I suppose that, if we’re honest, many natural disasters are easy to ignore because we have no real way to relate to what happened.  Somewhere a long way away, thousands of people we don’t know have been killed and a foreign country has been badly affected. For me, Sunday’s earthquake off the coast of Indonesia…

A rather badly-worded summary of a story from the BBC News website: Fiji police in record drugs haul Police find enough chemicals to make $500m worth of methamphetamines, in a lab outside the capital Suva. That should be quite a profitable sideline for them, then.

You may be aware that several countries joined the European Union on May 1st. This had led to a deal of idiotic speculation in certain British newspapers about the flood of refugees (from these countries) who would be arriving in Britain to take advantage of welfare benefits, the great weather and the marvellous food. Or…

According to The Economist: America has made discouraging comments about [Mr Wiranto’s] candidacy—but no Indonesian court has tried him for any wrongdoing, let alone convicted him. Golkar’s leaders, apparently, considered Mr Wiranto’s chequered career less of a liability than the corruption scandals dogging his rival, Akbar Tandjung. Wouldn’t that be interfering in another country’s election?…

I don’t normally comment on things happening overseas, but this seems ridiculous. I was reading about this today in The Sunday Times (subscription required) and now it has been confirmed by the BBC. Mordechai Vanunu is released tomorrow after serving nearly 18 years in jail. His crime was to speak to The Sunday Times in…