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Justice secretary to review divorce laws after Times campaign



Justice secretary to review divorce laws after Times campaign

By Francis Gibb

The justice secretary has agreed to examine the case for reforming divorce laws that force couples into damaging and false allegations of blame.

The move by David Gauke comes after senior judicial figures called for an end to the “unjust” and “outdated” laws in support of a campaign by The Times.

Mr Gauke said: “I know The Times has campaigned vigorously for reform of family law, including fault-based divorce, and a number of respected figures have voiced their support for change. I acknowledge the strength of feeling on this issue and will study the evidence for change.” However he added that he would not “rush to a conclusion”.

His comments come as the government pledges to look at other reforms to the marriage laws. On Friday ministers indicated they would consider a review of the law to extend the right to enter civil partnerships to opposite sex couples, another plank of The Times’s Family Matters campaign to reform the marriage laws.

Tim Loughton, the Tory MP and former minister who won the government commitment to review the law on civil partnerships, said of the justice secretary’s pledge to look at divorce laws: “This is a positive move by Mr Gauke which I welcome.”

The MP for East Worthing & Shoreham, added: “We need to reform family law and make family arrangements fit for the 21st century.”

His private member’s bill to extend civil partnerships received a second reading on Friday. The government has agreed to a review although some campaigners are disappointed that this stops short of a firm commitment.

Sir Paul Coleridge, chairman of the Marriage Foundation, also welcomed the comments by Mr Gauke. “It’s excellent news that the justice secretary has committed to considering a root and branch reform of family law,” he said.

“The refusal up until now of government and MPs to put in place an alternative to the 1996 act 21 years on is both pusillanimous and a total abrogation of duty.

“We need a full public and parliamentary debate rather than forcing judges to continue reinterpreting the law in light of changes to our society in the past 50 years.”

Several legal figures have joined the calls for reform of what they call the “antediluvian, damaging” 50-year-old divorce laws.

They include Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the lord chancellor to two prime ministers, and Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former lord justice of appeal and president of the High Court family division. Lord Mackay said: “I am delighted that the new lord chancellor has indicated that he will look at the evidence for change.

“It is now over 20 years since parliament, by a large majority in the House of Commons, passed a bill removing the need for making allegations of fault in order to obtain a divorce reasonably quickly.” The bill was never implemented.

Lady Butler-Sloss, a former president of the High Court family division, added: “I am delighted if the justice secretary took forward and looked at the proposals for a change in the seriously out of date fault law.”

The Family Matters campaign calls for the abolition of the need to allege fault or blame during divorce proceedings, plus reform of the way maintenance payments are awarded to end the so-called “meal ticket for life”, and statutory backing for prenuptial contracts.

Rich Russians ask Kremlin if they can leave Britain

By Tom Parfitt

Wealthy Russians in Britain have written to President Putin to ask if they can return home without fear of arrest as the government tightens the screw on oligarchs suspected of corruption.

Boris Titov, Russia’s “business tsar”, said that a list of more than ten businessmen who wanted to leave London had been passed to the Kremlin.

“It’s with the president,” he said. “As yet the list is not final as we continue to receive applications.” He did not name the Russians who had asked to be considered for safe repatriation.

Mr Titov, 57, was speaking in London after The Times revealed on Saturday that the High Court was preparing to issue new unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) to freeze and recover the property of individuals unable to explain how they came to acquire assets in Britain valued at more than £50,000.

Ben Wallace, the security minister, said he wanted to crack down on criminals and corrupt politicians like the Russians in London depicted in the BBC drama McMafia.

Mr Titov said the people who wanted to return home to Moscow were those “who managed to leave [Russia] and not end up in a pre-trial detention centre”. They had then become the subjects of criminal investigation in Russia and had remained on wanted lists for years, he told the Tass news agency.

“This can go on for years and decades. Some people have been living [away] for 20 years and cannot come home because a criminal case was opened,” he added. “There are no longer any accusations towards them, even Interpol has removed them from the wanted list, but the case in Moscow continues to hang over them.”

Russian media said that Mr Titov held a meeting with about 40 Russian businesspeople in London on Saturday. It is not known if any are on the list. They included Ilya Yurov, former chairman of Trust Bank, and Georgy Trefilov, former co-owner of the Marta holding, both wanted in Russia.

