The Mother and Baby Home at Tuam

The Irish historian Catherine Corless talks about her work in uncovering the crimes committed against children out of wedlock in Ireland up until the 1960ties.

Catherine Corless remembers the children of the “St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home” from her childhood. The home was run by nuns. What Corless did not know growing up was what crimes were committed there. She also could not imagine that she would be the one to uncover them.

In the middle of the 20th century unwed mothers were treated like criminals in Ireland. Pregnant girls where often sent by their families to these homes for mothers and children. They would give birth and live there for a year afterwards. The women would then return to their families while their children stayed with the nuns. Some were adopted. Many others died.

A Serbian cult artist doubles as my Yoga teacher in London’s Serpentine gallery.

“Breathe slowly”, she says and gently massages my shoulder. Not so bad for the beginning of a yoga class I think. But hold on: This is not my yoga teacher. The woman with the sensitive touch and Serb accent is Marina Abramovic.

JK Rowling, the author who invented Harry Potter, speaks out against Scottish independence. I am happy she did. 

UKIP is not just a populist Eurosceptic party. Far right from it. 

Is UKIP less radical than Marine Le Pen’s “Front National”? Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, certainly thinks so and does not want to have anything to do with her. Most inhabitants of the United Kingdom like to think so, too. It’s just too painful to admit the truth.

Sorry, but it cannot continue like this.

Nigel Farage feels “awkward” when people in London’s Tube speak every language other than English.

Nigel Farage informed the public recently that he feels “awkward” when he travels on the train and nobody speaks English. The leader of the europhobic, populist UKIP obviously thinks it’s a bad thing if tourists and locals use different languages to communicate. But let’s face it: London is Babel. Is this so bad?

Her subjects can’t wait - they want to know what happens after the death of their Queen.

Prince Harry is back in the media – this time not with naked pictures from Las Vegas but with “the real reasons why he and his girlfriend split” (if you really want to know: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2617385/Rows-best-friends-wedding-shadow-Chelsy-Cressie-Harry-really-split.html) But the fallback prince is in the limelight somewhere else, too. In the Almeida theatre in Islington. (http://www.almeida.co.uk/event/kingcharles3)

http://www.profil.at/articles/1415/982/374276/golf-emirat-katar-ein-zwerg-riese

The gas-rich emirate of Qatar is ruled by the ambitious Al-Thani clan. They are using their wealth to build a 21st century metropolis - minus the democracy.

It is not only America’s or Europe’s antagonistic policies which drove Putin to endanger peace and stability in Europe.

25 years after the fall of the Berlin wall Russia’s president took to the stage in his Kremlin on March 18 to tell the world: „The Germans should understand the Russian need for re-unification.“ Valdimir Putin looked very serious when he said that, although I guess he was chuckling inside. In 1989 he was not at all happy that the East Germans broke through the wall to get to West Berlin. Because they ran away from him, the Soviet KGB officer in Dresden. He did not see the collapse oft he Soviet Union as liberation from a dictatorship; for Putin the end oft he real socialist empire was a catastrophe. The joy of the „Ossis“ to finally be reunited with the decadent, capitalist West was a personal humiliation for the young Russian.

I am getting tired of this anecdote of Vladimir Vladimirovich’s early life. As traumatising as it was, it does not explain his behaviour today. Putin did not seriously expect understanding from the Germans for his theft of Crimea. „Instead they threaten us with sanctions“, he complained. „Since the 17th century, this policy of containment against Russia has been in place, but it is still going on. Our western partners have crossed the line, they have acted irresponsibly.“

Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski about the necessities of sanctions against Russia, the European future of Ukraine and the role of the EU in laundering money.

Radoslaw Sikorski, 51, foreign minister of Poland since 2007 studied in England since 1981 and became Poland correspondent of the "Sunday Times" after the fall of the Iron curtain. He then also briefly acted as advisor for media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Since 1992 Sikorski has been a member of various Polish governments. Under the conservative prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski he was defense minister, now he serves under the pro-European and German-friendly government of Donald Tusk., who like Sikorski is a member of the liberal Civic Platform Party. Sikorski, known for his sharp tongue, negotiated together with the German and French foreign ministers an agreement between then president Viktor Yanukovich and the opposition on February 21 in Kiev. "If you don't sign this", he told the protesters on Maidan, "You will get martial law. You will all die." Sikorski is married to US historian Anne Applebaum.

The Scots vote for or against their independence from the United Kingdom on September 18. Strangely, even the separatists want almost everything to remain the same. 

When Alex Salmond talks about the future even his hair seems to tremble in excitement: “Great Britain is increasingly unbalanced socially”, the charismatic Scottish First Minister said last Tuesday at the “New Statesman” lecture around the corner from the Houses of Parliament in Central London. “When we Scotts are independent, we will build a socially just country.”