Latest news with #Edmund
The Star
a day ago
- Health
- The Star
Enduring aches and long waits
Edmund's (not his real name) urine was the colour of cherry red at 4am. By dawn, it was the colour of blackcurrant juice, with blood clots. It burned when he urinated and he knew enough biology to be afraid. His company panel general practitioner (GP) wrote an urgent referral to a urologist at a private hospital and told him to go immediately. His company's insurance provider issued a guarantee letter within the hour. But the earliest appointment the urologist's clinic could give was three days later. So Edmund waited, worried sick about possible bladder cancer. When the appointment day came, blood and urine samples were taken in the morning. He only saw the urologist at 7pm. The radiology department was closed by then. He had to return the next day for a computed tomography (CT) scan, followed by a cystoscopy – a procedure where a thin, flexible tube with a camera (cystoscope) is inserted into the urethra and bladder to examine the lining. He spent nearly 20 hours of waiting over two days, surrounded by foreign patients. It turned out to just be a bad bladder infection. No cancer. Nevertheless, Edmund said he now dreaded ever needing to see a specialist in Penang again. In February, another man, Johnny (not his real name) twisted his knee but couldn't recall how it happened. He limped for months, needing a walking stick on some weeks. He nursed it with painkillers, an ice compress and a brace, but the pain got worse. His GP, who had previously treated him for other 'sprains without trauma', suspected Johnny had rheumatoid arthritis and needed to see a rheumatologist. That's when Johnny's wait began. One rheumatologist was booked for the entire month. Another had a single open slot – at the end of June. Not wanting to wait any longer because he had been taking strong painkillers for months, which he knew were bad for his organs, Johnny sought an occupational health doctor who was willing to order tests and start treatment. I related their stories to a friend who is a GP. She sighed and told me that in recent months, she had resorted to admitting some of her patients into private hospitals – just so they could get specialist care faster. Even then, there were times when no beds were available – these were top-rated private hospitals and her patients were either insured or had the money. If you were to ask around, you'll find many Penang residents with similar accounts – appointments weeks away, hours-long waits even if their given appointments are in the morning or hospital lobbies teeming with international patients. In February, Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council data revealed that Penang was no longer the country's top healthcare destination. Klang Valley has pulled up ahead. Between January and November last year, Klang Valley received 560,700 healthcare travellers and earned RM886mil. Penang saw 453,600 travellers and made RM866mill. The numbers are massive. But I couldn't help noticing the shift. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Penang was the crown jewel of medical tourism in Malaysia. Indonesians, in particular flocked here, not just for treatment, but also for the food. Now I wonder if Penang's position slipped not because fewer patients came, but because the hospitals here were full. That's still good news for Penang's economy – but less so for Penang's residents needing healthcare. We're used to government hospitals being crowded. But now even the private ones are packed. I don't work in healthcare and can't say what the solution might be. Build more hospitals? Limit foreign patient intake? Prioritise locals? Every idea I pondered on has complications. Maybe we just have to wait and hope that when our turn finally comes, the diagnosis isn't worse than the delay.
