Kidnapping

Tuesday

Leyla Sanai

The downside to being rich: Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, reviewed

From our UK edition

Fleishman is in Trouble was one of the funniest novels of 2020, and it catapulted Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a New York Times journalist, into the spotlight with a US TV series two years later. Long Island Compromise is a rollicking family saga written with the same sardonic wit. It is centred around a wealthy family living in a suburb of Long Island, who owe their fortune to the late patriarch, a Jewish European émigré who set up a successful factory making polystyrene foam moulds. There’s a backstory to this, which we learn later, but his indomitable widow and his son Carl’s wife Ruth rule the roost. At the beginning, Carl is kidnapped, then returned traumatised, and the implications of this violent act affect Ruth and their children Nathan, Beamer and Jenny.

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

America has few good options in Haiti

Haiti has never been known as a beacon of stability and tranquility. Most of its politicians are feckless, in league with criminals, or too consumed with trying to stay alive themselves. America not so long ago intervened on the island twice in 10 years — the first time in 1994, when President Clinton’s threat of an invasion compelled the junta to reverse its coup three years earlier, and the second in 2004, when the Bush administration participated in an international stabilization force after Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned. But this year has been an especially tough one for the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

haiti

Tuesday

Andy Owen

Prisoners dilemma: should we pay kidnappers?

From our UK edition

British-Mexican national Claudia Uruchurtu Cruz disappeared on the night of Friday 26 March in the town of Nochixtlan, Oaxaca State, Mexico. Claudia had been seen attending a rally protesting the beating of a local labourer, allegedly by security elements linked to the local municipal president. Unconfirmed witness statements claim she was grabbed and pushed into a red car. Claudia never arrived home and her family and friends have not heard from her since.  What is the right response for the British government? The most debated issue is whether to pay ransoms. Some governments refuse, others pay, or at least turn a blind eye to families that do. In Mali, where British troops are now operating, France has paid millions of dollars to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.