FIRST DAY

Thousands could perish annually in US if global heating not curbed, study finds
Every year nearly 5,800 people are expected to die in New York, 2,500 in Los Angeles and
more than 2,300 in Miami
Thousands of heat-related deaths in major US cities could be avoided if rising global temperatures
are curbed, new research has found.
On current global heating trends, thousands of people are set to perish due to the heat every year
across 15 major US cities, in an analysis by a team of British and American researchers.
Once the average worldwide temperature rises to 3C (5.4F) above the pre-industrial period nearly
5,800 people are expected to die each year in New York City due to the heat, more than 2,500 are
forecast to die annually in Los Angeles and more than 2,300 lives will be lost annually in Miami.
This dire scenario would probably be avoided if the world was able to keep to its commitments
made in the Paris climate agreement, where governments pledged to limit the global temperature
rise to 2C, with an aspiration to keep the increase to 1.5C.
If global heating was limited to 1.5C, a total of 2,716 lives would be saved each year from heat
mortality in New York City, the researchers found. Thousands of lives across other US cities
would also be saved, right down to San Francisco, where 114 people a year would avoid dying
due to the the heat, compared to a 3C world.
“Reducing emissions would lead to a smaller increase in heat-related deaths, assuming no
additional actions to adapt to higher temperatures,” said Kristie Ebi, a study co-author and public
health expert at the University of Washington. “Climate change, driven by greenhouse gas
emissions, is affecting our health, our economy and our ecosystems. This study adds to the body
of evidence of the harms that could come without rapid and significant reductions in our
greenhouse gas emissions.”
Overall, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and Philadelphia are set to experience the
largest number of heat-related deaths, while places such as Boston and San Francisco will suffer
lower death tolls. Researchers projected this by looking at previous records on the relationship
between high temperatures and mortality.
The planet has already warmed by around 1C since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, due to
the release of heat-trapping gases from human activity such as power generation, transportation
and deforestation. Even if current Paris agreement pledges are met, the world is on course to heat
by around 3C.
Scientists have warned the world is now dangerously close to breaching the 1.5C limit, which
would push societies to a new reality of severe droughts, coastal flooding, wildfires and the loss of
key ecosystems such as coral reefs.
But even keeping global temperatures at a 2C increase would save lives compared with the
warmer alternative according to the new paper, published in Science Advances. Researchers
found that 1,980 New Yorkers would be saved from a heat-related death at a 2C increase
compared with 3C heating. In Los Angeles, 759 people would avoid this same fate.
“We are no longer counting the impact of climate in change in terms of degrees of global warming,
but rather in terms of number of lives lost,” said the report’s co-author Dann Mitchell, from the
University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute.
Mitchell said the looming deaths mean he would “strongly encourage” Americans to hold elected
leaders to account over the climate crisis.
Donald Trump has vowed to remove the US from the Paris agreement, dismantled many of the
policies designed to cut greenhouse gases and has opened up vast areas of federal land and
waters to oil, gas and coal extraction. Following a period of gradual decline, US greenhouse gas
emissions rose last year.
This “energy dominance” agenda is aimed at turning the US into a major exporter of oil and gas,
while propping up the fading coal industry. But a series of disastrous hurricanes and wildfires,
influenced by the changing climate, along with a slew of stark warnings from scientists, has
provoked record levels of concern among Americans over the climate emergency.
A major US government climate assessment released last year warned that heat-related health
problems, particularly among the sick and elderly, are already a problem in parts of the country.
Research released earlier this week highlighted the health challenges posed by climate change,
including extreme weather events, the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and air pollution. The
World Health Organization has previously stated that tackling the climate crisis would save at least
a million lives a year globally, making it a moral imperative to act.
“Strengthened climate actions are needed as they would substantially benefit public health in the
United States,” said Eunice Lo, from the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute and lead author of
the heat study.
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'Did you ever know you're not my hero?' Bette Midler and Trump revive feud
Things blew up again this week between the social media foes, with the US president
calling the music legend a ‘washed-up psycho’
Even from a distance there is no harmony between Bette Midler and Donald Trump.
Regular foes on social media, the music legend and the American president sparred again this
week during Trump’s flashy state visit to Britain.
The US commander in chief called Midler a “washed up psycho” on Tuesday after she had to back
down following a tweet she posted, and later deleted, that repeated a fake quote from Trump
mocking Republicans.
Midler on Sunday tweeted a copy of an old image of Trump appearing to quote the then-real
estate magnate, saying: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of
voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet
my numbers would be terrific.”
