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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Brenna Ehrlich explains how people’s remains were stolen and sold after being donated to Harvard Medical School for science, and speaks to the families who may have been affected.
(Rolling Stone, approx 18 mins reading time)
On June 14, nearly a year after that summer night they had scattered their mother’s ashes, MacTaggart turned on the TV. Harvard was splashed all over the local news. Cedric Lodge, the manager of a morgue at Harvard Medical School, had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania — along with several others — on charges of conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods. The broadcast went on to explain that those so-called goods were body parts from corpses donated to the Anatomical Gift Program — the very same program to which Mazzone had proudly donated her body. “I was having a heart attack,” MacTaggart says. “I had no idea what was going on.” Her first instinct was to call the university, but it was nighttime. When she returned home from work the next day, there was a certified letter in her mailbox that confirmed her worst fears. “We cannot rule out the potential that Adele Mazzone’s remains may have been impacted,” the printed letter read. “We are deeply sorry for the pain and uncertainty caused by this troubling news.”
An interview with the US pop superstar who was named Time’s Person of the Year after smashed industry records this year with both her tour and its accompanying film.
(Time, approx 31 mins reading time)
Her epic career-retrospective tour recounting her artistic “eras,” which played 66 dates across the Americas this year, is projected to become the biggest of all time and the first to gross over a billion dollars; analysts talked about the “Taylor effect,” as politicians from Thailand, Hungary, and Chile implored her to play their countries. Cities, stadiums, and streets were renamed for her. Every time she came to a new place, a mini economic boom took place as hotels and restaurants saw a surge of visitors. In releasing her concert movie, Swift bypassed studios and streamers, instead forging an unusual pact with AMC, giving the theater chain its highest single-day ticket sales in history.
There are at least 10 college classes devoted to her, including one at Harvard; the professor, Stephanie Burt, tells TIME she plans to compare Swift’s work to that of the poet William Wordsworth. Friendship bracelets traded by her fans at concerts became a hot accessory, with one line in a song causing as much as a 500% increase in sales at craft stores. When Swift started dating Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chief and two-time Super Bowl champion, his games saw a massive increase in viewership. (Yes, she somehow made one of America’s most popular things—football—even more popular.) And then there’s her critically hailed songbook—a catalog so beloved that as she rereleases it, she’s often breaking chart records she herself set. She’s the last monoculture left in our stratified world.
Last December, seven chimpanzees escaped from their enclosure at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. In this gripping but heartbreaking read, Imogen West-Knights brilliantly recounts the 72 hours that followed.
(The Guardian, approx 34 mins reading time)
Seven chimpanzees on the loose require a very different approach. Chimpanzees are big and smart, they are adept climbers and can move at up to 25mph. For the humans catching the chimps, the experience can be emotionally challenging, even existentially confusing, in a way that returning an escaped cobra to its cage is not. Great apes, the name given to large primates like chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas, are so like us. They hold hands, embrace and kiss one another, and the meanings of these gestures seem to be the same as when we do it. They express fear, delight, surprise, affection. And yet they are not us. The Dutch zoologist Frans de Waal, who has more than 50 years of experience with chimpanzees, suggests in his seminal book Chimpanzee Politics that we cannot help but feel a sense of unease around the animal. How should we relate to them, these creatures we know to be wild, but who look like we do? Last month, I stood with a zookeeper at a zoo in the south of England, watching a group of chimpanzees sun themselves in their enclosure. “I find them terrifying,” she admitted. “They’re so human. Who is looking at who?”
What’s the weirdest crisp flavour you’ve ever tried? Amelia Tait investigates the decisions behind creating a crisp flavour, and who decides which country gets which crisps.
(The Guardian, approx 18 mins reading time)
Walkers began manufacturing in Britain in 1948; it was acquired by the US crisp company Frito-Lay in 1989, and today Lay’s are available in more than 200 countries, from Argentina to Vietnam. Some varieties require little explanation – Poutine Lay’s are available only in Canada because the gravy-soaked chips are not Brazil’s national dish. Yet the crisp aisles of the world are stacked with mysteries. Why are Salt & Pepper Pringles favoured by Norwegians, and Oven-Roasted Chicken Doritos only available in Korea? Why does Europe love paprika so much? Pringles, like Lay’s, is not even a century old, yet its tubes are available in 80 countries. Both brands have conquered the world. With billions behind them, surely they know untold secrets about our national tastes and temperaments? Peggy says that to understand why, for example, paprika crisps proliferate on German shelves, you have to understand immigration history. But I don’t hear her secrets until the end of my journey.
