Academics say UK defendants should be able to explain reasons for their actions and not have to express remorse
Protesters charged with non-violent offences should not be forced to disavow their motives when defending themselves at trial or seeking mitigation on their sentences, academics have said.
In a challenge to the current approach to protest trials, a study argues courts should allow defendants to explain the reasons for their actions as a defence, and respect their integrity as a mitigating factor.
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03/19/2025 - 00:00
03/19/2025 - 00:00
I drove 2,000 miles with a French friend across my home country – and saw the endless nowhere land that is the crucible of Trumpism
In 1941 Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist who reported from Germany in the lead-up to the second world war, wrote an essay for Harper’s about the personality types most likely to be attracted to Nazism, headlined “Who Goes Nazi?” “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t – whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi,” Thompson wrote.
Talia Lavin, a US writer, recently gave Thompson’s idea an update on Substack with an essay of her own: “Who Goes Maga?”
Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe correspondent
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03/18/2025 - 20:45
The potential layoffs listed in documents reviewed by Democrats are part of the White House'’s broader push to shrink the federal government
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to eliminate its scientific research office and could fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide the scientific foundation for rules safeguarding human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.
As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists – 75% of the research programme’s staff – could be laid off, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the house committee on science, space and technology.
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03/18/2025 - 19:01
Thinktank’s warning follow reports that Labour is considering cuts to budget of company it set up to drive renewable power
The government risks “disappointing voters” hoping for cheaper energy bills in the next decade if it cuts the £8.3bn budget for GB Energy, a thinktank has warned.
Researchers at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that the publicly owned energy company – set up by Labour to drive renewable energy and cut household bills – will need to be fully funded if it hopes to build enough clean energy projects to meet 5% of the country’s electricity needs by the 2030s.
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03/18/2025 - 19:01
Floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes occurred in hottest climate human society has ever experienced
The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.
The WMO’s report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.
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03/18/2025 - 19:00
The Orbital and Morningside authors join Abi Daré, Roz Dineen and Kaliane Bradley in the running for the £10,000 award, for inspiring ways to ‘rise to the challenges of the climate crisis with hope and inventiveness’
Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht are among the writers in the running for the inaugural Climate fiction prize.
Harvey’s Orbital, her Booker-winning novel set on the International Space Station, and Obreht’s novel The Morningside, about refugees from an unnamed country, have both been shortlisted for the new prize, which aims to “celebrate the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis”.
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03/18/2025 - 15:26
New White House fact sheet has removed references to Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments
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The White House is fueling speculation over plans to eliminate two large national monuments in California established by former president Joe Biden.
Less than a week before leaving office, Biden designated the 624,000-acre (250,000-hectare) Chuckwalla national monument in southern California and the 224,000-acre Sáttítla Highlands national monument in northern California. Native American tribes consider these lands sacred and had urged Biden to protect them from drilling, mining, clean-energy development and other industrial activity.
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03/18/2025 - 13:12
The red coral colonies that were transplanted a decade ago on the seabed of the Medes Islands have survived successfully. They are very similar to the original communities and have contributed to the recovery of the functioning of the coral reef, a habitat where species usually grow very slowly. Thus, these colonies, seized years ago from illegal fishing, have found a second chance to survive, thanks to restoration actions to transplant seized corals and mitigate the impact of poaching.
03/18/2025 - 13:07
A major review of over 67,000 animal species has found that while the natural world continues to face a biodiversity crisis, targeted conservation efforts are helping bring many species back from the brink of extinction.
03/18/2025 - 12:18
Brown bear charged at André Rives in the Pyrenees and dragged him several metres before he shot and killed it
An 81-year-old French hunter has gone on trial accused of killing an endangered bear that attacked him in the Pyrenees.
The brown bear is a protected species in the mountain range, which separates France and Spain.
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