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[
"Craig Little"
] | 2016-08-28T22:52:08 | null | 2016-08-28T20:30:42 |
Like your AFL football fast, skilful and expressive? Then look no further than the inaugural women’s league, to be showcased in an exhibition game next weekend
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fwomens-game-well-placed-to-produce-the-afls-next-great-entertainer.json
|
en
| null |
Women's game well placed to produce the AFL's next great entertainer
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
P.T. Barnum, a man who knew a thing or two about putting on a show, once said “clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung”. For football in the 1980s the show seemed to be hung on characters and showmen – from the unhinged antics of Mark Jackson through to Dermott Brereton’s parody of every rock-star swagger from Elvis to Jagger.
Like Stephen Sondheim in A Little Night Music, the game’s commentators last week lamentably asked themselves where are the clowns – the characters and the showmen – after Collingwood’s Dane Swan hung up his boots.
In many ways the game has never been better, the irony being that as it has improved and become more professional, footballers are being scrutinised years before they even enter the league. They are told not to be reckless on the field or off it, and that they must define themselves, always, as part of a team. You are expected to fold yourself into a character. One who can be drafted.
Eight teams to make up inaugural women's AFL competition in 2017 Read more
“I’m an individual!” Well, you’re not fooling anybody. But those suggesting we won’t see the like of if not Swan, then certainly Brereton, again simply aren’t casting their eyes wide enough. In the supermarket of football opinion, it is not the most wobble-wheeled of carts that contains the suggestion that the next Brereton may be a woman.
If you want proof, head out under the lights at the Whitten Oval on Saturday night, where the women’s all-stars match will be at the centre of football’s gravity and the only show in town.
One of the players to feature will be Moana Hope. What Collingwood lost in Swan last week, they more than replaced a month ago in Hope, one of their two marquee signings for the upcoming AFL women’s league. Collingwood’s newest tattooed forward has 14 siblings and a history as a state-level cricketer. When she kicked her 100th goal for the season last week with the St Kilda Sharks, members of her family stormed the ground and performed a haka.
The game will also feature midfielder Lauren Arnell, who was not only Carlton’s first priority pick, but also their first female football ambassador who is working to develop the women’s game in Melbourne’s north.
A man who not only knows Arnell well, but also the women’s game, is Graham Burgen. Burgen is the head coach of the Victorian Women’s Football League Academy and in October, will take the role of Carlton women’s team’s inaugural list manager and midfield coach.
Burgen is also no stranger to the times when the game’s pegs were characters and showmen, having plied his trade in the VFA during the 1980s against Port Melbourne’s Fred Cooke and “Buster” Harland. Burgan has seen more women’s footy than most and loves what he sees.
“I’ve been out to hundreds of games all across Victoria and interstate, and the skills of the game are first class,” says Burgen. “Once they get to play on a bigger stage and exposed to a larger audience, the public is going to love it – and the women who play it.”
Much to the delight of Burgen, one of those women has already been drafted by Carlton. Brianna Davey is a team-mate of Hope’s at St Kilda Sharks and is the AFL women’s competition’s first high-profile code-hopper, having previously kept goal for both the Matildas and Melbourne City.
“Brianna Davey could be as good as anyone in the competition in a couple of years,” says Burgen. “They can’t tackle her and she’ll bust out of a clearance with four women hanging off her. She’s really exciting.”
And there is exciting talent everywhere he looks, including another potential code-hopper in Cecilia McIntosh who represented Australia in the bobsled in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, having previously won a silver medal in the javelin at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.
“C-bomb is an excitement machine,” says Burgen of McIntosh. “Something is always happening when she’s near the ball.
There’s also Emma Kearney who will line up for the Bulldogs on Saturday night. In the likely event she’ll be drafted into the AFL women’s league, she’ll need to balance football with opening the bowling in the women’s cricket Big Bash competition.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Darcy Vescio and Briana Davey of the Blues, Melissa Hickey and Daisy Pearce of the Demons, Katie Brennan and Ellie Blackburn of the Bulldogs, Moana Hope and Emma King of the Magpies. Photograph: Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images
Those women drafted into the league will not only be talented footballers, they will be physical footballers also. After the success of the women’s rugby sevens team in Brazil, those who think that women’s sport is neither entertaining nor physical must be of such an archaic, misogynist mindset that they still believe you can decide if someone is a witch by seeing if she floats.
“There’s a girl called Lauren Tesoriero from the Eastern Devils who’s got a bit of character about her – she likes knocking girls down and there’s usually a bit of carnage in her vicinity,” says Burgen. “All the defenders are looking over their shoulder when she’s coming.”
As a footballer with the Darebin reserves, Alison Smirnoff is not expecting her name to be called on draft night, but as the founder of Change Her Game, an online movement that aims to positively raise the profile of women in sport, can’t wait to see how the inaugural competition plays out.
“A lot of the women that will be drafted for next year are women that are in their mid- to late-20s, some in their early 30s,” says Smirnoff. “They also have broader life experience in that they’ve had to fit footy around their job, so they’re vastly different from the TAC Cup footballer that comes into the AFL system.”
Smirnoff believes this provides clubs with a great opportunity to engage an audience beyond the important demographic of female members and supporters.
A lot of the women will have amazing backstories – Moana Hope gets up at three in the morning most days to start work, so she can take her sister Vinny, who has the rare neurological disorder, Möbius syndrome, to school – and they are not just remarkable athletes, but incredible people.
“Given clubs want people coming through the gates, their stories should be told and their individuality encouraged,” says Smirnoff. “In the future, we may reach the level of the men’s game with similar pathways, but for now the point of difference should be celebrated.”
As well as characters, the aesthetics of women’s football is likely to be a drawcard. Rather than the AFL tampering with the rules, Burgen believes in a simpler approach to make the game more free-flowing.
“I want to see the game blossom, so I’d be pushing for 16-a-side, rather than any rule changes,” says Burgen. “Because if the girls are taking hangers, running, bouncing and kicking goals, everyone’s going to go, ‘this is fantastic, I’m going to watch this’.”
Tinkering with the rules too much, could risk the league being perceived to take a patronising view of the women’s game, something Burgen believes is not required. “Having coached both men and women, I can comfortably say that to me it’s no different. I just coach footballers,” he says.
“If there is a difference with women, it’s that they can improve their footy IQ really quickly as they’ve not had years and years of being exposed to top-level coaching. So if you’ve an intelligent player, you’ll give her something, watch her do it and when it works you’ll see her smile and she’ll run back to you and say, ‘what else ya’ got?’”
Burgen says he has up to 150 women on speed dial seeking his feedback. “They’ll call as ask, ‘Did you see my game on the weekend? What do you think?’ The appetite for self-improvement is enormous.”
There are other ways too that Burgen believes the AFL could exert a positive influence. “I think it would be great that after draft night, the AFL get all the coaches together and say just let ‘em play.”
And once they play, the fans will come. “The most exciting thing for me is that it is not a gimmick,” says Smirnoff. “The clubs are 100% invested in growing the women’s game.”
And the more access that young girls have to sports can only be a good thing. “As a kid my football idols were Stephen Silvagni and Brett Ratten. But now little girls will be able to look up to Darcy Vescio, Moana Hope, Katie Brennan or Daisy Pearce.”
The women’s game has the potential to be many things – skilful, fast and expressive. It should be as entertaining as hell, but the one thing it won’t be is a circus.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/29/womens-game-well-placed-to-produce-the-afls-next-great-entertainer
|
en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2e792b9cd56baac08254a8825ed9ba42a3c4ff885da162fcf01a7e54359d372b.json
|
|
[
"Sarah Marsh"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:35 | null | 2016-08-25T15:21:15 |
A thinktank has warned that the NHS could collapse without its European workers. Tell us how you feel after the referendum
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Feu-nationals-working-for-the-nhs-how-do-you-feel-after-the-brexit-vote.json
|
en
| null |
EU nationals working for the NHS: how do you feel after the Brexit vote?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
What does Brexit mean for the NHS? One risk, highlighted by a leading thinktank on Thursday, is the loss of 57,000 European workers. The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) suggest in a report that British citizenship should be offered to EU nationals to avoid a collapse in the service.
Chris Murray, who compiled the report, said: “It is critical to public health that these workers do not seek jobs elsewhere. All EU nationals who work for the NHS, or as locums in the NHS system, should be eligible to apply for British citizenship. This offer should be organised by the regional NHS and mental health trusts, who would be responsible for writing to all NHS staff who are EU nationals to inform them of their eligibility.”
Are you an EU national working for the NHS? How do you feel, after the Brexit vote, and what are your plans? How vital are you to the health service? And how would you feel about being offered British citizenship? Tell us, using the form below.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/25/eu-nationals-working-for-the-nhs-how-do-you-feel-after-the-brexit-vote
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0f785223950743689b4ab6a117a6ba9fe34bec26b70d8eaf2488c8bf10af6491.json
|
|
[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-31T14:50:25 | null | 2016-08-31T13:50:08 |
Andrew Summerscales was one of first on scene after murders of Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone by notorious killer Dale Cregan
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fgreater-manchester-police-mourn-former-officer-found-in-park.json
|
en
| null |
Greater Manchester police mourn ex-officer found dead in park
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
A former policeman whose two colleagues were murdered after being lured into a trap by the notorious killer Dale Cregan has been found dead.
Andrew Summerscales, 46, is believed to have been one of the first on the scene after Cregan killed his fellow officers on the same shift, Nicola Hughes, 23, and Fiona Bone, 32.
Cregan, who was already wanted by police for the double murder of a father and son, lured the officers with a bogus call before killing them in a gun and grenade attack in Hattersley, Tameside, in September 2012.
Summerscales’ body was found at about 7.20am on Tuesday in Cheetham Park, Stalybridge. There are believed to be no suspicious circumstances and a file has been prepared for the coroner. The former officer left Greater Manchester police last November.
Deputy chief constable Ian Pilling said: “It is with great sadness that I can confirm we received the tragic news that former GMP officer Andrew Summerscales passed away yesterday.
“Andrew left GMP from the Tameside division in November 2015 after 15 years of service and I know that many of his former colleagues hold very fond memories of him.
“On behalf of Greater Manchester police I wish to pass on my most sincere condolences to Andrew’s family, friends and colleagues during this extremely difficult time.”
Online tributes were also paid to Summerscales. On one police website a message read: “RIP PC Andy Summerscales. A colleague and friend to many who policed Hyde, Tameside has passed away today in tragic circumstances.
“He was on the same shift as Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone and was one of the first officers on the scene. One can only imagine the horrific images he witnessed and the immense pain he has suffered as a result.
“Today our thoughts and tears are with our G division friend. Rest easy Andy and say hi to the girls.”
Jim Jones, GMP neighbourhood inspector for Radcliffe East, tweeted: “Words can’t describe what PC Andy Summerscales and his colleagues witnessed four years ago and images he’s had to live with. RIP #policefamily.”
In June 2013, Cregan was jailed for life without parole.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/31/greater-manchester-police-mourn-former-officer-found-in-park
|
en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/2a7e23f15f76338d605cc1c9b9dbd1e6a7e296c26308176587fa1d46a12d86d2.json
|
|
[
"Daffydd Bynon",
"Photograph",
"Oli Scarff Afp Getty Images",
"Ben Hoskins Getty Images",
"Stu Forster Getty Images",
"Tony O'Brien Reuters",
"Lee Smith Reuters",
"Mike Hewitt Getty Images",
"Michael Regan Getty Images",
"Darren Staples Reuters"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:37 | null | 2016-08-21T21:02:49 |
Your weekend round up of the best photography from the top flight
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Fgallery%2F2016%2Faug%2F21%2Fthe-dozen-the-weekends-best-premier-league-photos.json
|
en
| null |
The Dozen: the weekend's best Premier League photos
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
West Ham United won their first Premier League game at the London Stadium 1-0 against Bournemouth thanks to a late goal from Michail Antonio. Slaven Bilic said afterwards: “We just deserved it. We were pushing and wanted it more. We’re delighted to end the first game at this beautiful stadium with a win and a clean sheet.”
Photograph: Nick Potts/PA
|
https://www.theguardian.com/football/gallery/2016/aug/21/the-dozen-the-weekends-best-premier-league-photos
|
en
| 2016-08-21T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/14b4f5506760addb4b516cc85e277969a22aeb1b55a64516e843d79fb6437824.json
|
|
[
"Guardian Sport"
] | 2016-08-29T08:52:14 | null | 2016-08-29T08:11:45 |
The Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie will leave his post at the end of this season, the club has confirmed
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fyorkshire-coach-jason-gillespie-stand-down-end-season.json
|
en
| null |
Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie to stand down at the end of the season
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie will leave his post at the end of this season, the club has confirmed.
Steven Davies’ century floors Yorkshire and guides Surrey to One-Day Cup final Read more
Gillespie led the club from the second division to two consecutive Championship titles after being appointed in November 2011. In the course of 76 Championship fixtures at the helm, he suffered just five defeats.
The former Australia fast bowler Gillespie has a contract to coach the Adelaide Strikers in the Big Bash and his family has recently returned to live back in his homeland. Gillespie has told the club that he feels the close season is the best time to join them more permanently.
“The club would like to place on record its thanks to Jason,” read a club statement and they also confirmed they would not be looking for a new coach until the end of the season. “The focus will now be very much on the remaining four County Championship fixtures, beginning with Wednesday’s trip to the Ageas Bowl to face Hampshire, and on securing the first Championship treble seen at Headingley since the 1960s.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/29/yorkshire-coach-jason-gillespie-stand-down-end-season
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/334c76c0d4be5e17c6b3e87274eac9150dc96e9e984bc10cebb2179a24cd529c.json
|
|
[
"Kevin Mitchell"
] | 2016-08-29T18:52:31 | null | 2016-08-29T16:55:10 |
Great Britain’s Kyle Edmund stunned Richard Gasquet in the first round of the US Open on Monday, beating the No13 seed 6-2, 6-2, 6-3
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fkyle-edmund-richard-gasquet-us-open-first-round.json
|
en
| null |
Kyle Edmund stuns Richard Gasquet in straight sets in US Open first round
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
There are matches in a player’s career that mark a significant progression and Kyle Edmund had such an experience here on Monday when he not only beat Richard Gasquet in three quick sets, but played the sort of tennis that could carry him much deeper in the 2016 US Open than he might have dreamed of beforehand.
It took the bustling young British hope, ranked 84 in the world, an hour and 41 minutes under a fierce sun to beat the 14th seed 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 and he was worth every one of his 82 winning points to the Frenchman’s 52. A gap of 30 points in the first round of a major on a testing day constituted a terrific win.
Britain’s tennis players ready to reap benefits of Olympics at US Open Read more
It is easy to mistake Edmund’s innate politeness for frailty. Still on the nursery slopes of the game at 21, and with only a handful of five-set experiences, Edmund is yet to properly put his foot to the fire beyond the occasional big match in Davis Cup. He does acknowledge that winning both singles for Great Britain against Serbia in Belgrade in the absence of Andy Murray this summer did much for his self-belief under pressure.
“I dealt with the occasion pretty well,” Edmund said earlier. “Since then I haven’t been as happy as I’d want to be with my game. I’ve struggled a bit on court, but naturally there will be some ups and downs that you do have to deal with. You can’t play your best all the time.”
In the fiery midday sun on the exposed Court 5 on day one of the championships, Edmund cashed in on the good bits of his Belgrade coming of age. He raced to 4-1 as Gasquet struggled to handle his power and even a double fault in the seventh game did not trip his rhythm. What most impressed was his eagerness to press home his advantage; he closed down space behind a big serve and some withering ground strokes, daring the Frenchman to pass him.
After 22 minutes, Gasquet, rattled and nonplussed, served to stay in the first set. A lazy forehand went long for set point, Edmund attacked his second serve and finished the job with a perfectly placed crosscourt forehand that Gasquet did well to get a racket on.
It was a near-perfect start – much the same as his first set against David Goffin in the Davis Cup final against Belgium in Ghent in November. He faded and lost then; now he needed to build on the most promising of starts.
Gasquet occasionally recalls the spring days of his career. He still has his touch, the court geography, the eye for an opening – as well as that sumptuous backhand and pride. He remembers when he was 21, the year he reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon – where he stretched Roger Federer for an hour or so.
Andy Murray finds balance as he looks to cap his finest summer yet at US Open | Kevin Mitchell Read more
He dipped out in the second round here that year, injured. Gasquet has had success in New York – losing to Rafael Nadal in the semis three years ago and in the quarters last year to Federer – but the heat and racket and unforgiving courts of the circuit’s most unforgiving slam have some times been too much at odds with his languid temperament.
Now it was Edmund’s turn to test him. Pushing his man deep time and again, the Briton broke for 4-2 and, asking him to go for winners down the line, cut off his forehand at the net – his eighth success in nine raids – to put the pressure on Gasquet for a second time to hold at 2-5.
Edmund broke him to love in imperious style and Gasquet was visibly suffering in the beating heat. They had been playing less than an hour.
Gasquet has had many struggles, some of them heroic. He was lifted briefly with an early break in the third, but crushed within moments when, after double-faulting to hand back a second break point in the sixth game, could only watch as Edmund’s quite brilliant running forehand screamed to its legal landing point. It was the sort of shot Gasquet has played many times himself.
Back on level terms, the set was a battle of young legs and fading heart. Edmund held without fuss; on the changeover, Gasquet changed his handle wrap for the umpteenth time, as he does. No amount of idiosyncrasies were going to be much good now, though. He needed a comeback of Lazarus proportions and his weapons were letting him down.
Nothing much worked for Gasquet: 10 of 22 unforced errors came off his fabled backhand. Pretty everything worked for Edmund: 20 of his 38 clean winners arrived from his swishing forehand. He struck 10 aces, the last one for the match.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/29/kyle-edmund-richard-gasquet-us-open-first-round
|
en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f987e0fec76c42af794ab9f6fe343b815e4a7e03b750e88ea7867ab6d6af8dd9.json
|
|
[
"Hilary Osborne",
"Sarah Butler"
] | 2016-08-26T13:09:14 | null | 2016-08-19T18:21:50 |
Campaigners hope Deliveroo couriers’ victory over pay terms will rally more temporary, self-employed workers to organise
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fcollective-action-via-social-media-brings-hope-to-gig-economy-workers.json
|
en
| null |
Collective action via social media brings hope to gig economy workers
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Campaigners against low pay are hoping that a victory for Deliveroo couriers this week will encourage further action by gig economy workers. One of the biggest barriers to a repeat, however, is the very nature of the work Britain’s part-time, self-employed army carries out.
Workers at Deliveroo, the online food delivery firm, won a rare victory in seeing off an attempt to force them to sign up to new pay terms. Deliveroo’s change of heart followed several days of protests by its drivers.
Deliveroo announces it will not force new contracts on workers Read more
The protests, in which more than 100 moped riders and cyclists took to the streets after being told they would have to move from an hourly rate to payment per delivery, marked a new assertiveness among workers in the UK’s so-called gig economy.
Dr Alex Wood, a sociologist at Oxford University who is studying the gig economy and collective action, said the success of the Deliveroo strike could motivate other workers. “One of the most important elements for any action is that they believe there is a chance of it being successful,” he said. “That fact that the workers have got some concessions out of it will inspire other workers to think it is worthwhile.”
The Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, who has been campaigning for better treatment of low-paid workers, is less optimistic. She said it was hard for those employed in the gig economy - the term for temporary, self-employed work - to organise and agitate for better pay and conditions.
“They are not in the same workplace and there is not the same unity of cause. There is always somebody who will do it if you don’t want to. There is a big role for unions in this area, but they will have to change the way they are working and offer different services,” she said.
Mags Dewhurst, the chair of the couriers and logistics branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) helped the Deliveroo drivers draw up a list of demands. She said she had tried to recruit workers before the recent pay protests, but without much luck.
Deliveroo couriers are right to strike: the company’s claims of freedom are a sham | Mags Dewhurst Read more
“The difficulty we faced had been accessing them. How do you reach thousands of people when they are spread around London? I was literally chasing them down the street if I saw a blue jacket.”
Several major trade unions are considering how they can adapt to the fast-growing gig economy. Wood raises the possibility of a move towards something similar to “worker centres” in the US, where volunteers offer resources and advice to those on low pay.
Legal test cases also have a role to play. The GMB union is backing a court case taken by 19 drivers for taxi-hailing app Uber, who say they are employees rather than self-employed. A ruling in their favour could have far-reaching implications for gig economy businesses. The GMB became involved after existing members began working for Uber and asked for advice. The IWGB is backing action by cycle couriers at four firms starting later this year.
Alice Martin, a unions expert at the New Economics Foundation thinktank, said: “Major unions can play a really important role as they have the clout needed to take on these big cases, that strong presence, resources and expertise.”
Why has Britain stopped striking? Workers no longer feel empowered to act | Gregor Gall Read more
There are challenges, however, for unions that consider the cost of engaging with self-employed workers in the gig economy to be too high, according to Wood. “There’s a high turnover of people and there’s low market bargaining power. If they go on strike it’s not going to bring the economy to a halt, unlike coal miners or rail workers,” he said.
Social media and digital technology will probably play a key role in low-pay campaigns, he added. “Even amongst the workers who are working around the world from home we find most of them join online social networks through Facebook, forums and blogs,” he said.
“There’s not much formal training in the gig economy so the only way they can make it work for them is to get support from other workers. They need to learn from each other. They’ll find ways to meet up and exchange information. These networks form the basis for people to share dissatisfactions.”
The use of social media has taken employers by surprise. Workers for Deliveroo and the parcel firm Hermes have used closed social media groups to exchange information about things they are unhappy about, and messages about the protests were spread on open Facebook group pages and on Twitter.
Dewhurst said firms’ reliance on digital technology for their business models also laid them open to the possibility of workers’ action.
‘Love the job, hate the way we’re treated’: life on the frontline of UK’s delivery army Read more
Although this kind of tech has been designed to isolate individuals and atomise work, deskilling the industry and driving down wages, the very platform it uses to do that is hugely vulnerable to ad-hoc collective action by groups of individuals,” she said.
“It’s now very easy for Deliveroo to hire and fire people, but equally easy for drivers to decide not to work, and when they decide do to it altogether, can garner huge leverage against their would-be employer. All they need to do is log out.”
Whether traditional unions are ready and able to engage with workers in the digital world remains to be seen.
Martin said: “A lot needs to be done in terms of [traditional unions’] digital capacity.” Referring to digital voting, she said: “Traditional unions have found it notoriously hard as some technological changes have to be written into law.”
The TUC has spent several years campaigning for the right to conduct digital ballots, but was only able to win the right to a review of the concept and a pilot scheme in the controversial Trade Union Act brought in this year.
Martin said it was possible new unions and staff-led groups might have to fill the void if traditional unions were unable to.
Dewhurst said the events of the past 10 days were “just a taste of what could happen” when low-paid workers campaign together.
“The biggest problem people face is getting in contact with each other. Once they are in contact and they have decided to work with one voice, they have effectively unionised and the company is screwed,” she said.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/19/collective-action-via-social-media-brings-hope-to-gig-economy-workers
|
en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ae8c0985b8e0110c41059ef2efe944e53e96e7c8463ca26b186349ac74f00a17.json
|
|
[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-31T12:53:09 | null | 2016-08-31T12:09:16 |
Australia’s Diamonds cruised to victory over England in the netball quad series on the back of a dominant performance from shooter Caitlin Bassett
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fdiamonds-prove-too-strong-for-england-in-netball-quad-series.json
|
en
| null |
Australia's Diamonds prove too strong for England in netball quad series
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www.theguardian.com
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Australia cruised to victory over England in the netball quad series on the back of a dominant performance from shooter Caitlin Bassett, who netted 46 of her 51 shots to help the Diamonds claim a 66-46 win on Wednesday night in Adelaide.
Bassett’s performance over three-and-a-half quarters was three points off the career best she recorded against Jamaica in last year’s World Cup. Matched up against valiant Roses goalkeeper Ama Agbeze, 28-year-old Bassett’s height and reach proved too much for the England captain to handle.
Netball Australia rule out introduction of two-point shot – for now Read more
The tourists came out of the blocks strongly, with goal defence Stacey Francis making several deflections but the Diamonds’ superior passing allowed them to take control of the game and the Roses had little answer for Bassett, who was able to grab rebounds with ease.
Bassett was assisted well by goal attack Natalie Medhurst, who scored from 11 of her 13 shots while at the other end, Diamonds defender Sharni Layton’s manic pressure forced the Roses to look for tough shots which often didn’t come off.
Layton, matched up on Roses shooter Jo Harten, had five deflections and three intercepts in a standout first half as the Diamonds took a six-point lead at the long break.
Harten converted 28 of her 34 shots and set up the Roses with her creative passing but had little support from goal attack Kadeen Corbin, who netted 10 of her 14 shots but lacked aggression.
With Harten briefly sidelined with an ankle injury, the Diamonds were able to open up the game, restricting the Roses to just eight points. And from there, it was all the home team, who were able to carry on the impressive form from their 68-43 series-opening win over South Africa.
The Diamonds’ first real test of the series will come on Sunday in Melbourne when they face world No2 New Zealand, who smashed South Africa earlier on Wednesday 65-46.
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/31/diamonds-prove-too-strong-for-england-in-netball-quad-series
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e34b2567e618f7f7fc62b3358d41199fa475d11db4e8db495b13ad575aba0e81.json
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[
"Stuart James"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:19 | null | 2016-08-25T20:31:30 |
Patrick Bamford, the 22-year-old striker, who has never played a senior game for Chelesa, has joined Burnley on loan, aiming to make it in the Premier League
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Chelsea’s Patrick Bamford joins Burnley on season-long loan
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www.theguardian.com
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Chelsea’s Patrick Bamford is joining Burnley on a season-long loan. The striker endured a frustrating 12 months with Crystal Palace and Norwich City last season during which he made only two Premier League starts. He is now returning to the top flight with Burnley and will offer competition for places up front alongside Andre Gray and Sam Vokes.
Milan reject Chelsea’s £35m offer for Alessio Romagnoli Read more
The 22-year-old has been strongly linked with a number of Championship clubs, including Aston Villa, Queens Park Rangers and Fulham. Yet it is understood he was determined to have another crack at the Premier League and hopes to be given more opportunities under Sean Dyche to prove he can play at the highest level.
Bamford has a little under two years remaining on his Chelsea contract, having joined the club from Nottingham Forest in January 2012. He has yet to make a senior appearance for Chelsea, who have loaned him out to MK Dons, Derby, Middlesbrough, Palace, Norwich and now Burnley over the past four seasons.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/chelsea-patrick-bamford-burnley-loan
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1ba5bc31dad994372a9233d9afdbd79de4662184f72e6bd2c2d275763e571a3c.json
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[
"Katharine Murphy"
] | 2016-08-26T20:51:04 | null | 2016-08-26T20:00:43 |
Prime minister to set the scene for the new session of parliament as Coalition prepares to grapple with the uncertainties surrounding several urgent areas
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fmalcolm-turnbull-urges-all-parties-to-focus-on-bread-and-butter-issues.json
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Malcolm Turnbull urges all parties to focus on 'bread and butter' issues
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www.theguardian.com
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Malcolm Turnbull has urged non-government parliamentary participants to meet him in the “sensible centre” and focus on “bread and butter issues” as the federal parliament prepares to resume next week after the hiatus following the 2 July election.
In a speech in Brisbane on Saturday, Turnbull will signal the government’s intention to proceed with efforts to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and apply stronger governance rules to trade unions, reiterating the option of a joint sitting if the Senate fails to pass the proposals.
The government will need the support of One Nation to achieve that change but, through the week, Pauline Hanson said she was not going to be “railroaded by the government, or the unions” on the ABCC.
Trade unions have focused some of their lobbying efforts on the Hanson bloc, hoping to persuade her to look after the interests of blue-collar workers who voted for One Nation in 2016, and vote against the ABCC.
On Saturday, Turnbull will make a pitch to the party base, saying: “This legislation, blocked by the Greens and Labor to protect their union mates, was the reason we went to a double dissolution election.
Pauline Hanson on fence over support for ABCC Read more
“If the Senate fails to pass them, we have the option of taking them to a joint sitting,” the prime minister will say.
In a public intervention on Friday, the former prime minister Tony Abbott declared that sorting out the ABCC “should be the least politically difficult reform of all”.
Abbott said the government had an absolutely unambiguous mandate for the ABCC, after taking it to the 2010, the 2013 and now the 2016 double dissolution election, and “even this parliament should finally do the right thing”.
“It’s not a leap in the dark but the restoration of a body that’s proven to be effective,” Abbott said.
The government enters the first sitting week of the new parliament with most issues in flux – continuing negotiations around superannuation, uncertainty around other key budget measures, the same-sex marriage plebiscite looking decidedly wobbly, and continuing internal pressure to amend the Racial Discrimination Act.
Turnbull will use the speech on Saturday to set the scene for the new session. He will tell his Brisbane audience that the coming parliament will be about honouring the Coalition’s election commitments. “We have a long to-do list, with budget repair at the top,” he will say.
The prime minister will criticise the Labor leader, Bill Shorten – who used a National Press Club speech this week to float a superannuation compromise and set out alternative proposals for budget repair – for being “tactical” in the lead up to the resumption of parliament.
Bill Shorten offers Malcolm Turnbull compromise on superannuation changes Read more
“Mr Shorten says that Labor will oppose the government’s important flexibility measures on superannuation – particularly the carry-forward provisions on unused concessional contributions which will benefit around 230,000 Australians, including women who have experienced interrupted work patterns,” Turnbull will say.
“That he has revealed Labor’s superannuation policies the week before parliament resumes, rather than subjecting them to scrutiny during the recent campaign, exposes his tactics as being just that – tactics.”
Turnbull will say that Labor should pass the omnibus savings bill the government intends to bring forward, and desist from raising alternative revenue-generating proposals the Coalition ruled out in the recent election campaign.
But with that said, the prime minister will urge parties to adopt a flexible and pragmatic approach, saying Shorten, Labor and all the parties need to meet the government “in the sensible centre”.
“To act otherwise would badly misread the mood of the vast majority of Australians who want us to work together to secure their future,” he will say.
Danger for Turnbull as the new parliament heads into the unknown | Katharine Murphy Read more
“This term must be about the bread and butter issues that occupy people’s thoughts when they get up in the morning and when they lay down at night: their jobs, their health and education, whether they can pay their bills, their opportunities to get ahead, their security.”
The prime minister says he’s prepared to work constructively with the Senate.
“In the last parliament there were eight crossbenchers, six of whom had been newly elected at the 2013 half Senate election. Had there been a half Senate election this year, instead of a double dissolution, we could have reasonably expected another six crossbenchers being elected for a total of 12,” he says.
“We have had constructive discussions with all the crossbenchers and we are confident that we can find common ground with them in order to achieve our objectives.
“Of course there will be negotiation and compromise. That is what parliaments are for and it has been ever thus in the Senate.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/27/malcolm-turnbull-urges-all-parties-to-focus-on-bread-and-butter-issues
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1f3eae90c07d9f9648a76cbb12f4d2714d7469fcbb1046160f18986dcce2cc0d.json
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[
"Julian Borger"
] | 2016-08-29T06:49:51 | null | 2016-08-29T05:00:52 |
The ability of powerful figures to travel the world, ending wars and solving disputes has waned. But they must keep trying
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In a world of crises, shuttle diplomacy has lost its way
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www.theguardian.com
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If the age of shuttle diplomacy is really passing, nobody has told John Kerry. He recently became the most widely travelled US secretary of state in history, having flown more than 1.2m miles to visit 88 countries, some multiple times, and spent a total of 111 days up in the air.
Outside meddling has unleashed horror in Syria. We must step back | Simon Jenkins Read more
He still has four months in office to try to beat the record set by his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, of visiting 112 countries (though she travelled fewer miles to do so). Last week he was in Geneva with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, trying to hammer out the final details of an agreement on fighting Islamic State.
Joe Biden has also spent more time abroad than most vice-presidents, lately helping to engineer a rapprochement between Israel and Turkey, for example. This has been, by any measure, an outward-looking administration that has invested heavily in US soft power.
The important question is, what did all these air miles achieve? There is little doubt that last year’s multilateral deal on Iran’s nuclear programme would never have been secured without Kerry’s constant shuttling between national capitals and late nights spent in the negotiating rooms of Austrian and Swiss hotels. But elsewhere the successes have been harder to identify.
Henry Kissinger’s highly mobile mediation between Israel, Egypt and Syria in the 1970s brought the phrase “shuttle diplomacy” into common currency, and ever since it has been closely associated with US efforts to engineer a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. Those efforts lasted well into the Obama administration, involving former senator George Mitchell as special envoy until 2011 under Clinton’s command, and sporadically Kerry himself after he took over the state department, in 2013. But it has become the graveyard of diplomatic ambition. Agreement has never seemed so far off, and it is unlikely Kerry will devote his last months in office to trying to change that.
Syria is likely to take up most of his remaining days and energy. The ever deepening catastrophe is the greatest political failure of the 21st century, and the spectacle of besuited statesmen huddled in Geneva hotel rooms while the slaughter and chaos gather pace on the ground has raised serious questions about the efficacy of diplomacy, shuttle or otherwise.
Three veteran UN envoys have tried in turn to find a political solution: Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi and currently Staffan de Mistura. But their missions have led nowhere. In the past few days, De Mistura was forced to suspend the UN humanitarian taskforce, as none of its aid convoys were being allowed through to besieged areas.
To a large extent, the failure has been a consequence of a cold war-style deadlock – Russia and Iran on one side, and the west and most of the Arab world on the other – over the fate of Bashar al-Assad, a negotiating gap kept open by force in the shape of massive Russian and Iranian military support to keep the Syrian regime in place.
Besuited statesmen huddle in Geneva hotel rooms while the slaughter and chaos gathers pace on the ground in Syria
But the roots of the impasse in Syria are both new and old. It is also a symptom of the disconnect between the traditional capital-shuttling model of diplomacy in an age when non-state groups, with the proliferation of ever more extreme militias in Syria, are driving the course of events.
Shuttling between capitals, and convening meetings in Geneva or Vienna, looks more and more detached from the brutal and complex diplomacy on the ground. Getting on a plane, issuing a statement, and chairing high-level negotiation has become a displacement activity for influencing events on the ground.
The old-school nature of UN diplomacy may be a generational problem. Since the first UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was dispatched to Palestine in 1948, the average age of UN special envoys appointed to resolve global conflicts is 64. Brahimi was nearly 80, and De Mistura is approaching 70. Of the 52 envoys in that period, only three have been women. The rationale, if any, is that elder statesmen win the respect and face-time needed in often patriarchal states, but the relative success of Catherine Ashton and then Federica Mogherini in the role of EU foreign policy chief casts doubt on such blanket assumptions.
Fielding a younger generation of mediators with more women in their ranks, however, is not going to overcome the challenge of seeking peace on battlefields where the main protagonists are extremists with a vested interest in violence and chaos. Efforts at engagement are likely to be both pointless and a trigger for moral repugnance, as Owen Smith found in the Labour leadership debate when he raised the possibility of Isis sitting at the negotiating table.
But the fact that a task has become harder and more complex is not the same as saying it should not be done. In the field of diplomacy, it means the opposite. There needs to be more of it, in the knowledge that most of the effort will end in failure. On Syria’s borders, UN officials are having to talk to shifting alliances of shadowy groups in order to negotiate deliveries of humanitarian aid to besieged cities, and at the same time their colleagues have to keep making the rounds of the Middle Eastern capitals where the militias go for their funds, as well as keeping the pressure up on Damascus and its backers in Moscow and Tehran to stop the murderous aerial bombing of cities.
Such work often seems futile, and is undoubtedly dangerous. The UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, was killed in a mysterious air crash while flying between the warring parties in Congo in 1961. The circumstances of his death are still being investigated by the UN.
A decade or more ago, in the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa, the effective mediators would mostly have been Americans, with US economic and military clout held in reserve in case sweet reason failed. In a more multipolar world, the peacemakers more often come from the continents in turmoil, under multilateral flags of the UN or the EU. The more powers that have a say in the outcome of conflicts, the more diplomatic travel there is to do.
We may not see another US secretary of state as willing to jump on a plane as Kerry, but there is a strong argument that the next UN secretary general should be as indefatigable in their willingness to get to the nub of conflicts, even at the expense of frustration and humiliation.
It may be a paradox of the age that, despite the multiplicity of small-scale actors and the proliferation of secure and efficient ways to communicate electronically, the need for face-to-face diplomacy seems only to grow. Whatever the technology, the decisions to go to war or make peace are made by people, and people are best judged and cajoled in the flesh.
“You’ve got to figure out what is the other guy’s bandwidth,” Biden told the Atlantic last week. “You have to figure out what is realistically possible ... so that you can begin to make more informed judgments about what they are likely to do or what you can likely get them to agree not to do.”
Foreign policy, Biden added, is “a logical extension of personal relationships, with a lot less information to act on.” The price of giving up is not always obvious, but it can be severe. A report by the European Leadership Network, a thinktank led by former ministers and generals from the old east and west, shows how a lack of personal experience of adversaries can have severe consequences. It argued that “the deep lack of empathy between Nato member states and Russia” could lead to miscalculations as grave as Able Archer, a cold war incident in 1983 when Moscow mistook a Nato exercise as preparations for an all-out attack.
Diplomacy, with all its many wasted air miles and protracted hotel stays, always looks expensive, but the costs are tiny compared to what is spent every day on military campaigns. Look at Yemen. A diplomatic initiative would not be an instant panacea, but the absence of a serious effort to engage Saudi Arabia and Iran and their Yemeni allies is appalling, in the face of the daily human suffering. In a darkening world, to persist in dialogue and reason is to rage – politely and diplomatically – against the dying of the light.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/29/crises-shuttle-diplomacy-syria
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c77d63830eabec9130a34dd1e9ba74abbe17a2162cad9af01878d525c6a64384.json
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[
"Gareth Hutchens"
] | 2016-08-29T10:52:09 | null | 2016-08-29T10:23:05 |
Low unemployment rates and tightening of eligibility sees decline in working age people receiving income support from 25% in 1994 to 16.6% today
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fproportion-of-australians-on-welfare-is-far-lower-than-1990s-new-study-finds.json
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Proportion of Australians on welfare is far lower than 1990s, new study finds
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The proportion of Australia’s working age population that receives income support is much lower than it was in the mid-1990s, according to new Parliamentary library research.
Researchers say relatively low unemployment rates in Australia, and successive tightening of eligibility requirements for some support payments, has seen the proportion of the working-age population claiming income support decline significantly to 16.6%, from a peak of over 25% in 1994.
Welfare dependency in Australia is historically low. More cuts will only hurt the needy | Greg Jericho Read more
Jenny Macklin, Labor’s spokeswoman for Family and Payments, said the finding suggests the treasurer, Scott Morrison, should “stop trying to divide Australians” by suggesting we live in a country of “taxed and taxed nots”, as he did during a major speech on the economy last week.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration: Parliamentary Library/Department of Social Services/Australian Bureau of Statistics
Morrison warned that reining in the growth in welfare spending was one of the “most difficult challenges” confronting the commonwealth budget.
He also said a generation of young Australians had grown up thinking that government payments were a “common and expected component of their income” over their entire life cycle, rather than the reserve of people in real need of a hand up.
“On current settings, more Australians today are likely to go through their entire lives without ever paying tax than for generations,” Morrison said.
“More Australians are also likely today to be net beneficiaries of the government than contributors – never paying more tax than they receive in government payments.
“There is a new divide – the taxed and the taxed nots.”
Parliamentary Library research shows that since 1994, despite a significant decline in the number of people claiming income support, there has been a large increase in payments to the sick, to people with a disability and to carers.
“The most dramatic increase in income support reliance for the working age population has been among carers,” Parliamentary Library researchers said.
“The proportion of the working age population receiving Carer Payment has doubled since 2005, from 0.7% to 1.4%. Ageing of the population overall, with a consequential increase in the need for carers, may be a factor in this increase.
“It is also possible that changes to the eligibility for the age pension and other payments for mature-aged women have meant that those who are caring for elderly partners are now accessing this payment.”
Senior Labor MPs want to keep welfare payment they previously wanted to scrap Read more
The researchers show that between 1998 and 2015, the proportion of Australians receiving parenting payments has declined from a high of 5% to 2.4%.
Macklin says the Coalition could more easily reduce the deficit if it considered some of Labor’s policy proposals, such as its negative gearing changes, rather trying to take more money from low-income households.
“It’s clear that the Liberals haven’t learned the lessons from their calamitous first-term in office,” Macklin said.
New data from the Bureau of Statistics, released on Monday, showed there were 970,800 single-parent families in Australia in June 2015, making up 15% of all families – a rise of 58,600 since 2012.
Parliamentary Library research suggests the reason the number of people receiving parenting payments has declined is because of tighter eligibility requirements.
Pauline Hanson told Sky News on Monday that welfare had become a way of life in Australia.
“A lot of people are saying look, why should I get up and, go, you know, get up early and go to work, and actually, the neighbour next door can be sitting home with three or four kids and actually getting more welfare than what he’s getting paid to go to work and provide for his family,” Hanson said.
“Welfare is there as a helping hand, as I said, not a way of life. We’ve got to concentrate on looking after the pensioners, the sick, and the disabled, and our young ones who are not in a position to look after themselves.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/29/proportion-of-australians-on-welfare-is-far-lower-than-1990s-new-study-finds
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/737ffae31f078cc51f91f02d8f8bc8c17c3639bce0917f74bd9c0d7490c87268.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-30T00:50:10 | null | 2016-08-29T23:01:14 |
Four-year-olds Rosie and Ruby Formosa were given a low chance of survival at birth, but will start school in September
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Conjoined twins separated at birth to start school
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www.theguardian.com
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Conjoined twins who had a slim chance of survival are now preparing to go to school for the first time.
Rosie and Ruby Formosa, who were born joined at the abdomen and shared part of an intestine, needed an emergency operation to separate them when they were born in 2012. Their parents, Angela and Daniel Formosa, were told the girls had a low chance of survival when medics discovered they were conjoined. But after a successful separation operation at London’s Great Ormond Street hospital (Gosh), the identical twins lead happy and healthy lives and are preparing to start school in September.
The four-year-olds from Bexleyheath in Kent were “very excited” to be starting school like their big sister, Lily, nine, Ms Formosa, 35, said. “Four years ago it wasn’t in my mind that this would ever happen,” she said. “When I was pregnant I didn’t think I’d ever see their first day at school so it is really amazing and all thanks to Gosh really.”
She said it was “heartbreaking” when she discovered the girls had the rare medical condition which occurs in one in every 200,000 live births.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The twins’ mother said they were very excited to start school. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA
“At 16 weeks they sent me to King’s College hospital and it was there that they discovered the connection between the girls,” she said. “It was heartbreaking really – I was already worried that they were monoamniotic [where twins share an amniotic sac], and conjoined was the worst-case scenario.
“I was really, really, really scared and really upset because at that point I was told that there was a high possibility that the girls wouldn’t survive the pregnancy.
“And if they did survive the pregnancy they might not survive the birth, then they might not survive surgery.
“They couldn’t tell what was connecting them,” she added. “I didn’t prepare to bring them home. It wasn’t until they were in hospital and they’d had their operation that my husband started painting the bedroom and getting everything ready for them.”
The girls were born at University College hospital in London by caesarean section when Formosa was 34 weeks pregnant. Within a couple of hours of being born, they were taken to Great Ormond Street for emergency surgery because of an intestinal blockage.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The operation to separate the twins took five hours. Photograph: Family handout/PA
Praising the staff at the children’s hospital, Ms Formosa said: “They had a look and did scans and all sorts of tests and it wasn’t until they got into surgery that they saw what was going on.
“It was on-the-spot decisions as to what was to be done.”
The operation to separate them took five hours and the girls were well enough to go home when they were just three weeks old. Their mother said it felt like a million years ago that she was waiting for the girls to come out of their surgery.
“The time has just flown by, I can’t believe how fast it has gone,” she said. “They are very excited [about starting school]; their big sister is in school so they can’t wait.
“They’ve met their teacher a few times and they love their teacher.
“They’re looking forward to painting, anything messy, they love reading.
“They are very similar, they are very bubbly little girls, they are very headstrong and very determined, which I knew they were from when they were in my belly because of the way they kept growing and surviving,” she added. “I knew they were going to be determined and they are. They rule the roost.”
Great Ormond Street hospital is the leading centre in Europe for the care of conjoined twins, performing the first successful separation surgery in 1985. It has since cared for 27 sets of conjoined twins.
Twin takes: images of doubles – in pictures Read more
The Formosa family are supporting the hospital’s charity through its Back to School campaign, which is celebrating all of the children who are able to go to school thanks to care at the hospital, as well as raising funds. The campaign encourages people to share their children’s back-to-school moments on their social media pages to help raise money.
Prof Paolo De Coppi, consultant paediatric surgeon at the hospital, said: “Over the last 30 years we have treated 27 sets of conjoined twins at Great Ormond Street hospital.
“The surgery is highly complex and requires teams from across the hospital to work together and combine a whole range of expertise.
“We’re thrilled that Rosie and Ruby are starting school this September.
“It’s always a joy to witness patients’ progress and to hear that they are reaching new milestones – this makes the job we do all the more rewarding.”
Tim Johnson, chief executive of Great Ormond Street hospital children’s charity, said: “Thanks to the world-class care given to seriously ill children from across the UK at Gosh, more children will go back to school or enjoy their first day at school.
“We’re encouraging people from across the UK to share their back to school or first day at school moments and donate to help raise money for the hospital. Text SCHOOL to 70020 to give £3.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/30/conjoined-twins-separated-at-birth-to-start-school
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| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/88dab2a5421b48b56091c50c049964ef90af0e0e2138eed038a5eedab54c4caf.json
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[
"Observer Sport"
] | 2016-08-27T20:51:44 | null | 2016-08-27T19:00:11 |
The Sky Sports News biannual ‘shoutathon’ that is transfer deadline day; Rio Olympians back in Diamond League athletics action; and Andy Murray begins his US Open bid
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The Agenda: Deadline day brings noise with Rio’s best in quiet return
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MOST SOOTHING TV
Won’t come from Sky. 2016’s summer Jim White Day falls on Wednesday – the Sky Sports News anchor’s biannual showbiz chance to make up for months of reporting on late fitness tests by shouting his way through transfer deadline day. Pass the time between deals with Jim White bingo (“my goodness me”, “Sky sources are telling us”, “hold on to your hats” and “I’ll have to stop you there Natalie”) before the window OFFICIALLY SLAMS SHUT at 11pm.
ACTUAL FOOTBALL
Comes in the form of midweek international friendlies, while Premier League clubs recover from all that spending. The Republic of Ireland face Oman on Wednesday (7.45pm TV) – the official farewell international for 36-year-old Robbie Keane (left) – while other games include Turkey v Russia and Germany v Finland (BT Sport, 7.45pm) and, on Thursday, Italy v France, Belgium v Spain, and European champions Portugal delighting their neighbours and predecessors by hosting Gibraltar. England fans, meanwhile, can get started on their next cycle of hype, hope and despair today, when Sam Allardyce names his first squad. England play Slovakia away in a World Cup qualifier next Sunday (ITV, 5pm).
RETURN TO ACTION
Winning Olympic gold doesn’t buy you any time off: Paris was playing host to a couple of dozen Rio medallists on Saturday and 14 champions will be competing this week in the Zurich Diamond League finals (Eurosport on Thursday) – alongside 26 silver and bronze medallists. Among the big names are Caster Semenya (below), who recorded the world’s fastest 800m this year in Rio amid more uncomfortable accusations over “unfair advantage” from her hyperandrogenism, and Elaine Thompson, Dafne Schippers, Allyson Felix and Veronica Campbell-Brown, who go in a stellar 200m.
