In photos, a glimpse at the lauded artists and rising stars to join the renowned collection.

The Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, a Germany-based exhibition of contemporary photography has been cancelled after one of the curators posted content to social media that the German cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg, where the event was set to take place, described it as “antisemitic”. The event was set to open March 2024.

As first reported in the Art Newspaper, the Bangladeshi photojournalist and event co-curator Shahidul Alam posted “content that can be read as antisemitic and antisemitic content,” according to officials, including posts compared Israel’s assault on Northern Gaza to the Holocaust and accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people.

Authorities in the three German cities said in a statement that their “relationship of trust” with Alam “has been severely damaged” after his posts.

According to the Art Newspaper, organizers from the host cities approached Alam, as well as his two co-curators, Tanzim Wahab and Munem Wasif, to discuss the social media posts “in order to sensitize the curators to Germany’s special historical responsibility for the state of Israel and its right to exist.” Alam continued to share his views on social media. “[He] sees himself as an activist and demands freedom of expression,” the organizers said. For their part, Wahab and Wasif refused to work on the biennial if Alam was barred from participating.

“The consequences of the cancellation for the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie and the organizing team are far-reaching,” the organizers said. “They jeopardize the future of the entire event. In the time ahead, we will do everything in our power to maintain the Biennale as one of the largest and most important photography events in Germany and Europe in the long term.”

Hamas and Israel will free hostages and prisoners in a deal brokered by American, Qatari, and Egyptian officials that will include a four-day ceasefire to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, officials announced late Tuesday. 

The negotiations come after six weeks of brutal fighting that has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians—more than half of whom were women and children—and 1,200 Israelis, according to the latest numbers published by the Associated Press.

Here’s what to know about the agreement: 

What are the details of the release of the hostages and prisoners? 

According to Qatar’s government, 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be released. Those hostages are part of a group of 240 people kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7. The freed hostages will likely include at least three Americans—two women and a child—National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on the “TODAY” show Wednesday. Israel has also agreed to extend the ceasefire for 24 hours for every additional 10 hostages released, Sullivan confirmed. 

“I know you don’t like to admit it,” New York Mayor Eric Adams told reporters last month. “But I know you get on your knees and pray every night, ‘Thank God Eric is the mayor of our city.'” 

Chuckling with smug self-satisfaction, Adams delivered these remarks roughly two weeks before federal authorities raided the home of his chief fundraiser in an explosive investigation into whether his mayoral campaign accepted illegal donations from Turkey. The probe—which has since expanded to include the seizure of Adams’ personal phones—and mounting reports revealing Adams’ intensive ties and travel to Turkey, comes as the mayor proposes billions in cuts to city programs. Those cuts include slashing the NYPD, food and housing services, the sanitation department, library hours, and a litany of major cultural institutions. 

It’s against this gloomy backdrop that Adams’ standing with New Yorkers—or from his perspective, the supplicants who thank God every day for delivering him to Gracie Mansion—has nose-dived, according to a new Marist poll. With only 37 percent approving of his job performance, a staggering 72 percent of those polled believe Adams’ mayoral campaign is guilty of wrongdoing in its dealings with Turkey; New Yorkers appear split on whether such malfeasance was illegal or merely unethical. 

Perhaps the most prominent person watching this flood of bad news for the embattled mayor? Andrew Cuomo. The former New York governor, who resigned in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations, is reportedly considering a run to replace Adams in 2025 should a federal investigation effectively irreparably damage his political career. All of which is certain to put the ongoing effort among progressives to identify a formidable challenger into overdrive, should New Yorkers not have an appetite to watch a tortured battle between two ignominious men. 

As for the ongoing FBI investigation, when asked on Tuesday whether he’d be willing to disclose details of his personal trips to Turkey, Adams offered a one-word reply: “Maybe.”

I don’t remember learning to read. There is a story in my family: I am still a small child, my mother carries me in her arms as she stands in line at the bank, the bank teller sees my long golden hair and says, “What a pretty little girl.” I say “I am a boy, Janice,” and Janice screams and faints.

This was in the seventies in Kentucky, the years of The Exorcist and The Omen, the era of demonic children on-screen. Janice, primed by horror movies to see the supernatural in everything, was unable to imagine a less exciting explanation. It was impossible that a child so small could have read her name tag.

It is not lost on me that this myth of learning to read frighteningly early is, at the same time, about my indignant insistence that I am a boy. Nor is its brimstone whiff of my family’s demonic flavor lost on me. When my mother’s brother Charles Edward died, she told me, “He was the devil, John David, and you are just like him.”

