Research shows the decline of religious influence in the 18th century explains the puzzle of lower fertility ratesI know the rows over fish and migration mean we’re not talking to the French these days, but pondering their history is still allowed.A huge historical puzzle is why France, from the 1760s, underwent the demographic transition to lower fertility rates a century before the rest of Europe. It’s a puzzle because economists usually argue that fertility declines are driven by technological progress, making human capital more useful and raising the cost of kids. But pre-revolution France was backwards on most development measures, with half the literacy of England and Wales. Continue reading...
by Kim Willsher on the Charles de Gaulle aircraft car on (#5SPKB)
Top French commander cites ‘rapid rearmament’ of China and Russia as danger to maritime securityFrance’s most senior naval commander has said future conflicts are likely to be fought at sea and in the cybersphere, citing the “rapid rearmament” of countries such as China as a potential threat.Adm Pierre Vandier made his comments after the French Marine Nationale and forces from five allied countries, including the UK, took part in what he described as a unique two-week exercise intended to prepare for “composite threats”. Continue reading...
Mother-and-daughter team scoop gong at Gourmand awards in Paris for volume of traditional leaf-wrapped recipesA Colombian mother and daughter’s celebration of their country’s traditional leaf-wrapped dishes has been named best cookbook in the world at the Gourmand awards in Paris.Colombia’s envueltos are part of a culinary heritage that stretches across much of Latin America, from the tamales of Mexico and Guatemala to the humitas of Chile. Continue reading...
Local group hopes to take on tech giant and help keep hold of tourist revenueRhoda Meek knows the power of Scottish islands working together. During the first lockdown she created a website for more than 360 businesses from Arran to Ulva to sell their wares while the pandemic prevented visitors.Now she and her neighbours have launched a holiday lettings website that aims to take on Airbnb and ensure that more of the islands’ tourism revenue stays local. Continue reading...
Continuing our series looking behind the headlines of 2021, we speak to the philosophy professor who resigned from Sussex University after protests over her views on gender and transgender rights
Tulum, jewel of the Mayan Riviera, risks emulating Acapulco, another once glamorous resort now overwhelmed by violenceBright yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze outside a restaurant just off the main strip in the Mexican resort town of Tulum, as the lights of a nearby police truck flashed blue and red.Troops in camouflage fatigues stood guard outside the deserted late-night eatery La Malquerida, “The Unloved” – the site of a gangland shooting that killed two female tourists and wounded another three holidaymakers. Continue reading...
by Jessica Murray Midlands correspondent on (#5SPJA)
British driver says he had ‘nothing’ to do with sponsorship deal with company linked to Grenfell fireLewis Hamilton has distanced himself from his Formula One team’s partnership deal with Kingspan, an insulation company linked to the Grenfell Tower fire, saying he had “nothing” to do with the decision.He also cast doubt on Kingspan branding remaining on his Mercedes car, saying “whether that remains the same we shall see”. Continue reading...
France prides itself on ‘universalism’. But bigotry festers in its ‘colour blind’ pose“How does it feel to be a white man?” Simeon was not a white man. He was an African American who had left his homeland to escape the ferocious racism every African American faced and sought shelter in Paris. There, he had got into a fight in a bar with an Algerian. The police threw the Algerian into jail. Simeon they let go. In Paris, it was the light-skinned Algerian who was treated like blacks back home, the dark-skinned American to whom the authorities show deference. “How does it feel to be a white man?” taunted the Algerian.Simeon is the central character in William Gardner Smith’s newly republished 1963 novel The Stone Face. Smith, like Simeon, like many black Americans in the middle decades of the last century, found in France a refuge from the segregation and bigotry that scarred America. “There is more freedom in one square block of Paris than there is in the entire United States of America!” claimed the novelist Richard Wright in his essay I Choose Exile. Continue reading...
