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Concerns security deal could leave Papua New Guinea stuck between increasingly hostile US and ChinaThe US has signed a security pact with Papua New Guinea despite concerns within the country about increasing militarisation as Washington competes with Beijing for influence in the Pacific.The state department said the new agreement would provide $45m (£36m) to help improve security cooperation, including protective equipment for the Papua New Guinea defence force, plus help in mitigating the effects of the climate crisis, transnational crime and HIV/Aids. Continue reading...

Scottish islanders fear complete isolation as vital mail deliveries fail to arrive for days, sometimes weeksThe allure of the Isle of Mull is its sense of apartness. In summer, flocks of tourists make the 45-minute crossing from the mainland to sample life on the edge. From the point of view of its 3,000 residents, modern transport and communications have brought them closer to the rest of the country than ever. But now, thanks to Royal Mail, islanders fear they are being returned to isolation.For the last three years, parts of Mull have been cut off from mail deliveries for days. Since March, those days have turned into weeks. Continue reading...

UK museum of the year award has shortlist of five showing ‘astonishing ambition and boundless creativity’A museum on a small island in Orkney that became the Royal Navy’s nerve centre during both world wars has been shortlisted for museum of the year.The Scapa Flow Museum tells the story of how the island of Hoy became essential to Britain’s defence with the construction of a large naval base. It reopened last year after a £4.4m redevelopment. Continue reading...

Minister attacks ‘scare campaign’ after opposition leader says plan would ‘re-racialise’ Australia

‘Extradition in this case is a matter of life and death,’ campaigner tells National Press Club

Communications minister says there is ‘serious’ community concern about ads as Zoe Daniel makes push for ban

Europe’s largest airline says it is optimistic it will make even more this year after ordering more aircraftRyanair has bounced back to a near-record €1.4bn (£1.2bn) profit last year and expects to better that in 2023, fuelled by a summer boom in which the low-cost airline will carry a record number of passengers.Europe’s largest airline swung back to profit in the year to the end of March after reporting a €355m loss in the previous year. The company, led by the chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said it was cautiously optimistic that it will increase profits again this year, which could result in it topping the record €1.45bn Ryanair made in 2018. Continue reading...

Diggers move in as police and gendarmes launch operation against sub-standard housing and illegal migrationAuthorities on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte have begun demolishing homes in an operation against sub-standard housing and illegal migrationFrance has deployed hundreds of police officers and gendarmes in Mayotte – the country’s poorest department – since April to prepare a major security measure called Operation Wuambushu (“Take Back” in the local language). Continue reading...

Queensland government is seeking to change law that prevents a person charged with sexual offences from being named until they are committed to stand trial

52-year-old, in hospital for more than a year after bike accident, wants to be repatriated but is not listed as a resident in SwedenA Swedish woman left paralysed after a catastrophic bike accident has been stranded in a London hospital for more than a year after efforts to repatriate her to her home country failed due to Stockholm bureaucracy.The situation, described by her husband as “shameful”, comes following a similar case in which authorities threatened to deport a 74-year-old British woman with Alzheimer’s because of strict adherence to Brexit red tape. Continue reading...

Commission says corporations and forestry companies competing for estates are driving up prices in already squeezed marketLand ownership in Scotland is at risk of becoming more elitist and unequal because wealthy corporations and forestry companies are dramatically driving up land prices, a new study has warned.The report from the Scottish Land Commission found that a significant number of Highland estates and hill farms were sought by corporations last year as an investment or as sites for planting new conifer plantations. Continue reading...

MPs back new bill for medical graduates, designed to limit brain drain to countries including the UK and USA new bill to impose five years’ mandatory service on Nigeria’s medical graduates in an effort to stop the exodus of doctors to the UK and the US has been attacked as “obnoxious”.The bill, which could be put to a public hearing in the next few days, passed its second reading in the Nigerian parliament’s lower house last month. Continue reading...

Walter Sofronoff KC tells inquiry he had written to the editor of the Australian to understand why the paper ran photograph of Shane Drumgold on page one, but conceded it might serve a valid journalistic purpose

AFP’s Scott Moller says he charged Lehrmann on advice of DPP despite investigators not thinking Brittany Higgins’s allegations reached threshold for prosecution

Which? magazine also lists fake missing person appeals among most widely used deceptionsDating cons known as “pig butchering”, fake missing person appeals and dodgy apps are among the most widely used and convincing scams in circulation this year, according to Britain’s leading consumer watchdog.Pig butchering – so-called by fraudsters because they “fatten up” the victim by forming a romantic connection before executing the investment part of the scam – has been flagged by Which? magazine as one of the most pernicious scams. Continue reading...

Co-author says UK’s oldest form of social housing could be part of solution to care crisisPoor, older people living in almshouses enjoy longer lives than far wealthier people living elsewhere, a study has found.The secret to longer life has been intensely sought after for centuries. But research using data from almshouses going back 100 years has found that the solution devised in early medieval times to help poverty-stricken knights returning from the Crusades is still relevant today. Continue reading...

