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| { | |
| "id": "c154697af277016d452b1bc815f5d1787fa2d694", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/9fd1d41b23d3831ee8b918930cdd1bdc0c8045e1/0_0_2560_1536/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "There is a wounded pigeon in the garden. Should I intervene?", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/15/there-is-a-wounded-pigeon-in-the-garden-should-i-intervene", | |
| "words": "795", | |
| "section": "Life and style", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T05:00:58Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/9fd1d41b23d3831ee8b918930cdd1bdc0c8045e1/0_0_2560_1536/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Tim Dowling", | |
| "description": "I don’t know the details of the cat’s recent interaction with this pigeon, but I can guess", | |
| "text": "Just after I turn off the downstairs lights I find the cat capering about in a dark corner near the front door, all alone. Or, as I see when I take a step nearer, not quite alone.\n\nOn my way upstairs I poke my head into the youngest one’s bedroom, where he and the middle one are playing some kind of computer game.\n\n“Just so you know,” I say, “the cat’s got a mouse trapped by the front door.”\n\n“Dead or alive?” asks the middle one.\n\n“What am I, a doctor?” I say. “I’m going to bed.”\n\nWhen I come downstairs the next morning, my wife and the middle one are already pondering the obvious question: where is the latest mouse now, and in how many pieces?\n\n“I haven’t seen anything yet,” my wife says.\n\n“He must be stashing them somewhere,” says the middle one.\n\n“Wherever that somewhere is, the bodies will be piling up,” I say.\n\n“And of course you did nothing as usual,” my wife says.\n\n“I let nature take its course,” I say.\n\n“Did anyone check under this rug?” says the middle one, lifting a bare foot.\n\n“I mean, you wouldn’t pull a penguin from the mouth of a sea lion,” I say.\n\n“I’m surrounded by cowards,” my wife says. The cat, which has been fed twice, approaches me, asking to be fed for a third time.\n\n“Where’s your little dead friend?” I say.\n\n“Miaow,” the cat says.\n\nThree mornings later I come down alone and early. As I open the back door, I see the cat crossing the garden towards me. Behind it, sitting perfectly still on the grass, is a pigeon. I don’t know the details of the cat’s most recent interaction with this pigeon, but I can guess.\n\n“Miaow,” says the cat, asking to be fed for the first time.\n\n“Sure,” I say. “Step right in.”\n\nOnce the cat is fed I stand outside looking at the pigeon. It stares back, not moving. It looks fine, although it is transparently not fine.\n\n“Please don’t be my problem,” I say, but it is my problem, because the pigeon is sitting on the path to my office shed.\n\nI go back into the kitchen and make coffee. The cat comes over and digs its claws into my leg, asking to be fed for the second time.\n\n“Fine,” I say, refilling its bowl with dry food. I sit down to work at the kitchen table while pondering my next move. The cat exits through the cat flap, heading in the direction of the sitting pigeon.\n\nI get up, go outside, retrieve the cat and lock the flap from the inside. The cat claws at the flap until I shut him out of the kitchen altogether.\n\nI continue to work, occasionally glancing out into the garden. The first time I look, the pigeon is calmly preening itself. Feeling better already, I think. The second time I look, the pigeon is sunk low in the grass, watchful and still. Where, I think, is a sea lion when you need one?\n\nThe third time I look, the cat is creeping up on the pigeon from the other side of the garden.\n\n“Hey!” I shriek, bolting out the door. The cat runs off and hides under a bush, but I find it and eventually get hold of it. The cat wriggles and claws at me as I carry it back inside. The middle one is standing in the kitchen.\n\n“He must have got out through an upstairs window,” I say. “He’s after that injured pigeon.” The middle one looks over my shoulder.\n\n“Shouldn’t we help it?” he says.\n\n“I’m monitoring the situation,” I say.\n\n“Can’t you move it?” he says.\n\n“Where am I gonna put a pigeon where a cat can’t get it?” I say. I think: my office. Then: I’m not doing that.\n\n“Take this cat away,” I say, handing it to the middle one. “I have to work.”\n\nOn my way out to my shed I stop to look more closely at the pigeon. It regards me with a cold eye, but does not move. I look up at the dark and threatening sky. I think, what about an eagle? Is that too much to ask?\n\nFrom my office window I continue to evaluate the situation with mounting anxiety. Soon, I think, you must make a decision.\n\nThe first time I look back out at the pigeon, it is still sitting in the grass. The second time I look it is still there, but with its head turned the other way.\n\nThe third time I look, I see my wife creeping up on the pigeon from behind, preparing to scoop it into an outstretched apron. I think to myself: you did the right thing.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/cfe0547c492f72d34da1d888db81746b20f2bb0f/0_450_1000_600/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "From The Lost Boys to Ivo Graham: a complete guide to this week’s entertainment", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/15/going-out-staying-in-complete-guide-to-this-weeks-entertainment", | |
| "words": "1684", | |
| "section": "Culture", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T05:00:58Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/cfe0547c492f72d34da1d888db81746b20f2bb0f/0_450_1000_600/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "The Guardian", | |
| "description": "Whether you’re hankering for a Brontë reimagining or winningly posh standup, our critics have you covered for the next seven days", | |
| "text": "* * * Going out: Cinema Emily\nOut now\nOut on the wild and windy moors, we’d roll and fall in green … The book that inspired not only the Kate Bush banger but also countless adaptations gets a gorgeous behind-the-scenes treatment in this lovely, loose and elemental reimagining of how Emily Brontë came to write Wuthering Heights, with a breakthrough lead turn from rising star Emma Mackey.\n\nThe Lost Boys (35th Anniversary 4K Restoration)\nOut now\nWhat with rampant inflation and a mortgage crisis currently in the offing, the 1980s have never been more in vogue: time to get out the bleach blond and smudgy eyeliner and experience the ultimate 80s vampire movie, starring Kiefer Sutherland as a Billy Idol-esque bloodsucker.\n\nAll That Breathes\nOut now\nFrom director Shaunak Sen (Cities of Sleep) comes a documentary about a pair of brothers in Delhi who aim to protect birds of prey at a time when worsening environmental conditions and social upheaval combine to threaten their future.\n\nHalloween Ends\nOut now\nOne of those titles to which the only appropriate response is “you promise?”, the horror franchise crawls, bleeding, to the finish line, after an iffy last few outings for fractious siblings Laurie and Michael Myers. Still, might as well see how it all turns out, eh? Catherine Bray\n\n* * * Going out: Gigs Lauren Aquilina\nHoxton Hall, London, 20 October\nHaving taken time out from her own recording career to co-write songs with Little Mix, Rina Sawayama and Demi Lovato, Aquilina returns to her day job for this one-off London show. Expect the set to lean heavily towards 2020’s excellent, darkly hued EP Ghost World. Michael Cragg\n\nSŵn festival\nVarious venues, Cardiff, 21 to 23 October\nWales’s premier multi-venue fest returns for another year. As well as showcasing some of the best in Welsh music, from Greta Isaac, Panic Shack and Welsh-language rockers Sŵnami, the bill also includes US singer-songwriter BC Camplight, transatlantic indie stars Prima Queen and the Faroe Islands’ excellently named Joe & the Shitboys. MC\n\nJoe Locke’s Amaranth\nDorking, 18 October; London, 19 & 20 October; Ambleside, 21 October\nEqually expressive as an interpreter of sumptuous slow-burn music or hurtling uptempo jazz, the celebrated American vibraphonist Joe Locke imparts an imaginative drive to the sound of an instrument that can be languorous in some hands. A powerful European-American quartet including internationally acclaimed Slovenian saxophonist Jaka Kopač adds momentum on this tour. John Fordham\n\nPuss in Boots\nBishop’s Castle, 15 October; Swansea, 19 October; Criccieth, 20 October; Colwyn Bay, 21 October; touring to 12 November\nMid Wales Opera is devoting its 2022-23 season to fairytales, beginning with a work that’s little known in Britain. First performed in 1948, Puss in Boots was the Catalan Xavier Montsalvatge’s first opera, an approachable, tuneful work, presenting the Italian fairytale in a single act. MTW’s production is directed by Richard Studer and performed in a chamber arrangement by Jonathan Lyness. Andrew Clements\n\n* * * Going out: Art Turner prize\nTate Liverpool, 20 October to 19 March\nThe Turner prize hasn’t been winning any prizes lately and last year’s all-collective shortlist was bizarre. But with four actual artists on the shortlist, this one could be good. Ingrid Pollard’s incisive explorations of race and landscape should win but Heather Phillipson, Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin will make for a lively show.\n\nManet and Eva Gonzalès\nNational Gallery, London, 21 October to 15 January\nThe pioneering modern painter Manet’s 1870 portrait of his pupil Gonzalès depicts her at her easel in a long white silk dress, working on a still life: he seems to heighten stereotypes of 19th-century femininity while paradoxically celebrating her defiance. This show examines this intriguing work and its context.\n\nScience Fiction\nScience Museum, London, to 4 May\nA whizz-bang exhibition that surveys the relationship between science fact and fantasy, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to 21st-century cyborgs. Explore the possibility of time travel and the science of Star Trek, and compare the worlds of HG Wells and Isaac Asimov with our reality.\n\nReena Saini Kallat\nCompton Verney, Warwickshire, 20 October to 22 January\nThe line of partition that separated India and Pakistan in 1947 is a central image in Mumbai artist Reena Saini Kallat’s latest show. Lines are her thing. She mixes drawing with photography and installation, and here she draws with thread. Within the tangle, ghost maps of the Indian subcontinent materialise. Jonathan Jones\n\n* * * Going out: Stage Ivo Graham\nFoxlowe Arts Centre, Leek, 21 October; touring to 23 November\nThe Eton-Oxford pathway may be responsible for some of the very worst politicians, but it has also produced 32-year-old Graham, a standup who tempers his privilege with industrial quantities of self-deprecation. His new show My Future, My Clutter milks laughs from his many recent humiliations, from pandemic Zoom gigs to a comedown-blighted trip to Peppa Pig World. Rachel Aroesti\n\nCrystal Pite: Light of Passage\nRoyal Opera House, London, 18 October to 3 November\nIt is tricky to make dance that addresses current affairs, but Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite manages to tread that line. Light of Passage expands on her 2017 piece Flight Pattern, about refugee crises, now a full-length work set to Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Lyndsey Winship\n\nGood\nHarold Pinter Theatre, London, to 24 December\nA crack creative team revives CP Taylor’s powerful play about a liberal-minded professor seduced by nazism. Dominic Cooke directs David Tennant alongside the dependably excellent Elliot Levey and Sharon Small. Miriam Gillinson\n\nLocal Hero\nChichester Festival Theatre: Minerva, to 19 November\nDaniel Evans directs David Greig’s typically charming musical, with music from Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler. It’s based on Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film about a US oil exec sent to secure a development deal in a tiny Scottish fishing village. MG\n\nStaying in: Streaming Gangs of London\n19 October, 9pm, NOW & Sky Atlantic\nThe grisly thriller returns to chronicle the ongoing exploits of the Wallace Organisation, an ultra-violent crime conglomerate with tentacles that stretch across the globe. The original cast has been brutally thinned out by series one’s numerous bloodbaths, but Paapa Essiedu’s Alex and Sopé Dìrísù’s Elliot remain in play – for now.\n\nThe Peripheral\n21 October, Amazon Prime Video\nThere’s TV as mindless escapism, then there are the shows that send you scrabbling for the Wikipedia entry on theoretical physics. See: this adaptation of William Gibson’s 2014 novel, which follows Chloë Grace Moretz’s Flynne as she is transported to a bleak future. Except, inevitably it’s a bit more complicated than that.\n\nSomewhere Boy\n16 October, 10pm, Channel 4\nDanny has lived his entire 18 years in isolation with his father, who has convinced him the outside world is plagued by monsters. His sudden release sees him guilelessly confront the world’s actual terrors – and pleasures – in this moving drama from the team behind The End of the F***ing World.\n\nFriday Night Live\n21 October, Channel 4, 9pm\nNostalgia for comedy’s good old days is often misplaced, but it’s hard not to yearn for a time when mainstream TV hosted bleeding-edge talent – like on C4’s mid-80s alternative comedy series Saturday Live, later Friday Night Live. Hopefully, this one-off reboot – presented by Ben Elton and featuring old-school stars plus next-gen players – can recapture some of the original’s magic. RA\n\n* * * Staying in: Games Mario + Rabbids Spark of Hope\nOut 20 October, Nintendo Switch\nA very silly game about some cartoon rabbits teaming up with Nintendo’s mascots to save the world.\n\nA Plague Tale: Requiem\nOut 18 October, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch\nBy contrast, this is a disturbing, absorbing medieval-ish fantasy game about a plague of rats, a family and the struggle to stay alive. Keza MacDonald\n\n* * * Staying in: Albums The 1975 – Being Funny in a Foreign Language\nOut now\nEschewing their propensity for the overblown, the fifth album from the 1975 is a leaner, more streamlined beast, with 11 songs clocking up 43 minutes. It’s also lighter in places, as evidenced by the buoyant I’m in Love With You and the Peter Gabriel-esque Happiness. All I Need to Hear, meanwhile, is their best ballad to date.\n\nMIA – Mata\nOut now\nAfter claiming 2016’s AIM would be her last, the iconoclastic rapper returns with her sixth album. Featuring production from T-Minus, Skrillex and Rick Rubin, it’s a typically frenetic hotchpotch of styles and ideas. The highlight is the tongue-in-cheek Popular, in which she reunites with longterm collaborator Diplo.\n\nTove Lo – Dirt Femme\nOut now\nOn her fifth album, initially an independent release, Swedish agit-pop practitioner Lo explores femininity, sexuality and marriage, all while sampling Crazy Frog on nostalgia vacuum 2 Die 4. Elsewhere, the brooding True Romance utilises the 1993 Tony Scott film of the same name for its broken love story backdrop.\n\nMykki Blanco – Stay Close to Music\nOut now\nRecorded at the same time as 2021’s Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep, the third album proper by poet, artist and musician Blanco again demonstrates their eagerness to shed labels. Having previously dabbled in hip-hop and trap, here the focus is on live instrumentation and weaving in guest vocals from the likes of Kelsey Lu and Michael Stipe. MC\n\n* * * Staying in: Brain food Descendant\n21 October, Netflix\nDirector Margaret Brown’s beguiling film features interviews with inhabitants of the Alabama community Africatown as they reclaim and recount their history as descendants of the Clotilda, the last known ship illegally carrying enslaved Africans to the United States.\n\nTerrestrials\nPodcast\nUS podcasting giant Radiolab’s latest offering is a joyous six-episode series aimed at children. Host Lulu Miller explains a new natural phenomenon each week, with the help of scientific experts and wacky songs by indie musician Alan Goffinski.\n\nSamplebrain\nOnline\nElectronic experimentalist Aphex Twin has launched a playfully chaotic music-making app with engineer Dave Griffiths. The free-to-use software, Samplebrain, allows users to upload snippets of audio to be reconfigured into new, unpredictable sounds.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "46bc1f1e6361a08da15c5cdb6a111b7908f5517e", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/e14b8f37bfb3186afb4c70f284be06d305040592/0_0_5000_3000/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Blind date: ‘My trousers were a bit tight for such a warm night’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/15/blind-date-laura-tom", | |
| "words": "406", | |
| "section": "Life and style", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T05:00:58Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/e14b8f37bfb3186afb4c70f284be06d305040592/0_0_5000_3000/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "", | |
| "description": "Laura, 38, playwright, meets Tom, 47, job in transition", | |
| "text": "Laura on Tom\n\nWhat were you hoping for?\nGood food, easy conversation, a belly laugh if possible. Absolute worst case would make my Edinburgh Fringe show for next year.\n\nFirst impressions?\nSmiley, friendly, smart.\n\nWhat did you talk about?\nAll sorts of things, from theatre to therapy, education to cheese.\n\nAny awkward moments?\nNot really, just an early panic that I’d turned up at the wrong restaurant (I hadn’t).\n\nGood table manners?\nI’m not too fussed about table manners but we shared food without fighting.\n\nBest thing about Tom?\nHis openness.\n\nWould you introduce Tom to your friends?\nHe knows one of my friends already!\n\nDescribe Tom in three words.\nJoyful, warm-hearted, curious.\n\nWhat do you think Tom made of you?\nI’ll wait to hear – hopefully just that I’m not a total c***.\n\nDid you go on somewhere?\nWe had some wine in the courtyard.\n\nAnd ... did you kiss?\nA light peck goodbye.\n\nIf you could change one thing about the evening what would it be?\nI would’ve ordered a negroni.\n\nMarks out of 10?\nThis feels mean – I’ll just say gold star.\n\nWould you meet again?\nSure. There’s more wine to drink.\n\nTom on Laura\n\nWhat were you hoping for?\nGood food, good chat, the crackle of attraction.\n\nFirst impressions?\nWarm, friendly, great smile.\n\nWhat did you talk about?\nAll sorts: our jobs, dating, family, theatre, the surrealness of what we were doing.\n\nAny awkward moments?\nNo, not really. Some very lovely comfortable silences, actually. Laura held conversation well.\n\nGood table manners?\nExemplary: slow and considered eating. I had to check my desire to wolf down food.\n\nBest thing about Laura?\nSelf knowledge.\n\nWould you introduce Laura to your friends?\nAbsolutely yes.\n\nDescribe Laura in three words.\nEngaging, honest, fair.\n\nWhat do you think Laura made of you?\nThat’s hard. I think she thought I was good company.\n\nDid you go on somewhere?\nIt was a balmy evening and I walked her home, we had a drink in her courtyard, talked and giggled.\n\nAnd ... did you kiss?\nA non-lingering kiss at the end of the evening.\n\nIf you could change one thing about the evening what would it be?\nMy trousers. They were a bit tight on a warm night.\n\nMarks out of 10?\nNot doing this number rating thing.\n\nWould you meet again?\nWe swapped numbers and have messaged. She was off to Edinburgh for the month with her show so… I wonder how long that drive is? I suppose we’ll see what happens when she’s back.\n\nTom and Laura ate at Salumi, Plymouth. Fancy a blind date? Email blind.date@theguardian.com\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "29cfde7817d9ee2ea1b0cc841e9706ee78351ce1", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/e64ed75c9141088591b1c47a48efa367d0166dd6/0_209_5472_3283/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "‘Hunker down’: UK travel firms brace as fresh storm clouds gather", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/15/travel-firms-brace-storm-clouds-gather-again-abta", | |
| "words": "1002", | |
| "section": "Business", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T05:00:57Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/e64ed75c9141088591b1c47a48efa367d0166dd6/0_209_5472_3283/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent", | |
| "description": "At Abta conference, talk of buoyant market peppered with uncertainty – and anger at government", | |
| "text": "Liberated from pandemic restrictions, travel firms finally looked through the worst. Yet as industry leaders jetted in for a “survivor’s celebration” in Marrakech this week, fresh storm clouds were gathering.\n\nWith their customers facing the biggest cost of living crisis in a generation, two articles of faith are sustaining the UK travel industry. One, a holiday remains sacrosanct. And two, no economic turmoil can be as bad as Covid-19.\n\nEven with widespread airport disruption, it has been a relatively bumper year. There were double the trips of 2021, according to the travel association Abta, putting the number of people taking foreign holidays back towards 70% of 2019 levels, with tills ringing for fulfilled bookings rather than refunds or credit notes.\n\nAt the return of Abta’s annual convention, hosted by Morocco after a three-year hiatus of virtual or hybrid meetings, its chief executive, Mark Tanzer, said firms were facing a “double squeeze”. Higher interest rates and a weak pound were hiking up costs, while consumers were cutting back – and firms loaded up with debt during the pandemic could not borrow more.\n\nBoth optimism and uncertainty abound in the sector. Few want to talk down their own prospects – a snap poll of delegates at the convention suggested most still expect higher revenues in 2023 than in 2022. Dame Irene Hays, the chair of Hays Travel, said “people were returning in droves” to her company’s high street stores, while others talked of a buoyant market – at least relatively, for now.\n\n“It has been a pretty terrible last two years,” said Tanzer. Between 30 and 40 of about 1,000 firms he represented went bust, “tragic, but numerically I would have thought more would have struggled.\n\n“So I think there’s certainly a sense of not just relief, but almost a survivor’s celebration that we’ve come through it and it doesn’t destroy you.”\n\nYet anger at the government after the disastrous mini-budget was palpable, in an industry still raw from perceived neglect during the pandemic, and the UK’s traffic-light system, where weekly changes to permitted destinations, and borders suddenly closed and reopened, played particular havoc.\n\nPolitically, the sector was “screwed”, according to Giles Hawke, the chief executive of Cosmos Tours. “There’s no trust in the government from travel leaders,” he said. “We’re living through uncertainty.”\n\nRory Stewart, a former Tory minister who was in Marrakech as a guest speaker, gently explained to delegates why they should not expect much help from “professional bluffers” in government, not least “Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is unfortunately now responsible for your industry” as business secretary.\n\nChris Wright, the managing director of Greece specialist Sunvil Group, said even though their customers were predominantly older people with savings and no mortgages, “we’re still concerned that with the uncertainty that’s around, people will hunker down”.\n\nConsumer confidence is at its lowest point since the 2008 financial crisis – and the full economic-effect usually lags behind by about six months, according to Eleanor Scott, a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ UK travel and leisure strategy practice Strategy&. She added that while inflation may have has less of an impact on higher income groups and a significant minority of holidaymakers who were still to get away, “I would expect that consumer sentiment would filter through”.\n\nThe start of January is peak booking season for annual holidays – and firms are holding their breath. Garry Wilson, the chief executive of easyJet holidays, said bookings for 2023 have yet to slow – but that could be because customers who normally book then were locking in the price of next year’s trip now, while they could still afford it. All-inclusive holidays have been in demand with people fearful quite what sterling would be worth.\n\nCruise holidays have made a steady revival after ships were initially marooned by coronavirus. But Ben Bouldin, a vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Royal Caribbean, said he was doubtful cruises could keep selling in the UK, because soaring mortgage interest rates would drain disposable incomes. “The mortgage situation really worries me,” he added.\n\nPeople with a £300,000 mortgage up for renewal face a £600 a month increase on their repayments, he said, “which adds up to a pretty decent family holiday. We’re facing a real problem.”\n\nThe collapsing pound and strong dollar means his firm can adjust, because it could help inbound tourism, he said: “US customers will fill our ships. But if you’re reliant on tourists going to the US, it’s going to be quite a challenge.”\n\nChoosing a destination with even more rampant inflation has been another option, and Turkey’s rate is 83%. “Just now Turkey’s accounting for 30% of all bookings next year. It’s massive– the pound still has some value there,” said Richard Singer, the chief executive of Ice Travel Group, which includes he price comparison website TravelSupermarket. The average value of bookings the group has seen fell by 40% over the year, he said, from £3,500 to £2,000, after an initial rush from people desperate to travel in 2022.\n\nAirlines including British Airways’ owner, IAG, as well as Ryanair and easyJet, say bookings and revenues remain surprisingly strong. The mantra repeated by Hays, Wilson and numerous others was that Britons who can afford it would still prioritise their holiday. While 35% of people expect to cut back on holidays next year, according to Abta research, that compares well with other discretionary spending, such as new clothes, leisure or eating out, where 40-55% predict a reduction.\n\nAlistair Rowland, the chair of Abta and chief executive of Blue Bay Travel, a luxury long-haul specialist, described his situation as “fine, but painful”. He would normally sell into 2024 for those such as honeymooners who book long ahead – but any firm booking inventory and putting a price on holidays after next summer would be taking a gamble. “I’d have to add £200 per flight to be safe, and that wouldn’t look like value,” he said.\n\nPeople will still travel,but the financial turmoil has made many pause for thought.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "38deeb5742bb5892f4ccbc9afa97db444bf04a74", | |
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| "title": "Kwasi Kwarteng: how ex-chancellor’s fate was sealed by IMF orthodoxy he fought against", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/15/kwasi-kwarteng-how-ex-chancellors-fate-was-sealed-by-imf-orthodoxy-he-fought-against", | |
| "words": "824", | |
| "section": "Politics", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T05:00:57Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d0c5e9c3f69d530479e024bbc9dfe50492e1a7eb/0_94_2451_1471/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Larry Elliott Economics editor", | |
| "description": "Former occupant of No 11 Downing Street finally sacked after financial institution chief’s remarks in Washington", | |
| "text": "As the guests sipped English sparkling wine at the British embassy on Washington DC’s Massachusetts Avenue, the journalists in attendance were herded together for an impromptu briefing at the nearby temporary residence of the UK ambassador Dame Karen Pearce.\n\nThe briefing was short and to the point: Kwasi Kwarteng was cutting short his planned trip to the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and flying home to London.\n\nNone of the assembled hacks believed for a minute the official explanation for the chancellor’s hasty departure, that he wanted to engage with colleagues about his planned fiscal statement due at the end of the month. The assumption – correct as it turned out – was that Kwarteng was flying home to be sacked. The decision was so sudden that IMF officials were left in the dark about it.\n\nIn a way, it was appropriate that Kwarteng’s last full day in the job should have been in Washington, because the IMF is the ultimate bastion of the economic orthodoxy the Truss government has been battling against for the past six weeks. Kwarteng’s epitaph as chancellor might well be: I fought the orthodoxy and the orthodoxy won.\n\nThe IMF’s unhappiness with the UK first surfaced two weeks before the annual meetings in Washington, when it put out a statement in the wake of September’s tax-cutting mini budget saying the measures were likely to “increase inequality”, and it did not approve of large and unfunded stimulus packages when inflation was so high.\n\nThis week, the IMF turned the screw. Tuesday, the day before Kwarteng’s arrival, saw the release of the Fund’s two flagship publications: the world economic outlook and the global financial stability review. Both were critical of the UK, pointing out that the Treasury was adding to the cost of living at the same time as the Bank of England was raising interest rates to bring down inflation. It was, one official put it, like two people fighting over a car’s steering wheel.\n\nAndrew Bailey was also in Washington and on the same day. The governor of the Bank of England was interviewed on stage at the Ronald Reagan Centre on Pennsylvania Avenue, the venue for the meeting of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the trade body for the global financial services industry.\n\nSpeaking to Tim Adams, the IIF’s president, Bailey said the Bank of England’s bond-buying support for the pensions’ industry would be wound up at the end of the week. “You’ve got three days left now,” Bailey said. “You’ve got to get this done.”\n\nIt had taken action by the UK central bank to stem the run on pension funds after the adverse market reaction to the mini-budget. Now Threadneedle Street was sticking to its line that the scheme had to be temporary. With a hard stop on the Bank’s support pressure on the chancellor and prime minister to rethink their tax plans ratcheted up.\n\nIf Kwarteng imagined the worst was over by the time he touched down at Dulles airport on Wednesday he was wrong. His last 48 hours as chancellor could be summed up by uncomfortable encounters with three women.\n\nThe first sign of trouble came at a meeting of the G7, a group made up of Britain, the US, Japan, Canada, Germany, Italy and France. America’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, told Kwarteng she took a dim view of the mini-budget, which was causing turmoil in the markets.\n\nThere was some irony in Yellen’s attack, given that the Joe Biden administration has itself borrowed money to finance its spending plans. The US, though, is the world’s biggest economy and issues the world’s reserve currency, the dollar. Different rules apply to a country such as the UK.\n\nThe second woman Kwarteng had to contend with was Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director. With speculation already circulating in London that Truss was planning a U-turn on corporation tax, Georgieva made clear she would support a “recalibration”.\n\nAfter meeting Kwarteng and Bailey, the IMF head said they had discussed the importance of policy coherence and communicating clearly. Once again, a motoring metaphor was deployed. When monetary policy was putting its foot on the brake, fiscal policy should not be putting its foot on the accelerator.\n\nFund officials said the remarks were a blanket warning and not meant to single out the UK. Few were fooled. It was telling that Georgieva went out of her way to praise Bailey for his “appropriate” action to maintain financial stability. There was no show of support for Kwarteng.\n\nThe chancellor spent the rest of the day in a series of bilateral meetings, finding time for what proved to be a valedictory interview with the Daily Telegraph. At some point in the afternoon a decision was made that he was to fly home immediately for a meeting with a third woman: Liz Truss. On the flight back he had plenty of time to prepare himself for the sacking that inevitably followed.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "d97331b5a7bddd8e3d40d56387dcb4036f4594c7", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/16463e2ff27a972f8c1eb275fd95629c841215b2/0_483_4032_2419/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "‘They tried to wipe us out’: Kurds shelled as Iran seeks scapegoats for unrest", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/15/kurds-shelled-iran-scapegoats-unrest", | |
| "words": "1178", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T04:00:56Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/16463e2ff27a972f8c1eb275fd95629c841215b2/0_483_4032_2419/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Martin Chulov in Erbil, Iraq", | |
| "description": "Exiled Kurdish forces in Iraq feel abandoned by west and say they need weapons like in Ukraine", | |
| "text": "Picking through a pile of twisted metal, Rebaz, a Kurdish Iranian fighter, stooped to cradle a jagged chrome piece that was dug from the ruins of his base. “This was part of a Fateh missile,” he said. “It’s one of the biggest that the Iranians have in their arsenal. It’s from the day they tried to wipe us out.”\n\nThe heap included other wreckage – of rockets and kamikaze drones that had devastated this small outpost, just east of Erbil in northern Iraq, a fortnight ago. Since then, jittery guards had looked from the ruins towards the east, from where more than two dozen ballistic missiles and another dozen kamikaze drones blazed from a blue sky a fortnight ago.\n\nThe attack marked one of the biggest barrages of ballistic missiles anywhere in the region in at least the past decade and, across northern Iraq, few saw it coming. Except for the Iranian Kurds who have guarded this hilltop through war and insurrection, and knew what to expect from Iran, a mortal foe under mounting pressure at home.\n\nWith the attacks, Iran sought to lay the blame for protests at home on a long-term enemy, the fighters for an independent Kurdistan, a state the Kurdish ethnic group hope to one day establish on land currently in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.\n\nThe missile barrages, three in total, sent close to 70 long-range warheads to Iranian Kurdish bases in northern Iraq, killing 14 fighters, wounding 58 and levelling bases that had fought Islamic State, the Iraqi army and Shia militias over the last eight years.\n\nThey came as popular demonstrations were gathering momentum in Iran, pitting the country’s women and youth against one of the region’s most formidable police states. Two weeks later, and nearly six weeks into protests that continue to rattle Iran’s theocratic leaders, the mood on the streets remains febrile.\n\nFaced with an impetus the regime did not expect, or know how to contain, officials have attempted to divert the conflict from the streets of towns, cities and even villages, to age-old geographic flashpoints and to the more modern battleground of the information space. On both counts Iranian attempts are flailing.\n\n“They are not winning on the ground, and they are not deceiving anyone in Iran, or outside,” said Gen Hussein Yazdanpanah, the leader of an Iranian Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Freedom party (PAK). “Iran wants to demonstrate to the world that the protests are not relevant to what is happening inside the country and are instead driven by affairs from the outside. They are exporting this. They want the world’s attention to be taken away.”\n\nYazdanpanah had come to know every inch of the hilltop that he had called a base over the past eight years. From down the road towards Kirkuk and over the hills nearby, IS had once hovered. When they were gone, Shia militias and the Iraqi army had tried to advance after an ill-fated Kurdish referendum five years ago.\n\nAt all times, the Iranian Kurds stood their ground, committed to a broader Kurdish project as much as they were keeping Iran at bay. The general rejects Iranian claims that the protests are being driven by a Kurdish nationalist push. “It didn’t start that way, and it isn’t like that now,” he said. “We are tied to our people and the protesters. But it is not us that started these events. It is not our forces that are on the streets.\n\n“But they have to know that we will not stay silent in the face of this and we will defend our daughters’ blood.”\n\nThe smell of death rose from the rubble; two fighters remained unaccounted for and only heavy equipment could shift the enormous piles of ruins caused by the ballistic missiles. What remained of the PAK’s scorched arsenal lay baking in the autumn sun. But even among the devastation, work had started on a new base a mile away. “We will prevail,” said Yazdanpanah. “But we are not satisfied with the way the international community has responded.”\n\nAs well as watching events unfold in Iran, Iranian Kurds are well versed in the war in Ukraine, where a steady supply of powerful weapons have helped fight back a Russian invasion and could help turn the course of the war. Kurdish forces in Iraq received weapons while the war against IS was raging. But that was nearly five years ago and, once again, the Kurds feel history, and their friends, have forgotten them.\n\n“This territory is supervised by the international coalition and they know our role in fighting Isis. How can an airspace be monitored by them and something like this be allowed to happen? It’s like tying our hands and letting the wolf come for us. We are a people that has regularly been slaughtered for the price of supporting democracy and human rights. The only place in the region that allows room for democracy to be fertilised is here.”\n\nHe implored the international community to consider reimposing a no-fly zone, more than 20 years after another such zone was lifted. The first was to deter Saddam Hussein from attacking the Kurdish north. “The solution is to close our skies and to stop Iran targeting us. Iran does not respect diplomatic relations, nor soft power. It only knows strength.\n\n“The weapons that are being given to Ukraine could also be given to us. Even a small amount. You can give the Kurds in Iran similar support. Why are you not supporting a stateless people who have fought Isis and supported your interests? Without us, they would have made it to Europe.”\n\nIn nearby Erbil, which has so far been spared the Iranian barrage, but where officials are also considering calling for a new no-fly zone, an Iranian Kurdish refugee, Ibrahim, 29, from Urmia in the country’s north-west, said he was hopeful the uprising would continue to gain momentum.\n\n“There was a time when protests in Iran happened every 10 years or so, but that gap has been closing. It’s now every two years, and that shows that the regime is losing its hold.\n\n“They can’t think they can continue to run a repressive regime like this in an information age. The worst thing for them was the Covid lockdown. People and students had all that time to stay at home and look at the internet. They saw how life could be and they wanted a taste of it.\n\n“It is not an armed uprising for now. And I hope it doesn’t become one. But if it does, the problem will be, where would those weapons come from. This needs to be taken very seriously.”\n\nAn Iranian Kurdish woman, Arina, 28, from Sanandaj, said: “It’s never been like this, all minorities and ethnicities fighting together for basic human rights. I have many friends in the streets whom I talk to daily.\n\n“Every time I talk to my friends I say they’re very motivated. It’s very different from previous protests. In some areas the government has already lost control.”\n\nAdditional reporting: Nechirvan Mando\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "cd81612cf8eff9b1247b85cf905f47d64b8213eb", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4c3a2ae57c51fa71c527a08c72bcfeb5fba50b21/0_0_2500_1500/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "‘Time’s up’: what the papers say about Liz Truss and her fight to stay prime minister", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/15/times-up-what-the-papers-say-about-liz-truss-and-her-fight-to-stay-prime-minister", | |
| "words": "547", | |
| "section": "Politics", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T02:59:53Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4c3a2ae57c51fa71c527a08c72bcfeb5fba50b21/0_0_2500_1500/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Graham Russell", | |
| "description": "Turmoil in Tory party takes centre stage after unconvincing moves by an unrepentant Truss to fix her policy crisis", | |
| "text": "How long Liz Truss can last as prime minister dominated the UK front pages on Saturday, after the sacking of her chancellor and a pledge to “see through” what she had promised failed to assuage either the markets or her own MPs.\n\nThe Guardian calls it “a day of chaos”, as Kwasi Kwarteng lasts just 38 days in office and Truss is forced into a “humiliating” U-turn on a planned cut in corporation tax. It notes Truss’s press conference consisted of “eight minutes, four questions and no apology”.\n\nThe Mirror has clearly heard enough, saying “Time’s up” in its headline. It reports on growing calls for a general election, and Keir Starmer’s desire for a change of government.\n\nThe Telegraph says “Truss clings to power after axing Kwarteng” and reports on “an extraordinary day of reversals in Westminster that left Tory MPs despairing and sped up plotting among some rebels trying to remove Ms Truss”. It says Truss warned during her leadership contest that the looming rise in corporation tax, which will now happen, would trigger a recession.\n\nThe Times says simply “Truss fights for survival” and reports that Kwarteng believes the moves by the prime minister have bought her “only a few weeks”.\n\nThe FT weekend edition focuses on the sacrificing of Kwarteng, with the headline: “Truss sacks Kwarteng in bid to save premiership”. Political commentator Robert Shrimsley asks pointedly “what is the point of Liz Truss now” given the policy U-turns, adding that her MPs no longer trust her.\n\nThe Mail laments the Tory chaos and asks in its headline “how much more can she (and the rest of us) take?”. It reports that the latest moves by Truss “tore the heart out of her plans for boosting growth” and that some ministers are discussing the possibility of installing a new leader by consensus.\n\nThe i says: “Tory MPs tells Truss: ‘It’s over’”, based on the comments of a senior minister. It says Jeremy Hunt is the fourth chancellor in 101 days, and that there is talk of him as a replacement PM if Truss goes.\n\nThe Express evokes Thatcher with its headline: “Vultures circling, but Truss is not for quitting”. It says the prime minister installed centrist Jeremy Hunt at No 11 “in a desperate bid to regain credibility in the financial markets”.\n\nThe New York Times says western countries face a common problem in soaring inflation and the prospect of slowing growth, but only Truss had managed to unnerve the markets, anger other leaders and jeopardise her own position. Patricia Cohen writes that Kwarteng was fired for a package of cuts that was “precisely the package … that she had asked for”. “In the United States, President Biden, while waging his own political battles over gas prices and inflation, has not proposed anything like the kind of policies that Ms Truss’s government attempted, nor have any other leaders in Europe.”\n\nThe Washington Post says Truss “is still in office, but no longer in power”, because losing Kwarteng means she has “effectively had to abandon her whole governing project”. Therese Raphael writes that her only hope lies in showing she understands her errors and has a plan to fix them. Raphael says Truss’s weakness means Hunt will be a powerful figure at No 11.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "2b084ee0ed7b4d38555d34ff7fe9acacdc08b926", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/fb65d3dc60c012d40dd2bca15dd4fdc0be7c4698/0_25_3000_1800/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Old rivals Australia and England circle Twenty20 World Cup seeking knockout punch", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/15/old-rivals-australia-and-england-circle-twenty20-world-cup-seeking-knockout-punch", | |
| "words": "758", | |
| "section": "Sport", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T01:59:33Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/fb65d3dc60c012d40dd2bca15dd4fdc0be7c4698/0_25_3000_1800/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Geoff Lemon", | |
| "description": "After a series win in the warm-ups, England have upset Australia’s T20 World Cup favouritism", | |
| "text": "On arrival at Perth airport last week, wicketkeeper Matthew Wade said that his team’s heavy loss to England in last year’s Twenty20 World Cup group stage was “the lightbulb moment” that made the Australians change the way they approached the format and go on to win that tournament.\n\nA week after Wade spoke in Perth, having endured three more beltings by England in the interim, it is reasonable to wonder whether the lightbulb is flickering.\n\nOnly rain in the final match could turn whitewash to washout. The first two matches took different routes to identical margins of eight runs, once when England’s batting blitzed a score of over 200, then when the cleverness of England’s bowling defended a more modest score.\n\nIn the third match it was adaptability that had England on top, the batters walking back after two rain delays to loot 39 runs from the final 14 balls of a shortened innings.\n\nJosh Hazlewood is Australia’s standard-bearer for Test bowling, the tall quick with the accuracy to hitting a coin on the pitch, and who has more recently adapted his game to suit 20-over cricket. Jos Buttler is England’s captain, and currently the shortest format’s most consistently destructive batter in the world.\n\nIt felt symbolic to see Buttler calmly eviscerating a Hazlewood over, picking slower ball from full pace with a yawn in his throat, placing the fuller balls through the off side and the marginally shorter ones over leg to collect 22 runs from six shots.\n\nThen there was England’s swing bowler Chris Woakes, a man whose glum Ashes visits have seen him take a wicket in Australia every 95 balls, starting up on this damp Canberra evening to find movement and create catches from the first two deliveries of the match.\n\nThe DLS score adjustment had set Australia 130 to win, meaning that the required run rate soon exceeded 12 per over. The home team was gone, even before more rain. None of which is to say that Australia got much wrong. They go into the upcoming World Cup with an excellent best XI and an adaptable squad. It’s just that right now, England look a better side on paper and on grass.\n\nThe same was true at last year’s tournament, when they were stacked with batting power top to tail while Australia had frailties exposed. The path to that trophy didn’t rely on finding a way to beat England, it relied on avoiding them. New Zealand offered a trans-Tasman favour by maintaining the historical role of New Zealand cricket: being a giant-killer against everybody else before falling apart against Australia.\n\nSo the old rivalry is set at an interesting point with this year’s tournament about to start. All three of the aforementioned teams are in the same group, with Afghanistan and two qualifiers that will most likely be Sri Lanka along with Ireland or Zimbabwe.\n\nDon’t discount the Sri Lankans, who recorded some stirring wins across all three formats against Australia in June and July before storming on to win the Asia Cup. But as usual most eyes will be on Australia versus England, first in the group stage and then possibly again in the knockouts.\n\nBy then, memories of warm-up matches will be distant. Everything starts fresh in a big tournament as you wait for the umpire to call play. But there are still aspects of significance that could carry over. England’s batters have shown no fear of the blue-chip pace trio of Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood. Buttler regards all bowling as there to be scored from, and his players follow his lead.\n\nEngland’s bowlers fancy themselves against Australia’s top order, and can find ways to suppress explosions from the middle. And on a longer timeline, Australian teams find ways to win the big moments even when by rights they should not.\n\nThe dynamics between certain teams within a tournament context can be fascinating. Take Pakistan losing to India at World Cups for decades, and the eruption of delight when they finally broke that streak last October. The objective quality of sides outside tournaments is not always reflected in certain match-ups within them.\n\nEngland’s era of white-ball excellence from 2015 to now has not landed the biggest T20 prize, and last year’s World Cup did nothing to settle whether it made them a better side than Australia: if a World Cup match makes the warm-up fade to nothing, a final makes the group stage do the same.\n\nIn 2022, after a long wait, a knockout meeting would be a satisfying path to closure.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "725d164ee64f2826c1f6df1e344434d62e900529", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/8955af888c83b625fab7eba739658462628fca9c/0_743_6944_4169/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Russia-Ukraine war latest: what we know on day 234 of the invasion", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/15/russia-ukraine-war-latest-what-we-know-on-day-234-of-the-invasion", | |
| "words": "669", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T00:49:32Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/8955af888c83b625fab7eba739658462628fca9c/0_743_6944_4169/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Miranda Bryant, Martin Belam and staff", | |
| "description": "Russian submarine seen off French coast and being escorted by French navy; Vladimir Putin says ‘no need’ for talks with Joe Biden", | |
| "text": "Vladimir Putin said he believed the “partial mobilisation” of army reservists would be completed in two weeks. The Russian president said after attending a summit in Kazakhstan on Friday that a total of 222,000 reservists would be called up, down from the 300,000 figure initially circulated after the order last month.\n\nThe Belarus defence ministry said Russian troops would start arriving in the country “in the next few days” as part of its joint force.\n\nThe US and Germany are to deliver sophisticated anti-aircraft systems to Kyiv this month to counter attacks using Russian missiles and kamikaze drones, Ukraine’s defence minister said. Oleksiy Reznikov said Ukraine would receive the Iris-II air defence system from Germany this month.\n\nA Russian submarine has reportedly been spotted off the French coast and escorted by the French navy. The submarine was spotted sailing on the surface off the Brittany coast at the end of September, the French navy said on its Twitter feed. It said British and Spanish warships had also been involved in monitoring the submarine’s movements.\n\nPutin has called for the humanitarian corridors for Ukrainian grain to be closed if they are used for “acts of terror”. At a news conference in the Kazakh capital of Astana he also said there was “no need” for talks with the US president, Joe Biden.\n\nA Ukrainian member of Kherson’s regional council has condemned Russia’s “evacuation” of the occupied city, saying it is in fact a “deportation”. The council member also said it was an evacuation for collaborators, urging residents to go to Ukrainian-controlled territory if they could.\n\nThe International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has responded to criticism from the Ukrainian government calling for immediate access to all PoWs, saying: “We share the frustration regarding our lack of access to all prisoners of war.” Its comments came after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, accused the ICRC of inaction in upholding the rights of Ukrainian prisoners and called on it to visit the Olenivka camp in eastern Ukraine, where dozens of Ukrainian PoWs died in an explosion and fire in July.\n\nElon Musk’s SpaceX says it can no longer pay for critical satellite services in Ukraine, according to CNN. SpaceX is reportedly asking the US government to start paying instead.\n\nThe US will send munitions and military vehicles to Ukraine as part of a new $725m security assistance package, the defence department said on Friday. The package is the first since Russia’s barrage of missiles fired on civilian population centres in Ukraine this week, Reuters reports, and will bring total US security assistance since Russia’s invasion to $17.5bn.\n\nDemocrats on Capitol Hill have suggested transferring US weapons systems in Saudi Arabia to Ukraine and suspending a planned transfer of Patriot missiles to Riyadh in the wake of what they call a “turning point” in Washington’s relationship with the kingdom.\n\nSaudi Arabia will provide $400m in humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Saudi state news agency SPA said. It added that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Zelenskiy on Friday, Reuters reported.\n\nA newly discovered hacking group has attacked transportation and logistics companies in Ukraine and Poland with a novel kind of ransomware, Microsoft said on Friday. The attackers targeted a wide range of systems within an hour on Tuesday, Microsoft said in a blog post, adding it had not been able to link the attacks to any known group yet. Notably, however, researchers found the hacks closely mirrored earlier attacks by a Russian government-linked cyber team.\n\nOleh Synyehubov, the governor of Kharkiv, said two 16-year-old boys were among those injured by Russian shelling in the region in the last 24 hours.\n\nThe UK Ministry of Defence said that “Russia continues to prosecute offensive operations in central Donbas and is, very slowly, making progress”. The ministry said that “in the last three days, pro-Russian forces have made tactical advances towards the centre of the town of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast” and “likely advanced into the villages of Opytine and Ivangrad to the south of the town”.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "f133373d4f04d7d1fec0b60c6c6d5b4daf3ca6b7", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4d4220b53383a631c3f1222ea8a65574ae92b8a7/9_922_7245_4349/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "‘A big hit to us’: how La Niña is driving Australia’s tour operators to the brink", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/15/a-big-hit-to-us-how-la-nina-is-driving-australias-tour-operators-to-the-brink", | |
| "words": "812", | |
| "section": "Business", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T00:00:51Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4d4220b53383a631c3f1222ea8a65574ae92b8a7/9_922_7245_4349/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Mostafa Rachwani", | |
| "description": "Bushfires, then Covid and now the rain is leading to cancelled bookings, closed trails and businesses struggling to survive", | |
| "text": "Like many tourism operators on Australia’s east coast, Laura Stone has gotten used to watching and reading the weather.\n\nStone operates Sydney By Kayak and says her business has been deeply impacted by the ongoing heavy rain.\n\n“I would say, without a doubt, that La Niña and the weather we’ve experienced over the last couple of years has affected our business more than the pandemic,” she says.\n\n“We’re probably losing about 50% of bookings because of the rain. I’ve actually had to hire more staff to man the office, to deal with the amount of reschedules and questions on the weather.”\n\nStone says La Niña events combined with the Covid-19 pandemic and the early 2019 bushfires have sapped her morale.\n\n“They have changed my life,” she says. “Towards the end of last season, I was exhausted from every day checking the weather in the morning. I’d wake up and look out the window and wonder what the weather was doing. It drove me a little insane.”\n\nEastern Australia is bracing for another wet summer after the Bureau of Meteorology declared a third La Niña in a row last month. Meanwhile, rainfall records were broken in parts of Victoria and Tasmania this week, leaving many tourism operators reeling.\n\nTerry Cole, a mountain biking operator in northern Tasmania, says his business has been heavily affected by the flooding on Friday.\n\n“It’s a big hit to us,” he says. “We’re going to be shut down for a couple of days because of the rain and it’s the first time in a while the trails have had to close.\n\n“It’s mainly the creeks crossing the trails that have swelled, making it dangerous to go down. But it means we’ve had to refund all the existing bookings over the next couple of days.”\n\nCole says his business, MTB Express, usually closes during the winter, making shutdowns due to rain particularly painful.\n\n“We were finally cranking again after two years of Covid and we had a bit of money in the bank, some people employed, but we’ve had to stop and refund people. It’s very frustrating,” he says.\n\nHarry Fraser, a pilot for hot air balloon operator Geelong Ballooning, says the rain means none of the balloons are able to take off.\n\n“The areas we use to take off and land have been under water and it’s hard finding a dry enough area to inflate the balloons and fly them,” he says.\n\n“Access is also an issue due to the flooding. This sort of downpour just puts everything under water. We just had to cancel everything over the weekend and take the hit. We’re treating it with caution. We might have to push everything back next weekend as well.”\n\nIn its severe weather outlook, released on Monday, the BoM warned of an increased risk of widespread flooding and cyclones around the country – particularly in eastern and northern Australia over the coming months, as La Niña combines with a negative Indian Ocean dipole in the west to fuel the wet conditions.\n\nTristan Harley from Emu Trekkers, a not-for-profit organisation offering hiking tours around NSW, says the rain has severely affected bookings and even changed the trails.\n\n“There are many trails and access points that closed at one point due to the rain and have remained closed. Some of these trails have been extensively damaged and would take a lot of work to repair,” he says.\n\n“That is in addition to the rain itself causing bookings and hikes to be cancelled. The impact of the weather has been sustained and protracted.”\n\nHarley says in 2019, before the pandemic and bushfires, Emu Trekkers were running five hikes a week on average. Now they’re running about one hike a month.\n\n“We’ve been operating on a heavily reduced schedule because of the weather. And the damage done to the trails means the impacts are ongoing, not just seasonal.” he says.\n\n“We now have to work on plan B or plan C – there is always some element of a trail that has been impacted, changing the experience. It means our rebound after the pandemic has been difficult. There is so much uncertainty about how the weather will affect things going forward.”\n\nEven popular tourism services that can operate in rainfall, such as BridgeClimb in Sydney, have been affected.\n\nAli Cassim, head of marketing at BridgeClimb, says up to 60% of climbs can be cancelled on a rainy day.\n\n“Just like the rest of Sydney, it’s hard to be faced with the constant poor weather,” she says.\n\n“Obviously, from the bushfires and straight on to Covid, it’s very much still a recovering business. The summer of the bushfires was the first time we had been heavily impacted in 21 years of operation.\n\n“We’re still regaining our footing, so when you’re hit by the impacts of La Niña as well, it makes for a tough time.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "620d1addc9438e7784a3b214b821b1808745f4ad", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/368e74cc9916601fa2eb31e2d41bc88f49934ba7/0_117_8138_4883/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Australian fuel prices likely to rise as Opec+ countries cut oil production to ‘squeeze the market’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/australian-fuel-petrol-prices-likely-to-rise-as-opec-countries-cut-oil-production-to-squeeze-the-market", | |
| "words": "550", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-15T00:00:51Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/368e74cc9916601fa2eb31e2d41bc88f49934ba7/0_117_8138_4883/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Royce Kurmelovs", | |
| "description": "Cuts by world’s biggest petrol producers will work against other governments’ efforts to tame inflation by releasing fuel stocks", | |
| "text": "Australian motorists could be hit by higher petrol prices as the world’s largest oil exporting nations cut production, analysts say.\n\nThe Australian government reinstated the full fuel excise tax in September after the Morrison Coalition government introduced a temporary, six-month cut to lower the cost of fuel at a time of rising inflation.\n\nSince it was reintroduced, 24c has been added to the cost of fuel by the litre, but petrol prices have largely remained stable and not yet returned to the more than $2 highs in May. However, a recent decision by the Opec+ oil cartel to slash output has analysts predicting prices will increase.\n\nRussia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a key factor in driving up the price of oil, which climbed to US$130 a barrel earlier this year, but has since fallen back to under $100 a barrel.\n\nHigh oil prices have exacerbated the cost of living crisis and inflation globally.\n\nAccording to the Australian Institute of Petroleum, the price of petrol for the week ending 9 October averaged 182.5c a litre nationally. The highest average was in Adelaide at 186.9c a litre, with the lowest in Darwin at 173.6 cents a litre. Prices averaged 183.2c a litre in Sydney and 182.9c a litre in Melbourne.\n\nDr Ian Jeffries from the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland said the price of petrol in most capital cities follows a month-long cycle and is currently in a “cheap phase” that will begin to lift over the next few weeks.\n\n“That’s when we’ll start to see the effect of the fuel excise increase,” Jeffries said. “In Brisbane we’d expect prices to jump to $2.10 and that includes the return of the fuel excise.”\n\nSign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup\n\nJeffries said it was difficult to predict what exactly was going to happen to the price of fuel over the medium to long term as there were “several factors pulling and pushing” on the global oil market that created significant uncertainty.\n\nGovernments around the world, primarily the US, are currently releasing stocks from strategic oil reserves in an attempt to push down prices and tame inflation, but Opec cuts will work against that.\n\nJoaquin Vespignani, an associate professor of the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, said Opec was “trying to squeeze the market for its last big profit”.\n\n“They know the market is moving away from oil and that’s why they’re going to cut production to keep prices high for as long as they can, basically,” Vespignani said.\n\n“There is a tension between short-term gains and long-term pain. They want to squeeze for more profits, but if the price is high the transition to renewables will be faster.”\n\nHe added there was “common agreement” among economists that cutting the fuel excise was “a very bad policy” as it temporarily created a false perception and blunted the growing demand for alternatives such as electric vehicles.\n\nIt is expected this demand will grow as prices rise, though Vespignani said Australia was being held back by a lack of policy and planning to help facilitate the transition.\n\nDespite a sharp increase in the number of electric vehicles sold in Australia as of September, electric vehicles only make up 3.39% of all new car sales.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "4e603b7c69415c7fdc385c268a188fade4278d2e", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3acdd27b4492982922200e83d37dbd9f6de5db2c/0_256_5760_3456/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Five million UK families ‘face mortgage rising by £5,100 a year by end of 2024’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/oct/15/uk-families-mortgage-rising-resolution-foundation", | |
| "words": "579", | |
| "section": "Money", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T23:01:49Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3acdd27b4492982922200e83d37dbd9f6de5db2c/0_256_5760_3456/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Zoe Wood", | |
| "description": "Increase adds up to a £26bn rise for homeowners, says Resolution Foundation thinktank", | |
| "text": "More than five million families could see their annual mortgage payments rise by an average of £5,100 between now and the end of 2024, heaping fresh pain on households already struggling with higher food and energy bills.\n\nThe increase adds up to a £26bn mortgage rise for homeowners, according to the analysis by the Resolution Foundation thinktank which said nearly a fifth of British households would have to spend more on their housing costs by the end of 2024.\n\nThe thinktank said that approximately £1,200 of that £5,100 figure was due to expectations that interest rates would rise more quickly than previously thought because of the upheaval in the financial markets caused by the government’s disastrous mini-budget.\n\n“Between now and the next election, Britain is on track for a £26bn mortgage hike,” said Lindsay Judge, the thinktank’s research director.\n\nJudge said that almost half of borrowers were on course to see their family budgets fall by at least 5% due to higher housing costs, which meant the “living standards pain from rising interest rates will be widespread”.\n\n“Households across Britain are currently living through an inflation-driven cost of living crisis as pay packets shrink and energy bills rise,” she said.\n\n“The government has responded with policies such as the welcome energy price guarantee. But the Bank of England is responding too by raising interest rates, which will benefit savers but cause a fresh living standards crunch for mortgaged households.”\n\nWhile interest rates started the year at 0.25% the Bank of England is expected to push them up to more than 5% by early next year. After years of ultra-low borrowing costs this new landscape has sent shockwaves through the housing market with experts predicting homeowners will struggle to make mortgage repayments, leading to rising repossessions in 2023 and an end to the UK’s 13-year housing market boom.\n\nKwasi Kwarteng’s package of unfunded tax cuts led to chaos for homebuyers, with hundreds of fixed-rate deals withdrawn over the space of a few days, before lenders returned with significantly more expensive deals.\n\nAfter hovering around 2% for several years, mortgage rates have shot up. The average two-year fixed mortgage reached 6.47% on Friday, the highest since the financial crisis in 2008, while the average five-year deal was 6.29%, according to the data firm Moneyfacts.\n\nThe Resolution Foundation said that while 1.2m households with variable rate mortgages would see their housing costs rise swiftly in line with the changes to the base rate, the impact on the 85% of homeowners on a fixed-rate deal would build over the coming years as they moved on to new deals.\n\nThe thinktank said mortgage payments for 1.7m households would increase between now and the end of this year. A further 400,000 households would have to start paying more in early 2023.\n\nBy the end of 2024, 5.1 million borrowers – close to one-fifth of all households in Britain – will be spending more on their housing costs, it said.\n\nBorrowers in London would be hit hardest, with average payments set to rise by £8,000 over this period, more than twice the level of the £3,400 increase in Wales. The impact in London is concentrated, however, as less than a fifth of households in the capital have a mortgage.\n\nAlthough higher-income households will face the biggest increases in mortgage costs in cash terms on average, the report said that it would be lower-income families with mortgages who faced the biggest increase as a share of their income.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "9e8d1f52e405aaecff3a3beeec5a2d76067aef7d", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3d3b924dc1dba233c832f0277edca8d710e17451/0_116_3500_2101/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Broadband customers face up to 14% hike in bills, warns Which?", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/15/broadband-customers-face-up-to-14-hike-in-bills-warns-which", | |
| "words": "422", | |
| "section": "Business", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T23:01:49Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3d3b924dc1dba233c832f0277edca8d710e17451/0_116_3500_2101/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Mark Sweney", | |
| "description": "BT customers face £113 rise as providers such as EE and TalkTalk prepare controversial ‘inflation-plus’ mechanism", | |
| "text": "Broadband bills could surge by as much as £113 next year if a number of the UK’s biggest telecoms firms push ahead with inflation-busting price increases next spring, says consumer watchdog Which?\n\nMany of the country’s main internet providers – including the largest player BT, along with TalkTalk, EE, Plusnet and Vodafone – use a mechanism to increase the cost of bills annually by the rate of inflation as measured by the consumer prices index (CPI) in January, plus 3.9%.\n\nThe Bank of England forecasts inflation at just below 10% for January, meaning millions of broadband customers will face a 14% mid-contract increase in their bills.\n\nWhich?’s latest broadband survey found that a typical BT customer is facing the largest potential increase of £113 compared with what they were paying in January this year.\n\nCustomers of Plusnet, also owned by BT, will face the smallest hike of £87.15 among the five telecoms companies that use the mechanism surveyed by Which?\n\nGiven the telecoms companies pushed through inflation-busting rises of around 10% in April, next spring their customers will have seen their bills increase by between £120 and £156 in just two years.\n\n“It is unacceptable that many broadband customers are facing price hikes during an unrelenting cost of living crisis,” said Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at Which? “Customers should be allowed to leave their contract without penalty if prices are hiked mid-contract, regardless of whether or not these increases can be said to be ‘transparent’.”\n\nBT, which attributed the majority of sales growth between April and June to this year’s almost 10% bill increase, has already said it would “stick the course” next year as its own costs also rise. Telecoms companies are estimated to be in line for an almost £2bn windfall next year using the so-called “inflation-plus” mechanism.\n\nTelecoms regulator Ofcom, which has said a record 8m households have already experienced difficulty paying their telecoms bills, has told internet companies to “think hard” about continuing to make major hikes “when the finances of their customers are under such pressure”.\n\nEarlier this week, Labour said it would scrap the use of the mechanism and mid-contract price hikes if the party came to power.\n\nProviders including Hyperoptic, Utility Warehouse and Zen Internet keep customers prices fixed for the term of their contract, while KCOM moved to cancel mid-contract rises this year.\n\nSky and Virgin Media do not employ the inflation-linked mechanism but they do institute price rises, but allow customers to switch providers without penalty if they choose to leave.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "75dd15613f190fd9c1171cdf9eab8b1b87b58e62", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/782684afd7fae036db412ab23d6417590c068d77/0_41_3500_2101/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Truss premiership ‘hanging by thread’ after Kwarteng sacking and latest U-turn", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/14/liz-truss-kwasi-kwarteng-sacking-u-turn-hanging-by-thread", | |
| "words": "1342", | |
| "section": "Politics", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T17:59:07Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/782684afd7fae036db412ab23d6417590c068d77/0_41_3500_2101/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Rowena Mason, Aubrey Allegretti, Alex Lawson and Peter Walker", | |
| "description": "PM’s move to replace chancellor and commit to raising corporation tax fails to placate markets or Tory MPs", | |
| "text": "Liz Truss is desperately clinging to her premiership after she sacked her chancellor and ripped up the mini-budget but failed to calm the financial markets or furious Conservative MPs.\n\nIn a humiliating reversal, the prime minister backed down on plans to scrap an £18bn rise in corporation tax and replaced Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor with Jeremy Hunt.\n\nShe said staying in her position as prime minister would help to “reassure the markets of our financial discipline”, but the cost of government borrowing rose and the pound fell following her press conference announcing the changes.\n\nSenior Conservative MPs are plotting how to remove her from office, with some mulling whether to publicly call for her to resign in the coming days. One former cabinet minister said they thought it was “50/50 whether she will make it till Christmas”, adding: “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of her now then I would, but the problem is the mechanism.”\n\nSome Tory MPs thought the appointment of Hunt, a Tory centrist who has twice failed to win the leadership, could buy Truss some time, potentially as long as the further fiscal event on 31 October. In a sign that the former foreign secretary may be a powerful figure, one of his allies among Tory MPs, Steve Brine, told the BBC that people could regard “Truss as the chairman and Hunt as the chief executive” of the government.\n\nOthers said they regarded Truss as “finished” and it was a matter of time before she was ousted, particularly if there were a succession of further polls showing the Tories more than 30 points behind Labour – a situation that would lead to a landslide win for the opposition.\n\nThe former Tory leader William Hague told Channel 4 News it had been a “catastrophic episode” and while he was still hoping Truss could recover, it would be honest to say her premiership “hangs by a thread”.\n\nWith No 10 in disarray, Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has called for a general election regardless of whether Truss stays or goes, saying the government has “completely run out of road”.\n\nHe told the Guardian: “We are in the absurd situation where we are on the third or fourth prime minister in six years and within weeks we have got a prime minister who has the worst reputational ratings of any prime minister pretty well in history. Their party is completely exhausted, and clapped out. It has got no ideas, it can’t face the future and it has left the UK in a defensive crouch. For the good of the country we need a general election.”\n\nLabour could also look at calling a confidence vote in the government as soon as next week, putting pressure on Tories to back her or trigger an election, according to some of the party’s MPs.\n\nTruss set out her change of course in a very brief press conference on Friday, acknowledging that parts of the mini-budget “went further and faster than markets were expecting”. However, she refused to take responsibility for her own part in the situation and declined calls to apologise.\n\nShe also suggested she would stop public spending increasing as quickly as previously planned in remarks that appeared at odds with her promise in parliament this week not to cut public spending. Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said higher inflation had “already eaten into plans set out a year ago”, pointing out that she could not increase spending much less quickly “without it actually going down”.\n\nTruss’s decision to sack Kwarteng and raise corporation tax to 25% is the second major U-turn after she scrapped the abolition of the 45p income tax rate. Her massive package of unfunded tax cuts and spending sent the pound tumbling and plunged markets into turmoil in September.\n\nAsked why she should stay in the post, Truss replied: “I am absolutely determined to see through what I have promised – to deliver a higher growth, more prosperous United Kingdom.”\n\nShe hurried away from the podium after eight minutes in front of the cameras in which she took four questions from a list of journalists handpicked by No 10. She provided no answers to why she was staying on and Kwarteng was taking the blame for their joint plan, but sources said the prime minister wanted him to “carry the can” over her climbdown as she sought to calm the markets and the nerves of jittery Tory MPs.\n\nHer ousted chancellor reportedly believes Truss has only bought herself “a few more weeks”. A source close to Kwarteng told the Times: “His view is that the wagons are still going to circle.”\n\nSir Christopher Chope, one of the Tory MPs most loyal to the prime minister, admitted to feeling “very badly let down” by the U-turn.\n\nSpeaking to BBC Newsnight on Friday, he said: “I expressed disbelief at what I heard today because it’s totally inconsistent with everything that the prime minister stood for when she was elected.”\n\nOther cabinet ministers appeared to rally round Truss, such as Nadhim Zahawi, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and Simon Clarke, the levelling up secretary. Thérèse Coffey, the deputy prime minister and Truss’s closest ally, held a Zoom call for restive Tory backbenchers, although only a third of them tuned in. According to one of those on the call, she said she was “not sure what I can say right now”.\n\nThe appointment of Hunt infuriated some of Truss’s earliest backers who endorsed her tax cutting plan. One who was among the original 24 who nominated her for the leadership in July said: “She is removing every reason why I voted for her.” A previously loyal backbencher also said there would be gatherings over the weekend and she would be “told to go on Monday”.\n\nSeveral Tories said they were submitting letters to Graham Brady, the 1922 Committee chair, as the best way of showing they want her to resign, but others had reservations about this for fear a change of leader could cause pressure for a general election. The rules of the party state that she is safe from a party confidence vote for a year after taking office.\n\nBut one Tory grandee said Truss had to go. “Liz owns this mess, not Kwasi,” they said. “She must go immediately and be replaced by Rishi and Penny. No question.” A former cabinet minister added: “She should be resigning because it’s not good enough that she gets rid of a chancellor with whom she has been in complete agreement from day one.”\n\nJackie Doyle-Price, a Truss ally and minister, admitted to colleagues on WhatsApp: “Party discipline has totally broken down.”\n\nParty donors have also been raising eyebrows about the turmoil. The billionaire Phones 4u founder, John Caudwell, who donated £500,000 towards the Conservatives before the last election campaign and backed Truss as a leadership candidate, told the Guardian: “It’s all a bit rollercoaster isn’t it? We do one thing with some stupid measures, then we go and reverse the stupid measures but the danger is we make ourselves look uncompetitive but without doing anything that makes us look good … The problem is there is not a businessman among them, they do not know how to grow a business – and Britain is a business.”\n\nTruss’s unceremonious dismissal of Kwarteng, her longtime friend and ideological ally, came after he had said on Thursday he was “not going anywhere”. He then rushed back from an International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington to be sacked on Friday morning.\n\nChris Philp, Kwarteng’s deputy in the Treasury, has been moved to the Cabinet Office, with Edward Argar, formerly a Cabinet Office minister serving as paymaster general, taking over as chief secretary to the Treasury. In a tweeted letter to Truss, Kwarteng began: “You have asked me to stand aside as chancellor. I have accepted.” In her reply, Truss said she was “deeply sorry” to lose him and that she respected him for standing aside “in the national interest”.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "a5d17ceaee7279747ed1c5d01ccd00c2d8093104", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c7d8a5cfb7c6e322d42e76abe555c93c6c012d8e/0_8_2167_1300/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Manchester City ‘can do what they want’ financially despite FFP, Klopp claims", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/14/jurgen-klopp-liverpool-manchester-city-ffp", | |
| "words": "531", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T21:30:48Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c7d8a5cfb7c6e322d42e76abe555c93c6c012d8e/0_8_2167_1300/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Andy Hunter", | |
| "description": "Jürgen Klopp believes it is ‘not possible’ for Liverpool to compete financially with Manchester City and other Gulf state-owned clubs", | |
| "text": "Jürgen Klopp has claimed Liverpool cannot compete financially with Manchester City because Gulf state-owned clubs “can do what they want” despite financial fair play rules.\n\nThe Liverpool manager is satisfied his team can match City on the pitch but off it, he insists, is an entirely different matter demonstrated by Sunday’s opponents adding Erling Haaland to a squad that won the Premier League for the fourth time in five seasons in May.\n\nThe prolific striker cost City £51.2m in the summer while Liverpool agreed a potential club-record £85m deal for Darwin Núñez. The overall package for Haaland, however, who is reported to earn £375,000 a week plus bonuses that more than double his salary, put him beyond Liverpool’s reach.\n\nKlopp believes City, Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle are not bound by the same financial constraints as most clubs and cast doubt on the effectiveness of FFP. Asked how Liverpool could keep pace with Pep Guardiola’s team, who are 13 points clear of their recent title rivals, Klopp replied: “Oh, you won’t like the answer. You will not like the answer, and you all have the answer already. Nobody can compete with City in that.\n\n“You have the best team in the world and you put in the best striker on the market. No matter what it costs, you just do it. I know City will not like it, nobody will like it, you’ve asked the question but you know the answer. What does Liverpool do? We cannot act like them. It is not possible. Not possible. It is just clear and again you know the answer.\n\n“There are three clubs in world football who can do what they want financially. It’s legal and everything, fine, but they can do what they want. They will say: ‘Yeah but we have ...’ but it’s exactly the fact. We have to look at it [and say]: ‘We need that and we need that and we have to look here and make it younger, and here a prospect and here a talent’ and that is what you have to do. And you compete with them.”\n\nLiverpool are unbeaten in their past four meetings with City and have won the past two – last season’s FA Cup semi-final and the Community Shield in July. Klopp accepts the financial situation at Anfield but believes it is not his responsibility to highlight the disparities within football.\n\n“It is not a problem at all for me, it’s like it is,” he said. “Don’t ask me that question because you always open this discussion and it’s me telling you. But you all know it, you should know. I heard now that at Newcastle somebody [sporting director Dan Ashworth] said: ‘There is no ceiling for this club.’ Yes, he is right. He is absolutely right. There is no ceiling for Newcastle. Congratulations, but some other clubs have ceilings.”\n\nAshworth said in an interview this week there was no ceiling to what Newcastle “can achieve” as a club. He added that Newcastle, who have spent £210m on players in 2022 under majority Saudi ownership, would have to work within FFP rules and that this year’s outlay “is not sustainable” on an annual basis.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "ed9d08f8d834d2ef4e2792daeea652501664fb21", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/06f6b71bb228c839a6e6b758b9c4f2b8de1c937f/0_182_3437_2062/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Klopp primes Núñez for battle with ‘best striker in the world’ Haaland", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/14/premier-league-liverpool-jurgen-klopp-darwin-nunez-erling-haaland-manchester-city", | |
| "words": "889", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T21:30:48Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/06f6b71bb228c839a6e6b758b9c4f2b8de1c937f/0_182_3437_2062/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Andy Hunter", | |
| "description": "Uruguayan has four goals in 10 games for Liverpool but has been upstaged by the form of his rampant Manchester City rival", | |
| "text": "The comparison seems unfair now, and would be for any player in world football, but it is only three months since Erling Haaland v Darwin Núñez was billed as the duel that could shape another title race between Manchester City and Liverpool. A simplistic prediction, true, although with one team flying and the other yet to take off, in keeping with the impact of their big-money summer signings, it is not entirely wide of the mark.\n\nTo pin Liverpool’s inconsistent campaign on Núñez would be also unfair, and inaccurate, even accounting for the red card for violent conduct on the striker’s Anfield debut that stalled his integration for three matches. The Uruguay international has four goals in 10 appearances for Liverpool; by no means a shabby return for a forward in a new club, league and country where he does not understand the language. Jürgen Klopp’s instructions are relayed via Portuguese-speaking members of the coaching staff, because of his time at Benfica: the assistant manager Pep Lijnders and elite development coach Vitor Matos. They are sinking in gradually.\n\nThe 23-year-old scored for the second successive game in Liverpool’s 7-1 humiliation of Rangers in the Champions League on Wednesday, when Roberto Firmino maintained his impressive form and Mohamed Salah rediscovered his in front of goal. Confidence, one of the issues that Klopp has faced this season, should not be a concern among Liverpool’s strikers when City visit on Sunday. Núñez’s movement, work rate and link-up play have impressed in recent games. The £64m signing – whose fee could rise to a club record £85m – scored on his Liverpool debut when they beat City 3-1 in the Community Shield in July. Having since been eclipsed by the phenomenon that is Haaland – who hasn’t been? – Anfield would be the perfect stage to make another statement against Pep Guardiola’s team.\n\nThe instruction from Klopp is to forget any Haaland competition and concentrate on his job. “Let me say it like this,” the Liverpool manager said of Núñez’s start. “I think Darwin Núñez would have scored a couple more goals if he had played in the centre of Man City this season. He would be a pretty good striker for them as well, finishing the situations off. We have to improve our game to bring him more often in these situations.\n\n“I don’t know, but I hope he is not in a process where he compares himself with Erling Haaland. I think he is really making steps here. You could see it in his face that his goal [against Rangers] was really important for him. All the goals are really important, obviously, but maybe it was looking like someone had closed the opportunity for him, like the goalie brings his hand on it or a foot on it, and then everybody says you have to finish differently. But look at the goal for Bobby [Firmino] from Joey’s [Gomez] pass. He could put it in each corner but didn’t; he just hits the ball and it goes through the keeper’s legs. That’s what happens sometimes with a striker.\n\n“When it is running for you, the ball goes through the keeper’s legs. When it’s not running, you hit the foot or the hand of the goalie and it goes wide. The first chance for Mo, chip from Thiago [Alcântara] in behind and Mo doesn’t hit the ball properly. If he hits it a little bit better then the ball rolls in the goal. You need these moments. But don’t compare. I hope he is not doing that and doesn’t think about that. I don’t see that. We are in our situation and we want to sort our situation and that is all we are concerned about.”\n\nKlopp was asked about Haaland five times in his pre-City press conference on Friday. He is sometimes irked by a repeated line of questioning, certainly one relating to the opposition, but the exceptional goalscorer proved an exception. There was lavish praise for a player with 20 goals in his first 13 appearances for City.\n\n“When you play against the best striker in the world you have to make sure he doesn’t get too many balls,” said Klopp when outlining Liverpool’s approach on Sunday. “That is what you have to defend before you come into the challenge with him, but against City the problem is if you close down Haaland with too many players then you open up gaps for all the other world-class players they have. That will not make life easier.\n\n“Erling combines so many things. It is rare that you have his finishing skills, that are obviously exceptional, but he moves really smart as well and that makes him tricky. Physically he sets new standards, the combination of being really physical and technical and sensational awareness, his orientation on the pitch is exceptional, he knows always where the decisive gaps are, he is barely offside, reads that really well: so many things that make him a striker. The package makes him special.\n\n“Then you have some of the best players in the world around him at City in setting up goals and finding the right moments for the passes. Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gündogan, Bernardo Silva, [Riyad] Mahrez, Phil Foden; they are all really good at that so that makes him a perfect fit.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "317cf5c5b8589fead45f374f5d05cfd216e245ba", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/47a569c42f316c3d978d920842f179198ce62073/0_271_7790_4676/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Antonio Conte’s spirit of sacrifice key to Tottenham’s quest for success", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/14/antonio-contes-spirit-of-sacrifice-key-to-tottenhams-quest-for-success", | |
