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The PM’s talk of ‘fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs’ had a similar effect to that of a misfiring new Oxford Street attractionEarlier this week a pile of mud was dumped at the west end of Oxford Street. Then some squares of grass were stuck on the mud. Then people were charged £8 to go up it. Visitor Emma Wright tweeted that going up the mud was “the worst thing I have ever done in London”. But I believe it was Dr Johnson who wrote: “A woman who thinks going up some mud is the worst thing she has ever done in London has not visited the ladies’ toilets in Crystal Palace park. And neither have I.”The mud’s purpose is to promote Oxford Street, where 17% of shops have closed since March 2020. But in the long term, the best way to save shops is to force Amazon to pay proper tax, so it cannot undercut them. Making people pay £8 to go up mud will not do this. Though British Amazon goods are delivered from British Amazon warehouses to British Amazon customers on British roads by British drivers, the sales of those goods are processed in lightly regulated Luxembourg. Can it be a coincidence that as the net tightens on Amazon, its founder, Jeff Bezos, is lobbying Nasa to put Amazon in charge of outer space? Continue reading...

Evacuation flights start before visas are issued after insurgents make sweeping gains in provinces

The 1980s child abuse scandal reminds us that now, as then, being ‘on the side of the angels’ has to be backed with actionA council’s most important job is not emptying the bins or filling in potholes, the stuff most people see day to day. It has by far and away one of the most important jobs anyone could have: to be a parent. Local authorities, between them, have parental responsibility for more than 100,000 children in care in the UK. These are some of society’s most vulnerable children, removed from their parents’ care because they have experienced or are at risk of abuse and neglect. Anybody disinclined to take that responsibility seriously should come nowhere near elected office or senior management at a local council.How, then, did Lambeth council in south London get itself into a position where members and senior managers, at best, looked the other way while children in its care were subject to the most depraved sexual, physical and emotional abuse and, at worst, were complicit? The report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) into Lambeth, published last week, sets out the horrific scale and nature of what went on over several decades from the 1960s. More than 705 former residents of Lambeth children’s homes have come forward with complaints of sexual abuse; the inquiry says the true scale will be significantly higher. Continue reading...

Political liberty has been overturned – with majority support. That will delight authoritarians everywhereImplicit in US and western support for pro-democracy movements and transitions around the world is an assumption that, given a free choice, a system of elected, representative government is what people will always naturally prefer. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if a majority believes democracy doesn’t work for them?Emerging testimony from Tunisia, the latest country to face a crisis over how it is run, suggests many citizens welcomed the forceful suspension of a democratically elected parliament that had failed to address people’s problems and was widely reviled as a self-serving oligarchy.

We need to decarbonise and fast. But ‘adaptation’, the ways in which we protect people from the crisis, is not a dirty wordIt won’t be enough. It can’t be. From here, even an astonishing pace of decarbonisation will still deliver us a warmer world than we have today, full of more eye-opening extremes and more deeply disruptive disasters of the kind, we are learning this summer, that even the wealthiest and most climate-conscious countries are unprepared for. No one is.That is what Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, meant when he wrote, with the capital inundated, that the city was now on the frontline of the climate emergency and it is the central lesson of the Met Office’s annual report on the state of the UK climate, which found that mild British weather was already a relic of a bygone era. The Climate Crisis Advisory Group, led by Sir David King, recently declared that greenhouse gas levels were already so high that they foreclosed a “manageable future for humanity”. “Nowhere is safe,” King said, provoking a host of headlines. Continue reading...

I lost my comrade Kevin in battle. His sacrifice must not have been in vainWas it worth it? That is what many of us who served in Afghanistan are quietly asking as we watch with bewilderment and horror at what is unfolding.Four hundred and fifty-seven British servicemen and women never made it home from the war. Among them was Corporal Kevin Mulligan, a fearless young Scot with whom I had the honour of serving. He was the epitome of a paratrooper and one of our best and brightest commanders. At the time of his death, Kev’s fiancee was carrying their unborn child. One of countless tragedies borne out of that bloody conflict. Continue reading...

