From the ancient Greeks onwards, wise governments have seen the benefits of outsourcing. But what would a modern state look like if it put all of its ministries out to tender, employing the best foreign governments and…
Friday 25 March
The situation in Libya has escalated from protest to insurrection to civil war to international conflict
Sunday 16 September
It doesn’t matter how long I’ve lived in Japan. I’m still struck by the level of civility here. Every encounter, whether it’s on a crowded train or a busy street is transacted with a degree of quiet courtesy that continues…
Friday 4 March
One of the sparks for the political unrest that has erupted across North Africa was frustration over the lack of jobs and the rising price of food
Our new series, national icons, is about people who rise above politics to become symbols of a country’s strengths. First we meet May Arida who has kept Lebanon’s Baalbek festival alive despite wars and threats. She also…
On 7 June, Lebanon holds the most hotly contested general election in its history. But this time the fiercest fights are not on the streets but in the media. We meet the key players from Hezbollah to the westward-looking…
Wednesday 11 November
It’s shaping up to be a funny last quarter in the world of civil aviation – particularly in Japan.
Thousands of Spaniards lost their citizenship as they fled Spain’s Civil War and Franco. Now Spain is offering its descendents the right to be Spanish. Should other countries who need migrants do more to encourage the…
The ‘Rutland Herald’ is the second-largest daily paper in Vermont and the oldest family-owned newspaper in continuous operation in the US. Over the years it has grown more liberal and, in 2001, won a Pulitzer prize for its…
We speak with the African Union’s first female leader, discuss the Red Cross’s civil war verdict on Syria, and ride on some Buenos Aires buses.
World Cities Summit: A special report from Singapore on the experts, urban planners, and civil servants tackling the conference’s buzz word: liveability.
A civil war expert discusses Syria, we take our Monday look at science and technology, and Sasha Issenberg calls in from Washington.
Is Syria’s conflict now a civil war? We ask if Thomas Lubanga Congolese victims will ever see justice, and Tyler Brûlé checks in from Copenhagen.
Sunday 28 November
The next president of Haiti was already facing a catalogue of woes: nearly one million homeless, a civil service crippled by January’s earthquake, a new superstructure of international aid workers covering the country in…
Damien Hirst’s retrospective at Tate Modern, we see how Angola has changed 10 years after civil war, and ask how does one steal a plane?
Waking from the nightmare of war, occupation and civil unrest, Iraq has ambitious plans for the renovation and remodelling of its cities and infrastructure. The rebuiliding isn’t purely a physical process – a new mindset…
Encounters with Italian law are frequently less than elegant, but one northern notary’s offices present a very civil partnership between clean modernity and solemn tradition.
Solid economic growth and foreign investment have transformed Mozambique’s fortunes since the end of the civil war in 1992, but the big challenges lie in tackling the poverty and corruption that continue to block the cap…
Wednesday 11 July
Picture a newsroom in America and a newsreader, suitably vanilla-looking and a tad like an overgrown Ken doll, who leans over a desk and says to a female colleague, “Social scientists have concluded that the country is more…
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