Chinese police officers block off access to a site where protesters had gathered in Shanghai on Sunday (AP Photo)
(Picture: AP)Starting out as a journalist, I learned my reporting trade on the foreign desk at The Times, where we burgeoning newshounds scrapped for the chance to assist on the big stories. On one June day in the summer of 1989, though, there were more than enough stories to go round. Three of them rocked the world — the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and subsequent pushes for liberal reforms and rights, the vast outflows of East Germans trying to escape via Hungary to the West, and 50 days of protest, mown down by the military in Tiananmen Square.
More than three decades on, it strikes me that the intertwined threads of these stories still shape our world and this year with renewed vigour.
