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[
"Samuel Gibbs"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:31 | null | 2016-08-23T12:10:41 |
From speedier replies, settings and app switching to more emoji, hidden settings and a weird cat collecting game
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fandroid-7-nougat-tips-tricks-replies-settings-app-emoji.json
|
en
| null |
Android 7.0 Nougat: 11 tips and tricks
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Google’s latest version of Android is already rolling out to the company’s Nexus and Pixel devices and will begin launching on new smartphones starting with the new LG V20.
If you’re still waiting, Google is pushing Nougat to those on the Android beta programme first, so if you must have it right now, join the beta quickly to get it updated to the final version of Android 7.0.
Here are all the features to look forward to and things to tweak.
1. Quick reply
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Quick replies are now available for almost any messaging app on Android. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
There’s no need to actually go to into a messaging app anymore, as basically everything gets quick reply through the new modifications made to Android’s notifications.
You can reply to messages, see other replies and conduct your business without ever leaving the app you were already in. It’s great.
2. Longer battery life
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Doze helps prolong battery life whenever the phone is locked. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
You don’t have to do anything for the new version of Doze to give you better battery life apart from update your phone. Doze reduces the impact that apps not actively running in the foreground have on battery life by working out which ones need to receive updates and use the processor, and which don’t.
Using Marshmallow, that only happened when the phone was not moving around, but now it works even if the phone is in your pocket. It should give you anywhere between 10% and 25% longer battery life, depending on how long you leave the phone in standby.
3. Multitasking without having to hack around
Facebook Twitter Pinterest If you really must continue watching that video while checking Twitter, now you can, using Google’s native multitasking support. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
A few Android phones, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Note series, have had side-by-side app multitasking before, but now it’s baked into Android and works with almost every app out of the box.
Simply hold the overview button on the right side of the navigation bar when in an app to choose another to place beside it or above it.
4. Quick app switch
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The square button in the bottom right is your app-switching friend. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Almost better than multitasking – double tap the overview button to jump to the last used app. Switching from one app to the other has never been faster.
5. More emoji
Facebook Twitter Pinterest More emoji, because there never can be enough emoji, apparently. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Thanks to an update to Unicode 9, 72 new emoji have joined the party, bringing the total to over 1,500. You’ll never be without the appropriate pictogram to get your point across, if you can find it in the massive list, that is.
Now you can:
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
6. Edit Quick settings
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The top five quick settings panes can be changed to modify what’s always displayed at the top of the notification shade. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Quick settings are better than ever. Now you get a top line of settings without opening the rest. That line contains the first five of the full quick settings panel that can now be edited. Just tap the edit button on the bottom right of the quick settings panel and move them around by holding and dragging.
7. System UI tuner
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Unlock the System UI tuner by holding down the cog at the top of the quick setting panel. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
If you want more customisations of the icons on the status bar, the do not disturb settings or a swipe-up gesture for split-screen multitasking, the hidden System UI tuner is your friend.
To activate it, hold the cog at the top of the quick settings panel for around 3-5 seconds. A menu right at the bottom of the main settings list called “System UI Tuner” will then appear for you to play around with.
8. Power notification controls
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Power notifications provides granular control over what apps can and can’t notify about and when. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Inside the System UI tuner menu there’s a setting for even more granular control over notifications called power notification controls.
There are various levels of notification access, which can prevent notifications from showing when an app is full screen but still make a sound or vibrate, for instance, instead of outright blocking them. Activating power notification settings in the System UI tuner adds a new slider to notification settings that allows you to pick how important they are, instead of the app automatically picking for you.
9. Data saver
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Data saver helps stop unintentional data use, but may reduce or block notifications in the background. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
If you have a tight or no mobile data budget, the new built-in data saver function can help. The setting hidden under Data usage stops apps from sending or receiving data when in the background and limits an app’s data usage when being actively used.
You an set a whitelist to allow free data access for certain apps, and there’s a quick toggle available too. The feature isn’t the same as the data saver function of Chrome, which must be activated separately.
10. Change the DPI and font size
Facebook Twitter Pinterest If you want to display more on the screen or need things a little larger, the display size and text size tools are your friend. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
If the text and icons on screen are just too big or too small, now you can adjust how big everything is. The Display size setting allows you to magnify everything, reformatting the screen, while the Font size setting just affects the type face of text.
11. Cat collecting
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cats. Because the internet loves them. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
Android 7.0 Nougat comes with a built-in cat collecting game. It’s an easter egg mini-game similar to Neko Atsume.
To activate it, scroll down the list of settings to About and tap on the Android version number three times to bring up a big N logo. Tap the N logo a couple of times before holding down on it until a cat emoji pops up at the bottom of the screen.
Then edit your quick settings panel and add the Android easter egg tile to your collection. Then tap on the empty dish to put out bait and wait.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/23/android-7-nougat-tips-tricks-replies-settings-app-emoji
|
en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4aab50587727eca2b0a794c1fc2c00afc043dae76344a027b2422634a82481a0.json
|
|
[
"Staff",
"Owen Jones",
"Steve Richards"
] | 2016-08-29T06:51:50 | null | 2016-06-10T05:20:31 |
‘Too much Hampstead, not enough Hull’: shadow home secretary says Remain message is failing to reach Labour heartland
|
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Fjun%2F10%2Fandy-burnham-warns-remain-is-failing-to-reach-labour-heartland.json
|
en
| null |
Andy Burnham sounds alarm at 'very real prospect' of Brexit
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The Remain campaign is facing the “very real prospect” of defeat in the referendum in two weeks’ time as it fails to reach traditional Labour voters, Andy Burnham has warned.
The shadow home secretary said a vote to leave the European Union on 23 June could lead to social “fragmentation” and the break-up of the United Kingdom.
Burnham sharply criticised the party’s campaigning, saying it had failed to reach out to traditional Labour voters amid fears that concerns about immigration are driving them to back Leave.
“We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times and we need to change that. Here we are two weeks away from the very real prospect that Britain will vote for isolation,” he told BBC2’s Newsnight.
“I think it would have a profound effect on our national life – the fragmentation that will come, the fear and the division.
“Those are all the things that the terrorists couldn’t create with their bombs and yet we will have a situation where society becomes more divided.
“If this decision is taken, dominoes will start to fall. It won’t just be the EU that starts to break up, it will be Britain too.”
The warning comes as Ed Miliband tries to inject new momentum into Labour’s campaign effort with an attack on Boris Johnson and the Leave camp for perpetrating a “fraud” on the British people.
The former opposition leader and other senior colleagues will make a series of interventions aimed at winning over wavering Labour supporters.
The former cabinet minister Yvette Cooper will release a report warning of the damage facing Labour heartlands if the “far right of the Conservative party” gets its way.
The Labour deputy leader Tom Watson will release analysis indicating Brexit could result in £18bn of welfare cuts and tax hikes as the Tories impose tighter austerity measures.
The attacks by Labour are aimed at rallying the party’s supporters behind the Remain cause following criticism of Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts in the referendum campaign.
In a speech in London, Miliband will warn that senior members of the Brexit campaign want to abolish measures protecting workers’ rights.
He is expected to say: “The Leave campaign are trying to perpetrate what I can only describe as a fraud on the British people. Tories who in the last days of this contest are trying to disguise themselves in Labour clothes.
“Let’s be clear what the Leave agenda would mean for working people. They want out of Europe so we can be out of the social chapter, as Boris Johnson said in terms in 2012. Their competitiveness strategy for Britain is deregulation and the erosion of rights of working people.”
A Vote Leave spokesman said: “As support drains away from the Remain campaign, they are getting ever more desperate and hysterical with their fanciful Leave predictions.
“We need to vote Leave if we want to take back control of our economy, borders and democracy.”
With Press Association
|
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/10/andy-burnham-warns-remain-is-failing-to-reach-labour-heartland
|
en
| 2016-06-10T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6a78c0201c083486d9eef91ab3f66b9d7463b85aa6873f77964e2eefae56422d.json
|
|
[
"George Monbiot"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:13 | null | 2016-08-16T19:31:46 |
Their campaign against the RSPB is a shameful example of ‘astroturfing’. The public should beware
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F16%2Fgrouse-shooters-kill-first-casualty-is-truth-astroturfing-botham-rspb-packham.json
|
en
| null |
The grouse shooters aim to kill: the first casualty is the truth
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
This is how, in a democracy, you win when you are outnumbered: you purchase the results. It’s how politics now works. The very rich throw money at the parties, lobby groups and thinktanks that project their demands. If they are clever, they keep their names out of it.
Here’s an example: a campaign fronted by the former England cricket captain Sir Ian Botham, called You Forgot the Birds. It appears to have two purposes: to bring down the RSPB – the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds – and to get the natural history presenter Chris Packham sacked from the BBC.
It likes to present itself as “... a network of people who are passionate about bird habitat. Some of us are conservationists or self-confessed birders, some are farmers and landowners, some work full-time in the countryside while others are volunteers from the cities.” And this is what it revealed in a footnote at the bottom of one of its press releases, that has since vanished from the web: “The You Forgot the Birds campaign is funded by the British grouse industry.” Ah, the grouse industry. Who would have guessed?
Fragile habitats, but sturdy Ikea flatpacks | Brief letters Read more
To shoot grouse you have to be exceedingly rich: it costs around £7,000 per person per day. The owners of grouse moors, who are also exceedingly rich, justify these fees by ensuring that there are vast numbers of birds to shoot. This requires, across great tracts of our uplands, the elimination of almost everything else.
Grouse are wild birds, but cosseted at the expense of other life forms. Predators and competitors must be eliminated, either legally or, in the case of protected species such as peregrine falcons, golden eagles, red kites and hen harriers, illegally. Many grouse moors are black holes for birds of prey. They disappear and their satellite tags stop working in the same places, again and again. Alien abduction? Russian black ops? No: shooting, trapping and poisoning by the gamekeepers employed to maximise grouse numbers, most of whom, on these remote moors, get away with it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A red kite found poisoned near Cromdale in Morayshire. Photograph: RSPB/PA
Producing as many grouse as possible also means burning and draining the land, to create a monoculture of the young heather the birds eat. Sure, this releases the carbon in the soil, pollutes rivers and helps to flood the towns downstream. But to hell with the plebs.
To rub our noses in it properly, we pay them for the privilege: grouse moors are subsidised by us. At the height of his austerity programme, as essential public services were cut to the bone, David Cameron’s government raised the subsidy for grouse moors by 84%, to £56 per hectare. Some owners now harvest hundreds of thousands of pounds of our money every year.
Cameron also tried to close the national wildlife crime unit, which would have pleased his friends no end. It was saved only by a public outcry. Conservationists have called for a law of vicarious liability, making the owners of grouse moors responsible for the wildlife crime they commission, rather than leaving only the gamekeepers to take the rap. But this proposal was struck down by Cameron’s environment minister, Richard Benyon. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that he owns a grouse moor.
But through the efforts of wildlife campaigners (like Packham and the RSPB) and people whose homes have been flooded downstream, the grouse industry is now being called to account. Last week, the petition posted by the conservationist Mark Avery calling for an end to driven grouse shooting – where wild birds are sent towards the guns by “beaters” – passed the 100,000-signature threshold: the issue is now likely to be debated in parliament.
Through the efforts of wildlife campaigners like Chris Packham, the grouse industry is now being called to account
The result is You Forgot the Birds, championed by the Daily Mail, which describes it as “a grassroots campaign by farmers and conservationists”. It is, of course, coincidental that Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor, owns a grouse moor.
We know who’s in front of this “grassroots campaign”: Botham, who runs a shoot in North Yorkshire. But who’s behind it? Only one funder has so far been identified: the billionaire hedge fund owner Crispin Odey. We also know that the campaign is run by a lobbying company called Abzed. It boasts that “a besieged grouse moor community turned to Abzed. Our approach was to turn the spotlight on to the RSPB.” Very grassroots, I’m sure.
Claims made by the campaign keep falling apart. Last year the Telegraph had to issue a humiliating correction and apology to the RSPB after it repeated statements in a You Forgot the Birds press release that seem to have been conjured out of thin air. Last week, in the Mail and on the Today programme, Botham recited figures for the rare birds found on grouse moors during a survey by the British Trust for Ornithology. The BTO says it has conducted no such survey.
The purpose of the countryside, for people like Botham, Odey and Dacre, is an exclusive playground for the rich. For them, authentic country people are those who own or rent significant tracts of land, many of whom live in cities, and those who work for them, as long as they wear tweed instead of Gore-Tex. As for the RSPB and its members, they’re bipedal vermin. Never mind that many of them live and work in the countryside; they are interlopers with no right to a voice in rural life.
The media collaborates. News reporters describe shooting and hunting lobbyists as “countryside groups”, anointing them as the authentic rural voice and casting those who oppose them – who often seem to possess a far greater love for and knowledge of the countryside – as interfering townies. Documentary-makers seek a stereotyped rusticity which, though politically charged, is presented as the neutral and immutable spirit of rural life. The co-presenter of the series Clarissa and the Countryman was Sir Johnny Scott, a baronet who owns 5,000 acres in the Scottish borders: that’s what the BBC means by countryman. Where is he now? Ah yes, fronting up You Forgot the Birds with Botham.
This flood was not only foretold – it was publicly subsidised | George Monbiot Read more
When opposition is seen as illegitimate, it appears to be legitimate to cheat and bludgeon. That’s how the lords of the land have long maintained their pre-eminence. Today you can no longer call out the yeomanry, sit in judgment then have dissenters hanged. But there are other means of bypassing democracy. You buy yourself a crowd, or at least an outfit that looks like a crowd. You demand, from your position of comfortable anonymity, the silencing of people who contest your claims, like Packham. You use a corrupt and partisan media to hound them.
This is how politics works these days: astroturf groups (fake grassroots movements) and undisclosed interests are everywhere. The same forces are at play in the tobacco industry, fossil fuels, junk food, banking, guns, private health provision, in fact throughout public life. They recruit celebrities to front their campaigns. The astroturf groups confuse and obfuscate, make up stories and grant their anonymous backers plausible deniability.
They are a threat to democracy. Call them out, expose them to the light, and don’t believe a word they say.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/16/grouse-shooters-kill-first-casualty-is-truth-astroturfing-botham-rspb-packham
|
en
| 2016-08-16T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/054db42b239c5cde2bad83160973d61c8865ba7e3dc2fe95df8efb5e3a0eda8e.json
|
|
[
"Miles Brignall",
"Larry Elliott",
"Anatole Kaletsky"
] | 2016-08-30T00:50:07 | null | 2016-08-29T23:01:14 |
Almost 70% of consumers feel confident about their finances following the EU referendum but 62% feel country’s economy is ‘not good’, says Lloyds report
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fbritons-positive-about-own-finances-but-not-economy-report-finds.json
|
en
| null |
Britons positive about own finances but not economy, report finds
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Consumers are feeling more positive about their personal financial situation but worried about the UK’s overall prospects, according to July’s Lloyds Bank spending power report.
Brexit vote hits confidence, hurts companies and weakens London housing market - as it happened Read more
The monthly barometer, which tracks both spending habits and consumer confidence, found that in the weeks following the vote to leave the EU, almost 70% of consumers said they believed their own personal finance situation was either “excellent”, “very good” or “somewhat good” – the highest level since the survey started five years ago.
The report, conducted in conjunction with Ipsos Mori, also found that spending on essentials such as food, drink, rent and utility bills rose for the first time since November 2014, albeit by only 0.1% on the previous year. Earlier this month the Office for National Statistics said retail sales rose 1.4% in July.
Lloyds asked 2,000 adult bank customers about their current and future spending habits. The findings will comfort those who feared the Brexit vote would send the UK economy into freefall, but caution others – not least because it revealed that in July, pessimism increased markedly about the prospects for the overall UK economy.
Nearly two thirds (62%) of respondents said they believed the country’s financial situation was “not good” or “not good at all”. This compares with 55% who felt similarly negative about the wider economic outlook when asked a month earlier.
People said they are also feeling less positive about the overall employment situation, with 50% of respondents now feeling “not very good” or “not good at all”, compared to 46% in June.
The findings chime with recent forecasts of a slowdown in economic activity in the second half of 2016, which prompted the Bank of England to lower interest rates to 0.25% earlier this month.
Lloyds bank to axe 3,000 jobs and close 200 branches Read more
Yet despite this, three quarters of respondents remained positive about their own job security, down just 1% from June.
Robin Bulloch, managing director, Lloyds Bank said: “What’s interesting is that people are more negative about the general economic outlook since the UK voted to leave the EU but feel more positive about their own personal circumstances. For now at least consumers seem intent on putting any fears of a wider economic slowdown to one side and carry on spending,”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/30/britons-positive-about-own-finances-but-not-economy-report-finds
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e65be84ce7a2127c71772da57dd025b0ab0797584494c20b2414d2a7f8a3863d.json
|
|
[
"Dean Burnett"
] | 2016-08-30T16:59:28 | null | 2016-08-16T11:19:59 |
Dean Burnett: Elaborate public proposals are increasingly common: the Olympic podium effort is a case in point. But is it a romantic gesture, or something more sinister?
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2Fbrain-flapping%2F2016%2Faug%2F16%2Fpublic-proposals-true-romance-or-unwarranted-coercion-olympic-podium-proposal.json
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en
| null |
Public proposals: true romance or unwarranted coercion?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
One of more unusual records smashed at the Rio Olympics must be the one for most public marriage proposal ever. One that occurs during the televised awards ceremony of a global sporting tournament will be very hard to beat in terms of audience.
However, not everyone thinks this was appropriate. Many have objected to the gesture, saying it was an attempt by Qin Kai (the proposer) to steal his girlfriend He Zi’s thunder, or that she was under too much pressure to give an honest answer at that point, and so on.
In this instance, we just don’t know. Brief footage of someone in an intensely public situation is not enough to allow accurate assessments of their thinking or mental state. Maybe He Zi loves the idea of big public proposals? Maybe she’s no issue with huge audiences, what with being an Olympic athlete? Maybe her boyfriend of 6 years knows what she likes better than an audience of remote strangers, most of whom didn’t know she existed the day before? For this couple, we can’t say. But that’s never stopped people getting angry on the internet before.
Proposing in public seems to be increasingly common, incorporating increasingly elaborate and grandiose fashions, involving many people, as participants and observers. It’s uncertain if this is new or something we’re only now noticing thanks to our online society, meaning things can go “viral” more often.
(This is all based on Western culture, of course. Other cultures and religions, like Hinduism, have a whole different approach).
You can see how this could happen. Despite ever-changing attitudes to relationships and marriage, and some exceptions, most still feel that it’s the man who has to propose (if you leave same-sex marriage out of it as it’s a recent development). Old fashioned and sexist it may be, but there it is. If you like it then you should have put a ring on it, as Beyoncé famously said.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest If your marriage proposal doesn’t include at least one flashmob, you will be divorced within four years. Photograph: Imaginechina/REX/Shutterstock
It’s common enough in nature for the males to have to woo females in elaborate ways. Peacocks have their elaborate tails, deer engage in antler-to-antler combat, so maybe extravagant, expensive proposals are a manifestation of this in humans? Of course, human males are thinking, rational creatures (with the possible exception of those who comment on feminism online), so aren’t purely at the mercy of evolved subconscious tendencies. But, there are also rational reasons for a showy proposal. A sign of dedication. Risking public rejection shows how committed you are to your partner. It will make the moment far more memorable. It’s more “romantic”. It’s a celebration of love. And so on.
So what’s the harm with big public proposals? Sadly, there are far more cynical ways to view it.
Humans have long been monogamous (for possibly less-than-romantic reasons) and got married, so a lot of cultural inertia has built up around the process. Many aspects of marriage and weddings are now regarded as status symbols. The size of the engagement ring, the wedding, the dress, there are many ways to use your marriage to emphasise your social superiority over others. Big showy proposals can become just another way of flaunting your status.
But a showy proposal is one thing. A showy public proposal is something else. Doing it in front of friends or family is one thing, no relationship occurs in a vacuum. But in front of numerous strangers? This potentially adds a far more sinister element.
People care about their image, about how other people see them, down to the neurological level. We all want to be seen by others as good and decent no matter what the truth, hence racists always say “I’m not racist but…” before being racist. This is why the majority of people fear embarrassing themselves or failing in some way when in a public situation (social anxieties are incredibly common).
The desire to avoid the negative judgement of others is an incredibly powerful motivator for humans. Peer pressure, mob mentality and countless other things show how people often go against their own beliefs and instincts purely to avoid standing out and not being accepted.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Does featuring in the Guardian image archives count as a “public” relationship? Photograph: imageBROKER/REX Shutterstock
One really good way to earn the ire and dislike of countless people would be to say no to someone’s public offer of marriage after an elaborate and impressive display that clearly took considerable time and effort to arrange and drew considerable attention in the process.
The question at the end of this is not just “Will you marry me?”; it could be seen as “Will you refuse to marry me and risk harsh judgement from all these strangers, who know nothing about you apart from the fact that you have a partner who just went to extreme efforts to impress you so obviously cares about you greatly, and will likely be utterly heartbroken and humiliated if you refuse?”
This is, by anyone’s definition, a weighted question. And the woman on the receiving end, who typically should be utterly unprepared for the whole thing, has barely any time to make a rational decision without looking heartless in front of many people. People who are actually there in person, not watching remotely from a great distance. It would take serious guts and mental fortitude to stick to your guns and say no if it’s not what you truly want. This is a world where women can be vilified for refusing the sexual advances of a stranger, so actively rejecting someone you’re committed to could be far worse again.
Basically, if I were a man who wasn’t certain that my girlfriend would agree to marry me, I’d do it as publicly and loudly as possible, to “stack the deck” in my favour, as it were. It could easily be used as a method of coercion, not just a romantic gesture.
Of course it doesn’t mean every man who proposes publicly is thinking like this. They could well be doing exactly the sort of thing their partner would love and appreciate forever. But whatever the intentions of the people involved, it inevitably adds more factors and pressures into what should be a simple yes/no question between two people who know each other intimately.
And if you’re not sure your partner would say yes without all the elaborate public extras, maybe you shouldn’t be proposing yet?
Dean Burnett’s debut book The Idiot Brain is available now in the UK, USA and Canada. It could conceivably make a good wedding present.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2016/aug/16/public-proposals-true-romance-or-unwarranted-coercion-olympic-podium-proposal
|
en
| 2016-08-16T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/879a01addaba86f291debcfb69c36536f51659696e2ff5c589e04b5b42ef33e6.json
|
|
[
"Mark Townsend"
] | 2016-08-27T20:50:29 | null | 2016-08-27T20:45:13 |
RNLI aims to improve security at hazardous coastal sites and halve an annual national death toll of around 200
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fcamber-sands-high-risk-national-plan-beach-safety-strategy.json
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en
| null |
Camber Sands given high-risk status in national plan after five die
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The popular Sussex beach where five men drowned last week has been prioritised for inclusion in a national strategy aimed at making “high-risk” stretches of UK coastline safer.
Camber Sands to use lifeguards over bank holiday weekend Read more
As the inquest continues into the cause of the deaths on Camber Sands last week, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) told the Observer it had already held talks with local councillors, businesses and police.
As a result, Camber Sands is now to be included in its “community life-saving plan”, a national programme the service is rolling out to improve safety along the most hazardous stretches of UK coastline.
Five Sri Lankans in their teens and 20s drowned during a day trip from London to Camber Sands last Wednesday. A few weeks earlier, a 19-year-old Brazilian, Gustavo Silva Da Cruz, died swimming in the same stretch of sea, prompting Sri Lankan relatives of the latest tragedy to criticise the lack of safety measures on the stretch of Sussex coastline.
A temporary RNLI lifeguard service was introduced to the beach for the remainder of the summer, but a longer-term solution is already being prepared for what was, until recently, classified as a “benign” stretch of coast.
So far, the RNLI has identified 227 locations where its community lifesaving plan will be introduced. Volunteer safety officers will be recruited to organise community involvement and education. This year the organisation also introduced a drowning prevention strategy for Britain, a 10-year blueprint running from 2016 to 2026. The strategy identified men as most at risk of drowning, accounting for eight in 10 of all the deaths. Fatalities rise markedly for males aged in their mid-to-late teens, peaking among the 20 to 29-year-old age group. The RNLI hopes to halve the number of drowning fatalities in the sea – over the past five years, close to 200 a year have been killed. The service recorded 15,000 incidents on beaches last year, with 18,000 people needing to be rescued.
Brian Robson, community safety manager for the RNLI, said that Camber Sands, which can attract crowds of 25,000 to its seven-mile stretch of sands and dunes, was now among locations it had evaluated as high-risk.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Attendees of a life-saving course at the RNLI College in Poole.
He said: “Camber Sands has been fairly unique for us; obviously it came upon our horizon because of the previous fatality. Some colleagues who work along the south coast were talking to the council about whether we are doing enough, is everything in the right place?
“The horrible circumstances of last week has raised it on our risk scale. Until now, Camber Sands has been fairly benign, not a difficult area for us to work, but now it has been placed in a much higher-risk category.”
The other locations where community life-saving plans have been introduced include Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower peninsula, one of south Wales’ most popular beaches. Following the drowning of two people last year, the RNLI launched a programme working with local businesses, landowners and the National Trust. Lifeguards are now introduced during busy periods and new high-profile safety signs warn of dangerous current and rip tides in the area.
In the north Yorkshire resort of Scarborough, funds raised by the community, following the drowning last year of Andrew McGeown, 32, have seen the introduction of an initiative to teach local youngsters the perils of swimming offshore. This summer 400 local schoolchildren from the resort were educated on the dangers of swimming in open water compared with in a pool.
The RNLI is also studying the possibility of deploying drones that can carry an inflatable life ring to a swimmer in distress. Designers in the US have tested rings that automatically inflate as soon as they hit the water, helping swimmers to stay afloat until rescuers arrive.
One complicating factor is the constantly evolving nature of the UK coastline, with stretches becoming less or more dangerous. “The coastline around the UK is continually changing. One location might be high risk one year but not the next; the sea is dangerously unpredictable. We don’t know where the next event will strike, or what will happen this weekend,” said Robson.
He said another complicating issue was that one in 10 drownings involved individuals who had not meant to be in the water in the first place, such as a hiker who may have fallen into the sea.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/27/camber-sands-high-risk-national-plan-beach-safety-strategy
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9477dac5b4683abb08603152b967db0f32ef5d362cb54449ac8554e4c31c0462.json
|
|
[
"Associated Press In Bogota"
] | 2016-08-27T22:51:41 | null | 2016-08-27T21:20:05 |
Government agents take former San Cristobal mayor back to jail as Maduro regime says he planned violent acts before impending protests
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fdaniel-cabellos-venezuela-opposition-leader-imprisoned.json
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| null |
Venezuela opposition leader Daniel Cabellos seized and imprisoned
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A prominent Venezuelan opposition leader has been jailed again after intelligence agents picked him up at his home before dawn on Saturday, a move the government said was necessary to prevent acts of violence but which has alarmed opposition and human rights groups.
Venezuelan president warns rivals: 'Did you see what happened in Turkey?' Read more
Patricia Gutierrez said agents from the Sebin intelligence agency arrived around 3am without notice at the family home where her husband, Daniel Ceballos, had been held under house arrest.
She said they put Ceballos in an ambulance, saying they were taking for a medical exam, but instead transported the former mayor of San Cristobál to the jail in central Guarico state where was held for more than a year until August 2015, when he was granted house arrest due to kidney problems.
His transfer to jail came as the opposition vowed a mass protest on Thursday to demand that authorities allow a recall referendum to go ahead. A successful “yes” vote this year would cut short President Nicolás Maduro’s term and trigger new elections.
The government said it had intelligence that Ceballos was planning to flee before the 1 September protests and carry out violent acts.
“The evidence compiled will allow us to continue advancing in necessary investigations to prevent, uncover and neutralize any act that aims to destabilize our democratic system,” the interior ministry said in a statement.
Gutierrez published a cellphone video in which Ceballos and his daughter can be heard exchanging shouts of “I love you” as an ambulance is seen parked in front of an apartment building.
“This is how my daughter Victoria said goodbye to her father,” Gutierrez said on Twitter. “The dictatorship isn’t going to destroy my family. Freedom will come soon.”
The transfer alarmed government opponents and human rights groups.
“Authorities in Venezuela seem to be willing to stop at nothing in their quest to prevent anyone from criticizing them, particularly as the political and humanitarian situation in the country continues to deteriorate,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at the rights group Amnesty International.
The 32-year-old Ceballos was the leader of a wave of anti-government protests in the western city of San Cristobál that rocked Venezuela in early 2014, leading to more than 40 deaths.
Fear of another crackdown has made it harder for the opposition to coax its supporters back into the streets. But as Venezuela’s economy spins further out of control, with daily, blocks-long food lines and inflation topping 700%, calls for Maduro’s removal have grown louder, even among poor Venezuelans who still revere his predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chávez.
Electoral authorities, who are widely seen as bowing to Maduro’s demands, say it is unlikely a vote can be scheduled this year. If the ruling party can delay a vote until 2017, Maduro would be replaced by his vice-president if he loses, as polls indicate he would.
Ceballos was initially arrested along with several other activists of his Popular Will party, including Leopoldo Lopez. He has already served a 12-month sentence for disobeying a government order to remove barricades during the street protests but still faces civil rebellion charges.
He won a congressional primary from behind bars last year but authorities later barred him from holding public office. His wife then won by a landslide in an election to succeed him.
The US-backed opposition has made the release of Lopez, Ceballos and dozens of other activists it considers political prisoners a key demand. Maduro considers the activists dangerous coup-plotters.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/27/daniel-cabellos-venezuela-opposition-leader-imprisoned
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c08c93e797df2918c3f7e10ef4f624349b8f28886de84cdfc7411b7fcd79a0c5.json
|
|
[] | 2016-08-30T18:57:42 | null | 2016-08-30T18:49:54 |
Letters: For my son it meant a loss of his ‘job’, which he was very proud of. He also lost the companionship of the people he’d worked alongside for several years
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fmore-than-wildlife-is-under-threat-by-cuts.json
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| null |
More than wildlife is under threat by cuts
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Your report (Farming rethink demanded as wildlife suffers, 27 August), mentioning the fact that the “amount of time given by conservation volunteers has fallen”, reveals a hidden effect of austerity hurting people as much as the planet. In the first round of austerity cuts one nearby local authority reduced its grants to environmental bodies. For my learning-disabled son the budget cut meant the conservation volunteers’ organisation could no longer offer the free pick-up service to enable people from the surrounding areas to reach the site where they worked, often way beyond the reach of public transport. For my son it meant a loss of his “job”, which he was very proud of. He also lost the companionship of the people he’d worked alongside for several years, the chance to work as an equal with disabled and non-disabled people from all walks of life, and the opportunity to learn new skills. Modern farming methods no doubt have caused the main damage to our wildlife, but austerity has played its part by limiting attempts at remediation by environmental groups.
Pat Sanchez
Littleborough, Lancashire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/30/more-than-wildlife-is-under-threat-by-cuts
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9689fa766de500fbc1104f86e11f1a557a83245cc98a400872c995b57a5a8462.json
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|
[
"Chris Cook"
] | 2016-08-28T18:52:11 | null | 2016-08-28T18:41:32 |
Aidan O’Brien’s star juvenile Caravaggio is facing a race to be fit in time to run in the Middle Park Stakes at Newmarket in September
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fcaravaggio-2000-guineas-middle-park-aidan-obrien.json
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| null |
Caravaggio suffers slight setback and may not run again this year
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Plans for Caravaggio are up in the air after a tweaked muscle interrupted his training 10 days ago. Aidan O’Brien, his trainer, said on Sunday his classy juvenile is now “fine” but might not be ready in time for the Middle Park at Newmarket on 24 September. “I imagine if Caravaggio doesn’t make the Middle Park, he might not run again this year,” O’Brien added.
“Originally, we were thinking of going for the Middle Park and then maybe going on to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile ... but if he’s not ready in time for the Middle Park he wouldn’t do the rest.” O’Brien also cast doubt on if he would go for the 2,000 Guineas in May, for which he is no bigger than 9-2., calling him “a very quick horse”. O’Brien said he might opt for a spring trial over seven furlongs to start next year.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/28/caravaggio-2000-guineas-middle-park-aidan-obrien
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5f3304fab9394057d64b4321d66df2082347599f652ab2df1b67984c5b36305f.json
|
|
[
"Ben Jennings"
] | 2016-08-29T20:50:00 | null | 2016-08-29T16:16:46 |
Former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has called for the Jungle to be relocated to the UK
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2Fpicture%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fben-jennings-on-calais-refugee-camp-the-jungle-cartoon.json
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en
| null |
Ben Jennings on Calais refugee camp the Jungle - cartoon
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
| null |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2016/aug/29/ben-jennings-on-calais-refugee-camp-the-jungle-cartoon
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1ef1bfb8957af6b1a578670a5289773a9d4d3636d6dff1d50f9bc103158a198d.json
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[
"Jill Papworth",
"Photograph",
"Property Venture"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:17 | null | 2016-07-01T06:00:25 |
It dates back to 11th century, has connections with royalty and Napolean Bonaparte, and comes with its own private chapel, courtyards and gardens
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Fjul%2F01%2Flive-life-king-size-in-this-palatial-home-in-catalonia-spain-in-pictures.json
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en
| null |
Live life king size in this palatial home in Catalonia, Spain - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The three-storey property has courtyards, gardens, a private chapel, an orchard and a mill to produce oil from its olives. It is on the market for €7m ( just over £5.5m) through agent Property Venture
|
https://www.theguardian.com/money/gallery/2016/jul/01/live-life-king-size-in-this-palatial-home-in-catalonia-spain-in-pictures
|
en
| 2016-07-01T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/fce5bb9dfadd3c9c981828808c0decde4c279d8351568c639f81a5713b15d454.json
|
|
[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:16 | null | 2016-08-26T05:21:20 |
Growth in parcels business and changes to mail service have helped the government-owned company stage a smart turnaround
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Faustralia-post-returns-to-profit-despite-record-decline-in-letter-volumes.json
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| null |
Australia Post returns to profit despite record decline in letter volumes
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Australia Post believes it has stemmed the losses in its traditional mail business after returning to profit despite a record decline in the number of letters being posted.
Growth in its parcels business and changes to its mail service helped Australia Post achieve a $36m net profit in 2015-16, a big turnaround from its first full-year loss in more than 30 years of $222m.
The Australia Post managing director, Ahmed Fahour, said the return to the black showed it was on a more sustainable path for further growth.
“Changes to the letters business introduced earlier this year were an important factor in the group returning to profitability,” Fahour said on Friday.
The letters business remains in structural decline as companies and people post fewer letters in the digital age, but Fahour said Australia Post had now stemmed its losses in letters.
“We have managed to stabilise the rate of decline in our letters business,” he said.
Australia Post to charge up to $9 for delay in collecting packages Read more
The national postal service expects its cumulative losses from letters to be $1.5bn over the next five years, a significant reduction from the original $5bn forecast before its reforms.
The introduction of a two-speed letter service and an increase in stamp prices for basic postage and for business and government customers have helped reduce the losses in the traditional “snail mail” business.
The postal business still had a significant loss of $138m in 2015-16, but it was well below the previous year’s $381m loss.
The volume of snail mail has almost halved over the past eight years with the shift to digital, and it fell by a record 9.7% in 2015-16.
Fahour said about 1% to 2% of the volume decline could be attributed to higher stamp prices, but most of it was because of Australians opting for digital substitutes.
Australia Post increases stamp prices for regular mail from 70 cents to $1 Read more
The parcels business continued to grow, with profit rising 8.2% to $314m.
“The parcels business has performed well despite increased competition from overseas players,” Fahour said.
Australia Post was focused on redeploying workers as it shifted resources from the declining letters business into the fast-growing parcels and online businesses, he said.
It expects to deliver a $200m dividend to its owner, the federal government.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/26/australia-post-returns-to-profit-despite-record-decline-in-letter-volumes
|
en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6376640cea860e036c01b625f2500e815756c123eb3fcf7bc288415ce7005d7e.json
|
|
[
"Stephen Boyle",
"Natwest Chief Economist"
] | 2016-08-28T12:55:02 | null | 2016-08-28T11:58:29 |
Some of the claims of the immediate economic consequences of voting leave have been unfounded, but it is too early to declare peace
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomics-blog%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fis-the-brexit-vote-the-new-millennium-bug.json
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en
| null |
Is the Brexit vote the new millennium bug?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Do you remember Y2K? The millennium bug? For the benefit of younger readers, fears grew during the 1990s that, because of how we programmed computers, the dawn of 2000 would lead to catastrophes of all sorts. Planes would fall from the sky and power stations would switch themselves off.
Yet precisely nothing happened as we waved goodbye to 1999 and said hello to 2000.
After Brexit, Philip Hammond can make a strong case for investment Read more
When the UK voted to leave the EU, sterling fell sharply and is now 10% below its value in the first three weeks of June. That makes us worse off: it costs more to buy stuff from abroad, whether that’s French cheese or foreign holidays. Already, the effect on business costs is evident with input prices rising in July for the first time since 2013. In an otherwise low inflation environment, many businesses have little pricing power so margins are squeezed.
There have also been declines in commercial real estate prices and some property funds erected barriers to people wishing to withdraw money.
Little of this is good news. But no economic planes have fallen from the sky and no economic power stations have turned themselves off.
On the contrary, while surveys said consumer confidence had collapsed, Britain appears to have spent July at the shops. And we were not browsing: retail sales volumes were 1.4% higher than in June, strong growth by any standard. Surveys also said that hiring had ground to a halt. Yet the number of people claiming unemployment-related benefits fell in July.
So will Brexit turn out to have been a latter-day Y2K? Some of the claims of the immediate economic consequences of voting leave have been unfounded, but it is too early to declare peace.
Car sales and mortgage applications hint that people are pausing when it comes to big purchases. Among the more reliable surveys, such as that conducted by the Bank of England’s agents, there are signs of businesses taking stock before committing to investment. Economic performance could yet dip.
Concerned that the worst would come to pass, the Bank of England has acted decisively. While that will blunt any immediate adverse consequences of the leave vote, the more meaningful effects will happen later and demand a different type of response.
The long-term economic challenge of Brexit is that voting for restrictions on migration and limiting access to overseas markets will lead to slower growth than would otherwise have been the case. Trade makes us better off, on average, because it allows companies and countries to focus on what they do best. The threat of competition engendered by trade also keeps businesses on their toes, eking out improvements that lead to faster growth and higher incomes.
So Brexit becomes a growth challenge and there is barely an economic problem that cannot substantially be solved by faster productivity growth. One route to consider is more investment: create better assets than we have today and they will generate higher incomes tomorrow. That means not only more money in people’s pockets but could lead to better-funded public services.
Especially in an uncertain environment in which businesses might hesitate to invest, there is a role for government. Currently, we are committed to balancing this year’s spending and revenue unless growth is very weak. As part of the reset of fiscal policy, a rule allowing government to borrow for sensible investment while otherwise keeping a tight grip on the public finances would complement the Bank of England’s measures and lay a platform for long-term growth.
The National Infrastructure Delivery Plan is replete with sound projects. We know that fixing local road networks and adding to aviation capacity will deliver large benefits. It is essential, too, to invest in people – especially the very young – and in innovation in a plan for growth.
The vote to leave was partly a rebellion against the adverse effects of trade and open borders: we are better off on average but many people lose. Exiting the EU might slow migration and, thus, the rate of growth of demand for public services and housing. However, migration will not turn negative or the population stop rising.
So far, the economic consequences of voting leave have been modest. But the race has not been run. It has only started. Winning that race needs a plan for growth.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/aug/28/is-the-brexit-vote-the-new-millennium-bug
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/85cea87c1578c41197e570843305e022126d0e60b7013eff4e751407f568c58e.json
|
|
[
"Observer Editorial"
] | 2016-08-28T00:51:42 | null | 2016-08-27T23:03:16 |
This historic peace deal must be made to last
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fobserver-view-peace-deal-colombia.json
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en
| null |
The Observer view on the peace agreement in Colombia
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
In a world where good news is often a rarity, the peace accord struck last week between Colombia’s government and the leaders of the country’s main Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), stands out. The deal, four years in the making, brings to an end an era of often violent confrontation whose origins may be traced back to the peasant revolts of the 1960s. The Farc insurgency was rooted in a quest for social justice and land reform, issues that had dogged the country – sparking multiple uprisings between peasants and a landed elite – since its independence from Spain in 1891.
Stark though these inequalities were, successive governments in Bogotá entirely failed to address the primary causes, and in response to the Farc insurgency they resorted instead to ruthless extirpation and repression; the insurgency, in turn, morphed into a terror campaign of killings, kidnappings and bombings.
Farc’s leadership became closely involved with the lucrative trade in cocaine, helping to supply the apparently insatiable North American market, to fund their insurrection. It sometimes became difficult to distinguish between the original guerrilla movement and opportunistic criminal gangs and drug lords who exploited chronic unrest to further their selfish, greedy aims.
The insurgency and the brutal official response distorted and undermined Colombia’s shaky democracy, exacerbating divisions linked to class, race and land. It brought to power hardline rightwing governments prepared to countenance extra-judicial methods, including covert, paramilitary death squads, in pursuit of vain and costly attempts to “win” the war”.
There were no winners during this war. In the early 1990s, assailed by Farc on the one hand and Pablo Escobar-style narco-terrorism – whose money corrupted the judiciary, the police and the body politic – on the other, the country was close to being a failed state as the institutions buckled and very nearly broke.
The insurgency, more than 50 years old, is estimated to have taken up to 260,000 lives and displaced about 8 million people. As Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, said last week, few citizens escaped the dire effects, direct and indirect, of the resulting endemic instability. Nor were the ill effects confined to Colombia. Its weakness invited foreign meddling, whether by the regime of former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, which gave refuge to Farc leaders, or by US presidents, such as George Bush Snr, who co-opted Colombia in Washington’s ill-conceived “war on drugs”. The involvement of the American military, special forces and CIA units in government counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics campaigns magnified the drama but failed to solve the problem.
When set against this grim background, the peace deal reached in Havana must surely be viewed as a welcome development. It is a tribute to Santos, who has dedicated his presidency to its achievement. And it reflects well on Timoleón Jiménez, alias Timochenko, the Farc leader, who has finally traded violent resistance for a more peaceful future. The agreement is also a feather in the Che Guevara berets of Cuba’s leaders, who provided a neutral talks venue for UN mediators and for European countries, notably Norway, which supported the process.
Britain’s role was not insignificant. The draft final agreement draws on shared experience gained in formulating the Good Friday accords in Northern Ireland, as Downing Street was quick to point out. Irish Republicans also did their bit, atoning, perhaps, for past, less-than-constructive IRA links to the rebels. So congratulations are certainly in order. The breakthrough is a universal positive, demonstrating that even the most protracted conflicts can be resolved peacefully. It strengthens hopes, for example, that the current Geneva negotiations will eventually deliver a lasting Syrian truce. But for Colombia, the key question now is whether this historic deal can be made to stick.
The pact is much more than a mere ceasefire and downing of arms, as last week’s joint communiqué made clear. “The end of the conflict will mean the opening of a new chapter of our history. It means beginning a transition phase that may contribute to a greater integration of our territories, a greater social inclusion — especially of those who have lived at the margins of our development and have suffered the conflict — and strengthening our democracy... with full security guarantees for those who participate in politics,” its provisions stated.
In other words, this ambitious agreement calls for a range of sweeping structural changes including, crucially, land ownership reforms, daunting in their scope and highly challenging in their implementation. By offering the rebels immediate, non-voting representation in Congress, to be followed by legitimate, party-based participation in subsequent national elections, it also envisages a degree of political inclusiveness that could revolutionise Colombia’s democracy in ways Farc’s ideologists once only dreamed about. This is a tall order for any country – particularly one as divided across sectarian right and left lines as Colombia.
The debate preceding the national referendum on the deal, promised by Santos for 2 October, will expose these faultlines. Chief among them is the offer to most of Farc’s 7,000 fighters of an amnesty and de facto immunity from prosecution as part of a new transitional justice system. This offer is deeply resented by many surviving victims and their families who want retribution, not reconciliation. So, too, is the plan to pay demobilised rebels 90% of the national minimum wage as an upfront incentive to bring them in from the jungle. Álvaro Uribe, the former conservative president and leader of the main Centre Democratic party opposition, has vowed to resist these terms. He is urging a “no” vote in October.
The rebels, meanwhile, fear for their safety once they disarm. And with good reason. Their last experiment in politics was the Unión Patriótica, a party they co-founded in 1985 with a view to entering the political peace process. Unión Patriótica quickly made electoral gains across the country before a vicious three-year campaign of violence by rightwing paramilitaries murdered 3,000 of their activists, union officials, congressmen and even a number of their presidential candidates.
Colombia’s military and police did little to offer protection to this putative new voice in politics, and it seemed the country was not ready to embrace a more pluralist form of democracy. The experiment ended, the peace process failed, and Farc returned to arms. The next phase of Farc’s war would see increased kidnappings, urban bombings, allegations of narco-trafficking and the use of minors in combat. This left a bitter legacy for many Colombians, and critics say the accord should include jail terms for crimes against humanity, plus a ban on those so convicted from holding public office. There is also concern that the deal could be undermined by a smaller guerrilla group, the ELN, which has continued a campaign of violence. Organised criminal groups spawned by demobilised rightwing militias pose another potential threat.
Recent opinion polls suggest the public’s endorsement of the deal is by no means certain, with 88% of Colombians polled by Ipsos in early August saying Farc commanders should serve jail time, and 75% saying they should be banned from politics. Half of respondents said they would vote “no” in October, against 39% in favour. A more recent poll showed a tighter contest, with 32% saying “yes” and 29% “no”, and the remainder as yet undecided.
Colombians are also understandably sceptical about the longer-term promises made by both sides. These include Farc’s commitment to help dismantle and discourage the business of drug crops and trafficking. The ability of the government to deliver promised new development programmes, address gross inequalities in the country’s long-neglected rural sector and vanquish the rightwing narcotics gangs is also in doubt.
The fundamental question linking all these issues is whether Colombia’s entrenched ruling establishment – politicians, security forces, business oligarchs and media – can muster the maturity and vision to build a new order on the disputed and still-smoking ruins of the past. As has been seen in South Africa, Northern Ireland and elsewhere, peacemaking is relatively easy compared with long-term peacebuilding.
Justice, reconciliation, reparations and the myriad other aspects of sustainable conflict resolution require a deep, unifying commitment across the board – and a degree of trust that may be currently lacking.
It is right to celebrate last week’s achievement. It is wrong to assume that a lasting, successful and peaceful national settlement will inevitably ensue.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/28/observer-view-peace-deal-colombia
|
en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/28e4311f54dd4d3e33cf97ff2784ac9c25bd4f618f9e2366dc881fd5b32fb4fa.json
|
|
[
"Adam Gabbatt"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:47 | null | 2016-08-25T04:42:20 |
Runner-up in Democratic primaries announces Our Revolution to ‘continue the struggle for justice’ but walkout follows Jeff Weaver being put in charge
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Ffleeing-the-bern-half-of-staff-quit-sanders-legacy-project-before-it-begins.json
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| null |
Fleeing the Bern: half of staff quit Sanders legacy project before it begins
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Bernie Sanders announced plans for his new grassroots organising project, Our Revolution, on Wednesday night, declaring that “the struggle for justice still continues”.
In a livestream watched by tens of thousands of people, Sanders told his supporters “we have driven the debate and changed the mindset of people” as he laid out plans to elect progressive politicians and work to improve criminal justice reform, single-payer healthcare and immigration policy.
But the launch was overshadowed by reports that a majority of Our Revolution staff members had resigned in the past few days amid an internal row.
The departures, including the entire organizing department and the group’s digital director, came after Sanders’ former campaign manager Jeff Weaver was appointed president of the group.
Is Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution over before it even began? Read more
Wednesday’s announcement was broadcast from Burlington, Vermont, where Sanders appeared in front of a small crowd of supporters. The Vermont senator spoke for almost 50 minutes, much of which was spent hailing the success of his primary campaign.
Sanders cited his popularity among young voters as proof that “our vision is the future of this country” and took a dig at the Democrats, claiming that his campaign “took on virtually the entire Democratic party establishment”.
Our Revolution would build on the popularity of the primary campaign, Sanders said, by supporting “progressives at every level” as the group bid to plant liberal politicians throughout the country.
“Real change never ever takes place from the top on down,” Sanders said. “It happens when people come together and demand fundamental change in this country.”
He listed five of the progressives Our Revolution would be supporting, with the variation between level of office illustrating the breadth of the organization’s vision. The candidates ran from Vernon Miller, who is running for school board in Nebraska, to Zephyr Teachout, who is running for US congress in upstate New York.
Sanders also listed some of the issues the organization would focus on, which include campaigning against Citizens United, lobbying for a single-payer healthcare system and working against fracking and climate change.
Our Revolution’s chances of effecting this change would appear to have been impacted by the mass resignations, however.
Politico reported that staff had been unhappy with the way Weaver had managed Sanders’ primary campaign, as well as having concerns over Our Revolution’s 501(c)(4) status. That categorization means it will be able to accept large contributions from anonymous donors.
