100-year-old ginkgo trees could get the axe under disputed plan for Tokyo's Jingu Gaien park

Miho Nakashima has her body painted like a tree by artist Andy Boerger during a public protest on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, to point out that 100-year-old trees in the Jingu Gaien park area in Tokyo, Japan, could be cut down under a disputed development plan.

(AP Photo/Norihiro Haruta)

STEPHEN WADE
Sun, 27 August 2023 

TOKYO (AP) — Miho Nakashima stood in a two-piece bathing suit in Tokyo on Sunday next to a 100-year-old gingko tree, her body painted head-to-toe in green leaves and brown branches.

Her message was clear, and she repeated it standing at the heart of the Jingu Gaien park area, its sanctity threatened by a disputed real-estate development plan

“I'm a tree,” she said. “Don't chop me down.”

A plan approved earlier this year by Gov. Yuriko Koike would let developers, led by Mitsui Fudosan, build a pair of 200-meter (650-feet) skyscrapers in Jingu Gaien, mow down trees in one of Tokyo's few green areas, and raze and rebuild a historic rugby venue and an adjoining baseball stadium.

Takayuki Nakamura, among a few hundred who gathered on Sunday to protest, pressed his face into the bark of one tree and prayed. The area was set aside 100 years ago to honor Japan's Meiji Emperor.

“I want to appreciate the existence of these trees. Sometime I can feel some sounds inside,” he said.

The planned redevelopment would take more than a decade to finish, and has attracted lawsuits with mounting opposition from conservationists, civic groups, local residents, and sports fans.

Eighteen ginkgo trees behind the rugby stadium are likely to be cut down.

The flashpoint has been trees, green space, and who controls a public area that has been encroached on over the years. Also at issue is the fate of more than 100 gingko trees that line an avenue in the area and provide a colorful cascade of falling leaves each autumn. Botanists say any construction is sure to cause damage.

Critics say the plan has been rammed through despite a botched environmental assessment as real-estate developers take what was intended as public land and turn it into a private commercial venture.

Famous Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has opposed the plan. And composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto sent an open letter to Koike deriding the plan just days before his death on March 28.

The rugby stadium was used during the 1964 Olympics, and Babe Ruth played in 1934 in the baseball stadium along with other American stars facing Japan's best players.

The project highlights the ties among the main actors: the governor, Mitsui Fudosan, and Meiji Jingu, a religious organization that owns much of the land to be redeveloped.

“The redevelopment of the park is obviously a public issue,” Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University, told The Associated Press earlier this year. “At the same time, they (politicians) can claim that it is a private decision of a religious organization and the developers.

“But because Jingu Gaien is also a public park with sports facilities, politicians can — and do — meddle in the decisions. Which results in the cozy, probably collusive relationships among the insiders that are unaccountable to the public.”

About 1,500 trees were chopped down in the same area to build the $1.4 billion stadium for the Tokyo Olympics. The Olympics also allowed the city to change zoning laws, which may permit developers to further encroach on the park area.

“This is like building skyscrapers in the middle of Central Park in New York,” Mikiko Ishikawa, an emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo, told The Associated Press.

Developers have argued the two sports facilities cannot be renovated and must be razed.

However, Koshien Stadium near Kobe, built in 1924, has been renovated over the last 15 years, much in the same way that Fenway Park (1912) in Boston and Wrigley Field (1914) in Chicago are still viable for two of MLB's most famous teams.

Meiji Kinenkan, a historic reception hall, dates from 1881 and is still in wide use in Jingu Gaien with no calls from its demolition.

“The development companies are trying to cut down more trees and make a huge business area,” Nakashima said as a leaf was painted on her cheek. “The park has a very long history and should be saved.”

___



Miho Nakashima has her body painted like a tree by artist Andy Boerger during a public protest on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, to point out that 100-year-old trees in the Jingu Gaien park area in Tokyo, Japan, could be cut down under a disputed development plan.

 (AP Photo/Stephen Wade)



Takayuki Nakamura prays against a 100-year-old ginkgo tree that could be cut down under a disputed development plan for in the Tokyo Jingu Gaien park area in Tokyo, Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023. Nakamura, among a few hundred who gathered on Sunday to protest, planted his face in the bark of one tree and prayed. The area was set aside 100 years ago on honor the Meiji Emperor.

(AP Photo/Stephen Wade)



The Jingu Gaien park area is seen in central Tokyo, Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023. The beloved green area in under threat from a massive commercial redevelopment plan.

(AP Photo/Norihiro Haruta)

The sign is seen at the entry way of the Jingu Gaien park area in central Tokyo Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023. The beloved green area in under threat from a massive commercial redevelopment plan.

 (AP Photo/Stephen Wade)

Miho Nakashima has her body painted like a tree by artist Andy Boerger during a public protest on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, to point out that 100-year-old trees in the Jingu Gaien park area in Tokyo, Japan, could be cut down under a disputed development plan. 

(AP Photo/Stephen Wade)

Miho Nakashima, center, has her body painted like a tree by artist Andy Boerger, left, during a public protest on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, to point out that 100-year-old trees in the Jingu Gaien park area in Tokyo, Japan, could be cut down under a disputed development plan.

(AP Photo/Norihiro Haruta)

‘We’ll launch rockets every month’: 

Britain finally joins the space race

ROFLMAO

Robin McKie
Sun, 27 August 2023 



A large band of battered metal has been placed on a stand at the entrance of Skyrora’s rocket manufacturing hall in Cumbernauld in central Scotland. Six feet in diameter, the loop is perforated, torn and twisted, a result of being blasted into space and then dropped on to the Australian outback where it has lain for almost 50 years until its recent recovery.

