Bismarck was less circumspect in his conduct of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Seeing the opportunity to unify Germany’s loose confederations against an outside enemy, Bismarck stirred political tensions between France and Prussia, famously editing a telegram from William I to make both countries feel insulted by the other. The French declared war, but the Prussians and their German allies won handily. Prussia levied an indemnity, annexed the French border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and crowned William emperor of a unified Germany (the Second Reich) in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles—a tremendous insult to the French.

In the 1880s Bismarck set aside his conservative impulses to counter the socialists by creating Europe’s first modern welfare state, establishing national healthcare (1883), accident insurance (1884) and old age pensions (1889). Bismarck also hosted the 1885 Berlin Conference that ended the “Scramble for Africa,” dividing the continent between the European powers and establishing German colonies in Cameroon, Togoland and East and Southwest Africa.

William I died in 1888 and was succeeded by his son Frederick III and then his grandson William II, both of whom Bismarck found difficult to control. In 1890 the new king forced Bismarck out. William II was left in control of a flourishing unified state but was ill-equipped to maintain Bismarck’s carefully manipulated balance of international rivalries. Respected and honored by the time of his death eight years later, Bismarck quickly became a quasi-mythic figure invoked by political leaders calling for strong German leadership—or for war.

In 1881, Wilhelm married Princess Augusta Victoria (1858-1921) of Schleswig-Holstein. The couple would go on to have seven children

Wilhelm damaged his political position in a number of ways. He meddled in German foreign policy on the basis of his emotions, resulting in incoherence and inconsistency in German relations with other nations. He also made a number of public blunders, the worst of which was The Daily Telegraph affair of 1908. Wilhelm gave an interview to the London-based newspaper in which he offended the British by saying such things as: “You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares.”

The kaiser supported the plans of Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930), his chief admiral, who maintained that Germany could gain diplomatic power over Britain by stationing a fleet of warships in the North Sea. By 1914, however, the naval buildup had caused severe financial problems for Wilhelm’s government.

Wilhelm’s behavior during the crisis that led to war in August 1914 is still controversial. There is little doubt that he had been broken psychologically by the criticism that followed the Eulenburg-Harden and Daily Telegraph scandals; he suffered an episode of depression in 1908. In addition, the kaiser was out of touch with the realities of international politics in 1914; he thought that his blood relationships to other European monarchs were sufficient to manage the crisis that followed the June 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914) in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Although Wilhelm signed the order for German mobilization following pressure from his generals–Germany declared war against Russia and France during the first week of August 1914– he is reported to have said, “You will regret this, gentlemen.”

In late 1918, popular unrest in Germany (which had suffered greatly during the war) combined with a naval mutiny convinced civilian political leaders that the kaiser had to abdicate to preserve order. In fact, Wilhelm’s abdication was announced on November 9, 1918, before he had actually consented to it. He agreed to leave when the leaders of the army told him he had lost their support as well. On November 10, the former emperor took a train across the border into the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war. He eventually bought a manor house in the town of Doorn, and remained there for the remainder of his life.

After two decades in exile, he died in the Netherlands on June 4, 1941, at the age of 82.

Unlike in communism, a socialist economic system rewards individual effort and innovation. Social democracy, the most common form of modern socialism, focuses on achieving social reforms and redistribution of wealth through democratic processes, and can co-exist alongside a free-market capitalist economy.

Led by Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks put Marxist theory into practice with the Russian Revolution of 1917, which led to the creation of the world’s first communist government. Communism existed in the Soviet Union until its fall in 1991. Today it exists in China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam—although in reality, a purely communist state has never existed. Such countries can be classified as communist because in all of them, the central government controls all aspects of the economic and political system. But none of them have achieved the elimination of personal property, money or class systems that the communist ideology requires.

In the United States, socialism has not historically enjoyed as much success as a political movement. Its peak came in 1912, when Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs won 6 percent of the vote. But at the same time, U.S. programs once considered socialist, such as Medicare and social security, have been integrated into American life.

An icon of the Industrial Revolution broke onto the scene in the early 1700s, when Thomas Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine. Called the “atmospheric steam engine,” Newcomen’s invention was originally applied to power the machines used to pump water out of mine shafts. 

Just as steam engines needed coal, steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more of this relatively cheap energy source. The demand for coal skyrocketed throughout the Industrial Revolution and beyond, as it would be needed to run not only the factories used to produce manufactured goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.

