Archive for August, 2010
Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of murdering her flatmate Meredith Kercher in Italy, has revealed how she hopes to adopt children and become a writer when she has served her 26-year sentence. The revelations were made in meetings she had with Rocco Girlanda, an Umbrian politician who has made numerous visits to Knox at her prison in Perugia.
Mr Girlanda, who first met Knox around the time of her conviction, told Associated Press yesterday that he kept a diary of the conversations – material that forms the basis of a 240-page book, Take Me With You – Talks with Amanda Knox in Prison, to be published in Italy and the US in the autumn. They never discussed the case, he said, but the book includes letters and poetry Knox sent to the politician, who is head of a foundation promoting ties between the two countries. All proceeds will go to his foundation.
Knox, 23, was convicted last December of the murder and sexual assault of Kercher, a British student, in 2007. Knox's former boyfriend and another man were also convicted. All three maintain their innocence and are appealing. Knox's appeal is set to begin on 24 November.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
There are problems with language learning in schools and universities – but these need not be as terminal or wretched as is made out. Latin and Greek have long had to struggle in the education system, and many lessons could be learned from the efforts classicists have put in to maintaining the subject in the secondary and tertiary education system.
It may be true that only 25% of primary schools presently have modern language provision, but a far higher proportion of schools have some kind of Latin on offer, mainly in the form of after-school clubs. The Primary Latin Project is in contact with over 1,700 primary schools and their textbook, Minimus, has sold over 100,000 copies. I am in contact with over 100 primary and prep schools and am involved in a range of projects, including collaboration with the Iris Project, which runs taster courses of Latin in Oxford and London schools.
A French teacher in a state primary watched a group of year 3-6 children with whom I worked perform a Latin play in front of an audience of invited adults. My star performer was a year 6 boy with no previous experience in Latin who had become able to ad lib where needed, and the teacher exclaimed afterwards that he never spoke in French lessons. The problem clearly didn't lie with a lack of interest in languages per se; perhaps the national curriculum just isn't working. When students have the chance to learn Latin, they often leap at it.
At secondary level a similar story is true. The Latin Teaching Scheme in Oxford saw 20 students from eight local state schools sit the Latin GCSE this summer. They willingly gave up their Saturday mornings for two years in order to learn it. This does not sound like a generation uninterested in languages. A new cohort started in February 2010 and will sit the GCSE in 2012. I could have filled the places three times over. The students have commented that it was harder than they expected, but they express a sense of pride at their achievement. They were not all gifted and talented, and the results were mixed. But they rose to the challenge and enjoyed taking something that stretched them.
Perhaps in some ways we are not asking enough of our young people, feeding them a sterile curriculum, which fails to excite them intellectually. Not everyone will end up reading Caesar fluently, but, I suggest, some exposure to Latin could interest and benefit almost all students. At tertiary level, students flock to take up Latin, as successful university beginners' courses testify.
It does not matter if it is "just" the effect of Harry Potter, Gladiator or Rome: Total War. For whatever reason, many students want to learn Latin. If they do, and we can use this to inspire in them a love of language as a thinking tool as well as a means of communication, then all language learning will benefit.
An integrated curriculum, linking Latin and Greek with modern languages, could be the way ahead. We need not return to the direct method for Latin and force students to pretend it can be used in the same way as other languages, but shutting Latin out with the claim that it is elitist is the most certain way to keep it so and deny the richness it can offer students.
I regularly work with groups to improve their linguistic awareness, challenging them with tasks involving a range of Indo-European languages. Teaching them to respect and use languages, to engage their brains in the puzzle of their decipherment, is always appreciated. Students respond that they never realised how interconnected languages were, and some schools have reported a more generally positive attitude towards languages as a result.
As pointed out by Professor Christopher Pelling and Dr Llewelyn Morgan in their recent Politeia report, Latin is not classified as a language by the curriculum, and should be. Students in primary and secondary schools would learn it if they could, and would benefit from it in many ways.
drive from www.guardian.co.uk
This is great with warmed corn tortillas. Serves four to six.
