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[
"Patrick Collinson"
] | 2016-08-28T14:59:28 | null | 2016-08-14T19:13:35 |
Rebalancing between generations needed to ease burden of spending pledges for older people in Britain, says thinktank
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F14%2Fuk-younger-generation-pensions-bill-report.json
|
en
| null |
Younger generation in UK face overwhelming pensions bill, says report
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Older people have saddled the younger generation with an excessive bill for state pensions while grabbing an ever-greater share of NHS spending, according to a report that calls for intergenerational rebalancing.
The report from the Intergenerational Foundation (IF) said spending promises on state and public sector pensions are “overwhelming young people’s prospects”.
The thinktank is calling on the prime minister, Theresa May, to abandon triple lock protection, which promises that the state pension will rise each year by whatever is highest out of inflation measured by the consumer price index, average earnings growth or 2.5%.
The former pensions minister Ros Altmann has called for the triple lock to be scrapped. The Department for Work and Pensions has declined to rule out a review of the “totemic” policy in the coming months.
The report estimates that workers are paying £2,846 a year each to cover the cost of paying state pensions. Public sector pension liabilities, for schemes such as retired civil servants, have risen by 12% to nearly £44,000 per worker, with total liabilities at £1.4tn, it added.
Angus Hanton, the co-founder of IF, said: “Public sector pensions represent one of the largest unfunded burdens for younger taxpayers, who will not retire at the same age, or on the same terms, while having to contribute more to their own pensions.
“Increasing retirement ages and moving to career average pensions will not be enough to stall the pension burden avalanche that is bearing down on the young. Auto-enrolment is an apparent success, except that it leaves young people paying twice, saving for their own pensions while also paying for the pensions of older generations through taxation.”
But charity Age UK said the vast majority of pensioners have contributed throughout their life to the state pension, which remains lower than the amount paid in many other western countries.
Caroline Abrahams, the charity director at Age UK, pointed out that 1.6 million older people live in poverty in the UK. “A strong pensions system that provides a decent quality of life in retirement is central to a civilised society and in the best interests of us all,” she said.
“In fact, you could say it is all the more important for young people to know they have a reasonable state pension to look forward to, given the uncertainty they face over jobs and housing, and given that the value of future private pensions will largely depend on investment growth, which is not guaranteed.”
IF, which compiles an annual index that attempts to measure the balance, or lack thereof, between generations, said younger people have lost out significantly since the the millennium, not just on pensions, but also on health and housing.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Andy Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, highlighted an intergenerational “faultine” in the UK economy.
“Since 2007, the real disposal income of pensioners has risen by almost 10%. Those over the age of 65 have harvested fully two-thirds of that £2.7tn increase in national wealth. By contrast, since 2007, working-age households with children have achieved income gains of only about 3%, while the incomes of those without children have fallen by 3%,” he said.
The IF index charts a widening disparity on healthcare spending, mirroring Britain’s ageing population. In 2000, the NHS carried out 0.8 treatments on the over 60s, compared with one treatment for those aged between 14 and 59. This has risen to 1.2 treatments for the over 60s, an increase of 50%.
“This provides a snapshot of the extent to which older people are disproportionately using NHS hospital services, compared to younger ones,” the report said.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/14/uk-younger-generation-pensions-bill-report
|
en
| 2016-08-14T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ec43e233dc776ba16c11b6d28e1f0b54ad8a84e901d9f604b832242a7901bd09.json
|
|
[
"Andrew Brown"
] | 2016-08-31T08:53:11 | null | 2016-08-31T07:00:30 |
Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fam-i-good-person-google.json
|
en
| null |
Am I a good person? You asked Google - here’s the answer
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The beginning of being a good person is the knowledge that you may not be, or that you have acted as a bad one would. After that it gets complicated.
The most obvious complication, perhaps, is that there is no agreement on what constitutes a good person. In fact there’s no agreement on whether we should even agree who a good person is. In some extreme forms of theoretical individualism, the only judge of whether you are good is you yourself: cheating on your taxes, being Donald Trump, writing comments on news sites – whatever’s right for you. In practice, however, no one ever really believes this. Even the sociopath cares for the opinion of others. It’s just that the tribute he wants from them is awe and devotion rather than love and respect.
But before we even get to the question of what would make a good person, there is a basic difficulty with our inquiry: if we ask ourselves, the answer we get will probably be tainted with lies. Even when we know we have done wrong, our minds set at work to scrub the knowledge out. A rather elegant study recently published in PNAS showed that we have difficulties even forming memories of the times we have behaved unethically, and if they ever are formed, they disintegrate faster than other ones. And this is a truth that was known long before lab science, by anyone who studies human nature, from St Augustine to Jane Austen.
This isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, but any project of self-knowledge has to take into account what a hard and largely unrewarding prospect it is. The alternatives, however, are worse. And it is always possible that at the end of our explorations we discover that we were not, after all, wholly intolerable and disgusting but just possibly good enough.
What would it mean to be good enough? Good enough at what?
Am I going to hell? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Andrew Brown Read more
Very roughly speaking there are three big ideas about how we could measure goodness: it could be a matter of following the right rules; it could be a matter of cultivating the right virtues; it might be something that was judged by success: did I leave the world a better place? All of these have been held to be self-evident in some cultures, and ludicrous in others. In practice, any judgment will have elements of all three, but one of them will be treated as predominant.
Our own culture now mostly takes consequentialism for granted. In that scheme, being a good person means that you had a good effect on the world. So you can answer the question by totting up all the good you did, balancing it against the bad things you have such a hard time remembering, and seeing how the register comes out. This is problematic for two reasons. The first is the element of luck. People with power seem more morally significant, and capable of being better, under these rules because they can change the world more. Conversely, the wholly powerless – babies, very old people, or severely disabled people – would seem morally insignificant because they can’t do anything. There’s also the problem of how you measure the good done in the world. Socrates thought that it was part of virtue to harm your enemies and other bad people. Jesus disagreed. Which scale do you want to measure yourself against?
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Book of Job, dating from the 11th century. Photograph: Alamy
Virtue ethics gets round the first objection (and in this light, Christianity is a kind of virtue ethics, since the command is to love God and neighbour before you follow any particular rules). What matters is not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game. The price you pay for this is tragedy. You have to acknowledge that really good people will lose and suffer horribly, or even devote their goodness to wicked causes. This seems to me a gain in realism rather than cheerfulness. In the Old Testament, Job was a good man and look what happened to him. Satan got to take away his health, his family and everything he owned.
Job, however, is not held up as a virtuous man, who cultivated courage, or temperance, or justice, so much as one who followed the rules. He did what God commanded, and what society expected. Leaving, if you like, God out of it, that’s how most people most of the time have always lived, and had to do. You do what’s expected and expect the reward of good behaviour. Then you die, and never realise that in a couple of hundred years, society will have moved on, and some of the things you took for granted are regarded as monstrous crimes.
The only certain thing about this question is that if you’ve never thought to ask it, the answer has to be “no”.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/31/am-i-good-person-google
|
en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7e172bb2873fcbdcdd5e47ebc711df75508b417cb1d23d70adc894a5aacdc336.json
|
|
[
"Claire Phipps"
] | 2016-08-29T02:51:42 | null | 2013-04-17T00:00:00 |
Bishop of London's claim during funeral address, like everything else about former PM, is subject of controversy
|
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2Freality-check%2F2013%2Fapr%2F17%2Fmargaret-thatcher-team-mr-whippy.json
|
en
| null |
Was Margaret Thatcher really part of team that invented Mr Whippy?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Very little connected to Margaret Thatcher's legacy comes without an argument.
The claim by the bishop of London in his funeral address that the former scientist was "part of the team that invented Mr Whippy ice-cream" is no exception.
The New Scientist reported in July 1983, as Thatcher was elected a fellow of the Royal Society body of scientists, that she had worked "developing emulsifiers for ice-creams for Joe Lyons from 1949-51".
The Washington Post, in the wake of her death last week, claimed she "helped invent ice-cream as we know it", adding that her efforts as part of the Lyons team to create a cheap, airy ice-cream were "one aspect of Margaret Thatcher's legacy we can all feel unequivocally good about".
It is, though, as the New Yorker has it, a "frozen-dessert origin myth".
Mr-Whippy-style soft-serve ice-cream originated in the US about a decade before Thatcher worked at J Lyons, it reports. When soft-serve arrived in the UK, J Lyons was indeed at the forefront – but it had teamed up with the US ice-cream behemoth Mister Softee and operated franchises under that name.
Thatcher was a food research scientist at J Lyons but, as a Royal Society article noted in May 2011, the details of her work there are sketchy. She reportedly worked on the quality of cake and pie fillings as well as ice-cream, and researched saponification (soap-making).
The article reports: "An oft-told anecdote in British left circles associates Thatcher with the invention of soft ice-cream, which added air, lowered quality and raised profits. Lyons certainly worked on this new product, but there is no firm evidence that Thatcher directly assisted in its invention."
Incidentally, Thatcher didn't invent the Cadbury Flake either.
|
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2013/apr/17/margaret-thatcher-team-mr-whippy
|
en
| 2013-04-17T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/368688e220889417b32ec11933463fdfc1bdcd877d9844ed0f3c17e925d87fff.json
|
|
[
"Jennifer Rankin"
] | 2016-08-30T06:55:16 | null | 2016-07-05T17:03:58 |
Measures to identify real ownership of companies and a law clamping down on offshore avoidance in the pipeline
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Fjul%2F05%2Feuropean-commission-announces-crackdown-on-corporate-tax-loopholes.json
|
en
| null |
European commission announces crackdown on corporate tax loopholes
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The EU executive has announced a further clampdown on offshore tax avoidance and shell companies in response to the Panama Papers.
The European commission wants tax authorities to be able to identify the real owners of offshore funds in an attempt to stop individuals and companies avoiding tax by hiding money and assets in opaque companies and offshore trusts.
Panama Papers: inside the Guardian's investigation into offshore secrets Read more
The EU executive has also promised a robust new law to clamp down on lawyers and tax advisers helping clients stash money in offshore islands, although details remain sketchy.
The EU recently agreed measures to compel big companies to disclose their earnings and tax bills after a public outcry about multinationals using legal loopholes to lower their taxes.
But following the leak of 11.5m files exposing the tax secrets of the global elite, EU officials extended their focus to tax havens.
“The recent leaks exposed loopholes that still allow tax evaders to hide funds offshore,” said Pierre Moscovici, the European commissioner in charge of tax policy, as he announced the plans on Tuesday. “These loopholes must be closed and our measures to stamp out tax abuse must be intensified.”
In future, national tax authorities will exchange information about individuals and companies behind a trust, which is already collected under EU anti-money laundering rules.
As well as strengthening transparency, the commission has promised to clamp down on lawyers and tax advisers who come up with elaborate tax avoidance schemes.
The French tax commissioner promised to publish “robust EU rules to hold tax advisers to account” before his mandate ends in 2019, with a public consultation to start “as soon as possible”. Existing international rules on tax advisers were rather unspecific, Moscovici said, adding that he hoped that EU law would be “an inspiration to our international partners”.
The plans are part of a broader package of measures to stop money laundering and terrorist financing. Other measures would give authorities more oversight over Bitcoin and equivalents in a bid to stop virtual currencies being used by terrorists and criminals.
Judith Sargentini, a Dutch Green member of the European parliament, welcomed the fact that the commission was “grasping the nettle and trying to strengthen EU anti-money laundering rules in response to the Panama Papers revelations”.
She said: “The commission has set out a number of crucial measures but the proposals lack the necessary enforcement measures to make sure the rules are implemented and have a deterrent effect.” The Panama Papers showed that “existing rules are being widely flouted … this shortcoming must be addressed”.
The MEP, who will be one of the parliament’s lead negotiators in redrafting the EU’s anti-money laundering law, called on the commission to publish a law targeted at professionals “facilitating tax dodging” as soon as possible.
Transparency campaigners gave the proposals a mixed review. “We’re pleased to see the commission recognises that transparency is vital to end the system of secrecy which helps allow the corrupt to hide their stolen cash,” said Laure Brillaud, at Transparency International’s EU office.
But the campaign group said major loopholes remained, because registration requirements will only apply to trustees based in EU member states.
“Once again the commission has stopped short of full transparency around trusts,” said Brillaud. “This is a bold step by the commission but it’s not the brave leap needed to end this system of secrecy which fuels impunity.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/05/european-commission-announces-crackdown-on-corporate-tax-loopholes
|
en
| 2016-07-05T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6fc896af5cfc0d736122b015579bdbdef527a29502c1d3aed92b2516dbf605a0.json
|
|
[
"Suzanne Mcgee"
] | 2016-08-28T14:55:00 | null | 2016-08-28T13:00:33 |
The former head of Sanford C Bernstein and Smith Barney is behind an investment platform, Ellevest, designed around women’s financial priorities
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2Fus-money-blog%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fsallie-krawcheck-wall-street-women-interview.json
|
en
| null |
Sallie Krawcheck on her Wall Street ascent - and how to 'attack the boys' club'
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Sallie Krawcheck’s first “eureka” moment came just before her 30th birthday.
She had walked away from her investment banking job, after realizing she had been relegated to working with the firm’s most lackluster senior dealmaker. She was at home with her two children when it hit.
“I should be an equity research analyst!”
Yahoo's Marissa Mayer is a reminder that CEO is still elusive for women Read more
It turned out to be the beginning of one of Wall Street’s storied careers, for one of the tiny handful of women to make it big. Accepting the only job offer she got, from Sanford C Bernstein, in 1995, Krawcheck was its chief executive by 2001. By 2002, Sandy Weill, chief executive of Citigroup, had lured her away to take over as head of Smith Barney.
In 2005, she was chief financial officer of Citigroup and tipped to become Wall Street’s first female CEO. Even her high-profile firing following the financial crisis didn’t derail her career: Krawcheck surfaced as the head of the newly merged Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s wealth management division, charged with overseeing the famed “thundering herd”.
Then Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, possibly threatened by her high profile, offered her a choice between departure or demotion. She chose to leave. The aftermath of that high-stakes Wall Street power struggle lead to her next great eureka moment.
“There are different ways to attack the boys’ club than from the inside,” she tells the Guardian.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sally Krawcheck became head of Smith Barney after quickly rising to CEO of Sanford C Bernstein. Photograph: AP
For years after her 2011 “resignation” from Bank of America, Krawcheck debated with herself. She knew being a woman had given her a fundamentally different perspective on the way that Merrill Lynch’s “herd” of largely male brokers and financial advisers did business, a view that had been shaped and refined by her years at Citigroup. “But I made all the arguments to myself,” she says. “There were plenty of firms out there already” that could opt to do business in a different way, to serve their clients – especially women – better. Except that they didn’t.
“I watched and watched,” Krawcheck says. The percentage of financial advisors at big Wall Street firms that were men remained unchanged, about 85%. And that matters, she says, because they didn’t pay much attention to the women among their clientele, even when they thought they did.
“We’d study this, when a male advisor met with a couple, and ask him how much time he thought he spent interacting with each member of them, and he’d say, ‘Oh, 55/45.’”
In fact, the evidence showed he had spent 90% of his time talking to the man, and not realized it. Unsurprisingly, Krawcheck found that when they were widowed, 70% of Merrill’s clients took their assets and left.
BMO Wealth Institute calculates that women control about 51% of all personal wealth in the US, or some $14tn, and projects that figure to hit $22tn by 2020. Investment firms cannot afford to disregard women or to lose them as clients. And yet they weren’t hiring women as advisers.
“One firm used a marine corps questionnaire for hiring,” Krawcheck recalls.
Since it wasn’t her job to force Wall Street into recognizing what it was doing wrong, she decided to try to start doing it the right way. The first step was the purchase in spring 2013 of 85 Broads, a financial membership and networking community established by alumnae of Goldman Sachs, which she promptly renamed Ellevate, to reflect its new mission: to provide more women with a way to become involved and engaged in their finances.
Earlier this year, she rolled out the next stage of her plan: an investment platform designed around women’s needs and priorities, not those of the men who run Wall Street and the firms where she cut her teeth.
“The whole icon of a bull that stands for Wall Street – you couldn’t come up with an image of a more male environment,” she says. “Women feel that the brand doesn’t speak to them.”
They also, she argues, speak a very different language when it comes to money, and have very different objectives, which men don’t grasp at all.
To the extent that the big Wall Street firms attempt to cater to women, they “pinkify” their offerings, Krawcheck says. Why, she asks, does a woman-friendly approach to investing “have to mean the junior version?
“Somehow there is this feeling that women require remedial financial education and so everything must be dumbed down. The reality is that we all need a lot more education, but guys just go ahead and invest anyway.”
‘Just friggin’ pay them more’
Krawcheck’s irritation and anger at this kind of systemic bias – and its impact on women, who end up so alienated by the Wall Street system and so daunted by the difficult of finding a firm or an independent adviser who will listen to them that they simply avoid seeking out the investment advice they need – creep through her trademark charm and humour.
When others suggest that it doesn’t make sense to focus on the investment gender gap because it’s more important to close the gender pay gap first, you can almost hear her grit her teeth before answering.
“That’s like saying you broke your arm and you broke your leg, but I’m not going to fix your broken arm because I can’t fix your broken leg yet!”
As far as the gender pay gap itself is concerned, she has no patience at all. “Just friggin’ pay them more” is Krawcheck’s message to companies that still compensate men and women inequitably. “Oh, and if you haven’t stopped to check whether you have a gender pay gap? You do.”
And now Krawcheck has created a place where those women, tired of testosterone-fueled investment jabber about relative price/earning ratios and the best mid-cap growth mutual fund to pick, can find an investment home.
Krawcheck’s Ellevest does not “pinkify” investing, she insists, but it does start the process in a very different way. Ellevest’s objective isn’t to design a portfolio that will beat the market or focus on the exciting investment concept of the day. Instead, the robo-adviser designs portfolios based on the user’s investment time horizon and risk tolerance.
“Women think in terms of goals-based investing,” she explains.
It’s slightly pricier than rivals (the fee is 0.5% of assets a year), but cheaper than working with a traditional financial adviser would be. Moreover, as Krawcheck points out, it’s a process designed to ensure that women actually feel that their portfolios and goals are in sync.
“Women value capital preservation many times more than men, but you won’t find that reflected” at Merrill Lynch or anywhere else in the industry, she argues.
It’s early days still. If the company thrives, however, there’s no downside: success will give women an alternative to the Merrill Lynches of the world and give the latter a much-overdue wakeup call, the kind that its leaders couldn’t or wouldn’t listen to from inside the walls.
Welcome to Wall Street’s girls’ club.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/business/us-money-blog/2016/aug/28/sallie-krawcheck-wall-street-women-interview
|
en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/341d9eb5521e095b7ad40c148ad2450d4a03b3201d9b053b00a90f25fd4b96b4.json
|
|
[
"Nell Frizzell"
] | 2016-08-29T12:59:37 | null | 2016-08-29T11:00:04 |
Soaring house prices mean many are sharing far beyond their 20s. But minus the milk theft and piles of washing-up, communal living can be a thing of joy
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fflatsharing-young-house-prices-homes-communal-living.json
|
en
| null |
Flatsharing is a pleasure wasted on the young
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Unpaid electricity bills, damp towels, sour milk, the gentle thud of music played to – unsuccessfully – cover the sound of a one-night stand; ugly posters, encrusted cereal bowls, suspicious tissues stuffed between the sofa cushions; overdue rent, arguments over butter, stolen jumpers, cheap teabags, piles of washing-up lurking – cold and onion-spotted – below a film of orange, oil-stained water; uninvited pets, pubes in the basin, bad bedding and unwashed windows. Shared housing in your 20s can be about as fun as an ulcer. As photogenic as a blister.
The combination of poor hygiene, low income, unpredictable employment, erratic schedules, underdeveloped taste, and self-interest, make student living and its older sibling, the 20s flatshare, a hit-and-miss affair. In many ways, the whole concept of a shared home is wasted on the young. But flatmates in later life? Now that is a different story.
What is it like to flat-share in your 40s, 50s and 60s? Read more
According to a survey published by Spareroom in 2015, the number of flatsharers aged 45-53 increased by 300% in the last five years; by 186% for those aged between 35 and 44. In most cases this is, of course, because none of us can actually afford to live alone in the place where we work. And as house prices soar, the prospect of buying an actual home seems about as remote and quickly fading as the northern lights.
Average rents across Britain rose by 10.5% last year. This, combined with stagnant wages, means we are getting ruthlessly and unrelentingly priced out of individual living. In fact, it may be more accurate to argue that the model of a single person, or couple, living in their own flat was but a momentary blip on the long march of history. We are now simply sliding back to the crowded houses recognised by our great-grandparents as the status quo.
We’re living for longer with our parents, we’re taking in lodgers, we’re renting out spare rooms, or inviting in friends, strangers and distant relatives to help cover the bills. Not to mention all those under- or unemployed workers who grind from hostel to unstable renting situation to short-term let.
For the lucky few of us, there is an upside to all this. Like many, I have spent my 30s living in shared flats – both in London and abroad – and can happily confirm that communal living in this decade is what houseshares were always supposed to be. There’s nice crockery, everyone cleans the toilet, you can buy slightly nicer orange juice; there’s someone to talk to when you get home from work, people go to bed early, there are books, the plants live for months at a time, you have coffee and nobody will smash your lamp if you go away for the weekend. Sure, I still steal my flatmates’ milk and borrow their clothes, but nobody actually writes their name on the milk bottles in felt tip pen any more and the jumpers are way nicer. My flatmates are considerate, kind, clean and quiet in a way I certainly wasn’t at 22. I have company, I have cereal bowls and I have a table to sit at and write this, none of which I had to buy myself.
The model of a single person, or couple, living in their own flat may prove to be a blip on the long march of history
Looking at my parents and their generation, it appears to me that living in a shared house during that post-divorce, post-children, post-full-time working haze of your 50s and 60s could surely be a welcome change as well as a financial necessity. Not only can you cover the bills without selling your record collection first, but you can also cook a proper meal, have someone to watch television with and maybe even ask you about your day. Of course it wouldn’t suit everyone – god help any lodger trying to work around their landlady’s ITV3 schedule – but surely the stigma and resentment of living in a shared house can be binned along with all those Pulp Fiction DVDs and Argos mugs, at the end of your 20s.
As for our 70s and 80s, I for one hope that if I make it that far I’ll be living in a communal house, surrounded by people I either know well or can’t smell through a shared wall. According to studies quoted by the Campaign to End Loneliness, isolation is as damaging to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. If that really is the case, then I choose to make like the iron-girdled grandmothers of yesteryear and see out my final decades in a cloud of friends and fag smoke.
Who knows, by then we might even have cracked the great mystery of whose turn it is to buy loo roll.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/29/flatsharing-young-house-prices-homes-communal-living
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3ce7158ae9af149ad41ce82c08a3f1d078da8c9053a8cb17b9bc245ebd01e9da.json
|
|
[
"Damian Carrington",
"John Harris",
"Jakub Krupa",
"Danny Dorling"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:34 | null | 2016-08-25T10:48:54 |
Majority of British public polled support protections at least as strong as current EU rules and many think farming subsidies should focus more on environmental protection
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fbritish-wildlife-needs-new-laws-to-protect-it-post-brexit-poll-shows.json
|
en
| null |
British public back strong new wildlife laws post-Brexit, YouGov poll shows
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
An overwhelming majority of the British public polled want new post-Brexit laws protecting wildlife and the countryside to be at least as strong as the EU rules currently in place, according to a opinion poll published on Thursday.
Many also want a new farming subsidy regime to emphasise environmental protection more than the EU’s existing Common Agricultural Policy and the vast majority want an EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, known to harm bees and other pollinators, to remain in place.
Much of the protection of British wildlife and the environment stems from EU’s birds and habitat directives, but these will have to be replaced when the UK leaves the bloc. Farming minister George Eustice campaigned for the UK to leave the EU and told the Guardian in May that these directives were “spirit crushing” and “would go”.
But the national poll, conducted by YouGov for Friends of the Earth, found that support for the same or better environmental protection was high even among those who voted to leave the EU.
Overall, 83% of people said Britain should pass new laws providing better (46%) or the same (37%) protection for wild areas and wildlife as current EU laws, with only 4% wanting lower protection. Of those who voted to leave, 46% wanted better protection, 39% the same and 6% less protection.
The poll found 88% of people wanted the neonicotinoid ban to stay in place after the UK leaves the EU, with just 5% wanting the ban to be scrapped. The National Farmers Union (NFU) opposes the ban, arguing that it blocks useful protection of oil seed rape crops, but the ministers recently rejected an NFU application for an “emergency” lifting of the ban.
EU farming subsidies are currently worth £3bn a year to UK farmers and include some schemes for improving the environment. The poll showed 57% of the public want more emphasis (25%) or the same emphasis (32%) on environmental protection. Only 7% of people wanted less emphasis on environmental protection, while 11% said there should be no subsidies at all.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said earlier in August that existing levels of farm subsidies will be guaranteed until 2020, when there will be a “transition to new domestic arrangements”. The National Trust, a major landowner, recently called for complete reform of the British farm subsidy system after Brexit, ending payments for simply owning land and only rewarding farmers who improve the environment and help wildlife. The NFU criticised the plan, saying food production is vital.
Samuel Lowe, at Friends of the Earth, said: “This [poll] sends a powerful message to the UK government that EU rules aimed at protecting our natural environment must be maintained or strengthened. The poll completely undermines those who argue that Brexit should lead to a watering down of the UK’s environmental commitments.”
He said: “The government must also stand up to pressure from the NFU and keep the EU ban on bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticides. This is what the science says, and the public demands.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/british-wildlife-needs-new-laws-to-protect-it-post-brexit-poll-shows
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e09b7f6fbed524da3d56c26aa05ca2202de125a112b38e31354e1241739bc6d4.json
|
|
[
"Steven Morris"
] | 2016-08-31T14:50:23 | null | 2016-08-31T13:13:19 |
David Shepherd must serve at least 14 years after being found guilty of 22 offences including rape
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fdorset-man-jailed-14-years-philippines-child-sex-abuse.json
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| null |
Dorset man jailed for life over Philippines child sex abuse
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
A pub landlord from Dorset who travelled to south-east Asia and filmed himself sexually abusing children as young as eight has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 14 years.
David Shepherd, 60, from Bridport, flew to the Philippines and recorded himself committing serious sexual offences, including rape, against children. He also paid for and directed live “shows” over the internet in which children as young as 17 months were sexually abused.
He was found with a large collection of films he had produced and tens of thousands of indecent images and videos of children that he had downloaded to his computer and hard drives.
Such was the extent of his offending that the case was split into a series of hearings at Dorchester crown court. He was convicted by a jury of 22 counts of sexual offences against children including rape, attempted rape, producing indecent movies of children and paying for sexual services of a child.
He admitted 10 counts of arranging and facilitating a child sex offence and possessing 20,207 indecent images and videos.
He will have to serve at least 14 years behind bars before being considered for parole.
The judge, Peter Johnson, told Shepherd on Wednesday: “You have no moral boundaries. You have shown no remorse. Your acts will haunt your victims for the rest of their days. Their innocence has been taken from them.
“You have a deeply engraved sexual interest in young children. You are unquestionably a danger. This life sentence reflects the public abhorrence for your shocking crimes.”
Shepherd was arrested in November 2015 at the Loders Arms pub near Bridport where he had been landlord for six months.
Police found that his offending went back to 2007. They discovered that he had abused four girls under 13 in person while in the Philippines. Back in the UK he had contacted other paedophiles in the Philippines and directed at least 76 live “sex shows” involving Filipino children.
The takeover: how police ended up running a paedophile site Read more
During police interviews Shepherd denied visiting and meeting the children in the Philippines, despite evidence including videos of him abusing children, travel tickets and financial records indicating otherwise.
DC David Baker, of Dorset police’s paedophile online investigation team, said: “This is the most horrific case of child abuse I have had any dealings with. David Shepherd is an individual who presents a serious risk and danger to young children. For many years he has used the internet to commission live sexual abuse which he recorded.
“Such was Shepherd’s arrogance of his offending, he pleaded not guilty despite the overwhelming visual evidence against him. This evidence showed harrowing images of very young children being abused and degraded in the most vile manner.”
An NSPCC spokesperson for south-west England said: “The youngsters in these pictures and films are the victims of unspeakable abuse and the harrowing experiences they endured for the sexual gratification of Shepherd and other offenders should not be underestimated.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/31/dorset-man-jailed-14-years-philippines-child-sex-abuse
|
en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8bad20e1c715464f74f3b73db30704000bbb355f435ae98f292e06aaff8d6131.json
|
|
[
"Photograph",
"Klaus Honal Getty Images Age Fotostock Rm",
"Imagebroker",
"Alamy Alamy",
"Nasteex Faarax Ap",
"Ben Curtis Ap",
"Mauricio Lima Afp Getty Images",
"Michael Bok",
"University Of Lund",
"Blickwinkel Alamy"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:55 | null | 2016-08-01T07:00:00 |
A collection of zoological wonders from July 2016
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2Fanimal-magic%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F01%2Fzoo-news-this-months-animal-antics-from-round-the-globe-in-pictures.json
|
en
| null |
Zoo news: this month’s animal antics from round the globe - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
6 July: Hot tits
Male blue tits vary their paternal care depending on the temperature. Ornithologists monitored nests, each one fitted with a data logger to record temperature changes. When the female is incubating her eggs she relies on her partner to bring her food. The researchers found males provisioning females around twice an hour, but their effort dropped off considerably when it got too hot. This may be because on hot days, the female can afford to make her own excursions without risking cooling of her eggs and the males can’t be bothered. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
|
https://www.theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/gallery/2016/aug/01/zoo-news-this-months-animal-antics-from-round-the-globe-in-pictures
|
en
| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/705c79871abafc5c667ec70d8a00f2d73aae2be06056785eb39d9c46c792ad41.json
|
|
[
"Jenny Judge"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:35 | null | 2016-07-28T20:07:07 |
Mark Zuckerberg says VR will capture human experiences like never before – but is it really superior to what writers and artists achieved centuries ago?
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Fjul%2F28%2Ffacebook-virtual-reality-oculus-rift-mark-zuckerberg-art.json
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en
| null |
Facebook's virtual reality just attempts what artists have been doing forever
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The future is here, and it is glorious – but it’s not real. Or so said Mark Zuckerberg in an interview published on Wednesday, wherein he sketched Facebook’s grand ambitions for virtual reality. If Zuckerberg’s billions have anything to do with it (and it’s reasonable to suppose that they will), headsets like the Oculus Rift will shape our future digital lives, transforming everything from movie-watching, to tennis matches, to sharing baby pictures with our friends into immersive, Technicolor 3D experiences.
6×9: A virtual experience of solitary confinement Read more
The technical challenges facing VR are formidable, as are the scientific ones: there are still gaping holes in our knowledge about how perception works, which have to be plugged before the tech becomes truly immersive (or at the very least, stops making us feel seasick).
But what about the philosophical challenges? What does it mean to “share experiences”? And if that’s what VR is trying to facilitate, is a “scientific understanding” of experience really the only thing developers need?
How ‘rich’ is virtual reality?
For Zuckerberg, video has ushered in a “golden age” of online communication. “Photos are richer than text; video, much richer than photos,” he explains. “But that’s not the end, right? I mean, it’s like this indefinite continuum of getting closer and closer to being able to capture what a person’s natural experience and thought is, and just being able to immediately capture that and design it however you want and share it with whomever you want.”
Enlisting the virtual as a way of navigating and coping with the real has long been an established part of human life
There’s lots to unpack here. Take the notion of “richness”. Is Zuckerberg correct in saying that text-based communications are less “rich” than video-based or 3D ones – and that VR would really get us “closer and closer” to capturing “natural experience”? And what does he mean by “rich”, anyway?
On one reading, “rich” just means something like “informationally dense”. Photographs and videos might well pack in more information per unit area, or time, than text does. But if we take “rich” to mean “apt for communicating personal experience” – the sense of the word that Zuckerberg seems to have in mind – the putative trajectory of increasing richness away from text and towards VR starts to look less clear.
How should ‘experience’ be represented?
Suppose that I want to convey to you what it’s like to walk a foggy trail in Big Sur. I hold up a picture of me walking and point vigorously at it. You look baffled. I show you a video; it’s a pretty boring video, you think. Exasperated, I eventually put you in a simulator, from which you emerge slightly windblown, able to hazard a guess (informed by your own imaginings of my experience, rather than my experience itself) as to what it was like for me to walk on the trail. But now imagine that instead of all that fuss, I had read to you the opening line of Geoffrey Hill’s ‘Genesis’: “Against the burly air I strode / crying the miracles of God”. Which is the best experience-expressing strategy here? At the very least, it’s not obvious.
Rembrandt's lessons for the selfie era: why we must learn to look again Read more
More information does not necessarily imply better communication. Brevity is the soul of wit, as another decent wordsmith had it; and being succinct is something that, paradoxically enough, takes time and effort. It took Emily Dickinson a lifetime of skill, careful observation and (it’s safe to assume) numerous attempts to alight upon “Hope is the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul”.
Which brings us to another of Zuckerberg’s assumptions: that experience itself can (and ought to) be grasped instantaneously.
Zuckerberg wants us to be able to “immediately capture” our experiences, in order to share them with others. But what if “capturing” your experience takes time, effort, and sustained attention?
Virtual reality has existed for 40,000 years
We tend to forget, amid the clamour surrounding the advent of VR, that society is already full of virtual reality experts: artists. The enlisting of the virtual as a way of navigating and coping with the real has been an established part of human life since at least 40,000 years BSV (Before Silicon Valley). And it’s worth noting that the core of artistic practice exists at stubborn odds with the notion of instantaneous capture.
The core of artistic practice exists at stubborn odds with the notion of instantaneous capture
The arts have always advocated the long look, or the close listen. You can’t paint a portrait on the basis of a single glance. And good art rewards repeated visits: we discover something new in our favourite paintings, songs and poems each time we encounter them. It’s no coincidence that artistic production, and also artistic appreciation, is meaningful in proportion as it demands (and rewards) our time.
If the developers of Oculus Rift were to see themselves as the latest innovators in a long history of artistic thought, rather than the ex nihilo disruptors of extant computing platforms, there’s no reason why they, too, couldn’t foster “richness” in this sense. Just as there’s nothing intrinsically ennobling about the arts – Hitler was, after all, an ardent music listener – there’s nothing fundamentally destructive about this latest development in virtual reality, either.
But nobody, not even Zuckerberg, has a clear idea of how we got from pokes to Pokéballs, not to mind where we’re going next. And with the right input at the development level – from scientists, from artists, and even from philosophers – tech’s take on virtual reality could deliver on its promise of enabling expressive digital communication.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/28/facebook-virtual-reality-oculus-rift-mark-zuckerberg-art
|
en
| 2016-07-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6e49c4c66095fab8178ea2ebdc35f6708162ebb956befa0f3e442c0ce2950055.json
|
|
[
"Karen Mcveigh"
] | 2016-08-31T00:50:18 | null | 2016-08-30T23:01:14 |
Call for German-style system to reduce ‘shocking’ discrimination, particularly against women in casual work in UK
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fmps-urge-better-job-protection-for-expectant-and-new-mothers.json
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| null |
MPs urge better job protection for expectant and new mothers
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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MPs are demanding urgent government action to tackle a “shocking and unacceptable” rise in workplace discrimination in the UK against expectant and new mothers over the last decade.
A report published by the women and equalities select committee called for Britain to put in place protection similar to that in Germany, where pregnant women can only be made redundant in certain circumstances.
The MPs also expressed concern for casual, agency and zero-hours workers, who they said were more likely to report risks to their health and safety, and more likely to leave their employer because of those risks not being resolved. The government should review the maternity and pregnancy rights of this group, they said.
The report, published on Wednesday, recommended individual risk assessments, to help reduce the number of women, 25%, who left their jobs because health and safety concerns regarding pregnancy and maternity were not met.
Workplace discrimination: when a pregnant pause becomes more long-term Read more
The committee chair, Maria Miller, said: “The arrival of a new baby puts family finances under extreme pressure yet, despite this, thousands of expectant and new mothers have no choice but to leave their work because of concerns about the safety of their child or pregnancy discrimination. Shockingly, this figure has almost doubled in the last decade, now standing at 54,000 each year.
“There are now record numbers of women in work in the UK. The economy will suffer unless employers modernise their workplace practices to ensure effective support and protection for expectant and new mums.”
She criticised the government’s response to its own findings in March, which showed that pregnancy discrimination, which is illegal, was worse now than in 2005.
“The government’s approach has lacked urgency and bite,” Miller said. “It needs to set out a detailed plan outlining the specific actions it will take to tackle this unacceptable level of discrimination. This work must be underpinned by concrete targets and changes to laws and protections to increase compliance by employers to improve women’s lives.”
Currently, 77% of pregnant women and new mothers experience discrimination at work, compared with 45% 10 years ago and 11% lost their jobs, according to the study by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission in March.
“We find it shocking that the number of new and expectant mothers feeling forced out of their job has nearly doubled in the past decade,” the report on Wednesday said. “It is difficult to accept the EHRC’s characterisation of this as solely an issue of misinterpretation of the law.”
The report recommended greater protections, including changes in the law, paid time off for antenatal appointments for all workers, and a reduction in the current fee of £1,200 to take a case to a tribunal, which discourages those discriminated against to seek justice.
In Germany, a dismissal ban prevents redundancies for pregnant employees except in rare cases, such as gross misconduct by the worker, or the employer getting into severe financial difficulties resulting in multiple job losses.
Pregnancy discrimination in the UK is present across all industries and income brackets, studies have found. However, differences do exist. For instance, those on low incomes tend to face discrimination when pregnant, while those on higher incomes tend to experience discrimination on their return to work.
A recent survey of Mumsnet users found a fifth of mothers had been asked at a job interview how they would manage childcare if they got the job.
Rosalind Bragg, the director of Maternity Action, who gave evidence to the committee, described the report as a roadmap to help tackle the issue.
Implementing its recommendations could “reverse the increase in discrimination” and move towards a situation where pregnancy discrimination was rare, she said.
Elizabeth Duff, a senior policy adviser for the National Childbirth Trust, said: “Women in the 21st century should never fear making the choice between having a career and a family. Action to address this mistreatment is long overdue.”
Catherine Rayner, of the Discrimination Law Association, told the committee the rise in the number of women in casual, agency and zero-hours work might be one reason for the doubling of discrimination.
“There are huge swaths of women, particularly in some of the caring industries, who are treated not as employees but as workers and therefore do not necessarily access the (same) rights.”
The birthrights organisation said poorer women were at the greatest risk of having a stillbirth, dying in childbirth or suffering complications.
“It is vital that the law protects these women – some of whom are in casual, agency work or on zero-hours contracts where they are unable to access protected time for vital antenatal appointments.
“If vulnerable women cannot attend antenatal appointments because of concerns about missing work, this may put them and their babies at serious risk.”
The EHRC’s deputy chair, Caroline Waters, said the commission was pleased the committee had adopted its recommendations to improve access to justice, “calling for an extension on the three-month time limit for tribunal claims, and tackling the barriers caused by high tribunal fees”.
‘It came as a complete shock’
Rebecca Raven was sacked from her £21,000-a-year job teaching art at a private school after telling the headmistress she wanted to take maternity leave.
An employment tribunal later ruled that Raven, who was represented by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, had been unfairly dismissed by Howell’s School, in Denbigh, north Wales. In 2012 the school was ordered to pay Raven £34,000 in compensation, but she said that, so far, she hasn’t seen a penny.
The 36-year-old from Wrexham, who now runs her own business, said: “There is discrimination law and equality law, but employers are getting away with flouting it.”
She recalls being told by one of the school trustees that they did not want to “waste money on maternity pay”.
“I was very clued up. I had been previously self-employed and I knew my rights. But I was made to feel like a criminal. It came as a complete shock. When you are pregnant, you are emotional anyway, but the whole thing put me under a lot of pressure.”
She welcomed the report’s findings, in particular the recommendation for a reduction in tribunal fees, which have risen in recent years.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/31/mps-urge-better-job-protection-for-expectant-and-new-mothers
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2f247a7dd82d1c3bb6c925c70d57de27f61d4e78d861bff52a565eb041c3d580.json
|
|
[
"Sonia Sodha"
] | 2016-08-26T13:07:18 | null | 2016-08-20T22:22:00 |
Switch to 24-hour underground at weekends will also benefit shift workers across capital’s £17bn night economy
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F20%2Fnight-tube-economic-boost-shift-workers.json
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| null |
London night tube: it’s not just clubbers who can expect to gain
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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With the launch of the night tube, London joins a growing group of cities across the globe that have all-night metro services, including New York, Berlin, Sydney and Barcelona. The promotional tube carriages decked out in glittering stars conjure up images of late-night revellers going home after a night out, but night-time users of public transport are a far more diverse group. Transport for London (TfL) estimates that more than half of night bus passengers are commuting to and from work.
Economists think the night tube could deliver a significant boost to London’s economy. Initially all-night trains will run only on Friday and Saturday nights on the Victoria and Central lines. The economic consultancy Volterra forecasts that the night tube will generate more than enough in extra fares to cover the costs of running it, create almost 2,000 extra permanent jobs and deliver £3.90 of wider economic benefit for every pound invested. Perhaps the pertinent question is why it has taken so long to get tube trains running overnight.
There will be knock-on boosts to other sectors. Supermarket chain Tesco has announced that it will trial 24-hour opening at seven of its stores near Central and Victoria line stations.
As high-profile chef Angela Hartnett has pointed out, the night tube will also mean easier lives for those already working in London’s night-time economy. For many in the hospitality industry, the reality of last orders at 11pm is not getting home until the early hours, after hours spent cleaning up and the long trek home on one or more night buses. But the night-time economy extends further than London’s buoyant hospitality industry. Business group London First estimates it is worth at least £17bn a year and employs more than 700,000 workers. The biggest employers are the transport, storage and health and care sectors.
TfL estimates the night service will shave 20 minutes off average journey times. It will also add extra capacity to a creaking network: the demand for night buses has gone up by 170% in the past 15 years, far in excess of TfL’s daytime services.
The benefits go beyond the economic: there will be cultural benefits from pubs and music venues able to open later (subject to licensing), and safety benefits thanks to reduced demand for illegal minicabs.
The picture is not entirely rosy, though. London’s night-time sectors rely heavily on low-paid workers, who struggle to afford to live in zones one and two. Some may have to continue to rely on night buses because they can’t afford the tube fares, or there’s no 24-hour station near them. And many work at night throughout the week, not just at the weekend when the night tube will be running.
Business groups have also cautioned that the night-time economy will need more than the night tube in order to thrive. Perhaps that’s why, following the example of Amsterdam, Sadiq Khan has pledged to create a “night mayor” to promote London’s night-time industry.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/20/night-tube-economic-boost-shift-workers
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en
| 2016-08-20T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1f97d888cd4799f978f869647bbf16ea70909255c5a46e5fa8cc82980269616d.json
|
|
[
"Justin Mccurry",
"Phillip Inman Economics Correspondent"
] | 2016-08-26T13:21:00 | null | 2016-08-26T04:35:32 |
Consumer prices fell by 0.5% in July – the biggest drop for more than three years – as markets await US hints on rate rise
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fjapans-deflationary-spiral-worsens-as-abenomics-falters.json
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en
| null |
Japan's deflationary spiral worsens as 'Abenomics' falters
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Japan’s consumer prices have dropped for the fifth month in a row in July dealing another blow to prime minister Shinzo Abe’s attempts to fight deflation and revive the world’s third-biggest economy.
Figures released on Friday showed a 0.5% drop in July – worse than a 0.4% fall in June - and marks the biggest annual fall in consumer prices for more than three years.
The disappointing data comes as Japan looks to the Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen, for signs that the America is preparing to increase interest rates amid more upbeat assessments for the US economy.
The monthly decline in Japan’s consumer prices was the biggest fall since March 2013, a month before the Bank of Japan (BoJ) began its massive monetary easing programme in an attempt to reach Abe’s so far elusive 2% inflation target.
Any indication from the Fed that it is preparing to raise rates could push the yen down and bring relief to Japanese exporters, whose overseas profits have been ravaged by the currency’s recent rise against the greenback and other major currencies.
The dollar stayed flat in the mid-100 yen range on Friday morning, having strengthened significantly against the Japanese currency after Abe was elected in late 2012 on a promise to rein in the yen and boost export earnings.
Comments by some Fed policymakers, including its vice chair, Stanley Fischer, have raised expectations that Yellen will signal a readiness to raise rates gradually in the near future when she addresses a meeting of the world’s central banks in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later on Friday.
Some analysts, however, believe Yellen will strike a more cautious note, saying only that rate hikes are possible.
“The anticipation is a bit too much. She is one of the more pragmatic and balanced speakers,” said Jennifer Vail, head of fixed income research at US Bank Wealth Management in Portland, Oregon. “I think she will leave the door open for a rate hike sometime this year, but I don’t see the Fed actually moving until December.”
The unwillingness among Japanese consumers and businesses to spend the country out of stagnation will reinforce criticism that Abe’s three-pronged approach to recovery – monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reform – known as Abenomics, has failed to lift the economy’s fortunes, despite a promising start.
Japan’s exports suffered their biggest monthly fall for seven years in July, and data on consumer spending due out next week are expected to add to disquiet over the economy.
The turmoil unleashed in international financial markets by Britain’s voted to leave the European Union in June prompted Abe to unveil a 28 trillion yen spending programme to spur growth.
The Brexit vote sparked a surge by the yen, which is seen as a safe haven for investors in times of global economic uncertainty. A strong yen, however, eats into profits earned overseas by Japanese exporters.
The BoJ is expected to come under pressure to introduce more stimulus measures in light of Friday’s figures, after recently deciding to leave its 80 trillion yen ($796 bn) annual bond-buying programme - a pillar of Abenomics - unchanged.
Its next two-day policy meeting begins on 21 September.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/26/japans-deflationary-spiral-worsens-as-abenomics-falters
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/737c2d602d1846d0b357b418180979652da9c8d2f99aa7a1716bffd61d099d68.json
|
|
[
"Anna Tims"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:54 | null | 2016-08-03T06:00:39 |
Thomas Cook offered to compensate me for my euro cash passport, but no mention has been made of my $US card
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F03%2Fsystem-errors-dog-my-efforts-to-withdraw-my-own-money.json
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en
| null |
System errors dog my efforts to withdraw my own money
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
On 3 May, I visited Thomas Cook in Southsea to close a euro cash passport card and a $US cash passport and claim the balance.
I was told this was not possible because there was a nationwide error on the Thomas Cook system and was asked to return two days later.
On 5 May, I returned to the same branch and the system was still not working. Two more visits came to nothing, including one when the system appeared to be working and initially money was paid to me. However, at the last minute, I was told there was an error in the system, a receipt could not be printed and I could not have my money.
I also tried to access my funds from an ATM but both cards were refused.
On 9 May, I phoned Thomas Cook. After 45 minutes of talking to advisers who were unable to help, I gave up. I then tried the global complaints department.
I was left on hold for about 15 minutes and, when I finally got through, the call came to nothing.
I then sent an email and, a month later, received a reply accepting that I had a valid complaint.
For my euro cash passport, I was offered a “preferential rate” of 1.2786, free of charge, plus a goodwill gesture of €50.
This I thought reasonable. However, no mention was made of the $US card. I emailed to say I would only consider an offer once it included my $US card. There has been no further response.
I have contacted the Financial Ombudsman, but wonder if the power of the press can speed up closing my two cards and receiving a goodwill gesture to cover the time spent sending emails and making phone calls trying to retrieve my own money! AG, Portsmouth
Beat the Brexit effect when buying your holiday money Read more
You wonder rightly. Fear of bad publicity can usually be relied upon to overcome corporate apathy.
The day after I contacted Thomas Cook both your accounts were cashed in at a preferential rate and you were promised £100 in goodwill.
Thomas Cook lays the blame squarely with its affiliate, Mastercard, and makes no mention of its own indifferent customer service. “Our card partner Mastercard has looked into this and made improvements to its internal process,” said a spokesperson enigmatically.
If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/03/system-errors-dog-my-efforts-to-withdraw-my-own-money
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en
| 2016-08-03T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/93cd8109ea22c2bc18c0b1143818b401c54b45092aac1a6dfef0a97ceeddffd7.json
|
|
[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-27T14:51:17 | null | 2016-08-27T14:16:52 |
Firefighters work at the scene of a blaze which resulted in the deaths of at least 16 migrant workers in Moscow, Russia on Saturday morning
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Ffirefighters-tackle-blaze-killed-16-migrant-workers-russia-video.json
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Firefighters tackle blaze which killed 16 migrant workers in Russia - video
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www.theguardian.com
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Firefighters work at the scene of a blaze which resulted in the deaths of at least 16 migrant workers in Moscow, Russia on Saturday morning. The workers are said to have been from Kyrgyzstan and were trapped in a room by the fire, which broke out on the fourth floor of a printing company. It is believed to have been started by a broken lamp.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/aug/27/firefighters-tackle-blaze-killed-16-migrant-workers-russia-video
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/82168e48ca0ad0db5eabfa3be0d75ff6816c452957f179d6cdfcc688f308bfdb.json
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[
"Molly Redden"
] | 2016-08-30T18:52:33 | null | 2016-08-30T18:14:04 |
Number and effectiveness of abortions by medication has plummeted since state limited use of mifepristone, with supporters citing health concerns
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fohio-abortion-pill-law-mifepristone-study.json
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Ohio abortion pill restriction had no clear safety benefits, study finds
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A 2011 Ohio abortion restriction which supporters touted as a health measure had no perceptible benefits for women’s safety and drastically reduced the number and effectiveness of abortions by medication, according to a new study published in PLOS Medicine.
The study scrutinized the impact of requirements for abortion providers to strictly adhere to the Food and Drug Administration’s labelling for mifepristone, commonly known as the abortion pill. In recent years, several conservative states have enacted such requirements, citing women’s safety.
But mainstream medical groups say the evidence shows the FDA guidelines are outdated and recommend abortion providers prescribe the pills according to the latest evidence. The old regimen is more costly, less effective, and more cumbersome for patients. And abortion rights advocates have argued that laws like Ohio’s are thinly veiled attempts to limit an easy method of abortion.
Ohio Planned Parenthood fights back at frontline of new conservative assault Read more
Lending some credence to their arguments, the new study found that the number of women having abortions by using medication cratered after the law took effect.
In 2010, the year before the law was in place, 22% of all abortions in Ohio were medication abortions. In the three years after, only 5% were. The number of women obtaining medication abortions was so small, in fact, that it took Dr Ushma Upadhyay, the researcher who conducted the study, three years after the law took effect to collect a representative sample size.
The law can also be associated with “more visits, more side-effects, and higher costs for women compared to before the law”, the study said. After the new rules took effect, women using the abortion pill were three times more likely to need additional treatment – another dose of medication or a surgical procedure – to end their pregnancies.