Metro
3 days ago
- Metro
The teenage Orkney killer who got away with murder for 14 years
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video It was a beautiful summer evening in Orkney, when a loud gunshot rang out and the peaceful corner of the world changed forever. Families were dining in the only Indian Restaurant in the main town of Kirkwall, when a masked man calmly walked in on June 2 1994 and shot 26-year-old waiter Shamsuddin Mahmood at point-blank range, before vanishing into the night. It was the first murder to happen in 25 years on the island located just off the northern coast of Scotland, which has a population of around 22,000. Detectives arrived overnight, the area was sealed off, and the big question of who could have killed Shamsuddin was at the forefront of the locals' minds. He had no known enemies and had only arrived in Orkney six weeks before, with plans to soon return to Bangladesh to marry his fiancée. An investigation commenced, and 2,736 statements were taken. A pair of witnesses claimed they saw teenager Michael Ross wearing the same balaclava and dark clothing as the murderer in woodland a fortnight earlier. The 15-year-old was called in for questioning, accompanied by his police officer father, Edmund Ross. Michael proclaimed his innocence and provided an alibi – he'd seen friends on the evening of the murder, however, they later denied being in his company. In the Amazon Prime Video documentary The Orkney Assassin: Murder in the Isles , his mother, Moira, recalls asking Michael if he had killed Shamsuddin. 'I remember him coming home with the detective, and he went up to his room and sat there,' she says tearfully. 'I did go up and ask him 'Did you shoot that man?' And he said: 'No'. I just can't get over the look on his face when I asked him that.' Edmund adds, 'My head was spinning at the time. I didn't believe it. I knew my son, and he never showed any sort of tendency to go out and shoot anyone.' Evidence continued to build when Michael admitted dropping his balaclava into the sea with a heavy stone attached, and a bedroom search found school books marked with swastikas, 'Death to the English' scribbles and SS symbols. Meanwhile, Edmund owned the same type of bullets that were used in the murder, but didn't reveal this information until two months after the inquiry had begun. When lead investigator Angus Chisholm asked where they'd come from, he initially claimed he couldn't remember, before later revealing they came from a friend and former Marine, Jim Spence. The findings did not lead to a conviction; however, in 1997, Edmund was imprisoned for four years on charges of lying to the police and tampering with a witness, after it was alleged that he asked Jim to lie. Despite the determination of some detectives, the troubling case began to slip into obscurity. That was until 12 years after the murder in 2006, when a mysterious letter was delivered to the local police station. A new witness, later identified as William Grant, wrote that he had seen the killer in public toilets on the night of the murder, brandishing a gun. He identified him as Michael. Advocate depute Brian McConnachie QC, who led the prosecution case, tells Metro: 'When the incident happened, long before I was ever involved, it was taken to the Crown Office, and a decision was made that there was insufficient evidence against Michael. However, the letter was enough to reopen, and that's when I looked over the case; I didn't necessarily agree with the original decision that evidence wasn't strong enough to proceed with the case.' The revelation led to the shock arrest of Michael, who in the intervening years had married, become a father of two and now worked as a sergeant of a sniper platoon in Scotland's Black Watch regiment. As so much time had passed, it was a 'challenging' case for Brian to take on, he says. 'In cold cases, people who gave statements have forgotten what they said, what they saw, and they may have heard somebody else say something, and that becomes part of their memory.' He adds: 'There wasn't the same amount of CCTV in 1994 as there is now, and people didn't carry mobile telephones. Nowadays, the police solve a lot of crimes because the accused can be pinpointed to be in a particular location through signal.' However, the authorities had enough to bring it the case trial in 2008, where the 'compelling, unanswerable' circumstantial evidence was presented. 'It could be described as putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It was trying to find all the different pieces to make the picture. The bullets, his access, and interest in firearms were all important, then we added Mr Grant's identification into it,' says Brian. Although a motive isn't needed to prove someone's guilt, it was suggested that Michael's racist views had led him to shoot one of Orkney's only Asian residents. A fellow cadet claimed Michael said: 'Blacks should be shot'. 'It was such a pointless and senseless killing,' says Brian. 