In mid-May the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, won the plurality of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many American readers might not fully understand the significance of Sinn Féin’s political victory- but rest assured that subjects of the United Kingdom and a wide range of political movements the world over have heard the message […]
Amid doubts over whether Theresa May can deliver a Brexit deal that avoids a hard Irish border, Winthrop Rodgers assesses whether the result will be a renewed push for a united Ireland. The imposition of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic by a seemingly callous Tory government would risk angering the youth […]
As Iran and the United States, a key member of the P5+1 world powers, inch toward deicing their 35-year-old frosty and at times traumatic relations, jockeying from all sides of political spectrum target the direction of this process and whether the icy relations should ever start to melt. Regional opponents of improved ties between Iran […]
The Farne Islands, England lie at 55 degrees N. Off the coast of Northumberland, they’re not too far from Newcastle, England and Edinburgh, Scotland. I took a boat trip out to the islands a few weeks ago and saw thousands of puffins. The black and white birds were diving, bobbing, and flying with fish in […]
There have been many movies made about Margaret Thatcher in recent years. Now that she has passed, here is a review of three of them. We start with “The Iron Lady” (2011), which stars Meryl Streep. Streep does a fantastic job of playing the former prime minister of the U.K. at the height of her power […]
Europe has been these last couple years at the forefront of world media. First, the Eurocrisis and its domestic impacts have been over studied and analyzed. Second, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the EU creating an unfortunate outcry throughout Europe. Third, Western Europe has been plagued by a series […]
By Sarah Rose Ch. 4: Shanghai to Hangzhou, September 1848 Robert Fortune was patient as the coolie attended to his new coif. A small blue and white tea bowl sat nearby on a dusty crate, and swirling its sediment of leaves, Fortune spilled the cooling liquid out onto the dirty deck. Floors were the place […]
Hard to say, this past week, who was madder and more affronted about a missed opportunity: Evgeni Plushenko, the Russian figure skater who won Olympic silver but felt he deserved gold, or Argentina, which found out that a British company was exploring for oil in the nearby but British-held Falkland Islands. Despite losing a short […]