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Handwritten letters are still a powerful force for good | Letter

Your editorial (22 December) declares that the “writing’s on the wall” for letter writing. In the month of Amnesty International’s annual Write For Rights campaign, I would like to suggest that the pen can still be powerful. Last year’s event generated 4.7m handwritten letters to human rights defenders and their oppressors. Every letter takes time, attention and physical effort. Leaders will always be more impressed by real letters than by easy clicks, and activists under pressure will always feel uplifted when they read personalised messages of solidarity. Frankie Meehan Singapore • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Letter: Ros Howells obituary

Ros Howells, later Lady Howells of St Davids, chaired a committee of British Caribbean representatives at the then Commonwealth Institute, Kensington, London, when it was promoting a year-long Caribbean Focus cultural and educational programme in 1986. A highly consequential enterprise, it was supported by 50 Caribbean communities round the country, with a Caribbean Express touring an art and educational show around 21 railway stations; a Caribbean Music Village in nearby Holland Park; a pan-Caribbean Theatre Company; a literary conference and much else. Ros helped us negotiate the trickier moments with calm diplomacy and Caribbean understanding. She remained my friend, and all who worked with her then recall her with affection.

Divine messengers: Italian nuns’ social media posts go viral

For years, the mostly closed-off lives of the nuns living in a retirement home in Raiano, a mountain village in Italy’s Abruzzo region, followed much the same daily rhythm. They woke early, prayed, went to the chapel, had lunch, and perhaps whiled away the afternoon reading. But their routine switched pace when, under pressure from the eldest of the 22 women – Sister Maria Chiara, 98 – to liven things up, they broke out into social media. “Sister Maria Chiara was starting to feel very low – she would say: ‘We don’t do anything here, and my life feels pointless,’” said Sister Nayiby Jimenez, who works in the home managed by the Ravasco congregation of Catholic nuns. “I felt sorry for them too. These are women who worked hard all their lives and have all this goodness and light in their hearts – we couldn’t just keep them closed off.” Being the youngest of the nuns, the onus fell on Sister Nayiby, 45, to shine their light beyond the confines of the home. So with the blessing of their mother superior, the women began experimenting with producing videos that recounted their daily lives while offering spiritual guidance. They started simply: the first video, posted on Sister Nayiby’s Facebook account in July, featured Sister Maria Grazia, 97, imparting a pearl of wisdom about obedience and trust. The clip was an instant hit, generating thousands of views and attracting 7,000 followers to the account – more than double the population of Raiano. On a roll, the nuns branched out into Instagram, injecting their scripts with humour and music in their savvy quest to target a young audience. Views climbed to the millions and followers now number about 145,000 across their Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts. “All of this has been totally unexpected,” said Nayiby, who was born in Colombia. In one of the most popular videos, the nuns take it in turns to throw a cardboard box out of the window. Each box is labelled with a negative emotion or trait, for example “stress”, “anxiety”, “selfishness” or “indifference”. The clip ends with Sister Maria Chiara saying: “We need to throw out everything that makes us sad, because the Lord wants us to be happy.” In another, some of the nuns reluctantly take part in a morning exercise routine, before giving up, saying “we’re off to pray”. The overriding message is that care needs to be taken of the body and soul in order for us to “fully bloom”. The clips have generated thousands of messages, and the nuns each have a book listing the names of those who have asked for their prayers. “There are over 200 names in each book, and they respond personally to all,” said Sister Nayiby. Needless to say, the main star of the show is Sister Maria Chiara, hence she is tasked with opening and closing the reels. “I’ve always been a chatterbox,” she said. “But I’m spontaneous, I can never plan anything beforehand.” Sister Anna Lilia, 95, is another spirited participant, although they have not yet risked putting her on a live video: “She has no filter, she just says what she thinks,” said Sister Nayiby. The nuns come together to script each clip, with each production posted at 5am because “the first thing people do when they wake up in the morning is check their phones”, said Sister Nayiby. However, she confessed to occasionally asking ChatGPT for help with developing ideas. The care home was opened by Sister Maria Grazia Mancini, who was there from Rome during the Guardian’s recent visit. “These women gave so much during their apostolic life and then they reach a point where they feel a little discarded,” she said. “But this initiative has given them the chance to express something beautiful, to have fun and to spread positive messages so that we can resist the evil that sometimes surrounds us.”

