Новости за 14.06.2015

A disturbing illustration has been doing the rounds on social media recently. As soon as I see it I feel a little sick. On the left, it’s a familiar image, although one that will always be disturbing: a man, presumably African-American, hanging from a tree. But next to it is a pig strung up in the same way. The caption reads: “Then we had racism: Now we have speciesism.”

What Sebastian Coe did not say, when he spoke for the first time at length yesterday about the crisis which is sorely testing Britain’s faith in Mo Farah, was how awkward this whole business is proving to be for those many people, like him, whose relationship with Nike, its sports science set-up and Alberto Salazar is so long-standing and intricate.

The controversy surrounding Mo Farah’s training group will not remove his mantle as the world’s No 1 distance runner, according to the chairman of UK Athletics, despite the accusations mounting against Farah’s coach, Alberto Salazar.

The news last week that a group of 18, mostly Conservative, MPs has tabled an amendment to the EU (Referendum) Bill that would create stiffer oversight of broadcaster impartiality during the referendum period came as something of a surprise. However much some Tories might doubt the BBC’s ability to give a fair account of the EU’s merits, creating additional regulation hardly seems helpful.

No apologies for returning today to the strange case of the “moderate” Jabhat  al-Nusra rebels, the throat-cutters and executioners who are playing the anti-Isis card to woo the US.

In June 2014, forced marriages were outlawed in the UK, and last week, a 34-year-old man was prosecuted and convicted, the first conviction for this crime in Britain. Asian feminists have been campaigning for this law for several decades. We were fobbed off, castigated and denounced as traitors by some foolish equal-rights campaigners for whom such struggles were frivolous diversions from the only true cause: racism.

Gordon Benson swam, cycled and ran into the history books on Sunday when he became Great Britain’s first gold medal winner at the European Games.

Opening ceremonies of huge sporting events are frequently banal. They are almost always overblown. And they are often served with a massive amount of cheese. But it is rare that they are downright offensive, as parts of the pyrotechnic-filled preamble to the 2015 European Games in Baku were.

The new-music community turned out in force to watch the sixty-eighth Aldeburgh Festival kick off with the premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s scena for soprano, tenor and six instruments The Cure, in a double-bill under Martin Duncan’s direction with his earlier scena, The Corridor.

I owe Kay Burley an apology. A little over a year a go, I interviewed the Sky News presenter. The brief I received from my editor was clear and straightforward – get her to say a) something stupid, b) something controversial, or c) something related to her appearance. My questions were geared largely towards her on-air mishaps – tumbles at the top of escalators, her embarrassing mispronunciations, the time she made Peter Andre cry...

An intriguing bit of casting might just make Iqbal Khan’s new production of Othello at Stratford-upon-Avon feel – in the words of RSC artistic director Gregory Doran – “freshly minted”: not only is Othello being played by a black actor, Hugh Quarshie – but so is his tormentor, Iago. It is Lucian Msamati uttering lines such as “an old black ram is tupping your white ewe”.

Farmers in local villages claim that up to 120,000 people could be displaced by the plans which will have a massive environmental impact

Crystal Maze presenter Richard O’Brien will be involved in the reboot of the popular Nineties show when it returns as a live immersive experience in central London later this year. 

A few weeks ago, this column reported on the Norwegian film-maker Alex Lyngaas’s search to find a suitable partner for his 69-year-old mother, Eva. You might remember that Lyngaas posted a video to YouTube called “Looking For Adam”, and then sat back as the film racked up 7,000,000 views in its first week.

Thank you so much for compiling the Happy List (7 June). Not only did it give some recognition to all those people who have chosen to make such a valuable contribution, it helped to publicise their activities. What is even more important is the example to us all set by these unsung heroes, who, in the main, are just ordinary people who were motivated to take action often by extraordinary events in their own or in others’ lives.

Last week fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, entered a village in Idlib province in the north-west of the country and shot dead at least 20 villagers from the Druze community. They had earlier forcibly converted hundreds of Druze to their fundamentalist variant of Sunni Islam.

It begins innocently enough. We drive to the allotment as it otherwise takes an hour and two buses to get there, and we're scared of being turned into a loose- meat sandwich filling between a lorry and some railings if we cycle. Not to mention that driving makes bringing home all our blighted tomato plants so much easier.

The best time to inspect Martin Starr (a pseudonym – his real name is Higginbottom) is between the hours of 9am and 6pm, Mondays to Thursdays, at the local branch of HMV.

The Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Azerbaijan offered British coaches and facilities to train Azeri athletes, to improve their medal-winning chances before the controversial European Games. The special offer was made last year, as Britain sought to curry favour with the authoritarian regime in Baku to secure better oil and trade deals.

History does repeat itself. A century has passed since Mildred Bulkley highlighted  in her ground-breaking study, The Feeding of School Children, that for poor families the absence of school meals during the holidays resulted in much of the benefit derived during term time being undone.

It hasn't, it's true, been the finest of springs. Until recently, cool temperatures and overcast skies have meant that those who'd hoped to be peeling off the layers and revving up the barbecues have remained in long sleeves and wearing complexions straight from Dawn of the Dead.