Prime Minister David Cameron has promised that the UK will accept up to 20,000 more Syrian refugeesby 2020. To help fund this, Chancellor George Osborne says that money should be used from the foreign aid budget to provide support for local councils. He said there should be a "fundamental rethink" of how the aid budget is used.

This article seeks to explain the Commonwealth of Nations as an organisation and its enduring power. The Commonwealth is an example of a concept that ought to be politically fraught. The (English) language-based association comprises a former imperialist power plus its dismantled empire of former colonies, protectorates, and mandates.

The BBC has unveiled a proposal to launch a radio service in North Korea, but the U.K. government will never fund it without a dramatic shift in foreign policy, experts say. "The BBC is trying to justify its public funding by showing that it can do something political that the private sector wouldn't do," said Aiden Foster-Carter, a senior research fellow specializing in both Koreas at Leeds University. 

We make it clear in everything that we do that their identity is British and football is a great way of doing this.It breaks down barriers, brings people together and is a fantastic way to learn about British history and culture. What could be more British than playing football?”

Rosy Senanayake and Kumar Sangakkara are two extremely popular Sri Lankans and shadows that have befallen their careers have caused heartburn among their fans. [...] This brings in the key question: Can anyone who is not a professional diplomat and wants to be one or is selected as one be a successful diplomat?

The Islamic State has proved adept at appealing to different female profiles, using girl-to-girl recruitment strategies, gendered imagery and iconic memes. [...] Social media has allowed the group’s followers to directly target young women, reaching them in the privacy of their bedrooms with propaganda that borrows from Western pop culture — images of jihadists in the sunset and messages of empowerment. 

TALMA, the Israel Program for Excellence in English, is in its second year. This year the program brought 80 teachers from the United States for a summer English program in umpteen public schools across four Israeli municipalities. [...] For Israeli children, the program seeks to close social gaps by advancing their English-language abilities, regardless of financial background or religious affiliation.

Web giants Google, Facebook, and Twitter have joined forces with a British charity in a bid to remove millions of indecent child images from the net. In a UK first, anti-abuse organization Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has begun sharing lists of indecent images, identified by unique "hash" codes. Wider use of the photo-tagging system could be a "game changer" in the fight against pedophiles, the charity said.