Yevgeny Chichvarkin, the flamboyant former owner of the mobile phone retailer Yevroset, confirmed that he was present at the meeting but said a list was not discussed. “I think that this is a simulation of pre-election activity,” he told Moscow’s Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Mr Chichvarkin, 43, has lived in London since leaving Russia in 2008. He was later charged there with extortion and kidnapping. Prosecutors closed the cases against him in 2011.

In October last year he said that while Mr Putin was in power he would return to Moscow “only in a coffin”.

Mr Titov, who is expected to run as a minor candidate in Russia’s presidential election in March, was made the country’s business commissioner by Mr Putin in 2012. He criticised the introduction of UWOs, saying they would damage London’s reputation as a refuge for affluent foreigners.

“This new form of treating the country’s residents is a very bad signal,” Mr Titov said. “It shows that the UK’s political leadership has begun to play a completely new policy, starting a fight against the wealthy, so the country will lose this status of haven for the rich.”

The commissioner, who lived in Britain in the 1990s, said he would struggle to produce paperwork for his own “apartment on the edge of London” if it was demanded of him.

Speaking on his visit to London, he insisted the city benefited from granting sanctuary to the world’s wealthy: “For many decades, the UK lived by granting tax and civil shelters to many rich people; London developed so quickly and dynamically mostly because many rich people from Russia, China and Arab countries came here.”

It was unclear what kind of candidates have asked Mr Putin for a potential amnesty. Several prominent tycoons have been charged since leaving Russia.

One of the most prominent, Andrey Borodin, former president of the Bank of Moscow, moved to Britain in 2011 after an investigation into an alleged massive fraudulent loan deal was launched. He bought a property near Henley-on-Thames for £140 million.

Mr Borodin received political asylum in 2013 and has criticised the Russian authorities, saying the fraud allegation was fabricated after he resisted a state takeover of his bank. However, given the scale of allegations against him he is not expected to be on the list.

Anti-corruption campaigners in Britain have said Russian and Azerbaijani government officials with property in London are more likely to come under scrutiny than opponents of the Kremlin.

By Nicholas Fandos

WASHINGTON — As Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee backed away on Sunday from President Trump’s claim that a newly released memo vindicates him in the Russia investigation, Democrats pressed for the release of their own classified rebuttal, with a vote expected on Monday on whether to make it public.

The memo that the panel’s Republicans released on Friday claims that federal law enforcement officials abused their powers to spy on a former Trump campaign official. In the days since its release, members of the two parties have clashed sharply over its import: While some Republicans say it shows evidence of bias in the Russia inquiry from the start, Democrats have denounced it as a misleading tactic to undermine the investigation and protect Mr. Trump.

Republicans on the committee voted against releasing the Democratic rebuttal memo last Monday at the same time they chose to initiate the release of their own three-and-a-half-page document. But several of those Republicans, as well as the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, have indicated that they now favor releasing the Democratic memo, as long as it has been scrubbed of sensitive national security information.

Democrats have said their 10-page memo corrects mischaracterizations by the Republicans and adds crucial context to actions by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department in obtaining a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to wiretap the former Trump aide, Carter Page.

The Republican memo was released after Mr. Trump rejected pleas from national security officials and declined to invoke national security concerns to block it. The president has enthusiastically embraced the Republican document and claimed on Saturday that it “totally vindicates” him.

 

 

By NICHOLAS FANDOS

WASHINGTON — As Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee backed away on Sunday from President Trump’s claim that a newly released memo vindicates him in the Russia investigation, Democrats pressed for the release of their own classified rebuttal, with a vote expected on Monday on whether to make it public.

The memo that the panel’s Republicans released on Friday claims that federal law enforcement officials abused their powers to spy on a former Trump campaign official. In the days since its release, members of the two parties have clashed sharply over its import: While some Republicans say it shows evidence of bias in the Russia inquiry from the start, Democrats have denounced it as a misleading tactic to undermine the investigation and protect Mr. Trump.

Republicans on the committee voted against releasing the Democratic rebuttal memo last Monday at the same time they chose to initiate the release of their own three-and-a-half-page document. But several of those Republicans, as well as the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, have indicated that they now favor releasing the Democratic memo, as long as it has been scrubbed of sensitive national security information.

