Day: August 13, 2024

Carrots, cabbages and potatoes were the only vegetables ever served up to Zina Zaya. Never as a child, but in the canteen of the factory where she worked as a seamstress in the 1970s. Vegetables were hard to come by in the Mongolian People’s Republic, she recalls, and work lunches were for decades the only … Read more

In the immediate aftermath of Kabul’s shocking and rapid fall to the Taliban in August 2021, women across the Afghan capital began a painful process of textual self-erasure in anticipation of the house-to-house searches that would inevitably follow. Precious books that had helped them become themselves were set alight, proof of qualifications earned through years … Read more

Every US presidential election is consequential but American voters face an unusually weighty decision in 2024. The outcome will have implications for foreign policy, social policy, and the integrity of the political system. But none of its consequences will be more profound or far-reaching than on global efforts to combat the climate crisis. As president, … Read more

Oscar Wilde once described the English country gentleman galloping after a fox as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”. Elon Musk interviewing Donald Trump surely qualifies as the incoherent in full pursuit of the unendurable. The men’s joint appearance in an audio conversation on X on Monday night was, as expected, a display … Read more

SWNS / BBC Documents seen by the BBC show there had been concerns about Canon Hindley for years The Church of England made a six-figure pay-off to a priest assessed as a potential risk to children and young people, a BBC investigation has found. A senior member of staff at Blackburn Cathedral resigned over the … Read more

On 19 June 2024, I was scheduled to give a lecture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Be’er Sheva, Israel. My lecture was part of an event about the worldwide campus protests against Israel, and I planned to address the war in Gaza and more broadly the question of whether the protests were … Read more

‘If you’re not in an OK place, you’re just re-traumatising yourself,” says Anna Akana, who is performing her show, It Gets Darker, at the Edinburgh festival fringe this year. In it, she talks about her sister Kristina’s suicide, and how a stalker’s threats of violence drove Akana herself out of standup comedy. Trauma-focused shows have … Read more

I’m not a war correspondent. But it’s 3am and, like every night this week, I’ve been woken by the sound of sirens outside, alarms on my phone and a calm voice-broadcast in the corridor of my hotel telling me to go to the basement. I scramble into some clothes and fumble my way down to … Read more

Rutherford family Michele Rutherford died after being stabbed supported accommodation in Stirling The family of a carer who was stabbed to death say Scottish ministers have done nothing to create a high-security psychiatric facility for women. Michele Rutherford’s daughter Amy says it is “unacceptable” that there is nowhere in Scotland for her mother’s killer – … Read more