Women reported experiencing more side-effects of the drugs, notably nausea or vomiting. And because the outdated drug regimen calls for a higher dose of one of the drugs, medication abortion cost women $125 more, on average.
At the same time, the study found, Ohio’s anti-abortion law wasn’t associated with safer abortions. “There is no evidence that the change in law led to improved abortion outcomes,” the author wrote. “Indeed, our findings suggest the opposite.”
“Retrospectively, you can see these laws were ridiculous,” said Beverly Winikoff, the president of Gynuity Health Projects, which researches ways to make the abortion pill more widely available. “These laws were paraded around as somehow being better for women when there was no and still is no evidence that the things this law did would have made abortion safer.”
“No matter how hard you look, you can’t find any benefit for women,” she continued. “Not for their health, not for their pocketbook, not for their convenience, nothing.”
Upadhyay, a researcher with a University of California – San Francisco program, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, analyzed the medical charts of 2,783 women who obtained medication abortions at four Ohio abortion clinics between 2010 and 2014.
She expected to see some drop in the number of medication abortions, but not one this dramatic. “I wasn’t expecting a threefold increase in the proportion of women who required additional treatments,” said Upadhyay. “But there’s no other potential confounder that could have explained the difference.”
The FDA approved mifepristone for sale in 2000, with a label based on European prescribing practices from the 1980s. By the time the FDA approved the label, mainstream medical groups such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists already considered its instructions to be out of date. They encouraged abortion clinics to prescribe the pill off-label and according to the latest evidence, a practice which is legal and even encouraged by the FDA.
The modern prescribing guidelines called for a smaller dose of mifepristone and allowed women to take a second course of medication at home, saving them an extra trip to the doctor’s office. The evidence-based guidelines also allow the pill to be prescribed later in a pregnancy.
Ohio’s law is still in force, but early this year, its effects became moot. The FDA announced in March that it had approved a new label for the drug reflecting the modern prescribing guidelines. The change allowed Ohio abortion providers to resume prescribing the pill in the same way as before the law took effect.
The same was true for two other states, North Dakota and Texas, that had passed similar requirements. (Laws passed in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Arkansas are currently blocked in court.)
Some abortion patients have reported a preference for the abortion pill over the surgery because they feel the medication abortion is more private. Under the modern prescribing regimen, women can take their second doses of medication at home.
But Ohio’s law, said its critics, eliminated the benefits of the pill. Because a woman must take the second dose in the doctor’s office, the abortion is less private and potentially more unpleasant. One abortion provider reported that, after the law forced him to use the outdated regimen, some of his patients would begin bleeding not at home but in their cars as they left his office.
In Ohio, many abortion clinics stopped providing medication abortions once the law took effect, because the number of appointments required was so unwieldy. “It basically defeated the purpose of the medical abortion,” said Sue Postal, who formerly ran an abortion clinic in Toledo and stopped providing the pill due to the law.
In states pushing similar restrictions, abortion providers have threatened to stop providing the pill out of concern that the outdated regimen is not up to the standard of care.
Anti-abortion groups, in reaction to the study, repeated their assertions that the abortion pill is dangerous.
“A new study by abortion industry advocates released today should be met with the same skepticism we would give to tobacco industry findings that their products are ‘safe’,” said Clarke Forsythe, the senior counsel for Americans United for Life, which supports restrictions on medication abortions. (In the study, Upadhyay discloses the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation as a source of funding and states that the foundation had no role in executing the study.)
“Chemical abortions can be very dangerous for women, and it’s appropriate for state officials to protect women’s lives with life-affirming legislation,” Forsythe said. He cited 2,207 cases of severe adverse events linked to mifepristone that the FDA reported in 2011.
Those cases, though, made up a fraction of women who took the pill. The number comes from an FDA a survey of 1.52 million women who had taken mifepristone which found that only 0.04% of cases had complications requiring hospitalization – although subsequent studies have argued that the FDA used a method that undercounted the number of complications.
Winikoff pointed out that even though the Ohio law is moot today, it still prevents Ohio abortion providers from updating their practices to reflect new evidence until the FDA approves another label for mifepristone.
Her group, Gynuity, which provided much of the evidence that prompted the FDA to update its labelling earlier this year, is currently studying the effectiveness of prescribing the pill beyond 10 weeks, and mailing the pill to women living in remote areas.
Gynuity’s study on prescribing the pill up to 11 weeks should be released by the end of the year. “Stay tuned,” Winikoff said. “It’s going to be interesting.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/30/ohio-abortion-pill-law-mifepristone-study
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d37a260a84ab1a0207057385e081ad1c0abed5974b2653b4cd7d66ba0bc87eb0.json
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[
"Alex Hern"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:38 | null | 2016-08-22T07:42:57 |
As Google and Uber trial prototypes, the future of fully driverless cars and safer roads should come sooner than anyone thought – but they’re in no mood to rush
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If the age of self-driving cars is upon us, what's keeping them off the roads?
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Sitting in the passenger seat of Google’s self driving car is a less bizarre experience than sitting in the driving seat, but it’s still unsettling. In the streets of Mountain View, outside the headquarters of X (once Google X, in the post-Alphabet age it’s moved out of mum and dad’s house and dropped the prefix), I got the chance to do just that.
It’s partly unsettling because it’s hard not to feel a flicker of anxiety when you look over and notice that the person driving the car hasn’t got their hands on the wheel, even as you head towards a red light on a corner with a huge truck bearing down on you.
It’s partly because the software that drives the car isn’t exactly ready for production yet, so every now and again something weird happens – a jerky overtake, a slight hesitation to squeeze through into an adjacent lane, or, as happened once, the car declaring for no obvious reason that “a slight hiccup” had occurred and that it was going to pull over.
And it’s partly because the future has come a lot sooner than anyone really thought. Even if Google takes far longer to start selling cars than it thinks it will (and senior figures in X tell me that they’re confident something will hit the market before 2020), this technology is going to hit the real world somewhere soon, and it’s going to change everything.
Uber agrees. The taxi company on Thursday announced the latest phase of its own self-driving tests, putting its prototype cars on the roads of Pittsburgh for real riders to hail them for the first time. They aren’t quite self-driving – they still have a human driver for backup - but they’re the next step for the company’s drive to replace its “driver-partners” (Uber is notoriously reluctant to grant Uber drivers full employment rights) with a fully automated fleet.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A self-driving Ford Fusion hybrid car is test driven in Pittsburgh. Photograph: Jared Wickerham/AP
Until a month ago, though, you could be forgiven for thinking the self-driving revolution had already hit. Tesla Motors, the upstart electric car company headed by the charismatic serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, launched its heavily promoted “autopilot” feature to owners of its Model S cars in October 2015.
The feature was labelled a “public beta”, and users were warned to always keep their hands on the steering wheel; but those messages were counteracted by bluster from Musk, who declared in March that year that “We’re now almost able to travel all the way from San Francisco to Seattle without the driver touching any controls at all”. And, of course, the name Autopilot itself does little to suggest to the average user that the car does not, in fact, drive itself.
Those mixed messages led to tragedy in May, when a Tesla driver, Joshua Brown, died in a crash which happened while Autopilot was in charge of the car. As Tesla put it, the crash happened when “Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed” a tractor trailer crossing the highway in front of the car; the following day, it emerged that Brown may have been watching a movie as his car drove itself.
The problem of semantics
But the question of whether or not Brown had been paying attention to the road misses the more important point: he didn’t think he needed to. It’s a point Tesla itself tacitly admitted in China this week, when it changed the name of its Autopilot system from a phrase that loosely translates to “self-driving” to one that more closely resembles “driver assist”. “We want to highlight to non-English speaking consumers that Autopilot is a driver-assist function,” a Tesla spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tesla has highlighted that Autopilot is a ‘driver-assist’ function in the wake of May’s tragedy. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Other car companies have similar technology, but don’t quite sell it in the same way – or with the same bluster. Nissan rolled out its ProPilot technology in Japan this July, for instance, while BMW’s Driver Assistance systems in its 4 series can follow the car in front or warn the driver if they veer out of lane. ProPilot is sold as “autonomous driving” and “intelligent driving”. The semantics of naming are an important consideration for the companies: is their language encouraging drivers to think that their attention no longer needs to be focused on the road ahead?
But in X’s experience, modulating the tone of your advertising just isn’t enough. The very existence of almost-but-not-quite-perfect autonomous driving introduces whole new dangers. Nathaniel Fairfield, the principal engineer with X’s self-driving car team who “drove” me round Mountain View, said that people just don’t pay attention to the road, no matter what you tell them.
“You can tell them it’s a bundle of self-driving assist systems, but when the sucker drives them for the next three hours just dandy, they rely on their short term experience with it, and if it’s been doing well, they’ll just relax.
“You can say whatever you want to say, and people are going to interpret it however they interpret it, and at the end of the day you end up with whatever happens.”
X has had its own experience with that fact. In the early days of its self-driving car experiments, it loaned the modified Lexus SUVs which formed the basis of its first cars to employees, to use on their commutes. Even though they had been told to keep focused on the road, and their hands near the wheel – and even though they were in a car owned by their employer, and knew they were being monitored by some of the most all-pervasive telemetry you can put in a vehicle – they still rapidly ended up goofing off in the cars.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Test drivers use a Lexus SUV, built as a self-driving car, to map the area prior to a journey without a driver in control, in Phoenix, Arizona April 5, 2016. Photograph: Reuters
To a certain extent, that too can be approached as a simple technology problem. It’s not hard to imagine a driver assist function paired with simple sensors to ensure that the driver’s attention really is focused on the road, just as cars today emit ear-splitting alerts if you try to drive them without wearing your seatbelt. But that’s an engineering problem that Fairfield and the rest of the X team aren’t interested in tackling.
“You’re defining success as pissing off a customer enough that they have to perpetually [pay attention],” he said. “People don’t want to do that! People have better things to do with their time in cars these days” than sit and watch the road, and the ultimate goal of the self-driving car project is to let people actually do that.”
Andrew Chatham, another principal engineer who had acted as Fairfield’s bug tracker during the ride, jumped in: “I don’t think we’d even claim that it’s impossible to solve this problem, but it’s not the problem that we want to be working on.”
Of course, the counterpoint is that it’s still much better to be an irritated driver, being forced to keep your eyes on the road while a driver-assist system ensures that you don’t accidentally rear-end the car in front, than it is to be dead. The technology X has today is capable of feats beyond the wildest dreams of automotive safety technicians even a decade ago: even in my 10-minute jaunt round Mountain View, the car clocked a police cruiser by the lights on its roof, navigated a junction governed only by a stop sign, and carried out a tricky lane-merge in the queue for the lights. Those features could be saving lives today, rather than being held for an indeterminate future.
“That’s entirely true,” said Chatham, “and I don’t think we want to call off anyone from what they’re doing. Our intent is not to slag them [off], but the system we have built is aimed at full autonomy, and it is therefore much more complicated than a lot of these other systems. This is not the engineeringly efficient or cost-effective way to build something that just helps you stay in your lane.”
Fairfield, though, added a note of caution to the idea that such systems are even a desirable stepping stone. “To be clear, there’s a very complicated calculus: what are people willing to buy? How’s that going to work out? How much safety do you get? How much is that true safety, or how much is that just lulling people into a false sense of security?
“Or maybe you’re very clear about it, but how are they going to take that or internalise it or interpret it or how are they going to use it. And there’s a degree of uncertainty, and definitely room for people of good principal to have disagreements.”
‘It’s imperative that a human be behind the wheel’
Other disagreements pose more existential questions for the whole project, though. John Simpson, a US consumer watchdog, has been one of the loudest voices calling on Alphabet to clarify its policy on self-driving cars as a matter of urgency, and particularly to open up about how its system works, and doesn’t work. When one of its test vehicles swiped a bus in February, for instance, the company declined to release the telemetry from inside the car, even as it was otherwise very open about the circumstances of the accident.
Those questions bear down on Alphabet, but are ultimately a call for canny regulators to work with the company in negotiating rules for the new normal. A wild west where self-driving car companies set the rules of engagement – even in response to successful campaigning for openness – isn’t a desirable state of affairs for either the companies, who prefer to operate in a realm of certainty, nor drivers and passengers, who deserve more in the case of accidents than the obfuscatory statements released by Tesla in the wake of its first fatal crash.
Simpson is also vehemently against the idea of a fully automatic car, taking the exact opposite stance to X. “It’s imperative that a human be behind the wheel capable of taking control when necessary. Self-driving robot cars simply aren’t ready to safely manage too many routine traffic situations without human intervention,” he said. “What the disengagement reports show is that there are many everyday routine traffic situations with which the self-driving robot cars simply can’t cope.” Which is, in a way, obviously true, and why X’s car remains a research project rather than something you can buy today.
The question is how long that will remain true for. “The cars are really, really capable,” says Fairfield, “and the rate at which they’re getting better is actually increasing.”
When will it be good enough that they, at least, are happy with it hitting the streets without a fallback? “Not too long.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/22/google-x-self-driving-cars
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en
| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ea232ab1bea0f41dff8cd703c81fff9b5c861f8125521974291299faa980fdbe.json
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[
"Jeremy Hance"
] | 2016-08-31T06:52:39 | null | 2016-08-31T06:15:29 |
At best, just 2,500 Indochinese leopards survive today across Southeast Asia. Poachers, snares and deforestation have eradicated them from 93% of their historic habitat. Can conservationists stop the bleeding before its too late?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fradical-conservation%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fleopards-tigers-asia-snares-poaching-endangered-extinction.json
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Another big predator in Southeast Asia faces extinction
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www.theguardian.com
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Conservationists have long known that it’s hard – and in some cases – nearly impossible to survive as a tiger in Southeast Asia. Burning forests, high human populations and unflagging demand for tiger blood, tiger skin and crushed tiger bone means the big cats have to tread a daily gauntlet of snares, guns and desperate poachers. Now, conservationists are discovering, belatedly, that the same is largely true for leopards.
A sobering new study in Biological Conservation has found that the Indochinese leopard – a distinct subspecies – may be down to less than 1,000 individuals. And in the best-case scenario only 2,500 animals survive – less than the population of Farmsfield village in Nottinghamshire.
“Most people assume that leopards are still common everywhere, whereas everybody probably knows by now that tigers and lions have become very rare in the wild,” said co-author of the study, Jan Kamler with Panthera.
This has been in part due to the fact that leopards have been less rigorously studied than tigers and lions, but also the longtime assumption that leopards are more adaptable than many other big cats and therefore able to survive in more degraded habitats, on a wider variety of prey and closer to human dwellings. But even the leopard’s supposed plasticity has not been enough to save them across most of Southeast Asia.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A spotted leopard in Cambodia. Only 44-132 leopards are believed to survive in the country. Photograph: WWf/Panthera
Indochinese leopards (Panthera pardus delacouri) have lost 93% of their historic territory, according to the new survey. They are extinct in Singapore and are potentially extinct in Laos and Vietnam. Meanwhile, the few individuals hanging on in China are not expected to survive.
Kamler said the illegal wildlife trade is the biggest factor behind this massive decline.
“In particular, many areas have experienced epidemic levels of snaring, for wild meat and animal parts, which have devastated leopard populations in the region.”
Snares are rife across forests in Southeast Asia. Poachers may not be looking to kill a leopard – they may be after tigers for their body parts or small game for local consumption – but snares are indiscriminate killers. They will injure or kill any animal that stumbles on them them. Conservationists have warned for years that the forests of Southeast Asia are being emptied by overhunting for food, traditional medicine and the pet trade. And the Indochinese leopard is just one of thousands of victims in this local eradication of any living thing bigger than a mouse or a sparrow, a process that has come to be known as defaunation.
At the same time, Indochinese leopards have been hit hard by deforestation, prey declines and what seems to be an increasing trade in leopard parts, including skins and bones.
Although the Indochinese leopard was historically found in habitats across the region, the study found just two remaining strongholds for the subspecies: peninsular Malaysia and the Northern Tenasserim Forest Complex (spanning the border of Thailand and Myamnar). A third site was identified as a priority – the eastern plains region of Cambodia – due to the fact that the small population of leopards here have evolved some wild daring behaviors.
Cambodia’s banteng-hunting leopards
Leopards are known for tackling an increadly wide variety of prey, but much of that is small and medium-bodied. Not so of Cambodia’s leopards. An upcoming study by Susana Rostro-Garcia, a research student with Wildlife Research Conservation Unit (WildCRU), found that male leopards in Cambodia’s dray forests routinely tackled one of the biggest animals in the area: banteng. These distinctly-coloured wild cattle – themselves endangered – can weigh more than ten times the leopard at their heels.
Rosto-Garcia, who was also the lead author on the Indochinese leopard study, said that her research in Cambodia’s Eastern Plains is the “first study to show that the main prey of leopards was over 500 kg.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Banteng move across a camera trap in the dry forests of eastern Cambodia. Photograph: WildCRU
But Rosto-Garcia found that only big males, not smaller females, were killing banteng. And “even among the males there were large differences in diets, as some male leopards focused almost exclusively on preying on banteng, whereas other males did not consume banteng at all,” she said.
The results were particularly unexpected given the availability of small prey in the ecosystem, such as muntjac (small deer) and various species of monkeys.
“The tiger went extinct in this landscape over 10 years ago, so perhaps its absence allowed the leopard to expand its niche to include larger prey than usual,” Rosto-Garcia said.
The leopards of Cambodia are also the last population of Indochinese leopards that are uniformly spotted. Other populations sport a mix of spotted leopards and black, or melanistic, leopards.
Indeed, the largest remaining stronghold of Indochinese leopards in Southeast Asia is known for housing almost only melanistic leopards.
Malaysia’s black panthers
The black coat of melanistic leopards may have made them ‘perfect stalkers’ in the dimly-lit rainforests Reuben Clements
Not only does Peninsular Malaysia have the biggest population of Indochinese leopards left, but it is home to the largest population of black leopards on the planet. This fact may have helped perverse the population.
Their black coats make them “less sought after for their skins compared to spotted leopards,” said Reuben Clements, an Associate Professor with Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, who has studied leopards in the region for several years.
He also said the population may have hung on here due to “more forest” and the fact that the denser canopy of this rainforest could offer “additional habitat for leopards to utilize and to evade dangers on the ground.”
But why are the vast majority of leopards here melanistic?
“No one knows for sure,” said Clements. “Some suspect genetic drift. Others suspect the black coat of melanistic leopards may have made them ‘perfect stalkers’ in the dimly-lit rainforests, allowing them to compete with tigers for similar sized prey.”
As such, black leopards here may have found themselves with an evolutionary advantage.
Leopards in trouble everywhere
The Indochinese leopard survey comes close on the heels of a larger study that found that the world’s leopards have lost 75% of their range across their full territory, from South Africa to Java. The survey has resulted in the species being downlisted on the IUCN Red List from near threatened to vulnerable.
This means that of all the world’s big cats (those in the genus Panthera) only one, the jaguar, is not considered threatened with extinction – it remains listed as near threatened.
Conservationists, though, believe the situation can be turned around.
“If governments can get poaching and snaring under control, then leopards would have a promising future in the Southeast Asia,” said Kamler, who noted that there was still plenty of empty habitat available with sufficient prey.
“The question is whether there will be any leopards left in the region to make a comeback, depending on when the governments finally decide to get serious about reducing the poaching,” he added.
Tiger country? Scientists uncover wild surprises in tribal Bangladesh Read more
Combating snaring is particularly tricky, since many forests in the region are already blanketed with snares that would need to be removed – a difficult, but hardly impossible, task. If achieved, however, de-snaring would aid many other endangered species as well.
Kamler thinks that leopards may have been largely overwhelmed in conservation circles because they are smaller and were long-considered to be less threatened than the super-popular tigers.But he hopes these recent surveys serve as a wake-up call.
“Once people realize that leopards are becoming just as rare as the other big cats, hopefully there will be more interest in this species, and efforts to save them will increase,” said Kamler, who added that in his opinion the leopard was “the most beautiful of the large cats.”
Okay, so ,tigers might disagree. And so might jaguars and snow leopards. But it’s hard to dispute that leopards are still not getting the attention they deserve – or require. They may be more flexible than other big cats, but even this can only get them so far against the onslaught of butchery now occurring in Southeast Asia.
If the region wants to maintain leopards – or tigers for that matter, or bears, pangolins, hornbill, banteng, muntjacs, songbirds, monitor lizards, dholes, pretty much every species of turtle and some species that scientists have probably never even described – officials will finally have to get tough, really tough, on the wildlife trade.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2016/aug/31/leopards-tigers-asia-snares-poaching-endangered-extinction
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ebe9211491baeac1d39fbea4dd7e30ac6e8351d4194719487c20857edbc9543d.json
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[
"Melissa Davey"
] | 2016-08-30T08:50:11 | null | 2016-08-30T08:08:24 |
Two Conservative MPs and one Labour were invited to the South Pacific island by a former chief minister campaigning for it to regain political autonomy
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fbritish-mps-visit-norfolk-island-to-hear-protests-at-australian-takeover.json
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British MPs visit Norfolk Island to hear protests at Australian 'takeover'
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www.theguardian.com
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A group of British MPs has arrived on Norfolk Island at the invitation of a former chief minister of the island and the spokesman for the Norfolk Island People for Democracy, Andre Nobbs.
In November Nobbs travelled to London to make a presentation to the British parliament about the Australian government’s decision in May last year to revoke Norfolk Island’s autonomy.
'We're not Australian': Norfolk Islanders adjust to shock of takeover by mainland Read more
The island – roughly halfway between Australia and New Zealand – had been governed by its own legislative assembly since 1979, but that has now been abolished and replaced with a regional council. Australian law is now enforced on the island.
Nobbs told the British parliament why he and his organisation were opposed to the Australian government takeover, and called for an independent review of the decision.
Conservative MPs Andrew Rosindell and Daniel Kawczynski, Labour MP Paula Sherriff and parliamentary adviser Lloyd Mattingley agreed to visit the island on a “fact-finding mission” starting Tuesday, Nobbs told Guardian Australia.
Rosindell had visited the island in 2008, when Nobbs was chief minister, and the pair had maintained contact, Nobbs said.
“The British politicians will have an opportunity to collect information and facts from the people on the island about how they feel about the takeover and the situation, and they will also meet with Australian government representatives to make sure eevryone gets to have a say,” Nobbs said.
“Up until this point there has been no independent review of the process Canberra used to make this decision, and we believe the Australian government has made decisions using misleading information. We hope the politicians will put pressure on the Australian government and call for an independent review.”
48 hours on Norfolk Island: what to do, where to go Read more
Nobbs believes the takeover was unlawful and his group is exploring several routes to have it overturned, including appealing to the United Nations and gaining representation from the high profile human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC.
The island has a grim convict history and is famous as the final refuge of some of the Bounty mutineers, whose descendants are still a prominent presence among its population of barely 1,300.
On Tuesday Nobbs said the British MPs would be taken to a “tent embassy” of islanders who took over the parliamentary compound on the island in April and have remained there since.
“They will host a community dinner for the MPs,” Nobbs said.
Nobbs said the MPs would stay until Friday, and that the trip was being funded by Norfolk Islanders.
A spokesman for the minister for regional development, Fiona Nash, said the government was aware of the visiting MPs.
“The Australian administrator will of course meet with them as a matter of courtesy and we look forward to him being able to convey accurate information to the MPs,” he said.
“The Australian government is focused on delivering healthcare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, student assistance payments, pensions and social security to the island’s Australian citizens.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/30/british-mps-visit-norfolk-island-to-hear-protests-at-australian-takeover
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/75b76f34695a80f2a602af069887cbdecaf93d75699c13ac9eed81d232e1e5cb.json
|
|
[
"Michael White",
"Sadiq Khan",
"Rutger Bregman"
] | 2016-08-26T13:30:34 | null | 2016-08-26T06:12:37 |
Labour leader insists Brexit was not what he wanted as he and challenger trade barbs at ill-tempered hustings event in Glasgow
|
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fjeremy-corbyn-labour-snp-owen-smith-kezia-dugdale-scotland.json
|
en
| null |
Owen Smith accuses Jeremy Corbyn of lying over EU referendum vote
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has accused Jeremy Corbyn, his rival, of lying about his remain vote in June’s EU referendum during a fractious hustings event in Glasgow.
In his most direct attack yet, Smith – whose team have placed debate over the EU at the heart of their campaign – said: “I’m not even sure that Jeremy did vote ‘in’ in the EU referendum.”
Owen Smith may not beat Jeremy Corbyn, but he passed the Today test | Michael White Read more
He then told the crowded hall of party activists: “One reason why Jeremy can be so complacent and passive about this is that he’s happy about the result.”
During the ill-tempered exchange, Corbyn immediately hit back, accusing Smith of failing to act like a “grown-up” debater and saying: “I thought we’d agreed to stop using those kind of arguments.”
Accompanied by shouts and jeers from the audience, Corbyn insisted that he did vote to remain in the EU in June, concluding that “only the Daily Mail raised that question”.
Smith described Corbyn as “not bothered about the [referendum] result” and said he was prepared to fight Brexit and to oppose a vote to trigger article 50 in parliament. To applause, he added: “He didn’t fight hard last time round. I will.”
But Corbyn insisted the referendum result, although not the one he wanted, had to be respected. He said he would fight to protect workers’ rights and consumer rights and to ensure “there is an effective economic relationship with Europe when the Brexit negotiations are completed”.
He added: “We don’t want to become a low-wage tax haven bargain basement economy off the shores of Europe.”
We’ve gone backwards on your watch in Scotland Owen Smith to Jeremy Corbyn
At the only hustings event to take place north of the border, both candidates were asked how they planned to win Scotland back from the SNP, following Labour’s worst election result in more than a century last May, when it was beaten into third place in the Holyrood elections behind the Scottish Conservatives.
Smith, although still trailing Corbyn, has picked up proportionately more local party nominations north of the border, and described Scotland as a “radical, socialist country”.
He said: “People in Scotland cannot look to Labour in Westminster right now and anticipate us winning a general election, therefore we are ill serving the Scottish Labour party and we are ill serving the people of Scotland.
“We need to get back to being a radical and credible government-in-waiting, and we need to be much more powerful in attacking the Tories.”
Rounding on Corbyn, Smith told him: “We’ve gone backwards on your watch in Scotland.”
Scottish Labour admits that its membership has not risen in the way it has in England and Wales since Corbyn’s election as UK leader, which has also had no lasting impact on the party’s standing in the polls.
Corbyn said: “The SNP are very good at pretending to adopt the clothes of Labour.”
Earlier in the day, Corbyn ruled out any electoral alliance with the Scottish National party, while urging the leader of Scottish Labour, Kezia Dugdale, to recognise how much the UK party has changed under his leadership.
On Monday, Dugdale announced her support for Smith, saying: “I don’t think Jeremy can unite our party and lead us into government.”
Saying he was disappointed that Dugdale was not supporting his anti-austerity programme, Corbyn told the audience that Labour and the SNP “come from different traditions and have different goals”.
He added that the latest figures on the Scottish economy – which on Wednesday revealed a deficit of nearly £15bn following the crash in global oil prices – “raise a huge question mark over the central economic mission of the SNP”.
In his first visit to Scotland since the EU referendum, he told supporters: “A Labour government will demonstrate to the Scottish people that it is Labour that has the answers to the deep unfairness and inequality that currently stains this country.
“Labour’s goal has always been to shift the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people, and under this leadership we are committed to turning that into a reality with a Labour government.
“The SNP has a different purpose, which is to achieve independence. I respect their right to advance their cause and I also reserve the right to disagree with it and judge as the majority of people in Scotland did in 2014.”
The question of whether Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader, would entertain such an electoral pact dominated much of the debate before the 2015 general election, with the Tories using the image of Miliband poking out of the top pocket of the SNP’s Alex Salmond to attack Labour.
Scottish Labour’s leadership reacted furiously earlier this month when the shadow Scottish secretary, Dave Anderson, suggested the party might have to consider an arrangement with the SNP at the next Westminster election in order to form a government.
Jeremy Corbyn 'can help Labour rebuild in Scotland' Read more
Corbyn made his speech before attending a rally for hundreds of activists in central Glasgow, where he argued that the spirit of Red Clydeside – an era of political radicalism in Glasgow that lasted from the 1910s until the early 30s – was reflected in the “diversity and unity” of his leadership campaign.
During the speech, Corbyn was deliberate in stating his support for many policies already contained in the Scottish Labour manifesto, as well as pledging to stand by the party in its opposition to the SNP at Holyrood.
He also promised a new Scottish national bank if Labour came to power at Westminster, noting that small businesses in Scotland received just 8% of UK small business lending, compared with a third for London and the south-east.
Pressed about Dugdale’s support for Smith, Corbyn described her as “an excellent leader of the Scottish Labour party”, but urged her to reflect on the changes he had made to the party since his election.
“I am disappointed that she is not supporting my re-election. I hope to be re-elected as leader and we will continue working together in the future,” he said.
“But I hope she realises that we’re putting forward a clear anti-austerity programme. A year ago, the Labour party was not committed to an anti-austerity programme. A year ago, the Labour party in parliament was unfortunately abstaining on a £12bn cut to the welfare bill.
“We have changed and we’re now a party of half a million members, we’re now a party of redistribution, we’re not joining in any attacks on the principle behind the welfare state. That’s what has changed in Labour over the past year.”
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/25/jeremy-corbyn-labour-snp-owen-smith-kezia-dugdale-scotland
|
en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/bd074bf79c2bfec11dc90af5f42a2e8586b88fb26d736339c571e6a6017b72ba.json
|
|
[
"Guardian Sport"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:00 | null | 2016-08-23T09:29:48 |
Answer a simple question and you and some friends could be off to a luxury matchgoing experience at the Emirates Stadium
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fwin-a-15-seater-executive-box-for-arsenal-v-milan-legends-match.json
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en
| null |
Win a 15-seater executive box for Arsenal v Milan legends match
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The Guardian has teamed up with Arsenal Football Club to offer our readers the chance to win a 15-seater executive box for Arsenal Legends v Milan Glorie at Emirates Stadium on Saturday 3 September.
The star-studded encounter will see a host of football greats on show for both sides. Some of the legends that are due to play include Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg, Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Filippo Inzaghi and Cafu.
To be in with a chance to win, please answer the question below:
Tickets are now on general sale for this fixture and are priced from £20 adults and £10 concessions (16 and under and 65 and over) here.
The Legends match will be played in aid of The Arsenal Foundation. The money raised will be used to give more children in Islington, Jordan and Somalia a safe space to play. Visit www.arsenal.com/thearsenalfoundation for more information.
Terms and conditions
1. The competition is closed to employees of any company in the Guardian Media Group and any person whom, in the promoter’s reasonable opinion, should be excluded due to their involvement or connection with this promotion. Entrants must be 18 or over.
2. Answer the question correctly and complete your personal details on the online form and your details will be entered into a free prize draw. Only one entry per person.
3. Entries must be made personally. Entries made through agents/third parties are invalid. Entry indicates acceptance of terms and conditions.
4. The prize is a 15-seater executive to watch the Arsenal legends take on Milan Glorie at Emirates Stadium on 3 September. Travel to and from the venue is not included, nor is accommodation.
5. No purchase necessary to enter. Fill in the online application form with the necessary details, name and mobile number.
6. All entries must be received by midday on Tuesday 30 August 2016.
7. The winner will be notified before 10pm on Wednesday 31 August 2016 by telephone or email. Prize winners’ details can be obtained by writing to Guardian Sport at Guardian News & Media Limited, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK.
8. Stamped addressed envelope required.
9. Winners will be the first entry drawn at random from all qualifying entries by an independent judge on 30 August 2016. The judge’s decision is final.
10. There is no cash or other alternative to these prizes in whole or in part. Prize is not transferable in whole or in part. Prize is not for resale.
11. The winners will be required to participate in all required publicity, including any presentation ceremony.
12. The decision of the promoter in all matters is final and binding and no correspondence will be entered into.
13. The promoter is not responsible for any third party acts or omissions.
14. We cannot guarantee that the event will be free from disruptions, failings or cancellations. We are not liable for such disruptions, failings or cancellations unless they are caused by our negligence. Any requests for refunds or compensation arising from them should be sent to the operator of the event. We can provide you with their details on request.
15. The promoter reserves the right to cancel or amend this promotion due to events or circumstances arising beyond its control.
16. The prize is subject to the terms and conditions listed above.
17. GNM accepts no responsibility for any damage, loss, liabilities, injury or disappointment incurred or suffered by you as a result of entering the Competition or accepting the prize. GNM further disclaims liability for any injury or damage to your or any other person’s computer relating to or resulting from participation in or downloading any materials in connection with the Competition. Nothing shall exclude the liability of GNM for death or personal injury as a result of either party’s negligence.
18. GNM reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, this Competition with or without prior notice due to reasons outside its control.
19. The Competition will be governed by English law. Promoter: Guardian News & Media Limited, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/23/win-a-15-seater-executive-box-for-arsenal-v-milan-legends-match
|
en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d29f54aeeefb2545b45252d49ab5a9317dbb99fad52879a4b06f53ca3ef5f5cb.json
|
|
[
"Aaron Bower"
] | 2016-08-27T20:51:45 | null | 2016-08-27T19:08:46 |
Hull FC’s Marc Sneyd has said he was shocked when he heard he had been awarded the Lance Todd Trophy as the Challenge Cup final’s outstanding player
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fmark-sneyd-hull-fc-danny-houghton-challenge-cup-final-lance-todd-trophy.json
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en
| null |
Hull FC’s Marc Sneyd says Danny Houghton deserved Lance Todd Trophy
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Marc Sneyd said that he was stunned to win the 2016 Lance Todd Trophy as he would have chosen his team-mate Danny Houghton. The scrum-half was voted the final’s outstanding player after Hull FC overturned a 10-point deficit in the final quarter to secure a first victory at Wembley at the ninth attempt.
Houghton produced 52 tackles, including a decisive one with seconds left to deny Ben Currie and Warrington a certain victory.
Hull FC’s Jamie Shaul’s late try takes Challenge Cup away from Warrington Read more
“I was shocked when I heard it on the field,” said Sneyd. “I would have chosen Mint [Houghton]. I’m overwhelmed to get the recognition over guys like Mint.”
Sneyd was substituted during the first half of his previous appearance in the final, while playing for Castleford against Leeds in 2014, and he said the difference between the two experiences was immeasurable.
“I’m not the only one who has felt a loss here and the difference is out of this world,” he said. “I’ve just spent 45 minutes walking around and celebrating with the fans. Two years ago I was in the suites upstairs trying to down a bottle of wine as quickly as possible.”
Although Sneyd was quick to play down his own achievement, the Hull captain, Gareth Ellis, insisted the scrum-half was a deserving recipient of the award.
“Do not let this guy play his contribution down,” Ellis said. “His contributions were absolutely outstanding. His kicks at just the right time were vital, please don’t let him kid you or fool you into thinking he doesn’t deserve it. Some of the plays I saw him produce were just incredible.”
“It’s history-making,” said the Hull coach, Lee Radford. “There’s so many teams before us who haven’t achieved this and I feel privileged to be involved with this group that we’ve put together. They’re exceptional.”
The Warrington coach, Tony Smith, said: “It was a fantastic game to be a part of. This will go down as one of the better finals for many a year.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/mark-sneyd-hull-fc-danny-houghton-challenge-cup-final-lance-todd-trophy
|
en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ea5e28ba4fd5f462409f9dca96e04073d932f54ab458ca045726f873ee7a5a9b.json
|
|
[
"Damien Gayle"
] | 2016-08-28T18:49:54 | null | 2016-08-24T12:20:33 |
McKayla Bruynius, two, pronounced dead four days after incident at Newquay beach that also claimed her father Rudy’s life
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Ftoddler-swept-out-to-sea-parents-cornwall-dies-mckayla-bruynius-newquay-beach-father-rudy.json
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en
| null |
Toddler swept out to sea with parents in Cornwall dies
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A two-year-old girl rescued by lifeboat volunteers after she and her parents were swept from a Cornish beach and out to sea by huge waves on Friday has died in hospital.
McKayla Bruynius was pronounced dead at Bristol Children’s hospital on Tuesday night, after the incident which also claimed the life of her father, Rudy Bruynius. They are among seven people to have died over the weekend around Britain’s coasts.
The family, who are from Surrey, had been on holiday in Newquay when the incident happened. In a statement released by Devon and Cornwall police, McKayla’s mother gave her thanks to the emergency services, medical workers and members of the public, as she paid tribute to her loved ones.
“I am in disbelief at what has happened. I am so shocked at how quickly the sea condition changed on that day while we were enjoying a family time together in Cornwall,” Lisinda Bruynius said.
“I pray that others can learn from our tragedy as I do not wish for anybody to go through our grief.
“I would like to thank the RNLI, the staff at Royal Cornwall hospital, the staff from Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, the emergency services and all the members of public for their generous support and prayers they have given towards my family.
“I would especially like to thank the people of Cornwall for their messages of love and offers of help.
“I will never forget the close community spirit displayed towards us. Please respect our privacy at this really difficult time and allow my sons and I to try to come to terms with what has happened.”
The parents were with McKayla and their two sons on South Fistral beach when a large wave washed three of them into the sea, sparking a rescue operation involving RNLI lifeboats, a coastguard rescue team, the police, the air ambulance and the ambulance service.
According to Devon and Cornwall police Rudy and Lisinda Bruynius were rescued from the water by RNLI lifeguards, who attempted to resuscitate him before he was airlifted to Treliske hospital. McKayla was pulled from the sea by an RNLI lifeboat then flown to Derriford hospital.
The coastguard found the family’s two sons, who had managed to stay on the rocks where the family had been walking. They had sustained minor injuries and were taken by ambulance to Treliske.
Investigating officer DC Jarrod Yewen, from Newquay CID, said: “This is a tragic case for all those involved and our thoughts remain with the family at what is a deeply traumatic time for them.
“The deaths are not being investigated as suspicious therefore the police will now prepare a file for HM coroner and an inquest will be held in due course.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/24/toddler-swept-out-to-sea-parents-cornwall-dies-mckayla-bruynius-newquay-beach-father-rudy
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0f7808b3af84d7cabfd40224039d93d2aee4a8d9fea9e7b23f5ef0fc4bfe70ea.json
|
|
[
"Alan Travis"
] | 2016-08-26T13:30:31 | null | 2016-08-24T23:01:33 |
Action to date by social media companies to remove Isis propaganda and hate speech described as ‘drop in the ocean’
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http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fmps-facebook-twitter-youtube-extremism-isis.json
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en
| null |
MPs say Facebook, Twitter and YouTube 'consciously failing' to tackle extremism
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been accused by MPs of “consciously failing” to combat the use of their sites to promote terrorism and extremism.
Twitter suspends 235,000 accounts in six months for promoting terrorism Read more
A report by the Commons home affairs select committee says the social media networks have become the “vehicle of choice in spreading propaganda and the recruiting platforms for terrorism”.
The companies’ failure to tackle this threat had left some parts of the internet “ungoverned, unregulated and lawless”, said Keith Vaz, who chairs the committee. He demanded they worked much more closely with the police, to immediately shut down terrorist activity online.
It emerged last week that the authorities had struggled to get online posts by the convicted radical Islamist cleric Anjem Choudary taken down even after his arrest for inviting support for Islamic State.
The MPs’ inquiry into tackling radicalisation also recommends that the government’s Prevent programme should be rebranded as the Engage programme to remove its already “toxic” associations in the Muslim community.
The web companies reacted strongly to the combative tone of the MPs’ report. They insisted they took extremely seriously their role in combatting the spread of extremist material.
Google to point extremist searches towards anti-radicalisation websites Read more
Twitter announced last Friday that it had suspended 235,000 accounts for promoting terrorism in the six months since February. Facebook also insisted it dealt “swiftly and robustly” with reports of terrorist-related content. The US State Department and the French interior minister both praised Twitter for moving swiftly to try to get Isis off its platform.
But the MPs’ report says that the suspension of 350,000 Twitter accounts since mid-2015 and Google’s removal of 14m videos in 2014 relating to all kinds of abuse are “in reality a drop in the ocean”.
Vaz said: “We are engaged in a war for hearts and minds in the fight against terrorism. The modern front line is the internet. Its forums, message boards and social media platforms are the lifeblood of Daesh [the Arabic for Isis] and other terrorist groups.
“Huge corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter, with their billion-dollar incomes, are consciously failing to tackle this threat and passing the buck by hiding behind their supranational legal status, despite knowing that their sites are being used by the instigators of terror.”
Vaz said it was alarming the companies had teams of “only a few hundred” employees to monitor billions of social media accounts and that Twitter did not even proactively report extremist content to the law enforcement agencies.
The MPs want to see the UK government introduce measures that require the web companies to cooperate with the Metropolitan police’s specialist unit by promptly investigating hate speech sites and closing them down, or providing an explanation for why they have been left online. The Met unit should be upgraded to a round-the-clock “central hub” operation, MPs recommend.
The committee also wants to see the web companies publishing quarterly statistics showing how many sites and accounts they have taken down, and would like the success of the Internet Watch Foundation in tackling online child sexual abuse replicated in countering online extremism.
Responding to the report, the Home Office security minister, Ben Wallace, said it was vital everyone played their part in defeating extremism. “We are working closely with the internet companies and want to see a swifter, more automated approach to identification and removal of content from social media sites, not just in the UK but across the world,” he said.
Anti-Isis YouTube video aims to counter terror group’s social media campaigns Read more
Simon Milner, the director of policy at Facebook UK, said: “As I made clear in my evidence session, terrorists and the support of terrorist activity are not allowed on Facebook and we deal swiftly and robustly with reports of terrorism-related content.
“In the rare instances that we identify accounts or material as terrorist, we’ll also look for and remove relevant associated accounts and content. Online extremism can only be tackled with a strong partnership between policymakers, civil society, academia and companies.
YouTube said it took its role very seriously. “We remove content that incites violence, terminate accounts run by terrorist organisations and respond to legal requests to remove content that breaks UK law. We’ll continue to work with government and law enforcement authorities to explore what more can be done to tackle radicalisation,” it said.
|
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/25/mps-facebook-twitter-youtube-extremism-isis
|
en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/945b67af70b96d3bfb1db7ad30830ec41c9324c0ffdd6fd03e58b70b46d1f0bf.json
|
|
[
"Haroon Siddique"
] | 2016-08-31T10:50:20 | null | 2016-08-31T09:07:27 |
Leaked documents reveal proposals for industrial action as British Medical Association meets to decide next steps
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fjunior-doctors-monthly-five-day-strikes-bma.json
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en
| null |
Junior doctors 'push for monthly five-day strikes'
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Junior doctors are pushing for monthly five-day strikes to be held between now and the end of the year in an escalation of the dispute over their new contract, according to leaked documents.
Senior members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are meeting on Wednesday to decide what industrial action – if any – should take place after a compromise deal on the contract agreed with the government was rejected by its members last month.
The Mail reported that it had seen a 13-page document marked “confidential”, which states that the BMA’s junior doctors committee (JDC) is proposing a full withdrawal of labour between 8am and 5pm for five consecutive weekdays in September followed by further walkouts of the same duration in each of the remaining months of the year.
The BMA refused to comment on the specifics of the industrial action being considered but a source said “anything is up for discussion”.
Last month, the JDC chair, Ellen McCourt, wrote to members informing them that the committee was planning “a rolling programme of escalated industrial action beginning in early September”.
The decision will be ultimately taken by the BMA council, effectively the union’s board of directors, which usually has 34 voting members.
There have been five walkouts by junior doctors to date, the longest lasting for two consecutive days. The first all-out strike, including junior doctors working in emergency departments, took place in April. More than 100,000 operations and outpatient appointments have been cancelled as a result of all industrial action to date.
A breakthrough in the dispute appeared to have occurred in May, when the JDC and health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, agreed a revised contract. However, almost six in 10 junior doctors – all doctors below consultant level – and medical students (58%) who belong to the British Medical Association refused to accept the compromise deal, with only 42% endorsing it.
About 37,000 BMA members, or 68% of the 54,000 trainee doctors and final and penultimate-year medical students who were eligible to vote, took part in the ballot.
After the vote, the JDC chair, Dr Johann Malawana, who had recommended the revised terms and conditions as the best settlement junior doctors could get, resigned from his position. He was replaced by McCourt.
A BMA spokeswoman said: “Junior doctors have been clear in their rejection of Jeremy Hunt’s imposed contract. It should come as no surprise that BMA council are discussing the issue of further industrial action. But at this stage, no decisions have been made.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/31/junior-doctors-monthly-five-day-strikes-bma
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/854aacbc5bacf5b349b8c43633e326df8fe170b50f043f86711c97e0a0f0e18b.json
|
|
[
"Rowena Mason"
] | 2016-08-31T02:52:19 | null | 2016-07-21T20:50:26 |
French president lays out ‘the most crucial point’ in Brexit negotiations as British prime minister visits Paris
|
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Fjul%2F21%2Fmay-gets-hollande-ultimatum-free-trade-depends-on-free-movement.json
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en
| null |
May gets Hollande ultimatum: free trade depends on free movement
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Theresa May was warned by the French president, François Hollande, at their first meeting in Paris that the UK cannot expect access to the single market if it wants to put immigration controls on EU citizens.
At a joint press conference in the Élysée Palace, Hollande made it clear that the new British prime minister was facing a choice about whether to accept free movement of people in return for free trade.
Theresa May will soon have to decide which Brexit to take | Martin Kettle Read more
Standing next to May and speaking in French with an official interpreter, he said: “It’s the most crucial point. That’s the point that will be the subject of the negotiation.
“The UK today has access to the single market because it respects the four freedoms. If it wishes to remain within the single market it is its decision to know how far and how it will have to abide by the four freedoms.
“None can be separated from the other. There cannot be freedom of movement of goods, free movement of capital, free movement of services if there isn’t a free movement of people … It will be a choice facing the UK – remain in the single market and then assume the free movement that goes with it or to have another status.”
Hollande’s comments suggest it will be difficult for the UK to fulfil the desire of Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and other prominent leave figures during the referendum campaign, who favoured access to the single market while imposing limits on immigration.
The French president offered more support over May’s decision to wait until next year before triggering article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which formally kicks off the two-year process of the UK leaving the EU.
Earlier in Dublin, Hollande had demanded an explanation for the delay, saying: “We understood it would be September, then October and then December. Justifications will have to be given.”
However, he appeared to soften his language after the bilateral talks with May, saying he “understood the government that has just been formed needs this time”.
Why Theresa May should beware Angela Merkel’s honeyed words | Matt Qvortrup Read more
He went on: “But let me repeat, the sooner the better in the common interests of Europe … because uncertainty is the greatest danger. When economic players doubt the conditions under which the UK will leave and the relationship that will be maintained, there can be risks for stability of the European economy and therefore for jobs.”
The two leaders found most consensus on the issue of maintaining the existing Le Touquet agreement that means UK border checks are conducted in Calais in an attempt to control the flow of refugees and migrants across the channel.
During the EU referendum campaign, May, David Cameron and a French government minister all suggested this could be in jeopardy and the border might move to the UK if there was a vote for Brexit. These claims were dismissed by leave campaigners as “project fear”.
On Thursday, May and Hollande said they were completely committed to maintaining the Calais border.
May said: “We have discussed the Le Touquet agreement, and President Hollande and indeed interior minister [Bernard] Cazeneuve have both been very clear from their point of view that they wish the Le Touquet agreement to stay. I want the Le Touquet agreement to stay.
“I know there are those who are calling for it to go. There are those within France who are calling for it to go … Le Touquet is of benefit I believe to both the UK and France and we are both very clear, Britain now having taken the decision to leave the EU, Le Touquet agreement should stay.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A camp for migrants and refugees in Calais. May and Hollande are in agreement that the border between France and the UK will remain in the French port Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
Hollande became the first EU leader to guarantee that British people living in France would be allowed to stay in his country once the UK’s exit negotiations conclude.
“There is no doubt that the French people who reside in the UK will be able to continue to work there and that the British people in France will be able to continue to work there and spend as much time as they wish,” he said.
May has held off making a promise guaranteeing the right to stay of all EU citizens in the UK until she gets pledges from other nations that the rights of Britons will be preserved.
“I expect to be able to do so, and the only situation in which that wouldn’t be possible is if British citizens’ rights in European member states were not being protected,” she said.
May arrived in Paris after her visit to Berlin for similar talks with Angela Merkel. The German chancellor struck a sympathetic note about it being right and necessary for Britain to take its time with preparations for triggering article 50. Unlike Hollande, Merkel did not rule out a deal that combines some level of access to the single market with controls on immigration.
In the coming months, May is expected to visit more EU leaders as she lays the foundations for negotiations on Brexit, even though Brussels has banned formal and informal talks until article 50 is activated.
Cameron used his final meeting with EU leaders in Brussels earlier this month to warn that the British public would be unwilling to accept any deal that did not include limits on the free movement of people.
Brexit could force multibillion-pound projects to be scrapped, says NAO chief Read more
But there are concerns among other member states that ceding ground to Britain on the issue of immigration controls – which became a central theme of the referendum campaign – would strengthen the hand of anti-immigrant parties in other countries. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far right Front National, was jubilant after the Brexit vote, calling it the most important moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
May has handed the tough task of negotiating the details of the EU departure to David Davis, who will run Whitehall’s new Brexit ministry, while two more Brexiters, Liam Fox and Johnson, have been put in charge of trade and foreign affairs, both key departments as the practical challenges of negotiating an exit emerge.
Brexit campaigners appeared to suggest during the hard-fought referendum campaign that Britain would be able to maintain tariff-free access to EU markets while also “taking back control” of migration flows, but refused to identify what specific type of relationship they had in mind.
Cameron fought hard for the right to control migration during his renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the rest of the EU last year and won some changes, including the right to gradually phase in benefits for new arrivals from other member states. But that deal lapsed when the public voted to leave and the rest of the EU is now keen to hear what Britain’s demands will be for the article 50 process, which could take up to two years and which all countries must be willing to sign up to.
May was given a military welcome in Paris for the talks, which lasted around an hour. After the press conference, May and Hollande attended a working dinner where the leaders were served lobster salad, veal with spinach, vanilla mousse with strawberries and cheese.
• This article was amended on 22 July 2016. An earlier version referred to an “official translator” where “official interpreter” was meant.
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/21/may-gets-hollande-ultimatum-free-trade-depends-on-free-movement
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en
| 2016-07-21T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/82abc7842dc2ab4eb684bd7b4c29f67b0f672a24a1f49d02588a10cd64af0e73.json
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[
"Kevin Mitchell"
] | 2016-08-27T16:51:48 | null | 2016-08-27T15:37:16 |
Serena Williams, the world No1, goes into the US Open on the verge of breaking various Steffi Graf records, but remains troubled by injury and expectation
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2Fblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fserena-williams-laura-robson-us-open-pressure-flushing-meadows.json
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Serena Williams shackled by weight of history but Laura Robson ignores past
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www.theguardian.com
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Two players at this US Open, Serena Williams and Laura Robson, are coming to terms with what is left of their very different careers and doing it in contrasting ways.
