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Lamb kofta, sea bream puttanesca, potato cakes – 20-minute recipes from Anna Haugh
Sun, 19 May 2024 13:00:37 GMT
The Dublin-born chef talks about realising the culinary value of Irish food, plus six recipes from her new cookbook, Cooking with Anna
When Anna Haugh decided to write a cookbook after more than two decades in professional kitchens, pitching her recipes at the right skill level was a challenge. “Trying to simplify and reduce was an interesting learning curve,” says the Dublin-born chef, who opened her restaurant Myrtle in London’s Chelsea five years ago. “Even when I was doing the photoshoot [for the book] I would think, ‘No, that’s a bit too much,’ and I’d remove an element.”
The result is accessible enough for even the most hesitant cooks. It begins, irresistibly, with a section on 20-minute dinners, featuring potato cakes, speedy pasta dishes and a sea bream bake “for which you need zero cooking ability”. But Haugh, who has appeared as a judge on MasterChef, believes that sometimes a little extra effort at the stove can yield outsized rewards. “There are some dishes that might look complicated, but then you do it and realise, I’ve just injected loads of flavour and it wasn’t that hard. There weren’t 15 pots in the sink, a broken marriage and somebody weeping on the floor, questioning their life decisions.”
Continue reading...Emergency relief coordinator says famine looming as Israel’s Rafah offensive blocks vital aid routes
The United Nations’ humanitarian chief has warned of “apocalyptic” consequences due to aid shortages in Gaza, where Israel’s military offensive in the southern city of Rafah has blocked desperately needed food.
“If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it. That famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more. It will be present,” the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha.
Continue reading...The author on how his mission to improve our national diet began – and where it needs to go
Chris van Tulleken has suggested we meet at his local pizza place, Sweet Thursday, in Hackney, east London. If the choice seems counterintuitive for a man with a mission to improve our national diet, he puts me right when we sit down. “Pizza has become emblematic of junk food,” he says, “but proper homemade pizza is very healthy.”
At Sweet Thursday, purist Italian chefs work their fresh sourdough bases in an open kitchen (rumour has it they are so purist in this vocation that they draw the line at making salad). But it is not just authenticity that counts, it is also community. Van Tulleken lives around the corner; the owner grew up nearby and this is where local families tend to come to catch up or to celebrate. “Above all, a restaurant should never be just a way of extracting money in exchange for nutrition,” Van Tulleken says. “Or for paying dividends to offshore investors. And I think these things are actually obvious even if you don’t live, like me, in a world of nutritional studies.”
Continue reading...In this extract from her memoir, A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen, Sally Abé recalls the job she had to leave
• Read the interview with Sally Abé
‘You’ll never amount to anything, young lady.” These are words that no one, no matter what industry they are in, ever wants to hear. If you’re a chef, it’s likely someone will have screamed them in your face at least once. For me, it happened at a restaurant I don’t include on my CV. I have never admitted that I worked for this chef in interviews and rarely speak about my experience, even to friends and family. Because I don’t want to trash someone’s reputation for the sake of my own, I’m not going to use the real name of the restaurant or of anyone who worked there. However, people need to understand that places like this exist, and that the experience was formative, if awful. So, let’s call the restaurant “Jeff’s” after the chef patron, then let me tell you about the worst time of my career.
I wanted to work at the Ledbury, a restaurant in Notting Hill that everyone was talking about but after trying to arrange a trial a couple of times and not being able to make the dates work, I looked elsewhere as my notice period at Claridge’s was coming to an end and I needed to have money coming in. I settled on Jeff’s.
Continue reading...Our desires are an essential part of who we are – as I discovered when I lost my appetite for six months
Mostly, walking down New York streets in spring sunshine is the cinematic, euphoric ideal of what it is to be alive. It’s the thing I looked forward to for decades. It meant to me, back then as a kid in Ireland, listening to songs about Lexington and 14th Street, freedom: an almost deranged amount of freedom.
Sometimes, though, walking down New York streets in spring sunshine is agonising in both a physical and spiritual sense. This may be so, for instance, if you have no health insurance and are very stupid. Like me. That was in February 2023. I had been in increasingly acute pain for days, but because of a stubborn ability to ignore bodily breakdown and also a reluctance to spend money on healthcare in the US when I was only visiting, I kept going until I collapsed into an urgent care centre that I luckily passed one evening as I was dragging myself with manic good cheer to another dinner, despite being barely able to walk.
