What the commentators said

So much for the idea that we shouldn’t take Trump literally, said Jamelle Bouie on Slate. Before the election, some pundits assured us that his talk of banning Muslims was, like many of his more contentious proposals, merely “symbolic”. Well, they were wrong. It’s now clear that Trump meant what he said – and is determined to put it into action. Everything has gone crazy so fast, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. It took Americans years to find out that Richard Nixon was a paranoid madman, but with Trump, “it’s all out there – the tantrums, the delusions, the deceptions, the self-doubts and overcompensation. If the last president was too far above the fray, this one is the fray. We’ve gone from no drama to all drama”.

Spare me the liberal hysteria, said Rich Lowry in the New York Post. Trump’s travel ban may be misguided, and its introduction was certainly mishandled, but it is not “un-american” to put the brakes on immigration for a few months in order to ensure the integrity of the nation’s borders. It has happened before: in 1980, for instance, during the Iranian hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter banned Iranians from entering the US. Nor is Trump’s decision to cap America’s annual intake of refugees at 50,000 a radical departure: for the past five years, the US has typically admitted between 50,000 and 70,000 refugees.

Trump is not Hitler, said David Frum in The Atlantic, but he has set America on the path towards a subtler form of “21st century authoritarianism”. He has illiberal instincts, and due to the nature of his character will inevitably seek to accumulate “an apparatus of impunity and revenge”. And he won’t face much resistance. As politics has become more polarised, Congress has “increasingly become a check only on presidents of the opposite party”. As for protests, Trump relishes them – they fuel the turmoil and partisanship he feeds off. What Trump is vulnerable to, said Iain Martin on Reaction, is the charge of “woeful incompetence”. The botched rollout of last week’s ban was largely down to Trump’s key adviser, Steve Bannon, who delights in disrupting Washington. His influence in Trump’s “medieval court” has been growing ( see page 6), but on this occasion he “made his boss look like a blundering buffoon”.

Thousands pardoned

Thousands of posthumous pardons have been issued to men convicted of homosexual offences that have been removed from the statute book. The so-called Turing Law, named after the wartime codebreaker Alan Turing, who was granted a posthumous royal pardon in 2013, is a clause in the Policing and Crime Bill, which came into force this week. The automatic posthumous pardon applies to 50,000 men. People still alive who have been convicted of, or cautioned for, homosexual acts that are no longer illegal – an estimated 15,000 – can now apply for pardons. A spokesman for Stonewall, the gay rights charity, hailed it as “another important milestone of equality”.

Ambulance delays

Ambulance crews spent 500,000 hours waiting outside hospitals last year because A&E staff were too busy to take in their patients, according to the National Audit Office. Ambulances are meant to take 15 minutes to hand over a patient, but in 2016 the target was met in just 58% of cases; over the past two years, the time spent waiting beyond this 15 minutes has increased by 52%.The report also found that 10% of paramedic posts are empty.

Venice, Italy

African refugee drowns: An investigation has been opened into the shocking death of a young Gambian man, who drowned in Venice’s Grand Canal last week as scores of onlookers watched – some of them filming him on their mobile phones, laughing or making racist remarks. In video footage of the incident, one person is heard to shout “Go on, go back home”, as the man flails in the water. Another voice says, “Let him die at this point”. Three lifebelts were thrown to the man, named as Pateh Sabally, 22. But after rising to the water’s surface, he appeared to make no effort to grab them, raising speculation that he may have intended to take his own life. He was then caught by a current and pulled under for the final time. Groups of African asylum seekers have become a common sight in towns and villages across Italy; having been denied access to France and Switzerland, many arrivals are effectively trapped inside the country.

Pitigliano, Italy

Wolves killed: Wolves in Italy are being illegally shot dead, mutilated and left outside villages and towns by enraged farmers protesting against the damage done to livestock by the resurgent predator. In the latest incident, a decapitated wolf was found dumped outside the medieval ridgetop village of Pitigliano in Tuscany. In the 1970s Italy declared wolves a protected species, and since then the country’s wolf population has grown from about a hundred animals to an estimated 2,000, reports The Daily Telegraph. The government is now considering a limited cull of the animal.

Barcelona, Spain

Tourism law: In an attempt to curb the number of visitors to Barcelona, the city authorities have passed a law banning the building of new hotels or tourist apartments in the city centre. And if an existing hotel or apartment closes, its capacity cannot be replaced. The number of tourists visiting the Catalan capital has surged over the past 25 years, leading to growing complaints from residents about overcrowding, noise and soaring rents, as speculators focus on lucrative holiday lets instead of housing for locals. In 2016, the city – which has 1.6 million inhabitants – was visited by an estimated 32 million tourists, more than half of whom stayed there overnight. Last weekend several thousand locals joined a protest on the famous central boulevard, La Rambla, bearing banners saying, “Barcelona is not for sale”. The tourist industry accounts for about an eighth of Barcelona’s income.