When she arrived in New York for the tournament a year ago, Williams looked and sounded nervous, an observation given substance when the Italian doubles genius, Roberta Vinci, caused a shock by putting her out in the semi-finals, crushing the world No1 when she was within reach of completing the first calendar slam since Steffi Graf in 1985.
It became obvious in the aftermath of that disappointment that the weight of history was too much for the best player in the world, the best of her generation and probably of all time.
Twelve months later, Williams, who has just turned 35, is still chasing Graf. She has at last pulled alongside her on 22 majors and is a week shy of the German’s record of 185 consecutive weeks at No1 in the world. Again, there are worrying signs of anxiety.
“Mentally, some times I definitely do put a little more pressure on myself than I did a long time ago,” Williams said after the draw on Friday had pitched her into a first-round match against Ekaterina Makarova, on the same side of the draw as her sister Venus and Sam Stosur, the Australian who beat her in an extraordinary final at the end of a tumultuous tournament in 2011.
It seems such a long time ago and it is easy to forget the trauma Williams had been through with illness and injury. Her home slam was her sixth and last tournament of the season. Her ranking then tumbled to No12 in the world and despond gripped her, shaking her self-belief to the core.
Her health is letting her down again, this time a shoulder injury that has restricted her shot-making and her recent appearances, even though she declares herself fully fit. She went out early at the Rio Olympics and pulled out of the Cincinnati Open at the last minute after making the long journey from Brazil.
“It wasn’t very easy, physically, just really trying so hard and trying everything to get better,” she said. “I knew I gave the best effort I could and it just wasn’t enough.”
Seasoned Serena-watcher, Chris Evert, whose own cool demeanour in a garlanded career was so at odds with the public near-meltdowns of her compatriot, recognises the pressure building on Williams.
“There’s a lot at stake for her, to break Steffi in so many different ways,” Evert said on ESPN. “First of all, to win 23 and also the consecutive weeks. Hopefully, she can get that shoulder right. I think a lot of it has to do with her shoulder because that serve is the big key for her to win matches. There’s going to be pressure on Serena.”
How much of it is generated from within is impossible to see. But the odds are she will again look as if someone is trying to extract her teeth on every point. Still, you get the feeling she is ready to make some more history.
Laura Robson, meanwhile, has an entirely different take on her past and her future. She squeezed into the main draw on Friday with a stirring, flawed win over the German Tatjana Maria, 7-6 (7-5), 6-1, and spoke about how she has stopped trying to recreate what she had achieved before a wrist injury cut her down more than two-and-a-half years ago in Hobart.
Surgery and long, tedious rehab would have sapped the spirit of many players – and did not exactly please the young Londoner – but, until she came away from Wimbledon this year, where the world No2, Angelique Kerber, embarrassed her, she had looked too much to her past, she admits.
“I’m not really looking at it that way anymore,” she said. “I maybe was at the start of the year when I still had my protected [ranking], but it’s a totally different vibe for me now. I was so happy to just be in qualies and to play three good matches . To get through to the main draw is all I could ask for, to be honest. Now that I’m in the main draw I’m pumped about it, but I don’t really think about how I used to play because it’s so far down the line that I’m just taking it one match at a time.”
A cliché, but an apt one. In 2012 here, Robson retired the great Kim Clijsters and beat the world No9 Li Na, before Stosur, the defending champion, stopped her rousing run. This year, she enters on a stretch of eight unbeaten matches.
Still smiling, and looking fitter and leaner than when she was a prodigy, she said: “Initially, when I was coming back, I just lost the joy of playing a little bit. It was such a grind for me trying to get through a tournament and stay healthy. I’m just enjoying it. If it works out, great; if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. My mum always says to me: ‘It’s just a tennis match.’ Although I did call her and she was tearing up a bit. So she says that, but it means a lot.”
On Tuesday, she plays her compatriot Naomi Broady, which made her smile. Robson had a mild premonition that would happen. The future is slowly overtaking the past.
Mary Pierce: 'seeing Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt win gold was bucket list stuff' Read more
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/aug/27/serena-williams-laura-robson-us-open-pressure-flushing-meadows
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b59ad52fdc27d34a29b461fe77dd3dc5a570729bf8a6a5535ad53f3e1c04925f.json
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[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-28T14:51:46 | null | 2016-08-28T13:27:04 |
Marcus Rashford scored at the last minute allowing Manchester United to win 1-0
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fmanchester-united-vs-hull-city-mourinho-pleased-with-team-phelan-disappointed-video.json
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Manchester United vs Hull City: Mourinho pleased with team, Phelan disappointed - video
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www.theguardian.com
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Following the match against Hull City at the KCOM Stadium on Saturday afternoon, Manchester United manager José Mourinho praises Marcus Rashford for his last minute winner. Hull City caretaker manager Mike Phelan suggests his team may have lacked concentration despite playing ‘heroically’ in a difficult game
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2016/aug/28/manchester-united-vs-hull-city-mourinho-pleased-with-team-phelan-disappointed-video
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3ce359859c2d878ca6b2754675509f37b7027a8f4f20f0f2b033d515f2782d85.json
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[
"Paula Kahumbu"
] | 2016-08-26T13:25:00 | null | 2016-08-24T06:41:29 |
Paula Kahumbu: When will we learn that wildlife conservation is part of wealth creation and not an obstacle to it?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fafrica-wild%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fthe-best-and-worst-of-worlds-in-my-kenya.json
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The best and worst of worlds in my Kenya
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www.theguardian.com
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Three days spent in Samburu Reserve to celebrate World Elephant Day with 91 children from Kenya’s poor neighbourhoods, slums and rural areas were probably the most moving experience of my life.
A team of staff, interns and volunteers from my NGO WildlifeDirect put on an ambitious three-day programme of discovery, play and learning for the children. The children experienced a real safari, in a four-wheeled-drive vehicle. They camped for the first time in their lives. They met wild animals in the wilderness of Samburu, and talked to rangers and scientists involved in wildlife conservation.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chidren on a visit to Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, to celebrate World Elephant Day 2016, learn about elephants from Jeronimo Lepirei of the Samburu Elephant Project, run by Save The Elephants. Photograph: Andrew Kahumbu/WildlifeDirect
It has happened to all of us: we think we are doing something important for others only to discover it is we who gain the most. The children’s extraordinary individuality touched and moved me and everyone in the team profoundly. Their laughter, fun and play were a tonic.
I rediscovered my youth, and saw wildlife for the first time again through innocent eyes. Dik-diks, zebra, and impala were no longer common but extraordinary and delicate. Meeting elephants was heart-stopping.
I marvelled at the stunning horizon behind layers of mountains and valleys in hues of magical colours. I revelled in the powerful scents of herbs and trees, fresh morning air, and the unforgettable aroma of meals cooked on a campfire.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children round a camp fire in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya during a visit to celebrate World Elephant Day 2016. Photograph: Andrew Kahumbu/WildlifeDirect
A few days later, back in Nairobi, I took a walk. I was taking part in a demonstration in support of Kenya’s constitution. We walked from Kinoo village on the outskirts of Nairobi down Waiyaki Way, one of Kenya’s major highways, towards the city centre.
To get to Kinoo from my office in the upmarket district of Karen, my taxi followed previously unknown roads through filthy, polluted mini-towns. I saw a boy and a man carefully collecting water from a morning puddle. I imagined what their morning tea would taste like.
It was 9 am and I was in a world of smoke, exhaust fumes and loud shouting and banging, but this was ‘their’ world, not mine. My taxi windows were up, the air conditioning full on. We were in a world apart.
The walk down Waiyaki Way was a leisurely affair on a spectacular morning with blue, blue skies complete with pristine fluffy clouds. We were strangers united, in colourful T-shirts waving national flags, talking about justice, laughing, dancing. We chatted, our conservation meandered … police brutality, land grabbing, corruption cartels ....
There were hundreds of us, but thousands of others along the streets watched our noisy parade silently, unmoved. Why are Kenyans bystanders in their own imploding world, we wondered.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Three young residents of the second largest slum in African, Kibera, walk on the garbage-strewn basin of a water canal that makes its way through the slum on March 21, 2010. Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images
Bottles of water were distributed. I saw plastic wrappers and empty bottles being flung by the wayside on road verges, right in front of me. My blood boiled. I asked that we didn’t do it, and in that moment the rubbish strewn along the highway came into sharp focus. Plastic bags mostly. Everywhere, piles of litter, dumped onto the road verges. Anger began to well in me. Then there were the muddy patches and the need to hop over soggy piles of you-don’t-know-what and don’t want to know.
But it was the smells that offended me the most. At one point I fought down the need to reach. Walking through a small slum, I was no longer in a separate world, I was face to face with a disinterested population of adults, and playful children in their Sunday best whose innocence, I reflected, had probably been stolen multiple times over.
Talk of justice for wildlife and protection of national parks seemed totally inappropriate at that moment.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peak hour traffic on Tom Mboya Avenue, Nairobi, Kenya.
Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
As we walked down the road, cars were hooting at us, and Matatus—the ubiquitous minibuses that transport millions of Nairobi across the city every day, and kill quite a few of them too—tried to drive right through us.
Someone said: “walk on the road, it’s your constitutional right”. Nobody cared. The Kenyan constitution promises a clean and healthy environment but we have a filthy city, air, water and even the food we eat is polluted. The noise, smells are all so oppressive.
My feelings were not simply the over-sensitive reaction of a privileged Nairobi resident coming face-to-face with the real world. Scientific studies show that the amount of cancer-causing elements in the air in Nairobi city is 10 times higher than the threshold recommended by the World Health Organisation.
Michael Gatari, an environmental scientist at the Kenyan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, predicts that “without doubt, the pollution will have a huge economic and health impact. We will see more and more cancers and heart disease, many more asthma cases and respiratory diseases.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mbagathi River in Nairobi National Park, Kenya. Photograph: MEAACT PHOTO / STUART PRICE/MEAACT Kenya
Later, it is 4 am and I am back home in my comfortable bed on the edge of Nairobi National Park. The frogs and toads have gone silent. The lions too. I can hear the Mbagathi river gurgling. Everything is still and at peace.
In this moment of clarity, the faces of the children in Samburu come to life. Tiny 8 year old Anita who sat on my lap to colour in the lions in her activity book. Ibrahim who commandeered my camera and taught the others how to use it. Movin who knew the names of all the endangered species, Junior whose gift of expression was through art, Jonn in games, and Alvin through dance.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Girls from Kibera School for Girls, Nairobi, during a trip to Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, to celebrate World Elephant Day 2016. Photograph: Andrew Kahumbu/WildlifeDirect
The 37 children we brought to Samburu from Nairobi’s slums came from Ngong, Kibera, Dandora and Mathare … places I have been to but can’t imagine living in. They are much worse than anything I experienced earlier that day. There is virtually nothing green in our slums. The ground, paths, streams, and buildings are all one uniform colour ... brown. They call it chocolate city, but that is too kind. Noisy bars operate 24/7, there is no escape from danger, and every vice possible is just a step away.
People who live there seem to have a numbed life, oblivious of the noise, smells and piles of trash everywhere. I can’t imagine how a trip to Samburu to meet wild elephants and lions must have felt for these children. Camping was a terrifying novelty for some at first. But they were so upset to leave after only 3 days.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children setting up camp in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, at the start of a visit to celebrate World Elephant Day, 2016. Photograph: Andrew Kahumbu/WildlifeDirect
Samburu is an 8 hour drive from Nairobi, but city residents don’t have to go that far for the experience. Nairobi National Park is literally across the road from Kibera—just a five minute walk. The park is amazing: 117 square kilometres of savannah, bush and forest, valleys, dams and streams. It has more birds than most countries, and a mind-boggling diversity of animals that include lions, rhino, giraffe, buffalo, hippos, and much more.
Poor Kenyans live in filthy noisy slums, separated from rich Kenyans in safe, leafy suburbs. The park is the ultimate equalizer, a peaceful space for all to share. But we are losing it even before most of us have gotten to know it. Bulldozers stand ready to convert this unique wilderness into roads, railways, pipelines and power lines to feed an ever-growing urban expansion.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest KENYA, Nairobi: A lioness stalks a small group of buffalo through grass made long and lush by seasonal rains in Nairobi National Park, 17 May, 2015. Photograph: MEAACT PHOTO / STUART PRICE/MEAACT Kenya
The public, neighbours, residents of Kibera, business operators and even conservationists are silently watching as the park, an icon of the city, crumbles. Our Statue of Liberty is being hacked into chunks of concrete to build more roads, more slums, high-rises, and trash heaps.
As I lie awake I reflect on the contrasting worlds that make up my country. On how just a few weeks after the President inspired the global imagination by burning Kenya’s ivory stockpiles, demonstrators were being killed on the streets in violent confrontations with the police.
I reflect on the slums and the park. I ask myself, how do we get the poor and the rich alike to defend the park as we would our treasured cathedrals and ancient monuments?
How can we lift the veil of clouded thinking that is ready to sacrifice our country’s unique heritage in the interest of short-term economic gain? How can we make people understand that fresh air, calming sights, insect and bird songs, peace, nature and greenery are an essential part of creating a healthy and wealthy society and not an obstacle to it?
These are the thoughts that keep me awake at 4 am.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/africa-wild/2016/aug/24/the-best-and-worst-of-worlds-in-my-kenya
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4afd6728c7a689315276144774070b31e206f3fd4fb4d14ba58fd0c6d7c37aa2.json
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|
[
"Oliver Milman"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:35 | null | 2016-08-24T10:00:17 |
Previous investigations fail to reveal impact of ‘world’s largest human health threat’ because they do not account for people’s movement, researchers say
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fair-pollution-dangers-flawed-research-new-york-study.json
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Air pollution threat hidden as research 'presumes people are at home': study
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www.theguardian.com
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The true impact of air pollution has been obscured by the failure to consider people’s exposure as they move around during the day, according to a new study that has mapped the hotspots of New York’s air pollution based on where people gather for work or recreation.
The research cites air pollution as “the world’s single largest environment and human health threat” but laments that the problem has not previously been “considered spatially and temporally”, with most studies basing a person’s pollution exposure on where they live.
Pollution may shorten lung cancer patients' lives, research shows Read more
Using information obtained from cellphone towers, the researchers were able to build up a picture of millions of New Yorkers’ movements over the course of 120 days. They used a formula that charts population density as well as pollution levels to look at how people’s exposure to PM2.5, an airborne particle linked to an array of health problems, varies according to where they typically congregate during the day.
The researchers found that areas of midtown and lower Manhattan, which have some of the highest PM2.5 levels, saw large numbers of people exposed during the day, but less so at night. Conversely, areas of southern Brooklyn with high PM2.5 levels peaked in pollution exposure at night as people returned to their neighborhoods after work. Areas of Queens near LaGuardia airport remained elevated throughout the day.
Concentrations of PM2.5 also vary throughout the day and affect the identification of hotspots, depending on factors including power generation and traffic.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration: Wonyoung So & Hyemi Song, MIT Senseable City Lab
“Air pollution is linked to respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses but we have previously presumed that people exposed are at home all the time,” said Dr Marguerite Nyhan, lead author and a researcher in environmental health at Harvard University, although all the research was conducted at MIT’s Senseable City Lab.
“We know that’s not a true assessment of exposure as more people are exposed as they go from home to work and when they are socializing. We found that lots of people are being exposed in central Brooklyn and Queens and lower Manhattan, where people work and recreate.
“But that’s not the way cities are typically regulated for air pollution – they just look at highly polluted areas rather than the amount of time people spend in them.”
Disregarding population shifts throughout the day, PM2.5 air pollution in New York is greatest in midtown and downtown Manhattan, parts of the Bronx and areas of Queens and Brooklyn that meet the East River. These areas have PM2.5 levels that are around 14 micrograms per square meter – higher than the annual average advised as acceptable by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
According to WHO, worldwide around 7 million people a year die as a result of air pollution. The US accounts for around 200,000 of these annual deaths, with most linked to fumes from cars, trucks and other transportation, as well as emissions from power plants. Particles of PM2.5, which are around 30 times smaller than a human hair in width, can worsen asthma and heart disease and are linked to reduced lung function.
A study commissioned by New York City found that annual average PM2.5 levels fell by 16% in the six years to 2014 but warned that air pollutants “remain at levels that can be harmful to public health, particularly among seniors, children and those with pre-existing health conditions”.
Asked whether the city considers peoples’ exposure as they move around the metropolis, a spokesman for New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, said: “The city’s monitoring study is designed to assess outdoor, street-level air pollutant levels across the city.
“So in a sense, the data can be used to assess exposures at residences, places of employment, or parks and other recreation areas. The study is not designed to assess any single exposure setting.”
De Blasio has set a goal for New York to have the cleanest air of any US city by 2030, pledging to cut PM2.5 levels by 50% in this timeframe by adding electric vehicles to the city fleet, phasing in clean sources of electricity and making buildings more energy efficient.
The 'human sensor' making Manchester's air pollution visible Read more
Nyhan said her research, published in Environmental Science & Technology, could be used if New York wanted to go down the path of “low emissions zones” as London has done. Motorists driving in most areas of Greater London have to pay a daily charge unless their vehicles meet European emissions standards.
“If you identify areas of higher exposure, you can implement low emissions zones there for the maximum health benefit,” said Nyhan, who plans to undertake a similar spatial study in Boston.
“In the last 100 years, air quality has certainly improved but we are still seeing problems in larger cities. We are seeing a transition to electric vehicles but it’s not quick enough – more and more people are residing in cities, which means more people are contributing to and being exposed to pollution in urban areas.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/24/air-pollution-dangers-flawed-research-new-york-study
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e3d948635364e8e916158df773629ee053325062da86013526c1bc0fe10c47a3.json
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[
"Simon Goodley"
] | 2016-08-27T20:54:54 | null | 2016-07-31T06:00:27 |
This week brings new economic data that will again encourage both sides of the argument to indulge in self-justification
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Fjul%2F31%2Fpost-brexit-economy-hands-up-if-you-were-right.json
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| null |
Hands up if you were right about the post-Brexit economy
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The second episode of US political drama The West Wing is entitled Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc – in which smarty-pants President Josiah Bartlet educates his minions on the meaning of the Latin phrase after his unpopularity in Texas is blamed on one of his gags. “After it, therefore because of it,” he puffs. “It means one thing follows the other, therefore it was caused by the other. But it’s not always true. In fact, it’s hardly ever true. We did not lose Texas because of the hat joke.”
The dialogue’s wonderfully self-satisfied, of course, but we could perhaps do with a touch of this kind of rebuttal in real-life politics here. When it comes to Brexit, each side seems to be indulging in the same kind of confirmation bias as Bartlet’s advisers, with each week bringing new economic data that convinces both campaigns they were right.
Last week the economy was shown to be either in rude health or about to crash following June’s vote. Prepare for more of this self-justification this week after the CBI’s “mixed picture” on the economy is published on Sunday, the thinktank NIESR issues an economic update on Wednesday, and the Bank of England has a big statistics day on Thursday.
The numbers will all show that everybody who opined on the referendum was right all along. There will be no exceptions.
Chasing the odds on Ladbrokes and Hill’s
Perhaps the only section of the UK that cannot now claim to have been right about the referendum is the bookmaking industry, which heroically managed to call events even more incorrectly than our opinion pollsters.
No matter, they will be out in force this week, with both Ladbrokes and bitter rival William Hill announcing results – which should be buoyed by decent returns at Euro 2016.
Still, unusually for a bookie, William Hill is in the middle of an unlucky streak that has involved it losing (a) at the Cheltenham festival; (b) its tag as the UK’s best run bookie; and (c) its chief executive, following the departure of James Henderson earlier this month. Hills is also now possibly the subject of a takeover deal involving online gambling group 888 Holdings and bingo hall operator Rank Group – which is a bit humbling: last year William Hill was bidding for 888.
Also up is Ladbrokes, which is about to merge with rival Coral – assuming the pair can sell between 350 and 400 betting shops to get the deal through competition regulators.
The market reckons the likely buyers will be Betfred or, possibly, Boyle Sports. Developing.
Borrowing? The drinks are on NatWest …
The doyen of City journalism, Christopher Fildes, has always been fond of quoting Sibley’s law. Giving capital to a bank (said the worldly banker, Nicholas Sibley) is like giving a gallon of beer to a drunk. You know what will become of it, but you don’t know which wall he will choose.
The financial crisis, of course, proved Sibley’s maxim yet again, but just because his words keep reflecting reality, please don’t think these things are achieved effortlessly: the challenge for bankers is to continue to find new ways of losing other people’s money – and last week they alighted on a gem.
Without a hint of irony, NatWest, part of the bailed-out-by-the-taxpayer Royal Bank of Scotland, paved the way for the introduction of negative interest rates for the first time in Britain. The warning could mean that an account holder with £1,000 in a NatWest account might see that shrink to £999 or less the following year.
Obviously NatWest is blaming extremely low global interest rates for this idea, but expect plenty more questions on the plan during the week, as RBS and rival HSBC report results – while the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee also meets to set interest rates. First question to NatWest: if you charge savers, how much will you pay borrowers?
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/31/post-brexit-economy-hands-up-if-you-were-right
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en
| 2016-07-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ad3d475f48b3ddea4ec30d40032843da3b185975a2d0c7c83ce8a736b41f1d05.json
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[
"John Meurig Thomas"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:37 | null | 2016-08-22T14:05:30 |
Nobel prizewinning scientist known for his revolutionary work on femtochemistry
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F22%2Fahmed-zewail-obituary.json
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en
| null |
Ahmed Zewail obituary
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Before 1990, all students of chemistry and adjacent sciences were taught that it was impossible to determine the precise atomic rearrangements that occurred during the course of any chemical reaction at the instant when some chemical bonds are ruptured and others formed. The timescale for such events is around femtoseconds, and one femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second.
The major contribution made by Ahmed Zewail, who has died aged 70, was to break through this barrier. At the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), he developed ultrafast lasers which delivered pulses of femtosecond duration, thus making it possible to “photograph” the fundamental process of bond rupture and bond formation. For this outstanding work, he was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1999.
Bengt Nordén, a member of the Nobel committee, presenting Zewail to the King of Sweden at the prize ceremony, remarked: “Zewail’s use of the fast laser technique can be likened to Galileo’s use of his telescope, which he directed towards everything that lit up the vault of heaven. Zewail tried his femtosecond laser on literally everything that moved in the world of molecules.” The prize recognised that Zewail had brought about a revolution in chemical science.
In 1991 Zewail embarked on another major venture. He designed a new type of electron microscope – by judicious use of ultrafast laser pulses and the photoelectric effect – in which a stream of individual electrons, repeated on a femtosecond scale, could be used to probe the dynamics of atoms in solids and their surfaces, as well as to interrogate biological materials.
All this he could do over a thousand million times as fast as had been done by electron microscopists hitherto. His so-called 4D electron microscope – three dimensions of space and one of time – is now contributing greatly to advances in physical, biological, medical and engineering science. The Nobel laureate Roger Kornberg described Zewail’s recent book The 4D Visualization of Matter (2014), as “a chronicle of an extraordinary journey of invention and discovery”.
Ahmed was born in the town of Damanhur in the Nile Delta, the son of Hassan, a government official, and his wife Rawhia Dar. He liked roaming freely among the hamlets and towns of his beloved Egypt before embarking as a student of chemistry at the University of Alexandria. He took his bachelor and master’s degrees there and was an instructor at the same university for two years from 1967.
He then joined the group of Professor Robin Hochstrasser at the University of Pennsylvania. For two years, after his PhD in Philadelphia, he worked as an IBM fellow in Charles B Harris’s group at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976 he was appointed assistant professor of chemical physics at Caltech, where he remained for the rest of his outstanding career.
From 1982 to 1989 he was professor of chemical physics, and in 1995 he was appointed Linus Pauling professor of chemistry and professor of physics, positions he held until his death. From 1996 to 2007 he was the director of the National Science Foundation’s laboratory for molecular sciences at Caltech; and from 2005 onwards the director of the Center for Physical Biology, also at Caltech.
He was the recipient of numerous honours and an honorary doctor of 46 universities – he was one of the few (along with Mendeleev, Marie Curie and Michael Faraday) to hold honorary doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge. He was a foreign member of the Royal Society and of most other national academies. In 2009 the US president Barack Obama appointed Zewail to his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and in the same year he became the first US science envoy to the Middle East. In 2013, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, invited Zewail to join the UN Scientific Advisory Board.
Zewail was passionately concerned for the “have-nots”, especially the millions of children in various parts of the world who receive no education; and he made strenuous efforts to foster education and the establishment of centres of excellence in the Arab world, especially in his native Egypt. The Zewail City of Science and Technology on the outskirts of Cairo was created in 2000 and its inauguration in 2011 and its completion demanded a great deal of energy on his part. He believed that Zewail City could raise the hopes of his compatriots, just as the creation of the Aswan Dam had done in the 1960s. Zewail was decorated with the Order of the Grand Collar of the Nile, Egypt’s highest state honour. For several years, he played a leading role in the L’Oréal/Unesco prize for women in science.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Zewail used a spectacular image of Akhenaton (the father of monotheism, 14th century BC) to draw attention to “the first known image that depicts that light travels in a straight line”. Photograph: California Institute of Technology
Author of some 600 papers and 14 books (one of which, 4D Electron Microscopy: Imaging in Space and Time, 2010, I co-authored), Zewail has left a lasting legacy. In the summer of 2009, I spent four weeks with him at Caltech and a week on “holiday” in Yosemite national park. During that frenetic period of work, I grew to learn more about Zewail’s unique qualities.
In addition to his technical virtuosity and the profundity of his intellectual understanding, he had a prodigality of output and a general celerity of action. His passion for new knowledge was insatiable. To an almost punctilious degree he endeavoured to do things in memorable ways – in his writing, in his lectures and in the elegant illustrations that characterised his scientific papers and books.
Zewail also had a profound sense of history in general, but the history of science in particular. My eurocentric views of who had discovered what were often corrected by Zewail, who frequently reminded me that, for 700 years, the language of science was Arabic.
He pointed out that, in around AD1000, Alhazen had invented the camera obscura, and that this Arab scientist’s Book of Optics greatly influenced later European natural philosophers, including Galileo. He also drew to my attention that, in his native city, Alexandria, Hero had invented the principle of the jet engine (long before Frank Whittle); and that Aristarchus had suggested that the earth circulates the sun some 19 centuries before Copernicus.
In 1991, Zewail enthralled members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain with his scintillating account of his laser femtochemistry work. During the course of it he showed a spectacular image of Akhenaton (the father of monotheism, 14th century BC) and drew attention to “the first known image that depicts that light travels in a straight line”.
He is survived by his wife, Dema (nee Faham), a doctor, whom he married in 1989, and four children, Maha, Amani, Nabeel and Hani.
• Ahmed Hassan Zewail, scientist, born 26 February 1946; died 2 August 2016
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/22/ahmed-zewail-obituary
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| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f5a34380c27142e8f3df1f0dea439eb2247cd9ae83fd316a6778139aa7a37fa3.json
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[
"Guardian Sport"
] | 2016-08-31T12:53:10 | null | 2016-08-31T12:00:36 |
England have resisted the urge to rest key players and have announced a full-strength lineup for the one-off Twenty20 match against Pakistan at Old Trafford on 7 September
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England resist urge to rest players in full-strength T20 squad for Pakistan
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www.theguardian.com
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England have resisted the urge to rest key players and have announced a full-strength squad for the one-off Twenty20 match against Pakistan at Old Trafford on Wednesday 7 September.
The captain, Eoin Morgan, can call on the experience of Joe Root, who is named alongside the all-rounder Moeen Ali and Nottinghamshire’s Alex Hales. All three were rested for the win against Sri Lanka in July.
Sussex’s fast bowler Tyrone Mills has once again been named in order to bring pace into the side though Chris Woakes – who might have expected a call-up as an experienced all-rounder – misses out, as do Middlesex’s Dawid Malan, Yorkshire’s Jonny Bairstow and the Hampshire pair of Liam Dawson and James Vince.
The squad includes nine of the players who steered England to an eight-wicket victory over Sri Lanka at the Ageas Bowl. The Durham pair of Ben Stokes and Mark Wood return, with Stokes in line for a first international T20 appearance since his final-over disaster against the West Indies in the ICC World T20 final in February.
Wood, who has returned to full fitness after a long lay-off, will be hoping to add to his solitary Twenty20 cap, which came against New Zealand in June 2015.
James Whitaker, the national selector, said: “It is excellent to see the progress we are making in white ball cricket across both formats. The T20 international against Pakistan will give the squad another opportunity to measure their development.
“The squad has an exciting feel with exceptional talent throughout. We are delighted to welcome back Ben Stokes and Mark Wood into the squad. Both are world-class players and are an important part of our long-term plans to become the best side in the world.”
England Twenty20 squad to face Pakistan
Eoin Morgan (Middlesex; capt), Moeen Ali (Worcestershire), Sam Billings (Kent), Jos Buttler (Lancashire), Alex Hales (Nottinghamshire), Chris Jordan (Sussex), Tymal Mills (Sussex), Liam Plunkett (Yorkshire) Adil Rashid (Yorkshire), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Jason Roy (Surrey), Ben Stokes (Durham), David Willey (Yorkshire), Mark Wood (Durham)
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/31/england-full-t20-squad-pakistan-joe-root-ben-stokes-alex-hales
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9b926256df3fe34b5757af2f205398ba2801304a6705e6c8900733946cab339f.json
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[
"Chris Cook"
] | 2016-08-28T18:52:12 | null | 2016-08-28T18:44:39 |
Arrangements for the BHA’s rehearing of the Jim Best case could soon be a matter for the High Court, principally because of the timing
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Jim Best may seek High Court ruling over rehearing dispute with BHA
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Best was charged with ordering a jockey to stop two of his horses in December. He was initially found in breach and banned from racing for four years but that verdict was quashed at appeal on the grounds of apparent bias relating to the chairman of the original panel and also because the published reasons were insufficient to support the verdict.
Arrangements for the rehearing of the Jim Best case could shortly become a matter for the law courts. Solicitors for the Lewes trainer, exasperated by what they see as intransigence from the British Horseracing Authority, are expected to take the matter to the High Court if no progress is made in discussions between the two sides.
However, the prospect of agreement seems remote in view of the BHA response when asked to comment on the possibility of litigation. A statement from the regulator insisted it would not agree to change either the date of the rehearing or the proposed panel members, while noting that Best’s team is allowed to appeal to the panel itself on those subjects.
It is understood that Richard Wilson QC has been instructed on Best’s behalf. According to the Legal 500 guide to barristers, his reputation is “for being cogent and determined in court … His arguments are regularly described as ‘admirable’ and ‘attractively presented’ by judges”.
Adam Brickell’s departure from BHA may not be the last after Jim Best case Read more
The timing of the rehearing is the principal source of contention, with the BHA pointing out that the week beginning 19 September was identified months ago as a potentially appropriate time, with all relevant parties asked to keep it clear in their diaries. Since then, however, it has emerged that the BHA’s disciplinary practices and procedures would be reviewed by an independent person, Christopher Quinlan QC, whose report is to be published on 30 September.
The Quinlan review took on even greater significance a week ago, with the news that the BHA’s integrity director, Adam Brickell, would leave the organisation in mid-September. While the authority insists Brickell’s departure has nothing to do with the disaster his department has become this year, it will not go ahead with the necessary reshuffle of responsibility until officials have had a chance to consider the implications of Quinlan’s report.
Quinlan could recommend change in the way the BHA appoints disciplinary panel members, the qualifications needed to sit on a panel, the BHA’s approach to disclosure, the use made of expert evidence and the manner in which the BHA presents its cases. He may also have something to say about whether it is appropriate for the BHA to use a QC, Graeme McPherson, who is also regulated by them as a licensed racehorse trainer. McPherson has so far represented the BHA at every stage of the Best case.
Best’s solicitors argue that, after months of vexed proceedings, it would be folly for the BHA to rehear the case in the week of 19 September, with the clear possibility that an overhaul of the system may be recommended the following week. They have also raised queries about the suitability of two of the three panel members named by the BHA, but have been told the regulator is no longer willing to debate such points and that the only recourse is to take such concerns to the panel itself.
If Best presses ahead with his action, it could be heard in the High Court as early as next week. His lawyers would argue that the rehearing has not been arranged in the manner envisaged at the appeal hearing in May, when the regulator’s prediction was: “This is not a case where anyone would be imposed on Mr Best or where the objective observer would be able to say, ‘Oh, the BHA has picked its own chairman.’”
The BHA’s Robin Mounsey said: “Following clear direction from the appeal board, which stated that a rehearing of the Jim Best case was in the interests of British racing, the BHA has sought to put together a suitably qualified panel, in accordance with the rules of racing, and meeting the appeal board’s direction that it should be of unquestionable independence.
“As Mr Best chose not to accept our offer to use Sport Resolutions to convene a panel, the BHA has proposed a provisional panel. A process exists which allows the parties to formally raise a challenge to any panel member, a process which, if followed to its conclusion, would see an appeal board ruling on the suitability of the panel. This process is fair and transparent and will ensure the appointment of a suitably qualified and impartial panel.
“The timing of the rehearing has been proposed for several months, with all parties having stated their and their legal advisers availability for dates in September, which they were then asked to hold. Any challenge from Mr Best to the timing and/or final composition of the panel is in the hands of the chair of the disciplinary panel, who will make the necessary directions as to how to proceed.”
Best was charged with ordering a jockey to stop two of his horses in December. He was initially found in breach and banned from racing for four years but that verdict was quashed at appeal on the grounds of apparent bias relating to the chairman of the original panel and also because the published reasons were insufficient to support the verdict.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/28/jim-best-high-court-ruling-rehearing-bha
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| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9578e9809cbf6948e871705a141ecb5d08d3870a0070eb301a7188c10d53cda6.json
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[
"Paul Doyle"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:10 | null | 2016-08-26T11:43:31 |
Southampton fans can look forward to some thrilling ties, while Manchester United face long trips
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Europa League: Manchester United to face Fenerbahce, Southampton draw Inter - as it happened
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2016/aug/26/europa-league-group-stage-draw-live
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c88a7e8d92389c8cd8d952272aebd147d8b83f3d0fc4dcd41ee5f7f7b4670f98.json
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[
"Rob Davies"
] | 2016-08-27T22:49:31 | null | 2016-08-27T21:00:13 |
With more than 400 high-rises planned, major survey shows residents want numbers curbed
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Londoners back limit on skyscrapers as fears for capital’s skyline grow
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Londoners want curbs placed on the number of new high-rise buildings in the capital, amid concerns that a wave of monolithic skyscrapers is transforming the skyline.
A clear strategy on tall buildings can cut developers down to size | Rowan Moore Read more
Six out of 10 support a limit on the height of new skyscrapers, with the same proportion backing restrictions on the number of buildings with more than 50 floors.
The unprecedented survey, by Ipsos Mori, found that many Londoners, particularly those who live in the most affected areas, think the trend towards ever taller, bolder skyscrapers has gone too far. More than 400 buildings of more than 20 floors are in the pipeline in London, according to a recent report by New London Architecture and property consultant GL Hearn, which is twice as many as two years ago.
The volume of projects in the offing has led to flashpoints as developers meet opposition from local communities. Architect Renzo Piano was forced to withdraw plans for a 72-storey tower in west London, dubbed the Paddington Pole, following outrage from campaigners. The heritage group Historic England recently lodged an objection to a proposed 25-storey tower of luxury flats in Somers Town, north London, citing its effect on views from Regent’s Park.
Barbara Weiss, architect and co-founder of the pressure group Skyline Campaign, said the glut of skyscrapers was down to a combination of borough councils trying to raise money and the desire by former mayor Boris Johnson to boost London’s international profile.
What a difference 400 years makes: the London skyline 1616 v 2016 – interactive Read more
“It’s partly austerity because boroughs are strapped for cash and can’t run normal services. They need money; developers provide money,” said Weiss. “On the other side was Boris with crazy ideas about London needing to be put on the map. He was encouraging these excesses and Londoners didn’t know they were happening.”
The survey found that those who live in the city centre feel more strongly about the pace of development. Around half of those who live in inner London said too many high-rises were being built, with the figure falling to 34% among people outside the centre.
That geographical divide was also reflected in views about the overall effect large buildings have on the city. Fears that tall buildings are “damaging what makes London special” are shared by 43% of people in inner London but just 34% further away from the city centre.
Nearly half of people in outer London said new skyscrapers were improving the capital’s skyline, falling to 34% among central Londoners who are likely to live in their shadow. Differences in opinion between suburbanites and inner-city dwellers extend to views about what should be done to protect the skyline. Some 60% of inner Londoners would like new tall buildings limited to areas such as Canary Wharf and the City, while 53% from the suburbs support such a measure.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Boris Johnson didn’t want a ‘Dubai-on-Thames’ when mayor but approved a wave of high-rises Photograph: Reuters
However, the poll found that Londoners largely agree that tall buildings are not the best way to solve the housing crisis. Terraced houses, low-rise blocks and converted flats were all regarded as better ways to meet the capital’s housing needs. “In the right places tall buildings can make exciting contributions to city life,” said a spokesperson for Historic England. “But denser, well-designed and lower developments which reflect the architectural traditions of London’s different neighbourhoods could deliver even greater capacity for housing and workplaces.”
The character of London’s skyline is also a political issue, with 31% of the 504 people surveyed saying they would be less likely to vote for a mayor who supported more tall buildings. Johnson has drawn criticism for approving a slew of high-rises, despite promising during his election campaign to stop London turning into “Dubai-on-Thames”.
Johnson’s successor, Sadiq Khan, has spoken out against residential skyscrapers where flats stand empty because they are being used as “gold bricks for investment” by wealthy foreign investors. Khan and his housing team are still finalising details of the mayor’s housing plans and are set to release more information in a housing policy paper due to be published in the autumn.
London's changing skyline: planned tall buildings 'almost double in two years' Read more
Weiss said allowing too many skyscrapers puts London “at risk of losing its unique character … People who oppose these towers are saying they’re not part of London’s DNA. You can have a few in the right locations but if you have a lot of these ones that are badly designed and badly built, you’ll end up with a generic city that could be absolutely anywhere. That’s a real crime.”
Some developments have attracted particular opprobrium for their lack of affordable housing, such as One Blackfriars, known colloquially as the Boomerang. The building, to the south of Blackfriars bridge, includes a luxury apartment with a £23m price tag, but has no “affordable housing”. The developer, St George, paid the council £29m instead towards housing schemes elsewhere.
“London is on the cusp of profound change,” said Historic England. “We are particularly concerned that over-development along the Thames could cut off Londoners and visitors from the river, which is the city’s most ancient and important public space. It is time for a pan-London approach to tall buildings, with Londoners being better informed and involved in the changes that are gathering pace. While you can put a price on each individual tower, our skyline, streetscapes and public spaces are treasured and priceless.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/27/londoners-back-skyscraper-limit-skyline
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| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f07ccd0bdf62d1a20048673dbb057d46800e3c3898911697ee343db1f5161106.json
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[
"Angelique Chrisafis"
] | 2016-08-30T18:52:32 | null | 2016-08-30T16:50:32 |
Rebellious economy minister and one-time protege of François Hollande does not belong to a political party and has never run for elected office
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Resignation of French minister Macron fuels presidential bid rumours
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Emmanuel Macron, France’s rebellious economy minister, has quit the government, increasing speculation that he will launch his own presidential bid in an attempt to capitalise on French distrust of the political class.
François Hollande’s office confirmed that Macron had resigned as economy minister and that the minister of finance, Michel Sapin, would take over what is one of the government’s most important jobs.
Macron, who has left little doubt regarding his presidential ambitions, has not yet launched a campaign for next year’s presidential race.
Le comeback kid? Sarkozy shapes up for presidential run on hardline platform Read more
His departure puts an end to two years of government tension stoked by his outspoken criticism of the president and one-time mentor, Hollande. It opens up the possibility that the 38-year-old could launch an outsider bid to lead France, playing on what he sees as France’s disillusionment towards conventional politicians and political parties.
The philosophy postgraduate and former Rothschild banker is a relative novice in politics. He belongs to no political party and has never run for elected office. His rise to government minister was so extraordinary and unconventional that he is still known as a “flying saucer” on the political scene.
Five years ago the notion that someone with no constituency or political party and no electoral experience could be a serious contender for the presidency would have been unthinkable.
But Macron – a pro-reformist, pro-business figure who served for two years in the Socialist government while insisting he was “neither left nor right” – has spent months building up financial and strategic backing for a presidential bid. He is seen as a product of the times; a non-politician wanting to take on politics. For him, the fact that he is not in a political party is an advantage in a political climate that is tired of old party structures.
Macron was catapulted by Hollande from presidential adviser to economy minister just two years ago. In office he regularly launched scathing attacks on all of the left’s defining characteristics – from the 35-hour-week to the large public sector – and embarrassed the Socialists by repeatedly criticising the discrimination and inequality that still defines France’s high-rise suburban estates. He stated this month: “I am not a socialist.” Not afraid of grand metaphors, Macron has likened his own rebellious streak to France’s 15th-century saint and saviour, Joan of Arc.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Macron, pictured with Hollande in July, was promoted from presidential adviser to economy minister two years ago. Photograph: Jacques Brinon/AP
Macron has quickly become one of the most popular political figures in France, second only to Alain Juppé, who is currently favourite to win the right’s primary race to nominate its presidential candidate.
Only two years ago, when Macron was Hollande’s chief advisor in the Élysée Palace, he was unknown to the general public.
This year, when doubts were swirling about whether the deeply unpopular Hollande could run again for office, Macron launched his own political movement – En Marche! (Forward!) – which has gained 50,000 members. The movement enlisted volunteers to go knocking on doors across France to hear the public’s ideas on where the country was going wrong. Macron is seeking to build on the results of this in a political programme and book that he will probably publish this autumn.
“At least I’ve had a trade,” he said in office when opponents on the hard left mocked him as a banker. “I learned the life of business, commerce – it’s an art. I discovered the international [scene] and a financial savoir-faire that still serves me today,” he said of his time at Rothschild bank, where he is said to have earned €2m (£1.7m).
Polls show that he is most popular among rightwing, older and professional voters. Pollsters have warned that Macron has his work cut out to expand his support base.
In recent months, Macron has seen a slight dip in his poll ratings after a few PR mishaps, including being filmed having an argument with a demonstrator in a T-shirt in which he told him “the best way to afford a suit is to work”.
He was also criticised for falling into the celebrity trap after he and his wife appeared on the front page of several glossy magazines. He controversially blamed his wife for a criticised personal interview in Paris Match, only to appear on the front cover later this summer, wearing swimming trunks in an issue that got higher than average sales.
Macron’s marriage has been fodder for the gossip press. The son of two doctors, he grew up in the northern town of Amiens, but his parents sent him away to Paris to finish high school in an attempt to break up his relationship with his school French teacher, Brigitte Trogneux, 20 years his senior. Macron and Trogneux stayed together and have now been married for nine years.
Hollande’s opponents on the left and right said Macron quitting made the unpopular president look increasingly isolated. Key figures on the left of the party, such as the former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, have already broken from Hollande. With Macron’s departure, Hollande has now lost a key figure on the centre-right of his government.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/frances-economy-minister-emmanuel-macron-resigns
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| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
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[
"Paul Karp"
] | 2016-08-31T02:55:25 | null | 2016-08-31T01:18:02 |
Minister heads off Bill Shorten’s motion with a new inquiry into small business lending practices
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Labor push for banking royal commission shut down by government
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Labor has moved a motion to introduce a banking royal commission in an attempt to derail the government’s agenda on the first substantive day of parliament since the election.
But the government has shut the move down, pointing to a new inquiry into small business lending practices and other reforms to argue the royal commission is not needed.
Bill Shorten, the opposition leader, on Wednesday sought a suspension of standing orders in the lower house to call for a royal commission. The motion was seconded by independent MP Bob Katter.
Scott Morrison says banking industry needs a culture shift, not an inquiry Read more
Shorten said that scandals in the banking and financial services industry have gutted retirees’ savings, “rorted” families and resulted in life insurance policy holders being denied justice.
He cited examples including allegations of rate-fixing in the banking sector and insurance policies being denied for “having the wrong type of heart attack”.
“Despite several inquiries, new powers, new resources, and a financial ombudsman service, the rorts and the rip offs continue.”
Kelly O’Dwyer, the minister for revenue and financial services, announced on Wednesday the government has asked the Australian small business and family enterprise ombudsman to look at how banks treat their small business lending customers.
The ombudsman will report within 12 weeks and provide interim findings to the Ramsay review examining external dispute resolution schemes in the financial services sector.
The government shut down Labor’s call for a royal commission, successfully amending the motion to instead question why Labor had not instituted an inquiry when it was in government.
Coalition MP George Christensen, formerly an advocate for a bank royal commission, moved the motion.
He noted the Ramsay review – led by corporate law expert Professor Ian Ramsay – was under way and that the Australian Securities and Investment Commission had commenced prosecutions on the rate-rigging allegations.
Christensen pointed to government initiatives including increasing the resources of Asic and a new process to haul banks before a parliamentary committee to explain failing to pass on interest rate cuts.
“If a royal commission were to go ahead it would simply be reviewing old ground,” he said.
The leader of the opposition proposed areas of focus for the commission, including consideration of how widespread unethical behaviour is, financial institutions’ duty of care, and whether regulators are equipped to prevent illegal and unethical behaviour.
Shorten said the breadth and scope of the allegations showed problems in the industry “go beyond any one bank, type of financial institution or group of receivers”.
He accused the government of running a “protection racket” by refusing opposition demands for a royal commission.
“You can take Malcolm Turnbull out of the investment bank, but you can’t take the investment banker out of Malcolm Turnbull,” he said, referring to the prime minister’s former career in finance.
Shorten said Labor, the Greens, crossbench, and at least eight Liberal and National parliamentarians had supported a royal commission.
But the appetite for a royal commission is waning amongst some of those Coalition MPs, with Warren Entsch, previously a fierce advocate, now proposing a bank victim compensation tribunal instead.
On 16 August Katter blasted Entsch for the back-flip, accusing him of “dogging it” and pleading with him to back a royal commission.
Shorten said a royal commission “is the only forum with the coercive powers and broad jurisdiction necessary to properly perform this investigation”.
He invited Turnbull to meet with the victims of banking and financial scandals.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/31/labor-push-for-banking-royal-commission-shut-down-by-government
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
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[
"Marina Hyde"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:06 | null | 2016-08-25T15:45:29 |
The U2 frontman asked her to help the band link up with the International Space Station while on tour
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Flifeandstyle%2Flostinshowbiz%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fbonos-email-to-hillary-clinton-give-me-some-space.json
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Bono’s email to Hillary Clinton: give me some space
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www.theguardian.com
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Bono’s ego: the final frontier. Following the release of new information, galactic cartographers are invited to get in touch to plot the revised boundaries of the U2 frontman’s self-regard. Current indications place the northern border of this vast entity in low Earth orbit. Specifically, in the International Space Station.
According to the latest batch of Hillary Clinton’s private State department emails to be released, Bono is a donor to the Clinton Foundation, presumably as part of his pro bono work. Philanthropy need not always be its own reward and, in the course of discussions, Bono seems to have made an off-topic request to Hillary’s people. As a Clinton Foundation executive puts it in a joint email to both Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin, and Bill’s equivalent adviser: “Bono wants to do linkup with the International Space Station on every show during the tour this year.” Well, of course he does.
“I’m trying to figure out who the best contact is to talk to at Nasa, or the congressional committee on science and technology,” the charity executive wonders. “Any ideas?” Alas, both aides replied with the same phrase – “no clue” – and nothing more was done. However, U2’s 2009 U2360 concert tour did end up featuring a recorded video segment filmed with various ISS crew. On stage, Bono would credit them with “figuring out how our little planet exists in this cosmos we call home”.
But in many ways, we should also credit them with figuring out something ultimately more important. Namely, that there is no escape from Bono. Not only was U2’s album automatically installed on every iTunes user’s library a couple of years ago, but he is willing to pursue you across the galaxy to enforce promotion. There is only one thing more horrifying than the suggestion that in space, no one can hear you scream. And that is the possibility that in space, no one can hear Bono.
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2016/aug/25/bonos-email-to-hillary-clinton-give-me-some-space
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/9c71dbf2698a7219221aff6ee47df2b2be5d45b949e1129c5cc1c3f146ed29b9.json
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[
"Will Coldwell"
] | 2016-08-26T14:50:19 | null | 2016-08-11T18:09:03 |
London nightclub suspends operations amid investigation into recent deaths of two teenagers
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F11%2Ffabric-london-nightclub-close-weekend-deaths-teenagers.json
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| null |
Fabric to close this weekend after drug-related deaths
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www.theguardian.com
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The London nightclub Fabric is to close this weekend after the drug-related deaths of two teenagers.
The most recent incident took place on Saturday, when an 18-year-old male collapsed outside the venue at 8.20am and was pronounced dead shortly after.
Another 18-year-old died after he fell ill at the 2,500-capacity club in Farringdon on 25 June. Neither death is being treated as suspicious.
Say Why To Drugs: unravelling the myster-E of MDMA Read more
The club said on its website: “For the past two years Fabric has operated without incident, but tragically in the past nine weeks two 18-year-old boys have died as a consequence of drug overdoses.
“In order to understand how this has happened we have agreed with the police and other agencies to suspend our operation while we investigate. The club will therefore be closed this weekend.”
It said it would make a further statement next week and that all tickets for this weekend would be refunded.
Over the past three years, Fabric has struggled to maintain its licence amid increasing pressure from the Metropolitan police and Islington council over drug-related incidents.
In December 2014, the police requested the council “seriously consider” revoking the club’s licence, citing four deaths in the previous three years and eight other incidents in which clubbers collapsed.
Fabric was able to remain open, though the council imposed strict licensing conditions, including sniffer dogs and ID scans, but in December 2015 it won an appeal against these conditions, on the grounds that they undermined efforts to confiscate drugs at the door.
What drugs are on the rise in Britain? Read more
The news follows a growing number of cases in which people have died after taking ecstasy. One of the most recent cases was 22-year-old Will Moss, who died in July after collapsing outside the Chameleon nightclub in Southend.
In May, Faye Allen, 17, from Liverpool, died after taking ecstasy while at a nightclub in Manchester.
According to ONS statistics released last year, deaths caused by ecstasy or MDMA – the active ingredient in ecstasy also sold in powder form – rose from eight in 2010 to 50 in 2014. This follows a spike in the purity of the drug, which is at its strongest in years.
Harm reduction charities such as The Loop, which conducts drug testing and offers advice at festivals, has found pills containing up to 250mg of MDMA, more than double the average quantity found in pills during the late 90s.
Common harm reduction advice is for users to test their reaction to a pill by taking half, or a quarter, and waiting before taking more.
The Loop’s CrushDabWait campaign encourages users to consider the way they consume MDMA, advising those who want to take it to crush it into a fine powder, take a small finger dab and then wait one to two hours before considering taking more.
