culture
Melina Tavakoli Moghaddam, Sub-Editor, BA Politics and International Relations with a Year Abroad ***Spoilers ahead! The cast and crew of the hit Canadian TV show Heated Rivalry had a small budget and a dream when heading into filming the adaptation of Rachel Reid’s book series, Game Changers. With only
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Dear Readers of the Spirit, It’s been interesting to see who has been linked to the Epstein files, and frankly incredibly disturbing. We all knew Trump was involved, despite the previously redacted version that was provided to us, but its ties to almost everyone within the political establishment really
culture
Midnight Adams, MSc Humanitarianism, Aid & Conflict Sinners has been an awards favourite with audiences and critics alike since its release in April 2025. In a year packed with high-profile releases, Sinners has remained the dominant choice for awards season, sweeping the board at the Critics’ Choice, Music City Film
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Elfi Eden, BA International Relations and Africa and Black Diaspora The beginning of 2026 means two things: exam deadlines are out of sight, and the Awards season has begun! The 2023 SAG strikes’ influence is over, meaning the movie pipeline is fully unblocked, which allowed 2025 to be a massive
International News
Salsabeel Yasir, BA History and International Relations While Gaza faces mass starvation, continued bombardment, and constant displacement despite a supposed ceasefire, a neo-colonial governing structure has emerged to oversee its ‘reconstruction.’ This has been designed by many of the same Western political and corporate elites who denied or downplayed Israel’
International News
Rachel Tay, MA Middle Eastern Studies Slowly but surely, the skies above us are becoming the new frontier of contestation for digital infrastructure. Jeff Bezos’ astronautics company, Blue Origin, recently announced plans to build a 5,400-strong satellite megaconstellation called TeraWave, the latest to join the burgeoning ecosystem of satellite-internet
International News
Anon Yu Henriksen, International News Staff Writer, BA International Relations and Korean January was a busy month for South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who met with both China’s top leader Xi Jinping and Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi within the span of a week. As relations between
International News
Kaitlyn Prince, Photographer, BA Politics and International Relations On December 28th 2025, shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed their businesses and began a strike that would soon spark nationwide unrest. What started as protests over the collapsing value of Iran’s currency quickly spread across all 31 provinces, with
International News
Huda Abukar, BA Politics and International Relations On January 18th, a US-brokered ceasefire was announced by the Syrian President, Ahmad al-Shaara, with calls to halt hostilities after consistent escalating clashes between the Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces (SDF). Since the end of World War I, issues have
International News
Ayah Abu Mraheel, BA History and Politics It seems Donald Trump’s new year's resolution for 2026 is expansionism. Three days into the new year, Operation Absolute Resolve saw the United States (US) carry out a military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture and removal of
National News
Siddhant Pawar, BSc Politics, Philosophy and Economics One of the world’s most widely used social media platforms, X, has come under scrutiny in recent weeks following the illicit use of its AI model, Grok, to undress and create pornographic deepfake images of women and children. Ofcom, the UK’s
National News
By Anya Shah, BA Politics and International Relations In January 2026, the UK government found itself entangled in a growing transatlantic dispute after President Donald Trump pressured Greenland, a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, to become part of the United States. This statement created an uproar across many