ADDICTION AND EMOTIONAL PLAGUE
Pupil started deadly Guyana dorm fire over confiscated phone: source

Denis Chabrol
Tue, May 23, 2023

Relatives of the school dormitory fire sob during a meeting with Guyana President Irfaan Ali in Mahdia, where the tragedy happened

The weekend school dormitory blaze that killed 19 minors in central Guyana is believed to have been started by a disgruntled pupil angry at having her mobile phone confiscated, a government source told AFP on Tuesday.

Sunday's inferno gutted the building in the regional capital of Mahdia, which housed girls aged 11-12 and 16-17. Some are still hospitalized.

An official police report confirmed that "a female student is suspected of having set the devastating fire because her cellular phone was taken away."

The government source, speaking anonymously, said the teenage pupil in question had admitted to the arson attack and was under police guard at the district hospital in Mahdia.

Police are seeking advice on whether to charge her, the official said.

On Monday, Guyana Police Commissioner Clifton Hicken had already stated that investigators believed the fire was "maliciously set."

According to the government source, students aren't allowed to have phones in the dormitory.

After the staff took away the girl's phone, she "threatened the same night that she will burn down the building and everybody heard her," the government source said.

The official said that minutes later the girl went to the bathroom area and sprayed insecticide on a curtain before lighting a match.

Several pupils had recounted the same version of events, the official said.

The Guyanese government declared three days of mourning after the dormitory fire in Mahdia killed at least 19 people © Keno GEORGE / AFP

- Locked inside -

The girls were locked in for the night, and a house mistress told police that in her panic she could not find the front door key. The building had metal bars on the windows preventing pupils from escaping through them.

The house mistress "locks up every night at nine o'clock to ensure the girls don't get away from the building," the official said.

"According to the female students, they were asleep and were awakened by screams," said the police report.

Despite efforts by other students to extinguish the blaze, the official said the fire quickly swept through the wooden ceiling and eventually engulfed the entire building.

Some pupils, including the girl who allegedly started the fire, managed to escape when some men broke down a door.

"Upon checking, they saw fire/smoke in the bathroom area, which quickly spread in the building, causing several students to receive burns to their bodies and smoke inhalation, while several managed to escape," the police report said.

The police report said there were 57 pupils in the dormitory, which was "a one-flat concrete building measuring about 100 feet by 40 feet, with several windows, all grilled, and five doors."

Firefighters did not arrive on the scene until 25 minutes after the fire took hold.

The house mistress' son apparently also died in the fire.

Thirteen young girls and the boy died in the building, while five more pupils died later at the hospital.

As well as the dead, around 20 children were taken to hospital. Seven remain hospitalized, with two in critical condition, according to a hospital source.

Six autopsies performed so far revealed the minors died from smoke inhalation and burns, according to the police. The other 13 unrecognizable bodies were being transported to the capital, Georgetown, for DNA testing to confirm their identities.

National security advisor Gerry Gouveia said that a forensic team from Barbados had arrived in Guyana to help with the identification. Another team from the United States is expected.

Guyanese President Irfaan Ali said that Cuba also offered to provide medical support.

Guyana, with a population of 800,000, is South America's only English-speaking nation. It is a former Dutch and British colony, which recently discovered it holds the world's largest per-capita oil reserves.

dc-pgf/bc/nro/md

Mexico keeps close watch on ash-spewing volcano

AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023,

A soldier sweeps ash in the street in a town near Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano

A volcano southeast of the Mexican capital spewed more gas and ash into the sky on Tuesday as authorities maintained their warning level at one step below red alert.

Dozens of shelters have been opened near Popocatepetl -- located around 70 kilometers (about 45 miles) from Mexico City -- which has seen various periods of increased activity since awakening from decades-long slumber in 1994.

The government is monitoring Popocatepetl "day and night," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said after the volcano put on another fiery show overnight.

He said the volcano's activity had decreased slightly since the alert level was raised on Sunday, helping to calm nerves in nearby towns and villages that have been covered with ash.