• This article was amended on 12 August to correct a sentence that said Faye Allen died after taking ecstasy at a nightclub in Liverpool. The nightclub was in Manchester.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/11/fabric-london-nightclub-close-weekend-deaths-teenagers
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en
| 2016-08-11T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1720ef354e13ab5596324c2ee99e2c0f36193086585b18c295f61aa05db74d45.json
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[
"Ray Collier"
] | 2016-08-27T04:49:11 | null | 2016-08-27T04:30:53 |
Country diary: Strathnairn, Highlands Its rich chocolate fur looked luxuriant, and it was easy to see why it was so much prized in the middle ages as a trimming for robes of state
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fdaylight-encounter-with-a-hungry-pine-marten.json
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Daylight encounter hungry pine marten
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www.theguardian.com
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Mid-afternoon, and I watched the pine marten hunting a woodland bank, sniffing and listening for prey such as voles. Above it was ripening the rich crop of rowan berries that would augment its diet in late autumn.
It must have been hungry to be out hunting at this time of day, as pine martens are normally nocturnal. No doubt the poor weather of late had not helped. However, this one – a female, judging from its size – was in good condition, graceful and agile, with its slender body and long, bushy tail. Its rich chocolate fur looked luxuriant and it was easy to see why it was prized in the middle ages as a trimming for robes of state.
This female also had a very large throat patch, or bib, which was, unusually, almost apricot in colour. The bib varies from individual to individual – which often helps to identify them – and is sometimes almost absent.
Country Diary: Strathnairn Read more
At one time their food would have been largely invertebrates, small mammals and birds, but the pine marten’s recent expansion in range and numbers has changed the emphasis. There have been more raids on domestic poultry and on young pheasants, for instance, and predation on the ground-nesting and very rare capercaillie is an increasingly serious problem in some areas.
Because pine martens have been taking over nest boxes intended for such birds as barn owls and goldeneye ducks, the Vincent Wildlife Trust has now designed special den boxes for them. These purpose-built homes were an integral part of the trust’s first translocation of these captivating carnivores from the Scottish Highlands to mid-Wales last year.
Because of its size Martes martes is often known as the marten cat, and the young are called kits, kittens or cubs. However, I can find no specific names for the adult male and female. It is also known as the sweet mart, in contrast to the foul mart or polecat, and the Gaelic name is taghan. Best of all is the collective noun for these elusive creatures: a richness of martens.
Jonathan Elphick gives this year’s William Condry memorial lecture (thecondrylecture.co.uk) on the Birds of North Wales at Tabernacle/MoMA, Machynlleth, 1 October, 7pm for 7.30. £5 including refreshments (no need to book)
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/27/daylight-encounter-with-a-hungry-pine-marten
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/26bfa8121829e2193f0b95b4b8bbdfc699bbf652d8422177af118986be78305b.json
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[
"Nathalia Gjersoe"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:16 | null | 2016-08-22T06:30:04 |
Mind gamers, which of the two centre circles below is bigger? And what does this tell us about how the visual system works?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2Fhead-quarters%2F2016%2Faug%2F22%2Fthe-ebbinghaus-illusion-small-far-away-circles-father-ted.json
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The Ebbinghaus illusion: Small, or very far away?
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www.theguardian.com
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How do you tell if something looks small because it is small, or because it is very far away? It seems a ridiculous question because we make such calculations with apparent ease. As Father Ted demonstrates in the video below:
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dougal struggles with a basic concept in perceptual science.
Vision solves this problem by attending to context – things that are far away tend to be surrounded by other things that look small. Things that are small but close are often surrounded by bigger objects.
This visual calculation is so reliable that it is frequently used by both artists to create a sense of depth in pictures and by marketers to manipulate consumer perceptions. For instance, the advertising standards agency banned a DFS advert when it was found that they had digitally manipulated the size of the actors in order to make a couch appear larger.
Try it at home
One of the most elegant demonstrations of how context effects size perception is the Ebbinghaus illusion. You can have a go at creating this illusion yourself. Draw around a 5 pence piece twice. Around one of the circles place a ring of very small circles. Around the other, draw around a 2 pence coin five or six times, as shown below.
Recreating the Ebbinghaus illusion is easy. All you need is a pen, paper, and 7p. Photograph: Nathalia Gjersoe for the Guardian
Now examine what you’ve created. Do either of the two circles in the middle look bigger? Ask somebody else which of the two middle circles they think is bigger. Here is what the illusion typically looks like:
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Ebbinghaus illusion Photograph: Wikimedia Commons/Wikimedia
Almost everyone who sees this image will say that the central circle on the left is smaller than the one on the right. In fact the two orange circles are exactly the same size – measure them if you don’t believe me. Even when you have produced the illusion yourself, using the same 5 pence coin to create the two circles, it’s very difficult not to see the one on the right as being bigger.
How it works
The illusion rests on the fact that the visual-attention system uses context to determine the size of objects. The orange circle on the left is surrounded by larger circles, making it seem small by comparison. The one on the right is surrounded by smaller circles, making it seem big.
Interestingly, adults who fall for the illusion visually tend not to succumb if asked to reach for the two objects. Although their eyes are telling them that the circles are different sizes, their grip size is the same in both cases. This has been used as evidence that there are two separate pathways for vision in the brain, one used for identifying objects and the other used for action.
Is your memory as accurate as you think it is? Read more
The illusion feels fast and automatic yet is surprisingly susceptible to individual differences. Although most people across cultures experience the illusion, it is stronger for those from Japan than those from the UK. This cultural difference interacts with other factors: the effect is stronger on average in women than men (though there is massive overlap) and in social scientists than in mathematicians.
These differences are thought to rest on processing style. Those who experience the illusion most strongly tend to have a more global, holistic processing style as compared to a more local, analytic style.
Interestingly, children below the age of 7 do not seem to experience the illusion, regardless of where they come from. No-one is quite sure why but it may be because it relies on familiarity with depth cues in printed images. While most adults have years of experience of quickly making sense of size differences in 2D images, and so are easily fooled, children have a great deal less. The effect is surprisingly reliable – if you have any young children hanging about, try the illusion out on them.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2016/aug/22/the-ebbinghaus-illusion-small-far-away-circles-father-ted
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en
| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1f48bf2f979a645dfd0b56a1714173bb261386920999da8d56503c06a139ae14.json
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[
"Anna Tims"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:06 | null | 2016-08-17T06:00:24 |
It refused to take responsibility for collecting a Miele dishwasher, despite it failing within five minutes of being switched on
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F17%2Fcurrys-faulty-dishwasher-miele-your-problems.json
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Currys claim that dishwasher could not be collected doesn’t hold water
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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I purchased a Miele dishwasher from Currys for £579. It failed within five minutes and the screen showed a “circulation pump failure”.
The store assured me it would be collected and I would be refunded, but as it was a bank holiday and Miele couldn’t be contacted, I would need to call back the next day.
I did so and was told that Currys couldn’t in fact remove it as it was delivered directly from Miele.
Over the next few days I visited the store on several occasions and was variously told that Miele couldn’t be called, only emailed; that Miele would call within 48 hours (it didn’t); that I’d be texted about a collection date (I wasn’t); and that Currys couldn’t do anything – it was up to me to arrange collection and refund.
I’m stuck with something no one will take responsibility for.
SB, Hartlepool
Currys appears to be playing a favourite trick among retailers – to fob a customer off on to a manufacturer and hope they’ve never heard of the Consumer Rights Act, which puts the responsibility on the trader. A customer only has to contact the manufacturer if they are claiming under a warranty.
When I contacted Currys it finally admitted that it is guilty of an “administrative error”. It seems that Currys’ departments are reluctant to communicate with each other, for Miele had arranged with Currys to collect your machine almost as soon as you had complained.
Yet for a week after, Currys insisted it had heard nothing. You have now been refunded and have bought a fully functioning dishwasher.
If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/17/currys-faulty-dishwasher-miele-your-problems
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en
| 2016-08-17T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/07abede1dfe8d14ea4403d5bcce9b4029a17a1304a7095dcfb5413eb0f961424.json
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|
[
"Frances Perraudin"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:52 | null | 2016-08-22T09:39:54 |
Teenage boys at school in North Yorkshire given anticonvulsant drug Beclamide in attempt to improve behaviour
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2016%2Faug%2F22%2Fhome-office-approved-drug-trials-on-young-offenders-in-1960s.json
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Home Office approved drug trials on young offenders in 1960s
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www.theguardian.com
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The Home Office approved plans to carry out drug trials on children at two schools for young offenders in the 1960s, according to files released by the National Archives.
Research by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme revealed that, without the knowledge of their parents, teenage boys at Richmond Hill approved school in North Yorkshire were given the anticonvulsant drug Beclamide over a period of six months in 1968 in an attempt to improve their behaviour.
Plans to trial the anti-psychotic drug Haloperidol on teenage girls at Springhead Park approved school in Rothwell, near Leeds, were also given the green light, but later rejected by the school’s headmistress, Shelagh Sunner.
Modelled on boarding schools, approved schools were residential institutions for young people who had committed criminal offences or were deemed to be beyond parental control. They were funded and inspected by the Home Office but run by voluntary organisations.
Following the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, they were replaced by community homes, which were run by local councils.
National Archives files include correspondence between three doctors – all of whom have since died – discussing plans for the drug trials.
In a letter from 1967, Dr JR Hawkins, a psychiatrist working at Richmond Hill, wrote to the Home Office asking permission to test the drugs on boys who were “impulsive, explosive, irritable, restless and aggressive”.
Hawkings said this would be “a perfectly normal and legitimate therapy for certain types of disturbed adolescent” and that the drugs had not yet been widely tested on such boys.
According to a letter dated November 1967, Home Office psychiatrist Dr Pamela Mason welcomed Hawkings’s plan. “From the clinical or practical point of view these are the boys that can produce considerable problems within a school and this sort of research into possible drug treatment is to be welcomed,” she said. “I would recommend maximum support for this project.”
In November 1968, Dr Joyce Galbraith, a psychiatrist working at Springhead Park, also wrote to Mason saying she was increasingly concerned about unrest at the school.
She suggested giving Haloperidol to every girl in the school for 18 weeks. “My suggestion is that we should try some form of drug trial to see if, by allaying the anxiety of the girls chemically, we might perhaps settle the school a little bit more, and give the staff an opportunity to put their own house in order,” she wrote.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/22/home-office-approved-drug-trials-on-young-offenders-in-1960s
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en
| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d9c6a528b19fa888db547c1d0da927efac64426da08b4cbb0c7ee18b8879e586.json
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|
[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-28T10:51:52 | null | 2016-08-28T09:25:02 |
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump mentions the death of NBA star Dwyane Wade’s cousin during a rally in Iowa
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fdonald-trump-comments-death-nba-dwyane-wade-cousin-political-speech-video.json
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| null |
Donald Trump comments on death of Dwyane Wade's cousin - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump mentions the death of NBA star Dwyane Wade’s cousin during a rally in Iowa. Trump stirred controversy earlier by tweeting about the fatal shooting of Nykea Aldridge in an apparent attempt to attract African American voters. Trump tells the audience “this shouldn’t happen in America” after lamenting Aldridge’s death
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/aug/28/donald-trump-comments-death-nba-dwyane-wade-cousin-political-speech-video
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/39577891aecd67e9ebc179d6a0ac184e80cf413352d62f5491cd4a1b215389e7.json
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|
[
"Larry Elliott",
"Will Hutton",
"Jakub Krupa"
] | 2016-08-28T10:49:36 | null | 2016-08-28T09:42:51 |
This year’s autumn statement, the new chancellor’s first, is a very big deal indeed
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomics-blog%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fbrexit-philip-hammond-autumn-statement-investment.json
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en
| null |
After Brexit, Philip Hammond can make a strong case for investment
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Autumn statements come and go. Like comets, they blaze across the political sky for a couple of weeks in November and December before disappearing into the inky darkness. By Christmas, they are largely forgotten.
This year will be different. For once, it matters what the Treasury cooks up and what would have been a rather mundane affair had George Osborne remained chancellor has become a very big deal indeed.
Philip Hammond is the new occupant of 11 Downing Street and he has some big calls to make. Is the economy in need of a post-Brexit boost? If it is, can the job be left solely to the Bank of England? If not, can the Treasury take up the baton and at what cost to the public finances? If so, should the stimulus come from lower taxes or higher spending?
The answer to the first question is yes. Growth in the second quarter was reasonably robust at 0.6%, and the indicators since the referendum on 23 June have shown that the economy has held up better than most people anticipated.
In part, though, that has been the result of policy action already taken by the Bank of England and by the expectation – fostered by Hammond – that there will be more to come in the autumn statement.
Some softening in growth can be expected as a result of investment decisions being put on hold. Consumer spending appears to have held up well since Brexit, but there have been no figures yet for private capital expenditure. This was already lower in the second quarter of 2016 than a year earlier, and with uncertainty ratcheted up it is possible that there will be further weakness in the second half of the year.
The Bank of England is not best placed to cope with this. If interest rates of 0.5% for the seven years leading up to Brexit have failed to persuade companies to invest, it is hard to imagine that interest rates of 0.25% (or even 0.1%) will any more successful. Keynes called this a liquidity trap: business cannot be persuaded to invest no matter how low interest rates go. It is a classic example of the old saw: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Monetary policy, which is what central banks do, is on the point of exhaustion. Indeed, there are some economists who think perpetually low interest rates and QE are the problem.
“It is not that central banks have failed to reduce interest rates enough”, said the consultancy Fathom last week, “but that the continued application of emergency monetary policy measures has held back growth in productive potential by enabling barely profitable and increasingly unproductive firms to survive. Low rates encourage zombies. Zombies do not grow.”
Apart from in the depths of the 2008-09 global slump, fiscal policy has taken a back seat. Finance ministers have sat back and left it to central banks to sort things out. This looked like a mistake in late 2009-10, when the brief flirtation with Keynesianism gave way to the vogue for austerity, and it looks like an even bigger mistake today.
There are two necessary preconditions for a Keynesian stimulus: that private sector investment is being prevented by a high degree of uncertainty, and that monetary policy is played out. Both apply in the post-Brexit world.
So, Hammond can make a strong case for an expansionary autumn statement on the grounds that there is a risk to the economy that can be dealt with better by the Treasury than by the Bank of England.
The next question is what form that stimulus should take. Hammond has two options: to cut taxes or to increase public spending, or perhaps a combination of both.
If Hammond goes down the tax route, a cut in VAT is the obvious choice. The chancellor would hope that cheaper goods and services would encourage consumer spending and so limit the risk of the economy sliding into recession. There are, though, drawbacks with this approach. For a start, it is expensive; cutting the main VAT rate from 20% to 17.5% would cost the exchequer £14bn a year. There is also no guarantee that consumers would spend the windfall; they might simply save more. And if consumer spending does increase as a result of a VAT cut, the upshot is likely to be higher imports and a bigger balance of payments deficit.
The final reason to be wary of a VAT cut is that boosting consumption is a lower priority than raising investment. And if the problem is that the private sector is not investing, it makes sense for the Treasury to boost public investment.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Passenger numbers on the trains have doubled in the past 15 years while spending on railway infrastructure has remained flat as a share of GDP. Photograph: Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock
Some of the arguments always mustered against higher state investment can be easily countered. Hammond would not be competing against the private sector for the funds available for investment. There would be no “crowding out” if the Treasury borrowed more, because the private sector has made it abundantly clear over the past decade that it has a propensity not to invest.
Simon Wells, chief UK economist at HSBC, puts it this way: “In the current environment, the case for public investment is compelling. Interest rates can’t go any lower, uncertainty is extreme and borrowing is cheap.”
What’s more, the economy is suffering from obvious supply-side deficiencies that would be eased by higher investment: passenger numbers on the trains have doubled in the past 15 years while spending on railway infrastructure has remained flat as a share of GDP; there is no nationwide superfast broadband; there is a looming energy crisis caused by power stations reaching the end of their lives; the UK spends less on infrastructure than any G7 nation apart from the US; there is an acute shortage of new housing that is leading to excessively high property inflation and impeding labour mobility.
All in all, Hammond is spoilt for choice. Public investment is a better option for a stimulus than a VAT cut because it provides assets for the future, improves the economy’s long-term growth potential, and generates a stream of income that ensures the investment pays for itself. The deficit, currently 4% of GDP, will rise in the short term but come down over time.
Boosting public investment is not without its problems for the government. Despite all the talk about shovel-ready projects, it would take time for extra spending on infrastructure to show up in the growth figures. There are two other difficulties. One is public opposition to new railways and housing. So-called BANANAism (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone) is strong. The other is that the construction sector has a massive problem with skill shortages and the only realistic way to find the workers to build the new homes and lay the new tracks would be to import them from overseas.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2016/aug/28/brexit-philip-hammond-autumn-statement-investment
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1f08ee674bf6361133ee83374def3f3475c09ceb642a7e91e6b33445cac0eccf.json
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|
[
"Alan Smith"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:10 | null | 2016-08-25T15:39:03 |
Robbie Keane, who is calling time on his 18-year international career after next Wednesday’s friendly with Oman, has not always been popular but was always there when it mattered
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Frobbie-keane-street-footballer-ireland-greatest-striker-retirement.json
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| null |
Robbie Keane: the street footballer who became Ireland’s greatest striker
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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For Robbie Keane the hunger to score and the thrill of the pursuit are feelings that will never grow old but 18 years since making his international debut the inevitable fact that his body can no longer withstand the chase has finally been grudgingly accepted.
He has not always been universally well received and has endured a fair share of criticism throughout a remarkable career that positions him 17th in the all-time international goalscoring list, yet it is tough to think of an individual more driven by playing internationals than the Dublin street footballer who first broke into the Republic of Ireland team as a 17-year-old. Those well worn jokes about him joining his boyhood club each time he was transferred grew stale almost a decade ago but Ireland was indisputably his raison d’être.
Ireland’s Robbie Keane announces retirement from international football Read more
Sixty-seven goals from 145 appearances and his desire never wilted. Fitness permitting, Keane would be present – ready to give it his all. It is worth recalling how in 2003 he missed the 2-1 win away to Georgia due to his father’s passing. Also recovering from a knee injury at the time, he was not expected to turn up for the game away to Albania three days later but boarded a flight to Tirana after the funeral and started the scoreless draw.
Among the numerous tributes paid to the 36-year-old following the announcement that he will wear the green jersey for the final time in next Wednesday’s friendly against Oman, a previously tough sell for supporters that has now become a meaningful farewell party, one in particular stood out. Mick McCarthy, who gave Keane his debut away to Czech Republic in 1998, described the striker as being like a son on RTE radio but also, most importantly, encapsulated a key reason behind his success. “He understood the game and he had this side to him, he played like a street footballer,” said McCarthy. “Like kids used to but he had an intelligence that was way beyond his years as a 17-year-old kid in how he played and how he understood the game.”
It was under McCarthy’s reign that Keane produced one of Ireland’s greatest sporting moments – the last-minute equaliser against Germany at the 2002 World Cup. The only other player to score against the Germany keeper Oliver Kahn in Japan and South Korea was Ronaldo. Fitting company – for the Brazilian.
Apart from the cartwheeling delight of Ibaraki, it is quite a challenge to decide on Keane’s best goal. Even now hard-nosed cynics argue that he turned up only against the weaker teams.
Although 10 of the 67 came against Faroe Islands and Gibraltar, it is impossible to dispute he made an impact when it really mattered. He scored in three consecutive games at the 2002 World Cup and has found the net against the continent’s finest: Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy and France.
Keane was suffering a prolonged drought when he volleyed home in the 2002 play-off against Iran and was also the man who provided hope in the 2010 play-off before Thierry Henry infamously stretched his left palm.
In recent years his impact on the pitch lessened but his influence within the squad remained. Martin O’Neill had made it clear that the ageing star was no longer capable of spearheading his attack but his determination to stay involved was strong. He was available no matter the opposition or logistical challenge of travelling from LA to Dublin.
Despite being third choice behind Shane Long and Daryl Murphy, there was little doubt that, once fit, he would be going to France for this summer’s European Championship. Some may suggest his role was reduced to cheerleading but it is worth recalling how he was vociferously bellowing his support from the touchline in the farcical fog of Zenica during the play-off against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
His desire to take a coaching role eventually in Ireland is well known and it would be some surprise if he does not crop up on the senior team’s coaching ticket in the future.
Keane’s last truly important goals were arguably five years ago, in the Euro 2012 play-offs against Estonia – though he did score in the 2013 qualifying defeat by Sweden. He ended up with five during the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign but all came in the fixtures against an abject Gibraltar, featuring a hat-trick in the home game scored, memorably, from a combined total of eight yards.
That made him the all-time record scorer for European Championship qualifiers and an entire country will be hoping there is one more chance to celebrate on Wednesday – a 68th goal would put him level with Gerd Müller in 15th.
Keane was not just the country’s greatest ever striker but, as the president, Michael D Higgins, put it in his glowing tribute, “a wonderful ambassador for Ireland”.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/robbie-keane-street-footballer-ireland-greatest-striker-retirement
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a65813c7fa714186b8ae50aee47f27dd2a038df517b94a6e2b5497ac24a112ea.json
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[
"Hanneke Meijer"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:19 | null | 2016-08-24T12:00:20 |
The spread of chickens around the world is intimately linked to the movement of people. Research from New Zealand sheds light on how and when they arrived
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fhow-did-the-chicken-a-shy-forest-bird-migrate-around-the-globe-new-zealan.json
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How did the chicken, a shy, flight-impaired forest bird, migrate around the globe?
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www.theguardian.com
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Chickens are native to the tropical jungles of Southeast Asia, but over the last approximately 8,000 years, chickens have been domesticated and spread around the globe to become one of the most valued domesticated animals. These fairly shy forest birds lack the ability for long-distance flying and are not migratory. As such, their spread around the world is not just a tale of domestication, but one that is intimately linked to the movements of people around the world.
Darwin was the first to suggest that all domestic chickens descended from the red junglefowl Gallus gallus. The earliest archaeological evidence for domesticated chickens has been reported from sites in China, where chicken bones had been found dating back to 10,000-8000 years ago (West and Zhou, 1988; Xiang et al., 2014). However, close examination of the reported chicken remains found that most, if not all, bones identified as chicken are ring-necked pheasants, a species common in China, instead (Peters et al., 2016; Eda et al., 2015). Evidence from China regarding the early domestication of chickens remains controversial, but chicken remains from the Indus Valley in northern India suggests that domesticated chickens were present in southern Asia 4,000 years ago.
The rise of new molecular techniques, such as DNA analysis, allowed scientists to look at the domestication of chickens at a whole new level. An early study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) showed that domestic chickens indeed descended from the red junglefowl, and indicated that a single domestication event had taken place in Thailand (Fumihito et al., 1996). More recent studies showed that the domestication of chickens occurred in at least three separate regions in Asia (Liu et al., 2006). Moreover, domesticated chickens interbred with local populations of different wild jungle fowl species; the gene for yellow legs, an ubiquitous characteristic of domesticated chickens, can be traced back to the closely related grey junglefowl (Gallus sonneratii) (Eriksson et al., 2008) rather than the red junglefowl.
From southern Asia, the chicken left its natural range behind and embarked on its Grand Tour. Domestic chickens reached West Asia and the Near East during the third and second millennium BC, and were introduced to Europe by the Phoenicians during the 8th century BC (Perry-Gal et al., 2015). Up till then, chickens had had a mostly ceremonial or symbolic role, as evidenced by the inclusion of chickens in burials, clay figurines in early Chinese cultures and mentions of chickens in early texts. As chickens spread through Europe, chicken remains in archaeological assemblages became more abundant. This indicates that chickens had started to form an established part of European livestock, and the sagas have it that when the Vikings colonised Iceland in the 10th century, they took along their chickens.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Participants of the Poultry Club’s 2011 National Show on November 19, 2011 in Stoneleigh, England displaying a few examples of the fantastic array of shapes, colors and sizes of modern chicken breeds. From left to right: Blue Cochin, Silkie, and Malay. Composite: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Today’s chickens represent a range of different sizes, body proportions, plumage colours, behaviour, and physiological traits related to meat and egg production. Although it is thought that many modern breeds originated relatively recently (in the 18th-19th century), evidence from historical sources suggests that selective breeding was already practiced during Roman times and that several regions had their own domestic chickens with particular characteristics (de Cupere et al., 2005).
The spread of chickens from Asia south- and eastwards is thought to have been initiated by the first farmers, or Austronesians, who spread from mainland China into Island South East Asia around 5000 years ago. With them, they took pottery and agriculture including domestic animals such as pigs and dogs (Bellwood and Dizon, 2006). Although archaeological chicken remains from this region are very scarce, it is assumed that chickens formed part of this agricultural package as well. When the Polynesians subsequently colonized the Pacific island archipelagos, chickens were taken with them. Remains of chickens have been found in archaeological assemblages all over the Pacific region, and on the Hawaiian island Kauai, chickens introduced by the Polynesians some 800 years ago now run wild. Controversial evidence even suggests that the Polynesians brought chickens to South America (Storey et al., 2007) long before Columbus set foot on the continent.
Given the widespread introductions of chickens (and other commensals such as the Pacific rat Rattus exulans) by the Polynesians, it was generally assumed that the same had happened when the Polynesians colonized New Zealand in the thirteenth century. But chickens were conspicuously absent from the earliest Polynesian archaeological assemblages. Had they been overlooked? Lost to disease or predation after their arrival? Was the abundance of large flightless birds that required little effort to capture reason to abandon the keeping of chickens? Or, were they never there in the first place? To settle the question of when chickens arrived in New Zealand, researchers used radiocarbon dating to assess the age of three archaeological chicken bones that could potentially date to the period of Polynesian colonisation.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A chicken leg bone from New Zealand’s South Island, which radiocarbon dating has revealed dates to around the time of Captain Cook’s second voyage. Photograph: Paul Scofield, Canterbury Museum.
Surprisingly, the bones turned out to be quite young, with median ages of 1756, 1757 and 1840 - although note that the radiocarbon method yields age probability distributions rather than a single age, (Wood et al., 2016). These ages postdate the arrival of Polynesians by far, and pre-date permanent European settlement, but their age distributions overlap with the arrival of Captain James Cook’s second voyage in 1773. Moreover, Cook recorded gifting several chickens, both hens and cocks, to local Māori on several occasions. Little is known regarding the fate of these chickens, and it is unclear if the bones sampled in this study represent the chickens that were gifted by Captain Cook, or their descendants. The trading by Māori of other European items between settlements along the coast suggests that Māori were quick to incorporate chickens into their diet.
This may not just have been a matter of taste. Before the arrival of humans, New Zealand was home to a unique terrestrial fauna that included large flightless birds such as the moa, and large numbers of sea birds that bred in colonies on land. Much of the native fauna had gone extinct in less than two centuries after the Polynesians arrived. Moreover, evidence from East Polynesia suggests that long-distance trading had almost ceased around that time, and that the ability to make long voyages may have been lost among Māori. With protein sources dwindling rapidly, and without the possibility to resupply by long-distance trading, Māori were facing limited food resources. The arrival of chickens may have been met with relief.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Portrait of James Cook, He Who Brought The Chicken. Oil painting by Nathaniel Dance, 1775-76. Photograph: Dea Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty Images
Despite their title of the oldest chicken bones from New Zealand, the bones do not answer the question of whether or not chickens were introduced to New Zealand by the first Polynesians. However, the authors argue, had chickens been on board of the first Polynesian canoes and formed an established part of the settlers’ diet, their bones would have been more abundant in the earliest Polynesian assemblages, as is the case on other Polynesian islands. The fact that New Zealand was teeming with a diverse terrestrial fauna that was easy prey may have been enough incentive to leave the chicken be.
References
Bellwood and Dizon, 2005. The Batanes Archaeological Project and the “Out of Taiwan” Hypothesis for Austronesian Dispersal. Journal of Austronesian Studies 1:1-32.
de Cupere et al, 2005. Ancient breeds of domestic fowl (Gallus gallus f. domestica) distinguished on the basis of traditional observations combined with mixture analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 32:1587-1597.
Eda et al., 2016. Reevaluation of early Holocene chicken domestication in northern China. Journal of Archaeological Science 67:25-31.
Eriksson et al., 2008. Identification of the yellow skin gene reveals a hybrid origin of the domestic chicken. PLoS Genetics 4(2) e1000010.
Fumihito et al 1996. Monophyletic origin and unique dispersal patterns of domestic fowls. PNAS 93:6792-6795.
Liu et al 2006. Multiple maternal origins of chickens: out of the Asian jungles. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 38:12-19.
Perry-Gal et al., 2015. Earliest economic exploitation of chicken outside East Asia: Evidence from the Hellenistic Southern Levant. PNAS 112: 9849–9854.
Peters et al., 2016. Holocene cultural history of Red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) and its domestic descendant in East Asia. Quaternary Science Reviews 142:102-119.
Storey et al., 2007. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile. PNAS 104: 10335–10339.
West and Zhou 1988. Did chickens go north? New evidence for domestication. Journal of Archaeological Science 15:515-533.
Wood et al., 2016. Origin and timing of New Zealand’s earliest domestic chickens: Polynesian commensals or European introductions? Royal Society Open Science 3:160258.
Xiang et al., 2014. Early Holocene chicken domestication in northern China. PNAS 111:17564–17569.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/24/how-did-the-chicken-a-shy-forest-bird-migrate-around-the-globe-new-zealan
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b1001e85a41d132222116bf4809a1ef62f6d779e9519bc4347bc941a2dd82df2.json
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[
"Samuel Gibbs"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:04 | null | 2016-06-14T09:15:40 |
Apple launch new version of iPad and iPhone operating system, including redesigned Apple Music, internet of things Home app, and new Apple Watch OS
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Fjun%2F13%2Fapple-ios-10-emoji-siri-facial-recognition-iphone-ipad-homekit-watch-os-3.json
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iOS 10 brings bigger emojis, better Siri and facial recognition to iPhone
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www.theguardian.com
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The next version of Apple’s software for the iPhone and iPad, iOS 10, will feature enhanced 3D touch features, expanded Siri and an improved lock screen plus overhauls to Photos, Music and Messages.
Apple has also improved notifications, allowing apps to provide rich notifications that are activated via 3D touch gestures in the notification pane, as well as the widget pane and via the lock screen.
Siri is now open to third-party developers, which means apps like WeChat can be accessed straight from the voice-control window. While the Apple QuickType keyboard now has part of Siri’s machine learning to allow it to predict your responses based on what is happening on the rest of the phone.
Apple Photos now has facial, scene and object recognition built in, which is performed on device, as well as the ability to view your photos on a map and to automatically group photos for topics, trips, people and other activities in what Apple calls “Memories”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Craig Federighi of Apple Inc. talks about photos within iOS at the company’s World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. Photograph: Stephen Lam/Reuters
Apple Maps also got an overhaul to make it smarter, scanning your calendar for places and learning from your typical actions, adding third-party integrations such as Uber and a new dynamic view for driving directions, which is integrated into Apple’s CarPlay.
Apple made a big deal about how its machine intelligence features were powered by data stored on the device itself, not via cloud-based processing as with most other artificial intelligence features.
Craig Federighi, the head of software, described it as Apple’s differentiator with end-to-end encryption and advanced anonymization where taking data off the device for development is necessary saying: “Great features and great privacy. You demanded it.”
Apple’s Phone and Messages apps were upgraded. Messages gained rich links for video and websites, and larger emoji and prediction for “emojification” that allows semi-autonomous replacement of words with emoji. Message bubble animations and instant responses similar to Facebook were also added, plus the ability to handwrite messages, while iMessages has been opened up to third-party developer additions. The phone app also gained transcription for voice mail and integration with VoIP apps such as Skype, making them appear like the native dialer app.
Apple Music was also redesigned, as was Apple News with breaking news notifications and subscriptions. Apple’s HomeKit home internet of things also got an upgrade with a dedicated Home app on the iPhone, integration into Control Centre and the use of the Apple TV as a central hub for remote control of HomeKit devices.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, walks the WWDC faithful through changes to Apple Music. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images
The update is rolling out now to developers, along with a new development kit, and is expected to be available to the public via a beta programme in the next few months. The final version of iOS 10 is expected to be released in September to users via iTunes or directly through the Settings app on iPhones and iPads.
As part of the new update, Apple showed off some more pressure-sensitive 3D touch gestures on the lockscreen, greater multitasking features and more advanced Night Shift features that help limit the impact of device use on sleep.
The tenth version of iOS will support the iPhone 5 and newer, and the iPad Air and newer, including the iPad Mini 2, older iPhones and iPads will be left on iOS 9.3.
Apple also unveiled the latest version of its watchOS 3 for its smartwatch, which is set to improve native app support, speed them up and give them a greater ability to operate when not connected to an iPhone.
“Our top focus has been performance. Your watch should respond instantly, and it should be updated before you look at it,” said Kevin Lynch, vice president of technology for Apple. “It’s about seven times faster, but it feels a million times faster.”
One of the biggest criticisms of the Apple Watch is the time it takes for apps to load and perform actions, often longer than simply pulling out an iPhone from the pocket. Apple hopes to address speed issues, as it tried to with watchOS 2, although new Apple Watch hardware is likely required to bring them up to speed with the rest of the company’s devices.
There’s a new Control Centre for quick settings and a live dock of apps. Apps can now update behind the scenes so that they’re ready when you need them, while Apple has redesigned many of its apps to be quicker to activate the most common actions, often within one tap.
Apple has also implemented handwriting recognition functionality called Scribble, which allows users to write out words one letter at a time, an SOS emergency call function and activity sharing for fitness competition between friends and family. The company has also refined its activity tracking for wheelchair users and added a meditation app called Breathe.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/13/apple-ios-10-emoji-siri-facial-recognition-iphone-ipad-homekit-watch-os-3
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en
| 2016-06-14T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3755c07a4ceb95662fdf8fe7f67c353f94b67ad88cc03047ef2b33d7342d936d.json
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[
"Katie Allen"
] | 2016-08-30T02:55:19 | null | 2016-07-10T10:43:44 |
It’s easy to leap when you have a well-feathered nest to land in, but most UK workers don’t have that luxury
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Why resigning is the preserve of the lucky few
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Quitting has been all the rage ever since the Britain voted to leave the EU.
In the space of a fortnight, there have been farewells from prime minister David Cameron, Ukip leader Nigel Farage and thwarted Tory leadership hopeful Boris Johnson.
The resignation craze has by no means been confined to politics. England manager Roy Hodgson walked after his team’s humiliating defeat by Minnows Iceland and Chris Evans announced he was stepping down from presenting Top Gear after just one series.
Knowing when to go brings a welcome dose of humility to the brash worlds of top-flight politics, sport and TV. Evans, for example, said: “Gave it my best shot but sometimes that’s not enough.” Cameron went for the more poetic image of a ship, saying: “I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.”
Whether you view the slew of resignations as nobly falling on swords or turning backs on chaos, in each case what unites these quitters is their wealth, and particularly their wealth of opportunity. It’s easy to leap when you have a well-feathered nest to land in.
Their luxury of choice is in stark contrast to large parts of the UK population, who are trapped in low-paying, low-satisfaction work and would probably love nothing more than the chance to throw in the towel and try something else. But even when it comes to the opportunity to quit we are a nation of haves and have-nots.
There is every chance that Brexit will exacerbate this inequality of choice. In the uncertain times that lie ahead, when the economy will doubtless slow and firms will freeze hiring or even cut jobs, it’s not the rich we should be worried out. The rich will always be OK. Furthermore, by exercising their freedom of choice, it is likely that the rich will further narrow the opportunities available to those less well-off.
Take the City. If the big investment banks carry out their threats to desert London now their access to EU markets is at risk, their senior staff will go with them and so will their tax payments, which is a significant chunk of government income.
Underscoring how dependent the country has become on the capital’s wealth, a report last week highlighted that London still accounts for the lion’s share of UK tax revenues. The capital generated almost as much tax as the next 37 largest cities combined, according the Centre for Cities thinktank.
If London loses its international standing on financial markets, the hit to public coffers will be substantial and that risks serious ramifications for households on lower incomes.
An analysis before the referendum that struggled for publicity amid the mud slinging came from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr). Assessing the potential impact on government revenues and welfare spending, the thinktank warned that low-income households were likely to shoulder a disproportionate share of the Brexit costs.
If Niesr is right, that will mean a further squeeze on living standards after years of austerity and lacklustre wage growth. Underemployment – people working fewer hours than they would like – also remains high and millions of people are in insecure work where they do not have regular hours or predictable shifts.
Paris-based thinktank the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) summed up the post-crisis experience of many workers across advanced economies last week as “Back at work, but out of pocket”.
But it’s not just wages the OECD is worried about for the UK, because employment is under threat too. It warned that Brexit risked the UK economy’s ability to continue creating jobs.
Chiming with these findings, business surveys since the referendum have already signalled that some firms are holding off hiring permanent staff and that others are considering cutting their workforces.
None of that will bring hope to anyone thinking of jumping ship. Long before the referendum, job-to-job moves were on a downward trajectory in the UK. The Resolution Foundation thinktank has been looking into low job mobility, warning that the drop in the rate at which people move between jobs since the financial crisis in 2008 was stymying the careers and pay progression of young people in particular.
Unsurprisingly, this dearth of opportunity in the jobs market has gone hand in hand with people’s skills being mismatched to their roles, That appears to be hitting job satisfaction.
Key measures of national happiness stagnated in the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics last week, among them people’s sense that what they do in life is worthwhile. It was the first time since data was first gathered in 2011 that there was no year-on-year improvement in that measure, although there was an uptick in overall life satisfaction.
Of course, advocates for a self-starting approach to this lack of opportunity will tell the disenchanted to set up their own business. No doubt they would cite the startup success stories from downturns past, such as Microsoft being founded in the 1970s and cosmetics company Revlon, which was launched during the 1930s Great Depression.
But it is one of the great myths of this post-crisis era that a surge in self-employment has solved people’s problems of low pay and economic insecurity. Sure, a few will make their millions but for many, going it alone means forgoing employee benefits such as pension schemes and sick pay while working round the clock to make ends meet.
In some cases, self-employment has led to outright exploitation of workers. Citizens Advice has warned that as many as 460,000 people could be “bogusly self-employed” because unscrupulous employers are compelling staff to be self-employed when they should in fact have employee status.
So employers can avoid paying the minimum wage, employers’ national insurance, sick pay, holiday pay and pension contributions but still get the workers they want. Those doing the “self-employed” work end up overly dependent on one paymaster without any of the security of employee status. So much for self-employment being a ticket to freedom.
When Farage resigned last week, he said he wanted his life back. Millions of people in insecure work, dead-end jobs or a state of bogus self-employment probably feel the same way too. But quitting simply isn’t an option. That remains the preserve of the few.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/10/why-resigning-is-the-preserve-of-the-lucky-few-workers
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| 2016-07-10T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ee68927f41b5496c71cfe1705b68693eda6d6b1c0e86f872f9eca5b2808e29cb.json
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[
"Ruth Maclean"
] | 2016-08-29T10:52:10 | null | 2016-08-29T09:15:16 |
Inaccessible clinics, untrained and overstretched midwives and lack of medicine are among the challenges facing mothers and newborn babies in Guinea
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Giving birth in Guinea: a life or death lottery bereft of midwives and medicine
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www.theguardian.com
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A baby was born, took one breath, then left the world again. No amount of the midwife pumping his legs up to his ribcage and back, or poking a finger hard and fast at his chest, would bring him back.
His 17-year-old mother lay in pain on the delivery table as her son was wrapped up in a yellow cloth. There was no time even for her to hold him, as another woman was about to give birth. The midwives quickly changed their bloodied robes and gloves. Because there was no other table, the second woman gave birth lying on the floor.
This time, the baby yelled as soon as she came out. She was healthy. While the midwives moved on to the next urgent case, their small delivery room filling up, she spent her first few minutes screaming on the concrete slab.
Welcome to life in Guinea, baby Katherine.
The situation for newborn babies and their mothers in this west African country is dire. Of every 1,000 babies born in Guinea, 123 die before their fifth birthday. For every 100,000 live births, 724 women die. Guinea has the world’s second-highest rate of female genital mutilation (FGM), after Somalia – 97% of women between 15 and 49 have been cut. Women who have had FGM are twice as likely to haemorrhage during childbirth, and haemorrhage is the leading cause of mothers dying in Africa.
Conakry hairdressers dispense cut-and-dried contraceptive advice to women | Ruth Maclean Read more
Medicine is in short supply, and health workers’ salaries rely on selling enough of it. This leads to staff shortages; most health centres have one or two health workers when they should have eight.
The Ebola outbreak, which killed more than 2,500 people in Guinea, revealed how little access to medical care rural Guineans had. The health situation has improved slightly post-Ebola, but without donor money, the system would grind to a halt.
“The needs are identified, but the money is just not coming from the government,” says Guy Yogo, Unicef’s deputy representative in Guinea. After Ebola, the government increased its contribution to health from 2.66% to 4.66% of GDP, and has committed to 7% for next year. According to Yogo, however: “The minimum is 11-15% if you really want to have an impact.”
Katherine is one of nearly 5,000 babies officially born each year at Doko health centre in the Kankan region of north-eastern Guinea, but about 2,000 more are born to unregistered mothers who come to the area to search for gold in artisanal mines.
Births take place in one small room, with its single delivery table presided over by two midwives.
“Lots of women come, and there’s nowhere to put them all. They often have their babies on the floor. Better there than next to sick people – at least it’s clean,” says Bernadette Mansaré, a midwife.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sayon Keita, who is pregnant with her seventh child, is examined by a midwife at a health post near Doko, Siguiri
When there is a moment between deliveries, she lectures the dozen pregnant women waiting outside on the importance of coming in for checkups.
Doko’s midwives have not had any training in 20 years. If they had, they might have known how to give the baby who died mouth to mouth resuscitation or proper compressions. Thousands of babies die from preventable causes each year.
One of the things that the response to Ebola brought was medical supplies, the like of which had not been seen in a generation.
Kondiadou health centre is near Kissidougou, one of the towns to which the UN started regular flights during Ebola. Before, reaching south-east Guinea from the capital involved a bumpy car journey lasting several days. Now, because of the flights, it is easier to get supplies and staff in, although the UN is expected to cancel the flight as soon as the threat of Ebola is completely over.
“It’s the first time we’ve got equipment like this since the centre was built in 1990,” says Therese Soropogui, a community health worker at Kondiadou, as she pulls out standard latex gloves and yellow washing-up ones and explains the difference.
A small camping stove, some sterilising kit, bandages and a few hundred pairs of gloves have been donated by the Spanish government and Unicef. And a red plastic bucket. It does not take much to save lives in remote Guinea.
“Before, we burned tools in the fire, and that took too long,” Soropogui says. “And if you had two women giving birth at the same time, you had to use our one set of tools for both women, one after the other. That was very difficult. Now we have three or four sets of tools and, at the end, you can sterilise them.”
Not all of the equipment seems to have been used, however, showing up what many see as an endemic problem with the UN’s approach.
“They give out supplies like sweets,” says Yolande Hyjazi, the country director of Jhpiego, an international health organisation. “The UN system is: what the government asks for, they buy, and that’s it. We’ve seen a lot of vacuum extraction equipment, but if you ask the staff about it they say: ‘I don’t know [what it is], the UNFPA [UN population fund] sent it.’ They give equipment without training.”
Even when staff do know how to use it, obstetric equipment does not solve a problem many women have – getting to a clinic.
Harriet Somadouno, a 20-year-old farmer in her third trimester, walked 17km to Kondiadou for a checkup, carrying 10kg of peanuts on her head to sell at the market en route.
Liberian nurses learn to spot danger signs in babies as healthcare gets shot in arm | Nadene Ghouri Read more
“I walked with my friends, but I carried the peanuts myself,” she says. “It took me six hours. I’m going home tonight but I think it’ll be a quicker journey as I sold all the peanuts – perhaps four hours.”
Somadouno, exhausted after her walk, barely seemed to take in the information given by the nurse.
One scheme to help women involves what looks like a giant old-fashioned pram, which is attached as a sidecar to a motorbike. Spain has given 15 of them to health centres in Guinea.
Mamady Berete doubles up as Doko health centre’s broken bones specialist and the moto-ambulance driver. Dressed in high-vis from head to toe, he bumps up and down bush tracks and through enormous puddles, picking up pregnant women, strapping them in his sidecar and taking them to Doko.
The giant pram turns heads, but brings fresh problems, such as how to pay for petrol or maintenance.
“We have someone here who can fix it but, if a tyre breaks, we have to send to Conakry for a new one. It’s a bit difficult,” Berete says.
On his trips to the villages, Berete spreads the word about the health centre and encourages more people to use it.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mamady Berete heads off to collect a pregnant woman from a remote outpost and bring her to the Doko health centre
Trust in Guinea’s health system was in short supply during Ebola, when clinics closed their doors, doctors and nurses died, and infected people seemed to disappear into hospitals never to return.
“People were afraid of our health centre – they said if you came here you’d catch Ebola. So people avoided coming,” says Berete. Because nobody came, salaries could not be paid, so the clinic had to shut, leading to even less trust in the service.
According to Yogo, the lack of working health systems meant the death toll from “collateral” diseases and health complications outpaced that of Ebola.
“More people died from malaria, diarrhoea and in childbirth than of Ebola,” he says. “The country did not have enough ambulances. They were all used for Ebola patients – nobody else.”
Sierra Leone resumes long battle to save mothers and children – in pictures Read more
Now, people are trying to take advantage of the supplies and attention that Ebola brought, and keep people coming through the doors so staff can afford to keep those doors open.
Berete and his colleagues are succeeding: several health centres, including Doko, are recording pregnant women coming in greater numbers than before Ebola.
Somadouno, who left school aged nine and had her first child at 16, plans to repeat her gruelling 17km journey to give birth.
“I gave birth to my first child here and, because it went well, I’m coming back for this one,” she says. “My mother-in-law will come with me, but we’ll be on foot then too. My plan is to try to catch it early.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/29/giving-birth-guinea-maternal-health-life-death-lottery-bereft-midwives-medicine
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/aa6f585a74fbe7e929eb4f605503e9467e44ab8ccbae40a8bbcd1967d88d4721.json
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[
"Dean Burnett"
] | 2016-08-27T18:58:58 | null | 2016-08-17T14:43:12 |
Dean Burnett: One likely explanation for travel sickness is our easily-confused brains think they’re being poisoned
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2Fbrain-flapping%2F2016%2Faug%2F17%2Fwhat-causes-travel-sickness-a-glitch-in-the-brain.json
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| null |
What causes travel sickness? A glitch in the brain
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www.theguardian.com
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A lot of people, when they travel by car, ship, plane or whatever, end up feeling sick. They’re fine before they get into the vehicle, they’re typically fine when they get out. But whilst in transit, they feel sick. Particularly, it seems, in self-driving cars. Why?
One theory is that it’s due to a weird glitch that means your brain gets confused and thinks it’s being poisoned. This may seem surprising; not even the shoddiest low-budget airline would get away with pumping toxins into the passengers (airline food doesn’t count, and that joke is out of date). So where does the brain get this idea that it’s being poisoned?
Despite being a very “mobile” species, humans have evolved for certain types of movement. Specifically, walking, or running. Walking has a specific set of neurological processes tied into it, so we’ve had millions of years to adapt to it.
Think of all the things going on in your body when you’re walking, and how the brain would pick up on these. There’s the steady thud-thud-thud and pressure on your feet and lower legs. There’s all the signals from your muscles and the movement of your body, meaning the motor cortex (which controls conscious movement of muscles) and proprioception (the sense of the arrangement of your body in space, hence you can know, for example, where your arm is behind your back without looking at it directly) are all supplying particular signals.
There’s also the vestibular system, which includes the balance sensors; tiny fluid-filled tubes in our ears. The fluid responds to the laws of physics, so moves about in response to acceleration and gravity, so we can tell when we’re upside down, for example. And, of course, there’s our vision. When we walk, the world travels past on our retinas at a steady rate, and there’s the gentle side-to-side rocking caused by our hips and legs etc.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Even the flashiest car loses its glamour with a layer of vomit covering the interior. Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/REX/Shutterstock
When we’re walking, all of this sensory information is fed into the fundamental, subconscious areas of the brain, like the thalamus, that integrate it into one coherent and rich perception of ourselves and the world around us.
However, vehicles haven’t been around long enough for our brains, at such fundamental levels, to “recognise” when we’re travelling in one. Because when you’re travelling, all the usual signals of movement are absent. Your muscles are still. You’re sat down. Being inside the enclosed space of the vehicle even restricts your view of the outside world, so your eyes don’t see much passing by. This all results in sensory information that says to the fundamental brains regions “we are stationary”.
Not the vestibular system though; the fluid in your ears obeys physics, travelling at high speeds means it sloshes around even more than usual, so it’s telling the brain “we are really moving”. That means these fundamental regions are getting mixed signals; usually reliable senses are now disagreeing. What the hell can cause that? As far as the lower brain is concerned, only one thing; neurotoxin, aka poison. And what’s the quickest way to get rid of poison? Throw up. And so, we feel nauseous, and often vomit.
You can see why this might be more common in self-driving cars; there’s a lot of physical movement and watching the road when driving, so the signals aren’t so mixed. Take that and its associated movements away, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see increased motion sickness.
Some of you will know I cover all this in my book The Idiot Brain, so why rehash it here. Well, the US version of the book was released three weeks ago. I did some publicity for it, one item of which was an appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air, hosted by Terry Gross.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spike Milligan once said that the best way to treat sea sickness was to sit under a tree. Photograph: Finbarr Webster/REX/Shutterstock
In this interview, I was asked about the part of the book that looks at travel sickness. An interesting little hook to bring up in the mainstream, perhaps. The New York magazine certainly thought so, dedicating a whole article to my offhand mention. It has since snowballed from there, spreading from platform to platform to platform to platform to platform to (scientifically questionable) platform, finally arriving back here in the UK, where it started.
Now it’s appeared in the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph. This puts us in the slightly weird scenario where the Guardian was likely to be the only UK paper that hasn’t mentioned it, despite the fact that the originator of the story is already working for them! So I felt I’d best address it here.
Another reason to cover it is that, as with most things that spread like this, inaccuracies, distortions and misinterpretations gradually seep in. Now I’m reading stories that mention me by name that include claims and assertions that I’ve never heard before. So, I’d like to clarify a few points.
I did not discover this mechanism, I just read about it.
It is not a new discovery. I read about it years ago and didn’t realise until recently it wasn’t common knowledge. It even has a Wikipedia page.
This is not definitely the mechanism why which motion sickness occurs. There are other theories. It may be a combination of all these things, or something else. The one described above is the most persistent theory though.
And finally, anyone who has classed me an “expert” on something should be approached with caution.
