The New York Fed will no doubt now face questions in Washington. On this side of the Atlantic, the Bank of England's response to the Geithner emails amounted to little more than a claim that the concerns had been passed on to the British Banking Asso...

First, the here and now. In the face of so nasty a mix of pressures – chronic and acute, domestic and international – George Osborne warrants a modicum of forbearance. The globalisation of the modern world is such that there is a limit to the impact ...

They spurred debates about the widening gap between rich and poor, about morality, about whether there was a criminal underclass. They prompted a reassessment of the way cities, including London, were policed, bringing a new emphasis on the visibilit...

Much of the list will be no surprise to anyone who has ever been to an airport – no firearms, no illegal substances, no liquids, aerosols or gels over 100ml (not even if they're in a clear plastic bag). Pets, tents and "soft-sided bags over 25l in ca...

Earlier this week, I was in a black taxi and mentioned the dreaded rival. The driver, Ray, burst into a torrent of abuse, and reached fever pitch with this assertion: "Them ******** ain't even done the Knowledge!". Two years and four months Ray had l...

Now, almost three years later, in a rare display of bipartisanship, the US Congress is moving to pass the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, denying visas to Russians implicated in human rights abuses and freezing their financial assets...

Mehdi Hasan was right to speak out, but it must not be left to Muslims alone to take on this bigotry. A tide of Islamophobia has swept Europe for many years, and – shamefully – all too few have taken a stand. Even many who regard themselves as "progr...

I often fall into this trap myself. I willingly concede that I lead something of a cloistered life and, because I don't have first-hand experience of some of the commonplace aspects of modern life, I am probably unqualified to discuss the tastes and ...

After Russia, Ukraine has the worst HIV position in Europe. The best estimate is that there are about 300,000 people with HIV, three times the number in the United Kingdom.As I saw on a recent visit, the Ukraine government does all too little to prev...

You can almost smell the horror in their summary. There's even a warning: "Repeated use of very strong language." Hugely enjoyable. Especially if you read it to yourself in a 1940s newsreader accent.This is, however, the only fun aspect of an unpleas...

The obvious answer is that everything should be privatised, hived off and sent to private finance, but that services should still be available free or cheaply at the point of use. This is roughly what is happening in the National Health Service now...

"I've had a major hard-on ever since I first heard about it," says the tech reporter from the Financial Times, "and I can't see it going away any time soon. This may even be the most life-changing innovation of our time." RealMeet is unique. It is ...

After meeting six years ago, and living together until recently, I know a few things about his reluctance to get out of bed. But he'll be all right. He's legendary for falling asleep anywhere – on one cinema trip together he was snoring by the end o...