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Migrant workers ‘fear for their safety’ after deaths on Diego Garcia
Sun, 09 Jun 2024 08:00:12 GMT
Workers for US defence contractor KBR concerned after colleagues die on island with no hospital-grade health facility
Migrant workers employed by the US defence contractor KBR on the British-owned island of Diego Garcia have expressed concerns for their safety after the recent deaths of two of their colleagues, the Observer has learned.
The most recent death on Diego Garcia, which is host to a strategic American military base in the British Indian Ocean Territory, came on 5 January. Relemay Fabula Gan, 41, from the Philippines, died after suffering a collapsed lung following several weeks of illness after a Covid diagnosis, her family said.
Continue reading...US wants show of strength with planned sanctions for helping Russia, but group will also discuss migration, Middle East and AI
A dramatic expansion of entities exposed to US sanctions for helping the Russian economy and an EU-led $50bn loan to ease the financial burden on Ukraine will be at the centre of discussions at a summit of the leaders of wealthy G7 nations in Puglia, Italy, starting on Thursday.
The leaders, facing unprecedented challenges from discontented electorates, will be under heightened pressure to provide concrete results as their three days of discussion range across an interlinked agenda encompassing the war in Ukraine, migration, Africa, the Middle East, the climate crisis and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).
Continue reading...The tariffs are aimed at countering the alleged state support handed to China’s car manufacturing industry
• EU to put tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese EVs as trade war looms
The EU has told Beijing that it plans to impose new tariffs on imports of Chinese electric vehicles into the trading bloc, potentially triggering a trade war.
So what are the details, how will it affect the industry and will the price of cars on the dealership forecourt be affected?
Continue reading...Six years in the making, jaw-dropping new film The Grab shows a secret scramble by governments and private firms to buy up global resources
In 2013, the US food conglomerate Smithfield Foods – the country’s largest pork producer and maker of the famous holiday ham – was sold to a Hong Kong-based company called WH Group in a deal worth $7.1bn. It was the largest ever Chinese acquisition of an American company; virtually overnight, WH Group, formerly called Shuanghui International, gained ownership of nearly one in four American pigs. Such a huge business deal did not go unnoticed; news coverage and an eventual congressional hearing questioned the sale with a mix of good, old-fashioned American xenophobia and reasonable concern for the nation’s food supply. But in the eyes of most people, and certainly most American consumers, the Smithfield Foods sale remained just that: a one-off business deal, if they were aware of it at all.
For Nate Halverson, a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) out of Emeryville, California, the Smithfield deal was the first point in a much wider and concerning pattern – though the company’s CEO, Larry Pope, assured Congress that the Chinese government was not behind WH Group’s purchase, Halverson found evidence to the contrary on a reporting trip to the company’s headquarters: a secret document, marked not for distribution in the United States, detailing every dollar of the deal, and the state-run Bank of China’s “social responsibility” in backing it for “national strategy”.
Continue reading...The three British judges still on territory’s top bench under pressure to quit after two others stepped down last week
Pressure is increasing on the last remaining British judges who sit in Hong Kong’s top court to resign, after two senior justices stepped down last week because of the “political situation” in the former British colony.
Jonathan Sumption and Lawrence Collins resigned as non-permanent overseas judges from Hong Kong’s court of final appeal on Thursday. Collins cited the “political situation in Hong Kong” in a brief statement about his departure.
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Wang Wang and Fu Ni have not conceived during more than a decade at Adelaide Zoo, sparking speculation they may be replaced
Australia’s giant pandas – having failed to breed – could be swapped for a new pair.
Chinese premier Li Qiang is expected to make an announcement about the future of the rare bears when he visits South Australia on the weekend.
Continue reading...Peeping pooches, five-year-old photobombers and a guest appearance from the Fab Four all feature in Shin Noguchi’s vibrant photography
Continue reading...The industry that has traditionally powered about a quarter of GDP has been in a downward spiral that policymakers have struggled to halt
All across China, from Beijing in the north, to Shenzhen in the south, millions of newly built homes stand empty and unwanted. There were nearly 391m sq metres of unsold residential property in China as of April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That is the equivalent of Manchester and Birmingham combined – and then some – sitting as vacant, unwanted property.
