Indigenous All Stars invited nine-year-old rugby fan after seeing video of him crying

The World Health Organization has raised concerns about cases where there has been no contact with someone known to be infected nor travel to China5.58pm GMT4.53pm GMTThousands of members of a secretive religious sect in South Korea are being screened for the new coronavirus after more than 430 cases were confirmed in the country by officials, the Guardian’s Rebecca Ratcliffe reports with Nemo Kim in Seoul.Related: South Korea screens thousands of religious sect members for coronavirus Continue reading...

A year after the murder of Glendon Spence, a community is facing up to the surge in youth violenceOn 21 February 2019, two young men ran into the Marcus Lipton youth centre in south London on a busy Thursday and stabbed 23-year-old Glendon Spence to death. The tragedy sent shockwaves across my community in Loughborough Junction.Faced with intergenerational cycles of neglect and disadvantage, young people have for decades considered the youth centre as a second home. Glendon’s murder was a sharp reminder that, in modern Britain, street violence can pierce even the most resilient of spaces; another loved soul frozen in time. Continue reading...

After the horrific murder of Grace Millane, it’s worth reflecting on safety measures for datingWomen, please never feel that you have to be “cool” about dating strangers you meet online.The killer of Grace Millane has been jailed for life, a minimum of 17 years, for strangling her to death in a hotel room in Auckland, New Zealand, after a Tinder date, the night before her 22nd birthday. Afterwards, the man, whose name has been suppressed, watched porn and took intimate “trophy” photos of the British backpacker. He set up another date for the following day, leaving her body in the hotel room. Continue reading...

Don in charge of student welfare at Trinity Hall gave evidence on behalf of male student accused of rapeHundreds of Cambridge students have accused the university of “a complete failure” to deal with complaints of sexual misconduct after an investigation that raised concerns about a conflict of interest among academics.In a letter signed by more than 500 current and former students, Cambridge University Students’ Union Women’s Campaign has called for colleges to be stripped of their powers to investigate sexual misconduct complaints against their own members. Continue reading...

Country confirms more than 430 cases as WHO head voices concern over fifth death in Iran

Likely outcome reflects frustration at collapsing living standards and relations with the westIran’s conservatives are on the brink of a landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary elections as forecasts show them taking more than two-thirds of the seats.The reformists, the largest grouping in the outgoing parliament, have been decisively beaten, with predictions showing them taking only 17 seats in the 290-strong parliament. The principalists – or conservatives – were on course to take around 200 seats, including all 30 seats in the capital, Tehran, previously a stronghold of the reformers. Continue reading...

Rhys and Gemma Cousin and two daughters died in collision on A82 near Fort WilliamThe relatives of four people killed in a crash in Scotland have said the effects “will be felt far and wide”.The family were driving on the A82 north of Fort William on Thursday when their Mini Cooper collided with a Ford Fiesta. Continue reading...

The DJ and musician, 64, on being black and British, finding a scene, and why punk’s not deadJamaican people love country and western. My first musical memory is sitting at home with my dad, listening to incarnations of what would become reggae on his sound system. But as well as Prince Buster, and Toots and the Maytals, my dad loved things like Welcome to My World by Jim Reeves. It was the storytelling he could relate to.I know the exact moment I wanted music to be my life. I was 14 or 15, it was 1971, and I was watching the Who at the Young Vic in London. I went after school, in my uniform, and I could see the whites of Keith Moon’s eyes and Pete Townshend windmilling and that was it. I didn’t know what it was. But it opened a door that I wanted to step through. Continue reading...

Daniel Horton, 29, remanded in custody over attack on 70-year-old prayer leaderA homeless man has appeared in court charged with stabbing a prayer leader with a kitchen knife at a London mosque.Daniel Horton, 29, is accused of grievous bodily harm and possession of a bladed article. He appeared at Westminster magistrates court on Saturday. Horton spoke only to state his nationality as British and confirm his name and date of birth. Continue reading...

