Bahrain jails 20 medics who treated wounded protesters. US sells them weapons to wound some more

Call me a lily-livered liberal pantywaister, because I am one, but it seems to me that a country that jails doctors for the crime of treating injured people is not the sort of place to which the West should be selling arms. In Bahrain, the flyspeck Gulf monarchy, the Arab Spring revolution flared briefly in…

Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani faces death for apostasy: Iranian theocracy in action

I wrote the other day about Troy Davis, a man who faced the death penalty in America. Hours after I wrote it, he was killed. I maintain it was an appalling and brutal act, whether he was innocent or guilty. But in the coming days, another man will probably be executed. He is definitely guilty…

Labour Conference: Ivan Lewis’s proposed journalists’ register is totalitarian, impractical and utterly unnecessary

Conference season is barely half-way through, but already we have a strong contender for the most thunderously idiotic and ill-thought-through proposal of the year. I’m referring, of course, to Ivan Lewis’s suggestion that journalists “guilty of gross malpractice” should be “struck off” in the manner of doctors, and prevented from practising journalism again. Please don’t…

Large Hadron Collider and the search for the Higgs boson: the moment of truth approaches

From today’s paper: The 50-year search for the Higgs boson  –  the elusive particle that attributes mass to matter – is months from completion. Physics will never be the same The Large Hadron Collider’s search for the Higgs boson – the theoretical particle that is believed to give all matter in the universe mass –…

Nasa satellite plunging to Earth: how to avoid fiery death

A satellite the size of a bus, travelling at about four and a half miles a second, is going to plunge out of orbit in the next few hours and shower fiery debris over the planet.

Faster than light? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

There is a lot of talk over what it will mean if Cern’s latest scientific headline-maker turns out to be real. Researchers on the Opera experiment (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) seem to have managed to send a beam of particles four hundred miles at (very slightly) faster than the speed of light. If true,…

Why death penalty supporters should be campaigning for Troy Davis to be reprieved

I tell you what: if I supported the death penalty, I would want to make damn sure that everyone who went to the chair, or the chamber or the gurney or the noose, was guilty. In a perverse way, you’d think it’d be more important for the pro-death penalty lot than us antis. I think…

I’m running a half marathon for St Mungo’s: please sponsor me

Next month, on the ninth of October, I will be running the Royal Parks Half Marathon in support of the homeless charity St Mungo’s. I hope you won’t mind my using this blog to hassle you for money. • Sponsor me here These are tough economic times, as you’ll have noticed if you’ve so much…

We Lefties shouldn’t be so quick to forgive Johann Hari

Roy Greenslade on The Guardian’s media blog writes that Johann Hari’s punishment – a four-month leave of absence and the handing back of his Orwell Prize – “fits the crime”. “I am willing to accept Hari’s apology… The sinner has repented”, Professor Greenslade says, which is magnanimous of him. But I think he has missed…

Troll hunting: a look at the dark side of the internet

My piece from Saturday’s paper: The word “troll” no longer conjures up a dumpy little plastic figure with brightly coloured hair: nor a monster from The Lord of the Rings. If you live even a part of your life online, you’ll know that trolls today are better known as the angry and usually anonymous commenters…

The English language and my not-so-fulsome grasp of it

Apparently some journalists and politicians don’t feel they’ve made it until they’ve been lampooned in Private Eye. Well, for me, something comparable has just happened. The magnificent Language Log has taken a look at my post yesterday about Nadine Dorries and the word “fulsome”, and pointed out – as quite a few of you did…

Nadine Dorries, linguistic pioneer

I’m not a particular fan of Nadine Dorries, but her treatment by David Cameron in the Commons the other day was unpleasant: he described her before a packed House as “frustrated” and burst out laughing. He has, now, apologised: The Daily Mail reports that he sent her a text message, reading: “Nadine i am genuinely…