1 squash (butternut or red onion), weighing around 1kg
1 tbsp olive oil
3 cobs of corn
2 cloves garlic, peeled and very finely chopped
2 red chillies, very finely chopped
200g goat's cheese, crumbled with your hands (or chopped)
Juice of 1 lime
1 handful chopped coriander leaves, to garnish
For the dressing
80g pumpkin seeds
2 cloves garlic crushed
2 tomatoes (green, ideally, but not to worry if you can't get hold of any)
2 green lettuce leaves (romaine or cos), chopped
1 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
2 green chillies, roughly chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and freshly milled pepper
Peel and deseed the squash. Chop the flesh into 1-2cm chunks, tip into an oven tray, toss in olive oil, season and roast in a medium oven (190C/375F/gas mark 5) for about 30 minutes, until starting to brown and just cooked through.
While the squash is roasting, cook the corn in boiling water for about 10 minutes. Drain, refresh and leave to cool a little, then cut the kernels from the cobs.
Take the squash out of the oven (leave the heat on) and toss in the chopped garlic, chilli and corn kernels. Transfer the lot to an ovenproof serving dish and return to the oven for five minutes.
Meanwhile, make the dressing by dry-frying the pumpkin seeds over a medium heat for five minutes, until they are toasted and have popped. When cool, tip the seeds into the jug of a liquidiser, add all the other dressing ingredients and blend, adding a little water to take it to a pouring consistency.
Fold the goat's cheese into the squash and corn mix, and return to the oven for another 10 minutes or so, until the goat's cheese is hot.
To serve, squeeze lime juice over the pumpkin mix, drizzle the dressing over, season to taste and sprinkle with coriander.
drive from www.guardian.co.uk
A British spy found murdered in his flat might have lain undiscovered for up to two weeks.
The man, named locally as Gareth Williams, was found stuffed in a large sports holdall in the bath of his central London home.
Mr Williams, aged in his 30s, was employed as a communications officer at the GCHQ "listening post" in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
He was on secondment to the riverside headquarters of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, about half a mile from the flat.
Officers discovered Mr Williams after breaking into the flat on Monday afternoon when the alarm was raised by colleagues who had not seen him for "some time".
They found his decomposing body, as well as his mobile phone and several Sim cards, laid out nearby at the top-floor flat in Alderney Street, Pimlico.
A post-mortem examination was being carried out by a Home Office pathologist today to establish what led to his death.
Sources close to the inquiry said it is not clear how he died and played down speculation that the murder is linked to his secretive line of work.
One source said: "The suggestion there is terrorism or national security links to this case is pretty low down the list of probabilities."
Neighbours described Mr Williams as an "extremely friendly" and athletic man who enjoyed cycling and had a strong Welsh accent.
They said he had lived in London for about a year and was planning to return to Cheltenham, where he rented a flat.
A postwoman who called at the block today said he often collected parcels at the communal front door.
Secretary Laura Houghton, 30, said: "His windows were always shut and curtains were often closed. I could never tell if anyone was in.
"It was strange that we never saw him come and go. I just assumed he worked away.
"The first I heard of anything happening was when the police knocked on my door and asked me if I had heard anything happening. I told them the walls were so thick that I couldn't hear a thing.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
Warrington coach Tony Smith has effectively ruled Chris Bridge out of his line-up for the Challenge Cup final by naming him in his squad for the Carnegie Floodlit Nines at Headingley tonight.
The England centre has recovered more quickly than expected from a shoulder operation and an alternative interpretation is that his coach is testing his fitness in the short form of the game.
But Smith is adamant that is not the case. "I'm disappointed for Chris, because he was playing so well, but it's a bridge too far for him," he said. "We'll have him for the last league game of the season and for the play-offs and that's better than we thought."
Warrington and Leeds will name their 19-man squads tomorrow and their final 17s on Friday.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
The England manager, Fabio Capello, refused to comment yesterday on suggestions that he is contemplating the controversial selection of Mikel Arteta, Everton's Spanish midfielder who is eligible to play for England having never represented his native Spain.
Arteta, 28, could become a naturalised British citizen, having been in the country for five years with Everton. When Capello left Craven Cottage last night, having seen Fulham's 2-2 draw with Manchester United, he refused to be drawn on the issue saying: "I not speak about these things."
However, the Football Association is refusing to comment on the possibility that England could yet turn to a player born in San Sebastien who played for the Spain Under-21s. For many England supporters it would betray the notion of international football and the matter may yet become a decision for the FA main board rather than just Capello.