Group seeks cultural protection for music that defined reunification eraGetting into Berlin’s famous Berghain nightclub is a formidable task, even for some of the world’s best-known DJs. So they are unfazed by the challenge of persuading Unesco to grant heritage status to Berlin techno.The artists behind the Love Parade festival, DJs who pioneered the genre, and the impresarios of the German capital’s biggest clubs believe the backing of the UN body is vital for securing the future of the countercultural music genre. Continue reading...
Professionals urged to be more sceptical and ready to remove at-risk children after death of Arthur Labinjo-HughesSocial workers need to be more sceptical and decisive when confronted by “manipulative and deceitful” parents, one of the UK’s leading child protection experts has urged following the torture and killing of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes at the hands of his stepmother and father.Martin Narey, a former head of children’s charity Barnardo’s and senior government adviser, said social services should view potentially abusive parents “more critically” and not shy away from taking children into care. Continue reading...
Why didn’t the writer, the US justice system and the media ask more questions given the miscarriage of justice, asks the film producer whose investigation led to exoneration of Anthony Broadwater Anthony Broadwater, a 61-year-old resident of Syracuse, New York state, and former marine, was exonerated last week of the brutal rape, assault and robbery of best-selling author Alice Sebold. He was convicted in 1982.Sebold was savagely attacked while walking home from a friend’s house late one night. Five months later, Sebold said she saw her attacker in Syracuse town centre. Continue reading...
A short history of the Rose decision’s emergence as a signature cause for the rightPublic opinion on abortion in the US has changed little since 1973, when the supreme court in effect legalized the procedure nationally in its ruling on the case Roe v Wade. According to Gallup, which has the longest-running poll on the issue, about four in five Americans believe abortion should be legal, at least in some circumstances.Yet the politics of abortion have opened deep divisions in the last five decades, which have only grown more profound in recent years of polarization. In 2021, state legislators have passed dozens of restrictions to abortion access, making it the most hostile year to abortion rights on record. Continue reading...
The model and actor cooks apple pancakes or else pasta bolognese, stares at the clouds, walks the dogs, enjoys a calm family dayWhat does Sunday feel like? Calmness. I wake up naturally, no alarm. Monday to Friday, I’m up at 7am to make breakfast and do the school run. We live in the English countryside: rolling hills, fields, farmland. I love being surrounded by nature. Even when it’s raining I just watch the clouds.Do you cook? We normally have a long brunch with local produce – I like making my mother’s apple pancakes. That and pasta bolognese are about the only things I can cook. Drinking is seasonal: summer is perfect for a rosé; red wine, cheese and a game of cards is my absolute favourite winter afternoon. Continue reading...
Diaries of band’s road manager, Mal Evans, revealing chaos at gig to feature in major biographyThe police famously tried to shut down the Beatles’s rooftop concert on 30 January 1969, over concerns of breach of the peace, in what was to be the band’s final public performance. Now a further backstage drama has emerged with the revelation that Paul McCartney afterwards used his charm to stop a police officer from arresting their road manager and confidant, Mal Evans.Kenneth Womack, one of the world’s foremost Beatles scholars, told the Observer: “It turns out that Mal was actually arrested that day but managed to get out of it only when Paul went into PR mode and changed the copper’s mind after the show.” Continue reading...
Putin regards Ukraine as stolen territory and as the US focuses on China and Covid, Moscow is waiting to strikeVladimir Putin is an old-fashioned sort of guy. He yearns for the days when the Soviet Union was a great power. He still views western democracies as adversaries, to be confounded whenever possible. And he has never reconciled to the post-Soviet loss of cold war-era satellite republics in eastern Europe. This is especially true of Ukraine.The Russian view that Ukraine is stolen territory to which it has a natural right has roots in tsarist times and before. Ukrainians (and Belarusians) were habitually called “little Russians”. Indigenous narratives stress a common history and common faith indissolubly linking two brotherly eastern Slavic races. Putin has repeatedly stated that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people”. Continue reading...
