Good morning.
The devastating fires in Hawaii, where at least 55 people have died after a conflagration that engulfed the historic town of Lahaina, were worsened by a number of factors including the climate crisis, scientists have said.
Rising global temperatures and drought helped turn parts of Hawaii into a tinderbox before one of the deadliest fires in modern US history, with conditions worsened by strong winds from a nearby cyclone.
Katharine Hayhoe, the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said that global heating was drying out vegetation, priming it as fuel for an outbreak of fire. “Climate change doesn’t usually start the fires but it intensifies them, increasing the area they burn and making them much more dangerous,” Hayhoe tweeted.
Nearly a fifth of Maui, the Hawaiian island where the fires have occurred, is in severe drought, according to the US drought monitor. The island has experienced other serious fires in recent years, with blazes in 2018 and 2021 razing hundreds of homes and causing the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists.
How did the Maui fires start and what caused them? The fires appear to have burned first in vegetation and then rapidly spread into populated areas amid wind gusts of more than 60mph. The cause of the fires has not been determined but they broke out as the island faced strong winds and low humidity that the National Weather Service had predicted would bring high fire danger with the risk of rapid spread.
What have witnesses said? Survivors spoke of a scene of devastation in Lahaina, a historic tourist spot, and recounted close calls as the flames reduced part of the town to ruins and took the lives of at least three dozen of their neighbors. “Lahaina Town and whole neighborhoods went up in flames and is unrecognizable … it looks more like a war zone,” Dean Rickard, co-coach of the Lahainaluna high school football team, told the Star-Advertiser in Honolulu.
‘Unprecedented, stunning, disgusting’: Clarence Thomas condemned over billionaire gifts
The Conservative US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has been condemned for maintaining “unprecedented” and “shameless” links to rightwing benefactors, after ProPublica published new details of his acceptance of undeclared gifts including 38 vacations and expensive sports tickets.
Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, rendered an especially damning verdict. “Unprecedented. Stunning. Disgusting. The height of hypocrisy to wear the robes of a [supreme court justice] and take undisclosed gifts from billionaires who benefit from your decisions. 38 free vacations. Yachts. Luxury mansions. Skyboxes at events. Resign,” she posted.
From the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic judiciary committee chair, said: “The latest … revelation of unreported lavish gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas makes it clear: these are not merely ethical lapses. This is a shameless lifestyle underwritten for years by a gaggle of fawning billionaires.”
What does Thomas say? He denies wrongdoing, claiming he never discussed politics or business before the court with his benefactors, and to have been wrongly advised about disclosure requirements. Nonetheless, condemnation was widespread.
What might happen? Robert Reich, a former US labor secretary now a Berkeley professor and Guardian columnist, said Thomas “must resign or be impeached if [the supreme court] is going to retain any credibility”. Only one justice, Samuel Chase, has been impeached – in 1804 – and he was acquitted in the Senate. In 1969, the justice Abe Fortas resigned under threat of impeachment, over his acceptance of outside fees.
Amazon starting to track and penalize workers who work from home too much
Amazon workers in the US are being tracked and penalized for not spending sufficient time in the company’s offices, an email sent to employees this week showed, as tech companies pushed back against work-from-home practices that flourished during the pandemic.
Some staff were alerted on Wednesday that they were “not currently meeting our expectation of joining your colleagues in the office at least three days a week”, according to emails shared with the Financial Times. The emails were also discussed on the anonymous corporate message board platform Blind.
The email was intended to be sent to workers who were coming into the office fewer than three days a week for five or more of the past eight weeks, according to a follow-up message sent to employees, which Amazon shared with the Guardian. Some employees reported receiving the email by mistake and were encouraged to clarify their attendance with human resources.
Amazon is the latest employer taking measures to encourage workers to return to the office. In March, Apple began threatening punitive action against employees who did do so at all. At Twitter, Elon Musk began to require employees to return full-time, shortly after taking over as CEO.
How many tech workers work from home? As of May 2022, 48% of tech workers said they were working fully remotely, up from 22% before the pandemic, according to a study from Morning Consult. It found that most tech workers – 85% – were now working hybrid or fully remote.
In other news …
Air defence systems appear to have prevented Russian strikes on Kyiv this morning, with falling debris striking the city but no casualties reported. There were four big explosions this morning in Ukraine’s capital city. A children’s hospital was among the buildings damaged.