The ring is part of the remains of Britain’s only satellite launch, which took place on 28 October 1971 when a Black Arrow rocket placed a Prospero probe into orbit round the Earth. The programme was cancelled the same year.

But now the UK is preparing to return to the satellite-launching business as several rival companies vie for business with the aim, this time, of firing rockets from British, not antipodean soil. These competitors include Skyrora, which has begun manufacturing its XL rockets at Cumbernauld, in expectation of a first launch next year from the SaxaVord rocket base in Unst, Shetland.

“The launch of Black Arrow in 1971 was Britain’s only successful placing of a satellite into orbit. So we brought back a piece of it – a faring that connected the first and second stages before it fell to Earth – and have put it at the entrance of our manufacturing hall to make it clear that, after half a century, we are back in business and ready to go into space again,” said Euan Clark, a project team lead at Skyrora.

Other rocket companies with plans for UK launches include Orbex Prime, whose launchers are scheduled to take off from Sutherland Spaceport in north Scotland, with other launch sites being touted for the Western Isles and the Kintyre peninsula as well as locations in Wales and Cornwall.

The rebirth of UK satellite launching – which will be dominated by spaceports located north of Hadrian’s Wall – is the result of the dramatic miniaturisation of modern electronics. Early spacecraft were the size of cars and required massive launchers. Today, satellites are often the size of shoeboxes that need only modest launchers, like the Skyrora XL. It is 22m in height compared with the 110m-high Saturn V rockets that took Apollo astronauts to the moon.

The three-stage Skyrora XL will be powered by 3D printed engines and in the near future should, if the company’s plans work out, be launching around a dozen satellites a year from Unst, the most northerly inhabited place in the British Isles. Here, rockets can be fired over the open waters of the North Sea and will carry probes on polar orbits where Earth-monitoring spacecraft can study sea-level fluctuations and ice-sheet changes as the planet revolves beneath.

“We expect that environment-monitoring probes as well as communication satellites will form the core of our business,” Clark told the Observer. Each rocket will be able carry payloads up to 300kg, at a cost of £30,000 to £36,000 per kilogram, burning 50,000 litres of fuel to take their cargoes to heights of 1,000km.

Engineers at Cumbernauld are constructing engines for the first orbital flight of Skyrora XL, which is planned for next year. The quiet tempo at its manufacturing plant will change dramatically after that.

“In a few years, we hope to launch a rocket every month,” said Clark. “There are seven engines on the Skyrora first stage and another in its second stage, which means we will have to build one of them every three or four days to keep up that schedule.”

These highly complex engines will burn a kerosene-peroxide propellent, which offers key advantages, added Clark. It produces less pollution than standard fuel and can remain stored in a rocket on a launchpad for several days – in contrast to most launchers, which currently use liquid oxygen that has to be drained from the craft when delays occur. Given the unpredictability of weather in Shetland, an ability to keep fully fuelled rockets on a launch pad for long periods will be a key benefit.

Rocket-building promises to bring dramatic changes to the image of Cumbernauld, a town previously renowned for being the setting of Bill Forsyth’s endearing comedy film, Gregory’s Girl – although it remains to be seen how successful the company, which was set up six years ago, will be in achieving its ambitions. It is pinning its hopes on launching small satellites – which are defined as being under 500kg in weight. In 2012, there were about 50 launches of small satellites. By 2019, there were more than 400 and the global market continues to grow, say analysts.

The company – which has been given funds by both the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency – says it is also eyeing opportunities to use its craft to clean-up near-Earth space.

“There all sorts of old satellites and bits of rocket in orbit round the Earth and these can cause problems,” said Clark. “So if we can use our satellites – as we believe we can – to bring some of them down safely or put them in a safer, higher orbit, that will obviously be very useful as well.”

Protest convoy against government irrigation scheme reaches Paris after 8 day march

RFI
Sun, 27 August 2023 

© BassinesNonMerci

The protest convoy, which arrived in Paris on Saturday, brought together nearly a thousand people on the Champ de Mars in a good-natured atmosphere to the sound of songs denouncing "bassines" – the controversial government project to create massive open-air reservoirs for agricultural irrigation.

Hundreds of demonstrators chanted "Fence by fence, cover by cover, we'll destroy all the reservoirs" when they arrived in the French capital on Saturday, after setting off on bicycles and tractors over a week ago from Nouvelle-Aquitaine in western France.

Before reaching Paris, the slow convoy of protesters pitched camp in Orléans on Thursday, where they spent three days in front of the headquarters of the Loire-Bretagne Water Agency – one of the main contractors tasked with rolling out the government's irrigation scheme.

The aim of the so-called "mega-basins" is to store water drawn up from the water table in winter into the open air reservoirs, so it can be used to irrigate crops in when rainfall is scarce or during periods of drought.

Supporters of the government-sponsored plan see this as a prerequisite for the survival of farms in the face of the threat of recurring droughts.

On their way to Paris, a delegation representing the anti-irrigation protesters had been received for more than five hours on Wednesday by Sophie Brocas – the prefect of the Centre-Val de Loire region and water project coordinator – to call for an moratorium on current water storage proposals, but to no avail.

AUSTRALIA

Firefighters fear being ‘overwhelmed’ by rise in battery fires after fatal Sydney blaze

Royce Kurmelovs
Sun, 27 August 2023

Photograph: Sydney Photographer/Alamy

Firefighters say they fear being ‘“overwhelmed” by increasing numbers of battery fires, after the death of a Sydney man in a house fire on Saturday night was linked to toxic smoke from burning lithium batteries.

