The World Health Organization has said booster programmes are more likely to lengthen the pandemic rather than shorten it, as vaccine inequality means many countries have not yet hit their 40% vaccination target while wealthier nations move on to offer booster jabs. The WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Covid would continue to mutate and spread through unvaccinated populations
Officers say CCTV suggests the 20-year old man who went missing last week may have entered the waterPolice investigating the disappearance of a 20-year-old man after he visited a nightclub in central London last week have begun searching the River Thames after reviewing CCTV footage.Scotland Yard said the search for Harvey Parker was ordered after officers found footage suggesting he may have “entered the water” near the Golden Jubilee pedestrian bridge that links Embankment to Waterloo. In a statement, it added: “At this stage of the investigation there is nothing to suggest that there is any third-party involvement.” Continue reading...
by Mark Brown North of England correspondent on (#5T9RY)
Highly venomous snake apparently survived 4,000-mile journey from Pakistan in shipment of bricksWhen Ryan King was called about reports of a saw-scaled viper found in a brickyard he was doubtful. They are among the world’s deadliest snakes and they don’t tend to live in Salford.The RSPCA inspector, however, quickly realised he was wrong. It was indeed a saw-scaled viper, and it had apparently survived a 4,000-mile trip from Pakistan in a shipment of bricks. Continue reading...
Painting came close to being sold at auction for €1,500 before its true potential value of £50m came to lightA small oil painting that avoided being sold at a Spanish auction for €1,500 earlier this year after experts suggested it could be the work of the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio has been granted protected status as an item of cultural interest.The painting of the scourged Christ, which measures 111cm by 86cm, was withdrawn from sale in April after suspicions grew that it had been incorrectly attributed to the circle of the 17th-century Spanish artist José de Ribera. Continue reading...
European Commission says it has ‘serious concerns’ about challenges by Warsaw’s constitutional tribunalThe European Commission has begun legal action against Poland over rulings by the country’s constitutional court that challenged the supremacy of EU law, in an escalation of the long-running battle between Brussels and Warsaw.The EU executive said it had “serious concerns” about the Polish constitutional tribunal and its recent case law, citing rulings where the court had challenged the primacy of EU law. Continue reading...
From meditative portraits that nod at the Dutch old masters to an incendiary, epic exploration of the Troubles, these are the volumes that resonated this year
I had plumbing problems and his radio show transported me from the faecal hellscape in my garden. It became the ideal soundtrack for my pandemic realityIt was spring, and human excrement was pumping into our garden. I watched through the window as a perplexed young plumber with a long metal pole excavated the dark, gurgling drain. As if lockdown hadn’t been bad enough, our kitchen was now heavy with the stench of a thousand flushes. No one knew how to stop it. There was only one thing to do: brew weapons-grade black coffee and switch on the radio. That’s how I discovered Huey Morgan’s Saturday morning breakfast show on BBC 6 Music. It made everything feel a little more right in the world.What started as a way to distract from the tide of hot, liquid excrement on our patio quickly became the highlight of the week for my girlfriend and me. Huey – of Fun Lovin’ Criminals fame – thumbing you through his records: early 90s rap, early 80s disco, and early 70s soul to blow away the cobwebs, with choice modern selections marbling the retro soundscape. Continue reading...
Annual multibillion-euro draw goes ahead despite Covid surge and first ever strike by lottery ticket sellersSpain’s Christmas lottery, a lucrative and much-loved annual tradition that often ends in the joyous detonation of cava corks and the hatching of big plans, took place on Wednesday amid soaring Covid infections and the first ever strike by ticket vendors.After the country recorded a record 49,823 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday night, many Spaniards welcomed the chance to focus instead on El Gordo (the Fat One) and its €2.4bn in prizes. Continue reading...
Wealthy overseas buyers lured by ‘golden visas’ helped create a city where workers struggle to find homesManuela Lopes dates her misfortune from the moment her Lisbon neighbourhood began attracting comparisons with Brooklyn. It was the mid 2010s: former warehouses in the old working-class parish of Marvila were giving way to co-working spaces, art galleries, artisan breweries, creative hubs and tech startups. In 2018, average property prices in the neighbourhood were up 79.8% on the previous year.A short walk from Lopes’ home, a 12-building luxury residential project designed by the world-famous architect Renzo Piano is now rising from Marvila’s old industrial waterfront. Prices for apartments, some with balconies overlooking the Tagus, range from €500,000 to €925,000 (£425,000 to £786,000) and many have been sold off-plan. Promotional material for Prata Riverside Village promises a “new way of living Lisbon” for “young families, students, digital nomads and retired people” in a district “distinguished by its true neighbourhood atmosphere; quiet but full of life” .Manuela Lopes (above and below right) was born in the Santos Lima building (right) in the Marvila neighbourhood of Lisbon. She has lived with the threat of eviction since 2017. Photographs: Goncalo Fonseca/The Guardian Continue reading...
