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It wasn’t a financially astute move but it led to my TV series and helped me discover the truly important things in life

Sources suggest No 10 leaning away from stricter curbs in England, as doctors’ union says lack of response is ‘ludicrous’

Politicians, religious figures and activists pay tribute to archbishop, who died on Boxing Day aged 90Politicians, religious figures and activists from around the world have paid tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the cleric, social activist and giant of South Africa’s struggle against white minority rule who died on Sunday aged 90.The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, said: “The passing of archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa. Continue reading...

The Nobel laureate, often described as South Africa’s moral conscience, died in Cape Town on Boxing Day

Countryside Alliance accuses Labour of ‘anti-rural’ policies after party says public land should be hunt-freeA scaled-back Boxing Day trail-hunting programme will go ahead this year despite the worsening Covid situation and growing calls to ban the practice on public land, the Countryside Alliance has said.The majority of Boxing Day hunts are due to go ahead on 27 December because this year’s holiday falls on a Sunday, traditionally a day of rest for the hunting community. Continue reading...

Leaders around the world have paid tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the cleric, social activist and giant of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, who died on Sunday aged 90.

By striving for tranquility rather than gratification you are less likely to ruin your own day and you’ll be more pleasant to others.In one of our best episodes from the Guardian Australia Reads podcast in 2021, Brigid Delaney examines an ancient way to pursue happinessYou can read the original article here: The secret to happiness in uncertain times? Give up pursuing itYou can find every episode of Guardian Australia Reads here, or subscribe by searching for Guardian Australia Reads wherever you get your podcasts Continue reading...

Tutu did not spare those in power in the ‘rainbow nation’ – a phrase of his with unfulfilled aspirations

Parliamentary committee accuses ambassador of interference over tweet in support of recognising interim governmentLibya’s political crisis has taken on an increasingly international dimension after the UK was accused of defending corruption and interfering in internal processes by calling for the interim government to remain in power pending the rescheduling of delayed elections.The country’s first presidential elections, scheduled for 24 December, were indefinitely postponed at the last minute, largely because fierce disagreements over who should be allowed to stand had not been resolved. Continue reading...

In The Killing, Lund’s incredible brain inspired me when mine felt like mushroom soup. She was a solace and an inspirationThroughout 2021, I have accepted some important truths: I sometimes feel loneliness like an anvil on my chest; exercising really does, annoyingly, make me feel better; I am lost without a murder drama series on the go. This has been the year of the re-watch – Happy Valley, The Bridge, Unforgotten and The Killing. These shows are richly different and should not be reduced to basic tropes, but they do all share a strong-but-flawed female detective in whom you can invest emotionally. And do I.In a year stained by uncertainty, loss, health issues and boredom, spending my evenings absorbing the lives of fictional female police officers has been medicinal. That murder is a balm is perhaps something for a therapy session, but the determination and bruised souls of Sarah Lancashire’s Catherine Cawood, Nicola Walker’s Cassie Stuart , Sofia Helin’s Saga Norén and Sofie Gråbøl’s Sarah Lund have held my attention like nothing else – even the second or third time around. Continue reading...

Newspaper runs front-page statement and 64-word story stating it infringed copyright over letter to fatherPublishers of the Mail on Sunday have agreed to pay “financial remedies” to the Duchess of Sussex, three years after she began a protracted privacy battle over a handwritten letter to her estranged father.On Sunday, the newspaper printed a statement at the bottom of its front page telling its readers that the duchess had won her legal case for copyright infringement against Associated Newspapers for articles published in the Mail on Sunday and posted on Mail Online. Continue reading...

Successes and failures include the Stagecoach founder’s Perthshire castle and a footpath near a family bungalow

It is not known if Chen Quanguo’s replacement by Guangdong governor Ma Xingrui signals fresh approachChina has replaced the Communist party official widely associated with a security crackdown targeting ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims in the far-west region of Xinjiang.The state-owned Xinhua news agency said in a brief announcement on Saturday that Ma Xingrui, the governor of the coastal economic powerhouse Guangdong province since 2017, had replaced Chen Quanguo as the Xinjiang party chief. Chen will move to another role. Continue reading...

Fortified camp for thousands of soldiers thought to have been used by Emperor Claudius during conquest of Britain in AD43A large Roman fort believed to have played a key role in the successful invasion of Britain in AD43 has been discovered on the Dutch coast.A Roman legion of “several thousand” battle-ready soldiers was stationed in Velsen, 20 miles from Amsterdam, on the banks of the Oer-IJ, a tributary of the Rhine, research suggests. Continue reading...

Nicole Kidman is one of Hollywood’s most brilliant stars, but her everyday concerns are familiar to all of us. She talks candidly about sleepless nights, melancholy moments and why she still has so much to get doneNicole Kidman sleeps badly. Recently she got up at 3am to Google that thing, with the leg, where, “It feels like it needs to move?” But more often she will lie there in the dark beside her husband, in her Nashville bed, their two daughters sleeping some rooms away, and make decisions. She will “contemplate”. Between midnight and seven, she says, coolly, is the most “confronting time”.It says a lot about Kidman, her prolific career, her sustained presence on film and glossy TV, that we can immediately picture her there, hair coiled on a pillow, eyes wide, the restless sense she has become claustrophobic in her own body. Kidman, 54, has been acting since she was 14, already 5ft 9in then, with skin that burned easily. She started in theatre partly as a way to get out of the Australian sun – a year later she was known locally (she told an early interviewer) for playing “older, sexually frustrated women”. Over the next 40 years she extended that repertoire, so now she is known for playing cryptic, adventurous, troubled women, too, in brave work that might not have been made were it not for her glittering star-power. Continue reading...

The activist who was murdered in Paris in 1965 was a hero of the global struggle against imperialism, but files from the Czechoslovak secret service cast doubt on his independenceIt is one of the great causes célèbres of the cold war. At around noon on 29 October 1965, Mehdi ben Barka, a Moroccan opposition leader and hero of the international left, was abducted as he arrived at a brasserie on Paris’s left bank.Over the years, much of the truth about the murder of the 46-year-old dissident has emerged: how he was taken to a house south of Paris, tortured and killed by Moroccan intelligence agents. But many of Ben Barka’s activities before his death have remained shrouded in mystery. Now new research in the archives of former Soviet satellite states has revealed that the charismatic intellectual, propagandist and political organiser may also have been a spy. Continue reading...

Met Office yellow alert stretches south to Derbyshire and eastwards to Durham and NorthumberlandParts of England from the east Midlands to the north-east have joined Scotland in preparing for blizzard-like conditions on Boxing Day, as the white Christmas continues.One of the Met Office’s yellow warnings was expanded to include an area from the Scottish borders to Derbyshire, as well as further east over Durham and Northumberland, due to the increased chance of snow accumulating over the southern Pennines overnight. Continue reading...

It was another disappointing day for England as they mustered a poor total with Australia in a good position to secure the series on day one of the third TestOn the subject of England recovering from 2-0 down with three to play, senior players made the right noises pre-Test.Brollies down, covers coming off. We might have a toss soon. Continue reading...

This meticulous account of the Arab doctor who sheltered a Jewish girl in 1930s Berlin is a remarkable story of subterfuge and courageThe Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem honours 25,000 individuals who helped to save Jewish lives during the second world war. Among this roll call of the “Righteous among the Nations”, there is only one named Arab: Dr Mohamed Helmy. This remarkable book tells the story of Helmy’s life, in particular the years in which he helped a young Jewish girl, Anna Boros (later Gutman), evade the Nazis in the heart of Berlin from 1936 until the end of the war.Ronen Steinke, a political commentator at German broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung, has painstakingly pieced together these events from the state archive in Berlin, and from Gestapo correspondence, and interviews with the surviving relatives of Helmy and Gutman in New York and Cairo. His story, deftly translated by Sharon Howe, wears this research lightly. Steinke’s history sheds a light on what he argues is a deliberately forgotten world, the old Arabic Berlin of the Weimar period, centred around the grand mosque in the Wilmersdorf district, which was “open, progressive and far from antisemitic” and which welcomed Jewish luminaries, including Albert Einstein and philosopher Martin Buber, to its cultural events. “It is a perception shared by many Muslims in western countries that the Holocaust was nothing to do with them, that Muslim migrants played no part in that history,” Steinke writes. “This book is evidence to the contrary.” Continue reading...

From France to Ukraine, the continent faces many challenges during 2022The recent barrage of threats from Vladimir Putin is no longer solely to do with Ukraine. Russia’s president has steadily broadened the scope of his demands to encompass defence and security arrangements in Europe as a whole. Even if current tensions on Ukraine’s borders do not ultimately result in open conflict, this deliberate escalation bodes ill for 2022.What Putin wants, in effect, is to turn the clock back to the 1990s, before former Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland and ex-Soviet republics such as Estonia joined Nato. If he had his way, he would probably reconstitute the Soviet Union, whose demise he mourns. This bitter old KGB spy never accepted cold war defeat. Continue reading...

Leadership hopefuls told to block new limits in England as scientists model curbs on bars and cafes

Physical distancing will be required in public places and there will be new limits on indoor gatherings from Boxing Day

The killings come amid escalating violence in the region, where a four-year Islamist insurgency has resulted in thousands of deathsAuthorities in Burkina Faso have declared a two-day period of mourning after suspected militants killed at least 41 members of a government-backed civilian militia in the country’s desert north this week.A column of civilian fighters from the homeland defence volunteers (VDP), a group the government funds and trains to contain Islamist insurgents, was ambushed on Thursday as it swept a remote area in the northern Loroum province, authorities said on Saturday. Continue reading...

Virgin and Amazon bosses do well in our awards for business brass neck, but there are also nods to big oil, big money – and a powerful whiff of MuskEvery Christmas, Observer Business Agenda casts its eye over the year that was, seeking to spotlight the business luminaries whose deeds might otherwise have gone unrecognised. At first glance 2021 looked awfully similar to 2020 – a pandemic, various lockdowns and a new wave of infections to round it all off – but it soon became clear that there were still candidates worthy of special recognition. Continue reading...

Party calls for ban as Boxing Day meetings prepare to go aheadLabour has demanded the outlawing of trail hunting on public land, as Boxing Day meets prepare to go ahead.Several licences have been granted by the government for the meetings, despite a growing movement among public bodies to refuse permission for them to take place on their property. Continue reading...

Six days, 10 questions a day. How much can you remember about the news, culture and sport events of 2021 in Australia and overseas? Continue reading...

Luke Henriques-Gomes’s grandfather was one of 44 refugees to arrive in 1975 on the only RAAF plane ever hijacked. The official response still staggers him. Head of news, Mike Ticher, introduces this little known story

Agents step in after incident involving two small boats in early hours of morningUK authorities have rescued 67 people who were attempting to cross the Channel on Christmas Day.Border Force agents took a group of people to Dover in Kent in the early hours of Saturday, after an incident involving two small boats. Continue reading...

The Queen paid tribute to Prince Philip and encouraged the nation to see the joy in simple things in her yearly Christmas Day address. The monarch acknowledged the impact of the Covid Omicron variant, having cancelled her regular festive trip to Sandringham. Instead she was spending Christmas at Windsor Castle, joined by Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, in the Queen's first Christmas without the Duke of Edinburgh since his death.In the broadcast, recorded in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle, the Queen said she had drawn great comfort from the 'warmth and affection' shown in the tributes to the duke’s life Continue reading...

Observer investigation uncovers new trafficking gateway to the west after 500 migrants found in shocking conditions in SerbiaWhen construction began to great fanfare in 2019, the Linglong car tyre factory outside of Belgrade was heralded as the jewel in the crown of Serbia’s burgeoning strategic partnership with China.Two years later, 500 Vietnamese construction workers were allegedly found last month working in conditions of forced labour with their passports confiscated and living in cramped and degrading conditions. Continue reading...

Police say suspect was carrying an offensive weapon and royal family have been informedAn armed man was arrested after attempting to break into Windsor Castle where the Queen was celebrating Christmas with her family.Police said the intruder was carrying an offensive weapon but did not break into any buildings on Saturday morning. Continue reading...

Monarch speaks of the death of Prince Philip, and encourages the nation to see the joy in simple thingsThe Queen looked back on a year marked by personal, as well as national, grief in her Christmas Day message – the first since the loss of her husband – yet strived to strike a more hopeful tone for the year to come.As a second year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic drew towards its end, the 95-year-old monarch said she could understand the feelings of all those who have lost loved ones, having been bereaved herself in April. Nevertheless, she looked forward becoming the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee – 70 years on the throne – in 2022. Continue reading...

On my way to have painful medical tests, I felt dejected. Then I saw a giant dollop of whipped cream with a cherry on top in Trafalgar SquareMost people were keen to leave 2020 behind but had I known what was coming in 2021, I might have chosen to stay there. From the first days of January I started to experience extended bouts of dizziness – a feeling that the ground was moving beneath me, with bursts of tinnitus, nausea and head pressure thrown in.One thing I can tell you about near constant dizziness is that it’s not the ideal state to be in if you are trying to homeschool a four-year-old, entertain a stir-crazy one-year-old and hold down a full-time job. As for fun activities: just looking at a playground roundabout was enough to send me spinning out. Continue reading...

A sunny new world beckons for Neo and Trinity in this self-aware but smart fourth instalment of the sci-fi classicThomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is the designer of The Matrix, a popular video game set in a virtual reality. His bosses have ordered a sequel; at an ideas meeting, his colleagues throw around a few ideas. PVC. Guns. Trans allegory. There is much winking and nudging in Lana Wachowski’s follow-up to the groundbreaking sci-fi films she co-created with her sister Lilly. Wachowski understands that in the 20 years since, their legacy has been boiled down to a catalogue of memes with lucrative franchise potential. Yet her newest chapter manages to be self-aware (at times overly so) without being entirely cynical.Those foggy on the details of the trilogy’s plot will benefit from the exposition-heavy first act. Plagued by memories of his past, Anderson – also known as Neo – must once again choose whether to take the red pill offered by hacker Bugs (Jessica Henwick, whip-smart), and wake up, or continue to swallow his current reality. Carrie-Anne Moss’s Tiffany, a motorcycle mechanic and mother of two whom Neo remembers as Trinity, has a choice to make too. The romance between them has always been the molten core of the Matrix films; their power as a duo is what drives the story forward. Continue reading...

The actor, 57, on having a breakdown, aiming high and moving through life gentlyMy first memory is cycling to the top of the path outside my childhood home, on a yellow kids’ bike with fat grey tyres. I turned on to the road and said aloud: “I’m me, doing this, now.” I was heading away from the home and people I loved, off on my own adventure.The love I felt as a child was unconditional, especially from my mother. I loved Dad deeply, but was wary of him. It was idyllic, our gang of kids playing out on a Salford council estate. My children are middle-class Londoners, but I sit on the porch and let them play in the street just like I did. Continue reading...

Do you know what Demi Lovato thinks about aliens? What new role The Rock has been cooking up? Put your knowledge to the test Continue reading...

A new translation of Felix Salten’s 1923 novel reasserts its original message that warns of Jewish persecutionIt’s a saccharine sweet story about a young deer who finds love and friendship in a forest. But the original tale of Bambi, adapted by Disney in 1942, has much darker beginnings as an existential novel about persecution and antisemitism in 1920s Austria.Now, a new translation seeks to reassert the rightful place of Felix Salten’s 1923 masterpiece in adult literature and shine a light on how Salten was trying to warn the world that Jews would be terrorised, dehumanised and murdered in the years to come. Far from being a children’s story, Bambi was actually a parable about the inhumane treatment and dangerous precariousness of Jews and other minorities in what was then an increasingly fascist world, the new translation will show. Continue reading...

Pontiff looks to soothe global conflicts ranging from family feuds to threats of war in his speechPope Francis has used his Christmas Day message to call for dialogue on the world stage as he looks to resolve conflicts ranging from family feuds to threats of war.The pontiff listed tensions in several countries in Asia, Europe and Africa as he delivered his Urbi et Orbi address, and called on individuals and world leaders to talk rather than dig in their heels. This aversion to discourse, he said, has been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading...

Shetland and eastern Scotland get snow, with more forecast to fall later in the day in southern HighlandsShetland and parts of eastern Scotland have woken up to a white Christmas, the Met Office confirmed.As of 7am on Christmas Day, the weather agency said there had been snowfall, with more forecast for later in the day in the southern Highlands. Continue reading...

Hannah Ingram-Moore is encouraging those who are missing a loved one over Christmas to reach out for supportThe daughter of Captain Sir Tom Moore has encouraged people to not grieve alone if they are missing a loved one over Christmas.Hannah Ingram-Moore, whose father died in February, has said people “don’t need to” go through grief alone, and encouraged them to reach out for support if they need it. Continue reading...

Human rights group says burnt bodies of dozens killed by the military found near Hpruso townMore than 30 people, including children, have been killed and their bodies burned in Myanmar’s conflict-torn Kayah state, according to a local resident, media reports and a local human rights group.The Karen Human Rights Group said it found the bodies of internally displaced people killed by the military that rules Myanmar near Mo So village of Hpruso town on Saturday. Continue reading...

In Peru’s remote villages, farmers have used diverse crops to survive unpredictable weather for millennia. Now they are using this knowledge to adapt to the climate crisisIn a pastoral scene that has changed little in centuries, farmers wearing red woollen ponchos gather on a December morning in a semicircle to drink chicha, made from fermented maize, and mutter an invocation to Pachamama – Mother Earth – before sprinkling the dregs on the Andean soil.Singing in Quechua, the language spread along the vast length of the Andes by the Incas, they hill the soil around plants in the numerous small plots terraced into a patchwork up and down the Peruvian mountainside. Continue reading...

The Six Feet Under actor on ​challenging roles, working with Guillermo del Toro​ and being recognised at funeralsAmerican actor Richard Jenkins, 74, has been a screen regular since the 70s, but his big breakthrough came in 2001 playing deceased funeral director Nathaniel Fisher in the TV series Six Feet Under. He went on to receive an Oscar nomination for best actor in The Visitor (2007) and won an Emmy in 2015 for his role in the drama series Olive Kitteridge. Jenkins has worked with directors including Woody Allen, Kathryn Bigelow, the Coens and Mike Nichols, and next month can be seen in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. His latest project is playwright Stephen Karam’s film of his own one-act play The Humans – set in a newly rented, unfurnished apartment in New York’s Chinatown – in which Jenkins plays a man contemplating the state of his life at a family Thanksgiving.You live in Providence, Rhode Island, where you’ve worked a lot in theatre, right?

Despite living in the UK for more than 30 years, there are a handful of popular staples I have doggedly refused to eat. So I take the plunge with prawn cocktail crispsI like to think I have an adventurous palate. I eat many things that commonly upset people – shellfish, snails, coriander – without complaint. I don’t have any allergies and I am highly lactose tolerant.As an American who has lived in the UK for 30 years, I can only think of a few British foodstuffs I won’t touch, among them baked beans, Marmite and prawn cocktail crisps. But can I really consider myself adventurous if I’m not willing to give these three a go? Continue reading...

In Time, the actor known as Game of Thrones’ Ned Stark had to show the terrors of prison … mostly by sitting in silence. He talks religion, looking rough – and the role he played that would not be made nowAcross three Sunday nights last summer, Sean Bean was remarkable. BBC One’s Time saw him play a teacher jailed for killing someone while drunk-driving. With Jimmy McGovern’s script often leaving him silent and alone in his cell, he painted an astonishingly affecting portrait of the regret and terror of a previously respected professional banged up with veteran criminals – and he frequently did so using expressions alone.How is it to try to grab the audience entirely through looks? “As you get older, it’s sometimes a bit easier!” says Bean, 62, with a laugh. “When I started out, I used to count up how many lines I had and want some more. Now, it’s: ‘Oh, fuck, do I have to remember all that?’ So I don’t mind silence.” Continue reading...

How much gourmand gossip did you absorb?

Nearly 6,000 readers have donated towards causes that will help communities affected by the climate crisisAn incredible £500,000 has been raised for climate justice good causes by generous Guardian and Observer readers, in the space of just over a fortnight since the launch of the 2021 charity appeal.Nearly 6,000 people have so far donated to the appeal, which will be shared between four charities: Practical Action, Global Greengrants Fund UK, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and Environmental Justice Foundation. Continue reading...

The director of America’s art museum aims to ‘listen to people whom museum directors don’t always hear’Donato Bramante’s Tempietto in Rome. The Parthenon in Athens. Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The Barcelona pavilion in Spain. The Guggenheim museum in New York. And the White House in Washington.All have been turned into architectural birthday cakes by Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, as gifts for her architect husband. “I’m not a cook so they’re not pastry masterpieces,” says the 55-year-old, who used carrots for the minarets of the Hagia Sophia mosque in Turkey. “They sort of amuse me.” Continue reading...