The German government’s press conference on the Leipzig incident is expected around 5.30pm local time (4.30pm UK). I will keep an eye on this for you. Here’s the background:
In a relief response situation report published today, Nepal’s disaster risk reduction and management authority (NDRRMA) said the majority of deaths – which include recovered human remains – occurred in Chitwan, about 100 miles downstream from the region worst hit by the flash floods and mudslides, followed by Nawalparasi East, Nawalparasi West, Nuwakot and Gorkha. The NDRRMA said 1.6 million people were affected from the floods across five districts. “3,702 households, comprising a population of 14,461 remain isolated in the two most severely affected local levels (Gosaikunda and Amachhodingmo Rural Municipalities, Rasuwa), with road connectivity, electricity, and communication services disrupted for up to six days since the incident, severely limiting access to essential services, supplies, and emergency assistance,” the situation report read. It said unidentified bodies are being kept at 21 hospitals across various districts, adding that 2,740 people received medical treatment from Nepal’s army following Wednesday’s massive flash food. In terms of infrastructural impact, the NDRRMA said 41 bridges were washed away in the floods and four bridges damaged, while four health facilities and eight schools were “fully damaged”. In Nepal’s Nuwakot district, 1,267 houses have been reported as “fully damaged” and 1,253 as “partially damaged”.
The year was 1962 and the Kennedy administration was desperate to swing Brazil’s congressional elections against its leftwing president, João Goulart, as a way of countering the supposed communist threat sweeping a region the US considered its back yard. Historians say that in the lead-up to the vote, the CIA and the Department of State secretly channelled millions of dollars to opposition candidates and a group tasked with spreading rightwing propaganda and stirring up unrest. “There was a very heavy-handed intervention here by the US government,” said Chico Rubens Paiva, a political activist whose congressman grandfather Rubens Paiva investigated Washington’s meddling during a 1963 parliamentary inquiry into the conspiracy. More than six decades later, Paiva, whose grandfather was murdered by the US-backed dictatorship that seized power in 1964, is among those who fear history is repeating itself on the eve of Brazil’s 2026 presidential election. October’s vote will pit the leftwing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, against the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, a Donald Trump ally who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a military coup. Polls suggest a tight race and Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have been accused of trying to tip the scales in Bolsonaro’s favour by launching an overt campaign of economic and diplomatic pressure against Lula. The US measures include imposing 25% tariffs on most Brazilian imports and designating Brazil’s biggest crime groups – Rio’s Red Command and São Paulo’s First Command of the Capital – as foreign terrorist organisations. Brazilian officials suspect this is partly designed to boost Bolsonaro by making Lula look soft on crime. In July, Lula said two Trump officials had been denied entry visas because they planned “to meddle in Brazil’s elections”. Brazilian officials believe the pair, who reportedly planned to meet Flávio Bolsonaro, intended to sow doubt about the reliability of Brazil’s internationally respected voting system – something the Bolsonaros have sought to do repeatedly. Soon after, the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington was revoked. Celso Rocha de Barros, a political scientist and podcast pundit, voiced bewilderment that US interference – which he considered the election’s most urgent theme – was not getting more coverage in mainstream media. “The greatest superpower in human history is explicitly backing a candidate in our election and is strangling the Brazilian economy in order to help him [win],” Barros claimed. “We cannot pretend that this isn’t happening and treat this like a normal election … the Brazilian economy is under attack.” Trump’s tactics have echoes of Washington’s cold war-era attempt to manipulate Brazilian politics in the lead-up to the 1964 coup, which ushered in two decades of authoritarian rule in which hundreds of people were killed or disappeared. Back then, the CIA helped finance the Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action, which, according to the historians Lilia Schwarcz and Heloisa Starling, illegally