This time we are in calmer waters; too calm, perhaps, for there are several puzzles about the H5N1 outbreak that we must get to the bottom of before we can start to breathe easier. One is how the virus got into what is supposed to be a bio-secure env...

The importance of H5N1, which has been monitored since 1997, is that it is a severe strain of bird flu that has "pandemic potential", according to the World Health Organisation. In other words, it is a bird virus that has the potential to change into...

Another significant punch was landed last month. Russia's Supreme Court in Moscow closed the Russian Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS) on 23 January. This non-governmental organisation, which I helped run in Nizhny Novgorod, was the home for independ...

Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, has, of course, behaved commendably by putting to one side this rather spurious appeal to Euro-patriotism and choosing a less polluting car over the Mercedes and Volkswagens favoured by his colleagues. It ...

Dear Tony, May I suggest the single most important thing you could do this weekend in response to the terrifying new UN report predicting devastating climate change? Go out and buy a yellow plastic duck. It could be your most persuasive weapon in dea...

It started, as these things often do, with Sienna Miller. Remember her? The on-off girlfriend of Jude Law, who recently said that she wants people to respect her for her acting and not keep banging on about "what I'm wearing or my relationship". To t...

One unkind critic has gone so far as to suggest that Kylie's relics deserve rather to be exhibited in a "Chamber of Horrors". Many who don't go that far and don't see themselves as cultural elitists will nevertheless question the appropriateness of c...

It will doubtless comfort the man in question to learn this week that he is not alone in being afflicted by "moobs", as the male bosom has been dubbed. A report from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons revealed that a record 177 men...

Alas, the finer points of the game still escape me, even though I've lived here for 11 years now. But the metaphor holds good, as will be obvious to anyone who watches the time-out team huddles, the bone-crunching blocks and all the other goings-on i...