News – Journeys of Heart and Mind

April 2026 roundup

This is a very significant result, putting Hungary into a good relationship within the EU, rejecting JD Vance’s efforts to support Orbán, [and] rejecting Putin’s influence over the country.

The Hungarian election result

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3 – News and events

This is a monthly roundup of news and events in the world as well as in my life. So expect to find thoughts and comment on international and local events as well as links to anything I’ve seen or read that seems either relevant or interesting to me. I’ll republish every time I add a new item, so check back often.

Hungarian election results

12th April 2026 – The Hungarian voters heavily defeated Viktor Orbán in the parliamentary elections, Péter Magyar’s Tisza party winning a 2/3 supermajority. This is a very significant result, putting Hungary into a good relationship within the EU, rejecting JD Vance’s efforts to support Orbán, rejecting Putin’s influence over the country, and making it likely that Hungary will in future support Ukraine’s brave rejection of the Russian invasion.

The Conversation

8th April 2026 – If you don’t already read The Conversation, I suggest you take a look at it. It’s very much part of the web as Tim Berners-Lee originally intended it. Free to read, free to subscribe, free to copy, free to re-publish. In order to write for The Conversation you have to pass through a sieve that requires you have at least a PhD, so all the articles are written by academics.

That’s both a strength and a weakness, authors are guaranteed to be thinkers and well educated, though at the same time it lacks content from the less-well educated, even though many of those might be people with important and balanced views on everyday life.

To get started I suggest reading this article on food waste in the UK. Then browse around for material that interests you.

Ukraine helping Gulf states

7th April 2026 – President Zelenskyy’s getting growing support from the Gulf Arab states who are being so badly hurt by Donald Trump’s foolish war with Iran. While Trump gets more frustrated and angry day by day, falling into ever deeper difficulties and demonstrating a growing absence of planning and logical thinking; Zelenskyy is offering effective anti drone technology and training to the Arab Gulf states to enable them to bring down significant numbers of Iranian drones. This shrewd thinking by Zelenskyy, means the Gulf Arabs will supply money and support to Ukraine in exchange for the defence help they so urgently need.

It’s fascinating to watch this develop day by day. To hear some analysis, watch these Times Radio YouTube interviews with John Foreman, Professor Scott Lucas, General Richard Shirreff, and General Ben Hodges.

Family visitors

5th April 2026 – My daughter Debbie and grandchildren Aidan and Sara arrived today to stay for a couple of nights. It’s always great to see them, of course, but things were more exciting than usual this time. Just as dusk was falling, we had a major power cut and had to get out the candles. By the time power came back on it was fully dark. We had two further outages, both quite brief.

A new series on JHM

3rd April 2026 – I’ve started a new series of articles on JHM. View the index (it has only a single item so far) but I’ll add more items from time to time. This first entry recommends Life with CD, a great site for posts about following Jesus faithfully in the modern world. Lots of hard questions, lots of good answers, lots of thoughts provoked.

The journey continues

3rd April 2026 – The crew of Artemis II are now heading towards the Moon following a TLI burn (TLI = Trans-Lunar Injection) You might like to watch this news interview with them if you haven’t already seen it. As they draw ever closer to the Moon they will come more and more under its gravitational influence and less under Earth’s. Lunar gravity will gradually bend their orbit through 180 degrees and send them hurtling back to Earth at the same speed at which they arrived.

Caledonian Forest Restoration

2nd April 2026 – And now for some long news. The NASA mission I mentioned yesterday will last 10 days, but this forest restoration project in Scotland will last for 250 years!

Alan Watson Featherstone is a Scots ecologist, he founded the conservation charity, Trees for Life in 1986; and I recommend the video about the work and its striking results so far (link in the paragraph above). We need more people with vision like this! While you’re here, take a look at the charity’s website.

Friends of the Gumstool Brook

2nd April – FoGB is a local, volunteer organisation started by an old school friend of mine, Nick Henderson – more fully and properly Rev’d Dr. Nicholas Henderson. FoGB does a lot of very useful, even essential, work on Cirencester’s watercourses. If you live in or near the town you should certainly take a look. If you live anywhere else you might still find it interesting, a great example of what can be achieved by enthusiastic individuals and small groups.

To the Moon and beyond!

1st April – As I write, preparations are under way for the Artemis II mission, launching from NASA’s Cape Canaveral launch complex late this evening UK time. The objective is to fly four Astronauts well beyond the Moon, much further than anyone has ever been from Earth before. They will not be landing on the Moon on this mission. The launch was a success, Artemis II is in an initial orbit.

