A local police camp in India was set on fire by a mob on Saturday, just hours after the alleged rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl came to light.

The girl’s family from eastern Indian state of West Bengal had earlier filed a complaint with the local police station that she failed to return home following her tuition classes on Friday evening, according to news agency Press Trust of India.

The body of the nine-year-old girl from Joynagar in the state’s South 24 Parganas district was found in a nearby pond in the early hours of Saturday.

“She came to my shop in the local market around 5pm on her way back home from the tuition classes. But when I returned home at night, I was told that she never reached home,” the girl’s father told reporters.

“We started searching for her. Later her body was found around one kilometre from our home,” he said, according to the Hindustan Times.

Villagers allege that the girl was raped and murdered, accusing the police of failing to act promptly on their initial complaint.

This comes just weeks after a 31-year-old trainee doctor was raped and murdered at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in West Bengal’s capital city Kolkata, sparking widespread protests across the nation.

The state has witnessed thousands of protests over the last two months — some of which are still ongoing — demanding justice for the victim and safety for healthcare workers.

Meanwhile, when police entered the village to recover the girl’s body, they were heckled, and an angry mob ransacked a police outpost before setting it on fire. Women also took to the streets armed with lathis, brooms, and kitchen utensils.

“They also vandalised several vehicles parked outside the outpost and the policemen were forced to leave the premises,” an official told PTI.

Locals demanded action against police officers who allegedly responded late to the complaint.

A large police force was sent to the village to quell the mob of more than 200 people with tear gas shells.

Police deny allegations of negligence, saying that one person had already been arrested in connection with the case.

“So far, one person has been arrested. It remains to be seen if anyone else is involved. Efforts are underway to normalise the situation in the area. That is our priority,” a senior officer said, according to The Indian Express.

“We have identified and arrested the accused and he has confessed too. We have taken each step and acted promptly. Still if people have allegations we will surely look into it as well,” he said.

Protests demanding safety for women continued across West Bengal this week, coinciding with the start of the 10-day-long Hindu festival of Durga Puja.

Opposition political parties were quick to condemn the Trinamool Congress-run state government under chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

“Which Durga shall we worship if our Durga at home is not safe? It is all because of Mamata Banerjee. She has spread a message that [the police] not take FIR easily,” BJP leader Sukanto Majumdar said.

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The year was 1970 and Johnny Cash wanted to perform a hangover lament called “Sunday Morning Coming Down” on his primetime television show. ABC network executives were nervous about a line in the song: “I’m wishin’, Lord, that I was stoned.” Couldn’t Mr Cash change “stoned” to “home”? No, Mr Cash would not. As the cameras rolled in the Nashville theatre and the Man in Black delivered the line, he looked up to the balcony where the song’s writer was sitting — Kris Kristofferson.

Kristofferson, who has died aged 88, broke the Nashville mould. Songs such as “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Me and Bobby McGee” brought emotional daring and depth to country music, better known for folksy sentimentality and conservatism. Rarely satisfied with his work, including a successful Hollywood side-career, he was less sure of his achievements than his admirers. They were effusive. According to one of his idols, Bob Dylan: “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.”

Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson grew up in an officer-class military family. He excelled at sports at his Californian high school and had two prizewinning essays published in The Atlantic magazine. In 1958, he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford university to study English literature. There he fell hard for William Blake, from whom he learnt, in Kristofferson’s words, “if you buried your talent, sorrow and desperation would pursue you throughout life”.

He wrote most of a novel while in Britain: its rejection by a New York editor wounded him severely. He also recorded songs in London as Kris Carson, but the “Yank at Oxford”, as he was cornily promoted, came to naught. In 1960, he joined the US army as a helicopter pilot. To his parents’ anger, he left in 1965 to try his hand as a Nashville songwriter. With a young family to support, including medical bills for one of his children, he took an irregular variety of jobs, from oil-rig helicoptering to record-studio janitor. 

Country’s great maverick, Johnny Cash, became his mentor. He brought Kristofferson out to perform with him at the Newport folk festival in 1969 and wrote the sleeve notes for his protege’s self-titled debut album the following year. It featured “Me and Bobby McGee”, a beautifully tender elegy about parted hobo lovers, and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, perhaps the most romantic song about a fleeting sexual encounter ever penned. 

Kristofferson could combine vivid characterisation, tantalising scenarios, deep feelings and philosophical epigrams within the brief compass of a song. “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” from “Me and Bobby McGee”, was worthy of Dylan. Other country songwriters shared his literary sophistication, such as Bobbie Gentry and Jimmy Webb. But Kristofferson was coloured by rock music and the counterculture too. The singer Merle Haggard called him “Nashville’s own hippie”.

