happybadger

Mr Barnier, 73, is the EU's former chief Brexit negotiator and led talks with the UK government between 2016 and 2019.

A veteran of the right-wing Republicans (LR) party, he has had a long political career and filled various senior posts, both in France and within the EU.

He will now have to form a government that will need to survive a National Assembly divided into three big political blocs, with none able to form a clear majority.

Three years ago Mr Barnier said he wanted to take on President Macron for the French presidency, saying he wanted to limit and take control of immigration. He eventually failed to be the selected as a candidate by his party.

Known in France as Monsieur Brexit, Mr Barnier will be France's oldest prime minister since the Fifth Republic came into being in 1958.

He is set to succeed Gabriel Attal, France's youngest ever prime minister, who President Macron first appointed prime minister in early 2024 and who has stayed in post as caretaker since July.

It has taken President Macron 60 days to make up his mind on choosing a prime minister, having called a "political truce" during the Paris Olympics.

In the past few days he has interviewed several potential candidates for the job, but his task was complicated by the need to come up with a name who would not lose a vote of confidence on their first appearance in the National Assembly.

The Elysée Palace said Mr Barnier's appointment had come after an unprecedented period of consultation, and that Mr Macron had ensured that the prime minister and future government would offer the greatest possible stability and the broadest possible unity.

Mr Barnier had been given the task of forming a unifying government "in the service of the country and the French people", the presidency stressed.

However, Mr Macron's choice of prime minister has already caused discontent within the the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), which won the most seats in the July snap election and whose own candidate for prime minister was rejected by the president.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical France Unbowed (LFI) - the biggest of the four parties that make up NFP - reacted angrily. The election had been "stolen from the French people", he claimed.

Instead of coming from the the alliance that came first on 7 July, he complained that the prime minister would be "a member of a party that came last at the elections."

"This is now essentially a Macron-Le Pen government," said Mr Mélenchon, referring to the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN).

He then called for people to join a left-wing protest against Mr Macron's decision planned for Saturday.

Jordan Bardella, the young president of the RN was more measured in his response. Writing on X, he said his party's prime demand was respecting 11 million RN voters.

He made clear that Mr Barnier would be judged on his words, his actions and his decisions on France's next budget, which has to be put before parliament by 1 October.

He cited the cost of living, security and immigration as major emergencies for the French people, adding that "we hold all means of political action in reserve if this is not the case in the coming weeks".

Mr Reeves, a north London homeowner, returned from working abroad to find his family home transformed into a cannabis farm.

The criminals, posing as tenants, had dumped 10 tonnes of soil in the property, causing extensive damage and leaving the family devastated.

According to experts, rental scams linked to cannabis farms are on the rise, with criminals seemingly exploiting the lengthy eviction process to complete illegal grow operations before disappearing.

The Reeves family had advertised their property online as they prepared to work abroad. They were approached by an estate agent who discovered they would be away for an extended period. The agent promised them a family of tenants, supposedly working for a City firm and with children.

However, the "tenants" turned out to be scammers who never paid rent and instead used the property for criminal activities. It was later discovered that the estate agent was operating a fake site, and the tenants were bogus.

The police told Mr Reeves it was one of the worst cases of this kind of crime they had seen. They seized more than 400 cannabis plants from the property, with an estimated street value of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Mr Reeves went to the property after the tenants had failed to pay their rent, having gained a court order to enter the house.

He knocked on the door and was greeted by several men, with one claiming the property was in good condition. Within half an hour, these men had disappeared, although we don’t know what role they played in the farm.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," Mr Reeves said, describing the moment he entered the house. "The cannabis crooks dumped 10 tonnes of soil in the family bedroom.

"The whole place had been transformed into a drug factory. There were holes in the ceiling, wires everywhere, and the stench was overwhelming."

Mr Reeves discovered an elaborate setup with fans, lights and a ventilation system powered by stolen electricity. The criminals had rewired the property's electrical system to bypass the meter, allowing them to power their extensive growing operation without detection.

In addition to the tonnes of soil dumped on the upper floor, the property had suffered significant structural damage. Holes had been cut into the ceiling and walls to accommodate the complex ventilation system, which was designed to regulate temperature and humidity for optimal plant growth.

The sophisticated lighting setup, which included specialist grow lamps, had been rigged up throughout the house. The intense heat generated by these lamps also caused damage to the property, with burn marks and melted fixtures visible in several rooms.

