As the arctic warms four times faster than the global average, Europe’s only indigenous population is under threat. For centuries, the Sámi people have herded reindeer throughout northern Europe. Now, warmer winters are turning the snow the reindeer dig through to find food into ice, blocking their only source of sustenance. In the last two years, 10,000 reindeer died. If this winter is bad, herders fear up to half the herd could be lost

Organisers forced to cancel for third year in a row, but say they hope event can return in futureA “knob-throwing” event has been cancelled because the size has become too much to handle for the organisers.The Dorset knob-throwing contest involves competitors hurling a traditional Dorset knob – a hard biscuit – as far as they can. The record throw of 29.4 metres (96 ft) was set in 2012.Three Dorset knobs per go, furthest knob thrown is measured;Use only Dorset Knobs provided;Standing throw from marked standing point;Underarm throwing only;One foot must remain on the ground during throwing;Distance of the furthest knob only measured within the designated throwing zone, which is 5 metres wide x 32 metres long, marked in 2 metre zones, with use of measure in between marks to determine distance thrown;Dorset knob measured at final resting place;If Dorset knob breaks upon landing it will be the umpire’s decision of final resting place. Continue reading...

Dylan Alcott, Maggie Beer, Catherine Cox and Prof Leslie Burnett also among recipients, with women making up almost half of honours list

The deal covers all Dylan recordings dating from 1962 to future originals and reissues, and will explore ‘new ways’ to reach future generationsBob Dylan has sold his entire back catalogue of recorded music to Sony Music Entertainment, as well as the rights to multiple future releases, in a deal rumoured to be worth between $150m and $200m (£111m–£148m), Variety reports.The deal covers all Dylan recordings dating from 1962, including his self-titled debut album, which celebrates its 60th anniversary in March, and future releases and reissues in Dylan’s celebrated Bootleg Series. Continue reading...

Campaigners say it is a relief that private companies are now ‘out of the picture’ but want to know how future custodianship will operate

The Tragedy of Macbeth follows in the footsteps of Orson Welles’s 1948 film, which showed how imagination can turn Shakespeare’s text into more than a costume epicWith Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth streaming and in cinemas, I am struck by the way this particular Shakespeare tragedy acts as a magnet for movie-makers. It has obvious attractions: it is short, atmospheric, confronts the nature of evil and is open to adaptation. Parallel versions range from Akira Kurosawa’s magnificent samurai epic Throne of Blood to a low-budget film noir from the 1950s, Joe Macbeth. But, after viewing four versions that stick closer to the original text, I am intrigued to see what they tell us about the filming of Shakespeare.Although it got rave reviews and has some original touches – such as opening with the silent burial of the Macbeths’ child – I was least impressed by Justin Kurzel’s 2015 film. There is no denying Kurzel’s visual sense: we get epic battles and seductive shots of mist-wreathed Scottish landscapes. But, put bluntly, the film seems terrified of Shakespeare’s language: Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the Macbeths speak in hushed, conversational tones and insert pauses between each line that would make Pinter blush. “If we should fail?” asks Macbeth of the projected murder of Duncan. Five seconds later Lady M finally gets round to replying: “We fail.” Continue reading...

Virtual meeting between western powers comes as the US put 8,500 troops on alert and as France prepares to host a meeting of Russian and Ukrainian officialsUS president Joe Biden has insisted there was “total” unity among western powers after crisis talks with European leaders on how to deter Russia from an attack against Ukraine, as Downing Street warned of “unprecedented sanctions” against Moscow should an invasion take place. .“I had a very, very, very good meeting – total unanimity with all the European leaders,” Biden told reporters shortly after finishing a one hour and 20 minute video conference on Monday with allied leaders from Europe and Nato. Continue reading...