poured money into the campaigns of hundreds of lawmakers and eight gubernatorial candidates. “The objective was strategic: to create a strong opposition in congress, block government initiatives and prepare the way for a coup d’état,” Schwarcz and Starling argued in their book Brazil: A Biography. Another US-funded group, the Research and Social Studies Institute, was used to disrupt Goulart’s government by bankrolling anti-communist propaganda and anti-government protests. James N Green, a Brown University historian who has written a book about the period, said: “The intention [was] getting rid of Goulart [and] opening the door to the military coming to power.” Green sees parallels between Trump’s use of tariffs to sabotage Lula’s campaign and how in the early 60s Washington sought to enfeeble Goulart’s government by funding his opponents and cutting off loans. Then, as now, the US government was “bent on doing everything possible to weaken the government” in Brazil. But Barros sees one key difference between the two US gambits. “[The 1962 campaign] was done covertly, precisely because the CIA knew there would be real public anger in Brazil if people knew the US was bankrolling candidates. So they did it secretly,” he said. “Today, this is being done openly – and on an incomparably larger scale.” The Department of State rejected claims the US was seeking to meddle in Brazil’s election. “Any insinuation of a ‘ploy’ to undermine a democratic nation’s election is a baseless lie,” an official said in a statement. “We respect the Brazilian people and whatever government that they choose freely through free and fair elections in Brazil. We’ve respected and dealt with governments from both sides of the spectrum in Brazil, and had very successful relationships with them.” Last year Trump was accused of meddling in the politics of neighbouring Argentina after he threw his weight behind its rightwing president, Javier Milei, on the eve of crucial midterm elections. Milei recently attended Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign launch in Brazil, using his speech to lambaste Lula as a “thief”. Green believes two strategic objectives lie behind the Brazilian pressure campaign being waged by Trump and by Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, who has made toppling Cuba’s communist government a personal project. Firstly, it is designed to weaken and delegitimise Lula’s government, making it harder for Brazil, Latin America’s largest democracy, to challenge the US economic asphyxiation campaign against Cuba. Secondly, it is about “neutralising” leftwing forces in Latin America more generally and boosting the right in the hope of helping to elect even more Trump-aligned leaders. Since 2023, a succession of radical rightwing populists have won power in Argentina and Chile, Costa Rica and Colombia. In reference to Trump’s tangerine complexion, this has been nicknamed Latin America’s “orange wave”. Paiva, 38, believes US interference is intended to have a similar effect to the abduction of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro – strengthening “American dominance” in a region it considers a US sphere of influence. Maduro’s removal in January allowed the US to impose a pliant successor, his vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has started opening up the South American country to US oil and mining firms. Paiva believes Bolsonaro’s election will “serve the same purpose: putting people into power who will serve their interests”. He fears that as election day draws near, US social media companies could enter the fray, potentially giving Bolsonaro another lift. “Any kind of change to the algorithm has a brutal impact in the way information reaches people,” warned Paiva, who is running for a seat in congress in the election for the centre-left Brazilian Socialist party. He highlighted “the scary lurch the Silicon Valley bros” had taken into Trump’s camp during his second term. Barros is convinced the US aims to help elect Flávio Bolsonaro, “because Flávio will give them everything they want”, he said. “Flávio will make a rare earths deal no other president would. Flávio will let American big techs do whatever they like in Brazil. Flávio will reduce economic relations with China as much as he can.” He noted that Bolsonaro supporters attended rallies carrying US flags. Barros believes the campaign’s real driving force is not Trump but Rubio, who hopes to bolster a possible 2028 presidential run by showing voters he has “delivered the whole of Latin America to American interests”. “The fact is, this is an election between Lula and Marco Rubio,” Barros said.
