Europe

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Iceland Ice Wall Collapse: 1 Tourist Is Dead and 2 Are Trapped

      by

      The tourists were part of a group exploring a glacier in southeastern Iceland when an ice canyon wall collapsed. A fourth tourist was rescued, officials said.One person has died, two people remain trapped and one person was injured after an ice canyon wall collapsed Sunday during a group tour of a glacier in southeastern Iceland, the authorities said.Emergency responders received a call at about 3 p.m. local time that a group of about 25 tourists with a tour guide were exploring ice caves and canyons on the glacier, Breidamerkurjokull, when the side of an ice canyon gave way, said Jón Þór Víglundsson, a spokesman for ICE-SAR, a volunteer search-and-rescue association.The glacier is part of Vatnajökull National Park, one of Europe’s largest, spread across nearly 5,460 square miles.Four people were hit by the falling ice, Lögreglan á Suðurlandi, the local police force, said on Facebook. Two of them were rescued, the police said.One victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and the other was airlifted to Landspitalinn, the National University Hospital of Iceland, and is in stable condition, the agency said on Facebook late Sunday evening.Two people remain trapped, the agency said, and their conditions were unclear. A search-and-rescue effort that was underway to find the missing tourists was suspended late on Sunday, the authorities said.“Conditions during the search are difficult and darkness is now upon us,” the agency said, adding that it was dangerous to continue the search through the night. The search will resume in the morning, the police said.Others in the group remained uninjured, according to the police.It was unclear on Sunday evening where the tourists were from, what tour company organized the expedition or how many guides were on the trip.At least 150 people are involved in the search-and-rescue efforts, Mr. Víglundsson said. Crews have a “good feeling” on where the two trapped tourists might be, he said, but the operation is complicated.“Although we think we know the location of the two missing, it is hard to say what amount of ice is between them and the rescuers,” Mr. Víglundsson said. “It is a difficult situation.”Because of the precarious location on the glacier, teams cannot use heavy equipment and are instead using hacks, chain saws and ice picks to move the ice by hand to “clear a path” forward, Mr. Víglundsson said.Crews are working in teams of 12 and in shifts, he said.According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Breidamerkurjokull is an outlet glacier that extends from Vatnajökull, Iceland’s largest glacier, into the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.Breidamerkurjokull is famous for its ice caves. The best time to visit is in winter, according to Adventures.is, an Icelandic tour operator.Vísir reported that tourism companies that have signed a contract with the national park are authorized to organize ice cave trips and glacier walks year-round, and that the park “trusts companies to assess the conditions.”Amanda Holpuch More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Heat Contributed to 47,000 Deaths in Europe Last Year, but Relief Programs Helped

      by

      A new study shows that behavioral and social changes can reduce heat mortality. But challenges remain as temperatures continue to rise.More than 47,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes during 2023, the world’s hottest year on record, a new report in Nature Medicine has found.But the number could have been much higher.Without adaptations to rising temperatures over the past two decades — including advances in health care, more widespread air-conditioning and improved public information that kept people indoors and hydrated during extreme temperatures — the death toll for Europeans experiencing the same temperatures at the start of the 21st century could have been 80 percent higher, according to the new study. For people over 80 years old, the death toll could have doubled.“We need to consider climate change as a health issue,” said Elisa Gallo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a nonprofit research center, and the lead author of the study. “We still have thousands of deaths caused by heat every year, so we still have to work a lot and we have to work faster.”Counting deaths from extreme heat is difficult, in part because death certificates don’t always reflect the role heat played in a person’s death. The study used publicly available death records in 35 countries, representing about 543 million Europeans and provided by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union.The researchers used an epidemiological model to analyze the deaths alongside 2023 weekly temperature records to estimate what fraction of deaths could be attributable to heat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Day of great joy’: Wall Street Journal’s crusade to free Gershkovich succeeds

