World news | The Guardian

Ministers say working from home should come to an end, while unions push for flexible workingCivil servants will be told to return to their desks to ensure government department offices are running at “full capacity”, according to reports.Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for government efficiency, has written to all secretaries of state calling on them oversee the “rapid return” of officials to their workplaces. Continue reading...

Cuba says US sanctions and decision to close American consular section in Havana encourage Cubans to seek riskier routes to USAmerican and Cuban officials are due to meet in Washington on Thursday to discuss migration concerns, people familiar with the matter said, in the highest-level formal US talks with Havana since Joe Biden took office last year.The meeting comes at a time when Biden’s administration is grappling with rising numbers of undocumented migrants attempting to cross the US border from Mexico, with Cubans making up a growing portion of them. Continue reading...

Avian sickness responsible for millions of deaths in commercial poultry farms in worst outbreak since 2015The bald eagle, America’s national bird, is the latest to fall prey to the highly contagious bird flu that has been sweeping across the US, affecting birds in a majority of states.The US is enduring the worst bird flu outbreak since 2015 in terms of domestic poultry deaths, according to new data from the US Department of Agriculture, with the avian sickness responsible for millions of deaths in commercial farms. Continue reading...

None of 17 markers on buildings where historical figures lived or worked, or where major events occurred, are in Labor-held seats

Living in a small town can have its advantages when it comes to the rising problem of identity fraud

Spotlight narrows on far-right candidate’s policies while both contenders try to woo leftwing votersEmmanuel Macron has consolidated his lead over Marine Le Pen as France’s presidential race enters its final week, according to polls, suggesting harsher scrutiny of the far-right challenger’s plans may be shifting the race’s dynamic.Six days from the runoff that will decide who occupies the Élysée Palace for the next five years, all 16 polls carried out since the first-round vote on 10 April have put the incumbent ahead, by between seven and 12 percentage points. Continue reading...

Scottish first minister was recorded without a mask in a barber shop, breaching her own Covid regulationsNicola Sturgeon has been warned by police officers about the law surrounding face coverings in Scotland after she failed to wear a mask in a barber shop on Saturday, in breach of her own regulations.The first minister was reported to Police Scotland after footage emerged of her in the crowded shop without a face covering, joking with staff and pretending to shave a customer while out campaigning in East Kilbride. Continue reading...

Four rockets kill seven people in western city of Lviv, whose mayor accuses Moscow of genocide

Family hopes to find a way to safely evacuate the puppies to loving homes in the UK or elsewhere

Five activists in Essex and Warwickshire face legal action over efforts to disrupt fossil fuel suppliesFive environmental activists were held on remand over the Easter weekend over protests at oil terminals in Essex and Warwickshire.Three members of the Just Stop Oil campaign held on remand by Warwickshire police were taken to Coventry magistrates court on Monday morning. Continue reading...

Izyum’s mayor and other witnesses tell of resistance and concerns over fate of thousands still trapped

Officers hunt for Ford Transit tipper truck after colleague was admitted to hospital with head and hand injuriesA police officer was taken to hospital after a truck reversed into their patrol car following an attempt to get the driver to pull over.Metropolitan police officers had stopped the Ford Transit as it was seen driving erratically through Stockwell, south London. Continue reading...

Moscow parades Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin, with pair calling for Ukraine to agree prisoner swap

Elderly people in east Ukraine are waiting to be moved out as Russian troops advance

Alexander Downer says ‘no one will end up being able to reside in the UK if they pay a people smuggler’, in UK Home Office video

Exclusive: Plan follows schemes in US and China that have given 180,000 disadvantaged children access to keyboardsHe is a Chinese superstar, a piano virtuoso who has sold millions of albums worldwide and regularly topped the classical charts. Lang Lang has also used his fame and fortune to help state schools that lack music, sounding warnings at a 2019 awards ceremony in London that such lessons had become “a real challenge” for children in the most disadvantaged communities.Now he is bringing music to British state schools in an ambitious project that will set up state-of-the-art “piano labs” across the nation. Each lab will have 20 to 30 keyboards. Continue reading...

The Liberal MP for North Sydney’s request came before NSW treasurer Matt Kean publicly called for the Warringah candidate to be disendorsed

Labor seeks to pressure Coalition over Medicare, as aspiring Liberal heath minister says party ‘absolutely guarantee Medicare in law’

Violence erupts in eastern city amid demonstrations against anti-Islam group’s plans to burn Qur’anSwedish police have said officers wounded three people in the eastern city of Norrköping as demonstrators protested against plans by a far-right group to burn copies of the Qur’an.“Police fired several warning shots. Three people appear to have been hit by ricochets and are currently being treated in hospital,” police said in a statement. Continue reading...

