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[
"Jessica Murphy"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:41 | null | 2016-08-23T15:00:12 |
THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, makes rats less willing to exert cognitive effort – lazy – but, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fmarijuana-rats-lazy-thc-researchers.json
|
en
| null |
Researchers find lab rats on marijuana just can't be bothered
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana makes lab rats lazy, according to University of British Columbia researchers.
The new research, published on Tuesday in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, looked at the effects of both THC – the drug’s main active ingredient – and the non-psychoactive compound cannabidiol, or CBD, on the male lab rats’ willingness to exert cognitive effort.
What are the true risks of taking cannabis? Read more
Researchers trained 29 rats on two different challenges: rats which successfully carried out the more difficult task earned two sugar pellets; those which carried out the easier task earned just one.
Rats usually preferred the harder, but more rewarding, task. But after being dosed with THC, the same rats picked the easier task.
CBD, which does not cause a high and is believed to have medicinal benefits such as relieving pain and the symptoms of epilepsy, had no impact on the rats’ cognitive behaviour. It also did not mitigate the cognitive impact of THC in the rats.
The THC did not make the rats less intelligent – just lazier, said the study’s lead author, Mason Silveira, a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of British Columbia.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest UBC researchers test effects of THC on rats
“When rats were given THC – the active ingredient in cannabis or marijuana – we found that they were less likely to exert the mental energy needed to do more difficult tasks,” he said.
“What’s particularly interesting is though they were less likely to do these more difficult tasks they were still able to. There’s this distinction between THC’s ability to affect your cognition versus your willingness to actually use your cognitive abilities.”
Silveira said his work underscores the need for more research to determine the impact of THC on the human brain, to explore how any of those potential negative effects could be mitigated, and to look into the effect of other marijuana compounds other than CBD on THC’s impact.
“Our research highlights that, yes, cannabis itself may be beneficial for a variety of things, but can maybe lead to these impairments in cognition that you might want to consider,” he said.
A 2012 report by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse said there was “sound evidence” from both animal and clinical trials that medicinal marijuana can offer relief of nausea and vomiting and certain types of pain, but warned there was a lack of research documenting the risks associated with the medical use of cannabis.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/23/marijuana-rats-lazy-thc-researchers
|
en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/431faa46c80ac010c74d9ca8f9bea77a4737b1697ab6f85b8c85a04e0eba9a78.json
|
|
[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-30T06:52:30 | null | 2016-08-30T00:42:48 |
The number of Australian athletes who gained illegal entry into the semi-final Olympic basketball clash featuring the Boomers could be more than the Australian Olympic Committee has revealed
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Faustralian-olympic-committee-investigation-reveals-ticket-recycling.json
|
en
| null |
Australian Olympic Committee investigation reveals ticket recycling
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The number of Australian athletes who gained illegal entry into the semi-final Olympic basketball clash featuring the Boomers could be more than the Australian Olympic Committee has revealed.
While nine Australians were detained overnight for illegally tampering accreditation passes to enter the venue, an investigation shows 80 athletes used recycled tickets to gain access to the venue, according to Fairfax Media.
Australian Sports Commission chief executive Simon Hollingsworth resigns Read more
The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) attempted to play down the issue on the team’s arrival in Sydney last week but it is believed the internal investigation is looking into whether the organisation’s athlete services division helped with the sticker tampering.
Four members of the division were flown home early from the Games. However the investigation has also revealed the ticket recycling process, where unscanned barcodes were passed to athletes outside the venue.
Those athletes than sat separately at the Carioca Arena to those whose accreditation was allegedly tampered.
Most Olympic events allow all athletes to enter based on their usual accreditation. However for higher-profile events likely to attract a bigger crowd, each national organising committee are designated a limited number.
In the case of the Olympic basketball semi-finals, 25 passes were given to Australian athletes. The act is again believed to be commonplace at Olympic Games and there were enough vacant seats in the athletes area to fit all of the Australians.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/30/australian-olympic-committee-investigation-reveals-ticket-recycling
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a169c190ac2851174f3ed6ce07fa4d46a4c823fc3c44d57064e3874f8aee2ff6.json
|
|
[
"Katie Allen"
] | 2016-08-30T02:55:16 | null | 2016-08-05T16:07:46 |
Options range from tax cuts to helicopter money, but no initiative will be more important than negotiating new trade deals
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F05%2Fseven-ways-government-could-lift-the-economys-post-brexit-vote-blues.json
|
en
| null |
Seven ways government could lift the economy's post-Brexit vote blues
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
When Mark Carney unveiled a broad package of measures to ward off a post-EU referendum recession on Thursday, he emphasised that the Bank of England had only limited power to shore up the economy. The government will have to play its part too, the Bank’s governor said.
All eyes are now on the Philip Hammond’s autumn statement due later this year. The new chancellor has already told Carney that the government will “take any necessary steps” [pdf] and come up with its own measures.
There are a number of things the government will be considering.
Tax cuts
There have been calls for a cut to the VAT rate from 20% to fire up consumer spending, which is the main driver of the UK’s economic growth. The government, however, will want to see more surveys and official data on how spending has held up since the referendum before it decides to take a hit to its already squeezed public coffers.
The former chancellor George Osborne has said cuts to business taxes are needed in response to the Brexit vote. Before he was replaced by Hammond, Osborne said the government should get on with cutting corporation tax to below 15% in a bid to encourage businesses to invest in Britain outside the EU.
His successor will be wary of cutting without more evidence that companies are shunning the UK, and given that the prime minister, Theresa May, has talked about reforming capitalism so the system works “for everyone, not just the privileged few”, a cut to business taxes is probably not be the message she wants her new chancellor to send.
More infrastructure spending
Businesses are urging the government to spend more on infrastructure such as roads and rail links. They argue that record low interest rates make this a good time for it to borrow money to invest. The spending would get money flowing through the economy, create jobs and the projects would yield long-term economic gains.
Delaying the planned apprenticeship levy
Disgruntled business lobby groups have already labelled Osborne’s plans to introduce a near-£3bn levy on bigger firms next April a “payroll tax”. Now that the vote to leave the EU has hit business sentiment and demand, there are calls for it to be delayed. Hammond could agree to this to appease business leaders and boost confidence.
Boosting productivity
If the new chancellor does delay the apprenticeship levy he will have to come up with other ways to tackle Britain’s skills shortages in areas such as construction and IT, and so help raise the country’s productivity out of the doldrums. The government has committed to boosting apprenticeship numbers and creating 3m new apprentices by 2020. If May is serious about tackling inequality she will have to show that her government can provide routes into decent careers beyond university degrees.
The UK lags behind other advanced economies on productivity, a measure of what is produced by employees per hour worked. Carney said boosting productivity was key to raising the UK’s economic prospects, but experts say it could be years before the UK sees the gains of any measures to boost productivity, such as investment in innovation, education and infrastructure.
Reduce planned rises to the national living wage
The “national living wage” of £7.20 for over-25s was introduced in April, and the government has committed to increasing it each year. With economic prospects looking bleaker after the Brexit vote, however, some employers say such rises will be less affordable. They want the low pay commission, the independent body that advises the government on minimum wages, to recommend only a small rise in April 2017.
Here again, May’s government will be cautious about being seen to penalise the low-paid, given her pledge to raise living standards. Anti-poverty campaigners also argue that low pay is a significant part of the UK’s productivity problem and that only higher pay thresholds will make firms improve management, training and overall efficiency.
Helicopter money
Carney has questioned the effectiveness of so-called “helicopter money” schemes, under which a central bank prints cash so that finance ministries can hand it out to citizens or spend it on big infrastructure projects. With the government under pressure to boost spending on infrastructure, however, and both Hammond and Carney vowing they have more tools to help the economy, some sort of unconventional scheme along these lines could still become a reality.
One option would be for the Treasury to issue new infrastructure bonds for public investment projects. The Bank would then buy the bonds using newly created money, so financing the projects.
Trade deals
The biggest task for May’s government will be negotiating new trade deals. Any action taken by the Bank of England or the Treasury will have only limited impact as long as the UK’s trading relationships with the EU and the rest of the world drift into an uncertain future.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/05/seven-ways-government-could-lift-the-economys-post-brexit-vote-blues
|
en
| 2016-08-05T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b6426d4b1e60cb3aae69d9da77bf8ac694119201d9b925eaf43c2276cc7e4415.json
|
|
[] | 2016-08-26T13:21:05 | null | 2016-08-25T14:44:15 |
The Russian president hit out at his country’s Paralympics ban but admitted mistakes have been made on Russia tackles doping
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fvladimir-putin-banning-russia-paralympics-cynical-immoral.json
|
en
| null |
Vladimir Putin: banning Russia from Paralympics is cynical and immoral
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Vladimir Putin has described the ban on Russia from competing in the Paralympics as cynical and immoral but the Russian president has admitted mistakes have been made on how they tackle doping.
The Russian track and field team were excluded from the Olympic Games after world anti-doping authorities alleged Moscow ran a state-sponsored sports doping programme. The entire Russian Paralympic team have been barred over the same allegations.
At a Kremlin ceremony to welcome home Russian athletes who had competed in the Rio Olympic Games, Putin said international anti-doping organisations had singled out Russia for harsh treatment because they were subject to political pressure.
Russia finished fourth in the medals table in Rio, winning 19 golds from a total of 56 medals. Putin said the result could have been better if a third of Russian competitors had not been excluded.
“I used to say this before … and I still believe that these international anti-doping structures … should be rid of political pressure,” Putin said.
He also said the decision to bar Russian athletes, including those who had not tested positive for banned substances, was a vivid manifestation “of how the humanistic foundations of sport and Olympism are shamelessly flouted by politics”.
The court of arbitration for sport said on Tuesday that Russia had lost its appeal against a ban from the Paralympics which start in Rio on 7 September.
“The decision to disqualify our Paralympic team is outside the law, outside morality and outside humanity,” Putin said. “It is simply cynical to vent one’s anger on those for whom sport has become the meaning of their life … I even feel pity for those taking such decisions because they must well understand it is so demeaning for them.“
Putin said Russia acknowledged its mistakes and was striving to improve its anti-doping structures “in the most transparent way”.
“But … we don’t accept and we can’t accept any accusations against our athletes if they are not proven by evidence and facts …and we will view this as manipulation.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/25/vladimir-putin-banning-russia-paralympics-cynical-immoral
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/454c7e395bdc70734103a9acd56e51b5eeaf81f939c226ddaa71a6efbf401661.json
|
|
[
"Jamie Jackson"
] | 2016-08-29T12:52:17 | null | 2016-08-29T12:30:41 |
Manchester City’s goalkeeper Joe Hart is considering a loan move to Torino
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fjoe-hart-torino-loan-manchester-city.json
|
en
| null |
Joe Hart considers Torino loan move from Manchester City to revive career
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Joe Hart is considering a loan move to Torino, with the Manchester City goalkeeper conscious his career could be seriously affected if he fails to leave before the transfer window closes on Wednesday.
Sergio Agüero could miss Manchester derby after elbow incident mars City win Read more
Hart has been demoted as City’s No1 by Pep Guardiola and was again on the bench for Sunday’s 3-1 victory over West Ham United at the Etihad Stadium, where Willy Caballero started.
Torino finished 12th in Serie A last term and are seventh with three points after the opening two games of the season. Hart is keen to play regularly and knows if he does not join the Italian club or go elsewhere his status will drop to third choice under Guardiola.
On Thursday the Catalan signed Claudio Bravo from Barcelona for around £17m to be Hart’s replacement. Caballero is expected to be the deputy so Hart will struggle to make even the match-day squads.
Hart also has his England status as the No1 to protect. He is in Sam Allardyce’s first squad, for Sunday’s World Cup qualifier against Slovakia, but Allardyce has warned Hart has to play on a weekly basis to be considered in the long term.
Premier League: transfer window summer 2016 – interactive Read more
Gianluca Petrachi, Torino’s sporting director, said: “The goalkeeper is an idea we wanted to follow. If it’s Hart then good, otherwise we will certainly be doing something on the market for that role.”
Samir Nasri is being targeted by Besiktas, with a delegation from the Turkish club due to arrive at Luton airport at 5.30pm on Monday in a private jet in the hope of sealing the move. The flight is scheduled to return to Turkey on Tuesday at noon and Beskitas are hopeful of having the out-of-favour Frenchman accompanying them then.
“Yes, there could still be movement,” Nasri said. “It depends on a lot of things in fact. There’s been a lot of speculation. Things that are true; things that are false too because they’ve never shown me the door or anything like that. But I said: ‘Everything depends on what’s up there [in your head] and your desire.’ So we’ll see. We’re going to sit down, discuss it and see what’s to be done.”
Nasri was banned from training with the squad by Guardiola when he returned for pre-season overweight. He made a surprise substitute appearance against West Ham, playing the last 15 minutes. This was Nasri’s first appearance under the manager, who offered an ambivalent response after the game when asked about the 29-year-old’s future. “If you want to help us, want to stay, want to be part of something, it depends on him, not me,” said Guardiola.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/29/joe-hart-torino-loan-manchester-city
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/47f089f7d3867d0a912aa428e18af769db352d1fe8f5e640dbd44eaff76119aa.json
|
|
[
"Katharine Murphy"
] | 2016-08-28T14:51:51 | null | 2016-08-28T13:19:34 |
One Nation leader had previously blamed the former prime minister for ruining her career by bankrolling legal actions that saw her spend time in prison
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fpauline-hanson-reveals-tony-abbott-has-invited-her-for-coffee.json
|
en
| null |
Pauline Hanson reveals Tony Abbott has invited her for coffee
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Pauline Hanson has revealed that the former prime minister Tony Abbott has invited her to coffee, and says she has accepted the invitation.
The One Nation leader has previously blamed Abbott for ruining her political career by bankrolling legal actions against her party that saw her sent to prison in 2003. Hanson was convicted of electoral fraud, but the conviction was overturned and she was released months later.
On Sunday night’s 60 Minutes program ahead of the commencement of the 45th parliament, where she will take her place in the Senate for the next six years, Hanson said she would have a coffee with Abbott – although she said contradictory things during the interview about whether she was prepared to forgive him for his aggressive tactics during the Howard years.
Hanson told the program “you can’t live on hate” – but then said she was like a “bloody old elephant”, remembering everything.
Abbott’s attempt at rapprochement with Hanson follows a couple of public interventions from the former prime minister in the lead up to the opening of the new parliament, including a speech late last week where he suggested his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, needed to differentiate the government from Labor rather than look for the middle ground.
Pauline Hanson can't be dismissed this time. One Nation is bigger than it looks | Peter Lewis Read more
During a sympathetic interview, the One Nation leader was asked whether or not she was xenophobic – a repeat of a question she was asked on the program during her first stint in federal politics in the late 1990s. Hanson answered that question somewhat infamously with a question that has become something of a signature for her: “Please explain?”
In Sunday’s encounter, Hanson said she was not xenophobic. She told her interviewer Liz Hayes that it was stupid to think she was fearful of foreigners.
She was asked whether or not she hated Muslims, given the One Nation platform opposes immigration from Muslims and she has called for a royal commission into Islam. She said she did not hate Muslims or Asians. “Hate’s a very strong word,” Hanson said.
She said she had taken to reading sections of the Qur’an, which she carried in her handbag, to improve her understanding of the issues.
At one point in the interview she professed herself to be openminded. “To think we are right 100% of the time is being naive and stupid.”
Hanson said she was happy to work with peace-loving Muslims “to find answers.”
During the conversation the One Nation leader struggled to articulate a specific message she would like to send to Australian voters after her election. “I don’t know what the message I would send to them [would be].”
Hanson said she would always try to be honest, upfront and accountable to her supporters and she said she would have absolutely no difficultly plotting a decisive course for her Senate bloc.
“When the decisions have to be made, I will make them.”
Filmed in conversation with her new Senate colleagues, Hanson said she did not want One Nation to go the way of Clive Palmer’s political party, which disintegrated rapidly during the last parliament.
She suggested she had won support in the election in 2016 because voters needed someone to represent their interests, and Australians needed “hope.”
“I hope they give me a fair go and judge me on my performance and achievements,” Hanson said.
Her chief of staff, James Ashby, who came to public prominence when he worked for the former speaker of the House of Representatives Peter Slipper, and later accused him of sexual harassment, made a couple of interventions during the 60 Minutes segment.
He told Liz Hayes he had decided to assist Hanson, whom he described as “this little redhead”, because he felt she lacked professional support.
Ashby said it was quite odd to return to federal parliament after his history there. “I didn’t like it at all.”
Ashby noted that the best thing Hanson had at her disposal during her coming stint in federal politics was enormous reach on social media. He said she was the second most followed politician in Australia after the prime minister.
“That is a big platform,” he said.
Since the election, Hanson has been communicating with voters predominantly through social media, although she is now also starting to do traditional media interviews.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/28/pauline-hanson-reveals-tony-abbott-has-invited-her-for-coffee
|
en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/296dd22f3a8ca5031090def9a3f3f1725c69cf40c85f8ff43413f0afaa14917d.json
|
|
[
"John Crace"
] | 2016-08-26T14:49:48 | null | 2016-08-26T13:52:34 |
Hopefully Theresa May has also been watching Bake Off, because she needs to turn up the heat on her government, pronto
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Frio-olympics-team-gb-jeremy-corbyn-great-british-bake-off-nigel-farage-ukip-donald-trump.json
|
en
| null |
A sticky week, as Corbyn is jammy and The Great British Innuendo returns
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Monday
Every Olympics ends the same way. A lot of people talk nonsense about legacy and increased participation in sport for a week or so. Then most of the country forgets all about the Olympics for another four years and piles on the pounds. It’s almost as if there’s a quantity theory of exercise: the more medals Team GB wins, the fatter and lazier everyone else becomes. Breaking this cycle might be a little easier if we weren’t so obviously insincere in mouthing off platitudes like “It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part” when those athletes who came back from Rio without a medal are treated like pariahs. On the plane home, it was the gold medallists who got to turn left and pose with the cabin crew in first class. The silver and bronze medallists got to sit in premium economy, while the rest had to wedge themselves into the favelas of steerage. If that wasn’t bad enough, the losers were airbrushed out of all the “hero’s welcome” photos and left to make their own way home, where there was almost certainly a letter waiting for them saying their lottery funding had been cut.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Team GB arriving back in the UK from the Rio Olympics. Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Images
Tuesday
Embarrassment is now becoming second nature to the Labour party, but its cock-up architects excelled themselves with Traingate. Releasing at least eight different versions of the same event is never a good look. Nor is the discovery that none of Jeremy Corbyn’s advisers could get hold of him to agree one of the eight versions because the Labour leader was at a critical point in his jam making. But regardless of whether there were or weren’t any free seats available on the Virgin train from London to Newcastle, one thing stands out. The trip to Gateshead wasn’t planned at the last minute, so why did no one think to reserve the four seats on the service? Corbyn has at least four people working for him: surely one of them must have had some experience in booking train tickets on the internet? There seems to be only one way to make sure this kind of thing never happens again. Nationalise his back office.
Wednesday
The day is rapidly approaching when Theresa May’s government is actually going to have to do something, rather than talking about what it isn’t going to do. Most eyes will be on the Toxic Triumvirate of Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox, who are nailed-on certainties to fall out over the Brexit negotiations, but those looking for amusement in likely Tory incompetence should also keep a look out for Jeremy Hunt, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Grayling. Hunt has achieved a unique double by being the first health secretary to be equally disliked by the NHS and his own government department. Meanwhile, as environment, food and rural affairs secretary, Leadsom has the poisoned chalice of explaining to all those people in Cornwall and Wales who voted for Brexit why the government won’t be matching the EU subsidies, as she promised in the referendum campaign. The dark horse, though, is Grayling. As the man behind May’s ascent to No 10, he might have expected one of the great offices of state. That May felt she could only give him transport shows how little faith she has in his abilities. Expect some fun with the third runway and HS2.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Moist’ is leading in a poll of Britain’s most hated words, but it’s a favourite on GBBO. Photograph: Mark Bourdillon/BBC/Love Productions
Thursday
“Moist” is the frontrunner in an online poll conducted by Oxford Dictionaries to find the country’s most hated word. Moist also happens to be one of the favourite words of presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins in The Great British Innuendo, which began its seventh series on Wednesday and was watched by more than 10 million viewers. So I’d guess the country can’t hate “moist” that much. The return of Bake Off rather passed me by – I can’t get too worked up about people beating the odds to create the perfect lemon drizzle cake. There’s something about a programme that has been perfectly edited to be deliberately feelgood that leaves me feeling anything but. Not that I’m immune to emotional manipulation; it’s just I prefer it to be done with a little more subtlety, so I can believe my tears are forming of their own volition. Which is why my own autumn TV highlight is sure to be the return of Cold Feet. Heartstrings tugged at room temperature.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nigel Farage and Donald Trump at a rally in Jackson, Mississippi. Photograph: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
Friday
It’s not yet clear who paid for Nigel Farage to make a guest appearance at Donald Trump’s election rally in Mississippi, but, based on past form, it is unlikely to have been him. Nigel generally likes to let others – the EU in particular – take the strain when it comes to his political adventures. It’s also probable that just as few Americans knew who the hell he was as there are Brits who recognise any of the names on the list of candidates to take over the Ukip leadership. With Suzanne Evans suspended for being too normal and Steven Woolfe, Farage’s preferred candidate, being too dopey to submit his forms on time, the field has been left clear for a bunch of no-hopers that have almost as little name recognition within the party as without. Anyone heard of Lisa Duffy, Phillip Broughton, Bill Etheridge or Elizabeth Jones? Thought not. Even Liam Fox might stand a chance against that lot. The frontrunner is Diane James, who has put everyone’s backs up by refusing to turn up for any of the hustings. Stand by for the fallout when the new leader is announced at Ukip’s conference on 16 September.
Digested week, digested: Repetitive train injury
|
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/26/rio-olympics-team-gb-jeremy-corbyn-great-british-bake-off-nigel-farage-ukip-donald-trump
|
en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/32f471ce4eda5a28fdb30f55f0032af996f114e949a2387e9a8bda2375791db9.json
|
|
[
"Olly Mann",
"Matt Shore"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:44 | null | 2016-08-25T13:55:43 |
Chips with Everything presenter Olly Mann travels north to the Scottish capital to investigate what the future of TV looks like
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2Faudio%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Flive-from-edinburgh-international-television-festival-chips-with-everything-tech-podcast.json
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en
| null |
Live from Edinburgh International Television Festival - Chips with Everything tech podcast
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
In this episode of our digital culture podcast, Olly Mann ventures to the 2016 Edinburgh International Television Festival to interview TV industry veterans and new media enthusiasts alike, with this question in mind all the while: “What does the future hold for the television medium?”
The TV festival is on through 26 August and you can find more information here.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2016/aug/25/live-from-edinburgh-international-television-festival-chips-with-everything-tech-podcast
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ca7bf56f82ffe66002dcd51bfdb8cc6c28d2078a89d4ce2e7b3c844f76df4bfd.json
|
|
[
"Greg Wood"
] | 2016-08-30T10:52:38 | null | 2016-08-30T10:04:46 |
Nouvelli Dancer is one of three solid chances for Silvestre de Sousa as he looks to follow a stunning four-timer and add to his 81 Flat victories this season
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Flive-horse-racing-tuesday-30-august-epsom-goodwood-hamilton-ripon.json
|
en
| null |
Talking Horses: Tuesday’s best bets plus our tipping competition
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Today’s best bets, by Greg Wood
Silvestre de Sousa increased the tempo in the Flat jockeys’ title race on Monday with a four-timer at Epsom, and he returns to the track on Tuesday with three solid chances, including two probable favourites, to add to his 81 victories this year.
Silvestre de Sousa rides 245-1 four-timer to regain lead in title race Read more
Nouvelli Dancer (3.45) may be the pick of the champion’s rides in a competitive seven-furlong handicap. Ivan Furtado’s three-year-old filly has had seven races already this year, with four victories at all-weather tracks along the way. She showed she can act on turf as well with a close second at Redcar in July and returned to winning ways at Chelmsford last time off a mark of 77. Nouvelli Dancer is just 2lb higher here back on turf, and has been found a good opportunity to record her fifth win of 2016.
De Sousa will also be aboard the favourite for the Terry Mills & John Akehurst Handicap over six furlongs, and his mount Highly Sprung arrives in good form after a two-length victory on the July course earlier this month.
That was a race in which several contenders failed to fire, however, and Tuesday’s race has more depth with David O’Meara’s Highland Acclaim (3.10) possibly the one to back at the prices. He has his quirks and has gone two years without a win, but is capable of winning off this mark and was only nosed out of it in the final stride at Redcar earlier this month. At around 7-1, he is worth a small interest.
Jim Crowley, De Sousa’s principal rival in the title race, also has three rides but down at Goodwood. Bee Case (3.35) is definitely up to winning the card’s nursery handicap to keep his jockey ticking over, while later on the card, Oriental Fox (4.10) can improve Mark Johnston’s fine record at the track in the stayers’ handicap. La Casa Tarifa (5.10) and Cersei (7.15), meanwhile, stand every chance at Hamilton and Ripon respectively.
Tipping competition – a new week
Congratulations to GandT123, who picked two winners on Friday to take last week’s competition on a final score of +7.75, somewhat stealing it from beneath the nose of 16heathermac01 (+6.25). Well played, sir! We’ll be in touch by email.
This week’s prize, somewhat prematurely, is a copy of RFO’s Jumps Guide for the 2016-17 season, which will be posted to you on publication in October. A tremendously useful prep-guide for all jump racing fans, the annual promises interviews, horses to follow, analysis of last season and tips for forthcoming winter highlights. If you don’t win you can buy a copy here.
Because Monday was a bank holiday, this week’s competition starts today. To kick things off, we’d like your selections, please, for these races: 3.10 Epsom, 3.35 Goodwood, 4.00 Hamilton
As ever, our champion will be the tipster who returns the best profit to notional level stakes of £1 at starting price on our nominated races, of which there will be three each day up until Friday. Non-runners count as losers.
In the event of a tie at the end of the week, the winner will be the tipster who, from among those tied on the highest score, posted their tips earliest on the final day.
For terms and conditions click here.
Good luck!
And post your tips or racing-related comments below.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/30/live-horse-racing-tuesday-30-august-epsom-goodwood-hamilton-ripon
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| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/981be05230cada01c5f39876d2d23fb12b68dc42d191f0a96c8ed206ebcb26ee.json
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[
"Larry Elliott"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:46 | null | 2016-08-09T12:24:49 |
Latest in string of investigations into sector is unlikely to trouble big four, which have had stranglehold on market since late 90s
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CMA report on UK banking industry is weak and disappointing
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Investigations into the structure of banking in Britain have become rather a cottage industry. There have been 11 separate inquiries into the sector in the past 17 years. Thousands of hours have been spent taking testimony from expert witnesses. Millions of words have been written. And nothing much has changed.
As in 1999, the big four of HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group have a stranglehold on the market. Between them, they hold 77% of personal accounts and 85% of business accounts. Attempts to inject more competition into the industry have proved difficult.
It seems highly unlikely that the latest investigation, carried out by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), will unduly concern the big four. They were certainly a lot more worried when the investigation was launched two years ago, because at the time, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government felt the need to respond to Ed Miliband’s suggestion that the oligopoly should be broken up.
British banks: doing their worst for us Read more
In the end, the fruit of the past two years seems to amount to little more than a new mobile app to help customers save money by switching bank accounts. The idea is that people will be keener on moving from one bank to another if there is more transparency about charges and interest rates.
The charitable response to the CMA’s report is that it is proportionate to the scale of the problem. Given that only 3% of customers switch banks in any given year, it could be argued that the public is generally happy with the service being provided. Or, perhaps, not unhappy enough to up sticks and move somewhere else. From this perspective, breaking up the big four would be to use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
But hang on a second. Harnessing new technology is all very well and there will no doubt be bank customers willing to trawl around for the best deal. On past form, though, they will tend to be well heeled customers with accounts in credit.
The people who really need help from the CMA are the less well off; those who struggle to make ends meet and slide into the red. Banks charge penal rates for unauthorised overdrafts, which can be more expensive than payday loans.
It was perhaps unrealistic, given Miliband’s defeat at the 2015 general election, to imagine that the CMA would break up the banks. But it was not unrealistic to expect that it might put strict caps on the overdraft charges banks can levy. This, unfortunately, is a weak and disappointing report from a toothless watchdog.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/09/cma-report-uk-banking-industry-weak-disappointing
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| 2016-08-09T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7d77044781640e58045babe4d10b5e67964b5960db487b4fbbd62d44d68305b6.json
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[
"Tess Riley"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:11 | null | 2016-08-24T04:00:10 |
Renewables are cheaper but there’s still a huge investment gap. Here’s what our expert panel said in a recent debate on clean energy
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Investing in off-grid renewables in the developing world: what you need to know
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At the Paris climate talks last December, governments agreed to work towards limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. But the topic of financing developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy became a sticking point during the negotiations.
We recently brought together a panel of experts to debate how developing countries can reach 100% renewables. Here’s what we learned:
1 Off-grid renewables are becoming more accessible
The falling cost of technologies such as solar PV means renewables have become cost-effective in many parts of the developing world, said Henning Wuester, director of the International Renewable Energy Agency’s Knowledge, Policy and Finance Centre. This is particularly the case in rural areas away from the electricity grid, where people are otherwise using relatively expensive, inefficient diesel generators and kerosene lamps.
Despite this, the upfront cost of small-scale solar systems to power a few lights or charge a mobile phone can present a significant barrier to widespread adoption, said Aly-Khan Jamal, a partner at Dalberg Global Development Advisors. However, he said there have been “exciting breakthroughs” in addressing such challenges:
Businesses providing these systems are using pay-as-you-go approaches that allow households and businesses to pay a small amount each month. Some allow you to eventually buy and fully own the system; others have a ‘perpetual lease’ where it is somewhat like paying for a utility.
2 Mobile money is critical ...
Mobile money payment systems make these pay-as-you-go models feasible, said Jamal, as they give businesses the ability to monitor and control electricity provision remotely, and make collecting payments very efficient – in turn significantly reducing costs.
Wuester added:
Mobile payment schemes have been critical in driving the roll-out of off-grid solutions. This has enabled more than 300,000 households [across East Africa] to get access to electricity, including about 30% of the Kenyan population, 40,000 in Uganda and 20,000 in Tanzania. These numbers are growing rapidly.
Maite Pina, renewable energy specialist at social investor Oikocredit International, gave the example of M-Pesa, a mobile money transfer system introduced in Kenya in 2007. Seven in 10 adults in Kenya now use the cash alternative, making 9m transactions daily. Pina said that Oikocredit – together with London-based solar systems provider BBoxx – uses M-Pesa to collect monthly payments from solar system users in sub-Saharan Africa.
3 ... but it has limits
Jamal pointed out, however, that mobile money penetration isn’t even across all countries, so different approaches need to be used depending on the market. What’s more, he added:
In the most remote and low income communities, mobile networks don’t invest in telecoms infrastructure (it’s not worth it for them) so relying on mobile money to reach these really challenging communities may not be sufficient.
4 Pay-as-you-go could trap the poorest in debt
Social entrepreneur and investor Jamie Hartzell put the following question to the panel:
The boom in pay-as-you-go household solar in East Africa is very exciting. But it is all based on credit, and the companies have a view to selling other products like TVs. How big is the risk that boom will turn to bust and push the poorest of the poor into unpayable debt?
Nico Tyabji, director of strategic partnerships at solar financier SunFunder, replied that while users might have a legally enforceable contract, “the reality is no one’s going to come knocking” – they just don’t get the service any more.
Investors' neglect of small-scale renewables threatens universal energy access Read more
Tyabji said that since cutting off access isn’t in the companies’ interest, they spend time thinking about how to make the process work best, for example by setting up payment models around harvest season so that users can pay when they have access to money rather than having to stick to a regular payment schedule. However, he added that as products and services get bigger and pricier, Hartzell’s concerns could become an issue.
5 Credit must be responsible
Edward Hanrahan, CEO of ClimateCare, reiterated the need for caution in what he described as the “massive rush to [...] provide credit at levels unseen before to the lowest income populace”.
He cited the example of Pamoja Life, one of ClimateCare’s investment projects in east Africa, which ensures that the overall monthly or weekly cost of the goods provided is lower than the goods it is displacing (for example, a solar unit costs less than equivalent kerosene). This means monthly outgoings are reduced rather than increased.
Hanrahan added:
Of course, we are all now looking at providing ‘add-on’ products – fridges, internet access, TVs. It is crucial that we manage the ladder of credit in a very responsible manner
6 There’s a big investment gap
“The world is not investing enough in renewables as a whole, not just off-grid solar, given the imperatives of climate change and sustainable development goals,” said Jeremy Leggett, founder of Solarcentury and SolarAid, and chairman of Carbon Tracker.
While investment in large, centralised energy systems is driven mainly by multilateral agencies and large developers who rely on long term power purchase agreements, there is still a funding gap for decentralised systems where the requirements are smaller and the risks are higher, said Pina. Despite a growing interest in off-grid developments and new debt structures, Pina believes there is still a need to develop new guarantee structures to attract investors.
Tyabji said organisations such as SunFunder came into being to plug part of that investment gap:
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https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/24/renewables-developing-countries-clean-energy-off-grid-investment-climate-change-mobile-money
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| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c246018aa4106db18d02ccd9dec1aa49c91a0c872e2f08f34635fe94e7a69494.json
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[
"Suzanne Bearne"
] | 2016-08-31T06:55:30 | null | 2016-08-31T06:30:30 |
From requests to work for nothing to knowing when to up your price, experts and freelancers discuss how to know what your work’s worth
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The toughest question for a freelancer: what rate should I charge?
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One of the most difficult questions to answer as a freelancer is “what’s your rate?” Aim too high and you may have talked yourself out of next month’s pay, go too low and you may be underselling yourself and others in the same sector.
While some fees are set – for example, there can be little room to negotiate in competitive industries such as photography, journalism or copywriting – many are not. If you are freelancing in an industry with more flexibility, talk to other freelancers and explore resources such as Major Players (a recruitment agency in the marketing, PR, advertising and design industries, which runs salary surveys) and Londonfreelance.org, which flags up information on rates.
The Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE) recommends taking your equivalent earnings as an employee and adding a third, which accounts for the added costs that arise as a freelancer. Jordan Marshall, policy development manager at IPSE, says: “Whatever your profession, [as a freelancer] you’re responsible for your sick pay, holiday pay, for any equipment you need – and your client [should pay] this premium in return for the flexibility you provide.”
Many freelancers have a standard rate in mind, but are willing to show flexibility. Anna Addison, a freelance PR and social media consultant, has a day rate and a half-day rate, but it depends on the individual project. She is willing to negotiate based on the complexity of the work. “If it is a straightforward, regional PR campaign this differs greatly to a national campaign and my fees alter accordingly. But I do have a minimum rate.”
Amanda Davies recently became a freelance coach – she offers support and training to aspiring entrepreneurs (particularly women) and small firms through her business, Light Purpose Living. She says: “I had an intuitive approach to setting prices [that included] looking at the competition, seeing what they were offering and getting expert advice.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amanda Davies. Photograph: Erika Szostak Photography
Davies adds that freelancers in the service industries (which many of her clients are) – offering counselling or coaching, for example – tend to be reluctant to negotiate or increase their prices. “It’s something that’s maybe been instilled in us at an early age; that you shouldn’t charge money for helping people.”
Paul Bridges, a freelance animator, editor and video creative director, has set his day rate at £320. “This is benchmarked by the recruitment agencies I work for in London. I know my worth in London from my time working there.” His work in the capital tends to be for global companies (which are able to pay more); London costs and average salary are also higher than in the regions.
Bridges has found that recruitment agencies tend to set a ballpark figure for freelancers, according to their experience, from which to begin negotiations between the client and the freelancer.
Marshall acknowledges there are situations where freelancers need to compromise with the client. “What’s essential is that you consider your overheads and how much you need to live on, and make sure any deal you make doesn’t leave you short,” he says.
However, it is worth setting a minimum amount you will work for and not budging from it. “I regularly get asked if I will lower my rate, but you must know your worth,” says Addison. “I do find that the good companies, which will pay the going rate and pay on time, respect you more for knowing what your services are worth.”
As a freelancer, it is not uncommon to receive emails requesting that you work for no pay in return for exposure. This is a concern throughout the creative sector and has led to the creation of the Stop Working For Free Facebook group, which has attracted more than 20,000 members.
IPSE, meanwhile, has worked with The Freelancer Club (a creative community that supports freelancers) to produce a code of conduct to promote more ethical practices; it is available for freelancers, brands and employers to sign.
Marshall says: “If you feel that taking on free work is the only way to build your portfolio, consider whether you’re actually adding value for your client’s business – and you almost invariably will be – so ask them why that value can’t translate into a paid salary.”
But for those who have changed industries, it can be tempting to work for no pay to build a portfolio. York-based freelancer Suzanne Braithwaite experienced this when she swapped journalism for photography last year. She says: “I felt at the time it was a needs-must to start the business, but it was only for a very short period. I’m hoping that from working for free, or for a small amount, that I’ve got that client for life.”
As you gain experience, it is worth reassessing your rates every couple of years. Marshall says: “As demand for your services increases, you’ll also find yourself closer to full capacity, so you can afford to push your clients for a little more in order to keep you on.”
Davies is growing her customer base and ensuring a steady income by offering her clients packages. “It’s a real opportunity to be creative and bundle together your services, rather than doing hourly sessions here and there,” she says. Her six month mentor package, for example, includes 18 one-to-one sessions, guest expert tutorials, office hours with Davies and other resources such as workbooks and materials.
She also plans ahead for rate increases. “At the end [of a contract] there would need to be a conversation around pricing. When I sign a client, I make sure that’s transparent.”
Endless holidays and free time? Here's what it's really like to be freelance Read more
Braithwaite, meanwhile, is starting to benefit from her growing experience. Armed with a website showcasing a strong portfolio and regular clients, she is charging customers competitive prices. “It’s been a slow learning curve and [...] it may look like I was exploited when I was starting out, but I managed to boost my portfolio,” she says. “In the future, I will increase my rates in order to give value to my work and also to make more money.”
Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.
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https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2016/aug/31/freelancer-what-rate-charge-price-work
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
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[
"Kevin Mitchell"
] | 2016-08-31T04:52:52 | null | 2016-08-31T03:36:26 |
Britain’s Andy Murray eased into the second round of the US Open with a clinical straight-set victory over the Czech, Lukáš Rosol
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Controlled Andy Murray makes short work of Lukáš Rosol in US Open first round
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Andy Murray could hardly have made a more satisfying start to the 2016 US Open than he did here on the revamped Arthur Ashe Court in the last night match on Tuesday, demolishing the stubborn Czech, Lukáš Rosol, in under two hours.
The controlled venom of his tennis was markedly at odds with the rash power of his opponent, with whom he shares a bit of history. The Scot did not concede a single break point, converted five of his own and put 11 aces past Rosol to win 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 going away. His serve hummed like a bird on a wire and his technical acumen dazzled a rival who ran out of answers almost within the first quarter of an hour.
Britain’s tennis players ready to reap benefits of Olympics at US Open Read more
Murray will have witnessed the four-set struggle of the world No1 Novak Djokovic against Jerzy Janowicz the night before, and will know, but not acknowledge, that the educated money will be shifting sharply his way. In the third round on Thursday, he plays the artful Spaniard, Marcel Granollers, who earlier battled to beat Juan Monaco 7-6 (5), 7-6 (2), 6-4 in four hours and seven minutes.
Murray’s passage to the second round was a stroll by comparison. Even with the roof back, the acoustics on reconstituted Ashe have an echo to them, the crowd’s chatter taking on the hubbub of a crowded bar. We were sat no more than 15 feet behind the umpire’s chair and the “thwack” of the ball sounded less sharp. So at least the players could have sworn at each other with impunity – if there were of a mind.
Both tried their best this week to play down the spat they had in Munich last year – when Rosol shoulder-bumped Murray on a changeover and Murray responded with a rebuke so mild it would have had him laughed out of any pub in Glasgow.
Nevertheless, there was an edge. Rosol’s eyes blazed and in a fast opening he hit every shot with mean intent. Murray stayed cool, inflicting his own brand of retribution, with patient backhand slices, teasing the Czech into over-eager ground strokes.
Rosol was reckless and dangerous, a not uncommon mix, but there was little in it until Murray dragged his opponent into a deuce wore on the half hour that tested his composure, and he cracked, paying for one rash forehand too many.
When Murray held to love with an ace, the tone of the match changed. Although Rosol fought tenaciously to save three set points and hold for 3-5, Murray closed it out after 43 minutes.
Now began the process of grinding that would dismantle Rosol’s tennis. Murray broke to 15, held easily and the Czech, growing desperate, double-faulted three times to pretty much hand the set to him after three games.
Murray produced some breathtaking skills to stretch his lead and, although there was a bit of fight left in Rosol, he increasingly looked like the world No81 of his ranking as Murray dissected his game bit by bit.
An ace kept him in the set before Murray produced threee of his own – one on second serve – to settle the argument. After a mere hour and 20 minutes, all that remained for Murray to do was a bit of tidying up in the third set – but not before an hilarious toilet break in which he was first turned away by a security guard, and then left bamboozled when a woman walked past him out of the door. It was the most grief he’d had all night.
Murray’s serve, vicious and accurate most of the evening, was now sharpened for the kill. The uneven nature of the contest rather than the quality of the tennis had thinned the crowd, and the bulk of the noise now leaked from the bars around the concourse.
When Rosol hit a serve that cleared the baseline and followed it with a couple of howitzers off the ground that went nowhere, it was plain this contest was done. He wanted to go home, and hitting his way into rather than out of trouble looked to be his preferred route.
He bit hard, long and wide – and Murray had the break he needed in the fifth game. He broke again in the seventh as Rosol’s discipline collapsed completely, then brought a one-sided fight to a merciful conclusion after an hour and 51 minutes with one last thundering serve.
All in all, a satisfactory night’s work under what remains of the skies you can see from this raucous bowl.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/31/controlled-andy-murray-makes-short-work-of-lukas-rosol-in-us-open-first-round
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
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[
"Phillip Inman"
] | 2016-08-27T18:54:53 | null | 2016-07-17T06:00:33 |
The unshackled post-EU economy that free marketeers dream of will only succeed with high immigration – and massive state investment
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A hard truth for Leave voters: Brexit means big government
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Without the European Union’s shackles, Britain will be free to develop new products and innovate for greater success. Like a gleaming stallion racing away from the herd, the UK will leave Europe’s deadbeat economy in the dust. It’s a Brexiters’ image that also pictures Europe falling back, unable to maintain its poise while protecting the interests of unionised workers and ageing elites.
The most recent economic figures appear to bear this out, with lower growth posing a fresh problem for Brussels and European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi, who had presumed that increases in GDP, while still only moderate, were steady and assured.
And it’s true that policymakers in Denmark, Sweden and even some quarters of liberal Germany fear that, without the UK, Europe will turn inwards and ossify, forcing them to question their own membership.
Governments in Portugal and Spain have added to the pain, going head to head with Brussels after they broke through their budget ceilings. Italy wants to pump €40bn into its banks against eurozone rules. In all cases, ministers are attempting to shore up outmoded or bust institutions.
The question for Brexit campaigners is whether Britain is so very different to its continental cousins and can grow in a way that satisfies the demand of most Brexit voters. And to that question, the answer must be no.
Britain has seen a renaissance in jobs since 2013, of that there is no doubt. But most of those extra jobs were among the self-employed or fell into categories that can only be described as insecure and low-paid. When companies finally took the plunge and advertised full-time jobs from 2014 onwards, around a third went to migrants.
If you turn off the migration tap and regulate insecure jobs out of existence, as no doubt the voters of Brexit-loving Stoke-on-Trent would like, you have no growth. Overnight Britain becomes France, weighed down by high unemployment and low growth after sticking with policies that protect the terms and conditions of the current generation of workers, and discourage investment.
It is this mostly older group of workers across the developed world, worried about their pay, pensions and conditions of employment, that want to slam the brakes on globalisation and reject the remedy proposed by big business: greater labour-market flexibility and only limited job protections.
The same issue is causing social turmoil in the US, where a strong economic recovery from the 2008 crash is largely driven by consistently high net immigration filling gaps in the labour market and bringing new ideas and skills to places like Silicon Valley. Voters bridling against a diet of constant change are the bedrock of Donald Trump’s push for the White House.
Economists for Brexit, a 13-strong group who championed the UK quitting the EU, want British voters to embrace the anxiety that comes with flexible working and rates of pay that go up and down in line with the demand for their services, as determined by global capitalism.
Of course their message is more optimistic and is about developing high-skilled jobs. And they are not such principled free marketeers they can’t find room to offset their call for unfettered free trade with a bit of government subsidy directed at hard-pressed parts of the economy, particularly manufacturing and agriculture. Infrastructure spending with borrowed money is also allowed.
But it is noticeable that the US-style green card entry system they propose would shift the balance towards high-skilled workers without necessarily cutting the numbers. As the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said a day after the vote, a points system to determine who can work in the UK and who can’t would not on its own prevent the population growing by 1 million every three years, mostly through immigration.
And when you have new chancellor Philip Hammond saying that Britons need to fall over themselves to attract overseas investors upset at Brexit, putting a lower corporation tax rate at the top of his list, it is only a matter of a few years before the people of Stoke-on-Trent begin to feel conned again.
Like all other countries, Britain needs to increase demand to escape or at least ameliorate the deflationary spiral gripping the global economy. The G20 finance ministers meet this week and will reiterate the need for governments to supplement central bank funds in boosting growth. Only government can provide the cure, with a commitment to invest where the private sector cannot or will not go.
That means Theresa May will need to bust George Osborne’s budget forecasts by more than a few billion to implement an industrial strategy worthy of the name. The temptation will be to spend the money on an industrial commission or research centre to advise ministers on the way forward. Vince Cable did all this when he was business minister and implemented what he could.
