The 25th anniversary meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in the Kyrgyz capital may offer a glimmer of hope that international relations do not need to be defined by endless confrontation, writes KENNY COYLE
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D-Day: an unfavourable forecast
Rox Middleton, Liam Shaw and Joel Hellewell explain how meteorology played a key role in setting the date for the liberation of Europe from the nazis
The artist, who has just died, is embedded in the subconscious of the Palestinian people
The five young men killed in the A66 crash were responsible for a devastating tragedy — but the crash should force us to ask difficult questions about wider society, argues RENATA MEDEIROS MIRRA
Britain funds the policing of black culture 16 times better than the culture itself. The Diamond Jubilee is the moment to end that, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE
Despite Andy Burnham’s declaration defending the continued partition of the island, all major international and internal trends are converging to make Irish reunification inevitable
Humans are part of the ‘animal kingdom’ – and of nature in general – but also distinct from it and labour (work) is part of what makes us unique, declared Engels. His insights 150 years ago into how our species came to be and how we differ from the rest of nature, are as important today as they were then, says the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights general secretary GAWAIN LITTLE discusses the impact of the US-Israeli war on the Iranian people and economy
ANYONE celebrating the midsummer solstice might have been anxiously checking the weather forecast over the last week. This June is currently set to be the wettest on record, turning what should be long sunny summer days into gloomy grey ones. Unfortunately, this is consistent with increasingly variable weather year-on-year in Britain due to climate change.
Seventy-five years ago, it was with a very different aim in mind that commanders of the Allied forces were checking weather forecasts during WWII. Everything was ready for the invasion of northern France, but the actual date of D-Day had to be determined. They were waiting for the crucial combination of weather conditions to allow hundreds of thousands of soldiers to land on the beaches in flat landing craft.
Writing in 1994, Lawrence Hogben, a meteorologist involved in the planning of D-Day, wrote that the exact weather requirements (on top of a full moon and a suitable tide) were “a quiet day with not more than moderate winds and seas and not too much cloud for the airmen, to be followed by three more quiet days.” Only four days could potentially fit the bill: June 5, 6, 19 or 20. Hogben and his colleagues worked out that the odds of any one of these days meeting these weather requirements was less than 10 per cent.
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