"Last night I slept a little better because the other three days my house's windows and door vibrated," said Francisca de los Santos, a 56-year-old living in a town close to the volcano.

"We're used to it, but it always scares us a bit," she told AFP, adding that she had no plan to leave her home.

Roughly 25 million people live within a 100-kilometer radius of Popocatepetl, the second tallest volcano in Mexico, rising nearly 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) above sea level.

Mexico's National Center for Prevention of Disasters said Tuesday that over the previous 24 hours, 22 volcanic exhalations of water vapor, volcanic gasses and ash had been detected, along with two explosions.

The increase in the alert level on Sunday to "yellow phase three" came a day after two Mexico City airports temporarily halted operations due to falling ash.

The next level, a red alert, would trigger mandatory evacuations in communities near the volcano, whose name means "smoking mountain" in the indigenous Nahuatl language.

bur-jg/axm/dr/nro/md

PHOTOS

Popocatepetl: Ashes over Mexico – DW – 05/24/2023

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/05/silent-b-movie-mexicos-popocatepetl.html

'Modern slavery' most common in North Korea and Eritrea: study
NOT SOCIALISM BUT STALINISM
AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023

The 2023 Global Slavery Index says modern slavery has got worse since its last survey

North Korea, Eritrea and Mauritania have the highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world, according to the 2023 Global Slavery Index published Wednesday, which noted a "worsening" situation globally since its last survey five years earlier.

The report said an estimated 50 million people were "living in situations of modern slavery" in 2021, an increase of 10 million over 2016, when the problem was last measured.

The figure includes some 28 million people in forced labour and 22 million living in a forced marriage.

The situation is worsening "against a backdrop of increasing and more complex armed conflicts, widespread environmental degradation" and impacts from the coronavirus pandemic, among other factors, the investigation said.

Compiled by the human rights charity Walk Free, the report defines modern slavery as encompassing "forced labour, forced or servile marriage, debt bondage, forced commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, slavery-like practices, and the sale and exploitation of children."

Slavery's core principle entails "the systematic removal of a person’s freedom" -- from the right to accept or refuse labour to the liberty to determine if, when and whom to marry.

By this benchmark, reclusive and authoritarian North Korea has the highest prevalence of modern slavery (104.6 per 1,000 population), according to the report.

It is followed by Eritrea (90.3) and Mauritania (32), which in 1981 became the last country in the world to make hereditary slavery illegal.

The 10 countries with the highest prevalence of modern slavery have some common characteristics, including "limited protections for civil liberties and human rights".

Many of the countries are in "volatile" regions experiencing conflict or political instability, or home to a large populaton of "vulnerable people" such as refugees or migrant workers.

- 'Mirror held to power' -

Also in the top 10 globally were Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, where migrant workers' labour rights are restricted by the "kafala" sponsorship system.

Other countries in the top 10 are Turkey, "which hosts million of refugees from Syria", Tajikistan, Russia and Afghanistan.

While forced labour is more common in low-income countries it is "deeply" connected to demand from higher-income countries, the report said, noting that two-thirds of all forced labour cases are linked to global supply chains.

The report said G20 countries -- made up of the EU and the world's 19 top economies -- are currently importing $468 billion worth of goods that are at risk of being produced with forced labour, up from $354 billion in the previous report.

Electronics remain the highest value at-risk product, followed by garments, palm oil and solar panels, in a sign of high demand for renewable energy products.

"Modern slavery permeates every aspect of our society. It is woven through our clothes, lights up our electronics, and seasons our food," the group's founding director Grace Forrest said.

"At its core, modern slavery is a manifestation of extreme inequality. It is a mirror held to power, reflecting who in any given society has it and who does not," she added.

acl/phz/ri

$6 mn raised to preserve Nina Simone's childhood home

AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023

Nina Simone in concert at l'Olympia in Paris, October 22, 1991

An art auction and New York gala have raised nearly $6 million to preserve and restore the childhood home of soul music legend and civil rights activist Nina Simone, organizers said Tuesday.

