By the end of the day, eight inches of rain may have chucked down on to New York’s streets; the UK’s decision to water down its environmental and climate policies look—against all odds—even stupider one week on than they did on the day of their announcement.

Imagine you were undergoing a programme of uncomfortable and unpleasant, but necessary, exercise and dietary changes to improve your health and found yourself slightly ahead of schedule, though some distance from your target. You sit down with your doctors and give them the good news: I’m doing bett...

Sometimes you just need to turn your brain off and then on again: much like your computer, it will rectify a multitude of sins. I spent two weeks away, moving up and down the Catalan coast, going from beach to beach, lying in the sand with detective novels and watching my three year old pelt up and ...

Through the summer, I’ve had a few excuses for the links showing up at random times, or disappearing: technical disasters, our automated system crashing, unexpected illnesses and the like. But for the next two weeks, it will be none of these things that keep these links away from you: I am going on ...

In London, it’s hard to tell what season it is. The weather veers from wet and miserable to sunny and Mediterranean, sometimes in the course of a few hours; or indeed minutes. Today, we took our son to the Tate Modern to see the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Rooms exhibition (highly recommended, watching hi...

I have to open by apologising for the very patchy appearance of the Links this summer: its been a combination of last-minute leave plans, technical snafus with our emailing system and a pile-up of deadlines that means the different demands on my time have been fighting like they’re on a dock in Mont...

The effects of anthropogenic climate change are upon us, and the time for serious action is past due. In this context it is unsurprising that many observers are turning to the multilateral development banks (MDBs) for this action. These are institutions whose names inspire the potential for grand ac...

First things first: I am extremely pleased to report that University Challenge is still brilliant with Amol Rajan as its host. All of the important things are still there: the questions are great, the students are amazing and Rajan, like Paxman, ends the show with “and it’s goodbye from me; goodbye....

One of the joys of being a cricket fan is following the Guardian’s Over-by-Over (OBO) commentary on the day’s cricket. I discovered it while working Malawi and trying to surreptitiously keep track of the Sri Lanka tour of England in 2006 (this was the tour in which Murali took the first 8 wickets to...