| "words": "724", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T21:30:47Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/47a569c42f316c3d978d920842f179198ce62073/0_271_7790_4676/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "David Hytner", | |
| "description": "The manager has put club before his family life and wants that show of commitment to inspire players and staff to aim higher", | |
| "text": "As Antonio Conte approaches the first anniversary of his appointment by Tottenham, he continues to live in a central London hotel and so the conspiracy theorists question whether he intends to stick around for the long term. The manager’s contract is up at the end of the season, although the club have the option to extend it for one year. So he’s off soon, right?\n\nThe jokers, meanwhile, cannot see past the Alan Partridge aspect of it – the big plate in the restaurant and all the rest – even if, with all due respect to the Linton Travel Tavern, Conte’s digs are a cut above.\n\nWhat people are more reluctant to process is the element of sacrifice which, in Conte’s case, involves him being away from his wife, Elisabetta, and their teenage daughter, Vittoria, who have remained in Italy. They visit regularly but it is not the same. When Conte got the Spurs job on 1 November of last year, he and Elisabetta did not want to uproot Vittoria from her school and that is still the case.\n\n“I have to respect her moment because she’s growing and to change many schools is not good,” Conte said. “I’m really focused. We decided to go in this way with my family, also in this season, and then we will see. We will see in the future to try to find the best solution. It’s right to respect the family and, sometimes, if you have to put the family in front of you … [you do it].”\n\nConte is determined to lead by example at Spurs. He wants his wholehearted commitment to the club and how he suffers to be the template for everyone, beginning with the players.\n\nAs he prepared for Saturday’s visit of Everton, he noted how they had spent a lot of mental energy in Wednesday’s 3-2 Champions League home win over Eintracht Frankfurt. This is the nature of the competition. It is draining. But quite simply the players have to dig deeper. They need to know their limits and go beyond them. Everton boast the joint-best defensive record in the Premier League. They will be a tough nut to crack. It does not matter. Spurs must find a way.\n\n“Everyone can speak about mentality, about a winning mentality,” Conte said. “The difficulty is to transfer this concept every day through their work, their behaviour. To build a winning mentality is fatigue. You have to be available to do this path and it’s not for all. I’m enjoying a lot to work with these players and try to involve the whole Tottenham environment because a winning mentality has to be for the whole club, not only the players.”\n\nSo, every department of the club, every pore of the building at Enfield – and Conte wants it to extend to the fans in the stadium. One of the big pluses of the season has been the team’s 100% home record in all competitions. And it has not been lost on Conte that four of their six league games before the World Cup break are at home.\n\nConte has felt the energy of the ground at various times, most memorably in the pivotal derby against Arsenal at the end of last season, when Spurs powered to a 3-0 win that set up their Champions League qualification. Three days after that, they faced Burnley in a Sunday midday kick-off and everybody knew the atmosphere would be much flatter. It was, although Spurs did win 1-0. Conte wants a consistently intimidating home crowd and it is a goal towards which each fan can contribute.\n\n“I know very well – because I was a player – what it means to play away in a difficult atmosphere,” Conte said. “I remember this season [in the Champions League] at Sporting Lisbon and Eintracht Frankfurt and then in England at Nottingham Forest … it was really difficult, a lot of noise. When we play at home, our fans have to be a 12th player for us. We have to try to exploit that.”\n\nConte revealed that Dejan Kulusevski was out of the Everton match and he did not know whether the winger would be back for next Wednesday’s trip to Manchester United. Kulusevski, who damaged a hamstring on international duty with Sweden at the end of last month, suffered a setback in training on Thursday.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "e294fc25104cf120198b526fcf0990e47a45444e", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0485f077775a7081d33a34310324ff011f812576/0_0_4880_2930/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Democrats suggest shifting weapons from Saudi Arabia to Ukraine", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/14/democrats-us-weapons-systems-saudi-arabia-ukraine", | |
| "words": "890", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T17:04:32Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0485f077775a7081d33a34310324ff011f812576/0_0_4880_2930/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington", | |
| "description": "Democrats call for suspension of transfer of Patriot missiles in wake of ‘turning point’ in relationship with Saudis", | |
| "text": "Democrats on Capitol Hill have suggested transferring US weapons systems in Saudi Arabia to Ukraine and suspending a planned transfer of Patriot missiles to Riyadh in the wake of what they call a “turning point” in Washington’s relationship with the kingdom.\n\nRo Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California who is a leading supporter of a weapons freeze, said he believed that “at the very least” Congress would move to halt the transfer of Patriot missiles to the kingdom, and probably pause other defense initiatives.\n\nKhanna is a longtime critic of Saudi Arabia and was one of the original sponsors of a 2019 measure that received bipartisan support and would have forced the US to end military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. That resolution was vetoed by then-president Donald Trump.\n\nIn an interview with the Guardian, Khanna said tensions had reached a boiling point that was comparable to US sentiment following the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.\n\nThe break in the relationship followed an announcement last week that Opec+, the oil cartel, had agreed to cut oil production by 2m barrels a day over the strong objections of, and lobbying by, the administration of Joe Biden. The move was seen as both a boost to Vladimir Putin and his war effort in Ukraine, and a stunning betrayal of Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the US, just weeks after the president had visited Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah.\n\n“I think President Biden is judicious and pragmatic by temperament but this was a real slap in his face,” Khanna said. While lawmakers like him have long advocated for a tougher response to Saudi on human rights grounds, Khanna said the Opec+ move had galvanized members across Congress.\n\n“This is a second moment like Khashoggi’s murder. I believe it is a total miscalculation by the Saudis,” he said, adding that there was still time for the kingdom to change course.\n\nPressed on whether Democrats were likely to move beyond rhetoric, Khanna pointed to recent comments by his colleague Robert Menendez, a Democratic senator who as chairman of the foreign relations committee said he was prepared to halt Saudi weapons sales.\n\n“At the very least, the Patriot missiles will be suspended,” he said. “The fact that Menendez has spoken out means that at a minimum it is going to happen.”\n\nMeanwhile, Chris Murphy, an influential Democratic senator from Connecticut, said he believed the US ought to suspend the sale of advanced air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia and repurpose these missiles to Ukraine.\n\n“For several years, the US military had deployed Patriot missile defense batteries to Saudi Arabia to help defend oil infrastructure against missile and drone attacks. These advanced air and missile defense systems should be redeployed to bolster the defenses of eastern flank Nato allies like Poland and Romania – or transferred to our Ukrainian partners,” Murphy said in a statement.\n\nWhile physically transferring existing weapons systems in Saudi Arabia to Ukraine would not be particularly complicated logistically, experts said it could risk accusations that the Biden administration was escalating its support for Ukraine beyond levels that it considered appropriate, because the systems might require on-the-ground US personnel for support.\n\nWilliam Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute, said at a minimum, any such move to shift weapons would be met by serious debates within the White House and Congress. At the same time, he said, Russia’s continuing assault on Ukraine meant that “political considerations are shifting”.\n\nChanges to planned deliveries of Patriot missiles would probably cause “consternation” in Saudi Arabia, but changes to delivery of spare parts and maintenance could ground large parts of the Saudi air force, he said.\n\nHartung said he believed the Saudis might be underestimating the impact of the sudden break in relations with Washington, given the relationship appeared to survive the Khashoggi murder. In that case, however, Trump was in the White House and steadfastly loyal to the Saudis. Hartung said he believed it was unlikely that Biden would veto a congressional resolution aimed at the kingdom, as Trump did in 2019.\n\n“It’s not a done deal, but the political tides are stronger against the Saudis than they have been – possibly ever,” he said.\n\nThe Saudi foreign ministry this week rejected the criticism of its Opec+ decision and insisted the cartel had acted with unanimity and in its own economic interest. It also rejected any assumption that it could be forced into a policy U-turn.\n\n“The kingdom stresses that while it strives to preserve the strength of its relations with all friendly countries, it affirms its rejection of any dictates, actions, or efforts to distort its noble objectives to protect the global economy from oil market volatility,” it said.\n\nKhanna hit back at that claim.\n\n“The reality is that there is no economic case for what they are doing. This was punitive for Americans and it is aiding Putin,” he said.\n\nA spokesperson for the national security council said Opec’s decision last week to “align its energy policy with Russia’s war and against Americans” underscored Biden’s earlier call to set a “different sort of relationship” with Saudi Arabia.\n\n“We are reviewing where we are, we’ll be watching closely over the coming weeks and months, consulting with allies, with Congress – and decisions will be made in a deliberate way,” the spokesperson said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "4bb5ef9b40c0663f85fa0118ed69f1d1ce644b65", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/de8fc10ee600ba225b3905245b5f3ef2062c8825/0_226_3500_2100/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Brentford’s Ivan Toney presses England claim with double to see off Brighton", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/14/brentford-brighton-premier-league-match-report", | |
| "words": "759", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T21:08:14Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/de8fc10ee600ba225b3905245b5f3ef2062c8825/0_226_3500_2100/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Ed Aarons at the Gtech Community Stadium", | |
| "description": "Ivan Toney’s flicked backheel goal followed by a second-half penalty gave Brentford a 2-0 victory against a wasteful Brighton", | |
| "text": "If Gareth Southgate needed any more persuasion that Ivan Toney is worth a place in England’s World Cup squad then surely this performance seals it. Two goals from the Brentford striker, including an impudent backheel and another penalty to maintain his 100% conversion record for this club, were a perfect example of the 26-year-old’s qualities at just the right time.\n\nSouthgate must name his preliminary squad for Qatar by Friday and despite leaving Toney on the bench during the Nations League fixtures against Germany and Italy last month, the former Northampton and Peterborough striker looks more than a decent bet to be on the plane after moving level with Harry Kane on eight Premier League goals this season, behind only Erling Haaland.\n\nFor Thomas Frank, it was a timely result as his side moved into the top half of the table and within one point of Brighton, who are still waiting for a first victory under Roberto De Zerbi. “It was a beautiful ugly win,” said Brentford’s manager.\n\nIn the week that Enock Mwepu was forced to retire from football after being diagnosed with a hereditary heart condition, Brighton’s players warmed up with T-shirts bearing the message “Chambishi to the Premier League. Your dream came true. We are all with you” in tribute to the midfielder. The owner, Tony Bloom, was even spotted among the supporters in the away end with a Zambia flag, with Adam Lallana admitting beforehand that the sad news had “put a massive perspective on what matters in life”.\n\nDe Zerbi could consider himself unfortunate to have only picked up a solitary point from his first two matches since succeeding Graham Potter and selected the same side that were narrowly beaten by Tottenham last week. There was a tweak in formation, however, with his opposite number Frank also opting to ditch his usual three-man defence as he made three changes from the team thumped 5-1 by Newcastle.\n\nBloom’s frosty relationship with Brentford’s owner, Matthew Benham – a former employee – stems back to an acrimonious split in 2004 that resulted in legal proceedings and means that he usually watches this fixture far away from the comforts of the directors’ box. Aside from an early chance for Frank Onyeka, Bloom will have been encouraged to see Brighton take the initiative here, with Danny Welbeck forcing David Raya into the first save of any note following a Pervis Estupiñán cross. The Brentford goalkeeper then did well to reach a swerving effort from Moisés Caicedo before denying Joël Veltman from the resulting corner.\n\nBut instead it was the hosts who found the breakthrough just after Bryan Mbeumo had struck the crossbar with a brilliant left-footed volley that left Robert Sánchez grasping at thin air. This time, the Cameroon forward was the architect as he found space with some excellent skill to release Onyeka and Toney finished with a sublime flick for his 50th league goal in his 100th appearance for Brentford in all competitions.\n\nTempers spilled over just before half-time when Frank clashed with Veltman after the ball had gone out of play and De Zerbi briefly squared up to the Brentford manager. They swiftly shook hands afterwards but both ended up in the referee Michael Salisbury’s book.\n\nBrentford have now won all 10 of their Premier League matches when leading at half-time and their advantage never really looked under threat as Brighton struggled to create any clearcut chances despite recording 72% of possession and registering 21 shots.\n\n“To win games you have to score,” De Zerbi later acknowledged. “The Brentford goalkeeper played very well but we made mistakes at important moments. We are very positive and I trust in my team – with the quality we have shown in the three games we deserved more.”\n\nSánchez was relieved to see Toney fail to control the ball in a dangerous position after a mishit pass from the Brighton goalkeeper that would have left the goal at his mercy. Yet a moment of madness from Veltman, who brought down Brentford’s talisman right in front of the referee, left the visitors with a mountain to climb. Toney stepped up to convert from the spot – his 20th successful penalty from 20 attempts since joining Brentford two years ago.\n\n“I don’t even know where I’m going until I kick the ball,” he said of his spot-kick technique in an interview with Sky Sports. “I just walk away and think of different things, like being on the beach with a cocktail.”\n\nA frustrated De Zerbi will hope that his moment will come sooner rather than later.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "74c56263506efe3203da1f1442f53af9eb671926", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/78ac018762c46812c4b04e048e6e2afd28fa4b1a/816_1082_3432_2058/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "How the negroni sbagliato took off with the help of Emma D’Arcy and TikTok", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/oct/14/how-the-negroni-sbagliato-took-off-with-help-of-emma-darcy-and-tiktok", | |
| "words": "514", | |
| "section": "Food", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T21:03:48Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/78ac018762c46812c4b04e048e6e2afd28fa4b1a/816_1082_3432_2058/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Elle Hunt", | |
| "description": "The actor’s name check of the cocktail becomes a meme, creating an instant drinks trend", | |
| "text": "It is the impossible-to-pronounce Italian word that is on everyone’s lips in line at the bar – or, more likely – while making do with what’s in the fridge. “Sbagliato” – meaning “bungled” or “mistaken” – has suddenly become the all-important addendum in ordering a negroni.\n\nA negroni sbagliato is simply a negroni mixed with prosecco in place of the traditional gin, yet on Google Trends, which shows global search interest over time, there was a seismic spike on 5 October.\n\nThe origins of the trend can be identified with unusual precision: a namecheck by actor Emma D’Arcy. In a video to promote House of the Dragon, posted to HBO’s TikTok account, D’Arcy, who is non-binary, is asked by co-star Olivia Cooke about their favourite cocktail. They give the instantly iconic response: “Negroni sbagliato – with prosecco in it.” Italian, spoken by a Briton, has never sounded better.\n\nTikTok was spellbound – the original clip now has 30m views.\n\nMany drinks trends that set social media abuzz would raise, at best, a weary sigh of reluctant recognition at the bar. The negroni sbagliato, however, is a legitimate cocktail, with origins that go beyond the need to fuel the content machine. Henry Jeffreys, drinks writer and author of the Cocktail Dictionary, says it is a recognised twist on the negroni.\n\n“Negronis are so drinkable, but so strong, which is why they’re so dangerous,” says Jeffreys. The difference is the alcohol content. “The sbagliato is a really good alternative if you want a negroni, but you also want to get something done afterwards.” A sbagliato comes in at about 15%, whereas a standard negroni is between 25% or 30%.\n\nLike all good memes, it even has a backstory. “Apparently the bartender was meant to be making a negroni, reached for the wrong bottle, and put prosecco instead of gin,” says Jeffreys, “so ‘sbagliato’ means muddled, or wrong in Italian”.\n\nJeffreys takes the story with a pinch of salt, noting its “suspicious” similarities to the origins of the negroni itself, when the apocryphal waiter was attempting to make a Milano-Torino, mixing Campari, vermouth and fizzy water – and grabbed the gin instead of the soda siphon. “In some versions, being Italian, he was distracted by a beautiful lady,” adds Jeffreys, drier than a martini.\n\nYet the latest chapter in the evolution of negroni mythology could not be more 2022, being sparked by the stars of the year’s biggest television show, spreading via TikTok and being spun, almost instantaneously, into memes and merchandise (with cult label Novel Mart selling sweaters, caps and hoodies bearing “sbagliato” as a complement to its “negroni” baseball caps, beloved by fashion insiders).\n\nThere’s another reason that the order’s taking off in these times: with prosecco being significantly cheaper than gin, the sbagliato is a perfect cocktail for a cost of living crisis. Jeffreys likens it to a reversal of the upgrade in spirits that many home drinkers treated themselves to through the pandemic, with many brands already increasing their prices.\n\n“Sbagliato” could even describe an approach to life: a muddled drink for muddled times, born of – and consumed in – the spirit of making do.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "1fab41d50b80185dc2daca433eaf63720c3bb4f0", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/61012d78257a9bf34e983fa93c70bc8a78fad9c0/0_101_3790_2274/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Two brothers jailed after admitting murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/14/daphne-caruana-galizia-brothers-admit-murder-first-day-trial", | |
| "words": "895", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T17:27:01Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/61012d78257a9bf34e983fa93c70bc8a78fad9c0/0_101_3790_2274/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Juliette Garside", | |
| "description": "George and Alfred Degiorgio both given 40-year sentences for killing of Maltese journalist in 2017 car bombing", | |
| "text": "Two brothers charged with the car-bomb assassination of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have both been sentenced to 40 years in prison, after dramatically pleading guilty to her murder on the first day of their trial.\n\nCaruana Galizia, who had investigated political corruption in the European Union’s smallest member state, died in an explosion that destroyed her car as she drove away from home on 16 October 2017.\n\nGeorge Degiorgio, 59, and Alfred Degiorgio, 57, were given 40-year prison terms, meaning three of the seven men so far accused of conspiring to commit the murder have now been convicted.\n\nThe trial in Valletta’s central court, which has drawn international attention, began on Friday morning with both men denying all six charges laid against them, including wilful homicide, causing a fatal explosion, illegally possessing explosives and criminal conspiracy.\n\nIn an unexpected twist, after an extended midday break that followed a morning during which the prosecution set out its case, the brothers were ushered into the courtroom and asked to re-enter their pleas, the Times of Malta reported.\n\nGeorge Degiorgio stood before the judge, who asked him again: “How do you plead?”\n\nIn front of Caruana Galizia’s three sons and her husband, he replied: “Guilty.”\n\nAlfred Degiorgio, who uses a wheelchair and is under medical supervision after going on hunger strike to protest against the prosecution, entered the same plea.\n\nThe judge told the court the two men had been examined by a doctor and a psychiatrist beforehand, to verify they were of sound mind and understood the implications of changing their legal position.\n\nIn proceedings that were being monitored by an array of international observers, with members from press and free speech groups including Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Article 19 seated on the benches, the brothers were each sentenced to four decades, although time served is likely to be reduced if they can show good behaviour.\n\nTheir accomplice Vincent Muscat, a member of the gang that planted the bomb, avoided a trial after earlier changing his plea to guilty and providing evidence for the prosecution. Muscat is serving a 15-year sentence.\n\nDaphne’s son Paul Caruana Galizia was the first family member to respond publicly. He tweeted: “A break in the clouds.”\n\nDuring a series of heated exchanges, George Degiorgio asked to address his victim’s family but was reportedly shouted down and left the courtroom. His brother then rose from his wheelchair and spoke to Caruana Galizia’s widower, telling him: “Now you will know the whole truth, whoever was involved either way.”\n\nThe brothers had unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a pardon in exchange for naming bigger alleged conspirators, including a former minister whose identity has not been revealed.\n\nProsecutors alleged they were hired to carry out a contract killing, paid for by a top Maltese businessman with government ties. That businessman, Yorgen Fenech, has been charged and will be tried separately.\n\nFenech was indicted in 2019 for alleged complicity in the killing, by either ordering or instigating the commission of the crime, inciting another to commit the crime or by promising to give a reward after the fact. He was also indicted for conspiracy to commit murder. Fenech has entered not guilty pleas to all charges. No date has been set for his trial.\n\nA self-confessed middleman, the taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony against Fenech and the other alleged plotters. Two men, Jamie Vella and Robert Agius, have been charged with supplying the bomb, but their trial has not yet begun.\n\nThe case had taken years to reach trial, delayed by attempts from the defendants to have proceedings dismissed. They had requested presidential pardons, filed constitutional objections and objected on fair trial grounds. They had complained of being unable to find their own counsel and protested about having to rely on legal aid lawyers, saying it was a breach of their rights.\n\nA well-known newspaper columnist and magazine publisher, Caruana Galizia, 53, had also made a name as Malta’s foremost investigative journalist, publishing her findings on her website, Running Commentary. She reported extensively on suspected corruption in political and business circles in the Mediterranean island nation, an attractive financial haven.\n\nAmong her targets were senior members of the government of the then prime minister, Joseph Muscat, whom she accused of having set up offshore companies in tax havens days after entering office. But she also targeted the opposition. When she was killed she had become a target for online and political attacks, was facing more than 40 libel suits and her bank accounts had been frozen.\n\nThe bomb had been placed under the driver’s seat and the explosion was powerful enough to send the car off the road and into a field.\n\nThe 2019 arrest of Fenech, the heir to a property empire with connections to senior government officials, prompted a series of mass protests in the country, eventually forcing Muscat to resign.\n\nThe European parliament president, Roberta Metsola, a Maltese politician who has supported the Caruana Galizia family’s long struggle to secure prosecutions and political reforms, said the fight must continue. “This is not justice,” she said. “Now for those who ordered and paid for it, those who protected them and those who spent years doing everything imaginable to try to cover it up.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "9a5655b20c6dc227128a2d00e713458cc09ff223", | |
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| "title": "Home Office apologises over threat to send pregnant rape survivor to Rwanda", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/14/home-office-apologises-over-threat-to-send-pregnant-survivor-to-rwanda", | |
| "words": "422", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T20:27:01Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/24e1690b9a555b7bf4d2d408d2eb4bcda2b2d321/0_148_2256_1354/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Diane Taylor", | |
| "description": "Government withdraws letter to woman, who is 37 weeks pregnant, saying that it was sent by mistake", | |
| "text": "The Home Office has apologised to a pregnant rape survivor from Eritrea who was sent a letter threatening her with forced removal to Rwanda, saying it was sent by mistake.\n\nGuardian and ITV News revealed on Thursday that the woman was distraught after receiving the Home Office letter, which has now been withdrawn.\n\nThe 28-year-old woman is 37 weeks pregnant. Doctors say scans show her baby has stopped growing and that she may need to be induced.\n\nHome Office officials organised a pregnancy scan for her after she arrived in the UK on a small boat in July. They also moved her from one hotel to another after she became unwell with pregnancy-related nausea in the first hotel. She requested a pregnancy grant from the Home Office to buy nutritious food for herself and her unborn baby but was told that the hotel she was staying in could provide suitable food for her.\n\nThe woman, who is using the pseudonym Delina, said she was “really frightened” about what may happen to her and her baby if she was forcibly removed to Rwanda. She had been living in an informal refugee camp in Calais for eight months before travelling to the UK in a dinghy and was struggling to survive there as a homeless young woman.\n\nShe has spent decades in search of safety. She fled Eritrea at the age of three with her mother after her father was killed by the government. Her mother took her first to Sudan and later to Lebanon. She has no family members left. “I have not been able to sleep since I got the Rwanda notice,” she said.\n\nClare Moseley, founder of the charity Care4Calais which is supporting the woman, said of the Home Office’s decision to withdraw the letter threatening to send the woman to Rwanda: “The Home Office knew our client was pregnant but still issued a Rwanda notice. It has been withdrawn now after the Home Office were publicly shamed which is a relief for the woman but it is shocking that it happened at all.\n\n“The Rwanda plan is brutal. It is not safe or appropriate for any human being and the government should withdraw this plan now.”\n\nA Home Office spokesperson said: “We urgently reviewed this case and found the letter was sent in error. It has now been corrected and we have issued an apology.\n\n“Everyone in scope for relocation to Rwanda will be individually assessed, and no one will be relocated if it is unsafe or inappropriate for them.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "ec5093143d78b9cc856afd3651a7e656a1eaa397", | |
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| "title": "Former instructor sues Peloton for $1.8m on allegations of discrimination", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/14/peloton-lawsuit-discrimination-daniel-mckenna-instructor", | |
| "words": "341", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:09:57Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/a0b68913083625c8b5302a67d95f9a4efcf535a5/0_0_5865_3518/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Dani Anguiano", | |
| "description": "Daniel McKenna says his Irish background was mocked and that he wasn’t given any explanation when he was terminated", | |
| "text": "A former Peloton instructor has accused the company of wrongful termination and discrimination, alleging in a lawsuit that an executive mocked his Irish background and his request for a medical exemption for the Covid vaccine.\n\nDaniel McKenna is suing Peloton for nearly $2m after the exercise and media company terminated his employment last month. McKenna has accused Peloton’s chief content officer, Jennifer Cotter, of discrimination, retaliation and breach of contract.\n\nMcKenna had worked for the company for more than a year, during which time he received an annual salary of $260,000. He had been on leave after a surgery but was planning to return to work early. Shortly before his scheduled return, Cotter told him he was on “thin ice for taking disability leave”, the lawsuit states.\n\nThe company terminated his employment “for cause”, but it did not provide any explanation or notice about his behavior, according to the lawsuit.\n\nMcKenna also alleges Cotter subjected him to discrimination and stereotypes about his Irish nationality, telling him “nobody understands what you are saying” because of his accent, according to the lawsuit. “That’s Daniel our Irish instructor, he’s rough around the edges and hard to understand but the members love him,” the suit says Cotter said in a meeting. At the same meeting, the lawsuit alleges, Cotter told McKenna “I hope you’re not drunk, Daniel.”\n\nMcKenna says his “extreme anxiety, humiliation and embarrassment” spiraled after the meeting, according to the lawsuit, adversely affecting his mental and emotional health.\n\nThe former instructor also accused Cotter of disparaging him for concerns he had about getting the Covid-19 vaccine. After undergoing an unexpected surgery in 2021, McKenna says, he was fearful the vaccine would negatively affect his recovery and requested a “legally available medical exemption”, which Cotter “categorically denied” and made denigrating remarks about, the lawsuit states. Concerned about disrupting his career, McKenna received the vaccine.\n\nMcKenna is seeking $1.8m in damages for mental distress and the harm he says Peloton has done to his career. Peloton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Staunch or stubborn? Lidia Thorpe on the voice, the treaty and real power", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/staunch-or-stubborn-lidia-thorpe-on-the-voice-the-treaty-and-real-power", | |
| "words": "1628", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:47Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3d60e221857cd29d0ecd9deda712d18b0f216c5f/107_30_3049_1830/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Calla Wahlquist", | |
| "description": "The Greens senator has faced criticism over her lacklustre support for an Indigenous voice to parliament but she remains resolute", | |
| "text": "Lidia Thorpe says she does not want to be a “thorn in the side” of the Albanese government as it pursues a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament, but argues First Nations people should not be asked to set aside decades-long struggles in pursuit of an advisory body.\n\nSpeaking to Guardian Australia last month, the Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjmara woman would not say whether she would vote yes on the referendum, based on the proposed draft wording of the question.\n\nThe sticking point is, as it always has been in Thorpe’s long opposition to the idea of an Indigenous voice to parliament, the question of sovereignty.\n\nAnd like most of Thorpe’s politics, it both predates and has been unchanged by her time in state and federal parliament. It has been shouted at the frontlines of protests and on police barricades for decades: stop black deaths in custody, stop removing Aboriginal children from their families, land rights, treaty.\n\nThat constancy is, depending on whom you talk to, either Thorpe’s greatest strength or weakness. She is either stubborn or staunch; obstinate or uncompromising.\n\nThe referendum campaign has sharpened focus on the Victorian senator, who is the First Nations spokesperson for the Australian Greens. But anyone waiting for Thorpe to fall into line is bound to be disappointed.\n\n‘Tinkering around the edges’ Thorpe was one of seven delegates who walked out of the Uluru convention in 2017, the forum that resulted in the drafting of the Uluru statement from the heart, over the issue of sovereignty. They held that forming a voice to parliament under the Australian constitution would be seen as ceding sovereignty – a thing that, all 250 delegates agreed, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had never done.\n\nAt the time, Thorpe was the cochair of the Victorian Naidoc committee. She has been involved in Aboriginal politics since birth: her grandmother, Alma Thorpe, helped found the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service in Fitzroy in 1973. Her mother, Marjorie Thorpe, was a commissioner of the stolen generations inquiry that produced the Bringing Them Home report. Her first job was working for her uncle Robbie Thorpe, who ran the Koori Information Centre in Fitzroy.\n\nSovereignty is not, for First Nations peoples, a trivial point. And the draft referendum question, outlined by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, at the Garma festival, which states that parliament shall have power over the voice, has brought it to the fore.\n\n“The parliament is supreme over an Indigenous voice,” Thorpe says. “And I think that’s the crux of it right there. We want a treaty so that we can have real power.”\n\nLabor has, in order to reverse some of the damage done by the previous government’s bad faith reading of the Uluru statement, repeatedly stressed that the voice will be an advisory body only and one whose structure is under the parliament’s control. Those guarantees may have appeased non-Indigenous voters – and it is non-Indigenous voters who will decide the referendum – but it has not been met well by some First Nations voters.\n\n“What I’m hearing from Aboriginal people across the country is that they want more power; they’re sick of being an advisory body,” Thorpe says. “We’ve had hundreds of advisory bodies to government and they’ve not really done much at all … So if we’re talking about having power and influence in this country, we need to be talking about treaty.”\n\nThe Uluru statement called for a treaty and a truth-telling process to occur alongside the referendum on the voice. Thorpe argues that those elements have been left behind, when they should be the main focus.\n\n“Treaty can give us so much more than a constitutionally enshrined voice that has parliamentary supremacy over it,” she says.\n\n“There is unfinished business in this country that needs to be reconciled and tinkering around the edges like an advisory body that the parliament chooses to take advice from or not – I don’t think that that goes far enough in terms of justice for our people in this country.”\n\nThorpe’s criticism of the voice was known before she was preselected by the Greens for the Victorian state seat of Northcote in 2017 and again to fill the Senate vacancy left by Richard Di Natale in 2020. Just last month, she referred to the referendum as a “complete waste” of money.\n\nShe softened some of her criticisms of the referendum this week after describing as “false and misleading” a report in the Australian that suggested she had met with Warren Mundine about their joint opposition to the voice. She has made a complaint about the report to the Press Council. (The Australian did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment about the story.)\n\nOn Wednesday, the South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said: “My colleagues are going to be supporting the yes campaign.”\n\nHowever, Thorpe’s critics are not confident that her negotiations with the government on the referendum will be genuine.\n\nIn that September conversation, Thorpe told Guardian Australia that she could make compromises out of pragmatism – then named the 2018 treaty advancement legislation in Victoria as “an example of how I can compromise even though it’s not that great”.\n\n“It came down to the Greens to pass that legislation,” she says, “and we had 500 eagles poisoned on my country the night before that decision was made. That was a sign from my ancestors to say: don’t. Don’t pass it. Don’t pass it. It’s not good enough … and then the next day, I went in and supported it and felt like shit. Knowing that I supported something that is half-baked.”\n\nAsked if that was the lesson that was in her head as she thought about the referendum process, Thorpe says: “Possibly, yes.”\n\nThorpe’s criticism of the Victorian treaty process has led to significant divisions with a number of highly respected members of the state’s Aboriginal community. That culminated last June in a dispute with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria co-chair Geraldine Atkinson, which resulted in the latter making a formal complaint to the Greens leader, Adam Bandt. Thorpe’s former chief of staff reportedly sent an email to Atkinson apologising for the senator’s “appalling conduct”.\n\nBandt’s office says he wrote to Atkinson last month, acknowledging that he should have replied to the letter she wrote to him in June 2021 and that “he took the actions that she had requested of him at the time”. He said it would be inappropriate to comment further.\n\nThorpe tells Guardian Australia that “robust conversations and negotiations” were a feature of politics.\n\n“I’m not sure why that person felt aggrieved but that happens all the time in parliament,” she says.\n\nAn Aboriginal Victorian, one of a number of critics of Thorpe who declined to speak on the record, said that since the incident with Atkinson, First Nations people were reluctant to publicly criticise the senator for fear of a backlash from within their own community.\n\nThorpe says she is not concerned that other First Nations people may be wary of criticising her.\n\n“I’ve been given the mandate by my people to do what I do and say what I say,” she says.\n\nAtkinson was approached for comment.\n\nIt is not the only damaging misstep of the past 12 months. In December, Thorpe publicly apologised to Liberal Hollie Hughes after she was accused of saying “at least I keep my legs shut” during a Senate debate. She later wrote an open letter to Greens supporters to apologise to them for the remark, saying: “I must be part of the solution in the fight to change the culture in Parliament House.”\n\nUnmitigated blackness Aboriginal activist and Victoria University history professor Gary Foley says that criticism from conservative commentators is an indication that Thorpe is doing a good job.\n\n“I think she’s brilliant,” he says. “I think she’s doing all the things that her constituency – and when I say her constituency, I’m not talking about the Greens, I’m talking about the Aboriginal people of Victoria – she’s doing what they want her to do.”\n\nProf Chelsea Watego says Thorpe represents a kind of “unmitigated blackness” not often seen in Australian institutions.\n\n“Oftentimes in order to get entry into these particular places, these positions of power, one has to present as palatable, as conservative, as non-threatening, as moderate,” Watego says. “And she hasn’t done that, yet she is there.”\n\nWatego, a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman, is a professor of Indigenous health at the Queensland University of Technology. She is part of Thorpe’s second constituency: not a Victorian but a First Nations person who has not felt represented in parliament before.\n\n“She may be a member of a political party but it’s clear whose side she is on when it comes to issues facing our mob,” Watego says.\n\nWatego says this uncompromising presentation has made Thorpe a source of strength for her and other First Nations people, particularly First Nations women.\n\nStrength has also been drawn from moments that have been heavily criticised by sections of the mainstream media, to the point of calling Thorpe not fit to be in parliament, but widely circulated and celebrated on social media.\n\nMoments like referring to Queen Elizabeth II as a coloniser when making her oath of office in August; arguing that the federal government’s $20m copyright acquisition of the Aboriginal flag meant the symbol had been “colonised by the Australian government”; and calling for a republic following the Queen’s death.\n\nBut it would not matter, says Watego, if Thorpe changed her manner and stopped protesting.\n\n“Even if she was to be moderate, even if she was to adapt and change, she would still be despised by settlers,” Watego says. “There would still be people indignant that she dare occupy that space as a black woman.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "65990949539b781a4df6ade938fc19293ad0828d", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/46fc51d23ee491170e1544c6c11c4a227ae8ef90/0_128_3000_1800/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Queensland police discipline failures in ‘clear breach’ of workplace health and safety laws, says lawyer", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/queensland-police-discipline-failures-in-clear-breach-of-workplace-health-and-safety-laws-says-lawyer", | |
| "words": "891", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:47Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/46fc51d23ee491170e1544c6c11c4a227ae8ef90/0_128_3000_1800/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Ben Smee", | |
| "description": "Commissioner says not all officers have had a safe workplace as critics label complaints procedure a joke", | |
| "text": "The Queensland Police Service continues to employ frontline officers whose actions resulted in payouts worth millions of dollars to victims of bullying and harassment, Guardian Australia has learned.\n\nThe commission of inquiry into Queensland police responses to domestic violence has revealed dozens of instances where officers were found to have engaged in racism, sexism, misogyny and bullying. In many of these cases, officers were repeat offenders and not subject to disciplinary action.\n\nOn Friday, the QPS committed to re-examining an unknown number of these cases.\n\nEmployment law experts say the weak police discipline system and the ongoing employment of problematic officers have created “clear breaches of duty” under workplace health and safety laws, which require organisations to provide a safe environment for employees.\n\nGuardian Australia is aware of several recent cases where former officers made claims against the QPS for damages of more than $1m each, related to the actions of colleagues. Some are known repeat offenders, and remain on the job.\n\nIn one recent case, a female senior constable alleged she had to run from a patrol car, due to the aggressive behaviour of a male colleague. She sued for $1.1m and it is understood the case has settled out of court.\n\nGuardian Australia has confirmed the male officer was subject to prior complaint. He remains employed by the QPS in a frontline role.\n\nSusan Moriarty, a Brisbane lawyer specialising in workplace discrimination, said the failure to protect officers by removing problematic colleagues meant the QPS had “an extremely enhanced risk profile” for workplace health and safety complaints.\n\n“They have duties and obligations under the [law], and these instances are clear breaches of the duty they owned to eliminate all possible risks,” Moriarty said.\n\nShe said there was a “yawning disparity” between police discipline and processes in other public sector departments.\n\nA number of cases involving systemic bullying, harassment and misogyny were revealed at the inquiry to have been dealt with by “local management resolution” – a remedial discussion with a superior.\n\n“No matter how many times individual officers are named as stressors in these events they continue to maintain their careers,” Moriarty said.\n\nCommissioner Katarina Carroll said on Friday she believed “in the majority of cases” the QPS provided a safe workplace.\n\n“What’s been pointed out is that unfortunately in some places, that [safe workplace] has not been the case.\n\n“If it’s a failing under law it certainly has not been an intentional one. I think there’s a systems and processes issue here that I only became aware of and I intend to rectify that.”\n\nLongstanding concerns about policing of police Terry O’Gorman, a decades-long civil liberties advocate and barrister in Queensland, said the inquiry has not had enough time to properly scrutinise police discipline.\n\n“The evidence that has emerged shows that the long-discredited ‘managerial guidance’ complaints procedure is just a joke. It’s been a joke for ages and it remains a joke,” O’Gorman said.\n\n“Police regard it as being hit by a piece of wet lettuce.”\n\nThe Crime and Corruption Commission is supposed to have oversight of the police internal discipline system, but senior police have told the Guardian that advice from the corruption watchdog is usually marked “no outcome required” – meaning internal police investigators do not have to report back.\n\nGuardian Australia is also aware of cases where police Ethical Standards Command recommendations for disciplinary action were overturned by district-based police officers, who instead dealt with officers via “local management resolution”.\n\nO’Gorman said the Queensland Civil Liberties Council had longstanding concerns about the way the CCC spent too little of its resources looking at police misconduct.\n\n“It is time for the whole adequacy of the police complaints system to be fundamentally revisited.”\n\nOne of the recommendations of the Queensland Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce, which also called for the inquiry, was for the state to consider establishing a standalone law enforcement conduct commission, similar to the model in NSW.\n\nBad eggs and ‘fresh meat’ This week, the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, indicated vague support for the notion of a “no confidence” power that would give the police commissioner the ability to do what the discipline system struggles with: sack problematic cops.\n\nCarroll has said she wants disciplinary systems to allow “tough and decisive” action, and that she does not want problematic officers in the organisation. However, the influential Queensland Police Union opposes the commissioner having a no-confidence power.\n\nFurther media reports this week alleging that female recruits were told at the police academy they would be “fresh meat” for male officers were not surprising, many police said.\n\nThe reports reinforced concerns these are cultural problems throughout the entire organisation, and not just the actions of bad egg officers, as has been claimed by the police hierarchy and the union.\n\n“It has the potential to reinforce dysfunctional organisational norms of the kind we have heard about in the recent testimony of serving officers,” said Michael Pecic, a former police officer and the CEO of In Safe Hands, Educators in Safety.\n\n“In this particular case, we are talking about behaviours like sexual harassment … that appear to be tolerated and normalised within the QPS culture.\n\n“What is fundamentally missing in the first place is the education piece around identifying these behaviours, what to do to call it out, and then the processes for complaints and how they will be supported.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "35f00311dc4b35f44cbee2e91e49519642fcce6f", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c9f26cbaf61a4ad9d134d909ce017aa4974cae70/0_204_5130_3078/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Rethinking education: the programs for children too distressed to attend school", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/15/rethinking-education-the-programs-for-children-too-distressed-to-attend-school", | |
| "words": "2248", | |
| "section": "Education", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:47Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c9f26cbaf61a4ad9d134d909ce017aa4974cae70/0_204_5130_3078/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Sophie Black", | |
| "description": "For increasing numbers of families, school refusal is a crippling problem. But some programs are offering hope by thinking outside the box", | |
| "text": "As a year 10 coordinator in 2013, high school teacher Craig Hildebrand-Burke began to clock an increasing number of student absences at his school. As he began to contact families, he soon realised that school refusal was becoming “a major presenting issue” for the year 10 cohort at his co-ed Catholic high school in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.\n\nGenerally, he’d notice absences spiking around assessment time. “The pressure would pick up … and avoidance became the go-to strategy.” He would watch as students then struggled to “regain their footing and then it would quickly snowball into three, four days of time and then weeks”.\n\nAs the year level coordinator, Hildebrand-Burke would try to reassure his students. “We’d say ‘come in’ with no expectations, just to make contact again, to try to destigmatise the fear of being at school.” He’d emphasise that the school wouldn’t focus on the student’s results, instead telling them: “We just want you here.”\n\nThat approach worked roughly half the time. The school also brought in specialist psychologists who reaffirmed how crucial it was to work with students’ care workers towards a solution. Hildebrand-Burke would say to parents, “If you can get them to the school gate, we’ll look after them from there.”\n\nHe was acutely aware of the limitations of the strategy. He would see parents witnessing their children suffer from “headaches, nausea, all of the [symptoms of anxiety] that can look like illness, and certainly manifest as illness.” It left the parents stuck: they couldn’t send their kids to school “when there was clearly something leaving them feeling very anxious, and very sick”.\n\nHildebrand-Burke himself was becoming frustrated. “I was stuck in terms of whether I approached this as a disciplinary issue, or a wellbeing one,” he says. “It’s a very impossible position for teachers to be in. And I wasn’t trained in this stuff.”\n\nLike many teachers, Hildebrand-Burke was facing a phenomenon that he didn’t feel equipped to deal with. He also saw the beginnings of what could work to help kids who were too anxious to attend school, but ultimately he concluded that the actual design of school itself was stacked against his efforts. In 2018 he quit to study psychology full-time. Three years and a whole pandemic later, he returned to a different high school in Melbourne’s western suburbs, this time as a psychologist and education and developmental registrar.\n\nAs the rate of school refusal rises, he believes the experiences of students hold lessons not just for a rapidly growing cohort of kids across all ages, but for anyone interested in redesigning schools to help all students learn and adapt to a rapidly changing world.\n\nHildebrand-Burke is encouraged by how awareness around neurodivergence needs and an emphasis on wellbeing has increased in the last two years, but now it’s a matter of how quickly schools can catch up, and how capable they are of catering to a huge and growing need.\n\nRedesigning schools “Our models of schooling need a shake-up but what they could look like is the big question,” says Assoc Prof Lisa McKay-Brown, assistant dean of diversity and inclusion at the Melbourne graduate school of education, University of Melbourne, who oversees the In2School intervention program.\n\nIn2School was set up by the Melbourne graduate school of education, in conjunction with the Royal Children’s Hospital Mental Health and Travancore School, and is available to students aged 11 to 14 that have been school refusing for between three months and two years and have diagnoses of anxiety and/or mood disorders. It brings teachers and clinicians together for up to six months to assess, plan and implement needs-based, personalised programs for each young person at home, in the clinic and in the classroom.\n\nIf a student has been having attendance difficulties, a gradual re-orientation to the classroom setting is an important part of the return-to-school process. So a transitional classroom space can be a good option,” says McKay-Brown. “This means providing a space separate to where other students are learning so we can create a safe, contained environment. There is a focus on social-emotional engagement and a graduated return to school.”\n\nIn2School joins a growing list of programs, alternative, specialist and independent schools, school refusal clinics and a smattering of public schools around the country that cater to kids who have disengaged from school.\n\nAlmost all of their approaches share common traits such as small classes, an emphasis on student agency and environments designed with neurodiversity in mind.\n\n“School refusal is a dreadful experience for children and families. It is also a burden for society, especially increased health costs and reduced productivity – by parents having to withdraw from the workforce and by the children missing out on the learning and qualifications needed for future employment,” says Prof Kitty te Riele of the University of Tasmania, who is co-chair of Australian Association for Flexible and Inclusive Education (AAFIE). “There is both a moral and a financial imperative for governments to invest in genuine solutions.”\n\n“Alternative flexi schools can showcase really useful strategies that staff in mainstream schools can draw on,” says Te Riele.\n\n“Alternative settings often have the time and flexibility to place relationships at the centre. There can be a focus on connecting with every student and the smaller class sizes that you find in these settings can certainly support this,” McKay-Brown says. “There can be dedicated allied health, such as youth workers, who can provide outreach support to families. Teachers may have specialist skills for working with at-risk youth. While mainstream schools certainly focus on building relationships among members of the school community the pressure on academic outcomes and resourcing difficulties can mean that some students might miss out on this – particularly if there is sporadic attendance.”\n\nFunding students, systems and teachers These are not insignificant changes, and require more resources, says Te Riele. “Families and schools cannot do this on their own – support is also needed from education and health systems.”\n\nFunding is the first stumbling block. The Productivity Commission recently reported that Australia persistently falls short at providing a high quality and equitable education for all students.\n\n“The current national education funds distribution needs revision to equitably support a fee allocation to each student across the sectors – an allocated amount based on need,” says co-chair of Aaife Dale Murray, who’s also the director of education at Life Without Barriers, an organisation that provides and advocates for accessibility services for marginalised groups. “This allocation needs to consider increased support for wellbeing staff, neurodiversity and infrastructure development and upgrade.”\n\nTeachers play an obvious-but-crucial role in making kids feel safe, welcome and supported at school. But just like Hildebrand-Burke’s experience, “many teachers go into teaching because they care about children and young people, but the constraints of the ways in which our education system works sometimes make it hard for them to act on this in mainstream schools”, says Te Riele.\n\nResourcing, according to multiple sources, can make all the difference in mainstream settings.\n\n“Education systems can support schools to undertake their essential wellbeing work through increasing access to allied professional staff like youth workers, occupational therapists, and psychologists with appropriate trauma-informed practice skills and providing teachers and teacher assistants with professional learning to support their students’ wellbeing as well as their own,” says Te Riele.\n\nLearning from students Jennifer Griffith faced difficulties attending school from a very young age, even though she was told she was academically gifted and received good grades. Her parents attempted to alleviate the issues by moving schools a number of times. But Griffith’s anxiety and other mental health issues only intensified. “I became such a behavioural disturbance at school that in year 11 I was strongly recommended to leave.”\n\nGriffith, now 24, lived on the Central Coast of NSW, where there was “a grossly underfunded and unsupportive child and adolescent mental health service”. She was diagnosed with autism, but not until she was 19, and believes the lack of earlier diagnosis caused her mental health problems throughout her schooling.\n\nWhile she was struggling, she says, “the most helpful thing that the adults did for me when I was 15 or 16 was to take the pressure of the HSC off.” Griffith decided to go to Tafe. It’s “a significantly more supportive environment than high school, with smaller class sizes and learning things that particularly interest you and directly relate to the workforce. I began university before my peers even finished their HSC because I went to Tafe and transferred to online university without an Atar.”\n\nThose working in flexible schooling say it is critical for adults to listen and learn from students who find it hard to attend school. “Taking their experiences and views seriously is an essential starting point,” says Te Riele. “This should include their input not only on what the problem is, but also on strengths – such as what and how they enjoy learning, and how that could be part of returning to school.”\n\n“The young people that are in the In2School program speak about the importance of safe, supported and contained environments where they feel like they belong and have an identity,” says McKay-Brown. “They talk about social and academic pressures that impact their ability to attend. We need to understand the diversity of our students and how their own histories impact the ways they access education. The traditional ways of learning are not always fit for purpose any more.”\n\nFlipping the power dynamic Going beyond listening and working collaboratively with students to set goals is also a key component of flexible education settings, says Murray. They tend to “have a model of operation that repositions the power relationship between adults and young people”.\n\nAltering that power dynamic is a dramatic way of rethinking education and a teacher’s approach. And it’s not easy work, as Michael Scicluna can attest. He’s principal at Pavilion School’s Preston campus, a Victorian government school founded in 2007 to provide educational options for young people who have disengaged from mainstream education. The students that arrive at Pavilion have a “huge variation of presentations” says Scicluna. “Neurodiverse people, people in the youth justice system, people with a diagnosed disability, people with undiagnosed disability, people who have been bullied, people who have bullied.”\n\nEverything about the way Pavilion is designed, from its classes (groups of 15 students whose ages can range from 13 to 20 and who are allocated one teacher, one youth worker and one teacher assistant), to its environment (what the school dubs “quiet, calm and collaborative” and what materially manifests as aspects such as no lockers, no unattended corridors, no set recess or lunch), to every teacher’s approach is strikingly different from a standard school.\n\n“We are constantly asking: ‘What’s in the best interest of students?’,” says Scicluna. “Most schools will say they do that, but sometimes in the minutia of the work, it becomes about them.”\n\nPavilion school offers the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (years 10-12), youth work support, electives and extension activities as well as a bridging program for younger students. The Pathways program provides students a tailored transition into employment and further education and support from the wellbeing team, including counselling, mediation, restorative practices and health and wellbeing curriculum. It has grown from a group of 20 students in its first year to over 220 students, across two campuses. There are currently 70 students on the wait list.\n\nTo Scicluna, consistency of approach across teachers, and putting students at the centre of that, can make one of the most significant differences to any school. But it requires wholesale cultural change, and training in concepts like unconditional positive regard and restorative practices. And he admits it’s taxing work. “We never like to lose staff, but we love the idea of people taking their training out into a mainstream setting or a different setting so that they can hopefully start to influence thinking on a broader scale, to encourage people to repurpose or rethink education.”\n\nMeasures of success can be almost anything, from former student Hannah Gandy, who was the first Pavilion student to complete her VCE and is now currently completing a master of laws specialising in social justice at University College London as a 2022 Victorian Government John Monash Scholar, to “kids who are out working full-time.”\n\nSuccess is constantly redefined and questioned according to each student. “Are they in a better position than when they came? Can they sustain themselves in the world when they leave here?”\n\nSchools for students Pavilion seems to have interrogated and changed nearly all the aspects of school that so frustrated Hildebrand-Burke as a teacher , and still witnesses as a school psychologist trying to cater to his growing list of students. “Why are schools consistently aiming for a homogenous experience when it comes to stuff like uniform, gender roles or academic progress when everything we know about kids is that they don’t develop in a homogenous nature?”\n\nLately, Hildebrand-Burke has been grappling with these questions from the point of view of a parent. “My nine-year-old has ADHD and autism.”\n\nHildebrand-Burke says his daughter’s primary school has been very supportive, recently working in conjunction with a team of professionals who reaffirmed that “it’s not a case of changing the square to fit a round hole instead, how can the school change to ensure they fit better for her?”\n\n“If schools can start there … have that mindset for all individuals – how can we adjust to support them? That’s really what a place of learning should be about.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "9faad52ea01dfd2241d79b27c81573d884c728a6", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c750515509e6350c9246c025d9be01c15793806b/0_0_3000_1800/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Brittany Higgins: court hears how a dream job turned into the nightmare of alleged rape", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/brittany-higgins-court-hears-how-a-dream-job-turned-into-the-nightmare-of-alleged", | |
| "words": "1781", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c750515509e6350c9246c025d9be01c15793806b/0_0_3000_1800/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Christopher Knaus", | |
| "description": "Witnesses describe Higgins as ‘broken’ after the alleged rape in March 2019, to which Bruce Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty", | |
| "text": "In her final memory before blacking out, Brittany Higgins paused for a moment of reflection, she told those closest to her.\n\nFrom a window perched high among parliament’s labyrinthine network of office suites and hallways, she looked out over the prime minister’s courtyard, quiet in the early morning darkness of 23 March 2019.\n\nHer mother, Kelly Higgins, told court this week that her daughter remembered being struck by two feelings: happiness and pride.\n\nAll through high school and university, she had prepared herself for this career. She studied debating and public speaking, and volunteered for the Young Liberals, charting a path to reach Canberra’s halls of power.\n\n“She’s saying ‘I was looking out [the window]’ and … like this was her dream,” Kelly Higgins told the ACT supreme court this week.\n\n“This was everything she wanted and she just remembers feeling … proud and happy.\n\n“And then she passed out.”\n\nHiggins told her mother her next memory was of waking to find Bruce Lehrmann, a colleague and senior staffer in then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds’ office, on top of her, raping her on a couch opposite their boss’s desk.\n\nLehrmann has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent.\n\nIn evidence that was temporarily suppressed this week, friends, family and colleagues told the court they noticed a marked changed in Higgins’ demeanour after that night.\n\nThe “bubbly” and “happy” young woman, excited for her career in politics, became withdrawn.\n\nMultiple witnesses described her as “broken”.\n\n“It was like a light had turned off in her,” Ben Dillaway, a fellow Coalition staffer who had a close personal relationship with Higgins, said. “She was a broken, shattered person, I would say.”\n\nKelly Higgins said her daughter became unfamiliar to her.\n\n“She was just so frozen in what had happened to her,” she said.\n\nEarly hours in Parliament House Lehrmann, dressed in a navy suit and tan boots, has for the most part busied himself taking notes in a small black diary as his trial plays out.\n\nHe watched this week as multiple witnesses contradicted his evidence on the reason for going back to Parliament House in the early hours of the morning.\n\nIn his police interview in 2021, played to the court as part of the prosecution case, Lehrmann said he and Higgins had shared an Uber to parliament after a night of drinking, first at a pub on the Kingston foreshore, and then at 88mph, a club in Canberra’s CBD.\n\nHe told police he went back to the office to pick up his keys and do some work on question time briefs for the minister. Higgins, he said, had also needed to do some work, though he had no idea what.\n\nThey had been drinking but neither was heavily intoxicated, he told police. Lehrmann told police he didn’t continue drinking in parliament and had no alcohol available to him in the office.\n\nThe next week, Lehrmann was hauled into a meeting to explain the late-night visit to his then boss, Reynolds’ chief of staff Fiona Brown.\n\nAlso in the meeting was another Coalition figure, Reg Chamberlain, chief of staff to then special minister of state, Alex Hawke.\n\nThe Department of Parliamentary Services report recorded that Lehrmann had told security he and Higgins were there for urgent work purposes.\n\n“There was no urgent work purpose,” Brown told the court this week.\n\nBoth Brown and Chamberlain recalled Lehrmann telling them he had come back to parliament to drink whisky.\n\n“He said that he came back to the office to drink some whisky and I questioned that and said: ‘That seems a bit unusual to me, who comes back to the office to drink whisky?’” Brown said. “He said ‘people do it all the time’ and I said ‘it’s not something I’ve ever heard of’.”\n\nChamberlain told the court Lehrmann had never said he was there for work during the meeting with Brown.\n\n“He just said the purpose was to drink.”\n\nA former colleague of Lehrmann, who worked with him when Reynolds was assistant home affairs minister, told the court Lehrmann had previously had access to a “substantial” amount of alcohol.\n\n“He had quite a big range,” the colleague said. “There was spirits, there was whisky, there was wine.”\n\nLehrmann and Higgins entered Parliament House about 1.45am. A parliamentary security guard, Mark Fairweather, told the court he remembered Lehrmann leaving by himself at 2.33am.\n\nThe court heard Lehrmann seemed to be in a hurry.\n\n“I wanted to ask him about the lady,” Fairweather said. “I said ‘are you coming back?’ He just replied hastily ‘no’ and flicked the pass on to the desk.”\n\n“Before I could ask him anything more, he had left.”\n\nConcerned, the security team sent a female guard into Reynolds’ office to check on Higgins. The guard, Nikola Anderson, told the court she found Higgins lying naked on a couch.\n\n“As I’ve opened the door, I think the air from the door has made noise or whatnot,” Anderson told the court. “She’s opened her eyes, she’s looked at me, and then she’s proceeded to roll over into the foetal position, facing the desk.”\n\nThe aftermath Just hours after her alleged rape, about 4am, Higgins called Dillaway, a staffer who had worked with her in the office of Reynolds’ predecessor as defence industry minister, Steve Ciobo.\n\nThe pair were “very close” but were not officially together, the court heard. Dillaway missed the call but called her back as he drove to Orange from the Gold Coast.\n\n“It was I’d say a kind of strange conversation,” Dillaway told the court. “She seemed – I just sensed something was off straight away.”\n\nHe told the court Higgins had told him she and Lehrmann had been drinking the night before and had gone back to Reynolds’ office in Parliament House, something Dillaway found odd. He pressed her for more information, but she said she didn’t want to talk about it and ended the conversation.\n\nIn the days that followed, Higgins told Dillaway that she had been assaulted, he told the court. He said he flew to Canberra to support her.\n\n“I was basically kind of saying again, ‘So, you know, were you – were you raped?’ and again, she kind of broke down and I just remember her, you know, crying and, you know, really breaking down,” he said. “I kind of just had her in my arms and she was very much what I would say would be a broken person.”\n\nAfter seeking Higgins’ permission, he went to the prime minister’s office on 3 April, about 11 days after the alleged rape, to try to get more support for her. He said he spoke to Julian Leembruggen, an adviser to the prime minister.\n\n“This was at a stage where, from my recollection, she was struggling significantly, wasn’t coping very well with things,” he said, under cross-examination. “She’d tried to see a psychiatrist and the wait was two months or three months or something and I said, ‘Let me discreetly go speak to someone in the prime minister’s office because surely this can move things along, or surely this will get you the help you need’.”\n\nHiggins also told others, the court heard.\n\nChristopher Payne, a departmental officer who worked in Reynolds’ office in 2019, said Higgins told him “within a matter of days” that she had woken up to find Lehrmann on top of her.\n\n“She was very upset so I waited for her to regain her composure,” Payne told the court. “Once I had done that, I said to her … ‘Do you mind if I ask you a very direct question? Did he rape you?’”\n\n“And she said ‘I could not have consented, it would have been like fucking a log’, and at that point she was very upset again.”\n\nUnder cross-examination, Payne said he had learned that Higgins had been found in a “state of undress” in the office before she made the complaint of rape to him.\n\nHiggins told colleagues she was worried about her job and, despite initially speaking to police, decided not to pursue a complaint in 2019.\n\nHiggins has given evidence that she felt pressured into not pursuing the police complaint by Reynolds’ office.\n\nThat was disputed by Brown, her then chief of staff, who told the court she and Reynolds had offered Higgins their full support.\n\n“[Higgins] was concerned about how this might impact her career, and Senator Reynolds said there would be no impact to her career, and that she’d have powerful support,” Brown told the court.\n\nHiggins initially met two federal agents attached to Parliament House on 1 April 2019. The officers recalled that Higgins was rattled during the 30-minute interview.\n\n“She appeared very upset, visibly upset,” one officer told the court. “She was crying, she apologised for being upset.”\n\nThey also recalled Higgins saying she had already been to a doctor in the south of Canberra and was awaiting results. She gave the officers a date and location for the doctor she had visited.\n\nIn her 2021 interview, conducted after she reinstated her complaint, police notes record her telling detectives she had been to a medical centre in Kingston, Canberra, two weeks after the alleged rape.\n\nHiggins told the court that was wrong.\n\nNo record has been found of her visiting the doctor in the weeks after the alleged rape, the court has heard.\n\n“I wasn’t perfect,” she told the court.\n\nHiggins addresses her alleged rapist On Friday, for the first time during her evidence, Higgins spoke to her alleged rapist directly.\n\nShe had just resumed her evidence after being unavailable for much of the week, and was being cross-examined by Lehrmann’s barrister, Steven Whybrow.\n\nWhybrow repeatedly suggested to Higgins that she had made the complaint of rape only when she realised her dream job might be at risk due to the late-night visit to Parliament House.\n\nHe suggested Higgins had acted normally in the office – including in a “completely cordial and normal” email exchange with Lehrmann – in the days after 23 March.\n\n“It was me compartmentalising my trauma trying to do my job which I cared about more than, weirdly, my own life, which is fucked up, sorry,” Higgins said.\n\nHiggins said she had disclosed the alleged rape as soon as she had met Brown, her chief of staff, on the Tuesday, three days later.\n\nTurning to Lehrmann, sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom, Higgins said:\n\n“Up until then I was holding it in, holding it in, holding it in, pretending like everything was fine and it wasn’t,” she said.\n\n“Nothing was fine after what you did to me, nothing.”\n\nThe trial continues before the ACT supreme court justice, Lucy McCallum.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "d57bba7c9ea116684389927325868f59d578bf0e", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3f00e8122a2e2732a777f27a76f78de6f32dcb70/0_239_5472_3283/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Rising costs, insecure work and the stage-three tax cuts make Australia’s class system even starker", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/commentisfree/2022/oct/15/rising-costs-insecure-work-and-the-stage-three-tax-cuts-make-australias-class-system-even-starker", | |
| "words": "1006", | |
| "section": "Inequality", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3f00e8122a2e2732a777f27a76f78de6f32dcb70/0_239_5472_3283/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Sisonke Msimang", | |
| "description": "The sorts of long-term jobs we used to take for granted are now only available to a diminishing pool of established elites", | |
| "text": "A week ago, I was talking to a friend about the cost-of-living crisis. I mentioned that the last time I’d contemplated not filling the tank and just putting in enough petrol to get me through a few days, I’d been in uni. My friend smiled and said quietly, “those days have never ended for us.”\n\nI instantly felt embarrassed. Money is a blind-spot for a certain kind of middle-class person and here I was being that person, proving that lack of self-awareness is a luxury of the powerful. The conversation stayed with me because in part until recently I’ve rarely felt the need to talk about money as part of casual conversation.\n\nAs the cost of living rises and money is coming up more frequently, I’ve begun to realise that the category “middle class” is so broad that it doesn’t begin to explain the varied experiences of people who fall within it.\n\nFor years there have been three basic measures of social class: poor, middle class and wealthy. But a few years ago, a team of researchers from ANU developed at six-tier scale ranging from those living in precarity to those who are considered “established affluent” – what they describe as the closest thing Australia has to an aristocracy.\n\nI fit firmly into the established middle, which means that I have “slightly lower full-time employment rates compared with new workers,” but like others in my class, I am “more entrenched and comfortable in my social status.”\n\nUntil the recent cost of living increases, that has meant I can fill my petrol tank with reckless abandon because my solid university education and a lifetime of good financial habits have set me up to believe that I am immune to the pressures of the market. I’ve always credited my mum for this.\n\nWhen I got my first professional job 20 years ago, she sat me down and helped me split my first paycheck into three parts. The first portion went to my grandmother, to let her know (as is customary among many cultures) that I was grown up now and was now in a position to thank her and to contribute to her upkeep in old age.\n\nThe next portion went into my checking account and was for daily living and monthly bills. I was living at home, so my expenses were low.\n\nThe last third went into my savings account. The money in this account, she said, would ensure that if I ever needed to walk away from a terrible work situation or a bad relationship, I could. Over time I began to call it my “dignity fund”.\n\nAs an African woman who understood that hard work and discipline would never insulate her children from the ugliness of racism and sexism, my mother knew that I’d need a lifelong safety net, and it would have to be one that I could control. I remember her telling me that the money in this account was mine and mine alone. She had a lifelong marriage to my father, but she was smart enough to insist: “No husband or boyfriend should ever have access to this money.”\n\nThe more fundamental investment my mother made in ensuring that I was economically secure began when she taught me to read and write and insisted that I study hard. Research shows that in Australia, during recessions, the workers who lose their jobs first are those who are least educated.\n\nWhile she was right in many ways, the data makes it clear that I have also been the beneficiary of tremendous generational privilege. It turns out that my mother’s wisdom was contextual.\n\nToday, the advice she gave would only take my kids so far. My mother’s advice was predicated on the notion that I would have secure employment and that the job market would offer numerous options.\n\nAs the Victorian government’s 2021 submission to the Senate select committee on job security points out, in 2017 – for the first time since statistics have been collected – the proportion of employed Australians filling a standard job fell below 50%.\n\nThe implications are profound. The submission notes that “less than half of employed Australians now work in a permanent full-time paid position with basic entitlements (like sick pay and paid holidays)”. In addition, 72% of new jobs created since the lowest moment of the Covid-related economic downturn have no paid leave entitlements.\n\nThe kind of long-term secure employment I took for granted is only available to a diminishing number of young people – often the kinds of kids who belong to the aristocracy referred to in the ANU study on social class.\n\nFor other young people – like Chloe, a woman in her 20s who told me she has moved four times this year and her rent has gone up by $160 a week – doing it tough means living through multiple crises. She told me rising inflation “feels like a sucker punch.” It comes on the back of insecure work (she’s an arts worker who juggles multiple casual contracts) and is compounded by a lifting of the moratorium on rents that had been put in place by the WA government during Covid.\n\nHer whole cohort of friends have been affected.\n\nIn this environment, it is hard to see how the stage-three tax cuts will help anyone other than the established affluent – the aristocrats who control 40% of the economy and have never needed to think about how much petrol they put in their cars, how much rent they pay, or what strategies to put in place to buy themselves some dignity.\n\nThere has been much critiquing of the comfortable myth that Australia is a classless society over the past few years, but we are now in danger of those classes becoming even more deeply entrenched if we continue down a path of insecure work combined with a flattening of the tax system.\n\nSisonke Msimang is a Guardian Australia columnist. She is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018)\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "fa702ef4ff97c1ec2972c5455207edc66a8d3b31", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/358f1abaabfa611e6632d71e45b2cbdcf084afba/0_0_5445_3267/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "The Battleship Albanese is a paragon of calm but in the water lurks Dutton, looking for cracks in the armour", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/the-battleship-albanese-is-a-paragon-of-calm-but-in-the-water-lurks-dutton-looking-for-cracks-in-the-armour", | |
| "words": "1387", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/358f1abaabfa611e6632d71e45b2cbdcf084afba/0_0_5445_3267/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Katharine Murphy", | |
| "description": "The government has achieved commendable milestones already thanks to the PM’s reset strategy. If only it could last", | |