Twenty years after its release, Jessica M. Goldstein writes about how The Killers’ signature hit became a generation’s anthem.
(The New York Times, approx 7 mins reading time)
The track is the centerpiece of the Killers’ oeuvre and the star of their new greatest hits album, “Rebel Diamonds,” which is full of hits with lyrics that are basically tattooed onto the hippocampuses of even the most casual fans — “All These Things That I’ve Done” (“I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier”), the synthy-sad “Smile Like You Mean It” and gender-bendy “Somebody Told Me” (“you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had…”). But none of those singles comes close to matching the ongoing ubiquity of “Mr. Brightside.” “We’ve never not played that song live, because it’s stood the test of time and I’m proud of it,” Flowers told Spin in 2015. “I never get bored of singing it.” (A representative for Flowers said he was unable to speak for this article because he was in the studio.)
One detective’s quest to track down an international network of romance fraudsters, brilliantly told by Stuart McGurk.
(New Statesman, approx 30 mins reading time)
After that, the plot thickened: one multinational network would link to another, and another still, each with its own fake persona and modus operandi (many remain under investigation, and cannot be reported). Within months, Mason realised she was looking at the manufacture of infatuation on an industrial scale. The networks even had WhatsApp group chats, where fraudsters sought each other’s advice, like teenage girls perfecting a reply to a boy. Even within this river of illicit money, one bank account stood out: funds from several of the networks seemed to flow through it, a tributary before it split. The account holder: Alan George Baldwin.
To the untrained eye, Baldwin’s account appeared to belong to a criminal. But Mason knew that the accounts of long-term fraud victims can resemble the accounts of the fraudsters themselves. Often, they are the first entry point for funds elicited from other victims before being siphoned elsewhere. Mason’s theory was that Baldwin was being used as the networks’ currency exchange. One payment in particular concerned her: a £1,500 transfer that went out every month, like a mortgage payment, just after Baldwin’s pension had cleared. It didn’t fit any of the payments coming in. This, she realised, was Baldwin’s own money.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jeff Gottlieb details the downfall of a businessman named Steve Carroll, who went from being a powerful executive to robbing banks.
(Medium, approx 32 mins reading time)
The day after the August 2018 robbery, Scott Hamilton, a commercial airline pilot and Air Force Academy graduate living in Texas, answered a phone call from his brother John. “Dude you’re not going to freaking believe this,” John told him as he emailed him a link to one of the photos pinging around the internet. Scott opened the link and agreed it sure looked like Steve, but he offered that maybe it was just someone who resembled him. Another brother, Bob, came on the line and directed them to photos taken from different angles. There was no question: The man robbing the bank was their brother-in-law, their sister’s husband of 36 years. Scott even recognized the Bersa Thunder 380 pistol, which he’d given his sister as a gift. The Foster Grant sunglasses were familiar, too, a present from Scott to Steve the previous Christmas. The revelation left them shocked.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
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Should be 50 thousand euro fine.
@Gerard Carey: And the undocumented person sent straight to a detention centre until deportation to wherever the plane came from!
@Dave Callaghan: Afghanistan doesn’t issue passports to citizens anymore. So, what happens people trying to flee the taliban? Deport them back again?
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: Well, they won’t get a direct flight to Ireland, so maybe they should seek asylum in the first safe country they land in, as per the rules of asylum seeking.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: yes
@Mike Carson: No such rule exists Mike. Whatever concerns you might have about immigration are completely undermined by telling lies such as this. Try coming up an honest argument and you might get a bit more traction.
@Kevin Collins:EU law provides four safe country concepts which can be applied: ‘First country of asylum: Asylum seekers and refugees may be returned to a country where they have, or could have, sought international protection and where their safety would not be jeopardised, whether in that country or through a return from the first country to the country of origin.’ (European Union Agency for Asylum). Don’t make stuff up Kevin.. or perhaps educate yourself before commenting in future..
@Brian: https://gript.ie/refugees-having-to-stop-at-first-safe-country-is-a-far-right-myth-varadkar/
@Brian: This does not mean that an asylum seeker is required to apply in that first country though, it just means that if an application is refused in e.g. Ireland, then it is possible for Ireland to deport them to that first country. It’s not a grounds for refusal in Ireland either.
There was literally an article about this a few months ago which explains the regime. Like I said, there is a lot of misunderstanding (and outright lies) surrounding the topic so please follow your own advice and educate yourself before commenting further.
https://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-regulation-asylum-seekers-first-safe-country-6269603-Jan2024/
@Kevin Collins: So your Journal article trumps the written word of EU law as quoted back to you.. and our own government and national and international media are guilty of lying to us.. Id say put a bit more thought into this Kevin… and not solely rely on a Journal article ..