He was stopped in his tracks by Osborne when he wanted to spend some money. Yet there are oven-ready projects across the country that could be commissioned, encouraging contractors to invest in new equipment and skills. Will they be commissioned? Not if the nation’s ageing nimbys block each individual proposal. And not if the concern persists that governments cannot be trusted to spend taxpayer funds and get good value.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/17/brexit-means-big-government-hard-truth-leave-voters
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| 2016-07-17T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/02cd691a156261b540c4d528b463f265f710da4857bf8ae6ce193dfc9ec5c5f2.json
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[
"Alex Hern"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:27 | null | 2016-08-19T06:00:10 |
Whether nostalgic for older versions or looking forward to something new, the game seems eager to please both camps
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Final Fantasy XV footage reveals magic, quests and chocobos
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If news that Final Fantasy XV has been delayed, has you desperately searching for alternatives to get your JRPG fix, then here’s something that should take up a good chunk of time: SquareEnix has released a full hour of gameplay footage taken from the gold master of the game, giving a more in-depth look at its systems, side quests and early plot than anything to date.
The game was delayed by two months to 29 November, apparently, because Hajime Tabata, its director, felt the contents of the planned day-one patch should ship with it, not be made available to download after the fact, hence the two-month delay to the “master version”.
If you’ve got the time, the video’s above. If you don’t, we watched it so you don’t have to. Here’s the gems we spotted.
Don’t be fooled by the real-time sheen; this is still very Final Fantasy
This won’t come as much of a surprise if you’ve played Episode Duscae, the short extract of the game that was released alongside Final Fantasy Type–0 HD in 2015, but until now, not much video footage has shown how the game’s battles work when they take on the intricacies of high-tier Final Fantasy combat.
Yes, when you’re attacking lower-tier mobs, the game looks more like Devil May Cry than it does turn-based RPGs of yore, but as the classic systems-piled-upon-systems approach of Final Fantasy games builds up, its clear that you’re not always going to be mashing the X button until the enemies are dead.
The game borrows from western RPGs, from Baldur’s Gate to Fallout 4, in letting players enter “wait mode” to enter more complex commands, and while the choice of four weapon styles and four magic types bound to Noctis at any one time means that even in real-time, there’s a good variety of options available.
Final Fantasy VIII fans will be particularly happy
FFVIII is often overshadowed by its older sibling, as Final Fantasy VII conclusively takes the crown of leading JRPG of its generation, and so the innovations it introduced to the franchise haven’t entered the general milieu of the Final Fantasy theme.
The biggest change that game introduced was treating spells as an exhaustible resource, rather than things that are simply learned once and then used with MP. They could be “drawn”, both from appropriate enemies and special points on the world stage. It was divisive, for sure: some players loved the variety, while others hated the broader junction system, which boosted stats by the number of spells linked to them (and so punished players for actually casting spells by making them weaker, even as the game in general encouraged players to use magic to take down enemies).
Some of that mechanic’s returned in XV. Players can now absorb magic from environmental sources, letting them find blizzard spells in a can of compressed air, or fire in glowing crystals. The spells aren’t junctioned, nor can they be drawn from enemies, but it bears enough of a similarity to VIII to be worth noting.
But lessons come from all through the series
Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid offered players the ability to choose how their characters progressed, with spheres dropped by individual enemies being slotted in to a wider grid and granting stat boosts and new abilities. That’s reflected, it seems, in FFXV’s ascension screen, in which players spend their level-ups on a very similar-looking grid.
The open-world aspect of the game, meanwhile, clearly owes a lot to Final Fantasy XII, the last game for the Playstation 2, but it also draws its inspiration from FFs XI and XIV, the two MMORPGs in the series. Players can go fishing, collect materials to cook meals, or (not shown in the video) take photos or … survive? It’s not clear what the survival skill is but you can do that. I’ve never actually enjoyed fishing in any previous game and even the two minutes of fishing shown in the video was enough for me but hey, fishing.
There are some vaguely unwelcome returns too. Final Fantasy has yet to really make stealth work – heck, no game that isn’t focused around stealth has ever made stealth work – but that hasn’t stopped the team from trying again, as the squad tiptoe around a giant bird to retrieve a rare gem. If you haven’t watched the video, it ends with a nice set-piece, so congrats for not being spoiled on it. If you have, sorry.
Chocobos
Chocobos. You can race them, ride them and even dress them up with medals and so on. I’m the sort of player who will skip through character creation screens in a second but if you give me a chocobo to customise you can bet I’ll be there for a while, ensuring that my giant horse-chicken-pigeon looks just right.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/19/final-fantasy-xv-footage-reveals-magic-quests-and-chocobos
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en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6d4c724c08adf9767fb9358ad2ddb0ba216eef670a45c78767050ad9070059ad.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:39 | null | 2016-08-25T10:34:14 |
The former Liverpool full-back Javier Manquillo has become Sunderland’s sixth summer signing after completing a season-long loan move from Atletico Madrid
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Javier Manquillo joins Sunderland on season-long loan from Atlético Madrid
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www.theguardian.com
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Javier Manquillo has become Sunderland’s sixth summer signing after completing a season-long loan move from Atlético Madrid.
The Black Cats have also negotiated an option to seal a permanent four-year deal for the 22-year-old former Liverpool full-back next summer.
Premier League: transfer window summer 2016 – interactive Read more
Manquillo, who spent last season on loan at Marseille, follows Papy Djilobodji, Adnan Januzaj, Donald Love, Paddy McNair and Steven Pienaar to the Stadium of Light as manager David Moyes rebuilds his squad.
Manquillo spent the 2014-15 season at Liverpool after agreeing a two-year loan deal at Anfield. He started in Brendan Rodgers’ side but dropped out of the first team and was sent back to Madrid a year early at the end of his first season in the Premier League.
The Spain Under-21 international, who has played both Champions League and Europa League football for Atlético, arrived on Wearside on Wednesday evening for a medical and the formalities were completed on Thursday morning.
Moyes asked his No2, Paul Bracewell, to carry out his media duties following the 1-0 EFL Cup victory over League One Shrewsbury – the first competitive win of his reign at the Stadium of Light – as he attempted to push home his interest in Manquillo.
Transfer window: exposing the widely held myths about how clubs sign players Read more
The newcomer could go straight into the squad for Saturday’s Premier League trip to Southampton, where the Black Cats will attempt to register their first point of the campaign after back-to-back defeats by Manchester City and Middlesbrough.
By then, Moyes will hope to have added further to his squad with the club working feverishly behind the scenes to get him the players he wants before the transfer window closes next Wednesday night.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/javier-manquillo-sunderland-loan-atletico-madrid-liverpool
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/99495a8e50b8f3839f813e4d8b8e5bc10f9e77a1ab93df6df59d4da5ad238758.json
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[
"Mark Townsend"
] | 2016-08-27T22:49:29 | null | 2016-08-27T21:15:14 |
Britain refuses to release prison report as 81-year-old is held for sedition
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Bangladeshi jail ‘cover-up’ as UK journalist faces trial
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www.theguardian.com
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The UK government is refusing to release a report that it secretly commissioned into Bangladeshi prisons as concern grows ahead of a court appearance on Tuesday of an elderly British journalist being held in a notorious Dhaka jail.
Shafik Rehman, 81, will face a supreme court hearing over allegations of sedition. His family claim that the Foreign Office has effectively abandoned him and fears that, if charged and convicted, he could be sentenced to death. Even though no charges have been brought, Rehman has been detained for four months, during which his health has deteriorated. A prominent figure in Bangladesh, Rehman is a former BBC journalist and talkshow host and is the third pro-opposition editor to be detained in the country since 2013.
The commercial arm of the UK’s Ministry of Justice – Just Solutions International (JSI) – completed a consultation on Bangladesh’s prisons last year. However, the findings of the report have never been made public, despite concerns over the treatment of elderly prisoners. Freedom of information requests have been rejected by the MoJ on the basis of “protecting national security”, alongside diplomatic reasons.
Critics claim the UK government is effectively protecting Bangladesh by refusing to release potentially damning information about the conditions within its prisons.
JSI was forced to close earlier this year after winning a contract to train prison staff in Saudi Arabia. Set up by former UK justice secretary Chris Grayling, JSI had contracts with numerous governments with questionable human rights records, including Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and Libya.
Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team of legal charity Reprieve, which is representing Rehman, said: “By covering up these files, the UK government is helping Bangladesh whitewash its abuse and mistreatment of prisoners like Shafik.
“This 81-year-old British journalist spent a month in solitary confinement lying on the floor of a Bangladeshi prison cell as his health collapsed.He has now spent over 100 days in detention without charge and could face a death sentence, just for doing his job. The Foreign Office needs to urgently step up its assistance for imprisoned journalists like Shafik and support his release.”
Shumit Rehman, the 57-year-old son of the former journalist, said that he was afraid his father would never be free again. “I’m terrified that my dad’s health will fail,” he said. “He has a stent in his artery and had to be rushed to hospital once already. He’s missed important medical appointments in London. The UK government has information about conditions in Bangladeshi prisons that it is keeping secret. I want to know if ministers think these jails are safe for a frail old man like my dad.
“Instead of covering up poor conditions in Bangladesh’s jails, the Foreign Office should call for my father’s immediate release.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said it “continues to provide consular assistance” in the case.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/27/shafik-rehman-trial-whitehall-cover-up
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7b5f532efbbd15ee888abddae19c7ddb0f31e4e9190aa1e96811cb262e9ef040.json
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[
"Jamie Grierson"
] | 2016-08-28T08:51:41 | null | 2016-08-28T08:46:26 |
Ray Johnson attacks Patrick McLoughlin’s handling of Clifford Chance’s report and demands that it is published in full
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http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Felliott-johnson-family-condemn-tory-chairman-bullying-inquiry-arrogance-patrick-mcloughlin.json
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Elliott Johnson's family condemn Tory chairman's bullying inquiry 'arrogance'
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The family of Tory activist Elliott Johnson, who killed himself after alleged bullying in the party, have condemned the chairman of the Conservative party as “arrogant” following the release of an internal inquiry into the scandal.
In the letter seen by the Guardian, Ray Johnson, Elliott’s father, said he did not accept the Conservatives’ conclusion that the party acted properly when dealing with complaints made by their son before he died.
Elliott Johnson: the young Tory destroyed by the party he loved Read more
Johnson said his family was taken aback by Patrick McLoughlin’s “sheer arrogance” when he wrote to them with a copy of the summary of a report by law firm Clifford Chance into allegations of bullying within the Conservative party.
In his letter to the Johnsons sent on 17 August, McLoughlin said it was clear the Tories “acted entirely properly” when Johnson complained about the behaviour of Mark Clarke, the Tory election aide at the heart of the bullying claims. Clarke has denied all wrongdoing.
Johnson said: “Upon reading your letter, we were taken aback by the sheer arrogance of your summing up of Elliott’s letter of complaint in a mere one and a half lines, stating simply that ‘the report and summary are both clear that the Conservative party acted entirely properly in relation to the complaint received from Elliott in August 2015’.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Patrick McLoughlin. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters
Johnson added: “As you know, it is our contention that the Conservative party did not act ‘entirely properly’ towards Elliott and other young volunteers and activists nor in dealing with Elliott’s complaint. Nothing in your letter or the ‘summary’ has reassured us to the contrary.”
The summary of the Clifford Chance report revealed that the inquiry identified 13 alleged victims of Clarke, the so-called Tatler Tory, over a 20-month period, including six accusations of “sexually inappropriate behaviour”.
Clarke, who was appointed by the party to run its RoadTrip2015 election campaign, came under heavy scrutiny after Elliott took his own life at the age of 21 in September 2015 and named Clarke as his tormentor in a suicide note.
The report revealed that senior Conservatives, including David Cameron’s spin doctor Lynton Crosby and the former co-chairman Lord Feldman, had raised concerns about Clarke’s conduct.
However, the law firm found that senior figures, including Feldman, Crosby and Feldman’s former party co-chairman Grant Shapps, were not aware of Clarke’s alleged bullying of youth activists between 1 January 2014 and 14 August 2015.
In his response to McLoughlin, Johnson said the summary was published without prior notice to the family and expressed disappointment that the new Conservative leadership and cabinet had not led to an improvement in the party’s handling of the scandal.
“We can only consider that this was a deliberate attempt to ensure that we were unable to answer the inevitable press questions which followed immediately afterwards,” he said.
“We are further disappointed, that following a change of leadership of the Conservative party, no attempt has been made to directly make contact with us.
“Any hope that we had that a new broom would attempt to ‘right the wrongs’ of the last year, show how misguided our hopes had been. It appears that a change of personnel is not reflected in a change of attitude.”
The Johnson family refused to take part in the Clifford Chance inquiry due to concerns over its transparency and accountability. Johnson demands in his letter to McLoughlin that the party publish the full report, not just a summary.
Johnson said: “This is a very ‘selective’ publication, which does nothing to answer the many issues that arise from the death of our son, it reads as if its principal objective is to absolve the Conservative party’s senior management and senior volunteers of any responsibility – and somewhat inconsistently, with blame being attributed to failures in process, or more sinisterly, upon more junior officials for not progressing complaints prior to August 2015, which in itself should shame your party.
“We as a family had no illusions about the outcome of this ‘whitewash’, which is why we decided not to take part in it.
“However, many people did, with reservations, give evidence and some have made contact with us to express their dissatisfaction with its outcome, at least one saying that the ‘summary’ did not reflect their evidence.
“In the interests of transparency and accountability, and to satisfy those witnesses who are unhappy with the report’s ‘summary’, it is now incumbent upon the Conservative party to release the ‘full’ report and its evidence (respecting the anonymity of those witnesses who have requested it), to ensure that this inquiry is seen to have been conducted properly and its ‘gaps’ in evidence fully explored.”
A month before he killed himself, Elliott complained to Conservative Campaign headquarters (CCHQ) about an alleged altercation with Clarke in the Marquis of Granby pub in Westminster.
The Clifford Chance report reveals that upon receiving the complaint, Feldman, then co-chairman of the party said he had “always had the gravest possible reservations” about Clarke – but in relation to his “competence as a campaign organiser”.
Shapps appointed Clarke, a failed parliamentary candidate, in June 2014 to run RoadTrip2015, in which young activists were bussed around the country to rally support in marginal seats, despite reviewing Clarke’s candidate file, which detailed allegations of aggressive and bullying behaviour when he stood in Tooting in 2010.
Feldman and Crosby, as well as the former deputy chairman Lord Stephen Gilbert, were among senior Conservatives who raised concerns about Clarke when it emerged he was falsely using the job title of “director in CCHQ [Conservative Campaign HQ]”, the inquiry found. In one email exchange between Shapps and Crosby, Shapps admitted Clarke was a “difficult individual who delivered” and keeping him as RoadTrip director was a “calculated risk to be taken to help build the campaign network up”.
Clarke, who declined to be interviewed as part of the investigation, denied the allegations included in the report.
His solicitor told the law firm: “Clarke has cooperated and will continue to cooperate with the police, the coroner and any other statutory body charged with investigating any matters relating to the subject matter of Clifford Chance’s investigation on behalf of the Conservative party board.
“The police investigation into Elliott Johnson’s death and other inquiries are ongoing, and it is not appropriate to respond to allegations until the end of those processes. However, the allegations made against Mr Clarke in the Clifford Chance report are wholly untrue and unsubstantiated. Many are based on totally fabricated media reports. All these allegations are vehemently denied.”
• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/28/elliott-johnson-family-condemn-tory-chairman-bullying-inquiry-arrogance-patrick-mcloughlin
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/bde740b3be54c76c5b606a1ee59da617fec5faa2d0c1a7b7cf77787987e4cb39.json
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[
"Sarah Marsh",
"Harpal Kumar"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:01 | null | 2016-07-28T11:08:34 |
Everyone has done it, but research shows the danger of mindlessly consuming savoury dips. Tell us about the other food temptations you’d like to suppress
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Fjul%2F28%2Fhummus-be-joking-what-eating-habits-do-you-wish-you-could-change.json
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en
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Hummus be joking! What eating habits do you wish you could change?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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It’s a truth universally acknowledged that one can consume hummus and taramasalata by the tub-load (often without thinking about it). They have got to be two of the most moreish things on the planet. But their delicious taste comes at a price when it comes to your waistline.
New research by Consensus Action on Salt and Health has highlighted the calorific content of dips. Looking at many supermarket brands it found many are often laden with excess calories. In fact, nearly three-quarters of hummus products (74%) – for example – carry a so-called “traffic light” label red warning for fat.
So, is dip bingeing one of the guilty eating habits you have that you’re desperate to change? We want to hear about your unusual eating pleasures. Perhaps you’ve got a penchant for late-night snacking or eat unusual foods. What food temptations do you wish you could stop? Join our discussion via the form below.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/28/hummus-be-joking-what-eating-habits-do-you-wish-you-could-change
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en
| 2016-07-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9d53da4c56926e0dd9ace1bbdfca9769a637a40b0186725ccc28cb0c419a2ed2.json
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[
"Christopher Riley"
] | 2016-08-28T12:57:19 | null | 2014-06-06T00:00:00 |
In the 1960s, Margaret Lovatt was part of a Nasa-funded project to communicate with dolphins. Soon she was living with 'Peter' 24 hours a day in a converted house. Christopher Riley reports on an experiment that went tragically wrong
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2014%2Fjun%2F08%2Fthe-dolphin-who-loved-me.json
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The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Like most children, Margaret Howe Lovatt grew up with stories of talking animals. "There was this book that my mother gave to me called Miss Kelly," she remembers with a twinkle in her eye. "It was a story about a cat who could talk and understand humans and it just stuck with me that maybe there is this possibility."
Unlike most children, Lovatt didn't leave these tales of talking animals behind her as she grew up. In her early 20s, living on the Caribbean island of St Thomas, they took on a new significance. During Christmas 1963, her brother-in-law mentioned a secret laboratory at the eastern end of the island where they were working with dolphins. She decided to pay the lab a visit early the following year. "I was curious," Lovatt recalls. "I drove out there, down a muddy hill, and at the bottom was a cliff with a big white building."
Lovatt was met by a tall man with tousled hair, wearing an open shirt and smoking a cigarette. His name was Gregory Bateson, a great intellectual of the 20th century and the director of the lab. "Why did you come here?" he asked Lovatt.
"Well, I heard you had dolphins," she replied, "and I thought I'd come and see if there was anything I could do or any way I could help…" Unused to unannounced visitors and impressed by her bravado, Bateson invited her to meet the animals and asked her to watch them for a while and write down what she saw. Despite her lack of scientific training, Lovatt turned out to be an intuitive observer of animal behaviour and Bateson told her she could come back whenever she wanted.
"There were three dolphins," remembers Lovatt. "Peter, Pamela and Sissy. Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loud, she sort of ran the show. Pamela was very shy and fearful. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually coming of age and a bit naughty."
The lab's upper floors overhung a sea pool that housed the animals. It was cleaned by the tide through openings at each end. The facility had been designed to bring humans and dolphins into closer proximity and was the brainchild of an American neuroscientist, Dr John Lilly. Here, Lilly hoped to commune with the creatures, nurturing their ability to make human-like sounds through their blow holes.
Lilly had been interested in connecting with cetaceans since coming face to face with a beached pilot whale on the coast near his home in Massachusetts in 1949. The young medic couldn't quite believe the size of the animal's brain – and began to imagine just how intelligent the creature must have been, explains Graham Burnett, professor of the history of science at Princeton and author of The Sounding of the Whale. "You are talking about a time in science when everybody's thinking about a correlation between brain size and what the brain can do. And in this period, researchers were like: 'Whoa… big brain huh… cool!'"
Tripper and flipper: Dr John Lilly, who started experimenting with LSD during the project. Photograph: Lilly Estate
At every opportunity in the years that followed, John Lilly and his first wife, Mary, would charter sailboats and cruise the Caribbean, looking for other big-brained marine mammals to observe. It was on just such a trip in the late 1950s that the Lillys came across Marine Studios in Miami – the first place to keep the bottlenose dolphin in captivity.
Up until this time, fishermen on America's east coast, who were in direct competition with dolphins for fish, had considered the animals vermin. "They were know as 'herring hogs' in most of the seafaring towns in the US," says Burnett. But here, in the tanks of Marine Studios, the dolphins' playful nature was endearingly on show and their ability to learn tricks quickly made it hard to dislike them.
Here, for the first time, Lilly had the chance to study the brains of live dolphins, mapping their cerebral cortex using fine probes, which he'd first developed for his work on the brains of rhesus monkeys. Unable to sedate dolphins, as they stop breathing under anaesthetic, the brain-mapping work wasn't easy for either animals or scientists, and the research didn't always end well for the marine mammals. But on one occasion in 1957, the research would take a different course which would change his and Mary's lives for ever.
Now aged 97, Mary still remembers the day very clearly. "I came in at the top of the operating theatre and heard John talking and the dolphin would go: 'Wuh… wuh… wuh' like John, and then Alice, his assistant, would reply in a high tone of voice and the dolphin would imitate her voice. I went down to where they were operating and told them that this was going on and they were quite startled."
Perhaps, John reasoned, this behaviour indicated an ambition on the dolphins' part to communicate with the humans around them. If so, here were exciting new opportunities for interspecies communication. Lilly published his theory in a book in 1961 called Man and Dolphin. The idea of talking dolphins, eager to tell us something, captured the public's imagination and the book became a bestseller.
Man and Dolphin extrapolated Mary Lilly's initial observations of dolphins mimicking human voices, right through to teaching them to speak English and on ultimately to a Cetacean Chair at the United Nations, where all marine mammals would have an enlightening input into world affairs, widening our perspectives on everything from science to history, economics and current affairs.
Lilly's theory had special significance for another group of scientists – astronomers. "I'd read his book and was very impressed," says Frank Drake, who had just completed the first experiment to detect signals from extraterrestrial civilisations using a radio telescope at Green Bank in West Virginia. "It was a very exciting book because it had these new ideas about creatures as intelligent and sophisticated as us and yet living in a far different milieu." He immediately saw parallels with Lilly's work, "because we [both] wanted to understand as much as we could about the challenges of communicating with other intelligent species." This interest helped Lilly win financial backing from Nasa and other government agencies, and Lilly opened his new lab in the Caribbean in 1963, with the aim of nurturing closer relationships between man and dolphin.
A few months LATER, in early 1964, Lovatt arrived. Through her naturally empathetic nature she quickly connected with the three animals and, eager to embrace John Lilly's vision for building an interspecies communication bridge, she threw herself into his work, spending as much time as possible with the dolphins and carrying out a programme of daily lessons to encourage them to make human-like sounds. While the lab's director, Gregory Bateson, concentrated on animal-to-animal communication, Lovatt was left alone to pursue Lilly's dream to teach the dolphins to speak English. But even at a state-of-the-art facility like the Dolphin House, barriers remained. "Every night we would all get in our cars and pull the garage door down and drive away," remembers Lovatt. "And I thought: 'Well there's this big brain floating around all night.' It amazed me that everybody kept leaving and I just thought it was wrong."
Lovatt reasoned that if she could live with a dolphin around the clock, nurturing its interest in making human-like sounds, like a mother teaching a child to speak, they'd have more success. "Maybe it was because I was living so close to the lab. It just seemed so simple. Why let the water get in the way?" she says. "So I said to John Lilly: 'I want to plaster everything and fill this place with water. I want to live here.'"
The radical nature of Lovatt's idea appealed to Lilly and he went for it. She began completely waterproofing the upper floors of the lab, so that she could actually flood the indoor rooms and an outdoor balcony with a couple of feet of water. This would allow a dolphin to live comfortably in the building with her for three months.
Lovatt selected the young male dolphin called Peter for her live-in experiment. "I chose to work with Peter because he had not had any human-like sound training and the other two had," she explains. Lovatt would attempt to live in isolation with him six days a week, sleeping on a makeshift bed on the elevator platform in the middle of the room and doing her paperwork on a desk suspended from the ceiling and hanging over the water. On the seventh day Peter would return to the sea pool downstairs to spend time with the two female dolphins at the lab – Pamela and Sissy.
'If I was sitting with my legs in the water, he'd come up and look at the back of my knee for a long time': Margaret with Peter. Photograph: courtesy Lilly Estate
By the summer of 1965, Lovatt's domestic dolphinarium was ready for use. Lying in bed, surrounded by water that first night and listening to the pumps gurgling away, she remembers questioning what she was doing. "Human people were out there having dinner or whatever and here I am. There's moonlight reflecting on the water, this fin and this bright eye looking at you and I thought: 'Wow, why am I here?' But then you get back into it and it never occurred to me not to do it. What I was doing there was trying to find out what Peter was doing there and what we could do together. That was the whole point and nobody had done that."
Audio recordings of Lovatt's progress, meticulously archived on quarter-inch tapes at the time, capture the energy that Lovatt brought to the experiment – doggedly documenting Peter's progress with her twice-daily lessons and repeatedly encouraging him to greet her with the phrase 'Hello Margaret'. "'M' was very difficult," she remembers. "My name. Hello 'M'argaret. I worked on the 'M' sound and he eventually rolled over to bubble it through the water. That 'M', he worked on so hard."
For Lovatt, though, it often wasn't these formal speech lessons that were the most productive. It was just being together which taught her the most about what made Peter tick. "When we had nothing to do was when we did the most," she reflects. "He was very, very interested in my anatomy. If I was sitting here and my legs were in the water, he would come up and look at the back of my knee for a long time. He wanted to know how that thing worked and I was so charmed by it."
Carl Sagan, one of the young astronomers at Green Bank, paid a visit to report back on progress to Frank Drake. "We thought that it was important to have the dolphins teach us 'Dolphinese', if there is such a thing," recalls Drake. "For example we suggested two dolphins in each tank not able to see each other – and he should teach one dolphin a procedure to obtain food – and then see if it could tell the other dolphin how to do the same thing in its tank. That was really the prime experiment to be done, but Lilly never seemed able to do it."
Instead, he encouraged Lovatt to press on with teaching Peter English. But there was something getting in the way of the lessons. "Dolphins get sexual urges," says the vet Andy Williamson, who looked after the animals' health at Dolphin House. "I'm sure Peter had plenty of thoughts along those lines."
"Peter liked to be with me," explains Lovatt. "He would rub himself on my knee, or my foot, or my hand. And at first I would put him downstairs with the girls," she says. But transporting Peter downstairs proved so disruptive to the lessons that, faced with his frequent arousals, it just seemed easier for Lovatt to relieve his urges herself manually.
"I allowed that," she says. "I wasn't uncomfortable with it, as long as it wasn't rough. It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch – just get rid of it, scratch it and move on. And that's how it seemed to work out. It wasn't private. People could observe it."
For Lovatt it was a precious thing, which was always carried out with great respect. "Peter was right there and he knew that I was right there," she continues. "It wasn't sexual on my part. Sensuous perhaps. It seemed to me that it made the bond closer. Not because of the sexual activity, but because of the lack of having to keep breaking. And that's really all it was. I was there to get to know Peter. That was part of Peter."
Innocent as they were, Lovatt's sexual encounters with Peter would ultimately overshadow the whole experiment when a story about them appeared in Hustler magazine in the late 1970s. "I'd never even heard of Hustler," says Lovatt. "I think there were two magazine stores on the island at the time. And I went to one and looked and I found this story with my name and Peter, and a drawing."
Sexploitation: Hustler magazine's take on the story in the late 1970s. Photograph: Lilly Estate
Lovatt bought up all the copies she could find, but the story was out there and continues to circulate to this day on the web. "It's a bit uncomfortable," she acknowledges. "The worst experiment in the world, I've read somewhere, was me and Peter. That's fine, I don't mind. But that was not the point of it, nor the result of it. So I just ignore it."
Something else began to interrupt the study. Lilly had been researching the mind-altering powers of the drug LSD since the early 1960s. The wife of Ivan Tors, the producer of the dolphin movie Flipper, had first introduced him to it at a party in Hollywood. "John and Ivan Tors were really good friends," says Ric O'Barry of the Dolphin Project (an organisation that aims to stop dolphin slaughter and exploitation around the world) and a friend of Lilly's at the time. "Ivan was financing some of the work on St Thomas. I saw John go from a scientist with a white coat to a full blown hippy," he remembers.
For the actor Jeff Bridges, who was introduced to Lilly by his father Lloyd, Lilly's self-experimentation with LSD was just part of who he was. "John Lilly was above all an explorer of the brain and the mind, and all those drugs that expand our consciousness," reflects Bridges. "There weren't too many people with his expertise and his scientific background doing that kind of work."
In the 1960s a small selection of neuroscientists like John Lilly were licensed to research LSD by the American government, convinced that the drug had medicinal qualities that could be used to treat mental-health patients. As part of this research, the drug was sometimes injected into animals and Lilly had been using it on his dolphins since 1964, curious about the effect it would have on them.
Margaret Lovatt today. Photograph: Matt Pinner/BBC
Much to Lilly's annoyance, nothing happened. Despite his various attempts to get the dolphins to respond to the drug, it didn't seem to have any effect on them, remembers Lovatt. "Different species react to different pharmaceuticals in different ways," explains the vet, Andy Williamson. "A tranquilliser made for horses might induce a state of excitement in a dog. Playing with pharmaceuticals is a tricky business to say the least."
Injecting the dolphins with LSD was not something Lovatt was in favour of and she insisted that the drug was not given to Peter, which Lilly agreed to. But it was his lab, and they were his animals, she recalls. And as a young woman in her 20s she felt powerless to stop him giving LSD to the other two dolphins.
While Lilly's experimentation with the drug continued, Lovatt persevered with Peter's vocalisation lessons and grew steadily closer to him. "That relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together, and wanting to be together, and missing him when he wasn't there," she reflects. "I did have a very close encounter with – I can't even say a dolphin again – with Peter."
By autumn 1966, Lilly's interest in the speaking-dolphin experiment was dwindling. "It didn't have the zing to it that LSD did at that time," recalls Lovatt of Lilly's attitude towards her progress with Peter. "And in the end the zing won."
The dolphinarium on St Thomas. Photograph: Lilly Estate
Lilly's cavalier attitude to the dolphins' welfare would eventually be his downfall, driving away the lab's director, Gregory Bateson, and eventually causing the funding to be cut. Just as Lovatt and Peter's six-month live-in experiment was concluding, it was announced that the lab would be closed.
Without funding, the fate of the dolphins was in question. "I couldn't keep Peter," says Lovatt, wistfully. "If he'd been a cat or a dog, then maybe. But not a dolphin." Lovatt's new job soon became the decommissioning of the lab and she prepared to ship the dolphins away to Lilly's other lab, in a disused bank building in Miami. It was a far cry from the relative freedom and comfortable surroundings of Dolphin House.
At the Miami lab, held captive in smaller tanks with little or no sunlight, Peter quickly deteriorated, and after a few weeks Lovatt received news.
"I got that phone call from John Lilly," she recalls. "John called me himself to tell me. He said Peter had committed suicide."
Ric O'Barry corroborates the use of this word. "Dolphins are not automatic air-breathers like we are," he explains. "Every breath is a conscious effort. If life becomes too unbearable, the dolphins just take a breath and they sink to the bottom. They don't take the next breath." Andy Williamson puts Peter's death down to a broken heart, brought on by a separation from Lovatt that he didn't understand. "Margaret could rationalise it, but when she left, could Peter? Here's the love of his life gone."
"I wasn't terribly unhappy about it," explains Lovatt, 50 years on. "I was more unhappy about him being in those conditions [at the Miami lab] than not being at all. Nobody was going to bother Peter, he wasn't going to hurt, he wasn't going to be unhappy, he was just gone. And that was OK. Odd, but that's how it was."
In the decades which followed, John Lilly continued to study dolphin-human communications, exploring other ways of trying to talk to them – some of it bizarrely mystical, employing telepathy, and some of it more scientific, using musical tones. No one else ever tried to teach dolphins to speak English again.
Instead, research has shifted to better understanding other species' own languages. At the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, founded by Frank Drake to continue his work on life beyond Earth, Drake's colleague Laurance Doyle has attempted to quantify the complexity of animal language here on our home planet.
"There is still this prejudice that humans have a language which is far and away above any other species' qualitatively," says Doyle. "But by looking at the complexity of the relationship of dolphin signals to each other, we've discovered that they definitely have a very high communication intelligence. I think Lilly's big insight was how intelligent dolphins really are."
Margaret Howe Lovatt stayed on the island, marrying the photographer who'd captured pictures of the experiment. Together they moved back into Dolphin House, eventually converting it into a family home where they brought up three daughters. "It was a good place," she remembers. "There was good feeling in that building all the time."
In the years that followed the house has fallen into disrepair, but the ambition of what went on there is still remembered. "Over the years I have received letters from people who are working with dolphins themselves," she recalls. "They often say things like: 'When I was seven I read about you living with a dolphin, and that's what started it all for me.'"
Peter is their "Miss Kelly", she explains, remembering her own childhood book about talking animals. "Miss Kelly inspired me. And in turn the idea of my living with a dolphin inspired others. That's fun. I like that."
Christopher Riley is the producer and director of The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins, which will premiere at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival on 11 June, and is on BBC4 on 17 June at 9pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me
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en
| 2014-06-06T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/91ce8324577504e2439434039e7443618d19e020f3a51009cd1fb3a1b0519aa8.json
|
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[
"Harriet Sherwood"
] | 2016-08-28T02:49:32 | null | 2016-08-23T11:25:15 |
Police warning follows flag waving at Hapoel Be’er Sheva match and Celtic fans raising £100,000 for Palestinian charities
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fceltic-fans-warned-not-to-fly-palestinian-flags-at-match-in-israel.json
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| null |
Celtic fans warned not to fly Palestinian flags at match in Israel
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Israeli police warned against provocation at a football match on Tuesday night between Celtic and the Israeli team Hapoel Be’er Sheva after Scottish fans waved Palestinian flags and chanted support for Palestine at last week’s first-leg qualifier in Glasgow.
Any attempt to wave Palestinian flags at Hapoel’s stadium in Be’er Sheva, a city in the Negev desert, would not be tolerated, a police spokesman said.
Some 250 Celtic fans were expected to be at the match, which will decide which team goes through to the next stage of the Champions League.
Last Wednesday Celtic won 5-2. Since then, Celtic fans have raised almost £100,000 for Palestinian charities in response to their club facing disciplinary charges over the flag display.
Celtic fans raise more than £100,000 for Palestinian charities after flag protest Read more
More than 100 Palestinian flags were unfurled at Parkhead last week, in a protest organised by Green Brigade fans.
Celtic was subsequently charged by Uefa, which cited a rule that forbids the use of “gestures, words, objects or any other means to transmit any message that is not fit for a sports event, particularly messages that are of a political, ideological, religious, offensive or provocative nature”.
The case is scheduled to be heard on 22 September, with Celtic facing a fine of £15,000.
At the weekend, the Green Brigade set up an appeal on the gofundme website to match the expected fine, with donations destined for Palestinian charities. The appeal said: “At the Champions League match with Hapoel Be’er Sheva on 17 August 2016, the Green Brigade and fans throughout Celtic Park flew the flag for Palestine.
“This act of solidarity has earned Celtic respect and acclaim throughout the world. It has also attracted a disciplinary charge from Uefa, which deems the Palestinian flag to be an ‘illicit banner’. In response to this petty and politically partisan act by European football’s governing body, we are determined to make a positive contribution to the game and today launch a campaign to #matchthefineforpalestine.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hapoel fans at Celtic’s ground. Photograph: Wallace/BPI/REX/Shutterstock
The money raised will be divided between Medical Aid for Palestinians, a UK-based charity, and the Lajee Centre, a sports and arts project in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. The funds will be used to help launch a football team called Aida Celtic and buy kit.
The Lajee Centre posted a video thanking donors for “one of the biggest solidarity actions in European football history”. In Aida refugee camp, where thousands of Palestinians live in the shadow of the huge separation wall built by Israel, centre director Salah Ajarma said the support had been incredible.
“The flags at Celtic were one of the biggest demonstrations of support for Palestine and the Palestinian people and the Israeli occupation at a football match that I can remember,” he said.
Ajarma was tracking the amount raised by the appeal in his phone. “It’s amazing. It’s reached almost £100,000 pounds. I check every half hour and it’s more and more.”
The relationship between Celtic and Lajee goes back six years, and has seen players from the centre, which runs football courses and activities for some 80 girls and boys, visit Glasgow.
The connection, said Ajarma, was made initially by Palestinian activist Mohammed al-Azrak, who splits his time between the occupied territories and Glasgow.
Wearing the green and white striped Celtic strip - a gift presented when he visited the club’s ground in Glasgow - Ajarma Aboud Azam, who plays and coaches junior players, said: “I hope the money will help improve the talent of the children who are playing football in the camp. The donation from Celtic will help our players evolve.”
Yazar Ikkhlayel, 21, another player involved with the youth centre who has visited Glasgow, said he was proud that people wanted to show solidarity with Palestine. “I was amazed when I visited Glasgow. It has a real sense of social cohesion. And when Glasgwegians find out your are from Palestine they ask if there is any way that they can help.”
Football fans in Aida were not sure whether they would be able to watch the match. “We are boycotting Israeli television and we are not sure if it will be shown on Al Jazeera,” said Ajarma.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that Scottish fans would not be allowed to wave Palestinian flags at Hapoel’s stadium. “Obviously it won’t be allowed – that is for sure. The flags would of course be taken off them,” he told the Daily Record. “This is a professional football game and not a political opportunity.
“In terms of the football game, it’s not going to add to the atmosphere and might start up tensions which could lead to other issues. Our aim is to prevent any incidents from taking place as a result of any unnecessary provocative behaviour by any of the fans.
“There will be security measures implemented to prevent those sorts of incidents from taking place. It is not illegal to have a Palestinian flag in Israel but provocation by fans of either side is, and we will not tolerate it.”
No one at Celtic football club was available for comment, but the team’s manager, Brendan Rodgers, said last week that he was looking forward to the second leg in Israel. “I have never been there. It is a beautiful country, good people.”
Celtic has been fined eight times in the past five years for offences including the displaying of forbidden banners and fans’ conduct. The club was fined about £16,000 two years ago after a Palestinian flag was displayed at a Champions League qualifier against KR Reykjavík.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/23/celtic-fans-warned-not-to-fly-palestinian-flags-at-match-in-israel
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en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c4f412afcc7a341e43e6177d68a5de1c2dcbb830b66303c9949a6b8c0747f9a6.json
|
|
[
"Rebecca Allen"
] | 2016-08-26T13:12:34 | null | 2016-08-25T12:52:13 |
Lower grades could be attributed to higher number of 17 and 18-year olds sitting English and maths exam
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Feducation%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fmultiple-factors-at-play-in-decline-of-national-gcse-results.json
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en
| null |
Are this year's GCSE takers smarter than last year's? It's hard to tell
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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There are major limits to any conclusions that can be drawn on whether this year’s 16 year-olds are smarter than last year’s 16 year-olds, or whether the teaching they received was better.
Firstly, a policy called “comparable outcomes” exists to prevent grade inflation, and means that the overall age 11 test results of the children who took their GCSEs this summer are taken into account when deciding on the mix of grades awarded at GCSE.
A*-C grades in dramatic decline as GCSE results are published Read more
A number of other factors are also at play. In both English and maths, the number of children taking the alternative IGCSE has increased.If we combine GCSE results and IGCSE results, those for both English and maths are stable between this year and last year. For example, , 69.7% achieved A*-C grades in English when it was added to the IGCSE, compared with 69.8% in 2015.
Headline results have also been affected by the fact that for almost half of 16-year-olds, finishing secondary school is no longer the end of their GCSE experience. Under moves to improve general literacy and numeracy, the government now requires 17 and 18-year-olds to remain in education or training, and if they achieved a D in English or maths at GCSE they must retake these subjects.
As a result, thousands more 17 and 18-year-olds sat English and maths GCSEs this year. Only about 30% of those aged 17 or over achieved a grade C in maths, with a little more than one in four aged 17 or over achieving the grade in English – an important qualification for those who achieved it, but given the significant burden it places on colleges, not a great outcome overall.
A change in the performance measures against which secondary schools are judged has also had a number of effects this year, namely the introduction of something called Progress 8.
Progress 8 and GCSEs: will the new way to judge schools be fairer? Read more
Devised by Michael Gove when he was education secretary, to do well under Progress 8 schools need students to be entered for at least three English baccalaureate (EBacc) subjects, in addition to maths and English. Those that count are science subjects, computer science, history, geography and languages.
This year’s results show that schools are responding strongly to this change. Entries in all GCSE sciences have risen strongly as students are switched out of the alternative BTec qualification.
Entries in history and geography among 16-year-olds also went up sharply – 6% and 8%, respectively. The consequence for these subjects is that grades achieved have fallen, as lower attaining students are now entering these subjects.
That said, while they are among the subjects that would count towards a school’s Progress 8 results, entries in modern foreign languages by 16-year-olds have fallen again – French and German were both down 7% – suggesting that schools are focusing on getting children to do science and humanities GCSEs rather than languages, to meet this particular government requirement.
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https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/25/multiple-factors-at-play-in-decline-of-national-gcse-results
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/733f2836274559dd7598853c4a72b4b67ca45e29a4b92792b22629f88e30f95c.json
|
|
[
"Mark Sweney"
] | 2016-08-27T12:49:17 | null | 2016-08-27T11:30:02 |
Getty Images chief Dawn Airey on covering the Games from every angle, green swimming pools, the BBC – and what she thinks of selfies
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Frio-2016-usain-bolt-getty-images-dawn-airey-bbc.json
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en
| null |
'The defining image of Rio 2016 was Usain Bolt smiling at the camera'
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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“Pea green is what it looked like, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to dive in it,” says Dawn Airey, as she remembers the strange case of the Olympic pools turning green in Rio earlier this month.
The chief executive of Getty Images chuckles at the thought, but however unappealing the murky waters may have been for the swimmers, it gave Getty, the official picture agency of the Rio Olympics, a chance to show off the capabilities of its state-of-the-art underwater robotic cameras.
“It did present a challenge, not one we expected, it was particularly unpleasant for photography. You want crystal clear water.”
For Airey, whose impressive CV includes top jobs at ITV, Channel 5, Sky and most recently Yahoo, the Olympics provided the first chance to really see her Getty colleagues in full flow since joining last October.
Getty had 120 staff in Rio, 40 of them photographers, with every snapper given a 360° camera to post extra images to Getty’s site. That’s as well as two underwater rigs and 20 other robotic set-ups across the Games.
“It gave me a great opportunity to see our guys doing what they do in the most technically advanced Olympics ever from a photographic point of view,” says Airey.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Phelps of the United States, Zhuhao Li of China and Joseph Schooling of Singapore compete in the men’s 100m butterfly final. Photograph: Adam Pretty/Getty Images
But with 1.5 trillion photos a year being taken (Airey’s figure) - including runaway social media hits such as the “world’s best selfie” of Usain Bolt with Jessica Ennis-Hill and fellow heptathletes – is Getty’s position as a photographic giant being eroded one shot at a time?
“The defining image of the Games was probably Usain Bolt smiling down the lens of Cameron Spencer’s camera,” she says, referring to the image from the 100m semi-final likened to a smug Roadrunner taunting a hapless Wile E Coyote.
“We are in the age of selfies, and that’s great, but the fact that everyone has a phone doesn’t necessarily make them a photographer. Just like me having a pen doesn’t make me Shakespeare.”
“How did that shot happen? It wasn’t a freak occurrence. It was a very skilled photographer slowing his shutter speed down and knowing at what point Bolt tends to surge ahead. That isn’t luck, it is a high degree of skill and is one of the best Olympic shots of all time. That does not diminish user-generated photography of course.”
Airey, a sports fan who was a national judo champion at school, clearly relished her time teambuilding, networking and catching Olympic events on her five-day Rio trip.
She caught Andy Murray’s gold medal victory over Juan del Potro and in a match beforehand one of Getty’s tennis photographers let her take a shot, for which she is credited in the online archive.
“I certainly won’t get a royalty cheque,” says Airey, whose relaxed demeanour belies the nicknames of Scarey Airey and Zulu Dawn she relished earlier in her career.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dawn Airey (right) with US Olympian Kim Rhode at Rio 2106. Photograph: Joe Scarnici/Getty Images
Prior to joining Getty Airey spent two-year transforming her TV roots into digital shoots as Yahoo’s top European executive. With the company facing an uncertain strategic future it wasn’t the happiest of stints in Airey’s career, but she holds no grudges and is positive about the venerable internet brand’s future now as part of Verizon.
“Yahoo is still a superbrand and Verizon aren’t in any shape or form going to crash it,” she says. “They will nurture it and love it. I hope Yahoo will get a new and different lease of life. It is a new Yahoo isn’t it? It is in a really interesting group.”
In part spurred by her time at one of the world’s biggest web companies, Airey has implemented a strategy to open up Getty’s huge archive of pictures to consumers.
While the company’s core raison d’etre remains selling its content to businesses, from publishers to ad agencies and corporate clients, she is keen to monetise and learn from consumer interest.
“The Instagrams and Pinterests of the world show this explosion of interest and imagery and we have hundreds of millions of page views and don’t do anything with them,” she says. “There is an opportunity right there. But I am fussy about what [advertising] images will appear on my site, so I’m going to be very discreet.”
She says that the company is going to “relax” more about people coming to view and share its images – for non-commercial purposes only – and will analyse trends and data to help shape its work with commercial clients.
“With the traffic we have and the deep knowledge we have about image and trends we have the ability to ‘productise’ our content for our clients,” she says. “Inform them what are the photos being viewed, shared at scale from Getty that can help them with their choices in what they get from us. It’s about super-serving existing clients.”
Harking back for a second to her former TV life I ask Airey what she thinks about the BBC’s charter renewal deal with the government.
Airey, who has in the past said that the BBC might look to charge for some services, was a member of former culture secretary John Whittingdale’s high-powered advisory panel bought in as part of the government’s review of the BBC ahead of charter renewal.
“I don’t think there was the battle [that people think],” she says. “I think that the BBC should be pretty pleased with settlement and I think they were. Nothing was as radical as had been feared.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Airey in 2006 when she was Sky’s managing director of channels and services. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian
And on Channel 4, where she also once worked, Airey believes that the fears that a commercial owner might destroy its public service remit were over-played. While the government’s exploration of a potential privatisation this time round, she believes a sale will be a recurrent threat to the broadcaster.
“The battle seems to be done and dusted and [C4 chief executive] David Abraham and team did a good job of seeing off the barbarians at the gate so to speak,” she says. “But I think that [threat] will come back again and again in the future.”
Airey has business challenges of her own to face with sporadic negative articles about the performance of parts of the business, particularly against rivals in what is called the mid-stock market such as Shutterstock, the rate at which the company goes through cash and its level of debt.