But on Tuesday she retreated, though with a jab of defiance. “I apologize; this quote turns out to
be a fake from way back in ‘15-16. Don’t know how I missed it, but it sounds SO much like him
that I believed it was true! Fact Check: Did Trump say in ‘98 Republicans are dumb?”
she tweeted.
Despite a packed two days in London hobnobbing with the royal family and outgoing prime
minster Theresa May, Trump found time to hit back.
“Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me
that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make ‘your great president’ look really
bad. She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!” he tweeted on
Tuesday.
Unbowed, Midler went on to mock Trump’s sartorial style while in London and also to point out:
“Trump said he was greeted by thousands in the UK, but they were actually thousands of
protesters.” She rounded off that tweet with: “How does he always hear the opposite of the truth?
Donald, if you’re reading this you SHOULD NOT slam your dick in a door!”
She added: “I want to thank everyone who came to my defense last night during my personal
Battle of the Bulge with he who must not be named. Your wit and good nature really lifted my
spirits; as a newly washed up psycho, I am very grateful for your thoughts and prayers.”
Least likely words we’ll ever hear from Midler on Trump? “Did you ever know that you’re my
hero?”

US to label nuclear waste as less dangerous to quicken cleanup

Energy department says labeling some waste as low-level at sites in Washington state,
Idaho and South Carolina will save $40bn
The US government plans to reclassify some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to
lower its threat level, outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk
away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South
Carolina.
The Department of Energy said on Wednesday that labeling some high-level waste as low
level will save $40bn in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex. The
material that has languished for decades in the three states would be taken to low-level disposal
facilities in Utah or Texas, the agency said.
“This administration is proposing a responsible, results-driven solution that will finally open
potential avenues for the safe treatment and removal of the lower-level waste,” said Paul Dabber,
the energy undersecretary. “This will accelerate cleanup and reduce risk.”
The agency will maintain standards set by the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “with
the goal of getting the lower-level waste out of these states without sacrificing public safety”,
Dabber said.
Critics said it was a way for federal officials to walk away from their obligation to properly clean up
a massive quantity of radioactive waste left from nuclear weapons production dating to the second
world war and the cold war.
The waste is housed at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, the Idaho National
Laboratory and Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state – the most contaminated
nuclear site in the country.
Washington’s Governor Jay Inslee, a Democratic presidential candidate, and the state attorney
general, Bob Ferguson, said the Trump administration was showing disdain and disregard for
state authority.
“Washington will not be sidelined in our efforts to clean up Hanford and protect the Columbia River
and the health and safety of our state and our people,” they said in a joint statement.
The new rules would allow the energy department to eventually abandon storage tanks containing
more than 100m gallons (378m liters) of radioactive waste in the three states, according to the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
The change means that some of the “most toxic and radioactive waste in the world” would not
have to be buried deep underground, the environmental group said.
“Pretending this waste is not dangerous is irresponsible and outrageous,” the group’s attorney
Geoff Fettus said.
Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch, a watchdog group for the South Carolina nuclear
production site, called the reclassification of waste “a cost-cutting measure designed to get
thousands of high-level waste containers dumped off site”. He said moving the waste to Utah or
Texas is a bad idea involving “shallow burial”.
The old definition of high-level waste was based on how the materials were produced, while the
new definition will be based on their radioactive characteristics – the standard used in most
countries, the energy department said.
The old definition said high-level radioactive waste resulted from a military production stream,
Dabbar said. That meant, for instance, that all the waste from plutonium production at Hanford
was classified as high level.
It was a “one-size-fits-all approach that has led to decades of delay, cost billions of dollars, and
left the waste trapped in DOE facilities in the states of South Carolina, Washington
and Idaho without a permanent disposal solution”, the agency said.
Hanford was established by the Manhattan Project during the second world war to make
plutonium, a key ingredient in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
The nuclear site 200 miles (322km) south-east of Seattle contains about 60% of the nation’s most
dangerous radioactive waste that’s stored in 177 ageing underground tanks, some of which have
leaked.
Cleanup at Hanford has been under way since the 1980s, at a cost of more than $2bn a year.
The energy department said it would immediately begin studying one waste stream at the
Savannah River Plant to see if it should be reclassified as low-level waste.
“We are excited about reducing the risk faster in South Carolina as a result of this,” Dabbar said.
'Outdated and expensive': San Francisco to close juvenile hall in pioneering move
System violates ‘modern understanding of youth brain’, says official as lawmakers make
near-unanimous decision
San Francisco is set to become the first major city in the US to shut down its juvenile detention
center, after lawmakers voted to close the facility by the end of 2021.
The city is now tasked with creating a new program for youth offenders that will includea secure
facility, but one focused on rehabilitation. The facility should feel “more like a school or a wellness
center rather than a jail or a prison”, said the city supervisor Hillary Ronen, one of the sponsors of
the legislation.