The strategy would appear to put Our Revolution at odds with Sanders’s oft-repeated primary campaign message: that big money does not belong in politics.
The New York Times reported that eight staff members comprising a majority of Our Revolution’s employees had quit. Claire Sandberg, who was the organising director at Our Revolution until this week, told the newspaper the dramatic departures were a direct result of Weaver’s appointment.
“I left and others left because we were alarmed that Jeff would mismanage this organization as he mismanaged the campaign,” Sandberg said.
She said she was concerned over how Our Revolution, under Weaver, would raise and spend money; specifically that the group would “betray its core purpose by accepting money from billionaires and not remaining grassroots funded and plowing that billionaire cash into TV instead of investing it in building a genuine movement”.
Zephyr Teachout aims to keep Bernie Sanders’ vision alive in Woodstock Read more
Activists who had campaigned for Sanders during the Democratic primary relayed similar fears.
A grassroots organizer who worked alongside the Sanders campaign in New York said Sanders’s presidential campaign had tended to ignore groundwork already done by Sanders supporters.
They said there was concern among grassroots activists that Our Revolution, under Weaver, would attempt to do the same.
“During the campaign we would always already have operations running and would be doing things and the campaign would show up and throw everything out. It happened in New York and made it very difficult to organize,” the organizer said.
Our Revolution did not respond to requests for comment on Weaver’s appointment and the subsequent resignations.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/25/fleeing-the-bern-half-of-staff-quit-sanders-legacy-project-before-it-begins
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6bac8df0fc7bcebcef2e3d38cd3c1c6aed47e629c080892f934c652a0cf33a8c.json
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[
"Martin Pengelly"
] | 2016-08-26T13:16:23 | null | 2016-08-25T20:30:21 |
The former captain talks about the Bledisloe Cup, Sam Cane and why a man never quite at ease in the public eye is now releasing a book and a movie
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'The team just moves on': Richie McCaw on a new All Blacks era of domination
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“They were never going to miss me and DC,” Richie McCaw says with a smile. He is sitting in a conference room at the Manhattan headquarters of his old team’s sponsor, AIG. On message, he is wearing all black – but not All Black. The captain retired last year, with 148 caps, two World Cups and the gratitude of a nation now revelling in the havoc wrought upon Australia in Sydney. In Wellington on Saturday, they may perpetrate another 42-8 mauling – or something worse.
DC, the great fly-half Dan Carter, now lives and plays his rugby in Paris. McCaw hasn’t left home, but he also watched the Sydney Test from afar – in Rio de Janeiro, where he spent a happy couple of weeks watching the Olympic Games.
“I was quite impressed, actually,” he says, with habitual understatement, of such an ominous All Black performance at the start of a run that ends with the Lions tour next summer. “Every opportunity they got, they nailed. That’s the great thing about the ABs. It doesn’t matter who you are, the team just moves on.”
Wallabies struggle to draw positives from flogging at hands of the All Blacks Read more
The jersey comes first and handing it on is as important as wearing it with pride and righteous anger. McCaw’s No7 is now worn by Sam Cane, a Chiefs flanker who spent four years preparing to replace the irreplaceable.
McCaw downplays his role in Cane’s development – and then admits the importance of it. It’s a familiar tactic: when we spoke in Chicago in 2014, before a game against the USA in which Cane got the start, I asked about the pressure of the All Black captaincy and whether he really, truly enjoyed it. It was all fine, he said. Well, it was a little bit testing, every now and then. “A little bit” and “a wee bit” are McCaw’s conversational tics, signalling concession or insight to come.
“Not so much the selection or whatever,” he says, about his part in Project Cane, “but he’s been in the team for four years and we worked together a little bit. It wouldn’t have been right if I wasn’t passing on things but he was passing things on to me too. I’ve been hugely impressed. He’s keen to learn, he’s got a great instinct for the game and he’s a guy that I think is a natural leader.”
And then, for fans of the Wallabies or any nation feeling a little wobbly about whether the All Blacks will ever be deposed, the really frightening fact: “He’s got pressure on him too, from Ardie Savea who’s been terrific and wants to get in.”
McCaw’s heir apparent has an heir apparent. Nor is Ardie, who impressed in the Hurricanes’ Super Rugby title win, the only Savea on the All Black bench. Julian Savea, a wing with 4o Test tries, currently lurks there too.
“I reckon it’ll be closer,” McCaw says, nonetheless, of Saturday’s second Bledisloe Cup game. “Aussies don’t lie down. But I can still see the All Blacks winning. They’ve got too much firepower, especially when they can pull guys off the bench like the two Saveas. It must be horrible when you’re in the opposition seeing those guys coming on.
“I hope that it is a bit closer, because you don’t want to see big one-sided results for the top teams. I don’t think that’s healthy for southern hemisphere rugby, or for world rugby. But I can say that now I’m no longer playing. As a player that’s the last thing you want to hear, bloody idiots like me spouting on like that.”
It’s another conversational catch: a sharp point that might make headline-writers – Australian headline-writers – take notice, a quick switch to pleasant self-deprecation. The greatest All Black of all time sometimes seems not to rate himself that highly. Anyway, my next question offers him an out. How does he feel about his successor as skipper, No8 Kieran Read, taking one of his All Black records?
“Which one?”
I hope that it is a bit closer, because you don’t want one-sided results for the top teams. I don’t think that’s healthy On Bledisloe game two
Most yellow cards. In Sydney, Read went to the bin in the 74th minute. It was his fourth yellow in an All Black shirt. McCaw, infamously to some, given his reputation as supreme scavenger and spoiler of the breakdown, only ever had three. He laughs. “Interesting. He can have that one.”
McCaw is in New York to work one job in a post-playing portfolio that also includes flying and promoting Christchurch Helicopters and representing Fonterra, a New Zealand dairy conglomerate. He has signed autographs, pressed the flesh, spoken to local media. AIG staffers click iPhones into VR headsets and immerse themselves in Haka360, a gizmo the insurance giant put out before the World Cup last year. The roars of Ka Mate echo out over the rolling East River. “It’s making me a little nauseous,” says one woman, giggling.
Back in Chicago, I asked McCaw if impending retirement made him a little queasy. He said it didn’t, really, but then retreated a little bit, describing how former team-mates such as the hooker Andrew Hore missed the touring life, and how that made him wonder about the end that was coming. Now that end has come and gone, does he know how Hore felt?
“You’re never going to see the team run out and not miss that thrill a little bit,” he says. “But …” Thoughtfully, he taps the table. Since he left, the All Blacks have played four, won four, including a 3-0 whitewash of Wales which he watched from on high.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest McCaw tackles Australia wing Drew Mitchell during the 2015 World Cup final. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images
“You make your decision and move forward. I’ve got a lot of things on. I look back and I’ve got no regrets … but the thing I wonder about a little bit, with Andrew Hore for example, is that some of his good mates were still there. Whereas probably for me now, you’ve had DC move on and Kevvy [Mealamu] and Conrad [Smith], some of the guys I’ve played a lot of rugby with. If they were still there I’d probably still really miss it.”
As Tennyson – and Uncle Monty – had it, the old order changeth, yielding place to new. The All Black team in which McCaw made his debut, against Ireland in Dublin in 2001, included Jonah Lomu. If McCaw’s discussion of his decision to retire seems almost elegiac, the impression is strengthened by the sad realisation that Lomu, the greatest All Black of the era before McCaw, was only 40 when he died in November.
McCaw continues: “You know, deep down, any thought I have that ‘Jeez, I could still be playing’, you’re forgetting all the stuff that goes with getting there. And that’s the bit that you perhaps tire of first. I knew that it was getting harder and harder, especially at club level, to get myself in the right frame of mind.
You’d rather go when they say you could go a little bit longer, than when they say you’ve gone a little bit too long On retiring
“You’d rather go just before, when they say you could go a little bit longer, than when they say you’ve gone a little bit too long.”
And so McCaw went, after a 34-17 win over Australia in the World Cup final at Twickenham. After his final final whistle, he was loth to remove the black No7 for the final time. So he kept it on, with his shorts, socks and boots, through the press conference and after. That shirt – likely to attain holy relic status in New Zealand – is now at home in Christchurch, “probably in a bag or a cupboard”.
His approach to his legacy is not quite so offhand. There’s a book out, Richie McCaw: 148, which gives a coffee-table spread to each of his All Black Tests. Next week a film will follow. Chasing Great is a documentary that covers McCaw’s last year in the team and on the field. In New Zealand it will get a cinematic release, which means a red carpet premiere in Auckland. For someone who professes not to be completely comfortable in the spotlight, a big-screen biopic isn’t an obvious card to play. Is he making a bargain with fame?
“A little bit, I suppose. There were a couple of things about the film when it first came up that I thought, ‘Eh, that doesn’t feel right’. I started to get approached, they wanted a story, and you get no control over that. But the people who have done it” – co-writers and directors Justin Pemberton and Michelle Walsh – “I know pretty well.
“They said, ‘We’d be interested in doing a doco’. And I thought you should do something where you can tell your own story that you want told. I thought maybe a half-hour on TV but they said, ‘Oh, we’re aiming for cinema’. I thought, ‘It’s never going to get there’, but bugger me, they ended up with funding.”
The result is a mixture of documentary footage, interviews, family videos shot by McCaw’s dad and even a little bit of re-enactment, a child actor playing Young Richie, bowling over coaches at Kurow Rugby Club or rapt in front of a chunky analogue TV as David Kirk’s All Blacks win the 1987 World Cup. That was the last such triumph until older Richie lifted the Webb Ellis Cup in Auckland in 2011, securing his place in history.
Richie McCaw: the All Blacks captain's stellar career – in pictures Read more
He says: “I wanted that if some kids watch it, they be inspired to become an All Black and chase some dreams, because that’s what I did. And the second thing is that you don’t have to come from some privileged background to be an All Black in New Zealand. I’ve been pretty strong on that, that [the film] told a little bit about my upbringing which I haven’t really told a lot. I had some stuff that the old man filmed, to show a little bit about the normal Kiwi bloke.”
My time with the greatest normal Kiwi bloke is nearly up. I ask a little more about the spotlight and his life underneath it. He no longer has to deal with a national press obsessed with its national sport, this week happily swimming in a scandal over a bug in the team room in Sydney. But in January he announced his engagement to Gemma Flynn, a member of the New Zealand Black Sticks hockey team, via Facebook. For any All Black, let alone a great one, it might have seemed a little bit out of character, a little bit public, a little bit more Kanye than Kevvy Mealamu.
McCaw laughs, and says he never really got social media, and never will get Twitter, but the Facebook announcement just seemed the right way to satisfy public curiosity while maintaining control of his story.
A question about the “Curse of McCaw” – the supposedly chilling effect on New Zealand medal chances of his presence in Rio – also prompts genial laughter. So does the way the Kiwi media seemed to make more of his meeting Lydia Ko, the young Kiwi who won silver in the golf, than of Ko’s achievement itself. To be fair to the Kiwi media, Ko did say meeting McCaw was more exciting than winning a medal.
“It was a little bit embarrassing, to be fair,” he says. “We had a wee function at New Zealand House in Rio, she said that and I thought… ‘Oh. Bit embarrassing.’ It was nice of her, though, wasn’t it?”
It was. As he sets out on life off the field – which will also include a return to Chicago in November, when the All Blacks will take on Ireland and the Māori the US Eagles – plenty of people are prepared to be nice to Richie McCaw.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/26/richie-mccaw-all-blacks-bledisloe-cup
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/fc65ee1a9aa691ab734cce7e6aec7d57b9141872063596e97db7a94a96c6d4eb.json
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[
"Agence France-Presse"
] | 2016-08-26T13:17:00 | null | 2016-08-26T02:10:35 |
Thirty-year-old has lost appendages and may face charges after telling authorities in Hanoi she was hit by a train
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fvietnamese-woman-pays-friend-to-cut-off-hand-and-foot-in-insurance-scam.json
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Vietnamese woman pays friend to cut off hand and foot in insurance scam
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A Vietnamese woman paid a friend to cut off her hand and foot in a failed bid to claim an insurance payout, state-run media reported on Thursday.
The woman, identified only as L T N, told police she had been struck by a train as she walked along the tracks and was rescued by her friend, D, according to Tuoi Tre’s English edition.
The 30-year-old submitted a claim to her insurance company for 3.5bn dong ($157,000). In Vietnam the average annual income is $2,100.
“N hired D to cut her hand and foot, then continued to have him report false information to the police,” said Bac Tu Liem police chief Nguyen Thanh Tung, according to the newspaper.
Transforming a motorcycle city: the long wait for Hanoi's metro Read more
L T N checked into a hospital in Hanoi in May with a third of her left foot and a third of her left hand severed. Doctors told her they could not reattach the limbs.
Hanoi police declined to comment to AFP about the case, but reports said the woman offered her friend about $2,000 to perform the deed.
“The greatest shame is that N, instead of claiming the money, has suffered a huge loss by losing both her hand and foot,” Tung was quoted as saying.
The woman is being treated for the wounds, the newspaper added, and police are looking into whether she should be charged with conspiracy to steal assets.
“Her case sends a warning that people should not attempt insurance fraud at the expense of their own health,” said Tung, adding it was the first case of the kind he had seen in Vietnam.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/26/vietnamese-woman-pays-friend-to-cut-off-hand-and-foot-in-insurance-scam
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3e947f88d53c951333284bc63c2ca5c85e0ff4da38d7264fca25ded94c517f1e.json
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[
"Paul Karp"
] | 2016-08-29T04:52:01 | null | 2016-08-29T03:41:35 |
Kerry Jane Wilson, who was abducted while working for an Afghan NGO, is ‘safe and well’ after being held since 28 April
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Faustralian-aid-worker-kidnapped-in-afghanistan-released-by-captors.json
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Australian aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan released by captors
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An Australian humanitarian worker kidnapped in Afghanistan in April has been released, Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has revealed.
Kerry Jane Wilson was abducted on 28 April in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, where she was working for Zardozi, a small Afghan non-governmental organisation.
“I confirm that Kerry Jane Wilson has been released, and she is now safe and well,” Bishop said on Monday. “I am relieved for Kerry Jane, and her family with whom I have remained in close contact.
“I deeply appreciate the work of the authorities in Afghanistan whose support and assistance facilitated her release, as well as Australian consular staff who continue to provide assistance to Ms Wilson and her family.”
Father, 91, pleads for return of aid worker daughter abducted in Afghanistan Read more
Bishop said the government would not comment on the circumstances of Wilson’s release “to protect those who remain captive or face the risk of kidnapping in Afghanistan and elsewhere”.
“Her family has asked for privacy,” the minister’s statement concluded.
In April Wilson’s father, Brian, told the ABC: “I presume she’s a hostage, and that they’ll do their best to keep her alive and not harm her, simply because they want to have something or other in return and it’s not very good having a dead hostage.
“She’s on the security network, it’s always dangerous. There’s always peril in the background.”
Wilson had worked in the region for more than 20 years with charities related to women’s rights and water security, he said.
Zardozi, of which Wilson is executive director, helps women in poor urban areas start small businesses selling handicrafts and clothing to shopkeepers and traders.
She was previously chief of programs with the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/29/australian-aid-worker-kidnapped-in-afghanistan-released-by-captors
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8541a37968bf7acaeced6f4554d1e26438a8219eecadb3fd474bcf319b666850.json
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[
"Sian Cain"
] | 2016-08-29T14:50:01 | null | 2016-08-29T12:24:46 |
Claire Harman says several of the Wuthering Heights author’s character traits – including a dislike of leaving home and bursts of frustration – could indicate autism
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Emily Brontë may have had Asperger syndrome, says biographer
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Emily Brontë may have had Asperger syndrome, according to the literary biographer Claire Harman.
At an event at the Edinburgh international book festival, Harman, author of the recent biography Charlotte Brontë: A Life, said several of Emily’s character traits, including her genius, her dislike of leaving home, her discomfort in social situations and her sudden bursts of anger and frustration could have been symptoms of Asperger’s.
School where Brontë sisters worked as teachers is to be restored Read more
One famous case of Emily’s anger was recorded by Charlotte Brontë’s first biographer and fellow author Elizabeth Gaskell, who in her 1857 biography recalled how the family dog was left “half blind and stupefied” after Emily punched it in the face for dirtying the laundry. But Harman said on Sunday that Gaskell related the incident as “just a sign of Emily’s strength of character”.
“It is actually very disturbing. I think Charlotte and everybody was quite frightened of Emily. I think she was an Asperger’s-ey person,” Harman said. “She was such a genius and had total imaginative freedom ... Containing Emily, protecting Emily, not being alarmed by Emily, was a big project for the whole household. She’s an absolutely fascinating person – a very troubling presence, though.”
Even more than reclusive Charlotte, Emily hated leaving home, Harman said, which was why they hoped, for a while, to start a school from their home at Haworth, West Yorkshire.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Yorkshire village of Haworth, home to the Brontë family. Photograph: Travelib Europe / Alamy
At the event, Harman also dismissed the theory that all the Brontë books were written by one sibling, and that Emily’s brother Branwell wrote part of Wuthering Heights – an idea Harman said only existed because the novel was “so peculiar”.
“Being Emily Brontë is enough. Emily Brontë was an amazing genius. One of the problems of writing about Charlotte Brontë was, I thought, ‘Hang on, being Emily Bronte’s sister would be enough to have a book written about you, wouldn’t it?’” Harman said.
Why those subversive Brontë sisters still hypnotise us Read more
“People do tend to sentimentalise [Emily]. They say their favourite romantic novel is Wuthering Heights, but it is so full of violence, so full of things I would not classify as romantic at all.”
The Wuthering Heights author shared many behavioural qualities with her father Patrick. “He gave them an immense latitude in terms of his interest in issues of the day that transferred very readily. The children liked nothing more than to read a parliamentary report around the fireside. They were a very unusual family in that respect, and he did not restrain them intellectually. But he was a very chilly man, very emotionally strange. He was clearly hugely egotistical and I think, also a bit Asperger’s-ey too.”
After writing the biography of Charlotte in the lead-up to her 200th birthday this year, Harman said she was looking forward to the inevitable range of biographies about Emily in two year times. “It is Emily Brontë’s bicentenary in 2018 – it’s too late for me to write another book I’m afraid, but I am looking forward to what people produce because she is such an extraordinary person.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/29/emily-bronte-may-have-had-asperger-syndrome-says-biographer
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| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5c13ccd98ebfa190c68b8eb8a8c62d1798b8731f5bc6af68bc144a92e13cc1a8.json
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[
"Katie Allen",
"Felicity Lawrence",
"Phillip Inman"
] | 2016-08-30T06:59:44 | null | 2016-06-12T23:01:35 |
Focus on boosting pay risks ignoring debt problems for millions on zero-hour contracts, Citizens Advice says
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Fjun%2F13%2Fengland-wales-zero-hours-contracts-citizens-advice-insecure-work.json
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Nearly one in six workers in England and Wales in insecure work
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Four-and-a-half million people in England and Wales are in insecure work, according to research by Citizens Advice, which has warned too much focus on boosting pay risks ignoring the problem of unpredictable incomes for many households.
Even employers decry zero-hours contracts. So why are staff still being exploited? | Zoe Williams Read more
The charity highlighted the debt problems and difficulties accessing in-work benefits for the millions of people who do not have fixed, regular working hours. Its analysis of official figures published on Monday has revealed more than 2.3 million people are working variable shift patterns, a further 1.1 million are on temporary contracts and 800,000 are on either zero-hour or agency contracts.
Zero-hours contracts, which are widely used in the retail industry and do not guarantee employees any work from week to week, have been back in the spotlight this month after the billionaire Sports Direct founder, Mike Ashley, admitted his company had broken the law by failing to pay staff the national minimum wage. Ashley’s admission last week to MPs investigating his firm’s treatment of its workers, confirmed the findings of a Guardian investigation last year in which undercover reporters exposed how the company was paying staff less than the legal minimum and subjected them to a harsh regime of surveillance and financial penalties for lateness.
Citizens Advice warned that many of the 4.5 million people it classes as being in insecure work – equivalent to about 14% of the working population – do not have regular hours or predictable shifts and so struggle to manage their budgets or plan for the future. “While for some people working shifts or temporary contracts may provide the flexibility they want, many others struggle to balance the books in the face of such insecure employment,” said the Citizens Advice chief executive, Gillian Guy.
The charity welcomed recent changes to boost working people’s income – such as the introduction of the “national living wage” and raising the personal tax allowance threshold – but it wants to see those urgently complemented by efforts to improve people’s security at work. “Income security is the overlooked piece of the labour market puzzle,” said Guy. “Having a steady, reliable income is fundamental to how secure people feel and is key if the government wants to achieve its ambition of a high-wage, low-welfare economy.”
In a survey published alongside its jobs analysis, Citizens Advice found people rated a steady, reliable income as being just as important as the level of take-home pay when they were looking for work. The poll of more than 2,000 people also suggested employers have more to gain from their staff if people had a secure income. Eight in 10 people in work said a steady job with regular pay increased productivity and 86% said it increased their loyalty.
Previous research with staff and volunteers from the Citizens Advice network found 83% of people with fluctuating work patterns seeking the charity’s help were struggling with debt and 87% faced delays or problems with in-work benefits such as working tax credits and housing benefit.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jun/13/england-wales-zero-hours-contracts-citizens-advice-insecure-work
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| 2016-06-12T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b04edd02a0c1f216399c90559bccd80596e794f175276d18c97d450c0eb2b4ef.json
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[
"Associated Press In Santa Clara"
] | 2016-08-27T18:51:47 | null | 2016-08-27T17:49:52 |
San Francisco 49ers quarterback refuses to stand during national anthem in protest of minority oppression
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Colin Kaepernick sits during national anthem over treatment of minorities
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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick is refusing to stand for the national anthem before games because he believes the United States oppresses African Americans and other minorities.
Kaepernick sat on the team’s bench Friday night during the anthem before the Niners played host to the Green Bay Packers in an exhibition game. He later explained his reasoning in an interview with NFL Media.
“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. “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.”
The 49ers issued a statement after Pro Football Talk initially reported on Kaepernick’s stand, 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.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Colin Kaepernick scrambles for extra yardage during Friday’s game. Photograph: Cal Sport Med/REX/Shutterstock
Kaepernick, who is biracial, was adopted and raised by white parents. He has been outspoken on his Twitter account on civil rights issues and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Kaepernick is not the first US-based athlete to use the anthem for protest. In 1996, NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to stand for the anthem, saying the United States had a history of tyranny and doing so would conflict with his Islamist beliefs. The NBA initially suspended Abdul-Rauf for his stance before it was lifted when he said he would stand and pray silently during the song.
Kaepernick said he is not worried about any potential fallout from his protest.
“This is not something that I am going to run by anybody,” he told NFL Media. “I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. ... If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”
The NFL and Kaepernick’s agent did not immediately return a request for comment.
Kaepernick is in competition to win back the starting quarterback job in San Francisco that he lost to Blaine Gabbert last season. He made his first appearance of the preseason on Friday night after missing two games with a tired shoulder. He finished 2 for 6 for 14 yards and added 18 yards on four runs.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest
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| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/96134326e11fa09867dc1594a1be08caf5f3cffb03e1d5710823af520fb241d4.json
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[
"Damien Gayle"
] | 2016-08-29T20:50:01 | null | 2016-08-29T19:17:35 |
Despite more than 300 arrests and four stabbings, 2016 hailed as vintage year for two-day London street party
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fcrowds-enjoy-amazing-energy-of-sun-drenched-notting-hill-carnival.json
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Crowds enjoy 'amazing energy' of sun-drenched Notting Hill carnival
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More than 300 arrests and four stabbings marred an otherwise good-natured and sun-drenched Notting Hill carnival. According to the Metropolitan police, who had 7,000 officers on the streets of west London on Monday, there had been a total of 156 arrests by Sunday and a further 160 by 6pm on Monday evening.
The figures marked an improvement on last year’s celebration, which drew criticism after police made more than 400 arrests. According to the Met, most of the offences were drug-related, while 47 people were held over possession of offensive weapons.
Five people were wounded in four separate knife attacks. One of them, a 15-year-old boy stabbed in Ladbroke Grove on Sunday afternoon, was taken to hospital in a critical condition, but was later said to be out of danger.
London’s ambulance service was also kept busy, as revellers suffered from dehydration and excessive alcohol consumption.
— London Ambulance (@Ldn_Ambulance) Today at #NHC2016 with @stjohnambulance we treated 411 patients and 74 were taken to hospital. pic.twitter.com/x14cACeywT
The second and final day of the annual street party in west London marked the grand finale of the event’s 50th anniversary, which hosted 60 bands and 38 sound systems this year.
Hundreds of thousands of people attended the carnival, which regulars spoke of as a “vintage event”. Lina Caicedo, 30, from south-east London, who was partying near the Aba Shanti-I sound system, said she was on her second day of carnival. She had been coming for the past 23 years. “It’s such an important thing to support and celebrate,” she said. “The West Indian community is such an important community to London.”
Theo Taylor, 27, from Walthamstow, said: “The most important thing about carnival is we come together and remind ourselves that we own the streets.”
Dan Glass, 32, from Barnet, said he felt it was clear that people needed to party: “Carnival doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and with everything that’s going on just now, people need it.”
Lindsay Walker, 32, from Brixton, said her grandfather had come over on the Empire Windrush steamship and had been to every carnival for the past 50 years. “He came from Grenada and he used to dance with the Grenadian floats. Nowadays he stands on Grenada Corner.
“I’ve been to carnival for about the last 26 or 27 years. It’s a link to heritage, but also it’s a really, really fun party. You never see London like this – it’s usually so constrained. You normally wouldn’t have people from all different paths of life together, it’s such an amazing energy.”
Notting Hill carnival, day two - in pictures Read more
As ever, the partying was accompanied by complaints from local politicians and residents about the impact the carnival has on the area. Many locals board up homes and businesses for the bank holiday weekend and Kensington’s MP, Victoria Borwick, has raised questions over whether the event is worth the cost. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea said it spends approximately £500,000 each year on clean-up, licensing, toilets, enforcement of street trading regulations, food hygiene and other regulatory functions.
However, some locals have accused the authorities of strangling the carnival in red tape. Jay Hirano, owner of the Mau Mau Bar, which had its own sound system entertaining crowds on Portobello Road, said: “It’s a benefit for us. Every year, it’s getting more and more strict; the police and council are killing our businesses. This year between 7pm and 9pm, none can come to any businesses – we have to stop people coming in at 7 and can only start letting them in at nine.
“Rent is so expensive at Portobello, so many businesses are depending on carnival for survival, and police and council are just killing it.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/29/crowds-enjoy-amazing-energy-of-sun-drenched-notting-hill-carnival
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/accb2c7be6efade012f40a9da4cee8ff90c36bb333c20ee78f63c860055142ef.json
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[
"Adam Vaughan",
"Damian Carrington"
] | 2016-08-30T10:50:10 | null | 2016-08-30T09:16:13 |
Ten areas now licensed for culling, with Herefordshire, Cornwall and Devon added to Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fbadger-cull-areas-more-than-triple-under-new-government-licences.json
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Badger cull areas more than triple under new government licences
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The number of areas where badgers will be culled to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis is to more than triple under licences issued by the government on Tuesday.
Licensed shooters could begin killing badgers within days in Herefordshire, Cornwall and Devon, which have been added to the culling already taking place in recent years in Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset.
Ministers say the culling is essential to stop the spread of bovine TB to cattle, which cost the taxpayer £100m in 2015 to compensate farmers for slaughtered cattle. But experts have said the culls “fly in the face of scientific evidence” and could even make the problem worse.
George Eustice, the farming minister, said the cull’s expansion was vital to tackle the “reservoir” of the disease in badgers. “Our comprehensive strategy to eradicate bovine TB in England is delivering results, with more than half the country on track to be free of the disease by the end of this parliament.”
In total, 10 areas have now been licensed for culling, up from three areas previously. Ministers have also announced tighter controls on cattle movements and biosecurity measures.
The National Farmers Union welcomed the move. Meurig Raymond, the NFU president, said: “Farmers facing a daily battle against bTB in those areas that have been granted licences for badger control operations this year will welcome the news that finally action is being taken to tackle the reservoir of disease in wildlife in these areas.
“Today’s announcement means that badger control will now be taking place in 10% of the area where cattle are at the highest risk of contracting bTB.”
But animal welfare groups condemned the expansion and said it would not stop the disease.
Dominic Dyer, CEO of the Badger Trust, said: “Defra statistics show that despite killing thousands of badgers the number of cattle slaughtered for TB continues to rise in and around the cull zones. We could kill ever badger in Britain but bovine TB would continue to spread in cattle herds, due to inaccurate TB testing, excessive numbers of cattle movements and poor bio security controls.
“The badger is being used as a scapegoat for failures in the modern livestock industry. The badger cull has failed on scientific, humaneness and cost grounds. For Andrea Leadsom to extend the badger cull to seven new areas defies belief and is a national disgrace,” he said.
Chris Pitt, deputy director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “It is ludicrous that given all the evidence collated over the last four years, the government plan to roll out their misguided badger cull even further. Killing badgers is not only disastrous for badgers, but it’s also calamitous for cattle and a dead end for farmers, because all the unbiased scientific opinion suggests that we’ll never get rid of bovine TB this way.”
Claire Bass, executive director of the Human Society International UK, said: “It is both shocking and sad that the government is expanding this cruel ‘pilot’ policy to three new counties.”
Recent research showed that bovine TB is not passed through direct contact between badgers and cattle, but through contaminated pasture and dung.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/30/badger-cull-areas-more-than-triple-under-new-government-licences
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3fbedffc4584dbf80c78a55ba26fa5b43035decf07408465be61af1eae953748.json
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[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-31T02:52:36 | null | 2016-08-31T00:47:40 |
British DJ David Taylor sits holding a broken beer bottle to the head of a man posing as policeman Wayan Sudarsa. The scene was one of about 40 acted out by Taylor and Australian Sara Connor as part of a reconstruction of the night they allegedly took part in Sudarsa’s killing.
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fdavid-taylor-and-sara-connor-re-enact-death-of-bali-police-officer-video.json
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David Taylor and Sara Connor re-enact death of Bali police officer - video
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British DJ David Taylor sits holding a broken beer bottle to the head of a man posing as policeman Wayan Sudarsa. The scene was one of about 40 acted out by Taylor and Australian Sara Connor as part of a reconstruction of the night they allegedly took part in Sudarsa’s killing.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/aug/31/david-taylor-and-sara-connor-re-enact-death-of-bali-police-officer-video
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/76fb9fa16b3c80ab63577ea14d4b3863ba0ed05dd5b21e06ab8e1b1e605d413d.json
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[
"Stuart James"
] | 2016-08-28T20:51:48 | null | 2016-08-28T20:20:51 |
West Bromwich Albion are poised to break their transfer record by signing Nacer Chadli from Tottenham Hotspur after the clubs reached an agreement about a permanent move
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West Brom set to sign Nacer Chadli from Tottenham in £13m deal
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West Bromwich Albion are poised to break their transfer record to sign Nacer Chadli from Tottenham Hotspur after the clubs reached an agreement about a permanent move. Chadli is set to undergo a medical at West Brom on Monday in a deal worth around £13m, with the Belgium international expected to be the first of several signings made in a frantic few days before the transfer window closes.
West Brom’s direct route is easily cut off as Tony Pulis struggles for answers Read more
Chadli’s pace and creativity are just what Albion need to give everyone at the club a lift after a frustrating summer in the transfer market. Albion have made only one permanent signing in this window – Matty Phillips from Queens Park Rangers – and Sunday’s goalless draw at home against Middlesbrough underlined the weaknesses in their squad.
Signed from FC Twente for £7m in 2013, Chadli made 40 appearances for Spurs last season in all competitions but more than half of those were from the bench. This season the 27-year-old has not featured for Spurs or even been named among the substitutes, forcing him to look elsewhere in search of first-team football.
Tony Pulis, the Albion manager, is targeting four other players before 11pm on Wednesday, with another striker likely to be a priority if Saido Berahino departs. Stoke City are expected to make a renewed attempt to sign the out-of-favour forward on Monday in a deal that could be worth up to £20m.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/28/west-brom-nacer-chadli-tottenham
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/def07eb789cf53507871d4513e9e8605771ae4f3d9e921e086959cc1c08bfd36.json
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[
"Oliver Milman"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:52 | null | 2016-08-23T11:00:07 |
Hailed as ‘America’s best idea’, the parks are hugely popular with the public but face political efforts to lift federal protection and allow private development
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The political crusades targeting national parks for drilling and exploitation
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“It’s easy to feel besieged here,” said Wendy Ross, superintendent of the Theodore Roosevelt national park. Ross’s park, named after the “conservationist president” who helped to keep America’s natural treasures unspoiled, is surrounded by oil and gas drilling that has transformed the landscape.
100 years of America’s national parks – in pictures Read more
The boom in cheap natural gas has led to drilling and flame flaring just outside the boundaries of the 110 square mile national park, located in North Dakota’s badlands. There is virtually nowhere in the park in which its 600,000 annual visitors cannot see a drilling rig, an oil pump, a highway or a cellphone tower in what was once a sleepy rural area.
Ross said she is bombarded by letters and messages on Facebook from tourists over these eyesores. She frets that the park’s special status for clean air will be ruined by pollution and that a new oil refinery, planned for an area just two miles east of the protected area, will heighten this clash between nature and mining.
“The visitor experience is impacted by this type of structure,” Ross said. “These proposals all add up, they have a cumulative impact. There’s a perception that we are trying to shut down the energy industry but we just want responsible placement of these things.”
The challenges facing Theodore Roosevelt national park are emblematic of a fresh struggle for the soul of national parks. The parks, “America’s best idea”, have to define what they are for and whom they serve. Once-simmering tensions are starting to pop.
“The attacks on public land have become more visible and increasingly agitated, it’s got more muscle in recent years,” said Lynn Scarlett, chief operating officer of the Department of the Interior through George W Bush’s presidency.
“My discussions with Congress used to be about practical things, whether funding was enough,” she said. “It wasn’t like this. I didn’t find this general tenor of discussion that was anti-federal land and certainly not sentiments that were anti-national parks.”
There is a new crusade by some lawmakers, dubbed the “anti-parks caucus”, to unlock more public land to drilling and other development. This is a sharp divergence from the broad consensus forged since Roosevelt, a Republican, spurred the expansion of America’s network of national parks almost 110 years ago. This network now spans 412 federally protected places, including 59 national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite as well as hundreds of battlefields, monuments and historical trails.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theodore Roosevelt stands with naturalist John Muir on Glacier Point, above Yosemite Valley in California. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
Roosevelt enthused over the “majestic beauty” of nature, created five national parks and signed the Antiquities Act, which allows a president to unilaterally declare a national monument. Roosevelt wielded this power 18 times, protecting, among other places, the Grand Canyon, which he advised should be left “as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.”
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources,” Roosevelt acknowledged in 1908, before adding, rather presciently: “But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”
A bipartisan acceptance that areas of beauty or ecological importance should be off limits to development gradually set in. Although there have always been tussles – a 1920 campaign against the protection of Lake Malheur in Oregon showed a picture of a small child and a pelican with the slogan “Which is best for Oregon, this baby or this bird?” – and compromises over the boundaries of parks to accommodate grazing or mining, many park advocates feel there’s now an unprecedented ideological zeal against protected spaces.
An analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP) has found that between January 2013 and March 2016, rightwing members of Congress filed at least 44 bills or amendments designed to undermine or water down protections for national parks.
A core group of 20 members of Congress, many of them Tea Party members, are part of what CAP calls an “anti-parks caucus” gripped by an implacable hostility to public lands.
The wider Republican party is receptive to this position – its official 2016 platform states: “Congress should reconsider whether parts of the federal government’s enormous landholdings and control of water in the west could be better used for ranching, mining or forestry through private ownership.”
Republicans have attempted to remodel the Antiquities Act, an “evil” law according to congressman Rob Bishop, via the Improved National Monument Designation Process Act. They have tried to open up more areas for drilling and mining and also transfer vast areas of federal land in the west to the states, through bills such as the Utah Public Lands Initiative Act.
Developers have sniffed the wind of change and chanced their arm. Two proposed goldmines on the doorstep of Yellowstone national park have raised fears of heavy metal pollution. Uranium mining is planned for the Grand Canyon, while an attempt to create a large housing and commercial development on the rim of the valley has been blocked, for now.
Local anxieties can appear anti-parks, too. A foundation connected to Roxanne Quimby, co-founder of Burt’s Bees, has faced heavy criticism over its plan to donate land outside Acadia national park – an area of plunging granite peaks and forests in Maine – to the National Parks Service. Residents say federal ownership would have an irreversible impact on access and land use.
This opposition to perceived government overreach has extended to the armed militia that seized the Malheur national wildlife refuge in Oregon in January. The group, unhappy over grazing conditions imposed on federal land, stayed for 41 days, leaving almost $2m in damage.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The leader of armed activists at the occupied Malheur national wildlife refuge. Photograph: Rob Kerr/AFP/Getty Images
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he likes the “spirit” of Cliven Bundy, a rancher whose three sons were involved in the occupation. Former candidate Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, said the standoff was “the unfortunate and tragic culmination of the path that President Obama has set the federal government on”.
Tim Blount, lives and works at the Malheur refuge as executive director of Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He said he and other staff were forced to leave because of “threats and harassment from militia members”.
“Throughout the occupation I became keenly aware of my surroundings and never felt safe,” Blount said. “Refuge staff and I had been told that they were looking for one of us to kidnap.
“I now find myself looking over my shoulder, not feeling comfortable and realizing that I am a victim of domestic terrorism. I love my community but now I wonder who supported the militia and in doing so supported how I and refuge staff were victimized.”
Mark Wenzler, senior vice-president of conservation programs at the National Parks Conservation Association, said national parks rhetoric has become “reckless”.
“There’s been conflict for decades. What’s more dangerous now is that we have members of Congress who are encouraging these armed militias who feel empowered to take over federal lands,” he said. “They are getting cues that this is acceptable behaviour. Congress needs to be much more responsible. It concerns me.”
Wenzler said ceding land back to each state is “a terrible idea” due to their patchy conservation record. Republicans argue it is an economic imperative with the stagnation of job-producing industries elsewhere in the US.
“A prosperous people doesn’t looks desperately at public lands and see a missed opportunity,” said Nan Hayworth, a Republican former congresswoman and director of ConservAmerica.
“We have a citizenry that is palpably distressed and one of the ways we could decrease the cost of living is to have cheaper fuels. That means extraction. This is about misbegotten policy in regards to the economy, which I lay at the feet of the Democratic party. It has led us to this sorry point.”
These attitudes have caused deep disquiet within the administration of Barack Obama, who has set aside more land and water for protection than any of his predecessors, including tracts of Californian desert and one of the world’s largest marine reserves off Hawaii.
Celebrating American national parks in art – in pictures Read more
Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, said the “emergence of an extreme movement to seize public lands” risks areas belonging to Americans “being sold off for a short-term gain to the highest bidder”.
“This movement has propped up dangerous voices that reject the rule of law, put communities and hard-working public servants at risk, and fail to appreciate how deeply democratic and American our national parks and public lands are,” Jewell said.
A toxic brew of underinvestment, political vindictiveness and climate change are challenging Roosevelt’s legacy. Fifty-nine national parks spanning the tropical wilderness of Florida’s Everglades to the vast glaciers, grizzlies and wolves of Denali in Alaska, could become “isolated islands of conservation with run-down facilities that crowds of Americans visit like zoos to catch a glimpse of our nation’s remaining wildlife and undeveloped patches of land”, Jewell warned.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Some of the 60 rigs surrounding McKenzie County in western North Dakota. Visitors have complained about similar ‘eyesores’ spoiling views around national parks in the state. Photograph: Matthew Brown/AP
While the political landscape has tilted, public support for national parks remains rock solid. It’s almost impossible to find an issue that 95% Americans agree on, but polling suggests this is the level of support for federal government protection of national parks.
Separate polls show a hefty majority of voters would be unhappy if their representatives stripped protections from public land. A record number of visitors – almost 305 million – gazed at the vistas of Yosemite, Yellowstone, Gettysburg and other NPS properties last year.
While the NPS could be enjoying a triumphant centennial in 2016, it has to cajole funds from a recalcitrant Congress to deal with crumbling visitor centres, trails, campgrounds and education programs.
An overdue maintenance backlog has grown from a headache under George W Bush to a weeping sore under Obama. It will cost nearly $12bn to patch up all of the creaking infrastructure in national parks, at a time when a recent study found Congress has trimmed the budget of the NPS about 15% over the past 15 years.
“We are not placing a high enough priority on conservation,” said Linda Bilmes, a co-author of the research who sits on the NPS advisory board. “We have been underinvesting in the long-term work that supports the mission statement of national parks.”
The value the American public places on national parks dwarfs the NPS’s $3bn budget, the study found. Eight in 10 voters would be prepared to pay more in taxes to preserve national parks. That could equate to an enormous $92bn annual value of national parks, monuments and historic areas.
An unhappy confluence of events has squeezed national parks. Since 2001, a major focus has been put upon national security, overseas wars and economic crisis. The rise of the Tea Party has placed major scrutiny upon new government spending. And while the public has an ongoing love affair with national parks, outdoor spaces aren’t in enough visible distress for an outcry.
The result is a feeling of gloom among many who work to protect America’s natural treasures. “People who work for NPS have a sense of mission, they are some of the most professional, best-trained civil servants in the US,” said Bilmes.
“When you speak to the rangers, they’ll say ‘I used to have six people and now I have one.’ They are feeling overworked and concerned about the challenges they face.”
The funding impasse could be alleviated by private philanthropy. Tin-shaking by the NPS has raised $23m in the past year, with Congress matching $10m.
Wealthy individuals usually want their name attached to something more grandiose than a repaired walkway. “It’s hard to attract private funds for repair work,” acknowledged NPS spokesman Jeff Olson. “We don’t really have people out beating the bushes for deferred maintenance.”
What is needed is a high-profile, modern appraisal of the majesty of national parks and the risks of gradual decline.
The economic benefit is a key part of the case. Income from pristine parks is far more resilient than the cyclical revenues from mining. There is also a broader, more complex argument about how to maintain a network of protected spaces to nurture threatened species and cleanse the air and water we rely on. Parks surrounded by oil drilling, in North Dakota or elsewhere, risk creating the isolated fragments Sally Jewell fears.
“We know that healthy, intact ecosystems are fundamental to the health of our wildlife – and our nation,” Jewell said.
“But if their integrity is undermined by a haphazard web of transmission lines, pipelines and roads, where does that leave us 50 years from now? Or 500?
“What we need is smart planning, on a landscape-level, irrespective of manmade lines on a map. We need to take a holistic look at an ecosystem – on land or in the ocean – to determine where it makes sense to develop, where it makes sense to protect the natural resources, and where we can accomplish both.”
Long-term planning to save species and tackle climate change seems counter-intuitive to the short-termism gripping American politics. In its 101st year, the NPS will again be in the trenches, deflecting threats, making each dollar stretch, slowly trying to inch its way back to spirit of Roosevelt and his Yosemite camping buddy John Muir.
“There’s a strong 100 years-plus reason why we have national parks,” said Scarlett. “They reflect who we are as Americans. They are places of incredible historical, natural and geological renown.
“Places like Yellowstone attract people from around the world because it is mind-boggling. It isn’t just valuable to Wyoming and Montana, but to the nation and to the world. National parks inspire us and give us identity. If you see them just as states versus the federal government, you are missing the point.
“I remain reasonably confident that when push comes to shove, efforts to intrude upon national parks for energy development will be precluded. The strong support of the public will prevail. I just don’t think they will allow it.”
Big Cypress national preserve
There are 12 parks in the NPS system allowing for minerals to be dug up within the park boundaries. Big Cypress national preserve in southern Florida is to be the subject of seismic testing for oil and gas, a scenario worrying some conservationists.
“Driving big trucks though the park will disrupt the ecosystem,” said Mark Wenzler, of the National Parks Conservation Association. “Companies don’t have an absolute right to destroy everything. The last thing you want in a vulnerable ecosystem in Florida is this sort of thing.”
Mojave national preserve
Earlier this year, the federal government gave its blessing to the Ivanpah project, the world’s largest solar development. Situated in the Mojave national preserve, deep in the California desert, the project will provide power for 140,000 homes throughout the west. But there are concerns it will disturb a fragile desert ecosystem, which includes ancient mesquite trees and the endangered desert tortoise.
Theodore Roosevelt national park
During the day, visitors to Theodore Roosevelt national park can see drilling and flaring from sites on all sides of the park. At night, the light from these constructions can hinder stargazing. While fracking has brought new economic activity to North Dakota, some worry development has gone too far, too fast.
“Destroying the areas directly around national parks is probably not the best idea,” said Winthrop Roosevelt, Teddy’s great-great-grandson. “Just like people don’t want to live right next to chemical plants, national parks next to industrial sites might cause ecological damage.”
National historic trails
The Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil from Alberta in Canada to refineries in Illinois and Texas, was seemingly killed off by Barack Obama following vociferous opposition from climate campaigners.
But Donald Trump has said he would allow the pipeline to go ahead should he win the presidency. The pipeline would cut across a number of valued hiking routes, including the Pony Express trail and the Lewis and Clark national historic trail.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/23/national-parks-100th-birthday-political-threats
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| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/dbfb8be8b7b112131f4d5492fa49d28b4aaa85aa93386ab41bb792b0c0472ddd.json
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[
"Mazin Sidahmed"
] | 2016-08-27T18:51:29 | null | 2016-08-27T18:12:01 |
Humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, explains its version of Isis hostage situation as Mueller family speaks to ABC
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fkayla-mueller-isis-kidnapping-parents-medecins-sans-frontieres.json
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Kayla Mueller abduction: MSF withheld key information from us, parents say
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The humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) withheld vital information from the family of the Islamic State hostage Kayla Mueller for almost two months, her parents said in an interview broadcast on Friday.
How US aid worker Kayla Mueller was taken hostage by Isis - and how attempts to save her failed Read more
“They’re a fabulous organization. They do wonderful work,” Carl Mueller, the aid worker’s father, said in an ABC 20/20 documentary. “But somewhere in a boardroom they decided to leave our daughter there to be tortured and raped.”
Mueller’s parents say MSF, which is also known as Doctors Without Borders, withheld for almost two months an email address their daughter’s captors had asked be given to her parents in order for negotiations to begin.
Kayla Mueller, who was not an MSF employee, is one of four Americans to have been abducted by Isis in Syria. She was captured in August 2013, before the group had risen to global prominence, having travelled to Aleppo with her boyfriend, Syrian photographer Omar Alkhani, to help fix a satellite at an MSF hospital. The job took longer than expected and the two stayed overnight. The next day, they were abducted while driving in an MSF vehicle to a bus stop to return to southern Turkey, where Mueller was based.
After a failed rescue attempt on the weekend of 4 July 2014, and botched negotiations, Mueller died in captivity. Questions remain about the cause of her death: Isis says she was killed in a coalition airstrike, which the US denies.
The Muellers discussed their daughter’s 18 months in captivity in an hour-long documentary. On Wednesday, in anticipation of the release of the program, MSF released a statement that explained its version of events. The group has maintained it would never have permitted Mueller to come to Aleppo had it known of her intentions. It had already banned some foreign workers from operating in Syria, as kidnappings had become rife.
“MSF’s security policy therefore forbid people from certain countries, including the US, from working at or even visiting the hospital,” the organization said.
Five MSF workers were taken hostage in northern Syria after Mueller’s abduction. Two of them, Frida Saide and Patricia Chavez, told ABC they were held with Mueller in a cell that was guarded by the notorious British Isis fighters that other hostages named “the Beatles”.
The women, who had not spoken out before, described Mueller as strong and said that she would exchange letters with another American hostage, Steven Sotloff. The hostages created a makeshift game of Trivial Pursuit, they said. In September 2014, Sotloff was beheaded.
Mueller’s family said she was tortured from the start of her captivity, her fingernails being ripped out and her head shaved. Later, they said, she was forced into marriage with Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who repeatedly raped her.
MSF negotiated the release of Mueller’s cellmates, who managed to smuggle out a letter from Mueller addressed to her parents. They were also instructed by the captors to pass along an email address to the family, to begin negotiations for her release. MSF said it shared the letter with Mueller’s family but withheld the email address out of fear for the safety of the remaining hostages.
The MSF statement said: “The captors had also given the women a letter that they wanted delivered to Kayla’s parents, but Kayla herself asked the women not to pass along this other letter.”
After MSF was able to negotiate the release of its remaining staff about six weeks later, the family learned of the email address.
“We regret the fact that Marsha Mueller had to reach out to us first before we did so,” MSF said in its statement. “We should have reached out to the family first, and we have apologized to the Muellers for that.”
The ABC documentary included audio of a tense telephone exchange between the Muellers and MSF’s director in Syria at the time, who was not named.
“You’ll send that email right away after we hang up?” said an emotional Carl Mueller.
“We prefer to do it tomorrow, if that’s OK?” the director responded.
“No, that’s not OK … every day to us is a critical time,” Mueller said. “Every hour.”
After a pause, the director replied: “OK. Yes.”
