Read the daily news to learn English

Colombia’s elephant-costumed anti-corruption activist sworn in as senator

When 102 senators were sworn in for Colombia’s latest parliamentary session, they included 32 women, 69 men – and one cartoon elephant. He had some difficulty making his way down the narrow central aisle of Congress’s ceremonial chamber, weaving past fellow senators in sharply tailored suits and dresses, before taking the oath in his pot-bellied white plush costume. Blending in was never an option for the new senator, who ran almost his entire campaign without revealing his identity. It was only three days before the election that Luis Carlos Rúa, 34, revealed himself as the person behind Elefante blanco, the White Elephant, a reference to the term used to describe overpriced, abandoned or ultimately useless public works, which he had spent the previous five years exposing on social media. His videos attracted hundreds of thousands of views, some projects were resumed, and Rúa became one of Colombia’s most voted for senators, with about 124,000 votes. “The inauguration day was spectacular because nothing like it had ever happened anywhere in the world,” said Rúa, who took off the head of his costume only occasionally during the swearing-in ceremony. “No senator had ever taken office like that,” Rúa said during a video call from the Congress corridors, showing his face and dressed in formal attire. “I’m about to go into a plenary session, but I’m not wearing the costume because it’s for specific occasions and not every debate is that significant,” he added. The character’s origins can be traced back to 2019, when Rúa was working for the mayor’s office in Pereira, a city of almost 500,000 people about 205 miles from the capital, Bogotá. He said it was during that time he witnessed the administration pressuring employees to secure votes for a candidate. Rúa recorded a conversation and leaked it to the press. “I had to leave the city because I received death threats,” he said. Rúa moved to Medellín and decided to continue exposing wrongdoing, but anonymously because “here in Colombia, if you don’t do things the way the crooked people want, you’re not welcome”. He commissioned the elephant design from an illustrator and later had the costume made by a seamstress, and posted his first video in November 2021, about an unfinished road. Since then, there have been dozens more about bridges, schools, tunnels and hospitals, all narrated in a distorted voice and sometimes showing Elefante blanco trudging through mud or wading through murky water that stains the white plush costume – Rúa keeps a spare. “It’s extremely hot inside it, but it still has to be done because I’ll go to places the state doesn’t go,” he said. Rúa funded his trips through freelance work, the sale of Elefante blanco plush toys and crowdfunding campaigns, but said it was not sustainable and decided to run for office so that, with a senator’s salary, he could continue his oversight work. He announced his candidacy in December, but remained anonymous. “Revealing my face just three days before the election gave me enough time to protect my own safety,” Rúa said. He received at least one vote in almost all of Colombia’s approximately 1,100 municipalities. For the political analyst Gabriel Cifuentes, Elefante blanco’s election says as much about the growing influence of social media on elections as it does about “a growing weariness with traditional politics”. “Politics is seen as a corrupt exercise and, in that sense, activists like him, who are not tied to political parties, tend to attract the attention of a public that is increasingly connected through social media,” Cifuentes said. One of Rúa’s proposals is a law requiring municipalities to allocate dedicated budgets for repairing potholes. It would be named after his father, Darío Rúa, who was 85 when he fell on a potholed street and died in 2024. The senator said he cast a blank vote in the presidential runoff between the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda and the far-right millionaire lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, who won. “I’m not from the left, the right or the centre. I’m independent,” Rúa said. Even so, the new senator has faced criticism for voting in favour of De la Espriella’s proposal to move this Friday’s presidential inauguration ceremony from Bogotá to 280 miles away in Cali. The proposal passed the senate by 58 votes to 30. Critics argued that Rúa had campaigned against wasting public money, only to back moving the entire inauguration, with its hundreds of guests and staff, for a single day. He said he wanted to send “a signal of state presence in a region that has historically been neglected” and that, even with the venue change, the inauguration would cost less than the one held when the leftist president Gustavo Petro took office in 2022. Rúa said he would attend De la Espriella’s inauguration dressed as Elefante blanco. “My relationship with him will basically be one of political oversight, and it would have been exactly the same if the other candidate [Cepeda] had won,” he said.

