Lea Ypi says vocal minority of Albanians have sent torrent of online insults criticising her bestseller, Free
A memoir about growing up before and after the fall of communism in Albania has won rave reviews in the west but has prompted “vicious” abuse from a vocal minority of Albanians, its author says.
Free by Lea Ypi, a Marxist Albanian professor of political theory at the London School of Economics, might seem an unlikely bestseller.
Continue reading...In one of the world’s most dangerous regions for environmental and human rights activists, La Siguata offers a safe space for women suffering trauma as a result of their work
A milky-white and sky-blue stone hangs from a red string around Ethels Correa’s neck, and every so often she rubs it between her fingers.
“When I feel anger, I grab this stone and I begin to relax, because they taught me how to breathe, to relax the body and to relax the mind,” she says. “I carry it with me all the time.”
Continue reading...From Stuart Little and Pet Sematary to new movie The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, cats can be scene-stealers. But how do you get such fickle and independent creatures to behave on camera?
Cats have been effortlessly stealing scenes from their human co-stars for decades. Who could forget Audrey Hepburn’s adorable marmalade tabby in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Or Jinx, the toilet-flushing Himalayan in Meet the Parents? Behind every famous film cat, there is a dedicated trainer patiently teaching them to obey a command, making sure they’re happy on set, and grooming them fastidiously to maintain their fluffy good looks.
The film-makers behind The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, a British period biopic about the Edwardian artist and illustrator who became famous for his surreal portraits of cats, were adamant they didn’t want to use CGI for the shoot, so animal trainer Charlotte Wilde was brought in with 40 feisty felines. “It was organised chaos,” she says. “They had their own green room and were treated like royalty.”
Continue reading...New book claims intercepted cables sent in second world war by Allen Dulles, later head of CIA, enabled disinformation campaign
A US spymaster inadvertently helped the Nazis develop one of the most effective disinformation campaigns of the second world war by spreading rumours about Hitler’s plans for a Where Eagles Dare-style Alpine redoubt, a historian with access to classified US military records has found.
The myth that the Nazis were amassing weapons and crack units of 100,000 fanatical soldiers in the spring of 1945 for a last stand in the Austro-Bavarian Alps was without any basis in fact but had a powerful hold on the imagination of American and British military leaders, who feared it could prolong the war for years.
Continue reading...Until 1984, the prison on the island of Gorgona off Colombia’s Pacific coast was a place where political prisoners and dangerous criminals served their sentences. Now it is a national natural park of coral reefs, dense jungle and exuberant fauna
Continue reading...Israel’s PM made announcement in response to Omicron surge; Americans travelling to France without vaccination must isolate for 10 days
New Covid-19 cases in the locked-down Chinese city of Xi’an fell to their lowest in a week, health officials said Sunday, as residents face their eleventh day under strict home confinement.
China has followed a “zero Covid” approach involving tight border restrictions and swift, targeted lockdowns since the virus first surfaced in a central city in late 2019 – but this strategy has been put under pressure in recent weeks with a number of local outbreaks and cases remaining stubbornly high, AFP reports.
We will also make some adjustments to the prevention and control measures in a timely way.
The government does need to get its act together on the supply of testing.
And I think the health secretary needs to explain why it was that only three weeks ago he told me in the House of Commons that availability of tests wasn’t a problem. And yet now it so clearly is.
Continue reading...Abdalla Hamdok quits on same day at least two protesters killed by security forces during unrest in Khartoum and other cities
Sudan’s prime minister has announced his resignation amid political deadlock and widespread pro-democracy protests following a military coup that derailed the country’s fragile transition to democratic rule.
Abdalla Hamdok, a former UN official seen as the civilian face of Sudan’s transitional government, had been reinstated as prime minister in November as part of an agreement with the military following the October coup. In that time he had failed to name a cabinet and his resignation on Sunday throws Sudan into political uncertainty.
Continue reading...Russia is “very likely” to invade Ukraine and might only be deterred by “enormous sanctions”, the chair of the US House intelligence committee said on Sunday.
Adam Schiff also said an invasion could backfire on Moscow, by drawing more countries into the Nato military alliance.
Continue reading...Kenyan conservationist found oldest near-complete human skeleton in 1984, dating from 1.5m years ago
The celebrated Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter Richard Leakey, whose groundbreaking discoveries helped prove that humankind evolved in Africa, has died aged 77.
The president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, announced Leakey’s death with “deep sorrow”.
Continue reading...Police say suspect arrested inside building over blaze that spread from oldest wing of national assembly
A man is due to appear in court on Tuesday after a massive fire tore through South Africa’s national assembly building.
An investigation has been opened into the blaze that started at about 3am on Sunday in the parliament complex’s oldest wing, which was completed in 1884 and has wood-panelled rooms.