In its statement, MSF said that if the captors received any indication that staff members had smuggled out a letter, it would have jeopardized the lives of those who remained in captivity. The group also said negotiating hostage release for non-staff members could endanger its work in the future.
“If MSF were generally considered by would-be abductors to be a negotiator of release for non-MSF staff, there is no doubt that this would increase the risk levels in many locations,” the statement said.
The documentary also reiterated the Mueller family’s criticism of the way in which the Obama administration has handled kidnappings. The Muellers said Barack Obama had refused to meet them until after the beheading of the American journalist James Foley, in August 2014.
In the meeting, Carl Mueller said, Obama was cold. He added that the president had pledged to make a donation to a foundation set up in Kayla’s honor. Seventeen months later, that donation has not been received, the family said.
In a press briefing on Friday, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest did not provide reasons for the delay. He said the Obamas would be making a donation to the foundation.
“I would anticipate that they [the Obamas] would make a financial contribution to continue supporting it,” he said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/27/kayla-mueller-isis-kidnapping-parents-medecins-sans-frontieres
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/bff57ddf0feaa688804fd559d21341f289c16995be4c3164f7538e6914b43ef2.json
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[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-26T14:51:38 | null | 2016-08-26T13:00:11 |
West Coast remain in contention for a top four slot in the upcoming AFL finals after a 29-point win that could see Adelaide slip from a likely second to fifth spot
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Feagles-still-in-the-hunt-for-afl-top-four-after-holding-off-adelaide.json
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Eagles still in the hunt for AFL top four after holding off Adelaide
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www.theguardian.com
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Adelaide’s premiership hopes have been dealt a major blow after they fell to a 29-point loss to West Coast, which will likely dash their hopes of a top-two AFL finish. The Eagles dominated the play and led at every break to claim a 14.16 (100) to 10.11 (71) win on Friday night at Adelaide Oval.
It paves the way for West Coast to claim either a top-four finish or a home elimination final depending on the weekend’s remaining games. It will also fill the Eagles with confidence they can perform against the competition’s best sides without injured star Nic Naitanui, who was replaced admirably by back-ups Scott Lycett and Jonathan Giles.
Adelaide could finish as low as fifth, and a home qualifying final will be achieved only if there are upsets in at least two other games. In a sell-out clash with finals-like intensity, West Coast proved better at handling the pressure.
Mother who put son in blackface costume needs education, says Nic Naitanui Read more
The Eagles, led by Luke Shuey, Andrew Gaff and Matt Priddis, won the battle in the middle and moved the ball through the corridor with ease. Gaff had a career-best 41 disposals after gathering 38 touches in last week’s win over Hawthorn.
After a tight first quarter, West Coast went out firing in the second term as Shuey ran rampant, gathering 12 of his 31 touches to continue his magnificent run of form. The Crows fought back to reduce the margin to 11 points at halftime, but it was all West Coast in the third stanza, booting five unanswered goals to dismay the 50,785-strong crowd.
Adelaide, missing suspended star Rory Sloane, were uncharacteristically sloppy and struggled to supply their high-powered forward line as Eagles Jeremy McGovern and rookie Tom Barrass gathered a combined 16 marks. After booting 20 goals in his past four games, Eddie Betts didn’t have a touch until the second quarter and finished with just one goal.
West Coast spearhead Josh Kennedy kicked five goals to take his season tally to 80 and open up a near unassailable lead in his pursuit of a second consecutive Coleman Medal. The Eagles now enter the finals as one of the form sides after claiming successive wins against Greater Western Sydney, Hawthorn and Adelaide.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/26/eagles-still-in-the-hunt-for-afl-top-four-after-holding-off-adelaide
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e90e4672d224a8dd38703d726ddb0df277fd442176ed9c2d27fccf32dce0a54e.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-28T18:52:10 | null | 2016-08-28T17:05:22 |
Spain’s David de la Cruz claimed the leader’s red jersey after winning the ninth stage of the Vuelta a España, with Britain’s Chris Froome lying in fourth place
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fvuelta-a-espana-david-de-la-cruz.json
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Vuelta a España: David de la Cruz takes overall lead with stage win
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www.theguardian.com
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Spain’s David de la Cruz snatched the red jersey in the Vuelta a España with a dramatic stage nine victory.
The Etixx Quick-Step rider staged a breakaway with just 600m of the 164.5-km stage from Cistierna to Oviedo remaining to leave Dries Devenyns 27 seconds in his wake and Moreno Moser a further six seconds back.
Chris Froome’s Vuelta a España hopes hit as Nairo Quintana pulls ahead Read more
The gap he established over the race leader, Nairo Quintana, was also enough to leapfrog him in the overall standings, and he will take a 22sec advantage into stage 10.
Quintana finished in a group with Britain’s Chris Froome, Johan Esteban Chaves and Alberto Contador, 2min 56sec behind the winner.
Froome’s Team Sky colleague Leopold Konig was among the same clutch of riders as they crossed the line.
Quintana’s Movistar team-mate Alejandro Valverde lies in third place in the overall standings with the Tour de France winner Froome in fourth, 49sec behind the leader.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/28/vuelta-a-espana-david-de-la-cruz
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f4288473f56a94ebec38fa6b7d6fbc5acef2a44aae8b0296ced18b354ce57c38.json
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[
"Guardian Sport"
] | 2016-08-29T20:52:26 | null | 2016-08-29T19:07:27 |
Portugal midfielder has confirmed move to Leicester City is close while the Premier League champions want to sign the Algeria striker
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Leicester City line up £50m swoop for Adrien Silva and Islam Slimani
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The Portugal midfielder Adrien Silva has indicated he is close to joining Leicester City from Sporting Lisbon. With Claudio Ranieri pushing to sign another Sporting player, the striker Islam Slimani, the Premier League champions could end up paying around £50m for the pair.
Leicester in talks with Sporting Lisbon over £30m Islam Slimani deal Read more
Silva, who started every match for Portugal in their triumphant Euro 2016 campaign from the round of 16 onwards, is valued at around £21m. He discussed Leicester’s interest in an interview with the Portuguese newspaper O Jogo.
“Yes, I confirm this proposal,” he said. “Leicester is very interesting and corresponds to my career goals.
“After the past 15 years at Sporting, this opportunity is something exceptional for me and can allow me to express and impose myself in another championship, and also to evolve in the Premier League, which is a stunning league. I love Sporting as a family and I dedicated myself to the club since I was 12 years old.
“With Sporting I lived many moments of happiness. I can say that I grew up with the club. At 27 years old, and after so many years of loyalty, I think that no one will criticise me for wanting to embrace this challenge.”
Silva, who had loan spells with the Israeli club Maccabi Haifa and the Portuguese side Académica early in his career, has 13 caps.
Slimani would cost around £30m. The Algerian was the subject of a failed £25m offer from Leicester, who are hopeful of finalising a deal for the 28-year-old. Sporting have also turned down a bid from West Bromwich Albion. Slimani scored 27 league goals last season and would become Leicester’s record signing if he links up there with his international colleague Riyad Mahrez.
Ranieri wants to add Slimani to forward options which include Ahmed Musa, a £16m summer signing from CSKA Moscow, Jamie Vardy and Shinji Okazaki. Leonardo Ulloa appears to be the striker most likely to leave if Slimani joins.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/29/leicester-city-ranieri-silva
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3f8ed0b8fb9cc3aca1361b6c6d44367eb649a560a152ecb5e639ded2e4fd4e34.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:50:38 | null | 2016-08-26T17:59:38 |
Editorial: Twelve months ago, Europe failed to rise to the challenge of the Syrian refugee crisis. It is still paying the price – and so are the refugees
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fthe-guardian-view-on-europe-and-migration-the-year-of-living-damagingly.json
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The Guardian view on Europe and migration: the year of living damagingly
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www.theguardian.com
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Not every big issue that Europe has faced over the past 12 months has been linked to the migration and refugee crisis. But most of them have. The arrival of over 1 million people in late summer 2015 shook European politics and institutions, as well as challenging Europe’s awareness of itself and its place in the world more than any event since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It would be foolish to imagine that this crisis is now over and that the numbers will not rise again.
One key moment came in late August 2015, when Germany announced it would accept all Syrian refugees fleeing war without sending them back to the countries where they had first entered the EU. Angela Merkel’s words a few days later, “Wir schaffen das” (we will manage), felt pivotal, although whether the German chancellor really did open the floodgates of a vast refugee movement is still debated. Refugees had, after all, been on the move for months already in their hundreds of thousands. Harrowing pictures of overcrowded voyages to reach Europe were familiar. Long before Germany opened its doors, southern EU countries were facing a critical situation, their administrations and social services overwhelmed.
Many, including the Guardian, applauded Mrs Merkel’s humanitarian lead. Yet it cannot be disputed that in many ways Europe then failed the moral test. The worst refugee crisis in modern Europe has had a transformative effect that few had predicted or prepared for. The EU, Europe’s nation states, and Europeans in general have all been weighed in the balance. On the political level the migration crisis has empowered nationalist and populist parties, which have since grown in influence from Austria to Scandinavia in ways that may last. Brexit might not have happened without the worries fed by Europe’s refugee problem and their exploitation in Ukip’s posters. Chaos and misery at borders, from Calais in the north to Kos and Lampedusa in the south, exposed the EU’s divisions and inefficiency, energising centrifugal political pressures whose impact on the union may not end with Brexit.
A key pillar of the EU project, the passport-free Schengen area created in 1995, remains in disarray. Schengen was suspended last February, and there is still no clarity as to how it might be restored. Across the continent, internal border controls that had once been abolished – and in some places, barbed-wire fences with police using tear gas against refugees – have become the new normal. These reflect not just a spike of illiberalism caused by reactions to the refugees but the EU’s longterm failure to control its external borders effectively. Unless the external borders are controlled and managed, perhaps by the now strengthened EU border force, freedom of movement inside the bloc merely compounds the problems.
A year ago Europeans finally grasped that their own world is not shielded from the chaos of the Middle East and of parts of Africa and Asia. In the aftermath, geopolitics have been upended. European relations with Turkey have been transformed in the effort to stem the arrival of refugees across the Aegean sea. Mrs Merkel has been much criticised, this time for her realpolitik rather than her humanity, but the deal has brought the numbers down (while displacing some of the pressure to the Libya-Italy crossing). There have been EU efforts to get sub-Saharan countries to take back migrants not entitled to asylum, in exchange for development aid, but such aid has been patchy at best. Though most victims of war and poverty have stayed in their regions, the exodus will not stop until those regions are helped to become safer and more prosperous.
In spite of endless summitry and talks over refugee quotas, in which Britain played a strikingly minimal role, Europe has shown itself mostly at a loss. In dealing with Turkey as it did, it has harmed some of its human rights principles. The onslaught of terrorism in France and elsewhere has fed paranoia about migrants. Identity politics is on the rise almost everywhere. Anti-Muslim movements, such as the AfD in Germany, have benefited. France remains convulsed by issues like the burkini, in spite of today’s welcome court decision suspending a local ban. On the other hand, there have also been the many gestures of solidarity and humanity. Citizens’ networks have distributed food, clothes and offered housing. Volunteers have thrown themselves into support efforts on the beaches and in the camps. “Refugees welcome” slogans have been hoisted on homes, football stadiums, places of worship and even government buildings.
In the year since Alan Kurdi’s body was found on a beach, Europeans have been found wanting. They have learned that what goes on in the rest of the world affects them more than they thought – a glumly late illumination after Europe has had so much impact on the world. Europeans have been confronted with the truth that theirs is one of the richest parts of the planet and that many desperate people, some fleeing for their lives, want to reach it. How Europe responds in the longer term remains in the balance. But the past year has been a humbling start.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/26/the-guardian-view-on-europe-and-migration-the-year-of-living-damagingly
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e7dafc576104303a40ae5c2228dcd40b90464815a319aae5820bfe055607b078.json
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[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:46 | null | 2016-08-26T07:12:57 |
Czech tourist Pavlina Pizova tells reporters how she survived for a month in the mountains of New Zealand after becoming lost with her partner
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fczech-hiker-30-days-month-ordeal-new-zealand-wilderness-video.json
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Czech hiker speaks of month-long ordeal in New Zealand wilderness - video
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www.theguardian.com
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Czech tourist Pavlina Pizova tells reporters how she survived for a month in the mountains of New Zealand after becoming lost with her partner, Ondrej Petr. Pizova and her partner Ondrej Petr lost their way hiking and had to survive two nights in the open in freezing winter conditions. Petr later fell down a steep slope and died, leaving Pizova to forage for herself before she managed to find a hut
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/aug/26/czech-hiker-30-days-month-ordeal-new-zealand-wilderness-video
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/90d3a88a6f74740d48aba794ce943f0aa11554759493cf24af9489f68e3dc617.json
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[
"Jakub Krupa",
"John Harris",
"Danny Dorling"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:53 | null | 2016-08-25T20:43:57 |
Polish migrants ‘built their Poland’ in the UK after the second world war and are now the largest foreign-born group in the country
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fbritains-polish-wanted-to-stay-here-for-ever-until-the-eu-referendum.json
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Britain's Polish wanted to stay here for ever, until the EU referendum
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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In 2004, when Poland joined the European Union and Britain became one of the few countries to open its borders to Polish migrants, our presence in the country was much needed.
At the time, Britain required more labour to boost the economy, and Poles – numerous, determined, hard-working, and (let’s be honest) cheap – provided this.
Most stories of post-accession migrants from Poland start in the same place: with an underpaid position well below their qualifications, working as a porter, cleaner, waiter or bartender in a crowded bar, restaurant or hotel.
UK passport applications from EU nationals rose 14% before referendum Read more
For years, the exchange rate between sterling and Polish złoty was enough to compensate for swallowed pride, as highly-educated young Poles temporarily abandoned their plans to work in an industry they loved for the sake of earning more money.
Contrary to the rhetoric of some British red-top papers, these migrants were also never keen on leaving their friends and home just for the sake of £200 in benefits.
Poles who decided to leave their country and try their luck in Britain wanted a better life, but also a clear chance to develop themselves.
Home Office figures released on Thursday show that Polish people have now become the biggest foreign-born population in Britain, with 831,000 living in the UK in 2015.
The second largest group were people born in India, at 795,000. And while one wave of immigration began after 2004, to understand the Polish community’s history you have to look back further, to the second world war.
If you ever meet a Polish wartime immigrant to Britain, ask them about their luggage. There is a fair chance they still keep a hastily-packed bag of personal belongings that they managed to grab while fleeing wartorn Poland.
When this wave of Poles arrived in Britain – mostly as members of the Polish army in the west – they saw themselves as temporary exiles and refugees, not emigrants.
Britain was a country they did not expect, or frankly want, to be their home. Having finally regained independence and control over Poland after 123 years of military occupation, Poles had no intention whatsoever of fleeing the land their ancestors had fought so hard for.
Having fought in the Atlantic and the Battle of Britain, they settled across the UK; their tightly-packed bags remaining the only symbol of their homeland and their hope of return to Poland.
Although they admired their new country, they wanted one thing above everything else: to go home. The packed bag was always ready, as if they were just waiting for a connecting flight; waiting for the opportunity to return.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A group of Polish immigrants work at a farm in Gloucestershire in 1955. Photograph: Bert Hardy/Getty Images
But as a Moscow-imposed government took power in Poland, it was clear they would need to wait longer. Britain felt exotic to them, and so, in a postwar phrase they coined, they concluded: “We have landed on Mars and to stay alive we have to build our Poland.”
From eastern Europe to Bognor Regis: 'I didn't even know I could get benefits' Read more
They did in both literal ways – the Polish government-in-exile chose London for its headquarters – and more general ones, establishing organisations that revived the prewar spirit of Poland: social clubs, theatres, restaurants, associations.
To fulfil their dreams of seeing a free, independent Poland, the migrants had to wait more than 40 years, much longer than any of them expected.
By the time Poland started its democratic transition in 1989, their still-packed bags were covered with dust, their distance from Poland having grown as they aged, made new friends and started relationships, had kids, bought houses; their love for their second home growing all the time. They were accidental Polish Brits, but Polish Brits all the same.
This historical context is important because it meant that in 2004 the migrants who arrived did not have to build their own world. Their bags – carried by numerous low-fare airlines – no longer carried existential worries, but appetites for a better living awakened by Poland’s much-delayed economic transition.
Make no mistake, Poland has changed enormously since 2004 – becoming one of the most successful economies in Europe – and so have the Polish migrants living in the UK.
In the intervening years they’ve gained confidence in their value, built their social skills, and developed fluency in English, while becoming aware of all the opportunities out there. The myth of the Polish builder is fading away as a new, more complex profile emerges.
Poles on Brexit: 'I don't think many will stay. Life in Britain is tough' Read more
According to the latest statistics, as many as 92% of Polish migrants are in employment or education, the highest level among all nationalities, including the British.
Slowly but surely they are climbing up the social ladder, taking more complicated and fitting positions across a number of industries. In fact, with networks of Polish companies – more than 30,000 individual businesses – becoming well-established, Polish migrants are increasingly creating new jobs for other people, instead of taking someone else’s.
For many modern migrants, Britain has genuinely become their second home and this time a voluntary one, as they see this country as a place worthy of investing their talents, skills and future.
As they made progress in their careers, settled down, bought homes, started (often multicultural) families, they were ready to unpack the historical luggage once and for all and stay in Britain for ever. Or so they thought – until the morning after the EU referendum.
Following xenophobic attacks and hate crime incidents targeting the community in the first weeks after the vote, many were left shaken and worried about their security.
The exchange rate is no longer the main reason why many Poles want to stay in Britain – they have genuinely fallen in love with the country. We hope, after Brexit, it will remain a mutual feeling.
Jakub Krupa is the UK correspondent for the Polish Press Agency and a social activist.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/25/britains-polish-wanted-to-stay-here-for-ever-until-the-eu-referendum
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/56509060d91e63e9a58216017e05e5cd2a85284e4e3e61c3ef71408f3d07fd09.json
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[
"Dr Matthew Green"
] | 2016-08-30T08:50:08 | null | 2016-08-30T07:18:02 |
This week 350 years ago, the Great Fire of London burned through 400 of the city’s streets. Matthew Green reveals the extraordinary structures lost in the blaze – from old St Paul’s to a riverside castle – and what survived, only to vanish later
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcities%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fgreat-fire-of-london-1666-350th-anniversary-which-buildings-disappeared.json
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Lost in the Great Fire: which London buildings disappeared in the 1666 blaze?
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www.theguardian.com
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“Oh the miserable and calamitous spectacle!” wrote John Evelyn in 1666, “mine eyes … now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame.” The conflagration he witnessed from 2-5 September destroyed much of the medieval metropolis, swallowing 400 streets, 13,200 houses, 87 churches, and 44 livery halls.
Many of the City of London’s most iconic buildings were consumed: St Paul’s Cathedral, the Royal Exchange, Newgate Prison, Christ’s Hospital, even Whittington’s Longhouse, one of the biggest public toilets in Europe, in the Vintry. Evelyn was aghast at the destruction of so much of the medieval centre: “London was, but is no more”.
Yet this wasn’t exactly true. By the time of the fire, only a quarter of London’s population actually lived in the walled city, compared to three-quarters a century earlier. The growing eastern suburbs like Wapping and Stepney were left unscathed – as were much of Holborn, the Temple, western Fleet Street, the Strand, and the emergent squares of the West End.
Nor, as contemporary scorch maps reveal, did the fire even decimate the whole of the walled city: around four-fifths of it was destroyed (an area of 373 acres), leaving the north-eastern and some eastern parts (including the Tower of London) unaffected thanks to the gusty east wind.
It was here, outside the fire’s trail of destruction, that many extraordinary buildings survived only to be destroyed later on – whether by demolition works, other fires, or bombs. As we reach the 350th anniversary of the fire, it is fitting to commemorate not just the buildings destroyed in those four hellish days in September, but also some of those that survived, only to vanish later on.
Landmark buildings destroyed in the Great Fire ...
Facebook Twitter Pinterest View of Baynard’s Castle on the River Thames. Illustration: Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Castle Baynard
This riverside castle was built in the late 13th century, inheriting the name of a destroyed castle further to the west – the Tower of London’s lost twin – that had been built by the Norman Ralph Baynard after the Conquest. Many of Henry VIII’s wives lived here and, according to tradition, Richard of Gloucester was offered the crown here in 1483.
After several rebuilds, it appeared on the eve of the fire as a big, brooding stone structure with gabled projecting towers soaring from the Thames, a dock, thick curtain walls, central courtyard, and meaty turrets. The scene of lavish banquets and coronations, the castle was destroyed save for one round tower, later converted into a house, now vanished. Today, part of the site is occupied by a brutalist office block and commemorated by a blue plaque on Castle Baynard Street, just south of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A print of Bridewell Palace published in 1755 by an Act of Parliament for survey. Illustration: Culture Club/Getty
Bridewell Palace
Built in 1515-20 on the western bank of the River Fleet near Blackfriars, this lost inner-city palace was one of Henry VIII’s favourites. It was a large, rambling brick structure set around three courtyards with gardens and a private wharf. An imposing feature of the riverfront, it was probably the scene of Catherine of Aragon’s final meeting with the king in 1529 (over a quarrelsome dinner).
Under Henry’s son Edward VI, it became a poorhouse but was decimated on the third day of the Great Fire. The Fleet, contrary to expectations, proved no firebreak at all even though attempts were made to pull down the riverside houses. Something of the palace’s stateliness lives on in the Ionic columns of Unilever House, the art deco building that occupies the site today.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cheapside Cross, with the Great Conduit to the right of it. Illustration: Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty
The Great Conduit
Advantageously located next to St Paul’s Cathedral and considerably grander and more spacious than the rest of the City’s labyrinthine streets, Cheapside – from the old English chepe (market) – was the undisputed high street of London before the fire. One of its most distinctive features, at the eastern end of the street, was the Great Conduit fountain, pictured here to the right of the Cheapside Cross.
From the 1230s to 1666, the Great Conduit channelled free water from the River Tyburn to Cheapside in lead pipes via the Strand and Fleet Street. Illegal siphoning was rife, reducing the water pressure – in Henry VI Part II, Shakespeare describes it as a “pissing-conduit” – and on the occasion of military victories, royal births and coronations, it sometimes ran with wine. As the fire spread, people dug desperately into the earth to puncture the conduit’s water supply, hoping the water might quench the flames – in vain – and the Great Conduit itself was razed to the ground along with Cheapside on Tuesday 4 September.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest St Paul’s Cathedral, ‘the wonder of medieval London’, as it looked before being burned down
Gothic St Paul’s
Old St Paul’s was the wonder of medieval London. It was the fourth cathedral to stand on the site, built from Caen stone after the Norman Conquest, and finished in 1314. It was its monumental timber-and-lead spire that visitors noticed first (until it was struck by lightning in 1561), rising to 489 feet. Not until the BT Tower was built in 1964 would another building soar so high in London.
The remorselessly gothic exterior was much sterner than Christopher Wren’s neoclassical successor, with flying buttresses, pointed windows, and sharp turrets. As one of the biggest covered public spaces in London, a bazaar-like atmosphere prevailed inside, with lawyers tossing coins in the baptismal font, farmers’ wives selling fruit and ale, and apprentices shooting arrows at the jackdaws and pigeons in the rafters, smashing the holy windows. Riding high in the eastern wall was the famous rose window, bathing the high altar in kaleidoscopic light.
When St Paul’s burned down on the third day of the fire, a local thunderstorm broke out with forks of apocalyptic lightning radiating from the blazing building. Eventually, the roof melted, sending streams of molten lead pouring down Ludgate Hill “glowing with fiery redness” as people ran for their lives.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Steelyard depot of the Hanseatic merchants. Illustration: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty
The Steelyard
“Foreigners are ill-regarded, not to say detested in London,” observed a Venetian visitor to the capital in 1617 – one reason, no doubt, the 400 German merchants of the Hanseatic League (an economic alliance of German cities) lived a sequestered life in the Steelyard. This motley collection of wharves, storehouses, a tavern, guildhall, mint, chapel, and lodgings – all engirdled by a stone wall – amounted to a mini city-within-a-city.
Since the early 13th century, successive kings allowed the foreign merchants to trade freely in England, immune from rent and taxation in exchange for surrendering their vessels in wartime. Their complex was razed to the ground in 1666, by which point they had lost most of their privileges after the jealous city guilds expressed anger regarding them towards Queen Elizabeth I. Today, its memory is effaced by Cannon Street Station.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Royal Exchange, Cornhill. Illustration: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty
The Royal Exchange
This vast, open-air trading piazza was the brainchild of the merchant Thomas Gresham. Christened the Royal Exchange by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571, it became the epicentre of England’s burgeoning trading empire, emitting onto Cornhill “an incessant buzz, like the murmurs of a distant ocean”. Along its colonnaded walks and finely pebbled courtyard, merchants from all over the world, customers and suppliers would meet twice a day to seal deals that would send ships to the four corners of the world.
It was a broad, four-storey building with fine shops in its upper galleries, and a bell tower surmounted by a large grasshopper, the emblem of the Gresham family. Watching from niches above the colonnade were statues of all the English kings and queens since William the Conqueror.
The Great Fire swept through the Exchange on 3 September, filling the courtyard with “sheets of fire” and sending the kings and queens plummeting from their niches, smashing to pieces below. As a totem of England’s commercial prowess, the Exchange was swiftly rebuilt after the fire, opening in 1669. But this, too, was destroyed by fire in 1838, and the site is currently occupied by a third exchange.
... and classic buildings that survived, only to be destroyed later
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nonsuch House on London Bridge. Illustration: Alamy
Nonsuch House
This wildly eccentric, gaudily painted, meticulously carved Renaissance palace was the jewel in the crown of London Bridge. Made entirely from wood it was prefabricated in Holland and erected in 1577-79, replacing the medieval drawbridge gate. At four storeys it was the biggest building on the bridge, straddling the whole street and lurching over the Thames, affording its illustrious occupants spectacular views of the metropolis. Its tulip-bulb cupolas were admired from miles around and there was truly nonsuch like this architectural mongrel anywhere else in London.
The fire only consumed a modern block of houses at the northern end of London Bridge, separated from the rest by a gap, and so Nonsuch House, built on the 7th and 8th arches from the Southwark end, happily survived – only to be dismantled with the rest of the houses a hundred years later.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The White Hart Inn, Bishopsgate, 1829. Illustration: Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty
The White Hart pub
This old inn is a sad – and relatively recent – loss. Originally a 14th-century tavern harangued by the cries of the insane from the hospital of Bethlem next door, it was rebuilt in 1480 as one of Bishopsgate’s galleried coaching inns catering for a transient population of travellers, traders, actors, prostitutes and pilgrims. It had bulging bay windows, a profusion of tiny window panes, and central archway leading into the courtyard with “1480” proudly inscribed above.
Escaping the fire, it was completely rebuilt in a mellower Georgian style in 1829, all stucco and sash windows, only to be demolished in recent years to make way for a brash, nine-storey cylindrical block of offices and shops, set to open in December 2016. Rather absurdly, the old pub’s facade will be preserved and grafted onto the new building, rubbing Londoners’ faces in their loss.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Northumberland House on the Strand, shortly before it was demolished in 1874. Photograph: London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton Archive/Getty
Northumberland House
Built in 1605, this lion-topped Jacobean palace was once an imposing feature of Charing Cross, by the equestrian statues of Charles I from 1675. It belonged to the illustrious earls and dukes of Northumberland, perfectly located to attend court and parliament. It was originally one of a parade of gilded medieval and Tudor riverside palaces, of which only Somerset House survives today, albeit rebuilt, but giving a sense of their former grandeur. The westernmost point of the fire’s trail of destruction was Fetter Lane, saving Northumberland House – but, shamefully, it was demolished in 1874 after the Metropolitan Board of Works paid its final duke a small fortune to move out so they could build Northumberland Avenue.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Paul Pindar Tavern in Bishopsgate, 1878. Photograph: Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London/Heritage Images/Getty
Paul Pindar’s House
Around 1600, the wealthy merchant and diplomat Paul Pindar returned from Italy and built “a very commodious mansion” on Bishopsgate Street Without, a pleasant stretch just beyond the City walls. It had a richly carved oak facade, with gradually protruding bays meeting in a turret-like shape at the front, and tiny panes of glass with fine patterning. Lying in the north-east corner of the City, it emerged unscathed in the fire and, sub-divided, part of it became a tavern in the 18th century, the Sir Paul Pindar’s Head. It fell victim to the expansion of the Great Eastern Railway in 1890 – but part of the façade is preserved today in all its meticulously-carved glory in the V&A Museum.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Crooked House on the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, as illustrated by John Thomas Smith
The crooked townhouse on Fleet Street
On the north side of Fleet Street, the fire didn’t manage to vault Fetter Lane. If it had, then this wonderfully overwrought four-storey townhouse bulging over the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, depicted by the antiquarian engraver John Thomas Smith in 1789, would almost certainly have been lost. “Antiquity Smith” had a keen eye for the vanishing city – the house was removed 10 years later. Today a tasteful, but less characterful, auburn Victorian building occupies the site.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cock and Magpie Tavern, Drury Lane, depicted by Joseph Henderson. Illustration: Alamy
The Cock and Magpie Tavern
One of a cluster of old houses in Drury Lane – which was far west enough not to be threatened by the fire – this beguiling gabled building wasn’t destroyed until 1882. For most of its life, it housed the Cock and Magpie pub which, according to the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London in 1880, was nearly 400 years old (though this is questionable). In its twilight years, it became a bookshop.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The magnificent Savoy paupers’ hospital. Illustration: Alamy
The Savoy hospital
From 1512, this was a grand hospital within the stout, battlemented walls of the ruined Savoy Palace, magnificently built by Peter of Savoy but burned down in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. At sunset each night, poor pilgrims, strangers and children would stream in to pray, wash, sleep and perhaps consult a physician or surgeon. An initiative of Henry VII, the hospital was re-founded by Mary I, and enlarged by Queen Elizabeth I.
It survived the Great Fire, but had ceased to be an operative paupers’ hospital by that stage (serving mainly as a military barracks), and was in ruins by 1800 following a fire. The site was cleared in 1816-20 and, since the 1880s, has been a theatre and uber-exclusive hotel, retaining something of the Savoy Palace’s earlier hauteur. Today, only the hospital’s stone chapel survives, adrift in a sea of office blocks.
14-15 Nevill’s Court, Fetter Lane
Pre-fire houses in Nevill’s Court
Nevill’s Court was a narrow alley off the east side of Fetter Lane, named after Ralph Neville, the Bishop of Chichester who had a London mansion here in the 1220s. The court once contained one of London’s best-kept secrets: a cluster of houses with picturesque overhanging storeys and plastered walls, replete with small, fenced-off gardens. These houses escaped the fire by the skin of their teeth – but were then destroyed in the early 20th century. Photographs survive thanks to the London Topographical Society who, spurred on by the “practical rebuilding” of London from the mid-Victorian period, captured old buildings on the brink of oblivion.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Depiction of the mansion of Sir Richard (Dick) Whittington in Crutched Friars, 1812. Illustration: Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty
The glass and gargoyle mansion
Fashionable glazed windows were something of a luxury in Elizabethan London, and at a time when so many dwellings had only a cloth or greased paper behind a lattice to let light in, this timber-framed mansion in Crutched Friars, to the north of the Tower of London was a work of almost criminal ostentation. It was made almost entirely from glass, with the load-bearing beams adorned with particularly hideous gargoyles as a foil to the beauty of the glass. Just three streets separated it from the limits of Fire’s trail of destruction to the east. It was dismantled at the end of the 18th century, having become an antiquated curiosity.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shaftesbury House in Aldersgate Street, as depicted by J Simpkins in 1813. Illustration: Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty
Shaftesbury House
How London might have looked: five masterplans after the great fire Read more
Constructed to the designs of Inigo Jones in the 1640s, Shaftesbury House on Aldersgate Street was “built in brick, and ornamented with stone in a most noble and elegant manner.” Its eight Ionic pilasters and very large windows added gravitas, making it a fitting residence for the Earl of Shaftesbury, who lends the building its name.
In later years it was a tavern, lying-in hospital, general dispensary, and finally shops. It owed its Great Fire survival to the city walls at Aldersgate – but it was unceremoniously ripped down in 1882. Now a barren, unlovely stretch pounded by traffic, 17th-century Aldersgate was once reckoned the most Italianate street in London, with harmonious buildings and a graceful width.
Dr Matthew Green is the author of London: A Travel Guide Through Time. He lectures on the history of London and leads tours through the city
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/30/great-fire-of-london-1666-350th-anniversary-which-buildings-disappeared
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| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/72fd280144f706c4000c4ed4cb7a27166f032e2276df5e6ab6b1994f734b416d.json
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[
"Nicola Slawson"
] | 2016-08-29T16:50:07 | null | 2016-08-03T18:21:51 |
Met police officer was part of anti-robbery Flying Squad that received tip-off about smash-and-grab at watch shop in Piccadilly
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Police officer seriously hurt in attempted robbery in London
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A police officer is in hospital in a serious condition after being hit by a moped while helping to foil an attempted robbery at a luxury store in London’s West End.
Four men armed with a machete and an axe and riding two mopeds targeted the Chronext shop in Piccadilly on Wednesday morning.
The gang smashed the windows of the store and tried to steal valuables, but were stopped when Scotland Yard’s anti-robbery team, known as the Flying Squad, moved in after receiving a tip-off. Tasers were fired at the men as they tried to flee.
One officer was left in a serious condition after he was hit by a robber fleeing on a moped; three others suffered minor injuries. All four members of the gang were arrested.
— Paul Bainsfair (@PaulBainsfair) Ram raid gone wrong in Piccadilly pic.twitter.com/SkrUrAQIS7
Jacob Marrache, retail manager of the store, told the Guardian that the attack had caused close to £500,000 of damage to both the property and to their stock. The police had come into the store earlier in the day to warn them that a robbery might take place. Just before the incident, they were contacted once again by the police who told them it was definitely happening and they should ask their customers to leave the shop.
The attack began soon after. Marrache said: “Two mopeds showed up right in front of the store. There were four guys. They had a hammer and got the door open. They shouted ‘don’t fucking move’ and made a lot of noise and started smashing up the first cabinet. At that moment, the police just stormed in at them and chased them out.”
Outside the shop all of the men were apprehended, however there was a struggle with all four spitting and shouting. “The officer who got hurt was struggling with one of the guys who was trying to get on the moped,” Marrache said. “It’s not really clear what happened but he got hurt.”
He praised the actions of the officers. “They were all very brave. Our biggest concern is the injured officer’s wellbeing. We’ve got expensive stock here but everything is insured and none of that really matters when it comes to someone’s life. We’re all praying for him and hoping he’s alright. They all put their lives on the line. They were all amazing.”
Avi Reed, the UK director of Chronext, told BBC News that the company were delighted by the police warning.
“Thank god our employees were at the back of the store and nobody was injured,” he said. “The police acted with amazing speed. Unfortunately I believe one officer was injured.
“We are delighted there was a police warning and it’s terrifying to think what would have happened without it.”
One witness was Nasir Miah, an Uber driver who saw the attempted robbery unfold from his car. He told the Daily Mail: “I couldn’t believe what I was watching, it was like a scene out of a movie. Even in London you don’t see anything like that very often.
“I was coming up to a junction when I saw something that looked really weird. I thought it must be a robbery because these two mopeds mounted the pavement.
“The people riding them then got off and were acting quite aggressively, people were getting out of their way. The next thing there was a lot of shouting and undercover police officers jumped out from nowhere and lunged at the bikers before they could even get in the store.
“The bikers had nowhere to go as they were facing oncoming traffic, then some of the public started helping the officers when they realised what was going on.”
All four men were arrested on suspicion of robbery and have been taken to central London police stations. One of those arrested reported being unwell and has been transferred to hospital.
An axe, knives and the stolen jewellery were all recovered at the scene.
Det Supt Craig Turner said: “Our officers are absolutely committed to keeping London safe and target the criminals who pose a danger to Londoners and our city businesses day in, day out.
“They know that this work carries with it very real risks and dangers but take this in their stride as part of serving the public. However, today’s events highlight how the reckless behaviour of those determined to evade justice, heedless of the consequences, can have a real impact on all those involved.”
The store will reopen tomorrow after a new door was fitted on Wednesday evening, Marrache confirmed. The company also plan to increase security measures including stronger reinforced glass and extra CCTV cameras, as well as further staff training.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/03/police-officer-seriously-hurt-attempted-robbery-piccadilly-london
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| 2016-08-03T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ae8b40171397d957c0c3d7fdf139615882bf39783f5131f4d19f12e4e5082752.json
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[
"Joshua Robertson"
] | 2016-08-26T13:07:47 | null | 2016-08-26T07:29:36 |
Study of alcohol-related injuries treated in Queensland hospitals finds 36% took place in the home compared with 10% in licensed venues and 13% on the street
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Falcohol-fuelled-assault-twice-as-likely-to-happen-at-home-than-in-a-pub-study.json
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Alcohol-fuelled assault twice as likely to happen at home as in a pub - study
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People are almost two times more likely to fall victim to an alcohol-fuelled assault at home than in a licensed venue, according to new research.
A study from the University of New England in New South Wales of more than 12,000 alcohol-related injuries treated in Queensland hospitals over 10 years found 36% took place in the home, compared with just 10% in licensed venues and 13% on the street.
An injury by assault was 84% more likely to happen in the home compared with other locations, it found.
Alcohol is a direct cause of seven forms of cancer, finds study Read more
Kim Usher, a professor and head of the University of New England’s school of health, said the study – the first to examine alcohol-related injuries at home – dismantled a common media narrative about the dominant role of pubs and clubs in drink-fuelled harms.
That narrative has been embraced by governments in New South Wales and Queensland, where rollbacks of trading hours and venue “lockouts” have been the key policy responses to alcohol-related violence and injuries.
Usher said: “The media would lead you to believe that the majority of injuries happen at licensed venues when in fact the chances of injury is much higher when you are at home.
“This study shows that the home is a place of danger when drinking. It appears more people especially the young are drinking at home, because it is cheaper than going out.
“We hope health policymakers are looking at strategies to address this issue, as it is becoming the drinking location of choice and increasingly the site for alcohol-related injuries.”
In Queensland, cabinet minister Anthony Lynham has been a key Palaszczuk government proponent of licensed venue restrictions which began last month and sparked a backlash from critics, including live music supporters.
Lynham has cited his professional background working in an emergency department as a maxillofacial surgeon operating on alcohol-related injuries as a motive for entering politics and campaigning for reforms aimed at pubs and clubs.
Queensland lockout laws: millionaire offers to bankroll campaign to end them Read more
However, the study showed that of the 3,971 alcohol-related injuries from assaults presenting to Queensland emergency departments over a decade, 29.2% (1,161) were at home, compared with 16.5% (656) in licensed venues and 13.1% (520) on the street.
It found assaults made up up 32.2% of all alcohol-related injuries treated in emergency departments between 2003 and 2012, as recorded by the Queensland injury surveillance unit.
There were 12,296 alcohol-related injuries over the 10 years, which represented 3.02% of all injuries treated in Queensland hospitals.
Just over 500 injuries were identified as the result of domestic violence by a spouse or partner, almost 60% of these taking place at home.
The study found that – despite no change in mean alcohol consumption nationally – the proportion of all injuries treated in Queensland emergency departments that involved alcohol soared by 138% over 10 years.
But injuries in licensed venues fell by 77% over the 10 years.
“Due to interventions such as public media campaigns, lockout laws, responsible service of alcohol requirements and restricted trading hours, it is possible fewer people are drinking at a licensed venue or, due to the above measures and/or normal closing hours, are drinking elsewhere,” the report said.
Injuries at home were likely to be “more severe and complicated” than in other locations, the most common cause being a fall from a low level.
'Alcohol was there, always': Elspeth Muir on her brother's death and Australia's drinking culture Read more
The most common alcohol-related injuries overall were to the head, neck or face (35%).
But the study cited the large number of injuries to an “unspecified body region” – a category including overdoses or drink-spiking – in the home (44%) compared with licensed venues (11%).
“This finding indicates that despite concerted health promotion efforts in regards to the harmful effects of alcohol and excessive alcohol intake, many Australians drink at home at ‘risky’ or ‘high-risk’ levels,” it said.
Almost twice as many people were injured after being struck by or colliding with a person or object at home (1,038) than in licensed venues (556).
Contact with a person or object made up 26% of injuries at home but over half the injuries in licensed venues.
The study, Patterns of “At Home” Alcohol-Related Injury Presentations to Emergency Departments, is to be published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/26/alcohol-fuelled-assault-twice-as-likely-to-happen-at-home-than-in-a-pub-study
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b2837a9e2e2983da55542a73af0ff3988a0ce81ceb3efe083c026c95749de2ea.json
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[
"Miles Brignall"
] | 2016-08-29T06:55:06 | null | 2016-08-29T06:00:53 |
Legal & General has rejected our claim because we did not have an updated valuation certificate
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Finsurer-refuses-payment-diamond-ring-claim-legal-and-general.json
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We insured a diamond ring for £8,000, then were told it was not covered
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www.theguardian.com
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My wife recently lost the diamond from her engagement ring, which must have dropped out while she was at work. We have always insured this under our home insurance. Each year the insurer has stated it will only insure it up to the value documented on an accredited valuation, regardless of what we say it’s worth. This has been the same for many years across numerous insurers’ policies. After using a comparison website, we ended up with a Bradford & Bingley policy underwritten by Legal & General. The ring was insured for £8,000, its approximate value the last time we had it valued in 2014.
Upon making a claim we have been rejected and pointed to a clause in our contact that states if any one item of jewellery is worth over £7,500 you must have a valuation within the last year of the claim.
When I read it back, I assumed that if you hadn’t got a valuation certificate within the last year, you would fall back to the £7,500 threshold or the last valuation carried out, but no, they’ve simply rejected it outright. Is this is reasonable or fair? JA Cheadle, Cheshire
An interesting question, one which I think the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is going to have to answer. It seems that if you had put down the value of the ring as £7,400 when you took out the policy, you would not have come up against the policy demand to have it inspected each year – and, crucially, the claim would likely have been paid. This is one of the problems of using comparison websites, as valuables and other limits are not always clearly set out at the point of sale.
Legal & General says the inspection requirement is clearly stated in the policy documents sent when you took out the policy. It also suggests that had the ring been inspected the looseness of the stone may have been identified, and that a claim could have been prevented – an argument that has some validity.
“We always stress that customers should read their policy documents thoroughly, including the statement of facts and any exclusions that could apply when they take out their policy. We have offered £1,500 which is the standard single item limit which JA has under his personal possessions cover,” a spokeswoman said.
This leaves you £6,500 short, and in your shoes we would take the matter to the FOS who will pore over the policy wording and decide whether you have been treated fairly or not. We suspect that they will side with the company on this one, but it’s worth a go as the service is free.
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/29/insurer-refuses-payment-diamond-ring-claim-legal-and-general
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| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f4f7f0c50e9c7fac26bc605daafe7f07192f5eae506365cb92c24b90684e7a75.json
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[
"Reuters In Karkamiş"
] | 2016-08-28T10:51:50 | null | 2016-08-28T10:30:26 |
Monitoring group says many more wounded as Turkey continues cross-border offensive against Isis and Kurdish forces
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Turkish airstrikes and artillery 'kill at least 35 civilians in Syria'
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www.theguardian.com
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Turkish airstrikes and artillery attacks in Syria have killed at least 35 civilians and wounded dozens more on the fifth day of Turkey’s cross-border campaign against Islamic State (Isis) and Kurdish forces, according to a monitoring group.
Warplanes bombarded northern Syria at dawn on Sunday and artillery pounded what Turkish security sources said were sites held by the Kurdish YPG militia, after the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported fierce overnight fighting.
The UK-based monitor said at least 20 civilians died in Turkish airstrikes on the village of Jub al-Kousa and 15 were killed in an air raid targeting a farm near the village of al-Amarna, which was captured from Kurdish-allied militia on Sunday.
Turkey entered northern Syria on Wednesday, sending soldiers, tanks and other military hardware in support of its Syrian rebel allies and seizing the border town of Jarablus from Isis.
But most fighting so far has appeared to be with rebels aligned to the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a broad grouping that includes the YPG, rather than Isis.
The Turkish government wants to stop Kurdish forces gaining control of an unbroken swathe of Syrian territory on its border, which it fears could embolden the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.
It adds complexity to the Syrian conflict which erupted five years ago with an uprising against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and has since drawn in regional states and world powers.
Any action against Kurdish forces in Syria puts Turkey at odds with the United States, its Nato ally. Washington backs the SDF and YPG, seeing them as the most reliable and effective ally in the fight against Isis in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed and 50 wounded in a battle for the village of Jub al-Kousa.
Turkish officials have openly stated that their goal in Syria is as much about ensuring Kurdish forces do not extend territory they already control along Turkey’s border, as it is about driving Isis from its strongholds.
Turkish security sources said warplanes and artillery had hit Kurdish YPG militia sites near Manbij, a city south of Jarablus that had been captured by Kurdish-aligned SDF this month in a US-backed operation.
A Syrian rebel commander said on Sunday that Turkish-backed rebels aimed to capture Manbij. Col Ahmed Osman, head of the Sultan Murad rebel group, said his Turkish-backed force was “certainly heading in the direction” since YPG forces had fortified their positions rather than evacuate.
The YPG says its forces have withdrawn from the area and their presence could not be used as a pretext for an attack.
A Reuters witness in Karkamiş, on the Turkish side of the border, heard jets and artillery bomb Syrian targets. The Observatory said Turkish jets hit sites north of Manbij.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/28/turkish-airstrikes-artillery-kill-civilians-syria
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| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f74234ba080b66ee773c7d130990f4b5d0b76941fa1edfa2078bf62df618bdb9.json
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[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-27T08:51:39 | null | 2016-08-27T06:32:24 |
Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic could clash in a spicy first-time showdown between the Davis Cup sparring partners as opportunity knocks for Australia’s US Open hopes in New York
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US Open draw sets Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic on collision course
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Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic could clash in a spicy first-time showdown between the Davis Cup sparring partners as opportunity knocks for Australia’s US Open hopes in New York.
Kyrgios, seeded 14th, and Tomic, the 17th seed, have been thrown on a third-round collision course but Friday’s draw at Flushing Meadows was otherwise a good one for Australia’s top two men’s players.
Djokovic hopeful problems are behind him while draw opens up for Murray Read more
After drawing Andy Murray in the opening round last year and also falling to the eventual champion at Wimbledon, Kyrgios has finally been spared a confrontation with any of tennis’s so-called big four until at least the semi-finals.
Kyrgios will play British No.2 Aljaz Bedene on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) for the right to challenge either Argentine Horacio Zeballos or German Florian Mayer in the second round.
Tomic also opens Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), against Damir Dzumhur, and will face either Croatian Ivan Dodig or Ukraine Illya Marchenko if he can see off the Bosnian dangerman.
Unbeaten against unseeded opponents in all 13 of his previous slams, Kyrgios fancies his chances of challenging for his maiden grand slam crown in the Big Apple.
“I only found that out recently. It’s a decent record,” Kyrgios told AAP.
“But I don’t pay too much attention to it. I’ve always known that if I’m in the game and switched on, I can beat anyone on any stage.”
Kyrgios is slated to strike world No3 Stan Wawrinka in a possible last-16 grudge match – but Tomic looms large as a potential third-round roadblock.
The one-time US Open doubles partners have never clashed in singles and an intriguing match-up in New York would come six months after the pair engaged in a public verbal spat that played out on TV and social media.
Tomic accused Kyrgios of feigning illness to avoid a Davis Cup playoff with the USA in March, Kyrgios hitting back on Twitter.
The two have since settled their differences, with Tomic dubbing any perceived tension between the two as “silly” as the duo jostle for status as Australia’s top-ranked men’s player.
“Me and Nick are great friends off court,” Tomic said at Wimbledon.
“If Nick can be No10 in the world and I can be No5 or he can be eight and I can be 12, I’ve got to be happy with this.
“I respect him as a friend and as a person and as a tennis player.
“I don’t really see any competition between who’s No1 and who’s No2.”
John Millman has a tough first assignment against eighth seed Dominic Thiem on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).
Facebook Twitter Pinterest 2011 US Open winner Samantha Stosur in action during the Rio Olympics. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
Australia’s women’s stars received mixed Open draws, with former champion Samantha Stosur taking on Italy’s world No66 Camila Giorgi on Monday (Tuesday AEST).
Seeded 16th, Stosur is projected to meet world No.1 Serena Williams in a fourth-round rematch of their 2011 final at Flushing Meadows.
Daria Gavrilova plays 2015 French Open runner-up Lucie Safarova for a likely second-round shot at world No4 Simona Halep, while young wildcard winner Ellen Perez makes her grand slam debut against Zhang Shaui.
