F&O ranges this week from extremist attacks to Starbucks’ red cups; from the trouble with America’s news media to HONY; from the science behind picky-eating cats, to how Jihadi John — reportedly killed — came to be. Find essential facts, and analysis that goes behind the headlines and off the beaten track:
Focus on the Paris attacks:
Our selective grief: Paris, Beirut, Ankara, and Syria
TOM REGAN: Summoning Orenda Column
France vows “merciless” response
Reuters Report
Notebook: IS claims responsibility, world reacts
Reuters Report
Scores killed in Paris attacks
Reuters, Report & Photo-gallery
Why people distrust news media, Tom Regan, Summoning Orenda column
The reason the media consistently ranks so low on surveys of public trust (particularly among young people) is that we don’t give the public reason to trust us.
The Man Who Would be Dickens: Emlyn Williams. Brian Brennan, Brief Encounters column (*subscription)
In 1951, at age 46, Emlyn Williams carved out a new career touring the world with his one-man show, Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens.
Unpacking the backpack of Christian privilege, Penney Kome, Over Easy column
So Starbucks has won 2015’s first “War On Christmas” prize, by offering seasonal red, green and white paper coffee cups that some evangelicals deem not Christmasy enough. And it’s only the beginning of November!
Why cats are fussy, and dogs will eat most anything. By Hannah Rowland
Research suggests cats possess the genes that protect vegetarian animals from ingesting poisonous plants.
‘JIHADI JOHN’: how one man became the Islamic State symbol. By Scott Lucas
Mohammed Emwazi became a symbol of a complex conflict – a shorthand for the evil threatening the West as well as those in Syria and Iraq.
BRANDON STANTON, Humans of New York: beyond journalism headlines. By Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
In the fall of 1915, New York photographer Brandon Stanton – best known for his project Humans of New York (HONY) – documented the human stories behind the migrant crisis, in partnership with the United Nations Refugee Agency.
Recommended elsewhere:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made public the new federal government’s Ministerial Mandate Letters — essentially the terms of each appointment to cabinet. They are a contrast to the extreme partisanship of Canada’s previous government: one instructs a minister to create a non-partisan, merit-based process to advise on Senate appointments. There are surprisingly detailed instructions: orders to re-open coast guard facilities in St. John’s and Vancouver. And they promise sweeping change, from banning crude oil tankers off Northern British Columbia to electoral reform. One unexpected pledge will be welcome be every journalist: to engage with journalists as “professionals who, by asking necessary questions, contribute in an important way to the democratic process.”
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Last but not least, on Saturday –hours after the terror massacres in Paris — German musician Davide Martello rolled his mobile piano to a street near the city’s Bataclan music hall, and played John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
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