This glut of idle property has caused a headache for the government, shaken the world’s second largest economy and raised tensions over the purpose of housebuilding in a nation where property investment had been viewed as a safe bet.
Continue reading...The conviction of peaceful pro-democracy activists is another shameful moment in the ongoing crackdown
Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “canaries in the mine”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”.
That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong Kong courts and an oppressive political environment where judges are urged to demonstrate “patriotism”.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...First ball! Arshdeep send down a cracker that nips in, an unmoving Jahangir obliges by letting the ball thump in on the knee roll.
Blue, blue skies as the players line up . The camera zips along the line-up – hands strictly by their sides as they sing along. Arms down for the US too – making Pakistan the only hand on heart during anthem team I’ve seen this WC.
Continue reading...OVO Hydro, Glasgow
The chameleonic rapper and singer plays it both cocky and cute as she squares up to the crowd and bravely ditches some of her biggest hits
‘I’m a puppet, I’m a sheep, I’m a …” Doja Cat pauses, coyly. Her frenzied audience fills in the rest: “Cash cow!” A natural provocateur, the LA rapper and singer has a complex relationship to her pop star status, her megahit discography and the fans who stream it. Demons, a seething, brass-heavy rap single from her latest album Scarlet, posits all-conquering success as a kind of immunity from criticism, yet as she lists her victories (“I just bought a limousine”) she theatrically rolls her eyes.
Doja is a contrarian, but one with an unusually focused vision. She hangs off a rope made out of twisted blond hair, like a freaky Indiana Jones, on a stage which is half UFO, half Yeti: gleaming metal walkways, risers draped in more fake hair, and a ludicrous amount of pyrotechnics. Snaking lines of fire whip left and right, large flames blasting upwards when she cocks a finger during early single Tia Tamera.
Continue reading...Jin has finished his stint in South Korea’s military but group won’t be able to reform until RM, Jimin, Jungkook, J-hope and V are discharged in 2025
Jin, the oldest member of the K-pop supergroup BTS, has completed his military service in South Korea, although their legions of fans around the world will still have to wait at least a year until all seven artists are reunited.
The star, who in December 2022 became the first member of the group to begin 18 months of military service, emerged on Wednesday from the 5th Army Infantry Division’s base in northern Yeoncheon province, 60km north of Seoul, to be greeted by fellow bandmates J-hope, RM, V, Jungkook and Jimin.
Continue reading...Modi becomes second leader in Indian history to win three consecutive terms, but opposition leaders snub ceremony
Narendra Modi has been sworn in as prime minister of India for a historic third term, ushering in a new era of coalition politics for India’s strongman leader.
The ceremony, which took place at the presidential palace on Sunday evening, marked Modi’s return to power, only the second leader in India’s history to win three consecutive terms.
Continue reading...Campaigners say election shows rejection of ‘hate politics’ after marginalised groups vote to deny BJP a majority
It was widely described as the week that India’s beleaguered democracy was pulled back from the brink. As the election results rolled in on Tuesday, all predictions and polls were defied as Narendra Modi lost his outright majority for the first time in a decade while the opposition re-emerged as a legitimate political force. On Sunday evening, Modi will be sworn in as prime minister yet many believe his power and mandate stands diminished.
For one opposition politician in particular, the humbling of the strongman prime minister was a moment to savour. Late last year, Mahua Moitra, one of the most outspoken critics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), found herself unceremoniously expelled from parliament and kicked out of her bungalow, after what she described as a “political witch-hunt” for daring to stand up to Modi.
Continue reading...The US Justice Department has dismantled an enormous botnet:
According to an indictment unsealed on May 24, from 2014 through July 2022, Wang and others are alleged to have created and disseminated malware to compromise and amass a network of millions of residential Windows computers worldwide. These devices were associated with more than 19 million unique IP addresses, including 613,841 IP addresses located in the United States. Wang then generated millions of dollars by offering cybercriminals access to these infected IP addresses for a fee...
Animal welfare groups have called for better regulation of the sale of wildlife after a fire swept through the pet zone of one of Bangkok’s biggest markets
Animal welfare experts have called for a crackdown on the sale of wildlife in Thailand, after a fire swept through the pet zone of Bangkok’s most famous outdoor market, killing more than 1,000 animals.
