The television series Asking the Vast Earth (问苍茫, 2023) opens with a scene of a young Mao Zedong swimming in the Xiang River, swollen from the heavy rains. A fisherman calls from the bank
The crimson flags hanging over Nanjie village’s “East is Red” Square barely move in the sweltering summer heat as tourists pose for photographs beside a towering statue of Chairman Mao Zedong. Nearly
More
Wittenoom no longer appears on Australia’s road signs. It has been removed from official maps, abandoned and effectively erased. Nobody lives there, and visiting is prohibited. Yet for decades this remote settlement
More
Senior Serbian politicians and military figures have attended a memorial ceremony for the recently deceased war criminal Ratko Mladić, drawing renewed criticism over his public commemoration and prompting the European Union to
More
The People’s Palace Scene: The End of an Experiment and the Beginning of a Question On 25 August 2026, Mazloum Abdi announced from the People’s Palace in Damascus the end of the mission of
More
Sonia Gandhi is set to publish a deeply personal memoir examining the extraordinary journey that took her from a small village in Italy to becoming one of the most prominent political figures
More
The month of August lived up to the caption of “the living, dead and disappeared.” The month saw the end of the 10-day Kandy Esala Perahera festival in all its glory. The
More
The battle over Torreciudad, the spiritual heart of Opus Dei in Spain, has moved from a local dispute into a revealing test of power inside the Catholic Church. Newly disclosed handwritten letters
More
Cultural heritage is under attack in the United States. The National Historic Preservation Act’s Section 106 regulation, which balances economic development and historic preservation, has been rewritten to leave historic places in
More
More than 3.6 million people pass through room number 12 of Madrid’s Prado Museum each year to admire Diego Velázquez’s La familia de Felipe IV, better known since the 19th century as
More
Some friendships begin in the most unexpected circumstances. Ours began sometime in 1978, at a seminar organised by our college on the famous Sinhala film “Gahanu Lamai”. I had stayed back after
More