Democrats have said their 10-page memo corrects mischaracterizations by the Republicans and adds crucial context to actions by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department in obtaining a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to wiretap the former Trump aide, Carter Page.

The Republican memo was released after Mr. Trump rejected pleas from national security officials and declined to invoke national security concerns to block it. The president has enthusiastically embraced the Republican document and claimed on Saturday that it “totally vindicates” him.

The Democratic document, if the Intelligence Committee votes to release it, would be subject to the same review by the president. An official said on Sunday that the White House was open to releasing it pending an examination to protect intelligence sources and methods.

“Generally speaking, we’re open to considering any document the House Intel Committee submits to us for declassification along the lines that the Nunes memo was considered,” said a White House spokesman, Raj Shah, referring to Representative Devin Nunes of California, who spearheaded the Republican memo as the Intelligence Committee chairman.

The Democratic memo is said to contend that the F.B.I. was more forthcoming with the surveillance court than Republicans had claimed. Republicans allege that the bureau did not disclose to the court that information from a former British spy, Christopher Steele, that was used in the warrant application had been partly financed by the Democratic National Committee and lawyers for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

People familiar with the document have said it also rebuts Republican claims that Andrew G. McCabe, the deputy director of the F.B.I. at the time, had told the Intelligence Committee late last year that the agency would not have sought a wiretap of Mr. Page without Mr. Steele’s dossier of information.

Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, a senior Democrat on the committee, said on Sunday that Americans needed to see the Democratic document.

“What we will learn is that it is not true that this FISA warrant was awarded solely on the basis of the Steele dossier,” Mr. Himes said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We will also learn that the F.B.I., because they are very careful people, didn’t mislead the judge, that the judge had some sense that this information came out of a political context.”

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Senate Democrat, told Mr. Trump in a letter that any move to block the memo would “confirm the American people’s worst fears” that the release of the Republican document was intended solely to undermine the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

House Republicans had been promoting their secret memo for weeks, with some arguing that it would fundamentally reshape the public’s view of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. Mr. Trump, who has routinely referred to the investigation as a “witch hunt,” characterized the memo as a damning indictment of the inquiry.

But even though the president said the memo had vindicated him, in reality it did nothing to clear him of either collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice — the lines of inquiry being pursued by Mr. Mueller. The memo in fact undermined some Republicans’ efforts to cast doubt on the roots of the investigation by confirming that the inquiry was already underway before law enforcement officials presented the Steele information in obtaining the warrant to conduct surveillance on Mr. Page.

On Sunday, several Republicans on the Intelligence Committee distanced themselves from Mr. Trump’s statements. Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, who advised the Republican committee staff members who drafted the memo, said that he saw no substantive connection.

“I actually don’t think it has any impact on the Russia probe,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He added, “There is a Russia investigation without a dossier.”

Representative Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican who also sits on the intelligence panel, echoed those remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“In my opinion, what we’re dealing with is a situation within our FISA court and how we process within our government agencies,” he said. “And I don’t think it really has anything to do with that,” he added, referring to the broader Russia inquiry.

The people familiar with the Democratic document say that it reveals that while the F.B.I. did not name the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign as having funded the Steele research, the bureau disclosed to the court that the information it had received from him was politically motivated. That, the Democratic memo says, gave the judge in the case the information he needed to make a decision about its usefulness.

The memo is also said to argue that Republicans distorted the testimony by Mr. McCabe, the F.B.I. official, and left out reams of other evidence included by the F.B.I. to support the bureau’s suspicions that Mr. Page was acting as an agent of Russia. Mr. McCabe in fact presented the material as part of a constellation of compelling evidence that raised serious suspicions about Mr. Page, a former Moscow-based banker who had been on the F.B.I.’s radar for years, according to those familiar with the memo.

Democrats have publicly called for the Republican-controlled committee to release a transcript of the interview with Mr. McCabe.