Exclusive: experts have queried methods of Narconon, which has given talks in UK schoolsAmazon has agreed to channel funds to a controversial drug rehabilitation charity linked to the Church of Scientology, the Guardian has learned.The web giant will make donations to Narconon – which runs programmes for drug addicts based on the teachings of the Scientology founder, L Ron Hubbard – when supporters buy products through the site, with shoppers able to pledge 0.5% of purchases to selected charities under Amazon’s “Smile” feature. Continue reading...

Met Office says more belts of rain expected and warns of high winds and snow in ScotlandA third consecutive weekend of stormy weather has brought further flooding to already sodden areas.With swathes of south Wales and northern and central England still trying to cope with the impact of storms Ciara and Dennis, heavy showers have hit parts of the UK with warnings of more to come. Continue reading...

The first chapter of the final volume of Mantel’s award-winning Thomas Cromwell trilogy opens at the execution of Anne Boleyn

Leaseholders in Manchester ‘at end of tether’ after also being charged for 24-hour fire patrolsResidents of flats in Greater Manchester facing huge bills to replace flammable cladding have told of “anxiety so extreme I can’t function” and feel they are members of “generation stuck”.A survey carried out by the Greater Manchester High Rise Task Force found 53% of owner-occupiers in tower blocks had been hit with increased service charges after the Grenfell Tower fire. Continue reading...

Redesign proves as divisive as EU referendum, with one former MP calling it ‘ignorant’Blue passports will be issued for the first time in almost three decades from next month to mark Britain’s departure from the EU, the government has announced.They will replace the standard-issue burgundy passports that were rolled out across EU countries from 1988. Continue reading...

Defence minister hails ‘cooperation’ in fight against militants after Nigerien and French forces’ offensive in restive Tillaberi regionMore than 100 “terrorists” have been killed in south-west Niger by local forces in a joint operation with French troops, the country’s defence ministry said.As of Thursday “120 terrorists have been neutralised” in the operation in the vast Tillaberi region near the border with Mali and Burkina Faso, the statement on Friday said, adding there had been no losses among Nigerien or French troops. Vehicles and bomb-making equipment were seized. Continue reading...

Towns in northern Italy placed on lockdown after first fatality as virus is spreads in Middle East, with confirmed cases in Lebanon and IsraelFour Iranians have died after contracting the coronavirus, with health authorities warning it has spread to multiple cities, while Israel and Lebanon declared their first domestic cases as the deadly epidemic spreads across the Middle East.Asked on Friday if the new cases put the crisis at a tipping point, the World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the “window of opportunity is narrowing, so we need to act quickly before it closes completely”. Continue reading...

Daniel Horton, 29, charged with grievous bodily harm and possession of a bladed articleA man has been charged over Thursday’s stabbing attack at London Central Mosque.Daniel Horton, 29, of no fixed address, was charged on Friday night with grievous bodily harm and possession of a bladed article, Scotland Yard said. He will appear at Westminster magistrates’ court on Saturday. Continue reading...

Jury indicated that in three counts they have reached their decision, and will now break and return to deliberations on the other two counts on MondayThe jury at Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial in New York appears to have reached a verdict on three of the five counts facing him, though they are deadlocked on the most serious charge – predatory sexual assault.Shortly after the lunch break on Friday, the five men and seven women of the jury were called back into court having indicated that in three counts they have reached their decision. These are: the count that alleges the fallen movie mogul forced oral sex on a then Project Runway production assistant, Miriam Haley, in 2006 and two counts of rape in 2013 of a woman who the Guardian is not naming as her intentions on identification are unclear. Continue reading...

Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith who travels to cover the story of mercury poisoning that caused horrendous disfigurementsMinamata is not a masterpiece and there are one or two cliches here about western saviours and boozy, difficult, passionate journalists who occupy the perennial Venn diagram overlap between integrity and alcoholism. This movie’s producer-star Johnny Depp has form on this score, with his starstruck impersonation of Hunter Thompson. And once again, he has chosen a role in which he wears a hat indoors. But Minamata is a forthright, heartfelt movie, an old-fashioned “issue picture” with a worthwhile story to tell about how communities can stand up to overweening corporations and how journalists dedicated to truthful news can help them.Depp plays real-life US photojournalist W Eugene Smith whose glory days were in the second world war and the decades following, working for Life magazine in that now-forgotten era when analogue cameras were incapable of lying and magazines with compelling photos could command newsstand sales. Continue reading...

This account of the tough, troubled life of naive artist Antonio Liguabue boasts a committed performance from actor Elio GermanoGiorgio Diritti has directed a lovely-looking and fervent film about the life of the 20th-century naive artist Antonio Ligabue, who suffered poverty and mental illness throughout his life but whose fierce, primitive, impassioned studies and sculptures of animals and human portraits made him celebrated in his own day as an authentic unschooled genius, and an object of cult fascination from the metropolitan elite who perhaps regarded him as comparable to Van Gogh. (There was another biopic in 1978, with Suspiria star Flavio Bucci in the lead.)The Italian actor Elio Germano stars as Ligabue here, with a performance that has something of both Daniel Auteuil and Daniel Day Lewis — and also, maybe, a little of Sacha Baron Cohen. He plays him with the stoop, the shuffle, the fierce glare, the occasional equine twitch of the head and teeth-baring and drooping lower lip. This is a congenital dysfunction but also the natural brusqueness of the creative spirit and someone who does not suffer fools gladly (despite or because of being dismissed as a fool all his life). And for all that Ligabue once lived an almost feral existence, he is someone with some sense of the good things in life, particularly a decent meal in a restaurant. Continue reading...

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, has expressed concerned over the ‘narrowing window of opportunity’ to tackle Covid-19, and has urged the international community not to squander it. With four new cases in Iran, concern has increased about the epidemic spreading across the Middle East, and the sharp devaluation of the Iranian rial means it will be hard for its government to throw the same resources at the epidemic as China has

A new film tracks the life of one boy but is also the story of a generation of Indigenous children and their right to be educated in their language on country“I want my school to be run by Aboriginal people.I want adults to stop cruelling 10-year-old kids in jail. Continue reading...

Leading politicians say Alternative für Deutschland should face surveillanceLeading German politicians have called for the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland to be placed under surveillance, claiming it has helped fuel the extremist rhetoric behind the deadly attack in Hanau.Nine people with an immigrant background were murdered on Thursday in the western German city by Tobias Rathjen, a 43-year-old who had posted a racist video and manifesto on the internet before carrying out the killings. Continue reading...

Raafat Maglad says he feels sorry for alleged attacker as concerns are raised about securityA Muslim prayer leader has returned to Regent’s Park mosque a day after he was stabbed in the neck in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers, as London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, urged worshippers to remain vigilant.Raafat Maglad, who is in his 70s and is the mosque’s muezzin – the person who calls worshippers to prayer – said he was sorry for the alleged attacker, who was wrestled to the ground on Thursday after what one witness described as “30 seconds of mayhem.” Continue reading...

US lawyer Gloria Allred arranged for bus to be driven past Buckingham Palace with message for princeAn American-style school bus has driven past Buckingham Palace with a message on the side appealing for Prince Andrew to answer questions from the FBI about his links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The stunt was arranged by the US lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents some of Epstein’s victims. Continue reading...

Clifton Collins fears fishing gear was taken to dump by his landlord after he was jailedIn early 2017 Clifton Collins, an Irish drug dealer, had a dilemma: where to hide the codes of his illicit €55m (£46m) bitcoin fortune.His solution was to print them on to an A4 piece of paper and stash it in the aluminium cap of a fishing rod case kept at his rented home in Farnaught, Cornamona, County Galway. It seemed a good idea at the time. Continue reading...