LIFE-CHANGER
With the Paralympics starting on 7 September, BBC Radio 5 Live gives a repeat to Blade of Glory on Tuesday at 9.30pm – their documentary on Van Phillips, inventor of the Flex-Foot system that made Oscar Pistorius famous. Phillips, who lost part of his left leg in a water skiing accident in 1976, spent 20 years honing his dynamic design, inspired by the movement of porpoises, kangaroos and cheetahs, and by the spring of swimming diving boards. But, he says, blade technology is still “only in its infancy”.
AND TOP-LEVEL TENNIS
It’s US Open time – Novak Djokovic defending his men’s title against Wimbledon and Rio winner Andy Murray. Sky have dropped their coverage of the event after 25 years but Eurosport took up the rights and plan to show 200 hours’ worth of action from Flushing Meadows over the next fortnight. It starts on Monday from 4pm (UK time), and ends on Sunday 11 September.
The what? It’s the season’s edgiest rebrand – the new name for the cup previously known as the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, LDV Vans Trophy, Auto Windscreens Shield, Autoglass Trophy, Leyland DAF Cup, Sherpa Van Trophy and the mid-80s classic the Freight Rover Trophy. It starts on Tuesday, and people aren’t happy.
Why the discontent? It all used to be so simple: League One and Two teams aiming for a trip to Wembley. Barnsley won it last season, beating Oxford United. Fans liked it, so organisers decided to change it. Starting this season, it’s a group-stage tournament, with Premier League academy sides invited to take part – sold by the Football League as an effort to “rejuvenate this competition and assist the development of the very best young players in the country”.
So how’s that gone down, then? Not so well. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Spurs all declined the invitations; fans of lower-league clubs called the format “farcical” and plan to boycott it; and the regionalised draw system turned up some unlikely new local derbies due to teams being classified as “northern” or “southern” by division. Among the highlights: Cheltenham, in the northern section, face a 340-mile round trip to Blackpool, while Coventry, 50 miles north of Cheltenham, kick off in the southern section against traditional local rivals West Ham under-23s on Tuesday. It’s the start of the long road to the 2 April Wembley final – most likely between two sets of under-23s.
And “Checkatrade”? A trades vetting website – in keeping, at least, with the cup’s long paint and vans and windscreens heritage. The League – itself now rebranded “the EFL” – say there are “strong synergies” between their corporate identities.
That’s good to know. So what’s the official line? Everyone will grow to love it, reckons EFL chief executive Shaun Harvey. “Innovation is never easy. But we’re taking decisions we feel are in the best interest of our clubs and the game.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/27/transfer-deadline-day-rio-olympics-us-open-tennis
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| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7ad9e9608b5b51d1b2cd9ff6d10b23dd5d22c68be625eb7fd463765541f68329.json
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[
"Guardian Readers",
"Sarah Marsh"
] | 2016-08-26T13:23:00 | null | 2016-08-18T16:25:23 |
It’s supposed to be the happiest day of your life, but sometimes it can take an unexpected turn for the disastrous. Our readers share their experiences
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'I hated my dress and my husband was late': when a wedding day goes wrong
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www.theguardian.com
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Getting married is supposed to be one of the best days of your life – but what if it’s not? This week, the 2015 Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain described her wedding as one of the worst days of her life. “You are literally on show and it’s something I was always really uncomfortable with,” she said.
A wedding day can become a disaster for other reasons too, from extreme nerves to the venue falling through. We asked for your stories of nuptial horrors. Here, six people tell of everything from a death to rowdy guests.
‘I hated my dress, my hair and the fact that my husband arrived late’ – Annie, 65, East Midlands
My husband’s family are Catholic and insisted that we wed in a very unattractive church in my hometown. I actually wanted to have a register office wedding followed by a few drinks in a pub, but I was out-voted. We had very little money and although my parents grudgingly coughed up for the reception we had to pay for everything else. My mother-in-law-to-be was constantly adding further expenses – flowers, organs, choirs. Being young and stupid we allowed this.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We wed in a very unattractive church in my hometown. I actually wanted to have a register office wedding but got outvoted.’ Photograph: Alamy
In the end, I hated the day: I hated my dress and hair, and the fact that my husband and his family arrived late at the church – which meant that I had to wait outside in the freezing cold while our guests became increasingly impatient inside. I hated the embarrassment of having to be the centre of attention and the fact that I dismally failed to live up to anyone’s idea of a blushing bride, a sentiment echoed by two older women standing outside the church who asked me when the bride was arriving.
We spent our wedding night in a local hotel in a room with single beds Annie
My husband was equally miserable and we both felt that the money could have been better used to fund a deposit on a house. We spent our wedding night in a local hotel in a room with single beds. I remember spending a lot of time in there sicking up the wedding breakfast through a combination of nerves, exhaustion and the large scotch my father pressed on me before we left for the church. It was such a disastrous day that we have never felt inclined to celebrate any wedding anniversary since, even though we have now been married for 45 years.
‘I had to grin and bear it but was livid’ – Mark, London
It was my now-wife’s dream to have our reception in an exquisite location, with a private garden for kids to play in. So we booked a venue in London and it rained heavily during the church ceremony, but the sun came out during the reception. However, the manager of the venue decided to lock all the doors and would not allow any of the guests access to the garden. I tried to appeal to her, but she would not come out of her office to speak to me. I got very frustrated and angry – not what you want during your wedding reception. Eventually she came down and said it was for health and safety reasons, so guests would not slip and get their clothes dirty.
My wife and I were very upset – one of the main reasons for having our reception there was the garden, and no one told us they could lock all the doors if they chose.
I would have made a scene if all our friends and family had not been there, but I had to grin and bear it. I am still angry about how it ruined our wedding reception. We console ourselves saying that the rest of the day was great.
‘I had to go and lie down during the dinner, and couldn’t eat a thing’ – Amy, 35, Wiltshire
I used to be an events manager. I have never had so much go wrong with planning before: the dress arrived late, the shoes I ordered had to be returned, the marquee company mis-measured the tables so I had to change the table plan last-minute. The list of problems was neverending.
The day itself was beautiful, but we were both shattered and struggled with being the centre of attention. Both of us are quite shy. Neither of us had slept properly for weeks. I felt on edge for the rest of the day, worrying about everyone else. I wish someone had asked me if I was all right – all I needed was some reassurance that everyone else was enjoying themselves.
The day itself was beautiful, but we were both shattered and struggled with being the centre of attention Amy
I had to go and lie down during the dinner, and couldn’t eat anything. Looking back I can’t believe how much we had to put up with and resolve in such a short space of time. I wish we could get married again. I’d enjoy it so much more and be less nervous about being the centre of attention.
‘I was having wedding-day related anxiety dreams in the run-up’ – Catherine, 37, south-east
The run-up was the worst bit. I’d become so freaked out, I was having anxiety dreams: walking down the aisle to find my husband-to-be waiting for me without a head, giant rats in my underground cave ceremony, that sort of thing. This was compounded by not being able to eat for the final month because of nerves.
On the day itself, it pissed it down, the hotel “lost” loads of the booze we’d supplied for the evening bit, and the DJ was really grumpy. By the time I went to bed that evening, I was crying because my new husband had gone to the bar with his friends as he wasn’t “ready for bed”. My tears continued the next morning when I said goodbye to all my friends and family sobbing. After it was all over, I felt horrified that I had been sucked into such an embarrassing, narcissistic load of nonsense.
‘A relative died on my wedding day’ – Chloe, 57
My husband and I were 23 when we got married. We had the wedding in my hometown in Wales and invited all our friends and then our parents invited all the family. Among them was an elderly uncle of my husband who had been poorly but came. He was in the church for the wedding and during the line to meet and greet, complained of feeling tired so his daughter took him to sit on a park bench where he promptly died as he sat there. Luckily she had the presence of mind to put his hat on his head and just hold his hand while the crowd went by. We didn’t really know anything about it as half the family were doctors who knew what to do. All the family were brilliant and kept saying how he would have wanted to go like that, after having been to church and surrounded by the family.
‘I was totally pissed before the nuptials had even begun’ – Tanya, 37, Ireland
Where do I start? My mother tried to convince me not to get married in the middle of winter, but I said no – how bad does winter really ever get in Ireland? The answer: historically bad. Christmas 2010 has become synonymous with cancelled flights, frozen pipes and no drinking water. Amazingly, all of our guests made it to the day, though evening guests cut their losses and stayed at home.
The morning of the wedding, my hairdresser arrived early. “Them roads are shocking, you better ring and warn your guests before someone’s killed on that ice,” was her opening greeting. That didn’t help my nerves and so I started on the bubbly, while texting every single friend with road safety measures. I cried a bit. I drank some more. The photographers arrived and remarked that they thought the groom would be there by now but couldn’t find him. I became convinced he’d been killed. More tears ensued, and I downed a third glass. The bridesmaid was dispatched to locate the future husband and on coming back with good tidings I guzzled more to celebrate. Result? Totally drunk before the nuptials had even begun.
Now, one would imagine that that was sufficient trauma for one day. But alas, we had chosen a multipurpose venue for our special day. In the function room next to ours was wedding number two, a rowdy and animated bunch. That would have been fine, if the rooms hadn’t been separated by a partition and we weren’t sharing the same bathroom facilities. These guests were stashing their Smirnoff behind the cisterns in the loo, and any attempt to use the toilet by our guests was deemed as an intrusion.
The redeeming parts of the day were the service itself, which, despite my being rather drunk was very moving and special. I did keep looking at my husband and thinking, “I am so thrilled and lucky to be marrying you.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/18/when-a-wedding-day-goes-wrong-readers-experiences
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| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b11f5498dbf78353949e98637b660eaf49b39200cd4de8f8cf0a9d5001ad0fba.json
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[
"Gary Naylor"
] | 2016-08-30T10:52:41 | null | 2016-08-30T10:09:52 |
Jason Gillespie’s team know how to dig out a win; Sam Curran is showing remarkable talent for an 18-year-old; Essex move closer to Division One cricket
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County cricket talking points: Yorkshire beat Notts to keep pressure on Middlesex
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Ball one: Bresnan, Brooks and back-ups break Nottinghamshire
With leaders Middlesex having a week off, the counties bunched behind them had the opportunity to jostle for position as the run-in begins in earnest – easier said than done of course. At 11.00am on Tuesday, Yorkshire would have felt ideally placed to launch their endgame seeking the Division One hat-trick – North Marine Road: as well appointed as ever, their opponents: rock-bottom Nottinghamshire, the crowd: partisan. Within a couple of hours, the home side were 51-6 and cricket, again, showed that it was not in the mood to be taken for granted. But you don’t win consecutive pennants without knowing how to turn matches round and back-up keeper Andy Hodd and back-up spinner Azeem Rafiq counter-attacked effectively, posting 132 for the seventh wicket. That foothold became a platform when the seamers ran through Notts for 94 and they were at it again in the fourth innings, cleaning up the visitors for 146. Tim Bresnan had match figures of 8-51 (and 45 runs for once out) and Jack Brooks wasn’t far behind with 7-76 (and 48 runs for once out), the two old heads cool under pressure. When the leaves start to fall, “finding a way” becomes the most important skill in cricket – and few find a way as often as Jason Gillespie’s Yorkshire.
Ball two: Surrey’s lefties deliver with an eye on England
Sport picture of the day: Groenewald gives it a whirl Read more
County cricket’s form side met county cricket’s out-of-form side at the Oval – and the expected result duly arrived, as London sweltered. While all the pre-match talk centred on Haseeb Hameed, Lancashire’s teenage opener, his two wasted starts turned the spotlight on the home side’s two left arm seamers: Mark Footitt and Sam Curran. Since his selection for England’s touring party last winter, Footitt seems to have either been injured or easing his way back from injury, but his second innings 7-62 not only sent Surrey third in the table, but also provided a springboard for a late season run to possible selection again, though that seems unlikely given the pitches likely to be encountered in Bangladesh and India. It’s probably too soon for the cherubic Curran Jr, but his hard-hit 96 and four first-innings wickets lifted his season averages to 40 and 28 respectively – at 18 years of age, in Division One. It’s not “if” for England, it’s “when” for the super-talented manchild.
Ball three: Hampshire are closer to their objective than Somerset
Despite Roelof Van der Merwe’s match figures of 63–13–143–5 with the ball and an undefeated century with the bat backed up by Craig Overton’s pyrotechnics in his 138* at better than a run a ball from No9, Somerset ran out of time at Taunton, as Sean Ervine and Jimmy Adams made sure Hampshire secured the draw that lifted them 21 points clear of relegation with three games to play. The home side aren’t completely out of the race for the pennant – 22 points off Middlesex with four matches to play – but Somerset have been more handily placed than that over the years and have yet to win a Championship. That said, wouldn’t Marcus Trescothick be a popular winner if the dream does come true?
Ball four: the only win is Essex at Grace Road
Essex’s second consecutive win lifted them 24 points clear at the top of Division Two with three matches to play. They were still 170 behind with half of their first-innings wickets gone and Leicestershire no doubt felt well placed just before lunch on day two; 140 overs later, the match was over. Dan Lawrence (another impressive English teenager) registered his fourth County Championship century, his 154 at No6 backed up by half-centuries from Ryan ten Doeschate at No7 and James Foster at No8 (with Will Rhodes and Graham Napier at No9 and No10!) Jamie Porter bagged a second clutch of four wickets and the visitors travelled south to enjoy a day off and the prospect of Division One cricket in 2017.
Ball Five – DI Stevens solves the case of the missing runs
Kent’s win at Bristol is about the only thing ensuring that the Chelmsford champagne stays on ice, a full 24 points haul keeping them in touch as August turns to September. Kent enjoy a phalanx of all-rounders in the middle order and two came good in a stand of 258 for the fifth wicket. Keeper-batsman Sam Billings has already played white ball cricket for England and scores like 171 won’t do his international cause any harm, despite England’s glut of gung-ho glovemen. Even he was outscored by the old trouper Darren Stevens, who at 40 years of old, opened the bowling in both innings, took five wickets in his 39 overs and biffed 140 off 161 balls, for a first century of the season. Methinks that the old warhorse isn’t for the knackers yard yet – so give him another contract!
Celebrating Garry Sobers' 26th and final Test century, a thing of unalloyed beauty Read more
Ball six: Danny Briggs gets Sussex out of jail with vital win
Sussex won their second consecutive match in a low scoring thriller at Cardiff. After three innings had been concluded between 252 and 283, the visitors needed 233 to gain the 16 points reward for a win they needed to have any chance of an instant return to the top flight. That target looked a long way off when the seventh wicket fell still 77 runs short and the very sharp Timm van der Gugten having already won two LBW decisions and hit the stumps twice, fancied more. In came Danny Briggs, still only 25, but with plenty of experience, some for England, but very much a late order batsman and not even a bowler who bats. The tall spinner got the scoreboard moving, making 36, but leaving the crease with 22 still required. As keeper, Ben Brown, anchored one end, teenager George Garton calmly stroked 18 to get the away side over the line, eight down. Sussex will probably need to win at least three of their four remaining matches to gain promotion, but, as Worcestershire showed in chasing 401 to win after conceding an Adelaidesque 551 runs in the first innings of the match, when the win is all that matters, strange things can happen.
• This article appeared first on The 99.4 Cricket Blog
• Follow Gary Naylor on Twitter
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/99-94-cricket-blog/2016/aug/30/county-cricket-talking-points-yorkshire-nottinghamshire-middlesex
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| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/73ceec0bd20778ee11bd8f6e49b00225f25af896072fc452f22b8742018e4c19.json
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[
"Matthew Wheeland"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:23 | null | 2016-08-24T04:00:10 |
Companies such as Dell and Dow are working to define ‘net positive’ - where they put more into society than they take. Some suggest it’s self-serving rhetoric
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Can a company ever claim to be making a better world?
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When you walk the aisles of your favourite shop you are bombarded with labels attempting to explain why this product is so much better than those others. It can be overwhelming, and it’s neither a new problem nor one that’s getting better; there are currently at least 465 different eco-labels in use around the globe according to the EcoLabel Index.
Enter a potential new one: net positive. It’s a concept that has been around for a while, but a new project, backed by companies including Dell, Kingfisher and Dow Chemical, aims to boost its use and make it clearer to understand.
It has the potential to become a throwaway marketing term with little to no underlying meaning John Pflueger, Dell
It’s an opportunity for companies to demonstrate their positive social and environmental impact. However, the jury is still out on whether the majority of consumers will understand it.
While net positive is broadly understood to be a promise by business to “put more into society than we take out”, there is a fear that without some governance, it has the potential to become a throwaway marketing term with little to no underlying meaning, says John Pflueger, principal environmental strategist at Dell.
So, what exactly is net positive? At its core, it involves measuring a company’s impacts as a result of its operations and products. The positive impacts – anything from reduced greenhouse gas emissions due to fuel-efficient vehicles to the social benefits resulting from good supply chain practices – are the company’s handprint, or what a company adds to the world. A footprint is what it takes away.
For technology company Dell, which has been reporting its social and environmental impacts for more than a decade, net positive can be a way to encourage it to do more.
In 2013, Dell announced its aim to make its overall positive impacts 10 times greater than its negative impacts by 2020. It has attempted to do this with a net positive assessment of the impacts of its programme that helps employees work from home.
The immediate benefit of the scheme is to improve employees’ work-life balance. It also found a greenhouse-gas benefit, with the handprint of the scheme more than 200 times greater than its footprint, according to the company. It saves 1.15 metric tons of emissions per employee per year (for example by reducing the days they commute to an office, as well as reducing Dell’s need for office space and the costs and emissions that go with it). The emissions associated with implementing the programme (such as increased energy use in the data centres powering software to connect remote employees) are just 0.0057 metric tons of emissions per year.
A seven step guide to net positive Read more
Too complex for a label
Calculating this top-line result, however, required a level of expertise and effort that would be daunting to most companies. And it could be just as hard, if not impossible, to communicate such complexity on product packaging.
“You might not buy a product that says ‘this product is 5x net positive’ because it’s hard for a consumer to know what that means, but you might see a product that says ‘this product achieves XYZ, or this product is net positive because...’”, says David Korngold of US non-profit BSR.
Regardless of whether it appears on a label or not, net positive – at least by the definition being created by the project members – is expected to deepen an individual company’s sustainability efforts. “You can’t figure out your net positive impact in a vacuum,” says Korngold. “You have to figure out how your products and solutions are affecting other companies and consumers.”
Net positive could also reframe the way companies view their sustainability work. Josh Prigge, the director of regenerative development at Fetzer Vineyards, a major wine producer in California, explains the difference between traditional sustainability goals and a net positive mindset.
“If a company just says, ‘our big goal is to reduce greenhouse gases by 20%, or reduce water by 20%, or energy by 20%’ ... then you’re still 80% bad,” Prigge says. “I think the goal should be for everyone to be net positive and completely eliminate their negative impacts.”
Fetzer says communicating its net positive commitment to wine shoppers may never take the form of on-bottle labelling or messaging, but it is in its overall brand communication and how the company defines its impact.
In the meantime, all that’s left to be worked out in calculating net positive, is well just about everything, says Pflueger. Its partners in the new project will need to develop methodologies for specific areas like water and greenhouse gases as well as guidance for companies that want to set net positive goals. And because every company will need to address different social and environmental impacts to reach net positive, members will be casting a wide net in their approaches.
It’s this vague definition that is potentially problematic says Andrew Crane, director of the Centre for Business, Organisations and Society at Bath University: “The net positive idea is exciting because it challenges companies to think hard about their overall impact on society rather than just in terms of specific social responsibility initiatives. The challenge though will be to develop meaningful, auditable metrics that go beyond self-serving rhetoric. If the members are serious about doing that it could be game changing.”
Pflueger admits “there are far more questions now with regards to net positive than there are answers”. “But we if don’t start working on these, we’re not going to get anywhere. We don’t want to use the fact that we don’t fully understand this as an excuse for inaction.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/24/company-claim-better-world-net-positive-dell-dow
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| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/aa78200f54e24b5ef5022f810ed14b96d96d2093d036826073b0ceae2df1dae9.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-27T16:49:19 | null | 2016-08-27T16:33:16 |
Bomb disposal experts were called in as a precaution when the five men were arrested for alleged terrorism offences in Birmingham and Stoke on Friday
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West Midlands police get more time to question terrorist suspects
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Police who arrested five men over alleged terrorism offences have been granted extra time to question the suspects. West Midlands police said magistrates had given them an extension, so detectives can hold the five until 2 September without charge.
A police cordon was put up in Birmingham city centre for several hours on Friday as army bomb disposal units were called in as a precaution. Three of the men were arrested in the city and held on suspicion of commissioning, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism, according to West Midlands police.
Two, aged 18 and 24, were detained by counter-terrorism detectives at their homes, while another man, 28, was arrested in a different area of Birmingham. Another two men, aged 32 and 37, were held in Stoke-on-Trent. The force said that after one of the arrests an army bomb disposal team was called to the Lee Bank area of Birmingham as a precaution.
A spokesman said on Friday: “Police are searching a number of properties in the Stoke and Birmingham areas as part of the investigation. These searches are ongoing. The arrests were intelligence-led and part of an ongoing investigation.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/27/west-midlands-police-more-time-question-terrorist-suspects
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| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/18adbd71698b3af1a196a4487931aff6e85e03612fb94d50acf3d333cf6797e9.json
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[] | 2016-08-29T22:52:15 | null | 2016-08-29T21:17:06 |
Interior minister calls for more proactive approach to cracking down on racist and violent posts from users
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Germany says Facebook must do better about removing hateful content
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Facebook should be more proactive in removing racist and violent content from its sites, the German interior minister said on Monday after a visit to the company’s offices in Berlin.
“Facebook has an immensely important economic position and just like every other large enterprise it has a immensely important social responsibility,” Thomas de Maiziere said.
“Facebook should take down racist content or calls for violence from its pages on its own initiative even if it hasn’t yet received a complaint.”
In firing human editors, Facebook has lost the fight against fake news Read more
The German government has been critical of Facebook in the past. Political leaders and regulators have complained the world’s largest social network, with 1.6 billion monthly users, had been slow to respond to hate speech and anti-immigrant messages.
Last year Heiko Maas, the country’s justice minister, told Reuters that Facebook must abide by stricter German laws banning racist sentiment even if it might be allowed in the United States under freedom of speech.
De Maiziere said he recognized Facebook’s efforts to develop software that can better identify outlawed content and praised its efforts to fight child pornography. He said it was right to warn users in its terms against the dissemination of illegal content.
“But it’s up to the company to ensure those terms are upheld,” he said. “A company with a good reputation for innovation will have to earn a good reputation in this area.”
Eva-Maria Kirschsieper, Facebook’s head of public policy in Germany, told reporters during de Maiziere’s visit that the discussions between political leaders and companies in social media would continue.
Activists call for Facebook 'censorship' change after Korryn Gaines death Read more
“We see ourselves as part of German society and part of the German economy,” she said. “And we know that we have a major responsibility and we want to live up to this responsibility. We take this issue very seriously indeed.”
Mark Wallace, a former US ambassador to the United Nations who now heads the Counter Extremist Project (CEP) in New York, a non-profit group that maintains a database of information about extremist groups, said Facebook was a leader in the social media sector in combating extremism, but more work was needed.
“Of all the companies, Facebook has done the most, but they’re all just starting to recognize that the weaponization of social media platforms is not good business and not good for society,” Wallace told Reuters.
CEP is completing testing of a new software tool that will identify new images and videos published on social media sites by Islamic State and other extremist groups, and remove them instantly wherever they occur, much as already done with child pornography images.
Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came to Berlin to respond to the criticism. He said he had learned from Facebook’s experience in Germany that migrants were a group of people who also needed to be protected from hate speech online.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/29/facebook-germany-monitor-racist-violent-content
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| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/57fbc777e4b97a9246650008328f2fc87443b95780830cc035e03260ca2f8c52.json
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[
"Nicola Davis"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:45 | null | 2016-08-24T17:00:26 |
Thought to be at least 1.3 times mass of Earth, planet lies within ‘habitable’ zone of Proxima Centauri, raising hopes for life outside our solar system
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Discovery of potentially Earth-like planet Proxima b raises hopes for life
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The search for life outside our solar system has been brought to our cosmic doorstep with the discovery of an apparently rocky planet orbiting the nearest star to our sun.
Thought to be at least 1.3 times the mass of the Earth, the planet lies within the so-called “habitable zone” of the star Proxima Centauri, meaning that liquid water could potentially exist on the newly discovered world.
Proxima b will be our prime laboratory in the search for extraterrestrial life Read more
Named Proxima b, the new planet has sparked a flurry of excitement among astrophysicists, with the tantalising possibility that it might be similar in crucial respects to Earth.
“There is a reasonable expectation that this planet might be able to host life, yes,” said Guillem Anglada-Escudé, co-author of the research from Queen Mary, University of London.
Eamonn Kerins, an astrophysicist at Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, was among those enthusiastic about the discovery. “Finding out that the nearest star to the sun hosts not just a planet, not just an Earth-sized planet, but one which is in the right location that it could support life - and there are a lot of caveats there - really underscores that not only are planets very common in our galaxy, but potentially habitable planets are common,” he said.
Proxima b may be the closest of the thousands of exoplanets - which are planets orbiting stars outside our solar system - discovered to date, but at 4.2 light years away the prospect of a quick visit to find any Proximese aliens is still remote. Based on spacecraft today, a probe launched now would take around 70,000 years to reach the new planet.
Writing in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers describe how they discovered the planet after scrutinising data based on the light emitted by Proxima Centauri, collected using instruments at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
“What we basically do is measure how the star is moving,” said Anglada-Escudé. “If you have a planet around a star, the planet is also pulling the star a bit so you see the star is moving. It is going towards you and away from you, periodically.”
This movement affects the colour of light detected from the star - as it the star moves slightly towards us we see the light as being slightly bluer - as it moves away the light appears a little redder. The frequency of this motion relates to the duration of the planet’s orbit, and hence its distance from the star, while the magnitude of the motion provides information about the planet’s mass.
While analysis of data collected before 2016 hinted at the presence of a planet, it took a further intense round of data collection earlier this year before the discovery could be confirmed.
Taking 11.2 days to travel around Proxima Centauri, the planet orbits at just 5% of the distance separating the Earth and the sun. But, researchers say, the planet is still within the habitable zone of its star because Proxima Centauri is a type of red dwarf known as an M dwarf - a smaller, cooler, dimmer type of star than our yellow dwarf sun.
Whether the planet could harbour life, however, is matter of debate.
Red dwarfs are generally very active stars, emitting powerful solar flares, with Proxima b receiving greater doses of high-energy radiation than reaches Earth from our sun. “Because they tend to have a lot of these flares and things like that, it makes it very difficult for [planets] to keep an atmosphere - these flares just blow the atmosphere away,” said Don Pollacco, professor of astrophysics at the University of Warwick, who was not involved in the research. But, he adds, Proxima Centauri is only a moderately active red dwarf, potentially making its environment less hostile than other such stars. Whether the star’s activity when it was younger could have stripped Proxima b of an atmosphere remains to be discovered, while it is also unknown if the planet has a magnetic field which could potentially protect it from such radiation.
Proxima Centauri planet could tell us about alien life in the universe Read more
The planet has other characteristics that could affect its potential to host life.
The research reveals that if the planet’s temperature were down to its sun alone, its surface would be, on average, a chilly -40C. “It seems cold, but then if you look at the same numbers for Earth you would get minus 20, minus 30C,” says Anglada-Escudé. “What keeps Earth warm is basically that it has an atmosphere and an ocean,” he adds, pointing out that should the newly discovered world also boast an atmosphere, its temperature would likewise be higher.
And there’s more. It is very likely that the new world is tidally locked to Proxima Centauri (just as our own moon is to Earth) with only one side of the planet ever catching the star’s rays.
“If you are standing [on the side] looking at the star, you are quite warm,” said Pollacco. “If you are on the other side it is bloody cold - continual night.”
Anglada-Escudé is sanguine. If the planet has an atmosphere or an ocean, he says, the redistribution of heat could be possible. “Even if you have tidal lock, you have a lot of circulation - it is like jet streams on Earth.”
But Pollacco believes discussion about the habitability of the new planet is somewhat premature, “These observations tell you nothing about the planet itself, it is important to realise that,” he said, pointing out that there is no evidence that the planet has an atmosphere, or any water.
Anglada-Escudé admits that there is plenty to be unpicked about the new world. While its mass is thought to be at least 1.3 times that of the Earth, its size, and hence density, is unknown, meaning that scientists can only make an educated guess that it is likely to be rocky based on the types of exoplanets that have previously been detected around other small stars.
And there are other mysteries to solve. The planet’s location is also puzzling scientists, who say it is unlikely that the planet formed in its current location given that there would have been little planet-forming material available so close to the star. “What we suspect is that the planet forms somewhere else, or the raw materials, the dust or the rocks or the ice, condense somewhere else and then ended up there through some migration process,” said Anglada-Escudé. He points out that if the planet formed farther away from the star and migrated to its current position, it is likely to be a “water-world”, whereas if it formed in its current location from dust that migrated, it is likely to be very dry unless water was later delivered to the planet by a comet or other body.
While Pollacco describes the new discovery as symbolic, he believes the planet’s potential for hosting life could remain a mystery for many years to come, not least because the chances of seeing the planet pass in front of its star - an observation, known as a transit, that is crucial to unravelling the planet’s size and make-up - are low.
Anglada-Escudé is rather more optimistic. Even if a transit cannot be seen, he believes other techniques could shed light on the nature of the planet. “There are reasonable expectations that this planet can be detected with direct imaging within the next 10 years,” he said, adding that it might also be possible to design a space telescope to orbit around the Earth and look at the new world.
And with Proxima b just an interstellar stone’s throw away, he believes the new discovery could inspire a wave of creativity in designing approaches for probing the planet further.
“Just the discovery, the sense of exploration, of finding something so close, I think it is what makes [it] very exciting,” he said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/24/earth-like-planet-found-orbiting-our-suns-nearest-star-raises-hopes-for-life-proxima-b
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| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d1b0acc330302a2e5e3c8ff2730875131aa83dd97781c0ffe3b514f1c0760617.json
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[
"Ning Hui In Mozambique"
] | 2016-08-31T04:52:33 | null | 2016-08-31T04:00:19 |
The southern African country is losing millions in lost taxes from illegal logging, much of it destined for China
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Mozambique faces race against time to end illegal logging
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“We are cleaning the house now”, says Celso Correia. The young, smartly-dressed, minister for land, environment and rural development in Mozambique is talking about the corruption and illegal logging that has dogged the southern African country’s timber sector for more than a decade.
As recently as 2013, a remarkable 93% of of all the logging taking place in the country was happening illegally, according to a report from the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
As well as leading to unsustainable levels of deforestation, the export of illegally logged timber was also depriving the country of tens of millions of dollars a year in lost tax revenue.
The driving force behind this boom in illegal logging was China, the biggest importer of logs in the world. Chinese traders accounted for more than 90% of Mozambique’s timber exports in 2013, according to the environmental research organisation IIED. In 2014 Mozambican wood entering China surpassed $400m, up from $90m in 2009, according to the Africa Monitor (paywall).
Correia, who started in his job in the newly created environment department last year, acknowledges his country is a stark example of what happens when insatiable demand for logs, in this case from China, converges with weak law enforcement and corruption. His ambition is to change that.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Authorities in Mozambique checking for illegal logs. Photograph: Estacios Valoi
“We have seized more illegal wood in one year than Mozambique has since independence in 1992,” he says. “We are passing a new forestry law and a new conservation law.”
Correia and Mozambique’s long-term ambition is to develop a more sustainable timber market in the country, including developing a larger processing industry in the country rather than just exporting the logs. “We don’t mind people cutting trees. We need to have a sustainable forest and we need to have a market,” he says.
In Gile National Reserve, situated in Zambezia Province, such measures are desperately needed. A total of 35 logging licences created a huge circle of harvested land around the reserve boundary for the 2,980km squared of protected area. After years of logging in the country, the reserve is the last area where Pau Ferro, a highly sought-after wood, still exists in Mozambique.
Gile National Reserve attracts few tourists but an alarming number of illegal loggers, according to the warden Jose Dias. Since 2012, his team has captured a total of 58 trucks and 10 tractors packed with Pau Ferro from the reserve. He told me, “the majority of illegal acts are not detected”.
Dias said the looting amounted to organised crime and involved a network of government officials, Chinese buyers, communities and even staff from inside the reserve.
The government has responded to the issue by banning the cutting of Pau Ferro for five years. But the ban means little to Jorge Bing, a major timber dealer in Zambezia province. “When villagers bring you the best wood on the market, ” he told me, “why would you say no to it?”
The other ambition: to create a domestic processing market for timber in Mozambique, is not new. The government issued a partial export ban of so-called first class wood species in high demand from China, including Pau Ferro, in 2002 [pdf]. In late 2015, the Mozambique government then decided to expand the ban to all raw timber logs for two years.
The ban was meant to create added value in Mozambique, by encouraging the processing of wood into planks before they are exported to China, but it does not appear to be working. “The domestic processing sector does not have the capacity to absorb the logs,” says Anne Terheggen, a sustainable trade specialist from Centre for International Forestry Research.
Correia says he hopes to entice more responsible Chinese companies to Mozambique. “When they decide to come, they will be the ones who solve our problems.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Authorities measuring seized illegal logs in the Natural Reserve Gille Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Deffontaines
One of these new, potentially more responsible approaches is being proposed by Zheng Fei, a 50-year-old Chinese timber businessman who’s been in Mozambique since 1998, and who has declared his intention to build a “Sino-Mozambique forest resource ecological zone”. He’s already received technical advice from WWF on the project.
In a 3km square piece of land located in Mocimboa da Praia, a port city in northern Mozambique, the ecological zone for now only has a sawmill and a wood-drying plant. According to Zheng’s plan, within five years, as well as ensuring a responsible attitude to timber resources, the site would host a complete production line for furniture and other wood products as he hopes to encourage other Chinese companies to set up in the zone.
China at the centre of 'illegal timber' trade Read more
This may be optimistic with China under pressure to source raw wood materials for its own manufacturing sector due to a lack of domestic supply, according to consulting firm International Wood Market Group. As a result, the demand for processing facilities in Mozambique is limited, which is part of the reason they are not being built. “China wants the timber as raw in form as possible. They don’t want to invest in manufacturing or invest in the country they’re operating in,” Jago Wadley, senior forest campaigner at the EIA, has said.
Zheng and Correia both say that the drop in demand from China for timber exports since 2014 has provided an opportunity for reform in Mozambique, but Correia estimates that it will take at least a decade to build a more sustainable logging industry in Mozambique.
With China’s timber and forest products imports expected to increase by 60m cubic meters by 2025, that may not be enough time to prevent a repeat of illegal and unsustainable logging. The EIA has warned that commercial timber stocks in the country will be largely depleted within the next 15 years.
“The Mozambique case is very complicated,” said WWF China forest campaigner Wang Lei. “Perhaps the current market will eliminate some poorly performing Chinese companies and hopefully bigger companies could behave better. But it’s unpredictable.”
Ning Hui recieved funding for this investigation from the Global Environment Institute
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https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/31/mozambique-illegal-logging-china-timber-deforestation
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/99fb12019f888dd9f433fe3c4e4519d2e614010cea622d0c7662f66a875a5134.json
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[
"Patrick Collinson"
] | 2016-08-26T13:29:15 | null | 2016-08-13T05:57:18 |
Every time an employer closes a final salary scheme and moves workers to a ‘defined contribution’ one, it shifts all the risk onto them
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The scandalous changes to company pension schemes
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A man in his 40s receives a pension projection that tells him his retirement income is going to collapse from the £38,000 he was expecting to £18,000. His company is having to find a sum equal to 45% of his salary to keep the pension scheme going, a crucifying amount for any employer, and the costs will keep on spiralling. It says it has no choice but to slash the scheme to ribbons.
This is the sort of dilemma facing the workers, and bosses, of Royal Mail and the Post Office. Strike action is looming – and quite rightly too, because the cuts are equivalent to someone losing £200,000 or even £300,000 over the course of their retirement.
Final-salary pension scheme shortfalls stubbornly high, advisers warn Read more
We are about to enter a new era of trench warfare over pensions. The early battles were easy victories for the employers. They decided to close their final-salary schemes to new entrants, but existing workers were protected and were able to carry on chalking up their entitlement to, let’s face it, rather generous retirement payouts. Nobody seemed to care too much about the millennials who were missing out on what their parents took for granted. Next came the more thorny shift from paying out pensions based on final salaries at age 60 or 65 to cheaper ones based on a “career average” salary. Again the employers won, but it was more bruising.
But now we’re moving into far more dangerous territory. The employers have begun to target existing workers, many in their 40s and 50s, who are in these career average schemes, saying: “You can keep what you’ve built up so far, but nothing beyond that.” In pensions terminology it’s called stopping “future accruals”; Royal Mail, the Post Office and Marks & Spencer are all considering it.
To these companies it’s a foregone conclusion. They can’t possibly afford 45% of salary as a pension contribution, or in M&S’s case 34%. The snarky retort is that they’ll always find the money to pay silly sums into their chief executive’s pension, but not for the workers.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest M&S is cutting its contributions from 34% to 12%. Photograph: Claire R Greenway/Getty Images
The more serious retort is why do employers think the only alternative to “gold-plated” final salary schemes is the lousy world of stock market-based schemes, where the company pays in a pittance and workers have no guarantees about their retirement income?
M&S’s move is shameful. It is telling longstanding workers that the cap on company contributions in its new scheme will be 12%. That’s an enormous cut from 34%. Is there no half-way house? Every time an employer closes a final salary scheme and places workers into a “defined contribution” scheme it shifts all the risk on to them. How about sharing some of the risk? How about saying: “We can’t afford to guarantee pensions of up to two-thirds of final salary – but we could underwrite a promise that your stock market-based scheme will at least give you, say, 25% of your final salary.” It would then be on the hook for some, but not all, of the risk.
At the moment we are letting employers get away with lots of gobbledegook when they say pension schemes are falling into unaffordable deficits. You may have noticed that the FTSE has soared since Brexit. Some schemes are almost in rude health. The problem is actuarial – gilt yields have slumped, which has the mathematical impact of deepening a scheme’s projected deficit. It doesn’t mean the scheme will actually be in deficit in 10 years’ time, but it does give employers a good excuse to shut them.
We’re between a rock and a hard place on pensions. Until now it is workers who have given up all their rights. It’s now time employers began to show a bit of flexibility – and rather a lot more long-term responsibility.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/aug/13/scandal-closure-company-pension-schemes
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| 2016-08-13T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8a6d863c931bc52be410822473240d1de003cd534a6b1f41a433014cf3c405f3.json
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[
"Mark Brown"
] | 2016-08-26T13:03:01 | null | 2016-08-24T17:57:58 |
Val Derbyshire says no one should be embarrassed to read much-derided books, arguing many are literature of protest
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbooks%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fmills-and-boon-romances-are-actually-feminist-texts-academic-says.json
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Mills & Boon romances are actually feminist texts, academic says
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They have been called patriarchal, formulaic and lightweight – and that’s the polite description. But an academic is making the case for Mills & Boon romances to be considered as feminist texts that are the literature of protest rather than mere escapism.
Val Derbyshire said the books should be read by women and men with pride rather than guilty embarrassment. “It is such a shame that they have been so vilified, and that people treat them as trash and the black sheep of the literary family,” she added. “There really is literary value in them, which is why I continue to read them.”
Derbyshire is to lead two events at Sheffield University’s Festival of the Mind next month, in which she will make the literary and feminist case for the thousands of books in Mills & Boon’s vast back catalogue.
Staff Nurses in Love by Hilda Pressley. Photograph: Mills and Boon
“They are definitely not anti-feminist,” she argued. “These are novels written primarily by women, for women – why would they set out to insult their target audience? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Instead, they are largely stories of feminist triumph, with the brooding male hero often forced to acknowledge his sexism and change his ways. “They foreground the female and they are stories about women and for women,” Derbyshire said.
Some commentators have criticised the books as having needy heroines, desperate for the love of a brutish man. Derbyshire, who has read hundreds of Mills & Boon novels, said: “I suspect people who have never read them would say that. There are an awful lot of people who think they know what is going on in a Mills & Boon by just looking at the covers.”
The novels also tackle important issues head-on, the academic said. For example, Time Fuse (1985), by Derbyshire’s favourite Mills & Boon author, the prolific Penny Jordan, tackles the subject of rape, exposing the shocking way it was dealt with by courts and how women were blamed.
This is the “literature of protest”, said Derbyshire, with Jordan addressing the issue in “the only way she knew – through her romantic novels”.
Confessions of a secret Mills & Boon junkie Read more
Another criticism of the books is that they are formulaic. Again, Derbyshire said that people need to read them. “Penny Jordan wrote 187 novels over three-and-a-half decades. She couldn’t have remained so enduringly popular if she was churning out the same things. She was innovating all the time.”
Derbyshire was 14 when she read her first Mills & Boon, Escape from Desire (1982) by Jordan. “I asked my sister a difficult question on the facts of life and she said ‘read this’,” the academic said. “It raised more questions than it answered, I’ve got to be honest, but it was just so much fun I’ve been hooked ever since.”
Derbyshire is a doctoral researcher at Sheffield, studying the works of the 18th-century Romantic poet and novelist, Charlotte Turner Smith, a writer who also used romantic fiction as the literature of protest.
Mills & Boon was created in 1908 by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon. Beginning as a general publisher, it made romance its principal concern in the 1930s and has gone on to publish thousands of easy-reading novels with titles such as Staff Nurses in Love, Tethered Liberty, Italian Invader and The Trouble with Trent.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Dark Stranger by Sara Seale. Photograph: Mills and Boon
Derbyshire, a married mother of two sons, said she always reached for a Mills & Boon if she was fed up. “They always cheer me up, they are always an enormous amount of fun and they are always much more intelligent than you think they will be. There’s always something to discover in them.”
She believes historians should also read the books because they are so of their time, capturing contemporary anxieties and societal and fashion trends that are often forgotten. Anyone studying the social history of the late 70s, for example, could do worse than read Roberta Leigh’s Man Without a Heart, Derbyshire said – a book rich with romance and developments in the British car industry.
More than anything, Derbyshire urged readers not to feel ashamed. “There is a huge amount of snobbery,” she said. “It exists not just in academia and literature circles but generally. Some people do not feel comfortable sitting on a bus reading a Mills & Boon and that is a shame. If you have never read one, how can you know?”
• Val Derbyshire’s event, Why read Harlequin Mills & Boon romances?, takes place at Sheffield University’s Festival of the Mind on 17 and 22 September
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/24/mills-and-boon-romances-are-actually-feminist-texts-academic-says
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| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/81a74a4f02659ca5fa7ba3931614798e94bb2db29ab465d6b2bb35797195dfb1.json
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[
"Shawn Micallef"
] | 2016-08-31T12:53:00 | null | 2016-08-31T11:08:23 |
In an era when people are flooding to cities in record numbers, more people are looking to find ‘home’ in places where they didn’t grow up. So how do you know when you’ve made it?
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How I found 'my Toronto thing': when does a city become home?
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Two years after I moved to Toronto, I crossed the intersection of Bloor Street and Bathurst Street, as I had done many dozens of times before, and slid the sole of my shoe across a manhole that had been worn smooth by decades of cars, snow ploughs and shoes. I experienced a moment of satisfying grace: it occurred to me, mid-foot-drag, on that random snowy evening, that I had done this before – that it was a habit. I had a Toronto thing, my Toronto thing, a secret in the middle of a busy intersection.
“Home” is where you know the intimate details intimately: where the stairs or floorboards creek, or how to get around your apartment when the lights are off without bumping into anything. It’s a deep, almost subconscious familiarity with place that makes us feel comfortable and safe, even if we don’t think about it too much. But the feeling takes a while to trickle out into the streets of a new city.
I looked for signs, like the manhole cover, that suggested I was part of the place I had moved to
In this era of unprecedented urban migration and mobility, more people are looking to find home in places they didn’t grow up. Learning the streets and the short cuts of a new city is the easy part, though; the social part of feeling home is trickier. In London it might be bumping into a person you know on the street, thereby evaporating some of the anonymity of the big city. In Oslo it might mean getting a coveted invite to a cottage in one of the lake districts north of the city. Of course, in an unequal world, accessing power and playing a part charting the city’s future is the most elusive “home” feeling of all: only very few folks get to choose the city’s wallpaper and carpet.
My move 400km from Windsor to Toronto was not, in global terms, a difficult migration. I already had some friends and acquaintances waiting – and yet I still found the absence of feeling at home unsettling. So I looked for signs, like the manhole cover, that suggested I was part of the place I had moved to – no longer just floating along with the current and bumping into things, but instead bumping back, as if I were rooted to the ground.
When did your new city start feeling like home? Share your story Read more
Then, five years into my Toronto life, a friend’s grandmother in hospital developed a sudden heart condition. My friend was worried, so I made my first visit to a Toronto hospital to visit Granny, as we all called her. Thankfully, it was a brief illness; I later returned to the same hospital when that same friend gave birth to her first child. It had become a familiar place – and, I realised, a sign that I was developing roots here, getting tangled up with other people. The art deco facade of Toronto East General became an intimate landmark. For now, it is a place with good memories, though that will no doubt change – which is precisely how I know my city is home.
When did you know your new city was home? Share your moments with us using this form and a selection will be published at Guardian Cities
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/31/how-i-found-my-toronto-thing-when-does-a-city-become-home
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e337c79c7ed877cd8103ec266db41c8767d5c72fc8d1109bfd588968dee140f5.json
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[
"Martin Farrer"
] | 2016-08-31T06:55:31 | null | 2016-08-31T03:01:31 |
S&P chief economist Paul Sheard says nation needs to guard against believing prices will continue to rise
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fstandard-poors-economist-warns-australian-house-prices-cant-be-trusted.json
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Standard & Poor's economist warns Australian house prices can't be trusted
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Australians must beware of thinking that house prices will never fall because values have risen so consistently over the years, a leading global economist has warned.
Although the Australian housing market was not yet in bubble territory, Paul Sheard, chief economist at the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, said on Wednesday that the country had to guard against believing that prices would continue to rise.
Sheard, an Australian-born economist who is an expert in the asset price bubble seen by Japan in the late 1980s, told the annual AB+F Breakfast with the Economists event in Sydney: “I don’t get the impression that we have a housing bubble here yet ... but I would say that Australia must be beware of the narrative that because prices have never fallen they can never fall again.”
'Sexy but overpriced': Kim Kardashian’s real-estate agent snubs Sydney property market Read more
Referring to the 34% fall in house prices in the US after the global financial crisis, Sheard added: “It can happen and when it does it is difficult to reverse.”
However, the Australian-based economists on the panel were optimistic about house prices because of “strong fundamentals” such as low interest rates, low unemployment and sufficient population growth to support demand.
To cause a housing crash “history tells us that unemployment has to rise substantially or rates increase substantially”, said Su-Lin Ong, the managing director and chief Australian economist at RBC Capital Markets. Neither of those events were likely to happen, she said.
Overall the economy was performing well, the panel said, despite noting that consumer and business concern about the possibility of recession – so-called “dread risk” – was high and flew in the face of reasons to be positive about growth.
Shane Oliver, the chief economist at AMP, said people who had been predicting that Australia would suffer an “inevitable recession” after the mining boom had been proved wrong and were now trying to say the same thing about a housing crash.