His songs were covered by acts ranging from Frank Sinatra to Janis Joplin. His own recordings, sung in craggy drawl, made him a big star in the 1970s. Alongside the likes of Haggard and Cash, he represented “outlaw country”, a challenge to Nashville’s squaresville character. He and his second wife, the singer Rita Coolidge, were a golden couple who released a series of joint albums until their divorce in 1980.

Kristofferson’s good looks — bearded, tousle-haired, redolent of outdoor ruggedness and late nights indoors — attracted attention from Hollywood, home of the beautiful people. He brought a square-jawed charisma to films by Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese. Music critics complained that acting was a distraction from music, a concern that niggled at him. A persistent sense of discontent (“that old familiar pain,” as he sang in “Best of All Possible Worlds”) fuelled the heavy drinking and infidelities that wrecked his first two marriages. 

He sobered up after hitting rock bottom on the set of A Star Is Born in 1976, a box office hit with Barbra Streisand in which he played the lead but hated making. Both his film and music careers headed south in the 1980s, but Kristofferson’s personal life reached a state of calm with marriage to his third wife Lisa Meyers in 1983 (who survives him, as do his eight children). He formed a supergroup, The Highwaymen, with fellow outlaws Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in 1985 and continued working as a solo artist up to 2021.

“Never’s just the echo of forever,” he declared in the song “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends”. The laureate of the break-up song leaves behind an imperishable body of work.

A FLIGHT attendant has revealed the types of passenger he hates the most – and it happens before travellers even get on board.

“Gate lice” is the derogatory term give to those passengers who lurk around the airport gate well before it’s time to actually start boarding.

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It seems the phrase originated in a 2005 FlyerTalk discussion forum where one user coined the phrase to denote those who wait close to the gate so they can board as early as possible and ensure they get plenty of overhead bin space.

Brian Hart Hoffman, who was a flight attendant for eight years with US Airways and Alaska Airlines, told the Thrillist: “I absolutely hate gate lice.

“There is no need for it and it absolutely hinders the flow of boarding.”

He added those people who engage in this behaviour were making themselves “appear like [they] are more important than anyone else flying.”

Brian said that not only can gate lice delay take-off by stopping people from boarding but they can also prevent people from getting off the incoming flight.

He said: “Some of the dedicated ‘lice’ are in place and blocking things while the airplane is being deplaned from the inbound flight.”

Other experts agree with Brian’s point of view, saying that gate lice can cause delays to both people getting on or off a flight.

Flight attendant Rich Henderson, who is also the creator of Two Guys on a Plane said that gate lice sometimes also prevent the crew or cleaners from getting on a plane, also causing delays.

Samantha Facteau, a spokesperson for Delta Air Lines, said crowding the gate can make it difficult for those who need assistance to reach the gate and for those with mobility devices to get by.

Uncover Mental Health Counselling psychologist Kristie Tse said that “crowding the gate often stems from a mix of anxiety and a desire for control.”

She added: “Individuals may feel an overwhelming urge to secure their position, fearing they might miss out or face consequences if they don’t act quickly.

“This behaviour can indicate underlying insecurities or a lack of trust in the process.”

Frequent traveller Pip Davidson said that for him, anxiety is definitely a motivator as he gets stressed and is “hypersensitive” to crowds.

He said: “The actions and behaviour of a crowd [at the airport] can be overwhelming and trigger heightened anxiety that causes me to feel more alert and more worried.”

As a way to cope with this, he lingers by the gate before boarding.

Pip also noticed that his “gate anxiety” was triggered by other gate lice.

He said there was a “ripple effect” where numerous people start to head towards the gate.

Pip said that once one person started to head towards the gate, “that triggers another person to worry that they’re being cut in line, and that causes another person to have the same worry.”

SECRET CABIN CREW WORDS

Flight attendants have a special language they use to talk about passengers, including the ones they find attractive.

There are a number of other secret phrases used by pilots and cabin crew too, some serious and others less so.

• Cropdusting: If a passenger is being very rude and difficult, then it’s not unheard of for a flight attendant to break wind and ‘cropdust’ past the offender.
• Code Adam: This is used by airport staff to alert other staff of a missing child, in honour of Adam Walsh, a child who was abducted in a department store in 1981.
• 7500: If a pilot “squawks 7500” it means the plane has been hijacked, or a hijacking is a threat.
• Crosscheck: If you hear this phrase, usually made by senior cabin crew, it means that the emergency slides attached to each door have been deactivated.

