General Sir Richard Shirreff when serving as commander of the British forces in Kosovo in 2000.
Phil Noble / PA Archive/Press Association Images
We should welcome the latest intervention from General Sir Richard Shirreff – he knows what he is talking about.
Louis XIV in new TV drama Versailles.
BBC
From the halcyon days of Louis XIV, the French global seat of power was soon pulled down by corruption, elitism and arbitrary rule. Sound familiar?
Wikimedia
Farmers were supposed to bet big on energy crops like short-rotation willow to help fuel the UK’s biomass fleet. It hasn’t worked out like that.
from www.shutterstock.com
The number of people who identify with a religion is declining, but that doesn’t mean it’s on its way out.
#FoundThem.
ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)
In a world of blogs, twitter and open data, scientists need to think again about how they’d communicate a discovery of alien life.
Stampede imminent?
Lukasz Stefanski
Boris Johnson says so. But the reality about EU minimum wages and the effect on migration is more subtle.
Spin, liquid – just add quantum.
Panom Pensawang/shutterstock.com
Here’s how they could revolutionise science.
Green government, cheaper business.
Ponsulak
There are gains to be made from going green.
A protest in Tel Aviv backs the soldier who “executed” an unarmed Palestinian.
EPA/Jim Hollander
Israeli politicians have become obsessed with their country’s global image – and they’re shoring it up by cracking down on the debate at home.
Brussels remains on high alert as raids continue.
Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
The road to radicalisation can morph from an idea about noble deeds.
Penny for their thoughts.
Big city by Shutterstock
Their structures and funding give them scope and access that others don’t have, but foundations also lack accountability.
Pre-WWI Bayer heroin bottle, originally containing 5g of heroin.
Wikimedia Commons
Be careful: many of us have tried at least two of them.
On February 29, night suddenly becomes day.
Was it a UFO? Was it a high-tech plane? Here’s what lucky people really saw over Scotland on February 29.
The summit of Mt Zagaras north of Athens.
Jason König
In ancient times, they were the shrines and ritual sites to the Greek gods. These days, they’re astonishingly unloved and neglected.
The usual suspects.
BankofEngland.co.uk
The British do love a scientist on their money, as RBS’s new choice of Mary Somerville for the £10 confirms. Is it time we thought out of the box?
Shaken not stirred …
StudioVin
Getting tellurium and phosphorus to form a molecule is stupidly hard and not very glamorous. Here’s why it’s worth the effort.
Reuters/Pascal Rossignol
January 1, 2016
Stephen Chan , SOAS, University of London ; Afif Pasuni , University of Warwick ; Andrew Fagan , University of Essex ; Bahar Baser , Coventry University ; Catherine Gegout , University of Nottingham ; Fernando Casal Bértoa , University of Nottingham ; Juan Pablo Ferrero , University of Bath ; Louise Thompson , University of Surrey ; Marco Aponte-Moreno , UCL ; Martin Vinæs Larsen , University of Copenhagen ; Neil Pyper , Coventry University ; Oliver Walton , University of Bath ; Paul Kennedy , University of Bath ; Simona Guerra , University of Leicester ; Sotirios Zartaloudis , University of Birmingham ; Steve Hewitt , University of Birmingham , and Yoav Galai , University of St Andrews
For better or for worse, various countries around the world charted a new course last year. What lies ahead for 2016?
ITV
You might be forgiven for wondering if there’s any connection between ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde and Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella other than the title.
Modern enough?
Robin Irvine
Spain’s most controversial sport has been in strife lately. But anthropologist Robin Irvine explains why a year working on a bull-breeding estate made him optimistic for its future.
Orchid infected with the Tobacco mosaic virus.
Department of Plant Pathology Archive North Carolina State University - USDA Forest Service
They’re good, they’re bad and they’re useful: we are still discovering what we can do with plant viruses.