Georgia Morgan,

Simon Duke

Most of us have probably celebrated it at some point by having a ‘wee dram’ of whisky or tentatively tucking into some Haggis.But the origins behind Burns Night actually go back to the poetry of Scottish bard Robert Burns. His birth will be celebrated across the country with food, drink, speeches and of course renditions of Auld Lang Syne. You may be wondering why we celebrate it and where the traditions come from. Here's all you need to know.

When is Burns Night?

The wait is almost over if you’ve been itching to dig out your tartan Tam O’Shanter, See You Jimmy hat and recite some poetry as Burns Night is tonight. It falls on the same date each year with January 25 being significant as it was the day Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns was born. His most popular work is arguably Auld Lang Syne, which is sung at New Year's Eve celebrations in Scotland, parts of the United Kingdom, and other places around the world every time the clock strikes midnight.

What is Burns Night?

As its name suggests, the evening is a celebration of all things 'Rabbie Burns.' Most people choose to mark it with a Burns Supper which will include some hearty cuisine and speeches.

Most of us have probably celebrated it at some point by having a ‘wee dram’ of whisky or tentatively tucking into some Haggis.

But the origins behind Burns Night actually go back to the poetry of Scottish bard Robert Burns.

His birth will be celebrated across the country with food, drink, speeches and of course renditions of Auld Lang Syne.

You may be wondering why we celebrate it and where the traditions come from. Here's all you need to know.

When is Burns Night?

The wait is almost over if you’ve been itching to dig out your tartan Tam O’Shanter, See You Jimmy hat and recite some poetry as Burns Night is tonight.

It falls on the same date each year with January 25 being significant as it was the day Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns was born.

His most popular work is arguably Auld Lang Syne, which is sung at New Year's Eve celebrations in Scotland, parts of the United Kingdom, and other places around the world every time the clock strikes midnight.

Best Burns Night recipes and deals on haggis, whisky and more.

Your menu

Potato wafers with smoked salon watercress

Haggis, clapshot and whisky sauce

Scotch

Cranachan

The feast will typically include haggis, a type of sausage prepared in a sheep’s stomach that is minced with onion, oatmeal, suet (raw beef or lamb fat), spices, and salt, mixed with stock.

Those celebrating also have mashed neeps and tatties which are turnips, swedes and potatoes.

Of course as an accompaniment to the meal, Scotch whiskey is the ideal drink.

For dessert many people will delve into the traditional Scottish cook book and serve up cranachan (a mixture of whipped cream, whisky, honey and fresh raspberries, with toasted oatmeal) or Tipsy Laird (whisky trifle) followed by oatcakes and cheese. Traditional and formal Scottish celebrations will also often see the meal presented.

 

 

By Jessica Winter

Every society has its own signals—the hanky code, the safety pin—and in this one, it’s the bag. About the size of a Birkin, if a Birkin came in an easy-wipe microfiber most closely associated with drugstore umbrellas, and only in black. The fellowship of the bag provides a tacit solidarity, even an intimacy, however fleeting. Members of its Manhattan and Brooklyn chapters lock amused eyes in elevators; they nod and smile ruefully as they pass each other in the street. One might spot another as she waits outside a workplace’s always-occupied “wellness room” and beckon her instead toward a secret storage closet, equipped with a comfy chair and—more crucially—a door that locks. On public transport, an emeritus member might give up her seat to a downtrodden carrier of the bag, given the likelihood that she was up unusually early that day, or will be up unusually late.

The bag is just one component of the product known as the Medela Pump in Style Advanced Breast Pump with On the Go Tote. Inside the On the Go Tote can be found a small cooler that holds up to four bottles, along with the electric pump, an A.C. adapter, and a jumble of plastic parts and tubes that must be disassembled, washed, sterilized in a microwave, cooled and dried, and then reassembled after each use. It may be theoretically possible to pump in style, but breast-feeding does not readily lend itself to automation: where a baby’s mouth presses intelligently on the breast to release milk from the duct, the Medela employs a suction method abetted by a hard, ill-fitting breast shield with a bottle dangling from it. The suction pulls and stretches the breast like it’s taffy, except that taffy doesn’t have nerve endings. Some women manage to strap on the shields using a customized bra, a gently bovine parody of Madonna’s cone-bra ensemble that frees the user’s hands for some desktop multitasking. But this setup requires a near-ideal marriage of bra and breast, a union that is difficult to achieve even under less encumbered circumstances. Without it, the mother must hold the shields in place, hunched and staring into space for up to twenty minutes per session, while “The Daily” floats up from her iPhone over the HENGH-ughgh HENGH-ughgh HENGH-ughgh of the pump’s motor. When the pumping mother doesn’t have a finger free to scroll through pictures of her baby, at least she has Michael Barbaro’s “Hm!”s to stimulate her oxytocin flow.