Her response to the coverage is blunt: “That’s just a load of bollocks. We do have a lot of debt. But every business should. The question is can you service it. Do we have enough cash to run the business? Yes we do.”
Airey’s latest career incarnation couldn’t seem further removed from TV where she has spent most of her career, yet in some ways she feels like she has gone full circle, harking back to her early years at the launch of Channel 5 in the 1990s where she infamously referred to its content as “football, films and fucking”.
“I think I will like being ‘Getty’s Dawn Airey’ for a long time,” she says. “It feels a lot more like TV than Yahoo for me. It’s more creative. It feels in some ways like a big family. Like Channel 5 was which in some ways was when I was at my very best.
“It is generally a fabulous business with great people. We are in rude health. We are everywhere. It is a pretty famous brand. I just want it to perhaps resonate more than what it does with consumers by getting Getty everywhere.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/27/rio-2016-usain-bolt-getty-images-dawn-airey-bbc
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/32b0dd260fcfd534ac1fd3b249e2eb1364d2c66073055b11713c8a82f4a81cd6.json
|
|
[
"John Howell"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:03 | null | 2016-08-25T08:56:52 |
Danny Drinkwater has signed a new five-year deal with Leicester City, the club have announced
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fdanny-drinkwater-signs-five-year-deal-with-leicester-city.json
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en
| null |
Danny Drinkwater signs five-year deal with Leicester City
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Danny Drinkwater has signed a new five-year deal with Leicester City, the club have announced.
Drinkwater’s new contract will keep him at the King Power Stadium until 2021, with the midfielder following Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy and Kasper Schmeichel in committing his future to the Premier League champions.
The Question: How long will Liverpool keep faith with Jürgen Klopp? Read more
“I’ve loved playing for this club, it’s been perfect for me and my career and I want to be here for a long time to come. I couldn’t be happier,” the 26-year-old told Leicester’s official website. “I’ve grown a lot as a player and a person in the last four years and Leicester City has been a massive part of that. I owe a lot to the staff here for helping me get to this point – they’ve been quality.
“And I love being part of this team. We’ve been through so much together and I’m sure there’s a lot more to come.”
Drinkwater made 37 appearances for Leicester last season and was an integral part of their title triumph. He also made his England debut in March and went on to play twice more before missing out on a place in the Euro 2016 squad.
The news of Drinkwater’s contract comes as a boost for the Leicester manager, Claudio Ranieri, after he lost his other key central midfielder from last season, N’Golo Kante, to Chelsea this summer.
“Ever since I joined Leicester City, Danny has been one of our most consistent players,” said the Italian. “He’s a fantastic player and a fantastic man.“He’s an important player for us and a very popular player in the dressing room. I want him to stay with us for a very long time.”
Drinkwater signed from Manchester United in 2012 and has made 177 appearances in total for Leicester.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/danny-drinkwater-signs-five-year-deal-with-leicester-city
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7949dc6943578ccfaeb2632d672f00ab34763eb7dfe5ad8cc9315877cb1d4e0f.json
|
|
[
"Sean Farrell"
] | 2016-08-29T14:52:11 | null | 2016-08-29T14:23:11 |
Irish officials expect the European commission to declare the arrangement with Apple illegal under state aid rules
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fbrussels-ruling-could-hit-apple-with-billions-of-euros-in-back-taxes.json
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en
| null |
Brussels ruling could hit Apple with billions of euros in back taxes
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The European commission is expected to rule against Apple and Ireland this week over tax arrangements between the company and the Dublin government.
A ruling by Margrethe Vestager, the European competition commissioner, could make Apple liable for billions of euros in back taxes. Irish officials expect the commission to declare the arrangements illegal under state aid rules.
A decision against Apple and Ireland after a two-year investigation would rebuff US efforts to persuade the commission to drop its interest amid warnings about retaliation from Washington.
The commission has been investigating whether Apple’s tax deals with Ireland, which have allowed the company to pay very little tax on income earned throughout Europe, amounted to state aid.
The commission opened a formal inquiry in September 2014 after publishing preliminary findings suggesting deals between Apple and Ireland in 1991 and 2007 involved state aid that was incompatible with the EU’s internal market.
Apple and Ireland have denied repeatedly that they have a special deal. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has called the investigation “political crap” and said his company and Ireland would appeal against a ruling that Apple received state aid.
The investment bank JP Morgan has warned that if the commission requires Apple to retroactively pay the Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5% on the pre-tax profits it collected via Ireland it could cost the company as much as $19bn (£15bn).
Irish sources expect the bill to be much smaller and potentially in the hundreds of millions, the Irish Times said.
A US Senate investigation in 2013 found Apple paid little or no tax on profits of at least $74bn over four years through gaps in the Irish and American tax code. The investigation found no evidence of illegal activity and both Apple and Ireland deny any wrongdoing.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/29/brussels-ruling-could-hit-apple-with-billions-of-euros-in-back-taxes
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/decc3509d4d327cdbe37391578c452f85177949477ac23718d25af3da0f5c170.json
|
|
[
"Photograph",
"Amos Chapple Rfe Rl",
"Amos Chapple In Kiev For Rfe Rl",
"Part Of The New East Network"
] | 2016-08-26T13:17:33 | null | 2016-08-26T06:00:11 |
Two years since the protests that overthrew the government, large murals have been appearing across Ukraine’s capital – some by renowned street artists, others by politically charged locals. RFE/RL takes a tour
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fthe-revolution-inspired-graffiti-changing-the-face-of-kiev-in-pictures.json
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en
| null |
The revolution-inspired graffiti changing the face of Kiev - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A portrait of Ukrainian gymnast Hanna Rizatdinova, who is originally from Crimea but is now based in Kiev. A few months after the uprising Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in a move condemned by the international community and some locals, including Rizatdinova. ‘How can Crimea be Russia? How can our Simferopol school train under a Russian flag? I was outraged,’ she said. Fintan Magee decided to paint this portrait of her, which titled The Dreamer
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2016/aug/26/the-revolution-inspired-graffiti-changing-the-face-of-kiev-in-pictures
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3ca7fe2ade17eddaf79ae3e65480675990db0a4c5aa324bf10cd2b546c67dbfa.json
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[
"Jill Papworth"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:40 | null | 2016-08-26T06:00:11 |
Interested buyers needn’t work up a sweat as this large building has the potential for a variety of uses
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fsurreal-estate-former-school-gymnasium-norfolk-in-pictures.json
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School's out: a former gymnasium in Norfolk - in pictures
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www.theguardian.com
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Coming up for auction on 15 September with a guide price of £275,000-£350,000 is this former school gymnasium in Swaffam, Norfolk. It was built in 1931 as the gym to the former Hamond’s grammar school, with classrooms on the first floor. When the school became a comprehensive, this building became the sixth form centre until 2009. All photographs by Auction House.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/gallery/2016/aug/26/surreal-estate-former-school-gymnasium-norfolk-in-pictures
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0a672bce4fe44d7285101b892ac5ade7be4449d8faffa03ea29ba898b3d9f7c4.json
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[
"Ewan Murray"
] | 2016-08-27T12:51:43 | null | 2016-08-27T12:00:02 |
Darren Clarke, Europe Ryder Cup captain, has five debutants in his team and that is likely to be good news for Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer when he chooses his three wildcards
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2Fblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fdarren-clarke-europe-ryder-cup-rookies-wildcard.json
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en
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Darren Clarke has to decide how many Ryder Cup rookies are too many
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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As Darren Clarke uses this weekend to ponder his wildcard picks for the European team, with the announcement to be made at Wentworth on Tuesday, the nuances of Ryder Cup captaincy will play a part in his thinking.
Clarke has one opportunity to enhance his status by presiding over a successful European tilt. For all the Northern Irishman and others in his position, past or future, can speak of legacy, how they are portrayed – be it lauded or dismissed as outright disaster – revolves around three intense days.
This is especially pertinent in Clarke’s circumstances. Were he a long-term captain, or a manager in other sports, he would have scope to plan meaningfully. Instead the former Open champion has been dealt a batch of nine automatic qualifiers who include five who will be making their Ryder Cup debuts at Hazeltine. Many have already looked on with a passing nod of “good luck”.
Perhaps experience is overstated. In 2004, a Europe team including five rookies thumped the United States 18½ to 9½ at Oakland Hills. From that group, Ian Poulter was to emerge as a Ryder Cup talisman over a decade. “Rookies aren’t what they used to be,” Paul Casey, a Ryder Cup refusnik but educated onlooker, said this week. “Rookies aren’t scared any more.”
Yet the received wisdom is Clarke is in tricky territory by taking so many players untested in this environment to an away match. There have inevitably been changes in European teams but a serious move away from the core who have delivered an outstanding recent run has glaring risk.
With that in mind, Martin Kaymer and Lee Westwood are expected to receive the nod from Clarke. Westwood has impressively hauled himself into contention since the spring, with his tie for second at the Masters sufficient to demonstrate he can still mix it with the best. Westwood’s outstanding Ryder Cup record, added to popularity and compatibility with other players, means he should always have been worthy of selection if showing a modicum of form.
Kaymer’s run has been more of a slow burner. With the German playing so much in Europe this year there have been five top-10 finishes since mid-April but no scent of victory. Kaymer’s intense focus on the Olympic Games probably was not appropriately rewarded by a share of 15th but the two-times major champion at least closed with a 66, continuing his fine form from the US PGA Championship. The holing of that crucial, clinching putt at Medinah in 2012 would never have been enough to secure Kaymer a 2016 place but that positive strand of history can only help.
Beyond this, the fun starts. In a fair world, Russell Knox’s victory at the Travelers Championship this month would equal a pick. Knox won a WGC event before he was eligible for European qualification – and, to be fair, before he thought it attainable – but pressed home his candidature with a wonderful winning putt in Connecticut. Knox is ranked world No20, above Rafa Cabrero-Bello, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Andy Sullivan and Chris Wood, who have qualified for Hazeltine, plus Westwood and Kaymer.
Knox’s character means he is unlikely to express any annoyance but were any other debutant named he would have legitimate cause to do so. Clarke’s opening rounds pairing with the in-form Thomas Pieters at the Made in Denmark event means the captain has a Belgian in his thoughts, which applies, likewise to Paul Lawrie, one of the vice-captains, having Soren Kjeldsen and Shane Lowry for company.
Knox stands apart as a regular PGA Tour player, surely beneficial for an away Ryder Cup, and while Lowry is arguably the most gifted player of that group, his WGC success at Akron is now more than a year old.
The danger to Knox lies in that supposedly crucial commodity of background. Luke Donald and Graeme McDowell, apparently from nowhere, have come into Clarke’s view. Whatever else can be said of that duo’s recent struggles, Clarke will know he can trust them in a Ryder Cup environment. Donald would have a particular point to prove after missing out two years ago.
The under-appreciated name in this mix has been Francesco Molinari. The Italian, like Knox, has focused on the PGA Tour, and played for Europe in 2010 and 2012, although his own figures are hardly startling. For Molinari to feature, he surely had to fare better than a missed cut on Friday at the Barclays Championship in New York.
Clarke’s mind is not yet set. When it is, the importance of 2016 over anything else is understandable. The captain’s reputation is at stake.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/aug/27/darren-clarke-europe-ryder-cup-rookies-wildcard
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/bae3a08a5b1e7ac6e40c0418932a72f6eef59adecf8e7a140723f2e006e94967.json
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[
"Philip Landau"
] | 2016-08-31T02:59:56 | null | 2012-06-28T00:00:00 |
A persistent failure to pay employees could be a signal a company is struggling. Make sure you know where you stand
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2Fwork-blog%2F2012%2Fjun%2F28%2Fyour-rights-employers-dont-pay.json
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| null |
What are your rights when employers don't pay up?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The issue of not getting your salary paid has been in the news as a result of the problems at NatWest, but while those employees will eventually get their cash, some employees never do. So what are your legal rights if an employer does not pay you for work you have done?
Although technically a one-off or occasional failure to pay your salary is a breach of contract, it is not normally serious enough to entitle you to resign and claim constructive dismissal. There is, though, an express or implied term in every contract of employment that your employer will pay your salary, and a persistent failure to comply with this obligation would indeed entitle you to resign and claim constructive dismissal and a breach of contract.
Alternatively, you may bring a claim in the employment tribunal for "unlawful deductions from wages" which is often a speedier remedy, and you can still be employed while making a claim. Any claim to the employment tribunal must be made within three months less one day of the breach, but you could choose to make the breach of contract claim in the county court, in which case you have six years to do so.
Where there is a persistent failure to pay your salary, it is likely your employer is heading towards insolvency or administration (the latter being where an administrator takes over the company while deciding whether to sell or close the business). After two weeks an administrator may take on your employment rights, and if the business is sold your contract of employment may be transferred across to the new owners.
If, however, insolvency is the only option for your employer, the Insolvency Act 1986 provides that you become a "preferential creditor" in respect of salary due for the four-month period immediately preceding the insolvency, up to a ceiling of £800. In these circumstances, "salary" also includes commission. You are also entitled to be treated as a preferred creditor for accrued holiday pay and certain occupational pension payments. Amounts in excess of £800 (or relating to periods longer than four months) rank as ordinary debt, and so you are further down the pecking order for these sums, along with the bulk of other creditors.
If you still find there are insufficient funds to pay you, all is not lost. The secretary of state may reimburse part or all of your outstanding salary out of the national insurance fund (NIF). The Insolvency Service's Redundancy payments offices will deal with these claims, but the payments are capped at £430 a week for unpaid salary up to a maximum of eight weeks; up to six weeks' holiday pay to a maximum of £800; any statutory redundancy payment (as long as you qualify for redundancy in the first place); and outstanding statutory notice, up to a maximum of £430 a week. Your statutory minimum notice is one week for every year worked up to 12 weeks. If you find another job within the period of your statutory notice, you will have to reimburse the notice monies you have received from the NIF.
In order to qualify for NIF payments your employer must be insolvent and your employment terminated. You must also have done everything you can to get your payment, including applying in writing to your ex-employer for the payment within six months of the date your employment ended.
If your employer is a partnership or sole trader, then your options would be to commence personal proceedings against the individual owners who employed you, as they have no corporate entity to hide behind. Ultimately, you may have to commence bankruptcy proceedings against them.
It is hard enough losing your job, let alone not receiving salary for the time you have worked. It is always best to monitor the situation carefully as soon as you get wind of your employer's inability to pay its debts. Whatever difficult decisions you have to make, you cannot be expected to work for nothing, and many employees will "cut and run" in these circumstances, making whatever claim they can for lost wages while searching for a new job.
Have you experienced particular difficulty with outstanding salary or redundancy payments from your employer, and if so how did you redress this?
• Philip Landau is an employment lawyer
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/work-blog/2012/jun/28/your-rights-employers-dont-pay
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en
| 2012-06-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/244f252db0954ec63a7e1e28ca192312cdd2d1556c45002e2794652e05783fc8.json
|
|
[
"Liz Barney"
] | 2016-08-26T13:16:11 | null | 2016-08-25T11:00:09 |
Since losing her left arm during a shark attack 13 years ago, Bethany Hamilton has had to adapt on the waves and try to change the way others perceive her
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fbethany-hamilton-surfing-espy-award.json
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en
| null |
Bethany Hamilton: surfing with only one arm isn't as hard as beating the stigma
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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In Bethany Hamilton’s mind, winning the ESPY award for best female athlete with a disability would have been like “rewinding back to square one”.
Square one being the fateful day 13 years ago when she was attacked by a 14ft tiger shark and lost her left arm. Which is why, this year, she withdrew her name from consideration.
Hamilton, now 26 and one of the most well-known surfers in the world, has overcome substantial challenges in pursuing her dreams as a professional surfer. But she says the hardest thing she still struggles to adapt to is the way others perceive her and treat her.
“It’s funny,” she chuckled, “when I first heard I was going to be nominated for an ESPY the first thing I thought was: ‘Whoa, I’m going to be up for best female action sports athlete!’ It didn’t even occur to me that I was going to be placed in the disabled division … I don’t surf disabled or compete in a disabled category.”
Hamilton’s comment follows Serena Williams’ statement at Wimbledon that she preferred the phrase “one of the greatest athletes of all time” to “one of the greatest female athletes of all time”.
The nomination came on the heels of her best performance to date in a World Surfing League (WSL) competition. In May, she took third place in the Fiji Women’s Pro Competition. In the process, she beat six-time world champion Stephanie Gilmore and current top-ranked surfer Tyler Wright. She also landed her first WSL Big Wave award nomination this year for her performance on the wave Jaws in Maui in January, just six months after giving birth to her first child.
Her performances left her peers in awe.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest To compensate for her lost arm, Hamilton has to paddle twice as hard and kick with her feet. Photograph: Kelly Cestari/WSL / Cestari
“The hardships she overcomes to perform at the level she does in the ocean is arguably unparalleled in men’s or women’s sport,” surfing legend Kelly Slater said of her performance in Fiji. “I think everyone should have a full surf with one arm strapped to their side and attempt not only to paddle out but put themselves in position at heavy spots like Pipe, Jaws, and Cloudbreak, and try to get up on a short board. I’m scared to try it myself and ridiculously impressed with her talents.”
To Hamilton, the fact that she surfs with one arm is irrelevant.
“I don’t look at it like, ‘Wow, I did a really good job with one arm.’ It’s just, ‘Wow, I did a good job on that wave.’”
I don’t look at it like, 'Wow, I did a really good job with one arm.' It’s just, 'Wow, I did a good job on that wave' Bethany Hamilton
To compensate for her lost arm, Hamilton has to paddle twice as hard and kick with her feet. She drops into waves later than most because she can’t generate enough power to drop into waves at the same point as most surfers would. She has a handle on the front of her board to help her duck dive, but even then, she can’t always make it under large waves.
She doesn’t deny that she has some unique challenges, and she’s embraced the opportunity to inspire others, including with her not-for-profit group Friends of Bethany, which supports other amputees. So it was with great hesitation that she considered asking the ESPYs to withdraw her nomination. Ultimately, the decision came down to her feelings about the wording.
“I think disabled is a very degrading title for athletes,” she said “I feel like I’m an incredibly abled person ... If anything, I encourage ESPYs to … change the category to Best Adaptive Athlete, so athletes that have adapted to unique situations in their life. I would have been stoked to be in the category if that was what it was called.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bethany Hamilton: ‘I think disabled is a very degrading title for athletes. I feel like I’m an incredibly abled person.’ Photograph: Ed Sloane/AFP/Getty Images
Growing up on the north shore of Kauai, Hamilton was born into the classic dirtbag-surfer lifestyle. Her father was a waiter and her mother cleaned rental condos, earning just enough to cover the bills so they could chase the next wave.
Whether it was nature or nurture, her parents’ predilection for surfing manifested in Hamilton at a young age. When she was eight, she competed in her first competition. At nine, Rip Curl became her first real sponsor. In the following years, she competed in multiple events. At age 13, she placed second in the NSSA national championships.
But her promising career seemingly came to a halt on 31 October 2003. Bethany was surfing with her best friend, Alana Blanchard. At first, Hamilton didn’t realize what had happened. She saw a grey flash and felt a short tug. But when she looked down, the water was bright red and her left arm and a large chunk of her surfboard were missing.
“I’ve just been attacked by a shark,” she stated calmly, and started paddling towards the shore with one arm. Alana’s father used his surf leash as a tourniquet and rushed her to the nearest hospital. Local fishermen captured the 14ft tiger shark, surfboard debris still lining its mouth.
The story of the attack and a 13-year-old girl’s crushed dream of pro surfing captured the media’s attention on a rubbernecking level. But when Hamilton returned to the water just one month later, her tenacity garnered national attention.
She was uncomfortable in the limelight. In her autobiography, she bemoaned, in true teenage angst, that interviews were boring. But Hamilton still managed to find time to train. In 2004, she competed in the NSSA national championships just one year after the attack. She won an ESPY award for Best Comeback Athlete.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bethany Hamilton rides a wave during the NSSA tournament in Hawaii in 2004, her first competition after losing her left arm. Photograph: Michael Darden/AP
Over the next few years, Hamilton continued to surf and compete, acquiring a collection of various wins. And then, for the most part, things went quiet, with several years passing without a single win.
In 2011, the movie Soul Surfer was released, and she traveled to promote it. It seemed her competitive drive had begun to wind down.
But in 2014, something changed. Just a few months after marrying her husband, Adam Dirks, she took home first place in the Pipeline Women’s Pro competition. In an interview with People magazine, she credited her husband with reigniting her competitive spark and encouraging her to keep developing her talent. Later that year, she found out she was pregnant with her first child.
She delivered her son, Tobias, in June 2015. But having a child didn’t hold her back from training. If anything, Hamilton says her training has picked up a notch. “Now I only have windows of time to train and surf,” Hamilton remarked over the clamor of pots and pans. Tobias was in the kitchen, emptying her cupboards onto the floor. “I want to make the most of it, so I feel like I’m wiser with my time now.”
Three months after Tobias was born, Hamilton competed in the WSL Swatch Women’s Pro as a wildcard and came in 13th. “I kind of had a rough go,” she admits, trying to hide her disappointment, “but it was a good learning experience, and I look back at it going, ‘Yeah, not too much pressure four months after giving birth.’”
Hamilton noted that it’s much less common for female surfers to continue the sport competitively once they have a family. None of the women on the world championship tour are married or have children.
But she doesn’t believe mothers have to sacrifice competitive surfing, and adds that her husband’s support as a stay-at-home dad allows her to continue surfing professionally while raising their child.
It’s almost like my surfing has been overshadowed by being a shark attack survivor and being known as Soul Surfer Bethany Hamilton
Hamilton came back even stronger in 2016 with her performance at Jaws and in the Fiji Pro. She hopes to have another chance at the Swatch Women’s Pro competition this coming September.
Despite a supportive husband and new opportunities to compete, Hamilton says she isn’t trying to qualify for the world championships anytime soon. All her time and effort are currently going into her new documentary, Surfs Like a Girl.
The film covers the challenges in her life as an athlete and mother, but the primary focus will be capturing high quality footage of Hamilton surfing. Hamilton said many of her fans are unaware that she can actually surf at the level she does.
“It’s almost like my surfing has been overshadowed by being a shark attack survivor and being known as Soul Surfer,” she lamented.
For Hamilton, the project offers an opportunity to make her aquatic abilities known, while still sparking something in her young fans.
“It’s a different sort of inspiration,” she says, chuckling softly and hugging her knees to her chest with her arm. “Instead of ‘Whoa, she surfs with one arm!’ It’s ‘Whoa, she rips, I wanna be like her!’”
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/25/bethany-hamilton-surfing-espy-award
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d8782b4bc77ca1e95fdd7ee49658cefedbcbde4c361b0a86983fa5313ffca87e.json
|
|
[
"Alok Jha"
] | 2016-08-31T02:59:31 | null | 2010-04-29T00:00:00 |
Stephen Hawking thinks that making contact with aliens would be a very bad idea indeed. But with new, massive telescopes, we humans are stepping up the search. Have we really thought this through?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2010%2Fapr%2F30%2Fstephen-hawking-right-aliens.json
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en
| null |
Is Stephen Hawking right about aliens?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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In February 2008, Nasa sent the Beatles song, Across the Universe, across the universe. Pointing the telescopes in its Deep Space Network towards the north star, Polaris, astronomers played out their short cosmic DJ set, hoping that it might be heard by intelligent aliens during its 430-year journey to the star.
The hunt for intelligent species outside Earth may be a staple of literature and film – but it is happening in real life, too. Nasa probes are on the lookout for planets outside our solar system, and astronomers are carefully listening for any messages being beamed through space. How awe-inspiring it would be to get confirmation that we are not alone in the universe, to finally speak to an alien race. Wouldn't it?
Well no, according to the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," Hawking has said in a forthcoming documentary made for the Discovery Channel. He argues that, instead of trying to find and communicate with life in the cosmos, humans would be better off doing everything they can to avoid contact.
Hawking believes that, based on the sheer number of planets that scientists know must exist, we are not the only life-form in the universe. There are, after all, billions and billions of stars in our galaxy alone, with, it is reasonable to expect, an even greater number of planets orbiting them. And it is not unreasonable to expect some of that alien life to be intelligent, and capable of interstellar communication. So, when someone with Hawking's knowledge of the universe advises against contact, it's worth listening, isn't it?
Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Seti Institute in California, the world's leading organisation searching for telltale alien signals, is not so sure. "This is an unwarranted fear," Shostak says. "If their interest in our planet is for something valuable that our planet has to offer, there's no particular reason to worry about them now. If they're interested in resources, they have ways of finding rocky planets that don't depend on whether we broadcast or not. They could have found us a billion years ago."
If we were really worried about shouting in the stellar jungle, Shostak says, the first thing to do would be to shut down the BBC, NBC, CBS and the radars at all airports. Those broadcasts have been streaming into space for years – the oldest is already more than 80 light years from Earth – so it is already too late to stop passing aliens watching every episode of Big Brother or What Katie and Peter Did Next.
The biggest and most active hunt for life outside Earth started in 1960, when Frank Drake pointed the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia towards the star Tau Ceti. He was looking for anomalous radio signals that could have been sent by intelligent life. Eventually, his idea turned into Seti (standing for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), which used the downtime on radar telescopes around the world to scour the sky for any signals. For 50 years, however, the sky has been silent.
There are lots of practical problems involved in hunting for aliens, of course, chief among them being distance. If our nearest neighbours were life-forms on the (fictional) forest moon of Endor, 1,000 light years away, it would take a millennium for us to receive any message they might send. If the Endorians were watching us, the light reaching them from Earth at this very moment would show them our planet as it was 1,000 years ago; in Europe that means lots of fighting between knights around castles and, in north America, small bands of natives living on the great plains. It is not a timescale that allows for quick banter – and, anyway, they might not be communicating in our direction.
The lack of a signal from ET has not, however, prevented astronomers and biologists (not to mention film-makers) coming up with a whole range of ideas about what aliens might be like. In the early days of Seti, astronomers focused on the search for planets like ours – the idea being that, since the only biology we know about is our own, we might as well assume aliens are going to be something like us. But there's no reason why that should be true. You don't even need to step off the Earth to find life that is radically different from our common experience of it.
"Extremophiles" are species that can survive in places that would quickly kill humans and other "normal" life-forms. These single-celled creatures have been found in boiling hot vents of water thrusting through the ocean floor, or at temperatures well below the freezing point of water. The front ends of some creatures that live near deep-sea vents are 200C warmer than their back ends.
"In our naive and parochial way, we have named these things extremophiles, which shows prejudice – we're normal, everything else is extreme," says Ian Stewart, a mathematician at Warwick University and author of What Does A Martian Look Like? "From the point of view of a creature that lives in boiling water, we're extreme because we live in much milder temperatures. We're at least as extreme compared to them as they are compared to us."
On Earth, life exists in water and on land but, on a giant gas planet, for example, it might exist high in the atmosphere, trapping nutrients from the air swirling around it. And given that aliens may be so out of our experience, guessing motives and intentions if they ever got in touch seems beyond the realm's even of Hawking's mind.
Paul Davies, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University and chair of Seti's post-detection taskforce, argues that alien brains, with their different architecture, would interpret information very differently from ours. What we think of as beautiful or friendly might come across as violent to them, or vice versa. "Lots of people think that because they would be so wise and knowledgeable, they would be peaceful," adds Stewart. "I don't think you can assume that. I don't think you can put human views on to them; that's a dangerous way of thinking. Aliens are alien. If they exist at all, we cannot assume they're like us."
Answers to some of these conundrums will begin to emerge in the next few decades. The researchers at the forefront of the work are astrobiologists, working in an area that has steadily marched in from the fringes of science thanks to the improvements in technology available to explore space.
Scientists discovered the first few extrasolar planets in the early 1990s and, ever since, the numbers have shot up. Today, scientists know of 443 planets orbiting around more than 350 stars. Most are gas giants in the mould of Jupiter, the smallest being Gliese 581, which has a mass of 1.9 Earths. In 2009, Nasa launched the Kepler satellite, a probe specifically designed to look for Earth-like planets.
Future generations of ground-based telescopes, such as the proposed European Extremely Large Telescope (with a 30m main mirror), could be operational by 2030, and would be powerful enough to image the atmospheres of faraway planets, looking for chemical signatures that could indicate life. The Seti Institute also, finally, has a serious piece of kit under construction: the Allen Array (funded by a $11.5m/£7.5m donation from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen) has, at present, 42 radio antennae, each six metres in diameter, but there are plans, if the Seti Institute can raise another $35m, to have up to 300 radio dishes.
In all the years that Seti has been running, it has managed to look carefully at less than 1,000 star systems. With the full Allen Array, they could look at 1,000 star systems in a couple of years.
Shostak is confident that, as telescope technology keeps improving, Seti will find an ET signal within the next two decades. "We will have looked at another million star systems in two dozen years. If this is going to work, it will work soon."
And what happens if and when we detect a signal? "My strenuous advice will be that the coordinates of the transmitting entity should be kept confidential, until the world community has had a chance to evaluate what it's dealing with," Davies told the Guardian recently. "We don't want anybody just turning a radio telescope on the sky and sending their own messages to the source."
But his colleague, Shostak, says we should have no such concerns. "You'll have told the astronomical community – that's thousands of people. Are you going to ask them all not to tell anybody where you're pointing your antenna? There's no way you could do that.
"And anyway, why wouldn't you tell them where [the alien lifeform] is? Are you afraid people will broadcast their own message? They might do that but, remember, The Gong Show has already been broadcast for years." And, for that matter, the Beatles.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/apr/30/stephen-hawking-right-aliens
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en
| 2010-04-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/decce2516ed696c19abc5536d5995a1c08073e1334d9d48c185a1cf7d7f54651.json
|
|
[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-31T04:50:17 | null | 2005-02-10T11:24:28 |
The saga of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles' relationship has spanned more than three decades and two marriages.
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk%2F2005%2Ffeb%2F10%2Fmonarchy.constitution1.json
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en
| null |
A love lived in public and in private
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The saga of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles' relationship has spanned more than three decades and two marriages.
They first met at a Windsor polo match in 1970 and came across each other again in June 1972 at a London club.
It was clear the heir to the throne was keen on country-loving hunting fan Camilla from the start, especially when she jokingly mentioned that her maternal great-great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, was the long-time mistress of Charles's great-great-grandfather, Edward VII.
Mrs Parker Bowles - then Camilla Shand - is said to have told the prince: "My great-great-grandmother was your great-great-grandfather's mistress, so how about it?"
The two became very close but the relationship cooled when Charles joined the Royal Navy in 1971. Two years later Camilla married her long-standing admirer, Army officer Andrew Parker Bowles.
Throughout the late 1970s Charles and Camilla kept up contact and became close again towards the end of the decade.
However Camilla did play a part in encouraging the match between Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and it is thought the prince proposed to Diana in the Parker Bowles's vegetable garden.
After his marriage, in July 1981, Charles remained close to Camilla. Diana was intensely jealous of her husband's relationship with her and quizzed his aides about it constantly.
Royal watcher Andrew Morton named Camilla as "the other woman" in the Prince's life and said the Princess referred to her as "The Rottweiler".
It is thought that after Charles and Diana drifted further and further apart, following the birth of Prince Harry in 1984, he eventually returned to his old flame.
The depth of their intimacy became clear in 1992 when the so-called "Camillagate" tape surfaced, in which Charles was caught saying he longed to be Camilla's tampon.
In the recording of a telephone conversation between the two, made in December 1989, Charles said: "I love you" to Camilla and added many other highly personal endearments.
Camilla has consistently maintained a dignified silence about her friendship with Charles, who said of her in the 1994 Jonathan Dimbleby TV documentary: "Mrs Parker Bowles is a great friend of mine ... a friend for a very long time.
"She will continue to be a friend for a very long time."
When the prince admitted he had committed adultery after his marriage to Diana had broken down, Mrs Parker Bowles was widely assumed, but never confirmed, to be the other woman involved.
Diana later went on television to say there had been three people in the marriage and it had been too crowded.
Camilla was now recognised everywhere and her comfortable, country-set life was turned upside-down. Women threw bread rolls at her in a supermarket as she faced a public backlash. Camilla had become "the marriage-wrecker".
She and Andrew Parker Bowles, a former Silver Stick-in-Waiting to the Queen, divorced in 1995 and Camilla became a regular visitor to the Prince's Gloucestershire home, Highgrove.
In April 1997, Camilla took a tentative step into public life when she became patron of the National Osteoporosis Society. An official photograph was released to mark the occasion.
In July that year, Charles hosted a party for Camilla to celebrate her 50th birthday. She was pictured arriving at Highgrove by car.
The idea of Charles and Camilla as a couple was gradually being officially introduced to the public.
But the tragic death of Diana in August 1997 in a car accident changed everything. A charity function planned for September, at which the Prince and Camilla may have appeared together, was cancelled.
Public opinion, royal advisers thought, would not countenance the idea of Camilla replacing Diana.
However, in 1999 Camilla met Prince William and Prince Harry for the first time, and the teenagers and she later hosted a glittering party at Highgrove for 200 guests to celebrate Charles's 50th birthday.
In recent years, she has regularly accompanied Charles to Prince's Trust galas and became accustomed to donning an evening gown and sparkling jewels and appearing in front of the media.
As Clarence House was renovated and Camilla became the prince's live-in partner, questions began to surface about the cost of her lifestyle.
In June 2004, Mrs Parker Bowles appeared for the first time in the prince's official accounts - moving her into a new realm of official acceptance.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/feb/10/monarchy.constitution1
|
en
| 2005-02-10T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5326c1ee39048e1613e8adf7a36c3b69955e54b3a2e8d9451fcd1aa6e2d03b51.json
|
|
[
"James Richardson",
"Ben Green",
"James Horncastle",
"Simon Burnton"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:42 | null | 2016-08-25T10:33:58 |
The podders look ahead to the weekend’s big games, including Liverpool’s trip to Tottenham and Manchester United’s clash with Hull. Plus, everything you wanted to know about Rotherham, and the curious case of Carlos Kaiser
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Faudio%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fthe-curious-case-of-carlos-kaiser-football-weekly-extra.json
|
en
| null |
The curious case of Carlos Kaiser - Football Weekly Extra
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
On today’s Football Weekly, Philippe Auclair, James Horncastle and Simon Burnton are joined by the returning AC Jimbo, who’s returned safe and sound from his sojourn with the world’s strongest men.
We begin by looking ahead to the weekend in the Premier League and the top o’ the table meeting between Manchester United and Hull, and the ever-so-intriguing encounter between Tottenham and Liverpool. Klopp Out!
Next, we get up to speed with the midweek EFL Cup and Champions League drama. (We’ll assess the draw for the group stage on Monday, when Barry Glendenning and Iain Macintosh will be with us)
Finally, we discover some surprising titbits about Rotherham and - more excitingly - learn of the fabulous tale of Carlos Kaiser, the world’s finest ‘farce footballer’.
We’re all sold out now for our show in Manchester next week, but maybe you’ll want to see Producer Ben do his thing at his How To Be A Podcast Producer session at the London Podcast Festival on Thursday 22 September? Or maybe you won’t. It’s up to you, dear listener.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/football/audio/2016/aug/25/the-curious-case-of-carlos-kaiser-football-weekly-extra
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f4faa713cbeb0ec48a147314317046e3798d475453b7273c7f2302a95e7e87b2.json
|
|
[
"Barry Glendenning"
] | 2016-08-27T14:51:00 | null | 2016-08-27T14:49:39 |
Live updates: Join Barry Glendenning for the latest from all the 3pm BST kick-offs, featuring Leicester v Swansea and Arsenal’s trip to Watford
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Flive%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Ffootball-clockwatch-leicester-v-swansea-watford-v-arsenal-and-more-live.json
|
en
| null |
Football clockwatch: Leicester v Swansea, Watford v Arsenal and more - live!
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
| null |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2016/aug/27/football-clockwatch-leicester-v-swansea-watford-v-arsenal-and-more-live
|
en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4864156ba3562ee2a0e751bd8545df109ee0852322902068c22d83838fdb3c62.json
|
|
[
"Greg Wood"
] | 2016-08-27T18:51:46 | null | 2016-08-27T16:59:03 |
Dave Simcock’s five-year-old Lightning Spear won the Celebration Mile with an impressive burst of speed
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fgoodwood-lightning-spear-simcock-celebration-mile-hayley-turner-horse-racing.json
|
en
| null |
Lightning Spear strikes at Goodwood to boost Dave Simcock Ascot hopes
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Relief was the principal emotion for Dave Simcock after the Doom Bar Celebration Mile here on Saturday when his five-year-old Lightning Spear finally produced the same form on the racecourse that the trainer has been seeing on the gallops all summer. Two recent disappointments in Group One company can now be set aside, and Lightning Spear’s next target will be the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, Europe’s championship race for milers, on Champions Day at Ascot in October.
Bookmakers offer prices as big as 16-1 for Lightning Spear to win the QEII, odds that could well attract each-way backers at least given that the chestnut’s last race over the straight mile at Ascot saw him finish a close third behind Tepin in the Queen Anne Stakes. His turn of foot also seems sure to be a potent weapon when he returns to Group One company, as he was caught in an unpromising position with two furlongs to run here but quickened so sharply that Oisin Murphy, his jockey, was already easing down as he crossed the line one-and-a-quarter lengths clear of Zonderland.
Hayley Turner confirms retirement at end of turf season at Doncaster Read more
Thikriyaat, the warm favourite for this Group Two race at 7-4, was a bitter disappointment, pushed along at halfway and already beaten with a quarter of a mile to run. That should not detract from the quality of Lightning Spear’s success, however, and he is not a runner to dismiss lightly as the autumn’s big prizes come into view.
“The last two races have been so frustrating to watch, he’s a very talented horse and he hadn’t been able to produce for one reason or another,” Simcock said. “I’ve always said he’s good, and I think he’ll show his true potential next year.
“His turn of foot is something we’ve seen at home. We’ve always said he’s the best miler we’ve had, and I’m just really relieved. When you have belief in a horse and it doesn’t quite happen, you don’t doubt yourself but you wonder why and what went wrong.
“His good run at Ascot should have led on to the Sussex Stakes here and also to Deauville [in the Prix Jacques Le Marois]. I hate making excuses, but Goodwood is a hard place to come from the back when they don’t go a pace, and Deauville was messy and he got shuffled back on tacky ground.
“Everything will now aim towards Ascot and we’ll have a real go at the QEII.”
Kilmah held the late charge of Promising by a neck in the Group Three Prestige Stakes, but the runner-up may prove to be the better long-term prospect despite still being a maiden after three starts. Kilmah, seventh of eight in the Lowther Stakes at York nine days earlier, enjoyed a trouble-free trip in front under a well-judged ride by Franny Norton. Promising, however, was forced to come around the field having turned for home with just one rival behind her.
“She stayed on well and found a bit more when it mattered,” Mark Johnston, Kilmah’s trainer, said. “After running so disappointingly in the Lowther, it would have been so easy not to run her, but she was the only one I had in the yard that could go for this.”
Platitude, who was well beaten here behind his stablemate Ulysses in the Gordon Stakes in July, stormed away from his field to take the March Stakes by five lengths from Vive Ma Fille, but a gelding operation at the end of last season means that the three-year-old is ineligible for next month’s St Leger.
Away from the track, Hayley Turner, Britain’s most successful female jockey until her retirement from the saddle at the end of last season, has refused to comment on a report that she will join ITV’s team of presenters when the channel takes over coverage of the sport next year.
Rishi Persad, a current member of the Channel 4 Racing team who also worked for the BBC during the Rio Olympics, is also the subject of strong rumours linking him to the ITV team, while Radio 5 Live’s John Hunt has been linked with the commentator’s role.
Ed Chamberlin has already been recruited from Sky Sports to front ITV’s coverage, along with Francesca Cumani, the daughter of Newmarket trainer Luca, who will share presenting duties during the Flat season.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/goodwood-lightning-spear-simcock-celebration-mile-hayley-turner-horse-racing
|
en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b6f9d3fbe6a3ba974e020d7c61b78145518473a6babdb527b85ff35c0b1d2c6f.json
|
|
[
"Nicola Davis"
] | 2016-08-30T14:59:26 | null | 2016-08-30T14:23:14 |
Study finds that dogs process speech in a similar way to humans, and that what you say and how you say it both matter when conversing with canines
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fdogs-understand-both-words-and-intonation-of-human-speech.json
|
en
| null |
Dogs understand both words and intonation of human speech
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
It is both what you say and the way that you say it that matters when it comes to communicating with man’s best friend, research has revealed.
Scientists from Hungary scanned the brains of dogs while each was played the sound of their trainer’s voice, and discovered that our canine companions only experience a sense of reward when both the words and intonation indicate praise.
The team also found that dogs process speech in a similar way to humans, processing meaningful words with their left hemisphere and intonation with a region in their right hemisphere.
Dogs are twice as friendly to humankind as previously thought, suggests study Read more
“The results were very exciting and very surprising,” said lead researcher Attila Andics from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.
Writing in the journal Science, Andics and colleagues describe how they trained 13 dogs over a period of months to lie motionless inside an fMRI machine, in order to probe how they process human speech.
The researchers used the scans to look at how their brain activity changed as they were played recordings of their trainers’ voices through a pair of headphones. Four different recordings were played with either praise words (such as “well done!”) or neutral words (such as “however” or “nevertheless”) coupled with either a high-pitched intonation indicative of praise, or a neutral intonation.
The results revealed that compared to neutral words, praise words resulted in an increase in activity in the left hemisphere of the brain for both types of intonation, suggesting that, like humans, dogs use the left side of their brain to process words that they have recognised and attach meaning to. On the other hand, differences in intonation but not word type, resulted in a change in activity in an area within the auditory region of the right hemisphere.
“It is actually the very same part of the brain in this right auditory brain region that we found in dogs and also humans in an earlier study that responds to the emotional content of a sound,” said Andics. “It is not a mechanism that is only there for language stimuli, it is the same mechanism dogs use for processing emotional sounds in general.”
Study showing decline in dog fertility may have human implications Read more
The researchers also looked at the reward centre in the doggy brain, an area that responds to activities or experiences deemed pleasurable.
The results reveal that the reward centre only shows an increase in activity when both praise words and praise intonation are used.
“From this research, we can quite confidently say if they only hear you then it is not only how you say things but also what you say that matters to them,” said Andics.
But, says Andics, whether a dog can really tell if you are calling it a smelly hound in a jolly voice is another matter, as there are typically other cues, such as body language and facial expression at play.
The research, says Andics, offers new insights into the evolution of language.
“The neural mechanism humans have for processing meaning in speech, so for processing word meaning and intonation, are not uniquely human - they seem to be there in other species,” said Andics. That, he adds, suggests that our use of words was down to a novel idea, rather than new brain mechanisms. “It is not the result of a special new neural mechanism but the result of an innovation,” said Andics. “We invented words as we invented the wheel.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/30/dogs-understand-both-words-and-intonation-of-human-speech
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/06c85e4700833050822e52dad056e46fa3a69fda0aca272dd5d36cd134da155a.json
|
|
[
"Mark Wohlwender",
"Photograph",
"Save The Children"
] | 2016-08-26T22:51:12 | null | 2016-08-26T21:50:17 |
The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s ministry of health has declared a yellow fever epidemic in three provinces as concern grows about the spread of the disease, particularly in the densely populated Kinshasa region. Photographer Tommy Trenchard followed Save the Children’s vaccination campaign in the country
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Ffighting-yellow-fever-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-in-pictures.json
|
en
| null |
Fighting yellow fever in the Democratic Republic of the Congo - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Hundreds of thousands of people have been heading to vaccination sites in Kinshasa, with many queueing up from as early as 7am. Save the Children has reached more than 200,000 people in one suburb of the city in the space of just four days
Photograph: Save the Children
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2016/aug/26/fighting-yellow-fever-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo-in-pictures
|
en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7c72f6ae119e0eba7e97d26629da3dff6237a0303072d76c76aea4cd2dd0deb7.json
|
|
[
"Sue Hayward"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:01 | null | 2016-08-25T06:00:03 |
City tax imposed on hotel stays in Europe, including in Paris, Berlin and Rome, could potentially add up to £6 per person per night to your bill
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Ftourists-city-tax-hotels-europe.json
|
en
| null |
Taxing tourists: beware the extra charges that can make your hotel more costly
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
You may have budgeted for your next overseas city break away, but you could still be in for a shock if your hotel charges city tax. The tax can add up to £12 a night to the cost of a double room, and you may only be presented with the bill when it’s time to check out.
City tax is charged on hotel stays across many European cities including Paris, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam and Barcelona, and in some more far-flung destinations, such as Dubai and America. Rates and charging structures vary, but can go up to £6 per person per night.
Bob Atkinson from TravelSupermarket.com says in some cities you can expect to pay on a per person, per night basis, while in others, such as Berlin, Amsterdam and Cologne, city tax is charged at a flat rate of 5% of your hotel room bill. You may have to pay for your children too – in Berlin, for instance, their stay is taxed, while in Italy there are usually exemptions for the under-14s or under-16s.
Paris is relatively cheap, says Atkinson, with charges from 20 cents to €1.50 (£1.30) per person per night, based on hotel location and star rating. In contrast, in Rome you can pay up to €7 per person per night, he says, which works out at more than £80 for two people if you’re staying for a week.
It’s generally hotels that charge city tax, according to Atkinson, as “small private accommodation tends to be exempt and stays at Airbnb seem to avoid it in some places, although Paris is one city where it must be collected”. Once again, there are quirks in the system: in some places, including Cologne and Berlin, business travellers are exempt from the tax, and in Italy children under 14, (or 16 in some places), can be exempt.
In some cities payments go to supporting the local tourist industry and developing it, such as in Cologne
While you may think this is a sneaky way for hotels to boost their coffers, the money doesn’t go directly into their pockets, although where it goes varies too. “In some cities payments go to supporting the local tourist industry and developing it, for example, in Cologne,” says Atkinson. But in Italy the tax is used to “raise revenue for hard-pressed government departments”.
In the Catalonia region of Spain where city tax has been in operation since 2012, it has raised a total of €126m, which has been split between the Catalan Tourism Agency, local tourism boards and town halls.