Puppies, cats, fish, snakes, swans, cockatoos and rabbits kept inside cages were all reportedly killed in the blaze, which began early on Tuesday morning and burned through about 1,300 square metres of the Chatuchak Weekend Market.
Continue reading...Ian Sample hears from Linda Geddes about her recent trip to the Netherlands to try cultivated meat sausages, courtesy of the company Meatable. Advocates say that cultivated meat could be the future of sustainable and ethical meat production. Linda explains how they’re made, how their carbon footprint compares with traditional meat and most importantly … what they taste like!
Read more from Linda Geddes on her trip to the Netherlands
Continue reading...Microsoft recently caught state-backed hackers using its generative AI tools to help with their attacks. In the security community, the immediate questions weren’t about how hackers were using the tools (that was utterly predictable), but about how Microsoft figured it out. The natural conclusion was that Microsoft was spying on its AI users, looking for harmful hackers at work.
Some pushed back at characterizing Microsoft’s actions as “spying.” Of course cloud service providers monitor what users are doing. And because we expect Microsoft to be doing something like this, it’s not fair to call it spying...
Muhammad Yunus tells the Guardian charges against him are politically motivated, and expresses concern about personal attacks from politicians
The Nobel peace laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus has said that years of fighting what he calls “dirty” politically motivated attacks on his work to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh have made life “totally miserable”.
Yunus told the Guardian he had come under 20 years of pressure from the Bangladeshi government for his work, which is credited with improving the lives of millions of poor people, particularly women.
Continue reading...Kuo Chiu, known as KC to his friends, teaches urban design at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He’s also one of many of the country's citizens who practises rifle skills in his spare time, in case of a Chinese invasion.
The population of Taiwan has long grown familiar with Beijing’s pledge to one day ‘unify’ what it claims is a breakaway province. But recently, there has been a significant increase in aggressive and intimidatory acts.
Taiwan’s 160,000 active military personnel are vastly outnumbered by China’s 2 million-member armed forces, leading many civilians to turn to voluntary medical and combat training to protect themselves.
The Guardian's video team spent time with KC to see how he is preparing
Continue reading...Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.
Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
We know turbulence is a common part of flying – but are some routes more prone? And where is it the worst? Turbulence is the leading cause of in-flight injuries to crew and passengers and after the fatal Singapore Airlines incident and injuries to passengers above Turkey on a Qatar Airways flight, you might be wondering if flights are about to get bumpier. Incidents of severe turbulence are on the rise – increasing by 55% between 1979 and 2020 – and the climate crisis is thought to be a responsible factor
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Continue reading...Ban Khun Samut Chin, a coastal village in Samut Prakan province, Thailand, has been slowly swallowed by the sea over the past few decades. This has led to the relocation of the school and many homes, resulting in a dwindling population. Currently, there are only four students attending the school, often leaving just one in each classroom. The village has experienced severe coastal erosion, causing 1.1-2km (0.5-1.2 miles) of shoreline to disappear since the mid-1950s
Continue reading...Ustinov Studio, Bath
Deborah Warner’s staged version of Winterreise is a powerful and deeply moving piece of theatre
Schubert completed his great song-cycle Winterreise in what was effectively his own last winter; he would be dead just a year later. In this setting of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller, depicting a man rejected in love and his painful journey across a freezing, stormy landscape, both actual and metaphorical, the singer’s challenge is exploring that balance between vocal and psychological elements.
By his own admission, tenor Ian Bostridge’s engagement with the cycle has long been obsessive. Now, he and pianist Julius Drake – singer as ego and pianist as id, Bostridge’s definition of the relationship – have collaborated with Deborah Warner in creating a staged version and it seems as if all their previous experience – 100-plus performances, different recordings, a film as well as a book – has flowed logically into this powerful and deeply moving piece of theatre.