"There was a big curtain here. This is astonishing," Mr Reeves says. "They had fans going, the lights were going, this curtain was being pulled in."

The emotional toll on the family, from both the rental fraud and the damage caused to their home, has been immense.

Mr Reeves's wife Julia said: "When you're dealing with property, particularly a home that you're in for nearly 20 years, and raising your child in... It was pretty horrific to feel that you got attacked at the core, that inner sanctum, that place of comfort, that we'd rely on in the city, it's our home - very emotional."

Mr Reeves said: "Emotionally, it feels like my home has been defiled. That's what it feels like. The damage, the dirt, all this dirt everywhere.

"This is the first real home I ever had. We're crushed and devastated."

Metropolitan Police figures show more than 1,000 cannabis farms have been discovered in London in the past few years, with a total of 1,056 found between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 financial years. However, experts believe these figures represent only a tiny proportion of the cannabis farms currently in operation.

According to Allen Morgan, one of the UK's leading expert witnesses from criminal drugs trials and a former police officer who now runs a drug consultancy service, rental fraud linked to cannabis farms is increasing.

"We're seeing a definite uptick in these types of crimes, with criminals taking advantage of the rental market to set up illegal grow operations," he says.

"The criminals exploit the legal system and the eviction process. They know that it can take months to evict a tenant, even if they stop paying rent. During this time, they can complete multiple grows and make a significant profit before disappearing without a trace."

The lack of regulation in the rental property sector has made it easier for fraudsters to operate. Estate agents are not required to have qualifications, despite handling significant assets. This can leave homeowners vulnerable to scams and other criminal activities.

"If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is," Mr Morgan warns. "If somebody turns up offering to pay cash because they've been let down and they need to move in immediately, then alarm bells should start to ring."

The cannabis trade has evolved from small-scale grows to sophisticated multimillion-pound operations, allegedly run by international crime syndicates. London, with its vast local market and extensive transport network, has become a hub for drug distribution.

"The issue that London has is obviously it is one of the main distribution hubs for controlled drugs throughout the United Kingdom," Mr Morgan explains.

"The cannabis trade is so lucrative, what you get is when you convert a rented property, you effectively obtain five, six, maybe seven separate growing areas where you can produce cannabis plants, obviously discreetly and without any sort of evidential link to you."

Police have stated that what happened to the Reeves family is still under investigation, but the reality is that innocent landlords are being left to pick up the pieces of London's growing drug crime problem.

The Reeveses hope that by sharing their story, they can raise awareness of this growing problem and prevent other homeowners from falling victim to similar scams.

"We want people to be aware of the risks and to take every precaution when renting out their properties," Mr Reeves said. "No-one should have to go through what we've experienced.

"Not only was it the fraud, it was a destruction of our home."

Terrie and Dave Drewry, of Auburn, are convinced the animal, filmed by a hiker earlier in June, is their pet "Diesel".

The couple say they are relieved the animal is safe - and have decided to let him wander free with a new family as a "wild burro" .

Diesel was spooked and took off during a hiking trip with Mr Drewry near Clear Lake, California in 2019.

Weeks of volunteer searches proved fruitless, and a trail camera image a few months later was the last time he was seen.

"We finally kind of gave up," Mrs Drewry told BBC's news partner, CBS. "Just no signs of him."

Then hiker Max Fennell spotted the herd earlier this month, describing the donkey as "happy and healthy", and posted his film on social media.

"It was amazing. It was like, oh my gosh. Finally, we saw him. Finally, we know he's good. He's living his best life. He's happy. He's healthy, and it was just a relief," Mrs Drewery said.

The elk herd is a few miles away from where Diesel first went missing and in an area where there are no wild donkeys.

"Two completely different creatures, but they learn to get along and be each other's family," Mrs Drewry said.

The Drewrys have adopted new donkeys since Diesel's disappearance and do not plan on trying to capture their missing pet.

"To catch him would be next to impossible," Mrs Drewry said. "He is truly a wild burro now. He's out there doing what he's raised to do."

She said Diesel is about eight years old and donkeys can live for up to 40 years.