Continue reading...Ghofran Hamza is on a solo mission to bring glorious Syrian cuisine to lucky mid-Wales
Arabic Flavour, 4 Northgate Street, Aberystwyth SY23 2JS (01970 228 078). Starters and meze £4.75-£8.25, mains £14.50-£18.95, desserts £2.95-£7.75, wines from £21
Occasionally, during the wait for our starters at Arabic Flavour, one of us would pop off to the loo; a moment of magical thinking perhaps, in which a sudden absence from the table could somehow make the food arrive. They would stop by the kitchen door to sneak a look in through the window, willing there to be more people in there. Perhaps the rest of the brigade had simply popped out when last we looked. But no, there really was just one person in that kitchen doing everything: the compact, completely focused and utterly poised figure of Ghofran Hamza, the young Syrian refugee by way of Lebanon, who is determined to tell her 21st-century story at the stove. The lack of kitchen personnel means a dinner at Arabic Flavour is unlikely to be quick. Do not go ravenously hungry. Prepare a few conversational gambits. Perhaps do not go in a large group. But really, do go.
Continue reading...A quarter of Britain’s children live below the poverty line. Near his Fife home, the former PM shows how charities help families and says this issue must be a priority for any government
• The Observer view: Labour must tackle this scourge
• Torsten Bell: We can end child poverty
• Archbishop urges Starmer to ditch ‘cruel’ benefit cap
Outside a warehouse squeezed between a waste recycling plant, an auto parts outlet and a scaffolding company in Lochgelly, Fife, a blur of figures in hi-vis jackets are busily packing boxes into headteacher Ailsa Swankie’s car. Not for the first time, she is taking delivery of household essentials, hygiene products and food from the area’s heaving “multibank” – an institution she describes as an “absolute lifeline”.
The specific items differ with each pick-up – sometimes toilet rolls, other times washing powder or hot water bottles, donated by local businesses or sourced cheaply. But the need for each trip is always the same: an increasing number of families at her school who have found themselves struggling to afford what should be basic products. “We do have a lot of working families who work very, very hard, but they’re still really struggling,” Swankie says. “If I took nappies back to school, they’d all be gone by 3pm.”
Continue reading...From targeting humanitarian vehicles to standing by as mobs attack trucks, Israel is blocking aid from reaching Gaza.
The post The State Department Says Israel Isn’t Blocking Aid. Videos Show the Opposite. appeared first on The Intercept.
There was more business than usual and some bemused regulars after El Califa de León was rewarded for its ‘exceptional’ offering
El Califa de León, an unassuming taco joint in Mexico City, measures just 3 metres by 3 metres and has space for only about six people to stand at a squeeze. Locals usually wait for 5 minutes between ordering and picking up their food.
All that changed on Wednesday, however, when it became the first Mexican taco stand ever to win a Michelin star, putting it in the exalted company of fine dining restaurants around the world, and drawing crowds like it has never seen.
Continue reading...After inquiries from The Intercept, Duane Kees stepped down from his ethics panel position.
The post This U.S. Attorney Resigned Amid an Ethics Investigation. Yet He Wound Up Overseeing Judges’ Ethics. appeared first on The Intercept.
AI Overviews, announced this week, are the culmination of a long line of products dedicated to keeping you on Google.com
Google announced this week that it would begin the international rollout of its new artificial intelligence-powered search feature, called AI Overviews. When billions of people search a range of topics from news to recipes to general knowledge questions, what they see first will now be an AI-generated summary.
Google touted AI Overviews at its annual I/O developer conference as a way of delivering customers quick answers and simplifying the online search experience, but it also has another effect on the way that people engage with the internet: keeping users, and advertisers, on Google.com. It’s a new era in Google’s years-long quest for your attention.
Continue reading...“We’re continuing to work around the clock with the government of Israel and with the government of Egypt to work on this issue,” the State Department said.
The post American Medical Missions Trapped in Gaza, Facing Death by Dehydration as Population Clings to Life appeared first on The Intercept.
A weekly email from Yotam Ottolenghi, Meera Sodha, Felicity Cloake and Rachel Roddy, featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas
Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigel Slater, Meera Sodha and all our star cooks, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent and Jay Rayner.
Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.
Continue reading...South Africa's case against Israel over allegations of genocide before the international court of justice has raised a central question of international law: what is genocide and how do you prove it? It is one of three genocide cases being considered by the UN's world court, but since the genocide convention was approved in 1948, only three instances have been legally recognised as genocide. Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks back on these historical cases to find out why the crime is so much harder to prove than other atrocities, and what bearing this has on South Africa's case against Israel and future cases
What is the genocide convention and how might it apply to the UK and Israel?
‘Famine is setting in’: UN court orders Israel to unblock Gaza food aid
On the last day of his Huginn mission, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen takes us on a tour of the place he called home for 6 months: the International Space Station. From the beautiful views of Cupola to the kitchen in Node 1 filled with food and friends and all the way to the science of Columbus, the Space Station is the work and living place for astronauts as they help push science forward.