The 54-year-old man was eating downstairs in his Punchbowl unit in Sydney’s west with two women when the fire broke out. He tried to extinguish the blaze with a fire extinguisher, but when firefighters arrived he was found unconscious on his bathroom floor with soot on his mouth, having inhaled toxic smoke.

Firefighters performed CPR on the man until paramedics arrived, but his injuries were too severe and he did not survive.

While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, four lithium iron batteries were found in the home.

The incident has highlighted a growing concern about the rate of lithium battery fires, firefighters said.

Lithium battery fires are caused by a chemical reaction inside the battery that produces an intense flame that is hard to extinguish and produces toxic gases.

New South Wales Fire and Rescue Supt Andrew Shurety said he couldn’t put a specific number on how often fire crews were being called to lithium battery fires, but that it was a “marked increase” with “a number of fires including the fatal one last night”.

“I’ve been a firefighter for over 30 years and I’ve never seen anything like this. In my personal opinion we’re going to be overwhelmed by it, which will be quite shocking to the community, unless we start taking precautions,” Shurety said.

A spokesperson for Fire and Rescue Victoria said the service was also aware of the issue.

“Lithium ion batteries, although great for our lifestyle, pose a fire risk if damaged, are used incorrectly or are not maintained,” they said.

“Fire Rescue Victoria implore people to use reputable brands in line with manufacturer specifications.”

In July, an e-scooter in Wentworth, Sydney caused a fire which gutted a unit and in January five people in Brisbane were injured when an e-scooter caught fire inside a home.

As of July 2023, firefighters in Western Australia had responded to 32 battery lithium fires and in the ACT eight fires were attributed to e-scooter batteries in Canberra.

It is believed that electric vehicle lithium battery fires are rare, with only four known to date, but United Firefighters Union Australia flagged the issue as an emerging problem in March.

Superintendent Shurety said that like other fire risks, people should take precautions about how and when they charge lithium batteries, including avoiding overcharging them, avoiding flammable locations like a bed and using reputable brands.

“We see fires start from cheap brands that come in as import without warranties,” he said.

NSW Fire and Rescue has published detailed information on its website outlining precautions that can be taken.

Opinion

Shoplifting is out of control. Forget the police – stores need to up their game

CONSUMPTION BY OTHER MEANS

Martha Gill
Sat, 26 August 2023



Within corner-shops and supermarkets and department stores, a new mood of lawlessness circulates. Owners of small shops have long complained that they are being treated as larders; now the owners of large ones have joined them.

Co-op despairs that shoplifting is “out of control”; along with antisocial behaviour incidents, the crime has increased by a third in the first half of this year. Meanwhile, John Lewis has taken to offering free coffees to passing officers. “Just having a police car parked outside can make people think twice about shoplifting from our branches,” the head of security for the John Lewis Partnership has said, with more than a hint of desperation. Earlier this month, there was the “TikTok looting” of Oxford Street, where teens ran amok around stores after a thread urging people to “rob JD Sports” went viral. The trend has a longer sweep: in the past six years, shop thefts in Britain have more than doubled.

What to do about shoplifting? It’s a delicate subject. Shoplifting is not quite like other crimes. Pilfering, purloining, filching, snaffling – it is by nature relatively trivial, the sort of thing children try their hands at without necessarily graduating to car heists and bank jobs. No punishment quite fits (the collapse of Winona Ryder’s career for a few designer gowns stands as a sort of parable for the shoplifter: it’s hardly ever worth it). But most of all, shoplifting is a crime that seems to reflect social need: it rises when the economy dips. The current spate seems partly fuelled by the cost of living crisis. Starving your population and then “cracking down” on it for nicking baby formula or a can of soup can start to make a government look rather unreasonable.

Literature reflects some of our moral feelings about shoplifting – quite often we are on the side of the light-fingered lifter. Dickens is full of desperate characters driven to theft and punished for it by a hypocritical elite. Not for nothing did Daniel Defoe make the heroine of Moll Flanders a shoplifter. And the opportunistic thief is not only a vehicle for social comment but for social defiance, too. In his book Do It, 60s activist Jerry Rubin proffers the following advice. “Don’t buy. Steal. If you act like it’s yours, no one will ask you to pay for it.”

But if the root causes of shoplifting are economic and social these are fairly large problems to solve, not to mention slow ones. In the meantime, we need a few shorter-term solutions. This is not a victimless crime: costs are eventually transferred to the customer, and staff are put at risk. And when it comes to small businesses, shoplifting is hard to justify as a response to rising prices. Stealing is not always the best way, after all, to address inequality. In her book The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting, Rachel Shteir quotes a chastened Rubin after a thief burgles his apartment. “In advocating stealing as a revolutionary act,” he says, “I guess I didn’t make clear the difference between stealing from General Motors and stealing from me.”

Related: ‘We’ll just keep an eye on her’: Inside Britain’s retail centres where facial recognition cameras now spy on shoplifters

So, what can be done to address shoplifting (or “shop theft”, as outlets have tried to rebrand it, in a plea for it to be taken more seriously)? The instinct of politicians has been to ramp up deterrents – a Tory minister recently suggested more jail time is needed for repeat offenders – but this, according to Tim Newburn, professor of criminology at the London School of Economics, is exactly the wrong approach.

More bobbies on the beat – another part of Labour’s response – won’t help

“There are decades of evidence to show that increasing punishment is useless,” says Newburn. Not only is it expensive, it “compounds the social problem by sticking vulnerable people in prison”. But the key sticking point is that the vast majority of offenders do not get caught in the first place. Which makes Labour’s policy – making more use of community sentences – unlikely to work very well either.

