With one music video, Justin Bieber has made a pristine Icelandic canyon famous around the world. And that’s the problem. Icelandic environmental officials have had to close off Fjadrárgljúfur to protect it from the hordes of Bieber fans who are determined to visit the site, which is featured in the video for I’ll Show You. And these fans are not letting a few fences, signs or park rangers keep them away. It’s just one example of the challenges to Iceland’s fragile environment posed by its growing popularity with international visitors. Last year 2.3 million tourists visited the North Atlantic island nation, compared with 600,000 eight years ago. The 20% annual uptick in visitors has been out of proportion with systems needed to protect Iceland’s volcanic landscape, where soil forms slowly and erodes quickly. … [Read more...] about Justin Bieber effect leads to closure of Icelandic canyon
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Teacher suspended after pupils criticise Italian far-right law
An Italian teacher has been suspended over a video made by her students that compared a security law drafted by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to Mussolini’s racial laws, provoking a storm of protest against her suspension across the country. Rosa Maria Dell’Aria, 63, was last week suspended for 15 days on half pay after an investigation by the education ministry’s provincial authority in Palermo found she had not “supervised” her students’ work. “I am embittered,” she told the Guardian. “I am not talking about the economic damage, for the days of suspension, but about the moral and professional damage after a whole life dedicated to the school and the kids.” Students at the Vittorio Emanuele III high school in the Sicilian capital had presented the video in January as part of a project for International Holocaust Remembrance Day comparing current events to antisemitic persecution. The students, … [Read more...] about Teacher suspended after pupils criticise Italian far-right law
‘Art electricity’ revives old German power station
When the Luckenwalde coal power plant in east Germany closed down soon after the collapse of communism, the locals were both relieved and concerned. “Finally people could hang out their laundry without it getting covered in soot,” said Bernd Schmidl, one of the plant’s senior employees. Worries about jobs were soon allayed when the workers were given better-paid employment elsewhere, he said. But fears remained that the listed building, with elements of art deco and art nouveau, would fall into disrepair. “Who was going to find a long-term use for an old building spanning 10,000 metres over four floors?” Now, almost 30 years since it ceased operating as a power station, the plant, 30 miles south of Berlin, is to be reactivated. But instead of powering local industry as it did for almost 80 years, it will fuel the contemporary art centre housed within it. E-Werk Luckenwalde will offer exhibitions, a residential programme, workshops and studio space for … [Read more...] about ‘Art electricity’ revives old German power station
‘I’ve always believed in miracles’
The opposition Labour Party, meanwhile, began another bout of post-election soul searching while starting the task of finding a new leader, after Bill Shorten stood down on Saturday night following an emphatic defeat. The centre-left Labour, which has governed Australia for only 38 of its 118 years as a federation, was rated an overwhelming favourite, both in opinion polls and with odds-makers, to topple the Liberal-National coalition government after its six years in power. Instead, Mr Morrison - who became prime minister only last August when a contentious internal party vote dumped Malcolm Turnbull as its leader - swept the coalition to victory with what is likely to be an increased representation. With 75pc of votes counted by Sunday, the coalition had won 74 of the 76 seats needed to form a majority government. It went into the election as a minority government, with just 73 seats. Labour was holding 66 seats, with independents and minor parties claiming six, according to … [Read more...] about ‘I’ve always believed in miracles’
Four times the US has made the same mistake
I have spent much of my career as a correspondent in the Middle East, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, reporting crises and wars in which the US and its allies fatally underestimated the religious motivation of their adversaries. This has meant they have come out the loser, or simply failed to win, in conflicts in which the balance of forces appeared to them to be very much in their favour. It has happened at least four times. It occurred in Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1982, when the turning point was the blowing up of the US Marine barracks in Beirut the following year, in which 241 US military personnel were killed. In the eight-year Iran-Iraq war during 1980-88, the west and the Sunni states of the region backed Saddam Hussein, but it ended in a stalemate. After 2003, the US-British attempt to turn post-Saddam Iraq into an anti-Iranian bastion spectacularly foundered. Similarly, after 2011, the west and states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey tried in vain to … [Read more...] about Four times the US has made the same mistake