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History may not repeat itself, but there is no gainsaying its fondness for close affinities

When in 1807 Ferdinand, heir to the throne, stood accused by his father, Charles IV of Spain, of sedition and seeking to usurp the royal title, the young prince fearfully recalled the analogous events two hundred and forty years previously

In 1568 Philip II had similarly confronted his recalcitrant son Carlos, resulting in the latter’s imprisonment and mysterious death seven months later

In political prison camps, detainees have been subjected to torture and many North Koreans are incarcerated for life without any contact with the outside world, according to the UN in a 2014 report on the human rights situation in North Korea.

They are often located in remote and mountainous parts of the country. For North Koreans, the phrase "sent to the mountains" had become synonymous with the process of enforced disappearance, said the UN. The biggest camps are said to extend for hundreds of square kilometres.

Some 120,000 people are believed to be imprisoned in North Korea without due process for political reasons, according to the US-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK).

This was total war on a global scale, producing a new sense among nations that their fates were interconnected.

The sheer scale of the war and the complex administrative and strategic systems required to manage these global operations led to, during the Cold War that followed, a growing interdependency of a network of institutions, attitudes and ways of working.

the Cold War redrew geopolitical notions of time, space and scale.

The paper, published in the journal Science, concludes that a one-time lockdown will not be sufficient to bring the pandemic under control and that secondary peaks could be larger than the current one without continued restrictions.

One scenario predicted a resurgence could occur as far in the future as 2025 in the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment

apers released by the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) in March suggested that the UK would need to alternate between periods of more and less strict physical distancing measures for a year to have a plausible chance of keeping the number of critical care cases within capacity.

The U.S. spy agency was, in effect, supplying rigged communications gear to some of South America’s most brutal regimes and, as a result, in unique position to know the extent of their atrocities.

What the documents don’t show is any substantial effort by U.S. spy agencies, or senior officials privy to the intelligence, to expose or stop human rights violations unfolding in their view.

The countries’ initial target was a multinational rebel group operating in the southern part of the continent. But over time the operation morphed into a sprawling campaign involving mass killings in South America and assassinations of alleged rebel leaders and political exiles in Europe and the United States.

Is U.S.-U.K. Relationship Still ‘Special’ After Trump Spats, Shock Vote

LONDON — The so-called "special relationship" between the United States and Britain was forged on the beaches of Normandy 73 years ago. This alliance, nurtured by presidents and prime ministers for decades, has taken a battering since President Donald Trump took office. Trump criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan after the most recent terror attack in the city and he has previously suggested British intelligence agencies spied on him during his campaign.

France and Germany are "seeking full clarity" on a report claiming that one of Denmark's intelligence agencies helped the United States spy on several senior European officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday.

"If the information is true," Macron said during a statement to the press following a virtual Franco-German summit , these practices are "unacceptable between allies, and even less acceptable between European allies and partners."

Revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) tapped Merkel's cellphone emerged in 2013 after former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden shared documents with The Guardian showing that a US official had handed the agency 200 phone numbers, including those of world leaders, for the agency to monitor.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration defended in federal court the Willow project, a huge oil drilling operation proposed on Alaska’s North Slope that was approved by the Trump administration and is being fought by environmentalists. Weeks earlier, it backed former President Donald J. Trump’s decision to grant oil and gas leases on federal land in Wyoming. Also this month, it declined to act when it had an opportunity to stop crude oil from continuing to flow through the bitterly contested, 2,700-mile Dakota Access pipeline, which lacks a federal permit.

The three decisions suggest the jagged road that Mr. Biden is following as he tries to balance his climate agenda against practical and political pressures.

As important, Mr. Biden is trying to avoid alienating a handful of moderate Republicans and Democrats from oil, gas and coal states who will decide the fate of his legislative agenda in Congress. Among them is Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska for whom the Willow project is a top priority and who grilled Deb Haaland about it during Ms. Haaland’s confirmation hearing for interior secretary in February.Editors’ PicksSummertime … and the Sloganeering Is a Little AwkwardThe Murky World of Private Spies and the Damage They May Be DoingThey’ve Given $6 Million to the Arts. No One Knew Them, Until Now.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story

the Russian government announced that it would expel ten U.S. diplomats and blacklist eight former and incumbent U.S. officials that were “involved in drafting and implementing anti-Russia policy.” The expulsions come after the Biden administration attributed the SolarWinds breach to Russia and implemented economic sanctions.

The UK government has launched a security campaign this week meant to educate domestic audiences on strategies used by foreign spies to steal sensitive or classified information. The campaign, titled “think before you link,” is a response to an increasing number of British nationals being targeted by malicious state actors masquerading as online recruiters

The new campaign is meant to combat these foreign actors by giving “practical advice on how to identify a malicious online profile, how to respond if approached, and how to minimize the risk of being targeted in the first place.”

Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary, gave Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the spy agency’s director, until 6 p.m. on Saturday to install Michael Ellis as its general counsel.

Although General Nakasone was not pleased that Mr. Ellis was chosen over career officials at the National Security Agency, he did not actively block or slow the process of installing Mr. Ellis, according to two people familiar with the matter. He did, however, insist that all procedures were followed and all approvals were put in writing.

So Mr. Miller ordered the agency to swear Mr. Ellis in, a move The Washington Post reported on Saturday

Even for those who are convinced that President Trump must go, the prospect of impeaching him is daunting.In part, that’s because Trump is already calling his critics “spies” and “savages” and has warned of a civil war if the charges against him move forward.