Since July, the Spanish government has charged a new “tourist tax” on hotel stays in the Balearic Islands, which include Mallorca, Ibiza, Formentera and Menorca. It’s charged at a rate of up to €2 per person per night, depending on the type of accommodation, and is collected by the hotel. The upper rate applies to four- and five-star hotels; you may only pay €1 a night if you’re staying in a basic holiday apartment.
As city tax isn’t an issue in the UK, holidaymakers heading abroad may easily be confused about whether it has already been included in their holiday price if they’ve booked a package deal, or whether they need to save some money to cover this. Sean Tipton from ABTA, the group representing travel agents, says the basic rule is that “any locally collected taxes, which includes city tax, won’t be included as part of your package”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest In the Balearic Islands, including Ibiza, the government charges a tourist tax of up to €2 per person per night, depending on the type of accommodation. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
This means it is up to you to cover the cost on arrival or departure at your hotel, which could be a shock if you haven’t read the notes with your booking.
Budget flight company Jet2.com confirms that the tax isn’t included in its city breaks packages and should be paid locally at the hotel. It says it warns customers upfront: “We notify customers when they book, and they have to tick a box to say that they’ve read this.” Details are also contained in Jet2’s terms and conditions.
Both Thomson and First Choice also say city tax (if levied at your destination) isn’t included in package prices, adding, “we advise customers they are chargeable on arrival rather than included in the package price”.
If you’re booking accommodation independently, check you read the hotel’s website carefully, including details of any city tax charges. While these should all be listed – sites such as Booking.com put details alongside the room listing – it can be possible to spot the room rate, think you’ve got a bargain and forget to factor in the extra costs. In most cases you can pay any tax due on departure, by cash or card.
While city tax isn’t an issue in the UK, Camden council did propose a form of a tourist tax last year to help with street cleaning, in the wake of government cuts. Camden was suggesting a £1 a night tax on hotel stays in central London, but imposing such changes would mean new legislation being brought in. A council spokesperson says that for now, “the idea remains an idea and it has not been adopted or dismissed”.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/25/tourists-city-tax-hotels-europe
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d4b9d754ac747487e96f07980bf81a5f6ee38e8126369c0fd3bff14f258d3b55.json
|
|
[
"Associated Press In Rome"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:43 | null | 2016-08-19T03:01:16 |
Survivor from twin endangered loggerheads is separated by scientists and freed in Mediterranean Sea
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fconjoined-baby-turtle-saved-by-italian-marine-biologists.json
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en
| null |
Conjoined baby turtle saved by Italian marine biologists
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Marine biologists in southern Italy have separated conjoined twin loggerhead turtles and released the surviving newborn into the Mediterranean Sea.
The release occurred this week along the beaches of Campania where the endangered loggerheads nest every year.
Fulvio Maffucci, marine biologist at Anton Dohrn Zoological Station, said on Wednesday there had been seven known births of conjoined twin loggerheads in the Mediterranean. He said the fact that one survived was “extraordinary”.
The smaller twin was dead and significantly underdeveloped compared with the larger twin.
Maffucci said: “After the removal of the dead brother from his chest, he crawled from the nest and he’s been released in the wild without any help.”
In addition to the twins, one of the hatchlings this year also included a rare albino loggerhead.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/19/conjoined-baby-turtle-saved-by-italian-marine-biologists
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en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8977c8c97ca0d93e0faa8aeaf8b49fdf9c17e0fb7293e33773deda79049c8ad8.json
|
|
[
"Steven Bloor"
] | 2016-08-28T20:52:04 | null | 2016-08-28T16:17:50 |
A competitor takes part in the World Bog Snorkelling Championships in Waen Rhydd peat bog at Llanwrtyd Wells, south Wales
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2Fpicture%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fsport-picture-of-the-day-world-bog-snorkelling-championships.json
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en
| null |
Sport picture of the day: the World Bog Snorkelling Championships
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
A competitor takes part in the World Bog Snorkelling Championships in Waen Rhydd peat bog at Llanwrtyd Wells, south Wales. Entrants must negotiate two lengths of a 60-yard trench through the peat bog in the quickest possible time without using any conventional swimming strokes
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/picture/2016/aug/28/sport-picture-of-the-day-world-bog-snorkelling-championships
|
en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2ad14b677184c87975f1f292d48bf51263a3b95d9014b3b8fde23fc1bef6831c.json
|
|
[
"Miles Brignall"
] | 2016-08-27T06:54:47 | null | 2016-08-27T06:00:00 |
Car hire contracts can include clauses that penalise you for late arrival, as one family found out at great expense
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fdelayed-flight-no-rental-car-lose-deposit.json
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en
| null |
A delayed flight could leave you without your rental car and deposit
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Is Brad Rees this summer’s unluckiest holiday car renter? Rees paid £364 to hire a car for his family’s two-week summer holiday in Sardinia, using online agent Holiday Autos. Things started to go wrong when the family arrived at Bristol airport, with the flight delayed by two hours. But it got worse when they finally touched down in Sardinia.
At the carousel in arrivals, the suitcase belonging to Rees’s wife Frances failed to show up. It turned out – 45 minutes after scouring the airport – that another couple had wrongly picked up the bag. They eventually found them bickering with a car hire agent on the other side of the airport.
By the time the Rees family joined the queue at their car hire rental desk, they were two and a half hours late, but it was only 4.30pm. Then, they were hit by the first bombshell. InterRent, Holiday Auto’s agent in the airport, said that, because they were late, there would be no car, not today, not tomorrow, and no refund. Because they were late, their contract was no longer valid, and the £364 would not be returned. The InterRent agent simply shrugged and said nothing could be done.
Rees immediately rang Holiday Autos in the UK. But he was told it was in the terms and conditions, and that there was nothing they could do about it. Rees, who ironically runs a consumer insights company, asked to speak to a Holiday Autos manager but was told “she didn’t want to speak to him”.
A hire car was essential for the Rees family holiday – they had booked a villa – so they had no choice but to find a last-minute alternative. At the Goldcar desk, they were told they could hire its only remaining and suitable car which, once the extra insurance had been added, cost €931 – almost £800 at the time.
Luckily, the rest of the holiday went smoothly – until Rees returned the vehicle to Goldcar. “Two weeks later, I dropped off the car to be met with loads of couples arguing with staff about the damage that they were alleged to have done. I handed back my keys and was told my €92 fuel deposit – in itself exorbitant – would be refunded automatically.”
The family returned to England but, a few days later, Rees checked his credit card statement for the €92 refund. “They took €150 from the credit card for ‘major cleaning’ – even though there was a just a bit of sand in the footwells. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Rees related his tale to friends and found that, while his experience was particularly bad, nearly everyone had some sort of similar gripe.
“Everyone was totally gobsmacked when I told them that Holiday Autos had refused to refund me the money I’d paid to book the car. However, almost everyone I spoke to had a terrible story to tell about hiring a car … You have to wonder when car hire became such a battle.”
In fairness to Goldcar, it refunded €120 of the cleaning charge to Rees after he complained. It said: “We have found that our internal notification process has not been followed correctly and the amount of time and work necessary to clean the car was not correctly evaluated.”
Back in England, Rees took up his case again with Holiday Autos, but was shocked to find a flat refusal to refund the £364. In an email, it said: “I regret that you were unable to use the car rental booking you made through Holiday Autos. Every effort is made to accommodate changing pick-up times, but the car rental agent is not always in a position to hold a vehicle after the pick-up time has passed or to keep the rental desk open. At Holiday Autos, our customer is our primary concern, but we must stand by the rental terms and conditions that you agreed to at the time of booking. For this reason, I am not able to offer a refund”
Holiday Autos’ stance is likely to horrify the thousands of UK buyers who book with it every year and, through no fault of their own, might arrive at a car rental desk late because of a flight delay.
Guardian Money took up Rees’ case with Holiday Autos, and the happy ending is that it has refunded the money as a goodwill gesture. But it makes plain that other holidaymakers could face a similar bill.
A spokesman said: “We are committed to ensuring customer communication is as clear as possible, however additional charges around late pick-up [are] clearly outlined in the booking voucher documentation and rental agreement. To further mitigate against situations such as this, we also clearly recommend inputting flight details at the time of booking, which automatically alerts the car rental desk around unforeseen delays.
‘We advise all our customers to review their rental voucher document and familiarise themselves with the policies outlined. As a gesture of goodwill, we will issue a full refund as compensation for the effort in bringing this case to our attention.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/27/delayed-flight-no-rental-car-lose-deposit
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7021e40a48f98a787e159f26fe5659d2c3462c8548bb6878eb0be190e692914f.json
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[
"Rebecca Smithers"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:49 | null | 2016-08-22T06:00:04 |
I tried to send my daughter an emergency credit card but the parcel firm first said it would take 5 days, then 15
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F22%2Fparcel-monkey-failed-to-deliver.json
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Parcel Monkey failed to deliver in Bolivia
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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My daughter had her credit card swallowed by a cash machine on 13 July in Peru while travelling around South America. I arranged for a company called Parcel Monkey to deliver a replacement card to a hostel where she could be for five days to give them (I thought) a big window for delivery. It quoted a delivery time of four to five days. The parcel was collected from us on Tuesday 26 July but it then estimated a delivery time of 15 days (which took us into August by which stage my daughter was long gone).
I believe that I have been misled with a service that the company must have known it was unable to deliver. It told me that this was because the delivery was to a remote area. I am trying to have it delivered to Sucre, which is the capital of Bolivia – it can hardly be called a remote area. CJ, Cirencester, Gloucestershire
According to its website, Parcel Monkey was set up in 2009 with “the dream of bringing cheap parcel delivery to the masses”, claiming now to be well-established in the UK. But it is an agency, meaning that its business model involves sub-contracting out to local courier companies (which customers are invited to choose) over which it has no direct control, while delays with customs can extend predicted deadlines. We wondered why you had not asked your daughter’s card issuer (Santander) to forward it to her. But apparently when she reported the card lost it suggested she go to a local branch – and there are not many in Peru. She also asked if they could post it to her out there but they said it could only be sent to the address registered to the card.
We tested the Parcel Monkey site and it did indeed give us a four- to six-day quote for sending a package to Bolivia, so we asked it to explain what had happened. It said in a statement: “The item was held by Bolivian customs and as they could not trace the recipient [CJ’s daughter] direct, CJ had provided the contact number of the hostel her daughter was staying in and not a direct line number, which created the communication delay with customs officials.”
As a gesture of goodwill the company has refunded the cost of your order (£30.25). The lesson from this is to always take an additional card or payment method on extensive travels (and maybe not rely on your mum to sort out your problems). We also think the company should not be specifying delivery time frames that are ambitious, to say the least. It did point out that tracking services are provided to customers to monitor the movement of items, but this isn’t always helpful when people are travelling on this sort of scale.
We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/22/parcel-monkey-failed-to-deliver
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en
| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/72ef4c56b27a84ed5aadf286c16c63735d644cd32e9608af2d2e850fabc042dd.json
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[] | 2016-08-27T10:51:43 | null | 2016-08-27T09:57:07 |
Israel Dagg scored two tries as the All Blacks beat Australia 29-9 in their Rugby Championship clash, which ensures they retain Bledisloe Cup for another year
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fnew-zealand-australia-bledisloe-cup-game-ii-match-report.json
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All Blacks retain Bledisloe Cup with comfortable win over Wallabies
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Israel Dagg scored two tries as the All Blacks beat Australia 29-9 in their Rugby Championship clash, which also ensured they retained the Bledisloe Cup for another year.
Beauden Barrett also showcased his growing stature as the starting fly-half with nine points from the boot and his all-round play drove his side around the field in a match that was markedly less one-sided than the encounter between these sides a week ago.
Wallabies v All Blacks Rugby Championship – live | Paul Connolly Read more
The Wallabies fly-half Bernard Foley slotted two penalties, while debutant Reece Hodge landed a monster penalty in the first half for the visitors, who despite a better defensive showing still rarely threatened on attack, losing their sixth successive match.
The All Blacks have held the Bledisloe Cup, the symbol of trans-Tasman supremacy since 2003 and only had to draw in Wellington to ensure it stayed locked in New Zealand Rugby’s trophy cabinet for another season.
Steve Hansen’s side had hammered the Wallabies 42-8 last week in Sydney with a game of high pace and superb execution, and the Wallabies had promised they would perform better than they had at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium.
While the effort from the Australian team was noticeably more impressive, too many infringements and occasional ill-discipline hurt the Wallabies as they looked to match the physicality of the All Black forwards.
After a close opening stanza, the All Blacks only led 15-9 at halftime courtesy of Dagg’s tries and a conversion and penalty to Barrett, while Foley and Hodge kicked penalties for the visitors.
A defensive mindset from the Wallabies, however, did result in main protagonist Adam Coleman being yellow carded for a dangerous charge on All Blacks full-back Ben Smith late in the first half.
The All Blacks did not score again while Coleman was off the field as the Wallabies slowed the pace, with the game littered with squabbles and intermittent bad blood from both teams.
Julian Savea then gave his side some breathing space just after Coleman returned when Barrett’s blistering pace again exploited space in the Wallabies defence before Same Cane grabbed his side’s fourth try about 15 minutes later.
Both sides now have a week off in the Rugby Championship before the All Blacks face Argentina in Hamilton on 10 September, while the Wallabies play South Africa in Brisbane.
The final match of the Bledisloe Cup, which is now a dead rubber, is in Auckland on 22 October.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/new-zealand-australia-bledisloe-cup-game-ii-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9f806d29e1aeb6b854e8105e2776a4cf621367d00d07512a89ac4c50d0f00fbd.json
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[
"Alex Hern"
] | 2016-08-28T16:51:58 | null | 2016-08-28T14:56:54 |
Security is finally being taken seriously but the fact that we are increasingly entrusting our lives to self-driving cars creates unease
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fcar-hacking-future-self-driving-security.json
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Car hacking is the future - and sooner or later you'll be hit
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www.theguardian.com
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“Car companies are finally realising that what they sell is just a big computer you sit in,” says Kevin Tighe, a senior systems engineer at the security testing firm Bugcrowd.
It’s meant to be a reassuring statement: proof that the world’s major vehicle manufacturers are finally coming to terms with their responsibilities to customers, and taking the security of vehicles seriously.
But given where Tighe and I are talking, it’s hard not to be slightly uneasy about the idea that it’s normal to sit inside a massive computer and trust it with your life. We’re meeting at Defcon, the world’s largest hacking conference, just outside the “car-hacking village”, a recent addition to the convention’s lineup, where enthusiasts meet to trade tips on how to mess about with those same computers for fun and profit.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A self-driving vehicle picks up passengers during a demonstration in Singapore. Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters
The village, one of a number of breakout areas (others include biohacking, lock picking and “social engineering” – the art and science of talking people into doing stuff they shouldn’t), was instituted last year. Also in 2015, two researchers, from the security consultancy IOActive and Twitter, turned car hacking from a vaguely theoretical pursuit into one with terrifying consequences.
At that year’s Defcon, Twitter’s Charlie Miller and IOActive’s Chris Valasek demonstrated they were able to wirelessly take over a Jeep. They used a laptop connected to the internet miles from the vehicle to seize control of it, cutting the brakes and transmission at the flick of a switch.
It sparked a worldwide recall for the affected cars – which included much of Fiat Chrysler’s range. It also exposed serious problems with how the car companies planned to handle such software flaws. Even though the hack could be executed remotely, it could only be fixed with physical access to the car, forcing Fiat Chrysler to post USB keys to affected owners, or ask them to bring their cars in for maintenance. Posting USB keys brought its own problems: plugging an untrusted USB key into anything, whether car or computer, carries serious risks. It’s also hard for anyone to easily verify that a drive received in the post is malware-free.
Tesla drivers post viral, self-driving 'stunts' using autopilot technology Read more
Some fixes were easier to carry out, though. Speaking at this year’s Black Hat conference in Las Vegas (think Defcon but in suits, taking place a few days earlier), Valasek and Miller – now both employed as researchers at Uber – revealed that one of the more effective changes Fiat Chrysler made was simply asking Sprint, the cellular provider that connected all the cars to the net, to block all incoming traffic.
“This made the vulnerability kind of go away,” Miller said, as Valasek pointed out that the cars never really needed the incoming connections in the first place. The service had just been kept open because no one had thought to turn it off.
That’s good, because if it was still open, the situation would be much worse today than it was last year. Although the Jeep hack was spectacular, it came with severe limitations. The pair had managed to use a bug in the car’s entertainment system, which was connected to the net, to tunnel through to the supposedly secure internal network, which the various components of the car use to talk to each other, called the Can bus.
But simply having access to the network didn’t mean they were able to seize control of the car. Without the ability to stop the car sending its own messages, the hackers’ own commands were usually overruled by the car’s system, or simply recognised as a conflict that caused the car to err on the side of safety and turn off the feature altogether.
In 2015, they had managed to tackle the problem by forcing the car into diagnostic mode, which allowed them far greater control. But most cars built since 2015 disable diagnostic mode when the car is in motion, meaning that the hacks can only be started when the car is travelling less than 5mph. “It’s a nice parlour trick,” said Miller. “But I don’t think it affects safety.”
So the pair’s past year has been spent working out whether that safety feature can be turned off. Bad news: it can.
The trick lies in working out how the various components talk to each other, and what they expect to hear over the Can bus. “There are times you can have conflicting messages and the car will do what you want,” Miller said. For instance, the way cruise control works in the Jeep means that, rather than sending a message saying “cruise control is on”, the bus instead says “the button to turn cruise control on is not pressed”. This means that one message inserted into the feed saying “the button to turn cruise control on is pressed” will enable cruise control without sparking a conflict internally (a breakthrough demonstrated with video of a panicky Valasek sitting in the passenger seat of an otherwise empty car rapidly accelerating to 40mph on a deserted rural road).
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Lexus SUV equipped with Google self-driving sensors during a media preview of the firm’s prototype vehicle. Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters
For other controls, such as direct control of the accelerometer or brakes, that simple approach doesn’t work. But after analysing how the system determined conflicts, the pair found a simple workaround. Each message sent on the Can bus has a number, which increments by one each time. If the system receives three or more messages with the same number, it declares a fault and throws the whole thing out.
But what the pair discovered is that if the attacker’s message is sent first, with the correct counter, then the real message gets ignored. And if the next message is one further incremented, then the system never fully goes into lockdown, allowing the attacker to fully control the car: they can turn the steering wheel, hit the gas or slam on the brakes at any speed. Testing that one on the same rural road ended up with the pair losing control and crashing into a ditch, where they’d presumably still be to this day if some locals with a pickup truck hadn’t happened to pass by.
There’s one saving grace to all this though: ever since Fiat Chrysler fixed the hole disclosed last year, such attacks can only be done with physical access to the car. That’s the company’s response to the research: “While we admire their creativity, it appears that the researchers have not identified any new remote way to compromise a 2014 Jeep Cherokee or other FCA US vehicles,” it said. It’s true, but the pair warn others not to dismiss their findings that quickly: if they hadn’t found the earlier bug, then the cars would still be open to just this sort of attack, and it would be much more damaging.
“All these attacks would have worked if you had a remote attack,” said Valasek. “It would have worked in 2015.” Valasek and Miller offered some simple fixes that would make doing what they did much harder: code-signing would make reprogramming the onboard computers much harder, while better intrusion detection would throw up alarms earlier in the process, and not be fooled by simply incrementing a counter.
But for Bugcrowd’s Tighe, the success of Valasek and Miller is proof of the opposite: not that the car’s internal processes should be more suspicious, but that it’s in their nature to be naive and open. Speed, he says, is of the essence in these systems. If the brake pedal says brake, it’s important that the brake pads not waste time checking that the message really came from the brake pedal: instead, they need to get on with the important business of braking.
Tighe thinks the solution lies in ensuring that unauthorised users can’t send messages on the Can bus in the first place, not wasting valuable time encrypting, signing, or reverifying messages sent between the internal processes. It’s an approach he says works well for military hardware, where the time penalty is even fiercer.
Self-driving taxis roll out in Singapore - beating Uber to it Read more
It’s also one that necessarily involves putting all your eggs in one basket, however. No one thinks the car’s internal computers should be completely open to outsiders. The question is how much damage they should be able to do if they can find a way in anyway.
Of course, that assumes that access to the car’s internal computers is needed for a malicious attacker to do harm. Another group of researchers at Defcon presented their own form of car hacking which uses the very smartness of modern automobiles as the weapon.
Three researchers, from China’s Zhejiang University and internet security company Qihoo 360, took aim at the battery of sensors that adorn modern cars – particularly those with rudimentary (or more advanced) automation features. “The reliability of the sensors directly affects the reliability of autonomous driving,” said Chen Yan. The death of Joshua Brown, whose Tesla hit the side of a truck while the car’s autopilot mode was engaged, underscores that: the car failed to see the white truck against the bright sky and ploughed into it.
Chen and his fellow researchers showed that artificially creating a similar situation might not be as hard as it should be. The three subjected a Tesla Model S and an Audi equipped with self-parking features to a battery of attacks designed to leave them blinded in all their senses.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The wreck of the fatal Tesla crash, which killed its driver, Joshua Brown. Photograph: AP
Self-driving cars use a number of sensors, for various purposes. Ultrasound is used, like a bat’s echolocation, for determining the distance of close objects (useful for making sure you don’t hit a wall when reversing), while millimetre-wave radio is the core part of the radar component that lets the car map out the stretch of road immediately ahead of it (so you don’t end up rear-ending someone while using adaptive cruise control).
Those sensors, though, can be jammed, spoofed, or muted, and cars don’t tend to react well to them. Jamming involves drowning the sensors out with your own data; spoofing is trying to trick the sensor by blasting your own responses at it; while muting involves applying the same technique as used in noise-cancelling headphones to diminish the power of the original signal.
Unfortunately for the car manufacturers, the more complex techniques often aren’t necessary. Simply playing a loud enough ultrasound burst to drown out the echolocation, for instance, is remarkably effective. Rather than going into a failsafe mode and assuming that there’s an obstacle immediately in front, both the Audi and Tesla instead assume that there’s nothing for the next half-kilometre. Bravely or foolishly, one of the team demonstrated that fact by standing next to the car as it was driving towards the jammer. The car hit him, albeit slowly.
A similar, if more complex, attack worked on the radar. The team built a machine for generating radar interference, and were able to make a car simply disappear from the Tesla’s autopilot view. Importantly, neither attack led to a failsafe state: the car simply assumed there was nothing to see where it couldn’t see anything.
Take it from a cab driver: your most memorable ride won't be driverless | Eugene Salomon Read more
“Sensors should be designed with security in mind,” said Jianhao Liu, another of the three researchers, “so they should always think about intentional attacks, especially when the sensor is going to play a very important rule in self-driving cars.”
Following the collision in May, Tesla pointed out that its autopilot feature isn’t intended for fully autonomous driving. Drivers should be ready to take the wheel at any time. The company has downplayed the sensor attack. “We appreciate the work Wenyuan [Xu] and team put into researching potential attacks on sensors used in the autopilot system,” a spokesperson said. “We have reviewed these results with Wenyuan’s team and have thus far not been able to reproduce any real-world cases that pose risk to Tesla drivers.”
The response in the car-hacking village to the research was mixed. While some were happy that the research was being done, others saw it as less worthy than the genuine hacking, arguing that spoofing sensors isn’t really any different from causing car crashes by shining a laser into drivers’ eyes.
It’s hard to find unanimity among hackers on anything. People who use “herding cats” as the apotheosis of a tricky organisational challenge have never had to herd information security experts. But the group of people united by the motivation to push computer security to its absolute limit seem to agree on one thing, at least: car hacking is here to stay, and sooner or later, you’ll be hit too.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/28/car-hacking-future-self-driving-security
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/152529045124baf136a5d9d8b24cbbe7b843c4a9f16bcb2402f6970e3e5bffb4.json
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[
"Jamie Jackson"
] | 2016-08-30T12:52:44 | null | 2016-08-30T12:16:48 |
A defiant Bastian Schweinsteiger has told José Mourinho he could still help Manchester United if given a chance though the midfielder insisted there is ‘no problem’ with the manager
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fbastian-schweinsteiger-i-have-no-problem-with-jose-mourinho.json
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| null |
Bastian Schweinsteiger: I have no problem with José Mourinho
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Bastian Schweinsteiger has told José Mourinho he could still help Manchester United if given a chance though the midfielder insisted there is “no problem” with the manager despite being excluded from the first-team squad.
Transfer window live: Hart's agent confirms Torino move, Zaha, Wilshere and more! Read more
The German will retire from international football following Wednesday’s friendly with Finland at Borussia Park, Mönchengladbach. Yet the 32-year-old believes he can still play at the highest level despite being demoted by Mourinho and informed he should train with the younger players.
He said: “My wish would be to continue playing for Manchester United. I have no personal problems with José Mourinho. One thing is for sure: I’m not going to stop playing football. I still believe in my own ability. I could still help Man United if given the chance.”
The 2014 World Cup winner also ruled out a move to Major League Soccer. “The MLS transfer window is closed. So it won’t happen this season,” he said. “I’m so happy that I was able to make it to 120 games for Germany. I’ve had many great moments, but particularly the way the fans supported me and the road to the final in Rio [when Germany beat Argentina to win the World Cup].”
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/30/bastian-schweinsteiger-i-have-no-problem-with-jose-mourinho
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/cbd6206d47b820c356f7510c0c3d4a09de12f5128b3b4b884ecbf9e05a09196a.json
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[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-27T10:49:12 | null | 2016-08-27T09:23:23 |
Les Jackson stays with his son, who was critically injured in an attack that killed a woman at a hostel in far north Queensland
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fbritish-knife-attack-victim-tom-jackson-remains-on-life-support.json
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| null |
British knife attack victim Tom Jackson remains on life support
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The father of knife attack victim Tom Jackson, who remains on life support in a far north Queensland hospital, is keeping vigil at his bedside.
Since arriving from Britain on Thursday night, Les Jackson has spent the majority of his time with his son at Townsville hospital.
Tom Jackson, 30, was attacked on Tuesday at a hostel at Home Hills, about 100km (62 miles) south of Townsville, while trying to assist and protect fellow Briton Mia Ayliffe-Chung, who was stabbed to death. He suffered multiple wounds to his head and torso.
Politicians jostle to cry 'lone wolf' over stabbing of British backpacker in Queensland Read more
Les Jackson met with detectives in Townsville on Saturday, but has yet to speak publicly about his son.
Police have praised Tom Jackson’s “fantastic” bravery during the attack, which happened in front of 30 onlookers. A local man who intervened suffered non life-threatening injuries and a dog at the hostel was killed.
Les Jackson posted a photo of his family on social media on Thursday with the comment: “Family – the only really important thing.”
Frenchman Smail Ayad, who was staying at the hostel, is accused of murdering Ayliffe-Chung and stabbing Tom Jackson, as well as killing a dog and injuring a dozen police officers after his arrest.
Police deemed him too aggressive to appear in Townsville magistrates court on Friday, where his case was adjourned until 28 October.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/27/british-knife-attack-victim-tom-jackson-remains-on-life-support
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/388b50b8ec662ad86de3d6ffa0268784b95e91988510f73640be1a3a011eae5b.json
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[
"David Robert Grimes"
] | 2016-08-28T10:59:04 | null | 2016-01-11T16:44:32 |
Over 90% of cervical cancers are caused by HPV. But squeamishness about sex and unsupported safety fears are threatening vaccination programmes
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2Fblog%2F2016%2Fjan%2F11%2Fwhy-is-there-opposition-hpv-vaccine-cervical-cancer.json
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We know it's effective. So why is there opposition to the HPV vaccine ?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Human papillomavirus (HPV) has long haunted humankind; almost all sexually active adults carry some of HPV’s 170 strains. And although many of these are harmless, amongst the myriad mutants there are those whose effects are anything but benign: subtypes 6 and 11 can lead to genital warts; subtypes 16 and 18 (amongst others) can lead to cervical, vulvar, vaginal, penile, anal and oral cancers. This is not some mere hypothetical risk – over 90% of cervical cancers are caused by HPV, a cancer which claimed the lives of 270,000 women in 2012 alone.
Luckily, the HPV vaccine Gardasil is extraordinarily effective at preventing infection, being at least 99% effective against the four most odious subtypes (6,11,16,18) in young women. Yet despite this, it has been the subject of dogged opposition - in the US, vaccination rates have stagnated far below the optimum levels for protection, while a number of legal challenges against the vaccine have been mounted across Europe. But why is this the case?
Broadly speaking, opposition can be separated into two distinct categories, the first of which expresses itself as moral concern. There is a sizeable contingent who find the idea that their children will eventually have normal sexual urges disquieting, with some physicians also voicing opposition on moral grounds. Moral opposition to HPV vaccination is clearest in America, primarily voiced by religious conservatives, whose arguments pivot around sex rather than efficacy, advocating abstinence in lieu of vaccination. A major concern appears to be that without the fear of genital warts or cervical cancer, young people will become more promiscuous, and that the HPV vaccine therefore in effect encourages behaviour they deem immoral.
CDC says HPV down by 56% among teenagers since vaccine introduction Read more
This slightly twisted assumption is flatly contradicted by the data – it operates on a strange, moralistic “consequences of sex” principle, a mantra that abstinence trumps pragmatism. Yet evidence to date clearly indicates that abstinence programmes simply don’t work, and that teens subjected to this approach begin sexual activity at the same stage as their peers – worse again, teens educated in such ways tend to have more pregnancies than those receiving conventional sex education.
More damningly, the assumption that vaccination is a passport to wanton sexual abandon doesn’t stand up to scrutiny – teenagers receiving the HPV vaccine tend to be far more aware of sexual health than their unvaccinated peers, and fully cogniscent of the fact that the vaccine is no panacea to sexual infections. Studies on sexual activity in vaccinated and unvaccinated teen cohorts show quite clearly that sexual activity is not elevated in the vaccinated group.
The second category of opposition is rooted in safety fears. Like all clinical compounds, Gardasil has been extensively tested for years, constantly monitored for potential adverse effects. By all measures it has been found to be a safe and effective intervention. The complication rate is extremely low, with the most common reactions being irritation at the site of injection, and fainting post injection - precisely the minor temporary reactions seen with any shot. The safety and the efficacy of the vaccine has been reaffirmed by numerous independent investigations, including a 2015 report based on data from over a million individuals which concluded the vaccine had a favourable safety profile.
Despite this, ominous reports of “vaccine-damage” still circulate. Some of this is based on simple misunderstandings, but a significant proportion is down to the success anti-vaccine campaigners have in sharing their claims online and across social media. In particular, claims that the HPV vaccine causes thrombosis and chronic fatigue are common , but have been comprehensively debunked. Anti-vaccine sites also perpetuate the falsehood that Gardasil has been banned in Japan .
Despite the paucity of evidence for damaging effects from Gardasil, there have been a number of legal challenges mounted against it, most recently in December 2015 by Fiona Kirby, who is being supported by Irish group Reactions and Effects of Gardasil Resulting in Extreme Trauma (Regret). Kirby alleges that her daughter suffered “horrendous” adverse effects after being given the vaccine, and Regret claim that upwards of 140 girls are suffering severe non-specific reactions to the vaccination, from fainting spells to fits. The group’s attempt to obtain an injunction for a withdrawal of Gardasil made it to the Irish High Court, and although it was refused, the movement shows no signs of abating – if anything, they have received an incredibly sympathetic media airing.
In one respect, this is understandable: the cases are emotive, even if all evidence suggests Regret are misguided in their attempt to blame the vaccine. Their assertions are simply not supported by the copious amount of clinical evidence, nor have these trends been seen in the upwards of 200 million doses of Gardasil given worldwide to date. Given the sheer volume of teens who have received the vaccine, it is a statistical certainty that some will develop a physical or psychosomatic illness after inoculation. While this makes for an arresting anecdote, the implicit assumption that the temporal sequence is anything other than coincidental is comprehensively debunked by the scientific and statistical evidence against it.
While sensitivity by media organisations is laudable, is it completely irresponsible journalism to suspend all critical faculties when reporting on vaccines. Sadly, scaremongering anecdotes without scientific evidence all too frequently masquerade unchallenged as public interest stories, and the Gardasil controversy is no exception. In December, Irish broadcaster TV3 ran an investigation, featuring Regret’s assertions prominently. These claims were frequently presented uncritically, giving these tired myths a new audience of worried parents. Such was the response to the show that the Health Service Executive had to issue a statement on it to address the panic it induced. Those of us in science outreach were left in the unenviable position of having to counter an emotive narrative in an attempt to neutralise some of the damage done by such vapid reporting.
Conservatives' HPV vaccine dilemma: are they anti-cancer, or just anti-sex? | Jill Filipovic Read more
Such skewed coverage also triggers a chorus of populist politicians to chime in with equally vacuous additions. Indeed, so predictable is this phenomena that I’ve written about it before for this paper. In Ireland, a familiar list of opposition politicians from Sinn Fein to independents have regurgitated the claims verbatim, and speakers from Regret have even been invited to address the Irish parliament. One TD (member of the Irish parliament), seemingly unfamiliar with the old adage about prevention being better than cure, even questioned why there was a need for a vaccine when we have smear tests for cancer. Whether this is borne of genuine ignorance or cynical vote-chasing we can only speculate, but it risks adding to the public perception there is some genuine debate over the safety and efficacy of the vaccine when this is resoundingly not the case.
The case for the safety of the HPV vaccine is buttressed by swathes of clinical evidence and years of data, whereas the opposing side is comprised of anecdotes, emotive appeals and easily debunked assertions. It a complete failure of journalism to present them as equally valid opposing views, a glaring error known as false balance. It is also irresponsible: we need only cast our minds back to the damage done by baseless scare stories “reported” about the MMR vaccine to be reminded of this fact. This propensity to sensationalism over informed reporting is one that crops up with each new or rehashed panic story. Despite the complicity of media outlets in spreading poorly researched or misleading stories, blame for this seems to be curiously evanescent.
Despite all the sound and fury from religious conservatives, anti-vaccine campaigners and clueless broadcasters, the unassailable crux of the matter is that the HPV vaccine has the potential to save lives. We cannot afford to let squeamishness about sex dictate our health policy, nor should we allow falsehoods to cloud our judgement. The lives of countless young men and women count on us being guided by evidence rather than rhetoric.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2016/jan/11/why-is-there-opposition-hpv-vaccine-cervical-cancer
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en
| 2016-01-11T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/64e6bfb8e4ad49eac1296632be5dfc679aa98bedb597cc2f9a867623809a6fe9.json
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[
"Andrew Rawnsley"
] | 2016-08-28T04:51:27 | null | 2016-08-28T03:45:21 |
It looks highly improbable that the party will get any relief from its agonies when the leadership result is announced
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Flabour-leadership-interesting-experiment-corbyn.json
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| null |
Labour’s ‘interesting experiment’ in comradeship will run and run
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Chris Mullin was a fellow traveller of Jeremy Corbyn in the 1980s, back in the day when the two of them were helping Tony Benn in his ultimately unsuccessful bid to capture the commanding heights of the Labour party. He left parliament in 2010 and is about to publish a memoir which, as readers of his excellent diaries will anticipate, is wryly thoughtful. Towards the conclusion, he reflects on the prolonged torture that his party is putting itself through and writes that elevating his old Bennite comrade to the leadership was “always going to be a high risk strategy”. He goes on to reveal: “Much as I respect Jeremy, I did not vote for him on the grounds that in a parliamentary democracy it is folly to elect a leader who enjoys the confidence of less than 10% of his parliamentary colleagues. And so it has proved. It has been an interesting experiment, but always destined to end badly.”
More pungent descriptions than “interesting experiment” are available. There are also more lurid predictions of how it will end than “badly”. What no one can say with any confidence is when that will happen. It certainly looks highly improbable that Labour will get any relief from its agonies when the result of the leadership contest is announced next month. If anything, Labour’s pains are going to be compounded by an outcome which seems very likely to leave things exactly as they are, only worse.
Leadership battles do not have to be bad news for a political party. Even bitterly divisive contests can have a benefit if they allow the ventilation and thrashing out of differences as a step towards resolving them. There has been plenty of poison flowing through Labour during its long summer of unlove, but no sense that those toxins have been drained. Quite the reverse. The divisions have become more entrenched.
The threat that the Labour conference might have to be cancelled was lifted on Friday night when the party finally found a security firm prepared to work with them. The main challenge for the guards will not so much be shielding the conference from the outside world as protecting the party’s warring activists, officials and MPs from each other. We have got to an extraordinary situation when Labour suspends the party membership of the general secretary of an important trade union and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, then accuses his own party of conducting a “rigged purge”.
As the ballot papers start to come in, the expectation among both his devotees and his enemies is that the incumbent will win. The bookies’ odds imply that he has a better than 80% chance of still being leader when Labour meets in Liverpool at the end of September. Even the more optimistic of his internal opponents now think the best they can hope for is that his majority goes down, diminishing his mandate.
The strategy of his challenger, Owen Smith, has not been to make it a contest about ideology. “I am just as radical as Jeremy,” has been his refrain.” If Mr Smith were to win, it would be on a platform well to the left of Ed Miliband’s losing manifesto at the last general election. Mr Smith has instead sought to make the contest about effectiveness and electability. When this strategy was conceived it seemed to have a logic to it: the way to beat Mr Corbyn was to peel away some of his support. That argued for a challenger who would align with a lot of the incumbent’s positions. But the contest has revealed the flaws in that approach, as some of the Labour moderates who originally backed the strategy are now beginning to privately concede. It has meant a contest almost entirely devoid of the interplay of ideas.
Labour MPs are not going to clap their hands to their foreheads and cry: 'We were wrong about Jeremy!'
If you are a Corbynista, why would you not vote for the original rather than a copy who is being sold by MPs who clearly are not Corbynistas? As for effectiveness, many of St Jeremy’s supporters simply will not accept that he is a poor leader, while others dismiss “competence” as a false construct of the mainstream media, “Red Tories” and other running dogs of the neoliberal establishment. Among the devotees, the cult of his personality has, if anything, been inflated over the past few weeks. “The contest is all about Corbyn,” says one Smith-supporting MP with regret. “It is all about him. It doesn’t matter what Owen says really. No one is listening.”
So it looks highly probable that the crimson king will keep his throne, and that could be construed as a considerable triumph. This is certainly how it is going to be interpreted by his followers, whose ardour at rallies and hustings suggests that their devotion to him is undimmed by his appalling poll ratings. Against a hostile media, the open opposition of the vast majority of his parliamentary party and diabolical corporate conspiracies to make him sit on the floor of train carriages, he will be back. Mr Corbyn and those who support him will be able to say that he has become the only person in the postwar history of his party to have been twice elected to the job.
Yet that will simply leave Labour’s fundamental structural split as vast and unmaskable as ever. The party will be back to where it was at the beginning of the summer with a leader who is openly opposed by the vast majority of his parliamentary colleagues. This contest started rolling when 172 of them declared that they had no confidence in him. So then did every single living former leader of the party. During the contest, they have been joined by the mayor of London – the most powerful Labour politician in the land – and the leader of the party in Scotland. It is the more remarkable that Sadiq Khan and Kezia Dugdale should both urge his removal as leader even when it was apparent that this is unlikely to happen. None of that can be unsaid or undone. Labour MPs are not going to clap their hands to their foreheads and cry: “We were wrong about Jeremy!”
As soon as parliament resumes, with it will return the question of how Labour can function as the opposition when a critical mass of its MPs have resigned from or refused to serve on the frontbench. Mr Corbyn has said that he will offer a “hand of friendship” to his parliamentary party but many think that it will be aimed at their throats. “They will threaten the PLP with unity,” predicts one former member of the shadow cabinet. “They will send McDonnell out to say, ‘The members have spoken, now fall into line or we’ll come and get you.’”
Some of the resignees may agree to return to the frontbench for fear of retribution in their constituencies or on the more noble grounds that the country needs Labour to do its constitutional duty of providing a parliamentary opposition. But whether they choose to return to the frontbench or continue to be refuseniks, all of the 172 are still going to struggle to answer the question “Is Jeremy Corbyn fit to be prime minister?” when they have declared him unfit to be leader of the opposition.
The likelier prospect is that the two sides settle in for more months of bitterly attritional warfare
On the part of the Corbynistas, the more zealously vengeful talk of using deselection to launch a purge of Labour MPs. The more sober people in the Corbyn camp are wary of the multiple risks of pursuing that course, at least in the near future. There would be nothing to stop a deselected MP from carrying on in parliament in the meantime. Nor could an MP be prevented from resigning his or her seat to trigger a byelection which they could then fight under the name of “True Labour” or “Save Labour” or something similar.
The superficially clean answer to the party’s predicament is for Corbyn Labour and anti-Corbyn Labour to concede that their differences are irreconcilable and go their separate ways. Two models of how that could happen are most commonly discussed. In the slightly less apocalyptic scenario, the parliamentary party announces that it is declaring its independence from Mr Corbyn and then elects its own chief to replace him as leader of the opposition. The fuller-blown version of divorce would see Labour MPs separating themselves into a wholly distinct party and inviting those of the membership who agree with them to follow. These ideas have some takers and promoters among commentators and there are Labour MPs who don’t rule it out, but they are very much a minority at the moment. “The people urging a split just do not understand the Labour party,” says one former shadow cabinet member who entirely shares the despair about the current state of the party but fears an MP-led breakaway would simply make things even darker and invite annihilation at the ballot box if Theresa May goes for a general election next spring.
So the likelier prospect is that the two sides settle in for more months of bitterly attritional warfare. The interim goal of the Corbyn team will be to try to exploit his re-election by pushing for rule changes that will strengthen their position and aiming to wrest control of the party machinery. Iain McNicol, the party’s general secretary, is quite clearly in their cross-hairs. Labour MPs will try to learn from this contest as they plan for another challenge next year. Of an end to the “interesting experiment”, there is no sight.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/28/labour-leadership-interesting-experiment-corbyn
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a3faba1c07d363adc25ea06c52e37864fe66e5c5a8d135d8dcef407af95368f4.json
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[
"Ruth Maclean"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:52 | null | 2016-08-24T23:01:33 |
Research predicts African children will account for 43% of global poverty by 2030, although absolute number of poor will fall
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fglobal-development%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fhigh-birth-rates-poverty-undermine-generation-african-children-odi-report.json
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| null |
High birth rates and poverty undermine a generation of African children - report
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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African children will make up nearly half the world’s poorest people by 2030 if nothing is done to reverse existing trends, according to a report.
Despite economic growth, one in five children will live in poverty because of high fertility rates, inequality and deep-seated privation, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
The first of the 17 sustainable development goals agreed last September aims to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” by 2030.
Contraception and family planning around the world – interactive Read more
In absolute terms, the number of African children living in poverty is predicted to drop steeply: in 2012, 216 million children were estimated to be living below the $1.90 (£1.44) a day World Bank threshold. The ODI predicts the number will fall to 148 million in 2030.
However, because of other groups moving out of poverty faster, and because African women average more than four births each, their share in global poverty will double to 43%.
“It’s not that the number will grow,” said Kevin Watkins, one of the report’s authors. “The point is that poverty is not coming down in Africa in comparison with elsewhere.
“We’ve had economic growth, and child mortality rates have dropped dramatically over the last 20 years, but fertility rates haven’t started to shift.”
Fertility rates are highest in west Africa. Chad, where women have on average more than six children each, is near the top of the table.
“It isn’t easy to speak about and work on family planning in a country like Chad, because of many cultural and social problems,” said Moydoty Maranga, director of the Chadian association of family wellbeing (Astbef), the main organisation working on family planning in the country. “And it wasn’t at all easy at the beginning – people said these were western ideas. We insisted, and little by little we recruited volunteers.”
Over-populated or under-developed? The real story of population growth Read more
Volunteers give out information and contraceptives as well as showing people films about the consequences of having big families. Since it started in 1991, Astbef has set up clinics that offer everything from HIV testing to post-abortion care and pre-marital counselling.
“We’ve especially got a lot of support from women. Resistance comes from men. This is a pro-birth society and a bit macho. Before, when you talked about condoms – ayayay!” Maranga said, using a common Chadian expression of frustration and wordlessness. “People would even throw stones. They thought they made you sterile, and that the lube could make you sick – all kinds of crazy ideas. That’s why it’s so important to talk to young people and women about it.”
His words were echoed by the ODI report. Women across the continent want to have fewer children, Watkins said, particularly Nigerian women, who have five children on average but would rather have closer to three.
High child marriage rates – 12% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa are married off before the age of 15 – mean a longer childbearing window.
Family planning is 'critical link' in eradicating poverty Read more
“The silence of African leaders on issues like child marriage is frankly outrageous,” Watkins said, adding that the international community has also failed to put in place social protection systems.
“It’s out of step with all the things undertaken in the sustainable development goals.”
African governments in particular need to come up with strategies for fighting child poverty if they are serious about ending it within a generation, the report said.
The Chadian government agreed to fund Astbef, but cut funding when it found itself in economic crisis. The main donor, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, wants it to look for other donors.
“We can’t pay salaries, we need money for transport, for contraceptives – we can’t even get enough money for that,” said Maranga.
“This should be the government’s job, but they’re not doing it. So someone has to do it, and we are. But there’s so little money.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/25/high-birth-rates-poverty-undermine-generation-african-children-odi-report
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2d7abb58b48955fb01bbd5c16f0bcb427403c3f16fc20ed5f09c7c7ea4f97067.json
|
|
[
"Staff"
] | 2016-08-30T20:52:28 | null | 2016-08-30T20:19:58 |
US multinationals Amazon and McDonald’s deny receiving illegal state aid through alleged preferential arrangements with authorities
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fafter-apple-the-other-tax-deals-in-the-european-commissions-sights.json
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en
| null |
After Apple, the other tax deals in the European commission's sights
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The European commission’s ruling against Apple is the biggest blow dealt by Brussels so far in a long-running battle against multinationals and their tax affairs.
The Apple tax ruling – what this means for Ireland, tax and multinationals Read more
These are the tax investigations that have been completed by the commission, as well as ongoing cases. All involve some of the biggest companies in the world, from Starbucks to online retailer Amazon.
Completed investigations
Starbucks
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The coffee chain has been asked to pay another €30m by the commission. Photograph: Lex van Lieshout/EPA
In October 2015, the commission ordered the Netherlands to recover up to €30m (£26m) in taxes from the coffee shop chain. Because of favourable tax treatments available in the Netherlands, tax planners at Starbucks had been keen to ensure as much of the company’s income as possible was channelled through the country.