Villagers burn army vehicles after coalminers were mistaken for insurgents, with Indian home minister promising full investigationAngry villagers who set fire to army vehicles are among more than a dozen civilians killed by soldiers in India’s remote north-east region along the border with Myanmar.An army officer said the soldiers fired at a truck, killing six people, after receiving intelligence about a movement of insurgents in the area. As villagers reacted by burning two army vehicles, the soldiers fired at them, killing seven more people, the officer said, adding that one soldier was also killed in the clash. Continue reading...
A compatible friend needs treasuring. You might need to look elsewhere for sexThe question I met Tom online. We have now been dating for nearly two years, sometimes on Zoom as we live three hours away from each other. This is long-term relationship potential – except, from my side, for one thing.I am a deeply sexually alive person. Sex is an immense joy to me. Not only the explicit physical acts of it, but also the sharing, the play, all the openness and openheartedness. Tom is divorced and I suspect has not had much sexual experience. I think he is sexually repressed. I have always been open with him about wanting our relationship to become fully sexual. It never has been. Continue reading...
In a rare interview with foreign media, Sanna Marin says she is determined to defend human rights, despite asylum policy challengesEquality, a well-funded education system and a strong welfare state are the secret to the success of the world’s happiest nation, according to Finland’s prime minister.In a rare interview with foreign media, Sanna Marin – who briefly became the youngest world leader when she became prime minister of the Nordic nation in 2019 at the age of 34 – said Finland was committed to preserving its generous welfare state in an “environmentally sustainable way”, and saw the development and export of green technology as the key to its future prosperity. Continue reading...
Human Rights Watch says 47 former members of Afghan national security forces have been killed or forcibly disappearedThe US has led a group of western nations and allies in condemnation of the Taliban over the “summary killings” of former members of the Afghan security forces reported by rights groups, demanding quick investigations.“We are deeply concerned by reports of summary killings and enforced disappearances of former members of the Afghan security forces as documented by Human Rights Watch and others,” read a statement by the US, EU, Australia, Britain, Japan and others, which was released by the state department on Saturday. Continue reading...
Crowds chanted slogans condemning government of Aleksandar Vučić, which backs planned Anglo-Australian $2.4bn mineThousands of demonstrators blocked major roads across Serbia on Saturday as anger swelled over a government-backed plan to allow mining company Rio Tinto to extract lithium.In the capital, Belgrade, protesters swarmed a major highway and bridge linking the city to outlying suburbs as the crowd chanted anti-government slogans while some held signs criticising the mining project. Continue reading...
Poll reveals huge public cynicism, with just 5% of respondents believing politicians work for public goodTrust in politicians to act in the national interest rather than for themselves has fallen dramatically since Boris Johnson became prime minister, according to figures contained in a disturbing new study into the state of British democracy.The polling data from YouGov for the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) shows a particularly sharp fall in trust in the few weeks since the Owen Paterson scandal triggered a rash of Tory sleaze scandals. Continue reading...
Former Brexit secretary David Davis says Priti Patel’s plans could foster a situation similar to notorious US detention campA former Conservative cabinet minister has warned that the Home Office’s controversial borders bill risks creating a “British Guantanamo Bay”. David Davis, who served as Brexit secretary from 2016 to 2018, said that the home secretary’s plans to send asylum seekers to another country while their claims are processed may create a facility as notorious as the US detention camp in Cuba.Guantanamo Bay has been described as a “stain on the human rights record” of the US and the “gulag of our times” with detainees making repeated allegations of torture, sexual degradation and religious persecution. Continue reading...
Event took place near where Ava White was killed after a Christmas lights switch-on last monthHundreds of people have turned out to pay their respects to 12-year-old Ava White at a vigil held in her memory. She was fatally stabbed in Liverpool city centre on 25 November after a Christmas lights switch-on.On Saturday, family, friends and others gathered in Church Street, close to where the incident happened, to pay tribute to her. Hundreds of balloons, some in the shape of the letter A, were released at the start of the vigil. Many people wore hoodies with Ava’s face on and others had her name written on their faces. Continue reading...