Who the Aussies face at the US Open (prefix denotes seeding)
Men’s singles, first round
14-Nick Kyrgios v Aljaz Bedene (GBR)
17-Bernard Tomic v Damir Dzumhur (BIH)
John Millman v 8-Dominic Thiem (AUT)
James Duckworth v Robin Haase (NED)
Jordan Thompson v Dmitry Tursunov (RUS)
Women’s singles, first round
16-Samantha Stosur v Camila Giorgi (ITA)
Daria Gavrilova v Lucie Safarova (CZE)
Ellen Perez v Zhang Shaui (CHN)
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/us-open-draw-kyrgios-tomic-collision-course
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/36d04df9928e43dc7c46cea36865702b729b677c8d75758baa87978ebc1fcc2e.json
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[
"Jackie Ashley"
] | 2016-08-26T13:21:59 | null | 2016-08-25T06:00:03 |
In 2012 we hailed Paralympians as heroes. Now they face a grimly familiar cycle of cuts and contempt, as the clock turns back on compassion
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From London to Rio, 2012’s Paralympic legacy has been shamefully betrayed
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www.theguardian.com
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Ignore the cynics. A huge number of us loved the Rio Olympics, and before that loved the London Olympics, and are proud of how many gold medals Team GB managed to win. But I was much prouder of what this country did in 2012 during the last Paralympics when, building on Beijing, London finally and properly brought disabled people into the inner circle of popular elite sport.
In the summer of 2012, 2.7m tickets were sold, a record for Paralympic sport. Stadiums were packed. Heroes were celebrated. There seemed to be only a barely perceptible gap between the Olympic Games and the London Paralympics, with the same branding, vivid ballyhoo and saturation media coverage. There was virtually no sense of “second best”.
We cannot let the Paralympics take a step backwards at Rio | Anne Wafula Strike Read more
The Royal Mail, albeit under some political pressure, produced individual stamps to celebrate Paralympic champions and painted postboxes gold in their home towns. There was a massive poster and broadcast advertising campaign, and Channel 4 deserves a shout-out for its promotional film, We’re the Superhumans. More than 4,200 athletes from 164 nations took part, an all-time record, and demand was such that extra tickets had to be distributed. Philip Craven, president of the International Paralympics Committee, declared the event “the greatest Paralympic Games ever”.
Part of this derived from the Olympic Games, which were themselves such a success. We had become accustomed the long, hot days of watching sport, and the Paralympics benefited. But for whatever reason, we all got behind disability in sport, and recognised that a man in a wheelchair or a swimmer lacking a full hand could be as heroic as any “normal” competitor.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘In Rio, funding has been diverted, question marks hover over crucial travel grants and just 12% of tickets have been sold. There’s a real danger of it being back to business as usual.’ Photograph: Cameron Hart/AP
Now, in Rio, there’s a real danger of it being back to business as usual. Extra funding for the Olympics was diverted away from the Rio Paralympics. Olympic venues were closed and dismantled. Transport services were cut. Worst of all, a question mark has been thrown over grants enabling disabled athletes from 40 of the world’s poorest countries to come to Rio. By mid August, only 12% of tickets had been sold. Craven says the Paralympics has not faced such circumstances in its 56-year history.
It’s by no means all the fault of Brazil, whose government, badly strapped for cash, is doing its best to save the Paralympic Games. But it does show how incredibly difficult it can be to keep momentum going for disabled athletes, and disability issues generally.
Let’s move closer to home. There has been endless talk about the legacy of 2012 – have we really become fitter and sportier people as a result of watching all that sport? Has east London really benefited as well as it could have done from the Games? But what about the legacy of the London Paralympics?
Since then we have had four hard years of austerity economics in this country, and no group has been as badly affected as disabled people: about half a million people have been hit.
In 2014, the Conservative welfare minister, Lord Freud, announced that some disabled people were not worth the minimum wage, and could be paid as little as £2 an hour. The replacement of disability living allowance has caused mayhem for many of our most vulnerable people. Ministers backed down in March on the restrictions they had planned to personal independence payments (PIP), but there are a host of other reductions. The government’s own figures ahead of the last budget suggested that cuts to disabled people would “save” taxpayers £4.4bn.
Disability hate crime: is 'benefit scrounger' abuse to blame? Read more
How? Well, among other things there is a £40 cut coming next March for many new claimants of employment support allowance (ESA), around a third of the value of this crucial benefit. That equates to people not being able to cope, to having to rely on food banks, and occasionally to people killing themselves in despair. A third of those surveyed by the disability benefits consortium said they already had trouble feeding themselves, at the current ESA rate.
In a developed society, this can happen only where there is already an ingrained lack of compassion for those with disabilities. Disability campaigners are quite right that in one sense the Paralympic Games sets up a dangerous polarity between the “superhuman” heroes on the one hand, and the “feckless, contemptible scroungers”, as portrayed by the tabloids, on the other. Between sentimentality and venom, all that is missing is a clearsighted view of the vast majority of ordinary disabled people doing their decent best to get along, work, and live tolerable lives. But the binary heroes/scroungers, love ’em/loathe ’em mindset seems to be our woeful Paralympic legacy.
According to data uncovered last year through the Freedom of Information Act, hate crimes against disabled people reported to the police during 2014-15 rose by 41%. The disability hate crimes network regards this as only the tip of a very nasty iceberg, and believes there are 60,000 such incidents a year.
All statistics should be regarded with caution but there is too much evidence on display of our shameful treatment of disabled people – from Treasury officials making “easy” cuts, to newspapers slandering the unwell as scroungers – to be ignored. Frankly, that golden glow from the summer of 2012 has been betrayed, not just in Rio but every day on the streets of Britain. Meet the superhumans? Perhaps we should start to introduce ourselves to a few of them.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/25/london-rio-paralympics-legacy-disabled-cuts
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3f1ff17e7964154d79ca3f77509eee38c591701087cc0c3236f9907e1e360498.json
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[
"Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-29T08:52:04 | null | 2016-08-29T07:47:30 |
People flee and police storm building but search reveals no evidence of a gunman or shots fired
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fpanic-at-los-angeles-airport-lax-after-noise-mistaken-for-gunfire.json
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Panic at Los Angeles airport after noise mistaken for gunfire
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www.theguardian.com
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False reports of a gunman opening fire caused panicked evacuations at Los Angeles international airport on Sunday night, while flights to and from the airport were delayed.
A search through the terminals revealed no evidence of a gunman or shots fired, Los Angeles police spokesman Andy Neiman said. The reports were caused by loud noises only, and police were still investigating to find the source of them, Neiman said.
Terminals were slowly starting to reopen on Monday morning but passengers who fled will have to be rescreened through security, airport police said. Officials said they expected a massive backlog as flights slowly resume.
When the incident began, scores of people could be seen on social media and on TV news reports running from the terminal out on to streets as police with rifles stormed the building. Many other evacuees were standing on the airport tarmac, and abandoned bags littered some pavements.
Scott McDonald said he was getting off a plane in the middle of the incident and was told by the crew to get back on. He said looking out of the window he could see many evacuees gathered on the tarmac.
“I’ve never seen passengers, just normal people, on the tarmac anywhere in the United States,” McDonald told KCAL-TV.
Leyna Nguyen, an anchor for KCAL whose flight happened to arrive just before the panic began, said even false reports “create such a chaotic scene, it’s really scary”.
She said: “I saw people running faster than I’ve ever seen people run just to get out of the way.”
It came just days after another false alarm led to a panicked evacuation of Kennedy airport in New York.
In that incident, police were investigating whether an overly boisterous celebration of the Olympics on 14 August led to noises that were misinterpreted as gunfire, with the ensuing chain reaction turning into a panic as crowds ran to evacuate.
There was an actual shooting at Los Angeles airport in November 2013, when a man opened fire in the terminal, killing a security agent and wounding three other people.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/29/panic-at-los-angeles-airport-lax-after-noise-mistaken-for-gunfire
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/091325c20ec38a0ee4c0fc3ce4cf038f1b551b4e64686252f376d598877e29af.json
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[
"Rich Stanton"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:03 | null | 2016-08-18T11:13:55 |
Video game developer Konami imagines a new future for its biggest series, but the fans aren’t happy
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Can Metal Gear Survive without Hideo Kojima?
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www.theguardian.com
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Former Konami game director Hideo Kojima may be one of the most famous faces in video gaming. Not least because he puts himself in his games, a la Hitchcock, which for nearly the past three decades have been mostly Metal Gear titles. 2015’s MGSV: The Phantom Pain was a spectacular finale that offered real-life fireworks too, as Kojima and Konami acrimoniously parted ways.
This breakup saw a reaction along tribal lines, with the fanbase generally siding with Kojima and blaming Konami. Something of the hangover remains in the reaction to Metal Gear Survive, which is a “divergent take” on Metal Gear in the studio’s own words. It transplants the series into another dimension for an online co-op game for up to four players – with, and it’s hard to suppress a slight sigh here, zombie-type enemies.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The trailer’s end features the approach of a Metal Gear without showing us the machine – Peace Walker featured replayable boss battles against giant mechs, and bet on something similar here.
The trailer begins with footage from Ground Zeroes, MGSV’s prequel, showing central character Big Boss escaping from his imploding base – before cutting to a soldier left behind. It’s hard to miss the symbolism of Kojima’s game being used to introduce the new one; the replacement of the iconic Big Boss with a series of characters, and the overall idea of those left behind trying to forge a new path.
Various aspects about Survival are promising, not least the fact that it’s built on the incredible foundation of MGSV– a systems-based open world that created exciting scenarios in every engagement. The Mother Base seen in the trailer is the Peace Walker / Ground Zeroes version (though it uses MGSV’s visual assets). Around halfway through, the trailer focus switches to this – crash-landed but far from abandoned, with perimeter fences to keep out the zombies.
The implication is that, as with Peace Walker and MGSV, Mother Base will serve as the game’s expandable hub and overall structure, with players venturing into the wilderness for missions. An especially intriguing moment shows a soldier clocking a zombie with a pipe, meaning melee weapons in a series that has never really specialised in this kind of combat. There’s a pipe, a spear, and beyond this a bow followed by an explosive drill bow (expect crafting), alongside the trailer’s characters carting supplies back to Mother Base.
Much of the talent that worked on MGSV: TPP remains at Konami, including key figures suvh as Yuji Korekado – a designer / programmer so integral to MGSV he’s one of the few listed on every mission’s startup credits.
MGSV’s systems are being reworked towards, in Konami’s words, having four players “strategically manage massive threats” in “harsh terrain filled with deadly creatures”. This is much more of a nod towards Monster Hunter than hardcore survival sims. Survive’s inspiration seems to come from MGS: Peace Walker. This title not only copied the Monster Hunter endgame structure, which is scaling difficulty and equipment, but also included licensed tribute missions. The comparisons to western zombie games – the Day Zs and Left 4 Deads and COD zombies – may prove well wide of the mark.
Metal Gear Survive is being pitched as a companion piece to MGSV, which will retail at a non-premium pricepoint. It all rather calls to mind Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare DLC – an extremely popular and well-received expansion to a great open-world game. The zombies are a worry, not least because part of MGSV’s brilliance is the enemy AI, and the trailer included no stealth elements whatsoever A company spokesman did however assure Eurogamer that “there is stealth in it ... I know when you’re watching the trailer it’s all very action-packed and it doesn’t really elicit that feeling, but there will be stealth and one of the really interesting things that we will be exploring and playing with is how stealth and co-op can actually co-exist.”
So far, so normal for a game announcement – but of course Metal Gear Survive is a focal point for something else. The fan reaction has been about as measured as we’ve come to expect from the internet, with social media and YouTube near-united in condemnation of the game – despite knowing little about it. This parody Twitter account captures the general feeling:
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO__KOJIMA_) Watching the Metal Gear Survive trailer pic.twitter.com/DSB4l7r5LL
Alongside plenty of references to Kojima’s current project, Death Stranding:
— Jaya Ply (@Nikingply) me after watching Metal Gear Survive.... pic.twitter.com/6DpyaeQezY
And generally a feast of amusing Big Boss images and gifs:
Obviously humour is one method of expression, and all the explicit tweets we aren’t reproducing here are another. Yet another would be the YouTube “reaction” video I’ve just watched, where a young man pretends to be dead throughout the trailer before spasming to the floor at its conclusion. An especially popular portmanteau and hashtag ever since MGSV’s release has been “FucKonami” and, in the context of audience reactions recently, it’s hard not to feel we’re in an era of rather obnoxious ignorance.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest YouTube search results for Metal Gear Survive.
Konami finds itself in the frankly bizarre position of having developed and delivered, with Kojima, one of the all-time great gaming series – but all the credit seem to have left with that one man. To say that Kojima is Metal Gear is to ignore that Metal Gear is also Konami, by which I mean the hundreds of mostly unknown creators that have also worked on the series for decades. Such a perspective becomes even more incredible when you consider one of the later games’ core themes was the perils of hero-worship. Do such fans, one wonders, even understand their hero’s creations?
Even if they do not, the hand-wringing over Survive’s dafter elements – and the focus on zombies – is hard to reconcile with Metal Gear’s history. A wormhole sucking troops into an alternate dimension for a spinoff game is a narrative macguffin, sure, but MGSV featured wormhole technology in a more subsidiary role. Kojima himself had a zombie scenario in mind for the sequel to Metal Gear Rising – and MGSV includes missions where the player has to rescue former MSF soldiers who, in the intervening nine years, have gone mad and roam the world maps in a zombiefied state.
This is not to say it’s all sunshine. Metal Gear Survive is entering a saturated genre, making changes to what people might expect from Metal Gear gameplay, and parts of the trailer are undeniably generic (a consequence of using player avatars, perhaps). Alongside Peace Walker there’s also the ambiguous legacy of the Metal Gear Online games to consider, which have largely flattered to deceive – with brilliant mechanics but limited longevity. While zombies can make for a great enemy type in video games, we’ve had so many the idea is just boring.
But at a time when a vocal section of the internet is angry about pre-release hype, however, a large part of Metal Gear Survive is already a known quantity. Assuming the 2017 release date means late 2017, this represents maybe a two-year dev cycle and thus a huge reliance on MGSV. It is hard to overstate what an advantage it is for a video game to have such a base – using MGSV as a foundation is like having a great tomato sauce for cooking. If you make a great tomato sauce then the chances are the bolognese or lasagne or minestrone you go on to make will be pretty good too. MGSV is tomato sauce made by Marco Pierre White.
The fans have a readymade reaction for this analogy, of course.
— Ar Nomura sora pa ki (@sora54) Ma TL à l'annonce de #MetalGearSurvive. pic.twitter.com/Bzzp7gty66
Metal Gear Survive is, at least, a departure for the series – and after Kojima’s departure, that may be exactly what it needs. There are no rules for Metal Gear’s future because this has historically been the kind of series that writes them – the one fact that, with Survive being the first post-Kojima title, makes you wonder about the ambition here. Will this really be, as Konami promises, “survival done the Metal Gear way”? Or will it simply show that, without Kojima and his fans, Metal Gear has its own survival issues.
Metal Gear Survive will be released on PC, PS4 and Xbox One in 2017.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/18/can-metal-gear-survive-without-hideo-kojima-konami
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en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c98c23e4f19503fac0f1a74069dc90dcd90bd5db765452b6b9efe8f8ec4d3bea.json
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[
"Mark Harris"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:01 | null | 2016-08-19T11:00:00 |
Anthony Levandowski is one the most influential engineers behind self-driving vehicles. Now that Uber has bought his latest startup Otto, he talks about how it all started
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fself-driving-car-anthony-levandowski-uber-otto-google.json
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How a robot lover pioneered the driverless car, and why he's selling his latest to Uber
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www.theguardian.com
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Self-driving vehicles have been developed in many places, over many years, but few people have as strong a claim as Anthony Levandowski to being considered their inventor. And it all started with a phone call from his mother.
“My mom called me up and said, there’s this robot race it would be interesting for you to find out about,” he recalls. That race was the 2004 Grand Challenge, the first of three long distance contests for driverless cars organised by the Pentagon’s research arm, Darpa. “I was like wow, this is absolutely the future.”
With the help of fellow engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, Levandowski built Ghostrider, a 90cc Yamaha motorbike modified to balance and ride itself using motion sensors, video cameras and GPS. He chose a nimble two-wheeler because he thought better funded teams would quickly get four-wheeled driverless vehicles working perfectly.
“I expected the problem to be solved on cars on race day,” says Levandowski. “That was a huge miscalculation because 12 years later, it’s still not solved.” None of the dozens of competing vehicles finished the course, and Ghostrider (which is now in the Smithsonian) did not even make the final. But Levandowski had found his life’s calling. “It struck a chord deep in my DNA,” he says, “It was almost like discovering electronics. I didn’t know where it was going to be used or how it would work out, but I knew that this was going to change things significantly.”
Fast forward to this 2016 – and that significant change is happening. Uber just announced that self-driving cars will start pick up passengers later this month in Pittsburgh. And the man leading the project, alongside Uber’s multi-billion dollar efforts to automate long-distance trucking, delivery and passenger services? Anthony Levandowski.
“In 30 years, every single new car will be autonomous. That’s completely obvious,” says Levandowski, who was also the engineer responsible for Google’s first driverless car.
“But it will take a long time for the technology to be ubiquitous. It’s probably one of those things where we overestimate it in the short run and underestimate it in the long run.”
Relationship with Google
Levandowski himself could not be accused over underestimating the potential of robotic vehicles. After building Ghostrider, he put the first driverless car on public roads in 2008, and sold a start-up to Google that formed the nucleus of its self-driving car project. His latest venture, an autonomous truck company called Otto that only launched in May, is being bought by Uber for an estimated $680m.
It was at a second Darpa race, back in 2005, that Levandowski met Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford computer science professor. Thrun eventually recruited him to Google, to work together on its Street View mapping project.
“After a year of doing that, the robot itch came back,” says Levandowski. A TV producer friend suggested that Levandowski build a self-driving pizza delivery vehicle for the Discovery Channel show Prototype This! “Google was very supportive of the idea, but they absolutely did not want their name associated with it,” he says. “They were worried about a Google engineer building a car that crashes and kills someone.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Employees stand next to self-driving, big-rig trucks at the Otto headquarters in San Francisco. Uber bought Otto for an estimated $680m. Photograph: Tony Avelar/AP
So Levandowski set up another company, called Anthony’s Robots, to keep the technology giant at arm’s length. In less than a month, Levandowski and engineers had built the Pribot – a self-driving Toyota Prius with one of the first spinning lidar laser ranging units, and the first ever to drive on public roads.
On the day of the shoot, San Francisco police closed a five mile route to traffic as the Pribot could not yet detect other vehicles or pedestrians. The car made the trip almost without incident, just scraping a tight exit on the Bay Bridge. “You’ve got to push things and get bumps and bruises along the way,” says Levandowski. “But we did it in four weeks and that really got me jazzed about going back to robots.”
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were pretty jazzed, too. They gave Levandowski the budget to bring the Pribot into a secretive new unit of Google called X, dedicated to “moonshot” technologies and headed by Thrun. Within a couple of years, Google had quietly acquired both of Levandowski’s companies, Anthony’s Robots and 510 Systems.
Although some of the startups’ engineers wanted to work on self-driving vehicles on their own, Levandowski has no regrets to selling up. “Google was the right place to pioneer robot cars,” he says. “In 2008, no one else would ever have believed me that we were going to make a car actually drive everywhere, all the time.”
For the next couple of years, until a story in the New York Times revealed their existence, Google’s growing fleet of Priuses roamed the streets of California without anyone noticing. “If people asked us what was on the cars, we’d say, it’s a laser and just drive off,” says Levandowski with a laugh.
Uber buys Otto
In 2011, Levandowski helped lobby the state of Nevada to allow the testing of autonomous vehicles, and even put a Prius through the world’s first self-driving test to demonstrate its safety. “Nevada was all about removing an excuse for the engineers to not ship the technology,” he says. “But that’s when I realised it wasn’t ready. It was clear we had to do more work to improve the technology’s reliability.”
For the next five years, Levandowski helped Google expand its fleet to dozens of vehicles, including prototype self-driving cars without manual steering wheels, brakes or accelerators. In January this year he left to found Otto, a startup dedicated to giving truckers the freedom to take naps during long distance highway drives. Uber agreed to buy the company in late July, with Levandowski reporting direct to Uber founder Travis Kalanick.
Levandowski admits there are technical challenges to perfecting self-driving taxis like those Uber is developing. “Surface streets are probably a hundred to a thousand times more complicated than highways,” he says. But he is confident that autonomous vehicles will eventually “save on average more lives than any other technology that’s been created before”.
He also thinks that any legal and regulatory hurdles that exist today will melt away once the superior performance of self-driving cars is demonstrated. “As soon as it’s ready, it’s going to be legal. If we can show it’s safe, there’s no reason why it should not be allowed,” he says. “There will be fewer deaths, and we can’t stand in the way of that. Robots here we come!”
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/19/self-driving-car-anthony-levandowski-uber-otto-google
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en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/889bfad798a1d32d75e2e943b7f0f7f01b22947f0d5652ad0f995e852ac2647a.json
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[
"Ian Whitwham"
] | 2016-08-27T06:49:13 | null | 2016-08-27T05:15:54 |
Ian Whitwham was reading to his granddaughter when he lost the ability to speak. A stroke had laid him low
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Flifeandstyle%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fthe-bomb-that-went-off-in-my-head.json
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| null |
The bomb that went off in my head
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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I’m playing with the grandchild, Sylvie. It’s early in the morning. I’m a bit sleepy, a bit slow. She brings me her polar bear, Sidney.
She calls it “Shiissh”. I call it “Shidney”. She’s 17 months. She’s doing well. I’m 71. I’m doing badly. I have another go. “Hello, Shidney!” I make myself a strong coffee. I can’t get up off the sofa.
“I must snooze,” I say to Jill, the wife.
Sylvie gets a book.
“Spot,” she says. “Where Spot?”
Indeed. Spot the dog. I must read.
“Spit the dog.”
I’m struggling to say it.
“Where Spot?”
I don’t quite know. This is daft.
Can’t say Sidney. Can’t say Spot.
“You’re hungover,” says the wife.
I pick up Spot again. No. Can’t read it. I can see the words, I just can’t say them. My head hurts. My brain hurts. After 10 minutes, Sylvie wants a song.
“Row, Row, Row the Boat,” she goes
“Row, Row, Row the bit geny dun the streee … Murrily murr mur mur lif is but a dr …” I slur.
I phone my chum Michelle.
“He .. ll ..O aaa.” Pause. “Aaaaa … er.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“I might be aavving a str- strike.”
“Ring an ambulance! Now! You’ve got four hours,” she says strictly.
The ambulance is round in two minutes.
Two paramedics. One asks me my name, date of birth, address. I slur again. I have several goes. Each one is worse. My head hurts more. I’m miles away. My blood pressure is about a million.
“Let’s go!”
I say goodbye to Jill and the mightily indifferent Sylvie, and we go to the ambulance. Four hours. How long have I had it? I already sound like Shane MacGowan.
The ambulance has finally come for me – like those dread Larkin lines.
“Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities …
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets are visited.”
We go speeding through the traffic. Quick. Quick. Out of my way! I’m fading fast. Come on.
I’ve seen the ads – FAST (Face. Arms. Speech. Time). Your face slips, your mouth goes skewwhiff, you catch fire and blur into a gargoyle.
We’re at Charing Cross hospital in about four minutes. Special delivery. VIP. Medics everywhere.
“You may be having a stroke,” says a man a white coat.
“You’re going to be all right,” says a nurse, who looks like a Vermeer.
I get bundled into a tunnel for some scans of the brain. Or what’s left of it.
“Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door.” I think of that Dylan song.
It creeps up on you and goes off like a bomb in your head. I imagine brain cells dying, letters turning into sand, dust falling down a tablet, piano notes disappearing, typing keys vanishing, the alphabet collapsing, a computer screen wiping, no back-up, no recovery, all language packing up, all things going for ever – memory, childhood, consciousness and identity – irretrievable, irreparable, irreversible, irrevocable.
A fast forward to extinction …
Ah, the treachery of a stroke, a lightning in the skull and you’re gone. Will I speak again? Will I be able to write again?
How many words have I still got? 200. 100. 10. None.
Have I gone already? Can I come back?
Fade.
I wake up in bed in a hospital dawn, hooked up to machines. My head’s been rinsed. Medics surround the bed. The doctor pronounces my fate. It’s his job. I brace myself. He is clinical, calm and professional.
“You’ve had a stroke.”
I was still hoping I somehow hadn’t.
“It might not be so bad.” Oh.
“Did you get it in time?” I can’t say.
How much of my mind is left?
A nurse asks me my full name.
“Ian Willie Wobbie Wigwam,” I slur after about 10 goes.
My tongue still doesn’t work.
“Date of birth?”
This is astrophysics. Neuroscience. I know the answers – but I can’t say.
“What day is it?”
Ask me another.
“It will probably get better tomorrow.”
They go.
The family visit. Jill, daughter Anna, Sylvie and brother Duncan. I’m too zonked to respond. I dread not speaking to them. I feel sorry for them – how frightened and apprehensive they must be. How sad they’ll be, but they can’t let on. I stay silent. Jill keeps a bright, straight, dreadful face on. Anna too. They’re on eggshells. No one wants to give me the opportunity to be a vegetable.
“How you doing?”
Massive pause.
“I’m al … rite … I thin … a bit gro … grog,” I approximate.
I make some superfluous noises. The rags of language. I try to smile.
The family go.
I’m so sorry.
Nouns are the worst. And names. Words are like phantom limbs. An absence. I’m going Samuel Beckett
That evening I go to wash my face in the mirror. I’ve postponed this. Quasimodo and Nosferatu beckon. Go on. I gaze at myself. My non-speaking, absent-minded visage looks back. It’s haunted, jagged. Empty? The lip slipped, eyes not quite level, face not quite straight, not quite gargoyle. Could be worse. Still, I don’t shave. Cover it up.
Next day, I am a bit better.
“Name?” says the doctor.
“Ian,” yes.
“Date of birth?”
It takes a dozen syllables.
When Jill comes in, I’m twice as good as yesterday. Half a moron.
They tell me I can go the next day. Nothing more they can do. My speech should get back slowly over six months. Or not. The doctor says I must just keep talking out loud – to myself and to my family.
We better get the will settled. I may wake up dead. It’s no way to live.
In the meantime, I must talk and talk and blather and blether to anyone willing to listen – Jill, Anna and Alice, Sylvie, the cat, the wall. They can’t tell me to shut up like they used to.
Nouns are the worst. And names. This is where language goes to die. Words are like phantom limbs. An absence. I’m going Samuel Beckett. Mind you, Jill doesn’t have to listen and it is a comfort that she is going deaf.
She deaf, me mute. What a way to end our days.
And I’ve been wearing my friends out. I take them out for a meal. They can’t say no because it might be the last supper. They pretend to listen to my maunderings.
I must self-help. I say the alphabet backwards, recite Subterranean Homesick Blues, remember the QPR back four, dialogue from Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist, the running order of Astral Weeks or John Donne’s A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day.
It’s working slowly. It’s coming back. Meanwhile, it’s no booze, no coffee, no salt, no dramas, and lots of Zen. Meditation. Or breathing deep. Tuning out. Letting go. Listening to the silence.
The family are extremely patient, but my best therapist is Sylvie, who’s now 18 months. She can’t be doing with my tawdry histrionics, my inarticulacy. She hasn’t noticed my brain damage. She thinks I’m a bit slow. Her language is making exponential leaps. Mine isn’t. She’s going forward. I’m catching up. We can both get to the end of Spot. We can both pronounce Sidney’s name. And I’m on top of that “merrily merrily” dirge.
I must just avoid that bomb in the head and we’ll be fine. So far, so good.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/27/the-bomb-that-went-off-in-my-head
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8c0f5bef27398ba626381285c7dff4ea19eeecca8763b06b27c835a49570656d.json
|
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-30T14:52:46 | null | 2016-08-30T14:50:38 |
Jonathan Kodjia has joined Aston Villa from Bristol City in an £11m deal which could rise to £15m
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fbristol-city-jonathan-kodjia-aston-villa-championship-record-fee.json
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| null |
Bristol City’s Jonathan Kodjia joins Aston Villa for Championship record £15m fee
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Jonathan Kodjia has joined Aston Villa from Bristol City in an £11m deal which could rise to £15m.
The striker has signed a four-year contract at Villa, who were relegated from the Premier League last term.
Transfer news live: Arsenal sign Lucas Pérez, Hart to Torino, Barcelona seal Alcácer and more! Read more
The 26-year-old scored 19 goals in the Championship last season for the Robins from 45 appearances.
Villa boss Roberto Di Matteo said on avfc.co.uk: “We are really pleased to have secured the services of Jonathan.
“He is a proven goalscorer and hopefully he’ll play an important part in what we hope will be a successful season for the club.”
Kodjia is an Ivory Coast international who joined City for around £2m from Angers last summer.
City announced the deal was worth more than four times their previous record sale – when Ade Akinbiyi joined Wolves in September 1999 for £3.5m – and includes a sell-on clause.
— Dr. Tony Xia (@Dr_TonyXia) Kodjia almost closed a sign with other clubs including perims be4we turned into him.We're delighted he chose playing 4Villa! Welcome Kodjia!
The Robins said they had turned down offers from Premier League and Championship clubs, but reluctantly accepted Villa’s offer after Kodjia stated his wish to move on.
The club’s chief operating officer, Mark Ashton, said: “We’ve continually told Jonathan that we don’t want him to go, but recently he’s made it clear that he’s aware of the interest of other clubs and that he wanted to leave.
“Due to the high profile nature and speculation surrounding the deal we have chosen to disclose the fee.
“We will receive a total of £11m guaranteed, which has the potential to rise to £15m. In addition, we have retained a sell-on clause for a percentage of any future profit.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/30/bristol-city-jonathan-kodjia-aston-villa-championship-record-fee
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/400e4d9f6342e4a9ee6b42e2ef707446f24b052142c6ed502f8bccf4f1d2c372.json
|
|
[
"Tom Dyckhoff"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:42 | null | 2016-08-05T15:30:08 |
Friday night is a sight to behold, especially in Ten Tors season
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F05%2Flets-move-to-okehampton-devon.json
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| null |
Let’s move to Okehampton, Devon
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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What’s going for it? Traffic jams. That’s all I remember of childhood trips to Okehampton. The A30. Bumper to bumper. Hot Chocolate on the radio. Volvo hanging together by a thread. The promise of the summer holiday to come slowly dissolving amid exhaust fumes. I barely clocked the town around us as we inched through, its whitewashed terraces and glinting granite passing by in a ghostly smudge. Now – luxury! – the A30 whips by on a bypass (though the traffic jams, at summer’s height, are still chronic), meaning you have to actually go to Okehampton to go to it. And so I did. Equipped with a pasty from Endacott’s, step outside the car and the whitewashed smudge transforms into rather a jolly place. Why, it has the last working water-powered forge in England! See what I missed! Okehampton’s centuries as an isolated garrison town defending Dartmoor’s edge give it a “restaurant at the end of the universe” feel. It knows how to have a good time. Friday night is a sight to behold, especially in Ten Tors season, when local hostelries are awash with brawny beefcakes supping soda water (before) or sinking 10 pints (after).
The case against There’s not much to the town, and not much around, so don’t come expecting the Left Bank.
Well connected? Trains: there are mutterings of an alternative to the Dawlish line coming through Okehampton, but don’t hold your breath. Until then, it’s the A30: half an hour to Exeter, slightly longer for the M5, 45 mins to the coast at Bude, 35 mins to the heart of Dartmoor. Hourly buses to Exeter (50 mins), Bude (one hour).
Schools Primaries: there’s one, Okehampton, but thankfully Ofsted’s rated it “good”. Secondaries: ditto, Okehampton College is “outstanding”.
Hang out at… I’d head down the A386 to the Dartmoor Inn at Lydford.
Let’s move to Monmouth and the lower Wye valley: where sightseeing began Read more
Where to buy You’ll find pleasant period suburbans west, between Exeter and Crediton Roads, with fine stone Victorian and Edwardian semis and terraces. In the centre are lovely hugger-mugger terraces; start on and around North Street. Large detacheds and town houses, £280,000-£400,000. Detacheds, £200,000-£280,000. Semis, £160,000-£280,000. Terraces and cottages, £120,000-£250,000. Rentals: a one-bedroom flat, £425-£525pcm; a three-bedroom house, £650-£850pcm.
Bargain of the week “Quirky” four-bedroom Victorian terrace, £145,000, with gssproperty.com.
From the streets
Nick Godfrey “It’s a friendly, non-touristy market town, accessible to everywhere: right on Dartmoor.”
Deborah Squire “Wetherspoons have opened a fantastic new pub/hotel, the old White Hart. But we’re surrounded by quaint villages with lovely pubs. Pet hate: traffic at school pick-up time.”
• Live in Okehampton? Join the debate below.
Do you live in Bowness, Cumbria? Do you have a favourite haunt or a pet hate? If so, email lets.move@theguardian.com by Tuesday 9 August.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/05/lets-move-to-okehampton-devon
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en
| 2016-08-05T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7831bda4962f36dd69b85c7ec7a86f502817f7a2077436787eac495e89383a4f.json
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[
"Robin Mckie"
] | 2016-08-27T20:49:52 | null | 2016-08-27T20:00:12 |
Researchers believe widespread use of fungicides on crops is reducing effectiveness of frontline medicines
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fmillions-at-risk-as-deadly-fungal-infections-acquire-drug-resistance.json
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| null |
Millions at risk as deadly fungal infections acquire drug resistance
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Scientists have warned that potentially deadly fungal infections are acquiring resistance to many of the medicines currently used to combat them.
More than a million people die of fungal infections every year, including about 7,000 in the UK, and deaths are likely to increase as resistance continues to rise.
Researchers say the widespread use of fungicides on crops is one of the main causes of the rise in fungal resistance, which mirrors the rise of resistance to antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections in humans.
“There are close parallels between bacterial and fungal resistance, though the problems we face with the latter are particularly worrying,” said Prof Adilia Warris, a co-director of the newly opened Centre for Medical Mycology at Aberdeen University.
“There are more than 20 different classes of antibacterial agents. By contrast, there are only four classes of anti-fungal agents. Our armoury for dealing with deadly fungi is much smaller than the one we have for dealing with bacteria.
“We cannot afford to lose the few drugs we have – particularly as very little funding is being made available for research into fungi and fungal infections.”
Fungi cause a range of illnesses – such as thrush, athlete’s foot and dandruff – that can be treated relatively easily.
Other illnesses have more serious consequences. Individuals who are receiving bone marrow transplants and who are immune-suppressed can die of aspergillus and candida fungi infections, for example.
Another example of their grim potential was highlighted last week when doctors reported that a bagpipe player had died because deadly fungi had infected his pipes.
“Fungi are everywhere,” said Prof Gordon Brown, head of the Aberdeen mycology centre.
“We breathe in more than 100 spores of aspergillus every day. Normally our immune systems mop them up but, when our disease defences are compromised – for example, during cancer treatments or after traumatic injuries – they lose the ability to fight back.
“Fungi can spread through patients’ bodies and into their spines and brains. Patients who would otherwise survive treatments are dying every year from such infections.”
It’s time for drastic action on drug-resistant microbes Read more
This point was also stressed by Prof Neil Gow, another Aberdeen researcher. “Essentially fatal fungal infections are diseases of the diseased,” he said.
In addition, premature babies and patients with the inherited condition cystic fibrosis are also vulnerable.
However, the problem is even worse in developing countries. In sub-Saharan nations, where millions are infected with HIV – which causes severe depletion of patients’ immune systems – infections with cryptococcus and pneumocystis fungi account for more than half a million deaths a year.
“The total global number of fungal deaths is about the same as the number of deaths from malaria but the amount that is spent on fungal infection research is only a fraction of the cash that goes on malaria research,” added Gow.
A vaccine that could protect against fungal disease has yet to be developed, while the rise of resistance to the class of medicines known as azole drugs is causing alarm among doctors.
Recent reports from the US and Europe indicate that resistance to azole drugs is increasing in both aspergillus and candida fungi. The widespread use of agricultural fungicides to protect crops and their use in some paints and coatings has been linked to the rise of this resistance.
Doctors have recently uncovered another worrying development: outbreaks of fungal infections – mainly cryptococcus – that have appeared in previously healthy people. In one outbreak, in the northwest US, dozens of people died.
In the wake of these developments, it was decided by Britain’s Medical Research Council to open its Aberdeen mycology centre earlier this year.
It will employ experts in the field to gain new understanding of how fungi move into the human body and survive there. It will also work on the development of new drugs and tests for pinpointing specific fungi that are infecting patients.
“Fungal infections are going to be an increasing problem in coming years and we need to develop the best defences,” said Brown. “We aim to do that here.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/27/millions-at-risk-as-deadly-fungal-infections-acquire-drug-resistance
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/524048a038224eb49c6b87527ef54dd0c36ed52cf18c3419ff0275daeae1d3ae.json
|
|
[
"Paul Campbell"
] | 2016-08-31T12:53:18 | null | 2016-08-31T11:27:50 |
Featuring a long-ranger from Mexico, one each from Rangers and Celtic, a shot from the centre-circle and a topsy-turvy effort from a US high school team
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fbest-goals-week-xabi-alonso-isco-dirk-kuyt-toni-kroos.json
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en
| null |
The best goals of the week: Xabi Alonso, Jonjo Shelvey and a Dirk Kuyt double
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Featuring a long-ranger from Mexico, one each from Rangers and Celtic, a shot from the centre-circle and a topsy-turvy effort from a US high school team
|
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/31/best-goals-week-xabi-alonso-isco-dirk-kuyt-toni-kroos
|
en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8569ed2d3eb0405a364893dca5737757dd613a6abd1618d66ace8b504dff091e.json
|
|
[
"Nicola Slawson"
] | 2016-08-27T12:49:14 | null | 2016-08-27T11:12:45 |
The comedian is said to have been offered a starring role, despite saying commissioning editors had no idea what they were doing
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fculture%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fjohn-cleese-talks-bbc-sitcom.json
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en
| null |
John Cleese in talks with BBC about sitcom after vowing never to return
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
John Cleese is in talks to make a surprise return to the BBC for a major sitcom, a year after saying he would never work for the broadcaster again.
The comedian, who co-created comedy classics Fawlty Towers and Monty Python, has been offered a starring role in the show, said the BBC’s head of comedy, Shane Allen.
Last year, Cleese accused commissioning editors at his former employer of having “no idea of what they are doing” and said there was no way he would work for the corporation again.
But Allen told how Cleese, 76, was in talks to return for a sitcom that had been written specifically for him.
“We’re in discussions about a piece that he might be in,” he told the Telegraph. “It’s a sitcom and it’s very early days. He’s a comedy god and the door is always open to him. There are certain people who have earned their badges, who have got the right to do what they want.”
Allen, who has enticed Cleese’s fellow Python Eric Idle back for an hour-long Christmas special, said the BBC had been guilty of an “obsession with the new”, which meant it neglected some older stars.
Citing the example of Tracey Ullman, who returned to the BBC earlier this year after 30 years away, he said: “Someone said to her, ‘Why have you come back to the BBC after all this time?’ She said, ‘Because they asked me’. That’s the truth. Often times there were a lot of very, very talented elder statesmen who just don’t get asked.”
Allen was speaking ahead of the BBC’s landmark sitcom season, which begins on Sunday night at 9pm with modern takes on Porridge and Are You Being Served?
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https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/aug/27/john-cleese-talks-bbc-sitcom
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/cb354ae954bf890e13b656a9c39209b80060be786bdff640f63f3bdfc1b24bdb.json
|
|
[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-29T22:52:14 | null | 2016-08-29T21:01:36 |
323 wild reindeer including 70 calves are killed after lightning struck in Norway on Friday.
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2F300-wild-reindeer-killed-in-lightning-strike-in-norway-video.json
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en
| null |
300 wild reindeer killed in lightning strike in Norway - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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323 wild reindeer including 70 calves are killed after lightning struck in Norway on Friday. The Norwegian Environment Agency said this rare natural disaster happened on the Hardangervidda mountain plateau in the county of Telemark. Agency spokesman Kjartan Knutsen said the large number of animals were killed as they flocked together in bad weather
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/aug/29/300-wild-reindeer-killed-in-lightning-strike-in-norway-video
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c263661711117eb62ad859a01bc6e8c985c8c0c19deaa8a08fcf85e20acc1ef7.json
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|
[
"Jason Burke"
] | 2016-08-26T14:51:05 | null | 2016-08-26T14:36:59 |
Anti-Robert Mugabe rally is latest in recent unrest fuelled by economic crisis, cash shortages and high unemployment
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fzimbabwe-riot-police-fire-teargas-water-cannon-at-protesters-robert-mugabe.json
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| null |
Zimbabwe riot police fire teargas and water cannon at protesters
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Riot police in Zimbabwe fired teargas and used water cannon to disperse anti-government protesters as a demonstration against the 92-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, turned violent.
More than a hundred officers, backed by armoured trucks, moved to block a march on Friday – organised by a coalition of opposition groups in Harare, the capital – in the latest round of the most intense unrest in the former British colony for almost a decade.
The protesters responded by hurling rocks, setting tyres ablaze and pulling down the sign for a street named after Mugabe, witnesses cited by news agencies said.
Recent unrest has been fuelled by an economic crisis, cash shortages and persistent high unemployment. The government has been repeatedly forced to delay salary payments to teachers, doctors, soldiers and administrators. The country is also suffering a severe drought and is threatened by famine in some parts.
“We are not going anywhere and demonstrating is the only solution left to force the dictator out of office,” said Tapfuma Make, an unemployed 24-year-old from Chitungwiza town, south of Harare, who joined the protest.
Observers say the pressure on Mugabe, Africa’s oldest leader, and the ruling Zanu-PF party is immense.
The most recent rally called for electoral reforms before 2018 when Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, will seek reelection. Zanu-PF retained power after elections in 2013, which were tainted by allegations of vote-rigging.
Much of the recent activism has bypassed traditional opposition politicians and parties. However, the march on Friday was led by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai, and the Zimbabwe People First, formed this year by Joice Mujuru, a former vice-president.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zimbabwean riot police confront a protester during a demonstration in Harare. Photograph: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP
Police tried to discourage Friday’s march, saying the anticipated crowd of about 150,000 would disrupt business and traffic. Ignatious Chombo, the home affairs minister, warned on Thursday that the government would clamp down heavily on what it termed western-sponsored protests seeking regime change.
“We view this as victory for democracy,” opposition spokesman Douglas Mwonzora said after a ruling by a high court judge allowed the march to go ahead.
Opposition parties say Zimbabwe’s electoral commission is biased in favour of Zanu-PF and run by security agencies loyal to Mugabe, charges the commission denies.
The protesters called for the 2018 elections to be supervised by international observers, including the UN. They are also calling for Mugabe to fire corrupt ministers.
Earlier this week, Zimbabwe’s police used teargas and a water cannon to break up a march by MDC youth supporters.
Last week, similar tactics were deployed when demonstrators took to the streets to voice their concerns about the introduction of new bank notes in Zimbabwe, planned for the autumn.
Mugabe now appears weaker – physically and politically – than for many years. Veterans of Zimbabwe’s independence war made a significant break with him for the first time last month, calling him dictatorial, manipulative and egocentric.
Mugabe has recently turned toward the Zanu-PF youth league for political support, with two rallies attended by tens of thousands of people.
Analysts say an intensifying internal battle between factions seeking to take power when Mugabe dies has significantly weakened the ruling clique’s ability to respond to the economic crisis.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/26/zimbabwe-riot-police-fire-teargas-water-cannon-at-protesters-robert-mugabe
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/590ac782594306df0f0a95d96e7a9ce66ef687cf446a477b300a2ffd2778d467.json
|
|
[
"Luke Harding",
"Leo Hickman"
] | 2016-08-29T00:59:10 | null | 2010-06-03T17:45:28 |
The 520-day simulated journey will provide invaluable data for a real trip, European Space Agency announces
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2010%2Fjun%2F03%2Fmock-mission-mars-moscow-hangar.json
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en
| null |
Mars mission in a Moscow hangar is no joke, say astronauts
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Its critics have suggested it amounts to little more than sitting inside a giant tin can in a Moscow hangar with no sun, no fresh water, no alcohol and (one assumes) no sex for 520 interminable days.
But as the six fearless volunteers this afternoon sealed themselves inside a simulated mission to Mars, grinning and waving goodbye to their families before "blast-off", scientists insisted they were embarking on an unprecedented experiment that was no laughing matter.
The crewmen – three are Russian, one French, one Chinese and one a Colombian-born Italian – won't emerge from their isolation until November 2011.
Their goal is to recreate a return journey to the red planet, spanning a year and a half, complete with simulated emergency situations and realistic psychological pressures.
It will, say scientists, provide invaluable data on how a crew would cope with the difficulties and inevitable tedium of long-duration space flight. "This isn't a joke. It will give a lot of useful information, not just about Mars but also for Earth," said Dr Christer Fuglesang, a Swedish astronaut with the human spaceflight directorate of the European Space Agency (ESA).
He rejected suggestions that the experiment, named Mars 500, was more Red Dwarf than red planet. "People are isolated in many places in the world," he said. "We have scientists in the south pole for a long time, or in submarines. Then there are all those in jail."
The astronauts would be free to leave the experiment at any point, Fuglesang said, adding that he was confident none of them would.
The crew will live and work in a chain of cramped metal capsules. The highlight of their voyage will be a simulated spacewalk on Mars, which will take place in a large sandpit. Today journalists toured the sandpit while wearing 3D glasses – the experience was similar to wandering inside a dark and disappointing Moscow nightclub.
Before bidding farewell to the world, the six men conceded their experience would be tough. This is especially true for Alexey Sitev, the crew's 38-year-old Russian commander, who was recently married. Asked what his bride Ekaterina thought of his spending the next 18 months away from her, he admitted: "It is difficult to answer this question." But, he said: "I am not the first traveller who has left his family for a long time to discover new frontiers. When they got back, they found their families waiting for them."
The fact that the crew is single-sex should prevent the dangerous sexual tensions that have affected previous mixed missions. In 1999, participants in a similar experiment were given vodka to celebrate New Year's Eve: two members then brawled when one tried to kiss a Canadian female astronaut.
Chinese crewman Wang Yue struck an exalted tone: "When people say this is a simulation, that it isn't a matter of life and death, I tell them it's much more. It's the future of mankind." He added he would attempt to learn Russian during his odyssey.
The experiment is taking place in a sprawling hangar at Moscow's Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, in a suburb of dingy tower blocks and poplar trees. The institute began studying the likely effects of a Mars mission in the early 1960s.
Since the Apollo flights of the late 60s and early 70s, there have been no manned space flights beyond Earth's orbit. But Fuglesang said he hoped that a real manned space flight to Mars, with international collaboration, could take place in the next two decades or so, though not before 2025.
Mars 500 is designed to recreate as closely as possible the conditions of a spacecraft hurtling through the solar system. A return flight to Mars – 34 million miles from Earth – would take between 18 months and three years.
The six crew will spend 250 days performing flight tasks and experiments along the way – with half of them spending 30 days "on the planet" and the others remaining "in orbit". Getting home will take a further 240 days.
The 550 sq metre complex that will be their home includes four windowless modules for sleeping, working, storage and for medical and psychological experiments. Each man has a tiny 6 sq metre room. TV is banned but the crew can send emails and communicate with "ground control" via an authentically Martian time delay of 20 minutes. They can also take books, DVDs and video games.
Italian member Diego Urbina said he would be reading the entire works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and French flight engineer Romain Charles said he was bringing his guitar "to annoy the other guys".
Oliver Knickel, a German who took part in a 105-day experiment in the same complex last year, said tensions between crewmates were inevitable. During his mock flight, the crew almost came to blows over use of the treadmill in the module's tiny gym. Knickel, a German army officer, did not enjoy eating only space rations selected by others. "You don't realise what a privilege it is to choose your own food," he said.
The challenges: battle against bugs and boredom
Eighteen months in isolation will take its toll on the physical and mental health of the Mars 500 crew and is likely to test their ability to work as a team.
The six have a storeroom full of rations and will eat the same meals as astronauts on the International Space Station, but these supplies must last the whole stay. A small greenhouse in one of the modules will provide meagre helpings of fresh food including tomatoes, radishes and strawberries.
The facility is not an entirely "closed environment", meaning water and air are piped in and waste is removed rather than recycled. There are no windows though, so the crew will live under artificial lighting for the 520 days.
The lack of natural light is expected to trigger physiological changes affecting sleep, mood and metabolism. The capsule will be lit for periods with a bluish light to see whether it counteracts any problems the crew experience.
A gym with treadmills and weights is provided but European Space Agency scientists still expect to see the crew's physical health deteriorate through lack of activity. The men will be given amino acids and omega 3 dietary supplements to see if they help to maintain their mood and keep their performance sharp.
Wherever you have humans, bacteria follow, and the mock-up space capsule has plenty of nooks and crannies where they can breed. On previous simulated trips, pathogens have grown rapidly and at the expense of more benign bugs, posing a health danger. The crew will swab themselves and the capsule to identify which bugs are taking hold. The bugs in the crewmen's mouths and guts are expected to change too, so some will take food supplements laced with bacteria to boost the "good" bacteria in their bodies.
The greatest problem by far will be coping with the stress of being locked in a small space, with limited company, for such a long time – and only an internet connection to the outside world. Stress can weaken the immune system, disrupt sleep and hormones and make people irritable and even depressed. The crew will monitor each other for signs of psychological problems, but they will also be regularly assessed through online tests.
