Two-time Olympic champion Katie Archibald will miss Paris 2024 after suffering a double leg break in a freak accident.
The 30-year-old Scottish cyclist fractured a tibia and fibula and dislocated an ankle having tripped over a garden step. She also sustained substantial ligament damage during the incident on Tuesday and has since undergone surgery.
“I tripped over a step in the garden and managed to, somehow, dislocate my ankle; break my tibia and fibula; and rip two ligaments off the bone. What the heck,” she posted on Instagram alongside a picture of her in a hospital bed.
“Had surgery yesterday to pin the bones back together and reattach the ligaments. Then hopefully this afternoon I’ll be going home. A hundred apologies for what this means for the Olympic team, which I’ve been told won’t involve me.
“I’m still processing that bit of news, but thought I better confirm it publicly instead of leaving it to the grapevine (trip hazard and all that).”
Archibald, who won team pursuit gold at Rio 2016 and then topped the podium in the madison alongside Laura Kenny at Tokyo 2020, has endured a horrendous past couple of years.
She missed the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham after colliding with a vehicle amid a series of injury setbacks, while her partner, mountain biker Rab Wardell, died suddenly that summer aged 37.
“A hundred thank yous for the fabulous doctors, nurses, radiographers, porters, physios, surgeons and more at the Manchester Royal Infirmary,” Archibald wrote in her social media post. “Might be back with more updates, might be gone from the socials for a bit – TBC. Ciao for now. Katie x”.
You are in denial about the climate crisis. We all are, argues the American scholar Tad DeLay. Right-wing climate deniers are not the only ones with a problem, he says when we speak in early June after the release of his book, Future of Denial. For denial doesnât only amount to rejecting the evidence, he argues â it also consists of denying our role in the climate crisis; absolving ourselves through âcarbon offsets, hybrid cars, local purchases, recyclingâ. And in this, far more of us are implicated.
In some ways, this argument might not seem all that new. Multiple authors have pointed out that green capitalism, not rightwing deniers of the crisis, is our greatest obstacle to properly confronting the problem. DeLay agrees. The difference is the lens he brings to it â using psychoanalysis to explain the mechanisms behind denial.
In doing so he refuses the neatness of a definite or concretely optimistic path forward. Elaborate yet accessible â one chapter tells the history of Earth through rising and falling carbon dioxide â Future of Denialis an eloquent, forthright text about the realities of the crisis and where it is heading. Similarly, when we speak, he is friendly, open and does not seem to wallow in despondency, but his research has led him to informed conclusions that recognise the uncertainty and difficulty of where we are. He forgoes âhow to solve the crisisâ answers. To offer up such promises would, I imagine, itself be a form of denial.
DeLay looks to Freud for a framework to understand denial: individuals negate distressing ideas and when the repressed thoughts begins to surface, people either deny reality or accept it but deny their moral culpability. This is how people respond to the climate crisis: rejecting the science or committing to âpseudo-solutions, gimmicks and false promisesâ to get themselves off the moral hook. âI like to joke that America and many western countries conveniently have a political party for whichever form of denial you would like with regard to the climate,â he says.
Raised as part of a âvery Baptist evangelical fundamentalist megachurchâ in Little Rock, Arkansas, he thought he would be a minister, but when he started reading theology and philosophy everything began to fall apart. As a first-generation college student, the literature, plus psychoanalysis, gave him a language to think through and out of the very religious âconceptual and cultural baggageâ with which he grew up. DeLay brings all of his interests â psychoanalysis, philosophy and religion â to bear on the climate crisis.