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has attacked prime minister Scott Morrison's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘While Mr Morrison talks drivel at the cricket and shows off the contents of his kitchen, Australians are being confronted by empty supermarket shelves,’ the Labor leader said during an address at the National Press Club. ‘Never before has Australia had a prime minister with such a pathological determination to avoid responsibility’. Albanese said Morrison ‘doesn’t hold a hose and he doesn’t give a RATs’, referring to the acronym for rapid antigen tests which have been difficult to buy during the Omicron outbreak► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

Soldiers placed on standby to deploy to Europe as concerns over possible ‘lightning attack’ by Russia growThe US has placed 8,500 troops on heightened alert to deploy to Europe as Nato reinforced its eastern borders with warships and fighter jets, amid growing fears of a possible “lightning” attack by Russia to seize the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the troops, all of them currently stationed in the US, would be on standby to take part in Nato’s Response Force (NRF) if it is activated, but would also be available “if other situations develop”. Continue reading...

ITV News reports that prime minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, organised gathering for him in cabinet room on 19 June 2020

Tuesday: can the 1,700km rail route between Melbourne and Brisbane live up to its hype? Plus: Paul Kelly reflects on his most memorable concertGood morning. It’s been two years today since the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Australia. Since then, there have been more than 1.6m infections and more than 3,000 deaths, with many of those taking place in the current Omicron outbreak. The surge has caused shortages of rapid tests, which are causing stress for vulnerable people and has come at a difficult time for the return to school. In the aged care sector, some facilities are telling essential visitors to find their own rapid tests or be denied entry. Meanwhile, our economics correspondent, Peter Hannam, looks at whether Australia debt-fuelled pandemic finance party is finally over.A 1,700km rail route between Melbourne and Brisbane has been promised by the Coalition to deliver an economic boom for Australia’s regions and rural communities. But four years after the project (worth $14.5bn and counting) was announced, just 130km of track has been laid and we are still unsure of where it will exactly start and finish. A major Guardian investigation examines the mega project to find out whether communities along its route will benefit and whether their concerns are being bypassed. Continue reading...

Requirement to take lateral flow test will end from 4am on 11 February, cheered by airlines as a ‘landmark’

Lone gunman, 18, used a shotgun in the attack at the university, which he then used to kill himselfOne person was shot dead and three others were injured after an 18-year-old man opened fire on his fellow students in a packed lecture hall in the German university town of Heidelberg, according to police.The gunman, who was enrolled at the same university as the students he attacked, entered the university hall shortly before 12.25pm, while a lecture was in progress, carrying a rifle and a double-barrelled shotgun. Continue reading...

Force pays compensation to Dr Konstancja Duff for language used after CCTV captures officers’ commentsThe Metropolitan police have apologised and paid compensation to an academic for “sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language” used by officers about her when she was strip-searched.“What’s that smell? Oh, it’s her knickers,” officers at a north-east London police station said to each other after Dr Konstancja Duff was held down on the floor and her clothes cut off. “Is she rank?” another said. Continue reading...

Prime minister says claims that Covid-19 measure will disrupt supply chain and boost inflation are ‘fearmongering’Justin Trudeau has accused Canada’s conservative politicians of stoking fear that Covid-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truck drivers are exacerbating supply chain disruptions and fueling inflation.The United States imposed a mandate, meant to aid the fight against the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus, on 22 January, while Canada’s started on 15 January. The trucking industry has warned that the measure will take thousands of drivers off the roads during what is already a dire labor shortage in the industry. Continue reading...

Government prepares to sell barn known as Project No 2 or Detention Site Violet, which has windowless, soundproof roomsA menacing steel barn outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius where CIA terror suspects were once held in solitary confinement, subjected to constant light and high-intensity noise, is soon to go on the market.The government’s real estate fund, which handles assets no longer needed by the state, said on Monday it was preparing to sell the notorious former “black site”, known as Project No 2 or Detention Site Violet, for an as-yet unknown price. Continue reading...