The twin events brought in some $5.88 million -- far more than the original $2 million organizers hoped to raise to restore the rural North Carolina abode.

"The new funding will meaningfully advance our project goals to complete the full restoration of the house and landscape," said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

"With this investment, we are well on our way to opening the doors to visitors in 2024."

Four US artists -- Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Adam Pendleton -- bought the dilapidated rural home in 2017 for $95,000. They've since worked with Leggs' organization, as well as tennis star Venus Williams, to raise money to turn the house into a cultural and historic site.

The online auction, with works donated by British painter Cecily Brown and American artist Sarah Sze, was organized by Pace and Sotheby's.

Among the 11 works for sale, Mehretu's ink-and-acrylic "New Dawn, Sing (for Nina)" fetched $1.6 million.

Simone, whose songs found renewed resonance during the Black Lives Matter protests of recent years, had a complex, often difficult relationship with the United States, where she was born in 1933, during the era of racial segregation.

Born Eunice Waymon, she spent the first years of her life in the three-room house in Tryon, in the rural southeastern state of North Carolina, with her parents and siblings, and began playing the piano at age three.

But her dream of becoming a classical concert performer was shattered when she was rejected by Philadelphia's prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, an ordeal she attributed to racism.

In the 1960s, Simone was active in the civil rights movement, including through rousing speeches and song.

Her "Mississippi Goddam," was a response to a 1963 fire in an Alabama church started by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, she performed "Why? (The king of love is dead)."

Simone eventually left the United States and lived her last years in the south of France, where she died in 2003.

arb/cha/nro/ec

 

 

Nina Simone & Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon (Full Album) | Amerigo Gazaway

Soul Mates Records

 Dec 3, 2018

With his latest Soul Mates Project, Amerigo Gazaway imagines a studio session between The High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone, and living legend, Lauryn Hill. Continuing the “collaborations that never were” theme of his previous releases, the producer seamlessly connects the dots between Hip-Hop and the genre’s predecessor, Soul.

Back in 2016, I had the pleasure of discussing my conceptual collaboration projects via a roundtable discussion at MoPOP’s annual POP Conference in Seattle. During our discussion, a fellow panelist, writer and professor, Zandria Robinson, posed an interesting question: “where’s your project celebrating women artists?”

Two years later and I’m excited to finally share the answer with my new Nina Simone + Lauryn Hill mixtape, “The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon”. Given the project was, in part, inspired by Zandria’s question, she got the first listen and has written a few words on the album below. -AG

“Soul Mates’ “collaborations that never were” enters new territory with a now familiar deft and verve, this time highlighting intergenerational conjurings between two black women cultural workers from the civil rights and hip-hop generations. With Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill seated together at the table, collaboration transforms into vivid conversation, call and response, and a call to action--private, personal, and public--across space, time, and realm.

With "The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon", Amerigo Gazaway renders listeners children in the backseat of a shiny black Chevy, transfixed by the mysteries of grown women’s conversations. We ride along and listen quietly as Hill drives down South to retrieve Simone from North Carolina and the two travel back north together, to New Jersey and then to New York, and onward to woman-ish soul eternity.

Gazaway does a different kind of labor in this mashup, creating a private, interior space for these women to speak the truths of their lives, both to themselves and to each other. As they come to know each other across the project’s apt sample and song combinations and interview snippets, Simone’s piano accompanies and buoys Lauryn and Lauryn sings back Nina’s words and sounds a resonant understanding with her acoustic guitar. They become gold- and white-framed mirrors, dancing to breakbeats around each other’s personal and political struggles and triumphs with all the freedom being seen, being recognized, brings.

