From a Jacobean traveller’s travails in Sindh to the tangled roots of Nigeria, our pick of new nonfiction books that shine a light on Asia, Africa and South America
• Share your top recommendations for books on the developing world in the comments below
You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Works 2011-2021
By Alaa Abd El-Fattah
Governments urged to use ‘peace dividend’ to help UN tackle pandemics, climate crisis and extreme poverty
More than 50 Nobel laureates have signed an open letter calling for all countries to cut their military spending by 2% a year for the next five years, and put half the saved money in a UN fund to combat pandemics, the climate crisis, and extreme poverty.
Coordinated by the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, the letter is supported by a large group of scientists and mathematicians including Sir Roger Penrose, and is published at a time when rising global tensions have led to a steady increase in arms budgets.
Continue reading...Nationwide test for teenagers included passage indicating female independence was undermining discipline in the home
An Indian exam board has withdrawn a passage from a nationwide English exam that appeared to promote the subservience of wives, after an outcry over “blatant misogyny”.
All students have been awarded full marks for the comprehension section of the exam covering the passage, which appeared to explicitly state that women’s independence was undermining discipline and parenting in the home. The passage appeared in an English language and literature exam taken by 14 and 15-year-olds on Saturday.
Continue reading...A 104-year-old woman has fulfilled her dream to learn to read. After starting in April, Kuttiyamma achieved 89% in literacy and 100% in mathematics in the Kerala state primary literacy exam last month, the oldest woman to do so.
Kuttiyamma had been curious about reading and would often try to make out the alphabet herself, but when she was born in a village to a low-caste rural family, there was no education. Her neighbour Rehana John, a 34-year-old literacy trainer, persuaded her to start to learn to read. Previously, John’s oldest student had been 85
Continue reading...Daily newspaper is new joy for Kuttiyamma, who began taking lessons from her neighbour a year ago
For almost a century, Kuttiyamma’s daily routine had been much the same. Rising early at home in the village of Thiruvanchoor in Kerala, the 104-year-old would begin her day’s work of cooking, cleaning and feeding the cows and chickens.
But now, every morning, there’s something new to get up for. She eagerly awaits the paperboy to deliver Malayala Manorama, the local newspaper.
Continue reading...Bans failed to stop farmers torching fields each year but a new spray that turns stalks into fertiliser helps the soil and the air
Every autumn, Anil Kalyan, from Kutail village in India’s northern state of Haryana, would join tens of thousands of other paddy farmers to set fire to the leftover stalks after the rice harvest to clear the field for planting wheat.
But this year, Kalyan opted for change. He signed his land up for a trial being held in Haryana and neighbouring Punjab as an alternative to the environmentally hazardous stubble burning that is commonplace across India and a major cause of Delhi’s notorious smog.
Continue reading...Anupama S Chandran’s newborn child was sent away by her parents, who were unhappy that his father was from the Dalit caste
Through the rains and steamy heat of November, day and night, Anupama S Chandran sat by the gates of the Kerala state secretariat. She refused to eat, drink or be moved. Her single demand was written on a placard: “Give me my baby.”
The story of Chandran’s fight to get back her child, who was snatched from her by her own family days after he was born and put up for adoption without her knowledge, is one that has been greeted with both horror and a sad familiarity in India.
Continue reading...Gen Bipin Rawat, who was leading changes to his country’s military, died along with his wife and other senior officers
The Indian defence chief, Gen Bipin Rawat, was among 13 people killed in a helicopter crash on Wednesday, raising questions over the future of military changes he was leading.
Rawat was India’s first chief of defence staff, a position that the government established in 2019, and was seen as close to the prime minister, Narendra Modi.
Continue reading...‘He had been used for logging on the Andaman Islands. When I found him, he was 60, living in retirement – and loving his swims’
I lived at sea for 10 years. I co-owned and ran a global kiteboarding expedition business. We’d sail around the world on a 60-foot catamaran, following the trade winds, kiteboarding, surfing and paragliding in remote locations. One night, I watched a Hollywood movie called The Fall, which had a section where an elephant was swimming in tropical blue water. I didn’t know if it was real or a fake Hollywood thing. But I thought: “Man, if that does exist, I’d love to photograph it.”
I searched the internet and found the elephant from the film was living in the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal. When we sailed into the capital, Port Blair, a few months later in 2010, I decided to hop off and try to find this elephant. I found Rajan on Havelock (now Swaraj) Island and spent two weeks with him, learning about his incredible story.
Continue reading...Gemstones worth €300,000 shared between Mont Blanc climber and authorities as man praised for handing find to police in 2013
A treasure trove of emeralds, rubies and sapphires buried for decades on a glacier off France’s Mont Blanc has finally been shared between the climber who discovered them and local authorities, eight years after they were found.
