Ben Hooper is not your average person. The former policeman has spent years competing in triathlons and open-water swims, sometimes up to 40 km in one day. But there are some challenges that will test any super-fit athlete. Hooper has embarked on a five-month journey from Senegal to Brazil that will see him strive to…
Eleven years ago this week, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq fell as United States troops and marines occupied Baghdad and headed north towards Mosul. The war seemed over. Afghanistan also seemed much quieter by that time. Only three weeks later, on 1 May 2003, George W Bush could deliver his “mission accomplished” speech from…
Jonah Field, USA, where shale-drilling/hydraulic fracturing is heavy,and a dense web of roads, pipelines and well pads have turned continuous forests and grasslands into fragmented islands. Bruce Gordon/EcoFlight/Flickr. Some rights reserved. Information from Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons Agency shows that at least forty-three new fracking concessions have been handed out to multinational companies including Exxon Mobil,…
Jayma Bazaar in Osh city, Kyrgyzstan, looks like any ordinary Central Asian market. Built largely of metal containers, running for over a kilometre, it criss-crosses the Ak-Bura river that divides central Osh. Small passages run like arteries between hundreds of stalls, children darting between them. Wooden carts hold stacks of lipioshka, the traditional Kyrgyz bread,…
Upperclass vs underclass Safari in Stockholm.Feb 2012.A new action plan against extremism by the government wrongly suggests that a number of extra-parliamentary movements are prone to violence. In doing so, its guidelines risk having a negative influence on young people’s trust in democratic engagement. Civil disobedience is not the same as violent extremism, fifteen leading…
I have been out for two days to you. As I write this, that’s less than 48 hours. You have been kind and jovial and accepting thus far. I appreciate this and it means a lot to me that you would promise to support your child’s spouse through a gender transition. It’s a rather unusual…
A recent Al-Jazeera Arabic online poll shatters the dominant narrative that the Islamic State enjoys the support of only an isolated fraction of Arab Sunnis. Even considering the demonstrated online mobilisation of Islamic State supporters, it is sobering that 46,060 people (accounting for 81 percent of poll respondents) voted “Yes” in response to the question…
NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: THIS GOAL HAS BEEN MET! BUT YOU CAN GIVE TO ANOTHER WORTHY CAUSE HERE. From December 14 through December 25, GOOD Sports will feature the worthiest school athletic programs in need of funding. Holly High School in Holly, Colorado—a tiny ex-beet farming town near the state’s Kansas border—needs new volleyballs. The 77-student…
Rafael Marques de Morais. Alex Brenner for Index on Censorship. All rights reserved.Mass graves of miners who were buried alive, women with their eyes and genitals cut out of their bodies: these stories were just part of the exposé into crimes surrounding the Angola diamond industry that journalist Rafael Marques de Morais has tried to…
Trying to find a way to toss away perfectly good, hard cash? How about starting an initiative to test whether welfare recipients are using drugs. A year-long Michigan study of three different counties found that no one who was eligible for welfare could reasonably be said to be abusing drugs on the dole. This comes as no surprise,…