***

Is İlkay Gündoğan turning into the German Roy Keane? Can anyone stop Jim from turning into the God of Football? And will Kevin Keegan EVER stop hosting industry conferences? A listener has a fresh update for us...

Marcus, Jim, Andy and Vish are here to look back on the final round of Euro 2024 qualifiers, where Wales fell short of automatic qualification and now face the play-offs. We wonder whether people potentially have unreasonable expectations for this current Wales squad.

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up to the Football Ramble Patreon for ad-free shows for just $5 per month: patreon.com/footballramble.

***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***

I immediately found a taxi in front of my hotel, which I thought meant good luck for the venture ahead. The driver smiled. I smiled. I gave him the directions in Spanish, then French, and finally I gave him a slip of paper with an address. He smiled. We drove slowly up and down hilly streets and then into a valley of people selling carpets and kitchenware; a mosque towered above us. We passed a man walking with a live lamb draped over his shoulders. It was my second day in Morocco, and I was not yet used to such biblical scenes.

Ten minutes later, I saw the same spread of carpets and the same array of pots and pans, the same mosque, and I gestured to say, What’s going on? He shrugged and gave me another of his wide smiles. I was not reassured, thinking of stories of kidnapping and worse that supposedly happened in Morocco, stories I had admired written by a man I had admired since I was sixteen and whom I was on the way to meet. But then, finally, I arrived safe and free, ten minutes late and lighter by thirty dollars—with tip.

Paul Bowles was already there, waiting for me on a bench at the American School’s entranceway. He was very thin, slight, in a beige jacket, gray trousers, and a narrow, quiet tie, and was smoking a cigarette in a holder.

“I hope you had a good ride,” he said.

England completed a statement 8-1 aggregate victory over North Macedonia. Marcus and Jim are on hand to send that message to the rest of Europe. They also remind us that there are no rebounds in a penalty shootout.

Once that’s out of the way, the lads discuss if these two poor performances will have any effect on England going forward and whether Rico Lewis can make the squad for the Euros. Plus, would Harry Kane go to Oktoberfest by himself?

ollow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up to the Football Ramble Patreon for ad-free shows for just $5 per month: patreon.com/footballramble.

***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***

In 2007, I bought a brand-new red two-door Toyota Yaris off a lot at a Toyota dealership in the Inland Empire. I think it was about $13,000. I tried both the automatic and the manual transmission. The automatic had no power and because I was often getting on to the 110 freeway, whose on-ramps were about as long as the average hallway in a one-bedroom apartment, I thought the manual would be “safer.” I use quotes here because this car was tiny. If anything ever hit me while I was in that thing I would not be alive to write this. Luckily, nothing ever did.

I remember that as I headed into the dealership to sign the papers, I asked the salesman if I should maybe just try the Toyota Scion, what the heck, and he got very angry and started yelling at me that those cars were fucking garbage and that I should just buy the Yaris I said I had come to buy so that he could finish selling me this car and go sell another one, as God intended, more or less. “Why would you come here to buy a Yaris and walk out of here with another car, a stupid car, a car for A CHILD?” he shouted. I found all this charming, for some reason. I bought the car. I tried haggling. He made fun of me. “You are terrible at this, why try, go home and work and make five hundred dollars, don’t try to make it from me, you will never win. Also this car will make you money because you will never think about it.” And so I got a Yaris and the man was right. That car did what it was supposed to do, which was that it got me around and I never thought about it.

When I bought it, in my mid-thirties, it was one of the only good decisions I’d ever made. My boyfriends were mostly no good or not right. I was so bad with money it was a joke. When I hadn’t made a mess of my career, the economy stepped in to help. I did have good friends, and then later on I had a good dog, and this car made those things better. That might sound weird. But it never failed at getting me from one friend to another, or at getting me and that good dog around to various adventures. In that way, the rare sound judgment I had used in purchasing this car was compounded by the ways it was able to make the better parts of my life easier. The car took care of me and after a while I realized that I wasn’t as bad at taking care of myself as I thought I was.

I liked how it was so small from far away that you felt like you could just pick it up and kick it and it would definitely score you a field goal. There was never anything wrong with it. The air conditioner kicked ass. I would fill the thing up with gas and then just forget about it for a long time, especially since living in Los Angeles I didn’t commute and all I did was drive back and forth from Highland Park to Silver Lake. One day it started to act weird and I took it into the shop. I found out that this car had something wrong with its transmission, and so five or six years into owning it I got a brand-new transmission and then it was like a brand-new car all over again.