One impetus for writing Future of Denial, he says, was watching the UK Labour partyâs 2019 manifesto and US Democrat Bernie Sandersâ 2020 presidential campaign proposals âget rejected largely by people who probably thought of themselves as science believers even though both of them were proposing the most ambitious climate plansâ these countries had ever seen. This frustration shapes the book, which includes a chapter called What Does the Liberal Want?, that is sharply critical of liberalism and ends with the damning line: âThey have no plan ⦠nothing is fine.â
This denial is seductive to us all and in many ways it is in fact essential to function in the world. âYou canât admit, as a capitalist subject, that thereâs little you as an individual can do,â DeLay writes, âand neither can you imagine the end of capitalism.â Your options, then, are âintensely boringâ (attending meetings to âadvocate for a ban on new gas hook upsâ) or âterrificâ (âecoterrorismâ), and âdenial is going to come out in surprising other waysâ. DeLay himself is not immune. âMy second child was born while this book was being written,â he says. âSometimes people will ask me: is that a type of denial? Perhaps. Is ⦠writing this book, me trying to be able to at least in part show them that I did what I could? Perhaps.â
Though an enthusiastic supporter of the youth climate movement, he has little time for clutching at the promise of young people saving us. âI am all too familiar with this impulse; when Iâm especially despondent about the state of the world I look to them: they are the hope, they know whatâs what. But itâs a âcomforting fantasyâ, he writes, which rests on believing that âeducation and passion will get the job done without mucking up free markets with regulation or central planningâ. It also provides an easy out: âIf generational politics works, then we neednât concern ourselves with class politics.â There is the denial again â and one I hadnât really recognised in myself.
Denial is, of course, part of our everyday behaviour, and DeLay has many examples. Teenagers act recklessly because they deny their own morality, someone who will not go to the doctor when they know they should is in denial and so, too, are people who have affairs and buy expensive cars because they cannot face up to how unsatisfying their life is. But when it comes to climate, there is too much focus on denial as âconscious beliefâ, DeLay thinks. âWe talk as if we are Protestants who think you get saved by having the correct thoughts about the big important question.â
If it is possible at all, then, forcing action on the climate crisis will not be achieved by making people believe it is real and dangerous. âMost people donât really care that much about their beliefs,â he says. Evangelicals who believe the end of the world is coming âstill invest in retirement funds, right, they still have children, they still do all of the things [to] materially express a belief in some sort of futureâ.
The higher up the chain you go, the less individual neuroses are the problem. Even if everyone involved in fossil fuel extraction decided to stop, he argues, new companies would form overnight and file for leases with governments; the drive to consolidate profits and private property is unrelenting. DeLay points to the tight correlation between GDP and emissions, in particular GDP per capita: âThe more money you have, the richer you are and the richer you are the more likely you are to emit according to a high emissions lifestyle.â He asks us all to reflect on the fact that whenever we hear the economy is doing well, that means fossil fuels are âdoing greatâ.
Where to go from here? DeLay does not seem to have too much time for self-indulgent doom (he says some people seem to almost enjoy the anxiety and impotence), nor for simplistic, rosy roadmaps for a way forward.
He says there are some mitigation activities we should focus on. Though heâs no fan of reformism, without the Labour party in the UK or the Democrats in the US taking power, there is no chance of climate action, he says. Although what they offer is ânot very much at allâ, you can get some concessions from what he calls âcapitalist climate governanceâ â the Paris accord, COP and âlimited fundingâ. DeLay also does not advocate for living as hedonistically as you want, suggesting there is use in reducing your own emissions, even if this is patently not going to even touch the sides of the crisis.
We âcannot stop the progress of the stormâ, he tells me. âThis is too big, there is not a person on Earth who has the agency to stop this individually, itâs not even clear to me that anybody has much agency to stop this collectively ⦠we might just be at the mercy of market logics where falling renewable prices eventually convert us over. At least thatâs the hope, right, evidence is still kind of wanting.â
Adaptation has more of a chance, he thinks. Some of the things that are being proposed now are âgriftsâ, such as carbon offsets, but âmay save us laterâ, such as carbon capture. More immediately, he says, we could all use any expertise we have to support local activist groups and encourage young people to devote their âlife to this causeâ.