More bobbies on the beat – another part of Labour’s response – won’t help. Shops are private spaces, and shoplifters can wait until a policeman passes outside before they commit their crime. The number of extra police needed to adequately guard every shop from thieves, Newburn says, would border on the absurd. Labour wants specially trained patrollers to plug into local knowledge, which might catch the odd repeat offender but would also absorb a lot of resources. Meanwhile, forces are currently so stretched that some can no longer respond to serious mental health crises.

Not only does “cracking down” on shoplifters through the criminal justice system raise difficult moral problems, it doesn’t even work.

So what can be done? Well, there is another approach to the problem. Criminologists call it “situational prevention”. “Literally all crime over the last 30 years has dropped significantly,” says Gloria Laycock, emeritus professor at University College London’s centre for security and crime science. “This includes shop theft, which is now increasing but from a low base.”

The reason for this drop-off? Technology has made breaking the law much harder. The use of deadlocks has decimated car theft; domestic burglary has diminished as double-glazing and alarm systems have thrown up hurdles to burglars.

Yet in many modern shops, we have the opposite phenomenon. Although some security measures have increased, with door alarms and beeping tags, in other ways theft has become easier. Once goods were kept behind counters, but since the birth of large supermarkets they have been laid out near the door, ready for the taking. Automated self check-out means the customer in effect monitors their own behaviour. Staff levels have dropped precipitously. Some shops have responded by employing security guards, but these are effectively middlemen for an overstretched police service. They do little to stop the crime happening in the first place.

“A radical policy might be to decriminalise shop theft,” says Laycock, tongue only half in cheek. “This would put the onus directly on the shops, which could employ the measures that actually work, like putting goods back behind counters.”

She captures the problem: automation has led to lawlessness to which there is no ready solution in the justice system. And it’s not just shops where this is happening. Slowly, gradually, we are removing “secondary social control mechanisms” – shop staff, train ticket collectors, park keepers and bus conductors. Part of their job – an overlooked fact – was to maintain order. A bigger social problem may be looming.

• Martha Gill is an Observer columnist

‘Incredibly poor’ British Museum security let thief take valuables over years, ex-curator claims

Tara Cobham and Jane Dalton

THE INDEPENDENT
Sun, 27 August 2023 

‘Incredibly poor’ British Museum security let thief take valuables over years, ex-curator claims


A former curator at the British Museum has claimed security there was “incredibly poor”, which led to the theft of hundreds – and possibly thousands – of precious artefacts.

And a second expert has told The Independent a colleague raised concerns to the museum numerous times as far back as 2020, after spotting certain items for sale on eBay.

The London institution was rocked by scandal last week when it emerged that irreplaceable treasures had vanished from its vaults.

Hartwig Fischer has now quit as the museum’s director over the handling of the matter (Benedict Johnson/The British Museum/PA Wire)


Its director Hartwig Fischer resigned on Friday, admitting the museum “did not respond as comprehensively as it should have in response to the warnings in 2021, and to the problem that has now fully emerged”.

Mr Fischer is the second scalp the scandal has claimed so far. Last month, the head of the museum’s department of Greece and Rome was sacked after the disappearance of the ancient and antique items, such as gold jewellery, glass and semi-precious stones. Thought to be worth tens of millions of pounds, most had been kept in a storeroom.

Antiquities expert Peter Higgs denied having stolen the artefacts, with his family protesting his innocence.

The Metropolitan Police have interviewed a man, but no-one has been arrested.

Now an ex-curator in a different department has claimed scores of other conservators, specialists and researchers may go into any storeroom in the same week or even on the same day with no oversight of cataloguing, leaving invaluable items at risk.

“The British Museum really does need to review its security policy,” the former member of staff, who did not wish to be named. told The Independent.

Antiquities expert Peter Higgs, 56, who was sacked, denied being responsible (Brick Classicists Empire)

“Cataloguing was incredibly spotty. Each object does have a number and designated place in the store, but in probably most cases that’s all they have... The stores are alarmed but not otherwise monitored.

“I would call up security, tell them which room I was entering, get the key and that’s all I needed to do to have access to a huge range of objects.

“Many of the collections are stored in the same rooms as others so if a person were dishonest they would have the cover of knowing that scores of other curators, conservators, specialists and researchers would have been in that room in the same week or even day.”

The ex-curator told how she was never required to let anyone know which objects she was working with on any day.

Experts put tags in drawers when removing items, but there was no oversight of that, she said.

Mr Higgs’ family came out in his defence, insisting his name had been “dragged through the mud” (Sourced)

Pay in the sector, and particularly at the museum, is so poor that many experts with world-class reputations “end up making tough decisions about having children or eating”, she claimed, adding: “And when you’re that desperate, things can go wrong”.

“A lot of my colleagues are barely making enough for rent, particularly with the cost-of-living crisis. At the British Museum this was brought up by the supervisor of my line manager at nearly every departmental meeting.”

Calling the museum’s security “incredibly poor”, she further suggested Mr Higgs was innocent.

“He also wouldn’t have had a lot of control,” she said. “Even if he knew it was happening, which is incredibly doubtful unless he was directly involved, I don’t think he could have himself even sacked the responsible party without showing clear evidence of what had happened.”

Museum bosses have launched an independent investigation (Getty Images)

Separately, a leading expert on Roman art at the University of Oxford said a colleague had alerted museum bosses to eBay listings, but was “constantly apparently getting nowhere with the museum and getting very upset as a consequence”..

Professor Martin Henig told the Independent he believed reports that up to 2,000 items vanished over several years.

“To my eyes, these were major treasures of perhaps inestimable value, a window into ancient life. It is equivalent to ransacking a room in an art gallery,” he said.