Military says deteriorating security situation in west African country forced it to depose Roch Marc KaboréBurkina Faso’s military has announced it has removed the president, Roch Marc Kaboré, from office, suspended the constitution and dissolved the government and parliament, confirming a coup in a statement on the state broadcaster.In a statement signed by the coup leader, Lt Col Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, and read by another official, the army announced the takeover by a previously unknown group – Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (MPSR). Continue reading...

Police investigate two deaths after Maida Vale incident when man was run over by car in attempt to save woman, according to witnessesA woman has been stabbed to death in a west London street by a man who was then run over and killed by a car.The Metropolitan police said it had launched an urgent investigation after the incident in Chippenham Road, Maida Vale, at about 9am on Monday. Continue reading...

Fears grow that the Kremlin may restrict gas exports to Europe in the face of potential sanctionsThe deepening tensions between Russia, the world’s biggest gas producer, and Ukraine have reignited fears that the Kremlin may weaponise its gas reserves by restricting exports to Europe in the face of potential sanctions.Russia is western Europe’s largest single supplier of gas, a commodity that is in tight supply globally and has reached record market price highs in recent weeks, threatening to tip the UK into a national energy crisis. Continue reading...

Siege in Kurdish-run prison in Syria ‘deeply distressing’, says Save the ChildrenThe fate of more than 700 boys and teenage detainees has become central to the siege of a Kurdish-run prison in Syria that was overrun on Friday by jihadists, who are accused of using the boys as human shields.As the siege around the Ghwayran prison in the Kurdish-run northern city of Hasakah entered a firth day, Islamic State prisoners inside moved into a dormitory housing the boys, some of whom are as young as 12, in an attempt to prevent an assault by Kurdish forces stationed outside. Continue reading...

He captured poets, jazz giants and everyday black America. As a new exhibition of the great Harlem-born photographer’s work opens, his widow Sherry Turner DeCarava remembers his craftOnce, when asked why his prints were so dark, Roy DeCarava replied, “I happen to believe that photography is not about black and white; it’s about greys.” At London’s David Zwirner gallery, the first UK exhibition of DeCarava’s work in more than 30 years is a quietly mesmerising testament to the expressive tonalities of that neutral, in-between colour.“Roy is an artist who is known for the darkness of his prints,” says his widow, Sherry Turner DeCarava, an art historian who has deftly curated the exhibition to highlight the sustained mood music of her late husband’s work. “But it is deep understanding of the nature of light that gives quality to his pictures.” Continue reading...

Few signs of panic in Ukraine’s capital – though mood has darkened in recent days and some are making plans in event of conflictThe mood in Kyiv was calm on Monday, with shops and cafes busy and few visible signs of panic, despite the decision by the US and UK embassies to evacuate all non-essential staff amid warnings of a Russian attack.In the capital’s upmarket Podil district, families strolled amid festive lights and skated on an open-air ice rink. There were long queues at the October cinema for a screening of Stop-Zemlia, a prize-winning Ukrainian film about the lives of Kyiv teenagers. Continue reading...

Lourdes Maldonado was shot in Tijuana, a week after another journalist was killed, and a third was fatally stabbed days earlierThree years ago reporter Lourdes Maldonado López stood up before Mexico’s president at a press conference and told him: “I fear for my life.”On Sunday she was gunned down in the city of Tijuana – the third Mexican journalist to be killed this year in what is a deepening murder crisis facing the country’s press corps and its populist leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Continue reading...

Mother of Christopher Kapessa attacks justice system over response to incident in Wales in July 2019The mother of a 13-year-old boy who drowned in a river in Wales has said her son’s alleged killer has got away “scot free” after the high court dismissed a challenge to a decision by prosecutors not to bring charges over his death.Alina Joseph, the mother of Christopher Kapessa, said: “The [Crown Prosecution Service] have concluded that there is enough evidence to prosecute him for manslaughter.” Continue reading...

A major Guardian investigation examines the 1700km Melbourne to Brisbane mega project, asks whether communities along its route will benefit and whether their concerns are being bypassed Continue reading...