With the closed Turkish border behind them and Russian-backed forces at the horizon, Syrians have nowhere left to runHemmed against a border wall in Somme-like mud and misery, more than 1 million Syrians are awaiting their fate. Nearby, Iranian-backed militias and what remains of the national army are advancing towards them, as Russian jets pick them off in the crowded fields and ruined towns that are all that is left of opposition-held Syria.Convoys of the Turkish military, a protector of the displaced that have made it to the province over the last eight years, pass regularly along roads teeming with clapped out cars full of families and remnants of their belongings. Women and children beg them to stop, but they continue on to battlefronts miles from the panic and confusion, their attention diverted from helping the destitute to shaping the final months of the war in Ankara’s interests. Aid workers, who say things have never been worse in Syria, do what they can among scenes they describe as overwhelming and impossible. Continue reading...

Organisers in Aalst say they will defy calls from Israel’s government to cancel eventOrganisers of a Belgian carnival, removed from a Unesco heritage list last year following criticism of its antisemitic floats, have said they will defy calls from Israel’s government for Sunday’s event to be cancelled.Belgium’s prime minister, Sophie Wilmès, also described the parade as an “internal affair” after Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, called for the authorities to “condemn and ban this hateful parade in Aalst”. Continue reading...

The mother of the murdered British backpacker says she is tormented over 'the terror and pain she must have experienced at your hands'. Gillian Millane was speaking to a court via video link. Her daughter was killed in New Zealand in 2018.A 28-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years for Millane’s murder.

Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 36, pleads guilty to preparing terrorist acts in hearing at Old BaileyA supporter of Islamic State has pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb St Paul’s Cathedral and a hotel.Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 36, from Hayes in Middlesex, admitted preparation of terrorist acts and dissemination of terrorist publications at a hearing at the Old Bailey. Continue reading...

Rapporteur warns against trivialising psychological torture as states exploit internet to target individualsPsychological torture is being exploited by states to circumvent the more widely understood ban on physically inflicting pain and may open the way to a future of “cybertorture”, the UN torture rapporteur has said.Nils Melzer, professor of international law at the University of Glasgow and the UN’s special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, is cautioning that the internet could be used systematically to target individuals remotely – through “intimidation, harassment, surveillance, public shaming and defamation”. Continue reading...

Former PM makes claim after YouGov poll suggested only 16% believe country is unitedGordon Brown has claimed that Scotland is at risk of becoming “one of the west’s most divided countries”.The former prime minister made the claim after a YouGov poll of 2,500 Scots suggested that only 16% believe the country is united. Continue reading...

Predicted drop in passenger numbers because of outbreak will cost industry $29.3bn – IataThe spread of the coronavirus will result in the first fall in global air travel in more than a decade, the international airline industry body has predicted.The International Air Transport Association (Iata) warned falling passenger demand as a result of the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus will cost the airline industry $29.3bn (£23.7bn) in lost revenues this year. Continue reading...

Officials and state justice chief fired as at least 500 cases confirmed in prisons in three provinces

Ashok Khemka shot to fame in 2012 when he cancelled a land deal by son-in-law of Sonia GandhiThe ill-starred career of the Indian civil servant who has been transferred 53 times in 26 years is the subject of a new book written by two journalists to be published next month.Ashok Khemka, 54, has been shunted around because he kept exposing corruption by politicians. Continue reading...

Photographer Heba Khamis spent a year and a half documenting the lives of ‘black birds’: the male Afghan and Iranian sex workers in Berlin’s Tiergarten

Writer and activist who was imprisoned for insulting Ugandan president calls on him to go as 18-month sentence is revokedThe feminist academic and writer Stella Nyanzi has been released from prison after her 18-month sentence for insulting Uganda’s president was quashed.Nyanzi collapsed as she left court in Kampala on Thursday, and scuffles broke out between her supporters and prison wardens, who fired live rounds into the air to disperse the crowd. Continue reading...