The DoJ has dealt two blows and the 6 January committee is winding up for more. They know democracy is in danger

Elaine Thompson-Herah won the women’s 100m and Great Britain won the triathlon mixed relay on another action-packed day in Tokyo

The CDC has advised people to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status, prompting a political fight in several US states

The brains trust at Fox News recently debated whether the ‘childless left’ deserve the vote – which shows that choosing not to have kids if still very much stigmatized

Progressives had hoped for fewer Biden allies, more foreign service professionalsJoe Biden is sticking to tradition as he slowly fills the vacancies in the ranks of ambassadors across the world, focussing on mixing longtime career diplomatic officials with figures with strong ties to himself and the Democratic party.Among Biden’s expected picks is Caroline Kennedy, former US ambassador to Japan, daughter of the former president, and longtime Biden friend, ally and donor, to be ambassador to Australia. He has picked the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, who was a prominent Biden surrogate on the presidential campaign trail, to be ambassador to India, despite a relative lack of foreign policy experience. And the president is also widely expected to name the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel ambassador to Japan. Continue reading...

‘If they’re dumb enough not to get the vaccine, let them get sick,’ some thought. Now we know everyone would sufferAn email arrived from my cousin this week outlining how bad Covid cases are in her part of South Africa. Delta is surging, she wrote; their friends and neighbours were starting to die. Meanwhile, vaccination rates were terrible, with less than 5% of the population fully vaccinated. After filling me in on the rest of the family news, she assured me that she and her husband were on the waiting list for vaccines – for what it was worth. Her husband, she said, was “convinced they’re not safe”.This was information to me. Not that a member of my extended family differed from me in his thoughts about drug trials and government-agency approval, but more broadly: wow, I had no idea my cousin was married to a lunatic. Continue reading...

• IRS must give Trump tax returns to ways and means committee• Notes show Trump pressed DoJ officials to call election corrupt1.02am BSTThat’s it for me tonight. Thanks for sticking with us! Here’s what happened this afternoon:Related: ‘We went from heroes to zeroes’: US nurses strike over work conditions12.15am BSTThe US Department of Justice sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott today over his order to stop migrants from entering the state or being transported through it, unless by law enforcement officials.According to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in El Paso, only the federal government has jurisdiction over immigration, Reuters reports.The order, which Abbott signed on Wednesday, permits only ‘law enforcement officials’ to provide ground transport for migrants detained for illegally crossing the southern border. It also gives the state’s public safety department the authority to stop any vehicle suspected of carrying migrants and send it back to its point of origin.

Department says House panel has ‘sufficient reasons’ for requesting returns as Nancy Pelosi hails ‘victory for the rule of law’The US Department of Justice on Friday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand Donald Trump’s tax returns to a House committee, saying the panel had “invoked sufficient reasons” for requesting them.Related: Trump pressured DoJ officials to falsely claim election corrupt, memos show Continue reading...

Infections and hospitalizations are rising in the state as health officials fear not enough people are vaccinatedCalifornia’s public health agency this week recommended that people wear masks indoors regardless of their vaccination status, one of several steps taken across the state as part of an urgent effort to curb the rise of coronavirus infections.“The Delta variant has caused a sharp increase in hospitalizations and case rates across the state. We are recommending masking in indoor public places to slow the spread while we continue efforts to get more Californians vaccinated,” said Dr Tomás J Aragón, the state’s public health officer, in a statement on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Notes obtained by House oversight committee show Trump pressured officials to falsely claim the election was not legitimateDonald Trump pressured top justice department officials to falsely claim that the 2020 election was corrupt so he and his allies in Congress could subvert the results and return him to office, according to newly released memos.“Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me,” Trump told the former acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, memos turned over to the House oversight committee showed. The notes were taken by Donoghue, who documented a 27 December call with Trump and Rosen. Continue reading...

The attitude of Republican politicians to the committee shows exactly why it is neededThe investigation into the deadly insurrection of 6 January is not one but two processes. The first is an attempt to discover the truth about those events: not only what happened, but who, beyond the members of the mob, was responsible and in what ways. The second is the task of getting people to accept that truth – knowing that many will not.Senior Republicans initially acknowledged the horror of the events and the culpability of Donald Trump, whose big lie of a stolen election triggered the assault upon the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader – who is said to have telephoned the president urging him to call the rioters off as they tried to break through his office window – said that Mr Trump bore responsibility. He and others called for a 9/11-style independent commission. Continue reading...

The gymnast was considering quitting her sport in the run-up to the Olympics. But when Simone Biles stepped away she grabbed her chance to shineOn Thursday night in Tokyo, moments after Sunisa Lee was awarded the gold medal in the women’s gymnastics all-around competition, the 18-year-old American called the experience “surreal.”And of course it was. Lee, like every other US gymnast for most of the past decade, was supposed to play second fiddle, at best, to Simone Biles in Tokyo. In 2016, Biles’s teammate Laurie Hernandez told reporters at the Olympics: “If you get silver, you’re the best, because Simone doesn’t count.” Continue reading...