He agreed with the former curator there had been cataloguing failures, especially of smaller items.

“The British Museum has been rather negligent with this aspect of the collection,” he said, claiming “neglect” and “disregard” of the gem collection ultimately led the thief to think they could “get away with most things”.

The professor said the collection of at least 4,000 Greek and Roman items alone in 1926 contained “superb” material. “Having worked on this material for over 50 years, though not from the Greek and Roman Gallery, I am heartbroken.”

The museum, which houses the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, needs to “tighten security” (AFP via Getty Images)

Suggesting the delay could have been due to fears the scandal would “upset the institution”, Prof Henig said: “The British Museum should have acted [when my colleague flagged the thefts] and clearly didn’t, so there is moral culpability more widely and probably higher up.”

An eBay spokesperson said it supported the police investigation, adding: “eBay does not tolerate the sale of stolen property. If we identify that a listing on our site is stolen, we immediately remove it and work with law enforcement to support investigations and keep our site safe.”

A British Museum spokesman said: “Our new research-and-storage facility outside Reading, the British Museum Archaeological Research Collection, allows us to document parts of the collection with unprecedented precision. Projects already under way to digitise and better document the collection will fully modernise our record-keeping.

“We take the care of all the objects in our collection extremely seriously, and thankfully incidents of this kind are incredibly rare.

“We have already tightened security arrangements and launched an independent review to fully understand what happened.

“This review will also make recommendations about further measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again. The independent review will conclude this year and we will publish the recommendations.”

On the director’s resignation, George Osborne, a trustee chairman, said: “The trustees will now establish an interim arrangement, ensuring that the museum has the necessary leadership to take it through this turbulent period as we learn the lessons of what went wrong, and use them to develop plans for a strong future.

“I am clear about this: we are going to fix what has gone wrong. The museum has a mission that lasts across generations.

“We will learn, restore confidence and deserve to be admired once again.”

British Museum director dismissed warning about artefact missing since 1963

Gordon Rayner
Sat, 26 August 2023 

Dr Jonathan Williams mused that the jewel might have been damaged during the war - Mattis Kaminer/Alamy

An antiquities dealer contacted Jonathan Williams, deputy director of the British Museum, in 2020 with evidence that a Roman jewel he had bought belonged to the institution.

When he returned the artefact in May 2021, after the lifting of Covid restrictions, he says that his concerns were dismissed because the piece had been listed as missing since 1963.

The plasma portrait of a young man also had a piece missing, raising the possibility that a thief had broken it when removing it from its setting, but Dr Williams mused that it might have been damaged during the war.


The item is now thought to be one of more than 2,000 objects that may have been stolen over more than a decade, many of which were sold on eBay.

Ittai Gradel, the Danish antiquities expert whose warnings were ignored - Matthew James Harrison

A museum source said: “We believed it had been missing since 1963, so had no reason to believe it was as a result of theft.”

The claim came after George Osborne, a former Conservative Cabinet minister, issued an apology to the nation and blamed “groupthink” for senior management’s failure to face up to the scale of the scandal of artefact thefts from the museum.

Mr Osborne, who is chairman of the British Museum’s trustees, said some missing items had been recovered, but conceded that hundreds more may have been stolen from its vaults and added: “On behalf of the British Museum, I want to apologise for what has happened. We believe we’ve been the victim of thefts over a long period of time and, frankly, more could have been done to prevent them.

“But I promise you this: it is a mess that we are going to clear up. I can tell you today that we’ve already started to recover some of the stolen items.”

Mr Osborne spoke after Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, resigned and Mr Williams “voluntarily stepped back” from his duties over their failure to uncover the theft of objects, despite years of warnings from whistleblowers.

George Osborne (left), chairman of the British Museum and Hartwig Fischer, former director - Dave Benett/Getty

Mr Fischer announced that he was quitting his role as director after seven years because the museum “did not respond as comprehensively” as it should have done when presented with a dossier of evidence in 2021.

He also expressed “sincere regret” for comments he made about Ittai Gradel, a Danish antiquities expert whose warnings were ignored, but whom Dr Fischer tried to blame for the delays.

Mr Osborne said the review will look into “what has happened not just in 2021, but for the many years before then, into how come the museum missed some of the signals that could have been picked up”.

The former chancellor said the estimate of 2,000 items stolen or missing was “a very provisional figure”.

Last week, the museum announced that it had sacked a member of staff, now known to be Peter Higgs, the acting keeper of Greek collections, after jewellery and gems were found to have gone missing. Mr Higgs denies any wrongdoing.

On Wednesday, Metropolitan Police officers investigating the case interviewed an unnamed man under caution.

UK

RMT chief says pay ‘no longer primary issue’ as new wave of action sparks chaos - when will train strikes end?

Sophie Wills
Sat, 26 August 2023 

Secretary-General of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) Mick Lynch stands with union members at a picket line outside Euston Station

RMT general-secretary Mick Lynch says “pay is no longer the primary issue” and accused industry chiefs of “attacking” workers as a new wave of strike action begins. Thousands of rail workers staged a mass walk out today (Saturday, August 26), sparking bank holiday travel chaos amid huge events such as Leeds and Reading festivals.

Drivers represented by ASLEF are holding a separate strike next week on Friday (September 1) while the union will also ban overtime on the same day as the second RMT strike on Saturday, September 2. Disputes between unions and train companies have been dragging on for well over a year, but Mr Lynch said that pay is no longer in the spotlight after the recent closure of hundreds of ticket offices.

He told Sky News: “Pay is not the primary issue because they are attacking our people and telling them they’re going to be made redundant. My members won’t get a pay deal if they’re made unemployed.