In this curated interior space, audiences are compelled, at last, to listen to all of what and who these women were and are and to really hear those truths: to listen and learn about care, alienation, desperation, motherhood, women’s work; about the unending strivings for interpersonal peace and understanding; and about the necessity for liberation.”  - Zandria Robinson

Watch the teaser video here:   

 • Video  

Stream/download the full album here: https://bit.ly/3MLSOnv

Tracklist:

01. Feeling Good 

02. Ready Or Not feat. The Fugees 

03. Doo Wop (That Thing) 

04. To Zion feat. Carlos Santana 

05. Fu-Gee-La feat. The Fugees 

06. The Sweetest Thing feat. John Forté 

07. Take It Easy 

08. Peace Of Mind 

09. Lost Ones 

10. Killing Me Softly 

11. If I Ruled The World feat. Nas 

12. How Many Mic feat. The Fugees

13. So High feat. John Legend 

14. Care For What 

15. Angel Of The Morning 

16. The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon 

17. Fu-Gee-La (Refugee Camp Remix) [Bonus Track]

Produced by Amerigo Gazaway 

Executive Producer: Rickey Mindlin

Soul Mates 2018

DIY Acapellas by The Goodwill Projects:

http://www.thegoodwillprojects.com

http://amerigomusic.com

http://soulmatesproject.com

World 'failing' to protect civilians in combat zones, UN chief says

AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023

Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya sits next to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at a Security Council meeting on May 23, 2023

The world is failing to protect civilians as the number of people caught up in conflicts and their humanitarian aftershocks skyrocketed last year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday.

In 2022, the United Nations tallied a 53 percent increase in civilian deaths compared to the year prior, with nearly 17,000 civilian deaths recorded across 12 conflicts.

Citing civilian deaths in Ukraine and Sudan, schools destroyed in Ethiopia and damage to water infrastructure in Syria, Guterres warned the UN Security Council that "the world is failing to live up to its commitments to protect civilians; commitments enshrined in international humanitarian law."

Guterres, sitting next to Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, said UN research into the treatment of civilians of war zones showed 94 percent of victims of "explosive weapons" in populated areas were civilians last year, while more than 117 million people faced acute hunger primarily because of war and insecurity.

In Ukraine alone, which has been battling Russia's invasion for over year, the UN recorded nearly 8,000 civilian deaths and over 12,500 injuries, though it added that the actual figures are likely higher.

Worldwide, the number of refugees forced from their homes "due to conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution" has reached 100 million, the UN chief added.

Also speaking in front of the Security Council on Tuesday was Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who told members that "as we meet, countless civilians in conflicts around the world are experiencing a living hell."

"Any minute, the next missile can obliterate their home, their school, their clinic and everyone in it," she said. "Any week, they might run out of food or medicine."

Alain Berset, president of Switzerland -- which took up the rotating presidency of the council in May -- said that all parties to a conflict must abide by international humanitarian law.

"Conflicts are the main drivers of hunger," he said. "More and more people are facing acute food insecurity," with most concentrated in conflict zones like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and the Sahel, "or in other contexts where violence is endemic, such as Haiti."

French ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Riviere singled out alleged rights violations committed by Russia in Ukraine and by the Russian mercenary Wagner group in the Central African Republic and Mali.

The rise in civilians killed in armed conflicts last year is "very troubling," he added.

"Civilians have suffered the deadly effects of armed conflict for too long," Guterres said. "It is time we live up to our promise to protect them."

nr/led/nro/md

International Booker prize announces first ever Bulgarian winner


Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, portrays a ‘clinic for the past’ and was praised as a ‘great novel about Europe’

Sarah Shaffi

Tue 23 May 2023 

Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, has become the first book written in Bulgarian to win the International Booker prize.

Chair of judges Leïla Slimani described Time Shelter as “a brilliant novel full of irony and melancholy”, and added: “It is a very profound work that deals with a contemporary question and also a philosophical question: what happens to us when our memories disappear?”

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel

The £50,000 prize, which is split equally between the author and translator, is awarded annually for a novel or short story collection in any language that has been translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.