Forty-year-old, who was raising money for Spinal Cord Injuries Australia, spent years recovering from a spinal injury after being told he might never walk again

Intellectual Property Office rules that New Zealand beekeepers’ attempt to stop Australian producers using the name did not meet necessary requirementsNew Zealand honey producers have lost their latest battle to trademark mānuka honey, the latest blow in a years-long fight to stop Australian beekeepers using the lucrative name.The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand ruled on Monday that New Zealand mānuka beekeepers’ attempt for a trademark did not meet necessary requirements, and the term mānuka was descriptive. Continue reading...

Woman, 95, is surrounded by family and still in critical condition as calls grow for broader investigation of police treatment of dementia sufferers

Freese, who previously played at tribute concerts for Hawkins, was announced as the new drummer in a starry, tongue-in-cheek livestreamFoo Fighters have unveiled their new drummer after the death of their former percussionist Taylor Hawkins: the veteran session musician Josh Freese.Freese has accrued a long and star-studded list of credits over his three-decade career. The 50-year-old drummer has been a member of Devo since 1996 and the Vandals since 1989. He has also toured with the Offspring, Guns N’ Roses, Danny Elfman, Weezer, Sting, Paramore, Nine Inch Nails and 100 Gecs. Continue reading...

Ukraine’s leader knows he needs to win over nonaligned countries such as Brazil and India to increase the pressure on RussiaNormally G7 summits are about battling for the free world comma by comma, as diplomats parse lengthy communiques of ephemeral significance long into the night. Words, after all, constitute much of a diplomat’s work.At the Hiroshima G7 some of the communiques emerging from the summit do matter, notably the toolbox on de-risking trade with China, but the true significance of the summit lay in Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s scene-stealing visit courtesy of a ride in Emmanuel Macron’s French aircraft. Continue reading...

Scathing review finds the only time the network ran in line with its targets was during periods of lockdown or other Covid restrictions

Move to power Glenbrook steel plant with electricity from renewables rather than coal will reduce emissions by 1% – or the equivalent of taking 300,000 cars off the roadNew Zealand has announced its largest emissions reduction project in history, transitioning from coal to renewable electricity at the country’s major steel plant in a move that the government says is equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road.The government will spend $140m on halving the coal used at Glenbrook steel plant to recycle scrap steel, replacing that generating power with an electric-powered furnace. The plant will contribute $160m to the project’s cost. Continue reading...

Officers were responding to a domestic violence-related incident in Grange on Sunday afternoon

Under government reforms, schemes to be regulated as credit products in Australia

Survey of 236 young people caught up in 2017 blast shows 29% have not received any mental health support

Bread and Roses, co-produced by Lawrence, documents lives of three women after Taliban’s return to powerA documentary about the lives of three women living under the Taliban, co-produced by Jennifer Lawrence, has premiered at the Cannes film festival.Bread and Roses, shown at a special screening on Sunday, follows three Afghan women in the weeks after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 after the withdrawal of US troops. Continue reading...

Labour leader to say plan for reforming NHS will focus on ‘biggest killer of young lives in this country’A Labour government would reverse the rise in the number of deaths from suicide as part of a health plan to replace pain and anxiety with a “hope of a renewed NHS”, Keir Starmer will pledge.In a speech on Monday, the Labour leader will say his plan for reforming the NHS will focus on the biggest causes of death in the UK including suicide.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org. Continue reading...

Hari Budha Magar reached the peak despite being a double amputee since an explosion in AfghanistanA Gurkha soldier veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan has achieved mountaineering history after reaching the top of Mount Everest.Hari Budha Magar, who lives in Canterbury, Kent, reached the summit of the world’s tallest mountain at 3pm on Friday, having started the climb on 17 April – exactly 13 years since he lost his legs after an IED explosion. Continue reading...

Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s party on 40% share against Syriza on 20%, with more than 90% of votes countedGreece’s general election has failed to produce a winner despite the centre-right party of the incumbent prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, clinching 40% of the vote with more than 90% of ballots counted.New Democracy was leading with a 20-point margin – 40.8% – over the leftist main opposition Syriza party which was trailing at just over 20.1% – a difference rarely seen since the collapse in 1974 of military rule. Even in Crete, a socialist bastion, the rightwing party had fared unexpectedly well. Continue reading...

Home secretary has won little good will from colleagues since she was last – briefly – forced from officeWhen Suella Braverman’s career as home secretary was last on the ropes – for sending an official document from her personal email in a serious breach of the rules – she received little support from cabinet minsters. “She’s a joke,” one said at the time. “She shouldn’t be anywhere near high office.”Yet within six days she was back in the job, after Rishi Sunak calculated that it was worth reinstating the leading rightwinger to the Home Office to win her support for the Tory leadership bid which brought him to No 10. Continue reading...

