World

Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, once called Slovakia "the black hole at the heart of Europe," which seems a harsh judgement on five million Slovaks.

It has not been a good week for Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin 'Bibi' Netanyhu, chief decision-maker in the war in the  Gaza Strip that has already cost at least 35,000 civilian deaths.

"History repeats itself -- the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce," said Karl Marx. He was talking about European history, of course, and here it comes again, a century later, doing a tribute act to the 1920s.

Extreme nationalism always looks foolish or even deranged to those who have not caught the virus, but in India it's now official.

The crisis in Senegal, the one country in West Africa that has never had a military coup, has passed. Few people outside Africa were paying close attention, but I'm sure you will be pleased to know that democracy has survived.