Time Shelter is Gospodinov’s fourth book to be translated into English. It concerns the opening of a “clinic for the past” that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, with everything from furniture, cigarettes and drinks from the era, to newspapers that cover each day of the decade. As word spreads, healthy people begin to seek refuge in the clinic to escape the horrors of modern life.

Slimani said the novel “questions the way in which our memory is the cement of our identity and our intimate narrative.

“But it is also a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented and nostalgia is a poison,” she continued. “It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the west and the communist world.”skip past newsletter promotion

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov review – the dangers of dwelling in the past
Read more

Slimani was joined on the judging panel by Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian, Booker-shortlisted novelist Tan Twan Eng, New Yorker staff writer Parul Sehgal and Frederick Studemann, literary editor of the Financial Times.

Gospodinov is a Bulgarian poet, writer and playwright. When published in Bulgaria, Time Shelter topped the book charts, and won the Strega European prize. Rodel is a musician and literary translator who lives and works in Bulgaria.

Patrick McGuinness in his Guardian review called Gospodinov “a writer of great warmth as well as skill” and said Rodel’s translation was done with “skill and delicacy”.


The 2023 International Booker prize shortlist – review

Time Shelter’s win marks the second year in a row that the award has gone to a book in a language never previously honoured by the prize. Last year’s winner, Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell, was the first novel translated from Hindi to win.

Fiammetta Rocco, administrator of the International Booker, said “although fiction in translation published in Britain has always been a slightly specialised way of looking at literature, I don’t think that’s the case any more. There is an extraordinary evolution going on. We’re seeing it in the range of independent publishers, the presentation of books in languages we’ve never seen before.”

Gospodinov and Rodel were announced as winners at an event at London’s Sky Garden on Tuesday evening. The pair were up against a shortlist that included Eva Baltasar’s Boulder, translated by Julia Sanches from Catalan, The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated from French by her husband Richard Philcox, Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim, Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated from French by Frank Wynne and Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey.

RAPIST PRIESTS, CELIBACY COVER UP

Bolivia seeks files on pedophile priests from Pope

AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023

Most of the alleged abuses were committed at the Juan XXIII boarding school for poor, rural children in Cochabamba in the center of the country

Bolivia's president has asked Pope Francis for files on sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests in the South American country following revelations of alleged large-scale exploitation of children.

Investigations are under way after confessions were found in the diary of a deceased Spanish Jesuit priest, Alfonso Pedrajas, that he had abused possibly dozens of minors in Bolivia, where he arrived in 1971.

The revelations, published by the El Pais newspaper in Spain last month, have resulted in prosecutors opening at least eight cases against priests including Pedrajas and three others from Spain: Luis Maria Roma, Alejandro Mestre and Antonio Gausset.

All four are deceased, but there are other accused still alive.

President Luis Arce, in a letter sent to the Pope on Monday, appealed for "access to all the files and information concerning these allegations and acts of sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests and members of the religious order on Bolivian territory."

The letter was made available to journalists by the president's office.

Bolivia has been shocked by revelations that have emerged since a family member of Pedrajas, who died of cancer in Bolivia in 2009 at the age of 66, gave the priest's diary to El Pais.

In the journal, which he kept on a laptop, Pedrajas wrote he had done "harm to many people... too many," with the number 85 and a question mark. He wrote that senior clergy had known about his crimes and kept quiet.

Pedrajas had worked as a teacher in various parts of Bolivia. Most of the alleged abuses were committed at the Juan XXIII boarding school for poor, rural children in Cochabamba in the center of the country.

- 'Cover-up' -

Hilarion Baldivieso, head of an association of former pupils of Juan XXIII, at a press conference denounced "the cover-up" of Pedrajas' crimes by the Church.

Attorney General Juan Lanchipa said that since the media revelations, alleged victims have come forward in the capital La Paz, in Cochabamba, Tarija in the south and Santa Cruz in the east.

