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- ‘Apocalyptic’ scenes hit Greece as Athens besieged by fire
- HelpTurkey hashtag under investigation for ‘spreading fear’ about wildfires
- Tokyo 2020 Olympics: Jason Kenny becomes most successful GB Olympian, boxing gold for Lauren Price – live!
- Neeraj Chopra’s javelin gold medal seals India’s greatest ever Olympics
- Bailiffs called in to at least 280,000 homes over council tax debt
- Trump will run for president in 2024, Sean Spicer claims
- Texas Democrats still absent as Republicans make third bid to pass vote laws
- Boris Johnson’s approval rating slips to lowest level since he became prime minister
- We’re on the brink of catastrophe, warns Tory climate chief
- Reputed mafia ‘godmother’ arrested at Rome airport
- Tate donor warns: ‘I’ll take back my £20m Francis Bacon collection’
- Macron tells critics: vaccine passport will protect all our freedoms
- Covid live: UK allows quarantine-free travel from France as restrictions change
- Bosses battle over rights and wrongs of ‘no Covid jab, no job’
- Victoria to make AstraZeneca available to under-40s as it launches nation’s first drive-through vaccine hub
- ‘I’d never seen a boat come in with so many bodies’: mortal cost of Atlantic migrant route
- Dark matter: one last push to crack the biggest secret in the universe
- Amia Srinivasan: ‘Sex as a subject isn’t weird. It’s very, very serious’
- Why public schoolboys like me and Boris Johnson aren’t fit to run our country
- ‘It was just unconscionable’: Cori Bush on her fight to extend the eviction moratorium
- Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? review – slick, slippery and brave
- George Eustice defends decision to cull alpaca Geronimo as ‘arduous but necessary’
- ‘I don’t see how it can be safe’: Florida schools on frontlines of state’s mask war
- ‘If I go back, I’ll die’: Colombian town scrambles to accommodate 10,000 migrants
- I covered Hong Kong for decades. Now I am forced to flee China’s ‘white terror’ | Steve Vines
- Resolutions but no revolution as National ends its annual conference as divided as ever
- There are no happy lockdowns but every lockdown is unhappy in its own way | Kirsten Tranter
- Eulogy for Greenville, my beautiful home town lost to wildfire | Margaret Elysia Garcia
- How Cuomo went from #MeToo ally to a one-man battle to discredit women
- ‘Greece has burned’: thousands flee Athens suburb as wildfire spreads – video
| ‘Apocalyptic’ scenes hit Greece as Athens besieged by fire Posted: 07 Aug 2021 12:00 PM PDT The city is surrounded by flames. On the ground, there are tales of heroism – and fear for the future Little had prepared any of us on the Athens-bound flight for the sight of the great fire-induced clouds that swept either side of the plane as it made its descent on Friday. News of the extreme heat engulfing Greece had spread beyond its borders all week, packaged in increasingly desperate language. Temperatures were breaking records few had ever imagined. If Monday was bad, then Tuesday was worse. In some parts of the country, the mercury had hit 47C (117F), with thermal cameras on drones recording the ground temperature in downtown Athens at 55C. Continue reading... |
| HelpTurkey hashtag under investigation for ‘spreading fear’ about wildfires Posted: 07 Aug 2021 09:21 PM PDT Stung by claims of a bungled response to devastating fires, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says criticism is orchestrated by foreign powers Prosecutors in Turkey have launched an investigation into a social media hastag critical of the government's allegedly bungled response to the country's devastating wildfires, accusing it of spreading "anxiety and fear". The hashtag HelpTurkey exploded when rightwing president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was pictured on a tour of the damaged region under heavy police escort, tossing bags of tea to locals out of a moving bus in the middle of the night while a megaphone announced his presence. Continue reading... |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2021 02:22 AM PDT
I absolutely loved this. .@TheKoriMonster and @natashahastings' reaction to THAT 400m hurdles race is all of us rn.