Pontiff uses visit to Greece to highlight plight of migrants and refugees, and voice concern over threat to democracyPope Francis has used a trip to Greece to hit out at Europe for the divisions it has exhibited over migration while also warning against the perils of populism.In Athens, on the second leg of a Mediterranean tour that has highlighted the plight of migrants and refugees, the pontiff also expressed concern over democracy’s retreat globally. Greece has long been on the frontline of the refugee crisis. Continue reading...
In the suburbs hardest hit by Covid restrictions, the economic and psychological recovery has been slow to comeSydney barista Minh Bui rarely used to have time to sit down at her own cafe, but this weekday morning she’s in no rush. It’s just her and two women seated in the corner.Asked how business is at her Liverpool cafe since Sydney’s lockdown lifted, Bui motions to the empty seats around her. Continue reading...
As the major parties move into campaign mode, we look at the electorates where a handful of votes either way may determine who holds powerThe only political maxim worth remembering several months out from an election is that no one can predict how it will play out.Absolutes can change at a moment’s notice, and for the most part the voters who decide elections haven’t begun paying attention. Continue reading...
The Palestinian bookseller whose shop was destroyed in the most recent conflict in Gaza on how it has been crowdfunded back into existence – three times bigger
Frances and Jan Newell painstakingly uncovered their mother’s role in facilitating the escape of Jews and political dissidents from Berlin to BritainFor decades, more than 100 mouse-nibbled fruit boxes, tea chests and old leather suitcases sat untouched in a 3-metre pile in the backyard shed of Frances Newell’s home in suburban Melbourne.They were stuffed with thousands of letters – some in German, others in English – that she had kept when her father moved out of their family home in Castlemaine in the 1990s. Continue reading...
Next week, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov receive their Nobel peace prizes. In a rare interview, Muratov says he fears the world is sliding towards fascismThe last time a journalist won a Nobel prize was 1935. The journalist who won it – Carl von Ossietzky – had revealed how Hitler was secretly rearming Germany. “And he couldn’t pick it up because he was languishing in a Nazi concentration camp,” says Maria Ressa over a video call from Manila.Nearly a century on, Ressa is one of two journalists who will step onto the Nobel stage in Oslo next Friday. She is currently facing jail for “cyberlibel” in the Philippines while the other recipient Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, is standing guard over one of the last independent newspapers in an increasingly dictatorial Russia. Continue reading...
NCA says Osagie Aigbonohan used series of online aliases to form relationships with victims including terminally ill womanA romance fraudster conned a victim out of thousands of pounds and targeted hundreds of others, including a terminally ill woman, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).Osagie Aigbonohan, 40, used a number of aliases to contact women online through dating and social media sites, and in one case cheated a woman out of almost £10,000, the agency said. Continue reading...
Japanese and Korean are in top five choices in UK this year at online platform DuolingoWhether it’s down to Squid Game or kawaii culture, fascination with Korea and Japan is fuelling a boom in learning east Asian languages. Japanese is the fastest growing language to be learned in the UK this year on the online platform Duolingo, and Korean is the fourth fastest.Most of the interest is driven by cultural issues, the firm said in its 2021 Duolingo language report, which will be published tomorrow and analyses how the 20 million downloads of its platform are used. Continue reading...
The actor on her hopes for Brixton’s new theatre, an offbeat western and the sophistication of African artAdjoa Andoh was born in Bristol in 1963 and grew up in Wickwar, Gloucestershire. A veteran stage actor, she starred in His Dark Materials at the National Theatre and in the title role of an all-women of colour production of Richard II at the Globe in 2019. On TV, Andoh plays Lady Danbury in Bridgerton, which returns next year, and she will appear in season two of The Witcher on Netflix from 17 December. She lives in south London with her husband, the novelist Howard Cunnell, and their three children. Continue reading...