“So, just on the stations they want to get rid of a quarter of staff. You don’t get any pay if you’re not employed by the company. The Government is saying they’re going to take people out of the ticket offices and employ them in the stations, but what they’re actually going to do is give them P45s and say you’re out of the industry.”

Mr Lynch said in order for the strikes to be resolved the very structure of the rail industry would need to change. He added: “They’ve got some demands that they’re making on our members about how they want them to work - they want them to have new contracts, they want to introduce lower pay rates [even lower] than the ones we’ve got now. So if we can sort that stuff out, we can move on then to dealing with pay.

“And if they want to make us a pay proposal without the condition that we have to accept massive job cuts then we will consider that proposal. But we’ve never had a suggestion that we can have a pay rise independent of these changes they want to make at any stage in the last two or three years.”

What dates are the train strikes in August and September?

RMT are set to strike on the following dates in August and September 2023:

• Saturday, August 26

• Saturday, September 2

Drivers represented by ASLEF are holding a separate strike on Friday, September 1, while the union will also ban overtime on the same day as the second RMT strike on Saturday, September 2. The last strikes took place over three days on Thursday, July 20,Saturday, July 22 and Saturday, July 29.

Which train operating companies are affected by the strikes?

The 14 train operating companies affected by the most recent RMT train strikes are:

• Avanti West Coast

• c2c

• Chiltern Railways

• CrossCountry (also affected by industrial action on Saturday 9 September)

• East Midlands Railway

• Gatwick Express

• Great Northern

• Great Western Railway

• Greater Anglia

• Heathrow Express

• Island Line - ASLEF strike only

• London Northwestern Railway

• LNER

• Northern

• South Western Railway

• Southeastern

• Southern

• Stansted Express

• Thameslink

• TransPennine Express

• Transport for Wales (not on strike, but service changes on some routes)

• West Midlands Railway

The companies affected by the driver union’s action (ASLEF) are:

• Avanti West Coast

• Chiltern Railways

• c2c

• CrossCountry

• East Midlands Railway

• Greater Anglia

• GTR Great Northern Thameslink

• Great Western Railway

• Island Line

• LNER

• Northern Trains

• Southeastern

• Southern/Gatwick Express

• South Western Railway

• TransPennine Express

• West Midlands Trains

Children reaching UK in small boats sent to jail for adult sex offenders

Mark Townsend, Sian Norris and Katharine Quarmby
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Vulnerable children who arrive in Britain by small boat are being placed in an adult prison that holds significant numbers of sex offenders.

A growing number of cases have been identified where unaccompanied children, many of whom appear to be trafficked, have been sent to HMP Elmley, Kent, and placed among foreign adult prisoners.

According to the most recent inspection of Elmley, the block where foreign nationals are held also houses sex offenders.


Of 14 unaccompanied children so far identified by staff at Humans For Rights Network as being sent to an adult prison, one is believed to have been 14 when they spent seven months in Elmley.

Most of the cases involve Sudanese or South Sudanese children who travelled to the UK via Libya, with most appearing to have been trafficked or having experienced some form of exploitation.

This weekend there were calls for the Home Office to launch an immediate investigation into the issue and urgently release anyone believed to be a child who is inside an adult jail.

Maddie Harris, of Human Rights Network, said the group had worked with more than 1,000 age-disputed children and that those sent to adult prisons were among the most “profoundly harmed”.

She said: “These children are locked down in their cells, not knowing who to call for help, prevented from adequately accessing legal advice and from challenging the arbitrary decision made about their ages by immigration officials upon arrival in the UK. These are children looking for safety who instead find themselves in an adult prison, denied that protection and exposed to great harm.”

Anita Hurrell, head of the migrant children’s project at the children’s charity Coram, said: “It is wrong to criminalise these children and dangerous to send them to adult men’s prisons.”

The children – whose ages are contested by the Home Office – have been charged with immigration offences introduced under the Nationality and Borders Act, which became law last year and introduces tougher criminal offences to deter illegal entry to the UK. Lawyers warn that the practice of sending unaccompanied children to adult prisons appears to be increasing. On Thursday, an age-disputed child was identified in Folkestone magistrates court bound for prison, and there were reports that another minor was in police custody in Margate and also expected to be sent to Elmley.

The imprisoning of minors is, say critics, the latest facet of a broken asylum system. On Thursday, the asylum backlog rose to a high of more than 175,000, up 44% from last year, despite government spending on asylum almost doubling.

The children sent to Elmley were declared adults by the Home Office following what many experts describe as a “cursory and arbitrary” age assessment by officials, often conducted within hours of them reaching the UK by small boat.

A number of Home Office decisions that meant children were sent to an adult prison have already been overturned after detailed assessments by independent or local authority specialists.

New data obtained by the Observer confirms that hundreds of asylum-seeker children are being wrongly treated as adults by the Home Office. According to data from dozens of councils, more than half of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who undergo Home Office age assessments on arriving into the UK are later confirmed to be children.

Data from 55 councils under freedom of information laws shows that of 1,416 age assessments carried out over the five years to April 2023 by specialist social workers on age-disputed asylum seekers, 809 were found to be children. In 10 councils, all of the young people assessed were found to be children.

Syd Bolton, co-director of Equal Justice For Migrant Children, said: “Age assessment has developed into the most monstrous of procedural devices.”

Bolton said he considered the practice to be a “deliberate barrier to accessing asylum protection and denying young asylum seekers access to children’s services. It is a major tool of the Home Office in discrediting an asylum claim.”

Wrongly classifying children as adults means they can also be placed alone in unsupervised accommodation alongside adults. In Elmley, Harris said, youngsters shared cells, although a number of age-disputed children had since been released.

