Month: July 2020

Millions of Americans are at risk of severe flooding after more than a dozen tornadoes hit a number of states including Texas and Oklahoma, authorities have warned. 

On Monday at least 19 tornadoes caused scattered damage and a deluge of rain, sparking flooding and causing damage to buildings and vehicles.

The US National Weather Service warned more bad weather could be on the way, and more than 4 million people were under a flash-flood warning or watch on Tuesday.

“More tornados are on the way today, most likely late this afternoon into the evening,” Rich Otto, a forecaster for the National Weather Service said, adding the warnings stretched from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas eastwards to Arkansas and southwest Missouri.

Watch the video above to see dramatic footage of the tornados in Oklahoma

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A British climber, who became the latest person to die on Mount Everest this season, admitted before setting off that he feared the dangers of overcrowding in the "death zone".

Robin Haynes Fisher, 44, died on his descent after reaching the 8,850-metre (29,035 feet) summit of the world’s highest mountain.

He passed away in the "death zone", the area named for the low levels of oxygen on descent from the summit.

Mr Fisher, who lived in Birmingham, is one of at least eight climbers to die on the treacherous slopes in the current climbing season that ends this month.

Hiking officials attributed most of the deaths to weakness, exhaustion and delays on the crowded route to the summit.

In his last social media post on Tuesday, Mr Fisher wrote how he had changed his climbing plans in order to avoid the crowds.

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Climbed up to camp 3, 7500m but the jet stream had returned closing the summit after only 2 days so I descended to basecamp. Around 100 climbers did summit in those 2 days with sadly 2 deaths, an Indian man found dead in his tent at camp 4 and an Irish climber lost, assumed fallen, on his descent. A go fund me page has been set up for a rescue bid for the Irish climber but it is a well meaning but futile gesture. Condolences to both their friends and families. Both deaths happened above 8000m in the so called death zone where the majority of deaths of foreign climbers happen. Around 700 more people will be looking to summit from Tuesday the 21st onwards. My revised plan, subject to weather that at the moment looks promising, is to return up the mountain leaving basecamp Tuesday the 21st 0230 and, all being well and a lot of luck, arriving on the summit the morning of Saturday the 25th. I will be climbing with my Sherpa, Jangbu who is third on the all time list with an incredible 19 summits. The other 4 members of our team decided to remain on the mountain and are looking to summit on the 21st. My cough had started to return at altitude so I couldn’t wait with them at altitude for the window to open without the risk of physically deteriorating too much. Furthermore as I had missed due to sickness the earlier camp 3 rotation best practice was for me to descend to allow my body to recover from the new altitude high so I could come back stronger. This was not an easy decision as the 13 hours climbing from basecamp to camp 2 in a day was the hardest physical and mental challenge I had ever done, now I have it all to do again. Finally I am hopeful to avoid the crowds on summit day and it seems like a number of teams are pushing to summit on the 21st. With a single route to the summit delays caused by overcrowding could prove fatal so I am hopeful my decision to go for the 25th will mean fewer people. Unless of course everyone else plays the same waiting game. #everest #everest2019 #lhotseface

A post shared by Robin (@1c0n0clast22) on May 19, 2019 at 1:15am PDT

"With a single route to the summit delays caused by overcrowding could prove fatal so I am hopeful my decision to go for the 25th will mean fewer people. Unless of course everyone else plays the same waiting game," he added. 

He also described how the altitude had already taken its toll on his health. 

"Furthermore as I had missed due to sickness the earlier camp 3 rotation best practice was for me to descend to allow my body to recover from the new altitude high so I could come back stronger. 

"This was not an easy decision as the 13 hours climbing from basecamp to camp 2 in a day was the hardest physical and mental challenge I had ever done, now I have it all to do again."

Mr Fisher has been described by his family as an “aspirational adventurer”.

Mr Fisher’s family said: “He achieved so much in his short life, climbing Mont Blanc, Aconcagua and Everest.

"He was a ‘tough guy’, triathlete, and marathoner. A champion for vegetarianism, published author, and a cultured theatre-goer, lover of Shakespeare.”

Now Nepal is facing scrutiny for issuing a record 381 permits — at £8,600 each — for this year’s spring season.