Apparent staff error caused injuries to five people at central London bar Tiger Tiger last month, Met police saidClubbers in London’s Tiger Tiger were mistakenly given caustic soda instead of salt when knocking back tequila slammers, sending four people to hospital after suffering burns.Police attended the nightclub near Piccadilly Circus in central London last month after receiving reports that people had chemical-related injuries, believed to be caused by a staff error. Authorities then closed Tiger Tiger as a precaution. Continue reading...

Devon family makes a fortune from 13th-century gold coin discovered thanks to return to an old hobbyA metal detectorist who gave up his hobby when he started a family, only to return to it when his children were old enough to nag him into taking them out detecting with him, has been rewarded with one of the most extraordinary finds – a fine example of England’s oldest gold coin, which has sold for a record-breaking £648,000 at auction.Michael Leigh-Mallory, 52, found the Henry III gold penny buried 10cm deep on farmland in the Devon village of Hemyock shortly after taking up his old hobby again. Not realising what it was, he posted a picture of the coin on social media, where it was spotted by the auctioneers Spink in London. Continue reading...

Gabriel Tejedor captures the challenges of life in the remote, Stalinesque city of Magnitogorsk where hope glimmers from beyond the factory floorHere is a continuation of Gabriel Tejedor’s fascination with the debris of the former Soviet Union; this latest documentary sets its gaze on the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, situated 2,000km from Moscow. Here, time stands eerily still. Once celebrated as the “socialist city of steel”, Magnitogorsk typifies Stalin’s vision of transforming the largely agrarian nation into an industrialised superpower. Sprawled over the landscape is the colossal structure of Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK), the “kombinat”, or conglomerate, whose formidable influence embodies state authority, reflecting numerous key chapters in the country’s history.More than a Soviet relic, MMK is still the main employer in Magnitogorsk, and one of the biggest steel manufacturers in the world. Its unnerving omnipresence is evoked here in its conspicuous glossy billboards, and also in the lengthy tracking shots that swirl leisurely around the metal arches and the ever-burning furnaces of the factory – images at once grandiose and terrifying. Continue reading...

Analysis: Backbenchers are spotting opportunities to take advantage of a weakened leaderBoris Johnson and the Conservative party are facing crises on multiple fronts, all interconnected in various ways. As the pressure mounts on the prime minister, his MPs are spotting opportunities to take advantage of a weakened leader by pressing hard for different concessions.Here we take a look at the challenges facing Johnson, and the demands he is facing from his MPs that may help them go away. Continue reading...

Independent review finds officers stood by rather than tackling rioters during Mayhill unrest in spring 2021A police force left residents “in danger, at risk and unprotected” for a “protracted period” during a riot in which cars were set on fire and bricks were hurled at houses, leaving people fearing for their lives, an independent review has concluded.The chief constable of South Wales police, Jeremy Vaughan, apologised that his force had failed to act quickly enough during the disturbance in Swansea and accepted residents had been “tormented” by the rioters. Continue reading...

French surgeon faces legal action over attempted sale of image showing bullet lodged near boneA French woman who survived the 2015 attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris was “extremely shocked” after learning that her surgeon was attempting to sell an X-ray of her injuries online, her lawyer has said.A senior orthopedic surgeon at the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris was revealed at the weekend to be offering an image of the woman’s forearm, showing a Kalashnikov bullet lodged near the bone, as an NFT digital artwork. Continue reading...

Be it Jed Mercurio swiftly bumping off his star signings, Game of Thrones beheading Sean Bean or Stranger Things vanishing a young actor into the Upside Down, nobody is safeIt was Lisa Faulkner’s deep-fried face that started it. Almost 20 years ago, swishy new BBC spy drama Spooks seized viewers by the lapels – and saw the Broadcasting Standards Commission inundated with complaints – in only its second episode when Thames House trainee Helen Flynn (played by Faulkner) volunteered for a risky undercover mission, but found herself getting served up with salt and vinegar.Brookside alumnus and lads’ mag favourite Faulkner had just completed a stint on Holby City. Among a cast of newcomers, hers was the biggest name. Viewers assumed she would be a key player in the show taglined “It’s MI5, not 9 to 5”. Hence it was a jaw-dropper in spring 2002 when her character infiltrated an extremist group but got rumbled and gruesomely murdered. Continue reading...

