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Backers play down large rebellion, hailing ‘third mandate’ and saying Ukraine leader is ‘punching the air’

Police begin process to transport Indian-born pair wanted on criminal and money-laundering chargesPolice in Dubai are coordinating with their South African counterparts to secure the extradition of two wealthy Indian-born brothers wanted by South African authorities on criminal and money-laundering charges who were arrested in the emirate on Monday.Atul and Rajesh Gupta are accused of paying bribes in exchange for lucrative state contracts and influence over ministerial appointments during the chaotic nine-year presidency of Jacob Zuma, which ended amid allegations of systematic corruption in 2018. The brothers fled to Dubai shortly after Zuma’s fall from power. Continue reading...

Decision exceeded predictions from economists while Westpac was the first of the big banks to pass on the rise in full to customers

Long deployments and a lack of training, support, food and equipment all affecting morale as war drags onRussia-Ukraine war latestRussia’s assault on Ukraine’s east has brought it some battlefield success as its military has advanced slowly in fierce fighting in Donbas.But those gains have come at a high price for the Russian invasion force, with evidence that high-level casualties are growing and that some units may be approaching exhaustion as the war moves past its 100-day mark. Continue reading...

Lawyers for Lebanese man tell high court that national security information should not be kept completely secret from parties

Song reaches No 8 in the US 37 years after it was first released, thanks to inclusion in new season of Stranger Things

Prime minister responds to reports of Chinese naval base in Cambodia; nation records 29 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

Key critic Tobias Ellwood tells PM ‘a lot of work to be done’ with change of direction needed by party conference in early OctoberRebel Conservatives have given Boris Johnson until the party conference to change direction or they warn rules could be altered to allow another challenge, as Dominic Raab said the “democratic result” of the vote should be respected.Johnson lost the confidence of 41% of his MPs in a vote on his leadership on Monday night, after weeks of anger at lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street and fears the party’s direction is causing a slump at the polls. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Beykush winery struggled to get bottles to judges in UK from its site on edge of Russian-occupied territory

Retailers and club could face fines after watchdog finds they broke competition lawJD Sports and Elite Sports, along with Rangers Football Club, broke competition law by fixing the prices of some Rangers-branded clothing to keep them high at the expense of fans, Britain’s competition watchdog has found.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has been investigating the matter since December 2020, said sports retailers Elite and JD fixed the retail prices of a number of Rangers-branded replica kits and other clothing products from September 2018 until at least July 2019. Continue reading...

Jim Chalmers responds to Reserve Bank decision to lift cash rate 50 basis points as Anthony Albanese declines to comment during Indonesia trip

New Zealand PM arriving in Sydney on Thursday will be first foreign leader hosted by new Labor government

Toni Melrose-Mikeska said JC confided in her in 1990, after breaking up with Dawson, who has pleaded not guilty to Lynette Dawson’s murder

Dennis Basic pleads guilty in Victoria’s county court to 12 charges related to anti-lockdown rallies

Avi Yemini, who has brought the defamation suit, has said he wants to unmask the person behind the pro-Labor account

February Morning, founded by former Russian MP Ilya Ponomarev, broadcasts to audience in Russia

AFP say Calabrian mafia have been in Australia for decades, laundering money and ‘pulling the strings’ of other gangs

State has lowest per capita spend on mental health, alcohol and drug services in Australia, report says

Artwork by Adam Stone provoked a public backlash, culminating in its attempted decapitation and removal from a Fitzroy streetComedian John Oliver has offered to buy a controversial banana statue that was pulled off the streets of Melbourne after being attacked by vandalsThe $22,000, 1.8m tall anthropomorphic fibreglass banana was commissioned from artist Adam Stone by the City of Yarra. Stone said it was a representation of hubris and climate change. Continue reading...

Supply chain issues cause unprecedented demand and wait times for used cars pushing dealers to contact private sellers directly

Only the most stridently supportive titles stand vocally behind prime minister after 41% of his own MPs vote for his removalA haunted-looking Boris Johnson stares out from the front pages of many of the papers after a dramatic night of Conservative party bloodletting at Westminster.The prime minister is shown being driven back from the Commons to Downing Street after he won a Tory no-confidence vote in his leadership by 211 to 148. Continue reading...

Royal College of Nursing highlights lack of specialist NHS clinics and disparities in care around the UKNHS services for the 2 million Britons struggling with long Covid are “woefully inadequate” given how many people are being diagnosed with the condition, nurses’ leaders have warned.There are too few specialist clinics to handle the soaring demand for treatment, with only a tiny number of sufferers receiving any help, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said. Continue reading...