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, direct to your inbox every Thursday
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday
Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you
Continue reading...Imagine a world in which you can do transactions and many other things without having to give your personal information. A world in which you don’t need to rely on banks or governments anymore. Sounds amazing, right? That’s exactly what blockchain technology allows us to do.
It’s like your computer’s hard drive. blockchain is a technology that lets you store data in digital blocks, which are connected together like links in a chain.
Blockchain technology was originally invented in 1991 by two mathematicians, Stuart Haber and W. Scot Stornetta. They first proposed the system to ensure that timestamps could not be tampered with.
A few years later, in 1998, software developer Nick Szabo proposed using a similar kind of technology to secure a digital payments system he called “Bit Gold.” However, this innovation was not adopted until Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to have invented the first Blockchain and Bitcoin.
A blockchain is a distributed database shared between the nodes of a computer network. It saves information in digital format. Many people first heard of blockchain technology when they started to look up information about bitcoin.
Blockchain is used in cryptocurrency systems to ensure secure, decentralized records of transactions.
Blockchain allowed people to guarantee the fidelity and security of a record of data without the need for a third party to ensure accuracy.
To understand how a blockchain works, Consider these basic steps:
Let’s get to know more about the blockchain.
Blockchain records digital information and distributes it across the network without changing it. The information is distributed among many users and stored in an immutable, permanent ledger that can't be changed or destroyed. That's why blockchain is also called "Distributed Ledger Technology" or DLT.
Here’s how it works:
And that’s the beauty of it! The process may seem complicated, but it’s done in minutes with modern technology. And because technology is advancing rapidly, I expect things to move even more quickly than ever.
Even though blockchain is integral to cryptocurrency, it has other applications. For example, blockchain can be used for storing reliable data about transactions. Many people confuse blockchain with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Blockchain already being adopted by some big-name companies, such as Walmart, AIG, Siemens, Pfizer, and Unilever. For example, IBM's Food Trust uses blockchain to track food's journey before reaching its final destination.
Although some of you may consider this practice excessive, food suppliers and manufacturers adhere to the policy of tracing their products because bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella have been found in packaged foods. In addition, there have been isolated cases where dangerous allergens such as peanuts have accidentally been introduced into certain products.
Tracing and identifying the sources of an outbreak is a challenging task that can take months or years. Thanks to the Blockchain, however, companies now know exactly where their food has been—so they can trace its location and prevent future outbreaks.
Blockchain technology allows systems to react much faster in the event of a hazard. It also has many other uses in the modern world.
Blockchain technology is safe, even if it’s public. People can access the technology using an internet connection.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had all your data stored at one place and that one secure place got compromised? Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to prevent your data from leaking out even when the security of your storage systems is compromised?
Blockchain technology provides a way of avoiding this situation by using multiple computers at different locations to store information about transactions. If one computer experiences problems with a transaction, it will not affect the other nodes.
Instead, other nodes will use the correct information to cross-reference your incorrect node. This is called “Decentralization,” meaning all the information is stored in multiple places.
Blockchain guarantees your data's authenticity—not just its accuracy, but also its irreversibility. It can also be used to store data that are difficult to register, like legal contracts, state identifications, or a company's product inventory.
Blockchain has many advantages and disadvantages.
I’ll answer the most frequently asked questions about blockchain in this section.
Blockchain is not a cryptocurrency but a technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible. It's a digital ledger that records every transaction seamlessly.
Yes, blockchain can be theoretically hacked, but it is a complicated task to be achieved. A network of users constantly reviews it, which makes hacking the blockchain difficult.
Coinbase Global is currently the biggest blockchain company in the world. The company runs a commendable infrastructure, services, and technology for the digital currency economy.
Blockchain is a decentralized technology. It’s a chain of distributed ledgers connected with nodes. Each node can be any electronic device. Thus, one owns blockhain.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which is powered by Blockchain technology while Blockchain is a distributed ledger of cryptocurrency
Generally a database is a collection of data which can be stored and organized using a database management system. The people who have access to the database can view or edit the information stored there. The client-server network architecture is used to implement databases. whereas a blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, stored in a distributed system. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, timestamp and transaction information. Modification of data is not allowed due to the design of the blockchain. The technology allows decentralized control and eliminates risks of data modification by other parties.
Blockchain has a wide spectrum of applications and, over the next 5-10 years, we will likely see it being integrated into all sorts of industries. From finance to healthcare, blockchain could revolutionize the way we store and share data. Although there is some hesitation to adopt blockchain systems right now, that won't be the case in 2022-2023 (and even less so in 2026). Once people become more comfortable with the technology and understand how it can work for them, owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs alike will be quick to leverage blockchain technology for their own gain. Hope you like this article if you have any question let me know in the comments section
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And for some reason Justice Samuel Alito can’t stop talking about this witch trial judge.
