John Dowd, a personal attorney of Donald Trump, stepped down today from his role as head of the legal team representing the president in the special counsel’s investigation of possible collusion with Russia. The news came just as the House Intelligence Committee was set to vote on whether to release a report from Republicans in … Read more
With bird books the more personal the better. Joe Shute was once a crime correspondent and is today a Telegraph senior staff feature writer. It is his investigative journalism, a series of meetings with people who deal with ravens first-hand, which provides novelty. Historical, mythological and other diversions add ballast. In the prologue he writes:
My friend’s ten-year-old daughter has a new hobby. Like many of her school pals, she hopes to become a video blogger — a ‘vlogger’. She has started to record clips of herself for others to watch, share and ‘like’. She showed me a few, then gave me a list of famous vloggers to watch: JoJo
Sofie Hagen is a young Danish comic I admire. I didn’t see her most recent show, Dead Baby Frog, but I saw her win the best newcomer award at Edinburgh in 2015 and I was happy for her. I liked her sweet face and her fury. The audience treated her as a benign oddity. Because
The Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Knightsbridge, London is nestled in a maze of mews streets and embassy rows. It’s as much an expat social club as it is a place of worship, and on Sunday mornings it’s packed to the rafters. In what can sometimes look like one big game of Grand-mother’s Footsteps, the congregation
Grade: B+ Another ex-Long Beach crip replanted in pleasant Orange County via the conduit of very large amounts of record company money and thus now able to draw on his time as a gangsta, while telling us all it was a very naughty thing to have done. The difference between Staples and much of the
Saint Paul is unique among those who have changed the course of history — responsible not just for one but two critical historical developments 15 centuries apart. First, he persuaded the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth that gentiles as well as Jews could belong to their nascent church. This enabled its spread throughout the
We all have our favourite period of Parisian history, be it the Revolution, the Belle Époque or the swinging 1960s (the cool French version, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Françoise Hardy). Agnès Poirier, the author of this kaleidoscopic cultural history, certainly has hers: the turbulent 1940s, which saw the French capital endure the hardships of Nazi
This week marks 15 years since the start of America’s war in Iraq. Regime change was George W. Bush’s objective, and Saddam Hussein was duly removed, tried, and executed. But Bush could not have counted on how much regime change would also come to Washington as a result of the war. It contributed to the … Read more
Yesterday, Donald Trump went to New Hampshire, the ‘Granite State’ or, as he calls it, a ‘drug-infested den’. He has launched an initiative against prescription opioid addiction, and would like to execute drug dealers. He has not specified whether he would prefer to do this in the manner of Dirty Harry, or by a legal … Read more
From the outside it all looked haphazard and frenzied. A campaign that was skidding from scandal to crisis on its way to total defeat. That’s not how it felt inside the ‘Project Alamo’ offices in San Antonio, Texas where Trump’s digital division — led by Brad Parscale, who’d worked previously with Trump’s estate division setting
Zuck speaks! He’s finally responded to the Cambridge Analytica debacle. To be honest, I could have predicted almost word-for-word this evening’s statement: It wasn’t really our fault; it was mostly their fault; we’re a little bit responsible (‘front-up’ I can imagine a comms person insisting); and here are the steps we’ve taken. In fact, we’d already taken most of these steps in 2014,
Let’s face it: Donald Trump remains the best thing to happen to his enemies. Former FBI director James Comey’s forthcoming memoir is already an advance Amazon bestseller. Porn star Stormy Daniels is milking her standoff with Trump lawyer and all-purpose fixer Michael Cohen for publicity and earnings; this Sunday she’s slated to appear on CBS’ … Read more
Sooner or later even President Trump’s most ardent detractors are going to have to admit that he is capable of being funny. Intentionally funny. Worse, they’re going to have to admit that he’s funny for precisely the reason that Hillary Clinton isn’t: because he’s able to laugh at himself. Did you see him at CPAC? … Read more
Throughout the course of the inquiry on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, White House lawyers have attempted to drill a message into the president’s head. It is a simple one: whatever you do, don’t go after Robert Mueller personally or suggest in any way that you will shut down the investigation. You … Read more
Remember Nudge? It was a 2008 book by Chicago economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, full of bright technocratic ideas for using ‘choice architecture’ to ‘nudge’ the plebs to make the ‘right’ decisions. The Guardian’s reviewer called it ‘never intimidating, always amusing, and elucidating: a jolly economic romp with serious lessons within’. On … Read more
Every few weeks, it seems, Carole Cadwalladr drops a long piece for the Guardian or the Observer about how the Trump and Brexit campaigns mind-hacked democracy. On both sides of the Atlantic, people who don’t like Trump or Brexit share these pieces and shriek. The latest article, which has lit up the political internet this
It’s hard to stop watching cable news. Trump sues a former porn star, Stormy Daniels for $20m for saying they had an affair. Three other porn stars claim they were involved with Trump. No! Wait! Six more women are ready to come forward. Stormy Daniels promises a tell-all TV interview. Felix Sater – the former … Read more
Boris Titov is running to be president of Russia, but he’s eager to talk himself out of the job. ‘I am not a good politician,’ he says, over breakfast at the Lanesborough hotel in Knightsbridge, London. ‘To be a president means you need to be wise, a big politician like Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping, Lee Kuan … Read more
It was only Seven Days in Entebbe, but it felt like an eternity. The rescue in July 1976 by Israeli commandos of 102 Jewish and Israeli hostages from Palestinian and German terrorists at Entebbe airport in Uganda was a scriptwriter’s dream: a three-act drama of crisis, complication and resolution, in which the good guys won—good … Read more