Ray Oldenburg - The Great Good Place, 1989 (Third edition: 1999): https://archive.org/details/greatgoodplaceca00olde_2

Ray Oldenburg - Celebrating the Third Place, 2001 (unfortunately I cannot find a readily-available pdf online, I got the E-book for this video. But also you would be better served in avoiding this one, it's terrible)

Karl Marx - Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm

Leopold Schwarzschild - The Red Prussian, 1947: https://archive.org/details/redprussian0000schw

Erich Fromm - The Sane Society, 1956: https://historicalunderbelly.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/erich-fromm-the-sane-society.pdf

Henri Lefebvre - "The Right to the City" (1968) from Writings on Cities, 1996: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/henri-lefebvre-right-to-the-city

David Harvey - "The Right to the City," 2008 https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii53/articles/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city

Fossilised pieces of the animal's jaw bone were found in opal fields in northern New South Wales, alongside evidence of several other ancient and now extinct monotreme species.

Officially named Opalios splendens, the new species has been nicknamed for its resemblance to the platypus and echidna - which are the only egg-laying mammals in the world today.

The team behind the research say it indicates that Australia once had an "age of monotremes" - in which the incredibly rare order of animals were abundant and dominant.

"It’s like discovering a whole new civilisation,” lead author Professor Tim Flannery said.

The array of fossils were found about 25 years ago by palaeontologist Elizabeth Smith and her daughter Clytie while they were going through the discards of an opal mine.

They donated the specimens - estimated to be about 100 million years old - to the Australian Museum, where they sat forgotten in a drawer until about two years ago.

Prof Flannery, a mammalogist, says he stumbled across them and immediately knew they were from ancient monotremes.

Some of the bones belonged to the already-discovered Steropodon galmani, a shorter, stumpier and toothier ancestor of the platypus.

But the other fragments were unfamiliar. From them, Dr Flannery and his team discovered evidence of three species previously unknown to science, findings which were published in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology on Monday.

The critters had combinations of features never seen before - in living or fossil monotremes, said Director of the Australian Museum Research Institute Professor Kris Helgen, who also worked on the paper.

"[The Opalios splendens's] overall anatomy is probably quite like the platypus, but with features of the jaw and snout a bit more like an echidna," Prof Helgen said.

All opal fossils are rare - monotreme ones even more so - but these specimens are "a revelation", says Ms Smith.

They take the total number of monotreme species known to have once lived at Lightning Ridge - which was in ancient times a cold, wet forest bordering a vast inland sea - to six.

"They show the world that long before Australia became the land of pouched mammals, marsupials, this was a land of furry egg-layers - monotremes," Ms Smith says.

"It seems that 100 million years ago, there were more monotremes at Lightning Ridge than anywhere else on earth, past or present."

Other experts say it is too early to say whether Australia once hosted a multitude of monotremes and that further exploration is needed.

"It may have been at least as diverse as the later Australian marsupial fauna... but I would need more evidence," Flinders University palaeontologist Rod Wells told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The study's authors hope their paper will encourage more funding for more targeted digs in the region, to support their findings.

The huge sunspot cluster that hurled energy and gas towards Earth will rotate back towards us in around two weeks.

Scientists say it will probably still be large and complex enough to generate more explosions that could hit Earth’s magnetic field, creating more Northern Lights.

Since last Saturday, the Sun has continued pumping out increased radiation - a huge solar flare on Tuesday disrupted high-frequency radio communications globally.

And this hyperactive sunspot won’t be the last. The Sun is approaching what is called "solar maximum" - a point during an 11-year cycle when its activity is strongest.

That happens when the Sun’s magnetic poles flip - a process that creates sunspots that fire out material, generating space weather.

This solar cycle is the 25th since humans started systematically observing sunspots in 1755. It was expected to be quiet, but scientists say it is looking stronger than expected.

The intensity of a cycle is estimated by the number of these sunspots, explains Krista Hammond, a space weather forecaster at the Met Office.

But that doesn't actually tell us how strong the storms will be when they reach Earth, she says.

The geomagnetic storm last weekend was a one-in-30 year event and the biggest since 2003, says Sean Elvidge, a professor in space environment at the University of Birmingham.

It was caused by at least five coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - eruptions of magnetic fields and solar storms - leaving the Sun in close succession.

They took around 18 hours to reach Earth - where the CMEs interacted with our magnetic field.

This magnetosphere is what shields us from all that immensely powerful radiation - without it, there would be no life on Earth.

The storm turned out to be so powerful it had a G5 alert rating - the highest given by forecasters at the Met Office and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Stories of its impacts on global communications, power grids and GPS have trickled in.