Hungary comes ‘within millimetres’ of shutting down nuclear power plant amid drought crisis – Europe live

Back to discussions on Ceuta, now under way in Brussels (10:08), a senior Moroccan official claimed that Morocco had warned Spain that a recent Spanish court ruling that migrants arriving by sea would not face immediate removal was going to create “a problem,” AFP reported. Spain’s Supreme Court ruled on 8 July that migrants arriving by sea should not be returned as quickly as others and Madrid has blamed criminal gangs for spreading misinformation about the ruling. “We started engaging with the Spanish side around 22-23 July, when the networks began talking about this,” the Moroccan senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday night. “We discussed this ruling and its impact. We explained that this ruling was going to create a problem. And it did create a problem,” he said. The official also rejected any suggestion that Morocco was to be blamed for the crisis, saying “at a certain point, the Moroccan law enforcement forces could no longer confront the migrants because the numbers were very large,” and because “the pull effect was very strong,” he said. “Today, it is up to Spain to find answers to the challenges posed by this ruling,” he said. For what it’s worth, Spain responded to the ruling in recent days, installing new border containment structures that would provide them a legal claim to use an exemption provided in the court’s ruling and allow to send migrants back across the border.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating suspected corruption when killed, jury told

Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating suspected corruption by the businessman Yorgen Fenech and members of Malta’s government when she was killed, a jury has heard. The heir to one of Malta’s biggest fortunes, Fenech is on trial for murder, accused of commissioning and paying for Caruana Galizia’s killing in a car bombing in October 2017. The journalist’s son Matthew Caruana Galizia, a software engineer who was part of the reporting team that won a Pulitzer prize for the Panama Papers investigation into offshore companies, took the stand on Monday. He described being drawn in to helping his mother with her work, saying that as more facts came to light, it seemed to him a “portal” had opened and he could “see into hell”. In 2015, Matthew said, he was working on the Panama Papers leak, uploading millions of files into a database that reporters were using to investigate tax havens. While processing the files, he said, he found information directly relevant to Malta. “I had to share what I was seeing with my mother. I believed it was too important.” Over time, material from the leak and Daphne’s own sources produced evidence that Malta’s then energy minister, Konrad Mizzi, and the prime minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, had set up offshore companies soon after entering office. A firm of accountants was helping them to open bank accounts in the name of those companies, Matthew said. The jury was shown a comment left by Daphne in early 2017 under a newspaper article about the minister and the chief of staff. She wrote: “How unbelievably corrupt they are – and worse still, they were not tempted into corruption when they were already jaded in power, but actually got into power with the express purpose of being corrupt. It was their roadmap.” At the time of her death in 2017, Matthew said, he had been helping his mother process another leak, consisting of thousands of emails stored in the servers of a company called Electrogas, partly owned by Fenech. One of the Muscat government’s flagship projects after winning the 2013 general election had been to privatise a key part of Malta’s electricity infrastructure. The contract had been won by Electrogas. “I was receiving this info, I couldn’t believe it, it was like a portal opened up and I could see into hell,” Matthew said. The defence objected, saying the witness was offering an opinion. Asked if Daphne had discussed the tendering process with him, Matthew said she had. “Factually, what did your mother tell you about the tendering process?” the prosecutor asked. Matthew replied: “That it was corrupt.” The judge interjected to remind the witness that this was an opinion, not a fact. Asked what he had seen in the emails, Matthew said: “When I started receiving the data and put it in a system to make it searchable, I could see that Yorgen Fenech was at the centre of everything. He was featured in countless emails.” Matthew said the Electrogas leak was ongoing the day his mother was killed. He said she had wanted to gather a group of journalists together to examine the data, in a collaboration similar to the one that had produced the Panama Papers. He had contacted the Guardian to begin work on the project, but his mother was killed a few months later. “We never got to do it, and in fact when I see these emails my heart beats fast because I’m taken back to that time when I was with my mother planning on what to do,” he told the court. After the murder, Matthew set up the Daphne Project, working with a wider group of publications, including the Guardian and Reuters, to continue investigating Electrogas and try to uncover who was behind his mother’s killing. The reporting uncovered evidence that suggested Fenech had intended to pay bribes in order to secure the power station concession, provoking international condemnation and a European parliament investigation. Fenech, Mizzi and Schembri reject any suggestion of corruption. The allegations were not repeated on Monday, after the judge ordered the testimony to focus only on what could be supported by documents shown in court. The prosecution’s questioning ended with a description by Matthew of the day his mother died. They were working together at home and she had prepared a mozzarella and tomato salad. She then left in her car to go to the bank. “I was working on some software and I heard an explosion. I opened the door, I felt the blood drain away … I started walking faster and faster towards the tower of smoke,” he said. “First I saw fire on the road – the road was on fire. I saw pieces of metal and flesh. My eyes followed the smoke and I saw a huge ball of fire. I ran towards it. The horn was going off, it wouldn’t stop. I saw a shadow in the car and I remember saying ‘that’s my mum’.” He told the court he had set aside everything to ensure those responsible were held to account, leaving his job, ending his career and returning to Malta. “We had to make it our mission, which we did. It came at enormous personal cost.” Fenech, who is on trial for complicity in the voluntary homicide of Caruana Galizia, denies the charges. The trial continues. Transcript and translation by Amphora Media

