Tennis star gave an interview to French sports daily L’Équipe on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, accompanied by a Chinese officialThe Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai has given her first interview to an independent media organisation since she alleged on Weibo that a senior Chinese official had coerced her into sex, saying it was an “enormous misunderstanding”.The interview with the French sports daily L’Équipe came as the International Olympic Committee said it was not up to them or anyone else “to judge, in one way or another, her position”. Continue reading...
More than 100 authors from around the world have written to the Rwandan president about the case of Innocent Bahati, who disappeared a year ago todayMargaret Atwood, Ben Okri and JM Coetzee have joined more than 100 writers from around the world in calling on the Rwandan president to intervene in the case of the poet Innocent Bahati, who disappeared one year ago today.According to human rights organisation PEN International, Bahati was last seen at a hotel in Nyanza district, in the Southern Province of Rwanda, on 7 February 2021. The poet, who is well-known in Rwanda and had published poetry on YouTube and Facebook, as well as regularly performing at live events, failed to return to Kigali, and his phones have been switched off since. Continue reading...
Jonathan Van Ness’s new Netflix show Getting Curious sees them investigate gender, skyscrapers and pooing bugs. But beneath the curiosity lies a deep-seated anger at inequality and discriminationJonathan Van Ness is best known for fabulous hairstyles, for killer styling tips, and for treading a path that keeps them firmly on life’s glam side. Their new TV show may change that. “Being pooped on by a millipede is a lot,” they exclaim. “It stained my hands for days – there’s tar or resin in their poop!”The 34-year-old is talking via Zoom from their home in Texas about their new Netflix series, Getting Curious With Jonathan Van Ness. Based on their long-running podcast of the same name, each episode sees Van Ness – along with a coterie of experts and friends – tackle a topic, from skyscrapers to snack foods. As well, obviously, as assessing the kind of insects that go to the toilet on your hand if you pick them up in a laboratory. Or as Van Ness puts it: “Are bugs gorgeous or gross?” Continue reading...
‘It was inspired by a fabulously kitsch 3D movie called Cat-Women of the Moon. A character has to go back to her planet and leave her human love behind’Stay came to life one morning in my converted garage in the back of my house in LA: a very unassuming studio, all knotty pine and carpet, my recording equipment in a cupboard. Siobhan Fahey lived down the road and her then-husband Dave Stewart [ex-Eurythmics] had given her a lift over, then he came in, because he had an idea.Hormonally Yours is released in a 2-CD deluxe edition and coloured vinyl on 17 February, the 30th anniversary of its release. Continue reading...
by Patrick Butler Social policy editor on (#5VWAE)
Study finds one in 10 households report food insecurity while people with serious disabilities five times more at riskA million UK adults went an entire day without eating over the past month because they could not afford to put a meal on the table, according to research highlighting how the cost of living crisis has driven up food insecurity.Soaring energy and grocery prices – along with the removal in October of the £20 Covid top-up to universal credit – were having a devastating impact on the food consumption of millions of people, the Food Foundation thinktank said. Continue reading...
Analysis: The duchess once portrayed as a ‘rottweiler’ has not put a foot wrong as a royal, close observers sayA once vilified royal mistress perceived as a threat to the stability of the monarchy, Queen Camilla, as she will be crowned, is now seen as a guarantor of that institution’s future smooth running.The Queen clearly believes the Duchess of Cornwall possesses key traits of past successful consorts, such as quiet supportiveness and a determination not to outshine the principal. Continue reading...
Branagh’s spirited performance as Poirot and a big-name ensemble cast can’t keep this stale and two-dimensional whodunnit afloatLong delayed by coronavirus, Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie movie puffs effortfully into harbour. It’s the classic whodunnit about a murder on a steamer making its way down the river in Egypt with an Anglo-American boatful of waxy-faced cameos aboard. The horrible homicide means that one of the passengers will have to spring into action, and this is of course the amply moustached Hercule Poirot, played by Branagh himself. It is Poirot who interviews suspects, supervises corpse-storage in the ship’s galley freezer cabinet and delivers the final unmasking – and all without the captain insisting that the Egyptian police should possibly get involved.Screenwriter Michael Green has adapted the 1937 novel with some new inventions: some people of colour are introduced, and Christie’s intense dislike for her wealthy-hypocrite leftwing character has been dialled down. Most startlingly, Green invents a very good prelude showing the young Poirot’s service in the trenches of the first world war, and the origin of that moustache. Nothing in the rest of this rather stale and two-dimensional tale matches the brio of that opening. Continue reading...