      by

      The reporter Evan Gershkovich’s release from a Russian prison on Thursday was celebrated across US and global media but perhaps most happily by journalists at his own paper, the Wall Street Journal in New York.In an email to staff after news of Gershkovich’s release as part of a large-scale prisoner swap, Emma Tucker, the Journal editor-in-chief, said: “A few moments ago, Evan walked free from a Russian plane. He will shortly be on a flight back to the US.“I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same. This is a day of great joy for Evan and his family, and a historic day for the Wall Street Journal.“The strength, determination and resilience that Evan, his parents and his sister maintained throughout this long ordeal have been incredible. They have been an inspiration to all of us in the newsroom, to colleagues across the company and to supporters who have campaigned so hard for his release.”Tucker’s assistant editor, Paul Beckett, told the Guardian that this week, editors had detected “an inkling that something was coming”.From “seven o’clock this morning”, he said, he and other senior editors were in Tucker’s office, “trying to find out whatever information we could. We started to see some reports dribble out that things were in the offing, [and] we made the call to wait until we knew that our reporter was on the ground, out of Russian custody, free on the tarmac at Ankara, and then we’d publish.“We were sitting here and really trying to figure out what was happening and it was so complicated – we had flight tracking, we had people in the ground in Ankara, we had people at the White House, we had people at the national security council. We were essentially reporting on our own story, in a way.”Asked how staff reacted when Gershkovich’s freedom was confirmed, Beckett said: “It was great to see the newsroom gather around the office. There was applause. We had champagne, there were smiles, joy, there were tears of relief.“It’s a historic day for the Journal, it’s a historic day in geopolitics, in many ways. But there is just huge thankfulness after 16 months, it’s over.”View image in fullscreenIt has been a long 16 months. But after Gershkovich was arrested and accused of espionage, in late March 2023, the Journal mounted a high-profile campaign to stress his innocence, ensure he was not forgotten and press for his release.Speaking to the New York Times earlier this year, Tucker said: “After an initial flurry of attention in the weeks following Evan’s arrest, keeping the spotlight on his ordeal became a huge challenge for the newsroom amid jam-packed news cycles.“We used every grim milestone as a moment to organise publicity and get Evan back into the headlines: 100 days, his birthday in October, 250 days, every one of his court appearances.”The Journal’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal described some effects of the campaign: “Well-wishers raised banners at Major League Baseball games and Premier League soccer matches, calling for his release. Journalists and celebrity news presenters from [Tucker] Carlson to CNN anchor Jake Tapper spoke out on his behalf.“Supporters received upbeat and joke-filled letters from Gershkovich, written in his nine-by-12-ft cell at Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison, where Soviet interrogators once tortured and murdered alleged ‘class enemies’.”Beckett said: “We made a decision early on. Someone in the US government told me, really within 24 hours of Evan being taken, that there were times to be loud and there were times to be quiet. And that moment was the time to be loud, and we stayed loud.“Really the effort was to create a landscape in which there could be successful negotiation. We were never going to conduct those negotiations ourselves. But we also firmly believed that there’s so much going on in the world that if Evan ever fell out of the spotlight, it would make it that much more difficult for those negotiations to have been successful.“But this was not the Journal alone. The reaction from our colleagues in media globally, other governments, institutions supporting the free press and just people, well-wishers everywhere, that was the collective voice that spoke for Evan when he was silenced. That made the difference. We’re very grateful [for such] huge support, and we’re incredibly grateful for the happy outcome.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Journal staffers celebrated, it was only 13 days since Gershkovich was sentenced, in a Moscow courtroom, to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. Then, Tucker and Almar Latour, chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of the Journal, lamented a “disgraceful, sham conviction … after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist.”On Thursday, as the good news spread but before the Journal had confirmed its reporter was free, a dedicated page on the Journal website still hosted a counter showing time elapsed since Gershkovich was arrested. It stood at 491 days, minutes ticking forward towards 492.At the top of the front page, headings read: “Evan Gershkovich, Wrongfully Convicted, Sentenced to 16 Years, A Stolen Year, His Family Reflects, A Timeline, His Reporting, How You Can Help, Write a Message, Latest News and Get Email Updates.”But the paper was ready. After it launched its report on the release deal – and as Annie Linskey, a reporter, described “applause in WSJ’s DC office” – the Journal also rolled out a detailed account of how “secret negotiations to free … Gershkovich unfolded on three continents, involving spy agencies, billionaires, political power players and his fiercest advocate – his mom”.Beckett said: “A lot has happened out of our sight, and appropriately so. Both sides said that was important. The US government obviously was in touch with Evan’s parents and our legal team, but we were still on tenterhooks until two hours ago.”In her email to staff, reported by the Times, Tucker said the paper would now “ensure Evan is well looked after. We want him to take as much time as he needs to recuperate privately and are doing everything we can to support him and his family. I will be travelling later today to meet him when he lands in Texas.”Tucker also said the Journal was “happy too for the other Americans released today who will soon be reunited with their families”. But the paper’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal also noted a prisoner not set free.“Marc Fogel, a history teacher at the high school where US Moscow embassy staff sent their children … is serving 14 years in a penal colony. He was arrested in 2021 for carrying less than an ounce of medical marijuana. He said he had intended to use the drug for medical purposes to treat chronic pain.“The US has sought to free him on ‘humanitarian grounds’.”“Obviously, we feel for” prisoners not yet freed, Beckett said. “That is very tough, and I hope that the US government can work its magic again and get these folks home.” More

