World

Earlier this year, Nigel Evans discussed in The Spectator how there’s no way to live down a rape allegation, true or not. Yesterday Ben Sullivan, the President of the Oxford Union, had the rape charges against him dropped.  As I came into Parliament last Thursday, I swung by the newspaper stand  to take a brief look at the headlines. ‘Oxford Union president, 21, arrested on suspicion of rape and attempted rape,’ said one. My heart sank. A photo of the beaming Oxford Union president, Ben Sullivan, dominated the front page in his swanky dinner jacket. He looked as if he had the world before him — until, that is, the

Media freedom is under attack in Pakistan, declared Hamid Mir, one of Pakistan’s most prominent journalists. He had six bullets pumped into him by bike riders in Karachi on 19 April. TV anchor, Raza Rumi, was similarly attacked in Lahore in late March. In May 2011, investigative reporter Saleem Shahzad was murdered following his allegations of links between the Pakistani military and al-Qaeda. These are just three of the many Pakistani journalists who’ve been victims of a wave of threats and violence in recent months and years. Even foreign journalists covering Pakistan from inside the country dare not write about certain issues for fear of being killed, or that their

The choice in Iraq appears to be between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, ISIS need beating back. On the other, the West doesn’t want to further strengthen Iran’s grip over the Iraqi government. For the time being, though, the West appears to have decided to work with Iran. The Americans have already held talks with them about what to do in Iraq and William Hague announced this morning that the British Embassy in Tehran will re-open. But there is no guarantee that working with Iran will stop the emergence of a terrorist friendly, ungoverned space in western Iraq. As Steven Simon, a former Obama

There are two types of Australian male: the ‘julios’, a modern import who likes soft drinks and hair product, and the ‘nerds’, the traditional breed who like beer and Sheilas. Tony Abbott is a nerd. On his recent visit to America, Abbott could not have done less to counter national stereotypes. The customised surfboard he gave to ‘the dude-in-chief’, President Obama, could only have been bettered in the nerds’ catalogue by a crate of 4X and a cork hat. Mr S is looking forward to the White House releasing pictures of the board in action.

70 years have passed since, in the words of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, ‘Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies on the northern coast of France.’ Operation Overlord, or D-Day as the invasion is known to posterity, was astonishing in every sense; not least because weather conditions on 5/6th June 1944 were far from ideal to execute an amphibious landing against a well-entrenched enemy. Even military men were surprised by the comparatively light casualties (4,413 killed); many had anticipated a bloodbath. Major General Sir Frederick Barton Maurice (a retired soldier who later turned to teaching military history at the University of London) wrote in the

Maybe it’s a special relationship after all. President Obama has given David Cameron and the Better Together campaign a rhetorical boost this afternoon. At a press conference held at the G7 in Brussels, the president said: ‘With respect to the future of the United Kingdom, obviously ultimately this is up to the people of Great Britain. ‘In the case of Scotland, there is a referendum process in place and it’s up to the people of Scotland. ‘But I would to say the United Kingdom has been an extraordinary partner to us. From the outside at least, it looks like things have worked pretty well. ‘We obviously have a deep interest

Word reaches Mr S of the plight of Mr Alexander Sucenko, organiser of next Saturday’s annual Russian Summer Ball. The ball is said to be in jeopardy because nobody wants to come. It seems that many regular attendees of this staple of the Russian expat social calendar have cried off this year because of the actions of a certain Russian President. It all strikes Mr S as a little ironic, bearing in mind that the Summer Ball is geared towards the exiled Czarist side of Russian culture. Her Highness Princess Olga of Russia and His Highness Prince Rostislav are set to be the guests of honour. Hasn’t the Russian royal family

I imagine there are very few people who haven’t heard about the Duchess of Cambridge’s clothing catastrophe in Australia. And, of course, this isn’t the first time that the duchess has had clothing issues. The wind has caused her to come a cropper at a variety of events – and who could forget the furore when the French edition of Closer ran pictures of her walking around topless while on holiday in the South of France. But can you imagine what people (and the press) would be saying if, rather than it being Kate, it was her sister, Pippa, whose pants (or lack thereof) had been on show for the

Last Saturday a young man in southern California murdered six people. I’m not going to name him or link to his picture because you would have probably seen it anyway, and he does not deserve to be remembered except by his family. He achieved nothing. One of the depressing inevitabilities of such atrocities is the eagerness with which people in the media jump to some sort of political explanation; since many of these killers are men hateful of women or other people generally, and are obsessed with guns, some commentators put this in a wider context of political conflict where scant evidence actually exists. If we were to draw a

Daniel Hannan wrote in the Spectator earlier this year about the pirate parties of Europe I once shared a car to the airport with a French MEP, a member of the Front National (FN). He spoke that very correct French which, across the Channel, serves in place of accent as a social signifier. He casually mentioned that the Holocaust couldn’t have happened, at least not on the scale claimed: the volume of the ovens, he creepily explained, was insufficient. The European Parliament has always had its fair share of extremists, eccentrics and outright, drooling loons. With the FN then polling at 6 per cent, there seemed no need to treat any of its MEPs seriously,