Peep our medals table. Related: Tokyo 2020 Olympics: full medal table Continue reading... |
| Neeraj Chopra’s javelin gold medal seals India’s greatest ever Olympics Posted: 07 Aug 2021 10:45 PM PDT Army officer wins nation's first athletics gold to spark celebrations and a resurgence of pride amid the ravages of Covid India has been swept up in a wave of euphoria after Neeraj Chopra won the country's first ever Olympic athletics gold medal with victory in the men's javelin in Tokyo. Chopra's historic triumph on Saturday night means India has racked up its best-ever Olympic medal haul of seven and caps a resurgence of national pride amid the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 427,000 Indians. Continue reading... |
| Bailiffs called in to at least 280,000 homes over council tax debt Posted: 07 Aug 2021 10:45 PM PDT Local authorities also asked for thousands of people's benefits to be reduced to clear arrears Local authorities in England referred at least 280,000 households to bailiffs over council tax debt in the first year of the pandemic, and asked for more than 115,000 people to have their benefits deducted to clear their arrears, the Observer can reveal. Councils adopted widely differing approaches to council tax arrears as the economy froze and unemployment rose during 2020-21, with some councils suspending all debt-recovery action while others continued to pursue thousands of households. Continue reading... |
| Trump will run for president in 2024, Sean Spicer claims Posted: 07 Aug 2021 11:02 AM PDT Former press secretary says ex-boss 'is in' while Barbra Streisand offers tip for combating Trump's election lie Donald Trump's onetime press secretary, Sean Spicer, said his former boss would run for the presidency again in 2024. "He's in," Spicer claimed of Trump's interest in the race during a recent Washington Examiner interview. Continue reading... |
| Texas Democrats still absent as Republicans make third bid to pass vote laws Posted: 07 Aug 2021 06:54 PM PDT A month after fleeing the state to thwart passage of restrictive voting laws, Democrats again refused to appear at the state Capitol Texas Democrats have refused to return to the state Capitol as governor Greg Abbott began a third attempt at passing new election laws, prolonging a months-long standoff that ramped up in July when dozens of Democratic state lawmakers left the state and hunkered down in Washington, DC. "A quorum is not present," said Republican house speaker Dade Phelan on Saturday, who then adjourned the chamber until Monday. Continue reading... |
| Boris Johnson’s approval rating slips to lowest level since he became prime minister Posted: 07 Aug 2021 12:00 PM PDT Bad news for the Tories does not necessarily lead to good news for Labour: backing for Keir Starmer is also down Boris Johnson's personal approval rating has slipped to its lowest level since he became prime minister, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. His overall approval rating has fallen to -16, down from the -13 he recorded two weeks ago and -8 a fortnight before that. It is even lower than the -15 he recorded back in January, when Britain was in the grip of a Covid peak, lockdown measures were in place and the NHS was under severe pressure. Continue reading... |
| We’re on the brink of catastrophe, warns Tory climate chief Posted: 07 Aug 2021 11:03 AM PDT Cop26 meeting is last chance, says Alok Sharma as he backs UK's plan for new oil and gas fields The world will soon face "catastrophe" from climate breakdown if urgent action is not taken, the British president of vital UN climate talks has warned. Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks to be held in Glasgow this November, told the Observer that the consequences of failure would be "catastrophic": "I don't think there's any other word for it. You're seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record." Continue reading... |
| Reputed mafia ‘godmother’ arrested at Rome airport Posted: 07 Aug 2021 05:02 PM PDT Prosecutors allege Maria Licciardi, 70, ran extortion rackets as head of Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate A reputed top Naples crime syndicate boss was arrested as she was about to board a flight to Spain, Italian authorities said. The interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, praised the arrest of Maria Licciardi, 70, by Carabinieri officers on the orders of Naples prosecutors. Continue reading... |
| Tate donor warns: ‘I’ll take back my £20m Francis Bacon collection’ Posted: 08 Aug 2021 12:30 AM PDT Barry Joule, a close friend of the artist, says the gallery has not kept to a pledge to stage exhibitions of the works When more than 1,200 sketches, photographs and documents from the studio of Francis Bacon were donated to the Tate in 2004, it was described as one of the most generous gifts the gallery had ever received, estimated to be worth £20m. Now the donor is threatening to cancel the gift, accusing the gallery of reneging on pledges to stage exhibitions of the material. Barry Joule, a longstanding friend of Bacon, had wanted the items to go to the Tate, as it had been the artist's favourite gallery. Over the years, he kept expecting the Tate to do justice to it with an exhibition, as he says they had planned on accepting the gift. He wrote repeatedly to curatorial staff, asking when the show would happen. Continue reading... |