As the effects of the crisis worsen, DeLay argues, inequality will rise, food prices will increase and police and border budgets will balloon. It will probably be people of colour, migrants, homeless people who will suffer the most, especially because when people see the hurricanes and the fires, they may believe in the climate crisis less, not more; politicians will turn up the barbarism and there will be something â or someone â else to blame. In this context, adaptation is also about unionising in your workplace and engaging with reactionaries while you do it, discouraging police work and doing things that are âillegalâ to help house migrants.
There is no personal salvation though. âJust by driving to get groceries you emit carbon dioxide ⦠a fifth of [which] ⦠will still be in the air in 500,000 years, killing species that havenât yet evolved.â We need to ask ourselves: âWhat if there just is no solution to that on any sort of meaningful scale?â and act accordingly.
Future of denial: the ideologies of climate change is published by Verso Books
A trade unionist has called for a crackdown against âbarbaric exploitationâ after an Indian farm worker died when he was allegedly being left on a road by his employer following an accident that severed his arm.
Satnam Singh, 31, was injured on Monday while working on machinery on a farm in Latina, a rural area close to Rome with a large community of Indian immigrant labourers.
Singh, who came to Italy with his wife three years ago, was allegedly left with his arm severed on the road outside his home in Borgo Santa Maria.
Police said they were called by his wife and an air ambulance was sent to transport him to San Camillo Forlalini hospital in Rome, where he died of his injuries on Wednesday.
His Italian employer is under investigation for manslaughter, violation of workplace safety regulations and failure to provide aid.
Singh had been working on a plastic roller wrapping machine attached to a tractor when the accident occurred, according to initial investigations.
âAdding to the horror of the accident is the fact that, instead of being rescued, the Indian farm worker was dumped near his home,â Laura Hardeep Kaur, general secretary of the Frosinone-Latina unit of the Flai Cgil union, told Il Giorno newspaper.
âHe was left on the road like a bag of rags, like a sack of rubbish ⦠despite his wife begging [the employer] to take him to hospital. Here we are not only faced with a serious workplace accident, which in itself is already alarming, we are faced with barbaric exploitation. Enough now.â
Latina is known as an area for the exploitation of migrant labourers. Hardeep Kaur said Singh was working for â¬5 an hour without a legal work contract. âForeign labourers continue to be invisible, at the mercy of ferocious bosses, often Italian,â she added.
Italyâs labour minister, Marina Calderone, condemned the âtrue act of barbarityâ and hoped that those responsible would be punished. âThe Indian agricultural worker who suffered a serious accident in the countryside of Latina and was abandoned in very serious conditions ⦠has died,â she told parliament.
Agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida said on Thursday that Giorgia Meloniâs government was âon the frontline ⦠to fight against all forms of labour exploitationâ. He added: âThis is a tragedy which mustnât leave us indifferent and on which full light must be shed.â
The centre-left Democratic party (PD) condemned the manâs treatment as a âdefeat for civilisationâ, while urging the government to take action to rid Italy of the so-called âagro-mafiasâ that run migrant labouring rackets.
Just Stop Oil activists have sprayed orange paint over private jets at Stansted airport on the airfield where Taylor Swift’s plane is stationed, the environmental group has said.
Two activists, Jennifer Kowalski, 28, a former sustainability manager from Dumbarton, and Cole Macdonald, 22, from Brighton, broke into a private airfield in Stansted at 5am on Thursday before targeting the jet.
In a post on X, Just Stop Oil (JSO) said: “Jennifer and Cole cut the fence into the private airfield at Stansted where taylorswift13’s jet is parked, demanding an emergency treaty to end fossil fuels by 2030.”
The accompanying video showed one of the activists cutting a hole in the fence before spraying the paint over the jets.
In February lawyers for Taylor Swift threatened legal action against a student who is tracking Swift’s jet use via social media. The X account CelebJets, found that the plane owned by Swift, was the most used by celebrities emitting more than 8,000 tonnes of carbon. A spokesperson for the singer denied that Swift was on every flight, saying her plane is loaned out to others.