Dean Burnett’s debut book The Idiot Brain is available now in the UK, USA and Canada.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2016/aug/17/what-causes-travel-sickness-a-glitch-in-the-brain
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en
| 2016-08-17T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b2a2898dca1a1503d113ef18ce02acb9ee04f5b9f01b24e90bb4a6634ce8ec44.json
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[
"Reuters In Amatrice"
] | 2016-08-30T16:52:35 | null | 2016-08-30T15:42:16 |
In the worst-hit town, relatives and friends gathered around 38 caskets at state funeral, including those of two small children
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fitaly-earthquake-mass-funeral-dozens-victims-amatrice.json
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| null |
Italy earthquake: mass funeral for dozens of victims in Amatrice
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Dozens of coffins have been laid out in a marquee for the second state funeral of some of the victims of the earthquake that killed at least 292 people in central Italy last week.
Relatives and friends gathered around the 38 caskets, including those of two small children, which were carried into the tent in pouring rain on Tuesday after a summer storm broke over Amatrice, the worst-hit town in the 24 August quake.
Builders worked through the night to prepare the funeral site after residents said they would boycott the ceremony when they found out authorities planned to hold it in Rieti, more than 35 miles (60km) away.
The bodies were originally taken to Rieti because officials said it would be easier to hold a mass funeral there than in Amatrice, but the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, ordered a change of plan in the face of people’s anger.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rain falls in Amatrice. Photograph: Serrano'/AGF/REX/Shutterstock
In the centre of Amatrice, voted one of Italy’s most beautiful areas last year, crews continued to dig for bodies under mounds of rubble left by the 6.2-magnitude quake.
“There are families which have been destroyed. We must give them hope,” said Don Sante Bertarelli, who was a priest in Amatrice for 15 years and returned to help comfort his former parishioners after the disaster.
Italy must block mafia from earthquake rebuild, says prosecutor Read more
Of the 292 confirmed dead, 231 were found in Amatrice.
A number of foreigners were among the dead, including 11 Romanians and three Britons.
Renzi and the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, and the Romanian prime minister, Dacian Cioloş, were expected to attend the funeral, which was to start at 6pm local time, the civil protection agency said.
Many of those who died in Amatrice were not residents and their funerals are being held in their hometowns.
A fireman used a rope to hoist a wooden statue of Christ borrowed from a nearby church above a makeshift altar for Tuesday’s service. Hours before the ceremony, relatives placed bouquets of flowers and pictures of their loved ones on the simple wooden coffins.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A firefighter hoists a crucifix into position before the state funeral in Amatrice on Tuesday. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images
In the town centre, emergency workers used mechanical diggers and bulldozers to search for bodies, with up to 10 people still believed to be missing under the debris.
It rained on Tuesday for the first time since the earthquake, complicating the search efforts. It was the second state-sponsored funeral in three days. On Saturday a service was held for victims from the adjoining Marche region. Amatrice is in the region of Lazio.
Controversy has grown over poor construction techniques, which may have been responsible for some of the deaths.
Investigators are looking into work done on the bell tower in Accumoli, which was recently restored but collapsed during the earthquake on to the home of a family of four, killing them all.
A court sequestered the half-demolished school building in Amatrice, which had recently been remodelled in part to help it withstand earthquakes.
Italy sits on two seismic faultlines. Many of its buildings are hundreds of years old and susceptible to earthquake damage. Almost 30 people died in earthquakes in northern Italy in 2012 and more than 300 in the city of L’Aquila in 2009.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/italy-earthquake-mass-funeral-dozens-victims-amatrice
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e77ffeaf55095361897aa6936c6d7a4a32ca5504c608012d4f2b015d913d0ac3.json
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[
"Amelia Hill"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:53 | null | 2016-08-26T09:57:36 |
Children’s accounts of sexual abuse, torture and humiliation in offshore detention to be read outside Australian high commission
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fnauru-asylum-seeker-protest-australia-house-london.json
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Nauru asylum seeker protest targets Australia House in London
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A reading of more than 2,000 leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention camp for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru will be narrated in a 10-hour protest outside the Australian high commission in London.
Totalling more than 8,000 pages, as published by the Guardian earlier this month, the personal accounts of sexual abuse, torture and humiliation inflicted on children held by Australia in offshore detention will be narrated by members of the International Alliance Against Mandatory Detention, which has organised the event.
“We want Australia to be internationally shamed,” said Sarah Keenan, who co-organised the event with seven other members of the alliance. “We want everyone to hear these documented incidents of abuse, self-harm, humiliation and squalor that is the everyday life for refugees on Nauru.
“The duration, monotony and repetition entailed in the reading of each file echoes the normalisation of the violence and tedium endured by refugees in indefinite detention,” she said.
The Nauru files – the largest cache of leaked documents released from inside Australia’s immigration regime – set out as never before the assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, child abuse and living conditions endured by asylum seekers held by the Australian government. The picture they paint is one of routine dysfunction and deliberate cruelty.
“These detainees must be settled in the Australian community as is their right under international law,” said Nadine El-Enany, another alliance organiser. “We have chosen to read the report out in front of Australia House because this narrative of abuse directly contradicts the image the Australian high commission seeks to convey of Australia as a progressive nation and a desirable destination for tourists, students, highly skilled workers and international investors.
“Nauru Files Reading embodies the ongoing racist violence that has defined the settler colony of Australia since its inception,” she added.
The protests are timed to coincide with a national day of action in Australia, with events planned across the country to demand that the government immediately close the camps on Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island.
The Guardian’s analysis of the files revealed that children were vastly over-represented in the reports. More than half of the 2,116 reports – 1,086 incidents, or 51.3% of the total – involve children, although children made up only about 18% of those in detention on Nauru during the time covered by the reports, May 2013 to October 2015. The findings came just weeks after the brutal treatment of young people in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory was exposed, leading to the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announcing a wide-ranging public inquiry.
Some reports contain distressing examples of behaviour by traumatised children. According to a report from September 2014, a girl had sewn her lips together. A guard saw her and began laughing at her. In July that year, a child under the age of 10 undressed and invited a group of adults to insert their fingers into her vagina; in February 2015, a young girl gestured to her vagina and said a male asylum seeker “cut her from under”.
In the files, there are seven reports of sexual assault of children, 59 reports of assault on children, 30 of self-harm involving children and 159 of threatened self-harm involving children.
The files raise stark questions about how information is reported on Nauru, one of Australia’s two offshore detention centres for asylum seekers who arrive by boat. They highlight serious concerns about the ongoing risks to children and adults held on the island. They show how the Australian government has failed to respond to warning signs and reveal sexual assault allegations – many involving children – that have never previously been disclosed.
The most damning evidence emerges from the words of the staff working in the detention centre themselves – the people who compile the reports. These caseworkers, guards, teachers and medical officers have been charged with caring for hundreds of asylum seekers on the island.
“The Australian government detains refugees indefinitely [on these islands] as part of its offshore detention policy designed to deter refugees from arriving in Australia by boat,” said El-Enany. “More than 500 refugees are detained on Nauru, including many children.
“Refugees on Nauru are regularly subjected to abuse, violence, sexual assault and rape. Self-harm and suicide attempts are common,” she said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/26/nauru-asylum-seeker-protest-australia-house-london
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/bea931feebbe267ff503f568abbc3d921ae3dd0d1e45ceba746c0064bdc7ee2f.json
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|
[
"Tamsin Rutter"
] | 2016-08-30T10:50:16 | null | 2016-08-30T09:24:01 |
Some depots don’t have female toilets, and children still stare when they see a woman in the driver’s seat, but more is being done to bring gender balance to the railways
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpublic-leaders-network%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Ffemale-train-drivers-equality-diversity-network-london-underground-overground.json
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en
| null |
The railways are no longer just a man's domain: meet the female train drivers
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www.theguardian.com
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Kerry Cassidy was driving trains at 125 miles an hour until she was 37 weeks pregnant. A driver for Great Western Railway on the high-speed route between Plymouth and London Paddington, she bats away any suggestion that the railways are a man’s domain. Modern trains have no need for heavy lifting: long gone are the days of shovelling dirty coal into the engine’s firebox. “As long as you can do the job then gender isn’t really an issue,” she says.
Yet women make up just 5.4% of approximately 19,000 train drivers in Britain, up from 4.2% in 2012, according to Aslef, the train drivers union. Progress on diversity has been slow – in part because staff turnover is low. Many train drivers stay in the job for decades.
To a lot of the men, I was like the proverbial turd in the swimming pool Karen Harrison
Cassidy, 35, has been a train driver for eight years. She was the only woman out of 12 on her training course, causing some people to tell her she was “a tickbox exercise” by the company. But she says a lot more women are coming through now, despite difficulties. “Roles aren’t advertised where women will see them,” she says. “I don’t think women are put off, I just don’t think they know the job is there.”
Some kids point and stare when they see Cassidy in the driver’s seat, and some depots don’t have female toilets or bins for sanitary products. But on the whole, the sector has progressed since Karen Harrison, the first female train driver who started her career in 1978, said: “To a lot of the men, I was like the proverbial turd in the swimming pool.”
For Peter Austin, managing director of London Overground, attracting a more diverse workforce makes business sense. “I just think it’s a healthier workforce,” he says. “If you’re not reflecting the community you serve, I don’t really think that you can understand the community that you serve.”
The biggest barrier to diversity, he says, is “the stereotypical view that you have to be a man to be a train driver”.
Under former mayor Ken Livingstone, targets on diversity were written into London Overground’s contract, so it’s been a focus for the company since 2007. Today, some 9% of its drivers are women. The company, along with Crossrail and London Underground, have made more progress on this issue than many other train companies, partly because they’ve needed to hire a lot more train drivers to accommodate the growth of transport links in the capital.
But they’ve also targeted their recruitment. Ambassadors from London Overground, Austin says, have gone into schools to give careers advice and promote train-driving as a viable career choice for girls. Crossrail, which will employ more than 400 drivers when fully operational, made a video featuring female train drivers discussing the benefits of the role for them, and teamed up with websites such as workingmums.co.uk to create female-friendly adverts.
'Being a woman isn’t a barrier to working in the rail industry' Read more
Other companies have made sporadic progress. On track with diversity, an independent report commissioned by Aslef in 2012, highlighted good practice among train operating companies. Northern Rail, for example, placed job adverts in the fitting rooms of New Look branches in Manchester and Leeds. The company also worked on its image: one ad depicted a pile of pink shoe boxes with employee benefits written on them and a strapline saying “a girl can never have too many”.
The union used the report to put pressure on train companies to recruit more women and ethnic minorities. It urged them to place job adverts where women are likely to read them, hold open days that target women and ensure interview panels are trained in preventing bias.
Far from feeling like they’re imposing on a male environment, female train drivers think the job is ideal for women. One of the biggest plus points is the salary. Georgiana Oana, who has been driving for London Overground for just over a year, earns more than £55,000 a year – and has just managed to put down a mortgage on a property without her partner’s input. Cassidy, meanwhile, a single mother, can easily afford childcare while she’s at work.
Oana, 33, was an internal recruit: after moving to the UK from Romania, she did some agency work, including cleaning and other operational roles for the railway. She spent a few years improving her English so that she’d be able to apply for a driving position.
What attracted her were the employee benefits. As well as free or heavily discounted rail travel, drivers get long holidays, flexible working hours and decent pensions and maternity packages. Although the job is intense and requires a lot of concentration, train drivers never take any work home with them. It’s shift work – but for Oana, that means more time off during the day to see her young children, who are two and eight years old. Every month she gets a seven-day break.
She sees no reason why women shouldn’t apply. “There’s nothing that I need help from a man to do in this job,” she says.
Talk to us on Twitter via @Guardianpublic and sign up for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday.
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https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2016/aug/30/female-train-drivers-equality-diversity-network-london-underground-overground
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4153dd725a095d62545ef59709a6ccba65be9bef720b76840acf808f8b7c76be.json
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[
"Patrick Collinson"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:29 | null | 2016-08-20T06:00:06 |
Once you pass 70 you cannot serve on a jury, meaning Britain’s courts are losing the benefits of a wealth of knowledge and skills
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2Fblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F20%2Fcourts-older-jurors-kept-out-ageism.json
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| null |
And the verdict is ... guilty of ageism
| null | null |
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Every week Joan Bakewell and panellists wrestle with real-life medical and clinical issues on Radio 4’s Inside the Ethics Committee. Yet Bakewell is for ever banned from serving as a juror in a court case.
Neither can Michael Buerk be called by the Jury Central Summoning Bureau, nor David Starkey, nor Roger Scruton (although Melanie Phillips slips in). Some of the finest intellects in the country are called to debate on the Moral Maze, yet many would not be allowed to sit in a jury box.
Why? Because they are all 70 years of age or older. Jury service in England and Wales is limited to those between 18 and 70. It’s an astonishingly ageist rule, and all the more extraordinary in an era of huge improvements in longevity.
Are the over-70s too dozy? Will the likes of Michael Buerk nod off during a trial? Are the issues in court cases too complex for minds such as Bakewell’s? Our courts seem to think so.
Oddly, there is a widespread belief that juries are disproportionately made up of the elderly who have time on their hands (and a propensity to hang and flog). But that was always nonsense; until the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the upper limit for jury service was only 65.
Three years ago the Ministry of Justice proposed that the age limit be raised to 75, but it has hardly been a serious priority. The latest is that new legislation will be brought forward within the next year, although there is no guarantee.
Yet why even have an upper age limit? The new one will mean Buerk (70) is in, but Bakewell (83) remains firmly out. Judi Dench (81) will be deemed not fit for service, but Helen Mirren (71) will be.
As Age UK said when the new age limit was proposed: “Judging someone on the basis of their date of birth alone risks overlooking a person’s unique skills and knowledge. While it’s true that increasing longevity brings its challenges, there is also extraordinary human capital within our older population – older people are working, volunteering and contributing a huge amount to communities and the wider marketplace.”
When the Council of HM Circuit Judges examined the issue in 2010 they concluded that the upper age limit for jurors should remain at 70. They acknowledged that improvements in lifestyle and medicine have resulted in many older people enjoying a longer and more active life than their forebears. But they added that older jurors may be “more susceptible to illness and disability than those who are younger” and that “proceedings might be hampered by poor hearing, poor vision or physical disability”.
Yet over the border in Scotland there is no upper age limit; neither is there one in Australia or Ireland. What all those countries do is give older people a right of excusal. In England and Wales we have clamped down harshly on those who try to avoid jury service, yet ignore the huge depth of experience among the over-70s. A simple reform would be to remove the upper age limit on the over-70s, but to give those summoned an automatic right not to attend.
After all if we don’t allow the over-70s in, we won’t be reflecting society. One of the ringleaders behind the Hatton Garden heist, Brian Reader, was in his mid-70s at the time and headed a Dad’s Army group of robbers in their 60s and 70s. Given our ageist jury selection rules, it can hardly be said they were tried by a jury of their peers.
p.collinson@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/aug/20/courts-older-jurors-kept-out-ageism
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en
| 2016-08-20T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f2f57f2439c41454064b7cfbaf4483a038de93723bb813f8713526daff74fcf5.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-27T20:51:25 | null | 2016-08-27T19:25:59 |
Newcastle United moved into the Championship play-off places by beating 10-man Brighton & Hove Albion 2-0, with captain Jamaal Lascelles and Jonjo Shelvey scoring the goals
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fnewcastle-united-brighton-championship-match-report.json
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Newcastle on the up after Jonjo Shelvey’s first goal sinks Brighton
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Newcastle moved up to fourth in the Championship with a 2-0 victory that brought an end to Brighton’s six-month unbeaten run in the league. The Seagulls had not lost in the Championship, excluding May’s play-offs, since February but could not prevent the Magpies from making it three wins in a row after starting the campaign with two defeats.
The Newcastle captain Jamaal Lascelles put Rafael Benítez’s side in front after 15 minutes with a powerful header before Jonjo Shelvey added the crucial second in the 64th minute with a sublime free-kick.
Football League your thoughts: Terriers retain lead as Fulham snap at their heels Read more
Brighton, whose manager Chris Hughton led Newcastle to promotion in 2010, could find no way back after that having been reduced to 10 men when Sam Baldock was sent off for a second caution in the 55th minute.
Shelvey’s first goal for Newcastle since his £10m move from Swansea in January followed that dismissal and after that Brighton battled but to no avail.
On a day when it was confirmed Newcastle are close to adding aerial strength to the squad by moving for Ipswich’s Daryl Murphy, it was coincidental that it was a header which put them ahead. It was not from lone striker Ayoze Pérez, asked to lead the line in the absence of Aleksandar Mitrovic and Dwight Gayle, but the unlikely source of centre-back Lascelles, who rose just inside the 18-yard box to power a brilliant header inside David Stockdale’s right-hand post after meeting the fine free-kick delivery of Matt Ritchie.
Brighton, with eight points from four matches previously this season, looked hungry to impress but the noise levels had been lifted and Newcastle enjoyed the rest of the half.
Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford taps in last-gasp winner at Hull Read more
Yoan Gouffran almost scored a belter of a goal nine minutes later. A move that started in the right-back position, where Vurnon Anita made a tackle, ended with a blistering 30-yard drive from Gouffran which crashed off the crossbar.
Newcastle looked confident in possession but still had to be wary of a Brighton side showing glimpses of why they have been so hard to beat for so long.
Seconds before Baldock’s sending off, the Seagulls almost levelled. Anthony Knockaert, the subject of a failed bid from Newcastle in the summer, cut inside and struck the bar from 12 yards.
But Brighton’s task was made harder when Baldock, already cautioned for a foul on Pérez, arrived late to wipe out goalkeeper Matz Sels after he cleared his lines and that was enough to earn him a second yellow.
Nine minutes later the lead was doubled when Mohamed Diamé was brought down by Steve Sidwell 25 yards from goal. Shelvey, back in the side under Benítez, curled a fine free-kick over the wall and inside Stockdale’s top-left corner.
Shelvey almost had a second too, but his low strike destined for the bottom corner was turned behind as Brighton struggled to find a way to make a game of it.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/27/newcastle-united-brighton-championship-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/69d7a818be6f030fb38def06469f386063d8dd3220d0d2307bb8b188b7241d27.json
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[
"Miles Brignall"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:07 | null | 2016-08-23T06:00:07 |
Fee-free loans will be available for customers with breakdown cover who want to switch their mortgage
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Faa-mortgages-fixed-rate-breakdown-cover.json
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| null |
AA drives into mortgage market with fixed-rate deals
| null | null |
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The AA, best known for rescuing motorists whose cars won’t start, is to offer fee-free mortgages to its breakdown cover customers.
Following a tie-up with the Bank of Ireland, which already supplies mortgages for the Post Office, the AA has launched a range of fixed-rate loans mostly aimed at existing homeowners looking to move to their mortgage to a cheaper deal.
The company, which was listed on the stock exchange by its private equity owner in 2014, is initially offering five deals, all fixed for between two and five years. Borrowers will be offered loans of up to 90% of their home’s value, with the rates ranging between 2.08% and 3.78%.
Mortgage experts said only the four-year deal at 2.48% could be termed a best buy, but the lack of fees meant the products would appeal only to those looking to switch a small mortgage.
The AA’s home emergency and central heating emergency and repair cover are included in the package free for 12 months. Members will also receive a 15% discount on AA home insurance, but will have to buy breakdown cover if they do not already have it.
Michael Johnson, director of financial services at the AA, said: “Lots of people are on mortgage deals where they are spending far more than they need to. This could be down to a combination of high fees and a lack of information stopping them from switching to a better deal. We want to help our members by removing hidden costs and providing simple, straightforward mortgages, with all standard upfront fees included.”
He added that building on the firm’s motoring heritage, the company would offer members a “mortgage MOT” service, which gave them the chance to see if the AA could save them money.
However, Rachel Springall, of financial analyst Moneyfacts, said the AA had entered the mortgage market in the midst of a fiercely competitive price war.
“It’s great to see extra competition on the market and the fact these deals charge no product fee will be appealing to borrowers looking to keep upfront costs down,” she said. “Unfortunately, some of the rates are not as appealing as it seems, particularly if borrowers have a large loan.”
David Hollingworth, of mortgage broker London & Country, agreed that for many borrowers there would be cheaper deals in the market.
“The AA is offering no-fee products with free valuation and legal work for remortgage – these look most likely to appeal to those looking to review their current deal, especially those with smaller mortgages looking to switch,” Hollingworth said. “Most lenders will offer a range of rate/fee combinations so it’s important for borrowers to consider the best overall value rather than focus on rate or fee alone.”
The mortgage launch comes a year after the AA announced its partnership with Bank of Ireland’s UK division, and adds mortgages to credit cards, savings accounts, cash Isas and personal loans. It first began offering savings products in 2004 before the business was sold by then owner Centrica.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/23/aa-mortgages-fixed-rate-breakdown-cover
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en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/bc408576023e0c2cb643e41b91619d542e4f4c953af47edde57afc361dd744ca.json
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[
"Aheda Zanetti",
"Rachel Woodlock"
] | 2016-08-26T13:22:38 | null | 2016-08-24T06:06:39 |
The burkini does not symbolise Islam, it symbolises leisure and happiness and fitness and health. So who is better, the Taliban or French politicians?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fi-created-the-burkini-to-give-women-freedom-not-to-take-it-away.json
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I created the burkini to give women freedom, not to take it away
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www.theguardian.com
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When I invented the burkini in early 2004, it was to give women freedom, not to take it away. My niece wanted to play netball but it was a bit of a struggle to get her in the team – she was wearing a hijab. My sister had to fight for her daughter to play, had to debate the issue and ask, why is this girl prevented from playing netball because of her modesty?
When she was finally allowed to play we all went to watch her to support her and what she was wearing was totally inappropriate for a sports uniform – a skivvy, tracksuit pants, and her hijab, totally unsuitable for any type of sport. She looked like a tomato she was so red and hot!
So I went home and went looking for something that might be better for her to wear, sportswear for Muslim girls, and I couldn’t find anything, I knew there was nothing in Australia. It got me thinking because when I was a girl I missed out on sport – we didn’t participate in anything because we chose to be modest, but for my niece I wanted to find something that would adapt to the Australian lifestyle and western clothing but at the same time fulfil the needs of a Muslim girl.
So I sat down on my lounge room floor and designed something. I looked at the veil and took away a lot of the excess fabric, which made me nervous - would my Islamic community accept this? The veil is supposed to cover your hair and your shape, you just don’t shape anything around your body. But this was shaped around the neck. I thought, it’s only the shape of a neck, it doesn’t really matter.
French police make woman remove burkini on Nice beach Read more
Before I launched it I produced a sample with a questionnaire to find out what people would think - would you wear this? Would this encourage you to be more active? Play more sport? Swim? A lot of people in my community didn’t know how to accept this, but I developed it commercially and made a good business.
The burkini came to everyone’s attention when Surf Lifesaving Australia introduced a program to integrate Muslim boys and girls into surf lifesaving after the Cronulla riots – they had a young Muslim girl who wanted to compete in an event. She wore a burkini.
After September 11, the Cronulla riots, the banning of the veil in France, and the international backlash that came with it – about us being the bad people all because of a few criminals who do not speak on behalf of Muslims – I really didn’t want anyone to judge girls wearing these. It’s only a girl being modest.
It was about integration and acceptance and being equal and about not being judged. It was difficult for us at the time, the Muslim community, they had a fear of stepping out. They had fear of going to public pools and beaches and so forth, and I wanted girls to have the confidence to continue a good life. Sport is so important, and we are Australian! I wanted to do something positive – and anyone can wear this, Christian, Jewish, Hindus. It’s just a garment to suit a modest person, or someone who has skin cancer, or a new mother who doesn’t want to wear a bikini, it’s not symbolising Islam.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Australian burkini creator and manufacturer Aheda Zanetti
When I named it the burkini I didn’t really think it was a burqa for the beach. Burqa was just a word for me – I’d been brought up in Australia all my life, and I’d designed this swimsuit and I had to call it something quickly. It was the combination of two cultures – we’re Australians but we are also Muslim by choice. The burqa doesn’t symbolise anything here, and it’s not mentioned in the Qur’an and our religion does not ask us to cover our faces, it’s the wearer’s choice to do so. Burqa is nowhere in any Islamic text. I had to look the word up, and it was described as a kind of coat and cover-all, and at the other end you had the bikini, so I combined the two.
This negativity that is happening now and what is happening in France makes me so sad. I hope it’s not because of racism. I think they have misunderstood a garment that is so positive – it symbolises leisure and happiness and fun and fitness and health and now they are demanding women get off the beach and back into their kitchens?
This has given women freedom, and they want to take that freedom away? So who is better, the Taliban or French politicians? They are as bad as each other.
I don’t think any man should worry about how women are dressing – no one is forcing us, it’s a woman’s choice. What you see is our choice. Do I call myself a feminist? Yes, maybe. I like to stand behind my man, but I am the engine, and I choose to be. I want him to take all the credit, but I am the quiet achiever.
I would love to be in France to say this: you have misunderstood. And there more problems in the world to worry about, why create more? You’ve taken a product that symbolised happiness and joyfulness and fitness, and turned it into a product of hatred.
France’s liberal traditions won’t be helped by the burkini ban | Will Hutton Read more
Also, what are the French values? What do you mean it doesn’t combine with French values, what does that mean? Liberty? You telling us what to wear, you telling us what not to do will drive women back into their homes – what do you want us to do then? There will be a backlash. If you are dividing the nation and not listening and not working towards something you are naturally going to have someone who is going to get angry. If you are pushing people away, and isolating them – this is definitely not a good thing for any politician to do, in any country.
I remember when I first tested the burkini. First I tested it in my bathtub, I had to make sure it worked. Then I had to test it by diving in it, so I went to the local pool to test that the headband would stay put, so I went to Roselands Pool, and I remember that everyone was staring at me – what was I wearing? I went right to the end of the pool and got on the diving board and dived in. The headband stayed in place, and I thought, beauty! Perfect!
It was my first time swimming in public and it was absolutely beautiful. I remember the feeling so clearly. I felt freedom, I felt empowerment, I felt like I owned the pool. I walked to the end of that pool with my shoulders back.
Diving into water is one of the best feelings in the world. And you know what? I wear a bikini under my burkini. I’ve got the best of both worlds.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/i-created-the-burkini-to-give-women-freedom-not-to-take-it-away
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c0232fbf21668e517c786221a35a1636e88c538f98b3d80b37ce7673508d6180.json
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[] | 2016-08-27T16:51:01 | null | 2016-08-27T16:36:18 |
The 27-year-old continued the goal-scoring form that saw him score 25 Bundesliga goals last season to help Dortmund see off Mainz 2-1 at the Westfalenstadion
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Aubameyang double gives Borussia Dortmund winning start against Mainz
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Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored twice to give a new-look Borussia Dortmund a winning start to the Bundesliga as they beat Mainz 2-1 on Saturdayin one of five afternoon matches played in intense heat and including water breaks.
Dortmund’s top scorer in last season’s Bundesliga, who stayed with Dortmund while his team mates Henrikh Mkhitaryan, İlkay Gündoğan and Mats Hummels all departed, headed in a cross from André Schürrle, one of several newcomers at the Westfalenstadion, after 17 minutes. The Gabon forward Aubameyang converted a penalty late in the game to extend the lead, although Dortmund survived a nervy finale after Yoshinori Muto pulled a goal back for coach Mainz – the Dortmund coach, Thomas Tuchel’s, old club – in the 90th minute.
Dortmund, last season’s Bundesliga runners-up, are expected to be the main challengers to Bayern Munich, the champions who began with a 6-0 win over Werder Bremen on Friday.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/27/borussia-dortmund-mainz-bundesliga-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8e5c874c2120f5eb326947ca915863fb74091d5db15b89212c190f6e4df76dc6.json
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[
"Jack Schofield"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:49 | null | 2016-08-04T09:56:23 |
Vista users need to estimate how long their PC will remain usable before they decide to upgrade, but a few loopholes exist
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2Faskjack%2F2016%2Faug%2F04%2Fcan-i-still-upgrade-from-vista-to-windows-10-or-should-i-buy-a-new-pc.json
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Can I still upgrade from Vista to Windows 10 or should I buy a new PC?
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I currently have Windows Vista. Can I upgrade to Windows 10? If buying a new machine, for normal personal use for email and internet, what would you recommend? Laptop and desktop options would be useful. E&AB
Sadly, you can’t upgrade directly from Windows Vista to Windows 10: Microsoft only supports upgrades from Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Vista was the current version of Windows from January 2007 until July 2009, so any surviving Vista PCs are presumably more than seven years old. If they are laptops, they are probably due for replacement. Even if they are desktops, they may not be worth the upgrade cost.
The problem is that Microsoft’s offer of a free upgrade to Windows 10 expired after one year, on 29 July. Vista users may now have to pay for two operating system upgrades: one to Windows 7 and one to Windows 10. Worse, you don’t know if the second upgrade will work. You can test your Vista PC with the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, but you have to upgrade before you can test Windows 10 compatibility. Even if your PC is nominally compatible with Windows 10, the upgrade may still fail due to a lack of software drivers.
It really depends on your specific hardware. If your machine has a slow processor and 2GB or less memory, then it’s probably not worth upgrading. If it has a reasonably fast processor and you can upgrade to 4GB, then it might be worth upgrading but only if you can find a cheap upgrade to Windows 7 with a valid key for not much money. If the total cost of hardware and software is, say, £150-£200, it would probably be better to buy a new PC.
Windows 10 should improve the performance of almost any laptop that can run it, but your Vista laptop will still be old and probably slow.
Windows 10 still free?
At the moment, it appears that you may be able to upgrade to Windows 10 without paying. Some writers say they have been able to install Windows 10 by entering valid Windows 7 or 8.x product keys. If you tried and failed to install Windows 10 earlier, it may be worth having another go.
Yes, Microsoft said its deadline was 29 July, and the company is removing its hated GWX (Get Windows 10) pop-ups. And if you go to download Windows 10, it’s not free. But still, Microsoft wants as many PCs as possible on Windows 10, and so far only around 365m have migrated. Microsoft may have left a bit of wriggle room for people with valid product keys, bearing in mind that the same product keys weren’t even supported when Windows 10 was launched.
Further, users who need “assistive technologies” – such as the screen reader provided for people with limited vision – can still upgrade. If you can answer the question “Yes, I use assistive technologies and I am ready for my free upgrade to Windows 10” then you can get one. But if you have problems, you may end up talking to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk ...
Microsoft has not said when the free “assistive technologies” upgrade will end, but it may be tempted to pull the plug if the facility is widely abused.
Vista strategy
Microsoft publishes lifecycle information well in advance, and it says Windows Vista will be supported until 11 April 2017. That gives you nine months to upgrade to Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 – which will be supported until 14 January 2020 – or buy a new PC running Windows 10. One advantage of Windows 10 is that it will be supported forever, which means “until your PC no longer works”.
Take a hard look at your PC. Will you still want to use it next year? Will you still want to use it in 2020?
If it will survive until next April, you may as well stick with Vista. Internet Explorer 9 is a bit of a pain but you can use Firefox instead. Save up and buy a new machine just before the end of the tax year (it’s a deductible expense).
If you are confident that your PC will last until 2020 – when it will probably be 11 years old – then it might be worth upgrading to Windows 7. If so, you should kick yourself for not upgrading in 2009.
If your PC is slow and increasingly painful to use, buy a Windows 10 machine as soon as you can. A new version of Windows 10, the Anniversary Update, came out on 2 August, and it’s a significant improvement on the one that was launched last year. Regular readers will know that I was in favour of keeping my main desktop PC running Windows 7, but I upgraded and now think I’ll probably stick with it. Version 1607 is (touch wood) the best Windows yet.
Replacement PCs
You sent your email from a small business – a guest house – but only mentioned “normal personal use”.
If you use your PC for business, and need to print out orders, invoices and receipts, then I’d recommend buying a Dell desktop PC. Desktops take up more room, but they are more ergonomic than laptops, they perform better for the money, they are much easier to repair and upgrade, and they last longer.
You could get something like a small Dell Vostro 3250 desktop PC with an Intel Core i3 processor for £328.80 including delivery and VAT (base price, £249), or a larger Vostro 3650 (base price, £259) for slightly more. Neither comes with a monitor, but you can add one from Dell or elsewhere.
The key point in either case is to add four years of Pro Support and next business day on-site service, which costs £100. If your PC goes wrong then, if necessary, a technician will come to your house and fix it. Even if you are not a business, this is a terrific deal for 50p a week.
Vostro is Dell’s SoHo (small office/home office) range, which also includes laptops, but the four-year support costs almost twice as much (£192). You can also get much the same support on consumer laptops such as the Dell Inspiron 15 3000, which has a Core i3 and a 15.6in screen for £319 including delivery and VAT. However, the four-year, on-site support deal costs even more (£199.20).
There are, of course, hundreds of alternative laptops – and even a few desktops – as you can see by visiting your local electronics retailer or department store. All of them will do email and internet, as will all the various smartphones, tablets, Windows 2-in-1s and convertibles, all-in-one desktop PCs and even Chromebooks. I can’t cover all of them.
It’s worth checking which software you actually use, including things such as Apple iTunes, QuickBooks, Microsoft Office, games, photo editors and so on. How many browser tabs do you open at once? You should also try to decide on things such as screen size, weight and battery life. Do you want a laptop that plays DVDs or one that also works as a tablet? Nowadays, there are half a dozen different types of laptop.
The line of least resistance is to list the features of your old PC, then buy something that’s much the same, only cheaper and much faster.
Have you got another question for Jack? Email it to Ask.Jack@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/aug/04/can-i-still-upgrade-from-vista-to-windows-10-or-should-i-buy-a-new-pc
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en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/be66ecb8a6f06690772876dd13cb783ef8bf4fc996dc461dde63b5215abd2dee.json
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[
"Gabrielle Chan"
] | 2016-08-29T22:52:11 | null | 2016-08-29T22:51:35 |
Malcolm Turnbull is under pressure as his net satisfaction rating drops below Bill Shorten’s in the latest Newspoll. Follow the day’s news live …
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2Flive%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fparliament-returns-with-plebiscite-18c-and-budget-cuts-on-agenda-politics-live.json
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Parliament returns with plebiscite, 18C and budget cuts on agenda - politics live
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Malcolm Turnbull is under pressure as his net satisfaction rating drops below Bill Shorten’s in the latest Newspoll. Follow the day’s news live …
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2016/aug/30/parliament-returns-with-plebiscite-18c-and-budget-cuts-on-agenda-politics-live
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4df0b1b0c81339602ae07a4a7280b714c87030af8b6dbf25a40cbd8982cd5d7e.json
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[
"Henry Mcdonald"
] | 2016-08-28T16:49:42 | null | 2016-08-28T15:26:35 |
Irish foreign secretary and deputy prime minister who was one of the chief architects of the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement
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Peter Barry obituary
| null | null |
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The Irish politician Peter Barry, who has died aged 88, played a key role in the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985. The former Irish foreign minister and deputy prime minister helped shape the model on which relations between Dublin and London would eventually be founded during the peace process years of the 1990s.
As foreign minister in 1982, alongside his boss, the taoiseach and leader of the Fine Gael party in the Irish Republic, Garrett FitzGerald, Barry had become increasingly alarmed over the rise of the Provisional IRA’s political wing, Sinn Féin, since the death of 10 prisoners in the 1981 H-block hunger strike. To blunt the edge of rising radical nationalism in Northern Ireland and shore up support for the more moderate Social Democratic and Labour party, FitzGerald and Barry engaged in talks with Margaret Thatcher to persuade her to introduce the 1985 agreement.
In return for more security co-operation on the island (including the extradition of republican suspects to the north), the Fine Gael-Labour government in Dublin were given a more active role in the day-to-day running of Northern Ireland. Irish officials were dispatched to Belfast and soon became embedded into what was known as the “bunker”, the Irish government’s heavily fortified compound in the east of the city.
Barry and other Irish ministers then used their influence to obtain some changes to British policies, such as the banning of a controversial Orange parade in Portadown, County Armagh, as well as more overall intervention on British decision-making in the province.
The bunker became a focal point of unionist and loyalist protest, and Barry himself a unionist hate figure. In 1986 he found himself uniquely standing in four separate Northern Ireland parliamentary byelections – a candidate called “Peter Barry” (in fact a unionist activist named Wesley Robert Williamson who had changed his name by deed poll) was put up against a united unionist electoral front in North Antrim, South Antrim, East Derry and Strangford in February of that year.
The unionists regarded the agreement Thatcher signed with FitzGerald as treason, and while Barry was the hate figure, it was Thatcher’s effigy that was burned during a mass rally at Belfast City Hall, during which the Rev Ian Paisley memorably bellowed out, “Never, never, never” after asking the crowd if Dublin had a right to have a say over the governance of Northern Ireland.
Even the Royal Ulster Constabulary, seen by many nationalists and republicans as a unionist police force, had the “Barry” label hurled at them during the protests. As the RUC held the line and protected the bunker from mass assaults, as well as upholding the ban on the Portadown march, which led to rioting and the death of one loyalist protester, hardline unionists jibed that the police had become “Barry’s boot boys”.
Peter was born in the prosperous Cork suburb of Blackrock, when the Irish Free State was only six years old and the wounds of the civil war between those who accepted partition and those who violently opposed it were still bleeding. The son of Anthony, who ran the family business Barry’s Tea, and his wife, Rita (nee Costello), Peter was educated at Christian Brothers’ college, Cork. He followed his father on parallel career paths: both served as lord mayor of Cork and then in the Dáil for Fine Gael, and Peter also became a major importer for and shareholder in the business. He turned it into what is now a multimillion-euro brand. The product, popular throughout Ireland, was inevitably subjected to a unionist boycott in the 80s.
Barry entered the Dáil in 1969 for Cork City South-East. In 1973 he joined Liam Cosgrave’s coalition cabinet as minister for transport and power. He became minister for education in 1976, and, when FitzGerald became leader of Fine Gael three years later, he was elected his deputy. From 1981 to 1982 Barry served as minister for the environment and was then appointed foreign minister, a position he held for five years. For the last couple of months of FitzGerald’s government, he was tánaiste or deputy prime minister. His star was always hitched to the rise of FitzGerald, whom Barry regarded as a hero and mentor, believing that his leader had stepped down too early as head of Fine Gael in 1987 when the party lost 19 seats to its old rival, Fianna Fáil. Barry contended that Fine Gael would have “settled down” if FitzGerald had stayed in the post, instead of remaining out of power for more than a decade. Barry himself retired in 1997.
His political lineage continues to this day, with one of his daughters, Deirdre Clune, serving as a TD for Cork South Central, and in 2014 as an MEP for Ireland South in the European parliament. Barry’s wife, Margaret (nee O’Mullane), whom he married in 1958, died in 2013. He is survived by their six children, Tony, Deirdre, Donagh, Conor, Peter Jr, and Fiona.
• Peter Barry, politician, born 10 August 1928; died 26 August 2016
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/28/peter-barry-obituary
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1c74a6e7b3be98cc13b29076c7458309762c9b4b7e78ebba8f6fe79d5727908d.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:59:29 | null | null | null |
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk%2Frss.json
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk/rss
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The Guardian
| null | null |
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/48ecba9947ff05397db2c0f05182a836f29f13848fbdeff46df6f61230b71600.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-29T14:49:58 | null | 2016-08-29T13:55:24 |
Trainee spots boys and boat is launched within four minutes to save pair clinging to debris a quarter of a mile from shore
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Lifeboat saves teenage brothers off North Yorkshire beach
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Two teenage boys have been rescued from the sea after getting into difficulty while swimming.
The brothers, aged 13 and 15, had gone into the water at Skinningrove, North Yorkshire. The alarm was raised when Sam Shelley, a trainee crew member of the Staithes and Runswick RNLI who was out walking on the beach, spotted the pair at 8pm on Sunday and contacted his fellow crew members.
A lifeboat was launched within four minutes. Shortly after, the crew spotted the boys clinging to debris a quarter of a mile off the beach and hauled them safely aboard.
The boys were seen by paramedics before being taken by ambulance to James Cook hospital in Middlesbrough for precautionary checks.
Volunteer helm Lee Jackson said: “This operation showed the RNLI at its very best. Just a few minutes later and it could have been deadly serious. The boys were getting very cold, they were wearing only shorts and T-shirts and it would have been even harder to find them in pitch blackness.
“As it was the crew did exceptionally well to locate them at sea so quickly. To launch in four minutes from the alarm is just about a record for this station and for our volunteer crew to have brought the boys back to warmth and safety in under 20 minutes is remarkable.
“Great credit too to our trainee Sam Shelley who raised the alarm in exemplary fashion.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/29/lifeboat-saves-teenage-brothers-off-north-yorkshire-beach
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/107183c1a0c1c50575ce3579215a00543fb2d97441e9cdeb419053cb304ec001.json
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[
"Ali Martin"
] | 2016-08-30T06:52:31 | null | 2016-08-30T03:29:19 |
Ian Bell plans to join up with Perth Scorchers in November but will still be available for an England recall against Bangladesh and India
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Ian Bell signs up for Big Bash but does not close door on England tour
| null | null |
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Ian Bell has completed a deal to play for Perth Scorchers in the forthcoming edition of Australia’s Big Bash League. But while he considers himself “all in” with his new Twenty20 team, it is not, he insists, a sign that his international ambitions have diminished.
The signing of the Warwickshire captain, as first reported by the Guardian last week, commits him to Perth for the entire tournament and he will fly out to Western Australia with family in November in preparation for their opening fixture with Adelaide Strikers on 23 December.
Only an England recall for the tours of Bangladesh and India would cause a change in this itinerary – the final Test before Christmas finishes on 20 December – and although the head coach, Trevor Bayliss, sounded Bell out about this outside possibility a fortnight ago, it is not something on his radar at present.
“It’s an opportunity that when the Perth coach, Justin Langer, rang me about I was quite surprised,” Bell said. “But when you watch the Big Bash at home it looks fantastic and to be involved is very exciting. I started my journey in Perth playing grade cricket for the University of Western Australia too and so to go back and play in Perth again is something I am proud of.”
Asked whether his arrangement with Perth contains scope for a late arrival, were he to be part of the England Test side touring this winter, Bell replied: “We haven’t spoken about any of that stuff yet. I’m all in with Perth Scorchers at the minute.
“Every player has ambitions to play for England and until I retire I am no different. This season I haven’t thought about it too much – it does you no good thinking about things that are out of your control anyway. I’m sure my phone won’t be switched off [when the England selectors meet in September]. As captain at Warwickshire, it never stops ringing anyway.”
Bell has not made an overwhelming case for a Test recall through his numbers in county cricket this summer, with an unbeaten 94 in the 50-over semi-final win against Somerset at Edgbaston on Monday his highest score since a century in the opening week of the County Championship against Hampshire in April.
The England management, however, are understood to have debated whether to parachute his 118 caps of experience back into their struggling middle order, something that would require a strong end to the season with Warwickshire, starting at home against the leaders Middlesex this Wednesday, to make such a recall not look unmerited.
Either way, the Perth deal comes after Bell’s best season in Twenty20 cricket to date, with the right‑hander having scored five half‑centuries for Birmingham Bears in the NatWest T20 Blast and averaged 40, with a strike-rate of 130.
Langer, the Perth head coach, said: “It’s exciting to be able to add a player of Ian’s top-level experience and quality to our squad. With 22 Test centuries and a one‑day international average close to 40, he’ll bolster our batting options.
“He’s played at the international level for more than a decade so brings experience and leadership having captained his county side Warwickshire and the Birmingham Bears. We’re delighted to have him on board.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/30/ian-bell-england-big-bash
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| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/69efdfc09327be133183e8bc6b2c85eaf1509ff35f382a48e73b621a893e435a.json
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[
"Paul Doyle"
] | 2016-08-26T16:50:41 | null | 2016-08-26T15:59:14 |
In today’s Fiver: A Bobby M and Thierry H double act, Big Vase draw, Hull City chasing a miracle and who the eff is Steven Defour?
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A strict diet of pie in the sky
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THE BELGIAN FOR VA VA VOOM
For reasons that we cannot quite pinpoint the Fiver has always felt a strong bond with Belgium, the birthplace of Tintin, a journalist who never actually has to write any articles and spends most of his time hanging around with a dog and a bearded drunk. Maybe the attraction is the fact that the country’s top thinkers have always encouraged exploration of the absurd. From Rene Maigritte’s thought-provoking paintings of smartly dressed bodies with misplaced heads to Marc Wilmots’ wacky football teams with misbegotten notions of defending, it seems that no scheme is ever too preposterous for the residents of a country that regularly has no government but is never without beer and chocolate.
So the Fiver was not at all surprised when, in the wake of a Euro 2016 campaign in which their national football team displayed an urgent need for discipline and defensive rigour, the country’s federation declared that its new manager would be none other than Roberto Martínez, a meticulous taskmaster commonly believed to impose a strict diet of pie in the sky. Get relegated with Wigan, get hired by Everton; get sacked by Everton, land one of the world’s most coveted international gigs in the world; yes, Martínez’s curious career path made Belgium the obvious next destination.
Today, with his debut match scheduled for next week against his native Spain, Martínez announced his first squad since his appointment. It contained no shocks, Fifa rules preventing any call-up for Antolín Alcaraz. So most of the players who have been failing to form a coherent whole for the last four years have been recalled. But Martínez did stun onlookers by revealing that his assistant, along with his longtime accomplice Graeme Jones, will be Thierry Henry, who will be charged with providing a lot more stimulus to Belgium’s listless stars than he has been providing to viewers of Sky Sports since becoming the pundit most admired by taxidermists.
“Thierry brings something completely different, he’s someone who has been in the situation of having to develop a mentality in a team of chasing the dream of winning something special for his country,” explained Martinez. “He is very much an important figure in our staff and we hope he will pass on his experience to the players,” continued the Spaniard. At this point neutral observers may be wondering whether a Martínez/Henry duet risks increasing the imbalance from which the Belgian team appears to have been suffering for years, but Martínez showed that he is aware of the need to tighten up at the back by hiring not one but two goalkeeping coaches. And if any of the defenders need lessons in stubbornly fending off attackers in the face of seemingly impossible odds, then they’ll only have to tune into one of Martínez’s press conferences after a defeat.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We must have faith in the masses and we must have faith in the Party. These are two cardinal principles. If we doubt these principles, we shall accomplish nothing.” – Dr Tony Xia reads from The Mao Tse-tung Guide To Chairmanship before clarifying, “Quotation from Mao: We must have faith in the masses! Truly fans’ viewpoints are even better than scouting reports!”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Tony. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA
FIVER LETTERS
“With West Ham being railroaded out of the Europa League, it seems that they will try and win silverware or maybe even gold closer to home by securing the services of Zaza, whose penalty taking run up will be formidable in the hop, skip and jump at Olympic Park” – Raymond Reardon.
“I feel compelled to report that today’s missive caused me to eclipse my previous all time high Fiver evoked emotional response; a small, mirthless smile on the inside. Today I literally [not in the Jamie Redknapp way] chuckled at the verbification of Yosemite Sam. You can imagine the shock this caused, not to mention that this is exactly the sort of thing which needs to be stamped out before the people who need role models, start thinking the Fiver is a role model” – Stuart Siddons.
“So goalie Hope Solo is awarded a 6 month suspension for criticising USA! USA! USA!’s opponents for not passing and playing long balls. Imagine how that would help your Stop Football ! campaign if we took the same attitude over here - it may be that this is what has happened to [honest] Joe Hart” – Marisa Cardoni.
“May I be one of 1,057 American pedants to forgive The Fiver, Hope Solo and U.S. Women’s National Team executive director Rich Nichols for their not realising that the First Amendment to our Constitution limits governments’ ability to restrict speech [Thursday’s Fiver]. As the U.S. Soccer Federation is a private organisation, there is nothing here to see” – JJ Zucal and one other.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet The Fiver. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is… Raymond Reardon.
JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES
Chances are that if you’re reading this tea-timely football email, you’re almost certainly single. But fear not – if you’d like to find companionship or love, sign up here to view profiles of the kind of erudite, sociable and friendly folk who would never normally dream of going out with you. And don’t forget, it’s not the rejection that kills you, it’s the hope.
BITS AND BOBS
Southampton have been dealt a tasty group in the Big Vase, with trips to the San Siro, Prague and, eh, Beersheba, while José Mourinho can look forward to Fenerbahce and Feyenoord, perhaps prompting the use of another word beginning with F.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Big Vase balls bantz. Photograph: Claude Paris/AP
Arsène Wenger has finally remembered the pin for Arsenal’s company card and emptied the account to pay top dollar for Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Pérez.
After Wilfried Zaha told Crystal Palace he wants to swap Selhurst Park for White Hart Lane, Alan Pardew is unsure whether to start the winger against Bournemouth on Saturday but does “not expect him to use the situation as an excuse”.
Uefa have taken the unsurprising self-serving move of ensuring Europe’s strongest leagues are guaranteed four Big Cup places in the future, ensuring the champions from the weaker nations find it difficult to qualify for what is still officially called the Champions League.
Fresh from losing to a team named after a car for the second year running in the Europa League play-offs, Taxpayers FC have agreed a deal to sign Simone Zaza from Juventus for £24m.
STILL WANT MORE?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine… erm… what comes next? No, sorry, had it there for a seco… TEN! Ten things to look out for this Premier League weekend.
One, two, three, four, five [Fiver Ed – get on with it] … 14 – the 14 fit and available senior professionals tasked with providing Hull City with a miracle. Louise Taylor has more.
Luke Shaw’s mum gets nervous when he goes in for a tackle, but the Manchester United left-back tells Danny Taylor that he’s right as rain after recovering from his leg knack last year in this exclusive interview.
Ol’ DT has been a busy puppy, helping Manchester City lament another rock-hard Champions League draw.
Simon Burnton is pretty confident he can handle the truth – the truth about transfer fees. If only the clubs would tell us what they are.
If you were left scratching your head and thinking “Who the eff is Steven Defour?”, then worry not because Jamie Jackson is here to tell you all you need to know.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. AND INSTACHAT, TOO!
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/26/a-strict-diet-of-pie-in-the-sky
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
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[
"Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-26T13:16:20 | null | 2016-08-26T07:36:53 |
Richard Friedman sued Zimmer in January 2015 for copyright infringement but now regrets doing so after his case was dismissed from court
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Composer apologises to Hans Zimmer for 12 Years a Slave lawsuit
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Hans Zimmer has received more than just a win in a copyright infringement case – he also received an apology from a fellow composer who now says he mistakenly sued the Oscar-winner over the music for 12 Years a Slave.
Richard Friedman sued Zimmer for copyright infringement in January 2015, but he now says he never should have brought the case. Friedman wrote a letter to Zimmer saying he deeply regrets filing the lawsuit.
Hans Zimmer's five best movie music moments Read more
“I sincerely apologise to you for bringing the lawsuit and for the time and expense you incurred in its defence,” said Friedman, who writes music for film and TV.
He said he sued Zimmer based on the mistaken conclusion of a music expert. His case was dismissed from a federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Zimmer has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won an Oscar in 1994 for his score for The Lion King. His score for 12 Years a Slave was not nominated for an Oscar, although the film won best picture in 2014.
In a statement, Zimmer said he is happy with the outcome.
