33 h. ago Myanmar's military says it has recaptured a key central town from ethnic rebels

Myanmar’s military claims it has taken back control of a major district capital in northern Shan State more than a year after losing it to an armed ethnic minority rebel group

Events

3 d. ago Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon review – his first novel in 12 years tunes into rising fascism in the US

The 88-year-old’s jaunty whodunnit, set during the prohibition era, features clowns, Nazis and a missing cheese heiressEverything is connected in Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon’s fleet-footed noir fiction about a lindy-hopping detective in prohibition-era Wisconsin. The homemade bomb connects to the runaway cheese heiress, the cheese heiress to the federal agents, and the feds to the pro‑Nazi leagues at the bowling lanes outside town. Early-30s Milwaukee, in turn, is connected to powder-keg central Europe, where paramilitary groups have pitched camp on the Hungaro-Croatian border and guest speakers wax lyrical about “our immense fascist future”. Most likely it connects to the current moment as well, albeit wryly and slyly, with a nonchalant swing. That’s the implied final move of this merry dance of a book: the point where the past links its hands with the present.Shadow Ticket is a Pynchon novel – the 88-year-old’s first in 12 years; his ninth overall – and so it naturally connects ...

Politics

1 week ago Illness, animal deaths and water shortages: life inside Chile’s polluted ‘sacrifice zones’

Allegations of environmental breaches dog Anglo American’s mining operations. Now the company has been given the go-ahead for plans that communities say risk disasterPhotographs by Nicole KrammPatricia Silva lays out an array of medicines and doctors’ letters on her kitchen table. She lives a few kilometres from a copper foundry operated by the British-headquartered mining company Anglo American in Catemu, a town in central Chile. Every morning and evening, she says, the air is filled with a faint blue smoke.“It irritates your throat and makes you cough,” Silva says, remembering a day when her son Cristián, then three years old, began to have convulsions. “His face turned purple and he couldn’t breathe. He still has a red mark on his face from that episode.” Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago A tiny town in Idaho dodged incineration in 2024. Will the next wildfire take it out?

Heroic firefighting and a lucky turn in weather helped avert disaster once, but ‘a perfect storm of conditions’ remainsDuring a 2024 wildfire season described as “unprecedented”, the tiny central Idaho town of Stanley and nearby Redfish Lake Lodge narrowly missed incineration by two fires: the Bench Lake and then the Wapiti blazes.It took heroic firefighting efforts and favorable turns in weather conditions for the town – a mountain mecca for tourists from around the world – to survive without the loss of a single life or home. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Military airstrike on schools in western Myanmar kills at least 18 people, most of them students

An armed group and local media reports say Myanmar’s military has conducted an airstrike on two private schools in a village, killing at least 18 people, mostly students

Events

3 w. ago Horrific moment teen is repeatedly gored and tossed around by a rampaging bull during Spanish festival

The incident happened in the town of Mocejon, in the province of Toledo in central Spain , on Tuesday, 9th September, during festivities in honour of the Virgin of Angustias.

Politics

3 w. ago Discovery of new campsite shows fugitive Tom Phillips had ‘outside help,’ NZ police say

Phillips had spent nearly four years hiding in the wilderness with his three children before he was killed in an exchange of fire with police on MondayFugitive father Tom Phillips was receiving outside help during his years on the run before he was killed in a police shoot-out this week, New Zealand police said on Wednesday as they released images that show a newly discovered campsite.Phillips had spent nearly four years hiding in the wilderness with his three children. He was killed in an exchange of fire with police after reports of a burglary in the remote town of Piopio, in the central North Island, on Monday. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Revealed: the huge growth of Myanmar scam centres that may hold 100,000 trafficked people

Operated by crime syndicates and fostered by the country’s military junta, the number of vast complexes such as KK Park on the Thai-Myanmar border has doubled since 2021Five years ago, the land now home to KK Park – a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres) along the churning Moei River that forms Myanmar’s border with Thailand – was little more than empty fields.Set against rugged mountains south of the town of Myawaddy, KK Park, with its on-site hospital, restaurants, bank and neat lines of villas with manicured lawns, looks more like the campus of a Silicon Valley tech company than what is really is: the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry fuelled by human trafficking and brutal violence. Continue reading...

Politics