Avdiivka, Ukraine

Surge in violence: Ukrainian troops have been desperately trying to stop Russianbacked separatist rebels in the east of the country seizing control of the industrial town of Avdiivka, a Ukrainian army stronghold. At least 13 civilians and fighters were killed in fighting this week – the worst violence since a new truce was agreed on 23 December. The town, a few miles north of the rebel-held city of Donetsk, is home to one of Europe’s largest coking and chemical plants, and its capture by the rebels would cut off supplies to Ukraine’s steel industry. The fighting has left residents without power and heating, and has led to bread queues: Ukrainian officials are preparing for a possible evacuation of the town’s population, estimated at up to 22,000. The Kremlin denies it is backing the rebels. Since 2014, at least 9,600 people, more than half of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Athens

Turkish officers won’t be extradited: The Supreme Court in Athens has rejected a Turkish request to extradite eight Turkish military officers who fled to Greece in the aftermath of the failed coup against President Erdogan last July, on the grounds that returning them to Turkey would threaten their “fundamental human rights”. The verdict, which followed two rounds of appeals by the Turkish authorities, was greeted with anger in Ankara, and is likely to further worsen the fractious relations between the two countries, both Nato members. The eight officers – two majors, four captains and two NCOS – fled by helicopter to Greek territory hours after the coup attempt, but deny being involved in it. They have applied for political asylum in Greece, and say their lives would be in danger if they returned. Ankara has now threatened to end its migrant deal with Greece if the officers are not sent back.

Moscow

Gorbachev’s warning: Donald Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin over the phone for an hour on Saturday, his first call to his Russian counterpart since his inauguration. Both sides described it as a constructive conversation, in which they discussed “mutual cooperation” on issues including the fight against terrorism, the Ukraine conflict and restoring trade ties. They did not discuss alleged Russian cyberattacks. Earlier, Putin’s predecessor, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, had voiced the fear that the world seems to be “preparing for war” – and urged Putin and Trump to unite to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal. “Politicians and military leaders sound increasingly belligerent,” he wrote in Time magazine.

Ankara

May in Turkey: Theresa May has become the first Western leader to visit Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since the failed military coup last July. May flew direct to Ankara from Washington DC, arriving last Saturday. During her trip she hailed Turkey as an “important Nato ally”, endorsed a Uk-turkish deal (worth an initial £100m) to build a new fighter jet, and discussed the potential for a post-brexit free trade deal. She didn’t refer directly to Erdogan’s intensive clampdown on dissent since the coup, but urged him – as he looked on stony-faced – to sustain democracy and maintain “the rule of law”.

Washington DC

Alarm over Bannon’s security role: President Trump’s unprecedented decision to exclude the chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the director of national intelligence, from the small committee that decides US security policy – but to include Steve Bannon, his chief strategist and political advisor – has caused anger and alarm in parts of the Washington security establishment. Bannon (right), a former executive of the alt-right Breitbart news website, who has repeatedly been accused of racism, misogyny and Islamophobia, has been given a permanent seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council. By contrast, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence have been told their presence will only be required when “issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed”. Susan Rice, national security advisor in the Obama administration, called the move “stone cold crazy”, and tweeted, sarcastically, “Who needs military advice or intel to make policy [on Isis, Syria, Afghanistan, or North Korea]”. Eliot Cohen, a security advisor to the last Bush administration, called the move “abnormal” and “dangerous”.

Seattle, Washington

Businesses attack travel ban: Major US businesses and Wall Street banks – including Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Starbucks, Coca-cola, Ford, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup – have attacked President Trump’s controversial ban on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries. Jeff Bezos, chief executive of the Seattle-based Amazon, said he was backing a legal challenge to the ban by the attorney-general of Washington state; Microsoft said the same. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who came to the US as a refugee from the Soviet Union, delivered an address to employees holding placards with messages such as “refugees welcome here” and “no ban; no wall” ( see page 42).

Money, Mississippi

Lynching admission: The white woman at the centre of the Emmett Till case – one of the most notorious race crimes in US history – admitted that she fabricated her testimony, it has emerged. Till (left), a 14-year-old black boy, was visiting segregated Mississippi from Chicago in 1955 when he went into a shop in the town of Money to buy gum, and briefly met Carolyn Bryant, then 21. Days later, he was abducted by Bryant’s husband and his brother, beaten, shot and mutilated. In court, Bryant testified that Till had grabbed and threatened her – and the two men were acquitted, by an all-white jury. They later admitted they’d killed Till to teach black people a lesson, but couldn’t be retried under double jeopardy laws. Now, a historian has revealed Bryant confessed in 2007 that she lied about Till’s advances. “That part isn’t true,” she told Timothy Tyson.

