UK police are investigating after a Russian former security agent in exile in Britain was poisoned by thallium. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB colonel and critic of President Vladimir Putin, fell ill on 1 November after a meeting at a London sushi bar. A clinical toxicologist said the 43-year-old had been poisoned with a potentially lethal dose of the metal. Mr Litvinenko is in a serious but stable condition in University College Hospital, London. He is reported to be under armed guard. '50/50 chance' Mr Litvinenko had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a harsh critic of Mr Putin and Russian policy in Chechnya, who was killed in Moscow last month. Speaking to the BBC last week, he said a contact had approached him to say they should talk, and they arranged to meet at a restaurant in Piccadilly.
Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB colonel and critic of President Vladimir Putin, fell ill on 1 November after a meeting at a London sushi bar.
A clinical toxicologist said the 43-year-old had been poisoned with a potentially lethal dose of the metal.
Mr Litvinenko is in a serious but stable condition in University College Hospital, London.
He is reported to be under armed guard.
'50/50 chance'
Mr Litvinenko had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a harsh critic of Mr Putin and Russian policy in Chechnya, who was killed in Moscow last month.
Speaking to the BBC last week, he said a contact had approached him to say they should talk, and they arranged to meet at a restaurant in Piccadilly.
n 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder At first, it seems an open-and-shut case. On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver. As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee", then being choked by an angry mob. Defence psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin. Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, caught up in a strange tale of second guns and "Manchurian candidates" (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. I did not buy the official ending that Sirhan acted alone, and started dipping into the nether-world of "assassination research", crossing paths with David Sanchez Morales, a fearsome Yaqui Indian.
At first, it seems an open-and-shut case. On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver.
As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee", then being choked by an angry mob. Defence psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin.
Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, caught up in a strange tale of second guns and "Manchurian candidates" (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. I did not buy the official ending that Sirhan acted alone, and started dipping into the nether-world of "assassination research", crossing paths with David Sanchez Morales, a fearsome Yaqui Indian.
A 14-year-old Indian boy has been awarded the International Children's Peace Prize for leading a campaign against child labour and child slavery. Om Prakash was forced to work as a farm labourer for three years. After he was rescued, Om set up a network that aims to give all children a birth certificate as a way of helping to protect them from exploitation. Om was awarded the $100,000 (£53,000) prize organised by a Netherlands-based group at a ceremony in The Hague. Om suffered the fate of millions of children. At the age of five, he was taken away from his parents and for three years he worked in the fields. He was given two meals a day, was regularly beaten and never paid. After he was rescued, Om campaigned for free education in his native Rajastan. He then helped to set up a network of what are known as "child friendly villages".
Om Prakash was forced to work as a farm labourer for three years.
After he was rescued, Om set up a network that aims to give all children a birth certificate as a way of helping to protect them from exploitation.
Om was awarded the $100,000 (£53,000) prize organised by a Netherlands-based group at a ceremony in The Hague.
Om suffered the fate of millions of children. At the age of five, he was taken away from his parents and for three years he worked in the fields.
He was given two meals a day, was regularly beaten and never paid.
After he was rescued, Om campaigned for free education in his native Rajastan. He then helped to set up a network of what are known as "child friendly villages".
Kakutani is in fine form as she rips apart Pynchon's latest novel.
Thomas Pynchon's new novel, "Against the Day," reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author's might have written on quaaludes. It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex. The novel plays with themes that have animated the whole of Mr. Pynchon's oeuvre: order versus chaos, fate versus freedom, paranoia versus nihilism. It boasts a sprawling, Dickensian cast with distinctly Pynchonian names: Fleetwood Vibe, Lindsay Noseworth, Clive Crouchmas. And it's littered with puns, ditties, vaudevillesque turns and allusions to everything from old sci-fi movies to Kafka to Harry Potter. These authorial trademarks, however, are orchestrated in a weary and decidedly mechanical fashion, as the narrative bounces back and forth from America to Europe to Mexico, from Cripple Creek to Constantinople to Chihuahua. There are some dazzling set pieces evoking the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and a convocation of airship aficionados, but these passages are sandwiched between reams and reams of pointless, self-indulgent vamping that read like Exhibit A in what can only be called a case of the Emperor's New Clothes. Dozens of characters are sent on mysterious (often half-baked) quests that intersect mysteriously with the mysterious quests of people they knew in another context, and dozens of portentous plot lines are portentously twined around even more portentous events: the appearance of a strange figure in the Arctic, a startling "heavenwide blast of light", the hunt for something called a "Time-weapon" that might affect the fate of the globe. Whereas Mr. Pynchon's last novel, the stunning "Mason & Dixon," demonstrated a new psychological depth, depicting its two heroes as full-fledged human beings, not merely as pawns in the author's philosophical chess game, the people in "Against the Day" are little more than stick figure cartoons. <...> ... because these people are so flimsily delineated, their efforts to connect feel merely sentimental and contrived. And that, in the end, is one of the more telling problems of this labored production, which lacks both the ferocious energy and bravura literary gamesmanship of "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow," and the heartfelt emotion of "Mason & Dixon."
The novel plays with themes that have animated the whole of Mr. Pynchon's oeuvre: order versus chaos, fate versus freedom, paranoia versus nihilism. It boasts a sprawling, Dickensian cast with distinctly Pynchonian names: Fleetwood Vibe, Lindsay Noseworth, Clive Crouchmas. And it's littered with puns, ditties, vaudevillesque turns and allusions to everything from old sci-fi movies to Kafka to Harry Potter. These authorial trademarks, however, are orchestrated in a weary and decidedly mechanical fashion, as the narrative bounces back and forth from America to Europe to Mexico, from Cripple Creek to Constantinople to Chihuahua.
There are some dazzling set pieces evoking the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and a convocation of airship aficionados, but these passages are sandwiched between reams and reams of pointless, self-indulgent vamping that read like Exhibit A in what can only be called a case of the Emperor's New Clothes. Dozens of characters are sent on mysterious (often half-baked) quests that intersect mysteriously with the mysterious quests of people they knew in another context, and dozens of portentous plot lines are portentously twined around even more portentous events: the appearance of a strange figure in the Arctic, a startling "heavenwide blast of light", the hunt for something called a "Time-weapon" that might affect the fate of the globe.
Whereas Mr. Pynchon's last novel, the stunning "Mason & Dixon," demonstrated a new psychological depth, depicting its two heroes as full-fledged human beings, not merely as pawns in the author's philosophical chess game, the people in "Against the Day" are little more than stick figure cartoons.
<...>
... because these people are so flimsily delineated, their efforts to connect feel merely sentimental and contrived. And that, in the end, is one of the more telling problems of this labored production, which lacks both the ferocious energy and bravura literary gamesmanship of "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow," and the heartfelt emotion of "Mason & Dixon."