Israeli police arrest Palestinian man dressed as Santa Claus at Christmas party

Israeli police arrested a Palestinian man dressed as Santa Claus during a raid on a Christmas party in Haifa, a civil rights monitor has said. Israeli officers closed an event celebrating Christmas on Sunday, confiscating equipment, and arresting the Palestinian Santa Claus, as well as a DJ and a street vendor. In a video, police can be seen pushing the men to the ground and handcuffing them as bystanders watched. The Israeli police said in a statement that the man wearing the Santa Claus costume resisted arrest and assaulted an officer. The Mossawa Center, a rights groups that advocates for Palestinian citizens of Israel, said police used excess force on the men and that the raid on the music hall was done without legal authority. The arrests came as Palestinians celebrate Christmas across the occupied West Bank and Gaza amid continual restrictions on daily life by Israeli forces. Celebrations were held for the first time in Bethlehem since the war in Gaza started, with marching bands blowing bagpipes through the streets of the birthplace of Jesus. Worshippers attended mass at the church of nativity and children sang carols as the city lit up with celebrations. In war-torn Gaza, where more than 70,000 people have been killed and much of the infrastructure has been destroyed by Israeli bombs, a small Christian community celebrated its first Christmas since a shaky ceasefire began. Christmas trees and glitter brought splashes of colour to the rubble that is strewn across the Gaza strip. Israeli attacks continued despite the holiday. Israeli settlers uprooted olive groves in the town of Turmus Ayya, outside Ramallah, while Israeli soldiers stormed homes and confiscated vehicles near Hebron, according to the WAFA, the Palestinian news agency. Attacks by Israelis targeting Christians have been on the rise, with a March report documenting 32 attacks on church properties and 45 physical attacks targeting Christians. In his first Christmas address as pontiff, Pope Leo condemned the abysmal humanitarian situation in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands live in tents and substandard dwellings in the biting cold and rain. He referenced the story of Jesus being born in a stable, and said that it showed that God had “pitched his fragile tent” among the people of the world. “How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold,” he said, lamenting “the defenceless populations, tried by so many wars”.

‘It’s the wildest place I have walked’: new national park will join up Chile’s 2,800km wildlife corridor

