3 d. ago ‘They threatened to bulldoze my house’: fear and violence stalk journalists in Modi’s India

Attacks and self censorship, draconian anti-terror laws and tycoons’ control over the media, are all seen as eroding the country’s democracyAt her home in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Harleen Kapoor* reflects with melancholy on how, since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, she has spent a lot of time in the office instead of out on the powerful human rights exposés she used to work on.Stories from some of the most deprived areas in the country were her forte. But, she says, in the climate of fear that has built up in India in the past decade, her media outlet has made it clear that her reports on topics such as sexual violence against lower-caste women and the harassment of Muslims are no longer welcome. Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Trump news at a glance: President says he wants Putin ‘to stop shooting’ after talks with Zelenskyy

Trump expresses newfound sympathy for his Ukrainian counterpart, saying he ‘wants to do something good for his country’ – key US politics stories from Sunday 27 April at a glanceDonald Trump appears to have warmed to Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the two presidents met at the Vatican, with the US leader emerging from talks with a plea for Vladimir Putin: “stop shooting”.Trump on Sunday said Zelenskyy “wants to do something good” for Ukraine and is “working hard”, adding he was also “surprised and disappointed” that Russia continued to strike Ukraine after discussions between his peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Putin. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago ‘A sweeping catastrophe’: 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, a photo exhibit honors Mississippi victims

Hurricane Katrina: Mississippi Remembers captures the grief and resilience of survivors in the Magnolia stateTwenty years ago this August, the United States Gulf coast was irrevocably changed when Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever hit the country, made landfall. Making landfall as a strong category 3, the storm, which was so vast it stretched the length of the Mississippi Gulf coast all the way into Alabama, hit the Mississippi-Louisiana coastal border before continuing northward.Since then, superstorms fueled by the climate crisis have become relatively commonplace in the country, but the impact of Katrina endures to this day. Immediately following the storm, the country and world were enthralled by tragic stories out of New Orleans, where the levees failed to a catastrophic effect and the local, state and federal responses were disastrous. But Mississippi, which received the maximum impact from the storm surge, was largely left out of the nationa...

Events

2 w. ago The devastating legacy of Native boarding schools: ‘no way people can apologize it away’

Mary Annette Pember’s expansive and shocking book Medicine River looks at the many ways that the US has tried to dehumanise and eradicate Native familiesMary Annette Pember will publish her first book, Medicine River, on Tuesday. She signed to write it in 2022 but feels she really started work more than 50 years ago, “before I could even write, when I was under the table as a kid, making these symbols that were sort of my own”.A citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe, Pember is a national correspondent for ICT News, formerly Indian Country Today. In Medicine River, she tells two stories: of the Indian boarding schools, which operated in the US between the 1860s and the 1960s, and of her mother, her time in such a school and the toll it took. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Julien Baker and Torres make space for their own stories on the country

The Tennessee duo are faithful to country’s traditions while also delivering songwriting about queer love, addiction and anxiety

Politics

2 w. ago Julien Baker and Torres: Send a Prayer My Way review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Matador)The two deep south songwriters ditch country’s rhinestones for a personal, defiant reframing of the genre’s tropesThe origins of Send a Prayer My Way stretch back nearly a decade. The partnership between US singer-songwriters Mackenzie “Torres” Scott and Julien Baker germinated in 2016, when the pair performed together in Chicago. Scott subsequently suggested, in a text sent during the pandemic, that they make a country album. Accusations that the pair are jumping on an ongoing trend for high-profile pivots towards a Nashville-oriented sound – which has so far involved the likes of Beyoncé, Post Malone, Zayn Malik, Chappell Roan and Lana Del Rey – are thus diffused.Nevertheless, it still feels telling that Send a Prayer My Way arrives now. Baker has spent much of the 2020s as one-third of Boygenius, a collaboration with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers that made her far more famous than her previous solo albums. It spiralled into something that resembled a genuine pop phenome...

Politics