Author: The Guardian

A professional rock climber who assaulted a woman three times during a weekend hiking trip to California’s Yosemite national park in 2016 has been sentenced to life in prison.Charles Barrett, 40, had been accused of using his fame as a rock climber to lure the woman to the park, and then making hundreds of threatening phone calls against her and his other victims after he was arrested and placed in custody.The US attorney’s office in Sacramento announced the sentence for two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact on Monday.“Barrett’s long history of sexual violence…

timeGiant sequoias are so huge that they were once considered indestructible. High in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of southern California, the oldest trees (known as monarchs) have stood for more than 2,000 years.Today, however, in Sequoia National Park, giant tree trunks lie on the forest floor like the carcasses of blue whales stranded on the beach. Many trees have been cut down due to drought and fire. But one of the factors contributing to the rising death toll is a new tiny suspect: bark beetles.You could have a feedback effect where if we lose the carbon fixation of boreal forests,…

Name: King Charles’s goat.Age: 55.Appearance: Small, ceramic.Why does this sound like a bad children’s story? Relax, it’s nothing like that. Charles literally had a goat.A small, ceramic goat? Yes. Imagine the sort of small, ceramic goat that you might hastily buy for someone on the last day of your holiday at an airport gift shop in a warm southern European country. That is the sort of small, ceramic goat we are talking about.Why did someone give the king a small, ceramic goat? Oh, nobody gave it to him. He made it.OK, new question: why? Because he was a student in…

A Florence court has upheld a slander conviction against Amanda Knox for wrongly accusing a bar owner of murdering the British student Meredith Kercher.The American, 36, had asked for the conviction to be dropped, saying she had returned to Italy in the hope of “clearing my name once and for all of the false charges against me”.She cried when the sentence was read on Wednesday and told her lawyers: “I didn’t expect it, I’m very disappointed,” the Italian news agency Ansa reported.Knox had earlier told the judge: “I never wanted to slander Patrick [Lumumba, the bar owner]; he was my…

nitrogenA number of riders from 15 teams will set off from Welshpool on Thursday morning as the renamed women’s Tour of Britain kicks off in mid-Wales. The four-day event is one of the key preparations before the Paris Olympics and will see Lizzie Daignan lead a strong British Cycling team.World road race champion Lotte Kopecky and her SD Worx-Protime teammate Lorena Wiebes (who recently won all three stages of the Ride London Classique) are the biggest stars, while Deignan is the home favorite for the 2015 road race World Champion, in addition to double National Road Race Champion Pfeiffer Georgi,…

The last hurrah? A collective show to the world of anarchic solidarity? A time to take stock, to be joyful, to be maudlin – perhaps all three? What is it about the stag do? They are mainly awful. More often than not, it’s a random group of men, “off the leash” from their families, who act like incapable children and – as soon as booze is on the menu – neanderthals. And things get worse when the dos are held abroad, usually somewhere sunny or a European city – any European city. Before long, you’re not exactly sure what country…

It was a September afternoon in 2016 when I got on a bike and cycled to the sea. The Pembrokeshire coast was in full Technicolor that day, glowing with the sunlight reflected back from its sandy seabed. The air was thick and warm, and by the time my dad and I had reached the cove, my clothes were damp and itchy on my skin.I was 19, and about to enter my second year of university. I had been through a hellish time at secondary school. I had tumbled hard and heavy into my first real relationship – and out of…

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer ripped apart each other’s election promises on tax and immigration in the first fiery TV debate of the campaign.The pair had a testy exchange in front of an ITV studio audience in Salford, with Starmer accusing Sunak of being “the most liberal Prime Minister we have ever had on immigration” and pledging to keep Britain in in the European Convention on Human Rights.The Labor leader hit out at the Conservatives’ record after 14 years in power and accused Sunak of failing to take personal responsibility for his failings, including on the cost of living and…

A row has broken out over falling sperm counts after a new study suggested fears of a “spermageddon” may have been exaggerated.Recent research has suggested a global reproductive crisis could be in the offing, with researchers in Israel suggesting average sperm counts may have more than halved in the past 40 years.But seeds of discord have been sown after an analysis of sperm counts from would-be donors in Denmark revealed no significant changes over a six-year period.“I can’t comment on whether this is representative of the world, but in this population, at this location, there isn’t really evidence of a…

The first abandonment of this T20 World Cup took place between two countries who are no strangers to wetlands. But Scotland are likely to feel more aggrieved than England at the end of this Group B tie as they played much of the game between torrential downpours, which eventually fell apart.It is also a day full of hope. A small lively crowd prepared for the start of the match at 10.30am, including children from Jofra Archer’s alma mater, the Christ Church Foundation. Sir Garfield Sobers watched the game from a wicker chair atop the Worrell, Wicks and Walcott Stand, while…