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Confessions II: why Madonna still matters
There are many more female artists in the 2020s than the early 1980s, but none is as iconoclastic as Madonna, more than 40 years on from her debut.
OSI archive
MIL-OSI
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State of emergency in Crimea as Ukraine focuses pressure on ‘jewel in Putin’s crown’
Crimea has been the symbol of the success of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But now the peninsula is becoming isolated as Kyiv intensifies its attacks.
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Immigration and asylum bill: why yet another attempt to overhaul the system won’t work
If passed, it will be the fifth immigration act adopted in five parliamentary sessions.
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Smartphones are helping filmmakers tell the stories the movie industry overlooks
I wanted to make a film about solo parenting in all its messiness, the highs, but also the lows. I shot with my smartphone, almost daily, for nearly two decades.
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Why the UK government needed to apologise for its role in historic forced adoptions in England
Between 300,000 and 500,000 children in the UK and Ireland were put up for adoption without their mothers’ consent.
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Ulysses in isiZulu: why an African translation of the classic Irish novel matters in today’s world
Writers from very different places can grapple with the same questions.
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The rhythms that broke Bashir: how Sudan’s music shaped a revolution
Music created the networks, identities and spaces of trust that made collective political action possible in Sudan’s 2019 revolution.
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When ‘man’ didn’t mean humanity: How language excluded women for centuries
Language that fails to explicitly name women has historically excluded them. And that exclusion is an active, reversible mechanism that’s now resurfacing.
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Alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs, yet its presence is ubiquitous in social settings and celebrations
Despite growing evidence of alcohol’s harms, it remains deeply embedded in social norms and cultural rituals, both in the US and abroad.
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From Augustine to Jefferson, the idea of separating church and state has deep religious and secular roots
The Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission argues that religious freedom is under attack and blames the ‘wall of separation’ between church and state.