MM 2001: Looking for the next Balkans
Where in the world will major conflict flare up next? Tim Cornwell considers the likelihood of Pakistan and Colombia being the future flash points Guided cockroaches scuttling under doors to pinpoint...
Where in the world will major conflict flare up next? Tim Cornwell considers the likelihood of Pakistan and Colombia being the future flash points Guided cockroaches scuttling under doors to pinpoint...
Ways of the warrior in ancient Africa It was slavery that made historical African wars a world event, says John Thornton professor of history at Millersville University, Pennsylvania, US. In his work...
Colonial Adventurism Why Creek indians were armed and trained by the British in the 1812 war Heaven, for Ross Hassig, an anthropologist on sabbatical from the University of Oklahoma, is the Public...

Modern warfare can be a 'political entertainment' in which little is chanced, or a hell where civilians, not armies, are targeted. Mary Kaldor explains The 18th and 19th centuries were periods of...
Some 3 billion people live in extreme poverty. Of the 1.3 billion poorest, only 30 per cent are male and 70 per cent are female. - Gro Harlem Brundtland, Reith lectures 2000 Almost one-third of all...
The global satellite communications market is expected to be worth more than £140 billion per year by 2010. The global satellite navigation market is expected to exceed £50 billion by 2005. - British...
Women and girls make up more than two-thirds of the world's illiterate population. - UNFPA, The State of the World Population 1999 Some 350 million women in developing countries have incomplete or...
Nearly a billion people worldwide do not get enough to eat each day. At the same time, an estimated 600 million people - mostly in North America and Europe - are overnourished and overweight. - World...
Fewer than 400 billionaires hold assets that equal the cumulative worth of 45 per cent of the world's population. - Gro Harlem Brundtland, Reith lectures 2000 Average global per capita income has now...
Since its peak in 1986, the size of the global nuclear arsenal has declined by 48 per cent. The US has 12,000 nuclear warheads, Russia 23,000 and France, China and the UK have only about 1,000...
The more the fight for human rights gains in popularity, the more it loses any concrete content," writes novelist Milan Kundera in Immortality. "The world has become man's right and everything in it...
Cures for Alzheimer's, Aids and cancer are all potential prizes for geneticists. Geoff Watts spoke to some of those working at the cutting edge of research Health care has always been shaped by...
A Consumer's Guide to Genetically Modified Food: From Green Genes to Red Herrings By Alan McHughen Oxford University Press, £60.00 The gene is out of the test tube, warns Alan McHughen, and there is...
» Routes of English (9.00 am R4). "Border Talk" – the border being Offa’s Dyke. Melvyn Bragg listens to the people of Oswestry. Truman (9.15 am BBC2). Part two of presidential biography. The Civil...

Robot toys are a Christmas favourite. They are also the testing ground for sophisticated tools that will change our lives, writes Tim Cornwell. In 1997, researchers at the Massachusetts company...