Weekend Edition: The week's best reads
- 3 July 2015
A collection of some of the best features from the BBC News website this week, with an injection of your comments.
"Wow, what a story! Amazing story of overcoming life's adversity," posted Grace Berino. Brenda was raped, shot and stabbed during 25 years working as a prostitute. She started at the age of 14, by which time she'd already had two children, and continued until one day she was thrown out of a car by a customer. She was dragged along the ground, tearing all the skin off her face and the side of her body. A spell in the emergency room and a visit to social services would lead her to spend nearly two years in a safe house. "I got Brenda back," she says. Now she helps young women try to avoid the life she says she was lucky to survive.
Pet food
"I try not to judge people for what they eat but I could not finish reading this article," posted Hilda Sayedi. The BBC's Juliana Liu has been recalling the day she came home from a shopping trip to find her pet dog strung up by the legs in the communal yard. It was soon turned into a stew, complete with herbs and hard-boiled eggs. "I refused to eat the stew - and I have never eaten dog in my life," she writes.
Cashing in
"What's the catch?" posted Fahad Bin Mamoon. In France, it's possible to strike a type of deal, called en viager, where the buyer of a house pays a knock-down price. In return they must also pay the former owner (who has now become the tenant) a monthly fee for the duration of their natural life - which could be months, years or even decades. Why is it growing more popular?
'Don't try it'
"You made me cry. What a sad story," commented Alan Sanchez. Ollie Knocker says he "shudders" when he sees a picture of a man in a wheelchair being lifted by a festival crowd. The same thing happened to him in Australia on New Year's Day 2014. He broke both of his legs in three places after being dropped. "It was one of the hardest physical and mental challenges I have ever had to overcome and has now made me paranoid about my health and general safety," he writes .
Marching to oblivion
"Fascinating article," posted Wendy Attridge. As many as 74,187 Indian soldiers died during World War One and a comparable number were wounded. Their stories, and their heroism, have long been omitted from popular histories of the war, or relegated to the footnotes, writes former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor. "They served the very British Empire that was oppressing their own people back home."
One from the archives
"9 and 10 are spot on!" commented Helen Donovan. With the heatwave which hit many parts of the UK this week, a trip back to a previous hot spell in July 2013 shows us many of the issues that irk us most in warm weather remain.
Enjoyable reads from elsewhere
London: the city that ate itself - The Guardian
An Ocean Mystery in the Trillions - New York Times
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