Zainab al-Khawaja says plight of her detained father is better highlighted if she used her voice to support protest movement Zainab al-Khawaja, the Bahraini human rights activist who witnessed her father, husband and brother-in-law being beaten and imprisoned by masked soldiers earlier this month has ended her hunger strike. The 27-year-old mother of one told the Guardian she had decided to stop her 10-day fast after becoming convinced that “being silent in a tomb and not able to speak is not in the interests of my family”. Her decision follows pressure from human rights groups who tried to persuade her to use her voice in support of the protest movement, arguing that the Bahraini government would rather she were dead than alive. Meanwhile, Khawaja’s hopes of seeing her family again was given a major boost, after relatives received phonecalls from the authorities on Wednesday indicating that the three men were alive. Khawaja’s husband, Wafi Almajed, called his mother while in custody and asked for his father to bring clothes, a toothbrush and shampoo for him to the fort in Manama. Officials also called making the same request on behalf of Khawaja’s brother-in-law, Hussein Ahmed, and asked the family to bring essentials to the military court on behalf of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, 50, Zainab’s father and a prominent critic of the regime who was targeted after he called for the king of Bahrain to face trial. It is thought that Almajed and Ahmed were seized because they were with him at the time. “We feel so happy,” she said. “A few hours ago we were worried if they were dead. At least we know they are OK now. We had very little hope yesterday, so today is a great day.” Khawaja began her hunger strike on 17 April after she described how her father was seized in a violent raid on her home. In the early hours of 10 April, he was “grabbed by the neck, dragged down a flight of stairs and then beaten unconscious in front of me” by at least a dozen masked special forces. “He never raised his hand to resist them, and the only words he said were: ‘I can’t breathe,’” she wrote. “Even after he was unconscious, the masked men kept kicking and beating him while cursing and saying that they were going to kill him.” Almost 500 people in Bahrain and around the world have since made pledges to join her in a three-day solidarity hunger strike which was due to end on Wednesday. Bahrain’s ministry of information has failed to answer questions about what had happened to the men for the sixth day running. Following visits from human rights groups who wanted her to call off the hunger strike, Khawaja started drinking fruit juice and ate a little yoghurt on Wednesday. The decision came after her health had deteriorated on Monday and Tuesday, but she stressed this was not the reason for her decision to stop her action. “Over the last few days my situation was very bad,” she said. “I started collapsing every now and then and I had a difficult t ime speaking. My heart beat very, very fast and I felt I couldn’t breathe.” Speaking before she called off the hunger strike, Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights said he was among those had tried to persuade her to stop. “I said we don’t want people dying and suffering,” he said. “We are already in misery here and we don’t want to see more people lose their life. The government can do that. We are trying to convince her to stop. Her life is too important to us.” Khawaja said she was convinced by international human rights groups to campaign for her family and said she now planned to act as a spokesman for Bahrain’s civil and human rights movement. Bahrain Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Robert Booth guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The Middleton family has created its own coat of arms, just in time for daughter Kate to give it up. The design, commissioned by Kate’s dad, Michael, to mark his daughter’s marriage to Prince William on April 29, features three oak sprigs—one for each of the family’s three children….
