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How an eco-campsite in north Wales rescued our family holiday from disaster
Tue, 28 May 2024 06:00:45 GMT
We were supposed to be on the Italian Riviera, but an impromptu switch to a glamping break on the Llŷn peninsula proved a more than acceptable substitute
Everyone has a good holiday disaster story, don’t they? Even experienced travel journalists.
Ours was a twist on the classic passport fiasco, that saw us having to “exchange” a two-week trip to the sunny Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera for sitting on a compost toilet in Wales.
Continue reading...The way to ‘stop the boats’ is to create safe routes of travel. Instead, the Labour leader is obsessed with trying to appear tough
Keir Starmer isn’t interested in “gimmicks”, “talking tough” or, God forbid, protesting. He wants to roll up his sleeves and get things done – on this much he has been clear. Except, that is, for the times when it suits him to indulge in some “gesture politics”. This is especially true for asylum: Labour is headed into the snap July election promising to be tough on the “small boats crisis” and, if Starmer’s speech in Dover earlier this month is anything to go by, its plans are not good.
Gimmicks – the policies behind which could do untold damage – seem to be all Labour has. Starmer swapped Rishi Sunak’s “stop the boats” slogan for “border security”. He invoked the widely peddled myth that the UK, which has an incredibly strict asylum system, is a “soft touch” – suggesting deporting people more quickly would serve as a deterrent. And he promised a new border security command, which seems strangely similar to the small boats operational command. Granted, Labour does not look set to be quite as harsh as the Tories in every respect; Starmer committed to scrapping the Rwanda scheme. But that is the very least it could do, given how unpopular the policy is with the broader public. Look beyond the headline announcements and you find more of what we’ve had for decades – more borders, more brutality, more suffering.
Maya Goodfellow is an academic at City, University of London, and the author of Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats.
Continue reading...Analysis of real-world data suggests annual cost of fuelling PHEVs is nearly double manufacturers’ claims
Drivers of bestselling plug-in hybrid cars pay £500 a year more on fuel for their cars than manufacturers’ figures suggest, according to analysis of real-world data, largely because owners tend to charge them less frequently than expected.
Laboratory tests of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) suggest that fuel should cost £560 a year, but real-life data suggests the cost is nearly double that, at £1,059 a year, according to analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a climate research group.
Continue reading...Is this what the “pro-life” movement wanted?
The post Sterilization, Murders, Suicides: Bans Haven’t Slowed Abortions, and They’re Costing Lives appeared first on The Intercept.
ICC warrants against Israeli officials would mean they can’t travel — and their patrons in the U.S. would be pressured over continued arms sales.
The post Can a U.S. Ally Actually Be Held Accountable for War Crimes in the ICC? appeared first on The Intercept.
When asked what makes this an “emotional support squid” and not just another stuffed animal, its creator says:
They’re emotional support squid because they’re large, and cuddly, but also cheerfully bright and derpy. They make great neck pillows (and you can fidget with the arms and tentacles) for travelling, and, on a more personal note, when my mum was sick in the hospital I gave her one and she said it brought her “great comfort” to have her squid tucked up beside her and not be a nuisance while she was sleeping.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered...
The 71-year-old veteran peace activist discusses the war on Gaza, the Biden administration, and shaking up Congress.
The post Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin on Disrupting the U.S. War Machine appeared first on The Intercept.
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...Is this what the “pro-life” movement wanted?
The post Sterilization, Murders, Suicides: Bans Haven’t Slowed Abortions, and They’re Costing Lives appeared first on The Intercept.
As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
He tells the world he intends to be an authoritarian. So why won’t journalists repeat it?
The post The Media Still Doesn’t Grasp the Danger of Trump appeared first on The Intercept.
Israel pursuing a policy of ‘deliberate deprivation’ and taking ‘disproportionate’ military action against Palestinians in Gaza, Dr Christos Christou says
The global president of Médecins Sans Frontières has urged Australia to impose sanctions on the Israeli government, saying he has “run out of words” to describe the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and the collapse of the health system.