| "text": "At the start of every new government, prime ministers imagine themselves the tamers of chaos. They attempt to reset the operational tempo of politics. This process is invariably interesting because everybody has their own objectives and methodology.\n\nReaders with long memories will recall Tony Abbott coming to the job with a mantra of getting politics off the front page. This was always pretty ironic, given he’d unleashed pure bedlam to delegitimise Julia Gillard, the stoic, who had implored the media to not write crap. Abbott rode the pandemonium to the Lodge, but once unleashed, it proved impossible to subdue. Politics remained on the front page and his prime ministership was over in two years.\n\nMalcolm Turnbull swept in with a certain grandeur and an intention to restore adult, collegiate government, which allowed colleagues to get close enough to kill him. Scott Morrison thought he’d “take charge” after seizing command. This worked for a time but the voters got tired of hearing from a cosplay prime minister who stood for nothing, knew everything and refused to shut up.\n\nThe point of this recap is to explain why new prime ministers crave the reset; why they engage in the chaos taming. Governing has been borderline unmanageable in liberal democracies since digital technology upended the orderly habits of the analogue age. All prime ministers since Kevin Rudd have grappled with this phenomenon.\n\nEveryone in recent memory has come to the job with a mantra about how they are going to make things less crazy. Like a procession of control freaks or self-help gurus, Australian prime ministers have telegraphed their shibboleths. Starve the roiling political news cycle. Command it. This inane cacophony must stop. In the process, they’ve articulated parameters to fail against.\n\nAnthony Albanese is the sixth prime minister of Australia’s digital age. From him, we get tone not a mantra. He’s a shower not a teller.\n\nThis new government is going like the clappers. In only a few short months, they’ve assembled the nuts and bolts of round one on climate policy and have waded into round two; drafted the architecture for an anti-corruption commission; kicked off procedures to establish a voice to parliament; and circumnavigated the region 10 times to try win the influence race in the Indo-Pacific. There will be a budget in just over a week and another this financial year.\n\nInstitutionally, there’s an agenda and it’s being implemented like its five minutes to midnight. But Albanese floats on the surface, cruising like a battleship above a submerged frenzy of whole-of-government machinery. The prime minister is doing everything he can to look nonchalant. Calm. Perhaps even serene.\n\nIf you need the mind-focusing counterfactual to absorb this point, cast your mind back to Rudd, the first prime minister of Australia’s digital age. Ground zero dived head first into chaos, sprinting from process to programmatic specificity, galloping at a pace commensurate with his ambition to revolutionise Australia in a nanosecond. It was something, all that. But it wasn’t serene. Having visited 2007 to 2010, now bring your mind back to Albanese.\n\nThe prime minister appears before us regularly but he doesn’t zig and zag or impose himself forcefully on public consciousness. Like all prime ministers, Albanese lives by the Sun King mantra – l’etat c’est moi – but quietly. Let’s not fight. Let’s not fuss. Let’s keep it orderly. We can shout or sprint in private but let’s walk in public and do that as a group. The colleagues are as visible as the prime minister. This is a marked change from the presidential style that has dominated politics for the entirety of my reporting lifetime. Ministers carry their own briefs, both internally and externally, and that gives ballast to the whole exercise.\n\nThe components of Albanese’s reset strategy are easy to identify. Impose calm by projecting calm. Be the change you want to see in the world.\n\nCan it last? I suspect not because it’s hard to defy gravity. Stakeholders are playing nice now because they want to be part of the new thing and people are beyond relieved to see the back of Morrison. Colleagues are largely controlling themselves because so far so good, and success in politics begets success. Nobody wants to be the person who pulled on the thread that unravelled the becalming strategy.\n\nPerhaps Albanese is a magician. He’s certainly clever so I’m not ruling that out. But chaos is a tenacious and resilient adversary in politics. I can also see Peter Dutton conducting a deep-water surveillance mission underneath the hull of Albanese’s battleship, scanning for structural weaknesses.\n\nBefore anyone says “who cares?” – let’s be clear. It’s true the Coalition has fallen on hard times and over the past 48 hours things got really absurd, really quickly.\n\nEarlier this week, I read in the Australian Financial Review the Liberal party had launched the campaign to regain the “teal” seats it lost in the May wipeout. The opening sortie of this was the deputy Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, visiting the electorate of North Sydney and telling the locals who repudiated the Coalition “we see you, we hear you”. So far so good.\n\nUnfortunately for Ley, on the same day this fightback was unleashed, Dutton was raving about Labor’s plan to impose a “tax on cows” on 2GB. Just for the record, nobody in this country is contemplating a tax on cows but Labor is very likely to sign a global pledge to reduce emissions from one of the most potent greenhouse gases: methane.\n\nThe official transcript issued by Dutton’s office after the Liberal leader’s appearance on 2GB initially recorded the boss telling Ray Hadley the methane pledge was “attacks on cows”, which added comic piquancy to the proceedings. David Littleproud – a sensible person who periodically feels the need to zip himself into a Barnaby Joyce onesie – also declared the methane pledge (that voluntary, aspirational global goal signed by more than 120 countries) would end the Australian barbecue.\n\nGiven the Liberals have lost the electorates of Warringah, Mackellar, North Sydney, Wentworth, Goldstein, Kooyong, Curtin, Bennelong, Higgins and possibly Reid at least in part because of this kind of weaponised lying about climate action, it seemed counterproductive to unleash another instalment while poor old Ley was attempting a necessary gesture of inclusivity to the alienated heartland. But wiser heads than mine determine these forays, obviously.\n\nThe great cow tax offensive became even more ridiculous when the National Farmers Federation – which has been hostile historically to Australia signing the methane pledge – ignored the unhinged braying from Dutton and the Nationals and issued a statement saying it had secured specific undertakings from the government during the methane pledge consultations. Livestock emissions would not be taxed. Farmers would get help to change the diets of herds. The cow apocalypse found itself stranded in the remainder bin with the Whyalla wipeout, the $100 lamb roast and the war on the weekend.\n\nSo, yes, idiocy and partisan mendacity on a Wagnerian scale. But it would be naive to assume all this thrashing is purposeless. Australians certainly voted for climate action in May 2022. But Dutton continues to sense opportunity. Soaring energy prices – the most complicated element of the domestic inflation picture at the moment – can be sheeted home to the climate transition with some help from media friends. Dutton also thinks Labor’s ambitious Rewiring the Nation program – a plan to retool the power grid to integrate renewables – is a cock-up waiting to happen because of persistent capacity constraints, labour shortages and supply chain problems that can be spun as Labor’s managerial incompetence.\n\nDutton appears determined to wrest climate action out of the inevitability column and drag it back to where the Coalition has imprisoned this issue for a decade. Climate action is a threat. Labor will cock up the transition because Labor is incompetent.\n\nYou’d really hope the emphatic nature of the May election result would end the decade of vandalism. You’d think the Liberals would hear the message. But vandalism, like chaos, is persistent. As I said a minute ago, Dutton is down in the water, probing the underside of the Albanese battleship.\n\nDutton would be well placed to remember, though, that when it comes to underwater surveillance, there are two possible end points. Your torpedo splits the hull. Or, to borrow from TS Eliot, human voices wake you and you drown.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "869c93519b1986cc1ddd42e83d7b115ff427b5db", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c2884539b95352a5fa5bea91059024f2b7cf8931/0_461_7697_4619/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Fixed or variable? A look at how home loan rate options across Australia stack up", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/fixed-or-variable-a-look-at-how-home-loan-rate-options-across-australia-stack-up", | |
| "words": "839", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c2884539b95352a5fa5bea91059024f2b7cf8931/0_461_7697_4619/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Peter Hannam", | |
| "description": "After crunching the numbers, it’s clear that mortgage holders shouldn’t just do nothing, says RateCity’s head of research", | |
| "text": "To fix or not to fix? That is the question many mortgage holders will be asking themselves amid the fastest run-up in interest rates since 1994.\n\nThe Reserve Bank earlier this month raised its key interest rate 25 basis points to 2.6%, its highest level in nine years. The consensus is that more rate hikes are all but certain.\n\nHowever, with inflation still a threat at home and around the world, borrowers will be busy doing the sums: should I switch to a fixed rate if my loan is now at a variable one, to shield me from further increases?\n\nOr if I’m on a fixed rate that’s about to expire, should I expose my finances to the whims of variability?\n\nMarket watchers, of course, don’t offer advice except that borrowers tailor choices to meet their individual needs. They do, though, discourage a “do-nothing” stance, as competition tends to reward agility and penalise inertia when it comes to repayments.\n\nOne thing is clear: borrowers now taking out new loans overwhelmingly opt for variable over fixed rates.\n\nThe ratio was close to 50:50 during the pandemic but the fixed-rate share of 4% is now the lowest in 14 years, RateCity, a data provider, said.\n\nSally Tindall, the head of research at RateCity, said the appeal of variability over fixed-rates for new loans was simply a numerical one.\n\n“It’s really hard for people to sign up to a rate that starts with a ‘5’ or a ‘6’, even though when you do the maths, you know the logic tells you that their variable rate might get there,” Tindall said. By contrast, the lowest variable remains about 4%.\n\nTim Lawless, the head of research for CoreLogic, agrees, noting the current share of fixed-rate loans for new borrowings fell off a more normal level of about 15%.\n\n“Fixed mortgage rates are substantially more expensive than variable rates, with a difference of approximately 50 basis points between the average three-year-or-less fixed rate compared with the average variable rate for owner occupiers,” he said.\n\n“We are likely to see more borrowers choosing to fix their mortgage rates once fixed interest rates reduce to be closer or below the variable rate,” Lawless said.\n\nOutcomes will hinge, though, on where interest rates go from here.\n\nRateCity did some number crunching for Guardian Australia on refinancing a $500,000 loan to the lowest of each rate with a big four bank (average) compared with the lowest market rates overall. (Calculations include account switching costs, fees, cashbacks and cash rate changes.)\n\nTaking Westpac’s forecast for the RBA’s cash rate to peak at 3.6% by next March before sinking back to 2.6% in 2024, the lowest two-year fixed loan comes out only a fraction ahead. That gap, though, is solely because that cheapest deal comes with a $2,000 cashback offer for loans up to half a million dollars.\n\n“If you take out the cashback from the maths, the lowest variable works out better but by just a few dollars,” Tindall said.\n\nApplying CBA’s more dovish view of the RBA’s future moves, the calculations shift.\n\nThe biggest issuer of mortgages in Australia correctly picked the RBA’s 25 basis point move this month to 2.6%, and it expects another such rate rise next month to a peak of 2.85%. The CBA predicts the next RBA moves after that will be cuts of a quarter percentage point in August and November 2023.\n\nIn the latter case, opting for the variable rate over fixed and snaring the lowest one translates into savings of more than $5,400, according to RateCity.\n\n“The other thing that is clear is that people shouldn’t just ‘do nothing’,” Tindall said.\n\n“It is the worst of the options presented using the Westpac forecasts,” she added. “However, with CBA’s forecasts, the big four banks’ average two-year fixed rate is worse than doing nothing.”\n\nCoreLogic’s Lawless said variable rates at least help borrowers keep their options open. They may choose to refinance to a fixed rate “once there is more certainty about the level and timing of a peak in the tightening cycle”.\n\nAdelaide Timbrell, a senior economist for ANZ, said borrowers were typically making calculations on the advertised rates rather than a studied assessment of future economic trends.\n\n“The average borrower on housing in Australia is not necessarily making calls on what they expect interest rates to be in the future, rather they are choosing the cheapest current rate,” Timbrell said.\n\nGareth Aird, CBA’s head of economics, said: “Most borrowers don’t want to lock in a fixed rate as the fixed rates are higher than the floating rate.\n\n“I wouldn’t think about cuts at some point in the future as a sign of pessimism [about the economy],” he said. “Rather that, once inflation starts to come back to close to target, we don’t need a cash rate at such a restrictive setting.”\n\nAfter all, the RBA’s cash rate was just 0.75% before the pandemic or much less than the current level and what appears be a “neutral rate” of about 1.5%, Aird said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "4c6f3545b7bc5d56a0f187a4e0985759f2ab92b7", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0f1fd4de4ee53cab51b11777c16b923de6431746/0_0_6329_3800/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "‘It was unloved and used to mop up paint spills’: resurrecting a rejected Florence Broadhurst print", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/oct/15/it-was-unloved-and-used-to-mop-up-paint-spills-resurrecting-a-rejected-florence-broadhurst-print", | |
| "words": "399", | |
| "section": "Life and style", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0f1fd4de4ee53cab51b11777c16b923de6431746/0_0_6329_3800/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Brigid Delaney", | |
| "description": "In a new series sharing stories of the artwork in Australian homes, Clare Delaney shows the used drop sheet that’s been given a second chance in her lounge room", | |
| "text": "Ten years ago, when she turned 30, Clare Delaney was given a $250 gift voucher from her siblings to buy a piece of art.\n\nShe wandered into a shop in Sydney licensed to sell prints of the famed Australian painter and wallpaper and fabrics designer Florence Broadhurst.\n\nEverything was far above her price range. When Delaney asked if there was anything worth $250, the sales assistant said there might be something “out the back”.\n\nThe print out the back was a Broadhurst screenprint that had been used as a drop sheet for painting. It was covered in splashes, splotches, drips and drops.\n\n“It was a print that had gone wrong, that was lying out the back, unloved and now used to mop up paint spills.”\n\nBut Delaney “really liked the base of it. It’s a black and white Broadhurst print – and I loved the colours. It was really unusual. And the other thing I really liked about it was that no one else would have anything like it – because it was covered in paint!”\n\nShe bought the print for $250 and then had the canvas stretched and framed for $800.\n\nTen years later the piece still sits in Delaney’s lounge room; one of the few items to make it with her on a move from Sydney to Melbourne. “It reminds me where my home was – and particularly of my siblings,” she says.\n\n“The artwork really fits in with everything. I would characterise our furniture as fairly plain, accentuated by patterned accessories, and the colours in the art work accentuate that.”\n\nDelaney’s wife, Jane London, pipes in: “It’s clearly a fuck up and they’ve used it as a drop sheet. It’s clearly a used object but that’s why I love it.”\n\nDelaney counters: “The more I look at it, I wonder about all the other screen prints that were made on this drop sheet.”\n\n“Do you think the shop assistant was taking the piss when she sold you a dirty drop sheet?” London asks.\n\n“I don’t know, I really don’t know,” Delaney says. “I think she looked at it and thought: ‘Wow that’s really interesting.’”\n\n“I look back at their catalogue now of Broadhurst prints and think: ‘I don’t like any of that now.’ I am really glad I didn’t buy what I intended to buy. I love it even more than I did when I bought it.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "0fb685363a24fabb1dff9a934884a2907008bcad", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/e6347f97609e0565233ec114be11e636527a3c4a/0_354_3500_2100/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Intrigue and upsets on the menu as T20 World Cup begins in Australia", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/14/cricket-t20-world-cup-australia-intrigue-upsets", | |
| "words": "657", | |
| "section": "Sport", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/e6347f97609e0565233ec114be11e636527a3c4a/0_354_3500_2100/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Simon Burnton in Canberra", | |
| "description": "All the ingredients are in place for a spicy tournament as the battle to qualify for the Super 12 stage kicks off", | |
| "text": "Injuries, recoveries, surprising selections, awe-inspiring feats with bat, ball and in the field, on-pitch controversy and off-field scandal: as the world’s elite cricketers have gathered in Australia over the last couple of weeks all of these boxes have been ticked – and the T20 World Cup has not even started.\n\nThat changes on Sunday, when the action gets under way in somewhat understated style with a double-header in Geelong, where Namibia play Sri Lanka and then Netherlands face the UAE. Though Sri Lanka are a team on the rise, and recent winners of the Asia Cup, these are not exactly the kind of blockbuster fixtures that will grab the world’s attention, nor are they being played on one of Australia’s legendary grounds.\n\nOn Monday, while the second group of the opening phase – which includes West Indies, as well as Scotland, Ireland and Zimbabwe – begins in Tasmania, many cricket fans will be distracted by events in Brisbane, where the eight teams that have automatically qualified for the second round play each other in warm-up matches.\n\nThis, though, is the more intriguing group, particularly for British fans. Scotland start against West Indies, the overwhelming favourites, not that the prospect is likely to daunt them. They opened last year’s World Cup by playing the side generally considered the outstanding team in that group, beat Bangladesh and surfed into the Super 12s with a 100% record.\n\nBut there is one statistic that puts into focus the nature of the challenge facing the Scots: since Australia lifted the trophy in Dubai last November West Indies have played 24 T20 internationals, Ireland and Zimbabwe have played 22 and 16 respectively, and Scotland have played two. That is half as many as Botswana, a third of Vanuatu’s total and a fifth of Hong Kong’s. There were two unofficial warm-up games scheduled in Australia over the last week and they beat the Netherlands impressively in the first; but the second was rained off without a ball bowled on Thursday. They head into the tournament not so much undercooked as still a collection of raw ingredients.\n\n“We haven’t played a lot of T20 cricket as a group since last year’s World Cup but we know what we can do in this format,” their coach, Shane Burger, said as the rain fell in Melbourne. “I have faith that the guys are going to step up to the mark again when the tournament gets under way.”\n\nIreland’s preparation has been strong – India, New Zealand, South Africa and Afghanistan all visited over the summer and, though the first three left with 100% records, the Afghans were beaten 3-2. Despite the absence of their key bowler Craig Young, ruled out last week by the recurrence of a hip injury, a place in the Super 12s looks within their grasp. Motivation will certainly not be an issue, with memories still fresh of their failure to beat Namibia in their final group match which led to elimination.\n\nDespite the curious absence of Shimron Hetmyer, cut from the squad after failing to turn up for his flight to Australia, West Indies surely have enough quality to progress – as do Sri Lanka, by a margin the outstanding side in Group A. The Netherlands will aim to join them in the Super 12s despite the retirements of Ryan ten Doeschate and Pieter Seelaar. In their absence the Dutch have found a potential new leader in Bas de Leede, the 22-year-old batter who scored half-centuries in both T20s against New Zealand in August and 89 against Pakistan in an ODI.\n\nIf the rankings are accurate, Sri Lanka will top that group and join England, Australia, New Zealand and Afghanistan in the Super 12s while West Indies should win the second to move into the other pool. But should either of those sides come second, the result would be to tick another significant box and provide that crucial ingredient for any classic tournament: a group of death.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "5cf448b41130fad763c0fcc7f089cac77bcef518", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/53f61355b8aa407bdf34627c2c7976b712a953a0/958_1126_4216_2531/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Australians who’ve sworn off flying: ‘If you get on a plane, you’ve undone a year’s worth of good’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2022/oct/15/australians-whove-sworn-off-flying-if-you-get-on-a-plane-youve-undone-a-years-worth-of-good", | |
| "words": "1333", | |
| "section": "Travel", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/53f61355b8aa407bdf34627c2c7976b712a953a0/958_1126_4216_2531/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Katie Cunningham", | |
| "description": "Forgoing air travel is challenging in a country without convenient alternatives. But Australians who have stopped flying feel it’s a sacrifice proportionate to the climate crisis", | |
| "text": "After the bushfires of 2019, 38-year-old Clara* made a drastic decision: she swore off all air travel.\n\n“I had a two-year-old who was coughing up blood from all the smoke in the air in Canberra,” she recalls. “My morning routine was opening up the air quality app to see whether we could go outside that day.”\n\nClara, who does not want to use her real name because she feels it may threaten her employment, already did everything she could think of to reduce her climate impact: she composted, cut back on driving and tried to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible. But the bushfires clarified the need for “firmer” action. “I’ve got no choice left,” she remembers thinking. “I can’t do this any more for my kids. I can’t let them live in a world where they have to check an air-rating app before they go outside.”\n\nGoogling led her to an organisation called Flight Free, which encourages Australians to stop flying. Without consulting her husband – “which, in hindsight, probably would have been a good thing to do” – Clara signed up. She vowed not to step foot on an aeroplane for the next 10 years.\n\n“I just wanted to channel the rage, the anger and despair into something constructive.”\n\nClara is one of around 100 Australians who have taken Flight Free’s pledge to ditch air travel. Members can vow to quit flying for a year to test it out, or go all-in, boycotting air travel for the rest of their lives. Some, such as Clara, choose their own timeframe or tweak the pledge according to their circumstances. There is no one publicly holding pledgers to account; it’s a simple promise, made in an effort to tackle the escalating climate crisis.\n\nWhile Flight Free is a small organisation in Australia, the movement is far bigger abroad. The first Flight Free was founded in Sweden – also the country of origin for flygskam, or “flight-shaming” – in 2018. Globally, there are 10,000 pledgers across 62 countries, and Flight Free is one of many organisations calling on the public to fly less or not at all. Celebrities including Taylor Swift and Kylie Jenner have lately been taken to task for their egregious private jet usage, and in the UK there are growing calls to impose a frequent flyer levy.\n\nAlthough Flight Free has been operating in Australia since 2019, it’s no coincidence it has been slower to get off the ground domestically.\n\n“Because of our physical location on the planet and our lack of fast rail infrastructure, it is a big challenge,” admits Mark Carter, co-founder of Flight Free Australia. “Unlike in Europe, there’s not really the convenient alternatives to flying here.”\n\nCarter hopes Flight Free Australia will encourage more people to cut down on their air travel and potentially help to push future regulatory change. As well as collecting pledgers like Clara, Flight Free Australia does a “mixed bag” of anti-aviation lobbying work and seeks to raise public awareness of the industry’s emissions contributions.\n\nSo, how to quit flying in an island nation where major hubs are separated by thousands of kilometres and many remote areas are not accessible by land for parts of the year? “There’s not any quick or easy answer,” Carter says. But he believes extreme circumstances require extreme responses.\n\n“The climate emergency puts us in a non-normal kind of world,” Carter says. “Being in an abnormal situation means we need to do things differently.” He likens inaction to watching TV while one’s house is burning down. “It’s that way of looking at it.”\n\nMelbourne-based Flight Free pledger Peter Miller sees things similarly. He knows Carter “quite well” and their conversations convinced him to join the movement.\n\n“I think that going on holiday is not justifiable if it’s going to cause that much damage,” Miller says. “To go for holiday to Fiji and emit all that carbon, to sit alone on a beach and have a drink just seems a little bit preposterous to me.”\n\nMiller and his wife have both pledged off flying for the rest of their lives, though they may choose to travel if a loved one dies abroad, or similar “serious” circumstances. It’s been both an easy and difficult decision for the couple, both 64, to make.\n\nOn the one hand, Miller has had the privilege of travelling earlier in his life. But now that he is approaching retirement, the pledge means his golden years will look quite different from what he once imagined.\n\n“It’s a fairly large impact on how we had thought we would be living at this point in time. But nevertheless, we feel very strongly about it.”\n\nInstead of visiting Europe (“which would be nice,” Miller says), he and his wife are holidaying domestically, exploring the vast swathes of Australia they’ve not yet seen. The pair have already taken a couple of trips to Tasmania on the overnight ferry – a “little bit of an inconvenience” compared with the 75-minute flight, but not too onerous.\n\n“If you spend a lot of your time trying to minimise your carbon by adding solar power or having electric cars or any of those things, that’s all well and good,” Miller says. “But if you then get on a plane and travel to London, you’ve just undone a year’s worth of good.”\n\nTim Ryley, a professor of aviation at Griffith University, agrees that at an individual level, quitting flying is the most impactful thing we can do to reduce our carbon footprint.\n\nWhile aviation is a small percentage of Australia’s total carbon emissions (energy production is far and away the highest), “it’s harder to reduce than just about any other emission,” Ryley says.\n\nPower can go solar, fuel-guzzling cars can be traded for EVs and beef patties can be swapped for lentil burgers, but there is currently no way to fly without causing an environmental impact. (Even airline CEOs concede offsets are “a fig leaf”.)\n\nHowever, Ryley believes an Australia without planes as an unrealistic prospect. “Aviation is clearly not environmentally sustainable, but it is economically and socially sustainable,” he says. “It does help economically – cargo, that side of aviation, tends be ignored. Even if everyone stopped flying individually, you’d still get businesses delivering stuff from abroad.”\n\nLife without flying also poses “the social challenges of people having family internationally, as well as across Australia”, Ryley says. While the environmental case has merit, “the demand and interest in flying, particularly in a post-Covid world, probably trumps that at the moment”.\n\nThe pandemic made the first couple of years of Clara’s pledge relatively easy, but she is aware the choices will get harder from now on. Already the decision to swear off air travel has come with some sacrifice. To avoid the need for interstate business trips, Clara has actively looked for roles that don’t require travel.\n\nBoth her and her husband’s parents live interstate, so a visit to the grandparents means a long drive, not a short flight. Clara’s husband would like to take the kids on a skiing holiday to Japan at some point, but that’s out of the question unless they can take months off work and go by boat, a prospect they have not ruled out.\n\nAll this makes Clara question whether she is doing right by her children.\n\n“I do wonder, ‘Oh goodness, are my children going to be deprived because I’m making this decision for them?’ But then I counter that by thinking ‘Well, what are they going to be more angry about – the fact that they missed out going to Japan for a skiing holiday, or the fact that they have to live on a planet where they can’t actually breathe any more?’” Ultimately she wants to know “I did everything in my power to make things as least bad for them as I possibly could.”\n\nBesides, Clara says, “My parents lived the bulk of their lives without ever stepping foot on a plane and had perfectly happy childhoods.”\n\n*Name has been changed\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "c9860e6e515423532147c908139f2e744416c111", | |
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| "title": "Trent Robinson: Australian at heart of France’s rugby league renaissance", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/15/trent-robinson-the-australian-at-the-heart-of-a-french-rugby-league-renaissance", | |
| "words": "851", | |
| "section": "Sport", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/6b4205c3e78d7d5d1f108136673942280943e668/0_252_5768_3461/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Nick Tedeschi", | |
| "description": "The Sydney Roosters coach has a deep affection for France, the country that changed the course of his life", | |
| "text": "The changing nature of international rugby league might have centred on the rise of the Pacific nations but, while a French renaissance has not garnered the same levels of newsprint, the game in France is also very much on an upward trajectory.\n\nFrance will host the 2025 World Cup and this Chanticleers outfit shapes as one of the strongest French sides of the last 50 years.\n\nThe man charged with leading that revival is astute Sydney Roosters coach Trent Robinson, who has taken on the important director of rugby position. Luc Lacoste and the French Rugby League could not have tapped a more qualified person than the three-time NRL premiership winner, who has not only a history with the French game but a deep affection for the country.\n\n“France changed the course of my life,” Robinson says. “I went there and played and then had a bold president who gave me a [head coaching] job at 28 at Toulouse. Then Bernard Guasch gave me a Super League job at 33. It changed the course of my life as far as football goes but I also met my partner there and my kids are half French.”\n\nThere is a great deal of excitement about the French squad for this World Cup; it is a young team that has been building since Robinson came on board. The focus has been about creating a platform that can sustain an identity and a style from the national team down.\n\n“Setting up a professional environment has been really important,” Robinson says. “Even a year ago, Catalans and Toulouse were more professional than the French team. Changing the attitudes has been important, ensuring that when you come into the national team you realise this is the pinnacle of French rugby league.\n\n“It’s about putting systems in place that are going to last for the duration. That’s the goal of what we are trying to do. We want to play a certain style and a style that can be continued game on game.\n\n“These guys are incredibly professional. They are as good a group as I’ve been involved with in terms of their application to training, their life around training and how they prepare. Now it’s about getting those top-end decisions in big games nailed.”\n\nThe talent in the French team may not have a lot of name-appeal to southern hemisphere audiences but that may soon change according to Robinson, who says French players are not far away from playing at NRL level.\n\n“The first progression is being a top decision-maker in your club team in Super League,” Robinson says. “Then we can see them starting to push for NRL spots.”\n\nYoung halves pairing Arthur Mourgue and César Rougé are expected to be the centrepieces of Les Chanticleers for years to come.\n\n“Mourgue is going well and is developing nicely as a decision-maker while César Rougé has just turned 20,” Robinson says. “Those two halves are really key and it is important we spend time with them.”\n\nRobinson is taking a big picture view of his role and what he hopes to achieve between now and the next World Cup to ensure France are at their strongest when given a platform to shine on home turf. That includes empowering younger players and building a program that has them playing more Tests.\n\n“It’s more a medium-to-long term role rather than the short-term role of the coach,” Robinson says. “When Laurent [Frayssinous] got the job as the head coach, they were looking for a director of rugby to assist him in getting it set up. This included working towards the [World Cup] bid and what will be the World Cup in 2025.”\n\nThe importance of the tournament returning to France cannot be understated, particularly given the challenges overcome – from the outlawing of the game and the seizing of the its assets during the second world war to the code not being allowed to use the word rugby until 1991 and the violence that has consistently undermined any efforts to grow.\n\n“This is of huge significance to the game in France,” Robinson says. “It’s a platform for recognition and understanding of our sport in the wider community. It needs to be used as a platform for improvement in television coverage, in sponsorship, in growing the game.\n\n“We’ve talked about the [Fifa] World Cup in America and what that did for the teams and the elevation of clubs. It is about the French team, it is about the World Cup but it’s also about developing the game in France and accelerating its growth.”\n\nFinding a wider audience is also critical for growth, as the absence of TV coverage has impacted the game at all levels in France.\n\n“The big thing is that rugby league is recognised but because it doesn’t have a television platform it is known, but not followed,” Robinson says. “So you end up swimming in the same pool where it gets passed down from generation to generation but it doesn’t get expanded through new players or big large new groups of followers because we don’t have that platform.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "5e0d73b5c24fa7a4b2fa6664ae94e74ef58d3cfd", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/33eacb353210ed06f6052756f6c6805b30760e65/878_1732_3707_2224/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "NSW unions to declare start of new six-month campaign to remove Coalition government", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/nsw-unions-to-declare-start-of-new-six-month-campaign-to-remove-perrottet-coalition-government", | |
| "words": "476", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/33eacb353210ed06f6052756f6c6805b30760e65/878_1732_3707_2224/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Tamsin Rose", | |
| "description": "Unions NSW to release survey results suggesting voters believe healthcare and transport are worsening", | |
| "text": "Unions in New South Wales will declare the beginning of a six-month campaign to remove Dominic Perrottet’s coalition from government, releasing the results of a survey suggesting voters believe hospitals, ambulance services and public transport are deteriorating.\n\nThe Unions NSW secretary, Mark Morey, will tell the state Labor conference on Saturday that the state public sector is on the verge of a “mass resignation” and a new government needs to be elected in March to improve critical services including health and education.\n\nThe rallying speech will be given as a YouGov poll of 2,797 NSW voters, commissioned by Unions NSW, found more than half of respondents thought public hospitals were getting worse, with about three-quarters of those respondents blaming the state government.\n\nThe survey also revealed more than 40% of respondents believed public transport was getting worse and 75% of them blamed that on the government. Almost half of respondents said they felt the ambulance service was worsening and a majority of people blamed it on the government.\n\nSign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup\n\nUnions and the Perrottet government have been at war since the start of the year over conditions and the public sector wage cap that unions argue represents a real wages cut as inflation continues to worsen.\n\nTeachers and nurses have repeatedly gone on strike and rail workers have engaged in multiple rounds of industrial action and strikes, which the government has called a conspiracy with Labor to wreak havoc until the 2023 election.\n\nMorey will tell the conference of a “conspiracy” – one to lift wages, make workplaces safer and provide better schooling and healthcare.\n\n“That’s the conspiracy, and will we be fighting for it all the way to the state election? You bloody bet we will,” he will tell the conference.\n\n“Unions NSW and the broader movement are now on a campaign footing. There’s no corner of the state that won’t hear our message.”\n\nMorey will also compare the premier with former prime minister John Howard and his WorkChoices changes, which unions at the time argued had worsened workers’ conditions and rights.\n\n“[Perrottet] knows his wages policy is shrinking the take-home pay of paramedics, cleaners, firefighters, teachers – the very workers who risked … their lives to get us through the pandemic,” he will say.\n\n“We’re on the verge of a mass resignation … The public knows it. Across all major areas of essential services, confidence is collapsing.”\n\nThe opposition leader, Chris Minns, is this weekend also expected to announce a suite of policies that he plans to present to the people of NSW ahead of the election.\n\nA YouGov survey of 2,893 public sector employees released last week found more than a quarter were or had considered moving interstate for work and 62% were considering leaving the public sector within five years.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Return to Uluru: ending the unfinished business that began with a 1934 police shooting", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/14/return-to-uluru-ending-the-unfinished-business-that-began-with-a-1934-police-shooting", | |
| "words": "1538", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/dbc71a16b477707d14be1ac14da8990df42b4b20/0_594_7920_4755/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Lorena Allam Photography Dean Sewell", | |
| "description": "Ninety years after Pitjantjatjara man Yukun was killed by police and his remains sent to museums in Adelaide, he is finally laid to rest ", | |
| "text": "On the day Yukun was returned to Uluru, his descendants leapt into the deep, narrow grave to help ease him to rest as their elders looked on, weeping.\n\nThe ceremony, at the base of the rock on an unusually cold and rainy morning, helped ease the pain of almost 90 years of unfinished business that began with a Northern Territory police shooting in 1934.\n\nThe Pitjantjatjara men in the grave were Yukun’s great nephews and great-grandsons, some of whom had only recently learned that after Yukun was killed by police, his remains were exhumed and taken away to institutions in Adelaide. On Thursday, they interred a small box containing Yukun’s skull, which is all that the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum could find of him, despite a long forensic search.\n\nSome of Yukun’s families had travelled 470km from their community of Areyonga (Utju) to receive his remains, in a deeply moving ceremony.\n\n“We are really, really sad and upset. That part of history is really cruel and sad for us,” Joy Kuniya, Yukun’s great-niece, says. “Some people will carry it on for ever. We feel it really deeply.\n\n“The policeman came with his gun, with a weapon, and shot him in cold blood.”\n\nIn 1934, mounted constable Bill McKinnon was sent to find the men who had killed an Aboriginal stockman at Mount Conner, in central Australia. Travelling west, McKinnon and his Aboriginal trackers, Paddy and Carbine, came across a group of men hunting, and arrested them. There was a violent interrogation. They were chained and beaten. Confessions were extracted. After about a week the men escaped, and Yukun was shot.\n\nTwo of the men were recaptured, eventually spending 10 years in jail for murder. But four others, including a badly wounded Yukun, headed for the sanctuary of Uluru. The police trackers, following his blood trail, eventually found him in a cave about 40 metres up in the rock, near the Mutitjulu waterhole.\n\nMcKinnon told a subsequent commonwealth inquiry he fired into the cave without taking aim at Yukun. He said Yukun died from his wounds several hours later and they buried him there.\n\nThe inquiry exonerated McKinnon but expressed concern about his harsh methods. They exhumed Yukun’s remains and one member, Dr JB Cleland, took the body to Adelaide. At some point over the years, Yukun was sent to the University of Adelaide and later the South Australian Museum.\n\nAṉangu (the word for people in Pitjantjatjara) held a very different story.\n\nJoseph Donald was among the men chased by McKinnon, and was the only eyewitness. One day at Docker River in 1986, Donald told film-maker David Batty what had happened when they got to Uluru:\n\n“We came over a rock and saw our friend who had been shot by those bad men. A 44 bullet went through his chest and tore at his side … He walked towards us. We got him by the arm, poor bugger. We put him in a cave to look after him. He was my brother-in-law. We have the same grandfather.\n\n“I could see the policeman, McKinnon. He got out his rifle and loaded it. Then he fired it at me. He missed me. Then he fired again. I looked up and saw all the rocks rolling down towards me. Then McKinnon started running towards me with two rifles. I was sitting there wondering what to do. Shall I go down? So I jumped down and landed on the sand. I stood up and saw the police running towards me.”\n\nDonald says he hid and held his breath.\n\n“The policemen went into the cave. They found the one who had been shot [Yukun]. They grabbed him by the arm and brought him outside. They asked my brother-in-law [Yukun], where are the other three? My brother-in-law didn’t tell the police where the others were, so they shot him. The police shot him in front of me.”\n\nOther men who survived the attack, including senior traditional owner Paddy Uluru, fled the area and did not return for years, for fear of being killed by McKinnon. When Paddy returned in the 1950s, he brought his young sons Cassidy and Reggie with him, and they saw the rock – their birthright – for the first time.\n\nNow in their 80s, Cassidy and Reggie are in the Mutitjulu aged care home, where Reggie vividly remembers the story his father told him – that they were travelling and hunting when the police came and assumed they were “the ones who made the trouble”.\n\n“They didn’t understand English, they didn’t know what the tracker was saying, they didn’t know what was going on. That tracker kept telling them, pushing them to tell the ‘truth’, that they were part of the trouble group,” Reggie Uluru says. “But the policeman decided to blame them and started to arrest them on the day. They knew he was a bad man, he was a rough man, he had that tracker [Tracker Paddy] with him, he was a bad man too.”\n\nThe story is deftly told by historian Mark McKenna in his 2021 book, Return to Uluru. Bringing together the threads of these many histories, McKenna also uncovered crucial new evidence that corroborated the stories long told by Aṉangu – tucked away in a Brisbane garage.\n\nMcKenna had made contact with McKinnon’s daughter Susan, who generously gave him access to her father’s papers. The policeman had been a meticulous record-keeper. At the bottom of one trunk, McKenna found a journal in which McKinnon admitted he had “fired to hit” Yukun, a different story to the one he had told the board of inquiry in 1935.\n\nIn 2019, McKenna asked the South Australian institutions to search for Yukun’s remains. Since then, he has met families and uncovered more detail.\n\nOn the day of Yukun’s burial, he walks down the path to the Mutitjulu waterhole among the descendants of McKinnon and the descendants of Yukun, thinking about how “rare and extraordinary” it is that the book has led them all here.\n\n“To be here again, the third time now, is overwhelming, the significance of the whole story for the families, first and foremost, but also its just incredible for me as a historian and a writer to be able to follow this right thought to this moment,” he says. “And I keep feeling that the whole thing is just bigger than all of us. Trying to take it all in is really going to take some time.”\n\nAs well as Yukun himself, there has been a repatriation of knowledge, which has been essential for helping families come to terms with their histories, answer questions and resolve doubts they have been carrying for decades.\n\nAt Areyonga, a few days before the ceremony, Hilda Bert cried when she said her mother told her a story about Yukun, a story that she didn’t quite believe.\n\nFor almost 30 years Hilda says, she doubted her mother. She was “shocked” when she read Mark’s book and realised her mother had been telling the truth all along.\n\n“Mum told me the story of how her father speared Tracker Paddy as payback for what he did to Aṉangu. She knew what happened at Uluru. I thought she was making up stories,” Bert says. “It makes me cry just thinking about it.\n\n“I knew that story all this time. Mum knew. Her father told her what happened to him. I was shocked because my mother told me that story when I was young and I kept it secret all these years.”\n\nIn the lead up to the repatriation this week, many other strands of the story have been brought together, telling a complex history that has resonated in a deeply personal way for hundreds of people, from the direct descendants of Yukun and the other men who fled McKinnon, to the policeman’s own descendants who made their first visit to Uluru – to pay their respects at the service.\n\nThis is truth-telling, unfolding in real time.\n\nMcKinnon’s brother’s grandsons, Alistair and Ross McKinnon, and Alistair’s wife, Ruth, stood quietly at the back as the ceremony unfolded, at times visibly moved. Along with Aṉangu mourners they filed past the small casket at the beginning of the service and again at the end, to toss a handful of red earth into the grave.\n\nThe McKinnons made the trek because “it was the least we could do”, Alistair McKinnon says. They were “overwhelmed” by the moment, and the generosity they had received from Aṉangu present.\n\n“We were unsure how it would go,” Ruth says, “but they were so generous. We are so glad we came.”\n\nUnplanned, at the end of the service a steady stream of Yukun’s relatives came to meet them. There were handshakes and hugs. “Palya,” they said. “God bless you. Thank you for coming.”\n\nBut the story is not finished. Aṉangu are thinking about how they will mark the site. Descendants are thinking about future meetings.\n\n“We got to teach our children,” Paddy Uluru’s son Sammy Wilson told the gathering.\n\n“We got to bring our generations here, to learn, to understand what happened here.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "7e0f97297d343226a7a28df6f93a515ce0352c60", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/60dabec36010367d486672e9c7ed70cf5f914cc4/0_146_1253_752/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Potty prices: Sydney studio apartment with toilet in kitchen on market for $520 a week", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/potty-prices-sydney-studio-apartment-with-toilet-in-kitchen-on-market-for-520-a-week", | |
| "words": "371", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/60dabec36010367d486672e9c7ed70cf5f914cc4/0_146_1253_752/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Mostafa Rachwani", | |
| "description": "Weekly rent on this ‘room with a poo’ is up $140 since 2020, a reflection of Australia’s rental crisis", | |
| "text": "If you ever needed proof Sydney’s rental market is completely insane, here it is. This tiny apartment – previously dubbed a “room with a poo” – is currently listed for $520 a week.\n\nThe studio, in the inner Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, redefines open plan living with its bright red tiling in the kitchen, a polkadot couch, and a toilet – all in the same space.\n\nOnly a set of semi-frosted glass doors separate the kitchen from the “throne room”. In this apartment, your business becomes everybody’s business.\n\nAccording to the listing agent, the space is “chic” and the perfect bolthole for someone who “craves simplicity”.\n\n“Simplicity is not simple in Surry Hills,” the marketing guff reads. The flat features an “immaculate Italian designer tiled bathroom” and is situated in a “vibrant” suburb.\n\nThe real estate agent managing the listing did not respond to a request for comment.\n\nSign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup\n\nThe studio was previously listed in 2020 for $380 – the additional $140 demanded a reflection of the city’s rapidly rising rents. CoreLogic’s quarterly rental review for the third quarter of 2022 showed the median rent in Sydney had grown by 10.3% over the past 12 months.\n\nWith vacancy rates sitting at a national record of only 1.3%, demand is expected to remain high. Kaytlin Ezzy, a research analyst at CoreLogic, said there had been an “unprecedented” growth in the market in recent years.\n\n“We saw rents fall marginally over the first few months of Covid, but, since August 2020, national dwelling rents have surged almost 20%, equivalent to a weekly rent rise of approximately $90 a week.”\n\n“Initially driven by a reduction in the average household size, the continued upswing in values is likely now predominantly being driven by the strong return of overseas migration, coupled with extremely tight rental supply.”\n\nThe report showed that Sydney had overtaken Canberra as the most expensive unit rental market, with median prices sitting at $594 a week.\n\nMelbourne remains Australia’s most affordable capital to rent a house in, with median prices sitting at $518 a week, while Adelaide is the most affordable city to rent a unit in at $423 a week.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "43e56705fba44c4512c0ec8142a857b9f0888ee9", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/ee824db0a747b84410f5721cdd22b11f3783d5f1/271_438_4016_2409/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Budget management in a time of big-spending Victorian election campaign promises", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/budget-management-in-a-time-of-big-spending-victorian-election-campaign-promises", | |
| "words": "734", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/ee824db0a747b84410f5721cdd22b11f3783d5f1/271_438_4016_2409/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Benita Kolovos", | |
| "description": "Coalition has pledged $19bn more than the government, while claiming it is the better economic manager", | |
| "text": "For decades, the Victorian Coalition has traded on the idea that it is a better economic manager than Labor. Which makes it surprising to see it has so far pledged $19bn more than the government on election promises, while simultaneously vowing to bring “wasteful spending under control”.\n\nThe Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), which tallies political parties’ election commitments ahead of the November election, shows at the time of writing the opposition has announced 216 promises, of which 165 are funded, at a cost of $24bn.\n\nThis includes commitments within the past week to cap the daily fare of public transport in Melbourne at $2 and halve regional fares. Experts have raised concerns about the viability of the plan but it was well received by voters struggling with cost of living pressures, which has left some in Labor’s ranks rattled.\n\nAccording to the PBO, the $2 public transport cap will cost $1.3bn over four years, while the estimated cost of halving regional fares was not disclosed by the opposition.\n\nThe opposition maintains both commitments will be paid for by reining in “Daniel Andrews’ spiralling debt and wasteful spending”, under “stage one” of the Coalition’s “long-term economic plan”.\n\nThe plan includes a legislated debt cap to prohibit any future government from exceeding the limit without parliamentary approval.\n\nThe shadow treasurer, David Davis, is yet to specify what the limit will be, arguing he needs a clearer sense of the state’s financial position to do so.\n\nSign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup\n\nThe plan includes the opposition’s commitment to shelve the $34.5bn Suburban Rail Loop project to pay for new and upgraded hospitals (though less than $10bn is freed up by doing so) and a comprehensive audit of Labor’s major projects.\n\n“Our debt cap will bring wasteful spending under control. There will be no new taxes. There will be no cuts – the only cuts will be to Labor’s wasteful spending,” the Liberals said earlier this month.\n\nDavis has warned, as recently as Friday after the release of treasury’s annual financial report, that the state’s predicted net debt of $167.5bn by 2025-26 will “exceed that of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania combined”.\n\nThis is equivalent to about 7% of total revenue, the highest proportion since the mid-1990s when it hit 14%.\n\nAt the time, the state’s precarious economic situation led the then premier, Jeff Kennett, to embark upon an austerity program that involved cutting more than 45,000 public service jobs, the closure of hundreds of schools and hospitals and the privatisation of billions of dollars worth of public assets.\n\nBut David Hayward, an emeritus professor of public policy and the social economy at RMIT University, says that’s “no comparison” to the current economy and “no justification for panic”.\n\n“There’s no reason for people to become obsessed with the state’s debt. It’s time the analysis shifted from debt to looking at the assets the government has accrued or how it has used that money,” Hayward says.\n\nHe says about two-thirds of Victoria’s debt was incurred during the pandemic, to prepare the health system and support jobs and businesses.\n\n“I don’t think anybody would argue that it would have been better not to have had that health investment. People would have died,” Hayward says. “As for the infrastructure spend, think about all the assets that have been built up as a result.”\n\nFriday’s annual financial report showed the state’s 2021-22 deficit was $13.8bn, an improvement of $3.8bn from when the budget was handed down in May.\n\nThe treasurer, Tim Pallas, credits this to lower than forecast demand for Covid testing and PPE, and an additional $1.2bn in revenue as the economy bounced back.\n\nNet debt was just under $100bn, equivalent to about 19.4% of the state’s economy, $2bn lower than the budget estimate.\n\nAs for election commitments, Labor has made 31, all of which are funded, at a cost of $5bn.\n\nHowever, the election commitment tracker doesn’t take into account government announcements, which means projects such as the $6bn new medical precinct and upgrades to the Royal Melbourne and Royal Women’s hospitals, are not included in the tally, despite the important role they will play in Andrews’ campaign for a third term in office.\n\nAs the campaign begins to ramp up and more promises are made, how each party spruiks their economic management credentials will be interesting to watch.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "2e002f79d359e886e70b9fb1a2c0a19dc72a87d3", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0b5a4eefb161b6c64df39b99e4832a7974dc21f0/0_139_6720_4032/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Raised Warragamba Dam wall risks ‘irreversible harm’ to Aboriginal cultural heritage, NSW report says", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/raised-warragamba-dam-wall-risks-irreversible-harm-to-aboriginal-cultural-heritage-nsw-report-says", | |
| "words": "675", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T19:00:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0b5a4eefb161b6c64df39b99e4832a7974dc21f0/0_139_6720_4032/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Michael McGowan", | |
| "description": "Study says the NSW government project could lead to the ‘total loss’ of some sites due to flooding", | |
| "text": "The $1.6bn plan to raise the Warragamba Dam wall would cause “irreversible harm” to Aboriginal cultural heritage, a New South Wales government-commissioned report has found.\n\nSuggesting it is open to Unesco to “provide for modifications to the boundaries of World Heritage properties”, the report said the controversial project could also lead to hundreds of sites of Aboriginal cultural heritage suffering increased flooding, including the “total loss” of some sites.\n\nPrepared on behalf of the project’s proponent, WaterNSW, the report was produced by consultancy firm Niche after an initial assessment was savaged by Indigenous groups and government agencies.\n\nThe updated report, obtained by the Guardian, concedes that if the New South Wales government goes ahead with its controversial plan to raise the dam wall there would be “unavoidable” and “irreversible” harm to sites of Aboriginal heritage.\n\nThe project, it found, would have a “deleterious effect” on cultural heritage values and cause “additional injury to the wounds of previous dispossession and loss”.\n\n“The project will result in cumulative harm to the intangible values of the cultural landscape through extension of previously unmitigated impact on cultural values from the construction of the Warragamba dam and flooding of the Burragorang valley and its tributary valleys,” the report stated.\n\n“The further flooding of the Burragorang valley will contribute to irreversible harm to the cultural and spiritual connection that Aboriginal people hold to this part of the country, their heritage and the cultural landscape and will obscure the tangible aspects of the creation stories associated with the Burragorang such as the Gurrangatch and Mirrigan story.”\n\nThose harms, it found, could not be directly mitigated. Instead, it recommended “increasing the broader community’s knowledge of Aboriginal history in the Warragamba area” as a way of increasing “intergenerational equity”.\n\nWhile the report found that more than 250 sites of cultural heritage would be affected by the project – including dozens of new sites including forms of rock art “that are not commonly represented regionally” – it also conceded there was likely to be far more culturally significant artefacts outside its survey area.\n\nThe damning report comes amid increasing questions about the controversial project.\n\nSign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup\n\nThe premier, Dominic Perrottet, earlier this month moved to stop the plan being challenged in the courts by designating it as a critical state significant infrastructure project, but it has been the subject of fierce criticism from environment and Aboriginal stakeholders.\n\nOn Friday a document obtained by the Wilderness Society via freedom of information laws also raised concerns about the wall raising’s impact on water quality.\n\nThe internal Sydney Water document stated that “poorer quality water” stored in the dam “for extended periods” would risk the agency’s water filtration plant’s ability to “operate at capacity and increasing chances of failure to supply water and the need to boil water”.\n\nThe Coalition in NSW has sought to make the dam wall an election issue with voters in western Sydney after a spate of flood events in the Hawkesbury-Nepean area.\n\nWhile expert reports have found it would mitigate flood risk, many experts believe it would be of limited value with potentially disastrous environmental effects.\n\nThe Guardian understands WaterNSW officials believe it is unlikely to be ready for approval until after the March election.\n\nUnesco previously raised concerns about the projects impact on the world heritage-listed Blue Mountains area. While the draft report obtained by the Guardian insists increased inundation as a result of the raised wall would not have a “material effect” on the area’s value, it concedes it had “the potential to cause permanent harm through physical impacts to the sites and potential alterations to the waterways and ecology of the project area”.\n\nThe NSW government is also banking on a 50-50 funding split on the project with the commonwealth, which has yet to indicate support for the project.\n\nIn a statement, a spokesperson for Water NSW said it would not comment on the details of the report “on recognition of important cultural sensitivities associated with the document”.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "3a5f4a23cf7716407eb7aa1af2aa83e44f970f61", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/dda759faa55634ef065fb501ad95f6d12471d73d/0_176_3500_2099/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Man admits sexual assault of woman in queue for Queen’s lying in state", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/14/man-admits-sexual-assault-of-woman-in-queue-for-queens-lying-in-state", | |
| "words": "473", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T18:53:02Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/dda759faa55634ef065fb501ad95f6d12471d73d/0_176_3500_2099/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Donna Ferguson", | |
| "description": "Adeshina Adio, 20, from south-east London, was arrested after jumping into Thames to evade police", | |
| "text": "A 20-year-old man has admitted sexually assaulting a young woman by exposing himself and pushing into her from behind as she waited in the queue to attend the Queen’s lying in state.\n\nAdeshina Adio, from south-east London, jumped into the River Thames to escape arrest after assaulting the woman at Victoria Tower Gardens as she waited in the queue to pay her respects to the late monarch. He was detained by officers when he came out of the water.\n\nAdio, who has eight previous convictions for 29 offences, including recent sexual offences, also breached a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO).\n\nHe targeted his victim on the evening of 14 September, the day that Westminster Hall first opened its doors to the public. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, noticed Adio because she had not previously seen him in the queue – despite having waited with the same people for hours, Southwark crown court heard on Friday.\n\nShe felt him “pushing into her” and then “could feel something touching her back”, the prosecutor, Alex Adowale, told the court. When she turned around, she saw he had exposed himself.\n\nDespite being “very concerned”, she did not wish to alert Adio to the fact she realised what he was doing. She then saw him approaching another woman in the queue before exposing himself and pushing into that woman, the court heard, but “was not sure if the person had realised”.\n\nThe young woman and her sister then tried to form a barrier to prevent Adio reaching others in the queue and alerted the security staff, who called the police.\n\nAt this point, Adio was described as “trying to make off” – he threw his mobile phone into the Thames and jumped in himself “in an attempt to evade officers, before coming out a short while later”, Adowale said.\n\nThe court heard that Adio has “complex mental health issues” and had been diagnosed as having autistic spectrum disorder.\n\nHe initially denied any sexual assault, but then pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the young woman and to breaching his SHPO, which banned him from touching or exposing himself in a public place.\n\nHowever, he denied the further count of sexually assaulting “an unknown woman”. These pleas were deemed to be “acceptable to the crown”.\n\nAt an earlier hearing, Adowale warned the court that Adio “poses a real threat to members of the public, namely women”.\n\nDistrict crown prosecutor Anita Arora said she hoped the successful prosecution of Adio would encourage others who have been affected by this type of assault to come forward. She described Adio’s behaviour as “disgusting”, adding: “He subjected the victim to a very public sexual assault.\n\n“The incident was hugely distressing for the victim and her family, who were with her at the time, and she behaved with composure and courage.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "983534e79f77f1b8456b7f8efdb2f5ee3ea5f657", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/24efa20dfc9ea3fcdd3a0718a9fcfd5125f4d620/0_147_4928_2955/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Over 1,300 asylum seekers can claim compensation for phones seized by UK", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/14/asylum-seekers-claim-compensation-phones-seized-uk", | |
| "words": "680", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T18:29:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/24efa20dfc9ea3fcdd3a0718a9fcfd5125f4d620/0_147_4928_2955/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Diane Taylor", | |
| "description": "Judges say Home Office’s unlawful targeting of people arriving in small boats was ‘failure of governance’", | |
| "text": "More than 1,300 asylum seekers who arrived in the UK in small boats and had their phones unlawfully seized by immigration officials can claim compensation, the high court has ruled.\n\nJudges said on Friday there was “a failure of governance” over the unlawful phone seizures.\n\nThe number who can claim compensation could be as high as several thousand but due to confusion around the unlawful and unpublished Home Office policy to seize the mobile phones from new arrivals, many people may not know they are entitled to compensation.\n\nAnyone who crossed the Channel between April and November 2020 and had their phone seized may be able to claim compensation. In 2020, 8,466 people crossed the Channel.\n\nGovernment officials have written to 1,323 people who had their phones taken during this period.\n\nIt emerged that 439 phones seized during that period by immigration officials cannot be returned to their owners because the Home Office is not sure who the phones belong to.\n\nThe high court ruled in March that the department operated an unlawful, secret, blanket policy to take almost 2,000 mobile phones from asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats and then downloaded data from these phones.\n\nThe judges ruled there was no parliamentary authority for seizures and data extractions and that the legal power officials thought they could use was the wrong one.\n\nDuring that case the court heard evidence that asylum seekers were “bullied” into handing over their passcodes so officials could unlock personal information including emails, photos and videos and download them to an intelligence database called Project Sunshine.\n\nThe Home Office defended its right to seize the mobile phones, saying it helped officials gather evidence about the people smugglers who organise such journeys.\n\nIn a highly unusual move, there was a separate hearing in the high court on Friday because the government failed in its “duty of candour” and initially denied that the unpublished phone seizure policy existed.\n\nIn a strongly worded oral judgment, Lord Justice Edis and Mr Justice Lane ruled: “We are concerned with a failure of governance which allowed an unlawful policy to operate for an unknown period of time.”\n\nWhile acknowledging that everyone was under pressure due to the “crisis of mass migration into the UK” and the political and media interest this attracted, the judges made reference to government officials who “sidestepped” and “ducked” the issue of how the policy to seize phones was applied.\n\nIn relation to the way the government initially approached a legal challenge about the phone seizures by denying such a policy existed, they said “we consider there was a collective error of judgment” in the way the legal action was initially responded to.\n\nSir James Eadie, acting for the government, admitted in court: “The errors here were corporate errors. They were errors of the team, from counsel to government legal department to the Home Office. Everyone accepts that errors were made.”\n\nThe previous home secretary, Priti Patel, has apologised for these errors.\n\nThe lawyers who brought the high court challenge on behalf of three of the asylum seekers welcomed the ruling.\n\nClare Jennings, of Gold Jennings solicitors, said: “We are delighted the court has directed the home secretary to inform all those who had their phones taken that their rights have been breached. We hope that lessons will be learned from this case.”\n\nDaniel Carey, of Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors, said he welcomed the high court’s declaration that the blanket policy of removing migrants’ phones was unlawful and said it was a “scandal” that so many had their phones taken away from them.\n\nA Home Office spokesperson said: “We have addressed the concerns raised through the courts and have a robust policy in place on mobile devices.\n\n“Our staff are fully trained to ensure any use of powers to seize mobile devices is proportionate, necessary and based on reasonable grounds of suspected involvement in criminal activity such as piloting a small boat.\n\n“It is paramount that we use every tool at our disposal to investigate and disrupt the people smugglers who facilitate these dangerous crossings.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "92932e192a401f5672d7d3f1fd5c7130f496378a", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d790745c35586f766b46eec915994708e2285da0/0_124_3143_1886/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Robbie Coltrane obituary", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/14/robbie-coltrane-obituary", | |
| "words": "1657", | |
| "section": "Film", | |
| "date": "2022-10-14T18:11:51Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d790745c35586f766b46eec915994708e2285da0/0_124_3143_1886/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Stuart Jeffries", | |
| "description": "Comedian turned critically acclaimed actor, from Cracker’s sarcastic, cerebral Fitz to the half-giant Hagrid in Harry Potter", | |
| "text": "The actor Robbie Coltrane, who has died aged 72, was regularly described as a big man of the British screen. Journalists said he was heavy on talent yet thin-skinned as an interviewee. He disliked his encounters with the press. But the larger-than-life roles with which he was most associated – the criminal psychologist Fitz, Harry Potter’s half-giant friend Hagrid – demonstrated something else: they were performances of a kind of crumpled vulnerability that was also characteristic of the man.\n\nColtrane recalled that during the filming of Ocean’s Twelve (2004), he found himself sitting at a table with George Clooney, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. “These are about the three most successful, most beautiful actors in the world at the moment. And here am I. A fat boy from Rutherglen … What the fuck am I doing here?”\n\nThe fat boy from Rutherglen also had a splendidly eviscerating wit, useful for rebuffing questions premised on his girth. Once, he was telling an interviewer how he was trying to raise money for a film about Laurel and Hardy. Who would you play, his interlocutor asked? “I’d be playing the wee one with the funny hair, like yourself,” snapped back Coltrane.\n\nIt was easy to confuse the big man with his big roles. In the 1990s ITV crime drama Cracker, scripted by Jimmy McGovern, for which Coltrane won the best actor Bafta three years in succession, he played Dr Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald, an obese, alcoholic, foul-mouthed, sarcastic, yet cerebral criminal psychologist. “I drink too much, I smoke too much, I gamble too much. I am too much,” Coltrane’s Fitz shouted in one episode. That self-description seemed to fit actor as much as character. True, smoking and gambling were not Coltrane’s vices, but alcohol was: “Booze is my undoing,” he said once. “I can drink a gallon of beer and not feel the least bit drunk.” And Coltrane was regularly written up as just too much, dominating conversations with anecdotes and funny voices rather than listening.\n\nThere could also be too little of the big man. When, for instance, he fulfilled his manifest destiny and played the boozy, libidinous, life force Falstaff in Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film of Henry V, the critics felt short-changed. “Mr Coltrane is not on the screen long enough to create any true idea of Falstaff’s magnificence,” decided the New York Times. “Instead, he simply looks like a woozy Santa Claus.”\n\nHe could also erase himself exasperatingly: once in 2012, after disclosing to an interviewer that he was diabetic and had lost four and a half stone in order that a leg operation could proceed, he turned tight-lipped. How did he lose weight? “I just stopped eating for a while.” Seriously, how did he manage it, pursued his interviewer. “No, no, no! I don’t want to talk about this in the press!”\n\nBorn Anthony McMillan in Rutherglen, near Glasgow, he changed his name, on becoming an actor, in honour of the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. His mother, Jean Ross, was a pianist and teacher, and his father, Ian, a GP who also worked as a police surgeon. His son recalled that Dr McMillan “used to spend all weekend stitching up knife victims”. Their son attended Glenalmond college, an independent school in Perthshire, often described as Scotland’s equivalent to Eton. “It was a very strict school and I didn’t respond well to discipline.” Indeed, he was nearly expelled for hanging prefects’ gowns from the school clocktower, but also played for the school’s rugby team, captained the debating team and won prizes for his art.\n\nAt Glasgow School of Art (1968-72), he was nicknamed Lord Fauntleroy for the posh accent he quickly repressed. Contemporaries included the poet Liz Lochhead and TV presenter Muriel Gray. He soon became known as Red Robbie for his involvement with radical causes. In 1971, he supported the campaign by workers to keep the Glasgow shipyards open. “I believe I showed a pornographic movie and charged people five shillings to look at it and gave the money to Upper Clyde shipbuilders.”\n\nTo his lasting regret, he never became a painter. In 2014, when invited back to art school to open the Reid Building, Coltrane said: “I wanted to paint like the painters who really moved me, who made me want to weep about humanity. Titian, Rembrandt. But I looked at my diploma show and felt a terrible disappointment when I realised all the things that were in my head were not on the canvas. I felt there was something wrong with my hands. That was a heartbreaking day.”\n\nAt art school he had started acting. Lochhead saw him in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter and recalled his performance as “fantastic … bloody terrifying”. His memory was different: “I threw up every night before going on stage.” He went on to study art for another year, at the Moray House College of Education, Edinburgh, and acting became his vocation: “One day, [the renowned Scottish actors] Bill Paterson and Alex Norton came to me and said ‘Are you just going to carry on showing off in pubs, or are you going to take this seriously?’ and they sent me to the Traverse theatre”. His first success was in John Byrne’s trilogy The Slab Boys (1979), about a group of young working-class Scots in the 1960s.\n\nColtrane came to British TV viewers’ attention in a string of 1980s sketch shows, including A Kick Up the 80s and Laugh? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee, working alongside Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Ben Elton, Stephen Fry and Rik Mayall. He went on to become a fixture of TV comedy, starring in Blackadder and several films in the Comic Strip Presents series.\n\nHe was particularly fine as the butt of Blackadder’s wit as an increasingly apoplectic Dr Samuel Johnson in a 1987 episode. “Here it is, sir. The very cornerstone of English scholarship,” the doctor declared to Blackadder, brandishing the manuscript of his recently completed dictionary. “This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.”\n\n“Well, in that case, sir,” retorted Blackadder, “I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.”\n\nHe was better yet at the difficult task of playing Charles Bronson playing Ken Livingstone in the Comic Strip Presents … GLC: The Carnage Continues (1990). After preventing the Tories from flooding south London to turn it into a yacht club, Coltrane’s Livingstone strives to thwart Margaret Thatcher from beheading the Prince of Wales and taking over the kingdom.\n\nColtrane’s success had downsides. “I’d been broke for a long time and suddenly I had enough money in the bank not to worry if I could afford to eat out or drink a whole bottle of whisky and suddenly I was famous. It went to my head. It only lasted for 15 years.” His friend the actor John Sessions once said that Coltrane had a “strong self-destructive streak … a deep, driving melancholy”.\n\nIn the late 1980s, nearing 40, he met Rhona Gemmell. They had a son and daughter and married in 1999, but split up four years later.\n\nThe funny man went straight in 1987, when he starred opposite Thompson in Tutti Frutti, a six-part drama by Byrne about a faded Scots rock’n’roll band called the Majestics, newly fronted by the dead singer’s brother, Danny McGlone (Coltrane), who has a romance with a former classmate, Suzi Kettles (Thompson). Danny proves his fondness for Suzi at one point by taking a drill to the teeth of her estranged husband, a dentist. The performance earned him his first Bafta nomination.\n\nThough his subsequent performances in Cracker (1993-96, plus a 2006 revival episode) won awards and critical plaudits, it was the cheesy British film comedies such as Nuns on the Run (1990) and The Pope Must Die (1991) that made Coltrane a movie star. He also appeared in two consecutive James Bond films, GoldenEye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999). In 2000, he came sixth in a UK poll to find the “most famous Scot”, behind the Loch Ness monster, Robbie Burns, Sean Connery, Robert the Bruce and William Wallace.\n\nIn 2001, though, Coltrane’s celebrity status went global when he was cast as Hagrid, the half-giant gamekeeper of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry in the first film adaptation of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, reportedly at Rowling’s insistence. The 6ft 1in actor had to adjust to the novelty of being looked up to by adoring small fans. “Kids come up to you and they go: ‘Would you like to sign my book?’ with those big doe eyes. And it’s a serious responsibility.” In 2006 he was appointed OBE.\n\nColtrane had a passion for classic cars, which he indulged in two travelogues. For Coltrane in a Cadillac (1993) he drove from Los Angeles to New York in a convertible; in 1997 he drove from London to Glasgow in an open-top Jaguar for Robbie Coltrane’s B-Road Britain.\n\nWhen, in 2009, Coltrane hung up Hagrid’s beard for the last time, after filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2, the eighth and final adaptation from Rowling’s books, it was with regret. He went on to star in David Pirie’s well-received cop drama Murderland (2009) and in the last episodes of the US sitcom Frasier.\n\nHe memorably captured the years when entertainment crashed into investigations of sexual abuse as the veteran comedian Paul Finchley in the Channel 4 drama series National Treasure, written by Jack Thorne, with Julie Walters as his wife and Andrea Riseborough as his troubled daughter. Times and attitudes had moved on: again there was a crumpled vulnerability as Finchley failed to come to terms with what was happening to him. In 2020, Coltrane appeared in Sky Arts’ Urban Myths series as Orson Welles in Norwich.\n\nHe is survived by his son, Spencer, daughter, Alice, and sister, Annie.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "c5a53a700fed301036c023038db9f27619e372dc", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/6930ea747341219ad0344a33f5c44a71470fa812/499_74_1719_1032/500.jpg", | |
| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Peter Hollingworth to cease practising as an Anglican priest to ‘end distress’ for survivors", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/peter-hollingworth-to-cease-practising-as-an-anglican-priest-to-end-distress-for-survivors", | |
| "words": "464", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T02:52:17Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/6930ea747341219ad0344a33f5c44a71470fa812/499_74_1719_1032/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Christopher Knaus", | |
| "description": "The former governor general was last month reprimanded over his failure to remove paedophiles from the church’s ranks while Brisbane archbishop", | |
| "text": "Peter Hollingworth has announced he will cease practising as an Anglican priest and will hand back his permission to officiate, citing a desire to “end distress” for survivors and stop “division” in the church.\n\nHollingworth was last month the subject of serious misconduct findings, delivered after a protracted internal church process, which reprimanded him for his failure to remove paedophiles from the church’s ranks while Brisbane archbishop in the 1990s.\n\nDespite the serious findings, the church’s professional standards board recommended Hollingworth be allowed to continue in his priestly duties in Victoria, saying he posed no unacceptable risk of harm.\n\nThe decision sparked widespread anger among survivors and survivors’ groups, who say it undermined the church’s credibility, was at odds with other similar decisions reached by the Anglican church, and did not properly recognise the profound harm of victims.\n\nHollingworth, Australia’s 23rd governor general, on Friday announced that he will voluntarily return his permission to officiate, which allowed him to continue to conduct services at his local parish and officiate marriages, funerals and baptisms.\n\nHe acknowledge his continuing presence in the church was a “cause of pain to survivors”.\n\n“I want to end distress to them, and division within the church,” he said in a statement.\n\nHollingworth was found to have committed misconduct over his handling of abuse complaints against two clergy members, John Elliot and Donald Shearman, whom he allowed to remain in the church despite knowing they had sexually assaulted children.\n\nIt also found he had made unsatisfactory and insensitive comments about survivor Beth Heinrich during a 2002 episode of television program Australian Story.\n\nIn his statement on Friday, Hollingworth said he was “ill-equipped to deal with the child abuse issue” and was too defensive of the church and reliant on the advice of lawyers and insurers.\n\n“I say that as a matter of context, not as an excuse,” he said. “I have lived with my failures every day since.”\n\n“It is more than 20 years since allegations against me were first made. There have been five separate inquiries, including the five-year inquiry by the PSB. They have occupied countless time, energy, emotion and expense for many people.”\n\nHollingworth said his regrets had become “even more profound over the years” as his understanding of the impact of child sexual abuse changed.\n\n“But I did not commit a crime. I did not cover up sexual abuse,” he said. “And I was not an abuser.”\n\n“The [permission to officiate], commonly granted to retired priests, allowed me to conduct services at my local parish as well as marriages, funerals and baptisms. While I will no longer perform these duties, I will continue my lifelong commitment to social justice and service to the I will continue my lifelong commitment to social justice and service to the community.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "e16d01232d9d1716a9203aafe362de7286394046", | |
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| "title": "Moira Deeming expelled from Victorian Liberal party room after threat to sue leader John Pesutto", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/12/moira-deeming-expelled-from-victorian-liberal-party-room-after-threat-to-sue-leader-john-pesutto", | |
| "words": "519", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T01:44:09Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/48459fbdb37f7fd0db9e3c97134c0265cae8cb90/2270_97_3759_2255/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Benita Kolovos", | |
| "description": "Previously suspended for nine months, Deeming has been accused by colleagues of ‘bringing discredit’ to the party", | |
| "text": "The controversial MP Moira Deeming has been expelled from the Victorian Liberal party room.\n\nDeeming’s colleagues voted 19 to 11 to expel her during a party room meeting on Friday morning, meaning she will have to serve the remaining three-and-a-half years of her term on the crossbench of the upper house of the Victorian parliament. She remains a member of the broader Liberal party.\n\nDeeming, who had earlier been suspended by the party for nine months, was not present for the meeting.\n\nHer ally, upper house MP Renee Heath, has also been sanctioned.\n\nThe expulsion motion was put forward by five MPs – Roma Britnell, Wayne Farnham, Matthew Guy, Cindy McLeish and James Newbury – who alleged Deeming was “bringing discredit” on the parliamentary team by threatening legal action against the opposition leader, John Pesutto.\n\nSeveral MPs spoke after the meeting, all signalling their intention to move forward after the vote.\n\n“I think it’s a real chance to draw a line in the sand for the party now. We’ve had a meeting, we’re going to move forward,” the Nepean MP, Sam Groth, told reporters.\n\n“We’re going to get behind John … It’s time for the Liberal party to start being a viable option.”\n\nUpper house MP David Davis, who also backed the motion, described the result as “strong and decisive”.\n\nNewbury said an MP making legal threats against the party and its leader can’t expect to keep their job, adding that following through on the warning would be a “gross act of betrayal”.\n\n“But we are moving forward united as a team,” he said.\n\nHeath, who accused Pesutto of bullying last week, was stripped of her party secretary position after the former opposition leader Michael O’Brien moved a successful motion, that was also carried 19 votes to 11.\n\nDeeming had survived an earlier expulsion push six weeks earlier, put forward by Pesutto, after she spoke at an anti-trans rally that was gate crashed by neo-Nazis, who performed the Sieg Heil on the front steps of parliament.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nDeeming maintains that as part of the compromise deal that saw her suspended, Pesutto had agreed to issue a joint statement her exonerated her of being a Nazi, or Nazi sympathiser. Pesutto denies he made such an agreement.\n\nThe issue came to a head last week, when Deeming issued Pesutto with an ultimatum: release a statement by 2pm on the Thursday, or she would “instruct [her] lawyers to commence legal proceedings”.\n\nAfter the deadline passed, she emailed all Liberal MPs saying she would be mounting a legal challenge to her suspension.\n\nAt the weekend, Deeming issued another statement denying she planned to sue the Liberal party and claimed she only wanted a lawyer’s assistance to help clear her name.\n\nBut on Thursday, Pesutto’s office confirmed he had received a defamation concerns notice from Deeming’s lawyers. The letter warned of possible federal court proceedings if Pesutto didn’t immediately seek the withdrawal of Friday’s expulsion motion, publish an apology to her on his website, and pay her compensation and legal costs.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "2519ae3372f0849021bf009373c0eed251caad22", | |
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| "title": "Central Australian schools get record federal funding, as Labor aims to halt public education flight", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/12/central-australian-schools-get-record-federal-funding-as-labor-aims-to-halt-public-education-flight", | |
| "words": "725", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T01:34:54Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/612309d77016d4fb9b676e60cd7fc88eb847dde2/1908_169_3610_2166/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Caitlin Cassidy", | |
| "description": "Albanese government will spend $28bn on schools in 2023-24, but unions demand more to improve retention rates", | |
