It was August 2017 when the world really started to take note of Myanmar’s Rohingya people. Descendants of Arab Muslims who speak a different language to most other people in Myanmar, the Rohingya had up to that point lived mainly in the northern Rakhine state, coexisting uneasily alongside the majority Buddhist population.
But the Rohingya were reviled by many as illegal immigrants and treated by the then government as stateless people. In 2017, when violence broke out in the north of the state, security forces supported by Buddhist militia launched a “clearance operation” that forced more than 1 million Rohingya people to flee their homes and the country, actions that many onlookers saw as ethnic cleansing. Most Rohingya were driven into vast refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh, where they have remained ever since.
The Guardian global development reporter Kaamil Ahmed has been covering the Rohingya crisis for almost a decade, making multiple trips to the region. For this week’s Big Story, Kaamil returned to Cox’s Bazar where, in two moving reports, he details how disease and illness are widespread in the ramshackle camps, and how the desperation to escape has resulted in rich business for people traffickers.
And, with Myanmar now controlled by a military junta and introducing a deeply unpopular conscription drive (as Rebecca Ratcliffe and Aung Naing Soe report), the prospect of any Rohingya people being able to return home to Rakhine state remains as distant as it did in 2017.
It’s not just global warming that’s driving the growth in destructive wildfires. Better land management is the first step to mitigating the risks.
Some 7,300 years ago, the Kikai volcano in Japan produced up to 457 cubic kilometres of ash and other debris.
A study suggests that the asthma treatment omalizumab can reduce the risk of dangerous allergic reactions to peanuts and other foods.
Times Literary Supplement (March 6, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Talking about their generation’ – James Campbell and Douglas Field on the Beats including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; Alexandra Reza on Frantz Fanon; Miranda France on Montserrat Roig….
Country Life Magazine – March 5, 2024: The latest issue features The Country Life Top 100 – Britain’s leading exponents of country-house architecture, interior design, gardens and specialist services…
Welcome to the eighth edition of our guide to Britain’s leading exponents of country-house architecture, interior design, gardens and specialist services
In the first of this new series, Kate Green celebrates Dame Miriam Rothschild’s remarkable contribution to the nation as a pioneer of wildflower gardening
Following in the slipstream of swimming cattle, Joe Gibbs enjoys safe passage to the Isle of Skye courtesy of the world’s last manual turntable ferry
Jack Watkins is in the saddle for a canter through 100 years of the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival’s Blue Riband event, the Gold Cup
Works by a whole host of great artists are more accessible than you might imagine. Carla Passino talks to leading art dealers about the Old Masters you could collect
The artistic director admires a religious fresco that encourages contemplation and reflection
Carla Carlisle reflects on the life of Karen Blixen after visiting the author’s former home in Kenya
The restoration of Boston Manor House in Greater London offers a fascinating insight into changing tastes, reveals Charles O’Brien
March can be the month of all weathers, warns Lia Leendertz
Jack Watkins goes in search of the elusive, enchanting woodlark
Marion Mako visits Stancombe Park, Gloucestershire — Waugh’s garden inspiration for Brideshead
Melanie Johnson harnesses the subtle depth of flavour of leeks
Hemlock is a pretty addition to riverbanks, but its charm ends there, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee
Simon Lester shares the thrill of an encounter with the secretive native white-clawed crayfish
Patterned or pastel? Hetty Lintell showcases the finest waistcoats
Trailing Trump in polls and facing doubts about his age, the President voices defiant confidence in his prospects for reëlection.
By Evan Osnos
One night in 2014, a group of young men from a rural teachers’ college vanished. Since then, their families have fought for justice.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (March 1, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Yakety-Yak’ – In “Language City”, Ross Perlin chronicles some of the precious traditions hanging on in New York, the world’s most linguistically diverse metropolis…
The feisty title character of her new book, “Ferris,” has a sharp eye for detail, and so, its author hopes, does she. Meanwhile, she is on an Alice McDermott reading jag.
In “Language City,” the linguist Ross Perlin chronicles some of the precious traditions hanging on in the world’s most linguistically diverse metropolis.
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will travel to one of Jupiter’s largest moons to look for evidence of conditions that could support life.
The Large Hadron Collider hasn’t seen any new particles since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Here’s what researchers are trying to do about it.
Figuring out how the human body can withstand underwater pressure has been a problem for over a century, but a ragtag band of divers is experimenting with hydrogen to find out.
Boomers Daily 