“I hope this case’s successful conclusion will persuade other artists who face similar claims that justice can be achieved,” Zimmer wrote. “I also hope that this dismissal will discourage other plaintiffs who may be motivated by recent high-profile music copyright lawsuits from filing meritless infringement claims.”
On Wednesday, attorneys for Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke and TI filed their opening brief appealing an infringement verdict against their 2013 hit Blurred Lines. The verdict awarded $5.3m (£4m) to Marvin Gaye’s family, and gave them a 50% right to ongoing royalties from the song.
Since then, two more high-profile copyright trials have been heard in Los Angeles one against Jay Z and another against the band Led Zeppelin over the song Stairway to Heaven. Both cases were decided in favour of the artists.
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https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/aug/26/hans-zimmer-composer-12-years-a-slave-lawsuit-copyright
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
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[
"Observer Fans' Network"
] | 2016-08-28T08:51:36 | null | 2016-08-28T08:00:27 |
With spending set to pass £1bn for the first time, fans discuss the moves so far, what they still need, and the one deal that makes them jealous
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Transfer window wishlists: who Premier League fans want to sign this week
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Arsenal
In: Granit Xhaka Borussia Monchengladbach, £34m; Takuma Asano Sanfrecce Hiroshima, undisc; Rob Holding Bolton, £2m.
Premier League: transfer window summer 2016 – interactive Read more
With Arsène signing Xhaka good and early I briefly thought he was planning a glorious swansong with one last big, sustained transfer market blow-out. Then it all went quiet, until last week. We’ve left it so late yet again. Gary Neville was spot on when he said Wenger and the Arsenal board “don’t enjoy swimming with the sharks”.
• Best buy so far: Xhaka. • Jury’s out on: Asano with his lack of work permit, and Holding who has been forced in too soon by Wenger’s failure to sign an experienced centre-half – risking a promising young career. • Dream target: I’d set my sights higher than Lucas Pérez – Griezmann or Lewandowski. But assuming the deals go through, Pérez and Shkodran Mustafi are better than nothing. • Saddest exit: I’m still mystified why Joel Campbell’s face doesn’t appear to fit. • Most envious of: We really could have done with those points Zlatan has already banked for United. – Bernard Azulay @GoonerN5
Bournemouth
In: Jordon Ibe Liverpool, £15m; Lys Mousset Le Havre, £5.4m; Marc Wilson Stoke, £2m; Emerson Hyndman Fulham, £1m; Nathan Aké Chelsea, loan; Lewis Cook Leeds, £10m; Brad Smith Liverpool, £6m
It took a long time to bring in a centre-back, and to recognise we need quality at the back as well as going forward – but it’s good to finally have Marc Wilson.
• Best buy so far: I do admire the focus on buying young players – Jordan Ibe is by far the best signing. Nathan Aké and Lewis Cook will be good additions, too. • Jury’s out on: Brad Smith from Liverpool was a surprise, and he started the season on the bench. But I don’t think fans have seen enough of him yet to form much of an opinion. • Dream target: Michael Carrick on loan from United if he’s really not wanted there. We lack a bit of experience and he’d be a massive signing for morale. • Saddest exit: Matt Ritchie was offered a new contract – it was sad he wanted to go, but I hope he does well at Newcastle. Most envious of: Chelsea signing N’Golo Kanté. What a player. – Peter Bell @CherryChimes
Burnley
In: Jamie Thomas Bolton, free; Robbie Leitch Motherwell, free; Nick Pope Charlton, £1.1m; Johann Berg Gudmundsson Charlton, undisc; Steven Defour Anderlecht, £8m; Jimmy Dunne Manchester United, free; Jon Flanagan Liverpool, loan.
It feels like the spending has still hardly got started. We’ve only made four senior signings – with one of those a loan deal and one a back-up keeper.
• Best buy so far: Defour. I don’t think anyone thought this was a deal we would pull off. He had a more than decent debut against Liverpool. • Jury’s out on: Patrick Bamford, if he signs. He struggled at Palace. • Dream target: We need at least three more, but we have to be realistic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dale Stephens join from Brighton, but we also need a midfielder and a striker. • Saddest exit: The influential David Jones going to Wednesday. Most envious of: Sean Dyche joked we were in for Pogba. But it’s pretty pointless to envy what the big clubs can do. We are who we are at this level. – Tony Scholes @utcdotcom
Chelsea
In: Michy Batshuayi Marseille, £33.2m; N’Golo Kanté Leicester, £32m, Eduardo Dinamo Zagreb, free.
Two big deals, but we still haven’t addressed the real areas of concern, which we also failed to do last season.
• Best buy so far: Early indications are that both Kanté and Batshuayi are going to slot in well – though I’ll reserve judgment until we’ve seen them against some of the big boys. • Jury’s out on: The defence. Mourinho begged for a quality defender last season and was denied; we’re led to believe it’s also Conte’s priority but again it’s been left so late. We’ve seen failed moves for Bonucci and Koulibaly, and Milan are still refusing to sell Romagnoli. • Dream target: See above – but also a left‑back, and another striker. • Saddest exit: Marko Marin – the German Messi, allegedly. I’m sad because Chelsea keep buying third-rate players then seem genuinely surprised they don’t make it. Farewell Marko; follow in the steps of Ambrosetti, the Italian Ryan Giggs… • Most envious of: City and United doing their business early with no mucking about, while we’re still penny pinching. – Trizia Fiorellino chelseasupportersgroup.net
Crystal Palace
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Top-notch forward: Palace’s £32m Christian Benteke in action against Bournemouth. Photograph: Scott Heavey/PA
In: Christian Benteke Liverpool, £32m; Andros Townsend Newcastle, £13m; Steve Mandanda Marseille, free; James Tomkins West Ham, £10m.
So far, so good. All four signings targeted the key problem areas – and we should see more movement before the deadline.
• Best buy so far: Benteke will be the key to what we can achieve: it’s been a few years since we’ve had a top-notch forward. The signing dragged on and dominated the summer for us. The best moment was when we reportedly offered a clause promising Liverpool more money when we qualify for the Champions League… • Jury’s out on: The ongoing lack of options up front – and the Wilfried Zaha rumours. • Dream target: Realistic options before the deadline are Loïc Rémy and Jermain Defoe, while Oliver Burke, the young Forest winger, would be a really interesting addition. • Saddest exit: We never played a system that suited Dwight Gayle – and Jedinak is an emotional loss. But Bolasie was sold at the right time for a great price. • Most envious of: I’d have loved to have Zlatan at Palace, just the pure theatre. – Chris Waters @Clapham_Grand
Everton
In: Yannick Bolasie Crystal Palace, £28m; Ashley Williams Swansea, £12m; Maarten Stekelenburg Fulham, undisc; Bassala Sambou Coventry, comp; Chris Renshaw Oldham, undisc; Idrissa Gueye Aston Villa, £7.1m.
A very decent window so far. We’ve added four players who are clearly better than the options we already had, with talk of more to come.
• Best buy so far: Idrissa Gueye is an early favourite – but I think Ashley Williams will emerge as the real star. • Jury’s out on: Yannick Bolasie, mainly because of the £28m price tag. But the price of all players has risen sky high, and I think he’ll be loved by the Gwladys Street. • Dream target: Any top-level striker to partner Lukaku, just so long as he hasn’t got a topknot. • Saddest exit: Steven Pienaar was a favourite, but sadly his legs have gone. I’m not too bothered about Stones: he asked for a transfer twice and never settled after the Chelsea saga last season. So to get £50m is good business. • Most envious of: Juve signing Gonzalo Higuaín. – Steve Jones @bluekippercom
Hull
In: Will Mannion, AFC Wimbledon, comp.
It’s pretty easy to assess our summer spending this year. There hasn’t been any. In fact, we haven’t bought a player for 12 months.
• Best buy so far: Academy keeper Will Mannion, who we pinched from AFC Wimbledon, probably wouldn’t have expected to win this category when he signed back in early July. But there’s not much competition… • Jury’s out on: Absolutely everything. It’s fair to say that the lack of any signings and the takeover talks have been the main focus of debate. • Dream target: We need half a first team. Ryan Mason from Spurs would be a good addition in midfield but generally we’ve sat by and watched the players we wanted get snapped up by rivals. • Saddest exit: We’ve only sold one player, but that was our play-off final hero Mo Diamé who ludicrously had a release clause of two gobstoppers and half a Kit Kat. That one was soul-destroying. • Most envious of: Aston Villa buying our James Chester from West Brom. We needed a centre-half urgently, too. – Rick Skelton @HullCityLive
Leicester
In: Nampalys Mendy Nice, £13m; Ron-Robert Zieler Hannover 96, £2.6m; Luis Hernández Sporting Gijon, free; Raul Uche Rubio Rayo Vallecano, undisc; Ahmed Musa CSKA Moscow, £16m; Bartosz Kapustka Cracovia, £7.5m.
We’ve showed ambition – but more bodies would help us through a congested schedule this season.
• Best buy so far: Ahmed Musa is a star – his pace suits us exceptionally well. • Jury’s out on: Luis Hernández had looked strong in pre-season but a weak performance at Hull has led to criticism. Fans are split on whether his experience and long throw are enough to supplant Danny Simpson. • Dream target: I’d love Porto striker Vincent Aboubakar. But we’re looking lightest in midfield - if rumours linking us to Roma’s Leandro Paredes are accurate, he’d be welcome. • Saddest exit: Without a doubt, N’Golo Kanté. Any side would miss a player of his calibre but the saddest part was the way he tarnished his reputation here – he’s now widely regarded as a traitor. • Most envious of: United landing Ibrahimovic. A phenomenal signing. – Chris Whiting @ChrisRWhiting
Liverpool
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sadio Mané scores Liverpool’s fourth against Arsenal on 14 August. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty Images
In: Sadio Mané Southampton, £36m; Loris Karius Mainz, £4.7m; Joel Matip Schalke, free; Ragnar Klavan Augsburg, undisc; Georginio Wijnaldum Newcastle, £25m; Alex Manninger free.
We haven’t spent a ton, and we’ve recouped most of it (though the details of what Palace paid for Benteke aren’t easy to work out). That’s the situation we’re used to now but Klopp’s known for developing talent so I feel confident.
• Best buy so far: Mané and Wijnaldum look like they will both be good for us and seem to have slotted in right away. • Jury’s out on: It’s who we haven’t signed that has caused most comment. There’s still a lot of fretting going on about needing a left-back. • Dream target: Ricardo Rodríguez from Wolfsburg would do nicely. • Saddest exit: No one really. It’s not as though we’ve sold on a club great. I’d have kept Joe Allen maybe, rather than a midfielder we have kept, and will miss Kolo Touré’s craziness. • Most envious of: City signing Claudio Bravo. – Steph Jones
Manchester City
In: Ilkay Gündogan Borussia D, £21m; Nolito Celta Vigo, £13.8m; Oleksandr Zinchenko FK Ufa, undisc; Aaron Mooy Melbourne City, free; Leroy Sané Schalke, £37m; Gabriel Jesus Palmeiras, £27m; Marlos Moreno Atletico Nacional, £4.75m; John Stones Everton, £47.5m; Claudio Bravo Barcelona, £15.4m.
We’ve struck a fine balance: some seasoned performers (Gündogan, Nolito, Bravo), and some of the world’s very best young talent (Stones, Sané and Gabriel Jesus).
• Best buy so far: Stones has taken to Guardiola’s system like a duck to water. He’s going to become some player. • Jury’s out on: Claudio Bravo. Many fans still don’t buy into Pep’s concept of what a keeper should be, but I do – and on that basis, I think Bravo’s a great fit. • Dream target: No one. Our business is done. • Saddest exit: He’s not quite gone yet, but Joe Hart. He can rest assured that he’ll leave a bona fide City legend. He fully deserved that touching send-off he received on Wednesday night. • Most envious of: Southampton’s deal for Sofiane Boufal. He’s a mesmeric dribbler. – Lloyd Scragg @lloyd_scragg
Manchester United
In: Paul Pogba Juventus, £89m; Zlatan Ibrahimovic free; Eric Bailly Villarreal, £30m; Henrikh Mkhitaryan Borussia Dortmund, £26.3m.
It’s been a fantastic window – we’ve added steel, experience and class. Zlatan has that aura we’ve not felt since Cantona was strutting his stuff, and Bailly has been superb too, steadying a vulnerable defence.
• Best buy so far: Pogba. Too many fans were upset that we’ve paid so much for a player who left for nothing; the fact is we’ve signed the best young midfielder in the world and finally replaced Roy Keane. We’ll also make a profit when we sell him to Madrid in four years’ time… • Jury’s out on: The defence: we still need experience alongside Bailly. • Dream target: Ezequiel Garay has been linked before. I’d like Bonucci, too, but I just can’t see Juventus selling him to us. Unfortunately, we’ll probably end up settling for Southampton’s Fonte. • Saddest exit: Paddy McNair. I thought he was a decent ball-playing, homegrown centre-back. He’ll have a decent career. • Most envious of: I can see Michy Batshuayi having a massive impact at Chelsea. – Shaun O’Donnell
Middlesbrough
In: Marten de Roon Atalanta, £12m; Viktor Fischer Ajax, £3.8m; Bernardo Espinosa Sporting Gijon, free; Jordan McGhee Hearts, loan; Victor Valdes free; Álvaro Negredo Valencia, loan; Brad Guzan Aston Villa, free; Gastón Ramírez, free.
We’ve signed a mix of experience and potential, and we’ve done so early enough to bed everyone in over the summer.
• Best buy so far: It’ll probably turn out to be the permanent capture of our former loanee, Gastón Ramírez. • Jury’s out on: Brad Guzan. We had a very solid keeper for the last two seasons in Dimi Konstantopoulos; Guzan has started this season in the same dubious form as he ended the last with Villa. • Dream target: Just some solid extra back-up in midfield and defence. • Saddest exit: We’re still waiting to see who departs before the window shuts this week – but if we lose Jordan Rhodes or Adam Reach I’ll be disappointed. • Most envious of: Everton signing Ashley Williams and Chelsea landing N’Golo Kanté. And Nampalys Mendy is really going to excite Leicester fans this season. – Robert Nichols fmttm.com
Southampton
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Southampton’s £11m winger Nathan Redmond in action against Sunderland. Photograph: Michael Steele/Getty Images
In: Nathan Redmond Norwich, £11m; Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg Bayern M, undisc; Kieran Freeman Dundee Utd, comp; Alex McCarthy C Palace, £4m; Jérémy Pied Nice, undisc; Stuart Taylor free.
The deals we’ve done have been positive, but we’re still perhaps one or two short.
• Best buy so far: Assuming the Sofiane Boufal deal goes through that fills the Sadio Mané-shaped hole. • Jury’s out on: We’re in a weird and slightly unnerving scenario where everyone seems pretty happy with the players we’ve signed. • Dream target: We need another centre-forward to replace Pellè, especially if Rodriguez is loaned out too. I thought Christian Benteke would be ideal, but not at that ludicrous price – so perhaps Wilfried Bony is the better option. • Saddest exit: Mané was possibly the most exciting player I’ve ever had the privilege of watching on a regular basis. • Most envious of: Zlatan. I’ve seen him play live twice, and he’s scored six goals against my teams, Saints and England. Ridiculously good. – Steve Grant @SteveGrant1983
Stoke
In: Joe Allen Liverpool, £13m; Ramadan Sobhi Al Ahly, £5m.
New signings have been a little thin on the ground so far. We’re hoping for a busy couple of days.
• Best buy so far: We weren’t necessarily crying out for a player in Joe Allen’s position, but you can’t deny his quality. • Jury’s out on: The goalkeeping department – and the lack of a signing there to solve the problem. With Jack Butland coming back from injury, Shay Given getting no younger and rookie Jakob Haugaard struggling at the end of last season, the lack of depth there is worrying. It caught us out last season and could again this season. • Dream target: Saido Berahino. He has been Mark Hughes’s No1 target all summer and it looks to be going down to the deadline again. But I’m confident he’ll be a Potter by this time next week. • Saddest exit: Peter Odemwingie. The training ground will be a less happy place without his infectious smile. • Most envious of: Southampton signing Nathan Redmond. I think he’d have been a star for us. – Rob Holloway
Sunderland
In: Paddy McNair Manchester United, £2.75m; Donald Love Manchester United, £2.75m; Adnan Januzaj Manchester United, loan; Steven Pienaar Everton, free; Javier Manquillo Atlético Madrid, loan
I’m not happy. Spending ha’pennies and coppers won’t keep us in the top-flight.
• Best buy so far: Januzaj – mainly because he’s the only one most fans have heard of. • Jury’s out on: It’s more the non-signings than actual signings that have caused the debate – particularly the failure (so far) to re-employ Yann M’Vila and the situation regarding Lamine Koné. Questions are also being asked about Love and McNair’s suitability for this division. • Dream target: A right-back, a centre-half, a wide-right player and a striker to play with or replace Defoe. I thought Alfie Mawson at Barnsley would fit the bill at the back – then he joined Swansea. • Saddest exit: I’m disappointed that Kaboul felt that Hertfordshire was more congenial than County Durham. • Most envious of: It would have been fun seeing Ibrahimovic trying to get a Sunderland player to put a decent cross in. – Peter Sixsmith SalutSunderland.com
Swansea
In: Leroy Fer QPR, £4.75m; Mike van der Hoorn Ajax, undisc; Mark Birighitti Newcastle Jets, free; Tyler Reid Manchester United, undisc; George Byers Watford, free; Borja González Atletico Madrid, £15.5m; Fernando Llorente Sevilla undisc.
The window could have been worse, but it should have been a lot better. Apart from up front, we’ve not really signed anyone yet who improves our first team.
• Best buy so far: Hopefully Llorente and Borja will help replace Ayew’s goals. • Jury’s out on: We need Borja to be scoring as soon as he’s available after injury. • Dream target: Top priority remains an experienced replacement for Ashley Williams, but it sounds like young Alfie Mawson will complete our business. He may be an excellent prospect, but I’m not sure he’ll be challenging just yet. • Saddest exit: Our captain was with us for eight years. We’ll miss his influence and we won’t be the same without him. We’ve seen glimpses of that already. • Most envious of: Fans weren’t happy when we didn’t bother competing with Stoke to bring back Joe Allen and went with the cheaper option of Leroy Fer instead. – Kevin Elphick Swansea.vitalfootball.co.uk
Tottenham
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tottenham’s Victor Wanyama holds off Liverpool’s Adam Lallana. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters
In: Vincent Janssen AZ Alkmaar, £18.6m; Victor Wanyama Southampton, £11m.
I was pleased we strengthened in midfield and up front before the season started – it’s just a shame we’re still trying to sign key players three Saturdays into it.
• Best buy so far: Remains to be seen. At the time of writing, the midfielder has scored and the striker hasn’t. • Jury’s out on: There’s general agreement that Janssen coming on at Everton coincided with the attack becoming more potent – but I can foresee exchanges of views on Wanyama when Dembélé is back from serving his sentence. • Dream target: A top-class creative midfielder. At the high end of the market Isco seems unsettled at Real, and we’re linked with Calhanoglu from Bayer Leverkusen. Both are exciting young prospects. And Wilfried Zaha’s pace and dribbling would give us a much-needed extra option for unlocking defences. • Saddest exit: I was sorry Grant Ward went. He played 40 games on loan at Rotherham last season and was their young player of the year. He scored a hat-trick on his debut for Ipswich. • Most envious of: United and Zlatan. – Dave Mason
Watford
In: Roberto Pereyra Juventus, £13m; Younès Kaboul Sunderland, £3.5m; Isaac Success Granada, £12.5m; Christian Kabasele Genk, £5.8m; Jerome Sinclair Liverpool, free; Juan Camilo Zuniga Napoli, loan; Brice Dja Djedje Marseille, £3m; Daryl Janmaat Newcastle, £7m.
The Pozzos certainly can’t be accused of not backing their man. Our outlay in fees dwarfs anything that’s come before, with three deals to date eclipsing the previous transfer record.
• Best buy so far: Pereyra was the summer’s most anxiously awaited signing in that an already conservative midfield had lost its two most creative players. No debate that his arrival was a Good Thing – and his debut goal underlined that. • Jury’s out on: There’s been no time for doubts so far – we’ve yet to catch a breath. • Dream target: If I’m being greedy, another creative midfielder would be nice. Sofiane Boufal has been a target, but others like him too. • Saddest exit: Almen Abdi is an elegant genius who dug in in an unfamiliar wide role last year. He would have relished a central role in Mazzarri’s 3-5-2. • Most envious of: Zlatan’s a rock star. He’ll be lots of fun. – Matt Rowson @mattrowson
West Brom
In: Matt Phillips QPR, £5.5m; Brendan Galloway Everton, loan.
For some West Brom fans there’s a bigger picture that won’t be fixed by one result | Stuart James Read more
A shocking transfer window so far. Our biggest, and only, permanent deal of the summer came in at a modest £5.5m. We’ll see what happens this week.
• Best buy so far: By default, Matt Phillips. • Jury’s out on: We’ve been after a left-back here since Derek Statham hung up his boots, so not buying one yet again and just loaning in 20-year-old Brendan Galloway from Everton has caused plenty of debate. He’s a really good lad, but come on… • Dream target: Islam Slimani from Sporting Lisbon. He’s in demand, though. • Saddest exit: It was a real shame that we never got to see James Chester play properly. I think he counts as the strangest transfer and subsequent sale in many a year. • Most envious of: Palace signing Benteke. We needed a striker badly and with the takeover we thought we were going to pull this off as a statement of intent. It wasn’t to be. – Richard Jefferson @richbaggie
West Ham
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Edimilson Fernandes, passing his West Ham medical. Photograph: Arfa Griffiths/West Ham United via Getty Images
In: André Ayew Swansea, £20.5m; Manuel Lanzini Al-Jazira, £9.4m; Arthur Masuaku Olympiakos, £6m; Toni Martínez Valencia, £2.25m; Jonathan Calleri D Maldonado, loan; Havard Nordtveit Borussia Mönchengladbach, free; Sofiane Feghouli Valencia, free; Gokhan Tore Besiktas, loan; Domingos Quina Chelsea free; Ashley Fletcher Manchester United, free; Edimilson Fernandes Sion, £5m.
We’ve had terrible luck with £20.5m André Ayew’s injury. The stockpiling of right-wingers in Feghouli and Tore is a bit mystifying as we already had a great winger in Antonio, but Slaven seems determined to turn him into a right-back. Fletcher and Calleri are promising, though the latter has flopped so far. Left-back Masuaku has impressed early on.
• Best buy so far: Despite all the above, the biggest deal was to keep Dimitri Payet. • Jury’s out on: Havard Nordtveit hasn’t yet looked an upgrade as a defensive shield. • Dream target: With Ayew and – aaaargh! – Carroll out again, we need a striker. If the deal for Italy’s Zaza goes through that’d be exciting, as long as he doesn’t take penalties. • Saddest exit: No one here wanted to see James Tomkins go. • Most envious of: United. I wouldn’t mind Ibrahimovic up front feeding off Payet. – Pete May hammersintheheart.blogspot.co.uk
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/28/transfer-window-deadline-premier-league-fans-summer-spending
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| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5f5d0849046348e05ee10d6e6d3506b5ea8698005350aa22f0c317de79ad6238.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:18:45 | null | 2016-08-21T21:35:00 |
Gareth Bale’s double helped get Real Madrid off to a flier against Real Sociedad, winning 3-0 at the Anoeta Stadium
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Gareth Bale’s double gets Real Madrid off to a flyer against Real Sociedad
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www.theguardian.com
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Gareth Bale built on his excellent displays for Wales at Euro 2016 by scoring two goals in a commanding 3-0 win for Real Madrid in their La Liga opener at Real Sociedad on Sunday.
Bale opened the scoring with a powerful header in the second minute and rounded off the win four minutes into injury time with a simple finish after the new arrival Asensio had scored his first league goal for Real in the 40th with a sumptuous lob.
After Barcelona laid down a marker with a ruthless 6-2 win at home to Real Betis on Saturday, the pressure was on Real to make a strong start themselves. They were without their first-choice forwards Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, so Bale was accompanied by Alvaro Morata and Asensio instead.
Luis Suárez scores hat-trick in Barcelona’s 6-2 rout of Real Betis Read more
The winger nodded in the only goal in the fixture last season late in the second half but needed little more than 60 seconds to strike this time, meeting Dani Carvajal’s whipped cross from the right to power the ball into the top near corner.
Real Sociedad’s goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli had better luck with an arrowed effort from Toni Kroos midway through the first half, tipping the ball away at the near post.
The former Real midfielder Asier Illarramendi had the home side’s best chance to level but opted to pass to Juanmi rather than try his luck and wasted the opportunity. That lapse woke up Madrid and they upped their search for a second goal, which arrived via Raphael Varane’s scooped pass up to Asensio, the youngster controlling with one touch before producing a delightful chip over Rulli.
Madrid were just as dominant in the second half and were inches away from stretching their lead when Morata was denied by Rulli and Kroos met the loose ball on the volley, smashing it against the bar.
Mateo Kovacic was denied Real’s third by an another impressive save from Rulli, while the home side had a penalty appeal turned down later following a challenge by Carvajal on Willian José.
Bale had the last word, however, latching on to James Rodríguez’s through-ball to race clear and take the ball calmly round Rulli.
Atlético Madrid were held to a 1-1 draw by Alaves in extraordinary circumstances at the Vicente Calderon. Diego Simeone’s side missed a series of chances before Kevin Gameiro took advantage of a debatable penalty award in favour of Fernando Torres to put the Rojiblancos ahead in the third minute of second-half stoppage time.
However, they let two points slip from their grasp as Manu was allowed the space to unleash a right-foot shot two minutes later,which Atlético’s goalkeeper, Jan Oblak, who had barely touched the ball owing to the home side’s dominance, got nowhere near.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/21/gareth-bale-real-madrid-sociedad-la-liga-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-21T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2fe5a767544b1be24f044f2558f1e1008a690217755ae048b5107a4e000e2429.json
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[
"William Keegan"
] | 2016-08-27T20:54:52 | null | 2016-07-09T07:56:00 |
The economic consequences of this terrible mistake require us to make an urgent retreat
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Fjul%2F09%2Fbrexit-tragedy-reads-like-satire-mistake-urgent-retreat.json
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Brexit is a tragedy that reads like a satire
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www.theguardian.com
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One should have thought that in the production of Richard III at Islington’s Almeida theatre on the night the referendum results were declared, the cast would have relished the following exchange:
Richard: What news abroad?
Hastings: No news so bad abroad as this at home.
As we were reeling from the referendum result, this exchange would surely have brought the house down. But it didn’t. They left out the second line, and the opportunity was missed.
Or perhaps it was deliberate. What a shame. The subsequent outbreak of knifing among the Goves and Johnsons of this world makes the gory plot of Richard III look like a vicarage tea party. As the comedian Terry-Thomas would have said, these so called senior Tories are “an absolute shower”. They deserve every unguarded remark Kenneth Clarke makes about them.
What a tragedy it all is! Buffoons at the top of the Conservative party and the man who ought to have been leader years ago, namely Clarke, ostracised because, unlike the egregious Johnson and Gove, he is true to his European principles. As the Roman poet Juvenal opined at a certain farcical juncture in the affairs of his city state: Difficile est non saturam scribere (It is difficult not to write satire).
Indeed, the mood among my fellow Remainers seems to be evolving from depression to black humour. It was none other than Rupert Harrison, former economic adviser to George Osborne, who recently remarked that the people may have spoken but – did they know what they have said?
For sheer chutzpah I can think of few things more farcical than the statement by Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of the Sun, that even he was suffering from “buyer’s remorse” and regretted having voted Leave. Can this be the same man who spent his time as editor poisoning the minds of his readers with constant attacks on the EU and Brussels? Surely there must have been some mistake.
Again, during David Cameron’s last supper with European leaders in Brussels the other week, our prime minister complained that if the others had offered him an “emergency brake” on the inflow of migrants, the result might have been different. To which Jean-Claude Juncker made the eminently reasonable point: “If you, over years or decades, tell citizens that something is wrong with the EU – that the EU is too technocratic, too bureaucratic – you cannot be taken by surprise if voters believe you.”
As for Nigel Farage, a man whose nasty campaign can hardly be unconnected with a sharp increase in hate crime since the vote – can this be the same populist hoodlum who maintained that, if it went 52% to 48% against Brexit, then there should be another referendum, because such a momentous decision could surely not be taken on such a narrow majority?
Which brings us to a brilliant article in the current issue of Prospect, by the economist Anatole Kaletsky. Kaletsky takes issue with the way so many of the establishment seem to have caved in without a fight in the face of a referendum whose result even the former editor of the Sun objects to.
He makes many points that I cannot cover here, one of the key ones being that it is absurd to maintain that it is undemocratic to question the result. As he explains, from the very moment of a general election result, it is the duty of the opposition to carry on the attack.
Kaletsky argues that the implications of Brexit are so calamitous that it makes sense for a genuine effort on the part of the UK and the rest the EU to come to an accommodation on immigration and the single market, and then put it to parliament.
An obvious factor behind the hope that there will be a change of heart among the electorate is that the damage of Brexit is already becoming apparent. Contracts are being put on hold all over the place and the panic in the City is so great that investors are not being allowed to withdraw their money from prestigious funds.
I have seldom known such an atmosphere of fear and apprehension in postwar Britain. The Chilcot report concludes that the intelligence behind the invasion of Iraq was faulty and there was no plan for the aftermath. In this case there was certainly no plan; but there was also no intelligence. In the film The Dark Knight, the Michael Caine character says: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
The collapse of the pound has only begun, and is in danger of going well beyond what our trading competitiveness might require. And if Brexit goes ahead, any competitive gains are likely to be dwarfed by the impact on investment from multinationals that, until now, have seen the UK as a base for operations within the single market.
The governor of the Bank of England – who is, as it were, doing a sterling job trying to keep the show on the road – recently quoted A Streetcar Named Desire about dependence on “the kindness of strangers”. He was referring to the financing of our vast current balance of payments deficit. When the longer-term implications of losing the single market sink in, those strangers may not be so kind.
We urgently need to recognise that a huge mistake has been made. Meanwhile, let us remember that David Cameron came into politics to “make a difference”. He succeeded.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/09/brexit-tragedy-reads-like-satire-mistake-urgent-retreat
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en
| 2016-07-09T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/caced5dc8d5c7dae07c18c468ca77efa106043cca34fed5da76609466fac56bb.json
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[
"Michael Safi"
] | 2016-08-29T12:52:10 | null | 2016-08-29T11:29:10 |
Foreign arrivals issued with welcome kit including safety advice for women, after high-profile assaults
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Female tourists should not wear skirts in India, says tourism minister
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www.theguardian.com
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India’s tourism minister has said foreign women should not wear skirts or walk alone at night in the country’s small towns and cities “for their own safety”.
Discussing tourist security in the north Indian city of Agra, site of the Taj Mahal, Mahesh Sharma said foreign arrivals to India were issued a welcome kit that included safety advice for women.
“In that kit they are given dos and don’ts,” he said on Sunday. “These are very small things like, they should not venture out alone at night in small places, or wear skirts, and they should click the photo of the vehicle number plate whenever they travel and send it to friends.”
Women walk alone to reclaim India's streets from fear and harassment | Shaifali Agrawal Read more
He added: “For their own safety, women foreign tourists should not wear short dresses and skirts ... Indian culture is different from the western.”
The welcome kit, geared at female travellers and introduced last year, is one of a suite of measures introduced to address declining rates of female tourism after the high-profile gang-rape and murder of a Delhi medical student in 2012, and a number of subsequent attacks on female tourists.
The kit says: “Some parts of India, particularly the smaller towns and villages, still have traditional styles of dressing. Do find out about local customs and traditions or concerned authorities before visiting such places.”
It mirrors the UK Foreign Office advice to women travelling in India, which suggests they “respect local dress codes and customs and avoid isolated areas, including beaches, when alone at any time of day”.
Sharma clarified his remarks later on Sunday, denying they amounted to a dress code for foreign women. ”We have not given any specific instructions regarding what they should wear or not wear. We are asking them to take precaution while going out at night. We are not trying to change anyone’s preference,” he said.
“It was very stupid, not a fully thought-through statement,” said Ranjana Kumari, the director of the Delhi-based Centre for Social Research, a thinktank focusing on gender equality in India. “The minister doesn’t realise the implications of such irresponsible statements.”
Kumari said the remarks reflected “the syndrome of blaming women” for what they wore and where they were. She said: “But the problem is men and boys in India. They go for all kinds of misogyny and sexual acts, rapes and gang-rapes. It’s important for [Sharma] to have said how to punish the perpetrators of crime and stop the nonsense of ogling women and following them. Why should any girls come to India when it is becoming famous for not being safe to girls?”
India toughened sentences for rape and introduced fast-track courts for sexual assault trials after the fatal 2012 gang-rape focused world attention on violence against women in the country.
National crime statistics show 92 women are raped each day in India, mostly in rural areas, though the figure is widely believed to be an underestimate. Street harassment and violence, sometimes called “eve-teasing”, is even more common, experienced by 79% of Indian women according to a recent survey.
Tourists can be subjected to the same harassment and worse, most recently in July 2016 when an Israeli national was sexually assaulted by a gang of men in the Himalayan resort town of Manali. A Japanese woman was kidnapped and sexually assaulted in 2014 in Bihar and a Russian assaulted by an auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi in 2015, among other cases.
Sharma’s remarks trended on Indian social media on Monday and earned rebukes from political rivals.
— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) France shd send all burkinis it confiscates to our Tourism Minister who'll turn India into a Hindu Saudi Barbaria https://t.co/o5XudSXzh3
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) Women had greater freedom to wear clothes of their choice in Vedic times than they have in Modi times
https://t.co/8nKdRAhXIC
— Kapil Mishra (@KapilMishraAAP) I will be writing a letter to Mahesh Sharma ji today requesting him not to insult nation by such advisories. https://t.co/JnoteVLeqD
Sharma has previously been criticised over his views on nights out for women. “It may be alright elsewhere, but it is not part of Indian culture,” he said last year.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/india-female-tourists-skirts-safety-advice
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/24936a5c264b53801d3588ad424306ccda24a5eee6bd1a08e9063e94ee36d77a.json
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[
"Philip Oltermann",
"Patrick Kingsley"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:59 | null | 2016-08-25T05:00:02 |
One year ago, a tweet made Germany the promised land for refugees entering Europe – and changed the course of history
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fit-took-on-a-life-of-its-own-how-rogue-tweet-led-syrians-to-germany.json
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'It took on a life of its own': how one rogue tweet led Syrians to Germany
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www.theguardian.com
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The tweet was sent by Germany’s federal agency for migration and refugees a year ago today. “The #Dublin procedure for Syrian citizens is at this point in time effectively no longer being adhered to,” the message read. With 175 retweets and 165 likes, it doesn’t look like classic viral content. But in Germany it is being spoken of as the first post on social media to change the course of European history.
Referring to an EU law determined at a convention in Dublin in 1990, the tweet was widely interpreted as a de facto suspension of the rule that the country in Europe where a refugee first arrives is responsible for handling his or her asylum application.
— BAMF (@BAMF_Dialog) #Dublin-Verfahren syrischer Staatsangehöriger werden zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt von uns weitestgehend faktisch nicht weiter verfolgt.
By this point in 2015, more than 300,000 asylum seekers had reached Europe by boat – a figure that was already 50% higher than even the record-breaking number of arrivals in 2014.
Although the German agency’s intervention certainly did not start the crisis, it did make Germany the first-choice destination for Syrians who previously might have aimed for other countries in Europe, such as Sweden, which at the time offered indefinite asylum to Syrians.
It also created an impression of confusion and loss of political control, from which Angela Merkel’s government has at times struggled to recover. Twelve months on, politicians and officials at the centre of Berlin’s bureaucratic machine are still trying to figure out how the tweet came about.
Four days previously, Angelika Wenzl, the executive senior government official at the refugee agency, which in Germany is known as BAMF, had emailed out an internal memo titled “Rules for the suspension of the Dublin convention for Syrian citizens” to its 36 field bureaux around the country, stating that Syrians who applied for asylum in Germany would no longer be sent back to the country where they had first stepped on European soil.
Syrian refugees in Hungary: 'This is the so-called developed Europe?' Read more
Lawyers working closely with BAMF have pointed out that doing so did not, as some have claimed, amount to a complete suspension of the Dublin agreement across the EU, since the convention gives member states the right to take over asylum applications from other member states.
By channels that officials and journalists have so far failed to pinpoint, Wenzl’s internal memo was leaked to the press. While an investigation by Der Spiegel pointed at Germany’s largest immigration advocacy group, Pro Asyl, as the source of the leak, the NGO itself claimed it did not know of the memo until told about it by journalists seeking to make sense of the new procedure.
Maximilian Pichl, Pro Asyl’s legal policy adviser, said he was one of many lawyers who flooded BAMF with puzzled phone calls, creating pressure on the agency to clarify its position in public, which eventually culminated in what Die Zeit recently described as “the fateful tweet”.
More by old-fashioned word of mouth than by means of the retweet button, the message spread among refugees who were heading to Europe or already waiting in camps. “Right now it’s just one country – Germany,” a Syrian oil engineer told the Guardian as he made his way through the Balkans a few days later. “Where are the others? It’s only Germany. Only Merkel.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Refugees at Vienna’s railway station in September 2015. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images
Chinese whispers spread through the Syrian diaspora, inflating the significance and meaning of the government’s tweet. “She said she will bring big boats from Turkey to rescue Syrians!” Maria, a Syrian interviewed in Vienna station that fortnight, credulously explained.
Until mid-August 2015, 150,000 refugees had been registered in Hungary. After BAMF’s tweet, many refused to do so, reportedly holding up their smartphones displaying the message to police and border officers. Hungary’s ambassador to Germany later claimed that the day after the tweet, Serbian police had found thousands of discarded passports on their side of the border. “From that moment on, every refugee was a Syrian,” Peter Györkös said.
When Györkös called the German interior ministry, officials said they were not aware of the tweet. In a press conference the following day, Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said that the suspension of the Dublin agreement was “not as such a legally binding act”, but more of a “guideline for management practice”.
A few weeks later, Manfred Schmidt, the head of BAMF, stepped down for “personal reasons”, although in many quarters it is assumed that he was forced to do so because of his agency exposing the government’s loss of political control.
But a year on, the long-term consequences of the tweet are gradually becoming apparent. In April, the European commission revealed a wide-ranging shake-up of the Dublin system, which has long been criticised by human rights lawyers for unfairly pushing the main burden of asylum applications to poorer countries on the periphery of the EU while protecting wealthier landlocked member states.
EU unveils plans to reform asylum rules to help frontline members Read more
Yet sources close to BAMF insist the tweet had not been intended to torpedo the unloved law, but as an emergency decluttering measure, freeing the agency from additional bureaucracy before it was unable to cope.
According to Gerald Knaus, the initial architect of the EU-Turkey deal and the head of the European Stability Initiative thinktank, the tweet was not intended to signal a major policy change, and was not written by senior policymakers.
“It was seen as simply stating the obvious – they had already stopped trying to send Syrians back – and it wasn’t considered how it would be perceived,” said Knaus. “It took on a life on its own, because it confirmed that anyone who got to Germany could stay. It wasn’t a new decision – but it sent out a signal.”
Behind the scenes at the time, Knaus said, German officials were split between those who felt it was necessary to send people back to Hungary and viable to close the German border, and those who felt that it was logistically impossible and morally unjustifiable. A few weeks later, when thousands of Syrians decided to march from Hungary towards Austria and then Germany, Merkel decided to opt for the latter.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/25/it-took-on-a-life-of-its-own-how-rogue-tweet-led-syrians-to-germany
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0c169fd7eb7d04f0c464af6b81c640f6e7328eb29d7f5e7eba865def0e2d592f.json
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[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-30T10:52:29 | null | 2016-08-30T10:14:05 |
NSW health minister faces sustained questioning over her handling of a series of hospital mistakes
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fmps-question-jillian-skinner-over-baby-deaths-and-other-hospital-errors.json
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MPs question Jillian Skinner over baby deaths and other hospital errors
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www.theguardian.com
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The New South Wales health minister has faced torrid questioning in budget estimates over a string of serious hospital errors including an incident in which the bodies of two deceased babies were mixed-up, resulting in one of the children being accidentally cremated.
Jillian Skinner also faced questions over her response to an incident at Bankstown-Lidcombe hospital in which a baby boy died and a newborn girl suffered suspected brain damage after they were mistakenly given nitrous oxide instead of oxygen.
Baby death: report finds 'series of tragic errors' caused gas mix-up at Sydney hospital Read more
Skinner defended her decision not to appear before the media when a report into the catastrophic gas incident was released publicly on Saturday.
The report found “a series of tragic errors” including incorrect installations of gas pipelines, flawed testings and significant clinical and management failures caused the deadly error.
“I wanted the focus to be on the findings of the chief health officer [Dr Kerry Chant] – this was her report. It’s a really important report,” Skinner told an estimates committee hearing in state parliament on Tuesday afternoon.
“Do you think it was a mistake, that you should have fronted up with Dr Chant?” Labor’s shadow health minister, Walt Secord, asked.
“No I don’t. I did it deliberately because I wanted the focus to be on her report, on the findings that would give confidence to the public that the system was safe,” Skinner told the committee.
“If I had been there, that would not have been the focus. By not being there, that was the focus. That was what the media was reporting.”
Skinner said she eventually agreed to front television crews after several requests late on Saturday afternoon because by then “there had been enough time for the media to absorb the matters in [the] report”.
The committee was also told that in late 2015 the identities of two babies, one that was miscarried and one stillborn, were confused at a mortuary. One of the babies was incorrectly identified with a blanket label, leading staff to believe it was the other baby.
In another incident from April this year, a woman visiting the Royal North Shore hospital discovered someone else’s identification tags were on her 89-year-old mother’s body in a mortuary bag. Another mixup revealed in estimates on Tuesday involved the exhumation of an incorrectly identified body in south-western Sydney.
St Vincent's hospital's chemotherapy scandal sparks call for inquiry Read more
Skinner told the committee she hadn’t heard of any mix-ups involving dead patients this year, despite visiting the hospital about a month ago.
“I’m devastated for them and I’m really sorry that such an incident occurred,” she said.
Skinner also confirmed she has refused to meet with a patient affected by a chemotherapy under-dosing scandal at St Vincent’s Hospital, despite their request.
“I don’t have a hard and fast set protocol, but it would be my inclination to wait until the investigation had been completed [to meet with affected patients],” the minister said.
She told the committee she regretted saying St Vincent’s hospital “lied” about the scandal, conceding it was too harsh and she should have instead said they “misled” the public through the media.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/30/mps-question-jillian-skinner-over-baby-deaths-and-other-hospital-errors
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ad50e2822d235da771171e510652ccc31f1796aa70c8bfb377ac04d2a80b417e.json
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[
"Yawar Nazir Getty"
] | 2016-08-31T10:52:46 | null | 2016-08-31T05:40:50 |
Photographs from the Eyewitness series
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Eyewitness: Srinagar, Kashmir
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www.theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2016/aug/31/eyewitness-srinagar-kashmir
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/82b6a00f121800aaa7e64a0326dac07d6964934137b9d4289b7c41ac89b87a29.json
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[
"Guardian Sport"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:27 | null | 2016-08-24T09:53:10 |
With only seven days to go before the transfer window closes, we look at who the clubs have already signed and where they still need to strengthen
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Ftransfer-window-one-week-to-go-what-do-every-premier-league-club-still-need.json
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Transfer window: one week to go - what do every Premier League club still need?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Arsenal
Premier League: transfer window summer 2016 – interactive Read more
Takuma Asano, Sanfrecce Hiroshima, £3.4m; Rob Holding, Bolton, £2.5m; Kelechi Nwakali, Diamond Academy, £3m; Granit Xhaka, Borussia Mönchengladbach, £35m
What they need Centre-forward, centre-half, centre-forward, centre-half, centre-forward, centre-haaarrgghh. That’s the jist of what Arsenal need – have needed – for far too long frankly. They must buy the best they can afford in both positions and Arsène Wenger has said they will spend. But will they…? Amy Lawrence
Bournemouth
Nathan Aké, Chelsea, loan; Lewis Cook, Leeds, £10m; Emerson Hyndman, Fulham, undisc; Jordan Ibe, Liverpool, £15m; Lys Mousset, Le Havre, £5.4m; Mikael Ndjoli, Millwall, free; Brad Smith, Liverpool, £3m; Mark Travers, Cherry Orchard, free; Marc Wilson, Stoke City, £2m
What they need Eddie Howe has already signed seven players this summer and is unlikely to make significant further additions despite two early league defeats. One younger target, perhaps from abroad, may arrive with development for future seasons in mind but the first-team squad are well off for numbers. Nick Ames
Burnley
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steven Defour, left, in action for Burnley against Liverpool. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
Steven Defour, Anderlecht, £7.5m; Jimmy Dunne, Manchester United, free; Jon Flanagan, Liverpool, loan; Johann Berg Gudmundsson, Charlton Athletic, £2.5m; Nick Pope, Charlton Athletic, £1.1m
What they need Sean Dyche’s headline acquisition was Steven Defour; the Belgian was recruited for a club record £7.5m. The manager is clear he wants to bring in new faces but is unable to give a number due to his club’s difficulty in signing players in what Dyche believes is a particularly difficult market. Jamie Jackson
Chelsea
Michy Batshuayi, Marseille, £33m; N’Golo Kanté, Leicester City, £32m
What they need A centre-half, with interest retained in Kalidou Koulibaly and Nikola Maksimovic, is the priority though a club who had envisaged buying five or six key players at the start of the summer have plenty of work still to do. Ideally a striker, a reserve goalkeeper and a left-back are required. Dominic Fifield
Crystal Palace
Christian Benteke, Liverpool, £27m; Steve Mandanda, Marseille, £1.5m; James Tomkins, West Ham United, £10m; Andros Townsend, Newcastle United, £13m
What they need Palace have bought Christian Benteke but still need another centre-forward to bolster a shot-shy side, with Loïc Rémy and even Jermain Defoe now mooted as targets. Alan Pardew would also like replacements for Yannick Bolasie and Mile Jedinak, and may explore the loan market for a solution. DF
Everton
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yannick Bolasie joined Everton from Palace for £25m. Photograph: Tony McArdle/Everton FC via Getty Images
Yannick Bolasie, Crystal Palace, £25m; Idrissa Gueye, Aston Villa, £9m; Chris Renshaw, Oldham Athletic, undisc; Bassala Sambou, Coventry City, undisc; Maarten Stekelenburg, Fulham, £1m; Ashley Williams, Swansea City, £12m
What they need Lamine Koné remains a top target and the centre-back wants the move but he will need Sunderland to replace him first. Valencia’s Aymen Abdennour is an alternative. Ronald Koeman also hopes to add a striker although, if Romelu Lukaku signs a new contract, it might prove their best piece of summer business. NA
Hull City
Will Mannion, AFC Wimbledon, undisc
What they need Mike Phelan wants to make at least seven signings to bolster a bare bones squad currently boasting 14 fit senior professionals while also keeping hold of Abel Hernández, a key striker coveted by leading Championship clubs. With Hull’s Egyptian owners attempting to sell to a Chinese consortium, no senior players have arrived this summer – while that may well change, Phelan is unlikely to get the two strikers, two midfielders, two defenders and goalkeeper he covets. Louise Taylor
Leicester City
Luis Hernández, Sporting Gijón, free; Nampalys Mendy, Nice, £13m; Ahmed Musa, CSKA Moscow, £18m; Raúl Uche Rubio, Rayo Vallecano, £5m; Ron-Robert Zieler, Hannover, £2.6m
What they need Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, the Leicester vice-chairman, said the Premier League champions are ready to make more signings if the right players become available, with the Austrian defender Aleksandar Dragovic a long-term target. Claudio Ranieri is also determined to hold on to Jeff Schlupp. Stuart James
Liverpool
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Georginio Wijnaldum, centre, in EFL Cup against against Burton Albion. Photograph: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
Loris Karius, Mainz, £4.7m; Ragnar Klavan, Augsburg, £4.25m; Sadio Mané, Southampton, £30m; Joel Matip, Schalke, free; Georginio Wijnaldum, Newcastle United, £24m
What they need The weakness at left-back has clearly not escaped Jürgen Klopp despite his backing of Alberto Moreno last week but time is running out if Liverpool are to enlist a better alternative than James Milner. Klopp has expressed frustration at the hysteria of the transfer window but may yet be tempted to add a central midfielder to the ranks too. NA
Manchester City
Ilkay Gündogan, Borussia Dortmund, £21m; Aaron Mooy, Melbourne City, swap; Marlos Moreno, Atlético Nacional, £4.7m; Nolito, Celta Vigo, £14m; Gerónimo Rulli, Deportivo Maldonado, £4m; Leroy Sané, Schalke, £37m; John Stones, Everton, £47.5m; Oleksandr Zinchenko, Ufa, £1.7m
What they need With Pep Guardiola set to sign Claudio Bravo from Barcelona, the Joe Hart problem will be solved: the Catalan believes the 29-year-old Hart’s football ability is below par for the goalkeeping position in his team and the Chilean is Guardiola’s answer. The manager also wants to offload several players in various positions. JJ
Manchester United
Eric Bailly, Villarreal, £30m; Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Paris Saint-Germain, free; Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Borussia Dortmund, £26m; Paul Pogba, Juventus, £92m
What they need José Mourinho wants to sign José Fonte from Southampton to add the 32-year-old’s experience at centre-back. The Portuguese manager has arguably enjoyed the best transfer window even if Fonte does not come, having landed Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Eric Bailly, Paul Pogba and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. JJ
Middlesbrough
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marten de Roon joined Middlesbrough from Atalanta for £12m. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images
Marten de Roon, Atalanta, £12m; Bernardo Espinosa, Sporting Gijón, free; Viktor Fischer, Ajax, £3.8m; Jordan McGhee, Hearts, loan; Álvaro Negredo, Valencia, loan; Gastón Ramírez, Southampton, free; Víctor Valdés, Manchester United, free
What they need Not much. Aitor Karanka has already made 10 signings – the majority early in the window – and although he could do with another central defender, that need is not urgent. Boro’s manager says he wants to keep Jordan Rhodes – not even on the bench for last Sunday’s win at Sunderland – but suggestions linger that he may offload the striker while importing an alternative. LT
Southampton
Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Bayern Munich, £12.75m; Alex McCarthy, Crystal Palace, £4m; Nathan Redmond, Norwich City, £11m
What they need Southampton are happy to allow Jay Rodriguez out on loan if they can line up a replacement, although additions up front may be welcome regardless of outwards movement. Sébastien Haller, the prolific Utrecht forward, is a possibility. Little else is likely unless the situation around José Fonte, targeted by Manchester United but offered a new contract at St Mary’s, changes dramatically. NA
Stoke City
Joe Allen, Liverpool, £13m
What they need A defensive reinforcement is sought and Mark Bowen, Stoke’s assistant manager, has been candid about the club’s interest in the Manchester United centre-back Phil Jones. Monaco’s midfielder Tiemoué Bakayoko is among others linked but the most obvious vacancy in the squad appears to be for a top-class centre-forward. NA
Sunderland
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paddy McNair, left, and Donald Love signed for a combined £5.5m from Manchester United. Photograph: Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images
Papy Djilobodji, Chelsea, £8m; Paddy McNair, and Donald Love, Manchester United, £5.5m; Steven Pienaar, Everton, free
What they need To compensate for the gaping central defensive holes created by Younés Kaboul’s defection to Watford and Lamine Koné’s possible exit for Everton. Do a deal for Yann M’Vila, the classy central midfielder who shone while on loan from Rubin Kazan last season. Acquire at least one decent striker to complement Jermain Defoe. Strengthen at full-back. Overall, David Moyes’s signings to date look suspiciously like squad players but, to avoid yet another relegation fight, Sunderland require an infusion of top dollar quality. LT
Swansea City
Borja Bastón, Atlético Madrid, £15m; George Byers, Watford, free; Leroy Fer, QPR, £3.5m; Fernando Llorente, Sevilla, £5m; Mike van der Hoorn, Ajax, £200k
What they need The priority for Swansea is a central defender to replace Ashley Williams, whose £12m transfer to Everton has left a considerable hole to fill at the back. Francesco Guidolin suggested he is targeting Serie A – Udinese’s Thomas Heurtaux has been linked – but the club are exploring all possible options. SJ
Tottenham Hotspur
Vincent Janssen, AZ Alkmaar, £18.75m; Victor Wanyama, Southampton, £11m
What they need Mauricio Pochettino has suggested he is open to “one or two” additions before the window closes, with the first likely to be Georges-Kévin Nkoudou from Marseille and, potentially, a defender to follow as the Argentinian seeks to add greater depth to Spurs’ squad before a season playing in the Champions League. DF
Watford
Facebook Twitter Pinterest New signings Roberto Pereyra and Younes Kaboul being unveiled by Watford before their game against Chelsea. Photograph: Ian Kington/AFP/Getty Images
Brice Dja Djedjé, Marseille, £3m; Christian Kabasele, Genk, £5.8m; Younès Kaboul, Sunderland, £4m; Roberto Pereyra, Juventus, £10.7m; Jerome Sinclair, Liverpool, £4m; Isaac Success, Granada, £12.5m
What they need Watford are pursuing two potential right wing-backs due to uncertainty over Brice Dja Djedjé, who was nursing a foot injury when he joined from Marseille in July and is yet to regain fitness. Otherwise little is expected before 31 August, unless the club reacts to the unforeseen availability of long-term targets. Simon Burnton
West Bromwich Albion
Brendan Galloway, Everton, loan; Matt Phillips, QPR, £5.5m
What they need The Baggies are front runners to secure Jay Rodriguez for the season if Southampton let him out. If Tony Pulis has his way, that will be only the start; he would like to make five signings, largely in attacking areas, and retains a strong interest in the Leicester winger Jeff Schlupp. Leeds’s left-back Charlie Taylor is another target but Pulis despairs at this summer’s “stupid, crazy” prices. NA
West Ham United
André Ayew, Swansea City, £20.5m; Jonathan Calleri, Deportivo Maldonado, loan; Sofiane Feghouli, Valencia, free; Manuel Lanzini, Al Jazira, £10.2m; Toni Martínez, Valenica, £2.4m; Arthur Masuaku, Olympiakos, £6m; Havard Nordtveit, Borussia Mönchengladbach, free; Gokhan Tore, Besiktas, loan
What they need With Andy Carroll out for up to six weeks with a knee problem and Diafra Sakho’s mind elsewhere, Slaven Bilic would like to sign another striker, particularly as André Ayew is unlikely to return from a thigh injury before December. Wilfried Bony could arrive from Manchester City on a short-term loan deal. Jacob Steinberg
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/24/transfer-window-one-week-to-go-what-do-every-premier-league-club-still-need
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1f60d6523bd364f6bb0dc1b0cb85b67c85482cc514ab2edba2ef832753fd772c.json
|
|
[
"Nicola Slawson",
"Ranj Alaaldin"
] | 2016-08-27T10:51:14 | null | 2016-08-27T10:25:12 |
Several issues resolved during John Kerry meeting with Sergei Lavrov, but parties fail to reach comprehensive agreement
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fsyria-ceasefire-draws-closer-following-us-and-russia-diplomatic-talks.json
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en
| null |
Syria ceasefire draws closer after US-Russia talks
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A ceasefire in Syria is drawing closer after the US and Russia held diplomatic talks, but a final deal has yet to be reached, according to reports.
