Designing a groundbreaking, hi-tech new station to connect several subway lines in one of the world’s busiest cities is not just a matter of funnelling passengers in the right directions and keeping the trains running smoothly; now it’s also about channelling natural daylight underground.
It’s been a mixed week for those of us who care about protecting our environment and securing a decent future for generations to come.
John Cridland, the director-general of the CBI, has a point when he asks why we are persevering with the GCSE exam at 16 when we are insisting that all teenagers should remain in education and training until they are 18. Indeed he has put his finger on a contradiction in current Government education policy.
The Independent’s fine correspondent Adam Sherwin shows he thinks it controversial that Steven Berkoff should claim a white man might play Othello (“Berkoff’s black rage over white actor ban in Othello”, 18 June).
The prospect of voluntarily travelling to a war zone with your young children is not one which most British women would ever even consider. Yet it is thought that may be precisely what Khadija, Sugra and Zohra Dawood did last week, leaving their homes in Bradford and taking their nine children, aged from three to 15, to join Isis on the bloody battlefields of Syria.
This week’s 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo has been celebrated in many ways. One of the most amazing is that the Chilcot Inquiry into the battle is said to be ready for publication any day soon.
The Battle of Waterloo was a decisive moment in European history and one of Britain’s greatest military victories (albeit with a fair bit of help from the Prussians). Yet 200 years on, the commemorations are relatively muted. That is partly just a consequence of the passage of time: the days of sabre-wielding cavalry and red-coated infantry seem impossibly remote. But it is also indicative of the fact that Britons are not – except when playing football against Germany – much given to tub-thumping over battlefield successes. Читать дальше...
Even in America, a country by now inured to mass killings, the shooting rampage in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine people died, has come as a particular shock.
Who could ever replace middle-England’s human totem pole Jeremy Clarkson? After all, Clarkson is a man so revered by his fans that his dismissal brought over a million of Britain's alpha males to their knees, crying and slobbering like spoilt children throwing a tantrum.
A thrown World Series, players gambling on games, the rampant use of steroids. To baseball’s already compendious list of scandals must now be added one that could potentially top the lot: allegations that one team hacked into the top secret computer systems of one of its rivals.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar in which Muslims around the world fast from dawn to sunset. I have been fasting during the month of Ramadan every year since I was about eight-years-old and the experience has been changing for me in many ways, teaching me a lot about discipline, and what it means to be less fortunate.
It’s healthy for internal debate that Jeremy Corbyn has won a place on the Labour leadership shortlist, but despite calls for Labour to turn left and completely reject austerity, I believe the party, while remaining true to its values in defending the less fortunate and the public sector, should return to the centre ground.
It’s difficult to look at images of extreme animal cruelty, but not looking at them doesn’t mean the cruelty isn’t happening, it just means that we choose to close our eyes.
It would be a shame if the title put you off. Stephen Adly Guirgis's characters may use the f-word (and related profanities) almost as often as they draw breath, but this Tony-nominated play is gloriously funny and blisteringly honest as it shows its flawed, working-class personnel grappling with an unholy mess of addiction, infidelity, health-food and higher powers in contemporary New York.
The Twitter mob was at it again last weekend, using the power of the medium to mobilise a pressure group out of nothing more substantial than a hashtag. We have heard much about how Twitter influences outcomes in public life recently – compare Sir Tim Hunt and the television newsreader Kay Burley – but this is a story from the frontiers of social media which provides a welcome counterbalance.
1. A stunning map of Europe by Max Moser showing population change between 2001 and 2011. Red is an increase and blue is a decrease.
Mo Farah reportedly missed two drugs tests before he became a double gold medallist at the 2012 London Olympics, a newspaper has claimed.
Modern housing development in Britain have a reputation for poor quality, cheap materials and unimaginative design.