Ian Sample
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jun/03/mock-mission-mars-moscow-hangar
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en
| 2010-06-03T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ca6dcb16f6bb094211b81ac918d59e0620423792fcea46326fb0de6a22a88093.json
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[
"Juliette Garside",
"Simon Bowers"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:06 | null | 2016-08-25T17:26:16 |
US accused of ‘acting like a tax haven’ for threatening retaliation against Brussels’ anti-trust investigations into Apple, Amazon and Starbucks
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fwar-of-words-eu-us-tax-avoidance-starbucks-apple-amazon.json
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| null |
War of words hots up between US and EU over tax avoidance
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The US has been accused of “behaving like a tax haven”, in an escalating war of words between Washington and Brussels over the European commission’s anti-trust cases against Apple, Amazon and Starbucks.
On Wednesday, the US Treasury threatened retaliation if Europe continues its tax crusade against American multinationals.
Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s top anti-trust regulator, is expected to conclude her state aid investigation into Apple as early as next month. If her ruling goes against the Californian tech group, it could be ordered to hand over as much as $19bn (£14.4bn) in unpaid taxes to the Irish government.
A white paper commissioned by the US Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, accused Europe of targeting American companies disproportionately and behaving like a “supranational tax authority”. The claims have now prompted a swift rebuttal from MEPs and the European commission.
“The US Treasury prefers defending the interest of its multinationals rather than promoting international cooperation to fight corporate tax avoidance,” said Molly Scott Cato MEP, a spokeswoman for the Green party on tax affairs in the European parliament.
Apple may have to repay millions from Irish government tax deal Read more
Campaigners are furious because the US has failed to back two major initiatives designed to combat tax avoidance and money laundering. They are the creation of public registers of the owners of private companies and the automatic sharing of bank account information between countries, known as the Common Reporting Standard.
“The US is behaving like a tax haven by operating a deferral system which allows US companies to stash profits offshore,” said Cato. “The commission is seeking to prevent exactly this sort of free-riding and to ensure that tax is paid where economic value is added.”
America’s 500 largest companies have accumulated a record $2.4tn offshore, according to the pressure group Citizens for Tax Justice. The money, which comes from sales outside of their domestic market, has built up in tax haven subsidiaries because multinationals are refusing to bring the cash into the US, where it would incur a 30% corporation tax charge.
Anneliese Dodds MEP, tax lead for Labour in the European parliament, said: “The timing of this [white paper] seems highly suspect, falling as it does right in the middle of election season in the US. Instead the US government should be working with the EU commission to clamp down on tax evaders and aggressive tax avoiders, rather than criticising attempts to make the system fairer.”
The EU commission said on Wednesday: “All companies, no matter their nationality, generating and recording their profits in an EU country should pay taxes in line with national tax laws.
“Under EU state aid rules, national tax authorities cannot give tax benefits to selected companies that are not available to others. These state aid rules and the relevant legal principles have been in place for a long time.”
Lew’s white paper threatened retaliation, saying the US “continues to consider potential responses should the commission continue its present course”. Existing tax treaties could be revised and this would have a “chilling effect” on US investment into Europe, it claimed.
The commission has already ruled that tax advantages negotiated by Starbucks with the Netherlands government and by the Italian carmaker Fiat with Luxembourg amounted to illegal state aid, with €20m-€30m potentially owed by each company. In January, the commission took a preliminary view that Amazon’s deal with Luxembourg also amounted to state aid. A final decision is pending.
Apple boss Tim Cook has dismissed the claim that his company avoids taxes overseas as “political crap”. The iPhone maker has paid as little as 2% in tax on its international profits, most of which are routed through Ireland. Cook told the Washington Post earlier this month: “I hope that we get a fair hearing. If we don’t, then we would obviously appeal it.”
Alex Cobham, research director at the pressure group Tax Justice Network, said: “The US Treasury has fired the first shots of a tax war with Europe. And while it’s wrapped up in a claim to defend international tax cooperation, it looks more like an attempt to prevent an effective measure against international tax-dodging.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/25/war-of-words-eu-us-tax-avoidance-starbucks-apple-amazon
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9b3e792423b7a1277df2f3b1fb82312db68943a6eb292e4434fe247742b238a5.json
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[] | 2016-08-29T18:52:39 | null | 2016-08-29T16:58:28 |
Brief letters: Dag Hammarskjöld | London-centric arts | Mrs Brown’s Boys | Recherché ingredients | Tim Dowling’s shirts | Crossword difficulties
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Flifeandstyle%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Feven-my-uzbek-grocer-doesnt-stock-this-stuff.json
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| null |
Even my Uzbek grocer doesn’t stock this stuff
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Re the death of Dag Hammarskjöld (Letters, 28 August): I spent some time in Palestine in 2000 with a Rhodesian nurse who had been present when the crashed aircraft was searched. She told me she had seen Hammarskjöld’s body before it was taken away, and there were no marks on it that would confirm the plane had been hit by a missile, as is occasionally suggested. She died a few years ago.
George Roussopoulos
Hindhead, Surrey
• I note that in your autumn arts preview (G2, 29 August) upcoming events are located as follows: London, 26; Liverpool, 2; St Leonards on Sea, 1; Bristol, 1; Newcastle upon Tyne, 1; Washington (DC, not Tyne and Wear), 1; Birmingham, 0; Manchester, 0; Leeds, 0; Nottingham, 0; Leicester, 0; York, 0; All of Wales, 0; All of Scotland, 0; Everywhere else, 0. Many thanks.
Damian Casserly
Todmorden, West Yorkshire
• What is it about Mrs Brown’s Boys and Lincolnshire (Letters, 29 August)?
Dr Mike Davis
Blackpool
• Ah, 10 years of Ottolenghi (Weekend, 27 August); 10 years of ever more bizarre combinations of recherché ingredients that even my local Uzbek grocer doesn’t stock. Can’t wait for the next 10 years.
Anna Hawke
Market Rasen, Lincolnshire
• Memo to Tim Dowling (Weekend, 27 August): wash your own shirts, why don’t you?!!?
Susan Melrose
London
• Having tackled the cryptic crossword for over 50 years, and having a nostalgia for Araucaria and Bunthorne, even I felt some of your recent correspondents (Letters, 27 August) were over the top. Then I turned to Maskarade…
Ken Wales
Preston
• I read the instructions to Maskarade’s bank holiday crossword twice. Then did the Sudoku.
Billy Morrison
Ayr
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/29/even-my-uzbek-grocer-doesnt-stock-this-stuff
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| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c49fdef78080e22270a2c6e8537cbda5bc7074bf92c6a5ee159b3574360de11b.json
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[
"Nicola Davis"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:30 | null | 2016-08-23T18:50:15 |
Study suggests that even mild childhood head injuries can increase the risk of low educational attainment, psychiatric hospitalisation and early death
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fchildhood-concussion-linked-to-lifelong-health-and-social-problems.json
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Childhood concussion linked to lifelong health and social problems
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www.theguardian.com
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Children who suffer a traumatic brain injury, including mild concussion from a blow to the head, are less likely to do well at school and are at increased risk of early death, researchers have revealed.
As adults they are also more likely to receive a disability pension, have failed to gain secondary school qualifications and nearly twice as likely to have been hospitalised for psychiatric reasons.
The team analysed data from more than a million people born between 1973 and 1985, finding that around 9% had been diagnosed with at least one traumatic brain injury before the age of 25. More than 75% of these were mild injuries.
The researchers compared the outcomes for these individuals with those of others who had not experienced a head injury, as well as carrying out a second comparison, where possible, with siblings who had not been injured.
Concussion expert says children shouldn't play football until they turn 18 Read more
Once factors such as age and sex were taken into account, the team found that those diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury have an increased risk of experiencing a number of health and social problems. Those who had suffered a traumatic brain injury were 76% more likely to receive a disability pension, 58% more likely to have failed to gain secondary school qualifications and nearly twice as likely to have been hospitalised for psychiatric reasons, compared to those who had sustained no injury.
When the researchers looked at patients who had siblings that had not sustained a traumatic brain injury, they found similar - although smaller - effects, suggesting that genetics could also play a role.
The study also indicates that more than one brain injury increases the risk of ill effects and that the older the child, the more profound the potential impact.
Writing in the journal PLOS Medicine, researchers from the UK, US and Sweden describe how they examined a number of Swedish national registries to explore how traumatic brain injuries could affect a variety of outcomes later in life.
“To summarise, we found that even a single mild traumatic brain injury will predict poor adult functioning,” said Amir Sariaslan, first author of the research from the University of Oxford.
Peter Jenkins, a neurologist from Imperial College, London who was not involved in the research, described the study as powerful. “I think clinically in healthcare at the moment we don’t necessarily recognise these persistent problems [and] we don’t necessarily have the resources available to help deal with those problems,” he said.
The study comes just five months after UK health experts called for a ban on tackling in school rugby games, citing a number of concerns including the risk of fractures and head injuries.
Saracens rugby club sign up for head injury research project Read more
But experts are quick to warn that the new study does not mean that parents should prevent their children from taking part in sports. “What we also know is that across a range of health-related conditions sport is very good for you,” said Alan Carson from the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study. He added that exercise is also good for the brain as it thought to reduce the risk of dementia.
The researchers say more should be done to prevent children and adolescents from experiencing head injuries, and to make sure that any problems arising from such an injury are picked up early on.
“[Design of] playgrounds, helmets, the use of helmets, even certain rules in certain collision sports may need to be thought about,” said Seena Fazel, co-author of the research from the University of Oxford. With many head injuries in young adults down to traffic accidents, messages around road safety and drink driving are also important, he added.
Researchers say that parents should seek medical advice if their child has received a blow to the head, or appears to be having problems at school following an injury. “There is some vigilance required when the injury is severe, or there are changes to the trajectory of your child,” said Fazel.
While it is not known exactly how traumatic brain injuries affect later outcomes, scientists have proposed a number of possible mechanisms, including damage to the brain’s neurons, changes to levels of chemicals in the brain and long-term inflammation of the brain. Other effects, such as interruptions in a child’s education due their need to take time off from school, could also play a role.
But, the researchers point out, while traumatic brain injuries appear to be linked to a increased risk of a number of problems, the chances of experiencing such issues are still low. “Most children will be unaffected,” said Fazel.
Are we still struggling to get our heads around concussion in sport? | Sean Ingle Read more
For those who had not experienced a traumatic brain injury, the chances of an early death were just under 1%, while the chances of failing to achieve secondary school education was 9%. For those who had sustained an injury the figures were 1.6% and almost 14% respectively.
Peter McCabe, chief executive of brain injury charity Headway, said: “This research is a clear warning signal that the physical and psychosocial implications of brain injury can last a lifetime.”
McCabe says more support needs to be in place for those who have sustained traumatic brain injuries, and that teachers, social workers and GPs should all be aware of the possible effects.
“The often hidden effects of brain injury can make it difficult for people to get the diagnosis and help they need,” he said. “This is particularly the case in young people whose naturally developing personalities may mask any psychosocial changes following a traumatic brain injury.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/23/childhood-concussion-linked-to-lifelong-health-and-social-problems
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en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e1b1c9e020ed5d5cbe0715bd5f8a6b1e5f2df674b77bfdb9bc77a946fb230281.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:26:23 | null | 2016-08-17T09:17:27 |
Voice assistants duke it out in the most passive aggressive display of tech company feuding via slick-looking adverts yet
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F17%2Fmicrosoft-apple-ipad-pro-computer-voice-assistant.json
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Microsoft gets catty over Apple's 'iPad Pro is a computer' claims
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Microsoft’s seemingly getting pretty offended over the whole “iPad Pro is a computer thing”. In its eyes, a keyboard does not a PC make, and it’s all starting to get just a little catty.
Microsoft’s latest advert for the Windows 10 PC-in-a-tablet Surface Pro 4 takes the two arch rival’s tit-for-tat war of words to the next level - irritating voice assistants.
It’s Apple’s iPad Pro-powered Siri versus what is meant to be Microsoft’s Cortana, having a party of sorts, despite neither sounding quite like they do when you’re trying to actually use them. Apparently getting a keyboard is cause for celebration, because the iPad Pro is a computer now.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Apple’s what’s a computer ad.
Microsoft, of course, disputes the definition of a “computer”, and it all gets a bit passive aggressive, in the only way semi-restrained US tech firms know how.
Does this have a faint whiff of Apple’s I’m a Mac, I’m a PC of the mid-to-late 2000s to anyone else?
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/17/microsoft-apple-ipad-pro-computer-voice-assistant
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en
| 2016-08-17T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/de78346a03a353b8beb7e8958ace3bb433f1b8aae1b3283ca05c939756d5ad01.json
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[] | 2016-08-29T18:50:11 | null | 2016-08-29T17:27:07 |
It’s day two of Notting Hill carnival and partygoers are covered with paint and chocolate.
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fculture%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fa-million-people-gather-for-notting-hill-carnival-video.json
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| null |
A million people gather for Notting Hill Carnival - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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It’s day two of Notting Hill carnival and partygoers are covered with paint and chocolate. The annual west London event attracts a crowd of one million people to celebrate the Caribbean abolition of slavery in the 19th century. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the festival
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https://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2016/aug/29/a-million-people-gather-for-notting-hill-carnival-video
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b17d2a7768edb3e1d6446abc47e17e5e376bdb0f6403aeff68d268b6efd50bd0.json
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[
"Julia Kollewe"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:43 | null | 2016-08-26T09:39:03 |
Restaurant Group, which also runs Chiquito and Garfunkel’s, blames unpopular new menus for drop in sales
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Flifeandstyle%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Ffrankie-bennys-owner-closes-restaurants.json
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| null |
Frankie & Benny’s owner closes 33 restaurants
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The company behind Frankie & Benny’s, Chiquito, Coast to Coast and Garfunkel’s is closing 33 restaurants after reporting falling sales and profits.
Restaurant Group blamed its poor performance on unpopular new menus, higher prices and poor customer service, and said it would listen more to its customers in the future.
It runs more than 500 restaurants across the UK and Frankie & Benny’s is its biggest brand. The company posted a 3.9% fall in like-for-like sales and a 4.4% fall in operating profits to £37.5m in the 27 weeks to 3 July. It took a one-off charge of nearly £60m for the 33 site closures and writedown of 29 other outlets.
The group has ousted its chief executive and chief financial officer in recent months and appointed two new non-executive directors to its board to chair the remuneration and audit committees, after suffering a damaging shareholder revolt over boardroom pay in May. Barry Nightingale was appointed as finance chief in June along with a new managing director for Frankie and Benny’s, and the former Paddy Power boss Andy McCue will join as chief executive in mid-September.
His predecessor, Danny Breithaupt, had blamed increased competition for Frankie and Benny’s worsening performance, but the new chair, Debbie Hewitt, who took over from Alan Jackson in March, admitted it was not the main factor.
“Disappointingly our issues have been the result of our own making,” she said. “It’s been a business that’s been run very instinctively … But customers will tell you ‘it’s too expensive, we are not as keen on the menu and service is inconsistent’.”
She said prices had been pushed up too high in the past three years and that fixed-price lunches and many popular dishes had been taken off when new menus were introduced without being trialled first. For example, chicken parmigiana made way for chicken saltimbocca, which proved less popular and is also more complex to make, resulting in longer waiting times.
Hewitt said the “issues are fixable” and pledged urgent action to appeal more to families, Frankie’s main customers, by testing new value offers and putting popular dishes back on the menu. About £6m is being ploughed into technology to update “antiquated” tills, ordering and operating systems, she said.
The drop in the value of the pound following the Brexit vote will push up the price of imported food next year, but the group cannot afford to pass this on to customers, she added.
The company has scaled back new restaurant openings to 24-28 this year, from 44 in 2015. It is happy with its focus on retail parks, away from the high street.
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/26/frankie-bennys-owner-closes-restaurants
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d096e8976b6b266e07490940dd6b62608d2991ad5505498ae53a4fd4a95a7645.json
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[
"Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:28 | null | 2016-08-25T01:58:57 |
The goalkeeper called the Swedish team ‘a bunch of cowards’ at the Olympics in Rio for their defensive display against Team USA
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fhope-solo-suspended-us-womens-soccer-rio-olympics-loss.json
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USA's Hope Solo given six-month ban for calling Sweden 'a bunch of cowards'
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The USA women’s goalkeeper Hope Solo has been suspended for six months by US Soccer for disparaging comments about Sweden following the Americans’ early departure from the Rio Olympics.
Solo called the Swedes “a bunch of cowards” for focusing on defense rather than attacking the three-time defending champion US team. Sweden eliminated the USA 4-3 on penalty kicks following a 1-1 draw in a quarterfinal match.
Hope Solo calls Sweden 'bunch of cowards' after USA falter at Olympics Read more
The US Soccer president Sunil Gulati said on Wednesday that Solo’s comments were “unacceptable and do not meet the standard of conduct we require from our national team players”.
“Beyond the athletic arena, and beyond the results, the Olympics celebrate and represent the ideals of fair play and respect,” Gulati said. “We expect all of our representatives to honor those principles, with no exceptions.”
The 35-year-old Solo, who was previously suspended for 30 days early in 2015 for her conduct, will not be eligible for selection to the national team until February.
Solo was a lightning rod during the Olympic tournament, irking fans in Brazil when she posted a photo on social media of herself covered with mosquito netting and armed with insect repellant. Fans booed her mercilessly and hollered “Zika!” each time she kicked downfield.
Then she caused a stir with her “cowards” comment.
Sweden’s coach, Pia Sundhage, who led the US team to gold medals in Beijing and London, replied by stating: “It’s OK to be a coward if you win.”
Solo has been making headlines throughout her stellar career.
Last month, she became the first goalkeeper with 100 international shutouts when the United States defeated South Africa 1-0 at Soldier Field in Chicago. It was also her 150th career win.
David Squires on ... Hope Solo's inglorious exit from the Olympic Games Read more
Solo won her second straight Golden Glove award for the best goalkeeper at the Women’s World Cup a year ago. Over the course of the tournament in Canada, she had five clean sheets and allowed only three goals in seven games.
She has vocally advocated for women’s rights. Solo was among the US players who filed a complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for wage discrimination, saying the men’s national team players have been paid much more than many on the women’s team, which for years has outperformed the US men on the international stage.
More recently, she has called for better conditions for players in the National Women’s Soccer League.
She has also been trying to avoid trial on misdemeanor domestic violence charges after a 2014 incident at her sister’s home, when the goalkeeper was accused of being intoxicated and assaulting her sister and 17-year-old nephew. Solo said she was a victim in the altercation. Earlier this year, an appeals court in Washington state rejected Solo’s request to avoid trial.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/24/hope-solo-suspended-us-womens-soccer-rio-olympics-loss
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ccf6e253b2c1faa437b5e9efff59222c0227f130afd1a3103451e34a83005b1f.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:22:00 | null | 2016-08-26T06:00:11 |
The swaggering, hectoring tough-guy act was attractive to voters – but only so long as he was bullying people they didn’t like
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fdonald-trump-eileen-burbidge-nice-receptionist.json
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| null |
Even Donald Trump is learning that nice guys don’t always finish last
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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If you want to get ahead, be nice to receptionists. As life rules go, it’s certainly simple, but should you happen to be a thrusting young wannabe tech entrepreneur it’s also potentially rather lucrative. Last week the American tech investor Eileen Burbidge confessed to operating what she cheerfully called a “no assholes allowed” rule; she won’t put money into any startup, no matter how hot the concept, if the founders are rude to her receptionist when they come in for a meeting. Nice guys, it seems, don’t always finish last.
It’s easy to see why spiky personalities could be considered a business risk, given the bitter and expensive personal disputes between founders that have dogged some of Silicon Valley’s biggest startups. But Burbidge’s receptionist rule seems to be about more than that. To grow a business, she explained, you have to be able to attract people – staff, customers, other investors – and that means treating others with respect no matter who they are. “We don’t tell people how to behave but do believe one’s talents will go further when combined with good manners and decorum.”
As starchily old-fashioned as the words “manners and decorum” always sound, what Burbidge is saying could hardly be more contemporary in a world increasingly obsessed by notions of power and responsibility, of how the big shot treats the little guy. Like the age-old advice never to marry a man who is rude to waiters, the receptionist rule is less a test of good manners than a chance to see how people behave in circumstances where they think they have power over others – even if it’s just the person bringing them a coffee.
Lagging in the polls, Trump no longer has supporters queuing around the block for his rallies
Natural bullies, given half a chance, will invariably be tempted to throw their weight around to make themselves feel important. Natural leaders, by contrast, should seek to do the opposite. Twee as it sounds, that makes common-or-garden pleasantness a useful way of telling the difference between those who talk the talk about standing up for the little guy, and those who actually walk the walk. And that’s probably as good a way as any of understanding quite what’s going on in the American presidential race at the moment.
Just when you thought nothing Donald Trump said could shock you any more, last week he delivered what’s probably as close as he will ever come to an apology.
It was possible, he conceded at a rally in North Carolina, that sometimes in the heat of the moment “you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it – and I do regret it – particularly where it may have caused personal pain”.
Since he didn’t specify which of a potentially rather long list of offensive zingers he regretted, the whole thing may need taking with a pinch of salt. But whether or not he meant it, what’s significant is that Trump nonetheless felt obliged to say it.
Lagging in the polls, he no longer has supporters queuing round the block for his rallies in quite the same way. The swaggering, hectoring tough guy act that proved so attractive to millions of Americans who felt themselves downtrodden – so long as he was bullying people they didn’t like, from Mexican immigrants to Hillary Clinton to female reporters asking difficult questions – seems to be wearing thin, now the supposed scourge of the establishment has taken to attacking people such as the parents of Muslim soldiers killed in Iraq.
The trouble with cheering on a bully is that there’s always the lingering fear that he might turn on you when he runs out of other victims, and that’s the fear the Clinton campaign has begun exploiting, with campaign ads highlighting the damage ordinary Americans feel Trump is doing. One, featuring the parents of a child with spina bifida talking about how it felt to see a would-be president publicly mocking a disabled reporter for his disability, has the father saying that it “showed me his heart. And I didn’t like what I saw.”
Donald Trump tries out a new campaign tactic: saying sorry Read more
It’s not just the little things that resonate for politicians but the treatment of the little guy, which is why the former chief whip Andrew Mitchell had to resign when accused of being rude to a policeman at the Downing Street gate – no matter how murky the allegations turned out to be. And why people who couldn’t have cared less what the ex-cabinet minister David Mellor once did in bed with an actress cared very much when a tape surfaced of him pompously haranguing a London cabbie over his choice of route. (“You’ve been driving a cab for 10 years, I’ve been in the cabinet, I’m an award-winning broadcaster.”)
Whatever else he got wrong in that infamous “traingate” video, Jeremy Corbyn was at least careful to praise Virgin staff as he sat on the floor of the train attacking their employer.
Strength has always had the capacity to become a weakness, especially when used against the wrong people. But perhaps the current rage against anything that could reasonably be called a powerful elite (alongside much that reasonably couldn’t) simply enables us to see it more clearly than usual. How ironic, if the very emotional backlash that gave us Trump in the first place was eventually to contain the seeds of his destruction too.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/26/donald-trump-eileen-burbidge-nice-receptionist
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/da8ebfb61b7c19ca0a6116833485971e3e43ad98ec695c26728063bef8d7a51d.json
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[
"Patrick Butler",
"Nish Kumar"
] | 2016-08-26T18:50:45 | null | 2016-08-26T16:45:16 |
UN committee says politicians should share blame for surge in racist crimes during and after EU referendum campaign
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http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fpoliticians-rise-hate-crimes-brexit-vote-un-committee.json
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en
| null |
Politicians fuelled rise in hate crimes after Brexit vote, says UN body
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www.theguardian.com
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British politicians helped fuel a steep rise in racist hate crimes during and after the EU referendum campaign, a UN body has said.
The committee on the elimination of racial discrimination said many prominent politicians should share the blame for the outbreak of xenophobia and intimidation against ethnic minorities.
It said it was deeply concerned that the referendum campaign was marked by divisive, anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric.
“Many politicians and prominent political figures not only failed to condemn it but also created and entrenched prejudices, thereby emboldening individuals to carry out acts of intimidation and hate towards ethnic or ethno-religious minority communities and people who are visibly different.”
More than 3,000 allegations of hate crimes were made to UK police – mainly in the form of harassment and threats – in the week before and the week after the 23 June vote, a year-on-year increase of 42%.
The UN committee said it was concerned that the increase in hate crime notifications did not reflect the true extent of the problem, and that proportionately few reported cases resulted in successful prosecution. “As a result, a large number of racist hate crimes go unpunished.”
The committee did not name any politicians. However, the referendum campaign threw up allegations of racism against the prominent leave campaigner and former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, whose notorious anti-migrant “Breaking Point” poster was reported to the police for inciting racial hatred.
The UK government said in response to the committee that it had a “zero tolerance” approach to hate crime. “We have in place one of the strongest legislative frameworks in the world to protect communities from hostility, violence and bigotry. We keep it under review to ensure it remains effective and appropriate – and recently published a comprehensive new hate crime action plan to drive forward the fight.”
The committee added that the negative portrayal of minorities, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers by the UK media, particularly in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, was also a concern.
It called on the British government to investigate all reported acts of racist hate crime and ensure that perpetrators received appropriate legal sanctions. Ministers should also adopt comprehensive measures to combat racist hate speech and “xenophobic political discourse” on the internet.
The government’s anti-terrorism Prevent strategy had created “an atmosphere of suspicion towards members of Muslim communities”, the committee said. Ministers should introduce safeguards to ensure the strategy did not discriminate on grounds of race, colour or ethnic origin.
It warned that government proposals to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a new British bill of rights could lead to “decreased levels of human rights protection” in the UK.
The chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, David Isaac, said: “There is no place for racism and hatred in a modern Britain and we share the UN’s serious concerns about the recent spike in race-hate incidents.
“In the weeks before and after the Brexit vote we saw reports of race-hate incidents rise significantly. We support the UN’s recommendations for effective investigation and prosecution of all acts of racist hate crime and wide-ranging action better to deter and punish perpetrators.”
Dr Omar Khan, director of the Runnymede Trust, said the committee findings shamed Britain: “This report will embarrass the UK on the world stage and restrict the UK’s ability to criticise other nations on human rights unless the government takes urgent action.”
The committee’s conclusions, published on Friday, followed a series of hearings that took evidence from the UK government and charities and human rights agencies. It assesses all nations on a rolling four-year basis. The last UK report, in 2011, was critical of government inaction on tackling race inequality.
The committee was established by a UN treaty, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which Britain is a signatory. The convention is not incorporated into UK domestic law, meaning the government is not bound by the committee’s recommendations.
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/26/politicians-rise-hate-crimes-brexit-vote-un-committee
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/179f246717cc8c430b7dfd137da9928c508c417f1a2b434ebe7407bba4fb9849.json
|
|
[
"Kevin Mckenna"
] | 2016-08-28T00:49:33 | null | 2016-08-27T23:05:16 |
Solidarity with Palestinians shows the club’s supporters have not forgotten their own roots
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fwhy-celtic-fans-flew-flag-for-palestine.json
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en
| null |
Why Celtic fans flew the flag for Palestine
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The life of a committed football supporter in the UK could never be mistaken for a bowl of cherries. Since that first day, long in the planning, when his mother or father decided finally to inaugurate him into the sacred mysteries he has been condemned to be viewed with suspicion, fear and loathing by the government, civic authorities and the men who actually run the game.
Each of these estates has benefited greatly in the decades since the first rules of association football were drawn up. There is national prestige, free foreign travel with first-class accommodation and the opportunity to take a wee “clip” now and then when success causes its light to shine upon them all. None of them ever really experiences that peculiar numbness that comes with defeat for they only ever follow the money and the glory.
In those spaces between the big matches where global fame and marketing opportunities are at stake these three estates seem to spend their time either giving football supporters a right good kicking or dreaming up new ways of doing so. In their fantasy world, football success and the prestige that comes with it can be achieved without having to share it with the scum punters.
No one ought to be surprised by this. The state and its attendant offices have never been comfortable when large groups of mainly working-class men gather together in a common purpose. When you add alcohol and political fervour into the mix the result can sometimes be a little too saucy for the governors.
Games, along with military adventures and royal fecundity, have remained the favoured way of keeping the minds and bodies of the punters occupied while they are being cheated and exploited. But this football malarkey and the sheer numbers of its adherents, well… we must always keep an eye on them.
To civic Scotland and Holyrood, football supporters are regarded as occupying a position somewhere just above drug-pushers and just below crime lords: you can do business with organised crime but you can’t do business with football supporters. They are unpredictable and are driven by strange currents and deep emotions that a politician will never understand. Even after decades of being overcharged and made to watch the game in gulags these football fans remain true to their club.
That’s why small armies of policemen are deployed to kettle them and frogmarch them to and from matches. It’s also why the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act was drawn up. This is the act, unique in world law, where an innocent sentiment uttered at a rugby match in Edinburgh becomes a criminally offensive one when espoused in the vicinity of a football match in Glasgow.
So it was surely a welcome development when a group of Celtic fans deployed crowd-funding to raise money for two respected relief organisations operating in Palestine. When it was announced that Celtic would play the Israeli champions, Hapoel Be’er Sheva, in a Champions League play-off match, some of their fans wanted to use the game as an opportunity to make a small and peaceful protest about the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinian people living in the West Bank.
So around 100 Celtic fans in a crowd of 60,000 waved Palestinian flags at the game in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians. They knew the game would be beamed live around the world and they simply wanted to communicate to an oppressed people that, in a small corner of Glasgow, they were not forgotten. The Israeli players were treated respectfully throughout, as was Celtic’s midfielder and Israeli international player Nir Bitton, who was given a standing ovation when he left the field.
Uefa, the organisation that runs European football, has deemed the Palestinian flag to be an “illicit banner” when it is waved at a football match and has begun disciplinary proceedings against Celtic. This will probably end in a fine approaching six figures as there have been several previous instances of unwarranted political behaviour by Celtic fans.
These supporters launched a #matchthefineforpalestine campaignto raise funds for two relief charities operating in the West Bank. Their reasons for doing so were eloquently expressed in a GoFundMe page. In this, they stated their aim of raising £75k to match any Uefa fine and then distribute it to the two nominated charities. At the time of writing they are comfortably past the £200k mark and will be approaching £500k by the time of the Uefa hearing on 22 September.
Uefa, hardly the most impressive organisation on Earth, doesn’t want politics to contaminate the beautiful game. If it did, there might have been more scrutiny of the way in which it operated as a global mafia, helping itself to the fruits of ordinary supporters’ love for football. Yet, often, football and its mass participation is an ideal place for angry young men and women to gather around and express solidarity.
During the fascist regime of General Franco in Spain, to display the Catalan flag was to risk death or imprisonment. The only place where the Catalans could safely fly these fags was Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium. Barcelona FC now embodies Catalan identity and pride. Wherever there is oppression in the world, football, by its very nature, can provide a vehicle for expressing pride in a national cause. It was never only ever about football.
Celtic supporters know this too. Their club was founded in 1887 and played its first game in 1888 to raise funds for the relief of the poor Irish who had gathered in the East End of Glasgow. When they arrived in the city they initially faced resentment, discrimination and squalor. Every time Celtic won a game their suffering was eased a little.
In Scotland, those days are long departed. In Palestine, though, another oppressed people is suffering. Perhaps now because of a simple act of solidarity and generosity, they will know that they don’t suffer alone.
• Comments will be opened later today
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/27/why-celtic-fans-flew-flag-for-palestine
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2f407cb327a9aae5fcd197513f3ca8b3a37233f2de20d4ecc8750ea8b2f314e6.json
|
|
[
"Jon Swaine",
"Oliver Laughland",
"Jamiles Lartey",
"Kenan Davis",
"Rich Harris",
"Nadja Popovich",
"Kenton Powell",
"Guardian Us Interactive Team"
] | 2016-08-26T13:30:41 | null | 2015-06-01T08:36:40 |
The Guardian has been counting the people killed by US law enforcement agencies since 2015. Read their stories and contribute to our ongoing, crowdsourced project
|
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2Fng-interactive%2F2015%2Fjun%2F01%2Fthe-counted-police-killings-us-database.json
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en
| null |
The Counted: people killed by police in the United States - interactive
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The Counted is a special Guardian project to record all people killed by police in the United States this year.
We have gathered information from official databases and crowdsourced counts to create a full and detailed view of killings by law enforcement agents in the US.
This page shows the names and, where possible, faces of those killed since January 1 2015, as well as other details about the manner of their deaths and the status of any investigations into the incidents.
You can see these incidents mapped throughout the United States, and read more about the methodology of the project here.
We are actively searching for more information about many of these cases. If you have anything you can share with us, you can send us details by clicking here and filling in the form. You do not have to share identifying information about yourself.
You can also join our community on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to keep track of The Counted and share more information.
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
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en
| 2015-06-01T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c47aaf03e02095811f1ca5928653552ffa9194874945b93f349a6d20dd97636c.json
|
|
[
"Dominic Fifield"
] | 2016-08-31T12:53:12 | null | 2016-08-31T11:58:26 |
Chelsea’s pursuit of central defensive reinforcements has prompted them to open talks with Valencia over signing Aymen Abdennour
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fchelsea-valencia-aymen-abdennour-loan-deadline-day.json
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en
| null |
Chelsea look to Valencia’s Aymen Abdennour to solve defensive problem
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Chelsea’s pursuit of central defensive reinforcements has prompted them to open talks with Valencia over signing Aymen Abdennour, initially on loan with an option to make the move permanent at the end of the season.
Transfer news: Joe Hart deal confirmed, Tottenham start Sissoko talks – live! Read more
The London club have been frustrated in their pursuit of Kalidou Koulibaly at Napoli and Milan’s Alessio Romagnoli, and had been linked heavily with an attempt to re-sign David Luiz from Paris Saint-Germain. Yet, with the left-back Marcos Alonso set to complete his £25m move from Fiorentina on Wednesday, Chelsea have opted to revive their longstanding interest in Abdennour as they seek cover at the back.
The Premier League side had first attempted to secure the Tunisia international from Monaco a year ago, only to pull the plug when the French club hiked the price as deadline approached. Abdennour, who had apparently indicated his preference had been a move to London, joined Valencia instead but is prepared to leave the Mestalla after only one season. Manchester City’s Eliaquim Mangala is set to move to the Spanish club on loan as a replacement.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/31/chelsea-valencia-aymen-abdennour-loan-deadline-day
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/52fb4348ad4b74a1f32fadb7a1fbbf237d8231cf457aee98a5c3530ca237478c.json
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[
"Kim Willsher"
] | 2016-08-27T00:49:13 | null | 2016-08-26T22:50:35 |
French theme park has refused to return 15th-century relic that belonged to the teenage warrior who helped defeat English invaders
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fjoan-of-arc-ring-stays-in-france-after-appeal-to-queen.json
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en
| null |
Joan of Arc ring stays in France after appeal to Queen
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A ring believed to have belonged to Joan of Arc has gone on display in France after its new owners made an appeal to the Queen to keep it out of the hands of its historic rival across the Channel.
French historical theme park Le Puy du Fou bought the 15th-century gold-plated silver ring at auction in London in February for £300,000 but was told after it had arrived in France that it had not obtained the necessary export licence for a historical artefact.
Arts Council England, which oversees the export regulations, said the ring should be returned to Britain.
Puy du Fou president Nicolas de Villiers, whose father Philippe, a French politician, founded the theme park, said there had never been any question of returning the ring.
“The request made us laugh,” he told the Guardian. “We wrote to the Queen asking her if she could help sort things out quickly. Clearly Buckingham Palace spoke in the right person’s ear because we then heard we could keep the ring.”
De Villiers added: “It’s a symbol, a relic, that has been held prisoner in England for 600 years. It’s a small ring which does not appear of much value, but it has extraordinary symbolic significance for the French and we had to get it back.
“It’s a strong symbol of an extraordinary period in our history and reminds us of this great woman who overcame such obstacles to get people to listen to her and lead our our country to victory.
“We hope this symbol of hope and victory will help the French rediscover the pride and confidence that they have lost today.”
The medieval hoop is decorated with three crosses and the letters IHS and MAR for Jesus and Mary, and was allegedly taken from the French heroine’s prison cell before she was burned at the stake for heresy in Rouen, northern France, in 1431 aged 19.
On 17 March, 1431 under interrogation by an English ecclesiastical court, Jeanne d’Arc, the teenage peasant girl turned warrior, when asked about the visions she claimed had urged her to lead the French army to push the English out of her country refused to answer, infuriating her captors. Questioned about the ring, she told her captors it was a gift from her parents and she would look at it fondly before going into battle against the English invaders out of respect and fondness for them.
The auctioneers’ details from the sale earlier this year, suggested it had been enlarged at some point “from a band suitable for a small, feminine finger … the degree of wear generally evident to the ring, including to the hoop insert, suggesting an extended period of wear, long after the date of making.”
It stated the ring had passed from Cardinal Henry Beaufort, who died in 1447, who was present at the trial and execution of Joan of Arc in 1431. She is believed to have given him the ring on the eve of her execution, though there is no official documentation of its provenance. From Beaufort it went to the Duke of Portland’s family, to painter Augustus John. It was sold by Sotheby’s at auction at 1947, ending up as the “property of an Essex gentleman”.
After six centuries in English hands, the French were ecstatic to have the ring back, which had sold for many times more than its estimated £10,000 value.
The Puy du Fou is looking to build a special chapel where members of the public could see the ring, bought after an appeal for donations, for free.
“It will never be a business for us. That would be a very serious betrayal of the promise we made to donors. This is a relic and to make money from it is out of the question,” de Villiers said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/26/joan-of-arc-ring-stays-in-france-after-appeal-to-queen
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/487456cb1dc2b66efa7a80eb57c0eba3411088fde7078572c54b2389b7590e7e.json
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[
"Donna Ferguson"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:16 | null | 2015-12-02T08:27:12 |
The ONS has released its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2015. Here are the 10 best paid jobs in the country, with tips on how to get one of them
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2015%2Fdec%2F02%2Fhighest-paid-jobs-2015.json
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en
| null |
What are the UK's highest paid jobs of 2015?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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How well do you really know your country? Take our quiz Read more
Is your job is among the best paid in the UK? The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released its Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2015, so we have gathered together top tips for anyone aspiring to do one of the top 10 highest paid jobs, and asked people who do them why they are worth their high salaries.
CEOs and marketing directors seemed happy to talk about salaries, but getting comment from people doing some of the other top 10 occupations – notably, bankers, stockbrokers and in-house lawyers – was considerably more tricky. The British Bankers’ Association, for example, said it couldn’t find “anyone appropriate” to comment on why bankers are worth their salaries, while others declined to comment “due to sensitivities around the questions”.
So which jobs are in the top 10 this year? Who thinks they deserve a high salary because they do a “lonely job”? Who thinks they are “worth every penny” of their £82,565 average salary – and who needs to remember that “it’s not all about making money”?
1. Brokers
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The best stockbrokers help their clients avoid expensive mistakes.’ Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA
Includes: Stockbrokers, shipping brokers, foreign exchange dealers, insurance brokers, investment administrators and traders.
Average pay before tax: £128,231.
Pay range: £40,668 (20th percentile). Data about the middle and upper pay range was not available.
Annual change: -15.8%.
Why are stockbrokers worth their salary? “Ultimately, market forces decide that, but the best stockbrokers help their clients avoid expensive mistakes, build their wealth and improve their financial security,” says Danny Cox, spokesman for investment service Hargreaves Lansdown. “The most important feature of any pay structure is to have a clear link to performance. The better the stockbroker, the better their earnings.”
Minimum qualification for a stockbroker: It depends on the firm, but you typically need a degree. You will then need to get a relevant investment or wealth management qualification approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), such as the investment advice diploma from the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.
2. Chief executives and senior officials
Includes: Vice-presidents, chief medical officers and civil servants (grade 5 and above).
Average pay before tax: £122,967.
The job never really ends – it’s 24/7, seven days a week, and you have to be an expert in every part of your business
Pay range: £38,686 (10th percentile) to £155,802 (80th percentile). Median is £87,562.
Annual change: +7.2%.
Why are CEOs worth their salary? “I am absolutely accountable for the success and failure of the business – it can be a very lonely job on occasions [with] a swift and painful exit for failure,” says Jason Downes, CEO of conference calls service provider Powwownow. “The job never really ends – it’s 24/7, seven days a week, and you have to be an expert in every part of your business,” says Neil Everatt, CEO of Software Europe.
Minimum qualification for a CEO: None. However, financial qualifications and an MBA can be useful.
3. Marketing directors
Includes: Sales directors.
Average pay before tax: £89,933.
Pay range: £35,378 (10th percentile) to £100,000 (75th percentile). Median is £73,255.
Annual change: -0.1%.
Why are marketing directors worth their salary? “Quite simply, a marketer can make the company,” says Sara Jones, marketing director at Swigflasks.com, which sells personalised hip flasks. “You can have the best product in all the world – it means nothing if the marketing team can’t communicate it.”
“A strong marketing function is central to achieving income targets, and the 2,500 people who work here rely on that income for their jobs,” says Russ Langley, director of marketing at the University of Derby.
Minimum qualification for a marketing director: A degree, usually, but this doesn’t have to be in marketing or business. The Chartered Institute of Marketing offers a wide range of training courses.
4. Aircraft pilots
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Helicopter pilots are among the highest paid in the country. Photograph: Alamy
Includes: Flight engineers, first officers, flying instructors and helicopter pilots.
Average pay before tax: £87,474.
Pay range: £64,250 (20th percentile) to £96,778 (70th percentile). Median is £84,867.
Annual change: -7.1%.
Why are pilots worth their salary? “Initial training costs aspiring pilots up to £130,000 with no guarantee of a job at the end,” says Steven Draper, spokesman for the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa). “When they do find a job, the consequence of an error can have immediate and devastating consequences to hundreds of lives, so a pilot’s performance is under constant scrutiny through regular simulator assessments.”
Minimum qualification for a pilot: An airline transport pilot licence. To help with this, “join Balpa for free as a trainee ‘nextGen’ member”, says Draper. “That membership entitles you to career preparation and training courses, and an advisory service run by senior pilots.”
“Get your head in the books and either take yourself to flying school or apply to a sponsored scheme like the British Airways Future Pilot programme, which trains inexperienced pilots from scratch,” says British Airways first officer Aoife Duggan.
5. Financial managers and directors
Includes: Investment bankers and treasury managers.
Average pay before tax: £82,565.
Pay range: £27,492 (10th percentile) to £104,071 (80th percentile). Median is £62,678.
Financial directors play a critical role in helping a business manage risk and therefore ensure its survival
Annual change: -2.3%.
Why are finance directors worth their salary? “Finance directors not only ensure compliance with financial regulations, but also influence the future direction of the company by providing financial leadership – we are worth every penny,” says Adnan Zaheer, finance director for IT company Smart Pension.
“Financial directors play a critical role in helping a business manage risk and therefore ensure its survival,” agrees Jamie Lyon, spokesman for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).
Minimum qualification for a finance director: Qualify as a professional accountant from a recognised accountancy body, such as ACCA or the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
6. Financial institution managers and directors
Includes: Bank managers and insurance managers.
Average pay before tax: £80,755.
Pay range: £29,318 (10th percentile) to £106,281 (80th percentile). Median is £57,956.
Annual change: -4.0%.
Why are financial institution directors worth their salary? “Salaries are related to successful delivery. It is to the benefit of customers to have talented and well qualified people running the businesses that serve them,” says Hilary McVitty, spokeswoman for the Building Societies Association.
“Financial institution managers have an important responsibility – looking after other people’s money – but many would agree senior salaries in the financial sector have got out of kilter with societal norms,” says Charles Middleton, managing director of ethical bank Triodos.
“I’m not sure financial institution directors are always worth their salaries,” says Paul Ellis, chief executive of Ecology building society. “Yes, they take the regulatory flak and there is always a premium on leadership. But usually this is predicated on the delivery of ever higher financial results, which in too many instances have depended on frankly illegitimate business models.”
Minimum qualification for a financial institution director: No formal qualifications are required but you would need experience in banking or the financial sector. You must also be an “approved person” to be in control of a bank, which means passing the FCA’s “fit and proper” test.
7. Medical practitioners
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The pay range for medical professionals is between £33,174 and £113,603. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Includes: Anaesthetists, hospital consultants, doctors, GPs, paediatricians, psychiatrists, radiologists and surgeons.
Average pay before tax: £80,628.
Pay range: £33,174 (10th percentile) to £113,603 (80th percentile). Median is £76,275.
Annual change: +1.5%.
Why are consultants worth their salary? “When you have achieved the level of expertise required to become a consultant, you become a great asset to society and consequently your knowledge becomes valuable. I had to train for around 17 years,” says Dr Adam Friedmann, consultant dermatologist at the Harley Street Dermatology Clinic. “The salary for junior doctors is very poor. I started on around £1.98 per hour. Salary and money never played a role until I had been working in the NHS for around 12 years and realised I was earning approximately the same as an entry-level accountant. I also had great concerns that the NHS was on the verge of collapsing.”
Minimum qualification for a consultant: At least 10 years of postgraduate medical training on top of the five- to six-year medical degree.
8. Legal professionals (except judges, barristers and solicitors)
Includes: Patent attorneys, in-house company lawyers, magistrates’ clerks and advisers at law centres.
Average pay before tax: £80,578.
Senior lawyers' salaries are commensurate with their global risk management and compliance responsibilities
Pay range: No data available.
Annual change: +0.8%.
Why are in-house lawyers worth their salary? “Junior lawyers’ salaries can be moderate, particularly taking into account the qualifications that lawyers need to enter the profession,” says Emily O’Neill, in-house lawyer at Spectris Group. “The higher salaries of senior lawyers, particularly those in-house, are commensurate with the level of global risk management and compliance responsibilities that senior lawyers take on.”
Minimum qualification for an in-house lawyer: A degree, a postgraduate legal qualification and several years of experience as a solicitor.
9. Air traffic controllers
Includes: Flight planners.
Average pay before tax: £77,220.
Pay range: £63,344 (40th percentile) to £87,320 (60th percentile). Median is £77,860.
Annual change: +0.3%.
Why are air traffic controllers worth their salary? “Only a small percentage of the population possesses the specific skill set to become an air traffic controller,” says Steph Kelly, a Nats air traffic controller at Heathrow. “Every airport or section of airspace has a different set of procedures, which can be very complex and often subject to change, and we are responsible for making quick, accurate decisions to provide the safest service to all aircraft under our control.”
Minimum qualification for an air traffic controller: Pass the Nats training course. Fewer than 1% of applicants are accepted onto it each year. “If you can calmly hold a constantly changing 3D picture in your mind of what’s going to happen in five minutes’ time based on what’s happening at the moment, while at the same time talking to pilots on the radio, other air traffic controllers on the phone, and noting everything down on a screen in front of you, then you’ve probably got the aptitude for the job,” says Kevin Edmunds, a Nats watch manager at Manchester Airport.
10. IT directors
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Top-flight IT directors can be truly transformational and worth every penny they earn.’ Photograph: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters
Includes: Telecommunications and technical directors.
Average pay before tax: £70,971.
Pay range: £40,549 (20th percentile) to £79,990 (75th percentile). Median is £65,717.
Annual change: -17.0%.
Why are IT directors worth their salary? “We are quite often not worth the money ... but there is a big skills gap for really good IT directors and that pushes up salaries,” says Jos Creese, president of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. “The value IT directors can bring depends on the organisation’s appetite for risk and IT-enabled innovation, and its culture. Top-flight IT directors can be truly transformational and worth every penny they earn.”
Minimum qualification for an IT director: A relevant degree, and business experience. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the best technologist in the field – if you want to lead your own technology team, it’s vital that you have fantastic communication and people skills,” says Katherine Spice, IT director at jobs website CV-library.co.uk.
The survey shows the average (mean) salary of a sample of full-time employed workers who carry out these occupations and have been in the same job for more than a year. The data is taken from their PAYE record – it includes bonuses, but the figures do not cover the self-employed or celebrities who don’t appear on company payrolls. The pay range stated is the broadest available as reliable data was not consistently collected by the ONS for the 10th and 90th percentiles.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/dec/02/highest-paid-jobs-2015
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en
| 2015-12-02T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c1d44c0c13486d80a8db9761eb7eaeca8a201a1211166b87775c5868a0aec62a.json
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[
"Pádraig Collins"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:39 | null | 2016-08-24T00:00:05 |
Recent changes have seen huge increases in fines for not wearing a helmet or jumping a red light. Next year it will become compulsory for all cyclists to carry identification on every trip – have state authorities gone too far?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcities%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fsydney-australia-war-cyclists-fines.json
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en
| null |
Sydney's 'war on cyclists': 'I got fined $106 for not having a bell'
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www.theguardian.com
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Michael Gratton was cycling to work in Sydney when he was stopped in a recent police “education and awareness” blitz and fined $531 (£310). His offence? Not wearing a helmet, not having a bell and not having a working brake.