| Macron tells critics: vaccine passport will protect all our freedoms Posted: 07 Aug 2021 10:00 PM PDT French protests expected to enter fourth week but president's hardline strategy is succeeding When the Great Plague struck Marseille in 1720, killing more than half of the city's population, travellers were ordered to carry a "bill of health" and ships arriving at the Mediterranean port underwent a 40-day cordon sanitaire or quarantine. As a gateway for trade, the city authorities struggled to find a delicate balance between halting the spread of the disease and damaging vital commerce. Three hundred years on, President Emmanuel Macron is walking an equally tricky tightrope just eight months before he seeks re-election in April 2022. And unlike the ancient Marseillais, Macron has to answer to social media. Continue reading... |
| Covid live: UK allows quarantine-free travel from France as restrictions change Posted: 08 Aug 2021 02:22 AM PDT Follow the latest on the coronavirus pandemic from the UK and around the world
After a turbulent 18 months running an online retail business during the pandemic, Julie Jones is now facing a new challenge. One of her eight employees has decided not to get vaccinated against Covid-19. The company, based in the north-west of England, works in a small office space, and having one unvaccinated team member is causing health and financial concerns for Jones (not her real name) and her other staff. It's a difficult situation. I'm between a rock and a hard place. I would really rather she was jabbed, but I feel it is personal choice. It's not a healthcare setting, and I don't feel it's my place as an employer to ask her to do something medical she isn't comfortable with. She's a fantastic employee and I would rather take the risk of her not being jabbed than risk an argument and her potentially leaving over it. Related: Bosses battle over rights and wrongs of 'no Covid jab, no job'
The Philippines' health ministry recorded on Sunday 9,671 new coronavirus cases and 287 additional deaths, the biggest single-day spike in the country's death toll since April 9. In a bulletin, the ministry said total confirmed infections in the Southeast Asian country had risen to 1.66 million, while the death toll had climbed to 29,122, Reuters reports. Continue reading... |
| Bosses battle over rights and wrongs of ‘no Covid jab, no job’ Posted: 07 Aug 2021 11:00 PM PDT While big-name US firms can compel their staff to be vaccinated against Covid, in the UK the issue is a legal and moral minefield After a turbulent 18 months running an online retail business during the pandemic, Julie Jones is now facing a new challenge. One of her eight employees has decided not to get vaccinated against Covid-19. The company, based in the north-west of England, works in a small office space, and having one unvaccinated team member is causing health and financial concerns for Jones (not her real name) and her other staff. Continue reading... |
| Posted: 07 Aug 2021 11:41 PM PDT State reports 11 new Covid cases as authorities scramble to work out how the outbreak started
The Victorian government will provide the AstraZeneca vaccine to under-40s at its state-run vaccine clinics and has launched the nation's first drive-through vaccination operation at a former Bunnings site. Victoria, into day three of its seven-day lockdown, recorded 11 new locally transmitted cases on Sunday, all linked to the Hobsons Bay cluster. That cluster was started in Melbourne's west and south-west with a teacher from the Al-Taqwa College. Continue reading... |
| ‘I’d never seen a boat come in with so many bodies’: mortal cost of Atlantic migrant route Posted: 08 Aug 2021 12:00 AM PDT Every year thousands of refugees from conflict, climate and instability in Africa board vessels in search of a new life in Europe but hundreds never arrive At 6.30am on Friday 28 May, three fishermen at work four miles off the southern coast of Tobago spotted a large white boat adrift on the dawn waters of the Caribbean. As they drew closer, the trio saw the boat's shape was far from local, and noticed a strong smell coming from inside it. The body the fishermen glimpsed at the bow was enough to confirm their suspicions. They called the coastguard who, unable to dispatch a vessel, asked them to tow the boat ashore at Belle Garden beach. Continue reading... |
| Dark matter: one last push to crack the biggest secret in the universe Posted: 08 Aug 2021 12:15 AM PDT Scientists are pinning hopes on elaborate detectors to track the elusive material that holds galaxies together Deep underground, scientists are closing in on one of the most elusive targets of modern science: dark matter. In subterranean laboratories in the US and Italy, they have set up huge vats of liquid xenon and lined them with highly sensitive detectors in the hope of spotting subatomic collisions that will reveal the presence of this elusive material. However, researchers acknowledge that the current generation of detectors are reaching the limit of their effectiveness and warn that if they fail to detect dark matter with these types of machines, they could be forced to completely reappraise their understanding of the cosmos. Continue reading... |
