A slightly belated happy birthday to South Sudan! As I assess my need for new mapping to accurately reflect the way that Africa is carved up as of Saturday, I’m drawn to thinking about the challenges that the world’s newest country faces. It’s perhaps not the best time to be striking it out alone, though splitting from the abusive partner that the Sudanese government, especially under al-Bashir, represents was, on balance, the right thing to do. (more…)

So today sees the last edition of the News Of The World. Having never read the thing, I can’t say I’ll miss it much, but the whole scandal of its demise raises at least a couple of important questions: first, how does Britain manage to regulate the excesses of the press, without castrating it, and second, how can the over centralisation of media power, as seen with Murdoch, be avoided? (more…)