Monthly Archives: October 2015
Malala Yousafzai: ‘I want to become prime minister of my country’
On the eve of the release of a film about her life, Malala Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin, relive her remarkable journey from schoolgirl to ‘modern-day folk hero’ and the guilt he still feels about her attempted murder by the Taliban
On an overcast, anonymous morning, journalists assemble outside Claridge’s hotel in London. The plan is not to linger: a coach is to drive us to an undisclosed destination where Malala Yousafzai will be waiting. The security arrangements add edge to the existing sense of expectation at the prospect of meeting Malala Yousafzai and, in my case, her father. Malala, celebrated for her refusal to be silenced by the Taliban in her championship of girls’ education, is about to experience limelight of a different sort as a documentary about her life, He Named Me Malala, is released here. It’s an intimate, inquiring, moving film, directed by the Oscar-winning documentary-maker Davis Guggenheim, who directed An Inconvenient Truth, and it has earned a chorus of celebrity approval across the pond, where it opened earlier this month. Ellen DeGeneres, on her TV show, called Malala “incomparable, impressive, inspiring”. Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, sees her as “proof that one person can change the world”. And to Meryl Streep she is “a modern-day folk hero”. But the film reminds us that Malala is also an ordinary girl. Hollywood is a long way from Pakistan’s Swat valley, where she was born.
The coach stops outside a labyrinthine building in a rundown part of town. I feel as if I were in an unlikely dream and wonder if that’s how Malala feels every day. On the far side of a huge, echoing room, Malala and her father have been positioned on a sofa, like stowaways. A table of untouched drinks and snacks is in front of them. It’s 10am. As I walk in, they stand up – smiling. Malala is tiny – a surprise, because one thinks of her as larger than life. Her head is covered in a purple veil through which sunlight shines. With her sweet, wonky smile (bitter souvenir of the Taliban’s attack – her facial muscles are unable to rally on her left side), there is singularity mixed with what I am trying to resist describing as saintliness. I look down and notice elegant, salmon-pink sandals with little heels, scarlet varnish on every toe. At 18, a poised, uncowed figure, she has her own version of glamour. But what I notice most is the similarity between Malala and her father. They have the same twinkle, the same animation. Everything about 46-year-old Ziauddin Yousafzai is lively, down to his flourishing moustache. And in the film he does not hold back in describing the bond with his daughter as being like “one soul in two different bodies”. His story merges with hers.
What type of teacher are you?
A report has identified four kinds of teacher – idealists, practitioners, rationalists and moderates. Where do you fit?
Why did you become a teacher? Was it to a) improve society, b) help students, c) have a steady career or d) a bit of all three? If you wanted to improve society, you may be an idealist – one of the four teacher types outlined in a recent report. Researchers looked at teachers’ reasons for joining and leaving the profession, and identified four classifications from the results. The study notes, however, that teachers could have qualities from different categories over the course of their careers.
Related: Fact or fiction? The reasons teachers choose the job – and quit
US cutting Palestinian aid, says official | PNN (Major Fail by US!)
A US State Department official, travelling with Secretary of State John Kerry on a trip to Amman, confirmed there would be a cut.“The decision to reduce assistance to the Palestinian Authority was made this past spring,” he told reporters.“There were several factors contributing to this decision, including unhelpful actions taken by the Palestinians and constraints on our global assistance budget.”
After the fire, a familiar Irish story: we treat our Travellers as outcasts | Joe Joyce | Comment is free | The Guardian


We Irish like to see ourselves as a touch more moral than other nationalities, an odd legacy of the popular policy of neutrality during the second world war married to an older belief that we are more spiritual and empathetic than the crass materialists to our west and east.We tut-tut about American police shootings of poor African-Americans, Israel’s heavy-handed treatment of Palestinians, Hungary’s inhumane attitude towards Serbian refugees, and get misty-eyed about three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body lying on a Turkish holiday beach.But Tom Connors is not an African-American, a Palestinian, or a Syrian refugee; he’s not someone else’s problem. And we don’t really give enough of a tut about him to face down the visceral hatreds in our midst and treat our own outcasts with decency.
Feminism isn’t dead, despite all the assassination attempts | Laura Bates
The proclaiming of the ‘end of feminism’ by the Spectator and others is merely an attempt to deflect blame for problems society has failed to tackle
Feminism is dead. Long live feminism. The front page of the Spectator and a spate of other articles would have us believe the battle is won and we can now “move on”.
I can’t be the only one who thinks this is wonderful news. We highly strung, hand-wringing, over-sensitive, perpetually offended wilting violets can hang up our suffragette-coloured hats, stop combing Twitter in desperate search of minor criticism to weep about and finally stop hating all the men for long enough to get boyfriends. Rejoice!
Love wins: first Kentucky couple rejected by clerk exchange vows
April Miller and Karen Roberts marry on Saturday and have one request for guests – do not mention Kim Davis
April Miller and Karen Roberts stood before a minister on Saturday night, hand-in-hand, and said the two words they fought for months to exchange: “I will”.
The people packed into the room around them jumped into a standing ovation. They all wore matching rainbow buttons that read: #LoveWins.
Exclusive: UK nuclear deterrent to cost 167 billion pounds, far more than expected
Baby rescued from sea by Turkish fishermen after refugee boat capsizes | World news | The Guardian
Muhammad is now in good health and has since been released from a hospital in the provincial capital Izmir after initial treatment in Kusadasi.The rescuers said they helped 15 other people out of the water, adding that most of those floating the water were women crying for help, including one woman who was pregnant. They said that the group had been in the water for about five hours before they were found by the fishermen who then alerted the coastguard.Muhammed was since successfully reunited with his mother, 23-year-old Lorin Halef, who said that the smugglers had promised them a bigger boat than the one they had been forced to take in the end.“They put 30 people on the boat. They had told us that we would be going on a bigger boat. But when we got there, we saw that the boat was small,” Halef told Turkish reporters. “But by then it was too late to do anything. We wanted to go to Greece. We lived through a huge panic. But [the fishermen] saved us, I cannot thank them enough.”She also said that her husband Ihsan was still in Syria.
Source: Baby rescued from sea by Turkish fishermen after refugee boat capsizes | World news | The Guardian
You must be logged in to post a comment.