After England's dismal World Cup however, Capello is prepared to push the boundaries in order to strengthen his squad. In the past, he said of the Arsenal goalkeeper Manuel Almunia, another Spaniard who would be eligible to play for England, that it would be down to him to put himself forward. Arteta said he would consider the idea.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
David Rudisha of Kenya broke the men's 800m world record yesterday by running 1min, 41.09sec, only minutes after Caster Semenya had returned to the Berlin Olympic Stadium to win the women's race over the same distance.
Rudisha powered home to beat the previous record of 1:41.11 set by Wilson Kipketer, a Kenyan-born runner from Denmark, in Cologne in August 1997.
"I met him last year and he told me, 'I can see you have a future in the 800, you can beat the world record,'" Rudisha said of Kipketer. "He encouraged me to go for it."
Rudisha broke the record at the same stadium where he was just a semi-finalist in the 800m at last year's world championships. "I was very disappointed last year, but the weather was so cold then," said Rudisha, a 21-year-old former world junior champion. "I knew that I would be fast today and that I am in good shape. I was just hoping the weather would be good. It was a bit windy but otherwise it was perfect," he said.
Once the pacemaker dropped out after the first lap, Rudisha ran alone against the clock. "I saw I was inside world record pace in the final straight and I just went for it. This was really the first time I tried to break the record," Rudisha said. "Now my next steps are to win world and Olympic titles. But I can still improve my record."
While Rudisha did not have good memories of his previous visit to Berlin, the Olympic Stadium was the site of Semenya's triumph at the world championships last year. She subsequently missed 11 months of competition while undergoing gender tests.
"I still feel the same but it was not easy for a 19-year-old girl to go through what I've been through," Semenya said after cruising home in 1min 59.90sec to a warm reception from the nearly 50,000-strong crowd. "I ran a good time, I felt at home."
The South African teenager surged ahead in the last 50 metres in her third race since she was cleared to run again last month. She competed in two minor races in Finland before being invited to run in Berlin. Semenya, who hopes to make the South Africa team for the Commonwealth Games in October, was 4.45sec slower than her winning time of 1min 55.45sec in Berlin last year.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
Sticky apple balsamic spare ribs - addictively good and easy to make. Photograph: Colin Campbell for the Guardian
Wherever there has been wine, there has been vinegar, its sharp-tongued twin. I don't mean this disparagingly. I wouldn't be without its puckery, palate-bracing charms. From the mildest rice wine vinegar to potent, syrupy, complex balsamic, vinegars perk up my cooking every day.
Vinegar is one of history's happiest culinary accidents. Who would have thought that sour wine (literally, "vin aigre") would play such an important role in all the world's great cuisines, from Tokyo to Burgundy? And, indeed, here in the West Country, where cider vinegar is my reach-for default for dressings and sauces.
The first batch of vinegar was no doubt a great surprise to its owner, a disappointment – amusing now, when you think that the finest Italian balsamics command a price to rival the world's greatest wines. But when air seeped into that first cask, along with a few yeasty spores, allowing the vinegar mother to thrive and grow like some all-consuming alien, it must have been something of a blow. What a credit to whomever then took this throat-rasping liquor and said to themselves, "There must be something useful I can do with this. Now where's the olive oil?"
There are records of vinegar going back thousands of years. Hippocrates mentions its medicinal properties in the fifth century BC. The Greeks used it to preserve food – very important in the days before refrigeration. Caesar's armies fortified themselves with it. Pliny the Elder wrote that Cleopatra dissolved her pearls in it to impress Mark Antony that she could throw the most expensive banquet in history. Wags, take note…
I have quite the collection at home, from white-wine vinegars with tarragon (perfect for a béarnaise sauce), to brown rice vinegar and homemade red-wine vinegar, made from our (scant) leftovers, which is slowly gathering age and complexity in its special jar. But my beloved cider vinegar comes out more often than the rest put together. I use it not only for most of my dressings, but for most of my pickling, too, where its genuine fruitiness lends far more character than white distilled vinegar or even malt vinegar (save that for the chips).