Continue reading …Uh-oh. Tiger Mom’s control over perfect daughter may be slipping. Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, spawn of Tiger Mom Amy Chua, is now indulging in a favorite pasttime of slackers everywhere: Blogging. Maybe now that she has her coveted spot at an Ivy League school, she figures she can join the hoi polloi…
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For the top dog in British book awards, it’s remarkably uncertain of its authority Now that Booker’s Bainbridge beano is over, the plaster has stopped falling from the ceiling, and the revellers have moved on, it’s a good moment to ask the question, Why? What profound institutional insecurity is it that provokes a respectable book prize to focus less on its main responsibility (the annual selection of a readable shortlist) and more on involving itself in the kind of diversions that make many regular book lovers shake their heads in disbelief. My informal straw poll of friends and co-workers finds almost universal dismay at Booker’s recent antics. The Beryl Bainbridge saga, which has come to a close with the selection of Master Georgie, is the latest in a sequence of stunts whose chief justification must be “all publicity is good publicity”. This suggests that, somewhere in its collective psyche, Booker has a deep sense of inferiority, and feels it has to justify its place in the world. But does this add up? Booker is routinely said (by people like me) to be the UK’s ” premier literary prize “. It’s hard to dispute this. From a massive field of competing trophies, only Orange and Costa (formerly Whitbread) come close. Internationally, too, thanks to the clever promotional skills of Colman Getty, Booker has become a global brand. Booker night is celebrated throughout the English-speaking world. Significantly, not one US prize (neither Pulitzer nor National Critics’ Circle) can rival it. If that’s not enough, then perhaps the Booker’s record of nominations is suspect. That, after all, is the unspoken admission of the Bainbridge prize. Possibly, this explains Booker’s self-doubt. In fact, Booker’s track record stands up quite well to scrutiny. There have been some truly great years, a lot of middling winners, and a few outright duds. Generally, however, the prize has done what it sets out to do, which is promote good new fiction to the reading public. More than that, the so-called “Booker novel” has become almost a genre in its own right. You can deplore this if you want (loads of people do), but you can’t escape either Booker’s power or its influence. So why the Bainbridge-style side-shows? The answer, I think, lies in the recent evolution of the literary marketplace. Book prizes, like publishing, reflect cultural change. In the 40-something years since Booker started, the literary scene has morphed from serious to showbiz, from prose-conscious to promotion-savvy. That’s simply The Way We Live Now. However, as a leader in its field, perhaps the time has come for Booker to show a bit of responsibility and become slightly more grown-up. Mind you, I’m not sure Beryl Bainbridge, wherever she is, would approve. I remember that she always treated Booker night as basically a terrific party. Which it used to be, when she was around. Booker prize Fiction Awards and prizes Robert McCrum guardian.co.uk
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Relatives of the 11 workers killed when BP’s rig burst into flames overfly the site by helicopter while oil still washes up on beaches Relatives of some of the 11 men who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are to fly over the Gulf of Mexico to mark the first anniversary of the worst offshore oil spill in US history. On land, vigils were scheduled in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to mark the moment on the night of 20 April last year when the rig, owned by Transocean Ltd, burst into flames while drilling a well for BP. The explosion killed 11 workers on or near the drilling floor and the rest of the crew were evacuated before, two days later, the rig sank to the sea floor. The bodies of the dead were never recovered. Over the next 85 days, 206m gallons (5m barrels) of oil – almost 20 times more than was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster – leaked from the well . In response, the US commandeered a fleet of vessels in an effort to contain the spill, and BP spent billions of dollars to cap the well and clean up. “I can’t believe tomorrow has been one year, because it seems like everything just happened,” Courtney Kemp, whose husband Roy Wyatt Kemp was killed on the rig, wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday. “I have learned a lot of things through all of this but the most important is to live each day as if it were your last … what matters is if you truly live.” In a statement, President Barack Obama paid tribute to those killed in the blast and thanked the thousands of workers and volunteers who “worked tirelessly to mitigate the worst impacts” of the spill. “But we also keep a watchful eye on the continuing and important work required to ensure that the Gulf coast recovers stronger than before,” Obama said in the statement. Transocean invited up to three members of each family to attend the flyover. They were expected to circle the site a few times in a helicopter, though there is no visible marker identifying where their loved ones perished. On the seabed, 11 stars were imprinted on the cap of the well. While ceremonies mark the disaster, oil is still occasionally washed up on beaches in the form of tar balls, and fishermen face an uncertain future. Louis and Audrey Neal of Pass Christian, Mississippi, who make their living from crabbing, said it had got so bad since the spill that facing foreclosure as the bills keep pile up. “I don’t see any daylight at the end of this tunnel. I don’t see any hope at all. We thought we’d see hope after a year, but there’s nothing,” Audrey Neal said, adding thatfinancial difficulties were only part of the problem. “Our lives are forever changed,” she said. “Our marriage, our children, it’s all gotten 100% worse.” She