Nepali rescuers have built temporary bridges to reach remote areas and dug through the ruins of hydropower projects in the Himalayas to rescue hundreds of trapped workers, as the death toll passed 1,000 nearly a week after devastating floods left a trail of destruction across the country’s towns and valleys. About 600 people remain stuck in several devastated hydropower stations that have become the focus of rescue efforts. The prime minister, Balendra Shah, said more than 11,000 people had been rescued across the affected region, and power and communication lines had been restored in some areas. “Thousands of citizens have lost their homes, families, loved ones and property,” Shah said. Six days after the catastrophe struck the Himalayan border region, 4,400 people were still missing in Nepal and Tibet. Police in Kathmandu have urged relatives of missing tourists to provide DNA samples to assist identification efforts. In a statement posted to social media, Nepal police on Monday asked relatives of those missing to “provide a fresh blood sample for DNA profiling and two passport-sized photographs” to the pathology laboratory at the Nepal police hospital in Kathmandu, or the nearest district police office. Among Nepal’s list of the missing are 592 foreigners, including tourists who had come for mountain trekking and Hindu pilgrims seeking spiritual peace at Tibet’s sacred Mount Kailash, from countries such as India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada. Relatives abroad have been requested to undergo DNA profiling at an authorised laboratory and to “send a soft copy of the DNA profile to Nepal police’s official email address”. In some of Nepal’s flood-affected areas, hundreds of unidentified bodies have already been buried because they are decomposing and there is no room left in hospitals or morgues. At the police hospital in Kathmandu on Tuesday, more than 100 people were waiting to have their blood sampled. Among them was Prakaiti Jurnj. Her mother was still missing, but the family had been able to identify her father’s body from a photograph on the wall outside the teaching hospital, where images of the deceased have been posted in an effort to identify the victims. “Both my father and mother, they were in the village in Nukawot. They were both swept away by the flood,” she said. “We haven’t heard from them since Wednesday. We found my father’s body; my brother saw the photo on the wall.” She was waiting for her two other siblings, who live in the UK, to arrive on Tuesday so they could all try to get up to the village. She said she wanted to contact her grandmother or sister-in-law, who she thinks both survived the flood because their house is further up the mountain. Their village was still in a blackout, and making contact was impossible. “I can’t go there; the situation is very bad,” she said. “I can’t go up there alone. I am not sure if we’ll be able to get them.” The disaster was triggered by a glacier collapse that sent a deluge of ice, rock and mud through Nepal’s border region with China, posing a massive challenge for the country’s six-month-old government. The region is vulnerable to flooding and landslides, and extreme weather events such as intense monsoons and melting glaciers have become more common because of warming due to human-caused climate change. In a late-night social media post, Shah said aid worth more than $42m had poured into the country, but that Nepalis were reeling. “The government understands the immense pain they are enduring. The path ahead is to support them through this suffering and help them return to normal life through rehabilitation,” the prime minister said. Shah also said that 279 workers had so far been rescued from hydropower projects, where authorities estimated close to 1,000 people had been trapped. Days after the disaster, hope was rapidly diminisging that any of those trapped in a series of tunnels could be alive. Pictures and videos shared by rescue teams showed earth-moving equipment digging and shovelling mud and rocks under lights in the dark of the night. Soldiers used torchlight in a big pit they had created to look for space to get into one tunnel. Chinese state media coverage has focused largely on the official response, highlighting the deployment of firefighters, the People’s Liberation Army and instructions from top leaders. Little is known about victims on the Chinese side. The flood was “caused by glacier instability under the long-term effects of global warming”, China’s state broadcaster said on Monday. Shah said the catastrophic event signalled the growing risks that the Himalayan region faces. “The region must therefore remain vigilant. The time has come for us to strongly raise before the international community the disasters we are experiencing as a consequence of climate change,” he wrote in his post.
At least 12 people have been killed in and around Kyiv overnight as Ukraine’s capital endured a sixth consecutive night of Russian drone and missile attacks aimed at shattering infrastructure and lowering the morale of the city. Eight of the dead were reported killed in Kyiv, including seven at a railway depot on the city’s left bank, and four more in the surrounding region, after hours of air alerts culminating in a wave of strikes at about 2.30am. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said “a significant number of jet-powered drones and ballistic missiles were used in the attack” and that Russia was taking advantage of a shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors. In a morning post on social media, Zelenskyy said: “Russia always plans its strikes specifically to cause as much destruction to people’s lives as possible, and it succeeds only when air defence capabilities are insufficient.” Kyiv and the surrounding towns and villages have come under sustained attack in the past few days. Thirty-eight people were killed after a Russian drone struck an ammunition store in Myla, 15 miles west of Kyiv on Thursday, the hit causing hours of secondary explosions and damaging nearby homes. Ukraine’s air force said Russia had attacked 28 locations, focusing on the cities of Kyiv, Odesa and their surroundings. Air defence shot down five Iskander ballistic missiles, two Banderol and five Kalibr cruise missiles and 187 out of 218 drones. Officials no longer reveal the total numbers of missiles fired. Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the chief executive of Ukrainian Railways, said six of the seven people killed in and around the depot were employees of the network. Another rail worker had been hospitalised, he added. Kyiv has been chronically short of air defence systems since the supply of US made Patriot interceptors dried up. The Patriots are the only weapon that can effectively stop high-speed Russian ballistic missiles, made at the rate of about 60 a month. Lockheed Martin, the US company that makes the most capable Pac-3 interceptors, produces about 600 a year, but US military supplies have been depleted during the US war with Iran. Ukraine is trying to secure a stockpile of about 300 for the winter, paid for by European allies, in a supply deal agreed with the US. Moscow appears to be trying to take advantage of an absence of air defence capability before winter, in an escalation of a conflict nearly deadlocked on the frontline. Ukraine has been responding by attacking oil refineries, warehouses and other military facilities deep inside Russia, aiming to hurt the country’s economy.
