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Scotland’s 50p alcohol tax: Battling health with money

Scotland has elevated far beyond Theresa May’s 40p proclamation then, with an impetus to enforce a m...

Outlook: cloudy

A most enjoyable session at Weber Shandwick this lunchtime on the outlook for the 2012/13 political ...

How much money is at stake if Greece exits?

Christian Schulz of Berenberg Bank has calculated that total exposure of the rest of the world is ju...

As with Iran and Syria, the usual clichés have been used in the reporting of Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri’s underpants bomb

Robert Fisk: Must we stand idly by while world leaders spout this codswallop?

Even Churchill told the Empire that Britain would 'not stand by idly and see Poland trampled'

Robert Fisk: Arab Spring has washed the region's appalling racism out of the news

The Long View: Migrant workers from the subcontinent often live eight to a room in slums – even in oil-rich Kuwait

Osama bin Laden

Robert Fisk: Did Osama really believe I would polish his image?

O Lordy, lordy. So there's Bin Laden, hiding in Abbottabad and he's waffling on about Fisk.

Muslims performing one of the five pillars of Islam, the pilgrimage to Mecca

Robert Fisk: After the Arab Spring, an Islamic Awakening?

More than a decade and a half ago, I travelled to Holland to meet – in the anonymity of a train station café at Leiden, at his request – one of the most brilliant Arab professors of Islamic thought, Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid.

Five-year-old Sayef Ala’a with his father who hopes that foreign surgeons can rebuild his son’s ear

Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - families fight back

Special Report day three: Abandoned and afraid, the parents of Iraq's suffering children wait in vain for help

Dr Aiman Qeis cares for babies at Fallujah General Hospital, which has a high rate of children born with congenital defects

Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - the hospital of horrors

Special Report day two: Stillbirths, disabilities, deformities too distressing to describe - what lies behind the torments in Fallujah General Hospital?

Mariam Yasir, six, with her mother in Fallujah - she suffers from a birth defect

Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - Sayef's story

Special Report day one: The phosphorus shells that devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the victims of America's dirty war still being born?

US Marines during the ground offensive in Fallujah in November 2004

Robert Fisk: Iraq's road back from oblivion

Memories of sectarian war, kidnapping and child killing are fading. It is safer. But nine years since Saddam's fall, Robert Fisk meets many who feel they have lost their homeland

In Syria, the regime is crushing dissent, while the Qataris and Saudis arm the rebels

Robert Fisk: Counter-revolution – the next deadly chapter

It was my old Jordanian-Palestinian chum Rami Khouri who first spotted what is going on in the Middle East right now: it's the counter-revolution. Bahrain is crushing dissent. Syria is crushing dissent. Mubarak's former head of intelligence, the sinister Omar Suleiman, is standing for president in Egypt – the cancellation of his candidacy last week by a dodgy "electoral committee" may well be overturned. Libya is at war with itself. Yemen has got its former dictator's sidekick back. Sixty-one dead in a battle between soldiers and al-Qa'ida last week – in a single day. All in all, a pretty mess.

Robert Fisk: This is politics not sport. If drivers can't see that, they are the pits

Supposing it was Assad shelling out £40m for a race. Would Ecclestone be happy to give him a soft sporting cover for his repression?

A man sells second-hand books in Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad

Robert Fisk: The Baghdad street of books that refuses to die

Saad Tahr Hussein rushes me through the narrow alleyway towards Mutanabbi Street, where the concrete wall in front of the central bank hems in the pedestrians. About a thousand Iraqis briefly see – or don't notice – the sly shade of a Brit as he stumbles down the alley. Then, in the square where the statue of old Marouf al-Rasafi, poet and history-debunker under British colonial rule, glares at the crowds, we turn left into the street of books.

