© Steven Molina Contreras for The New York Times
As the number of the semi-aquatic creatures soars so can tensions. But the Swiss have a tried and tested system to calm the neighbours and restore harmony
“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.
The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.
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© Photograph: Nationale Biberfachstelle
© Photograph: Nationale Biberfachstelle
© Photograph: Nationale Biberfachstelle
The American author uses fiction to explore the life of her Chinese mother as she seeks to understand the violence that marked their relationship
At first glance, the protagonist of Gish Jen’s latest novel seems like many of the other Chinese American immigrants Jen has portrayed so astutely in her decades-long career. Loo Shu-hsin is born into privilege in 1924 – her father is a banker in the largely British-run International Settlement of Shanghai – but her life is marked by her mother’s constant belittlement. “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk,” she’s told, after speaking out of turn. “With a tongue like yours, no one will ever marry you.” Her only solace in the household is a nursemaid, Nai-ma, who vanishes one day without warning – a psychic wound that lingers even as she grows up, emigrates to the US and enrols in a PhD programme.
In one striking way, however, Loo Shu-hsin is different from Jen’s previous protagonists: she happens to be Jen’s own mother. Bad Bad Girl is in part a fictionalised reconstruction of Jen’s mother’s life, in service of a searching attempt to excavate their troubled relationship. “All my life, after all,” Jen writes, “I have wanted to know how our relationship went wrong – how I became her nemesis, her bête noire, her lightning rod, a scapegoat.”
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© Photograph: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images
© Photograph: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images
© Photograph: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images
Two people killed in assault launched on country’s energy infrastructure as temperatures dip towards freezing
Several Ukrainian regions were hit by power cuts in frigid winter weather on Tuesday after Russia launched its latest deadly large-scale attack with drones and missiles, authorities said.
Neighbouring Poland scrambled jets to protect its airspace during the strikes, the country’s military said in a post on X.
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© Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters
© Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters
© Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters
Ahead of his new album, My Days of 58, the US singer-songwriter will answer your questions for the Guardian’s reader interview
In a career hardly plagued with lows, Bill Callahan has been on a hot streak recently. Since 2019’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, the Maryland-born songwriter has shared his beguiling meditations on being changed by parenthood and marriage, while his music has loosened and expanded accordingly. The latter is in part down to the chemistry that Callahan has formed with his live band – guitarist Matt Kinsey, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi and drummer Jim White also of the Dirty Three – audible on the extraordinary 2024 live album Resuscitate! It’s this ensemble and their facility for improv that powers Callahan’s forthcoming solo record, My Days of 58, the first tastes of which offer up some Callahan wisdom.
The song Lonely City, he said, was an odd one for him to write, being generally more concerned with “humans and the spirit within”.
So writing about concrete and steel felt like a no go. Like I’m going to write a song about a car next? But of course cities are made by humans so they are human, too. You have a relationship with them, like friends.
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© Photograph: Bill McCullough
© Photograph: Bill McCullough
© Photograph: Bill McCullough
Like many of his US counterparts, the Russian science protege turned hugely successful ‘digital populist’ has a deep suspicion of government constraint
Tech visionary, Kremlin dissident, FSB agent, free speech absolutist, health guru. These are just some of the labels admirers and critics have attached to Pavel Durov over the past decade.
The Russian-born tech entrepreneur founded Russia’s version of Facebook before going on to create the messaging app Telegram, launch a cryptocurrency ecosystem and amass a multibillion-dollar fortune, all while clashing repeatedly with authorities in Russia and beyond.
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© Photograph: Tatan Syuflana/AP
© Photograph: Tatan Syuflana/AP
© Photograph: Tatan Syuflana/AP
Political backbiting has led to accusations Fifa is running the show as tournament switches to four-year cycle
It was a decision that took many by surprise, although not those who have been watching closely since February 2020. Members of the Confederation of African Football’s (Caf) executive committee, along with various other dignitaries including George Weah, the former Ballon d’Or winner and president of Liberia at the time, were assembled in Rabat at a seminar to hear Gianni Infantino outline his plan for the development of competitions and infrastructure in African football.
As well as improving standards in refereeing and mobilising investment in the continent’s infrastructure, the president of Fifa floated the prospect of holding its most important tournament, the Africa Cup of Nations, every four years instead of every two and described the current arrangement as “useless”. The argument ran that it would be more beneficial for countries “at the commercial level” and would help to “project African football to the top of the world”. “Let us show the world what we can do,” added Infantino. “This day is special – it’s the start of a new chapter for African football.”
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© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
© Photograph: Reuters
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