Human rights groups claim the violent abuse of detainees is widespread in Egypt and perpetrators are seldom punishedA video obtained by the Guardian appearing to show Egyptian police torturing detainees in a Cairo police station confirms the extent to which officers appear able to inflict violence on civilians with near total impunity, according to human rights groups.The video, covertly recorded by a detainee through a cell door, appears to show two inmates hung in stress positions. The detainees are naked from the waist up and suspended from a metal grate by their arms, which are fastened behind their backs. Continue reading...

Dr Konstancja Duff was given an apology and compensation by the Metropolitan police after she obtained CCTV footage of officers making sexist and derogatory comments about her.Here she recounts what was happening as officers at an east London police station cracked jokes about her body after they restrained her and cut her clothes off. The academic was arrested after she tried to give a 15-year-old boy being stopped and searched by police a card with details of solicitors. She was taken to Stoke Newington police station, where she was strip-searched. ‘What’s that smell? Oh, it’s her knickers,’ officers quipped to each other

Debates about the human-like attributes of animals miss the point. Can we respect them regardless?The government has finally caught up with what most animal behavioural scientists have been saying for years by formally recognising animals as sentient beings in its animal welfare (sentience) bill. In November it was confirmed that the scope of the bill would be extended to include in the “sentient” category all decapod crustaceans (such as crabs and lobsters) and cephalopods (including octopuses, squid and cuttlefish). This ruling heeds a review led by Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics, who points out: “Octopuses and other cephalopods have been protected in science for years, but have not received any protection outside science until now.”Although these rulings are welcome, their tardiness is sobering. People have been arguing fiercely, dogmatically and even violently about animal welfare for a very long time – yet framing the issue in terms of legally enforced rights comes with baggage about the socially constructed (and therefore exclusively human) nature of moral status and rights-based reasoning. The starting point should rather have been the nature of animal cognition: how we and other beings are situated in a broad panorama of minds. While there is still plenty to learn about that mindscape, Birch is right to imply that, given what science has already told us, it borders on the absurd that UK law took so long to formally acknowledge animal sentience. Continue reading...

New details raise questions about why Emad al-Swealmeen was not pursued for deportation in 2015The Liverpool bomber had an asylum claim rejected on multiple grounds six years before he attempted to detonate a homemade explosive outside a hospital, court documents show.Emad al-Swealmeen, 32, was killed when the bomb he was carrying exploded inside a taxi outside Liverpool women’s hospital on Remembrance Sunday last year. Continue reading...

Toni, 68, and Ron, 62, met after he went on a singles show in the 1980s – and she made a bet with a friend. They now live together in St LouisIn 1986, Toni was working as a clinical laboratory director in St Louis, Missouri. “I was single at the time and keen to meet someone,” she says. One Friday night, she and a friend were listening to the area’s flagship radio station KMOX, which hosted a show called Dateline. “The idea was that single people called in, shared a bit about themselves, and listeners could contact the radio station for their details afterwards,” says Toni. She made a bet with her friend that she would call one of the men from the show. “At the time, it wasn’t the thing to do,” she laughs. “Internet dating didn’t exist back then and a lot of strange people would call into that show. But we thought it would be a funny story to tell if I gave it a go.”She had vetoed lots of callers before Ron came on the show at the end of the night. He had recently moved from North Carolina to a nearby town to work for a medical technology company, and was keen to meet new people. “My sister suggested I try going on the radio to find a date,” he says. “Now I’m used to public speaking, but at the time I was very scared. [The station] gave you guidelines on how to introduce yourself and I was on air for about a minute.”Want to share your story? Tell us a little about yourself, your partner and how you got together by filling in the form here. Continue reading...