A number of issues blocking the restoration of a nationwide truce and wider aid deliveries were resolved at the 10-hour meeting in Geneva, but the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, fell short of a comprehensive agreement.
The two countries support opposite sides in the Syrian conflict, which erupted in March 2011 after President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on a pro-democracy revolt. Russia is one of Assad’s most important international backers while the US supports Syria’s main opposition alliance and some rebels.
Successive rounds of negotiations have failed to end the conflict which has killed more than 290,000 people and forced millions from their homes.
After the talks, Kerry said he and Lavrov had agreed on the “vast majority” of technical steps to reinstate the ceasefire and improve humanitarian access. But critical sticking points remained unresolved and experts would stay in Geneva to try to finalise those, he said.
Kerry stressed that the only way to solve the conflict was through political agreement.
“We are close,” he said. “But we are not going to rush to an agreement until it satisfies fully the needs of the Syrian people.
“We want to have something done that is effective and that works for the people of Syria, that makes the region more stable and secure, and that brings us to the table here in Geneva to find a political solution,” he said.
Lavrov echoed Kerry’s points, while highlighting the need to separate fighters in the al-Nusra Front, which has ties to al-Qaida, from US-backed fighters who hold parts of north-west Syria.
“We have continued our efforts to reduce the areas where we lack understanding and trust, which is an achievement,” Lavrov said. “The mutual trust is growing with every meeting.”
Yet it was clear that neither side believed an overall agreement was imminent or even achievable after numerous previous disappointments shattered a brief period of relative calm earlier this year.
The UN’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, had voiced hope of bringing the warring parties back to the negotiating table by the end of August, but that deadline looks sure to pass in the face of intense fighting.
Kerry reminded journalists of the footage, widely shared on social media, of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh sitting dazed in an ambulance after an airstrike in Aleppo: “That image needs to motivate all of us to get the job done.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/27/syria-ceasefire-draws-closer-following-us-and-russia-diplomatic-talks
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2472f5869c31a6354bd9d832a35b82f03137d6c4e4f75de7290ad1544234a75f.json
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|
[
"Celine Gounder"
] | 2016-08-26T13:16:13 | null | 2016-08-24T14:54:24 |
Parkinson’s, seizures, sedatives: wild rumors about the Democratic candidate’s health signal fear among Trump supporters that they’re heading for defeat
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fhillary-clinton-health-rumors-doctor-column.json
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I'm a doctor. The real issue isn't Hillary Clinton's health - it's that she might win
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s health has been under scrutiny in recent weeks, not by medical professionals but by politicians and supposed pundits playing doctor on TV. Clinton’s personal physician, Dr Lisa Bardack, has repeatedly said: “Secretary Clinton is in excellent health and fit to serve as president of the United States.” Meanwhile, conspiracy theories about Clinton’s supposed ill health have gone viral. There’s no evidence these claims are true.
I’m a doctor. I don’t play at being a doctor. I don’t diagnose patients in the absence of unbiased, reliable information, such as performing a physical exam or reviewing tests. When I write or am interviewed on television or the radio, I’ll talk about what new research will mean for patients and the science behind the latest guidelines. I’ll explain why we’re seeing increasing rates of certain diseases and whether policies to combat them make sense. I don’t talk about individuals except to say what one might expect more generally with regard to a particular medical illness.
But the scientist in me understands that the real issue here isn’t Clinton’s health. Conspiracy theories signal fear; in this case, Trump’s realization that Clinton may well be the next president of the United States.
This is not the first time rumors of illness have been deployed to attack a seemingly untouchable political adversary. At a time when Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis had a 10-point lead over then vice-president George HW Bush in the polls, reports circulated that Dukakis suffered severe depression after losing his first re-election campaign. When asked if Dukakis should release his complete medical records, Ronald Reagan did little to dispel those rumors, saying: “Look, I’m not going to pick on an invalid.”
Some Trump surrogates are also calling on Clinton to release her medical records. Trump has not released his, and a letter from his physician reads as if Trump had written it himself: little in the way of detail but plenty of superlatives like “astonishingly excellent” and “extraordinary”. Meanwhile, in contrast to Clinton and every other presidential candidate in the last 40 years except Gerald R Ford, Trump has yet to release his tax returns.
What is different is that Trump gushes conspiracy theories like a fire hose. He was one of the most vocal birthers, those who claimed Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim and thus ineligible to hold office (that was untrue). Trump later claimed that Clinton started the birther movement, not he. He tweeted: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” He said “thousands and thousands” of people in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks, implying they were Muslims. He tweeted an allegation that 81% of white homicide victims are killed by blacks. And he suggested that vaccines cause autism. The list goes on. None of these assertions are true.
It’s almost as if Trump is reading from a textbook on how to invent and disseminate conspiracy theories. First, target those who feel most alienated and disempowered. Then, identify a complex social or political threat to control, which might include stagnant wages, demographic changes or terrorism. Next, identify an outsider group such as China, Latino immigrants, blacks or Muslims who you can blame. Then tell a simple, black-and-white story of conflict between good versus evil, us versus the other. Finally, say the system is “rigged” by the mainstream media or the elite.
Trump is riding a rising tide of alienation and disempowerment, most notably among working class white men. They’re his strongest supporters because uncertainty, anxiety and powerlessness drive the need to reassert control. It’s also perhaps why those with a more authoritarian bent tend to favor Trump.
Trump shares a certain worldview with his supporters, but he’s also a brilliant psychologist. It should come as no surprise that he “loves the poorly educated”. They’re most likely to buy into his conspiracy theories, and not because they’re stupid. Researchers have found that having less education – not sex, race, ideology or knowledge – is the most reliable predictor of whether someone will believe a conspiracy theory. Education not only arms us with facts but also teaches us how to think analytically (methodically and scientifically) not just intuitively (from the gut).
The scientist in me knows that attempts to debunk conspiracy theories – whether they’re about Clinton’s health or the myth that vaccines cause autism – are at best futile and may in fact backfire. We pick and choose those facts that add up to the truth we’ve already chosen to believe. The more someone tries to disprove the reality we’ve constructed, the more we dig in our heels.
In 2008, questions about President Obama’s citizenship intensified with his likelihood of clinching the Democratic nomination. So long as the odds of winning the election remain in Clinton’s favor, we can expect to see more conspiracy theories emerge between now and November.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/hillary-clinton-health-rumors-doctor-column
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/46b0ec325b1b3d6476b68642dbad815c9fb89c0a66d76bcd29de41364159ce2e.json
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[
"Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-27T06:51:14 | null | 2016-08-27T06:18:18 |
Republican Paul LePage apologized to ‘the people of Maine’ but not to Drew Gattine after voicemail message saying ‘I am after you’
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fmaine-governor-wants-to-point-gun-right-between-opponents-eyes.json
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Maine governor wants to point gun 'right between' opponent's eyes
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www.theguardian.com
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Maine’s bombastic Republican governor has built a reputation on his unfiltered comments, but his obscene tirade unleashed on a liberal lawmaker prompted Democrats on Friday to warn that the governor was coming unhinged and to call for a political intervention.
Governor Paul LePage apologized to “the people of Maine” but not to the legislator after he left a voicemail message for Democratic politician Drew Gattine that said “I am after you” and then told reporters he wished he could challenge Gattine to a duel and point a gun “right between his eyes.”
Maine governor moving state south | Michael Tomasky Read more
LePage said the angry outburst was justified because Gattine had called him racist, something Gattine denied.
In Portland, assistant House Democratic leader Sara Gideon called for a “political intervention” from members of both parties to ensure either the governor “gets the help that he needs” or that he’s removed from office.
The voicemail followed a controversy that bubbled up on Wednesday when LePage, who is white, said at a town hall in North Berwick that photos he has collected in a binder of drug dealers arrested in the state showed 90% of them “are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut; the Bronx; and Brooklyn.” He displayed the binder at a news conference on Friday.
I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you.
“I want you to prove that I’m a racist,” LePage told Gattine in the voicemail on Thursday, adding that he had spent his life helping black people and calling Gattine a vulgar name related to oral sex. “I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you.”
After leaving the voicemail, LePage invited reporters to the governor’s mansion, where he said he wished he could turn back the clock so he and Gattine could face off in a duel.
“When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825,” LePage said, according to the Portland Press Herald. “And we would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be [Alexander] Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes.”
Oh, the horror! Stephen King denies claim he has fled Maine over income tax Read more
Gattine said he was stunned to receive the voicemail. “My first thought after I listened is I’m really glad I’m not in the room. He sounded like if I’d been in the room with him that he’d be attacking me physically,” he said.
House and Senate Democrats and the Maine Democratic Party on Friday questioned LePage’s capacity to lead. LePage said he would not resign unless several of his political opponents, including Gattine, did as well.
Police in Westbrook said Friday they had received a citizen complaint about the voicemail. A police official said the complaint came from someone who did not live in the city. It is unclear if there will be an investigation.
Gattine has differed with the governor on how to address welfare reform, drug addiction and eligibility for developmental disabilities programs. But LePage said Friday he did not know Gattine “from a hole in the wall” until Thursday.
Gattine said he was not concerned about his safety, but he called the voicemail a distraction and the latest of LePage’s personal vendettas against lawmakers. Gattine first shared the voicemail’s audio with the Press Herald.
Michael Thibodeau, the Republican president of the Maine Senate, also rebuked LePage, saying it “damages our public institutions when inappropriate comments come from either party”.
Fact-checking the remarks of a Maine governor on drug dealers Read more
LePage, whose second and final term as governor ends in 2019, has a history of drawing attention for his blunt remarks. In January, he said drug dealers with names like “D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” are getting Maine’s white girls pregnant. He later apologized, saying he meant to say “Maine women” and not “white women”.
LePage has compared his style to that of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whom he supports, though he recently said Trump was his third choice for president after Chris Christie and Jeb Bush.
“I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular, so I think I should support him since we’re one of the same cloth,” he told a radio show host in February.
Gattine revealed that the governor called him again on his cellphone Friday and left a message challenging him to debate the issues at a town hall-style meeting next week in Westbrook.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/27/maine-governor-wants-to-point-gun-right-between-opponents-eyes
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1129a162b9eabfe270b26b1aa9728f439bb953316ce812484915e53594237435.json
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|
[
"Ashifa Kassam"
] | 2016-08-30T12:52:25 | null | 2016-08-30T10:55:07 |
Residential areas are still barricaded and a quarter of the population has sought mental health services: ‘People think life is back to normal – but it really isn’t’
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Ffort-mcmurray-wildfire-rebuilding-aftermath.json
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en
| null |
The return to Fort McMurray: residents rebuild lives in city scarred by wildfire
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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“Welcome home,” read the cheery poster tacked up on a window of the imposing beige building as the McMurray Gospel Assembly prepared for its first church service in weeks.
Inside people exchanged hugs and traded stories, wiping away tears as they shared memories of the disaster that struck their town – and the long weeks of evacuation that followed.
Like most of the city, they were caught by surprise when a raging fire jumped the city limits into Fort McMurray in northern Alberta. Nearly 90,000 people struggled to evacuate the city, crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic as ash rained down and flames licked the side of the highway. “It was something out a movie,” said one resident. “It was absolutely apocalyptic. There were vehicles stranded everywhere; the sky was black and orange.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Smoke and flames from the wildfires erupt behind a car on the highway near Fort McMurray in May. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters
Fearful residents scattered across the province, watching from afar as the fire – a “multi-headed monster”, in the words of the mayor – tore a path of destruction through the city, consuming more than 2,500 homes, about 10% of the structures in the city.
Officials closed down the city for a month, until they could guarantee it was safe to return. In early June, residents timidly began returning to the city. Days later, many of the city’s churches opened their doors. “You have a place where almost everyone is going through trauma,” said Brian Walrond, part of the leadership team at McMurray Gospel Assembly. “We wanted to see what was the best way to serve the community and just to be there, for our people, and also for the city.”
After a month of staying with friends or family or in evacuation camps, most residents were happy to be home, said Walrond. But months after flames danced through the city, many have been left scarred. “You can just feel it. Some people are just hopeless or just tired or dealing with a fear of the unknown. And even the people who haven’t lost anything, there’s a lot of survivor’s guilt.”
For most in Fort McMurray, life has yet to return to normal. Some residents continue to live in limbo, waiting on insurance claims or permits to rebuild that have been caught up in red tape. Others have left town, gambling on the relative ease of rebuilding their lives elsewhere.
Two residential areas – home to most of the burned structures – remain barricaded. For those who lost their homes, the pace of rebuilding has been excruciatingly slow; in mid-August, the city issued its first rebuilding permit. The bulk of the new construction is expected to begin next spring.
“It seems when the flames went away, the world stopped watching. Many people think life is back to normal in Fort McMurray,” said resident Tamara Wolfe. “But it really isn’t.”
Soon after she evacuated the city, she found out that all that was left of her home was the chain link fence that once encircled it.
Wolfe hasn’t been able to return to the city. Instead, she spends most nights tossing and turning, reliving the fear that gripped her during the evacuation. The sound of sirens or the faintest whiff of smoke sends her into a panic. On the heels of the evacuation, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and severe anxiety. “I really honestly miss it there, but I’m afraid to return,” she said.
More than 20,000 people – almost a quarter of the town’s population – have sought mental health services since the fire, said Sandra Corbett, who heads the services for the region. Additional staff have been brought in to cope with the demand, allowing the region to extend the availability of services to residents.
“We’re hoping it’s enough,” she said. The focus right now is on building a response for the next year. “Then we’re looking at three to five years because we know it takes that long for a full recovery to happen.”
The effort is challenged by the fact that Corbett and many others on her team are also residents of Fort McMurray, meaning they’re grappling with many of the same issues facing others in the city. “Some of them, the people I work with, have lost their homes,” said Corbett.
She and her team came together in the days following the evacuation to take stock, she said. “And that was quite an emotional time for all of us, because we were also dealing with what we had gone through and where we were at.”
Corbett returned to Fort McMurray in early June to begin laying plans to ensure residents had the help they needed. After the initial focus on getting to safety and a honeymoon phase characterised by short-lived optimism, many residents now find themselves struggling with disillusionment, she said. “So that’s when people realise what they have lost and the limitations of disaster response, that things aren’t going to happen as quickly and things take time.”
Normality has been slow in coming to the city. Throughout the summer, businesses have been slowly getting back on their feet. Sid Aboughoche was one of the first to return to the city, eager to reopen his pizza shop. “When we first came back, it was like a ghost town,” he said. “There was no sounds, nothing.”
To his relief, his business was still standing, but everything inside needed to be thrown out. “It was like opening a new store.” After a week of cleanup, officials gave him the all-clear to open the shop – one of three pizza shops that opened within days of each other. “It was so crazy, so busy,” he said. “Everybody in town wanted to eat – there was pretty much no food in town besides us.”
The pace has since slowed and around three-quarters of the town’s businesses are now open, he said. Others are expected to open their doors once school gets under way this month.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alberta’s premier, Rachel Notley, and the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, inspecting wildfire damage in May. Photograph: Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta/EPA
Many residents have yet to return permanently to the city. After a harrowing evacuation that left her backing out of her driveway as flames licked her front lawn, Erica Decker returned to Fort McMurray for a visit in late June. “The neighbourhood looked so small, because you could see everything for miles. There was nothing but flattened homes, burned-out cars and the remains of people’s lives.”
She and her husband pulled up to their home – the one she used to describe as her dream home – finding little more left than the foundation and appliances reduced to “crumpled hunks of metal”.
Her heart dropped. But then she noticed a small flash of colour: amid the layers of rubble, several pink peonies had sprouted up. “My husband and I took this as a sign that we had made the right decision in returning to our home, if [for] nothing else but to say goodbye,” she said.
Canada wildfire: why a sleeping giant awoke in Alberta and became relentless Read more
Outfitted in protective suits, with a respirator, gloves, rubber boots and safety glasses, they spent hours sifting through the debris of their home. The dig turned up some unexpected treasures, such as the first ring they gave their daughter when she was just a few months old.
Soon afterward, Decker returned to Newfoundland to stay with her family. She has yet to find out if her company will reopen and what their insurance provider thinks about rebuilding their home.
Her husband has returned to work in Fort McMurray, staying in a trailer with friends. “He had no choice but to continue to work, as we are still responsible for paying our mortgage, even though the house no longer stands,” she said.
Months after the fire forced her out, she’s not sure whether Fort McMurray will ever be home again. “It’s hard to imagine never coming back,” she said. “But at the same time it’s unbearable to think about closing my eyes each night and feeling safe after what we went through.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-rebuilding-aftermath
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| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/40da106330ec02d5133b7b86d8759e88ace2cd072899fc9d58af64bf54f11ec9.json
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[
"Jacob Steinberg"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:08 | null | 2016-08-25T20:52:57 |
West Ham lost 1-0 in the Europa League play-off round and 2-1 on aggregate to Astra Giurgiu after Filipe Teixeira’s goal inflicted the first home defeat at the London Stadium
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West Ham Europa dream ends after Teixeira strike for Astra Giurgiu
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All that hard work last season was for nothing. So were all those draining qualifying games this summer. West Ham United’s attempt to reach the group stage of the Europa League ended in familiar frustration, because of both the manner of the defeat and the identity of their conquerors.
Astra Giurgiu were too wily for them for the second successive year, becoming the first visiting side to win at the London Stadium, but the way West Ham squandered their slender advantage was largely down to their own making. Slaven Bilic’s side conceded a sloppy goal, let themselves down with some generous finishing and were too naive in the defining moments.
West Ham agree €28m (£24m) fee with Juventus for Simone Zaza Read more
On a night when West Ham’s weaknesses in attack were encapsulated by Bilic resorting to sending James Collins up front in those desperate dying stages, the only consolation is that a £24m fee has been agreed with Juventus for Simone Zaza. How they could have done with the Italy forward here.
Bilic did not shed any light on that deal. He was too frustrated with what he had witnessed on the pitch. “I didn’t hide it,” West Ham’s manager said.
“I said this is one of the most important games for us this year. This is like a final that you have to win to go through. The disappointment is massive. We created a few opportunities that we should have scored.”
The nagging concern for West Ham was the knowledge they should have left Romania in a vastly superior position last week, only for Astra to equalise moments after a glaring miss from Michail Antonio. Although Astra have made a slow start to their season, winning one of their first five league matches, the Romanian champions produced a classic European away performance, snatching a 2-1 aggregate victory thanks to Filipe Teixeira’s goal and some spectacular goalkeeping from Silviu Lung.
To put Astra’s achievement into context, they lost 5-1 to CFR Cluj last Sunday and have a manager, Marius Sumudica, who cannot attend his team’s domestic matches after being banned by the Romanian Federation for betting on games. “This is one of the best days in my life, on pretty much the same level as when my children were born,” a jubilant Sumudica said. “Because I knew that they were mine. Obviously I’m kidding.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Astra Giurgiu’s goalkeeper Silviu Lung thwarted West Ham with a number of outstanding saves. Photograph: John Sibley/Reuters
Sumudica, who revealed Astra have a monthly wage bill of €130,000 (£111,000), argued West Ham had a better team last year and it was true that Bilic’s task was complicated by the absence of eight injured players and Arthur Masuaku’s ineligibility. The relentless injuries have hurt most in the attacking areas and this was a game too soon for Manuel Lanzini and Dimitri Payet, both of whom could return at Manchester City on Sunday.
For all that West Ham lack a creative spark without Payet, however, they did make chances. The problem was taking them. This was a difficult evening for Jonathan Calleri, the Argentinian forward who spurned two glorious opportunities, and West Ham found Lung in defiant form.
Yet, frantically as West Ham searched for that elusive goal, what really frustrated Bilic was that they played as individuals. He said that he did not see enough desire from his team.
Teixeira’s winner was utterly avoidable, stemming from a West Ham attack that broke down when Sam Byram put Reece Burke into difficulties with a poor pass from right to left on the stroke of half-time.
Burke’s heavy headed touch invited a tackle and West Ham were exposed when the young left-back sold himself, leaving his fellow defenders outnumbered as Astra countered. With both full-backs out of position Daniel Niculae fed Teixeira, the Portuguese midfielder formerly of West Bromwich Albion, who gave Astra control of the tie for the first time.
West Ham confirm signing of Edimilson Fernandes from FC Sion Read more
West Ham, who presented Edimilson Fernandes on the pitch before kick-off after completing the £5.5m signing of the Swiss midfielder from FC Sion, were crying out for inspiration. But when Bilic turned to his bench during the interval, he could bring on only Enner Valencia, whose confidence disappeared long ago.
At least Ashley Fletcher, a summer signing from Manchester United, showed no fear after replacing Calleri. The young forward scared Astra with his direct running, appealing for a penalty after a risky tackle from Teixeira; and a superb save from Lung denied him his first goal in claret and blue.
However, this was the first real test of West Ham’s character in their new stadium. It was also the first time they heard boos at the final whistle.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/west-ham-astra-giurgiu-europa-league-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2305adb8f414e09dbacd0c28a66dfa6719c67fd03976267efeaba01e3831f7a2.json
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[
"Louise Taylor"
] | 2016-08-29T22:52:29 | null | 2016-08-29T21:36:12 |
Hull City’s Mike Phelan looks set to make his first signings of a difficult summer with the Manchester United striker Will Keane and Derby County midfielder Jeff Hendrick
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Hull City’s Mike Phelan set to make first signings of difficult summer
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www.theguardian.com
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Mike Phelan, Hull City’s caretaker manager, finally seemed to have made a transfer market breakthrough on Monday night with the imminent purchase of Will Keane from Manchester United for £1m.
The forward was due to undergo a medical before a reunion with Phelan, who as Sir Alex Ferguson’s assistant coached Keane at Old Trafford. Keane, a 23-year-old academy graduate, has made three appearances for United’s senior team, two of those coming last season.
After assorted loan stints at Wigan Athletic, Queens Park Rangers, Sheffield Wednesday and, most recently, Preston North End, Keane is believed to be enthusiastic about linking up with Phelan and becoming Hull’s first senior signing of the summer.
Phelan is anxious to prevent Aston Villa from signing his centre-forward Abel Hernández while hoping that negotiations with Derby County relating to the potential £10m transfer of their 24-year-old Republic of Ireland midfielder Jeff Hendrick reach a satisfactory conclusion. That mooted deal was understood to be at a fairly advanced stage on Monday.
Phelan’s enthusiasm for acquiring Hendrick has been increased by Sunderland’s apparent hijacking of Hull City’s £8m move for Tottenham Hotspur’s Ryan Mason. The midfielder is understood to favour a move to Wearside but everything hinges on Sunderland agreeing a fee with Spurs.
David Moyes, the Sunderland manager, will be without Jeremain Lens this season, though, with the winger poised to join Fenerbahce on Tuesday on loan. Lens has failed to established himself at the Stadium of Light following his £8.5m move from Dynamo Kyiv last summer and is poised to be reunited with his former manager Dick Advocaat in Istanbul.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/29/hull-city-manchester-united-derby-keane-hendrick
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d15d27569d1d3c0d144e18a46f5a8aa7dcfe8c19766d1d0df8857074c8cc44c5.json
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[
"Emma Sheppard",
"Claire Burke"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:27 | null | 2016-08-25T07:25:30 |
More than half have been hit by unfair contract terms, new research shows – but legally they’re powerless. Now one owner has launched a petition to call for a change in the law
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsmall-business-network%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fconsumer-rights-small-firms-unfair-contract-petition.json
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Lack of consumer rights leaves small firms at mercy of multinationals
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www.theguardian.com
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When publican Stephen Reid tried to cancel his BT Sport subscription he was told he couldn’t. Reid, owner of the Kettledrum Inn in Burnley, Lancashire, had agreed to continue the service, but reconsidered a few days later because the package had changed.
However, when he contacted BT he was told that the contract, agreed and recapped over the phone, was binding. He says: “When I found out there was no cooling off period, I was shocked. I thought I’d had consumer rights. They said I’d have to pay the full amount, which was just under £2,000.”
A BT spokesperson responded that Reid had been “advised of the terms and conditions, including the minimum term, and entered into a contract with us on that basis”, adding that “business customers do not have the same statutory cancellation periods consumers have”.
Reid, who bought the pub two years ago, has launched a petition urging the government to improve consumer rights for small businesses when agreeing contracts over the phone. There should, he says, be 14 days for a small business to consider such an agreement in full. “The main issue was the realisation that as a small business I have no equivalent ‘consumer rights’.”
David Smellie, partner at BP Collins solicitors, says business-to-consumer contracts are subject to stricter legislation than business-to-business contracts. “A supplier can include greater restrictions when it is dealing with a business as opposed to dealing with a consumer. The problem is that no differentiation is made between a micro business and large multinationals, where the latter has the resources and expertise to review contracts and monitor the supplier relationship closely.”
Fifty two percent of small businesses have fallen foul of unfair supplier contract terms, according to research by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), released on Monday. It found that 24% of cases were because of hidden auto-renewal clauses.
Our appetite for apps doesn't make them a must for businesses Read more
Guy Levine, CEO of internet marketing service Return on Digital, was caught unawares when an agreement with a software provider renewed automatically without warning. “We gave them a ring and were presented with an extract from the contract and told ‘tough, these are the terms you agreed to’. There was no cooling off period, no break clause.”
Levine says he would have broken the contract, given the chance but was instead denied the opportunity to assess the competition available and renegotiate the terms if necessary.
The issue is not with auto-renewal contracts per se, but how they are handled. Return on Digital use contracts that renew but have a process to let clients know, with reminders sent 45, 30 and 14 days before the renewal date.
Levine feels this sort of notice period should be required legally for all contracts, as should a 30-day cooling off period, while contracts should be written in language everyone can understand. Currently, he says, they are “written in a language that means only a lawyer can deal with it and partner fees are between £250 and £400 an hour”.
Mike Cherry, FSB national chairman, says: “Small business owners behave in a similar ways to consumers, but don’t have the same guarantees of quality or legal redress in an unfair situation.”
Small businesses are also subject to high early termination fees (20%) and lengthy notice periods (23%), according to FSB’s figures. Two in five felt powerless to do anything about unfair terms, because the supplier was too big to challenge.
How to start a business in 30 days Read more
One owner of a boutique retail business, who wants to remain anonymous, says her broadband and phone provider has left her “over a barrel” after she moved business premises. “I want to move from this company but they won’t allow me to before the end of the contract [in November] without paying draconian level fees. As well as a severance fee, I’d have to pay the rest of the contract to get out.”
After agreeing to stay with the provider for another two years, she had to wait more than two weeks to be connected, and is still fighting bills for new equipment she doesn’t need, limited service (including no answer phone), and restricted internet access.
“I’ve spent something like 16 hours on the phone and it still isn’t resolved,” she says. “I’ve engaged a solicitor to help me write the letters. With all these extra charges the cost is just under £1,000. I’ve got to do a lot of work to make £1,000 profit.
“I know I’m not the only one. We talk about it as business owners all the time and it’s always the telephone and broadband. I knew one guy who had to run his business from a Costa coffee shop for three weeks.”
She says small businesses should have better protection against big corporates. “The internet and phone are the most critical tools a small business has. The fact they have the ability to [damage] an organisation isn’t on. If I treated my customers like this, I wouldn’t have a business.”
Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.
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https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2016/aug/25/consumer-rights-small-firms-unfair-contract-petition
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c5d497743f4076120175bb460bdc685a15aeafa84069a8d0a0b11d956e75eabd.json
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[
"Peter Beaumont"
] | 2016-08-31T10:52:50 | null | 2016-08-31T09:11:54 |
Roni Alsheich condemned for comments, which come against backdrop of complaints by Ethiopian Jews over how their community is policed
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fisrael-police-chief-roni-alsheich-natural-suspect-ethiopians-crime.json
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Israel police chief says it is natural to suspect Ethiopians of crime
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www.theguardian.com
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Israel’s most senior police officer has provoked outrage by suggesting it is “natural” for officers to suspect Israelis of Ethiopian origin – as well as Arabs – of being more involved in crime than other Jews.
Roni Alsheich, Israel’s police commissioner, made the comments in response to a question at a conference of the Israeli bar association, suggesting more widely that research worldwide showed that “young people and immigrants” were disproportionately involved in crime.
His remarks come against a growing background of complaints by Ethiopian Jews over policing of their community – including accusations of crude profiling – which has led to recent street protests.
Asked about allegations of Israeli police violence against Ethiopians, Alsheich said: “In all criminological studies around the world it is proven that immigrants are more involved in crime than others, and this should not surprise us.
“In addition, all studies prove that young people are more involved in crime. When these two things converge, a situation is created in which a particular community is involved in crime.
“This was the case in all the waves of immigration [to Israel]. When there is a community that is more involved in crime – also with regard to Arabs or East Jerusalem, and the statistics are known – when a police officer meets a suspect, naturally enough his mind suspects him more than if he were someone else. That is natural.”
Alsheich was immediately condemned by leading figures in Israel’s Ethiopian community as well as prominent Israeli political figures.
Fentahun Assefa-Dawit, the head of Tebeka, a group that has highlighted police abuses, called for an apology and accused Alsheich of “effectively calling [Ethiopians] a criminal community, giving legitimacy and a seal of approval to the racist behaviour of the police against Ethiopian Israelis and other groups”.
The issue of over-policing of the Israeli Ethiopian community boiled over last year after video emerged of police assaulting an Ethiopian-Israeli soldier, Demas Fikadey, in an apparently unprovoked attack.
Gadi Yevarkan, an activist involved in organising protests against that incident, said Alsheich was “not particularly smart for openly saying that Israel was a racist country”.
“We are not migrant workers, we are Jews who returned to their country after some 2,500 years in exile,” he said, adding that it was now “understandable that police officers deal violently with black people and Arabs”.
Alsheich’s comments were also criticised by the leader of Israel’s opposition, Isaac Herzog, who called on the police commissioner to “correct and clarify his statements, because it’s intolerable that anyone understand that it’s legitimate to place Ethiopian or Arab citizens under heavier scrutiny”.
Alsheich’s claim that immigrants worldwide are overrepresented in criminal behaviour is contradicted by numerous studies suggesting that the claimed link between immigration and crime is a myth.
A report last year by the American Immigration Council found, to the contrary, that immigrants to the US were historically less likely to be involved in crime.
The issue of racism in Israel – in particular institutional racism – has become more prominent recently, underlined earlier this summer by comments from the prominent Ethiopian-Israeli model and actress Tahunia Rubel, who in June described Israel as “one of the most racist countries in the world”, adding: “People in Israel find it strange to see an Ethiopian woman who behaves like an Israeli.”
Rubel’s comments followed racist remarks aimed at her that were broadcast on the Israeli version of Big Brother.
Following the row over Alsheich’s comments, Israel’s police service released a statement saying it had not been his intention to offend and that he had admitted that Israel’s Ethiopian community had been “over-policed”.
“To remove any doubt, the statements made by the police commissioner had no intention to offend Ethiopian Israelis,” the statement said.
Israel’s public security minister, Gilad Erdan, defended Alsheich, saying his comments did not defend “over-policing” or racial profiling of Ethiopian-Israelis.
“He did exactly the opposite and courageously said that there is a problem that the police are addressing,” Erdan said. “We are working with members of the community and their leaders to address the errors of the past.”
Police spokeswoman Meirav Lapidot, however, told army radio that the sensitive topic “should have been explained differently.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/31/israel-police-chief-roni-alsheich-natural-suspect-ethiopians-crime
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1b2afcc1d160f4a03a9eb52fb4732cf64dc5b943758bd39ff7d001673c68a317.json
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[
"Julian Borger"
] | 2016-08-28T14:49:40 | null | 2016-08-28T14:23:57 |
The ‘journalist’s journalist’, Ian covered post-cold war Europe, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the expansion of the EU
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fian-traynor-european-editor-of-the-guardian-dies-aged-60.json
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Ian Traynor, European editor of the Guardian, dies aged 60
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www.theguardian.com
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Ian Traynor, the Guardian’s globally respected European editor, died in Brussels on Saturday after a short illness at the age of 60.
Ian witnessed, reported and interpreted the critical turning points in post-cold war European history including the fall of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s reunification, the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, as well as the European Union’s expansion and subsequent crises.
“Ian was one of the finest reporters of his generation, who brought a rare level of knowledge and expertise to his work,” said Katharine Viner, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief. “He covered many epoch-defining events for the Guardian, from the breakup of the Soviet Union to the Greek financial crisis, and he will be hugely missed by colleagues and readers alike.”
Rare among journalists, Ian was a true linguist as well as a gifted reporter. He started studying Russian and German in school in Glasgow and then at Aberdeen University, visiting both countries as a student in the 1970s. He worked as a translator and editor of foreign broadcasts at the BBC monitoring unit at Caversham Park, near Reading, before getting a job as a subeditor at the Guardian. He stayed in London only briefly. When a stringer’s position covering central Europe became vacant in 1988 he took his young family out to Vienna. It was a characteristically prescient move, as central Europe was on the brink of a revolution with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
He filed to the Guardian as a stringer initially but was put on staff as eastern European correspondent in 1990. He covered the Balkan wars from Vienna and then went to Bonn to report on the evolution of a new Germany, moving to Berlin as the capital shifted, and then to Moscow in 1999. He moved to Zagreb in 2003, covering much of Europe from there, before establishing himself as European editor in Brussels in 2007.
“I think I’ve been out in the field longer than anyone,” he proudly told a visitor not long before his death.
His colleagues from the conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia remember him both for physical bravery and for vivid and crafted writing, but most of all for his sharp analytical mind.
Allan Little, who reported the Bosnian war alongside Ian for the BBC, recalled the UN security council passing an ill-fated resolution in April 1993 establishing Srebrenica as a “safe area” under the protection of UN peacekeeping troops.
“Ian unpicked that resolution with forensic precision and focus. He wrote about how vulnerable that left Srebrenica. He knew what would happen two years in advance,” said Little. “He was a ferocious critic of the UN intervention. Working alongside him, I learned a lot from him about the place.”
Jamie Wilson, the Guardian’s head of international news, said: “Ian was the journalist’s journalist. He was a brilliant foreign correspondent: supremely knowledgeable, always one step – but usually three – ahead of the opposition, a fantastic writer with that all too rare art of being able to pull a splash out of his back pocket on those days when there really was no news. The world will be a much poorer place without Ian reporting on it.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/28/ian-traynor-european-editor-of-the-guardian-dies-aged-60
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/cd920439811c2d759558c0f91162cace10abe6d289f258e60d5f7a2804544022.json
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[
"Sarah Marsh",
"James Walsh",
"Guardian Readers",
"Peter Jones",
"Ben Fogle",
"Susanna Rustin",
"Abi Wilkinson",
"Frances Ryan"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:20 | null | 2016-08-25T13:13:38 |
As students get their GCSE results today, catch up on our discussion on whether exam results are the best measure of success
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2Flive%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fdo-exam-results-really-matter-live-debate.json
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Do exam results really matter?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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06:04
It’s the day met with a mix of fear and anticipation by students everywhere: GCSE results day. It comes shortly after A-level grades are released, and marks the end of exam result season for many. But how much does what you get really matter?
The Guardian’s Secret Teacher argued earlier this month that bad grades are not the end of the world. “What do exams actually test anyway? Memory, certainly. They test time management. They test elements of competence in individual subjects. But, ultimately, they really test how good a person is at sitting exams,” they wrote.
It’s true that academic success isn’t the be-all and end-all. After all everyone from successful writer Julie Burchill to media mogul Simon Cowell dropped out of school. Even Jeremy Clarkson spoke out about disappointing A-level results last week, tweeting: “Don’t worry. I got a C and two Us, and I’m currently on a superyacht in the Med.”
Sometimes not getting the grades you want can lead to better things. Carrie, 28, spoke to the guardian about missing out on her first choice university because of not getting the right grades, and ending up on a completely different path. She took a year out and eventually enjoyed a fulfilling art degree, instead of English which she’d originally set her sights on. She said: “It will only be okay – maybe even bloody amazing – if you make it work for you ... There is a reason for everything and a huge adventure awaits.”
However, Frances Ryan argued that grades do matter for some – especially in our unequal society. She wrote: “Of course, a formal education is no guarantee of a fulfilling career or decent wage, and disappointing A-level results are not the end of the world (really, they’re not). But focusing on individual examples of success distracts from the bigger picture: the multiple obstacles that rig the system and lets society off the hook for eliminating them.”
What’s more, others have argued telling students exam results don’t matter is dangerous because there is still a value placed upon academic success in the highly competitive modern workplace.
What do you think? Do grades still matter or are they less important in modern times? Did you succeed through other means? Join us from 12pm-2pm today to discuss. You’re also able to take part by filling out the form below.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/live/2016/aug/25/do-exam-results-really-matter-live-debate
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6255891a6afd0ae0f008ab8e0cdc018517cc61ba667a1f45a4900e931575321c.json
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[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-26T16:50:51 | null | 2016-08-26T16:23:15 |
Pep Guardiola is looking forward to returning to his former club Barcelona with Manchester City in the Champions League this season
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fguardiola-special-barcelona-champions-league-video.json
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Guardiola: Champions League date with Barcelona will be special - video
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www.theguardian.com
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Pep Guardiola is looking forward to returning to his former club Barcelona with Manchester City in the Champions League this season. Speaking on Friday in Manchester, Guardiola says a trip back to the Camp Nou will be special for him. The Catalan spent four years as coach of Barcelona, winning the European Cup twice while in charge
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2016/aug/26/guardiola-special-barcelona-champions-league-video
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e16ed765a5d7da6b9b88c0c939beffd0ad5ee28e5f3bb643c7f3dd78e80a8be5.json
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[
"Gwyn Topham"
] | 2016-08-30T08:50:22 | null | 2013-09-15T00:00:00 |
Mikhail Polyakov aboard the MV Independent believes deserting the vessel would result in him and his crew going unpaid
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2013%2Fsep%2F15%2Fcaptain-polyakov-stranded-abandon-ship-sussex.json
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Captain refuses to abandon ship after eight months stranded in Sussex port
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Mikhail Polyakov's 40-year career at sea has taken him from novice sailor in a Soviet outpost to the helm of a decommissioned East German warship. But, for nearly eight months, the experienced Russian captain has been stranded in limbo in the unlikely waters of Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex.
In a standoff which highlights the vulnerability of seafarers worldwide, Polyakov has been stuck on an impounded ship after Independent Shipping, the British company that hired him for its small fleet, failed to pay a £32,000 fuel bill.
The MV Independent was served with an arrest notice in January by the Admiralty marshal and cannot leave port. Crew wages already owing went unpaid. Over the ensuing months, most of the nine-strong crew left the boat, some paying their own way home to Russia or Ukraine. But Polyakov did not want to desert his ship, and his long wait began.
Across the water from where the Independent is moored, boats have continued to deliver gravel for Dudman, the construction materials suppliers whose director, Steve Dudman, co-owned Independent Shipping.
The firm had sourced the crew for its ill-fated venture through a Latvian agency. Wages for its kind of boats – coasters mainly operating short distances between ports – were too low to attract enough British crew. But in Odessa and Kaliningrad, where unemployment is high, there are sailors willing to work all hours for long stretches at sea for £900 a month.
Polyakov is owed almost £18,000; the wages owed to his crew are much smaller. Only one man, a Ukrainian able seaman, Igor Aleynykov, who speaks little English, remains on the ship with him. Aleynykov transferred from another of Independent's ships, the Torrent, which has also been seized, along the south coast in Rye. Four Russian and Ukrainian seamen remain stranded there.
Another four are waiting for funds to leave the MV Shoreham, docked in Santander, Spain. The firm's two other crews left when their boats were sold for scrap.
In Shoreham-by-Sea, with the waters calm, Polyakov is in good spirits. He jokes that he has spent a year in UK waters and will be able to marry an English woman and enter the country. His wife in Russia has her doctor's salary, although his son has also been left without work in Kaliningrad.
Aleynykov has two young children being cared for by his wife in Izmail, southern Ukraine, and without his wages the family have slid into debt. His studies to become a navigator provide some focus, but tuition fees are $1,000 (£646) and he is not sure he will be back at the academy to sit the exam in March. An international charity, the Apostleship of the Sea, is raising an emergency grant to help his family.
Day to day, the pair have a strange existence. With immigration law allowing sailors into port towns, but without a full visa, the world of someone who has sailed ships from the Baltic to Africa is strangely circumscribed. Local Apostleship volunteers take them out to the shops, but days are spent mainly on the impounded ship, checking the ropes and auxiliary engines.
The last qualified engineer left some time ago; Polyakov now anxiously tends the engine room to keep the water and fuel topped up in the auxiliary engines powering the ship. A dead battery means no one can restart them should they fail: "I look after them as if [they were] a child." The hot-water pump has already failed, as have some lights.
The risk of fire aboard the deteriorating ship troubles him, as do the ropes. It is illegal to leave a ship unmanned in a tidal dock, as the owners and the captain are aware. When the winds cross Shoreham from the south, the 2,000-tonne ship rocks and strains at its mooring, Polyakov says, and there is a real danger of it breaking free without monitoring.
The notices of arrest are pinned to the redundant bridge, where Polyakov looks out across the empty deck of what was once vessel number 41 in the navy of the former German Democratic Republic. A loading vehicle still sits aboard from when the converted Independent – now officially registered in the port of Moroni in the Comoros islands, off the south-east coast of Africa – shipped cement across the seas.
Other boats now deposit crushed stone on the forecourt of Dudman, just across the port. In Dudman's offices, Chris Grosscurth, general manager of Independent Shipping, says the activity is not connected to the firm that employs Polyakov. The new companies are not financially linked, although Steve Dudman is a shareholder in both. Recession saw contract work dry up, Grosscurth says: "We were struggling like any other normal company."
He says all the crew will be paid in full when they have the funds. "It's a terrible situation. But the best thing we can do is sell the ships," he adds.
Interested parties have come to view the boat. Grosscurth says the two men are given fortnightly sums for food and fuel. Some back wages were paid in March; the firm gave another £5,000 to Polyakov in July, but the captain chose to forward it to another member of his unpaid crew.
Such situations are not unique. Polyakov himself has already been through a similar situation in South Africa; at least here he feels closer to his wife, who rings his mobile for short chats. But Polyakov is outraged that a British firm should leave him and his crew this way: "I am absolutely sure: if I leave, I will never get my wages. And my crewmen ashore will not."
John Green, development director of Apostleship of the Seas, says: "We come across a lot of abandoned crews, but this is exceptional in the duration. When a firm is in trouble, the crew's wages are pretty much the first things to go."
Legal responsibility can be difficult to pin down and disputes hard to settle in the complex waters of international shipping. The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) says cases of stranded sailors are common worldwide, but rare in the UK. For now, according to Katie Higginbottom of the ITF, the responsibility to protect crew should fall on the flag state: "In theory this is now up to the Comoros islands. But in practice that will never happen."
Some extra protection for the crew should be afforded by the Maritime Labour Convention, which came into force on 20 August, seven years after it was first ratified by 30 nations. The UK belatedly signed up on 7 August this year, which means its duties as a port state will come into effect in a year's time, potentially obliging the government to intervene to protect stranded sailors on arrested ships.
"It's often difficult to put your finger on where the whole thing lies," says Green. "But this affair just shows that the welfare of seafarers is precarious. Who's there for them?"
• This article was amended on 17 September 2013 because the original said the ship was once a destroyer. It was converted from an armed German navy vessel.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/15/captain-polyakov-stranded-abandon-ship-sussex
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en
| 2013-09-15T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/67a1caa7f59ba01eb66a1aa613a8da75dc7ffbea24fb694b0a5802180063d32d.json
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[
"Miles Brignall"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:41 | null | 2016-08-13T06:00:18 |
I’m wondering if a separate policy covering my car and motorcycle would be better
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F13%2Flegal-protection-motor-insurance-policy.json
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Is it worth paying for legal protection on my motor insurance policy?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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In general, is the legal protection add-on to a motor policy worth the usual £25 or so? I own a car and a motorcycle and am paying for legal protection on both policies. Could I manage with just one policy to cover me for both vehicles? My wife also owns a car and a motorcycle. Could we access a freestanding legal protection policy that would cover both of us in all eventualities? AM, by email
It’s a question many people grapple with each time their car insurance renewal comes through. Legal expenses cover is designed to step in if you are hit by another driver and need to bring an action against them.
Generally, a legal helpline is offered and the insurance is to pay for lawyers if required. The problem is that the insurer will only fund a legal action if there is a better than 50:50 prospect of success, and there is money to pay a successful claim – a huge get-out for the insurer. I don’t buy this cover as I think I’m unlikely to ever bring a successful claim. I’ve always wondered how many claims are paid out each year, but insurers like to keep this information to themselves.
If you do value it, you should almost certainly buy it separately from your car or motorcycle policy. For £20 a year, Driverguardian.com will sell an annual motor legal protection policy to cover both you and your wife (and any other vehicles you insure), saving you £80 a year. In your case, I’d do this.
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/13/legal-protection-motor-insurance-policy
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en
| 2016-08-13T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/910e0b636f12738dfb8609596fe67792ce38cd0d034717f836b73e510aa899c0.json
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[
"Sam Thielman"
] | 2016-08-26T13:26:56 | null | 2016-08-25T01:35:16 |
Legalist uses a database of legal records to determine the likelihood that a case will succeed, and can fund the suit in exchange for up to 50% of the judgment
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fpeter-thiel-legalist-startup-gawker-lawsuit.json
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Peter Thiel has backed a startup that makes it easier to sue - and win
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www.theguardian.com
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Peter Thiel has backed a small legal startup that has developed an algorithm they say will allow a would-be litigant to learn if they are likely to win their case.
Legalist, founded by a pair of Harvard undergrads, uses a vast database of local legal records to determine the likelihood that the case will succeed: and if the algorithm says the case can win, Legalist funds the suit in exchange for up to 50% of the judgment.
Eva Shang co-founded the startup with a $100,000 Thiel Foundation grant. She told the Silicon Valley Business Journal, which first reported on the startup on Wednesday, that Legalist wasn’t interested in the kind of suit Thiel funded against Gawker through Hulk Hogan. Shang said the startup focuses on small businesses tied up in costly litigation; the firm has accepted a single case so far.
Shang told the Guardian the startup was funding “limited cases” at the moment and stressed what she said were the business’s philanthropic aims. “I used to work for a public defender in DC,” she said. “We’re not funding criminal cases, nor would I be funding any suits against the media.”
“Litigation financing as a field is growing so fast but the one area it’s not actually getting to is small businesses.”