Some of the complaints were filed by the Jesuit order itself, but Lanchipa expressed concern at "the apathy this Catholic organization has shown in not denouncing these events" earlier but rather "providing cover and protection for these aberrant events."

More cases could follow, with a recent investigation by Bolivian newspaper Pagina Siete finding at least 170 alleged victims.

Former Jesuit priest Pedro Lima told AFP last week that not only minors but also trainee clergy were subjected to sexual abuse in Bolivia. Lima claimed he was expelled from the Jesuit order in 2001 for reporting abuses.

Days after the exposure of Pedrajas' diary, the Bolivian Episcopal Conference -- an assembly of bishops -- asked for victims' forgiveness.

"We stand in solidarity with victims who have suffered acts of sexual abuse," it said in a statement.

The Jesuit order, for its part, said it would assist in the investigation.

Spanish priest Jordi Bertomeu, a top sex crimes investigator for the pope, has been dispatched to Bolivia.

Thousands of reports of pedophilia within the Catholic Church have surfaced around the world in recent years.

Pope Francis has pledged an "all-out battle" against clerical abuse, holding an unprecedented summit on the issue in 2019 and enacting reforms that include new obligations to report clerical child abuse and cover-ups.

jac/ll/mlr/t

London show explores sari's 21st century reinvention

Helen ROWE
Wed, May 17, 2023 

Over the past decade, according to curator Priya Khanchandani, the sari has seen the most rapid invention in its 5,000 year history

The sari is being reinvented for the modern age in an Indian "fashion revolution," with around 60 trailblazing examples due to go on display at a new exhibition in London.

Over the past decade, according to curator Priya Khanchandani, the sari has seen the most rapid transformation in its 5,000-year history.

From sari styles worn by young women on their way to work in Delhi and Mumbai to the spectacular creation that was the first sari to grace New York's famous Met Gala, the London showcase spotlights the garment's 21st century revival.

Khanchandani says she first became aware of a renaissance in 2015 when she met some of the designers in Delhi who were transforming the sari, traditionally a single long piece of unstitched fabric draped over the body.

"I saw the sari being revived as an everyday garment in a way that was very fashionable. They were being worn by younger women than I knew before," she told AFP ahead of the show, The Offbeat Sari, which opens at the Design Museum on Friday.

"They were often quite intellectual women, writers and artists... wearing them in ways that I didn't expect," she said.

Having previously viewed saris as a garment to be worn for special events or weddings, she suddenly noticed them being reinvented as everyday clothing, even teamed with T-shirts and sneakers.

The birth of mass consumerism and social media in India combined with the growth of the country's urban middle class has accelerated the sari's revamp, Khanchandani said.

"The influence of digital media which has a really significant reach in India, particularly among young people, allowed trends to spread and I think allowed the way that saris were being worn to become a grassroots movement," she added.

- Pushing boundaries -

Popular hashtags that have seen a vast array of images shared online include #sarilove, #sarifashion, #designsarees and #sareeindia.

Despite the sari's long history, it was not until last year that a sari was seen at the celebrated annual Met Gala event in New York.

Worn by Indian businesswoman and socialite Natasha Poonawalla, the showstopping ensemble featured a flowing gold sari by Sabyasachi with a gold Schiaparelli bustier.

In addition to extravagant couture saris, designers in India have also pushed boundaries by experimenting in a range of ways.



The Raj Kilt, by the Little Shilpa brand, is described as "half kilt, half sari" and reflects the cross-cultural experiences of Indian designer Shilpa Chavan who studied in Britain.

Some of the most eye-catching and innovative exhibits include a sari adorned with sequins cut from old X-ray images from hospital waste and another in distressed denim.

But while the sari's potential for extravagance and creativity is on full display in the exhibition's selections, there are also examples of how it is being pressed into use to express ideas of identity and resistance.

Hundreds of thousands of members of the so-called Gulabi Gang, a group set up to fight domestic violence, including sexual abuse and child marriage in rural India, have adopted bright pink saris along with bamboo sticks as the symbol of their movement.