'There wasn't a feud between them, but there was certainly an amount of evidence which suggested that at the relevant time, he had racist tendencies. 'Whether that was something that was genuinely felt or it was just the rantings of a teenager, it's hard to say. I've said in the past that I've never been totally convinced about the racism angle.' During the trial, Michael's lawyer, Donald Findlay, argued it was unthinkable that a teenager would have carried out the killing, claiming it was more likely to be a 'professional hit'. But at the end of a six-week trial, it took jurors just four hours to reach a guilty verdict of murder. At the trial, Shamsuddin's brother, barrister Abul Shafiuddin, said: 'He was our baby brother and at least we know the person who killed him will be punished.' Upon hearing his fate, Michael attempted to escape by jumping out of the dock at Glasgow High Court, assaulting a guard and making it into an outside corridor, before being wrestled to the ground. Days before, he had parked a hired car two miles from the court with a machine gun, hand grenades and a sleeping bag amongst the items found in the boot. He explained in an open letter to supporters that he would have used the items to live off the land. It hasn't been his only attempt to escape punishment either, as he has since tried to leave prison three times. Brian says: 'It's the first time I've seen anything like that from somebody who'd just been convicted of murder. 'If someone thinks they're innocent and is convicted, they might well want to escape, but the fact that he was running to a motor vehicle filled with the items, is a problem. The jury decided his guilt without all of that evidence, but I don't think that helps his position now.' Even so, the case of Shamsuddin's murder is far from over, with a shadow of doubt still dividing opinion in Orkney to this day. Michael's family believe there has been a grave miscarriage of justice, while a petition has been set up by supporters to clear his name, which currently has 2650 signatures. Michael, now 46, remains incarcerated, and his earliest release date is 2035. Orkney local Ethan Flett wasn't even born when the crime took place, but the 25-year-old has spent many hours analysing the case through his role as a reporter for the island newspaper The Orcadian. The journalism took him to Perth prison, where he went through airport-like security, before sitting down at a table that had been screwed into the floor. When Michael entered the visitors' room, Ethan didn't instantly recognise him. 'He's been taking the gym seriously,' the young reporter thought to himself. As they began chatting, Ethan quickly made it clear that he wasn't interested in campaigning for his innocence or trying to find anybody else guilty. Even so, Michael was happy to give his first ever interview. 'The meeting will stick in my mind for a while. He seemed very laid-back and was an easy guy to deal with. It is one of the paradoxes, considering what he's been convicted of, but he seemed at least like a fairly normal person. It's strange,' recalls Ethan to Metro. They spent the next six months writing back and forth to each other, with Michael responding to each of Ethan's questions in great detail. 'What I found most interesting was his justifications for his escape attempts. He says that he did it to garner a bit of publicity for his claims of innocence, and says that he would have surrendered to the authorities if he were successful,' Ethan explains. 'He admitted to saying racist things as a teenager, but claimed that it was immaturity that he regretted.' Ethan adds that the police previously publicly stated that they had ruled out racism as the motive, which 'would make it a motiveless crime, so it's hard to get your head around.' In letters to Ethan, Michael says that the reason the friends mentioned in his alibi don't remember talking to him is that the police didn't question them until months had passed. Ethan's research has also raised some possible inconsistencies, such as when Michael became a suspect. He was questioned about his movements on the night of the murder on December 2 1994. Michael's legal team have said that the audio shouldn't have been allowed in court, as he hadn't been offered a lawyer. The appeal was rejected as it was determined he wasn't a suspect at this point. 'I found court records from the trial of Eddy, which stated that Michael had become the prime and only suspect as of September,' says Ethan. 'There are unsolved leads in the case, such as two days before the murder, there was a heated argument at the door of the restaurant between Shamsuddin and people trying to get in. According to one of the witnesses inside the restaurant, the man threatened to shoot Shamsuddin a number of times. 