Shang said she didn’t understand when she took the Thiel fellowship that it would come with so much negative attention. “I accepted the Thiel fellowship because my parents are first-generation immigrants and when I was dropping out of Harvard, money was a concern,” she said.
Thiel famously pays undergraduates to drop out of college, and Shang is among this summer’s crop of former students.
At the moment, Shang and Christian Haigh, the other founder, are the only people who decide what suits to take. Shang said she had considered forming an advisory board to mitigate ethical concerns. The press attention on the Thiel-backed startup, she said, “has been stressful”.
Haigh said he could not answer questions until Friday. The pair is attending consecutive meetings at a conference sponsored by one of the startup’s other backers, Ycombinator.
Peter Thiel justifies suit bankrupting Gawker, claiming to defend journalism Read more
Ycombinator’s Sam Altman told the Guardian he did not think Legalist would be used to fund lawsuits attempting to chill the press and characterized the business as one that defends the little guy. “There are a lot of people who really get screwed over by the legal system and who end up unable to defend themselves,” he said. Shang used the example of a bakery damaged by a burst pipe bogged down in costly litigation.
But there is always the possibility that the ready availability of enough cash to pay for an aggressive suit will encourage litigation. Altman admitted the problem was complex: “With legal financing, this is one case where I can really empathize with both sides of the argument,” he said.
There is also the practice of scouting for courts where local laws are particularly friendly to the kind of case a litigant wants to pursue. Fully one-fourth of all patent law cases are heard in a single town in Texas where the judge is known for overturning so-called “patent troll” judgments, Motherboard writes. That can get counsel into trouble, but it can also work out in their favor: Judge Pamela Campbell was far friendlier in the Hogan case, when Thiel was backing the plaintiff than US district judge James Whittemore, the first time Hogan sued the website over the tape.
Thiel told the New York Times he was upset Gawker had outed him in a 2007 blog post entitled Peter Thiel is Totally Gay, People and backed the suit against the site in an effort to chill reporting he deemed “ruined people’s lives for no reason”. A New Yorker profile of Thiel from 2011 reported that Thiel had come out as gay in 2003.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/24/peter-thiel-legalist-startup-gawker-lawsuit
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/24095190babc1d8b7bdc144965d66bde25d6cc1f0548faf1e32bdd614e17cd1a.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:25:50 | null | 2016-08-22T17:52:49 |
Brief letters: Grouse shooting | Sugar and schoolchildren | Ikea furniture | Uber drivers | Cryptic crossword | ‘Pithicisms’
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F22%2Ffragile-habitats-but-sturdy-ikea-flatpacks.json
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| null |
Fragile habitats, but sturdy Ikea flatpacks
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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George Monbiot is right: wholesale destruction of wildlife is obscene (The grouse shooters aim to kill, 16 August). Why no grousing, then, on the imminent destruction of the diverse habitats and endangered species, including many red list birds, on the west coast of Cumbria? Why no grouse about the collateral damage in obsessive pursuit of the “biggest nuclear development in Europe” at Moorside? The environmental destruction planned is on a scale the most bloodthirsty grouse hunter could only dream of.
Marianne Birkby
Radiation Free Lakeland, Milnthorpe, Cumbria
• This morning I entered my local Morrisons supermarket to be greeted by a large display, just inside the entrance, selling multipacks of filled chocolate bars. The sign above said “Back to School”. Selling high sugar goods is one thing, but encouraging the purchase for children is quite another (Report, 22 August). Shame on Morrisons.
Roger Frisby
Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire
• I suggest Elizabeth Lowry, in stating that the scenery in the Book of the Week is flimsily assembled (Review, 20 August), does an injustice when comparing it to Ikea flatpack goods. If properly tightened with the Allen key provided, I have found these products to be very sturdy.
Michael Robinson
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
• Uber will have a problem if it tries to bring driverless cars to London (Report, 19 August): the driver won’t be able to pass the English test (Report, 17 August).
David Ridge
London
• To save me any further anguish, is there anyone else who now fails to complete the cryptic crossword?
Jean Jackson
Seer Green, Buckinghamshire
• It’s clear that brief letters have to be both pithy and witty to have a chance of being printed (Letters, 22 August). How about pithicisms?
Mike Pender
Cardiff
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• This article was amended on 23 August 2016. An editing error changed the name of the reviewer of the Book of the Week from Elizabeth Lowry to Gregory Norminton. This has now been corrected.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/22/fragile-habitats-but-sturdy-ikea-flatpacks
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en
| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1e6e7a814e08731589e9e9b4feb891229ce72c469aad24d1b0634eb03175c8ff.json
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[
"David Babbs"
] | 2016-08-26T13:14:29 | null | 2016-08-26T08:50:18 |
Our research reveals the looming black hole in NHS finances, writes the head of campaigning organisation 38 Degrees. Thankfully, people are speaking up
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fnhs-38-degrees-government-plans.json
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Politicians have failed the NHS. We need people power to save it
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www.theguardian.com
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“I have a teenage daughter with heart and kidney failure,” says Jo from Wolverhampton. “Regardless of the great care she receives, her condition can and does suddenly become critical. Her mother lives in constant fear of changes to the NHS and her support system. We must keep a tight hold on our very precious NHS.”
The story of Jo’s family is moving. But it’s not that surprising – most of us have some experience of the NHS as a true life-saver. And sadly, many of us will also recognise the anxiety Jo describes about the future of the NHS.
Elizabeth, from north-west London, has a rare autoimmune disease that requires regular visits to hospital, including overnight stays. She echoes Jo’s fears. “It is imperative that numbers of beds are not cut,” she says, “my last wait for a bed, following complications with an outpatient procedure, was approximately seven hours.” Valerie from Dorset gave 33 years of her career to the NHS as a registered nurse. “Now I am possibly facing cardiac surgery,” she says, “and I need the NHS to support me.”
Many of us have gradually started to feel less confident than our parents and grandparents were that we will be able to rely on the NHS into our old age – let alone that our children or grandchildren will have a service they can trust.
Not all the pressures on today’s NHS are the fault of politicians. We’re living longer. There are more of us. Demand has risen in hospitals and in health centres. But at the same time, government funding for the health service has been dangerously squeezed. Social care is continually neglected, putting even more pressure on hospitals. And successive ministers have refused to listen to doctors, nurses or patients when pushing through politically motivated NHS reorganisations.
Conventional politics has failed us when it comes to the NHS. The voice of ordinary people – the likes of Jo, Elizabeth and Valerie – has never been more needed. And that’s why they and hundreds of thousands of us are taking matters into our own hands. Think back to David Cameron’s costly and damaging NHS reorganisation. Without a people-powered campaign to prevent the worst elements of Cameron’s legislation, the Health and Social Care Act would have had far more harmful consequences.
A new investigation commissioned by the campaign organisation 38 Degrees, where I work as executive director, is published today. Carried out by a team of health policy experts at Incisive Health, it exposes new plans being drawn up for the NHS across England, called “sustainability and transformation plans” (STPs). The investigation has been funded by hundreds of thousands of people making individual donations via the 38 Degrees website. People like Jo, Elizabeth and Valerie have shared their personal stories, signed the campaign petition and donated to fund the research. Independent of party politics, we’ve chipped in to protect the health service we value so much by putting these plans under the spotlight.
The research finds huge funding gaps for local services, which, the experts say, could lead to A&E closures, cuts to beds and mergers of hospitals. Put together, the projected funding shortfalls across England would see a £23bn deficit in health and social care spending by 2021.
Where Jo lives, in the Black Country, there are plans for major changes at Midland Metropolitan hospital, including the closure of A&E. The plans also include the proposal to shut one of two district general hospitals. By 2021, the health and social care system in the Black Country is projected to be £476.6m short of the funds it needs to balance its books while maintaining the same level of care. Where Elizabeth lives, the draft plan indicates “reducing demand for acute services by approximately 500 beds”. That’s health manager-speak for cutting 500 hospital beds.
Our crowdfunded investigation shows that this worrying plan for the Black Country is typical of many others across England.
These kinds of cuts aren’t the fault of local NHS leaders. They’re being planned all across the country, the result of a growing black hole in the funding provided to the NHS by the government. Whether or not Theresa May allows these cuts to go ahead will be a key test of her commitment to protecting the NHS.
The NHS belongs to all of us. So before these plans go any further, local people should have a say on any changes to their services. That’s why almost 250,000 people have already signed the 38 Degrees campaign petition to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, calling for full public disclosure of the STPs for each and every one of the 44 areas across England.
No one is suggesting that all changes to NHS services are bad. There may be a good case for some of the changes that are being proposed. But because the plans are not out in the open – we have had to hire specialist researchers to give us even a partial picture – there’s every reason to fear that many of these will be about cost cutting at the expense of patient care and patient safety.
One thing is certain: we know that when we leave the politics of the NHS to the politicians, it doesn’t end well. Now, more than ever, people-powered campaigning is critical to the future of the NHS.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/26/nhs-38-degrees-government-plans
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1514c68917904b74ed0dc527bc431d4b85df4c27501e5026ce0af5b2de6d6e64.json
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[
"Patrick Collinson"
] | 2016-08-26T16:59:09 | null | 2014-02-12T00:00:00 |
Should you sell it, scrap it, or give it away? Getting rid of an old car is not as easy as it seems
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2014%2Ffeb%2F14%2Fgetting-rid-old-car-scrap.json
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Do's and don'ts of getting rid of your old car
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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I have only ever owned two cars, and a thief relieved me of the last one. So when it came to saying goodbye to my defunct 13-year-old Alfa estate, lying abandoned with a dead battery outside my house since November, I realised I had no idea how to actually get rid of a vehicle. Could I sell it? Scrap it? Give it away?
Every year in Britain between six and seven million used cars are sold, and two million are scrapped. The EU has introduced strict environmental rules on how cars should be disposed of through its End of Life Vehicle Directive, while new rules designed to combat copper and other metal theft have had the curious impact of making it illegal for car owners to be paid cash when scrapping a vehicle.
So what is the best way to rid yourself of an ageing car? Where can you obtain the best price? And how can you be sure the buyer isn't some rogue who will take your car, yet leave you still liable for potential speeding tickets and fines?
Selling
Autotrader.co.uk is probably the best place to start (full disclosure: The Guardian Media Group has a 50% share in the company, although it last month announced it was selling this). You can enter your car registration and mileage for free, then it finds the vehicle and gives an immediate suggested selling price. Advertising on the site costs from £9.99 to £19.99. In my case it said the car was worth around £600. But what the computer didn't know was that the MOT and tax was due to run out in three days' time, there was no proper service history, and I was pretty sure it would fail the MOT – and, with a corroded battery, even jump-starting looked out of the question.
Trading in an old car when buying a new one is seen as bad value. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA
Gumtree is another option. Its chief advantage is that advertising is free (although it will encourage you to pay for premium services) and clearly the site has lots of old bangers like mine for sale. But again, with just days to go before I risked being clamped for failing to have a tax disc, I decided against.
How about Webuyanycar.com? It offered £285, but it prefers you have an MOT lasting at least one month and two sets of keys – both fails for my Alfa. Plus (something of a problem) I'd have to drive it to a local centre ... and they're not keen on "non-runners" in any case.
Trading in your old car when buying a new one is discouraged as bad value by many motoring experts. Back in November I bought a new car, and at that point thought it might be useful to keep the Alfa as a second vehicle, given it was still taxed and insured for a few months. But those months slip away, and I realise now that had I traded it in then (for around £400) I would have saved a lot of hassle.
Scrapping
The good news is that the days when drivers had to trawl round dodgy car breaking yards are over. Now just pop "scrap my car" into Google and up comes dozens of companies that promise to collect your car within days – and pay you as well.
But are these safe? The first one I emailed gave me an instant quote of £120 – and rang almost immediately, saying they'd pop round in an hour. And this was a Sunday afternoon. It's the sort of offer that rings alarm bells; were they a registered scrap dealer? (he mumbled something about a certificate coming soon); would he pay cash? (should be able to – which later I realised is a no-no); and would it definitely be scrapped? (er, he might sell it abroad). At this point I realised more research was necessary.
Rules introduced in 2005 make it a legal requirement that any car sent to be scrapped must go to an Authorised Treatment Facility. All car scrapyards must have a licence issued by the Environment Agency or Scottish Environment Protection Agency to ensure that scrapped vehicles don't harm the environment (all that battery acid, gearbox oil and engine parts) and that they are recycled appropriately.
All the car scrapping sites that came up on my Google search allowed me to enter my car registration and came back with quotes for how much they'd pay me. The range was between £150-£200 if I took the car to the yard, or £50 or so less if I wanted it collected from home.
You must tell the DVLA if you send your vehicle to scrap. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
Which sites should you trust? Under the EU directive, the car manufacturers are ultimately responsible for ensuring vehicles are recycled properly, and that cars can be disposed of for free.
Many have linked up with either cartakeback.com or rewardingrecycling.co.uk, which says it has handled the destruction of 1.25m cars. Ford in the UK says cartakeback.com is its recycling partner, while Toyota is linked to rewardingrecycling.co.uk, although both sites deal with virtually all brands of car.
They don't scrap the car themselves but get a local recycling centre to contact you. In my case, both offered around £150 for home collection.
What happens next? Dig out your V5 ownership document, follow the instructions and send the relevant part to the DVLA, which should confirm to you that you're no longer responsible for the car. The scrap dealer should send you a Certificate of Destruction, and should also tell the DVLA you don't own the car anymore.
If the dealer says they'll pay you in cash it's a sure sign they are dodgy. Under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act, introduced last October to combat metal theft, particularly copper from railway lines, it is illegal for anyone to pay cash for scrap cars. Most will issue a cheque or make a payment directly into your bank account. When selling, you have to give proof of identification, such as your driving licence or passport.
Remember to claw back any road tax or insurance you have on the vehicle. You can reclaim any unused complete months of road tax from the DVLA by downloading form V14 and returning it along with your tax disc to the DVLA.
Giving it away
There are a number of organisations that will take your clapped-out car and donate the money to charity. The leading one is giveacar.co.uk, while cartakeback.com operates charitycar.co.uk. Oxfam runs a donation service at oxfam.org.uk, which since 2006 has raised £100,000-plus through the sale of more than 350 cars.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/feb/14/getting-rid-old-car-scrap
|
en
| 2014-02-12T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c1fd1b59e5cb2dff480153f3d987acfbd7abfc398ebf8d721e972a53519062a2.json
|
|
[
"Joanna Ruck",
"Photograph",
"Ben A. Pruchnie Getty Images",
"Kevin Mazur Wireimage",
"Rehan Khan Epa",
"Emilio Morenatti Ap",
"Giorgos Moutafis Reuters",
"Franco Origlia Getty Images",
"Picture-Alliance Barcroft Images",
"Noah Seelam Afp Getty Images"
] | 2016-08-29T14:49:59 | null | 2016-08-29T12:51:53 |
The Guardian’s picture editors bring you a selection of photo highlights from around the world
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fnews%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fbest-photographs-of-the-day-beyonce-and-sumo-wrestling.json
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en
| null |
Best photographs of the day: Beyoncé and sumo wrestling
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Sabratha, Libya
Migrants and refugees, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the water from a crowded wooden boat as they are helped by members of an NGO during a rescue operation in the Mediterranean, about 13 miles (21km) north of Sabratha. Thousands of people were rescued on Monday from more than 20 boats by members of the NGO Proactiva Open Arms
Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP
|
https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2016/aug/29/best-photographs-of-the-day-beyonce-and-sumo-wrestling
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b1a2e79434500697796fb94f3cab2290cea2b58c5b6dfa5863703770f22aacc0.json
|
|
[
"Mark Townsend"
] | 2016-08-29T12:52:00 | null | 2016-06-25T14:05:11 |
Residents of the French port, dismayed at the rhetoric of Brexit, now want to see the town’s huge refugee camp moved over the Channel
|
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Fjun%2F25%2Fshock-calais-french-english-not-best-friends-jungle-refugees-brexit.json
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en
| null |
Shock in Calais: ‘Perhaps the French and English were not best of friends after all’
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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On the corner of the Boulevard des Allies, the thoroughfare that runs parallel to the port of Calais, the sense of dismay and regret was palpable.
“Naturally the English people are still welcome to come to buy their cheap alcohol, but maybe the French and English were not the best of friends after all,” said Adeline, 20, a nurse who was born in the port.
The prevailing sentiment among locals in the corner of continental Europe closest to Britain was one of bitter sadness.
“It is a big surprise. We were supposed to be building a future together,” said hotel worker Mathis Robert, 33, jabbing his finger towards the white cliffs of Dover, 20 miles away across the channel.
“I thought we were closer. We have English friends who live close to Vannes [in Brittany] and they are also extremely upset,” said retired English teacher Genevieve, who has lived all her life in Calais.
Many of the port’s residents paraphrased a central slogan from the defeated Remain camp, as if repeating it might undo an unwelcome development. “We’re stronger together, it’s obvious,” said 45-year-old taxi driver Frank.
Xavier Chauberi, 42, who works at the Eurotunnel terminal at nearby Coquelles, admitted to being horrified at the venom of the referendum debate in the British media. “It’s crazy that this has happened. Maybe it’s an island mentality thing. Great Britain is one of the biggest members of Europe and what does it mean for us now?”
Inevitably, talk turned quickly to the border. Less than 12 hours after the news came that Britain had voted to leave, the mayor of Calais urged the scrapping of a deal that allows the UK to carry out immigration checks in France.
Natacha Bouchart said it was now the moment to renegotiate the Le Touquet agreement, which places border controls – and with them the hopeful refugees aspiring to settle in Britain – on the French side of the Channel. Bouchart, stipulating that Britain must “take the consequences” of its vote, wants the Jungle, the sprawling refugee camp on the outskirts of Calais, to be moved across the Strait of Dover.
For many Calais residents, the Jungle is the hottest issue in town. Standing in the central Place d’Armes, architect Nico Cousineau, 34, said: “I am very curious about what they will do with the border now. We want it moved to Dover.
“The migrants have caused many, many problems for us, including insecurity and perception issues. Many people, including British, avoid the town because they think it is unsafe.”
Yet in the vast refugee camp itself, where an estimated 6,000 people are camped within a six-minute drive of the town’s central square, news of the referendum result was greeted with indifference by many. Most said it would neither deter them nor make them more determined to reach Britain, though several admitted they would welcome any attempt to move the camp across the Channel.
Fawad Khan, 29, who last year fled a Taliban stronghold in Wardak province, close to the Afghan capital of Kabul, said: “It makes no difference. I will keep trying to get to my cousins in Southall like I do every day.” During his eight months inside the jungle, Khan estimated he had made more than 200 attempts to illegally gain entry to the UK. “Hundreds of my friends have made it there,” he beamed.
Aemal Niazi, 19, from the east Afghan city of Jalalabad, said that after four months of travelling to reach Calais he would not give up, whatever the ramifications of Brexit: “I have family in Birmingham and I intend to get there.”
Some were relieved to hear of the UK’s decision. Eritrean Hlebi Araya, 25, from Asmara, hoped it meant he could not be deported to countries like Italy. “Perhaps if there is no agreement with Britain they cannot send us back again into Europe.”
For others, the decision – and the resulting reaction of the global financial markets – meant that overnight the UK had become a place that might not be able to support their ambitions.
Engineer Ali Khan, 26, from Jalalabad – listening to Brexit reports on a small radio in the middle of the jungle on Friday evening – said the turn of events might dictate a change of plan. “For the UK it is very bad, very bad for its people. I might try somewhere else: Sweden, maybe Germany.”
There was however, at least one unrepentant Englishman in Calais. Among the crowd in the Place d’Armes was Lee Davidson, 40, from Dover, who had voted Leave. Asked if he felt anything had changed, he smiled: “Nothing really, the beer still tastes good.”
|
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/shock-calais-french-english-not-best-friends-jungle-refugees-brexit
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en
| 2016-06-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/64fbdb6daa6663a40abb6a23dd24a954068ade40e18bd13fa2d7d5f30d1fbbe7.json
|
|
[
"Photograph",
"Mark Godfrey Nature Conservancy",
"Blake Gordon Nature Conservancy",
"Nick Hall Nature Conservancy",
"Erika Nortemann Nature Conservancy",
"Gaston Lacombe Nature Conservancy",
"Paul Sinclair Trust For Nature Nature Conservancy",
"Brian Richter Nature Conservancy"
] | 2016-08-31T12:57:50 | null | 2016-08-31T12:51:53 |
More than 30% of the water sources on our planet are being over-exploited, in many cases to near exhaustion. World Water Week brings together experts and innovators from around the world to develop solutions for a sustainable water future
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fworld-water-week-in-pictures.json
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en
| null |
World Water Week - in pictures
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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More than 30% of the water sources on our planet are being over-exploited, in many cases to near exhaustion. World Water Week brings together experts and innovators from around the world to develop solutions for a sustainable water future
• This year World Water Week takes place in Stockholm, 28 Aug to 2 Sept, and takes the theme of Water for Sustainable Growth
|
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2016/aug/31/world-water-week-in-pictures
|
en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/64725aa77925b51abd8f5c052bf75ef09b1aef2238cf3652882398a861f4c949.json
|
|
[
"Colin Marshall"
] | 2016-08-26T13:17:06 | null | 2016-08-24T11:57:19 |
In the 1960s, British architectural critic Reyner Banham declared his love for the city that his fellow intellectuals hated. What Banham wrote about Los Angeles redefined how the world perceived it – but what would he think of LA today?
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcities%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fradical-alternative-reyner-banham-man-changed-perception-los-angeles.json
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en
| null |
A 'radical alternative': how one man changed the perception of Los Angeles
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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“Now I know subjective opinions can vary,” the journalist Adam Raphael wrote in the Guardian in 1968, “but personally I reckon LA as the noisiest, the smelliest, the most uncomfortable and most uncivilised major city in the United States. In short, a stinking sewer ...”
Three years later, Raphael’s words appeared in print again as an epigraph of Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies – the most exuberantly pro-Los Angeles book ever written. Ever since publication, it has shown up on lists of great books about modern cities – even those drawn up by people who consider Los Angeles anything but a great American city.
Somehow, this book that drew so much of its initial publicity with shock value (“In Praise (!) of Los Angeles”, sneered the New York Times review’s headline) has kept its relevance through the decades, such that newly arrived Angelenos still read it to orient themselves. But what can it teach us about the Los Angeles of today?
An architectural historian a decade into his career when he first visited, Banham knew full-well that his fellow intellectuals hated Los Angeles. How and why he himself came so avidly to appreciate it constitutes the core question of his work on the city, which culminated in this slim volume.
The “many who were ready to cast doubt on the worth of the enterprise”, he reflected in its final chapter, included a “distinguished Italian architect and his wife who, on discovering that I was writing this book, doubted that anyone who cared for architecture could lower himself to such a project and walked away without a word further.”
The project began when Banham “brought his shaggy beard and wonky teeth to Los Angeles and declared that he loved the city with a passion”, in the words of novelist and Bradford-born Los Angeles expat Richard Rayner. Teaching at the University of Southern California, who put him up in the Greene brothers’ architecturally worshipped Gamble House in Pasadena, “Banham had a privileged base from which to explore. But what he went looking for, and the way he wrote about what he saw and felt, redefined the way the intellectual world – and then the wider world – perceived the city.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reyner Banham with his ‘shaggy beard and wonky teeth’ in 1968. Photograph: Peter Johns for the Guardian
Not that he declared his love right there on the tarmac at LAX. “Banham initially found the city ‘incomprehensible’ – a response shared by many critics,” wrote Nigel Whiteley in the study Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future.
Banham first attempted to publicly explain this cutting-edge metropolis, saturated across its enormous space with electronic devices, synthetic chemicals and televisions, in four 1968 BBC radio talks. He told of how he came to grips with LA’s embodiment of the experimental: its experimental shape and infrastructure, the combinations of cultures it accommodated, and the experimental lifestyles to which it gave rise.
Los Angeles offers radical alternatives to almost every urban concept in unquestioned currency. Reyner Banham
But even an appreciator like Banham had his qualms with the result. “In Los Angeles you tend to go to a particular place to do a particular thing, to another to do another thing, and finally a long way back to your home, and you’ve done 100 miles in the day,” he complained in the third talk. “The distances and the reliance on mechanical transportation leave no room for accident – even for happy accidents. You plan the day in advance, programme your activities, and forgo those random encounters with friends and strangers that are traditionally one of the rewards of city life.”
Nevertheless, to Banham this un-city-like city held out a promise: “The unique value of Los Angeles – what excites, intrigues and sometimes repels me – is that it offers radical alternatives to almost every urban concept in unquestioned currency.”
In his subsequent landmark book, Banham enumerated Los Angeles’ departures from traditional urbanism, as well as from “all the rules for ‘civilised living’ as they have been understood by the pundits of modernity”, with evident delight. It seemed to legitimise a model he had already, in a 1959 article, proposed to replace the old conception of a single dense core surrounded by a wall.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Civilised living’ in suburban LA. Photograph: University of Southern California/Corbis via Getty Images
Banham foresaw “the city as scrambled egg”, its shell broken open, its business yolk mixed with its domestic white, and everything spread across the landscape, its evenness disturbed only by occasional “specialised sub-centres”. A visitor to Los Angeles today might hear the city explained in just the same way: as a network of nodes, a constellation of urban villages, an exercise in postmodern polycentrism.
Banham put another finger in the eye of traditionalists who insisted that a city should have just one strong centre with his short chapter A Note on Downtown, which opens with the words, “... because that is all downtown Los Angeles deserves.”
From its fetishised structures such as the Bradbury Building and Cathedral of Saint Vibiana to its brand new office towers “in their standard livery of dark glass and steel”, Banham wrote that everything “stands as an unintegrated fragment in a downtown scene that began to disintegrate long ago – out of sheer irrelevance, as far as one can see.”
The book’s contrarianism reflects the contrarianism of Los Angeles itself, which, insofar as it “performs the functions of a great city, in terms of size, cosmopolitan style, creative energy, international influence, distinctive way of life, and corporate personality [proves that] all the most admired theorists of the present century, from the Futurists and Le Corbusier to Jane Jacobs and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, have been wrong.”
Filled with photographs and diagrams, Banham’s book on Los Angeles divides its subject up into the four “ecologies” of its subtitle: the beaches and beach towns of Surfurbia; the Foothills with their ever more elaborate and expensive residences; the utilitarian Plains of Id (“the only parts of Los Angeles flat enough and boring enough to compare with the cities of the Middle West”) and the famous, then infamous, freeway system he dubbed Autopia: a “single comprehensible place, a coherent state of mind” in which Angelenos “spend the two calmest and most rewarding hours of their daily lives”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 1893 Bradbury Building in downtown LA was an ‘unintegrated fragment’ in Banham’s eyes. Photograph: Michele and Tom Grimm/Alamy
Between chapters on the city’s ecologies, Banham examined the buildings found in them. Populist, stylistically promiscuous, tradition-agnostic and often deliberately impermanent, Los Angeles’ architecture has, of all the city’s elements, drawn distain the longest. “There is no reward for aesthetic virtue here, no punishment for aesthetic crime; nothing but a vast cosmic indifference,” wrote the novelist James M. Cain in 1933.
More than 40 years later, Banham saw a stylistic bounty of “Tacoburger Aztec to Wavy-line Moderne, from Cape Cod to unsupported Jaoul vaults, from Gourmet Mansardic to Polynesian Gabled and even – in extremity – Modern Architecture.”
He discussed at length the LA building known as the “dingbat” – a “two-storey walk-up apartment-block ... built of wood and stuccoed over”, all identical at the back but cheaply, elaborately, decorated up-front, emblazoned with an aspirational name such as the Capri or the Starlet.
In defining dingbats as “the true symptom of Los Angeles’ urban id, trying to cope with the unprecedented appearance of residential densities too high to be subsumed within the illusions of homestead living,” Banham diagnosed the central and persistent tension, then as now, between wanting to grow outward and needing to grow upward.
Banham drew out the meaning of Los Angeles’ ostensibly disposable buildings not by venerating them, nor denigrating them, but simply by seeing them as they were. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour would advocate the same approach in their own urban classic, Learning from Las Vegas, published the following year: “Withholding judgment may be used as a tool to make later judgment more sensitive. This is a way of learning from everything.”
Still, even appreciators of Los Angeles might take issue with this method when Banham’s non-judgmental attitude – at least toward the aesthetics of American commercial culture – starts to look like advocacy for bad taste.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ‘self-absorbed and perfected’ Watts Towers. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Non-appreciators of Los Angeles certainly did. The painter and critic Peter Plagens, author of an 11,000-word excoriation in Artforum magazine entitled The Ecology of Evil, went so far as to label Banham’s book dangerous: “The hacks who do shopping centres, Hawaiian restaurants and savings-and-loans, the dried-up civil servants in the division of highways, and the legions of showbiz fringies will sleep a little easier and work a little harder now that their enterprises have been authenticated. In a more humane society where Banham’s doctrines would be measured against the subdividers’ rape of the land and the lead particles in little kids’ lungs, the author might be stood up against a wall and shot.”
Uncowed, Banham followed the book by starring in Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, a 1972 television documentary that followed him through one day in the city that “makes nonsense of history and breaks all the rules”, and inspired within him “a passion that goes beyond sense or reason”. Stops on the tour included Simon Rodia’s handmade Watts Towers (a “totally self-absorbed and perfected monument”) to Los Angeles’ characteristic “fantasy of innocence” (prominently marked on all the maps in his book); the overgrown sections of the old Pacific Electric Railway’s “rusting rails that once tied the whole huge city together”; the decrepit canals and beachside bodybuilding facilities of Venice; and a Sunset Boulevard drive-in burger joint.
There, Banham asked the painter Ed Ruscha, plainspoken and painstaking observer of American urban banality, what public buildings a visitor should see. Ruscha recommended gas stations.
Banham pre-empted objections to Los Angeles’ urban form by claiming “the form matters very little”, having already written that “Los Angeles has no urban form at all in the commonly accepted sense”. Yet whatever it does have, he argued, has produced a fascinating, and sometimes even efficient, set of emergent urban phenomena.
“Come the day when the smog doom finally descends,” he narrated over aerial shots of Wilshire Boulevard’s double row of towers and frame-filling neighbourhoods of detached houses, “... when the traffic grinds to a halt and the private car is banned from the street, quite a lot of craftily placed citizens will be able to switch over to being pedestrians and feel no pain.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cyclists on Venice Beach ... though much of LA is not bike-friendly. Photograph: Alamy
The end of the car in Los Angeles? Bold words for the man who called Wilshire Boulevard “one of the few great streets in the world where driving is a pleasure” – after having, “like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original”, learned to drive “in order to read Los Angeles in the original”.
But just as the languages heard on the streets of Los Angeles have multiplied, the language of mobility has changed there, as has much else besides. How legible would Banham, who died in 1988, now find it?
The smog – that supposed bane of the city’s postwar decades which he always downplayed – has all but vanished. The time of “apparently unlimited space” to gratify an “obsession with single-family dwellings” has given way to one of construction cranes sprouting to satisfy the new demand for high-density vertical living. They stand not just over a downtown risen miraculously from the dead, but the specialised sub-centres scattered all over greater Los Angeles.
Though the ban on private cars hasn’t come yet, no recent development astonishes any Angeleno who was there in the 1970s more than the city’s new rail transit network, which started to emerge almost 30 years after the end of the Pacific Electric. It ranks as such as a success of funding, planning and implementation (at least by the globally unimpressive American standard) that the rest of the country now looks to Los Angeles as an example of how to build public transportation and, increasingly, public space in general.
Readers might scoff at Banham calling the Los Angeles freeway network “one of the greater works of man” – but he has demonstrated more of an ability to see beyond it than many current observers of Los Angeles. “Even though it is vastly better than any other motorway system of my acquaintance,” he wrote, “it is inconceivable to Angelenos that it should not be replaced by an even better system nearer to the perfection they are always seeking.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Banham felt downtown Los Angeles only deserved a short chapter dedicated to it. Photograph: Alamy
Banham also foresaw the rise of the self-driving car, so often mooted these days as an alternative solution to Los Angeles’ traffic woes. But cars that drive themselves (as distinct from “Baede-kar” – a then-fantastical voice navigation system dreamed up for Banham’s TV doc, that bears an uncanny resemblance to those every American driver uses today) come with problems that Banham also predicted all those years ago. “The marginal gains in efficiency through automation,” he wrote, “might be offset by the psychological deprivations caused by destroying the residual illusions of free decision and driving skill.”
Under each outwardly celebratory page of Banham’s book lies the notion of change as Los Angeles’ only constant: no matter how excitingly modern the car and the freeway, their day will come to an end; no matter how comfortably idyllic the detached house, it too must fall out of favour, or into impracticality, sooner or later.
Some of the elements that drew Banham’s attention have, after their own periods of disrepute, turned fashionable again. Even the humble dingbat has found a place in the future of the city, becoming the object of critical study and architectural competition.
Banham also saw the future of Los Angeles in other unprepossessing buildings, especially one “striking and elegantly simple” stucco box on La Cienega Boulevard. Its architect? A certain Frank Gehry, then almost unknown but now one of the most powerful influencers of the built environment in not just Los Angeles (his current high-profile project involves re-making the city’s famously dry, concrete-encased river), but other cities as well. The Toronto-born “starchitect” became his adopted hometown’s architectural emissary – just one of the myriad ways in which Los Angeles has influenced the rest of the urban world.
Story of cities #29: Los Angeles and the 'great American streetcar scandal' Read more
These days, the rest of the urban world also influences Los Angeles. No longer labouring under the delusions of total exceptionalism that prevailed in Banham’s day, it has, with its towers, trains, parks and even bike-share systems, made strides toward the “liveability” so demanded by 21st-century urbanists. It now even resembles (if faintly) New York, Boston, London, and Paris – those thoroughly planned, non-experimental cities where, Banham lamented, “warring pressure groups cannot get out of one another’s hair because they are pressed together in a sacred labyrinth of cultural monuments and real estate values”.
In its impressive bid to incorporate older metropolitan virtues and play by the rules of good urban design, modern Los Angeles ignores the possibility of becoming a similarly sacred labyrinth at its peril. Keeping Banham’s Los Angeles: the Architecture of Four Ecologies on its syllabus will hopefully protect against the dire fate of losing its rule-breaking experimental urban spirit.
The engineering-trained author regarded Los Angeles as a kind of machine. Though it has come in for a badly needed overhaul of its interface in recent years, nobody has yet written a user’s manual more engaged in the city on its own terms as Banham did 45 years ago.
Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/24/radical-alternative-reyner-banham-man-changed-perception-los-angeles
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c4d9d863c65b05d8e451da253332035abb9772569908882ffb7cb3e87905eb15.json
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[
"Catherine Deveney"
] | 2016-08-28T08:49:39 | null | 2016-08-28T08:00:26 |
Given the abuse suffered by the Wavertree MP, who’d be a woman in politics today?
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http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fluciana-berger-i-have-been-contending-with-issues-surrounding-my-safety-and-security-for-years.json
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Luciana Berger: ‘There've been issues concerning my safety for years'
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Luciana Berger: ‘We have a mental health crisis as the system only focuses on crisis’ Read more
When Wavertree MP Luciana Berger passes the steps at the back of Central Lobby in the Palace of Westminster, she is able to give a nod to her great-uncle Manny – which is a good trick given that he died in 1986. Manny Shinwell, the famous Red Clydesider, is one of few people who was not a prime minister to have a bust in parliament. “It’s amazing to see that and be part of that heritage,” says Berger, who has read all of her great-uncle’s books. He was also, she points out, the last parliamentarian to throw a punch in the chamber. Shinwell, who was of Polish-Jewish extraction, took exception to a Tory MP telling him to “get back to Poland” and lashed out. “And good for him!” says Berger.
Were he alive, Shinwell would be as proud of his great-niece’s defiance as she is of his, given the scale of antisemitic provocation she, too, has had to endure. Three men have been convicted of abuse against her and there’s even been an international social media campaign – #FilthyJewBitch – organised against her. But that is not the only reason that Berger, who resigned as Labour’s shadow minister for mental health following Brexit, has been targeted. An atmosphere of contempt and violent aggression has recently begun to pervade political discourse. The most extreme illustration of it was the murder of politician Jo Cox, but others have had to endure aggressive and misogynistic intimidation. None more so than Luciana Berger. “It’s a combination of being young, female and Jewish,” she explains.
“Look,” says Berger, who was the director of Labour Friends of Israel for three years before becoming an MP, handing over her phone. She shows me a website which contains a vitriolic catalogue of messages, urging people to tell her – and I can’t even repeat what they call her – that Hitler was right – six million times.
The campaign, organised because antisemites were angry at one of their own being jailed for abusing Berger, has been online since 2014. Could Twitter do more to control it? “Of course they could!” Berger says. The effects of receiving these messages go deep. “It’s personal and sometimes very extreme in its nature. Sometimes it’s pornographic, sometimes violent, often very misogynistic. At its peak, there were 2,500 tweets. Some people who were shown just one message couldn’t believe it, so to receive thousands is difficult.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Garron Helm was jailed in 2014 for sending this antisemitic tweet to Berger.
Difficult, too, for her family. We’re sitting in Berger’s constituency office in Wavertree, Liverpool but, a few weeks before I’d gone to watch her at the mayoral hustings. “Where’s Luciana’s husband?” I asked her adviser, looking round for someone who might approximate to the male equivalent of a politician’s wife. “That’s Alistair,” said the adviser, pointing to a laid-back figure in jeans and T-shirt. They met at a music industry event and he contacted her afterwards, claiming she’d given him the eye. Had she, I asked her. “When I got the message on Facebook, I didn’t even know who he was! I kept refusing to go out with him but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Alistair says politics isn’t the full Luciana. “She’s very funny – a cool person.” And the abuse she receives? “She has a lot of strength. She won’t combat hate with hate.” Then his tone darkens. “I can’t repeat what I’d say behind closed doors.”
The first time I visit Liverpool to meet Berger, a massive cruise ship is sitting in the docks, a glitzy illustration of the regeneration of this area. The lights of smart hotels and restaurants bob in inky water, and the iconic bronze-cast Liver birds look down from above on the city’s Liver building. Arguments rage, however, about how real this development is; whether it is slick and superficial or has reached deep into the city’s deprivation. Liverpool belongs to Labour, a part of leader Jeremy Corbyn’s heartland. Even Derek Hatton, the old ex-deputy leader of Liverpool city council who was expelled for his membership of Militant, wants to finally vacate the 80s and rejoin Labour these days.
But Corbyn’s Labour party has heralded strangely intimidating times, and resulted in new attacks on Berger who is supporting Owen Smith in the current leadership election. Almost half of Labour’s 99 female MPs (including Berger) signed a letter to Corbyn deploring the party’s bullying culture and accusing him of not doing enough to stop threats against women by his supporters. “I’m very worried about the future for women in politics,” admits Berger, who joined parliament in 2010 as one of 64 new Labour MPs – 32 men and 32 women. “It’s definitely got uglier. People feel they have permission to say the most awful things.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Nimmo, who messaged Berger saying she would ‘get it like Jo Cox’. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
That tone has been evident in recent Labour party mayoral nomination elections across England. It was not just that there was only one female candidate – Berger – across four contests. It was the way she was treated for having the temerity to stand. Berger has kept quiet until the vote but scheduled our final meeting for the day after the result. The nomination has gone to Steve Rotheram, Corbyn’s parliamentary private secretary. Jess Phillips, Labour MP for the Birmingham Yardley, has already posted an acerbic tweet. “All the mayors can now go on an actual man date. We can make the tea.” The responses include calling Phillips “renta gob” and a “stupid woman” – which make her point even more neatly than she does.
At the mayoral hustings, Rotheram had made a virtue out of being “too nice, too ordinary, too working class and too loyal”. “Too loyal” seemed a less-than-subtle jibe at Berger, who joined the post-Brexit exodus from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet when she resigned as minister for mental health. “A difficult decision but the right thing to do,” she says. It was undoubtedly a factor in her defeat. “Especially the fact that there was a rally in the city and one of the candidates introduced the leader very publicly… I’m sure that helped! It’s not customary for the leader of the party to be seen endorsing any candidate in an internal selection but we live in a different time.” Our final meeting is to find out why: why being young, female, Jewish and anti-Corbyn is such a challenging cocktail in politics in 2016.
I was shouted at by people who should have known better, saying: ‘How dare you put yourself forward?
Berger flashes a brightly disconcerting smile. She lost but she’s fine. As a teenager, her Saturday job was in the Disney store and you can spot the pedigree: an on/off smile of blinding wattage. One of her detractors told me she found her false but, underneath the smile, Berger’s politics are hallmarked by a deep sense of sincerity and a powerful sense of direction. The smile is just her shield.
She is originally from Wembley, and her father runs a small furnishings shop where he made Tony Benn’s curtains, while her mother was a counsellor in a palliative care unit. The family was more culturally Jewish than religiously so, says Berger, though she still adheres to the main Jewish festivals. Nonetheless, she manages to make family life sound a bit like a scene from Friday Night Dinner, with her father’s party trick being a repertoire of “incredible voices”, while her mother (who wrote a hit in the French charts in the 60s) and her brother (a successful singer in Nashville) fought over use of the piano.
The family was not particularly affluent but growing up in the Thatcherite 80s, Berger knew friends who experienced real poverty and disliked the way they were treated. She developed a strong sense of social justice, basing her desire for political change on the Jewish concept of “tikkun olam” or “heal the world”. She didn’t want power. She wanted to make a difference.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Opposing force: Berger sees Jeremy Corbyn as ‘principled’ but ‘not a leader’. Photograph: Alex Telfer for the Observer
The morning of the result, she received messages of support from women who feel she has made a difference, just by seeking nomination in the current climate. One says,: “The way you were treated during the selection process by some was awful so I wanted to thank you for standing.” What was that treatment? “At the start,” she says, “I had a colleague say to me that we already had a contest with the two men, which disgusted and appalled me.”
Following the result, criticism increased. “My campaign manager and I were shouted at by people who should have known better. There was a massive sense of entitlement around the other two candidates’ teams. I was absolutely right to stand – I’d do it all again tomorrow.”
Strange that it was Berger’s experience that was constantly questioned. “The left have a problem with women,” one young (male) party member tells me, while another describes their horror at hearing Berger publicly referred to as “a young pup” by another candidate. Yet she was the only one of the three with shadow cabinet experience. She has two degrees and despite being only 35 has worked at the London stock exchange and BP, and for the Commission for Racial Equality mapping Muslim-Jewish engagement, as well as being a runner at Paramount in America and a debt collector for an American production house. (The English accent worked, apparently.) And Disney, of course.
You have to admire Berger’s courage and tenacity, particularly in the wake of fellow politician Jo Cox’s murder. “I suppose we all think we are untouchable but it means we have to take our security more seriously.” Did it frighten her? “I suppose I have been contending with issues surrounding my safety and security for years.” But what’s going on right now – why have things escalated to such ugly proportions in British politics? “Everything is just so much more polarised, particularly in the wake of Brexit. If you think about the British psyche right now, I saw doctors’ reports of increased presentation of people concerned about their mental health, for instance. Brexit was a prompt, a catalyst for uncertainty.”
To be fair, Berger believes that – unlike misogyny – antisemitism exists more out of the Labour party than in it. But she is still “disappointed” that Shami Chakrabarti’s official report into antisemitism absolved the party completely. “There [was a bit of it] that had no place there unless someone had asked for it.” Did she feel the report was manipulated? “I just didn’t believe that it was independent.” Does she believe Corbyn is manipulative as a leader? “You can’t just look at him in isolation. You have to look at the people who surround him. Incidentally, not many women!”
Corbyn, one party insider tells me, is a puppet in the middle, divided between MPs who don’t think he can lead Labour to victory and party militants who are more interested in the power of opposition than the power of government. It’s an unprecedented catch 22 with accusations of intimidation flying. Did Berger feel there was a murky side to what was happening at Westminster? “Yes, but it was more the ineptitude. I served under Ed Miliband and there was a stark contrast in terms of the professional operation and everything that happened in terms of trying to get a response.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour’s women MPs after the 2010 election, including Berger, centre back row. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA
Berger was present when Corbyn was elected candidate for the leadership. So why join his cabinet if he’s inept? “I wanted to give him a go. I didn’t know him. I have sat in cabinet meetings every week since last September and saw some of the things that have been well documented in the health team. I saw it with transport. On the day when we should have had a campaign on the increase in train fares, we had a reshuffle going on. That’s not how you take the Tory government on.”
Personally, Berger says, she gets on well with Corbyn. He’s a man of principle. “But that doesn’t make him a leader.” If Corbyn wins, can Labour win an election? “I don’t think so. In order to win, you need a united Labour party and that isn’t what we currently have.” Winning is important to Berger because it’s about changing lives. She remembers the 80s recession and her family not being able to afford a Chinese takeaway. She remembers Thatcher getting to the top and pulling the ladder away, so she makes sure she mentors a woman every year through the Fabian Women’s Network. Small changes can make big differences.
You can’t be the great niece of Manny Shinwell without having a sense of heritage about the Labour party and a sense of responsibility about its future. “Absolutely not,” she retorts smartly, when asked if the Labour party could split. She’s committed. The party is held in trust for future generations and there’s a duty to safeguard it. Not even the level of violent abuse she has experienced dents Berger’s resolve. She’s going nowhere. But she thinks Corbyn is not the best caretaker. “Ultimately,” she says, “the thousands of people I represent deserve a Labour government. They deserve not just a viable opposition but a government in waiting – and currently we are not.”
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/28/luciana-berger-i-have-been-contending-with-issues-surrounding-my-safety-and-security-for-years
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5e77001725d7cdc1efe16100e4e16d997f51b5b531775457788580a5795a139b.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:18:20 | null | 2016-08-20T19:07:26 |
Barcelona, the Spanish champions, started the league season with a resounding 6-2 win against Real Betis that also included two goals from Lionel Messi
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Luis Suárez scores hat-trick in Barcelona’s 6-2 rout of Real Betis
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www.theguardian.com
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Luis Suárez grabbed a hat-trick and Lionel Messi scored two goals as Barcelona began their quest for a third straight La Liga title with a 6-2 rout of Real Betis.
Arda Turan, whose two goals against Sevilla helped Barça lift the Spanish Super Cup on Wednesday, gave them an early lead at the Camp Nou before Rubén Castro equalised in the 21st minute. Barça went back in front thanks to a 37th-minute goal from Messi before Suárez, La Liga’s top scorer last season, made it 3-1 before half-time.
Messi set up Suárez for the Uruguayan’s second in the 56th minute before the Argentinian netted again a minute later with a left-foot drive from outside the area. Suárez then completed his treble with a 25-metre free-kick eight minutes from time. Betis scored again, two minutes later, after Castro struck a right-foot shot beyond Claudio Bravo.
Barça were without several injured players including their captain, Andrés Iniesta, and Neymar, who is playing for Brazil at the Olympics. The Chile captain, Bravo, linked with a move to Manchester City, started in goal with Marc-André ter Stegen out injured. The Barça coach Luis Enrique gave league debuts to two of his new signings, Samuel Umtiti and Lucas Digne.
Neymar and Gabriel Jesus march Brazil past Honduras and into Olympic final Read more
The hosts went in front when Messi’s diagonal pass found Jordi Alba and he cut a pass back to Turan who beat the Betis keeper, Antonio Adán, from six metres. Betis equalised when Bravo got a touch to Castro’s powerful free-kick but could not prevent the ball going in.
Messi then hit the bar before going one better minutes later when he pounced on Denis Suárez’s pass and shot with venom into the bottom corner of the net.
He carved the Betis defence wide open in the 42nd minute with a pass to Sergi Roberto and he set up Luis Suárez, who finished clinically. Betis, under their new coach Gus Poyet, struggled to keep up with Barça in the second half.
Messi and Luis Suárez combined before the Uruguayan beat Adán with a tap-in. The dynamic Messi then found the corner of the net again before Luis Suárez added Barça’s sixth goal.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/20/barcelona-real-betis-la-liga-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-20T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/041e773a97139e785f3795e825ac5f4cf7f84868d4d05b871e5e8d4dc771d4ac.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-29T08:49:56 | null | 2016-08-29T07:31:28 |
Party leader launches consultation on tackling discrimination and the ‘systematic disadvantage’ faced by minorities in UK
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Flabour-to-fight-for-diverse-and-united-britain-says-corbyn-discrimination.json
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Labour to fight for 'diverse and united Britain', says Corbyn
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Jeremy Corbyn has vowed that Labour will fight for a “diverse and united Britain”, as he launched a new consultation on tackling discrimination and promoting racial equality.
The Labour leader said it will also look at measures to tackle the “systematic disadvantage” faced by minorities.
The move comes after Theresa May launched an audit of public services to root out racial disparities as part of a drive to tackle inequality.
The consultation will be in partnership with Labour’s race equality advisory group, chaired by Patrick Vernon, and will involve special events across the country and online.
Corbyn said: “In Britain, hate crime is rising. More than half of all young black people are unemployed. Black people are a shocking 37 times more likely to be stopped and searched.
Theresa May’s inequality audit seems clever, but it will backfire | Zoe Williams Read more
“Labour must be a party that fights for black, Asian and ethnic minority communities – and a diverse and united Britain.
“Words matter. We must never pander to elements of the rightwing press which sow division in our society and demonise Muslim communities. We must stand against antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism, wherever they exist.
“But it also means going further – and addressing the systematic disadvantage that so many people face.
“To build a society that works for everyone, we will end austerity and invest £500bn in jobs, infrastructure and public services as part of our plan to rebuild and transform Britain.”
Corbyn has come under fire over his approach to allegations of antisemitism within the party and a frontbencher suggested that he could have faced a race discrimination case over his treatment of her.
Chi Onwurah expressed concern at the way she and fellow Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire have been treated by Corbyn and suggested “if this had been any of my previous employers in the public and private sectors, Jeremy might well have found himself before an industrial tribunal for constructive dismissal, probably with racial discrimination thrown in – given that only 5% of MPs are black and female, picking on us two is statistically interesting to say the least”.
Corbyn’s office insisted it was “clearly not the case” that Onwurah had been singled out.
The shadow women and equalities minister, Angela Rayner, said the new consultation would help address the structural issues which affect black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) communities.
“Labour has a proud history of tackling race equality, but recent events and the rise in extremism across Europe has shown that despite the progress which has been made, more work needs to be done,” she said.
“This consultation will take the first steps in developing policies which can tackle the structural issues which affect Britain’s Bame communities and the new challenges we all face in building a fairer, more equal society.”
Labour’s announcement comes after the prime minister ordered Whitehall departments to identify and publish information showing how outcomes vary for people of different backgrounds in a range of areas including health, education and employment.
The audit aims to give every person the ability to check how their race affects the way they are treated by public services, with the data used to improve poor-performing areas.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/labour-to-fight-for-diverse-and-united-britain-says-corbyn-discrimination
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/290140c6a192387fbc94d8dc8eca4ff9ecebd7fc639db4f074248066c9bc9dba.json
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