According to Elmley’s latest inspection, one in four inmates in a survey said they felt unsafe in the jail. It also said that, despite the prison being “no longer designated to hold prisoners convicted of a sexual offence”, 70 such inmates were still there.

Days ago, details emerged of a paedophile being held at Elmley who was convicted of 14 sex offences and found guilty of abusing two children.

Harris added: “The children are always deeply harmed by the time they have spent in prison in the UK, expressing clearly how they are unable to sleep, do not understand why they were held there and struggle to speak about their time there.”

She added: “It should be made clear that neither adult or child should be criminalised for arriving in the UK to claim asylum, an offence that clearly contravenes the refugee convention.”

Hurrell referred to a recent court ruling that unaccompanied minors should be looked after by councils “where they can be kept safe and recover”. It is thought that many more unaccompanied children have been placed in adult prisons. Human Rights Network staff attending hearings at Folkestone magistrates court have identified them by noticing a young person contesting the date of birth given to them by immigration officials upon arrival in the UK.

Related: Asylum seekers say Bibby Stockholm conditions caused suicide attempt

A government spokesperson said: “Assessing age is a challenging but vital process to identify genuine children and stop abuse of the system. We must prevent adults claiming to be children, or children being wrongly treated as adults – both present serious safeguarding risks.

“To further protect children, we are strengthening the age-verification process by using scientific measures such as X-rays.”

The spokesperson added that the government had not been provided with the information needed to investigate the points raised by the Observer, although at the time of publication it had not asked to view any evidence.

Grenada prime minister calls on Britain to pay slavery reparations: ‘It’s the decent thing to do’


Nadine White
Updated Sat, 26 August 2023

The prime minister of Grenada has issued fresh calls to King Charles and Rishi Sunak to apologise and pay slavery reparations to former colonies of Britain.

Speaking from his home in an exclusive interview with The Independent, Dickon Mitchell criticised Britain’s failure to atone for the mass enslavement of African people and said failing to do so sent a bad message.

“If the UK wants to continue being a country that demonstrates that it upholds the values of justice, fairness, democracy, [and] equal treatment of human beings, then it should be upfront in apologising for slavery,” Mr Mitchell said as the nation prepared for its annual Spicemas carnival.

Grenada prime minister Dickon Mitchell 

(Que Media)

“Reluctance or refusal to do so then sends the opposite message. In Grenada, as a former colony of the UK, we recognise the legacy issues that we’re dealing with and therefore I think it’s the decent thing to do, frankly.

“Even in a post-colonial era, I think it is critical to ensuring that going forward ... we improve our relationship with Britain and see that there’s a genuine sense that the former colonies, the people who live there, are viewed as equals by the country that colonised us.”

His call comes as the family of former UK prime minister William Gladstone are due to travel to the Caribbean to apologise for the role of their ancestors in the slave trade.

Mr Gladstone, who was prime minister on four occasions in the 19th century, was the son of John Gladstone – one of the largest slave owners in the British West Indies. Charlie Gladstone, the great-great-great-grandson of John, said he “felt absolutely sick” when he found out about his family’s slave-owning past and has vowed to apologise.

Nadine White interviews Mr Mitchell at his home in Grenada 

(Que Media)

The UK has never apologised for slavery or committed to paying reparations, despite multiple requests to do so from MPs over the decades.

In April, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy asked Mr Sunak if he would make a “full and meaningful apology” on behalf of the government and “commit to reparatory justice” during a parliamentary session.

But the prime minister declined, saying “trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward”.

The month before, Foreign Office minister David Rutley told Labour MP Clive Lewis, who has family links in Grenada: “We acknowledge the role of British authorities in enabling the slave trade for many years before being the first global force to drive the end of the slave trade in the British empire.”

Mr Mitchell slammed that response – likening it to a killer dodging responsibility for a heinous crime.

“Well, that’s almost like seeing someone who’s committed murder be applauded for having committed murder,” he told The Independent.

“To my mind, that’s nonsensical and, in reality, an attempt to, in a sense, whitewash your own conscience. It was wrong, you should say it’s wrong, give a commitment that you will never support something like that – and then help the victims of the descendants who have to deal with this.”

King Charles has recently spoken of his “sorrow” and deepening “understanding” of slavery, but Mr Mitchell said he hoped he would go further and lead impactful change on the issue.

“I think it’s easy sometimes for people to conveniently forget the past,” the Grenada prime minister said.

The Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park in Grenada was designed by British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor and is thought to be a tribute to enslaved African people (Supplied)

“So I applaud the King’s comments – I hope they actually lead to action and that that helps to bring parts of the UK that have steered away from this conversation into the conversation, so that ultimately, we couldn’t get the right consensus and be able to move on.”

It comes amid mounting calls for the UK to pay reparations as numerous Caribbean nations, which are former colonies of Britain, including Grenada, signal their intentions to ditch the monarchy and become a republic.

 Is It Time The UK Paid Reparations For Slavery? | Good Morning Britain 

Aug 24, 2023  

'It may have been a long time ago, but there are obviously current-day consequences.' Leading UN judge, Patrick Robinson, says the UK will no longer be able to ignore calls for slavery reparations. It’s been suggested Britain owes £18.8 trillion.

Is it time to pay reparations?

Mr Mitchell said he hoped his nation would make such a move – which would require a referendum – however, he said it was not a priority and he was keen to avoid the matter being used as a “political football”.

“I need to make sure that we get sufficient buy-in from all sectors of society to say ‘this is what we want’, and the average Grenadian understands the benefits of moving to a republican type of government, rather than just the political class,” he said.