Matthew Selby, 19, pleads guilty to manslaughter of 15-year-old sister AmandaA teenager has admitted killing his younger sister at a holiday park.Matthew Selby, 19, pleaded guilty at Mold crown court on Monday to the manslaughter of his sister Amanda, 15. Continue reading...
Millions of UK households will soon be struggling with energy bills – if they are not already. After a childhood spent in damp and freezing flats, Kerry Hudson is full of sympathy – and rageLet’s start with a multiple choice question. It is a cold, wet February evening. You come home with your two kids after school. You stand in the hallway and contemplate your options. Do you put on the heating? It is freezing and your kids are reluctant to take off their coats. Perhaps you should make a cheap but nutritious dinner for them. They have been saying all the way home that they are “starving”. You could give them their night-time bath, because it is two days since they had their last one, or save the cost of the heating for some new winter boots – theirs are too tight and letting in water.You can pick only one option. Continue reading...
A much-loved community space and an essential service, their days now seem numberedThe first thing Rajiv Shrikul does when he opens up his launderette in south Edinburgh each morning is pray. He says the 7am routine, which he started as a young boy in India, helps him cope with the kaleidoscope of personalities that pass through his shop. “Some people are angry, some are generous – you need to have a very stable mind. Meditation calms you down, especially in these hard times.”Photograph: Murdo MacLeod Continue reading...
With perv patrols, wellness sanctuaries, and femme-only playrooms, the kink scene has reinvented itself for a new, inclusive era – but you still won’t get in wearing jeansAlthough public physical contact has not been a defining feature of the last couple of years, London’s sex clubs are experiencing a renaissance, thanks to a generational shift. Think: fewer key bowls and CEOs in expensive lingerie, more pioneering house DJs and art students in makeshift harnesses, as younger crowds drive demand for events that foreground inclusivity, individuality and queerness. For smoke machines and St Andrew’s crosses, try Klub Verboten. For hedonism with a sense of humour, you’ll want Adonis. And for women and non-binary people, One Night offers a blend of Japanese rope bondage and R&B.Between them all lies Crossbreed, a night where underground stars such as Shanti Celeste and Tama Sumo DJ to a room full of techno fans who can partake in everything from exhibitionist orgies to solo cups of tea in a dancefloor-adjacent wellness sanctuary. “The [queer fetish] community has long been dominated by gay men, who have rightly claimed and taken up space,” explains Alex Warren, who founded the event in 2019. “But that has left bisexuals, pansexuals, lesbians, trans and non-binary people with fewer non masc-dominated spaces to call home.” Continue reading...
Richard Epstein, a 78-year-old scientist with stage four prostate cancer, says that skating helps him to embrace uncertaintyThe first time Richard Epstein went to his local ice-skating rink in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was handed a free pair of skates. They had been left behind by a discontented customer. “I do things out of my comfort zone, and good things happen,” he observes.This wisdom was borne out last December, when Epstein, now 78, skated in his first exhibition. His wife filmed his routine, which he performed with his coach, Teri Moellenberg, then his eldest daughter posted it on Twitter, along with a note that Epstein has stage four prostate cancer. Nearly 3 million people viewed it. Epstein is somewhat baffled by the response, describing himself as “just an old guy going around in circles”. Continue reading...
The writer’s archaic shorthand has baffled experts for over a century. So they launched a deciphering competition for fans – with stunning results that cast new light on his love life and financial perilDespite all the precision he brought to bear on his intricate plots, Charles Dickens was a notoriously messy writer. His manuscripts are full of inky splodges, with barely legible alterations crammed in between scrawled, sloping lines. Worse still was his love of a type of shorthand dating from the 1700s. To this, he added his own chaotic modifications to create what he called “the devil’s handwriting”.Fond of puzzles and codes, the great Victorian writer used these time-saving hieroglyphics to make notes and copies of his letters and documents, reams of which he burned. Academics are still toiling to decipher 10 shorthand manuscripts that survived. Forget Wordle. This is the Dickens Code. And for a long time, it had seemed uncrackable. Continue reading...