“The bell fine of $106 is ridiculous,” says the robotics researcher, who is challenging the third fine, as braking on his fixed-wheel bike is done through the pedals. “I don’t ride on the footpath and a bell is useless against cars. It has been my experience in the past that if you ring a bell behind a person they are as likely to jump into your way as out of it. Pedestrians also see ringing a bell as an aggressive act. The fines are massively disproportionate.”
Gratton was one of many caught out by a huge increase in fines for cycling offences in New South Wales. The fine for not wearing a helmet (which is compulsory across Australia) rose from $71 to $319; fines for cycling through a red light, riding negligently or not stopping at a pedestrian crossing were all raised from $71 to $425.
The value of cycling in Sydney has been undermined by hysterical claims Clover Moore
From March next year it will be compulsory for all cyclists in Sydney and elsewhere in the state to carry identification. This is going too far, says Ray Rice, chief executive of Bicycle NSW. “There has been no evidence provided that there was any real issue in identifying riders. Police have existing powers to do this. It will mean that riders will need to carry a driver’s licence or photo card even when going to the local shops or down to the beach. This will be a disincentive to riding.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cyclist injuries remain high in Sydney – but are fines the solution? Photograph: The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images
Clover Moore – the mayor of Sydney since 2004 who is running for a fourth term – is a longtime supporter of cycling as a way of making cities more liveable, but her political rivals use that as a blunt instrument to attack her.
“The value of cycling in Sydney has been undermined by hysterical claims that bike riding will cripple the city’s economy, misleading stories that distort data to proclaim that less people are riding, and wilful ignorance of good practice overseas,” she told the Guardian.
An independent who leans to the left, Moore’s main rival for mayor is Christine Forster, a member of the conservative Liberal party, and sister of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott. Forster wants a moratorium on cycle lanes while a light rail system is built, and then a reassessment of the existing network. Moore says the Liberal-National New South Wales government passed legislation giving two votes to businesses against one to residents to help Forster – and the recent increase in fines for cycling offences could be seen as backing Forster’s views over Moore’s.
But Duncan Gay, the NSW minister for roads, insists it is about safety and that cycling groups were consulted. “With cycling injuries remaining high in NSW, I had no choice but to look at tougher deterrents and increased enforcement to improve safety for cyclists and other road users like pedestrians,” he said via email. “I don’t want to see another dollar in fine revenue but I do hope to see a reduction in cyclist injuries.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest All cyclists must wear helmets in Australia. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
That’s not how many cyclists see it – and Mark Ames, of consultancy Strategic Cities, says Sydney is going against the flow of other world cities. “Making your city efficient should be above party politics, cycling is not really a right versus left thing, yet here in Sydney it is kind of seen as being a lefty, hippie, latte-sipping city thing, not something important,” he says.
“If you look at the leaders of other cities that are investing in cycling, they are conservative. In New York there was Michael Bloomberg, in Auckland it is the New Zealand prime minister John Key who led the charge on a $50m cycleway project. And in London, it was Boris Johnson, also a conservative. The tone of the debate here is very peculiar.”
Australia's biggest bike-lane sceptic 'wants to destroy cycling in Sydney' Read more
Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, was once seen as friendlier to cyclists than Sydney – but that is no longer the case according to Chris Standen, an analyst at the University of Sydney’s Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies.
“In both cities you have some local councils that see value in giving more people the freedom to get around, or to access public transport, by bicycle, something that requires a connected bicycle network with either safe traffic speeds, or physical separation between traffic and bicycles.
“But in both cities you also have a state roads authority whose number one objective is to maximise the flow of motor vehicles through our neighbourhoods, and is therefore reluctant to approve any roadway changes that would affect vehicle flow … Progress on bicycle network development has been a lot slower in Sydney and Melbourne than in cities which have a single metropolitan transport authority responsible for all transport modes, such as New York, London and Berlin.”
In Australia, the “war on cyclists” continues.
Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook and join the discussion
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/24/sydney-australia-war-cyclists-fines
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8513d2e9f9257329a6a1e10c2ce65b35baa3ef3cac383d464b370e18bdb8c8fc.json
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[
"Elle Hunt"
] | 2016-08-31T06:52:42 | null | 2016-08-31T04:57:14 |
‘You present a future where our daughters need to complete their “home duties” before they can go out and save the world,’ a woman posts on Facebook
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fbatgirl-housework-target-removes-sexist-t-shirt-and-apologises.json
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Batgirl 'housework': Target removes 'sexist' T-shirt and apologises
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www.theguardian.com
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Target will remove a children’s T-shirt that suggests the duties of “Batgirls” include cleaning clothes and cars from its stores following complaints on social media.
The $12 short-sleeved T-shirt for girls aged from two to seven years old features a “Batgirl to-do list” that reads: “Dryclean cape. Wash Batmobile. Fight crime. Save the world.”
A Facebook user from Northcote in Melbourne, who gave her name as Ninac Ollins, posted to Target Australia’s page late on Tuesday night to complain about what she perceived to be the sexist assumption that only “Batgirls” would do housework.
How a sexist T-shirt harms us all | Chitra Ramaswamy Read more
“Target, can you explain why you are selling something as offensive as this in your stores currently? What message are you intending on sending to young girls? I’m insulted that you present a future where our daughters need to complete their ‘home duties’ before they can go out and save the world. We know that working mothers still do more housework than their spouses, we don’t need you to perpetuate this inequity.”
Within 14 hours of its being posted, the comment had received close to 400 reactions and almost 100 comments, several of which were stating that they took no offence from the T-shirt.
“Target, your Batgirl T-shirt is out of step with 21st century family values,” wrote another user, Summer Edwards. “It is utterly offensive and must be removed.”
Target responded to Ollins’ post on Wednesday morning, thanking users for the feedback: “It absolutely wasn’t our intention to cause any offence with this shirt, so we really appreciate you all getting in touch with us to let us know your thoughts. We’ve taken this feedback on board, and sincerely apologise for any disappointment caused.”
A spokeswoman confirmed to Guardian Australia on Wednesday afternoon that Target would pull the item from its stores.
“After reviewing and reading our customers concerns on the Batgirl tee, we have decided to remove the shirt from our stores. It was never Target’s intention to offend our customers with this item.”
Ollins’ post had not been the first complaint Target had received about the shirt, with Shelley Wedemeyer posting an image to its Facebook page on 25 August with the incredulous caption: “Target, are you serious? In a world where so many are fighting so hard for equality for our daughters, you put this on your shelves? Speechless.”
The equivalent T-shirt for boys sold by Target bears the slogan: “Like father, like son … Yes my dad’s Batman.”
One Facebook user remarked: “Assuming this is the boy’s version … Dad must have all that spare time to fight crime because Mum’s off doing the drycleaning!”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/31/batgirl-housework-target-removes-sexist-t-shirt-and-apologises
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2ee398a1491a7d5e4f975753bace06730a499c97e468f9a124cbe844a810ca35.json
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[
"Kate Hodal"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:45 | null | 2016-08-25T09:00:07 |
World risk report underlines need for major improvements to transport and power networks in poor countries vulnerable to extreme weather events
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fglobal-development%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fdecrepit-infrastructure-denies-millions-urgent-natural-disaster-aid-report-says.json
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en
| null |
Decrepit infrastructure denies millions urgent natural disaster aid, study says
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Countries with dilapidated transport networks and unsafe power grids stand a greater risk of extreme natural events becoming humanitarian disasters, a report has found.
World heading for catastrophe over natural disasters, risk expert warns Read more
Using analysis of floods, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters, the 2016 world risk report (pdf), claims that decrepit infrastructure and logistics systems can become a “direct threat” to societies because they can trap or injure victims, as well as impeding the delivery of humanitarian relief.
“Once you have a disaster situation, you need infrastructure to deal with it in the short term and long term, to get supplies and relief into the right places,” says report co-author Dr Matthias Garschagen of the UN University – Institute of Environment and Human Security, which publishes the annual reports.
“Not only are the quality and quantity of the infrastructure important, but issues of redundancy are important as well: if you only have one main highway into a disaster area and that highway is blocked, do you have a helicopter, an alternative railway line, or elephant or donkey even in really remote areas, to get there?”
Last year’s series of devastating earthquakes in Nepal are a case in point: half a million homes were destroyed, and another 250,000 badly damaged as entire villages were reduced to rubble; roads into remote mountain regions were blocked by landslides and avalanches; power supplies were cut off and telephone lines destroyed; and eight million people, nearly a quarter of Nepal’s population, needed urgent humanitarian relief.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Traffic bearing evacuees in Nepal is brought to a standstill after a landslide caused by an earthquake. Photograph: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
Although Nepal’s international airport at Kathmandu escaped major damage, the volume of relief goods received was so high – and the road networks out to the areas affected so damaged – that aid effectively languished for days in the capital as a result, leaving millions of people in need of sanitation, shelter, food and water, and urgent medical care.
Poor infrastructure systems can also have far-reaching effects that go beyond the scope of the natural disaster itself, the report says. The 2011 floods that effectively shut down huge swaths of Bangkok also crippled the city’s regional airport and deluged major industrial parks, costing billions of dollars in damage and lost revenue.
Such situations demonstrate just how much infrastructure can shape disaster risk, says Garschagen. As natural disasters have increased dramatically and intensity over the past three decades, investment in better logistics and infrastructure systems would not only save lives but also billions of dollars annually. According to UN figures [PDF], 346 natural disasters were recorded worldwide last year, killing 22,000 people, affecting another 100 million, and costing $66.5bn (£50bn) in total.
The world risk report analyses various data each year in an attempt to rate 171 countries by their disaster risk. This year’s focus was on logistics and infrastructure.
A number of developing countries, like Vietnam and Bangladesh, are now looking at designing and implementing disaster-resilient infrastructure systems, says Garschagen, taking into particular account flood patterns over the past few years and projections for the next 20 years. While this is a major step in the right direction, effective law enforcement is also needed, says Garschagen, pointing to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China that killed thousands of children when school buildings collapsed, effectively because the schools had not been built to code.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Partially submerged vehicles are seen stranded in floodwaters at a roundabout in Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok, in October 2011. Photograph: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images
According to World Bank estimates, additional investments of up to $1.5tn in low- and middle-income countries are needed annually until 2020, simply to establish an “adequate level” of infrastructure. This could be an opportunity for humanitarian organisations to branch out and look at investing in preventative areas instead of focusing solely on relief after a natural disaster has already occurred, says Garschagen.
The world risk report also commends the use of new technologies – such as smart phones and drones – in sharing logistics information and mapping out relief zones, for example in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan. But the authors warn that depending on these advances as a “panacea” for disaster efforts is a short-sighted mistake.
“A lot of the humanitarian assistance from many of the organisations today are so keen to jump on these new technologies that they forget the more political story that needs to be told,” says Garschagen. “Smart phones and drones will only take you so far if you don’t even have the basics in place.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/25/decrepit-infrastructure-denies-millions-urgent-natural-disaster-aid-report-says
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/51b1ef3a3d9a0a414279af5ab4380ddfe6410cbd5f7d7da2e84c105674e8fe93.json
|
|
[
"Chris Whitworth"
] | 2016-08-26T13:16:59 | null | 2016-08-25T18:27:41 |
The rules of acceptable – and lawful – behavior in the US National Parks have changed drastically over the past 100 years
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fnational-parks-vintage-film-video.json
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en
| null |
Vintage films show risky (and hilarious) behavior in US national parks - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The rules of acceptable behavior in the national parks have changed drastically over the past 100 years. It was once legal to drive through trees, ride waterfalls, and boil an egg in the Yellowstone hot springs – but now such actions are generally frowned upon
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2016/aug/25/national-parks-vintage-film-video
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e2ba58d49bdd636f5f66f32ae6b5d82a3d9e31392240fa58a4df7a41999e595f.json
|
|
[
"Rupert Jones"
] | 2016-08-27T02:59:15 | null | 2015-09-11T00:00:00 |
The case of a Barclays customer denied access to an amount larger than £1,100 lifts the lid on secret withdrawal rules
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2015%2Fsep%2F12%2Fbig-cash-withdrawals-bank-barclays-denied-access.json
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en
| null |
Want to make a big cash withdrawal? Don’t bank on being allowed
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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If you had £12,000 sitting in your current account, and you walked into your local branch to make an over-the-counter cash withdrawal, what’s the maximum you would expect to be able to take out? Would you be surprised to be told that each branch of your bank has its own “secret” no-notice maximum withdrawal? And would you be shocked to discover your branch has opted not to keep much cash on the premises … even though it is, after all, a bank?
These are questions some bank customers may wish to ponder after hearing about the experience of retired civil servant Nick Robinson. He has accused Barclays of effectively “denying customers access” to their money after he walked into his local branch to withdraw £1,570 in cash in order to pay a bill.
He produced his debit card and photo ID, but was told that even though there was around £12,000 in his current account, £1,570 was too big a sum to have on the spot, and he could only have £1,170.
Robinson, 66, says he was also told that his branch in Oxfordshire carries no £50 notes and only limited numbers of £20 notes – so he had to walk out with a big stack of mainly £10 and £5 notes.
When he complained, he was surprised to be told by Barclays in a letter that cash withdrawal limits “are made at a local level” – but that the bank doesn’t generally disclose to customers what these limits are. He was told that in the case of his branch, in Didcot, the most someone can withdraw without notice is £2,000, but that on the day he visited the weekly cash run had just taken place, which was why he was only able to have the smaller sum.
Guardian Money had not previously encountered such a policy, where a local branch manager apparently has the discretion to decide how much an in-credit account holder can withdraw on any given day, so we decided to ask other banks what their policies were (see panel). Several, including Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest, HSBC and Lloyds told us there were no limits on the amounts people can access without notice.
Robinson, a Barclays customer for 45 years, was also told that if he wanted his money in £50 notes, the bank would have to order them, because his branch was now expected to have only “a minimum of cash in stock”, and holding £50 notes “would impact [on] providing a service to the majority of customers”.
Robinson, who has taken his complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, told Money that a £2,000 daily limit was unacceptable, as this was arguably now not a huge sum. Someone buying a car or paying a builder may well need to withdraw more than that in one go, he says, adding: “A current account is not a savings account or long-term deposit or ‘notice’ account. To say, as Barclays has, that for reasons of security and efficiency it has opted not to keep much cash in its branches seems bizarre. After all, paying out cash is what banks are supposed to do.” He was also annoyed at the apparent admission that his branch doesn’t routinely hold all four denominations of banknote.
A Barclays spokesman told Money that Didcot was a small branch and that “locally, the demand for large cash withdrawals just isn’t present, certainly in £50 notes”. He says that while more and more customers are using digital banking, fewer customers are requesting large amounts of cash at the counter.
The spokesman adds that on the day in question, Robinson was advised he could withdraw the remaining £400 from ATMs over the next two days, or come in the following day and get it in £50 notes (Robinson disputes that this latter offer was made).
Large cash withdrawals are a thorny issue for banks because of the various scams which have seen some older people conned into handing over large sums of money to fraudsters. On top of that, banks are petrified about falling foul of the regulations on money laundering and financing crime, and being hit with huge fines, so they get twitchy about “unusual account activity”.
The British Bankers’ Association told us: “There is a clear tension between providing customers with easy access to their money and protecting them from the threat of a fraud that could have a devastating effect on their finances. If you are planning to make a large withdrawal, we recommend you talk to your bank in advance.”
What the banks say
Barclays “In the most part we are able to meet customers’ requests when withdrawing funds. We do not generally highlight what our local [cash withdrawal] limits are for security, and also to protect our customers and the bank … If a large sum of cash is required we will be able to meet a customer’s needs the following day.” It adds: “We would also advise the customer of alternative methods of withdrawing cash – banker’s draft, Chaps, electronic transfer – so they are not carrying around large sums of money.”
HSBC “There are no limits on the amount of money a customer can withdraw from their account – as long as there are sufficient funds.” It adds: “For larger withdrawals we do not require advance notice, but we are more likely to be able to meet requests for specific denominations or larger amounts if we are given prior notice. In most incidences we can meet the request the same day. Significantly large requests at smaller branches could take longer.”
Lloyds It says “there is no maximum amount” that a current account customer can withdraw in cash without notice, but that it would be dependent on ID and “collateral” presented – ie, a debit card – as well as the amount of cash held in the branch. If there is insufficient cash at the branch, the customer will need to give two days’ notice, assuming they pass the ID and verification checks. “We would add that in order to protect the customer we would promote alternative payment methods such as faster payments, Chaps or banker’s draft.”
RBS/NatWest “A customer is able to go into a branch to withdraw any amount of money without the need to give prior notice. However, for large amounts we would advise the customer that the type of notes would be subject to availability. They may want to consider contacting the branch in advance to request specific denominations.”
Nationwide The building society says its customers can withdraw up to £2,000 per account a day. “However, if they want to withdraw more than £500, it is best to pre-book the amount with the branch to ensure that it has the cash available. If customers want to withdraw more than £2,000, they would need to pre-book the money. This can be done the day before.” It adds that there is no set maximum that customers can withdraw, but if it is a large amount then it “would look to work with the customer to see if there was another solution for withdrawing their money (ie, Chaps).”
Santander The bank says the maximum amount a current account customer can withdraw in cash without notice is £5,000, “subject to availability of funds”, and assuming that he/she has the cash in their account. “For amounts in excess of £5,000 we would ask for 48 hours’ notice so we can make special arrangements to meet the customer’s request,” it adds. “Larger branches are able to fulfil customer requests more so than smaller local branches.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/sep/12/big-cash-withdrawals-bank-barclays-denied-access
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en
| 2015-09-11T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2818c52cab716e7619aebdc99cffc3c30fdd01b7bef0cb4776ed3d606cabb165.json
|
|
[
"Patrick Collinson",
"Jill Treanor"
] | 2016-08-27T04:59:16 | null | 2016-08-15T13:43:59 |
Savers hit by rate cut six times larger than recent Bank of England reduction while Lloyds warns of imminent rate cuts
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F15%2Fsantander-slashes-123-interest-rate-savers.json
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en
| null |
Santander slashes its 123 interest rate
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Lloyds Banking Group and Santander have put savers on notice that they face cuts to interest rates as the two high street banks attempt to shore up profits in the wake of the Bank of England’s post-Brexit-vote stimulus package.
Spanish-owned Santander is slashing the rate of interest on its highly popular 123 current account by half, in a move that will hit more than 500,000 customers.
From 1 November account holders will receive just 1.5% interest, compared with 3% previously, in a cut that is six times the recent 0.25% reduction in Bank of England base rate.
Lloyds, 9% owned by taxpayers and the largest savings institution in the UK, also warned customers they faced reductions in savings rates - but did not disclose how deep the cuts would be nor give any assurance that they would be limited to Threadneedle Street’s quarter-point reduction.
As Santander raises its fees, check that 123 still adds up Read more
Santander said it was forced to make the reduction “due to the market expectation of interest rates staying lower for longer, compounded by increased costs brought about by changes in the banking industry”.
Until now, the account has paid 3% interest on balances of up to £20,000, making it one of the best deals on the high street. Its cashback offer on household bills will remain the same.
But the reduction in returns for savers is huge. Under the old terms, someone with the full £20,000 saved would have earned £600 a year in interest, but this falls to £300 under the new rate – with a further £5 a month account fee also deducted.
It is the second major blow to 123 account holders, who were told last January the account fee was rising from £2 to £5 a month.
MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis said the move was “depressing news for savers”, with most experts predicting a cut to 2% rather than 1.5%. “The bank account that has topped savings tables for over four years will take a hammer to the interest it pays from 1 November. It’s a huge blow to many people’s savings income. Santander 123 has been the one refuge for those with a decent amount of cash.”
The strange case of Santander and suspicious withdrawals Read more
Lewis added that while many account holders “will be furious and want to ditch it to punish Santander”, it may make sense for some to hold on, despite the cut.
Andrew Hagger of MoneyComms.co.uk said the only surprise is that this move didn’t happen at least 12 months ago. “There will undoubtedly be plenty of anger and frustration from customers who now will be faced with scratching around for a 1% return, if they’re lucky, from an instant access savings account, or 1.5% for a one-year bond with no access to their balance.”
For customers of Lloyds, which also owns Halifax, there was little indication of the scale of the saving cuts that are being planned. The bank, known for its black horse logo, indicated a decision would not be made until 1 October - the date when holders of its standard variable rate mortgages would receive the full quarter-point cut.
These one million customers – about a third of its mortgage holders – had been waiting to find out how Lloyds would react for 10 days since Mark Carney told lenders they had no excuses not to pass on the reduction. Becoming the last major lender to announce how it would respond to the Bank of England governor, Lloyds said the SVR would fall to 3.74%.
The announcement was less specific for savers, who receive rates varying from 4% for Club Lloyds customers and 0.3% for Halifax Everyday Saver accounts. “We can confirm that over the coming weeks we will make reductions to our savings rates across Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland,” Lloyds said.
“We will not make any changes to our savings rates for existing customers until we have reduced our mortgage reversionary rates (Halifax Homeowner Variable Rate, Halifax Standard Variable Rate and Lloyds Bank Homeowner Variable Rate) with effect from 1 October 2016,” Lloyds added.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/15/santander-slashes-123-interest-rate-savers
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en
| 2016-08-15T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e0a5cc663ca9a0c0b3c2029657aed43f1759e62e44354de562a31ac70ac55cfb.json
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|
[
"Associated Press In Bogotá"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:17 | null | 2016-08-25T19:53:31 |
Deal aims to end 50-year conflict that has killed more than 220,000 people and driven over 5 million from their homes
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fcolombia-moves-quickly-to-hold-referendum-on-a-peace-deal-with-farc.json
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| null |
Colombia moves quickly to hold referendum on a peace deal with Farc
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Colombia’s president is moving quickly to hold a national referendum on a peace deal to end half a century of bloody conflict with leftist rebels, delivering the final text of the deal to congress on Thursday and declaring a definitive ceasefire with the guerrillas.
“The armed conflict with the Farc is ending,” President Juan Manuel Santos said on the steps of the congress building, while declaring a definitive end to military action against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Colombia faces Brexit-style ‘great dilemma’ in vote to end war with Farc Read more
Members of his family and cabinet walked with him the short distance from his official residence to hand-deliver the 297-page accord to lawmakers, a move required for Colombia to hold a national referendum on the deal that Santos announced for 2 October.
The Farc declared a unilateral ceasefire over a year ago, but Santos refused to grant a formal truce until talks were concluded, though he ended aerial bombardments of guerrilla camps.
The peace agreement was announced on Wednesday after more than four years of gruelling negotiations in Cuba. The ceasefire will take effect from midnight on Monday, Santos said.
Congratulations poured in from regional governments and the United Nations, which will play a key role keeping the peace. The US president, Barack Obama, also welcomed the deal.
The British prime minister, Theresa May, phoned President Santos to congratulate him on Thursday. A Downing Street spokesperson said: “She noted that, after more than 50 years of conflict and four years of tough negotiations, this agreement is a significant personal achievement for the president that will put Colombia on a path towards long-term peace and prosperity.”
The spokesperson added: “Britain led the drafting of a UN security council resolution to secure international support for verifying the ceasefire, and the UK has given practical advice based on our peace-building experience in Northern Ireland.”
Colombians celebrated the historic agreement even while expressing doubts about whether the guerrillas will honour their commitments to lay down their weapons, confess human rights abuses and help eradicate illegal coca crops that helped fuel Colombia’s conflict after insurgencies elsewhere in Latin America were defeated. The five-decade conflict has killed more than 220,000 people and driven more than 5 million from their homes.
The accord commits Colombia’s government to carrying out aggressive land reform, overhauling its anti-narcotics strategy and greatly expanding the state’s presence in long-neglected areas.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/25/colombia-moves-quickly-to-hold-referendum-on-a-peace-deal-with-farc
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/406f12206d831b084283c2c255fdbe74848de5ac2c99831146022953a7309409.json
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[
"Phillip Inman"
] | 2016-08-27T20:49:34 | null | 2016-08-27T19:30:11 |
People will have to save more for pensions to have income they were on course for before Britain voted out, say City experts
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fbrexit-millions-risk-pension-shortfall-city.json
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en
| null |
Brexit will put 75% of workers at risk of pension shortfall
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The Brexit vote is having “terrifying” effects on the pension schemes of millions of British workers, with 75% of people now expected to have a retirement income below the government’s recommended level, City experts warn.
Leading pensions consultants Hymans Robertson say the combination of interest rates and weaker projections for growth post-Brexit mean people will have to save far more towards their pensions to receive the level of income they were on course for before Britain voted to leave the EU.
A survey by the firm of 600,000 employees, factoring in new economic assumptions post-Brexit, shows that only 25% now have a good chance of meeting the level of retirement income regarded as appropriate by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and that 50% have an extremely low chance of reaching that level.
Chris Noon, head of workplace savings at Hymans, said: “It is terrifying that such a large proportion of the population which is due to retire in the next 20 to 30 years will be receiving an income below the level regarded as adequate by the government.
“But we are in a post-Brexit world of low yields in which risk-free assets are generating little or no returns. This makes the cost of providing pensions more expensive.
“Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that the cost of purchasing an annuity [which provides a guaranteed income for life] is up by as much as 30% since Brexit.”
Since the EU referendum on 23 June, experts have focused mostly on what they believe will be Brexit’s effect in killing off remaining final salary pension schemes, which guarantee a proportion of an employee’s final salary as a pension. The deficits of final salary schemes soared by tens of billions of pounds as a result of the vote.
Hymans and other City firms now say the far larger numbers of workers in defined contribution schemes must face the grim post-Brexit choice of either having to pay far more into their pensions, or accepting lower income in retirement, or working for longer.
Why are UK pensions so complicated? Read more
Noon added: “Together the changes to the economic outlook mean the average employee may need to save 2% to 3% a year more over their lifetime to deliver the same level of pre-Brexit income [at the same retirement date].”
Calculations used by the DWP advise that someone on an average salary of £30,000 would need a pension of £20,000 to maintain their standard of living, having taken into account their reduced costs in retirement. Someone who retired on a salary of £70,000 would need around £35,000 a year.
Richard Farr, managing director at Lincoln Pensions, which advises pensions trustees, said: “It means people will no longer be working into their 60s but into their 80s before they have a pension they can retire on. Brexit may be liberating in the long run, but in the short term it will be carnage.”
The collapse in interest income and people living longer has wrecked the finances of Britain’s final-salary pension schemes since the financial crash in 2008, and rising life expectancy and a decline in investment returns from 2000 onwards have created huge funding shortfalls.
Jon Hatchett, head of corporate consulting at Hymans, said: “Post-Brexit and with the Bank of England’s policy response to economic uncertainty, the cost of providing a defined benefit scheme has risen to 50% of pay. This is clearly unsustainable for the majority of employers. Unsurprisingly, we’re likely to see the last remaining open private-sector schemes close.”
Unlike on the continent, Britain has relied on private pensions to top up state pensions to provide workers with an adequate retirement income. If, as many expect, the UK’s GDP turns out to be substantially lower than it was predicted pre-Brexit, then previous projections for the new state pension will prove to be overly generous.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/27/brexit-millions-risk-pension-shortfall-city
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2c53f9bc7a4b8ed2a2c2b95b4add5f163892bf11580c55bf8b059edca2cb77cc.json
|
|
[
"Edward Helmore"
] | 2016-08-30T12:52:29 | null | 2016-08-30T12:25:30 |
Tech company ordered to pay up to $14.5bn in back taxes over deal with Ireland; Trump rejects former KKK leader’s support; ‘freaks on the peaks’ keep lonely watch for forest fires
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fapple-ireland-european-union-back-taxes-fine.json
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en
| null |
Unpaid EU back taxes cost Apple billions
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Supported by Cisco
Apple hit by EU tax ruling
Apple is facing a $14.5bn fine from the European commission over unpaid back taxes, stemming from arrangements it made over nearly 25 years with the Irish government. The ruling found that Dublin afforded Apple illegal state aid, allowing the US tech company to pay as little as 1% corporate tax rate on two-thirds of its global earnings, and levies a heavier fine than expected. The result of the Irish arrangement was that Apple avoided tax on almost all profits from sales of its products across the EU’s single market by booking the profits in Ireland rather than the country in which the product was sold. Ireland’s finance minister said Dublin would appeal against the ruling, which columnist Owen Jones calls a vindication of protest. Here is an explainer.
EU orders Apple to pay up to €13bn
Trump rejects David Duke robocall
Republican nominee Donald Trump has rejected a robocall from white supremacist and onetime Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard David Duke encouraging Louisiana voters to vote for him in November’s election. As Trump’s presidential campaign becomes mired in accusations of racism, his campaign released a statement to Politico saying the candidate “continued to denounce David Duke and any group or individual associated with a message of hate. There is no place for this in the Republican party or our country. We have no knowledge of these calls or any related activities, but strongly condemn and disavow.”
David Duke releases robocall in support of Donald Trump
Earth’s warming ‘unprecedented in 1,000 years’
Nasa is reporting that the Earth is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it “very unlikely” that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed at the Paris climate accord just last year. This year has already seen scorching heat around the world, with the average global temperature peaking at 1.38C (2.48F) above levels experienced in the 19th century, perilously close to the 1.5C (2.7F) limit agreed in Paris.
Nasa: Earth is warming at a pace ‘unprecedented in 1,000 years’
News module devolves into chaos as Facebook fires editors
Just months after the discovery that Facebook’s Trending news module was curated and tweaked by human beings, the company has abruptly dismissed its editors and left the algorithm to do its job. The results are not promising: the algorithm has pushed a false story about Fox’s Megyn Kelly, an offensive Ann Coulter headline and one about a man masturbating with a McDonald’s sandwich.
Facebook fires trending team, and algorithm without humans goes crazy
Scientists tune in to HD164595b
At only 95 light years away, HD164595 is 99% the size of the sun and with at least one planet, HD164595b, which is about the size of Neptune and has a 40-day year. This is where a Russian radio telescope, Ratan-600, observed a “strong signal” a year ago. Claudio Maccone of the University of Turin in Italy said “the power of the signal received is not unrealistic for type I civilizations”, civilizations with a similar level of technology to Earth.
Alien life, or noise? Telescope detects ‘strong signal’ from sun-like star
Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka star, dies at 83
The actor, who starred in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and The Producers, died from complications from Alzheimer’s aged 83. The frizzy-haired actor was a master at playing panicked characters caught up in schemes that only director Mel Brooks could devise, whether reviving a monster in Young Frankenstein or bilking Broadway in The Producers.
Gene Wilder dies aged 83
Racism in tech: one man’s solution
Racist posts on Nextdoor.com – billed as a “private social network for your neighborhood” – became so frequent that they started to make Shikira Porter feel physically ill. “It’s incredibly toxic,” says Porter, 42, who said she has had migraines after arguing with racist users. “I just feel like I’m in a constant state of rage that I have to manage.” Now Porter is a part of Neighbors for Racial Justice, an advocacy group to combat racial profiling.
What happens when tech firms end up at the center of racism scandals?
North Korea executes officials with anti-aircraft gun
North Korea’s purge of senior officials who are deemed a threat to Kim Jong-un’s leadership of the country has continued with the public executions of two senior officials, according to South Korean media, possibly to generate fear among members of the elite after recent high-level defections. The conservative daily, the JoongAng Ilbo, reported on Tuesday that Hwang Min, a former agriculture minister, and Ri Yong-jin, a senior official at the education ministry, were executed by anti-aircraft gun at a military academy in Pyongyang earlier this month.
North Korea executes officials in new purge – report
Kaepernick has our attention. Now what?
It’s one thing to spark debate by refusing to stand for the national anthem or complaining about “what’s really going on in this country”, but now San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has to take meaningful action if he is to fight injustice, says Les Carpenter. And that means talking about issues such as police brutality, racial stereotyping and a system weighted toward the rich. It means convincing other athletes to join in and going to rallies and protests and city council meetings and demanding to be heard.
Colin Kaepernick has our attention: so what does he do now?
In case you missed it ...
Once there were 10,000 lookouts, some among them famous writers and poets, scanning the wilderness for signs of smoke. Now just a few hundred remain. They are known, unofficially, as the “freaks on the peaks” – the name given to fire lookouts who live in elevated huts, armed with binoculars, a compass and a radio, scanning the wilderness for smoke. Twenty-six-year-old Levi Brinegar, at the Stonewall fire lookout in Montana’s Helena-Lewis and Clark national forest, says he could not be happier. “It’s fun. I’ll definitely try to get back next year.”
‘Freaks on the peaks’: the lonely lives of the last remaining forest fire lookouts
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/30/apple-ireland-european-union-back-taxes-fine
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8582af622bff34cebe16c40eab77e1641e7f3565c88fa4fe699368b90718e9e7.json
|
|
[
"Paul Rees"
] | 2016-08-27T22:51:50 | null | 2016-08-27T21:00:13 |
Gregor Townsend, the Glasgow coach, said he is optimistic about the future of Scottish rugby and the standard of Pro12
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fgregor-townsend-pro12-glasgow-scottish-rugby.json
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en
| null |
Gregor Townsend remains confident Pro12 can keep up with the rich boys
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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As Guinness Pro12 organisers look at ways of boosting income to help sides grapple with the greater financial muscle of clubs in France and England, Scotland’s coach-in-waiting, Gregor Townsend, insists there is no reason to panic.
The television deals for the Pro12 work out at around £1m per side, compared with £3.5m in England and more than £5m in France, but Townsend, who takes charge of Glasgow for a fifth and final season before succeeding Vern Cotter, says the cross-border league has always been financially disadvantaged.
“France and England have had more money thanks to the deals their greater populations generate,” said Townsend, whose playing career in four countries included stints in the Premiership and Top 14. “We have to get on with it in the Pro12 and what we have is a tournament high on quality, helped by the fact there is no relegation.
“There is more interest than ever before and its profile has never been higher. The arrow is definitely pointing upwards and we have to work hard to make sure we keep improving. It is a unique tournament involving 12 teams from four countries and more current internationals play in it than the Premiership or Top 14.
“If the other two leagues have more money, players in the Pro12 are highly motivated to play international rugby: playing for Glasgow and Edinburgh, for example, helps them achieve that goal. You can only be positive when you recall what the old Celtic League was like. The Scottish sides struggled to get crowds but now there is growth and the final is played in a national stadium.”
Glasgow start their campaign at Connacht next Saturday, the 2015 champions travelling to the team who took their crown in May. Townsend, who won 82 caps for Scotland, is determined to sign off on a high, saying that until a few months ago he had no immediate ambition to coach the national side. “I spent a few years as an assistant Scotland coach [2009-12] and while it was wonderful to be involved with the team, I have enjoyed coaching Glasgow and having the opportunity to be head coach” he said.
“It was only a couple of months ago that I started thinking how great it would be to be involved with Scotland, even if I thought that day would be well into the future. I am delighted and honoured that the opportunity has come sooner but there is much for me to do before then. Coaching in the Pro12 is so intense you do not have time to think about anything else. We have to improve at Glasgow because we did not get to a final last season.
“I am very optimistic about the future of Scottish rugby at Pro12, European and international level. It starts with the players and we have some very good ones in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and they are young. It is the best player pool I have known and while it is as hard to hold on to players as it was five, 10 or 15 years ago, the lure of Test rugby is important and Scotland players know if they are based in the country, they are managed better. Part of our reason for being at Glasgow is to make sure the national side is as strong as possible.”
Townsend has been tipped as a candidate for the attack coach position on next summer’s Lions tour to New Zealand which comes 20 years after, as fly-half, he helped achieve a series victory in South Africa. “That is a hypothetical question,” he said, when asked if he would be interested. “It will be some tour to face the best team in the world who are playing fantastic rugby.
“It is a great time to be involved in our sport, a positive era after the political fallouts of the past. Stadia are full and more people are coming into a game which is better to watch with outstanding skill levels. The Pro12 is really punching its weight.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/gregor-townsend-pro12-glasgow-scottish-rugby
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7c1a2e452ee29c99fc57ea80ce95e6301583b58b2e5c0bb6e4144befc0373a36.json
|
|
[
"Ian Walker",
"Adrian Barrance"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:53 | null | 2016-08-23T15:19:25 |
Ethnobotanist who spent 30 years in Honduras working to protect the country’s ecosystems
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fpaul-house-obituary.json
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en
| null |
Paul House obituary
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The ethnobotanist Paul House, who has died of cancer aged 55, was fascinated by the interaction of human societies with their surrounding ecosystems, and always coupled social and environmental advocacy with scientific inquiry. He spent nearly 30 years in Honduras, working to understand and protect the country’s ecosystems and inspiring a generation of young Honduran biologists.
He carried out fieldwork in areas ranging from the cloud forests of the country’s highest mountains to the dry thorn scrub of the interior valleys. It highlighted the need for active conservation, given the high levels of endemism – when a species is unique to a particular place – in Honduras’s vulnerable ecosystems, and the pressures from expanding agriculture, urban sprawl and infrastructure projects. He identified several new plant and tree species and was a member of an international panel of experts on threatened flora in the Central American isthmus.
In the 1990s he carried out groundbreaking work on the Tawahka tribe, a dwindling group of fewer than 3,000 people living in the lower basin of the Patuca river in La Mosquitia, which he published in his book Farmers of the Forest (1997). He lived with the Tawahka and learned their language, one of the few outsiders to do so, and demonstrated how their livelihoods and culture are intimately linked to their forests and to the Patuca River, which is now threatened by hydroelectric development.
Paul also showed that the Tawahka people understood that interdependence, and that they taught their children to use the forest without destroying it. He helped develop the management plan of the Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve, an important link in the chain of protected areas running between Honduras and Nicaragua.
He recognised the need for pragmatism and adaptation in conservation, and showed that the Tawakha knew that they could not remain isolated from the outside world. In the aftermath of the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, he worked to mobilise aid for the Tawahka.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A member of the Tawahka tribe of La Mosquitia, Honduras, the dwindling group that was the subject of Paul House’s 1997 book Farmers of the Forest. Photograph: Alamy
Although a quarter of Honduras is designated as protected areas, the institutional framework is weak and funding is scarce. There is no national service of forest guards and the management of protected areas is often delegated by the government’s Forest Conservation Institute (ICF) to under-resourced NGOs, with little accountability.
Paul took part in a landmark 2002 study on the rationalisation of the Honduran protected-area system, which identified 39 high-priority sites, and he later worked on an ecosystems map of the country. In 1991-92 he spearheaded collaboration between the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) and the UK-funded Honduran forest conservation project CONSERFORH, exploring and collecting in the country’s threatened cloud forests, whose isolation has resulted in particularly high levels of endemism. The collection gathered on Celaque, the country’s highest mountain, was sent to the Missouri Botanical Garden, whose experts identified 745 “Paul House specimens”.
Paul’s work also highlighted the importance of the dry lowland thorn scrub, a neglected ecosystem under pressure from agricultural clearance, road development and urbanisation. In the Aguán Valley, the thorn scrub is the habitat of the threatened Honduran Emerald, the country’s only endemic hummingbird. He lobbied the development banks to block the building of a road into the valley until the government had agreed to set aside tracts of thorn scrub to protect the Emerald’s habitat.
Born in Rochford, Essex, Paul was the second child of Raymond, a motor mechanic, and his wife, Margaret (nee Payne). He attended Greensward Lane comprehensive school in Hockley and South East Essex sixth form college in Benfleet. He read biochemistry at the University of Sussex and held an MSc in taxonomy and a PhD in ethnobotany, based on hiswork with the Tawahka, from the University of Reading.
His first visit to Honduras came in 1986 as a volunteer with the Catholic Institute for International Relations. He was assigned to the biology department of UNAH, where he helped establish the country’s first collection of native medicinal plants, later publishing a book on the subject with his wife and collaborator, Margarita Rivas, a fellow ethnobotanist whom he met at the university. A talented amateur musician, he would play his flute and piccolo to entertain CIIR get-togethers.
Paul stayed in Honduras for nearly 30 years, apart from a couple of years in the mid-90s spent at Reading University and the Natural History Museum in London while he was finishing his PhD. He worked mostly in the UNAH biology faculty, helping establish the postgraduate programme in botany and conservation biology and setting up the university’s botanical garden; he eventually became director of the National Herbarium.
At the time of his death, he was working on a book about Honduran orchids. He had a passion for orchids and cacti, maintaining an impressive collection at his home in Tegucigalpa. His passion for orchids once saved his life: after climbing a tree to collect an orchid in a national park he missed a flight in a small aircraft which crashed, killing all on board.
Paul returned to the UK for cancer treatment in 2012. He is survived by Margarita and their three children, Sara, Emily and David.
• Paul Raymond House, ethnobotanist, born 22 April 1961; died 18 July 2016
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/23/paul-house-obituary
|
en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/fd9ef458efcd54abad142cdc65091568f94931d026f1ee91048fa1ca84282397.json
|
|
[
"James Dyke"
] | 2016-08-26T13:25:28 | null | 2016-08-19T08:57:25 |
The success or failure of certain species can be used to predict the future health of an entire ecosystem, research says
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fstudy-identifies-key-species-which-act-as-warning-signs-of-ecosystem-collapse.json
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en
| null |
The 'ecosystem canaries' which act as warning signs of collapse
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The Earth’s biodiversity is under attack. We would need to travel back over 65 million years to find rates of species loss as high as we are witnessing today.
Conservation often focuses on the big, enigmatic animals - tigers, polar bears, whales. There are many reasons to want to save these species from extinction. But what about the vast majority of life that we barely notice? The bugs and grubs that can appear or vanish from ecosystems without any apparent impact?
Biodiversity increases resilience: more species means each individual species is better able to withstand impacts. Think of decreasing biodiversity as popping out rivets from an aircraft. A few missing rivets here or there will not cause too much harm. But continuing to remove them threatens a collapse in ecosystem functioning. Forests give way to desert. Coral reefs bleach and then die.
New research that I have been involved in suggests that there biodiversity has a value that has been overlooked, but could be vitally important if we are to manage our impacts on ecosystems. Our study, published in the journal Ecology, shows that crucial information about the overall health or resilience of an ecosystem may be lurking in data about supposedly inconsequential species. In fact, the presence or absence of some of the rarest species may be giving us important clues as to how near an ecosystem is to a potential collapse.
Such rare species we call ecosystem canaries. Like canaries that coal miners used to check for poisonous gasses deep underground, ecosystem canaries are often the first species to disappear from a stressed ecosystem. Their vanishing can be linked to changes in the functioning of ecosystems, which can serve as a warning that a collapse is approaching.
Our study used data collected from lakes in China that showed changes in the abundance of species from algae (diatom) and aquatic midges (chironomid) communities as they compete for resources under environmental pressures. From this data it was possible to identify three types of organism: slowly-replicating but strongly competitive ‘keystone’ species; weakly-competitive but fast-replicating ‘weedy’ species; and slowly-replicating and weakly-competitive ‘canary’ species.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the lakes mentioned in study
Photo taken in July 2015 shows Erhai Lake in Dali, in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Yunnan plans to spend 26.4bn yuan (US$4.1bn) to tackle pollution in the Erhai Lake, which saw blooms of blue green algae in 1996 and 2003. Photograph: Lin Yiguang/Xinhua/Alamy
Runoff of fertiliser from surrounding fields has a major environmental impact on these lake ecosystems. As the situation worsens the canary species is the first to suffer.
With continuing degradation affecting all species, this leads to the eventual collapse of the keystone species as they are replaced by the weedy species. The loss of keystones tips the ecosystem into a critical transition – the point at which a system shifts into an alternate state which in lakes is dominated by smothering algae and absence of many plant and animal species. Moving a lake back to a clear water, high biodiversity state can be extremely difficult.Better to avoid the collapse in the first place.
Waiting to observe changes in the keystone species would not allow any intervention because the system would already be spiralling towards collapse. By searching for changes in the structure of populations that includes the ratio of keystone, weedy and canary species, we were able to detect a clear signal of an impending collapse many years, sometimes decades before the actual event. Time enough to put in place changes to farming and other practices.
The ecological theory underpinning this approach should apply to many other aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Given the extent and rapidity of human impacts there should not be any shortage of ecosystems to apply our findings to.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2016/aug/19/study-identifies-key-species-which-act-as-warning-signs-of-ecosystem-collapse
|
en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0f26966e38204d822134277a822d689500cfb860dded8a8c8aa97496c0e44814.json
|
|
[
"Jill Papworth",
"Photograph",
"David Levene For The Guardian",
"Iwan Baan The Modern House",
"Iwan Baan"
] | 2016-08-26T13:30:02 | null | 2016-08-19T06:00:09 |
These unique structures pay tribute to the 18th century neoclassical summer house, Queen Caroline’s Temple, in London’s Kensington Gardens
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fwhen-art-meets-architecture-summer-houses-for-sale-in-pictures.json
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en
| null |
When art meets architecture: summer houses for sale - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Here’s the summer house designed by Berlin studio Barkow Leibinger . Constructed from plywood and timber, it was inspired by another, now extinct, 18th century pavilion also designed by William Kent, which rotated and offered 360-degree views of the park. It’s for sale at £125,000 plus VAT.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/gallery/2016/aug/19/when-art-meets-architecture-summer-houses-for-sale-in-pictures
|
en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c5f27a056fe86df084d03139c1da4788f01c99ab53f5a8c1efbca14dc3096613.json
|
|
[
"Sean Farrell"
] | 2016-08-27T04:54:46 | null | 2016-08-24T10:19:46 |
António Horta-Osório emailed 75,000 staff to express regret for bad publicity and attempts to quash questions about his position
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Flloyds-chief-antonio-horta-osorio-apologises-damage-caused-affair-allegations.json
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en
| null |
Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group has written to employees to apologise for revelations about his private life and the damage they caused the group’s reputation.
In an email sent to the bank’s 75,000 staff, António Horta-Osório said he regretted the bad publicity caused by allegations of an affair with Wendy Piatt, a former aide to Tony Blair. The couple were pictured together while the married bank chief was on a business trip to Singapore.
Lloyds says António Horta-Osório has 'no case to answer' Read more
Horta-Osório, whose pay deals over the past two years total £20m, also sought to quash talk of him leaving the group, saying he was as committed as ever to leading Britain’s biggest retail bank.
The reports earlier this month prompted questions about whether Horta-Osório breached Lloyds’ policies by combining private and business expenses. Lloyds said on 10 August he had no case to answer after an internal review.
In his email to staff, Horta-Osório reiterated that he kept personal and business expenses separate. But he admitted that the furore had damaged the bank, which is 9% owned by taxpayers after being bailed out during the financial crisis.
He wrote: “My personal life is obviously a private matter as it is for anyone else. But I deeply regret being the cause of so much adverse publicity and the damage that has been done to the group’s reputation. It has detracted from the great work which you do for our customers on a daily basis and from the major accomplishments of the past five years.”
Horta-Osório has stressed the importance of maintaining high standards of behaviour to Lloyds staff, which has paid multiple fines and billions of pounds in customer compensation for past misdeeds. He said he included himself in his call for good behaviour and promised to do better.
Lloyds bank to axe 3,000 jobs and close 200 branches Read more
He added: “Having the highest professional standards raises the bar against which we are judged and as I have always said we must recognise that mistakes will be made. I don’t expect anyone to get everything right all the time. The important point being how we learn from those mistakes and the decisions and actions we take afterward.”
The revelations about Horta-Osório’s private life came soon after Lloyds announced plans to cut a further 3,000 jobs. This is on top of the 54,000 job losses announced since the bank rescued HBOS during the financial crisis. The Portuguese banker, who joined in 2011 from Santander, got a 6% salary increase to £1.12m this year, while staff received 2%.
Horta-Osório told staff their hard work was behind the bank’s recovery and its ability to cope with low interest rates and a weakening economy.
“With that in mind please be assured that I am as committed as ever to leading the group forward to deliver our strategy and to meet our future ambitions. Thank you again for your messages of support over the last few weeks. I have greatly appreciated them,” he wrote.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/24/lloyds-chief-antonio-horta-osorio-apologises-damage-caused-affair-allegations
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/83e45192f718927160a17092b2e7d0cf1c2505081a2e92997292d5c4a31da3f7.json
|
|
[
"Nicole Puglise",
"Sam Levin"
] | 2016-08-27T16:57:12 | null | 2016-08-27T15:27:04 |
As the National Park Service turns 100, longtime rangers reflect on tasks ranging from teaching rescue missions – and the sexism many female rangers face
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fnational-park-service-100-rangers-interviews.json
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en
| null |
'I was born to do this': national park rangers on their triumphs and tragedies
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Andrea ‘Andy’ Lankford
Andrea “Andy” Lankford often came close to death during her twelve years as a ranger for the National Park Service. But there was nothing quite as horrific as the time she ended up with parts of a human brain in her hand.
Lankford, now 52 years old and retired from the park service, was in the Grand Canyon in the 1990s, responding to the calls of a woman who was “very precariously clinging for her life at the edge of the canyon”. The young woman, who worked nearby, had been walking along a rock wall and slipped, launching a tense rescue mission and “real-life cliffhanger”, the former ranger recalled.
Other rangers arrived before Lankford and risked their lives to save the woman – but they were too late. She wanted to make sure the staff who had the traumatizing experience of watching the woman fall did not have the grim task of recovering the body.
In my career, it would get rather dark. I would deal with tragic, violent things Andrea Lankford
“In my career, it would get rather dark. I would deal with tragic, violent things,” she recalled.
