The hype over ChatGPT is getting to such ludicrous levels, some are now calling on it to be prevailed upon to keep the peace in Northern Ireland. I realised the intense nature of the global conversation over chatbot that generates text when a Financial Times reader sent in a letter…

On the last day of January, Boris Johnson was wandering around Capitol Hill, meeting and greeting sundry members of the Republican Party. The trip came within weeks of Liz Truss’s attempt to chum up with the same political crew, albeit a slightly different cast. What’s with former British prime ministers…

Two months on from ChatGPT’s November 30 public launch, the story remains alternately amusing and alarming. Among creatives, there’s a somewhat injudicious rush to compliment or caterwaul. Business too are on an artificially induced Artificial Intelligence (AI) jag, similar to the dotcom boom, the stampede to the worldwide web, and…

Hats off to Politico, which has a killer piece from Washington, D.C. about Liz Truss’s trip to America’s capital last month. It seems that the woman who lost the longevity battle to a lettuce (and practically crashed the pound, meanwhile) believes the comeback trail lies through the Beltway. Perhaps Ms…

Nearly a hundred hours before Rishi Sunak marks 100 days in the prime minister’s office, he lost a cabinet minister. It seemed rather careless. With the sacking of Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi, Mr Sunak’s record as PM now stands as follows: he has lost two cabinet ministers in his…

More than a decade ago, Patrick Barkham singled out tacky holiday souvenirs from India at the start of an amusing (and apparently heartfelt) blog on the subject for The Guardian. He wrote: “The classic holiday purchase is the pair of loon pants that makes perfect sense in a dusty alleyway…

At month’s end, it will be 75 years since Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse, a member of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organisation called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It’s a decent passage of time and 75 is a nice number for the usual anniversary story, which memorialises, recreates…

Shashi Tharoor, an Indian politician and former United Nations diplomat, recently fulminated on the Biden administration’s seeming insouciance about its lack of an ambassador to India. Mr Tharoor suggested that it showed the US didn’t care enough about India, one of the United States’ most important partners in its strategy…

On Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s birthday, America announced a big present. Not the 31 M1 Abrams tanks, but heart. Joe Biden’s America has given political cover for the Germans to send Leopard tanks, and for Spain, Poland, Finland and probably Norway to do the same. Without the US, the Europeans…