| "text": "Public schools in Central Australia will meet the minimum education funding benchmark for the first time in about a decade under the new federal budget, but the Greens say more needs to be done to close the gap between public and private education.\n\nThe Albanese government will spend a record high of $28bn on schools in 2023-24, Tuesday’s budget confirmed, rising to $31.4bn in 2026-27.\n\nGovernment schools will receive an extra 5.7% in federal funding, totalling $10.8bn in the next financial year, while private and Catholic schools will have their funding increased by 4.8% to $17.4bn.\n\nThe figures do not represent the entire funding for all sectors – most funding for public schools comes from state governments.\n\nThe extra $590m to government schools is well short of the billions demanded by teachers’ unions.\n\nThe education minister, Jason Clare, said while funding per student was going up, the number of students attending public schools was going down.\n\nSchool funding is allocated based on projected enrolments, with data showing parents are continuing to turn away from public education to the private sector.\n\n“If that’s not proof of why we need serious reform in education, I don’t know what is. I want public education to be the first choice of parents,” Clare said.\n\n“If we are serious about breaking the cycle of disadvantage this is where we have got to do it.”\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nFor the first time, Central Australia will meet full funding of the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) – the minimum benchmark to provide a decent education agreed to by governments – after receiving $40m in the budget to improve student outcomes.\n\nOnly the ACT had previously achieved the benchmark, set out more than a decade ago in the Gonski review of school funding.\n\nClare signed a pledge for each school to reach 100% of its SRS funding at the NSW Teachers Federation Principals’ Conference last week.\n\nThe federal president of the Australian Education Union, Correna Haythorpe, said while $40m may not be much compared with other budget commitments, it was important to be “clear about what it represents”.\n\n“For public school students in central Australia … that funding will deliver more teachers, more education support staff, and more one-on-one individual attention,” she said.\n\n“For public schools across the country, it is the first, albeit small, step towards the delivery of Labor’s 2022 election commitment – to get every public school on the pathway to 100% of the SRS.\n\n“But it cannot be the only step.”\n\nThe Australian Education Union has been calling for an extra $6.5bn a year in public school funding to address growing disparities in the sector.\n\nSince 2017, high school retention rates have dropped from 83% to 76% in public schools, while remaining relatively steady at non-government schools.\n\nFor students from poorer backgrounds, just 74% complete high school.\n\nHaythorpe said the Northern Territory had the highest levels of student need. Almost half of its students are First Nations students, a quarter have a disability and one in five public school students are underfunded.\n\n“It’s one in 10 public school students across the nation,” she said. “That is a national shame.”\n\nGreens spokesperson on schools, senator Penny Allman-Payne, said apublic schools across the country are struggling to attract and retain teachers and meet the needs of their students.\n\n“Labor says it wants to put all public schools on a pathway to full funding. But under the current national school reform agreement, public schools will never receive 100% of their SRS.”\n\nThe agreement was postponed until next year under Labor.\n\nThe budget also outlined $254m to be injected to improve Indigenous education outcomes, including $38.4m for children in remote areas, $11m for national Indigenous languages and $21.6m for a boarding grants program.\n\nA further $9.3m on top of the previously announced $328m for the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan will also be allocated to address workforce shortages.\n\nIndependent Schools Australia chief executive, Graham Catt, said the budget provided funding certainty but questioned a plan to save $1.9m over four years by improving funding integrity in non-government schools, citing a lack of detail over how it would be achieved.\n\nIn budget papers, the government said it would strengthen safeguards for non-government schools to encourage “compliance oversight” and ensure funding was used for the “purpose intended”.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "e953d7b536990f5c977a6adcf67be0fe778750b3", | |
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| "title": "Sorry, Swifties: BTS revealed as authors of mystery book that intrigued the internet", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/may/12/sorry-swifties-bts-revealed-as-authors-of-mystery-book-that-intrigued-the-internet", | |
| "words": "686", | |
| "section": "Music", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T01:34:25Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/c03c18462482f49be56538a4cb169ca8e6d777de/234_579_5525_3315/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Sian Cain and agencies", | |
| "description": "Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS will be out on 9 July, ending feverish speculation that the previously untitled book was a Taylor Swift memoir", | |
| "text": "The guessing game began this week when a mysteriously untitled book, scheduled for publication in July and known only as “4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023”, appeared. It quickly became a bestseller when Taylor Swift fans began feverishly speculating that it was her surprise memoir.\n\nBut the mystery has been solved, with publishing house Flatiron Books bringing forward their announcement by a month to reveal the book is actually by another musical powerhouse: the K-pop boyband BTS.\n\nBeyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS is written by journalist Myeongseok Kang with the seven members of the group – RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook – and will be structured as an oral history of their story. It has been translated into English by Anton Hur, in collaboration with Clare Richards and Slin Jung.\n\nRumours about the book began to spread when US booksellers shared news that an untitled book with a huge initial print run of 1m copies was coming on 9 July, and that they had been required to sign an affidavit to stock copies on publication day. The book, a Flatiron sales official emailed sellers, would have “global appeal” and “massive publicity”.\n\nThe scant available details about the book were read as clues by both fans of Swift and BTS. The author and subject were initially set to be revealed on 13 June: 13 is Swift’s favourite number, but the date is also the 10th anniversary of BTS’ first single, No More Dream.\n\nThe numbers in the 544-page count – 5-4-4 – also add up to 13. The 9 July publication date also falls two days after the release of Swift’s upcoming album Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). But it is also the 10-year anniversary of Army day, marking the founding of BTS’s fanbase, Army, whose name stands for “Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth”.\n\nSpeculation about the book made it a bestseller on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites earlier this week, as fans of both Swift and BTS placed pre-orders.\n\nThe Army is an extremely online fandom that has become famous for their devotion to the band, with many learning Korean to help translate BTS content into English and other languages for fellow fans, as well as harnessing their collective voice for political activism.\n\nWhen the #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag began to take off on Twitter in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, K-pop fans hijacked the hashtag and drowned it out by flooding Twitter with video clips and memes of their favourite artists, many accompanied by anti-racist messages.\n\nSoon after, K-pop fans humiliated the then US president Donald Trump by registering for tickets at one of his rallies with no intention of attending, meaning Trump showed up to a very empty 19,000-seat arena in Tulsa.\n\nSince 2013, BTS has released nine albums and six EPs. In 2018, the group became the first K-pop act to hit No 1 on the US Billboard album chart with Love Yourself: Tear, an achievement it repeated twice more in less than a year, matching a record set by the Beatles.\n\nLast June, BTS announced they were going on hiatus, citing exhaustion and pressure as well as a desire to focus on solo creative projects. “It’s not that we’re disbanding,” member Suga said at the time. “We’re just living apart for a while.”\n\nIn October, the group’s label confirmed that the seven members of BTS would perform their mandatory military service, meaning any reunion would be delayed until 2025. All able-bodied South Korean men under the age of 30 are required to serve for between 18 and 21 months – a duty intended to maintain the country’s ability to defend against a possible attack by North Korea, with which it is technically still at war.\n\nThe oldest member of the band, Jin, began his military service in December, with J-Hope following in April.\n\nBTS remains a huge money-spinner for South Korea, adding an estimated US$3.5bn annually to the country’s economy. Still, some male K-pop stars have struggled to resume their careers after military service, in a cutthroat industry where artists are seen as easily replaceable.\n\nAssociated Press contributed to this report\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "c87ab4118072892e7c5979f1322c37ffe70b7507", | |
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| "title": "Hong Kong political cartoonist axed after 40 years following criticism from officials", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/hong-kong-political-cartoonist-axed-after-40-years-following-criticism-from-officials", | |
| "words": "651", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T01:21:18Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/82e29be0e140b1a686ef99d147f52a45e4a3fd58/0_511_4032_2420/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Verna Yu", | |
| "description": "Wong Kei-kwan, known as Zunzi, says it was a ‘mutual decision’ after the Ming Pao newspaper ended his column", | |
| "text": "A decades-old political cartoon column has been scrapped by a respected Hong Kong newspaper after it faced a barrage of criticism from officials, in a move widely seen as a further blow to the city’s freedoms since the implementation of the controversial national security law.\n\nOn Thursday, the Ming Pao newspaper announced it would stop publishing cartoons by Wong Kei-kwan, better known under his nom de plume “Zunzi”, from Sunday.\n\n“Ming Pao thanks Zunzi for bearing witness with us to the changing times over the past 40 years,” it said in a short statement.\n\nWong’s satirical cartoons on Hong Kong politics have been published in Ming Pao since 1983. His popular comic strips lampooned officials and politicians throughout the British colonial era and after the 1997 changeover of sovereignty to Chinese rule.\n\n“I think the reason is widely understood by our readers and we all feel very sad about that,” Wong, 68, told the Guardian in a carefully worded response. “All we can do is to attempt to limit our fear. It was a mutual decision.”\n\nWong’s works have been criticised six times by government officials in the past six months, including by the police and the security bureau. Criticism from the secretary for home and youth affairs, Alice Mak, this week appeared to be the last straw.\n\nWong’s last comic, a three-panel strip published Tuesday, showed a man telling a woman that the city’s community representatives would be chosen “as long as the superior finds them suitable”, even if they have failed their exams and health tests.\n\nThe government last week announced a revamp of district councils, under which only 20% of all seats would be elected. The rest will be either appointed by the government or selected by committees staffed by pro-establishment figures. Mak called Wong’s cartoon strip “distorting” and “unethical”.\n\nOn Friday, a search of “Zunzi” on Hong Kong’s public library catalogue yielded no results. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department told Ming Pao newspaper that books were regularly inspected and those which allegedly violated national security were immediately removed.\n\nPolitical satire – once commonplace and part of Hong Kong’s robust civil society – has become a dangerous pursuit under the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 after months of anti-government protests. The law lays out penalties as severe as life imprisonment for crimes including secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. The authorities have also reactivated the colonial-era offence of sedition to prosecute government critics.\n\nProf Chung Kim-wah, a social scientist formerly with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said government pressure had forced the city’s media outlets to either close or self-censor. He noted that Ming Pao had already cut some columns by authors seen as politically sensitive.\n\n“Through law and force, the ones which would not be compromised, such as Apple Daily or Stand News, have been forced to close,” he said. “For Ming Pao, they’re exerting [pressure] to make it gradually change, and in the end it will become just like other [pro-establishment outlets].”\n\nBoth Apple Daily and Stand News shut down after their assets were frozen by police in 2021.\n\n“They are comprehensively sabotaging Hong Kong’s civil society, which took decades to build,” Chung said.\n\nJohnny Lau, an independent political commentator and veteran journalist, said the cull of Wong’s cartoons showed that political pressure had not only affected Hong Kong’s politics, education and press but popular culture as well.\n\n“This is a landmark incident,” he said. “But official censorship of the arts, culture and literature can never be totally effective … the more they crack down, the more people will treasure them. They will go down in history.”\n\nThe chief of Hong Kong’s security bureau, Tang Ping-keung, said on Thursday that the pulling of Wong’s cartoons was a “responsible action” taken by editors if they didn’t want their platform to be used to mislead the public or “to incite dissatisfaction towards the government”.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "2c788886da5a483dca3b25227131dca634c7a82b", | |
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| "title": "Australian terrorism prediction tool considered autism a sign of criminality despite lack of evidence", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/12/australian-terrorism-prediction-tool-considered-autism-a-sign-of-criminality-despite-lack-of-evidence", | |
| "words": "787", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T01:08:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/9b98427a63c5a7e43cd10797b05627bd25756889/0_89_3898_2340/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Nino Bucci and Christopher Knaus", | |
| "description": "Independent report into Vera-2R, released through FoI, found it was ‘extremely poor’ at predicting risk of offending", | |
| "text": "A tool designed to predict future crime in terrorist offenders considered them at greater risk of offending if they were autistic despite having no empirical basis to do so, an independent report has found.\n\nThe report into the Vera-2R tool, which was released to Guardian Australia and others under freedom of information laws, found a lack of evidence underpinning the instrument had “potentially serious implications for [its] validity and reliability” and found it was “extremely poor” at predicting risk.\n\nIt also found that autism spectrum disorders, as well as non-compliance with conditions or supervision, were included as risk factors in the tool, despite a lack of empirical evidence.\n\nThe most comprehensive systematic review that has been conducted on the drivers of radicalisation and terrorist behaviour and violence found not a single piece of empirical evidence that supported the inclusion of those two factors, the report found.\n\nThe release of the critical report came after a series of Guardian Australia stories which exposed the federal government’s continued use of the tool despite criticisms. The federal government did not disclose the report to the lawyers of convicted offenders, its own experts, or the NSW government, which uses the tool to justify harsh post-sentence orders for offenders, including ongoing detention.\n\nThe report, titled “Testing the Reliability, Validity and Equity of Terrorism Risk Assessment Instruments”, was completed by Australian National University academics Dr Emily Corner and Dr Helen Taylor for the Department of Home Affairs and runs to more than 270 pages.\n\nThe government received the report, known as the Corner report, in May 2020.\n\nIt was released under FoI with minimal redactions, despite the federal government previously claiming it could not be released because of national security.\n\n“The lack of evidence underpinning both instruments has potentially serious implications for their validity and reliability,” the report found.\n\n“Without a strong theoretical and empirical basis for factor inclusion, it is not reasonable to anticipate that the instruments are able to predict their specified risk with anything other than chance.\n\n“If an instrument with a weak evidence base is employed as a predictive instrument by practitioners, it is not possible to determine if individuals who pass through assessment processes would ever be suitable for the management plan as determined by the risk decision outcome made on the instrument.”\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nGuardian Australia has previously reported the tool was used 14 times by the federal government after they received the report, and the NSW government also continued to use it to assess offenders, including some without convictions for terrorism.\n\nCorner and Taylor also assessed the Radar tool, a classified instrument which is used less frequently to justify post-sentence orders than Vera-2R, and said their report was the first piece of research to be performed on these instruments.\n\nThe report made four recommendations, including that another evaluation is conducted, that the authors of both instruments “enact far more thorough evaluations of the wider theoretical and empirical literature to help develop risk factors that accurately reflect behavioural trajectories towards radicalisation and terrorist violence”, and that the risk specification of each instrument should be refined.\n\nIt found that the correct instrument, implemented correctly, could allow risk assessment that ensured those at highest risk of offending received the most intensive interventions, while those presenting as lower-risk were protected from too much intervention and therefore avoided “the disruption of circumstances that were making them low risk in the first place”.\n\nBut it found there was little basis for the claims made by the developers of the Vera-2R of its strong reliability and validity.\n\nIt said it was “concerning” that almost 60% of the cited evidence base for factor development of the tool was not empirical, and less than half of the works cited in the Vera-2R accurately reflected what was in the recorded texts.\n\nThe test can only be used by people who complete training accredited to the author, with the report noting that “there is no information within any documentation as to the time or costs of this training program, but it is believed to be a multiple day program with substantial costs attached”.\n\nThe federal and NSW governments both say they are considering the Corner report findings, but this week’s federal budget shows the Labor government is committed to continuing to fund its regime of post-sentence orders.\n\nThe budget gave $130.1m over two years to the high-risk terrorist offenders scheme.\n\nA NSW communities and justice department spokesperson said the Vera-2R tool was just one of a number of tools used to assess risk.\n\n“The Department of Communities and Justice is currently considering the Corner report in collaboration with other stakeholders,” the spokesperson said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "e9e51e28d2289ba7b136bf1447c4812917f6a4ea", | |
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| "title": "The Mother review – Jennifer Lopez goes kick-ass in abject kidnap thriller", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/12/the-mother-review-jennifer-lopez-netflix", | |
| "words": "319", | |
| "section": "Film", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T01:00:39Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/328596bb43fe2925526ae7a179f610dff9648556/0_307_6048_3627/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Peter Bradshaw", | |
| "description": "Lopez plays an ex-special forces parent aiming to rescues her kid from the bad guys in this formulaic and muddled Netflix caper", | |
| "text": "There’s some real ChatGPT film-making here in this abjectly formulaic and inert Netflix thriller from director Niki Caro, although ChatGPT would have made a better, clearer job of the muddled story. This one has Jennifer Lopez rescue her 12-year-old daughter from the bad guys on a number of separate occasions, with one villain (Gael García Bernal) vanishing from the plot about halfway in, presumably left on the cutting-room floor. It’s a script which shows every sign of having had plenty of rewrites, though perhaps it could have done with a few more.\n\nLopez is ex-special forces, skilled in guns and knives and unarmed combat, with what an official calls an impressive number of “confirmed kills”; she bitterly regretted being drawn into gun-running and people-trafficking after leaving the army, and getting involved with creepy bad guys Hector Álvarez (Bernal) and former SAS Brit Adrian Lovell (Joseph Fiennes). She gets pregnant by one of them – the identity of the father is a fantastically uninteresting mystery which the film shows no interest in solving – and this personal event, combined with the horror of what she’s doing induces Lopez’s character to try getting out of the filthy trade.\n\nLovell tries to kill her, and the FBI offers her an amnesty only on condition that she hands over her baby to foster-care authorities and takes up a new identity in Alaska. But when she discovers, some time later, from a friendly bureau guy called Cruise (Omari Hardwick) that her sinister former colleagues are interested in kidnapping her now 12-year-old daughter, Lopez realises that she is going to have kick some ass and be a real mom to this adorable tween.\n\nThe Mother might have been entertaining, but the screenplay clunks and everyone is phoning it in, especially Fiennes who looks understandably bored and irritated by the whole tiring business.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "76421a9ba2b851751b020ab0de538f8fe324c6d2", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Drug and alcohol tests of graduate paramedics revealed in Ambulance Victoria data breach ", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/11/ambulance-victoria-data-breach-reveals-drug-and-alcohol-tests-of-graduate-paramedics", | |
| "words": "498", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T14:38:49Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/202a9bc6117cf56c36b0a2c2c30ad0cbccdcd740/0_41_6000_3600/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Nino Bucci", | |
| "description": "Privacy watchdog will be asked to investigate after information became available for all employees to view on the staff intranet", | |
| "text": "The confidential drug and alcohol test results of graduate paramedics were available for every Ambulance Victoria staff member to view under a significant breach that is set to be reported to the state’s privacy watchdog.\n\nAccording to an email sent late Thursday to members of the Victorian Ambulance Union, confidential spreadsheets relating to pre-employment testing of graduate paramedics in 2017 and 2018 were available on the staff intranet until the union alerted Ambulance Victoria to the problem.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nIn the member email, the union said the private information included the full names of graduate paramedics, when they were tested, whether the result was positive or negative, and, if positive, the substance that had been detected.\n\nThe union said it had written to Ambulance Victoria urging it to contact any affected employee including past employees about the breach, conduct an audit to determine who had accessed the files, and immediately cease all alcohol and drug screening until it could be confident the issue had been rectified.\n\nIt also said it had told Ambulance Victoria to report the breach to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner and other relevant authorities.\n\nThe union said it would also report the breach to the watchdog on behalf of its members, and was exploring possible legal action.\n\nAccording to the email, signed by the union’s general secretary, Danny Hill, and the assistant secretary, Olga Bartasek, the union had also requested an urgent meeting with Ambulance Victoria to discuss the breach.\n\n“This will be extremely stressful to anyone affected. Members are invited to make contact with the VAU to seek support and advice if you are advised that you are involved in this breach,” the email said.\n\n“This is one of the biggest examples of organisational incompetence we have ever seen in AV. Employees deserve to have the highest confidence in the ability of their employer to protect their confidential information.\n\n“AV have dismally failed this test today and will have to work very hard to regain the trust of the workforce in relation to private employee information.”\n\nAn Ambulance Victoria spokesperson said it had been made aware that documents containing personal information of some employees and prospective employees have been inadvertently accessible on its intranet.\n\nThe information contained in the documents refers to data captured between May 2017 and October 2018, they said.\n\n“Since becoming aware, AV has removed access to these documents and has undertaken an access audit of these documents.\n\n“The documents were not directly accessible to anyone outside of the organisation.\n\n“We take privacy very seriously and acknowledge the distress that this may cause. Those affected are being notified and will be provided wellbeing support.”\n\nThe spokesperson did not comment on when it became aware of the breach, how long the data had been made available for, and how many people were impacted.\n\nThey said Ambulance Victoria would “fulfil all reporting requirements” to the OVIC.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "5d9f802cce3a204b28adf37c22c25478c936677c", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "PNG minister apologises for calling daughter’s coronation critics ‘primitive animals’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/png-minister-apologises-for-calling-daughters-coronation-critics-primitive-animals", | |
| "words": "657", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T00:07:45Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/67f62eedd68bee3950bee6b8b398cc017a8ee254/0_89_2723_1634/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Bethanie Harriman", | |
| "description": "Foreign minister Justin Tkatchencko’s daughter had been criticised for posting TikTok videos of her first-class trip to London for the king’s coronation", | |
| "text": "Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister, Justin Tkatchenko, has apologised for calling people “primitive animals” after his daughter faced criticism for TikTok videos she made while accompanying him to London for King Charles’s coronation.\n\n“I would like to personally apologise about my comments that were taken the completely wrong way and make known that these comments were solely directed to the individuals that made these disgusting and vile comments about my daughter,” Tkatchenko said in a statement.\n\n“Ultimately, my daughter is a person of her generation, the online generation, where they like to post everything about their lives online. She realises now how the video was perceived, which was not appropriate.”\n\nIn one video Savannah Tkatchenko, 25, had shown herself travelling first class on Qantas and said she had done some shopping in Hermes and Louis Vuitton at Singapore airport. “For those of you that don’t know, Singapore airport shopping is so elite,” she said.\n\nAnother video showed her unboxing cosmetics and a handbag after a shopping trip in London.\n\nThe videos went viral on social media in PNG, with people questioning why taxpayer money had been spent on her attendance at the coronation.\n\nResponding to the criticism of her on Wednesday, Tkatchenko told Australia’s ABC her critics were “primitive animals” who had “nothing to do”. He later reiterated the comments to the Guardian, saying they were “living in the dark ages”.\n\n“I was officially invited by Buckingham Palace for myself and my spouse to go to the coronation representing the prime minister and the government of Papua New Guinea and for me that was an absolute honour and unfortunately my spouse could not attend, so I invited the next best person, who was my daughter,” Tkatchenko told the Guardian on Wednesday.\n\n“So where they get all this trumped-up thing that we are misusing public funds and going overseas, what a load of bullshit.”\n\nPrior to Friday’s apology, Tkatchenko had said that his daughter received K25,000 (£5,600/$7,100) in government funds as an allowance for the trip which she had used to pay for accommodation and meals. The flight was also paid for by the government.\n\n“Is that misuse of funds when you’re going there on an invitation, representing the government and prime minister of this country?”\n\nTkatchenko said his daughter had not actually bought anything in Singapore. When asked about the London unboxing video, he said: “I have no idea of this.”\n\nSavannah Tkatchenko was not available for comment and has since shut down her TikTok account.\n\nThe prime minister, James Marape, asked Papua New Guineans to accept the apology, saying in a statement that he too had been offended by Tkatchenko’s comments.\n\n“I advised him that as ministers of state, and leaders of our country, we carry a huge responsibility in how we respond to public scrutiny of our conduct as well as that of family members,” he said. “I appeal to our people that we should rise above these issues and stand united as one people, one nation, one country, regardless of colour or creed.”\n\nCritics of the coronation trip also noted media reports that 30 people were part of the delegation accompanying PNG’s governor general, Bob Dadae, and his wife. Other Pacific Island countries sent fewer than three people each to represent their country.\n\nA local newspaper, citing a reliable source in the country’s finance and treasury department, reported that the trip cost taxpayers K3 million (£672,000/$851,000) and another K3 million was spent on celebrations in PNG.\n\nAbout 85% of people in Papua New Guinea lived in poverty in 2020, according to the World Bank, while the national budget continues to be supplemented by loans and grants from donor partners.\n\nAs Apec minister in 2018, Tkatchenko was responsible for the controversial acquisition of a fleet of Maseratis and Bentleys that was supposed to ferry world leaders to meetings. Tkatchenko was criticised for wasting money on expensive luxury vehicles, which the government then struggled to sell.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "41c2f9c5190e145d15927c6bb9008f40e8712ed9", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/cacc8d264ae0ef4a9793c8c63b137ebec09704f7/0_137_1804_1083/500.jpg", | |
| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Banana appeal: Australia’s first genetically modified fruit sent for approval", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/12/banana-appeal-australias-first-genetically-modified-fruit-sent-for-approval", | |
| "words": "762", | |
| "section": "Environment", | |
| "date": "2023-05-12T00:00:38Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/cacc8d264ae0ef4a9793c8c63b137ebec09704f7/0_137_1804_1083/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Donna Lu Science writer", | |
| "description": "Cavendish made to resist fungus threatening variety worldwide is seen as safety net for growers if industry wiped out", | |
| "text": "Scientists have submitted Australia’s first genetically modified fruit – a Cavendish banana – to regulators for approval, saying it has been engineered to withstand a deadly fungus that poses a threat to banana growers worldwide.\n\nThe banana, known as QCAV-4, has been genetically modified to resist a fungus known as Panama disease tropical race 4 (TR4), which is threatening the multibillion-dollar Cavendish industry globally.\n\nIf approved, the banana would become Australia’s first GM fruit to be approved for cultivation and consumption, as well as the first GM banana to be approved worldwide.\n\nProf James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology, who led QCAV-4’s development, said the GM variety offered a safety net for growers in the event that the Australian industry was wiped out by TR4.\n\nThe research team is not planning on immediately releasing the banana for commercial production or consumption if approved.\n\nThere are between 300 and 1,000 varieties of banana globally, Dale estimates, but the Cavendish banana accounts for about half of commercial growing worldwide. “It has some disease resistance, it’s high yielding, it tastes pretty good and it travels well,” Dale said.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nCavendish bananas increased in popularity after an outbreak of Panama disease – the strain TR1 – wiped out plantations of the Gros Michel banana, which until the 1950s was the main commercial variety internationally.\n\nIn the 1990s a related fungus that affects Cavendish bananas, Panama TR4, was discovered in south-east Asia. It has has since spread to China, India and major banana-growing countries.\n\n“Eighty-five per cent of the world’s export bananas come from south and central America, and the other 15% come from the Philippines,” Dale said. “The Philippines is already dramatically affected by TR4.\n\n“Once it got to Colombia, and then Peru and now Venezuela, that’s when the big exporters suddenly realised that this is really very serious.”\n\nIn Australia Panama TR4 was first discovered in the Northern Territory, where it was gradually wiping out the industry, said Leon Collins, chair of the Australian Banana Growers’ Council.\n\n“On the east coast, we only have it in the Tully River valley at the moment. We’ve confined it to that so far because of good biosecurity, and also the big effort that the growers have made.”\n\nThe fungus “attacks the root of the plant and kills it slowly”, Collins said. “It virtually dehydrates the plant and it wilts.”\n\nCollins described the genetically modified QCAV-4 as “another string in the bow … that we can use. One day [we] may not have an industry here growing with normal bananas.”\n\nQCAV-4, the result of 20 years’ work, was developed by taking a resistance gene from a wild banana that is immune to TR4 and inserting it into the Cavendish.\n\nUsing six transgenic varieties of the banana, Dale and his colleagues began field trials south-east of Darwin in 2012, with good results.\n\n“We did a much, much bigger field trial that we planted in 2018, and that’s still going,” Dale said. One variety, now called QCAV-4, showed a 2% infection rate after four years, compared with 95% and 75% infection rates in two lots of regular Cavendish plants.\n\n“If the disease gets going [in Australia] like it has in the Philippines … we’ve got this banana in the back pocket and we’ll be able to pull it out.”\n\nCavendish bananas, including the QCAV-4, are incapable of sexual reproduction – every plant propagated is an identical clone. This means that “the genes aren’t going to flow to any other plant”, Dale said.\n\nA spokesperson for the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator said: “This is a significant step, but it is the first in a series of steps.\n\n“The gene technology regulator will carefully examine any risks to people and the environment posed by the commercial cultivation of the GM banana plants.\n\n“The regulator will only issue a licence authorising the cultivation of the GM banana if satisfied that any risks can be effectively managed.”\n\nThe spokesperson said two rounds of stakeholder consultation would be required, with public consultation expected to occur in August.\n\nFood Standards Australia New Zealand is assessing the banana’s suitability for commercial sale and consumption. Its chief executive, Dr Sandra Cuthbert, said: “Consumers can have trust and confidence in FSANZ’s independent scientific assessment. We develop world-leading standards and our experts have a strong track record of assessing the safety of novel foods.\n\n“We will invite public submissions on any proposed changes to the Australia New Zealand food standards code resulting from our assessment of this application.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "e34f95be102cf15cd1124a8235678746ca6c865b", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d382695329d13a334f7827b003d0e29dfb8beb73/0_113_5722_3433/500.jpg", | |
| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Thailand elections: young people want radical change in a country they say is stagnating", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/thailand-elections-young-people-want-radical-change-in-a-country-they-say-is-stagnating", | |
| "words": "949", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T23:32:50Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d382695329d13a334f7827b003d0e29dfb8beb73/0_113_5722_3433/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Rebecca Ratcliffe and Navaon Siradapuvadol in Bangkok", | |
| "description": "An end to military service and the lese majesty laws are among the priorities for many young voters ahead of Sunday’s election", | |
| "text": "As the date for the military draft loomed, Napasit Tonsiedee, 23, from Buriram, north-east Thailand, visited the temple, bathed in holy water and prayed the odds would land in his favour.\n\nHe, like many other young men in Thailand, was part of a lottery that would determine whether he would be forced to complete military service. If you pull a red card, you are drafted for two years; a black card means you are exempt.\n\nThe annual draft lottery – which some political parties have proposed scrapping – is one of the many issues weighing on young people’s minds ahead of elections.\n\nMuch to his relief, Napasit pulled a black card. He hopes the system will end under a new government.\n\nPaetongtarn Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai party, which is expected to win the most seats, has courted young voters by saying that a landslide win would allow it to oust the military generals. It has promised it will push to end the military draft, approve equal marriage and raise the minimum wage.\n\nSunday’s election will pit Paetongtarn, the scion of the Shinawatras, a family that has long dominated Thai politics, against former army generals. Her family remains popular in the north and north-east of Thailand – though are strongly opposed by conservative military royalists.\n\nBut her party faces major challenges: from an electoral system weighed against them (senators, who vote alongside the lower house for a future prime minister, were all appointed by the military) as well as from the Move Forward party.\n\nMove Forward is the most progressive party, and has drawn huge crowds of engaged young voters. It was the first to promise the end of mandatory military conscription, and has pledged to demilitarise politics and break up the big monopolies that dominate the economy.\n\n‘The military should be in the barracks’ The political outlook of first-time voters has been shaped by the incumbent prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ochaa, a former military general who first came to power in a coup in 2014, said Dr Pitch Pongsawat of Chulalongkorn University.\n\nMok, 30, who asked to give only one name, says she wants reforms so that the country’s generals stop interfering in politics. She says that every time there is a coup – there have been two since 2006 – it causes the country to stagnate.\n\n“Every time it happens it holds Thailand in one place. The military should be in the barracks.”\n\nThis weekend’s election is the first to be held since mass youth-led protests in 2020, which called for Prayuth to stand down and for the military to be removed from politics.\n\nStudent protest leaders also risked jail to call for the royal family’s power and wealth to be curbed, and for the lese majesty law – which outlaws and punishes criticism of the monarchy – to be removed. Since the protests more than 230 people, including children, have been charged under the law, which can lead to 15 years in jail.\n\nWhether citizens should have the right to criticise the monarchy has emerged as a new political faultline and this election is the first time the lese majesty law has been debated by public leaders in a substantive way, said Ken Mathis Lohatepanont, a political commentator.\n\n“The fact that this [debate] has happened was the result of the protests. But whether or not that’s actually going to lead to real change, that’s very much dependent on the makeup of the next coalition.”\n\nMove Forward has said it will push for reform of the law, while Paetongtarn has said the matter should be debated in parliament. Conservative parties are staunchly opposed to reform.\n\n‘I hope I don’t get cheated’ Natchaya, 18, a first time voter in Chiang Mai, hopes for change. “A lot of my friends got charged with article 112 [the lese majesty law]. I know if I make a mistake, one day it could come to me. The law should never have been this way.”\n\nShe was at school when the 2020 protest movement emerged, and became involved in activism, campaigning for changes to the education system, including greater freedom of thought in schools.\n\n“[The school system] is designed to teach students to obey, to make us become ‘good people’ according to their definition. It leads to a lack of diversity in Thai society.”\n\n“I want the curriculum to come from several sources, not only from the Thai government, especially in history classes.”\n\nShe also wants greater workers’ rights, and action on air pollution, having lived through the months of thick haze caused by agricultural burning. “The pollution in Chiang Mai is not a joke, our lives are being shortened every day.” Some parties point only to farmers in the fields, not the big companies that profit from the produce, she adds.\n\nIn the south of Thailand, Ekapong Noojaroen, 24, who is from Songkhla, said he too wants more investment in the quality of education in state schools. He also wants jobs to be created in areas outside the capital.\n\n“I don’t want us to have to go to Bangkok to work.” Of his childhood friends, as many as 80-90% have left to find work elsewhere, he said as he took part in early voting in Phuket on Sunday.\n\nSaksit Konkrathok, 24, who was also taking part in early voting in Phuket, agrees that greater investment is needed in areas outside the capital, and says it is hard for young people to get jobs.\n\nBoth add they want a future in which the electoral process is more democratic, without the influence of military-appointed senators, and with a fairer voting system. “The most important thing is that my true vote is really counted. I hope I don’t get cheated in any way,” Saksit said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "3c21d5c7db7b0aa8ea290310a16a906834eab7a8", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/2254c37837d5b76b1b8b70b423c9eb7e99cb6e57/0_108_4335_2601/500.jpg", | |
| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Almost two-thirds of young women have been sexually harassed at work, says TUC", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/almost-two-thirds-of-young-women-have-been-sexually-harassed-at-work-says-tuc", | |
| "words": "590", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T23:01:38Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/2254c37837d5b76b1b8b70b423c9eb7e99cb6e57/0_108_4335_2601/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Julia Kollewe", | |
| "description": "Most victims do not report it for fear of not being believed or damaging career prospects, says union body", | |
| "text": "Almost two in three young women have experienced sexual harassment, bullying or verbal abuse at work, according to a TUC poll.\n\nHowever, most victims do not report it for fear of not being believed or of damaging their relationships at work or their career prospects, the TUC said.\n\nOverall, almost three in five women (58%) have experienced harassment at work, the poll showed. The figure rises to 62% of women aged between 25 and 34.\n\nMost of these cases were not isolated incidents, with 57% of women saying they had experienced three or more incidents of bullying at work. More than two in five (43%) had experienced at least three incidents of sexual harassment.\n\nThe TUC’s general secretary, Paul Nowak, said: “Every woman should be safe from sexual harassment. But every day we hear stories about the extent of sexual harassment in our workplaces.\n\n“And we know many women in public-facing jobs – like retail workers and GP receptionists – suffer regular abuse from customers and patients. Sexual harassment and bullying have no place in modern workplaces.”\n\nSeparate research by the public sector union Unison recently showed that only one NHS trust in England provided dedicated training to prevent sexual harassment, even though one in 12 NHS staff had experienced such behaviour at work in the past year.\n\nMeanwhile, the CBI, the UK’s biggest business lobby group, has been rocked by a series of sexual misconduct allegations reported by the Guardian.\n\nThe TUC alleged that some Conservative MPs and peers were trying to sabotage new laws to protect workers from sexual harassment and assault at work.\n\nThe worker protection bill, a private member’s bill put forward with ministers’ support by Wera Hobhouse, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, would introduce a new preventive duty on employers to tackle sexual harassment in the workplace.\n\nThe bill would also protect workers from harassment and abuse by third parties such as customers, clients, patients or members of the public. The TUC said these were two big gaps in the current workplace protections for women.\n\nBut it said Tory backbenchers were trying to delay the bill to ensure it does not pass within the parliamentary time available.\n\nThe TUC poll found that in two out of five of the most recent incidents, the perpetrator was a third party rather than another member of staff.\n\nMost incidents of sexual harassment, bullying or verbal abuse happen in work premises (71%), but they also happen over the phone or by text message (12%), or online, by email, on social media or on a virtual meeting (8%).\n\nHowever, fewer than a third of women who said they experienced sexual harassment at work told their employer about what was happening, and only two in five (44%) of those being bullied, and half (50%) of those suffering verbal abuse, reported it.\n\nOf those who did not report it, some felt they would not be believed or taken seriously (39%), while others thought reporting it would impact negatively on their relationships at work (37%) or on their career prospects (25%).\n\n“Ministers promised to bring in long overdue new laws to prevent workplace sexual harassment and tackle abuse from third parties like customers and clients,” Nowak said. “But they are now backsliding under pressure from their own backbenchers who are trying to delay and derail these vital new protections.\n\n“It will be a disgrace if the government allows this bill to fall. Ministers must urgently ensure this bill passes in full or they will let down working women right across the country.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "442308ce96aab02e60a57935eaad916a657d9d10", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/df499f3224569f3d887b9dea17944ad4a942c66e/0_121_5486_3292/500.jpg", | |
| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Wealth tax of 0.5% could cover UK’s share of loss and damage fund, says charity", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/12/wealth-tax-of-05-could-cover-uks-share-of-loss-and-damage-fund-says-charity", | |
| "words": "485", | |
| "section": "Environment", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T23:01:37Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/df499f3224569f3d887b9dea17944ad4a942c66e/0_121_5486_3292/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Damien Gayle Environment correspondent", | |
| "description": "International fund set up at Cop27 is intended to provide compensation to countries worst hit by climate breakdown", | |
| "text": "A tax on wealthy Britons of just 0.5% could more than meet the UK’s entire “fair share” contribution to the international loss and damage fund established to support countries worst hit by global climate breakdown, a charity has suggested.\n\nTaxing 5p of every £10 of individuals’ wealth over £1m would raise £15bn a year by 2030, well in excess of an estimated $15bn (£12bn) UK contribution to the new fund, according to an analysis by the anti-poverty campaigners Christian Aid.\n\nThe loss and damage fund, established at last year’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt, is intended to provide compensation for climate-related disasters that are beyond the possibility of adaptation.\n\nSought by developing countries since 1992, the fund was the most contentious issue at the UN conference, and many of its specifics are yet to be ironed out.\n\nEstimates of its potential cost differ, but the range of $290bn-$580bn a year by 2030 is often cited, with a midpoint of about $400bn, taking into account inflation and rising climate impacts. Christian Aid estimates the UK’s “fair share” of this to be about 3.5%, or $15bn.\n\nThe charity says a wealth tax of the kind envisaged in its report would affect the top 5% of households, with the burden disproportionately borne by the top 1%. “This has the advantage of being levied on those who are likely to be disproportionately high polluters in their consumption and personal investment,” the report says.\n\nThe entire sum could also be raised through a tax of up to 95% on the excess profits of fossil fuel companies, which are enjoying all-time record surpluses, the report suggests. Or the money could be raised through a combination of measures including air passenger levies, emissions trading schemes and an expanded financial transactions tax, according to the report.\n\nNushrat Rahman Chowdhury, Christian Aid’s climate justice policy adviser, who wrote the report, said: “Climate change is the biggest issue of global injustice facing the world today. Some of the people that have done the least to cause it are experiencing the most terrible consequences. How we address that injustice fairly is at the heart of international climate negotiations.”\n\nNo country has yet agreed how much they will contribute towards the loss and damage fund. Chowdhury’s report recommends that richer countries should use progressive taxation to raise the cash, and communicate the need for it in the context of the growing climate emergency.\n\nLiane Schalatek, an associate director of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation, said: “This study clearly highlights the potential of progressive taxation for generating new and additional funding to support developing countries and the most vulnerable people in addressing loss and damage.\n\n“Rich countries, in fulfilling their moral obligation and historical responsibility, can build on approaches that many already have in taxing wealth, financial transactions or harmful environmental impacts. It is technically feasible and should be pursued as a matter of political priority.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/may/12/premier-league-10-things-to-look-out-for-this-weekend", | |
| "words": "1685", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T23:01:37Z", | |
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| "author": "Guardian sport", | |
| "description": "Big Sam returns to Newcastle, Southampton are nearing their end and will City risk things at buoyant Everton?", | |
| "text": "1) Allardyce has a point to prove Sam Allardyce arrived at St James’ Park for his May 2007 unveiling as Newcastle’s manager by helicopter. Eight underwhelming months later, Big Sam was sacked – and immediately had to hand his top-of-the-range company car to security, leaving him requiring a lift home to County Durham in his press officer’s somewhat more modest vehicle. Allardyce’s hefty payoff from Mike Ashley, Newcastle’s then-owner, enabled him to buy a lavish villa on Spain’s Costa Blanca, swiftly dubbed ‘Casa St James’ but the current Leeds manager has not forgotten what he describes as a “massive, massive career setback”. Allardyce has played down any talk of old scores being settled when Eddie Howe’s Champions League-chasing team visit Elland Road on Saturday but there is little doubt that Allardyce would enjoy sticking a metaphorical two fingers in the directions of those travelling Newcastle fans whose lack of enthusiasm for his tactics arguably prompted that dismissal. Much more importantly, this is a game Leeds surely cannot afford to lose – and quite possibly need to win – if they are to avoid falling into the Championship. Louise Taylor\n\nLeeds v Newcastle, Saturday 12.30pm\n\n2) Ten Hag must avoid Wolves raid The previous staging of this fixture came in January 2022 and ended with a 1-0 defeat for Manchester United, a first league victory for Wolves at Old Trafford since 1980. A repeat of the result would set alarm bells clanging for Erik ten Hag, as it would be his third successive defeat in the Premier League for the first time. It would also come in the first of the “four finals” that close this campaign as Ten Hag’s team battle with Newcastle and Liverpool to claim the two remaining Champions League berths. Ten Hag’s team are two points behind Newcastle and one ahead of Liverpool, who have played one match more and are in flying form, so three points has to be order of the day against visitors who are now safe from relegation. Jamie Jackson\n\nManchester United v Wolves, Saturday 3pm\n\n3) Drifting Blues offer Forest rare chance Nottingham Forest’s previous trip to west London did not end well. They went in front against Brentford, only to crack in the dying stages and concede a late winner, as a big chance to boost their survival hopes slipped away. It kept Steve Cooper’s side under pressure to perform at home and while Forest are out of the bottom three after beating Southampton at the City Ground on Monday, their Premier League status is far from secure. Forest host Arsenal next week and can give themselves some breathing space when they visit Chelsea on Saturday. A trip to Stamford Bridge would usually be a write-off for a struggling team but this feels different. Forest should have far more motivation than Chelsea, who are playing for little more than pride. Cooper’s players need to realise that these opportunities do not come around often. Jacob Steinberg\n\nChelsea v Nottingham Forest, Saturday 3pm\n\n4) Will City risk it at buoyant Everton? Manchester City’s march towards a third Premier League title in succession appears unstoppable: 10 league wins in a row, 21 matches unbeaten in all competitions and a winning unit peaking at the right time. Goodison Park would have represented a straightforward assignment for the champions until recently but Everton’s improvement and City’s Champions League dilemma has suddenly complicated the picture. Sean Dyche’s side were outstanding in a stunning 5-1 win at Brighton on Monday, with their ability to absorb pressure and destroy on the counterattack providing a template to follow against Pep Guardiola’s league leaders. One more win would be a monumental step for Everton towards Premier League safety – it would even be enough on its own if Leeds and Leicester each lose two of their remaining three games. Goodison should be a bear pit on Sunday. With the second leg of a delicately poised semi-final to follow against Real Madrid on Wednesday, will Guardiola ring the changes he resisted at the Bernabéu? Andy Hunter\n\nEverton v Manchester City, Sunday 2pm\n\n5) Villa’s future is looking bright With three games to play, European football is still in Aston Villa’s sights, an incredible feat in itself given they were only a point above the relegation zone at the start of November. Villa have won their past five home matches without conceding and if they can extend that pristine record against Tottenham on Saturday, they will keep alive their chances of a top-six finish. Victory would move Villa level on points with Spurs before Unai Emery’s side end the season against Liverpool (away) and Brighton (home). Regardless of whether they realise their dream of playing in Europe for the first time since the 2010-11 season, they are shaping up for a busy few months. Villa are pressing ahead with plans to increase their stadium capacity to 50,000 and building an inner-city academy in Aston. Barcelona’s director of football, Mateu Alamany, is to take on a similar role at the club from July. These are exciting times at Villa Park. Ben Fisher\n\nAston Villa v Tottenham, Saturday 3pm\n\n6) Seagulls seek response at Emirates Roberto De Zerbi was frustrated with his Brighton players after their shock capitulation against Everton. The Italian felt they had mentally been dining out on their last-gasp win over Manchester United, and that they would do well to understand a team is only as good as its next game. That particular test happens to come at the Emirates on Sunday: it is a happy hunting ground for the Seagulls. Brighton have won three of their last four meetings there in all competitions, but the dynamic around Arsenal has changed hugely since last season’s 2-1 success. It will be a clash of similar styles and, if Brighton are half as open at the back as they were on Monday night, they will surely be punished again. It feels like a match neither team can afford to slip up in if they are to remain in the mix for their respective goals; should De Zerbi’s words have cut through, then a thriller could be in prospect. Nick Ames\n\nArsenal v Brighton, Sunday 4.30pm\n\n7) Southampton’s last stand? According to the stats gurus at FiveThirtyEight, Southampton already have a 99% chance of dropping down to the Championship for the first time since 2012. Failing to beat Fulham after kicking off eight points shy of safety will confirm their relegation. Then the recriminations can begin, from the sacking of Ralph Hasenhüttl to the employment of Nathan Jones to asking a rookie, Rubén Sellés, to save the day. Then there’s the calamitous January transfer window in which six players were signed, from whom only Carlos Alcaraz, with four, has scored a goal. Ebere Onuachu and Kamaldeen Sulemana, both signed as forwards, are still yet to register. Marry those issues with a defence that has leaked sloppy goals through all three managerial regimes, and you have the formula for relegation. A squad not without talent have occasionally looked capable of pulling themselves from the mire. But even beating Fulham would leave Saints needing snookers to survive. John Brewin\n\nSouthampton v Fulham, Saturday 3pm\n\n8) Foxes’ task gets tougher So bleak is Leicester’s situation that this week Jamie Vardy said Leicester staying up would eclipse the achievement of their 5,000-1 Premier League title win. The Foxes have won one of their past 13 matches and face Champions League-chasing Liverpool and Newcastle in their next two fixtures. Dean Smith cancelled Leicester’s scheduled day off on Tuesday after the 5-3 humbling at Fulham and he can only hope the overtime his players have put in this week will spark an uplift in results. Brendan Rodgers took similar action earlier in the season, after Leicester’s poor showing in a 3-0 defeat at home to Newcastle on Boxing Day, but his side lost their next three league matches and squeaked past Gillingham in the FA Cup third round. The bad news is by the time Leicester host Jürgen Klopp’s side on Monday, they could be further adrift from safety. BF\n\nLeicester v Liverpool, Monday 8pm\n\n9) Johnstone can nail down No 1 slot It has taken a while for Sam Johnstone to become Crystal Palace’s No 1, replacing Vicente Guaita only after the goalkeeper suffered an injury in March. Johnstone seized his chance, which is no surprise considering the calibre of the 30-year-old with three England caps to his name and a successful Premier League career behind him. He has conceded five goals – three in a single match against West Ham – in his eight appearances in all competitions for Palace, keeping five clean sheets in the process. Despite his fine form, Johnston will know goalkeepers are regularly in a precarious position, and will be aware of the competition he faces from Guaita. The former West Brom keeper has three more matches to prove that he should be kept in the role when pre-season rolls around, regardless of who is in charge, with Roy Hodgson set to depart at the end of the current campaign. Will Unwin\n\nCrystal Palace v Bournemouth, Saturday 3pm\n\n10) More derby delight for Bees? Outwardly there is little riding on West Ham’s visit to Brentford. David Moyes’ players would probably be happy for the league season to wrap up here now that they are essentially safe and have a place in the Europe Conference League final to shoot for. Brentford’s hopes of their own European adventure appear to have faded, despite their admirable resilience and ability to bloody noses. Thomas Frank will not want his side clocking off though: they have won all three of their top-flight games against Sunday’s opponents since their promotion, which speaks eloquently of the instant ease they found at this level. Making it four in a row would do plenty for their prospects. Brentford face Spurs and Manchester City after this in a potentially sticky end to the campaign, but three points here would make a top-half finish almost certain. It would be something to celebrate for a club that never ceases to impress. NA\n\nBrentford v West Ham, Saturday 3pm\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Astronomers capture largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/12/astronomers-capture-largest-cosmic-explosion-ever-witnessed", | |
| "words": "573", | |
| "section": "Science", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T23:01:37Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/f4cc522a1a72be31241153dd2f6fd4750acb32d2/0_243_3500_2101/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Hannah Devlin Science correspondent", | |
| "description": "Fireball ‘100 times the size of the solar system’ thought to have been caused by gas being sucked into supermassive black hole", | |
| "text": "It started as an unremarkable flicker in the night sky. But closer observations revealed that astronomers had captured the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed, an event thought to have been triggered by a giant cloud of gas being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.\n\nThe flare-up, traced to 8bn light years away, is more than 10 times brighter than any known supernova and has so far lasted more than three years, making it the most energetic explosion on record.\n\n“It went unnoticed for a year as it gradually got brighter,” said Dr Philip Wiseman, an astronomer at Southampton University who led the observations. It was only when follow-up observations revealed how distant it was that astronomers appreciated the event’s almost unimaginable scale.\n\n“We’ve estimated it’s a fireball 100 times the size of the solar system with a brightness about 2tn times the sun’s,” Wiseman said. “In three years, this event has released about 100 times as much energy as the sun will in its 10bn-year lifetime.”\n\nScientists believe that the explosion, known as AT2021lwx, is the result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than our sun, plunging into the inescapable mouth of a supermassive black hole. The cloud of gas may have originated from the large dusty “doughnut” that typically surrounds black holes – although it is not clear what may have knocked it off course from its orbit and down the cosmic sinkhole.\n\nAT2021lwx is not the brightest phenomenon ever witnessed. A brighter gamma-ray burst, known as GRB 221009A, was spotted last year, but this event lasted only minutes. By contrast, the new event is still going strong, meaning the overall energy release is far greater.\n\nThe explosion was first detected in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, which surveys the night sky for sudden increases in brightness that could signal cosmic events such as supernovae or passing asteroids and comets. The event initially did not stand out, but when follow-up observations allowed its distance to be calculated, astronomers realised they had captured an incredibly rare event.\n\n“When I told our team the numbers they were all just so shocked,” Wiseman said. “Once we understood how extremely bright it was, we had to come up with a way to explain it.”\n\nIt was outside the plausible range for a supernova (exploding star) and so astronomers turned to the other common scenario that cause bright flashes in the night sky – a so-called tidal disruption event. These events typically involve a star straying too close to a black hole and being shredded, with part being swallowed and the rest being stretched out in a swirling disc.\n\nBut simulations suggested a star up to 15 times the mass of the sun would have been required to account for AT2021lwx. “Encountering such a huge star is very rare, so we think a much larger cloud of gas is more likely,” Wiseman said.\n\nSupermassive blackholes are typically surrounded by a vast halo of gas and dust, and the authors speculate that some of this material may have been disrupted, possibly by a collision of galaxies, and sent inwards. As the material spiralled towards the black hole’s event horizon (its spherical outer boundary), it would have given off vast amounts of heat and light, illuminating a portion of the doughnut and heating it to 12-13,000C.\n\nThe findings are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Budget incentives for Australian GPs unlikely to increase available bulk-billing appointments, experts say", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/12/budget-incentives-for-australian-gps-unlikely-to-increase-available-bulk-billing-appointments-experts-say", | |
| "words": "772", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T23:00:37Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/20dea5a88cb24a4476621d5daf52e04246a1fda1/0_50_4928_2959/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Melissa Davey Medical editor", | |
| "description": "Health policy analysts say payment boost will not reverse the trend of practices already charging patients gap fees", | |
| "text": "Budget incentives aimed at GPs are unlikely to increase the number of bulk-billing appointments available, or prompt clinics that have moved to private fees back to providing bulk-billed care, health policy experts and GPs say.\n\nA health policy analyst and former senior public servant of two decades with the federal department of health, Charles Maskell-Knight, said the bulk-billing incentive increases announced in the budget will encourage GPs already bulk billing to keep doing so, but will not reverse the trend of practices charging some patients a private fee or scrapping bulk billing altogether.\n\nFrom 1 November the amount of money the government pays GPs as an incentive for bulk billing will triple to $20.65 instead of $6.85 for a standard consultation. GPs working in very remote areas will receive $39.65. This is not the total GPs receive from the government for bulk billing (where a patient pays nothing for their appointment), but is a government payment GPs get paid on top of the Medicare rebate to encourage them to bulk bill.\n\n“If you are a GP currently charging patients a gap fee of $50, then unless you get the same amount of money from changing to bulk billing, you’re not going to change as the extra incentives are nothing close to that much,” Maskell-Knight said.\n\n“It’s just doesn’t make economic sense. It might stop bulk billing from going backwards for now, but it’s not a long-term solution.”\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\n“The problem is we are obsessed with fee-for-service medicine, and we need to try and get away from that idea. We need to also pay people for being doctors, and pay them a capitation payment, which would cover following up with family, following up with staff, talking to specialists and all of that care.”\n\nIn other words, rather than a GP just being paid an incentive for giving a single short consult, they would be also be incentivised to provide holistic, integrated care across a number of services.\n\nIn an analysis of the reforms for the Conversation, health system expert Dr Stephen Duckett said “it’s unclear” whether the budget measures will increase bulk-billing rates.\n\n“Practice owners could simply pocket the increased incentive for patients who are already bulk billed, leaving bulk-billing rates unchanged,” Duckett said. “Or GPs could use the increased revenue from their existing bulk-billed patients to reduce their hours of work, rather than bulk billing more patients.”\n\nPresident of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Dr Nicole Higgins, said the funding gives GPs more flexibility to support their vulnerable and disadvantaged patients, which she said is especially important for rural patients. But on whether bulk-billing rates will increase, she said: “We will have to wait to see the real impact of this measure in the Medicare benefits schedule data.”\n\n“But I am optimistic,” she said. “Taken with the rest of the measures in this budget, this is a gamechanger budget for general practice, and it will make a difference for patients, particularly those who are most vulnerable.”\n\nDr Tim Senior is a GP who works in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, and the western Sydney clinic where he works bulk bills all patients.\n\n“We will actually benefit from these budget measures because it will just increase the amount of money we’re getting for doing the work that we were already doing,” he said.\n\n“So I think the GPs who are already bulk billing healthcare card holders, pension card holders and children will benefit. And I think for GPs who really want to bulk bill because their patients are vulnerable and who have been forced to close their clinics because their patients can’t afford to pay a fee may return to bulk billing.\n\n“But the extended Medicare rebate freeze has created a real lack of trust. There’s a lot of talk among GPs about this measure being a trap, because what we really need is long-term funding that keeps pace with the cost of providing care, and these incentives are not enough to address that.”\n\nOverall Senior does not think there will be meaningful changes to bulk-billing rates as a result of the incentive. The increased incentive payments only apply to GP consultations with children under 16, pensioners and other commonwealth concession card holders.\n\n“I think the increased bulk-billing incentive is a really good health equity measure, because it targets those who are most likely to need help to pay for services,” he said. “But the budget measures won’t make any difference for people without a concession card. There’s no extra incentive for bulk billing them.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Moyes banks on West Ham’s ‘resilience’ to hold off AZ Alkmaar and reach final", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/may/11/moyes-banks-on-west-hams-resilience-to-hold-off-az-alkmaar-and-reach-final", | |
| "words": "348", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T22:40:08Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/f399f27eb103fb20e027be5ca227fb522a94ad1b/0_207_5063_3038/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Jacob Steinberg at the London Stadium", | |
| "description": "The manager says Europa League semi-final is ‘evenly balanced’ after Michail Antonio’s strike gave West Ham a 2-1 first leg lead at the London Stadium", | |
| "text": "David Moyes believes that West Ham will have enough resilience to reach the final of the Europa Conference League when they resume their battle with AZ Alkmaar next week.\n\nWest Ham will travel to the Netherlands with a 2-1 lead after fighting back from a goal down to win the first leg of their Conference League semi-final at the London Stadium last night.\n\nTijjani Reijnders gave AZ a half-time lead, but Saïd Benrahma equalised from the spot and Michail Antonio scored the winner with 15 minutes left.\n\n“I hugely believe we’ve got a big resilience here,” Moyes said. “I think we have it through the club, I think we have it through the team and we’ll need it. We’ve needed it in the big games in the Premier League. We’re just off a big win against Manchester United.\n\n“Tonight, we’ve won 2-1 in a semi-final first leg, so you’d have to say that’s OK. When it’s a cup competition, it doesn’t matter how you do it really and the job is to get it done. We’ve not got it done yet, far from it, we’ve got a big job to do next week.”\n\nMoyes admitted that West Ham, who have not been in a European final since 1976, will need to improve. They did not create much and there were parallels with their defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League semi-finals last year when they were behind.\n\n“We’ve got a slight narrow lead but nothing more than that,” Moyes said. “When I got to half-time I felt there were still three-quarters of the game to go. We had to make sure we picked up. We did. The decision-making in the final third in the first half was so poor. In the second half we got a little better.\n\n“I think the tie is evenly balanced. I didn’t think we gave up too many opportunities, even though we conceded the goal. It was our play in the higher part of the pitch where we didn’t play well enough. We got ourselves in front, which is a big thing.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Ex-marine to be charged in subway chokehold killing of Jordan Neely", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/11/jordan-neely-killing-subway-new-york-criminal-charges", | |
| "words": "409", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T21:05:31Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/22953dfca18514ae52aa36e763fbfe503572df11/0_0_5214_3129/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Guardian staff and agencies", | |
| "description": "Daniel Penny, 24, faces second-degree manslaughter charges that could carry up to 15 years in jail, according to Manhattan DA’s office", | |
| "text": "Authorities in New York said they will bring criminal charges against a former marine who put fellow subway passenger Jordan Neely in a chokehold that killed him.\n\nDaniel Penny, 24, is expected to be arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter, which could carry a jail term of up to 15 years.\n\n“We cannot provide any additional information until he has been arraigned in Manhattan criminal court, which we expect to take place tomorrow,” the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement.\n\nNeely’s killing nearly two weeks ago has triggered widespread anger across New York and the US. The death of Neely, an unhoused Michael Jackson impersonator who was Black, has become a symbol of inequality in the US as well as concern over racism and paranoia over crime and vigilantism. Penny is white.\n\nThe incident played out after Neely entered a train carriage yelling that he was tired and hungry and ready to die. A four-minute video captured by a freelance journalist showed other riders pinning Neely down against the floor and Penny putting him in a chokehold that he maintained for long after Neely had stopped moving and as at least one passenger urged him to let go.\n\nPolice found Neely unconscious, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Investigators determined he died from having his neck compressed, and his death was ruled a homicide by a city medical examiner.\n\nOfficers detained Penny and questioned him, but released him without booking him with a crime.\n\nDemonstrators have held regular protests in New York calling Neely’s death vigilantism by a white man against a Black subway passenger who was experiencing homelessness as well as having longstanding mental health struggles after his mother’s murder when he was a teenager. Neely was well known to homelessness advocates in the city and had been arrested multiple times.\n\nNeely’s family have condemned Penny for offering neither “an apology nor an expression of regret” in a statement of about the incident that he released through lawyers and which highlighted Neely’s mental health struggles. Penny’s lawyers previously said their client, along with two other riders who helped restrain Neely, had acted in self-defense.\n\nThe Neely family called the statement “a character assassination and a clear example of why he believed he was entitled to take Jordan’s life”.\n\n“The truth is, he knew nothing about Jordan’s history when he intentionally wrapped his arms around Jordan’s neck, and squeezed and kept on squeezing,” they added.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Eurovision organisers rebuff Zelenskiy request to give video speech at final", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/11/eurovision-organisers-rebuff-zelenskiy-request-to-give-video-speech-at-final", | |
| "words": "475", | |
| "section": "Television & radio", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T21:52:12Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/868e75717b462c584c01df4349e6c8355a45a3d9/5_910_3977_2386/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Nadeem Badshah", | |
| "description": "European Broadcasting Union, which oversees song contest, says appearance by Ukrainian president could politicise the event", | |
| "text": "The owners of the Eurovision song contest have turned down a request from Volodymyr Zelenskiy to make a video appearance during the final on Saturday in Liverpool.\n\nThe Ukrainian president had hoped to appeal to the global audience of about 160 million people to continue their support for his country in the war with Russia.\n\nThe European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – an alliance of more than 100 broadcasters that oversees the contest – is concerned that an appearance by Zelenskiy risks politicising the event.\n\nAn EBU spokesperson told the Times: “The Eurovision song contest is an international entertainment show and governed by strict rules and principles which have been established since its creation. As part of these, one of the cornerstones of the contest is the non-political nature of the event. This principle prohibits the possibility of making political or similar statements as part of the contest.\n\n“The request by Mr Zelenskiy to address the audience at the Eurovision song contest, whilst made with laudable intentions, regrettably cannot be granted as it would be against the rules of the event.”\n\nThe spokesperson added that in this week’s two semi-finals and the final of the contest, there are 11 Ukrainian artists including last year’s winners Kalush Orchestra.\n\n“Additionally 37 locations around Ukraine will feature in the short film postcards that introduce each of the participating artists before they take to the stage. We believe that this is the best way to reflect and celebrate Ukraine’s Eurovision song contest win and show we are united by music during these hard times.”\n\nThe BBC, this year’s host of the song contest, is among the broadcasters that are members of the EBU but decision-making lies with the body itself.\n\nIt is not the first time that Zelenskiy has been barred from giving a video address at major entertainment and sporting events.\n\nA request to speak at the Oscars in March was said to have been declined for the second consecutive year, in addition to the Toronto film festival in September.\n\nA request by Zelenskiy to share a message of world peace before the kickoff at the World Cup final in Qatar last December was rejected by Fifa, it was reported.\n\nLady Stowell, chair of the Lords communications and digital select committee and the BBC’s former head of corporate affairs, said the Ukrainian president should be allowed to speak at Eurovision. “It’s the wrong decision to deny him the opportunity to give a message on the basis that they don’t support political statements,” she told the Times. “It’s not acceptable.”\n\nUkraine’s national broadcaster UA:PBC said in October that it was unable to host the 67th edition of the song contest on safety grounds due to the Russian invasion.\n\nThe EBU asked the BBC to host the competition after the UK finished in second place last year with Sam Ryder’s Space Man.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Hong Kong passes law to limit work of foreign lawyers amid ongoing Jimmy Lai case", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/11/hong-kong-passes-law-to-limit-work-of-foreign-lawyers-amid-ongoing-jimmy-lai-case", | |
| "words": "699", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T05:26:20Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3f637c53b00050cb969abb075b87a9942d67fcde/0_11_1548_929/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Helen Davidson in Taipei and Verna Yu", | |
| "description": "Amended legislation gives chief executive power to veto any foreign lawyer working on cases brought under national security law", | |
| "text": "Hong Kong has passed a law that allows authorities to ban foreign lawyers from working on national security cases, completing a months-long effort to block a UK practitioner from defending the media mogul and activist Jimmy Lai.\n\nThe amendment, which was passed unanimously by the Legislative Council on Thursday, gives the chief executive the power to veto any foreign lawyer from working on cases brought under the 2020 National Security Law (NSL).\n\nLai, the founder of now defunct Apple Daily newspaper and a high profile pro-democracy figure, was first arrested in August 2020. He has since been charged with foreign collusion under the sweeping NSL, after calling for sanctions against Hong Kong and China over their crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. If convicted he could face life in prison. Apple Daily shut down after its assets were frozen by the police in 2021.\n\nLai had sought to engage UK lawyer Tim Owen in defending the charges. The government challenged Owen’s appointment in court, but lost an appeal in November when the city’s highest court ruled Owen could represent Lai. The chief executive, John Lee, then asked Beijing to intervene, and make an “interpretation” of the national security law to clarify its stance on foreign lawyers.\n\nIn the interim, Lai’s trial was postponed from November, when the immigration department withheld Owen’s application for a visa extension to stay in Hong Kong, and again in December when that application was denied and Owen was forced to leave.\n\nSoon afterwards, Beijing declared that courts needed approval from the chief executive to allow foreign lawyers on national security cases. Wednesday’s amendment enshrines that interpretation in Hong Kong law, and adds to mounting concern over the independence of Hong Kong’s once vaunted judiciary. Previous changes have given the chief executive the power to appoint judges to oversee national security trials, which are not guaranteed to be heard in front of a jury.\n\nLai’s trial is set to begin in late September, by which time he will have spent almost 1,000 days in jail. He was initially held on remand, but is now serving successive terms for convictions related to the 2019 protests and business fraud, all charges his supporters say are politically motivated.\n\nIn Washington, the US government’s congressional-executive commission on China held a hearing on Thursday, examining the erosion of the rule of law in Hong Kong. At the hearing, exiled Hong Kong activists drew attention to the mass political imprisonment in the city since the national security law passed three years ago.\n\n“Mass political imprisonment affects virtually ever sector of Hong Kong society, every community, every neighbourhood,” said Brian Kern, an activist formerly based in Hong Kong. “Almost everyone in Hong Kong knows someone imprisoned for political reasons.”\n\nSince the start of the mass anti-government protests in June 2019, there have been 10,615 political arrests in Hong Kong, said Kern, researcher of the US-based Hong Kong Democracy Council’s report on political prisoners. He noted that there were 1,014 political prisoners in the city as of May last year, but that figure has jumped by nearly 50% to 1,457 within a year.\n\n“The only countries incarcerating political prisoners at rates faster than Hong Kong’s over the past three years are Myanmar and Belarus,” he said.\n\n“How high does the number has to get for the world to actively hold the Chinese Communist party accountable?” asked Anna Kwok, executive director of Hong Kong Democracy Council.\n\nLai’s son, Sebastian, pointed out that his 75-year-old father may never get out of jail as he is likely to receive a lengthy sentence. “My father is in prison because he spoke truth to power for decades,” he said. “He is still … refusing to be silenced, even though he has lost everything and he may die in prison.”\n\nOn Wednesday, he accused the UK government of “weakness” for not speaking out about his father with the same strength as the US. Both father and son are British citizens.\n\n“It’s very sad to see a democratic government being afraid – or asking permission, even – to speak on behalf of one of its citizens that is in prison for freedom of speech,” said the younger Lai. “It’s just ridiculous.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "875cf1f46367013875e503562635e6403b4b9e14", | |
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| "title": "Antonio strikes against AZ Alkmaar to give West Ham chance of final step", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/may/11/west-ham-az-alkmaar-match-report-europa-conference-league", | |
| "words": "859", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T21:04:48Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d09386c5f977bdd47b205602a2c6c7a810a6999c/1133_448_3982_2391/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Jacob Steinberg at the London Stadium", | |
| "description": "West Ham came from behind to beat AZ Alkmaar 2-1, with Saïd Benrahma equalising from the spot before Michail Antonio’s winner", | |
| "text": "It was scrappy, it was messy, but West Ham only saw the beauty. They celebrated wildly when Michail Antonio bundled the ball over the line with 15 minutes left, completing a turnaround few people had anticipated, and in those moments it was possible to forget that the evening had been such a slog. Perhaps, then, it will only be when the dust settles that West Ham remember that they were going nowhere until the AZ Alkmaar goalkeeper Mat Ryan misjudged the flight of the ball and almost took Jarrod Bowen’s head off midway through the second half.\n\nNobody should make the mistake of thinking that David Moyes’s side are assured of reaching their first European final since 1976. In truth they toiled for long spells against a limited AZ side, creating little and treating the ball with insufficient care. Their football was unimaginative, too reliant on physical power and counterattacks, and for a while it seemed that the first leg of this Europa Conference League semi-final would be defined by Alphonse Areola handing AZ the lead when he allowed a soft shot from Tijjani Reijnders to squirm past him.\n\nNonetheless Moyes will take heart from West Ham finding a way to take control of the tie before travelling to the Alkmaar for the second leg. The mood turned when Ryan fouled Bowen and Saïd Benrahma equalised from the spot. Soon it was 2-1, Antonio scoring after a scramble, and West Ham finally had their young opponents where they wanted them.\n\nThey could tell themselves that this was an important step. West Ham failed to handle the occasion when they faced Eintracht Frankfurt in the semi-finals of the Europa League last year. They lacked nous and were always chasing the game after conceding in the first minute of the first leg, but it was different against AZ. This time West Ham responded to adversity. They were resilient enough to keep plugging away and, if they are capable of dealing with AZ’s ability to hoard possession, they will back themselves to cause problems on the break given that Pascal Jansen’s side will have to commit men forward.\n\nEqually Moyes was not entirely happy with West Ham’s performance against the fourth best team in the Eredivisie. The Scot saw a lack of quality in the final third and he wondered if his forwards were overexcited. Everything felt too frantic, although West Ham did have a few early openings. There was a chance for Bowen, who headed Declan Rice’s cross over, and Benrahma forced Ryan to make one outstanding save.\n\nAZ struggled to hurt West Ham. They built up slowly, trying to draw the sting, carefully looking for space on the flanks. Openings were rare, although there was a moment when Vangelis Pavlidis almost broke through. Kurt Zouma, back in central defence after Angelo Ogbonna was taken unwell, saved West Ham with a timely interception.\n\nWest Ham looked comfortable without the ball, although there was a question over whether they saw enough of it. They needed more precision and Benrahma and Bowen were short of composure on the flanks. Lucas Paquetá’s final ball was lacking and Antonio’s hold-up play needed to improve.\n\nThe frustration for Paquetá rose when he went down after being beaten to a header by Sam Beukema. It was a fair challenge from the centre-back and West Ham were too focused on complaining to the Turkish referee, Halil Meler. They were not alive to the danger when AZ broke through Myron van Brederode. Sven Mijnans found Reijnders, West Ham backed off and the midfielder’s shot from 25 yards caught Areola out at his near post.\n\nIt was not a surprise to hear the home fans lash out at the officials at half-time. Yet there was no reason to disallow the goal. West Ham needed to look closer to home. Where was the pressure on Reijnders? Why had Moyes brought Areola in for Lukasz Fabianski when most teams resist the urge to rest their No 1 goalkeeper in the big games?\n\nWest Ham grew tense. They snatched at passes and overhit crosses. There were howls when Nayef Aguerd miscued a long pass. West Ham were forcing it and allowing AZ’s time-wasting to get under their skin. There were ironic cheers when Jordy Clasie was booked for taking too long over a free-kick, but the mood was fraught. Bowen threatened, shooting just wide, but it did not feel particularly encouraging to see a flick from Paquetá go out for a throw.\n\nThe comfort for West Ham, though, was that AZ were not threatening to score again. Midway through the second half they pumped a cross to the far post. Tomas Soucek headed it back and in went Bowen, getting to the ball just before Ryan and then going to ground after being caught by the goalkeeper’s attempted punch.\n\nIt was rash from Ryan. Benrahma buried the penalty and West Ham pushed again. AZ failed to clear a corner and Rice picked up possession on the left. He crossed, Aguerd’s effort was cleared off the line and Antonio forced the rebound in. West Ham were halfway to next month’s final in Prague.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "f140ea87c0363e359b45e14d4cafd694f3b0c443", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/64c91fad68fd0ba358920b6303f5458afcb8e73b/0_275_8256_4954/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Morning Mail: aged care ‘gaming’ funding, coalmine approved, fears of ‘another Juukan Gorge’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/12/morning-mail-aged-care-gaming-funding-coalmine-approved-fears-of-another-juukan-gorge", | |