| Amia Srinivasan: ‘Sex as a subject isn’t weird. It’s very, very serious’ Posted: 08 Aug 2021 01:00 AM PDT With her debut book, The Right to Sex, a 36-year-old Oxford don is dazzling everyone from Vogue to Prospect magazine. She discusses porn, gender dysphoria – and why her students are no snowflakes If All Souls is one of the most inordinately beautiful colleges in Oxford – its bone-white gothic, best peered at by mere mortals from nearby Radcliffe Square, is the work of the great Nicholas Hawksmoor – it's also one of the oddest and most rarefied. Famously, it has no student body. Each year, however, a small number of recent graduates who would like to become so-called prize fellows may apply to take a famously difficult and inscrutable exam during which, as a tour guide I followed earlier put it, they must "write an essay on a single word, like coconut". As my eavesdropping also revealed, TE Lawrence, AKA Lawrence of Arabia, passed this exam, but Harold Wilson failed it. In her lovely, wood-panelled room in All Souls – its current tenant wears Adidas sneakers and likes a good martini, but it still makes me think of patched corduroy and sherry – Amia Srinivasan laughs heartily. "Right," she says. "Those guides. They always come up with things like: everyone here is a priest, or everyone is a man. Or they tell people: 'Stephen Hawking is in there right now.' At least the exam thing is sort of true." Having taken it successfully herself in 2009 – she had to write around the word "reproduction" – Srinivasan was a prize fellow at the college until 2016, when she became a lecturer at UCL (the one-word riff component was abandoned the following year). Now, though, she's back. Last January, she took her up her post as the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls, a job once held by Isaiah Berlin. She is both the first woman, and the first person of colour, to hold it. At just 36, she is also its youngest ever incumbent. Continue reading... |
| Why public schoolboys like me and Boris Johnson aren’t fit to run our country Posted: 07 Aug 2021 11:00 PM PDT Our elite schools foster emotional austerity and fierce clique loyalty. Here a privately educated writer of the prime minister's generation reveals the lasting damage public schools do
I had a feeling I couldn't immediately place. I wanted to go out but wasn't allowed. Shelves were emptying at the nearest supermarket and instead of fresh fruit and vegetables I was eating British comfort food – sausages and mash, pie and beans. My freedom to make decisions like an adult was limited. I wondered when I'd see my mum again. March 2020, first week of the first lockdown: I was 53 years old and felt like I was back at boarding school. Which wouldn't have mattered, but for the fact that at a time of national crisis my generation of boarding-school boys found themselves in charge. Continue reading... |
| ‘It was just unconscionable’: Cori Bush on her fight to extend the eviction moratorium Posted: 08 Aug 2021 02:00 AM PDT The congresswoman's protest on the Capitol steps may have been unconventional – but she didn't come to Washington to play by the old rules. When Cori Bush decided to camp out on the steps of the US Capitol for four days to protest against the end of the eviction moratorium, people insinuated her behavior was unbecoming of a congresswoman. "Shameless and embarrassing," was what Matt Walsh, the self-described "theocratic fascist" radio host called it. Ben Shapiro called the protest "stupid," meanwhile, Bush's local paper, the St Louis Post Dispatch, wrote that her "righteous-sounding aspirations" did not "seem to take into account political reality." Continue reading... |
| Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? review – slick, slippery and brave Posted: 07 Aug 2021 11:00 PM PDT An engaging academic study of Alexei Navalny paints a vivid picture of a Russian politician who is a necessarily courageous product of the internet age In January, Alexei Navalny boarded a flight to Moscow. Russia's most famous dissident had spent five months in Germany recovering from the effects of novichok poisoning. Surrounded by journalists who travelled with him, he was under no illusions as to what would happen once he swapped Berlin for home. The Russian authorities would arrest him, for sure. He would spend months, years, in prison. Probably he would never emerge. On the plane, Navalny shrugged off these concerns with his usual dark humour. "I am not afraid," he said. He spent the flight watching his favourite show, the US cartoon sitcom Rick and Morty. Continue reading... |
| George Eustice defends decision to cull alpaca Geronimo as ‘arduous but necessary’ Posted: 07 Aug 2021 02:42 PM PDT Environment secretary says bovine tuberculosis test used on animal 'over 99% accurate' Environment secretary George Eustice said it is an "arduous but necessary endeavour" to cull animals that test positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB), as he defended the decision to put down Geronimo the alpaca. Helen Macdonald's animal has been ordered for destruction after twice testing positive for the disease, but she has repeatedly questioned the tests used to condemn him. Continue reading... |
| ‘I don’t see how it can be safe’: Florida schools on frontlines of state’s mask war Posted: 08 Aug 2021 02:00 AM PDT Ron DeSantis has promised cut off state funding to any district that forces children to wear face coverings – but some schools are bucking his ultimatum With about two weeks to go until the start of a new school year, Miami father Jerry Greenberg is feeling anxious. With the more contagious Delta variant of Covid-19 fueling record-breaking positive cases across Florida, Greenberg's biggest fear is that his son and daughter will catch the deadly respiratory disease even if they are wearing masks. Continue reading... |
| ‘If I go back, I’ll die’: Colombian town scrambles to accommodate 10,000 migrants Posted: 08 Aug 2021 02:00 AM PDT Necoclí, population 20,000, faces bottleneck as Covid rules lift and unrest, poverty and violence grow across region
Most had been stuck in this remote Caribbean coastal town for days, trapped in a migration bottleneck caused by the loosening of Covid travel restrictions and growing unrest, poverty and violence across the region. Continue reading... |