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Completed oxygen training which we will use in the so called death zone, above 8000m. I have 8 bottles, each weighing 4kg when full that the Sherpas have thankfully already shipped up the mountain to our advanced camps. Tomorrow we head up the mountain, leaving at 3am. We are going to bypass camp 1 and go all the way to camp 2. I can expect a 13 or 14 hour day of climbing. From camp 2 the plan is to go up to c3 for an acclimatisation climb and then return to c2. Depending on how the summit window looks, what the other teams are doing and how I feel I may then descend to basecamp to complete acclimatisation and return up the mountain later or may go for my summit push. A summit push will mean a return to c3, spending the night, proceeding to c4 and either spending the night or pushing for the summit that evening. It depends on how we feel, the weather and what the other 380 climbers are doing. As most expeditions average 1 to 1.5 Sherpas per climber we need to pick a day when there are not a few hundred other people heading for the summit. Due to their being one set of ropes their are a number of bottlenecks at tricky points. Standing around in a queue of a hundred people when with the windchill can be -40C is a recipe for frostbite or worse. When I was waiting to see the doctor in base camp yesterday to get the all clear to go up the patient before me had just come down the mountain. He had, at altitude, taken his summit mitts off to change the batteries in his headtorch. These 2.5 minutes had caused him stage 3 frostbite in his fingers and the prognosis was that he may lose the tips of his fingers. A timely reminder to keep my gloves on at all times. #everest #everest2019

A post shared by Robin (@1c0n0clast22) on May 14, 2019 at 12:34am PDT

This week, a climber shared a photograph of the lengthy tailbacks on the mountain. Hundreds found themselves stuck for hours in the notoriously dangerous death zone, having used the window of good weather to push for the 8,848m (29,030ft) summit.

Murari Sharma, of the Everest Parivar Treks company that arranged Mr Fisher’s logistics, told Reuters: “He died because of weakness after a long ascent and difficult descent.

“He was descending with his sherpa guides from the summit when he suddenly fainted.”

Fellow guides changed Mr Fisher’s oxygen bottle and offered him water, but could not save him.

At least four other deaths have been linked to the human traffic jam. A Nepali guide is also believed to have died.

Irish climber Kevin Hynes, 56, died in his tent at 7,000 metres on the early hours of Friday morning, after turning back before reaching the summit.

With each climber normally accompanied by at least one Sherpa, the mountain could see more than 750 people trekking to the summit this season.

Garrett Madison of the U.S. based Madison Mountaineering company that sponsors climbers to Mount Everest said many were not well qualified or prepared climbers and lacked  the support necessary to ascend and descend safely.

Mr Madison told Reuters: “If they were with a strong and experienced team they would have likely been fine, but with minimal support, once something goes wrong it’s tough to get back on course.”

An Australian man who kidnapped and raped a British backpacker, and forced her to drive for weeks through the outback at gunpoint has been jailed for ten years.

The Cairns District Court in  Queensland was told that Marcus Martin had repeatedly assaulted Elisha Greer from Liverpool after the couple had met at a dance party in January 2017.

"He didn’t seem like a psycho, to say the least. He just seemed like a normal guy at the time,” Ms Greer, 24, told Australia’s Channel 7 news earlier this year. 

Her hostage ordeal lasted for 1,000 miles through Queensland. Lawyers said her violent, obsessive boyfriend was motivated by jealously, and he routinely beat and terrorised the English backpacker, gouging her eyes with his thumbs and almost choking her with her own handbag.  She was raped and said she was forced to drive her attacker’s car with a gun pointed at her head.   

“I thought he would kill me,” she said, as her adventure-of-a-lifetime in Australia became a fight for survival.

Her British passport was destroyed by Martin in an attempt to isolate and control her. Ms Greer was finally rescued after driving off from a petrol station without paying for fuel in the small outback town of Mitchell, west of Brisbane.

Staff, who said the young woman was “crying and shaking”, called the police.  Martin was found hiding in the back of the four wheel drive vehicle when it was stopped by officers on the remote Warrego Highway.  He pleaded guilty last October to three counts of rape and one of kidnap.

Ms Greer needed hospital treatment for injuries, including facial fractures. At the time, investigators said the young Briton was lucky to be alive.