The post The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Is Constitutional, After All appeared first on The Intercept.
The Dublin-born chef talks about realising the culinary value of Irish food, plus six recipes from her new cookbook, Cooking with Anna
When Anna Haugh decided to write a cookbook after more than two decades in professional kitchens, pitching her recipes at the right skill level was a challenge. “Trying to simplify and reduce was an interesting learning curve,” says the Dublin-born chef, who opened her restaurant Myrtle in London’s Chelsea five years ago. “Even when I was doing the photoshoot [for the book] I would think, ‘No, that’s a bit too much,’ and I’d remove an element.”
The result is accessible enough for even the most hesitant cooks. It begins, irresistibly, with a section on 20-minute dinners, featuring potato cakes, speedy pasta dishes and a sea bream bake “for which you need zero cooking ability”. But Haugh, who has appeared as a judge on MasterChef, believes that sometimes a little extra effort at the stove can yield outsized rewards. “There are some dishes that might look complicated, but then you do it and realise, I’ve just injected loads of flavour and it wasn’t that hard. There weren’t 15 pots in the sink, a broken marriage and somebody weeping on the floor, questioning their life decisions.”
Continue reading...Tigran Gambaryan faces allegations of ‘serious criminality’ on behalf of world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange
A Nigerian court has ruled that Tigran Gambaryan, the Binance executive detained on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, can face trial on behalf of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
In a judgment in Abuja on Friday – Gambaryan’s 40th birthday – the presiding judge, Emeka Nwite, denied the American national bail, saying he was likely to abscond.
Continue reading...Lawyers urge international court of justice to issue urgent measures over assault on Gaza’s southernmost city
South Africa has asked the international court of justice (ICJ) to urgently order Israel to end its assault on Rafah, halt its military campaign across Gaza, and allow international investigators and journalists into the territory.
In a court hearing, lawyers for South Africa expanded a written request for judges to issue an emergency order to stop the offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.
Continue reading...Since Dobbs, state-level Republicans have sought to strip power from DAs elected in Democratic cities who won’t prosecute abortion care.
The post Republicans Can’t Decide: Do They Hate Prosecutors Because of Bail Reform or Abortion? appeared first on The Intercept.
After inquiries from The Intercept, Duane Kees stepped down from his ethics panel position.
The post This U.S. Attorney Resigned Amid an Ethics Investigation. Yet He Wound Up Overseeing Judges’ Ethics. appeared first on The Intercept.
From targeting humanitarian vehicles to standing by as mobs attack trucks, Israel is blocking aid from reaching Gaza.
The post The State Department Says Israel Isn’t Blocking Aid. Videos Show the Opposite. appeared first on The Intercept.
With Bowman’s challenger handpicked by AIPAC, the Israel lobby is cementing its status as the biggest player in Democratic primary politics.
The post Outside Groups Spent $285,000 Backing Jamaal Bowman. AIPAC Alone Just Dropped Nearly $2 Million to Attack Him. appeared first on The Intercept.
As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
The 71-year-old veteran peace activist discusses the war on Gaza, the Biden administration, and shaking up Congress.
The post Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin on Disrupting the U.S. War Machine appeared first on The Intercept.
The 22-year-old woman and her child were civilian casualties of a U.S. drone strike, but the Pentagon won't return the family's messages.
The post Pentagon Compensated Zero Civilian Victims in 2022 — Despite Evidence That the U.S. Killed a Mom and Child in Somalia appeared first on The Intercept.
A new anti-terrorism bill would allow the government to take away vital tax exemptions from nonprofit news outlets.
The post Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process appeared first on The Intercept.
The powerful lobbying group is going against a Capitol Police officer who fended off January 6 insurrectionists.
The post Neither Candidate Has Much to Say About Israel. So Why Is AIPAC Pouring Money Into This Race? appeared first on The Intercept.
Antony Blinken’s report identifies “incidents that raise concerns,” but says Israel is not blocking humanitarian aid.
The post Israel “Likely” Used U.S.-Supplied Weapons in Violation of International Law. That’s OK, Though, State Department Says. appeared first on The Intercept.
Four lawsuits alleging Hamas ties against Students for Justice in Palestine, the AP, UNRWA, and a cryptocurrency exchange share many of the same plaintiffs.
The post October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division” appeared first on The Intercept.
A donor to Dexter in the Portland congressional race tells The Intercept: “I give all my contributions through AIPAC.”
The post AIPAC and Republican Donors Raising Big Money for Maxine Dexter Against Susheela Jayapal in Oregon appeared first on The Intercept.
An open letter from government attorneys questions the legal cover for arms transfers to Israel.