The drama won hearts by showing the world Australian suburbia – albeit with regular light plane crashes and bouts of amnesiaWhen they let you through the security gate at the Neighbours studio, something magical happens. It’s not finding out the food at Harold’s is real, though it is. And it’s not realising the Erinsborough High quad is also where they filmed Prisoner, though that’s true too.No, stepping into that Nunawading studio is a wormhole to a simpler time, where no one has a real job, drama is just drama, and the people next door have become good friends. Continue reading...
Authorities dub situation ‘unprecedented’ as heavy snowfall followed by warm weather makes for dangerous conditionsNine people died in three days during which more than 100 avalanches struck Austria, authorities said Sunday, as heavy snowfall followed by warmer weather made for unusually dangerous conditions.Most of the avalanches hit the western Tyrol region and Friday alone saw five fatalities, rescue services said. Continue reading...
Chancellor flies to Washington amid criticism of Berlin’s approach to Russian mobilisationGermany is preparing to send reinforcements to its battlegroup in Lithuania as the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, headed to Washington to reassure Nato allies of its solidarity over the Ukraine crisis.Tentative planning for a further deployment of German military force follows weeks of criticism of Berlin’s approach to Russia’s mobilisation of 145,000 troops on its border with Ukraine. Continue reading...
The singer who defined music and melody for generations in India has died in MumbaiLata Mangeshkar, one of India’s most influential singers, known as the “nightingale of Bollywood”, has died in Mumbai aged 92, with two days of national mourning declared in her honour.Mangeshkar died on Sunday as a result of complications from Covid-19, which she had contracted a month ago, leading to multiple organ failure, according to doctors. Continue reading...
by Mark Kermode, Wendy Ide, Simran Hans, Guy Lodge on (#5VV90)
Ahead of the official Academy nominations on Tuesday, Observer film critics pick their own favouritesAmid the hype over her acclaimed performance as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer, Kristen Stewart briefly stopped awards pundits dead in their tracks when, upon being asked about her Oscar buzz, she drily admitted, “I don’t give a shit.” Sacrilege! Some of the best films and performances of all time haven’t been considered by the Academy, she continued. “There’s five spots. What the fuck are you going to do?”Nobody disagrees with Stewart on any of this: just ask our critics, whose ideal Oscar ballots below are knowingly far from the expected reality of next week’s nominations. That the actor’s comments made showbiz headlines anyway speaks to the strange aura the Oscars maintain as a gold standard of cinematic achievement: for several months a year, people fret and discuss and strategise about them, while companies expensively campaign for them, only to spend the rest of the year complaining that they don’t mean anything anyway. Even Stewart’s scepticism emerged while on the campaign trail, being interviewed on a Variety podcast named Awards Circuit. Should she win for Spencer, she’ll doubtless turn up and give a humbly grateful speech anyway. That’s the game. Nobody gives a shit about the Oscars, after all, except when everyone does.
The Queen jokes at an event held in Sandringham House in the lead up to the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne. 'I don’t matter,' she said when she was told it had been positioned to face the press. 'I think I might just put a knife in it,' she added
In 1965, Teté-Michel Kpomassie left his African homeland for a new life in Greenland, swapping sunny beaches for icy fjords and spiced food for boiled seal. Now, at 80, he’s planning to retire to his ‘spiritual home’The warm living room of Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s otherwise neat Parisian home has a coffee table in the middle of it piled high with keepsakes – a mountain of black and white pictures, letters and handwritten diaries. It’s an archive of one remarkable man’s intrepidly adventurous and unconventional life to date. Balanced on top of the overloaded files and folders sits a tattered book, its pages faded. On its cover is a portrait of an Inuit in a sealskin jacket, standing next to an icy shore. The title reads Les Esquimaux du Groenland à l’Alaska (The Eskimos from Greenland to Alaska). It’s a 1947 work of nonfiction authored by French anthropologist Robert Gessain.Decades may have passed since the day Kpomassie first set his teenage eyes upon this image in his native Togo, but the 80-year-old remembers the precise moment as if it had happened just minutes before. How could he not? What he found inside has, since that day, consumed him entirely, shaping every chapter of his own story. He ran away from home at 16 to embark on an epic cross-continental mission that delivered him to Greenland, the world’s northernmost country. He was the first African man to set foot there. The adventure resulted in a travelogue, return visits and countless speaking invitations, and, more recently, a rather acrimonious divorce. Now, his very own sealskin jacket hangs by the door to his home in pride of place. Continue reading...
by Rowena Mason Deputy political editor on (#5VV86)
Former Tory leader says parties scandal and cost of living problems are PM’s responsibility to sort outBoris Johnson must stay in place to deal with the “hugely damaging” No 10 parties scandal and the cost of living crisis because they are his responsibility to fix, according to the former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.The Conservative grandee said he wanted cabinet ministers to “temper their ambitions” and allow Johnson the time to sort out “the big, big crises that are hitting the government”. Continue reading...