Nine Lives, the feral cat that terrorised New Zealand’s rare ducks, is caught after three years

A notorious feral cat given the name “Nine Lives” because it eluded trappers for three years has been caught and killed in New Zealand, ending its devastating rampage against one of the country’s rare duck populations. The cat, a large grey tabby, is estimated to have killed dozens of New Zealand’s rarest mainland duck – or 1% of its population – plus a host of kiwi chicks, native geckos and other native wildlife during the three years it was known to be roaming the Purerua peninsula, near the top of the North Island. “We don’t take for granted that we’ve had this success because it had us baffled for so long,” said Andy Mentor, the project manager for Pest Free Purerua, a conservation project. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of cat ownership in the world, and the impact of feral and domestic cats on biodiversity ignites fierce debate. Some on social media were horrified Nine Lives had been shot, believing it deserved to live, while others said its capture was “a fantastic result”. Nine Lives will form part of that debate long after its death, with its body set to be taxidermied for use as a tool to educate the community about the devastating impact of feral cats on native species. Nine Lives was first spotted on the Purerua peninsula in Northland in 2023. What ensued was a frustrating and twisted game of cat and mouse. Pest Free Purerua had just introduced 20 pāteke, or brown teal – the country’s rarest mainland duck – to the peninsula, believing it had control over the feral cat population. “But within a week we had our first death. We put up some cameras and we identified a particular cat with specific markings,” Mentor said. Another 15 pāteke were killed, with the same cat turning up. “It was a really stressful time. So we brought in more traps, gear, night cameras to try and get to the root cause of the problem.” The project managed to catch other feral cats over the next year, but Nine Lives remained elusive. They decided to release more pāteke in 2024 but the same cat appeared, killing another 15 of the 20 birds. “This particular cat would be very erratic. It would show up in a particular place and then not show up for another two or three months. It would show up in the dusk, midnight, early morning, through the day, so it was never a predictable pattern, which made it very, very difficult to track,” Mentor said. The team came close to catching it on a number of occasions, but each time it slipped their grasp, earning it the name Nine Lives. At the end of July, Mentor and his team noticed the cat had turned up to a quarry three nights in a row, which was “quite unusual”. They laid out salmon, fried chicken and rabbit to attract the animal, and deployed cages and traps. On 30 July, a notification on a cellphone camera showed a cat in one of the cages. “We dispatched our trappers to check it out and there it was. So it was humanely shot,” Mentor said. The animal will have its stomach contents examined to see what it was feeding on before being taxidermied. Mentor said it has likely also fed on kiwi chicks, native geckos and other native wildlife. More than 2.5m feral cats roam New Zealand’s bush and on offshore islands, where they can grow up to a metre long, including their tail. They have destroyed native wildlife and hunted some bird species to the brink of extinction. In November, the government announced feral cats would be added to the country’s world-leading Predator-Free 2050 strategy. Mentor said moving from the suppression of cats to an elimination strategy will be a “real step up” for the peninsula and the team may restart introducing pāteke once more. But for now, conservationists will celebrate the capture of Nine Lives, as well as honour their most evasive adversary. “Nine Lives needs to be given a certain amount of dignity and respect,” said Mentor.

