World

‘Milk?…Milk!’ rages Nirmal Sethia, clutching the side of the table in ill-disguised apoplexy. ‘If you put in milk and sugar then you have destroyed the taste! Destroyed it!’ I apologise and say I will happily drink my Earl Grey black. The truth is, I don’t have much choice, because I am trapped in a basement near Smithfield meat market with an impassioned tea magnate. I never knew there was such a thing, but there really is. Tea is an art form, you see, and although we Brits think we know quite a bit about it — well, we like drinking it morning, noon and night — we actually don’t know

Today I’ve been at the Shanghai Stock Exchange – the epicentre of the volatility that spooked global markets over the summer. I deliberately chose to come here because I wanted to make sure this simple message would be heard in both our country and China: through the ups and downs, Britain and China should stick together.  Indeed the constant refrain of my five-day tour – with one of the broadest, most ambitious British delegations of recent years – is that China can count on Britain to be its best partner in the West. That means Beijing choosing London as its bridge to Western financial markets, which it has demonstrated this

Well that all got quite ugly quite fast. Last week Donald Trump, a contender for US Republican party’s Presidential nominee, was asked by a supporter at a rally: ‘We have a problem in this country – it’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one… But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them?’ In the days since Donald Trump has got some flak for appearing nervously to humour this ill-informed questioner rather than shutting him down or correcting him. Then during an interview at the weekend the only Republican contender who has been anywhere

The call for limericks featuring a well-known artist and a destination of your choice was prompted by one that Robert Conquest wrote about Paul Gauguin: When Gauguin was visiting Fiji He said things are different here, e.g. While Tahitian skin Calls for tan spread on thin You must slosh it on here with a squeegee. Brian Allgar had this to say to Mr Conquest: Mr Conquest, your limerick’s cheaty — Stop writing mendacious graffiti! In Fiji? What rot, For the tropical spot Where Paul Gauguin arrived was Tahiti. It was a record-breaking entry size-wise and there was oodles of wit, skill and originality on display (though I lost count of

   Washington DC Ben Carson is relaxed. ‘He’s always relaxed,’ says an aide. The next televised Republican primary debate is two days away, but Dr Carson is about to begin his first rehearsal for it. The preternatural calm he exudes is presumably what gave him his steady hands during the 22-hour operation that led to him becoming the first surgeon to successfully separate Siamese twins fused at the head. That operation is part of the Carson legend: growing up poor, black, becoming chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins aged 33. This life story has aided an improbable presidential bid that is now starting to look more plausible. Carson is polling

Over the weekend, a Muslim conference held near Paris was interrupted when two Femen activists stormed the stage during a talk given by two fundamentalist preachers. The focus of the talk was on the role of women in Islam and, according to Inna Shevchenko – Femen’s founder member –  they were discussing why husbands should not beat their wives. The topless activists were then forcibly removed from the stage and kicked aggressively by a number of the event organisers. Irony doesn’t even cover it. It’s easy to dismiss this as yet more bare-breasted attention seeking from Femen protesters, and in a way, it is. But you can’t doubt that they often get their targets right. Back in Ukraine in 2008, Femen activists fought

Having, effectively, unilaterally ripped up the EU agreement on how to handle refugees, Germany is now desperately trying to re-impose the rules. At the start of this month, Angela Merkel’s government declared that any Syrian who could reach the country could claim asylum in Germany. This was contrary to the Dublin Convention of 1990 which set out that refugees should seek asylum in the first EU member state that they arrive in. Predictably, Germany’s actions led to a huge surge in the number of refugees trying to reach the country. The volume of people coming is now so great that Berlin has had to put in place controls on the

Earlier this week I asked where the celebrated ‘Ummah’ is when it comes to Muslim refugees. I think we now have an answer. Here is a video of one Kuwaiti official’s response to the question of why none of the Gulf countries seem willing to take any Syrian refugees. ‘Kuwait and the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries are too valuable to accept any refugees. Our countries are only fit for workers. It’s too costly to accept them here. Kuwait is too expensive for them anyway. As opposed to Lebanon and Turkey which are cheap. They are better suited for the Syrian refugees. ‘In the end it is not right for

There have been plenty of bad decisions taken by European politicians in the last few years. But few will cause as much misery as Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. Her decision to rip up the Dublin Convention and announce that any Syrian can claim asylum in Germany will lead to more people putting their hands in the lives of unscrupulous human traffickers as they try desperately to make it to Germany. This will, tragically, lead to more deaths. In the magazine this week, I argue that Merkel’s policy is flawed on several levels. First, she has chosen to prioritise those Syrians who have already made it to Europe. These people are

I have just returned from a trip abroad to find Britain and Europe in a state of madness. I will not reflect on any connections between these events. But perhaps a reader could enlighten me as to why in recent days Britain and Europe appear to have decided that Syria’s refugees are entirely ‘our’ responsibility. Other than a generalised sense that we are all human beings, Europeans are about as far down the list of those responsible as it is possible to be. Neither this country nor any of our European allies have made any significant intervention in Syria’s civil war. So why should Hungarians and Slovakians, Austrians and Poles

They call it the summer of Trump. Only a year ago everyone expected the 2016 presidential election to be a clash of dynasties, with Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush enjoying coronations by the Democrats and Republicans. But Bernie Sanders, the socialist Senator from Vermont, is proving to be a formidable challenge to Clinton. Even more disruptive, on the Republican side, has been Donald Trump. While Sanders represents the left wing of a common progressivism he shares with Hillary Clinton, Trump is challenging conservative orthodoxy itself by giving voice to a robust right-wing populism. Populists love outsiders, can-do executives and simple policy panaceas, and Trump, a billionaire real estate developer and

The more one thinks about the current witch-hunt against alleged paedophiles in the establishment, the more beyond satire it seems. What mordant novelist could have imagined, even ten years ago, that the police would be devoting massive amounts of their time to investigating famous people who were a) suspected on no actual evidence and b) dead and therefore beyond the reach of the law? Yet it has happened. It just goes to show that even a society which self-consciously prides itself on its tolerance will always contain those who are desperately searching for people to ruin and then to scream at those who suggest they might be wrong, and —