Sometimes we aren't properly aware of our freedoms until we start to lose them. In a country like the UK, for instance, most people probably feel they do have freedom of speech - and if you asked them which countries do not have real freedom of speech they might mention...

Friday's opening of the Olympic Games, with the extraordinary spectacle created by Danny Boyle, ranging from the industrial revolution to the digital age, from children's literature to the National Health Service, has received plaudits and praise along with some bemusement and criticism. It may be just as well though that...

As we head towards one more tacky but popular Eurovision final, will a spotlight also be shone onto the serious human rights abuses in Azerbaijan, this year's host? Or will the Azeri government succeed in burnishing their image and hiding the reality of violence, repression and an increasingly hostile environment...

The government's next legislative programme may sound like a dry topic. But new laws can have a big impact. If there's a libel reform bill in the Queen's Speech next Wednesday 9 May, it could end London's run as the global capital for libel tourism, and prevent free speech on...

Kirsty Hughes writes this blog in a personal capacity

Is Europe about to embrace growth and job-creation, not austerity - and if so do the EU leaders who have been pushing austerity on the continent for the last two years or more know how to do that? And can they...

Francois Hollande, candidate of the French Socialist Party, is still the frontrunner in the French presidential elections. But he is untested in government. And in the midst of the euro crisis and the eurozone's commitments to binding austerity, what are the chances that a Hollande victory could represent a real...

As 25 of the EU's 27 member states signed the fiscal treaty designed to put a line under the euro crisis on a grey and misty Brussels morning, the mood at the summit was low key and low energy (the UK and the Czech Republic the two non-signatories).

Politicians...

As the Syrian army continues to bomb and attack civilian targets in Homs, and other towns and villages in Syria, killing children, men and women - against all the laws of war, international humanitarian law and the protection of civilians - statements of outrage are piling up, but no action.

This year, the elites in Davos - debating the future of capitalism - faced a little more self-doubt than usual as to whether they have the best ideas to run the world, not least in the face of the intractable euro crisis. But the future of capitalism is just one...

When the 'make or break' summit to save the euro finished in Brussels on Friday afternoon, David Cameron headed rapidly for the exit without the traditional end of summit press conference (making do, unusually, with only an interim pre-dawn one as the leaders stumbled out from their almost ten hours...

In Duck Soup - the 1930s Marx brothers' film - a powerful rich lady tells the ailing government of Freedonia she will only bail them out with another loan, if her favourite - Groucho Marx - becomes president: chaos follows.

Europe may or may not escape chaos...