Court rejects actor’s push to dismiss case of Anthony Rapp, who alleges sexual advance occurred when he was 14A US federal judge has rejected Kevin Spacey’s bid to dismiss a civil lawsuit in which a fellow actor, Anthony Rapp, accused the Oscar winner of making an unwanted sexual advance during a party at Spacey’s Manhattan home in 1986, when Rapp was 14.The US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said on Monday there was a genuine factual dispute about whether the now 62-year-old Spacey had forcibly touched Rapp’s “intimate parts” to gratify his own sexual desire. Continue reading...

Ahead of travelling to Makassar on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese tells Jakarta business leaders Australia will partner with Indonesia to drive clean energy transition

Daughter of Duke and Duchess of Sussex turned one during the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrationsThe Duke and Duchess of Sussex have shared a photograph of their daughter, Lilibet, which was taken on her first birthday during the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations.Named in honour of the Queen’s childhood nickname, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor turned one on Saturday during the couple’s brief UK visit for the jubilee. To mark the occasion, close friends and family were invited to a backyard picnic at Frogmore Cottage, the couple’s home on the Windsor estate, where they stayed during their flying visit. Continue reading...

Business owners at the centre of a scandal that led to former president Jacob Zuma’s resignationTwo wealthy Indian-born business brothers who were allegedly at the centre of a massive web of state corruption in South Africa have been arrested in Dubai, Pretoria announced on Monday.The arrests came as an investigation was concluded into massive plundering of state institutions during former president Jacob Zuma’s era. Continue reading...

Analysis: With 148 votes against him, the task of governing is likely to become more, not less difficult in the months aheadBoris Johnson’s allies had always said about the vote of no confidence that victory by just one vote was still a win, and he would remain in Downing Street and get on with delivering “the people’s priorities”.They will no doubt be cracking opening the bubbly on Monday evening. But the truth is that with 148 votes against him, the task of governing is likely to become more, not less difficult in the weeks and months ahead. Continue reading...

PM retains support of most colleagues but badly weakened after result in which 148 MPs voted against him

Officials say Orlando Jorge Mera, founder member of Modern Revolutionary party, shot and killed by unknown personThe Dominican Republic’s minister of the environment and natural resources has been shot and killed in his officeby a close friend, the office of the president said in a statement on Monday.Authorities said Orlando Jorge Mera was shot by Miguel Cruz, who has been detained. No further details were immediately available. Continue reading...

Witnesses describe how attackers detonated explosives and shot at those who tried to fleeWorkers cleared the pools of blood and pieces of broken pews at the Saint Francis Catholic church in south-west Nigeria on Monday, as the local community mourned more than 50 parishioners shot dead in the final moments of mass a day earlier.

Workshops and classrooms remain empty and inmates inactive as prisons ‘do not have staff to run properly’Covid lockdowns in prisons will leave “a price to pay” for the boredom, loss of family ties and lack of education inflicted upon thousands of inmates, the official watchdog has said.Charlie Taylor, HM chief inspector of prisons, said there had also been “a depressingly low level of activity for prisoners” as the pandemic eased despite prisons’ responsibility to educate, train and increase the employability of inmates. Continue reading...

Li Jiaqi, a blogger with millions of fans, had his livestream abruptly cut on Friday, and has posted nothing sinceOne of China’s top bloggers has gone silent after livestreaming footage of a cake apparently shaped like a tank just before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, prompting debate over the highly sensitive event among tens of millions of young fans.Discussion of the crackdown on 4 June 1989, when China set troops and tanks on peaceful protesters, is all but forbidden on the mainland. Continue reading...

While jury deliberated in Toronto, news broke that the Canadian rock musician had been charged with another sexual assault

UK and US have so far promised a handful; official says with 60 they can stop Russians ‘dead in their tracks’

Who can write about whom was a running question, tackled by writers from Rose Tremain to Damon Galgut“Authenticity” is a word that gets bandied about in the cultural sphere quite a lot just at the moment, so it’s perhaps no surprise that discussions around how “authentic” a work of literature should be were something of a theme at this year’s Hay festival.When it comes to fiction, according to Julian Barnes, there is kind of a grey area, with it being “a strange mixture of something that is very personal, and also something very objective”. Is it a novelist’s job to imagine characters from all walks of life? Or should autofiction become the only option? Continue reading...

Dom Phillips disappeared on a trip to one of the remotest corners of the Amazon days after receiving threatsFears are growing over the safety of a British journalist and a Brazilian Indigenous expert who have disappeared in one of the remotest corners of the Amazon just days after receiving threats.Dom Phillips, a longtime contributor to the Guardian in Brazil, was last seen over the weekend in the Javari region of Amazonas state – a vast region of rivers and rainforests near the border with Peru. Continue reading...