But he said that the Australian economy had been surprisingly resilient and flexible. The post-mining boom drag was bottoming out and sectors such as education and tourism were benefiting from the lower dollar.
“It’s very unlikely that we’ll have a recession,” he said.
Westpac’s chief economist, Bill Evans, agreed, saying that different regions were seeing different rates of growth but “we shouldn’t be too negative”. He noted that while the $200bn liquid natural gas development boom was tailing off, it was being offset by $90bn of state infrastructure spending.
Ong said the weakness in wage growth was a problem for Australia and meant that the headline growth in GDP of 3.1% was “misleading”.
“Income weakness is a soft underbelly in the economy and is why the RBA had to cut rates,” she said. “The income story is exceptionally weak but the odds of a recession are low.”
The panel were broadly agreed, however, on the need for more constructive policy making by the federal government.
Sheard, who is based in the US, noted that the Coalition’s ability to drive through reforms and “budget repair” were increasingly reminiscent of the political gridlock in Washington DC, which meant it would be difficult for presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton to make policy changes stick if she won in November.
Governments had failed to invest in infrastructure projects during the mining boom because the benefits took longer to see and were therefore less attractive for politicians to pursue, Evans said.
He said the federal government had to try to reduce “bad debt” related to recurrent expenditure but also needed to increase “good debt” to fund capital spending.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/31/standard-poors-economist-warns-australian-house-prices-cant-be-trusted
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
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[
"Alan Pickup"
] | 2016-08-28T20:51:58 | null | 2016-08-28T20:30:42 |
Starwatch What to look out for during the month of the equinox, with a solar eclipse over Africa, followed by a lunar eclipse
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The September night sky
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September night sky Graphic: Paddy Allen
The month of our autumnal equinox opens with an annular or “ring” solar eclipse on 1 September which is visible along a path that sweeps across Southern Central Africa from Gabon to Madagascar. The surrounding area, where a partial solar eclipse is seen, does not extend as far north as Europe.
A second eclipse occurs on the 16th when the Moon passes through the southern edge of the Earth’s shadow. The resulting penumbral lunar eclipse is already underway as the Harvest Moon rises in the E for western Europe on that evening.
The Moon first touches the shadow at 17:55 BST while still below Britain’s horizon and reaches greatest eclipse at 19:54, 30 minutes or so after moonrise. All but the southern 9% of the lunar disc then lies within the penumbra, but little darkening may be obvious except near its upper edge, closest to the shadow’s dark central umbra. The Moon exits the penumbra at 21:54.
Jupiter remains hidden in the Sun’s glare, but Venus is brilliant in the evening twilight, albeit only 6° high in the W at sunset at present, and no higher in the SW by month’s end.
Easier to spy is the triangle of Mars, Saturn and the star Antares in Scorpius which stands low in the SSW as darkness falls and after Venus sets.
Starwatch: Teapot in Sagittarius Read more
Antares, the dimmest of the three, stands below Saturn while Mars, the brightest, lies to their E (left) and speeds 18° away during the month to approach the lid of the Teapot of Sagittarius, just setting in the SW at our map times. Mars dims from mag -0.3 to 0.1 while Saturn is mag 0.5.
The slender young Moon lies 3° above-left of Venus on the 3rd, and is close to first quarter when it stands a similar distance above-right of Saturn on the 8th and 7° above Mars on the 9th.
Mercury emerges from the Sun’s far side to begin its best morning apparition of 2016 late in the month. Between the 24th to 30th, it brightens from mag 0.5 to -0.6 and rises more than 95 minutes before the Sun to stand 8° or more above the E horizon forty minutes before sunrise. Catch it 1.9° to the left of the very slim earthlit Moon on the 29th.
September diary
1st 10h New moon and annular solar eclipse
2nd 18h Neptune at opposition
3rd 12h Moon 1.1° N of Venus
8th 22h Moon 4° N of Saturn
9th 13h First quarter
9th 15h Moon 8° N of Mars
13th 01h Mercury in inferior conjunction
16th 20h Full moon and penumbral lunar eclipse
22nd 00h Moon 0.2° N of Aldebaran; 15:21 Autumnal equinox
23rd 11h Last quarter
26th 08h Jupiter in conjunction with Sun
28th 20h Mercury furthest W of Sun (18°)
29th 12h Moon 0.7° S of Mercury
* Times are BST
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/28/september-night-sky-eclipse-sun-moon-planets-constellations-starwatch
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| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5902930f24a1a3eeecfd2fc49450e8a0e06ea49cd0022fbce2334a2f09ceea50.json
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[
"Oliver Milman"
] | 2016-08-26T20:57:03 | null | 2016-02-23T20:17:16 |
Climate Central sounds ‘warning bells’ of human impact on rising sea levels with report that coastal flooding days have more than doubled in US since 1980s
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Ffeb%2F23%2Fus-coastal-cities-flooding-climate-change-sea-level-study.json
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Increased flooding in US coastal cities caused by climate change, study says
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www.theguardian.com
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Rising sea levels are putting increasing pressure on US coastal cities, with a new analysis showing that human-driven climate change is to blame for three-quarters of the coastal flooding events over the past decade.
The Climate Central research shows that coastal flooding days have more than doubled in the US since the 1980s, the primary drivers of which have been the warming of the atmosphere and oceans. The findings are based on a separate study, released on Monday, that found the Earth’s seas are rising at a pace unseen in the past 2,800 years.
Between 2005 and 2014, a gauge at Kings Point in New York showed there were 157 days where the water reached above an established “nuisance” level – double the total of the previous decade. A total of 96 of these flooding events are attributed to changes in the climate.
In Washington DC, a total of 522 human-induced flooding days have occurred since 1950, with just 336 deemed to have occurred regardless of the changes in our climate. In San Francisco, the number of human-caused flooding events is almost three times above the unaltered trend while Charleston in South Carolina endured 219 flooding days between 2005 and 2014, with the vast majority climate change-driven.
The analysis compares the latest yearly estimates for human-caused global sea level rise with hourly water level records at 27 tide gauges around the US, to see the influence of climate change on nuisance flooding. The world’s oceans are estimated to have risen by an average of six inches compared with the 19th century, spurred by melting land ice and the thermal expansion of seawater.
The results show that flooding events are being severely exacerbated by climate change, primarily in the upping of high tide marks. With even just a small increase in the high tide level, flooding can inundate areas, resulting in roads being cut off or houses and businesses becoming swamped.
Across all the tidal gauges, climate change was responsible for three-quarters of these flooding events over the past decade. The US’s east coast is experiencing sea level increases above the global average, possibly due to a change in the Gulf stream that is causing warmer water to pile up along the Atlantic seaboard.
“This human fingerprint on flooding is already interfering with people’s lives and local economies, as well as degrading local infrastructure,” said Dr Ben Strauss, who led the analysis. “We aren’t talking about buildings getting knocked over, but there are real effects to people’s lives.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sea level rise by century. Photograph: Climate Central
“There has been a sharp spike in flood rates over the past few decades, driven by us. This is only going to continue to accelerate and we will see more dramatic impacts in the coming decades. We can take adaptive measures but eventually a lot of land will be submerged. These flooding events are the warning bells.”
Barrier islands, which are long offshore deposits of sediment or sand found in places such as New Jersey and North Carolina, will bear the brunt of the continued sea level increases. Miami Beach, which is re-engineering its flood controls to deal with regular inundations, is considered particularly vulnerable.
“In the long run some places will have to be abandoned, but in the short term it’s not clear,” said Strauss. “It will all depend on how we plan. The better we plan for this, the better our chances will be.”
The study released on Monday, compiled by an international team of scientists, found that if greenhouse gas pollution continues at its current pace, the sea level will rise by a further 57cm to 131cm. If countries fulfil the treaty agreed upon last year in Paris and limit further warming to another 2C, sea level rise would be in the 28 to 56cm range.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/23/us-coastal-cities-flooding-climate-change-sea-level-study
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en
| 2016-02-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5d402fa166ecce0244a0265f35dcfe9e17f0cd8a3ef59f80446856c3289e6f0c.json
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[
"Dr Dave Hone"
] | 2016-08-31T10:59:37 | null | 2016-08-31T10:15:53 |
Researchers from the Burke Museum in Washington have found a new Tyrannosaurus rex in Montana, but this is less rare than you might think
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fscience%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fnew-tyrannosaurus-rex-skeleton-discovered-in-usa-tufts-love-rex.json
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New Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton latest in a flurry of finds
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www.theguardian.com
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A newly discovered Tyrannosaurus rex skull and partial skeleton have been unearthed in Montana by a team from the Burke Museum, Washington. The skull is being described as mostly complete and at least some of the skeleton has been excavated, though more remains in the ground and has yet to be uncovered. In addition to the skull (which includes the lower jaws), some of the ribs, vertebrae, and the hips have been found so there is likely much more to come as the work continues.
As with many Tyrannosaurus skeletons, this one has already acquired a nickname and has become known as the “Tufts-Love rex” after the discoverers of the specimen, Jason Love and Luke Tufts. It looks set to be an impressive skeleton and although it is likely to be some time before the material can be prepared for research and display, the nature of the material recovered so far suggests that it is in superb condition.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Tyrannosaurus tooth is exposed during excavations in Montana by the Burke Museum of Washington Photograph: Tom Wolken
The new specimen is from the famous Hell Creek Formation of Montana that has yielded animals such as Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Anzu and numerous specimens of Tyrannosaurus. The specimen is dated to 66.3 million years ago which makes it a relatively old T. rex - the last of these animals were still around nearly a million years later when the mass extinction hit. Tyrannosaurus is known from a variety of locations in the west of the US and Canada with some isolated teeth and bones from Mexico also suggested to belong to this genus hinting at a large north-south range.
Although palaeontologists are naturally intrigued to see the new specimen and the potential for research it might bring, this discovery is not such a rare event as might be supposed. Dinosaur fossils are of course rare generally, but we actually have a good number of Tyrannosaurus specimens in public collections (and there are a fair few more in private hands as well). Larger dinosaurs tend to have better fossil records (they are simply easier to find) and more recent animals tend to produce more specimens (they have had less time to be lost to various geological processes) and so although large carnivores are rare, it’s perhaps not a big surprise that we have quite a few good rex specimens.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Tyrannosaurus rex is unpacked in Leiden
ready to go on display in early September. Photograph: Marten van Dijl/EPA
If anything, the Burke find is the latest in a little flurry of Tyrannosaurus specimens coming to the fore. Another Montana specimen is due to go on display shortly in Leiden in the Netherlands and one also recently went on display in Berlin late last year. Not only that, but at least one more tyrannosaur (a Tarbosaurus) has recently been repatriated to Mongolia after it was confiscated in the US following its illegal export.
Clearly it’s a good time for tyrannosaurs and indeed tyrannosaur specialists. Tyrannosaurus is one of the best known carnivorous dinosaurs given the amount of material, and has actually become something of a model organism for researchers, though more data is always welcome. As palaeontologist Dr Tom Holtz of the University of Maryland says “We can’t do biology (whether on a living species or an extinct one) on single specimens, or at least we can’t do it effectively. After all, the word “data” is plural, so we need multiple specimens to really grasp the life and habits of a species.”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The skull of the Tyrannosaurus rex known as Tristan on display in Berlin Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Still, the Mongolian specimen is just one example of specimens that have eluded researchers and the public and thus remains inaccessible. Several tyrannosaur fossils have recently come up for auction but have failed to find buyers (with museums or other private individuals) and there are plenty more that are known to be in private hands. Thus although tyrannosaurs are relatively well known compared to most dinosaurs, researchers are inevitably frustrated that a third or more of the known specimens cannot be studied. That makes specimens like the Burke discovery important as it can begin to fill in further gaps in our knowledge and of course potentially present us with new insights. We await with bated breath.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/31/new-tyrannosaurus-rex-skeleton-discovered-in-usa-tufts-love-rex
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ab6033efead9dcb42cefbbb31be3260376294b7e5271cd025b6cecaa2cd3a65b.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:50:35 | null | 2016-08-26T17:07:35 |
Brief letters: Train toilets | NHS | Beach wear | Post Office | Dockside Dandies | Folk | Brave wrens
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fno-sign-of-nudity-or-swastika-t-shirts.json
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No sign of nudity or swastika T-shirts
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www.theguardian.com
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Owen Jones may well not relish having to sit “in the floor area next to the toilet” on a train (Britain’s railways are a disgrace, 25 August), but on Virgin East Coast, which boasts absurdly of “pimping” journeys, the toilets are often out of order, something extremely rare before Virgin/Stagecoach won the franchise.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
• We can’t find £20bn (Report, 26 August) to balance the NHS books but we can find £200bn-plus to build and run another fleet of nuclear weapons. Something bonkers going on?
Bruce Kent
Vice-president, CND
• Re Protesters bring the battle (plus sandy beach) to London (26 August): I didn’t notice anyone naked or wearing a swastika-emblazoned T-shirt in the photo of the “wear what you want” beach party. Was there a reason for that?
John Warburton
Edinburgh
• Ann Hindley says (Letters, 24 August): “I really thought that the Post Office was there to provide a public service.” It was. It isn’t.
Peter Empringham
Bristol
• Your article Arresting looks (G2, August) uses a photograph captioned “a group of Teddy Boys, 1962”. This would have horrified the four young fishermen featured. With their Norfolk-style pleated jackets and in some cases 24in bell-bottom trousers, they belong to an early 1960s fashion craze that my research project called the Dockside Dandies of Lowestoft. These young men were unique to our town.
Peter Wylie
London
• I was pleased to see Imogen Tilden’s four-star rating for last weekend’s FolkEast festival and her descriptions of many fantastic performances (Review, 24 August). However, as she did not mention the brilliant Eliza Carthy and the Wayward Band, I can only assume she was not there for Friday’s amazing opening headline act.
Julia Rumsby
Little Melton, Norfolk
• Has anyone else noticed that wrens are more visible and courageous this year?
Jonathan Stanley
Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/26/no-sign-of-nudity-or-swastika-t-shirts
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| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4df0acc5baaf3dd75ec09d53e6e861336e95fa419d599d074ae619f3f6da6eff.json
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[
"Eleanor Ainge Roy"
] | 2016-08-30T06:52:15 | null | 2016-08-30T06:45:15 |
Stock worth NZ$1m spirited off property on the south island in an extraordinary theft that has surprised industry chiefs
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fbovine-bother-500-cows-stolen-new-zealand-biggest-cattle-farm-theft.json
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Bovine bother: 500 cows stolen in New Zealand's biggest cattle farm theft
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www.theguardian.com
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As many as 500 cows have been stolen from a New Zealand dairy farm in what is believed to be the largest cow theft in the country’s history.
Locals in the town of Ashburton on the south island said they had never before heard of cattle rustling on such a massive scale. And that’s in a nation that is home to some 10m cows, more than double the number of people.
The farmer who owns the herd posted a plea for information on Facebook on Monday (it was shared over 500 times), but is too embarrassed to talk about what happened to the media, according to friend Willy Leferink.
Leferink said the 500 milking cows could have been taken from the herd of 1,300 anytime between early July, when they were last counted, and late August.
How an ordinary New Zealand town became steampunk capital of the world Read more
Federated Farmers Dairy Industry chairperson Andrew Hoggard said the recent cow theft was the largest in “at least the last couple of hundred years”.
“My guess is that the 500 cows have been butchered somewhere for illegal meat sales. Most of the stock theft we see in New Zealand is for illegal meat. My concern is how and where they could possibly be butchering this many animals hygienically.”
Hoggard said farms around Ashburton had been targeted for stock theft last year and farmers increasingly felt police were not taking the crimes seriously.
“These cows [the 500 stolen] are worth NZ$1m. If a bank was robbed of that much there would be an uproar, but police don’t tend to see stock as cold, hard cash. But it is extremely serious. Theft on this scale will put huge pressure on their business and could potentially spell the end.”
Hoggard believed the cows were probably stolen in small trucks over many nights, and that possibly the infrastructure of the farm allowed them to be targeted, if their stock-loading facilities were a good distance from the residential quarters.
New Zealand Police declined to be interviewed about the theft.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/bovine-bother-500-cows-stolen-new-zealand-biggest-cattle-farm-theft
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4574d4364e85bf70e5877c69e8d61c15f3d230649883632ae95c365b81a422a5.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:28:25 | null | 2016-08-05T06:00:53 |
Are there any parts of the country that are in particular need of Tefl teachers?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F05%2Ftefl-teacher-job-uk.json
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My brother, a Tefl teacher, wants to return to the UK, but will need a job
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www.theguardian.com
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Twice a week we publish problems that will feature in a forthcoming Dear Jeremy advice column in the Saturday Guardian so that readers can offer their own advice and suggestions. We then print the best of your comments alongside Jeremy’s own insights. Here is the latest dilemma – what are your thoughts?
My brother has been a Tefl teacher for over a decade and is now the head of a Tefl school for adults in Australia. He is also an accomplished musician. After a recent trip back home with his wife and children they’ve decided to come back to the UK for a year or two – potentially longer. It is all rather dependent on employment, of course. That would probably be the first factor before location.
My brother is a dedicated and passionate teacher. I feel teachers as a whole in this country are not valued (I say this as a teacher myself) so I’d be interested in your view and those of Tefl teachers here. Also, are there any areas in the UK with a particular need for Tefl teachers?
Do you need advice on a work issue? For Jeremy’s and readers’ help, send a brief email to dear.jeremy@theguardian.com. Please note that he is unable to answer questions of a legal nature or to reply personally.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/05/tefl-teacher-job-uk
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en
| 2016-08-05T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/5fa1fca013dacd84038ad02e6758276cc94a96bad56ee7417cd049547e8feb2c.json
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[
"Paul Vallely"
] | 2016-08-31T08:53:10 | null | 2016-08-31T06:00:29 |
Canonising in haste is a big mistake. As time passes, a candidate’s weaknesses fade from public memory
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fmother-teresa-may-deserve-to-be-made-saint-but-why-now.json
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Mother Teresa may deserve to be made a saint. But why now?
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www.theguardian.com
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Mother Teresa once went to a cash-and-carry-in London. She filled a huge trolley with food for her hostel for homeless men in Waterloo. At the till she was told the total was more than £500. “It’s for the poor,” she said. “Very admirable,” said the store’s owner, repeating the total. “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “It’s for the poor.”
The shopkeeper told the nun that it was she who did not understand: she still had to pay. To the embarrassment of the English volunteer who had driven her to the shop, a standoff ensued, with the nun and the owner reiterating their positions over and over. Eventually the customer waiting behind with his own trolley told the shopkeeper: “It’s all right, I’ll pay for hers.” “See?” the wily nun said to the volunteer as they loaded his boot, “I told you God would provide.”
Mother Teresa to be made a saint in September Read more
Next week, on the 19th anniversary of her death, the Vatican will declare Mother Teresa to be Saint Teresa of Kolkata. It is a controversial canonisation.
To her admirers, the fruits of her holiness are evident, in her legacy of homes for the dying, homeless hostels, soup kitchens, leprosy clinics, HIV/Aids hospices, orphanages, schools, mobile dispensaries, mother and baby clinics, and centres for drug addicts and alcoholics in 133 countries. They are run by the 4,500 sisters in the Missionaries of Charity order, which she founded in 1950 to help those she called “the poorest of the poor”. Her work for the disadvantaged won her the Nobel peace prize. Malcolm Muggeridge, the man whose 1969 film set the Albanian nun on the road to becoming an international household name, called what she did, in the title of his 1971 book, Something Beautiful for God.
It is a far from universally accepted verdict. The most formidable of her critics was another British journalist, Christopher Hitchens, who in 1994 made a film called Hell’s Angel. It claimed that Mother Teresa treated the symptoms of poverty while ignoring the causes. She took money from distasteful political figures and rich fraudsters, and didn’t publish any accounts. Her Catholic opposition to abortion and contraception made her a religious fundamentalist. Her Kolkata home for the dying had poor medical standards. It all constituted, Hitchens railed, a “cult of death and suffering”.
Should all that disqualify her from being a saint? Hitchens’s critique is polemical – his 1995 book on her is framed with attacks on religion in general – but it airs concerns raised by an Indian doctor, Aroup Chatterjee. It has interviews with volunteers from the Kolkata Home for the Dying Destitutes, who spoke of needles reused without sterilising them, too few drips, and little pain control beyond aspirin. The Lancet visited in 1994, and said the home failed to distinguish between dying patients and those who could be cured.
All this stemmed, critics said, from Mother Teresa’s archaic religious attitude to suffering, which she saw as “beautiful” because it enabled poor people to “share in the passion of Christ” – though that did not prevent her from being treated in expensive medical facilities when she herself was ill.
It was not a view all the dying shared. When she told one man “you are suffering like Christ on the cross, so Jesus must be kissing you,” he replied: “Then please tell him to stop kissing me.” Mother Teresa was unrepentant, insisting that a home for the dying was not a hospital. “We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers,” she said: “We are religious.”
Certainly, Mother Teresa embraced an “ostentatious anti-materialism” that bordered on primitivism. In her San Francisco convent, she threw out all the mattresses, carpets, curtains and sofas, arguing that comfort corrupted. In the Bronx she refused to open a home for the poor when the local authorities insisted it had to have an elevator. In Rome she reprimanded her sisters for canning a glut of tomatoes, saying it revealed a lack of trust in God.
Yet many found that severity attractive. From the 60s onward she was repeatedly named in polls of the world’s most admired figures. Her compassion for the poor, rejection of consumerism and countercultural lifestyle resonated with the idealism of the times. She became part of the collective imagination as a casual synonym for goodness: “Who do you think you are? Mother Teresa?”
But the two sides of the ledger are not incompatible. In war-torn Beirut, ignoring warnings of extreme danger, she crossed the green line to rescue mentally and physically disabled children trapped in a hospital under fire. One Red Cross worker said: “She saw the problem, fell to her knees and prayed for a few seconds, and then she was rattling off a list of supplies she needed.” She was “like a cross between a military commander and Saint Francis”. Providence and planning to her were not alternatives.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Do small things with great love.’ Photograph: Joy Shaw/REUTERS
In Ethiopia, travelling with a minister from the Stalinist Mengistu regime, she made small talk. But, when the world’s press were present, she asked about a large building they had passed. It would make a good orphanage she said. It was a government ministry, he replied. But, said the crafty nun, hadn’t the ministry just moved out? Wasn’t it now empty? Well, yes, but … The minister blustered, but she countered his every response. Every question she asked, she already knew the answer to. She got her orphanage. She used the same techniques everywhere. When she first met the owner of the Daily Mirror, Robert Maxwell, she asked for a donation. When he offered a measly amount she declined it, and said she would go to the Sun instead. He paid up.
Her defenders said she was not cosying up to dodgy rich people, but working in the world as she found it. Bad money could be redeemed by putting it to good use. Her critics called her disingenuous, but she insisted some good was always to be found in every person and any situation. Jesus mixed with disreputable characters. A good act might be a redemptive doorway for a bad person.
This combination of personal faith, unremitting dedication, clarity of focus, PR savvy, organisational genius and constant travel made her, in the words of former UN secretary general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, “the most powerful woman in the world”.A saint is not a perfect person but a holy one.
One of the qualities the Catholic church requires to canonise someone is that they have “heroic virtue”. In the past the church allowed decades, even centuries, to pass before declaring someone a saint. With the passing of time a candidate’s foibles and weaknesses faded from common memory, leaving only their towering heroic virtue in the general mind. But, since Pope John Paul II, the fashion has been to accelerate the canonisation process. The Catholic church has made a serious mistake on this. Mother Teresa may merit sainthood, but that is a judgment it would be better to make a century from now.
Saints can be signs of contradiction. During the Ethiopian famine of 1985, I visited three refugee camps near Alomata. Grain was being distributed in the first, amid much shouting and pushing. Triage doctors in the second were sorting skeletal people into those in need of treatment, those not yet quite ill enough to warrant it, and those beyond help. The soundtrack to the process was the piercing cries of pleading mothers.
The third camp was run by Mother Teresa’s nuns, to care for those deemed too sick for treatment in the second camp. It was an oasis of peace and serenity, where nuns dropped water on to the cracked lips of the dying, or simply sat and held their hands. “Do small things with great love,” Mother Teresa had instructed them. That remains my deepest memory of her.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/31/mother-teresa-may-deserve-to-be-made-saint-but-why-now
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| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6ec8598bb4b49e91fbdbf04416349c9cb29ad0b6c68efe8435aea94a5dad4ddd.json
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[
"Rowan Moore"
] | 2016-08-28T00:49:34 | null | 2016-08-27T23:04:16 |
As the US celebrates the 100th anniversary of its national parks, we too should treasure our own hard-won legacy
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Cherish our public spaces - among the glories of the democratic age
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www.theguardian.com
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I don’t know how you set light to a golf course, but in 1897 a riot of several thousand ordinary citizens did just that. The location was One Tree Hill in Honor Oak, a southeastern suburb of London, and they were objecting to the enclosure of common land so that men could hit balls around it with sticks. They were repulsed, which led Golf magazine to say: “We are not likely to hear anything more of the alleged right-of-way over One Tree Hill, which nature evidently intended for a golf course.”
Golf was wrong. In 1905 One Tree Hill became what it is now, one of thousands of green spaces across Britain, each with its own idiosyncrasies and history, that are kept at public expense for the benefit of absolutely anyone for whatever legal or sometimes slightly illegal activity they choose, as long as it doesn’t impede others’ enjoyment of the same place. It is part of what is, collectively, one of the great achievements of democracy, two centuries in the making, which crosses both classes and the Atlantic. It is the work of Mancunian communists and Republican US presidents, as well as philosophers, woodcutters, poets, bankers, factory workers and politicians.
This is the creation and preservation of parks and commons, both in cities and, in the form of National Parks, in the countryside, that run from the grandeur of Yosemite in California to the more genteel delights of Birkenhead Park in Merseyside, generally acknowledged to be the first publicly funded civic park in the world. They include the more obscure zones of grass and trees from which you are rarely far in British towns. Their different forms have a common principle, which is the availability of nature to all.
These areas are remarkably good at fulfilling their intended purpose, as places for refreshment and recovery, for play, for exercise as gentle or strenuous as you would like, in peaceful coexistence with other people whom you may not know and may be different from you, but are attracted by the same pleasures and freedoms of the open air – elderly bowls players both Anglo-Saxon and Asian, yummy mummies doing exercise classes with their Bugaboo pushchairs, Lebanese picnickers with shisha pipes, Caribbean barbecues, sub-continental kite-flyers. In a recent New York Times article, Nicholas Kristof wrote movingly of the American national park as “a rare spot where doctors mingle with construction workers”.
They feed the creativity, imagination and even economy of the country. The view from Hampstead Heath inspired not only John Keats and John Constable, but was also the place where the piratical Chicagoan entrepreneur Charles Tyson Yerkes had the idea of building many of the Underground lines on which London now depends.
The Danish architect and writer Steen Eiler Rasmussen called British parks “wonderlands of the unrestrained imagination” and saw them as part of the same national genius for escape and fantasy that gave us the literature of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.
These places are taken for granted, but they were not achieved without a long, slow struggle. Its origins go back at least to Wordsworth’s statement that the Lake District should be a “sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy”. One of its main episodes was the campaign, which ran throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond, to preserve common land threatened by development.
Led by the remarkable MP George Shaw-Lefevre, the Commons Preservation Society wielded the not entirely trusty weapon of ancient rights of access to common land, originally conceived for grazing livestock and gathering firewood and roof-thatching materials.
Landowners objected that these rights were now obsolete in urban areas and therefore they should be free to make money by building and quarrying, but Lefevre’s persistence eventually rescued places such as Epping Forest, the Forest of Dean and the Malvern Hills from destruction and enclosure, without which Britain would feel like a very different country.
Lefevre’s allies included John Stuart Mill, the original bookselling WH Smith, and people who made their living from lopping trees and, if the campaign’s methods were mostly legal, political force was sometimes wielded. There was the battle of the golf course, for instance. At Berkhamsted Common in Hertfordshire a radical MP and banker financed 120 navvies to tear down two miles of iron fence that had been erected to enclose common land. Separately from Lefevre’s efforts, there was the Hyde Park Railings Affair of 1866 in which demonstrators forced down the park’s fence, and helped make what was once an aristocratic playground into the open and available place it is now.
There was an unsuccessful attempt, in 1884, at an act of parliament that would have created national parks, a concept which flourished better in the United States, where it was backed by Theodore Roosevelt. A hundred years ago this month the National Park Service was established. Back in Britain forcible action was again felt necessary, with the 1932 mass trespass by ramblers of Kinder Scout in the Peak District, led by the 21-year-old Benny Rothman of the Young Communist League of Manchester. The Attlee government, in 1949, finally passed the legislation that brought national parks to Britain.
A common quality of these campaigns is their bottom-up spontaneity. They came about less from the leadership of demagogues and visionaries than from a powerful sensation among disparate people in different places of the fundamental human importance of access to nature. They also continue into modern times. In the 1980s the London Wildlife Trust successfully fought to keep the wild places left by the retreat of industry. The Open Spaces Society, as the Commons Preservation Society is now called, celebrated its 150th anniversary last year.
Like other things humane, civilised, inclusive and well-functioning, these concepts are under threat from vandals on the right. Republicans in Congress have for some time blocked adequate funding for the National Parks Service and the 2016 Republican platform includes the promise to remove the “economic burden” and “lost revenue” that comes from their management by Federal government.
This policy comes in the context of assaults on other allegedly business-killing environmental protections, such as limits on carbon dioxide emissions. The intent seems clear, to loosen controls on the parks to enhance their opportunities for profit. If so, the Republicans would unravel what has been called “America’s best idea” and one to which great figures in their own party have contributed.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/27/defend-public-spaces-national-local-parks
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d353ae7d96055e373537f2374c877c2186277b072003b83e7f6421d49b7c22d0.json
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[] | 2016-08-30T14:52:14 | null | 2016-05-31T08:11:03 |
Get a weekly rundown of the debates and developments as Britain starts out on the long road to leaving the European Union
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EU referendum morning briefing - sign up here
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www.theguardian.com
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Struggling to keep on top of the latest Brexit news? Each Tuesday morning, we’ll send you a round-up of the most recent developments, the biggest talking points, and what to look out for in the days ahead. Plus, we’ll keep you up to date on relevant Guardian events.
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/31/eu-referendum-morning-briefing-sign-up
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en
| 2016-05-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/825ba794e35ee8772083685c496a5c00461d0243e01d5ea766a4dc37ef394d63.json
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[
"Nicola Davis"
] | 2016-08-27T16:57:11 | null | 2016-08-12T08:18:57 |
Shark, which would have reached sexual maturity at around 150 years, sets new record for longevity as biologists finally develop method to determine age
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400-year-old Greenland shark is oldest vertebrate animal
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She was born during the reign of James I, was a youngster when René Descartes set out his rules of thought and the great fire of London raged, saw out her adolescent years as George II ascended the throne, reached adulthood around the time that the American revolution kicked off, and lived through two world wars. Living to an estimated age of nearly 400 years, a female Greenland shark has set a new record for longevity, scientists have revealed.
Forget Nessie, now is the time to spot basking sharks in Scottish waters Read more
The discovery places the lifespan of the Greenland shark far ahead of even the oldest elephant in captivity, Lin Wang, who died aged 86. It is also far longer than the official record for humans, held by 122-year-old Frenchwoman Jeanne Louise Calment.
“It kicks off the bowhead whale as the oldest vertebrate animal,” said Julius Nielsen, lead author of the research from the University of Copenhagen, pointing out that bowhead whales have been known to live for 211 years.
But the Greenland shark doesn’t scoop all the gongs – the title of the world’s longest-lived animal is held by Ming, an Icelandic clam known as an ocean quahog, that made it to 507 years before scientists bumped it off.
Grey, plump and growing to lengths of around five metres, the Greenland shark is one of the world’s largest carnivores. With a reported growth rate of less than one centimetre a year, they were already thought to be long-lived creatures, but just how long they lived for was something of a mystery.
“Fish biologists have tried to determine the age and longevity of Greenland sharks for decades, but without success.” said Steven Campana, a shark expert from the University of Iceland. “Given that this shark is the apex predator (king of the food chain) in Arctic waters, it is almost unbelievable that we didn’t know whether the shark lives for 20 years, or for 1000 years.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Greenland shark near the surface after its release from the research vessel Sanna in northern Greenland. Photograph: Julius Nielsen/Science
The new research, he says, is the first hard evidence of just how long these creatures can live.
“It definitely tells us that this creature is extraordinary and it should be considered among the absolute oldest animals in the world,” said Nielsen.
Writing in the journal Science, Nielsen and an international team of researchers describe how they set about determining the age of 28 female Greenland sharks, collected as by-catch during scientific surveys between 2010 and 2013.
While the ages of many fish can be determined by counting the growth layers of calcium carbonate “stones” found in their ears – in a manner somewhat similar to counting tree rings – sharks do not have such earstones. What’s more, the Greenland shark lacks other calcium-rich tissues suitable for this type of analysis.
Instead the team had to rely on a different approach: scrutiny of the lenses in their eyes.
Ming the clam was not the only really ancient living thing on Earth Read more
The lens of the eye is made of proteins that build up over time, with the proteins at the very centre of the lens laid down while the shark is developing in its mother’s womb. Work out the date of these proteins, the scientists say, and it is possible to achieve an estimate of the shark’s age.
In order to determine when the proteins were laid down, the scientists turned to radiocarbon dating - a method that relies on determining within a material the levels of a type of carbon, known as carbon-14, that undergoes radioactive decay over time.
By applying this technique to the proteins at the centre of each lens, the scientists deduced a broad range of ages for each shark.
The scientists then made use of a side-effect of atomic bomb tests which took place in the 1950s: when the bombs were detonated, they increased the levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. The spike, or pulse, in carbon-14 entered the marine food web across the North Atlantic no later than the early 1960s.
That provides a useful time-stamp, says Nielsen. “I want to know when I see the bomb-pulse in my sharks, what time does that mean,” he said. “Does it mean they are 50 years old, or 10 years old?”
Nielsen and the team found that the eye lens proteins of the two smallest of their 28 Greenland sharks had the highest levels of carbon-14, suggesting that they were born after the early 1960s. The third smallest shark, however, had carbon-14 levels only slightly above those of the 25 larger sharks, hinting that it was actually born in the early 1960s, just as bomb-related carbon-14 began to be incorporated in marine food webs.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Greenland shark returning to the deep and cold waters of the Uummannaq Fjord in northwestern Greenland. The sharks were part of a tag-and- release program in Norway and Greenland. Photograph: Julius Nielsen/Science
“That indicates that most of our analysed sharks were actually older than the time mark, meaning that they were older than 50 years,” said Nielsen.
The scientists then combined the carbon dating results with estimations of how Greenland sharks grow, to create a model that allowed them to probe the age of the 25 sharks born before the 1960s.
Their findings revealed that the largest shark of the group, a female measuring just over five metres in length, was most likely around 392 years old, although, as Nielsen points out, the range of possible ages stretches from 272 to 512 years.
“The Greenland shark is now the best candidate for the longest living vertebrate animal,” he said.
What’s more, with adult female Greenland sharks known hit sexual maturity only once they reach more than four metres in length, the scientists found that females have to clock up an age of around 150 years before they can produce young.
Tourism with bite: swimming with the great white shark Read more
But not everyone is convinced that Greenland sharks can live for four centuries. “I am convinced by the idea of there being long lifespans for these kinds of sharks, [but] I take the absolute numbers with a pinch of salt,” said Clive Trueman, associate professor in marine ecology at the University of Southampton.
Trueman agrees that it is possible to get a record of the early life of a vertebrate from eye lens proteins. However, the fact that the proteins in the centre of the eye lenses, and hence the carbon-14 within them, came from nutrients taken in by the shark’s mother adds a number of uncertainties to the calculations, he says.
Campana says while the approach taken by the researchers is sound, he remains unconvinced that Greenland sharks live for almost 400 years. But, he adds, “future research should be able to nail the age down with greater certainty.”
Nielsen is also looking forward to further research, saying that he hopes the Greenland shark’s new found fame will boost awareness of the animal, as well as conservation efforts and attempts to unravel other aspects of its physiology. “There are other aspects of their biology which are super-interesting to know more about and to shed light upon,” he said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/400-year-old-greenland-shark-is-the-oldest-vertebrate-animal
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en
| 2016-08-12T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/dc85180c010fba42e1dcb019702b6a672661f36cf4339d16f538d9c4352e8cc5.json
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[
"Eric Allison"
] | 2016-08-30T12:50:09 | null | 2016-08-30T12:31:26 |
Comment in recruitment video attacked as ill-judged and offensive at a time when prison suicide rates are at record high
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fcare-uk-firm-criticised-for-promoting-exciting-prison-self-harm-incidents.json
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Care firm criticised for promoting 'exciting' prison self-harm incidents
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The UK’s largest private healthcare provider has been criticised after one of its senior executives spoke of the “exciting life of prison medical staff” in reference to life-threatening injuries and self-harm.
Dr Sarah Bromley, Care UK’s national medical director for health in justice, said in a staff recruitment video: “If you like life to be exciting, there are always alarm bells going off, resuscitations, self-harming incidents, a lot of chaos that goes on in our prisons.”
The remarks, which have been criticised as ill-judged and offensive, come at a time when suicides and self-harm rates are at a record high in prisons in England and Wales.
Care UK is the UK’s largest independent provider of health and social care services. Its health and justice arm provides healthcare in 30 prisons in England and Wales, including some of the biggest.
It provides healthcare in HMP Leeds, which has seen five apparently self-inflicted deaths in the last year. At Chelmsford prison, where it also operates, an inspection report published this week said health provision was inadequate. Inspectors said self-harm levels were “very high, far higher than at comparator prisons.”
This month a coroner said “significant failures” by Care UK had contributed to the death of a prisoner at Pentonville jail in London. Terence Adams, 43, killed himself at the prison last November. Mary Hassell, the senior coroner for inner north London, found medical staff did not take immediate action after Adams’ admission to the jail despite recording a “high risk of self-harm”.
Adams had been deemed at risk on a mental health assessment, which should have triggered an immediate admission to in-patient care at the jail. Instead he was placed in a normal cell. He killed himself three days later.
The coroner also said a report compiled by Care UK after the death was not shared with the coroner’s office until it was accidentally discovered by lawyers during the inquest.
Suicides and assaults in prisons in England and Wales at all-time high Read more
Also this month, the Ministry of Justice published a bulletin on deaths, self-harm and assaults in prisons. In the 12 months from June 2015 there were 105 apparently self-inflicted deaths, a 28% increase on the previous year, and 34,586 reported incidents of self-harm, up 27%.
Deborah Coles, the director of Inquest, which supports relatives of people who die in custody, said Bromley’s remarks were offensive to the hundreds of families the charity had represented over the years.
Coles expressed concern that the comments demonstrated a lack of understanding of the vulnerability of prisoners and the staff who work with them.
“If this is the premise in which staff are recruited to work in some of the most challenging prisons, it is not hard to imagine the quality of training Care UK staff receive,” she said.
“The evidence from prison inspectors and the coroner earlier this month is alarming. When will the government stop prioritising profit over quality of service and look at how these private providers are operating on the ground?”
A Care UK spokesman said: “The video seeks to explain to healthcare professionals the difficulties, but also the opportunity, of providing complex multi-disciplinary care to vulnerable people, who often have had limited access to healthcare in the past, within what is inevitably a challenging environment.
“Whilst seeking to describe the nature of the role and environment appropriately, we are of course sensitive to the perceptions of everyone connected to prison healthcare and we will review our recruitment material accordingly.”
After the Guardian contacted Care UK about the recruitment video, the company edited the film, removing Bromley’s reference to excitement, resuscitations, and self-harm.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/30/care-uk-firm-criticised-for-promoting-exciting-prison-self-harm-incidents
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/88afa5ba1a183569e9c8e73be012b09764fa6ec1024d60b0287f9919bd47788b.json
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[
"Ian Sample"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:33 | null | 2016-08-24T17:23:10 |
Signs of warming appear as early as 1830 say researchers, whose analysis will help build accurate baseline of temperature before influence of human activity
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fhuman-induced-climate-change-began-earlier-than-previously-thought.json
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Human-induced climate change began earlier than previously thought
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www.theguardian.com
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Continents and oceans in the northern hemisphere began to warm with industrial-era fossil fuel emissions nearly 200 years ago, pushing back the origins of human-induced climate change to the mid-19th century.
The first signs of warming from the rise in greenhouse gases which came hand-in-hand with the Industrial Revolution appear as early as 1830 in the tropical oceans and the Arctic, meaning that climate change witnessed today began about 180 years ago.
Researchers in Australia found evidence for the early onset of warming after trawling through 500 years of data on tree rings, corals and ice cores that together form a natural archive of Earth’s historical temperatures.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Temperature trends for the continents and tropical oceans over the last 500 years. Credit: Abram et al.
Much of what is known about Earth’s climate history is based on instruments that have monitored temperatures from the 1880s onwards. But while these capture the changing conditions seen in the 20th century, they miss the start of the warming trend.
“A lot is known about the climate record for the time when we have instrumental records,” said Nerilie Abram, a climate scientist at the Australian National University. “We wanted to look at whether these records give us the full picture.”
Pooling the data, the scientists found that temperatures in the tropical oceans and in the air above northern hemisphere land-masses began to rise above natural variations in the 1830s, just as greenhouse gas emissions edged upwards.
The scientists first thought that they were seeing the climate rebound after a period of natural cooling brought on by particles thrown high into the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions. But climate simulations showed that the warming they observed could be explained purely by the small rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
“The changes in greenhouse gases in the 19th century were small compared with the fairly rapid changes we see now, so seeing the climate respond this way was a surprise,” said Abrams.
The southern hemisphere, including Australasia and South America, appeared to start heating up 50 years later, near the turn of the century, while no sign of warming on the continental scale was noticed in Antarctica. The lack of appreciable warming in Antarctica may be down to ocean currents carrying warm waters to the north and away from the frigid continent.
The results are important to build up an accurate baseline of the Earth’s temperature before human activity began to wield an influence on the climate. Details of the study, which involved 25 scientists across Australia, the US, Europe and Asia, are published in the journal Nature.
Industrialisation led to only minor rises in greenhouse gases in the 1800s, but what struck the scientists was how swiftly the climate changed as a result. “There is a potential that this could have a flip side,” Abram said. “If we can do anything to slow down greenhouse gas emissions, or even start to draw them back, there may be at least some areas of the climate system where we get a rapid payback.”
Ed Hawkins, a meteorologist at Reading University, said the results show how tree rings, corals and other natural material can be used to understand the regional and global changes that unfolded during and since the pre-industrial period. “This is further evidence that the climate has already changed significantly since the pre-industrial period,” he said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/24/human-induced-climate-change-began-earlier-than-previously-thought
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/50041122ad1755a2c3cc40ddc47a033efb4ad263394d593467d885b22cb69b7b.json
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[
"Ranj Alaaldin"
] | 2016-08-26T13:22:06 | null | 2016-08-25T18:36:17 |
Editorial: Civilians are paying the price for the competing interests of parties to the conflict
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fthe-guardian-view-on-turkeys-incursion-into-syria-ankaras-biggest-concern-is-containing-the-kurds.json
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The Guardian view on Turkey’s incursion into Syria: Ankara’s biggest concern is containing the Kurds
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It is hard to anticipate whether Turkey’s unprecedented military incursion into Syria this week will change the dynamics of the multiple wars that have ravaged the region and put civilians through hell. If things already seemed complicated in the Middle East, they may have just become even more so. What started on Wednesday ranks as the largest Turkish military operation inside Syrian territory since the civil war began five years ago. A dozen tanks, reportedly followed by a bus transporting Syrian rebels, rolled into northern Syria to drive Islamic State forces from the town of Jarablus, one of their last footholds on the Turkish-Syrian border. Today Turkey sent more tanks in and told the YPG Kurdish armed group it had one week to retreat from the border areas.
Western anti-Isis coalition forces facilitated Operation Euphrates Shield with air strikes. It came days after a terrorist attack killed 54 people at a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border – highlighting both how exposed Turkey has become to the insurgency and the multiple pressures the Kurds face.
Although Turkey carried out this operation with US back-up, its priority – evident in other recent foreign manoeuvrings, such as detente with Russia and overtures to the Syrian president, having previously urged him to quit – is to curtail the territorial ambitions of Kurdish combatants, some of which happen to be US proxies in the war against Isis. Turkey is in effect deploying forces in Syria with US support, with the aim of pushing back Kurdish groups that the US also supports. The US has equipped and trained local forces to fight Isis, under the label “Syrian Democratic Forces”. They are dominated by Kurds, but include anti-Assad rebels. Nuances easily get lost: united against Isis, these groups are less so when it comes to confronting Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Little noticed in Aleppo’s plight is the fact that Syrian Kurdish fighters have played no small role in the siege of the city. The YPG has been more of a problem for the Syrian opposition than for the Assad regime.
Turkey’s advance now puts these Kurdish groups under pressure, especially given its warming relations with Russia. Moscow may have qualms about Kurdish groups working tightly with the US and its protest against Turkey’s move into Syria may have less to do with protecting the Kurds than keeping the upper hand in Syria’s quagmire. As the Jarablus operation unfolded, US vice-president Joe Biden was in Ankara to attempt to woo Turkey back from Russia. Relations between the US and its Nato ally have been fraught since July’s coup attempt, but getting them back on track now seems a shared objective. So, having used Kurdish forces to take Manbij and stalk Raqqa, Mr Biden warned the YPG to move back across the Euphrates or lose US support.
Syria is racked by multiple wars in which protagonists claiming to share common goals pursue their own distinct priorities. Turkey is part of the anti-IS coalition but wants to fight Kurdish militants in Syria as it does the PKK in its own south-eastern regions. Its role has shrunk from active intervention on multiple fronts to more narrowly defending its border. Even the renewed enthusiasm for Syrian rebels is not about toppling Mr Assad, but ensuring that the Kurds do not prop him up. Russia claims its military involvement is all about combatting Isis but has done much more to ensure the survival of the Assad regime. Syrian Kurdish groups have been “recruited” by the US against Isis, but their ultimate goal is to carve out an autonomous region. Anti-Assad revolutionaries have all along wanted to get rid of a dictatorship but are increasingly associated with radical Islamist groups, largely for a desperate lack of other options. The US has prioritised bombing Isis but at the expense of forging a solution to Syria’s civil war, which has helped Isis grow. With its tanks, Turkey has played one more card in a multi-pronged war that has created immense suffering and has no end in sight.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/25/the-guardian-view-on-turkeys-incursion-into-syria-ankaras-biggest-concern-is-containing-the-kurds
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b5eed8628ea5d9eae7dfa9971a238e165150ace74e458ee39bcdff6464785d44.json
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[
"Agence France-Presse"
] | 2016-08-29T02:52:05 | null | 2016-08-29T01:40:32 |
Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, an accountant believed to a dual British or Candian national, is suspected of espionage
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Firan-arrests-nuclear-spy-for-giving-secrets-to-west-say-reports.json
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Iran arrests nuclear 'spy' for giving secrets to west, say reports
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Iran has arrested a “spy” involved in the nuclear negotiations with world powers but has not yet formally charged the suspect, according to the judiciary’s spokesman.
Iranian media outlets reported on Sunday that a dual national identified as Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, a senior accountant involved in banking-related aspects of the nuclear talks, had been arrested for alleged espionage.
“(News of) the arrest of the infiltrating spy is true. Legal action has been instigated against him and he has been released on bail,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie as saying at his weekly press conference.