said the couple received a $53,000 (£32,000) payment from BP early in the crisis, but that was just enough money to cover three months of debt. They have as yet received nothing from the $20bn compensation fund set up by BP, they said. The outlook is, however, not all bleak. Traffic jams on the narrow coastal roads of Alabama, crowded seafood restaurants in Florida and families taking their holidays along the Louisiana coast attest to the fact that familiar routines are returning, albeit slowly. “We used to fuss about that,” said Ike Williams, referring to the heavy traffic heading towards Gulf Shores, Alabama, where he rents chairs and umbrellas to beachgoers. “But it was such a welcome sight.” “It seems like it is all gone,” said Tyler Priest, an oil historian at the University of Houston. “People have turned their attention elsewhere. But it will play out like Exxon Valdez did. There will be 20 years of litigation.” Most scientists agree the effects “were not as severe as many had predicted,” said Christopher D’Elia, dean at the school of the coast and environment at Louisiana State University. “People had said this was an ecological Armageddon, and that did not come to pass.” Biologists, however, are concerned about the spill’s long-term effect on marine life. “There are these cascading effects,” D’Elia said. “It could be accumulation of toxins in the foodchain, or changes in the food web. Some species might dominate.” Accumulated oil is believed to lie on the Gulf seabed, and it still shows up as a thick black crust along miles of Louisiana’s marshy shoreline. Scientists have begun to notice that the land in many places is eroding. Confidence in Louisiana’s seafood is eroding, too. “Where I’m fishing it all looks pretty much the same,” said Glen Swift, a 62-year-old fisherman in Buras who works the lower Mississippi river again. But he cannot sell his fish. “The market’s no good,” he said. But the BP spill has faded from the headlines, overtaken by the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, unrest in the Middle East and political clashes in Washington. “Nationally, BP seems like a dim and distant memory,” said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian. But the accident will have long-lasting influence on environmental history, he said. BP oil spill United States Pollution Oil spills BP Oil Oceans Marine life Wildlife guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Relatives of the 11 workers killed when BP’s rig burst into flames overfly the site by helicopter while oil still washes up on beaches Relatives of some of the 11 men who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig are to fly over the Gulf of Mexico to mark the first anniversary of the worst offshore oil spill in US history. On land, vigils were scheduled in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to mark the moment on the night of 20 April last year when the rig, owned by Transocean Ltd, burst into flames while drilling a well for BP. The explosion killed 11 workers on or near the drilling floor and the rest of the crew were evacuated before, two days later, the rig sank to the sea floor. The bodies of the dead were never recovered. Over the next 85 days, 206m gallons (5m barrels) of oil – almost 20 times more than was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster – leaked from the well . In response, the US commandeered a fleet of vessels in an effort to contain the spill, and BP spent billions of dollars to cap the well and clean up. “I can’t believe tomorrow has been one year, because it seems like everything just happened,” Courtney Kemp, whose husband Roy Wyatt Kemp was killed on the rig, wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday. “I have learned a lot of things through all of this but the most important is to live each day as if it were your last … what matters is if you truly live.” In a statement, President Barack Obama paid tribute to those killed in the blast and thanked the thousands of workers and volunteers who “worked tirelessly to mitigate the worst impacts” of the spill. “But we also keep a watchful eye on the continuing and important work required to ensure that the Gulf coast recovers stronger than before,” Obama said in the statement. Transocean invited up to three members of each family to attend the flyover. They were expected to circle the site a few times in a helicopter, though there is no visible marker identifying where their loved ones perished. On the seabed, 11 stars were imprinted on the cap of the well. While ceremonies mark the disaster, oil is still occasionally washed up on beaches in the form of tar balls, and fishermen face an uncertain future. Louis and Audrey Neal of Pass Christian, Mississippi, who make their living from crabbing, said it had got so bad since the spill that facing foreclosure as the bills keep pile up. “I don’t see any daylight at the end of this tunnel. I don’t see any hope at all. We thought we’d see hope after a year, but there’s nothing,” Audrey Neal said, adding thatfinancial difficulties were only part of the problem. “Our lives are forever changed,” she said. “Our marriage, our children, it’s all gotten 100% worse.” She said the couple received a $53,000 (£32,000) payment from BP early in the crisis, but that was just enough money to cover three months of debt. They have as yet received nothing from the $20bn compensation fund set up by BP, they said. The outlook is, however, not all bleak. Traffic jams on the narrow coastal roads of Alabama, crowded seafood restaurants in Florida and families taking their holidays along the Louisiana coast attest to the fact that familiar routines are returning, albeit slowly. “We used to fuss about that,” said Ike Williams, referring to the heavy traffic heading towards Gulf Shores, Alabama, where he rents chairs and umbrellas to beachgoers. “But it was such a welcome sight.” “It seems like it is all gone,” said Tyler Priest, an oil historian at the University of Houston. “People have turned their attention elsewhere. But it will play out like Exxon Valdez did. There will be 20 years of litigation.” Most scientists