Continue reading...Billie Eilish’s third is a triumph, Shabaka goes woodwind and Yunchan Lim makes the most thrilling piano debut of the decade … here are our music team’s picks of the best LPs from the first half of the year
Being called “overproduced” is generally a criticism but BMTH make it a virtue on this ridiculously high-intensity album. The glitched-up production reflects a fiendishly intricate digital world, while frontman Oli Sykes’ emotions are more histrionic – and affecting – than ever. At a time when so many bands are content with tinkering at the edges of what’s been done before, it’s bracing to hear BMTH be so relentlessly ambitious and fused to the present moment. Read the full review. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Continue reading...Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his Manchester United advisers were minded to sack the Dutchman but in the end another trophy changed their minds
The documentary of how Manchester United’s Sir Jim Ratcliffe-led season review ended with Erik ten Hag keeping his job as manager would show a forensic, painstaking process, according to a high-ranking club executive. The non in-house version might differ as it would show Ratcliffe and his advisers being minded to sack the Dutchman before a number of factors ultimately persuaded them that Ten Hag should remain in post.
Ten Hag probably stopped contemplating clearing his United desk after Ratcliffe’s beauty parade of Thomas Tuchel, Kieran McKenna (who signed a lucrative new contract with Ipswich), Mauricio Pochettino, Roberto De Zerbi, Thomas Frank, Graham Potter, Gary O’Neil, Paulo Fonseca and Gareth Southgate as potential replacements ended with them all judged less handsome than the incumbent.
Continue reading...Co-president of the KlimaSeniorinnen says declaration is betrayal of older women
Swiss politicians have rejected a landmark climate ruling from the European court of human rights, raising fears that other polluting countries may follow suit.
A panel of Strasbourg judges ruled in April that Switzerland had violated the human rights of older women through weak climate policies that leave them more vulnerable to heatwaves. Activists hailed the judgment as a breakthrough because it leaves all members of the Council of Europe exposed to legal challenges for sluggish efforts to clean up carbon-intensive economies.
Continue reading...The three British judges still on territory’s top bench under pressure to quit after two others stepped down last week
Pressure is increasing on the last remaining British judges who sit in Hong Kong’s top court to resign, after two senior justices stepped down last week because of the “political situation” in the former British colony.
Jonathan Sumption and Lawrence Collins resigned as non-permanent overseas judges from Hong Kong’s court of final appeal on Thursday. Collins cited the “political situation in Hong Kong” in a brief statement about his departure.
Continue reading...The conviction of peaceful pro-democracy activists is another shameful moment in the ongoing crackdown
Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “canaries in the mine”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”.
That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong Kong courts and an oppressive political environment where judges are urged to demonstrate “patriotism”.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...
The president has ruled out pardoning his son, but White House press secretary said it was unclear whether Biden would intervene to lessen a sentence length
The White House has not ruled out a possible commutation for Hunter Biden after a jury found him guilty on three federal gun crimes.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, speaking to reporters on Wednesday on Air Force One, said:
As we all know, the sentencing hasn’t even been scheduled yet.
Of course he respects that, and we all do, and we’ve all talked about it ad nauseam.
Continue reading...Six years in the making, jaw-dropping new film The Grab shows a secret scramble by governments and private firms to buy up global resources
In 2013, the US food conglomerate Smithfield Foods – the country’s largest pork producer and maker of the famous holiday ham – was sold to a Hong Kong-based company called WH Group in a deal worth $7.1bn. It was the largest ever Chinese acquisition of an American company; virtually overnight, WH Group, formerly called Shuanghui International, gained ownership of nearly one in four American pigs. Such a huge business deal did not go unnoticed; news coverage and an eventual congressional hearing questioned the sale with a mix of good, old-fashioned American xenophobia and reasonable concern for the nation’s food supply. But in the eyes of most people, and certainly most American consumers, the Smithfield Foods sale remained just that: a one-off business deal, if they were aware of it at all.
For Nate Halverson, a journalist with the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) out of Emeryville, California, the Smithfield deal was the first point in a much wider and concerning pattern – though the company’s CEO, Larry Pope, assured Congress that the Chinese government was not behind WH Group’s purchase, Halverson found evidence to the contrary on a reporting trip to the company’s headquarters: a secret document, marked not for distribution in the United States, detailing every dollar of the deal, and the state-run Bank of China’s “social responsibility” in backing it for “national strategy”.
Continue reading...Three US nationals on trial in Democratic Republic of Congo over events in May described as an attempted coup
More than 50 people, including three US citizens and a Belgian, have gone on trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo over what the army has described as an attempted coup.
The actions of the three Americans were “punishable by death”, Judge Freddy Ehume told the military court in the DRC capital, Kinshasa.