“But the charge against him has not been proven yet.”
On 16 August, the Tehran prosecutor announced the arrest of a British-Iranian on suspicion of links to Britain’s intelligence service.
Without naming the accused, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said on 16 August the suspect was “active in the field of the Iranian economy, and was linked to the British espionage service”.
But it remained unclear whether Dorri Esfahani and the British-Iranian were the same person.
Was the Iran nuclear deal just a triumph of White House spin? Read more
Other reports said Dorri Esfahani was a dual Iranian-Canadian national. Quoting Iranian news reports from Wednesday 24 August, Associated Press said on Sunday that authorities had detained Dorri Esfahani, a dual Iranian-Canadian national and a member of the Ontario Institute of Chartered Accountants in Canada.
Iran and the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia negotiated for more than two years before signing a historic July 2015 agreement that removed some international sanctions in return for curbs on Tehran’s controversial atomic programme.
A conservative-linked weekly, Ramze Obour (which means Passcode in English), on 24 August Wednesday quoted hardline lawmaker Javad Karimi Ghodousi as saying Esfahani “bypassed the negotiating team and gave invaluable information to the US”.
It claimed he had been paid by both Britain and the United States.
However, the ISNA news agency said the accused was not a member of the negotiating team or the foreign ministry.
It said the accused “only appeared on the team at certain points, out of necessity on behalf of one of the country’s economic sectors”.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/iran-arrests-nuclear-spy-for-giving-secrets-to-west-say-reports
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d0d42e931233722e32d8fe0087aa44db2388616d8f65af8bd6cda69bc9307f75.json
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[
"Ben Fisher"
] | 2016-08-27T16:51:05 | null | 2016-08-27T16:09:39 |
Jay Rodriguez scored a late equaliser for Southampton to cancel out a Jermain Defoe penalty and deny Sunderland three points in a 1-1 draw at St Mary’s Stadium
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Jay Rodriguez rescues point for Southampton to deny Sunderland victory
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Southampton’s Jay Rodriguez scored a late equaliser to deny Sunderland their first win of the season at St Mary’s, but their tepid display will have done little to whet the appetite for their upcoming European tour – as their supporters so proudly sang – that will span as far as Israel and the San Siro.
Jermain Defoe scored a late penalty eight minutes from time, after going down under pressure from the Southampton captain, José Fonte, after Jeremain Lens’s low cross into the penalty area. But Rodriguez, a late substitute here in place of Charlie Austin, drilled low and underneath the Sunderland goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford, who should have done better. Defoe had by then, though, already worsened Southampton’s record of 15 matches without a clean sheet.
Any pre-match excitement surrounding Friday’s Europa League draw – in which Southampton will face trips to Internazionale, Sparta Prague and Hapoel Be’er Sheva – was quickly extinguished in a largely drab affair. How Southampton could have done with the energy of Sofiane Boufal, the Lille midfielder expected to join the club for a record fee in the coming days.
With Vito Mannone sidelined for three months with an elbow injury, Pickford, who spent half of last season on loan at Preston North End, again deputised in goal. And while the chants of “England’s No1” from away supporters were probably a little far-fetched, the 22-year-old impressed until his late mistake on just his third start for the club. The England Under-21 goalkeeper, who was born on Wearside, made smart stops to deny Dusan Tadic and Charlie Austin inside the first half hour.
Tadic, who lost his consistency and starting spot under Ronald Koeman last season, threatened from distance with a powerful, rising drive that alluded even Pickford but a tepid Southampton were tamed time and again by an organised Sunderland backline. In truth, Tadic was Southampton’s best performer and his withdrawal just after the hour was met with boos from the home support. His replacement, Shane Long, immediately forced Pickford into a low dive to his right.
Austin, preferred to Shane Long as a lone striker, was handed his first start of the season but flattered to deceive and, unsurprisingly, appeared short of match fitness. Both Austin and Southampton’s Fonte sent wayward passes out of play to grumbles from a restless home crowd. Southampton’s first-half frustrations were compounded when Nathan Redmond was awarded a yellow card for dissent by the referee Lee Mason.
As the hosts huffed and puffed, Sunderland grew into the match, lit up by sparks of clever play from a front three of Fabio Borini, Defoe and Adnan Januzaj. Defoe, though not in his heyday, remains the sharpest tool in the box available to Moyes and the striker comfortably raced past Fonte, only for his square ball to end up at the feet of the opposition. But Southampton did not respond to the wake-up call. Defoe later got his reward from the penalty spot, though, lashing the ball beyond the Southampton goalkeeper, Fraser Forster.
Sunderland’s Lamine Koné squandered his side’s best chance in open play, nodding his header narrowly wide after a deep cross by Patrick van Aanholt. Koné, who missed Sunderland’s 2-1 defeat at Middlesbrough, was restored to the starting lineup alongside Papy Djilobodji in central defence, while Javier Manquillo made his debut after arriving on a season-long loan in the week. And how David Moyes would hate to lose Koné before Wednesday’s transfer deadline.
Pickford twice saved well from Long and Redmond before eventually coming undone against Rodriguez. Claude Puel’s face was a picture just before that moment: the Southampton manager’s cheeks were puffed out as the Frenchman looked exasperated at his team’s failure to open up Sunderland on a muggy afternoon. But Puel rolled the dice late on, throwing on striker Rodriguez late on for Austin, subject of interest from West Bromwich Albion, and Sunderland’s resolute backline, led by Koné, were eventually broken.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/27/southampton-sunderland-premier-league-match-report
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/46df0e717bde2ade03c9f69596ec73195e3ececec330992fa9004b78d9431e12.json
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[
"Angelique Chrisafis",
"Rachel Woodlock"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:12 | null | 2016-08-26T08:03:30 |
Presidential candidate takes hard line, positioning himself as defender of French values and tough on immigration
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fburkini-row-nicolas-sarkozy-calls-for-nationwide-ban.json
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Burkini row: Nicolas Sarkozy calls for nationwide ban
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www.theguardian.com
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Nicolas Sarkozy says he will impose a nationwide ban on burkinis if re-elected to the presidency in 2017, positioning himself as a strong defender of French values and tough on immigration.
Hundreds of supporters waving French flags chanted “Nicolas! Nicolas!” and applauded as Sarkozy, a conservative president from 2007 to 2012 before losing an election to Socialist François Hollande, promised to protect the French people in his first rally for the 2017 election.
“I will be the president that re-establishes the authority of the state,” Sarkozy told a crowd of more than 2,000 in a sports hall in Châteaurenard in Provence, a town where his Les Républicains beat the far-right Front National (FN) in regional elections last year.
“I want to be the president who guarantees the safety of France and of every French person,” the 61-year-old said.
The burkini ban: what it really means when we criminalise clothes Read more
Taking a hard line on the burkini debate that has agitated France over recent weeks, Sarkozy said that the full-body swimwear should be banned from beaches across the country.
Several seaside towns have already outlawed the full-body swimwear, arguing that it breaks French laws on secularism, but there is no national ban. France’s highest court – the state council – is to rule in a case on Friday brought by the Human Rights League and an anti-Islamophobia group to reverse a decision by the southern town of Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice, to ban burkinis.
“I refuse to let the burkini impose itself in French beaches and swimming pools … there must be a law to ban it throughout the republic’s territory,” he said to wide applause.
The row over the burkini bans on some beaches has divided the Socialist government, with the prime minister, Manuel Valls, clashing with his education minister.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, one of the Socialist government’s leading feminist voices, told Europe 1 radio the proliferation of burkini bans was not welcome and had “let loose” verbal racism. The Socialist party had previously expressed outrage after a 34-year-old French woman was stopped by police on a beach in Cannes for sitting with her children wearing a headscarf and long trousers and was shouted at by a crowd to “go home”.
“My dream of society is a society where women are free and proud of their bodies,” said Vallaud-Belkacem. She warned that with tensions high after a series of terrorist attacks claimed by the Islamic State, “we shouldn’t add oil to the fire” by banning burkinis.
But moments after Vallaud-Belkacem spoke, her comments were flatly contradicted by Valls, who reiterated his support for mayors who have banned the garments. Asked if the decrees amounted to racism, Valls said: “No, that’s a bad interpretation.” He said the full-body swimwear represented “the enslavement of women”.
Valls has said he supports the mayors who have issued local short-term decrees against burkinis, while refusing their demands for nationwide legislation against them.
The state council’s ruling is likely to set a precedent for other towns that have banned the burkini. The administrative court in Nice ruled on Monday that the Villeneuve-Loubet ban was necessary to prevent public disorder after the Bastille Day attack in Nice and the murder of a priest in Normandy.
Sarkozy is seeking to win back votes from the far-right FN, whose rising popularity mirrors that of populist politicians in other countries that have appealed to voters concerned about globalisation and immigration, such as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the US and the leaders of Britain’s Brexit campaign.
For months Sarkozy lagged in opinion polls behind Alain Juppé, the centrist former prime minister, but his popularity, which had already started improving with party sympathisers in June, rose after Islamist attacks on a Bastille Day crowd in Nice and on a priest in Normandy.
The political row over burkinis has intensified after a woman in a headscarf was photographed on a beach in Nice removing a long-sleeved top while surrounded by armed police.
The city banned the burkini on its beaches last week, following about 15 seaside areas in south-east France where mayors had done the same.
The series of pictures, taken by a local French news photographer, showed a woman dressed in leggings, a long-sleeved tunic and headscarf being approached by four officers. As the police stand around her, she removes her long-sleeved top, revealing a short-sleeved top underneath. It is unclear whether or not the woman was ordered to do so. In another image, a police officer appears to write out a fine.
The Nice mayor’s office denied that the woman had been forced to remove clothing, telling Agence France-Presse that she was showing police the swimsuit she was wearing under her tunic.
Nice’s deputy mayor, Christian Estrosi, from Sarkozy’s Les Républicains party, said a municipal police team had “acted perfectly to make sure that [the] decree was respected”. Twenty-four women have been stopped by police in the city since the burkini ban came into force.
The various mayoral decrees do not explicitly use the word burkini; instead they ban “beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation”, citing reasons such as the need to protect public order, hygiene or French laws on secularism.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/26/burkini-row-nicolas-sarkozy-calls-for-nationwide-ban
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/1e48919bf9c2b9e17ff3b28e0820038229b4fb4b473aa286ad3b7d8199a50d51.json
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[
"Louise Taylor"
] | 2016-08-26T14:50:38 | null | 2016-08-26T14:05:18 |
After a shambolic pre-season, Hull City won their opening two games but the question is can their thin squad and inexperienced leader keep it going?
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The Hull City 14: the manager and players tasked with performing a miracle
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www.theguardian.com
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The good news for Mike Phelan is that he now has 14 fit senior professionals from which to select a starting XI. The bad news is that Hull City have still to sign a first-team player this summer and making it three league wins out of three will be tested by José Mourinho’s Manchester United on Saturday evening.
It is sure to be an evocative occasion for Hull’s caretaker-manager, who spent almost 20 years as a player, coach and, finally, Sir Alex Ferguson’s assistant at Old Trafford, and Steve Bruce’s successor knows his chances of securing the job on a permanent basis have been enhanced by impressive wins at home to Leicester City and away at Swansea, but he is desperate to strengthen a ridiculously skinny squad.
With a Chinese consortium – led by a sister-and-brother team Hawken Xiu Li and Dai Yongge – in the process of trying to take over from the Allam family, the Premier League is considering whether they meet the fit and proper persons test. This may take several weeks. Meanwhile the purse strings appear tight and Phelan, who says Hull remain “34 points short of safety”, is frustrated. “It’s the same old, same old,” says a coach who, ideally, wants six recruits - preferably including the Spurs midfielder Ryan Mason - by Wednesday evening. “Nobody has yet come into the building. We haven’t signed any new players. We’re in talks with two or three but nothing has been delivered.
“I’ve spoken to who might potentially be the new owners. But not about my future, just where they are at the moment. Everything’s with the Premier League. They’re going through their paperwork and we’ll see where it takes us.” For now Phelan has to plot another win, against his former club, with a group of players clearly energised by having their backs to the wall.
Hull’s Robert Snodgrass starts Leicester title defence with shock defeat Read more
Mike Phelan Caretaker manager
He would like to have the caretaker element of his current job title removed before his 54th birthday next month. The Lancastrian right-back or midfielder – and holder of one England cap – played for Burnley, Norwich, Manchester United and West Bromwich before carving out a coaching career at Norwich, Blackpool, Stockport, United and Norwich again before becoming Steve Bruce’s No2 in 2015.
Eldin Jakupovic Goalkeeper
The Bosnia-born goalkeeper with one cap for Switzerland is playing because of injury to Allan McGregor. Played for, among others, Grasshopper Lokomotiv Moscow, Olympiakos Volou and Aris before joining Hull in 2012. Has since had a loan stint at Leyton Orient.
Ahmed Elmohamady Right-back
Elmo, as he is almost universally known, is a star in Egypt and has been capped 71 times. The popular defender is deputising for the injured Moses Odubajo but can also operate as a wing-back or winger. The 28-year-old also played for Sunderland and joined Hull, initially on loan, in 2012.
Jake Livermore Centre-back
Signed from Tottenham in 2014 and, with Michael Dawson injured, has impressed as an emergency centre-half. The 26-year-old tested positive for cocaine in April 2015 but a ban was dropped when the FA decided he had taken the drug to cope with the grief of losing a newborn baby. Played in midfield for his one England cap.
Curtis Davies Centre-back
Hull’s intelligent, articulate 31-year-old has emerged as a galvanising force and leader during a summer of turmoil. The London-born centre-half has been on Humberside since 2013, his career having taken him to Luton, West Bromwich Albion, Aston Villa and Birmingham City. Will captain the team until Dawson returns from injury.
Harry Maguire Centre-back
The 6ft 2in centre half, 23, started the season sidelined by an ankle injury but is in contention to make his first Premier League appearance of the campaign at home to Manchester United. Wanted by Middlesbrough – where Aitor Karanka remains a big admirer – this summer, Maguire’s return to health has given Phelan his first real selection dilemma. An England Under-21 international, he began his career in his hometown with Sheffield United, but joined Hull two years ago.
Have Hull City suffered the worst-ever Premier League pre-season? | Louise Taylor Read more
Andrew Robertson Left-back
The very attack-minded 22-year-old swapped Dundee United for Hull in 2014. A Glaswegian, he has been capped 10 times by Scotland. Much admired by Jürgen Klopp, Robertson is of interest to Liverpool and Hull fans dread losing him in the transfer window.
Tom Huddlestone Midfielder
A powerful 6ft 3in midfielder with more than a touch of Glenn Hoddle about some of his long passes, Huddlestone played for Derby and Tottenham before Steve Bruce lured him north in 2013. When Huddlestone – capped four times by England – plays well, so do Hull. A key individual capable of dictating play.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tom Huddlestone celebrates Hull’s first goal against Leicester City. Photograph: Russell Cheyne/Reuters
Sam Clucas Midfielder
After being discarded by Lincoln City as a teenager, Clucas’s career was kick-started when he joined the Glenn Hoddle academy in Spain and turned out for Jerez Industrial. He moved to Hereford United before playing for Mansfield, Chesterfield and Hull, as the midfielder played in the Conference, League Two, League One, the Championship and the Premier League in successive seasons from 2012-13. Mainly left-sided, the 25-year-old is shining in an unfamiliar anchoring role and has recently signed a three-year deal. Would probably be on the bench had Mohamed Diamé not moved to Newcastle.
David Meyler Midfielder
Versatile and combative, the midfielder was spotted playing for Cork City by Roy Keane, then Sunderland’s manager, and brought to Wearside in 2008. Four years later – and after overcoming two long-term, potentially career-ending knee injuries – Bruce took him to Hull, initially on loan. Now 27 and with 16 Republic of Ireland caps, he had an infamous “coming together” with Alan Pardew, Newcastle’s manager at the time, in 2014.
Robert Snodgrass Forward
A gifted 28-year-old winger, Snodgrass turned down the chance to join Barcelona while a youngster at Livingston. He later joined Leeds and then Norwich before a £7m move to Hull in 2014. A serious knee injury swiftly followed, which sidelined a player now capped 17 times by Scotland, for 16 months. Returned in time to help Hull secure promotion in 2016 and is now central to their survival hopes.
Abel Hernández Forward
A 6ft 1in striker capped 27 times by Uruguay, Hernández became Hull’s record £10m signing when Steve Bruce bought him from Palermo in 2014. Scored 20 goals in 39 Championship games last season. On record as saying he dreams of one day playing for Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid or Newcastle United. Worryingly for Hull fans, Rafael Benítez is said to be an admirer.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Abel Hernández battles for possession with Leicester’s Wes Morgan. Photograph: Alex Morton/Getty Images
Adama Diomandé Forward
Born in Oslo to Ivorian parents the striker has been capped five times by Norway. Now 26, Diomandé played in his home country and for one club in Belarus before ending up at Hull last year. Injury restricted him to 11 Championship appearances, in which he scored three goals.
And on the bench
Dusan Kuciak Goalkeeper
Hull’s only signing in 2016, the 6ft 4in Slovakia goalkeeper arrived from Legia Warsaw for £250,000 in February. Capped 10 times, the 31-year-old played in Romania and Poland before catching Bruce’s eye. Still to make his debut for Hull.
Shaun Maloney Midfielder
Born in Sarawak, Malaysia, the attacking midfielder, who is 33, has 47 Scotland caps. Played for Celtic, Aston Villa, Wigan and Chicago Fire before joining Hull a year ago. Made 20 Championship appearances last season.
All 14 players were signed by Steve Bruce, who resigned as Hull’s manager last month
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/26/hull-city-14-players-premier-league-miracle
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/97dc9e0dc03c3e5f37b7a273d893e2940673968500b34dd3e65c5d4fb145ba56.json
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|
[
"Reni Eddo-Lodge",
"Leah Green",
"Bruno Rinvolucri"
] | 2016-08-26T13:22:49 | null | 2016-06-08T06:00:06 |
We are being turned into a nation of vigilante terrorist hunters, says writer Reni Eddo-Lodge
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Fjun%2F08%2Fbeing-suspicious-of-muslims-wont-stop-terrorism-video.json
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en
| null |
Being suspicious of Muslims won't stop terrorism - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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We are being turned into a nation of vigilante terrorist hunters, says writer Reni Eddo-Lodge. From the government’s prevent strategy to representations of Islam in the media, the message is that Muslims are guilty until proven innocent. We should stop doing the terrorists’ job for them, she argues, by profiling ‘Muslim-looking-people
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2016/jun/08/being-suspicious-of-muslims-wont-stop-terrorism-video
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en
| 2016-06-08T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/44f0eaaea7cd4166860618cd4f2d3036a7df5152e7d86b2a578e41c733588e6f.json
|
|
[
"Lauren Gambino"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:48 | null | 2016-08-26T11:00:17 |
GOP nominee softened his stance on the signature issue of his campaign and talked African American unemployment while trying to court the non-white vote
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fdonald-trump-fact-check-immigration-inner-cities.json
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en
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The lies Trump told this week: from immigration to the safety of inner cities
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www.theguardian.com
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Immigration
“They’ll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but we will work with them” – 24 August, to Sean Hannity, Fox News.
The lies Trump told this week: from opposing the Iraq war to San Bernardino Read more
Last summer, Donald Trump burst into the political ring with a fiery proposal to build a “great, great wall” along the US-Mexico border – paid for by Mexico. An ultra-hardline stance on immigration has remained at the heart of his campaign, though reporters have had a notoriously difficult time pinning him down on what he actually proposes to do to or with the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants who currently live in America. He has suggested a “deportation force” to remove them.
“We’re rounding ’em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized,” Trump told CBS last September. “And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.”
On Saturday, after meeting with his Hispanic advisory council, reports emerged that the Republican candidate was softening his stance. The next day, newly installed campaign manager Kellyanne Conway appeared to waffle on whether Trump was still committed to deportation. In an interview with Fox News, Trump himself denied that he was “flip-flopping”. To gain more time to fine-tune, the campaign postponed a speech he was due to give on Thursday.
On Wednesday, Trump said immigrants not in the US legally would not get citizenship – but also appeared to offer a path a forward and to contradict his previous promises that undocumented migrants would be deported.
Donald Trump in favor of immigration reform, softening stance on his signature issue Read more
“They’ll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but we work with them,” Trump said in a town hall with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity. The next morning, he met African American and Latino activists at Trump Tower in New York.
Such apparent moderation on immigration comes as Trump tries to aggressively court Hispanic and African American voters. Polling shows Trump trailing Hillary Clinton. A Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday gives Clinton a 62-point lead over Trump among likely non-white voters.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump holds a roundtable meeting with the Republican Leadership Initiative at Trump Tower. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP
War zones are safer than America’s inner cities
“The Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities. For those hurting the most who have been failed and failed by their politicians – year after year, failure after failure, worse numbers after worse numbers. Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing, no homes, no ownership. Crime at levels that nobody’s seen. You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it’s safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats. And I ask you this, I ask you this – crime, all of the problems – to the African Americans, who I employ so many, so many people, to the Hispanics, tremendous people: what the hell do you have to lose?” – 22 August, speech, Akron, Ohio
There’s a lot to unpack in this statement. At best, Trump is offering a broad-brush portrait of America’s cities and at worst he’s using language that is offensive to the very voters he’s trying to reach.
Trump also claims crime is at “levels that nobody’s seen”. Based on the context and past statements about crime statistics, we can assume he means crime is at record heights. But this bleak picture of crime-ridden American streets more dangerous than parts of the world where the US is engaged in military action, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, runs counter to a trend of declining crime that has persisted for more than a quarter of a century.
The lies Trump told this week: from Obama and Isis to support for vets Read more
Though crime statistics are notoriously ripe for manipulation, studies show a steady decline since 1991. Particular demographics, particularly low-income areas, do continue to show high rates of criminal activity.
Trump also claims to employ “so many, so many” African Americans in his various businesses. However, a June analysis by the Associated Press found “few if any” black executives in the upper echelon of Trump’s organization.
Trump has recently dialed up his outreach to African American voters, but he delivers his speeches before largely white audiences. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump receiving the support of only 1% of African American voters.
African American unemployment
“Look at how much African American communities are suffering from Democratic control … 58% of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?” – 19 August, Dimondale, Michigan
Trump and his campaign raised eyebrows when they repeated this eye-popping statistic: that more than half of young black men and women are unemployed.
The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) put the unemployment rate among 16- to 19-year-old black Americans at 25.7%, adjusted seasonally. So how did he get to 58%?
The campaign’s economic adviser, David Malpass, told ABC News it began with BLS data from 2015 and broke out the numbers for 16- to 24-year-old African Americans. As part of its calculation, the campaign included labor force participants and those outside the labor force, including people who have no job or are not looking for one, such as students and retirees. These are sectors of the population the federal government does not count as unemployed.
The campaign then divided the larger number by the population of the 16-to-24 age group to reach 58.5%, ABC reported. Economists have said it is statistically misleading to include segments of the population that are actively not seeking employment.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/26/donald-trump-fact-check-immigration-inner-cities
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/fa5dc38ef24f2c3950e12e2309620b1c01f772e171294a29b7464d18935edc7d.json
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|
[
"Martin Chulov",
"Ranj Alaaldin"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:55 | null | 2016-08-24T17:45:30 |
Joe Biden reassured Ankara, but it is unclear how Washington’s Kurdish proxies will react to his demand that they step back
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fturkey-and-us-unite-to-oust-isis-curb-kurds-syria.json
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Turkey and US unite to oust Isis and curb Kurds
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www.theguardian.com
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Turkish tanks have moved rapidly through the Syrian town of Jarablus on Wednesday, ousting Islamic State from one of its last border strongholds – but the most important outcome in Ankara’s eyes was beating the US-backed Kurdish fighters in a race to seize the surrounding area.
In a pointed concession to Turkey, the US vice president Joe Biden demanded that Kurdish forces, who had been a central US proxy in the battle against the terrorist group, “move back across the Euphrates river”, to the east of Jarablus. He also said that the Kurds, who have won a series of recent battles against Isis, would be abandoned if they advanced. US jets gave cover to the Turkish push, one of the first times in the war that the two allies have conducted a joint operation.
“They cannot, will not, under any circumstance get American support if they do not keep that commitment,” Biden said in Ankara during a visit to reset ties with Turkey, which had been strained since the failed coup attempt in July.
The Turkish incursion, which was supported by Syrian rebels, was the largest into Syria in the five-year civil war and came after months of gains by Kurds in the north which had seriously tested relations with Washington and transformed the once-dormant border into one of the war’s most important battle zones.
Bystanders throughout much of the war, Kurdish groups in Syria’s north-east had made swift gains after Russia’s intervention to reinforce President Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, the Kurds had been pivotal to US efforts to break the grip of Isis in the area, being used as a proxy force by US trainers and given air support by fighter jets.
The development incensed Ankara, which insists that the Kurds were using the war to advance a de facto autonomous region aligned with the aims of a four-decade-long insurrection being waged by Kurdish groups in Turkey’s south-east. Turkish officials have repeatedly pointed to Kurdish manoeuvres along its 500-mile frontier as evidence of a plan to move Arabs from the area and create a buffer allowing the Kurds to consolidate influence in the area.
In recent months, Turkey has stepped up its support for Syrian rebels battling both Isis and the Assad regime. The influence of rebel groups in the north had previously waned under Russian airstrikes and the creep of jihadi groups, who had gradually taken the ascendancy in key campaigns, such as the fight for Aleppo.
A Turkish move to re-arm Syrian rebels, including jihadis, earlier this month had led to the siege of Aleppo imposed by Assad loyalists being broken and a supply line being reopened.
Since then, Turkey has stepped up efforts to deter the Kurds from making further advances and to keep open access to Arab rebel areas.
At the same time, Ankara has set aside a feud with Russia, which shares its insistence that Syria’s current borders be preserved. Recent public statements about talking to the Syrian regime give weight to a growing view in the region that Turkey views keeping Syria intact as a higher priority than removing the Syrian leader – a key goal of the Turkish leadership for the past five years.
Biden’s demands that the US-backed Kurds go no further is likely to reassure Ankara, which had publicly denounced Washington’s efforts against Isis, even as a Kurdish-led force, comprised of some Arab units, pushed Isis from the city of Minbij earlier this month, splintering a supply line between the town of al-Bab, near Aleppo, and Raqqa to the east, which remains one of the group’s two most important hubs.
However, the effect on the US-Kurdish relationship is less clear. The Syrian Kurdish political arm, the PYD, said in response to the campaign that “Turkey will be defeated just like [Isis]”.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/24/turkey-and-us-unite-to-oust-isis-curb-kurds-syria
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/76e5af199f848ff1778acb45d1415c23bccedcde0ea80e2365cb9b1c1a900394.json
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|
[
"Jacob Steinberg"
] | 2016-08-30T08:52:35 | null | 2016-08-30T07:49:12 |
Chelsea to sign Inter’s Marcelo Brozovic? | Hull City in for Bristol City’s Jonathan Kodija? | Tottenham’s Son Heung-Min to Wolfsburg?
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Ffootball-transfer-rumours-arsenals-jack-wilshere-to-valencia-on-loan.json
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| null |
Football transfer rumours: Arsenal's Jack Wilshere to Valencia on loan?
| null | null |
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Mr Roy knew what he was doing all along. A day before the closure of the transfer window, Jack Wilshere is a man in demand and that development comes as no surprise given the midfielder’s stunning performances for England at Euro 2016. What? Oh. Trust the Mill to get the wrong end of the stick. It seems than emerging as this summer’s hottest transfer target, instead Wilshere is a man in search of a loving home, with Arsenal ready to let him leave on loan. But interested parties are thin on the ground at the moment. Valencia have been mooted as a potential destination but will Wilshere’s injury record put off Premier League clubs? Maybe Bolton Wanderers have a midfield vacancy.
Joe Hart agrees deal to join Torino on loan from Manchester City Read more
Speaking of midfielders, Antonio Conte has decided to make Cesc Fàbregas’s life even harder. Chelsea are in the market again and they’re eyeing a £25m swoop for Internazionale’s Marcelo Brozovic. One of these days they’ll actually sign someone from Serie A; they’ve been linked with enough players from that league. If not Brozovic, then perhaps the Lazio defender Stefan de Vrij, whose arrival could spell the end for Kurt Zouma, a target for Schalke. Meanwhile Loïc Rémy could be on his way to Crystal Palace, who also want Lorient’s Ghanaian striker, Majeed Waris.
While Chelsea look to Italy, Joe Hart is heading there. And not just to sell some shampoo! The Manchester City goalkeeper is going to Torino on loan and he’s unlikely to be the last player shoved out the door by Pep Guardiola. Besiktas are interested in Samir Nasri’s new haircut, while Everton, Stoke City and West Ham United all want Wilfried Bony on loan.
Hull City have realised that trying to go through a whole season with only 13 players heightens the possibility of Mike Phelan having to pull on his boots. So without further ado, here they come, ready to splash the cash. They’ll battle Aston Villa and Derby County for Bristol City’s £14m striker Jonathan Kodjia, and Sunderland for Tottenham Hotspur’s £8m midfielder Ryan Mason. Spurs will console themselves by signing Isco from Real Madrid, once they’ve sold Son Heung-Min to Wolfsburg for £24m.
Burnley want Chelsea’s Patrick Bamford on loan and they’re also partial to Brighton & Hove Albion’s Dale Stephens. And finally, Newcastle United could do with Wigan Athletic’s Calum McManaman, even though he once broke one of their players.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/30/football-transfer-rumours-arsenals-jack-wilshere-to-valencia-on-loan
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7eb23cf89978d4b8cfeea634b19be00476d4a1d8f347418e313a3df044f85c23.json
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[
"Associated Press In New York"
] | 2016-08-28T22:51:57 | null | 2016-08-28T22:16:47 |
Marches take place in New York City and elsewhere around the world as one organiser says ‘push for women to go topless is as strong as women wanting to vote’
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Ftopless-protesters-womens-rights-new-york-city.json
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en
| null |
Topless protesters bare breasts in push for women's rights
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Women around the US were taking off their tops on Sunday to mark GoTopless Day, a day that seeks to promote gender equality and a woman’s right to bare her breasts in public.
GoTopless Day is celebrated annually on the Sunday closest to Women’s Equality Day, which marks the day American women earned the right to vote.
A few dozen women and some men went topless on Sunday afternoon as they walked down Broadway in New York City. The march was led by women carrying a banner, followed by others in a convertible – with the top down. A pair of giant inflatable breasts brought up the rear. Onlookers gawked and took photos.
Topless protesters march through Manhattan in call for equality Read more
The event was one of several planned across the globe. In the US, gatherings were planned in New Hampshire, Denver, Los Angeles and more.
Nadine Gray, president of GoTopless, said she hoped the events would take away the shock and awe of seeing female breasts.
“In New York City, we are really celebrating our right to be freely topless without getting a ticket or going to jail for it,” she said. “In other places, it will be more like a protest because the discrimination is still happening.
“This push for women to go topless in the 21st century is as strong as women wanting to vote in the 20th century. It may be sensual, but it’s not illegal to be sensual. This is not Saudi Arabia.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A marcher harnesses the power of the pun. Photograph: Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images
It has been legal to be bare-breasted in New York since 1992. The legality of women going topless varies by state. Kia Sinclair is an event organizer for GoTopless Day at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire.
“It’s in hopes to show people that it can be normal, that it’s really not a big deal and it’s not about getting attention or protesting,” she said.
Sinclair was part of a group of women who last year helped beat back an effort to criminalize toplessness in New Hampshire.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/28/topless-protesters-womens-rights-new-york-city
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/013534f4c159cc8d86c607b9814733349a3fabe8de2ce5e5930de7229068051d.json
|
|
[
"Rupert Jones"
] | 2016-08-30T10:59:48 | null | 2016-07-09T06:00:08 |
Select committee chair calls for help for victims having to sell their homes or rely on others as they are forced to wait for their state pension
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Fjul%2F09%2Fwomen-pension-age-trap-40000-out-of-pocket.json
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| null |
Women caught in pension age trap ‘are £40,000 out of pocket’
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Older women are having to sell their homes, go without essentials and rely on their own elderly parents because of the unfair way changes to the state pension age have been made, according to Labour’s Frank Field.
The veteran MP says that many women born in the 1950s have been “grotesquely disadvantaged” by the government’s handling and communication of the changes. He is one of a number of high-profile figures to speak out about pension age increases that some women have said will leave them as much as £40,000 out of pocket.
For decades the state pension age (SPA) for women was 60. An increase to 65, phased in between 2010 and 2020, was included in the Pensions Act 1995, but five years ago the coalition government pushed through a speeding up of the process. The SPA for women is instead increasing to 65 between April 2016 and November 2018, then 66 by October 2020.
Many women say they had always expected to receive their pension at 60, then discovered their SPA had increased by perhaps four, five or even six years. Amazingly, the government did not write to any woman affected by the rise in the pension ages for nearly 14 years after the law was passed in 1995. The result is that hundreds of thousands of women say they didn’t have enough time to make alternative plans.
Field says he has received many letters from women who have been affected. Here are some of their testimonies:
• “I was born in 1954... I received no prior notification from DWP... I am in the process of having to sell my family home to supplement the shortfall, which works out at about £40,000. Money, I feel, has been stolen from me. Had I received my state pension at 60, I would not have had to sell my family home where I raised my daughters.”
• “I cannot begin to tell you the deep problems I face because the government failed to give me any notice about my pension deferment... I will have to sell my home because my situation is untenable to sustain for a further four-and-a-half years, and as I can no longer get a mortgage. I have been ill and continue to suffer from periods of stress-related illnesses.”
• “I was born in December 1955, am single, and did not receive a DWP letter until 2013 advising me I would retire at 66. This gave me only two years’ notice of a six-year rise... At present I am forced to rely on my 80-year-old retired mum to help with the purchase of meals or clothes as I am utilising dwindling savings to pay bills. This is an intolerable burden placed on older women, and I fear I will not be able to carry on should anything happen to my mum.”
• “I was never informed I could not retire until I was 66 … I have nothing to look forward to after working all these years but poverty. I have applied for more than 60 jobs since being made redundant, but who wants to employ a 61-year-old nurse who has arthritis in her knees and is unable to lift patients?”
• “When I was 52 I gave up full-time work with the idea of doing contract work for six months a year. I had worked out that I could afford to do this until I had my pension paid at age 60. So now I am 61, it’s four-and-a-half years until I get a pension, and I have sold my house with the intention of buying a smaller, cheaper property [in a different town] so that I have some money to live on, leaving my son, daughter, grandchild, elderly parents and two sisters [in the town where I currently live]. As from June I shall be officially homeless and am currently living in my partner’s campervan on a campsite.”
• “I was born in January 1954 … I have struggled for so long alone that I finally broke down a couple of nights ago … I’m almost losing the will to live when everything is such a battle. I can’t wait another three years for my pension.”
Campaigners from the Waspi group (Women Against State Pension Inequality) staged a demonstration outside Parliament on 29 June. Field chairs the Commons work and pensions select committee, which has been looking into this issue. He has written to work and pensions secretary Stephen Crabb to say the government must at the very least offer this group the option of taking their state pension early at a reduced rate.
In May, Crabb told MPs that it would be “impossible” to unwind changes dating back more than 20 years. Meanwhile in January the Department for Work and Pensions said those affected by faster equalisation would reach state pension age after the introduction of the new state pension, which would be more generous for many women.
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https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jul/09/women-pension-age-trap-40000-out-of-pocket
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en
| 2016-07-09T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3c43272ae0590fef918949611c735f14fb207edf5c4d60bbd608e7cd877de310.json
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[
"Sarah Marsh",
"Guardian Readers"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:10 | null | 2016-08-23T11:56:01 |
New research shows women earn 18% less than men on average, a gap that widens after childbirth. Here, women talk about their experiences
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Feducation%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fmy-pay-fell-by-thousands-stories-of-returning-to-work-after-childbirth.json
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en
| null |
'My pay fell by thousands': stories of returning to work after childbirth
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The pay gap between men and women widens markedly in the wake of maternity leave, according to new research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Women earn 18% less than men on average but 12 years after the birth of a first child that grows to 33%.
UK women still far adrift on salary and promotion as gender pay gap remains a gulf Read more
The Fawcett Society, a women’s rights campaign group, said the figures showed that the economy was “wasting women’s skills and experience” by not producing enough quality part-time jobs. Here seven women talk about their experiences of returning to work as a mother and how it affected their career.
Julia, 37, from Yorkshire: ‘Now I just see my work as a job – not a career’
Job: physiotherapist
While I was pregnant with my child there was a big restructure at work and a lot of jobs were at risk of going, but new positions also became available. I was offered one of the new senior positions when I was on maternity leave, and they said that me having a baby would not put me at a disadvantage. But, when I came back to sort out my contract I realised that it would be harder than I anticipated: I felt they were completely inflexible about my working hours. The contract they offered me was on a full-time basis but I wanted to return part-time so I didn’t have to put my child in full-time childcare. I offered to work weekends instead as the service runs seven-days-a week but they didn’t allow this.
I felt really upset – I had worked hard in my old role and felt this wasn’t being recognised. It seemed to me that as soon as they realised I couldn’t do the hours they wanted they didn’t want me anymore. I was frustrated because I knew I could do just as good a job part-time. Also I could have done a lot of the admin work from home, but they didn’t want me working off site.
Eventually I had to take a part-time job at a lower banding, reducing my annual pay by thousands. It’s affected my career, and I am working at a lower level than I was before maternity leave. I’ve seen a few more senior jobs come up but don’t want to apply as I know they won’t be flexible on hours. Now I just see my work as a means to pay the bills rather than a career I can progress in.
Tanya, from Scotland: ‘I know my pay lags behind that of male colleagues. It’s soul-destroying’
Job: senior manager, IT
I know that my pay is lagging behind others. I’ve seen male colleagues get regular pay rises, and I now earn a mere £2,000 more than some of them, despite being one of the longest-serving members of staff. It’s soul destroying.
This is partly because I had a child but also because I am not as pushy as some of the men I work with.
I cannot afford to go back up to working five days a week because of the cost of childcare Tanya
After maternity leave I had to really fight to come back part time. I had to make a representation to the board and explain why it was doable. I was even put on a trial period where my work was monitored closely. My job now hasn’t changed, I just have to do it with one extra day. I work four days a week and spend my day off with my child, checking my phone all day. I cannot afford to go back up to working five days a week because of the cost of childcare.
Within two weeks of being back at work after having a baby I was told: “You can’t expect to have kids and make any progress in your career.” I was shocked. If there’s a problem, for example, my child is ill, they aren’t very understanding. I have been told dogs are a better option than children. The situation is dreadful in my industry – once you’re out on maternity leave, it’s very hard to get back in again. Many of my female friends have never gone back to work.
Melody, 35, from the north-west: ‘I have been well supported by my team and manager since having a baby’
Job: scientist in aerospace and defence
I have been told in the past that I earn more than most of my colleagues. I am interested to find out more about the pay gap in my company when they publish the figures next year.
In my current job, I am one of two women out of 15 employees and the sole female scientist. None of my colleagues have ever been sexist to me and I am never afraid to ask for help if I cannot manage something.
Given the high cost of childcare, it’s almost not worth coming back Melody
I have been well supported by my team and manager since having a baby. I have no interest in getting promoted, but I have been given new roles within my area and new tasks that might one day lead to a promotion. Mothers who return to work should be given 15 hours free childcare, whatever the age of the child. Otherwise, given the high cost of childcare, it’s almost not worth coming back (we spent about half of our income on it, including childcare vouchers). If I could have free hours now, I would be much less stressed about my family’s finances.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest School holiday childcare.
Caitlin, 32, from the north: ‘My company refused to give me maternity pay’
Job: tech
I’ve worked for companies where pay rates were not discussed or published and I was aware anecdotally that male colleagues at the same level were earning more.
I also worked with a senior manager who only ever promoted male colleagues to management posts, including when there were numerous female colleagues that could have been promoted (many better qualified) instead.
My company refused to give me maternity pay when I had a baby. Legally this was within their right as I was pregnant when I joined the company, but I actually didn’t know at the time (it was only by a few weeks). I was lucky I could claim maternity allowance and get extra financial support from my partner.
I let my boss know I wouldn’t be returning to the company after six months maternity leave which he seemed surprised at – I don’t know why this came as a shock after they had chosen not to invest in my future at the company.
I took on a part-time contract role when my son was nine months and the company was very understanding and accommodating of my situation. However, in reality, this was a five-day-a-week role being squeezed into three days and I struggled with it. I’ve now decided to move on and look to set up my own business so I can be in control of my time.
We need to move away from the idea that organisations are losing money when their staff go on maternity leave – companies should see employees as a long-term investment. If someone is treated well then they will want to stay at the organisation for longer.
Women are also put under enormous pressure from both sides to either “have it all” (work and be a mum) or to not go back to work and “neglect” their child. Women struggle daily with knowing what the right thing is to do. Many won’t financially have the choice either way, but many feel guilty for wanting a career.
Ally, 36, from Southampton: ‘After I had a baby I wasn’t offered the “sexy” projects that get you promoted’
Job: civil servant
Just because we don’t want to work late it doesn’t mean we are not making a positive contribution Ally
I’m very lucky that working in the public sector means that pay is very transparent and there is no difference, at my level, in what men and women are paid. There is a motherhood penalty, however. I was not offered the high-profile “sexy” projects which get you noticed and promoted because I needed to leave the office at 4.30pm to get home for my child. There was also an assumption that I would go off and have a second child so I was given work to tide me over until that day came (I was eventually so bored at work I did decide it was a good time to have a second child). My prospects of promotion are diminished now I have children and want to get home to my family. We need more flexible working – just because we don’t want to work late it doesn’t mean we are not making a positive contribution.
Winnie, 40, from Surrey: ‘Since my husband left, I am even less able to go for promotions’
Job: teacher
There doesn’t appear to be a gender pay gap in teaching, but men hold more positions of authority and don’t work part-time to raise their children. This means they can access full-time roles more easily.
I had a child with additional needs and the on-site nursery wouldn’t take him so I had to give up my job as a further education lecturer. I am unable to work as a “proper” teacher as there is no childcare for children with additional needs in my area to help me outside of school hours. Since my husband left, I now have no support and am even less able to go for promotions. I have tried but been rejected because I would need to work from home.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pencils on a desk.
Jasmine, 33, Midlands: ‘I’m able to fit the work around my children, not the other way around’
Job: architect
In my career, I studied alongside men, and progressed at the same time as them. My experience was that I was paid the same, based on my ability and experience. I was never discriminated against.
My employers were also incredibly supportive in offering me flexible working when I had a baby. I know that my pay and position would have continued to be based on my ability to do the job. I have since found ways of working part time from home, meaning I don’t have to leave my children or pay for childcare. I’m able to fit the work around my children, not the other way around. Obviously some jobs don’t allow this, but more could be done to facilitate it.
All names have been changed.
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https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/23/my-pay-fell-by-thousands-stories-of-returning-to-work-after-childbirth
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en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b532dbdb134cb6f9cbe272b2e8cbf08cdedea441f790c66e3861b8de34f69b17.json
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|
[
"Amy Lieberman In Tulsa"
] | 2016-08-26T13:17:22 | null | 2016-08-25T11:30:07 |
Oklahoma is one of the most food insecure states in the US, where families struggle to buy enough healthy food. Locals are trying to ease poverty with community farming, but face difficulty in a city with a complex racial history
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcities%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Ftulsa-oklahoma-community-garden-urban-farming-oasis-food-desert.json
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en
| null |
Could urban farming be an oasis in the Tulsa food desert?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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As a young girl in Mississippi, Demalda Newsome once found some sweet potatoes sprouting outside. Excited at her discovery, she presented them to her grandmother, who angrily ordered the root vegetables out of her house. People should eat things from the ground only out of poverty, her grandmother said.
Now as a 59-year-old grandmother herself, Newsome still hears this view expressed as she works to combat food insecurity in the low-income neighbourhood of north Tulsa, Oklahoma. The state ranks among the worst in the US for national fruit and vegetable consumption, and has one of the lower average national hourly wages: US $7.25 (£5.53).
“We launched different school garden initiatives, but they just caused a racial divide,” Newsome explains, while driving along a near-deserted north Tulsa avenue one recent sweltering morning. “The black teachers didn’t want to do it. Black women have moved away from gardening so much and, to them, it is just like bringing them back to slavery. I never felt like that. If you want something, if you want to eat better, you better feed yourself.”
But feeding oneself can be complicated in this neighbourhood. Tulsa, a city of nearly 400,000, is considered one of the nation’s worst food deserts (places with officially “low access” to supermarkets). Only 7% of its residents are said to be able to walk to a grocery store within five minutes.
Typical household incomes in north Tulsa hover at around $20,000, and dip lower in Turley, a community at the city’s northernmost edge. It’s not uncommon for families here to struggle to purchase healthy – or simply enough – food at the one full-service grocery store left in all of north Tulsa. Other people, unable to pay off former tenants’ outstanding water or electricity bills, live with these basic amenities shut off so cannot cook.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Demalda Newsome on her farm in north Tulsa. Photograph: Amy Lieberman
The “urban gardening” trend, having taken off in the form of community and rooftop gardens from Asia to Europe, is seen as a partial solution to US food insecurity by some experts. In theory, local gardens can help people with low incomes and limited or uncertain access to nutritious food gain reliable sources of produce. Yet in Tulsa and nearby Oklahoma City, gardening initiatives such as the Newsomes’ have a hard time overcoming the immediacy of people’s hunger, and the complex racial history and financial constraints that divide this south-midwestern state.
Newsome and her husband are long-time pioneers of black community farming in Tulsa. Their organisation, Newsome Community Farms, opened its farmers’ market in 1999, employing 10 young people at a time with stipends to work on their five-acre farm. The Newsomes’ focus has always been on training more gardeners and farmers, and Demalda still works with a group of Hmong immigrant farmers. Community gardening activity at their farm has dwindled over the last three years, but they still plan to sell greens and honey at market rates on their front garden this autumn.
Racism is not out in the open. But you see another place getting money that is white-run, and what else can you think? Demalda Newsome
Sharp racial divisions in Tulsa, which tend to coincide with food deserts (as they do throughout the US), extend beyond maps, Demalda Newsome says. The city’s legacy is still charged by the Tulsa race riots of 1921, which saw an affluent black neighbourhood burned and approximately 300 people killed. “There’s a lot of conversations about the conversations here – but there’s no resolution, no problem solving,” she says.
Though she partners closely with two other Tulsa initiatives, Newsome says she finds few opportunities open to her as a black woman. “Racism is not out in the open. Nobody says, ‘I am not giving you the money, I don’t trust you with the money’ – but then you see another place getting the money that is white-run, and what else can you think?”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wounded prisoners are taken to hospital following the Tulsa race riots. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Newsome believes it’s easier to tackle food insecurity at a national level – she sits on several food organisations’ boards – than locally, where “people won’t address what is going on”. She thinks this happens, in part, because of a lack of grassroots community involvement in food insecurity forums.
Other black urban gardeners in Oklahoma share these feelings of exclusion. Bryan Wright, a teacher, launched an urban gardening project in Oklahoma City last year after he realised he was the only black person at a sustainability conference.
Wright uses holistic, permaculture principles in his work with Bugs, the Black Urban Gardening Society (as distinct from the similarly named New York-based network). On a recent hot day, only two families and one middle school student braved the 38C weather for a meeting, but 40 people have been known to attend, he says.
