As calls grow for action to address the problem, here are a few practical steps that could be consideredCalls are increasing for action to tackle what is described as an institutionally sexist atmosphere in parliament, one in which harassment – against both women and men – is alleged to have become endemic. So far, however, there has been little in the way of specific ideas. Here are a few possibilities: Continue reading...

Analysis: The Reserve Bank of Australia finds itself in a strategic and political bind. Credibility is at stake

Explosions in separatist-controlled region have heightened worries that country could be drawn into the Ukraine warWhen a string of mysterious explosions hit government buildings in Transnistria, the Moscow-backed separatist region of Moldova, there was no immediate claim of responsibility. But for Pasha, a 24-year old journalist from the breakaway region’s capital, Tiraspol, this week’s blasts were a clear sign that it was time to get out.“There was a chance that there would be more attacks, and it’s no fun waiting to find out where would be hit next,” he said. Adding to the uncertainty were growing rumours that men in the region would be mobilised to fight alongside Russian troops across the border in Ukraine. Continue reading...

Major report finds poorer areas worst affected by deep cuts in government fundingPoorer areas have been hit disproportionally by a combination of cuts to neighbourhood services such as parks, libraries, refuse collection and children’s centres that have left English councils “hollowed out” since 2010, a major report into local government has concluded.The study by the Institute for Government thinktank found that while some councils coped better than others, and reduced spending did not necessarily mean worse results, a lack of information made it difficult to learn lessons. Continue reading...

Opposition leader to visit Kyiv on Monday and Ukrainian ambassador says military aid pledged is ‘not enough’The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has defended himself against accusations that his approach to Russian aggression has been hesitant and timid, insisting his decisions followed close consultation with Germany’s allies and sought to avoid any suspicion that the country was “going it alone”.Scholz has faced fierce criticism even from within his own government and last week came under particular fire from the opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, who accused him of weak leadership and of “procrastination, dithering and timidity”. On Sunday it was reported that Merz was planning to travel to Kyiv on Monday. Continue reading...

Embedded officials can pass the details of undocumented people to immigration enforcementThe Home Office has placed immigration officers in child social services and dozens of other local authority departments, in an arrangement that has raised concerns about the ability of the most vulnerable to seek support, the Guardian can reveal.The officers are part of an “enhanced checking service” that includes providing information about people’s right to work and their eligibility for council services. The embedded official can also pass the details of undocumented people to immigration enforcement officers. Continue reading...

Some have returned to Mariupol area in frustration and some British sponsors also quitting scheme, it is claimedHundreds of Ukrainian families are pulling out of the Homes for Ukraine scheme because of delays in issuing visas to travel to the UK, with some subsequently returning to their wartorn country.Not only are frustrated Ukrainian refugees withdrawing from the scheme after waiting up to six weeks for a visa to materialise, but UK sponsors are also deciding to walk away because of problems with issuing visas to families fleeing the war. Continue reading...

Party to declare itself most likely to beat Tories in byelection, but leader denies pact with LabourThe Liberal Democrats view themselves as the likely challengers to the Conservatives in the forthcoming Tiverton and Honiton byelection, Ed Davey has said, despite his party finishing behind Labour in the past three general elections.The Conservatives have held the Devon seat continuously since it was created in 1997, but could face a tough battle following the resignation of MP Neil Parish after he admitted twice watching pornography in the House of Commons chamber. Continue reading...

Labour leader says ‘fish rots from the head’ after resignation of Neil Parish for watching porn in parliamentA culture of misogyny and harassment in parliament has been worsened by the government’s repeated attempts to delay disciplinary action against misbehaving Tory MPs, Keir Starmer has argued, saying that “a fish rots from the head”.Starmer said real change had to be “led and modelled from the top” when asked about new claims of abusive and sexualised behaviour by MPs following the resignation of the Conservative backbencher Neil Parish for watching pornography in the Commons chamber. Continue reading...

Priti Patel has buried ‘humane’ plans for refugees – and in Linton-on-Ouse, locals fear a new ‘reception centre’ has an undisclosed purposeFor Priti Patel, the findings of the report on her desk were no doubt unpalatable. Fixated on creating a system that detained and quickly removed asylum seekers, the home secretary would have been shocked to discover that some officials in her department were now enthusing about a “humane” alternative.At precisely the same time as the Home Office was secretly drawing up options for new immigration removal centres, civil servants elsewhere in the department were championing an option that may have rendered such plans redundant. Continue reading...