Continue reading...In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, revealed the tactics and traits that help him face the daily frustrations of leading a country at war for more than two years.
Within a ceremonial room inside Kyiv’s presidential compound, Zelenskiy spoke for nearly an hour with a Guardian team, including the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. The interview took place during perhaps the toughest time for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Russia is on the offensive in Kharkiv, an advance that follows months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities
Continue reading...Paddington in Peru, which sees Olivia Colman, Antonio Banderas and Emily Mortimer join the cast, sees the beloved bear travel to Peru to visit Aunt Lucy
Break out the marmalade sandwiches: the first trailer for the third Paddington movie has been released.
Paddington in Peru, due for release in November, sees the duffel-coated bear travel to South America to pay a visit to Aunt Lucy along with the Brown family. But on arrival he’s told by a guitar-playing nun who runs the home for retired bears that Lucy is missing in action on a scientific mission.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Figures reveal that opposition leader traveled at taxpayer’s expense to event sponsored by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting
Opposition leader Peter Dutton used a taxpayer-funded private jet to travel to a News Corp event in Tamworth, claiming $23,000 in travel expenses to speak at the summit where he criticised the government’s response to the cost-of-living crisis.
Despite multiple flight connections daily between Canberra and Tamworth, it’s understood Dutton had a pre-existing commitment, meaning no commercial flight could get him to the Daily Telegraph’s annual “bush summit” in August 2023 in time.
Continue reading...Plans for the £1.9bn Smithfield scheme include a park that is smaller than a football pitch, falling short of the council’s own guidelines
Campaigners are warning that a major development project that will be approved by Birmingham city council falls far short of the city’s own guidelines for open green space.
The £1.9bn Smithfield scheme will bring 3,500 new homes as well as restaurants and offices to 17 hectares (42 acres) of fenced brownfield land in the centre of the city. But the new park – Smithfield Park – will be only 0.8 hectares, smaller than a football pitch.
Continue reading...Former Scotland winger on being an ‘accidental footballer’, Russian culture and his country’s chances at Euro 2024
An afternoon with Pat Nevin unfolds like a travelogue. The former Scotland international waits for me inside Berwick-upon-Tweed station and, in a moment of peak Nevin purity, he is reading a memoir written by Simon Raymonde, the bass player of his favourite band, the Cocteau Twins. The book is great, apparently, and sparks a stream of amusing anecdotes about a time when Nevin was considered a “weirdo” as a Chelsea and Everton footballer interested in music, books, film and politics.
We drive out of England, and into Scotland, while the 60-year-old Nevin talks about his love of travel and his relish for another European Championship, where he will work as an analyst for BBC Radio 5 Live in Germany. The tournament begins on Friday and Nevin will be there as Germany face Scotland in the opening match in Munich.
Continue reading...Party has vowed to end sewage scandal if it wins power, but experts say it will have to act quickly and ambitiously
Since the UK’s general election was called, the Labour party has been seeking to capitalise on voters’ fury over the sewage filling England’s rivers and seas.
The debt-ridden, leaking, polluting water industry, owned largely by foreign investment firms, private equity and pension funds, has overseen decades of underinvestment and the large-scale dumping of raw sewage into rivers. It has become one of the touchstone issues of this election, with voters across the political spectrum angry at the polluting of waterways treasured by local communities. Groups have sprung up to look after rivers and lakes; protests pop up most weekends along the coast.
Continue reading...Whether it’s holidaying domestically or heading to a destination with a cooler climate, we’d like to hear about anything you’re doing differently this year
As the northern hemisphere enters the summer, we want to hear from people who are planning to have a different type of summer holiday this year.
Are you visiting a cooler climate than usual? Or holidaying domestically when you go abroad most summers, or vice versa?
Continue reading...This cheap politics of envy distracts from the country’s most pressing issue: inequality. To survive, Tories must face reality
Rishi Sunak looked relieved as he took the final press question from a local reporter after the launch of his Conservative manifesto yesterday. It came after a torrid previous week, which saw the prime minister accused of lying about Labour tax plans and having to apologise for unforgivably missing crucial D-day commemoration services. You might have thought the manifesto would include some surprising, eye-catching policies. But in many respects, it was a more traditional Conservative party manifesto than some had expected – it contained tax cuts, promises to pensioners and the customary pro-business language.