Dr Christos Christou is due to meet the Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, on Wednesday to request “immediate, concrete actions to hold Israel to account” for its conduct during the war.
Continue reading...New paper: “Zero Progress on Zero Days: How the Last Ten Years Created the Modern Spyware Market“:
Abstract: Spyware makes surveillance simple. The last ten years have seen a global market emerge for ready-made software that lets governments surveil their citizens and foreign adversaries alike and to do so more easily than when such work required tradecraft. The last ten years have also been marked by stark failures to control spyware and its precursors and components. This Article accounts for and critiques these failures, providing a socio-technical history since 2014, particularly focusing on the conversation about trade in zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits. Second, this Article applies lessons from these failures to guide regulatory efforts going forward. While recognizing that controlling this trade is difficult, I argue countries should focus on building and strengthening multilateral coalitions of the willing, rather than on strong-arming existing multilateral institutions into working on the problem. Individually, countries should focus on export controls and other sanctions that target specific bad actors, rather than focusing on restricting particular technologies. Last, I continue to call for transparency as a key part of oversight of domestic governments’ use of spyware and related components...
Trial enters final stages as prosecutors allege former president falsified business records relating to payment to adult film star
Donald Trump’s hush-money trial enters its final stages on Tuesday as closing arguments begin in court.
For weeks, testimony has gripped America and the world amid the prospect that the former US president could be found guilty of the criminal charges. Trump, who is almost certain to secure the Republican presidential nomination, is charged with falsifying business records related to paying the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about an alleged sexual liaison.
Continue reading...Mossad director Yossi Cohen personally involved in secret plot to pressure Fatou Bensouda to drop Palestine investigation, sources say
The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.
Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.
Continue reading...Tension at a writers’ co-op is spliced with the hunt for a gifted footballer in the Netherland author’s first book in 10 years, an exceptional tale of desire and betrayal
Joseph O’Neill broke out with his third novel, Netherland, which made the Booker longlist in 2008 and was ecstatically reviewed in the New Yorker by James Wood, whose praise made it that summer’s hot book, propelling him into the literary A-list. But come autumn, O’Neill was the fall guy in Zadie Smith’s influential essay Two Paths for the Novel, which contrasted the smoothness of his post-9/11 scenario (“perfectly done … that’s the problem”) with the edgier experiment of Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, branding Netherland an antiquated example of “a breed of lyrical realism [that] has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked”.
Although his next novel, The Dog (2014), about a New York attorney in Dubai, widely seen as a Netherland minus, was also Booker longlisted, O’Neill seemed to recede from view almost as suddenly as he’d emerged. So much the better, perhaps: his exceptional new novel, Godwin, coming 10 years after his last, would seem to represent time well spent. It somehow wrings edge-of-your-seat drama from the unlikely subject of the murky office politics dividing a technical writers’ co-op in pre-Trump Pittsburgh – and as if that doesn’t sound improbable enough, O’Neill splices that story with an equally unlikely saga involving a transcontinental hunt to snap up a gifted young footballer in west Africa.
The chase kicks off when Mark Wolfe, a thirtysomething failed scientist now writing grants for big pharma, is contacted from London by his estranged half-French half-brother, Geoff, breathlessly explaining that, in a bid to set up as a football agent in London, he’s paid $5,000 to an Ivorian middleman for three months’ “exclusive access” to footage of a young player known as Godwin. “I’m not saying he’s as good as Messi. I’d never say that. But he’s like him,” says Geoff, pleading for Mark to help him find the boy. “You’re the cleverest person I know … If you can’t find him, no one can.”
Mark, one of the novel’s two narrators, fully understands that the proposition is utterly bananas, but he’s at a low moment after a bust-up at the writing collective where he works. The book opens with the voice of his senior colleague, Lakesha – Godwin’s other narrator – and her mood of retrospect makes clear that Mark’s story won’t end well (“Everyone knew him as Wolfe”); but the pinball momentum of his point-of-view sections pushes that to the back of our minds as we’re kept agog by his ill-conceived trip across the Atlantic, where flaky Geoff – perpetually stringing Mark along – leaves him no option but to spend his first night in Europe kipping on a treadmill in Walsall.