Chile’s government is poised to create the country’s 47th national park, protecting nearly 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of pristine wilderness and completing a wildlife corridor stretching 1,700 miles (2,800km) to the southernmost tip of the Americas. The Cape Froward national park is a wild expanse of wind-torn coastline and forested valleys that harbours unrivalled biodiversity and has played host to millennia of human history. “I have been to many exceptional places, and I can tell you that the Cape Froward project is the wildest place I have walked through,” said Kristine Tompkins, the renowned US conservationist at the heart of the project. “It’s one of the few truly wild forest and peak territories left in the country, and the richness of the Indigenous history in the region makes a case for these territories to be preserved for all time.” It is the 17th national park created or expanded in Chile and Argentina by Tompkins Conservation and its successor organisation, Rewilding Chile. The groups have spent the best part of a decade knitting together a patchwork of land purchases and state-held properties to create the park. In 2023, they signed an agreement with the Chilean government to donate the land to become Cape Froward national park. In February, a population of 10 huemul, an endangered deer species, was found in the park, and a network of cameras regularly captures wild pumas and the endangered huillín, a river otter. The area also encompasses 10,000 hectares of sphagnum bogs, a spongelike moss which stores carbon deep below the ground. Benjamín Cáceres, the conservation coordinator in the Magallanes region for Rewilding Chile, is a native of Patagonia who first visited Cape Froward at the age of 12 with his conservationist father, Patricio Cáceres. “My father was always a dreamer,” he said. “When he found out about an abandoned lighthouse all those years ago, he brought us here as a family to dream with him – and that’s where this story began for me.” The San Isidro lighthouse is one of seven designed and built by the Scottish architect George Slight along the treacherous strait of Magellan. It was abandoned in the 1970s and itinerant fishers would come by to salvage wood until the roof collapsed. Now, Patricio and Benjamín’s vision for the restored lighthouse is becoming a reality. It has been converted into a museum of the natural and human history of the area and – together with a cafe on the beach below – will become the entry point for the new national park. Dotted along the shoreline are delicate archaeological sites that enshrine the history of the Kawésqar, a nomadic Indigenous people who navigated fjords, rocky beaches and forests in canoes carved from trees. “This mosaic of ecosystems is tremendously important,” said Cáceres. “The bogs and subantarctic forests are incredibly fragile, and the cultural legacy of the Kawésqar territory, the era of explorers, then whalers; all of this history and biodiversity will be preserved in some form in the future national park.” In among shells buried in silty mud at Kawésqar campsites are bird and dolphin bones from feasts. There are even circles of stones set out as fish traps on the beaches, and trees stripped of their bark to line the hulls of Kawésqar canoes. “The area was widely inhabited by nomadic canoeists who lived by fishing and gathering food,” said Leticia Caro, a Kawésqar activist who belongs to the Nómades del Mar community. “For our community, it is very important to protect this area, where you can also see the different ways of inhabiting the land and seas, and the interaction with other peoples like the Yagán, Selknam and Tehuelche.” Long after Indigenous communities had settled in the area, the waters of the strait of Magellan, which the Kawésqar call the tawokser chams, became the link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Charles Darwin stepped off the Beagle to climb nearby Mount Tarn on his voyage along the coast of Chile and the strait was one of the world’s most important shipping routes until the Panama canal opened in 1914. The murky depths have claimed many lives and spawned legends. Treasure troves lie in the depths, and sealed bottles of rum have washed ashore over the centuries. Timber from the forests has been taken as far afield as the Falkland Islands and Buenos Aires for construction and, in 1905, the Magallanes Whaling Society was formed. Eleven years later, with the whale population decimated, an auction was held to sell off the society’s land and equipment. All that is left at Bahía el Águila, where the carcasses were processed, is the footprint of the factory and a few rotting wooden stumps. Adolf Andresen, the society’s Norwegian founder, died poor and forgotten in the saloon bars of Punta Arenas in 1940. But there are still a number of steps before the national park officially comes into existence. An Indigenous consultation process, a legal requirement for large-scale projects in Chile, was held in September but fell flat. Chile’s environment ministry said it would make “every effort” to advance with plans for the park by March. But if no progress is made after two years, the lands revert to the ownership of Tompkins’ organisations. “Each of the park projects we have developed has specific reasons for being considered essential for conservation,” said Tompkins, who was the chief executive of Patagonia outdoor clothing for 20 years until 1993. “And in this sense Cape Froward is a piece of an ecological puzzle that, over time, should ensure that key biodiversity sites within Chilean Patagonia are permanently protected.” The Guardian’s reporting was supported by Rewilding Chile

Immigration debate ‘dividing us’, incoming archbishop of Canterbury warns in Christmas sermon