These storms are not just about pretty lights - there is a downside, explains Ian Muirhead, a space systems researcher at University of Manchester:

“We're much more technologically dependent now than we were even in the last major storm in 2003. A lot of our services come from space - we don’t even realise - it’s the glue that holds together a lot of our economy.”

SpaceX owner Elon Musk said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the storm put his Starlink satellites that provide internet “under a lot of pressure”. A spokesperson for the European Space Agency (ESA) said the Starlinks had voltage spikes.

Satellites we rely on for GPS and navigation also had signal disturbance as the extra radiation pulsed towards Earth, ESA said.

A flight from San Francisco to Paris was re-routed to avoid flying over the Arctic where radiation was stronger, explains Dr Elvidge.

Farmers who use tractors with high-precision GPS reported being affected, and manufacturer John Deere warned users about outages.

And a satellite operated by UK company Sen that films Earth in high definition was put in an "idle" state for four days, meaning it missed taking images of events like the wildfires in Canada, the company said.

There was stress on power grids too, as the extra current surged through electricity systems.

In New Zealand, which has a similar electricity grid to the UK, the national grid switched off some circuits across the country as a precaution to prevent damage to equipment.

The UK National Grid said there was no impact on electricity transmission. The Energy Networks Association, which represents the UK's electricity network operators, said it took precautions like ensuring “extra back-up generation to deal with any voltage fluctuations that may occur.”

Space weather is not just a threat remote from us on Earth - something happening out there. The government considers the risks from extreme space weather greater than from earthquakes or wildfires.

On its national risk register, which also covers health pandemics like Covid-19, extreme space weather is rated "four" for likelihood and impact. "One" is for events with the lowest risk, and "five" is the highest.

An extreme space storm - more powerful than the one last weekend - could cause deaths and injuries through power failures, according to the register.

“Mobile back-up power generation would be required in some areas for a sustained period, while damaged electricity transformers are replaced, which could take several months," it warns.

Power in urban areas could be back within hours, it says, but for people living in remote areas by the sea, it could take months for electricity transformers to be replaced.

The worst-case scenario is what people in the space weather community call a “Carrington-level event”.

They're talking about a huge solar storm one night in 1859 that saw aurora worldwide so bright that people started to make breakfast because they thought it was daytime.

So much current was generated that telegraph operators in Canada continued transmitting even when they manually disconnected equipment for safety. Fires broke out from damaged equipment.

That same event today could be catastrophic.

"The general consensus is that a solar superstorm is inevitable, a matter not of ‘if’ but ‘when?’," says a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

But we now have two things to help us - forecasting and preparation, explains Dr Elvidge.

Forecasters like Krista Hammond monitor satellites 24 hours a day for solar activity.

They issued alerts to governments and critical infrastructure providers about last weekend’s horde of CMEs heading to Earth hours in advance.

"Our White House situation room is informed about it. Messages come down through our emergency channels down to local governments," says Shawn Dahl, space weather forecaster at NOAA.

That forecasting and preparation may explain why, despite the doomsday warnings that extreme weather could take out power for days, we actually appear to have seen few obvious impacts of the storm last weekend.

"We are relatively well prepared for these," explains Mr Muirhead.

Local councils and emergency services test scenarios, including plans to make sure ambulances can still navigate if they lose GPS connection.

But he says the issue of power supply is sensitive, with commercial implications, and companies may not be willing to disclose how much stress was placed on the network.

Space weather forecasting is young compared to atmospheric weather, but as we learn more about the Sun and send more equipment into space, predicting the next superstorm will get closer and closer.

Nationwide rallies - during which there have been hundreds of arrests - showed no sign of stopping over the weekend.

At UCLA "physical altercations broke out" after a barrier separating the two sides was breached, an official said.

The White House has insisted that demonstrations must remain peaceful.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC that the US government respects the right of protesters demonstrating over the Israel-Gaza war.

But he condemned antisemitic incidents that have been reported, as well as "all the hate speech and the threats of violence out there".

At UCLA, a pro-Palestinian encampment has grown in size in recent days, as has a group of pro-Israeli counter-protesters.

The Israeli American Council (IAC) organised the counter-protest. It recently said it had "profound concern" over the antisemitism reported elsewhere, including at Columbia University in New York City.

Many pro-Palestinian protesters who spoke to the BBC there sought to distance themselves from antisemitic incidents. In some cases they have blamed outside agitators.