With gloves on, she helped put the woman into a body bag – and ended up carrying parts of her brain that had splattered during the fall. It was difficult, but she had learned to remain calm in crisis. “We were very gentle and professional.”
Being a park ranger wasn’t always so harrowing. Lankford first fell in love with the job when she began rescuing baby sea turtles at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina from hazardous ATVs or hungry seagulls.
Lankford also thrived on the adrenaline-inducing adventures the wilderness – and its human visitors – thrust upon her.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrea Lankford, right, with a colleague in front of a rockslide in Yosemite Valley. Photograph: Courtesy Andrea Lankford
At Zion national park in Utah, she had to confront a group of white supremacists who claimed they were going to take over the park, warning that they would shoot any law enforcement who tried to stop them.
“Skinheads waiting for war at Zion,” blared one newspaper headline that Lankford keeps on file.
'We need to preserve this beauty': your memories of US national parks Read more
The ranger wasn’t scared. At one point, she even managed to pull one of the leaders over, citing a busted headlight.
“He didn’t shoot me.”
Then there was the time she helped arrest bank robbers who had gotten lost in the middle of the night and became so frightened that they were pleased to be taken into custody.
At Yosemite national park in California, Lankford learned how to de-escalate human-bear conflicts, though dealing with humans was typically the harder part. One time, she had to rescue a cub without upsetting the nearby mother. A crowd of onlookers watched as Lankford tried to remove the cub from a dumpster, and the tourists ignored Lankford’s repeated demands that they step back.
During one failed attempt, the mama bear charged in her direction, prompting Lankford to deploy her pepper spray. Lankford did not, however, hit the intended target. The coughing visitors learned their lesson.
By the end of her career, however, it was some of her male colleagues who caused her the most grief – forcing her to confront sexism, discrimination and harassment, she said.
Whether supervisors were telling her jobs were too dangerous for women or colleagues were making sexual remarks, Lankford refused to be intimidated.
“I fought fire with fire. When one of the guys made a joke about showing me his penis, I said, ‘Well, wait, let me get a microscope,’” she recalled. “It was so part of the culture. You knew if you complained you were going to be retaliated against.”
Lankford learned how to demonstrate she was more than capable of handling the duties that were once exclusively the domain of men – whether life-threatening rescues or arresting criminals.
“I survived – and I did a good job.”
Mary Hinson
“We’re getting rescued by a chick?”
Those were the first words park ranger Mary Hinson heard when, after waiting patiently for years, she was finally given the opportunity to do a rescue mission at El Capitan at Yosemite.
A favorite destination for experienced rock climbers, El Cap rises more than 3,000ft above the floor of Yosemite Valley and regularly requires rangers to save visitors in near-death predicaments.
I felt like I was born to do this, and it’s my chance, and I’m going to prove myself. Mary Hinson
Hinson, now 51 years old and a police chief in Nevada, was an experienced rock climber and trained emergency medical technician when she was hired in 1993. But despite her qualifications, supervisors initially didn’t give her a chance to do a high-stakes rescue mission. It took time for any new ranger to break into the rescue teams, but as a woman, Hinson felt particular pressure to prove herself. It was especially frustrating given her skill set.
“There would be all these big technical rescues going on ... and I would get a great assignment to do administrative duties and clean up.”
During one particularly bad winter storm, however, two rescue teams had struggled to reach the stranded climbers, and Hinson was called in.
“It was pretty dicey conditions,” recalled Hinson, who put on a bright yellow suit and helmet headed out with as much confidence as she could muster.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mary Hinson and her colleagues. Photograph: Courtesy Mary Hinson
“I felt like I was born to do this, and it’s my chance, and I’m going to prove myself.”
She was the first to reach the climbers, who had lost their sleeping bags and were screaming for help as it snowed and rained on them. She shouted back that she would be throwing a rope in their direction. The men were shocked to hear a female voice and one immediately whined about a “chick” saving them.
Another man, however, interjected: “I prefer to look at it as they sent an angel from above.”
They all laughed – and the mission was ultimately a success. Hinson believes she was the second woman to ever complete an El Cap rescue.
Celebrating 100 years of the National Park Service: readers' photo and stories Read more
She rose in the ranks and eventually became chief ranger at Lake Mead national recreation area in southern Nevada. But she had to confront rampant sexism along the way. Male coworkers joked about her mascara running during a mission. She said she felt forced to hide her pregnancy to avoid discrimination. Supervisors suggested she find a safer line of work.
As a woman in the field, she said, all you can do is “climb better, run faster and jump higher”.
Despite the struggles – Hinson said sexism in the field played a big part in her decision to leave – working for the park service was a dream come true, she said.
“Being a park ranger is probably one of the coolest possible jobs anyone can have.”
Billie Patrick
Billie Patrick worked hard to earn her nickname, “horse patrol queen”, as a park ranger at Yosemite from 1983 to 2012.
Patrick, now 60 and retired from the park service, quickly learned that in many ways, her mode of transportation – by horse – was far superior to her colleagues’ cars or bikes.
“Put it this way: how many people have you see walk up to a patrol car and pet it and then have a conversation with the police officer inside?
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Billie Patrick earned the nickname ‘horse patrol queen’. Photograph: Courtesy Billie Patrick
“The horse was the conduit and the connector to the public,” she added.
It wasn’t just that the public responded better to a ranger on horse. Patrick’s horse, Danny, could speedily gallop on certain terrain where motorized vehicles could not travel.
One time, she and another ranger on horse patrol were able to chase after four young men who had shoplifted from a park store.
“We ran across the meadow to get them.”
The men gave up and sat down on the ground for questioning, with the horses standing nearby.
You're a teacher. You're a law enforcement person. You're search and rescue. You're a confidante Billie Patrick
“When you have a 1,000lb horse, they don’t want to mess with you,” she said. Horses are “able to de-escalate a volatile situation because of their size”.
Patrick also fondly recalled the process of teaching her horse how to chase bears – training that involved horses playing with giant stuffed bears.
“People thought we were crazy,” she said.
Her best Danny memory was a quiet moment. One day, a young boy with cerebral palsy approached the horse and wanted to pet him, she said.
What happened next felt magical to her: “Danny laid his head in this little boy’s lap in his wheelchair. It just amazed me how this horse knew that this little boy needed him to do that ... It’s not anything earth-shattering, but it was really touching.”
One thing Patrick loved most about the job was the diversity of her assignments, she said.
“You’re a teacher. You’re a law enforcement person. You’re an emergency medical person. You’re search and rescue. Oftentimes, you’re a coroner. You’re a confidante. You’re a peer counselor,” she said. “You wear all of those hats.”
Don Stanko
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Don Stanko is often asked: ‘Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?’ Photograph: Nicole Pugliese for the Guardian
The largest unofficial mausoleum in North America is in New York City’s Riverside Park. The General Grant national memorial, the final resting place of Ulysses S Grant and his wife, Julia, is colossal – a pristine, pillared mass of white marble and granite that stands 150ft tall.
On a hot Wednesday in July, a handful of tourists wandered its cool interior, perusing civil war-themed artwork as they circled the Grants’ red granite sarcophagi. Ranger Don Stanko answered their questions (and mine) about the oft-maligned president.
“Wasn’t Grant an alcoholic?” asked one. “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” asked another – the reference to Groucho Marx’s 1950s quiz show, You Bet Your Life, is a frequent inquiry.
Through his job as an interpretive ranger with the National Park Service, Stanko has become something of a history expert, and not just about the 18th president. In his 12-year career, the 40-year-old has worked at parks all around the country – from Montezuma’s Castle in Arizona to Independence Hall in Philadelphia to Cape Hatteras national seashore in North Carolina – absorbing stories from each place. “Each park is its own master’s degree,” he jokes.
The most common thing I've heard is: 'I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve never visited' Don Stanko
In 2008, Stanko was stationed at the National Mall in Washington DC. Once, he took Sarah Palin on a tour of the Jefferson memorial. He did crowd control while then senator Barack Obama visited the Lincoln memorial with a young Malia and Sasha Obama. “You could see him reading the second inaugural and the Gettysburg address to his older daughter,” Stanko recalled. “His younger daughter just wanted to bounce around.” At the end of Stanko’s time in the capital, the Martin Luther King Jr memorial was just being built, and Stanko helped to research the training manual for the site.
Though he has lived in eight different regions of the country so far, Stanko said he thinks people are the same everywhere, just with different scenery. He even hears a lot of the same comments. “The most common thing I’ve heard at every single park I’ve worked at is: ‘I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve never visited,’” Stanko said.
Dan Stevenson
Wrangell St Elias, in Alaska, is America’s largest national park. At 13.2m acres, it measures about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont put together – or Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Switzerland combined.
When it opened nearly 40 years ago, “the park service really didn’t know what was out there, as far as trails and cabins and old mines”, said Dan Stevenson, who has worked as a park ranger since its inception. Rangers were sent in conservation units to document small areas, Stevenson said. “You name it, we were trained to document it.”
10 of the least-visited US national parks Read more
Stevenson arrived at Wrangell not long after the park was signed into legislation as part of the the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980. He left his home of Fairbanks, jumped on a bus and arrived with little more than a backpack and enthusiasm.
Stevenson and a partner, Pat Flanagan, would go out and explore the unknown terrain for two weeks at a time, their heavy packs filled with freeze-dried foods and a radio to connect them to the outside world. Sometimes Stevenson’s boss, Jim Hanna, would fly overhead to check in and drop down a loaf of banana bread, baked by Hanna’s daughters. With no trails to follow, the two backcountry rangers hiked or floated rivers. “It was incredible. I thought: ‘I should be paying them,’” Stevenson said of the experience.
The rangers had one major animal-related problem: poaching. The Dall sheep, fluffy and white with curved brown horns, was seen as a “trophy animal”, Stevenson said. One of the rangers’ jobs was to stop the poachers – a difficult task in an area the size of Wrangells. The rangers went out in teams for 10 days or so, watching for illegal activity, sometimes working with Canadian rangers in Kluane park, just across the border.
It was incredible. I thought: 'I should be paying them' Dan Stevenson
Search and rescue was part of Stevenson’s job when planes, hunters or hikers would go missing – usually due to bad weather. He and other rangers, along with Alaska state troopers, would be dispatched to find them – searching with planes, helicopters or people on the ground.
There are no roads leading to the nearby town of Kotzebue, where Stevenson is based with his wife, but Stevenson said it was pretty easy to catch a flight up from Anchorage. The town has one road that it is “pretty proud of”, but most people get around by boat or by snowmobiles once the ocean freezes.
The ranger has divided his time between Alaska, where he was born, and Montana, where he went to high school, college and worked during the 90s. He’s a fourth generation National Park Service employee – his great-grandfather was one of the first rangers at Glacier national park in Montana, he said. “Maybe it’s in my blood,” he joked.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/27/national-park-service-100-rangers-interviews
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| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
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"Sid Lowe"
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The tiny club from cucumber country south of the capital, where most people support Real or Atlético, are the only side in La Liga not to have let in a goal. Ever
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Noisy neighbours Leganés give Atlético blues to take back corner of Madrid
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Butarque was blue, just like their manager wanted and just like their captain’s hair. “I hope they wear Leganés shirts and only Leganés shirts, with no one else’s underneath,” Asier Garitano said, and they did. Sitting on a hill, circled by motorways, the ground had been done up and filled up for its first match of a new season: the first of a new era that still had something of the old about it. Under the stands was the smell of bacon, cooked on a camping stove; in the stands were 10,958 people, more than had ever been here before. They were dressed for the occasion and making the most of it. Scarfs, flags, banners. And blue, lots of blue.
“This is Butarque and only ‘Lega’ play here,” the slogan runs, stuck up around a municipal stadium that is their home and theirs alone. But on Saturday night it wasn’t only Lega playing there, it was Atlético Madrid as well. And here’s the thing: for many of them, Atlético Madrid are their team too. For others, Real Madrid are. A town of 185,000, 11 kilometres south of the capital, where there are streets named after AC/DC and Scorpions, surrounded by cucumber-growing country, retail parks, towns not unlike theirs, and lots of cars, Leganés had never had a team in the first division before and they had never expected to either.
Barcelona maintain perfect start as Ivan Rakitic goal beats Athletic Bilbao Read more
This, coach Garitano admits, is “incredible”, “unthinkable”.
In their 88-year history, Club Deportivo Leganés hadn’t been in the first division and hadn’t been in the second much, getting there for the first time in 1987: they’d spent longer in regional, and spread the last 40 years across tercera and segunda b, the former made up of 18 regional divisions, the latter made up of four, and both theoretically amateur. Historically, their rivalry was with Getafe but even they left Leganés behind: when the derby came around it was against Getafe’s B team. It is only three years since Leganés were last in segunda b and when they were promoted to segunda in 2014, it was the first time they’d been there in a decade. They weren’t the biggest team in either division – their budget last year was €4.5m euros – and now they’re the smallest in primera.
The day Garitano took over as manager in 2013, there was no training ground and a pitch full of potholes. “We had seven players … and I didn’t want three of them,” he admits. He had never been in the first division, either. The club was restructuring under new ownership, taken over by Felipe Moreno Romero in 2009. The president is his wife María Victoria Pavón – one of three women presidents in primera – and while they invested around €3m, austerity was the word. With their son Felipe as sporting director, they began building; with Garitano, they grew. Two improbable promotions in three years followed.
Reaching the first division wasn’t even a target. There was no obligation, and no pressure, which might just have been part of the reason for their success. “We were happy in the second division,” Garitano admits. But they didn’t settle for that: having finished 10th in 2014-15, more than a dozen new players joined last season. They won only two of their first 12 games but then the run began. Before the final game, their captain gathered the squad together, and reading the speech he had prepared off an iPad in the corner of the dressing room as they stood in a circle, eyes closed, arms around each others’ shoulders, told them: “This is your heart speaking … if you lose, you’ll still be the best; if you win you’ll be historic.”
They did win: Pablo Insua’s header at Mirandés took them up. And so here they were on Saturday night, a first division team. Better still, they had won their opening match 1-0 at Celta de Vigo and now they were facing Atlético, some fans forced into a choice they never expected to have to make, a measure of just how far they had come.
It was no choice, of course. Although there were a few tell-tale signs – the man in the Leganés shirt with the Atlético tattoo – there was no ambiguity. Garitano got his way: how could he not on a night like this?
Besides, as last season progressed they’d backed their team too, playing a key role. Leganés was little but it was loud. They weren’t going to miss this and nor were they going to doubt. They had sold 8,800 season tickets, the maximum in a ground that doesn’t quite hold 11,000 having been expanded from 8,200 (the aim is to expand it still further, to 15,000). This is a season to enjoy and one to embed the club in its community, to elevate it above its giant neighbours, locally at least – a lesson in part learned by Getafe’s failure to do the same, dropping down again a decade later without really building that base.
There were 500 Atlético fans in one corner but everywhere else was blue, thousands of striped shirts like the stands had been filled with deckchairs. “Proud”, one banner read. “Don’t wake up; the dream continues,” said another. When Garitano quietly walked in a couple of hours before kick-off, a rucksack on his back, he picked his way through a crowd that had come to see the buses arrive, Atlético’s especially – proof somehow that they had made it. As he went through Gate 0, there was a gentle and belated ripple of applause, as if he’d been barely noticed, but by the time he and his team walked on to the pitch after 10pm it was different. An occasion and a special one. In the stands was an inflatable cucumber. In the Atlético dressing room was a basket of real ones as promised, a gift from Leganés.
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That was all they gave them. Atlético came, but they could not find a way through. Kévin Gameiro hit wide, Antoine Griezmann too, but mostly Atlético hit a wall. Jon Serantes made three superb saves; ahead of him, his team-mates made tackle after tackle. And every time they did, there was another roar, a connection built, like a cup game where one set of fans knows what the reality is but rebels against it, where every challenge is a relief, vindication, a victory. “This is a stadium where even the guy selling tickets defends,” AS wrote. And as time went on so the likelihood that they would not be beaten grew; from four at the back to five, the chances reduced. It felt like, actually, Leganés had this under control. Or maybe for the pessimists among them – and a banner at one end did declare them “paranoid” – that a cruel end might be coming closer.
But it didn’t; instead, history beckoned. It finished 0-0.
“We didn’t have a shot and we didn’t cause them problems. We have to improve dramatically. We did not play well at all,” Garitano insisted. Meanwhile, Griezmann claimed that if Atlético carry on playing like this they will be fighting to avoid relegation, while a depressed-looking, exhausted team-mate of his just rolled his eyes when he was asked if Leganés were really that good. The message was clear: no, we were that bad.
Perhaps, and there will be a battle ahead – it will be Leganés, not Atlético fighting relegation, they will still seek additions in the next two days, and the limitations are clear – but on Saturday night, few really cared and nor should they. They had endured but this was a moment to be enjoyed. Leganés – Leganés! – had done it. They had reached the second division, they had reached the first division, they had beaten Celta, and now they had only gone and held Atlético Madrid, European runners-up. And Garitano was critical, sure, but they could argue that they deserved this. In the dressing room is a sign: “If you’re sitting here, it is because you want to do something great,” it says.
There was merit in it, certainly, and that was recognised at the final whistle. They had not let up and nor had the noise. The fans sang and chanted and accompanied every action. It rose with each tackle, interception and run, until in the last minute Martín Mantovani dived to head away a corner at the near post and bring the opening performance to a close, just after midnight. They had emerged equal. Eighty-eight years later, here they were, unbeaten. Record breakers, too. One win, one draw, two games no goals conceded – something no debutant in Spain has done for 87 years. They are the only side in the first division not to have let in a goal.
Ever.
No wonder there was a sound like thunder when Mantovani dived to head away the last threat; no wonder he insisted: “This tastes like glory.”
Somehow, it had to be him: the man who had been on the point of giving up on the game at 21; who left behind his studies as a food safety inspector to come to Spain and join Atlético’s youth system alongside Koke and David de Gea, yet still didn’t make it to the second division – “professional” football – until he was 30; who slept rough in Milan the night he went to get the passport that allowed him to play, wrapping himself in cardboard boxes to blend in with others spending that night in the bus station; who joined Leganés from Real Oviedo in 2013 and made this journey with them, the journey of their lives, winning two promotions.
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Mantovani is one of only three players remaining from those days, the Leganés captain who proudly told team-mates that they would make history before the game in Miranda and whose speech before their first ever primera match concluded: “We’re here to enjoy ourselves, lads … but I enjoy myself winning”. He is the man whose speech on Saturday night, delivered as supporters arrived, insisted: “never stop believing”. The man who promised to dye his hair if they got promotion in 2014 and said the same again in 2016; who did it permanently this time because his dad said that last time, a three-day job, didn’t count.
Which is why the very last final touch in Leganés’s very first home game in the top flight, greeted by the noise of the night, the biggest cheer in their history, was reserved for Martín Mantovani’s head, blue as Butarque.
Talking points
• And top of the table are … Las Palmas. It’s the first time they have been there for 27 years and they will be there for at least a fortnight too as this week is international break (without Iker Casillas for the first time in 16 years). They deserve it. Just like watching Brazil. Only better. That’s two wins out of two, and nine goals scored. That’s nine goals in two games, when last year it took them until December to get as many. That Quique Setién is a genius, alright. “I’m enjoying this but we haven’t done anything yet,” he said.
He was right on both counts: it’s early still but everyone is enjoying this. Las Palmas have scored nine times with only eleven shots on target this season, five from five on Sunday, but that doesn’t make them lucky (although Valencia were actually pretty good in the opening game against them); it is more that they aren’t wasting chances because the chances they make are so clear. They’re almost walking the ball in. Against Granada, their precision and pace on the break was wonderful, led by Nabil El Zhar and Jonathan Viera and … oh, what the hell, they were all pretty brilliant.
• Las Palmas’s best player was Paco Jémez. That’s what Paco Jémez says, anyway. The Granada manager blamed himself … in that slightly pleading tell-me-I’m-good-reading way that he is sometimes prone to doing and which is wearing a little thin. Granada, it is true, were awful.
• From 40 goals in the opening weekend to just 17 in week two. Blame Sevilla, who went from 10 to zero with a 0-0 draw against Villarreal. And they should be grateful for that too. Their best player was Sergio Rico, the goalkeeper, and they didn’t manage a single shot on target. Not so fun, after all. Not this time.
• “Has dadila Festa” the banner said: let the party begin. Mendizorrotza looked good for Alavés’s first game back for a decade – and so, on the pitch, did Theo Hernández and Marcos Llorente – but, like Leganés, it finished 0-0. And like Leganés, Alavés held Atlético of course. That’s two games unbeaten for them.
• So, Griezmann. “If we carry on like this we’ll be fighting not to go down.” It was quite an exaggeration but this wasn’t good, that’s for sure. And Atlético Madrid are already four points behind Madrid and Barcelona having played two newly-promoted teams. If on the opening weekend Atlético could count themselves unlucky, the same wasn’t quite so true at Butarque – even if they wasted three or four decent chances. The look on one player’s face after the game said it all. So did his silence. This felt systemic, not just a one-off. It did to him, anyway. And he clearly wasn’t alone. As one headline, playing on the Leganés horticultural theme, put it: “Atletico don’t play a cucumber.” They don’t play any football at all, in other words.
• Oh, Valencia. Oh my. They have all of their centre-backs up for sale, have sold the only one that wasn’t for sale, and their striker is on his way out. And now they sit bottom of the table this morning. What can go wrong, will go wrong it seems: they should have beaten Eibar easily and actually played quite well at times, as was the case on the opening day, but dreadful defending and worse finishing saw them lose 1-0 at Ipurua to a Pedro León penalty. For the first time in 17 years, Valencia have lost their first two league games.
• “With Barcelona, all you get to choose is how they beat you,” Athletic Club Bilbao manager Ernesto Valverde said. That’s not entirely true and shouldn’t be taken as an abdication of duty: his team took the Super Cup off Barcelona last season, for a start, and Athletic pushed them right back on Sunday, taking them to the wire. In the end, though, an Ivan Rakitic header was enough in a superb game, played in the rain the way football’s supposed to be and in which both teams played very well. It was an important and very creditable victory, Luis Enrique said and he was right. It might have been a bigger one too, but for chances wasted by Lionel Messi, Arda Turan and Luis Suárez. Yet it might also have been no victory at all.
Athletic pressed so high that Barcelona were forced to play from very deep, the pitch feeling as long as anyone could remember. Barcelona avoided the temptation to just hit the ball forward, though, despite being put under so much pressure. In fact, they seemed to embrace the idea, walking a tightrope but emerging on the other side, overcoming the first wave and running into the space behind before meeting the next line of Athletic players 40 or 50 yards further on. It was almost as if they invited trouble – which they did at times – as a way of, in fact, inviting opportunity. As if they wanted to play a counter-attacking game … with possession. Whose design it was is open to debate: both of theirs, probably. Perhaps the best measure of how it went was that Marc- André ter Stegen completed more passes than any goal keeper in a decade – and provoked more heart attacks too.
• Toni Kroos got a classy 81st-minute winner as Real Madrid defeated an impressive Celta side, the ball curling across the floor like a bowling ball down a lane and going in off the post. Oh, and speaking of class: Luka Modric.
• Doctor Diego Cervero Otero: he scores goals.
Results
Betis 0 – 0 Deportivo
Espanyol 2 – 2 Málaga
Osasuna 0 – 2 Real Sociedad
Eibar 1 – 0 Valencia
Real Madrid 2 – 1 Celta
Leganés 0 – 0 Atlético
Las Palmas 5 – 1 Granada
Alavés 0 – 0 Sporting
Athletic 0 – 1 Barcelona
Villarreal 0 – 0 Sevilla
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/aug/29/noisy-neighours-leganes-atletico-madrid-real
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| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:30:13 | null | 2016-08-11T18:41:58 |
Editorial: The government has boosted demand but not supply. There are too few new homes, and too many penalties on social housing. It’s not a policy, it’s a disaster
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The Guardian view on housing policy: a rethink is needed
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It is very hard to detect what this government thinks a successful housing policy looks like. In the past six years, the party of home ownership has failed to revive home ownership. Far from the Tory dream of a Britain transformed into a property-owning democracy, the median price for a house is now nearly nine times the median income and generation rent struggles to put so much as a toe on the property ladder at all.
Meanwhile, the long war of attrition against social housing goes on: right to buy, almost moribund by 2010, was fanned back into life with new and bigger discounts in the early coalition years. Council receipts from the discounted sales were cut to a third of the sale price, which has to be reclaimed in a slow and bureaucratic process from central government to meet the obligation imposed by Whitehall to replace all right to buy sales. In fact, councils are now building just one new home for every nine sold.
The Local Government Association, representing councils in England and Wales, says a rethink is essential if the right to buy is going to benefit more than this generation. Soon, higher-value council properties will have to be sold too, to fund a new assault on social housing, the introduction of the right to buy for housing association tenants. The latest English Housing Survey found that tenants were paying up to half their income on rent – even more in London. Meanwhile the rent councils receive is being cut year on year. The LGA foresees a £2bn hole in council finances by 2020.
An era of very low interest rates, and the new ability of people with pension pots to invest in property rather than buy an annuity with it, is propelling a huge market in buy-to-let. It has slowed with new higher stamp duty, but the grants designed to support first-time buyers have had only a limited effect as the supply of new homes continues to lag far behind demand, putting the next move out of reach. There are already 1.4 million people on council waiting lists. The cost of housing benefit for tenants in private accommodation is soaring along with rents – and homelessness. Earlier this month, the Resolution Foundation published research showing unaffordable home ownership is not just a London problem but affects people across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is at its lowest level since the early 2000s. The number of new homes started was less than 150,000 last year, the average house price has risen 60% in 13 years, while pay for many people has risen at only a fraction of that rate. On some estimates, in less than a decade there will be a shortfall of at least 4m affordable homes. Whatever its intentions, the government appears to have created a housing catastrophe.
The Local Government Association is controlled by Conservative councillors. It is not a radical organisation trying to challenge government. It merely wants voters able to live in homes they can afford to buy or rent. They know how to do it. Theresa May promised a country that did not entrench privilege. Housing is a good place to start.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/11/the-guardian-view-on-housing-policy-a-rethink-is-needed
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en
| 2016-08-11T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4559df2f54b03c23e3df64045602245a6b2c477e7ce34bc8cbc0539d3b01d1ab.json
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[
"Maev Kennedy"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:23 | null | 2016-08-22T14:57:59 |
Human hairs will be DNA tested to identify whether they come from 18th-century sailors who cast Captain Bligh adrift
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Scientists hope to prove pigtails belong to HMS Bounty mutineers
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www.theguardian.com
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A collection of hair taken from 18th-century pigtails and stored for more than a century in an old tobacco tin has arrived in London for analysis that could prove it belonged to some of the most famous troublemakers in naval history – the sailors responsible for the mutiny on the Bounty.
Scientists hope to extract mitochondrial DNA, using the same technique that identified Richard III after the skeleton of the last Plantagenet king was found under a Leicester car park. Researchers would then have the even more challenging task of identifying an unbroken female line to a living descendant, to get a crucial match.
“If the hair is in good condition, I don’t see that it would be impossible to extract the DNA – it’s a technique we regularly use in forensic work – but that’s where the difficulties will really begin,” said Denise Syndercombe-Court, the project leader from the analytical and environmental sciences division at King’s College London.
The hair is said to be from seven of the nine mutineers and three of their female Polynesian companions, who cast Captain Bligh and the 18 crew members who remained loyal to him adrift on the south Pacific in a small boat in April 1789. The mutineers sailed to Tahiti and then on to establish a new home on the remote Pitcairn Island, where their descendants live to this day.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando, is the most famous depiction of the incident. Photograph: Moviestore Collection
The incident inspired several books and films, most famously the 1962 version starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutiny. One of the pigtails is said to be Christian’s.
The pigtails were bought by an American collector at a Sotheby’s auction some years ago, and recently presented by his widow complete with the tobacco tin and a handwritten label with their claimed history, to the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre in California.
Herb Ford, the centre’s director, said that despite the notoriety of the story, if the DNA testing and matching was successful it would be the only physical proof of the men’s identity.
“If the tests and genealogical studies of this hair authenticates that it is of seven of the nine mutineers who hid out from British justice on Pitcairn Island in 1790, it will be the only tangible physical evidence of their having existed. There is only one known mutineer grave on Pitcairn – that of John Adams. Of the whereabouts of the remains of the eight others, we can only speculate.”
Ford first contacted Scotland Yard for help in analysing the hair, and the Metropolitan police referred him to King’s College, whose scientists often work with the force on contemporary crime cases.
He has appealed for public help in tracing the mothers of the mutineers, and their direct descendants.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pitcairn Island, where descendants of the mutineers live to this day. Photograph: Alamy
Bligh, who was on a mission to collect breadfruit trees regarded as a possible crop to feed slaves in Caribbean plantations, has gone down in legend as a brutal commander, but in fact was regarded by his contemporaries as a moderate man, exceptionally concerned for the welfare of his sailors.
He wrote to his wife: “I have been run down by my own Dogs,” and was baffled by the mutiny. He navigated the small open boat across more than 3,500 miles to the nearest European settlement, and eventually returned to England, where he was cleared in a court martial of losing the Bounty. He died in 1817, and is buried in Lambeth, south London, where his tomb is topped with a breadfruit.
Although the package containing the pigtails has arrived safely at King’s, Syndercombe-Court has wrestled with her curiosity and refrained from opening it. “We need to open it under very special clean conditions to avoid contamination as much as possible, so we won’t open it until we are ready to begin work next month,” she said. “But I am told that there are definitely several different colours and textures of hair, so we know at least that we are dealing with several individuals.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/22/scientists-hope-prove-pigtails-belong-hms-bounty-mutineers
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| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1648a7400ded66127f9c1fbf55cc88b7f7036b139ad3c637b6c2e09346ae9ea0.json
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[
"Marina Hyde"
] | 2016-08-31T10:52:58 | null | 2016-08-31T09:40:47 |
The FA has shown great front in looking to recruit foreign players to the England team after years of bemoaning the Premier League’s dearth of homegrown talent
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Fblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fsam-allardyce-england-fa-nuclear-disarmament.json
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Sam Allardyce: an emblem of England’s footballing nuclear disarmament
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www.theguardian.com
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As Theresa May has been at pains to stress: Allardyce means Allardyce. There will be no backsliding, no attempts to weasel out of the full implications of the Football Association’s decision, however unhappy or depressed with it some people may be. The FA clearly signalled their intentions with Big Sam’s appointment to the big job, and his predictable tendency to lump along with the status quo must be delivered upon. Indeed, following the naming of his first squad for Sunday’s World Cup qualifier against Slovakia, that task appears to already be well under way. Wayne Rooney remains captain, in the No10 role. Furthermore, both Rooney and Allardyce – and the kindly Manchester United boss, José Mourinho, – believe United’s Marcus Rashford will be much happier in the Under-21s.
Sam Allardyce: If England are to win something, we must look at ‘foreigners’ Read more
These days, we know that any England manager is essentially managing decline. That was clear with the appointment of Roy Hodgson over Harry Redknapp. With Harry, there would have been hope. Totally misplaced hope – but hope nonetheless. And we can’t be doing with hope as far as the England football team are concerned. As the John Cleese character in Clockwise so rightly observes: “It’s not the despair … I can stand the despair. It’s the hope.”
There was no such baggage with Roy. It made perfect sense that he had previously managed Switzerland, a nation with whom we would do well to accept footballing parity. The Hodgson appointment, I reflected at the time, was a timely acceptance that England belonged in the twilight home of international football (we had long belonged in the twilight home of international politics). We’d had a good innings, but it was high time to have a rug tucked round our knees and settle down to a nice game of drafts with Switzerland.
If appointing Hodgson was the equivalent of voluntarily giving up our seat on the UN security council on the basis that we obviously hadn’t been a world power for yonks, Allardyce seemed to be the perfect continuity successor. The Big Sam appointment was the equivalent of saying: “Yes, we finally accept that we wouldn’t be allowed to use our nuclear weapons unless the Americans ordered us to, and that is why we are unilaterally disarming.” I had a lot of time for it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest It is questionable what the reaction would be to the likes of French player Steven N’Zonzi bringing success to England. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA
Unfortunately, there seems to be some raging against the dying of the light in the more obscure reaches of the Wembley executive suite. This time last year, we learned that 100 FA staff were to lose their jobs in a restructuring and reprioritising exercise. The FA chief executive, Martin Glenn, spoke of “the ultimate ambition of resourcing our elite England teams to give them the best chance of success at tournaments”. Strong words, and almost decipherable.
Perhaps more flesh has now been put on their bones by Allardyce, who used his press conference this week to reveal the existence of an intriguing-sounding FA department. Its job: sourcing foreign players who might be eligible to play for England. “We have a department to look at the whole situation,” he declared, “in all areas for every [age range] international team.” All the other sports do it, he said, and all the other countries. “We all know the shortage of English players in the Premier League,” Allardyce observed. “I think it is only 31%. If those don’t play on a regular basis and there is another option then, surely, if we are going to win something and that player is of the calibre to force his way into the side, we give him an opportunity.”
Aha. Having tried the foreign manager approach, we will be now trialling the foreign player approach. At some level, you have to admire the front of the FA, who have spent years whingeing for years about the problem of the shortage of English players in the Premier League. Still, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Michail Antonio morphs from so-called invisible man to shining light Read more
Even so, I can’t help thinking there could be no more auto-satirical department at this stage of Britain’s post-imperial journey than one dedicated to confecting Englishmen. Ironywise, it ranks alongside Nigel Farage’s solution to the problem of Britain not having any qualified trade negotiators to handle Brexit. “I’m told we haven’t got the skills,” Nigel conceded. “So let’s headhunt them. Let’s get them from Singapore, from Asia …” Or, you know … Europe? They’ve got loads there.
Whether they’ve got any talented youngsters who’d rather play for us than some other European country is unclear – perhaps, like Adnan Januzaj, they’d rather play for Belgium or even Kosovo. It’s almost as if people no longer take as gospel the words of cuddly old Cecil Rhodes: “Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.” Remember that you are an Englishman, and will consequently go out in the last 16. You might want to try Iceland or something instead.
Anyway, Big Sam is pretty sure that it won’t matter so much when the pretend English chap propels us to triumph. “It’s a very difficult, very delicate subject. I’ll have to see if I actually do it one day how it’s perceived across the nation. If the player goes out and scores the winner, will it be quite that bad?”
Answers to the FA’s department of international outreach, please.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/aug/31/sam-allardyce-england-fa-nuclear-disarmament
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/026cd757d67480cc14871515e760efb91d2544a7081702d4b146992905d609b2.json
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[
"Graham Readfearn"
] | 2016-08-28T14:57:21 | null | 2016-08-09T02:29:22 |
Scientist and Nobel prize-winner Peter Doherty says new One Nation senator ‘has no understanding of how science works’
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fplanet-oz%2F2016%2Faug%2F09%2Fwhy-one-nation-senator-malcolm-roberts-demand-for-empirical-evidence-on-climate-change-is-misleading-bunk.json
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Why Malcolm Roberts' demand for 'empirical evidence' on climate change is misleading
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www.theguardian.com
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Across Australia, climate science denialists are beside themselves with glee at the voting into office of one of their own.
Late last week, the Australian Electoral Commission confirmed that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party had snagged Queensland’s final 12th Senate spot. Her candidate, Malcolm Roberts, is now a senator.
Roberts’ election is yet another demonstration of the quirkiness of Australia’s electoral system.
Only 77 people actually voted for Roberts as a first preference but, thanks to the popularity of Hanson, he’s in for three years.
Roberts’ own brand of climate denial – a heady mix of conspiracy theories and blind spots the size of the Antarctic ice sheet – is now in the national spotlight.
Josh Frydenberg: Australia's use of coal is falling 'and that is not a bad thing' Read more
Roberts has had wall-to-wall coverage across Australia’s media – from Sky News, to Lateline, to Insiders to flagship ABC radio. Even Triple J has joined in.
News Corp’s Andrew Bolt, a strong promoter of the kind of material produced by Roberts, told the senator there were now “five or six out and proud voices of climate scepticism in the Senate”.
So how did Roberts respond to his newfound fame? Well, he didn’t disappoint, telling every mainstream audience there was “no empirical evidence to show that carbon dioxide affects the climate in any way”.
I’ve written several stories over the years about Roberts and the Galileo Movement – the climate science denial group founded in 2011 with radio personality Alan “climate change is witchcraft” Jones as its patron.
Three years ago I pointed out how One Nation was taking its cues on climate science from Roberts. Last month I suggested that, if elected, Roberts would bring an extreme form of climate science denial to the Senate.
But for those paying close attention to climate science denial – such as the string of US senators who spent hours talking about it only last month – Roberts sounds like a broken record. In Roberts’ case, the needle has been stuck for about six years.
What about his conspiracy theories (he says they’re not conspiracies, just facts) that climate change is a scam pushed by global banks looking for cash and the UN on the hunt for global domination? Roberts didn’t disappoint there either.
On ABC Melbourne, host Rafael Epstein asked Roberts: “Do you think the UN’s trying to impose some sort of global government through climate change policy?”
“Definitely,” replied Roberts. “Really?” checked Epstein. “Definitely,” confirmed Roberts.
For years, Roberts has been writing to politicians, government agencies, universities and scientists making the same claim that there is “no empirical evidence” to show fossil fuel burning causes climate change.
You can go and read all that material on his website – I’ll see you in six months once you’ve read it all.
Empirical evidence?
So what does Roberts mean by “empirical evidence”? According to him, decisions should be based on “observations in the real world … it’s measured, real world data” and nothing else counts.
There are two very obvious problems with Roberts’ argument.
The “real world data” is sending a clear message that the Earth is gaining heat at a rapid rate and that this is a long-term trend. Whether you look at global air temperatures measured in the real world by thermometers or derived from satellites, or the temperature of the oceans at multiple depths, or the increasing frequency of extreme temperatures, or the rising sea levels, the melting ice sheets, the disappearing Arctic sea ice, the increasing risk of bushfires … we could go on and on with a parade of “empirical evidence”.
Anyone can claim there is no evidence if they refuse to look at it. Professor Steven Sherwood, UNSW
At the same time, humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere and oceans at a rate that groups like the Geological Society say are unprecedented “even in comparison with the massive injections of carbon to the atmosphere at the Palaeocene-Eocene boundary, which led to a major thermal event 55m years ago”.
Roberts’ argument that science is only about “empirical evidence” might sound all sciencey to his interviewees and the lay audience. But it’s bunk.
If all you rely on is “empirical evidence”, and reject modelling and analysis that uses that data, then you basically throw out large swathes of modern scientific endeavours.
Prof Steven Sherwood, director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, told me:
The argument is specious. Anyone can claim there is no evidence if they refuse to look at it. In Galileo’s time, some people refused to look into his telescope and then claimed there was no evidence to support what he was saying. Same thing today. The problem is that evidence does not stand up by itself and announce the answer to any given question. Evidence must be interpreted by humans. Scientists have all interpreted the evidence, going back decades, and unanimously agree that it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that (a) humans are increasing CO2 and (b) this is causing warming. There is not a single respectable atmospheric scientist in the world whom I know of, who disagrees with either of these conclusions (there are a handful who challenge the magnitude of the effect but that’s a different question). It is impossible to make a prediction based on data alone. Only a model can make a prediction of anything that has not happened yet.
Denial suite
Roberts has built a whole suite of well-rehearsed arguments to enable him to reject any assertions put to him.
They go like this, and I’m paraphrasing here. Climate scientists only say it’s warming because if they didn’t their grants would dry up. The Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO have corrupted climate science and are thus guilty of corruption. Government agencies are politicised, which means anything they produce cannot be trusted. You can’t trust climate models, so anything that comes from them should be chucked out.
[Roberts] has no understanding of how science works. Professor Peter Doherty, Nobel winner
One of Australia’s most famous and celebrated scientists is Prof Peter Doherty, who, in 1996, was jointly awarded a Nobel prize for his research into the immune system.
Doherty told me he had sent Roberts “plenty of reports and material” but Roberts had ignored it.
So Doherty has first-hand experience with Roberts and also knows a bit about the scientific method. He told me:
I’ve never used the term ‘empirical evidence’, or heard any other working scientist say it. [Roberts] has no understanding of how science works. Discoveries in science stem from a mix of hypothesis, experiment, data generation, data analysis, insight and even a bit of guesswork. Telling the story of what’s happening in something as complex as climate science further depends on integrating information from a diverse spectrum of fields, then designing to see if the conclusions are valid or false. There’s a constant process of correction and further interpretation that then has to be supported by measurement. You can tell a genuine sceptic from a denier (as I discuss in The Knowledge Wars) because the sceptic will want to look at new data and conclusions and, like any real scientist, will modify their conclusions accordingly. The denier remains ‘locked in’ to a sort of ‘decerebrate rigidity’. All good scientists are sceptical, not least about their own data and conclusions. Further data show that we’re wrong, and we prefer not to be wrong, so people change their positions with new evidence. And, if you want to understand very complex, interactive systems, you have to use modelling approaches. With climate science, data is coming in from a very broad spectrum of scientific disciplines that no one person can pull together ... thus the IPCC.
So how should journalists react when a newly-minted senator makes claims that run against science academies across the planet while suggesting institutions and governments the world over – from the US military to the UN – are either part of, or have been hoodwinked by, a conspiracy that only he can and a few other people on the internet are able to see?
Deference? Respect? Polite engagement?
According to Doherty “you have to respect the institutions of our democracy, including the Australian Senate, but that does not mean you have to respect the viewpoints held by individual senators”.
So there is another approach journalists could take.
In 2013, Roberts sent one of his voluminous reports to Ben Cubby, then the environment editor at the Sydney Morning Herald. I’ll leave you with Cubby’s response.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/aug/09/why-one-nation-senator-malcolm-roberts-demand-for-empirical-evidence-on-climate-change-is-misleading-bunk
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en
| 2016-08-09T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7b44fc1ee2f878cb8a5ba82f62113414af66cadc35cc029bf6781422d8f936c2.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:30 | null | 2016-08-25T19:27:24 |
West Ham have announced the signing of the Swiss midfielder Edimilson Fernandes from FC Sion for an undisclosed fee believed to be around £5.5m
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fwest-ham-confirm-signing-of-edimilson-fernandes-from-fc-sion.json
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West Ham confirm signing of Edimilson Fernandes from FC Sion
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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West Ham have announced the signing of the Swiss midfielder Edimilson Fernandes from FC Sion for a fee believed to be around £5.5m. The 20-year-old was introduced on the pitch of the London Stadium before Thursday evening’s Europa League qualifier against the Romanian side Astra Giurgiu.
Simone Zaza set for medical after West Ham agree £24m fee with Juventus Read more
Fernandes, the cousin of former Manchester City and Leicester midfielder Gelson Fernandes, becomes manager Slaven Bilic’s ninth signing of the summer. He has put pen to paper on a four-year contract, and arrives on the back of reported interest in the Hammers midfielder Pedro Obiang from several Italian clubs.
West Ham have also agreed a £24m fee with Juventus for the forward Simone Zaza. The 25-year-old is now understood to have agreed the terms of his contract at the London Stadium and will complete his medical on Friday.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/west-ham-confirm-signing-of-edimilson-fernandes-from-fc-sion
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/59568a351ae2615e73a57c30898030bbbfc8d865cf66c4454826e0123f8aff04.json
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[
"Gwyn Topham"
] | 2016-08-28T12:54:59 | null | 2013-09-30T00:00:00 |
Firms both majority-owned by French SNCF announce joint venture for franchise currently run by UK government
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2013%2Fsep%2F30%2Feurostar-keolis-bid-east-coast-rail.json
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Eurostar and Keolis bid to run east coast railway line
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Eurostar is entering the bidding for the east coast mainline rail franchise, as the government prepares to privatise the London-Edinburgh route before the next general election.
Eurostar and Keolis, both majority-owned by the French state rail operator, SNCF, have announced a joint venture to bid for the contract.
The Department for Transport (DfT) will start vetting bidders next month, with a view to restoring the line to the private sector in March 2015.
The east coast franchise is currently run by a government-owned company, Directly Operated Railways (DOR). It was brought in to operate the line as East Coast after National Express defaulted on the London-Edinburgh franchise in 2009, when the transport group admitted it could not afford the £1.4bn in payments due over the life of the contract.
By contrast, East Coast has paid more than £600m in premiums to the government over the past two years.
Labour has said it would keep the east coast mainline in public hands. At its conference the shadow transport secretary, Maria Eagle, attacked the "nonsense" of allowing foreign state-backed firms to run UK railway franchises while excluding DOR. Deutsche Bahn, the German state-owned rail company, is also a prominent player in Britain through its ownership of Arriva, the business that operates the Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry and Arriva Trains Wales franchises.
The DfT has said it will try to attract bids from as many international firms as possible in order to promote competition. A bidders' day in July attracted interest from firms in Europe and the far east.
Keolis, which already operates four train franchises in the UK in a partnership with Go-Ahead Group, will be the lead partner in the bid, with a minority share to be held by Eurostar. It marks a further potential expansion for Eurostar, which last week announced it would start direct services between London and Amsterdam.
Alistair Gordon, chief executive of Keolis UK, said: "What's exciting about the east coast mainline is that there is an opportunity to transform a hugely important national route, which is yet to see the same levels of investment as the west coast mainline."
The successful bidder for the franchise is expected to be awarded a contract in October 2014, with the franchise commencing in early 2015.
Richard Branson has indicated that Virgin will bid for the route, probably along with Stagecoach, his partner in Virgin Rail. However, National Express has ruled itself out of the east coast bidding.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/30/eurostar-keolis-bid-east-coast-rail
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en
| 2013-09-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/691b014321b9c9cb59a8943938452c8b452409877f36c1fd92339780c6d49970.json
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[
"Sarah Marsh",
"Katie Callin",
"Guardian Readers"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:37 | null | 2016-08-19T09:40:43 |
The range of mental health problems experienced around pregnancy and childbirth is vast and often isn’t spoken about. Here, we share your stories
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fpregnancy-mental-health-birth-childbirth.json
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Pregnancy and mental health: the hidden pain of giving birth
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Magda, a 29-year-old software developer, regularly fends off questions about when she will have her first child. Coming from a close-knit family and having been with her boyfriend for a decade, the topic is brought up regularly. But Magda grimaces in response, only to be told: “Don’t leave it too late.”
For Magda, the question of when she wants to have a child is complex. There is a serious history of depression and psychosis in her family on both sides. In fact, her mother was sectioned for a long time after giving birth to her.
“I’m not just concerned about passing on mental health problems to any child I might have, I also have serious concerns about the risk to my own wellbeing from having a baby,” she says.
She also worries about the kind of treatment she might receive if she were to have problems. “I’m acutely aware of how awful the mental health support can be in the NHS. I have witnessed failing after failing in the care of my mother. If I speak to a GP about my concerns, will they care and offer advice? If I did decide to have a baby, would they make sure I’m looked after through pregnancy and beyond?”
This is just one of the individual stories sent to the Guardian as part of a project inviting people to discuss the often taboo topic of mental health and pregnancy.
Between 10 and 20% of women in the UK develop a mental illness during pregnancy or within the first year after having a baby. This costs the NHS around £8bn for each annual birth cohort. Conditions range from postnatal depression to obsessive compulsive disorder and psychosis.
It’s not just women either: one in eight first-time fathers suffer from depression while their partner is pregnant, according to a survey by scientists at McGill University in Canada.
Despite this, new NHS England figures show less than 15% of areas currently provide recommended services for mothers with mental health issues, and more than 40% provide no service at all. In almost half of the UK, pregnant women and new mothers do not have access to specialist perinatal mental health services – with even less specific support in place for men.
It’s an issue the government has pledged to address, with £365m allocated for specialist perinatal mental health services over the next five years, the the first tranche of which has just been made available.
So, why is help desperately needed and what sort of experiences do people have? Here are our readers’ stories.
The decision to have a child
For some, like Magda, the challenge begins before pregnancy – many women and men experiencing mental health problems worry about their children developing similar conditions. They also worry about how their condition could affect their ability to be a parent.
A lot of times my days are coping minute to minute. I don’t know if that puts me in a good position to raise a child Daniel Stusiak
Daniel Stusiak, 37, from Aberdeen, South Dakota,has type-two bipolar disorder. In the audio recording above, he explains how his mental health problems influenced his decision not to have children.
When it comes to having children I have two thoughts. One, genetically I don’t like the idea of gambling and seeing whether I pass it on... Second, should that child not have to deal with that, they will have to deal with me as their father and a lot of times my days are coping minute to minute. I don’t know if that puts me in a good position to raise a child in the best way.
The medication question
A lot of women also have to weigh up whether or not they are prepared to come off their medication to have a child. While some drugs are considered relatively safe the evidence is not conclusive, and some have been linked to health problems in babies.
But those who come off any medication are at risk of getting ill again: for example, seven out of every 10 women who stop antidepressants in early pregnancy become unwell again.
