On 16 March 1988, Saddam Hussein's regime dropped bombs containing various poisonous chemicals, including mustard gas, on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing some 3000 to 5000 people. Even more people were wounded.

On Monday, 3 December, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson reported on the continuing legacy of the...

Will the body of Yasser Arafat yield any clues about how he died? The former Palestinian leader died at the age of 75 in Paris on 11 November 2004 following a short illness. The cause of his death is not clear. In July this year, reports of tests on Arafat's...

It was a photograph of Justin Welby that did it for me. The Bishop of Durham and Archbishop-designate of Canterbury is wearing a purple cassock in the photo. Now, as I write, I see purple everywhere.

The Monday edition of our local paper - the Basingstoke Gazette...

"In Flanders the poppies blow." So wrote Canadian soldier, physician, and poet John McCrae (1872-1918) who served as an army medical officer during the First World War. He had noticed that red poppies grew readily in the disturbed soil around the graves of soldiers who had died in battle. Red...

Wherever I look in the magazines that have landed on my desk over the past week or so, I seem to find water, or at least articles and reports on water, or to be more specific, articles and reports on the lack of access to clean drinking water.

"Almost 900...

At the Imperial War Museum in London yesterday, British prime minister David Cameron introduced plans to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and commemorate some of the battles that took place during the war. He called for "a commemoration that captures our national spirit in...