Kat Watkins, who requires a ventilator at night, said she is suffering from severe back pain after night at Travelodge in HounslowA disabled wheelchair user who requires a ventilator at night had to sleep on a sofa in a hotel dining room because the accessible room she booked was not available.Kat Watkins, 36, a UN convention on the rights of disabled people development officer at Disability Wales, who has brittle bone disease and sleep apnoea, said she is suffering from severe back pain as a result of not being able to sleep in the bed she had booked and paid for at a Travelodge hotel in Hounslow. Continue reading...

No 10 appears to distance itself from home secretary amid growing political storm about possible breach of ministerial codeRishi Sunak is under intense pressure to launch an investigation into whether Suella Braverman broke the ministerial code by requesting a private speed awareness course, as Downing Street appeared to distance itself from the beleaguered home secretary.The prime minister arrives back from the G7 summit in Japan to a growing political storm over whether Braverman breached strict rules by asking Home Office civil servants for special treatment after she was caught breaking the speed limit. Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy says during Japan visit that Ukrainian troops are still in eastern city at centre of bloody battle; Moscow calls summit a ‘politicised’ eventA Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region said that Kyiv had struck the Russian-held port city of Berdyansk with British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles, Reuters reports.

Temporary hosts will take on presenting duties as Phillip Schofield tries to keep hold of his broadcasting careerAlison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary have been announced as temporary presenters of ITV’s This Morning, as former host Phillip Schofield battles to save his television career.Schofield announced on Saturday he would step down from presenting the daytime talkshow with immediate effect, after ITV bosses told him “the current situation can’t go on” following weeks of damaging news stories. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Home secretary’s aides repeatedly requested she be allowed to miss vote on major legislation despite three-line whipSuella Braverman tried to get out of the final Commons vote on the government’s small boats bill despite Conservative MPs being instructed to attend, the Guardian has learned.The home secretary’s aides sent multiple emails over the course of several days to the Tory whips’ office requesting that she be “slipped”, or permitted to miss, the third reading of her department’s flagship legislation. Continue reading...

‘Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing ... just ruins and dead Russians,’ says Ukraine’s president

The pair attended a conference organised by the Russian Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky in AprilBerlin police have opened an investigation into the suspected poisoning of two Russian journalists visiting the city for a conference last month organised by the Russian Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.The city’s office of criminal investigation confirmed to German media that it had opened the case after reports in the Russian investigative media group Agentsvo were picked up by the Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Continue reading...

The director and actor talked about learning from the Native American nation at the heart of their latest filmMartin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have reunited at the Cannes film festival to present a feature together for the first time in almost half a century, discussing their acclaimed new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, on Sunday.“We haven’t been here together since 76,” said De Niro, recalling the premiere of Taxi Driver, the second of their 10 collaborations, which won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. Continue reading...

Deceased, who was in her 70s, died in hospital after reported attack and police say they are not looking for anyone elseA 77-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a woman was found unconscious and later died.Thames Valley police found the woman, who was also in her 70s, unconscious just after 8am on Saturday, after reports a woman had been attacked in Bradwell Road, Loughton, Milton Keynes. The woman was taken to hospital, where she died. Continue reading...

More than half of weapons exports were for repressive regimes such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as sales doubled last yearBritish arms exports doubled during 2022 to a record £8.5bn according to the only publicly available official figures, reflecting escalating geopolitical uncertainties and fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The largest destination for UK-made weaponry was Qatar, which bought £2.7bn-worth, and 54% went to countries designated as “not free” by the human rights group Freedom House. These include Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as Qatar. Continue reading...

Susan Hart, 74, from Bath, was on holiday in Telendos when she disappeared on 30 AprilA woman who went missing on holiday on a Greek island three weeks ago has been found dead in a remote area.Susan Hart, 74, from Bath, was in Telendos with her husband, Ed, when she disappeared on 30 April. Continue reading...

Minns government says changes will mean more than 80% of first time buyers will pay no stamp duty or a reduced rate

Treaty Authority will oversee disputes while being ‘completely respectful of the principles of self-determination’

Analysis shows more than 330,000 jobs gained in past year, but treasurer concedes inflation needs to cool

Labor MPs say Tuesday’s budget will be tough amid rising debt but election pledges will be honoured

Coles and Woolworths have defended the increased margins, but data shows shoppers are being charged more than enough to cover additional costs and other rising expenses

Anna Ermakova wants to establish identity for herself in her own right beyond parents’ infamous brief encounter, say reportsThe daughter of the tennis star Boris Becker has won the final of Germany’s equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing with a record number of votes.Anna Ermakova, the 23-year-old offspring of the Wimbledon champion and the Russian model Angela Ermakova, triumphed on Let’s Dance on Friday evening with what critics described as a “breathtaking performance” over the course of a series during which she scored the full 30 points on 11 occasions, breaking a previous record. Continue reading...