The deeper reason there is so much uncertainty around impeachment is because no sitting president has ever actually been thrown out of office for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Except that it has happened, to another real estate mogul turned politician with improper ties to foreign leaders. It’s just that he was a senator, not a president.

in his own administration, after a week of damaging public hearings.

Mr. Holmes told impeachment investigators that he had overheard the president ask the ambassador, Gordon D. Sondland, about Ukrainian investigations into his political rivals, a consequential detail in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

“I guarantee you that never took place,” Mr. Trump said. He added that he barely knew Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier from Oregon who contributed $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee. In his own testimony, Mr. Sondland corroborated Mr. Holmes’s account.

The House of Representatives sent the articles of impeachment over to the Senate Wednesday evening. There was a signing ceremony -- known as the "engrossment ceremony" -- a march across the Capitol building and a bit of legislative theater. It was interesting to watch. Read more on the historic day.What's next

The impeachment trial of Donald John Trump has felt like a foregone conclusion since the inquiry wrapped up in November. Amid all the procedural drama, the facts of what Trump's allies did on his behalf in Ukraine, which the Democrats chose not to pursue in full before impeaching him in the interest of speeding to a conclusion, were almost forgotten.

That's not at all clear. This is not Trump texting about Yovanovitch's whereabouts. But it is certainly a US ambassador, supposed to be under Trump's protection, being watched by people working on the President's behalf. It is, to say the least, disturbing and indicative of the murky and paranoid world where he's comfortable, where congressional candidates act like third-rate spies and answer up to the businessman who is working with the President's personal attorney.

I gave them a warning that still feels foreign, even eight months into this pandemic. “Leave your masks on!” They both gave a nod of agreement and were off.

In the beforetime, rather than a mask reminder, I would have told them when I expected them home, and after that I would not have given the matter a thought until they walked back in the house minutes before dinner, sweaty and tired, but happy.

But in Covid times, the longer they are gone the more a nag begins to build in my mind. Are they really leaving those masks on? They are the only kids I’ve ever seen wearing them at that park. Are they going to be responsible, or will they bend to social pressure? Am I doing the right thing letting them go? Is this really safe? Am I going to catch Covid because I let them go skating?

In 1984 television screens watch you, and everyone spies on everyone else. Today it is social media that collects every gesture, purchase, comment we make online, and feeds an omniscient presence in our lives that can predict our every preference.

Orwell understood that oppressive regimes always need enemies. In 1984 he showed how these can be created arbitrarily by whipping up popular feeling through propaganda.

Today there is another set of ‘-isms’, such as nationalism and populism who operate through the mobilisation of that most dangerous of feelings, resentment. And everywhere you look in the contemporary world, ‘strong’ men are in positions of power.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, argues that these committees were neither independent enough, nor experienced enough in public health. “Our advisers appeared to be utterly ignorant,” he says now. “They did not look at the evidence, or they did not believe it. It was a case of British exceptionalism – that China didn’t know how to handle a pandemic like this, but we did. What planet were they on? There was no risk assessment done for Cheltenham. The only advice from Boris Johnson was a generic statement about the need for ‘business as usual’.”

Minutes from Sage meetings released by the government show that, on 4 February, the committee judged that shutting down public gatherings would “probably be ineffective in creating any meaningful delay in spread” of the disease. One week later, the “consensus” view among the government’s modellers was that “in most larger events, such as sports matches, attendees will come into close contact with at most a handful of people, so the risk to attendees is low”. Three weeks later, on 5 March, Sage noted: “There is no evidence to suggest banning very large gatherings would reduce transmissions.”

By then, Horton says, the projection of hundreds of thousands of deaths was well established. “Sage knew by early March, and advised government of the potential death toll. But the government ignored it.”

I first read Lord of the Flies as a teenager. I remember feeling disillusioned afterwards, but not for a second did I think to doubt Golding’s view of human nature.

That didn’t happen until years later when I began delving into the author’s life. I learned what an unhappy individual he had been: an alcoholic, prone to depression; a man who beat his kids. “I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” And it was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies.

had anyone ever studied what real children would do if they found themselves alone on a deserted island

Members of a prestigious research unit at Google have sent a letter to the company's chief executive demanding that ousted artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru be reinstated.

Gebru, who studies the ethics of AI and was one of the only Black research scientists at Google, says she was unexpectedly fired after a dispute over an academic paper and months of speaking out about the need for more women and people of color at the tech giant.

"Offering Timnit her position back at a higher level would go a long way to help re-establish trust and rebuild our team environment,"

Thursday that hackers who American intelligence agencies believed were working for the Kremlin used a far wider variety of tools than previously known to penetrate government systems, and said that the cyberoffensive was “a grave risk to the federal government.”

complicates the challenge for federal investigators as they try to assess the damage and understand what had been stolen.

Echoing the government’s warning, Microsoft said Thursday that it had identified 40 companies, government agencies and think tanks that the suspected Russian hackers, at a minimum, stole data from. Nearly half are private technology firms, Microsoft said, many of them cybersecurity firms, like FireEye, that are charged with securing vast sections of the public and private sector.

He was also sure that the United States would enter the war against him sooner or later. He thought the only solution was pre-emptive: to get control of enough oil and food from the Soviet Union to enable Germany to hold its own against Anglo-America in a long war.

the only alternative he saw to immediate war on the United States was slow but certain strangulation at Anglo-American hands. With a nod to an epigram from A. J. P. Taylor, Simms and Laderman offer this summation: “Hitler committed suicide for fear of dying.”

Early December 1941 is the moment of the war in which plausible alternate scenarios seemed to loom the largest