Richard Windsor

3 weeks ago | theweek.com | Richard Windsor

Could there really be a push for new Labour leadership so soon after a crushing general election win? "Inside Labour there might not be a vacancy but there is always a contest," said The New Statesman's political editor George Eaton. And the government's declining approval ratings "means this is even truer than usual". Starmer's troubles have opened the door for others to begin "positioning for a post-Starmer world", said Eaton.

1 month ago | theweek.com | Richard Windsor

The Arctic is "fast becoming an area of intense focus for geopolitical competition", said Foreign Secretary David Lammy during his recent visit to the region. Russia has long eyed control over the Arctic for its military and economic significance. During Lammy's visit to Norway and Iceland, he observed joint military exercises between the UK and Norway – a show of strength from Western allies in what is becoming an increasingly important strategic area.

1 month ago | theweek.com | Richard Windsor

Five years on from the killing of George Floyd by a US police officer, a new BBC documentary examines how and if the world has really changed since that seismic event. While "Backlash: The Murder of George Floyd" recounts the shocking killing caught on camera, its bigger aim is to assess the impact of the subsequent Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement on racial inequality, both in the US and in the UK and beyond.

1 month ago | theweek.com | Richard Windsor

The 7,000 or so satellites orbiting Earth as part of Elon Musk's Starlink network make up nearly two-thirds of the entire network of active satellites. And with thousands more planned for launch in the coming years, the rapid expansion of Musk's space internet service shows no sign of slowing down. It has already spread widely across the globe, reaching remote areas that fibre broadband cannot, and has afforded Musk "unprecedented geopolitical leverage for a private citizen", said The Atlantic.

1 month ago | theweek.com | Richard Windsor

An abandoned gold mine in Canada is known as a "sleeping monster" by Indigenous locals – because it contains enough arsenic to kill 1.7 trillion people. Giant Mine, near the subarctic city of Yellowknife, was once one of the biggest gold mines in the Northwest Territories, said The Wall Street Journal. The "unwanted by-product" of five decades of mining is 237 tonnes of arsenic trioxide "locked in the subterranean caverns". Just 140 milligrams is enough to kill a person.