The Stansted demonstration came as English Heritage pleaded with JSO to stop targeting cultural monuments after two protesters sprayed orange power on Stonehenge.
Nick Merriman, the chief executive of the national body that cares hundreds of national properties and sites including Stonehenge, condemned the protest as “vandalism to one of the world’s most celebrated ancient monuments”.
Two Just Stop Oil activists were arrested after the incident on Wednesday before summer solstice celebrations at the monument, which are due to begin on Thursday evening.
The group has targeted a series of cultural institutions in recent months including disrupting a Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall; damaging a case around the Magna Carta at the British Library and throwing tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, Merriman said: “We respect the rights of people to protest as an important right in British life. But we wish people would channel their protests, away from cultural heritage sites, museums and galleries, because we feel that doesn’t actually help their cause and causes this huge upset and disruption to the operation of these important sites.”
In a statement about the Stonehenge protest, Just Stop Oil said it was time for “megalithic action” to stop the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.
It said: “Continuing to burn coal, oil and gas will result in the death of millions. We have to come together to defend humanity, or we risk everything. That’s why Just Stop Oil is demanding that our next government sign up to a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030.”
Merriman said the protest was “difficult to understand”.
He said: “Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old, and people in those ancient times were living so sustainably, and the stones are a testament to the desire of people to connect with nature and the Earth and the sun and the moon as well as each other.”
Restorers have managed to clean the orange powder from the stones using blown air to avoid damaging rare lichens on the surface, Merriman said.
He said: “Lichens are very fragile and sensitive indications of climate change, and the lichens on Stonehenge are actually quite rare in southern England. Luckily, our staff moved very quickly to remove the powdered substance from the lichen so it looks like they are OK.”
He also warned that if conditions had been wet more damage could have been done.
Merriman said: “We were very lucky, given that the atrocious weather we’ve had recently, that it wasn’t done in pouring rain, where we fear that there would have been quite some considerable damage to the lichens.”
He added: “The site is open to the public again and for the solstice tomorrow.”
The UK, Canada, New Zealand, Italy and Spain are among the rich countries contributing less than half their fair share of nature finance to poor countries, a new report has found.
Developed nations have agreed to collectively contribute a minimum of $20bn annually for nature restoration in low and middle-income countries by 2025. This money is in addition to the $100bn agreed for climate finance.
So far, Norway and Sweden are the only two countries providing a fair amount, while the âoverwhelming majority of developed countries do not provide even half of their fair share,â according to the report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) thinktank. The UK was providing about 24% of its commitment, while countries in southern and eastern Europe came at the bottom of the ranking, with Greece providing only about 10% of what it should, and Poland 5%.
Globally, nations are falling $11.6bn (£9.1bn) short on these financial commitments and must âdramatically scale upâ, according to researchers who looked at each countryâs progress based on 2021 data, which was the most recent to be released by governments. Some additional pledges have been made in the past three years but they do not âsubstantially move the needleâ, experts say.
Rich countries are most responsible for the loss of nature globally over the past 60 years. The payments to poorer countries â which typically have the greatest reserves of biodiversity left and smaller ecological footprints â are designed to compensate for this overconsumption of the planetâs natural resources.
The report is the first analysis of how individual donor countries are delivering on their financial commitments made in the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) at Cop15, where nature targets for the next decade were agreed upon.
Earthâs wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, and for decades nations have failed to meet UN targets to stop this decline.
âWe hope this report serves as a wake-up call for high-income countries to fulfil their obligations,â said Laetitia Pettinotti, the lead author and a research fellow at ODI.
âFailing to reach the target undermines the UN convention on biological diversity and damages trust. But far more importantly, this failure represents a genuine threat to our shared prosperity, livelihoods, economies and health,â she said.
The 2022 Cop15 treaty had no details about much each country would contribute to the funding pot. This report calculates that by accounting for countriesâ historical impact on nature, their gross national income and population to calculate how much each of the 28 donor countries needs to contribute to the $20bn.
