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Every five years Latvia stages a week-long song and dance festival and this year my wife’s Latvian cousins got us tickets to two of the biggest events. I had no idea what to expect. The first evening, in a vast open-air arena in the Mezaparks forest outside Riga, while the light faded behind the tall […]

Britain’s electric vehicle transition and the ban on petrol car sales from 2030 are a slow-motion car crash. The technology is not ready, the cost will be vast, the logistics are forbidding, the reliance on China is worrying and the backlash from the public is likely to be harsh. Worst of all, the benefits are […]

That a pandemic caused by a bat coronavirus started in the city with the world’s largest programme of research into bat coronaviruses was always intriguing. That among the first people to get ill with covid-like symptoms in the month the pandemic began were three scientists working in that lab was highly suspicious. That now we […]

Labs have boomed in recent years, heightening the danger of a major accident – or indeed sabotage   Last week a horrifying report emerged from Khartoum, where poor Sudanese civilians are being terrorised by internal conflict. Fighters had seized a biological laboratory that houses samples of measles and cholera. It was said that power cuts may threaten the safe […]

Two years ago I watched a red squirrel climbing a pine tree at my home in Northumberland. I fear it may be the last time I have that thrill. Twenty years ago they were everywhere in our woods and regular visitors to my bird table. Then in 2003 we saw the first grey squirrel. Almost […]

As a US Senate committee’s full, 300-page report on the origin of covid now makes clear, a whole string of clues now points towards a laboratory accident as the probable cause of the covid pandemic.   For example, there is: evidence of a biosafety crisis at the lab in the autumn of 2019; the Chinese […]

British institutions beholden to China or concerned about the effect on science appear uninterested in investigating the lab leak hypothesis     As a US Senate committee’s full, 300-page report on the origin of covid now makes clear, a whole string of clues now points towards a laboratory accident as the probable cause of the […]

When I joined the House of Lords in 2013 I soon realised that, despite its poor reputation, the place contained plenty of wise, quick-witted and courageous minds. None more so than Nigel Lawson who died this week. An intellectual titan who had once almost become a philosophy professor, he was not content to rest on […]

There is new evidence pointing to the origin of Covid being in the seafood market in Wuhan. That, at least, is the substance of a breathless piece published in the Atlantic. Specifically, Katherine Wu, the journalist who wrote the piece, had evidence suggesting that ‘raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying […]

Despite Chinese obstruction and denial, the world is coming round to the idea that the origin of the pandemic might be traced to a Wuhan laboratory. Little wonder — the clues have been there all along   By Matt Ridley   It is not clear why the US government chose this week to drop not […]