The number of Australians missing in the Nepal-Tibet flash flooding disaster fell from 43 to 42 on Tuesday, with the announcement that one of the unaccounted for people had made contact from Tibet. Pilgrims trekking to a holy site in Tibet make up the majority of Australians who have been reported missing after deadly flash floods and landslides tore through valleys on the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday last week. Most were travelling with Himalayan Glacier Adventures, Kailash Journeys and the Isha Foundation. The announcement that a second Australian had been found alive on Tuesday comes after Sydney woman Cara Severino, 25, was safely located last week. Due to privacy obligations, Dfat has not provided further details about the second Australian to be found alive. Across Nepal and Tibet, thousands of people have been reported missing and Nepali and Chinese authorities have confirmed hundreds have died. Here’s what we know about the Australians who remain missing. This article will be updated as more information becomes available. Venkatraman Balakrishnan and Chitra Venkatraman New South Wales couple Venkatraman Balakrishnan, 52, and Chitra Venkatraman, 46, were among 15 Australians travelling to Mount Kailash on a spiritual trip with the Himalayan Glacier Adventures tour group. Their son, Akash Venkatraman, said his parents had planned to leave their riverside accommodation in Syabrubesi before it was devastated by flood waters. Muralitharan family Shylaja Muralitharan, 42, Chandresekaran Muralitharan, 47 and their children Ashwin, 14, and Aarush, 11, were also taking part in the Himalayan Glacier Adventures spiritual tour to Mount Kailash when the flood hit. The parents and two children had been training together for the long walk, Shylaja’s younger sister Vaishnavi said. She lost contact with the family shortly after their breakfast on the morning of the flood. Iyer family Sreedharan Iyer, 52, and Lakshmi Iyer, 50, and their adult sons Rishab Iyer, 23, and Rudhra Iyer, 20, were taking part in the spiritual pilgrimage to Mount Kailash with Himalayan Glacier Adventures. The Iyer brothers are medical students at the University of Newcastle and members of the West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Cricket Club in Sydney’s north-west. Karan Bhardwaj, Arpan Mithalal Kothari and Bhavin Raval Karan Bhardwaj, Arpan Mithalal Kothari and Bhavin Raval were travelling together on a Kailash Journey tour of the region. Bhardwaj’s family says the three men have known each other since 2009, when they met at university. Raval’s wife, Bhavinkumar Raval, has told the ABC she believes her husband is still alive and is making plans to travel to Nepal. Bhardwaj is a 40-year-old Brisbane-based member of the Royal Australian Air Force. Bhardwaj’s family member Jen said: “Karan is a dad to my beautiful seven-year-old nephew, as well as a brother, uncle and brother in law. He is so desperately loved by his family and right now we are desperately praying, hoping and believing that Karan is safe, alive and somehow making his way back to us.” Narayan Panthi Narayan Panthi, from Brisbane, has been listed by Nepali police as travelling with operator Kathmandu Holiday Tours and Travel. It is understood Panthi had been carrying out independent volunteer charity work in Kathmandu earlier in the week before travelling towards the border region. Panthi’s cousin, Amrit Bhusal, told Guardian Australia his family were devastated but “holding on to hope and praying for positive news”. “We are still hoping,” Bhusal said. “We are still searching. We are still praying for Narayan to come home safely.” Bhusal said Panthi had been “helping disadvantaged children in Nepal reach their full potential through education”. Bharat Mangwani Bharat Mangwani, 42, was travelling with the Isha Foundation as part of a pilgrimage to Lake Manasarovar when his family lost contact with him on Wednesday morning. He was last seen at Gyirong before the group was set to depart for Kathmandu. “All of us are praying for him and hopefully he comes back to us soon,” close friend Kushagra Tiwari said. Mangwani’s family, including his nine-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, have travelled to India with a family friend, while his wife has flown to Nepal to look for him. Sumi Adhikari Sumi Adhikari, 41, was at the Gyirong Port crossing with the Isha