Tuesday briefing: Inside the right’s heated climate-denial debate

Good morning. Half of England and all of Wales are officially in drought, wildfires have burned through parts of the Cairngorms, Suffolk and the Isle of Wight, and reservoirs are running low. Farmers have warned that there could soon be food shortages, and the Royal Horticultural Society is considering moving its hydrangeas to cope with the heat. Many people are now asking a question rarely associated with British summertime: when will it rain? The Guardian has been covering how the climate crisis is supercharging wildfires in Europe, the impossible choices firefighters face about which places to save, the number of people who have died in England due to heat, and the air conditioning haves and have-nots. Had you been reading another newspaper, you may have come away with a very different impression of this extreme weather. Over the last week, a string of articles, mostly in the Telegraph, suggested that Britain should give up on net zero and learn to live with its newly Mediterranean climate; that wildfires had been exacerbated by environmental groups; and, rather grandiosely, that climate “catastrophism” is a “leftist weapon” designed to “destroy capitalism”. In a week when England entered its fourth heatwave of 2026, this line of argument might have seemed more than a little out of touch. But it reflects how climate deniers are reconfiguring their narratives in the face of an indisputable crisis. I spoke to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, about how a minority is shaping the political debate and trying to thwart the transition, even while most people want to see more action on climate. First, here are the headlines. Five big stories UK news | Rapists, child sexual abusers and groomers will be excluded from early release plans to ease critical prison overcrowding in a major intervention by Andy Burnham. UK politics | Nigel Farage has made his clearest admission that he was in talks to return to lead Reform UK months before the 2024 general election, casting fresh doubt on previous claims that he was not involved in politics when he received a £5m gift. Spain | A growing chorus of voices has accused Morocco of helping to fuel the crisis in Ceuta, with the leader of the Spanish enclave describing last week’s border crossings as an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity that was seen as being “if not orchestrated, at least encouraged or permitted by Morocco”. Middle East | New talks between Washington and Tehran are the “last chance” for Iran to forge a deal and avoid an escalation of US strikes on the country, Donald Trump said on Monday. Environment | A plastic manufacturer in the north of England is facing potential legal action over emissions of benzene, a carcinogenic chemical with no safe level, the Guardian can reveal. In depth: From ‘lukewarmers’ to ‘daft’ arguments – how climate deniers are reshaping political discourse As the world heats up, denying the reality of climate change has become implausible. “This is no longer a matter of speculation: the wildfires of Europe, pitiless and persistent, are the way we live now,” the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley wrote recently in an article persuading the right to “get serious” about the subject. Instead, a tendency to downplay the seriousness of the crisis has emerged. In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Matt Ridley, a former Conservative peer whose ancestral estate features two coalmines, suggested that a “cult of rewilding” – whose converts allegedly include the RSPB and National Trust – is connected to the risk of wildfires in England (this suggestion was repeated in another Spectator piece on Saturday, £). The Spanish far-right party Vox recently made a similar argument about wildfires in Spain, blaming them on a failure to clear rural areas and invest in firefighting services, rather than on the climate crisis (read Sam Jones’s piece on Spain’s climate deniers here). Another line of argument is to acknowledge that the climate crisis is real, but insist that nothing can be done to address it. “The war against global warming has been lost, with only grievous collateral damage to show for it,” Allister Heath, the Sunday editor of the Telegraph, wrote last week (£) in a piece arguing that people in Britain should learn to love their new Mediterranean climate, and take inspiration from other “blossoming” hot regions, such as Dubai and Israel. *** Who are the ‘lukewarmers’? “All of this commentary reflects a battle on the right between climate sceptics – people often referred to as ‘lukewarmers’ – versus the Conservative voters who actually care about conservation, nature and so on,” Ward told me. The term “lukewarmer” was popularised by Ridley, who is affiliated with the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a campaigning body that has spent decades undermining climate science, and its campaigning arm, Net Zero Watch. “Lukewarmers accept the reality of human-made climate change, but believe the impact of it won’t be as big as people argue, and that policies involved in mitigating these impacts will be expensive and difficult,” Ward says. Net zero has become a particular focus for them. Basic physics dictates that reaching net zero is necessary to stop global temperatures rising even further. Although it was Theresa May, a Tory, who committed Britain to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, voices in the rightwing press have sought to paint the target as a bureaucratic conspiracy devised by lanyard-toting Labour wonks and enforced on an unsuspecting population, spreading “desolation across the loveliest countryside in the world”, as one writer recently put it (£). *** If Britain doesn’t contribute that much to global emissions, does net zero even matter? Another common refrain (I counted at least five articles about the climate crisis published in the Telegraph last week that made variations of this argument) is that, since