Maximiliano Contenti’s horror flick attempts to unpick voyeurism but lacks the sophistication of others in the genreNostalgia for idiosyncratic analogue film style is the simplest explanation for the recent giallo revival – but maybe there’s more to it than that. This most stylised of horror modes is perfect for our over-aestheticised age, so the newcomers – such as Berberian Sound Studio, Censor and Sound of Violence – make artists and viewers accessories to violence, often unleashed through that giallo mainstay, the power of the gaze. Set almost entirely in a tatty Montevideo rep cinema, Uruguayan slasher The Last Matinee joins this voyeuristic club, even if it ends up more in the raw than the refined camp.On a rainswept night in 1993, engineering student Ana (Luciana Grasso) insists on taking over projectionist duties for a screening of Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (an in-joke – it was released in 2011 and was directed by Ricardo Islas, who plays the killer here). She shuts herself in the booth, trying to ignore the inane banter of usher Mauricio (Pedro Duarte) – but neither have noticed a heavy-set trenchcoated bogeyman enter the auditorium to size up that night’s film faithful: three teenagers, an awkward couple on a first date, a flat-capped pensioner and a underage kid stowaway (Franco Durán). Continue reading...
The broadcaster, 51, talks about his first memories, last meal, lockdown resets and his brainier older brotherI always felt like the second fiddle to my older brother Marcel, who I thought was impossibly brilliant and mature and seemed to be reading more or less from the womb, although I’m two years younger, so I wouldn’t have known that first-hand. I was the sideshow: the funny one, the ridiculous one my grandparents said was “good with my hands”, which at five or six I embraced. It was only as I got older I realised it meant, “might not want to stay in school past 14 or 15”.From childhood I’ve always found anxiety in the most unlikely places. Aged six I remember watching maypole dancers skipping around and braiding these ribbons into beautiful patterns at my Ssouth London primary school and even though I was still in the infants and wouldn’t be doing it for years, I thought, “I’m never going to be able to fucking dance around a maypole.” All through my life I’ve tended to experience future events in a negative way. It’s always been a source of looming discomfiture. Continue reading...
The pop superstar on her extraordinary year – the Bond theme, that Vogue cover, the success of her second album – and hosting Saturday Night LiveIt’s a measure of what Billie Eilish’s life has been like in 2021 that she woke up one morning last month, rolled over to check her phone and found out she’d got seven Grammy award nominations. She’d overslept the actual announcement. “I was up late, watching Fleabag. Again!”We’re speaking over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. “This is my third time watching Fleabag. I’ve literally just paused it, again, to do this interview. Andrew Scott is my favourite actor in the world! And Phoebe [Waller-Bridge] is so fucking good, I can’t stress it enough. When I met her at the Bond premiere, I was trying not to blow smoke up her ass the entire night.”
British authorities accused of interrogating parents who came seeking help when their daughters went missingDetails of how police attempted to criminalise British families whose children were trafficked to Islamic State (IS) in Syria are revealed in a series of testimonies that show how grieving parents were initially treated as suspects and then abandoned by the authorities.One described being “treated like a criminal” and later realising that police were only interested in acquiring intelligence on IS instead of trying to help find their loved one. Another told how their home had been raided after they approached police for help to track down a missing relative. Continue reading...
Brian Cox is punchy, David Harewood candid and Miriam Margolyes raucously indiscreetIn a bonanza year for memoirs, Ruth Coker Burks got us off to a strong start with All the Young Men (Trapeze), a clear-eyed and poignant account of her years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1980s. While visiting a friend in hospital, Burks witnessed a group of nurses drawing straws over who should enter a room labelled “Biohazard”, the ward for men with “that gay disease”. And so she took it upon herself to sit with the dying and bury them when their families wouldn’t. Later, as the scale of fear and prejudice became apparent, she helped patients with food, transport, social security and housing, often at enormous personal cost. Her book, written with Kevin Carr O’Leary, finds light in the darkness as it reveals the love and camaraderie of a hidden community fighting for its life.Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl (Penguin), an exuberant account of Paris Lees’s tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where “the streets are paved wi’ dog shit”. Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders’ institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter. Continue reading...
