Prime minister says now is not the time to ‘remove our armour just as the battle begins’ despite pressure from protesters

Ottawa police have abandoned their policy of de-escalation against anti-Covid mandate demonstratorsToday’s action to cordon off the occupation of parliament’s grounds and prevent it growing might go some way to restoring public confidence in the police, which has appeared to be eroding since the protests began a fortnight ago.So far, police have pursued a de-escalation strategy, but there have been calls for firmer action. The whole event has raised important questions about the relationship between the police and government, and about police independence and accountability.The police are an instrument of the crown […] but in the two principal roles of detecting and preventing crime and keeping the Queen’s peace they act independently of the crown and serve only the law. Continue reading...

Natasha Beth Darcy, 46, will be jailed until at least 2047 for sedating and gassing Mathew Dunbar in 2017

Emotional scenes at Sydney airport as families, friends and lovers reunite after 704 days of Covid restrictions

Flurry of phone calls by French president leads to ‘in principle agreement’, as US warns war is imminent

Life can be tough for everyone and we never know what another person may be experiencing – take a breath to consider before you speakWe like predictability. We function best when we know what is going to happen. The irony here is that after all this uncertainty, predictability in this phase of the pandemic in New Zealand is increasing. As the Omicron wave gathers strength, we can most likely expect a version of what happened in other countries: a steep increase in case numbers, exerting pressure on the health and social care system.New Zealand’s successful management of the primary health impacts of the pandemic may have contributed to a sense of “kiwi exceptionalism”. This may be responsible for the jolt we may feel when we realise that what has happened elsewhere might actually happen in New Zealand, when, for most of this pandemic, our experience has been very different. Continue reading...

Third named storm in a week to bring further strong winds and heavy rain to Britain

The legendary guitarist tore the page of lyrics in two to sign autographs for fans after a gig in 1967Two halves of a rare signed manuscript of lyrics by Jimi Hendrix have been pieced together 55 years after they were torn in two.The legendary guitarist was in the early stages of his career when his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, played the Bath Pavilion on the evening of 20 February 1967, standing in for Chuck Berry who had cancelled. Continue reading...

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Monday: Vaccinated international travellers to arrive as Australia reopens border for first time in nearly two years. Plus: the fall of Prince AndrewGood morning. There will be excitement at airports today as Australia’s international border reopens to vaccinated travellers, nearly two years after the border closed to help stop coronavirus from spreading.Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron have agreed to try to secure a ceasefire in the east of Ukraine and to put together an urgent summit at the highest level on the future of the country, the Élysée Palace said in a statement. The two leaders spoke on the phone for 105 minutes, and the outcome, broadly confirmed by the Kremlin, suggests Russia might be willing to step back from the brink of a full invasion of Ukraine to allow renewed diplomatic discussions. Meanwhile, Russian troops sent to Belarus for military exercises will remain in the country indefinitely, Belarus’s defence ministry has said, in a decision that will further fuel concerns Moscow is planning an imminent Ukraine invasion. Continue reading...

Large parts of area in capital cleared after more than 191 are arrested and 57 vehicles are towed

Celebrated author and illustrator’s work inspired by Polish childhood and experience as wartime refugeeJan Pieńkowski, the beloved illustrator and author of more than 140 children’s books, has died aged 85.Pieńkowski, whose work included the Meg and Mog pop-up books, had been living with Alzheimer’s. Continue reading...

Mitie admits failure to ‘escalate’ whistleblower complaints made two years ago about racist WhatsApp group postsThe Home Office is investigating allegations of racist WhatsApp messages sent by immigration staff, as the contracting firm Mitie admitted that they received complaints two years ago but failed to “escalate them”.The messages by workers for Mitie, revealed by the Sunday Mirror, include derogatory references to Chinese people and the mocking of the Syrian refugee crisis. Continue reading...