other countries emit far more carbon than Britain, striving for net zero in the UK is, at best, an irrelevance and, at worst, a decision that will make the country much poorer than other industrialising nations. As the “anti-woke” libertarian podcaster Konstantin Kisin said in a speech to the Oxford Union in 2023, the future of climate change will be decided by “poor people in Asia and Latin America who could not give a crap about saving the planet … because they are poor”. People who make this argument often point to China, which produces about 35% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Since the UK produces less than 1%, why should the UK bother decarbonising when it’s not even responsible for that much damage? “That’s a totally daft argument,” says Ward. “If more than 99% of the emissions damaging the UK come from other countries, then we have a vested interest in persuading those countries to accelerate their transition. And we’re not going to persuade them by dragging our feet.” In fact, China has massively expanded its renewables sector, and has a far higher proportion of electric cars on the road than in Britain. Meanwhile, commentators in Britain are trying to forestall the transition by making misleading arguments about China. *** How is this shaping politics? The 2024 Conservative manifesto committed to reaching net zero by 2050, but Kemi Badenoch ditched the target, perhaps hoping to win back Reform voters (a month before U-turning on the pledge, Badenoch spent a week on a “retreat” hosted by the Tory donor and chair of Net Zero Watch). And among the reported reasons why Ed Miliband didn’t get the role of chancellor were his commitment to net zero and his opposition to new exploration licences in the North Sea. Most British voters are in favour of net zero. Despite this, media coverage of it is more than twice as likely to be negative than positive. This could be helping to drive a false perception that climate action is overwhelmingly unpopular with voters, encouraging MPs to significantly underestimate public support for these policies, and overestimate opposition. In other words, a small chorus of climate sceptics aren’t trying to represent public opinion or persuade us to embrace Mediterranean summers, so much as convince politicians that climate action is deeply unpopular. • For more on extreme weather and the climate crisis, sign up to our free (and very good) weekly email Down to Earth. Click here to subscribe. It features an exclusive weekly piece from our top climate crisis correspondents, as well as a digest of the biggest environment stories. What else we’ve been enjoying I’ve had a sneak peek at the Guardian’s new This Is India newsletter, which launches this morning (you’ll be able to read it online imminently), and Niha Masih’s dispatch from the frontline of the Cockroach movement is essential reading. Sign up for This Is India here to read future editions first. Sam Coare, newsletters team I have fond memories of visiting Blockbuster and arguing with my brother over which VHS our parents would rent us for the weekend, so I loved this piece about the lost civic life of video rental shops. Hettie Audacious when they come off, humiliating when they don’t … this celebration of 50 years of the Panenka shows how thin the line is between footballing genius and stupidity. Sam It’s worth listening to this morning’s episode of Today in Focus with Anna Isaac about her latest story on Nigel Farage’s funding scandals. Her reporting on this has been unmissable. Hettie The Guardian’s annual invertebrate of the year competition is back! Can the reigning champion Milnesium tardigradum defend its spineless crown? The reveal of the 10-strong shortlist is under way, with today’s spotlight turning on the common woodlouse. Sam Sport Tour de France Femmes | Sigrid Haugset, the Norwegian national champion, shocked the established order in the Tour de France Femmes by breaking away to take the overall lead. Fifa | The English FA and Serbia’s have followed Wales’s and Finland’s in dropping support for Gianni Infantino’s re-election bid as Fifa president. Tennis | Emma Raducanu will miss the US Open because of the stress fracture in her right leg that she sustained during the grass-court season and forced her to pull out of Wimbledon. The front pages “Rapists and groomers will not be freed early, says PM”, is the Guardian’s front page today, while the Telegraph writes “Pc Harper killers will still be freed early” and the Times says “Killers but not rapists to be given early release”. The Mail has “Athens suitcase murder suspect”, the i Paper leads on “Driest July in 190 years”, the FT leads on “Apple launches legal challenge to new demand for data access”, and the Mirror splashes “Farage’s sinking ship”. Elsewhere, the Express goes with “Two jabs a year to target ‘silent killer’” and Metro has “15st lighter … and jabs are just the job”. The Latest How Ceuta migrant crisis exposes divisions within Europe Dozens of people died attempting to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after an estimated 50,000 crossed from Morocco last week. The incident has led to a political crisis in Spain and criticism from EU countries. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s European community affairs correspondent, Ashifa Kassam – watch on YouTube. Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad When she was a teenager, Amy Annette spent summers wrapped up in a black cardigan and was often asked: “Aren’t you hot in that?” She wasn’t hiding from the heat, but from years of feeling ashamed and insecure about her arms. Last month, after decades of avoiding sleeveless tops, the heatwave pushed Annette to bare her arms in public for the first time, at 37 – prompting her to rethink the body standards that had shaped her wardrobe, and her confidence, for decades. “And if it gets any hotter,” she says, “I’m wondering what other internalised standards I can sweat out.” 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