The incoming archbishop of Canterbury has warned in her Christmas Day sermon that “our national conversations about immigration continue to divide us, when our common humanity should unite us”. Acting in her current role as the bishop of London, Dame Sarah Mullally told St Paul’s Cathedral: “Joy is born exactly where despair expects to triumph. As joy breaks through in our lives it gives us the opportunity to become people who make room. “Room in our homes. Room in our churches. Room in our public conversations and in the attitudes we hold. The joy asks us to allow our lives to be interrupted by the needs of others, just as the people of Bethlehem were interrupted.” Mullally continued: “This insight matters because our own society carries uncertainties that can wear us down. Many feel the weight of economic pressure. Some feel pushed to the margins. “Our national conversations about immigration continue to divide us, when our common humanity should unite us.” Many people also “experience the hardship and injustice of inequality”, she said. The bishop added: “These issues do not define the whole of our life together, yet they can leave us wondering whether the world is fraying at the edges. “We who are Christians then hold fast to joy as an act of resistance. The kind of joy that does not minimise suffering but meets it with courage.” She told the Christmas congregation: “God chooses to be born precisely into a world like ours. A world of limited resources and crowded homes. “A world of political tension and uncertainty. A world where people do their best to offer kindness even when they feel stretched. God does not wait for perfect conditions. God arrives in the midst of the incomplete.” In his Christmas Day sermon, the archbishop of York also spoke of divisions in society and how he was “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year. Stephen Cottrell said he was stopped at checkpoints and that militias told him he could not visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank. “We have become, I can think of no other way of putting it, fearful of each other, and especially of strangers,” he said. “We cannot see ourselves in them. And we, therefore, spurn a common humanity.” He described how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with “persecuted Palestinian communities” in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood nativity scene carving depicting a “large grey wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus. “It was sobering to see this wall for real on my visit to the Holy Land, and we were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by local Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” he said. He said that, as well as “thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land”, he also thinks of “all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world”. He continued: “And perhaps, most alarming of all, the ones we build around ourselves and construct in our hearts, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers.” “The strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people robbed of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future, means that we are in danger of even failing to welcome Christ when he comes.” In October, Mullally was named as the first female archbishop of Canterbury. A former chief nursing officer for England, who was made a dame in 2005 in recognition of her contribution to nursing and midwifery, she has been bishop of London since 2018. The Confirmation of Election ceremony on 28 January at St Paul’s Cathedral will lead to Mullally legally becoming archbishop of Canterbury. She will remain bishop of London until then, and her enthronement will take place at Canterbury Cathedral on 25 March. The 105th archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, formally resigned in early January, having announced his intention to stand down in November 2024 over his handling of one of the church’s worst abuse scandals. Pope Leo decried conditions for Palestinians in Gaza in his Christmas sermon. Leo said the story of Jesus being born in a stable showed that God had “pitched his fragile tent” among the people of the world. “How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?” he said. Leo was celebrating his first Christmas after being elected in May by the world’s cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis. In Thursday’s service with thousands in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Leo also lamented conditions for the homeless across the globe and the destruction caused by the wars roiling the world. “Fragile is the flesh of defenceless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds,” said the pope. “Fragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the frontlines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths,” he said. During the Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) message and blessing given by the pope at Christmas and Easter, Leo called for an end to all global wars. Speaking from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica to thousands of people in the square below, he lamented conflicts, political, social or military, in Ukraine, Sudan, Mali, Myanmar, and Thailand and Cambodia, among others.

