Newsmakers

The case of the messy notebooks

John Curran, a Dublin city councillor and self-described “arch-fan” of Agatha Christie, took a sabbatical from his day job to apply his sleuthing skills to the beloved mystery writer’s archives. Teaching himself to read Christie’s “bloody awful handwriting,” Curran poured over 72 of her notebooks, long held in storage at her country home in Devon, which chronicled her work from the ’20s until her death in 1976. In his new book, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, Curran reveals his findings—most significantly, two never-published short stories starring the beloved Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

I know you are, but what am I?

A heated email exchange between N.B. Education Minister Kelly Lamrock and Brandon Pike, a middle-schooler with a bone to pick, was made public last week after it turned up on Facebook and was later published on the CBC’s website. The clash began after Pike emailed Lamrock to denounce his cuts to school libraries and support workers. “Cutting the funding to the library is a very childish thought,” he wrote, ending the letter with this rhetorical flourish: “You’ve took [sic] early French immersion, but you will not take this from us, our dreams.” Lamrock, apparently not charmed, responded that he had attempted to negotiate alternatives with the unions, but they had refused to compromise. Pike then scolded Lamrock for blaming the teachers, and reiterated his position that getting rid of libraries is “just plain dumb.” Provoked now, Lamrock replied, “C’mon Brandon, do some research instead of trying to come up with clever personal attacks,” and reiterated his position in great detail. Pike refused to back down and challenged Lamrock to “Stop hiding behind [his] statistics.” But Lamrock got the final word: “I will leave you to make arguments unburdened by facts or conflicting opinions,” he wrote. Conservative MLA and opposition education critic Claude Landry later criticized Lamrock of doing a lousy job of engaging the student’s concerns. Lamrock admitted he tends to get riled up in a debate. “It’s a personal flaw of mine,” he said. “I get carried away. I’m sure I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. I try and do better but God isn’t finished with me yet.”

Not just retaining water

Officials at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand were surprised and delighted recently when a rare panda they had been trying to breed for years gave birth unexpectedly. Zoo employees did not even know that Lin Hui, 7, was pregnant. “The panda experts from China said the baby is in good health and strong,” said one official. They had tried just about everything to get Lin Hui and her male companion, Chuang Chuang—both on loan from China—to mate: a mock wedding, separation, even “porn” videos of pandas mating. Finally, in mid-February, they resorted to artificial insemination, but Lin Hui’s ultrasound in May was inconclusive. According to the official, Lin Hui is “very fond of her baby”: “She cuddles, licks and holds the baby very carefully all the time. She knows how to be a mother even though she’s never been one before.”

Feed the sinner

When a masked man carrying a bat tried to rob Mohammad Sohail’s convenience store in Suffolk County, N.Y., Sohail took out his rifle and ordered the man to the floor—but he soon found himself overcome by compassion for the robber, who explained that hard times had made him desperate. “He started crying,” said Sohail. “He was saying, ‘I have no money. I have no food. I have to take care of my family.’ ” Sohail gave the robber a loaf of bread and $40 in cash, and asked him never to commit a robbery again. The man fled while Sohail went to get him some milk. Police are looking for the man, who was captured on a surveillance video and could face a first-degree felony charge. But Sohail says he hopes police don’t charge him. “I hope he learned something,” he said.

It’s a dame shame

Speaking with The Stage magazine, the legendary British actor Sir Ian McKellen, 70, criticized contemporary playwrights for their prudishness and relentless focus on young people, and for not generating enough interesting and sexually charged roles for older female actresses. Dame Judi Dench, he said, has virtually run out of Shakespearean parts to play. “Plays about old age are perhaps going to be more popular than they used to be and that should help playwrights think, well, we can find some fabulous parts for the fabulous actresses there are around,” he said. “If Shakespeare hadn’t been interested in older people and people in their prime, we would not have had Antony and Cleopatra, and many other characters.”