| I covered Hong Kong for decades. Now I am forced to flee China’s ‘white terror’ | Steve Vines Posted: 08 Aug 2021 12:00 AM PDT After 35 years, the Observer's former correspondent is leaving as what was once a haven of liberty and peace is transformed into a police state When I arrived in Hong Kong in 1987 as the Observer's south-east Asia correspondent, the foreign editor said he saw it as being a base, not the kind of territory that would generate much news but it was a safe place to be, communications were good and I was unlikely to have any visa problems. I thought I might stay a couple of years and move on. Thirty-five years later, I have, with great sadness, moved on and no one in their right mind can possibly assert that Hong Kong is a safe place for journalists. The white terror – the term used to describe the ruthless elimination of the opposition in Taiwan following the imposition of Kuomintang rule and more recently taken up by the opposition in Hong Kong to describe similar events in the city – is relentless, swooping down not just on journalists, but on prominent opposition leaders, teachers, lawyers and, recently, speech therapists who had the temerity to write a children's book about sheep that dared to answer back; they have been charged with subversion. Continue reading... |
| Resolutions but no revolution as National ends its annual conference as divided as ever Posted: 07 Aug 2021 11:49 PM PDT There was a degree of heat, but not much light cast on the future of a party still recovering from last year's election thumping The National Party has just wrapped up the final day of its annual general meeting. There was a bit more drama than usual. Former speaker of the house David Carter resigned from the board before the close of the meeting after failing to win the presidency from Peter Goodfellow, who has held the role since 2009. Various changes were made to the party rules. A nod to the Treaty of Waitangi as the country's founding document was inserted into the party constitution. There was heated debate on questions of party governance, with delegates opting to keep the board on a short leash following a disastrous election last year. Continue reading... |
| There are no happy lockdowns but every lockdown is unhappy in its own way | Kirsten Tranter Posted: 07 Aug 2021 01:00 PM PDT Competitive suffering shows itself as another face of the trauma we're going through. But eventually there will be unpredictable moments of delight It's coming up on a year since the skies over San Francisco turned red because of smoke from wildfires in surrounding areas, an uncanny reminder of Sydney's Black Summer of late 2019 and early 2020. Now there is different kind of grim echo, as Sydney goes further into lockdown in the grip of a new surge of coronavirus. Here in California we are cautiously taking off our masks and trying to remember how to talk to friends face to face. Meanwhile, in a horrible reversal, I see my Sydney friends and family experiencing something like we did in March 2020, when the schools closed, the shelter-in-place order went into effect and there was no certainty about how long it would go on, and how bad it would get. Continue reading... |
| Eulogy for Greenville, my beautiful home town lost to wildfire | Margaret Elysia Garcia Posted: 07 Aug 2021 03:00 AM PDT Every morning after moving here, I thought I must have done something right because I got to live in all this majesty. Then the Dixie fire took it away My defiantly quirky, beautiful adopted hometown turned into a ghost town last night. There are so many things I could tell you about Greenville. There were over a thousand people and change, though the population sign still said 2,000. We all have an opinion. About everything. We are a microcosm of America and often frustrated with each other. Greenville is filled with do-gooders, volunteers, retirees, hippies, bikers, and rednecks, ranchers, cowboys, and people who never felt like the town they were born in was quite the right fit for them. We were extended families and single moms and dads. We were drunks. We were sober. We tried not to be too judgmental lest someone judge us back. We were recent survivors of Paradise, too. Continue reading... |
| How Cuomo went from #MeToo ally to a one-man battle to discredit women Posted: 06 Aug 2021 11:00 PM PDT The New York governor's self-defense follows the playbook of powerful men accused of sexual misconduct – but it's shocking given his history of advocacy On 12 August, 2019 Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, held a glitzy bill ceremony in his executive mansion in Albany to mark the signing into law of new legislation designed to beef up sexual harassment protections for women in the workplace. With a flourish of a pen, Cuomo sought to seal his reputation within the Democratic party as a champion of gender-based rights. Continue reading... |
| ‘Greece has burned’: thousands flee Athens suburb as wildfire spreads – video Posted: 07 Aug 2021 04:35 AM PDT Thousands of people were forced to flee Thrakomakedones, a suburb of the Greek capital, after strong winds spread wildfires that burned down homes. More than 50 wildfires are burning across Greece as the worst heatwave in more than 30 years has hit the country. Tens of thousands of acres of forestland, homes and buildings have been destroyed and the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has promised a radical shift in the country's approach to the climate emergency. Continue reading... |
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