A group of 21 Democratic members of Congress has called on Columbia to end what they call the "unauthorized and impermissible encampment of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish activists on campus", in a letter obtained by Axios. Similar calls for action had largely come from the Republican side of the political divide.

In a fresh statement on Monday, Columbia head Dr Minouche Shafik said "alternative internal options to end this crisis" were under discussion, after talks between protest organisers and the university failed to result in a deal.

At least some of the protesters involved in the disturbances at UCLA appeared to have come from outside the university, the Reuters news agency reported.

The two groups remained peaceful until Sunday, when campus police with batons separated them as they pushed and shoved each other, and traded punches.

It was not immediately clear which group broke through the barrier between them.

"We are heartbroken about the violence that broke out," the university said, adding that additional security measures had been introduced.

Tensions flared at US universities after the 7 October Hamas attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed in Israel, and the retaliatory Israeli military assault that has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza.

In the last fortnight, a nationwide uprising has emerged which university officials and law enforcement have struggled to contain. They have blamed outside groups for infiltrating the demos.

The movement seems to have been emboldened by the arrest of more than 100 protesters at Columbia after police were called to clear an encampment.

Hundreds of people have since been arrested in locations across the US - many of whom had pitched their own tents on university grounds.

The protests have also spread to Canada, with a pro-Palestinian camp of about 20 tents now installed in the grounds of Montreal's McGill University.

Activists in both countries are demanding a ceasefire in the conflict, and that their universities - many with massive endowments - cut their financial ties, or divest, from Israel.

They say that companies doing business in or with the nation of Israel are complicit in its ongoing war on Gaza - and so are institutions that invest in those companies.

Officials in the US have also scrambled to tackle alleged incidents of antisemitism, with a number of Jewish students voicing fears for their safety.

At several campuses, they have spoken of incidents ranging from chants and signs supporting Hamas - a proscribed terror group in the US - to physical altercations and perceived threats.

Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, reported "virulent antisemitic slurs" in a statement on Saturday that accused "professional organisers with no affiliation to Northeastern" of infiltrating a student protest.

More than 100 people were detained, it added.

In other recent developments:

-Among hundreds of other activists arrested over the weekend was Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who was detained with dozens of others at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. The university said they had been asked to leave "multiple times". Ms Stein told local media that the arrests were a "really bad look" for the institution

-Protesters at Yale University set up a new encampment after a previous one was cleared by police, the student newspaper reported

-California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, has become the latest institution to request that students switch to virtual classes

-More than a dozen students were arrested at University of Georgia, Athens, on Monday morning

This study presents a cluster of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) cases after exposure to chronic wasting disease (CWD)-infected deer, suggestive of potential prion transmission from CWD-infected deer to humans.

Background:

CJD is a rapidly progressive central nervous system disorder caused by misfolded prion proteins. CWD, a prion disease prevalent in North American deer, has raised concerns due to its possible link to CJD. Although no conclusive evidence of cross-species prion transmission exists, vigilance for such cases is crucial for public health.

Design/Methods:

Not applicable.

Results:

In 2022, a 72-year-old man with a history of consuming meat from a CWD-infected deer population presented with rapid-onset confusion and aggression. His friend, who had also eaten venison from the same deer population, recently died of CJD, raising concerns about a potential link between CWD and human prion disease. Despite aggressive symptomatic treatment of seizures and agitation, the patient’s condition deteriorated and he died within a month of initial presentation. The diagnosis was confirmed postmortem as sporadic CJD with homozygous methionine at codon 129 (sCJDMM1). The patient’s history, including a similar case in his social group, suggests a possible novel animal-to-human transmission of CWD. Based on non-human primate and mouse models, cross-species transmission of CJD is plausible. Due to the challenge of distinguishing sCJDMM1 from CWD without detailed prion protein characterization, it is not possible to definitively rule out CWD in these cases. Although causation remains unproven, this cluster emphasizes the need for further investigation into the potential risks of consuming CWD-infected deer and its implications for public health.

Conclusions:

Clusters of sporadic CJD cases may occur in regions with CWD-confirmed deer populations, hinting at potential cross-species prion transmission. Surveillance and further research are essential to better understand this possible association.

Disclosure: Mr. Trout has nothing to disclose. Dr. Roberts has nothing to disclose. Dr. Tabet has nothing to disclose. Dr. Kotkowski has nothing to disclose. Dr. Horn has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Cala Trio. The institution of Dr. Horn has received research support from Alzheimer's Association.