“We have this history of forced agrarian work, so when I have kids out here the first thing they will say is, ‘Man, we slaves’,” Wright says. “They joke with it, but you have to reach the kids. We are dealing with major food insecurity, so having an outlet where we’re able to harvest food is extremely beneficial.”
***
Despite its food deserts, Oklahoma was once a nationally competitive agriculture producer. Almost every native Oklahoman used to farm, or knows someone who did, says Ron Robinson, head of the Third Place community centre which runs a weekly food pantry and a community garden in Turley. Third Place planted the garden, now in its second year of production, after purchasing a row of dilapidated houses for $12,000 and razing them to the ground.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Turley garden run by Third Place community centre. Photograph: Amy Lieberman
Turley residents in the know can trek up to the garden with shopping carts to pick peaches or receive free breakfasts on weekends. But anxieties surrounding food prevail: according to a 2013 Oklahoma University study, more than half of shoppers at the Third Place food pantry displayed low food security and said they had experienced anxiety over having enough food to eat.
“Most people used to have good food, and the older people will have that in their history,” says Bonnie Ashing, a volunteer who runs the garden and is married to Robinson. “But the younger people don’t remember it at all.”
Ashing says use of Third Place’s community garden is still plagued with doubts and a lack of knowledge among its potential users. “People have expressed fear: ‘What if somebody picks my food? Don’t you lock your garden?’ Or some people will want to pick the produce all at once, before it is ripe.”
Claudette Schexnider, 54, remembers eating sliced cucumbers and cherry tomatoes growing up on her family’s farm outside Oklahoma City. Now, her food budget limits her weekly purchases to “the basics”, such as eggs and toast. She also receives free groceries once a month from the food pantry at Third Place.
After two heart attacks, Schexnider does not have the physical ability to consider gardening. She wants another grocery store that is cheaper and better quality than the only one in North Tulsa which currently stocks a small supply of fresh food.
“Urban farming is one piece of many bigger issues like structural inequality, pollution, health issues, and investment in these communities,” says Laura Lawson, dean of the office of agriculture and urban programmes at Rutgers University. “People can get involved in the community, and that is a really great thing, but it is not going to resolve the larger community problems that are shaping the food desert issue.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bugs group in Oklahoma hopes to one day create an urban forest to supply food throughout the year. Photograph: Amy Lieberman
In Tulsa, healthy eating is simply not part of the broad culture any more, while urban gardening is viewed as a “little bit of a white trend solution”, according to Justin Pickard, director of Crossover Community Impact. This local Christian community development organisation is planting fruit trees in the gardens of Tulsa residents, and alongside a highway. They might prove easier to maintain than an urban farm.
Meanwhile Wright, founder of Bugs in Oklahoma City, is hoping to grow a perennial, year-round “urban forest”, so the community garden’s supply is not limited to a few months each year. Unfortunately, his organisation operates on virtually no budget; a common situation in Oklahoma. The energy-rich state has a financially strapped state government, but Oklahoma’s Republican leadership impacts even organisations such as the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, which feeds 116,000 Oklahomans weekly but is forced to forge its own path without any public support.
“The [state] government doesn’t think it’s their responsibility to help people, but there are a lot of good people doing good things,” says Katie Plohocky, co-founder of the Tulsa-based mobile grocery R&G Family Grocers. “Without that, we would be in big trouble.”
Urban farmers: community food growing around the world – in pictures Read more
Newsome says she and her husband are considering leaving Tulsa, perhaps for Philadelphia to be with her son, who is also involved in community gardening. “I didn’t believe it until I was there: you have gardens on every corner in low-income neighbourhoods, and you don’t have to talk people into it. You have elders, young people, everyone just coming out.”
By comparison, Newsome says she is worried for the future in Oklahoma – particularly when “band-aids to the wound”, such as Ron Robinson’s Third Place community centre, disappear. She and her husband are disappointed and disillusioned with the funding reality they continue to confront. But for now at least, the work still continues, and they take it day by day.
Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/25/tulsa-oklahoma-community-garden-urban-farming-oasis-food-desert
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ae6464984cb5c6d04f2682d3be1dae9e8988021ecd7c6fd7a09fa9e32bc9b1c5.json
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[
"Alice Ross"
] | 2016-08-26T16:48:32 | null | 2016-08-26T15:10:40 |
Sister and mother of student who died in 2011 after being restrained call for police officers to be prosecuted
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fuk-black-lives-matter-kingsley-burrell-death-protest-cps-birmingham-police.json
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| null |
Activists occupy CPS offices over Kingsley Burrell's death
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Activists occupied the lobby of the Crown Prosecution Service offices in Birmingham on Friday, calling for police officers to be prosecuted over the 2011 death of a student.
About 20 protesters chanted “who are the murderers? Police are the murderers”, “no justice, no peace” and “black lives matter”, waved placards that read “shut it down”, and recited the names of black men who had died after coming into contact with the police.
They vowed not to leave until a senior representative of the CPS came to speak to them.
Desmond Jaddoo, coordinator of the Justice for Kingsley Burrell campaign, said the protest was the start of more direct action. The sit-in included members of the Black Lives Matter campaign, who were wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts or displaying banners with the slogan.
A CPS area business manager, Karen Sawicki, came to the lobby more than two hours into the sit-in to accept a letter that the protesters asked be passed directly to Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, highlighting the delays in reaching a charging decision.
“We need justice now as justice delayed is justice denied,” the letter said.
Burrell’s sister Kadisha said afterwards: “I think today definitely went well – we managed to have our direct action in a peaceful way. Getting a reaction from the community to let them know that Kingsley’s death hasn’t been in vain – it goes to show it’s a serious issue, what happened to Kingsley.”
Her brother Kingsley, a student and father of three, died in March 2011 from a heart attack four days after being detained under the Mental Health Act. He was 29.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kingsley Burrell, who was detained under the Mental Health Act, died as a result of neglect by police and ambulance staff who forcibly restrained him, an inquest found. Photograph: PA
His sister told a rally in front of Birmingham Cathedral before the CPS protest that the family had campaigned for justice ever since, adding: “What happened to Kingsley, nobody should go through that ill-treatment. He was treated like a dog. He was treated like an animal.”
She and their mother, Janet Burrell, joined those occupying the CPS offices.
Jaddootold the Guardian the case had been “shrouded in delays” from the outset.
He said: “It took 18 months for them to release his body for burial, and four years to get to inquest.”
The inquest recorded what Jaddoo described as a “damning verdict of negligence” against agencies including the police, but the family was concerned by the evidence given by three officers and complained to theIndependent Police Complaints Commission that they appeared to have perjured themselves.
The IPCC passed a file to the CPS for a charging decision last October. The family met the CPS on Tuesday and told the demonstrators they expect to hear in the next fortnight whether charges would be brought against the officers. Kadisha Burrell said: “It doesn’t look promising at all.”
She added: “We want them to prosecute: there’s more than enough evidence … we’re anxious. We can’t wait any more.” She denied her brother had mental health problems.
The CPS had previously declined to bring charges against the officers. It said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, after the IPCC’s initial investigation into the death.
Janet Burrell told the Guardian about the wait for the CPS decision. She said: “You can’t move on with your life. Your life’s left on hold, you’re constantly waiting, waiting in vain for answers.
“I’m hoping we get the right answers. The state has a duty of care to protect vulnerable young people. I just want to know why my son’s not here today … My son called the police for help and ended up dead, and that was the result, and nobody can tell me the reason why.”
Her son’s inquest last year heard he was taken into custody after calling police to say he was being threatened with a gun in Birmingham city centre. After CCTV showed that he was not being followed, he was detained. There was a violent struggle with police officers in the back of an ambulance and Burrell had a heart attack that led to brain damage, the inquest heard.
Burrell had been left handcuffed on the hospital floor for five or six before being assessed, and had wet himself. At one point he had a covering put over his face.
Jurors at the six-week inquest found that neglect by police officers and ambulance staff who forcibly restrained him caused his death. The verdict lead his family to call for a public inquiry.
The IPCC, which investigates deaths in police custody, launched an investigation in April 2011 during which four West Midlands police officers were interviewed under police caution, a spokesman said. Dorset police force carried out a separate investigation into medical staff.
More than two years later the IPCC passed a file to the CPS for a decision on whether three officers should be charged with gross misconduct on the grounds of honesty and integrity. The CPS decided there was insufficient evidence prosecute any of the officers in June 2014.
The officers gave evidence at the inquest, leading to a complaint on behalf of the family to the IPCC, which again investigated and again passed a file to the CPS, which has not yet announced a decision.
A CPS spokesman said on Friday that officials had met the family three days earlier to update them on the case. He added: “The CPS has been considering this matter since it was referred to us by the IPCC in October 2015 and are mindful of the impact this continues to have on the family.
“We are still considering the evidence passed to us and will make a decision in due course.”
Jaddoo said the case highlighted “consistent inequalities and injustices that the black community face[d] when coming into contact with the police.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/26/uk-black-lives-matter-kingsley-burrell-death-protest-cps-birmingham-police
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/4a94ba0b80f49114e6191f2844ded1adcbe90f5ac837f89b715ee26ecce3622d.json
|
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[
"Amelia Hill"
] | 2016-08-30T04:50:09 | null | 2003-12-14T01:03:12 |
It claims to be about self-improvement but it's been accused of exploiting the gullible, even of being a cult. Others say it transforms their lives. So what is the Landmark Forum? And what does it do? Amelia Hill decided to find out.
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk%2F2003%2Fdec%2F14%2Fameliahill.theobserver.json
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en
| null |
Investigation: is the Landmark Forum a cult?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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I don't do epiphanies. I don't make leaps of faith or have life-transforming realisations and I have never experienced anything even remotely resembling a breakthrough.
I have never read a self-help book and consider myself immune to out-of-body experiences. Meditation bores me and the few times I tried yoga, I ended up inexplicably angry.
Above all, what I most certainly do not do is stand up in front of 200 people who openly talk about sharing, loving and personal journeys, and apologise for getting it all wrong. Except, as of last Tuesday, I apparently do.
This is how it happened. When I signed up to a course held by Landmark Education, I wanted to investigate tales I had heard about a course that turned intelligent, predominantly middle-class professionals into strange automatons.
Students were said to lose all sense of themselves and take to phoning loved ones late at night to bring up long-forgotten arguments while excoriating themselves for real and imagined character flaws.
A quick look on the internet revealed even more dramatic claims. Since its creation in 1991, Landmark Education has been described variously as a cult, an exercise in brainwashing and a marketing trick cooked up by a conman to sap the vulnerable of their savings.
Landmark rebuts such claims. Not satisfied with simply transforming the lives of its students, it promises to deliver the secret of what it means to be human and guarantees them futures greater than they could imagine.
For £275 and 39 hours of my time, it seemed like an offer worth considering. In my head, however, I had already begun to draft an article about a society so needy that even its educated elite were mugs enough to pay through the nose for such vague, preposterous promises.
Mugs or not, over the past two years, Landmark has experienced an astonishing surge of interest. While most companies congratulate themselves on achieving a 6 per cent growth, Landmark boasts a steady 10 per cent rise in customers across 100 cities and 21 countries.
More than 125,000 people in the world participated in Landmark's courses last year. In 2001, its revenues reached $56 million, although the organisation is struggling to recover from the destruction of its main New York office in the Twin Towers.
But it is on Britain's cynical shores that the organisation has struck gold, attracting more than 1,050 students each month, 80 per cent of whom go on to take a second course.
Questioning former students on what the course taught them got me nowhere: happy to talk, they spoke winningly of transformations and breakthroughs, insights and possibilities while remaining vague as to how such magic was achieved. Clearly, the only way to get to the bottom of the course was to attend myself. So it was that three weeks ago, I reinvented myself as a human resources manager for an unspecified City firm, and signed myself up.
It was with mild trepidation that I took my seat on Friday morning in the all-white lecture hall in Landmark Education's rented north London offices. I had three days of lectures ahead of me, each day lasting 15 hours and seemingly designed to induce mild sleep deprivation. Still, I had been guaranteed a transformation by Monday morning.
We sit in rows. On the stage in front of us, 53-year-old Jerry Baden perches on a director's chair and twinkles at us with dark eyes. Below him sit 160 students, aged from 18 to 84, with the majority in their thirties. There is a fairly equal balance between the sexes and we are a reasonably representative ethnic mix.
On the floor beneath us, are 100 Forum graduates taking the £495 Advanced course. Two floors below, another 100 students study the £90 Self-Expression and Leadership programme. The building practically throbs with budding transformations.
People look apprehensive. There is much twisting of hair, shifting in seats and quick, covert glances around the room: everyone seems to be wondering what they have got themselves into.
Jerry is bombarding us with grand claims: Landmark Education is so powerful, he says, that it could achieve world peace if used correctly. He slips in a reference to Arafat and Rabin shaking hands in the rose garden; it was a Landmark moment, he claims. Really? Our eyebrows have barely time to arch in cynical disbelief but he has swept on.
World peace aside, this course will transform our lives, he promises. Transformation will come to all, but individual moments will vary: like corn, we are told, we will pop at different times.
'But not all popcorn pops,' I think, momentarily panicked by the sure knowledge that I'm going to be that one last kernel, left charred and blackened at the bottom of the pan.
Jerry sweeps on. To pop, we must make ourselves coachable. We must not, he emphasises, choosing the one word guaranteed to strike fear into my soul, be observers. He seems to look straight at me. I kick my notebook under my chair and sit up straighter.
There are rules. Timekeeping is essential, toilet breaks are discouraged: missing even a minute will jeopardise our chance of achieving transformation. We will work for three to four hours at a time. During short breaks, we will have homework. There is one meal break in the early evening and more homework after the day is done. Notetaking, unprescribed medicines and alcohol are forbidden and we must open our minds to all suggestions.
Are we being lulled into dangerous credulity? We discuss it anxiously in corners during our first break. Are these mind games? Is this how brainwashing begins? We glance over our shoulders as we whisper together to see if we are being watched. Comforted, I think, by the discovery that we all share the same anxieties, we begin to relax. We start to take active responsibility for each other and a community is formed.
Over the next three days, we are educated in a mix of philosophies, psychology and religious theories, illustrated by readings from books, plays and one detailed description of the entire plot of Citizen Kane. Including the ending.
The theories expounded cherry pick ideas from existential philosophy and motivational psychology. They take in aspects of Maxwell Maltz's psycho-cybernetics, Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts and Freud. Shadows of Abraham Maslow, Hinduism, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale and P.T. Barnum flit over the proceedings.
We're encouraged to share and, schooled by Oprah in what to do with a platform and a neurosis, people rush to the microphone to have Jerry lay waste to their tales of parental neglect, social deprivation and emotional hardship. It's useful but not rocket science and I remained stolidly unpopped. We've been sitting in the same, hard chairs for almost 13 hours. I'm bored and my back hurts.
There are two more hours to go before we can go home, by which time my last train will be long gone. I begin to get cross. I suspect I'm losing what little coachability I might once have possessed.
Next morning, we retake our seats. Everyone in my row spent hours on their homework. I unwound instead by reading P.G. Wodehouse and criticising the course with my boyfriend. I feel bad.
I've had kinder starts to the day. We're still taking our seats when Jerry begins shouting: We're ugly people. Disgusting. Our behaviour is entirely governed by a need to look good which makes us liars, fakes and frauds.
'You're disgusting,' he shouts. 'You just don't realise quite how disgusting you are yet.' He pauses. 'But you're just about to find out.' His timing is impeccable; we've hardly woken up and we're already hanging on his every word.
This morning, he says, he is going to force our resistant minds to recognise how fetid and mean our personalities are. He shouts, he mocks, he refuses to let us ask questions. He tells us we're liars and ridicules the stories we tell about our own lives.
I can hardly bear it. I resent the way he struts across the stage and the way he takes stock of us all, smoothing the pleats in his trousers and patting his hair. I find his confidence intolerable and am maddened by his belief that he knows us better than we know ourselves. And yet, I am gradually forced to admit that he might be right.
One after another, Jerry lambasts those who take the microphone to complain about how hard, harsh and unfair their lives have been. He pushes them through stages of anger, tears and denial until they stand face to face with their own delusions, deceits and contrivances.
Jerry knows he's won. Now that we're putty in his hands, he launches his bombshell. For every relationship that has failed, it is up to us to make it right. And now. In the next break. It's time for that phone call.
He asks for a show of hands: who will make the call. A smattering of hands go up. Too few for Jerry, who tells us to begin the conversation with the words: 'I've been making you wrong for...', 'I've been resenting...' or 'I regret that...'.
There are more hands in the air now and Jerry ploughs on. However we choose to begin the call, he says, we're to end it with the unambiguous, unilateral statement: 'I love you.' A few people take their hands back down.
By midday, the pressure to make the phone call is so intense that people are dialling as they walk down the stairs. Tearful heart-to-hearts take place in public corridors as once-implacable feelings of hurt and recrimination turn to reconciliation in a few short sentences.
I do not make a phone call - I feel I have no one to call - but I see how brave and strong others are to make theirs. I begin to wonder whether it is healthy self-awareness or a deepset denial that make me feel so stable. I begin to prod at the possibility of the latter.
Landmark has faced accusations of being a cult, but I saw nothing of that. Far from working to separate us from our families and friends, we were told there was no relationship too dead to be revived, no love too cold to be warmed.
One girl who complains that she cannot feel close to her own mother realises she has never recovered from seeing her struggle ferociously bring up a young family alone.
'You were scared of your mother at the age of four and have been carrying that frightened child around with you ever since,' Jerry says. That evening, she phones her mother.
'I didn't even realise I was doing it because the feeling had become so familiar,' she says next day. 'It's only now I've stopped being scared of her that I realised how it had affected our relationship.'
By the third day, nearly everyone except me seems to have popped. One man who has called everyone in his phonebook describes his newfound joy to another man who has just rung every woman he has ever slept with.
People are straining at the leash to take their new-found confidence out into the real world. Everywhere, plans are being made; careers are reinvigorated and lives overhauled.
I wish I could be part of it but, apart from recognising a couple of useful lifestyle tools, I remain out in the cold. Eventually, I realise I'm breaking the promise I made to be coachable. I decide to stop analysing, and simply give Jerry my trust. The words sound extraordinary in my mouth: this is not what I do.
As a semi-interloper, I don't feel I have the right to go up to the microphone but at the next break I ask Jerry to show me how to mend a once-strong relationship that hit a barrier.
'We make others wrong so we can be right and you just love to be right, don't you?' he says. His words mean nothing to me. I don't understand. Jerry speaks as though to a child. Chastened, I accept his condescension; I realise his words will change my view on not just this relationship but on others.
I struggle and dimly begin to see his point. If my friend didn't regard what she did as wrong then there are at least two versions of her intention. If there are two interpretations of anyone's meaning, there might be dozens. If, therefore, there is no absolute truth, then whatever I believe about someone else's intentions says more about me than about them.
I feel pins and needles run down my legs. I realise I have, finally, popped. Now I have to make that call.
'Just tell her you love her,' Jerry concludes, getting up. I don't want him to go now. I want him to stay for ever and advise me. 'Isn't that the only thing you know for certain?' he asks. 'Just tell her what you know to be true.' And I do. It's easy, surprisingly so. In a single phone call I get a friendship back. She tells me she loves me too. I cry and am happy.
Two days later, after a tentative excursion into the real world, we return to compare notes. I cannot find a single person who believes their life hasn't improved.
We're invited to come up to the microphone and share. It is Doug Tucker, a 35-year-old hot tub salesman from Stratford-upon-Avon who puts it best. Over 6ft 4in, with a shaven head and rippling biceps tattooed with a snarling bulldog and the England flag, Doug is hardly the middle-class professional the course appears to attract.
'If anyone who knew me before I came on this course said I would even be in the same room as a bunch of people clapping and saying they loved each other, I would have hit them,' he says. 'Likewise, if anyone had told me I would have realised things about myself that I've realised in the last few days, I would have laughed in their face.'
'This course has transformed me. And the funny thing is, I didn't know I even had it in me to transform,' he smiled.The Landmark Forum is not magic. It is not scary or insidious. It is, in fact, simple common sense delivered in an environment of startling intensity.
It is this intensity that makes the difference. While any one of us might well have already been told the same home truths by friends and family, we were too distracted by life and too wrapped up in our own defence mechanisms to listen.
Landmark takes you away from life. The three days create a bubble of possibility in which we were able to try on new opinions and experiment with fresh behaviours.
I don't know whether I will apply every lesson in the future, although I hope I will. I'm simply going to trust Jerry when he promised it was like riding a bicycle; that once we learn how to balance, we never forget. Although we might, every so often, still fall off.
Secret seven
The Landmark Forum's 'seven commandments' for being an extraordinary person:
· Be Racket-Free: give up being right - even when you know you were.
· Be Powerful: be straight in your communication and take what you get.
· Be Courageous: acknowledge your fear (not necessarily get rid of it) and then act.
· Be Peaceful: give up the interpretation that there's something wrong.
· Be Charismatic: give up trying to get somewhere. Be entirely fulfilled in the present moment.
· Be Enrolling: share your new possibilities in such a way that others are touched, moved and inspired.
· Be Unreasonable: in expectations of yourself and others beyond what you would think they are capable of.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/dec/14/ameliahill.theobserver
|
en
| 2003-12-14T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/74616a8d5f021dfd36f6680cd59243f0a675bad2e675fdea06adcc379396831e.json
|
|
[
"David Squires"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:28 | null | 2016-08-16T05:16:10 |
As the English top flight starts once again, David Squires is on hand to look at some of the big stories from opening weekend … as well as a few others
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Fpicture%2F2016%2Faug%2F16%2Fdavid-squires-on-the-big-premier-league-kick-off.json
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en
| null |
David Squires on … the big Premier League kick-off
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
As the English top flight starts once again, David Squires is on hand to look at some of the big stories from opening weekend … as well as a few others. And you can find David’s archive of cartoons here
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2016/aug/16/david-squires-on-the-big-premier-league-kick-off
|
en
| 2016-08-16T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/cf8273ed2e4d31874685a2fed227cb741b7f9f97e95c7123368b895b72f0af1d.json
|
|
[
"Australian Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-28T06:51:48 | null | 2016-08-28T04:48:52 |
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has flatly refuted a Wallabies’ allegation he had a secret meeting with referee Romain Poite before the second Bledisloe Cup Test
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fall-blacks-secret-meeting-with-referee-did-not-happen-says-steve-hansen.json
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en
| null |
All Blacks' 'secret meeting' with referee did not happen, says Steve Hansen
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has flatly refuted a Wallabies’ allegation he had a secret meeting with referee Romain Poite before the second Bledisloe Cup Test.
The Australian Rugby Union filed an official complaint after Saturday’s 29-9 defeat in Wellington, claiming Hansen and Frenchman Poite had met in contravention of World Rugby regulations.
Australia’s Michael Cheika hits out as eye-gouging row mars Bledisloe loss Read more
Hansen said on Sunday he never met with Poite but did catch up with assistant referee Jaco Peyper, who controlled last week’s first Test in Sydney, at the South African’s request to “review” several incidents from that match.
“I’m a firm believer that we’re here to support the referees and help them. It’s a difficult game to ref so why wouldn’t you have the meeting?” Hansen said. “[But] we certainly didn’t have one with Romain Poite.
“We don’t meet the ref, haven’t done for about 18 to 24 months, because it’s just a waste of time.”
Under World Rugby rules, coaches are permitted to meet with referees before a match, but only if there are representatives from both teams present, or if one side is invited and declines the opportunity.
Hansen said it was “quite sad” the allegation was made and joked he was “shattered” by the implications.
Upon arrival back in Sydney, coach Michael Cheika tried to play down the controversy as a “footnote” for the Wallabies.
“It’s something we want to be heard on and I think for Australia we’ve got to get ourselves heard on and off the field as much as we can to try and get ourselves more organised,” he said.
Cheika also blasted Poite post-match for ignoring approaches from captain Stephen Moore to discuss in-game rulings, even claiming referees have preconceived ideas about Australian players.
But Hansen – who noted Cheika didn’t complain about the refereeing in last year’s World Cup quarter-final against Scotland, which was decided by a controversial late penalty – suggested that was their fault.
“I know he was upset the ref didn’t talk to Stephen but if I was in their shoes I’d be wanting to ask myself what is it we’re doing that’s making him not want to talk to Stephen?” Hansen said. “The best captains in the world pick their moments.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/28/all-blacks-secret-meeting-with-referee-did-not-happen-says-steve-hansen
|
en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/61d3da9c648d8f3d57a2e6015cf30490d326de655b23ee550f7aaff068819032.json
|
|
[
"Samuel Gibbs"
] | 2016-08-26T13:27:07 | null | 2016-08-24T10:51:07 |
Scores of users complain of broken or unresponsive screens, which repair specialists report is down to a widespread flaw in touchscreen chips
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Ftouchscreen-chip-flaw-iphone-6-plus-touch-disease.json
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en
| null |
Touchscreen chip flaw renders some iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices useless
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus appear to be vulnerable to so-called “touch disease”, a hardware problem that is crippling phones, according to reports from users and third-party repairers.
The issue, which has been observed in iPhone 6s since the beginning of the year, seems to affect the touchscreen controller chips, resulting in problems for the high-end smartphones in responding to touch input.
Badly affected phones become next to useless. First the status bar becomes grey and flickers and the touchscreen becomes unresponsive, with users unable to control or use the smartphones without the touchscreen working.
On the eve of Apple’s unveiling of its next version of the iPhone, an extensive report by third-party repair resource iFixit has suggested the issue is widespread.
iFixit repair advocate Julia Bluff said: “Of course, there’s no way to tell exactly how many phones are afflicted with what we’re calling Touch Disease, but every repair tech we spoke to told us that the problem is incredibly common.”
“This issue is widespread enough that I feel like almost every iPhone 6 or 6 Plus has a touch of it (no pun intended) and are like ticking bombs just waiting to act up,” Jason Villmer, owner of repair shop STS Telecom, told iFixit.
A fix for the issue is possible, requiring the broken chips within the iPhones to be carefully replaced by workshops capable of performing so-called microsoldering – the use of microscopes and very fine soldering irons to remove and replace tiny chips on the main boards of the iPhones.
The microsoldering repair specialist Jessa Jones puts the fault down to the same reason the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus suffered from bending issues. Their thin, wide bodies flex more than previous Apple smartphones and the flex point appears to be around where the touchscreen controllers sit within the smartphones. Apple has since strengthened the structure of its iPhones to correct the issue with 2015’s iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.
Jones said: “Over time, normal daily use of the large, thin phone will eventually create a small crack or separation in one of the balls that underlie either of the [touchscreen control] chips on the board. At first, there may be no defect at all. Later you might notice that the screen is sometimes unresponsive, but it is quick to come back with a hard reset. As the crack deepens into a full separation of the chip/board bond, the periods of no touch function become more frequent. This is exacerbated by any drop.”
Pressure on the screen or twisting of the phone can work as a temporary fix, as can so-called reflowing of the chip, where it is heated up to try and reform broken bonds, reconnecting the chip to the board beneath it. But the problem will get worse over time, eventually rendering the touchscreen unresponsive.
Jones explained that the only solution is to replace both touchscreen control chip, cleaning the board underneath, which should cost about the same as a screen replacement or a quarter of the cost of Apple’s out-of-warranty refurbished phone replacement offer.
Apple’s in-store support are not capable of doing so, leaving those out of warranty with little recourse but to buy a new or refurbished smartphone, according to users of Apple’s support forums.
While Apple store staff have reportedly told users affected by the issue that it is a known problem, the company has not officially acknowledged the issue.
Apple did not respond to request for comment.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/24/touchscreen-chip-flaw-iphone-6-plus-touch-disease
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/8d38b5d1297462bbf897d500283d348e2a2812045cbba121f6c58b91bd99597d.json
|
|
[
"James Walsh"
] | 2016-08-31T12:57:51 | null | 2016-08-31T11:14:07 |
BBC presenter uploaded footage on Facebook showing an incident with a driver - has something similar happened to you?
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Flifeandstyle%2Fbike-blog%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fcyclists-have-you-experienced-an-altercation-like-jeremy-vines.json
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en
| null |
Cyclists: have you experienced an altercation like Jeremy Vine's?
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Jeremy Vine’s video of an alleged road rage incident in a west London street is upsetting, but not surprising to regular cycle commuters.
Bike users in London and elsewhere shared many similar stories on social media, including those of drivers getting out of their cars to physically threaten cyclists over perceived indiscretions.
In Vine’s video, a woman who had been driving behind him gets out and starts hurling abuse at him. Vine was taking the primary position, due to parked cars on both sides, with the driver apparently furious at Vine for riding in the middle of the road.
Challenging Vine, the driver says: “Why the fuck would you stop in front of a car. You don’t respect your fucking life. Move your bike, move your bike. I could have hit you and I’d be done for a murder. Get the fuck out of the road. Fucking idiot, now fuck off. You lot piss me off.”
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) Most notable thing about @theJeremyVine road rage video is just about every London cyclist will have faced similar https://t.co/PORndZZFUU
If you’ve been involved in an incident similar to that experienced by Vine, we’d like to hear from you. Where were you, and what happened? Did you report it to the police, and if so, how did they respond? Did you, like Vine (and an increasing number of urban cyclists), have video of the incident?
You can share your stories by filling out the form below. You can be anonymous if you wish.
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/bike-blog/2016/aug/31/cyclists-have-you-experienced-an-altercation-like-jeremy-vines
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/240923a010c28439791961fd7e09744c4df1394f37eed1d5e09ffc462e3569ad.json
|
|
[
"Nils Pratley"
] | 2016-08-26T13:30:16 | null | 2016-07-25T22:13:50 |
The select committee made a mistake in allowing the former owner of BHS not to give precise details of how he would ‘sort’ the deficit in the schemes
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2Fnils-pratley-on-finance%2F2016%2Fjul%2F25%2Fregulator-must-chase-philip-green-for-bhs-pension-cash.json
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en
| null |
Regulator must chase Philip Green for BHS pension cash
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The MPs who rightly denounced Sir Philip Green’s grubby sale of BHS to a thrice-bankrupt chancer missed a trick: they never pinned down what the tycoon meant when he said he would “sort” the deficit in the pension schemes.
Their report was well researched, well argued and commendably concise – a fine advertisement for the power of select committees to cut through financial fog. A mistake, however, was made when Green gave his testimony on 15 June and proclaimed: “I want to give an assurance to the 20,000 pensioners – I am there to sort this in the correct way.”
That sounded definitive. But what did the “correct” way mean? To most observers, the answer should be easy: it means ensuring that every BHS pensioner receives the pension he or she was expecting.
But note Green’s response when Iain Wright, the chair of the business select committee, asked for clarification in those terms. Green replied: “Sir, they [Green’s advisers] are working up a plan. When they have got the plan together they are going to present it. I haven’t seen – I basically, this time, am going to get presented the plan, hopefully to find a way how we solve it.”
That was far from clear. Green’s answer did not commit him to any precise outcome. Disastrously, the exchanges then fizzled out inconclusively. Indeed, in later answers, Green suggested “sorting” involved reheating a pension restructuring plan from 2014, entitled Project Thor, that would have involved Green and his family finding an up-front payment of £80m.
But £80m no longer seems remotely enough. At the point of BHS’s collapse the combined deficit in the two schemes was £571m on one accounting measure. It may be even bigger today because long-term gilt yields have fallen, which has the effect of increasing the size of future liabilities in a defined-benefit scheme. More important, BHS has failed and thus can’t make future contributions. The bill, on some estimates, could be reduced to £400m by making cash offers to scheme members with small pots. But there is no indication Green is contemplating an offer of that size.
Indeed, the mood music suggests Green is still fixated by the idea that long-term gilt yields will rise one day, allowing the deficits to evaporate.
If Lesley Titcomb, chief executive of the Pension Regulator, has even half a mind to accept a settlement on these terms, she should think again. Green had many opportunities over many years to address BHS’s deficit. He failed to do so, even after paying himself dividends far in excess of BHS’s profits in the early years of ownership.
Yet another exercise in procrastination, or date-stamped IOUs backed by Green family vehicles, would be -disgraceful. This time, “sorting” should mean a structure that gives BHS -pensioners proper confidence. If Green won’t pay, the Pensions Regulator should chase him for the cash – that’s what its powers are there for.
BT Openreach: decision time
Over at the select committee for culture, media and sport, the MPs have also scored a result of sorts. A week after they complained that BT was “significantly underinvesting” in its broadband network, company chairman Sir Mike Rake is firing off promises. Openreach, the infrastructure division, can have an independent chairman and a majority of independent directors, says Rake, plus more control over how the cash is spent.
Will that be enough to silence the calls for Openreach to be liberated from BT via a formal breakup? We’ll find out on Tuesday when regulator Ofcom publishes its final thoughts on the matter. A breakup, we assume, is off the cards, but Ofcom also said in February it wanted Openreach to have more autonomy than BT had proposed.
Rake’s eleventh-hour offer was thus timed curiously. It was, perhaps, a case of volunteering concessions Ofcom would demand anyway. Alternatively, BT was drawing a line in the sand: this much, and no more.
One thing seems clear, however: the MPs’ report illustrated how little goodwill BT enjoys in Westminster. One prod from the MPs and BT is on the back foot.
Gambling problem
The gambling industry is obsessed by deals, or so it seems. But here’s an offer William Hill can surely afford to decline. Rank and 888 Holdings want the chain of bookies to join a three-way mashup to pursue benefits of scale.
That, at least, is what it says on the invitation. In practice, it sounds like a plea for William Hill, the biggest of the trio, to fix the others’ lack of size. Just say “No”. William Hill, without a permanent chief executive since last week’s ousting of James Henderson, has enough headaches of its own.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2016/jul/25/regulator-must-chase-philip-green-for-bhs-pension-cash
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en
| 2016-07-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b81e94da660272e3538531bb900aeef94654c7b0a58ecaca340d2248f25102dd.json
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[
"Ed Aarons",
"Dominic Fifield"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:49 | null | 2016-08-25T20:13:16 |
Arsenal are to pay £35m for Valencia’s Shkodran Mustafi which, with the purchase of the Deportivo la Coruña striker Lucas Pérez, will take the club’s summer spending close to £100m
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Farsenal-agree-35m-fee-with-valencia-for-shkodran-mustafi.json
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Arsenal agree £35m fee with Valencia for Shkodran Mustafi
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www.theguardian.com
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Arsenal have agreed to pay £35m to sign Valencia’s Shkodran Mustafi, with the purchase of the Germany defender and Deportivo la Coruña striker Lucas Pérez set to take the north London club’s spending in the summer transfer window close to the £100m mark.
Premier League: transfer window summer 2016 – interactive Read more
Arsène Wenger has been under pressure to strengthen his defensive options after long-term injuries to Per Mertesacker and Gabriel, with Mustafi identified as the Frenchman’s No1 target weeks ago.
Having initially bid around £20m for the 24-year-old, who was on Everton’s books as a teenager before moving to Sampdoria in 2012, Valencia were insistent that he was not for sale. However, negotiations have continued since then and an agreement was finally reached on Thursday, with Mustafi set for a medical before the weekend having agreed personal terms with the club.
The news will come as a huge relief for Arsenal supporters after a poor start to the season that has seen them pick up just a solitary point from their opening two Premier League fixtures.
Mustafi looks set to be joined in north London by Lucas, who scored 17 goals last season and opened his account for this season with the winner against Elbar last Friday. The 27-year-old, who was also wanted by Everton, has a buyout clause of around £17m and is also expected to travel to London on Friday to complete his move.
Arsenal have already spent £35m on Switzerland midfielder Granit Xhaka and outlayed around £9m combined on defender Rob Holding, forward Takuma Asano and midfielder Kelechi Nwakali.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/arsenal-agree-35m-fee-with-valencia-for-shkodran-mustafi
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a9f39573908ba6678219b6ab8a8804d50b6559309e3ccaac5a34cd9473de88fe.json
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[
"Euclides Montes"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:39 | null | 2016-08-25T15:56:03 |
In today’s Fiver: USA! USA!! USA!!! Marlon Harewood’s birthday, meta-pedantry and can anybody bring down the Bayern death star?
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The land of the free and the home of the brave
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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IT’S NOT THE REJECTION THAT KILLS YOU, IT’S THE HOPE
The Fiver loves the USA! USA!! USA!!!, Bruce Springsteen, the lunar landing, those steps Rocky runs up at the end of the training montage, the funky way they insist on saying aluminium – after all, it is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And in this brave land, full of brave souls, there is nothing worse than being called a coward. Just ask Marty McFly. Nobody calls him chicken.
And so the Fiver was shocked earlier this month when our flag-waving, Humvee-driving trans-atlantic cousin, Yankee Doodle Fiver texted us with the news that the USA! USA!! USA!!! goalkeeper Hope Solo had used the ‘C-word’ – in the Olympics no less – aimed at the Sweden team for having the temerity to defend against the World Cup winners and No1 ranked team in the world. Sweden won the Rio quarter-finals on penalties, USA! USA!! USA!!! lost and Hope turned to despair.
“I thought we played a courageous game,” she Yosemite Sammed. “I thought we had many opportunities on goal. I think we showed a lot of heart … the best team did not win today – I strongly, firmly believe that. I also think we played a bunch of cowards.”
But it seems that the First Amendment doesn’t extend to international women’s football interviews. On Thursday, US Soccer President Sunil Gulati took exception to Solo’s use of the C-word, handing her a six-month suspension from the national team, ruling that her comments were “unacceptable and do not meet the standard of conduct we require from our national team players. Beyond the athletic arena, and beyond the results, the Olympics celebrate and represent the ideals of fair play and respect. We expect all of our representatives to honor those principles, with no exceptions.” Ho hum.
Never one to miss out on having the last word in an argument, Solo shot straight back. “For 17 years, I dedicated my life to the US Women’s National Team and did the job of a pro athlete the only way I knew how – with passion, tenacity, and unrelenting commitment to be the best goalkeeper in the world, not just for my country, but to elevate the sport for the next generation of female athletes. In those commitments I have never wavered,” she Trumped on Twitter. “And with so much more to give, I am saddened by the Federation’s decision to terminate my contract.” An apology it is not.
Solo didn’t have a great Olympics to be fair, causing a stir even before the tournament started by posting pictures of her protecting herself from mosquitoes in Brazil, leading local fans to follow every one of her goal kicks with shouts of ‘Zika! Zika!’ - Olympics bantz galore. Add to that a couple of mistakes leading to goals in a match against Colombia and her attempt to play silly buggers/mind games – changing her gloves! – during the Sweden penalty shoot out and you can see that Solo might have wished to stay at home, watching reruns of Seinfeld instead on her own.
Once again, the American justice system, erm, prevails. Solo now has six months to dedicate her time to campaigning against wage discrimination in American sport, fighting to avoid trial for domestic violence and thinking up an apology for the Swedes. The good, the bad, and the ugly. USA! USA!! USA!!!
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE RIGHT NOW
Join Paul Doyle for live coverage of Big Cup group stage draw, featuring a certain Leicester City for the very first time.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Happy 37th birthday to Marlon Harewood.” With no small amount of fanfare, ITV Football leave no box unticked in wishing the Nuneaton Striker well on his big day. Tomorrow … Nicky Summerbee and Colin Kazim-Richards!
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Happy birthday Marlon! Love, the Fiver. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
FIVER LETTERS
As regards Guardiola’s formation of 0-2-1-0-2-2-0-2-1 [yesterday’s Fiver]; surely if he’s playing his keeper as a de facto outfield player then this should total 11, rather than the traditional 10? Or is this one of those times you, perhaps accidentally, manage a clever comment, here at the expense of Yaya regarding his occasional lapses in endeavour? – Will Wardley.
Please tell fellow reader Barry Etheridge [yesterday’s letters] that, as an American and Jesuit-educated to boot, I’m perfectly comfortable with “tedium” in all its Latinate glory, blissfully unaware of tortured Anglo-etymologic eccentricities. We also have our own league, “the” MLS, as it’s called at The Fiver – Christopher Smith, New York, New York.
The only thing that’s worse than a pedant, Mr Barry Etheridge, is one who pedantically corrects a pedant … what that now makes me as a consequence of this letter, I’m really not sure - but I am certain it is not something to be proud of. A feeling the Fiver knows all too well, I’m sure – Dan Makeham.
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… Will Wardley.
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.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Join the returning James Richardson and the rest of the squad (Philippe Auclair, James Horncastle and Simon Burnton) for Football Weekly Extraaaaaaaaaaa!
BITS AND BOBS
Claudio Bravo to Manchester City. Romeo done.
The tribulations of youth eh? Fresh from being elbowed aside by Zlatan in José Mourinho’s Manchester United lineup, Marcus Rashford has now been shunted into England’s U21s by Big Sam.
Mauricio Pocchettino has wagged his finger and told Érik Lamela that his showboating against Crystal Palace was neither big nor clever. “To be honest I don’t like this kind of thing,” he buzzkilled.
Arsène Wenger has decided that Lucas Pérez’s £17m buy-out clause is A-OK and looks set to nab the Deportivo la Coruña striker from under the nose of Everton’s Ronald Koeman.
Milan have rejected a whopping £35m bid from Chelsea for Alessio Romagnoli. “The player is untransferable and therefore this offer will not be accepted,” Milan cooed in a statement. “We thank Chelsea, a club Milan always have had the best of relationships.”
“My name wouldn’t be Sepp Blatter if I didn’t have faith, if I wasn’t optimistic. I will accept the verdict because, in football, we learn to win, this is easy, but we also learn to lose, but this is not good, I wouldn’t want to lose.” Third-person’s Sepp is at it again, as he arrives for his Cas hearing on Thursday to contest six-year ban.
Daniel Sturridge ain’t going nowhere. Especially out wide.
And Joe Hart enjoyed his ‘special night’ after being let out to play in Manchester City’s Big Cup foregone conclusion against Steaua Bucharest, but Pep Guardiola is standing by his selection decisions.
Danny Drinkwater has crossed the Is and dotted the Ts on a new five-year contract at Leicester.
Elsewhere, former Liverpool full-back Javier Manquillo has coughed for the Sunderland doctor after signing on a season-long loan from Atlético Madrid and Tottenham’s Nabil Bentaleb has done the very same at Schalke.
STILL WANT MORE?
Can anyone bring down the Bayern death star? Our old mucker complacency is your best bet, reckons Raphael Honigstein in his red-hot Bundesliga pre-season preview.
Sid Lowe has the lowdown on new City boy Claudio Bravo, and how he went from being told he was not good enough as a kid to becoming Pep Guardiola’s No1 man.
Confronted by The Question of how long Liverpool will keep faith with Jürgen Klopp, footballing-brain-in-a-box Jonathan Wilson duly attempts to answer it.
Alan Smith has had his say on Robbie Keane, the street footballer who became the Republic of Ireland’s greatest striker.
Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Win! Chances are, if you’ve read this far down in the Fiver you probably don’t have 14 friends spare to join you in an executive box to watch Arsenal Legends v Milan Glorie on Saturday 3 September at the Emirates. But if you’re one of those rare Fiver readers who does have a social circle you may want to enter this competition.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. AND INSTACHAT, TOO!
FAREWELL COMRADE
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/hope-solo-us-soccer-team-fiver-six-month-ban-coward
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/94cb15527827721d51a4ddc453a224d9a11f1b8fd8a31f4e5069ade4f46747c6.json
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[
"Chris Young"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:40 | null | 2016-08-24T16:42:58 |
The US international fought back from a bad start during his loan at Sunderland. But he simply wasn’t being given an opportunity in north London
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Fblog%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fdeandre-yedlin-newcastle-united-transfer-tottenham-premier-league.json
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DeAndre Yedlin had to leave Tottenham to fulfil his promise
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Head bowed and humiliated, DeAndre Yedlin wandered towards the electronic board displaying his number to accept a very public vote of no confidence.
Yedlin had endured a torturous dissection in the opening stages of a Premier League encounter against Watford, and he was Sunderland’s sacrificial lamb as he was taken out of the firing line just 19 minutes into the game. Months later, the USA international admitted his premature substitution that December afternoon last year was an embarrassing, infuriating experience, which drained him of confidence. “For the next three weeks it was a period of feeling sorry for myself, that sort of thing, pouting about it,” said Yedlin.
Transfer window: one week to go - what do every Premier League club still need? Read more
At what was a make-or-break moment, Yedlin could have have continued to sulk and tossed aside the significance of his loan spell at Sunderland, or knuckled down and made a statement. He chose the latter. When Yedlin was next given a first-team opportunity, his displays demonstrated a marked improvement and he would establish his credentials as a Premier League-calibre performer. His determination to make the grade proved to be decisive.
This week, Yedlin faced a crossroads again – whether to stay at Tottenham or drop down into the English second-tier and play for Newcastle. But then again, the choice wasn’t too tough. The brutal reality is that Yedlin had no future at Spurs. He was given a squad number at White Hart Lane, but his failure to even occupy a place on the bench during the opening two Premier League fixtures (to the benefit of US under-20 international Cameron Carter-Vickers) told the story of his place in Mauricio Pochettino’s plans.
Pochettino had the vastly improved Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier ahead of Yedlin in the pecking order at right-back, with the Seattle native forced to operate as a makeshift left-back to even get minutes under his belt during pre-season. If Yedlin remained at Spurs beyond next Wednesday’s European transfer deadline, he was going to be the bit-part man; that guy who only plays in the League Cup, during an injury crisis or in a meaningless European tie.
At this vital stage of his career, he could not afford that. A return to Sunderland was a possibility this summer and Yedlin would have been eager to take that opportunity, yet it was a proposition that never really arrived on the table. The Black Cats balked at Tottenham’s £5m asking price and new manager David Moyes wasn’t convinced by Yedlin’s potential.
But earlier this week Aston Villa and Newcastle showed their hands by making formal bids, even if it meant Yedlin would not be competing in the Premier League, which, after all, was his goal following his move from Seattle Sounders in January 2015. The Sounders academy product had penned a four-year deal when he first arrived at Spurs after his raw pace, athleticism and early inclusion in the USA set-up had caught the eye of the Premier League outfit.
He was given a chance to catch his breath and acclimatise to English football with just one substitute’s appearance in the second half of the 2014-15 season, before it was decided that he could leave Tottenham on loan last summer. Amid interest from a host of sides throughout Europe, it was Sunderland who won out and he was swiftly handed his chance by a club who usually struggle against the threat of relegation from the Premier League. The early signs from Yedlin at the Stadium of Light fulfilled the preconceived views on him – namely that he was lightning fast, a threat going forwards, yet suspect defensively.
Manchester United consider allowing Bastian Schweinsteiger to leave for free Read more
The latter issue worried Sam Allardyce, who desperately wanted to bring in an alternative right-back in the January window, particularly after deciding to substitute Yedlin so early in that Watford defeat. There were even suggestions that Yedlin’s loan spell would be terminated early. But there was a new attitude, as well as a new haircut, when Yedlin returned to the Sunderland starting line-up in an FA Cup third round tie in January.
Under Allardyce’s tutelage, there was a far better discipline and concentration to Yedlin’s defensive work, and he rarely found himself out of position and left with too much to do to contain the opposition winger. Even when Sunderland came up against an on-song Eden Hazard in their crucial penultimate home game of the season, Yedlin gradually got to grips with the Chelsea star. He also provided the cross to Jermain Defoe that secured the victory that put the club on the verge of Premier League survival. That form rolled over into USA’s Copa America campaign, although he picked up an unnecessary red card for two bookable offences against Paraguay. Yedlin demonstrated the rapid progress he has made over recent months and the potential he has to be his country’s first-choice right-back in the long term. Certainly, those days of Jürgen Klinsmann experimenting with him as a right winger look to be a thing of the past.
