Sportswear and sneaker brand joins dating app Bumble in offering extra time off in Covid pandemicNike has given its head office employees in the US a week off to “destress” and recover from the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic.The sportswear and trainers brand said workers at its headquarters in Oregon would be “powering down” until Friday, with senior leaders encouraging staff to ignore all work responsibilities to aid their mental health. Continue reading...
In 2008, many of Barack Obama’s supporters hoped he would bring the global war on terror to a close. Instead, he expanded it – and his successors have done nothing to change courseOn 23 May 2013, the peace activist Medea Benjamin attended a speech by President Barack Obama at Fort McNair in Washington DC, where he defended his administration’s use of armed drones in counter-terrorism. During his speech, Benjamin interrupted the president to criticise him for not having closed Guantánamo Bay and for pursuing military solutions over diplomatic ones. She was swiftly ejected by military police and the Secret Service. The Washington Post later dismissed her as a “heckler”. Obama himself had been more reflective at the event, engaging with her criticisms, which led to even deeper self-criticism of his own. It was the moment of greatest moral clarity about war during a presidency that did more than any other to bring its endless and humane American form fully into being.For all its routine violence, the American way of war is more and more defined by a near complete immunity from harm for the American side and unprecedented care when it comes to killing people on the other. Today, there are more and more legal obligations to make war more humane – meaning, above all, the aim of minimising collateral harm. Countries like the US have agreed to obey those obligations, however permissively they interpret them and inadequately apply them in the field. Absolutely and relatively, fewer captives are mistreated and fewer civilians die than in the past. Yet, at the same time, the US’s military operations have become more expansive in scope and perpetual in time by virtue of these very facts. Continue reading...
by Oliver Laughland in New Orleans and Bridge City, L on (#5NZDJ)
Residents grapple with damaged buildings and widespread power outages – but find reasons to be thankfulAs the sun rose over the city of New Orleans, the streets quiet but for the crunch of detritus under foot, residents in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward awoke to assess the damage.This neighbourhood bore some of the worst scars of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when New Orleans’s levee system failed and submerged the Lower Ninth in a storey of water, sweeping away lives and livelihoods. Continue reading...
The 20-year US military presence in Afghanistan is over. The head of US Central Command, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, announced just after midnight Tuesday morning, 31 August, that the last flight out of Kabul was 'now clearing the airspace above Afghanistan'. 'Tonight’s withdrawal signifies both the end of the military component of the evacuation, but also the end of the nearly 20-year mission that began in Afghanistan shortly after September 11 2001,' he said.
Celebratory shots rang out in Kabul as the United States completed the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan, ending 20 years of war that culminated in the militant Taliban's return to power. Footage from inside the city in the early hours of Tuesday morning showed loud gunfire ringing out, lighting up the skyline as Taliban fighters fired into the sky to mark the end of two decades of US military presence. Video released by the Taliban shows Taliban fighters walking through Kabul airport after the US forces had left.
Suspects, including alleged mastermind Hambali, appear in military court 18 years after attack, in case complicated by evidence tainted by CIA tortureThe alleged Bali bomber Hambali has appeared in court at the Guantánamo detention centre along with two Malaysians on charges that include murder, conspiracy and terrorism.The Indonesian Hambali – real name Encep Nurjaman – was a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a south-east Asian militant group with ties to al-Qaida. The US government says he recruited militants, including the two Malaysians, Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep Nurjaman, for jihadist operations. Continue reading...
Hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums ‘at the edge of crisis capacity’Two Oregon counties hit hard by Covid-19 are running out of space to hold bodies amid an intense surge in cases that is overwhelming the state’s healthcare system, forcing authorities to request refrigerated trucks to help handle the overflow.In Josephine county, located in the state’s south-west, the local hospital is exceeding its body storage capacity and the area’s five funeral homes and three crematoriums are “at the edge of crisis capacity daily”, the county emergency manager told the state last week. Meanwhile, Tillamook county, on Oregon’s north-west coast, reported that its sole funeral home “is now consistently at or exceeding their capacity” of nine bodies. Continue reading...
Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood turn to justices in final bid to block near-total banTexas abortion providers are asking the US supreme court to block a near-total abortion ban that allows any individual the right to sue an abortion provider who violates the extreme law, a final effort to stop the unprecedented measure from taking effect on Wednesday.Signed into law by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, in May, Senate bill 8 bars abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected – typically around six weeks – and offers no exceptions for rape or incest. Continue reading...
