Thursday 23 July 2026 Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, released in 1982 and set in a brooding vision of Los Angeles in 2019, remains one of the most influential cultural texts through which modern societies imagine artificial intelligence. Although the word AI is scarcely used in the film itself, the narrative is saturated with questions about the boundaries between human and machine, the duties of creators towards their creations, and the instability of identity once human-like

Thursday 23 July 2026 Every war acquires its own mythology. Those searching for guidance instinctively reach backwards, looking for historical analogies that promise clarity amidst uncertainty. The wars that accompanied the disintegration of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001 have become one of the most frequently invoked comparisons with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Diplomats speak of “another Bosnia”; military analysts recall Croatia’s reconquest of occupied territory; lawye

Thursday 23 July 2026 Few national stereotypes are as casually repeated as the assertion that Russians are unusually prone to infidelity. Like most stereotypes, it contains fragments of observable social reality mixed with exaggeration, selective memory and cultural misunderstanding. The more interesting question is not whether Russians cheat on their partners more than anyone else but why this perception has become so widespread. Human beings everywhere form romantic attachm

Thursday 23 July 2026 The war in Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated that no military innovation enjoys a monopoly for long. Every battlefield success invites a countermeasure, every technological advantage provokes an answer and every apparent revolution in warfare soon becomes merely another stage in an endless cycle of adaptation. Russia’s deployment of jet-powered variants of the Shahed attack drone represents the latest chapter in that process, forcing Ukraine to rethink

Thursday 23 July 2026 Every legal system worthy of the name depends upon an uncomfortable but indispensable principle: advocates must be free to argue fearlessly on behalf of their clients. That freedom is not a privilege granted by judges. It is a constitutional necessity, because the administration of justice depends upon courts hearing the strongest arguments available from both sides before reaching a decision. The decision to prosecute Rajiv Menon KC for alleged contempt