Take a look at the Everyday Astronaut’s YouTube channel for the latest news as it happens. Or watch his video about the Mission for all the background before it happens.

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March 2026 roundup

The photo shows the aftermath of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia’s Ust Luga oil export terminal north of St Petersburg.

Ust Luga on fire

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2 – News and events

Mr Putin’s war against Ukraine

Russia’s Ust Luga oil terminal on fire (United24 Media)

29th March – The ‘Special Military Operation is looking a lot less ‘special’ these days. Russia is trapped in an expensive and bruising war that it can’t stop (without admitting failure) and can’t win because the Russian economy is in a right old mess and Ukraine is growing stronger by the day. Tactically, Ukraine is running rings around Russia, while strategically its industrial base is far better prepared than Russia’s and is providing ever larger amounts of military equipment including advanced drones and missiles.

Currently Russia is losing more troops every week than it can recruit. This does not look like a war-winning strategy to me. The photo shows the aftermath of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia’s Ust Luga oil export terminal north of St Petersburg.

Another report from Times Radio

Mr Trump’s war against Iran

29th March – I quite deliberately attribute the war to Trump, not the USA. It’s not one of the cleverest things he’s done, particularly as he clearly failed to take advice from his military planners or political advisers. Not only that, but he has rudely mocked European NATO countries for wisely not joining in. It’s going to be interesting to see how he tries to wriggle out of the difficulties and blame that are surely soon going to be coming his way.

Here’s a report from Times Radio.

Loss of internet

27th March – The broadband internet is back online. Vodfone didn’t replace the router, so the fault must have been in the streetbox of the cabling between that and our house. Nice to have it back, though!

24th March – Our internet failed mid morning, I could connect over our local Wi-Fi to the router just fine, but the router was receiving little or no data over our broadband connection. I spent three hours on a call with an engineer, sent them a packet dump, and they will call back tomorrow.

Climate change

23rd March – Nature’s news section points out that we’ve just lived through the eleven hottest years on record, 2025 was the second or third warmest since records began. More than 91% of the extra heat goes into the oceans, so our perceptions and measurements of atmospheric warming are just the tip of the heatberg, so to speak. (You can sign up free for the Nature Briefing.)

See also: https://jhm.scilla.org.uk/2022/01/09/climate-change-what-can-i-do/

RFK Jrs. Vaccine plans blocked

19th March – Nature reports that A US judge has blocked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s changes to the USA’s childhood vaccination programme. The judge reversed the vaccine-advisory panel’s decisions as well. Legal wheels turn slowly, but I’m glad to hear that some irresponsible choices by the Trump administration are being blocked.

Russia is struggling

17th March – Russia is really struggling now in its war in Ukraine. Anna’s latest video describes the major strikes on Moscow; while Times Radio’s Frontline covers Putin’s current difficulties (the second part of the video is about Trump and Iran). It all seems pretty bleak (which is, of course, a good thing).

War in Iran

14th March – The US war in Iran continues. Europe, including the UK, is not having anything to do with this war, neither is Canada or Australia. So the USA is alone in their decision to attack Iran, and it seems there was no planning in depth, no analysis of what might go well and what not; just an assumption that the Iranian government would give up, the people would rise up, and that would all be accomplished in just a few days. Basically, Trump has no idea and never listens to people who do know. The USA is going downhill fast, not just in the war but economically, technologically and in many other ways. There’s only one person to blame for all this. For some good analysis, watch this video.

Yet, surprisingly Ukraine is providing thousands of drones and experienced military advisors to train American and local Arab troops how to use them to bring down the Iranian Shahed drones that are hitting shipping in the Straights of Hormuz. Has Donald Trump said, ‘Thank you’? Not a chance!

Microplastics

12th March – Microplastics are everywhere, they form part of the everyday dust around us, indoors and out. We breathe them in (every breath we take), they are present in every part of every living organism on the planet, in the deepest ocean, on top of the highest mountain, in everything we eat and drink, in your muscles, on your skin, they’ve even been found in brain tissue. Few people are even aware of microplastics.

It’s fair to assume they may be harmful, but we have little idea of the degree of that harm or the mechanisms behind any damage they may cause. You can read about detecting them in the environment (scroll to page 28 for the article). There are some videos worth watching on the topic too, here are a couple to get you started from CBS 8 San Diego and from Anton Petrov.

Blast from the past

9th March – I’ve had to slow down with these posts, but I’m also getting deeper into the past now. For the first time what began as a family history now goes back to the year 1500. Nothing is known about the family that far back, but a good deal is still known about the history of the local area. Here’s the full index.