Map of British backpackers journey

“We have potentially saved this young girl’s life, given what’s happened to her, the extent of what’s happened and over the period of time, anything may have transpired,” explained Detective Inspector Paul Hart, from Queensland police.

In handing down sentence in Cairns, Judge Dean Morzone said Martin, 25, would be classified as a serious violent offender, who will serve at least eight years behind bars.

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Spain’s former king will spend the first day of his retirement from public life on Sunday lapping up the sunshine at a bullfight south of Madrid – exactly five years after his reign ended in abdication and scandal.   

As emeritus king since his son, Felipe, took up the throne, 81-year-old Juan Carlos de Borbón has endured a series of humiliations as ill health and revelations about his private life have seen him shunted in and out of the spotlight.

According to reports, Juan Carlos was piqued after planning to accompany King Felipe VI at Saturday’s annual Armed Forces Day in Seville, only for his son and Queen Letizia to decide this was not a good idea.

Quite unexpectedly, last Monday Juan Carlos wrote in a letter to Felipe VI, posted on the Royal Household’s website, that it was time to “start a new chapter in my life and complete my retirement from public life”.

As king, Juan Carlos kicked off the changes that created modern Spain by swearing allegiance to the fascist regime of dictator Francisco Franco before launching a democratic transition after the latter’s death in 1975. 

This year, he has been increasingly conspicuous by his absence from public life, barely making a half-dozen appearances.

Juan Carlos must now hope that history remembers him as the architect of Spain’s transition to modernity, and not as a flawed and corrupt playboy monarch. 

When he pulled out of a sailing regatta in Mallorca last August citing a wrist injury, it was broadly interpreted that he was doing so because, once again, rumours about his excesses had made him someone King Felipe wished to avoid being photographed alongside.

Shortly before the event, a recording of Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, described by Spanish media as Juan Carlos’s “intimate friend”, had emerged in the press, in which the German socialite claimed the old king had used her as a signatory on secret overseas assets.

The royal family did not respond to the claims.  It was the revelation of his relationship with Ms zu Sayn-Wittgenstein – and the way it came about – that prompted Juan Carlos’s initial fall from grace.

In 2012, with the Spanish economy teetering on the brink of collapse, it emerged that the king had broken his hip – while on a secret trip to Botswana to hunt elephants in the company of his German female friend.

Juan Carlos and his wife, Queen Sofia, have made little attempt to conceal their estrangement since then. Worse was to follow, however, with the conviction and jailing of the former king’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, who had traded on his royal connections to pocket fraudulent consulting contracts with Spanish regional governments.

Juan Carlos’s youngest daughter, Cristina de Borbón, was acquitted after the 2015 trial, in which emails from Urdangarin asking for help from the king and Ms zu Sayn-Wittgenstein were aired.  

During the investigation into the so-called Nóos case, Juan Carlos took the decision to abdicate in June 2014, with support for the monarchy among Spaniards polling below 50 per cent.

Under the austere and disciplined Felipe VI, approval has climbed back over half in most polls.

Juan Carlos has also endured physical problems, using a walking stick after a series of operations on his hips and knees, as well as the recent removal of a basal-cell carcinoma from the skin on his cheek. But few believe it is health that has led the old lion to finally lie down.

Pilar Urbano, a journalist who has written extensively about Spain’s royal family, said Juan Carlos was tired of being “a pawn” of his son, prompting the letter announcing his retirement from public life.

“To me it sounded like a case of fire yourself before you get fired,” Ms Urbano told Spain’s Cuatro TV channel on Friday.  

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Italy’s prime minister on Monday night delivered an ultimatum to the two parties that form the country’s ruling coalition, threatening to resign unless they put an end to their political clashes. 

In a dramatic press conference, Giuseppe Conte openly asked the far-right League and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement if they still want to govern together, urging them to stop a continuous fight that puts the government’s action at risk. 

"I am asking both these political forces to make a choice and tell me if they still want to honour the government’s obligations," Mr Conte said.

“They must be aware of their task. If this is not the case, I will simply hand back my mandate.”

The two coalition partners have been constantly squabbling since they clinched a fragile governing pact a year ago, choosing Mr Conte, a former academic, to act as a mediator.

Mr Conte’s speech comes at a turbulent time for Italian politics and follows the surprising results of May’s European elections. 