‘Dancing on bones’: Mariupol theatre to reopen with staging of Russian fairytale

The Mariupol Drama Theatre, destroyed in a Russian airstrike in 2022 while hundreds of civilians were sheltering in its basement, is to open its doors again, with Russian occupation authorities heralding the reconstruction as a sign of renewal, while former actors at the theatre denounced the reopening as “dancing on bones”. The Kremlin has made the reconstruction of Mariupol a calling card of its rule in occupied Ukraine, but Moscow’s oversight is accompanied by arrests or exile of critics, along with property seizures that have stripped thousands of Ukrainians of apartments they legally owned. The Mariupol Drama Theatre is due to reopen by the end of the month with a performance of The Scarlet Flower, a Russian fairytale, after being rebuilt almost from scratch over the past two years. “The theatre is being reborn together with Mariupol. Russian and Soviet classics have returned to the stage,” said the theatre in a statement about its plans for the future. Evgeny Sosnovsky, a photographer from Mariupol who worked extensively with the theatre but moved to Kyiv after the Russian takeover, said: “I can’t think of any other word for it than cynicism. There should be a memorial at the site in memory of the Mariupol residents who died during Russia’s capture of the city, not an entertainment venue.” The strike on the theatre remains one of the most notorious incidents of Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the building targeted despite the fact that “CHILDREN” had been painted in block letters in the square in front of it. At least a dozen people are confirmed to have died, but the real number is likely much higher. Russia has denied hitting the theatre and claimed the damage was caused by an explosion detonated inside the building, but several independent investigations have suggested Russian air bombs were responsible. Amnesty International concluded that the devastation was “likely caused by Russian forces deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians” and said the attack should be investigated as a war crime. “Having entertainment, songs and dances on top of all the bones? I have the feeling that the souls of the people who died there won’t let them perform well there,” said Vira Lebedynska, a former actor at the theatre. Lebedynska is now based, with a small group of former Mariupol actors, in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod. The calling card of the theatre-in-exile has been a play called Mariupol Drama, which is based on the events in February and March at the Mariupol theatre, and which has toured across Europe over the past year. “At the beginning, it was really difficult to perform in this, and I wondered why I have to remember all of this, but I carried on and I realised it was my mission to tell the world about what happened there in the theatre,” said Lebedynska. However, many other actors have remained in Mariupol and are collaborating with the new theatre. “For them, the main thing is acting on stage, and everything else is irrelevant. ‘We are outside of politics’ is their principle. They don’t care where they are, in Russia or Ukraine,” said Sosnovsky. The theatre’s former director stayed in Mariupol but has been demoted to run the orchestra, while Russian authorities have appointed Igor Solonin, formerly the deputy director of the Donetsk Circus, as the new head. In an interview earlier this year with a Russian journalist, Solonin repeated claims that the building was blown up from inside. “It was an internal explosion. It was a bomb or an explosive device inside the building, or maybe careless handling of ammunition,” he said. Several people who were in the theatre at the time of the explosion have told the Guardian there were no soldiers or military equipment there. Russia has undertaken a huge reconstruction programme in Mariupol, after its invasion reduced much of the city to rubble. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, earlier this month signed a decree allowing officials in occupied areas of Ukraine to confiscate homes left empty after their owners fled or were killed during Russia’s invasion. According to the document, dwellings deemed to show signs of “ownerless property” will be recognised as the property of regional authorities. Compensation is possible only for those who obtain Russian citizenship. There are now more than 12,000 apartments listed as ownerless, according to publicly available files from the Russian-installed Mariupol authorities. The Guardian spoke to several former Mariupol residents who said their property had been confiscated or was about to be. One, Volodymyr, said he owned an apartment in a building that was destroyed in the fighting and has since been rebuilt by Russian authorities. “On the door of the entrance, they posted a notice that they were waiting for the owners of the flats, who urgently needed to confirm their ownership or their apartments would be ‘nationalised,’” he said. The only way to make the confirmation would be to travel to Mariupol and take Russian citizenship. Sosnovsky said he had found his Mariupol apartment on the “ownerless” list, and has accepted he will lose the property. “I know that I will never return to Mariupol. In my lifetime, it is unlikely that it will return to Ukraine,” he said. “My wife and I are already over 60, so it’s unlikely. We are trying to start our lives from scratch in Kyiv. But there is absolutely no help or support from the state.” he added. One woman from Mariupol, who asked not to use her name, said she had managed to buy “the apartment of my dreams”, a modest flat in a Soviet-era apartment block in Mariupol, and had planned to begin renovations on it a few days before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The apartment block was damaged during the fighting, but has since been repaired. The woman asked her father, who still lives in the occupied territory, to take possession of the apartment, but was told that even with a power of attorney, she cannot transfer ownership to her father. “As far as I can tell there is no possibility if you don’t go there and take Russian citizenship,” she said, a step she is not willing to take. It is not only those who have left Mariupol for Ukrainian-controlled territory who are struggling to establish their property rights. Earlier this month, a woman who identified herself as Anna Guzevskaya, a Mariupol resident with three children, recorded a video appeal to Putin saying her house had been destroyed. Although this should have made her eligible for a new apartment, she had instead only been offered cash compensation which was nowhere near enough to buy a new apartment. “How should I explain to my children, that in the newly built apartment block there is no longer our apartment, where they have lived since their birth,” she asked Putin. Lebedynska, the actor, said her apartment in Mariupol had survived relatively unscathed, with just a few smashed windows. She heard in 2022 that other people had moved in, and has not made efforts to contact them since. “I’m not interested in who is there. Even if there was a theoretical chance I wouldn’t want to sell it. I have closed that place in my life, I have built a wall. The place is dead to me. Let them enjoy their ‘Russian World’,” she said.