In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830 similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the industrial hubs of Manchester and Liverpool. By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in wide use, carrying goods along Britain’s rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.

The latter part of the Industrial Revolution also saw key advances in communication methods, as people increasingly saw the need to communicate efficiently over long distances. In 1837, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first commercial telegraphy system, even as Samuel Morse and other inventors worked on their own versions in the United States. Cooke and Wheatstone’s system would be used for railroad signalling, as the speed of the new trains had created a need for more sophisticated means of communication.

Though many people in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the Industrial Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, as the rise of large factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades. This rapid urbanization brought significant challenges, as overcrowded cities suffered from pollution, inadequate sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water.

The beginning of industrialization in the United States is usually pegged to the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by the recent English immigrant Samuel Slater. Slater had worked at one of the mills opened by Richard Arkwright (inventor of the water frame) mills, and despite laws prohibiting the emigration of textile workers, he brought Arkwright’s designs across the Atlantic. He later built several other cotton mills in New England, and became known as the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.”

By the end of the 19th century, with the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway, the United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems. By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.

He welcomed the outbreak of the French Revolution in July 1789, when he was a month short of his 20th birthday—not just because he was a republican, but also because by removing class barriers it opened up new prospects politically and personally. But when he found himself in revolutionary Paris five years later, 26-year-old general Napoleon faced an alarming world governed by two things he had never had much experience of: money and sex.

The lure of making money briefly eclipsed his military ambitions as he speculated on buying and selling the properties of émigré or guillotined nobles, and importing often-smuggled luxuries such as coffee, sugar and silk stockings. Although his dislike of what he called “men of business” never left him, neither did his determination never to be short of ready cash. When he came to power he always had with him a cassette of gold coins. He also saw money as the key to achieving the goals he set himself, creating new institutions and building public works.

While he was on the retreat from Moscow, a group of generals tried to seize power by announcing he had been killed in battle. The plot failed, but it revealed to Napoleon that his whole edifice of imperial glory had feet of clay. On hearing of his death, nobody reacted as they would have had he been a real monarch—by saying ‘the Emperor is dead, long live the Emperor’ and proclaiming his son’s accession to the throne.

As appalled as he was by Josephine’s promiscuity, Napoleon was entranced by her supposedly aristocratic background. He would be even more excited by that of his second wife, the Austrian archduchess Marie-Louise. As she was a great-niece of the late Marie-Antoinette, he would refer to his ‘uncle’ king Louis XVI and reveled in the fact that his father-in-law was the Emperor of Austria.

He continued to build on this image so successfully that he could turn a less-than-glorious episode in Egypt into the stuff of legend and persuade many in France that he was the predestined savior of the nation. This enabled him to seize power and begin rebuilding France from the ruins of the Revolution.

While he was destroying the might of Austria, Russia and Prussia by his spectacular victories at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, he received reports from Paris that people were longing for an end to the fighting so they could get on with their lives. By then, his extraordinary luck, leading from triumph to triumph, had begun to make him believe his own propaganda, that he was the darling of destiny. Yet the aura of glory could not mask an underlying frailty.

His sexual insecurity and distrust of women only deepened his unwillingness or inability to engage with others, hampering his diplomatic relations, which he saw as showdowns in which he had to be seen to win. He could never see that a judicious concession might win him greater advantages; had he prolonged the peace of Amiens by allowing Britain to keep Malta in 1803, for example, he could have used the respite to reinforce his position, rebuild France’s economy and his navy.

He went on fighting a battle that was long lost, desperate for a resounding victory he believed might redeem what, for all the bluster, was his irredeemably low self-esteem. Ironically, it was only after he had lost his throne and was even denied the courtesy of being addressed as a monarch by his British jailers on the island of Saint Helena, that he managed to recover this and project an image of grandeur in defeat that still fascinates people today.

The device soon became known as the “guillotine” after its advocate, and more than 10,000 people lost their heads by guillotine during the Revolution, including Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette, the former king and queen of France.

the last execution by guillotine occurred in 1977. In September 1981, France outlawed capital punishment altogether, thus abandoning the guillotine forever.

It codified several branches of law, including commercial and criminal law, and divided civil law into categories of property and family

All male citizens were also granted equal rights under the law and the right to religious dissent, but colonial slavery was reintroduced. The laws were applied to all territories under Napoleon’s control and were influential in several other European countries and in South America.