The mountaineer stumbled across the precious stones in 2013. They had remained hidden in a metal box that was onboard an Indian plane that crashed in the desolate landscape some 50 years earlier.
Continue reading...Villagers burn army vehicles after coalminers were mistaken for insurgents, with Indian home minister promising full investigation
Angry villagers who set fire to army vehicles are among more than a dozen civilians killed by soldiers in India’s remote north-east region along the border with Myanmar.
An army officer said soldiers fired at a truck, killing six labourers returning home from work, after receiving intelligence about a movement of insurgents in the area.
Continue reading...Ukhoo village in Kashmir supplies 90% of wood used in the country’s pencils, but the industry, a major employer in the area, has seen a dramatic drop in demand
School closures in India during the pandemic have left their mark on more than the children who have seen delays to their learning. In one Kashmiri village the impact has been catastrophic on employment.
Pick up a pencil anywhere across India and it is likely to come from the poplar trees of Ukhoo.
Continue reading...A Spanish trans woman’s memoirs, a Mumbai gangster drama, Israeli sisters in trouble… the Covid era is a rich moment for TV drama. Critics from Spain to South Korea tell us about the biggest shows in their countries
Continue reading...ECDC follows WHO in threat assessment of new variant; countries bar foreign nationals from several southern African nations; UK sees most new infections for a month
Hungary needs to increase the number of people taking booster shots against COVID-19 to curb infections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told state radio this morning.
Reuters report that Orbán said the government would extend a special campaign making vaccinations available without any prior registration to next week following a surge in Covid-19 cases.
Continue reading...Kashmiri farmers lose half their harvest to early snows for third year, with fears for future of the region’s orchards
The homegrown apple is in danger of becoming a rarity in India, as farmers have lost up to half their harvest this year, with predictions that the country’s main orchards could soon be all but wiped out.
Early snowfalls in Kashmir, where almost 80% of India’s apples are grown, have seen the region’s farmers lose half their crops in the third year of disastrous harvests.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Torridge in Devon had the highest rate in UK followed by Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland; France reports over 30,000 cases
Here’s the latest from Reuters on the situation in Germany, where the acting health minister called on Tuesday for further restrictions to contain a “dramatic” surge in coronavirus cases as the country’s infection rate hit a record high and the United States advised against travel there.
The seven-day incidence rate - the number of people per 100,000 to be infected over the last week - hit 399.8 on Tuesday, up from 386.5 on Monday, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed.
Access to healthcare is expensive and, in an emergency, villagers are forced to walk for hours to the nearest health facility. For women, the lack of facilities, combined with patriarchal attitudes, means they have had no control over their reproductive health. But Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) organises mobile healthcare outreach to poorly served communities such as Lekiji. Chat identifies vulnerable communities with limited access to health facilities and significant family planning needs, and brings health provision and education to their door.
Lack of roads is no barrier to their work. If they cannot reach the communities by car, they switch to an older form of transport: camel. In the past three years Chat has reached more than 100,000 people with behaviour-changing messages that focus on family planning but include TB, HIV and Covid prevention services across 14 counties in Kenya.
Continue reading...With up to one in five new mothers suffering depression or psychosis, experts say the need for help is ‘overwhelming’ India
A month after giving birth, Divya tried to suffocate her new daughter with a pillow. “There were moments when I loved my baby; at other times I would try and suffocate her to death,” says the 26-year-old from the southern Indian state of Kerala.
She sought help from women’s organisations and the women’s police station, staffed by female officers, in her town. But Divya was told that the safest place for a child was with her mother.
Continue reading...Indian police say four men killed in shootout were militants but families say gunfight was staged and they were innocent civilians
Tensions in the Indian state of Kashmir remain on a knife edge after a shootout by the Indian authorities this week left four people dead, with families alleging the gunfight was staged and that police used innocent civilians as a “human shield”.
Police initially described the incident, which took place on Monday when officers raided a shopping complex, as a counter-insurgency operation in which two militants and their associates had been killed in a shootout.
Continue reading...Analysis: the authoritarian PM’s first retreat is a much needed triumph of democracy
“The strongman finally blinks,” was how one commentator put it. On Friday morning, India woke to a surprise announcement by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, that he was repealing the farm laws, which have been at the heart of one of the greatest challenges his government had faced in almost eight years in power.
It was a significant turning point, not only for the farmers, but for Indian politics and the reputation of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government. Since Modi was first elected in 2014, his modus operandi has been that of a tough, unyielding, authoritarian strongman leader who does not bow to public pressure.
Continue reading...Narendra Modi has announced he will repeal three contentious farm laws that prompted a year of protests and unrest in India, in one of the most significant concessions made by his government and a huge victory for India’s farmers. They had fought hard for the repeal of what the farmers called the 'black laws' that put their livelihoods at risk and gave private corporations control over the pricing of their crops
Continue reading...