    • 200 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden defiant despite gaffes at Nato press conference as he battles calls to stand aside

      by

      In a critical press conference meant to make or break his presidential campaign, Joe Biden spiritedly defended his foreign policy record even as he faced a barrage of questions on his mental fitness and, in another gaffe, mistakenly referred to Kamala Harris as “vice-president Trump”.Biden offered extensive remarks on thorny foreign policy issues including competition with China and the Israel-Hamas war, in which he said he had warned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu away from an occupation of the Gaza Strip.He said he was directly in contact with Xi Jinping to warn him not to offer further support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, but not with Vladimir Putin, whom he said: “I have no reason to speak to him right now.”But Biden, who is running to be president until January 2029, fielded an equal number of questions during the press conference on his mental fitness, an issue that has loomed over his campaign since a faltering debate performance against Donald Trump that he called “that dumb mistake”.Ultimately, it was a performance that supporters will probably say shows he is capable of handling his responsibilities as commander-in-chief, but unlikely to convince those already in doubt about his mental fitness that he can serve another four years in office.Biden, 81, insisted he would stay in the race despite calls from some in his party to drop out and to allow another figure, including Harris, run in the November election.Shortly after he finished speaking, Connecticut congressman Jim Himes, the top ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called on Biden to step down from the campaign, writing on X: “We must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism. I no longer believe that is Joe Biden.”Appearing later on CNN, Himes said: “Imagine that three months from now, we get another performance like there was in the debate, right before the election. Do you want to take that risk? I don’t.”Two more congressional Democrats also called on Biden to step aside, bringing the total to 17. Representative Scott Peters of California said, “The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course,” while Representative Eric Sorensen of Illinois said that Biden should “put country over party”.Wrapping up a summit of the 32-member bloc in Washington DC, Biden said: “I’ve not had any of my European allies come up and say, ‘Joe, don’t run’. What I’ve heard them say is, ‘You’ve got to win’.“If I slow down and can’t get the job done that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “But there’s no indication of that. None.”Biden said he wouldn’t leave the race unless polls showed him that he had no chance of winning against Trump, even if they showed that Harris’s chances in the election were better than his own.Nonetheless, he said Harris was qualified to be president as well, although he misnamed her in the endorsement. “I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president, if she’s not qualified to be president,” he said.That gaffe was compounded by the fact that he had introduced the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “President Putin” just hours earlier, before correcting himself and saying “we’re going to beat Putin”.Biden initially used the final Nato summit press conference as something of a stump speech, brandishing his national security record in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression and saying that the November vote was “much more than a political question … It’s a national security issue.”He then turned to his record on the economy, border security and his efforts to broker a peace in the Israel-Hamas war to bolster his case for his campaign in November.Biden spoke for 58 minutes, including 50 minutes of unscripted question-and-answer. He appeared most comfortable and cogent as he discussed thorny foreign policy questions.“Don’t make the same mistake America made after [Osama] bin Laden,” he said he told Netanyahu, as he sought to ward off a potential occupation of the Gaza Strip. “There’s no need to occupy anywhere. Go after the people who did the job.”He also indicated that European countries were prepared to cut their investments in China if Xi continued to “[supply] Russia, with information and capacity, along with working with North Korea and others, to help Russia in armament”.But at times he got lost in the weeds. Asked about reports that he had asked his schedule to be moved up, he said: “I’m not talking about, and if you’ve looked at my schedule since I, since I made that stupid mistake in the campaign, in the debate. I mean, my schedule has been full bore.”“Where’s Trump been?” he continued. “Riding around on his golf cart? Filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball?” More

    • 263 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Political rifts have left the US haunted by fear of civil war. Here’s how France can do better | Alexander Hurst