On April 6, 1814, Napoleon, then in his mid-40s, was forced to abdicate the throne. With the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was exiled to Elba, a Mediterranean island off the coast of Italy.

The new king, Louis XVIII, fled, and Napoleon embarked on what came to be known as his Hundred Days campaign.

Upon Napoleon’s return to France, a coalition of allies—the Austrians, British, Prussians and Russians—who considered the French emperor an enemy began to prepare for war. Napoleon raised a new army and planned to strike preemptively, defeating the allied forces one by one before they could launch a united attack against him.

Two days later, on June 18, Napoleon led his army of some 72,000 troops against the 68,000-man British army, which had taken up a position south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo.

Although Napoleon’s troops mounted a strong attack against the British, the arrival of the Prussians turned the tide against the French. The French emperor’s outnumbered army retreated in chaos.

Ultimately, the Battle of Waterloo marked the end of Napoleon’s storied military career. He reportedly rode away from the battle in tears.

Did you know? Today, the expression that someone has “met his Waterloo” means the person has suffered a decisive or final defeat or setback.

On June 22, 1815, Napoleon once again abdicated. That October, he was exiled to the remote, British-held island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic Ocean. He died there on May 5, 1821, at age 51, most likely from stomach cancer.

The cardinal believed these letters to be authentic and agreed to buy the necklace for the Queen. A late-night secret liaison was arranged in the garden of the Palace of Versailles, where the cardinal was to meet “the Queen.” In reality, La Motte sent a prostitute who resembled the Queen, called Nicole le Guay d'Oliva), who assured him of her forgiveness. Now completely convinced of his close relationship with the Queen, the cardinal contacted the jewelers, agreeing to pay for the necklace in installments.

The cardinal was arrested, along with La Motte, the forger, Villette, the prostitute, d’Oliva and Count Cagliostro, one of the cardinal’s clients, whom La Motte accused of having orchestrated the entire con.

Jeanne de la Motte, the adventuress at the heart of the story, was found guilty and sentenced to be whipped, branded and imprisoned for life in the Salpêtrière, a notorious prison for prostitutes. However, she managed to escape disguised as a boy and made her way to London where, in 1789, she published her memoirs. Unsurprisingly, she blamed Marie Antoinette for the whole affair.

Only a few years later, she would face the guillotine, the dying symbol of the corruption of the ancien régime. 

Trump has roundly denied accusations of racism. As President, he's faced blistering criticism over his public and private statements, like in 2017, when he blamed "both sides" after violence sparked by a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He also privately referred to some African nations as "s***hole countries" and lambasted the protests led overwhelmingly by black NFL players. Last year, the US House of Representatives voted to condemn the President's comments when he told four congresswoman of color to "go back" to where they came from.

This Washington Post-Ipsos poll was conducted online January 2-8, 2020 among a random national sample of 1,088 non-Hispanic black adults age 18 and over.

The legal team argues that the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, "alleges no crime at all, let alone 'high crimes and Misdemeanors,' as required by the Constitution." The team cited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's repeated denials that he felt any pressure from Trump as evidence that Trump did not abuse his power during the July 25 phone call.

Starr, the hard-charging prosecutor whose work led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment, and Dershowitz, the constitutional lawyer, will join Robert Ray, Starr's successor at the Office of Independent Counsel during the Clinton administration, on the defense team, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said earlier in a statement.

The President was especially fixated on having controversial defense attorney Dershowitz on the legal team. But Dershowitz has been telling his own associates he didn't want to participate in the President's trial, the source who is familiar with these conversations said. White House officials have applied a lot of pressure over the last several weeks to convince Dershowitz to join the team, sources familiar with the attorney's appointment said.

Sekulow has a long history working with Starr, going back to when Starr was solicitor general and Sekulow argued to the Supreme Court. Starr was a partner Cipollone's at Kirkland and Ellis.

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump's longtime personal counsel Jane Raskin and attorney Eric Herschmann will also supplement the President's impeachment legal team, Grisham said. All are expected to have speaking roles, people familiar with the matter told CNN.

When the President was presented with his final team by his lawyers, he was pleased with it and gave the ultimate sign off, but he had also previously been looped in on the idea of Starr and the others.

The legal team has been strategizing on how to make what are typically dry legal arguments more interesting by changing up who is delivering the message, in part to appease the President who has said privately he wants a show fit for television.

