26th February 2026
Different Memories, Shared Futures: Why Inclusive Remembrance Matters for Serbia and the Region
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22nd December 2025
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17th December 2025
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20th June 2013 New Delhi, India
Karnataka State Innovation Council
Sam Pitroda, as Chair of the National Innovation Council of India, wrote to the Chief Ministers of each State in 2010 suggesting they set up their own Innovation Council to “drive the innovation agenda… and harness the core competencies, local talent, resources and capabilities to create new opportunities” in their State. To date, 22 States […]
20th June 2013 Windhoek, Namibia
Visit to Osire Refugee camp in central Namibia
Today (20 June) is International World Refugee Day 2013 – and I marked the event by travelling out to Osire Refugee Settlement in central Namibia earlier this week. I was surprised when I arrived in Windhoek to discover that the country had a UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)-run resettlement camp filled largely by Angolans and Congolese. […]
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20th June 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Australia: gas super power
Hard hat, heavy boots, pre-dawn start. That’s what a visit to an Australian resources site entails. I’m getting used to it. Australia is a gas superpower, on its way to overtaking Qatar as the world’s largest LNG exporter by the end of the decade. British companies are big players in developing the industry, offshore in […]
19th June 2013 Beirut, Lebanon
G8 Summit: Lebanon does not face Syria refugee crisis alone
The windy resort of Lough Erne in Northern Ireland this week must have felt far from the millions of Syrians whose lives have been ripped apart by conflict. Yet many of the G8 leaders meeting there have seen the human impact for themselves. Prime Minister David Cameron’s focus on stopping the war in Syria is […]
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19th June 2013 Tashkent, Uzbekistan
The Aral Kum and the Kyzyl Kum
I visited Muynak recently with a senior representative of the British parliament. I’d read a lot about the Aral Sea, since the 1980s when I first worked on Soviet issues (as they were then). It’s one of those things – not by any means unique to the former Soviet Union – that illustrates humanity’s ability […]
18th June 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
G8 Summit
Today the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is hosting the annual G8 Summit in Northern Ireland, with the Heads of State of Germany, Canada, USA, France, Italy, Japan, the UK and Russia. With these countries still comprising half of global GDP, the bold steps we take by working together through the G8 can make a […]
18th June 2013 San Francisco, USA
Ripple Effects: An App to Prevent Violence?
Sometimes, a seminar that you expected to be interesting turns out to be astonishing. This is what happened to me last week when the Science & Innovation team in San Francisco hosted a talk at the Consulate by Alice Ray, cofounder and CEO of Ripple Effects. Alice had been invited by one of the many […]
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18th June 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
EU – US TTIP – The Big Deal
At the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland yesterday, the EU and US embarked on the biggest trade deal ever negotiated. Despite the rise of the economies of Asia, the EU and the US remain the two giants of the world economy, accounting for half the world’s GDP between them. The US invests three times more […]
18th June 2013 Toronto, Canada
Transparency and open data at the G8
The Group of Eight (almost universally abbreviated to G8) is an unofficial forum for the leaders of the world’s eight wealthiest countries – at the time of writing, these were Canada, France, Germany Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The Presidency of the G8 rotates every year, and 2013 […]
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18th June 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
What is civil society
I spend some of my time considering the state of civil society in Belarus, as a measure of the political and social health of the country. Is it flourishing? Does it have “space” to grow? Is the government responding to the concerns raised by civil society? I’m struck by how elusive it is to define […]