Electoral body proposes one-month delay but it is unclear whether idea will be accepted by rival bodies jostling for powerLibya’s chief electoral body has announced a plan to delay elections set for 24 December by a month, but it is unclear if the rival bodies jostling for power will accept the proposal.With Libya’s political transition in crisis, the proposed new date, set out by the High National Elections Commission (HNEC), is the first attempt to draw up a new roadmap. Bitter unresolved disputes over the legal basis for the elections and who was eligible to stand have been crushing the international community’s hopes that elections would mark a reset after a decade of war and infighting, largely between the east and west of the country. Continue reading...
Carl Davies, 44, given two years and eight months for posting ‘intimidating’ messages to Minchin and her daughterA former soldier who stalked the BBC presenter Louise Minchin and her teenage daughter has been jailed.Carl Davies, 44, was sentenced to two years and eight months after posting multiple “intimidating” messages “intended to maximise fear and distress” to Minchin and her teenage daughter Mia’s social media accounts over four days between 14 and 17 July 2020. Continue reading...
Search and rescue operation under way near Folegandros as boat carrying as many as 50 people sinksGreece’s coastguard says one person has died and dozens are feared missing after a boat sank off the coast of the island of Folegandros.The body of the unidentified man was recovered during an ongoing search and rescue operation. The coastguard said 12 people, all believed to be from Iraq, had been rescued and transported to the nearby island of Santorini. Continue reading...
Death toll underscores daunting task facing schools as they help students recover not just academically, but also emotionallyMelanie Keaton, 9, used to spend hours playing with her grandfather. Having tea time together from her miniature toy set. Taking trips to the zoo. Zigzagging their characters across the board of Candy Land.When he fell ill from the coronavirus in April 2020 and went to the hospital during New York City’s deadly first wave, the young girl, then just 7, turned to her mother. Continue reading...
Neil Patrick Harris and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II join Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in a fourth instalment in the franchise that is full of little treasures
Survey suggests UK residents more likely to have faced shortages than those in France, Germany and SpainBritons are many times more likely to have experienced shortages of food and fuel than people in half a dozen EU member states, according to a poll.Global supply chain problems prompted by the pandemic have disrupted the international trade network since the summer, with transport backlogs combining with labour shortages to create scarcities of various goods around the world. Continue reading...
by Cait Kelly (now) and Stephanie Convery (earlier) a on (#5T8VS)
WA to close to NT and Tasmania from Boxing Day and mandate booster shots for some workers; PM speaks after ‘positive’ emergency national cabinet meeting; SA reports record 198 Covid infections; NSW records 3,763 new cases and two deaths; Victoria records 1,503 cases and six deaths; Queensland records 186 cases; ACT records 58 cases; Tasmania records 12 cases. This blog is closed
In 1951, Werner Bischof was sent to cover the war in Korea. The photographer instead found himself captivated by Japan, where US soldiers took their leave, and spent a year exploring ‘the depths of the Japanese soul’ Continue reading...
I had a lot of existential questions. What is death? What if the dead wake in their coffins? And who was going to deliver my presents: Santa, God or Rabindranath Tagore?Christmas was always such a magical time for me when I was young, and the beginning of December 1970, filled with excitement and anticipation, was no different. I was six and though I had already figured out there was no Santa, I didn’t quite understand how presents materialised in the pillowcase annually hung from the post of my upper bunk bed. My parents were adamant about Santa’s existence, but my friends and older brothers had confirmed the awful, heart-wrenching, nihilistic truth of my suspicions.There were a lot of other existential questions in my mind that year. What was death? Did people seriously spend eternity in a box buried underground? What if they woke up? At school, the alternative of an eternity in heaven was presented by our overtly Christian teacher and, on balance, heaven definitely sounded preferable to an afterlife of maggot-ridden decomposition. The caveat of complete faith and devotion to a bearded man who floated on a cloud seemed a small price to pay for everlasting bliss. God even looked a lot like Santa, only his beard was more straggly and his suit less fun. Maybe God delivered the presents. Sorted. Roll on Christmas. Continue reading...