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By Andy Lee Roth and Steve Macek

The power of news is often described using visual metaphors. Good journalism is said to be illuminating, meaning it provides clarity and insight; exemplary reporting is praised for “shining light” on a subject or “bringing to light” crucial facts and original perspectives. And the concept of “framing,” a fundamental element of critical media literacy, portrays news as a “window” to the world—yet another visual metaphor.

Extending these metaphors of vision and illumination, the independent news reports identified and vetted by college students and highlighted by Project Censored in its annual presentation the year’s most important but underreported stories are rays of light shining through a heavily slatted window. Each of these independent news reports addresses an issue that has otherwise been dimly lit or altogether obscured by corporate news outlets.

The shading slats are built from the corporate media’s concentrated ownership, reliance on advertising, relationship to political power, and narrow definitions of who and what count as “newsworthy.” Censorship, whether overt or subtle, establishes the angle of the slats, admitting more or less light from outside. Put another way, independent reporting on these topics—light shining through the slats—represents the influence of independent journalism to challenge the “mainstream” news media’s exclusive worldview.

In 1920, Walter Lippmann, a leading media critic of his era, issued a clarion call: “The news about the news needs to be told,” Lippmann wrote. Since 1976, college students working with Project Censored have done just that. Each year students and faculty participating in the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program identify and vet independent news stories on issues that have either been marginalized or blockaded by corporate news media.

One fundamental purpose of the annual Top 25 story list is to draw greater attention to important issues that we only know about because of intrepid reporting by independent journalists and news organizations. From activism to reform outdated laws that criminalize HIV to the economic costs of gun violence and the discovery of toxic “forever chemicals” in rainwater, each of the stories highlighted by Project Censored is important in its own right and represents an issue on which the public might be motivated to act, were it better informed.

But it is also important to grasp the Project’s 2022-23 story list as the latest installment in an ongoing effort to identify systemic gaps in so-called “mainstream” (i.e., corporate) news coverage. Examining public issues that independent journalists and outlets have reported but which fall outside the scope of corporate news coverage makes it possible to document in specific detail how corporate news media leave the public in the dark by marginalizing or blockading crucial issues, limiting political debate, and promoting corporate views and interests. To Project Censored’s existing database of 1,175 news topics and stories neglected by the establishment press, State of the Free Press 2024 adds twenty-five new data points.

Examining connections between stories within this year’s Top 25 list can be a first step in recognizing patterns of omission or marginalization in corporate framing of what is newsworthy. One of the most obvious of these omissions is the corporate news media’s apparent reluctance to cover the grinding consequences of immense, systemic economic inequalities, as highlighted by independent press reporting on record-high corporate profits, a looming debt crisis for the world’s poorest nations, and the reality that nearly half of all unhoused people in the United States are employed.

Another major theme of independent journalism evident in this year’s story list is the corrosive influence of the fossil fuel industry. In efforts to maintain their economic interests and political influence, fossil fuel investors are suing national governments to thwart climate regulations and using donations to universities to skew climate and energy research, even as climate change has forced entire tribal towns to relocate, and new research further documents the threats of oil and gas extraction to human health, including especially mothers and young children.

Thanks to the work of independent journalists, we also know that rainforest carbon offset programs—as endorsed by Shell, Disney, and other internationally renowned corporations—are often “worthless” and that the fossil fuel industry was not alone in hiding its knowledge of the climate crisis from the public: Electric utility companies have also been knowingly spreading misinformation about climate change for decades.

Project Censored’s 2024 story list also includes a cluster of stories that illuminate the nuanced realities of censorship in the twenty-first century. Big Tech companies, including Google, Meta, and Microsoft, are hiring former employees of US and Israeli intelligence agencies for senior positions, affording them significant influence over online communication, commerce, and information gathering; US government agencies have pressured Twitter to constrain political content on the popular social networking service; and leaked Department of Homeland Security documents revealed new details of its efforts to ramp up censorship of dangerous online speech through the development of a Disinformation Governance Board. 

This year’s Top 25 Censored story list represents the collective effort of 220 students from twelve college and university campuses across the United States who have developed and engaged their critical media literacy skills by identifying, vetting, and summarizing important but under-reported independent news stories. They are the forty-eighth cohort of students who have worked with Project Censored to expose and publicize what its founder, Carl Jensen, called “The News That Didn’t Make the News—and Why.”

Perhaps one or more of the featured stories will motivate you to join the independent journalists, student researchers, and Project Censored in speaking out about these important but often overshadowed issues. Focusing attention on what Lippmann called “the news about the news” helps to expose the operation of the “slats” that frequently filter our news and privilege elite interests. Removing these filters allows the light of independent journalism that serves the public good to shine more brightly.

