Day: October 8, 2025

The top stories of 2013 – as viewed on the BBC News website

Edward Snowden’s revelations about secret NSA surveillance were by some distance this year’s most read story, but there was also much else to engage our readers’ attention, from the threat of a global wine shortage to Lostprophets front man Ian Watkins’ guilty plea to depraved child sex offences. We end on a heart-warming note from the US, where the city of San Francisco transformed itself into Gotham City to fulfil leukemia patient Miles Scott’s wish to be Batman for a day – with the help of thousands of volunteers, TV crews and even President Obama himself.

International policy news

Think tanks are a vital part of the ecosystem in which academics and policy makers collide. They usually publish long reports and small articles, are backed by big donors (usually governments) and act almost like lobby groups in some cases. There are too many to mention them all but Carnegie, CSIS, RUSI, Chatham House, CFR, IFRI and Wilson Center are the ones that come to mind. It’s important to read them but also the ones from other countries as they often have different takes on things based on their national context (reading only American IR will keep you out of the other national bubble). Also it’s useful to read non-think tank political magazines of foreign affairs in general as they offer a more balanced view (although sometimes biased, of course). The Economist is good, so is “Internationale Politik” in Germany and “Poltica Exterior” in Spain. Lastly you could also read news agencies (Reuters, AP, AFP) they have many short pieces on all sorts of topics and can be a good source to get a global overview of issues.