Sara Pantuliano, the chief executive of ODI, said: âWe are far from reaching this goal and must dramatically scale up our contributions within the next year.â
Collective agreements often shield wealthy nations from individual responsibility, she said: âApportioning responsibility is a necessary step to enhance accountability, transparency and awareness.â
Germany and France come close to providing the necessary contributions, as does Australia.
Some countries have made financial contributions since 2021, according to an accompanying report by Campaign for Nature, which commissioned the research: 29 countries pledged to give the equivalent of $480m annually to the Global Environment Facility, while Canada, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, Spain and the UK committed to giving $32m annually to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund.
The report states: âWhile these are positive developments, it is not expected that these recent contributions substantially move the needle for those countries that are marked as below 50% of their fair share.â
The US is not party to the GBF and therefore did not commit itself to contributing to the target. If it were included it would be one of the poorest performers, the report concluded.
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, said: âThe world is already spending $1.8tn each year on subsidising industries that are destroying nature. The pledge of $20bn a year is equivalent to only 1.1%, or about four days, of those subsidies. Wealthy governments have no excuse but to act with greater urgency.â
World leaders will come together at Cop16 in Cali, Colombia to review these financial commitments.
Dr Nicola Ranger, the director of the Resilient Planet Finance Lab at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, said the overall findings were robust. She believes if the report fully accounted for the UKâs outsized impacts through global supply chains and finance for damaging sectors linked to pollution and deforestation, the countryâs overall share of responsibility would be larger. âWeâve been turning the worldâs nature capital into economic and financial capital for decades,â she said.
She added: âTo meet our international commitments, the UK would need to accelerate our funding by a factor of four. It is right that the UK takes responsibility and plays its part in protecting biodiversity and meeting these global goals. But it is also squarely in our interests to do so ⦠our economy is highly exposed to nature-related risks, of which half come from environmental damage overseas.â
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features
The world’s consumption of fossil fuels climbed to a record high last year, driving emissions to more than 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time, according to a global energy report.
Despite a record rise in the use of renewable energy in 2023, consumption of fossil fuels continued to increase too, an annual review of world energy by the Energy Institute found.
Juliet Davenport, the president of the Energy Institute, said the report had revealed “another year of highs in our energy-hungry world” including a record high consumption of fossil fuels, which rose by 1.5% to 505 exajoules.
The findings threaten to dash hopes held by climate scientists that 2023 would be recorded as the year in which annual emissions peaked before the global fossil fuel economy begins a terminal decline.
The Energy Institute, the global professional body for the energy sector, found that while energy industry emissions may have reached a peak in advanced economies, developing economies are continuing to increase their reliance on coal, gas and oil.
Overall, fossil fuels made up 81.5% of the world’s primary energy last year, down only marginally from 82% the year before, according to the report, even as wind and solar farms generated record amounts of clean electricity.
The report, authored by consultants at KPMG and Kearney, found that wind and solar power climbed by 13% last year to reach a new record of 4,748 terawatt hours in 2023.
But that was not enough to match the world’s growing consumption of primary energy, which rose 2% last year to a record high of 620 exajoules and led to more fossil fuel use.
The review found that the world’s appetite for gas remained steady in 2024 while consumption of coal climbed by 1.6% and oil demand rose by 2% to reach 100m barrels a day for the first time.
Simon Virley, the UK head of energy and natural resources at KPMG, said: “In a year where we have seen the contribution of renewables reaching a new record high, ever increasing global energy demand means the share coming from fossil fuels has remained virtually unchanged at just over 80% for yet another year.”
Nick Wayth, the Energy Institute’s chief executive, added that the “slow” progress of the energy transition “masks diverse energy stories playing out across different geographies”.
“In advanced economies, we observe signs of demand for fossil fuels peaking, contrasting with economies in the global south for whom economic development and improvements in quality of life continue to drive fossil growth,” said Wayth.