Fiat
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fiat has also been asked to pay €30m by the commission. Photograph: IPA/Rex/Shutterstock
At the same time as the Starbucks decision, the commission told Luxembourg to recoup up to €30m from carmaker Fiat. Both cases involved the use of similar tax avoidance structures. Income from many other countries was shifted to the Netherlands and Luxembourg via interest, royalties and other intra-group payments.
Announcing the Fiat and Starbucks rulings, the European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said: “I hope that, with today’s decisions, this message will be heard by member state governments and companies alike. All companies – big or small, multinational or not – should pay their fair share of tax.”
AB InBev, BP and 33 others
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brewer AB InBev has been targeted by Brussels authorities over its tax arrangements. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
In January this year, the commission told Belgium to recover around €700m from 35 companies. According to reports, they included oil group BP and AB InBev, the brewer behind the Stella Artois brand, due to their participation in a tax scheme that breached EU competition rules.
Belgium had introduced a scheme under which multinationals could reduce their corporate tax bases by up to 90%.
Ongoing investigations
Amazon
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amazon’s tax deal with Luxembourg is under investigation. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
The commission is currently scrutinising Amazon’s tax deal with Luxembourg. Brussels believes the 2003 deal could have allowed Amazon’s European headquarters to lock in a preferentially low tax rate, using a system of internal royalty payments. According to a Reuters report, Amazon could be ordered to repay €400m. However, the US company has said it does not receive preferential treatment from Luxembourg and is not based in the Grand Duchy solely for tax reasons, and it has more than 1,000 employees based there.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s’ tax affairs need to be ‘looked at very carefully’, says Vestager. Photograph: Barry Bland
In December, Vestager announced an investigation into a deal between McDonald’s and Luxembourg. She said the US fast food chain had not paid any corporate taxes in Luxembourg or the United States on royalties paid by franchisees in Europe and Russia since 2009. She said: “A tax ruling that agrees to McDonald’s paying no tax on its European royalties either in Luxembourg or in the US has to be looked at very carefully under EU state aid rules. The purpose of double taxation treaties between countries is to avoid double taxation — not to justify double non-taxation.”
McDonald’s denied any wrongdoing, while Luxembourg said the fast food group had not received preferential treatment. As with the Apple ruling, the commission can rule that a tax arrangement constitutes illegal state aid if it has not been offered to other companies.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/after-apple-the-other-tax-deals-in-the-european-commissions-sights
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/fe8efcea9a07eb75e8fadccd4d3b70c243ad90aae5b9a64c726174255278c6ef.json
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|
[
"Jillian Segal",
"Judith Landsberg"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:01 | null | 2016-08-24T23:26:42 |
The recommendation that Australia needs fewer science graduates is damaging. Science degrees provide skills that will be central to the jobs of the future and foster attributes vital in our future leaders
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsustainable-business%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fthe-grattan-institute-is-wrong-we-need-more-science-students-not-fewer.json
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en
| null |
The Grattan Institute is wrong. We need more science students, not fewer
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Science degrees have copped more than their fair share of criticism in recent weeks. The Grattan Institute’s Mapping Australia’s higher education 2016 report argues that Australia has too many science graduates. What’s striking about this finding is that it fails to acknowledge the broad-based value of a scientific education.
PhD candidate Alexandra Phelan studied for a dual bachelor of biomedical science and a bachelor of law, and is now completing a doctorate in international health law at Georgetown University in Washington as a John Monash scholar. In 2014, when the Ebola outbreak hit west Africa, Phelan consulted on the epidemic for both the World Health Organisation and the countries affected.
Phelan is continuing to provide advice on how global law can be used in international epidemics to reduce the spread of the Zika virus. But if we are to take note of the Grattan Institute report on education, Phelan would be lamented as falling among the many science graduates who are not working as scientists.
Music with a message: engineering industry tackles shortage of female students Read more
The Grattan Institute report makes the narrow assumption that science is a vocational degree that trains people to be scientists, and is concerned that “science graduates are pushing into a general labour market in which they must compete with graduates from other fields”. This conclusion is based on a misconception: that science graduates are limited to a career in science. A science degree teaches skills that are important in any workplace: it is a foundational degree that develops numeracy and challenges students to value the critical lessons learned in the process of discovery: creativity, patience and attention to detail. Phelan is a perfect exemplar of the value a science degree holds to other fields.
Every year General Sir John Monash scholars are selected from all fields of endeavour in a highly competitive process, with the goal of identifying and funding individuals who will lead Australia in the future. More than half of these have undergraduate science degrees (including science, maths, engineering, IT and biomedical science, commonly grouped as Stem degrees, but excluding medical undergraduate degrees). It is striking that in an open selection process, with selection panels largely composed of non-scientists, science graduates are over-represented among individuals identified as Australia’s future leaders. The key attributes fostered by a science degree are an inquiring mind, facility with data and technology, an analytical approach to problem solving and a sense of curiosity and inquiry. These are attributes that are of vital importance to Australia’s future leaders.
There are broader lessons here. Almost all of Australia’s industries – including mining, banking and retail – are, and will continue to be, subject to technology-driven disruption and will need technology-literate people to counter such disruption with innovation.
Moreover, most jobs of the future will exist in industries we cannot yet predict but that will require creativity, analytical ability and a comfort with technology. The Grattan Institute report, in fact, acknowledges that “Stem employers report that their employees with Stem qualifications are better at problem solving and critical thinking than are employees without Stem qualifications”.
Time for men to sign up to female-dominated caring and sharing jobs Read more
Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel, observed this month: “If you want a worker who can solve a problem in a short time, with resources strung out to the nth degree, hire someone with a science doctorate.”
Hugh Evans, the founder of the Oaktree foundation and another John Monash scholar, illustrates Finkel’s point. Evans heads up the Global Poverty project, a global human rights organisation that aims to eradicate world poverty. The problem-solving skills of his undergraduate science degree from Monash are used every day and have an impact on millions of people in need around the world.
The Grattan Institute’s recommendation that we need fewer science graduates is potentially very damaging to Australia. We believe that more science grads are needed, not fewer. We need to encourage an understanding among educators, students and the wider community that an undergraduate science degree can be applied to many different contexts, jobs, industries and situations. Government and business should get behind our science students and encourage future ones.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/25/the-grattan-institute-is-wrong-we-need-more-science-students-not-fewer
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1f410f0ce18237498d11eb626ed7aaf58a55b4b1984c67b36157f4be2a10f7d9.json
|
|
[
"Niall Mcveigh"
] | 2016-08-28T12:51:41 | null | 2016-08-28T12:51:00 |
Minute-by-minute report: Can Middlesbrough continue their unbeaten start to the season or will West Brom improve their prospects with a home win? Join Niall McVeigh
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Flive%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fwest-bromwich-albion-v-middlesbrough-premier-league-live.json
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en
| null |
West Bromwich Albion v Middlesbrough: Premier League - live!
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
| null |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2016/aug/28/west-bromwich-albion-v-middlesbrough-premier-league-live
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6d72afcfa20efe90e35e2d97d422273026a922e4bb024b0b9aa3e4d570789231.json
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|
[
"Associated Press In Chicago"
] | 2016-08-27T12:51:44 | null | 2016-08-27T03:23:42 |
Wade opens up on Twitter after fatal shooting of cousin on Chicago streets: ‘Enough is enough’
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fdwyane-wade-cousin-shot-chicago.json
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en
| null |
Cousin of NBA star Dwyane Wade fatally shot while pushing baby in stroller
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A family spokesman says a cousin of Chicago Bulls star Dwyane Wade has been fatally shot while pushing a baby in a stroller on the city’s South Side.
Pastor Edward Jones says 32-year-old Nykea Aldridge was walking to register her children for school Friday after recently relocating.
Basketball star Wade addressed the killing in a post on Twitter.
— DWade (@DwyaneWade) My cousin was killed today in Chicago. Another act of senseless gun violence. 4 kids lost their mom for NO REASON. Unreal. #EnoughIsEnough
Chicago police say Aldridge was killed when two males walked up and fired shots at a third man Friday afternoon but shot Aldridge in her head and an arm. Police say she wasn’t the intended target.
Police say the baby wasn’t hurt.
Police say one of the males who fired shots was being questioned Friday.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/26/dwyane-wade-cousin-shot-chicago
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1711b0116b0aebb3e609ef0b0e31a889b6a8bdb8f78a877b7fb00dad799f7b29.json
|
|
[
"Photograph",
"Giuseppe Bellini Getty Images"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:27 | null | 2016-08-26T09:10:28 |
Rubble slumps down the hillside where houses once stood in this devastated village in central Italy
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fitalian-earthquake-pescara-del-tronto-ruins-in-pictures.json
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| null |
Italian earthquake leaves Pescara del Tronto in ruins - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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An aerial view of the ruined village of Pescara del Tronto, released by Italian authorities, shows rubble slumped down the hillside where houses once stood. Photographer Giuseppe Bellini was in the village to take a closer look at the devastation
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2016/aug/26/italian-earthquake-pescara-del-tronto-ruins-in-pictures
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/017220f68163f23674137a31b902b32955e9439e403c68981872a39e21732b74.json
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|
[
"Paul Rees"
] | 2016-08-26T13:21:29 | null | 2016-08-25T19:13:50 |
Andy Robinson, director of rugby at promoted Bristol, said at the Twickenham launch of the Premiership season that it was not a case of survival but looking up the table
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fbristol-andy-robinson-not-about-surviving-saracens-bath-wasps-premiership-season-launch.json
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| null |
Bristol’s Andy Robinson: It’s not about surviving but looking up the table
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The future was toasted at the Twickenham launch of the Premiership season, a contest that grows each year, but the past held the way forward for the director of rugby of promoted Bristol, Andy Robinson, who has never been one to follow the flow slavishly .
Global rugby union season talks stall to leave 2019 fixture list in limbo Read more
The head of the Championship winners’ coaching team is traditionally given a seat at the top table at the Premiership launch, when he is expected, among other platitudes, to say 11th place would mark a successful season. Robinson ignored the script, not because his club is owned by one of the richest men in Britain, Steve Lansdown, but because he expects his players to show the bloody-mindedness and grit he was renowned for during his career with Bath, and to aim higher.
The season starts next month and few of Bristol’s signings so far would amount to a tent signing, never mind a marquee, with the No8 Jordan Crane, a summer recruit from Leicester, namechecked by Robinson. “He knows all about a winning culture,” said Robinson, whose side clambered back into the Premiership at the seventh attempt after years of play-off final heartache.
“It is not about surviving this season but looking up the table. We will be scrapping for everything and we know if we do not perform, we will take a hiding. The players must enjoy the occasion after such a long wait, not get caught in the headlights. We may not be able to compete with other clubs when it comes to international players but we have a number of exciting players who have come through our academy and have the chance to make a name for themselves.”
It has been a long road back for Bristol since they were relegated in 2009, emerging from financial ruin to remodel themselves after Lansdown’s involvement, checking out of the Memorial Stadium and into Ashton Gate, which this season has a 27,000 capacity. “There is a desire for rugby in Bristol and we hope for crowds of 15,000-20,000,” said Robinson, who has signed a new three-year contract with the club he joined in 2013. “We want to create a clubhouse feel after a game, something I remember from my playing career, where players and supporters can mix and discuss the match. Rugby has been built on speaking to people after the final whistle.”
While Bristol are pointing up, Saracens dare not look down from the heights of last season and the league and European Champions Cup double. Such was their ascendancy they lost only once when they had their contingent of England players available and their director of rugby, Mark McCall, believes the success is more of a beginning than the culmination of a project started seven years ago.
“It is not about trying to follow what we achieved last season,” he said. “When this project started, Saracens was not a club known for its consistency. We had a revolving door policy, players and coaches coming and going, but when people leave the club now it is generally due to retirement. We know the underlying factors behind our success and we need to stay true to ourselves.
“It will be tougher for us this season because of the new agreement between the clubs and England: player availability will be an issue for us and we will have to cope with seven or eight being away during the international windows and for two compulsory rest weekends. Our best players may be available for only half the programme and that is unique in world sport.”
Saracens, who are likely to be without their fly-half Owen Farrell for the opening weeks of the season with a back problem, have kept signings to a minimum, although they include the South Africa flanker Schalk Burger, one of several A-listers to arrive in the Premiership this season as the salary cap increases and clubs are allowed a second marquee player. Willie le Roux, Kurtley Beale, JP Pietersen, Louis Picamoles, Matt Toomua and Taulupe Faletau are among others while Bath’s new director of rugby is Todd Blackadder, who has arrived from the Crusaders in New Zealand.
“I have fitted right in because Bath’s style is similar to what I am used to and there is no massive contrast,” said Blackadder, who has made the England fly-half George Ford the club’s captain a few months after the player reportedly considered leaving after his father Mike, Blackadder’s predecessor, was sacked.
“George is a really talented player and an incredibly nice young man,” Blackadder said. “He has drive and is a real student of the game. He is committed and by giving him the leadership role, it shows his standing in the squad. He is a great team man and, having established himself in the England team, he will be in the frame for the Lions without any doubt. He is right up there with [New Zealand’s] Beauden Barrett and I see similarities with Dan Carter.”
The Lions’ tour to New Zealand will give the season an added piquancy and Wasps’ director of rugby, Dai Young, believes his new club captain, Joe Launchbury, will have a notable campaign. “He is an England captain in the making and has all the qualities you want in a leader,” Young said. “He is very respectful of everybody, whether that is the cleaner or chief executive. He is humble, hard-working and a world-class player. He is not someone who talks a hell of a lot but neither was Martin Johnson. He thrives on responsibility and what is frightening is that there is a lot more to come from him.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/25/bristol-andy-robinson-not-about-surviving-saracens-bath-wasps-premiership-season-launch
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f537f9c957b2e5d02faa5e0e109b8b9ffde532759dc1c3bd7da9064c8812639c.json
|
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[
"Stuart Clark"
] | 2016-08-28T08:51:53 | null | 2016-08-28T08:00:27 |
For years, its space programme was shrouded in secrecy. Now China is ready for liftoff
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fchina-new-space-superpower-lunar-mars-missions.json
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| null |
China: the new space superpower
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www.theguardian.com
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At 8pm Beijing time on 25 June this year the tropical darkness over China’s Hainan province was temporarily banished by a blinding orange light. Accompanied by the thunderous roar of engines, a 53m-tall rocket pushed itself into the sky.
China is developing rapidly into one of the major space players Fabio Favata, European Space Agency
An increasing number of Chinese rockets have launched in the past few years but this one was significant for three reasons. It was the first launch of the new Long March 7 rocket, designed to help the Chinese place a multi-module space station in orbit. It was the first liftoff from China’s newly constructed Wenchang launch complex, a purpose-built facility set to become the focus for Chinese space ambitions. And it was the first Chinese launch where tourists were encouraged to go along and watch.
For a space programme that has long been shrouded in secrecy, it’s a major step. The Wenchang complex has been designed with large viewing areas, and in the sultry heat of that June night, tens of thousands of spectators stood cheering as the rocket began its 394km journey above the Earth and into orbit.
“China is developing very rapidly into one of the major space players,” says Fabio Favata, head of the programme coordination office at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) directorate of science.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Long March 7 carrier rocket moves vertically to the launch tower in Wengchang, 22 June 2016. Photograph: VCG via Getty Images
China launched a pioneering “hack proof” quantum communication satellite, called Quantum Experiments at Space Scale, on 16 August from its older Jiuquan launch centre in the Gobi Desert. This is the first large-scale satellite designed to investigate the weird quantum phenomenon called “entanglement” that so unnerved Albert Einstein he once called it “spooky”. In addition, China is preparing to launch another new rocket design, a new space station, an X-ray telescope and a crewed mission before the year is out.
China is estimated to spend around $6bn a year on its space programme. Although that is almost $1bn more than Russia, it is still a fraction of the American space budget, which is around $40bn a year. Despite its large budget, the US made only 19 successful space launches in 2013, compared with China’s 14 and Russia’s 31. With numbers like this, it is clear that China has arrived in space, and is set to become stronger.
To use a Chinese phrase, they want to bring their own mat to the table. They want respect from the space community
“You will see the Chinese quite visibly begin to match the capacity of the other spacefaring powers by 2020,” predicts Brian Harvey, space analyst and author of China in Space: The Great Leap Forward . Key to this will be the large manned space station, Tiangong, which they plan to have in orbit by then. Although not as physically large as the International Space Station America, Russia, Europe, Japan and other countries have been building and using since 1998, China’s space station will have a broadly similar capacity to perform science.
“Science is becoming more and more important in the Chinese space programme,” says Wang Chi of the National Space Science Centre, Chinese Academy of Sciences. “We are not [just] satisfied with the achievements we have made in the fields of the space technology and space application. With the development of the Chinese space programme, we are trying to make contributions to human knowledge about the universe.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chinese astronauts of the Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft mission, Wang Yaping, Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images
Perhaps most impressive is the broad front on which the Chinese space programme is advancing. They are making strides in everything from human space flight to space science and planetary exploration.
So do the Chinese want to take over space? Brian Harvey, space analyst and author of China in Space: The Great Leap Forward, believes the Chinese simply want to be seen as equals. “To use a Chinese phrase, I think they are wanting to bring their own mat to the table,” he says. “They are looking for equality, they want respect from the world’s space community.”
To that end, China’s biggest inroad has been made with the ESA through the space science programme. Soon after the turn of the century. ESA launched the Cluster mission to study so-called “space weather” and the electrical malfunctions this could cause on satellites. The Chinese were keen to learn more about space weather too and came to the European agency with a proposal: they would build extra satellites to enhance the Cluster mission if ESA would collaborate with them.
“They understood that space weather was a key challenge as we rely more and more on technology in orbit,” says Christopher Carr, a physicist at Imperial College, London, who worked on the Cluster mission. ESA took care of the negotiations, allowing scientists, including Carr, to build the instruments unhindered. Although there were some differences in working methods that had to be ironed out, Carr says: “Overall it was an enjoyable collaboration.”
The Double Star mission was launched in 2003 and became China’s first scientific satellite. Cluster and Double Star have so far produced 2,300 peer-reviewed science papers. “That is an enormously successful, astonishing scientific output,” says Carr.
China has gone from strength to strength. In December 2015, it launched the Dark Matter Particle Explorer, a satellite to look for the mysterious non-atomic matter that astronomers believe makes up a large fraction of the universe. This December, it plans to launch the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope to look for black holes. ESA and China are working together on a new mission – the Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (Smile), which is slated for launch in 2021.
The Chinese know that the value of these collaborations extends way beyond the science. “We are the newcomers in space science, and don’t have much experience,” says Wang Chi. “International collaborations are the shortcut for China to catch up with the world. In addition, science, especially space science, should be the responsibility of all humans around the globe. International collaboration is the effective way to obtain the maximum science return from any space mission.”
Favata agrees: “At ESA we collaborate with all major spacefaring nations. If Smile works well it is likely to be the pathfinder for future missions.”
In stark contrast is America, where there is a blanket ban on working with China that dates back years. The most obvious consequence of this has been the exclusion of China from the International Space Station. But far from slowing the Chinese down, the cold shoulder has actually speeded them up.
Circling above us at the moment is the disused shell of China’s first space station. The eight-ton Tiangong 1 (Heavenly Palace) was launched on 29 September 2011 and hosted two three-person crews between 2012 and 2013. It is now abandoned and expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere some time later this year.
The Chinese will launch Tiangong 2, a second test station, next month. It will lead to a substantial orbital facility that will be in use by 2020. Known simply as Tiangong, it will be a key base for space research, with two large science modules joined together by a connecting service module.
“They can do a lot of science on it. It will have a research capacity that the ISS didn’t reach nearly as quickly,” says Harvey.
China is not planning to keep Tiangong all to itself. In June, it signed an agreement with the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs to open the station to experiments and astronauts from UN member states, specifically developing countries that find space too expensive at the moment.
And running the experiments is where China’s astronaut programme comes in. There have been just five crewed space flights since 2003, and none at all since 2013. This is deliberate. “The idea is to take a significant step forward each time,” says Harvey, “and they’re not going to cut corners in terms of safety.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 2011: the Long March II-F rocket carrying the China’s first space station module Tiangong 1 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in north-west China’s Gansu province. Photograph: AP
For the next decade, the Tiangong space station is likely to be the principal destination. Their crew capsule is called Shenzhou (divine vessel). It looks similar to the Russian Soyuz modules probably because the Chinese bought Soyuz technology in the mid-90s. This same agreement saw the training of two Chinese astronauts at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Russia, who then returned to China and trained more astronauts themselves.
Twelve Chinese astronauts have now been into space, including Liu Yang who became the first Chinese woman in space on Shenzhou 9 in 2012. Assuming the Tiangong 2 gets to orbit in September, then Shenzhou 11 will follow on 16 October, carrying two people whose identities have yet to be made public who are scheduled to spend a month on board.
I think the military element in the Chinese space programme is quite overstated Brian Harvey, space analyst
Looking to the future, the Chinese have already begun testing the larger replacement of the Shenzhou capsule. A scaled-down version flew on the June flight of the Long March 7 from Hainan. This larger vehicle will be capable of taking up to six crew to the full Tiangong space station or on missions to lunar orbit.
It was the secondary payload, Aolong 1 (Roaming Dragon), on that launch that raised eyebrows, and stoked fears in some quarters that the civilian space programme is just a front for more covert operations. Aolong 1 has a robotic arm that can grab another satellite and guide it to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Officially, it is to remove space debris from orbit but it could also be used as a weapon, bringing down a rival’s satellite.
Although this is true of any space debris removal system, doubts remain because China does not have an unblemished record in anti-satellite weaponry. In 2007, the Chinese shot down one of their own orbiting spacecraft in what was probably a thinly veiled warning to America. Chinese concerns had been growing since 2002 when the US withdrew from 1972’s Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which paved the way for President George W Bush’s administration to develop space-based weapons systems.
Since that time, concern over China’s militarisation of space has persisted in America. To others, however, that is little more than paranoia. “I think the military element in the Chinese space programme is overstated,” says Harvey. “It’s based on a misreading of the fact that their facilities are protected by the military. It’s a bit like saying the US military controlled the Apollo programme because the US navy took the returning astronauts out of the ocean. It doesn’t stand up.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Long March 2D carrier rocket carrying the remote sensing satellite Yaogan IV blasts off in December 2008. China claimed the satellite was used for scientific research purposes. Some western analysts believed they were spy satellites. Photograph: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images
The military may not be in the driving seat, but it does launch about 15-20% of China’s space missions. The Yaogan series of satellites are billed as remote sensing missions but analysts believe they are actually spy satellites. “I suspect they are entirely military missions. I’ve never seen any scientific papers from the Yaogan missions,” says Harvey.
It is this American fear of China’s military that’s been driving the ban on collaboration, in particular the prevention of technologies being transferred to China by mistake. But now ESA has found a way to allow collaboration without the loss of control. It is “an elegant solution”, says astrophysicist Graziella Branduardi-Raymont at University College London, who is working on Smile. “China builds the basic spacecraft and sends it to Europe. ESA and its collaborators then attach the payload module, which holds the science instruments, and launches the mission. That way, no western tech goes to China.”
The Russians never got much further than paper studies in the 1970s. This is real, the spacecraft is already built
When it comes to rockets, China continues to develop a formidable arsenal of launch vehicles. Their rockets are called Long March and have been in development since the 1970s. The mainstay of their complement is gradually being replaced by the Long March 5, 6 and 7.
While the Long March 7 in June was capable of lifting about 13 tonnes into low Earth orbit, it is the Long March 5 that analysts are really excited about. Due to make its maiden flight this autumn, it’s capable of lifting 25 tonnes to low Earth orbit, rivalling anything the Americans, Russians or Europeans currently have. It is not yet known what the Long March 5 will send into orbit, but the giant rocket’s second flight, scheduled for next year, will be carrying a very special cargo. It will be a robotic mission designed to land on the lunar surface and send back samples of moon rock to the Earth for Chinese scientists to analyse.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest China’s Shenzhou 10 rocket blasts off from the Jiuquan space centre in the Gobi Desert in June 2013. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The Chinese call their lunar exploration mission Chang’e, after the Chinese goddess of the moon. In December 2013 Chang’e 3 hit the headlines after it successfully deployed a small rover on the lunar surface. Despite some technical problems, it continued to return data until just a few weeks ago.
Now, China plans to land a similar mission on the far side of the Moon in 2018. This will be a world first. “The Russians did think about such a mission in the 1970s but they never got much further than paper studies. This is real, the spacecraft is already built,” says Harvey.
Also in the advanced planning stages is a rover to go to Mars. Pencilled in for launch in 2020, the Chinese Mars mission is going to find itself racing Nasa and the ESA, which have their own Mars rover missions launching that year too.
But what about a human landing on the moon? There could be no bigger sign of Chinese competency than that. Sure, America did it almost 50 years ago but with each passing year Apollo seems to have less relevance to the modern exploration of space. Nasa has held back from committing to a new round of lunar landings. Russia and ESA would both like to go to the moon but can’t go it alone. The Chinese, however, seem to have the lunar surface in their sights. Designs for a Long March 9 rocket are currently being studied. With the first launch for the Long March 9 due in 2025, China could very well be in a position to land astronauts on the moon by 2030. This puts it roughly neck-and-neck with America, which currently plans to send astronauts to lunar orbit in 2023 but which has made no commitment to returning to the surface.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Liu Yang, China’s first female astronaut, waves during a departure ceremony before becoming the first Chinese woman in space in June 2012. Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters
Almost certainly this will be a flashpoint, but the ignition of a new space race would be a mistake. The Apollo programme of the 1960s cost the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars for little more than technological one-upmanship. Better now, surely, to cooperate, spreading the cost and the benefit across the world.
The Chinese space programme is gaining momentum year upon year. Its power lies not in unlimited funds but in carefully chosen projects, and the pursuit of clearly targeted goals – something the traditional space powers could learn from, especially when is comes to the crewed programmes.
At present there is no agreement on what to do when the current agreements to use the International Space Station come to an end in 2024. With America continuing to talk about hugely expensive missions to Mars, but with no real plans or budget in place to do this, Russia and ESA could increasingly find that their space ambitions are more aligned with those of the Chinese.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mission control at the Jiuquan space centre in the Gobi Desert after China’s longest manned space mission in 2013. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
What is clear is that the Chinese space programme is more willing than ever to cooperate. With the signing of the UN agreement to host foreign experiments and eventually astronauts on their space station, the Chinese are opening up. It is of course hard to imagine Russia and in particular ESA abandoning Nasa altogether, but it is not inconceivable. In the aftermath of 2008’s credit crunch, Nasa pulled out of a number of high-profile joint missions with Europe, including robotic Mars exploration and space-based observatories. This left ESA floundering for new partners, or frantically rescoping its missions. Increasingly, China will play a role in the international exploration of space, and although it is early days they have so far they have proved to be highly reliable.
A seismic shift in space power is taking place. Europe could pivot either way or balance in the middle. Although most still talk about China “becoming” a space superpower, it is likely that history will record the tipping point as 25 June this year, when a giant rocket split the sky amid the cheers of more than 20,000 tourists.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/28/china-new-space-superpower-lunar-mars-missions
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f8af9e7a8abc5aeaec2febf62d45d135763914f00e4e6a8e77c32d80df021257.json
|
|
[
"Associated Press In Albuquerque",
"New Mexico"
] | 2016-08-27T20:51:34 | null | 2016-08-27T19:55:33 |
Jessica Kelley facing abuse charges in the death of the Albuquerque girl, who was also drugged, strangled and dismembered
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fvictoria-martens-death-suspect-charges-albuquerque.json
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en
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Victoria Martens death: third suspect in court after 10-year-old girl raped
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www.theguardian.com
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The third suspect in the horrific death of a 10-year-old Albuquerque girl made her first court appearance on Saturday.
KRQE-TV reported that Jessica Kelley remained silent as a judge read the charges she faces in the killing of Victoria Martens. The charges include child abuse resulting in death and kidnapping.
Authorities say Victoria Martens was drugged with methamphetamine, raped and strangled before her dismembered body was found in a bathtub on Wednesday. The girl’s mother, Michelle Martens, and her boyfriend, Fabian Gonzales, have also been arrested. Kelley is a cousin of Gonzales.
Judge Chris J Schultz said the case was one of the worst he has ever seen, and ordered Kelley held on $1m bond. The 31-year-old, the last suspect to be booked, had been hospitalized for a broken leg, which she suffered while trying to flee police.
New Mexico has the country’s highest youth poverty rate and a state government that has had heavily publicized difficulties protecting children from abuse. Victoria Martens was not known to have been a victim of previous violent abuse, but officials acknowledged on Friday that Gonzales, who is accused of injecting her with methamphetamine before raping her, was not being monitored by probation officers or tested for drugs as mandated by a judge last year.
In that case, 31-year-old Fabian Gonzales was arrested for beating a woman in a car with a baby inside it while the woman was driving. He ended up pleading no contest to two misdemeanor crimes that kept him out of jail.
Deputy corrections secretary Alex Sanchez said on Friday her agency never received a judgment and sentence order mandating supervised probation for Gonzales. Second judicial district court spokesman Tim Korte said records showed the documents were forwarded to the corrections department in February 2015.
New Mexico has seen other high-profile cases of crimes against children in recent months. In May, a 40-year prison sentence was handed down to an Albuquerque woman over the 2013 kicking death of her nine-year-old son. That case prompted an overhaul of the state agency that investigates child abuse. Also in May this year, an 11-year-old Navajo girl was taken to a desolate area by a stranger who sexually assaulted her, bludgeoned her and left her to die.
“We have a litany of little angels who are crying at us from the grave,” said Allen Sanchez, executive director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops (NMCCB).
New Mexico children, youth and families secretary Monique Jacobson said on Friday state records showed no prior cases involving violence or sexual abuse against Victoria Martens. The agency has joined police in the investigation into the death.
Jacobson said she was prohibited by law from disclosing whether the agency had received any other complaints related to the 10-year-old, who was described by neighbors from her blue-collar apartment complex as a seemingly happy and sociable girl who loved to swim and dance. While Michelle Martens has no online record of an arrest in New Mexico, she told police Kelley had been released from jail days before Victoria’s death.
The three adults face charges of child abuse resulting in death, kidnapping and tampering with evidence. Gonzales and Kelley are also charged of criminal sexual penetration of a minor.
Michelle Martens worked at a local grocery store, said neighbors who knew little else about her, and told detectives she met Gonzales online about a month before her daughter’s death.
Victoria Martens’ grandparents and other relatives said they were thankful to first-responders, investigating authorities and community members who offered prayers, said minister and family spokeswoman Laura Bobbs.
“Children have few rights and no one to speak for them,” Bobbs said. “Today, I speak for the children and the voice of Victoria. Parents, communities and governments need to put our children first because they are our future.”
New Mexico governor Susana Martinez said the Martens case was more troubling than all crimes she handled in a 25-year career as a state prosecutor before her election to the state’s top post in 2010.
“I personally took on some of the most brutal, violent, gut-wrenching cases our state has ever seen. This has to be the worst,” she said in a statement.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/27/victoria-martens-death-suspect-charges-albuquerque
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7f5fcc898dc3303c8be484bb1fc01e0587accdb6d9c57b0ecef51c7d07af67cf.json
|
|
[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-26T18:50:28 | null | 2016-08-26T18:24:04 |
Kieran McDade was taken to hospital after collapsing on the pitch at Dunbeth football club in Coatbridge last week
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fboy-13-dies-after-collapsing-at-football-training.json
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| null |
Boy, 13, dies after collapsing at football training
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www.theguardian.com
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A 13-year-old boy has died after collapsing during a football training session.
Kieran McDade was taken to hospital after collapsing while on the pitch at Dunbeth football club in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, on Thursday last week.
The club confirmed that the teenager died on Friday morning.
In a statement posted on Facebook, the club said: “It is with a broken heart that I have to inform you all that Kieran McDade of our 2003 squad passed away this morning.
“Kieran collapsed at training last Thursday and although all efforts by coaching staff, paramedics, doctors and all the prayers that people said it just wasn’t enough.
“This is the most heartbreaking situation that any parent could go through and all the people connected to Dunbeth FC send their condolences to Bernie, Gemma, Amy and all extended family and friends.
“Kieran was a big happy-go-lucky boy and all his teammates and coaches will miss him terribly.
“A popular boy who gave his all for his team and will forever be remembered for the league championship he proudly won with his teammates and all the good memories that came with that.
“He was a founder member of the 2003 squad and secured his place as our No 8 which we all knew he treasured dearly.
“It doesn’t matter what words I use they will never explain the feeling we have for Kieran or the loss that we share with his family.
“He has left us all with cherished memories but ones that will forever be tinged with sadness that he is not here to relive them with us. Rest in peace KM8.”
The Forth Valley Football Development Association (FVFDA) announced on Facebook earlier that as a mark of respect a minute’s silence would be held at all youth games on Saturday and no games would be cancelled as “Kieran loved his football”.
Following the incident last week messages of support from friends, family and footballers flooded in for the youngster, hoping that he would pull through.
Kieran’s sister Amy paid tribute to her brother on Facebook earlier and revealed that he donated some of his organs, which have saved two lives.
She wrote: “My family would like to thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for the overwhelming prayers and support you have given us.
“Our beautiful boy is now with the angels and will forever live on in our hearts.
“Kieran’s mum and dad would like to thank all his friends for all of the amazing things you have done for him, we now know how loved he truly is.
“My mum would also like to thank all the brave boys and girls for staying so strong, and to all the mums, she asks you hug your boy tight tonight because life is full of surprises and so so precious, appreciate every moment you have with them.
“Would also like to let everyone know that Kieran has remained the most sensitive and generous boy that he is and donated some of his organs which has saved two people’s lives today. What a brave soldier, he will be truly missed.
“Lots of love, big sis x.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/26/boy-13-dies-after-collapsing-at-football-training
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/583da618916da3ef87b44861ea7f85bcdc2c1b829df8b7e7861806e817932e21.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:29:19 | null | 2016-08-06T06:00:25 |
My husband is keen but I fear we will soon get bored of going there
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F06%2Fshould-we-buy-holiday-home-brittany.json
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| null |
Should we buy a holiday home in Brittany?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it’s up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday’s paper.
This week’s question:
We have just returned from Brittany and my husband wants to buy a holiday home there. We can afford it (just), but I worry we’ll soon grow bored of going there, and that it will cost far more than expected. Will it be a great family decision, or a nightmare?
Do you have a problem readers could solve? Email your suggestions to money@theguardian.com or write to us at Money, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/06/should-we-buy-holiday-home-brittany
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en
| 2016-08-06T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d8cb78aa779a5f57e972ebb29958d06345524195977754910d05ddc0c055fdf0.json
|
|
[
"Eric Hilaire",
"Photograph",
"Rebecca Cole Alamy",
"Jerome Murray Alamy Stock Photo",
"Kay Nietfeld Afp Getty Images",
"Richard Rayner North News",
"Pictures Ltd For National Trust",
"Nuno Sa Npl Alamy",
"Andrew Forsyth Barcroft Images",
"Tass Barcroft Images"
] | 2016-08-26T13:25:39 | null | 2016-08-19T13:00:03 |
Burrowing owls at the Olympics, a pygmy elephant with very special tusks, and a rare white mynah bird are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fthe-week-in-wildlife-in-pictures.json
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| null |
The week in wildlife - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A rare arctic mouse-ear plant found in a gully on the north face of Ben Nevis. Climbers, botanists and geologists set out from the Charles Inglis Clark memorial hut to scale the ridges and buttresses in search of rare plants. Between them completing a three year study into the secret life of the alpine plants and rocks on the otherwise inaccessible aspects of the Ben Nevis’s north face.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2016/aug/19/the-week-in-wildlife-in-pictures
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en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ca8383c59c5a2911e0222c8c98c53f0dfee8c53b8b3a709144092a7ccfac2239.json
|
|
[
"Paul Mason"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:11 | null | 2016-07-18T12:30:12 |
In 1951, Winston Churchill’s incoming Tory government pledged to build 300,000 council homes a year – and delivered. If the new regime is serious about social justice, it needs to do something similar
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Fjul%2F18%2Fcamerons-housing-legacy-luxury-apartments-theresa-may.json
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en
| null |
Cameron’s housing legacy was a glut of luxury apartments - Theresa May must clean up the mess
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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“Housing is the first of the social services,” said the manifesto. “It is also one of the keys to increased productivity. Work, family life, health and education are all undermined by crowded houses.” The incoming government pledged to build 300,000 council homes a year and to make that target “second only to national defence”.
This was the Conservatives in 1951 – and they kept their word, with housing minister Harold Macmillan forcing civil servants to scrawl the figures on to a blackboard daily. They achieved the target in December 1953, their second year of office. The postwar Labour government had only ever managed 220,000 a year.
It’s an episode from Conservative history that Theresa May would do well to revisit. As she begins to piece together an economic strategy, one of her first acts should be to clean up the mess left by David Cameron and George Osborne on housing.
Cameron’s pledge was a pale, post-Thatcherite reflection of Macmillan’s: one million new homes over a five-year period, built largely by the private sector. It is failing badly. The last time the housebuilders exceeded 200,000 homes a year was in the four years prior to the Lehman Brothers crash.
We need nothing short of a wholesale review of housing policy after Brexit Read more
At the heart of the problem is a dearth of council-house construction. For the past five years, councils in the UK have built only 2,000-3,000 homes a year. In 2012, council-house building became “self financing”. Councils took on an extra £13bn of debt, creating the capacity to build half a million homes over 30 years. That would have been only 16,000 homes a year but would have been a significant change of pace from the low thousands now.
What kiboshed the whole thing? Councils’ plans to borrow and spend were based on the assumption that economic recovery would boost inflation, that housing benefits and rents could rise above inflation, and that they would borrow against the projected upside. But inflation dropped like a stone.
Next, to save money on the welfare bill, the government stopped pegging council rent increases to RPI inflation and switched to the lower CPI. On top of that, the government has ordered social landlords to cut rents by 1% a year from 2015.
When council finance experts punched all this into their spreadsheets, gloom descended: instead of accumulating a cash pile of £1.5bn from their own housing operations, they are looking at cash losses for the next 11 years. Far from financing new building, any cash generated from council rents has to go to servicing the debt they took on in 2012.
If May is serious about social justice, she should start by scrapping the Cameron government’s housing policy. If you look at the stats for housebuilding – and indeed house prices – since Macmillan’s day, it’s clear that the single most important determinant is policy. You can switch supply on and off if you want to – but Cameron’s addiction to market solutions meant he never wanted to.
Millennials will spend £53,000 on rent before age of 30, thinktank says Read more
The first key to unlocking the housing problem is overall government spending. With everybody now talking about stimulus – fiscal and monetary – there should be cash for council house building, and to reduce pressure on the welfare bill. If the Treasury were to refinance the councils’ existing debt, remove the cap on council borrowing and scrap the four-year rent freeze, councils could start building again.
But the bigger change has to come in the government’s attitude to the mix of commercial and social housing in private-sector developments. Market forces are skewing new building projects towards high-priced homes that are out of the reach of most families. Even to afford one of Cameron’s pledged “starter homes” you have to be earning £55,000 a year.
A Tory government really committed to social justice would do as Winston Churchill did to Macmillan – prising him out of his desired role as defence secretary and ordering him to transform the built landscape of Britain. It would create a national plan – call it a framework if you really don’t like the word – for councils and housing associations to build. And massively.
At the same time, it would understand the lessons of another Conservative-led administration: the National Government of 1931-35. Under Stanley Baldwin’s effective leadership, a policy of cheap credit and loose planning rules effectively covered British suburbia with semi-detached private homes that were well within the reach of the lower middle class and some workers.
But such is the scale of Britain’s housing need that, for May, it is not a choice between the Baldwin approach and the Macmillan approach. She needs to do both.
There are, currently, 27.7m households in Britain, projected to be 30m by 2025. That means we need Cameron’s promised million homes, and another million in the five years after 2020, just to stand still.
Housebuilding, done right, has a multiplier effect on economic growth. If you train the people to do it, source the raw materials locally, do it to high-quality environmental and energy standards – and make it beautiful – you can use housebuilding to counteract the forces of stagnation and depression.
It’s a testament to the incoherence of Cameron/Osborne that, despite a massive monetary stimulus into the housing market, and very generous handouts of government land to private builders, they produced a glut of luxury apartments and a shortage of homes for working people.
Cameron’s ministers, in their perpetual backroom tussle over welfare cuts, took away from councils the very thing they’d tried to give: the power to build homes by the tens of thousands. It’s time for a fresh start.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2016/jul/18/camerons-housing-legacy-luxury-apartments-theresa-may
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| 2016-07-18T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/014d817c0cd0fb12d2d59dadeeb381a27671e86c5eb556fae1a4af0cb3e31c70.json
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[
"Bibi Van Der Zee"
] | 2016-08-26T13:25:19 | null | 2016-08-12T13:03:12 |
Elephant herds face an uncertain future – over the next year we’ll be taking a closer look at what can be done to help
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F12%2Fwhy-the-guardian-is-spending-a-year-reporting-on-the-plight-of-the-worlds-elephant-population.json
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Why the Guardian is spending a year reporting on the plight of elephants
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Welcome to the elephant conservation hub. Over the next year, with the support of Vulcan, Guardian journalists will be taking a closer look at the situation of elephant herds around the world.
Elephant conservation has been a particular focus for Vulcan, a private company set up by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to look for solutions to problems like endangered species, climate change and ocean health. The future of this particular species is precariously balanced. Although in some areas (a very few) elephant herds are expanding and thriving, the overall picture is one of decline, with falls of as much as 60% in elephant population in countries such as Tanzania.
With your help, we want to probe some of the different factors that have led us here. We’ve opened with an essay from wildlife specialist Patrick Barkham, looking at the awe-inspiring lineage of the modern elephant, and a summary of the current situation. In the months to come we’ll be looking at this species in close detail - both past and future. How can we conserve that future? What really works? What happens if you pull away a ‘keystone species’?
We’ll also be looking into the modern ivory trade. Who are the criminals behind these international networks? Where does the ivory go (not always where you’d think) and how does it get there? We’ll dig into the economics of different policy approaches, the people who make the big decisions, and the countries who have managed to change their ivory culture and cut demand.
Finally we’ll be talking to the people on the frontline in Africa, Asia and Europe; the rangers and investigators and campaigners, some of whom risk their lives regularly to protect Loxodonta africana and Elephas maximus. An inspiring network of conservationists from China, Africa, the US is at work on behalf of elephants, and other species, and is growing in strength and power. With your support we can make that global network stronger and more powerful still.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stegotetrabelodon syrticus Illustration: Jennie Webber
Read our coverage so far:
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/12/why-the-guardian-is-spending-a-year-reporting-on-the-plight-of-the-worlds-elephant-population
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| 2016-08-12T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d579d524e122839e1b1bad189aaccacbf9f9d8121df71bfd590702333f063eba.json
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[
"Tom Davies"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:23 | null | 2016-08-24T15:11:39 |
Celtic have reached the Champions League group stage for the first time in three years but on the evidence so far, European humiliation could be round the corner
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Brendan Rodgers savours win but Celtic must plug gaps in Champions League
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After what he had described as probably the longest 90 minutes of his career, Brendan Rodgers was entitled to see the positives in Celtic’s nerve-shredding progress to the Champions League group stages for the first time in three years.
“I am immensely proud,” he said after his side had survived Hapoel Beer-Sheva’s onslaught to advance 5-4 on aggregate following a 2-0 defeat on the night. “Maybe the focus of the criticism when I came in was we couldn’t tough it out but we showed after two games and under a huge amount of pressure that this team could tough it out.”
Celtic survive Hapoel Beer-Sheva fright to advance in Champions League Read more
In that respect, it was a match that showed how little and how much has changed since Rodgers succeeded Ronnie Deila in the summer.
It is difficult not to conclude a Deila side would have crumbled during that fraught period after half-time in which Hapoel took a firm grip, particularly in the light of the catastrophic mix-up between the defender Saidy Janko and the goalkeeper Craig Gordon that gifted the Israeli side their second goal.
Celtic just about managed to steady the ship and Rodgers was helped by his options on the bench. Though the introduction of the in-form Australian midfielder Tom Rogic at half-time initially unbalanced the side, Moussa Dembélé gave Celtic a fresh attacking outlet when brought on in the 57th minute and had chances to make the tie safe.
The manager made a point of praising the chief executive, Peter Lawwell, and the major shareholder, Dermot Desmond, for backing him in the market. “They stuck their neck out and the club has a real positive feel to it at the moment and this was always, hopefully, going to keep that momentum going, so it is a huge step for us,” he said.
The mood is undeniably upbeat, yet Tuesday’s performance carried enough uncomfortable echoes of European calamities to keep feet firmly grounded. Hapoel were desperately close to adding their name to those of Maribor, Malmo and Artmedia Bratislava on the list of unheralded opponents to have inflicted embarrassing early Champions League elimination on Celtic. The Scottish champions’ European performances have established so much of a pattern they have become almost cliched: the rousing home display in front of a crowd capable of generating one of the most intoxicating atmospheres on the continent followed by the abject shapeless surrender abroad.
It is a trend that dates back to Celtic’s first appearances in the group stages at the start of the century, when a much better resourced side under Martin O’Neill could overpower teams such as Juventus at home but struggle to pick up a point on their travels, and which was also seen in Celtic’s last decent run in the competition, in 2012-13, when they famously beat Barcelona at Celtic Park in their group before bowing out to Juventus in the last 16.
Celtic 2-1 Barcelona | Champions League Group G match report Read more
They did at least manage their only ever away victory in the competition’s group stages that year, over Spartak Moscow, but Tuesday’s disjointed display demonstrated just how much improvement is needed if they are to avoid humiliation.
Rodgers’ own European record is also a concern. He has not presided over an away win in Europe for eight matches, since Liverpool won 1-0 at Udinese in the Europa League in December 2012. His Liverpool teams lacked defensive solidity and rarely looked capable of digging in for the kind of well-organised away win European competition often demands. This season’s away displays at Lincoln Red Imps in Gibraltar, Aat stana and on Tuesday in Israel have not looked like bucking that trend, even though a swagger has been restored to the team’s attacking football.