Foundation group when the flood hit. Her husband, Nava Pandey, has travelled to Nepal seeking information about her whereabouts. “We still have no clear or official information about Sumi or the other members of her group,” Pandey said on Saturday morning. Renee Spry A Sunshine Coast disability support worker, Renee Spry has been described as a “deeply spiritual” person who travelled to Nepal on a pilgrimage. “She had two degrees, and she chose to do something that was … a completely selfless vocation. Her priority was always other people,” her sister Clair Spry said. “Every person she touched, they knew her love and kindness. She would be so uncomfortable with all this.” Clair Spry has set up a GoFundMe so her family can travel to Nepal to look for signs of Renee. Suhasini Kandimalla A mother of two from Springfield, near Brisbane, Suhasini Kandimalla was hiking with another Springfield local, according to her sister, Supreethini Kandimalla. While she was a New Zealand citizen, Suhasini had been approved for Australian citizenship, her sister said. She had planned to attend a citizenship ceremony for it to be granted soon after she returned. “I don’t know if it was a religious calling for her to do it,” Supreethini said of the Nepal trip. “But she certainly loved the treks in New Zealand too, and would go on lots of long hikes.” Reshma Patel Newcastle woman Reshma Patel, 46, was in the Isha Foundation group. She didn’t know Sumi Adhikari beforehand, but the pair had become friends on the pilgrimage, Patel’s family friend Chin Valsan says. “They were talking to each other, and they were supposed to come back on the same flight on Thursday,” he says. He describes Patel, who has two children aged 10 and 14 and works casually for Canterbury-Bankstown council, as “full of life” and a “kind soul” who loves her family and friends. Kanagamah Sundrasan The mother of two from Springfield, near Brisbane, was part of the Kailash Journey trek to Mount Kailash. Her daughter, Swaatika Kanniah, said her mother had been excited about the hike. “It was a pilgrimage, she really wanted to go and have that experience.” A photograph of her on the trip shows her smiling with five other members of the tour; all are now missing. “I feel like everyone is trying their best, but yes we don’t know much about what’s going on,” Kanniah said of the recovery efforts. Michael Keats The family of 37-year-old Michael Keats, from Mollymook in NSW, said on social media that he had died. Keats’s partner, Emily Boyd, said on Instagram on Sunday that he had been on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, which had been his “dream for many years”. “Mike went on a pilgrimage to Mt Kailash seeking enlightenment,” Boyd said. “There’s a bittersweetness knowing that there was nothing more that Mike wanted [than] to know God, and to merge with the divine. “He was a mystic, a medicine man, a teacher, leader, partner, father, brother, son, uncle and dearly beloved friend. He showed up for so many people in so many ways. A heart of pure gold. We love you forever and always.” On Tuesday, the foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the Australian government “has not yet received official confirmation of Mr Keats’ passing. He does remain unaccounted for in terms of the information we have. But … we respect the rights of the families to make the statements they have”. “Our thoughts go out to his family and to every Australian family who is hoping that the many who are missing can be located,” she said. Luke Costanzo Luke Costanzo, 30, from Perth remains missing, his family has confirmed. He was on a pilgrimage trek with the Isha foundation, and the group was last in contact at the Gyirong port border crossing as they were making their way back to Kathmandu on the final day of their journey, the family said in a statement. “Luke is an extremely strong, compassionate, disciplined and spiritual person. Once he makes a decision he commits to it fully and he was so excited to be visiting Mount Kailash on a pilgrimage trek with the Isha Foundation,” the family said. “We truly appreciate all the love and support from friends and family that we’ve received and ask everyone to keep Luke, and all those affected, in your thoughts and prayers.” The family has asked people who wish to help to donate “to aid the wonderful people on the ground who continue with rescue efforts”.
