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  • Israel stunned by Hawking snub Israel stunned by Hawking snub

    It is an event "of cosmic proportions", said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description of Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated by the Cambridge University, where Hawking is a professor, on May 8. Hawking is a world-renowned cosmologist and physicist. His scientific work had ...

  • Editorial Boy Scouts do a good turn

    THE decision by the Boy Scouts of America to welcome openly gay boys into the program is a work in progress. The next appropriate step is to allow gay Scout leaders. In the years leading up to the 61-percent vote by the organization’s National Council to change policy, it became clear how many gay boys had already thrived in scouting. Gay young men who had achieved the rank of Eagle ...

  • The NHS dont pick on GPs Mr Hunt. Develop a vision | Observer editorial

    NHS .What Bevan would have found difficult to understand, however, is why modern-day ministers seem unable to pick the right fights. Bevan's bribe was surely a price worth paying: without the support of GPs, the NHS would never been more than a proposal on paper. Fifty years later, the Labour government again went to war with GPs over performance-based contracts. At least there was a point ...

  • Syria’s River of Death

    clashing along the frontline. Mohammed’s problem was that the frontline ran between the two places where he was buying and selling the clothes for his shop. So one morning in early March, Mohammed set out toward government-controlled territory, through checkpoints and the no-man’s land separating the two fighting forces, to buy merchandise. Many people cross the frontlines this way ...

  • How Baghdad Fuels Iraqs Sectarian Fire

    The Iraqi government has hurled the country to the brink of a new civil war. In under a month, Baghdad launched a vicious assault on a Sunni protest camp, resulting in 44 deaths; executed 21 alleged Sunni terrorists in one day, and suspended the licenses of 10 satellite channels, 9 of them deemed pro-Sunni. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s message to his country’s extremely ...

Movie Review

The Kid Stays in the Picture

The Kid Stays in the Picture

The title of The Kid Stays in the Picture, Brett Morgen and Nanette Bursteins portrait of Hollywood legend Robert Evans life, comes from the mouth of another Hollywood legend, the great producer/studio mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. Zanuck had personally selected Evans to play a role in the 1957 screen version of Ernest Hemingways The Sun Also Rises. The rest of the cast disapproved of his ... ...

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  • Russia The Day the Inspectors Came

    This is how it is in today's Russia, one year since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency. Over the last twelve months, the authorities have introduced a sweeping set of restrictive new laws. In addition to raids on nongovernmental groups, they are harassing, intimidating and imprisoning political activists. Government critics and even charities that can in no way be thought of as ...

  • If all options are open why not prosecute Abu Qatada in the UK

    Listening to Theresa May’s statement to Parliament today, it seems the British government is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to deport Abu Qatada to Jordan to face terrorism charges. A new treaty with Jordan aims to address the risk that Abu Qatada, who has already been convicted in his absence there, would be tried again using torture-tainted evidence. The main problem in Jordan, ...

  • The Scotsman recruits friends in editorial and subscription deal

    The Scotsman has launched a subscription initiative linked to the right to publish editorial content. It is inviting organisations - such as charities, universities, trade associations, professional bodies, societies and interest groups - to become "Friends of The Scotsman", which would give them the right to contribute to a new editorial section.If the initiative takes off, the ...

  • A Real Life Hunger Games

    Human Rights Watch, we’ve been documenting abuses of unaccompanied migrant children for more than 10 years, and I’ve personally interviewed hundreds of these children. The kids I met with are sent abroad in a last ditch effort to find a better life or escape persecution. Traveling with smugglers-under trucks, by foot, and in rickety boats-at least 10,000 unaccompanied children enter ...

  • What matters now about marriage

    A very few years ago, most Americans (including me) viewed the idea of gay marriage as both undesirable and wildly improbable. Today, most Americans (including me) believe that permitting gay and lesbian couples to marry is the right thing to do, a matter of simple justice. Let us pause in wonder at the speed and moral meaning of this change. As recently as a decade ago, homosexual conduct ...

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