@Brian: The fact that you don’t understand the EU law in this area doesn’t actually change the law Brian nor does it mean our government or media are lying to you. The journal article does a good job of explaining the situation without the legalese, which is that there is NO obligation to claim asylum in the first safe country. This is a fact, whether you agree with it or not. Feel free to take a case challenging this if you like. Or just continue believing and spouting falsehoods, which is not going to achieve anything.
@Kevin Collins:Well let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re right.. I have at the very least ably demonstrated,within the EUs own regulations and said belief being held and repeated by multiple government sources and national and international media. For you to turn around and call someone a liar for repeating what they have been informed to be the truth by all these so called trusted sources.. is despicable. And you seem to think you understand EU law because you read a Journal article.. I suggest you broaden the scope in terms of sources..
@Brian: as I have stated above, and as explained in the journal article, the provision of EU law you cited is relevant in the context of a decision to refuse asylum but does not itself create an obligation to apply for asylum in a first country. I’ll give you some credit and say you are not intentionally lying, but you are simply misinformed and/or do not understand the legal text. Have a read of the full Directive there (or more accurately, the transposing statutory instrument) and you won’t see it stated anywhere that an asylum applicant needs to apply in a first country. I appreciate that may not necessarily approve of this situation, but that is how the asylum mechanism operates across the EU.
@Kevin Collins:’ That followed calls by Greece, Italy and Malta last month to overhaul the Dublin Regulation, whereby refugees must seek asylum in the first country they enter. ’ The Journal ie ’23
@Brian: we haven’t signed up to this and not yet implemented, so Kevin is right,
@Kevin Collins: window shopping
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: If they have no passport, please explain how they end up on a commercial airline? Stop virtuesignalling for fake asylum seekers, dude. You are not helping anyone, especially genuine asylum seekers who are in real trouble. Everybody can see this sham for what it is now. Stop making yourself look foolish with this bs rhetoric.
@YKwkSIqW: the example that Sean gave is exactly that of a genuine refugee. So he/she travels on falsified docs and destroys them on arrival. So cut the virtue signalling accusation nonsense and go learn something about the subject
How many fines have been issued prior to today, I would wager that the figure is Nil. Helen Mc Entre flat out proposing things now, pure electioneering, proposing things that should have been done years ago. Bit late now, they have lost the people, who no longer have any trust or faith in the Establishment.
@SV3tN8M4: Quite a few actually, and not difficult to find this information – https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41316454.html. Seems a bit unfair to me though as passengers are destroying their travel docs on arrival.
@SYaxJ2Ts: then they don’t have docs to enter- simple really. And therein
Lies the first criminal offence – destruction of a legal document
@You’re Not Serious: so why fine the airline?
New procedure for all airports for passengers boarding a plane should be a scan of the passport and then saved and kept at the point of departure.
Immigration can then check with airport of departure for a copy of the scanned document that disappeared “mysteriously” while the person was in flight.
There is no way in hell that one will be allowed to board a flight from the UK, for example, without a valid travel document.
@George Vladisavljevic: The discarded documents have to be on the plane somewhere . You can’t flush them down the toilet. Would such documents not be handed to immigration authorities when found?
@Patrick MC Dermott: Might be easier to find on a memory stick, for example than trying to find the physical one on a plane somewhere.
@George Vladisavljevic:
Excellent idea.
I thought the papers had to be shown,on arrival too.
No papers ,no entry.
@Patrick MC Dermott:
Of course a passport could be flushed if it was torn into small pieces. Easier to flush on an airplane toilet than any other one.
@Patrick MC Dermott: The People Trafficker travels with the migrants and collects the passports from them before disembarking and takes the passports with him out of the airport, presumably for re-use!
@Patrick MC Dermott: You show your documents at passport control. When you get of the plane just flush them down the toilet or even throw them in the bin before you reach passport control.
It should be the person breaking the law that should be arrested fined and removed from the state
Noone should ever be on a flight without a passport scan.
If they destroy the passport on board the airline must produce the scan of the passport they used when boarding.
Failure to do this €80,000 fine to the airline and the passenger is jailed until his/her identity is established
How can you even board a plane to Ireland without a travel document? It’s not a domestic flight from Europe, we’re not in the Schengen area
And if the passport is destroyed during the flight it can hardly be the airline’s fault can it?
