Weekend Box: Unrest in Kosovo, Scammer in the Slammer & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
UNREST RETURNS TO KOSOVO
25 years on from the Kosovo War, tensions are once again running high in the Balkan country.
Ever since the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Kosovo – an ethnic Albanian and majority Muslim territory – has sought independence from Serbia. In 2008, Kosovo unilaterally declared itself a republic, a move that Serbia strongly opposed. A number of European countries still do not recognise Kosovo as a sovereign state.
The war in Ukraine has caused a flare up in Kosovo, with fears that Russia will use its ties with Serbia to stir up more unrest. Another flash point came in November over the seemingly banal demand for ethnic Serbians living in Kosovo to change their car licence plates from Serbian to Kosovo-issued ones. The EU has attempted to arbitrate between Serbia and Kosovo and European leaders have made it plain to both sides that without normalised relations between the two, neither will fulfil their ambition to join the EU.
In March, it looked like a lasting agreement between Serbia and Kosovo was close. The two sides accepted a solution whereby majority ethnic Serb communities living in Kosovo could have certain local powers, and Serbia would not object to Kosovo joining international organisations such as the UN.
However, the plan was not implemented by either side. The upshot was local elections in April were boycotted by Serbs, leading to ethnic Albanians winning the votes. This week, as the newly elected mayors tried to take office, violence fuelled by ethnic Serbs broke out. The US blamed Kosovo for provoking the violence and kicked it out of a military exercise in the Balkans. NATO has now said it will send a further 700 troops to try to restore calm.
It is a depressing setback for the EU and NATO, who would dearly love to avoid further conflict in the Balkans. Overall, their strategic aim of aligning Serbia and Kosovo with the West seems distant.
Image Credit/FORTUNE Global Forum/ Flickr
SCAMMER IN THE SLAMMER
Federal Prison Camp Bryan occupies 37 acres of land in the heart of the Brazos Valley, Texas. Until last week, it was best known for housing one of the ‘Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ Jennifer Shah and Jenna Ryan who took part in the January 6th attack on the US Capitol.
Now it has a new occupant who reported to the facility on Tuesday a full 16 months after her conviction for one of the most notorious frauds in US history.
Elizabeth Holmes, once the darling of the tech scene and some of the world’s most renowned publications, began her 11-year jail sentence this week having failed in a last-ditch bid to get her proposed incarceration overturned. The story of Holmes has gripped much of corporate America ever since a 2015 Wall St Journal expose suggested her blood-testing startup Theranos was built on false claims and dodgy data.
Now, a best-selling book, award-winning podcast, and Hulu TV series later, the one-time paper billionaire has swapped life in the tech utopia of California for a more mundane existence in a minimum security prison where she will earn up to $1.15 an hour for completing general tasks.
It’s a spectacular fall from grace for someone once courted by big investors (such as Rupert Murdoch) and feted by Presidents (Joe Biden was a big fan). But there’s little sign that corporate America is going to learn. Elsewhere this week, prosecutors responded to the latest attempt of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to stave off prosecution. He too was lauded by Silicon Valley until his crypto exchange collapsed spectacularly.
Both Holmes and ‘SBF’ were charismatic founders and able storytellers. Yet while storytelling is important, so too is authenticity. Their downfall is a reminder that the two must go together. The truth catches up with you in the end.
SCHOOL’S OUT
Where have all the children gone? This is the burning question in the minds of teachers and parents, with the Department of Education revealing this week that an alarming 88 primary schools in the UK were more than 66 percent empty last year, with a further four set to close imminently. The Department also predicts that the number of pupils at state-funded schools will decline by 944,000 over the next decade, with the issue more pronounced in urban areas.
The reason behind this growing shortage of pupils is multifaceted. It is a combination of falling birth rates, high childcare costs, and housing costs (that have hollowed out urban communities in particular). This is a significant challenge for schools given that most funding is received on a per-pupil basis.