Also included in the show is a purple silk sari embroidered with sequins and crystals by the brand Papa Don't Preach.

After the label posted a photograph of the sari being worn by the author and comedian ALOK, who founded the #DeGenderFashion movement, it decided to remove the "womenswear" wording from their messaging.

har/jj/pvh

Before and after images show how Russia's invasion has shattered the city of Bakhmut

Grace Eliza Goodwin,Ryan Pickrell,Charles R. Davis
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Destroyed buildings in the city of Bakhmut on February 27, 2023.

AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images

Before and after images show the devastation in Ukraine's city of Bakhmut.


The 10-month battle for the eastern city has been the longest and deadliest in the war in Ukraine.


Bakhmut was once flush with greenery. Now it's a gray city littered with skeletal buildings and brown earth.

The Ukrainian city of Bakhmut has been all but completely destroyed. Homes, schools, and businesses have been blown out by months of ceaseless combat and reduced to rubble, and most of the city's people are long gone. What remains is a scarred landscape where thousands of lives have ended.

Satellite images from Maxar, released May 17, highlight the scale of the destruction caused by the battle for Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.

The horrific fight that began last summer is the longest and bloodiest battle in the war in Ukraine. The battle has seen some of the hardest and most intense fighting and tremendous losses, and it's not over. Neither side is backing away.

The Russian military and Wagner mercenaries began their siege of the city last August — though it faced regular shelling before that — and have been fighting to take control of the city for ten months. The Ukrainian army put up a fierce resistance, but it's unclear if they can hold out against the Russian assault.

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Wagner for its fighting in Bakhmut, crediting them with the "liberation" of the ruined city. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disputed that, with independent observers saying that the fight for control continues, though he conceded that the city exists now "only in our hearts."

While the city's ultimate fate remains uncertain, the following images capture how a thriving town of roughly 73,000 people became a war-torn, bloodstained battlefield.

Bakhmut was once a beautiful city full of leafy green trees until it became the target of Russia's ambitions and a symbol of Ukraine's resistance.

Bakhmut in May 2022 before the battle for the city began.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

Nearly all the trees and greenery have been wiped out. Bombs, artillery, and incendiary weapons, among other things, have laid waste to the city.

The same section of the city as seen in May 2023 satellite images.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

A school and apartment buildings in Bakhmut, now the site of brutal urban combat, were surrounded by grassy lawns and trees.

This section of the city was also lush and green.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

The same section of the city now looks like a brown and battered wasteland.

A section of the city as it looks now.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

Bakhmut's university buildings and radio tower were surrounded by homes before the war.

A section of Bakhmut seen from an aerial view in May 2022, before the battle for the city began.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

The university and surrounding buildings are now nearly unrecognizable. The buildings, now skeletal, have been devastated in the war. The radio tower now lays on its side.

Those same buildings as they look in May 2023.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

A theatre and surrounding stores in Bakhmut were bustling with cars before the battle began.

A closer look at a section of the city before the battle.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

Some trees remain in the city but most of its buildings have been destroyed as the Ukrainians and Russians trade fire daily. As a high-casualty fight, the battle has been described as a "meat grinder" by Ukrainian and Russian troops and "slaughter-fest" by outside military observers.

Roofs have been blasted away and reveal the guts of the theatre and stores.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

In an aerial view of the entire city from May 2022, Bakhmut had corridors of greenery between buildings.

The entire city as it looked before the battle began.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

The city's buildings now appear brown and much of the greenery within city limits is gone. Bakhmut has been a focal point for front-line combat in a war that, in a span of six months between December and May, claimed an estimated 20,000 Russian lives. The Ukrainian defense has also come at a heavy cost.

An aerial view of the entire city as it looks now.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

'Playing War': Conflict Militarises Ukraine Children

By Joshua Melvin and Elizabeth Striy

May 23, 2023
BARRON'S

AFP is republishing this story which has been selected by the agency's chief editors as one of the best of the week. 