Cancer survivors need protection from future discrimination, say German politicians

German politicians who have survived cancer have spearheaded proposals to protect people long in remission from what they call rampant discrimination in areas including bank loans, adoption of children and insurance. The policy known as “the right to be forgotten” (RTBF) is a central demand of a community estimated to number 5.5 million people in Germany: former cancer patients who have been given a clean bill of health by their doctors. “Anyone who has medically overcome cancer must not be permanently disadvantaged in any area of life, be it in insurance, credit or employment law,” reads the proposed measure drawn up by the Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in Germany’s coalition government. Once medically justified time limits – generally five years – have expired, “disclosure of a previously overcome cancer diagnosis can no longer be required”, the paper states. One of the proposal’s initiators is Adis Ahmetović, the foreign policy spokesperson of the SPD’s parliamentary group, who went public with a lymphoma diagnosis at the age of 30 and is now 33. He has been tumour-free since October 2024 and could be medically considered cancer-free in 2029. Ahmetović argues that beyond its ethical justification, the policy “would not cost the state a cent”. He received support from his fellow Social Democrat Manuela Schwesig, who is a breast cancer survivor and the state premier of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on the Baltic coast. Schwesig said Germany remained among EU outliers in creating high obstacles to a fresh start for former cancer patients. “You have the right [in other countries] to make plans again as normal: to buy a house, to start a family,” she told the Funke media group. “Other European countries have long since sorted this out. We need a law for this; voluntary commitments are not enough.” The SPD’s co-leader Lars Klingbeil, who is Germany’s finance minister, overcame tongue cancer, after learning of his illness in 2014. He has also thrown his weight behind the legislation. “Anyone who has beaten cancer must be able to look ahead freely again, socially and economically,” he said. A petition calling for Germany to adopt RTBF reforms has drawn more than 55,000 signatures. It was initiated by Tobias Burggraf, whose daughter was diagnosed with cancer at the age of two and a half. “After the healing, life begins – not the next hurdle,” Burggraf said, describing his goal. He said the SPD-sponsored proposal “covers the thrust of our petition”, calling it “correct and long overdue”. The SPD parliamentary group cited survey data from a patients’ rights lobbying group showing that 77% of medically declared cancer survivors face what it called discrimination when taking out private insurance policies. However, the German Insurance Association (GDV), an industry group, warned against setting fixed time limits on cancer patient status. It said private insurance providers of life and disability coverage must be able to assess patients’ future risk based on scientific review and medical advice to keep policies affordable for all. “Even after successful treatment, relapses, long-term effects of the therapy or lasting health problems may persist,” said the association’s general manager, Jörg Asmussen. “There may also be an increased risk of other diseases, particularly other types of cancer.” Susanne Weg-Remers, of the German Cancer Research Centre in the western city of Heidelberg, said that while some cancer survivors did develop tumours in other organs, the risk was not significantly higher than in the general population. Given that one in two men and one in two to three women in Germany will develop a malignant tumour at some point in their lives, “if you were to use cancer as an argument,” she told Süddeutsche newspaper, “you wouldn’t be allowed to sell insurance policies or grant loans at all”. Patient advocacy groups say automatic presumptions about future health are particularly unfair to younger survivors, whose prognoses are often good. The German Foundation for Young Adults with Cancer said 16,500 people aged 18 to 39 were diagnosed with cancer in Germany each year, as well as 2,100 children, but medical advances meant more than 80% of the two groups could be healed. The European Society for Medical Oncology, which provides cancer information and education, has advocated for a fair common standard for financial services access for cancer survivors across Europe based on a five-year minimum remission period. The society said the current patchwork of laws across the EU led to “unjustified discrimination”. Only 11 EU member states had introduced specific legal measures protecting cancer survivors from financial discrimination, it said, leaving 16 without equivalent protections. “As a result, access to financial services continues to depend heavily on where a cancer survivor lives.” An EU directive that Germany is still working to implement allows for restrictions for a period of up to 15 years after the end of treatment and offers narrow protections in the context of credit and insurance. The UK has no binding RTBF laws. While Ireland passed such a law in 2026 focused on a level playing field for mortgage seekers, the UK has a largely voluntary framework.