The Medela pump has competitors available from Ameda, Philips Avent, and others, but the fellowship of the bag underscores the company’s dominance. Eighty per cent of hospitals in the United States and the United Kingdom stock Medela’s pumps, and its sales increased thirty-four per cent in the two years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which mandated coverage of lactation services, including pumps. New parents can be paralyzed by the paradox of choice amid the glut of strollers, car seats, cribs, baby carriers, and high chairs on the market; Medela’s ubiquity can help give them one fewer decision to make—the fellowship of the bag offers safety in numbers.

Still, if given more alternatives, it’s safe to say that nursing mothers would try them. “Shouldn’t the breast pump be as elegant as an iPhone and as quiet as a Prius by now?” asked an article in the Times, in 2014, a much-circulated cri de coeur that helped lead to a breast-pump hackathon at M.I.T. later that year. Nearly four million American women will give birth in 2017, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that they try to breast-feed for at least twelve months. Why don’t they have a slew of pumps to choose from?

Part of the answer can be found in a new Bloomberg piece, by Emily Chang and Ellen Huet, about a startup, the California–based Naya Health Inc., that makes a smart breast pump. “The Naya’s soft suction cup mimics the feel of a baby’s mouth and distributes the suction over a broader area of a woman’s breast,” Chang and Huet write. According to the company’s founder, Janica Alvarez, “the Naya delivers 30 percent more breast milk and is 20 percent faster than alternatives, thanks to a unique water-based system,” the writers continue. “The company is also planning to sell a smart bottle that will be able to track the volume, calorie count and fat content of breast milk and inputs them into an app.” Reading these words, I began levitating, and also wondering how I could nominate Alvarez for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Venture capitalists, however, do not appear to share my enthusiasm for breast-pump #disruption, perhaps because the industry is ninety-three per cent male. According to Bloomberg, Alvarez initially raised about $6.5 million from investors. To put that number in perspective, it’s about the same as what Twist, the defunct iPhone app designed to let your friends know you were running late, raised back in 2012. Or put it this way: Juicero raised a hundred and twenty million dollars. But Naya “recently hit a wall” with funding, and turned to a Kickstarter campaign to keep the lights on. Alvarez told Bloomberg that investors commented on her body and questioned her ability to run a startup while raising three small children. She recalls one pitch meeting where investors looked at a porn site, and another where a V.C. rep refused to touch herproduct, calling it “disgusting”—which is, incidentally, the same adjective President Trump used to describe a lawyer who took a planned break during a deposition to pump milk for her infant. Neither our political nor our entrepreneurial leaders, it seems, are poised to help resolve the conflicts and contradictions created by too-brief maternity leaves, A.A.P. guidelines, and technological shortfalls.

Even were she not pushing a product that somehow both titillated and repulsed her potential investors, Alvarez faced an uphill climb. Companies led by women received less than five per cent of all V.C. funding in 2016. According to CNN, a study conducted between 2011 and 2013 “found that teams comprised entirely of men were four times more likely to get VC funding than those that had even one woman on their executive team.” A Swedish study recently noted that when venture capitalists talk about fledgling entrepreneurs, the men are described as “promising” while the women are “inexperienced.” Alvarez’s case goes further in defining what “experience” really means to the V.C. community: a woman who breast-fed her children seeks venture capital for products to serve women who breast-feed their children, and yet both her womanhood and her children—for Naya Health, an R. & D. component unto themselves—are used against her.