It was bitter weather in Geneva in 1986 and all any of us could think about was getting warm. Then I met a charismatic woman and felt a strong mutual attractionGeneva in March 1986 was cold. I had travelled overnight on an extremely long train journey from London to Switzerland. I and several other women heading for a huge lesbian feminist conference had failed to find affordable flights and instead had bought train tickets with vouchers collected from very large boxes of Persil washing powder.The journey was hellish. There was no heating on any of the trains and we only had enough booze for the odd warming sip from a hip flask. I was wearing every pair of socks I had packed and would run up and down the carriages every half-hour trying to get my circulation moving. Continue reading...
Russell T Davies’s Aids drama was gut-wrenching and it made us weep time and again, but it also made us truly love the characters. What a devastating delight
Jonathan Chew, charged with putting chief medical officer in headlock, defended himself by video link after lawyer withdrew in embarrassmentA man accused of assaulting Chris Whitty in a central London park attended a court appearance via video link from his bedroom while wearing a dressing gown after saying he had tested positive for coronavirus.Jonathan Chew, 24, and estate agent Lewis Hughes, 23, filmed themselves with England’s chief medical officer as he walked through St James’ Park in Westminster on 27 June. Continue reading...
Boric envisions a greener, fairer and more inclusive country, reflecting the generational shift underway in ChileChile’s future as a greener, fairer country, depends on the success of efforts to rewrite the country’s dictatorship-era constitution, president-elect Gabriel Boric said on Tuesday.After a meeting with the delegates elected last year to rewrite the 1980 constitution which enshrined the ideological legacy of General Augusto Pinochet, Boric called for Chileans to unite behind the project. Continue reading...
Wednesday: National cabinet to discuss Doherty modelling, Omicron and vaccine boosters. Plus: why you should be extra kind to retail staff this silly seasonGood morning! There are only a few more sleeps until Christmas and the morning mail will take a short break over the festive period. If you’re worried about missing your morning news fix, never fear! Five Great Reads will be stepping in. Every weekday, Guardian Australia’s lifestyle editor, Alyx Gorman, will be selecting five brilliant reads from across the Guardian. Sign up here.Australia could have 200,000 new Covid cases a day by late January without low-to-medium restrictions under a “worst-case scenario”, according to Doherty Institute modelling. That scenario would only be reached “if we do nothing” and is based on people not altering their behaviour, no change to the booster schedule and only basic public health restrictions being in place, according to a senior source. The modelling will be discussed in national cabinet today, along with the spike in Omicron cases and the vaccine booster program. Meanwhile, families could miss out on seeing loved ones in aged care over Christmas as inconsistent restrictions are causing confusion. Advocates are pushing for coherent guidelines and calling for a balance to be struck so residents are protected but not isolated. Continue reading...
This year’s Guardian and Observer appeal charities do inspirational work, fighting for climate justice where it matters mostIn August 1965, the German-born, Oxford-educated economist EF Schumacher published an article in the Observer. Titled “Help them to help themselves”, it criticised the prevailing model of aid to the developing world and proposed a new emphasis on regional planning and “intermediate technology”. If the west would give up trying to impose the latest production methods, he argued, it could instead unleash the “power of self-help”.That article led to the creation of a charity today known as Practical Action. The approach it pioneered, of supporting local people to make incremental changes to improve their lives, lies at the heart of the Guardian and Observer’s 2021 charity appeal. All over the world, as our recent “Living on the frontline of global heating” series showed, climate breakdown is having disastrous consequences for the people and communities who (along with their ancestors) have contributed least to the problem of global heating. Practical Action and the other three charities that we are supporting cannot stop carbon emissions. But they can, and will, help people in some of the hardest-hit areas and communities to adapt, survive and thrive. Continue reading...
Appeals court rules in favour of men filmed piloting small boats after prosecutors ‘misunderstood’ lawThe convictions of four asylum seekers for driving small boats across the Channel have been found unsafe by the court of appeal in a ruling that identified systemic failings in such prosecutions.The three judges in the case said the convictions “must be quashed in due course”. Three of the men who appealed had their convictions quashed on Tuesday; a fourth man’s appeal is pending as the Crown Prosecution Service is seeking a retrial of his case. Continue reading...
by Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent on (#5T8KT)
Nicola Sturgeon cancels Hogmannay street party as Welsh bring in £60 fines for failing to work from homeEdinburgh’s annual Hogmanay street party has been cancelled while in Wales employees face £60 fines for failing to work from home as governments tightened rules to limit the spread of the Omicron variant.The Scottish and Welsh governments also imposed limits on sporting events from Boxing Day. Continue reading...