Aston, Marvin, JB and Oritsé recreate their audition photo and reflect on backflips, friendships, reuniting and turkey farmingFinalists on 2008’s X Factor, JLS – short for Jack the Lad Swing – are one of the show’s most successful acts. Celebrated for their R&B-infused pop and slick dance routines, the band reached No 1 with their first single, Beat Again, while their debut album won multiple Brit and Mobo awards, and went quadruple platinum. They released three more albums and a condom range, before splitting in 2013. Oritsé Williams and Aston Merrygold went on to pursue solo careers in music, Marvin Humes is thriving as a TV and radio host, while JB Gill pivoted to turkey farming in Kent. Their new album, JLS 2.0, came out on 3 December, and they complete their comeback tour on 12 December at Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball at London’s O2.Aston Merrygold
Delays prompt energy regulator to threaten enforcement action and increase compensation paymentsThousands of people are still without power eight days after Storm Arwen caused major damage to parts of the UK network.The latest figures from the Energy Networks Association (ENA), the national industry body, show about 9,200 homes were without power on Friday evening. Continue reading...
Going vegan has never been more popular – but some people who try it and then decide to reintroduce animal products face shocking treatmentIn 2015, Freya Robinson decided to go vegan. For more than a year, the 28-year-old from East Sussex did not consume a single animal product. Then, in 2016, on a family holiday in Bulgaria, she passed a steak restaurant and something inside her switched. “I walked in and ordered the biggest steak I could have and completely inhaled it,” she says. After finishing it, she ordered another.For the previous year, Robinson had been suffering from various health problems – low energy levels, brain fog, painful periods and dull skin – which she now believes were the result of her diet. She says her decline was gradual and almost went unnoticed. “Because it’s not an instant depletion, you don’t suddenly feel bad the next day, it’s months down the line. It’s very, very slow.” In just over a year, the balanced plant-based food she cooked daily from scratch, using organic vegetables from the farm she works on, and legumes and nuts vital for protein, had, she felt, taken a toll on her body. Continue reading...
Dazzling debuts, a word-of-mouth hit, plus this year’s bestsellers from Sally Rooney, Jonathan Franzen, Kazuo Ishiguro and moreThe most anticipated, discussed and accessorised novel of the year was Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber), launched on a tide of tote bags and bucket hats. It’s a book about the accommodations of adulthood, which plays with interiority and narrative distance as Rooney’s characters consider the purpose of friendship, sex and politics – plus the difficulties of fame and novel-writing – in a world on fire.Rooney’s wasn’t the only eagerly awaited new chapter. Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s magnum opus The Books of Jacob (Fitzcarraldo) reached English-language readers at last, in a mighty feat of translation by Jennifer Croft: a dazzling historical panorama about enlightenment both spiritual and scientific. In 2021 we also saw the returns of Jonathan Franzen, beginning a fine and involving 70s family trilogy with Crossroads (4th Estate); Kazuo Ishiguro, whose Klara and the Sun (Faber) probes the limits of emotion in the story of a sickly girl and her “artificial friend”; and acclaimed US author Gayl Jones, whose epic of liberated slaves in 17th-century Brazil, Palmares (Virago), has been decades in the making. Continue reading...
Aldi, McDonald’s, Ikea and Marmite jump on the festive bandwagon with branded jumpers, pants, hats and baublesA Lidl bit of style goes a long way. After the supermarket chain scored a surprise hit with its own-brand trainers, rivals are looking to capitalise on the “mundane” trend which has seen clothes emblazoned with the logos of everyday brands become surprise fashion icons.Aldi, McDonald’s, Ikea and Marmite have all jumped on the bandwagon with jumpers, hats and even Christmas baubles after Lidl’s trainers, decorated with the store’s garish corporate colours, became a social media sensation. Continue reading...