Santiago

Killer fires: More than 40 people have been detained in Chile for their “possible responsibility” for some of the 130 forest fires that have killed at least 11 people, and left thousands homeless, in the past two weeks. The wildfires – described by President Michelle Bachelet as the “greatest forest disaster” in Chile’s history – have raged across central and southern parts of the country since the middle of January, fanned by strong winds and high temperatures. An entire town, Santa Olga (pop. 6,000), was burnt to the ground late last week. “This is an extremely serious situation – of horror, a nightmare without end,” said Carlos Valenzuela, the mayor of the neighbouring city of Constitución. By Wednesday – with 11,000 people fighting the fires, aided by supertanker planes from Russia, Brazil and the US – around 50 blazes were under control.

Québec City, Canada

Terror attack: A 27-year-old French-canadian student, with no previous history of violence, entered a mosque in Québec City last Sunday during evening prayers and opened fire on worshippers, killing six and wounding 19 others. He was arrested after calling police and identifying himself as the killer. According to fellow students, Alexandre Bissonnette had never revealed an interest in extremist politics until Marine Le Pen visited the city last March: he was known to be quiet, shy and interested in chess, and combined his studies with working in a call centre for a blood donation agency. After Le Pen’s visit, however, he had taken to extreme online activism, spewing hatred about refugees and feminism. His attack came shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had voiced his strong opposition to Donald Trump’s controversial immigration ban on Muslim refugees, declaring that “Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith”.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Billionaire arrested: The Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, who not long ago was Brazil’s richest man, has been arrested on corruption charges after flying home to Rio de Janeiro to “clear his name”. He is accused of paying $16.5m (£13m) in bribes to Sérgio Cabral, the former governor of Rio state who was arrested last year. Their arrests are part of a sweeping investigation into corruption inside two of Brazil’s biggest businesses: state-owned oil company Petrobras and the construction firm Odebrecht. Odebrecht executives have testified that the firm has been running a “massive” bribery scheme, paying $788m (£624m) in bribes across a dozen countries. It’s expected they will implicate several top politicians, including Michel Temer, Brazil’s president.

Kolbio, Somalia Al-shabaab attack on Kenyan troops: Islamist militants from the al-qa’edalinked group al-shabaab have killed dozens of Kenyan soldiers in an attack on a Kenyan military base in southern Somalia. Al-shabaab began life as the radical youth wing of the now-defunct Islamic Courts Union, a federation of local clan-based courts that controlled southern Somalia until late 2006, when they were forced out by Ethiopian forces. It has been conducting a separatist insurgency in Somalia ever since. About 3,600 Kenyan troops are now in Somalia as part of a 22,000-strong African Union military mission, supported by the US, to counter al-shabaab and stabilise the country. Kenyan authorities would not confirm casualty figures in last week’s attack, but maintained that their soldiers had repulsed the militants.

Porto-novo Anti-voodoo

cult deaths: Five members of a religious sect in Benin died of asphyxiation last weekend, and several more required hospital treatment, as a result of following their leader’s instruction to seal themselves into prayer rooms, burn incense and charcoal, and await the end of the world. The group, which calls itself the Very Holy Church of Jesus Christ of Baname, is known for its sometimes violent opposition to the traditional religion of Voodoo. Thousands of Baname followers across the country regard their young, female leader, Vicentia Chanvoukini – known as “Lady Perfect” – as a living god. About 40% of Benin’s population follow Voodoo, and many local Christians and Muslims incorporate elements of Voodoo into their faiths.

Thengar Char, Bangladesh

Island plan for Rohingya: The Bangladesh government has ordered officials to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees, who have fled from neighbouring Burma, to Thengar Char – an island in the Bay of Bengal which is submerged under water in monsoon season, and has no roads or flood defences. Bangladesh first proposed the relocation plan in 2015, but dropped it in the face of international criticism. It has reinstated the plan since a brutal crackdown by Burma’s army led to the arrival of a further 65,000 Rohingya. Burma’s government makes the hotly disputed claim that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, who arrived in Burma after the country attained independence. The number who have fled to Bangladesh is estimated at between 200,000 and 500,000. Sana’a Famine looms: The UN’S head of international aid has warned that Yemen will slide into famine later this year unless immediate action is taken. The country, one of the poorest in the world, and long reliant on imports for 90% of its staple foods, has been devastated by two years of civil war, and by an ongoing blockade of its main ports by Saudi Arabia. An estimated 14.4 million people, almost 50% of the population, are now dependent on food aid for survival. According to the UN’S Stephen O’brien, 2.2 million children in Yemen are acutely malnourished: every ten minutes, on average, a child under the age of five dies there of preventable causes. Tokyo Big in Japan: Japan’s long wait for a homegrown sumo yokozuna (grand champion of sumo wrestling) has finally come to an end: 30-year-old Kisenosato was awarded the ranking, the sport’s highest honour, after winning a grand tournament last week. The wrestler (above), who weighs more than 27st, is the first Japanese-born yokozuna since 1998. In recent years the ancient Japanese sport has been dominated by wrestlers from Mongolia, Hawaii and Samoa: the three other current yokozuna are all Mongolian. Manila War on corrupt police: Rodrigo Duterte has suspended his war on drugs – which has seen more than 7,000 people killed by police and vigilantes – in order to focus on cleansing the Philippines’ police, which he calls “corrupt to the core”. The president cited the recent case of a South Korean businessman who was kidnapped for ransom and then murdered by anti-drugs squad officers. He said an estimated 40% of officers were as “lousy as drug lords”, and that the war on drugs would resume once the force had been purged.

