Voices from Baghdad

A reporter returns to Iraq after 10 years and, after after speaking with old friends and colleagues, finds a city “traumatized by violence”

They spoke generously and the words lent perspective to these new, unhappy days in Iraq. The first years of democracy were expected to be hard. But this year, with the third national election in April, these men have been frustrated by their terror-torn existence. Every new blast cracks their hopes for a normal life.

“What does it mean if work is good but you have to worry about survival all the time?” said Tharwat al-Ani, the trade ministry official. “Every year, it’s been something new: car bombs or IEDs or kidnappings.

Source: Financial Times
Published: Mar 7, 2014
Length: 20 minutes (5,122 words)

Death in Singapore

An American electronics engineer is found dead in Singapore. Police told the family it was a suicide, but they believe their son was murdered:

“Shane had died a week before he was to return to the US. The police said he had drilled holes into his bathroom wall, bolted in a pulley, then slipped a black strap through the pulley and wrapped it around the toilet several times. He then tethered the strap to his neck and jumped from a chair. Shane, 6ft 1in and nearly 200lb, hanged himself from the bathroom door, the autopsy report said.

“So the Todds, along with two of Shane’s younger brothers, John and Dylan, were unnerved by what they didn’t see as they crossed the threshold. The front door was unlocked and there was no sign of an investigation – no crime-scene tape, no smudges from fingerprint searches. ‘The first thing I did was make a beeline for the bathroom,’ Mrs Todd recalled. She wanted to see exactly how Shane had died – and she saw nothing that fitted the police description. The marble bathroom walls had no holes in them. Nor were there any bolts or screws. The toilet was not where the police had said.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Feb 15, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,470 words)