Union delegates say walking into class is like entering the land of the giantsSchools are cramped not just because of bigger class sizes but because pupils themselves have got bigger, according to teachers who say they feel as if they’ve “entered the land of the giants” when they walk into class.Children are “crammed” into chairs and desks that are too small, and have to put their feet in the aisles, delegates at the annual conference of the NASUWT teachers’ union were told on Sunday during a debate on class sizes. Continue reading...

Survey finds third have skipped meal to keep up with other costs and 20% unable at least once to afford cooking with ovenNearly one in 10 parents are “very likely” to use a food bank to feed their children over the next three months, a survey has found.It means that as many as 1.3 million parents are expecting to have to visit a food bank as families struggle to cope with rising costs of living, with 88% of those surveyed admitting their monthly food bill has increased in the past three months alone. Continue reading...

Ukraine starts process to join EU, Mariupol defies demand to surrender, and second British soldier paraded on Russian TV

Israeli police say Palestinians in compound began gathering stones before the arrival of Jewish visitors later seen leaving under police guardMore than 20 Palestinians and Israelis have been wounded in several incidents in and around Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound, two days after major violence at the flashpoint site.The clashes on Sunday take the number of wounded since Friday to more than 170, at a tense time when the Jewish Passover festival coincides with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Continue reading...

Pilot scheme will see trained volunteers responding to ‘category three’ calls where extra help needed due to mobility problemsVolunteers could be responding to urgent 999 calls in London within weeks, as the capital’s ambulance service tries to tackle mounting delays.A pilot scheme, revealed in London ambulance service (LAS) board papers at the end of March, will focus on people who fall into “category three”, where they require a response within two hours, and need extra help because of mobility problems. Continue reading...

Move comes 16 years after collapse of Christmas savings club Farepak, which left thousands unable to access cashNew laws are to be announced this week aimed at protecting the hundreds of thousands of Britons who use savings clubs to put money aside for Christmas or pay for other items in advance.The government said it would also look at whether there were other sectors posing risks to people who prepay for goods or services, and whether similar protections were needed. Home improvements and weddings are two examples of big-ticket items where people frequently hand over substantial sums in advance. Continue reading...

Letter to government renews calls to repatriate citizens, including 30 children, held in conditions that ‘meet the standard of torture’

Uncooperative developers to be threatened with loss of planning permission by Michael GoveDevelopers that are refusing to contribute to the fund set up to fix dangerous cladding will be warned this week they could be blocked from selling new homes.The levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, will explicitly threaten retaliation, citing powers in the building safety bill that would stop uncooperative developers getting planning permission. Continue reading...

Social media video shows first minister not wearing mask during campaign visit to East Kilbride barber’sNicola Sturgeon has been reported to police after footage showed her appearing to break Scotland’s Covid laws on face masks.A video posted on social media showed the first minister not wearing a mask during a local election campaign visit to a barber’s in East Kilbride, south Lanarkshire, on Saturday. Continue reading...

NASUWT say tutors being contacted 24 hours of the day as job parameters become blurred amid pandemicParents now feel they can access teachers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and have got into the habit of firing off “aggressive and accusatory” emails at any time of the day or night, a teaching conference has heard.Teachers said that since the outbreak of the pandemic, the parameters of their job have become blurred, and parents now feel they can just “jump on the phone” or go on to social media to directly contact their child’s teacher outside school hours. Continue reading...

Downing Street gathering in November 2020 became leaving party only after PM arrived, Sunday Times reportsLabour said that a fresh Partygate revelation on Sunday implied that Boris Johnson instigated one of the No 10 parties that he has denied attending.The deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, spoke out after the Sunday Times reported that a gathering that took place in Downing Street on Friday 13 November 2020 took on the nature of a leaving party only after Johnson arrived and started pouring drinks. Continue reading...

Propaganda video shows Shaun Pinner, believed to have moved to Ukraine four years ago

More than 1,000 people thought to have descended on site near East Lulworth on Easter SundayPolice have warned would-be revellers not to cross military firing ranges in an attempt to reach an illegal rave in Dorset.More than 1,000 people were thought to have descended on a site close to the village of East Lulworth in the early hours of Sunday, Dorset police said. Continue reading...

Demonstrators threw stones and burned vehicles during a protest against an anti-Islam event organised by Danish far-right Stram Kurs partyUnrest broke out in southern Sweden late on Saturday despite police moving a rally by an anti-Islam far-right group, which was planning to burn a Qur’an among other things, to a new location as a preventive measure.Scuffles and unrest were reported in the southern town of Landskrona after a demonstration scheduled there by the Danish right-wing party Stram Kurs party was moved to the nearby city of Malmo, 27 miles south. Continue reading...