Twenty wounded civilians escape Mariupol steel plant, and Nancy Pelosi makes surprise visit to Kyiv

Karan Chanana’s £220,000 donation to the Conservatives turns spotlight back on laxity of rules banning contributions from foreign companiesA supermarket rice magnate whose firm is based in the Middle East is one of the Conservative party’s major backers, donating through a foreign-owned company with millions of pounds of debt, the Observer can reveal.Karan Chanana, 49, the head of the global rice brand Amira, has donated more than £220,000 to the Conservative party through his British company Amira G Foods since September 2019. Continue reading...

Anthony Albanese outlines vision for medicines, manufacturing jobs, gender pay equity, electric vehicles and housing affordability

Details released of tale about Queen’s 70-year reign, which is felt to be too ‘Anglocentric’ by devolved governmentsThe platinum jubilee children’s book due to go out to every state primary school pupil to celebrate the Queen this month will not be welcomed in all Welsh or Scottish schools.On the request of the Scottish and Welsh governments, schools in those regions will be asked instead to opt-in to receive copies. Continue reading...

Denis Avey’s publishers plan changes to new editions of bestseller as researcher raises alarmIt started with an extraordinary tale of wartime bravery and led to the publication of a bestselling account, The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, and to a BBC documentary. Then the difficult questions began. Were the heroic exploits of Denis Avey really all they seemed? Was his dramatic claim he had swapped places with a man inside a concentration camp possibly a fake?In spite of growing doubts, Avey’s story that he saved the life of a Jewish prisoner by placing himself in danger while he was being held in a prisoner-of-war sub-camp near Auschwitz is still in popular currency. Continue reading...

Anthony Albanese and senior Labor members speak at ALP campaign launch in Perth; Scott Morrison speaks at Sydney rally; Coalition outlines e-safety plan; Greens announce LGBTQ+ equality plan; Victoria reports seven Covid deaths; NSW reports five; South Australia reports two. This blog is now closed

Group championing rights of new mothers and pregnant women removed after commenting on government’s lack of progressA charity that champions the employment rights of pregnant women and new mothers has been dropped from a government advisory board after posting critical tweets.In recent months, senior Tories including the culture secretary Nadine Dorries and her predecessor Oliver Dowden have taken pains to position themselves as champions of free speech, decrying “cancel culture”. Continue reading...

‘I was more interested in his acting,’ says Reinaldo Marcus Green in his decision to choose a rising star of British film and theatre to play the king of reggaeHe was the king of reggae, a giant of Jamaican music whose life was cut short in 1981, aged just 36. Now Bob Marley is to be celebrated on the big screen with a film that will be shot in London and Jamaica this autumn.Kingsley Ben-Adir, a rising star of British film and theatre, whose previous roles include Malcolm X in One Night in Miami, will play Marley in the Paramount movie. Continue reading...

In an interview after travelling back to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons said she believed Vladimir Putin still intends to seize the capital

In Neil Parish’s Devon seat, and further north in the Red Wall, there’s little comfort for Boris JohnsonThe market town of Tiverton, which became prosperous in the 16th and 17th centuries thanks to its thriving wool trade, is usually a tranquil kind of place.But it was an uncomfortable spot to be on Saturday as townsfolk digested the news that their MP, Neil Parish, was under investigation for allegedly watching pornography in the House of Commons. Continue reading...

The party is fighting a tough local election map, but could still benefit from symbolic triumphs in high-profile Tory strongholdsLabour heads into this week’s local elections with a spring in its step. The government is in the doldrums, the prime minister is scandal-tainted and unpopular, and the opposition is preferred on nearly all the major issues of the day. Labour has led the opinion polls for months, and Keir Starmer has opened up a lead over the diminished and beleaguered Boris Johnson, becoming the first Labour leader in a decade to hold such an advantage over his Conservative opponent. This sounds like a political environment in which Labour should prosper at the polls.Not so fast. The bulk of this year’s English contests are being fought on Labour’s strongest terrain – London and other big cities – meaning more seats to defend and fewer opportunities for gains. Labour was also riding high when these seats were last contested. The 2018 contest, fought in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 campaign surge, was Labour’s strongest local election showing in the last decade. Continue reading...

