News (old posts, page 817)

G7 leaders are paralysed by their fear of upsetting Donald Trump | Rafael Behr

Tyranny is contagious – and western governments’ reluctance to name the threat is helping it spread

There is no founding charter or admissions process to the self-selecting group of “leading” economic powers that currently numbers seven. It was the G8 from 1997 to March 2014. Then Russia annexed Crimea and had its membership suspended, establishing the rule that participating nations should not seize their neighbours’ land.

The White House used to condemn that sort of thing on the grounds that “it violates the principles upon which the international system is built”. These days, not so much. On Sunday, shortly after arriving for a G7 meeting in the Kananaskis resort in Alberta, Donald Trump told his host, the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, that Vladimir Putin’s expulsion from the club had been a “big mistake”.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

One year of Labour, with Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr and more

On 9 July, join Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr, Frances O’Grady and Salma Shah as they look back at one year of the Labour government and plans for the next four years

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Discarded clothes from UK brands dumped in protected Ghana wetlands

Garments thrown out by consumers from Next, George, M&S and others found in or near conservation areas

Clothes discarded by UK consumers and shipped to Ghana have been found in a huge rubbish dump in protected wetlands, an investigation has found.

Reporters for Unearthed working with Greenpeace Africa found garments from Next in the dump and other sites, and items from George at Asda and Marks & Spencer washed up nearby.

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The shorter man’s search for love: ‘One woman cried when I told her how tall I am’

Tinder is trialling a height filter, following in the footsteps of some other popular apps. What is behind the ‘6ft fixation’ in dating – and could it be scuppering the chance of true connection?

Height is often seen as a dealbreaker when it comes to romance, particularly within heterosexual relationships. But when Tinder recently said that it was trialling a feature that allows some premium users to filter potential matches by height, it quickly proved controversial. “Oh God. They added a height filter,” lamented one Reddit thread, while an X user claimed: “It’s over for short men.”

“I’ve experimented with not putting my height on my dating profile, or lying about it just to see, and the number of likes I get shoots up massively,” says Stuart, who is in his 50s and from the Midlands. “I know I get screened out by the majority of women from the off.” At 5ft 7in (170cm), Stuart is just two inches below the UK and US male average height of 5ft 9in, but a height filter would probably prevent him from receiving as many matches.

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Why Europe should hijack Nato for its own purposes | Paul Taylor

As the Trump administration’s security focus shifts towards countering China, European governments are living on borrowed time

Call it the five-for-five summit. When Nato leaders meet in The Hague next week, European allies will sign up to a phoney transatlantic bargain in which they pretend they will spend 5% of their economic output on defence and Donald Trump pretends in return that he is committed to Article 5 of the Nato treaty, the mutual defence clause that he has repeatedly undermined.

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, is deploying all his considerable political wiles and powers of persuasion to contrive a short, “no surprises” summit at which fundamental differences over Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, trade, the Middle East and liberal democratic values are deliberately excluded.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

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Former NFL star Henry Ruggs apologizes to family of woman he killed in DUI crash

  • Former wide receiver serving up to 10 years in prison

  • Ruggs killed Tina Tintor after driving at up to 156 mph

Former Raiders wide receiver Henry Ruggs, on special release on Monday night, spoke at a Hope for Prisoners event in Las Vegas and apologized to the family of a woman he killed in a car crash in 2021.

Ruggs drove his sports car at speeds up to 156 mph in Las Vegas on 2 November 2021, slamming into a vehicle that killed driver Tina Tintor and her dog. Tintor was 23. Blood samples taken after the crash showed that Ruggs had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16% — twice the legal limit in Nevada. The speed limit in the area of the crash was 45 mph. The Raiders cut the wide receiver the day after the crash, in which he suffered minor injuries.

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