The report found that, in India, fossil fuel consumption climbed by 8% last year, matching the increase in overall energy demand to make up 89% of all energy use. This meant that, for the first time, more coal was used in India than Europe and North America combined, it said.
In Europe, fossil fuels fell to below 70% of primary energy use for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, driven by falling demand and the growth of renewable energy.
Europe’s demand for gas in particular has continued to tumble since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which caused pipeline gas imports into Europe to collapse. Overall gas demand fell by 7% in 2023, according to the report, after a fall of 13% the previous year.
Canada will ban open-net pen salmon farming in British Columbia coastal waters in five years, the government has announced, a decision that has been welcomed by environmental groups but opposed by the aquaculture industry.
The Liberal government made the decision in 2019 to transition to closed containment technologies to protect declining wild Pacific salmon populations.
“Today, we are delivering on that promise and taking an important step in Canada’s path towards salmon and environmental conservation, sustainable aquaculture production, and clean technology,” said Jonathan Wilkinson, natural resources minister.
There are dozens of the farms in British Columbia. More than half of wild salmon stock populations are declining in the province’s waters, according to the Pacific Salmon Foundation.
The BC Salmon Farmers Association said the ban could cost up to 6,000 jobs and would harm an industry that generates C$1.2bn (US$880m) for the provincial economy.
“The idea that 70,000 tonnes of BC salmon can be produced on land in five years is unrealistic and ignores the current capabilities of modern salmon farming technology, as it has not been done successfully to scale anywhere in the world,” said the organisation’s executive director, Brian Kingzet.
The government said it would release a plan by the end of the month outlining how it would support First Nations, industry workers and communities that rely on open-net aquaculture for their livelihoods. Wilkinson said: “We recognise the importance of meaningful and thoughtful engagement with First Nations partners and communities as we move forward, in order to ensure that economic impacts are mitigated.”
Salmon spawn in freshwater but spend much of their adult life in the ocean, making closed containment operations challenging and more expensive than farming them in open-net pens that float in the sea. Environmental campaigners say these salmon farms harm wild salmon populations by spreading disease.
“There’s a large body of science that shows that they amplify parasites, viruses and bacteria right on the wild salmon migration routes and spread them to wild fish,” said Stan Proboszcz, an analyst with conservation group Watershed Watch Salmon Society. “Many of our stocks are in decline. So let’s take [open-net farms] out and give wild salmon a bit of a relief.”
The announcement needed to be enshrined in law “in case we see a change in government next year”, Proboszcz said.
Opinion polls have shown a majority of residents in British Columbia support ending open-net salmon farming, while more than 120 First Nations in the province have shown support for land-based closed containment fish farms.
The First Nation Wild Salmon Alliance welcomed the announcement. “This date will serve the longer-term needs of protecting wild Pacific salmon from the impacts of the open-net pen fish farm industry, and is a positive step in that regard,’ said Bob Chamberlin, its chairman.
The Hungary manager, Marco Rossi, accused the referee Danny Makkelie of a âdouble standardâ after a controversial Jamal Musiala goal was allowed to stand in their 2-0 defeat by Germany.
Rossi and his players were furious that Ilkay Gündogan was not pulled up, either by Makkelie or VAR, in the buildup for what they felt was a shove on the centre-back Willi Orban. In truth contact had been light and, on balance, the decision seemed correct. But it set Hungary on the way to a defeat that leaves their participation beyond the group stage at Euro 2024 in grave doubt and Rossi pondered whether bigger-name sides might have been treated differently.
âWhat the referee did tonight, itâs a double standard,â said Rossi, citing an incident in the second half when the Germany midfielder Robert Andrich tumbled in his own box and was given a foul. âFrom my perspective Germany would have won anyway, theyâre stronger than us, but the referee was the worst on the pitch.
