Author: lauraspinney
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The anatomy of terror
WHAT makes someone prepared to die for an idea? This is a question that concerns anthropologist Scott Atran of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Resolution of Intractable Conflicts. Research he has led in some of the most embattled regions of the world, including in Mosul, suggests the answer comes in two parts. Jihadists fuse…
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Pope Francis champions Huntington’s disease
YOSBELY Soto Soto shares a corrugated iron hut with her two sons on the shores of Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo. The heat inside has been unbearable since her husband left her a few years ago, taking the air conditioner with him. The 32-year-old has to beg for food to feed herself and her children, something made…
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Radio New Zealand on Pale Rider
Radio New Zealand’s Kim Hill picked up on Pale Rider for her Saturday Morning show on 22 July 2017. To listen click here: Laura Spinney – Pale Rider
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Nous les Français, ne devons pas oublier comment accueillir un voisin en détresse
D’ICI 2019, le gouvernement va créer 12,500 places pour les réfugiés et les demandeurs d’asile. “C’est une connerie”, dit Michel Sitbon. “On en a besoin maintenant. Avons-nous oublié, nous les Français, comment accueillir un voisin en détresse?”… Cette tribune a été publiée sur le Huffington Post France le 21 juillet 2017. Cliquez ici pour lire l’article dans…
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Inside the minds of torturers
WHEN Françoise Sironi was 6, her grandfathers met for the first time. One was Italian, the other from the French frontier region of Alsace. She remembers the conversation turning serious, then being mystified when the men fell weeping into each other’s arms. They had discovered they fought in the same first-world-war battle – but on…
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On death and glaciers
IN September 2013, I came home from the Italian Alps and asked my husband if he thought that, as a science journalist, I’d be covering the science of the First World War for the next four years. I had just attended what was surely the last funeral for unknown soldiers fallen in that war. There…
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The Pope and Huntington’s disease
FRANKLIN Soto will develop Huntington’s disease (HD), a lethal genetic disorder that causes progressive mental and physical deterioration and for which there is no cure. His two sisters already have it. His wife died of the disease last year, and his three-year-old daughter has a 75 per cent chance of developing it. Franklin’s was among…
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The tantalising truth about twins
MY godson George, aged eight, is a non-identical twin. He’s not alone. That’s not a gag from #kidswritejokes. He obviously has his twin William to keep him company, not to mention their younger brother Henry who, as George put it, “would have been a triplet if Mum hadn’t put him in a special fridge”… This…