The vote confirmed the surging popularity of Matteo Salvini’s League, which scored a sound victory and replaced a declining Five Star Movement as Italy’s biggest party.

The result also consolidated Salvini’s dominance over the Italian political scene.  

The League’s leader responded to Mr Conte’s call almost immediately with a tweet: "We want to carry on, no time to waste," Mr Salvini, the interior minister, wrote, before listing all the main measures he wants to push forward as part of his ambitious agenda.

Those include in first place an expensive plan to reduce Italian income taxes to a flat rate of 15 per cent.

Mr Conte’s ultimatum came at a time when he increasingly needs a clear and solid mandate to negotiate with Brussels. Due to its expansive economic measures, Italy could face disciplinary procedures for breaking the European Union’s budget rules.

The Commission wrote to Rome last week expressing its concerns over the country’s budget forecasts and warning the Italian government against its expansive budget plans. 

Italy’s economy minister Giovanni Tria replied on Friday, ensuring that next year’s economic measures will include a spending review and revenue enhancement. Brussels is expected to write again later this week and tell Rome how to avoid an excessive debt procedure.

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Iraq is reportedly demanding money from France in return for commuting death sentences passed on 11 French jihadists to life imprisonment, according to the conservative newspaper Le Figaro.

France is unwilling to repatriate jihadists from Syria or Iraq, but it opposes the death penalty. It has said its adult citizens should be tried locally.

About another 120 other French citizens are awaiting trial in Iraq. Le Figaro says the Iraqi government is demanding $1 million (£785,000) for each foreign jihadist transferred from Syria and sentenced to death, and $2 million (£1.57 million) each for those whose sentences are commuted to life imprisonment.

The paper quotes an Iraqi source as saying Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the Iraqi prime minister, made the request when he met President Emmanuel Macron last month.

The Elysée Palace and the Iraqi embassy in Paris deny the claim. “Neither Adil Abdul-Mahdi nor Barham Salih [Iraq’s president] made such a request to France,” a spokesman for Mr Macron’s office said. 

However, Le Figaro quotes its source as saying Iraq plans to ask for up €270 million (£240 million) for trying and imprisoning French jihadists, “not a large sum if you consider the political and social cost of the return of all the jihadists to France”.

More than 80 per cent of the French public do not want them back, according to opinion polls.

Politicians are divided, with the Right taking a firm line and arguing that they should be tried in the Middle East where their crimes were committed. Left-wingers and human rights campaigners maintain that the French legal system should be involved, but there are fears that proof of guilt may be difficult to establish in France.

Some 4,000 foreign nationals were captured in Syria and Iraq after the rout of Isil, and most of their home countries do not want them back.

Iraq has offered to try all foreign fighters captured by a US-backed alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Several hundred have been transferred for trial by Iraqi courts but none have so far been executed.

The question of how to deal with Isil fighters is one of the most difficult issues in the aftermath of the group’s defeat. The trials in Iraq are seen as a test of whether Iraqi courts can meet international standards for fairness.

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A helicopter crash-landed on top of a 51-storey building in New York City on Monday, catching fire and killing the pilot.

The helicopter took off at 1:32pm from the heliport on 34th Street, and flew for 11 minutes before crashing.

The pilot was named by local media on Monday night as Tim McCormack, and he had been flying a private client shortly before the accident.

He had finished the trip, and was heading home to Linden, New Jersey, when the crash happened.

The helicopter was reportedly owned by a company called American Continental Properties Inc, the New York Post said.

Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, said it was "a very unusual situation".

He added: "Helicopters have not been landing on New York buildings for decades. The helicopter should not have been in this area."  

Mr de Blasio said "a horrible incident" had been avoided, given that the helicopter was "obliterated", but very little debris hit the ground.

He said the pilot was an experienced commercial pilot, and they had no idea yet what caused the crash.

The fire was extinguished rapidly by the city’s fire fighters.

The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) said they believe the pilot was the only passenger on board. They said the helicopter was an Augusta A109E.

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, said it appeared that the helicopter pilot made an emergency landing. The city was doused in heavy rain on Monday, with thick clouds causing delays of 90 minutes at the major airports.

"If you are a New Yorker you have a level of PTSD from 9/11,” said Mr Cuomo. “That’s immediately where your mind goes.