Temperatures to fall and rain forecast for some areas as weather returns to normal for April, Met Office saysMonday is expected to herald a drop in temperatures and rain for some areas of the UK at the end of an unseasonably warm Easter weekend.Temperatures were expected to reach the high teens on Sunday, with the possibility of even higher in the south after Good Friday was the warmest day of the year so far, with 23.4C recorded in St James’s Park in London – warmer than Ibiza. Continue reading...

Glanbia Milk’s products will attract VAT because they are not baked and would not be served at afternoon teaA range of flapjacks have been found to be sweets rather than cakes and therefore subject to VAT, in a judgment that could have big financial implications for manufacturers of the treats.The tax tribunal ruled that 36 flapjacks produced by Glanbia Milk were not cakes, which are zero-rated for VAT purposes, because they would not be eaten for afternoon tea, were more commonly eaten on the go, were not baked and contained significant amounts of protein. Continue reading...

Matthew Rycroft said that without evidence to justify the plan he could not be sure it provides value for moneyThe civil servant in charge of the Home Office has said he does not have evidence to show the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will act as a deterrent.In a letter released at the weekend, Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary at the department, said that because the evidence was not available to justify the plan, he could not be sure it would provide value for money to the taxpayer. Continue reading...

20th Century Flicks has been renting out films since 1982 and is surviving the streaming era

Ursula von der Leyen says she doesn’t distinguish between heavy and light arms and suggests Sberbank could face sanctions

About half of ethnic minority workers said their employer had taken action to tackle racism in last 12 monthsThe number of employers implementing new diversity and inclusion drives has almost trebled since the end of the Black Lives Matter protests, new research shows.A total of 27% of ethnic minority workers said their employers had introduced new initiatives during the last 12 months in response to the global movement, according to an Opinium survey of 2,000 adults. This was an increase from 10% in 2020, the year in which protests began after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in the US state of Minnesota. Continue reading...

The Colombian Nobel laureate, who lived in the city from 1967-75, is to have a €12m building specialising in Latin American literature named after himIn the digital age, building a new library filled with old-fashioned printed books seems idealistic, almost quixotic.Not so in Barcelona. The city council is about to open a new €12m (£10m) library next month, the latest instalment in a programme that dates back 20 years.The library, in the working-class district of Sant Martí de Provençals, has been named in honour of the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. Continue reading...

With the prospect of more Partygate fines and a spiralling cost-of-living crisis, many on his own side are playing a waiting gameIt wasn’t as if things had been going brilliantly for Boris Johnson as he attempted to spend some precious downtime last week at Chequers, a bubble of countryside tranquillity away from the escalating cost of living crisis and political woes that had punctuated his year.Already by Tuesday morning, one MP had been expelled from the party after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. Another had caused outrage for issuing a statement supporting his former colleague – all just weeks before looming local elections. Continue reading...

Staff shortages, treatment backlogs and the pandemic have contributed to hospital doctors and nurses taking almost 23,000 years off with mental health problems since 2017

Labor says Anne Ruston as health minister if Coalition re-elected should ‘send a shiver down the spine’; WA records eight Covid deaths, NSW six, Victoria two and Tasmania one. This blog is now closed

Minister says Coalition is ‘not cutting Medicare’ as Labor accuses her of wanting ‘to take the universal out of universal healthcare’

Barry Joule says he is cancelling plans to donate a collection to the UK gallery because it failed to exhibit works in earlier giftAn extensive collection of Francis Bacon’s art will be given to France instead of to the Tate following a row between the gallery and one of the artist’s closest friends.Barry Joule, who was Bacon’s confidant, said he is so frustrated by the Tate’s failure to exhibit an earlier donation of the artist’s work that he has cancelled plans to donate hundreds more items to the gallery. Continue reading...

After two weeks of relative calm in the city, sinking of Moskva warship leads to retaliatory missile attacks

Russia has told Ukrainian soldiers in southern city to surrender as Ukraine president laments ‘inhuman’ situation there

Teaching union calls for cap on class sizes for all key stages as staff warn they cannot meet learning needs of all childrenThree out of four teachers in the UK say class sizes are getting bigger, having a negative impact on pupil progress, levels of attainment and behaviour during lessons, according to a survey.As schools struggle to help pupils catch up amid continuing disruption resulting from the pandemic, more than nine out of 10 (95%) teachers warned that bigger classes were damaging their ability to meet the needs of all pupils. Continue reading...

Foreign minister says she has made it ‘explicitly clear’ she does not agree with comments made by Warringah candidate