Bangkok

Jailed for insult: A Thai welder has been jailed for more than 11 years for insulting the Thai royal family in an (undisclosed) Facebook post and a private online message. Burin Intin has admitted the crime of lèse-majesté and a second charge of putting “false data” on a computer. Had he pled “not guilty”, he would have faced a 22-year sentence. His lawyer said Burin would not appeal the sentence, but would instead ask for a royal pardon. The woman to whom Burin sent the offending message, Patnaree Chankij – whose son is a political activist – has been arrested for not denouncing Burin.

The fighting sisters

Geeta and Babita Phogat are suddenly famous twice over, says Amrit Dhillon in The Guardian. The sisters, who grew up in the rural Indian state of Haryana, are both world-class wrestlers. They are also the subject of a new film, Dangal, which has already become the highest-grossing Bollywood movie of all time. It tells the story of how their father – himself a former amateur wrestler – defied social convention to train the girls in this traditionally male sport. In reality, says 26-year-old Babita, “the hostility towards us was far worse than what is shown in the film. We were two girls who, according to custom, should have been draped in loose clothes to disguise our curves, but instead we were running around the wheat fields in shorts and Lycra tops and cropped hair”. Other villagers would whisper insults to their father: “May insects eat your insides.” “You are spoiling your girls.” “They will turn wild and bring shame on you.” And it wasn’t just the neighbours. “All the men in our family swore at him for training us,” says Geeta, 28. “His parents said he was mad. But he didn’t listen.”

Instead, he banned his daughters from wearing makeup or jewellery, and made them train for hours every morning and evening. “He never let up,” says Babita. “If he caught us arguing at home, he’d be livid: ‘You can’t have trained enough, because if you had, you wouldn’t have the energy to argue.’” It was “torture”, she admits, but it paid off: Geeta won a gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and Babita pulled off the same feat in 2014. But perhaps most important, says Geeta, is what this upbringing did for their souls. “My father gave us inner confidence. He taught us, as young girls, never to be scared. I feel that Indian women are too frightened. They all say, ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that,’ Things are not going to change until Indian women, and their parents, stop being afraid of what society will say.”

Thatcher’s biggest hater

Tosh Mcdonald is a trade unionist of the old school. The 56-year-old president of Aslef has worked on the railways since 1979, as a freight guard and now as a train driver. “I first started on the railways a month after Thatcher came to power,” he told Danny Scott in The Sunday Times. “I was a gobby lad and couldn’t wait to join the union. My politics came from my grandad. He was a miner and was involved in the 1926 general strike. He never forgave the Salvation Army for driving trucks during the strike. Called them scabs.” Mcdonald believes the current government has it in for the transport unions (“They look at us like Thatcher looked at the miners – they want to break [us]”), but he doesn’t loathe them like he did the Iron Lady. “I hated Thatcher so much that I used to set my alarm an hour earlier, just so I could hate her for an extra hour!” Stevie Nicks has survived more than four decades in rock’n’roll – both as part of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist, says Will Hodgkinson in The Times. And now the 68-year-old singersongwriter is attracting a whole new generation of fans, including young stars such as Adele and Ariana Grande. “Maybe they like my dogged determination to stay in the business,” muses Nicks. “Christine Mcvie [the only other woman in Fleetwood Mac] and I made a pact that we would never be treated like second-class citizens in a man’s world. We would never be in a room with Eric Clapton or Steve Winwood or Robert Plant and be made to feel we weren’t as good as them.” Did those 1970s rock gods try to lord it over them? “Never. Because we were gorgeous, we were smart, we were a force of nature. It didn’t matter if the room was filled with politicians or movie stars or musicians. When we walked in, the focus was on us. And we made that happen. Now these young girls see me up on stage in chiffon and leggings, not looking ridiculous but age-appropriate, and they think, ‘This is what I could do one day.’” Indeed, Nicks has no intention of ever retiring. “A friend told me that when you retire, you get smaller. Small means old, so I fight it with a sword. I’ll be on stage, dancing around, thinking, ‘Now, let’s see… how old am I again? 110?’”