âGermany didnât need help from the referee, especially against a team like Hungary. When they play against someone like France, letâs see if a foul will be given or not.â
Hungary, who have two defeats from two, must beat Scotland to have any chance of a place in the last 16. âWe will try everything to win,â Rossi said. âOur fans want to see on the pitch that we are spitting blood. I donât ask our guys to win, to score goals. I just ask them to give their maximum.â
Gündogan had a different view of the opener. âI was quite surprised that the Hungarian player and his teammates were angry about it,â he said. âI donât know what it looked like on TV but I played in the Premier League for seven years and if you gave that in the Premier League as a foul I think everyone would have been laughing on the floor.â
Julian Nagelsmann, whose team have reached the knockout stage with a game to spare, urged Germany to finish the job by topping Group A. âWe want to be first in our group and then we will see,â he said. âFor today Iâm happy with the result. It was a tough game and weâve qualified.â
Fewer than three weeks before actor Alec Baldwin is due to go on trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, prosecutors have said that he âengaged in horseplay with the revolverâ, including firing a blank round at a crew member on the set of Rust before the tragic accident occurred.
Baldwin is facing involuntary manslaughter charges in the 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
In new court documents, prosecutors said they plan to bring new evidence to support their case that the 66-year-old actor and producer was reckless with firearms while filming on the set and displayed âerratic and aggressive behavior during the filmingâ that created potential safety concerns.
Prosecutors in the case, which is due to go to trial on 10 July, have previously alleged that to watch Baldwinâs conduct on the set of Rust âis to witness a man who has absolutely no control of his own emotions and absolutely no concern for how his conduct affects those around himâ.
In the latest filing, special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Erlinda Johnson allege that Baldwin pointed his gun and fired âa blank round at a crew member while using that crew member as a line of site as his perceived targetâ.
Prosecutors also allege that after he asked for the âbiggestâ gun available, the actor used the prop weapon âas a pointer directing crew membersâ; fired it after âcutâ was called on a scene; placed his finger on the trigger in scenes that required no shooting; rushed the filmâs armorer to reload faster; and was âinattentive during the firearms trainingâ and âdistracted by texting/face timing family members and making videos for his familyâs enjoymentâ.
Minutes before the 911 call was made reporting the shooting of Hutchins and director Joel Souza, Baldwin had been photographed manipulating his prop gun and âappears to have his finger inside the trigger guard and his thumb on the hammerâ.
They also allege that when Rust resumed filing in Montana the following year Baldwin âwas insistent that he not be required to follow safety recommendations made by film set safety expertsâ.
Baldwin has pleaded no guilty to involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of Hutchins during a rehearsal on the set when he aimed a revolver in her direction. The gun fired, killing Hutchins and wounding Souza. He faces up to one and a half years in prison if convicted.
In April, Rustâs set armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 26, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty on the same charges Baldwin now faces. The actor has repeatedly tried to have the charges dismissed and previously refused a plea deal.
Separate to Baldwinâs criminal prosecution, Hutchinsâ family recently renewed their negligence lawsuit against Baldwin and other producers and crew, contending that Hutchinsâ death was caused by reckless behavior.
âThe fact that live ammunition was allowed on a movie set, that guns and ammunition were left unattended ⦠and that defendant Baldwin inexplicably pointed and fired a gun at Halyna Hutchins, makes this a case where injury or death was much more than just a possibility â it was a likely result,â the lawsuit said.
Baldwin recently announced that he and wife, Hilaria Baldwin, along with their seven children all under the age of 10 will star in their own reality TV show about their family to be broadcast next year.
The decision to make the announcement soon before the Santa Fe trial was criticized as a stunt by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred.
âThis appears to me to be a calculated and cynical public relations move to try to influence the jury pool in New Mexico to think of him as a sympathetic family man rather than as the killer of Halyna Hutchins,â Allred told the celebrity news site TMZ.
Which of Germanyâs old stagers will be next to steal the scene? Toni Kroos had teased Scotland to pieces on the opening day but this time the floor was left to his captain, who delivered a resounding statement. Four months from now Ilkay Gündogan will turn 34 but this was another of those evenings where, as with his imminently retiring colleague, the idea that the show will one day end feels simply unfair.