Deal includes payment to designer Harold Thomas and terminates commercial licences, meaning flag now ‘belongs to everyone’, federal minister for Indigenous Australians says

Senate commission plans reform after hearing how NSO software used against government criticsPolish senators plan to draft a law that would regulate the use of surveillance technology in the country, after hearing testimony of how the invasive Pegasus spyware has been used against a number of government critics.Poland is the latest country where Pegasus, a surveillance tool developed by Israeli company NSO, appears to have been used for political purposes. Pegasus allows the operator to take control of a target’s mobile device, to access all data even from encrypted messaging apps, and to turn on audio or video recording. Continue reading...

Why stick to the same condiments when you can zhoosh dishes up with za’atar or add some yummy yaji? Some of Britain’s best chefs suggest their favourite additionsHistorically, Britain has been timid about seasoning. Salt and pepper are the standard duo in the UK, while an exhilarating array of flavourings is deployed globally to tweak cooked foods: traditional spices, evolving spice mixes, clever powders created by imaginative chefs. In deep midwinter, what could be better than sprinkling a dash of vibrant colour across your meals? Here are 22 ways to spice up your food in 2022. Continue reading...

Éléonore Weber’s documentary, air-strike footage of pilots on night missions, could work well in a galleryThis hypnotic meditation on modern warfare from Éléonore Weber is an experimental cine-essay that feels closer to a gallery installation than a documentary. Watching it is a bit of a test of concentration: 75 minutes of helicopter airstrike footage from American and French missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clip after clip of pilots following what’s on the ground hundreds of metres below. Who is that in their crosshairs: a Taliban fighter holding a Kalashnikov or a farmer with a rake? Farmers know that they get mistaken for fighters, so run and hide their tools when they hear helicopters. Which of course makes them look suspicious.In the cockpit, we hear American voices: “Request permission to engage.” “We got a guy with an RPG.” This is the notorious video WikiLeaks dubbed Collateral Murder, a US airstrike filmed from an Apache helicopter in 2007. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher turned out to be a camera tripod belonging to a Reuters photographer, who was one of a dozen civilians killed in the attack. It’s impossible to watch and not think of computer games. “Kill! Kill! Kill” we hear in another video – you can almost feel the itch to shoot everything that moves. Continue reading...

Publication of findings is likely to exclude evidence such as emails, texts or details of what happened at alleged partiesOnly the “findings” of Sue Gray’s report into alleged lockdown-breaking parties at Downing Street will be published, Nadhim Zahawi has said, in another apparent step by the government away from promising full transparency with what she uncovers.The education secretary’s comments come after Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, said on Sunday that it would be up to Boris Johnson to decide how much information was released. Continue reading...

State’s teachers union says significant disruption to staffing may cause closures as parent group says it will launch legal action over rules preventing pandemic leave

Missile fire, claimed by Yemeni Houthi rebels in retaliation for airstrikes, further escalates tensionsThe United Arab Emirates intercepted two ballistic missiles claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the skies of Abu Dhabi early on Monday, authorities said, the second attack in a week that targeted the Emirati capital.The missile fire further escalates tensions across the Persian Gulf, where there has been a series of assaults near but never indisputably on – Emirati soil amid Yemen’s years-long war and the collapse of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Continue reading...

Ruth Crocket spent little time at home when she made a sudden decision to buy her local post office. Just as she lost her job, it began losing money. But then came the pandemic …Ruth Crocket is too modest to say life was busy when she worked as a risk modeller for a leading bank. “Not busy, but occupied,” she says. Always dashing for a train, she was rarely in her village of Hitcham, Suffolk. But occasionally she popped into the village’s only shop for fresh bread rolls, which were very, very good.One day, she heard the shop was to be sold, possibly converted into housing. The village pub had recently gone the same way. “It seemed impossible not to do something,” she says. “So I did it. I bought the business.” Six years on, at the age of 66, she is postmistress and owner of Hitcham Post Office and Stores.Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60? Continue reading...