Continue reading...Staff from a tram company and a restaurant were stranded overnight on a tramway near Albuquerque in the US on New Year's Eve after a storm caused rapid buildup of ice on the cables, making it unsafe to travel to the base of the mountain. Rescuers brought the 21 passengers to safety, with no injuries, according to local reports
Continue reading...Jonathan Powell says PM and Brexit ministers risking fragile peace in Northern Ireland and ‘don’t seem to care’
One of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace deal has said Boris Johnson and the former Brexit minister Lord Frost have risked “all the work” the previous generation of politicians put into the Belfast Good Friday agreement by putting their hard ideological beliefs ahead of people.
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff and chief negotiator on Northern Ireland, said he was concerned that neither the prime minister nor the recently resigned Brexit minister seemed to understand or care about the fragility of the political settlement in Northern Ireland in 1998.
Continue reading...Half a million people have sunk into poverty since the pandemic struck, with rising costs forcing many to cut back on food
Sri Lanka is facing a deepening financial and humanitarian crisis with fears it could go bankrupt in 2022 as inflation rises to record levels, food prices rocket and its coffers run dry.
The meltdown faced by the government, led by the strongman president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is in part caused by the immediate impact of the Covid crisis and the loss of tourism but is compounded by high government spending and tax cuts eroding state revenues, vast debt repayments to China and foreign exchange reserves at their lowest levels in a decade. Inflation has meanwhile been spurred by the government printing money to pay off domestic loans and foreign bonds.
Continue reading...Galliano di Mugello’s poor signal has endeared it to Italians, but the mayor hopes to use recent publicity to close the digital divide
At the cafe that doubles-up as a newsagent in Galliano di Mugello, a medieval hamlet in Tuscany, there are no pings from mobile phones, people aimlessly browsing the internet or uploading pictures of their cappuccino to Instagram. Instead, customers read the newspaper – their main source of information on the outside world – or talk to each other.
Surrounded by Tuscany’s postcard perfect cypress trees and rolling hills, Galliano di Mugello, would be a haven for those wanting a digital detox. But the absence of mobile phone coverage is a much less endearing quirk for the 1,300 or so inhabitants, who are starting to rise up against not being able to make a call, send a text or search for something on Google on their handsets.
Continue reading...She had been ‘catfished’ for years, and now her hit podcast tells the story of tracing the scammer and her quest for justice
The voice of Kirat Assi, subject of the podcast Sweet Bobby, is so familiar I momentarily forget we had never spoken, let alone met. I am one of the million-plus listeners gripped by her story of being “catfished” – duped into a relationship by someone with a false identity.
Assi, who lives in London, fell victim to a complex fraud that lasted eight years and involved up to 60 characters who only existed in the scammer’s warped imagination. At the centre was Bobby, a handsome cardiologist with whom Assi formed a close friendship that turned into romance despite never meeting in real life. Bobby was a real person whose identity had been stolen by the scammer, eventually exposed as Assi’s cousin Simran Bhogal.
Continue reading...Firefighters still battling to contain blaze that broke out in the historic building
A major fire in the South African parliament in Cape Town is continuing to burn after more than six hours, with authorities fearing significant damage.
Images broadcast on television showed flames leaping from the roof of one large building, while several others in the parliament precinct including the National Assembly were enveloped in a thick cloud of black smoke.
Continue reading...A major fire broke out in South Africa's parliament building in Cape Town early on Sunday that could be seen from miles around.
The fire started in third-floor offices and spread to the National Assembly chamber, the City of Cape Town fire and rescue service spokesperson Jermaine Carelse told local media. He added that no people had been injured in the fire
Continue reading...Individual experiences and suffering are, of course, at the heart of the pandemic. But one way to understand what has happened is through putting those experiences together – and statistics are those personal stories writ large. And this pandemic has brought unprecedented demand to explain all the numbers that have been flying around.
This has not been without its problems and we’ve had to learn some hard lessons, such as the journalistic skill of brevity. Since January 2021, we’ve been writing a weekly column in this paper about Covid numbers, covering everything from infections to deaths, vaccines to mental health, masks to lockdowns.
Continue reading...A new book outlines the mistakes and missteps that made UK pandemic worse
There was a distinctive moment, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, that neatly encapsulated the mistakes and confusion of Britain’s early efforts to tackle the disease, says Mark Woolhouse. At a No 10 briefing in March 2020, cabinet minister Michael Gove warned the virus did not discriminate. “Everyone is at risk,” he announced.
And nothing could be further from the truth, argues Professor Woolhouse, an expert on infectious diseases at Edinburgh University. “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.”
Continue reading...Swing state races for governor and secretary of state are the most consequential midterm contests
When Americans go to the polls in the 2022 midterms, the most important elections won’t be for office in Washington. The most high-stakes races will be statewide contests, in some cases for long overlooked offices, that have profound consequences for the future of free and fair elections in America.
The races for governor and secretary of state, the chief election official in many places, will determine which officials have control over setting election rules and the post-election certification process.
Continue reading...