Recently, I've been using quite a bit of apple balsamic vinegar, too – the Suffolk company Aspall, still family-run, makes a stunner – adding it to recipes or simply mixing it with olive oil to dip bread into, or trickling it over ripe, sliced tomatoes with a sprinkling of salt.
drive from www.guardian.co.uk
"There was a soldier, a Scottish soldier Who wandered far away and soldiered far away There was none bolder, with good broad shoulders,He fought in many a fray and fought and won.He's seen the glory, he's told the story Of battles glorious and deeds victorious..."
The kilted soldier shown here – a short, grinning teenager without especially "broad shoulders" – is one of the 560,000 Scots who "wandered far away" to fight in the 1914-18 war. Almost 150,000 of them did not live to "tell the story of battles glorious and deeds victorious".
Scotland suffered, proportionally, greater losses than almost any other nation engaged in the First World War. (France lost 3.36 per cent of its total population killed in battle; Scotland 3.14 per cent; Germany 2.76 per cent; Britain as a whole 1.7 per cent.)
The two images of our grinning "Scottish soldier" – one in which he stands alone and one arm-in-arm with a comrade from the Machine Gun Corps – are among 450-plus glass plates recovered from a rubbish skip and jumble sales in the Somme region in northern France in the last two years. The photographs, published in two batches in The Independent Magazine in May 2009 and May 2010 and on The Independent website, have generated interest all over the world. They were by far the most visited item on The Independent website in 2009 and are among the most popular in 2010.
First World War graveyards and memorials are a legion of names without faces. The lost Somme photographs gave us, movingly, hundreds of faces without names. Of the first batch of images, only one was tentatively identified as a gunner from Ayrshire.
The Independent believes that we can now also name this soldier from the second batch: even though investigations over the last few weeks have generated almost as many questions as they have provided answers. In the process, we have taken a fascinating meander through the history, and subtle differences in uniform, of the Highland regiments of the British Army.
We have also collided with the frustrating barriers faced by many people who try to examine the service records of those British soldiers who did not die and were not decorated in 1914-18. Two-thirds of the British Army's records were destroyed in the Blitz on London in the Second World War.
The soldier in our two images has been identified by his daughter and two of his grandchildren as James Henry Hepburn, who was born in Birse, near Aberdeen, in 1898. He survived the war to have two wives (at different times), nine children, at least 20 grandchildren and a still expanding army of great-grandchildren. He died in 1962, aged 64.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
Gwen Spurlock is in trouble. Britain's top pro surfer has forgotten to put petrol in the car and her mum, Rhona, is unimpressed. "But I reminded you twice yesterday," she tuts, picking up the keys and heading out to the drive. It is the kind of exchange that happens between parents and teenagers every day. The difference is that this is not just a snap at adolescent laziness, but serious concern.
Two years ago, just after she had taken home both the British junior and the British women's surfing titles in one season, Gwen suffered a brain injury that she was lucky to escape from alive. There is still a chance that some of the damage has been lasting. "I tease her about forgetting chores but we are worried," says Rhona, "She does seem to forget things all the time now. She's going to have some tests later in the year." '
The petrol row was sparked by my arrival at the Spurlock family home in Swansea, where we meet ahead of a tour of Gwen's local beaches. Two hours into a "quick chat" later, it soon transpires that filling up with petrol is the least of the day's delays.
With contagious enthusiasm, Gwen sustains conversation for unfeasible periods. Perched on the sofa in hot pants, a vest and Ugg boots, she talks so quickly that her words fall into each other in a constant stream. After one monologue in extreme fast-forward, her mum interjects: "Are you going to pause for breath?" She doesn't.
But then, she does have a lot to talk about. Aside from winning a mountain of trophies that spills over two chests of drawers, her remarkable recovery from near-fatal head injuries has given her more to discuss than the average 19-year-old.
In 2008, as the UK's new young face of surfing, Gwen was asked to launch Wales's first indoor-surfing centre in her home town. What should have been a simple four-hour promotion nearly killed her. After repeated falls on the machine – which forces a shallow jet of water over a hard plastic slope – she left with a splitting headache. Thinking nothing of it, she went home and took some painkillers. "I was hoping it was just going to go away," Gwen explains, "but all of a sudden it got really horrible."
drive from www.independent.co.uk
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