'A month into the investigation, one of the detectives was quoted as saying that the incident had been cleared up. However, a statement was taken from the detective who led the cold case review when Michael's conviction was examined by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2014, and he said it wasn't solved.' As a journalist, Ethan remains impartial. More Trending 'I don't know whether or not he committed the murder. My interest has always been in the handling of the investigation by the police. There's still so much interest in this case from Orkney people, so the story is ongoing,' he explains. Meanwhile, Brian doesn't think there's enough to appeal the case's verdict: 'I think new evidence becoming available is the only way that it would get back into the court. 'I haven't seen or heard anything yet to make me think that the jury got it wrong.' The Orkney Assassin: Murder in the Isles will be available on Prime Video in the UK & Ireland on June 8 Do you have a story you'd like to share? Get in touch by emailing Share your views in the comments below. MORE: Rich people 'will have robot butlers by 2030′ – but there's a major flaw MORE: BBC's 'brilliant' true crime drama made me question my own morals MORE: 'Exquisite' Amazon Prime show cancelled after one series despite 85% Rotten Tomatoes score
New Statesman
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Sharing a bed with Edmund White
Photo by Peter Kevin Solness / Fairfax Media via Getty Images For a time, Edmund White and I slept in a bed reputed to have belonged to Walt Whitman. We were both living in New York and teaching at Princeton. When we had to stay the night, we were hosted by a friend who lived on the edge of the campus. In his guest room was a dark wood bed purchased in the 1950s from an antique dealer who produced the story of its connection to the 19th-century American poet. Whatever the truth, on our separate nights, Edmund and I both slept in 'Whitman's bed', smoothing the unchanged sheets in the mornings to maintain the fiction that it had not been slept in by anyone else. Eventually, Edmund wrote a poem about it, describing himself, an aged gay novelist, chastely reading Chekhov's stories, and a British PhD student who was the object of his erotic fantasy, both sharing the great gay poet's bed. 'My first poem since 1985', he told me untruthfully in an email. Edmund, who died this week at the age of 85, was perhaps America's greatest living gay writer. The author of more than 30 books, including novels, memoirs, and biographies of Proust, Genet, and Rimbaud, he occupied a unique position in American literature. I first met Edmund in Princeton, where he was a professor of creative writing until 2018, at a weekly dinner that he hosted with the owner of 'Whitman's bed' – the philosopher George Pitcher. The evening before Edmund taught his class, he and his husband, the writer Michael Carroll, would travel down to Princeton, stay with George, and take a group of PhD students out to dinner at a local restaurant. The dinners were a finely honed ritual: George, then in his early nineties, would use a flashlight on his key ring to inspect the menu. Someone would order a bottle of white wine. And the PhD students would attempt to keep up with Edmund and Michael's wit. Edmund was a conversationalist of the kind I associate with 18th-century philosophers: intellectually curious but also a master of levity, ranging from minor French literature to celebrity gossip. He once recalled a dinner with Michel Foucault to which he had also invited Susan Sontag. When she went to the bathroom, Foucault hissed at Edmund: 'Why did you invite her? She only ever talks about work!' Edmund's life informed his literature in a special way. In The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir (2025), his last published work, he writes: 'I'm at an age when writers are supposed to say finally what mattered most to them – for me it would be thousands of sex partners.' This is another connection with his 19th-century predecessor, as his Princeton colleague Jeff Nunokawa points out: 'Ed believes with a Whitmanesque unabashedness that sex is an instrument of knowledge.' His promiscuity gives his work an epic quality. His oeuvreis, in one sense, a story of America in the second half of the 20th century: its husbands and hustlers observed in their most intimate moments. In The Loves of My Life, he writes: 'I remember a big Southerner who fucked me as I wiggled my butt to show passion, though he kept saying in his baritone drawl, 'Just lay still, little honey.' More wiggling and he'd say, 'C'mon, baby, just lay still for me.' I thought his bad grammar proved he was a lifelong top. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe There is also an unignorable darkness in Edmund's account of desire. As a child, he was sent to a Freudian therapist who pronounced his sexuality pathological. His most well-known book A Boy's Own Story (1982) features a boy who seduces his teacher, only to betray him. To readers who complained that this was unbelievable, Edmund wrote: 'how could the product of an oppressive culture not be deformed?' In time, he outgrew the belief that his desires were curable. He witnessed the Stonewall riots, in the summer of 1969, after a police raid on a popular gay bar. Recalling the laughter, Edmund called it 'the first funny revolution', but emphasised its importance: 'Stonewall inaugurated an epoch when partners of the same sex could claim, maybe for the first time in history, their common humanity.' Like Whitman and the American Civil War, this revolution required its writers, and Edmund would be one of them. After becoming HIV positive in 1984, Edmund was found to be a 'long-term non-progressor', a condition affecting 1 in 500 people infected with HIV. It meant that he would not die from AIDS. Instead, he watched his friends and acquaintances die, and his own writing became a record of the disease and the political intolerance that met it. In Artforum in 1987, he wrote: 'I feel repatriated to my lonely adolescence, the time when I was alone with my writing and I felt weird about being a queer.' Unlike so many gay writers of his generation, Edmund lived long enough to see himself be celebrated as a legend. He spent his summers in Europe and winters in Florida. He was made the director of creative writing at Princeton, until, according to his friend and colleague Joyce Carol Oates, he realised that he would not be able to spend the first week of every January in Key West. At this point, he 'graciously resigned'. Success, inevitably, brought criticism. A review of The Loves of My Life by James Cahill in The Spectator called it 'lurid.' Edmund had cleverly anticipated this, noting in the book's introduction that 'sex writing can seem foolish, especially to the English.' It is his openness to and about sex that will grant Edmund's work its enduring significance, and which makes it feel vital for an era threatened both by a new puritanism and an even more repressive 'anti-wokeness'. His funny, detailed, historiographical writing makes sex appear motivated more by curiosity than appetite. 'I always feel as if I don't really know people unless I've gone to bed with him,' he claimed. I loved visiting Edmund and Michael's apartment in the West Village, the walls stacked to the roof with books. The dinner conversations were full of warmth and wit and smut. I simply expected to see him again. His long life and many books are something to be grateful for and amazed by. My friend Amelia Worsley, who visited him at home a few days before his sudden death, writes: 'I was amazed when Stan, one of Edmund's first loves, stopped by the apartment. We talked about the glamour of New York in the 1960s and the AIDS crisis that followed. 'It's a wonder that I am still alive,' Stan said to Edmund, 'And a wonder you are too.'' [See also: Alan Hollinghurst's English underground] Related
Time of India
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
From OT to the big league: Edmund scripts a spine-chilling comeback
Edmund Lalrindika is now also the only player from the I-League to make it to Manolo Marquez's national team probables Panaji: Edmund Lalrindika remembers holding his teary-eyed sister's hand and telling her, from a hospital bed, not to worry. It was hours before he was to be wheeled into the operation theatre on March 7, 2022. A spine injury had put a question mark over the young striker's future, threatening to end a promising career that saw him captain India juniors. Two doctors that Edmund consulted over his injury told him he would never play football again. The third provided some hope. Football wasn't recommended, but he could try his hand at non-contact sports, 'probably badminton or tennis.' Despite the grim diagnosis from three top doctors, Edmund refused to give up. His life, and that of his near ones, depended on him cutting uncompromising defenders to size. Eighteen months later he was back on the field, and even though it only resulted in Bengaluru FC terminating his contract after a not-too-impressive campaign at the Durand Cup, his move to I-League debutants Inter Kashi in the second tier of Indian football changed everything. The Mizo ended as the club's top scorer, made heads turn with stunning goals in the I-League, trained with Atletico Ottawa, a leading team in the Canadian Premier League, and has now returned to the top-tier of Indian football with East Bengal paying Rs 1 crore, a record sum, for his transfer from Inter Kashi. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Keep Your Home Efficient with This Plug-In elecTrick - Save upto 80% on Power Bill Learn More Undo The striker is now also the only player from the I-League to make it to Manolo Marquez's national team probables. 'Before the surgery, everyone was too tense,' Edmund told TOI recently. 'They knew what the doctors had said, but I told my sister, 'your brother will play football, and I will be my best version as a footballer. I am a Christian, I am a believer, and I had faith. It is this faith that helped me make a comeback.' Edmund, 26, said the signs of his injury were there during the 2021-22 season when he played through pain. 