Note: The above material was adapted from Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2024, Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff, eds. (Fair Oaks, CA and New York: The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press, 2023).

Welcome back. Ukraine has scaled back its war aims. Although it remains committed to recovering the lands seized by Russia over the past decade, it regrettably lacks the manpower, weaponry and western support to do it.

Ukraine’s new strategy — presented by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to US leaders last week — is to ask its allies to strengthen its hand, militarily and diplomatically, to bring Russia to the negotiating table. 

Western diplomats and increasingly Ukrainian officials have come round to the view that meaningful security guarantees could form the basis of a negotiated settlement in which Russian retains de facto, but not de jure, control of all or part of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies. I’m at ben.hall@ft.com

Land for Nato membership

To be clear, neither Kyiv nor its supporters are proposing to recognise Russia sovereignty over the one-fifth of Ukrainian territory it has illegally grabbed since 2014. To do so would encourage further Russian aggression and severely undermine the international legal order.

What is envisaged is tacit acceptance that those lands should be regained through diplomatic means in the future. Even that, understandably, is a sensitive issue for Ukrainians, especially when presented as the basis of a compromise with Moscow. Ceding land to gain Nato membership may be the “only game in town”, as a western diplomat told us, but for Ukrainians it remains a taboo, in public at least.

What is being more openly discussed is the nature and timing of the security guarantees Ukraine will need to underpin a settlement.

In Washington Zelenskyy restated his pitch for accelerated membership of Nato.

The problem is the US is against moving beyond the agreed position of the alliance that Ukraine’s “future is in Nato”, that its accession is on an “irreversible path” and that it will be invited to join “when allies agree and conditions are met”. It fears that offering a mutual defence guarantee under the Nato treaty’s Article 5 before the war is over would simply draw in the US and its allies. 

But some of Ukraine’s allies say this need not be the case. “There are ways of solving that,” Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian who stood down as Nato secretary-general this week, told my colleague Henry Foy in a farewell Lunch with the FT interview.

Stoltenberg pointed out that the security guarantees that the US provides to Japan do not cover the Kuril Islands, four of which Japan claims as its own but which are controlled by Russia after being seized by the Soviet Union in 1945.

He also cited Germany, which joined Nato in 1955, despite being divided. Only West Germany was covered by the Nato umbrella. 

“When there is a will, there are ways to find the solution. But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border,” he said.

From Bonn to Kyiv

The West German model for Ukraine has been discussed in foreign policy circles for more than 18 months. 

Dan Fried, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, was one of the first to make the argument in this piece for Just Security. Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to Nato and Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Stoltenberg’s predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen and FT contributing editor Ivan Krastev have made similar arguments.

The idea is also gaining traction in official circles. 

“I don’t think that full restoration of control over the entire territory is a prerequisite,” Petr Pavel, the Czech president and a former Nato general, told Novinky a Právo newspaper.

“If there is a demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat [that] as temporary and accept Ukraine into Nato in the territory it will control at that time,” Pavel said.

Most proponents acknowledge that Moscow would hate this idea. Sceptics fear it could provoke an escalation. Nato membership would guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and allow it to pursue its western orientation, goals that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is determined to destroy.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument came from the US cold war historian Mary Sarotte in this piece for Foreign Affairs. 

Sarotte’s contention is that the terms of Nato membership can be adapted to suit individual circumstances. Norway pledged not to house a Nato base on its territory when it became a founding member. West Germany’s strategy was to make clear its borders were provisional. It had to tolerate division indefinitely but not accept it, and renounce the use of force to retake East Germany. 

Ukraine should, she wrote, define a military defensible border, agree to not permanently station troops or nuclear weapons on its territory unless threatened with attack, and renounce use of force beyond that border except in self-defence.

Nato membership under these terms would be presented to Moscow as a fait accompli, Sarotte added. But there would still be an implicit negotiation: “instead of a land-for-peace deal, the carrot would be no [Nato] infrastructure for peace”.

The bear does the poking

Other analysts argue West Germany is a bad parallel because its borders, though provisional, were recognised by both sides. In Ukraine they are being fought over every day.

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Foreign Policy’s Anchal Vohra last year “you have the potential of all kinds of problems emanating from the revisionism of both sides. For example, it will be up to Vladimir Putin to define Article 5, whether some of his poking falls below or above that threshold.’’ 