O’Neill once told an interviewer that he reckons “plot happens most of all at the level of the sentence … as a reader, I want to start a sentence and then be surprised by what happens to it.” He happily flouts the writerly edict to show rather than tell – Godwin is all telling, its drama generated by an overlay of perspectives à la Joseph Conrad as its narrators recount nested monologues from various interlocutors, above all Jean-Luc, a wily French football scout whose claim to fame rests on working with the young Didier Drogba.
The quest for Godwin – a male midlife-crisis scenario doubling as wild goose chase – raises thorny questions of people trafficking and postcolonial legacies, as well as fuelling mass mania among the various rapacious parties seeking a cut. If O’Neill is in his element here, lifting the lid on the murky fixers and footmen circling big money, it’s to his credit that Lakesha’s portion of the book is equally engrossing, as we’re caught up in every twist and turn of an ill-conceived coup to oust her as co-lead of her writers’ collective (his decision to write in the voice of a black woman raised in poverty is, you suspect, a direct response to Smith’s diagnosis of what she called his “class/race anxiety”).
O’Neill’s storytelling here has an enthralling fireside quality, ushering us with deceptive simplicity into a labyrinth of motive and desire, breathtaking betrayals and artfully twined threads. A book to sink into, in other words, and one not to be missed.
In divergent messages, president pays tribute to fallen heroes, while Trump fulminates on social media against opponents
Joe Biden and Donald Trump marked the Memorial Day national holiday honoring America’s war dead with jarringly divergent messages that promised to foretell the forthcoming US presidential election campaign as a contest of sharply contrasting characters.
In a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, Biden paid tribute to the fallen as heroes who sacrificed themselves in the service of American democracy and ideals. Meanwhile, Trump, taking to his Truth Social site, took a very different tack – bestowing holiday wishes on those he branded “human scum” and accused them of trying to destroy the country.
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Is this what the “pro-life” movement wanted?
The post Sterilization, Murders, Suicides: Bans Haven’t Slowed Abortions, and They’re Costing Lives appeared first on The Intercept.
Shalev Hulio is remaking his image but is still involved in a web of cybersecurity ventures with his old colleagues from NSO Group.
The post After Pegasus Was Blacklisted, Its CEO Swore Off Spyware. Now He’s the King of Israeli AI. appeared first on The Intercept.
The battalion has a dedicated U.S. nonprofit to support its operations — whose president is supporting AIPAC’s political agenda.
The post This AIPAC Donor Funnels Millions to an IDF Unit Accused of Violating Human Rights appeared first on The Intercept.
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy signs security pact with Belgium’s De Croo during visit to Brussels
Nato chief Jans Stoltenberg will urge EU member states to allow their military assets in Ukraine to be used behind enemy lines amid increasing concerns that the country’s defence is being stymied by the EU’s deescalatory defence policy.
The EU’s chief diplomat Joseph Borrell said it was an important discussion at today’s summit of defence ministers in which Stotenberg will participate. But some member states are concerned it would be an escalatory move. Borrell said:
Do you allow your arms to be used in order to target out of the Ukrainian soil as Stoltenberg proposed today?
It is not only within the law of war, it is perfectly possible, it is no contradiction. Sure it will be put on the table by some. But you have to balance the risk of escalation and the need for Ukrainians to defend itself.
Continue reading...From a dynasty of Ukrainian climbers, Jenya Kazbekova was displaced by war but now she is determined to reach Paris
Three years after Russia had occupied Crimea, the Ukrainian climber Jenya Kazbekova returned to her “favourite place in the world” and achieved a personal best route on its rocks. The crux of her challenge that day in 2017 lay not in scaling the peaceful, sun-drenched cliff, but far below. “I closed my eyes to what really bothered me – Russian guns, flags, currency,” she says. This summer, she aims to reach Paris and climb against the odds for Ukraine once more, after injury, illness and Covid-19 ended her Tokyo dream – and Putin’s full invasion became a living nightmare, forcing the rest of her family to flee to Britain.