Nothing is more dangerous than the illusion of action – which is all that the British government is offeringFuture generations will look back on the climate events of 2021 and say: “That was the year they ran out of excuses.”Heatwaves and flooding here in the UK, temperatures topping 50C in Pakistan, hundreds killed by a heatwave in British Columbia, deadly floods in Germany and China. All within a single month. Add to that the recent dire warning from the Met Office that the age of extreme weather has just begun. Continue reading...

The Republican party is encouraging Americans to make objectively selfish, harmful choices – then using the tools of government to shield them from accountability“It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions,” declared Ronald Reagan at the 1968 Republican National Convention.By the time he became president 12 years later, this idea – that individuals can be trusted to act wisely and should be held accountable when they don’t – was firmly entrenched in Republican rhetoric. Reagan even included “personal responsibility” in his list of America’s bedrock values, right up there with faith in God, honesty, and caring for others. Continue reading...

Athletes like Simone Biles must perform at the highest level while also carrying burdens specific to Black sportswomenThis week, Simone Biles unexpectedly withdrew from the team and individual all-around gymnastics events at the Tokyo Olympics. The 24-year-old told reporters she wanted to focus on her mental health after experiencing the “twisties” – a condition in which a gymnast loses his or her spatial awareness during a move – in practice. It is no surprise that Biles is under overwhelming stress. With speculation that the four-time Olympic champion has plans to retire after Tokyo, pressure to walk away on a triumphant note would have left any athlete anxious.But unlike most other athletes gearing up for the Olympics, Biles is held to impossible expectations. That is not only because she is the greatest in her sport, but also because she is a Black woman dominating an industry that has neglected and discriminated against athletes of her kind. A woman like Biles was never meant to be the greatest gymnast of all time, and because of that, she is held to higher standards and became a role model to the next generation of Black gymnasts and Black women. That is an incredible burden, even for someone who is not stepping onto the biggest stage in sports. Continue reading...

With the Delta variant spreading, Joe Biden announced new requirements for federal workers and urged local governments to do more to incentivize people to get vaccinatedGood morning.Joe Biden announced yesterday that all civilian federal workers must attest to being vaccinated against Covid-19 or face regular testing and physical distancing, masking and travel restrictions. Continue reading...

The American placed fifth in the 400m hurdles in Rio, but she’s poised to finish on the podium five years laterGiven its unique demands on technique, endurance, and speed, many consider the 400m hurdles one of the most challenging track and field events. After exploding out of the starting blocks, athletes must sprint 400m while propelling themselves up and over 10 hurdles positioned evenly around the track.At 21 years old, Sydney McLaughlin is already the fastest woman in the history of the event as she begins her Olympic campaign on Saturday morning in Tokyo. Continue reading...

The US pro league had a wild ride in season four but made it to the big show. Its commissioner knows it’s in the shop windowIn American sports parlance, as George Killebrew puts it, Major League Rugby is “98 & 0”. The championship game in Los Angeles on Sunday will make it 99 out of 99 for games played in a league which began its fourth year amid rampant uncertainty and Byzantine Covid protocol.Related: All Blacks will play US Eagles at Washington NFL stadium in October Continue reading...

Guest list includes Oprah Winfrey and George ClooneyLooks like former president Barack Obama is gearing up to throw the (outdoor) bash of the summer.The 44th president is reportedly pulling out all the stops when it comes to his upcoming birthday. Obama, who turns 60 on Wednesday, will be inviting dozens of friends to celebrate with him this weekend on his estate on Martha’s Vineyard. The guest list includes Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney, according to the Hill. Continue reading...

The Tokyo Games have shone a light on bullying, abuse and sexualisation, which are too often ignored in the pursuit of gloryNobody should have to go to work in their bra and knickers. So when the Norwegian women’s beach handball team were fined earlier this month for defiantly choosing to compete in shorts – rather than the buttock-revealingly skimpy bikini bottoms mandated by their sport’s governing body – it was the organisers of the European championships, not the squad, who ended up looking ridiculous. Why should female athletes have to be served up half-naked, for the benefit of leering audiences?But the rebellious Norwegians, it turns out, were merely the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Now the Tokyo Olympics are witnessing what looks very much like the beginnings of a movement, as sportswomen increasingly speak out about their experiences of sexualisation and exploitation. Continue reading...