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  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 Image copyright Getty Images Parents are being urged to make sure their children are up-to-date with all their routine vaccinations. The Local Government Association said high vaccine uptake could prevent infections and stop pressure being piled on the NHS. The childhood vaccination programme is continuing as normal while jabs given in school are being rescheduled. Vaccines protect children against serious diseases including measles, meningitis and whooping cough. The LGA, which represents councils in England and Wales, said it was expecting an influx of children needing vaccinations when schools return in September. It called for the government to set out a plan to ensure children get the vaccinations they need and to provide funding to allow GPs, clinics and schools to cope with demand. Research by Public Health England found that during the first three weeks of lockdown, there was a 20% drop in the number of MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccines given to young children. Numbers then rose again in late April. There was little impact on uptake of other vaccines, and further analysis by PHE suggests children were vaccinated at normal levels in May and June. 'Essential protection' Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at PHE, said it was "vital" that parents knew that routine vaccinations were still available and made sure their children attended appointments. She said this was particularly the case for diseases such as measles, where high vaccination rates were needed to prevent outbreaks. The LGA said a "national effort" to vaccinate children and young people was required to relieve pressure on the health service and avoid preventable diseases. Judith Blake, chairwoman of the LGA's Children and Young People Board, said: "Vaccines are an absolutely essential part of our children's health and wellbeing, so if you or any member of your household are not displaying symptoms of coronavirus and are not self-isolating, vaccinations should happen as normal. "Local services are working hard to ensure that people including babies, children and pregnant women still receive their routine vaccinations - they provide essential protection against potentially life-threatening diseases." 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 There are growing fears over the handling of November’s US presidential election after it emerged that the US Postal Service (USPS) has warned it cannot guarantee mail-in votes will be counted in almost every state in America and Barack Obama accused Donald Trump of trying to “discourage people from voting”. In letters to 46 states, and the District of Columbia, the USPS has warned that it could not guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted – possibly affecting tens of millions of votes across almost the whole country. The news was reported first in the Washington Post. Trump faces surprise call from Republican congressman to pardon Edward Snowden – live Read more A record number of Americans are expected to vote via the USPS because of concerns over in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far claimed more than 160,000 US lives. One of the letters was sent to Pennsylvania’s top official overseeing elections, warning that a one-week turnaround for mail-in ballots may not be possible. Pennsylvania is a key swing state won by Donald Trump by less than 1% in 2016, and it could play a pivotal role again in 2020. Voters are able to request a mailed ballot up to seven days before the election, but ballots returned after election day cannot be counted. In response to the growing crisis in the USPS Obama – who has generally carefully avoided attacking Trump directly – launched a remarkable broadside against his successor. In a podcast with David Plouffe, his former campaign manager, Obama said: “What we’ve seen in a way that is unique to modern political history is a president who is explicit in trying to discourage people from voting. What we’ve never seen before is a president say, ‘I’m going to try to actively kneecap the postal service to encourage voting and I will be explicit about the reason I’m doing it.’” Obama added: “That’s sort of unheard of.” Voting by mail has become a politically charged issue, with Trump claiming that mail-in ballots will benefit his rival, the Democrat Joe Biden, and lead to fraud. Experts have confirmed that the mail-in ballot system has long been safe from any fraudulent tampering, with Trump and members of his family repeatedly using the methods themselves. Democrats have proposed $3.6bn in election funding to help states with vote processing, with another $25bn for the cash-strapped USPS to help it meet the expected demand from the 180 million voters who are registered to vote. But Trump has explicitly said he opposes these measures as he wants to deter mail-in voting. “If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” the president told Fox Business on Thursday. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.” Trump also repeated his claim, again with no evidence, that mail-in ballots would be “fraudulent”. Those remarks triggered widespread outrage, especially among Democrats and civil liberties groups. What we’ve seen in a way that is unique … is a president who is explicit in trying to discourage people from voting Barack Obama Trump’s critics have accused the president, who is badly trailing Biden in polling, of attempting to stymie the USPS to bolster his floundering re-election effort. Biden said the president’s latest comments were “pure Trump”. The presumptive Democratic nominee, who this week chose the California senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, added that Trump “doesn’t want an election”. The mounting concerns over the democratic process have been fueled by an apparent slowdown in activity by the USPS, which is headed by a Trump appointee. The USPS plans to remove hundreds of high-volume mail processing machines across the country, ostensibly due to a reduction in letters and packages sent during the pandemic. Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, has said that she fears “Republican sabotage of the USPS, including slowing mail delivery, is a Trump strategy to make voting by mail more difficult this fall”. Clinton urged voters to requests ballots early and send them in as soon as possible. Obama condemns Trump attempt to 'kneecap' USPS to discourage voting – live Read more The 300,000-member National Association of Letter Carriers said on Friday that the union’s executive council had endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president, warning “the very survival” of the postal service was at stake. Trump, presiding over a disastrously handled pandemic that has ravaged the health of millions of Americans and plunged the country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, has attempted to hurry along the reopening of schools and businesses, despite a surge in infections in many states, while attempting to paint Biden and Harris as an existential threat to the US. On Thursday, Trump lent credence to a false and racist conspiracy theory that Harris was not eligible to serve as vice-president, saying that he considered the allegation “very serious”. Harris, who would be the first black and Asian woman to be vice-president, was born in California and is able to serve in the role, or as president, under constitutional requirements. Trump previously aired the same “birther” conspiracy about Obama, the first black US president. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 Naruhito reflects on war actions at Covid-curtailed ceremony, marked elsewhere by former foes as Victory in the Pacific or VJ Day Japan has marked the 75th anniversary of its surrender in the second world war with Emperor Naruhito expressing “deep remorse” over his country’s wartime actions at a sombre annual ceremony curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic. Naruhito pledged to reflect on the war’s events and expressed hope that the tragedy would never be repeated. There was no word of apology from the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who gave thanks for the sacrifices of the Japanese war dead. “Reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse, I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated,” Naruhito said in a short speech at the event in Tokyo marking the 75th anniversary of Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945. UK to mark 75th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day Read more Amid virus fears and worries about the fading memories of the fast-ageing war generation, about 500 participants, reduced from 6,200 last year, mourned the dead with a minute of silence. Masks were required and there was no singing of the Kimigayo national anthem. Naruhito has promised to follow in the footsteps of his father, who devoted his 30-year career to making amends for a war fought in the name of Hirohito, the current emperor’s grandfather. Abe has increasingly sought to whitewash Japan’s brutal past since taking office in December 2012. He has not acknowledged Japan’s wartime hostilities during 15 August speeches, which had previously been a nearly 20-year tradition that began with the 1995 apology of the Socialist party prime minister Tomiichi Murayama. Abe said the peace that Japan enjoys today was built on the sacrifices of those who died in the war. He pledged that Japan would reflect on lessons from history and will not repeat the war devastation. He listed damage inflicted on Japan and its people, including the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, firebombings of Tokyo and the fierce battle of Okinawa. He pledged to play a greater role in tackling global problems. Under his goal of turning Japan into a “beautiful” and “normal” nation, Abe has steadily pushed to cleanse Japan of its embarrassing wartime history and build up its military by stretching the interpretation of Japan’s war-renouncing constitution. It includes acquiring greater missile defence capability in the face of a growing military threat from North Korea and China. Japan PM sparks anger with near-identical speeches in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Read more Abe stayed away from a Tokyo shrine that honours convicted war criminals among the war dead. He sent a ritual cash, seeking to avoid angering China and South Korea, which consider the Yasukuni shrine a symbol of Japan’s militarism. It honours 2.5 million war dead, mostly Japanese, but among them are senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes. The South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, offered talks with Japan to resolve their feud over wartime grievances as his country celebrated the 75th anniversary of its liberation from Japanese colonial rule. In a nationally televised speech, Moon said his government had left the door of consultations wide open for Japan to settle a long legal and diplomatic dispute over compensation for Koreans who had been subjected to forced labour. Relations between South Korea and Japan sank to their lowest point in decades in 2019 as they allowed their disagreements over wartime history to spill over into issues related to trade and military cooperation. Moon avoided direct criticism of the conservative government of Abe, which has insisted that all compensation issues were settled when the two countries normalised relations under a 1965 treaty. That stance was rebutted by South Korea’s supreme court in 2018 when it ruled the deal did not cover individual rights to seek reparations and called on Japanese companies to compensate ageing Korean plaintiffs. “Our government is ready to sit face-to-face with the Japanese government at any time to find a mutual solution the victims can support,” Moon said. Moon also called for North Korea to respond to South Korean proposals for bilateral cooperation, including joint programmes against Covid-19 and other diseases, and the resumption of temporary reunions between ageing relatives separated by the 1950-53 Korean war. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 The first chain of women appeared on Wednesday: a few hundred brave souls, dressed in white and holding aloft flowers, in a quietly powerful response to the gruesome violence inflicted on thousands of Belarusians over the previous days. By the next afternoon, columns of flower-waving women were everywhere, parading along the broad avenues of central Minsk smiling, laughing and resolutely demanding political change. “We are here to show solidarity with all our men who were beaten up and abused,” said Tatyana, a 31-year-old waitress who was at the very front of a column of about 1,000 women holding flowers – one of many such groups walking through the centre of Minsk. She and her friend were holding a white flag, which she said was a sign of their desire for no more violence. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women in Minsk demonstrating after Lukashenko claimed election victory. Photograph: Misha Friedman/Getty Images On Friday evening, thousands of protesters descended on the Belarusian parliament, potentially setting the scene for a new show-down with riot police. As the demand for change intensifies and reaches even the factories that are the pride of Alexander Lukashenko’s neo-Soviet economy, the authoritarian ruler ends the week clinging on to power in defiance of an ever-broader coalition of opponents. But from the beginning, this has been an uprising inspired and led by women. After several male presidential candidates were arrested or fled in the run-up to the vote, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of one of them, stepped in. Together with two other women, the trio offered a simple programme that inspired many Belarusians: swift new elections that would be free and fair. Lukashenko, misreading the mood of the country he has led for 26 years, laughed at Tikhanovskaya, suggesting she should focus on cooking dinner for her children. The attacks only made people admire the resolve of Tikhanovskaya more. “The three of us were able to show that we had taken responsibly for what is happening and for the future of Belarus,” said Maria Kolesnikova, the only one of the all-female trio who remains in Belarus, in an interview in central Minsk this week. “The west won’t help, Russia won’t help, we can only help ourselves. Our female faces became a signal for all women – and for the men too – that every person should take responsibility.” Nobody knows the real result of Sunday’s election, but it seems unlikely that Lukashenko won anything close to a majority, and certainly not the claimed 80%, a wildly implausible number that inflamed the protest mood and brought thousands onto the street. Authorities responded to the protest with some of the most egregious police violence in modern European history. On Sunday and Monday evenings, riot police fanned out through Minsk like they were playing a computer game, scooping up anyone wearing protest ribbons, anyone chanting and many random bystanders. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Two women talk with a riot police officer as police block a part of a street in the capital Minsk. Photograph: Sergei Grits/AP Those who were snatched were subjected to brutal violence, and no one was immune. Not the 47-year-old man on his way home to his wife, arrested at random and later given an extended ritual beating by a gang of police while he was forced to lay face down on the floor. Not the 51-year-old journalist in the city of Grodno, who shouted “journalist” and waved his accreditation in the air, only to be kicked in the face and lose four teeth (and then be detained, and fined). Not the man captured on video as he was dragged away by riot police, shouting in disbelief: “I fucking voted for Lukashenko!” And not roughly 6,700 others, detained over four nights this week. The epicentre of terror was a detention centre on Okrestina Street on the outskirts of Minsk: two imposing buildings, one white and one terracotta, behind high walls and topped with barbed wire. In scenes that might have come from the pages of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, weeping relatives waited outside, desperate for information about the whereabouts of missing children, siblings or partners. A long line snaked back from a grey metal door, which had a tiny hatch that would open briefly every few hours. When it did, those waiting could give the names of their missing and wait for a yest or a nyet to be barked at them from an unseen person inside. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Svetlana Tikhanovskaya giving a press conference after she left the country. Photograph: Valery Sharifulin/TASS By day, armed men patrolled the rooftops, and appeared to be communicating with thinly disguised plain-clothed watchers stationed among the crowd of weary relatives. By night, anguished cries of pain could be heard from behind the walls. Occasionally, ambulances arrived to carry away those whose injuries from beatings had become critical. Judges arrived in minibuses to perform show trials right inside the prison, with many detainees saying they were forced to sign papers with fabricated information about where, when and how they were detained. By Wednesday morning, it seemed the protest had been decisively crushed. The reappearance of the internet, crudely switched off across the country just after the vote, seemed to be a sign that the authorities felt back in control of the situation. The picture painted by opposition social media channels of a country on the verge of a successful revolution seemed just as detached from reality as the nightly spots about grain harvest targets and rapeseed oil prices on Lukashenko’s state television. But as prisoners began to be released, thousands of graphic videos of their injuries and testimony were shared with disgust on messaging apps. The mood changed again, as the country began to appreciate the scale and brazenness of the abuse. Marina, a 28-year-old musician who took part in the initial demonstration of women on Wednesday, said that prior to this year she had not been interested in politics, simply living her own life in parallel to the repressive state and not feeling restricted by it. However, she was energised by the campaign of Tikhanovskaya and disgusted at Lukashenko’s violent response. “Now when I see his face, I can’t even explain the feeling. It’s something worse than hatred, it’s something black inside me I didn’t even know was there,” she said. As shock turned to catharsis, Minsk on Thursday and Friday resembled a carnival, as large groups of women marched through the streets, and cars honking their horns in support provided a constant backdrop of noise. The riot police retreated and the authorities launched a belated strategy of half-hearted reconciliation. Tikhanovskaya may now be out of the country, but her video appeal on Friday calling for protests over the weekend, combined with growing resolve among the protesters and the increasing number of striking factories, suggests the next days will be crucial. There has been total absence of demonstrations of support for the dictator, with none of the flag-waving youth groups or angry grandmas that presidents in Russia and Ukraine have mustered over recent years in attempts to showcase the depth of their support as protest movements flared. Lukashenko appears to be in control of little except the police and army. Kolesnikova, who has remained in Minsk despite a series of threats and the arrest of many colleagues, dismissed talk of things turning violent. “I don’t think there should be a revolution, and the only person who is using words like revolution is the current president. We always talked only about peaceful methods of protest,” she said on Wednesday. But events in Minsk were moving fast, with crowds massing on Friday evening set to be the biggest demonstration yet, and uncertainty about how riot police will respond. A new demonstration planned for Sunday could be the biggest in the country’s history. Nobody really believes in the prospect of dialogue with the dictator, leaving a bloody crackdown or the sudden fall of the regime as the most likely outcomes. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women protesters offer flowers to police officers during a demonstration. Photograph: Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images At Pushkinskaya, an intersection of two broad avenues on the edge of the city where a protester was killed on Monday night, people who had never before dreamed of attending a protest came to pay their respects throughout the week. The crimson bloodstains are still visible on the pavement. “I’m scared. Of course I’m scared. But I have a son, and I don’t want him to live in this kind of country,” said 54-year-old Marina, who started crying as she was speaking. As she brushed away the tears, a young man passed along the row of protesters on a scooter. “Thank you, wonderful women of Belarus!” he shouted, handing out flowers to each of them as he passed. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 Government advisers and leading infrastructure experts have said ministers must do much more to protect the UK’s infrastructure from extreme weather, as the fiercest heatwave in decades gave way to thunderstorms and deluges over large parts of the country. Storm warnings are in place over the weekend for most of England, Wales and large parts of Scotland. The Met Office said the current weather was likely to stay in place at least until next Tuesday, bringing heat, lightning and downpours to many regions of the UK, though some of the far north was likely to avoid the worst of it. Temperatures reached above 34C (93.2F) for six days in a row last week for the first time since 1961. Across Europe, countries have had localised heat records beaten and a long stretch of hot weather has given way to storms in many places, with France and Belgium beset by thunderstorms after more than a week of sweltering heat. Parts of the Arctic have experienced the highest temperatures ever recorded this summer, and fires have raged again in some areas of the far north. German farmers have complained of a plague of mice eating their harvests, in hot and dry conditions. Southern Europe has had more typical weather. Last summer was the hottest on record for many European countries, and this year’s heat is likely to come close. Heatwaves are growing more likely in the UK, with 2020 on course to be the hottest year on record. Engineers and infrastructure experts are growing increasingly concerned that vital infrastructure – from homes and buildings to transport, water and energy networks – is unable to cope with the added strain. Several pointed to last week’s Stonehaven derailment, in which three people were killed and many more injured. The derailment may have been caused by a landslip after heavy rain, as experts cited it as an example of the kind of incident that may grow more frequent unless urgent action is taken to make the UK more resilient to the impacts of the climate crisis. Quick guide Extreme heat has become more common in recent years Show Hide • Temperatures stayed over 34C for six consecutive days last week in the UK, the longest such run since comparable records began in the 1960s • Spring was the sunniest on record in the UK, even as millions of people were stuck indoors by lockdown. There were more hours of sunshine than in any year since the series began in 1929, and May was the driest in more than a century • February was the UK’s wettest ever, with 202.1mm of rainfall as storms battered the country • July was unusually wet and cool • In April, meteorologists forecast that 2020 would be the world’s hottest year since records began • Last year was Europe’s hottest on record, with 11 of the 12 hottest years on record having occurred in the past two decades • Siberia has experienced temperatures more than 10C above average this summer, in an Arctic heatwave that has alarmed scientists • Last summer, Arctic sea ice was at its second lowest extent on record. This year may surpass records, and recent research suggests Arctic sea ice is on track to disappear in summer by 2035 • Antarctica hit a record high of 20.75C in February, recorded on Seymour Island by Brazilian scientists, at the close of its summer • The last decade was the earth’s hottest on record The government’s statutory advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, called for new regulations to protect people from rising temperatures. “The recent heatwave shows how ill-suited the current UK building stock is to hot weather, and the risk that overheating poses to us all,” said Kathryn Brown, head of adaptation at the committee. “Yet there is still no legal requirement to ensure homes, hospitals, schools or care homes are designed for the current or future climate. This urgently needs to change and be part of a wider programme of retrofitting and designing buildings within a green economic recovery package.” The National Infrastructure Commission, whose recommendations the government has postponed replying to until the autumn, also raised concerns. “We absolutely can’t afford to stick our head in the sand,” said Sir John Armitt, chair of the NIC. “The impact of extreme weather cycles can be catastrophic, particularly on structures built over a century ago for a very different age. Given the scientific consensus on the future likelihood of such events, nobody can pretend these are unknown unknowns.” He cited the NIC’s recent report on UK infrastructure, which called on the government to publish resilience standards every five years, and for stress tests for utilities and other infrastructure such as transport. Geoff French, former president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, pointed to the Stonehaven derailment as an example of what can happen when