MPs grappled with each other in a fight in Ghana's parliament during a proposed tax debate for electronic transactions on Monday.The 1.75% e-levy, which would include taxes on mobile money payments, has been challenged by the opposition for weeks, pushing the national budget announcement back.
by Presented by Laura Murphy-Oates and reported by Em on (#5T8PT)
From reckonings on race and gender inequality, to Australian sporting heroes shining on the international stage – Guardian Australia sports editor Mike Hytner and deputy editor Emma Kemp talk to Laura Murphy-Oates about the biggest moments in sport in 2021You can also read: Continue reading...
Keanu Reeves is back as cyberpunk icon Neo but fans of the original will find this cynical reboot a bitter pill to swallowEighteen years after what we thought was the third and final Matrix film, The Matrix Revolutions, Lana Wachowski has directed a fourth: The Matrix Resurrections. But despite some ingenious touches (a very funny name, for example, for a VR coffee shop) the boulder has been rolled back from the tomb to reveal that the franchise’s corpse is sadly still in there. This is a heavy-footed reboot which doesn’t offer a compelling reason for its existence other than to gouge a fourth income stream from Matrix fans, submissively hooked up for new content, and it doesn’t have anything approaching the breathtaking “bullet time” action sequences that made the original film famous.The first Matrix was a brilliant, prescient sci-fi action thriller that in 1999 presented us with Keanu Reeves as a computer hacker codenamed “Neo”, stumbling across the apparent activity of a police state whose workings he scarcely suspected. Charismatic rebel Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) brings Neo to the mysterious figure of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) who offers our reluctant hero one of the most famous choices in modern cinema: the blue pill or the red pill. The first will allow Neo back into his torpid quasi-contentment, the second will irreversibly reveal to him the truth about all existence. He swallows the red and discovers all our lives exist in a digitally fabricated, illusory world, while our comatose bodies are milked for their energies in giant farms by our machine overlords. Continue reading...
Proposed levy has been challenged by opposition since it was first proposed last monthA fight has broken out between lawmakers in Ghana’s parliament during a debate over a proposed tax on electronic transactions that has divided the house for weeks.The 1.75% e-levy, which would include mobile money payments, has been challenged by the opposition since it was first proposed last month and held up the passing of the budget. Continue reading...
Suspected dealers in Murcia held lottery for their clients with prizes of drugs, whisky and a leg of hamSpanish police have arrested two suspected drug dealers who were raffling off a Christmas basket containing cocaine, hashish, alcohol and a leg of cured ham, they said on Tuesday.Officers discovered the unusual lottery when they raided a drug den allegedly operated by the two men, a Spaniard and an Argentinian, in the eastern city of Murcia, the police said in a statement, without adding when the arrests took place. Continue reading...
I have finally admitted that my hair has gone for ever, and taken great comfort from the reigning king of baldnessThis year will go down in history as the year I went bald. Well, actually, 2018 went down as the year I went bald. But still, 2021 will go down as the year that I stopped fastidiously brushing three long wisps of cobweb over my scalp in the berserk belief that it somehow made me look less bald. I am bald now. Hello.Obviously, being bald is rubbish. A bad roll of the genetic dice means I am now conclusively unattractive in the eyes of most of the world. Of course I am – I’m 85% forehead now. I can never go out and commit a crime, because a witness would only have to draw a face on their thumb and show it to the Photofit guy and I’d be in handcuffs by teatime. Continue reading...
by Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent on (#5T8H3)
John Apter, chair of Police Federation of England and Wales, facing two criminal investigations into gross misconductOne of the most powerful leaders in UK policing has been suspended after being placed under criminal investigation over two allegations of sexual touching.PC John Apter was on Tuesday suspended as chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW), which represents 130,000 rank and file officers. Continue reading...
by Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent on (#5T8F7)
Twenty-five-year-old accused of stabbing politician to death also denies planning terrorist attackThe man accused of stabbing to death the Conservative MP Sir David Amess has pleaded not guilty to his murder and planning a terrorist attack for more than two years.Ali Harbi Ali, 25, appeared before the Old Bailey in central London on Tuesday for a pre-trial hearing. Continue reading...
Villagers claim animals were carrying out ‘revenge killings’ after dogs killed an infant monkeyTwo monkeys that allegedly killed hundreds of puppies in the Indian state of Maharastra have been captured.Villagers in Lavool village, in the Beed district of Maharastra, reported the langur monkeys after they witnessed them engaging in what seemed to be targeted killings of the neighbourhood puppies by snatching them and taking them up to deadly heights. Continue reading...
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