Survey shows public attitudes across age, gender, region and voting habits are less polarised than culture wars might suggestAn overwhelming majority of people in the UK hold the “woke” belief that it is important to be alive to issues of race and social justice, according to a new analysis of public attitudes.Four in five Britons believe in being attentive to those issues – the definition of “woke” used by the Merriam-Webster dictionary – leading researchers to claim the country is not as divided by culture wars as is often assumed. An overwhelming majority of Conservative voters and those who backed Brexit also said it was important to be attentive to the issues. Continue reading...

Russia’s foreign ministry says nuclear war ‘should never be unleashed’, as its forces regroup for battle for eastern Ukraine

Opposition leader also vows to make gender equity an objective of the Fair Work Act if ALP wins federal election on 21 May

Scott Morrison argues Labor is ‘looking to make money out of this’ as Anthony Albanese pledges to cut cost of some mortgages by up to $380,000

Killing of Israeli guard in Ariel and a Palestinian in nearby incident raise fears of escalating violenceIsraeli forces on Saturday arrested the suspected killers of a Jewish settlement guard shot in a West Bank attack claimed by a Palestinian armed group that linked it to violence in Jerusalem.Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, one of the main militant groups active in the Israeli-occupied territory, claimed responsibility for the shooting which, along with the killing of a Palestinian, brought a deadly conclusion to a Friday marked by clashes at Jerusalem’s flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound. Continue reading...

Strong winds pushed blaze across containment lines, threatening the small town of Las VegasMore than 1,000 firefighters backed by bulldozers and aircraft battled the largest active wildfire in the US on Saturday after strong winds pushed it across some containment lines and closer to a town in northern New Mexico.Preliminary overnight mapping imagery indicated that the fire that has burned at least 166 homes grew in size from 103 square miles on Friday to 152 square miles by early Saturday, officials said. Continue reading...

Labour leader attacks Tory tax rises and inability to tackle the cost of living crisisBoris Johnson has been rendered “incapable of governing” by a series of scandals and rows that have left him unable or unwilling to tackle the cost of living crisis, Keir Starmer has warned.In a final pitch before Thursday’s local elections, the Labour leader said that voters were hearing “the dying groans of a clapped-out government” that was attempting to use “desperate attacks and deflections” to distract from inaction over rising bills and tax increases. Continue reading...

Daughters announced her death on Saturday, one day before the Judds were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of FameNaomi Judd, the Kentucky-born singer who formed the Grammy winning duo the Judds with her daughter Wynonna, and was also the mother of the actor Ashley Judd, has died. She was 76.Judd’s daughters announced her death in a statement on Saturday, one day before the Judds were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Continue reading...

Hollywood actor and UN envoy met refugees in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, its regional governor said

The major parties have turned to internet jokes as they fight for attention, but some experts think it’s a big waste of time

Parish resigns over ‘moment of madness’, and claims ‘it was tractors I was looking at on the internet’Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish, who resigned his seat on Saturday after admitting he had twice watched pornography in the House of Commons chamber, appeared to have committed a criminal offence which carried a maximum two-year prison sentence, Labour said.Parish, who had represented the safe west country seat of Tiverton and Honiton since 2010, said that on the first occasion he watched porn on his mobile phone next to other MPs, including women, he had done so by accident. Continue reading...

Sir Lindsay Hoyle says MPs should no longer employ staff directly, following revelations involving bullying and harassmentA radical overhaul of the working practices in Westminster is being demanded by the House of Commons Speaker, in the wake of a series of scandals over sexual harassment and bullying that have rocked parliament.After a week in which MPs and staff have spoken out over their treatment in the Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle said that a review of how parliament functions was now “urgently needed” following the damaging revelations. Continue reading...

Prime minister had broached issue of asymptomatic transmission publicly with advisers long before testing rules were introducedBoris Johnson’s claim that a lack of knowledge about the asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 put care homes at risk has been further undermined after it emerged he openly discussed the potential scale of symptom-free transmission.The prime minister has already been accused of misleading parliament over the claim. He made it last week after the high court ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in ordering the discharge of patients to care homes without testing in the spring of 2020. Johnson told the House of Commons: “What we didn’t know in particular was that Covid could be transmitted asymptomatically.” Continue reading...