Taoiseach will continue as caretaker leader after inconclusive sitting of Dáil ÉireannLeo Varadkar has resigned as taoiseach after Ireland’s hung parliament entered deadlock over the choice of a new premier.Varadkar submitted his resignation to Michael D Higgins, the president of Ireland, on Thursday night after a tempestuous but inconclusive sitting of Dáil Éireann, which met for the first time since the 8 February election. It adjourned until 5 March, giving party leaders three weeks to try to form a ruling coalition. Continue reading...

In February 1965 Charles Perkins led a group of university students on a bus trip around rural NSW to challenge racism wherever they saw it. They visited a number of towns, including Walgett, where Aboriginal ex-servicemen were denied membership to the local RSL, and Moree, where Aboriginal people were banned from swimming in the local pool. Their protests gained national media attention and Perkins was thrust into the spotlight, becoming a towering figure for the Indigenous community Continue reading...

Friday: two people killed after train derailed in Victoria. Plus: domestic violence campaigners criticise police comments about Brisbane tragedyGood morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 21 February. Continue reading...

Shadow chancellor compares US extradition case to 19th-century treason trialThe US attempt to extradite Julian Assange is the “the Dreyfus case of our age”, John McDonnell has said, as Europe’s human rights watchdog added her voice to opposition to the move.On Wednesday it was claimed in a London court that Donald Trump had offered the WikiLeaks founder a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails. Continue reading...

Country Fire Authority says five carriages derailed near Wallan station, 45km north of Melbourne, about 8pm on ThursdayTwo people were killed and several injured after the Sydney to Melbourne XPT derailed in Victoria on Thursday night.The Country Fire Authority said the diesel locomotive and five carriages derailed near Wallan station, 45km north of Melbourne, on the North East line at about 8pm. Continue reading...

Thomas Thabane will also face attempted murder of wife’s friend during 2017 shooting

Police say attack suspect killed nine people at two shisha bars then killed his mother and himself at homeA gunman has killed nine people in two apparently racially motivated shootings at shisha bars in the German town of Hanau, police have said. The suspect then killed himself, according to police, after also killing his mother at his home.Investigators believe a racist motive was behind the attack, said Peter Beuth, the interior minister for the state of Hessen. Angela Merkel said the circumstances of the attack needed to be fully investigated, and the shootings had exposed the “poison” of racism in German society. She pledged to stand up against those who sought to divide the country. Continue reading...

Experts call for solutions to be enforced immediately to halt global population collapsesThe “fates of humans and insects are intertwined”, scientists have said, with the huge declines reported in some places only the “tip of the iceberg”.The warning has been issued by 25 experts from around the world, who acknowledge that little is known about most of the estimated 5.5 million insect species. However, enough was understood to warrant immediate action, they said, because waiting for better data would risk irreversible damage. Continue reading...

The diner is always right – only that isn’t true. From heavy petting to no-shows, restaurateurs share their biggest bugbearsChefs work under constant scrutiny. Everyone is a critic now, from the couple muttering at table 12 to those angrily logging on to TripAdvisor. Generally, chefs suck up this feedback silently; that is how the hospitality industry works. So, we thought it might be fun – therapeutic, even – to turn the tables for once and ask chefs: what do diners do that really winds you up? From minor irritations to serious misdemeanours, here is a rundown of the customer behaviour that chefs can’t stand. Continue reading...

Several people have been killed and others seriously injured after two shootings at shisha bars in the western German city of Hanau, police say. At least nine people died in the attacks that took place on Wednesday night. The suspect and one other person were also found dead after police launched a huge hunt for the perpetrator

More than 100 flood alerts in England as Jeremy Corbyn criticises government responseParts of the UK already saturated by heavy rainfall and flooding have been warned by forecasters to prepare for more wet weather.The Environment Agency said there were 106 flood warnings in place for England on Thursday morning, including six severe warnings, indicating a danger to life, in communities near the Welsh border. Continue reading...