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Firefighters are battling to try to bring the worst wildfire in decades on Tenerife under control. Fernando Clavijo, regional leader of the Canary Islands, said: "The fire and the weather have behaved in a more normal fashion after showing very unusual behaviour earlier. We've managed to work more intensely during the night... preparing containment lines on the ground," he told a news conference. The fire in the north of the Spanish Canary Island, which started late on Tuesday, has forced the evacuation or confinement of nearly 8,000 people in eight municipalities. "The good news is that there have been no new evacuations," added Mr Clavijo. He has called the wildfire the most complex the Atlantic Ocean archipelago has faced in 40 years, due to a combination of hot, dry and windy weather, as well as difficult terrain. Images and videos posted on social media showed the flames coming down the hill close to houses in small neighbourhoods and a massive cloud of smoke rising from the area. The fire is located up in a pine wooded mountain area with several municipalities on its flanks, including Arafo and Candelaria to the east, and La Orotava to the west. Army captain Rafael San Jose told Spanish National Television that some progress had been made overnight into Friday stopping the fire's spread but that rising temperatures during the day was increasing the difficulty for those fighting the blaze. The Canary Islands have been in drought for most of the past few years, just like most of mainland Spain. The islands have recorded below-average rainfall in recent years because of changing weather patterns impacted by the climate crisis. Mr Clavijo said the blaze, which has scorched 3,200 hectares (7,900 acres), was still very virulent but that fortunately there had been no injuries so far. He said Friday's efforts would be crucial to containing the fire. He said the combination of extreme temperatures and the fire had turned the area into a virtual oven. The north of the island was forecast to have a maximum temperature of 30C (84F) on Friday with light winds but temperatures were set to rise further over the weekend. The flames cover a perimetre of 40 kilometres (25 miles) encircling some 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land. Nearly 300 firefighters and Spanish army soldiers are in the area, which is around 20 kilometres (12 miles) away from its main town, Santa Cruz. Tenerife is one of Europe's main tourist destinations. Its tourism office has stressed that the most popular tourist areas are far from the fire. Business continues as usual in hotels, beaches and other tourist sites near the coast and in the midlands, the office said. But access to the Teide National Park, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Tenerife after the beaches, was closed on Thursday evening and all tourist facilities around the Teide volcano area, including accommodation, were to be evacuated. The seven-island archipelago is located off the north-west coast of Africa and south-west of mainland Spain. More than 2,000 people were evacuated in a wildfire on the nearby La Palma island last month that affected some 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres). Wildfires have burned almost 64,000 hectares (158,000 acres) in Spain in the first seven months of the year, according to Spanish government data. That's the third highest figure in the last decade. Spain accounted for almost 40 per cent of the nearly 800,00 hectares (2 million acres) burned in the European Union in 2022, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. Associated Press Read More Mapped: Where are the wildfires in Tenerife?

A celebrity chef has “banned” vegans from his restaurant after reportedly receiving a negative review from a customer who criticised the lack of plant-based options. On Tuesday, Chef John Mountain revealed on the Facebook page for his restaurant Fyre that the eatery would no longer be catering to vegan diners. According to Mountain, the decision to ban vegans from the Perth, Australia, restaurant was due to “mental health reasons”. “Sadly all vegans are now banned from Fyre (for mental health reasons),” the post on the restaurant’s Facebook reads. “We thank you for your understanding. Xx.” The post also included the caption: “Yep. I’m done.” and the hashtags #vegan, #not, #pleasegoelsewhere, #veganfreezone, and #nomorevegans. The decision allegedly stemmed from a bad review posted by a vegan customer, with Chef Mountain telling PerthNow that a customer had reached out to him to ask if there were any vegan options at the restaurant, and that he’d promised he would accommodate her. “A young girl reached out to me and said she was coming to the restaurant… and asked if there were vegan options,” he said. “It was my only shortfall… I said I would accommodate her, I said we had gnocchi, vegetables… and that was that.” However, according to Mountain, who previously starred on the BBC show Great British Menu, he’d forgotten about the woman’s request when she came to dine on Saturday, as he’d been busy catering a private party. “Saturday came around and sadly I’d forgotten… I had a private party I had to cater for,” he told the outlet, adding that his sous chef had reportedly reprimanded him for “not telling them about the vegan customer”. According to the UK-born chef, the woman wrote a complaint to the restaurant on Facebook the following day, in which she’d criticised the $32 vegetable dish that had been her “only option”. The woman’s message also reportedly read: “I think it’s incredibly important nowadays that restaurants can accommodate everyone and to not be able to have actual plant-based meals shows your shortcomings as a chef. “I hope to see some improvements in your menu as I have lived in Connolly for quite some time and have seen many restaurants come and go from that building and none of them last. If you