The rise of self-proclaimed illiberal democracies in East Central Europe arguably constitutes one of the most formidable – albeit perhaps still underestimated – challenges the EU is currently facing. Whether and how the EU should react has been debated. All sides portray the EU’s role in these illiberal regimes as that of an outsider. But […]

If I were to design a laboratory experiment that reliably disturbed sleep and increased fatigue for eight to ten days, it would look a lot like the festive period. To understand why, you need to consider how normal sleep works. Sleep is controlled by three things: the supply-and-demand relationship between sleep and wakefulness or “homeostasis” […]

Sexual harassment is rife in public spaces, and as an integral part of daily life, public transport is no exception. As global as it is endemic, women are forced to negotiate the risk and reality of sexual harassment as they get from A to B on a daily basis. On the London Underground, the extent […]

The UK chancellor of the exchequer, Philip Hammond, has delivered a budget which offered help to first-time home buyers and the prospect of more money for workers in the National Health Service, but his speech was partly overshadowed by sharp cuts to GDP growth forecasts from the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR).

There have long been scare stories about drugs so we need to be careful when interpreting new drug use data. But recent reports suggest that crack cocaine use is on the rise again.

For the distinguished crime novelist PD James, Agatha Christie’s distinctive contribution to the genre lies not in thematic complexity nor stylistic prowess, but in the meticulous fashioning of mysteries.

“Few holidays have a cinematic potential that equals Halloween’s,” wrote the American cultural critic David J. Skal.

“In the four quarters of the globe,” asked the British writer and cleric Sydney Smith in 1820: “Who reads an American book?” Smith was a career eccentric, known for odd sayings and doings, such as wearing a self-designed tin helmet as a defence against rheumatism.

In Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, a collection of nine short stories about robotics, Asimov explores the possibilities of human-computer interaction. How can humans and computers co-exist? How can they work together to make a better world?

North Korea’s nuclear test, by far its largest, came less than a week after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew over northern Japan, triggering a national text-message system known as the J-Alert.