Off the beach, villas ornate enough for a king; on the beach, fish-smoking huts offering delicious platefuls. Welcome to Usedom, an isle of delightsIn whitewashed Strandkorbs, families huddle together, enjoying the last of the warmth from the faltering autumnal sun on their upturned faces. These striped beach baskets, some owned, others rented, are dotted along large expanses of windswept sands that seep into the inky Baltic sea.The island of Usedom in Pomerania, surrounded by forests of beech trees, is known by some as the “bathtub of Berlin” and by others, slightly more poetically, as “sun island”. Dietrich Gildenhaar, a local author and guide, tells me that the island, north of the Szczecin lagoon in the huge Oder estuary, has been a luxury tourist destination since the Gründerzeit (Germany’s mid-19th-century economic boom), having been crowned one of the country’s sunniest places in Germany, with an annual average of more than 1,900 hours of sunshine. It is in two halves, the west side belonging to Germany and the eastern part to Poland, and has some of the region’s best beaches, with designated strips of sand for dogs and other sections reserved for nudists partaking in Freikörperkultur or “free body culture”. Continue reading...

Guardian will bring challenge against attorney general and Queen’s private lawyersA legal challenge over a decision to ban media organisations from a court case about the Duke of Edinburgh’s will is to be heard by the court of appeal.The Guardian has been given permission by a court of appeal judge to bring the challenge against the attorney general and the Queen’s private lawyers. Continue reading...

The river town of Mongla is leading the way in a project to resettle people in a region decimated by extreme weatherBy the time the rising sun breaks through the morning mist over the Mongla River, the rhythmic chug of motors strapped to wooden canoes is already audible as thousands of workers are hurriedly ferried across the waterway.They jump on to the small landing dock, pick up a potato-stuffed shingara pastry for pennies and rush towards the factories in Mongla’s export processing zone (EPZ), which has transformed the small town into an employment hub in a part of Bangladesh ravaged by the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Forty years after his breakthrough role in Little House on the Prairie, the actor is thrilling TV audiences as a drug cartel money launderer. But he almost threw his career awayJason Bateman appears on a Zoom screen from Los Angeles, bespectacled, calm and in uncluttered, butter-coloured environs. It’s as if Michael Bluth, the character he played in Arrested Development, had dressed up as a therapist for some hilarious purpose. To fans of the show, its entire cast will always have traces clinging to them, as if they have all been, well, arrested in that dysfunctional family. But today we’re here to talk about Ozark, a drama with a reputation that has been climbing each season (it’s now in its fourth and final) and so has, arguably, become even more defining for Bateman.Tense and lingering, Ozark has the dizzying pace and visual sumptuousness that the modern long-running box set demands. What was haunting about it from the start were the subtle performances of Bateman and his co-star, Laura Linney; just a regular, affluent, middle-aged couple, except he was about to launder $500m for a drug cartel and she’d just watched the murder of the lawyer she was having an affair with. They were on the run, but only sort of. They hated each other, except they didn’t. What passed between them gave such propulsive energy to their characters that from the very beginning you could trust one thing: it might be improbable, but it was never going to be boring. But all that nuance was a double-edged sword. “Marty and Wendy are really intelligent characters,” Bateman says. “Sometimes that narrows your options as a writer, trying to keep things plausible. They can’t do really stupid things. The smart thing to do is to turn yourself in. Then the show’s over.” Continue reading...

Delicate, beguiling and studded with trees, the museum has landed in a Budapest park – but behind it is a controversial €1bn vision by rightwing populist leader Viktor OrbánA great big crumpet appears to have landed in the middle of Budapest’s City Park, its circular hole-studded mass impaled on a thicket of trees. It droops down here and there, revealing little terraces cut into its top, and flares up elsewhere, showing off a sparkling underside of tiny golden leaves.