Former president says billionaires should ‘pay a little bit more in taxes’ to fund healthcare, childcare and the climate crisis fight
Barack Obama says wealthy Americans – including himself – can afford tax rises to help fund Joe Biden’s ambitious spending plan.
Related: Pelosi: Biden spending plan, infrastructure deal and funding ‘must pass’ next week
Continue reading...Before Christine Blasey Ford and Monica Lewinsky, there was Anita Hill, shamed for exposing the actions of a powerful man. She explains how she withstood the tumult
Anita Hill sits so still that, when she is not speaking, I worry that the screen through which we are talking may have frozen. Yet despite her lawyerly, academic poise, she exudes warmth: you would feel safe confiding in her. And that is what people have been doing for the past 30 years – telling her of their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault. “I was a symbol of so many people’s experiences,” she says.
In the pantheon of women shamed for exposing the actions of high-profile men – before Christine Blasey Ford in 2018 and Monica Lewinsky in 1998 – there was Anita Hill. In 1991, the US president, George HW Bush, nominated Clarence Thomas to the supreme court. Senate hearings for his confirmation were completed without incident, until an interview of Hill by the FBI was leaked to the press. In it, Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment while he was her supervisor in two separate jobs, at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Among other claims, Hill said that Thomas discussed women having sex with animals, and pornographic films depicting group sex or rape scenes, and described his own sexual prowess and anatomy. According to Hill, Thomas’s behaviour forced her to resign from her job.
Continue reading...We thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrong
We thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrong.
Most of us were shaken and horrified, and the country rightfully embarrassed, by images of US border patrol agents on horseback attacking asylum seekers, including at least one child, in Texas. Thankfully, that has been stopped and an investigation is now underway. We need more than an investigation, though: we need to know that nothing like that will ever happen again.
Continue reading...There has been a chronic mistreatment of workers in the country’s meat industry, according to unions
Read more: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe
In spring 2018, Alina Serbenco’s husband, Vasile, sat in a fast-food outlet in Dublin and plugged his mobile phone into a socket to recharge. It had been only a few months since he had moved from Romania to take up a job in a car wash, but he was being paid less than half the minimum wage and could not send money home to Alina and their two children. Homeless and living in a car, Vasile urgently needed a new job.
As he scrolled through Facebook, he spotted an advert for a job in a meat factory. It was posted by Irish employment agency AA Euro, a specialist recruitment consultancy working with companies in the agricultural, food processing, construction and mining industries, which has offices across the EU, including in Romania, Poland and the Netherlands. The job offer was up to 70 hours a week of work for just over the minimum wage and a room in a house for about €60 (£51.50) a week. Vasile decided to apply.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Activist says there are many fine words but the science does not lie – CO2 emissions are still rising
Greta Thunberg has excoriated global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as “blah, blah, blah”.
She quoted statements by Boris Johnson: “This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging”, and Narendra Modi: “Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower” but said the science did not lie.
Continue reading...Rijksmuseum says change in focus prompted by renewed interest in wake of Black Lives Matter
The two earliest portraits of men of African descent in the history of European art are being exhibited together for the first time in their 500-year history, reflecting a change of focus championed by the Black Lives Matter movement, curators at the Rijksmuseum have said.
Among more than 100 portraits by Renaissance artists being showcased by the museum in Amsterdam from Tuesday are Albrecht Dürer’s 1508 sketch, discovered in the German painter’s workshop at the time of his death, and Jan Jansz Mostaert’s portrait, dating from about 1525.
Continue reading...The New Zealand trio have gone global thanks to their forthright Māori-language songs, which confront colonial history and ongoing inequality
New Zealand was a war zone in the mid-1800s. On one side were the British and the colonial government, craving a stranglehold on more of the country’s land. On the other were the indigenous Māori people, fighting to preserve tino rangatiratanga: their sovereignty and self-determination.
On 29 April 1864, the British invaded Pukehinahina, also known as Gate Pā. Despite being grossly outnumbered, the Māori fended off the attackers using concealed trenches and guerrilla tactics. It was a fleeting victory in a war that, ultimately, led to the confiscation of 3m acres of Māori land.
Continue reading...As the pandemic deals a death blow to an already struggling sector, former workers see little hope for recovery
The seafront along the town of Hammamet in Tunisia is deserted. Looking out at the bright empty coast from his souvenir shop, Kais Azzabi, 42, describes the crowds that would stroll along the broad boulevards. Today, there is nobody.
“It was very busy here,” he says, gesturing to the street and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. “Since the corona started, everything stopped.”
Continue reading...Thousands of outsourced workers on inferior pay and conditions to fulfil demand for cheap meat, Guardian investigation shows
Read more: ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry
Meat companies across Europe have been hiring thousands of workers through subcontractors, agencies and bogus co-operatives on inferior pay and conditions, a Guardian investigation has found.
