Arkiv-Global View

SOME of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates.

The most stinging dismissal of a point is to say: “That’s academic.” In other words, to be a scholar is, often, to be irrelevant.

«Sempre con il Napoli». Roma, Hotel Eden, interno giorno: la dolce vita di via Veneto è a due passi, le cattedrali dello shopping pure e sembra quasi un sacrilegio entrare nella hall senza stringere tra le mani una di quelle buste che fanno chic da sole, prima ancora di averlo indossato, il made in Italy. Si compra italiano ma si parla inglese: è l’ora del tè, qualcuno si accomoda al lounge bar, sceglie la  

Matteo Renzi è impaziente. Conosceva le intenzioni del presidente del Consiglio. Sapeva che Letta si preparava a prendere la parola in Parlamento per esporre al Paese una versione aggiornata del suo programma e chiedere la fiducia delle Camere. Ma il sindaco di Firenze non è né deputato né senatore e ha preferito evitare un voto parlamentare spostando il dibattito là dove il podio sarebbe stato interamente suo. Il galateo democratico avrebbe richiesto una diversa procedura, ma l’impazienza non è necessariamente un difetto.

No nudity please, we're French.... A strange prudishness has seized a section of political opinion in France – a country that habitually mocks the alleged sexual squeamishness of "les Anglo-Saxons". The leader of the main centre-right opposition party, Jean-François Copé, declared on television last week that his "blood ran cold" when he read a children's book called Tous à poil (All in the Buff).

It's not surprising that greater numbers of Americans these days tell pollsters they believe corporate CEOs are grossly overpaid, or that they support an increase in the minimum wage, or agree with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposal to open an alternative banking system through the U.S. Postal Service.

This week a French judge ordered the comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala to take down a YouTube video. In it, he says he “knows nothing about the gas chambers” but can refer his viewers to “Robert” – that is, Robert Faurisson, a former academic who reckons the six million deaths never happened.

Dieudonné invented the “quenelle”, a disguised Nazi salute. I’m sure you remember the fuss. How odd, I thought at the time, that an entertainer who was once part of a double act with a Jewish friend should have drifted into Holocaust denial.

'Don't think the Mafia's gone away. It's still there, especially in Sicily's politics," says the photographer and photojournalist Letizia Battaglia, whose images of the Cosa Nostra have defined Italy's struggle with mobster violence.

With the first major UK exhibition of her work opening, she explains how her images are more relevant than ever.

Enrico Letta has stepped down as Italy's prime minister after the leadership of his centre-left party deserted him for Matteo Renzi, a telegenic and smooth-talking rival who cites Tony Blair as a role model and now looks likely to become the country's youngest premier in modern history.

Tony Blair's friends and allies seem to accept the globe-trotting former prime minister's emphatic assurances that the press has got it wrong again.

The devastating floods and storms sweeping Britain are clear indications of the dangers of climate change, according to Lord Stern, the author of a 2006 report on the economics of climate change.