Authorities in the Thai resort city of Pattaya have stepped up security as they prepare to welcome thousands of sailors and marines from the USS Abraham Lincoln who have spent more than 270 consecutive days at sea. “About 600 officials will provide security and other necessary assistance,” the provincial governor, Narit Niramaiwong, told AFP. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier sailed past Singapore over the weekend on its way back to the US after a lengthy deployment in the Middle East as part of the US war against Iran. It left California in November 2025 for duty in the South China Sea and was rerouted to the Middle East before the US-Israeli attacks on Iran that began six months ago. Reports of deteriorating living conditions and poor mental health onboard, including attempted suicides, have made headlines in the US and provoked criticism of Donald Trump’s war against Iran. Pattaya’s mayor, Poramase Ngampiches, said the carrier would dock just after midnight on Wednesday (about 5pm GMT on Tuesday) at Laem Chabang port. About 40 buses have been laid on to transport the sailors to Pattaya and back in staggered groups before the carrier departs on Sunday. After meeting US officials on Monday, Poramase said service members would be banned from certain recreational activities such as parasailing and cannabis use. Medical cannabis was legalised in Thailand in 2022 and dispensaries have become common in Thai cities. Once a sleepy fishing village, Pattaya was transformed by the Vietnam war in the 1960s, when US soldiers on leave began coming for rest and recreation. The city has since become hugely popular with foreign tourists, known for its beaches and a nightlife scene that has long drawn scrutiny over sex tourism. Poramase told AFP there had been a recent crackdown on sex workers but denied this was linked to the US arrivals. Government officials are warning local businesses not to overcharge US sailors, and Poramase said there would be a greater police presence in popular areas along Pattaya beach and Walking Street. The city’s police chief, Anek Srathongyoo, said law enforcements agencies had been ordered to step up security measures to prevent undesirable situations. He said that if any US service members broke Thai law, they would be prosecuted accordingly. Local business owners feeling the tourism slump from the Iran war are eager for the new arrivals. A banner hung over a local bar near a beach read: “Welcome all US military personnel. Thank you for your service.” Bualuang Ponok, a bar employee, said she had seen US service members during past visits but she did not expect many from this crew. “They said 5,000 people will come here but how many will reach us?” she said. Earlier in August, the usually Asia-based USS George Washington relieved the long-deployed Lincoln in the Middle East. The Lincoln, one of the US navy’s largest warships, was part of American efforts in the Iran war, which flared back up over the weekend for the first time in a month. The deployment included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 270 days. Trump downplayed concerns over conditions onboard and said the deployment was “not nearly long enough”. Thai officials have said the Lincoln will return to the US after its port call in Thailand. Associated Press and Agence France-Press contributed reporting
Good morning. Violence against women and girls, in all its myriad forms – physical and mental, blatant and insidious – is a global challenge. It reaches back through millennia and, lately, it has been turbo-charged by technology, which offers abusers new ways to shame, harass and monitor victims. What would it take to eradicate it? Scotland’s first minister John Swinney wants to find out. Today, he will set out his programme for government (the Holyrood equivalent of the King’s speech), and Swinney surprised many when he pledged to put ending violence against women at the heart of his government’s ambitions for the coming year and beyond. But haven’t we been here before? Scotland has produced a raft of radical strategies, as well as legislation hailed as the international gold standard on domestic violence. So what hasn’t changed? For today’s newsletter, I spoke to equalities campaigner Talat Yaqoob, who co-chaired the Scottish government’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls after four years until last month. I asked her what government – and societal – action constitutes meaningful change, and what other countries can learn from Scotland. But first, the headlines. Five big stories Nepal-Tibet | Rescue teams are working to reach more than 900 missing hydropower workers, who are thought to be trapped in underground areas in Nepal, after the devastating flash floods. Iran | The new US sanctions campaign is expected to push many Iranians into deeper poverty as food inflation soars. UK | The British Museum privately hosted Palantir founder Peter Thiel in a private viewing of the Bayeux tapestry, the Guardian understands. Slavery | Countries are legally obliged to consider reparations for the transatlantic slave tried, and address the legacy racial discrimination, a UN committee has said. US news | A Las Vegas jury has found former South Side Compton Crips gang leader Duane Keith Davis guilty of the murder of Tupac Shakur, bringing the case to a close nearly 30 years after the famous rapper was gunned down. In depth: Why Scotland’s pioneering laws aren’t enough We’ll find out later today the detail of the measures John Swinney is proposing, but the SNP leader’s preliminary talk has been big: pledging