US – For those who haven’t been following the latest front of the ongoing culture wars, Comicsgate is, well, exactly what it sounds like: Gamergate but comics. In 2014, the Washington Post described Gamergate as “a proxy war for a greater cultural battle over who belongs to the mainstream”, and that description, four years later, remains perfectly adequate to describe its comics iteration.

Many will tell you that the movement began with the 2017 rise of Richard C Meyer, a Twitter user who amassed a platform largely based on denouncement, derision and disrespect of marginalised industry professionals, as well as their advocates typically by co-opting marginalised rhetoric to reposition himself and others like him as victims.

“The issue with trans,” Meyer said in April to the Daily Beast, “is that I believe there’s people who have basically weaponised their status and they’ve been put to this gatekeeper position because they’re unassailable because of their trans status.” Of course, months earlier, Meyer and his thousands of followers had made it their mission to virulently misgender and personally insult trans creators and critics on the grounds of their being trans. It’s a boring but familiar tactic, one that draws a through-line from the relatively small western comics industry to the national and international stage.(The Guardian)…[+]

UK  –  UK news organizations have cited tweets from Russian trolls more than 100 times, a Guardian investigation has found, in stories about topics including Donald Trump, Donald Glover and Lena Dunham.

In June the US Congress released details of 1,000 accounts that Twitter believes were run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a state-backed misinformation operation based in St Petersburg, adding to more than 2,000 accounts the company had already identified. The accounts were cited in news stories by the British press more than 20 times. Adding to the 80 citations the Guardian uncovered in November 2017, Russian propaganda ended up being published by the British press more than 100 times.

One account, @KaniJJackson, posed as a Black Lives Matter activist and tweeted under the names “Kanisha J” and “Remove Trump Now”, with a profile picture of Michelle Obama.(The Guardian)…[+]

FRANCE  –  Flights at a major French airport were halted yesterday  as police arrested a man who smashed his car through the perimeter fence and reached the runway.

Officers chased and reportedly shot at a silver grey Mercedes that had driven for several miles up the wrong way of a nearby motorway, causing several accidents. The car rammed through a toll booth before forcing its way into the Saint-Exupéry airport at Lyon.

A witness filmed the car bouncing over an embankment before coming to a halt. The driver ran off, chased by police vehicles. Following the security breach on Monday, the airport was immediately closed and flights halted.(The Guardian)…[+]

US  –  Starvation being used as a weapon of war has become the new normal, according to Save the Children. Its analysis shows more than half a million infants in conflict zones could die of malnutrition by the end of the year if they do not receive treatment, the equivalent of one every minute.

The charity makes its own estimates using UN data, and projects that 4.5 million under-fives will need treatment for life-threatening hunger this year in the most dangerous conflict zones an increase of 20% since 2016. At current rates, only one in three will receive treatment, and 590,000 could die as a result. The data emerged ahead of Tuesday’s launch of the UN annual report on food security, which last year warned that global hunger was rising for the first time since the turn of the century, fuelled by conflict and climate change.

“The broad story is we’ve seen a drastic increase in the number of children at risk of death as a result of hunger related problems” said Kevin Watkins, the CEO of Save the Children. “Using starvation as a weapon of war has become the new normal, with devastating consequences for children. From Yemen to South Sudan the failure to protect children from hunger is putting children at risk.”(The Guardian)…[+]

Greek police are conducting an investigation into the death of an Australian model onboard a superyacht off the Ionian island of Kefalonia. Three days after the body of Sinead McNamara was discovered at the back of the luxury vessel, local police said they had broadened an inquiry into her death.

“The yacht left our waters last night but we are still gathering evidence,” Kefalonia’s police port official, Stamatis Limneos, told the Guardian. “The inquiry is ongoing.”

Local media reported that the 20-year-old had killed herself, with news outlets saying she was found in a comatose state in a cabin. The model, originally from Port Macquarie, had been employed as a crew member on the 93.25-metre Mayan Queen IV, owned by the Mexican mining magnate Alberto Baillères.The billionaire businessman is believed to have left the yacht last Tuesday and only crew members were onboard at the time of McNamara’s death. A father of seven, Baillères is listed as the world’s 143rd wealthiest individual with a net worth of $9.6bn (£8.26bn), according to Forbes magazine.(theguardian)…[+]

The Italian far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini will meet former British prime minister Tony Blair in Rome to discuss controversial plans to extend a gas pipeline that will run from Azerbaijan to Puglia in Southern Italy.

