The Monocle Minute

After last week’s G20 summit in Hamburg was overshadowed by violent riots – in which cars were set on fire and shops vandalised – Olaf Scholz, the city’s mayor, is facing calls to resign. As residents turned out en masse to help clean up their city by scrubbing graffiti off walls and sweeping up glass, local politicians accused Scholz of failing to secure the city sufficiently ahead of the summit. The chief of the Munich Security Conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, has now called for the formation of a special European force to deal with such security issues in the future. Still, don’t expect Germany to play host to such a contentious summit again any time soon.

In Japan Muji isn’t known just for furniture, clothes and homewares. The brand, loved for its pared-down aesthetic, also builds homes and apartments, renovates public housing and operates camping grounds – and is now moving into hotels. The company is opening two hotels in Shenzhen and Beijing later this year, and in the spring of 2019 will open a hotel in Tokyo’s Ginza retail district on the top five floors of a new 10-storey building that will be the brand’s global flagship. The decision to build one in Tokyo seems a no-brainer: you couldn’t ask for a more central location and it’s likely to attract plenty of interest from the record number of visitors coming from overseas. Tokyo-based architects UDS will design and run the hotel but Muji is expected to provide most of the furniture and you can expect the brand’s signature simple appeal.

“Tunisia is a hotspot” was the advertising campaign that the Tunisian government rolled out on London buses in 2011 to encourage people to visit the North African country despite the Arab Spring. After the disorder and terror attacks that have since rocked the country, that slogan now seems a little naive. But hoteliers in Tunisia are feeling buoyed by tentative signs that the tourism industry is starting to rebound. The first six months of 2017 showed a 30 per cent bump in the number of foreign arrivals, despite travel restrictions still being in place. Denmark, Iceland and Norway have now relaxed their rules on citizens heading to the North African state but there’s still an uphill battle ahead to reassure travellers that Tunisia’s security is up to scratch.

A state of emergency is in place in Canada’s central and western British Columbia as wildfires continue to spread through the country’s westernmost province, fanned by high winds and dry weather. Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes – more than 130 new fires were reported to have started on Saturday alone – in a swift response by provincial leaders, despite BC’s political upheaval after its premier Christy Clark recently lost a vote of no confidence. The transitional team is offering CA$600 [€408] via the Red Cross to people forced out of their homes and the measure is proving a smart example of rapid response to an evolving crisis.

Fiona Stewart and Ben Coleman, the mother-and-son duo behind Green Man Festival, discuss how music and the Brecon Beacons inspired 15 years of their annual bonanza.