Acerbic, even curmudgeonly – his catalogue of America’s social ills is harsh but fair – Bacevich veers between the commonplace and the sarcastic. “The promotion of globalization included a generous element of hucksterism,” he writes, “the equivalent of labeling a large cup of strong coffee a ‘grande dark roast’ while referring to the server handing it to you as a ‘barista’.”

Even if the Donald Rumsfeld-endorsed, technology-friendly “Revolution in Military Affairs” only “purported to describe the culmination of a long evolutionary march toward perfection”, which great power today does not rely on technology for military might? And what, other than isolationism, “would preclude the possibility of another Vietnam”?

Yet “one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day”, as the bumper sticker read, and any leader is responsible for maintaining vigilance. Which threats can be ignored? Air piracy? Chemical weapons? Nuclear smuggling? Bacevich never offers what he would do to states harboring terrorists, even while noting failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some people saw what was happening and sought to answer the question Rabbit Angstrom asked and Bacevich cites: “Without the cold war, what’s the point of being an American?” They were ignored.

Despite Bacevich’s call for conversation on issues formerly “beyond the pale” such as abandoning globalism and “militarism”, his book has a fatal weakness: he never quite says what or who he is for. He is too good a historian not to know there was a tendency of “anti-anti-communism” during the cold war. Perhaps his book is about “anti-anti-Trumpism”. But “the pale” is there for a reason

...we’re asking readers, like you, to make a contribution in support of the Guardian’s open, independent journalism. This has been a turbulent decade across the world – protest, populism, mass migration and the escalating climate crisis. The Guardian has been in every corner of the globe, reporting with tenacity, rigour and authority on the most critical events of our lifetimes. At a time when factual information is both scarcer and more essential than ever, we believe that each of us deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.

We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

Nationalism can exploit these injustices but it cannot end them. While the Conservatives are the current beneficiaries of the revolt of the regions, their promise of a northern renaissance will have to mean more than love-bombing the regions with a few infrastructure projects and an airline rescue.

This widespread and rising dissatisfaction is the context for today’s populist nationalisms. The 19th- and 20th-century nationalism that underpinned anticolonial movements and the breakup of the imperial dynasties was driven by anger at cultural discrimination, political exclusion and the economic exploitation of one ethnic group by another.

Instead, we must deliver a radical alternative to nationalism. It must start with a plan to address economic insecurity. But it must also recognise that, in a multinational state that is asymmetric (83% of its voters lie in one nation) and where financial, political and administrative power is concentrated in just one city far to the south, the outlying nations and regions require new powers of initiative as decision-making centres – which, given our history as a unitary state, would be something akin to a British constitutional revolution.

The Treasury should also devolve decisions about the allocation of regional resources to new councils of the north and Midlands, comprising mayors, councillors and MPs. With proper financial backing, whether in research, science, technology, new industries or culture, cities and towns in every region – not just London – could become leaders for the UK, capitals in their own right.

In 2020, that means rediscovering the value of empathy and solidarity between nations and regions and the benefits that can flow from cooperation and sharing in pursuit of great causes: from jointly tackling climate change to offering the same floor of rights to universal health, social care and welfare services in every part of the UK.

None of this would have been attainable without our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are so grateful.

That night the temporary campground under the bridge swelled to the hundreds, including many who had fled with just the clothes on their backs and who were now sleeping in their cars. The discount department store sold out of tents that night, we were told. Many people had not intended to flee, but changed their minds when they saw the size and speed of the smoke column.

The next morning at the official evacuation centre it was easy to spot those whose houses had been lost. They walked around white-faced, desperate to talk to someone but wary of the notebook. I made friends with the animals: 250 horses held safe in the saleyards, countless dogs, five chickens laying eggs in the back of a Landrover. Shellshocked humans who did not want to talk about how they were doing told me about how their pets were faring, and then their kids, and then finally themselves.

My first fire callout this season was to the well-heeled Sydney suburb of Turramurra in November, where no property was lost, houses were doused in the delightfully coloured pink fire retardant and some departing firefighters handed us ice creams on their way out.