Yet one of the challenges that Sunak’s Conservative party faces is that for the first time in decades, it now finds itself with no clear political territory of its own. For the past several years it has travelled down a political cul-de-sac and is now at a political dead end. In pandering to Ukip, then the Brexit party, and now Reform, it has ceded the political centre ground to the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, alienating millions of voters turned off by the constant culture warring.
Continue reading...British Museum will host treasures from Samarkand in a bid to dispel cliches of camels, spices and bazaars
A monumental six-metre-long wall painting created in the 7th century, and 8th-century ivory figures carved for one of the world’s oldest surviving chess sets, are among treasures set to be seen in Britain for the first time.
The items will travel from the ancient city of Samarkand to the UK for an exhibition opening in September, as part of the first-ever loan from museums in Uzbekistan to the British Museum.
Silk Roads will be at the British Museum from September 26 2024 to February 23 2025. Tickets go on sale on Monday.
Continue reading...Interesting story of breaking the security of the RoboForm password manager in order to recover a cryptocurrency wallet password.
Grand and Bruno spent months reverse engineering the version of the RoboForm program that they thought Michael had used in 2013 and found that the pseudo-random number generator used to generate passwords in that version—and subsequent versions until 2015—did indeed have a significant flaw that made the random number generator not so random. The RoboForm program unwisely tied the random passwords it generated to the date and time on the user’s computer—it determined the computer’s date and time, and then generated passwords that were predictable. If you knew the date and time and other parameters, you could compute any password that would have been generated on a certain date and time in the past...
Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.
Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
Continue reading...Public polling is a critical function of modern political campaigns and movements, but it isn’t what it once was. Recent US election cycles have produced copious postmortems explaining both the successes and the flaws of public polling. There are two main reasons polling fails.
First, nonresponse has skyrocketed. It’s radically harder to reach people than it used to be. Few people fill out surveys that come in the mail anymore. Few people answer their phone when a stranger calls. Pew Research reported that 36% of the people they called in 1997 would talk to them, but only 6% by 2018. Pollsters worldwide have faced similar challenges...
PM has said Sky – once derided by snobs as ‘council house TV’ – was among ‘lots of things’ he went without as a child
While scouring his memory for the “lots of things” he missed out on as a child, Rishi Sunak plumped for Sky TV as his best example of hardship.
But the prime minister, who attended Winchester College boarding school, did not acknowledge the role that snobbery may have played in that choice. As satellite dishes multiplied across the country, Sky was derided by critics as “council house TV” – and many wealthier families demurred from more than four channels.
Continue reading...US wants show of strength with planned sanctions for helping Russia, but group will also discuss migration, Middle East and AI
A dramatic expansion of entities exposed to US sanctions for helping the Russian economy and an EU-led $50bn loan to ease the financial burden on Ukraine will be at the centre of discussions at a summit of the leaders of wealthy G7 nations in Puglia, Italy, starting on Thursday.
The leaders, facing unprecedented challenges from discontented electorates, will be under heightened pressure to provide concrete results as their three days of discussion range across an interlinked agenda encompassing the war in Ukraine, migration, Africa, the Middle East, the climate crisis and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI).
Continue reading...Four vessels, including nuclear-powered submarine and frigate, greeted by sparse crowd upon arrival in Cuba
A fleet of Russian warships has arrived in the bay of Havana, in a visit seen as a show of strength amid tensions with the west over support for Ukraine.
Four vessels, including the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, entered Havana Bay early on Wednesday, where they offered a 21-gun salute that was reciprocated from the battlements of La Cabaña, the fortress where Che Guevara once had his office.
Continue reading...The president has ruled out pardoning his son, but White House press secretary said it was unclear whether Biden would intervene to lessen a sentence length
The White House has not ruled out a possible commutation for Hunter Biden after a jury found him guilty on three federal gun crimes.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, speaking to reporters on Wednesday on Air Force One, said:
As we all know, the sentencing hasn’t even been scheduled yet.
Of course he respects that, and we all do, and we’ve all talked about it ad nauseam.