| "words": "890", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T20:49:00Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/64c91fad68fd0ba358920b6303f5458afcb8e73b/0_275_8256_4954/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Martin Farrer", | |
| "description": "Consultants advised providers to exploit subsidies before rule changes, while Labor faces wrath over green light for Queensland scheme", | |
| "text": "Morning, everyone. Our top story today reveals a worrying financialisation of the aged care sector, with consultants urging providers to exploit the system for profit. We’re also reporting from the Northern Territory where traditional owners fear “another Juukan Gorge” development disaster, we’re covering an alpaca baby boom, and we have an interview with the novelist Marcus Zusak.\n\nAustralia\n\nOK for coal | The Australian government has approved a new coalmine development for the first time since it was elected last year. The go-ahead is expected for the Isaac River coking coalmine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin.\n\nAged care scandal | Consultants have advised aged care providers to exploit the system by considering which residents generate “higher profit margins” and urged them to “get your money now” before new regulations are introduced.\n\nChristmas surprise | One of the world’s biggest defence contractors, BAE Systems, tried to bill the government $55,000 for Christmas cards and decorations, an audit report into the cost blowout for the new frigate program reveals.\n\n‘Very limited’ staff | Australia’s freedom of information commissioner complained on the eve of his departure about being routinely ignored within his agency and of the pointless diversion of his “very limited” staff.\n\nAlpaca boom | Australia’s alpaca herd is on track to jump from 350,000 to 400,000 after a baby boom in the leggy camelids fuelled by ideal breeding conditions.\n\nWorld\n\nNo rain in Spain | The Spanish government has approved a €2.2bn ($3.6bn) plan to help farmers and consumers cope with an enduring drought that has been exacerbated by the hottest and driest April on record.\n\n‘Served America well’ | CNN bosses have defended their decision to host a primetime town hall with Donald Trump after triggering widespread outrage by allowing the former president to spout lies and disinformation.\n\nImran ruling | Pakistan’s supreme court has ruled the arrest of the former prime minister Imran Khan was illegal and ordered that he be released.\n\nBird boss | Elon Musk says he has found a new chief executive for Twitter, though he didn’t reveal who it was in his tweeted announcement.\n\nGaza fighting | Fighting between Israel and militant groups in the Gaza Strip has intensified for the third day despite ceasefire efforts brokered by Egypt, with 28 people killed in Gaza, including at least 10 civilians, and one civilian in Israel.\n\nFull Story\n\nWhy we should avoid a scare campaign on immigration\n\nThe Coalition has accused the Albanese government of allowing the number of immigrants to balloon, which it says will further entrench a nationwide housing crisis. Gabrielle Jackson talks to Lenore Taylor and Mike Ticher about getting the facts straight on immigration.\n\nIn-depth\n\nThe traditional owners of Darwin are warning about the risk of “another Juukan Gorge-style scenario” if the Middle Arm industrial hub development is allowed to go ahead a “stone’s throw” from the city’s only known remaining Indigenous rock art. Both NT and federal government planning guidelines advise early engagement with First Nations people about development proposals on their country but senior Larrakia people say that has not happened on Middle Arm. Lisa Cox investigates.\n\nNot the news\n\nIn the lead-up to an ABC adaptation of his novel The Messenger, Marcus Zusak talks to Sian Cain about why he thinks the show is better than his book and coping with the success of his huge bestseller, The Book Thief. “You can’t whinge about the pressure – it’s only there because something really fortunate happened. So I would never wish The Book Thief away. It is the book you hope for.”\n\nThe world of sport\n\nAsh Barty | The former tennis world No 1 talks about her life after retiring from the game, expecting a child and what she misses most about competing.\n\nFootball | Australia will face India, Syria and Uzbekistan in a tough Group B when the Asian Cup kicks off in Qatar in January.\n\nAFL | All booing is infantile but not all boos are equal , writes Jonathan Horn, as he addresses this week’s big latest controversy in the sport.\n\nMedia roundup\nThe Financial Review casts Peter Dutton’s budget reply as “more work, not higher dole is solution” as a comment piece says the opposition leader will try to use immigration to win back middle-class votes. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside parliament in Darwin calling for action in the wake of the alleged murder of a student, NT News reports.\n\nWhat’s happening today\n\nCanberra | The inquiry into ACT police handling of the Bruce Lehrmann case continues.\n\nLismore | Findings are due in inquest into the death of Natasha Lechner, who died after undergoing kambo treatment in NSW.\n\nSydney | Former NRL player Jarryd Hayne is to be sentenced for sex offences.\n\nSign up\nIf you would like to receive this Morning Mail update to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here. And finish your day with a three-minute snapshot of the day’s main news. Sign up for our Afternoon Update newsletter here.\n\nPrefer notifications? If you’re reading this in our app, just click here and tap “Get notifications” on the next screen for an instant alert when we publish every morning.\n\nBrain teaser\nAnd finally, here are the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.\n\nQuick crossword\n\nCryptic crossword\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "acf732766f9b2fdb9d942ec8fc8833844e3214e2", | |
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| "title": "Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz rivalry could finally reignite in Rome", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/may/11/novak-djokovic-and-carlos-alcaraz-rivalry-could-finally-reignite-in-rome", | |
| "words": "796", | |
| "section": "Sport", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T20:42:11Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/90edb5668d296689c55d404e4549ec728f021e7f/0_209_4823_2894/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Tumaini Carayol in Rome", | |
| "description": "The world’s two best men’s tennis players have not played one another in over a year but are in the same tournament at last", | |
| "text": "Over the past 10 months, the duality of the ATP tour has been exasperating. Two exceptional players have pieced together dominant runs across multiple surfaces, clearly distinguishing themselves from the rest of the field, trading the No 1 ranking back and forth. And yet, in this same period, Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz have avoided each other the entire way.\n\nSince he rediscovered his killer instinct, Djokovic’s results have read like a vintage season even on the eve of his 36th birthday. Djokovic has compiled a 43-5 record in individual events since losing to Rafael Nadal in the French Open quarter-finals last year. He has won Wimbledon and the Australian Open among six titles in total.\n\nAs Djokovic re-established his high standards, a new star blazed his own path. Alcaraz won the US Open last year and ended one of the all-time great breakout seasons by becoming the first men’s teenage world No 1. This year, he is 29-2. The 20-year-old now has four Masters 1000 titles, a grand slam and 10 titles overall having started 2022 with one to his name.\n\nNot only have the pair failed to meet since Alcaraz beat Nadal and Djokovic back-to-back en route to winning the Madrid Open last May, but they have barely even competed in the same big tournaments together. While Djokovic was barred from the United States as Alcaraz won the US Open and Indian Wells, Alcaraz was injured while Djokovic swept up the ATP Finals and Australian Open. A year ago, Alcaraz skipped Rome after his Madrid heroics, and Djokovic won the title. This year Djokovic’s elbow injury ruled him out of Madrid as Alcaraz clinched the title.\n\nFinally, men’s tennis’s long-distance rivalry is coming together. This week’s Italian Open will mark the first time in 2023 that the two best men’s players in the world have entered the same tournament. Rome will also represent a shift within those dynamics: Djokovic leads Alcaraz by just five points in the ATP rankings. By merely stepping on to the court on Saturday, Alcaraz will gain 10 points and leapfrog Djokovic, the defending champion, retaking to the world No 1 ranking.\n\n“It is strange that we haven’t been in the same draw since the beginning of the season,” said Djokovic on Thursday. “Due to the circumstances on both sides, that didn’t happen. I mean, he’s going to be No 1 after this tournament whatever happens. Deservedly so. He’s been playing some very impressive tennis, a great level. He’s the player to beat on this surface, no doubt.”\n\nAlcaraz’s run this year has been even more remarkable considering it has come immediately after a three-month injury layoff. The remainder of the clay season will test his stamina and durability even more than his ability. The Spaniard has played a lot of tennis over the past few months, and after two weeks in Madrid, he faces another two weeks in Rome while also trying to preserve his energy for the French Open.\n\n“Of course, it depends if Nadal is going to play in French Open or not. But Alcaraz is one of the top favourites without any dilemma,” said Djokovic. “He’s been playing fantastic tennis. We faced each other only once last year in Madrid. If we get a chance to face each other here, it would be in the final. I think we would both love to play in the final.”\n\nDjokovic arrives in Rome with work to do ahead of the French Open. After missing the Indian Wells and Miami double due to not being able to enter the US as an unvaccinated visitor, he lost a dire match to Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in the third round of Monte Carlo. Afterwards Djokovic, normally a fluid speaker, was seething. He responded with staccato answers and cut his press conference short.\n\nA week later, Djokovic was defeated by his fellow Serb Dusan Lajovic in Banja Luka. Djokovic promptly withdrew from the Madrid Open with an elbow injury. After a number of training sessions in Rome, however, he says he is feeling well.\n\n“It’s all good,” said Djokovic. “There’s always some things here and there that bother you at this level. It’s normal. Also when you’re not 25 any more, I guess you experience that a bit more than what used to be the case. It takes a little bit more time to recover. But I feel good. I miss competition. I love playing in Rome.”\n\nTen arduous days and many tough opponents stand between a potential second meeting of Alcaraz and Djokovic. They will start as the clear favourites in their respective halves of the draw, but whether they face each other in Rome or not, it is only a matter of time before they stare each other down again.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "7f30db5380932bb079113b96322a5ad3cba22d2a", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "YouTuber accused of deliberately crashing plane for views pleads guilty", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/11/youtuber-crashed-plane-pleads-guilty-los-padres-forest", | |
| "words": "395", | |
| "section": "Technology", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T20:29:57Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4833dc7094d1803da5a01e6b6e65b37af2359e2e/97_0_1498_900/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Abené Clayton in Los Angeles", | |
| "description": "Trevor Jacob, 29, faces up to 20 years in prison after purposely destroying wreckage of small plane that he crashed in 2021", | |
| "text": "A YouTuber accused of deliberately crashing his plane to get a boost in views has agreed to plead guilty to obstructing a federal investigation, the US Department of Justice announced.\n\nTrevor Jacob, 29, faces up to 20 years in federal prison after he purposely destroyed the wreckage of the small single-engine plane that he crashed in California’s Los Padres national forest in 2021, according to a statement from the US attorney’s office.\n\nJacob, who parachuted out of the plane before it crashed, uploaded a video to YouTube documenting the incident. He initially told investigators that his plane lost power and that he did not know where the wreck was. But his story drew doubts from aviation experts and federal authorities. They later found that Jacob made no attempt to call air traffic control, restart his engine or search for a safe place to land.\n\nThe YouTuber, who described himself as an experienced pilot and skydiver, never intended to complete his solo flight from Lompoc airport in southern California to Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada mountains, he admitted in his plea agreement.\n\nPrior to taking off on 24 November 2021, Jacob mounted several video cameras on different parts of the plane and equipped himself with a parachute, video camera and selfie stick, officials said. About 35 minutes into the flight, he jumped from the plane and began filming the aircraft as it plunged into the dry brush below. Once he touched ground, he hiked to the crash site and retrieved the footage from the crash.\n\nTwo days later, Jacob informed the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) of the plane crash but told investigators with the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration that he did not know where the wreckage was.\n\nOn 10 December 2021, however, Jacob and a friend flew to the crash site and towed the crashed plane to Santa Barbara county, where Jacob put it in a hangar. Over several days, he destroyed sections of the plane and placed the parts in trash cans around the airport and elsewhere, which authorities say he admitted to doing in order to mislead investigators.\n\nHe uploaded a video titled I Crashed My Plane to YouTube on 23 December 2021. The following April, after investigators uncovered Jacob’s lies and obstructions, the FAA revoked his pilot license.\n\nJacob’s video of the crash has been viewed nearly 3m times.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Country star Jimmie Allen accused of sexual assault by former manager", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/may/11/jimmie-allen-sexual-assault-accusation-country-star", | |
| "words": "500", | |
| "section": "Music", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T20:07:25Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/159ffe4fa6902c7433d0eb816a53c260a1fed1ff/326_138_1906_1144/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Guardian music", | |
| "description": "Grammy-nominated musician, 37, accused of a ‘torrential cycle’ of abuse and harassment, which Allen denies", | |
| "text": "The country star Jimmie Allen is being sued by his former manager for sexual assault.\n\nThe woman, known as “Jane Doe”, has alleged that the singer repeatedly raped and harassed her over an 18-month period, referring to it as a “torrential cycle” of abuse. According to Variety, a lawsuit was filed this week in federal court in Tennessee, accusing Allen, 37, of sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment, sex trafficking and emotional distress.\n\nMultiple claims were made in the lawsuit, include the allegation that Allen, a Grammy-nominated singer, raped the woman during a trip to Los Angeles when he filmed a 2021 episode of American Idol as a celebrity guest. The plaintiff claims she woke up in bed after a business dinner, in pain and bleeding, to discover she had lost her virginity without consent.\n\n“I was disconnected from my body, feeling a sense of panic,” she said to Variety.\n\nThe woman alleges Allen made it clear that her work contract was dependent on her “staying silent about his conduct”, and that he used his power and influence “to recruit and entice the plaintiff to private locations, including his hotel room, home, car and event locations, where he would perform sex acts”.\n\nIn a statement, Allen called the allegations “deeply troubling” and said he was shocked to see them come from one of his “closest friends, colleagues and confidants” , who he said he had a consensual sexual relationship with.\n\n“During that time, she never once accused me of any wrongdoing, and she spoke of our relationship and friendship as being something she wanted to continue indefinitely,” he said. “Only after things ended between us, did she hire a lawyer to reach out and ask for money, which leads me to question her motives.”\n\nThe woman’s attorney has contested this, denying that any initial monetary demand was made, and that instead a meeting was requested to discuss the allegations.\n\n“The response was a hard no, and coloured with threats that his team would take steps to publicly tarnish my client,” the rebuttal said. “My client had no choice but to be proactive in protecting herself by filing the complaint.”\n\nAllen first rose to prominence on American Idol in 2011, and has since released hits including Best Shot and Make Me Want To. He became the first Black solo performer to win new male artist of the year at the 2021 Country Music Association awards and was also nominated for a best new artist Grammy. He has also written the children’s book My Voice Is a Trumpet.\n\nHe was recently a judge on My Kind of Country, the Reese Witherspoon-produced music competition show for Apple TV+. Allen split from his wife in April.\n\nJane Doe is also suing her former employer, Wide Open Music, and Ash Bowers, its founder.\n\n“I have to tell this story because there’s no way I would let my daughter near a situation like this,” she said. “My life has been turned inside out because of Jimmie Allen.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "2d1f4e045fb11900eae2b813a8a3ded0f69e3b52", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Lois Keith obituary", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/11/lois-keith-obituary", | |
| "words": "999", | |
| "section": "Society", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T19:41:53Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/7763cf1fd3998b3bc5d58881ff29656eece04320/410_734_2854_1712/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Dea Birkett", | |
| "description": "Writer, teacher and disability rights campaigner who challenged the barriers facing disabled women", | |
| "text": "The writer, teacher and disability rights campaigner Lois Keith, who has died aged 73, used her words and first-hand experience as a wheelchair user to challenge the barriers faced by disabled women.\n\nLois began to write about attitudes towards disability in the 1990s, part of a growing band of disabled women, including Jane (now Lady) Campbell, Jenny Morris, and Rosalie (now Lady) Wilkins, who were spearheading change in the years before the Disability Discrimination Act was passed.\n\nIn 1994, she gathered new voices in a pioneering anthology Mustn’t Grumble: Writing By Disabled Women, which won the Mind Book of the Year/Allen Lane award. It remained one of her proudest achievements and is still used in gender studies and disability courses worldwide. Her novels A Different Life (1997, for young adults) and Out of Place (2003) both championed positive images of disability.\n\nIn 2003 Lois joined the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama (which included Rada, Lamda, Bristol Old Vic and Rambert) as their first equality and diversity manager, where she remained for 12 years.\n\nHer work there made established arts institutions question their assumptions, alter policies and open the door to disabled students. In 2016, she was made an OBE for her services to equality and diversity in higher education and the performing arts.\n\nLois and I met at a party held by the disability-led charity Shape Arts, where she later became a trustee. I had read her book Take Up Thy Bed and Walk – Death, Disability and Cure in Classic Fiction for Girls (2001), and when Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic The Secret Garden was restaged I wrote a piece for the Guardian, heavily influenced by her work, condemning the revival of this tragic tale of life in a wheelchair.\n\nWe immediately became friends, often wandering around museums together muttering about the height at which paintings were hung, the broken lifts or the word “carer”, which Lois despised, being used to describe whoever was accompanying her, whether a friend or her husband, Colin.\n\nAn optimist by nature, she believed in the power of small stages to make big changes. On our frequent outings to a new exhibition, we rarely left without striking up conversation with the visitor services manager and agreeing to write in with recommendations for making their venue more accessible.\n\nLois was a constant activist. When she drove her adapted car, she would point out how low-traffic neighbourhoods were disadvantaging disabled drivers and bemoan the abuse of blue badges. An articulate, formidable talker, she was welcome on many boards and access committees, including at the Almeida theatre, Disability Arts in London and Channel 4.\n\nA lifelong Guardian reader, she nevertheless joined a small group of women to protest against a 1991 billboard campaign by the paper at the time of Maastricht negotiations that depicted Britannia as a weakened, battered figure in a wheelchair – under the banner Women in Wheelchairs Are Powerful. The Guardian Is Wrong.\n\nLois was not a natural banner-waver, preferring to wield her pen than join a demonstration. Her voice – in person and in her writing – was strong but never loud. Measured words were her most powerful weapon, believing language could both reveal and change attitudes. On the board of the dance company Candoco (2003-10), she argued for it to move from being “integrated” to “inclusive”. It now describes itself as “the world’s foremost inclusive dance company”.\n\nHer friend Joanna Owen remembers how Lois cut through “professional verbiage” when a charity organised a ladies’ day at the spinal injuries unit, now the London Spinal Cord Injury Centre, at the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital in Stanmore, north London, that included a programme of grooming, hygiene and toileting. Lois responded: “For fuck’s sake, we’re not poodles!” She and other disabled women took over the event, running an annual women’s day by and for women with spinal cord injuries for many years.\n\nBorn in south London, Lois was the younger child of Jewish parents, Hilda (nee Cohen), a homemaker, and Herbie Keith, a men’s clothier. As Herbie’s menswear business in Walworth Road expanded, they moved to Stanmore, where Lois went to Kingsbury county grammar school. In 1972, she graduated with a BEd in sociology and education from the University of Sussex. After a year out travelling in America, she returned to teach in the UK, first at primary then secondary school.\n\nIn 1976, she gained a master’s in sociology of education from the Institute of Education, University of London, and was later appointed head of English at Walworth school, close to where she grew up. Throughout her life she spoke of the challenges faced by the children there at a time when the National Front paraded through Camberwell.\n\nLois married Colin Schofield, an Australian engineer, in 1981. Their first child, Rachel, was born in 1982, and a second daughter, Miriam, in 1984. In 1985 Lois was injured in a traffic accident and became a permanent wheelchair user. She spent time in the spinal injuries unit in Stanmore, where Lois, a lifelong Labour supporter, shared a room with Margaret Tebbit, wife of the Conservative cabinet minister Norman Tebbit.\n\nLois’s employer, the Inner London Education Authority, tried to persuade her to retire at only 35. She argued fiercely against physical impairment limiting ambition. Eventually, in 1986 she was appointed to Ilea’s English Centre as an advisory teacher, then to North Westminster community school teaching English literature. A highly regarded teacher, she became education consultant for BBC Schools Television.\n\nFive years ago she was diagnosed with cancer, treating this challenge much as she had all earlier ones by simply carrying on, cooking roast chicken dinners and making smoked-salmon sandwiches for her grateful grandchildren. She often quoted her mother, Hilda: “We have a duty to be as happy as we can.”\n\nLois is survived by Colin, Rachel and Miriam, and her grandchildren, Isiah, Nathaniel, Aliya and Naomi. Her brother, Stephen, died in 1982.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "1514427d0d97a55cca9fd89e22d6e534b1491414", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Sussex police ‘committed to solving’ Vishal Mehrotra murder case ", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/11/sussex-police-committed-to-solving-vishal-mehrotra-case", | |
| "words": "491", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T19:18:04Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/2962821b42d33f8c985679fe62809966a69e56b8/496_1366_3188_1914/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Mabel Banfield-Nwachi", | |
| "description": "Father had criticised force for failing to reinvestigate killing of 8-year-old son who disappeared in 1981", | |
| "text": "Sussex police are to re-examine the case of a murdered schoolboy who disappeared on his way home more than 40 years ago.\n\nVishal Mehrotra, eight, vanished from west London in July 1981 and part of his remains were found in Rogate, West Sussex, seven months later. No one has been convicted for his murder.\n\nPolice told Vishal’s father, Vishambar Mehrotra, that detectives had been given a “clear direction” to “advance” the case.\n\nPolice officers also apologised for failing to spot a potential link between Vishal’s murder and a document known to them that had been found in the possession of a convicted paedophile.\n\nVishal’s father said he was content that Sussex police have said new lines of inquiry would be followed up, but had doubts about how thorough the investigation will be. “Well, I am very pleased, but I am also sceptical because I am not so sure how much and when they are going to actually investigate,” he said.\n\nVishal and his family were on their way home to Putney when he disappeared, having watched Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding parade in central London.\n\nLast month, his father criticised Sussex police for failing to reinvestigate the case when fresh evidence had emerged. He said he had lost trust over the police’s handling of the case.\n\nSussex police said though the case was still an open and unresolved investigation, at the time “there are no proportionate or viable lines of enquiry to be followed up in this investigation”.\n\nA new BBC podcast, Vishal, describes how the BBC South East journalist Colin Campbell and two retired police officers investigated a connection between a local paedophile gang and the unsolved disappearance.\n\nNew material uncovered by the team includes a document, titled Vishal, written in 1983 by a man convicted of child sexual offences about a boy he was abusing.\n\nThe document was created a year after Vishal’s remains were found in woodland less than 5 miles from where the mother of this offender lived, in a property where he is known to have abused children. It has been held by Sussex police since the 1990s but was only connected to Vishal’s murder four years ago.\n\nShaun Keep, a retired Scotland Yard detective who helped convict the killers of Stephen Lawrence, said he was “quite aghast” at the force’s response to the fresh material: “I did feel it was entirely inadequate, quite frankly.”\n\nDS Mark Chapman, of Sussex police, said: “We acknowledge the ongoing distress to Mr Mehrotra and Vishal’s wider family and their need to find answers to what happened to Vishal in 1981.\n\n“The force is committed to identifying those responsible for Vishal’s tragic death and to delivering justice for Vishal and his family.\n\n“Extensive and thorough police enquiries have been completed to date but we remain open to and welcome any new information, and officers will continue to follow-up on any reasonable and viable lines of enquiry.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "bd3ba3420a90ea0c2bc9b7e40fd23dc5cf47032f", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "‘Man of 1,000 faces’ wins Deutsche Börse photography prize", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/11/deutsche-borse-photography-prize-samuel-fosso", | |
| "words": "496", | |
| "section": "Art and design", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T19:10:28Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d3a1c8604a8847f46678de3be7436dcd3a4f5bc7/0_386_3543_2126/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent", | |
| "description": "Samuel Fosso scoops £30,000 award for performative self-portraits of historical figures including Angela Davis and Mao Zedong", | |
| "text": "One of Africa’s most important living photographers and contemporary artists, who photographs himself in the style of leading historical figures including Martin Luther King and Angela Davis, has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize 2023.\n\nThe Cameroonian-born Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso was awarded the £30,000 prize – one of the most prestigious in the industry – at the Photographers’ Gallery in London on Thursday.\n\nThe award was in recognition of Fosso’s retrospective exhibition, Samuel Fosso, at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, which traced a career spanning almost 50 years.\n\nShoair Mavlian, the director of the Photographers’ Gallery and chair of the Deutsche Börse jury, praised Fosso’s work for creating “an extraordinary platform for Black voices and artists throughout his career”.\n\nMavlian said Fosso’s sustained exploration of self-portraiture “uses a traditional, studio-based approach steeped in history, while at the same time his work remains relevant and addresses contemporary political issues of today with humour and authenticity”.\n\nRaised in Nigeria, Fosso fled the Biafran war as a young boy, and in 1972 was taken in by an uncle in Bangui in the Central African Republic. In 1975, at the age of only 13, he opened his Studio Photo Nationale to take commercial portrait photographs. Initially, he made self-portraits to fill the unused parts of his photographic films but it became a mode of representation the artist has never abandoned.\n\n“I started taking self-portraits simply to use up spare film; people wanted their photographs the next day, even if the roll wasn’t finished, and I didn’t like waste. The idea was to send some pictures to my mother in Nigeria, to show her I was all right,” he has previously told the Guardian.\n\n“Then I saw the possibilities. I started trying different costumes, poses, backdrops. It began as a way of seeing myself grow up, and slowly it became a personal history – as well as art, I suppose. In 1994, there was an exhibition of African photography in Mali. I looked out some of my self-portraits, and won first prize. Now my work has been exhibited in Paris, New York, London.”\n\nDescribed as “a man of 1,000 faces”, Fosso plays the role of leading historical figures in front of the camera, which also includes Mao Zedong, Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba, demonstrating photography’s role in the construction of myths.\n\nAnne-Marie Beckmann, the director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, said Fosso’s retrospective “opened up new perspectives, allowing many more people to discover his work for the first time; and thrilled and surprised those who felt they already knew it”.\n\n“Through the retrospective we were able to see his work differently and gain a much deeper understanding of the relevance of his practice today,” she said.\n\nThe jury also acknowledged the work of the other shortlisted artists – Bieke Depoorter, Arthur Jafa and Frida Orupabo, who received £5,000 each.\n\nThe exhibition showcasing all four artists is at the Photographers’ Gallery until 11 June.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "682a7de721711fd55c83b9b18400cad6e8a80cd4", | |
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| "title": "Arinze Ifeakandu wins Dylan Thomas prize for ‘kaleidoscopic reflection of queer life in Nigeria’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/11/arinze-ifeakandu-wins-dylan-thomas-prize-for-kaleidoscopic-reflection-of-queer-life-in-nigeria", | |
| "words": "438", | |
| "section": "Books", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T19:00:28Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d48bb0b2d5c866690878cbe96b7eecab6fc95e41/0_1403_3333_2000/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Ella Creamer", | |
| "description": "The writer took the £20,000 award for writers under 39 with his debut short story collection, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things", | |
| "text": "The 28-year-old writer Arinze Ifeakandu has won the £20,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize for a “kaleidoscopic reflection of queer life and love in Nigeria”.\n\nThe prize, which recognises literary works by authors aged 39 or under, is one of the most prestigious awards for young writers.\n\nIfeakandu’s debut short story collection, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things, features nine stories that examine queer love, family and loneliness against the backdrop of Nigerian society.\n\nThe chair of judges, books editor at BBC Audio Di Speirs, said Ifeakandu’s collection “shines with maturity, the writing bold, refreshing and exacting but never afraid to linger and to allow characters and situations to develop and change, so that the longer stories are almost novels in themselves”.\n\nGod’s Children Are Little Broken Things also won the 2022 Republic of Consciousness prize for the US and Canada and the Story prize Spotlight award. The title story, arranged in 14 mini-chapters, narrates the romance of Lotanna and Kamsi, two college boys whose relationship faces external, cultural threats. Colm Tóibín, recommending the book in the Observer, said: “The characters are given great complexity; the drama lies within the self as much as it does in the relationship between the self and society”.\n\nIfeakandu was born in Kano, Nigeria, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has cited James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe among his literary influences. In a 2022 interview with i-D, Ifeakandu said: “I want this book to be really wonderful company for someone. I want this book to be something that people read and feel seen.”\n\nThe other shortlisted titles were Limberlost by Robbie Arnott, Seven Steeples by Sara Baume, I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel, Send Nudes by Saba Sams and Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire.\n\nThe prize was launched in 2006 in honour of esteemed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas to celebrate young writers of poetry, novels, short stories and drama in the English language. This November will mark the 70th anniversary of Thomas’s death.\n\nAlongside Speirs, the judging panel comprised writers Jon Gower, Maggie Shipstead, Rachel Long and Prajwal Parajuly. Shipstead won the Dylan Thomas prize in 2012, and Parajuly was shortlisted in 2013.\n\nIn 2022, Patricia Lockwood won the award for her debut novel about internet culture, No One Is Talking About This. Past winners also include Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Guy Gunaratne, Kayo Chingonyi, Fiona McFarlane and Max Porter.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "1a3cc021d4129007ab71172088741841ba483e6d", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/b72003881297fe50a95a1ee40ccedb06bcbc4c30/219_0_10152_6096/500.jpg", | |
| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Hypnotic review – Ben Affleck apes Inception in goofy B-movie thriller", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/11/ben-affleck-hypnotic-movie-review", | |
| "words": "759", | |
| "section": "Film", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:55:18Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/b72003881297fe50a95a1ee40ccedb06bcbc4c30/219_0_10152_6096/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Benjamin Lee", | |
| "description": "Robert Rodriguez’s nonsensical yet charmingly unpretentious film about the power of hypnosis makes for a fast-paced pre-summer throwback", | |
| "text": "Before the inevitable bloat of summer lands with exhaustingly overextended runtimes and confusingly interconnected universes, there’s some unpretentious fun to be had with Robert Rodriguez’s daft and brief little B-movie Hypnotic, written in 2002 and made as if it was shot soon after. It’s such a curiously dated thriller, from the score to the direction to the casting to the overall vibe, that at times it feels like Rodriguez is in full pastiche mode, as if this was a Far From Heaven-level homage deliberately designed to recall a very specific moment in cinema history.\n\nMaybe he’s trying to feed into our collective desire to see mid-budget genre films that look like real films again, rather than whatever washed-out pieces of content Netflix dumps on our smartphones, and whether intentional or not, there is something satisfying in how slickly mid-2000s the whole thing feels. Back then it probably would have been more of an event – a mind-bending sci-fi thriller starring Ben Affleck with a $70m budget – but in 2023, it’s far from it, made back in 2021 and gathering dust ever since. Its original backers, cursed studio Solstice, imploded after just one release and so the Covid-impacted film was sold on, eventually finding its home at Ketchup Entertainment, a small distributor without any major titles to its name (last release was 2021’s Dr Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets).\n\nAfter an unusual “work-in-progress” screening at March’s SXSW and before it makes its European premiere at this year’s Cannes film festival (a truly baffling scheduling decision), it’s being rolled out wide in the US with precious little fanfare. It will probably fail to find much of an audience this weekend (it’s tracking low with around a $7m opening expected) but later when it hits streaming (an eight-figure exclusivity deal has been promised to the Universal-owned Peacock stateside), those with that aforementioned itch might find plenty worth scratching.\n\nI would argue that something as silly yet sturdily entertaining as this would have benefited more from a late summer release, welcomed with open arms after a season of films aiming that much higher yet, probably, landing that much lower. It might have been written in 2002 but it lives very much in the shadow of 2010’s Inception, a film also about a haunted father trying to get his family back by dealing with a reality-shifting mystery. For anyone who might have grown weary of Christopher Nolan’s dry self-seriousness with 2020’s tiresome Tenet, there’s something refreshing in Rodriguez aping his shtick without such a straight face. Affleck might be hampered with a frown but Rodriguez is clearly directing with a grin.\n\nThe dour and dependable star plays Danny Rourke, a detective who is still searching for his kidnapped daughter, a cold trail that heats up when a picture of her is found during an elaborate heist, seemingly performed by unconnected strangers. Clues lead him to psychic Diana (Alice Braga), who informs him of so-called “hypnotics”, people with the ability to control someone’s idea of reality, reshaping it to get them to do whatever they want. They’re led by a mysterious villain (William Fichtner going full ham) who may or may not know where Rourke’s daughter is.\n\nThe hypnosis acts as a fun trick that allows for an escalation of neat mind-fuck reveals, playing with our perception of reality along with the characters. Braga is lumped with playing Mrs Exposition in the first act but after a while, Rodriguez isn’t too invested in real coherence, playing fast and loose with the rules of the game, especially as his film enters the unhinged final third. There’s a fantastically silly twist, or at least a fantastically silly version of the twist the film keeps employing that adds an interesting and at times hilariously meta level of performance to both Affleck’s role and the film as a construct. Rodriguez is no Nolan, for better and worse, allowing his lean 93-minute film to glide without pretension yet he also opts for some stylistic choices that feel embarrassingly musty, such as an anonymously by-the-numbers score and some laughably sub-Inception world-bending imagery.\n\nThe goofier it all gets, the more one starts to warm to it, leaning further away from its initial A-trappings and nestling into a far more likable B-movie mode. As the season gets stuffier with bigger budgets and runtimes, it will act as a cosy reminder of what a summer movie looked like 20 years ago, and what’s more hypnotic than that?\n\nHypnotic is out in the US and Australia on 12 May and in the UK on 26 May\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Jeff Hollingworth obituary", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/11/jeff-hollingworth-obituary", | |
| "words": "451", | |
| "section": "Politics", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:49:29Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/675d7e1d29d2abb8620b4bfed75a7373cb40ce10/0_63_363_218/master/363.jpg", | |
| "author": "Stephen Battersby", | |
| "description": "Other lives: Senior civil servant whose work behind the scenes led to the licensing of bedsits and introduction of leasehold reform", | |
| "text": "My friend Jeff Hollingworth, who has died aged 74, was a senior civil servant in the Department of the Environment. He was well known in environmental health and housing circles for his work on regulatory reform of housing renewal assistance in 2002 and his drafting, in the early 1990s, of a consultation paper on the licensing of bedsits and other houses in multiple occupation.\n\nThe proposals in his paper were blocked by the government at the time, but licensing eventually came into being with the Housing Act of 2004. Jeff was also involved, behind the scenes, in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, which introduced the concept of commonhold as an alternative to leasehold for flats and other properties.\n\nBorn in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, the second son of Olive (nee Butts), a homemaker, and James, a local government officer, he went to Wintringham grammar school and then Manchester University, where he read economics. After graduating in 1970 he joined the civil service as an economist, later gaining an MSc at the London School of Economics in 1974, which he worked on part-time.\n\nHe switched to work on policy and administration, ending up as a principal civil servant, although he could probably have gone higher were it not for his tendency to be outspoken and to vigorously defend his staff when he thought superiors were in the wrong.\n\nHis first area of work at the DoE (and its successors) was on derelict land regeneration, and later he was at the Government Office for London, looking at policies to regenerate the East End. There was then a secondment to the London borough of Kingston, where he prepared a report on how tram systems could be provided in the area.\n\nAlways a popular speaker at conferences for environmental health officers, he could be charmingly indiscreet and, unlike so many civil servants, did not always play a straight bat. He was also unusually keen to leave the office and meet those affected by decisions taken in Whitehall.\n\nHeld in high regard by local government employees, who saw him as one of the good guys, he was a member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health’s Commission on Housing Renewal and Public Health until he took early retirement at 58.\n\nAfterwards he worked for Citizens Advice in Kingston for eight years, taking great pride in helping clients through the maze of local and national government bureaucracy, before spending time enjoying his allotment, walking, birdwatching and sampling good food and wine.\n\nJeff is survived by his wife, Ann O’Sullivan, whom he married in 2004, two children, Tessa and Adam, from his first marriage to Linda (nee Ross), which ended in divorce in 1995, and his brother Doug.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "dab0a2905ce83a615fbec3ffdb99d30e5801bd4c", | |
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| "title": "Police officer filmed appearing to punch man repeatedly in head during arrest in Wales", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/11/police-officer-filmed-appearing-to-punch-man-repeatedly-in-head-during-arrest-in-wales", | |
| "words": "468", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:45:35Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/9fd574b54c139340cec7ce539e0483e05b246c80/60_0_1800_1080/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Nadeem Badshah", | |
| "description": "Independent Office for Police Conduct has launched investigation into incident in Porthmadog", | |
| "text": "The police watchdog has launched an independent investigation after a police officer in Wales was filmed appearing to punch a man repeatedly in the head before arresting him.\n\nFootage of the incident is circulating on social media and has caused considerable “public concern”, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said.\n\nThe incident occurred on Wednesday during the arrest of a 34-year-old man from the Pensyflog area of Porthmadog, north Wales, after officers were called to an address in relation to a domestic incident.\n\nBystanders filmed the interaction and video footage shows the suspect being pinned face down on the ground by a male and a female police officer.\n\nThe male officer then puts his arm around the man’s neck in a headlock and appears to punch him nine times in the side of the head.\n\nThe suspect can be seen struggling and groaning in pain as the female officer puts him in handcuffs.\n\nIn a second video clip, the man arrested appears to have a bloodied and swollen face as he is put in a police van. The video has been viewed more than 100,000 times on social media.\n\nThe IOPC said inquiries were under way to “establish whether the level of force used during the arrest was reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances”.\n\nAfter being tagged in the post, Gareth Davies, the Conservative Senedd member for the Vale of Clwyd, tweeted to the North Wales police chief constable, Amanda Blakeman, and the home secretary, Suella Braverman: “This is police brutality. What are you doing? Surely we’re better than this?”\n\nNia Jeffreys, a Gwynedd councillor, said the incident had shaken people’s trust in the police.\n\nNorth Wales police said the man was taken to hospital for treatment before being transferred into custody. The force confirmed that a referral had been made to the IOPC and said the matter would be fully investigated.\n\nIt added that only witnesses to the incident should get in contact, and it directed those who wish to make a complaint to the IOPC website.\n\nThe IOPC director for Wales, David Ford, said: “Footage on social media capturing part of the interaction between police officers and the arrested man has, understandably, attracted significant interest and public concern.\n\n“It is important that we thoroughly and independently investigate the whole incident, in order to establish whether the level of force used during the arrest was reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances.”\n\nAndy Dunbobbin, the North Wales police and crime commissioner, said: “The video that is circulating of the arrest of a male in Porthmadog is concerning. I have discussed this incident with the chief constable this morning and she has confirmed the matter is rightly being investigated by North Wales police, who will be issuing further updates in due course.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "d7dc3b59d6bb8c0e3cf1e7f41de7d2461910c798", | |
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| "title": "Ray Shulman obituary", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/may/11/ray-shulman-obituary", | |
| "words": "402", | |
| "section": "Music", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:44:34Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/14065a04cc869a45ff19efd6e3bfa707eccca72c/40_655_6267_3761/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Michel Faber", | |
| "description": "Other lives: Musician and composer who dazzled audiences with the progressive rock band Gentle Giant", | |
| "text": "My friend Ray Shulman, who has died aged 73, was an adventurous composer, musician and record producer.\n\nHe was born in Portsmouth to Louis Shulman and Rebecca Laufer, and attended Portsmouth Technical high school. At first he seemed set to become a jazz trumpeter like his dad, then seemed headed for the National Youth Orchestra, but in 1966 he was persuaded to join his older brother Derek’s R&B group Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. Their career – whose highpoint was the psychedelic hit Kites – flared and faded while Ray was still a teen, but the group soon reinvented itself as Gentle Giant, an ensemble of supremely accomplished multi-instrumentalists who combined medieval, baroque, folk, jazz and rock elements with joyous panache.\n\nToo challenging for the charts, the band’s music dazzled and delighted audiences in concert. Integral to its charms were Ray’s muscular but always elegant bass playing and his sprightly violin (often bounced around the hall by an innovative sound system).\n\nIt was after one such gig in 1973, in Cleveland, that Barbara Tanner, a photographer, snapped Ray outside a strip club and joked that she would send it to his mother if he didn’t stay in touch. Tan and Ray were partners from that moment, marrying in 1981.\n\nAfter Gentle Giant bowed out in 1980, Ray experienced a creative renaissance as a producer of quirky alternative pop. He produced Björk’s breakthrough band the Sugarcubes and a slew of indie acts, including his personal favourites, AR Kane, with whom he also played bass. Morphing into a tech wizard, he went on to score video games, release a techno 12-inch under the name Head Doctor, author DVDs for bands such as New Order and Queen, and compose commercials for Nike.\n\nRay’s lack of interest in reforming Gentle Giant when prog came back in vogue frustrated fans; he had certainly moved on, but his alienation was not disapproval. “Sorry to give the impression that I’m not a GG fan,” he told me. “I loved our time and like the fact it’s still remembered, particularly when sampled by hip-hop acts.” A heartwarming YouTube video of Proclamation, directed by Ray’s nephew Noah and recorded during Covid lockdown by a far-flung collective of younger-generation fans and former band members, celebrated the music’s enduring verve. Ray had long abandoned his violin but he contributed some banjo, smiling gently.\n\nHe is survived by Tan and his brothers, Derek and Phil.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "0999a1f0678928cc56f3a63170d18b4def5ebd40", | |
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| "title": "Schumer decries Republican senator’s ‘revolting’ remarks on white nationalists", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/11/tommy-tuberville-republican-senator-white-nationalists-us-military", | |
| "words": "610", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T12:32:02Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/1c98685c9abc2cfefbb21ad3fd2957ff3f014d4f/0_224_6000_3600/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Martin Pengelly in New York", | |
| "description": "Senate majority leader speaks after Tommy Tuberville of Alabama appeared to defend white nationalists in US military", | |
| "text": "The Democratic US Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, condemned as “utterly revolting” remarks in which the Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville appeared to defend white nationalists in the US military.\n\nIn an interview with the Alabama station WBHM, published on Monday, Tuberville was asked: “Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?”\n\nHe answered: “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.”\n\nThe Senate armed forces committee member added: “We are losing in the military so fast. And why? I can tell you why. Because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that don’t believe in our agenda, as Joe Biden’s agenda.”\n\nTuberville is currently attempting to impose his own agenda on the US military, by blocking promotions and appointments in protest of Pentagon rules about abortion access.\n\nOn Thursday, Schumer said: “Does Senator Tuberville honestly believe that our military is stronger with white nationalists in its ranks? I cannot believe this needs to be said, but white nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society, period, full stop, end of story.”\n\nPreviously, Sherrilyn Ifill, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund, said: “I hope we are not getting so numb that we refrain from demanding that Mr Tuberville’s colleagues in the Senate condemn his remarks.”\n\nSchumer added: “I urge Senator Tuberville to think about the destructive spectacle he is creating in the Senate. His actions are dangerous.”\n\nOn Wednesday, a spokesperson for Tuberville said he was “being skeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military”.\n\nA Tuberville spokesperson told the Washington Post the senator “resents the implication that the people in our military are anything but patriots and heroes”.\n\nThe same spokesperson told NBC Tuberville “has kind of a sarcastic sense of humor” and “was expressing doubt about this being a problem in the military”.\n\nReports have shown the US military has a problem with white nationalism and white supremacy, despite the Pentagon having prohibited “active participation” in extremist groups since 1996.\n\nIn October 2020, a Pentagon report warning of a problem with white supremacists in the military was sent to Congress. It was released in 2021.\n\nIn February 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism, co-published documents showing one in five applicants to one white supremacist group claimed ties to the US military.\n\nOn Thursday, Adam Hodge, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said it was “abhorrent that Senator Tuberville would argue that white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, while he also threatens our national security by holding all pending DoD military and civilian nominations.\n\n“Extremist behavior has no place in our military. None.”\n\nFact-checking Tuberville, WBHM, an NPR station, noted Pentagon efforts “to keep extremists, particularly fascists, out of the military”.\n\nThe station also fact-checked a remark about “what [Joe Biden’s] done to our military with the woke ideas, with the [critical race theory] that we’re teaching in our military”.\n\nCritical race theory is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. Republicans have turned it into an electoral wedge issue.\n\nWBHM said: “The US military is not requiring that CRT be taught and there is little evidence that it’s being discussed much at all in the ranks. According to Military Times, the one instance in which it is being used in an educational setting is at the US Military Academy at West Point.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "8a9765d26744fdb04ba3156a683f64e24474fc11", | |
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| "title": "What is Title 42, and what’s next for migrants to the US?", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/11/what-is-title-42-explainer-immigration", | |
| "words": "856", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:19:47Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/eabe1272e37ae4bdb62a754e915b2ae08eba599c/0_0_6617_3973/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Guardian staff and agency", | |
| "description": "The arcane rule that allows officials to expel migrants at US land borders is due to expire at midnight – what happens now?", | |
| "text": "This week marks the end of a coronavirus-related restriction on claiming asylum that has allowed the US to quickly expel migrants at US-Mexico border since 2020.\n\nThe rule is known as Title 42, part of an arcane public health law that allows curbs on migration aimed at protecting Americans from disease.\n\nThe federal government and US states and cities on the border are trying to prepare for a fresh increase of people coming to the border and seeking permission to stay in the US. Joe Biden has warned the situation will be “chaotic for a while”.\n\nHow did Title 42 start? In March 2020, under Donald Trump, the CDC issued an order limiting migration into the US, saying it was necessary to reduce the spread of Covid.\n\nThe order made use of little-used laws dating back more than a century that authorized border officials to immediately remove migrants, including people seeking asylum, overriding their normal rights.\n\nThe government argued that areas where migrants were held on the US side of the border after crossing without permission often were not designed to quarantine people or for social distancing. Migrant and human rights advocates condemned Title 42 as a ploy to stop immigration.\n\nThe Biden administration continued the policy amid legal battles and criticism from left and right. Liberals say the government is undermining asylum rights and breaking campaign promises about creating a fair and humane system. Rightwingers use inflammatory language about a migrant “invasion” and accuse Joe Biden of running an “open border”.\n\nTitle 42 has been used more than 2.8m times since 2020 to expel migrants back across the border. Some people have been exempt, including children traveling alone. But there have been mind-boggling variations in who the law is applied to and how it is enforced, resulting in widespread confusion and, often, chaos at the border.\n\nWhy is Title 42 ending? The Biden administration announced in January it was ending the declared national emergencies linked to the coronavirus. That also spelled the end of using Title 42 to deal with immigration. Thursday was set as the end of the official emergency and the last day Title 42 was expected to be used.\n\nThe CDC announced in April 2022 that the rule was no longer needed because Covid vaccines and treatments were widespread. But Republican-leaning states sued to keep it in place. The Biden administration said it wanted to end Title 42 – but in fact tightened restrictions further.\n\nWhat happens next? Starting on 12 May, asylum seekers will be allowed to request asylum again at the border and will be interviewed by immigration officers. Those who are found to have a “credible fear” of being persecuted in their home countries can stay in the US and go through the immigration court system until a final determination is made.\n\nThat can take years. While some people are detained while their asylum process plays out, the vast majority are freed into the US with notices to report to the authorities or court.\n\nAlready some locations along the 2,000-mile-long US-Mexico border are seeing greater numbers of migrants than last winter. The US border patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, said on Twitter on Monday that his agents had stopped about 8,800 migrants a day over a three-day period crossing the border without permission. That was up from about 5,200 a day in March and at a pace to exceed the December tally, the highest month on record. But being able to request asylum will not necessarily mean a higher chance of being allowed to stay in the US and go through the court system than before – and could mean a lower chance.\n\nDoes the US have a plan? Biden administration officials say yes, critics say no.\n\nThe federal government has said that it has spent more than a year getting ready for the end of Title 42. It expects more migrants will be crossing initially. Tens of thousands of people have been stuck on the Mexican side of the border after making their way, often in treacherous overland journeys through Central America, towards the US, only to be denied the right to ask for asylum or being expelled after crossing unlawfully.\n\nThere have been bursts of chaos and violence in the last two years when people, desperate for a way forward and often destitute by the time they cross the border after harrowing journeys and long waits in Mexico, cross without permission because official ports of entry have been all but closed.\n\nThe Biden administration’s strategy has relied on two approaches: providing more – but still limited – legal pathways for migrants to get to the US without just turning up at the border. And toughening border security to try to stop irregular crossings.\n\nAnd in a new crackdown, Biden is adopting a rule that would generally deny asylum to migrants who first travel through another country before arriving at the border with Mexico. It also wants to screen migrants seeking asylum much more quickly and deport those deemed not qualified – then deny re-entry for five years.\n\nCivil rights groups have condemned Biden’s hardening of policies, comparing it to actions taken by Trump.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "f081ae4e0676b9b13249f2979e7040f921daf7de", | |
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| "title": "UK sending long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, says defence minister", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/11/uk-sending-long-range-storm-shadow-missiles-to-ukraine-says-defence-minister-ben-wallace", | |
| "words": "997", | |
| "section": "Politics", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T13:02:41Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/2cc1935980e18a4ff2fea51100823515493c3999/0_37_4000_2400/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding in Mykolaiv", | |
| "description": "Britain donating arms capable of striking targets in occupied Crimea as Kyiv prepares counteroffensive against Russia", | |
| "text": "Britain has become the first western country to provide Ukraine with the long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles that Kyiv wants to boost its chances in a much-anticipated counteroffensive, prompting a threat from the Kremlin of a military response.\n\nHours after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he needed more western weapons to be confident of a victory this summer, Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, told MPs that the missiles – which cost more than £2m each – were “now going in, or are in the country itself”.\n\nThe gift of the missiles was supported by the US, Wallace added, although previously Washington had declined to give Ukraine long-range missiles of its own, fearing that the outcome could escalate hostilities in the 15-month war.\n\nReflecting such concerns, the minister said the decision was “a calibrated and proportionate response” to the Russian invasion, and in particular Moscow’s repeated targeting of Ukrainian civilians.\n\nAt least 23,000 civilians had been killed or injured, Wallace said. Russia had made “788 attacks on healthcare facilities, hospitals, clinics, medical centres”, and on many occasions killed civilians in missile strikes, he added.\n\n“The use of Storm Shadow will allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian sovereign territory,” Wallace told MPs, adding: “Russia must recognise that their actions alone have led to such systems being provided.”\n\nSpeaking at a press briefing in Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia was taking a “rather negative” view of the UK’s move. “This will require an adequate response from our military, who … will make appropriate decisions,” he said.\n\nWallace did not say how many Storm Shadow missiles had been given to Ukraine, although it has been estimated the UK holds a stock of between 700 and 1,000. Working with four other countries, the UK issued a tender to buy more long-range “missiles or rockets with a range of 100-300km” (62 to 186 miles).\n\nStorm Shadow has a range of “in excess of 250km”, according to its manufacturer, the European arms group MBDA. That is significantly further than the high-precision US Himars rocket launchers currently used heavily by Ukraine, which rely on missiles with a range of 47 miles. Himars have become less effective as the Russian invaders have moved reserves of troops and equipment out of their range.\n\nThere have been concerns that the Storm Shadow missiles could be used to strike targets deep inside Russia’s internationally recognised borders. The White House has balked at supplying Ukraine with similar long-range ATACMS missiles, which can be fitted to the Himars systems.\n\nWallace said the US was “incredibly supportive” of the UK’s decision, and said ATACMS missiles were not as suitable as Storm Shadow, which is designed to be able to strike defensive positions below ground.\n\nA US official said that “each country makes their own sovereign decisions” about what weapons to give to Ukraine, and stressed that the Biden administration appreciated the contributions made by “more than 50 countries, including the UK” in support of Kyiv in its effort to kick out the Russian invaders.\n\nUkrainian commanders on the ground have said Kyiv still lacks vital weapons needed for a large-scale campaign to succeed. These include long-range missiles. Without them, it is feared that deep-lying reserves could be used to snuff out any Ukrainian counteroffensive quickly if it looks likely to break through.\n\nEarlier, Zelenskiy said in a television interview Ukraine needed more time before it could launch its much-anticipated counteroffensive, and was still waiting for key weapons to arrive.\n\nThe president said newly formed brigades were ready to attack, but were at risk of taking too many casualties if they did so now. “We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable,” he said. “So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”\n\nHis comments are the clearest sign yet that the Ukrainian military push, on which the outcome of the war may depend, is unlikely to take place in the next few weeks. Long-range attacks on key Russian military sites in Crimea and elsewhere deep in occupied territory are likely to be a prelude to any frontline assault.\n\nJustin Bronk, an aviation analyst at the Rusi thinktank, described Storm Shadow as “an expensive weapon designed for strategic targets such as command centres, logistics hubs or other high-value fixed sites”.\n\nExperts say Storm Shadow could be used to strike targets such as the Dzhankoi rail and logistics hub in northern Crimea, as well as the naval base at Sevastopol and airfield at Saky. Rendering them unusable would make it harder for Russia to push back against any Ukrainian counterattack.\n\nUkrainian leaders have publicly said they would not use long range missiles inside Russia, although leaked Pentagon papers reported, based on electronic eavesdropping, that Zelenskiy privately complained to his top commander that Ukraine “does not have long-range missiles capable of reaching Russian troop deployments in Russia”.\n\nUkraine has been gradually amassing western tanks and armoured vehicles as it seeks to build up a counterattack force of 12 brigades aimed at breaking through Russian lines and demonstrating that it could be possible for Kyiv to push the invaders out of the country.\n\nBronk said that although Nato standard weapons, Storm Shadows could be mounted under the Soviet-standard jets used by Ukraine’s air force, and, as with any cruise missile, could be pre-programmed from the ground.\n\nUkraine’s small surviving air force runs about 12 or so missions a day, its pilots often flying a few metres above ground to evade detection.\n\nBritish sources said giving Storm Shadow missiles was compatible with the UK’s signature to the voluntary missile technology control regime, which is intended to limit the proliferation of cruise missiles.\n\nAlthough the missiles are considered a category 1 weapon, and so there is a “strong presumption” that they will not be exported to other countries, officials pointed to the fact that an exception can be made “on rare occasions” where there is a demonstrable need.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "e6cee1ceed9b67aaad56a8386615497e7ace6295", | |
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| "title": "Leicester’s Chris Ashton escapes ban following red card against Harlequins", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/may/11/leicesters-chris-ashton-escapes-ban-following-red-card-against-harlequins", | |
| "words": "531", | |
| "section": "Sport", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:08:10Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/023bf2f8bf70fa92a884a17305248b395b9cf6ca/0_183_4140_2485/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Robert Kitson", | |
| "description": "The soon-to-retire winger, sent off for a tackle on Cadan Murley, is free to play in the Premiership semi-final after being cleared by a disciplinary panel", | |
| "text": "The soon-to-retire Chris Ashton has been handed a dramatic Premiership reprieve after escaping a ban following his sending-off in Leicester’s final regular season game on Saturday. The former England winger has had his red card rescinded and is free to play with immediate effect.\n\nAshton, 36, was sent off for a dangerous tackle on Harlequins’ Cadan Murley which Leicester believed was only worthy of a yellow card. An independent disciplinary panel came to the same conclusion after a five-hour hearing, deciding the head contact had been indirect and did not involve a high degree of danger. Ashton admitted to an act of foul play but Murley testified to the panel that the initial contact was to his right shoulder rather than to his head.\n\nIt means Ashton is now eligible for the Premiership semi-final against Sale Sharks in Salford on Sunday, in addition to the final should Leicester make it to Twickenham. Having recently become the first player in history to score 100 Premiership tries, Ashton now has the opportunity to add to his tally.\n\nIt is the latest in a series of high-profile disciplinary U-turns which are further highlighting the slim margins under which players and referees are now required to operate. The panel chair, Gareth Graham, revealed Ashton’s case had also been bolstered by a number of camera angles unavailable to the match officials on the day.\n\n“Mr Ashton accepted committing an act of foul play that would have merited a yellow card,” said Graham in a statement. “Having seen and heard all the evidence, including that of Mr Murley, who gave a clear account as to the point of contact and the level of force involved in the tackle, the panel agreed with the submission that this was a yellow-card offence.\n\n“Having assessed all the evidence before it, including that of Mr Murley … the panel concluded there was indirect contact to the head and that any force to the head/neck was low. Consequently, the panel concluded there was not a high degree of danger and that the correct starting point under the head contact process was a yellow card. Therefore, the panel found the charge not proven.”\n\nIt represents yet another twist in an eventful career, during which Ashton also scored 20 tries in 44 Test appearances for England. Leicester can now include him in their back three for the Sale encounter but also have the all-international trio of Freddie Steward, Anthony Watson and Mike Brown available.\n\nWorld Rugby’s council has rubber-stamped the election of the former Scotland forward John Jeffrey as vice-chairman of the game’s governing body, filling the vacancy caused by the resignation of France’s Bernard Laporte. It has also been confirmed that unions can introduce lower tackle height trials in the elite game as well as at community game level if they so wish.\n\nThe Rugby Players’ Association has announced the shortlist for the players’ player of the year, with Mateo Carreras, Ben Earl, Alex Mitchell, Tom Pearson and Jasper Wiese all nominated by their peers. The Exeter pair of Maisy Allen and Claudia MacDonald and Gloucester-Hartpury’s Natasha Hunt have all been shortlisted for the women’s Premier XVs player of the year award.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Senior civil servants vote to take a stand against bullying from politicians", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/11/stop-acting-tough-with-officials-former-tory-politician-tells-ministers", | |
| "words": "893", | |
| "section": "Politics", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T12:27:10Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/e0c7f51a2dc7dea7c2e820eb16dca4be94045631/0_444_8192_4915/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Rowena Mason Whitehall editor", | |
| "description": "FDA union votes to use ‘all means available’, including ‘targeted legal action’ in wake of Dominic Raab scandal", | |
| "text": "Senior civil servants have voted to take a stand against inflammatory language from politicians and in favour of legal action to combat bullying, as former cabinet ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab renewed their attacks on officials.\n\nMembers of the FDA union passed a motion in favour of using “all means available” to challenge bullying and harassment of officials, including “use of targeted legal action”, in after the scandal that forced Raab to resign.\n\nThey backed the union pushing for an independent process for investigating complaints of bullying and harassment by ministers and MPs, and better ways of challenging bad behaviour.\n\nAt their annual conference, senior civil servant delegates also voted to mandate their union to “challenge inflammatory language and unfair characterisations of the civil service, both publicly and privately and via media engagements”.\n\nHowever, it came on a day of renewed attacks on the civil service by senior Conservatives, as the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, appeared to accuse Whitehall of having tried to preserve EU laws rather than focus on “meaningful reforms” as she dropped “sunset clause” plans for EU legislation.\n\nRaab also told the House of Commons that “Whitehall resistance” to rolling back EU laws should have been resisted, and Rees-Mogg asked whether “civil service idleness” had been behind the government’s decision to drop the plans.\n\nTheir rhetoric added to strained relations between ministers and civil servants, after strikes, threatened job cuts, the sacking of the Treasury permanent secretary, and the bullying of officials by Raab and Gavin Williamson. After resigning over a report that found he bullied officials, Raab hit out at “unionised officials” he believed were targeting him and accused civil servants of being insufficiently resilient in the face of his demanding management style.\n\nPenman, the general secretary of the FDA, said the process of investigating Raab had been so “flawed” that it would discourage people from complaining about bullying again, and he criticised Sunak’s handling of the affair.\n\n“I spoke to some of the people who raised complaints, and they’ve said: ‘We’d never do it again, we would not go through this again,’” he said. “I just simply wouldn’t advise anyone, because the process is so completely flawed and one-sided, I wouldn’t advise anyone to go through this again.”\n\nBut Penman also said it was not the case that Raab was “one bad apple”, as civil servants had reported in a survey that there were problems with other ministers as well.\n\nHe said of the FDA members who most regularly come into contact with ministers, 70% said they had no confidence in the system for raising complaints. One in six reported misconduct from ministers in the past 12 months alone across more than 20 departments.\n\nThe general secretary also urged Sunak to make a stand and defend civil servants against the rhetoric of politicians that has labelled them “lazy, woke, inefficient, remainer activist snowflakes” as well as “machiavellian geniuses, able to unseat ministers and undermine the settled will of government” – an apparent reference to Raab’s claims of activist civil servants trying to get rid of him.\n\nTo applause from the audience of FDA members, Penman said: “I don’t know about you, conference, but I’ve had enough of this. At some point we need to say enough is enough. Ministers need to demonstrate they value civil servants.\n\n“It is they who have put a number on that, not us. It is they who believe that the cost of living crisis should be addressed for some public servants and not others, and it is they who have pushed the FDA over the edge into balloting for industrial action.”\n\nThe civil servants also won support from David Gauke, a former Conservative justice secretary who said ministers needed to stop trying to look tough by being confrontational and trying to establish dominance in meetings with officials.\n\nGauke, who served in the cabinets of Theresa May and David Cameron, said it was not effective for ministers to deal with problems by “asking which idiot is to blame” rather than trying to solve them.\n\nSpeaking at the conference, he said that at some level ministers need to be tough, but added: “Too often the view of what tough means is a confrontational approach in meetings and desire to establish dominance and the dismissal of challenge.”\n\nThe former politician said he was “not convinced those in favour of a confrontational approach necessarily are the most effective ministers”.\n\nGauke said one reason he was frustrated with the Raab affair was that a minister should feel privileged to have a dedicated private office of civil servants trying to make their working lives easier.\n\nThe conference also backed the ballot for strike action over pay for the first time in 40 years, meaning its members may join civil servants from Prospect and the Public and Commercial Services union on the picket line. It comes after the government offered most civil servants a pay rise of just 4.5% and no cost of living lump sum, which is on the table for other sectors. The FDA will start balloting members at the end of May, the ballot will close at the end of June and, if successful, action will take place before summer break\n\nIn other motions, the conference voted in favour of more reasonable arrangements for civil servants wanting to work from abroad and improving wellbeing for civil servants.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "‘Skeletal’ body of man who lay dead in Bolton flat for six years discovered", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/11/skeletal-body-of-man-who-lay-dead-in-flat-for-six-years-found-on-gas-check-visit", | |
| "words": "639", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:02:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0da580a38178e5327b8396112ad9fef41201be3f/46_0_1260_756/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Patrick Butler Social policy editor", | |
| "description": "Robert Alton, 70, is believed to have died in 2017 with his death going unnoticed by his landlord and local council", | |
| "text": "The body of a retired bookkeeper lay undiscovered in his flat for six years with his “skeletal” remains found only after housing officials forced entry to carry out a gas safety check, an inquest heard.\n\nRobert Alton is believed to have died in 2017 aged 70, but his death went unnoticed by both his landlord, which continued to receive his rent automatically through housing benefit, and his local council, which seemingly failed to act on Alton’s mounting council tax arrears.\n\nOfficials who found Alton’s body when they gained entry to the flat in March also discovered a half-metre high pile of unopened post, food with 2017 expiry dates, and a pair of reading glasses placed on a TV guide for 4 May 2017.\n\nAlton’s social landlord, Bolton at Home, has apologised, admitting it had missed opportunities to spot that something was wrong, while Bolton council said it would hold an internal inquiry to identify if and how it had failed to spot something was amiss.\n\nA police investigation concluded there were no suspicious circumstances, while an inquest held this week heard it was not possible to determine a cause of death for Alton, of Hemsworth Road, Bolton.\n\nThe coroner, Peter Sigee, said: “On the balance of probabilities Mr Alton died in May 2017. I’m satisfied the appropriate conclusion is an open conclusion.”\n\nThe case is likely to reopen debate on how individuals can die at home and fall off the radar without neighbours, family and friends, or public agencies and utility providers either noticing or acting on their disappearance for long periods.\n\nRecent high profile cases include Sheila Seleoane, a former medical secretary, who died in 2019 aged 61 but whose body was not discovered until February 2022, despite repeated complaints from her neighbours to her landlord Peabody about the smell coming from her flat in Peckham, south London.\n\nThe body of Laura Winham was found in her Surrey flat in May 2021 more than three years after her death. Winham, 38, who was severely mentally ill, had cut herself off from her family, who accused local NHS and social care agencies of effectively abandoning her.\n\nExtreme social isolation appears to have been a factor in all three cases. Greater Manchester police put out a public appeal in March to help them trace Alton’s relatives, and obtain any other information about Alton that may be useful to them but so far no one has come forward.\n\nBolton at Home said it was unacceptable his body had remained undiscovered for so long. It admitted that in hindsight it should have spotted sooner that something was wrong.\n\nThe Bolton at Home chief executive, Noel Sharpe, said: “We made many attempts to contact Robert over a number of years to arrange gas safety checks. It’s clear that the action taken by us to understand why we couldn’t contact him didn’t go far enough.\n\n“Opportunities were missed in spotting that something was potentially wrong. We should have done more to check on Robert’s welfare.”\n\nIt explained that at the time of Alton’s death its policy was to automatically cap gas supplies when it was unable to contact tenants to arrange a gas safety check. Though this was legal, it changed its approach in July 2022 to enable it to seek a warrant in such circumstances to gain entry to homes requiring gas tests.\n\nBolton council confirmed Alton had run up council tax arrears since 2017. A spokesperson for the council said: “This is a tragic case which has had a profound impact on the whole Bolton community. We are currently reviewing Mr Alton’s account to identify any potential missed opportunities to act sooner.”\n\nThey added: “Pending the outcome of this review, appropriate additional measures will be put in place with a view to preventing similar tragic cases in the future.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "1447dc99192ea6100a4ad0ce016ea79f4fef3c49", | |
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| "title": "Piers Morgan authorised illegal blagging of prince’s bank details, court told", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/11/piers-morgan-authorised-blagging-of-prince-michael-bank-details-court-told", | |
| "words": "734", | |
| "section": "Media", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T18:02:10Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/f4d5b535ff6e077c9e4bf8b23d5d2436cf3dc9d5/581_239_1800_1080/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Jim Waterson Media editor", | |
| "description": "Mirror hired investigators to pose as Prince Michael of Kent’s accountant, phone-hacking trial hears", | |
| "text": "Piers Morgan authorised the illegal blagging of a prince’s private bank details when he was editor of the Daily Mirror, it has been alleged at the high court.\n\nPrince Michael of Kent’s personal financial records were published by the Mirror in 1999, allegedly revealing that Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin was millions of pounds in debt and had an unauthorised £220,000 overdraft at Coutts bank.\n\nWhen the prince’s lawyers complained to Morgan that the story was inaccurate and the records must have been obtained illegally, Morgan dismissed their “poor and thinly disguised threat” and insisted the information had come from an “impeccable source”.\n\nIn reality, the Mirror obtained the information after employing private investigators to pose as the prince’s accountant, phone the bank and illegally “blag” his account details, the court heard.\n\nBefore the article was published, two hoax calls were made to Coutts seeking to confirm the prince’s bank account number. The Mirror’s publisher later settled a legal claim from Prince Michael and issued an apology to him.\n\nDavid Sherborne, representing claimants in the phone-hacking trial against Mirror Group Newspapers, said the incident pointed to a culture of widespread illegality and cover-ups at the highest level of the company. The barrister said it was “inconceivable the legal department and Mr Morgan were not aware of the source of this story”.\n\nThe high court also heard claims that:\n\nMorgan “lies at the heart” of allegations of unlawful information-gathering, including phone hacking, under the Mirror’s parent company and was “directly” involved in illegal behaviour.\n\nThe journalist who helped obtain Prince Michael of Kent’s financial records was Gary Jones, now the editor of the Daily Express.\n\nThe Mirror regularly used the services of Southern Investigations, a private investigations agency heavily implicated in police corruption and the murder of its former employee Daniel Morgan.\n\nPhone hacking was so widespread at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People that even those newspapers’ editors were illegally accessing voicemails.\n\nThe claims were made on the second day of the Mirror group’s phone-hacking trial, in which more than 100 alleged phone hacking victims are bringing cases against the publisher. Four individuals have had their claims chosen as test cases, including Prince Harry, and will give evidence in court next month.\n\nSherborne, the claimants’ barrister, told the court there was widespread illegal behaviour at every level of the organisation. “Mr Morgan lies right at the heart of this in a number of ways. He was a very hands-on editor, also very closely connected to the board … We have the direct involvement of Mr Morgan in a number of these incidents and his knowledge of voicemail interception,” he said.\n\nMorgan has always denied knowingly commissioning phone hacking. In an interview with the BBC released on Wednesday night, he said: “Originally I said I had never hacked a phone, never told anyone to hack a phone, and no stories have been published in the Mirror in my time from the hacking of a phone. Then someone pointed out that you can only know the first two things for sure. All I can talk to is what I know: I never hacked a phone; I wouldn’t know how.”\n\nThe court heard of several occasions when Mirror journalists employed the services of Southern Investigations, a private investigations agency run by Jonathan Rees, who was convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice in 1999. Rees used to work closely with Daniel Morgan, whose 1987 murder led to one of the Metropolitan police’s longest-running scandals.\n\nSherborne claimed the reporter Gary Jones, now the editor of the Daily Express, commissioned “multiple unlawful investigations”, including commissioning Rees to target Prince Michael of Kent. “Piers Morgan was personally aware of what Gary Jones was doing,” the lawyer said.\n\nSherborne alleged that during the mid-2000s phone hacking was so widespread at newspapers owned by the Mirror group that even the editors were getting in on the act. He said Richard Wallace at the Daily Mirror, Tina Weaver at the Sunday Mirror and Mark Thomas at the People were not only aware of what was going on but at times personally accessing voicemails.\n\nThe barrister alleged: “All three of them were prolific hackers and users of unlawful information gathering.”\n\nAll three editors have since left their newspaper roles. Wallace was recently hired to run Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV channel. This means he is the boss of the channel’s star presenter, Piers Morgan.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Sentamu rejects report findings that he failed to act on child sexual abuse claim", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/11/sentamu-rejects-report-findings-child-sexual-abuse-claim-church-of-england", | |