Some of the roadblocks nursing mothers encounter, in any setting, are due to a kind of innocent ignorance. (Once upon a time at an offsite meeting, a lovely and well-meaning office manager—a woman in her early twenties—proposed that I pump in a shower stall.) Alvarez’s tale of the V.C. gauntlet is something else. “I felt like I was in the middle of a fraternity,” she said—and of course, she was. Whether it’s breast pumps or period-tracking apps, the gender-based idiocy of Silicon Valley long ago lost its shock value; what’s both surprising and incalculable is just how much money its kingmakers are leaving on the table by shunning women and mothers and babies. Breast pumps make up a seven-hundred-million-dollar market, with ample room to grow, but for venture capitalists, perhaps the pleasures and comforts of sexism are priceless. Nursing mothers, meanwhile, lug the industry’s indifference around in a bag.

 

 

By Russell Shorto

President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord was perplexing to Europeans for many reasons, not least of which was their determination that climate change represents a for-profit opportunity. In particular, the Dutch, who more or less invented water management in Europe, a millennium or so ago, have developed a specialty in climate-change-related innovation.

Four years ago, Jurriaan Ruys was a partner at McKinsey, focussing on global sustainability issues. The Dutchman had been an environmentalist since the age of eight, when he went door to door handing out stickers to save the sea turtles, but he became frustrated by the abstract nature of his work—flying around the world, advising governments on long-term climate strategy. Eventually, he up and quit. Ruys had trained as an engineer, and he was convinced that the current moment, thanks in part to instantaneous communication, was one in which grassroots solutions to yawning environmental problems could yield results. He decided to focus on desertification, which is both a symptom and an intensifier of climate change. It’s also one of the most multilayered problems on Earth, the results of which lead to human misery, political strife, and war. For the next year, Ruys hunkered down in a storage space, tinkering furiously, making frequent trips to the local hardware store.

The result of this freelance engineering is a low-tech invention that is succeeding beyond Ruys’s expectations. Three years after he emerged with his prototype, his invention has been adopted in Mexico, Cameroon, Malawi, Peru, Chile, Spain, Italy, Greece, Israel, China, Dubai, and the U.S. The company he formed, Land Life, with Eduard Zanen, an entrepreneur, has twenty employees who are working with the U.N., the World Wildlife Fund, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the U.S. National Park Service, and in remote villages and refugee camps. José Luis Rubio, the vice chair of the European Soil Bureau Network, called Ruys’s invention “remarkable” in its results and told me that it represents “an innovative method” to restoring vegetation to barren landscapes.

So what did Ruys invent? One way to restore degraded soil is to plant trees—lots of them. The catch is that seeds and saplings won’t grow in such soil, but if a young tree becomes large enough that its roots can reach groundwater it stands an excellent chance of thriving. Previous efforts often followed two paths: cumbersome and impractical irrigation techniques, or tossing a few million seeds out of an airplane and hoping for the best. Ruys’s innovation was to develop a doughnut-shaped waxed-paper cocoon, the base of which is buried underground. It contains the sapling, enough water to sustain the tree while it establishes a root system, and a small lozenge of beneficial fungi. The cocoon is cheap, easy to plant, scalable—a community can plant hundreds of acres of them in a short time—and biodegradable. Rubio told me that in the desert regions of Spain where his organization is working, other efforts have resulted in a success rate of ten to twenty per cent; “the cocoon,” he said, “is providing around ninety-five per cent survival rate of trees.”

In its three years of existence, Ruys’s company has planted a quarter of a million trees in twenty countries. Its current projects include reforestation in China, renewing mesquite forests that have been harvested for charcoal and reëstablishing the trees in which monarch butterflies nest in Mexico, planting forty thousand trees for shade and wood fuel at a refugee camp in Cameroon, and restoring ecosystems in Italy, Spain, and Greece.

Maybe more interesting than Ruys’s invention is the way he has worked himself into and around the bureaucratic complexities of the issue. The cheapness of the product and the ease of planting helped him to leapfrog over old-school N.G.O.s and establish direct relationships with villages. Olaf Tchongrack, an administrator with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told me that his people in the field were impressed precisely because of the cocoon’s simplicity: “It’s actually an ancient technique. What’s innovative is they’ve found a way to industrialize it and keep costs low.” Its success has gotten the attention of governments, the U.N., and private investors. At the moment, the company isn’t able to fill, or even respond to, all the requests it is getting for the cocoons.

