内容摘要：Meloni made the call after speaking with U.S. President Donald Trump and other European leaders, who asked her to verify the Holy See’s offer.

Meloni made the call after speaking with U.S. President Donald Trump and other European leaders, who asked her to verify the Holy See’s offer.

Born in 1938, Ngũgĩ’s first books told the story of British colonial rule and the uprising bySince the 1970s, he mostly lived in exile overseas, emigrating to England and eventually settling in California, where he was a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.

Some literary critics have argued that Ngũgĩ's preference of his native Kikuyu language over foreign languages was as influential in his writing as it was in his honors.“What separates Ngugi from his Nobel predecessor is his brave and polemical decision to write in his first language, Gikuyu,” British researcher Zoe Norridge wrote in 2010.Chika Unigwe, a Nigerian writer and an associate professor of writing at Georgia Collede and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia, recalled her interaction with Ngũgĩ about whether African writers should write in their indigenous language.

“While I agreed with him that linguistic imperialism is a serious issue — one we must confront as part of the broader decolonization of our literature — I disagreed with the idea that writing in indigenous languages is a practical solution for most of us,” Unigwe told the AP.“He believed passionately in the power of writing to challenge oppression,” she recalled.

Ngũgĩ’s influence is far and wide across Africa. In Nigeria, Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera, an author and director of the local Umuofia Arts and Books Festival, recalled how the late author’s work influenced him even as a science student nearly 10 years ago.

He first read his book, “A Grain of Wheat,” which explored colonialism and Kenya’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule, and met him shortly after at a literary event, a photo of which he shared on Wednesday as he mourned Ngũgĩ.The January-March drop in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — reversed a 2.4% gain in the fourth quarter of 2024. Imports grew at a 42.6% pace, fastest since third-quarter 2020, and shaved more than 5 percentage points off GDP growth. Consumer spending also slowed sharply.

And federal government spending fell at a 4.6% annual pace, the biggest drop in three years.Trade deficits reduce GDP. But that’s mainly a matter of mathematics. GDP is supposed to count only what’s produced domestically. So imports — which the government counts as consumer spending in the GDP report when you buy, say, Costa Rican coffee — have to be subtracted out to keep them from artificially inflating domestic production.

The first-quarter import surge likely won’t be repeated in the April-June quarter and therefore shouldn’t weigh on GDP.From January through March, business investment surged 24.4%. An increase in inventories — as businesses stocked up ahead of the tariffs — added more than 2.6 percentage points to first-quarter GDP growth.