But of course an event of this size and drama cannot be covered solely from the office. The logistical challenges of putting reporters and photographers into fire zones hundreds of kilometres from their Sydney or Melbourne bases have been huge

In Kurrajong Heights, photographer Jessica Hromas and I met a strike team waiting for a fire to come up from the gorge and into the suburbs. A firefighter told us where to park our car – facing out and with doors unlocked – and said he’d give us a radio so he could tell us when to escape.

There has been a lot of anger and politics swirling around Australia’s bushfires, as well as a lot of facts – some relevant, some not, and some fake.

So while some of my colleagues have been delivering blistering and heart-wrenching narratives from the fire grounds, I’ve been knee deep in academic papers about bushfires, and conversations about the Forest Fire Danger Index and the Indian Ocean dipole.

As the fires took hold in NSW and continued in Queensland, a blame game emerged. These fires had little to do with the climate crisis, some were saying, but were down to “greenies” and their “policies” to stop hazard-reduction burning in forests and national parks.

I’ve spoken to I don’t know how many experts in their field over the last few months. I’ve disturbed conservationists and scientists on their holidays. One ecologist on Kangaroo Island was telling me what was going on while she and her children evacuated her house from the threat of a fire. The climate crisis comes up in every conversation.

We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

The WhatsApp exchanges show that Nunes aide Derek Harvey raised questions about foreign assistance to Ukraine in late March 2019.

Last month, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee included in their impeachment inquiry report phone records of calls exchanged between Nunes and Parnas and other allies of President Donald Trump.

Nunes admitted Wednesday to speaking on the phone with Parnas after previously saying such a conversation would have been "very unlikely."

Iran has also admitted shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet in error, killing 176 people. Amid anti-regime protests in Tehran, the threat of a US-Iran war has receded.

“They’re together sir,” Trump said he was told. “Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. ‘Two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They’re in the car, they’re in an armoured vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. Thirty seconds. Ten, nine, eight ...’

According to CNN, Trump told his audience in Florida the death of al-Muhandis meant the US took out “two for the price of one”. He also repeated an erroneous claim that the Iraqi was “the head of Hezbollah”. Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed militant group based in Lebanon.

CNN said the audio of Friday’s speech also included a complaint that Conan, a Belgian Malinois dog wounded in the Baghdadi raid, “became very famous” and “got more credit than I did”.

...we’re asking readers, like you, to make a contribution in support of the Guardian’s open, independent journalism. This has been a turbulent decade across the world – protest, populism, mass migration and the escalating climate crisis. The Guardian has been in every corner of the globe, reporting with tenacity, rigour and authority on the most critical events of our lifetimes. At a time when factual information is both scarcer and more essential than ever, we believe that each of us deserves access to accurate reporting with integrity at its heart.

We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

The team, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Mr Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, said they were challenging the impeachment on both procedural and constitutional grounds, claiming that the president did nothing wrong and had not been treated fairly.

"This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away," it added.

The filing on Saturday came a day after Mr Trump finalised his defence team, which includes special prosecutors from former President Bill Clinton's impeachment.

They said the president should be convicted and removed from office "to avoid serious and long term damage to our democratic values and the nation's security."

President Trump is accused of pressuring Ukraine to dig up damaging information on one of his main Democratic challengers for the presidency in 2020, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.

Mr Trump is also accused of obstructing Congress by refusing to co-operate with the congressional inquiry.

A two-thirds majority of 67 votes in the 100-seat Senate is required to convict and oust Mr Trump. But because there are only 47 Democrats (and 53 Republicans), the president is widely expected to be cleared.

A simple majority of senators - 51 - could also vote to end the trial should they wish.

Different species relate to fire in different ways, Costello explains. Wombats, for example, dig burrows to escape, while koalas climb into the canopy.

“When you do that, you get more productive landscapes, you get healthier plants and animals, you get regeneration, you discourage invasive elements, which are sometimes native species that might belong in the system next door.

Dr David Bowman is a professor of pyrogeography and fire science at the University of Tasmania. Bowman describes Indigenous fire management as “little fires tending the earth affectionately”.

In northern Australia, Indigenous land ownership is widespread. Caring for country and ranger programs in protected areas has delivered a degree of autonomy to traditional owners to walk the country, burning according to seasonal need and cultural knowledge.

Professor Bowman says it is possible to “blend Aboriginal with European and modern scientific approaches to create an opportunity for all land users and land owners”.

“These ‘right way’ fire days are getting fewer and fire behaviour is changing along the same lines as over east. Late season conditions are also driving more fires in unusual ways due to the climatic conditions we are currently facing.”