'I should have rested, but I kept going, thinking I'd get a chance (in a star-studded Bengaluru squad).' After a complicated surgery, it wasn't easy. For four months, Edmund was rooted to his bed, helpless. Then he started taking baby steps. It wasn't until a year later that he could jog a bit, then run. The dream of returning to competitive football still appeared far-fetched. Edmund didn't give up. Eighteen months later he returned to play for Bengaluru but it wasn't convincing enough. Parting of ways followed. 'I can understand why Bengaluru terminated the contract. I must thank the club. Although I didn't get enough chances because it's a big club, and I was very young, they provided me with the best facilities, the best rehab (for treatment) and the best doctors. If the club had not provided such support, I would have never made it,' said Edmund. After parting ways with Bengaluru, Edmund was on his own. Nobody wanted to touch him. Understandable for a player who had undergone spine surgery and looked a far cry from the player who was part of every junior India squad from the U-16s in 2013. When Inter Kashi presented him with another opportunity, he quickly grabbed it. The rest, as they say, is history. 'Injuries are part of football. As footballers, when you face such adversities, you need to be tough. My mentality was strong. I always had faith in God and that helped me a lot. When you are down, hit rock bottom, it's important to get up. My understanding about life is now much better than what it was before (surgery). I can deal with anything,' said Edmund. He's a much better footballer too. Across four previous seasons in the Indian Super League (ISL), his numbers made for poor reading: five appearances in 2018-19 was the best he could manage. For the next three, he played two minutes one year, 14 minutes the next and 106 minutes over three appearances the year he got injured. With Inter Kashi, he was the first name on the coach's team list, playing every game. Now he's keen to prove himself in the top tier too with East Bengal, and of course the national team, where he is no stranger to the India jersey 'I am not new to East Bengal. I've played there before but got injured. I always wanted to come back; it's one of the biggest clubs in India. Even with the national team, I know I can do better. There are many players who have played alongside me (during junior days). I always believed that I could catch up with them. They've been my teammates before. I believe I can be there (on top) one day,' said Edmund.
The Herald Scotland
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'Spectacular': Review: The Lion, Witch & Wardrobe @ Festival Theatre
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Neil Cooper Five stars A World War Two soldier is playing We'll Meet Again on the piano at the start of this latest tour of C.S. Lewis' classic morality tale. The melancholy melody is about the most down to earth thing you're likely to see over the next two hours of a show that turns its dramatic world upside down in epic fashion. Scaled up by director Michael Fentiman from Sally Cookson's 2017 version at Leeds Playhouse, the result is spectacular. The opening song sets the tone for the wartime evacuation of the four Pevensie children, who are decamped to Aberdeen, where the allure for their new home's spare room proves too much for the eternally curious Lucy. Before she knows where she is she has gone beyond the flea ridden fur coats and landed in Narnia. As imagined by designer Tom Paris and original designer Rae Smith, the Narnia under the queendom of Katy Stephens' White Witch's more resembles some Fritz Lang styled dystopia driven by a constructivist chain gang who seem to have stepped out of a 1970s adult SF comic. Read more Yes, the White Witch has got the power, as she proves with her jawdropping metamorphosis at the end of the first act, but Spring is coming. This is the case even if Lucy's daft brother Edmund sells out his siblings for a bumper sized box of Turkish Delight personified by way of Toby Olié and Max Humphries' larger than life puppetry. Fentiman's slickly oiled machine is driven by Barnaby Race and Benji Bower's chamber folk score played by the cast of more than twenty throughout. Despite the show's grandiose staging, it is the humanity of the piece that gives the show its heart and soul. This is even the case with Stanton Wright's messianic looking Aslan, embodied by a life size lion puppet beside him as he spars with the White Witch and her well drilled minions. As Shanell 'Tali' Fergus' choreography navigates the cast from dark to light, it is the Pevensie clan who shine. Joanna Adaran as Susan, Jesse Dunbar as Peter, Kudzai Mangombe as Lucy and Shane Anthony Whiteley stepping up as Edmund for a Thursday matinee briefly halted by technical gods all rise to the occasion in a big show that never loses sight of the eternal story at its heart.