Last April, the UK was cautioned against glossing over its past atrocities, as Prince Edward and Sophie Wessex were forced to cancel a royal tour of Grenada following concerns over tensions around reparations talks.

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has declined to apologise for Britain’s links to the slave trade (2023 Getty Images)

As the UK marks Windrush’s 75th anniversary – remembering the arrival of the first ship carrying Caribbean families to the UK to fill the need for more workers after the Second World War – Mr Mitchell said there could be no mistaking the fact that multiculturalism was behind the UK’s success.

He said Mr Sunak’s own position, as the first Asian prime minister, reflected this and his government should bear that in mind when considering immigration strategies.

“So, there is no doubt in my mind that the future success of the UK is actually built on remaining a multicultural open society,” said Mr Mitchell. “In order for that to continue, you also have to recognise that immigrants – including persons who are not traditionally white – are critical towards the continued success of the UK.

“It’s obvious that the conversation about reparations, migration, immigrants, maintaining an open, plural society – rather than one that’s closing off against itself – is something that has to happen.”

The UK government and Buckingham Palace both declined to comment.

UK

Home Office’s ex-asylum boss joins pro-migrant charity  

OUCH


Edward Malnick
Sat, 26 August 202

Ms Haddad was known as being 'very difficult' during her time at the Home Office, one source claimed

A former Home Office chief accused of resisting key Conservative policies while in charge of asylum is joining a charity that has said the Government’s policies are “inhumane, racist and divisive”.

Emma Haddad, who was the Home Office’s director general for asylum until October 2022, will help to oversee Amnesty International UK, which has been campaigning against the Government’s attempts to halt Channel crossings and deport migrants to Rwanda.

Ms Haddad’s appointment will intensify tensions between Conservative ministers and senior officials. A senior Tory said: “This demonstrates the extent of the institutional hurdles that we have been up against.”

One source described Ms Haddad as “very difficult” and the “chief blocker” of ministers’ policies during her time at the Home Office. A Home Office source claimed that, during her time at the top of the department, the senior civil servant was “hostile” to the Government’s agenda on asylum, including a plan to move migrants out of taxpayer-funded hotel rooms and into large-scale accommodation.

The Home Office source said that Ms Haddad also oversaw the introduction of “lenient” guidance in which asylum caseworkers were told they could not reject the testimony of a migrant caught lying.

Sources cited her move to Amnesty as evidence that Ms Haddad was politically opposed to Conservative policies on asylum and immigration.

Obeyed Civil Service code

Responding to the claims, Ms Haddad said: “As with any civil servant, my job was to serve the government of the day. All civil servants must abide by the Civil Service code and uphold the Civil Service’s core values of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.”

The row came as a poll by Public First found that almost half of pro-Leave voters who backed the Conservatives in 2019 believe the Government is not trying hard enough to deal with asylum and immigration.

The survey highlights a potential backlash brewing among the primary group of voters that Mr Sunak had set out to win over with his pledge to stop illegal Channel crossings.

Ms Haddad’s move to Amnesty will also heighten concerns about the “revolving door” between Whitehall and organisations that seek to influence government policies.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which vets jobs taken by former senior officials, said the Home Office acknowledged that Ms Haddad’s knowledge of the department’s “strategic thinking” on asylum and immigration would improve Amnesty’s “effectiveness as a lobbying organisation.”

It has banned Ms Haddad from lobbying the Government for two years, and added: “Ms Haddad has confirmed she will not have contact with the Government in this role and is inwardly focused.”

During Dame Priti Patel’s stint as home secretary, which ended in September 2022, scores of officials voiced their opposition to the Government’s Rwanda asylum deal on an internal Home Office online noticeboard – with some threatening to strike over the issue.

In March, mandarins complained after an email in Suella Braverman’s name to Conservative members blamed an “activist blob of Left-wing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” for blocking the Government’s plans to stop small boats carrying migrants across the Channel.

It later emerged that the Home Secretary had not seen or sanctioned the email before it was sent out.

Ms Haddad, who has also taken up a post as chief executive of St Mungo’s, the homelessness charity, since leaving the Home Office, applied for the unpaid role at Amnesty having seen an advertisement.

Amnesty has been one of the fiercest opponents of the Government’s crackdown on illegal Channel crossings over several years, describing Rishi Sunak’s Illegal Migration Act, which became law in July, as “inhumane, racist and divisive”.

The legislation changed the law so that those who arrive in the UK illegally can be detained and then deported, either to their home country or a “safe third country” such as Rwanda – an element currently being challenged in the courts.

In April, the charity stated: “Harsh asylum and immigration policies do not deter people from making dangerous journeys, indeed, the Home Office’s own research contradicts this … The Home Secretary has spread nonsensical scare stories about the numbers of people trying to come to the UK and blamed people for failing to take safe and legal routes that do not exist.”

Ms Haddad left the Home Office a month after Mrs Braverman was first appointed as Home Secretary by Liz Truss, having served as director general for asylum since February 2021, when Dame Priti was home secretary.

Dame Priti introduced the Nationality and Borders Bill, which tightened up asylum rules, including by creating a two-tier system under which those who arrive via illegal crossings may receive less protection and support. Ms Haddad’s approach at the time was “all about not being able to do things,” a source claimed.

The legislation under Dame Priti was opposed by Amnesty on the grounds that it was “racist” and “drags the UK’s reputation through the mud”.

A spokesman for Amnesty International UK said: “Non-executive directors at Amnesty International UK do not determine our policy positions on legal or human rights matters but are expected to support those positions while serving on the Board of Amnesty UK, and we have full confidence that all the members of our board do so.”