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Politics

14 June 2010

In all this the vuvuzela reminds us that soccer is a black and working-class sport in a country whose cricket and rugby teams, among the best in the world, are still very much the extension of a privileged and mostly white sports infrastructure. More…

Jadwat was unreliable. It hadn’t been true then. There had been no rain at her wedding. Today there was no sunshine. The reservoir of these tears had accumulated in the course of a difficult year. If she was distracted while driving, or couldn’t add two numbers together, or misplaced the key to her surgery, the tears found their way to the surface. They embarrassed her. More…

The airport is deserted at two in the morning, Pyongyang time. A tractor stands on the apron behind an unroofed, unpainted cargo container. It hisses into life as he passes into the custody of the ground guards. The turboprop, which has brought him all the way from Karachi, spins down its engine. He looks back at the aircraft. More…