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Can you remember what a Wellerman was? Who Bean Dad was? Or are you just too cheugy for this meme-packed quiz?

Laali and Meenakshi’s unborn daughters are among the country’s 46 million ‘missing’ women and girls over the past 50 yearsLaali was alone at home when she realised her legs were drenched in blood. The bleeding did not stop for eight hours. As she fell unconscious, the 25-year-old thought she would die alongside the foetus she was losing.She had been three months pregnant when she was taken for prenatal sex determination. “When I learned it was a girl, I started feeling as though I was suffocating,” she says. Continue reading...

At my lowest point, I sought self-annihilation. I was saved at the last moment by two of the few people I had not pushed awayIt was a Saturday night in early October 1986. My 30th birthday party, or what passed for it. Just a handful of junkies and my few remaining friends sitting on the floor of a grey, bare room in a flat in south London. I had thought it would be fun, as, for once, there was no shortage of heroin. Instead, I felt wretched.I was in total despair, as a rare moment of self-awareness had kicked in. It wasn’t just that I had trashed my entire 20s, achieving almost nothing of any note; it was also that I could see no prospect of any future. My self-destruction was complete. I had hit rock bottom. It was a terrifying moment, so there was only one thing for it. Take more and more drugs until I fell unconscious. Happy birthday to me. Continue reading...

Omicron threat stokes fears coast to coast but leading public health expert says ‘We know how to keep schools open and safe’

NSW tourism minister expects lower turnout as leading epidemiologist says best place to watch festivities is from home

Christian Aid says the 13% rise in the cost of damage reflects the effects of climate change, with Hurricane Ida the most expensiveThe 10 most expensive weather disasters this year caused more than $170bn in damage, $20bn more than in 2020, a British aid group has found.Christian Aid said the upward trend reflects the effects of manmade climate change and added that the 10 disasters in question also killed at least 1,075 people and displaced 1.3 million. Continue reading...

Amid growing intolerance to India’s Christian minority, several Christmas events were targeted by Hindu right wing groupsFestive celebrations were disrupted, Jesus statues were smashed and effigies of Santa Claus were burned in a spate of attacks on India’s Christian community over Christmas.Amid growing intolerance and violence against India’s Christian minority, who make up about 2% of India’s population, several Christmas events were targeted by Hindu right wing groups, who alleged Christians were using festivities to force Hindus to convert. Continue reading...

NSW reports 6,324 cases and three deaths, Victoria 1,999 cases and three deaths, 784 in Queensland, 189 in ACT and 35 in Tasmania

A strict lockdown in the city of 13 million entered its fifth day as the country continues to pursue a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy

Russian president’s attention-seeking diplomatic demands speak to long-held grievancesIt is more than 13 years since Nato’s Bucharest summit, the meeting that agreed that the western alliance wanted the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia to become members. But in many respects the legacy of that April 2008 meeting – the last attended by Vladimir Putin – hangs over the Ukraine crisis today.George W Bush arrived in an expansionist, post-cold war mindset pushing for Ukraine and Georgia to be given a roadmap to Nato membership. Granting them a so-called membership action plan would allow the two countries to follow a string of former eastern bloc states that had been allowed to join since 1999. Continue reading...

Chair of National Māori Authority says country should adopt John Howard’s playbook or risk sparking local gangland wars between deported criminals

Two members of international humanitarian group unaccounted for after killings in Kayah stateTwo people working for Save the Children have gone missing after a massacre in eastern Myanmar that left more than 30 people dead, the international aid group has said.Photos of the aftermath of the Christmas Eve killings in Mo So village, just outside Hpruso township in Kayah state, spread on social media in the country, fuelling outrage against the military that took power in February after ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Continue reading...

Actor welcomes scruffy white pet with tribute to politician Johnny Depp described as ‘inbred with a tomato’Six years after Barnaby Joyce threatened to euthanise dogs belonging to Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, Heard appears to have had the last laugh, naming her new four-legged friend after Australia’s deputy prime minister.On Monday the actor posted a photograph on Twitter showing herself holding up a large scruffy white dog with the caption: “Meet the newest member of the Heard family, Barnaby Joyce!” Continue reading...

Footage appears to show masked figure saying they wanted to ‘assassinate the Queen’Police are investigating a video linked to a man who was arrested at Windsor Castle while in possession of a crossbow.

NSW records 6,234 cases and Victoria 1,999 amid reported delays in PCR testing; US reporting 184,802 new cases per day; Vaccination teams could go door-to-door in UK to reach those yet to have jabs

Shoddy investigation into serial killer also result of underfunding, says producer of BBC drama about murdersThree victims of the serial killer Stephen Port might still be alive today were it not for a shoddy police investigation that was the result of “ineptitude, poor systems and underfunding”, the producer of a new drama about the crimes has said.Jeff Pope is senior producer of Four Lives, a dramatisation for BBC One of the murders of four young gay men: Anthony Walgate, 23; Gabriel Kovari, 22; Daniel Whitworth, 21; and Jack Taylor, 21. Continue reading...

Fires threaten homes in Warrigal Estate and Augusta-Margaret River shire amid scorching weather

Experts explain techniques to navigate pandemic news so you can avoid being swamped while keeping up to date

Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, paid tribute to the late archbishop Desmond Tutu in a televised address to the nation on Sunday. Calling him a leader with 'compassion, dignity, humility and grace', Ramaphosa highlighted Tutu's activist approach to peace and alleviating poverty.Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and in recent years was hospitalised on several occasions because of infections associated with his treatment. He died peacefully in the early hours of Sunday morning, according to his relatives.

Government accused of thwarting poorer countries’ bid to manufacture their own vaccines

Police chief writes to ex-footballer’s family praising their strength and dignity in the years since his deathPolice have formally apologised to the family of the former footballer Dalian Atkinson after an officer who kicked and fired an electric stun gun at him was convicted over his death, the Guardian has learned.In June PC Benjamin Monk, of the West Mercia force, became the first officer in more than three decades to be convicted of manslaughter during the course of his duties. Continue reading...

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...