World

‘Oh, I’m an owl,’ said my friend Nick. ‘You’re probably a lark.’ I raised an eyebrow. He explained. Apparently all human beings are either owls or larks, being genetically predisposed to stay up late or get up early, and to be at their best after sundown or dawn. Nonsense, of course, complete nonsense. Nick just likes partying and his career does not demand his availability much before ten in the morning. The woman friend he had just consigned to the larks section of the human aviary has land and horses, needs to be up before dawn, and not unnaturally begins to flake out after about 9p.m. None of this has

Conventional wisdom suggests that Islamic State and its affiliates have mastered social media. Yet the group’s real talent lies in dominating the traditional media cycle and using sensational violence to goad its enemies into overreactions. Hours after Isis released one of its more gruesome videos showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians on the shores of Sirte, Egyptian fighter jets pummelled several Isis targets in Derna. The Egyptians claim to be fighting the terrorists by propping up General Khalifa Haftar’s anti-Islamist Operation Dignity. However, if the Egyptians want a UN-resolution authorising international military intervention in Libya, this must be resisted. It will only polarise Libya’s political spectrum even further, creating a vacuum in which terrorism can

Are we now closer to Grexit? Tonight’s talks between eurozone finance ministers broke up after a few hours with Greece slamming the draft statement prepared by the group as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘unreasonable’. That statement was leaked by the Greek camp while the talks were happening, which can’t have helped the atmosphere in the room. The talks broke up acrimoniously. Finance ministers have told Athens it has until Friday to agree to maintain the current bailout under the troika, but Varoufakis said in a press conference this evening that ‘we are going to meet halfway during the next couple of days. Europe will do the usual trick, it will pull a

Another week and another completely random attack by a gunman hunting down cartoonists before inexplicably heading to the local synagogue. My guess is that events in Copenhagen yesterday have already been put down in many quarters to what President Obama describes as ‘a random bunch of folks’ being targeted by somebody who has ‘misunderstood’ what every Western leader agrees is an entirely peaceful and harmless religious tradition. As it happens, I know the people who put together the Lars Vilks committee and had a number of friends who were in the room in Copenhagen yesterday when the gunman attacked. One of them wrote a brief account of events for us

Haggis was on the menu at the Tories’ Black and White Ball on Monday, and now it’s on the political agenda too. In an otherwise dry speech on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership at the Institute of Directors this morning, Conservative Party Chairman Grant Shapps threw his weight behind Mr Steerpike’s campaign to have the US import ban on haggis overturned: ‘It is quite literally a criminal offence, for a British farmer to sell certain products to the largest economy on Earth, even if American diners want to enjoy these dishes. President Obama – whose family tree is said to go all the way back to a 12th-century king

The Green Party have finally admitted that their numbers are a bit squiffy. No, not their bonkers universal minimum income plans, rather their artificially inflated membership data. Mr S has been digging around these figures since the Green leader Natalie Bennett boasted their membership had hit 52,000, yet he was assured – on the record – that everything was above board. Now Bennett has admitted in an interview that over a thousand members of ‘The Green Surge’ have not actually paid up. Speaking to Fubar Radio‘s Tom Latchem, the antipodean revolutionary said: ‘The way membership works is that people can pay for 12 months and then you’re allowed, if you’ve

After the late Bob Hoskins was left out of a tribute montage at the Baftas, many people took to Twitter to vent their anger. The comedian David Baddiel went so far as to suggest the academy were showing bias against working class actors as a result of the omission. Now Hoskins’ daughter Rosa has spoken out, saying that her father would not have cared about the snub. The actress says that he ‘knew his worth’ so would not require validation from the academy. Thanks to everyone who’s expressed dismay that Dad wasn’t mentioned in the #Bafta obituaries. But he wouldn’t have cared. #bobhoskins — HauteHoskins (@HauteHoskins) February 9, 2015 #bobhoskins needed no external validation, he knew

Tony Abbott is not dead yet. He has survived a spill motion this morning by the narrowest of margins (61 – 39). Had the vote got into the forties it would have been extremely difficult for Mr Abbott not to hold a leadership ballot, in which case Malcolm Turnbull would have challenged and almost certainly won. Mr Abbott is a renowned political fighter, but due to poor recent polls and a series of unusual events, dissatisfaction with him clearly runs high. How much time he has bought himself remains to be seen, but he is clearly a wounded beast. It is likely that Mr Abbott will find himself under pressure

Speaking this weekend, Francois Hollande said, ‘If we don’t find a lasting peace agreement, we know perfectly well what the scenario will be. It has a name, it’s called war.’ The day before, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former head of Nato, said that Russia was likely to intervene in the Baltic states to test NATO’s shaky commitment to collective defence. ‘This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power.’ As telling as anything leaders are saying are the films Russian reporters have been broadcasting – I must warn you that there are age controls on these links for reasons that will become

We all need stories ‘to help us make sense of the complexity of reality’, intones the sensible sounding voice of Adam Curtis at the start of his new documentary about Afghanistan, Bitter Lake. But stories told by ‘those in power’ are ‘increasingly unconvincing and hollow’. What a relief then that Curtis has raided the archives of BBC News on our behalf for footage of the west’s 13 year engagement in Afghanistan to construct his own more than two hour long story. His conclusion: the crisis in Afghanistan is all the fault of the witless Americans! The problem all began on a US warship parked in the Suez Canal in 1945

Seventy years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, Roman Kent, who was 12 when he was sent there, wept as he implored the world not to allow anything like that to happen again. ‘How can one erase the sight of human skeletons – just skin and bones, but still alive?’ he said. ‘How can I ever forget the smell of burning flesh?’ Paul-Emile Seidman was working as a doctor in Bichat hospital in Paris when the survivors of the concentration camps began to arrive. In a few days our beds were occupied by skeletons…They all seem to be of the same age, whether they are twenty or sixty. Their heads