Harriet, 32, Stoke-on-Trent
Giving birth was much more painful and difficult than I ever imagined it would be Harriet
I have been told that I may need medication for life to treat my anxiety and depression. When I decided to have a baby, my main fear was that the drugs would be dangerous and I’d have to come off them. I was scared of falling ill, which had happened when I came off medication before – when I was at my worst I had extreme panic attacks about 10 times a day. My dad, who is a doctor, assured me that citalopram is generally considered OK during pregnancy. But babies born to depressed mothers can have worse growth and general health. I talked to my husband and I decided it was safer for me to stay on the drugs. However, I still found the pregnancy very stressful. I worried constantly about miscarrying. I was offered a reassurance scan but it made me more stressed because they noticed a slight abnormality in the baby’s brain. It turned out to be nothing, but I completely broke down. I could not function for weeks and struggled with the rest of the pregnancy. Since the birth my mental health has improved. I love being a mum and my daughter makes me very happy. Giving birth was much more painful and difficult than I ever imagined it would be. Afterwards, you wake up to a life and a body that you don’t recognise. It’s not great for your self-esteem. I put on a huge amount of weight but the pain was definitely worth it.”
Mandy, 36, north-west England
I have borderline personality disorder and a social anxiety disorder. I stopped taking my medication (Escitalopram) when I was pregnant because I was worried about the health of my baby. Some doctors thought it was better I stay on the drug, while others disagreed, and because of this varying advice I stopped. However, coming off it caused me a lot of problems. I started self-harming, for example, and worried about everything. I ended up hiding in my house, which meant I couldn’t go back to work. With borderline personality disorder I can go very quickly from being level-headed to mentally unstable. Being pregnant made it harder to cope with this. I didn’t feel like my body was my own. I couldn’t harm myself physically to rid my mind of distressing thoughts. I was referred to a mental health assessment team and put back on medication on a low dosage. I had one visit with the assessment team but found the nurse dismissive and unhelpful. They didn’t realise I’d had past mental health problems and were treating me as if I had just turned up with thoughts of harming myself. Once I explained to them that I presented before pregnancy I hoped they’d adjust their attitude towards me, perhaps offer more contact, but they didn’t. I coped throughout the pregnancy mainly thanks to my husband and my GP, who I could talk more openly with, but I wish there had been more support from the assessment team.
Hannah from Yorkshire experienced anxiety before pregnancy, but chose to come off medication to treat this in order to have a child. Listen to her story below.
Antenatal
Postnatal depression is often reported on, but less attention is given to mental health issues during pregnancy. While it’s normal for women to experience “baby blues” as a result of hormonal changes, for a large number this is much more extreme. In fact, it is estimated that 7% to 20% percent of pregnant women are affected by what is known as antenatal depression, which if untreated can lead to postnatal depression after the birth.
Women and men can also experience a great deal of anxiety during pregnancy – it is thought that more than one in 10 women struggle with symptoms of anxiety while carrying a child.
I started to have horrible thoughts about my baby – thinking I had made a terrible mistake and wanted to get rid of it Ariana
Ariana, 25, London
I have never experienced mental health issues other than while I was pregnant. When I was around eight weeks, I started to feel upset. The baby hadn’t been planned, but I was ecstatic at first. However, depression soon took over. As the weeks went on it got worse – I hated people talking about the pregnancy and wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening. I started to have horrible thoughts about my baby – thinking I had made a terrible mistake and wanted to get rid of it. Bizarrely, I also decided that when the baby was born, I would swap it with another child in the hospital, and at least then they wouldn’t be my responsibility any more. Fortunately by the time I was heavily pregnant, I didn’t feel negatively any more. I only felt sad that this thinking had ruined my early pregnancy for me. I now have a huge amount of sympathy for anyone who experiences depression.
After having my son, I stayed up all night on the maternity ward just watching him. I remember thinking he was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I still do now. He is three years old. Postnatal depression is widely recognised, but there is less said about depression during pregnancy. I might have sought help if people talked about it more.
Leila experienced anxiety and depression during her pregnancy, having never had mental health problems before. You can hear about her experience in this recording.
I finally admitted to myself that I was seriously ill after weeks of considering throwing myself under the train Leila
I finally admitted to myself that I was seriously ill after weeks of considering throwing myself under the train on my way to work, followed by weeks of not being able to get out of bed. I lacked the motivation to do anything: get dressed, wash my hair, let alone make any preparation for a new baby. There is a hormonal trigger to perinatal depression and the more the pregnancy progresses the greater the influence of hormones.
Miscarriages
There are no official government statistics held on women who miscarry (they are only collated for women admitted to hospital), but the pregnancy charity Tommy’s says around one in every four women with a BMI of over 30 will miscarry a child.
The effects of this last longer than you might imagine: a study in 2011 found that the depression and anxiety experienced by many women after a miscarriage can continue for years, even after the birth of a healthy child. Men are also affected, although perhaps differently. One British study of 323 men found that although they displayed less “active grief” than their female partners, they were more vulnerable to feelings of despair and difficulty in coping eight weeks following the loss.
Matt Allen, 38, from Brighton, shares his story of how miscarriage affected his mental health below.
Looking back on it it would have been better for me to have someone to talk to [after the miscarriage] and maybe drop the stigma that men have to be strong and carry everyone around them, because something like losing a child does affect us just as much emotionally.
Kaye, Manchester
I’m pregnant for the second time. My husband and I lost our first child when I had a miscarriage in my first trimester. It’s not something you get over. People around you think that it’s all about getting pregnant, but the waiting for the arrival of a healthy baby now is worse than any treatment. I suffer from crippling anxiety – crying at random times, waking up from nightmares. I can’t talk about being pregnant and am still trying to hide it at almost 20 weeks. I wish that I could be offered some counselling. My partner and I received no support whatsoever from the NHS after the D&C [a surgical procedure often performed after a first-trimester miscarriage]. Only now, from reading the Miscarriage Association’s literature am I beginning to understand that the anxiety we are going through is common. A viability scan should also be offered on the NHS at seven to eight weeks as a standard. This can really help to reassure new parents. I do think the NHS should have different support in place for people where this is a Pal (pregnancy after loss), and that includes silent miscarriages. Friends from abroad are often shocked at how few scans we get in the UK and that the chance to hear the baby’s heartbeat at midwife appointments isn’t standardised across the country.
Postnatal
Postnatal depression is an illness that affects between 10 to 15 in every 100 women having a baby. It can start within one or two months of giving birth. It’s also something that hits men too: studies predict about one dad in 10 has postnatal depression. Traditionally, the mother’s mental health gets more attention, but recognition of the dad’s mental health is increasing.
Alice, Midlands
I had my daughter a few years ago and read all the information I could get my hands on. After a difficult birth I eventually delivered my baby. I was exhausted (it took 48 hours in total) and shell-shocked. We stayed in hospital for a few days while trying to get my daughter to breastfeed. I was struggling so much with this that I refused to have any visitors as I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t cope. In the end I gave up so that we could all just go home. Luckily bottle feeding didn’t affect bonding with my baby. However, my partner didn’t cope well at all. From seeing me in so much pain and out of control, he tried to take on far too much so that I could recover. His mental health spiralled as a result to the point where he couldn’t look at our baby. He couldn’t handle her crying and one day I found him crouched in a corner rocking. I got him to see a counsellor and the doctor advised that he would recover better if he moved out for a while. He went to live with his parents and we would visit, but he couldn’t cope with the guilt of leaving us. Eventually we got through it and he was able to move back home with us. Unfortunately we didn’t make it as a couple; the strain was too much. Looking back I wish we’d have had more support in trying to deal with his depression but even though this was a few years ago, there was very little awareness about male postnatal depression and a lot of shame attached to it. I wish I could have helped more.
Emma, Manchester
I’d already had a baby and enjoyed being a mum, so when I fell pregnant again I never expected to experience postnatal depression.It was four months before I plucked up the courage to go and see the doctor. I kept telling myself to keep going, and that I could be a perfect mum like the ones you see plastered all over social media. Now I realise that it’s not real. To me, during the dark days that perfect picture wasn’t my life but boy did I try to achieve it. I was really struggling and I told no one. Admitting weakness was like putting my hand up and saying: “Look at me, the bad mum over here.” The day I told my sister and my mum I was at my wits’ end. I cried the whole time. I paced the length of my house for half an hour before I finally made the call to my family. After that I went to the doctor. I thought he was going to laugh and tell me to just get on with it like every other mum, but he didn’t. He told me that this would be the last time I would feel this way and that every day, from today, I would start to feel better. Most importantly he made me realise for the first time in four months that I wasn’t a failing mother-of-two. I’d managed to keep my head above water through one of the most challenging times of my life. We discussed options and I agreed that I would take tablets for depression and anxiety – it was time to give my body a little helping hand. He made me see some things are out of my control and postnatal depression can happen to anyone.
Psychosis
One of the most severe forms of illness seen in psychiatry are postpartum psychoses. In rare but tragic cases it can lead to women taking their own lives.It’s thought that postpartum psychosis affects women in every 1-2 of 1,000 births. It’s more likely to affect women who have had it before (or have a relative who has) or have a serious mental health condition, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lisa Abramson, who suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter
Lisa Abramson, from San Francisco, experienced severe mental health difficulties after giving birth to her first child. She talks about postnatal psychosis in the audio recording below.
Leila, interviewed above, also experienced psychosis after pregnancy – as well as antenatal depression and anxiety. She talks about this below.
I completely lost touch with reality and was convinced my phone was communicating with me in code Leila
I started to get hyper-manic and the effect that had, in terms of behaviour, meant that I would be wide awake all night. My mind would be racing and I was really driven to do things, for example I would reorganise the kitchen cupboard at 3am to 4am in the morning. I also wrote lists compulsively and used hand gestures, which I don’t normally do … then after that I became psychotic. I completely lost touch with reality and was convinced my phone was communicating with me in code. I thought it might be my father who had died three years previously. I thought I would just will with my mind ordering a pizza and it would be delivered to the door.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Research is limited but estimates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after delivery tend to be around 1-2% in high-income countries. One study in Sweden put the rate of postnatal PTSD at 2% in the first year after birth. While some women experience it after a particularly traumatic birth (with medical difficulties), others have PTSD from the birth process itself.
A spokesperson for the Birth Trauma Association said: “The help on offer for women is very patchy and generally poor. Individual health visitors and midwives may help but waiting lists are long – up to a year – and almost no one gets on a list for cognitive behaviour therapy or other treatment unless they have been symptomatic for at least 12 weeks.”
Bill, Staffordshire
My wife and I experienced the stillbirth of our first child, Andrew. It was very sudden, my wife noticed a lack of movement and we went to hospital. We saw a classic scan, but this time with no heartbeat. I carry the image with me to this day. The following days and weeks were traumatic. We were told that the chances of a future successful pregnancy were higher if my wife delivered Andrew naturally, so labour was induced gently. We then went to a dedicated maternity suite (where we were handled with exceptional care and attention by all staff). The delivery was normal, except that Andrew was not alive.
Following the stillbirth, I experienced post-traumatic stress disorder for which I have since received cognitive behavioural therapy. I had flash-backs of the traumatic delivery and the events immediately before and after, including my son’s funeral. I also suffered from an intense anxiety as we went through four more pregnancies – two ended in miscarriage and two ended inthe births of two wonderful boys. We constantly wondered about miscarriage, stillbirth and the chances of a good outcome. The mental health problems affected my work – I was constantly on high alert. On the whole the NHS was marvellous. Their care when we lost Andrew was excellent in the circumstances. My wife got support during the pregnancies and for the way in which the stillbirth affected her. However, there was less attention on the father. I was not prepared mentally for the immense impact that this would have on me.
On the whole the NHS was marvellous. Their care when we lost Andrew was excellent in the circumstances Bill
Emma, Midlands
I had a traumatic first birth and my baby was in neonatal care, which left me struggling with what I know now to be PTSD and perinatal anxiety. I didn’t understand what was happening, so tried to carry on as normal. I became pregnant again 14 months later by accident and really suffered. I believed I would die, writing letters to all my family and counting down the days until I would leave this world. I had awful anxiety, flashbacks and was terrified all the time. I didn’t trust healthcare professionals, hated going to the hospital for appointments and didn’t know who I could approach for help. I became a shell, empty and full of fear. I wish that my traumatic birth had been acknowledged and that I had been asked how I was coping in my next pregnancy. I wish that there had been counselling, more information around having a difficult birth. I wish I’d just been asked how I was, not physically but mentally. I wish there had been continuity of care so that I had someone I trusted care for me. It took me 15 years to get a correct diagnosis after the second birth and even then there was no specialist treatment support available.
Obsessive compulsive disorder
It’s thought to affect 2-4% of all new mothers, but – until recently – has received relatively little research attention. Some women develop obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) for the first time either during pregnancy or shortly afterwards, while others find it makes a pre-exisitng condition worse. This is partly down to the fact that pregnancy is a time of increased stress, with most women becoming concerned about protecting their baby. It is a time of major physical change, which can cause difficulties.
It’s not just down to hormones, however, and some fathers also experience postnatal OCD because of their feeling of responsibility to protect their new baby.
May, Birmingham
I was diagnosed with OCD following the birth of my first child. I was experiencing intrusive thoughts about my son coming to harm (and that I might actually be the one to harm him). I have suffered from recurrent depressive episodes throughout my life.This and the severe anxiety I was experiencing led me to spend a lot of my maternity leave sitting at home, waiting for something terrible to happen. My midwife noticed during my pregnancy that I was feeling anxious and referred me to a mental health clinic at the local women’s hospital. I continued to attend there after my pregnancy and, as things spiralled out of control, I was prescribed antidepressants and given a place in a group therapy session. I was admitted to hospital – in a dedicated mother and baby unit – for two months as things failed to improve.
The care I received was wonderful – I cannot fault it at all. I had never imagined that I might be suffering from OCD, and once I had my diagnosis and began cognitive behavioural therapy, the depressive episodes in the past began to make sense. I was treated with utter respect and kindness both as an outpatient and an inpatient, and have since been able to return to work. I feel very lucky that I had access to this service, and that it was so close to home. I know that this isn’t the case for most women.
• Some names have been changed.
• 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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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/19/pregnancy-mental-health-birth-childbirth
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| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8504d6096c578f0fc7ce7d508fc76a535a21c8839e560dc02698f1b31962aa47.json
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[
"Robin Mckie"
] | 2016-08-27T20:59:01 | null | 2016-07-09T19:54:26 |
With rates of human papilloma virus on the rise, it is vital to immunise males as well as females, researchers believe
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Give HPV vaccine to boys to protect against cancers, experts say
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www.theguardian.com
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Millions of young British men are being denied a vaccine that could protect them from throat cancers in later life. Scientists say the problem is becoming increasingly worrying as rates of human papilloma virus (HPV) – a common sexually transmitted infection and the prime cause of these cancers – are now rising exponentially.
Researchers want the government to include adolescent boys in the current vaccine programme that immunises girls aged 12 and 13 against HPV before they become sexually active. HPV in women is known to lead to cervical cancers. The vaccine, if extended to boys, would protect them in later life against HPV-related head and neck cancers.
“If we want to eradicate male throat cancers – which are soaring in numbers – we need to act speedily and that means giving them the HPV vaccine we now give to girls,” said Professor Mark Lawler of Queen’s University Belfast.
Health experts say increased levels of oral sex are in part responsible for the spread of HPV. “Smoking and alcohol add to risks, but the fact that couples are having more and more oral sex is the main factor,” said Peter Baker, campaign director of HPV Action.
We know it's effective. So why is there opposition to the HPV vaccine ? Read more
A vaccine to block HPV infections was developed a decade ago and from 2008 formed the basis of a programme to inoculate UK schoolgirls to protect them from cervical cancer later in life.
At present more than 3,000 women develop cervical cancer a year in the UK. Most other western nations have since introduced similar programmes.
“HPV is spread sexually. However, this vaccine will not work effectively if a person has already been infected by HPV,” said Baker. “That’s why it is given to girls when they are 12 or 13 – before they are sexually active.”
Tens of thousands of young women are now given the vaccine, although it is too early to say how cervical cancer rates are going to be affected, said virologist Professor Sheila Graham, of Glasgow University.
“However, rates of genital warts in women – which are also caused by HPV – are going down, so there is confidence the vaccine will work.”
However, the introduction of the HPV vaccine for women has come just as infection rates in men have started to soar, with cases of tonsil cancers and cancers of the base of the tongue – both caused by the virus – rising dramatically. Tonsil cancer cases have tripled in numbers since the 1990s, for example.
“Unfortunately, these cancers have very serious outcomes with dreadful morbidity,” added Graham.
Scientists say it would cost about £20m a year to extend the current HPV vaccine programme to boys.
“By contrast, it costs about £30m a year to treat males for genital warts while the costs of treating the rising numbers of throat cancers are even greater,” Lawler said. “So, in purely monetary terms, it makes sense to give boys the vaccine.”
This point is disputed by some health economists. They say the human papilloma virus will have virtually disappeared from sexually active UK women in a few decades, thanks to the vaccine now given to girls at school. As a result men will no longer pick up the virus when having oral sex with women. This effect is known as herd immunity.
But Professor Margaret Stanley, of Cambridge University, said the argument was flawed. “Relying on female-only vaccine programmes to remove HPV from the population is risky.
“In Denmark the take-up rate of the vaccine recently dropped from around 80% to 20% because of a scare story – which was quite untrue – suggesting the vaccine was spreading disease. We need protection for both sexes to be sure we eradicate HPV.”
In addition, reliance on a female-only vaccine programme would mean that gay men would never be provided with protection against HPV, she added.
This last point was crucial is persuading health officials in Australia to extend its school HPV vaccine programme to men in 2013. It is the only country to run a free HPV vaccine programme for both sexes.
The government’s joint committee on vaccination has been considering extending the HPV programme to boys for several years but is not due to give a ruling until 2017.
“Even if it gives approval then, we are unlikely to get the programme extended to boys until around 2020,” said Baker. “By then millions who could have been protected against throat cancers will have lost the chance to get the vaccine.”
Stanley was also emphatic the vaccine programme should be extended. “A great many health experts in this field are paying privately to have their sons vaccinated.
“It costs £160 for a double shot. I have had my grandson vaccinated. The nature of the problem is obvious.
“In any case, it is simply discriminatory not to give a vaccine to men when it could save their lives.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/09/vaccine-boys-cancer-men-hpv
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en
| 2016-07-09T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6cbdcce3b5bcd959630633094204a77613506cb6934792e61ea72097a2529dd7.json
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[
"Alison Flood"
] | 2016-08-26T13:04:12 | null | 2016-08-26T09:30:15 |
Abandoned Bookshop is seeking the family of a mystery author first published during the 1930s, in order to give them the royalties from new editions
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fpublisher-hunts-for-forgotten-detective-novelist-clifton-robbins.json
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Publisher hunts for forgotten detective novelist Clifton Robbins
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In a quest that calls for the detective skills of fictional sleuths from time past, a publisher has launched a search for the surviving relatives of a crime novelist whose novels have been out of print for almost 80 years.
Clifton Robbins published nine novels between 1931 and 1940, five of which featured London barrister-turned-detective Clay Harrison. Scott Pack, co-founder and publisher at Canelo’s imprint Abandoned Bookshop, first discovered Robbins in a secondhand bookshop nearly 20 years ago, and said he had “spent almost as long trying to track down the author or his family”.
Pack has just published the first two Clay Harrison novels, Dusty Death and The Man Without a Face, as ebooks, but says the publisher will keep aside royalties from the sale of the books in the hope that one of Robbins’s relatives comes forward to claim them. In the first, Harrison is investigating an apparent suicide in a London suburb and ends up on the trail of a drugs cartel. In the second, he and his clerk Henry witness a murder during a pageant at a stately home.
“His novels, although very much of their time, are wonderful crime capers with a detective, in Clay Harrison, every bit as compelling as Lord Peter Wimsey or Paul Temple. I am sure modern readers will take to him, and his sidekick, Henry,” said Pack.
Canelo co-founder Michael Bhaskar said that attempts to trace Robbins’s descendants had proved entirely fruitless so far. All the publisher knows is that the author appears to have been born in London in 1890, that he studied in Cambridge and that he worked as a journalist. None of his books were reprinted after 1940, and he published nothing new after that date. Some records suggest he died in 1944, others that he made it until 1964, but despite all of the publisher’s efforts, nothing else is known about the writer.
“It’s a complete mystery who he is,” said Bhaskar. “Scott’s been in archives, he’s looked through newspapers from the time searching for notices of his death, he’s spoken to people all around the country, put notices up, but there’s been nothing. The trail has gone cold. It’s a very unusual situation - usually when a book is in copyright, it’s known who owns it. We’re hoping that opening this up to the general public will help us find a lead.”
Canelo, a digital-only publisher, offers its authors a royalty starting at 50% of receipts. “Our royalties are more substantial than most … [they] will be there waiting if someone comes forward, and it will go on accruing if they don’t,” said Bhaskar. “As a publisher, we respect copyright and we want to do everything we can to find these people. Hopefully we’ll see someone come forward and say ‘this was my great-uncle’ or something.”
Bhaskar compared Robbins’s writing to that of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, “but with more of an edge”. (“‘Drugs?’ ‘Yes, pounds of them. Enough to kill hundreds, sir,’” opens Dusty Death in Abandoned Bookshop’s new edition, which also features an appeal for information about Robbins or his family.)
As for the author himself, “from his books, you get the sense that he might have been a bit of a character – there are a lot of dark shenanigans and drugs … he’s one of those people who exists on the fringes of the establishment, and flirts with the darker side as well,” said the publisher.
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/26/publisher-hunts-for-forgotten-detective-novelist-clifton-robbins
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2950bed9961817fe5d5531d9c917e654c92855d053b2d37af074440aa2c3ecdf.json
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[
"John Vidal"
] | 2016-08-28T14:49:38 | null | 2016-08-28T13:59:58 |
Report appears to show BASC in meltdown with senior staff suspended and resigning amid accusations of a ‘culture of fear’
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Britain's biggest shooting lobby riven by infighting, leak reveals
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Britain’s biggest and richest shooting organisation appears to be in meltdown, with senior staff suspended, members of its governing council resigning and an external investigation being conducted by an international law firm into vicious internal conflict.
According to documents sent to the League Against Cruel Sports and the Guardian, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, whose patron is the Duke of Edinburgh, has been riven for months by internal dissent, “accusations of institutional bullying” and “a culture of fear and intimidation”.
Anonymous letters are said to have been sent to staff, and police have been called in to the organisation’s head office near Chester to defuse a possible breach of the peace when things “threatened to get out of hand”.
Grouse shooting's rich, influential backers join forces to fire on critics Read more
A 65-page grievance investigation report prepared by London law firm Hill Dickinson at the request of Alan Jarrett, the BASC chair until he resigned in June, includes allegations that directors and trustees gave each other two verbal barrels. One senior BASC man is alleged to have said to another: “You will live to regret this;” another is accused of saying of a colleague that “the only thing that cunt wants is a bullet between the eyes;” and a third is said to have said: “I swear I will kill you, you cunt.” All statements were denied, according to the Hill Dickinson report.
BASC, headquartered on the site of an 11th-century mill recorded in the Domesday Book at Rossett, outside Wrexham, has a membership of 140,000 shooters and 110 staff. As Britain’s most powerful shooting lobby group, it boasts that it is the largest and best-resourced country sports organisation in the UK, with David Douglas-Home, the present Earl of Home and son of former Tory prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home, its president. There is no suggestion he was involved in any of the grievances.
BASC, which states its primary aim is to foster a “strong and unified voice for shooting”, declined to respond to questions about what precisely triggered the almighty bust-up and who exactly has resigned or been suspended.
But according to the conclusions of the independent investigation, four people at BASC “clearly breached fiduciary duty” by not cooperating with the investigation. Others “have not been acting in the best interests of BASC”, says the report. One man was found to have damaged the organisation by spreading rumours.
“Exactly who has resigned and who has been suspended is not altogether clear,” said one member of staff who asked not to be named. “It’s toxic. As a BASC employee I can tell you that people are too scared to speak out. They keep sending threatening letters to anyone who dares question them.”
The investigators admit astonishment at the goings-on in the charity. “We have however never had a situation ... where the respondents have declined to respond to the substance of the complaints and given their version of events. There has been clearly a culture of gossip, spreading rumours, and relying on hearsay,” said Hill Dickinson which puts the cost of the debacle to BASC at between £140,000 and £175,000.
In a published statement in June, the chair of the BASC governing council, Alan Jarrett, said he had resigned because “it is obvious to me that council remains dysfunctional and unable or unwilling to take action against those ... named in the Hill Dickinson investigation into complaints”.
Christopher Graffius, director of communications at BASC, said: “We are trying to sort it out. We are going through the proper procedures. I cannot understand why anyone would want to send you this stuff. BASC is following due process on internal issues and is unable to comment further, to protect employment rights and all involved.”
In an earlier statement, BASC said: “Certain internal employment issues are currently being investigated at BASC and, to protect people’s employment rights and ensure confidentiality, we are unable to say more at this time.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/28/basc-britain-shooting-lobby-infighting
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| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/829205c944e701f858bd9a5d53fa316eeab6bf00ab28a1c91b53e57f8fa74d11.json
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[
"Phillip Inman"
] | 2016-08-31T00:50:16 | null | 2016-08-30T23:01:14 |
Britons’ outlook for year more positive after better than expected data on UK jobs and high street sales helped lift gloom
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Consumer confidence rebounds as figures ease post-Brexit vote nerves
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British consumers have recovered some of their swagger after a run of better than expected economic figures calmed nerves following the Brexit vote.
A leading poll of consumers found that a panic in the aftermath of the EU referendum, causing the biggest fall in confidence for 21 years, was partially reversed in August.
Official figures showing strong high street sales in July and an increase in employment, coupled with a soaring stock market, helped bolster the outlook for the coming year, according to the GfK consumer confidence index.
A package of measures announced by the Bank of England earlier this month, including an interest rate cut to 0.25%, was widely seen as an important safety net for households and businesses, offsetting warnings of an impending recession and rising joblessness.
The GfK index climbed to -7.5, after slumping to -9.2 in July from -1.2 in June ahead of the referendum.
Joe Staton, a spokesman for GfK, said consumers had settled into a new “wait and see reality of a post-Brexit [vote], pre-exit UK”.
“The uptick in confidence is driven by good news from hard data, the combination of historic low interest rates matched with falling prices and high levels of employment,” he said.
Consumers said the outlook for the economy and their personal finances had improved, the survey reported.
Staton said it was significant that the major purchase index, which monitors the demand for cars and other expensive items, had leapt by nine points to +7, while the savings index fell by 16 points.
“We Brits are clearly determined to carry on shopping for today, rather than saving for tomorrow,” he said.
However, consumers remain nervous about the future, according to Bank data released on Tuesday, which showed a slowdown after previously strong growth in borrowing on credit cards and bank loans.
Net consumer credit went up by £1.2bn in July, according to the Bank, the smallest increase since August 2015 and well below analysts’ expectations of a rise of £1.7bn.
The rate of consumer credit growth also slowed for the first time since December 2014, rising by 10.1% year on year in July, compared with year-on-year growth of 10.3% in June.
Martin Beck, a senior economic adviser to the EY Item Club, said the long-term outlook for consumers was muted.
“August may see some recovery, in line with other economic indicators and aided by further declines in borrowing costs. But longer term, a less benign environment for consumers, reflecting a rise in unemployment and the squeeze on incomes from higher inflation, suggests that households’ appetite to borrow will stay relatively subdued.”
Credit card lending was broadly unchanged in July, but personal loans almost halved from £1.3bn to £700m, consistent with a slowdown in purchases of big-ticket items such as cars.
Scott Bowman, a UK economist at consultancy Capital Economics, said the Bank lending figures showed that the Brexit vote had dented households’ appetite for debt.
“The latest figures suggest households’ debt appetite has taken a bit of a hit post- referendum. But support from policymakers should prevent household borrowing from slowing too much,” he said.
The interest rate cut would prevent the UK economy from slipping into reverse, he said. “Accordingly, we think consumer spending will ensure GDP growth falls to around zero in the second half of this year, rather than turning significantly negative.”
Announcing the rate cut, the Bank’s governor, Mark Carney, said the economic outlook for Britain had changed markedly. But several economic indicators suggested that the UK economy has so far absorbed the shock of the referendum result. This month, the Office for National Statistics reported that retail sales volumes rose by 1.4% month on month and 5.9% year on year in July.
The good economic news continued when the ONS said the jobless benefit claimant count fell by 8,600 to 763,600 in July. Last week, the CBI distributive trades survey, a monthly healthcheck for retailers and wholesalers, found that they had enjoyed their best month in August for half a year as shoppers bagged summer clothing bargains.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/31/uk-consumer-confidence-rebounds-post-brexit-vote-figures
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c2c3143f9068e7e75ce2b23762f22557fe7822a6c0d5cf0c1d6b09e15a861323.json
|
|
[
"Agence France-Presse In Istanbul"
] | 2016-08-29T16:52:11 | null | 2016-08-29T15:53:27 |
US calls for de-escalation after Turkey shells more than a dozen targets in operation targeting Isis and YPG
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fturkey-threatens-more-strikes-on-syrian-kurdish-militia.json
|
en
| null |
Turkey threatens more strikes on Syrian Kurdish militia
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Turkey has said it will carry out more strikes on a Syrian Kurdish militia if it fails to retreat beyond the Euphrates river.
Turkish forces pressed on with a two-pronged operation inside Syria against Islamic State jihadis and the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), shelling more than a dozen targets.
Strikes against the YPG are hugely sensitive as the Kurdish group, seen by Ankara as a terror group, is allied with the US in the fight against Isis in Syria.
Ankara said it had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” in strikes on YPG positions on Sunday, a day after a Turkish soldier died in a rocket attack allegedly by the militia.
Washington said the clashes were “unacceptable” and urged an immediate de-escalation.
Turkey’s operation aims to push the YPG back across the Euphrates to prevent it from joining up a region east of the river that is already under its control with a Kurdish-held area to the west.
Last week the US vice-president, Joe Biden, said Washington had told the YPG to go back across the Euphrates or risk losing American support. But Ankara says it had seen no evidence of this.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said: “The YPG … needs to cross east of the Euphrates as soon as possible. So long as they don’t, they will be a target.
“In the places where it has moved, the YPG forces everyone out – including Kurds – who do not think like it does, and carries out ethnic cleansing.”
Cavusoglu said the ethnic composition of the area around the city of Manbij, west of the Euphrates, captured by the YPG from Isis this month, was largely Arab.
He said those who had lived in the area before fighting broke out should return rather than lose out to new Kurdish migrants.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 40 civilians were killed in Turkish shelling and airstrikes on Sunday. Ankara strongly rejected the claims.
“Allegations that … civilians were shot at or targeted do not reflect the truth,” the Turkish premier’s office said, adding that the army was taking “all necessary measures to prevent any harm to the civilian population”.
It said 13 villages had been “cleared of terrorist elements” and were now controlled by anti-regime Syrian fighters that Ankara refers to as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Last week Ankara-backed forces captured the Isis border stronghold of Jarabulus , facing seemingly little resistance from the jihadis who fled to bases further south.
A Pentagon spokesman said Washington was monitoring reports of airstrikes and clashes and found such fighting – in an area clear of Isis – “unacceptable and a source of deep concern”.
He said: “The United States was not involved in these activities, they were not coordinated with US forces, and we do not support them.” The spokesman called for steps to de-escalate the situation and said Washington had once again told the YPG to retreat east of the Euphrates. This had “largely occurred”, he added.
NTV television said that Turkish artillery had shelled 15 targets in northern Syria on Monday. It did not say which group was targeted.
The deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmuş, said one of the key aims of the operation was to prevent the creation of a corridor controlled by the YPG stretching from Iraq to the verge of the Mediterranean.
“If that happens, it means Syria has been divided,” NTV television quoted him as saying.
He said all relevant parties had been informed of Turkey’s operation in Syria, including the regime of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, who is a bitter enemy of Ankara.
But Kurtulmuş denied Turkey was at war. “We are not pursuing an aim of becoming a permanent power in Syria. Turkey is not an invader. Turkey is not entering a war.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/turkey-threatens-more-strikes-on-syrian-kurdish-militia
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3d3503ff823665dcbb29ee42e85e54f675758acdd2b92d1748332ebb62bc1cff.json
|
|
[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-29T18:50:09 | null | 2016-08-29T17:36:15 |
Police seeking man who threatened a member of staff and took money from counter at Nice’n’Naughty shop
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fman-in-red-dress-holds-up-liverpool-sex-shop-at-gunpoint.json
|
en
| null |
Man in red dress holds up Liverpool sex shop at gunpoint
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
A man who held up a sex shop at gunpoint while wearing a red dress and wig is being sought by police in Liverpool.
The man threatened a member of staff with what appeared to be a black handgun at the Nice’n’Naughty adult shop on Colquitt Street in the city centre at 5.40pm on Sunday. Merseyside police said he took money from the counter and left after a brief struggle.
The force has issued CCTV images of the man. DI Steve McGrath, of Liverpool CID, said: “We are keen to speak with the man pictured to assist us in our inquiries. The staff at the shop were thankfully unhurt but understandably distressed to be threatened with what had the appearance of a firearm, regardless of whether it was real or fake.”
He added: “I would appeal to anyone in the Colquitt Street area around 5.30pm who saw a man dressed as described and acting suspiciously to contact police at once. We have spoken with the owners and staff to offer reassurance but I want to assure all businesses that we will do everything possible to identify this offender and bring him to justice, and ensure Liverpool city centre is a safe place to live, work and visit.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/29/man-in-red-dress-holds-up-liverpool-sex-shop-at-gunpoint
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e8f65d2294c58d1b3a5e39e32356e639bf21202a3d3845e38bfe6eb0d72e7bde.json
|
|
[
"Larry Elliott"
] | 2016-08-30T02:55:15 | null | 2016-08-14T11:02:23 |
After weeks of conjecture, meaningful figures land this week. Is this another crash, or will life largely go on as before?
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F14%2Fconsumer-spending-is-key-to-avoiding-a-uk-recession.json
|
en
| null |
What cost Brexit? Soon we'll know
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
We’ve had all the surveys. There have been forecasts and predictions by the score. Every thinktank, every City analyst, every international body has a view about whether the UK economy is going to drop into recession following the EU referendum on 23 June. Some of them have sophisticated models of the economy to help them, but the truth is nobody really knows.
This week will see the first piece of hard evidence of how the economy has fared in the period after the Brexit vote. Thursday’s retail sales report from the Office for National Statistics will show what happened to spending in the shops and online in July.
The ONS data is eagerly awaited because the survey evidence has been so mixed. Reports from the CBI and the polling company GfK have been downbeat, but those from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and the Bank of England’s regional agents have been more positive. Interestingly, both the BRC and Threadneedle Street found that consumer behaviour seemed more affected by the weather than it was by the referendum.
If the UK is to steer clear of recession over the coming months, it is important for the tills to keep jangling in the high street. In part, that’s because consumer spending accounts for around two-thirds of national output. But it is also because one of the other big components of GDP – investment – is likely to be weak. By and large, businesses were in favour of remaining in the EU and it may take them some time to get over the shock of the result. The report from the Bank’s agents suggested that investment over the next year will now be lower than it would have been, although not dramatically so.
Companies will only consider investing if they think demand is going to be strong enough to warrant extra spending on buildings, plant, machinery and training. For those that export, the fall in the value of the pound should help, but the strength of consumer spending will be crucial for those that cater for the domestic UK market.
There are umpteen factors that affect consumer behaviour, but the two big ones are the state of the labour market and spending power once the mortgage or rent has been paid. Put simply, people will spend less if they think they are about to lose their jobs or if the value of their wages and salaries is being eroded by higher prices or the rising cost of housing. The recession of the 1990s was caused by a combination of these two effects: a doubling of interest rates to 15% led to much higher unemployment and a sharp reduction in disposable income. Consumer spending fell off a cliff.
The recession of 2008 to 2009 was different from those of the early 1980s or early 1990s. In those episodes, interest rates were raised aggressively to combat rising inflation. Last time round, the trouble was not excess consumer demand, it was a crisis in the financial sector, which led to a global credit crunch.
In terms of the hit to national output, the last recession was more severe than those of the early 1980s and early 1990s. As such, it was reasonable to assume that unemployment would rise even more sharply than it during those previous downturns.
But it didn’t. The labour market felt the strain, but the effects came through in different ways: through under-employment, an increase in self-employment and a sharp drop in productivity growth. People were prepared to accept pay cuts or freezes in order to hold on to their jobs. This was far from an ideal outcome, but better than mass unemployment. The problems that those parts of the UK that suffered de-industrialisation in the 1980s still faced is proof of how joblessness leaves deep and permanent scars.
The labour market looked pretty healthy before the referendum. In the three months ending in May, unemployment was at its lowest level since 2005, a year when the economy was booming ahead of the financial crisis.
The percentage of the population in work has not been higher since modern records began in 1971, but wage growth has remained stubbornly weak. Average earnings are rising at just over 2%, well down on the levels seen in the years leading up to the financial crisis. One explanation is that there is more slack in the labour market than the official figures suggest. Another is that the dice are loaded in favour of employers in pay negotiations, and that the part of the economy where trade unions have a significant presence – the public sector – has borne the brunt of austerity.
The Resolution Foundation provides a third explanation in its latest earnings outlook. Researcher Laura Gardiner says earnings growth for those people who stayed in the same job fell from 4% to 2% between 2008 and 2010 and has never recovered. By contrast, the average pay rise for those who change jobs has risen steadily since the economy started to recover and stood at 7.5% in 2015.
Gardiner says that previous experience would have led her to expect a “knock-on effect on pay settlements for the ‘static’ workforce, via mechanisms such as firms experiencing resignations raising the pay of those who remain for fear of losing them too.”
There has, though, been little sign of such effects. Gardiner speculates that the reason could be that job mobility is still below its peak, that firms don’t think the stayers need higher pay awards to command their continued loyalty, or that the stayers crave job security in what seems like a tentative recovery.
Brexit, she says, may further delay any take off in wage growth, and that seems a reasonable assumption. Even if unemployment holds steady at its current levels, it is hard to envisage average earnings rising at much more than their current level.
This won’t matter much in the short term, because with inflation so low spending power is increasing. The Bank of England’s decision to cut interest rates – and, just as importantly, signal that they will stay low for a prolonged period – means that households have the reassurance that the cost of housing is not going to shoot up.
The fall in the pound will lead to dearer imports and higher inflation. That will eat into real income growth and is likely to lead to slower consumer spending growth. The process, however, will probably not be immediate and it probably won’t be as dramatic as some fear. Policy stimulus and a willingness to accept low pay awards will support employment, but productivity and living standards will be squeezed. Life for most people will go on in much the same way as it has ever since the financial crisis.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/14/consumer-spending-is-key-to-avoiding-a-uk-recession
|
en
| 2016-08-14T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/20d11acab4da3264de23fd89fad5e7ceefdfd0f5235b2930237624a2c460ac74.json
|
|
[
"Rupak De Chowdhuri Reuters"
] | 2016-08-30T10:52:35 | null | 2016-08-30T05:25:26 |
Photographs from the Eyewitness series
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fpicture%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Feyewitness-kolkata-india.json
|
en
| null |
Eyewitness: Kolkata, India
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
| null |
https://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2016/aug/30/eyewitness-kolkata-india
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/49d4b93686ee0913ae56174247dab802c9136f991db2d97ae76f0a6910417438.json
|
|
[
"Eric Hilaire",
"Photograph",
"Paul Hilton For Wildaid",
"Photo",
"All Photographs Paul Hilton"
] | 2016-08-26T13:25:30 | null | 2015-03-11T00:00:00 |
The endangered pangolin is being eaten out of existence before many people have even heard of it. Photographer Paul Hilton followed poachers in Indonesia to raise awareness of this gentle animal’s plight
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fgallery%2F2015%2Fmar%2F16%2Fpangolins-worlds-most-illegally-traded-mammal-in-pictures.json
|
en
| null |
Pangolins: the world's most illegally traded mammal - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Often known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are the only mammal with scales. Their closest relatives are anteaters, armadillos and sloths. These two will end up on a dinner table in Gunagzhou, southern China, one of the areas of the world where their flesh is considered a delicacy. The illegal trade in pangolins is estimated to be worth about $19bn (£12.7bn) a year.
Photograph: Paul Hilton for WildAid
|
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2015/mar/16/pangolins-worlds-most-illegally-traded-mammal-in-pictures
|
en
| 2015-03-11T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1a131364106aae0ab943ee38c657f8c8204fe4bf5645314e525c14753d3f81fb.json
|
|
[
"Mark Lawson"
] | 2016-08-30T08:52:45 | null | 2016-08-30T07:00:24 |
John Osborne’s classic allegory The Entertainer is back. But the UK is now so fragmented that no modern playwright could pen a drama to sum up who we are
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fjohn-osborne-state-of-the-nation-plays-lost-britain.json
|
en
| null |
State-of-the-nation dramas can’t capture the lost state of Britain today
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Kenneth Branagh, whose career has often shadowed that of Laurence Olivier, will tonight take over one of his predecessor’s stand-out characters: Archie Rice, the failing music hall comic in John Osborne’s 1957 play, The Entertainer.
Angry young woman: female Jimmy Porter looks back at John Osborne Read more
Branagh’s revival shows that the part is still a catch for actors. But there is greater doubt over whether such a drama could – or should – be written today. The Entertainer is a prime example of the genre known as state-of-the-nation plays, a metaphor for the condition of the culture.
First seen on stage the year after Britain’s humiliation over the Suez canal, Archie Rice – touring seaside theatres often boastingly called the Empire or the Rex – is a surrogate for his country: crumpling, bankrupt, living on past glories. A clue that Osborne’s approach is metaphorical rather than journalistic is Archie being, unusually for his profession, a former public schoolboy. (Max Miller, one of the models for him, had left state school at the age of 12.)
As the Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro has shown, Hamlet and King Lear can be seen as state-of-the-nation plays, finding in far Denmark and ancient England subtle parallels for fears about invasion and the lottery of Royal succession that were convulsing the playwright’s country as he wrote.
However, the genre peaked in the decade or so after The Entertainer. Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On (1968), a satirical examination of changing postwar Britain, was set in a public school nudgingly called Albion. Soon afterwards came The National Health by Peter Nichols, set in an underfunded hospital.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer
Trevor Griffiths’ Comedians (1975) used a northern night school for aspiring standups as a setting for a stand-off between the forces of traditionalism and innovation. The play’s debate about the acceptability of jokes involving gender or race anticipated current worries.
The knack of the genre is to find a microcosm symbolic of wider goings-on. The newspaper industry, whose biggest titles have often claimed to speak for the nation, has been used as an allegory in a long print-run of scripts that includes Arnold Wesker’s The Journalists (1972), Howard Brenton and David Hare’s Pravda (1985), and Richard Bean’s phone-hacking drama, Great Britain (2014).
Although “Britain” is actually the surname of the protagonist, Bean’s title declared state-of-the-nation ambitions. By then, though, the form had become rare and problematic, mainly because ideas of nationhood were in such a state.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jonathan Pryce in Trevor Griffiths’ Comedians
The United Kingdom now contains such distinct constituent populations – each further subdivided – that a dramatist has to define the location before analysing it. The Entertainer reflects a period when the terms “English” and “British” were used almost interchangeably, at least in England. Although Osborne was Welsh on his father’s side, in The Entertainer it is “England” that has been ruined by Suez, even though the rest of the UK shared the consequences of post-colonial overreach.
The library shelf to which The Entertainer belongs now feels as rickety as the stages Archie Rice played
Such attitudes understandably encouraged devolution and independence movements, which resulted in, for instance, specific state-of-Scotland scripts, from John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil (1973) to Rona Munro’s eve-of-referendum The James Plays (2014). Similarly specific state-of-England plays were led by Hare’s Racing Demon (1990), its main characters bishops and clergy of the C of E, the country’s established but increasingly unworshipped church.
The risk of any theatrical time-piece is that it rapidly dates. But because Hare depicts a marginalisation of Anglicanism that has continued, the play has retained its relevance in revivals, further helped by the fact that the depicted religious tension between orthodoxy and reform apply just as strongly to political parties, the health system and broadcasting.
Some of the laments in The Entertainer – immigration, the venality of the Tories but ineffectuality of Labour, different rules for the poor and rich, and the idiocy of popular culture – also prove surprisingly enduring, suggesting that national dissatisfactions tend to take the same conservative-nostalgic form.
No modern playwright, though, could make an end-of-pier auditorium – and still less an NHS hospital or a school – a metaphor for wider Britain because the funding systems and policies across the UK are now so varied.
So, while The Entertainer may continue to be revived, especially around anniversaries of the Suez crisis, the library shelf to which it belongs now feels as rickety as the stages Archie Rice played. Any theatre hoping to sum up a country now would surely be drawn to the portmanteau form: a season of plays written by several authors variegated by gender, race, faith and (at the more far-thinking venues) even politics. But such a form – fragmented, contradictory, argumentative – does feels the right response to the state of the nation, or nations.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/30/john-osborne-state-of-the-nation-plays-lost-britain
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/dd14b28488493e2d6279e6eda380cffe0897bf210411b93f8540a0a9ff01a3a6.json
|
|
[
"Philip Obaji In Abuja"
] | 2016-08-30T10:52:28 | null | 2016-08-30T09:47:55 |
More than 100 cases of sexual assault are reported in just one state each month, yet only a handful of suspects are ever prosecuted
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fnigerian-rapists-escape-punishment-using-money-influence-and-marriage.json
|
en
| null |
Nigerian rapists escape punishment using money, influence - and marriage
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
When 14-year-old Amina got married last year, the occasion was solemn. Rather than the flamboyance that often characterises Nigerian nuptials this was a subdued affair, attended only by a few family members and close friends.
The bride and groom knew each other, but they had not been in a relationship. Rather Amina, not her real name, was marrying one of three men who had gang-raped her in her village when she was 13 years old.
Usaini Ja’afar and his accomplices had confessed to the crime under interrogation by the Hisbah board, a religious police force responsible for the enforcement of Sharia law in the northern Nigerian state of Kano. He pleaded for forgiveness and offered to marry Amina so as to escape punishment.
Amina’s father agreed and the men were allowed to walk free.
“I decided to temper justice with mercy,” said Amina’s father, explaining his decision not to press charges against the men who assaulted his daughter. “I allowed him to marry the girl because our consultations with our Malams [Islamic clerics] showed that there is nothing wrong about that.”
Salahuddeen Armayau, who heads the Hisbah board, said the wedding had taken place last year, adding that the board had approved of the union because “the boy said he was willing to clear his mess, and even the victim’s father gave his blessing”.
The marriage, which has been condemned by human rights activists, is just one example of how rapists are escaping justice in northern Nigeria’s commercial capital. In a state where more than 100 cases of rape are reported each month, only a handful suspects are ever prosecuted.
Authorities say the majority of rape allegations are settled before they ever reach court. Sometimes the accused get off by asking respected members of the community to testify on their behalf; sometimes they offer the family money in return for dropping the charges; sometimes they marry their victims.
Even if charges are pressed, it can be hard to prosecute rape offences.
“Some of the victims are shy of speaking publicly about their ordeal in the hands of their rapists for fear of being stigmatised,” said Agafi Kunduli, a prominent Nigerian human rights activist.
“The police cannot prosecute without witnesses and this is one major reason why many rapists walk free.”
Police officers have even been accused of demanding bribes from women before arresting rape suspects.
“Some victims do not trust the police,” said an officer in Abuja who once worked in Kano. “We cannot blame them because even policemen are also involved in this,” he said, referring to the fact that a number of Kano police officers have themselves been accused of rape.
In 2014, a police officer and four others were arrested for allegedly gang-raping a 17-year- old at gunpoint. Last year, another officer was alleged to have raped a seven-year-old girl at police quarters in Kano. Neither officer has yet been prosecuted.
Even in the case of rape and murder, offenders often avoid jail sentences. Murder victims include a 22-year-old pregnant woman who died after being gang-raped in her home early this year, and a newlywed woman who was killed by at least one rapist in Sha’iskawa village, north of Kano state. No one has yet been prosecuted in either case.
Until last year, the maximum sentence for rape in Kano was two years, with the option of paying a fine instead. After an outcry, the government introduced a minimum sentence of 14 years life sentence in late 2015.
There is no crime of rape under Sharia law, which runs parallel to the criminal justice system in Kano, but having sex outside of marriage carries a sentence of death by stoning if the defendant is married or 100 lashes if they are not. In practice, however, the sentence is seldom enforced.
Women’s rights activists have called on authorities to do more to protect women and girls from sexual violence, and to ensure that rapists face justice. They say marriage should not be used as a way to escape justice.
“We just have to keep encouraging victims to speak,” said Kunduli. “No rapist should be allowed to go scot-free, even when he decides to marry the victim.”
Human rights lawyer, Eno Edet, said that the legal requirements to proving sexual assault needed rethinking, as they did not take into account the particular sensitivities involved in reporting rape.
“Law makers should sit down, speak to victims, and put themselves in their shoes,” said Edet, who has worked with a number of women who have been sexually assaulted. “The police should take their work seriously because rape changes lives.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/nigerian-rapists-escape-punishment-using-money-influence-and-marriage
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0dd47409c38f8335262f24ffd214f9d364e332704700775cebd018f3e903e13d.json
|
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