| "words": "704", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-11T17:57:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/5772f1550ffb330a19a644af3ed80afc1a48a8dd/188_56_2747_1647/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Harriet Sherwood", | |
| "description": "Church of England commissioned review into how it handled disclosures that a vicar raped a 16-year-old boy", | |
| "text": "John Sentamu, the former archbishop of York, failed to act on disclosures that a Church of England vicar raped a 16-year-old boy, a report commissioned by the church has found.\n\nLord Sentamu immediately rejected the conclusions of the report, saying the author, an experienced safeguarding investigator, had a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the responsibilities of bishops and archbishops.\n\nIn 2013, Sentamu acknowledged a letter from the victim detailing the sexual abuse with the words: “Please be assured of my prayers and best wishes during this testing time.”\n\nThe C of E commissioned the report to examine how it handled allegations by Matthew Ineson that he was repeatedly raped as a teenager in the 1980s by Trevor Devamanikkam, who later killed himself.\n\nThe C of E is not expected to impose sanctions on any individual as a result of the review’s findings. Ineson said Sentamu, who retired in 2020 as the C of E’s second most senior official, should be banned from officiating within the church.\n\nIneson, who was ordained as a priest but no longer serves, refused to cooperate with the review on the grounds that it was not independent.\n\nOn Thursday he accused the C of E of hypocrisy. “Yesterday, the archbishop of Canterbury was lecturing on morality, but the church he leads is still covering up rape and abuse and protecting bishops at any cost,” he said.\n\nIneson said he reported the abuse verbally to various bishops and other senior clergy, whom he identified, in 2012 and 2013 but no action was taken.\n\nHe then wrote two letters to Steven Croft, the then bishop of Sheffield and now bishop of Oxford, copying them to Sentamu, in which he said he had “suffered sexual abuse as a youth by a priest” and complained that his disclosures had been ignored.\n\nThe review found there was evidence that Ineson had made disclosures to some of the senior clergy he had identified and they had “failed to act on them”.\n\nIn 2016, Ineson lodged formal complaints of misconduct against four bishops and the archbishop, which were dismissed by the church.\n\nThe following year, Devamanikkam was found dead at his home the day before he was due to appear in court on three counts of buggery and three counts of indecent assault relating to Ineson’s allegations.\n\nThe report says that although Devamanikkam did not face a trial, the reviewer “can confirm the survivor was sexually abused” by him.\n\nSome senior clergy “prioritised their own involvement” relating to Ineson’s formal misconduct complaints against them over safeguarding issues.\n\nThe report adds: “There appears to be reluctance on the part of some senior clergy to formally apologise to the survivor.”\n\nIt recommends that the C of E make such an apology for its failings, and ensure Ineson “has the support and counselling he needs in order to rebuild his life”.\n\nJane Humphreys, the reviewer, said: “It takes a lot of courage to disclose abuse and to not receive the right support and guidance at the time he disclosed his abuse is inexcusable.”\n\nJoanne Grenfell, the bishop of Stepney, who leads on safeguarding, said the church “should be ashamed” of its failure to respond properly, adding: “We are truly sorry.”\n\nIn a lengthy statement released by the C of E alongside the report, Sentamu said: “I find myself in an unenviable position of having to reject the opinions of the reviewer … This is due to a fundamental misunderstanding on her part of the jurisdictional, pastoral and legal responsibilities of diocesan bishops and archbishops in the C of E.”\n\nHe said the reviewer’s stated opinion that individuals must act on safeguarding issues regardless of church law was “odd and troubling”. He added: “Safeguarding is very important but it does not trump church law.”\n\nOn Thursday, Croft wrote to all clergy in the diocese of Oxford saying he had “made a mistake in my safeguarding practice. That mistake was costly for the survivor and for this I am very sorry.”\n\nSince waiving his right to anonymity, Ineson has become one of the most persistent and outspoken critics of the church over its shortcomings in dealing with cases of sexual abuse. He previously gave evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Council in Melbourne declares health emergency, claiming truck pollution is linked to high rates of illness", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/17/council-in-melbourne-declares-health-emergency-claiming-truck-pollution-is-linked-to-high-rates-of-illness", | |
| "words": "510", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T07:02:26Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/6cc2f6458e03aa57313e953cab39eb1b9f898b84/0_119_3600_2160/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Elias Visontay Transport and urban affairs reporter", | |
| "description": "Maribyrnong city council says lack of enforcement of road train curfew has undermined its ability to protect residents", | |
| "text": "A “health emergency” has been declared by a Melbourne council, which claims residents are suffering above-average rates of hospitalisations for certain conditions partly due to a surge in road trains on its suburban streets.\n\nMaribyrnong city council, which takes in Footscray in the city’s inner western suburbs, announced the declaration on Wednesday, claiming rates of illness in the municipality due to pollution “considerably exceed the Australian average”.\n\n“Council believes this is in part due to the exhaust from heavy trucks, which contains particulate matter, being blown directly into resident’s homes day in and day out from morning to night,” it said in a statement.\n\nThe health emergency declaration follows long-term frustration about heavy trucks driving through suburban streets around Footscray, even after a curfew was introduced in 2015.\n\nAdolescent asthma rates in the City of Maribyrnong are 50% higher than the state average, and the hospital admission rate is 70% higher than the Australian average for those aged between three and 19.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nMelbourne’s inner west also has a higher rate of lung cancer than the national average, according to long-term health data cited in a 2020 report published by the Inner West Air Quality Reference Group, made up of experts and residents and set up by the Victorian government in 2018 in response to local concerns.\n\nComplaints from residents near Moore Street in Footscray have surged in recent times due to the construction of the West Gate Tunnel, with allegations that road trains are ignoring the 8pm to 6am curfew or receiving exemptions.\n\nMaribyrnong councillors are writing to the Victorian roads and road safety minister, Melissa Horne, claiming a lack of monitoring and enforcement of the curfew has undermined its ability to protect residents. The council wants the government to begin monitoring air pollution and the health of residents.\n\nThe motion was moved by Greens councillor Bernadette Thomas. The council’s mayor, Labor-aligned Sarah Carter, also spoke about the need for action.\n\n“Our residents tell us at least as many heavy trucks are using residential streets now as they did before the curfew was introduced,” Carter said.\n\nShe singled out road trains – which are larger and longer than standard trucks and that have been allowed to carry concrete castings to the tunnel site – as posing particular health risks.\n\nThe Maribyrnong Truck Action Group, which has campaigned on the issue, said the council area experiences more than eight million truck movements each year on residential streets, due to container trucks servicing the Port of Melbourne.\n\n“The City of Maribyrnong is ground zero for truck pollution in Australia and our health needs protection now,” said Martin Wurt, the group’s president.\n\n“This was a bold move by our councillors, we now need follow-up action to alleviate this health crisis,” Wurt said.\n\nHe said “hospitalisation rates for children in the City of Maribyrnong with respiratory illness is shocking”.\n\n“We need a plan to get these rates down as fast as possible,” he said.\n\nGuardian Australia contacted Horne for comment.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Quad summit cancelled after Joe Biden calls off trip to Australia ", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/quad-summit-meeting-cancelled-joe-biden-calls-off-australia-trip", | |
| "words": "648", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T02:14:30Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4ed1bdc7f1caf72bcc2f87d847c69590abf4a01d/692_348_3244_1946/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Amy Remeikis in Canberra", | |
| "description": "Leaders of Japan, India, US and Australia will instead meet on sidelines of the G7 in Hiroshima this weekend", | |
| "text": "Anthony Albanese has confirmed the Sydney Quad meeting will not go ahead, after US president Joe Biden pulled out of his Australian visit to deal with domestic issues.\n\nEarly Wednesday morning Albanese was still hopeful the meeting with the leaders of India and Japan could proceed with a senior representative from the US, but hours later confirmed the event was off.\n\nInstead, the Quad nations are expected to have a sideline meeting at the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend, with all four leaders still attending.\n\nWhile a meeting is yet to be locked in for the Japan gathering, Albanese said it was “appropriate that we talk”.\n\n“The Quad is an important body and we want to make sure that it occurs at leadership level and we’ll be having that discussion over the weekend,” he said.\n\nBiden’s visit to Australia, with a historic stop to Papua New Guinea having been confirmed in recent weeks, had been long anticipated and would have included an address to the parliament.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nInstead, Albanese will hold a bilateral meeting with Biden in Japan, and has been invited to the US later this year for a state visit.\n\nIt is not known when Biden will be able to reschedule his Australian trip.\n\nThe postponement, due to hostile negotiations with the Republican-heavy US Congress over the government’s debt ceiling, comes at a delicate time in the US’s engagement with the Pacific region.\n\nThe visit was supposed to help cement the US’s renewed interest in the Indo-Pacific and help quell regional concerns over the Aukus agreement.\n\nIn a radio interview speaking on the postponement, which came just hours after the visit had been confirmed, Albanese stressed Biden’s commitment to the Quad arrangement.\n\n“President Biden emphasised the importance of the Quad,” he said.\n\n“He was very disappointed at some of the actions of some members of Congress and the US Senate. We long ago passed the time where opposition parties tried to hold up supply in Australia, you might recall, you’re old enough like me to recall 1975. And ever since then, of course, we don’t have those supply issues. But that effectively is what you’ve got in the US at the moment.\n\n“And obviously the domestic priority for the president, understandably, is to play a role in resolving those issues.”\n\nBut Albanese confirmed that the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, would still visit Australia next week, including for a bilateral meeting and to make a public address in Sydney.\n\n“I look forward to welcoming him to Sydney. He made me a very welcome guest in March and he is the host of the G20 this year,” Albanese told ABC Radio Brisbane.\n\nBut Albanese indicated that the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, was no longer likely to visit Australia. Albanese noted Kishida had visited Perth late last year, and Albanese would attend the G7 summit hosted by Kishida this weekend.\n\nFormally the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the US, Japan, India and Australia relationship was formed during the international response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, officially meeting for the first time in 2007.\n\nIt was disbanded in 2008, although the history of Quad 1.0 remains contested, with some blaming the Australia government under Kevin Rudd for pulling back in a bid not to upset China, while others point to the US’s own go-slow approach for the break.\n\nIt was revived at the 2017 Asean summit at a ministerial level, while Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister and Donald Trump was US president. Further meetings were held between the four nations, including among defence personnel, and “leaders’ summits” have been held since 2021.\n\nThe Quad was instrumental in creating the concept of the “Indo-Pacific”, instead of the Asia Pacific, in a nod to the ties between the nations between the Indian and Pacific oceans.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Small firms could be entitled to thousands from insurers after Covid payment ruling", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/small-firms-could-be-entitled-to-thousands-from-insurers-after-covid-payment-ruling", | |
| "words": "462", | |
| "section": "Business", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T07:00:23Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/bb456f111588b18781936607ea4ae1bdc9734639/0_190_5700_3420/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Daniel Boffey Chief reporter", | |
| "description": "In test case, UK financial ombudsman rules dental practice should be paid interest over delayed claim", | |
| "text": "Hundreds of thousands of small businesses that claimed on their insurance during the Covid pandemic but had their payouts delayed could be owed thousands of pounds after a ruling by the UK’s financial ombudsman.\n\nIn what campaigners say is a key test case, the complaints body has ruled that a dental practice whose claim had been initially declined but later approved should be paid interest by QBE, one of the largest insurers in the world.\n\nThe ombudsman has ruled that an 8% annual rate of interest should be paid on the sum pro rata over the period between the claim being declined and it being paid, opening up the potential for many more businesses to make similar claims.\n\nAbout 370,000 small businesses, from restaurants and bars to hairdressers and guesthouses, made insurance claims to a total value of approximately £1.2bn after the coronavirus lockdowns left them unable to trade.\n\nMany of those policyholders – including the former footballer Gary Neville, who co-owns two hotels with his former Manchester United teammate Ryan Giggs – had their claims initially declined on the grounds that the business interruption policies were not designed to cover a government-imposed lockdown.\n\nIn 2020, the high court found in favour of policyholders after the Financial Conduct Authority brought a test case to court, but six of the eight insurers named in the case: Arch Insurance, Argenta, Hiscox, MS Amlin, QBE and RSA – appealed.\n\nIt was not until the supreme court ruled in the policyholders’ favour in 2021 that the claims were paid out. The dental practice, in Cornwall, made its claim against QBE, with the support of loss adjusters Salmon Assessors.\n\nJeff Salmon, the chief executive of Salmon Assessors, said: “It’s important to stress that this additional payment only applies to policyholders who made successful business interruption claims.”\n\nThe dental practice had made its initial claim in April 2020 but did not receive their payout and £250 in compensation until “late 2021”, with QBE advising that it would wait for the supreme court to make its judgment before settling the claim.\n\nIn the judgment, the ombudsman concluded that QBE should pay a further 8% interest from two months after the dentistry practice made the initial claim.\n\n“The Covid-19 pandemic and surrounding circumstances presented a novel situation for insurers,” the ombudsman wrote. “I recognise that there was some uncertainty about whether the wording of certain types of clause would cover claims. This was part of the reason for the FCA test case. But whilst the court judgments provided clarity, this does not mean QBE was unable to have reached a different conclusion to the one it did prior to the judgments.”\n\nA QBE spokesperson said: “We have complied with the ruling of the ombudsman for this individual complaint and consider this matter closed.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "34c5489e4f0ad7ec856c677870323a7b1bbf49db", | |
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| "title": "‘Camavinga left-back?’: how luck led to Real Madrid’s new dimension", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/may/17/eduardo-camavinga-left-back-real-madrid-new-dimension-manchester-city-champions-league-semi-final", | |
| "words": "791", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T07:00:23Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/fbdb9f5a4e6bafe35fdd541a365e2bdb159e9cb4/0_101_4141_2486/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Philippe Auclair", | |
| "description": "Didier Deschamps tried the midfielder there for France at the World Cup, and Carlo Ancelotti clearly liked what he saw", | |
| "text": "It wasn’t the first time that necessity proved the mother of invention, and it won’t be the last that what was meant to be a stopgap turned into more than a stroke of luck – and, in a not so distant future, may even be seen as a stroke of genius.\n\nHad Lucas Hernandez not been injured in France’s first game at the 2022 World Cup, Eduardo Camavinga would not have played at left-back for Les Bleus against Tunisia and Argentina later in the tournament.\n\nSimilarly, had Ferland Mendy and David Alaba not been unavailable for a Real Madrid La Liga fixture against Real Sociedad in late January of this year, it is unlikely Carlo Ancelotti would have imitated Didier Deschamps and deployed his 20-year-old midfielder in a position Camavinga knew very little about until six months ago – a position in which he gave such a brilliant display in the first leg of Real’s semi-final against Manchester City that a madridista paper gave him 10 out of 10 in its ratings, regardless of the misdirected pass which led to Kevin De Bruyne’s equaliser.\n\nNo one would have predicted this back in November. Deschamps’s decision had taken everybody by surprise at home. He had tested his young player at left-back in a warm-up friendly against the Qatari side Al-Gharafa and been pleased enough to field him there again when France, already qualified for the last 16, met Tunisia in their final group game. It was not a resounding success. Tunisia won 1-0 and Deschamps was fiercely criticised for his choice. The former Marseille coach Rolland Courbis thundered on national radio: “Camavinga left-back? Why not the physio?” It was one thing to deploy Antoine Griezmann as a deep-lying regista, quite another to ask a youngster with four caps, all as a central midfielder, to try a new role in the biggest of all tournaments. Yet it is on the left of defence that Camavinga played, and very well, the last 49 minutes of an epic final.\n\nOne of the most striking features of Camavinga’s reinvention is that the two managers who engineered it are not thinkers in the Pep Guardiola mould. Both learned and perfected their trade in Serie A, a league which, during their time there, in the era of Arrigo Sacchi, could be associated with tactical refinement and a quasi-scientific approach but not with experimentation for the sake of it. Both are pragmatists, superb readers of the flow of a game, exceptional leaders of men. They have knowhow, experience and principles, but neither could be considered “system coaches” by any stretch of the imagination.\n\nCamavinga’s transformation was not informed by an urge to try the untried, but by the gradual realisation that this young footballer possessed qualities which could blossom into something very special if put to good use in a different context. Counterintuitive as the process may have seemed from the outside, it was no less organic for that. The square peg was not forced in the round hole; it now feels like a natural fit, an “invention” in the original sense, that is: a find.\n\nWednesday’s game will be only the 20th in which Camavinga operates from the left of defence, yet what we’ve seen of him there suggests that he may – just may – set a template for a new understanding of what this role could be.\n\nWe’ve had plenty of marauding full-backs who could turn into auxiliary wingers, from Giacinto Fachetti to Manuel Amoros to Cafu in the past to Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold today. Thanks, in particular, to Guardiola and his former assistant Mikel Arteta, we also have had a number of full-backs who can “tuck in” and bring numerical superiority in midfield, such as Philipp Lahm, David Alaba, João Cancelo, John Stones and Oleksandr Zinchenko. What we have not had until now – until Camavinga – is a full-back who could combine both these dimensions in a single, thrilling package, one whose influence could, just as much as Vinícius Júnior’s or De Bruyne’s brilliance, determine the fate of this semi-final.\n\nThere is always the temptation, when speaking of so young a footballer, to rein in expectations for fear of succumbing to hyperbole and harming the development of a prodigious talent. It should be resisted. Camavinga has the athleticism and stamina required of the most physically demanding role in modern football. He has the touch, raw pace and dribbling ability of a winger. Most importantly, he has the intelligence, passing range and vision which astonished onlookers when, aged 16, he masterminded a shock 2-1 win for Rennes over Paris Saint-Germain in 2019.\n\nPlayers blessed with such a profusion of gifts are not usually found at left-back. But then, Eduardo Camavinga isn’t your usual kind of left-back.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "The great escapes: football’s best late-season runs to avoid relegation", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/may/17/the-great-escapes-footballs-best-late-season-runs-to-avoid-relegation-knowledge", | |
| "words": "1375", | |
| "section": "Football", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T07:00:23Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4a79f27b64ba01f3bae9651d76c52e90f226c206/0_0_1965_1179/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Guardian sport", | |
| "description": "Plus: low-percentage point champions, the fewest fouls conceded in a game and Atlético Madrid’s bear", | |
| "text": "“My team, Cambridge United, won five of their last nine matches to escape relegation by a single point,” tweets Simon Gleave. “What is the most wins in the last nine matches by teams occupying relegation places? And did they survive?”\n\nHaving started the bidding at five, Simon immediately ups the ante: “Bournemouth won six of their last nine in 1995 to relegate Cambridge from the third tier.” Mark Mitchener also nominates the Cherries for a failed escape in 2008. “Bournemouth won six of their last seven (and seven out of nine) in League One after being deducted 10 points for entering administration. They were relegated by two points.”\n\nStaying in the third tier, Wayne Ziants suggests AFC Wimbledon in 2018-19. “We were 10 points from safety until a win at Walsall in game 32 started a run of seven wins, five draws and two defeats. That lifted us out of the relegation zone, with a final-day 0-0 at Bradford keeping us up on goal difference.” Those last nine games: three wins, five draws and one defeat.\n\n“In 1957-58, Lincoln won their last six Division Two matches to survive by one point – they had only won five matches up to then, and lost their previous nine,” notes Scotty Walden. In fact, the Imps didn’t win a game between early December and Easter Tuesday, a run of 18 winless matches. They won at Barnsley to kickstart their run, ending with a 3-1 victory over Cardiff in a rearranged fixture.\n\nLet’s look over some memorable recent top-flight examples, starting with Fulham in 2007-08. “Under Roy Hodgson, the team won five and drew one of the last nine games,” writes Richard Hirst. “Fulham stayed up on the last day of the season thanks to Danny Murphy’s header at Portsmouth. The next season we finished seventh, qualified for the Europa League and the rest is history.”\n\nOther honourable Premier League mentions include Oldham in 1992-93 – who matched Fulham’s five wins and one draw in their last nine games – and Bradford in 1999-00 with three wins and a draw in their last five games. Perennial escapees Sunderland are also in the mix for 2013-14 (four wins and a draw, all in their last six games) and 2015-16 (three wins, five draws in their last nine).\n\nWest Ham’s controversial escape in 2006-07 takes us to a new height of seven wins in their last nine, with two defeats coming against Chelsea and, er, Sheffield United. Dean Whearty can offer two examples that edge out the Hammers by a point, starting with Wigan in 2011-12: “Seven wins and one draw in their last nine, including huge wins against Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal, lifting them to 15th.”\n\nAnother Premier League team can match that record. “In 2014-15, Leicester went into their final nine games rooted to the bottom of the table with 19 points, seven from safety,” adds Dean. “Their run-in produced seven wins, one draw and one defeat, propelling them from 20th to 14th. They didn’t do too bad in the season after that, either.”\n\nFinally, some examples of great escapes from around Europe:\n\nCrotone, 2016-17 Serie A: six wins, two draws in last nine games\n\nTondela, 2015-16 Primeira Liga: five wins, two draws in last nine\n\nEintracht Frankfurt, 1998-99 Bundesliga: four wins, two draws\n\nWerder Bremen, 2019-20 Bundesliga: four wins, one draw (via playoff)\n\nCagliari, 1990-91 Serie A: three wins, five draws in last nine\n\nPoints make … percentages “Dundee won the Scottish Championship with 63 points: 58% of the total points available,” notes Stefan Arnott. “What is the lowest percentage of points won for a team to win the league?”\n\nChris Roe kindly steps up to do the hard work for us again. “Dundee amassed their points total from 36 games this season,” he begins. “The maximum they could have scored was 108, so the total points percentage was 58.33%.\n\n“In the top four English divisions there has only been one instance where a team winning the division has had lower than this, namely Burnley in the 1981-82 season in the third tier, where they collected 80 points from their 46 games. The maximum they could have scored would have been 138, so their points were 57.97% of those available.\n\n“However, over time the number of points for a win has changed from two to three, so if we had standardised points scored at always being three for a win, then Everton in 1914-15 would have scored 65 points from 38 games (57.02%); one of the nine seasons in which Dundee’s figure would have been beaten.\n\n“At the other end of the spectrum, Manchester City’s 100-point season in 2017 took 87.72% of the available points, which has only been bettered by Preston North End in the inaugural Football League season in 1888-89 (90.91%).” Preston won 18 of their 22 games, claiming 40 points from 44 available (90%) – adjusted to three points for a win, it’s still a City-shading 87.88%.\n\nKeeping it clean “In Sunderland’s last game of the season at Preston, the team committed one foul (compared to 18 by Preston),” mails Paul Oakley. “Has a team ever recorded zero fouls and what are the fewest number of fouls recorded in any game?”\n\nStephan Wijnen can help here. “In the Netherlands, since the data on this subject has been kept (from 2010-11 onwards), it has happened twice in the Eredivisie, both in the current season,” he writes. “As recently as 23 April, Feyenoord didn’t commit a single foul in their 3-1 win over FC Utrecht (who made seven), while on 3 September last year, FC Volendam didn’t give away any fouls against Sparta Rotterdam. For them this wasn’t a good thing though, given they lost 4-0. Sparta made four fouls, which means there were only four in that entire match.”\n\nBut there are more. “Arsenal hosted Dundalk in the Europa League in October 2020, with the Irish side recorded as not committing a foul,” mails Brian Walsh. “Here are the official stats.” Jamie Fitzgerald was another to flag Dundalk’s “achievement” but he has two more examples: Chelsea going without a foul during their 1-0 home defeat by West Ham in November 2019. Even more impressive was Derby v Grimsby in the 2016-17 League Cup (this suggests the Mariners gave away the solitary match foul).\n\nKnowledge archive “Can someone please tell me why the Atlético Madrid club crest contains what looks like a bear trying to get jiggy with a cherry tree?” wondered Steve Guy in 2007.\n\nSteve had obviously never been to the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, because he would have seen the 20-tonne statue known as El Oso y el Madroño, a life-size model of a bear doing nothing more than sniffing a Madroño tree.\n\nThe story goes that the word Madroño sounds like Madrid, so the tree was adopted as a symbol of the city. Bears used to be common around Madrid, so the two items were thrown together and have since appeared on the city’s taxis, buildings and man-hole covers. Atlético added the bear and tree to their badge at some point between 1903 and 1919, and the seven stars on the club crest represent the autonomous region of Madrid (or Big Bear constellation).\n\nCan you help? “Paul Mullin scored 38 goals for Wrexham in the National League this season, but was beaten to the top-scorer award by Notts County’s Macaulay Langstaff, who hit 42,” notes Niall McVeigh. “Are there any higher-scoring non-top-scorers?”\n\n“Oxford City’s goalkeeper in their National League South playoff final victory was Chris Haigh, who joined them on an emergency loan from NLS champions Ebbsfleet United,” flags David Byrom. “Do your readers know if anyone else has ever picked up two promotion-winning medals for the same league in the same season?”\n\n“Aalesunds in Norway’s top league have not scored a single goal in their first seven matches, a goal difference of 0-13 with six losses and one draw,” writes Yves Corlet. “Which (professional) team has gone the most games in a row without scoring?”\n\n“With the Premier League season finishing later this year, will a night-time fixture finish with no floodlights?” muses Roger Kirkby. “And has a game starting after 7.30pm finished without turning them on?”\n\nMail us your questions or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Police hunt under way after used condoms allegedly mailed to dozens of Melbourne women", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/17/police-hunt-under-way-after-used-condoms-allegedly-mailed-to-dozens-of-melbourne-women", | |
| "words": "329", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:59:51Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/946ccf4b40ba0dcfef07eae840050d2814c81c2a/0_0_6720_4032/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Adeshola Ore", | |
| "description": "First report of the packages, allegedly sent to more than 60 former students of the same school, was made to police on 20 March", | |
| "text": "Dozens of women living across Melbourne’s south-east are alleged to have received used condoms in the mail and graphic messages for more than three months, sparking a police hunt for the person behind it.\n\nMore than 60 women who attended the same Melbourne school during the late 1990s have reported the disturbing pattern of about 100 letters to police, the Herald Sun reported. The packages have also contained handwritten letters detailing graphic messages.\n\nThe women who received the mail reportedly graduated from Kilbreda college in Mentone, 21km south-east of the Melbourne CBD, in the late 1990s.\n\nIn a statement, Victorian police said officers were treating this as a “targeted attack”. They said the first incident was reported to police on 20 March and the most recent on Monday.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\n“Investigators have been told several people attended their local police stations to report the incidents, with upwards of 65 female victims coming forward,” police said in a statement.\n\n“It is believed that most of those who reported the material have received multiple letters, all with the suspected used item included.”\n\nPolice said the letters were sent to addresses in Melbourne’s south-eastern and eastern suburbs.\n\nFormer student Bree Walker was the recipient of one of the letters, describing it to the Herald Sun as “disturbing” and “creepy”. She said she struggled to sleep after receiving the mail.\n\nThe women’s details may have been sourced from an old school yearbook, according to the publication.\n\nKilbreda college’s principal, Nicole Mangelsdorf, told the Herald Sun the school was aware of the matter and were helping police with their investigation but did not believe it stemmed from any recent data breach at the school.\n\nDetective acting senior sergeant Grant Lewis of the Bayside sexual offences and child abuse investigation team told publication that forensic analysis was been conducted on the mail’s content and inquiries with Australia Post were under way.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "3634bcb4c55de6ae1565c809ea831e08158c662b", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Jetstar check-in to close earlier in bid to make flights more reliable and punctual", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/jetstar-check-in-to-close-earlier-in-bid-to-make-flights-more-reliable-and-punctual", | |
| "words": "438", | |
| "section": "Business", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:48:34Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/cb8f2e62fe4e32b73d492fc8f44114467e096f81/933_133_2255_1354/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Jordyn Beazley", | |
| "description": "Passengers will need to be checked in for domestic flights 40 minutes before departure and for international flights 60 minutes prior", | |
| "text": "Jetstar passengers will need to arrive at the airport earlier after the airline tightened check-in and bag-drop times in a bid to improve its reliability and punctuality.\n\nFrom next Tuesday, the budget carrier will close check-in for domestic flights within Australia and New Zealand 40 minutes prior to departure, bumping it up from 30 minutes.\n\nThe carrier will also cut the check-in time allowed for international flights by 15 minutes, requiring passengers to complete check-in and bag drop-off 60 minutes before departure.\n\nThe boarding gate for international and domestic flights will close 20 minutes before the flight departs, up from 15 minutes.\n\nJetstar’s chief operating officer, Matt Franzi, said the airline was working to strengthen its operations while delivering low-fare flights.\n\n“We know our performance hasn’t been up to scratch and we are working hard to boost punctuality and reliability,” he said.\n\nIt comes after the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics released figures in April finding Jetstar was the least punctual airline in Australia, with 7.1% of flights cancelled.\n\nLast year, about 4,000 Jetstar passengers were left stranded in Bali for up to a week after mass flight cancellations.\n\nThe carrier said the new check-in times bring it in line with other budget airlines.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nBonza, Australia’s newest budget airline which launched earlier this year, also closes check-in and bag drop-off for domestic flights 40 minutes prior to departure. However, the boarding gate closes 10 minutes before departure, giving its passengers 10 minutes longer than Jetstar customers to get to the gate.\n\nJetstar’s new rules are on par with Ryanair, an Irish budget carrier that operates across the UK and Europe. Ryanair shuts check-ins 40 minutes before flights depart, and closes boarding 20 minutes before departure.\n\nAlan Kirkland, the chief executive of Choice, said it was good to see Jetstar working to address its problems with flight reliability.\n\nBut he urged the airline to be flexible about the changes initially, and to give its customers ongoing warnings of the new rules.\n\n“Customers are used to the check-in times that have stood for many years and it would be really unfair if someone was denied boarding soon after these changes and ended up having to book a new flight due to changes Jetstar made,” he said.\n\nJetstar said it would also be hiring more airport staff, cabin crew and engineers to increase its reliability.\n\n“Everyone across the airline is committed to getting Jetstar to its best while delivering the lowest possible fares so our customers can fly to more places, more often.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "941632d861ed72b31a7a2b8d25c463aa6e90562a", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/572aaaac5df62b46a69e7c13c8a2d0d9221d2c40/0_48_1920_1152/500.jpg", | |
| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "‘We have to be more than athletes’: inside the women’s US soccer league", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/16/angel-city-hbo-sports-docuseries-natalie-portman", | |
| "words": "1299", | |
| "section": "Television & radio", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:38:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/572aaaac5df62b46a69e7c13c8a2d0d9221d2c40/0_48_1920_1152/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Andrew Lawrence", | |
| "description": "A revealing new HBO docuseries follows the fortunes of Angel City FC, the Natalie Portman-backed team trying to make it big", | |
| "text": "The women’s locker room is supposed to be a safe space. And yet its feeble record for warding off unwanted attention is underscored time and again in TV tropes and class-action lawsuits. It goes a long way to explaining why, despite the abundance of fly-on-the-wall sports documentaries, you’d be hard-pressed to name one that follows a women’s team as closely and earns enough trust to linger.\n\nIn so many ways director Arlene Nelson is breaking the mold with Angel City, a three-part HBO Sports doc that goes inside the same-named LA franchise pushing for change on and off the pitch. The series embeds with the team over the course of the 2022 season, as the National Women’s Soccer League was reeling from an internal investigation that implicated five coaches and a general manager in a toxic workplace scandal marked by verbal abuse, racist remarks and sexual misconduct. “It was really important for us to assure them that we appreciate the need for that protection,” says Nelson, who came to this project from a Secrets of Playboy miniseries that unmasked Hugh Hefner as a predator and sadist. “It was a delicate dance, trying to find that balance of being respectful while also getting the story right.”\n\nIt’s a complex tale. Angel City FC was born in the wake of the Time’s Up movement from a majority female ownership that includes the actor-activist Natalie Portman, the venture capitalist Kara Nortman and the Hollywood exec Julie Uhrman. The story is as much about them trying to prove pro women’s soccer can carve out a viable niche in the entertainment-saturated LA market as it is about whether there’s even profit to be had within a league experiment on its third draft, the NWSL being the first to make it past year three. Much of the reason for optimism comes down to Portman, a soccer naif too bold and blunt to let the game’s entrenched biases and business practices stunt her ambition. Her persistence, too, is awe-inspiring. “She does a really good job of asking ‘Why is this happening?’ and then putting in the work behind it to change things,” says Julie Foudy, the former US National Team captain turned Angel City investor.\n\nAll the while Angel City is bidding to finish with a winning record in its launch season – a near impossible feat for an expansion team. And they add to the degree of difficulty by not making any trades or roster cuts unless by player request. The idea is to provide a sense of security within a league that was capricious about on-field shake ups before assenting to a collective bargaining agreement. But it comes at the expense of Angel FC’s ability to make roster upgrades throughout the season and really bites them hard when a slew of injuries wipe out their offensive lines.\n\nEqually daunting was the job of capturing all this drama. Where HBO’s Hard Knocks has small armies of people to embed with key characters and permission to hide cameras around NFL team facilities, Nelson filmed Angel City with a 40-person crew, squeezing that number like an accordion while haggling with the team over shooting opportunities; so it goes when your subject team doesn’t have its own training complex. “It was incredibly challenging having to figure out which storylines we were going to follow,” Nelson says.\n\nMany times a story would continue unfolding after production had exhausted its allotted filming time, forcing Nelson to grab a go-bag and get the footage herself. “I had my camera in the garage at the ready, batteries always charged,” she says. “When Sydney Leroux was traded from Orlando, I scrambled from Culver City to catch her arriving at LAX with her kids.”\n\nNelson made a point of assembling a production team that was as female and inclusive as Angel FC. But the effort didn’t score the hoped-for points. Members of the team still come off guarded and vigilant. At one point in the first episode Uhrman is at the team office in Santa Monica kibitzing with her twin sister Amy Longhi (a marketing consultant for the team) about Amy’s habit of ignoring her car’s fuel gauge.\n\n“Again?” she exclaims, swiveling around to the fly on the wall. “Did you hear this?”\n\n“Why are we talking into camera?” Amy shoots back nervously.\n\nIt’s the kind of exchange you’d never see in sports docs about men, who disrobe as easily as they lay bare their darkest professional fears in front of viewers. Sportswomen, on the other hand, don’t have nearly as much practice or protection in similarly vulnerable moments, let alone a Last Chance U-type project to offer some guidance on how to relax around a film production that’s designed to style them as larger than life. So it figures Angel City players would be suspicious when Nelson’s camera crew approach from a low angle.\n\nHow could it not feel intrusive when women athletes are already sharing so much of themselves as a matter of course. “We have to be more than athletes just to, you know, make money,” says the defender Madison Hammond. “I look at male athletes on social media and there’s nothing about their weekend, who they’re with, why they’re with. All their pictures will be from their sport.\n\n“But then I look at my peers, my teammates – even myself, I’m posting what brands I like to use or where I’m going on the weekend. People have to think I’m a person.”\n\nHammond is a documentary subject out of central casting: a Black Native American from New Mexico who happens to be the niece of the former PGA Tour fixture Notah Begay. When she wasn’t starring on Wake Forest’s ascendent soccer team, she was playing violin in the Demon Deacons orchestra.\n\nIf this were Hard Knocks, that skill wouldn’t just be captured on camera; it’d be fodder for a cold open. But Hammond never felt like she could ever bare that much of herself. “I just heard different stories about how there’d been cameras and boom mics everywhere and, you know, that’s not something I had ever experienced as an athlete,” says Hammond, traded to the team weeks into shooting. “It’s difficult to kind of put those walls down to let people in and just continue operating like you normally would.”\n\nIt’s hard not to wonder how much richer the Angel City story could have been with the benefit of more access and time. “We wanted to go deeper and highlight players even more,” Nelson says, “but it was a challenge to keep everything to three hours.”\n\nStill, it would be a shock if Angel City was a one-off for HBO, still the sports documentary gold standard. The network just began streaming US women’s national team matches this year in the run-up to the Women’s World Cup later this summer. As the Americans attempt to become the first team – men or women – to win three titles in a row, US support figures to be massive again even with the tournament scattered across Australia and New Zealand. Domestic TV ratings for the 2018 women’s final were 22% higher than the men’s.\n\nThere’s always been an audience for high-level women’s soccer – which, for young fans in particular, is every bit as absorbing as the men’s game, if not more. Angel City, plenty gratifying on its own, doesn’t just prove the need for sports docs that center women; it serves up an excellent template. “In 15 years, when the NWSL is huge and people are making millions of dollars playing women’s soccer, this documentary will be a very interesting snapshot in time,” Hammond says. “Like, seriously, there was a moment when we weren’t gonna do that?”\n\nAngel City is now available on HBO Max in the US and in the UK at a later date\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "97bcce527d66ef436f05f8666514604720f5c44d", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0b06faa80c014813c76d852986070aff40b82bc4/0_275_8256_4954/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Afternoon Update: Truck driver charged after Melbourne school bus crash", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/17/afternoon-update-truck-driver-charged-after-school-bus-crash-young-australians-spending-less-and-arson-suspected-in-wellington-fire", | |
| "words": "880", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:34:30Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0b06faa80c014813c76d852986070aff40b82bc4/0_275_8256_4954/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Antoun Issa", | |
| "description": "Seven children were seriously injured in collision, including one who has undergone a complete arm amputation", | |
| "text": "Good afternoon. Details are still emerging about a “horrific” bus crash on the western outskirts of Melbourne yesterday, which saw the vehicle carrying 45 primary school children roll over after a collision with a truck.\n\nSeven children were seriously injured, including one who has undergone a complete arm amputation. The Victorian premier praised first responders, while the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said, “the fact that it involves school students just breaks your heart”.\n\nIn other news, this year’s Falls festival has been cancelled and young Australians are spending less.\n\nTop news Melbourne bus crash | A 49-year-old truck driver has been charged with four counts of dangerous driving causing serious injury. The bus was conducting a right-hand turn in Eynesbury, an hour west of Melbourne, when police allege the truck crashed into the bus, causing it to roll over. Police say it appeared the bus driver had seen the truck approaching him from behind and tried to accelerate to get out of its path.\n\nQuad summit cancelled | The leaders’ summit – which was due to be held in Sydney next week – involving the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US, has been called off after Joe Biden suddenly cancelled his trip to Australia. Instead, the Quad nations are expected to have a sideline meeting at the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend, with all four leaders still attending. Analysis: the cancelled summit is a win for China and a self-inflicted blow to the US’s Pacific standing, Daniel Hurst, our foreign correspondent, writes.\n\nFalls festival cancelled | Organisers say they “need a break” after several challenging years for music festivals across Australia.\n\nWages rise again | The March quarter wage price index rose to an annual rate of 3.7% in the first three months of 2023 – economists had expected it to increase 3.6%. It still falls well short of annual inflation, however, which hit 7% in the March quarter.\n\nYoung Australians cut non-essential items | Those aged under 35 have cut spending on clothing, shoes and accessories and reduced spending on retail services, such as haircuts, according to a report from CommBank iQ. However, spending by over-35s has increased by 7.7%, almost double the increase in spending by those under 35. Older cohorts, who may have paid off mortgages and have limited household expenses, increased their expenditure by as much as 13%.\n\nHigh-profile Queensland rape case | A high-profile man has been charged with two counts of raping a young woman in Toowoomba in October 2021. But Queensland law prohibits the disclosure of the man’s name, as the state is one of the last jurisdictions that prevents the public naming of someone accused of serious sexual offences until they are committed to stand trial. A joint bid by a conglomeration of media companies which sought leave to name the accused man was rejected by the court in February as premature.\n\nSudan airstrikes | Fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces has intensified with airstrikes and artillery fire shaking Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. The UN says almost 200,000 people have fled Sudan, and another 700,000 have been internally displaced by the conflict. Watch our three-minute explainer on why violence has erupted in the African nation.\n\nSuspected arson in Wellington hostel fire | New Zealand police have started a homicide inquiry into the hostel fire, which killed at least six people – a death toll that is likely to climb. Nobody has been arrested, Inspector Dion Bennett said. He would not say why officers believed the fire was deliberately lit, or whether accelerants were used.\n\nDemocrats move to expel George Santos | A week after the New York Republican was indicted for fraud, House Democrats have triggered a political manoeuvre designed to force congressional Republicans to either break with Santos or publicly vote to defend him. To succeed, a privileged resolution introduced by Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, must attract two-thirds support in the House. The resolution could come to a vote within two days.\n\nIn pictures Australian fashion week in pictures – view the gallery.\n\nWhat they said … ***\n\n“Nothing’s changed between yesterday and today. These are legislated tax cuts.” - Anthony Albanese on stage-three tax cuts\n\nThe prime minister wasn’t budging today on the widely criticised tax cuts, after new costings revealed in the Guardian this morning showed the measure will cost taxpayers $313bn.\n\nIn numbers The federal government says allowing people to buy two months’ worth of medicine for the price of a one-month prescription will save patients up to $180 a year for each medicine. But the reforms will see pharmacies lose about $1.2bn over the first four years.\n\nBefore bed read Anna Nicole Smith lived a life of much-publicised excess, but a new Netflix documentary provides a more rounded idea of who she really was.\n\nThe director Ursula Macfarlane speaks to the Guardian about the fascinating true story of Smith.\n\nDaily word game Today’s starter word is: ASK. You have five goes to get the longest word including the starter word. Play Wordiply.\n\nSign up If you would like to receive this Afternoon Update to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here. And start your day with a curated breakdown of the key stories you need to know. Sign up for our Morning Mail newsletter here.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "0bf5563746b0cc0ccd345f2bd951153fa30e0d8f", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy review – the first draft of history", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/17/the-russo-ukrainian-war-by-serhii-plokhy-review-the-first-draft-of-history", | |
| "words": "874", | |
| "section": "Books", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:30:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/4050bf90485ad88f41a1c41ea5beba3e1650f3de/0_202_5225_3137/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "John Simpson", | |
| "description": "An impressive account of the origins and early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine", | |
| "text": "At the time of writing this review, we still await the big Ukrainian counter-offensive. On its success or failure will depend the future course of the war. In February, when the detailed planning for the Big Push was already starting, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told me how nervous he was about it. Such frankness is typical of him. A charming, natural-seeming former actor, he has brought his professional abilities to the job of representing Ukraine at the highest level: providing the roar, he says, channelling Winston Churchill.\n\nWe know that the United States believes Ukraine’s counter-offensive won’t ultimately succeed, because we’ve seen the leaked documents that say so. But, of course, on the morning of 24 February 2022, Washington was sure the Russians would capture Kyiv within days – as were the Russians themselves. Zelenskiy’s decision to stay put, against American advice, was one of the main reasons Ukraine has proved so successful. So, as historian Serhii Plokhy shows in this sober, thoughtful, honest account of the war up to now, was the courage and grit of the 300 Ukrainian soldiers guarding Hostomel Airport outside Kyiv, who shot down several Russian helicopters and ensured that even when the others landed they didn’t have control of the skies.\n\nBasically, though, the Russians defeated themselves, with their shocking incompetence. Some of the tanks destroyed on the approaches to Kyiv contained parade uniforms for the expected victory celebrations, and the invaders brought no more than three days’ worth of food with them. Russian military intelligence had lined up various senior Ukrainians to take control in Kyiv; but when they saw Russia’s failure at Hostomel they backed down abruptly. That morning the Kremlin’s press department had put out a statement talking about the imminent overthrow of “the band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” that had “taken the whole Ukrainian people hostage”. By the afternoon, when the inhabitants of Kyiv failed to welcome their liberators as Putin had been told to expect, that approach wasn’t looking so good.\n\nUkraine’s army has done well for three main reasons. Its morale has been sky high. The weaponry that Nato has supplied is mostly a lot better than Russia’s. (To that extent, the Kremlin’s self-pitying claims of being at war with Nato are correct.) The third reason is the remarkable transformation in the military doctrine of the Ukrainian forces. When a high-powered Nato military team visited Kyiv before Russia’s takeover of Crimea in 2014, it found that the Ukrainian army was much like the Russian one, and the Soviet army before them: rather than take a decision and risk punishment, junior officers would pass the buck to their seniors, and the seniors would refer upwards to Moscow. The Nato team taught the Ukrainians that any decision, even a wrong one, was better than no decision at all, and that, cowardice or treachery excepted, there should be no punishment for orders that turned out to be wrong. Liberated by this, the Ukrainian forces have made the Russians look sclerotic and antiquated. Whatever happens now, Putin has demonstrated Russia’s incompetence for the whole world to see.\n\nThis book is appearing far too soon to be a definitive account of the war, of course. Plokhy, a Harvard professor of Ukrainian background and the author of the magnificent Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, says himself that it arose from the “shock, pain, frustration, and anger” caused by the invasion; yet it is a fine, scholarly, unemotional chronicling of the war’s origins and early stages. It comes alive when it uses diaries and testimony from people in places like Bucha, outside Kyiv, where 1,650 were killed, nearly half of them shot at point-blank range, sometimes after unspeakable torture. Yet Plokhy keeps his academic distance. There is no ranting.\n\nDid the US promise Russia it wouldn’t expand Nato beyond the borders of East Germany? If some members of the George HW Bush administration did say this, it was entirely unofficial: no such promises were made public. Should Nato have expanded to take in so much of Russia’s former empire? “You have no idea how desperate the Baltic states, Poland, the Czechs, the Romanians and the others are to join,” a senior Nato diplomat told me at the time. “They’re yelling at us that we’ve got to protect them in case Russia comes calling.” The invasion of Ukraine shows how right they were; Putin’s assurances have turned out to be utterly meaningless. In March 2014, after capturing Crimea in contravention of two international treaties, he promised not to take any more Ukrainian territory. By February 2022 he was calling the whole of Ukraine “historically Russian land”.\n\nThe invasion, and its accompanying atrocities, have made any simplistic Elon Musk-style “Crimea for Donbas” deal impossible for years to come. Anything can happen now: a sudden victory for Ukraine, a long and bitter stalemate, the overthrow of Putin, all-out nuclear war. This impressive and valuable book can’t tell us which. But it is a clear, reliable and (in the circumstances) remarkably calm account of how we got here.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "fbecc716b163734ece4b26eff4a35efd1b03cf92", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Collingwood’s Field of Dreams model fails with Magpies project unable to take flight", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2023/may/17/collingwoods-field-of-dreams-model-fails-with-magpies-project-unable-to-take-flight", | |
| "words": "803", | |
| "section": "Sport", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:13:59Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/086c7e94862b45353b20d955f3bb653840d04217/0_273_4385_2632/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Megan Maurice", | |
| "description": "Without its own unique location or a grassroots connection, the Super Netball expansion club faced challenges from the outset", | |
| "text": "As the sun set on the ANZ Championship in 2016, the most salient question centred around where three new teams would come from to form a standalone Australian competition. Five Australian teams participated in the trans-Tasman league, all of which had history dating back to the start of the Commonwealth Bank Trophy in 1997 and were owned by their respective state netball associations.\n\nThings moved quickly and with little time to build the kind of following those existing teams had, Netball Australia made it clear the new teams should have the ability to bring in their own fanbases. This resulted in the granting of licences to the Sunshine Coast Lightning (owned by Melbourne Storm), Giants Netball (a partnership between Netball NSW and the GWS Giants) and the Collingwood Magpies.\n\nFrom the outset, the Lightning enjoyed the benefit of being based in a location with no other professional sports team to call their own. The physical separation from the Storm provided the support and connection without unnecessary interference. The local community developed a sense of pride and belonging and the success of the team – winning the first two premierships of the new competition – only solidified their burgeoning fanbase.\n\nIn Sydney, the Giants were able to take advantage of growing western Sydney support for their AFL team, while maintaining a connection to the grassroots through the partnership with Netball NSW. This provided access to local clubs and associations, with regular visits out to suburban netball competitions on weekends to drive fan engagement across codes.\n\nWith the news that the Collingwood Magpies are reviewing their netball program, it is clear that things did not go so well for the competition’s third expansion team. Without its own unique location or a connection to grassroots, the challenges were there, but with the might of the Collingwood Football Club behind them, few believed they would fail.\n\nAnd yet, from an outsider’s perspective there appeared little effort from the start to bring football supporters across, to educate them about netball or to nurture a fanbase. Instead they assembled a team of stars, did not bring in a coach of the calibre to support those stars, and assumed success would follow and with success would come fans. It was the Field of Dreams model of success – if we build it, they will come.\n\nIt seems now that little can be done to resurrect the Magpies. If the power of the Collingwood machine was not enough to carry the team when they entered the competition riding on a wave of hype, it is unlikely to now, when the team is languishing at the bottom of the ladder and struggling to bring enough fans through the door.\n\nIt is heartbreaking for the players who have done all they can. Many have made their homes in Melbourne, worked to build a team culture, and to connect to fans through social media and at games.\n\nIn a statement released on Monday, Netball Australia reiterated its commitment to an eight-team competition – a condition set by the broadcast deal with Fox Sports. This means that should Collingwood exit the league, a new team would need to take its place. The timing here is critical – with no collective player agreement (CPA) in place for 2024, all 80 Super Netball players will come off contract at the end of the current season. The Australian Netball Players’ Association has highlighted the start of the finals series on 24 June as their ideal date to have the new CPA signed to allow teams to begin contracting players. But the possible addition of a new team creates complications – the decisions around ownership and location will need to be made quickly to have staff in place to make contracting decisions.\n\nTasmania has long been discussed as a location for a new team, but continuing to have a second Victorian team may be preferred. With the tight hold the Vixens have on Melbourne and the 2026 Commonwealth Games being hosted in regional Victoria, now may be the right time for a team to find its home in the regions and build a dedicated fanbase through connection to the local community – much as the Lightning have done for the past seven seasons.\n\nIf a new team is to emerge in 2024, there are plenty of lessons to be taken from the demise of the Magpies. Connect to the local community and grassroots sport to nurture and educate new fans of the game. Create a club culture that transcends the playing group and encompasses the community as well. Recognise that fans are not a natural result of success, but a vital part of creating it. Do not build something and assume they will come, rather show them the plans, ask for input and build it together. Then they will not only come, but they will stay.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "The cancelled Quad summit is a win for China and a self-inflicted blow to the US’s Pacific standing", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/17/cancelled-quad-summit-meeting-china-us-pacific-standing", | |
| "words": "782", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:11:43Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/24063bda4326f74ea81a0885102adb9a350ee61c/127_41_2631_1579/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Daniel Hurst Foreign affairs and defence correspondent", | |
| "description": "Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of visits to Australia and PNG will reflect poorly on the US amid growing competition for influence in the region", | |
| "text": "The Chinese government is probably the biggest winner from Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of his trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea, forcing the cancellation of the Quad summit in Sydney.\n\nChinese state media outlets won’t need to muster much creative energy to weave together some of Beijing’s preferred narratives: that the US is racked by increasingly severe domestic upheaval and is an unreliable partner, quick to leave allies high and dry.\n\nTo make matters worse for the US’s standing in the region, Biden’s planned visit to PNG on Monday had been trumpeted as a clear statement of intent about his commitment to the Pacific amid growing competition for influence with China.\n\n“We even declared a national public holiday for Biden’s historic visit only to be thrown under the bus by the US,” wrote Martyn Namorong, a PNG blogger and political activist. “The US keeps shooting itself in the foot as it stumbles to maintain its grip in the region. China doesn’t have to deal with such internal squabbling.”\n\nVeteran US diplomats say the Australian and PNG governments will be particularly disappointed by Biden’s decision to head home after this weekend’s G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, to focus on resolving the high-stakes political standoff over the debt ceiling.\n\n“It will be seen in the region as a self-inflicted wound caused by political polarisation in Washington that does not reflect well on America’s reliability as a partner,” said Daniel Russel, a former US assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs who is now at the Asia Society Policy Institute.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nFor more than a week, there had been speculation Biden might curtail his planned travel to the region to negotiate a deal with Republicans in Congress to prevent the US defaulting on its debt. Such an outcome would see millions of workers go unpaid in the US, but would also have severe flow-on consequences for the global economy.\n\nBut officials involved in the planning of the Quad summit – bringing together the leaders of the US, Japan, India and Australia – insisted on Friday that it was “full steam ahead”. They were certainly proceeding on the basis the US president would attend the event at the Sydney Opera House on 24 May with a very large entourage.\n\nThings looked even more secure on Tuesday, when the Australian government announced – in close coordination with the US – that Biden would arrive in Canberra the day before the Quad summit to deliver an address to a joint session of parliament. Separately, photographs were published in the media showing Marine One, the US president’s helicopter, had arrived in Sydney ready for use during the Australian leg of his travel.\n\n“I am pleased that President Biden is able to take up my invitation to address parliament,” the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said in a statement issued on Tuesday night. He also declared the Quad summit would be “the largest, most significant gathering in Australia since we hosted the G20 a decade ago”.\n\nBut by about 4.30am on Wednesday, Albanese’s phone had started ringing as officials lined up a call from the president. The pair spoke before 6am and Biden “apologised that he would now have to postpone this visit because of the unfolding difficulties he is facing in his negotiations with the US Congress”, Albanese said.\n\nAfter a few hours of further discussions about whether to proceed with the Sydney summit but with the US sending someone else in Biden’s place, Albanese announced the whole thing was off. Albanese – who was already planning to go to the G7 summit in Hiroshima as an invitee of the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida – said the four Quad leaders would be “attempting to get together over that period of time”.\n\nEveryone involved will publicly express understanding for Biden’s political difficulties – Albanese, for one, said he was “absolutely certain” that “the president certainly wishes that this wasn’t happening” – but the cancellation is undoubtedly a blow to the Australian hosts. Officials had spent months extensively planning the huge logistical and security operation; last October’s budget set aside $23m for the costs of hosting the summit.\n\nIt’s too soon to leap to any longer-term conclusions about the future of the Quad, previously a low-key channel for coordination among Japan, India, Australia and the US that has been elevated in status to leader-level talks in the past couple of years.\n\nBut given the Quad was meant, in part, to send a signal of unity of purpose at a time when an increasingly powerful China was challenging regional norms, that project appears to have suffered a temporary setback.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "A moment that changed me: a brutal attack ended my dreams of being a boxer – but I found a new passion", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/17/a-moment-that-changed-me-a-brutal-attack-ended-my-dreams-of-being-a-boxer-but-i-found-a-new-passion", | |
| "words": "949", | |
| "section": "Life and style", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:24Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3daf0551ce666486b23992172914f286bede7463/5_543_2826_1696/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Oliver Sykes", | |
| "description": "Happy in my life in the theatre, I sometimes wonder if that assault in the park was meant to be", | |
| "text": "At 16 I had my whole life planned out. I was a budding amateur boxer with bags of passion and talent. I was going to be a star. My dad was my coach. Our mission was to win the national youth championships, then conquer the Olympics, before turning professional and working together to capture a world title. But, in one night, this dream of ours was taken away.\n\nIt was a Friday evening. Teenagers stood around the park chatting and drinking. I was taking a night off from training to ride my BMX. I remember rolling towards the grind rail, sliding down and landing well enough to earn a cheer from my mates.\n\nAs I rolled around the back of the main ramp, I began to cycle hard, building up speed, but mid-jump I caught sight of something in the sky whistling its way right towards the spot where I was heading. Before I could react, a beer bottle had exploded in front of me, showering me in shards of broken glass. I hit the concrete hard and lay there bleeding.\n\nNext thing I knew, my mates were screaming obscenities from across the skate park, but louder than that was the sound of pounding footsteps. I turned just in time to see the first fist strike my face. I couldn’t tell you how many times I got hit during the six-on-one beat-down. But it was a lot. I remember thinking: “What have I done to deserve this?” and “Why isn’t anybody helping me out?”\n\nThen things went from bad to worse. One lad used his knee to pin down my right arm. He splayed my hand on the ground and held it there. Then he shouted at his mate to stamp on it. His friend obliged, repeatedly.\n\nSuddenly, as if by magic, it stopped. Groups of kids from across the park had come together to form a human shield – an example of real courage and solidarity for which I’ll be forever grateful. I staggered home with the help of my friends.\n\nIt wasn’t until the following morning, when I looked in the bathroom mirror, that I realised my sporting dreams were over. My face looked like one big bruise. There was massive swelling around my eyes, a deep cut on the ridge of my nose and teeth marks on my chest. What’s more, I soon learned that my right hand was permanently damaged. I was overwhelmed with despair.\n\nSix years later, my counsellor set up a meeting with the lad who engineered the foot stomping. He told me that cocaine had had a big part to play that night, as had jealousy and toxic masculinity. You see, the local newspaper had run a feature about me representing Buxton Amateur Boxing Club at their annual show. These lads had seen it and decided to bring me down a peg or two. Well, they succeeded. I never boxed competitively again after the incident in the park – it killed my appetite for the sport.\n\nMy dad was my rock. At the time, we were living in poverty in rural Derbyshire. He was single-handedly raising my three brothers, two sisters and me. As challenging as that sounds, Dad dropped everything to give me the support I needed. Ultimately, he advised me to focus on my education.\n\nThough boxing had been my main obsession, followed closely by BMX-ing, I was also involved in theatre, having played several bit parts in school plays (usually, the small funny guy) and a couple of larger roles with Chapel Players, the local amateur dramatics club.\n\nDad and I still loved boxing and we would often spend evenings watching reruns of old shows. I remember being absolutely in awe of Muhammad Ali: he was so funny, eccentric and theatrical. He was a performer too, so the idea of switching to the theatre never felt daunting to me – I’d still be dancing under those lights in rooms full of people, only this time nobody would be trying to punch me in the face.\n\nSo, I swapped punchbags and skipping ropes for scripts and rehearsal rooms, and I relished the thrill of performing in front of a live audience. Theatre soon became my biggest passion and it has remained this way through college, university (where I graduated with a first-class honours degree in theatre studies) and into the world of work.\n\nNow, looking back on my 10 years in the arts, I wonder whether being assaulted in that park all those years ago was meant to be, because being involved in theatre has enabled me to do so much that sport couldn’t.\n\nFor instance, at the core of my work as a producer and an artist, I have been helping young people from low-income backgrounds to access the arts – whether through creating work experience opportunities, mentoring, or producing the work of artists whose voices are underrepresented.\n\nNot only that, but the sport has found its way back to me. I’m currently touring a stage adaptation of my debut children’s book, Alfie’s First Fight. The story revolves around a child boxer being raised by his dad, who fights for his family and triumphs against all the odds. It’s amazing to think that I can provide children with inspiring stories that draw on my own experiences.\n\nSometimes life throws you a curveball. Your dreams can disappear. Your ambitions can slip through your fingers. But I’ve learned that it’s how we respond that counts. In the face of adversity, you must never give up – you must forge new paths, dream new dreams and find what makes you happy.\n\nOliver Sykes’ production of Alfie’s First Fight is touring nationally until October\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "How mifepristone became a target of the US anti-abortion movement", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/16/how-mifepristone-became-a-target-of-the-us-anti-abortion-movement", | |
| "words": "1077", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:24Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/23e65d2d397fb9a35a535f30de98d83f2aaaff32/0_52_1536_922/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Poppy Noor", | |
| "description": "The abortion pill, first invented in 1980 in France, was slow to be accepted in the US. Now, it’s at the center of a major court fight", | |
| "text": "The future of mifepristone, a crucial abortion drug, is currently under question as US courts consider a challenge brought by anti-abortion groups. Considering medication is the most common US abortion method, it is the most significant reproductive rights case to make its way through the courts since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.\n\nThe groups suing the Food and Drug Administration over its approval of the drug claim that the drug poses a threat to women and girls – contrary to scientific consensus – and should never have been approved by the FDA more than two decades ago. The FDA vehemently stands by its approval of the pill, with the Biden administration emphasizing the agency’s rigorous safety reviews of the drug.\n\nSo what’s the story of the drug, and how did we get here?\n\nThe history of mifepristone – a global perspective In 1980, mifepristone was invented by French drug company Roussel Uclaf and was approved for market use in France in 1988. After its approval, following threats of boycotts and violence by US anti-abortion groups, Roussel Uclaf decided to suspend distribution of mifepristone for two days before the French government stepped in, ordering the drug back on the market.\n\n“From the moment governmental approval for the drug was granted, RU-486 became the moral property of women,” said France’s then health minister Claude Evin in reference to mifepristone, shutting down anti-abortion groups’ protest.\n\nThe UK and China followed France in approving mifepristone in 1991 and Sweden’s 1992 approval came quickly after.\n\nBut while the Clinton administration had high hopes of also quickly approving mifepristone, the same pattern did not emerge in the US.\n\nIn 1993, on the 20th anniversary of Roe v Wade, Bill Clinton signed a host of executive orders in support of abortion rights, in one of his first acts as president. One of those orders directed the health secretary to review an import ban that had been imposed on the drug, to determine whether it had any basis. “It is time to learn the truth about what the health and safety risks of the drug really are,” Clinton said.\n\nOn that day, he was met by about 75,000 anti-abortion protestors, angered by the change of direction after years of anti-abortion policies during the Reagan years. It was a harbinger of times to come: a fraught, seven-year battle for approval, putting the US behind many of its European counterparts in the approval of a potentially life-saving drug.\n\nIn 1996, the FDA met for the first time to consider the drug’s approval. Concerned about the potential for violence, officials held the meeting under strict security requirements, using metal detectors and a rigid travel itinerary to keep violence at bay. Those attending the meeting were to be bussed in from a nearby hotel, and only camera crews were allowed to wait outside the meeting in the parking lot.\n\nFierce anti-abortion backlash continued, and the FDA continued to review evidence on the drug’s safety, while the rest of the world continued to move ahead in approving it. By 1999, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, and Ukraine had all approved mifepristone.\n\nIn 2000, mifepristone was finally approved in the US, for terminations through seven weeks of pregnancy. That time period was later extended, to 10 weeks of pregnancy in 2016. Until 2021, mifepristone could only be dispensed in clinics, medical offices and hospitals – even though countries such as Canada and Australia had begun lifting those kinds of restrictions years prior.\n\nWith lockdowns in place across the world, the US finally began reconsidering its dispensing restrictions in 2020 during the Covid pandemic. By April 2021, in response to mounting pressure, the FDA temporarily lifted its restrictions on mifepristone, allowing it to be sent in the mail. Those changes became permanent in December 2021. In 2023, the FDA announced that pharmacies could become certified to dispense mifepristone, lifting the strict requirements on who can dispense it.\n\nThe fifth circuit court of appeals, which is currently considering the future of mifepristone in the US, in April invalidated all of the FDA’s post-2016 actions to loosen restrictions on the drug. The supreme court temporarily blocked that decision, and mifepristone currently remains available in pharmacies and through the mail as the case proceeds.\n\nAre abortion drugs safe? The plaintiffs challenging the approval of mifepristone have claimed the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone has put the safety of women and girls at risk.\n\nIn reality, years of research on tens of thousands of women has shown it to be safe and effective. Many point out that mifepristone is safer than Tylenol and Viagra, and have lambasted remaining restrictions on the drug in the US, even at a time when it is listed as an essential medicine by the World Health Organization.\n\nMeta-analyses within the last decade, on almost 270,000 people using the drug through nine weeks of pregnancy, have consistently shown a less than 1% rate of serious complications associated with use of the drug (such as an infection, or need for a blood transfusion). Only two deaths have been reported in that subsample – one caused by pneumonia, and one from an ectopic pregnancy – both of which are listed as likely not the result of taking medication abortion pills.\n\nThe rise in use Medication abortion only recently became the most common abortion method in the US. The most recent comprehensive data, from 2020, suggests that 53% of US abortions could be attributed to medication (both misoprostol and mifepristone used together). But that number does not account for any likely increase in usage after the FDA’s 2021 decision to expand access to the pill by mail, nor from the likely increase in pills being acquired from the internet – including from overseas – since Roe v Wade was overturned.\n\nPrior to 2017, the incidence of medication abortion was far lower: around 39% of all US abortions in 2017, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 31% in 2014; 23% in 2011, 17% in 2008, 6% in 2005 and 6% in 2001.\n\nWith abortion banned in more than a dozen states since Roe v Wade fell, the number of legal abortions in the US has been reported to have fallen by 6%. However, the increase in people ordering pills online may be significantly mitigating that drop.\n\nIt may be this impact, in offsetting the effect of abortion bans, that is fueling the rightwing push against the pills.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "3b632467c64b719a258af8e17dbc4b427bb3f555", | |
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| "title": "Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV review – the adventures of a multimedia maverick", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/17/nam-june-paik-moon-is-the-oldest-tv-review-video-warhol", | |
| "words": "340", | |
| "section": "Film", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:23Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/45f15b7824981922b74cde2e7e7fc2d6ffa7c466/60_0_1800_1080/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Peter Bradshaw", | |
| "description": "Documentary shows the awe-inspiring vocation of this avant garde disruptor, who foresaw the internet and meme culture’s importance in the 1970s", | |
| "text": "Nam June Paik was a Korean video art pioneer, experimentalist and avant garde disruptor whose amazing, anarchic career – which flourished in 1960s and 70s New York – is recounted in this amusing and engaging documentary, the title of which is taken from one of his works: a luminous disc on a screen, telling us we gaze at the TV in the submissive way we once stared at the moon.\n\nMinari’s Steven Yeun provides the voiceover for the artist’s own words and, among other things, this film shows us how exhausting it must be to do what he did: to insist, for decades, that his art, an art which bore no resemblance to anything that had gone before, had validity and meaning, while always being on the verge of poverty and physical breakdown. The overwhelming sense of vocation necessary for such a life is almost awe-inspiring, although Paik’s own jokey, opaque persona seems to exist as a rebuke to any reaction as bourgeois as that.\n\nPaik was a music student and pianist, radicalised by his period in 1950s West Germany during which he encountered Schönberg, Stockhausen and especially John Cage, who became a lifelong ally. Cage has a droll remark about Paik’s wacky, confrontational concerts and happenings: “More entertaining to recall than to experience at the time.” A Cageian movement in his own work led away from music to an interest in soundscape design, radio and TV and finally video art; Paik was the early adopter who saw video’s potential.\n\nPaik’s work also involved the manipulation of TV images, an artistic “talking back” to the TV, and there is a sense that he foresaw the whole of the internet and Web 2.0: his 1974 work Electronic Superhighway arguably anticipated the phrase “information superhighway”. He was a kind of Warhol figure (or even Godardian figure) in his fascination with the image: a very modern creator.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "I left my party lifestyle behind for a week in a nunnery – and began to see the light", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/17/party-lifestyle-nunnery-benedictine-nuns-minster-abbey-phone-alcohol-happiness", | |
| "words": "973", | |
| "section": "Opinion", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:23Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/0f994a0b038f6ea518053a55541dd1fd4c661448/0_738_3913_2347/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Elizabeth McCafferty", | |
| "description": "Among the Benedictine nuns, without my phone, or alcohol, or mirrors, a truer path to contentment emerged, says freelance journalist Elizabeth McCafferty", | |