Continue reading...A lie is a lie, but the president’s support of his son - and of the legal system - has been moving to see
If you didn’t know better, you might think the jury that found Hunter Biden guilty this week knew precisely what they were doing. The evidence against the president’s son – that he lied about his drug use on a firearms form six years ago – was overwhelming, but so too was the impression of a trivial, overegged charge. But, by finding him guilty, the jury in this area of solid Democratic support have potentially done more injury to his father’s political rival than if they had found him not guilty on all counts.
For those of us watching, the entire spectacle has at times been an uncomfortable exercise in flushing out biases. Like the Trump children, Hunter Biden has the demoralised air of a scion struggling to escape his father’s shadow, albeit in a different style. If the Trump boys are chinless dimwits, Hunter has about him the seedy air of a second- or third-tier Hollywood actor, clamped behind aviators and accompanied seemingly everywhere by his much younger wife.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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D-day commemorations have failed to mention equally important turning points in the war, says Prof Colin Green. Plus a letter from Ben Summerskill
The D-day 80th anniversary events were really moving, especially hearing from the veterans who survived. Much has been made of Rishi Sunak’s failure to attend the international event (Furious Tories turn on Rishi Sunak over D-day commemorations snub, 9 June). I was more saddened by the repeated claim in TV programmes that D-day was the turning point of the second world war, without mention of the 27 million Soviets (including Ukrainians) who lost their lives and were ignored in this commemoration.
The eastern front was crucial to defeating Hitler and the Nazi armies well before 1944. Moscow in 1941, Stalingrad in 1942, three battles for Kharkov in 1941, 1942 and 1943, the great tank battle of Kursk (1943) and the siege of Leningrad (1941 to 1944) decimated the best German troops and were, collectively, the war’s true turning points. How Erwin Rommel would have welcomed defending Normandy with just a fraction of the 152 German divisions (3 million men) that invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. I feel great sadness for all deaths, including on D-day, and wake up every morning well aware that I owe my happy life to so many courageous men and women who gave their lives or were injured.
Prof Colin Green
Harrow, London
This summer is something else, a three-month run crammed with colour, drama, escapism. We’ll be there for every moment
As the gloom of June gives way to the gloom of July, August and September, it is worth taking a second to consult the schedule. Because an unusually epic summer of global sport is well under way.
This is quite a thing. From Real Madrid’s triumph in the Champions League final at Wembley this month through to the women’s cricket T20 World Cup in October, we’re in the midst of a non-stop sporting bloom.
Continue reading...The livewire Albania head coach on playing down his past, his work ethic and Euro 2024’s toughest group
“I never stay calm,” Sylvinho says midway through an afternoon that, in the best way possible, bears out his point. “The players know it, the federation knows it, the president knows it. Christmas party, end of year, normally you restart work in January … but the whole time all I’m thinking is how we can go through. How can we play against Italy? How can we play against Croatia? What will we do against the Spanish?”
It is an understandable preoccupation given Albania, who Sylvinho led to an outstanding qualification for Euro 2024 last year, must face all three over the next fortnight in the tournament’s toughest group. They could not have been dealt a more fiendish hand and it will cause shock waves if they progress. “You have to find a way to reduce the distance between them and us,” he says. “How? You have to work.”
Continue reading...Public polling is a critical function of modern political campaigns and movements, but it isn’t what it once was. Recent US election cycles have produced copious postmortems explaining both the successes and the flaws of public polling. There are two main reasons polling fails.
First, nonresponse has skyrocketed. It’s radically harder to reach people than it used to be. Few people fill out surveys that come in the mail anymore. Few people answer their phone when a stranger calls. Pew Research reported that 36% of the people they called in 1997 would talk to them, but only 6% by 2018. Pollsters worldwide have faced similar challenges...
Former Scotland winger on being an ‘accidental footballer’, Russian culture and his country’s chances at Euro 2024
An afternoon with Pat Nevin unfolds like a travelogue. The former Scotland international waits for me inside Berwick-upon-Tweed station and, in a moment of peak Nevin purity, he is reading a memoir written by Simon Raymonde, the bass player of his favourite band, the Cocteau Twins. The book is great, apparently, and sparks a stream of amusing anecdotes about a time when Nevin was considered a “weirdo” as a Chelsea and Everton footballer interested in music, books, film and politics.