The MP for Tiverton and Honiton says he initially found the pornographic website while looking at tractors

UK dispatches minister after ex-leader charged with drug offences and inquiry finds serious governance issuesThe Foreign Office is risking a political backlash on the British Virgin Islands if it goes ahead with plans recommended by an independent commission of inquiry to impose a form of direct rule on the islands from London after allegations of maladministration and corruption.Natalio Wheatley, the acting BVI premier elevated to the office after the former premier Andrew Fahie, 51, was arrested on drug running charges in Miami on Thursday, said he opposed the plan for direct rule for two years, with the British appointed governor taking charge and being advised by a council of local politicians. Continue reading...

Hannah Kenny was subjected to sectarian and misogynistic abuse by three men in east BelfastA Stormont candidate was grabbed by the throat in a terrifying “sectarian and misogynistic” attack while out canvassing.Hannah Kenny, standing for the People Before Profit party, said the assault took place last Saturday while she was delivering election material in east Belfast. Continue reading...

Parish says an initial incident was accidental while looking at tractors, but a second time was deliberate

The 76-year-old former leader, jailed on corruption charges in 2018, is ready to run again and is ahead of incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the pollsFor weeks Hilton Acioli wrestled with the melodies and lyrics that would become the theme tune to one of the most remarkable political careers in recent history.Finally, one morning in the winter of 1989, something clicked. “Lula lá – a star is sparkling. Lula lá – the flourishing of hope,” the Cat Stevens-loving Brazilian songsmith sang as he sat before his computer with a guitar. Continue reading...

Forces to be redeployed over smaller areas with simplified command structure, says UK military report

Early years providers can’t attract qualified workers and the crisis will put prices up, increasing the burden on struggling familiesNurseries across the UK are being forced to close or reduce their services at an alarming rate because they are struggling to recruit and retain staff, the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) has warned.The crisis is only set to deepen as more childcare providers go out of business, increasing demand for places and pushing prices even higher for families struggling with the rising cost of living. Continue reading...

Sue Parish claims she was unaware of Tory MP’s suspension until a journalist asked her for a quote

Ease of finding accommodation and work lures 10 times the number who have made it to BritainWhen it became clear to Liliia Fomina that the war raging outside her hometown of Zaporizhzhia would continue not just for days, but months or even years, she decided that she wanted to flee to the UK. A sponsor in Windsor was found, and on 18 March the 29-year-old applied for a British visa for herself and her five-year-old son Lev.The pair sheltered with friends of friends in a village near Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, and waited: one week, two weeks, three weeks. By the time her visa finally came through, after almost a month of uncertainty, the lawyer had changed her mind. Continue reading...

Footage shows injured man, who gives his name as Andrew Hill, being questioned by Russian forces

People in Devon town have little sympathy and say Tory should ‘admit what he’s done’ and resign

Anthony Albanese will unveil $329m Help to Buy housing initiative as the centrepiece of Labor’s campaign launch in Perth

Retiree Jim Fitton, 66, was detained when airport security found ‘valueless’ pottery shards in luggageThe family of a retired British geologist facing the death penalty in Iraq have called on the UK government to urgently intervene.Jim Fitton, 66, was detained by authorities in the Middle Eastern country, accused of smuggling, during a geology and archaeology trip. Continue reading...

With no Moneypenny and no M, a previously unpublished script reveals the author’s original ideas for MoonrakerIn the action-packed film Moonraker, James Bond escapes from Jaws, the metal-toothed villain, on a hang-glider that ejects from a speedboat just as he drives over the precipice of a waterfall. It is one of numerous outlandish scenes in the film that Ian Fleming never wrote in his original 007 novel. And it could not be more different to the author’s own version of the film, according to a previously unpublished script.In 1956, a year after the Moonraker novel was published, Fleming wrote his own 150-page film treatment with a plot that is as serious as the 1979 film is lightweight, despite Roger Moore’s charm as the fictional spy. Continue reading...

Thousands are without power after a suspected twister tore through parts of the state on Friday eveningA suspected tornado that barrelled through parts of Kansas damaged multiple buildings, injured several people and left more than 6,500 people without power, officials said.Officials said the suspected twister moved though parts of south-east Wichita and Andover on Friday evening. Andover fire chief, Chad Russell, said during a news conference on Saturday morning that 50 to 100 buildings were damaged in Sedgwick County, though it was not immediately known how many buildings were damaged in Andover. Continue reading...