Pyongyang still developing nuclear and ballistic programmes and seeking material and help abroad, says reportNorth Korea has continued to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, including its capability to produce nuclear fissile materials in violation of UN security council resolutions, UN experts have said in a report.The panel of experts said in the executive summary of the report obtained on Saturday night by Associated Press that there was “a marked acceleration” of Pyongyang’s testing and demonstration of new short-range and possibly medium-range missiles through January, “incorporating both ballistic and guidance technologies and using both solid and liquid propellants”. Continue reading...
Tourists who had their jabs more than 270 days ago need a booster to enter France, Spain and DenmarkTravellers have been warned to check their half-term holiday plans to make sure they meet Covid vaccination rules when travelling to EU destinations as a growing number of countries impose new restrictions.France joined Spain and Denmark last week in requiring anyone who completed their vaccination jabs more than 270 days ago to have a booster to enter the country – or be considered unvaccinated. Austria requires boosters after 180 days. Continue reading...
A recently unearthed interview with an old friend recalls how the actor was looked after by a kindly ‘foster mother’ who made sure he did the right thingThe extreme poverty endured by Charlie Chaplin while growing up in the slums of Victorian London reduced him to stealing and being scolded by the woman who took care of him, according to an interview with one of his childhood friends that has remained unheard in the British Film Institute for almost 40 years.Effie Wisdom, whose aunt gave him a home from home when he needed it most, lamented that Chaplin “had a terrible life” as a child, “always hungry”, dressed in “ragged”, filthy clothes – no doubt later inspiring the comic genius who created the Tramp, society’s eternal victim and one of cinema’s most memorable characters. Continue reading...
The remarkable rise of the viral sensation Wordle, which the New York Times recently bought, is just the latest in a very long line of word puzzles that have intrigued us down the centuriesI scored a two in Wordle the other day. God. The rush, as the five squares in the second line blinked green, one by one, touched on the sublime. I felt like Mary Magdalen in the Caravaggio painting, lost in ecstasy. Oh mama.Up until this point, I had considered that those who found the solution in two guesses were simply lucky. Consistent threes and fours – this was a surer marker of Wordle prowess. Once I had scored a two myself, however, I began to doubt this hypothesis. Surely, only the most elite players could manage such a feat. Surely, I was now part of this pantheon. Continue reading...
Campaigner and journalist Julie Bindel was the first to report on grooming scandals in the early 2000s. Here she talks exclusively to a survivor of ex-Labour peer Nazir Ahmed’s child sexual abuseIt was in 2016, that Mr B, a survivor of sexual abuse, heard that a female victim had reported his attacker for attempted rape. “I went mad when I heard that,” he says. “I could just about cope with knowing what he had done to me, but when I heard that I just thought: ‘You dirty bastard, you are not getting away with this any longer.’”The attacker was Nazir Ahmed, or Lord Ahmed of Rotherham as he prefers to be known, and last Friday he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for child sex offences, namely the attempted rape of a young girl and sexual assault of a boy, during the 1970s. Continue reading...
On the eve of his new double album, the songwriter takes questions from Observer readers and celebrity fans on being a style icon, marrying young, and 20 years without boozeJohnny Marr calls himself “a lifer”. It’s a fair description of someone who started playing guitar in bands aged 13, founded the Smiths at 19, departed the band five years later, and went on to become an integral part of the sound of the Pretenders, Electronic, Modest Mouse and the Cribs. Latterly, Marr has contributed to soundtracks with Hans Zimmer, including the Billie Eilish song No Time to Die for last year’s Bond film, and made four solo albums. His latest is Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, a terrific, vigorous double album of 16 tracks that swoops from moody introspection to rousing anthems. So, yes, after 40 years in the business, it’s hard to deny Marr’s zeal and commitment.“When you get older, you learn that no matter whether your work is in or out of fashion, it’s all about whether you can stand behind it,” he says, “because you can’t do anything about the trends and fashions and the way you are perceived too much – that’s a really secondary load of baggage that just gets in the way. So there are definitely some advantages to the mentality of being older: you don’t really care too much about being liked, certainly not as much as how much you like the work.” Continue reading...
Painter Joe Machine ‘incensed’ by similarity to his own canvases, created a decade beforeOver the years, Damien Hirst has faced more than one accusation of copying someone else’s work, with artists variously claiming to have created his diamond skull, his medicine-cabinets and his spin-paintings before he did. The one-time enfant terrible of the British art world has always denied plagiarism, although he did go as far as saying in an interview in 2018 that “all my ideas are stolen anyway”.Now he is facing fresh allegations. His cherry blossom paintings in his latest exhibition, which has just closed in Paris, have prompted outrage from the English artist and writer Joe Machine, who says they look just like his own cherry blossom paintings. Continue reading...
Designs for official documents celebrate the country’s heritage – and are hard to forgeTrees, eagles, bears, turrets and towers: passport designs used to follow certain conventions. Not any more. From Monday, all new Belgian passports will feature Tintin, the Smurfs and other heroes of Belgian comic-strip art.With a 34-page standard passport, Belgian travellers will be accompanied by Lucky Luke, Blake and Mortimer, and Bob and Bobette. Many images are from the original strips, such as the 1954 Tintin serial, Explorers on the Moon, where the intrepid boy reporter took his first steps on the lunar surface 15 years before Neil Armstrong. Others were specially designed for the passport, such as a Smurf contemplating a globe, with its knapsack and maps spread on the ground. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Dingucha, Gujarat on (#5VV3Q)
Many Indians embark on often treacherous journeys to North America through agents who are now the focus of anti-human trafficking officersThe signs are painted on every wall and hang from every lamp-post of this small Gujarat village. “Easy Canada visa, student and immigration,” states one. “Study in Canada, free application, spouse can apply,” claims another.Indeed, in Dingucha, a village in rural west India, almost every house now has a family member either in Canada or the USA. It was a fact they used to proudly shout from the rooftops; but now, the village has fallen silent. Ask people about their relatives in north America – particularly the journey they took to get there – and they shrug their shoulders and walk off nervously. Continue reading...
At 30, Adeel Akhtar was all but homeless, now he’s been nominated for this year’s Baftas. Here, he talks about the beauty of ordinary livesAdeel Akhtar was living in a van, wondering if he should move back in with his parents. It was 2010. He’d recently appeared in Four Lions, the Chris Morris satire, in which he plays a Muslim extremist who, in an uncanny set of events, blows himself up in a Yorkshire sheep field. The film had been successful. (The New York Times called it “stiletto sharp”.) But it did not immediately become the career tipping point Akhtar hoped it might. So there he was: 30 years old, not well off, suffering after the break-up of a “messy” relationship, recording audition tapes from his van. The work had dried up, but he wasn’t hustling. Even when he got a gig, he sometimes wouldn’t bother learning his lines. “What is that?” he asks now. “Why would a person not apply themselves?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I suppose a not-nice way of looking at my younger self is that I was lazy.”Akhtar does not seem lazy now. A few days before we meet, in a mid-market café near his south London home, he won Best Actor at the British Independent Film Awards, for his role in Ali & Ava, a Clio Barnard film about forbidden love. Akhtar plays Ali, a British Asian man – irrepressible, distressed, permanently on the edge of euphoria or breakdown – who falls for an older white woman. The film is set in and around the housing estates of Bradford, and across social and racial divides. At the awards ceremony, Akhtar praised Barnard for presenting ordinary lives as extraordinary, and for “looking at people who are traditionally overlooked”. This was important, he said, particularly for him, because, “I’m one of them.” Continue reading...
The director on yoga, films, football – and spending lazy sons with her grownup childrenWhat time are you up? I’m usually awake by 6am, with my sausage dog’s nose pressed against me; we sleep arm-in-paw. I recently moved house and painted my bedroom pink with pictures of Marilyn Monroe on the walls, because I’m single so I can. I light the fire, incense and candles. Sensory satisfaction is all at this stage in life.A morning routine? After 15 mind-calming minutes of Vipassanā yogic meditation, awakening my kundalini, I feel cleansed and calmer. Things are still, if only briefly. Then I chuck on my tracksuit and take the dog to the park while it’s quiet out. Continue reading...