“But there is no indication at the moment of anything more than that. This is only preliminary, and it evolves all the time, but that’s what we know."

Nicolas Estevez was standing across the street from the building when a 30 cm piece of metal that appeared to be from the helicopter landed on the pavement just feet away.

The crash, which sent people streaming out of the building within seconds, reminded him of September 11, Estevez said.

"I saw the explosion and the smoke coming out," he said.

Donald Trump tweeted his admiration of the emergency services, saying they did a "phenomenal job", and saying the federal administration was ready to help in any way.

I have been briefed on the helicopter crash in New York City. Phenomenal job by our GREAT First Responders who are currently on the scene. THANK YOU for all you do 24/7/365! The Trump Administration stands ready should you need anything at all.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 10, 2019

It remained unclear why the helicopter was in the air. Helicopter sightseeing tours are popular, and television and photography crews fly frequently, but the visibility was extremely limited. Executives use helicopters to arrive in and leave the city, but they usually avoid going over central Manhattan.

There was not believed to be a helicopter landing pad on the roof.

New York – Helicopter crash

Workers inside the office building told of feeling a shaking sensation, and then being asked to evacuate. The stairwells were crowded, many said, yet people remained calm.

Morgan Aries, working inside the building on the 14th floor, said he felt a large tremor. They were told initially to stay in their seats, but after five minutes were told to leave.

"It was a little unnerving in the stairwell, as no one knew what was going on," he told CNN.

"We were all checking our phones, looking for updates. There were a lot of sirens, but we didn’t see any smoke or debris."

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A man arrested on suspicion of murdering a senior politician in Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats has links to Germany’s increasingly militant Far-right scene, local media reported last night.

Police in the central state of Hessen confirmed yesterday that they had detained a 45-year-old man on suspicion of murdering Walter Lübcke, the head of government in the city of Kassel.

Mr Lübcke, who had clashed with the far-Right over the immigration issue, was shot in the head on his garden patio late at night on June 2nd and died almost immediately.

Police insiders told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the suspect is a known Far-right extremist. Separately the tabloid Bild reported the suspect has a long criminal history and links to the far-Right.

The arrest came after Germany’s intelligence services recently warned of a growing potential for violence in the country’s fragmented Far-right scene, highlighting the danger of lone attackers radicalized over the internet.

Prosecutors in Hessen are set to give further details a press conference on Monday. They have not made any official response to the arrest other than to say that a DNA match led them to the suspect, but did not deny the media reports.

While police have yet to comment on a possible motive for the crime, colleagues of Mr Lübcke went public soon after the murder with their fears that a Far-right extremist was behind it.

How the rise of the populist far-Right has swept through Europe in 2017

The 65-year-old had become a hate figure for far-Right after he told a town hall meeting in 2015 that opponents of the government’s refugee policies were free to leave the country.

A video of his comments was spread online and Mr Lübcke briefly required police protection after he was inundated with death threats.

If suspicions that the murder was political are confirmed, it would be the most serious crime yet in a string of assassination attempts on proponents of Ms Merkel’s refugee policies.

A Dutch university is appointing only female academic staff for at least the next 18 months to improve its gender balance.

Eindhoven University of Technology, located in an area known for its high-tech business, currently has the Netherlands’ lowest proportion of women in its academic workforce.

After years of failed targets, the university has decided to take what it calls “bold” move: a new programme, the Irène Curie Fellowship – named after celebrated scientist Marie Curie’s daughter – has been established to appoint only female professors, associate and assistant professors.

“Our objectives to increase the numbers of women are years old, and we are not getting there,” said Ivo Jongsma, science information officer.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint the specific reason, but we are convinced that we have this implicit gender bias, and even women who are hiring think a man will do the job better.”

Rector Frank Baaijens is also convinced that “a diverse workforce performs better” and so for the next 18 months, 100 per cent of available jobs will be allocated to the Irène Curie programme, for female applicants.

The scheme will run for five years in total, and positions for the first six months will be advertised next month.

At a glance | Women in tech

Currently, said Mr Jongsma, only 16 per cent of full professors, 15 per cent of associate professors and 29 per cent of assistant professors are women: the university is aiming for at least 35 per cent.

