Sammy Wanjiru lived as he ran: fast. In a country overflowing with talent, he was one of the finest athletes Kenya ever produced – a man who broke world records as a teenager, a serial marathon winner, and an Olympic gold medallist. But it was not just his results that made him special. Kenya has[…]
Freedom means something different to Aung San Suu Kyi than it might to you or me. Imagine you had been placed under house arrest for 15 of the last 21 years – would you consider yourself free? How about if, since being released in November last year, you had been placed under constant surveillance, and[…]
On a bright spring morning, Joseph “Chubs” Lee is working his trainer hard. He pummels his coach’s outstretched palms. Bang. Right hook. Bang, bang. Right hook, left hook. Then four straight punches. Bang bang, bang bang. When his fists reach their target, the reports reverberate around the room. Joseph’s session finishes with one more shot.[…]
There are two things Alain Robert has never desired: safety or permission. For the past 17 years, the 48-year-old Frenchman known as the Human Spider has scaled most of the world’s tallest skyscrapers — without ropes, usually illegally, and with scant regard for consequence. The reasons he does so are numerous and complex, but there[…]
It’s not an image I remember best from the match, but a sound. At seemingly incongruous moments in the fifth set of last year’s first round tie between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, the crowd on Court 18 at the All England Club emitted a nervous, collective giggle. Wimbledon crowds don’t usually giggle. Of course,[…]
Far removed from the Kenya of beach resorts and safaris, the Dadaab refugee camps on the country’s border with Somalia are home to 300,000 people displaced by its volatile neighbour’s civil war. For Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab, the camp’s children are easy targets for recruitment. Is this supposedly safe haven the breeding ground for the[…]
Latif Yahia, who claims to have been a body double for Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son, Uday, has just had his life story turned into a Hollywood film. But is Yahia all he seems? There are some life stories that were just made for the movies. Latif Yahia’s, surely, is one of them. It is because[…]
What turned a conscientious schoolboy from a comprehensive in Wales into the forgotten man of the WikiLeaks affair? Jordan Davis doesn’t have the words. He wants to write a letter to a friend in need, but something is stopping him. It should be no problem. He has the address — Inmate Bradley Manning, Marine Corps[…]
On a bitter, bright September morning in 2006, I stood with my translator on the gravel outside Chita airport, in Siberia, considering my options. We were in a fix. Having already flown seven hours from Moscow on a Kruschev-era rustbucket, we were still half a day’s journey from our destination. Siberia is that kind of place. Our problem was[…]
The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was an environmental, political and financial catastrophe that killed 11 men. It was also completely avoidable. Jason Anderson was an oilfield man to the soles of his cowboy boots. When he was relaxing — home from working the rig at his isolated country house in Midfield,[…]