Defensively, Celtic have been unconvincing all season, the two goals conceded from a position of strength against Hapoel at home and in the 4-2 win at St Johnstone last weekend providing further evidence of their flakiness. The full-back Janko, a summer signing from Manchester United last year, had a dismal night in Israel, putting further onus on the importance of a strong central partnership of the experienced Kolo Touré and the Danish defender Erik Sviatchenko. Reinforcements may be needed.
For all this though, Celtic fans can feel justified in feeling positive. The absence of Champions League football brought a flatness to recent seasons, and should give their campaign a purpose that will dwarf the return of the Old Firm derby in the league. It also brings cold, hard cash – as much as £30m that will enable Celtic to stretch their financial advantage over the rest of Scottish football, while paradoxically contributing to the lack of competitiveness that has arguably contributed to their recent failings in Europe. Such are the iniquitous realities of the European game and Celtic’s place within it.
For now, though, they can both savour and fret about the campaign ahead. The “mentality” that Rodgers was so quick to praise faces much bigger tests.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/24/celtic-brendan-rodgers-champions-league-
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5c28ead19ad5381362594715010cc5e721cfee5f69a6e7347e9ee73140facf7b.json
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[
"Anna Tims"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:13 | null | 2016-07-06T06:00:07 |
From Scotland to the Algarve, escape from the daily grind and unwind in a home from home
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Summer houses - in pictures
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www.theguardian.com
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Home: Haydons Road, London SW19
You get the lower half of this Victorian terraced house, including the landscaped garden at the end of which is a timber studio room with glass doors and room for a desk or guest bed. Although living is small back inside – only one daintily sized bedroom – it is elegant with Victorian moulding, fireplace and bay in the living room and a stylish kitchen large enough for a table. It’s a short stroll to the mainline station at Haydons Road. Asking price: £395,000. John D Wood , 020 3151 5932
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/gallery/2016/jul/06/summer-houses-in-pictures
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en
| 2016-07-06T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/160c80d2c935c927e028142ce9efe05d87dfc0f5165e0a3440054e4185b5b068.json
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[] | 2016-08-28T18:49:52 | null | 2016-08-28T18:31:07 |
Letters: What family will want to live here with children if there are no medical services? Without children, our schools are doomed. How can it be OK to destroy a community?
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Local difficulties in the cash-strapped National Health Service
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www.theguardian.com
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I pity the civil servants in the Department of Health who are forced to give platitudinous responses to the press (Leak reveals doubts over ‘seven-day NHS’, 23 August). In 2012 the then secretary of state for health, Andrew Lansley, fought tooth and nail (using taxpayers money) to hide the risk assessment done before the disastrous health and social care bill, despite intervention by the information commissioner. There, the “worst case scenario” has occurred after the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Civil servants are right to be worried that there is not enough money or sufficient trained staff available to carry out the policy, as there is insufficient money to run the NHS as it exists, providing a five-day elective (planned) and seven-day emergency service.
The lack of detailed planning of the proposed service is analogous to the way the Cameron government approached the EU referendum. What the NHS needs is more money to deal with rising demand, which could easily be found by scrapping the wasteful tendering processes which have resulted in almost £20bn of contracts going to the private sector since 2013, reviewing PFI debts costing over £2bn per year, reducing expenditure on the CQC, which has become unwieldy but arguably has failed to prevent hospital disasters, and reducing the six-figure salaries that too many top managers are now paid. Private contracts are expensive and have not yielded the promised innovation or improved services.
Wendy Savage
President, Keep Our NHS Public
• Most people will agree that the NHS is the jewel in the crown of British life and prized by almost everyone. David Nicholson wrote on his retirement as chief executive of the NHS, “It is built into what it is to be British” (Sunday Times, 2 March 2014).
Yet it is “threadbare, scrappy, perilously understaffed and barely held together by legions of nurses, doctors and allied health professionals” (These leaks show Hunt’s deception on the seven-day NHS, 23 August).
As a retired NHS physician and former independent MP, I talk to many people about the NHS and, without exception, they would willingly accept an increase in income tax, if it was hypothecated to the NHS, and if all measures for increasing efficiency and economy within the NHS had been adopted.
Would the Guardian consider carrying out a survey of its readers to assess the support for such a measure to rescue our beloved NHS?
Richard T Taylor
Kidderminster, Worcestershire
• You report that NHS England expects local doctors, hospitals and councils to work together in each of 44 “footprint” areas for the “first time on shared plans” (Revealed: plans to fight NHS deficit, 26 August). We recall how, in a 1968 green paper, health minister Kenneth Robinson proposed just such area health boards, to meet his paramount requirement that all the different kinds of care and treatment should be readily available to the individual citizen. We, who were involved in the preparation and promotion of those novel ideas in 1968, can but hope that our successors will get past the green stage.
Dora Pease and Tim Nodder
Ministry of Health long-term study group 1967-74
• Save Our Hospitals: Hammersmith and Charing Cross has been campaigning for more than four years against the downgrading of hospitals in north-west London, where we have already lost two A&Es, with dire effects on other A&Es in the area, and where two further major acute hospitals, Charing Cross and Ealing, are to be downgraded to as yet undefined local hospitals. As you note, these hospitals will be little more than glorified urgent care centres (Councils reject plans to ‘transform’ NHS, 26 August).
Already all hospitals in NW London are working at full capacity, failing to meet A&E targets, and with accelerated population growth in NW London, out-of-hospital care is even less likely to meet the health needs of our local population.
For four years we have been asking the local health authorities for the evidence that the proposed out-of-hospital provision can replace acute in-hospital care. For four years we have been promised this evidence. And for four years we have been presented with no evidence that suggests the changes can work.
It has become increasingly clear that financial considerations are driving the plans for this new top-down restructuring of the NHS. The outcome will be even greater privatisation of the NHS.
That two council leaders have been prepared to stand up to the NHS bullies and reject this attack on local health provision and local democracy is admirable. We know that the leaders of Hammersmith & Fulham and Ealing councils have the support of the local population as well as local campaign groups.
Merril Hammer
Chair, SOH: Hammersmith & Charing Cross
• Among your articles on the “sustainability and transformation plan” for the NHS, you mentioned the current efforts to remodel healthcare in North, West and East Cumbria. My local community hospital is threatened with removal of all inpatient beds. Alston Moor is a sparsely populated area of high moorland with four of the five roads leading over high passes; all are slow, frequently impassable in winter. The nearest hospitals are 20 miles from Alston, another five miles for some parts of Alston Moor; the nearest main hospital is over 30 miles away, in Carlisle. There is no meaningful public transport; even by car, it takes 40 minutes to the smaller hospitals, an hour to Carlisle.
If there are no inpatient beds, there will be no nurses. If there are no nurses, there will be no nurse-led minor injuries unit, and all will have to get to A&E in Carlisle. Without the hospital, our GP surgery is not viable (the relatively low returns of GP services for a mere 2,000 people are supplemented by the hospital work).
What family will want to live here with children if there are no medical services? Without children, our schools are doomed. What older person will want to live here knowing that their dying days will be spent in a hospital far from family and friends? What carer will cope with the burden of their task with no respite care?
How can it be OK to destroy a community? First they came for the small rural communities and I did not speak out because I did not live in a small rural community…
Alice Bondi
Alston, Cumbria
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/28/local-difficulties-in-the-cash-strapped-national-health-service
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| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
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[
"Francis Beckett"
] | 2016-08-31T06:50:24 | null | 2016-08-31T05:00:28 |
In the 1940s as today, we handed unlimited power to the security services. But who watches the watchers?
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State spying helps to create extremists. My father was one of them
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When you lock people up without trial, “whether it is in Belmarsh or Guantánamo Bay, you recruit more terrorists than you contain”, warned Shami Chakrabarti earlier this year. She has said that senior intelligence officials made a successful bid for enormous power post-9/11, particularly in government surveillance. And appalling attacks in France and Belgium have made us more likely to give the security services the power to curtail our liberties. But should we?
The Guardian view on the counter-extremism bill: think again about thought police | Editorial Read more
I claim some special insight. For at least the first 10 years of my life, from 1945 to 1955, my childhood home was under constant MI5 surveillance. My parents knew it, though I did not; and I have spent a lot of the past two years with recently released MI5 records at the National Archives, reading verbatim my parents’ telephone conversations from 60 years ago and the spies’ reports on their movements.
I recognise a few of the people described as the adults who peopled my childhood, and I can picture in my mind where the watcher’s car was parked when he reported on my family’s movements. My father, John Beckett, was a leading fascist. He was in prison for nearly four years during the second world war, then under a sort of house arrest, not allowed to live within 20 miles of London or to travel more than five miles from his home.
When these restrictions were lifted, the surveillance continued, masterminded by Graham Mitchell, who became deputy director of MI5 in 1956. It is mostly Mitchell’s memoranda I have been reading. They betray a deeply unhealthy pleasure in the secret power his position gave him over the life of another man. At one point Mitchell believes (probably wrongly) that he has caught John out in an extramarital affair. Telephone intercepts have John telling his wife he is having dinner with a male friend, but the man following him says it is a female friend who joins him in the restaurant.
Mitchell was also slyly amused to have convinced John that one of his friends was, in fact, an MI5 spy. “Mr Mitchell”, reads an internal memorandum. “You may be amused to know that John Beckett is certain that Major Edmonds gave information to MI5 … Beckett believed that Edmonds tried to seduce his wife while Beckett was in prison.”
What was true of fascists in the 1940s and 50s is true of suspected Islamic extremists in 2016
Just after the war my father, against all the odds, managed to get himself a job as assistant administrator at a local hospital. When he was fired, a few months later, he thought it was because he had bought bananas for a desperately sick baby on the black market. But the real reason was that Mitchell seems to have had a quiet word. My mother had always hoped her husband would settle down to a quiet, normal job and give up politics. But when he lost the job, he returned to the only work he could get, running a neo-fascist party called the British People’s party and being paid to do so by its patron, the Duke of Bedford.
From all I have read, I draw two conclusions.
First, Chakrabarti is right. My father came out of prison far more racist – and, in particular, antisemitic – than he went in: a phenomenon familiar to those who have studied wartime detention.
After the war, the constant surveillance, which he knew was there but could never pin down, made him just a little mad. He was noisy and entertaining, he could tell a good anecdote, but there was something strange about him. And sometimes he would say something about a race – about Jews or about black people – so gross and offensive that, even as a child in the 1950s, it made me start and stare.
John was proud of holding himself together in prison when others went to pieces, but this came at the cost of internalising his rage. This, I think, stayed with him during the years after the war, when he knew they were watching him.
Second, such a surveillance regime is very bad for the characters of those who govern us. Reading Mitchell’s memoranda, the satisfaction in the covert control he exerted over other people shines through his flat prose.
If I had been home secretary, I too would have locked up the Oswald Mosleys, the John Becketts and the rest of them
Yet we must be protected. And in May 1940 we had to be protected against people like my father. That was one of the few moments in history – with the Germans apparently just a step away from an invasion – when internment without trial was justified; and if I had been home secretary, I too would have locked up the Oswald Mosleys, the John Becketts and the rest of them.
But by 1942 the fifth column had been shown to be a chimera, and an independent panel set up to oversee internment had advised release. Mitchell’s memoranda and those of his political boss, the home secretary Herbert Morrison, show signs of reluctance to give up the arbitrary power over the freedom of others that they had been handed in 1940.
After the war, it is very hard to see the justification for the expensive, intrusive and oppressive surveillance that was undertaken. What was true of fascists in the 1940s and 50s is true of suspected Islamic extremists in 2016. There may be moments, like May 1940, when detention without trial in a democracy can be justified, but they are rare and brief. There may be circumstances when spies can be let loose among us, but if it becomes normal, they do far more harm than good. That may well have been the case with my father. The question of who watches the spies should have been important then. It certainly is now.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/31/state-spying-extremists-father-john-beckett
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/405b3912c0f3d8485dda613c5858532af9b5fd80cc0556fd15a75bd826cc25ad.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-27T00:51:38 | null | 2016-08-26T22:57:06 |
Laura Robson’s comeback from injury is gathering pace after she beat Germany’s Tatjana Maria 7-6, 6-1 to qualify for the US Open first round
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Laura Robson qualifies for US Open with win over Tatjana Maria
| null | null |
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Laura Robson’s comeback from injury is gathering pace after she beat Germany’s Tatjana Maria to qualify for the US Open first round.
Djokovic hopeful problems are behind him while draw opens up for Murray Read more
Robson has been ravaged by fitness issues over the past two years but this 7-6, 6-1 victory over Maria means she has now won eight matches in a row.
The 22-year-old former British No1 will be entered into the main draw at Flushing Meadows, where she is looking to win her first grand slam match since reaching the third round there in 2013.
Robson’s injury problems have resulted in her dropping to 247th in the world but she showed her class against Maria, who is ranked 126 spots above her and was seeded 15th in qualifying.
Robson will earn $43,313 (£33,000) for her progress but also invaluable confidence, the victory coming on the back of winning an ITF event in Landisville earlier this month.
Her serve, so often problematic in her career, had been shaky in round two of qualifying but it was far more consistent against Maria, with 65% at the first attempt and producing only four double faults.
There was one break apiece during a tight opening set, which was settled in a tie-break as Robson strung together four consecutive points to clinch it. Riding the momentum, Robson then broke early in the second to lead 2-1 before Maria was forced to take a time-out to be treated for injury.
The German eventually re-entered the court but was visibly restricted thereafter, failing to win another game as Robson cruised to victory in one hour and 36 minutes.
Robson qualifies
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/26/laura-robson-qualifies-us-open-win-over-tatjana-maria
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/17645385c920a8fbdeb7d76cb53a7058043e55a75a94ec3d64b5c860009337a7.json
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[
"Sarah Butler"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:49 | null | 2016-08-25T16:21:56 |
Riders for group’s food delivery service follow Deliveroo couriers in expressing discontent with gig economy pay structure
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fubereats-drivers-plan-protest-cuts-pay-rate-per-delivery-london-uber.json
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UberEats drivers plan protest against cuts in pay rate per delivery
| null | null |
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Drivers for Uber’s food delivery service are planning a protest in the latest sign of discontent within the gig economy.
UberEats riders will demonstrate outside the group’s London headquarters on Friday after the company cut the amount it pays per delivery, which some drivers say leaves them at risk of earning less than the minimum wage. They are calling on the company to pay the independently backed London living wage of £9.40 an hour.
The action comes after more than 100 moped riders and cyclists took to the streets to protest against pay changes at rival food courier service Deliveroo, eventually seeing off an attempt to force them to accept new pay terms.
UberEats drivers, who earned as much as £20 an hour during peak meal times when the service launched in June, told the Guardian they are now earning less than £10, even at peak times. Off peak, drivers earn £3.30 per delivery, plus a mileage payment between the restaurant where food is picked up and the drop location, minus a 25% fee taken by UberEats.
The changeable rates mean that some are at risk of earning less than the minimum wage over the course of a week, according to pay records passed to the Guardian.
All drivers are self-employed, which means that they do not receive holiday or sick pay, or any hourly wage while they wait around for orders.
Imran Siddiqui, a scooter courier at UberEats, said: “Although they speak of ‘flexibility’ the bosses at UberEats have been cutting pay since day one. We’re telling them we need the London living wage. I’d like to ask them: where is the freedom in poverty wages? ”
“We’re trying to get by, but it’s been a race to the bottom.”
Mags Dewhurst, the chair of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain couriers and logistics branch, which has been working with the delivery drivers, said: “Uber is becoming less and less rewarding to work for. It is reducing its rates during peak times as a response to piece rates.
“By paying a piece rate, they are saying they only want to pay for work when they can make a profit out of it. They are saying work is only when someone is making a delivery, but people are providing a service to the company when they are standing around waiting for orders. Without that, UberEats wouldn’t be able to function.”
On average, couriers take home more than the London living wage at meal times, UberEats said.
Alex Czarnecki, the general manager of UberEats in London, said: “We’re committed to being the best option for couriers in London. Unlike other companies, we don’t set shifts, minimum hours or delivery zones. Couriers can simply log in or out when and where they choose.
“This is why we’ve seen hundreds of new couriers sign up in the last week alone. As UberEats grows, couriers are busier than ever. In fact, so far this week, couriers delivering lunch and dinner have made over 10% more an hour than they did in the same period last week. Our office is open and our team is always available to chat to couriers.”
At peak times, drivers now earn £3.30 per delivery, plus a £4 “promotion” amount per job between 11.30am and 2.30pm, or a £3 promotion between 6.30pm and 9.30pm, as well as the mileage payment. UberEats then takes a 25% cut.
Drivers are upset as UberEats has been gradually cutting the promotion part of the fee as it takes on more people and becomes busier. UberEats said a driver would earn about £7.60 for a peak time delivery if they travelled 1.5 miles.
UberEats began recruiting delivery drivers this summer in an attempt to take on Deliveroo and grab a slice of the UK’s takeaway food market.
The San Francisco-based company, which began as a taxi-hailing app, initially offered a £100 signing-on fee to delivery partners, its term for bicycle and scooter drivers, to tempt them away from rivals.
An ad campaign called get there with Uber sought to woo customers and drivers by suggesting that income from working for the company could help them start their own business.
Uber’s phenomenal growth has been met with opposition from traditional taxi services, leading to major protests and bans in some European cities.
The company is facing a legal challenge from its drivers, who say they should be recognised officially as Uber workers, rather than counted as self-employed.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/ubereats-drivers-plan-protest-cuts-pay-rate-per-delivery-london-uber
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e48c8110e863f76f9184981d86e1a042053365673a63cbbd51fbe057f7803f72.json
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[
"Hadley Freeman"
] | 2016-08-30T10:52:50 | null | 2016-08-30T09:25:21 |
Enduring partnerships with Richard Pryor, Gilda Radner and Mel Brooks show Wilder’s gift wasn’t just his own mastery, but an ability to coax it from others, too
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffilm%2Ffilmblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fgene-wilder-collaborations-richard-pryor-gilda-radner-mel-brooks.json
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Gene Wilder: a comic enigma whose genius shone brightest in collaboration
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Anyone who’s read Gene Wilder’s 1970 letter about the costume suggestions for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory to the movie’s director, Mel Stuart, let alone seen his performance in the film, knows that he was no slouch when it came to creating wise and confident solo performances.
“I don’t think of Willy as an eccentric who holds onto his 1912 Daddy’s Sunday suit and wears it in 1970,” he wrote, “but rather as just an eccentric – where there’s no telling what he’ll do or where he ever found his get-up – except that it strangely fits him … Jodhpurs to me belong more to the dancing master. But once elegant now almost baggy trousers – baggy through preoccupation with more important things – is character … The hat is terrific, but making it two inches shorter would make it more special … To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste.”
He describes Wonka, perfectly, as “part of this world, part of another … Something mysterious, yet undefined”.
Gene Wilder, star of Willy Wonka and Mel Brooks comedies, dies aged 83 Read more
However, it was in Wilder’s collaborations that the shrewdness and generosity of this famously kind man really shone through. Willy Wonka aside, Wilder will forever be best known for his long relationships with three of the best-loved American comedians to have emerged in the 1960s and 70s: Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor and Gilda Radner. Wilder’s work with Brooks produced arguably both of their best work: The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. As a writer-director combination, they were as natural and well-matched as Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. In a PBS documentary about Brooks, Wilder was asked if he thought his initial meeting with Brooks was significant. Wilder burst out laughing: “When God spoke to Moses the first time, would you ask him, ‘Was that significant in your life?’” he replied, still chortling. “I would say it had some minor importance, yes.”
For his part, Brooks put it like this: “Everything Gene did for me was angelic and supreme.” When news of Wilder’s death broke, Brooks, now 90, tweeted: “Gene Wilder – One of the truly great talents of our time. He blessed every film we did with his magic & he blessed me with his friendship.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles. Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros
Wilder and Pryor seemed, on the surface, a more unlikely pair – the older, gentle Wilder and the more tempestuous and tortured Pryor – but together they found an improvisational style that came so easily it surprised even them. Wilder recalled in an interview about the making of Silver Streak: “He said his first line, I said my first line, and then this other line comes out of him. I had no idea where it came from, but I didn’t question it. I just responded naturally … Then he went back to the script and then he came away, and everything we did together was like that.”
The two originally met on Blazing Saddles, which Pryor co-wrote with Brooks, and Pryor was originally supposed to co-star, although that part eventually went to Cleavon Little. But Wilder and Pryor eventually formed one of the all-time great on-screen odd-couple partnerships, making together Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, See No Evil Hear No Evil and, finally, Another You.
Pryor was never the easiest man to work with, as he admits in his extraordinary autobiography, Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences, turning up on set later and later having been up all night freebasing.
“We did Stir Crazy and Richard was a bad boy,” Wilder later recalled. “He would come to the set 15 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half late and it would bug all of us. I didn’t want to say anything because I wanted it to go on.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest With, Zero Mostel and Lee Meredith in The Producers, directed by Mel Brooks. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
It was typical of Wilder’s sweetness that he claimed Pryor’s lateness was limited to just 90 minutes – according to Pryor it could easily be more than half a day. But the two, while not exactly friends offset – their recreational lives were far too different for that – had a profound respect for one another, and interviews of the two of them together, such as one they gave Roger Ebert in 1976, show how much they loved to make one another laugh:
‘“What are you doing next?” Wilder asked [Pryor].
“It’s a movie called Which Way is Up?” Pryor said. “This, uh, Italian director, Lina Wertmuller.”
“No!” said Wilder. “Oh my God! I’ll kill myself!”
“What are you moaning about, man?”
“You’re going to work with Lina Wertmuller? She passed right by me and saw you and said, ‘I must have that young man’?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Pryor said. “She made this movie called The Seduction of Mimi, and this will be a remake, set among the grape pickers of California. Somebody else is directing.”
“I would have killed myself out of envy,” Wilder said.
Gene Wilder – five key performances Read more
“And then,” said Pryor, “I’m in a remake of Arsenic and Old Lace.”
“My favourite play next to Hamlet,” Wilder said. “All black cast, I suppose, nothing for me.”
“And then,” said Pryor, “I’m doing Hamlet.”’
Wilder always fondly referred to Pryor as “Richie” and Pryor, according to his daughter Rain, considered him “a genius and a good man”. The only other artist who Pryor would accord similar respect was Lily Tomlin. Another You, their last work together, was also the last film either starred in. It was during the filming of that 1991 comedy that Pryor realised the MS, which he’d been trying to ignore, was no longer ignorable.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Richard Pryor in Silver Streak,. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock
Wilder was also suffering profoundly during the making of that movie, but in a different way. Two years earlier, his wife, the comedian Gilda Radner, one of the original stars of Saturday Night Live, had died from ovarian cancer. The two had met while making a movie, Hanky Panky, in 1982 and married in 1984.
“I had been a fan of Gene Wilder’s for many years, but the first time I saw him my heart fluttered – I was hooked. It felt like my life went from black and white to Technicolor. Gene was funny and athletic and handsome, and he smelled good. I was bitten with love,” she wrote in her extremely moving autobiography, It’s Always Something, which she completed shortly before she died.
Wilder was equally devoted and the two were deeply in love. The years they were together, making two more movies – The Woman in Red and Haunted Honeymoon – were, Wilder often later said, “the best years of my life”. Certainly the photos of them in It’s Always Something show two people shining with happiness, laughing together, kissing, and almost invariably holding their beloved Yorkshire terrier, Sparkle.
But Sparkle wasn’t quite enough and Radner desperately wanted them to have a baby. But she had trouble conceiving, and then she heartbreakingly miscarried. She also started to suffer mysterious maladies. It took 10 months for doctors to realise she had stage IV ovarian cancer. One of Radner’s favourite books was Disturbances in the Dark by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, in which a father ties tennis shoes to the umbrella on the beach so his daughters will be able to find him. The night before Radner underwent her first chemotherapy treatment, Wilder came into the hospital room with an umbrella to which he’d tied some shoes. But neither the shoes nor chemotherapy could save her, and Radner died in 1989, at the age of 42.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Gilda Radner in Haunted Honeymoon. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
“For weeks after Gilda died, I was shouting at the walls. I kept thinking to myself, ‘This doesn’t make sense.’ The fact is, Gilda didn’t have to die. But I was ignorant, Gilda was ignorant – the doctors were ignorant,” Wilder later wrote.
In an attempt to give Radner’s death some kind of logic, Wilder tried to transform his grief into proactivity, helping to found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre and testifying before a congressional subcommittee about the need for more money for research into the disease. His testimony helped allocate a further $30m. When asked how he felt about that, Wilder simply said, with characteristic understatement: “I feel relieved now, and I sleep better at night … I think I was one spoke in a wheel that started to turn at this time. Actually Gilda was the main horsepower behind the whole thing.”
Wilder often liked to suggest he was the mere straight man, the one off whom true genius – Brooks, Pryor, Radner – bounced. But as all three of them knew, Wilder gave them not just the support but the bounce and also the love. Something mysterious, yet undefined. Part of this world, part of another.
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https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/aug/30/gene-wilder-collaborations-richard-pryor-gilda-radner-mel-brooks
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/54f24d54daf7d633eebb8368849d4d0bc9b69ee8eb4f02a51f335877048117f8.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:13:57 | null | 2016-08-25T18:11:56 |
Letters: Your natural instinct if you are getting taken out sea is to try and reach land, but that is impossible in a riptide, even for an Olympic swimmer
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en
| null |
Sound advice for dealing with riptides
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Strong riptides are not uncommon at Camber Sands (Report, 25 August). It is well worth knowing what a riptide is, how to spot one and what you should do if you get caught in one. A riptide is basically a river of water flowing fast back out to sea when the tide is going out after the waves have persistently pushed water ashore. You can spot one because there will be no incoming waves across the width of a riptide, whereas there will be waves either side of it.
If you get caught in a riptide, you should not try to swim against it because you won’t be able to and are likely to panic. You should try to relax and go with it, because you will easily be able to swim back in once it has subsided. If you swim at all before the riptide subsides, you should swim parallel to the beach to get out of its flow.
Your natural instinct if you are getting taken out to sea is to try to reach land, but that is impossible in a riptide, even for an Olympic swimmer. This is the reason people often panic, exhaust themselves and sadly drown.
Thomas Quinton
London
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/25/sound-advice-for-dealing-with-riptides
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a4d27bec263bf9490a8e985049afda2c94eade58c0d969650976733d956777b5.json
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[
"Guardian Sport"
] | 2016-08-29T16:52:20 | null | 2016-08-29T16:22:04 |
Siemian beats off competition from Mark Sanchez and Paxton Lynch to start the opening game of the new season against the Panthers
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fdenver-broncos-trevor-siemian-starting-quarterback-panthers.json
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Trevor Siemian gets Broncos' starting spot for NFL opener against Panthers
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www.theguardian.com
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Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak has confirmed that Trevor Siemian will start at quarterback in the NFL’s season opener against the Panthers next Thursday.
Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest is all the more brave due to his career slump Read more
Kubiak made the announcement just before the players broke off into position-group meetings on Monday. He told Siemian, Mark Sanchez and Paxton Lynch of his decision before sharing it with the entire team.
Siemian and Sanchez were considered “neck and neck” by Kubiak in the first few games of pre-season, but Siemian nudged ahead thanks to his solid work in camp and his performances in the three pre-season games to date.
Siemian finished 10-of-17 for 122 yards in Saturday’s 17-9 victory over the Rams. Rookie Lynch followed Siemian into Saturday’s game as the Broncos’ No2 quarterback, and Sanchez did not play.
It is unclear, for the moment, what Kubiak’s plan for the No2 quarterback is – and what it all means for the near future of Mark Sanchez.
Kubiak hinted which way he was leaning in his evaluation of Siemian after Saturday’s game. “I’m impressed, I think he’s very calm,’’ Kubiak said. “I can tell by the way he handles the team in the huddle, he’s got control of what’s going on. Gets a bad break on the ‘go’ ball and comes right back and goes down the field. I think what I see is a guy getting better.”
Siemian, 24, was picked in the seventh round of the 2015 draft, and was the seventh and final quarterback to be taken.
The reigning champion Broncos will kick off the new season against the Panthers in a Super Bowl rematch on 8 September.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/29/denver-broncos-trevor-siemian-starting-quarterback-panthers
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a56500925316ce74210334b6508a9bba17491bb6f6d7bc30d1a2376999e6cda7.json
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[] | 2016-08-30T20:52:56 | null | 2016-08-30T18:49:21 |
Brief letters: Amazon fix | Cryptic crosswords | Carpool Karaoke | Handling Harry with caution
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fwhen-jeff-bezos-delivered-for-me.json
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en
| null |
When Jeff Bezos delivered for me
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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You don’t have to be a megastar diva like Barbra Streisand, who rang Steve Jobs about a problem with her personal computer (Report, 27 August), to get the chief executive’s assistance. A few years ago I was trying to send a book, via Amazon, to a friend incarcerated on death row in Texas (the prison department only recognised Amazon for the dispatch of books). My problem was to match the way the address was written to the way the Amazon order form was designed. I emailed Jeff Bezos, the chief executive, and he fixed it for me.
Terry Philpot
Limpsfield Chart, Surrey
• Of course we don’t want Guardian crosswords to be too easy (Letters, 29 August) but whereas setters used to set puzzles for people sitting in their armchairs or on the train with a Biro and perhaps a dictionary, they now assume we are at our laptops with a range of helpful websites at our command. Nowadays I seldom manage to complete the crossword in my bath before the water gets cold, as I used to. I have to turn to the internet to have any hope of finishing.
Rosemary Chamberlin
Bristol
• I’d been following the concerns raised by your correspondents that the cryptic crossword is getting harder, turned to Arachne’s latest offering and completed it in less than 10 minutes. I can only conclude that the problem lies in the declining quality of the Guardian readership.
Paul Dennehy
London
• When it is considered dangerous to use a mobile phone when driving, even a hands-free one, by what logic is it acceptable to record to camera, or do a broadcast interview with a passenger, when driving (How Corden cracked America, 27 August)?
Robert Powell
Sedbergh, Cumbria
• Being an elderly lady, I treat with grave suspicion any phone numbers that I do not recognise. I must therefore apologise to the “lovely young Harry” (Letters, 25 and 26 August) if I have failed to engage him in conversation.
Elizabeth Dunnett
Malvern, Worcestershire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/30/when-jeff-bezos-delivered-for-me
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/60a51cd60188ceb60c858778ed0169740dc10e63677cc4479876d358758d6cdb.json
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[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:05 | null | 2016-07-18T06:03:15 |
The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Fjul%2F18%2Fspacex-dragon-successfully-takes-off-to-resupply-international-space-station-video.json
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SpaceX Dragon successfully takes off to resupply International Space Station - video
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www.theguardian.com
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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida headed to the International Space Station carrying 5,00lbs of supplies
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2016/jul/18/spacex-dragon-successfully-takes-off-to-resupply-international-space-station-video
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en
| 2016-07-18T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ee4417cfcac1eb2029c5ad737ce3b360efb61730ff53b03b67f78752c713bc7d.json
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[
"Roy Greenslade"
] | 2016-08-30T10:52:26 | null | 2016-08-30T09:47:27 |
Head of Unesco condemns killing of João Miranda do Carmo who was shot 13 times after receiving threats because of his reporting work
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2Fgreenslade%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Ftwo-men-detained-after-the-of-a-brazilian-journalist.json
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en
| null |
Two men detained after the murder of a Brazilian journalist
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Two days after the head of Unesco demanded an investigation into the murder of a Brazilian journalist a second man was arrested for the crime.
Irina Bokova, Unesco’s director-general, condemned the killing of João Miranda do Carmo, saying: “I call on the authorities to investigate this crime and bring its perpetrators to justice so as to protect journalists’ ability to continue contributing to informed public debate.”
Do Carmo, who ran and edited a news website, SAD Sem Censura, in Santo Antônio do Descoberto in the central Brazilian state of Goiás, was shot 13 times on 24 July.
Three days later, police detained Douglas Ferreira de Morais, the head of security guards (the Guarda Patrimonial) at the city hall. He was accused of participating in the murder.
Almost a month passed before Bokova issued her statement. Then, on 26 August, police arrested 22-year-old Rooney da Silva Morais, son of Douglas Ferreira. Both father and son have since denied the charges.
Police believe the killing was linked to do Carmo’s journalistic work. He was critical of local politicians, and reported on drug dealers and other criminals. In one of his last articles, he reported the arrest of another of Douglas’s sons.
Do Carmo’s family and friends spoke him receiving “many” threats over a six-month period because of his work.
Cláudio Curado, president of the Goiás State Union of Professional Journalists, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that do Carmo “was very controversial in his city. He demanded answers from politicians, police and local officials.”
Sources: UN news centre/IPI/CPJ/Knight Centre one & two
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https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/aug/30/two-men-detained-after-the-of-a-brazilian-journalist
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4bae6500b3abe74b08f9f0d2b4a83e0f3702795a84473f19c08e0ea9c2bcb8b0.json
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[
"Paula Cocozza",
"Tom Meltzer",
"Nosheen Iqbal",
"Aisha Gani"
] | 2016-08-30T02:59:45 | null | 2014-01-21T00:00:00 |
A new study claims that working nights can disrupt gene activity after only three days – and the health dangers are thought to include an increased risk of breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart attacks. Does it worry nocturnal workers? And are there any advantages?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2014%2Fjan%2F21%2Fworking-night-shifts-bad-for-you.json
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en
| null |
Is working night shifts bad for you?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Graham Wettone, 52
Retired police officer
I started doing nights in 1980. There was nothing open back then. Monday to Thursday, all of society went to bed at midnight. Even the television shut down. In those days you worked shifts on a four-week cycle. In the space of five days, your whole system and body clock was completely the wrong way round. I've had doctors say you shouldn't eat at night, but I always took some sandwiches in or stopped by the kebab shop or the local fried chicken place.
It is physically demanding to try to stay awake all night. You are tired during the day and tired during the night. As I got older, I found it even more difficult to stay awake. By the time you get to the Monday, you're a zombie. You forget appointments, you have to write everything down. The quieter nights were harder.
Graham Wettone: 'The biggest problem was digestive – I had loads of stomach upsets.'
Unfortunately, you don't get a chance to sleep during the day. The rest of society doesn't expect you to sleep. In summer, everyone's out in the garden, cutting grass; you've got the curtains pulled and the earplugs in.
On the flip side, I loved night duty. The station was ours; no hustle and bustle in the workplace. You could get things done. But I packed it in because it was having an impact on my health. The biggest problem was digestive – I had loads of stomach upsets. It wasn't so much the heart problems or breathlessness the report mentions: I got checked for that, along with other colleagues. After 15 years of working nights, it was a bit of a relief when I stopped. I could almost feel my system saying: "Thank God that's over, it's back to normal now." PC
Kathryn McLaughlin, 30
Burlesque dancer and fire performer
I have been working nights for about 10 years. The week gets later as it goes on. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, I get to bed about 5am. I have never found it hard to stay awake. When I was little, my mum used to take me to the doctors because I would be up all night reading. I have always been a night owl. Even if I'm not working I wouldn't go to sleep until about 3 or 4am. I find it easier to do things that require more thought later at night.
I suspect some of the health effects tie in with the fact that, when you get in late, you are not inclined to sit down and make a proper dinner. I think it's more about making choices to eat something sensible instead of just grabbing something on the go. I have my evening meal between 10.30 and 11pm. I go to the gym five times a week.
For me, this is actually a better way of living: I'm not somebody who functions well at 8 or 9am. When I had a job with more normal hours, I was always drinking Red Bull or eating cheese toasties on my way to work to reward myself for having got up. PC
Dr Zakia Akhteruzzaman: 'The most difficult thing is no fixed times … it's difficult to have a social life.'
Dr Zakia Akhteruzzaman, 32
General practitioner
"I worked night shifts on and off for three years when I was a junior doctor, but the worst time was four long months in A&E. It was disorientating. A&E totally messes up your body clock. You have long shifts – 12 or 13 hours – and you have no time to process anything. There's no window in the main emergency room, so you don't know what's happening outside. I felt totally out of touch with the universe. The most difficult thing is that there's no fixed times. One day you do 8am to 5pm and then 8pm to 8am for a few days, and then sometimes till 2am. So every day is different. It's difficult to have a social life, and your body can't adjust.
You feel very unwell and jetlagged. I could barely talk sometimes. I would be seeing a patient and taking down their history, and then would have to go to the toilet and cough up phlegm. Twice when I was on night shift I had to take time off as I was sick in bed. I remember feeling really guilty.
When we qualified, there were some doctors who wanted to do A&E, mainly because they enjoyed acute medicine and the associated adrenaline rush, but it wasn't for me. I don't see how you could have any work/life balance and work those shifts.
But as difficult as it was, I also remember it with some nostalgia. It sounds strange, but hospitals can be peaceful at that time. During the day, the patients are in the corridor and there are doctors huddling. But at night, it's often just you walking along the corridors. We would have really deep conversations at that time – even discussing spirituality and deeper issues. I have never found that during the day. I think people feel a bit more vulnerable and open up more. Also, another positive thing is that at this time you really get a chance to bond. Sometimes the junior handles the shop floor while the senior is asleep or does some paperwork, and so the motherly nurses – especially on paediatrics – would look out for juniors and would make a bed and say: "It's quiet now, get some sleep." AG
Lucy Horsfall, 34
Senior cabin crew
I have been doing this for 11 years. It's my job, and you just fight through it. The challenge is going through time zones. Coming back from Los Angeles, it's dark and then you see the dawn rising through the clouds – and in the cockpit they say we haven't even got to New York. I tell myself it's still night, keep the window blinds down. I think that's the only way I can deal with it.
My airline is very good. It gives us the correct rest. You get allotted a break time on the long flights and you have a bunk you can sleep in. The minimum rest is three hours. That really helps – you can actually fall asleep. The hardest part is at about 2.30 or 3am, when you start getting really cold. That's when I get most tired. It's a really heady feeling when we land in the morning. But an hour or two later you get a real crash and start to feel sick. Diet-wise, it can be tricky. You're craving sugar through the evening, eating chocolate or whatever's around. You're eating dinner at 3am just to get a sugar hit.
I suppose you could get depressed if you worked on your own through the night. You could start thinking about things. But I have got a team around me. We'll have a chat, a cup of coffee, and if one person's tired we'll go and do something like cleaning: it's just a little thing, but it takes your mind off it.
I've never had anything wrong with me, other than tiredness and jetlag. When I come back from maternity leave I'll still be doing night shifts, but I'll be part-time – two or three long-haul flights a month. PC
Alex Lester, 57
BBC Radio 2 DJ
I've been doing night shifts for 26 years and I'm still alive, so hopefully it's all right. It just turns your day on its head, that's all.
The downsides are mainly social. I play a lot of music, and I'm always looking out for new stuff, so I get invited to a lot of concerts, and I have to say: "I'm sorry, but unless it's a Beatles reunion with all the original members I won't be able to make it." They say: "The band are on stage at 9.30." And I go: "Er, I'll have been in bed for two hours."
There are upsides, though. I don't get stuck in the rush hour. I don't get stuck in crowds, so during the day I can do things while everyone's at work. My Christmas shopping is usually done before everybody else's.
During the first few months I had a bit of trouble sleeping. There's this figure eight hours that's been plucked from somewhere, and when I started working nights I would go to bed thinking, "I must get my eight hours!", and then lie awake all night worrying about getting the amount of sleep I needed. People worry far too much about that, but your body will tell you how much you need.
Once you are doing night shifts on a permanent basis, your body clock sort of adjusts. So I'm now a nocturnal creature. I tend to go to bed at 7.30 in the evening and then get up at one in the morning and go to work. Then I'm back in bed again by about six in the morning and tend to be asleep until 10 or 10.30am. That's the way my body clock works. I'm hoping that it won't have any long-term health effects. I'd have thought I would have noticed it by now if it did. TM
Simon Matthews: 'There’s a different atmosphere at night; it’s nicer.'
Simon Matthews, 48
Freelance lorry driver
Night working is a damn sight easier than day work. At night, there's far less traffic on the road, especially in the summer. There is something peaceful about it: you're totally on your own, with nice open road most of the time. Serenity is a good word. There's a different atmosphere at night; it's nicer. People aren't so stressed. Probably because the rest of the world is sleeping.
I don't do many nights any more because I'm semi-retired, but I never really had a problem staying awake. Your body clock seems to be set so that it wants to shut down around 2.30 or 3 in the morning. Your body temperature goes down, but I don't really ever seem to want to go to sleep.
The longest stint of night shifts I have done, without day shifts between, was eight weeks. I was carrying chilled food products. It was a similar journey every night, from Taunton up to Oxford, down to Southampton and then back to Taunton. I felt as if I was permanently in a different time zone. It affects your head. You feel totally out of sorts coming off nights and then having to live a day life for two days, and then going back on to nights again. I imagine it would have very detrimental effects on you, especially mentally PC
Torgeir Fotland, 33
Former psychiatric nursing assistant
I did this temping job in Oslo in 2010 and 2011. There were three of us working from 10pm to 8am, making sure that patients were asleep and taking care of them if they needed to get up. We were just waiting there in case something happened. That made it harder to stay awake. The others brought in their computers or were in front of the TV or reading. They had some sort of activity which occupied them privately. I was a bit miffed, thinking: just sitting here looking at a wall, I might fall asleep in five minutes. I was working with guys who had done it for decades. They had their routine. I spent a lot of time on YouTube – I don't know how people survived this job before the internet.
You're fine until midnight, even sociable. Two comes, three. And then you become cold. You'd be sitting there at 4am, saying: "This is not good for the health is it?" "No, definitely not." "How long are you intending to do it?" "A while. Better pay."
For me, it was a temporary thing. But looking at my colleagues, the regular staff, they had a routine. They had done it for 20 or 30 years. I don't think that can be good. You miss out on life; you don't really see people; you are on the outside of society. I'm on the same bus as everyone else, but they're going to work and I'm going home. They look fresh and I look like I just killed someone. I couldn't do it for long without thinking: what's going on out there in the world? PC
Dan Doherty: 'The atmosphere in a 24-hour restaurant can be … interesting.'
Zdenek Honsa, 35
Engineer
I have just changed jobs so as not to work nights. For 18 months I worked as an engineer on the London Eye – mostly maintenance, fixing things that had broken during the day. I worked a 12-hour shift, 8pm to 8am. I didn't find it hard to stay awake, but it used to take a week to get back to normal. It doesn't surprise me that there may be long-term health effects. I hope I didn't do it for long enough to matter. I felt very tired. If I got five hours' sleep that would be really good. Sometimes it would be four or less, and often not in one go. I also noticed that my digestion went quite funny.
It was nice to get to see the city at night though. It was quite special on the London Eye. Even the commuting was quite nice in the dark. Going over Waterloo Bridge was lovely. And I could see my son during the day more. If I had a choice, I wouldn't do nights again. But sometimes you can't pick jobs. PC
Dan Doherty, 29
Executive chef at Duck and Waffle 24-hour restaurant
It's surreal, that's the only way I can describe it. Working an eight-hour shift from 10pm to 6am is so much more different from eight hours in the day. I do both throughout the week – post-midnight dining is an integral part of our business – and so my body is in a permanent state of jetlag. At 2am, you get more celebrities; footballers on one table, Made in Chelsea on another. There's also travellers on different time zones and couples on dates. It's always strange because all the signals that normally dictate you leaving a restaurant – catching the last tube, the waiters clearing up – don't apply and the atmosphere can be … interesting.
I do like it, but if you don't plan it properly, not seeing sunlight can have an adverse affect on your personality – it's not normal, is it? It goes against everything our bodies do. I'm more spaced out. You eat too much, the same way you do when you travel, and it can make you feel gross. You're constantly dull-eyed and because I mix it up and it's not routine, my sleeping patterns are entirely random. My wife works normal hours and I try to cook when I get in so we can at least have breakfast together but even that's hard – I want sausages and mash after a night shift ends at 6am, not eggs or pastries.
The upside? Sunrise is the most beautiful time to drive through London. NI
Peter Collins, 33
Spacecraft engineer
I work as part of what we call the flight control team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt in Germany. I'm currently working on a mission called Gaia, which is a star mapper. It was launched in December and is travelling to a point which is 1.5m km from the Earth in the opposite direction to the sun. From there, it will map our galaxy, the Milky Way.
My particular area is the power and thermal systems on Gaia. I have to make sure the spacecraft's got enough power; that the solar array is working as it should; the distribution of the power through the spacecraft's working; and, on the thermal side, that everything is in the right thermal ranges.
In the first few months after the mission has launched it's quite intense. The first few days are critical. Once we've launched, for the week following the launch, we're in 12-hour shifts. So you're often working through the night. For those four or five days you basically just eat, sleep and work. You get into just working and not really knowing what time of day it is.
It's totally worth it for me, but then I don't have to do it for years and years and years. We have what are called spacecraft controllers, who come in when the mission is up and running. They have to be there the whole time to make sure the spacecraft is working. They're on their own in the control room overnight, day in, day out, night in, night out, which must be tough. It's not something I could do, because of the loneliness. Personally, I think it's being on your own for the whole time that would have an effect on your health; it's losing touch a bit of what's going on around you because you're so focused on work.
In my case, I don't think working nights has had a lasting effect on my health, but during the period that I'm doing it I would say my home life was affected, in that all I was doing was going home to eat, sleep, get up and go back to work again. My wife does a similar job, elsewhere at ESOC. It will be the same for her in a couple of years when her mission launches, but we both understand that it's only a short-term thing. TM
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/21/working-night-shifts-bad-for-you
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en
| 2014-01-21T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2151c6388975e9a263ae17a4309497809d6d594eadb277eea451da972abb28b0.json
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[
"Stuart James"
] | 2016-08-28T14:51:41 | null | 2016-08-28T14:42:16 |
The West Bromwich Albion manager, Tony Pulis, looked as exasperated as the supporters at the end of a tedious 0-0 with Middlesbrough
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West Brom’s need for new blood laid bare in dour draw with Middlesbrough
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An afternoon full of frustration ended with the predictable sound of boos at the final whistle as the desperate need for new signings at West Bromwich Albion was laid bare. Tony Pulis looked as exasperated as the West Brom supporters, who endured 90 minutes of tedious action in a game where both teams were lucky to get nil.