But if Yedlin is going to fulfill that promise, he needs to be playing competitively for an entire season. Neither he, nor the US, could afford for his career to be in lockdown, even if that means he is no longer a Premier League performer.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/aug/24/deandre-yedlin-newcastle-united-transfer-tottenham-premier-league
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e75e5a009a3c201710d0aeeae870507391112f778dc0a4dd310a8181d5d419a4.json
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[
"Hadley Freeman"
] | 2016-08-31T12:53:20 | null | 2016-08-31T11:21:59 |
She may be negotiating the move from everygirl to A-lister, but Schumer is truly at home on stage, hilarious on pills, guns – and even the odd heckler
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Amy Schumer review - sex, neuroses and gun control from a sure-footed star
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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“I just say whatever dumb stuff comes into my head, and most of it is disgusting and horrible,” Amy Schumer muses happily, midway through her set. This, of course, is a lie: while Schumer still likes to project an image of herself as a pottymouth who’s just winging it, you don’t become one of the biggest standups in the world by the age of 35 without working your butt off.
Schumer keeps her 90-minute show under deceptively tight control, sneaking frequent peeks at her notes while affecting to stroll casually through her mental landscape, which spans all of Americana from the Kardashians to an improbably hilarious section on gun control – or lack of it – in the US.
“Someone on the suspected terrorist list can buy a gun. So we’re like, ‘Get the hell out of our country! But before you do, would you like to buy a gun?’” she says, touching on a subject that has become a cause for Schumer ever since a gunman attacked an audience at a screening of her film, Trainwreck, last summer, killing two young women.
Amy Schumer: ‘I'm not trying to be likable’ Read more
This is Schumer’s first international tour since Trainwreck, which pushed her out of the category of “successful comedian” and into the “bona fide A-list celebrity” golden circle. This shift has not always seemed comfortable for her: in interviews she has become increasingly suspicious and monosyllabic and in her forthcoming book, The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, she appears unsure how to reconcile her celebrity status with her everygirl image.
But on stage, which she has always said is where she feels happiest, there are no such troubles. Amid her usual favourite subjects – sex, women’s neuroses and neuroses about women – she achieves what few have done before her and makes her tales of newfound fame genuinely funny and interesting. Her riff on what it feels like when near-naked photos of you go viral and you don’t have a celebrity-sized body is done with a light touch, while still making a sharp jab; and her anecdote about her encounter with the American broadcaster Katie Couric made me double over with laughter. While many of the stories she tells are straight out of her book, she is more sure-footed with them on stage and has a better control of the tone.
Yet it is hard not to wish Schumer would relax some of her control. Some anecdotes, while amusing, don’t really go anywhere, seemingly said by rote just because they are on her setlist. By contrast, she sparks to life when dealing with a heckler, shooting back whipsmart retorts without pausing for breath. She should trust herself more and not stick quite so rigidly to the plan.
It will be interesting to see how long Schumer can pull off this trick: affecting normality while hanging out with Hillary Clinton and earning $8m book advances. Going by those who have tried before her, the safe bet is not that long. She is already outgrowing her persona as the chaotic mess who happily blacks out on sleeping pills and wine, to the disgust of her boyfriend – and she knows it. That shtick is too small for her huge celebrity presence. But for now, at least on stage, she is still acing it.
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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/aug/31/amy-schumer-review-edinburgh-playhouse
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/406a8c5fa654322bf9bdaadd803894074e4c2004a975ffa4703c7ad862e6dc94.json
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[
"Grant Atterbury"
] | 2016-08-30T14:52:52 | null | 2016-08-30T11:46:48 |
The worker whose diary chronicled the slow collapse of the high-street chain describes how it all ended, with a raucous booze-up and a fruitless wait for Philip Green to get his comeuppance
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fboredom-scavenging-stifling-heat-final-days-of-bhs-philip-green.json
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| null |
Boredom, scavenging and stifling heat: the final days of BHS
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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On 20 August, the Kent branch of BHS where I worked closed its doors, after the slow and undignified liquidation process was completed. By the time the “Last Few Days” signs went up, I could barely recall how the shopfloor had looked back when the shelves were overflowing with merchandise and I was kept busy ensuring that my section remained fully stocked and tidy. As the store began to resemble a post-apocalyptic approximation of its former self, I increasingly found myself with nothing to do but walk pointless circuits around the near-empty expanse of the ground floor.
As the weeks dragged on and unemployment loomed, my thoughts would inevitably turn to our old boss, Philip Green, who by this point had taken delivery of his third yacht and was sailing aimlessly around the Greek islands, enjoying the fruits of our labours. When my shift in Tunbridge Wells ended each day, I would return home and check for the latest news online regarding Green, hoping to find some consolatory announcement that the Serious Fraud Office had uncovered evidence of wrongdoing and issued a warrant for his arrest, or perhaps that the mighty Lionheart had sprung a leak.
I had to make do instead with the amusing spectacle of a cornered Phil throwing a tantrum and threatening to hurl a television camera into the sea. The Sky News footage of him stomping around, behaving like a cross between a belligerent toddler and Mr Toad, lifted my spirits briefly. Sadly, however, the novelty of this short video wore off after repeated viewings, and I was soon back on Google searching fruitlessly for news of his comeuppance.
Diary of a BHS worker: ‘If there were a Dignitas for department stores, I would make the call’ Read more
I wasn’t at work on the final day of trading, but I was for the subsequent two mornings, when employees were required to come in and ensure that all signs of life were removed from the building. We spent Sunday morning throwing whatever odds and ends were lying around into a giant skip in the store’s loading bay. Staff went through everything to see if there was anything worth scavenging, but little was of any real use. I pocketed a metal tape measure, despite a total lack of interest in DIY.
Once the general detritus had been disposed of, the remainder of these two shifts was a waste of everyone’s time. I spent several hours kicking a football around the now-empty ground floor. There was no tearful farewell to the old building as we exited the front doors for the last time, because, having sat in the stifling heat doing nothing for the previous three hours, we were all desperate to stretch our legs and feel some fresh air on our faces. No one even looked back, as far as I recall.
Predictably, the day ended in a long session at a local pub, catching up with staff members who had already left, and saying our final farewells. With the booze flowing freely, things got predictably raucous. Among the chaos there was much hugging and countless promises made to keep in touch with one another.
I’m pleased to say that a great many of my colleagues have, despite the lack of assistance from BHS and the inconvenience of not knowing exactly when the store would close, already found new employers. Most seem to have opted to stay working in retail. Hopefully, in terms of pay and conditions, their new jobs will prove to be an upgrade on life at BHS. Hopefully, too, their new employers will prove to be less unscrupulous and greedy than the likes of Green and Dominic Chappell, and will be appreciative of their new employees’ hard work and loyalty.
As for my own future, the job hunt continues. Like many of the 11,000 left unemployed by this fiasco, I have filled in the online forms necessary to claim my redundancy payment and am now waiting the three to six weeks it takes to process such applications. Between that and what’s left of my final wage packet, I hope I’ll be able to remain fed and sheltered while I contemplate my next move. I have my heart set on making an escape from the world of shelf-stacking and finding something more rewarding.
Since my Guardian debut in July, several people have suggested that I should pursue a writing career. I would certainly like to give it my best shot, but in the meantime, if anyone happens to know of any good jobs going that might suit a deeply cynical 43-year-old whose key skills include folding towels and writing slightly bleak yet comical portraits of ramshackle department stores, do please get in touch via Twitter @GrantAtterbury.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/30/boredom-scavenging-stifling-heat-final-days-of-bhs-philip-green
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/d4b9809fee81d1664360ab3835c12089b9b6df930b20c8af59a19c114ad01694.json
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[] | 2016-08-27T14:58:57 | null | 2016-08-27T14:08:59 |
Following few simple tips should protect you from the subtly depressing influence of social media, keeping you both happy and productive
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Flifeandstyle%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Finternet-productivity-tips-sadness-social-media.json
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| null |
The internet can harm your productivity by making you sad - here's what to do
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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In September, the first positivity officers of the United Arab Emirates’s Ministry for Happiness will begin their training in happiness science, a program designed for them by the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University. The UAE established its Happiness Ministry in February. In July, the government of Madhya Pradesh state in India followed suit.
Typically, when governments set out to improve their citizens’ subjective wellbeing, they present the idea as a worthy end in itself. That’s not to be sniffed at. But there is another side to this pursuit. Plenty of evidence shows that happy people are not only healthier in the long run (and therefore less costly to the state), but also better worker bees.
A simple experiment demonstrates this. When volunteers are asked to perform easy mathematical tasks many times over in return for modest per-task payment, they do about 10% more work if they have just watched a few minutes of a comedy show. If they watch a boring video instead, or simply don’t find the show uplifting, the effect isn’t there.
Outside of the lab, software programmers are better at solving analytical problems when they are happier. Putting lots of workers together, employees’ job satisfaction levels today can even predict a firm’s value on Wall Street a year down the road.
An emotional support animal is just a mouse click away Read more
Beyond these narrow measures of productivity, there’s a suite of broader societal benefits – public goods – that flow from keeping citizens smiling. In Germany, for example, the 7% of the population that gives blood doesn’t fit into any easy demographic generalization. It isn’t disproportionately male or female, employed or not – or more or less educated. However, Germans who report feeling generally happy in the previous month are more likely to donate blood than those who don’t.
As enlightened governments figure all of this out and seek to encourage happiness and its spin-off effects, there is at least one obvious bump in the road: a countervailing trend that is not making mass-happiness creation so easy. The drive to raise citizens’ wellbeing is taking place as people are shifting their communications from in-person meetings to ever more online exchange.
Probably the biggest study of its kind, intended to evaluate the effects of social media use on everyone in Italy, makes for gloomy reading. It clearly links spending time on social networking sites with lower levels of individual happiness, and more specifically, with a lower level of general trust in society.
Long before the Guardian launched its campaign against cyberbullying, even before Monika Lewinsky received a pummeling in the late 1990s, there was good reason to suspect that online communities would foster bad vibes. Fifty years of research has underscored the conclusion that swapping written messages is a very ineffective way to generate cooperation in conflict situations. Face-to-face communication is inordinately better.
This implies, of course, that the online world may already be playing nicer than it did a few years ago, as social media platforms have made it easier for people to share video and audio material. Companies such as Facebook have cottoned on to the idea that they need to develop a whole host of soft skills to foster online harmony.
What is often ignored in discussions of social media malaise is that individuals, armed with the latest happiness research, can also develop soft skills of their own, to protect themselves from the subtly negative influences of online interaction. To that end, here are some guidelines to keep your subjective wellbeing relatively buoyant.
Upset? How to find a happier place using Twitter Read more
First, don’t worry about how many online friends you have. Whatever your personality type, age or income, a study of 5,000 people (and their friends) in Canada reveals that doubling your number of real-world friends has a huge impact on your happiness. Doubling your friends on social media has almost none.
Second, avoid passively scrolling through your Facebook feed. Doing so has been shown in experiments to make people feel low and envious as they consume the rose-tinted edits of they friends’ lives. Actively messaging and commenting on Facebook is far less likely to give you the blues.
Third, if you insist on scrolling through your Facebook feed, train yourself to pay selective attention to updates from friends with whom you are close in the offline world. Their posts are probably as biased as anyone else’s, but reading them fosters a good kind of envy of the positive, self-motivating variety. By comparison, ingesting a glut of effortless romance and exotic adventure sports from distant acquaintances is likely to conjure up a desire to pull others down.
Finally, if you feel low, indulge in internet cats, the YouTube content category with more views-per-video than any other. Research out of Indiana University finds that the more people watch internet cats, the more they enjoy the experience. (And if you get really into it, you can always go to the internet cat film festival.)
Based on their happiness measurements, the authors of that study go so far as to suggest a role for Grumpy Cat and the permanently kitten-sized Lil Bub in pet therapy, potentially in place of the real thing.
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/27/internet-productivity-tips-sadness-social-media
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en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/abb635ed47a2322f50cded5db27098a29d6ce976d6cbfb426ed68bc016656117.json
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[
"Steven Morris"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:01 | null | 2012-10-11T00:00:00 |
Frankie and Benny's restaurant in Swansea accidentally served Sonny Rees the spirit as he celebrated his second birthday
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk%2F2012%2Foct%2F11%2Frestaurant-apologises-serving-boy-whisky.json
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| null |
Restaurant apologises for serving two-year-old boy whisky
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A restaurant chain has apologised after a child was accidentally served whisky as he celebrated his second birthday.
Sonny Rees's worried family took the boy to hospital following the mix-up at a Frankie and Benny's restaurant in Swansea.
He was asleep by the time he got to hospital but was given the all-clear and was later sick when his parents got him home.
Sonny's family believe the restaurant staff may have mixed the boy's drink up with one that was supposed to go to a nearby stag party.
A spokesman for Frankie and Benny's said: "We are very sorry that this happened. It was a human error, an accident, and we are putting in place processes to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
Sonny's mother, Nina, told the South Wales Evening Post: "I immediately went into a panic and a rage. I was crying my eyes out, and called NHS Direct, which told me to take him straight to A&E.
"We had gone in just after noon and I had ordered him water and cordial. I realised what Sonny had been drinking when I had to retrieve a dropped toy from his glass and I could smell the whisky on it.
"I think there was a stag do in there at the same time and that the drinks had been accidentally mixed up. Because he was eating salty things I had been encouraging him to drink."
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/11/restaurant-apologises-serving-boy-whisky
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en
| 2012-10-11T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/38d6e85e825d8617fa6a79f2108ae3d9a8d417f500f4651eb4cad55d52d682da.json
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[
"Environment Editor"
] | 2016-08-26T16:57:01 | null | 2016-08-26T15:20:17 |
The week’s top environment news stories and green events
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fus-national-parks-badger-cull-and-microplastics-green-news-roundup.json
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en
| null |
US national parks, badger cull and microplastics - green news roundup
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/26/us-national-parks-badger-cull-and-microplastics-green-news-roundup
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3c669a953355f307b956e7478694938fc07d036c4df211de489e8dc3d3472e7e.json
|
|
[
"Associated Press"
] | 2016-08-31T02:52:31 | null | 2016-08-31T01:55:42 |
Man who shares the same name as the Russian leader was arrested for tresspassing when he refused to leave a Palm Beach store
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fvladimir-putin-arrested-at-florida-supermarket-but-russian-president-remains-at-liberty.json
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| null |
Vladimir Putin arrested at Florida supermarket - but Russian president remains at liberty
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Vladimir Putin has been arrested at a Florida supermarket.
No, not that Vladimir Putin.
Police in West Palm Beach said a 48-year-old man who shares the name of the Russian president was arrested at a Publix supermarket in the city’s downtown on 21 August.
Police said Putin was screaming at employees and refused to leave the store.
Records with the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office show he was charged with trespassing and resisting an officer without violence.
Reports said Putin initially refused to give police his name.
Putin appeared in court Monday morning and was released. He is due back in court in September.
Court records do not list an address for him. Sheriff’s deputy Eric Davis said he didn’t know if Putin had a lawyer.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/31/vladimir-putin-arrested-at-florida-supermarket-but-russian-president-remains-at-liberty
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ae7bdafcb4259a9dfcc5fe7e166f65fe810fc0fb3accad85d6e9d216324c81f8.json
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|
[
"Alan Smith"
] | 2016-08-28T18:51:44 | null | 2016-08-28T18:51:25 |
Minute-by-minute report: Join Alan Smith as Barcelona look to claim their second win of the season against Athletic Bilbao
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2Flive%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fathletic-bilbao-v-barcelona-la-liga-live.json
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en
| null |
Athletic Bilbao v Barcelona: La Liga - live!
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
| null |
https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2016/aug/28/athletic-bilbao-v-barcelona-la-liga-live
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/34d331e0c90aeb7ca17317e83f3998020d1dbad62cb562bf6cacac9a82680cfe.json
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|
[
"John Howell"
] | 2016-08-26T13:18:07 | null | 2016-08-25T11:47:03 |
Nabil Bentaleb has expressed his delighted after completing his transfer from Tottenham Hotspur to Schalke on loan until the end of the season
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fnabil-bentaleb-completes-loan-move-from-tottenham-hotspur-to-schalke.json
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en
| null |
Nabil Bentaleb completes loan move from Tottenham Hotspur to Schalke
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Nabil Bentaleb has expressed his delighted after completing his transfer from Tottenham Hotspur to Schalke on loan until the end of the season.
Tottenham announced on Thursday that the midfielder had joined the Bundesliga club, who reportedly have the option to make the move permanent for a fee of around £17m.
Premier League: transfer window summer 2016 – interactive Read more
“Delighted to have signed for @s04 new chapter, new beginnings,” tweeted Bentaleb after the move had been confirmed.
The Algerian was a regular starter for Spurs during the 2014-15 campaign and signed a new five-year deal last season. But Bentaleb has found himself training exclusively with the club’s Under-21s during the summer after Mauricio Pochettino decided he was not part of future first-team plans.
— Nabil Bentaleb (@nabilbentaleb42) Delighted to have signed for @s04 new chapter new beginnings 👊🏽
“If you are not part of my plans, why are you training with us? He understands very well, like any other player. It is not a big issue, not a problem,” said the manager. “Sometimes it looks like a big, big issue, but it is very normal in football.”
The 21-year-old made 66 appearances for Tottenham after joining the club’s academy in January 2012 but started only twice in the league last season.
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/25/nabil-bentaleb-completes-loan-move-from-tottenham-hotspur-to-schalke
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/30686fca0659887cb6e9e1f9f1336c19a3392aa6a1c7f7cfe8d216e9be550dc4.json
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|
[
"Rebecca Smithers"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:15 | null | 2016-08-21T06:00:09 |
An ongoing £1.5m refurbishment at the safari park meant the kings of the jungle were out of sight
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F21%2Fno-sign-of-lions-longleat.json
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en
| null |
We went to Longleat, but even paying £83 could not make the lions appear
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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I bought three tickets (total cost £83.55) for my family, including my 10-year-old grand-daughter, to see the lions of Longleat in July. The website promised a drive-through safari tour “wilder, furrier and growlier than you ever dared imagine”. Her father drove slowly but they saw nothing beyond a couple of monkeys that jumped on the car. There were no lions walking free when they went through and the only sighting was the very top of three lions’ heads quite a distance away. I contacted Longleat to ask for a refund and received a short email saying that animals follow their natural instincts and might have been lying down and/or asleep.
But when I said £83.55 was a high price to see nothing, I was directed to its website which said it was redeveloping its carnivore section, “that may result in animals being off show or in their smaller paddocks”. So not so much a natural instinct as a redevelopment. Longleat sells itself on its lions, and visitors should be clearly warned that they might not see any. PMcD, Winchester, Hampshire
We can understand your disappointment. Longleat confirmed that on the day in question work was taking place in one of the reserves in the “big cats” section of the safari park, part of a £1.5m refurbishment. It insisted this was made clear on the website so prospective visitors could decide accordingly. On that day all its big cats were out in the park, though the first section of lions were in a smaller paddock to enable work to be carried out within their larger enclosure. However, they were apparently still on view for visitors. The second section is home to a pride of 15 individuals that were all out as normal, it said. All the other animals within its safari park were out and about as usual – more than 1,000 in total – including giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, tapirs, flamingo, vultures, monkeys and rhinos.
It pointed out that one of the major attractions of the safari park concept is that animals are able to roam freely in large areas of parkland rather than in more traditional zoo enclosure, “which makes the experience far more immersive for visitors but does also mean specific animals cannot always be guaranteed to be in a set location”.
It questioned your claim that your family saw absolutely nothing, adding that: “There were 18 lions on view on the day in question, three in the first section and 15 in the second. If you also factor in the additional 13 we have in the park which would also have been viewable through another paddock in the second section there were a total of 31 the visitors could have seen. We cannot understand how the family were able to drive through the entire second section and not see any of the 15 lions that were in it.” Clearly the centre cannot make any guarantees about how many animals are on show at any one time (as in its terms and conditions) and it seems to have been bad luck on your part. Sorry, there won’t be any refunds.
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
|
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/21/no-sign-of-lions-longleat
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en
| 2016-08-21T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f2b712e8cc3cf6b751a9eb1e0a4a59bb830fe0a8d6052d9dbcc2450cd6a523b6.json
|
|
[
"Paul Karp"
] | 2016-08-30T08:52:15 | null | 2016-08-30T07:03:19 |
Guide released at security summit lists Islamophobia and invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as factors in extremism
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Faustralian-counter-terrorism-guide-says-western-military-action-partly-to-blame.json
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en
| null |
Australian-sponsored counter-terrorism guide says military action partly to blame
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
The Australian government has sponsored a guide to undermine violent extremist narratives in south-east Asia that identifies Islamophobia and western military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as “push” factors to extremism.
The guide proposes strategies to prevent radicalisation by undermining the factual and religious bases for calls to extremism.
The Australian justice minister, Michael Keenan, announced the release of the guide on Tuesday at the 14th annual national security summit in Canberra.
Keenan, who is also the minister assisting the prime minister on counter-terrorism, confirmed the government would introduce a bill next month to establish a scheme to keep high-risk terrorist offenders in jail indefinitely.
The counter-terrorism guide was produced by the Hedayah Institute, an independent, multilateral centre devoted to countering violent extremism.
Michael Keenan's accusations of Anne Aly are an outrageous betrayal of his role | Lydia Shelly Read more
It suggests people are radicalised when they are convinced there are injustices to which violence is the only effective response.
The guide notes a number of socioeconomic factors and grievances of extremists in south-east Asia, including poverty, hate speech, Islamophobia, feelings of victimhood related to suffering of Muslims outside the region, lack of education and “military operations by Western governments in Afghanistan and Iraq”.
Pull factors for terrorism are more individual and emotional, it says, and include ideas of achieving a “pure Islam”, a sense of adventure and “idealisation of former fighters from Afghanistan and other conflicts”.
The guide suggests using religious texts and leaders to refute the claims of Islamic extremists. For example, scholars should reinforce the concept of jihad as an internal struggle, not a physical or violent one, and emphasise that Islam is inclusive of all ethnicities.
Particular weaknesses in extremist ideology include the number of Sunni Muslims the organisation kills and the hypocrisy of its violence, the guide says.
Other strategies include rebutting factually incorrect claims and even “poking fun at [extremists’] objectives, aims, tactics or beliefs”.
The guide recommends identifying the best messenger to counter radicalisation.
Former terrorists and fighters have the “street credibility” to effectively contradict the emotional or psychological appeal of extremism, the guide says. It cited an interview with a former Isis member from Indonesia, which it said demonstrated the corruption within the group.
The families of potential extremists are highly persuasive, as are victims and survivors including mothers of violent extremists or mothers of victims of terrorism, it says.
The guide warns that individuals may travel to Iraq and Syria to join groups such as Isis and al-Qaida and return to carry out attacks in south-east Asia, or may conduct lone wolf attacks locally.
Keenan said at least 500 people, and possibly more than 800, had travelled from south-east Asian countries to fight in Syria and Iraq.
He said the guide was sponsored and supported by the Australian government and was a first of its kind for the south-east Asian region.
Keenan warned that since the declaration of the Islamic State “caliphate” in June 2014, terrorist attacks had spiked worldwide.
“In the last two years alone, we have seen three attacks and 10 major disruption operations in relation to imminent attack planning in Australia. This compares to no attacks and four disruptions in the preceding decade.”
Keenan said Australia’s counter-terrorism approach was pre-emptive because “preventing a terrorist incident and saving lives must have precedence over gathering the evidence necessary for a prosecution”.
He said the government would introduce two bills, including the preventive detention bill, as part of the “constant review” to ensure agencies had powers to deal with terrorist threats.
Keenan described radicalisation to the point of violence as “an incredibly complex issue”.
“Terrorist propaganda affects each individual’s state of mind, their thoughts and emotions differently. There is no single pathway to radicalisation.”
He said the government had “developed intervention programs to help those on the wrong path before security or law enforcement responses are needed”.
Keenan said the guide provided guidance for governments and civil society organisations to support development of effective counter-narratives that undercut the appeal of terrorist propaganda.
|
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/30/australian-counter-terrorism-guide-says-western-military-action-partly-to-blame
|
en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f6151a8c85eed4f2b61de227a1d404feeb8695bb9212287b0e7b94a1ff6ad7a5.json
|
|
[
"Michael Slezak",
"Paul Karp"
] | 2016-08-26T13:25:35 | null | 2016-08-19T07:20:59 |
States agree to develop coal seam gas and make deals more transparent in an effort to increase competition and reduce prices
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Fgas-supplies-to-rise-and-secret-contracts-to-be-scrapped-under-coag-reform-plan.json
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en
| null |
Gas supplies to rise and secret contracts to be scrapped under Coag reform plan
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Gas supplies in Australia will be expanded and suppliers forced to publish previously secret prices under reforms agreed to by state and federal ministers at the Coag energy council meeting in Canberra.
All states except Victoria, which has a blanket ban on coal seam gas, agreed to focus on expanding onshore gas activities. The state government in Melbourne agreed to consider its position.
The federal environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, said after Friday’s meeting that the current practice of secret gas deals would be banned.
Blocking the sale of Ausgrid was a poor decision and will cost Australia dear | Stephen Koukoulas Read more
“Going forward, we want new gas contracts to be transparent. That is a very significant change,” he said. “We’ll have a bulletin board that will publish the prices of the gas contracts that have been agreed.”
The comments follow an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report in April that found that industrial users received offers “at sharply higher prices and on strict take-it-or-leave-it terms”.
The details of how the new system would work will be the job of a gas market reform group, headed by Michael Vertigan, which will be required to find ways to increase both gas supply and suppliers.
“These are the most significant reforms to the domestic gas market in two decades,” Frydenberg said in a statement.
Frydenberg said the council also agreed to examine ways to “ensure consumers can confidently take advantage of new technologies such as battery storage through the introduction of appropriate consumer protections”.
The council “recognised the growing importance of gas as a transition fuel as we move to incorporate more renewables into the system”.
Olivia Kember from the Climate Institute described the meeting as a “missed opportunity”.
“In considering the impact of climate and clean energy developments on the electricity system, we need to think beyond the current 2030 emissions target to deliver a well-managed transition to zero emission electricity,” she said.
Managing the closure of the dirty power generators was also something the council should have dealt with, Kember said.
If energy ministers bow to gas industry they'll be deciding in the dark Read more
“As we saw in South Australia, disorderly, unplanned closures can have bad consequences for the local community, energy users and the stability of the market as a whole,” she said.
Dylan McConnell from the Melbourne Energy Institute told Guardian Australia that the focus on gas seemed misplaced. “We actually have plenty of gas, it’s just all being exported,” he said.
“I am yet to be convinced that increased local supply will necessarily dramatic impact on prices, unless there is a gas reservation policy, which seems to be unpopular with just about everyone.”
He said the focus on gas as a “transition fuel” was also an outdated idea and not consistent with climate change targets.
“Gas may have a role in balancing variable renewables such as wind and solar PV – but will have to compete with storage including but not limited to pumped hydro, concentrating solar thermal and battery storage,” he said. “If it does have a balancing role, it will actually not produce much energy, operating in ‘peak’ mode, when required, but only for small periods of time. As such, the demand for gas to fire the turbine shouldn’t actually be very high.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/19/gas-supplies-to-rise-and-secret-contracts-to-be-scrapped-under-coag-reform-plan
|
en
| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/b010aa13587381dc7beead49a34fa43338dffa1e951e7aedf4e23c91c60af775.json
|
|
[
"Miles Brignall"
] | 2016-08-28T06:54:57 | null | 2016-08-28T06:00:24 |
It says I have to pay for cancelling the contract, but the salesperson had told me there would be no charge if I moved
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmoney%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fvirgin-media-contract-cancellation-charge.json
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en
| null |
I’m moving down the road and Virgin Media is demanding £240
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
I am on an 18-month Virgin Media contract that includes broadband, television and telephone. When I bought the services, I asked the sales lady at a Virgin kiosk in Woking, Surrey, what would happen if I moved to a new property where there is no Virgin Media service. I was told that the whole of Woking was connected so it wouldn’t be a problem.
I am now moving just two buildings away from where I am now, but Virgin Media is not offered at the new property. I still have seven months remaining on my contract. Virgin is insisting I pay £240 to cancel the contract.
When I took it out my wife was pregnant and I knew I would have to change the property before the contract ends. It seems to me they hid important information from me at the point of buying. SP, Woking, Surrey
We asked Virgin about your case, and it said the charges are applicable as per the terms of your contract you signed – and it was not for budging.
The company said: “We urge all our customers to consider the length of contracts before entering into them. Details of early disconnection fees are at the top of our T&Cs in clear English to help ensure customers have sight of them.”
Unfortunately it’s your word against theirs as there is no recording of the conversation in which you say you were told that moving would not be a problem. In many cases sales people will embellish the facts to get a sale, or are simply lacking in the correct knowledge. We are surprised that Virgin has not taken a more emollient approach to your complaint.
The media regulator Ofcom told us it has produced guidance on how such cases should be dealt and that customers “should often” pay less to reflect the costs providers save because the contract ends early. Virgin put up its prices this week and you may be able to use that to get out of the contract.
As you feel you were mis-sold the contract, you should raise a formal complaint with Virgin. If the complaint is not resolved you can escalate it to CISAS – an alternative dispute resolution scheme – which will assess the case and reach a fair and impartial judgement. Other potential Virgin customer’s take note – and stick to BT or a BT-based provider if you think you might move within the period of the contract.
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/28/virgin-media-contract-cancellation-charge
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/df4acd39401d450fdb48651831074ca6c0ad26a9330bdfc16cb33ad5a48c8754.json
|
|
[
"Nate Berg"
] | 2016-08-30T14:52:32 | null | 2016-08-30T13:41:20 |
‘Philanthropy lab’ People’s Liberty is funding individuals with smart ideas to benefit Cincinnati, in the hope of finding a new generation of local civic leaders
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcities%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fcincinnati-experiment-peoples-liberty-citizen-philanthropy-improve-city.json
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The Cincinnati experiment: can 'citizen philanthropy' improve a city?
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When Brandon Black and his wife were trying to fix up the old two-unit house they’d recently bought in Cincinnati, they discovered they needed some help from people who actually knew what they were doing. His old wrestling coach and her father – two baby boomers with construction experience – proved to be invaluable home improvement mentors, who happily guided them through the process.
Black realised that the project was mutually beneficial: he and his wife needed help, and his coach and father-in-law had skills they wanted to share. He also realised there were probably many other people in Cincinnati – both new homeowners and older skilled tradespeople – in the same situation.
“What if there was a way a new homeowner could just borrow somebody’s aunt or uncle and leverage their experience?” Black says.
He saw an opportunity to connect these two groups. Now, thanks to a new and unconventional approach to place-based philanthropy, he has $100,000 (£75,900) to develop a programme in Cincinnati that makes those connections.
Black is a recipient of the Haile Fellowship, a year-long “civic sabbatical” for individuals to develop ideas that can benefit the city and its people. It is a project of People’s Liberty, an experimental “philanthropy lab” set up by the Cincinnati-based Carol Ann & Ralph V Haile Jr/US Bank Foundation.
Instead of handing out grants to urban planning non-profits or community development organisations, People’s Liberty is giving the money directly to regular citizens with good ideas.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cincinnati ‘microcinema’ created by 2015 grantee Jacqueline Wood. Photograph: People's Liberty
Launched a year and a half ago, People’s Liberty has given itself a five-year mission to make more than 100 grants to individuals in the region. Two of the $100,000 fellowships are granted annually; then twice a year, eight other individuals are awarded $10,000 grants to develop smaller-scale urban interventions that focus on people, places and ideas.
Current projects include a mobile showroom for musical instruments that will travel around the city, and a model to show how vacant buildings can be used as urban gardens. Three other individuals will be given $15,000 grants to create three-month installations in the storefront gallery of the organisation’s three-storey historic building. The current installation is a “lending library” for toys and games.
You don’t have to join the big initiative to get something done. You can go and do it yourself Eric Avner
The first two year-long fellowships were awarded in 2015. One focused on building affordable small houses, the other developed a platform for local musicians to earn money through licensing. Smaller projects range from practical to playful: last year’s batch included an open-source app to display bus arrival times and a public space installation featuring 15-foot beanbag chairs.
Eric Avner, CEO of People’s Liberty, says as well as being selected for their potential to make a positive impact on the Cincinnati region, its grantee projects are designed to build up a sorely needed new class of civic leaders.
The impetus, Avner says, was “this recognition that it was the same 10 people we were seeing running for office, and the same 10 people running non-profits, and the same 10 people showing up for any kind of committee ... It was like, I know there’s more than 10 people. So where’s the next 10 people; where’s the next 150 people who are going to be the civic succession plan for this community?”
The soup revolution: changing cities over dinner, from Detroit to Liverpool Read more
Though philanthropists regularly make grants to artists, it’s relatively rare to make charitable grants to individuals not associated with an organisation, according to Shena Ashley, director of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, a Washington DC–based think tank. That’s partly because of complicated tax rules, but also because of the risk of giving thousands of dollars to someone without a track record for completing projects.
“It is more risky in terms of not being able to produce the outcome that was intended,” says Ashley. “But the benefit can be higher, because that person can focus on their passion and on what they actually want to try to produce, rather than trying to sustain an organisation.”
Avner is hoping this will become a model that philanthropists in other cities follow. “It sets up an alternative path for citizen engagement,” he says. “You don’t have to join the big initiative to get something done. You can actually go and do it yourself.”
Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/30/cincinnati-experiment-peoples-liberty-citizen-philanthropy-improve-city
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/3757475e7bd1efbe47904bca97fe82f89197ef5b23b0a83733315df547eea3bf.json
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[
"Oliver Holmes"
] | 2016-08-29T06:52:08 | null | 2016-08-29T05:18:24 |
Man carrying piece of paper bearing the Islamic State symbol attacked priest after bomb in his backpack failed to explode
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F29%2Fman-armed-with-suicide-bomb-and-axe-attacks-church-in-indonesia.json
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Man armed with suicide bomb and axe attacks church in Indonesia
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www.theguardian.com
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A would-be suicide bomber has failed in an attempt to blow himself up during mass at a Catholic church in Indonesia, using an axe to assault a priest after his bomb did not detonate.
Police said the 18-year-old ran towards the altar of the packed church but the explosives in his backpack only burned, not fully exploding.
Plot to launch Singapore rocket attack foiled, say Indonesian police Read more
Realising the suicide bomb had failed, the assailant took out an axe from the bag and used it to attack 60-year-old Albert Pandiangan. The priest received a slight injury to his left hand, according to national police spokesman Major-General Boy Rafli Amar.
Attendants at the Roman Catholic St. Yoseph Church in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province, were able to the restrain the man.
Local chief detective Nur Fallah said the explosives were rudimentary.
“Somebody tried to kill the priest by pretending to attend the church service and at that time tried to explode something, like a firecracker, but the firecracker didn’t explode, it only fumed,” he said.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest People carry an unconscious woman to an ambulance in front of a church after a would-be suicide bomber failed to detonate explosives during Sunday service in Medan. Photograph: Binsar Bakkara/AP
Police said the man was carrying a piece of paper with a hand-drawn Islamic State symbol on it.
“He sat in the same row as I did ... I saw him fiddling with something in his jacket, and then I heard a small explosion and he immediately ran to the podium,” said eyewitness Markus Harianto Manullan.
Another member of the congregation told the Jakata Post that the attacker “was fidgety the whole time” and was unable to follow the church’s rituals.
There have been several attacks on religious minorities in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Indonesian mobile brigade policemen stand guard after an attempted suicide bombing at St. Yoseph Catholic Church in Medan. Photograph: STR/EPA
A January suicide attack in the capital Jakarta killed eight people, including four attackers.
Police are still investigating the motive for Sunday’s attempted bombing. Authorities detonated the man’s belongings.
National Counter-terrorism Agency Chief Suhardi Alius said the suspect was only a “puppet”.
“Considering his young age, there has to be someone else who supports him. We are currently digging to seek his identity,” he said.
AFP and AP contributed to this report
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/man-armed-with-suicide-bomb-and-axe-attacks-church-in-indonesia
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/0b01e26da838efeba6dbb887ab297b2782c2e471739425b1b6d67d039bcc2260.json
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[
"Gareth Hutchens"
] | 2016-08-31T10:52:54 | null | 2016-08-31T10:13:25 |
Many Newstart recipients are on brink of homelessness, Council of Homeless Persons warns, and loss of $4.40 payment leaves less than $24/day to live on
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F31%2Fliving-on-24day-mps-warned-loss-of-welfare-supplement-will-hit-hard.json
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'Living on $24/day': MPs warned loss of welfare supplement will hit hard
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www.theguardian.com
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The Coalition’s plan to cut the $4.40/week energy supplement could push thousands of Newstart recipients who are already on the brink of homelessness into poverty, according to the Council of Homeless Persons.
Kate Colvin, the council’s acting chief executive, warns the $4.40 a week payment may not sound like much but if it is abolished it will leave thousands of Newstart recipients with less than $24 a day to live on.
Departmental data – published last year in senate estimates – show that 25% of Newstart recipients in Australia (76,951 people) are in severe “rental stress”, defined as paying more than 50% of their income on rent.
That number has more than doubled in the last 15 years from 32,500 to 76,950.
Senior Labor MPs want to keep welfare payment they previously wanted to scrap Read more
Colvin says if the supplement is cut it will therefore “crush the already broken backs” of thousands of vulnerable Newstart recipients.
She says median rents in Melbourne are close to $400 a week, with Department of Health and Human Services rent data showing just 6% of all Melbourne rentals would be affordable to someone on a low income.
“When you’re looking for work, you need money to travel to job appointments, for clothing for interviews, to access the internet to search for jobs,” Colvin said.
“How can you do that on less than $24/day?” she said.
The Turnbull government plans to abolish the energy supplement for all new recipients of welfare payments or concession cards from 20 March 2017.
The supplement was introduced to compensate welfare recipients for the carbon tax, but the government wants to stop the payments and use the money to help fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
The government says it will save $1.3bn from the measure, which is included in its so-called “omnibus” bill.
Q&A panellist attacks myth of welfare bludgers Read more
Welfare and jobs organisations have warned the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, that if the supplement was abolished it would cut payments to 2.2 million people on the lowest incomes.
In a letter to Turnbull two weeks ago, they warned pensioners, sole parents, single-income families, family carers and Newstart recipients would all be hit.
“A proposal to cut the energy supplement flies in the face of an overwhelming consensus from business, unions and the community sector that the Newstart payment needs to be increased,” the letter said.
Critics say the government will create a “two-tiered” system for welfare recipients by abolishing the energy supplement because people who are newly unemployed will not be able to access it, and will therefore be paid a record low of 32% below the official poverty line.
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/31/living-on-24day-mps-warned-loss-of-welfare-supplement-will-hit-hard
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en
| 2016-08-31T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e7353824dfe2b089fb2bb7ada84f1ad405fe9f31ff0e2d70dc27367c2e8681c2.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:20:33 | null | 2016-08-25T18:12:33 |
Letters: As all work, including the professions, has come under increasing commercial pressures and all sectors are subjugated to cost- and fee-cutting demands, so the status of women in the workplace has deteriorated
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Flooking-for-ways-to-tackle-the-gender-pay-gap.json
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Looking for ways to tackle the gender pay gap
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www.theguardian.com
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I was interested to read the news on the gender pay gap (Women still far adrift on salary and promotion, 23 August). Care responsibilities and part-time work are a convenient get-out clause for institutional and systemic economic discrimination against women, particularly mothers. Yet the fact is that women are penalised in the waged and unwaged economy for having children.
In the discussion about the pay gap many assumptions are made: that women often stop working or work fewer years than men; that somehow “jobless” means “workless”. In fact, these mothers who have “dropped out of the workforce” have continued to work: they have simply become unwaged and unvalued carers of babies and young children, volunteers in the communities and helpers at schools.
The reality is that the pay gap discussion is a misdirection, focusing on pay discrepancy based on the paid workforce. It doesn’t talk about the income gap when taking into account the unwaged labour (valued by the ONS recently at about £1tn) in the shadow, core economy. The majority of that work is unwaged care – care that has to be done by somebody. Much is done by women – mothers. So the position is even worse than these headlines suggest.
We have to find ways to ensure that mothers are not penalised in their job, pay and conditions. A restructured economy and workplace, which does not expect “ideal worker” performance, is long overdue – men have to show up at home, not just at work. But the counterpoint to this has to be that we ensure that mothers are not also marginalised when they take time out of the paid workforce. Basic income and the abolition of the family tax penalty in single-earner families would go some way to reduce the income gap for carers. The truth is that it is not a gender pay gap but a maternal income gap. It is not discrimination against women but against mothers.
Vanessa Olorenshaw
Sevenoaks, Kent
• In response to the IFS research a government spokesperson expresses concern and reminds us that “the government is pushing ahead with plans to force businesses to publish their gender pay and gender bonus gap”. Well bully for them, but such action will not address the need for affordable childcare, better quality part-time jobs nor the retraining or upskilling that would be so helpful to mothers who are forced to change employment direction.
Of course we need a change of attitude but these are structural impediments which cost women, their families and the country dear. We should also question the IFS finding of a decline in the wage gap among the lower educated. I might wager a small coin that this is more to do with men’s pay being held down than women’s pay moving up.
Margaret Prosser
Labour, House of Lords
• As all work, including the professions, has come under increasing commercial pressures and all sectors are subjugated to cost- and fee-cutting demands, so the status of women in the workplace has deteriorated. This climate of rampant competition is a situation in which work-life balance is sacrificed to naked ambition. Long hours are frequently demanded (often unpaid). This presents women in particular with impossible choices.
Since the destruction of the public sector, a trail-blazer in equal pay and maternity leave, the shake-out has affected women more than men, both as employees and as beneficiaries of services.
The social surveys used in The Spirit Level, with charts of income differentials within all democracies, show that all the Scandinavian countries are well rated, while the UK is the third worst. A survey published in December 2013 showed Britain as one of the three worst countries in the democratic world for professional women. In the five best countries – Sweden, Norway, Germany, France and Spain – the proportion of women to men in my profession of architecture is in much better balance, there is better paid maternity and paternity leave and childcare is much more affordable. In Sweden and Norway, where the gender split is 50/50, the cost of childcare is 7.1% and 16.7% of average income respectively. In UK it is close to 50%.
Kate Macintosh
Winchester, Hampshire
• One reason for the persistence of the gender pay gap is government policy. Since 2010, Conservative-led governments have imposed a virtual pay freeze on all public sector employees. A very high proportion of public sector workers are women, many of whom are graduates, such as nurses, midwives, social workers and teachers. This Treasury-inspired social engineering has contributed to maintaining the gender pay gap, particularly among graduates.
Alastair Hatchett
Visiting fellow, University of Greenwich
• Margaret Hodge’s excellent piece (Motherhood should not be a brake on women’s careers, 24 August) follows on from the IFS report which confirmed that the gender pay gap widens as women and men grow older. One important factor is that time spent working part-time or in non-conventional patterns is not valued as “experience”. We need a change in the images we use to think about work commitment and careers: how about “career mosaics” instead of “career ladders”?
Tom Schuller
London
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/25/looking-for-ways-to-tackle-the-gender-pay-gap
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/dbebba929fa59f08f42f4b0afa6699fd90132816a10d4267fbce198449ba73e2.json
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[
"Source"
] | 2016-08-26T13:19:56 | null | 2016-08-26T12:36:07 |
France’s former leader Nizolas Sarkozy says he’ll ban the burkini nationwide if re-elected as president next year
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fglobal%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fnicolas-sarkozy-ban-burkini-france-presidential-election-video.json
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en
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Nicolas Sarkozy demands burkini ban across France - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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France’s former leader Nizolas Sarkozy says he’ll ban the burkini nationwide if re-elected as president next year. At his first rally for the elections on Thursday, Sarkozy commends both right- and left-wing mayors who have banned the burkini in their towns. The former conservative leader, who served as president from 2007 to 2012, says the ban is to preserve public order. Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA
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https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2016/aug/26/nicolas-sarkozy-ban-burkini-france-presidential-election-video
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7fc6a62861fc2150fd0180e9923bcd116c32d22cb1c8865459239ab9dc3cb37f.json
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[
"Source",
"Youtube",
"Lee Cordell"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:03 | null | 2016-08-24T13:03:31 |
The Airlander 10 aircraft slowly nosedives and crashes in footage posted to YouTube on Wednesday
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F24%2Fworlds-largest-aircraft-crashes-during-test-flight-airlander-10-cardington-video.json
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en
| null |
World's largest aircraft crashes during second test flight - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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The Airlander 10 aircraft slowly nosedives and crashes in footage posted to YouTube on Wednesday. The 92 metre-long aircraft was damaged on its return to Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire around 11am, after reportedly hitting a telegraph pole. The giant craft had a successful first test flight on 17 August. No one was injured in the crash, but the cockpit was damaged
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/aug/24/worlds-largest-aircraft-crashes-during-test-flight-airlander-10-cardington-video
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en
| 2016-08-24T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/77bb8474708dd8f7695686629e2d15a0a4f8085bc143a185e1e743780c132071.json
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[
"Drew Reed"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:32 | null | 2016-08-19T06:30:10 |
In the 1920s the US industrialist wanted to found a city based on the values that made his company a success – while, of course, producing cheap rubber. The jungle city that bore his name ended up one of his biggest failures
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcities%2F2016%2Faug%2F19%2Flost-cities-10-fordlandia-failure-henry-ford-amazon.json
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Lost cities #10: Fordlandia - the failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon
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www.theguardian.com
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In 1928, northern Brazil was captivated by an enticing bit of news. The region’s residents were about to receive a new visitor, a man who came with the promise of reviving their ailing economy and introducing them to a whole new way of life – Henry Ford.
Local papers began raving about their future neighbour. Speculation ran wild: some columnists opined that Ford would be building a new railroad to the coast, or a new factory for his cars. Above all, they just wanted to know when he would be arriving.
Officially, Ford’s interest in Brazil was a business venture: the monopoly on Sri Lankan rubber maintained by Britain was driving up costs for his new Model A cars, so he wanted to find a cheap source of latex that would allow the Ford Motor Company to produce its own tyres, to cut costs.
But Ford’s vision ran much deeper. His goal was not simply to ship latex back to the company’s Dearborn HQ – it was to build his vision of the ideal city. A city that would fuse the same concepts that Ford had championed throughout his career, and bring a better future to a forgotten part of the planet. And that city would bear his name: Fordlandia.
It is difficult to overstate the reputation Henry Ford had built for himself by that time – whether in Brazil, America, or anywhere else on the planet. In his day, Ford’s name was every bit as evocative of the glimmering promise of technological revolution as Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg – perhaps even more so.
Within a decade of its founding in Dearborn, Michigan in 1903, the Ford Motor Company had revolutionised car production by introducing the assembly line – isolating tasks within the complex process of car assembly, allowing new models of his flagship vehicle, the Model T, to be cranked out faster than ever before, making the company a global success.
Yet Ford’s greatest innovation was arguably not mechanical, but social. He took pride in the fair treatment of his staff, and in 1914, to great fanfare, he proclaimed that all Ford workers would receive a daily salary of $5 (the equivalent of $120 (£90) today).
Ford believed fair treatment would make his workers more responsible citizens and, in the process, solidify a client base for manufacturers. The Rev Samuel Marquis, one the heads of Ford’s employee relations office, once proclaimed that Ford’s cars were “the by-products of his real business, which is the making of men”.
But some of Ford’s social ideas were highly sinister – most notoriously his anti-semitism, which featured prominently in a newspaper he himself printed, the Dearborn Independent.
