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A small but highly-important ceramic dish from Imperial China is expected to sell for more than £10 MILLION next month. The brush washer is around 1,000 years old and was commissioned by the imperial court during the Song dynasty. And it was made by Ru guanyao, which is one of the most revered of the Five Great Kilns used during this period. The dish, which has a diameter of just 13cm and would have been used to clean brushes, has...

Turkey has submitted almost 2,000 content removal requests to Twitter this year according to The Spectator Index. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been heavily criticised on the global stage for censoring the media in his country. The 2016–17 purges in Turkey brought about in reaction to the failed coup d'état have resulted in many journalists being locked up and several news outlets being shut down. Last year the president shut down an unprecedented number of television channels, radio stations and daily...

How safe is the air we breathe on airplanes? Britain's largest union is calling for a public inquiry into toxic air in passenger planes as it emerged that one of Britain’s biggest airlines is set to fit new filters to stop particulates entering cabin air next year. Unite the union, which represents over 25,000 cabin crew working for airlines operating out of the UK, is calling on the rest of the airline industry to follow suit now. Unite also want...

Donald Trump's approval ratings have jumped up following his speech to the United Nations where he threatened nuclear war. Following a low of 39 per cent in the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll last month Trump is back at 43 percent in this week’s survey, with other surveys showing similar results. The president once again courted controversy this week when he threatened to "totally destroy North Korea" in a highly-combative debut speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Addressing world leaders and...

A major undercover exposé of the white supremacist-linked ‘alt-right’ movement is launched today, revealing the year that a gay anti-racist activist from Sweden spent deep inside the world’s most active far-right network, on both sides of the Atlantic. Included as part of a groundbreaking new report into the ‘alt-right’ and its sister movement, the ‘alt-light’, The International Alternative Right: From Charlottesville to the White House has been compiled by British anti-extremism organisation HOPE not hate, which today is launching a...

The OECD has published its Interim Economic Outlook showing the world economy is picking up momentum - except for the UK. The pace of expansion is projected to be faster this year than in 2016, with a further uptick expected in 2018. The US is projected to grow by 2.4 per cent in 2018 and Germany, France, Italy and the general Euro area are also forecast to post strong results. Conversely, the previously identified growth slowdown in the United Kingdom is...

This shocking photo shows TEN ambulances queuing outside an overstretched A&E department with patients being treated inside the vehicles and in corridors. The line of vehicles waiting outside the Royal Cornwall Hospital highlights the deepening crisis within hospitals with patients being warned to stay away if possible. The lack of beds has been blamed on a combination of governments cuts in social care leading to 'bed-blocking' and the closure of local treatment centres. Lib Dem councillor Colin Martin posted a...

Climate change is a divisive issue. The US’ stance on the Paris Agreement of 2015 is just one example of that. And while disagreements over the extent of the threat posed by climate change are all too common, the world’s countries are even more divided on how best to address that threat. From reforestation to electric cars, the potential solutions are many and diverse in nature. One mooted remedy is altering the surface albedo of the earth. For the unfamiliar,...

Humanoid robots are a 'strong' step closer after engineers developed synthetic muscle that can lift a thousand times its own weight. The 3D-printable synthetic soft muscle, which doesn't need an external compressor or high voltage equipment as previous attempts required, also has a strain density - expansion per gram - FIFTEEN times larger than natural muscle. And the artificial muscle can push, pull, bend and twist - as well as lift weight. Up until now no material has been capable of...