Kazbekova’s connection to climbing and Crimea spans three generations. “It was as natural as walking – I don’t remember ever not climbing. It’s just part of me,” says the 27-year-old from Dnipro. On frequent family holidays to the Crimean peninsula, her father taught her how to fall safely, turning trepidation into joy: “It was a big lesson in working through fear.”
Continue reading...From being branded Lai Dai Han, a derogatory term, to a lack of access to education and services, these children face a life of stigma. Our country must acknowledge their need for justice
For more than five long decades me, my children and the hundreds of other families affected by sexual assault and rape during the Vietnam war have faced interminable suffering. It has been an impossible battle against shame and stigma, a struggle for jobs, services and survival, and a fight for rightful recognition from our government and our communities.
I am a mother to three Lai Dai Han – a derogatory term that means “mixed blood” in Vietnamese – children born as a result of rape committed by South Korean soldiers during the war. These children are regarded in Vietnam as rubbish, denied access to education and basic social services, hindering their ability to get a job and earn a living. Many of the Lai Dai Han have been forced to conceal their identities.
Continue reading...Cause of accident was ‘operational reliability of engine’, says Pyongyang, after two failed attempts last year
North Korea’s latest attempt to put a spy satellite into orbit ended in a mid-air explosion, Pyongyang said late Monday, hours after its announcement of a planned launch was criticised by Seoul and Tokyo.
Japanese broadcaster NHK ran footage of what appeared to be a flaming projectile in the night sky, which then exploded into a fireball. NHK said the footage was taken from northeast China at the same time as the attempted launch.
Continue reading...Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, says the funding will improve Kyiv’s air defences, just days after Russia killed 18 people in Kharkiv
Spain will provide Ukraine with €1bn in military aid this year after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met in Madrid to sign an “enormously important”, decade-long defence and security deal.
Although the precise details of the agreement have not been made public, the Spanish government said its assistance would “allow Ukraine to prioritise its capacities, including its air defences”.
Continue reading...UK touts ‘Bletchley effect’ of safety institutes, but division remains over whether to limit AI abilities
The Bletchley Park artificial intelligence summit in 2023 was a landmark event in AI regulation simply by virtue of its existence.
Between the event’s announcement and its first day, the mainstream conversation had changed from a tone of light bafflement to a general agreement that AI regulation may be worth discussing.
Continue reading...Hungary ‘systematically blocking all efforts’ to support Ukraine, says Gabrielis Landsbergis, Lithunian foreign minister
A former German armed forces officer was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on Monday for spying for Russia, German media reported, in a case that highlighted Germany’s vulnerability to the increasingly hostile neighbour to its east.
The former army captain, who was stationed at the army’s procurement office in Koblenz, was accused of handing over classified documents to Russia’s consulate in Bonn and embassy in Berlin.
Continue reading...Sales in the UK are up 99% annually on Ocado, while there has been a 437% month-on-month rise in London. No wonder Aldi, Majestic and M&S are stocking up
On an early summer’s evening, customers flock to a bar called Oranj for glasses of wine that range in colour from subtle gold to deep amber. A catarratto from Sicily maybe, with notes of ripe yellow fruit and a savoury, saline edge, or a juicy, glowing pinot gris from Slovakia, or perhaps an intensely mineral blend of indigenous grapes from Italy’s Lazio region – all sell like the proverbial hot cakes.
Oranj, which does not only sell orange wines, started out as a natural wine e-commerce site during the pandemic, and later evolved into this wine bar in Shoreditch, London, in what was its logistical warehouse. It serves “exciting, unusual and unorthodox” wines, 25% of which are orange, says the founder, Jasper Delamothe. This is quite a proportion, given the niche status of orange wine just a few years ago. Delamothe tells me that while it does a roaring trade in orange wine year-round, it does see an upturn in the summer months, alongside rosé.