We drive out of England, and into Scotland, while the 60-year-old Nevin talks about his love of travel and his relish for another European Championship, where he will work as an analyst for BBC Radio 5 Live in Germany. The tournament begins on Friday and Nevin will be there as Germany face Scotland in the opening match in Munich.
Continue reading...We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.
This week, from 2021: Much progress has been made in attitudes towards sexual equality and gender identity – but in many places a dramatic backlash by conservative forces has followed.
By Mark Gevisser
Continue reading...Jin has finished his stint in South Korea’s military but group won’t be able to reform until RM, Jimin, Jungkook, J-hope and V are discharged in 2025
Jin, the oldest member of the K-pop supergroup BTS, has completed his military service in South Korea, although their legions of fans around the world will still have to wait at least a year until all seven artists are reunited.
The star, who in December 2022 became the first member of the group to begin 18 months of military service, emerged on Wednesday from the 5th Army Infantry Division’s base in northern Yeoncheon province, 60km north of Seoul, to be greeted by fellow bandmates J-hope, RM, V, Jungkook and Jimin.
Continue reading...Stephen Kwikiriza is one of 11 campaigners against EACOP targeted by authorities in past two weeks, rights group says
A man campaigning against the controversial $5bn (£4bn) east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP) is recovering in hospital after an alleged beating by the Ugandan armed forces in the latest incident in what has been called an “alarming crackdown” on the country’s environmentalists.
Stephen Kwikiriza, who works for Uganda’s Environment Governance Institute (EGI), a non-profit organisation, was abducted in Kampala on 4 June, according to his employer. He was beaten, questioned and then abandoned hundreds of miles from the capital on Sunday evening.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed.
Sydney’s light rail network disrupted today amid industrial action
A reminder for Sydney commuters that the light rail network will be disrupted today amid planned industrial action.
Recent estimates have Australians consuming around 3,300,000 bags of cocaine per year, with every single one of them bought off the black market. There is no way of knowing whether any of them have been cut with deadly substances like fentanyl or nitazene.
We have to acknowledge that the majority of people who use cocaine do so recreationally and there is absolutely no chance of stopping people using the drug. We therefore need to consider all options to reduce harm, including regulating cocaine in a similar way to how we regulate alcohol.
Continue reading...We look back through 14 years of Conservative manifestos at policies on net zero, energy, transport and more
It’s been a long journey on environmental issues for the Tories – but somehow it feels as if it has been in the wrong direction. Eighteen years on from David Cameron’s “hug a husky” campaign of 2006, where the climate and nature crises were largely viewed with cross-party consensus, we look back through the (many) Tory manifestos since 2010 to see how the Conservatives’ environmental message has evolved.
Continue reading...Microsoft recently caught state-backed hackers using its generative AI tools to help with their attacks. In the security community, the immediate questions weren’t about how hackers were using the tools (that was utterly predictable), but about how Microsoft figured it out. The natural conclusion was that Microsoft was spying on its AI users, looking for harmful hackers at work.
Some pushed back at characterizing Microsoft’s actions as “spying.” Of course cloud service providers monitor what users are doing. And because we expect Microsoft to be doing something like this, it’s not fair to call it spying...
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, revealed the tactics and traits that help him face the daily frustrations of leading a country at war for more than two years.
Within a ceremonial room inside Kyiv’s presidential compound, Zelenskiy spoke for nearly an hour with a Guardian team, including the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. The interview took place during perhaps the toughest time for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Russia is on the offensive in Kharkiv, an advance that follows months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities
Continue reading...Twelve jurors in New York have presented their fellow Americans with a simple question: are you willing to elect a convicted criminal to the White House?
On Thursday, Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. The verdict makes him the first president, current or former, to be found guilty of felony crimes in the US's near 250-year history. Regardless, the conviction does not disqualify Trump as a presidential candidate or bar him from again sitting in the Oval Office.
Trump, who opted not to take the stand during the trial, has denied wrongdoing, railed against the proceedings and ahead of the verdict compared himself to a saint: “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges. The charges are rigged,” he said on Wednesday. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is expected to appeal the verdict.
The Guardian’s Sam Levine has been in court over the last several weeks covering all the developments – here are three testimonies he found most memorable.
Could Trump go to prison? Here’s what happens next after the guilty verdict
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