West Bromwich Albion 0-0 Middlesbrough: Premier League – as it happened Read more
Albion, who have completed only one permanent transfer this summer, were woeful as an attacking force. There was no creativity or spark and they looked totally devoid of ideas as to how to break down Middlesbrough. Saido Berahino started on the bench and the reaction to his introduction in the second half – a chorus of boos – suggested that the Albion fans would have been happy for him to remain there. Berahino could not get off the pitch quickly enough at the final whistle.
The only bright note for Albion was the performance of the 18-year-old Sam Field, who looked composed in possession on his full Premier League debut and left the field to deserved applause when he was withdrawn with just under quarter of an hour remaining. As for Middlesbrough, this will probably be viewed as a useful point, although Aitor Karanka’s team may feel that it could have been more if they had played with a bit more conviction.
Albion actually started reasonably brightly, with James McClean lively on the left flank – Antonio Barragan’s well-timed tackle brought one promising run to an end and Brad Guzan smothered at the winger’s feet after a fine pass from Darren Fletcher – yet the game soon slipped into a lull.
It was painful to watch at times and for a long period in the first half it felt as though nothing happened. Middlesbrough were dominating possession during that period but the neat and tidy passing at the base of their midfield, where Adam Clayton and Adam Forshaw were seeing plenty of the ball, rarely led to anything meaningful.
Albion flickered into life at the end of the first half when Brendan Galloway, who was making his Premier League debut for the club after joining on a season-long loan from Everton, made a couple of bursts forward from left-back. A low, drilled shot from the edge of the area was held by Guzan and six minutes later an inviting cross picked out Salomón Rondón.
The Venezuelan failed to make decent contact with his header, however, and the chance was spurned. Pulis, throwing his arms around in the technical area, made his thoughts clear.
There was little improvement after the interval. Craig Dawson’s header from a Matt Phillips corner dropped the wrong side of the post and that was as much as Albion mustered in the second half. Boro were no better. Barragan’s sinuous run ended with Cristhian Stuani shooting tamely into the arms of Ben Foster. The final whistle could not come quickly enough.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/28/west-bromwich-albion-middlesbrough-premier-league-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4ca3b36aadfab0a97c1463733dd0bc9a933cb5cd65fa78f866dd2be755c27887.json
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[
"Tom Mccarthy"
] | 2016-08-26T14:51:04 | null | 2016-08-26T14:14:47 |
Clinton said ‘outside forces’ did not affect policy decisions as secretary of state; Stephen Bannon’s empty Florida home and domestic violence charges revealed
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Hillary Clinton denies foundation donors' influence - campaign live
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www.theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/aug/26/election-2016-clinton-foundation-trump-campaign-live
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d8b831c50d2924c9d07ec7ca80dbe04ee9c4a049440b42a068b5fa2fc836d8f2.json
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[
"Rob Davies"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:33 | null | 2016-08-25T11:15:52 |
Taxi-hailing app tests scheduled rides feature in capital, opening up new front in battle with traditional cab industry
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Uber to allow London customers to book cars in advance
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www.theguardian.com
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Uber is stepping up its assault on traditional cab services by allowing customers in London to book in advance for the first time.
The taxi-hailing app launched the scheduled rides feature on Thursday, using the capital as a testing ground before rolling the service out to other cities in the UK and Europe.
Until now, Uber customers could only request a taxi to come immediately, but they can now order a car up to 30 days in advance.
The service will initially be available to customers with a business account, but will be extended to the company’s 2 million London users within a fortnight.
Tom Elvidge, Uber’s general manager for London, said: “Instead of tapping a button a few minutes before you need the ride, you can now tell us hours or days in advance when you need a car and we’ll do it for you.”
He said the service had been introduced in response to customer demand for booked cabs.
Uber has been experimenting with different formats, including the UberEATS delivery service, which pits the company against Deliveroo.
Moving into the booked car market could intensify the animosity between Uber and traditional taxi drivers, who have protested bitterly against its assault on their business.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/uber-allows-london-customers-book-cars-in-advance
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/30069228b482b10c4453da423ac3cccb1bce34988fe581f21562fa1065695f5c.json
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[
"Adithya Sambamurthy",
"Julia Ivanova",
"Bonnie Thompson"
] | 2016-08-30T12:52:26 | null | 2016-08-30T11:00:08 |
Fort McMurray residents were forced to flee a huge wildfire that destroyed much of their city in May 2016, the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fash-and-oil-fort-mcmurray-wildfire-damage-video.json
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Ash and Oil: Fort McMurray residents rebuild after wildfire destroys city - video
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www.theguardian.com
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Fort McMurray residents were forced to flee a huge wildfire that destroyed much of their city in Canada’s Alberta province in May 2016. About 88,000 residents were evacuated from the oil-rich region during the fire, the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history. More than a month later, some returned to pick up the pieces and resume their lives
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/aug/30/ash-and-oil-fort-mcmurray-wildfire-damage-video
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/237cd5289b7ecc334029df76ee7e1e3e1e54b1ed501d33ecf9d7b387d92cd6ab.json
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[
"Robert Skidelsky"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:56 | null | 2016-08-25T07:36:27 |
The argument for fiscal austerity, coupled with concerns about budget deficits in the UK and US, is gaining traction, but invalid
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fhow-worried-should-we-be-about-national-debt-uk-us-fiscal-austerity.json
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How worried should we be about national debt?
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www.theguardian.com
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Most people are more worried by government debt than taxation. “But it’s trillions”, a friend of mine recently expostulated about the UK’s national debt. He exaggerated a bit: it is £1.7tn. One website features a clock showing the debt growing at a rate of £5,170 a second. Although the tax take is far less, the UK government still collected a hefty £750bn in taxes in the last fiscal year. The tax base grows by the second, too, but no clock shows that.
Many people think that, however depressing heavy taxes are, it is more honest for governments to raise them to pay for their spending than it is to incur debt. Borrowing strikes them as a way of taxing by stealth. “How are they going to pay it back?” my friend asked. “Think of the burden on our children and grandchildren.”
I should say that my friend is extremely old. Horror of debt is particularly marked in the elderly, perhaps out of an ancient feeling that one should not meet one’s maker with a negative balance sheet. I should also add that my friend is extremely well educated and had played a prominent role in public life. But public finance is a mystery to him: he just had the gut feeling that a national debt in the trillions and growing by £5,170 a second was a very bad thing.
One should not attribute this gut feeling to financial illiteracy. It has been receiving strong support from those supposedly well versed in public finance, particularly since the financial crisis of 2008. Britain’s national debt currently stands at 84% of GDP. This is dangerously near the threshold of 90% identified by the Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, together with Carmen and Vincent Reinhart, beyond which economic growth stalls.
In the face of criticism of the data underlying this threshold, Rogoff has held firm and he now gives a reason for his alarm. With US government debt running at 82% of GDP, the danger is of a fast upward shift in interest rates, he says. The “potentially massive” fiscal costs of this could well require significant tax and spending adjustments – economist code for increasing taxes and reducing public spending – which would increase unemployment.
This is the financial leg of the familiar crowding out argument. The higher the national debt, according to this view, the greater the risk of government default and therefore the higher the cost of fresh government borrowing. This in turn will raise the cost of new private sector borrowing, which is why Rogoff wants the US government to lock in currently low rates by issuing much longer-term debt to fund public infrastructure. Maintaining low interest rates for private bank loans has been one of the main arguments for reducing budget deficits.
But this argument, or set of arguments – there are different strands – for fiscal austerity is invalid. A government that can issue debt in its own currency can easily keep interest rates low. The rates are bounded by concerns about inflation, overexpansion of the state sector and the central bank’s independence, but with relatively low levels of debt – Japan’s debt amounts to more than 230% of its GDP – and depressed output and inflation, these limits are quite distant in the UK and the US. As the record shows, continuous increases in both countries’ national debt since 2008 have been accompanied by a fall in the cost of government borrowing to near zero.
The other leg of the argument for reducing national debt has to do with the burden on future generations. The then US president Dwight Eisenhower expressed this thought succinctly in his State of the Union message in 1960: generating a surplus to pay back debt was a necessary “reduction on our children’s inherited mortgage”. The idea is that future generations would need to reduce their consumption in order to pay the taxes required to retire the outstanding debt – government deficits today crowd out the next generation’s consumption.
Although governments have endlessly repeated this argument in the past eight years as a justification for fiscal tightening, the economist AP Lerner pointed out its fallacy years ago. The burden of reduced consumption to pay for state spending is borne by the generation that lends the government the money in the first place. This is crystal clear if the government simply raises the money it needs for spending through taxes rather than borrowing it.
Furthermore, the idea that additional government spending, whether financed by taxation or borrowing, is bound to reduce private consumption by the same amount, assumes that no flow of additional income results from extra government spending. In other words, that the economy is already at full capacity. This has not been true of most countries since 2008.
But in the face of such weighty, if fallacious, testimony to the contrary, who am I to persuade my elderly friend to ignore his gut when it comes to thinking about the national debt?
Robert Skidelsky is an emeritus professor of political economy at Warwick University, a fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, and a member of the House of Lords.
© Project Syndicate
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/25/how-worried-should-we-be-about-national-debt-uk-us-fiscal-austerity
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b8594d8635098dd8ac89b654fff6484668895fb32e1c692983784574b5329f6f.json
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[
"Guardian Readers",
"Sarah Marsh"
] | 2016-08-26T13:22:09 | null | 2016-08-03T12:21:27 |
As research shows more people than ever are alive decades after diagnosis, we speak to five people about life after treatment
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F03%2Fwhat-its-like-to-survive-cancer-by-those-who-have-been-given-the-all-clear.json
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What it's like to survive cancer, by those who have done it
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www.theguardian.com
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The chances of surviving cancer are much greater than ever before. In a study published by the charity Macmillan Cancer Support it was found that people are now twice as likely to live at least 10 years after being diagnosed than they were 35 years ago.
Five people shared with us their cancer remission stories and what they learned from the experience.
Stephen Evans, 63, Abu Dhabi: Having come so close to death, I now realise life is short
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stephen Evans in 2012
I was surprised by how accepting I was when told I had cancer in 2011. The diagnosis came only a couple of years after my father had suddenly succumbed to lung cancer. At one point I came very close to death as a consequence of leukopoenia, a reduction in the number of white cells in the blood, rather than the cancer itself. Having come so close to losing my life, I now realise life is short and nothing is certain.
My first dose of chemotherapy was dreadful. The oncologist and nurses warned me it would be, but it was still a shock. I felt hot, and nauseous and thrashed about in pain. I would’ve fallen off the bed if the nurses hadn’t been hanging on to me. However, after that one episode, ongoing chemotherapy caused me no further problems. In fact, the whole treatment programme was so well managed that eventually I just went back to work and pretty much lived normally.
I’ve been in remission since 2014 and I feel pretty good. The cancer may return one day, but I’m ready for it – I know the symptoms and I’m confident prompt treatment will see me OK once more.
Finding out my cancer was gone was not the dramatic moment one might imagine because I could feel I was getting back to normal. I have a clinical background and so I viewed the whole thing quite analytically. When my oncologist told me I now needed only annual check-ups I just went back to normal living – like it was no big deal. It’s funny really.
Rebecca Palmer, 36, Colchester: One minute I was looking for baby clothing and the next wigs
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Becky Palmer
I’d gone from being pregnant to having cancer in the space of a matter of weeks – one minute I was looking for baby clothing online and the next wigs. I simply didn’t have time to be ill and it was a mighty inconvenience to my lovely life.
I had a molar pregnancy – a type of gestational trophoblastic tumour that happens when the normal fertilisation of an egg goes wrong. To get cancer as a result of a miscarriage seemed so surreal to me, it actually made the whole thing seem like a very bizarre dream.
Six months of chemo followed and with the help of my husband and incredible nurses and doctors I got through it. My cancer has a very high survival rate, so I wasn’t hugely surprised to go into remission. It was the only outcome I expected and I simply wanted to get back to my normal life.
I’m not sure the whole experience taught me anything. I rather suspect I’m supposed to say something poignant about life and I am bloody grateful to be here but cancer itself is just a bad bit of my past and has no particular impact on my present. I now have three children and I don’t have the time or inclination to give cancer any more of my life.
Robert Barden, 58, Portland: I’m still on the road to remission, but feeling positive helps
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Robert Barden
I found out that I had lung cancer in the summer of 2011. I was terrified when I heard the news as my stepfather and grandmother both died of it. After the initial shock, I went into a state of denial. Then, I felt determined: I was not going to let my wife and daughters watch me die from this.
Surgery started just a couple weeks after my diagnosis. My lung was collapsed, and there was no time to waste. They removed the lower lobe of my left lung. That was followed by a month of daily radiation treatments, due to a positive test on one of the lymph nodes. It was emotionally draining to realise that I was not out of the woods with surgery alone, but this prepared me for the battle to come. The following two years were met with recurrent tumours requiring the inevitable chemo treatments and more surgery, the last two-and-a-half years ago.
I’m still on the road to remission. I’ve recently graduated to six month scans, as opposed to three monthly ones, so the prognosis is cautiously optimistic until I reach the five-year mark. But I’m halfway there and feel great about it.
I’ve learned that a positive attitude and sense of humour is sometimes the only thing that will get you through the day. There were many times when all we could do was laugh or cry, and we most often chose to laugh.
Tom, 43, Hertfordshire: The surgeon said removing my testicle was like getting a Malteser out of the bag
I’d known I had testicular cancer before the diagnosis. The lump had been there for months, stubbornly refusing to go away and, by the time I actually mustered the courage to take it to the doctor, the testicle was at least twice normal size. There were only so many possibilities in terms of what was wrong with me and blind optimism has never been my strong point. It was almost a relief to have it confirmed. I had a weekend between diagnosis on the Friday and finding out that the cancer hadn’t spread. I spent most of it drunk.
You either learn to laugh at humiliating situations or you’ll have to crawl under a rock and die of shame somewhere. Before my operation, I had an entire class of medical students have a feel of my diseased nut so that they’d recognise it in future. I don’t know how anyone can’t see the funny side of that.
I had an orchidectomy, a surgical procedure to remove one testicle. I made the surgeon write on my left leg which ball I was having off, complete with an arrow pointing at the offending gonad. She was the same woman who had charmingly told me what a simple operation it was, “like getting the last Malteser out of the bag”.
After that, I had the option of one big dose of chemo to be sure. I took it, as I figured it would give me peace of mind. If I’d known how it felt, I might not have done. At the risk of stating the obvious, chemo is not pleasant.
It’s been over 10 years since I was diagnosed. My life has changed in lots of ways and I wonder if the cancer had something to do with it. I became far more reckless afterwards. I’m not sure whether that was as a sort of “life is short” reaction to what happened. Whatever caused it, that period led to the break-up of my relationship. I can’t blame the cancer, but it feels like it was a catalyst. Or it might just be a convenient excuse for my own bloody awful behaviour.
Either way, I’ve remarried now and I hardly ever think about the cancer any more. It’s still good for the odd comic anecdote here and there, but that’s about it.
Kathy, 65, Lancashire: Remission felt like the end of a journey I never thought I’d complete
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘When the cancer came back 12 years later, I opted for a bilateral mastectomy.’ Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA
The first time I heard the words I wanted to run away rather than face up to what was happening. The doctor was cold, clinical and didn’t seem to understand why I was so terrified – the nurse tried to tell me that people did survive but nothing made any sense at that point. I just thought, I’m going to die.
My bloke, my sister and best friend got me through it. When the cancer came back 12 years later, I opted for a bilateral mastectomy and had both breasts removed. I had bilateral reconstruction – with muscle taken from my abdomen – during a nine-hour operation. Unfortunately, I haemorrhaged in the recovery room and it took a further two hours to control the bleeding. The reconstruction was wrecked from that point on. Following surgery I had six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by radiotherapy.
When I found out I was in remission it felt like I had finally got to the end of a journey I never thought I’d complete. I felt a huge mix of relief and exhaustion. My experience taught me that there are so many brilliant, kind, supportive people in my life, and out there generally. As time goes by I’ve realised that if you’re here, there may be reasons for that. It sounds like a cliche, but I believe people should live for the moment. Do what you want to do, be where you want to be, and spend time with those who matter to you.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/what-its-like-to-survive-cancer-by-those-who-have-been-given-the-all-clear
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en
| 2016-08-03T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4e78ba5a7c62471ae8a8560506ff0861358817181ac7f06f65fa8bfaf99a1448.json
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[
"Kingsley Faulkner"
] | 2016-08-31T02:57:45 | null | 2016-08-31T01:20:02 |
Another cloud of preventable misery is gathering in our land and beyond our shores with the ongoing push to fossil fuels, and governments are responsible
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fcigarettes-asbestos-now-fossil-fuels-how-big-business-impacts-public-health.json
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Cigarettes, asbestos, now fossil fuels. How big business impacts public health
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www.theguardian.com
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The decisions reached at the recent Coag energy council meeting are reminiscent of a long series of failures to understand the impacts of powerful business on the health of the community.
The failures extend historically from tobacco, to asbestos to the health scourges of coal, and now to the health and community impacts of the unconventional gas industry.
It is too much to believe that governments fail to understand the implications.
Just 30 years ago, Australia was awash with tobacco advertising and promotion by tobacco companies and their agents through multiple media outlets and sporting organisations, supported by newspaper editorials opposed to any restrictions.
Major political parties readily accepted large donations, and some individual politicians were not immune to personal gifts and favours. Tobacco lobbyists had ready access to legislators to ensure that measures to deal with the health consequences were thwarted.
Gas supplies to rise and secret contracts to be scrapped under Coag reform plan Read more
While over 20,000 Australians were dying each year because of tobacco smoking, and children were being actively enticed into smoking addiction, their lives were valued less than an increasingly discredited industry. It remains a stain on governments of those days.
The tragedy of asbestos mining, transportation and usage in Australia is another cautionary tale still being played out. Mining continued, with active government support, well past the time when there was unequivocal medical evidence of lethal harm being caused by asbestos elsewhere in the world. Political intervention began far too late to prevent the deaths of thousands, with hundreds of distressing deaths still occurring.
Another cloud of preventable misery is gathering in our land and beyond our shores with the dangerous push to tolerate and expand coal mining and unconventional gas extraction. The reasons for political short-sightedness are similar to those that prevailed with tobacco and asbestos.
The fundamental reason has been the distortion of the political process that has enabled powerful commercial interests to buy political favours to crush health and environmental concerns and work against the wider public interest.
There are glaring examples where the mining industry has gained political favours through large direct and indirect donations to political parties and favours to individual public servants and legislators.
There also continues to be a revolving door of appointments from the mining sector to pivotal public service positions and political careers, and the reverse. The industry has had, and continues to have, extraordinary access to policy makers and legislators.
A report by the Australia Institute and the Australian Conservation Foundation analysing this process in Queensland has laid bare the extent of this distortion of good governance in that state, and exposes the failure of successive Queensland governments to allow sufficient scrutiny.
Genuine health and environmental concerns, and their associated financial consequences, are given minimal weight compared to that given to the proponents of exploration, mining, transportation and combustion of coal and of unconventional gas extraction and usage.
By comparison, access by organisations and individuals who have real expertise in the health effects of coal mining go unheeded.
This is nothing short of outrageous.
It is estimated that air pollution in Australia already causes around 3000 deaths annually, more than the motor vehicle accident toll. Most of those deaths are from particulate matter released by mining, transport and combustion of coal.
The recognition of black lung disease in coal miners in Queensland is a vivid reminder of the dangers involved. The inadequacy of regulatory standards and enforcement has led to debilitating illness and death.
The same could have been said of the asbestos tragedy on a much larger scale, and will eventually be said about coal mining.
Climate change resulting from the cumulative effects of global fossil fuel combustion is already causing multiple health consequences, including deaths, from heat stroke, dehydration, bushfires, floods, typhoons, storm surges, vector borne diseases, cardio-pulmonary diseases and allergies. All of these problems will worsen as climate changes become more pronounced.
Australia continues to lead the world in tobacco control and has saved the lives of thousands by doing so. It has protected its children in the process. It has belatedly learned some painful lessons on asbestos.
Queensland's black lung safeguards: 'major system failures' exposed Read more
By comparison, Australia is ignoring the overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels must be rapidly phased out in the early part of this century. Australia is blessed with abundant solar, wind and wave resources but it has been deceived into becoming a laggard rather than a leader in harnessing them.
It appears that the Coag decisions in their subservience to fossil fuel interests asked for information on the additional costs of renewable energy imposed on the national electricity market. There was no mention of the much greater costs imposed by coal on the health services by coal pollution and by gas on the health of communities from global warming.
Australia must avoid hurtling headlong into further coal mining and destructive unconventional gas extraction. It needs to have vision and true leadership; a focus on innovation and employment; and to be conscious of its responsibility to protect the natural environment and the health of its citizens.
This country has the intelligence, technological expertise, enterprise, workforce, space and moral obligation to make this possible. It will just take political wisdom and will to turn it into reality.
If federal and state governments do not do so, it will be at the clear expense of the people they serve.
As with asbestos, history will judge the responsible governments very harshly indeed.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/31/cigarettes-asbestos-now-fossil-fuels-how-big-business-impacts-public-health
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2ada58523763264454d873981c9ad65cae86df615cacd3058ebebcaa86364cb0.json
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[
"Anushka Asthana"
] | 2016-08-31T10:50:33 | null | 2016-08-31T10:39:48 |
PM starts first cabinet meeting since the summer break by reiterating that ‘Brexit means Brexit’
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No staying in the EU by the back door, says Theresa May
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www.theguardian.com
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Theresa May has told her cabinet that there will be “no attempts to stay in the EU by the back door”, as she began the first meeting of her top team since the summer break.
The prime minister started the session at Chequers by telling colleagues that they would be discussing the next steps towards Britain’s exit from the European project, and the opportunities available as “we forge a new role for the UK in the world”.
At Theresa May’s Brexit awayday, spats and spin must be put aside | Mary Dejevsky Read more
“We must continue to be very clear that Brexit means Brexit, that we’re going to make a success of it. That means there’s no second referendum, no attempts to sort of stay in the EU by the back door, that we’re actually going to deliver on this,” she said.
May, who spent her summer break on a walking holiday in Switzerland with her husband, also praised the fantastic success of Team GB in the Olympics, calling it “absolutely great” and wished the country’s Paralympians well.
She said her team would also discuss social reform, arguing that a major priority was wanting “to be a government and a country that works for everyone”.
“I want it to be a society where it’s the talent that you have and how hard you’re prepared to work that determines how you get on, rather than your background,” she said.
“We’ll be having an update on the state of the economy. We’ll be looking at how we can work to increase productivity – that’s one of the key issues that we want to address. But also how we can get tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business – again making sure that actually everyone is able to share in the country’s prosperity.”
Brexit talks: PM warned not to try to 'negotiate the unnegotiable' Read more
May’s team will also consider its legislative programme and then hear from the Tory party chairman, Patrick McLoughlin, in a special political cabinet for which civil servants will have to leave the room.
Finishing her introduction, May added: “Can I just remind everybody that this really is a very significant moment for the country, as we look ahead to the next steps that we need to take? We have the opportunity to forge a new positive role for the UK in the world, to make sure that we are that government and country that works for everyone – that everyone can share in the country’s prosperity.”
May met her team in an ornate room at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence in Buckinghamshire, flanked by Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary on one side, and the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, on the other. The prime minister allowed cameras in to film the opening comments.
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/31/no-staying-in-eu-by-back-door-theresa-may-brexit
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/53d52df213b7404028b9cb3aaf1eb556319ee9fd120e3754fe6a4e288d8e8b5c.json
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[
"Scott Bixby"
] | 2016-08-29T22:52:28 | null | 2016-08-29T21:20:10 |
Republican nominee responds to decision by San Francisco 49ers quarterback to sit during playing on national anthem last Friday in protest
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fdonald-trump-colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest.json
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Trump on Colin Kaepernick: 'He should find a country that works better for him'
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick “should find a country that works better for him”, Donald Trump has said in response to the furor over the black footballer’s decision to sit during The Star-Spangled Banner because he believes the US oppresses African Americans and other minorities.
“I have followed it and I think it’s personally not a good thing,” Trump told the Dori Monson Show, a conservative afternoon talk-radio program in the Seattle area, of the controversy. “I think it’s a terrible thing, and you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him. Let him try – it won’t happen.”
Colin Kaepernick's national anthem protest is fundamentally American | Ijeoma Oluo Read more
Kaepernick sat on the team’s bench on Friday night for the first time during the anthem before the 49ers played host to the Green Bay Packers in an exhibition game.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said in an interview with NFL Media afterwards. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Kaepernick has gone on to say that he will continue to sit out the anthem until he sees change in the way black people are treated in the US.
The 49ers issued a statement saying that Americans have the right to protest or support the anthem.
“The national anthem is and always will be a special part of the pregame ceremony,” the team said. “It is an opportunity to honor our country and reflect on the great liberties we are afforded as its citizens. In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose to participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.”
Kaepernick’s stand has proved divisive within the NFL. His former coach at the 49ers, Jim Harbaugh, was critical of the decision. “I acknowledge his right to do that. I don’t respect the motivation or the action,” said Harbaugh, who is now head coach at Michigan. Harbaugh later said he had misspoken and said he supported the quarterback’s motivation but not his “method”.
Other NFL players believe that Kaepernick’s actions are disrespectful towards the military. “It’s hard for me, because my brother was a Marine, and he lost a lot of friends,” Kaepernick’s former team-mate Alex Boone told USA Today Sports. “That flag obviously gives [Kaepernick] the right to do whatever he wants. I understand it. At the same time, you should have some fucking respect for people who served, especially people that lost their life to protect our freedom.”
The Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Myke Tavarres initially said he would follow Kaepernick’s lead before changing his mind on Monday afternoon. The Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, one of the most eloquent voices in the league, was broadly sympathetic to Kaepernick when he spoke to reporters on Monday. “There is some depth and some truth into what he was doing,” Sherman said. “I think he could have picked a better platform and a better way to do it, but every day they say athletes are so robotic and do everything by the book. And then when somebody takes a stand like that, he gets his head chopped off.”
Kaepernick’s future at the 49ers was under threat even before the events of the last few days. He lost his job as a starter last season, and has failed to kick on since establishing himself as one of the most exciting young quarterbacks in the league when he led his team to Super Bowl XLVII in February 2013.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/29/donald-trump-colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/de46d5e56b54fd7d38517bdb8f94abbf1479070dc52243c64c75be4437942642.json
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[
"Juliette Garside"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:45 | null | 2016-08-25T20:59:24 |
Measures are part of a series of planned European commission changes designed to strengthen rights of creators and publishers
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Feu-proposals-could-see-news-publishers-paid-by-google-and-facebook.json
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EU proposals could see news publishers paid by Google and Facebook
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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News publishers would have stronger rights to demand payment from digital giants such as Google and Facebook in exchange for using their content, under proposed European rules that are designed to shore up the collapsing revenues of traditional media companies.
The measures are part of a series of reforms that the European commission plans to put out to consultation in September. They are designed to strengthen the rights of those who create and invest in original content, from authors and musicians to record labels, broadcasters and publishers.
The commission has come under increasing pressure from publishers to level the playing field. Google and Facebook have attracted a ballooning share of online advertising money, while revenues for news publishers have slumped despite their expanding online readerships.
In draft proposals setting out its preferred options, the commission says: “The sustainability of publishing industries in the EU may be at stake, with the risk of further negative consequences on media pluralism, democratic debate and quality of information.”
The digital groups have a “strong bargaining position”, which “makes it difficult for publishers to negotiate with them on an equal footing”, according to a version of the draft seen by the Guardian.
How technology disrupted the truth | Katharine Viner Read more
Brussels is looking at giving news publishers the exclusive right to make their content available to the public, and to reproduce it for digital purposes.
This would mean that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, could face demands from publishers to pay to use extracts of their articles in services like Google News.
The protection, known as “neighbouring rights”, already exists for performers, record labels and broadcasters. The commission wants to extend it to the producers of news – publishers who produce largely text-based journalism.
According to the draft proposal, publishers would like the protection to last for 50 years. The commission is asking whether a shorter period of as little as between one and five years would be more appropriate, given the perishable nature of news.
A spokesman for the commission said: “Neighbouring rights are attributed to those that assist in making the original author’s work available to the public at large, for example performers, producers and broadcasters. The commission is considering whether to grant such rights to news publishers. It would recognise their role as investors in content and give them a stronger position when negotiating with other market players.”
However, there would be no obligation on publishers to make Google pay for using their content, and many may choose to continue making their journalism available at no cost in the hope of attracting more readers.
Previous attempts to force Google to pay for reproducing news stories have hit the buffers. When Spain introduced a mandatory levy, the search engine shut down its Spanish version of Google News. In Germany, after big drops in traffic, many publishers decided to stop charging the company.
The proposals are part of a drive to create a digital single market in Europe, first adopted in May 2015, which has the overall aim of reducing the differences between national copyright regimes and allowing for wider online access to films, television shows, sports broadcasts and music by users across the EU.
The working document also suggests imposing obligation on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion, which host content uploaded by members of the public, to seek revenue-sharing agreements with rights holders.
These big brands have already negotiated multiple deals, but record labels in particular claim they are being short changed. Digital platforms say they are under no obligation to share revenues, and such deals are voluntary. And many lesser known distributors – including pirate sites – refuse to negotiate any compensation at all.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/eu-proposals-could-see-news-publishers-paid-by-google-and-facebook
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b1116990f74a10e2860ee71f6e385be9cf0be31f805fe92fe401eac917ee22d2.json
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[
"Agence France-Presse In Beirut"
] | 2016-08-26T14:51:00 | null | 2016-08-26T12:55:17 |
Opposition fighters and families to leave town outside Damascus after four-year siege under deal with Assad government
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Syria: evacuation of rebels and families from Darayya under way
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Syrian rebels and their families have begun evacuating the town of Darayya outside the capital Damascus on Friday, under a deal agreed with the government after a four-year army siege.
The fighters and their families left the devastated town on buses accompanied by ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles.
The first bus to emerge from the town carried mostly children, elderly people and women.
Rebels to surrender Syrian town of Darayya to Assad's forces Read more
A military source told Agence France-Presse that about 300 rebels and their families would be evacuated from Darayya on the first day of the operation.
The evacuation, which is part of a deal between the government of Bashar al-Assad and opposition fighters in Darayya announced on Thursday, is expected to run until Saturday.
Rebels are being allowed to leave with their personal weapons and have been promised safe transit to the opposition-held Idlib city.
Civilians are expected to be transferred to government-run reception centres for processing and resettlement.
An estimated 8,000 people have remained in Darayya despite a siege that began in late 2012 and constant government bombardment.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/26/syria-evacuation-of-rebels-and-families-from-darayya-under-way
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/723520c6a8fd93f53d032fe85d9d0de4b27d9c9e62c696cd7ced05c6653c1b42.json
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[
"Will Hutton"
] | 2016-08-26T14:50:10 | null | 2016-08-26T14:02:02 |
Brexiters claim we have avoided Armageddon, but economies have slow responses. The reality of unravelling ties with the EU will hit Britain hard
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fdamaging-fallout-brexit-armageddon-economies-ties-eu.json
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Don’t be fooled. There will be damaging fallout from Brexit
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Two months on, leave campaigners now acknowledge that a key driver of their successful campaign was not to argue via fact and evidence, but rather to stir raw emotions – “psy ops” as Iain Duncan Smith has called it. Fact-based criticism was dismissed as part of “Project Fear”, a way of monstering inconvenient challenges to the blithe it-will-all-be-fine claims of leave. It worked then, and to a saddening degree, it is still being deployed.
Brexit Armageddon was a terrifying vision – but it simply hasn’t happened | Larry Elliott Read more
There has been no Armageddon, the Brexiters say, but economies, like supertankers that respond slowly to changes of steering direction, exhibit slow responses – especially to an event that has yet to happen. Nobody economically literate thought that unemployment, always a lagging indicator, would immediately soar in the weeks after the vote. Nor would tumbleweed now be blowing through high streets.
Yes, George Osborne’s “punishment” budget – an attempt to dramatise the impact of weakening longterm economic growth on any chancellor’s options – was over the top. But in the context of leave’s specious NHS claims it was no more than a misguided attempt to fight abusive statistical fire on the same terms.
Stock market buoyancy is a function of sterling’s weakness and of the Bank of England’s “sledgehammer” monetary response – itself born of the bank’s own deep apprehensions of a “material slowdown”. Thus, too, the current resilience of retail sales. But what matters is future intent. Here surveys of business and consumer confidence tell a more ominous story. The commercial property market and construction, where decision-makers are compelled to make longer-term assessments, are already experiencing sharply weakening conditions.
Prospects over the next five years are sobering – even alarming. The British and European economies are inextricably interconnected, as you would expect after more than 40 years of EU membership. Much of what remains of our manufacturing industry is dependent on free movement of goods and people, of which the newly successful motor and aerospace industries are typical exemplars. Industries as disparate as higher education, agriculture and financial services have prospered directly from EU programmes and the single market. Unscrambling all these hard-won and valuable relationships is bound to have a deleterious effect.
Further, the world’s companies come here to enjoy the UK “aircraft carrier” effect – exporting into the EU single market from an exceptionally business-friendly environment. Nearly 500 multinational companies have their European or global HQ in Britain – five times more than Germany – a major boost to our business services and commercial property industries alike.
Now the “aircraft carrier” is torpedoed – but until we know the details of Brexit nobody can tell whether it is badly crippled or sunk – along with the economic activity that derived from it. Is the end result likely to be Brexit-lite, with continued access to the single market and some compromise on free movement of people? The Tory right and their media allies will insist that is a sell-out, and will the Labour party want to be painted as a friend of immigration? In which case Britain will be compelled to negotiate trade deals with 27 EU countries, and another 52 deals with the countries with whom the EU has deals in turn. What will the resulting tariff – and indeed non-tariff – regime be? When will they be concluded, given they take on average seven years? Liam Fox trumpeting possible deals with Australia and Azerbaijan in a decade’s time is no substitute for knowing the answer, or better still having free and uninhibited access to the vast market in our own continent.
What will be the regime for agriculture, for science, for startups, for aerospace, for financial services?
This is the “dust cloud” of uncertainty of which the chief economist of the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, recently warned. It can be partly ameliorated, certainly, but it can’t be removed by an active fiscal policy and industrial policy. There will plainly be some increase in exports with a lower pound: but the response was desperately weak after sterling’s fall in 2008-9. More importantly, who is going to make a major investment in the UK in these circumstances, even with a weaker pound? Two economists (Nauro Campos and Fabrizio Coricelli – yes, experts) calculate that foreign direct investment will fall by a quarter. And if or when the uncertainty lifts, will it be because we have a hard or soft Brexit? It was for these reasons that every reputable forecaster predicted Brexit would lead to output falling below what it would otherwise have been in the years ahead. Not lurid pictures of an Armageddon; rather a cool assessment of economic realities, casually dismissed as “Project Fear”.
It could even be worse. Economies can get trapped in vicious downward spirals. Falling investment begets falling investment. A weakening commercial property market spells weakened bank balance sheets, and potential credit constraints. What kind of recovery will happen after the inevitable slowdown or recession next year? What will be the regime for agriculture, for science, for start-ups, for aerospace, for financial services? Who has confidence in Messrs Johnson, Fox and Davis putting the interests of the economy and jobs before their ideological predilections?
We have been plunged into a mess. The EU never obstructed the vital structural changes to the British investment and innovation ecosystem that had to be made, in or out. Now we have to deliver those reforms beset by the disastrous uncertainty of leaving the world’s greatest trading bloc. For what? Not to co-operate with our European neighbours in what, in my view, is a noble cause? To unleash the most disturbing outburst of anti-foreigner sentiment I have witnessed in my adult life?
Of course opinions vary. As you will have seen last week, Larry Elliott, the Guardian’s current economic editor, is upbeat about Brexit. I, a former one, am profoundly concerned. Readers in the years ahead will judge which of us was right.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/26/damaging-fallout-brexit-armageddon-economies-ties-eu
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/19e2c4c5a386a67b7f8d69b992dc6a5b5ea6e795f44e6a4372c94a009e02c40a.json
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[
"Haroon Siddique"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:38 | null | 2016-08-23T11:46:28 |
2% of women monitored for six years got breast cancer – and they were 2.7 times more likely to contract it if they were on combined HRT than if they were not
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fcombined-hrt-increases-breast-cancer-risk-nearly-300.json
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British study finds risk of breast cancer nearly tripled by combined HRT
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Women who rely on the most commonly used form of hormone replacement therapy are roughly three times more likely to develop breast cancer than those who do not use it, according to a study whose results suggest the risk of illness has been previously understated.
Those using the combined HRT therapy, a combination of oestrogen and progestogen, were running a risk 2.7 times greater than non-users, according to a study by scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London.
Previous investigations may have underestimated the increased risk by up to 60%, the study added.
NHS cancer patients missing out on innovative drugs Read more
Anthony Swerdlow, professor of epidemiology at the ICR, said: “What we found is that the risks with combined HRT are larger than most of the literature would suggest.”
The study’s leaders added that HRT is an individual choice but one for which accurate information is essential.
An estimated one in 10 women in their 50s use HRT to deal with menopausal symptoms including hot flushes, night sweats, insomnia, mood swings and tiredness.
The treatment is effective but controversial because studies published in 2002 and 2003 have previously suggested there is also link with breast cancer. Those findings led to a halving of the numbers of women taking the drugs.
In November an NHS watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), sought to reassure women about the safety of the treatment, which replaces depleted oestrogen and – in combined HRT – progestogen to alleviate symptoms.
Most women take combined HRT because oestrogen alone can increase the risk of womb cancer and taking progestogen alongside oestrogen is known to help minimise this risk. HRT using oestrogen alone is usually recommended for women who have had a hysterectomy.
Breast Cancer Now’s chief executive, Lady Delyth Morgan, said:
“Menopause symptoms can be hellish. The really important thing about the generations study is that it’s actually a fine-tuned study that’s looking very specifically and carefully at the issue.
“It’s potentially the most accurate assessment that can be made because it’s looking at the menopausal status of the participants and it’s looking at the length of time HRT was taken and on that basis assesses the change in the risk.”
There were almost 900,000 prescriptions for combined HRT with progestogen last year, according to the NHS. The risk of breast cancer increased with duration of use, with women who had used combined HRT for more than 15 years being 3.3 times more likely to develop breast cancer than non-users.
HRT media campaign underplays cancer risks, critics say Read more
However in women using the other type of HRT – a variant that uses oestrogen only – the scientists found that there was no overall increase in breast cancer risk compared with women who had never used HRT.
Scientists have debated the increased risk of breast cancer from HRT, which could be explained by an increased exposure to hormones affecting the development and growth of some tumours.
For the study, published in the British Journal of Cancer on Tuesday, 39,000 women were monitored for six years. During that time 775 – or nearly 2% – developed breast cancer and women using combined HRT (for an average, median duration of 5.4 years) were 2.7 times more likely to contract the disease during the treatment period than women who had never used HRT.
However, no increase in risk was seen in women using oestrogen-only HRT and a year or two after women stopped taking combined HRT, there was not a significantly increased risk of breast cancer, confirming findings of previous studies.
The experts believe the lack of follow-up information on the use of HRT and menopausal status affected the accuracy of other studies. For example failure to account for women who had stopped using HRT during the research period could lead to the risk being underestimated.
When the researchers analysed their own data without adjusting for changes in HRT use or women’s known menopause age, it led to a lower estimate of a 1.7-fold increase in risk.
Dr Heather Currie, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and chair of the British Menopause Society, said: “Women need clear, evidence-based information to break through the conflicts of opinion and confusion about the menopause.
“For many women, any change in breast-cancer risk is outweighed by the benefit on their quality of life, bearing in mind that there are many other factors that increase the risk of breast cancer, for example lifestyle factors.”
The Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which monitors the safety of medicines, said it would evaluate the study and provide updated information to prescribers and users of HRT if necessary.
“Medicine safety and effectiveness is of paramount importance and under constant review,” an MHRA spokesperson said. “Our priority is to ensure that the benefits of medication outweigh the risks. Current product information on all forms of HRT carries strong warnings on breast cancer, including that the risk increases with duration of use.
“The decision to start, continue or stop HRT should be made jointly by a woman and her doctor, based on the best advice available and her own personal circumstances, including her age, her need for treatment and her medical risk factors.”
HRT treatment should be re-assessed on a yearly basis at least, the agency said.
Meanwhile a separate study has found that women who expect the worst from a type of breast cancer treatment are more likely to suffer adverse side-effects.
HRT opened my eyes, and gave me my life back | Mariella Frostrup Read more
The research, published in the Annals of Oncology, found that women with a negative perception of receiving hormone therapies such as tamoxifen suffered nearly twice the number of side-effects than women with positive expectations or who thought the effects would not be too bad.
The authors looked at 111 women in Germany who had had treatment for hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer.
They questioned the patients about their expectations of the effect of taking hormone therapy at the start of the trial and then assessed them at three months and at two years. Those with higher expectations of side-effects at the start of the study saw a 1.8 increase in their occurrence after two years.
Prof Yvonne Nestoriuc, from the University Medical Centre, Hamburg – who led the study – said: “Our results show that expectations constitute a clinically relevant factor that influences the long-term outcome of hormone therapy.
“Expectations can be modified so as to decrease the burden of long-term side-effects and optimise adherence to preventive anti-cancer treatments in breast cancer survivors.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/23/combined-hrt-increases-breast-cancer-risk-nearly-300
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en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e84e79bbd4d1a3055488bacfd94f14c883e3656f80a1bba10258cbfda5beda64.json
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[
"David Lepeska"
] | 2016-08-31T06:52:40 | null | 2016-08-31T06:30:30 |
If Ukraine’s Maidan revolution has largely not led to the transparent government its proponents envisioned, it has certainly democratised Ukrainian culture. The country’s capital, Kiev, is at the forefront of a powerful new wave of creativity
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcities%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fkiev-new-revolution-young-ukrainians-cultural-revival-amid-conflict.json
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Kiev's new revolution: young Ukrainians spur cultural revival amid the conflict
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www.theguardian.com
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On a sultry Saturday evening in August, hundreds of young Kievans have descended on a vast courtyard a few miles from the city centre. As a DJ spins electronica in front of a 20-ft LED screen, partygoers stand in a paved open area bobbing their heads to the music, crowding the bar, or sneaking off to a leafy grotto to chat and canoodle.
The scene evokes late 90s Williamsburg, not the capital of a crisis-wracked country at war. “Lately there are so many more shows, so many more interesting parties like this,” says Ilya Myrokov, a 25-year-old dentist with a bowl cut, shaking his head as he sips beer from a plastic cup. “Compared to two years ago, it’s like an explosion.”
Last year, Ukraine’s economy shrank by 12%. Its slow-drip, two-and-a-half-year conflict with Russia has killed nearly 10,000 people and displaced about two million in the east of the country. But if the Maidan revolution, which ousted a Russia-friendly regime in February 2014, has largely failed to install the transparent, democratic government its proponents envisioned, it at least appears to have democratised Ukrainian culture.
Young Ukrainians today – they are so free, and the revolution moved them, spurred them Ivan Kozlenko
Bold young artists, promoters, entrepreneurs and officials have quietly begun to transform this city of three million into a hotbed of urban creativity, with innovative theatre, outdoor concerts and food events, a slew of smart bars and cafes, and a flowering of film production and appreciation.
“People stopped being afraid, after Maidan,” says Ivan Kozlenko, the 35-year-old general director of Ukraine’s national film archives. “Nobody’s afraid any more to say what they believe, to express their visions, their ideas. Young Ukrainians today – they are so free, and the revolution moved them, spurred them.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A still from 2015 film The Russian Woodpecker, which won the Sundance grand jury prize for world cinema documentaries. Photograph: Everett/Rex/Shutterstock
Much of Kiev’s new cultural thrust has been in response to recent tumult. Class Act, a recent conflict-focused theatre project led by Edinburgh’s Traverse theatre company, brought together Ukrainian youth from the country’s east and west. A song about Donbass, the Ukrainian region under conflict, by the Dakh Daughters – a cabaret band spun off from Kiev’s revered Dakh Theatre – is approaching a million views on YouTube. And of course, the Ukrainian singer Jamala won Eurovision 2016 with a song about the suffering of Crimean Tatars.
But film may be Kiev’s current hottest medium. The Russian Woodpecker, a documentary about one Kiev artist’s bizarrely compelling spin on Russian imperialism, took the grand-jury prize for world documentaries at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. And Ukrainian-made docs about Maidan have won several top festival prizes; one, Winter on Fire, was nominated for the best feature documentary Oscar.
Kozlenko has worked tirelessly to promote Ukrainian film, screening silent classics at major film festivals in Berlin, Cannes, and Karlovy Vary, and at the archives’ headquarters, known as the Dovzhenko Centre. He has also developed innovative funding methods such as renting out unused building space, and recently launched a major renovation at Dovzhenko; a film museum is also set to open next spring.
“Ivan has managed to single-handedly get the Dovzhenko Centre from an actual crumbling building into a legitimate cultural centre,” says Myroslava Hartmond, the Ukrainian-British owner of Kiev’s Triptych: Global Arts Workshop.
Hartmond and others, meanwhile, have sought to bring high-minded works to the masses. Impressive street art has been popping up across the city. Pinchuk Art Centre, perhaps the country’s top independent art space, now positions “mediators” in every room of its four-floor gallery space – young art students who speak Ukrainian, Russian, and English and answer questions from visitors. Last year’s Kiev biennial, called School of Kyiv, commandeered a variety of unusual spaces – a shuttered factory, a stylish shop, an unused mall – to reach a broader audience and help haul Ukrainian culture into the 21st century.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Over the last year Kiev has exploded with dozens of street art projects. Photograph: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images
Of course, Kiev has its troubles. The Donbas region is still a tinderbox, with Ukraine-Russia tensions on the rise in recent weeks. Corruption remains deeply endemic. Unemployment hovers at around 10%, and the economy is still sluggish. Locals complain of huge potholes, pricey public services, and no parking.
Kiev also appears to have become a more dangerous place of late. Serious crimes have more than doubled nationally since 2013, according to the local weekly New Time. And in July, prominent journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed by a car bomb in broad daylight on a busy street in central Kiev.
But while some may dismiss the city’s new ferment as just the latest chapter in the globalisation of hipster culture, Kiev’s newfound creativity marks a shaking off of the Soviet mindset, a breaking away from a past where new ideas and free thinking occurred only underground.
