How Europe’s ‘breakthrough’ privacy law takes on Facebook and Google

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Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation is forcing big changes at tech’s biggest firms – even if the US isn’t likely to follow suit

Despite the political theatre of Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional interrogations last week, Facebook’s business model isn’t at any real risk from regulators in the US. In Europe, however, the looming General Data Protection Regulation will give people better privacy protections and force companies including Facebook to make sweeping changes to the way they collect data and consent from users – with huge fines for those who don’t comply.

“It’s changing the balance of power from the giant digital marketing companies to focus on the needs of individuals and democratic society,” said Jeffrey Chester, founder of the Center for Digital Democracy. “That’s an incredible breakthrough.”

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Last caribou to roam lower 48 US states all but extinct: ‘The herd is functionally lost’

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Experts fear only three of South Selkirk herd, which moves from Canada into Idaho and Washington, survived winter – all female

The last remaining herd of caribou to roam the contiguous United States is believed to be on the brink of disappearing, after an aerial count suggested that only three members survived the winter – all of them female.

The South Selkirk herd were once part of a larger population of southern mountain caribou whose habitat spanned much of the Pacific Northwest. But human activity – from hunting to logging and snowmobiling – has forced the population to break off into small herds.

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How funding cuts work: first, they come for the furniture | Frances Ryan

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Local welfare cuts are now so acute that councils are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. What price humanity?

The consequence of cutting funding for local councils can be seen everywhere – even in a furniture store in Hastings, Sussex.

Fronted by Naomi Ridley, this is a service that collects reusable furniture and electricals – a bed or a fridge, say – and gives discounts to low-income customers. But it’s the service it runs partnered with the council that really tells us something – or to put it another way, is the definition of an effective safety net.

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‘Alarming’ lack of diversity among charity trustees in England and Wales

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Study shows senior leadership of organisations such as Oxfam and Save the Children is significantly less diverse than FTSE 100 firms

The largest charities in England and Wales have less diverse boards than FTSE 100 firms, research has found.

An analysis of board members across the biggest charities in terms of income in the two countries, including Oxfam and Save the Children, showed that only 6.3% were from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, compared with 8.2% among FTSE 100 companies. Women of colour were the least likely group to be on a board or a senior leadership team.

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Southwest explosion: aviation authority orders mass engine inspections

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Directive requires ultrasonic inspection of fan blades on CFM56-7B engines that accrued certain number of flights

The US Federal Aviation Administration has ordered the inspection of 220 jet engines after investigators said a broken fan blade touched off an engine explosion on a Southwest Airlines flight, shattering a window and killing a passenger.

The order, called an air-worthiness directive, would require an ultrasonic inspection within the next six months of the fan blades on all CFM56-7B engines that have accrued a certain number of flights.

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‘Haifa is essentially segregated’: cracks appear in Israel’s capital of coexistence

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For decades, Haifa has been Israel’s model of what a ‘mixed’ Jewish-Arab city could be. But as the country’s 70th anniversary nears, the strain is showing

Ben-Gurion Boulevard climbs from the bustling port on Haifa’s Mediterranean shore up Mount Carmel towards the famous Bahai shrine, its gleaming golden dome surrounded by lush terraced gardens. On the south side of the palm-lined road, on a spring lunchtime, the Fattoush restaurant is packed with customers chatting noisily in Arabic and Hebrew over Levantine and fusion salads, cardamom-flavoured coffee and exquisite Palestinian knafeh desserts.

Fashionable eateries like Fattoush are one reason why Israel’s third largest city and its biggest “mixed” one, as officially classified, is held up as a model of Jewish-Arab coexistence. Not everyone agrees with the concept, of course, and the “c” word is often qualified, placed in inverted commas, or simply dismissed as propaganda. Official figures say Arabs make up 14% of Haifa’s 280,000-strong population; unofficial estimates are closer to 18%, swelled by students and commuters from nearby Galilee. Public spaces, at least, are open to all. And the ever-present Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, usually, softer-edged than elsewhere in the country.

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Bill Shorten calls for suspension of live sheep exports

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Labor leader says that ‘only a monster’ would think live export industry should be unchanged

Bill Shorten has demanded a suspension of shipments of live sheep during the northern summer and blasted the Coalition for failing to update standards to protect sheep.