He became increasingly convinced that his role in advancing society had to go beyond the factory floor, and encompass entire cities. While he succeeded in bringing some of his smaller urban planning concepts to life, his much larger project, a massive manufacturing city to be built in northern Alabama – 75 miles long, with power supplied by damming the Tennessee river – never got off the ground.
Eventually, Ford settled on a location for his ideal city that was a good deal further south than Alabama: the Amazon.
‘A work of civilisation’
By the 1920s, the Amazon basin lay in shambles. At the end of the previous century, the region had benefited from a monopoly on global rubber production, skyrocketing demands, and easy transportation via the navigable waters of the Amazon river.
Cities along the river had swelled with new residents seeking their fortunes, and had lined their streets with opulent new buildings. Belem, at the mouth of the river, became the busiest port in Brazil; upriver, Manaus became world famous for its decadent Amazon Theatre.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The sawmill and power house at Fordlandia were abandoned in 1945. Photograph: The collections of Henry Ford
But the cultivation of rubber trees could not be standardised; placing them too close together exposed them to blight and parasites. And though these trees only grew natively in Brazil, it wasn’t long before enterprising botanists decided they would try planting them in other tropical regions, where they had no natural parasites.
The British began growing rubber in Sri Lanka, after a rubber tree’s seeds were famously smuggled out of Brazil. And by the beginning of the century, this produce was vastly outperforming Brazil’s rubber crop. The Amazon basin, heavily dependent on proceeds from rubber sales, was devastated.
We are not going to South America to make money, but to help develop that wonderful and fertile land Henry Ford
Fresh off the failure of his Alabama development, Ford grew fascinated with the economically ravaged Amazon as a potential site for a reboot of his utopian aspirations. He had reportedly first become interested by the area after hearing ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, a personal friend, tell of his journey down the river. Increasing rubber prices gave a practical aspect to his dream.
In his utopian mind, Ford’s plan for growing rubber in the Amazon was (as one state department official later described it) a “work of civilisation”. He believed the values that had made his company a success would build character anywhere else on the planet. In 1928, he went as far as to announce: “We are not going to South America to make money, but to help develop that wonderful and fertile land.”
But the move also represented a certain disenchantment with his home country, and a desire to start from scratch in the blank slate of the Amazon jungle. “The force of industrial capitalism [Ford] helped to unleash,” writes Greg Grandin in his definitive history of Fordlandia, “was undermining the world he hoped to restore.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest To attract workers to Fordlandia, Ford offered a range of services – including an 18-hole golf course and dance hall. Photograph: The collections of Henry Ford
By 1927, the economic justification for Ford’s proposed incursion into Brazil had become less convincing. Britain’s stranglehold on global rubber began to diminish, and his advisers suggested he would be better off purchasing rubber from local suppliers in Brazil. But Ford soon sent two of his most trusted men to reach an agreement with Brazilian authorities.
The deal with the Brazilian state of Para was not exactly beneficial for Ford. He received rights to commercially operate a 5,625 sq mile tract of land on the Tapajós river, a tributary of the Amazon, for a total of $125,000. It was later revealed that Ford’s men had given him something of a raw deal; by law, he could have obtained that land for next to nothing.
Nevertheless, Ford now had all he needed to bring his ideals to life in the middle of the jungle. As Grandin notes: “Ford had the right to run Fordlandia as a separate state.”
Ford’s uphill battle
The site of Fordlandia had been chosen on top of a rise, to protect it from flooding. But this meant it was far enough inland that the cargo vessel chosen to haul construction materials could not pass through the rocky waters of the Tapajós until the rainy season. A crew assembled at the future site of the city in late 1928, angered by a rotting food supply, and revolted against its leadership.
Materials didn’t arrive at Fordlandia until early 1929. Construction finally began under the command of the Norwegian-born Einar Oxholm, who oversaw the laying out of Fordlandia’s basic street grid.
The city was built with a separate neighbourhood, the Vila Americana, for the American staff who worked there. Grandin points out that this development was separated from the areas intended for Brazilian workers. “It was offset a bit, similar to the relationship of suburbia to a city,” he says. The Vila Americana had the best view of the city, and was the only section with running water; while the Brazilian workers made do with water supplied by wells.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Interior of a derelict rubber factory in the middle of the city. Photograph: Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images
The city would come to feature modern hospitals, schools, generators and a sawmill. By the end of 1930, its landmark structure was complete: a water tower, utilitarian beacon of modernity for Ford’s “civilising” project.
But it still faced an uphill battle. Clearing the jungle was excruciating work, and despite Ford’s famously high wages, labour of the kind needed for the project was in short supply. Amazon wood, which Ford had initially hoped to sell at a profit until rubber could be produced in the territory, proved useless.
The local press, initially friendly, turned on Ford and his project. Meanwhile, Ford’s desire that the city remain alcohol-free proved all but impossible to enforce. Oxholm didn’t last long as manager – the city would go through several managers in its first two years.
Just when things appeared to be settling down in Fordlandia, violence broke out again on 20 December 1930. At the workers’ cafe, in which skilled workers were separated from manual labourers, an argument between supervisor Kaj Ostenfeld and Manuel Caetano, a brick mason working at the city, quickly escalated. Workers rallied behind Caetano, vandalising the city, destroying generators, manufacturing equipment, and even their own homes.
Fordlandia’s managerial staff managed to escape by ship; they were eventually able to subdue the violence, but only by appealing to Pan Am air magnate Juan Trippe to assist them by flying in Brazilian military personnel on one of his planes.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The drawing room in the museum that’s housed in one of the former managers’ homes in Vila Americana. Photograph: Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images
After this low point, Fordlandia faced a turning point. Ford finally found a successful manager in Archibald Johnston, who turned the city around after the riot: paving the roads, finishing much of the city’s much needed housing, and beginning work on access roads to connect Fordlandia with the massive territory Ford had acquired inland from the river.
It was perhaps under Johnston that Fordlandia came closest to Ford’s original ideal. He succeeded in bringing many of the amenities typical of American towns into the heart of the Amazon basin. The centrepiece was an entertainment facility that screened Hollywood films and also held dances. Health and education facilities were also improved. Johnson saw to it that many of Ford’s behavioural edicts were put into place, including a strict diet (though the alcohol provision still remained hard to enforce), and an emphasis on gardening.
But one problem remained: Fordlandia was not producing any rubber. Jungle foliage continued to be cleared, but efforts to plant rubber trees yielded discouraging results. The few trees that took root were quickly beset by blight.
To combat this, Ford brought in expert botanist James R Weir, who infuriated Johnston by insisting on a number of extravagant planting methods, and then, in 1936, demanding the construction of a second plant within Ford’s territory, called Belterra. Weir unceremoniously departed from Fordlandia a year later, without informing any staff of his intention to never return.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest By 1940, the plant employed 400 people. Photograph: The collections of Henry Ford
Despite having outlived their economic rationale, Fordlandia and Belterra nonetheless persisted for nearly a decade. As Ford’s car manufacturing operation became increasingly involved in the second world war effort, his holding in Brazil filled with American military personnel.
By the time the war ended, Henry Ford was in poor health. Management of the company fell to his grandson Henry Ford II, who promptly cut into the company’s ballooning costs by selling underperforming assets. Fordlandia was first on the chopping block.
Ford II sold it back to Brazil for a fraction of what his grandfather had originally paid. The moment news of the sale reached Fordlandia, its American residents headed home, leaving its Brazilian residents wondering what had hit them.
A quiet death
In contrast to the excitement generated around its creation, Fordlandia’s death was a quiet one. Equipment from the sawmill and generator was left to the elements and vandals over the years, rusting in the thick Amazon air. The iconic water tower still stands, though it no longer holds any water, and the Ford logo proudly painted on it has long since faded.
In the past decade, however, Fordlandia has enjoyed something of a renaissance. Part of that is cultural: its history has been revisited in news articles, documentaries and even in music – Icelandic minimalist composer Johann Johannsson released an album in 2008 inspired by the city. After the population languished at under 100 for several decades, it has rebounded to about 3,000 people in recent years.
Lost cities #8: mystery of Cahokia – why did North America's largest city vanish? Read more
“Today, most residents don’t care very much about Fordlandia’s history,” says Christiane von Schwind, producer of a short documentary about the city. “If the population is rising, I’m sure it has to do with economic reasons rather than the history or ‘spirit’ of Fordlandia.”
Yet there are those who still remember their time in Fordlandia. In a 2008 film about the city, former resident Charles Townsend returns to the town with members of his family. Seeing one of the schools, he runs ahead of the camera, eager to chat with some of the children.
“Who here was born in Fordlandia?” he asks the children in an easygoing Portuguese; they respond with cheers. “I was born in Fordlandia too!” he replies.
Those children don’t have the good fortune of attending a modern school, the way Fordlandia’s first residents did. But in a way they are better off. Fordlandia was created as the brainchild of one of the world’s most ambitious industrialists, and it failed. Perhaps it will do better as just an average town.
Do you know of other lost cities throughout history? Share stories in the comments below and follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/19/lost-cities-10-fordlandia-failure-henry-ford-amazon
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| 2016-08-19T00:00:00 |
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"David Hill"
] | 2016-08-26T13:25:42 | null | 2016-08-21T16:40:35 |
David Hill: Huge swathe of new “protected natural area” in Peru’s Amazon is included within an oil and gas concession run by Canadian company
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National parks must be for people, plants, pumas - not Big Oil
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The creation of the 1.3 million hectare Sierra del Divisor National Park in the western Amazon in November 2015 generated considerable elation and Peruvian and international media coverage. Logging, gold-mining, coca cultivation and narco-trafficking were highlighted by some media as ongoing threats to the new park, but why such failure to acknowledge what is possibly, in the long-term, the most serious threat of all?
The sorry, alarming fact is that approximately 40% of the park is superimposed by an oil and gas concession run by a Canadian-headquartered company, Pacific Exploration and Production. This is despite Peru’s 1997 Law of Protected Natural Areas stating “the extraction of natural resources is not permitted” in parks, while 2001 regulations on Protected Natural Areas state “the exploitation of natural resources is prohibited.” In addition, Peru’s 1993 Constitution “obliges” the government “to promote the conservation of biological diversity and protected natural areas.”
Map showing how Pacific’s concession, Lot 135, with its boundaries in black and purple, overlaps the Sierra del Divisor National Park, with boundaries in red and sky blue. Photograph: Screenshot from July 2016 Perupetro map.
Peru’s government is currently preparing a “Plan Maestro” - “Master Plan” - for the park and deciding how different areas within it will be used. Proposals seen by the Guardian, in Environment Ministry (MINAM) and Culture Ministry (MINCU) documents, are deeply concerning. While it is encouraging that almost the entire south-east part of the park is being proposed as a “strictly protected zone” because it overlaps the Isconahua Reserve established in 1998 to protect indigenous peoples living in “isolation”, the whole north-east part of the park, which overlaps the proposed Yavari-Tapiche Reserve for other indigenous peoples in “isolation”, is not due to receive the same level of protection and instead is slated to be a “special use zone.”
Why? Compare a MINCU map of the proposed zonification with maps from Peru’s oil and gas sector and the reason is obvious: the proposed “special use zone” in the north-east corresponds to that part of the park overlapped by the oil and gas concession, Lot 135, where Pacific explored in late 2012 and 2013.
2009 Pacific map showing the company’s interest in operating in part of what is now the Sierra del Divisor National Park, marked in dark green. The light green lines and black and yellow circles are the “areas of influence” of seismic lines and exploratory drilling. Pacific operated in what is now the north of the park in 2012 and 2013. Photograph: Screenshot from a Pacific map.
The north-east is not the only part of the park where oil and gas operations are effectively being prioritised. According to MINCU’s map, the very southern tip of the park - and therefore the very southern tip of the Isconahua Reserve - will also be a “special use zone”, rather than a “strictly protected zone.” Why? Again, the reason is obvious: that part of the park and reserve corresponds to an oil and gas concession, Lot 138, which was held by Pacific up until December 2014.
It is a similar story in the far west of the park where one - admittedly tiny - area is also proposed as a “special use zone.” Yet again, the reason is obvious: that part of the park corresponds to an oil and gas concession too, Lot 31-B, ultimately controlled by the US-based Maple Resources Corporation.
Indeed, the west and north-west of the park fall within what would be the Sierra del Divisor Occidental Reserve, effectively proposed in 2007 as another off-limits area for indigenous peoples in “isolation” but which, like Yavari-Tapiche, has never been established. Only a small part of that proposed reserve now inside the park is due to be a “strictly protected zone.”
This zonification is being proposed by SERNANP despite Peru’s 2001 regulations clearly stating that a newly-created “protected natural area” must respect the “property rights and other acquired rights” of indigenous peoples in “isolation.” In addition, the regulations state that it must “promote mechanisms to make the objectives and aims of Protected Natural Areas compatible with their ancestral uses.”
Responses to the proposed zonification by indigenous organisations in Peru have included accusing SERNANP, which sits within MINAM and runs Peru’s “protected natural areas”, of backtracking on promises made during the administrative process to establish the park and “misinforming” indigenous communities in the region. According to a declaration made in April this year by ORPIO, an indigenous federation representing more than 20 indigenous organisations in Peru’s northern Amazon:
Along with [indigenous organisations] AIDESEP and ORAU we supported the creation of the Sierra del Divisor National Park on the condition that the rights and protection of the indigenous peoples living there would be guaranteed by SERNANP, as much as in the law establishing the park and regulations for its management as in practice. . . Contrary to its commitments to acknowledge the proposed Yavari Tapiche and Sierra del Divisor Occidental Reserves for indigenous peoples in isolation and give them the highest level of protection by classifying them as strictly protected zones, SERNANP has omitted all references to such peoples and reserves in the law creating the park as well as in the proposed zonification, and has even failed to acknowledge the proposed reserves in its maps.
AIDESEP, an indigenous federation representing indigenous organisations across all Peru’s Amazon, has been extremely critical too. “SERNANP ignores existence of indigenous peoples in isolation in order to prioritise “economic rights”,” ran the title of an AIDESEP statement summarising ORPIO’s April declaration.
The very north of the park also overlaps an area considered by Matsés indigenous people to be part of their territory. A statement released in April by Matsés from both Peru and Brazil said they reject any kind of oil and gas operations and demand Lot 135 is annulled. It also said the Matsés confirm the presence of indigenous peoples in “isolation” in the Yavari-Tapiche Reserve and claim the Brazilian government’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) has evidence of them - and that as a result the two governments, Peru’s and Brazil’s, should coordinate.
“Considering that part of the Sierra del Divisor National Park is the ancestral territory of the Matsés and peoples in isolation, we urge that the park’s Plan Maestro and zonification respects the presence of such peoples in the area proposed for the Yavari-Tapiche Reserve, as well as respecting the right of the Matsés’s traditional use of this zone and prohibiting activities by third parties,” the Matsés statement read. “We urge that the future control posts in the park in the River Yaquerana basin are run exclusively by the Matsés.”
More recently, in July, ORPIO took legal action against MINCU, filing a case with the Superior Court of Justice in Lima. According to ORPIO, MINCU is violating 2007 regulations by moving too slowly to create the proposed Yavari-Tapiche Reserve and four others, and, in the meantime, failing to “implement the necessary mechanisms and measures” to protect the indigenous peoples in “isolation” living there.
Asked to respond to the indigenous organisations’ accusations, SERNANP’s Mariela Huachillo told the Guardian that they plan “to implement the necessary mechanisms and measures to guarantee the protection of indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact.” She says that national parks are intended to protect “cultural characteristics” “associated” with “intangible” eco-systems, that no “new rights” can be granted to exploit natural resources, and that the park will be monitored and protected from outsiders.
“However, SERNANP cannot impose restrictions, through the zonification, on other sectors for which it is not responsible,” Huachillo says.
According to Huachillo, SERNANP is developing the Plan Maestro “with the financial support” of CEDIA, a Peruvian NGO. CEDIA’s Lelis Rivera told the Guardian the funds have been provided by the US-based Rainforest Trust, and that, while his NGO has provided “technical and financial support”, the Plan Maestro is ultimately “the responsibility of SERNANP.” He says that the proposed zonification emerged from the administrative process establishing the park and can be traced back to 2012, that local indigenous communities agreed to the zonification, and that both AIDESEP and MINCU have been, from the start, part of the Ad Hoc Commission to develop the Plan Maestro and as a result the existence of the proposed reserves and the protection of the indigenous peoples in “isolation” “is being taken into account.”
“The zonification comes with conditions, rules and laws which justify each type of zone, what you can and can’t do where, and what are the special considerations for each space,” Rivera told the Guardian.
Just a few days after the park was created the US-based Andes Amazon Fund (AAF) announced it would provide $1 million, over five years, to help SERNANP to protect the park. AAF’s Enrique Ortiz told the Guardian the money, none of which has been disbursed yet, will not be spent “on the development of the Master Plan or zoning”, but that it will be spent on “protection activities” although they “are still working out exactly what those will be.”
“The zoning is a responsibility of SERNANP and we are not involved in it,” Ortiz says. “We would certainly believe that SERNANP should address those concerns of the indigenous organizations.”
But will SERNANP do so? Can the proposed zonification be improved? Can the Rainforest Trust, given that it is providing funds, wield any influence?
SERNANP’s Huachillo effectively dodged those first two questions, saying instead that the establishment of the park didn’t prohibit the Yavari-Tapiche and Sierra del Divisor Occidental Reserves from being created. CEDIA’s Rivera’s answer was more encouraging: “The law states that SERNANP can change the zonification at any moment, if reality requires it, for example, if an acquired right is annulled or a reserve for the indigenous people in isolation is established.”
Pacific told the Guardian it disagrees that the north-east of the park is not being proposed as a “strictly protected zone” because it is overlapped by its concession.
“Pacific does not accept that part of the park could eventually not be considered a protected zone simply because part of it is assigned to [our company] under block 135,” says Pacific’s Melissa Mackie. “We have sculpted our operations based on the existence of these environmental restrictions.”
Pacific signed the contract for Lot 135 in 2007 - for 30 years for oil or 40 years for gas. A map sent to the Guardian purportedly showing proposed exploration suggests the company wants to operate inside the park, although Mackie says, “Block 135 is in force majeure and we are currently not developing any activity there. There is no exploratory drilling planned for 2016.”
A map purportedly showing Pacific’s interest in exploring in the northern part of the Sierra del Divisor National Park, marked with green stripes. Photograph: Screenshot from a Pacific map.
Recent public statements in Peru make it clear that the Sierra del Divisor National Park is far from the only national park that the government and oil and gas companies are eyeing. Newspapers El Comercio and Gestion reported that the government, under new president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, will “revise” the 1997 Law on Protected Natural Areas in order to promote oil and gas operations, while the president of Perupetro said in an interview with Gestion on 10 August that laws must be changed to permit operations in part of the Bahuaja Sonene National Park in particular and in “reserved areas” in general. Following that came a statement by the Peruvian Hydrocarbons Society calling for legal changes and claiming oil and gas operations are “compatible” with “protected natural areas”, and then an interview on Peru’s most popular radio station, RPP, with the new Environment Minister, Elsa Galarza, also talking up the compatibility of hydrocarbon operations with “protected natural areas.”
The Sierra del Divisor National Park is considered a unique part of the Amazon basin and home to a tremendous range of flora and fauna, including jaguars and pumas.
Rainforest Trust did not respond to questions from the Guardian about the proposed zonification, but said instead that its work helps to protect “threatened tropical forests and endangered wildlife by partnering with local and community organizations in and around vulnerable areas.”
“Our unique, cost-effective conservation model for protecting endangered species has been implemented successfully for over 25 years,” says Rainforest Trust’s Marc Ford. “Our partners work closely with their national governments and local communities to formally establish reserves protecting the land.”
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[] | 2016-08-28T04:59:24 | null | 2007-11-16T16:38:08 |
My mum has just given me my late father's coin and stamp collections to dispose of. I know nothing about either; where is the best place to start? Will dealers give me a fair price, or should I try to sell privately? If so, is eBay the answer?
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What's the best way to sell a stamp collection?
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My mum has just given me my late father's coin and stamp collections to dispose of. I know nothing about either; where is the best place to start? Will dealers give me a fair price, or should I try to sell privately? If so, is eBay the answer?
Charity choice
We gave my mother's coin and stamp collections to Oxfam. The local shops pass them on to a specialist central department, which as far as I know sells them to dealers. If your father's estate was above the inheritance tax threshold, the collections would presumably have been valued and declared. If you then give them to a registered charity their value is exempt from tax.
Hilary Jane, Manchester
Expertise is essential
As a dealer in collectable items, selling primarily online, I would advise you against trying to dispose of your father's collection on eBay. If you know little about coins and stamps it will be extremely difficult to describe the items or give accurate assessments of their condition - a very important factor in coin collecting and pricing. As for selling to a dealer or private collector, it is very hard to tell the difference. Most dealers are collectors and those in search of a bargain seldom advertise they are dealers. My advice is therefore to get the experts on your side rather than pitted against you. Take the collection to a specialist auction house such as Warwick & Warwick. They will know what will and won't sell, whether items should be sold individually or as a collection, and how to accurately catalogue items to attract dealers and collectors worldwide. The auctioneer receives a percentage of the sale price from both the buyer and the seller (approx 15% each) and it is in their interest to get the best possible price for you.
H Chapman, Leighton Buzzard, Beds
Stamp society
If you are disposing of a stamp collection, the best place to start is the Philatelic Traders Society. They have about 450 member dealers in the UK who abide by the society's code of ethics. You also have recourse to the society if anything goes wrong with a transaction. You can also find member dealers in your area willing to give you a price. Always get two or three quotes, as dealers have different buying requirements. Some might be more interested in your stamps than others and may be willing to pay more.
Rob Myers, Bishop's Stortford, Herts
Heirloom opportunity
As a 13-year-old, I would suggest keeping them to pass on to a relative. I am looking forward to the day I get my grandad's collection, with stamps costing four million marks from his national service days in Hamburg. It will be very interesting and also a lovely thing to remember him by. I especially look forward to looking at all the different colonies around then.
Samuel Boyd, Guildford, who wins this week's £25 National Book Token
Ask the experts
You could find out if he was a member of a club. Get in touch with them and they may offer a trustee and executor service, ensuring that valuation is fair and realistic - they might even be able to liaise with dealers or auction houses on your behalf, or at least offer you some help. Alternatively, see if your late father subscribed to a specialist magazine for either hobby, and read the back issues or get in touch with the editor to identify possible dealers or auctions to approach.
Tim Knights, Northamptonshire
Internet is worth the time and effort
Most dealers would give a "fair" price, although they only buy to sell again at a profit. If you can spare the time and effort list the items on eBay, I think it would give the best returns. You need to describe items accurately and aim for the listing to end in the evening at the weekend, preferably in winter - this is when the majority of buyers will be looking.
Peter McCann, Preston
World wide auction
I am afraid I don't have much faith in either stamp or coin collectors. A few years ago I was told my George VI collection, minus one or two valuable stamps, was worth £4,000 by two dealers, who, however, wouldn't give me that for it. When I put them up for auction in London I got £1,800 - ridiculously low. I would try to sell your precious items separately and on the internet, getting them valued first and then putting a reserve price on them. That way you will get dealers interested from around the world and may get a fair auction.
Pam Hardyment, Twickenham
Keepsake collections
Collections, well presented, can be individual and beautiful accessories for one's home - all the more so if they are sentimental reminders of a loved one. I suggest mounting the collection in frames to give as gifts to family and friends.
Madeleine Clegg, London
Gauge the market
eBay may not necessarily be the best way to sell your collection, but it's certainly the ideal method of establishing its worth. It shouldn't be too hard to find similar or identical items for sale and then monitor their progress. eBay, through its sheer scale, has diminished rarity and sent prices down, so be prepared for some disappointment.
bramble, via the Money blog
Deal with a dealer
A first step might be to take them to reputable dealers who will be able to tell you whether there is anything of particular value, and quite possibly make you an offer. If you just want a valuation, they might charge a fee, but since you want to sell that needn't be a problem. If there's nothing of particular value they will tell you as much, so you don't need to worry about being ripped off by unscrupulous buyers. For stamps try Stanley Gibbons, and for coins try Spink.
zangdook, via the Money blog
This week's question
We are planning a long trip abroad, travelling through many countries (mainly European). What is the safest way to use internet banking away from home? Do we need to take our own laptop? We would be interested and grateful to hear from other travellers.
Email your answers to personal.effects@guardianunlimited.co.uk
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"Alec Luhn"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:50 | null | 2016-08-17T10:59:41 |
The former ZiL car factory is the latest to undergo a major redevelopment as part of a city-wide project to transform derelict industrial areas – but campaigners are concerned their unique architectural heritage is under threat
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Moscow’s industrial heritage 'at risk' in rush to redevelop old Soviet sites
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A warning scrawled on a wall in the dismantled press shop of the former ZiL auto factory still reads: “Don’t smoke, fine 100 roubles.”
This wall is all that’s left to remind visitors of when the press shop, built in 1935, was part of the 400-hectare Soviet industrial hub – a “city within a city” which enjoyed its own cafeterias, barber shop, bus line and fire department. At one point, 100,000 proletarians laboured here to put together trucks that could be found at almost every collective farm, as well as deluxe armoured limousines that carried the Soviet leadership.
After falling into debt and disrepair in the past two decades, part of ZiL will once again become a city within a city; only this time one of upscale apartment blocks, boutique shops, schools, a riverside park, concert hall and branch of St Petersburg’s famous Hermitage museum. It will all be designed by leading Russian and foreign architects and integrated into wider Moscow by 26 new streets.
This 65-hectare ZiLArt project is part of a push by the Moscow government to encourage redevelopment of industrial zones, which make up 13% of the city’s territory.
You can say there’s some preservation, but it’s not real local memory Marina Khrustalyova
Though these projects are vital to making the city more comfortable for living, some architects, historians and activists have raised concerns about preservation at ZiL and other sites, since many Soviet factory structures were built by groundbreaking constructivist architects or have historical significance. Only the five-storey facade of the press shop – notable for a grid of small glass planes contrasting with its four looming concrete entrances – will be retained. The Meganom architectural bureau will build four 20-storey glass residential towers behind it.
According to Marina Khrustalyova, coordinator of the preservation group Arkhnadzor, nine-tenths of the historic buildings in the ZiLArt part of the industrial area are being torn down. Developer LSR Group said the fire station and the facades of the press shop, and possibly other buildings along Vesnin Brothers Prospect, which ZiLArt renamed for the pioneering constructivist architects who designed ZiL general plan, will be saved.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The current state of the Soviet press shop after Moscow’s redevelopment project. Photograph: Alec Luhn for the Guardian
“It’s this kind of compromise, and you can say there’s some preservation, but it’s not real local memory, it’s not real preservation,” Khrustalyova said.
The largest city in Europe, Moscow is infamous for its traffic jams, expensive housing and crowded public transport. It ranked 167th out of 230 cities in this year’s quality of living index by the consulting firm Mercer. And at the heart of its terrible congestion is the fact that up to 45% of workplaces are located in the city centre, which is surrounded by a “rust belt” of little-used industrial areas and then an endless sea of residential high-rises.
This summer, Moscow began a 120bn-rouble (£1.4bn) renovation of a million square metres of streets, and it plans to build more than 70 new subway stations by 2020. But to truly free up the gridlock, it will also have to develop new business hubs and transportation options outside the downtown.
Redeveloping Soviet industrial zones in particular will “deconcentrate the centre and create a multifunctional urban plan”, Moscow chief architect Sergei Kuznetsov said on an excursion during the Moscow Urban Forum in June. To this end, the city is spending 100bn roubles on the Moscow Ring Railway project to repurpose railroads between the rust belt factories for public use, which will open this autumn.
“There’s no transport [in industrial zones], they aren’t working, there aren’t good roads there, no workplaces, they aren’t paying much in taxes, so it’s a wasteland and a burden on city,” said Marat Khusnullin, deputy mayor for urban development and construction.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Campaigners fear Moscow’s heritage will be lost with the ZiLArt redevelopments. Photograph: LSR
Of 9 million square metres of real estate put into exploitation in Moscow in 2015, 2.2 million was in former industrial areas, according to city hall. At least 2 million more will be built in these areas in 2016. The biggest project under way is the redevelopment of the Hammer and Sickle, a former steel factory that at 87 hectares is twice the size of the Vatican, by a consortium of Dutch and Russian architects. It will be mainly new construction, although the architects have promised to preserve the street network and some of the factory buildings.
The most celebrated redevelopment projects, such as the Sulzerareal former steel plant in Winterthur, Switzerland, or London’s Tate Modern, hinge on the “adaptive reuse” of existing structures, rather than demolishing them. Several such projects in Moscow have become creative clusters and nightlife hotspots in recent years, including wine factory Winzavod, pressure gauge manufactory Artplay, and chocolate factory Red October. Rem Koolhaas’ Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Gorky Park set a new high point for adaptive reuse last year, covering a voluminous Soviet restaurant with a shimmering polycarbonate skin while preserving mosaics, tiles and brick inside.
But due to their gigantic size, reviving the Soviet-era industrial zones in the rust belt will require more time and money.
The developer always wins even though it seemed at beginning that culture would win Eugene Asse
Other potential complications include ground pollution – ZiLArt representatives said they had to remove at least two metres of contaminated topsoil – and corruption, for which the real estate business is notorious. In addition, obtaining legal permission for large, complex redevelopment projects has been problematic in the past. Yet Khusnullin said a law passed in June, which allows the authorities to confiscate any industrial zone if at least 50% of the territory holds unapproved structures or is not being exploited for its original purpose, will alleviate this.
The biggest concern by far is preservation. Cavernous Soviet factory buildings don’t typically lend themselves to new uses without significant reconstruction, tempting investors to knock them down and build something more profitable in their place.
Moscow already has a poor track record in this area, and Soviet avant-garde architecture is especially under threat. Most recently, the Taganka telephone exchange building, a constructivist landmark from 1929, was torn down to make way for a luxury flat and hotel complex despite local protests and international condemnation.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visits the ZiL plant in 1985. Photograph: Tass/Getty Images
LSR Group is now tearing down more structures after purchasing two large sections of ZiL from the city to build ZiLArt, which will include apartment blocks designed by several architectural bureaus, as well as a 140,000 sq ft Hermitage branch and a 490 ft retail and residential tower designed by New York-based Asymptote. The city is financing infrastructure like a metro station, schools and a reconstruction of the bank of the Moscow river that will open it for public use. LSR Group will invest 135bn roubles in the project.
Eugene Asse, the founder of the March architecture school, called ZiLArt an “attempt at a good compromise” between preservation and profit, but highlighted doubts about how much will be preserved.
“It’s indeed more destructive than expected,” he said. “The developer always wins even though it seemed at beginning that culture would win, but we’ll see.”
Asymptote’s Hani Rashid said the ZiLArt project honoured Soviet constructivism without taking the “Disneyland approach” of total preservation.
“An intelligent respect is needed to convert these buildings, reconstructing them but not making them relics, and integrating them into the city,” he said.
Moscow then and now – interactive with photographs from the Guardian archive Read more
Meganom’s Yury Grigoryan said that the press shop was “difficult to save” due to bad materials and weak construction, but argued that keeping parts of it intact could encourage preservation as more of ZiL is developed. Already the factory’s fire station is planned to be converted into a kindergarten by acclaimed architect Alexander Brodsky.
“There’s lots of glass, so there isn’t much body to the building. We took it to show that we can preserve the facade,” Grigoryan said. “People should like the result, we hope then there will be more enthusiasm to preserve buildings.”
Khrustalyova gave Grigoryan credit for saving at least the facade of the press shop, but argued the demolition of ZiL structures against preservation promises made during public hearings about the territory’s development, which were held by the city before LSR’s ZiLArt project appeared. According to her, part of Moscow’s heritage has been lost.
“The fact they tore them down is not against the law, but everyone involved in this project knows that from experts’ point of view these buildings had architectural and historical value, and it was possible to implement adaptive reuse,” she said.
Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion
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https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/17/moscow-soviet-heritage-risk-redevelop-industrial-zil-car-factory
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"James Whitmore For The Conversation"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:14 | null | 2016-08-25T00:53:40 |
Leading climate and environmental scientists urge Malcolm Turnbull to take urgent action ‘while there is still time’
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Letter signed by 154 Australian experts demands climate policy match the science
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More than 150 Australian experts have signed on open letter to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, demanding urgent action on climate change that matches the dire warnings coming from climate scientists.
The letter, organised by the Australian National University climatologist Andrew Glikson, calls on the federal government to make “meaningful reductions of Australia’s peak carbon emissions and coal exports, while there is still time”.
The 154 signatories include leading climate and environmental scientists such as the Climate Council’s Tim Flannery, Will Steffen and Lesley Hughes, as well as reef scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Charlie Veron.
Queensland solar projects that could create 2,600 jobs at risk in federal cuts Read more
They point out that July 2016 was the hottest month on record, and followed a nine-month streak of record-breaking months. Average carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million in 2015, and are rising at a rate of nearly 3 ppm each year.
The world is already witnessing the effects of climate change, the letter argues, including an increase in extreme weather events, melting of the polar ice sheets and ocean acidification.
Australia, along with 179 other countries, has signed the climate treaty brokered in Paris last year, aiming to limit average global warming to “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C”.
But Glikson warned that “the Paris agreement, being non-binding, is in danger of not being fulfilled by many of the signatories”. The deal will not enter into force until it is ratified by 55 countries accounting for at least 55% of the world’s greenhouse emissions.
Glikson called for action to “transition from carbon-emitting technologies to alternative clean energy as fast as possible, and focus technology on draw-down (sequestration) of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere”.
Australia’s current greenhouse gas target, which it took to December’s Paris climate summit, calls for emissions to be reduced by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. It has been widely criticised by experts as not ambitious enough.
Andrew Blakers, professor of engineering at ANU, said Australia could reduce emissions by two-thirds by 2030 “at negligible cost”.
He said the falling cost of renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, the replacement of gas with electricity for heating, and the advent of electric vehicles would eliminate most emissions. Solar and wind installation, now at 1 gigawatt each year, would need to be increased to 2.5 gigawatts each year to reach 100% renewable energy by 2030.
Remaining emissions, from shipping, aviation, and industry, could be eliminated after 2030 at slightly higher costs.
Human-induced climate change began earlier than previously thought Read more
Lesley Hughes, a member of the Climate Council and professor at Macquarie University, said there were a number of factors causing the gap between science and policy, including vested interests, perception of economic downsides of climate action, ideological biases and inertia in the system from investment in fossil fuels. But she said the “most important issue” was the difficulty in convincing people to act to reduce risk decades in the future.
The Climate Change Authority, which advises the government on climate policy, in 2014 recommended Australia adopt a target of 40% to 60% below 2000 levels by 2030.
In a report released on Wednesday, the Climate Institute highlighted that aiming for 1.5C instead of 2C would avoid longer heatwaves and droughts, and give the Great Barrier Reef a better chance of survival.
The institute recommended that Australia adopt an emissions reduction target of 65% below 2005 levels by 2030 and phase out coal power by 2035.
• This article is reproduced from the Conversation
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/25/letter-signed-by-154-australian-experts-demands-climate-policy-match-the-science
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e8b5855b6ce73c558d458128665b0501b4949aafc6d5ceb0c320c25173e1df6a.json
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[
"Press Association"
] | 2016-08-26T14:50:16 | null | 2016-08-26T12:57:06 |
Consumers asked to check batch codes of 500ml tubs of Cookie Dough ice-cream after fears some may be contaminated with small pieces of metal
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fben-jerrys-recall-cookie-dough-ice-cream-tubs-metal-scare.json
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Ben & Jerry's recalls ice-cream tubs after metal scare
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www.theguardian.com
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Tubs of one of Ben & Jerry’s best-known ice creams have been recalled over fears they may contain small pieces of metal.
Some consumers who bought 500ml cartons of Cookie Dough are being told not to eat it and instead throw it away.
Four batches of the ice-cream are thought to be affected, with UK customers being asked to check batch numbers printed at the bottom of their pots.
The company issued an “important safety notice” after internal quality assurance checks showed a limited number of products could be affected.
It said: “The company has identified a specific production period during which Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough 500ml may have been affected and, as safety remains a top priority, Ben & Jerry’s is voluntarily recalling four batch codes of Cookie Dough 500ml from sale.
Sold up but not sold out, Ben and Jerry are still the poster boys for fair trade Read more
“As a precaution, everyone with a 500ml tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough in their freezers at home should check the batch number on the bottom of their tub to make sure it’s not affected.
“And, if it matches the batch numbers listed above, they should not eat the product and, instead, we ask them to discard the product in the usual household bin.”
The batch codes affected are L62110L011, L62111L011, L62112L011 and L62113L011.
Consumers who have to throw away a tub of the ice cream can call 0800 146 252 to find out how to receive a voucher for a free pot.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/26/ben-jerrys-recall-cookie-dough-ice-cream-tubs-metal-scare
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/ec4175c31e3c57de6c02b370fc184a453effc0e9064c6f9f4e40b2c78f745b41.json
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[
"Julian Rademeyer"
] | 2016-08-26T13:20:21 | null | 2016-08-25T07:00:04 |
Rogue state officials and disjointed land reforms have created an increasingly dangerous environment for at-risk animals
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fzimbabwes-government-is-standing-by-as-its-wildlife-gets-slaughtered.json
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Zimbabwe's government is standing by as its wildlife is slaughtered
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www.theguardian.com
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It was a normal day in the Chipinge Safari area when two police officers, Robert Shumba and Vengai Mazhara, headed into the bush in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands after getting a tip about a poacher armed with an AK-47.
They were soon dead, shot by an unknown man who escaped the scene.
A month later, the police arrested a man alleged to have supplied the AK-47 used in the killings, 36-year-old Munashe Mugwira, an operative at the state security agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO).
Mugwira was detained after another suspected poacher was arrested. According to the local press, the suspect told police that Mugwira had supplied him and four others with AK-47s and .303 hunting rifles to “kill rhinos”. The man, Jason Chisango, also accused Mugwira of poisoning elephants with cyanide.
The accusations against a government agent point to a worrying trend in Zimbabwe: the involvement of the state’s security apparatus in rhino horn smuggling and supplying weapons to elephant and rhino poachers.
Mugwira – who has denied the charges – is now facing trial, and while Zimbabwe does have stringent legislation to protect its fauna and flora, the application of these laws has so far been disastrously uneven.
In December 2015, for example, Tavengwa Machona – one of Mugwira’s co-accused and a man accused by the prosecution of being involved in “decades of poaching activity” – was found guilty in a separate trial of killing two rhinos and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
However, the court promised to commute the sentence by 15 years if he paid $480,000 – the estimated value of the rhinos – to the park where they were killed. It is unclear whether he has paid the fee.
‘Things are getting worse’
The extent of the allegations against Mugwira are wide-ranging and extreme, but there are concerns that the involvement of the CIO in poaching appears to extend beyond a few rogue agents.
One conservationist, who spoke to the Global Initiative Against Organised Crime on the condition of anonymity, said thatcorrupt game scouts and poachers were regularly trading horns and tusks with CIO operatives.
Over the past decade, more than 6,000 rhinos have been killed by poachers across several African states, and things are getting worse. In the early stages of the crisis in 2008, 262 rhinos were killed. By 2015, that number had risen more than fivefold to 1,377, according to the African Rhino Specialist Group.
South Africa, which is home to 79% of the continent’s remaining rhinos, has borne the brunt of the killings, but Zimbabwe has also experienced a worrying rise in poaching. In 2014, 20 rhinos were killed; in 2015, the figure was 51.
The upsurge in poaching in Zimbabwe has complex roots including continuing political instability, a foundering economy, and widespread corruption. The ruling Zanu-PF’s party policies have also exacerbated the issue.
As part of their “fast-track” land reform programme, the government encouraged local subsistence farmers to invade wildlife conservancies where rhino populations were being protected and rebuilt.
In 2011, senior officials and military officers also seized key properties and land in the Savé Valley , an area once heralded as one of the world’s most notable conservation success stories. Ministers and local provincial leaders were controversially granted 25-year leases on the properties, justified on the basis of “wildlife-based land reform” measures to empower indigenous black Zimbabweans.
Beyond land reforms, cyanide, which is widely used in Zimbabwe’s mining industry, is relatively easy to obtain in the country and has also been used repeatedly by poachers.
In 2013 at least 300 elephants died after waterholes and salt-licks were purposefully poisoned with cyanide in what was described as “the largest massacre of elephant in this part of the world for the last 25 years”. In October 2015, at least 62 elephants were reported to have been poisoned with cyanide-laced oranges in the Hwange National Park.
With the right leadership, Zimbabwe’s wildlife could be used to reinvigorate community ownership, and the nationwide resource that has been pillaged for the profit by the central state could be protected.
But given the depth of problem it seems this change of direction will require a fresh government. This may come about sooner rather than later given the political challenges president Robert Mugabe is currently facing.
But the increasingly endangered rhino species does not have time on its side. While a few groups continue to profit massively, the onslaught on wildlife and the environment in Zimbabwe is only getting worse.
A version of this article originally appeared in “Tipping Point – Transnational organised crime and the ‘war’ on poaching”, by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, and African Arguments
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/25/zimbabwes-government-is-standing-by-as-its-wildlife-gets-slaughtered
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/09407a6b54878d44bbef48f3b2a0a5729be464c110f45ca255de18fe81b985c6.json
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|
[
"Source",
"Ap Reuters"
] | 2016-08-26T13:21:48 | null | 2016-08-23T10:59:24 |
Members of Great Britain’s Olympic team arrive back at London Heathrow on Tuesday after their most successful overseas Games
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fteam-gb-arrive-home-from-rio-olympics-video.json
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| null |
Team GB arrives home from Rio Olympics - video
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Members of Great Britain’s Olympic team arrive back at London Heathrow on Tuesday their most successful overseas Games. Team GB were greeted by hundreds of supporters at the airport after winning 67 medals in Rio and finishing second in the medal table behind only the United States
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2016/aug/23/team-gb-arrive-home-from-rio-olympics-video
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en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f37318d97a631a82fc6c30fbe94f3d23b869087a510b3b447d4a76a44bedae64.json
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[
"Nicola Clark"
] | 2016-08-30T14:50:14 | null | 2016-08-30T13:05:35 |
Women with autism are adept at hiding traits that society frowns upon, and far too many are being misdiagnosed, or waiting years to find out
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fdiagnosed-autism-male-condition-women-misdiagnosed.json
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| null |
I was diagnosed with autism in my 40s. It’s not just a male condition
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Last year, in my late 40s, I was diagnosed with autism. I’ve always known I was different, and sought a formal diagnosis after the traits I’ve lived with for almost five decades became progressively more difficult to manage.
You think autistic people have no empathy? My little boy is so empathetic it hurts | Louise Milligan Read more
I’m certainly not the only woman who has had to wait a long time for a diagnosis. The National Autistic Society (NAS) is calling for doctors to have a better understanding of how gender differences affect autism, and to recognise that women and girls have been historically under-diagnosed.
In its 2012 survey of more than 8,000 autistic people and family members in the UK, the NAS found that women and girls were more likely to be misdiagnosed than men and boys (41% of females had been diagnosed with another condition on assessment, compared to 30% of males). And once they were diagnosed, women and girls were less likely to access extra support. In cases of Asperger syndrome, only 8% of girls were diagnosed before they had reached the age of six, compared to 25% of boys; and only 20% of girls were diagnosed by the age of 11, compared to 50% of boys. Many women remain undiagnosed until their 20s or 30s.
From an early age, I was fascinated with the way things worked and happiest reading books and being on my own. Playing with groups of other children was always disastrous. I also had sensory problems and an over-sensitivity. Labels in clothes, unexpected noises, strong smells and dirt and germs would stop me in my tracks.
When we were considering our O-level choices, my biology teacher suggested I pursue a career in medicine, but all I could focus on as she spoke was the smell of the lab and the alarming appearance of the locusts in formaldehyde. I couldn’t bear it, so I chose drama school instead. I’d spent my life training to be other people, watching and learning, surmising how to fit in, so I loved this experience.
I needed other people to explain to me the mysteries of human behaviour. My brother Michael, who died when I was 12, was one of these people; my mother, my rock, was another. As an adult, when both my daughters were diagnosed as autistic, I wondered if my eccentricities were similar to theirs, but life was so busy caring for them and my mother, who had Alzheimer’s, that there was no time to question it.
Last year though, when a counsellor raised the question again, I decided to pursue diagnosis. My GP referred me to a diagnostic team of two psychiatrists for a huge catchment area in Shropshire where there was a long waiting list. Frameworks for diagnosing autism vary and in my case concentrated on my childhood; I found it really difficult emotionally to talk about myself, and my husband accompanied me to the sessions over a period of months.
When the diagnosis came I cried with relief. I’d felt it was almost a battle, that I’d had to prove myself, that I wasn’t mad.
I realise now that I’d always known that I was autistic – as had my husband, and my oldest daughter Lizzy. I think my Mum suspected it too, especially after the girls were diagnosed. To anyone in my situation, if you want a diagnosis ask your GP whether you can be assessed. But know that, as a woman, you might be misdiagnosed at first because you’ve probably become adept at covering up traits and behaviour that others have told you is unacceptable. Women are generally raised and expected to be compliant, so diagnostic markers of autism are often self-suppressed and internalised.
It’s well documented that eating disorders and very high levels of anxiety are common for women and girls with autism. Food has been a friend and feared enemy for most of my life, and my anxiety stems in part from attempting to identify and comply with social rules. I find it impossible to be quiet, for example, if I believe someone in authority is wrong. I also have a tendency either to overshare, or to stay silent when I should speak up in my own defence. Mostly I identify social rules only once I’ve broken them. I’ve often crossed the invisible line of social conformity and faced retribution. I’ve been ostracised at work and online, because I say what I think, which is not always well received.
No two autistic people are the same. Some people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are outgoing and gregarious, some shy and selectively mute. What unites everyone on the spectrum is that our needs, wants and desires are as essential as anyone else’s. An assumption that because we can’t necessarily express those needs in a way non-autistic people find palatable and understandable, doesn’t mean we don’t need to be understood.
We have put autism on TV but can’t accept it in real life | John Harris Read more
For me the diagnosis was liberation from a life of censure, which targeted aspects of my personality over which I have no control. I was often told that my thoughts and feelings were stupid, that I was odd or weird or my emotions were inappropriate. The people who loved me, loved my passion; those who didn’t called me aggressive. That taught me to be quiet and to try to suppress what I thought. I felt relief on being diagnosed and when I discussed it online I received such supportive responses from others diagnosed later in life too that for the first time I felt I belonged.
I’ve been a disability rights campaigner online for eight years, so the decision to reveal my diagnosis was straightforward for me, but the stigma of autism and all invisible conditions was clear in the reaction, with many saying that it was brave to reveal this. It seemed no braver to me than saying I have blue eyes. So on Twitter I started the hashtag #SheCantBeAutistic to gather some of the dismissive responses women have received from clinicians, friends and family. Women talked about being told that they or their daughter couldn’t possibly be autistic, because they were able to make eye contact, had good verbal skills, showed empathy and weren’t violent. This shows the misunderstanding of autism in women, but of the condition in general too.
The pioneering work of Lorna Wing and Judith Gould has shown that autism is a spectrum. It has no bias in terms of age, status, wealth, location, race, ethnicity or gender. But achievement and life choices do seem to colour the view of some clinicians who have to diagnose this condition.
If a woman has had children, is in a relationship, is interested in makeup, music, fashion, or in my case doing stand-up comedy, this level of sophistication apparently makes diagnosis “less clearcut”. At worst, it apparently makes autism seem “nonexistent”.