The Pentagon has said it is investigating reports of civilian casualties from a drone strike on Sunday in Kabul, but is 'not in a position to dispute' accounts from the scene of nine people from one family being killed, including seven children.US military officials continued to insist however that the strike hit an Islamic State car bomb, pointing to 'secondary explosions' at the scene.That conflicted with reports from Kabul, that the targeted vehicle belonged to a civilian and that children were in it when it was struck by a missile from a US drone.Initial reports said at least 10 people were killed, nine from the same family, who lived on the street where the attack happened, adding to the bloodshed and chaos of the last days of the 20-year US military presence.Among the dead were three two-year-olds, two three-year-olds and two 10-year-olds, according to reports from Kabul
Pen Farthing got his animals out. But the evacuation is a gift to extremists who claim the UK holds foreign lives in contemptAs the gates of hell closed on Kabul, they were among the last to make it out. They landed in the early hours of Sunday morning, to a hero’s welcome from some, and shamed silence from others. For this was a planeload not of human souls – those desperate Afghans who had huddled knee-deep in sewage for days outside the airport in hopes of being saved – but of cats and dogs.The Ministry of Defence confirmed, through audibly gritted teeth, that the private plane chartered to bring back former soldier turned animal rescuer Paul “Pen” Farthing and his menagerie of strays had been “assisted” through the airport by British troops in the final shambolic hours of the retreat from Kabul – even as human beings who had put their trust in the western forces they worked alongside were being abandoned to their fate. Continue reading...
Our global reputation is in tatters. The UK needs soft power more than ever, yet everywhere the Tories are trashing itAfter humiliation, here ends hubris and surely the “global Britain” delusion. No more fatuous boasting, no more “world-beating” and “world-leading”, but time for an honest audit of who we are, what we can do, and what we plainly can’t.Holed below the waterline, Britain has done itself incalculable reputational damage in recent years. Rescuing Afghan dogs and cats may stand as a global emblem of barking mad Britain. John Casson, a recent ambassador to Egypt, sorrowfully tweets his lifetime Foreign Office goals: leading in the EU; freeing young Arabs from authoritarians; being impactful not transactional in development; and leaving Afghanistan in good shape. All these have failed. Continue reading...
• Assassin is serving a life sentence in California prison• Parole board ‘made a grievous error’ in recommending releaseFormer congressman Joseph P Kennedy II, the oldest son of Robert F Kennedy, has denounced the possible parole of Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of killing his father in California in 1968.Related: Rory Kennedy: ‘In our family there was no tolerance for being a victim’ Continue reading...
A short video clip captured by the crew of Captain John Boats and posted to Facebook shows the apex predators, one estimated to be at least 18ft (5.5 metres) long, devouring what whale expert Peter Corkeron called 'the biggest smorgasbord a shark could ever dream of'.A decomposing carcass of a year-old humpback calf floating in the waters of the Stellwagen Bank national marine sanctuary turned into a camera-ready moment, when two large great whites showed up and started feasting on the remains.Over the next two days, eight great whites arrived along with blue sharks and numerous species of seabird, according to researchers funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
It’s understandable that players like Javier Baez don’t enjoy being jeered. But clapping back at his own fanbase is spectacularly unwiseOne of the oldest debates in sports is whether or not fans should boo their own players. On Sunday, several New York Mets introduced an unexpected new element into that debate. During Sunday’s win over the Washington Nationals, Javier Baez, Francisco Lindor and Kevin Pillar gave the thumbs down signal to fans, many of whom have expressed their displeasure with a team that recently lost 12 out of 14 games.“When we don’t get success, we’re going to get booed,” Baez explained. “So, they are going to get booed when we get success.” Continue reading...
The fault lies with western democracy at its most arrogant and interventionistWho can we blame? There must be someone. When disaster lies all around, democracy craves a culprit, someone to carry the can. This past weekend has seen an orgy of blaming: of Boris Johnson, Joe Biden, Dominic Raab (Britain’s foreign secretary), his ambassadors, Nato and the west generally, not to mention George Bush and Tony Blair. Afghanistan was supposed to be the “good” intervention, the one that worked. Yet the “nation” we spent 20 years building has suddenly collapsed. Where are the architects?Victory has many parents, defeat is an orphan. Nothing looked as lonely this past weekend as “Afghan nation-building”. But whereas tyrants who fail can be toppled, democracy rightly diffuses responsibility. It is all very well accusing Biden or Johnson or their predecessors. We elected them. When things went well, the west trumpeted its values and patted itself on the back. It was so evidently superior. Continue reading...