Dordogne murder mystery: British woman’s death confounds detectives

The quiet village of Trémolat nestled in the Dordogne valley is best known for its “cingle”, where the sinuous river forms an Instagrammable loop. Home to about 700 people, along with restaurants, a cafe, boulangerie and wine bar, it is a picture-perfect French idyll and a popular place for a getaway or even retirement. Karen Carter, a 65-year-old British-South African national, knew the appeal of Trémolat well: she ran two gites in the village, a beautifully renovated 250-year-old farmhouse and neighbouring 18th-century stone barn collectively called Les Chouettes. Carter, who bought the gites with her 65-year-old husband, Alan Carter, 15 years ago, divided her time between the Dordogne and the home the couple shared in the city of East London, South Africa. But on 29 April, Carter’s time in the charming hamlet was brought to a brutal end when she was murdered in a frenzied attack outside Les Chouettes, shattering Trémolat’s tranquil existence and triggering a hunt for a killer who remains at large. The tragedy has been one of the year’s most intriguing crime stories, becoming the subject of hundreds of column inches and bringing journalists from around the globe to Trémolat. An autopsy reportedly revealed that Carter died from severe blood loss after being stabbed multiple times, collapsing and dying next to her car. Eight serious wounds were reportedly noted in total, including to the “chest, abdomen and forearm”, as well as “superficial ones on the thigh, shoulder and thumbs”. Carter had reportedly been at a wine tasting party at Cafe Village Trémolat, described on Facebook as “an association that wants to offer the people of Trémolat and the surrounding area a meeting place”, with about 15 other guests, including Eric Chassagne, the village’s mayor. A few days after the attack a 69-year-old local woman – named in media reports as Marie-Laure Autefort – who was thought to have been at the wine soiree was arrested. She was released without charge shortly after. It has emerged that Carter was discovered by a 75-year-old businessman, Jean-François Guerrier, with whom she was reportedly in a relationship. The nature of their relationship has been seized upon and speculated over by tabloids during the last eight months. A number of reports cited the state prosecutor’s office as confirming Carter was in a relationship with Guerrier, a former managing director for Fujitsu Services. Both Carter and Guerrier volunteered at Cafe Village. He is said to have found Carter after going to check on her when she did not return his calls. Finding her collapsed in a pool of blood, he tried in vain to resuscitate her. Guerrier was reportedly taken in for questioning but was shortly after excluded from the investigation. Carter’s husband, a former London Stock Exchange worker who was in South Africa at the time of the murder, expressed his shock at the revelations that his wife had “started a relationship” with another man, saying he understood Guerrier was “just a friend of hers”. In comments made to the Times in May, Alan Carter, who runs an environmental consultancy, said: “What has come out of this investigation has confirmed a relationship I did not want to believe and that had been denied to me repeatedly by my wife.” Speaking from South Africa, he added: “I told her that the gossip was tarnishing her reputation but she batted it away and said there was nothing in it. She told our friends the same.” Later in the year, in a visit to Trémolat, Alan Carter told the same newspaper the gossip and speculation around what happened to his wife had been damaging: “It’s been extremely upsetting to hear what’s being said, though more for our children and the rest of the family than me.” But with no clear motive for the attack, though many theories, the mystery continues to confound detectives who renewed their appeal for witnesses at the end of November. Most recent reports suggest police are looking at whether “an outsider” committed the murder after considering both a “robbery gone wrong” scenario as well as a “personal grudge” from someone within Carter’s social circles. It is understood a number of villagers, including maintenance workers, were asked to give forensic samples to eliminate them from inquiries and no links were made. Among them were Chassagne, the mayor, as he was with Carter on the night she died. There is no suggestion he is a suspect, and he told Sud Ouest, a regional newspaper: “From what I can understand, they want to compare the DNA to that found in the victim’s car.” It has been reported that none of the samples provided any matches to materials taken at the scene. Carter had four adult children, two daughters and two sons who live in Britain, the US, Australia and South Africa. The most recent police appeal said: “We need your help to identify the perpetrator. Your testimonies could prove crucial to the progress of the investigation.” The appeal includes a photo of a smiling Carter, who was a member of a women’s over-50s football team there called Reines du Foot, with her daughters. During a wake in Carter’s honour organised in South Africa, her family paid tribute to her. “It was in the early 1990s that our stars collided,” Alan Carter reportedly told the wake. “We started seeing each other, we fell in love and we got married.” The inquiry continues.