Workers, officials and labour experts have described how Europe’s £190bn meat industry has become a global hotspot for outsourced labour, with a floating cohort of workers, many of whom are migrants, with some earning 40% to 50% less than directly employed staff in the same factories.
The Guardian has uncovered evidence of a two-tier employment system with workers subjected to sub-standard pay and conditions to fulfil the meat industry’s need for a replenishable source of low-paid, hyper-flexible workers.
Researchers find space in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 years
Researchers excavating a cave network on the Rock of Gibraltar have discovered a new chamber, sealed off from the world for at least 40,000 years, that could shed light on the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who occupied the area for a thousand centuries.
In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand.
Continue reading...Analysis: some say Covid has increased voters’ sense of social justice, but the picture remains uneven
Social democracy is back, according to jubilant SPD officials. And after Germany’s oldest political party edged the narrowest of wins against its conservative CDU/CSU rival, it may be tempting to believe Europe’s centre left is stirring.
Not everywhere, though: in France, the Socialist party shows no sign of recovering from its near-obliteration in 2017, when it failed to make the second round of the presidential election and crashed from 280 MPs to 30 and just 7.4% of the vote.
Continue reading...Factories were closed to avoid exceeding limits on energy use imposed by Beijing to promote efficiency
Widening power shortages in China’s north-east have left homes without power and halted production at numerous factories, while some shops operated by candlelight as the economic toll of the squeeze mounted.
Residents in the north-east, where autumn temperatures are falling, reported power cuts and appealed on social media for the government to restore supplies.
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Earlier, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, pleaded with healthcare workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19 before an end-of-day deadline which could bring staff shortages at hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities.
The Biden administration’s announcement of a new approach to protecting Dreamers from deportation is meant to “bulletproof” existing measures guarding against litigation, a leading expert said.
“Dreamers” are undocumented migrants living in the US who were brought to the country as children. Their fate has long been held in limbo by deadlock in Congress over immigration reform.
Continue reading...President receives public Covid jab after FDA and CDC carved out fewer categories than he hoped of Americans eligible for third dose
At the White House on Monday, Joe Biden donned a black surgical mask, rolled his shirt sleeve to his shoulder and received a third dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine as a “booster” shot.
Related: Judge rules in Wisconsin teen’s favor after sheriff threatened jail over Covid post
Continue reading...UK records 40 coronavirus-linked deaths in the past 24 hours; Japan to lift Covid state of emergency in all regions at the end of September
Hello, it’s Robyn Vinter here, taking over the live blog for the next few hours.
US President Joe Biden has received his booster jab for Covid-19 at the White House. This is his third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after announcing last week that Americans over the age of 65 and frontline workers would be eligible for booster shots.
Here is a quick round-up of the coronavirus stories dominating the headlines today in the UK and around the world:
Continue reading...Sculpture based on the poem The Gleaner of Sapri was unveiled by former PM Giuseppe Conte on Saturday
A statue depicting a scantily dressed woman from a 19th-century poem has sparked a sexism row in Italy.
The bronze statue, which portrays the woman in a transparent dress, was unveiled on Saturday during a ceremony attended by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte in Sapri, in the southern Campania region.
Continue reading...Party that entered German parliament in 2017 drops about 2% nationally despite performing strongly in east
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which made a whirlwind entry into the German parliament in 2017, is set to lose its status as the main opposition force following Sunday’s election but has at the same time emerged as the strongest party in parts of eastern Germany.
The party, which rose to prominence on an anti-immigrant ticket after the arrival of around 1m refugees in 2015 but has more recently focused its attention on attacking the government’s pandemic management, dropped just over 2% nationally to secure 10.3% of the vote.
Continue reading...Policy uses women as tool for economic goals and could endanger their lives, says rights group
China’s pledge to limit abortions puts women’s bodies under the state’s control just as the one-child policy did and could endanger the lives of women seeking abortions, rights groups have said.
The Chinese government announced on Monday that it would seek to reduce abortions for “non-medical reasons” – a move seen as being in line with its attempts to accelerate birthrates.
Continue reading...Olaf Scholz, poised to become next chancellor, wades into row over HGV driver shortage
The centre-left politician in pole position to replace Angela Merkel as German chancellor has pinpointed the decision to end freedom of movement with Europe after Brexit as the reason for Britain’s petrol crisis.
Olaf Scholz, who is seeking to form a coalition government after the SPD emerged as the biggest party in Germany’s federal elections, said he hoped Boris Johnson would be able to deal with the consequences of the UK’s exit from the EU.
Continue reading...Hinckley, who was 25 when he shot and wounded the president in 1981, can be released from all court supervision if he follows rules
A federal judge has said John Hinckley Jr, who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, can be freed from all remaining restrictions next year if he continues to follow those rules and remains mentally stable.
Related: Close calls: when American presidents diced with death
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