Spaceflight news from Marcus

7th March – Marcus House publishes regular video news reports about rockets and spaceflight. His videos are shorter than those from some of his rivals, a bit more… erm… dare I say – down to Earth! There’s no clutter, no bulking up, just straightforward information presented neatly and in good humour. Like listening to an old friend chatting factually and enthusiastically.

He posts on Saturdays from Tasmania. Today’s post covers the coming testing of SpaceX’s Starship version 3 and some much-needed rethinking by NASA on their Artemis programme, and much more. Watch it for yourself (less than 23 minutes).

The Raisina Dialogue

6th March – Alexander Stubb addressed the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi where he suggested we need to look forward to the future rather than back to the past, in our international thinking and discussions. He suggested reviewing and reforming the UN Security Council, in particular adding India as a new permanent member.

Watch and listen to Stubb’s speech.

The war in Ukraine

5th March – Ukraine is still defending itself more than five years after the Russian invasion on 24th February 2022. It’s sometimes difficult to know how things stand, as the war is rarely mentioned on national news channels here in the UK and the same is true elsewhere as well. There are good sources of news out there but there’s a lot of nonsense and AI slop too.

Times Radio has several good YouTube channels where knowledgeable people are interviewed. As an example, here’s Philip Ingram interviewing Matthew Savill today, on Times Radio’s Frontline channel. Savill is Director of Military Sciences at RUSI. We’ll look at some other information sources from time to time.

Images from Nature

4th March – I enjoyed these amazing photos from the journal Nature’s email newsletter. Click the link and scroll down to see them all. Which is your favourite, I wonder? Anyone can sign up for Nature Briefing.

Green Earth

4th March – I’ve been reading Green Earth for a few weeks now, it’s a condensed version of three earlier novels called Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty degrees below, and Sixty days and counting, all by the author Kim Stanley Robinson. All three are fiction about global warming and its effects. I read all three when they were published and as Robinson is one of my favourite authors, and he also published the compressed version (in 2015), I wanted to read that as well.

I’m a good chunk of the way through now and would like to recommend it to anyone who is interested in having a hint of where our climate is heading. Everyone on the planet should be interested! Like all of Robinson’s books, this one is another page turner with complex, believable characters.

Brain bleed

1st Mar 2026 – Following six days in Hospital in October 2025, I’ve been seizure-free for four months now. My consultant wrote ‘You’ve made a remarkable recovery’. (See also A time in hospital, October 2025)

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February 2026 roundup

Claude 3 has been retired in favour of more recent versions of this excellent AI from Anthropic. But instead of just turning Claude 3 off, they’ve given it/him the chance to write a weekly article which they will check and then publish on Claude 3’s behalf on the AI’s own SubStack account.

Norway wants to buy America

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1 – News and events

I think it will be interesting to do a monthly roundup of news and events in the world as well as in my life. So expect to find thoughts and comment on international and local events as well as links to anything I’ve seen or read that seems either relevant or interesting to me.

This first roundup may be a little haphazard as I work back through February, but for March and following months I’ll add items as they happen or occur to me.

USA and Israel attack Iran

28th February – The USA had been building up a naval and air capability off the Iranian coast of the Persian Gulf for some weeks. The attack came suddenly and without provocation. Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian leaders were killed in the attack. The intention seems to have been regime change in Iran.

A1 writes weekly on SubStack

25th February 2026 – Claude 3 has been retired in favour of more recent versions of this excellent AI from Anthropic. But instead of just turning Claude 3 off, they’ve given it/him the chance to write a weekly article which they will check and then publish on Claude 3’s behalf on the AI’s own SubStack account. The first one was an interesting read. The substack is called Claude’s Corner.

Early fire making

21st February 2026 – That’s the date this interesting abstract from Nature appeared in my inbox from ‘The Past’ mailing list. It was written up as a feature article in Current Archaeology in January. You’d have to pay to see the full Nature article, but you can read the Current Archaeology write up from the link above. It seems that making fire might be an innovation that happened about 350 thousand years earlier than we previously thought. In terms of cooking things, this is highly significant as better nutrition would have made possible bigger brains requiring more energy.

Norway wants to buy America

19th February 2026 – If you haven’t already seen this video it will make you laugh, I hope in a good way. it also has something of a feel good factor about it. It comes to you from a YouTube channel called Unreal Affairs. They posted the video on 19th January, but I didn’t see it until February.

Here’s a response from one American.

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