The Electric Pitchfork

Woman ‘snatched by crocodile during late-night swim’ The 46-year-old woman’s last words were “A croc’s got me!” A large crocodile is believed to have snatched a tourist who ignored warnings and went swimming off a north Australian beach known to be infested by the reptiles. Cindy Waldron, 46 was walking along Thornton Breach in Queensland’s Daintree National Park with a another woman when she decided to enter the water at about 10.30 yesterday evening. Ms Waldron, who was born in New Zealand, waded into the water despite numerous signs in the area warning of the dangers posed by the many large crocodiles living within the national park Almost immediately her 47-year-old friend heard screaming. Ms Waldron’s last word were : “A croc’s got me!” “Her friend tried to grab her and drag her to safety but she just wasn’t able to do that,” Senior Constable Russell Parker told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “It would be very, very distressing for her.” A search, which began at

Objects of desire: Russian doll What to bring back from your travels The original Russian — or Matryoshka — doll actually came from the Japanese island of Honshu in 1890. The dolls-within-dolls design was appropriated by Muscovite craftsmen, and thus was born Russia’s most enduring souvenir. They first went on sale in Sergiev Posad, a pilgrimage town 45 miles north of Moscow. Local craftsmen, who made a living selling carved knick-knacks to the faithful, found the new offerings to be bestsellers. The true objects of desire, however, come from Semionovo, 300 miles east of Moscow, where the master carver Arsenty Mayorov developed the classic Matryoshka style in the 1920s, using aniline dyes rather than gouache to create the rosy-cheeked peasant girl with the headscarf and floral apron. The dolls are still made here: a hand-painted 6in, seven-piece set from the Khokhloma workshops, on Chkalova Street, costs £6, while a 12-in, 12-piece set costs £42. If you can’t make

Helena Bonham Carter at 50 The convention-defying actress is back on screen this week in Alice Through the Looking Glass. She talks about being single, her 100-year-old knees and having her very own girl squad The other day, I was getting changed at the gym,” says Helena Bonham Carter, adjusting her vast bird’s-nest hairdo while talking at 90 miles an hour, “and this woman, a stranger, looked me up and down and said, ‘Do you have a broomstick at home?’ I thought, ‘Honestly, I’m just trying to do some exercise here.’ Another time I was doing yoga, and someone tweeted ‘Bonham Carter’s wearing bloomers to the yoga!’ I was going to tweet back saying they’re not bloomers, but then I realised that actually they were. Hahahahaha!” This is how conversations tend to run with Bonham Carter — intelligent points segueing into self-effacing personal anecdotes, before exploding in fruity, tobacco-smoked, whisky-marinated laughs. We were supposed to be talking about media intrusion,

The Dark Roots of the “Brussels EU” This article highlights the birth place of the "Brussels EU" on the drawing boards of the Nazi/IG Farben-coalition for a post-war Europe under their control. It is an excerpt of the  speech by Dr. Rath   on the occasion of receiving the " Relay of Life " award from survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Original Article Link The corporate preparations for World War II started as early as 1925, when Bayer, BASF, Hoechst and other German multinationals formed a cartel called “IG Farben Industry”. The declared goal of this cartel was to obtain control of the global markets in the key industrial sectors of chemistry, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals. Already in 1925, when this cartel was founded, its corporate value surpassed 11 billion Reichsmark and it employed more than 80,000 people. One of the strategic industries for which IG Farben sought global control was the pharmaceutical “investme

The 30-Year War That Tore Northern Ireland Apart A Belfast man on patrol for the Irish Republican Army, 1987. Pacemaker Press International/Belfast Telegraph Archiv e By  Elisabeth Sherman  on  May , 2016 From 1968 to 1998, Northern Ireland was the battleground of a guerrilla war known as The Troubles. On one side was the Protestant majority called the Unionists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. On the other side were the Nationalists, a Catholic minority who sought to become part of the Republic of Ireland. For 30 years, Northern Island ripped itself apart trying to decide whether to merge with Ireland or stay subject to the British crown. Over the course of the conflict, approximately 3,600 people died, with thousands more injured. A British soldier drags a Catholic protester during the “Bloody Sunday” killings. THOPSON/AFP/Getty Images In one of the conflict’s most infamous massacres,  Bloody Sunday , British soldiers

Hobbit star says Hollywood has its own Savile scandal Elijah Wood, the former child actor and star of the Lord of the Rings films, claims that Hollywood has been gripped by cases of sexual abuse similar to the Jimmy Savile scandal in Britain — and it may still be continuing. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Wood, 35, sympathised with British victims of Savile and said: “Jesus, it must have been devastating.” He said his mother had protected him from abuse when he arrived in Hollywood aged eight, but “I’ve been led down dark paths to realise that these things probably are still happening”. Original Article Link Wood, who played Frodo Baggins, the hobbit protagonist in the films of JRR Tolkien’s books, said there were “a lot of vipers in this industry . . . there is darkness in the underbelly”. Allegations that powerful Hollywood figures have been protecting child abusers have circulated widely in recent years and Anne Henry, co-founder of Bizparentz

OBITUARY Madeleine LeBeau French actress who stole a famous scene in Casablanca and whose own life as a wartime fugitive mirrored the film’s plot. The last surviving cast member of one of the greatest of all movies, Madeleine LeBeau was integral to the plot of the wartime classic, Casablanca. The French siren first appears as Yvonne, the current love interest of the cynical bar owner Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart). She asks: “Where were you last night?” to which Rick replies, “That’s so long ago I don’t remember.” She asks again, “Will I see you tonight?” to which Bogart replies, “I never make plans that far ahead.” Having been jilted, she gets drunk and later reappears on the arm of a German officer, walking back into the bar in Vichy-controlled Morocco. When her new boyfriend and his comrades start singing a Nazi song, the fugitive resistance leader Victor Laszlo leads the bar in a stirring rendition of La Marseillaise — after Rick nods his approval to the