Kuopio Dance Festival
Every year during the brief Finnish summer, Kuopio hosts the most important dance event in Northern Europe, the Kuopio Dance Festival. Featuring the best of local and international companies, the festival attracts a vast and variegated audience from all over Scandinavia.
Jahanshahi on Censorship
Award-winning Iranian cartoonist Ali Jahanshahi reviews the history of the satirical cartoon in Iran and takes a rueful look at his own experience of censorship both at home and abroad.
A Guide to Australian Politics
Bewildered by the Australian election results? Tess Shannon clears away the political debris and explores the origins of the nation’s electoral deadlock – which could result in Australia’s first hung parliament in 70 years.
The Uncertainty of Deflation
A self fulfilling prophesy? A deflationary spiral is when a decrease in price leads to lower production levels, which then triggers lower wages and diminished demand, which then leads to even more decreases in prices. So it is a spiral but also a vicious circle that feeds itself.
Diplomats from the Desert
Every year thousands of Sahrawi children from the Tindouf refugee camps in the Algerian desert come to Europe for a two-month summer holiday – which doubles as a diplomatic mission.
Symbolism in the Annunciation
The Middle Ages. Part Two of a three-part series examining the iconography of the Annunciation used in Eastern and Western painting, mosaics and sculpture, from the Early Christian period to Italian art in the 15th century.
Double Dip?
A double dip in the economy is a bit like getting a bad cold, recovering and feeling slightly better but then slipping back into pneumonia. To continue the medical analogy, the result could mean a long-term weakening of the immune system.
Journey to Ulaanbaatar
You know you’re getting closer to Mongolia’s capital city when in the final hour of the train ride the previously desolate brown hills start to show some minor signs of life. You can’t expect more than minor signs of life in a country where anyone outside the capital is either a nomad or a miner.
Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger
Former information advisor to the Prime Minister of India, Prem Shankar Jha has recently been a visiting fellow at the Fairbank Center at Harvard University. Here he discusses his new book “Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger – Can China and India dominate the West?”
In Praise of Jirō Taniguchi
The work of award-winning Japanese cartoonist Taniguchi has been translated into several European languages. A far cry from the violent storylines often associated with teenage mangas, his “graphic novels” offer a subtle analysis of Japanese culture and society.