| "text": "For me, a standard day off on a Saturday would consist of an overpriced brunch, mooching around the shops with my friends, bingeing Netflix and eating a large, carb-infused dinner in order to line my stomach for an evening of partying until the early hours.\n\nAs a 28-year-old, my life has often revolved around relationships, sex, work, drinking, money, partying and looking good. Even reading the list as I type, I feel guilty and almost embarrassed about my self-indulgence. I’ve always wondered what life would be like without modern-day pleasures and pressures.\n\nSo one Saturday morning three months ago, I caught the train from London to Ramsgate on the Kent coast in order to be welcomed into the guest house of a group of 11 Benedictine nuns for a week. I had decided to swap my lifestyle for theirs, and to see what would happen if I gave myself fully to a world where your only relationships are with a higher being, and with your sisterhood. Could having less, and focusing on simpler things, actually make me feel more satisfied?\n\nAlthough my mum was taught by Benedictine nuns at school, I wasn’t brought up to follow a religion. She has many terrifying stories of getting the cane for no reason and was left with plenty of Catholic guilt. She was, perhaps understandably, nervous about me going to stay with the nuns.\n\nAs I wheeled my (admittedly big) suitcase up to Minster Abbey, I was met by Mother Nikola. She has been at the abbey for 40 years and joined the convent when she was my age. Benedictine nuns are defined by the vows they take: obedience, stability and conversatio morum (sometimes translated as “fidelity to monastic life”). They promise to remain in the community for life, commit to chastity, and live for God, not themselves. All money and possessions are surrendered on arrival, and the community lives on joint funds.\n\nI was shown to my room. Brown, 1960s-style floral bedding lay on the single bed; a crucifix and a portrait of a nun hung on the wall (there was no mirror); and a Bible was left in the drawer. A prayer schedule was tacked to the back of the door: 5.30am, 8.30am, 9am, 12.15pm, 5.30pm, 6pm and 7.45pm. As someone who struggles with structure and routine – I’ve never been able to have a full-time office job – I quickly became overwhelmed by the rigid timetable.\n\nI found the first three days unbelievably hard – and felt ashamed for feeling that way. The early mornings, not being able to talk to anyone, and the lack of wifi made me anxious that I might be missing out on work or other “important” things. Why I’d brought so many clothes with me, I don’t know. I spent the whole day either in prayer or in solitary contemplation. My struggles were mirroring what I needed to work on in everyday life – so I tried to sit with the discomfort and adjust to the discipline. The lack of mirrors became a positive thing: I began to eradicate the urge to check myself in passing.\n\n“Love your enemy,” said Mother Nikola while reading a chapter during prayers on my third day at the abbey. Not much had resonated with me before that. But loving my enemy is something I’ve often struggled to do. I have a tendency to hang on to the past, which has made me stubborn and sometimes bitter. I haven’t spoken to some people I’ve fallen out with for more than 10 years: the ability to forgive is what I need to learn in order to move forward in my life. For the first time, something really clicked; over the next few days, I felt a shift in my learning. Even the structure started to feel easier.\n\nSister Benedict joined Minster Abbey in 1975 and she, too, found the monastic life difficult at first. At the age of 14, she’d had “a powerful experience of God”, which she now understands was her calling to the abbey. After leaving school she went into social work, but soon found herself, at 22, joining the abbey. Her ongoing doubts, however, meant that she had to retake her vows of commitment after several years. “If it’s not hard, it’s probably not right,” she says. “For a lot of women, the thought of joining us might be as an escape from the pressures of life, but what’s the point? Joining a nunnery is supposed to be a sacrifice, not easy.”\n\nThis was exactly what I needed to hear. I went back to my room and looked at my open suitcase, filled with 11 days’ worth of clothes for a seven-day trip, and my five-step skincare routine laid out on the desk. I realised how much I use things such as films, podcasts and Instagram as distractions because I don’t particularly like sitting with myself or with my thoughts for too long. As I reflected, I realised that yes, even though I want these things, I don’t actually need them; and quite often I use them to mask deeper problems and insecurities.\n\nAs I made my way back home after seven days, I contemplated how much I really give back to the community – and reflected on the difference between wanting and needing something. I realised that I am a master of procrastination and actually, could do with a little more structure. I rely on tech, money and chatting to friends as tools to escape being on my own – and to mask deeper emotions. As I approach 30, this experience has really helped me to shift my focus and prioritise being more present. My stay at the abbey might just have been the path to contentment I didn’t realise I needed so much.\n\nElizabeth McCafferty is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for Guardian Experience\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "2eef306b590091626c79df3ef283db5b11727837", | |
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| "title": "New York law aims to stop funding of illegal Israeli settlements in West Bank", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/17/new-york-law-aims-stop-funding-israeli-settlements-west-bank", | |
| "words": "780", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:23Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/49211bfcd95a667ac56e31ce0f1d2b9513faa865/0_0_1024_614/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Chris McGreal", | |
| "description": "State assembly member introduced law to prohibit tax-deductible donations from being used to expel Palestinians from their land", | |
| "text": "New York’s state assembly is to consider legislation to stop registered charities from sending tens of millions of dollars a year to fund illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.\n\nState assembly member, Zohran Mamdani, has introduced the “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence” act to prohibit tax-deductible donations from being used to expel Palestinians from their land and other activities widely regarded as war crimes under the Geneva conventions.\n\nThe United Nations security council has called Israeli settlement construction “a flagrant violation under international law”.\n\n“This legislation makes it clear that New York will no longer effectively subsidise war crimes and the flouting of international law,” Mamdani told the Guardian.\n\n“What we have is a number of New York state-registered charities that are sending at least $60m a year to Israeli settlement organisations which then use that funding to continue the history of expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories that has been going on for decades.”\n\nThe bill was denounced by some other members of the legislature who characterised it as an attack on charities that provide care for victims of terrorism and clothe orphans.\n\n“The bill is a ploy to demonise Jewish charities with connection to Israel. It was only introduced to antagonise pro-Israel New Yorkers and sow divisions within the Democratic party,” they said in a statement that did not make mention of settlements.\n\nThe legislation is backed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Jewish Voice for Peace among others. Vince Warren, CCR’s director, said: “Aiding and abetting war crimes is not charitable, period. This bill goes a long way toward ensuring that New York is not inadvertently subsidising war crimes, but rather creating paths for accountability.”\n\nMamdani named several New York-based organisations as targets for the law including the Central Fund of Israel which describes itself as “promoting charitable causes in Israel”. CFI makes specific mention of its money going to the “land of Israel” which is often used to refer to the occupied territories as well as the state of Israel.\n\nThe CFI disperses donations to an array of settler organisations including the Israel Land Fund responsible for the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers.\n\nAnother US group, Friends of Ir David, funds Elad, an Israeli settler organisation responsible for the forced removal of Palestinians as it seeks to “Judaise” occupied East Jerusalem.\n\n“These organisations masquerade as charities while funding illegal activities,” said Mamdani.\n\nIn 2015, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that at least 50 organisations across the US were involved in fundraising for Israeli settlements. Haaretz said some of the money also went “toward providing legal aid to Jews accused or convicted of terrorism, and supporting their families” through a “legal aid society” called Honenu.\n\n“Among those who benefited from the group’s support in 2013 were the family of Ami Popper, who murdered seven Palestinian laborers in 1990, and members of the Bat Ayin Underground, which attempted to detonate a bomb at a girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002,” Haaretz reported.\n\nThe proposed legislation would give New York state’s attorney general the power to sue groups funding settlements. It would also give Palestinians harmed by settler organisations funded by New York-based charities the right to seek damages in American courts.\n\nMamdani said that explicit legislation is necessary because, while there may be other laws on the books that could be used to prevent Americans funding illegal activities abroad, the politics of support for Israel in the US means they have not been applied.\n\n“There’s a phrase that I grew up hearing: PEP, progressive except Palestine. You’d see how time and again how politicians who espoused universal beliefs would always seem to find an exception when it came to the question of Israel and Palestine. We see that sadly in terms of how our laws are applied in terms of how our policies are applied. What this legislation does is it reckons with reality,” he said.\n\nFor that reason, Mamdani acknowledges he will struggle to get the law passed at this time. But he said successive US presidents have opposed settlement expansion and public opinion is increasingly shifting toward support for the Palestinians.\n\n“I think it will be a long fight. I do not have any illusions. But if you look at the attitudes of Americans towards Palestine and towards Israel, and specifically to the question of settlements, it is very clear that this is also a fight that is broadly popular,” he said.\n\nThe Central Fund of Israel and Friends of Ir David have been asked for comment.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "5a4ecb6e7ded3f73cb1c5c193bd2b5129a974fb1", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Framework Laptop 13 review: cracking modular PC gets all-round upgrade", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/17/framework-laptop-13-review-modular-pc-upgrade-performance", | |
| "words": "900", | |
| "section": "Technology", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/ca1285d84eced6255ebb1545ccc03f9e533801bf/0_363_5106_3063/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor", | |
| "description": "Thin and light performance machine continues to set standard for fixable, upgradeable laptops", | |
| "text": "The fixable and upgradeable premium Framework Laptop 13 has been improved all round for 2023 and is packed with small changes that are backwards compatible with older models, making a great laptop even better.\n\nThe original Framework broke new ground last year as a laptop designed to be taken apart and upgraded, and with a modular selection of ports, too. Crucially, the company followed through on promises to provide parts and upgrades for existing machines – first with 12th-gen Intel chips and now new 13th-gen Intel processors, with AMD Ryzen 7040 series chip options coming later this year.\n\nBut for those who don’t already have a Framework 13 sitting on their desks, these improved parts have been rolled into new pre-built options, with Windows 11 starting at £1,049 ($1,049).\n\nPhysically, little has changed, so that the new parts are compatible with older machines. The laptop is thin, light and made of recycled aluminium. It looks and feels premium.\n\nThe screen is the same crisp and bright panel as before, but now has a matt rather than gloss coating, which significantly reduces glare and reflections. The new, more robust-feeling screen hinges still open to a full 180 degrees, which is very handy for using the laptop in a stand.\n\nThe laptop has new, louder stereo speakers, which are still fairly tinny compared with the best, but fine for watching YouTube or taking meetings. A good 1080p webcam is at the top of the screen, with a physical switch for privacy. If you don’t like the black screen bezel, you can swap it for various colours, too.\n\nSpecifications Screen: 13.5in LCD 2256 x 1504 (60Hz; 201 PPI)\n\nProcessor: Intel Core i5 or i7 (13th generation)\n\nRAM: 8, 16, 32 or 64GB\n\nStorage: 256, 512GB, 1, 2 or 4TB\n\nOperating system: Windows 11 Home or Pro\n\nCamera: 1080p front-facing\n\nConnectivity: wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, headphones, fingerprint scanner + choice of 4 ports: USB-C (USB4/Thunderbolt 4), USB-A, HDMI, DisplayPort, ethernet, microSD\n\nDimensions: 296.6 x 229.0 x 15.9mm\n\nWeight: 1.3kg\n\nPorts and power The Laptop 13’s modular ports are still a great idea. Choose between any combination of USB-4/Thunderbolt 4, USB-A, HDMI, DisplayPort, ethernet, microSD and expandable storage drives, and swap them as you need. With most costing less than £20 each, they are cheap enough to keep a collection for different tasks.\n\nThe 13th-gen Intel Core i7, as tested in the “performance” version of the laptop with 16GB of RAM, was all round an improvement on the 11th-gen chips tested last year.\n\nIt was certainly fast enough to handle any general computing task, keeping up with rivals for power. It won’t handle high-end gaming, but managed a bit of Command & Conquer Remastered and various other older or lighter titles just fine.\n\nIt also ran a lot cooler than the previous version, with the fans generally staying silent while browsing and general computing, which was most welcome.\n\nFramework also released a higher-capacity battery that stores 11% more energy in the same physical size and ships in all but the cheapest models. It still won’t win any longevity awards, but the laptop managed a good eight to nine hours of productivity work in Chrome, Windows Mail, Evernote and various other light apps. That is at least an hour longer than the previous version.\n\nSustainability Framework rates the battery to maintain at least 80% of its original capacity for at least 1,000 full charge cycles. It can easily be replaced along with all the rest of the components, including the RAM and SSD. The first-gen laptop was awarded 10 out of 10 for repairability and the 2023 model praised by the specialists iFixit for its ease of upgrade.\n\nFramework sells replacement parts and upgrades through its marketplace, but also supports third-party parts. The laptop contains recycled aluminium and plastic in most components.\n\nPrice The Framework Laptop 13 is available as a pre-built, ready-to-use machine or in a DIY edition.\n\nPre-built “base” machines with Windows 11, an Intel Core i5-1340P, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage start at £1,049 ($1,049). The performance model as tested with an i7-1360P costs £1,469 ($1,469) with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. DIY editions start at £849.\n\nFor comparison, the Dell XPS 13 Plus starts at £1,348.99, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 starts at £999 and the Apple MacBook Air M2 starts at £1,249\n\nVerdict Framework has delivered on its promise of upgrades for its existing machines which, when put together, create a more refined machine in the Laptop 13.\n\nThe 13th-gen Intel chips run cooler, helping the laptop to stay quieter and offering plenty of performance. But the other refinements to the hinges, speakers, battery and screen improve the experience just as much. The swappable ports remain an excellent idea.\n\nThe battery life is still far short of the best in the business, but is now long enough for a work day. A touchscreen would be nice but isn’t essential. And you can certainly get better-looking mainstream rivals.\n\nBut the 2023 Framework Laptop 13 is an excellent, adaptable and upgradable marvel suitable for more than just PC enthusiasts.\n\nPros: swappable ports, repairable and upgradeable design, great performance, decent battery life, contains recycled aluminium and plastic, well-made, good fingerprint scanner, good screen, great webcam, good keyboard and trackpad.\n\nCons: no touchscreen, lid a little flimsier than the rest of the body, short availability, with wait time for purchasing new machines.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "fef6ccfdf4b7039618748153118915cba9bb414a", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Malmö design festival fights back against the flatpack", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/may/17/malmo-sweden-design-festival-fights-back-against-the-flatpack", | |
| "words": "1059", | |
| "section": "Travel", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/59befa891e3f761c0023f924a00499db6ac6077a/789_470_4211_2527/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Sarah Gillespie", | |
| "description": "Sweden’s third city showcases independent artists and stylish restaurants reviving Scandinavia’s offbeat, sustainable design", | |
| "text": "If you want to see the full range of expression of which a Swede is capable, just mention Ikea. Annoyance, amusement, pride and resentment flit across Terese Alstin’s face as she forms a response. “It’s a love-hate relationship,” she says finally, laughing.\n\nWe’re tucking into an exquisite lunch of chicken and asparagus at the Mat- & Chokladstudion cafe in Malmö. Sweden’s third-largest city is renowned for its independent design scene – with boutiques and design-forward restaurants that are open year round – but right now, just before the third Southern Sweden Design Days (SSDD), there’s an almost audible crackle of creative energy in the air. Terese is strategic manager at the Form/Design Center, the organisation behind the event, which takes place on 25-28 May. More than 60 venues across Malmö will be involved, turning the city into a sprawling design museum. About 85% of participants are one-person companies.\n\nThe theme for 2023 is “Dissonance”, appropriate for a festival that appears to pit designer Davids against Ikea’s Goliath. And yet – in the Swedish spirit of inclusivity – Ikea, too, will be part of the festival, hosting a seminar on the role of dissonance in design. “They are a part of Swedish design, but we wouldn’t want them to become an official sponsor,” says Terese. “I feel it’s my responsibility to change the perception of what Swedish design is about.”\n\nTerese and I grab coffee and kanelbullar (cinnamon buns) and go to meet designer Anna Gudmundsdottir for a spot of fika: the twice-daily social coffee breaks built into the fabric of Swedish society. Pastries are mandatory.\n\nWe step into Anna’s “hoarder’s studio” (her words). Against one wall, old shop display parts and pipes are locked in a complex embrace – pull one out, I think, and the whole lot would tumble. On her desk is a clutter of Carrara marble offcuts, which she tells me would have been ground up and used in asphalt if she hadn’t saved them.\n\nLately, Anna has channelled her hoarding tendencies into founding the Malmö Upcycling Service, which supplies leftover materials to designers. She shows me examples of her recent works: a lamp made from ventilation tubes, a cabinet made from leftover shipbuilding vinyl. I wouldn’t know they were upcycled if Anna hadn’t told me. “It doesn’t have to look like waste,” she says. “It’s not waste – it’s a resource.”\n\nAnna’s designs are available in the Form/Design Center shop – and during SSDD she, along with many others, will be exhibiting at BISe, a quintessentially Scandi restaurant that’s all clean-lined chairs and rippling glassware. At dinner that evening, the interiors are upstaged only by the creative clashes on my plate: pairings such as halibut and passionfruit, rhubarb and cardamom. I brace myself for a Stockholm-style bill, but the three-course meal, as with most things in Malmö, is surprisingly reasonably priced at 600kr (£46), excluding drinks.\n\nIt’s much-needed fuel for a whirl through Malmö’s designer boutiques: hand-thrown pots at AB Småland, Technicolor homeware at Designtorget, and frilly dresses at Beyond Us, where decor and merchandise are as pink as the cherry blossom trees lining Malmö’s canals. While dodging bicycles, I marvel at the juxtaposition of cobbled streets and modern buildings with glittering glass facades that shift and dance in the sun. I come to rest at Mitt Möllan, another SSDD venue, which was once a dated shopping mall; now, it’s an incubator for fledgling design businesses. “We meet them when they’re green and they’re here with their mums,” says Kajsa Blum, Mitt Möllan’s brand strategist.\n\nAny business is welcome, as long as it meets Mitt Möllan’s criteria for sustainability and locally made goods. I peer into Ateljé Laga, where Mexican designer Verónica Luna is stitching floral fabric scraps on to a handbag. Customers bring their old garments to Verónica; she redesigns them with embroidery and lace before handing them back. She’s currently working on a denim line with Phoenix and Friends, a secondhand clothing store across the corridor.\n\nThe variety here is dazzling. Stepping across the mall’s faux terrazzo floors, I encounter huge, crepe-paper flowers in the window of Pill & Punch, and a Song-o-matic recording booth where visitors record anonymous confessions, to be transformed into whispering works of sound art by the Finnish musician Elee Loop. On seeing a wall of posters by the Malmö-based graphic artist Magoz, I pause. Kajsa notices my confusion.\n\nIt’s all so unlike the Swedish design I thought I knew. Peer behind the massive, monolithic brands and you will find the grassroots growing, sprouting multicoloured flowers – if only people would bother to look. In the 19th-century Folkets Park, Terese and I stroll by a pastel menagerie of bicycle-sized bumblebees and water-lily fountains. Malmö’s designers collaborated on Folkets’ playgrounds: I hear delighted shrieks and turn to see children scaling what looks like a space shuttle. Other playgrounds are inspired by safaris and fairytales. There’s not a flat-pack Lack table in sight.\n\nOur final stop is the Cowgirl Gallery. Founder Selma Modéer Wiking shakes my hand with a firm grip, then hands me a bottle of kombucha from the Malmö-based company Gaëlle.\n\nSelma was planning a move to Berlin when she walked past the then-vacant space in which we now sit. On impulse, she decided to stay in Malmö instead, and set up Cowgirl – a cafe, gallery, co-working space, performance space, cinema and boutique. “I want to have everything I love: good coffee, a new exhibition every month, poetry, live music,” she says, talking rapidly.\n\nBacked by government funding, Selma has seemingly limitless agency; the gallery changes according to her whims. “I used to have ceramics here, but it’s so trendy,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I want to sell magazines you can’t find anywhere else, and posters – posters are the most democratic form of art.”\n\nShe pauses for a sip of kombucha. Behind tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, her eyes dart about the space – I can tell that she is already visualising next month’s exhibition. “When you have accessibility to art and an affordable city to live in, you have time to create,” she says. “It is an extreme luxury to live in a country where you can be odd.”\n\nThe trip was provided by Form/Design Center and Visit Sweden, with accommodation at MJ’s Hotel (doubles from £86 room only)\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "8e53f63dd717f84c60db0977fb67605c44ba0aa5", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "A US company is trying to trademark the shape of its lettuce – but this is just the tip of the iceberg", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/17/us-company-trademark-lettuce", | |
| "words": "334", | |
| "section": "Opinion", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/2c787b4fe0cbcca4e39254ce3a4e6df6e52915c7/0_184_2700_1620/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Arwa Mahdawi", | |
| "description": "From Rebekah Vardy trademarking ‘Wagatha Christie’ to Drake’s ‘God’s Plan’, we live in a world where absolutely anything can be monetised, writes Arwa Mahdawi", | |
| "text": "Hannah Gadsby, a feted, award-winning comedian, has curated an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, about Pablo Picasso’s complicated legacy, called It’s Pablo-matic. This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand – which is lettuce. Rather, I am alerting you to the exhibition because it’s proof that terrible puns are now high art. Bear this in mind as I proceed to make as many terrible leaf puns as I can in the next few paragraphs.\n\nOK, lettuce get back to the point. A US company called Little Leaf Farms is trying to trademark the curvy shape of its baby crispy green leaf lettuce. Is this some kind of GM-nightmare leaf, you might be wondering? Has big lettuce deviously planted cells in order to create a super-curvy salad? I wouldn’t rule it out, but in this instance it seems the lettuce’s shape is natural and the result of a particular seed being grown in a way that results in ruffled edges. Can you trademark that? US trademark experts seem to think it’s a long shot, but possible.\n\nBut this is just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it? Please romaine calm, but we live in a world where absolutely anything can be commoditised, monetised, trademarked and privatised. If you make a joke on the internet and it goes viral, for example, it’s almost guaranteed that someone will try to profit from it. Just ask Dan Atkinson, who coined a (little) gem of a pun, “Wagatha Christie”, and then, three years later, discovered that Rebekah Vardy had trademarked the phrase so that, if she feels like it, she can slap it on a line of branded meat tenderisers.\n\nWhile that sounds brazen, it’s nothing compared with the musician Drake, who trademarked “God’s Plan”, the title of one of his songs and a commonplace phrase, so that he could put it on cardigans. Nothing is sacred these days, not even salad.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "3a5a0f845763f734eb4c07678508237405c52ee7", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Preventing millions of hepatitis deaths is a ‘thundering moral imperative’", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/17/preventing-millions-of-hepatitis-deaths-is-a-thundering-moral-imperative", | |
| "words": "575", | |
| "section": "Global development", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/614cc50217cc6e6ad1c33bf3c5eaeb1346b572bc/0_113_1500_900/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Lizzy Davies", | |
| "description": "By 2040 the disease could kill more people each year than malaria, TB and Aids combined – despite the cost of treatment being ‘less than dinner for two’", | |
| "text": "The world faces “a thundering moral imperative” to prevent people in poor countries dying of viral hepatitis when the cost of treating them is “less than dinner for two”, the pharmaceutical industry will be told today.\n\nIn a passionate appeal to the international community to avoid repeating the mistakes made early in the HIV and Aids crisis, delegates meeting in Geneva at the first international pledging conference for viral hepatitis will be urged to give $150m (£120m) to ensure that low-cost treatment reaches those who need it.\n\nDr Michel Kazatchkine, the veteran HIV/Aids advocate, will say: “For those of us who have engaged in the fight against HIV and tuberculosis for decades, this sounds familiar. This lack of political and financial commitment is typical for a disease that disproportionally affects the poorest and the most vulnerable.\n\n“And this lack of concern is deadly. It leads to millions of unnecessary deaths.”\n\nMore than 350 million people live with a chronic viral hepatitis infection, with more than 1.1 million deaths each year, predominantly in low and middle-income countries. Experts estimate that if the current trajectory continues, viral hepatitis will kill more people annually than malaria, tuberculosis and Aids combined by 2040.\n\nComparatively low-cost diagnostic tools and generic drugs – as well as a highly effective vaccine – already exist. But there is a lack of funds to get them to the places most in need and, when the cost of treating someone with hepatitis C is as little as $80 (£64) a patient, this is “unforgivable”, according to Kazatchkine.\n\n“We have been here before: while cost should not be an obstacle to saving a life, we have seen again and again that it is,” he will say.\n\n“But when treatment is this affordable, we face a thundering moral imperative to act. Letting someone die or passing on their infection to their children is unforgivable when the diagnosis and treatment cost less than a dinner for two here in Geneva.”\n\nKazatchkine, the former UN special envoy for HIV and Aids and the ex-director of the Global Fund, has spent decades advocating for more investment in treating Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. But he believes it is “more than absurd” for donors to spend tens of billions on those diseases, “only to see patients die from another easily preventable and treatable disease and frequent co-infection”.\n\nIn 2016 World Health Organization member states committed to reducing deaths from viral hepatitis by 65% by 2030. Some countries, such as Egypt, Rwanda and Mongolia, are making good progress, but overall the world is off target.\n\nAccording to WHO data, fewer than one in five newborns in Africa receive the hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth, which is essential because mother-to-child transmission is the primary way the infection is passed on.\n\nBefore Covid-19, Gavi, the vaccine alliance, committed to supporting a rollout of hepatitis B birth vaccines, but in 2020 announced it had delayed implementation due to disruption caused by the pandemic.\n\nMillions of people with chronic hepatitis C infection – which is spread through contact with blood from an infected person and can lead to fatal liver complications such as cancer and cirrhosis – are also yet to see the benefit of scientific breakthroughs. Antiviral medicines can cure more than 95% of cases, but reach just 13% of diagnosed people.\n\nToday’s hepatitis resource mobilisation conference will be hosted by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, alongside the Hepatitis Fund and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Thames Water has failed us for four months after a flood", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/may/17/thames-water-has-failed-us-for-four-months-after-a-flood", | |
| "words": "385", | |
| "section": "Money", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T06:00:21Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/ee0f2da98ed5440c9a0ec34e3b22516599abfb0f/308_265_4876_2926/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Anna Tims", | |
| "description": "A burst pipe in our street damaged our flat but we are still waiting for a repair", | |
| "text": "Four months ago, a water pipe burst in our street and flooded the bathroom in our lower-ground-floor flat. The damage forced us to move out and we are still waiting for Thames Water and its insurer for a repair. When the burst pipe was discovered, the mains water was not shut off and it was five days before engineers came. By then, water had flooded a large area of the street and leaked through the light fittings in our bathroom. A dehumidifier made little difference and, three weeks later, we were moved into an apart-hotel while builders stripped the bathroom.\n\nThat was two months ago and no one has returned since. In the meantime, our landlord commissioned a survey, which recommended a programme of works, but repeated calls to Thames and its insurer have been ineffective. I suffered a miscarriage shortly after the flood, and believe severe stress was a factor. I am now seven weeks pregnant, and we are desperate to return home. Our 81-year-old landlord also had his health affected by the worry.\nAH, London\n\nYour log of interactions shows numerous calls and emails, most of which were either ignored, or asked you to wait for an update. Nonetheless, Thames Water claims it has been in “regular contact” and was unaware of your pregnancies. The most effective contact appears to have happened after I waded in. Contractors were appointed and you were told the work would take three weeks. You moved back four weeks later.\n\nThe company says initial delays were due to the complexity of the repair and council bureaucracy, and the water supply could not be shut off because of vulnerable residents in the street. The delays in repairing your flat, or confirming a timescale were, it says, because of the time it took to dry out. That doesn’t explain a month-long lapse between it declaring the bathroom dry and scheduling remedial works. Thames Water has agreed to pay £3,500 for the four months of rent you had to fork out on an uninhabitable flat.\n\nCustomers with problems should follow the company’s official complaints procedure on its website. If there is no satisfactory resolution, they can ask the Consumer Council for Water to intervene.\n\nEmail your.problems@observer.co.uk. Include an address and phone number. Submission and publication are subject to our terms and conditions\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "78e5cbaccf283fce0fa0b8243e8fb245196e28df", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/1a00011366184b1d1d8e06ee528f8ebeceac66a6/0_0_4320_2592/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Wednesday briefing: Are standardised tests failing children?", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/wednesday-briefing-first-edition-standardised-tests-sats-failing-children", | |
| "words": "2585", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:53:58Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/1a00011366184b1d1d8e06ee528f8ebeceac66a6/0_0_4320_2592/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Archie Bland", | |
| "description": "In today’s newsletter: Sats tests have left students in tears, and teachers and parents calling for an overhaul. Here’s how they are supposed to work – and what critics say needs to change", | |
| "text": "Good morning. Almost everything about adulthood stinks, but it has one important benefit: nobody can ever make you take another exam. Who among us looks back fondly on turning over a sheaf of paper to find out which particular gaps in your knowledge are about to be ruthlessly exposed? And who doesn’t feel a shiver of sympathy for the children going through the same thing today – and gratitude that at least this time, it isn’t you?\n\nYear 6 pupils in England, who sat their key stage 2 tests (widely known as Sats, or standardised assessment tests) last week, might be justified in feeling particularly hard done by: they face far more onerous assessment than their counterparts across the rest of the UK, and can look to 10 and 11-year-olds in comparable systems from Canada to New Zealand for proof that another approach is possible.\n\nIn the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis, and after the alarm was raised over a particularly brutal English test last week that was said to have left some pupils in tears, those worries look particularly salient. Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s education correspondent Sally Weale, is about the long-running fight over Sats, and why so many teachers and parents are calling for an overhaul.\n\nYou may now look at the headlines. You have five minutes to complete this newsletter. Do not use a calculator.\n\nFive big stories Housing | Tenants and campaigners have warned Michael Gove not to create a “back door” for unfair evictions as private rented sector reforms are unveiled on Wednesday. The overhaul will ban no-fault evictions but strengthen landlords’ rights to throw tenants out for antisocial behaviour, which could mean renters being given a two-week notice period for antisocial behaviour evictions.\n\nTaiwan | Free nations must commit themselves to a free Taiwan, Liz Truss has said on a visit to Taipei, in which she called for an “economic Nato” to tackle Beijing’s growing authoritarianism. Truss, the most senior British politician to make the trip since Margaret Thatcher, drew a rebuke from China’s UK embassy, which said the visit would only harm Britain.\n\nMedia | A leading Mirror journalist allegedly blackmailed the company as it attempted to cover up phone hacking, the high court has been told. Lee Harpin, who held a number of senior roles at the People and Sunday Mirror, was alleged to be a known phone hacker whose understanding of illegal behaviour at the newspaper group caused anxiety at board level. Harpin denies the claims.\n\nAsylum | Ministers are removing basic housing protections from asylum seekers under new rules designed to move tens of thousands out of hotels and into the private rented sector. The changes would exempt landlords from regulations governing everything from electrical safety to minimum room sizes.\n\nEducation | The University of Oxford will cut its ties with the Sackler family, whose wealth came from addictive opioid drugs. The family’s name will be removed from two galleries in the Ashmolean Museum and a university library as well as several staff positions.\n\nIn depth: ‘There is real worry that disadvantaged students will find it very difficult to catch up’ Dismay about the difficulty of Sats is now as predictable a part of the academic calendar as a terrible school play – but it feels especially acute this year.\n\nLast year’s results revealed the gap between the scores obtained by disadvantaged children and others had grown since before the pandemic, when they were last taken, leaving the biggest difference between the two in a decade. And after the Department for Education responded to anger over an English test last week, reported to be so hard that some teachers struggled to understand the questions, by saying that it was “designed to be challenging”, schools minister Nick Gibb promised to review the paper in question.\n\n“They do have to test a range of ability to make sure we can show what proportion of children are exceeding the standards and so on,” he said. “But we don’t want these tests to be too hard for children. That’s not the purpose.”\n\nSo what is the purpose? “The government would say that up until the pandemic, taking a rigorous approach has in general narrowed the gap between disadvantaged children and their wealthier peers,” Sally Weale said. “But that approach has stalled. And there is real worry that they will find it very difficult to catch up.”\n\nHow are Sats supposed to work?\n\nThe key stage 2 assessments are billed as a way to measure how well schools are doing, and to identify any problem areas for pupils ahead of their secondary education.\n\nIn theory, they’re not meant to be a source of stress for the children who take them. “The assessments only include questions on things that children should already have been taught as part of the national curriculum,” the government’s education hub says. “Children shouldn’t be made to feel any unnecessary pressure when it comes to the KS2 assessments.”\n\nThe exams are calibrated to be a reliable guide to what children have learned, with questions going through three cycles of reviews by teachers and experts before being trialled on 1,000 pupils each time. That process is supposed to avoid any disadvantage for particular groups of pupils and to make sure they produce a range of marks that accurately measures a full range of abilities – since there’s little point in a test that leaves the bottom quartile all scoring zero, or the top one all getting full marks.\n\n“They’re supposed to provide a picture of a school’s performance that helps parents know what kind of school they’re choosing, and to see how individual kids are doing,” Sally said. “The idea is that it’s just based on what they’ve been doing all year. It’s meant to be fairly pain-free.” UCL research in 2021 supported that argument: it found little difference in the well-being of children who had taken them and those who had not.\n\nThose who defend the existing system might point to news yesterday that pupils in England have risen to fourth place in the world rankings of literacy among nine- and 10-year-olds – beating the US and every other country in Europe.\n\nWhile that measure is taken before the Sats, Prof Alan Smithers, of the University of Buckingham, argued: “Although there are sometimes cries of pain from parents and teachers about the Sats test, there’s no doubt that they set clear objectives for primary schools, and that is reflected in our position on the international scene.”\n\nWhat do critics say?\n\nThe argument against Sats is not, typically, that there is no need for assessment of children’s progress: it is that high-stakes external tests that matter so much to schools are bound to create perverse “teach to the test” incentives that drive out what many parents value most about education, and consign children to an “exam factory” at too early an age.\n\nThey also say that quite often, as in the recent English test, they’re simply too hard. One measure of that: when a group of MPs and peers (pictured above) took a sample test in maths and English last December, they scored lower than the average results achieved by 10-year-olds. (You may think that you’d quite like more than 44% of MPs to be up to year 6 maths, but the point still stands.)\n\n“Even if the department says that they aren’t meant to be this way, you hear many stories about kids having revision at lunchtime, or getting homework during half term, or being sick from the stress, and so on,” Sally said. “The news of this recent test will have added to that argument. It feels like a judgement to parents and pupils, and the argument is that it drives a lot of the joy out of a period in education which is supposed to be about enriching children’s lives and making them love education.”\n\nThe National Education Union says that the UCL research fails to take into account how Sats have changed in recent years. Ninety-five percent of headteachers say too much time is spent preparing for the test, and 90% of teachers are unsatisfied with the system.\n\nYou might see a vested interest in teachers rejecting a system that demands a lot of them. But parents tend to agree: 95% said Sats had a negative effect on their child’s well-being last year. Nor do parents typically use them to choose a school: Ofsted reports and local reputation are considered much more important, and 85% say they don’t use Sats at all.\n\nAs for pupils: almost half of year 6 children said they spent most of the year doing practice papers, 60% said they were worried about the exams last year, and one in 10 said they were having trouble sleeping as a result. (You can see all these figures and others in this briefing (pdf) by the campaign group More Than a Score.)\n\nWhat would an alternative look like?\n\nThere are plenty of suggestions from critics – but most centre on replacing Sats with something new. Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour promised to abolish them altogether, though did not say what the alternative would be; the party doesn’t currently have a stated position on the issue.\n\nThe EDSK thinktank argues that more frequent, shorter assessments run online that automatically give pupils questions adjusting to their performance would make the process less burdensome for schools and pupils alike and provide a fairer measure of progress.\n\nThe British Educational Research Association suggests removing the tests – and league tables – and instead using a test of a sample of pupils alongside questionnaires for schools, parents and pupils for a broader measure of success.\n\nAny alternative would be more popular with teachers and parents. Nonetheless, the government does not appear likely to abandon the current system, which it sees as one of the tools it will use to get 90% of pupils to expected standards in reading, writing and maths by 2030. That looks a tall order: last year, that target was hit by just 1% of schools.\n\nWhat else we’ve been reading Zoe Williams has an entertaining meeting with Loreen (above), who won Eurovision for Sweden for the second time at the weekend, and finds a beaming, self-mocking balladeer with a rich life story and political convictions. “I don’t like the word ‘political’,” she says. “It’s so small – I wish there was a bigger word for it.” Archie\n\nPresident Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is the most popular leader in Latin America, in part because of his draconian treatment of gangs and the resulting fall in crime. Luke Taylor reports on the innocent young men being caught up in the crackdown. Archie\n\nIt has been three months since a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, spilling more than 116,000 gallons of toxic petrochemicals. Like many residents, Zsuzsa Gyenes is still displaced, unable to return home, and is calling for accountability for those responsible. Nimo\n\nMarina Hyde has every last detail of the byzantine Phil and Holly drama on This Morning. Stop lying to yourself and read it. Archie\n\n“Stealth wealth” and “quiet luxury” are the latest fashion phrases dominating social media. But in the Atlantic, (£) Amanda Mull asks whether this trend is actually taking off in the way many seem to be suggesting: “Stealth wealth seems to be more of an imagined trend than anything else – inspired by a mistaken, stylised notion of how the wealthy live their glamorous lives.” Nimo\n\nSport Champions League | Inter reached the final of the competition after a 74th minute goal from Lautaro Martínez (above) secured a 1-0 win against their bitter rivals Milan on the night, and a 3-0 aggregate victory. While Inter will be underdogs against either Manchester City or Real Madrid in the final, Jonathan Liew wrote: “This is a club that has always done its best work in the shadow of doubt, that is most dangerous at the moment when you dare to write it off.”\n\nCricket | Jofra Archer will miss a third successive summer, and a second successive Ashes series, after scans revealed a recurrence of a stress fracture to his right elbow. Rob Key, the ECB’s managing director for men’s cricket, said the fast bowler was “pretty distraught” at the news.\n\nChampionship | Luton fans celebrated on the pitch after a 2-0 win over Sunderland in the playoff semi-final second leg secured them a place in the final. Goals from Gabriel Osho and Tom Lockyer turned the tables on Sunderland, who had won 2-1 at home in the first leg. “We had to mix it up and be horrible and dirty and that’s how we won the game,” Lockyer said.\n\nThe front pages Our Guardian print edition splashes this morning with “Alarm as ministers target housing standards to cut asylum hotels bill”. Housing issues of a different kind lead the Times’ Wednesday edition – “Starmer: I’ll allow more homes on green belt”. “PM: You must let us deport illegal migrants” – that’s t message from Rishi Sunak to European judges, says the Daily Express. “Can’t afford a sandwich? Hard cheese” – the Daily Mirror calls out “more right-wing cruelty” as, it says, former MP Ann Widdecombe declares “no one has a right to cheap food”.\n\nThe Daily Telegraph has “Free speech is at risk in trans row, Oxford dons tell students”. “We’re NOT guns for hire Harry” – that’s the Sun’s headline for its story about the court case between the prince and the Met over payment for his security. “Working from home fuels UK’s sick note crisis” says the Daily Mail, while the i has “Bird flu spreads to humans in the UK”. The top story in the Financial Times is “ChatGPT chief sees AI manipulation of US elections as ‘significant’ concern”.\n\nToday in Focus Has Ukraine’s spring offensive begun?\n\nUkrainian officials claim their forces have retaken land around the eastern city of Bakhmut and shot down Russian missiles targeting Kyiv. Luke Harding reports on the state of the war\n\nCartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad\n\nThis picture essay collects images from a new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art of works by female artists who have highlighted the evolving political and social landscapes of countries with large Muslim populations. One photograph (above) features the actor Iman Vellani, known for her television role as comic-book character Kamala Khan, AKA Ms Marvel, in a series that focuses on girls and women in the US and Lebanon. Another features the photographer’s daughters, inspired by their evolution from girls to adults. The two girls, Darine and Dania, gaze confidently at the camera, their personalities emerging through their body language and what they are wearing.\n\nOthers highlight the plight of a transgender woman in Iran, the dispossession of Palestinian women who live in a perpetual state of occupation, and a moment of togetherness in Nigeria as girls gather around a circle of candles on their classroom floor to exchange stories while Boko Haram unleashed attacks on the country. The exhibition centres the experiences of marginalised women and celebrates the achievements of female photographers who have been able to capture their stories.\n\nSign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday\n\nBored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.\n\nQuick crossword\n\nCryptic crossword\n\nWordiply\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "50af6d908e08162f129c7dd5ae9c84ac3b60399d", | |
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| "title": "Angus Taylor signals Coalition may reject Labor changes to petroleum resource rent tax", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/17/angus-taylor-coalition-may-reject-labor-changes-prrt-petroleum-resource-rent-tax", | |
| "words": "700", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:47:26Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/fe2f908a614c67734b61ce2e514dacaacdee6bd2/0_550_8256_4954/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Paul Karp Chief political correspondent", | |
| "description": "Move may mean government must deal with Greens to pass PRRT reforms as shadow treasurer warns against gas industry’s ‘death by a thousand cuts’", | |
| "text": "Angus Taylor has warned Labor against the “death by a thousand cuts” of the gas industry, signalling the Coalition may reject changes to the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT).\n\nThe shadow treasurer made the comments at the National Press Club on Wednesday, in an alarming sign for industry that the Albanese government may be forced to deal with the Greens to pass the reform.\n\nLabor and the Coalition are also engaged in a budget barney over the opposition’s plan to increase the income-free threshold for jobseeker, which the social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, has warned is “not costed”.\n\nThe government has proposed to limit the proportion of taxable income from offshore oil and gas projects that can be offset by deductions to 90% in a move that could collect $2.4bn over four years. The Greens and independents have suggested more extensive PRRT tax changes could raise more than $9bn every year.\n\nThe Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association has said Labor’s policy would “provide greater certainty” to the industry and called for bipartisan support to “ensure the ongoing efficiency and administration of the PRRT regime”.\n\nOn Wednesday Taylor was asked if he was concerned that opposing the PRRT could force Labor to deal with the Greens. He replied that he didn’t “want to get ahead of our processes” because the opposition is still “systematically and methodically” working through the budget.\n\n“But there’s a couple of principles that are important regardless of the outcome,” he said. “Number one, if you want more of something, you don’t tax it more. It’s pretty simple. It’s pretty basic economics.\n\n“But that’s what Labor has chosen to do here, and it’s disappointing that that’s their approach more generally.”\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nTaylor said that “taxing more” struck him as the wrong way to deliver affordable energy. “We want a gas industry that’s successful in this country, not one that’s dying by a death by a thousand cuts.”\n\nIn Thursday’s budget reply the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, offered bipartisan support for a range of cost-of-living and welfare measures including improvements to bulk-billing, single parent payments, and jobseeker for those aged 55 to 60.\n\nThe Coalition has so far withheld support for the $40 a fortnight base rate increase to jobseeker, proposing instead that the amount jobseekers can earn before their payments are reduced increase from $150 to $300 a fortnight.\n\nInitially the Coalition suggested this could cost as little as $700m, but on Tuesday Dutton revealed a discrepancy with the Parliamentary Budget Office suggesting it could cost “in the order of about half of what the government is proposing to spend” on jobseeker, or $2.3bn.\n\nOn Wednesday Rishworth said that while Labor had “focused our support on strengthening the safety net” the Coalition had “just torn that down”.\n\n“We also want to ensure that people are able to move off income support into careers, into jobs that are meaningful for them,” she told reporters in Canberra.\n\nRishworth noted that “75% of people on jobseeker and other working-age payments are not reporting any earnings, which means they’re not even using the income free threshold that’s available to them”.\n\nRishworth said there were “no costings” of the Coalition’s policy and “no analysis of what actual improvement it will mean for all those people that have been locked out of the labour market”.\n\nIn April the treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, indicated that how welfare payments interact with earnings will be a focus of the upcoming full employment white paper.\n\nKennedy said that “the elasticity of labour supply is higher at the lower end of the income distribution, which is where those on income support are most likely to be”.\n\nOn Wednesday, Taylor cited the “very good” speech, arguing it reinforced the need for the Coalition’s policy because unemployed people are “paying an effective tax rate of 50-60 cents in the dollar” as their earnings increase.\n\nTaylor could not say how much the policy will cost, explaining it was still working with the PBO “now we’ve got the budget parameters”.\n\n“We know that this is a policy that has the potential to get more people into work.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "023873056b58623a8d8be4238d0d6d14c69971fe", | |
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| "title": "Disappointment in Papua New Guinea after Biden cancels first visit by a US leader", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/disappointment-in-papua-new-guinea-after-biden-cancels-first-visit-by-a-us-leader", | |
| "words": "742", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:43:06Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/6516ef34118b0ece99b9f25f29aaa34851d5c2b6/0_0_1800_1080/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Rebecca Kuku in Port Moresby", | |
| "description": "After six months of preparation in Port Moresby, the President cut short his trip in order to focus on debt limit talks in Washington", | |
| "text": "Papua New Guineans have reacted with disappointment to the news that US president, Joe Biden, has cancelled his visit to the capital, Port Moresby, in order to focus on debt limit talks in Washington.\n\nPreparations for the visit – the first by a sitting US president – began six months ago and included a plan to shut down the country’s airspace as well as to designate next Monday a public holiday to allow residents of Port Moresby to catch a glimpse of the president. Roads were set to be closed and students and cultural dancing groups were planning to line the path of Biden’s motorcade.\n\nOn Tuesday, before the news of the cancellation broke, the front page of the Post-Courier newspaper featured a full page story on Biden’s security arriving ahead of the visit.\n\n“We are disappointed that this historic visit has been cancelled as we have prepared well, spent a lot of time, effort and energy towards the visit and we were all looking forward to the visit,” said Powes Parkop, the governor of the National Capital District.\n\nBiden had confirmed that he would visit PNG for three hours on Monday, after attending the G7 meeting in Japan, but cancelled on Tuesday evening in order to be in Washington to meet with congressional leaders to avert a debt default.\n\nBiden was also set to travel to Sydney to attend a meeting with the leaders of Australia, Japan and India after his visit to PNG. Australia’s prime minister confirmed on Wednesday that the Quad meeting would be postponed as well.\n\n“We look forward to finding other ways to engage with Australia, the Quad, Papua New Guinea and the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum in the coming year,” the White House said in a statement.\n\nPrime minister James Marape could not be reached for comment, but opposition leader Joseph Lelang said that “many citizens who wanted to catch a glimpse of … Biden would be disappointed”.\n\n“But we do understand that there are domestic issues back in the United States that needed his attention,” he said\n\nLelang added that the cancellation of the trip would give the prime minister the opportunity to outline the details of a proposed defence treaty with the US.\n\n“Information on the contents of the Defense Cooperation Treaty with the United States [is] sketchy,” said Lelang.\n\nThis week Marape confirmed that two security agreements would be signed with the US, on defence cooperation and maritime surveillance, during Biden’s visit. Marape had said his government would provide details on the security agreements on Thursday.\n\nOpposition groups had raised concerns that PNG would be stuck between and increasingly hostile US and China, if the country signed a security treaty with the US.\n\n“We have a foreign policy of ‘Friends to All and Enemies to None’. We … should not be blinded by the dollar sign or be coerced into signing deals that may be detrimental to us, in the long run,” Lelang said.\n\nDespite the cancellation of Biden’s visit, operations to provide security for the five presidents and ten prime ministers – including Indian prime minister Narendra Modi – who will be in the country to attend the Forum for the India-Pacific in Port Moresby next Monday will remain in place, according to internal security minister Peter Tsiamalili.\n\n“The airport closure only applied for the US president Biden’s visit, so only that will not be applicable, but we will continue to maintain [security] operations for the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pacific Leaders,” Tsiamalili said.\n\nMeanwhile, Institute of National Affairs (INA) executive director, Paul Barker, said that the cancellation of the visit by Biden “may not be a bad thing for PNG.\n\n“He will still send a senior representative, but it was always going to be a bit of a rushed visit,” Barker said.\n\n“Preparing for a less rushed visit by the President at a later date, but still before the next US election period rolls out, will enable him to have a more meaningful visit with wider local engagement.”\n\nAsia Society Policy Institute senior fellow Richard Maude said the cancellation of Biden’s visit to Papua New Guinea could set back Washington’s battle for influence with Beijing in the region.\n\n“The mantra in the region is all about turning up. Turning up is half the battle. China turns up all the time, and so the optics aren’t great,” Maude, a former Australian intelligence chief, told a panel discussion on the Quad on Wednesday.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "dd225577f9fbc5bc1c7e137d57be32f8dac264d9", | |
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| "title": "‘The reality is worse’: can TV drama end legal woes of Egypt’s bereaved?", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/17/the-reality-is-worse-can-tv-drama-end-legal-woes-of-egypt-bereaved-families", | |
| "words": "1145", | |
| "section": "Global development", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:30:21Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/fe19796d4dc4c7f3f8ca9cea2029407192870562/115_306_5248_3149/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Edmund Bower in Cairo", | |
| "description": "As a hit series puts patriarchal guardianship laws under the spotlight, campaigners say proposed reforms are not enough", | |
| "text": "The day before Aly Hegazy graduated from high school in June 2020, his father died from cancer after a long illness. The grief of losing him was compounded by the realisation that, without his father’s signature, he would be unable to go to university.\n\nUnder Egyptian law, responsibility for Hegazy, who was 17 at the time, and his younger brother fell not to his mother but to his 90-year-old grandfather, who had dementia.\n\nStill in mourning, Hegazy’s mother, Eman Helal, began the long, slow process of challenging the country’s guardianship law to take control of her family affairs and get access to her late husband’s pension and bank accounts. Three years on, her legal difficulties continue. “We weren’t ready for any of this,” says Hegazy.\n\nThe guardianship legislation is one of a number of “personal status laws” that lawyers say are outdated and treat women like criminals. They stem from a passage in the Qur’an that says: “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more [strength] than the other, and because they support them from their means.”\n\nThe drama series Under Guardianship, which was aired on Egyptian television this year during Ramadan in March and April, followed the struggles of a bereaved mother trying to raise two children whose guardianship had passed to their grandfather.\n\nIt led the country’s MPs to submit amendments to update the 75-year-old law, but campaigners are sceptical that the slow-moving Egyptian parliament can deliver substantial change.\n\nFor months after her husband died, Helal struggled financially. Her father-in-law had not left the house for seven years so was unable to attend court to sign the guardianship over to her. Hegazy could not enrol at university. Helal was forced to rely on friends and relatives for money.\n\n“The reality is worse than on the TV show,” she says. “Nobody understands what it’s like unless they’ve been through it.”\n\nIt took six months before Helal was granted a special court hearing to transfer guardianship because of her father-in-law’s dementia. “It was easier for us because we had other sources of income,” says Hegazy. “Other people wouldn’t have survived those six months.”\n\nBut Helal still does not have direct access to her late husband’s money. The family has to make regular trips to court, queueing with other women to ask the judge to reimburse payments for food, fuel or Hegazy’s tuition fees. Helal has to pay out of her own pocket and present the receipts to the judge, who has the power to refuse a refund.\n\n“I want the law to be changed. Guardianship should go from the father to the mother,” says Helal. “They are the two most important people for the children. If, for some reason, it’s not right to give the kids to the mother, the law should account for that, not the other way around.\n\n“The law should reflect modern life,” she adds. “Nowadays, women go out and work, she can do everything the children need. It’s not like in the past when women would just sit at home not doing anything.”\n\nThe guardianship legislation was intended to protect the inheritance of a child before they reached the age of 21, explains Karim Adel, a lawyer based in Cairo, and to prevent the mother from spending it. But in practice, he says, “the court treats the mother as a thief”, with judges reluctant to let women spend money.\n\n“Some people want to enrol their kids in international schools,” he says. “These schools cost $10,000 a year or even more. And here is the judge, who is getting the salary of a judge, who sees things differently to the way the mother sees things. So he feels that spending this money on schools is insane.”\n\nMenna el-Zuheiry, 25, says: “There are things the court doesn’t always agree to. “Clothes, for example … food, drink, private tuition. We’ll go and ask to buy bottled water and the court will say, ‘just drink from the tap’ or ‘get the bus, why are you getting an Uber?’”\n\nWhen Zuheiry lost her father, Mohamed, to Covid-19 in 2020, her two younger siblings fell under the guardianship of their estranged grandfather. Mohamed, who worked as a customs official, knew he was dying and that his death would leave his family’s money in the hands of a man with whom they had a rocky relationship.\n\nHowever, he was too ill to leave hospital to sign the guardianship over to his wife. “My father worked so hard so that we could have a good future,” says Zuheiry. “And he died worrying about this.”\n\nIt took Zuheiry’s mother, Um Haidy, months to persuade her father-in-law to give her guardianship. But since then, Haidy “spends every day in the court. Every day. Nothing happens without the court. Imagine, we had to go through all of this when our father had just died.”\n\nAmira el-Adly, a member of Egypt’s House of Representatives, says that the Qur’anic verse on which the law is based has been misunderstood and used to argue that women are incapable of managing money. But as she notes: “Even the prophet Muhammad married a businesswoman.”\n\n“The law is based on very outdated ideas,” says Adly. “We have female politicians, we have doctors, scientists – even the minister of planning and urban development is a woman. But the law still sees women as incapable of managing their children’s money.”\n\nFor some women, she says, the implications of the guardianship law can be crushing: “Many of these women aren’t working outside the home. Their sole source of income came from their husband.” Even when requests to the court for reimbursement of expenses are approved, women can wait up to eight months to receive it.\n\nAzza Soliman, a lawyer and co-founder of the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, welcomes discussion about changing the law but is sceptical that it will lead to real reform. “We have had a big crisis for a long time,” she says. “Now, suddenly, after one TV drama, they are saying, ‘Oh my God! We have a problem!?’ Please. Pull the other one.”\n\nAccording to Soliman, even if the amendments to the guardianship law go through, a host of other personal status laws remain, under which women are treated unfairly.\n\n“This is the big mistake we make in Egypt,” she says. “Since 1920, we have changed a few articles here, a few articles there. But we need to change the mentality of our legislators. They still see women as subservient to men and in need of somebody to protect them.\n\n“The president and many people who have important positions in this country always talk about women by saying, ‘Oh, she’s like my daughter, my wife, my mother, my sister.’ No, habibi [my dear],” says Soliman. “You need to see me as a citizen.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "3d02655e30b13b7aa78c5d9061ad448b5a384a4c", | |
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| "title": "TV tonight: Matt Willis is brutally honest about his addiction", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/17/tv-tonight-matt-willis-is-brutally-honest-about-his-addiction", | |
| "words": "439", | |
| "section": "Television & radio", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:20:21Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/d48e46c6b0605ea63327cf2d93172fca7780e2d2/0_470_4317_2590/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier, Graeme Virtue and Phil Harrison", | |
| "description": "The Busted bassist speaks openly about its impact on his loved ones. Plus: Banjo gets even more lovable while Designing the Hebrides. Here’s what to watch this evening", | |
| "text": "Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction 9pm, BBC One “I’m terrified of relapse. If I do that again, everything will end.” Busted member, actor and dad-of-three Matt Willis has spent most of his adult life dealing with addiction (he left rehab days before marrying his wife, Emma Willis, in 2008). Now sober, in this documentary he investigates his past to try to find the root cause, while also putting the spotlight on the people in his life that it has affected the most, including Emma. Hollie Richardson\n\nDesigning the Hebrides 8pm, BBC Two Just when you thought your host Banjo couldn’t get any more lovable, he sheds a tear thinking about what the farm he calls home means to him. The catalyst is a brief for a gin-tasting bar on a tiny budget. Scavenging for church pews and imagining “a secret door of cheeseboards” lightens the mood as he gets busy. Hannah Verdier\n\n11 Minutes: America’s Deadliest Mass Shooting 9pm, BBC Two In 2017, country star Jason Aldean took to the stage at Route 91 Harvest in Las Vegas to perform to tens of thousands of fans when a gunman started shooting the crowd. He killed 60 people and injured about 800. Here, survivors give their collective version of events. HR\n\nKids 9pm, Channel 4 Growing up in the care system is challenging enough, but what happens when you turn 18 and have to leave? This week, the powerful and often wrenching series embedded with Coventry children’s services examines two such cases. Hedonistic Byron seems to relish his independence (at least at first); introvert Bayley is more equivocal. Graeme Virtue\n\nRookie Nurses 9pm, BBC Three “When I first put those blues on, I got impostor syndrome,” says upbeat A&E nurse Mikey. “I thought I was in fancy dress.” And yet he is exactly the nurse you’d want, as he proves when he treats a head-and-neck injury. He’s one of the seven freshly graduated Welsh nurses in this new documentary series. HR\n\nNaked Attraction 10pm, Channel 4 This dating show manages to have its cake and eat it, being both mildly titillating and admirably body-positive. Sam from Melton Mowbray is in search of a superhero-style partner and Tony, a former Royal Marine from Plymouth, is looking for a woman compatible with his dog and his son from a previous relationship. Phil Harrison\n\nLive sport Women’s Super League Football: Everton v Arsenal, 5.30pm, Sky Sports Top-flight action at Walton Hall Park. Followed by West Ham v Chelsea at 8pm.\n\nChampions League Football: Man City v Real Madrid, 7pm, BT Sport 1 Semi-final second leg at the Etihad.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "4883d7cdb86c2c1e32286c24a874957404468b3d", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "PwC internal review of tax leak ‘continues the cover-up’, Australian senator says", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/pwc-internal-review-of-tax-leak-continues-the-cover-up-australian-senator-says", | |
| "words": "724", | |
| "section": "Business", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:18:51Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/cb647fb22fc28d59e723c76a082c40d5778bd6a3/0_208_6240_3744/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Henry Belot", | |
| "description": "Labor’s Deborah O’Neill says it’s not enough for company to ‘share summary of key recommendations’, amid calls for AFP investigation", | |
| "text": "The scandal engulfing global consulting giant PwC has deepened, with an Australian senator accusing its proposed internal inquiry of “continuing a cover-up” amid calls by a Greens senator for an investigation by the Australian federal police.\n\nPwC is the subject of multiple investigations after a former senior executive breached confidentiality agreements while working with Treasury and shared information about future tax policies with colleagues. That information was later used to help clients and make millions of dollars.\n\nThe Labor senator Deborah O’Neill, who was instrumental in obtaining documents that detail the scandal, said the Australian people deserve to know every senior executive who received confidential government information about tax policies.\n\nThe 144 pages of internal PwC emails are heavily redacted with names and full email addresses removed. It is not clear how many people who received the confidential information, or acted on it, are still employed by the company.\n\nEarlier this week, PwC announced the businessman Ziggy Switkowski would conduct an investigation into the company’s operations and culture. His report is due by September and could lead to further resignations or sackings.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\n“When complete, PwC Australia will share a summary of these key recommendations to ensure transparency,” a company spokesperson said.\n\nBut O’Neill said this limited disclosure indicated the proposed internal review would not meet the standards of transparency expected by the Australian government and taxpayers, and accused the review of “continu[ing] the cover-up”.\n\n“PwC have indicated that when that review that they are paying for themselves is completed, they might decide to provide a summary of some parts that they want to be revealed to the public,” O’Neill said.\n\nPwC was contacted for comment.\n\nMeanwhile, the Greens have obtained independent legal advice suggesting PwC’s actions should be investigated by the Australian federal police.\n\nThe Greens senator Barbara Pocock has highlighted advice from the Sydney lawyer Brent Fisse, who has considered potential liability issues associated with the misuse of confidential information.\n\n“A full AFP investigation should be undertaken into the potential application of the criminal code and the Proceeds of Crime Act,” Fisse said in advice seen by Guardian Australia.\n\n“The PwC Australia partnership would not be exposed to potential criminal liability for general dishonesty or conspiracy to defraud because, as a partnership, PwC Australia is not subject to corporate criminal liability.\n\n“However, the commonwealth has the power to impose remedies informally or contractually on PwC Australia.”\n\nPocock said “the AFP should be investigating criminal charges right now”. The senator has also suggested the scandal be investigated by the new national anti-corruption commission, which will launch in July.\n\nPocock and O’Neill will use upcoming Senate hearings to get more information about how many people knew confidential information was being misused.\n\n“I have a genuine fear about a contagion of these individuals staying at PwC and continuing the practice,” O’Neill said.\n\n“This matter isn’t going to go away. There is no way that the commonwealth government or major corporations inside and outside of Australia can continue to do business as usual with PwC after this.”\n\nThe Liberal senator Andrew Bragg said the misuse of confidential government information by PwC was an “abomination”, “unethical and outrageous”.\n\nBragg, who was also critical of PwC’s own proposed inquiry, questioned whether the scandal would have occurred if regulators and enforcement agencies were strong enough to scare executives into doing the right thing.\n\n“I have asked to expand the federal inquiry into the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (Asic) and I expect the government will support my effort to do this because we need to look at how they have enforced the accounting laws and standards and ethical frameworks,” Bragg said.\n\n“We need to understand why Asic has not been successful in securing prosecutions more broadly, but we also need to understand how this stuff can just happen. Clearly, PwC thought this was something they could get away with.”\n\nWhen PwC’s own investigation was launched, the company’s acting chief executive, Kristin Stubbins, said Switkowski would “have access to all the people and information he needs to conduct a rigorous and robust review”.\n\n“We are committed to learning from our mistakes and ensuring that we embrace the high standards of governance, culture and accountability that our people, clients and external stakeholders rightly expect,” Stubbins said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "694cc972d5c99558793f82a3de15d36a07b764b2", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Liz Truss in Taiwan calls for ‘economic Nato’ to challenge China", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/liz-truss-in-taiwan-calls-for-economic-nato-to-challenge-china", | |
| "words": "776", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T04:32:13Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/3e116ddeadf5a730d22f19b3195a5109c6103f6b/722_4_3118_1871/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Helen Davidson in Taipei", | |
| "description": "Former British PM says Taiwan is ‘on the front line of the global battle for freedom’ during trip that China has called a ‘dangerous political show’", | |
| "text": "Free nations must commit themselves to a free Taiwan and must be prepared to back it up with concrete measures, Liz Truss has said in a keynote speech in Taipei, in which she called for an “economic Nato” to tackle Beijing’s growing authoritarianism.\n\nThe former British prime minister said she had come to show support for Taiwan, which was “on the frontline of the global battle for freedom”, under threat from a totalitarian regime in China. Truss arrived in Taiwan on Monday for a five-day visit, and is expected to meet senior government officials.\n\nTruss, who was prime minister for 49 days in 2022 after serving as foreign secretary for the year prior, is the most senior British politician to make the trip since Margaret Thatcher, and drew a rebuke from China’s UK embassy, which said the visit was “a dangerous political show which will do nothing but harm to the UK”.\n\nBeijing claims Taiwan as a province of China, and Xi Jinping has not ruled out using force to achieve what he terms “reunification”. Taiwan’s government and people overwhelmingly reject the prospect of Chinese rule, and a potential conflict and its fallout are of key concern to the global community.\n\n“We cannot pretend we have meaningful deterrence without hard power,” Truss said in a speech and panel discussion for a Taiwan thinktank, the Prospect Foundation, on Wednesday. “If we’re serious about preventing conflict in the South China Sea we need to get real about defence cooperation.”\n\nTruss said the world could not rely on the UN security council or the World Trade Organization, and instead called for a “network of liberty”, with free nations working together to develop an “economic Nato” to coordinate pushback against Beijing.\n\nShe said the G7 – which will meet this weekend in Hiroshima – needed to coordinate economically against Chinese economic coercion, saying “bullying on a major scale” was taking place across the international area.\n\nTruss said Beijing was using Taiwan’s international participation as a strategy, and called for Taiwan’s membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership to be fast-tracked and approved – and China’s denied.\n\nTruss is a hawkish member of the British Conservative party, and her speech appeared to rebuke comments made by current members of government and their European counterparts. Last month the UK foreign secretary James Cleverly singled out climate change as an area in which engagement with China was needed, saying it would be a mistake to isolate Beijing.\n\nOn Wednesday Truss said there were “too many mixed messages from the free world”, which she blamed on a “false idea” that the west could still cooperate with China on some issues.\n\nThe current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, must make good on earlier comments when he declared China “the biggest-long term threat to Britain”, she added. She called for the shutting down of UK-based Confucius institutes, and for the UK to rule out the resumption of economic dialogue with Beijing, saying: “We cannot have more integration with the Chinese economy.”\n\nShe said Beijing was already working to make itself economically self-reliant “whether we want to decouple from the economy or not”.\n\nTruss also appeared to swipe at recent comments by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, saying it was “completely irresponsible for European nationals to wash their hands of Taiwan because it’s a long way away or not a core part of our concerns”.\n\nHer speech was critical of the Chinese Communist party’s rule over China, referring to the Tiananmen massacre, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and the crackdown in Hong Kong.\n\nTruss is the latest in a long line of foreign dignitaries to arrive in Taiwan, often drawing rebuke from Beijing, which objects to any action that appears to give credence to Taiwan’s sovereignty.\n\nAfter the then US speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, Beijing drastically increased its military harassment of the island, setting a “new normal”, the head of the Prospect Foundation said before Truss’s speech.\n\nAsked whether she considered the potential for her visit to worsen the security situation in Taiwan, Truss said Taiwan’s government had invited her and they were “best placed to understand what will help”.\n\n“[Beijing] are trying to limit visits, trying to silence Taiwan’s supporters and intimidate people internationally,” she said. “I think we need to stand up to that bullying.”\n\nAn editorial in the Chinese tabloid Global Times on Tuesday night repeated a criticism by Alicia Kearns, the chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, that Truss’s visit was “the worst example of Instagram diplomacy”.\n\n“These types of ugly performances are attracting fewer and fewer audiences,” the Global Times said.\n\nChi Hui Lin contributed to this report\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "1b6bd6f583f2c704e8d006ab4d69803f861723fd", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Deadly Wellington hostel fire being treated as arson, police say", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/deadly-wellington-hostel-fire-treated-arson-new-zealand-police", | |
| "words": "489", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:08:49Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/9309301b5cdbab9fb31c8eaa5eb64cb2d963c554/0_194_5817_3490/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Charlotte Graham-McLay in Wellington", | |
| "description": "New Zealand police open homicide inquiry after at least six die in Loafers Lodge blaze", | |
| "text": "A fire that erupted in a Wellington hostel, killing at least six people, is being investigated as arson by New Zealand’s police, who have started a homicide inquiry.\n\nNobody has been arrested, Inspector Dion Bennett said on Wednesday. He would not say why officers believed the fire was deliberately lit, or whether accelerants were used.\n\nA day after fire ripped through the 92-room hostel there is still no definite number of people missing, Bennett said. The current total of those unaccounted for is less than 20, including the six confirmed killed, he said.\n\n“Gut feeling is that yes, it may climb,” said Bennett of the death toll.\n\nInvestigators have yet to learn if the source of the blaze was a couch fire that occurred two hours earlier. “As part of our inquiries, we will be seeking to confirm any link between that couch fire and the subsequent fatal fire,” Bennett said in an earlier statement.\n\nThe fire broke out at 12.25am on Tuesday, prompting dozens of residents of the accommodation, called Loafers Lodge, to flee their beds. Some jumped from windows of the four-storey building, and five were rescued from the roof before the fire was brought under control at about 6am.\n\nBennett said not everyone who was at the hostel had registered themselves as safe with the authorities, and urged those who escaped the building to contact the police. Some residents left their phones in their rooms when they fled.\n\nSmall groups of police officers entered the charred hostel building for the first time on Wednesday afternoon to begin a scene examination, Bennett said. Entry had not been possible earlier due to concerns about the building’s safety, and the level of contaminants searchers are exposed to is being monitored, he added.\n\nThe fire service earlier said there were no sprinklers in the building – it was not legally required to have them – and there have been conflicting reports about when and whether alarms sounded at the time the blaze began.\n\nThe hostel in Newtown – near central Wellington – was home to a mix of short- and long-term tenants, including workers at the nearby hospital. Murray Edridge, the head of the Wellington City Mission, told Radio New Zealand said that clients of the charitable organisation were among those who lived at the hostel. Nine residents were being supervised by New Zealand’s corrections agency.\n\nNew Zealand’s government will investigate whether building regulations for accommodations like Loafers Lodge are fit for purpose, prime minister Chris Hipkins told reporters at parliament on Wednesday.\n\n“I have asked the minister for housing to look particularly at issues around building regulation, to see whether there is anything we should be doing right at this point,” Hipkins said.\n\nThe prime minister said a friend of his from university was among the missing. Those who died have not been formally named.\n\nChief coroner Anna Tutton said on Tuesday that identification of the bodies could be a “painstaking, slow” process.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "fc2d2472a0dc7d3fb9186f69ad6c9cc642af19bb", | |
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| "title": "Melbourne bus crash: hero bystanders praised for freeing school children trapped in wreckage", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/17/melbourne-school-bus-crash-victoria-eynesbury-vic-collission-truck-driver-exford-primary-school-students-injured", | |
| "words": "688", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T00:59:01Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/804e332157f08890b74c5c01707d7f944e35a863/60_0_1881_1129/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Benita Kolovos with Australian Associated Press", | |
| "description": "Truck allegedly struck bus carrying 45 Exford primary school children, causing it to roll over in Eynesbury, Victoria, on Tuesday", | |
| "text": "A truck driver has been charged after he allegedly crashed into a school bus in Melbourne’s west on Tuesday, seriously injuring seven children, including one who has undergone a complete arm amputation.\n\nThe 49-year-old Balliang East man will appear before the Melbourne magistrates court via video link on Wednesday afternoon after he was charged with four counts of dangerous driving causing serious injury.\n\nPolice said more charges could follow, with crash investigators currently probing whether inattention played a role in the crash, which occurred at the intersection of Exford Road and Murphys Road in Eynesbury about 3.40pm on Tuesday.\n\nThe bus, which was carrying 45 children from Exford primary school, was conducting a right-hand turn from Exford Road onto Murphys Road when police allege the truck crashed into it, causing it to roll over.\n\n“Inattention is something that we are actively looking at as part of the investigation,” Victoria police Supt Michael Cruse told reporters on Wednesday.\n\n“As the investigation continues, it is likely there will be more charges.”\n\nCruse praised the actions of those first on the scene, who helped emergency workers pull trapped children from inside the wreckage.\n\n“The bus driver, despite being injured, I understand that he helped some of the children out of the bus. Then we had passersby who have heroically stopped immediately … assisting the children who could be removed from the bus,” he said.\n\n“It was a horrific scene. It was chaotic and it would have been really confronting for those passersby, so I think a special mention to those people.”\n\nThe Exford primary school principal, Lisa Campo, was alerted by someone driving past the scene.\n\n“We were about to start a staff meeting and I said, ‘I have to go,’ and they all followed me down. We just flooded the kids,” Campo said.\n\n“I honestly thought I would just be there accompanying distressed kids and there had been a minor collision. I didn’t ever expect to see that and I hope I never see that again.”\n\nCampo said students would be offered counselling and other support services. Several did not attend on Wednesday; those who did were allowed to wear their pyjamas to school.\n\nPolice on Wednesday said 18 children were taken to hospital, as well as the 52-year-old bus driver who had non-life-threatening injuries. The first child was in surgery less than an hour after the accident.\n\nThe chief executive of Royal Children’s hospital, Bernadette McDonald, had earlier said nine children, aged between five and 11, were admitted to the hospital and several required extensive surgery, including one who has undergone a complete amputation of their arm.\n\n“The children have suffered multiple and traumatic injuries including partial and complete amputations of arms, multiple crushed limb injuries, severe lacerations to head and body, head injuries and glass shard injuries,” McDonald told reporters on Wednesday.\n\n“Three patients are currently receiving spinal support and being monitored, carefully, in terms of spinal injuries.”\n\nTwo children were discharged last night, with seven remaining in a stable condition on Wednesday afternoon.\n\nMany children would need to undergo multiple surgeries and long-term rehabilitation was likely, McDonald said.\n\n“We’re working extremely hard to provide that trauma support and care that they will need, not just now but in the coming weeks and months,” she said.\n\nEarlier, major collision investigation unit Det Sr Sgt Paul Lineham said it appeared the bus driver had seen the truck approaching him from behind and tried to accelerate to get out of its path.\n\n“That may have lessened the actual impact of the truck itself,” Lineham told 3AW.\n\nHe said it was not yet known if the children were all wearing seatbelts, which he later confirmed were available on the bus.\n\n“There’s nothing that we’ve looked at so far that would point us towards an external factor in relation to this crash,” he said.\n\nThe state premier, Daniel Andrews, and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, praised the work of first responders\n\n“Any accident is just horrific of this nature,” Albanese said. “The fact that it involves school students just breaks your heart, and my heart goes out to them and their families.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Half of pizzas on sale in the UK contain a whole day’s allowance of salt", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/may/17/half-of-pizzas-on-sale-in-the-uk-contain-a-whole-days-allowance-of-salt", | |