The post Even Biden’s Lawyers Are Urging the White House to Change Course on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
From dementia to mild cognitive impairment, it’s easy to be terrified of what ageing will do our minds. But the vast majority of us can reduce the danger – especially if we look after our bodies
Like a lot of people who are getting on, I find myself wondering about my brain. If I mislay my glasses, or struggle with a name, is it just common-or-garden forgetfulness – the sort of slip I might have made well before hitting 60 – or something more worrying?
Why, I think, did I have to ask my wife to remind me what we’re doing for her birthday? Why can’t I remember if I locked the front door? Why did I fail to send that email I desperately need an answer to?
Continue reading...Our desires are an essential part of who we are – as I discovered when I lost my appetite for six months
Mostly, walking down New York streets in spring sunshine is the cinematic, euphoric ideal of what it is to be alive. It’s the thing I looked forward to for decades. It meant to me, back then as a kid in Ireland, listening to songs about Lexington and 14th Street, freedom: an almost deranged amount of freedom.
Sometimes, though, walking down New York streets in spring sunshine is agonising in both a physical and spiritual sense. This may be so, for instance, if you have no health insurance and are very stupid. Like me. That was in February 2023. I had been in increasingly acute pain for days, but because of a stubborn ability to ignore bodily breakdown and also a reluctance to spend money on healthcare in the US when I was only visiting, I kept going until I collapsed into an urgent care centre that I luckily passed one evening as I was dragging myself with manic good cheer to another dinner, despite being barely able to walk.
Continue reading...This isn’t “politics by other means,” it’s never-ending conflict.
The post Israel Wants Endless War Without the Politics. Biden’s Going Along for the Doomed Ride. appeared first on The Intercept.
And for some reason Justice Samuel Alito can’t stop talking about this witch trial judge.
The post The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Is Constitutional, After All appeared first on The Intercept.
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During a bombastic speech in Dallas, GOP frontrunner asks: ‘Are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?’
Donald Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the National Rifle Association in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration.
“You know, FDR 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” The ex-president and GOP presidential frontrunner said to the organization’s annual convention in Dallas, prompting some in the crowd to yell “three!” Politico reported.
Continue reading...Pundits say rising negative feelings to other parties threatens democracy. Apart from in America, new research tells a different story
The frontrunner to be the next US president is spending his weeks in court, charged with a criminal offence related to an alleged sexual encounter with a porn star. This would normally be suboptimal from a campaign perspective, but to date is having no effect on support for Donald Trump.
Moreover, whether you think the US economy is going gangbusters or collapsing depends not on whether wages and employment are rising but on whether you side with Democrats or Republicans, with the latter currently reporting that economic conditions are worse than in the depths of Covid.
Continue reading...With Bowman’s challenger handpicked by AIPAC, the Israel lobby is cementing its status as the biggest player in Democratic primary politics.
The post Outside Groups Spent $285,000 Backing Jamaal Bowman. AIPAC Alone Just Dropped Nearly $2 Million to Attack Him. appeared first on The Intercept.
Since Dobbs, state-level Republicans have sought to strip power from DAs elected in Democratic cities who won’t prosecute abortion care.
The post Republicans Can’t Decide: Do They Hate Prosecutors Because of Bail Reform or Abortion? appeared first on The Intercept.
As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
This week, it was Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen’s turn to take the stand in the hush-money trial in New York. Cohen walked the jury through the steps he says he took to make any potential story that would damage Trump’s image go away, in advance of the 2016 election.
The defence is trying to chip away at Cohen’s credibility, to sow seeds of doubt among the jury listening to his testimony. So how did he do? Jonathan Freedland asks former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori what he makes of the prosecution’s star witness so far
Archive: Fox News 5, CBS News, CNN, Sky Australia
Continue reading...“As a Liverpool fan, all I want is for Arsenal to score early and for the Hammers to be resolute in defense for at least the first half,” writes Joe Pearson. “Then City can crush all our neutrals’ dreams with a devastating second half rout. For myself, I’m watching Klopp’s Last Rodeo, but I’ll be checking in with you to know when it’s all over.”
It’s odd that, in Europe’s other big leagues, the leaders are often overtaken on the final day. Never seems to happen in England though. Even 1988-89 was slightly different because the top two were playing each other (although Arsenal still needed a miracle). In the 1990s and early 2000s, in particular, it happened all the time in Italy, Germany and Spain. Maybe today’s the day for good old English jeopardy to strike back.
Continue reading...The two literary greats wrote 400,000 words to each other in letters that now reveal rare insights into their friendship - sometimes affectionate, intimate, cool and resentful
Elizabeth Harrower’s trip to Italy in 1984 should have been pure joy. She was invited by her friends Shirley Hazzard and Francis Steegmuller to join them, at their expense, in Rome, Naples, Capri and then New York.
The couple wanted to thank Harrower for her years of care for Hazzard’s mother, through mental illness and decline in Sydney, and they had been urging her – pleading with her – for years.
