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A most dangerous present in a box
PETER FROST warns us about several threats to our native woodlands
[Flick/hedera.baltica]
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Born on this day in 1931, the heroic revolutionary faces a dangerous new wave of White House aggression. We must treat his birthday as a rallying cry to resist the illegal siege of Cuba, writes ROGER McKENZIE
RAMZY BAROUD decries the rats of Gaza, the rodent and human type. Both abound as profiteering from tragedy reaches obscene levels
A KIND friend gave me a nice present this Christmas. It was a plant for my garden — a beautifully clipped globe shaped topiary-box tree about a foot high and a foot in diameter.
I thanked her profusely but was a tiny bit worried as I had heard about these imported box plants. They are available at remarkably low prices for such labour intensive products being grown in Asia. Sadly some of them have brought a relatively new insect pest to Britain.
This is the box tree caterpillar that weaves a white web over the plant — and inside that web eats the leaves and often kills the plant. The caterpillar was first seen in Britain in 2008 and was being spotted in English gardens by 2011.
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