Gündogan intervened decisively midway through each half, Âcreating the opener for Jamal Musiala and sweeping in a second goal that finally deflated a largely impressive Hungary. Had Marco Rossiâs players converted one presentable chance among several, notably through Barnabas Varga on the hour, they would have quietened a buoyant crowd. Instead they were the latest to find that the hosts have begun this summer with the dead-eyed edge of old. Germany were clinical and their momentum is gathering.
If the veterans are trading star Âbilling, Musiala is a dazzling constant. âThe way heâs going right now, he can be one of the best,â Gündogan said afterwards and it was justified praise. He turned in another irrepressible performance and what a special moment it was when, in his home city, he met the captainâs pass and hammered high into the net. Musiala tormented Hungary out wide but his acuity in occupying pockets of space more centrally was fundamental to the moments that won this game.
Exhibit A came in the 22nd Âminute of a game Germany had started slowly, finding that Hungary were as good as their word in promising a more aggressive display than in a poor defeat against Switzerland. Some of the hostsâ connections around the box had started to show promise, and Peter Gulascsi had saved from Kai Havertz after ineffectual defending from Willi Orban, but it took Musialaâs initiative to calm their early jitters.
Musiala had collected the ball in a tight space on the edge of the box, with four opponents looking to minimise his options, and slipped it through to an on-rushing Gündogan. There was a sizeable element of fortune after that, the pass bouncing off his thigh as he sought to tame it and seemingly allowing Orban to take control.
The centre-back, no more conÂvincing than he had been earlier on, stumbled as he tried to shepherd the ball towards the byline. The complaint was that Gündogan had shoved him, but Orban had seemed to lean into his opponent and surely should have been stronger. Several of Hungaryâs players certainly erred in stopping with hands held aloft while Âthe midfielder took control of matters and, from the left side of the sixâyard box, teed up an alert Musiala for a second thudding finish in as many games.
Hungary had come close after only 16 seconds, Manuel Neuer Âdiving at the feet of Roland Sallai, and gave the 38-year-old more to do. They did not appear perturbed at going behind and were denied soon afterwards when Neuer brilliantly repelled a Dominik Szoboszlai free-kick and blocked the rebound from Varga. If the excellence of golden oldies is to be a theme, Neuer was another who warmed to it.
By the three-quarter mark Germany had not put Hungary, who had recorded a win and two draws in their previous three meetings, out of view. Then Kroos sped up a prolonged passing move with a first-time clip to Musiala, imbued with instructions to maintain that raised tempo. Eyes in the back of his head, Musiala found the leftâback Maximilian Mittelstädt in space and the resulting cutback was swept in by Gündogan.
He barely put a foot wrong throughout and Julian ÂNagelsmann pointed out that, off the ball, he had kept Germany on the straight and narrow when they were listing. âHe worked amazingly,â Nagelsmann said. âHe tried to steer the match, he used some of the stoppages and tried to double check things with me. I have big trust in him because I know what is within him.â
Perhaps the post-match enthusiasm would have been more restrained if Varga, unmarked from a perfect Sallai cross, had equalised rather than looping his header over. There was little influence Gundogan could exert on that sequence. Sallai had a goal correctly disallowed before the interval and, towards the end, a late goalline clearance from Joshua Kimmich ensured the bank of almost 20,000 fans behind Neuerâs goal were left with nothing bar an improved showing to savour. Hungary, fancied as potential dark horses, are on the brink of elimination.
For Germany the latter stages were celebratory and Nagelsmann could play to the gallery by enhancing the local flavour. Mittelstadt, who plays here for VfB Stuttgart, was joined on the pitch by clubmates Chris Fuhrich and the Brighton loanee Deniz Undav; the crowd loved those little touches, just as they had adored those of Gundogan and his cohort.