Continue reading...Cannes film festival
Eduard Limonov’s bizarre career, from rebel émigré writer in New York to leader of a fascistic, militaristic political group, is told with gusto by Kirill Serebrennikov
Fascism, punk, euphoria and despair … it’s all here, or mostly, in this hilarious biopic of Eduard Limonov, the rock’n’roll émigré Russian writer and patriot-dissident who wound up poverty-stricken in New York at about the same time as Sid Vicious. Limonov (a pen name taken from the Russian word “limonka”, meaning lime but also slang for grenade) became an angry bohemian, a sexual outlaw, a celebrated adulte terrible in French literary circles in the 80s, railing against the prissy liberals and mincing hypocrites. Then he returned to Russia and became the leader of a violent group called the National Bolshevik Party. Tactfully, nobody here points out the similarity to “national socialist party”. It was if someone had given Michel Houellebecq a machine gun.
Ben Whishaw gives a glorious performance as Limonov - funny, dour, crazy, sexy, boiling with unhappiness and apparently bipolar (although this diagnosis is something else that doesn’t seriously occur to anyone). And maybe always, at the back of his mind, worried that his writing is not good enough to make him immortal, and that posing, PR, situationist outrage and political violence are his real vocation. Inevitably his autobiographical fictions are compared by a New York publisher to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (Limonov says he hasn’t seen it), but he winds up being a grizzled conflation of Ed Norton and Brad Pitt in Fight Club.
Continue reading...The pioneering photographer, who would have been 100 next month, showcases her eye for the uncanny with this image of a newspaper stand
From the moment her father took his Leica camera from around his neck and gave it to Dorothy Bohm as she boarded a train out of Nazi-occupied Lithuania in June 1939, she seemed fated to her vocation. Bohm – then Dorothea Israelit – was 14 at the time and the journey took her to England as a refugee; she lodged with a family in Hassocks in the heart of the Sussex countryside. She did not see her parents – eventually sent by Russian forces, separately, to detention camps in Siberia – for another 20 years. The separation, she later said, gave her a profound sense of impermanence; the Leica felt like one antidote to that: “The photograph fulfils my deep need to stop things from disappearing,” she wrote. “It makes transience less painful.”
Over her long life – Bohm died last year aged 98 – that need never left her. This picture, taken in Lisbon in 1996, is included in a small exhibition and a wonderful retrospective book of the photographer’s work, Dorothy Bohm at 100, in which notable friends and fellow photographers pay tribute to her pioneering influence. Her career began when she set up a portrait studio in Manchester in 1946, but she subsequently travelled extensively with her camera across Europe and beyond, before settling in London, where she was a prime mover in creating the Photographers’ Gallery in 1971.
Dorothy Bohm at 100 is published by Beam Editions on 20 June (£35). A print sale exhibition of her work is at the Photographers’ Gallery, London W1 until 23 June
Continue reading...Salome Zourabichvili says bill contradicts constitution but ruling party is expected to override her action in coming days
Georgia’s president has vetoed a “foreign agents” bill that has split the country and appealed to the government not to overrule her over a law she said was “Russian in sprit and essence”.
Salome Zourabichvil followed through on her stated intention to use her veto on Saturday although the governing Georgian Dream party has the votes to disregard her intervention.
Continue reading...As much as 40cm fell in less than a day in part of Seoraksan national park. Plus, a powerful tornado in Australia
There was unusually heavy snowfall this week in the highlands of the mountainous region of eastern Gangwon province in South Korea. Between 5.30pm local time on Wednesday and 9am on Thursday, as much as 40cm fell at the Socheong shelter of Seoraksan national park, while 20cm was recorded at its Jungcheong shelter.
This unexpected snowfall has caused damage ahead of a harvest on wild vegetable farms that operate on the mountains. Conditions over the next few days are expected to improve, with warmer and drier weather over the weekend.
Continue reading...After inquiries from The Intercept, Duane Kees stepped down from his ethics panel position.
The post This U.S. Attorney Resigned Amid an Ethics Investigation. Yet He Wound Up Overseeing Judges’ Ethics. appeared first on The Intercept.
Ukrainian military says its has forced Russia to reduce tempo of offensive; Russian president thanks Xi Jinping for ‘trying to solve Ukraine crisis’. This live blog is closed
Vladimir Putin has said that Russia-China cooperation is not directed against any other power and is a stabilising factor for the world, during his meeting with Xi Jinping.
It is of crucial significance that relations between Russia and China are not opportunistic and are not directed against anyone. Our cooperation in world affairs today acts as one of the main stabilising factors in the international arena.”
In our new journey we intend to remain good neighbours, trusted friends and reliable partners, consistently strengthening the relationship between our two nations … defending international equality.”