On Thursday the bipartisan consensus to wait for a series of reviews before intervening in the industry began to fracture, with the Liberal MP Sussan Ley proposing a private members bill for a total ban, the Labor MP Josh Wilson backing a ban and Shorten warning the government his patience is “running very thin”.

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Britain’s housing market is broken. Here’s how Labour will fix it | John Healey

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We plan to build genuinely affordable homes for the millions of people priced out of the system

The housing market is broken, and, after eight long years it is clear that current Conservative housing policy is failing to fix it. Ministers talk big about housebuilding targets to be reached some time in the next decade. But what new homes we build, and who they’re for, matter just as much as how many we build.

To make housing more affordable, we need to build more affordable homes, and to hardwire housing affordability through the system, from planning to funding to delivery. The public know this: eight in 10 people think ministers should be doing more to get affordable housing built.

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Man believed to be the world’s oldest dies in Chile aged 121

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Celino Villanueva Jaramillo, thought to have been born in 1896, died in hospital after puncturing his lung falling out of bed

A Chilean man believed to be the world’s oldest person has died in hospital at the age of 121.

Celino Villanueva Jaramillo, whom the Guardian met and interviewed last year, passed away on Wednesday in the southern Chilean town of San José de Mariquina.

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New guidance to help consumers make better meat choices

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Campaign draws up eight principles to guide people who want to be healthier and reduce their environmental impact

Eating less meat has long been advocated for our health and that of the planet, but the choices we make within that advice can be just as important, according to a new report.

Choosing lamb, for instance, means the animal is almost certain to have been grass-fed and free range, as sheep are not factory farmed in the same way as pigs or chickens. Meat from pasture-fed animals also tends to have higher levels of “good” fats, which are healthier.

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Field Day festival set to go ahead after organisers, council and locals do battle

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A fraught process of relocation to south London’s Brockwell Park has laid bare the troubles faced by big festivals in the capital

The London music festival Field Day looks likely to be finally granted a licence by Lambeth council for its 2018 edition, following a long dispute between local councillors, festival promoters and local residents that has mirrored London’s wider struggles over public space and private profit.

Headlined by Erykah Badu, Four Tet and Fever Ray, Field Day is scheduled to take place for the first time in Brockwell Park, after 11 years in east London’s Victoria Park. But with accusations of council mismanagement, warnings of ecological damage and impending legal action, Field Day’s long-term prospects remain under threat – as do those of the capital’s wider festival scene.

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Family of Afghan man tortured by CIA demands US reveal location of his body

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Gul Rahman was killed in a secret CIA interrogation facility where he endured being doused with frigid water and shackled naked

It took almost 15 years for Gul Rahman’s family to receive a direct acknowledgment that he had been killed in a secret CIA interrogation facility in Afghanistan.

Now the family is pressing the United States to disclose what happened to his remains.

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Don’t be fooled by Emmanuel Macron the ‘moderate’ | Owen Jones

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The French president is hailed as a centrist saviour, a bulwark against extremes – even as he taxes the wealthy, attacks workers’ rights and demonises refugees

The world has gone mad, the fanatics of left and right are on the march, the voices of reason have been sidelined. This is the view of the self-styled “moderates” or “centrists” of the political world and the commentariat. There has been little reflection about how the broken economic model they defended unleashed so much anger and disillusionment.

Rather than debating ideas and policies, they longingly gaze after allegedly charismatic men who might act as saviours. David Miliband is the eternal prince over the water. But their international icon, France’s Emmanuel Macron, provides an instructive lesson in what “centrist” politics means in practice.

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It’s not just Windrush. Theresa May has created hostility to all immigrants | Nesrine Malik

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There has been no bureaucratic snafu. The error was that the dragnet picked up some people who fall into a popular sympathy sweet spot

To the politicians who presided over a long-term policy to use every means possible to reject and eject as many people from the UK, regardless of extenuating circumstances or status (up to and including whether they came to the country as British subjects or citizens), the Windrush scandal appears to be an aberration. Amber Rudd called the treatment “appalling”, as if she had no responsibility for it as the current home secretary. Caroline Nokes, the immigration minister, revealed that there had been deportations but that she did not know how many, and that the situation “as a minister” had “appalled” her.