deluges strike. “Cuttings, slopes and so on need to be checked more frequently,” he said. “The challenge is to identify the most critical infrastructure and deal with that. You need to reduce the knock-on impact, when one piece of infrastructure fails.” Much of the UK’s infrastructure dates from the Victorian age, when the climate was less prone to such high temperatures and the risk of flash flooding. Roger Kemp, professorial fellow at Lancaster University and fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said building new houses, streets and transport networks to those old specifications and templates no longer made sense. “If you look at other countries, their drains are deep and wide but we are still building as the Victorians did.” Since the privatisation of utilities in the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis has been on keeping down costs to billpayers, rather than investing in better infrastructure. “That was a mistake,” said Kemp. “The cultural shift has not happened: people haven’t woken up to the need to invest yet.” Centralised government was another problem, he added. “This stuff is not very sexy, and governments like big prestige projects. There is a place for unspectacular improvements to be carried out by local authorities.” Adapting the UK’s buildings, transport and energy and water networks, and protecting against future flooding and storms, would create much-needed jobs and could form a leading part of an economic stimulus to revive the economy battered by the coronavirus crisis, according to Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics. While the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced £2bn for refurbishing homes to be more energy efficient, the question of protecting them against excessive heat was not mentioned. The wrong type of insulation can reduce ventilation and turn homes into heat traps in summer. Brown said: “Deep retrofits are needed to improve shading and ventilation for buildings alongside improving carbon and water efficiency. This will improve the comfort of our homes, create jobs and reduce household bills.” A government spokesperson said: “Bolstering our resilience to climate change is a national priority but we know there’s more to do to protect vital infrastructure in the short term. We’re already working to protect the nation from extreme weather by doubling our investment in flood defences to better protect and prepare properties and vital infrastructure, and ensuring energy, communications and transport networks are more resilient.” Britain is likely to experience further extremes of weather in future as climate breakdown takes a stronger hold, the Met Office said. “Winters will be wetter and warmer, and summers hotter,” said Aidan McGivern, meteorologist at the Met Office. Convective storms, such as those being seen across the country at present, will become more frequent. “The season of thunderstorms will lengthen, to begin in late spring and go on into early autumn.” Even when we can predict rising temperatures and higher rainfall, one certainty about the future weather is that it will still take us by surprise – just as last week’s heatwave prompted outrage and shock on social media, despite 2020 following a decade of exceptional heat. Mark McCarthy, head of the National Climate Information Centre at the Met Office, has studied centuries of the UK’s weather records, and found an enduring pattern. “We are always being taken by surprise by our weather, and what it can throw at us” he said. “That just doesn’t seem to change.” 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 For the purist – and there are many purists – top-class jamón ibérico de bellota (acorn-fed Iberian ham) must come from Iberian blackfoot pigs that spend the last months of their lives eating acorns on the dehesa, a traditional Spanish or Portuguese pasture shaded by mature oak trees. After being hung and dry cured for at least 36 months, the meat produced is silky with fat, and, say experts, has a flavour that can only come from the acorns. Spaniards consider jamón ibérico their greatest gift to international gastronomy – the caviar of the Iberian peninsula. But now two American companies have had the incredible temerity to begin importing blackfoots to the US in order to make their own jamón. Acornseekers, established in Flatonia, Texas, by two Spaniards, and Iberian Pastures, another Spanish-American venture in the state of Georgia, were both set up recently to capture the American market with their own version of Spanish ham. It will be marketed as jamón ibérico armericano or Ibericus meat. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Piglets foraging for acorns in the dehesa. Photograph: Rawdon Wyatt/Alamy Stock Photo Even worse, Iberian Pastures is taking advantage of the state’s native crop to feed the pigs not acorns but “pecans, peanuts and sunflower”. According to Constantino Martínez, ham industry consultant: “The real problem is that we are a nation of idiots who have given away our heritage that our governments have done nothing to protect, and then the media present the people exploiting it as great innovators.” The diet of acorns is essential to producing the prized omega-9 fats that make the meat so delicious, he points out. Peanuts are “not the same thing at all”. To call Marítinez a champion of authentic jamón ibérico would be an understatement. It is his passion to defend the purity and quality of what he describes as the flagship of the Spanish nation. He believes it should enjoy the same sort of protection as champagne. He is furious with the failure of the Spanish government to protect jamón’s integrity and allow native blackfoot pigs to be exported to the United States. Ham needs to be hung and dry cured for at least 36 months. Photograph: Constantino Martinez “Their real game is to get access to the American market on better terms and at better prices than Spanish producers,” says Martínez. “Then they will move into Latin America and ultimately Asia, where Spanish jamón is very popular”. Martínez rejects the argument that, as a variety, the blackfoot pig can’t be protected by a denomination the way champagne and parmesan cheese are, pointing out that the Japanese wagyu enjoys just this sort of protection. However, the US has tended to be cavalier about such things. Parmesan cheese technically has to be from Parmigiano-Reggiano but under the name of parmesan it could be anything, and in the US it’s as likely to have come from Peoria as from Parma. As the US never ratified the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, under which champagne became a protected brand, until recently American wine producers have been able to play fast and loose with the term. Now, it seems, what is sold as jamón ibérico may well originate in Dallas or Macon rather than Badajoz or Salamanca. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 Two million GCSE grades recommended by teachers are to be downgraded next week, with disadvantaged pupils even worse hit than those affected by the A-levels debacle, according to analysis from leading researchers. Thousands of headteachers have called for urgent action to avoid “serious injustices” that could blight the life chances of their pupils, after exams were cancelled because of coronavirus and the results consequently being decided by an algorithm that has been condemned as unfair. Experts at the FFT Education Datalab research unit told the Guardian they expected the proportion of grades assessed by teachers likely to be forced down by Ofqual’s statistical mechanism to be 35-40%. As revealed by the Guardian last week, 39% of teacher-assessed A-levels were downgraded on Thursday. Amid the outcry, the Department for Education has said it will pay any appeal fees so English schools are not left out of pocket. Exam boards charge schools to challenge grades, sometimes over £100 in complex cases. These fees are usually refunded if an appeal is successful. Nick Gibb, the schools minister for England, is also understood to be setting up a taskforce to ensure that appeals over A-level grades will be heard by 7 September, before the start of the university year. The taskforce will include members of Ofqual and the examination boards, as well as the DfE. The Datalab warned that teachers’ assessments for disadvantaged students’ GCSEs were likely to be the most over-optimistic, so schools and regions with higher proportions will see the biggest negative impact of Ofqual’s moderation. A greater slice of those taking GCSEs are from disadvantaged backgrounds when compared to A-levels. It comes amid a row between Ofqual, the exam regulator, and the Royal Statistical Society, after it claimed to have offered independent external advisers to help oversee the algorithm – but was told this would only be accepted if it signed a non-disclosure agreement. Despite being higher overall than last year, Thursday’s A-level results left students and teachers in shock at a slew of unexpectedly poor grades issued by Ofqual. Students reported being downgraded from an A to an E and a C to a U. The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said he was considering legal action against Ofqual. A repeat of tearful scenes would increase pressure on the education secretary, Gavin Williams, who faced a call to resign from the Liberal Democrats and angry rumblings from Conservative backbenchers over his handling of the controversy. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, proposed that the government in England should follow Scotland by reinstating the grades recommended by teachers before they were moderated down by an algorithm designed to control grade inflation. GCSEs are taken by around 700,000 schoolchildren in England, who in a normal year would sit 5m individual exams. This year Williamson ordered exams to be cancelled after schools closed in March due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Ofqual’s model uses the recent historical performance of a school and the academic track record of each pupil to distribute the grades set by its national formula. Teachers were asked to assess and rank their pupils and submit the results to Ofqual, but the assessments are often overruled. Philip Nye, a researcher at the Datalab, said: “We found that schools that were lower-attaining and with more disadvantaged intakes were submitting higher grades, so we think that GCSE results will see more disadvantaged pupils have their results lowered through the moderation process. “There are more disadvantaged pupils taking GCSEs than there are at A-levels, so potentially downgrades could be more widespread.” Jon Coles, chief executive of the United Learning schools group and a former senior official at the DfE, said Ofqual’s analysis suggested results in the two biggest GCSE subjects, English and maths, were likely to be more accurate. But most other GCSE courses would see more erratic results. Coles said next week could see more turbulent results because of the wider spread of abilities and weaker data available. For disadvantaged pupils the biggest danger point was getting a 4 or above in England and maths, which the DfE counts as a pass. “For comprehensives schools that’s the key measure of success, especially for disadvantaged pupils,” he said. Thousands of headteachers have backed a plea by the Worth Less? campaign group of school leaders for Williamson to explain how he intends to avoid a repeat of “serious injustices”. “We fear that such injustices will occur on a massive scale when GCSE grades are published next week. That’s why thousands of responsible headteachers are demanding that the secretary of state make an urgent public statement explaining to pupils and their families how and why the standardisation process has failed so many and confirming exactly what the DfE will do to put things right and avoid a ‘GCSE debacle’ next week,” the group said. “Through no fault of their own, pupils have suffered enough disruption to their school lives. They have the unassailable right to successfully and fairly proceed with their future plans for university, A-level, vocational and other vital future educational courses. This is currently in serious doubt unless decisive new action is taken.” Simon Burgess, a professor of economics at the University of Bristol who specialises in education and school attainment, said the major issue would be how many pupils are marked down at crucial grade boundaries, such as 4 and 5 in subjects like English and maths. “These matter most for lower ability students. The key thing for GCSEs is getting at least a 5 in English and maths – let’s hope we will not be looking at many students predicted to get that but denied. That would seriously worsen their chances in an already dreadful labour market,” Burgess said. Controversy continued to rage over A-level results on Friday, as more scrutiny was applied to Ofqual’s algorithm and how it appears to favour pupils in small classes taking less popular courses such as Latin, which are