Nowhere has been more hit by this trend than London, a city where to put it simply: many parents cannot afford to bring up children. This exodus to the countryside has left half-empty schools in its wake, with Hackney Council for instance recording 589 fewer kids in reception today than it did in 2014, a shortfall equivalent to about 20 vacant classrooms. Some Conservatives, such as MP Miriam Cates at the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) last month, have voiced their concerns about collapsing birth rates, which Cates described as a “symptom of a serious societal malaise”. She’s not wrong, but this is less to do with ‘liberal individualism’, as many Conservative pro-natalists argue, and more likely to do with the lack of financial support for new parents. This, and the fact that there is no shortage of people wanting to have children, is detailed thoroughly in the Social Market Foundation’s report ‘Baby bust and baby boom’. France, which provides financial grants for each new baby and continues to have the highest birthrate in the EU, is a good example of this working.
Schools serve as more than just educational institutions; they are the heart of neighbourhoods and communities. The thought of a capital city without children, but plenty of shiny Nine Elms-esque tower blocks, is the stuff of dystopian novels, and an issue that politicians need to wake up to.
Image credit/ MetaphoricalPlatypus/ Wikimedia Commons
TINKER WHALE-OR SOLDIER SPY?
Hvaldimir, the alleged former Russian spy whale is on the move. First encountered in the icy waters of northern Norway in 2019, wearing a GroPro mount and harness marked "Equipment of St Petersburg", the tame beluga has moved on from plundering the area’s salmon farms and headed south to Sweden. His trackers at OneWhale, an organisation devoted to his well-being, think he may be seeking a mate, judging by his hormone levels. Unfortunately, he’s probably going the wrong way.
When Hvaldimir (a nickname combining ‘hval’ – whale - with Vladimir, as a nod to Mr Putin) first showed up, rigged for underwater filming, the Russians denied having any trained belugas. However, research suggests that since the 1960s Russia trained various sea mammals for military tasks. In 2017, Russia’s Defency Ministry-run Zvezda TV channel reported that Russia’s “underwater special forces” were taking on “new fighters”, including beluga whales. They would guard the entrances to naval bases, search for underwater mines, help divers and, “if necessary,” kill any “aliens that invade their territory”.
Once freed from his harness, Hvaldimir remained keen for human company and easy supplies of salmon. He became a local tourist attraction too, but the human interactions have often risked his well-being and in 2021 he was seriously injured, probably by a strike from a boat.
OneWhale’s experts have sought to find Hvaldimir his own safe fjord where he can avoid humans, potentially be joined by other rehabilitated whales and return to ways of the wild. The town of Hammerfest in northern Norway agreed to set a fjord aside as a reserve. It seems that Hvaldimir has his own ideas. It’s tempting to think he’s having a whale of a time on his travels – but where will they end?
Image credit/Andrew Lih/ Wikimedia Commons
HAY FEST: ONE FOR THE BOOKS
This week one of The Weekend Box’s correspondents will be out of office, spending Friday in the beautiful border town of Hay-on-Wye for the annual Hay Festival.
The Hay Festival of Literature and Arts was founded in 1988, two decades after the one-time owner of Hay Castle and self-proclaimed ruler of the town King Richard Coeur de Livre, AKA Richard Booth, first established his renowned bookshop there. Dubious as Booth’s claims to royalty were, his mark on Hay-on-Wye is indelible. His was the inspiration for the wave of second-hand bookshops that would open in Hay, transforming the former market town into a haven for bibliophiles and the ideal site for a celebration of writing.
In its thirty-five years, the festival has hosted many of the most respected names in literature and the arts, and this year is no exception. In the past week, it has welcomed comedian and author David Baddiel, former Guardian editor Gary Younge, and Handmaid’s Tale novelist Margaret Atwood to discuss their new works. Sunday will see British rap royalty Stormzy and authors from his publishing imprint #Merky Books marking its five-year anniversary, while popstar Dua Lipa will join Booker Prize Foundation director Gaby Wood and Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart for special recordings of her podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service.
Our correspondent is particularly looking forward to an event focused on the cultural life of his home nation and the home of the festival on Friday afternoon. Author, poet, and editor Sam Adams will take to the stage to discuss his new collection of columns Letters from Wales, a monument to Anglo-Welsh literature. He will share the stage with historian Dai Smith, celebrating the publication of his memoir Off the Track: Traces of Memory.
With an unusually favourable weather forecast in Wales this weekend, our correspondent wishes readers well – he’s going to go make Hay while the sun shines.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.