| "words": "609", | |
| "section": "Food", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/a5f72dc9515bbec82ab3a61da5b1a4b65bda2d59/0_146_5472_3283/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Denis Campbell Health policy editor", | |
| "description": "Manufacturers showing ‘complete disregard for public health’, campaigners say, with some pizzas containing three days’ worth of salt", | |
| "text": "Half the pizzas eaten in Britain contain all of the salt that government scientists say we should be eating in a day, new research reveals.\n\nNutritional analysis of 1,387 different pizzas bought in shops, supermarkets, takeaways and restaurants shows that one of the Domino’s range has more than three days’ worth of salt in it.\n\nThe brand’s sizzler standard mozzarella stuffed crust medium pizza emerged as the UK’s saltiest pizza in the research. It contains 21.4 grams of salt, which makes it saltier than seawater. In contrast, the maximum daily intake, as recommended by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), is just six grams.\n\nHowever, average consumption remains about 8.4g – 40% higher than the official target.\n\nHealth experts said the high levels of salt in one of the country’s favourite foods is worrying because it leads to high blood pressure, which is the leading cause of heart attacks and strokes.\n\nAction on Salt, the scientific research group which carried out the analysis, warned that the sheer amount of the substance they found in many varieties of pizza showed that the government’s repeated exhortation of the food industry to use less salt had not worked.\n\nIndeed some brands of pizza now contain even more salt than they did when Action on Salt undertook a similar study in 2014 – which it condemned as “a disgrace”. For example, the salt content of Domino’s Tandoori Hot standard mozzarella thin and crispy crust pizza has risen over that time from 5.3g to 14.4g.\n\nSonia Pombo, a registered nutritionist who is the group’s campaign lead, said: “Despite our reliance on the food industry to provide us with access to better, healthier options, it’s infuriating to see some companies ignoring the overwhelming evidence in support of salt reduction and, worse still, increasing the salt content further.”\n\nPizza manufacturers doing so “are showing a complete disregard for public health and are making a mockery of our voluntary reformulation programme”, she added.\n\nThe salt content of pizzas and other foods is so damaging to health that ministers should extend the principle of the sugar tax to it too, to compel firms to make less salty products, the group said.\n\nGraham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London who is the chair of Action on Salt, cited Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) research showing that reducing the population’s salt intake by one gram a day could save 4,000 lives a year.\n\nTakeaway pizzas contain more than double the amount of salt found in supermarket-bought ones. Two-thirds of pizzas sold in restaurants and takeaways have 6g or more.\n\nZizzi, Franco Manca and Crosta & Mollica are the retailers and manufacturers with the saltiest pizzas per 100g, while Domino’s, Papa John’s and Caprinos are the worst offenders in the restaurant and takeaway sector, Action on Salt found.\n\nHowever, it also identified the brands with the smallest amounts of salt per 100g. Goodfella’s, Morrisons and the Co-op are the retailers and manufacturers whose pizzas contain the lowest amounts of salt, with Bella Italia, Pizza Express and Fireaway among the restaurant and takeaway operators offering the least salty pizzas.\n\nA DHSC spokesperson said: “Thanks to our salt reduction programme, the amount of salt in food has fallen by about 20% – helping to prevent nearly 70,000 heart attacks and strokes while reducing pressure on the NHS.\n\n“We’re also taking firm action by restricting the location of foods high in fat, salt or sugar, which will bring health benefits of over £57bn and save the NHS £4bn.\n\n“We will continue to work closely with industry to make it easier for people to make healthier choices.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "4add5233e90dc379d3073abf778681463adc5a9c", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "This 9/11 suspect has spent 20 years in Guantánamo. Is he nearing a deal with the US?", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/16/ammar-al-baluchi-guantanamo-bay-torture", | |
| "words": "3553", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/594c18602b90533980486d780076968470efdb8f/0_0_1500_900/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Moustafa Bayoumi", | |
| "description": "Ammar al-Baluchi was a human experiment for interrogators learning brutal techniques. Now prosecutors have proposed a plea bargain", | |
| "text": "Warning: this article contains graphic images and descriptions of torture\n\nOn 29 April 2003, 25-year-old Ammar al-Baluchi was snatched off the streets of Karachi by Pakistani authorities and handed over to the CIA.\n\nWhile in CIA custody, he endured extreme forms of cruelty. He was denied sleep for days and became a human experiment for interrogators who practiced brutal methods on him to gain “official” certification in using “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Over the next three years, he was secretly shuttled between six different black sites around the world. Then, in September 2006, he was transferred to Guantánamo Bay, where he still sits in a cell. Though never convicted of a crime, he hasn’t seen a day of freedom since he was first disappeared.\n\nAccording to the US government, Baluchi is one of five co-conspirators responsible for the 9/11 attacks, which killed close to 3,000 people, and he is facing charges that carry the death penalty.\n\nThough his name and horrific experiences of torture provided the basis for a character in the 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty, no journalist has been able to talk directly to Baluchi for the last 20 years. The US government imposes strict rules on communications between him and the outside world. Journalists may not ask him questions via his lawyers, for example. But by talking to his defense team and legal experts, digging deep into the trial record, examining legions of declassified documents and partially redacted transcripts, and comparing his own written accounts of his ordeal with recently declassified CIA documents of his treatment, it is possible to assemble what might be the fullest picture yet of who Ammar al-Baluchi is, how his captors saw him, and what he has endured.\n\nUnderstanding Baluchi and his torture is crucial beyond mere human interest or political curiosity. The torture he and his co-defendants endured and the long-term consequences of that abuse, including the possibility of post-torture therapy treatments, have all become part of plea negotiations, which began after the prosecution approached the defense teams in March 2022.\n\nThese talks could fail and, if they do, the 9/11 case will probably continue without any resolution for many years to come. But if the talks succeed and a plea agreement is reached, a judgment will finally be entered in one of the biggest legal cases in American history. And the United States will also be one step closer to closing the most infamous site of indefinite detention amid the “war on terror”.\n\nBut why has the prosecution even proposed a plea deal? And how likely is it to happen?\n\nTwenty years of detention Baluchi, who also goes by the name Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, is facing capital charges but, after 20 years of detention, the United States has yet to bring him to trial. Charges against him and his four co-defendants were filed for the second time in 2012, but since then the case has been stuck in endless pre-trial hearings.\n\nOver a decade of hearings with no sign of a trial doesn’t seem like normal jurisprudence, but nothing is normal at Guantánamo. The case is being heard by military commission, a new and separate legal system established by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and modified in 2009. It’s taking place in a courtroom far from the US mainland, behind soundproof glass, and on a 40-second audio delay for those – press, family and NGO observers – allowed to watch its “public” proceedings.\n\nMost of the charges Baluchi faces in his military tribunal concern conspiracy, but conspiracy is generally not recognized by international law as a war crime and its status as such under US law remains unsettled.\n\nThe specter of torture, a crime under both international law and US statute, has haunted these proceedings from the beginning. That this torture was state policy is a dangerous fact for the US government, and from the beginning prosecutors have tried to suppress any mention of it (hence the 40-second delay) while seeking to admit statements made under torture into the record. It hasn’t been that simple.\n\n“Administration after administration has assumed the 9/11 case is open and shut, that a jury will convict these guys, give them death sentences, and we’ll be good,” explained Lisa Hajjar, author of The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture, a book about torture and the American judicial system in the “war on terror”. “But you cannot have anything that passes the sniff test for justice when people were tortured and disappeared for years.”\n\nFrom the 2014 Senate select committee on intelligence’s “Torture Report” (which references Baluchi over 100 times) to years of litigation from lawyers, journalists, and activists, the gruesome details of torture have been emerging, sometimes in drips, other times in waves. Also emerging has been the degree of coordination between the CIA and FBI in holding and questioning men.\n\nProsecutors have long relied on the idea of separation between the CIA and FBI, arguing that statements made to the FBI were not coerced and are therefore admissible in court. Yet court transcripts in 2021 revealed that at least nine FBI agents were temporarily assigned as CIA agents at black sites, complicating the picture.\n\nWe can’t ask Baluchi what happened to him and, like the rest of his co-defendants, he hasn’t had the opportunity to testify about it in open court. Until December 2013, in Guantánamo’s military commissions, a defendant’s own memories of his torture were considered classified, and, to this day, any statement a defendant makes about the CIA still undergoes classification review.\n\nBut in 2021, another man, Majid Khan, openly recounted for the first time the torture he endured at the hands of the United States. This statement was part of Khan’s plea deal from years earlier. Khan, who was a courier for al-Qaida, described to a military jury the harrowing treatment he received in CIA custody. In grisly detail, he explained how he was shackled, hooded, and kept naked for days on end. He talked about being force-fed with “a plunger to force the food quickly” into his stomach and how a puree of “hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins” was shoved up his rectum.\n\nHis eyeglasses were broken early in his confinement, and he was not given a new pair for three years, he said. He was repeatedly beaten and waterboarded. He was sexually assaulted and forcibly submerged in ice water, and much more. All this happened before he arrived at Guantánamo Bay, a place he described as “death by a thousand cuts”. During his statement, he also spoke of his remorse for his actions with al-Qaida. “There is not a day that goes by that I am not sorry for what I have done,” Khan said.\n\nSeven of eight senior officers on his military jury were moved enough by his words to recommend clemency for the 41-year-old. “The treatment of Mr Khan in the hands of US personnel should be a source of shame for the US government,” they wrote. Khan completed his 10-year sentence at Guantánamo, which started with his guilty plea in 2012, and he has since been resettled in Belize.\n\nWhile observing developments in the Khan case, the 9/11 trial prosecutors began to see more details about questionable CIA and FBI activity emerge. According to Hajjar, who follows the military commissions closely, the prosecutors soon realized that “they [could not] achieve what they had sought to achieve”. Unanimous death sentences that would withstand appeal seemed ever more unlikely, so “plea bargaining, from the government’s point of view, became necessary”, she said.\n\nIn March 2022, the government approached defense teams in the 9/11 trial for plea negotiations. While details haven’t been made public, the broad outlines have been reported. The men would plead guilty and the government, in exchange, would no longer seek the death penalty. Since Congress passed a law forbidding the transfer of any Guantánamo detainee to the US mainland, sentences would probably be served at Guantánamo Bay. The length of sentence would be worked out individually for each of the five.\n\nParts of the deal proposed by the defense must be decided by policymakers, so they have been labeled “policy principles”, according to court filings. What’s known about these policy principles is that they concern conditions of confinement, rehabilitation from torture, and adequate medical care. The policy principles have been sent to Caroline Krass, general counsel of the Department of Defense, who, perhaps problematically, also served as general counsel for the CIA between 2014 and 2017. And since these plea negotiations began, the military commission on the 9/11 case has been sitting in limbo, waiting for over a year for a response.\n\n‘Enhanced measures on Ammar’ Ammar al-Baluchi is the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man often called the “mastermind of 9/11”. (Alongside Mohammed and Baluchi, the three other men facing charges for the 9/11 attacks are Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Walid bin Attash.) Baluchi was born in Kuwait, but his roots are from Baluchistan, an area that covers parts of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and Baluchi spent most of his teenage years in Iran and Pakistan. He then moved to Dubai, where he worked in computers before relocating to Pakistan in September 2001, after his Dubai visa expired. He speaks Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Baluchi, and English.\n\nThe government alleges that, at his uncle’s behest, Baluchi wired over $100,000 in several transactions to some of the 9/11 hijackers. It’s said he kept the money in a laundry bag. He’s also alleged to have helped some of the hijackers in the United Arab Emirates before they traveled to the US. According to trial transcripts of government witnesses, Baluchi says he didn’t know for certain what the men he had wired money to were planning.\n\nIn April 2003, he was arrested with Walid bin Attash in Pakistan because of an “unrelated criminal lead”, according to the CIA. Reports at the time of his arrest say the men were seized with 300lb of explosives with them. First questioned by the Pakistanis (with the CIA watching a live video feed), Baluchi was described as forthcoming, even “chatty”. But the CIA wanted him, and days after his arrest he entered their custody.\n\nBefore the Pakistanis turned Baluchi over to the US, the decision had “probably” been made to use “enhanced measures on Ammar”, according to CIA documents. The US was convinced he held “perishable information” on an imminent attack on the US consulate and a residential compound in Karachi. Taken to Black Site Cobalt in Afghanistan, Baluchi immediately had his beard and head shaved and a medical professional performed the intake. Deemed healthy, he had “no apparent medical contraindications for enhanced measures”. When the US took him in mid-2003, Baluchi weighed 141lb.\n\nBy late 2003, his weight had dropped to 119lb. Initially starved of food for four days, Baluchi was given two cans of Ensure. Meanwhile, CIA headquarters sent his interrogators a list of approved techniques to be used on him: “the facial slap, the abdominal slap, walling, the stress position of standing with his forehead against the wall, the stress position of kneeling with his back inclined toward his feet, water dousing, cramped confinement, and sleep deprivation in excess of 72 hours”.\n\nThose were the “enhanced” techniques, but other techniques, considered “standard”, didn’t need headquarters’ approval. Among them were “isolation, sleep deprivation not to exceed 72 hours, reduced caloric intake (as long as the amount is calculated to maintain the general health of the detainee), deprivation of reading material, use of loud music or white noise (at a decibel level calculated to avoid damage to the detainee’s hearing), and the use of diapers for limited periods (generally not to exceed 72 hours or during transportation where appropriate)”.\n\nBaluchi underwent all of it, often at the same time. The lead interrogator explained that his way of using sleep deprivation was to keep Baluchi naked and standing in total darkness while blasting music by Eminem “to humiliate the detainee and make him uncomfortable in the cold”. Baluchi also described the use of music as an instrument of his torture. “I [was] suspended from the ceiling, my hands above my head. I was completely naked. It was very cold. Even that was not enough for them,” he wrote. “So they added the element of blasting music 24/7, nonstop, for months and months.”\n\nHe identified one song in particular, My Plague, by the American heavy metal band Slipknot (“Kill you, fuck you, I will never be you” is one refrain). Going through his mind “was the conviction that I was about to be killed. It was just a matter of when. I was counting every second, every minute, and on many occasions I thought I was already dead”.\n\nHe was also repeatedly doused with cold water, a procedure separate from “waterboarding”, yet still “outside the bounds of what we were supposed to be doing”, as one interrogator notes. The “water the interrogators used was excessively cold and some of it had ice in it”, a CIA report states.\n\nBaluchi described the procedure as being pushed down on a tarpaulin, after which “one man poured ice water on my face” and “four men at the corners of the sheet would raise and lower the corners to move the ice water to different parts of my body”, eventually forcing the water on his chest “so that I would try to suck in air but breathe in water instead”. The effect was traumatizing. “I was sure they were going to finally kill me and wrap me up in the sheet,” he wrote.\n\nPerhaps the most shocking element of his treatment is how Baluchi became a training prop for interrogators for multiple techniques but especially for “walling”. This is when a detainee is placed in front of a wall designed to have some flexibility to it. A rolled-up towel is put around his neck, and the interrogator holds the towel and then shoves the detainee “backward into the wall, never letting go of the towel”. The technique is meant to produce a great “noise” and frighten the detainee. “The ‘goal’ was to bounce the detainee off the wall,” one interrogator notes.\n\nTo gain “certification” as interrogators, student interrogators “lined up” to “wall” Baluchi, who was kept naked during the process. The trainees would take turns “walling” Baluchi but sessions typically “did not last for more than two hours at a time”, because “fatigue would set in for the interrogator doing the walling”.\n\n“They smashed my head against the wall repeatedly,” Baluchi wrote in court filings. “As my head was being hit each time, I would see sparks of lights in my eyes. As the intensity of these sparks were increasing as a result of repeated hitting, then all of [the] sudden I felt a strong jolt of electricity in my head. Then I couldn’t see anything. Everything went dark and I passed out.” He notes that “after this particular head injury I lost my ability to sleep ever since”.\n\n‘He is a different person now’ The first 25 minutes of the 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty enacts a similarly gruesome interrogation of a suspect named “Ammar”, a character who shares the biographical details of Baluchi. The film-makers worked closely with the CIA on the film, and the character of Ammar “is modelled after Ammar Baluchi”, states a declassified CIA draft memorandum. In fact, the CIA provided the film-makers with the very details of Baluchi’s treatment that the government was withholding from his defense team at the time on the grounds that the details were classified.\n\nIn the film, Ammar is shown as either a brooding monster or a pathetic bag of pain. Then, after 96 hours of sleep deprivation and a clever little CIA bluff (along with a meal of “hummus, tabouli, and I don’t know what that is”, to quote his interrogator), Ammar begins talking and reliable information floods out of mouth. A CIA report, on the other hand, tells us something else about how things really happened. While he was labeled as “hard corps” [sic] and “defiant” by some interrogators, it was clear to many others that Baluchi simply told his handlers what they wanted to hear.\n\nInterrogators expressed concern that Baluchi was “blurting out information and making it up because he wanted Agency officers to stop” water dousing him. Baluchi “was afraid to tell a lie and was afraid to tell the truth because he did not know how either would be received”, according to the CIA. He was also petrified that he would be killed once he stopped providing information. “Agency officers,” a CIA report notes, “focused more on whether Ammar was ‘compliant’ than on the quality of information he was providing.”\n\nBaluchi’s real-life interrogators also held many opinions about his character. What emerges is a picture of a sensitive, animated, and intelligent young man. While he is twice called a hypochondriac and once histrionic, he is also labeled as “bookish”, “a philosopher, thoughtful, rational, and logical”, and “one of the more cooperative, likable, and even gentle detainees”. One interrogator who “describes her circumstances as very ‘odd’” says she found herself “sitting across from a terrorist who was responding to her as though he could be a graduate school student in the United States”.\n\nIn mid-2004 and at a different black site, Baluchi fainted in his cell. At one point, he told his captors of his difficulties reading texts. At another, he described how, after being “walled” by interrogators, “he could not recall complete memories because he tended to daydream”. By early 2006, a medical assessment noted his “attention difficulties” while concluding that “there is no evidence of any significant or prolonged mental harm”.\n\nBut later assessments tell a different story. Between 2015 and 2020, four different medical professionals, sent by his defense team, determined that Baluchi’s torture has had long-term consequences, including brain damage from the “walling”. The damage inflicted by torture has “seriously diminished” Baluchi’s “psychological functioning and has left him with mild to moderate Traumatic Brain Injury and moderate to severe anxiety, depression, and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder”, notes one neuropsychologist.\n\n“I feel like my body and mind are deteriorating,” Baluchi wrote in 2014. “I am well educated and speak several different languages, but I can no longer read or concentrate. It is difficult for me to write letters, and at times I can’t even track a conversation. I am always exhausted, yet I can’t sleep.”\n\n“When you sit with him and talk to him, you can see there was a person who existed before he was tortured,” Alka Pradhan, one of the lawyers on Baluchi’s defense team, told me. “He can sort of access that person. He knows that person. He has memories of that life as that person. But he is a different person now, and this is very difficult to explain to people who have not sat in a room with a torture victim.”\n\nCalls for ‘a rapid conclusion’ In December 2021, Brig Gen John Baker, who headed the Military Commission Defense Organization for more than five years, testified before the Senate judiciary committee. “The only path to ending injustice in the military commissions – for the accused detainees, for the country, and above all for the victims of 9/11 and the other crimes currently on trial at Guantánamo – is to bring these military commissions to as rapid a conclusion as possible,” which for Baker means “a negotiated resolution of the cases”, he said.\n\nJames Connell III, the lead defense counsel for Baluchi, agrees. “Right now, the only option on the table that will bring judicial finality is some kind of negotiated resolution,” he told me, stating that the defendants in the 9/11 trial “are so damaged that they can barely participate in their court”.\n\nTed Olson was the solicitor general of the United States in 2001. His wife Barbara was killed on 9/11 when her plane was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon. Olson, too, believes a negotiated settlement is the best path forward. “The US must bring these legal proceedings to as rapid and just a conclusion as possible,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal in February 2023. “True justice seems unattainable. The best the US government can do at this point is negotiate resolutions of the remaining Guantánamo cases.”\n\nYet, Guantánamo has remained open through four presidencies, and during that time, prisoners who have been convicted of no crimes have continued to age, their bodies and minds spiraling downward in post-torture deterioration. If opening Guantánamo was a politically brazen act in the months following 9/11, bringing the military commissions to an end would be the politically courageous one. Stakeholders from all sides of the case appear united in the view that the military commission has failed and that plea agreements must follow. All that’s needed is the political will.\n\nBut does the will exist? That’s the question looming, for more than a year, over this quiet courtroom on a remote corner of a far-away island. Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to offer only silence on what ultimately is its decision as a presidential election approaches. This lack of political resolve means defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and legal advocates are all learning the very skill that the defendants and the victims’ families have honed over the last 20 years. They’re all waiting.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "3ef292813da4eb77951c29d9da213829b3f7e9a7", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Tory fanatics are on the march again – and Rishi Sunak is next in their sights", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/17/tory-rishi-sunak-suella-braverman-hard-right", | |
| "words": "1102", | |
| "section": "Opinion", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/76f459fb2f83cd49ee9b0fc6d8e2b5aa6bc03bd4/136_198_5631_3379/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Rafael Behr", | |
| "description": "The PM is treading the perilous path of indulging Suella Braverman and her allies on the Conservative hard right, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr", | |
| "text": "Conservative leaders fail in one of two ways. Either they resist the demands of their most fanatical MPs or they don’t. Ignoring the zealots provokes rebellion, making the party unmanageable. Indulging them leads to policies that are unworkable.\n\nRishi Sunak is combining both mistakes. The prime minister is giving the right of his party most of what it wants, which is not enough. Everything would not be enough.\n\nBritain has left the European Union on terms more drastic than anything promised by the leave campaign, but the demand for separation is unsatisfied. Euroscepticism is an itch that spreads faster than every effort to scratch it.\n\nAnd so Sunak flies to Reykjavík this week for a summit of the Council of Europe to explain to the president of the European court of human rights (not an EU institution) why the rules must be changed so Britain can deport refugees to Rwanda.\n\nThe Brexit promise was that control of the border would be taken back. From whom? Bureaucrats in Brussels first. Still the frontier is porous. Attention turns to judges in Strasbourg whose overreaching fingers must be peeled off national sovereignty.\n\nBut meddlesome foreigners never act alone. The quest for control inevitably turns inward. It becomes a pursuit of fifth columnists and a cleansing of unsound minds in the culture. The trajectory is intrinsic to a doctrine that the Tory right embraced before daring to name it – nationalism.\n\nMany Eurosceptics are still squeamish about the label. Some recognise the brand limitations of a word that comes historically associated with autocracy and war. Others insist that Brexit is a project for the advancement of free trade and therefore liberal, from a certain angle.\n\nIn that view, the pattern of xenophobic rhetoric – the Brexit campaign posters depicting dark-skinned interlopers massing at the border; Home Office ministers warning against invading hordes – is a figment of the hysterical remainer imagination.\n\nThe pretence got harder to sustain this week. Leading figures on the Tory right have mustered for a “National Conservatism” jamboree. They swapped laments about falling birthrates, subjugation by globalised elites and the demoralisation of youth by godlessness and Marxism.\n\nThe home secretary, Suella Braverman, rehearsed her next bid for the Tory leadership, complaining about the unchecked advance of multiculturalism and calling for British workers to fill vacancies where migrant workers are in short supply.\n\nThat is a swerve away from government policy, which is quietly more permissive of legal immigration, by way of work visas, while noisily hostile to anyone who turns up uninvited. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, understands that a tight labour market is constraining economic growth.\n\nSo does Sunak, but he won’t say it aloud. The prime minister’s spokesperson rejected any suggestion that Braverman was freelancing, or that the cabinet is divided on migration matters.\n\nThe text of her speech was cleared by Downing Street. That doesn’t mean it was welcome. But nor should it be assumed that Sunak stifles liberal qualms when issuing licences to bang the hard right drum. The prime minister is a social conservative by conviction, much more so than his recent predecessors.\n\nLiz Truss was a libertarian in all things. She thought government should stay out of people’s private moral choices as well as their bank accounts. Boris Johnson shared that inclination, to the extent that he believed in anything beyond his own ambition.\n\nBut Johnson also had an interventionist streak that verged on egalitarian when it came to levelling up. Or at least he understood that former Labour voters who had supported him on Brexit wanted tangible payback in public investment, even if he didn’t admit that higher spending meant that either taxes or borrowing must rise.\n\nSunak’s economics are more typically Thatcherite. He hung an icon of Nigel Lawson in his office at the Treasury. The pandemic forced him to override those instincts, subsidising the nation’s wages through lockdowns, but bowing to expediency in a crisis didn’t dent the underlying faith.\n\nLikewise, the prime minister’s refusal to cut taxes is not, as some of his Tory critics allege, symptomatic of some socialist mind virus contracted in the Treasury. It is orthodox fiscal conservatism, given a disciplinarian edge by last year’s market backlash against Truss’s wild adventures in budget incontinence.\n\nFor Conservatives to be led by such a prime minister, one so pious in adherence to the tenets of their creed, yet still feel betrayed goes beyond ideological monomania. It is a kind of childish ingratitude, mixed with weariness at the dull burden of grownup government. That is why a hardcore still hankers for Johnson. They praise his unique electioneering talent, forgetting his ignominious downfall, because the “Boris” show was a delightful deferral of hard choices. They can’t muster any affection for Sunak for the same reason that an alcoholic can’t like the hangover as much as the binge.\n\nBut sobriety in style is not the same as moderation of belief. Downing Street is now better organised under a prime minister who pays attention to detail and sustains strategic focus. There are plans that don’t change from one hour to the next.\n\nWhitehall officials are grateful for the restoration of functional administration, but the underlying tension between ideological obsession and practical government has not gone away. Where Johnson would bluff and bluster, Sunak prefers tactical discretion.\n\nLast week’s U-turn on a December deadline for the automatic vaporisation of retained EU law is a case in point. Erasing thousands of statutes without knowing what purpose they serve is an obviously reckless, stupid idea. It was opposed even by the businesses for whose benefit the indiscriminate regulatory purge was intended.\n\nThe climbdown prompted a predictable backlash from Brexit ultras, mostly directed at Kemi Badenoch, business and trade secretary. She passed the blame – or credit, as it should rightly have been recorded – on to her civil servants. Downing Street made it clear that Sunak was hardly involved in defusing a legislative bomb ticking down in Whitehall, in case anyone might suspect him of losing faith in the doctrine of encouraging enterprise by pointlessly blowing things up. He was all for it during last summer’s leadership contest.\n\nWhat the prime minister believes these days is hard to discern. He indulges his party’s most fanatical tendencies without full-throated endorsement. In return he is tolerated as a caretaker, not trusted as a believer. He is not blind to the practical limitations of Brexit ideology, but nor he does he see beyond them. He has not picked a side between reality and dogma, but stands awkwardly between them, in the churned-up bog of a political no man’s land, sinking.\n\nRafael Behr is a Guardian columnist\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "2104ed845bfedba9f70bf2613619a016fe2b944d", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "‘In London there is no space at all’: the rise of self-storage as rents soar", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/17/in-london-there-is-no-space-at-all-the-rise-of-self-storage-as-rents-soar", | |
| "words": "968", | |
| "section": "UK news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:00:22Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/31c6c396ade99bca91adafcb27d6cf048e8f3488/0_271_8143_4885/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent", | |
| "description": "A self-storage facility in Cricklewood helps people living in tiny homes, running businesses and sofa-surfing", | |
| "text": "Last Sunday morning at the Space Station self-storage depot in Cricklewood, north-west London, Merlin, 49, a care worker, was on her weekly visit to her unit – a space not much larger than a broom cupboard. She was depositing duvets and removing a bag of sun cream and an exercise machine as she managed the transition from winter to summer.\n\nHer unit was neat – house proud even. She even had installed a wine rack and a clothes rail, on which outfits were carefully hung.\n\n“My flat is so small, I need the extra space,” she said. She pays £160 a week for a single room in a shared flat, but it is better value to rent this storage for £120 a month than find a bigger home.\n\nShe is one of more than 300 people for whom the Cricklewood depot, managed by Gareth Wood, has become an essential adjunct to home.\n\nWood asks new customers why they are using the storage, but the answer is often simple.\n\n“Do you live in London? That’s why you need storage,” he said. “ You don’t have a shed or a spare room. People are just trying to declutter and are making space.”\n\nNew flats going up in the area mean more business. A Matalan is about to be knocked down and replaced with an apartment block and “as soon as that goes up I imagine there will be a big need,” Wood said.\n\nPatricia, a live-in domestic worker, rents a small £162-a-month unit in the facility because she says her boss doesn’t allow her to have many possessions in the house.\n\n“This is my home,” she said, indicating the yellow door of her storage unit. “It’s an important place for me. I know people who sleep on buses and keep their clothes here. That’s happening here in this country.”\n\nBehind another steel door, a writer has turned a unit into a library while Ivan Arvay, 42, originally from Slovakia, has filled his unit with wooden wine crates that he turns into furniture as a hobby. He simply doesn’t have room in his studio apartment.\n\n“It is [crazy],” he agrees. “In Slovakia even in a studio flat you have storage in the cellar but here there is no storage at all.”\n\nBusinesses account for around one in five customers. Among those at the Cricklewood Space Station is Nalia Echchen, 34. She uses three units for her Amazon-based retail business selling Moroccan textiles, under the brand Maroccanity, and Pokemon figures and other toys. Boxes of toys teeter over a desk and computer she has installed in one corner – effectively turning the unit into an office as well as a warehouse. She has hung a map of the US to remind her of the road trip she one day hopes to enjoy if business thrives.\n\n“I started selling from home and when I had too much stock, I used storage,” she said, as she worked on orders alongside her assistant, Mariana Repeti, 28.\n\nEchchen spends £1,500 a month on the units but she has developed a business that turns over £400,000 a year. It may not be glamorous, but it is effective.\n\nSelf-storage is not just booming in the major cities. Rental returns have been increasing in all regions apart from the south-west and operators are expanding in places such as Slough and Northampton. And the uses are extremely diverse.\n\nIn Coventry, Ross Morris, who used to work in a self storage facility said there were several men fixing motorbikes and car parts in some units and a DJ practising in another, “the deep thud of bass often emanating from his container”. At a certain point a team of builders rented a unit, filled it with rubble, stopped paying the rent and were never seen again.\n\n“A heroin addict was once living in one,” he said. “We cleared his container of needles, a single mattress, a camping stove and a giant bag of pasta. Not sure how long he had been living in there. Containers have been raided by the police on multiple occasions. Drug dealers operating out of them and people storing illegal cigarettes. There is almost no limit to what people use them for – from every walk of society.”\n\nKevin Prince, who runs the Space Station chain, recalled a run-in with one customer.\n\n“I had a really difficult customer who was quite rude and arrogant, never paid on time and always gave me a hard time,” he said. “And then he just stopped responding at all.”\n\nAfter a couple of months not paying rent Prince cut the customer’s lock off and found the unit empty. The customer had removed all his possessions, but “in the middle of the room was a 4ft inflatable penis”.\n\n“I think I knew what he was saying to me,” said Prince.\n\nTee, a software engineer who lives in an adapted Land Rover, partly due to expensive rent, said he believes “storage is a powerful tool in allowing people to live tiny”.\n\nHe uses it to “change the contents of the Land Rover depending on what I’m doing”.\n\nIf he’s going hiking he’ll deposit his bike and hot water shower and pick up his hiking gear.\n\n“I have about four or five different configurations of my mobile home I can choose from because I have storage and can swap items in and out,” he said.\n\nMeanwhile, Jo, 54, an education manager in Brighton, who could not afford £1,200 a month rent during Covid said she hired an £80-a-month Big Yellow unit for her belongings and saved money sofa-surfing and using Airbnbs for two years. Returning to normal renting after the pandemic she missed “going back to the Big Yellow looking at all my stuff in one place”.\n\n“Now it’s all distributed again, it doesn’t have the punch,” she said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "id": "715135cfb16a4378c9f0146e7924a65c0a837cce", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Housing crisis drives £1bn-a-year boom in UK self-storage", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/housing-crisis-drives-1bn-a-year-boom-in-uk-self-storage", | |
| "words": "980", | |
| "section": "Business", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:00:21Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/168c1a34a433de14d60a9cdfdce68002f57c57ce/0_73_2464_1478/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent", | |
| "description": "Revenues rose to £990m last year as people unable to upsize their home opt to pile their possessions elsewhere", | |
| "text": "Britons have packed away enough possessions to fill Buckingham Palace more than 60 times over as the housing crisis, enduring consumerism and a sentimental reluctance to let go of inanimate objects means self-storage is now on the brink of becoming a £1bn-a-year business.\n\nSelf-storage units are proving cheaper than renting or buying a bigger home and are springing up alongside new housing developments across the UK, with at least 280 more stores planned between now and 2026 – a more than 10% increase.\n\nIn 2022, UK households and businesses piled enough additional items into storage units to occupy more than 2m sq ft (185,000 sq metres), driving up revenues among operators – including Big Yellow and Safestore – by 6.5% to £990m, according to a study by the property agency Cushman & Wakefield and the Self Storage Association UK.\n\nAmid increasing signs that shuttling to and from a self-storage facility is becoming a routine part of urban life for hundreds of thousands of people, two-thirds of customers now keep their unit for around two years and 16% stay for at least five years.\n\nSelf-storage gains from both sides of the online retail boom, hosting online retailers who dispatch products to consumers, who haven’t got room for them and so end up taking them to self-storage.\n\n“Marvellous isn’t it?” said Kevin Prince, the chief executive of Space Station, who opened his first unit in 1997, now manages 14 units, and is about to add 13 more. “Long may that continue.”\n\nThe high cost of housing and shrinking residential floor space are key drivers of rising demand that is attracting global investors, not just in the UK but in other rent hotspots such as New York and California where people can pay $25,000 a year for a unit.\n\nDemand is also driven by people acquiring possessions in the hope that they will soon be able to upsize their home, but being thwarted by the housing market, analysts said.\n\n“Self-storage operators reported a combined £990m of revenue and increased profitability in 2022 as the sector’s growth continued unabated despite the pressures on household budgets,” the study concludes.\n\nA 90 sq ft unit typically costs £273 a month to rent in London and £131 in the north of England, which is cheaper than residential property.\n\nAn industry survey of more than 1,800 UK customers found that the most common reason for using self-storage was a lack of room for the items at home, followed by a house move, major life event such as a death, inheritance or divorce, and renovations. One in five renters are now business customers, often e-commerce retailers.\n\nThe range of possible users is huge. Renters and staff told the Guardian that units had been used by homeless people as a base while they sofa-surf or sleep on buses; a heroin addict who broke the rules by moving in a mattress to sleep on; a family who wanted their son to learn the drums where it wouldn’t disturb them; and by people trying to “live tiny” by having the smallest possible flat and using the storage as an annexe for half of their possessions.\n\nHelping to embed storage in the urban fabric, the Space Station chain has installed a hairdresser, florist, vape shop, tattooist and dog beautician at one of his facilities in Shrewsbury. Many other operators are starting to add office space. In London’s Kings Cross, where thousands of flats have been constructed in recent years, the finishing touches are being put to a new Big Yellow featuring a stylish brick facade equal in architectural merit to the nearby apartment blocks.\n\n“An increasing proportion of people, whether by choice or necessity, are staying in rented accommodation for longer,” said Philip Macauley, the head of self-storage at Cushman & Wakefield. “On-site self-storage can be a valuable amenity for residents in large developments, especially if they don’t have cars.”\n\nThe industry describes its product as “sticky” because most new customers think they will only use it for a couple of months, but once many people move their stuff in, they struggle with the decision to take it out.\n\n“We get very sentimental about inanimate objects,” said Prince. “So that sentiment is good for the sector.”\n\nHe added: “Nobody buys stuff to keep for life. We buy it and when we get bored of it we change it. Storage is good in that it encourages people to save things and reuse them rather than just throw them away and replace. I don’t know what percentage of that actually happens because there’s many occasions where we’ve had people stay for a long period of time and then they just phone the manager and say ‘can you get me a skip so I can throw all these things away’.”\n\nSelf-storage stats Self-storage is increasingly profitable. Big Yellow, which has 108 stores and is the UK’s largest operator by floorspace, recorded a 30% increase in adjusted profits before tax in 2022, reaching £96.8m. Revenues at the next largest operator, Safestore, rose 14% in the same year to £213m.\n\nIn 2022, a single self-storage depot in Camden, London, was sold to Shurgard for £6m, and four properties in Banbury, Wednesbury, Frome and Amesbury were acquired by Storage King for £59m.\n\nA 500-unit facility can be looked after by only four staff members.\n\nMore people say they have used self-storage more because of the cost of living crisis than used it less, according to a Cushman & Wakefield survey\n\nThe most likely age of a customer is between 55 and 64, and the most common income bracket is £21,000 to £31,000 a year, with demand falling among people with higher incomes.\n\nHalf of customers are single, widowed, separated or divorced.\n\n65% of domestic customers have occupied their unit for about two years, and 43% for a year or less. Another 16% have had their unit for more than five years.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "cf6615985d2d13af53df13d8565a69c814101eb5", | |
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| "showTableOfContents": "false", | |
| "title": "Malawi’s Rastafarian children return to school after ban on dreadlocks is lifted", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/17/malawis-rastafarian-children-return-to-school-after-ban-on-dreadlocks-is-lifted", | |
| "words": "623", | |
| "section": "Global development", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:00:21Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/5a510919f9bce825feb69737ec0120c7f4750996/0_62_1200_720/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Benson Kunchezera in Lilongwe", | |
| "description": "Schools told to honour court order as families seek compensation and training for pupils who missed education because of their hair", | |
| "text": "About 1,200 Rastafarian children in Malawi are expected to return to state schools over the next month after being banned for a decade because of their hair.\n\nAfter a landmark decision at the high court in March, letters have now been sent out to about 7,000 schools telling headteachers that the exclusion of children with dreadlocks from the classroom has been ruled as unconstitutional.\n\nThe high court judge, Zione Ntaba, who presided over a long-running judicial review of government policy in Malawi’s former capital, Zomba, ordered the education ministry to inform state schools that they must admit Rastafarian children by 30 June.\n\nIn Malawi, primary school is provided free of charge but enrolment had previously required all children to cut their hair.\n\nRastafarianism developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, an Afrocentric belief system based around certain tenets of the Bible and against western colonialism. For some it is a religion, for others a way of life, says Ezaius Mkandawire, a father and Rastafarian community leader in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe.\n\nMkandawire has been campaigning for several years on behalf of his three children Makeda, six, Uhuru, eight age, and Urunji, 14, who had been excluded from state schools due to their dreadlocks.\n\nWithin Malawi’s small Rastafarian minority, an estimated 15,000 people follow Rastafarianism as a religion and thousands more have adopted it as a way of life, or what Mkandawire calls “livity”. As such, their hair has sacred symbolism, as referenced in several passages in the Old Testament, and cutting it or using “a razor” on it is anathema to Rastafarians.\n\nThe court ruling has now prompted many in the Rastafarian community to request compensation from the government for their children’s exclusion from school, saying their rights were violated by the “archaic policy” that had classed dreadlocks as “unhygienic” and that their children had suffered as a result.\n\nMkandawire said their campaigning for the government to address the damage caused by the ban would continue, calling for the establishment of special vocational schemes and loans to help the young people who missed out on education.\n\n“We are not fighting with the government, or throwing stones, but [trying] to reason with them,” said Mkandawire, adding that some young people had slipped into criminal activities because of the ban.\n\nLike many Rastafarian parents, Pemphero George found it distressing when her children were refused entry and sent home from school because of their dreadlocks. “My children’s right to education and freedom of association was put to question” because of the ban, she said.\n\nGeorge, 30, runs a stall in Lilongwe, selling handmade caps, ginger plants and fruit. She could not afford to send her three children to private school, and so felt forced to cut their hair.\n\n“I had no choice but to cut their dreadlocks, a thing which was not easy at all,” she said. “It was painful seeing my own children being deviated from Jah’s teachings. Cutting hair means disobeying God’s commandments, according to our religious beliefs.”\n\nShe said she was happy about the court ruling but added that many Rastafarian parents would always feel judged – and compelled to make extra efforts to ensure their children looked neat at school.\n\nPatrick Galawanda, an education coordinator and Rastafarian community leader who was among the group who took the case to the high court, said the resolution was long overdue and that he was delighted to see “this battle” coming to an end.\n\nRastafarians had complained of discrimination after being left out of an agreement in June 2021, when a Malawian civil society organisation, the Public Affairs Committee, encouraged Muslims and Christians to sign a memorandum of understanding which, among other things, allowed Muslim students to wear a hijab or headscarf to school.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "4c27a70bcd3738ff1f66318257140436f55127d3", | |
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| "title": "High Desert review – Patricia Arquette’s comedy is so jampacked it’s exhausting", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/17/high-desert-review-patricia-arquettes-comedy-is-so-jampacked-its-exhausting", | |
| "words": "778", | |
| "section": "Television & radio", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T05:00:21Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/142bea9ed45aeecee3a87894da007280586e00c9/30_0_920_552/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Lucy Mangan", | |
| "description": "There are acid trips, flashbacks and a lead character who’s a can-can-dancing PI. Luckily, Arquette’s powerfully charismatic performance keeps the show from going off the rails", | |
| "text": "Perhaps it is a sign that I have watched too much television, or a sign that television has watched too much television and all entertainment is about to eat itself in the tri-meta-po-mo world we live in – but my overriding thought when watching Patricia Arquette’s magnificent turn in High Desert is: “This is what it would be like if a Jennifer Coolidge character was real.” Which I think is, overall, a compliment, and for Arquette and her writers a triumph.\n\nOn the other hand, it can make things exhausting. High Desert is many things but it is not a bingewatch. In fact, it is precisely because it is so many things that you are better off consuming it as a weekly half-hour treat than a straight eight-episode feast.\n\nArquette plays Peggy, a warm-hearted, lovably absurd figure whom we meet hosting a family party in her luxurious SoCal home for Thanksgiving 2003. Then the DEA burst through the door and put an abrupt end to what turns out to have been a drug-deal-fuelled lifestyle (“Just pot! And a little hash!” she later protests. “I only did cocaine”).\n\nWe next meet her 10 years later, after the recent death of her beloved mother Roslyn (Bernadette Peters). Her husband Denny (Matt Dillon) is in prison, she is on a methadone treatment programme, estranged from her now grownup son and working as a barmaid/can-can girl at an Old West theme park. When her siblings Stewart and Dianne (Keir O’Donnell and Christine Taylor) – still smarting from being caught up in the DEA raid a decade ago, though one suspects Peggy and her addictions haven’t given them a lot of peace since then – announce that they need to sell the family home Peggy lived in while caring for Roslyn, the pressure is on for Peggy to find a job she can do in between can-cans that pays enough to afford the mortgage.\n\nWhen her best friend Carol (Weruche Opia) is ripped off for $300 by private investigator Bruce Harvey (Brad Garrett), Peggy rolls up her sleeves, goes round to collect the cash and finds her true calling as a PI. After terrorising Harvey’s landlord into waiting for Harvey’s unpaid rent, she finds their first proper case – a fellow dancer’s ex appears to be selling stolen masterpieces. He (played by Rupert Friend) is a former TV presenter who had a meltdown on air and, in true California fashion, reinvented himself as “Guru Bob”. He now uses the catchphrase that sent his live breakdown viral (“Everything is stupid!”) as a mantra for his followers.\n\nOn top of that there is a theft from the theme park safe; a missing mafia wife; a nipple-slicing father-daughter hitman team; the release of Denny from prison and Peggy’s inability to resist being drawn into various scams and schemes he comes up with; acid trips and flashbacks; a TV actor who is a dead ringer for Roslyn (also played by Bernadette Peters), which causes quite some discombobulation, especially during the acid trips – and much, much more.\n\nThat it makes sense at all is down to Arquette, whose powerful charisma draws the whole thing together, and whose ability to keep a vulnerable side to Peggy apparent through all her chaos, misjudgments and exuberance gives you something to invest in. Otherwise, High Desert is very much a case of style over substance. It looks gorgeous, there is an endless parade of side characters, each brighter and kookier than the last, and the New Agey energy and stupidity of southern California is at least as much a presence as they are.\n\nBut there is too much going on to allow the viewer to care about any of it other than Peggy herself. It feels like a fertile premise – how do you rebuild a life when you only want to have fun and make sure everyone around you has fun too? – largely squandered, in terms of comedy and drama. Because although you keep waiting for them and often feel – in a trippy, Peggy-life way – that you must have heard some, there aren’t actually any jokes in High Desert. It’s always a rush, but without backstories (Carol’s mysterious past, for example, is never explored) or any deeper digging into exactly what produced the bundle of charm, resourcefulness and idiosyncracies that is Peggy, it starts to feel a bit empty.\n\nIt is enough, of course, for something to be fun while it lasts. But with Arquette and everyone around her clearly capable of so much more, and the premise perfectly set up for them to do so, it’s a shame it didn’t happen.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "1a916325b748d25e74f25229a83cc9f7394b5606", | |
| "thumbnail": "https://media.guim.co.uk/02892652b300afa13f4f427765bc18277513273e/0_129_2048_1229/500.jpg", | |
| "title": "Country diary: The bittersweet arrival of nine clean, alert piglets", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/17/country-diary-the-bittersweet-arrival-of-nine-clean-alert-piglets", | |
| "words": "385", | |
| "section": "Environment", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T04:30:20Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/02892652b300afa13f4f427765bc18277513273e/0_129_2048_1229/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Sarah Laughton", | |
| "description": "Long Dean, Cotswolds: It’s been a difficult spring so far on the farm, with not just the endless wet, but also a devastating loss", | |
| "text": "The sight of Irving’s trailer creaking backwards into the yard is a familiar one, though we don’t associate it with this season. Usually he arrives in November, as he did last year, delivering a boar to put with our saddleback sow. Mind you, the ground conditions today are not dissimilar, this spring mirroring last year’s early winter with its unending wet and mud.\n\nToday’s delivery is of nine weaners – piglets around eight weeks old – and a mixture of gilts (females) and boars. It’s difficult to resist a smile as I peer through the vent on the trailer’s side. But the pleasure is bittersweet. Our sow farrowed in March. It was a straightforward evening’s work, notwithstanding the fact that she produced 15. She is a gentle creature and tolerant of assistance, but a primitive protectiveness takes over once she has shed the afterbirths, (two pieces, one from each horn of the uterus) so it is best to give her space. Besides, this was her fourth farrowing and she had proved herself the most diligent of mothers. A few fatalities are inevitable in a large litter, but over the next 24 hours, more came. Why? Everything appeared normal – she was lying with teats exposed, the piglets somnolently latched on.\n\nThen it struck me. A feeding sow will rhythmically grunt, but this time everything was abnormally quiet. Not even the vet’s injection of oxytocin, a hormone stimulant, could induce her to let down her milk. With nothing to sustain them, the whole litter perished. It was utterly distressing, the more so for being without explanation.\n\nOften in farming, you are further back than when you started. We have a much-loved sow that we can no longer assume to breed from and we’ve paid for weaners before we’ve begun to rear them, with commercial feed prices still high, not to mention the emotional toll this has taken. But these thoughts are banished as nine immaculately clean piglets bundle down the ramp and into the sty. They pause, calm but alert, their snouts busily taking it all in. Then one heads for the open field and the rest skitter after. Hours later, they are still out delightedly digging – at least someone is glad of the mud.\n\nSarah Laughton\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "f5fd1bb3b679026c40d53e2590cf5118b4c9b367", | |
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| "title": "Why does it take a deadly fire for New Zealand to pay attention to how its most vulnerable live?", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/17/why-does-it-take-a-deadly-fire-for-new-zealand-to-pay-attention-to-how-its-most-vulnerable-live", | |
| "words": "759", | |
| "section": "World news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T03:17:20Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/b6f45983e83fe98ea7156171415e7df09002ce44/0_155_3000_1800/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Max Rashbrooke", | |
| "description": "The deaths of at least six people at Wellington’s Loafers Lodge has shone a light on the country’s long-ignored housing crisis", | |
| "text": "It shouldn’t take a fire and yet so often it does. In the wake of tragedy, questions will be asked about the living conditions of the six people who died in the Loafers Lodge boarding-house, but as ever, too late.\n\nLoafers Lodge is just one of several hundred similar boarding houses scattered across New Zealand. Once predominantly a rough but functional form of accommodation for single working men, such places have long since catered to a wider range of people, most of them down on their luck.\n\nThe tenants of Loafers Lodge included nurses working shifts at the nearby Wellington hospital, but also cash-strapped retirees, people on community sentences and other members of the marginalised and vulnerable poor.\n\nI first came across boarding houses a decade ago, when I spent three weeks as an undercover reporter in one in central Wellington. The rooms were foul-smelling, dirty and damp. Some windows didn’t close properly, so the rain just came “hosing through”, as one resident observed. The place provided just one working shower for 14 people, and even that had a cracked concrete floor. There was no hot water in the hand-basins, no toilet paper in the toilets. The kitchen, such as it was, boasted neither fridge nor washing machine.\n\nThe people living there tolerated these appalling conditions because they had, as another resident put it, “nowhere else to go”. Whether it was alcoholism, poverty, difficult behaviour or other assorted conditions, no conventional private landlord would have them as a tenant. Social housing was in short supply.\n\nThe tenants, some of whom had lived there for decades, enjoyed few legal protections. Boarding house tenants can be evicted with 48 hours’ notice on various grounds, including where the landlord claims they will cause “serious damage” to the property.\n\nNeedless to say, such provisions are open to abuse, and help create a climate in which tenants feel frightened to speak up. Not that it would necessarily help if they did: when I tried I discovered the local council had virtually no legal powers to force improvements.\n\nNo one yet knows how the fire started at Loafers Lodge and it could be unrelated to its status as a boarding house. But there were, reportedly, warning signs. A nearby business owner, florist Laura Newcombe, told media she wasn’t surprised by the tragedy: “It’s just a maze in there.”\n\nOne hospital worker said they “often used to think when I used to visit: God, if there’s a fire it’s like a rabbit warren.” Conflicting reports have also emerged from residents over whether alarms went off when the fire broke out. Fire and emergency said on Tuesday that they could not confirm whether alarms had gone off.\n\nEither way, Loafers Lodge shouldn’t bear all the blame. Wellington City Council has said that the lodge was issued with a Building Warrant of Fitness in March this year, indicating that it met minimum safety standards at the time.\n\nIt has been widely reported that the building had no sprinkler system, but there is no legal requirement to retrofit older buildings with sprinklers – even when the presence of large numbers of vulnerable people, some of them cooking in their own rooms, creates a frightening fire hazard. For over a decade politicians have known the risks posed by such places and done nothing.\n\nBoarding-house owners are, in a peculiar sense, victims of a wider failure. It shouldn’t be their responsibility to care for such troubled people. The state should provide safe, secure accommodation, with wraparound public services available on-site. It is starting to do so, through initiatives like Housing First, but not yet at the required scale.\n\nAnd as long as vulnerable people live in private accommodation, tougher rules may be needed. It’s not yet clear exactly what could have saved those who died in the fire, but it’s not hard to imagine how closer regulatory attention – mandatory sprinklers, licensing regimes, a legal framework that ensures tenants feel safe speaking out – might have at least alleviated the tragedy.\n\nAs it stands, all we have is grief, and a growing pile of unanswered questions.\n\nSpeaking in parliament on Tuesday, Green Party co-leader James Shaw made clear his anger: “What kind of country are we, where those people have so few options in life but to live in substandard accommodation with a reasonable chance of lethality?”\n\nIt’s a good question. It’s just a shame that only now, after people have died, will there be anything like sufficient investigation into the conditions in which they lived and whether those conditions contributed to their deaths.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "title": "Brisbane Tigers announce bid for 18th NRL team licence", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/may/17/brisbane-tigers-announce-bid-for-18th-nrl-team-licence", | |
| "words": "405", | |
| "section": "Sport", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T02:02:01Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/9533b8e8bb190087883af387dc43db005392d67b/0_0_1406_844/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Guardian sport", | |
| "description": "One of the oldest clubs in Australian rugby league has launched a bid to become the NRL’s 18th team after opening a new $10m stadium", | |
| "text": "The Brisbane Tigers, one of the oldest clubs in Australian rugby league, have launched a bid to become the NRL’s 18th team after opening a new $10m stadium on Wednesday.\n\nHaving failed to become the league’s 17th team under the name of the Brisbane Firehawks in 2020, the Langlands Park-based club has renewed its interest in joining the four existing Queensland NRL franchises.\n\n“Our NRL bid will leverage our great club’s 90-year-old history of legendary players and coaches, premierships and Queensland spirit to become the go-to team of Queensland’s fastest growing region,” Tigers CEO Brian Torpy said.\n\nThe Australian Rugby League Commission has indicated further expansion of the competition to 18 teams is just a matter of time and could happen as soon as 2027 or 2028.\n\nThe club, known as Easts since 1933 before the Brisbane Tigers rebrand in 2020, hope to join fellow south-east Queensland teams the Dolphins, Broncos and Titans in the expanding competition. North Queensland is represented by the Cowboys.\n\nShould the Tigers win the NRL’s 18th licence, another change of name would be likely needed, to avoid a clash with the existing Wests Tigers.\n\nThe Tigers’ bid chair, Shane Edwards, pointed to the initial success of the Dolphins, who are competing in their debut season this year, as reason to believe his club can step up and join the country’s premier rugby league competition.\n\n“With the strong attendance and audience figures we are seeing the Dolphins achieve in their debut year, we believe the Brisbane Tigers can provide a similar stimulus in the south-west corridor that takes in the Logan and Ipswich regions,” Edwards said.\n\n“If successful in becoming the 18th NRL team, our goal is to be the go-to club for sports fans on Brisbane’s south side and western corridor and the millions of casual fans between the ages of 18 to 34 who do not currently support the Broncos, Dolphins or Titans.”\n\nThe Tigers’ new Totally Workwear Stadium was unveiled on Wednesday by Queensland’s tourism and sport minister, Stirling Hinchliffe, and rugby league great Des Morris, who opened his namesake grandstand.\n\nThe redevelopment, to which the Queensland government contributed $1.1m, features a high performance and community centre and was hailed as “one of Australia’s best boutique, gender-inclusive rugby league stadiums”.\n\n“The change rooms and gymnasium are female-participant compliant and will encourage more women to play rugby league, providing more inclusive pathways to our BMD Premiership team,” Torpy said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "26893945956735db8b8eb3aee456ed44e15b2305", | |
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| "title": "George Santos: Democrats move to expel indicted Republican from Congress", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/17/george-santos-democrats-expel-indicted-republican-congress", | |
| "words": "588", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T01:53:37Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/2c20cfb492b039fd26ef969f4a2efe937c5a54e5/0_265_3978_2387/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Martin Pengelly in New York", | |
| "description": "New York representative is subject of a privileged resolution, which would need two-thirds support to succeed", | |
| "text": "Democrats moved on Tuesday to expel George Santos from Congress.\n\nThe New York Republican won election in November last year but his résumé has been shown to be largely made up and his campaign finances and past behaviour, some allegedly criminal, have been scrutinised in tremendous detail.\n\nLast week, federal prosecutors indicted Santos on multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to Congress. Appearing in court on Long Island, he pleaded not guilty and claimed to be the victim of a political witch hunt.\n\nNow, House Democrats have triggered a political manoeuvre designed to force Republicans to either break with Santos or publicly vote to defend him.\n\nTo succeed, a privileged resolution introduced by Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, must attract two-thirds support in the House. The resolution could come to a vote within two days.\n\nOn Tuesday, Garcia told reporters: “The Republicans in the House are actually going to have to go on record and make a decision about if they’re actually going to stand for truth and accountability, or if they’re going to stand with someone that’s clearly a liar.”\n\nSome Republicans have said Santos should quit but as yet party leaders have not broken with him, saying he has a right to seek acquittal while representing his district.\n\nRepublicans control the House by just five seats – and Democrats would be favoured to win Santos’s seat should it fall vacant. In January, amid a far-right rebellion, Santos supported Kevin McCarthy through 15 votes for speaker.\n\nGarcia also said Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic minority leader, was “involved” in the process.\n\nMcCarthy told reporters he would talk to Jeffries about referring the resolution to the House ethics committee, which he hoped would “move rapidly” despite rarely doing so or imposing heavy punishments.\n\nOnly five members of the House have ever been expelled. Three were kicked out for fighting for the Confederacy in the civil war. Two were expelled after being convicted of crimes.\n\nThe last, James Traficant of Ohio, was expelled in 2002. Like Santos, Traficant cut a somewhat picaresque path through the halls of power.\n\nReporting his death in 2014, the New York Times said Traficant was known for his “colorful personality and wardrobe, his legislative theatrics and his wild mop of hair.\n\n“So it was something of a surprise when the hair turned out to be fake, a fact that was made clear when he had to remove his toupée during booking after his arrest on bribery and racketeering charges.”\n\nTraficant did not let his expulsion stop him running for re-election, as an independent and from federal custody in Pennsylvania. Though unsuccessful, he received more than 28,000 votes.\n\nSantos has announced a run for re-election. McCarthy has said he does not support such a move.\n\nOn Tuesday, Garcia told MSNBC McCarthy had “lost all control of his caucus. He needs Santos for key votes on the on the deficit, on the budget, and so … he’s been working with literally a liar and a huge fraudster in the Congress.\n\n“So now McCarthy’s going to actually have to make a choice, if he will support George Santos … or if he’s actually going to listen to the American people.\n\n“And so we’re gonna continue to push this as best possible. We think it’s absolutely the right approach. And we’ve given plenty of time to George Santos to resign. We’ve been calling for his resignation for months and for months. It’s time for him to do the right thing.”\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
| }, | |
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| "id": "c993272fad5fed0a827b48c6dbf3b8f1448a07a7", | |
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| "title": "New Mexico shooter roamed area with at least three guns, police say", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/16/new-mexico-shooter-guns-police-farmington", | |
| "words": "928", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-16T13:16:51Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/8d04ac0455e50725e508662acc96935cc018ecc8/0_0_3600_2160/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Victoria Bekiempis", | |
| "description": "Three killed and six injured in shooting in Farmington as police say suspect, 18, shot dead by police, appeared to fire ‘randomly’", | |
| "text": "An 18-year-old man who stalked a New Mexico neighborhood, fatally shooting three people “at random” on Monday, armed himself with at least three guns, one of which was the style of powerful rifle used during many mass shootings, officials said, renewing calls for legislation to combat gun violence.\n\nThe attack, which also left six people injured, came as the US is poised to see its worst year in recent history for mass killings.\n\nPolice named the three dead victims as 97-year-old Gwendolyn Schofield, her 73-year-old daughter, Melody Ivie, and 79-year-old Shirley Voita.\n\nThe deadly shooting erupted about 11am local time in Farmington, a city of about 50,000. “The suspect roamed throughout the neighborhood, up to a quarter of a mile,” Farmington’s police chief, Steve Hebbe, said.\n\nAuthorities also named the shooter as local 18-year-old high school student Beau Wilson, but added they were still trying to determine a motive for the attack. Wilson lived in the Farmington neighborhood where he opened fire.\n\nFarmington’s deputy police chief, Kyle Dowdy, said there was nothing yet leading investigators to believe Wilson knew any of the people he shot. “We’re pretty confident in that is was completely random,” he said.\n\nWilson legally purchased at least one of the guns he used in November.\n\nWitnesses and police say Wilson walked through the neighborhood spraying bullets until police arrived within minutes and fatally shot him. Two police officers were among the wounded, and were treated and released from the hospital.\n\n“The amount of violence and brutality that these people faced is unconscionable to me,” Dowdy said.\n\nThe gunman shot at least six houses and three cars during the attack. Authorities said the gunman did not target any particular location – such as a school or church – nor people during the shooting.\n\nAmong the dead was Shirley Voita, a 79-year-old woman who had worked as a nurse and was a devoted parishioner at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, said former state lawmaker James Strickler, who was her friend.\n\n“She was just a dynamite lady. She was well-loved and I’m still shocked over it,” said Strickler, who heard gunfire ring out on Monday before learning the circumstances of Voita’s death.\n\nSome of the shootings were captured on video that was uploaded to TikTok, which police confirmed was authentic.\n\nThe footage shows a man clad in black clothes pacing near a driveway outside the First Church of Christ, Scientist, with an apparent handgun. Later, the footage shows him being shot by police.\n\nNeighborhood resident Joseph Robledo, 32, hurried home after hearing that his wife and one-year-old daughter hid in their laundry room during the gunfire. A bullet went through his baby’s room and its window, but did not strike anyone.\n\nAn older woman was in the street in front of his house. She had been shot while driving by and appeared to have fallen out of her vehicle, which kept going without her, Robledo said.\n\n“I went out to see because the lady was just lying in the road, and to figure just what the heck was going on,” Robledo reportedly said. As he and others provided first aid, neighbors told a police officer where the shooter was.\n\nThe middle school teacher Nick Atkins, who lives on a street locked down by police, said the neighborhood is largely calm. “You never think it’s going to happen here, and all of a sudden, in a tiny little town, it comes here,” Atkins reportedly said.\n\nAfter the shooting, New Mexico’s congressional delegation issued a statement that read: “One thing is clear: Congress needs to act on gun violence NOW.”\n\nThe statement alluded to how the federal government last year enacted bipartisan congressional legislation that expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers while funding mental health and violence intervention programs. But, the statement added, Monday was “a painful reminder that we must do more”.\n\n“We are committed to fighting for sensible gun safety measures that will keep New Mexicans safe,” the statement said.\n\nNumerous mass shootings have afflicted large cities and small towns, maiming and killing innocents in places ranging from schools to synagogues to shopping malls. But Congress and many state legislatures have done little beyond last year’s legislation, such as a measure that would raise the minimum age people must reach before being able to legally buy guns.\n\nInstead, many politicians continue trying to deflect discussions about gun control by saying the focus should be on praying for victims of violence or arming would-be bystanders such as schoolteachers and training them to confront mass shooters themselves.\n\nSome officials have even taken steps to insulate the gun industry from potential lawsuits. Several weeks after a shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee, school left six dead, among them three nine-year-olds, the Republican state governor signed legislation that provides additional legal protections for firearm and ammunition sellers, dealers and manufacturers, ABC News reported.\n\nThe killings in Farmington left the US with at least 225 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines as a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are injured or killed.\n\nWhile Monday’s case wasn’t classified a mass murder, which is when four or more victims are slain, the US has been on pace this year to set the highest number of mass murders in recent memory, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. There have been 21 mass murders so far this year as of Tuesday. There were 31 mass killings in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022.\n\nAgencies contributed to this report\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| { | |
| "id": "3050dd570157b4c4691bd04098a95dbd92164697", | |
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| "title": "Australian wages rise again but still lag behind cost of living, March quarter figures reveal", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/australian-wages-rise-again-but-still-lag-behind-cost-of-living-march-quarter-figures-reveal", | |
| "words": "713", | |
| "section": "Australia news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T01:33:57Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/5ddcfb66106f611f72bb1b16c9419539afcad550/0_152_5472_3283/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Peter Hannam Economics correspondent", | |
| "description": "Wage price index increase to annual rate of 3.7% will be scrutinised by Reserve Bank", | |
| "text": "Australia’s workers saw their wages rise at a quickening rate in the March quarter but the pace still fell far short of cost-of-living increases.\n\nThe March quarter wage price index rose to an annual rate of 3.7% in the first three months of 2023, from 3.3% in the December quarter. Economists had expected it to increase 3.6%.\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup\n\nThe advance, though, compared with headline annual consumer inflation in the March quarter of 7%, with the underlying rate at 6.6%.\n\nLeigh Merrington, the acting head of prices statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, said the seasonally adjusted increase was the most in just over a decade and reflected “low unemployment, a tight labour market and high inflation”.\n\nPrivate sector employees saw their pay packets swell 3.8% in the year, and 0.8% in the quarter alone, in line with the average advance. Those working in the public sector notched up a 3% annual increase – the most since 2012 – and 0.9% for the quarter alone.\n\nThe dollar was slightly lower on the news while the stock market was little moved after losing about 0.5% in morning trading.\n\nThe WPI figure will be closely scrutinised by the Reserve Bank for its impact on its interest rate course, and by unions and others concerned that wages are still in retreat when inflation is taken into account.\n\nAccording to the 2023-24 federal budget, workers should start to enjoy wages growing faster than the inflation rate by early 2024, or slightly sooner than expected by the October budget. That would mark the first real increase in three years, and by the June quarter reach a 0.75% annual pace, “helping to drive the recovery in domestic activity through 2024-25”, the budget said.\n\nThe ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, said that while the increase was welcome, real wages still went backwards at about 3.3% in the past 12 months.\n\n“Wage growth is clearly not contributing to inflation,” she said. “Any increases over the past year have been swallowed up by price rises, rent rises and interest rate rises.”\n\nMcManus said the Fair Work Commission needed to consider “this harsh reality in deciding minimum wages and award wages”.\n\nBelinda Allen, a senior CBA economist said there were signs public sector salary growth was accelerating.\n\n“We expect stronger public sector wages to continue over coming quarters as long‑standing wage caps are lifted and enterprise-bargaining agreements are reset at higher rates of pay as they expire,” Allen said.\n\nBy contrast, there were signs private sector wages growth could be plateauing, with the pace apparently peaking on a quarterly basis in the September quarter of last year.\n\n“We do expect the labour market to show further signs of loosening from here due to the large lift in supply of labour and as the economy slows,” she said.\n\nBefore today’s numbers, investors were rating the chance of a 12th interest rate rise since last May as very unlikely, although the prospect of an August rate hike was nearing a 50-50 chance.\n\nAs inflation retreats from three-decade highs, the share of employees reporting bigger wage increases in the past year, compared to the year before, has risen to almost 60%. That’s the largest share since the ABS began collecting such numbers in 2003.\n\nThe proportion of those reporting increasing by 4-6% from a year ago now make up almost one-in-four workers. That’s the largest share of the market since 2009. Those eking out increases of less than 2% are down to about 18.6%, down from more than 50% about two years ago.\n\nWestern Australia reported the biggest increases in wages. New South Wales and Victoria, the two most populous states, both posted a 3.5% annual change, or less than the national average.\n\nSean Langcake, the head of macroeconomic forecasting for Oxford Economics Australia, said the “remarkably tight labour market has delivered relatively brisk wage growth over the past four quarters”.\n\n“Looking ahead, quarterly outcomes are likely to stay within this range while the unemployment rate is below 4%,” Langcake said.\n\nThe ABS will release April labour market numbers on Thursday, with economists expecting a similar reading as March’s near half century-low of 3.5% jobless rate. April CPI data will land on 31 May.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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| "id": "61eaba40d7a3f891c52c66103c52706862f08778", | |
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| "title": "Dianne Feinstein: oldest serving senator says she ‘hasn’t been gone’ despite absence", | |
| "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/16/dianne-feinstein-says-hasnt-been-gone-from-senate", | |
| "words": "443", | |
| "section": "US news", | |
| "date": "2023-05-17T01:30:46Z", | |
| "image": "https://media.guim.co.uk/864dcf6985bf086e9a72ade517eec36c385d0c9c/0_48_4000_2400/1000.jpg", | |
| "author": "Maanvi Singh and Abené Clayton", | |
| "description": "The 89-year-old legislator insisted she had been working when questioned by reporters on Tuesday after being gone for three months", | |
| "text": "A bizarre exchange with reporters has raised new questions about the return of Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior senator who has been absent from Washington for months due to shingles.\n\nJim Newell, a reporter for Slate, ran into Feinstein shortly after the 89-year-old lawmaker voted on the Senate floor on Tuesday. When he and another journalist asked Feinstein how she has been received by her colleagues since returning to Washington, Feinstein appeared to insist that she had never left.\n\n“I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working,” Feinstein told Newell and another reporter, according to a Slate article published Tuesday. She was asked if she meant she had been working remotely, to which Feinstein responded: “No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting. Please. You either know or don’t know.”\n\nThe exchange comes as Feinstein faces pressure to resign amid questions about her health.\n\nNow the oldest serving senator, Feinstein led the effort to pass a landmark 1994 assault weapons ban and fought for a full investigation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. But in recent years, media and Feinstein’s colleagues have increasingly questioned her fitness to serve as one of two senators representing the most populous US state.\n\nHer three-month absence from the Senate judiciary committee this year threatened to derail the confirmation of Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, at a time when 9% of district and appellate court seats remain vacant. And while Feinstein has managed to fulfil her committee duties since returning to Washington, questions remain about whether she can effectively govern. A San Francisco Chronicle report last year described Feinstein suffering memory losses and relying heavily on her staff to fulfil job duties.\n\nThe senator has said that doctors have asked her to maintain a lighter work schedule as she continues to recover, but has provided no details on what that means. She has continually dismissed reporters’ questions about her health and workload.\n\nSome fellow Democrats, including the California representative Ro Khanna, have called on her to resign. “Three months is a long time to be absent without any clarity,” he told Politico.\n\nFeinstein has said she wouldn’t seek re-election in 2024. Three California representatives – Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee – have already declared their candidacy. If Feinstein does decide to retire early, it would fall to Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, to appoint a temporary replacement.\n\nStill, because Feinstein holds seniority after 30 years of service in the Senate, if she did step down, her replacement would not automatically wield the same authority she does on the judiciary committee and the powerful appropriations committee. The situation has rankled Californians who had called for Feinstein to step down earlier, before this term.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break." | |
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