The cocoon is a bit deceptive in its seeming simplicity: a good deal of high-tech thinking went into it. “Everyone likes biodegradable,” Ruys said, “but it’s actually a tricky concept. You want a thing to work over a period of time, then completely disappear. It’s hard to do, which is why, as consumers, we still buy plastic.” Ruys solved the problem with a particular kind of wax coating that dissolves at the right time. He also spent a lot of time developing a wick that would precisely feed water to the plant.

His company’s approach is similarly deceptive in its apparent simplicity. As a former McKinsey partner, he is used to thinking at a macro level, and his true goal, he told me, is nothing less than “to professionalize nature restoration.” Where agribusiness is highly professional, nature restoration, he said, remains “a charity.” He wants this to change. “Agriculture has developed satellite technology, G.P.S. locationing, remote sensors. We want to bring all of that to bear,” he said. Land Life is working on an app that uses Google Earth and other existing technologies to allow for real-time monitoring of every one of the trees it is planting.

Ruys and his partner insisted from the start that Land Life should be a for-profit company. As of this year, it is breaking even on revenue of approximately 2.5 million euros, with clients ranging from N.G.O.s to private companies to an Israeli businessman who has paid Land Life to plant trees on both sides of the Israel-Palestine border. Ruys is part of a generation of Europeans who believe that tackling climate change has to be commercialized if it is to succeed. And, as dire as the ecological threats are, he finds the nature-restoration field to be wide open. The big aid agencies, he said, are receptive to new ideas in ways they never were before, and so are communities in need of reforestation. “I see this as a very doable technological challenge,” he said. “And I see a generation that sees it as a no-brainer, that is ready to buy a product called ‘fix this planet.’ ”

 

Justice secretary to review divorce laws after Times campaign

By Francis Gibb

The justice secretary has agreed to examine the case for reforming divorce laws that force couples into damaging and false allegations of blame.

The move by David Gauke comes after senior judicial figures called for an end to the “unjust” and “outdated” laws in support of a campaign by The Times.

Mr Gauke said: “I know The Times has campaigned vigorously for reform of family law, including fault-based divorce, and a number of respected figures have voiced their support for change. I acknowledge the strength of feeling on this issue and will study the evidence for change.” However he added that he would not “rush to a conclusion”.

His comments come as the government pledges to look at other reforms to the marriage laws. On Friday ministers indicated they would consider a review of the law to extend the right to enter civil partnerships to opposite sex couples, another plank of The Times’s Family Matters campaign to reform the marriage laws.

Tim Loughton, the Tory MP and former minister who won the government commitment to review the law on civil partnerships, said of the justice secretary’s pledge to look at divorce laws: “This is a positive move by Mr Gauke which I welcome.”

The MP for East Worthing & Shoreham, added: “We need to reform family law and make family arrangements fit for the 21st century.”

His private member’s bill to extend civil partnerships received a second reading on Friday. The government has agreed to a review although some campaigners are disappointed that this stops short of a firm commitment.

Sir Paul Coleridge, chairman of the Marriage Foundation, also welcomed the comments by Mr Gauke. “It’s excellent news that the justice secretary has committed to considering a root and branch reform of family law,” he said.

“The refusal up until now of government and MPs to put in place an alternative to the 1996 act 21 years on is both pusillanimous and a total abrogation of duty.

“We need a full public and parliamentary debate rather than forcing judges to continue reinterpreting the law in light of changes to our society in the past 50 years.”

Several legal figures have joined the calls for reform of what they call the “antediluvian, damaging” 50-year-old divorce laws.

They include Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the lord chancellor to two prime ministers, and Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former lord justice of appeal and president of the High Court family division. Lord Mackay said: “I am delighted that the new lord chancellor has indicated that he will look at the evidence for change.

“It is now over 20 years since parliament, by a large majority in the House of Commons, passed a bill removing the need for making allegations of fault in order to obtain a divorce reasonably quickly.” The bill was never implemented.

Lady Butler-Sloss, a former president of the High Court family division, added: “I am delighted if the justice secretary took forward and looked at the proposals for a change in the seriously out of date fault law.”

The Family Matters campaign calls for the abolition of the need to allege fault or blame during divorce proceedings, plus reform of the way maintenance payments are awarded to end the so-called “meal ticket for life”, and statutory backing for prenuptial contracts.


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