Continue reading...Readers respond to an article weighing up the relative costs of heat pumps and gas boilers for home heating
I had heat pumps installed in my 100-year-old seafront house in 2009, with air-to-air systems – outside units connected with highly controllable indoor heaters – in three of the four flats. Why are systems like this – relatively cheap to install and run, and easy to manage, requiring no plumbing because they don’t use radiators – so often ignored? Your article on air-source heat pumps doesn’t even mention them (Are heat pumps more expensive to run than gas boilers?, 13 May).
My experience of air-to-air heaters has been brilliant; they are not only cheap to run, but they also work as air conditioners on hot days. I heat water separately, without hot water cylinders; the water is heated only when the hot tap is turned on, so there’s minimal waste of energy.
Continue reading...A state industrial strategy is needed to reduce carbon output, produce cleaner growth and redistribute jobs around the UK
Theresa May and Boris Johnson both argued for levelling up and for a state-supported green transition undergirded by an industrial strategy. Neither delivered and their successor, Rishi Sunak, has repudiated their legacy as prime minister. He looks to the City to deliver growth, with banks determining the rate of investment to meet the challenge of the climate emergency. This is a recipe for failure. The Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisers on cutting carbon emissions, warned last year of “worryingly slow” progress to meet net zero targets. The government is not engaging on what it will take to decarbonise.
Weaning the country off fossil fuels and on to green energy is a complex transition that should be a job for the state, not the free market. Yet Britain is bottom of the league for state spending on renewables in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In the offshore industry alone 30,000 workers could end up with nowhere to go by 2030 without new roles in green industries. Relying on big finance to meet that gap will entrench today’s failing model, which emphasises the need to attract significant capital flows through deregulation and privatisation, strengthening the hand of boom-and-bust financial services and weakening labour rights. The flipside is a bigger trade deficit and a destructive politics of redistribution to asset holders and to London.
Continue reading...Alexis Bloom’s documentary captures the sheer charisma of the actor, model and 60s rock survivor, though little of her background
The terrifying magnetism of Anita Pallenberg – the German actor, model, style icon, muse and, according to some, murderer who dated two Rolling Stones and epitomised rock chick cool – is captured in Alexis Bloom’s suitably enigmatic documentary portrait. Composed of interviews with those in Pallenberg’s orbit, and home movies that crackle with chaotic energy, Catching Fire is more concerned with the mercurial essence of its subject than it is with the nuts and bolts of her life. We learn little, for example, about her family background.
But Pallenberg was, it becomes clear, a self-created creature; a woman who kicked back with equal force against the restrictive gender roles prevalent in 60s and 70s society, and against the misogyny of the music scene. The girlfriend of Brian Jones, then Keith Richards, with whom she had three children, she did everything on her own terms; be it acting (Performance, Barbarella) or parenting, her approach was unconventional. But even Pallenberg’s formidable strength of character was no match for the drugs that were ubiquitous in the world in which she moved.
In UK and Irish cinemas now
Continue reading...The latest victims of the culture wars? Woke white goods. Because, apparently, energy efficiency and lower electricity bills are unAmerican
If you’ve ever wished your dishwasher used more water, or found your fridge too cheap to run, help is at hand. US Republicans have their sights set on one of the greatest scourges of our age: woke white goods.
You may or may not remember last year’s “induction hobs are unpatriotic” idiocy. For the mercifully uninitiated, one of 2023’s more niche culture war moments crystallised around an allegation that “the Feds” were going to “take away” gas stoves. This was demonstrably untrue: despite plentiful research demonstrating gas stove emissions are hazardous to human health, there was no proposed ban, just a statement from a consumer safety commissioner that “any option is on the table” with harmful products; the White House almost instantly clarified that it would not support a prohibition. Shame: imagine the bootleg methane speakeasies.
Continue reading...New furnaces will be powered by electricity from 2027 but up to 2,800 workers will be made redundant
Tata Steel has reached a deal with the UK’s electricity grid to start supplying the energy for new furnaces in south Wales from 2027, as the company moves ahead with its plan despite union opposition.
The agreement with the National Grid’s electricity supply operator (ESO), the company that controls how energy is moved around Great Britain, will provide hundreds of millions of megawatts of power to a new electric arc furnace at the steelworks in Port Talbot.
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Georgian protesters opposed to a 'foreign influence' bill picketed the Georgian parliament amid a major police presence during the third, and final reading of the bill. Police attempted to disperse demonstrators and people were seen being detained. The 84-30 vote has cleared the way for the bill to become law. The draft now goes to the president, Salome Zourabichvili, who has said she will veto it, but her decision can be overridden by another vote in parliament, which is controlled by the ruling party and its allies. Government critics and western countries have criticised the new bill as authoritarian and Russian-inspired
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
Crowdfunding campaign launched for Namatjira portraits
Australian presenter and comedian Dan Ilic has launched a crowdfunding campaign to have Vincent Namatjira’s latest exhibition, Australia In Colour, projected on to a billboard in Times Square.