Consider that courtyard party. To boost revenues and attract Kiev’s youth, last year Kozlenko rented an entire floor of Dovzhenko to Plivka, a group known for organising all-night raves. Plivka and another outfit, Rhythm Buro, put together that party – the first event in Dovzhenko’s backyard – and in the process likely awakened hundreds of young Kievans to their national film archives.
Slowly, even the government’s top-down Soviet style appears to be shifting toward glasnost. “Before Maidan, our ministry would decide what each group or theatre should perform,” says Ukraine’s culture minister Yevhen Nyshchuk – a former actor and a prominent figure during the Maidan protests – during an interview in a stately conference room at his ministry.
We encourage self-expression. We want to support creative youth who have these new ideas and new ways to do things Yevhen Nyshchuk, culture minister
In addition to encouraging leaders like Kozlenko, his ministry is working with local arts organisations and international events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair and Venice Biennale. Nyshchuk himself has even gotten into the act, performing in a play during the Class Act project earlier this summer.
“There’s a Ukrainian proverb: ‘start with yourself’,” says the 43-year-old minister. “So we started here, reorganising the ministry. Now we encourage self-expression. We want to support creative youth who have these new ideas and new ways to do things.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ulichnaya Eda is now one of the largest street food events in Europe. Photograph: Alamy
The Ukho Music Agency, founded by Eugene Shimalsky and Sasha Andrusyk, has in the past two years held 15 classical music concerts in unlikely spaces across the city. Envision a sea-themed Ukrainian choral work in a swimming pool; a vocal arrangement in the city’s botanical garden. With tickets at $6-10, all the shows sold out. “We wanted to facilitate listening, and we wanted to tell stories about Kiev,” Andrusyk explains.
While many tales have been told of Kiev’s legendary all-night raves, the city’s newer dining and nightlife spots are embracing a highly democratic approach. Three-year-old Closer is a welcoming multi-use space, with live music and DJs, art exhibitions, film screenings and lectures. Cafe Squat 17b, which was opened last summer by squatters in the adjoining building, offers well-made drinks and snacks in a quiet, shady courtyard in the city centre.
Meanwhile, Ulichnaya Eda (“street food”), the festival founded three years ago by Roman Tugashev, a 32-year-old former lawyer, is now one of Europe’s largest regular street food events. Around 100 vendors and 30,000 visitors are drawn to a vast former silk factory compound one weekend per month from April to November. The selection is dizzying, from garlic butter snails to pork burritos, goat burgers to honey vodkas.
Tugashev is set to expand to other Ukrainian cities next year. That’s good news for gourmands: the festival, which receives dozens of new vendor applications each month, has emerged as an incubator for local food entrepreneurs. At least half a dozen Kiev food outlets got their start at the festival, including a Scandinavian sandwich shop, a crawfish-on-a-bun outfit, and a craft ice cream business. “People are starting to make and do whatever they want, because they believe they can,” Tugashev says. “It wasn’t like this a few years ago.”
How nature turned a failed communist plan into Bucharest's unique urban park Read more
In terms of influence, Kiev peaked about a millennium ago, when the leaders of Kievan Rus built St Sophia Cathedral and the Monastery of the Caves (now a Unesco Heritage site) and embraced literacy and Orthodox Christianity, which spread across the region.
The Mongols decimated that city, and Kiev lay largely dormant for centuries. Recently, the Economist placed Kiev only 131st out of 140 global cities in its liveability rankings. Yet Ukraine’s capital may be quietly regaining its long-lost swagger.
“Everybody abroad thinks Ukraine is in a war now, a terrible crisis, and it’s not safe here,” says culture minister Nyshchuk. “Of course there are issues, but right now we have great potential. Kiev is seeing so many festivals and events, so much creativity. Culture can play a key role in spurring development.”
Follow Guardian Cities onTwitter and Facebook to join the discussion
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/31/kiev-new-revolution-young-ukrainians-cultural-revival-amid-conflict
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b684d34d703c4dd620d69049bbb58595facdc1ac615404b00dbe164adf3d1a15.json
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[
"Ian Sample"
] | 2016-08-29T16:59:18 | null | 2016-08-29T15:00:04 |
Researchers claim analysis of 3.2m-year-old skeleton of ‘grandmother of humanity’ shows injuries consistent with those of humans falling on hard ground, but others query findings
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Ffamily-tree-fall-human-ancestor-lucy-died-in-arboreal-accident-say-scientists.json
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Family tree fall: human ancestor Lucy died in arboreal accident, say scientists
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www.theguardian.com
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The ancient human ancestor known as Lucy may have met her death more than 3m years ago when she tumbled out of a tree and crashed to the woodland floor, a team of US researchers claim.
A fresh analysis of the “grandmother of humanity” points out a number of cracks in the fossil bones that the scientists say match traumatic fractures seen in humans who suffer serious injuries from high falls on to hard ground.
“The consistency of the pattern of fractures with what we see in fall victims leads us to propose that it was a fall that was responsible for Lucy’s death,” said John Kappelman, an anthropologist who led the study at the University of Texas in Austin. “I think the injuries were so severe that she probably died very rapidly after the fall.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A hypothetical scenario for Lucy’s fall out of a tall tree and the subsequent vertical deceleration based on the patterning of bone fractures. The first segment depicts about the last half of the fall from 7.4 m with a real time duration of 0.45 seconds. The second segment shows a close-up of the last 2.2 m of the fall. The third segment shows as low-motion (about 1/5 speed) close-up of the last 1.7 m of the fall. The last frame illustrates the fractures. Credit: John Kappelman, University of Texas at Austin
But the claims, published in the prestigious journal Nature, were roundly dismissed by scientists who spoke to the Guardian. They point out that a lot can happen to a skeleton in 3.2m years. Lucy’s body may have been trampled by stampeding beasts before sediment covered the bones and gradually encased them in rock.
“There is a myriad of explanations for bone breakage,” said Donald Johanson at Arizona State University, who discovered Lucy more than 40 years ago in the Afar region of Ethiopia. “The suggestion that she fell out of a tree is largely a “just-so story” that is neither verifiable nor falsifiable, and therefore unprovable.”
Tim White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California in Berkeley, said the cracks were no more than routine fossil damage. “If paleontologists were to apply the same logic and assertion to the many mammals whose fossilised bones have been distorted by geological forces, we would have everything from gazelles to hippos, rhinos, and elephants climbing and falling from high trees,” he said.
Lucy was discovered in 1974 when Johanson and his student, Tom Gray, were searching for ancient animal bones on the parched terrain near the village of Hadar in northern Ethiopia. The chance finding of a piece of arm bone led them to uncover more remains of an ape-like animal. Eventually, they gathered about 40% of the skeleton.
That evening as the team celebrated at camp the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds came on providing the scientists with a name for their discovery. The species, Australopithecus afarensis, meaning “southern Ape from Afar”, walked upright, but had long, strong arms and curved fingers, making Lucy more adept at life in the trees than modern humans.
Kappelman became intrigued by some of the cracks in Lucy’s bones after examining high resolution x-ray scans of the fossils. The cracks had been described before and put down to natural processes such as erosion and fossilisation. But Kappelman thought there might be another explanation.
Working with Stephen Pearce, an orthopaedic surgeon, the scientists identified cracks in more than a dozen bones, ranging from the skull and spine to the ankles, shins, knees and pelvis, which look like compressive fractures sustained in a fall. One injury to the right shoulder matches the kind of fracture seen when people instinctively put their arms out to save themselves, the scientists believe. Kappelman calls it “a unique signature” for a fall and evidence that the individual was conscious at the time.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 3D printouts of Lucy’s right humerus reconstructed Photograph: John Kappelman/University of Texas at Austin
From the scientists’ calculations, Lucy, who weighed less than 30kg, could have suffered similar injuries in a fall from about 15 metres. If Australopithecus afarensis climbed trees to nest, the animals could have spent hours a day at this or even greater heights. “We know that chimps fall out of trees and often it’s because they step on a branch that turns out to be rotten, and boom, down they come,” said Kappelman.
“Based on clinical literature these are severe trauma events. We have not been able to come up with a reasonable way that these could be fractured postmortem with the bones lying on the surface or even if the dead body was being trampled on. If somebody is trampled on the bone breaks in a different way. It doesn’t break compressively,” said Kappelman.
But Johanson is not impressed. The cracks on Lucy’s bones are similar to the damage seen on other early human and ancient mammal fossils throughout Africa and the rest of the world, he said. “We don’t know how long the fossilisation process takes, but the enormous set of forces placed on the bones during the build up of sediments covering the bones is a significant factor in promoting damage and breakage,” he added.
Jaw bone fossil discovered in Ethiopia is oldest known human lineage remains Read more
One of White’s major complaints is that the scientists fail to prove beyond doubt that the cracks in Lucy’s bones occurred around the time of death. “Such defects created by natural geological forces of sediment pressure and mineral growth are very common in fossil assemblages. They often confuse clinicians and amateurs who imagine them to have happened around the time of death,” White said. “Every single element of the Lucy fossil has cracks. The authors cherry pick the ones that they imagine to be evidence of a fall from a tree, leaving the others unexplained and unexamined.”
Kappelman concedes that we can never know for sure what happened. “None of us were there. We didn’t see Lucy die,” he said. “Thinking about testing this idea, it’s hard to get someone to fall out of a tree, but we have tests going on every single day in every emergency room on planet Earth when people walk in with fractures from falls,” he said.
In pondering Lucy’s death, she came back to life, Kappelman added. For the first time she became a living, breathing individual, because I could understand what I propose to be her death. We have all fallen down. For an instant in time you can identify with her and imagine exactly what this individual, who lived over 3m years ago, was doing at that instant.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/29/family-tree-fall-human-ancestor-lucy-died-in-arboreal-accident-say-scientists
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e49dc66e1df62d968c6ac95d364a85b67064b411959e1fa6436da39ea2e0fd91.json
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[
"Simon Burnton"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:09 | null | 2016-08-26T12:22:00 |
Fifty years on from Keith East’s move to Stockport County for an undisclosed fee, football’s secrecy for the sake of it is growing more than a little tiresome
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2Fblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fundisclosed-transfers-conversations-growing-tiresome-secret-era-keith-east.json
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It is hard to get excited about a question mark hiding an undisclosed fee
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www.theguardian.com
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This is a story that starts, in a manner of speaking, with an astonishing scoring spree in Swindon more than half a century ago. After 13 games of the 1965-66 season the Robins were toiling in the middle of what was then called the Third Division and particularly underwhelming in attack, where they averaged precisely one goal per game, the second-worst record in the league. And then, suddenly, everything changed.
To say they clicked would be to massively downplay what happened next, a transformation so extraordinary it would have Clark Kent demanding a smarter outfit and a better phone box. In their next five home games Swindon ran riot, scoring 25 times, before abruptly returning to normal once again.
York were thrashed 6-0 on 19 October, Peterborough beaten 3-0 four days later, and the next visitors, Reading, suffered a 5-0 hiding. The No9, Jimmy Lawton, was in top form while Don Rogers, who scored once against Posh and hat-tricks in the other two games, was irrepressible. When Lawton strained a hamstring a day before the visit of Merthyr Tydfil in the first round of the FA Cup in November they were forced to change their front line, but the young reserve Keith East turned out to be better still. Thrown into the team at short notice he scored four times in a 5-1 win, and then proved it wasn’t a fluke when, during the visit of Mansfield the next week, he managed five. Lawton did not play again until April, by which time East had 24 goals to his name.
Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend Read more
It was the kind of achievement that always attracts interest in a young player, and towards the start of the following season top-flight Fulham moved in, only to move out again when Swindon increased their asking price at the last minute. Player and club fell out and in the end East went north, to Stockport County, who were on an ultimately successful title-winning charge in the Fourth Division. “Keith East, a 22-year-old Swindon Town centre-forward, was transferred yesterday to Stockport County at an undisclosed fee,” the Guardian reported. “East has played nine times for the first team this season and scored twice.”
It was the first time the Guardian had ever reported a transfer being concluded for an undisclosed fee. (The Times first applied the phrase to Harry Hood’s move from Clyde to Celtic in 1969. The Mirror did not use it in the context of football until 1973, and that was in announcing Jimmy Hill’s switch from ITV to the BBC. “You can say I’ll be earning a few bob more than Malcolm Allison at the Palace, and they say he’s on thirteen grand a year,” was all the information the pundit would provide.)
Times have changed. Between them the Guardian and the Observer reported 22 undisclosed fees in the 70s, 24 in the 80s, 61 in the 90s and 195 in the 2000s, and still the number rises. The Premier League’s own list of deals completed so far this summer involving its clubs contains 13 signings for specific sums, 26 free transfers, 74 loans and 116 undisclosed fees.
It is not hard to see the attraction of this financial secrecy, when the sums swilling around the English top flight are so gallingly stratospheric. Premier League clubs spent £859m in the summer 2015 transfer window, up from £835m in 2014 and £631m in 2013. Each September following the window’s closure the sum is announced by television hosts pointing excitedly at blinking totalisers, a bit like Children in Need only without the children or the need. Soon, though, this will have to stop: it is harder to get excited about a question mark, however large we believe the number hiding behind it to be.
The sport has discovered a taste for secrecy. Having successfully hidden their finances, footballers started hiding their faces, covering their mouths with their hands before they talk to each other in public. Whether on a beach in Dubai or a pitch in Manchester it seems they can only relax when there’s a palm between them and the nearest camera.
West Ham confirm signing of Edimilson Fernandes from FC Sion Read more
Some filmed conversations later prove problematic – just ask John Terry. Roger Lemerre and Didier Deschamps had a lengthy discussion on the pitch after the Euro 2000 final, prompting a French TV station to hire lip-readers and discover the national team captain’s intention to retire – “I’m tired, so tired. I have a wife, a family, I don’t want to make them suffer” – and the coach’s desperation to stop him, which must have been irritating.
But there are two sides to this coin, with TV footage having been used on several occasions by footballers and their managers to defend themselves against charges of using offensive language. This, to be fair, isn’t always totally successful: though the lip-reader hired by Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira in 2002 convinced a disciplinary panel that he did not, as alleged, call the referee Andy D’Urso “a fucking wanker with no personality”, they decided the only one of those words he hadn’t used was the second and still gave him a two-match ban and a £25,000 fine.
So here we are. Every week millions of people, in person and on television, pay to watch the beneficiaries of undisclosed transfers have undisclosed conversations. But this is a road that leads to a dark and distrustful place, where teams play mystery matches against obscure opponents on private pitches, and the phrase “classified results” takes on a different meaning entirely. Secrets are convenient but they are corrosive; a sport forever in the spotlight might wish we sometimes looked the other way, but every time they force us to do so some of us will decide not to turn back.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/aug/26/undisclosed-transfers-conversations-growing-tiresome-secret-era-keith-east
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a98ead0823a723c1c7166c8bc47cb4db39fadec5e7ac0bca41bcd1270c8cf7b9.json
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[
"Amelia Hill"
] | 2016-08-31T10:50:22 | null | 2016-08-31T09:53:07 |
Most people satisfied with service in their area despite 36% not having seen an officer on patrol for a year, survey shows
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Feight-out-of-10-people-happy-with-policing-watchdog-finds.json
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Eight out of 10 people happy with policing, watchdog finds
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www.theguardian.com
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Almost eight in 10 people are satisfied with policing, according to a report published by the police watchdog.
The survey of 26,000 people also found that the majority of the population felt that crime and antisocial behaviour was not much of a problem (62%), while a further one in 10 did not consider it a problem at all (10%).
The study, conducted last summer but published for the first time on Wednesday, was carried out by Ipsos Mori on behalf of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to monitor public views of policing. It is the first time the study has been done.
The findings reveal that 76% of people are happy with policing in their area despite 36% not having seen a police officer on patrol over a period of 12 months. Another 23% said they had seen police on foot only once or twice over a year. Those living in the most deprived neighbourhoods, however, are more likely to report having seen a uniformed police presence on foot.
But the survey also found a quarter of respondents believed that crime and antisocial behaviour was a big problem in their local area (25%). Age appears to have an impact on feelings of safety with 33% of 16 to 24-year-olds feeling unsafe, compared with 21% of those aged 65 and over.
The study questioned people aged over 16 across the 43 police forces in England and Wales, between 15 July and 6 August 2015.
Last October, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Sara Thornton, and Craig Mackey, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said the era of routine patrols by “bobbies on the beat” had come to an end.
They also said funding cuts would lead to a transformation in investigating crime, but the Home Office said at the time police reform was working and crime was falling.
Police budgets in England and Wales were protected in real terms in the former chancellor George Osborne’s spending review last November.
People’s overall contentment with policing appears to reflect the national picture of falling crime rates, as recorded by the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). The CSEW shows overall crime has been falling since a peak in 1995, with some fluctuations from year to year. The latest survey ending March 2016 showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults aged 16 to 59. There were 6.3m incidents, compared with 6.8m in the previous survey year.
Improved crime rates, however, do not reliably result in people feeling safer. The same ONS survey showed that around 6 out of 10 adults (61%) perceived crime in the country as a whole to have risen over the past few years. Fewer people, however, perceived that crime had risen in their local area (32%). Instead, when asked about the level of crime in their local area, compared with the level nationally, only a small proportion (9%) thought crime in their local area was above average and 55% felt it was below average.
News programmes on TV and radio are most often cited as the main source of information influencing people’s perceptions of national crime levels (cited by 67% of people).
The 2013-14 survey found 12% of adults classified as having a high level of worry about violent crime. Almost one in five adults (19%) thought it was either “very” or “fairly likely” that they would be a victim of crime within the next 12 months. All of these measures were at a similar level to the previous year and the general trend has been flat for a number of years.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/31/eight-out-of-10-people-happy-with-policing-watchdog-finds
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1bf473c8af829418ef526cc9b6adaf3fb87689ddcda44d05dd4c1702e4b22f7f.json
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[
"James Richardson",
"Ben Green",
"Barry Glendenning",
"Iain Macintosh",
"Paolo Bandini"
] | 2016-08-29T16:52:25 | null | 2016-08-29T10:42:26 |
City’s diminutive striker looks set to be banned for the top-of-the-table clash with Manchester United. Plus, Chelsea make it 3 wins out of 3; reactions to the Champions League and Europa League draws; and Owen Coyle’s race to the bottom
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Faudio%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fsergio-aguero-swings-but-will-he-miss-the-manchester-derby-football-weekly.json
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Sergio Aguëro swings but will he miss the Manchester derby? - Football Weekly
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On today’s Football Weekly, AC Jimbo is joined by Iain Macintosh, Paolo Bandini and, fresh off the beach from Rio, Barry Glendenning.
We begin by musing on the top three. Chelsea swept past Burnley to make it three wins in a row for Antonio Conte, while Manchester United needed a late Marcus Rashford strike to get past Hull, City may be counting the cost of their victory over West Ham.
Next, we turn our attention to Europe, giving our belated reaction to the Champions League and Europe League draws.
Finally, we discuss the ingloriously named Checkatrade EFL Trophy, Owen Coyle’s miserable start at Blackburn, and the latest hare-brained idea to bring Celtic and Rangers into English football.
Rafa Honigstein will be here on Thursday - and it’s international week, so let us know anything you want us to talk about.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/audio/2016/aug/29/sergio-aguero-swings-but-will-he-miss-the-manchester-derby-football-weekly
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/91941597439a93d24ad03fa00e5d92bf69bb256a4e5509fe2e141c60007339e3.json
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[
"Louise Taylor"
] | 2016-08-26T22:50:56 | null | 2016-08-26T21:30:45 |
Ayoze Pérez was set to be Newcastle’s lone striker against Brighton after two forwards were ruled out by concussion
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fnewcastle-united-ayoze-perez-brighton-striker-chris-hughton.json
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Newcastle United’s Ayoze Pérez ready for lone role against Brighton
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www.theguardian.com
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Ayoze Pérez already knows that in the Championship little is ever certain but Newcastle United’s young Spanish striker remains convinced about two things. “Brighton’s going to be a special game,” he says. “And it’s going to be hard.”
If Chris Hughton’s return to St James’ Park on Saturday evening represents the “special” part of the equation, the former Newcastle manager’s Brighton side are out to capitalise on Rafael Benítez’s loss of two principal strikers, Dwight Gayle and Aleksandar Mitrovic to the Football Association’s precautionary concussion rules.
Once an expected 52,000 crowd has greeted Hughton – who led the Tynesiders out of the second tier in 2010 and whose replacement by Alan Pardew when the team were 11th in the Premier League the following season still rankles – attentions will focus on Pérez’s interpretation of an unfamiliar lone-striker role.
The absence of Gayle and Mitrovic, both having suffered minor blows to the head during the League Cup win against Cheltenham on Tuesday, has frustrated Benítez. “They’re fine,” he said, “but it’s the English rules.” It leaves him turning to Pérez to lead the line as Newcastle continue their quest to regain Premier League status at the first attempt.
“I’m just about the only fit striker,” said the 23-year-old Pérez, whose confidence has been bolstered by League victories at home to Reading and Bristol City.
Those wins followed defeats against Fulham and Huddersfield but Pérez ascribes those losses to culture shock. “The Championship is tougher than the Premier League, 100% tougher,” he said. “But we’ve now adapted to this league. Although there’s still a lot of work to do we’re becoming more confident and playing better football. Brighton almost won promotion last season so they’re good and I’m sure they’ll be up there again this time – but we can win.”
He maintains the division’s “toughness” is not merely down to its enhanced physicality. “I’d say the Championship’s the sixth best league in the world,” Pérez said. “There are a lot of good teams with a lot of money. It’s tough.
Rafael Benítez unmoved by Newcastle’s struggles | Louise Taylor Read more
“It’s harder physically. But it’s more than that. It’s about the fixtures, there’s so many. You’re playing most midweeks. You feel really tired and you need a bigger squad to survive. There’s no let up. And in every game you have to give 100% physically. It’s more about winning second balls, winning battles, than the Premier League.”
He continued: “Everyone’s desperate to beat us because we’re Newcastle United. You can see it in their eyes. We’re the biggest club in this league and they want to be able to say they stopped Newcastle or they beat Newcastle.
“Just look at the way Fulham and Huddersfield celebrated afterwards. Beating a club like this was a big moment for them. Now we know what to expect. It’ll be the same every match. Maybe it was a shock at first but now we know every team will raise their game against us. We’re everyone’s game of the season. Teams are running hard, running so much but we have to try to beat them with good football.”
It is surprising a forward regularly watched by Barcelona remains on Tyneside but unlike the unsettled Moussa Sissoko (the France midfielder is once again omitted from Benítez’s squad as he desperately attempts to engineer an escape) – Pérez has never sought a move “I’ve always been happy here,” he said. “That hasn’t changed – not even when we were relegated. Of course, relegation was bad but not once have I thought about leaving.
“I believe staying here is what’s best for my career. If you’re happy in one place, why leave? During the summer I could have gone to other teams but I didn’t.”
And Barcelona? “That is something big,” he said. “But if I started thinking ‘Barcelona, oh Barcelona’ it would be wrong. Newcastle has given me everything.”
It will be an evocative occasion for the once similarly loyal Hughton but his sole focus is on outwitting Benítez. “It’s one of the biggest games on our calendar,” said Brighton’s manager, who is adamant his gifted winger Anthony Knockaert will not be among the “two or three more” players Benítez hopes to sign before Wednesday’s transfer deadline. “Playing Newcastle in front of more than 50,000 people is an atmosphere our lads are going to embrace.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/26/newcastle-united-ayoze-perez-brighton-striker-chris-hughton
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0d99423c6c99b58e375dd9bdc31cb741d524641970b09a4df891fd71bd9eee5b.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:29:40 | null | 2016-08-01T06:00:24 |
I was told there would be opportunities to progress in this position, but have been encouraged to apply elsewhere
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2Fwork-blog%2F2016%2Faug%2F01%2Fmy-line-manager-has-no-complaints-about-my-work-yet-excludes-me.json
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My line manage has no complaints about my work yet excludes me
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www.theguardian.com
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Twice a week we publish problems that will feature in a forthcoming Dear Jeremy advice column in the Saturday Guardian so that readers can offer their own advice and suggestions. We then print the best of your comments alongside Jeremy’s own insights. Here is the latest dilemma – what are your thoughts?
I started work in a department about a year ago where I was told that, if I demonstrated a commitment to the job, I could progress.
I worked hard, contributed to team meetings and up-skilled at every opportunity but got no feedback from my line manager or the other member of the team.
My line manager said that she had “an informal style of management” and only gave feedback if you did “something wrong”. But she wouldn’t give me any indication of what sort of training I should do to progress in the department. Then I found myself excluded from team meetings and upcoming projects without any reason being given. In fact, no word at all.
Then, to my utter amazement, my manager printed out a job advert for another organisation and gave it to me during a monthly one-to-one. She said I should look on the website and think about the other job, adding: “What kind of manager would I be if I did not tell you about other jobs out there.”
Before you say it, yes, I can take a hint! I asked point blank if she had a problem with my work but to my astonishment she said no. To make matters worse, the other job is in a totally different field and does not reflect the work I have been doing.
I reported the incident to HR (her line manager) and they have said that they see nothing wrong with what happened.
The stress of the situation is getting to me (I am still being excluded from everything and am only being given menial tasks.)
Yes, I could just move on. But I just wish someone would give me a straight answer because all my confidence in applying for another job in the same field has been shattered. If there’s something wrong with me or my work I need to know.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/work-blog/2016/aug/01/my-line-manager-has-no-complaints-about-my-work-yet-excludes-me
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en
| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9e78686d44661310f4ab3cbafdb084541350f0c95bcdf8954120e818e56f4d05.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-27T18:51:45 | null | 2016-08-27T17:03:30 |
Chris Froome’s hopes of winning the Vuelta a España were dealt a blow as Colombian Nairo Quintana made a late surge on stage eight to take the red jersey
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fvuelta-a-espana-chris-froom-nairo-quintana.json
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Chris Froome’s Vuelta a España hopes hit as Nairo Quintana pulls ahead
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www.theguardian.com
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Movistar’s Nairo Quintana landed a blow on Chris Froome and took possession of the red jersey following stage eight of the Vuelta a España.
Quintana attacked late on a brutal final climb on the 181.5km route from Villalpando to La Camperona, dropping Team Sky’s Froome to gain 33 seconds on the Tour de France winner and take the leader’s jersey from Darwin Atapuma (BMC Racing), who finished two minutes down.
Sport picture of the day: Italy earthquake tribute at La Vuelta Read more
Froome was passed by Alberto Contador (Tinkoff Saxo) before the line but remains third in the general classification standings, 27 seconds behind Quintana.
Quintana’s team-mate Alejandro Valverde crossed the line with Froome and now sits in second place in the GC standings, 19 seconds behind the Colombian.
Sergey Lagutin (Katusha) won the stage after holding off Axel Domont (AG2R La Mondiale), Perrig Quemeneur (Direct Energie) and Pieter Serry (Etixx-Quick-Step) in the closing stages.
But the GC drama was just getting started behind them, as Froome was initially distanced by Movistar but fought back before launching an attack of his own.
Quintana kept pace, though, and then surged clear in the last kilometre of the gruelling Alto de la Camperona.
Contador’s late attack earned him 12 seconds over Valverde and Froome and saw the three-time Vuelta winner move up to sixth in the standings, 1min 39sec behind Quintana.
However, the stage belonged to winner Lagutin, who told Eurosport: “I’ve been dreaming about it since I was little, to win a stage of a Grand Tour like the Vuelta, so when this happened I couldn’t believe that it happened to me. I’m 35-years-old and at some point I thought that it was probably it, but I still hoped that it was for me.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/vuelta-a-espana-chris-froom-nairo-quintana
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4b7c57d35dfef79fb27366420247a799750057e41555aca435bebdf807d00244.json
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[
"Larry Elliott",
"Larry Elliott Economics Editor"
] | 2016-08-26T13:30:15 | null | 2016-08-02T17:33:20 |
The FCA’s decision to move time bar to 2019 still doesn’t address merciless, industrial-scale scamming by banks
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2Feconomics-blog%2F2016%2Faug%2F02%2Fextension-ppi-payback-period-small-comfort-for-customers-hit-by-mis-selling.json
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PPI deadline extension offers cold comfort for banks. Deservedly so
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www.theguardian.com
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On the face of it, drawing a line under the payment protection insurance mis-selling scandal seems a reasonable idea. There can be few consumers unaware of the gigantic scam perpetrated by the big banks during the 1990s and the 2000s. A time bar was first mooted by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for 2018, but now looks like being extended by a year to 2019. That sounds like good news for customers.
The banks are deeply unimpressed with the first big decision made by Andrew Bailey, the FCA chief executive, since his arrival from the Bank of England. Lloyds, RBS, Barclays and the other big lenders have all been making provisions for a line to be drawn in the sand in 2018.
Clearly, this is not good news for the banks, because a PPI bill that already stands at £37bn means weaker profits, smaller dividends and a lower share price. Nor is it marvellous news for a government which will find the uncertainty over the final cost of PPI unwelcome as it seeks to get rid of its stakes in Lloyds and RBS.
In fact, there should be no sympathy for the banks. The hefty costs they have incurred, are incurring, and will continue to incur as a result of PPI are entirely of their own making. As even a cursory look at the charge sheet shows, Bailey is still letting them off lightly.
Let’s start with the way the banks mercilessly and knowingly rooked their customers. PPI was not a case of mis-selling by the odd bad apple; it was mis-selling on an industrial scale. Regulation of the banks as they perpetrated this scam was somewhere on the scale between lax and non-existent.
Nor was there much contrition when the scandal finally came to light. On the contrary, when the regulator finally woke up to what was happening and said compensation should be paid, the banks fought the decision in the courts. It was only when Lloyds broke ranks that consumers started to get paid back.
Even then, consumers have had to battle against quite blatant foot-dragging on the part of the banks. The reluctance to settle legitimate claims is demonstrated by figures showing that 70% of complaints to the ombudsman about the refusal of banks to pay up have been upheld.
Consumer groups argue that only when the banks stop playing for time should a deadline for PPI claims even be considered. It’s hard to disagree.
Helicopter money looms closer in Japan
Going Japanese. It’s the fear that haunts policymakers the world over. Mario Draghi had the travails of the world’s third-biggest economy at the back of his mind when he made the case for negative interest rates in the eurozone. The risk of deflation helps explain why the US Federal Reserve has been so reluctant to push up the cost of borrowing and why the Bank of England has kept UK official rates at 0.5% for the past seven or so years.
Japan has been trying to get out of its economic mess for a quarter of a century. It demonstrates what can happen if countries fail to spot the root causes of a problem, fail to act quickly enough, and remove policy stimulus over-hastily. More pertinently, it provides a warning of what can happen when conventional economic tools cease to work.
The government of Shinzo Abe has just announced details of a supplementary budget designed to boost growth and drive inflation back up to its official 2% target. A 28tn yen package sounds like a lot of money, but as has tended to be the way in Japan, appearances can be deceptive. Half the 28tn yen is supposed to be extra spending by the private sector, and a further quarter will be the provision of cheap loans. The extra spending by the government amounts to 6tn yen, only 4.5tn yen of which will be spent in the current year.
Abe’s government says the fiscal measures will increase national output by 1.3% in the current year. That looks highly improbable given the modest size of the package. Lifting Japan out of its malaise is going to require something more radical, which is why the talk of helicopter money is becoming louder. And why Draghi et al are watching so closely.
Lack of strikes is not a sign of workplace harmony
Like bell-bottomed trousers and prog rock, industrial action is a relic of a bygone age. Official records stretch back to the 1890s and never in all that time have as few people been involved in disputes as the 81,000 who went on strike in 2015.
Nor was this a one-off. The post-war peak for days lost through strikes came in a period that embraced the miners’ strikes of 1972 and 1984-5 and the Winter of Discontent in 1978-9. Since then, the number of stoppages has dwindled.
So is this a golden era of workplace harmony? Hardly. Grievances have not disappeared. Brexit was partly caused by year after year of falling real wages. The difference is that with union power restricted and fewer workers covered by collective bargaining, employers call the shots.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/economics-blog/2016/aug/02/extension-ppi-payback-period-small-comfort-for-customers-hit-by-mis-selling
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| 2016-08-02T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/37a61831bdd1e4ad5fa674d2b1b561c70fecd7368b09718195f5afd285bfdf4b.json
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[
"Guardian Staff"
] | 2016-08-28T14:49:45 | null | 2016-08-28T13:47:42 |
Chief economist Andy Haldane says pensions are too complicated and property is better due to continuously rising prices
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fproperty-is-better-bet-than-a-pension-says-bank-of-england-economist.json
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'Property is better bet' than a pension says Bank of England economist
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www.theguardian.com
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Property is a better investment for retirement than a pension, according to the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane.
Haldane owns two homes – one in Surrey and a holiday home on the Kent coast. His basic salary at the Bank is £182,000 and he is in line for a pension of more than £80,000 a year when he retires.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Haldane said he did not consider himself wealthy. “I see myself as not having to worry about money, but plainly not wealthy. I never have [felt wealthy] , and never expect to in this job.”
He does not have a credit card – “I’ve never seen the need for it,” he told the paper. “My spending is all on debit cards.”
Haldane believes that property is a better bet for retirement planning than a pension. “It ought to be pension but it’s almost certainly property,” he said.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England. Photograph: ANL/REX Shutterstock
“As long as we continue not to build anything like as many houses in this country as we need to ... we will see what we’ve had for the better part of a generation, which is house prices relentlessly heading north.”
Ros Altmann, the former pensions minister, said his comments were “divorced from reality” and it was “irresponsible” to suggest people should rely on property rather than pensions.
This is not the first time Haldane has raised eyebrows with his comments on pensions. In a speech in May, he admitted that he was unable to understand pensions because the system was so complicated.
ONS data shows UK wealth wedded to property Read more
“I consider myself moderately financially literate – yet I confess to not being able to make the remotest sense of pensions,” he said. “Conversations with countless experts and independent financial advisers have confirmed for me only one thing – that they have no clue either.”
He said ordinary workers had no chance of making informed decisions for their retirement funds and called for the system to be simplified.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/28/property-is-better-bet-than-a-pension-says-bank-of-england-economist
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| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/abcee57c9b55684ba46bf1efb93c1dece0a70eab7ff77b5c6ba08648f85bbaf0.json
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[
"Benjamin Ramm"
] | 2016-08-26T13:17:18 | null | 2016-08-25T08:30:06 |
The author of The People v OJ Simpson examines another ‘trial of the century’, which hinged on whether Hearst was brainwashed or radicalised
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Famerican-heiress-by-jeffrey-toobin-review-patty-hearst.json
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American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin review - was Patty Hearst for real?
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On the eve of Patty Hearst’s trial, 40 years ago, a reporter described her saga as “probably the mystery story of the 20th century”. It is certainly one of the most bizarre episodes in recent US history – a tale of high drama and farce, and of a shocking personal transformation, the nature of which continues to be the subject of much speculation. Jeffrey Toobin’s account is nuanced and well paced, if at times lacking the imagination to solve the “mystery”.
The American heiress was born into California’s most famous family. Her grandfather was the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, on whom the film Citizen Kane was based, although the mildly rebellious Patty made a point of never watching the movie. At 17, she was engaged to her teacher, who she followed to Berkeley when he became a student at the most radical campus in the country. But Patty was not politically minded; at 19, she was “restless and unformed”, Toobin writes, and discontented with a domestic routine in the service of her fiance. Then, on 4 February 1974, she was kidnapped by an obscure political group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).
Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence – review Read more
The SLA stated that capitalism is parasitic, whereas socialism is symbiotic – the group’s slogan was “Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys upon the Life of the People!” Although the army never numbered more than nine members, they proclaimed a Symbionese Nation and adopted a jazz-funk national anthem. Led by an escaped convict, the group dreamed of “unleashing the most devastating revolutionary violence ever imagined”, but they also practised free love – largely to the benefit of male members (as Hearst later wrote, “it was ‘comradely’ to say yes”).
After the confidence and exuberance of the 1960s, the 70s were dominated by anxiety and brutality, “in a kind of cosmic refutation of the Summer of Love”, Toobin writes. He documents the waves of criminality in northern California, from the Zodiac killer to the Zebra murders, which peaked with the slaughter of five citizens in the week before Hearst’s kidnapping. With the nation mired in Watergate, domestic terrorism engulfed the United States. In 1974, there were 2,044 actual or attempted bombings.
What happened to Hearst during her 57 days of blindfolded captivity, after which she joined the SLA and became “Tania” in honour of the martyred lover of Che Guevara? Was her motivation for joining solely self-preservation, or was she – as a prosecution psychiatrist famously claimed – “a rebel in search of a cause”? The abiding fascination of this story lies in issues that resonate today – the question of consent, the notion of the malleability of character and the fear that radicalisation is something that can happen to anyone.
Toobin is right to argue that the SLA’s approach to the kidnapping was more haphazard than methodical, reflecting their internal indecision rather than a concerted attempt at brainwashing. Perhaps Hearst learned to mimic her captors in order to survive, but became so fluent in their rhetoric that she began to persuade herself? Toobin draws heavily on her autobiography, but omits one of her most intriguing statements: “I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Performance was the goal itself’ … Hearst caught on camera during a bank robbery in San Francisco. Photograph: FBI/AP
The SLA denounced the “fascist pig media”, but also understood how to manipulate it, ensuring that Tania was captured on camera during the robbery of a bank owned by the father of her best friend. Toobin asserts that “for the SLA, performance was not a means to a goal but often the goal itself”, and that in this, “its story provided a kind of trailer to the modern world”. When the SLA fled to Los Angeles, six of its members died in a gunfight broadcast live on television, watched by Hearst in a motel in Disneyland.
For Toobin, “Patricia was always a rational actor” adapting to her circumstances, which explains her reversion to a civilian identity: “In the closet, she became a revolutionary; in the jail cell, she became a Hearst.” She began her days in jail writing of revolution, but a few weeks later was asking for eyeliner.
Yet the public mood shifted after her capture, and her trial occasioned a national debate about victimhood (Patty) and individual responsibility (Tania). Due in part to some legal bungling that Toobin examines expertly, the jury decided the latter outweighed the former, finding Hearst guilty and ushering in what historian Philip Jenkins calls the “Anti-Sixties”. (“They blamed society,” writes Toobin, “now society was blaming them.”) There’s little doubt that Hearst owed her minimal time in prison and her ultimate pardon to her position of privilege.
Toobin, a New Yorker writer, is best known for his 1997 book The Run of His Life: The People v OJ Simpson, recently adapted into a successful TV miniseries. Hearst’s trial, like OJ’s two decades later, was dubbed the “trial of the century”, and it is in the legal aspects of this saga that Toobin is in his element. His greatest contribution is the publication of previously unseen prison correspondence which sheds light on the evolution of Patty’s personal and political outlook. (“Power to those who have the strength to keep their minds free of dogma,” she wrote.)
Yet Toobin is not particularly engaged with the ideas that animated the revolutionaries. Hearst’s most authentic and lasting ideological commitment was to feminism, which she studied during the “lost year” prior to her arrest. Toobin writes: “Their bible was Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex, a dense and at times nearly incomprehensible analysis of feminism in Marxist terms.” But Firestone’s hugely influential text is actually admired for its clarity, which makes this dismissive comment all the more puzzling. In a similar vein, Toobin derides “psychobabble”, describes SLA member Angela Atwood as “empty-headed” (she wasn’t), and downplays the role of the doctrinaire Emily Harris, author of Tania’s lyrical eulogy for her comrades (“Perfect love and perfect hate, reflected in stone cold eyes”).
American Heiress is not, whatever the publisher claims, the definitive account of what happened. Although Toobin offers invaluable insights about Hearst’s prison days, a richer version of events before her arrest can be found in The Voices of Guns by Vin McLellan and Paul Avery. Written in 1976, the book offers a deeper understanding of the SLA’s motivations, perhaps because it was forged in the fire of that era whose energies still perplex us today.
•Benjamin Ramm presented the BBC Radio 4 documentary Captive Media: The Story of Patty Hearst. American Heiress is published by Doubleday ($28.95)
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/25/american-heiress-by-jeffrey-toobin-review-patty-hearst
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/198d108db0526250620e5267217298319b6709bbc41c0d0aaf357ee2378c9217.json
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[
"Nadia Khomami"
] | 2016-08-27T12:49:16 | null | 2016-08-27T11:48:40 |
The AA estimates 13m drivers will be on the road as record numbers of visitors stay in UK for long weekend
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| null |
Long road delays expected over record-breaking bank holiday
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www.theguardian.com
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Long delays and tailbacks are expected on the motorways as millions of Britons travel around the UK and abroad for the three-day bank holiday weekend.
An estimated 13 million drivers will have taken to the road for a holiday or an outing between Friday and Monday, according to the AA.
On Saturday traffic was affected after a bridge collapsed onto vehicles on the M20. Pictures uploaded to social media showed the bridge broken in half with damaged lorries underneath as onlookers exited their cars to get a better look. Emergency services are on the scene.
— Kent News (@HeartKentNews) #M20 Pedestrian Bridge collapse pic from @RobynTaylor94 #HeartNews pic.twitter.com/gNl5Y2Vgo9
— Kalpana Fitzpatrick (@KalpanaFitz) Looking v serious. BRidge collapse on #M20 #road #traffic pic.twitter.com/lUEVzPUobB
The busiest time is predicted to be between 11am and 4pm on Saturday, when up to 10 million people are expected to get behind the wheel. Other busy times on the roads over the bank holiday weekend are expected to be between 11am and 4pm on Sunday and 4pm and 6pm on Monday, the RAC motoring body said.
It added that warm weather, rail maintenance and a boom in “staycations” due to a fall in the value of sterling are contributing to a rise in traffic. National tourism agency VisitEngland said an estimated 5.1 million people will take a break within the UK, generating around £1.3bn for the UK economy.
Transport information supplier Inrix warned that some stretches of road could have twice as many vehicles between Friday and Monday compared with a normal weekend. Congestion hotspots were predicted to include the M25 between J9 Leatherhead and J21 Winch Hill Wood; the M5 southbound from J14 Thornbury and J22 Highbridge; the M25 between J4 Orpington and Dartford Tunnel; the M27/A31 between Southampton and Ringwood, and the M4 westbound from London to the West Country.
Max Holdstock, AA patrol of the year – the company’s top employee accolade – warned that traffic jams will build up around large events, with a number of music festivals taking place this weekend, including Reading and Leeds, Creamfields in Cheshire and CarFest South in Hampshire. The Notting Hill carnival will also take place in London.
“August Bank Holiday weekend is always a bit of a mad scramble on the roads,” Holdstock said. “Routes to the south west and the coast are usually among the busiest, particularly with hot weather forecast; and there will be localised congestion around events, especially at finish time.
“It’s a good idea to plan an alternative route in case of delays and carry plenty of water – at least a litre per person.”
National Express announced it will be its busiest weekend of the year with hundreds of thousands of people expected to travel by coach.
Highways England said that almost 98% of England’s motorway and major A roads will be clear of roadworks over the weekend, and some 373 miles of roadworks were either completed or suspended ahead of the holiday.
But congestion could be boosted with nearly 1,000 engineering projects being carried out across Britain’s rail network, meaning some lines will be closed. Major work is taking place to upgrade signalling in the Bristol area, affecting Great Western Railway passengers. Other work includes track replacement disrupting services between Milton Keynes and Rugby, and rail replacement buses operating between Preston and Bolton due to a project to electrify the railway through Chorley.
Network Rail’s route managing director, Martin Frobisher, said: “Work takes place 365 days a year as part of our Railway Upgrade Plan but we carry out larger upgrades over bank holidays when there are fewer passengers travelling.”
Camber Sands to use lifeguards over bank holiday weekend Read more
Travel organisation Abta also estimated that 2 million Britons will head abroad between Friday and Monday. Heathrow is expecting more than 440,000 passengers to depart over the last long weekend before Christmas. A further 311,000 passengers are leaving from Gatwick; 150,000 from Stansted; more than 103,000 from Manchester; 55,000 from Bristol and 47,000 from East Midlands.
“This weekend is the traditional curtain closer for the peak summer months and it is always a very busy weekend for travel, with millions taking advantage of the long weekend to head off overseas,” Abta chief executive, Mark Tanzer, said.
“With the roads predicted to be extremely busy, holidaymakers should make sure that they leave plenty of time to get to their port of departure.”
Ports and the Channel tunnel were also expected to be busy, Abta added.
The Met Office has forecast the weather as mixed, with sunshine, clouds, and outbreaks of thundery showers. A yellow warning for rain was issued for Saturday with showers, some of them heavy and thundery, together with outbreaks of rain spreading north across much of England and Wales. The south and south-east of England was predicted to become warm and humid as the day progressed.
Sunday will start cloudy for many with some rain around but this will break up to leave a day of sunny spells, although some showers will be slow moving and could be locally heavy with a risk of thunder. Monday is likely to be a day of scattered, light showers and sunny spells for most.
Guy Addington, community incident reduction manager with the RNLI, urged beachgoers to enjoy Britain’s coastlines safely. “Conditions can change quickly at the beach, so it is really important to respect the water and take extra care when visiting the coast,” he said. “If you want to swim in the sea we would advise you do so at a lifeguarded beach. RNLI lifeguards are always happy to answer any questions or advise of any risks, including where any rip currents may be, which can catch out even the most experienced swimmers.”
Meanwhile, English Heritage is on track to welcome a record-breaking 1.9 million visitors to its castles, palaces and forts this summer due to what it believes has been the “perfect temperature” across July and the first half of August.
Something for the weekend: activities and events for August bank holiday Read more
Some 870,000 people visited the charity’s staffed sites such as Stonehenge and Dover Castle last month, making it the busiest July since 2000. Visitor numbers for August are expected to exceed the previous highest figure of 1.07 million for that month in 2013, leading to this year’s summer holiday period being a record breaker.
English Heritage’s head of events, Emily Sewell, said: “Spiral staircases can be a struggle during a heatwave and when it’s pouring rain a roofless castle can test anyone, but this summer’s fine weather is just right. The August bank holiday weekend will be crucial but we’re confident that with everything from jousting to Victorian cooking at our sites, we’ll have a record-breaking summer holiday.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/27/long-road-delays-expected-over-record-breaking-bank-holiday
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/24db6ada1e85008c6fa73d8a43cd6fd1bb3241451c9c070e61d7fda567e6a137.json
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