There is also the big question of whether the US, let alone its European allies, would be prepared to make the force commitments necessary to defend a Ukraine inside the alliance. While France has warmed to the idea of faster Ukraine Nato accession, German chancellor Olaf Scholz is firmly opposed, fearing his country could be drawn into another war against Russia.

In the US, the Biden administration has so far refused to budge on accelerating Kyiv’s membership. Would a Kamala Harris presidency treat it differently? Could Donald Trump imagine the West German model as part of his proposed “deal” to end the war? Could Zelenskyy sell it to his people?

There are many obstacles still on Kyiv’s Nato path. But the west patently lacks a strategy for Ukraine to prevail.

As Sarotte concludes, following the West German route “would be far preferable, for Ukraine and the alliance, than continuing to put off membership until Putin has given up his ambitions in Ukraine or until Russia has made a military breakthrough. This path would bring Ukraine closer to enduring security, freedom, and prosperity in the face of Russian isolation — in other words, towards victory.”

More on this topic

Russians do break: historical and cultural context for a prospective Ukrainian victory. For War on the Rocks, Ben Connable examines when and in what circumstances Russia might quit Ukraine

Ben’s pick of the week

‘Hizbollah is voiceless’: Lebanon’s most powerful force reels from loss of leader, by Raya Jalabi 

A FORMER homeless man who lived in a tent after his parent kicked him out revealed that he is now worth a whopping £5million.

Adam Pope transformed his life after admitting that he often found himself in trouble during his youth.

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The now-millionaire would regularly host illegal raves and joyride in cars.

He was no stranger to the police who almost threw him in jail after he was caught driving whilst disqualified several times.

Despite his illegal activities, Adam claimed that his parents did everything they could to keep him on the right path.

He said: “I came from a good background; my parents are still together. It’s not like I came from a broken home.”

However, at the age of 20, he was kicked out of his family home in Bolton after his parents became fed up with his behaviour.

Adam began sofa surfing at friends’ houses, but unfortunately, their parents soon grew tired of his disruptive behaviour as well.

He told Manchester Evening News: “I was on a self-destructive trail.

“I’ve always been a nice person – I was never a bad person – I just never knew why I was going down this path or what the cause was.”

With nowhere left to turn, he was forced to sleep on the streets where he would walk for hours “just to pass the time”.

He added: “By the end of the night, I would have walked 20 miles instead of going to sleep.”

Fearing for his safety on the streets, Adam would sleep in his parents’ back garden, ensuring he was out of sight by the time they woke up.

The millionaire Brit added: “I was paranoid about staying in the same place for any length of time.

“I would rarely stay in the same place every night. It became challenging.”

Eventually, he managed to take a tent from their garage, which he used to camp in a local woodland.

Despite his homelessness, Adam continued to attend college to finish his business course. 

Anything and everything would freak you out

Adam Pope

A lecturer confronted him about it after rumours about his living conditions spread.

“I had gone to college and I wasn’t far from finishing,” he said.

“I got there and one of my tutors went, ‘I heard you’re sleeping in a tent in the woods’.

“I got back from college and the very few belongings I had left had been stolen along with my assignments that were due in a few weeks. I couldn’t finish college.”

Adam slept rough for a total of six months, during which he recalled how terrifying “sleeping in the woods” can be.

He added: “All sorts go through your mind. There are all sorts of characters about.

“It was the winter and it was freezing. Anything and everything would freak you out.

“You could hear shuffling about and you would think, ‘What was that?’ and quickly get back in your tent.

“Sleeping was never a thing. You couldn’t switch off properly.

“But I knew I was better off in the tent compared to some of the other places I was in.”

BACK ON TRACK

Fortunately, Adam’s grandma learned about his situation and offered him a place to stay with her.

With a roof over his head, he began trying to get his life back on track and even managed to find employment.

However, it was short-lived after he was fired from several jobs over poor punctuality and other issues.

Failing to hold down jobs, his dad allowed him to work in his business as a tea boy.

This proved to be a humbling moment for the now 43-year-old, who decided he wanted more out of life.

At the age of 27, Adam started a financial services dispute company before going on to launch Spencer Churchill five years later, a law firm based in Bolton.

The company specialises in corporate law, commercial mediation, dispute resolution, employment law, real estate, intellectual property and private client services.

Incredibly, the business now turns over £5million.

Although the business is already hugely successful, Adam has no intention of slowing down – aiming to scale the firm even further in both revenue and size.

But the entrepreneur says he probably wouldn’t be in his position today if it weren’t for the hardships he’s had to overcome in life.

“It’s not where you started, it’s where you finish,” he added

“I’ve had a very difficult early few years. It would have ruined a lot of people.”