agree the effects “were not as severe as many had predicted,” said Christopher D’Elia, dean at the school of the coast and environment at Louisiana State University. “People had said this was an ecological Armageddon, and that did not come to pass.” Biologists, however, are concerned about the spill’s long-term effect on marine life. “There are these cascading effects,” D’Elia said. “It could be accumulation of toxins in the foodchain, or changes in the food web. Some species might dominate.” Accumulated oil is believed to lie on the Gulf seabed, and it still shows up as a thick black crust along miles of Louisiana’s marshy shoreline. Scientists have begun to notice that the land in many places is eroding. Confidence in Louisiana’s seafood is eroding, too. “Where I’m fishing it all looks pretty much the same,” said Glen Swift, a 62-year-old fisherman in Buras who works the lower Mississippi river again. But he cannot sell his fish. “The market’s no good,” he said. But the BP spill has faded from the headlines, overtaken by the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, unrest in the Middle East and political clashes in Washington. “Nationally, BP seems like a dim and distant memory,” said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian. But the accident will have long-lasting influence on environmental history, he said. BP oil spill United States Pollution Oil spills BP Oil Oceans Marine life Wildlife guardian.co.uk
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Iranian director imprisoned for six years for criticising the country’s ruling regime awarded prize for courage The jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi is to win the Carrosse d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival. Panahi, who won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1995 for The White Balloon, was convicted of making propaganda against the ruling regime in Iran last December. He was jailed for six years and banned from directing films for 20 years. A prominent supporter of the protests that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election in 2009, Panahi was arrested for joining in mourning for demonstrators killed in July that year. He was subsequently released but barred from leaving Iran. In February 2010 he was arrested along with his family and colleagues and taken to Tehran’s Evin prison. He was released on bail three months later after starting a hunger strike, but was later convicted of the propaganda offence . In her best actress acceptance speech at Cannes last year, Juliette Binoche criticised the Iranian regime for holding Panahi. His place on the jury for this year’s Berlin film festival was kept empty in protest at his incarceration. In a similar gesture, Cannes will keep a seat empty in the middle of the orchestra at the Croisette theatre, the screening venue for the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight. The Carrosse d’Or (or Golden Coach), awarded by the Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF), is rewarding film-makers’ courage and independence of thought. Previous recipients include Clint Eastwood, Nanni Moretti, David Cronenberg and Jim Jarmusch. Panahi’s 2005 film Offside, about a female fan who attends a football match disguised as a boy and is arrested, will be screened at Cannes on 12 May. The following day there will be a press conference to raise awareness of Panahi’s situation. The SRF said: “Because no film-maker, no author can remain indifferent to the violence of such a decision, the SRF has promised to break the silence imposed on Panahi, for freedom of expression.” Jafar Panahi Awards and prizes Festivals Iran Freedom of speech Protest Ian J Griffiths guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Iranian director imprisoned for six years for criticising the country’s ruling regime awarded prize for courage The jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi is to win the Carrosse d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival. Panahi, who won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1995 for The White Balloon, was convicted of making propaganda against the ruling regime in Iran last December. He was jailed for six years and banned from directing films for 20 years. A prominent supporter of the protests that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election in 2009, Panahi was arrested for joining in mourning for demonstrators killed in July that year. He was subsequently released but barred from leaving Iran. In February 2010 he was arrested along with his family and colleagues and taken to Tehran’s Evin prison. He was released on bail three months later after starting a hunger strike, but was later convicted of the propaganda offence . In her best actress acceptance speech at Cannes last year, Juliette Binoche criticised the Iranian regime for holding Panahi. His place on the jury for this year’s Berlin film festival was kept empty in protest at his incarceration. In a similar gesture, Cannes will keep a seat empty in the middle of the orchestra at the Croisette theatre, the screening venue for the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight. The Carrosse d’Or (or Golden Coach), awarded by the Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF), is rewarding film-makers’ courage and independence of thought. Previous recipients include Clint Eastwood, Nanni Moretti, David Cronenberg and Jim Jarmusch. Panahi’s 2005 film Offside, about a female fan who attends a football match disguised as a boy and is arrested, will be screened at Cannes on 12 May. The following day there will be a press conference to raise awareness of Panahi’s situation. The SRF said: “Because no film-maker, no author can remain indifferent to the violence of such a decision, the SRF has promised to break the silence imposed on Panahi, for freedom of expression.” Jafar Panahi Awards and prizes Festivals Iran Freedom of speech Protest Ian J Griffiths guardian.co.uk
