It is one of the greatest mysteries of our time — why is New Zealand always being left off world maps? A new video tackles the issue. In a 2.5 minute video posted to Facebook around 10am on Wednesday 2 May 2018, New Zealand has launched a tourism campaign exploring this question that has bothered … Continue reading “New Zealand, Where Are You?”
Philip Roth, one of the most admired American novelists, has died at the age of 85. In more than 30 novels, Roth fascinated and scandalised his home country. Roth won accolades for his work from the outset, winning the National Book Award for his first book, the collection of short stories Goodbye Columbus (1959). The … Continue reading “Novelist Philip Roth Dies”
Ireland has long been one of the most socially conservative countries in the European Union. But things have been changing and the country’s current Prime Minister is a sign of the times. Since the creation of Irish Free State in 1922, the post of Taoiseach*, Ireland’s equivalent of Prime Minister, has been held by … Continue reading “Changing Ireland”
There were various celebrations and exhibitions planned to mark the 70th anniversary of the beginning of West Indian mass immigration to the U.K., with the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in London on 22 June 1948. Instead, a scandal has grown up about the treatment of the “Windrush Generation” that led to the … Continue reading “What About Windrush?”
A hundred years after some British women got the right to vote, there is finally a woman among the statues of political and democratic heroes on Parliament Square outside the Palace of Westminster. London Mayor Sadiq Khan unveiled the statue of Dame Millicent Fawcett on 24 April. There had been an organised and popular movement … Continue reading “Suffragist Honoured”
Britain’s Prince Charles has long been recognised for his involvement in ecology. Now the Queen is turning to conservation, protecting forests all over the Commonwealth, from a tiny 2.5 hectare site in Antigua and Barbuda to the 6.4 million hectares of the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada. The Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy originated in an idea … Continue reading “The Queen Goes Green”
Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 is remembered in the U.S. as a landmark moment in the fight for civil rights. But behind the title were real children. The one whose name was forever associated with the case, Linda Brown, has died, aged 76. Linda Brown was just seven years old in 1951, when … Continue reading “School Integration Pioneer Dies”
A scientific study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that false news spreads on Twitter much further and faster that true news items. Just like spoken gossip and rumours, people just can’t wait to share or retweet something unusual or shocking. The study found that false news stories are 70 percent more likely to … Continue reading “False News Travels Faster and Further”
Professor Stephen Hawking, possibly the most famous modern scientist, has died at the age of 76, after beating enormous odds to survive and work for 55 years with the debilitating motor neurone disease. Hawking had an exceptionally brilliant mind. He became the prestigious Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University at just 35. But by … Continue reading “Stephen Hawking: Death of A Scientist”
Sixteen-year-old Melbourne schoolgirl Jade Hameister loves a challenge, and she isn’t going to let sexist Internet trolls affect her ambitions. She recently set a polar record: she is the youngest person to achieve the “polar hat-trick” of skiing to both poles and across Greenland. When she reached the South Pole, she sent a feminist message … Continue reading “Sandwiches, Skis and Self-Esteem”