Blair has worked as a consultant on the Trans Adriatic Pipeline since 2014, which is the pet project of Azerbaijan’s strongman president, Ilham Aliyev. Blair’s office did not offer any direct comment on the reason for the meeting, but Salvini said he was willing to hear from Blair on the pipeline, and other issues.

Blair’s strong views on the dangers of populism make him an unlikely choice to persuade Salvini of the value of the pipeline. Blair has toned down his commercial lobbying since heading up his new Institute for Global Change, a movement dedicated to combatting populism and its causes. He said in a recent speech that the simplistic solutions provided by rampant nationalism of the kind advocated by Salvini’s League could lead to a return to 1930s fascism. The governing Italian coalition between the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Salvini’s League is divided on the gas pipeline issue. In July, Salvini said he would support the pipeline project claiming it would help to drive down gas prices in Italy, where there was little competition in the energy market. “The south of Italy needs infrastructure,’’ he said, “we need to move forward.’’(theguardian)…[+]

Nepal has ordered a review of the way summit helicopter rescues are conducted after uncovering a multimillion-dollar scam in which climbers were pressured, sometimes by having their food spiked, to take costly flights down mountains.

Insurance industry figures said the scam, which had been operating for more than five years, had caused at least one unnecessary death and involved dozens of helicopter companies, tour operators, hotels and hospitals. Thousands of climbers had been forced to abandon their ascents at the first sign of illness and take expensive helicopter rides to private hospitals, according to an investigation by the Nepalese government.

Their bills were allegedly charged to insurance companies, with kickbacks given to the trekking guides, hotels and sometimes the climbers themselves. One investigation on behalf of insurers estimated there had been more than 1,600 helicopter rescues so far this year, of which about 35% had been fraudulent, costing the companies more than $4m (£3.1m). Several international insurers warned that they would pull out of Nepal by 1 September if the government did not act.(theguardian)…[+]

A large anti-racism rock concert will be held on Monday in an east German town hit by far-right protests and violence, as the country’s foreign minister urged German people to take a stand against xenophobia. More than 27,000 people have registered their intent to attend the “Wir sind mehr” – “There are more of us” – concert in Chemnitz. German punk band Die Toten Hosen, Kraftklub and rappers Marteria and Casper are among groups expected to play.

“Racism cannot be allowed to run unchallenged on the streets,” said a post on the event’s Facebook page. “For all of those people, who have been attacked by neo-Nazis, and who stand for values such as tolerance, respect and humanity, we want to show you that you are not alone.”

Chemnitz has been in the spotlight since violent protests erupted over the fatal stabbing of a German man, allegedly by a Syrian and an Iraqi, last Sunday. Some demonstrators have been photographed giving the outlawed Hitler salute, while mobs have chased down foreigners in the street. On Sunday, the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, called for German citizens to be more active in the fight against racism “Unfortunately, we have become too comfortable in our society, and we have to get over that,” Maas told Bild am Sonntag. “We have to get up from our sofas and open our mouths,” he said, stressing that “all of us have to show the world that we democrats are the majority and the racists are the minority.”(theguardian)…[+]

A man has been bitten by a blue shark while fishing off the coast of Cork. The man from Belfast sustained a serious lower arm injury while deep-sea angling on Saturday evening just off the Irish coast. He was given immediate first aid by the crew of the angling boat, before being transferred to a lifeboat where he received further care.

Crosshaven RNLI volunteers were called to the scene at 6pm. An RNLI spokesman said: “This was more of an angling accident than a shark attack, there was a bit of a struggle when pulling the shark on board. We’re not trying to panic anyone.”

The boat, Deora De, sailed towards Crosshaven from about eight miles offshore and met the lifeboat about four miles south of Roches Point. An ambulance took the man from Crosshaven to Cork University hospital. Although blue sharks are the most common species of shark in Irish waters, they rarely bite humans. They usually feed on small fish and squid, and can live for about 20 years. Until 2013, the species was implicated in only 13 biting incidents.(theguardian)…[+]

Last month, yards from the Social Democrats’ booth in Rinkeby town square, where Kersten Aggefors is handing out leaflets for the party that has finished first in every Swedish election since 1917, masked young people set five cars ablaze.

A few days earlier, eight unidentified men had attacked the town’s half-built new police station, crashing through the gate and hurling rocks and firecrackers at security guards, apparently in retaliation for a drug bust. In January, two gunmen walked into a crowded pizzeria and shot a man dead, in what police said was a gang execution.

Rinkeby, a symbol of Scandinavian social democracy when it was built in the 1970s, had a bad reputation, but this was largely undeserved, said Aggefors, who has lived in the suburb, 20 minutes by metro from the capital, for 47 years.(theguardian)…[+]