Acrobatic, goofy and super-fast: the biama battles redefining Ivorian dance culture

The 400-strong crowd, perched on plastic chairs and wooden benches in Abidjan’s Yopougon-Selmer neighbourhood, roared with approval as Sauce Graine twisted and turned on the spot with breathtaking speed and dexterity. The dancer, named after the Ivorian palm nut delicacy, was competing in a series of street dance battles set to biama, a frenetic offshoot of coupé-décalé, a type of percussive dance music popular across west Africa that originated in Côte d’Ivoire around the turn of the century. A neighbourhood square in Yopougon-Selmer had been transformed into a dance arena for the event, which got under way about six hours after its advertised midday start. The performers were all under 25, with some as young as five. Audience members, some munching on skewered meat or drinking from beer bottles or plastic cups, periodically joined in as one competitor after another showcased intricate footwork and dramatic chest pops. “This [is a] small ceremony so that people can see the talent we have … a talent that God has given to each of us to share with the whole world,” says Sauce Graine, a 15-year-old whose real name is Arnold and who began dancing to biama six years ago. “Since many people aren’t very familiar with the dance yet, they think it’s just a neighbourhood thing. All we have to do is create the dance so that more people can see it and love it.” Alongside the local strain of hip-hop known as maïmouna – a new fusion of coupé-décalé and rap Ivoire – biama has become emblematic of the resurgence of Ivorian pop culture over the past decade. There is some debate over exactly when biama emerged, but it exploded in popularity after the coronavirus pandemic as young people turned to TikTok to post and respond to dance challenges that fused acrobatics with goofiness that pushed bodies to their limits. “Biama is basically coupé-décalé 2.0, like at 200% speed,” says Cédric Kouamé, a music producer and chief archivist at Baoulecore Archive Center in the Angrè district of Abidjan. “Like maïmouna, it comes from Yopougon . Most trends start [in] Yopougon. It is basically where a lot of artists started their career.” *** For decades, this working-class district has dictated the cultural zeitgeist of both Abidjan and Côte d’Ivoire. Stéphane Doukouré, better known as Douk Saga, grew up there before founding coupé-décalé with his Jet 7 crew after returning from Paris in the early 2000s. There, he had made a name for himself in a nightclub frequented by wealthy young partygoers by setting light to thousands of euros. Their genre championed the philosophy of sagacité – the shrewdness needed to outwit authority – alongside farotement, the flamboyant display of wealth. Its free-spending hedonism offered escapism from many Ivorians living through the country’s civil war. Doukouré’s career was short-lived. He died from lung disease in 2006 at the age of 32. The genre was propelled to new heights by Ange Didier Houon, who was born in Yopougon to an icon of the Ivorian sound engineering industry. In his teens, his Lebanese friends gave him the stage name DJ Arafat, after the Palestinian political leader. One of his earliest breakthrough hits as a teenager was 2003’s Jonathan, a homage to a DJ friend killed in a motorbike crash. Over time, he increased the tempo of his music to match the high-energy, acrobatic roukaskas routines devised by his dancers, drawing on traditional Ivorian dance. Their feet shuffling quickly in lêkê – the ubiquitous Ivorian water-resistant plastic sandals – the dancers performing Arafat’s roukaskas continued a long tradition of audience participation in Ivorian popular music. Arafat’s following grew so large that fans referred to themselves as “the Chinese”. But after his death in another motorbike collision in August 2019, many believed the genre, already showing signs of decline, was nearing its end. Today, a new generation of artists is vying to be the next megastar of Ivorian pop. Among those hoisting the flag for maïmouna are Didi B, who has gained international recognition, and the more street-famous Himra. The rappers’ rivalry entered a new phase last year when both filled stadiums just weeks apart in different parts of the country. Biama remains the more popular of the two subgeres, particularly among children and young people, who proudly call themselves biamaseurs and eagerly accept dance challenges shared across social media. “Biama is, first of all, a dance for the immature,” the popular dancer Kalomaman said in a recent interview. Kouamé argues that dance has always been inseparable form Ivorian music. “Since the beginning of Ivorian music, as artists were creating their sounds, they were also thinking of the dance moves,” he says. He cited the example of Ernesto Djédjé, a superstar of Ivorian music who emerged in the 1970s, who created ziglibithy, a music and dance style whose name comes from a Bété phrase meaning “delicious rhythm”. “Since we were very young, each six months there was a new dance move that we had to learn,” Kouamé syas. Midway through the event in Yopougon, Kehou Mousso – a biama dancer and one of the genre’s few female musicians – took to the stage to loud cheers. Wearing a waist-length orange wig and frilled green outfit, she and four of her dancers came as special guests. Known to her 2.6 million TikTok followers as the “queen of coupé-décalé”, she says the frenetic biama choreography demands constant improvisation. “You have to be improvising every second.” Some cultural observers in Côte d’Ivoire dismiss the genre as little more than “street music”, but biamaseurs remain undeterred. “People will love us,” Sauce Graine says. “They will dance [and] little by little, they will spread the word through their social networks. Then it will take off.”

Seoul braces for heatwave sweeping South Korea as death toll reaches 16

Seoul is bracing for its first ever “severe heatwave warning” on Tuesday, as South Korea reels from a deadly heatwave that has seen the country record its highest ever temperature. The south-eastern city of Yangsan reached an all-time national record of 42.5C on Sunday afternoon – the highest temperature measured in 122 years of weather observations – and now the heat is shifting westwards, approaching the densely populated capital of more than 9 million people, which is forecast to hit 38C on Tuesday followed by three sweltering days of 37C. South Korea has recorded 16 fatalities linked to heat and more than 2,000 people treated for heat-related illnesses since May, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Lee Jae Myung called on ‌officials to take necessary ‌measures to protect the daily ‌lives of people and inspect power systems as demand for airconditioning surges. “We need to make efforts for a fundamental overhaul of the national crisis ‌system, since this extreme weather is becoming normal,” he said. Seoul authorities held an emergency meeting on Monday and launched initiatives to counter the heat and alleviate health risks. It is the first time the capital has seen a severe heatwave warning under a new system established this year as the government sought to improve how it responds to rising temperatures. Nurses are conducting checks on up to 63,000 residents deemed most vulnerable, including elderly people and people with disabilities or chronic illnesses. In an attempt to dampen rising urban heat in Seoul, a fleet of 200 trucks are spraying almost 2,000km of roads with water. The trucks are operating up to six times a day in the most problematic areas. Seoul’s pedestrian commuters have been snaking their way to work through patches of shade, avoiding direct sunlight even in the morning’s cooler early hours. Others have sought relief under mist-spray zones around the city. Elsewhere, officials in North Gyeongsang province are flying drones equipped with loudspeakers to broadcast safety messages. The drones are also using thermal imaging cameras over areas crowded with people on summer holidays. The nation’s highest temperature on Monday was 41.2C in Goryeong. Multiple cities and regions topped 41C and Seoul reached 39C in the Guro district. Outdoor workers are bearing the brunt of the oppressive heat. A construction worker in Seoul, identified by the Korea Times only as Kim, said: “We take a 10-minute break every hour, but there isn’t even a fan here, so all we can do is sit in the shade … I sweat so much that my clothes rub my skin raw wherever they touch.” Lee, a 55-year-old from Gwangmyeong who collects shopping carts in a supermarket car park, said conditions were brutal. “Lacking ventilitation makes the experience feel like being inside a sauna.” Concern has been expressed for food delivery riders. The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) has attributed the heatwave to overlapping high-pressure systems over the Korean peninsula combined with strong, direct sunlight under clear skies. The heat in South Gyeongsang province, in the south-east, has been intensified by the “foehn phenomenon” – which occurs when wind crosses a mountain range and becomes hotter and drier on the other side. Another factor in the heatwave mix is Typhoon Dolphin, which has the potential to make conditions better or worse, depending on its path. If the typhoon moves towards eastern China, it could increase humidity and potentially worsening the heatwave and tropical nights in Korea, the KMA said. But a path closer to the south of the peninsula could bring stronger winds, greater cloud cover and rain, temporarily easing the heat. As of Monday, Dolphin was continuing westwards towards the Japanese island of Okinawa, south of the Korean peninsula. It is forecast to weaken further and make landfall as a category 1 or 2 typhoon. Scientists warn that extreme weather events such as heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of human-induced climate change.