Theresa May, in her apology to Caribbean leaders, described the violations as simply unforeseen fallout from recently introduced policies that clamped down on the undocumented. Yet in her six years as home secretary she was the high priestess of hostile environments for immigrants. But the prime minister and Tory MPs and advisers have been falling over themselves on social media to appear shocked and to abhor what has been happening. It is a roll call of the shameless and brazenly amnesiac.

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Fake it till you make it: meet the wolves of Instagram |Symeon Brown

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Their hero is Jordan Belmont, their social media feeds display super-rich lifestyles. But what are these self-styled traders really selling? By Symeon Brown

The original Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, was a rogue trader convicted of fraudulently selling worthless penny stocks to naive investors. His biopic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the ostentatious, money-obsessed huckster, was a box-office hit in 2013. Although it may have been intended as a cautionary tale, to thousands of young millennials from humble backgrounds, Belfort’s story became a blueprint for how to escape an unremarkable life on low pay.

Within months of the Wolf of Wall Street’s UK premiere in January 2014, a stocky 21-year-old named Elijah Oyefeso from a south London housing estate, began broadcasting on social media how much money he was making as a stock-market whizzkid. His thousands of young followers were desperate to do the same. As Oyefeso’s online fame grew, he caught the attention of TV producers. In January 2016, Oyefeso was featured in the Channel 4 show Rich Kids Go Shopping, in which he bought expensive jumpers to give to homeless people and showed viewers how easy it was to make stock trades online.

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Island of no return: Vanuatu evacuates entire population of volcanic Ambae

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Thousands of south Pacific islanders will leave for permanent resettlement, government says, as Manaro spews ash 30cm deep

Thousands of south Pacific islanders at the mercy of an active volcano will be permanently resettled by the end of May, the Vanuatu government has said.

Ambae Island is home to 11,000 people, and for the second time in six months Ambae’s Manaro volcano on top of Mount Lombenben has started rumbling, spewing torrents of ash and gas from its crater and burying vegetable plots and crops, causing breathing and health problems for locals, and threatening their lives and livelihoods.

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Miguel Díaz-Canel: Cuba selects first non-Castro president in 60 years

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Díaz-Canel’s transition aims to ensure the country’s single-party system outlasts the ageing men who created it

The Cuban government has selected the country’s 57-year-old first vice-president, Miguel Díaz-Canel , as the sole candidate to succeed President Raúl Castro in a transition aimed at ensuring the country’s single-party system outlasts the ageing revolutionaries who created it.

The certain approval of Díaz-Canel by members of the unfailingly unanimous National Assembly will install someone from outside the Castro family in the country’s highest government office for the first time in nearly six decades.

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Japan’s renewable energy puzzle: solar push threatens environment

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As the country rushes to cut carbon emissions by 26%, campaigners worry that forests and wildlife are being trampled

The tens of thousands of solar panels resting on the surface of the Yamakura dam reservoir have finally begun to earn their keep.

This floating solar farm in Chiba prefecture is the biggest of its kind in Japan – and one of the largest in the world – covering 180,000 square metres, or roughly equivalent to 25 Wembley stadium pitches.

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: a dictator in all but name seeks complete control | Simon Tisdall

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Turkey’s president is unlikely to lose an election that will make him more powerful than Atatürk

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is one of a crop of present-day political leaders who value the respectability an ostensibly democratic election confers but don’t want to risk actually losing the vote.

In this respect, Turkey’s president is no different from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Their shared idea of democracy can be summed up by the motto: “You vote, I win.”

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Ipswich axes kerbside recycling that would cost residents a ‘few extra dollars per week’

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Queensland council’s mayor, Andrew Antoniolli, says every other council will feel brunt of China’s recycling crackdown
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The mayor of Ipswich city council, Andrew Antoniolli, has warned every council will feel the brunt of China’s recycling clampdown and ratepayers will eventually foot the bill.

The local government body has come under fire for dumping recyclable waste in landfill because it would have cost $2m a year to comply with China’s tighter imported recycling regulations.

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