Liza Mügge, director of the Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality was positive about the thoroughness of the programme and its support for spousal arrangements too – although she said it could be even more ambitious for associate professor ranks. 

“The risk with measures like quota is that positions are filled in the lower ranks of the organisation, [and] gendered case power imbalances stay intact,” she said. “This programme seems to invest in women at all levels, and candidates get a substantive start-up package.”

Devika Partiman, founder of the Vote for a Woman campaign – which has been credited with getting more women elected – added that it was nice to see more than symbolic words.

“They are finally admitting that the ‘old’ ways don’t work to get enough balance and give women enough of a chance. And they think it’s important enough to make this drastic step.”

The university added that it has taken legal advice to ensure the scheme comes under European dispensations to target recruitment towards people from “underrepresented groups”.

Fellows in the new programme will also be considered for a €100,000 research grant, and only if a good candidate cannot be recruited after six months of searching will men be considered.

However, some listeners to Dutch NPO Radio 1 were less enthusiastic. Klaas van der Lucht pointed out: “Fewer women study at this kind of university so it’s hardly strange that there are fewer female professors.”

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Hundreds of thousands of Czechs gathered in Prague on Sunday to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in the biggest protests in the country’s capital since the fall of Communism thirty years ago.

Organisers estimated that at least 250,000 people took part in the demonstration in Letná Park, chanting, cheering, and waving Czech flags and signs about democracy in scenes that echoed rallies held on the same site during 1989’s Velvet Revolution. 

The protests are the latest in a series demanding that Mr Babiš steps down amid several fraud and conflict of interest scandals, and come ahead of a no-confidence vote in the prime minister in the Czech parliament next week.

Co-organiser of the protests Benjamin Roll, a student who was yet to be born when the 1989 demonstrations were held, told The Telegraph: “The main difference [from 1989] is that we are not protesting against the system, we are protesting for the system, to protect democracy.

“The message to Babiš is: ‘The citizens are watching, and they care.’”

Many brought children to the protests, which had a peaceful festival feel on a sunny afternoon, with banners reading “Dear EU, don’t feed the oligarch”, "Resign!", and "We’re not here for the concert". 

People had travelled from across the country to attend the demonstration, including Marie Noemi, 68, who came from Brno, the Czech Republic’s second biggest city.

She also attended the rallies in 1989. “This is more sad, because we thought we had freedom forever,” she said. “Now we know that you have to keep fighting.” 

Mr Babiš, who has variously been dubbed the Czech Trump and “Babišconi”, after Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, is a billionaire businessman and one of the richest men in the Czech Republic, whose ANO party sailed to power in 2017 on a populist anti-establishment platform.   

But Mr Babiš’s political rise and his time in office have been marked by controversy, including rumours that he was a Communist-era informant for the secret police, which he denies.

In April this year, police recommended that the prime minister be formally charged for fraud over accessing a €2m EU-subsidy a decade ago.

Just after that announcement, the appointment of a new, loyalist Czech justice minister – who some fear could interfere in the prosecution process – sparked the initial round of protests. 

This month, Mr Babiš took another hit in the form of leaked preliminary results from an audit by the European Commission which found that he is in conflict of interest over his ongoing business links.

Mr Babiš transferred his farming, chemical, food and media business Agrofert, valued at $3.7 billion by Forbes, into trust funds on his election, but he remains the beneficiary of the trust funds – and the companies are among the country’s leading recipients of EU subsidies.   

Mr Babiš didn’t respond to requests for comment, but in the past has dismissed the fraud investigation as “politicized” and the EU audit as an “attack on the Czech Republic”, and said he will never resign, disregarding both the protests and a petition with 400,000 signatures also organised by Mr Roll’s A Million Moments for Democracy.   

However, alongside the protests, Babiš is now also facing political pressure, with a vote of no-confidence tabled by the five opposition parties in the Czech parliament next week.  

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Mr Babiš is expected to survive the vote thanks to the – for now – continued support of his government’s coalition partners. And despite the scandals, the 64-year old also remains the Czech Republic’s most popular politician, particularly outside liberal Prague. 

Mr Roll acknowledged Babiš’s continued popularity, but added: “The latest polls show he is also seen as the most…” He paused, searching for the English term. “Hated,” supplied a passerby. “Untrustworthy,” concluded Mr Roll.