Colleagues laying down cameras in front of a portrait of the Lebanese cameraman Ali Shabaan at his funeral in the village of Maifadoun

Robert Fisk: Shot in the heart - the journalist Assad made into a martyr

Mourners demand answers over fate of cameraman killed on the Lebanese border

Andrew White, the 'vicar of Baghdad': 'Why can’t I be Iraqi?', he wants to know

Robert Fisk: Under siege but vicar of Baghdad is still spreading the word

Andrew White got his blue Iraqi badge on Wednesday – the pass that allows him to move around Baghdad. The Anglican Chaplain to Iraq supported the US invasion – he still thinks Saddam shipped his weapons of mass destruction off to Syria before the Anglo-American armies arrived – and as someone who used an American pass to get about, the end of the occupation must have contained a special irony. "From the day the Americans left, their passes didn't work any more. I couldn't do anything. But now I've got the new Iraqi badge. It's fine."

What happens to Afghan women and children when Western troops leave?

Robert Fisk: Watch us lead the UN donkey up the Khyber

So back to THAT BLOODY WAR. I mean not the Syrian one – where we're going to stay hands off – or the Libyan one (where we were hands on, but not touching the ground). Nor the Iraqi one, which is a war at 60-a-day fatalities (pretty much equal with Syria's daily death toll, though we can't make that comparison). Nope. Of course, I mean the Afghan war which we fought in 1842 and in 1878-80 and in 1919 and from 2001 to 2014 (or 2015 or 2016, who knows?). We wouldn't let them down this time, we said about the Afghans – or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara said – in 2001. Oh yes we will.

A family fleeing the violence in Syria arrives at a Lebanese army checkpoint

Robert Fisk: On Lebanon's border, silent Syrians are flocking to an unknown future

Our writer visits a village where families flee Assad's wrath

Career Services

Day In a Page

Power politics: French threat to UK energy

Power politics: French threat to UK energy

François Hollande's reported plans to close France's nuclear plants could have a shocking impact on Britain, highlighting dangerous flaws in our national energy policy
A tale of two Zionists: the dramatic origins of Israel

A tale of two Zionists: the dramatic origins of Israel

A Jewish playwright is staging a conversation that shaped history. He tells Donald Macintyre how it can help to form the future
Facebook: Is it worth it?

Facebook: Is it worth it?

The books were closed early on the flotation of the social network giant, which is now valued at up to $104bn. Stephen Foley examines whether this is a wise investment – or whether the buyers have gone mad
So, Dave, is your top track 'money' or 'us and them'?

So, Dave, is your top track 'money' or 'us and them'?

David Cameron claims that Dark Side of the Moon is his favourite album. Yeah, right says John Rentoul – these days, politicians' pop picks come direct from the focus group
Australia mourns 'Angel of the Gap', the man who talked 160 out of suicide

Australia mourns 'Angel of the Gap'

Don Ritchie, the man who talked 160 out of suicide, dies aged 86
The white album: celebration of British music hits sour note as black artists are overlooked

The white album: celebration of British music hits sour note as black artists are overlooked

Critics ask why only white acts are featured on compilation celebrating 'legendary performances'
Lloyd Webber casts radio's bad boy as Bible's worst villain

Moyles asked to star as Herod

Lloyd Webber casts radio's bad boy as Bible's worst villain
From 6am to 1am, daily: BBC1 runs into Olympic overload

From 6am to 1am, daily: BBC1 runs into Olympic overload

Schedules cleared for 2,500 hours of coverage – and 'glass box' World Cup studio will be used again
James Lawton: With Neville in the camp, England's players should not fall prey to indifference

James Lawton

With Neville in the camp, England's players should not fall prey to indifference
Brian Lara: West Indies legend likes look of the 'latest Lara'

Brian Lara interview

West Indies legend likes look of the 'latest Lara'
Steve Bunce on Boxing: I was there at the start for Audley. I don't want to be there at the end

Steve Bunce on Boxing

I was there at the start for Audley. I don't want to be there at the end
Picture preview: Other Worlds

Other Worlds

Picture preview
Swan Lake: A leap into the future

A leap into the future

Matthew Bourne's renowned reinterpretation of Swan Lake is now showing as a 3D film
Gary Neville: 'Red Nev' is a rebel with a new cause

'Red Nev': rebel with a new cause

Gary Neville will play by the rules during his time with England
Death on Earth: how the world's wildlife vanished

Death on Earth

How the world's wildlife vanished