      by

      In 2016, it was the “Anglo-American” world that seemed in lockstep, the US electing Donald Trump hot on the heels of Britain’s own goal of Brexit. A few weeks ago, it seemed as if France would take the UK’s place as the US’s partner in implosion. But even though fireworks and cheers filled Paris’s Place de la République on Sunday night following the success of a hasty marriage of convenience between leftwing parties and centrist coalitions to keep the far right out of power, they only temporarily drowned out reality. France’s social and political fractures are not going away any more than a four-year respite from Trump means that Trumpism has gone away.France and the US have seen their neuroses about social fracture leading to civil conflict seep into politics, as well as playing out in film and TV dramas. The US’s fractures are so deep that full-blown civil war is already the subject of fiction. Alex Garland’s Civil War film skips over the reasons that the country is divided and jumps straight to the middle of the fighting, suggesting a politically improbable alliance of Texas and California to overthrow a president turned autocrat.During the recent election campaign in France, historians, analysts and politicians evoked the spectre of conflict that could arise in the case of a far-right victory. Emmanuel Macron said that should the extreme right win it would “divide and push” the country towards “civil war”.Of course, there is one big difference between the US and France: guns. “There have to be guns for there to be a civil war; it’s the bare minimum,” says Marie Kinsky (Ana Girardot) in the 2024 French TV series La Fièvre. The co-protagonist and far-right activist sets about to turn France into the US (even seeking assistance from the National Rifle Association) as the basis for provoking an identitarian implosion. Far-fetched? Hopefully – though a shocking 91% of French people share the sentiment that “society is violent”.La Fièvre, directed by Eric Benzekri, opens with an altercation between a football player and his coach, which both far right and far left attempt to inflate into a race and identity crisis to exploit for their own purposes. In the aftermath, Sam Berger (Nina Meurisse), a political communications consultant, and an anxiety-ridden depiction of the centre left, feverishly tries to stop Kinsky from pushing French society to the brink. The two play a nationwide game of chess that takes in disinformation, social media astroturfing, a citizens’ assembly and – in a direct foreshadowing of how Kylian Mbappé and other French footballers took public stances against “the extremes” – the use of a Paris football club as a force for moderation.View image in fullscreenWhile Civil War can seem almost apolitical, La Fièvre never stops theorising, pulling from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, the Overton window and the research institute Destin Commun’s La france en qûete. The show lays bare the way that modern democracy is being hollowed out by what it terms “conflict entrepreneurs”, those in politics and the private sector who gain from exploiting and aggravating social fracture.One of the truths Benzekri conveys is that the far right isn’t the only threat. Ideological rigidity can come from the far left too, and often blocks progress while contributing to a society where conversation – and thus, democracy – becomes unworkable. But what seems to worry Benzekri most is the phenomenon of politics as spectacle, and the degree to which populism is contagious.In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Benzekri worked with Jean-Luc Mélenchon – the radical-left leader of France Unbowed (LFI), the largest party in the New Popular Front (NFP), the shock winner in the recent French parliamentary elections. But the director has drifted towards the more mainstream centre left, and now seems to see some of his former allies as conflict entrepreneurs who also bear responsibility for the deteriorating state of French politics.I’ve watched as the US has experienced the polarisation of almost all aspects of life along political lines. It’s a phenomenon I desperately would love France to avoid. But how?During the 2021-22, and 2022-23 academic years, I taught a first-year seminar to students at Sciences Po Paris that I titled, “In search of respect: US democracy confronting race and inequality.” I pulled the title from a book written by a French anthropologist, Philippe Bourgeois, who studied crack gangs in Harlem in the 1990s. A desire to be “respected”, it seemed to me, was at the root of so much of the emotion and anger that Trump was able to channel and direct.Populism pits different segments of society against each other, often around competing notions of respect. A far-right populist tells supporters that they are right to feel disrespected, because “someone else” has come and intruded upon something fundamental about who they are. A far-left populist tells supporters that the institutions of the state itself are racist. And now each side’s desire for justice and to be respected validates the other side’s deepest fears about what kind of society they are going to live in.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne solution is to change the game rather than play by the new rules the populists have set out for us. In La Fièvre, football is a socially unifying factor. Offscreen, Destin Commun has for many years promoted ecology as a common project with the potential to create social cohesion: an argument that it has found to be one of the most effective in countering the far right.Outside parliament, perhaps there is another way to change the rules of the game and create something new. According to Mathieu Lefèvre at Destin Commun, when it runs a focus group it often finds that participants request to come back the next day for nothing because they are so relieved to have had the chance to listen to, and be listened to by, other people in their communities. What if focus groups weren’t just run for campaign purposes, but in every one of France’s 36,000 communes? What better way to feel respected than listening and being listened to?Even though the NFP is now the largest group in the national assembly, it lacks anything close to a majority and is divided between different wings. Unless moderates succeed in coalition-building, a legislature split between three rough political families – the far right, Macron’s centrist coalition and the NFP – is a recipe for ungovernability that would serve “conflict entrepreneurs”, but certainly not the country.In the final scene of La Fièvre, the president asks: “Can we make it through?” In real-life France, we are going to find out.
      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian columnist More