On May 24, 1948, my maternal grandfather, Herbert Johnson, died suddenly in bed, the victim of a cardiac arrest. He was just 50 years old.
Bert, as the family knew him, had seemed indestructible.

Every 10 years, a census is carried out in England and Wales by the Office for National Statistics. Its purpose is to paint an accurate demographic picture of the population, to help with the planning, funding and running of public services.

Throughout COP27, which ended last weekend, there was the usual juvenile sniping at the engagement in the climate change mitigation process of the oil-producing countries, as if anything could possibly be achieved without their collaboration.

There is a delightful irony in the fact that, even as the sun sets slowly on the era of fossil fuels, two of the countries with the oil and gas reserves that have powered the global economy for decades are now at the cutting edge of the nuclear power renaissance.

In the Enuma Elish — the Babylonian creation myth found inscribed on seven clay tablets from the 7th century B.C. and excavated at Nineveh in the 19th century — Eridu, in southern Mesopotamia, is named as the world’s first city.

It is an unfortunate and occasionally dangerous reality of international relations that perceptions of whole countries and their entire populations are often reduced to a set of stubborn stereotypes.

LONDON: In the days of imperial heavy-handedness, when Britain ruled the waves and waived the rules whenever it suited its interests, London’s favored technique for dealing with those who dared challenge its global hegemony was to “send a gunboat.”