Federal prosecutors asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump for allegedly attempting to subvert the 2020 election to schedule the trial for the start of January 2024, saying there was a significant public interest in expediting the prosecution.
North Koreans have been told to do everything possible to protect portraits of the Kim dynasty, as the country braces for heavy rain and strong winds caused by tropical storm Khanun. The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Korean Workers’ party, said people’s “foremost focus” should be on “ensuring the safety” of the portraits.
Joe Biden has called China a “ticking timebomb in many cases” because of its economic challenges, saying the country was in trouble because of weak growth. The US president pointed to China’s high unemployment and ageing workforce, saying: “China is in trouble.”
Soccer with Jonathan Wilson: who are the biggest contenders to win the Premier League?
It is a week of arrivals and departures. As many prepare for the start of the Premier League season on Friday, the US are on their way home from the Women’s World Cup after a last-16 defeat at the hands of Sweden. Here is a look at the contenders in this season’s Premier League, compiled by Jonathan Wilson in his new weekly newsletter on European soccer.
Manchester City have won five of the past six league titles, a level of dominance achieved only by two sides before; no team has ever won six out of seven. Even after the loss of some cutting edge with the departures of İlkay Gündogan and Riyad Mahrez – for all his passing ability, Mateo Kovačić is unlikely to replicate Gündogan’s main goals late in the season – City have by far the best squad in the Premier League. But if City slip up, if winning the Treble last season does dim their hunger, who is most likely to take advantage?
Stat of the day: News Corp profits dive 75% as Rupert Murdoch-owned company hints at AI future
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has recorded a steep 75% drop in full-year profit but sees future opportunities as it expands the use of cost-saving AI-produced content. The US-listed media conglomerate – which owns mastheads in the US, UK and Australia, along with book publishers, subscription television and real estate advertising assets – recorded $US187m ($A287m) in net profit for the financial year, down from the previous year’s $US760m record.
The result was weighed down by lower print and digital advertising at News Corp Australia, a division that includes The Australian newspaper. It also recorded lower print advertising at its UK news arm. The company’s Australian arm recently disclosed it was producing 3,000 articles a week using generative AI.
Don’t miss this: ‘I’ll never know where I’m from’ – plight of the adopted children of Bangladesh’s Birangona women
Jane Radika was searching for answers. Approaching 50, she yearned to know more about the circumstances of her adoption, from an orphanage in Bangladesh to a small Cornish town in England, writes Thaslima Begum and Rosie Swash.
There were others out there like her, thousands around the world, adopted from Bangladesh in the 1970s, many on their own search for the truth. Most had little or no information about the circumstances of their adoption or birth parents. There is one unifying detail: Bangladesh was declared an independent state in December 1971, nine months after Pakistan launched a brutal crackdown on Bengalis seeking self-rule in the then East Pakistan. It was a period of widespread violence and was one of the first documented examples of rape as a weapon of war – between 200,000 and 400,000 women were said to have been victims. The result was tens of thousands of babies.
Climate check: Return of El Niño raises risk of hunger, drought and malaria, scientists warn
The return of El Niño against the backdrop of the climate crisis will hurt people’s health in many parts of the world, scientists have predicted. The hot natural weather pattern is back after three years of its cooler sister, La Niña, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirmed last month. As it grows stronger, scientists fear it will raise the risk in some countries of hunger, drought and malaria. Coupled with hotter global temperatures from burned fossil fuels, the shift could make a host of heat-related dangers worse, from heart disease to suicide.
“Heat is unambiguously dangerous,” said Gregory Wellenius, head of the center for climate and health at Boston university’s school of public health. “Sometimes it leads to hospitalisation, other times it leads to death. Then there’s indirect impacts that follow up on that.”
Last Thing: ‘A lack of respect’ – Catalan nudists campaign against clothed tourists
It was on a sun-kissed stretch of beach in Catalonia that Segimon Rovira began to feel self-conscious, writes Ashifa Kassam. For as long as the 56-year-old could remember, the area’s turquoise waters had primarily been frequented by nudists. Now he was painfully aware of being surrounded by sunbathers – in their swimsuits. “Before, people would arrive at a nude beach and either leave or strip down,” said Rovira. “Now they stay and keep their swimsuit on. But what they don’t realise is that if there are a lot of them, they end up making us uncomfortable. It’s a lack of respect.”
Now Rovira and other naturists in Catalonia are fighting back, with a campaign aimed at protecting the decades-long tradition associated with 50 or so of the region’s beaches.
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