King’s College London is one of the top 20 universities in the world (2015/16 QS World University Rankings) and among the oldest in England. King’s has more than 27,600 students (of whom nearly 10,500 are graduate students) from some 150 countries worldwide, and nearly 6,800 staff.
Every year around half a million people die in England. The success of medicine over the past decades has led to a sustained rise in the average human life expectancy: a third of children born today will…
Dying is increasingly medicalised - but it doesn’t make things better.
Iamnotunique
We need to do more to ease the pain and suffering of terminally ill patients and allow people to die comfortably, with dignity, and at peace. This is the issue being debated today in the House of Lords…
Painting about peace in Kiev’s Maidan square.
Robert Ghement/EPA
Ukraine’s recent political crisis, a pro-Russian separatist movement and violence in the East has yet again drawn attention to the competing loyalties of Ukrainian citizens. Ukraine gained statehood in…
Cate Blanchett plays the voice of Valka in How to Train Your Dragon 2.
DreamWorks
The release of DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon 2 has once again brought into relief the fact that animated feature films now regularly attract a host of Hollywood stars and high-profile performers…
The cat that got too fat. But let’s talk about you.
Yukari
Our understanding of fats – including which ones are actually good for us – is evolving. We know for example that red meat and meat products, cakes and biscuits, which are rich sources of saturated fatty…
Economic development along the coast would mean hijacked ships have nowhere to hide.
EPA
Imagine you are a Somali pirate captain. You have hijacked a cargo ship after four weeks out at sea, 800 nautical miles from home. It will take maybe three, perhaps six, possibly 18 months to extract a…
Look to the future now, Brazil.
Thomas Eisenhuth/EPA
The extraordinary 7-1 defeat of Brazil by Germany in the World Cup semi-final is richly ironic. Many Brazilians had hoped that by hosting the World Cup in 2014, their country could finally exorcise the…
I learnt a new technique to teach you that.
David Davies/PA Archive
Teachers in England have good access to free courses aimed at improving the quality of their lessons, but many are opting for shorter workshops, rather than the long-term qualifications more common in…
Hopes of the Taliban’s decline, up in smoke.
EPA/Rehan Khan
Only recently, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) was expected to fall apart: violent rivalries had split the insurgency in two, peace talks with the government had collapsed, and military jets had hit hide-outs…
When FIFA awarded the 2014 World Cup finals to Brazil seven years ago, it looked as if the tournament would be a coming out party for the country. Now, the picture is far more mixed. It has become fashionable…
Khalid Abdalla and Ahmed Hassan in The Square.
Netflix/Noujaim Films
In 2011, as one popular uprising after another swept across Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and beyond, the Arab spring (more commonly referred to in Arabic as al-thawrat al-arabiyya, “the…
For many children from Eastern European families, the 3pm school bell on a Friday isn’t the last they’ll see of a classroom until Monday. Many attend complementary schools, voluntary community-led programmes…
For James, the reasons for putting pen to paper haven’t changed.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Death is a funny thing. It creeps up on us all, or surprises us if we are unlucky (or lucky, depending on the circumstances). For a writer, especially a self-confessed solipsist such as Clive James, the…
Should have bought the nasal spray.
Mandy Godbehear/Shutterstock
The excitement of sunshine and warm weather that comes with the approaching summer is tempered for some by the sneezing, itchy eyes and congested airways that accompanies it. Hay fever, or seasonal allergic…
The stoush between China and the US over spying is becoming toxic.
Shutterstock
The members of China’s military charged over cyber espionage by the US will never see American justice, but the case does break new ground in a fractious US-China relationship increasingly characterised…
Earlier this month, Nigeria marked a most unwelcome anniversary; a year of special measures in the three northern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. Located in the north east corner of the country, snug…
Human rights monitoring can now be done by anyone.
Allyson Neville-Morgan
In November 2013, the New Yorker published a profile of Eliot Higgins – or Brown Moses as he is known to almost 17,000 Twitter followers. An unemployed finance and admin worker at the time, Higgins was…
Bruises fade, but stress stays on.
Teenager bullying image via Helder Almeida/Shutterstock
It is still not clear how the experience of being bullied in childhood translates into long-lasting health problems. A new US study has found that victims of bullying have high levels of a protein in their…
Hugo and Ross Turner are a pair of intrepid twins currently on an expedition to Greenland. One of them, Ross, is using the same style of equipment and facilities used by Ernest Shackleton 100 years ago…
Britain’s combat operations in Afghanistan are due to end completely this year, and along with them a century of continuous UK involvement in foreign conflicts. But ever since the HMS Ark Royal sailed…