The thing it is most difficult to get your head round about child soldiers is the fact that they are literally two things - children and soldiers.  Most of us cannot cope with those two facts simultaneously. In thinking about them we switch from one ...

Time is running short. In just 17 days, if nothing is done, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts passed under George Bush will expire, while mandatory reductions in government spending – part of the compromise that averted disaster in the 2011 deadlock over i...

The drawings on these pages have been assembled by a number of charities that rescue child soldiers and try to restore to them the childhood of which war has cheated them. It is estimated that today some 300,000 children – between the ages of 7 and 1...

Fracking, the hydraulic fracturing technology that releases underground shale gas, if it gets the go-ahead as part of a strategy for maximising the use of gas, will expose the Government's commitment to the environment as a sham and prove that it ...

It could, of course, be argued that this is just how the spies like it. Too much definition, too closely defined a brief, they might say – though obviously anonymously and subject to strict deniability – would not only clip their wings but also re...

She is not a feminist. We know this because, collecting Billboard’s Woman of the Year award, the pop star who shoots whipped cream out of her bra declared, “I am not a feminist but I do believe in the strength of women.” Like those X Factor song styl...

Most spectacularly, David Cameron, who seems completely obsessed with Ed Balls, decided to launch a volley of abuse at him in the Chamber apropos of nothing during Prime Minister’s Questions, accusing him of being “a bully who can dish it out … but c...

So, what would have been the British Library’s fair share, and by how much was it exceeded? Nobody even pretends to know. “More than its fair share” is one of those phrases of which people say “Well, it’s only a manner of speaking”. I prefer a manner...

She is paralysed for life. A woman on the eve of her wedding is killed on a quiet street by a drunken driver. A cyclist on an Alpine road... But why go on? Every day another cruel mischance to make fools of those who would see order and meaning in th...

From Space with loveMedvedev talks about aliens on Earth! youtube.comSay cheeseThe entire annual production of the world's most expensive cheese (made from donkeys' milk, obvs) has been bought by the tennis player Novak Djokovic. telegraph.co.ukWar g...

Now we couldn't possibly feature them all, but from Mariah to The Pogues, Sinatra to Slade and Cliff to Geldof, here are a selection of the greatest ever Christmas songs.Which one is your favourite of all time? Vote below.(Or if you need some time to...

Confused.com commissioned a secret camera to film an actor playing a drunk man trying to get into his car and failing while stumbling around.He then asked over 50 members of the public to help him get into the car, with surprising results.More than t...

Something's not sitting right with me when it comes to Greening and Creasy...I shouldn't like Justine Greening. As a beardy, bleeding-hearty type, the Tory frontbench isn't my usual go-to place for spiritual companionship – particularly Tory transpor...

Robert was a tough guy. His gun never left his side. Indeed he was so much of a soldier he even slept with his gun. The problem was that he was only 15. Then one day, after months in the African bush, his mother came. And everything changed.Ask why t...

The old system, under which courts booked interpreters autonomously, needed reform. It was wasteful of both money and time, though at least it worked. But government ministers decided that a centralised system would offer better quality, greater eff...

There were the Gulf States and there were the Russians exporting fossil fuels who could pretty much dictate their terms. There were the resource-hungry Chinese preparing to plunder Africa for raw materials; there was Norway showing us all how a minia...

The Russian birth rate is 1.6 children per woman. It would need to rise to 2.1 in order to sustain the population, say experts. So Putin’s message is not casual avuncular dinner party talk. The Russian population is set to fall by a third by 2050 if ...

Of course, this doesn't mean he'll win the gong. TIME executive editor Radhika Jones said in a recent interview that  editors don't make their selection for Person of the Year on poll results alone - "but it's always interesting to see where our pref...

This weekend was the fourth in succession on which my son’s morning football match was cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch. The field he plays at hosts nearly 400 boys and girls each Saturday; or rather, it does when there has been no rain for a wee...

The findings and the comments about that particular hospital were both chilling and crucial.In October, six care workers were jailed on charges of shocking patient abuse at Winterbourne View. Panorama footage showed care workers abusing patients, wit...

Top of the list of sites accessed by employees at the Department for Communities and Local Government was the BBC homepage, but Facebook received 2.4 million hits and Amazon 268,000.Chief executive of the TaxPayer's Alliance Matthew Sinclair said: "s...

The away stand for Udinese's match against Sampdoria was completely empty - except for the presence of Arrigo Brovedani, a merchant, who clapped and cheered his team alone.At first, Brovedani was booed by the Sampdoria fans - but soon his lone stand ...

Until the day before yesterday the transit camp at Bria was a bustling place of hope. There children, rescued from their fates as child soldiers and sex slaves in the rebel militias of the Central African Republic, were beginning the long, slow task ...

The animals, more than two dozen of them, didn't even get a cage: they lost their lives during production of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in freakish and no doubt preventable ways. A rep for Jackson acknowledged the lives lost bu...

This has been the case for a while; but, crucially, Russia is now publicly acknowledging it for the first time. The country's Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, says it is time to "face facts" and that a victory for the rebels "[cannot] be r...

Yet a serious point lies at the heart of the silliness. For it shows how easily politicians can be tempted to exert backroom pressure on journalists. This is a cautionary tale at a time when the idea of state regulation of the press is in the air.