more common in private schools. The Royal Statistical Society repeated a call for the Office for Statistics Regulation to conduct a formal review of the statistical models adopted by Ofqual and other UK exam regulators, and revealed that Ofqual snubbed repeated offers of advice and help. The society said it offered its fellows to act as independent external advisers on Ofqual’s technical advisory group during the construction of its algorithm. “We eventually heard from Ofqual that they could consider these two fellows, but only with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that gave us real concern,” the society said. “The proposed confidentiality agreement would, on our reading, have precluded these fellows … from commenting in any way on the final choice of the model for some years after this year’s results were released. “In the end, we did not get an official response to those questions, and our offer to help was not taken up.” Ofqual did not respond to a request for comment about the offer. The turbulent results and likely wave of appeals by disappointed students appears to have slowed down applications for university places. Ucas, the universities admissions body, said that the number of applicants going through clearing to find places was down by 24% compared with previous years. One reason, Ucas said, was that “students face a more complex set of choices around appeals”. Universities told the Guardian that their staff were having to spend longer with individual applicants. “For the University of Greenwich, this has meant that we have had to adapt and spend more time reassuring and supporting our prospective students than ever before,” said Chris Shelley, director of student and academic services at Greenwich. Tracey Lancaster, deputy vice-chancellor at Leeds Beckett University, said: “We’ve had a number of calls from students who are disappointed with their grades. We’ve also noticed fewer celebratory posts on social media this year – the general atmosphere has been more subdued.” 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 Oxford PV says tech based on perovskite crystal can generate almost a third more electricity British rooftops could be hosting a breakthrough in new solar power technology by next summer, using a crystal first discovered more than 200 years ago to help harness more of the sun’s power. An Oxford-based solar technology firm hopes by the end of the year to begin manufacturing the world’s most efficient solar panels, and become the first to sell them to the public within the next year. Oxford PV claims that the next-generation solar panels will be able to generate almost a third more electricity than traditional silicon-based solar panels by coating the panels with a thin layer of a crystal material called perovskite. The breakthrough would offer the first major step-change in solar power generation since the technology emerged in the 1950s, and could play a major role in helping to tackle the climate crisis by increasing clean energy. By coating a traditional solar power cell with perovskite a solar panel can increase its power generation, and lower the overall costs of the clean electricity, because the crystal is able to absorb different parts of the solar spectrum than traditional silicon. Typically a silicon solar cell is able to convert up to about 22% of the available solar energy into electricity. But in June 2018, Oxford PV’s perovskite-on-silicon solar cell surpassed the best performing silicon-only solar cell by reaching a new world record of 27.3%. The perovskite-coated panels will appear different too. Instead of the blue tint usually associated with traditional silicon panels, Oxford PV’s panels will appear black and blend in better with rooftop slates. The crystal was first discovered by a Russian mineralogist in the Ural mountains in 1839 but for the last 10 years scientists around the world have been locked in a race to engineer the mineral to help generate more renewable electricity at a lower cost. Dr Chris Case, the chief technology officer at Oxford PV, said using perovskite represents “a true change” for solar technology, which has remained relatively unchanged since the silicon-based panels developed in the 1950s. “Silicon has reached its culmination of capability,” he said. “There are residual improvements to be made, and cost of production opportunities, but from a performance standpoint it is at its efficiency limit. The perovskite material is something totally innovative for solar.” The company won £100,000 of funding from the UK government in 2010, before attracting equity investment from Norwegian oil giant Equinor, Legal & General Capital and the Chinese renewables giant Goldwind. Frank Averdung, Oxford PV’s chief executive, said the company will be able to steal a march on the first commercially available solar panels which use perovskite to improve solar generation against the company’s rivals. “There are other companies working on perovskite, of course, and these other companies will eventually have a commercial focus, but none of these companies has the same focus on the combination of silicon and perovskite which we do,” he said. 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 Hundreds of families in temporary accommodation in east London have had their rent reduced by about 60% following a four-year campaign against their corporate social landlord. The London borough of Newham announced this week that “following a series of management issues” 250 properties in the borough, which were leased out by the council to the property management company Mears, would be transferred back into council management. The families, who live in Custom House and Canning Town, have previously told the Guardian that the homes they live in are unsafe and unhealthy, with issues such as crumbling asbestos floors, brown water running from taps, and leaky roofs. Those who had struggled to pay their rent, which they described as “sky high”, had fallen into arrears. Some of these issues were compounded during lockdown. Over the past four years, the families have campaigned – under the banner of People’s Empowerment Alliance for Custom House (Peach) – for social rent and to have repairs completed in a timely manner, staging protests and holding street parties while negotiating with the council. As well as charging social rent, the council will now respond to repair works needed in the homes, which have been used as temporary accommodation to house local homeless households. The residents said the exact rent reduction would depend on each property. Fayha Badi, 40, said the rent reduction would be life-changing for most families in the area. The 40-year-old mother of three, who is studying for a masters in biomedical science, said: “I never imagined I could win like this in the end.” Badi, who currently pays £356 a week for a three-bedroom property, will probably pay around £120 when the council takes back control. With the money she saves, she can finally take her children on holiday for the first time in five years. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fayha Badi, a mother of three, said the rent-reduction would be life-changing for most families in the area. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian She added: “It’s all through being part of Peach and meeting all these kind people. When I think of them, I feel safe and confident.” Rokhsana Fiaz, Newham’s mayor, said: “This marks a real victory for the residents who have had historical issues with the management of the property by Mears, which I have been committed to address from the time I was a councillor in Custom House. “Since becoming the mayor of Newham in May 2018, officers have worked tremendously hard with residents to address these issues, by challenging Mears to meet their responsibilities and now we’ve come up with an acceptable solution which causes minimum disruption for tenants.” Mears said it had spent £400,000 annually on repairs to the properties, which were condemned for demolition by Newham council. The company said the rent levels in the blocks were set by the council. Alan Long, executive director of Mears, said: “First and foremost, I am deeply saddened that the residents of Customs House have been the victims of political indecision and electoral promises which could not have been delivered. I hope that Newham will now be able to start the much-needed regeneration of the area to develop the homes needed in their borough. “Whilst we are sad to be leaving our relationship with the tenants, I am thankful that this may be an opportunity for Newham to finally create new homes that the residents of Customs House deserve. Mears believes it has met its contractual obligations to residents and the council over the past nine years and have delivered the best service possible in the circumstances.” The properties will eventually be demolished and replaced as part of the regeneration scheme. The council announced plans that will allow current Mears tenants who have lived in the area for five years and were placed into their homes by the council to receive a secure social rent home. These plans are currently subject to cabinet approval. Boglárka Filler, 39, who lives in a two-bedroom property, said she finally felt hopeful about the future following Newham council’s announcement. “Since I’ve been a member of Peach, it’s helped me avoid a mental breakdown. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. If it wasn’t for Peach, I would not have any hope and I wouldn’t be able to participate in the community at all.” Filler, who has two children, hopes to return to her studies. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sam Napa who has lived at Custom House for seven years, said she was ‘lost for words’ and urged others in a similar situation to unite and organise. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian “I’m still lost for words. It’s what we’ve been working for, it’s what we’ve been fighting for,” said Samantha Napa, 31, who works in the financial sector. “There’s been times where I just thought this is never going to happen, but the fact that it is actually happening, it hasn’t sunk in. It’s overwhelming.” Napa, who has lived in her current temporary accommodation in Custom House for seven years, urged others in a similar situation to come together and organise. “By coming together, by showing that we are united as one, they’ve had to listen to us.” 

  Published Date: 2020-08-15 

 The New York City Police Benevolent Association endorsed President Donald Trump on Friday – a union representing 24,000 police officers in the city. Trump welcomed a group of enthusiastic New York City officers to his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for an event to announce the endorsement. The police union president, Patrick Lynch, gave a passionate speech thanking the president for standing up for law enforcement at a time when many were afraid to do so. Lynch said: I cannot remember when we’ve ever endorsed for the president of the United States until now. That’s how important this is. …. Mr. President, we’re fighting for our lives out there we don’t want this to spread to the country, we need your strong voice across the country. Trump delivered a speech warning of the dangers they were facing if former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris won the presidential election. “As we gather today, our country is suffering from a radical far-left movement,” Trump said, noting that Democrats wanted to “defame, demoralize, defund, dismantle, and dissolve our great police departments.” The left-wing mobs, he said, were running around vandalizing churches like St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City and painting messages such as “Cops must die” and “Kill all cops” in the city. He also recalled stories of police officers getting run down by a car, hit with Molotov cocktails, and even beaten in the streets during a summer of protests and riots. “It’s a left-wing war on cops,” Trump said. Trump criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for failing to back police officers while they were under siege from the left, saying the mayor was afraid of the mob. “Joe Biden’s national police strategy will be modeled on the Bill de Blasio catastrophe,” Trump said. Lynch thanked Trump for his speech. “The sign of a leader is someone who will stand at a podium like this and speak the truth and will say what needs to be said and will not be afraid to do it,” he said. The event took on the feeling of a Trump rally as supporters in the room applauded and cheered during the president’s remarks. At one point, the president polled the room as to whether he should keep the “Sleepy Joe” nickname created for Biden or whether he should change it to “Slow Joe.” The audience cheered the loudest for the “Sleepy Joe” nickname. “I’ll tell you one thing, Putin and Kim Jong Un and President Xi of China, they’re not sleepy,” Trump said. “We can’t have slow, sleepy people dealing with them.”