World

Harare, Zimbabwe At a meeting in Harare in early August, Mr. Mugabe stated quite clearly, that the persons responsible for the murder of white Zimbabwean farmers during the land invasions would ‘never be prosecuted’. Tens of thousands of people who were members of Zapu and lived in the south west of the country were murdered, beaten, raped, tortured and harassed between 1983 and 1987 during a campaign that Mr. Mugabe named ‘Gukurahundi’ or the storm that ‘washes clean’. Over a million-people fled the genocide and moved to South Africa and Botswana. Not a single person has been prosecuted for any of these crimes. During the campaign that Mr. Mugabe called

As if the issue of Catalonian secession wasn’t fraught enough, some of its most committed advocates are now arguing that the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last week demonstrate the region’s readiness for independence. Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, for his part, has suggested that the vehicle attacks that left 15 dead require regional differences to be cast aside in the battle against jihadism. The debate about Catalonian independence has always been a heated, complex one in Spain. Now that the tragic events of last week are being introduced into the discussion, it will become even more so. Some of the more fervent supporters of Catalonian secession have been particularly active on social media

Spain, Finland, Russia: in the space of a few days, Europe is reminded, yet again, that terrorism – like the virus it is – kills brutally, indiscriminately and, critically, transnationally. On Thursday, August 17, a van rammed into crowds of people in Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard – a hub of tourism and social life. Thirteen were killed with dozens more injured. The atrocity was followed by a knife attack the very next day in the Finnish city of Turku, which killed two people and injured eight. Another knife attack, this time in the Siberian city of Surgut on the 19 August, injured eight. Islamic State has claimed responsibly for all the

Towns on Ukraine’s ceasefire line are marking three years since some were retaken by government forces from pro-Russian separatists. But there is little cause for celebration: houses in Marinka, Krasnogorovka and Avdiivka bear the scars of war. Some of these scars are recent, including a large house with nine apartments that was destroyed in shelling in late July. The war in eastern Ukraine is a forgotten conflict in many ways. It is talked about as “frozen” or “hidden” yet there is little recognition that the fight is still rumbling on. Unlike Bosnia or the border between Georgia and the breakaway statelets of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, eastern Ukraine witnesses dozens of exchanges of fire a day.

Another attempt to bring animal rights activism off social media and into the real world has faltered. Nothing changes, does it? But before we move on past another small march in Westminster, it might be an idea to stop and take stock of the irregularities. There are lessons to be learned for politicians, for the media and for the BBC in particular. If you missed it, and you probably did, there was a march in Westminster this past weekend. There may have been more than one for all I know; small protests in London are not uncommon. But the march in question was led by the BBC’s own Chris Packham, with

Long before student activists started talking about pulling down statues of Cecil Rhodes, a cultural war was being waged in America over monuments honouring General Robert E. Lee and other leaders of the Confederacy. In 2001 there was a petition to remove some of these statues from the University of Texas on the grounds that their presence might ‘lead people to believe that the university is tolerant of the Confederate ideology regarding slavery’. The arguments that started on campus then branched out beyond it. To some, the statues were a symbol of Southern heritage and pride. To others, they were a monument to racism. In recent years this argument has

Here are some of the many insults that Donald Trump has ladled out over the years. On Senator John McCain: ‘He’s not a war hero.’ On Senator Rand Paul: ‘I never attacked his looks, and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.’ On Jeb Bush: ‘He’s an embarrassment to his family.’ On Jeb Bush’s family: ‘Do we really need another Bush in the White House—we have had enough of them.’ On Hillary Clinton: ‘Such a nasty woman.’ On Rosie O’Donnell: ‘I’d like to take some money out of her fat-ass pockets.’ On Barack Obama: ‘He’s the founder of Isis.’ Yet Trump’s response to last weekend’s racist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia—an idiots’ Woodstock of warmed-over Ku Klux Klan bigots, arm-thrusting neo-Nazis, historically

If he takes a break from the 24-hour feed of Fox News and switches over to HBO in time to join his country in the millennial kumbaya that is Game of Thrones, Donald Trump might find himself gazing into the uncanny valley. Daenerys Targaryen is a striking doppelgänger: same initials, same preternaturally bright hair, same reliance on ‘fire and fury’. If Trump becomes a full-on Thronie, it’s surely only a matter of time before the White House’s conveyor belt for officials includes a demand to bend the knee in the Oval Office. We open the latest episode of Game of Thrones – ‘Eastwatch’ – by witnessing the fallout from the last

On Sunday morning the White House, in an unsigned statement, came out swinging against ‘nephew-nazi and all extremist groups.’ Leave it to the Trump administration to bungle even the wording of neo-Nazi in its belated attempt to distance itself from the sanguinary events that took place on Saturday in the bucolic town of Charlottesville, Virginia, where the radical right gathered to chant ‘blood and soil’ and carry Nazi flags. Their mission was to decry the impending removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who lost the Civil War to Ulysses Grant. The odious David Duke, a leading neo-Nazi who speaks worshipfully of Donald Trump, had slithered out of