Monarch, 95, experiencing ‘mild cold-like symptoms’ but expects to continue carrying out light duties

Border regions appear unprepared for hundreds of people arriving from separatist-controlled areas in Ukraine

Police pushed back protesters in Canada’s besieged capital on Saturday, arresting 170 people and towing away dozens of vehicles. Many more trucks were driven out of the city, raising authorities’ hopes for an end to the three-week protest against the country’s Covid restrictions. Police in tactical gear quickly gained ground on the second full day of one of the biggest police enforcement actions in Canada’s history, for which officers were drawn in from around the country

Parents of Romello McCook believe their son’s death was not properly investigated because of his raceThe police watchdog has ordered a force to re-examine its handling of the case of a black student killed on a railway line after his parents complained their son’s death was not properly investigated because of his race.Romello McCook, a talented and popular 22-year-old, was hit by a train after a night out in Plymouth, where he was about to begin a course in architectural engineering. Continue reading...

‘We are not punishing the Taliban, we are making it worse for the people,’ says former UK foreign secretaryThe west has inflicted catastrophic damage on Afghanistan and its own reputation by imposing a policy of starvation on the country, according to David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.“If we wanted to create a failed state we could not have a more effective policy mix than the one we have at the moment,” he told the Guardian. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson indicates last restrictions could be eased from next week and free testing will end soon

Police announce 170 arrests after more confrontations on Saturday with anti-Trudeau protestersCanadian police on Sunday were making possibly a final push to clear the capital city, Ottawa, of demonstrators who have paralyzed it by parking trucks and camping on the streets for more than three weeks to protest against pandemic restrictions.Police had made 170 arrests and towed 53 vehicles since they began efforts to bust up the protest on Friday morning. To do so required the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to invoke rarely used emergency powers. Continue reading...

Video footage shows Ukrainian officials, soldiers and foreign journalists running away from what appeared to be shelling as they visited the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. David Arakhamia, the faction leader of the ruling Servant of the People party, said the group drove to an 'observational outpost' in the Donetsk region and took shelter when it came under fire by '120mm calibre ammunition'. The group had to be evacuated to a shelter, the spokeswoman for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's party said on Saturday

PM says he ‘can’t comment’ after returning questionnaire to Met police on alleged No 10 partiesBoris Johnson has repeatedly refused to say whether he would resign if fined by the police for breaking Covid laws at a series of alleged Downing Street parties.After handing back a questionnaire to the Metropolitan police, which is expected to defend his presence at some of the dozen events under investigation, the prime minister dodged a series of questions about the issue. Continue reading...

EU capitals concerned UK is not ensuring identity of real estate owners known in event of sanctions

Despite the post-#MeToo era, TV sex is hotting up and on the increase. What does all this mean for actors and audiences?What’s the story with the modern television sex scene? Are there too many of them? Or not enough? Are they overtly pornographic and shocking, or becoming so numerous they verge on monotonous? What about the actors who perform sex scenes: in the era of the post-#MeToo intimacy coordinator – this golden age of on-set respect and sensitivity – is TV sex feeling good for everyone?TV sex is nothing new (the still-legendary I, Claudius aired in 1976), but increasingly the small screen is all panting, writhing bacchanalia. Continue reading...

Why did ancient Scots build their mysterious ‘skyscrapers’? Now modern Scots are to build one to help us find outIf Ken McElroy gets his way, a very unusual feature will soon be added to the wild Caithness landscape at the northern edge of mainland Britain. He plans to re-create a 50ft-high iron age “skyscraper”, known as a broch, one of the most intriguing and mysterious types of building ever constructed in the British Isles.The elaborately built, drystone structures stood several storeys high and were erected only in Scotland, with hundreds being constructed between 600BC and AD100. The identities of the people who built them remain a mystery. Continue reading...

Labour leader accuses the Tories of failing to counter the flow of corrupt money into UK property sector

Prince’s Foundation middleman says in 2014 he attended talk about award for billionaire donorA businessman involved in arranging donations for Prince Charles’s charitable ventures has confirmed how a 30-minute meeting at Clarence House helped secure an honorary CBE for a Saudi billionaire, which is now at the centre of a police investigation.Michael Wynne-Parker, who acted as a middleman for donations for the Prince’s Foundation, attended a meeting in September 2014 with Royal aide Michael Fawcett. A key topic of the meeting was the ambition of securing an honour for the Saudi billionaire and charity donor Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz. Continue reading...

Osgur Breatnach, one of three people jailed in Ireland for the 1976 Sallins heist, claims his confession was wrongly obtainedIt was one of the most audacious heists in Irish history when a 17-strong armed gang posing as police held up the night mail train at Sallins, County Kildare, snatching the equivalent in today’s money of £1m in cash.The IRA would later twice claim responsibility for the 1976 robbery but the lives of the three men wrongly convicted and sentenced to between nine and 12 years for a crime they did not commit were ruined. Continue reading...

NSW government expected to announce parents will instead be given at-home tests to use when needed. This blog is now closed

David Hare, Ali Smith, Steve McQueen, Russell T Davies, Meera Syal, Melvyn Bragg and others tackle some difficult questions about the corporation’s prospects to mark its centenary – and pick the shows they’d like to take to a desert islandDavid Hare, playwright

Cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have plummeted – but transmission remains high across the nationAs some US companies begin asking people to return to the office and governors lift mask mandates, talk has emerged of life after the Covid-19 pandemic in America.But infectious disease experts aren’t quite ready to declare that it’s safe for individuals, rather than governments and health officials, to determine whether precautions such as masking indoors are necessary. Continue reading...

Western governments have expressed solidarity with Volodymyr Zelenskiy but behind scenes there has been exasperationWhen Volodymyr Zelenskiy sought to become Ukraine’s president he stood on a platform of peace. Zelenskiy promised to sit down with Vladimir Putin and to reach a deal with Russia. He would end the unpopular war in the east and concentrate on important domestic reforms. These included ridding the country of corruption and oligarchs.The plan didn’t work out. Nearly three years after winning a landslide victory, Zelenskiy is a president on the brink of war. About 190,000 Russian troops are poised on Ukraine’s borders. The US president, Joe Biden, has warned of an attack on Kyiv. A Kremlin military offensive – whether full-scale or more limited in scope – seems likely, possibly within hours or days. Continue reading...

Invasion ‘must be seen to fail’, says Boris Johnson, as western allies hold secret talks about how to give military backing to KyivSecret discussions are under way between western allies over how to arm what they expect to be fierce Ukrainian resistance in the event of a Russian invasion that topples the Kyiv government.Boris Johnson laid bare the case for such a move in a dramatic speech to the Munich security conference where he stated it was in the collective self-interests of the west for any Russian invasion to “fail and be seen to fail”. Continue reading...

European Council urges Moscow to ‘de-escalate’ its military buildup; Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy says global security architecture is failing

Liberal senator James Paterson says politicians should heed Asio warning after parliament brawls over national security

Yellow warnings of wind and rain are issued for Sunday, with wet and windy weather expected next weekThousands of homes were left without power on Saturday night, as forecasters predicted gusts of up to 80mph were set to batter again Britain on Sunday.The Energy Networks Association said that about 155,000 customers remained without electricity in the south and east of England and Wales after Storm Eunice, while new yellow weather warnings were announced across the UK. Continue reading...

Police allege the 36-year-old used a circular saw to cut off a 66-year-old man’s leg at an Innisfail park

Talk at this week’s NFU conference will be alive with financial, labour and competition concernsSwapping their pastures for the concrete jungle, hundreds of Britain’s farmers will take off their wellies this week and head to a conference centre in central Birmingham for the annual shindig of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU).Nearly 1,500 food producers will meet to discuss the “blueprint for the future” of British farming, against the backdrop of the biggest upheaval in a generation in agriculture, following the UK’s departure from the EU and the pandemic, and amid discussions about future land use in the face of the climate crisis. Continue reading...

Police chief says ‘occupation is over’ as he vows to clear out those still demonstrating against Covid mandates and Trudeau governmentCanadian police deployed pepper spray and stun grenades on Saturday in a continuing effort to break up a blockade of trucks and demonstrators that has occupied downtown Ottawa for more than three weeks in a protest against pandemic protocols.Reports indicated that authorities escalated crowd control efforts. Police with rifles reportedly approached protesters and smashed truck windows. Continue reading...

PM to announce end to legal duty to quarantine next week as part of ‘living with Covid’ measures

Oscar-nominated actor speaks of his grief and how it left him struggling to make sense of worldAndrew Garfield has opened up about the grief of losing his mother to pancreatic cancer, saying it left him in “precise agony” and struggling to make sense of the world around him.The actor, 38, who was recently nominated for an Oscar for his role in Netflix biography Tick, Tick… Boom!, started filming just after Lynn Garfield, a teacher from Essex, died in 2019. Continue reading...

The pandemic has made us re-evaluate what we took for granted. How have Australians made sense of the value of work, amidst all this change and chaos? We also hear about the digital preservation of a Sydney herbarium, and unlikely discoveries from Alexander Downer’s suitcaseYou can read the original articles here:‘Maybe I should just stop and enjoy my life’: how the pandemic is making us rethink work Continue reading...

From Castlepoint to the Mātakitaki river, New Zealanders are in awe of the natural world around them. As part of the my wild place series, Guardian readers pay tribute to a special place in natureI’m not sure where Ōtepoti Dunedin’s Middle Beach ends and St Kilda begins but we park close to the muralled surf club, on the road that was closed for a month in 2021 so a mother sea lion and her pup could have safe passage from the golf course to the beach. We head right, away from the glitz, the groynes, the sand sausages, the coffee shop chic and the actual good surfers at St Clair beach. Continue reading...

Last wishes have gone unfulfilled, families been kept distant – the pandemic has made death a lonely experience. For carers, it’s underlined the value of a good deathRachel Coghlan first witnessed death as a four-year-old when she watched her grandfather collapse and die in front of her. Later, as a physiotherapy student working as a carer in a nursing home, she found a woman dead in her bed. A nurse taught her not to recoil and instead showed her how to bathe and dress the body.Later again, working as a physiotherapist in London, she watched as a man from Sudan struggled to weigh up a diabolical choice between staying in the UK to access treatment, or returning home to his family but with no prospect of healthcare. He chose his family. Continue reading...

While many assume they will be immune after catching Covid, experts say the emergence of Omicron has seen a significant increase in reinfectionWhen Peter Coleman took a rapid antigen test just weeks after recovering from Covid-19, it was partially “for the fun of it”.Peter and his husband first tested positive to the virus on 10 January, during the post-holiday period that saw a spike in cases hit Melbourne and much of Australia. Continue reading...

New rules were expected to be introduced soon but BBC says government likely to drop planThe British government is reportedly considering ditching its pledge to ban fur and foie gras imports after opposition from within the cabinet.The new rules, which were due to be part of the animals abroad bill, were expected to be introduced soon. But, according to the BBC, the government is likely to drop the plans due to objections from several cabinet ministers. Continue reading...

Fighting breaks out a day after France announces a military withdrawal from west African countryEight soldiers and 57 “terrorists” were killed in clashes at a rebel base in northern Mali where rival jihadist groups, including the Islamic State, are active, the Malian army said on Saturday.Friday’s fighting followed an air raid and erupted a day after France and its allies announced their military withdrawal from the African country. Continue reading...

What was a red-hot outlook is cooling rapidly as market saturation coincides with a squeeze on household budgetsThe end of the pandemic-fuelled home entertainment boom that has driven record breaking growth for Netflix and its rivals has revealed an uneasy truth – the streaming revolution has peaked.The market is facing a perfect storm as, after a decade of making easy converts, streaming companies are seeing dramatically slower growth and increasing competition fuelling an unsustainable content war, just as stretched household budgets prompt consumers to start cutting back on entertainment services. Continue reading...

Volunteers are picking leftover produce on farms to reduce waste and help food banks“It’s like a vegetable treasure hunt,” says Jenni Duncan, 54, ankle deep in mud, looking at the rows of cauliflower plants stretching out in front of her as the Cornish drizzle gets heavier by the minute.This field near Hayle in west Cornwall has already been harvested, but not all the produce met supermarket standards and so some was left unpicked. This is where Duncan and her team of volunteers come in, working down the rows, peeling back the leaves of plants that have been left behind, hoping to find small but perfectly formed cauliflowers still tucked deep inside. Continue reading...

Construction crews from mainland China will help build isolation units, Carrie Lam said