Picture by Sergei Supinsky. 

Video by Elizabeth Striy

The boys wear second-hand helmets and their guns cannot kill, but the war they play at in a verdant Ukraine field is real for them and carries consequences.

Over a year into Russia's invasion, the fighting has seeped into Ukrainian children's games and worldviews, impacting them in ways they will carry forever.

"I really enjoy playing war. I want to grow up to be a real war hero," said 10-year-old Maksym Mudrak, wearing child-size battle fatigues, a beat-up helmet too big for his head and a plastic toy gun.

Maksym's father, who was not in the military, was killed near Kyiv in the war's early days after going out to deliver supplies to volunteers defending against Russia's attack, the family said.

The boy's grandmother said he became steadily more interested in war following the invasion and the loss of his 40-year-old dad Oleksiy Mudrak on March 4, 2022.

"He was very, very affected by his father's death. Maksym constantly thinks about him. He goes to the cemetery and cries," 72-year-old Valentyna Mudrak said.

Maksym sees becoming a soldier as a way to preserve his father's memory and has a clear idea who is responsible for the war that took him.

"I treat Russians like my worst enemies," said Maksym, who lives with his grandmother near Kyiv in Stoyanka.

The war has brought staggering destruction and suffering to Ukrainians, and for children that has meant losing loved ones, being ripped from schools or homes and exposure to horror.

Also, over 500 children have been killed since the invasion, according to UN statistics.



Psychologist Kateryna Goltsberg said children have long played war in conflict situations and it is both a reflection and a means to process their experiences.

And while all Ukrainian children are impacted by the war in some way, it's not clear whether those experiences will result in life-long trauma.

"War changes us. But we have to realise that there is such thing as post-traumatic stress growth, when a person who has survived traumatic events... becomes stronger," she said.

The confrontation on the front line has changed the way children interact on the playground.

Lesya Shevchenko said her eight-year-old daughter Dana used to have just one question for the children she met in public: "What's your name? Let's go play."


But on a family trip to the beach in Bulgaria after the war began, Shevchenko was stunned when she realised her daughter was asking where potential playmates were from.

When children said they were Russian, Dana would turn silently and walk away.

"I just think that I don't want to talk to them, that's all. Probably because I think that all Russians are a certain way, because in my eyes they are evil," Dana said.

Her mother, a 49-year-old dentist, said this was not behaviour she had taught, noting that she has told her children they cannot hate everyone from Russia.

Yet Dana has been left traumatised by the war –- shelling has made her fearful of loud noises and she has been afraid to leave the protection of a bomb shelter.

Dana's mother herself is willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Russians clear about their opposition to Moscow's seizure of Ukrainian land in Crimea and the eastern Donbas region.


"If a person says that 'this is a very controversial topic', then I won't talk to them. There is no grey area there –- only black and white. We were attacked," Shevchenko said.

Other parents see it as their duty to teach their children a view of Russia that leaves no room for doubt.

Iryna Kovalenko has taught her children since the invasion that Russians are collectively responsible for the war and those who are good have to prove it.

Her six-year-old daughter Sofiya summarised by saying: "My mother told me they are launching bombs into Ukraine from Russia."

"Mum also said that (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is very bad. And he beat cats and dogs when he was a child. And then, when he grew up, he turned to people," she added.

Kovalenko, a 33-year-old nurse, views her words to her children as a warning.

"One way or another, they should know who they live next to. Ukraine will always have a border –- Russia will always be our neighbour."

One of the other boys who plays war with Maksym, the child whose father was killed in the war's opening weeks, has taken that message a step further.

"I really want to somehow take revenge for the soldiers who died at the front," said 13-year-old Andriy Shyrokyh, who wore battle fatigues and homemade body armour.

He dreams of becoming a soldier, and says he has absolutely no interest in going to school –- unless it is to learn military tactics.

"I want to do to the Russians the same as they did to us," the boy said.

© Agence France-Presse