his personal leadership, acknowledging that alongside resources to protect those most at risk of violence right now, his government needs to address underlying economic inequalities – and hinting at the need for focused prevention when he says that lasting change requires all of society to play our part. The context for Swinney’s vow is bleak: a steady increase in misogyny and violence against women and girls across the world. In Scotland, both domestic abuse and sexual crimes are on the rise – crimes recorded by Police Scotland including rape and attempted rape, sexual assault and communicating indecently were up 10% last year and are now at their highest level since 1971. Rape Crisis Scotland has pointed out that these figures reflect a significant rise in historic offences and that, despite the best efforts of Reform in Scotland to link them with immigration, the vast majority are perpetrated by people known to the victim. Moreover, as Yaqoob tells me, technological advances have “enabled an entirely new field of violence against women and girls – deepfakes, ‘revenge porn’, online coercion and control of women through things like GPS tracking” – while the now-quotidian misogyny of the manosphere is saturating playgrounds and classrooms. A survey of Scottish secondary school boys last year found a third believed that girls who wear revealing clothing were “asking for trouble”, while a third of female teaching staff, in a separate study, reported sexist abuse from children as young as eight years old. “We also know that when there is recession, when there is poverty, there is a rise of the far right, there’s a rise of anger, and women are often the victims of that anger,” Yaqoob says. The Guardian’s own research last year found that two out of every five people arrested after participating in the 2024 summer riots had been previously reported to the police for domestic abuse. Recession hits funding too: many services are on their knees, according to campaigners, while the post-pandemic court backlog and ongoing crisis in the legal aid system continues to deny victims access to justice. *** Haven’t we been here before? When I returned to Scotland to report for the Guardian just over a decade ago, there was a new female first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, one of three women heading the main political parties at Holyrood, and you could taste the change in the air. This visibility of women in top jobs – necessary, of course, but never sufficient – was accompanied by a raft of ambitious strategies and bills. Equally Safe, launched in 2014, was a plan across central and local governments to act together on tackling gender-based violence. The National Advisory Council on Women and Girls, established by Sturgeon in 2017, brought forward radical proposals to offer two months of paid paternity leave and establish a world-leading process for complainants of sexual violence. In 2018, the Scottish parliament passed legislation to criminalise coercive control for the first time, hailed by international experts at the time as “the gold standard”, and three years later added further powers with domestic abuse prevention orders. There’s been funding for sexual violence prevention programmes in schools and universities, and a national advocacy service to support victims as they navigate the justice system. And, in 2025, a landmark justice reform bill abolished the Scottish verdict of “not proven” – a global legal anomaly thought to be a key factor in the country’s significantly lower convictions rate for rape and sexual assault. These offer a useful case study of what Yaqoob describes as “the implementation gap”. While the 2018 Act was undoubtedly radical, campaigners say it hasn’t achieved its full potential because the institutional change demanded of police and prosecutors – including the training of officers and shifting of mindset over charging decisions – hasn’t happened. Only 4% of domestic abuse crimes were prosecuted under the new legislation last year. Meanwhile, many of the 2021 powers are gathering dust because poor drafting has rendered them too difficult to implement. “There is a theme here,” says Yaqoob. “There’s no shortage of inspiring rhetoric and in some cases good strategy and legislation. What there isn’t is the priority and resources when it leaves the desk of the Scottish government and that means a lack of tangible change in women’s lives.” *** What needs to happen now? Removing this block between declaration and delivery doesn’t have to be onerous, Yaqood argues. Partly it’s about making gender equality a priority across the public sector. “Gender equality is always on the periphery of interventions. Until it’s at the centre, you can have as many big commitments as you want, but it will not make a difference enough to women and girls’ lives”. And placing gender equality at the centre is the beginning of the systemic change demanded of the police and prosecution service, as well as resourcing the tailored, often grassroots, projects that can make a difference in schools and communities – especially those designed by and for men – like the Many Good Men project which takes the conversation into football clubs. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” says Yaqoob. “There are years of well-evidenced practice that we need to scale up.” Credit where it’s due: Police Scotland has done some very decent work in recent years with Don’t Be That Guy – a campaign that has young men talking directly to their peers about problematic behaviour. But the force has struggled to take on misogyny and racism within its own ranks. In recent years in Scotland, the discussion around violence against women has been dominated by arguments around women-only spaces – the UK’s most influential gender critical group, For Women Scotland, is based in Edinburgh – and unfounded claims that Scotland’s asylum population is responsible for an increase in sexual violence. Yaqoob is clear: “Anyone who tries to position themselves as protectors of women and girls, but does not have an agenda that is focused on tackling poverty, putting money back into communities for women and girls, or the need for consent and sexuality education in schools, is selling you a lie.” (For more, that broader agenda of tackling gender inequality in all its forms is the subject of a new book of essays, co-edited by Yaqoob.) *** The solution is global – and also local A global problem demands, in part at least, a global solution. As I’ve written in previous First Editions, change at street levels demands that all of us engage in small acts of solidarity. Yaqoob puts it this way: “Whether you’re calling out misogynistic language in the pub or you’re the leader of a local council allocating resources, there are so many different facets of society where people need to take more responsibility for the space they occupy.” So much of this conversation applies beyond Scotland, but back at Holyrood it’s fair to say that, while there’s a bit of eye-rolling as yet another male politician “discovers” violence against women and some head-scratching over precisely what reforms he intends to unveil, there’s also wary optimism to hear this focus at the beginning of the SNP government’s five year term. As one campaigner told me yesterday: “This is an opportunity to kick the door down for bigger changes”. What else we’ve been enjoying Rebecca Solnit is on form in this column lambasting Donald Trump’s plan to “sell off” chunks of Yosemite national park. “The US is being sold for parts or just handed over to the oligarchy,” she writes. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team I found Ben Quinn’s acute analysis of what’s gone wrong for Reform this summer a useful primer ahead of their party conference later this week. Libby I loved this perceptive piece from Tanya Aldred on the short shelf life of football shirts. For more from Tanya on the intersection of climate change and sport, sign up to The Hotspot. Charlie The story of how Jackson Pollock’s masterwork Blue Poles became Australia’s most controversial painting takes in Gough Whitlam, the Shah of Iran and Paul Hogan – and Guardian Australia’s political editor, Tom McIlroy, tells it brilliantly in this Full Story podcast. Libby Our Laura Snapes’s music coverage is indispensable, yet not even her Taylor Swift opus can compete with this vital piece against the term “picky bits”. “It’s the Boaty McBoatface of dinner time,” she correctly argues, “exposing our once-repressed nation’s surprisingly twee core and total disregard for shame”. Charlie Sport Football | Argentina’s Lionel Messi announced his retirement from international football, following his father’s death and the World Cup defeat by Spain. Tennis | Carlos Alcaraz beat Roman Safiullin 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in the first round of the US Open in his first match since April. Football | Bukayo Saka scored the only goal of the game as Arsenal held off a much-improved Aston Villa to make it two wins from two in the Premier League. The front pages “Public control of utilities is key to growth – Burnham”, is the Guardian’s front page today. The Times leads with “Healey: I’ll prove I’m no hypocrite on defence”, the Telegraph writes “SAS chief: Army witch hunts put UK at risk”, and the Mail has “Kemi gets Tories battle ready with ruthless reshuffle”. The i Paper’s splash is “Killer kitchen dust: victims’ loved one to receive higher compensation”, the FT says “Crunch warning for consultants as clients harness AI to cut IT spending”. The Express has “Million OAPs hit with top-rate tax bills”, and the Sun’s headline is “Prem’s £10m crypto cash frozen”. The Mirror leads with “Maxwell to beg Trump for freedom”, and Metro’s front page is “Dad’s gift of life”. Today in Focus War of words: my language lessons in Ukraine For Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer, visiting Ukraine and meeting the artists, novelists and poets under fire changed her life. “It was even before I went home that I decided I needed to learn some Ukrainian,” she tells Helen Pidd. She talks about why she was inspired to learn Ukrainian and what it taught her about its people. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Rachel Aroesti has always loved podcasts, especially the kind that can be described as ‘Two Men Talking (In Excessive Detail About Their Lives)“. Initially drawn to them for their humour, she began to find them hugely comforting – sometimes falling asleep listening to Adam and Joe’s BBC 6 Music show. But, as her consumption increased, she became aware that she used podcasts as a psychological crutch, to prevent being alone with her thoughts. After a silent, tech-free train ride across the East Anglian countryside, Aroesti felt she was undergoing a mental reboot. Her mind flooded with ideas, plans, insights and reflections at a speed and intensity she had not experienced for years. Nowadays, she savors silence and boredom, and has successfully reduced her listening by at least 80%. “I’ve given my mind permission to wander – both productively and pointlessly – again,” she writes. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply