For seven years, the East German security service’s poetry group met in Berlin to discuss literature. But there was more to it than just learning about iambic pentameterAt the height of the tense second phase of the cold war, a group of Stasi majors, propaganda officers and border guards convened at a heavily fortified compound in socialist east Berlin. From spring 1982 until winter 1989, they gathered once every four weeks, from 4pm until 6pm, at the House of Culture inside the premises of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment (the Stasi’s paramilitary wing), in Berlin’s Adlershof district. They met in a first-floor room adorned with portraits of East German leader Erich Honecker and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin that was closed with a security seal overnight.But the Stasi men did not gather to gameplan nuclear war scenarios, work up disinformation campaigns or fine-tune infiltration techniques. They set out to learn about iambic pentameter, cross-rhyming schemes and Petrarchan sonnets. The group, which internal memos referred to as the Working Circle of Writing Chekists (a reference to the fearsome Bolshevist secret police, the Cheka), produced two anthologies over this seven-year period. I got hold of a copy of one shortly before I moved to Berlin in 2016. The slim paperback, its title Wir Über Uns (“We about us”) falling down the front page in curling calligraphic letters, felt like something out of a Monty Python sketch, or a spin-off from the film The Lives of Others. How had a secret police synonymous with the suppression of free thought ended up writing poetry? Over the coming months I tried to track down former members of the circles, and contacted them to see if they could tell me more. Continue reading...

Lawyers say delay in case against three defendants including a Briton is to avoid embarrassing ChinaThe trial in Greece of activists who protested against Beijing holding the Winter Olympics has been postponed amid accusations that proceedings were delayed to avoid embarrassing China on the eve of the Games.The highly anticipated hearing had been due to take place on Thursday in the town of Pyrgos, with human rights lawyers travelling from the UK and Athens to attend. The activists, who included a Briton, an American and a Tibetan-Canadian, were arrested when they briefly disrupted the Olympic flame lighting ceremony in October. Continue reading...

Police issue ‘desperate’ appeal for information after burglary on Friday in Garretts GreenPolice have appealed for help after a burglar stole an urn containing the ashes of a child.West Midlands police said the urn was taken on Friday after someone broke into a home on Clopton Road in Garrett’s Green, Birmingham. Continue reading...

Greater Manchester police called to report of stabbing of man, believed to be 20, in Dukinfield on Friday nightFour teenage boys have been arrested on suspicion of murder after a 20-year-old man was stabbed to death in a town near Manchester.Greater Manchester police were called at 9.30pm on Friday by the ambulance service responding to a report of a stabbing on Cheetham Hill Road, Dukinfield, in Tameside. Continue reading...

Headless bodies may have belonged to criminals or outcasts says HS2 Ltd after year-long excavationAbout 40 beheaded skeletons are among 425 bodies exhumed by HS2 archaeologists from a large Roman cemetery discovered on the route of the high-speed railway.The 50-strong team uncovered the remains at a cemetery in Fleet Marston near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, HS2 Ltd said. Continue reading...

Residents brace for powerful winds and torrential rains forecast to hit east of Indian Ocean island on SaturdayCyclone Batsirai was expected to reach eastern Madagascar on Saturday, posing a “very serious threat” to millions with powerful winds and torrential rains set to batter the large Indian Ocean island.Residents hunkered down before the storm’s arrival and winds of more than 124mph (200km/h) were forecast as it bore down on the country still recovering from the deadly Tropical Storm Ana in late January. Continue reading...

As her beloved character Rachel returns, older and sober, the Irish author discusses her own journey from addiction to recovery - and the sexist snobbery that surrounds her workMarian Keyes is in bed. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, but she has just got back from a funeral and was feeling chilly. “It was a beautiful send off,” she says in her southern Irish lilt, as reassurance that she’s OK to talk. She is wearing a lilac hoodie and flashes a pastel pink manicure (a Keyes heroine would know the shade) as she rearranges the pillows to get comfy. Within a few minutes it feels as if we are both having tea and biscuits under the duvet at her Dún Laoghaire home outside Dublin, as she gives me a virtual tour of her bedroom.So far, so Marian Keyes. Loved by readers for her chatty style and satisfying storylines, she was for many years dubbed the queen of chick lit, a phrase now as passé as Daniel Cleaver’s chat-up lines in Bridget Jones’s Diary. In fact, her novels have tackled hefty issues such as addiction (Rachel’s Holiday), bereavement (Anybody Out There), domestic violence (This Charming Man) and depression (The Mystery of Mercy Close), always with her trademark lightness of touch. Yet despite selling more than 35m copies over the years, she is too often dismissed as a popular writer of books with pink covers (both of which are fine by her, thanks for asking).

A decade ago this month, the streaming platform released its first original series, and never looked back since. But, with competition building, can it stay on top?“I’m a brand new guy over here,” said “Little” Steven Van Zandt in the first episode of Lilyhammer, back in January 2012. He wasn’t that new: Van Zandt was basically reprising the New Jersey mobster persona he’d successfully deployed for nearly a decade in The Sopranos. After ratting out his associates, his new character, Frank “the Fixer” Tagliano, had to begin a new life – in Lillehammer, Norway. The sleepy, snowy town didn’t know what was about to hit it. The same could be said for us: Lilyhammer was Netflix’s first original series.Ten years on, our entertainment landscape is almost unrecognisable. Netflix has changed what we watch and the way we watch it. It has successfully reorganised traditional broadcast television and theatrical cinema models and put itself at the centre, growing from 24 million subscribers in 2012 to 214 million this year. It is available in more than 190 countries (Netflix UK launched the same month as Lilyhammer). It has created more than 1,500 original series, including planet-straddlingly massive shows such as Stranger Things and Bridgerton. In 2021 alone it released over 150 original movies – three per week. Its competitors have been playing catchup ever since. So how did it take over entertainment in just 10 years? Continue reading...

A tender moment captured by Mehmet Aslan of Munzir al-Nazzal and his son, both survivors of the Syrian war, prompted Italian organisations to act. A year on, they are settling into life in TuscanyIn January last year, while working on the Turkish-Syrian border, photojournalist Mehmet Aslan photographed a Syrian man, Munzir al-Nazzal, who had lost a leg in a bomb attack. Munzir was playing with Mustafa, his 5-year-old son, who was born without limbs, and the shot portrayed the father, propped up on a crutch, raising his smiling child into the air.Aslan entitled his photograph Hardship of Life. Continue reading...

UFO-watchers say 2022 could prove a bumper year, as clamor for details grows in the wake of a highly anticipated reportLast year was a breakthrough time for UFOs, as a landmark government report prompted the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors to finally be taken seriously by everyone from senators, to a former president, to the Pentagon.But 2022 could be even more profound, experts say, as the clamor for UFO disclosure and discovery continues to grow, and as new scientific projects bring us closer than ever to – potentially – discovering non-Earth life. Continue reading...

Firefighters in Western Australia battle two emergency-level bushfires. This blog is now closed

Government says move is a ‘Brexit win’ but figures suggest average sum will drop from £220 to about £23.60The government’s plan to overhaul the air passenger compensation scheme has been described as a step backwards for consumers, leading to “small amounts of compensation that often won’t be worth claiming”.Earlier this week the Department for Transport (DfT) announced it is consulting on proposals to overhaul the air passengers’ rights rules – but only for flights within the UK. Continue reading...

The two-year total compiled by Johns Hopkins University comes less than two months after eclipsing 800,000 deathsPropelled in part by the wildly contagious Omicron variant, the US death toll from Covid-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000.The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Indianapolis, San Francisco, or Charlotte, North Carolina. Continue reading...

Concerns frequent images of ‘cute’ breeds such as pugs maintains their popularity despite animal cruelty warningsGreetings card designers are being urged to stop using pugs and other flat-faced dogs and cats on Valentine’s Day cards as those sold by big retailers show how popular such images remain despite animal cruelty warnings from vets.The British Veterinary Association (BVA) has written to the Greeting Card Association and card retailers, including Moonpig, Paperchase, WH Smith, Scribbler, Clinton’s and Funky Pigeon, reigniting a call to action it first made four years ago to ban such images. Continue reading...

Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi had been an unseen phantom in a safehouse in the town of Atme until his violent end on ThursdayFor many months, the man on the motorbike would come and go from the house and a mechanic’s workshop in the Syrian border town of Atme.No other adult in the three-story building ever seemed to emerge, least of all a second man who signed a lease last spring and moved in with two women and three young children, never to be seen publicly again until the early hours of Thursday. Continue reading...

Questions are being asked about the timing of a Brisbane school’s attempt to introduce anti-gay contracts, amid the federal debate on religious freedom laws

Once, singing in te reo Māori could trigger a backlash – now New Zealand’s indigenous language is at the heart of its music scene“It was never a good thing, a positive thing being Māori when I was growing up,” says Bic Runga. She sighs audibly into the phone.Runga, who is of Chinese and Ngāti Kahungunu descent, shot to international fame in her 20s with 1997 album Drive, and went on to become one of New Zealand’s leading songwriters. “I was someone that grew up with pretty sustained, garden-variety racism,” she says. “I don’t really have the words for it – it’s just like a wash of backdrop. It’s the actual scheme that the whole thing is built on … It’s like asking a fish to describe water. It’s in the very makeup – we’re a settler colony, you know?” Continue reading...

Andrew Murrison has boasted of leading charge against NT and accused it of ‘tarnishing reputation of Winston Churchill’The National Trust has expressed surprise at plans to create a parliamentary group dedicated to them chaired by a Tory MP at the forefront of criticising the charity over issues such as a report into its properties’ connections to colonialism and slavery.While it is not unusual for all-party parliamentary groups to be dedicated to bodies such as the BBC, or have charities involved in their running, the trust said it was “unusual” for an “organisation-specific” APPG to emerge without that organisation’s knowledge or involvement. Continue reading...

Memorial day charity ‘appalled’ at comedian’s remarks about Nazi killings in Netflix specialAnti-hate groups including the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the Auschwitz Memorial and Hope Not Hate have condemned Jimmy Carr for his comments about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community in his Netflix special.The show, called His Dark Material, was released on Christmas Day but received widespread attention on Friday after a clip was posted and shared online. Continue reading...

Only one in four African healthcare workers is protected. Regional production and patent waivers are neededNo one asked for generosity – only justice. Self-interest as well as decency should have encouraged fairer distribution of vaccines: no one is safe until everyone is safe. Yet two years into the pandemic, with 8,400 people dying each day, the prospect of anything approaching vaccine equity remains as remote as ever. More boosters have been delivered in the developed world than first and second doses in low-income countries – the places that can least afford other measures such as restrictions on movements. In high-income countries more than two in three people have received at least one dose, but in low-income countries only one in nine. As of November, only one in four African healthworkers was fully vaccinated.“What we understood to be equitable treatment is not the way rich nations looked at it. [To them] it means: we get [them] first, and when we are done with saving our own people, we will then attend to you,” observed Strive Masiyiwa, African Union special envoy on Covid-19, and head of the African vaccine acquisition task team. Continue reading...

Complex and dangerous operation grips residents after Rayan fell 32 metres down an empty shaft in ChefchaouenRescuers have inched closer to reaching a five-year-old boy trapped for three days in a well in Morocco, in an operation hampered by concerns about ground stability that has captivated the north African country.Rayan fell into a 32 metre (105 ft) well located outside his home in the village of Ighran in Morocco’s northern Chefchaouen province on Tuesday evening. Continue reading...

Judge also imposes restraining order on Andrew Brady, who had blamed the journalist for Flack’s deathThe former fiance of the late television presenter Caroline Flack has been jailed for a campaign of harassment against the journalist Dan Wootton.Judge Jeremy Richardson QC said that Andrew Brady’s claims that the former executive editor of the Sun newspaper was in some way responsible for Flack’s death were “wholly irrational”.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. Continue reading...

Rescue workers in Tyrol searching for survivor, as five others rescued after being buried at ski resortAn avalanche in Austria’s Tyrol province has killed five people on an unusually dangerous day in the Alps after heavy snowfall was followed by warmer weather.“Unfortunately five people lost their lives,” a rescue official said on Friday. Continue reading...

Some argue Boris Johnson’s wife is pulling the strings at No 10 but others note that claims contain more than a whiff of sexismBoris Johnson’s inner circle imploded so spectacularly in recent days that only one close political confidante from the early days of No 10 remains: his wife, Carrie Johnson.The most powerful prime ministerial spouse in recent memory, the 33-year-old Johnson has a job of her own for a wildlife charity, but multiple sources from Downing Street past and present say her influence on the prime minister’s operation is undeniable. Continue reading...

Robert Hooper said of altercation he had ‘felt threatened and an Englishman’s home is his castle’A farmer who used his forklift tractor to flip and push a Vauxhall Corsa car off his land after a row with the driver over blocking access has been cleared by a jury of dangerous driving and criminal damage after going through “months of hell”.Robert Hooper, 57, a fourth-generation hill farmer, used a telehandler with forks to lift the car from a lane outside his farm in Newbiggin-in-Teesdale, County Durham, flip it and push it on its side on to the road outside, mobile phone footage played to Durham crown court showed. Continue reading...

The unionist party signals it wants the Brexit protocol at centre stage, but it may not be a winning strategyOnce again Northern Ireland is in the headlines. Stormont is on the brink of collapse and the febrile politics of orange, green and everything in between is exposed to all who do not live there.An election for the Stormont assembly looms in May and on Friday the Democratic Unionist party raised the stakes again. Continue reading...

As most UK countries start including reinfections in overall total, we look at why this is happening nowWith reinfections now included in the daily Covid case numbers for most countries in the UK, we take a look at why the shift matters. Continue reading...

When Allwood was 31 she gave birth at 24 weeks, but none of the babies survivedMandy Allwood, who made headlines in 1996 after losing all eight of her babies after a rare octuplets pregnancy, has died of cancer. She was 56.When Allwood was 31 she lost six boys and two girls, sparking an outpouring of grief and emotion from around the world. Continue reading...

Infections among younger children thought to have peaked, but secondary school disruption still rife

More than a dozen MPs have now called publicly for prime minister to resign over ‘partygate’ scandal

Spread of Omicron variant cited as another factor that could determine whether Moscow launches offensive

UK urged to follow suit as Brussels draws up proposal to cut overall use of the chemicals by 50%The use of synthetic pesticides in parks and other green public spaces in urban areas is to be banned in the EU, with member states obliged to cut overall use by 50%, according to a leaked draft regulation.The move is said by the European Commission to be necessary owing to the failure of a number of EU member states to act on previous guidance on reducing the use of chemical pest control. Continue reading...

With plummeting ratings and accusations of racial and gender bias, the Brits and Grammys are facing a battle to stay relevantOnce upon a time, the Brit awards and the Grammys were an annual staple in the TV calendar of even the most casual music fan. Drawing millions of viewers, the ceremonies offered a feast of entertainment, ranging from the unpredictable to the spectacular. Think Chumbawamba chucking a bucket of ice water over John Prescott at the 1998 Brits or Lady Gaga emerging from an egg at the Grammys in 2011. More recently, Brits sets by Stormzy and Dave have marked an important shift in mainstream recognition of Black British talent.For audiences, however, the shine seems to have worn off. Last year’s ITV broadcast of the Brits, which was postponed from February to May due to Covid-19, recorded 2.9 million viewers – a figure that plunged for the fourth year running. The 2021 Grammys were the lowest rated in history, delivering an audience of just 8.8 million viewers for CBS, down a staggering 53% on the year prior. (These declines aren’t exclusive to music award ceremonies: the Oscars also recorded a 58.3% dip in viewers last year.) Continue reading...

Despite an EU-first law that imposes fines of up to 3,600 euros for adults refusing a jab, government accused of mixed messaging

Belfast high court rules checks on goods entering from Great Britain must continue pending reviewBrexit checks on food and farm products entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain must continue pending a judicial review of the order made by Stormont’s agriculture minister, Edwin Poots, the high court in Belfast has ruled.Mr Justice Colton said he was “suspending the order or the instruction given by the minister of agriculture until the further order of this court”. Continue reading...

Format might not have romance of vinyl but its versatility and reliability will never be topped, say supportersAfter languishing in his car boot for several years, Jordan Bassett’s CD collection – mostly dating back to his teenage years – will soon be on proud display in his newly converted home office space.Bassett, a commissioning editor at the NME, has no means of playing the CDs and, in any case, his musical tastes have moved on. But the 100-150 thin, shiny 5in discs have sentimental value – and, who knows, one day they may be part of a revival similar to vinyl among music aficionados. Continue reading...

Urgent protection for minority groups needed in crisis connected to escalating clashes across central Asian ex-Soviet region, say human rights groupsParents of men killed by Tajikistan forces have called on the international community to step in and urgently protect ethnic groups being targeted by the Tajik regime.In a rare interview, families from the Pamiri ethnic minority have demanded that soldiers who killed their sons be brought to justice and urged the UN to prevent a new phase of conflict in Tajikistan, a landlocked country in central Asia. Continue reading...

Canadian Ashley Wadsworth was staying in Chelmsford with Jack Sepple whom she met on dating appThe stepmother of a 19-year-old woman from Canada allegedly murdered in Essex as she visited the UK for the first time has paid tribute to her “strong, smart and witty” daughter.Ashley Wadsworth, from Vernon, British Columbia, had reportedly never left Canada before arriving in the UK in November to stay with Jack Sepple in Chelmsford, Essex, whom she had met through an online dating app. She was due to fly home to see her family this week. Continue reading...

Anti-corruption activists criticise government inaction in face of years of Kremlin provocationBritain’s efforts to halt the flow of Russian “dirty money” into the UK have been called into question in the aftermath of the threat by the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, to hit Kremlin-linked oligarchs with economic sanctions if Ukraine is attacked.Labour and anti-corruption campaigners this week accused the government of failing to curtail Russian wealth and influence in Britain, despite years of provocative actions from the Kremlin. Continue reading...

We look at a selection of the PM’s statements this week and rate them for honesty

In this week’s newsletter: the beauty of podcasts is that anyone can start one and be successful. But that also means Rogan’s is far from the first show to get out of hand

Fierce stabs of sexuality and violence cut through the stoic calm of Chadian film-maker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s urgent drama of survivalMahamat-Saleh Haroun is the Chadian film-maker whose 2002 movie Abouna – my favourite of his – has a claim to classic status. Now he returns with a film that is recognisably a part of African cinema’s quietist walking-pace tradition, set in a place where, on its outskirts, the city becomes a village. The two distant ambient sounds are barnyard chickens and incessant traffic noise. Yet for all its ostensible gentleness, his storytelling is driven by a need to challenge the country’s reactionary theocratic males. There are fierce and even shocking stabs of sexuality and violence cutting through the opaque, stoic calm.The title Lingui is the Chadian word meaning sacred bonds, and on the question of abortion, the male rulers of church and state think the really sacred bond is between mother and unborn child, or perhaps more pertinently, between submissive women and autocratic menfolk. But the men’s opposition to abortion co-exists with an enormous enthusiasm for female genital mutilation. The film shows that they are two halves of a whole, and the women involved feel that their sacred bonds are those of loyalty to each other. Continue reading...

Thousands expected at Saturday demonstration as killing of young Congolese lays bare racial fault lines in Brazilian societyThousands of demonstrators are expected to hit Brazil’s streets on Saturday to protest against the murder of a young Congolese refugee whose killing – captured in spine-chilling video footage – has caused an explosion of anger over deep-rooted structural racism and hate violence.Moïse Mugenyi Kabagambe abandoned his home in the conflict-stricken city of Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 11 years ago after his grandmother was killed. He sought shelter thousands of miles away in Brazil only to lose his own life last week, aged 24, after being set upon by a group of men on one of Rio’s best-known beaches, Barra da Tijuca. Continue reading...

US says Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi killed himself when he detonated explosives in home in AtmeAbu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi took over as leader of Islamic State in 2019 following the deaths in quick succession of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Baghdadi’s nominated successor Abu Hassan al-Muhajjir.The US operation to try to kill him had been in the planning stages since early December, when officials became convinced that he was living in a nondescript three-storey building on the outskirts of Atme in Syria’s Idlib province, close to the Turkish border. Continue reading...

Streaming has allowed the genre, sometimes sung by people with ties to the mafia, to become a national craze. Is a crackdown necessary, or merely kneejerk censorship?Tony Colombo is one of the biggest names in neomelodica, an Italian music style combining elements of traditional Neapolitan song (think O Sole Mio) with modern pop influences. He has released more than 20 albums, held concerts across Italy, Germany, Canada and the US, and has hordes of fans.It is also alleged that part of his fortune comes from laundering money for the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia , made famous through its depiction in Roberto Saviano’s book Gomorrah and its TV adaptation. On 21 December, the Italian police confiscated goods from Colombo including an apartment, two cars and €80,000 (£66,000). In 2019, Colombo married the widow of a Camorra boss and he has reportedly been seen at parties thrown by the Camorra; prosecutors believe he has received dirty money from his wife’s clan and attempted to pass them as proceeds from his music career. He has always denied any involvement with organised crime. Continue reading...

Elena Narozanski, Boris Johnson’s special adviser on women and equalities, is latest to resign

Taskforce to oversee workplace changes and acknowledgement of trauma caused by bullying, sexual harassment and assault to be considered next week

She likes waking up slowly; he gets out of bed immediately. We air both sides of a domestic disagreement – and ask you to deliver a verdict• If you have a disagreement you’d like settled, or want to be part of our jury, click hereRegina sets between six and seven alarms each morning and ‘snoozes’ each one Continue reading...

Spurred on by military atrocities, young people are turning to armed struggle against the regime – leaving supportive but fearful families behind

Mayor denies any decision to accommodate the billionaire Amazon boss, despite claims that historic bridge will be removedThe Dutch port city of Rotterdam has not received a request for a permit to temporarily dismantle a historic bridge to allow a superyacht built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to pass, local media reported Thursday.The city’s mayor denied any decision had been made, a day after a municipality spokesperson told AFP that officials had green-lit the shipbuilder’s request to remove the central section of the famous Koningshaven Bridge, sparking widespread criticism on social media. Continue reading...