The push to shut down the city’s juvenile detention center came as youth crime and juvenile felony
arrests dropped throughout the state. However, San Francisco continued to spend $13m a year
on a facility that remained, at times, three-quarters empty, Ronen said.
And for the youth stuck inside, studies have shown time and time again the damage that
incarceration can do to personal development.
“It just doesn’t make sense any more in this day or age, with all our modern understanding of the
youth brain, to keep using these outdated modes that are extremely expensive,” she said.
The near-unanimous decision had overwhelming support from city lawmakers, with eight of the 11
lawmakers co-signing the legislation. The legal action was spurred by a San Francisco Chronicle
report that found the city spent $300,000 per youth in juvenile detention, despite a declining
population.
The battle to close the detention center was personal for at least one lawmaker. Twenty-seven
years ago, Supervisor Shamann Walton was one of those kids in juvenile hall, spending time in
custody for crimes like armed robbery and possession of a firearm.
As an elected official, he returned to a detention center and realized the experience was almost
exactly the same as it had been for him when he was a kid.
“You’re still walking the line, you’re still sleeping on concrete, you’re still doing workbooks and not
working with a teacher, you’re still spending more time in your room, isolated, not having the
opportunity for mental health help, or to gain life skills or social skills,” he said. “Something needed
to change.
“The only thing I learned from juvenile hall was how to be resilient and how to endure a locked-up
experience, which only prepares you to be in county jail or prison,” Walton said. “Nothing I learned
in juvenile hall prepared me to make the change I needed to get to where I am today, and the
same thing is happening to far too many of our young black and Latino people.”
He hopes that by closing down the juvenile detention center and developing a new, rehabilitation-
focused program for youth offenders, he will be able to provide future generations of kids that
same opportunity to end the cycle of criminality that he was afforded.
“We have to set our young people up for success and do it with the bold change that it requires,”
he said. “We have a couple years to reimagine and reinvent the current structure, and I’m
excited.”
Shakira appears in Spanish court over tax evasion allegations
Singer reportedly paid £13m to settle debt in February and said she was up-to-date with
taxes
The Colombian singer Shakira has appeared in a Spanish court to testify over allegations that she
avoided paying €14.5m (£13m) in taxes.
The 42-year-old said she was up-to-date with her taxes, had given her full cooperation to the
investigation and had no outstanding debts with the tax authorities.
She arrived at the Esplugues de Llobregat court near Barcelona at about 10am, using the court’s
car park entrance to avoid the media.
Prosecutors, who accused her of tax evasion in December last year, argue she avoided taxes by
claiming to live in the Bahamas when she was resident in Catalonia.
Shakira changed residences in 2015 from the Bahamas to Spain, where she lives with her
partner, the Barcelona footballer Gerard Piqué, and their two sons.
But prosecutors allege she was already living in the Catalan capital between 2012 and 2014, and
should have paid tax in Spain on her worldwide income for those years.
They argue she was resident in Spain for most of the year, only travelling abroad for short periods.
In February, the Catalan newspaper El Periódico reported that the singer had paid the Spanish tax
authorities €14.5m to settle the debt.
In a statement released on Thursday morning, Shakira’s PR company said she had appeared in
court to “help clarify the facts over her tax situation in Spain”. It said the singer had always met her
tax obligations in every country where she had worked and did not own taxes to the Spanish state.
“As soon as she learned how much she owed the Spanish tax authorities – and before a
complaint was filed – Shakira paid the full amount, as well as providing the tax office with
exhaustive information. For this reason, there is currently no debt whatsoever.”
Given that there were no more payments to be made, it continued, the only remaining matter for
discussion was the interpretation of rules over when Shakira began to be liable to pay taxes as a
resident in Spain.
Last month, a Spanish court cleared Shakira and fellow Colombian star Carlos Vives of
accusations of plagiarism of part of their Grammy award-winning hit La Bicicleta.
Liván Rafael Castellanos, a Cuban singer known as Livam, had alleged that the tune copied parts
of the melody and lyrics from his song Yo te quiero tanto (I love you so much).
The court ruled that the allegedly shared lyrics – including the line, “I love you so much” – were
“common, used in all sorts of songs and lyrics, all through history”, adding that the melody, rhythm
and harmony were different.

Fifa aware of Afghanistan sexual abuse allegations two years ago, according to emails
• Fifa has said it was told of the claims in early 2018
• Questions raised over Asian Football Confederation account too
Fifa and Asian football’s governing body were made aware of sexual abuse allegations against
senior Afghanistan football officials and a coach more than two years ago, according to emails
seen by the Guardian.