Resources minister signals ‘very positive’ talks with gas corporations and suggested managing coal supply could relieve market pressures

State government struck an agreement with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria to establish body with legal powers

Family of Ehud Yonay, author of source material for the 1986 blockbuster starring Tom Cruise, launch legal action against hit sequelThe family of the author whose article inspired the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun on Monday sued Paramount Pictures for copyright infringement over this year’s blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick.According to a complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court, the Paramount Global unit failed to reacquire the rights to Ehud Yonay’s 1983 article “Top Guns”, which appeared in a 1983 issue of California magazine, from his family before releasing the “derivative” sequel. Continue reading...

Flying stun gun plan in response to US school shootings was expression of potential, not launch timetable, says CEOAxon, the company formerly known as Taser, has abandoned plans to build a stun gun-equipped drone intended for deployment in schools after an “exodus” of resignations from its internal ethics board.The company’s chief executive, Rick Smith, said in a statement: “I want to be explicit: I announced a potential delivery date a few years out as an expression of what could be possible; it is not an actual launch timeline, especially as we are pausing that program. A remotely operated non-lethal Taser-enabled drone in schools is an idea, not a product, and it’s a long way off. We have a lot of work and exploring to see if this technology is even viable and to understand if the public concerns can be adequately addressed before moving forward.” Continue reading...

More than 70 staff suspended and 34 arrested at psychiatric hospital in County Antrim since allegations came to lightA public inquiry has opened into allegations of extensive and repeated abuse of patients at Muckamore Abbey, a hospital for vulnerable adults in Northern Ireland.The inquiry’s chair, Tom Kark, said at the first hearing on Monday that the allegations of abuse and neglect at the psychiatric facility outside Belfast, in County Antrim, brought the medical, nursing and care professions into disrepute. Continue reading...

EasyJet axes a further 37 services as most underground stations in centre of capital are closedTransport troubles have hampered the return to work for many after the jubilee weekend, with more flight cancellations and a tube strike causing widespread disruption.EasyJet cancelled a further 37 flights on Monday, as the staffing issues that have plagued the airline over half-term continued. Thousands more passengers had their travel plans upturned, after more than 80 flight cancellations by the airline on Sunday. Continue reading...

Recently rediscovered BBC footage of an exuberant Sunday afternoon disco in Ardoyne has gone viralIn 1964 it was the moment the children of Holy Cross parish in north Belfast waited for all week: at 3pm on Sunday their school held a disco.For the price of a few pence they would pack the hall, the music would start and for the next few hours their world was a sublime realm of dance, joy and rock’n’roll, especially when the Hippy Hippy Shake played. Continue reading...

Surge in shopper footfall over four-day bank holiday also gives UK high streets a much-needed liftAlmost 17 million people took part in community celebrations during the platinum jubilee weekend, according to one poll, as the Queen highlighted the “sense of togetherness” in her thank you message to the country.The four-day bank holiday also gave UK high streets a much-needed lift as shopper footfall surged. Continue reading...

Your rights if you are one of the thousands of people caught up in recent travel chaosThousands of Britons are stuck abroad after about 200 flights were cancelled over the weekend, including 80 by easyJet on Sunday. But what are your rights if you are one of those affected? Continue reading...

Kaja Kallas warns pain of sanctions will test relations, and also criticises Macron’s stance on Putin

Dominic Raab to unveil new raft of measures, which include providing court with a specialist legal and police teamThe UK Ministry of Justice has announced a second tranche of support for the international criminal court’s (ICC) investigations into war crimes in Ukraine, including the deployment of a specialist legal and police team.Karim Khan QC, the court’s chief prosecutor, was due in London on Monday to provide an update on the progress of the investigation, although his trip was later cancelled due to illness. The deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, will present further support to the independent investigation on top of the £1m of funding provided earlier this year. Continue reading...

Recordings from May 1965 were sealed for nearly 50 years, and reveal folk-like renditions of songs including I’m Waiting for the Man and HeroinLou Reed’s earliest versions of some of the Velvet Underground’s greatest songs, including I’m Waiting for the Man and Heroin, have been unearthed and will be released in August.The US record label Light in the Attic, in partnership with Reed’s widow Laurie Anderson, will release Words & Music, May 1965 as the first album in a new archival series. Continue reading...

Global supply chain crisis, including computer chip shortage, and inflation hit businessUK car sales slumped by a fifth last month compared with a year earlier as the semiconductor shortage continued to bite and the industry raised concerns over the impact of inflation on the market.New UK car registrations fell by 20.6% year on year to 124,400 in the second weakest May since 1992, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), a lobby group. Continue reading...

Rise of almost 6p a litre at UK forecourts over bank holiday week renews concern over spiralling costsPetrol prices soared by almost 6p a litre at UK forecourts over the jubilee bank holiday week to a fresh record, with drivers warned they could exceed 180p this week.The RAC called for radical government intervention after figures from the data firm Experian Catalist showed the average cost of a litre of petrol reached a record 177.9p on Sunday, up from 172.1p on 27 May. Continue reading...