by Stuart Goodwin, Daniel Harris, Emma Kemp and Geoff on (#5NXYP)
Felix Streng took sprint final gold but Jonnie Peacock shared bronze after a drum-tight finish on another dramatic day in Tokyo5.17pm BSTRelated: Jonnie Peacock shares Paralympic T64 100m bronze after remarkable dead heatRelated: Strides made but stigmas remain: Japan hesitant in embracing ParalympicsRelated: Ex-China champion Lei Lina snaps Australia’s Paralympics table tennis gold droughtRelated: Ellie Robinson hints at retirement but insists ‘this is a triumph, not a defeat’Related: Tokyo Paralympics 2020: day six – in picturesRelated: Paterson Pine wins archery battle of Britain before claiming Paralympic gold Related: Tokyo 2020 Paralympics briefing: 27th heaven for Perales, first Sri Lanka gold3.16pm BSTHewett and Reid are through to the wheelchair tennis semi-finals. They closed out victory over their Belgian opponents 6-2, 6-2 and the British top seeds now take their place in the last four.That wraps up our live coverage of the day six action from Tokyo. We’ll leave you with Paul MacInnes’s report from what is indisputably going to be one of the highpoints of the whole thing. Thanks for joining us, and hey, let’s do this again on day seven. Good day!Related: Jonnie Peacock shares Paralympic T64 100m bronze after remarkable dead heat Continue reading...
• Rebecca Firlit, 39, refused to get coronavirus vaccine• Hearing was ‘supposed to be about expenses and child support’A judge in Illinois revoked a mother’s right to visit her 11-year-old son because she refused to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.Related: Rand Paul: ‘Hatred for Trump’ blocks Covid study of horse drug ivermectin Continue reading...
Kentucky senator tells constituents he is ‘in the middle’ on use of deworming medication FDA has implored Americans not to takeFederal researchers will not objectively study ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19, the Kentucky senator Rand Paul claimed, because “hatred for Donald Trump” has tainted their view of those who say the drug used to deworm horses can aid the fight against the pandemic.Related: Florida radio host who called himself ‘Mr Anti-Vax’ dies of Covid-19 Continue reading...
One person has died as Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US, knocked out power to all of New Orleans, reversed the flow of the Mississippi River and blew roofs off buildings across Louisiana. Across the state, more than a million households were without power, and the outage in New Orleans had left the city more vulnerable to flooding – 16 years after Hurricane Katrina caused devastation.
They have become virtually incapable of seeing any solution to any foreign problem that does not include the barrel of a gunSome of America’s most experienced diplomats, politicians and former generals have been saturating the airwaves in the aftermath of the Taliban’s capture of Kabul issuing dire warnings of what may come next. Many are advocating, even in this final hour, to abandon the withdrawal and return to combat against the Taliban. Such alarmist rhetoric from our senior-most figures does much to explain why America has failed so spectacularly in this war: some of the most influential voices over the past 20 years posses an unhealthy and irrational lust to use war as the first option to solve every foreign problem.Before 2001, Americans generally thought they were immune from foreign attack. Those beliefs were shattered with the shocking images of the twin towers falling and the Pentagon smoldering on September 11th. In the aftermath, fear and anger descended over the US population. Political leaders and senior military commanders sought to look and sound tough to calm a jittery people. Continue reading...
One of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US has knocked out power to all of New Orleans. Plus rockets fired at Kabul airport before US troop withdrawal
From some of the chatter among parents, you’d think that sending children back into classrooms was a risk with no upsideThere are another two weeks on the clock until state schools go back in New York, and the temperature around Covid discourse is changing. Teachers will be required to be vaccinated; the kids will be masked; and random Covid testing will continue into the autumn. Meanwhile, the test positivity rate in the city hovers at about 4% (in schools, in June, that figure was 0.03%, confirming earlier suppositions that schools aren’t big sites of transmission) and the vaccination rate among adults, at 70%, is among the highest in the country. Still, from some of the chatter on parenting websites and social media, you would think that sending kids back into classrooms constituted a risk of impossible proportions, with no plausible upside whatsoever.The anxiety is real, though catastrophising is also an indulgence. Like hate-reading and unvanquishable grievance, doom-mongering is a guilty pleasure, one that delivers concrete psychological benefits. By deciding to believe that things are, have been, and always will be terrible, we absolve ourselves both of the burden of making plans, and of offering much of an account of what we’ve been up to. In the case of Covid, this low-key impulse towards the worst-case scenario is magnified by the much greater political forces that attend every position in relation to Covid. Anti-vaxxers and anti-mask campaigners are, clearly, the victims of various delusions, but their fiercest opponents can be delusional, too. If, to prove how pro-science, pro-teacher safety or anti-anti-vax you really are, you are willing to make the case that wearing a mask has zero effect on a child’s ability to learn, for example, then you are probably motivated as much by politics as public health. Continue reading...