With seven leftwing Élysée hopefuls in the running, next time the left might win over voters by shunning factionalismFrance’s presidential election is still two months away and the most likely winner, according to opinion polls, the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, has yet to declare his candidacy. Yet one result already appears certain: the vote will be another, perhaps terminal, disaster for the once-dominant Socialist party and, more broadly, the French left.Important lessons may be drawn from this impending failure by other European progressive, social democratic parties and also by Labour in Britain. The re-election victory in Portugal last week of António Costa’s Socialists, who improved on their 2019 performance, demonstrated it is still possible for the centre-left to win, govern and win again. Continue reading...
by Josh Taylor and Justine Landis-Hanley (earlier) on (#5VTXZ)
Nation records at least 45 Covid deaths with 28 in NSW, nine in Queensland, six in Victoria and one each in South Australia and Tasmania; Scott Morrison addresses relationship with Barnaby Joyce ahead of deputy PM facing colleagues in Canberra this week. This blog is now closed
The Sundance film festival revealed a growing challenge to the traditional casting of middle-aged men with much younger womenIt’s a contentious issue. The Hollywood age gap romance – the habitual casting of an older male actor and a much younger female actor, for so long accepted as the norm – is now meeting with increasing scrutiny and criticism from audiences. Some filmmakers, identifying a hot-button topic, have started to respond.At the Sundance film festival last month, age gaps in relationships were a recurring theme. But rather than the traditional approach, of hoping that people wouldn’t notice an age difference which could practically be measured on a geological time frame, filmmakers are instead emphasising and examining the issue. Continue reading...
Seek help from your GP and a therapist, says Philippa Perry. It is possible to change this pattern in relationshipsThe question I am in my 50s with children who all left home recently. I have been in a relationship with a patient and kind man – but it hasn’t always been easy, mostly because of my insecurities. We went away and I spoilt things by starting fights and, consequently, he decided to end it.Up until this episode, I was a friendly, easy-going, non-confrontational person. The problem is that I don’t recognise myself any more. When the relationship finished, I was out of control. I had created so much drama and upset, mostly drink-fuelled. Continue reading...
Network Ten to pause filming after Channel 5 announces it will stop airing the show in AugustThe Australian soap Neighbours, which launched the international careers of countless local stars including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Margot Robbie and Guy Pearce, has been axed in the UK in a move likely to sound the death knell for the iconic show.The UK’s Channel 5 announced it would no longer air the program and unless it is picked up by another UK broadcaster the show will end its record-breaking 36-year run in August. Continue reading...
Fears an attack could lead to 50,000 casualties as US troops arrive in Poland and French and German leaders prepare to visit Kyiv and MoscowRussia has assembled at least 70% of the military firepower it intends to have in place by the middle of February to give President Vladimir Putin the option of launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, US officials have said.On Saturday, officials warned that a full Russian invasion could lead to the quick capture of Kyiv and potentially result in as many as 50,000 civilians killed or wounded, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. A US official confirmed that estimate to the Associated Press but it is not clear how US agencies determined those numbers. Continue reading...
Secretary general says he expects Xi Jinping to allow ‘credible’ visit to troubled region during meeting on Winter Olympics sidelinesUN secretary general Antonio Guterres told leaders in Beijing he expects them to allow UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to make a “credible” visit to China including a stop in the Xinjiang region, his spokesman said on Saturday.Guterres met with Chinese president Xi Jinping and foreign minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics, according to a readout of their talks. Continue reading...
In a pre-recorded address, the New Zealand prime minister says while people cannot come together on the Treaty grounds this year due to Covid restrictions, 'the day remains of great importance to us as a nation'. Ardern acknowledges the government still has a way to go in turning around poverty, housing inequality and poor health outcomes for Māori. 'If we are to make progress as a nation, we have to be willing to question practices that have resulted over and over in the same or even worse outcomes', she says Continue reading...
King hails efforts to rescue Rayan Awram, aged five, who was trapped for four days after falling into the well in his village of IgharaA five-year-old boy in Morocco who was trapped for four days in a deep well, and whose plight captivated residents of the north African kingdom, has died, the royal palace has said.The boy, Rayan Awram, fell 32 metres (100ft) down the empty shaft in his home village of Ighrane on Tuesday afternoon. Since then, every detail of the complex and dangerous mission to reach him has garnered international headlines and an outpouring of sympathy online, with the Arabic version of the hashtag #SaveRayan going viral. Continue reading...