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Catholic church unlawfully sacked Resurrección Galera from school for marrying divorcee, Spain’s constitutional court rules Spain’s Roman Catholic church has lost control over the personal lives of religion teachers in state schools after the country’s highest court ruled that they cannot be sacked for disobeying Vatican rules on marriage. In an historic decision, the constitutional court ruled that Resurrección Galera could not be fired for marrying a divorcee. The decision prevents the church, which controls the hiring and firing of religion teachers in Spain, from dismissing teachers who do not follow Catholic precepts in their relationships. The ruling that Galera’s marriage bore “no relation to the plaintiff’s work as a teacher” overturned the decisions of lower courts who backed the church. “The truly important thing is that these men cannot get away with this and treat people as if they were in the age of the inquisition,” Galera, a practising Catholic who was referring to the country’s bishops, told El País. Several hundred teachers of religion have reportedly been fired for similar reasons over the past decade. Some have won court cases against the church, with either the Spanish state or the church itself forced to pay compensation. The constitutional court’s decision establishes a precedent for the lower courts in similar cases. “We have been informed that you are living with a married man. That is an unsustainable situation,” officials from the diocese of Almería told Galera when she was sacked in 2001 after seven years teaching at a state school in Los Llanos de la Cañada, south-east Spain. In fact, she had married a divorced Catholic who was waiting for an annulment of his previous marriage. For the past decade she has had to find other work, and set up a country guest house with her German husband. A lower court must now rule on whether she should be reinstated and receive compensation. Spain’s bishops enjoy control over the hiring of religion teachers, whose classes are optional, after an agreement signed with the Vatican in 1979. About 70% of Spanish families opt for their children to study what the church defines as “religion and catholic morals”, though numbers are declining. “The least one can ask of a teacher of the Roman Catholic religion is that she should believe in what she teaches,” the partly church-owned COPE radio station said in an editorial. Spain Catholicism Divorce Christianity Religion Europe Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk
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‘We’re allowing too much, maybe, free speech,’ says Washington lobbyist for company Facebook could block content in some countries, a Washington lobbyist for the company has said, adding that it has faced uncomfortable positions over “too much, maybe, free speech”. The comments come amid increasing speculation that the company plans to enter the Chinese market, probably in collaboration with a local partner. “Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others,” Adam Conner told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).”We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we’re allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven’t experienced it before.” Asked whether Facebook stood by the remarks, a spokeswoman confirmed Conner, 25, worked for the company but said she could not offer further comment. The company’s position on user content is attracting renewed attention because of its perceived role in the uprisings in the Middle East – especially after Egypt blocked social media sites in an attempt to foil pro-democracy protests. Activist Wael Ghonim, asked what came after Tunisia and Egypt, replied: “Ask Facebook”. Facebook is blocked in China, but Bloomberg reported this month that it has held talks with potential partners about entering the market . It would have to comply with China’s extensive internet censorship system to do so and would face strong competition from domestic rivals such as Kaixin and Renren. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is thought to have been interested in the Chinese market for a long time, with rumours of an impending launch picking up when he visited China late last year and was pictured with Robin Li, CEO of search site Baidu. Chinese media claimed recently that Facebook has reached a deal to create a standalone China service, citing unnamed employees of the Beijing firm, but a Baidu spokesman declined to comment. Baidu dominates search services in China – with about two-thirds of the market – but is keen to expand its into other areas. “Right now we’re studying and learning about China but have made no decisions about if, or how, we will approach it,” Debbie Frost, Facebook’s director of international communications, told the WSJ. If Facebook established a service in China it would be legally required to hand user data to Chinese authorities. Bill Bishop, a digital media entrepreneur in Beijing, said: “Google said, ‘We’re not going to launch any services that require user information’. They could do that with search and maps and music. But Facebook has a problem that is more complicated by an order of magnitude. “It is inevitable that to comply with Chinese laws they or their partner are going to have to turn over data. The day that happens they should expect a call from Congress.” In 2007 Yahoo apologised to the families of two jailed Chinese journalists for turning over their email records, after a dramatic congressional hearing in which the firm was accused of ” morally [being] pygmies “. It had already handed control of its mainland operations to China’s Alibaba.com, in which it had bought a 40% stake. Bishop said: “It is an incredibly mature, incredibly competitive market. People don’t lack for social networking services. They will get a huge amount of grief overseas [if they come here] … Is it really worth the risk of significant brand damage and regulatory and political scrutiny overseas to be an also-ran?” Facebook Social networking China United States Internet Censorship Freedom of speech Wall Street Journal Mark Zuckerberg Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk
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