Women are still expected to behave as others dictate, from the function of our uterus, to the way we express ourselves in person or on the page. For women with autism our capacity and interest in conformity is diminished – we are no friend to the patriarchy. The status quo is that autism is seen as a predominantly male condition. Wider recognition of autistic women must start now.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/30/diagnosed-autism-male-condition-women-misdiagnosed
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a185cf08239d4869ca44813a30b025995498f9b4de88f1d0030d63a995a27828.json
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[
"Miles Brignall"
] | 2016-08-30T00:50:11 | null | 2016-08-29T23:01:14 |
Study finds ‘stubbornly high number of young people excluded from UK labour market’ – depending on where they live
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsociety%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fyouth-unemployment-highly-regionalised-report-shows.json
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Youth unemployment highly regionalised, report shows
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www.theguardian.com
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The huge disparity in youth unemployment rates across the UK has been laid bare by a new report that found over a quarter of 16- to 24-year-olds in Bradford, Middlesbrough, Swansea and Wolverhampton are now unemployed.
The study commissioned by the accountancy firm EY found youth unemployment rates range from 18.3% in north-east England to 11.2% in the east of England. Coventry had one of the lowest youth unemployment rates out of the 48 UK cities reviewed, at just 8.2%.
The study found youth unemployment rates vary far more around the country than overall rates of employment.
Young people find it significantly harder to find work than their older peers in the east Midlands, where Leicester’s 23.6% youth unemployment rate was more than double the average for all workers.
Youth employment levels declined by 166,000 from 2004 to 2015, the report found, with the biggest fall – 28% – seen in the manufacturing sector over the same period. In the last decade, the construction, financial and business sectors have also reduced their employment of young people – those aged under 24.
The two sectors that currently employ the highest proportions of young people – hotels and restaurants – are still set to grow, researchers concluded. It forecasts that between 2015 and 2030 the UK’s employment in these areas will grow by an average of 0.4% a year, meaning more roles.
Mark Gregory, EY’s chief economist, said: “Youth unemployment rates have fallen from the peaks we saw during the recession, when 40% of the UK’s 16- to 17-year-olds were facing unemployment. However, a stubbornly high number of young people remain excluded from the labour market, which could be further exacerbated by a period of weaker economic growth in these uncertain times ahead. History has shown us that young people are more exposed to economic volatility and industry restructuring than the population as a whole.”
He said the skills agenda is fast becoming one of the biggest priorities for UK business, with Brexit also likely to impose some restrictions to the free movement of labour in the future.
“It has never been more important to ensure the UK has the right mix of skills and talent, both nationally and locally, and young people are core to this,” he said.
While youth unemployment in the UK compares relatively well with that in most other countries in Europe, the UK rate is almost double that in Germany. Youth unemployment rates seen in France, Italy and Spain reach almost 50%.
Maryanne Matthews, chief executive of EY Foundation, an independent UK charity set up to help young people who face barriers in the labour market, said: “It is imperative that UK employers open their doors to invest in developing the skills of young people. By offering paid work experience opportunities to young people, this could lead to jobs in the future, reduce unemployment rates and help to address the UK skills gap. The more that employers play an active role in developing young people, the more we can help every young person to have better working prospects now and in the future.”
Young people’s debts
Young people are building up debt and worrying about money in their first few years of adult life, but far too few are seeking advice when they fall behind, according to research by National Debtline, which is run by the Money Advice Trust.
The charity’s report, Borrowed Years, reveals that 18- to 24-year-olds are building up significant debts at a relatively early age and suffering widespread money worries, despite most trying to budget and actively manage their personal finances. It found that 37% are already in debt, owing an average of just under £3,000 which excludes any student loans or mortgages. Over half of adults under 25 report that they regularly worry about money, with 21% admitting they lose sleep as a result.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/30/youth-unemployment-highly-regionalised-report-shows
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en
| 2016-08-29T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/c28a493b4e78a78df193b8365f2d10c5d5070426bdb2bb074b8fe302c4093859.json
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[] | 2016-08-30T20:52:29 | null | 2016-08-30T18:50:42 |
Letters: Unless further inquiries initiated by the present UN secretary general produce new and conclusive evidence to the contrary, I shall continue to believe that the tragic crash was due to pilot error
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fdag-hammarskjold-crash-was-pilot-error.json
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| null |
Dag Hammarskjöld crash was pilot error
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Several of your correspondents have complained of lack of transparency on the part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the tragic death of UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld in an air crash near Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) on the night of 17-18 September 1961 (Letters, 29 August). There is ample evidence available for study. As almost certainly the only British official still living who was present at Ndola airport throughout that fateful night (as a junior diplomat I accompanied the British high commissioner, Lord Alport, who had been instructed to arrange ceasefire talks between Hammarskjöld and Moise Tshombe, the president of the breakaway Congolese province of Katanga), I have written an account of the night’s events that was published in the Guardian (25 August 2011). Lord Alport’s official dispatch to the FCO of 25 September 1961, formally reporting on the developments prior to, during and immediately after the crash, is publicly available, as also, among other sources, is the report and voluminous accompanying documentation of the privately sponsored inquiry by Stephen Sedley of September 2013, to which I also gave lengthy evidence.
There are many conspiracy theories, but unless further inquiries initiated by the present UN secretary general produce new and conclusive evidence to the contrary, I shall continue to believe that the tragic crash was due to pilot error.
Brian Unwin
Dorking, Surrey
• My brother Bengt-Åke Bengs wrote to you in 1966 including a pamphlet he had written about the Ndola accident. My brother had been a captain with the airline SAS and had 4,000 piloting hours with the UN in similar operations in Africa. He put forward the theory that the accident was due to pilot error. He had seen reports and interviews taken immediately after the accident which had been flown direct to Stockholm and kept secret.
Joy (Hjordis) Dorsett
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/dag-hammarskjold-crash-was-pilot-error
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/365c88a367869f9e84f4096b18fe796bdba0e9f1203e325ea0281f344adae767.json
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[
"Peter Scott"
] | 2016-08-30T08:59:45 | null | 2016-08-30T06:00:23 |
With many graduates now ending up in the Uber economy, the salary premium they command appears to be faltering
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Feducation%2F2016%2Faug%2F30%2Fgraduate-job-uber-economy-salary.json
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The ‘graduate job’ gravy train is shuddering to a halt
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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‘Education, education, education” was the rallying cry of Tony Blair before history cruelly teamed him up with George W Bush. We all applauded – and, to be fair, the money flowed during the Blair-Brown years, even if it was accompanied by intrusive “modernisation”. For higher education, the equivalent mantra would have been – and still is – “jobs, jobs, jobs”.
Students – sorry, customers – are now cajoled into measuring the value of their courses in terms of future earnings. High tuition fees in England, soon to be higher still even though they are already among the highest in the world, are justified by these higher graduate earnings.
And it is not only students. Institutions, too, have to focus on “employability”, usually reduced to the proportion of their students who find “graduate” jobs. In the looming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) this will be a key indicator of their performance.
Whole nations now justify public investment in higher education almost entirely in terms of enhancing the skills of graduate workers, as well as more “impactful” research. Competition in the global knowledge economy is the new Olympian struggle, with growth rates and gross national product substituting for medals.
But just because over the past two decades the growth in the proportion of “graduate” jobs roughly kept pace with the increasing production of graduates there is no guarantee this will happen in future. The recent Institute for Fiscal Studies report found that the “graduate premium”, the extra earnings graduates can expect compared with non-graduates, has held up – so far. It offered no reassurances about the future.
Because older non-graduates are retiring and being replaced by graduates, the proportion of graduates in the workforce will go on increasing even if there is no growth in student numbers (and the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service has reported a 4% increase in first years this autumn).
Less than half of students confident their degree will pay for itself Read more
There is already alarming anecdotal evidence that the increase in “graduate” jobs is failing to keep pace. Lots of graduates end up in the Uber economy. In any case, the “graduate premium” has always been uneven – high for Oxbridge graduates heading for the City, wafer-thin for those from less prestigious universities working in the public sector (especially if they are women or from ethnic minorities).
Ministers will be tempted to heap blame on these less prestigious universities, naming and shaming them and penalising them in the TEF in the name of “driving up standards”. But that will be pointless and deeply unfair if the “graduate” jobs don’t exist in sufficient quantity. It is worth remembering that the growth in such jobs in the past was fuelled by incorporating the education of most healthcare and primary school teachers into the graduate economy.
The anecdotal evidence that the explosion of “graduate” jobs may be over is already there. The scientific evidence is slowly becoming available, notably in a paper by Stephen Kemp-King, The Graduate Premium: manna, myth or plain mis-selling?, published by the Intergenerational Foundation. There are lots of reasons. Top of the list is the government’s refusal to embrace a high-skill industrial strategy, preferring the quick fix of a liberalised, and lower-wage, workforce.
Another reason is that many of the “graduate” jobs generated in management and financial services, even though they are filled by graduates from our now ubiquitous “top” universities, are rather “soft”. They may – may – demand those sometimes over-hyped problem-solving and inter-personal skills. But they often don’t need high-level expert and technical skills. Not really very “graduate” on one reading.
Then there are longer-term structural reasons. Some fear high-skill jobs are being hollowed out, as the need for truly advanced skills is becoming more and more concentrated in a few very high-tech sectors (often abroad). Others suggest our existing advanced technologies are becoming mature, and may cease to devour graduates in the way they once did.
If the graduate job market does falter, there are two responses. The first, and much the most likely from government, is to increase the pressure on universities, insisting that the fit between higher education and employment becomes even more exact. That is probably a battle that can never be won.
The second is to recognise that a higher education is about more than jobs. It is about self worth and citizenship too. So even if the supply of “graduate” jobs does fail to keep up with the production of graduates, there is no need to panic. A good society is more than just an ever-expanding economy.
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https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/30/graduate-job-uber-economy-salary
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en
| 2016-08-30T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/a879cbc6bb83c8f1717249f258379e1b2208155c91bcd7d4283e2ae01d40847d.json
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[
"Miles Brignall"
] | 2016-08-26T13:28:46 | null | 2016-08-01T23:00:01 |
We took a ferry from Hull to Rotterdam but the calls we made were charged through a company in Bermuda
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Mobile phone calls made while at sea could add up to unexpectedly big bills
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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I wanted to let you know of a con of which you might like to make your readers aware.
My O2 mobile phone account has a travel bolt-on that allows me to use my UK allowance of minutes and data when travelling in Europe for a flat fee of £1.99 a day.
On a recent trip, I was stung for a £21 international data roaming charge from Bermuda. Looking in my diary, I realised this was incurred while I was on the P&O car ferry from Hull to Rotterdam. The company, it seems, has installed a Bermuda-registered phone mast on its ferry, so your phone thinks it is in Bermuda and charges accordingly.
There was one announcement about this, but I suspect many holiday travellers with European data roaming will be stung this summer.
HB, Otley
Europe finally abolishes mobile phone roaming charges Read more
Thanks for your timely reminder about the perils of using a mobile while at sea. This is not the first time this problem has featured in these pages.
P&O told us the charges come from Cellular at Sea, an external company that offers international network coverage. “We use this internally and a mobile phone will connect to it automatically if data roaming is not switched off.
“We have posters on board which explain the costs and that you will be billed directly by your provider. We do rely on all passengers to take responsibility for their own mobile phone usage whilst travelling with us. On this occasion, as a gesture of goodwill we would like to pay the £21 cost to HB.”
You had also complained to O2, and it has also agreed to refund the cost.
Other ferry (and cruise) passengers take note.
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/02/mobile-phone-charges-ferry-bermuda
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en
| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/fa7101e6c95238833d2622ffdcc0dc62d318aa243c2de4bb9d7381e68dbf2825.json
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[
"Sally Weale",
"David Batty"
] | 2016-08-26T13:08:01 | null | 2016-08-26T10:41:50 |
Harassment of students is widespread but remains invisible, partly because of confidentiality clauses, say campaigners
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Feducation%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fsexual-harassment-of-students-by-university-staff-hidden-by-non-disclosure-agreements.json
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en
| null |
Sexual harassment of students by university staff hidden by non-disclosure agreements
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Universities’ use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in sexual harassment cases involving staff and students is allowing alleged perpetrators to move to other institutions where they could offend again, according to academics, lawyers and campaigners.
They warn that the prevalence of harassment is being masked because of the use of confidentiality clauses in settlements, which prevent any of the parties discussing what has happened.
Universities that find themselves at the centre of sexual harassment allegations are accused of prioritising their own reputations in an increasingly competitive higher education marketplace over their duty of care to vulnerable students. Those who described concerns include:
Ann Olivarius.
Ann Olivarius, a leading lawyer in the area of sexual harassment in UK and US universities, who said: “Young women are terrified about the consequences if they make a complaint, then when they do, the university’s chief concern is to protect its own reputation by keeping the whole thing quiet.”
Alison Phipps
Dr Alison Phipps, director of gender studies at Sussex University, who said her research had taken her into 10-15 universities and it was the same story every time. “The system comes into operation to protect itself.” Universities are operating like businesses, she said, and these types of problems “are thought of in terms of the economic cost, of reputation management, and: ‘What happens if we lose our star professor and his grant income?’”
Ruth Lewis
Ruth Lewis, coordinator of the Universities Against Gender Based Violence network and senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Northumbria, who raised concerns that NDAs were concealing the true extent of the problem of harassment and violence in UK universities. “They make it very difficult to know how often complaints about harassment or violence from staff or from students are resolved by a private settlement that makes the problem invisible.”
An NDA is a legal contract, used in many areas of business and industry, by which one or more parties agree not to disclose confidential information. They can be used to keep damaging information secret, and can protect a vulnerable victim or witness who may not want their name made public. But in complex cases confidentiality may end up applying to those who haven’t asked for it in order to protect those who have.
Universities UK (UUK), the higher education action group, said there were no statistics on the use of NDAs, but with more than 400,000 employees, a spokesperson said it was likely that settlement agreements were used from time to time when employees departed.
The Department for Education, asked about the prevalence of sexual harassment of students by university staff, and the danger that NDAs were keeping the problem hidden, said: “Sexual harassment is unacceptable and universities’ responsibilities to their students are crystal clear. They must have clear policies in place for the handling of such complaints and ensure students do not face harassment of any kind.
“If a student is unhappy with how a complaint has been dealt with they can speak to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator. Ultimately, if a student feels they have been the victim of a sexual assault they should report it to the police.”
But Olivarius, who is working on a number of allegations of sexual harassment against senior academic staff in the US as well as cases in the UK, said there was no effective mechanism at universities to stop academic staff pressuring students for sexual relationships and any kind of disciplinary action was extremely rare. “There are very few penalties for academics who sexually harass their students; until penalties are established and made known, the problem will continue.”
The issue of NDAs is at the centre of a recent case of sexual harassment highlighted by Prof Sara Ahmed, who resigned from her post at Goldsmiths, University of London, earlier this summer in protest against what she described as the university’s failure to address sexual harassment. It had become, she said, a “normalised and generalised” part of the academic culture.
Speaking for the first time since her resignation, Ahmed, former director of the centre for feminist research at Goldsmiths, said there had been a number of complaints by female students which resulted in some staff leaving. However, because of the use of confidentiality agreements no one was told why or how they came to leave.
“Those staff are then free to represent their departures however they wish,” Ahmed said. “Confidentiality agreements are not necessarily used intentionally to silence students who have been harassed by staff or the staff who support them. But that is the effect. If no one speaks about the cases then no one speaks about what the cases revealed.”
A Goldsmiths spokesperson said sexual harassment was a very serious issue and was not tolerated at the university, adding: “It is sadly pervasive across society – and like many other organisations we have not been immune from the issue.
“We have confirmed that there has been inappropriate behaviour at the university in the past. Any allegations of sexual harassment are thoroughly investigated with action taken against those found responsible.”
The Guardian has been given the names of a number of men who were allegedly the subject of inquiries at Goldsmiths between 2013 and 2014 following complaints from students about harassment and sexual misconduct. Settlements were reached and some staff left the university, but much of the detail cannot be reported because parties involved signed a confidentiality clause.
In recent weeks, however, a group of mainly postgraduate students from Goldsmiths have launched a campaign to try to flush out the truth about what happened at the university to prompt Ahmed’s resignation.
“We feel hugely resentful that she is no longer teaching at Goldsmiths and are frustrated at the lack of information around precisely what she is protesting against,” a spokesperson for the group told the Guardian.
The students want to know if any of the members of staff at the centre of the allegations are still at Goldsmiths and, if they have left, whether other institutions are aware of the claims against them.
“It is not only to the detriment of Goldsmiths students and staff, but to other students and staff all around the world that severe cases of sexual harassment over several years have been buried,” the spokesperson said.
It has also emerged that a number of books in the university library have been defaced, with handwritten allegations of sexual harassment against the author – a former Goldsmiths academic – scrawled across the title page. The university has since removed the books from the library shelves.
According to sources at Goldsmiths inquiries focused on one department, where there were allegations of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct and bullying. One source described the culture in the department at that time as “macho, sexist and harassing”; any women who objected or did not participate were perceived as “uptight or disloyal”.
Goldsmiths refused to talk about specific cases and would not comment on the use of non-disclosure agreements, though in a previous statement Jane Powell, deputy warden, said: “We actively encourage people to report incidents but often there is a reluctance to speak up. That’s why we deal with these matters confidentially.”
A spokesperson said the university was looking at how it might be able to share information about previous complaints with students “to provide reassurance that we have taken robust and fair action in the past, and to think collectively about how we can do better in the future”.
A new lobby group and consultancy, the 1752 group, has been set up by four former and current PhD students at Goldsmiths to advise universities and deliver training around the issue of staff-to-student sexual harassment and exploitation.
Group spokesperson Dr Tiffany Pagesaid: “Many institutions have inadequate policies and complaints procedures in this area, so students who experience sexual harassment from their supervisors or tutors tend to avoid making official complaints and therefore are at risk of dropping out of their studies.
“If women do make complaints, we have evidence that these are often dealt with poorly by institutions, putting complainants at risk.”
The problem of sexual harassment in UK universities has come under the spotlight in recent years, but mainly with reference to student behaviour and so-called “lad culture” on campus rather than staff harassment of students.
In a survey by the National Union of Students in 2014, more than a third of women (37%) said they had faced unwelcome sexual advances, but the issue of sexual harassment of students by academic staff has remained under the radar.
A UUK taskforce has been set up to collect evidence on violence and harassment against women at universities, which is expected to report to government in October. “The university sector has been clear that there is no place for violence and sexual harassment on a university campus, nor anywhere else,” a UUK spokesperson said.
“Universities across the UK already have a range of initiatives and policies in place to address these issues, including policies on student-staff relationships. The aim of the taskforce will be to identify best practice across a range of areas and share this with all universities.”
Alison Phipps, who is involved in projects which challenge institutional sexism in several universities, said NDAs were dangerous because they could allow serial offenders to continue to target students.
“Non-disclosure agreements are about protecting the institution and particular individuals. That’s so dangerous because if that person is serially sexually harassing students that is a public interest issue. We need to know if there are people who are serial sexual harassers in our universities.”
Fellow academic Ruth Lewis called for more information on how often universities are using NDAs to settle cases. “They don’t help address cultures which condone such behaviour, they don’t help other victims know that they are not alone, they don’t help protect potential victims.
“Gender-based violence is an urgent, worrying problem in our universities; we need to know more about it to try to end it and universities need to improve their responses to it,” she said.
Case study: ‘There was inappropriate stuff going on’
Within weeks of starting to study for her PhD at Goldsmiths University, Beth (not her real name) was struck by the informal culture within her department. There were evenings out drinking in the pub, parties and lots of extracurricular socialising between senior academics and their students.
She was warned that her supervisor was flirtatious and had previously had relationships with students, so she tried hard to build a professional working relationship with him. As time went on however, she found herself caught between the need to maintain a professional student-staff relationship and her fear that she would be frozen out if she didn’t play along with the prevailing culture.
“In the first year I tried really hard to create a professional relationship. I thought I had, but on reflection there was inappropriate stuff going on.” Then in her second year, she became one of the favourites. “That meant I got more privileges, more opportunities thrown my way – I felt like I could become one of the in-crowd.”
It began to feel inappropriate, so in her third year she pulled back. “I stopped getting any support. I felt like a 13-year-old again. He was never an outright bully. He would never bark at you – but he would roll his eyes and he wouldn’t invite you to something. If you showed up, he wouldn’t engage with you, even though you were his supervisee.”
Her original complaint to the university was about inadequate supervision for her PhD, but she began to feel increasingly uncomfortable about other factors in the professional relationship, which then formed part of a later complaint – the way her supervisor stared at her chest while talking to her, the way he would touch her waist.
She was unhappy about the wider culture – going out with staff in the evenings and getting drunk. “He’d get closer to you and whisper in your ear: ‘You’re great.’
“I spent my first two years negotiating around that. Then I started to kind of withdraw – choosing not to go to more and more events, not going out with them, not being part of the party – then all of a sudden you’re not getting any supervision.
“It took me a very long time to make a complaint because I felt like I owed him something. He has this very large network – you felt if you made a complaint you would lose everything. Your entire future depends on having a really good recommendation from your supervisor. To sever those ties puts you in a really precarious position.”
The Goldsmiths spokesperson pointed out that the allegations centred on past events at the university and that since then the complaints procedure had been overhauled in consultation with students to make it easier for people to come forward.
“The organisation has been refreshed and renewed to ensure strong professionalism and focus on student wellbeing and to build on our reputation for offering a transformative learning experience,” the spokesperson said. “Goldsmiths offers a progressive and inclusive culture which draws students and staff from across the world.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/26/sexual-harassment-of-students-by-university-staff-hidden-by-non-disclosure-agreements
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/61409e3ef0486fb3b724aaa3f1c16af2f44d5a4ce96de894ebab9b5a689badb5.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:19:48 | null | 2016-08-26T01:58:30 |
Rodolfo Illanes was kidnapped by striking workers before being killed, the government says
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fbolivian-deputy-interior-minister-beaten-to-death-by-miners-say-reports.json
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Bolivian deputy interior minister beaten to death by miners
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A Bolivian government minister has been beaten to death by striking mineworkers after being kidnapped, the government said.
Rodolf Illanes, deputy interior minister, had gone to talk to protesting workers on Thursday in Panduro, around 160km (100 miles) from the capital, La Paz, but was intercepted and kidnapped.
“At this present time, all the indications are that our deputy minister Rodolfo Illanes has been brutally and cowardly assassinated,” minister of government Carlos Romero said in broadcast comments. The government was trying to recover his body, Romero said.
Reymi Ferreira, the defence minister, said that Illanes had been “savagely beaten” to death by the striking miners.
He broke down on television as he described how Illanes, appointed to his post in March, had apparently been “beaten and tortured to death”. Illanes’ assistant had escaped and was being treated in a hospital in La Paz, he said.
“This crime will not go unpunished. Authorities are investigating ... around 100 people have been arrested,” Ferreira said.
— Iliana Mier-Lavin (@imlavin) Mining strike in #Bolivia
Deputy Interior Minister Rodolfo Illanes died while being kidnapped by miners @EFEnoticias pic.twitter.com/gAC5TGaMRe
— Noticias de Bolivia (@info_bolivia) (INTERNET).- Viceministro Illanes dice que no recibió maltrato y ruega por diálogohttps://t.co/iIb3RBd60k
Moises Flores, the director of a mining radio station, later told local radio: “We have been able to see close up that vice-minister Illanes was dead. Colleagues told us that he had died of a beating.”
Protests by miners in Bolivia demanding changes to laws turned violent this week after a highway was blockaded. Two workers were killed on Wednesday after being shot by police, and the government said 17 police officers had been wounded.
Bolivia president blames 'conspiracy' for loss – but weary voters may be to blame Read more
The National Federation of Mining Cooperatives of Bolivia (Fencomin), once a strong ally of the leftwing president, Evo Morales, began what it said would be an indefinite protest after negotiations over mining legislation failed.
Protesters have been demanding more mining concessions, the right to work for private companies, and greater union representation.
The vast majority of miners in Bolivia, one of South America’s poorest countries, work in cooperatives, scraping a living producing silver, tin and zinc. There are few foreign-owned mining firms, unlike in neighboring Peru and Chile.
Natural gas accounts for roughly half of Bolivia’s total exports. Morales, a former coca grower, nationalised Bolivia’s resources sector after taking power in 2006, initially winning plaudits for ploughing the profits into welfare programs and boosting development.
But his government has been dogged by accusations of cronyism and authoritarianism in recent years, and even the unions who were once his core support have soured on him as falling prices have crimped spending.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/26/bolivian-deputy-interior-minister-beaten-to-death-by-miners-say-reports
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/93079df113d0ce1e7fb8aa518dcbe58e04d339b46173fb449b4aa446aa09dcf0.json
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[
"Katie Allen"
] | 2016-08-26T13:24:00 | null | 2016-08-26T09:33:19 |
April to June figures included data for a short period after the EU referendum on 23 June
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fbusiness%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Fuk-economic-growth-second-quarter-brexit-eu-referendum.json
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| null |
UK economic growth confirmed at 0.6% in second quarter
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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A rise in consumer spending helped the UK economy power ahead in the months running up to the EU referendum, with little sign the vote hurt investment or the wider economy, official statisticians have said.
The Office for National Statistics confirmed a previous estimate that GDP growth picked up to 0.6% in the second quarter from 0.4% in the first quarter.
The figures will be a boost to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who has repeatedly asserted that Britain entered the post-referendum period from a position of strength. Economists said the second quarter would come to represent a high point for this year, with growth set to grind to a halt over coming months as the EU vote hurts business confidence.
— ONS (@ONS) 0.6% rise in #GDP in Q2, unrevised from the preliminary estimate https://t.co/GzCRcoXayZ
The April-to-June figures included data for a short period after the EU referendum on 23 June. “There is very little anecdotal evidence at present to suggest that the referendum has had an impact on GDP in Quarter 2 2016,” the ONS said.
It provided more detail on what drove growth in this GDP update, with business investment rebounding 0.5% in the second quarter, compared with a fall of 0.6% in the first quarter.
Household spending rose 0.9% after a rise of 0.7% in the first quarter. It was the strongest quarterly growth in spending for almost two years and adds to evidence that strong employment, low interest rates and low inflation are buoying consumer sentiment.
But net trade continued to drag on GDP growth as the gap between exports and imports widened further in the second quarter. Exports edged up 0.1% in the second quarter but imports grew by a much stronger 1%.
In year-on-year terms, household spending was up 3%, the strongest growth since the end of 2007, before the financial crisis. Business investment was down 0.8% on a year earlier. Overall GDP was up 2.2% on the year.
The ONS chief economist Joe Grice said: “Today’s figures reinforce the picture that the economy grew strongly in April, and then remained relatively flat in May and June.
“Business investment grew in the second quarter, partly thanks to companies spending on transport equipment such as cars and planes. However, levels of investment remained lower than at the same period last year.
“Our survey returns, which include the period leading up to and immediately following the referendum, show no sign so far of uncertainty having significantly affected investment or GDP.”
The 0.6% headline figure was as most City economists had been expecting, according to the consensus forecast in a Reuters poll taken last week. But many expect growth will slow in this July to September quarter.
There were already signs that the economy was losing momentum before the vote, based on figures for individual months in the second quarter, said Scott Bowman, UK economist at Capital Economics. The consultancy expects growth to fall to zero in the third and fourth quarters of this year.
“Looking ahead, growth looks set to slow significantly in the second half of the year as uncertainty related to the Brexit vote takes its toll. The monthly output indices suggested that activity fell in May and rose only slightly in June, with almost all of the second quarter’s growth coming in April,” he said.
“Admittedly, consumer spending appears to have held up fairly well since the referendum. But survey measures of business activity have taken large hits and a significant portion of firms say they will invest less as a result of the Brexit vote.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/26/uk-economic-growth-second-quarter-brexit-eu-referendum
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en
| 2016-08-26T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/eeadb87c47d6125498a42f60828a6d32454df1187372e4125dda80c60d9954bd.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:26:08 | null | 2016-08-25T18:42:57 |
The subsidies the ride-hailing firm gives its drivers was main reason for losses, finance head said, as leaked figures from investor call revealed huge losses
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ftechnology%2F2016%2Faug%2F25%2Fuber-losses-2016-investors.json
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en
| null |
Uber lost at least $1.27bn in first half of 2016 - report
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies lost at least $1.27bn before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the first six months of 2016, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The subsidies Uber grants its drivers was the main reason for the loss, finance head Gautam Gupta told investors in a quarterly conference call, Bloomberg said, citing sources.
Uber, whose investors include Goldman Sachs Group and Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The company lost about $520m in the first quarter of the year and another $750m in the second quarter, Bloomberg said.
Uber, which is now valued at roughly $69bn, lost at least $2bn in 2015, the report said.
The company’s net revenue increased to about $1.1bn in the second quarter from $960m in the first quarter, while bookings rose to more than $5bn from more than $3.8bn in the prior quarter, Bloomberg said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/uber-losses-2016-investors
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f8b43c699bb3f743f7856d47c2682fb1b0491dc6364c4a42ee77f6c6da851759.json
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[
"Associated Press In La Paz"
] | 2016-08-28T12:51:51 | null | 2016-08-28T12:27:00 |
Deputy interior minister Rodolfo Illanes was kidnapped and beaten to death;attorney general’s office detains 40 miners, among them a protest leader
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F28%2Fbolivia-accuses-mining-killing-deputy-interior-minister.json
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| null |
Bolivia accuses mining officials of killing government mediator amid bitter strike
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
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Bolivian authorities accused the president of a mining federation and two of his top officials of the killing of deputy interior minister Rodolfo Illanes amid a bitter strike, officials said on Saturday. Forty miners have been detained in the case.
Illanes was kidnapped and beaten to death by striking mine workers on Thursday after going to the town of Panduro, 80 miles south of La Paz, to mediate in the dispute over mining laws and dwindling paychecks.
Bolivian deputy interior minister beaten to death by miners Read more
Three protesters have been killed in clashes with riot police, stoking tensions. The striking miners had armed themselves with dynamite and seized several highways, stranding thousands of vehicles and passengers.
Bolivia’s attorney general’s office has detained 40 miners, among them protest leader Carlos Mamani, president of the National Federation of Mining Cooperatives of Bolivia. On Saturday afternoon, Mamani and two other federation officials were accused by the public ministry in Illanes’ death.
An autopsy found that Illanes died from trauma to the brain and thorax.
The blockaded highway in Panduro was clear on Friday as the miners returned to their camps. A funeral mass was held for Illanes in La Paz.
Illanes’ murder underscored how President Evo Morales, a former coca growers’ union leader, has increasingly found himself at odds with the same kind of popular social movements that fueled his rise to power and have made up his political base. The president called the beating death of the deputy minister “a conspiracy” to overthrow him.
Bolivia’s informal miners number about 100,000 and work in self-managed cooperatives producing primarily zinc, tin, silver and gold. They want to be able to associate with private companies, which promise to put more cash in their pockets, but are currently prohibited from doing so. The government argues that if they associate with multinational companies they will no longer be cooperatives.
Bolivia has seen increased social agitation as a financial slowdown hit an economy heavily dependent on natural gas and minerals, which account for over 70% of foreign export sales.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/28/bolivia-accuses-mining-killing-deputy-interior-minister
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en
| 2016-08-28T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/e11a50fc9eab741102dc2ef08a5186ea041dcb20f2f2ee8e762f24d3a6e7e88f.json
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[
"Maev Kennedy"
] | 2016-08-26T13:21:12 | null | 2016-08-23T15:13:05 |
Olympians dream of dinner and holidays as they return from Rio 2016 Games
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https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2F2016%2Faug%2F23%2Fteam-gb-fish-and-chips-olympians-rio-2016.json
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'Haven't had fish and chips for months': Team GB hungry for home
| null | null |
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In blazing sunshine under a brilliant blue sky, Team GB’s Olympians returned home festooned with medals and eager to offer up corporate endorsements – but above all dreaming of British food.
“Fish and chips,” said Jonny Brownlee, last seen rolling on the ground in his brother Alistair’s arms after they won silver and gold in the triathlon. “Haven’t had fish and chips for months. I am really looking forward to fish and chips.” Jonny Brownlee had, he recalled happily, already had a “really good steak” on the flight home.
Great Britain finish second in Rio 2016 Olympic medal table Read more
Dina Asher-Smith, winner of bronze in the women’s relay, looked thoughtful. “I’m looking forward to having something really, really bad to eat – that’s been a long time coming,” she said.
For swimmer Adam Peaty, who blushed furiously as his gold and silver medals clashed together and chimed like a church bell, the food party has already started. “I’ve been in McDonald’s for the last seven days,” he said. He added: “It was free in the village so I really went for it. We were sending someone out on a burger run in the morning and they were coming back with about 20 burgers. It was great.” His races done, he had had a fine old time in Rio, he recalled. “I have lots of memories. Maybe not appropriate. Definitely not appropriate.”
Every single member of the squad – the winners of 92 medals who descended the front steps, and the other team members and support staff who emerged more modestly from the back of the plane – was greeted with wild cheers from hundreds of ground crew and British Airways staff who piled into the landing area.
The flight crew plied them with champagne throughout the journey and played the national anthem over the PA, before waiting on the steps to applaud each of the 320 athletes and support workers to leave the plane, with the last exiting almost half an hour after BA2016 landed – its much vaunted golden nose cone looking, in truth, slightly more bronze.
“Perfect, it was absolutely perfect – and they deserved it,” captain Allister Bridger, BA’s chief pilot, who will be flying the Paralympic squad back from Rio next month, said.
The athletes repaid the compliments with a string of tweets namechecking the national carrier for bringing them back home. Sam Quek, part of the winning women’s hockey team, tweeted:
— Sam Quek (@SamanthaQuek) WE ARE HOME!! Huge thank you @British_Airways for an amazing flight. Such an honour to be a part of this moment with @TeamGB #greattobeBAck
Gymnast Louis Smith, a silver medallist, wrote:
— Louis Smith MBE (@louissmith1989) Homeeeeeee #greattobeBAck @British_Airways thank you for such an amazing flight back safe and sound pic.twitter.com/tcFfwfmbEz
Rio now done, Tokyo 2020 – and the terrifying expectation that even this year’s medals haul could be topped – is already much on the mind of the Team GB organisers. “It will be tough – Tokyo will be tougher,” Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the British Olympic Association, said.
The athletes are now planning to take long holidays, as they seek breaks from training. Many are taking several weeks off, some as much as a month. The Brownlee brothers plan on taking it easy, only swimming and running for a few hours each day, until Christmas.
Team GB haven’t quite got their heads around the strange new world they have returned to: the cheering ground crew, the instant beaming recognition of strangers in the airport, never mind the possibility of official honours to come.
“Sir Adam Peaty?” the champion swimmer said. “I don’t think I quite deserve it yet. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
During the flight, the crew – who had to navigate singing, dancing hockey women and Max Whitlock’s impromptu pommel horse display over the seat backs – had told them: “You have no idea what you’re going to walk into.” Rower Katherine Grainger, who won silver and is a veteran of five Olympics, did have some idea, but even she did not expect the congratulatory tweet from the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
— Justin Welby ن (@JustinWelby) Welcome home @TeamGB and congratulations on your amazing achievements in #Rio2016! 🏅 https://t.co/7RCSnH26tQ
Scores of ground crew and British Airways staff piled out on to the hot tarmac as BA2016 arrived nine minutes early. The cheering started as boxer Nicola Adams and Whitlock emerged and stood for a moment on the top step, blinking in sunlight brighter than on many of their days in Rio.
The Terminal 5 arrivals area was packed with families, friends and fans, including Mavis Williams – Peaty’s grandmother, who became a social media star after tweeting about his success. They had to wait some time until the team managed to sort through several hundred identical red kit bags and make it through to join them.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Staffordshire bungalow of Olympic gold medallist Adam Peaty’s grandmother, Mavis Williams. Photograph: Richard Vernalls/PA
Even in the euphoria of the moment some were honest enough to admit that the honour of merely taking part, and the much repeated noble ambition of inspiring more Britons to get up from their sofas and start running, was not quite all that counted. “We’re all very competitive, we all want a bit of our own,” Grainger said.
The Brownlee brothers refused to speculate about any medals in Tokyo. “I’ll be 32, I think that’s still a very good age to be competing,” Alistair said, with a sideways glance at the younger brother who won silver to his gold. Jonny noted that his brother was seated in first class on the flight, while he had to make do with club class. “Suited me fine, I got a few good hours’ sleep,” he insisted.
Tom Daley, who provided one of the most joyous moments of the games when he tumbled back into the pool with his diving partner Dan Goodfellow as they realised they were heading for a medal only to suffer disappointment when he failed to make the solo finals, said: “I would have liked two medals, but I’m happy with one.”
Veteran Olympics swimmer Mark Foster thinks all the athletes will experience a morning-after feeling in the next few days.
“It’s an odd time immediately after the Olympics, particularly for those facing retirement. I was lucky, I could keep going till I was 38 – the best exercise advice is ‘dont get injured’ – but for some it will come much earlier. As a sportsman you know it lasts so long, then you’re going to need another career.
“For the others, it’s a four-year cycle. They’ll get time off for the rest of the month, for some maybe even until Christmas, then it’s time to sit down with your coach and work out your programme; it all starts again.”
Additional reporting by Nadia Khomami
|
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/23/team-gb-fish-and-chips-olympians-rio-2016
|
en
| 2016-08-23T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/7c619b083ffcba2887a2d363c08b2e3395a120abad83ef82e9c998d43d8d2867.json
|
|
[
"Jessica Elgot",
"John Harris",
"Jakub Krupa",
"Danny Dorling"
] | 2016-08-26T13:08:38 | null | 2016-08-25T23:01:03 |
Projects have been designed to showcase the country outside London, although so far just one scheme is in north of England
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fuk-news%2F2016%2Faug%2F26%2Ftheresa-may-announces-40m-fund-to-boost-post-brexit-uk-tourism.json
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en
| null |
Theresa May announces £40m fund to boost post-Brexit UK tourism
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
Theresa May has pledged Brexit will create “real opportunities for growth” in the tourism sector as she announced a new £40m fund for tourism projects across the country, though just one of the projects which have won funding so far is based in the north of England.
Ahead of the August bank holiday weekend, the prime minister also announced several new schemes to attract visitors to Britain, including relaxing licensing laws to allow B&Bs to offer a welcome drink to guests and to pick visitors up from train stations.
What could Brexit mean for the UK's travel and tourism industry? Read more
The first grants from the £40m Discover England fund have been awarded to projects and organisations in different geographic areas intended to attract tourism outside of London.
Of the seven announced so far, five are based in the south of England, including Kent, Surrey and Devon, though of those, Golf Tourism England runs trips across the UK, as does Gloucestershire-based Compass Holidays, which has been funded to develop its tourism app. Birmingham-based Leopold Marketing won funding with the brief to develop tourism outside London and Scotland.
Just one of the projects is based in the north of England, UK Countryside Tours in Derbyshire, which runs tours across the country including Yorkshire, Cumbria and the Peak District. A DCMS spokesman said more projects which had won funding would be announced in due course.
As well as the relaxation of licensing laws, Number 10 announced a new government-backed deal with train companies will offer visitors the ability to book five scenic rail itineraries around the UK.
May said in a statement that tourism would be an even more vital industry after the UK leaves the EU. “The British people’s decision to leave the European Union creates real opportunities for growth and we will work in close partnership with the tourism industry, to ensure it continues to thrive as negotiations on the UK’s exit progress,” she said.
“We are making it easier for visitors to travel beyond London and experience all of the world-class attractions the UK has to offer, to make sure the benefits of this thriving industry are felt by the many and not the few.”
Karen Bradley, the new secretary of state for culture, media and sport, said the initiative would “further strengthen tourism outside of London to ensure that growth from the sector is enjoyed right across the country.”
The sharp drop in the pound post-EU referendum has been a bonus for foreign tourists, making holidaying in the UK cheaper. Last week it was reported that tax-free spending had increased from visitors from Asia and the US. Shipping company Global Blue reported a 7% year-on-year increase in UK international tax-free shopping in July.
Communities minister, Andrew Percy, has also announced a scheme to create 20 new coastal community teams in seaside towns across the UK in order to boost tourism for Britain’s beaches.
“Across our Great British Coast we’ve got an amazing variety of resorts to be proud of from Cleethorpes to Brighton and beyond,” Percy said. “People in those areas can now come together and bid for government cash to revive tourist attractions to their former glory.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/26/theresa-may-announces-40m-fund-to-boost-post-brexit-uk-tourism
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/f30effc5bcb7dd57a641dabfc707f2fd5daa387ca5d7347d937acfe1b3c7b32b.json
|
|
[
"Jennifer Rankin"
] | 2016-08-27T16:51:21 | null | 2016-08-27T15:00:06 |
Cecilia Malmström, the EU trade commissioner, will take a hard line on new trade deals
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2016%2Faug%2F27%2Fcecilia-malmstrom-swedish-politician-play-hardball-with-uk-on-brexit.json
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en
| null |
Meet the Swedish politician ready to play hardball with the UK on Brexit
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
|
During the febrile, topsy-turvy days after Britain voted to leave the European Union, there were plenty of tough messages from European leaders. But few sounded more uncompromising than the EU trade commissioner.
A week after the result, Cecilia Malmström, Europe’s lead trade negotiator, stated that the UK could not even begin discussing a trade deal until it had left the bloc. “First you exit and then you negotiate the terms of the relationship,” she told Newsnight, opening up the prospect of the world’s sixth-largest economy being left dangling for years. When the BBC interviewer suggested this would damage businesses in Britain and on the continent, her response was straightforward: “Yes, but the vote was very clear.”
Such plain speaking provoked fury among leading Brexiters. Conservative MP Liam Fox condemned her remarks as “bizarre and stupid”. While legally correct that Britain cannot sign a trade deal before it has left, by taking such a tough line against early negotiations, she walked into a political minefield.
In a few months’ time, Fox, since appointed Britain’s secretary of state for international trade, may find himself sitting opposite Malmström. Nobody knows exactly how big a role the 48-year-old Swede will play in Brussels’s team Brexit. Michel Barnier, the silver-haired former French foreign minister, has been given the task of leading Brexit talks by European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. Meanwhile, Belgian diplomat Didier Seeuws is handling Brexit for his boss, European council president Donald Tusk. Another EU president, Martin Schulz of the European parliament, is unlikely to stay quiet, as MEPs have a vote on the UK divorce and any subsequent trade deal.
If the cooks are in Brussels, the master chefs are in Berlin, Paris and other national capitals. Anyone negotiating a future EU-UK trade deal is going to find many political leaders looking over their shoulders, says Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy. The British deal will not be a normal trade negotiation, akin to Vietnam or Canada, he stresses. “Member states are going to play a far more prominent role in defining the ambitions or the objectives of where these negotiations land.”
Meanwhile, the Swedish commissioner has plenty more on her plate: she wants to conclude a deal on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, better known as TTIP, the most controversial trade deal the EU has ever negotiated. Talks will reach a moment of truth in the autumn as both sides strive for an agreement before President Barack Obama leaves office.
But doubts are mounting about whether a deal is possible. To critics, TTIP is a charter for deregulation that threatens the NHS. EU and US officials say the reality has become buried under myths and strenuously reject charges of secret negotiations.
“She is very open and transparent in what we are doing,” says one EU source close to the commissioner, who cites Malmström’s decision to publish EU negotiating positions after the talks. “We have taken transparency quite far. It is not on our interest to take it much further because we would be bad negotiators.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Liam Fox, now Britain’s secretary of state for international trade, was incensed by Malmström’s comments on Newsnight after the Brexit vote. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Although not exactly unusual, the volume of criticism is a far cry from Malmström’s early political days. As a member of the European parliament between 1999-2006, Malmström was a hero of the liberal left, known for taking a firm stance against sweeping data-retention proposals.
She was one of the “warrior parliamentarians” in the parliament’s liberal group, recalls Teresa Küchler, a reporter at Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet. “When she became a commissioner, everyone thought she shut up very quickly,” she says, noting how carefully Malmström avoided criticising decisions taken by EU governments. Cautious maybe. But not a dry-as-dust technocrat, who floats above politics. “She is known for being a liberal, above all, with not a drop of conservatism in her,” Küchler adds. Mats Karlsson, director of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, describes her outlook as the politics of the “decent middle”, the big tent of Swedish Labour and centrists who came of age during “the golden age of globalisation and Europeanisation”.
Malmström is also a true European. She was born in Gothenburg, Sweden’s earthier second city, home to Volvo and Swedish manufacturing. Swedes can hear this in her accent, the Gothenburg lilt associated with banter and down-to-earth common sense. “Even if she had been a politician for 100 years, she still comes across as a local, clever woman that we can be proud of,” says Küchler, a fellow Gothenburger.
Like so many Swedes, Malmström speaks impeccable English. She is fluent in French and Spanish, comfortable in German and Italian. She spent part of her childhood in France and completed a PhD in Catalan and Italian regional politics. She studied literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and is as likely to have the latest Elena Ferrante novel in her bag as she is the TTIP text on public procurement rules.
After stints as a Gothenburg town hall official and political science lecturer, she was soon climbing the ladder of Swedish politics, elected to the European parliament in 1999, aged 31.
Like her friend and fellow liberal Nick Clegg, a career in the European parliament was a springboard into national politics. But, in Malmström’s case, not for long. After four years as Europe minister in Sweden’s liberal centre-right coalition, she returned to Brussels as Sweden’s European commissioner. She was put in charge of home affairs, a demanding portfolio covering asylum and terrorism that makes, but mostly breaks, reputations. This was a difficult job. Every year, more people were setting off in rickety boats from north Africa hoping to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa. Every year, more were dying. In October 2013, disaster struck. At least 366 people drowned less than half a mile from Lampedusa when their overcrowded fishing boat capsized. As EU commissioner, Malmström urged governments to do more. Italy set up the Mare Nostrum search-and-rescue operation, which was credited with saving 400 lives a day, although operations were later drastically scaled down. But she was far less successful in persuading EU countries to share responsibility for refugees, a divisive issue which has only grown more rancorous.
Malmström returned to Brussels for a second term, under Juncker, and took over EU trade policy, amid growing scepticism about big corporations in the wake of the economic crisis.
Karlsson thinks his compatriot will be clearly focused on European interest when it comes to Brexit. “I think she will be a very hard negotiator in that we did not create this problem, this was a problem created by Britain.”
Reflecting a fairly widespread view among pro-European Swedes and beyond, he said: “Britain can only get a bad deal, a very bad deal ,or a catastrophic deal. I think that she will be very clear about what is required.”
|
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/27/cecilia-malmstrom-swedish-politician-play-hardball-with-uk-on-brexit
|
en
| 2016-08-27T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/49055e07b3c4185a02393480eb9694684ab09497e72f206f8481f046db13569a.json
|
|
[
"Steve Bell"
] | 2016-08-26T13:17:55 | null | 2016-07-21T02:05:01 |
Steve Bell’s If ...
|
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2Fpicture%2F2016%2Fjul%2F21%2Fsteve-bells-if-empress-theresa-may-rocks-the-pearls.json
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en
| null |
Steve Bell’s If ... Empress Theresa May rocks the pearls
| null | null |
www.theguardian.com
| null |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2016/jul/21/steve-bells-if-empress-theresa-may-rocks-the-pearls
|
en
| 2016-07-21T00:00:00 |
www.theguardian.com/6996a732545a2574dfa11eabe5d4eff3f5ca50ec8c2575072705c90ba06934de.json
|
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