don’t get with the times, I don’t hold out faith that your restaurant will be the one that does.” The restaurant reportedly addressed the woman’s complaint in a response of its own, in which it noted that it tried to “accommodate everyone” before encouraging the customer to “feel free to share your sh**ty experience”. “Thanks for your negative review… please feel free to share your sh***y experience and I look forward to not seeing you again. How very childish. You and all your vegan mates can all go and enjoy your dishes in another venue, you are now banned,” the restaurant’s response read, according to PerthNow. Although Chef Mountain admitted he’d said he would accommodate the woman and then “didn’t,” she’d made the complaint “personal”. The chef also claimed that, as a result of the woman’s complaint, his restaurant was flooded with negative one-star reviews on Google, which he said “really hurts the business”. “F*** vegans seriously… I’m done. At the end of the day, it’s not what I want to do, they can f*** off,” he added. Mountain reiterated the sentiment while speaking to 7News, with the chef telling the outlet: “F*** vegans, I’m done with them.” Mountain also claimed that customers should “know what they’re getting from me,” as he has previously written a cookbook titled Pig. “I once wrote and sold a book called Pig which had pork recipes. People know what they’re getting from me,” he said. “I understand where vegans are coming from but my job is to make food taste as good as I can and I can’t always cater to everybody’s dietary requirements.” On social media, the chef’s ban on vegans has sparked an intense debate among customers, with some praising Mountain and Fyre, while others have condemned the decision. “Bravo! Good on you mate, great stance. It’s nowhere near where I live but I will definitely come to your restaurant now,” one comment under the Facebook post reads, while another person wrote: “Can’t wait to try this place, just booked a table! Looking forward to a nice piece of rare steak.” The restaurant has also received a flood of positive reviews on its Facebook, where many have praised both the food and the staff, while others have applauded the restaurant’s “principles” and “ethics”. “Outstanding chef. Great rules and ethics,” one review reads, while another recent review states: “Great staff, great food and a chef with principles.” However, the restaurant has also continued to face criticism over Mountain’s “ban” on vegans, with one recent review reading: “You can’t call yourself a chef if you can’t even cook veggies. Owner is very arrogant and can’t take criticism.” “Discriminating and refusing vegans into his venue, all for a complaint for not following an agreed vegan option. How disgusting,” someone else wrote. The restaurant’s alleged ban on vegans comes after a vegan landlord in New York City recently went viral after requesting that only tenants who follow a plant-based diet live in the building. The Independent has contacted Chef Mountain for comment. Read More Vegan landlord seeks tenants for $5,750 New York apartment with period features. Meat eaters need not apply Vegan family asks neighbours to close their windows when cooking meat Former vegan says meat ‘saved her life’ after diet ‘made hair fall out’ Celebrity chef bans vegans from his restaurant ‘for mental health reasons’ The Union Rye, review: Finally, a decent restaurant in East Sussex ‘As long as it tastes good’: People react to US approval to sell ‘lab-grown’ chicken

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Taylor Swift has already broken a number of records this year with her Eras Tour - and now her shows in Seattle caused seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. For two nights (22 and 23 July), the 33-year-old pop star performed to a record-breaking 144,000 fans at Lumen Field, in the Emerald City in what has now been described as the "Swift Quake." This has been compared to the “Beast Quake," back in 2011 when Seattle Seahawks fans reacted to Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch's touchdown. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, who is a geology professor at Western Washington University noticed someone comparing the two events on a Facebook group and decided to investigate further. “I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals,” Caplan-Auerbach told CNN. “If I overlay them on top of each other, they’re nearly identical.” Seismographs are instruments used to record the motion of the ground, When looking at the difference in magnitude, the "Beast Quake" was 2.0, while the "Swift Quake" was just higher at 2.3. An earthquake of this scale is minor, it can shake the ground enough for people to notice but damage is normally limited to objects falling off shelves, according to New Scientist. Though Caplan-Auerbach noted a sizable difference between the "Beast Quake" and "Swift Quake" in terms of shaking. "The shaking was twice as strong as ‘Beast Quake’. It absolutely doubled it," the seismologist told the same publication. But in a tweet, Caplan-Auerbach considered other factors that come into play such as the music, speakers and sound system contributing to the seismic activity, not just the fans. While a reaction to a touchdown lasts for seconds, the seismologist detailed how for Swift's concerts she "collected about 10 hours of data where rhythm controlled the behavior." Swift clearly enjoyed the atmosphere at the weekend as she took to Instagram and wrote: "Seattle that was genuinely one of my favorite weekends ever. Thank you for everything. All the cheering, screaming, jumping, dancing, singing at the top of your lungs." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The head of Elon Musk’s social media platform X says the company formerly known has Twitter has removed hundreds of Hamas-linked accounts and taken down or labeled thousands of pieces of content since the militant group’s attack on Israel