In the Kimberley, the Land council holds community fire planning meetings throughout the early dry season to ensure the correct people are burning their country.

“It was pretty bad before that happened,” Edwards says. “It was just fires running wild across huge tracts of north Australia that nobody was doing anything about.”

“If we want to manage our natural environment properly, we need to be doing prescribed burning. There’s so much cultural knowledge out there still, and it’s being totally ignored. There’s hundreds of Indigenous rangers out there now doing this work.”

The Coag national bushfire management policy includes a commitment to “promote Indigenous Australians’ use of fire”, but Indigenous fire groups like Firesticks Alliance say they need more resources to build capacity.

The Darwin centre for bushfire research at Charles Darwin University maps bushfires weekly. Since traditional burning was reintroduced on a large scale, the centre has collected enough data to show that the area of land destroyed by wildfires has more than halved, from 26.5m hectares in 2000, to just 11.5m hectares in 2019.

“Because in the end there’s two things which are important to [remember]: all humans have come from a fire management background in their cultures, it’s just that some cultures ended up obliterating that knowledge because of industrialisation.

“We need to encourage and promote the philosophy of Aboriginal fire practice because that’s going to be a really important pathway for sustainable fire management and also for healing because so many communities have been traumatised and shocked by the scale of the burning.”

“There’s all this canopy that’s been burnt away. We’ve got knowledge and techniques that can help heal that country in the future. It’s going to take some time. We’ve got probably two or three years before we can really be effective in some of that country because it needs to recover. But if we don’t get in there after that, then we miss our chance.”

You’ve read 5 articles in the last four months. More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. And this is only possible because we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

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No president has been convicted and removed: Clinton and Andrew Johnson survived Senate trials and Richard Nixon resigned before he could be formally impeached. On the BBC, Dershowitz was asked if he thought Trump was a good president and how he felt about potentially facilitating his re-election.

As the White House faces into the storm, Dershowitz will join a Trump legal team that also includes Ken Starr, who played a leading role in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Jay Sekulow, a Trump lawyer and regular media surrogate, and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, will also represent the president.

On Friday, it was reported that documents released by House Democrats showed that an aide to Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee and a key Trump ally, worked with Lev Parnas on approaches to Ukraine last year.

“I’m not going to allow my partisan views to impact my constitutional views and what I think is best for the long term survival of the constitution rather than the short-term partisan advantage of getting my person elected to be president.”

He also said that in the Senate trial he would be “only arguing on behalf of the constitution”. He would answer questions from senators, he said, but would have a “limited role”, as agreed with Trump.

Dershowitz answered: “Let me perfectly clear, I am an advocate … against impeachment. But I’m politically neutral, that is I would make the same argument whether it was a Democrat or a Republican. I don’t let my political preferences interfere with my constitutional analysis.”

More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. And this is only possible because we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

None of this would have been attainable without our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are so grateful.

Putin also has options to be speaker of the Duma (parliament) or leader of its main party, United Russia, thereby exercising power behind the scenes in the manner of Jaroslaw Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party.

The accompanying, enforced resignation of the entire government, including the prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, is Putin’s attempt to reset his administration before Duma elections next year. Analysts say he feared Medvedev’s unpopularity – he has been accused of corruption – was beginning to rub off on him.

Although these changes are dressed up as desirable constitutional reforms, they clearly serve one common purpose: establishing Putinism in perpetuity. By showing he has no intention of retiring, Putin hopes to nip a possible succession battle in the bud.

Yet it appears Putin does not want to emulate out-and-out dictators in other countries by making himself president-for-life – the path chosen by China’s Xi Jinping. He values a veneer of democratic legitimacy.

The continuing drag on Russia’s development caused by western sanctions, imposed after the illegal annexation of Crimea, symbolises the broader, negative aspects of perpetual Putinism.

Putin is in cahoots with Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his campaign against pro-western Kurds in north-east Syria. More recently, he has inserted Russian mercenaries into the war in Libya, backing rebels against the UN-recognised government in Tripoli.

And speaking of poison, who doubts that Putin and his henchmen were behind the unpunished attempt to assassinate Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury and last year’s murder of a Chechen separatist in Berlin?

The prospect of Putin prolonging and strengthening his nihilistic reign is a terrible one. Putin’s is the face of the enemy. Henceforth he must be recognised as such.

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