Continue reading...French far right leader suggests alliance of ID and ECR groups, including Italian PM’s Brothers of Italy
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has suggested the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, join forces with her in a new alliance, as the EU’s resurgent but divided nationalist parties gear up for European parliamentary elections next month.
The move came as European centre-left parties reiterated a warning to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, that they would not support her bid for a second term if it entailed the backing of hard-right parties – including Meloni’s.
Continue reading...Under new defence minister Andrei Belousov, FSB is tackling corruption aggressively with serious implications for Ukraine
In the weeks since Vladimir Putin sacked his longtime defence minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s FSB security service has pursued a series of high-level corruption cases against a deputy minister and department heads in what many insiders are now calling a purge in the defence ministry.
Andrei Belousov, the technocrat economist appointed to replace Shoigu, has a mandate to reduce corruption in the defence ministry and streamline military production for a long war against Ukraine that could largely be decided by industrial output.
Continue reading...Italy may be more associated with the red, white and green of its tricolore, but in May there is only one colour that matters to cycling fans
Continue reading...ICC warrants against Israeli officials would mean they can’t travel — and their patrons in the U.S. would be pressured over continued arms sales.
The post Can a U.S. Ally Actually Be Held Accountable for War Crimes in the ICC? appeared first on The Intercept.
Analysis of real-world data suggests annual cost of fuelling PHEVs is nearly double manufacturers’ claims
Drivers of bestselling plug-in hybrid cars pay £500 a year more on fuel for their cars than manufacturers’ figures suggest, according to analysis of real-world data, largely because owners tend to charge them less frequently than expected.
Laboratory tests of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) suggest that fuel should cost £560 a year, but real-life data suggests the cost is nearly double that, at £1,059 a year, according to analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a climate research group.
Continue reading...As official mourning for Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi ends, here are some of the names of his potential successors
The end of official mourning for Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has unleashed a battle for succession in which as many as 20 credible names have been proposed.
All candidates have to be cleared by the 12-strong elite body known as the Guardian Council, and the regime is torn between ensuring continuity on the one hand and on the other, allowing an open competition that stimulates turnout and gives the victor legitimacy.
Continue reading...Engineers warned Meta that nations can monitor chats; staff fear Israel is using this trick to pick assassination targets in Gaza.
The post This Undisclosed WhatsApp Vulnerability Lets Governments See Who You Message appeared first on The Intercept.
In the survey of Democrats and independents in five battleground states, 2 in 5 voters said a ceasefire and conditioning aid would make them more likely to vote for Biden.
The post Conditioning Aid to Israel Would Boost Support for Biden in Key States, New Poll Finds appeared first on The Intercept.
This isn’t “politics by other means,” it’s never-ending conflict.
The post Israel Wants Endless War Without the Politics. Biden’s Going Along for the Doomed Ride. appeared first on The Intercept.
And for some reason Justice Samuel Alito can’t stop talking about this witch trial judge.
The post The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Is Constitutional, After All appeared first on The Intercept.
With Bowman’s challenger handpicked by AIPAC, the Israel lobby is cementing its status as the biggest player in Democratic primary politics.
The post Outside Groups Spent $285,000 Backing Jamaal Bowman. AIPAC Alone Just Dropped Nearly $2 Million to Attack Him. appeared first on The Intercept.
Since Dobbs, state-level Republicans have sought to strip power from DAs elected in Democratic cities who won’t prosecute abortion care.
The post Republicans Can’t Decide: Do They Hate Prosecutors Because of Bail Reform or Abortion? appeared first on The Intercept.
As brutal police repression sweeps campus encampments, schools have been cutting ties with pro-Palestine faculty members without tenure.
The post University Professors Are Losing Their Jobs Over “New McCarthyism” on Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
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