The trainer would have turned 100 this week. His gentle cool helped many fighters reach their potential as world championsOf all of boxing’s trainers there’s arguably none greater than Angelo Dundee. Monday would have been his 100th birthday, but the man who coached Muhammad Ali in all-but-two of his fights also had qualities away from the ring worthy of remembrance. For, like all great cornermen, the advice that helped hone 15 American world champions across six decades was maybe at its best when applied to the world outside of the ropes.After serving in World War Two as an aircraft inspector, Dundee’s boxing obsession drew him from his native Philadelphia to the famous Stillman’s Gym in Manhattan to reimagine his own identity. Continue reading...
Video footage caught on a locked-off camera at a dock in Port Fourchon, Louisiana shows the immense power of Hurricane Ida as it made landfall off the US south coast. The category 4 storm moved through the state northward, causing structure damage and downed trees.
Nobody wants to play vaccine cop but the aggressive attitude of some unvaccinated patrons is making a tough situation worseThere are plenty of vaccines available but, as it turns out, not everyone wants to get vaccinated. And those that choose not to – for whatever reason – are creating headaches for countless small business owners around the country who are trying to recover from what has been one of their worst years ever.And now the situation is about to get even worse. Continue reading...
In the ego-riddled world of rock’n’roll, the Rolling Stones drummer was the model of a grown-upI was fortunate enough to meet Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones drummer who died on Tuesday, interviewing him in 2000 for one of his beloved jazz projects. In the interview, I managed to call George Harrison “the bass player of the Beatles”. Still, I got some things right, writing: “Charlie’s the Stone who is so universally well liked that he commands instant respect without trying.”It soon became apparent when his death was announced that the response was about honouring a great musician – the rock’n’roll legend, the lifelong jazz aficionado – but also a lot more. There was the standard emotional outpouring, the shock and dismay, that sense of grief-ownership that hits you: “Oh no, not Charlie!” However irrational such feelings are (Watts was 80, not 20), it nevertheless stings when one of “your own” artists takes their final bow. But something else was noteworthy: the reaction, immense and heartfelt, was also courteous, genuine, adult. Continue reading...
Listening to Joe Biden’s words as the US left Afghanistan was to hear echoes of George W Bush from 2001. Is this a crisis destined to repeat itself?Many who heard President Biden’s pledge to exact revenge for the killing of 13 US Marines in an Islamic State suicide bombing in Kabul last week will have been struck by how closely they resembled the words of George W Bush almost exactly 20 years ago.“I want justice,” Bush then told a nation traumatised by 3,000 deaths in the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. “And there’s an old poster out west that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’.” Bush is no longer president and Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks whose face was on the putative poster, died in a US special forces raid 10 years ago. But the rhetoric remains the same. “We will hunt you down and make you pay,” Biden said on Thursday. Such language is unavoidable for the leader of a nation that retains and promotes a “frontier culture”, as a veteran CIA official told me last week, but it signals much more too. Continue reading...
Retreat from Afghanistan gives a clear signal of a US shift on counter-terrorism that leaves the rest of the world to fend for itselfIt is, perhaps, dreadfully apt that an invasion which began 20 years ago as a counter-terrorism operation has ended in the horror of a mass casualty terrorist attack. The US-led attempt to destroy al-Qaida and rescue Afghanistan from the Taliban was undercut by the Iraq war, which spawned Islamic State. Now the circle is complete as an Afghan IS offshoot emerges as America’s new nemesis.The Kabul airport atrocity shows just how difficult it is to break the cycle of violence, vengeance and victimisation. Joe Biden’s swift vow to hunt down the perpetrators and “make them pay” presumably means US combat forces will again be in action in Afghanistan soon. If the past is any guide, mistakes will be made, civilians will die, local communities will be antagonised. Result: more terrorists. Continue reading...
The mountain lion, which dragged the boy across his front lawn, was later killed by wildlife officersA mountain lion that attacked a 5-year-old boy in southern California has been shot and killed by a wildlife officer, authorities say.The 65-pound (30kg) mountain lion attacked the boy while he was playing near his house on Thursday in Calabasas and “dragged him about 45 yards” across the front lawn, said Captain Patrick Foy, a spokesman with the California department of fish and wildlife, on Saturday. Continue reading...
