Harvey may have been unprecedented, but it wasn’t unexpected. Houston frequently experiences flooding and experts have repeatedly warned that worse could be to come as the world gets warmer.And yet Houston was shockingly unprepared, not least because its flood control directors think talk of climate change is a plot to prevent development, and its planning …
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Brazilian President Michel Temer has removed the protected status of a vast tract of the Amazon in order to open it up to mining. The national reserve – known as Renca – in the states of Amapá and Pará, covers 46,000 sq km (about the size of Denmark) and is rich in deposits of copper …
Lorelei Armstrong writes to the New Scientist complaining (tongue in cheek) that “atheism does not seem to lead to moral depravity, despite measured prejudices”. (New Scientist, 19 August, p 22) “I was promised moral depravity. Which way to moral depravity?”. Quite. Actually, non- believers are often those who help the old and the poor and …
“Queueing has become a symbol of Britain’s civilised, fair, quiet way of doing things. But is it all it is cracked up to be? The person at the front of the soup kitchen line gets fed first even if the one at the end is hungriest. The youth at boarding gate five gets to sit …
Part of an interview conducted by Sarah Lyall with David Cornwell ( John Le Carre) and Ben Macintyre, writers on the theme of spying: Sarah Lyall: Is there something about the British psyche that makes spying, or at least duplicity, an enticing prospect? Ben Macintyre: We Brits are particularly susceptible to the double life, aren’t …