The Asian Football Confederation said late last year, after Afghanistan women’s national team
players made detailed allegations of sexual and physical abuse, that it had received no complaints
of abuse.
Last November a Fifa source said that it began investigating claims of sexual abuse when it was
told of the allegations in March 2018.
The Guardian has been shown emails which suggest senior officials within Fifa and the AFC were
informed in April 2017 of possible abuse of players within the Afghan federation.
No action was apparently taken by either organisation and it is unclear whether the accusations in
the emails reached the staff who, when approached by players in March 2018, instigated the
investigation.
A formal complaint alleging abuse of girls was emailed on 19 April 2017 to three sets of people:
members of world football’s governing body, including the general secretary’s office; members of
the AFC, including the official integrity-reporting email account; and the Afghan federation.
In a separate case seven months later, Fifa, the Afghan federation and the AFC received a letter
which accused the president of the federation, Keramuudin Karim, of failing to take action against,
and then appointing as a club manager, Habib Charjeba, a coach accused of the sexual assault of
a 14 year-old-boy. Charjeba is still a coach. No action was taken by the AFC or Fifa.
Karim has been suspended by Fifa since December 2018 following allegations that he sexually
and physically abused Afghanistan women’s national team players. The claims are being
investigated by Fifa and the attorney general’s office in Afghanistan. Fifa said it expected to make
a final judgment in the next few weeks. Karim has strongly denied the allegations.
The general secretary of the federation, Sayed Ali Reza Aghazada, has also been suspended in
relation to the allegations, together with the goalkeeping coach Abdul Saboor Walizada, the
provincial team liaison Nadir Alimi and the deputy president Yosuf Kargar. Aghazada has
described all the allegations as “baseless”.
A Fifa spokeswoman, asked about the emails, said: “In early 2018, Fifa was made aware of
sexual abuse allegations and immediately began to investigate these serious matters in a way that
would ensure, first and foremost, the safety and security of the victims and their families.”
She added that Fifa was “strongly committed to promoting the safety and wellbeing of all
individuals involved in football activities” and had “a zero-tolerance policy on human rights
violations and condemns all forms of gender-based violence”.
The Guardian has been provided with evidence that Aghazada and Karim were involved in paying
off five girls who launched a sexual harassment case in July/August 2017 against five other
members of staff within the federation.
Four of the five accusers were officially under age according to Afghan penal law, aged 14, 14, 16
and 17, with the fifth aged 18. The case involved the girls being asked for sexual favours and to
leave their families in return for promotion into the national team and was settled in September
2017, although it is not clear whether liability was admitted.
The AFF has not responded to the question of whether the men were disciplined as a result of the
cases or allowed to continue in their roles.
Aghazada was elected unopposed to the AFC executive committee on 6 April despite being
suspended and subject to a travel ban on the orders of the Afghanistan attorney general’s office.
Emails sent to Fifa, the AFC and Afghan federation in April 2017 also alleged corruption by
Aghazada and Karim.
On 6 April 2017 four members of Fifa, including the general secretary’s office, together with the
AFC and the AFF, received an email from 34 of the provincial football presidents in Afghanistan
which – among other things – raised concerns over the impartiality of Aghazada, accused him of
campaigning for Karim and accused Aghazada and Karim of removing provincial presidents who
would not support the latter.
Later that month the emails alleging abuse of girls also referred to other accusations: of unpaid
salaries of provincial presidents; the removal of provincial presidents by the general secretary in
processes contrary to Fifa, AFC and AFF rules; misuse of funds; and use of federation funds for
Karim’s own campaigning.
On 4 November 2017 members of the AFC, AFF and Fifa were informed via email that the salary
of the president of the Jawzjan province had not been paid for a year because he had failed to
support the AFF leadership.
Three days later members of the AFC, AFF and Fifa were informed via email that there had been
no salary paid to the president of the Paktika province and that the AFF refused to recognise it as
a federation of Afghanistan despite having 46 teams and some competing in the Afghan Premier
League.
The AFF did not respond to requests for comment.
A Fifa spokeswoman said: “Alleged representatives of the Afghan provincial associations sent
emails to various staff in Fifa which made allegations which proved difficult to verify for two
reasons: 1. The attachments/enclosures mentioned in the emails were never provided and 2. Fifa
staff could not travel to Afghanistan for a fact-finding mission due to the serious security
constraints within the country.”
The AFC said: “All candidates for the AFC elections were subjected to eligibility checks and all
passed. Issues with the Afghanistan Football Federation should be addressed to them. The matter
surrounding the allegations against certain members of the AFF is being addressed by Fifa.”