This is an invitation to help get as many people to know about Australia In Colour as possible by putting the highlight of the show on a huge billboard in Times Square the week of the 27th May. We need to raise about $30,000 by Thursday. Any excess money raised will be donated to a charity of the artist’s choice.
Every Victorian deserves to have a roof over their head and that’s why we’re pulling every lever we can to enable 800,000 homes to be built over the next decade.
Continue reading...The powerful lobbying group is going against a Capitol Police officer who fended off January 6 insurrectionists.
The post Neither Candidate Has Much to Say About Israel. So Why Is AIPAC Pouring Money Into This Race? appeared first on The Intercept.
Four lawsuits alleging Hamas ties against Students for Justice in Palestine, the AP, UNRWA, and a cryptocurrency exchange share many of the same plaintiffs.
The post October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division” appeared first on The Intercept.
A new anti-terrorism bill would allow the government to take away vital tax exemptions from nonprofit news outlets.
The post Criticizing Israel? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process appeared first on The Intercept.
As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
Speech warmly received at historically Black college despite backlash from students in weeks leading to address over war
Joe Biden told graduating students of Morehouse College that American democracy has failed the Black community, but vowed to continue fighting “the poison of white supremacy”, in a widely watched speech to a historically Black college during an election year.
Despite a backlash from some students and alumni in the weeks leading up to Biden’s commencement address, including over the Hamas-Israel war and concerns that Biden would use the speech as a campaign event, the president’s address to the all-male school was warmly received. He used his speech to reaffirm his commitment to democracy in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, and to reiterate his call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Continue reading...The former New York Times journalist exposes the excesses of hyper-‘woke’ culture and the suffocating impact of groupthink in this enjoyable study of a topsy-turvy world
Morning After the Revolution by the American journalist Nellie Bowles is a wickedly enjoyable book about the madness that seemingly began to inflame the brains of a certain cohort of the liberal intelligentsia about four years ago (its author dates the fever to the pandemic, but I think – personal information! – it began some time before then). It was a delirium that took her, as it did many people, a little by surprise, not least because she in theory belonged to this subsection herself: at school, where she was for a while the only out gay person, she ran around sticking rainbows all over the place; after college she was known to go to readings at Verso Books (“my God, I bought a tote”); when her girl Hillary was “about to win” she was “drinking with I’m With Her-icanes at a drag bar”. But once she’d noticed it, she couldn’t ignore it. Her instinct was to whip out a thermometer and ask a few pertinent diagnostic questions.
Asking questions, though, is (or it certainly was… things may be shifting now) verboten in the time of madness. Either you’re for the ideological buffet – every single dish – or you’re against it, and must eat at the bad restaurant where all the mean people hang out, a place that is otherwise known as “the wrong side of history”. When the insanity started, Bowles was working in Los Angeles for the New York Times, a job she’d dreamed of since childhood, and there her curiosity soon began to piss off some of her colleagues. When she went on to fall in love with a full-blown dissenter, the columnist Bari Weiss, who’s now her wife, she found herself on the outside of something, looking in. Morning After the Revolution is an account of her adventures in this topsy-turvy realm, in both the period before and after she left the NYT in 2021 (she and Weiss now run the Free Press). It comprises a series of reported colour pieces in which she touches on such things as diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes, the campaign to defund the police, trans rights and (briefly) the crystal display she noticed when Meghan and Harry did pandemic Zooms from their home in Montecito.
Continue reading...It is the NHS’s worst treatment disaster – with 30,000 patients infected. Two survivors, Ade Goodyear and Andy Evans, explain why it took so long for it to be brought to light
Ade Goodyear was 15 when he was told he had contracted HIV. Like about 30,000 other NHS patients – including more than 300 children – who were given blood transfusions or commercial blood products before 2019, he was infected by contaminated blood. Some patients got HIV and hepatitis C from blood transfusions after childbirth or other medical procedures. Ade was infected with HIV at the medical centre of his school.
Pupils at his Treloar’s college, which had a specialist haemophilia unit, were among those given injections of a blood plasma product called factor VIII concentrate. Concerns had been raised a decade before by the World Health Organization because it was a commercial product that mixed plasma from tens of thousands of often high-risk donors. If one had an infection such as HIV, it could contaminate the whole batch.
Continue reading...Four lawsuits alleging Hamas ties against Students for Justice in Palestine, the AP, UNRWA, and a cryptocurrency exchange share many of the same plaintiffs.
The post October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division” appeared first on The Intercept.
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