@Jerry LeFrog:
Agreed, but it should be simple to verify what documents were used to book the flight and get through security at the departing airport. Either way they should be sent packing back to wherever they came from.
That’s pennies for an airline
Not before time!
Try going through pre-screening in Dublin or Shannon for the US, without a passport.
@George Vladisavljevic:
Yes, It can be hard enough to get into the US even with a valid passport !
Helen said may be fined, not very positive. Can they can collect their free travel pass in Belfast?
@Criostoir Mac Raghnaill: Yeah, because we have laws and due process.
How much have the Govt. collected so far? Journal please check!
@Patrick MC Dermott: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41316454.html
How many instances has the current €3,000 fine been issued?
The way it works is this: person gets on plane with someone who has already made an application or already has status in yhe country etc. When the plane lands at airport person A hands passport etc to person B. Person B goes through immigration and person A seeks asylum. When Person A is out and about they meet Person B and get their documents back.
Sometimes in the past there used to be a solicitor waiting for them airtime.
I know a guy who went to China, had a visa. Lost his passport boarding the plane and was put on the next plane back to where he came from.
@Washpenrebel:
I would imagine that happens in most countries. Here we give them accommodation, 3 meals a day, a medical card and pocket money ! Like winning the lotto when you’ve come from a mud hut in west Africa. We’re being taken for mugs.
@Regular John: It’s called humanity.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: It’s called gullibility!
@Regular John: a mud hut in West Africa?
5000 euro fine pathetic they should be made pay to support the illegals if they bring them in not the Irish tax payers ,support them and pay to deport them .
1. What if one is travelling from the UK to Belfast? No passport required.
2. At what point is missing documentation a cause for fining the airline? Stands to reason if flying from Europe or UK directly to Ireland one cannot board a plane without I.D, but what of no such I.D on arrival from either origin.
This law does not sound water tight. I’m thinking Revenue should start making, and most certainly enforcing the law.
@Keth Tgi: Very debatable point coming (tin hat on), and it will inflame many but legally UK to Belfast is UK to UK, same as UK to Manchester etc. I only see 2 options – 1) stick up a border at Newry and Ireland either join Schengen or enforce their own system, or 2) create a common travel area system with UK with harmonised controls / visa etc and share data (similar to Schengen). Both have massive issues and will inflame many.
Using EU influence to pressure the French to tackle the small boats leaving for the UK (and eventually Ireland) would probably have more effect.
If this isn’t sorted out soon… and government don’t start listening then we have serious problems coming our way… but this government continues to ignore its own ppl
If a passenger tears up their passport and flushes it down the toilet how is the airline going to stop that? However the passenger does have to give their passport details to the airline in order to fly. Why isn’t there an arrangement that if the passenger then has no passport when arriving at their destination then the airline simply hands the details over? Am I missing something? Is it not that simple?
Make it €50,000 . That’ll ensure they’re checked thoroughly .
It’s time fg ff start listening to us.. ppl being called racists, we are worried bout our country.. they plan to double our population in a few yrs… we can’t look after the ppl living here already.
It’s not jus planes it’s either… they’re coming in storage containers boats trucks throw the ports aswel… these ppl smugglers have been doing this for yrs it’s not new… ffs ppl need wake up the amount of sheep protecting these ppl is crazy… they have no right to come here from safe countries telling lies to stay here…
If you look at the news you will see they are using smugglers who travel on said flight… who takes passports off them on the plane… when they arrive in Dublin they claim asylum… and have the right to stay here until their claim is processed… a guy from south Korea was caught recently with two womans passports who were in the same flight… they had tryed claim asylum when they landed
They are coming from moldova Albania Pakistan, Tunisia algeria Georgia… and most coming from Nigeria… some are saying they are lgbti and can’t return to Nigeria due to persecution?? Most of them are liars… I’ve seen interviews online one Nigerian woman says she escaped a prostitution ring in England and came here… more lies they don’t wanna go to Rwanda
Simon Harris seems to think ppl love, running round like a complete bellend ignoring the irish the irish the ppl he works for and pay his wages he’ll find out the hard way
The airline’s I use always check, there being put down the loo because they know Ireland will house them, so please gov stop talking rubbish,there must be an election coming.we Irish are so dimwitted at times.
I don’t understand this, can somebody help me out? When I travel I can only get through customs having presented my travel documents, I do not believe anybody is legally req’d to present their travel documents at a boarding gate (unless a customs officer or Law enforcement official is requesting) – so how can the 5k fine be legally enforced?
I really think the airlines might fight this one.
have your say