Western Scotland, Northern Ireland, north-west England and north Wales forecast to see frosty conditionsSnow and ice are expected to hit parts of the UK this weekend as bands of rain move in from the west, the Met Office has warned.Western Scotland, Northern Ireland, north-west England and north Wales are forecast to experience frosty conditions as downpours continue into Sunday morning. Continue reading...

Met seeks information after Albanian national was caught in fire at a lock-up garage on New Year’s EveA man died after a fire in a cannabis factory on New Year’s Eve in east London.Police said a manslaughter investigation is under way and are appealing for information after the fatal incident at a lock-up garage on Southwold Road in Clapton. Continue reading...

For the late-blooming, quietly bestselling author, inhabiting her characters is crucial. And so in her new novel, Free Love, she becomes a middle-aged woman in 1960s London who abandons her family for a much younger man…Tessa Hadley walks into the sitting room of a hotel in London’s West End that is a pleasant mixture of Christmassy, deserted and library-quiet – a welcome side-effect of the pandemic. At 65, she has an eager, intelligent, girlish face and an elegant angularity (I’ve not seen her handwriting but would bet on forward-sloping italics). She is wearing a long string of red beads against a white sweater that is reminiscent of her character Alice’s fashion advice in her 2015 novel, The Past: “you should go for this understated thing, that the French women do”.I feel, from the minute we meet, as if Hadley were a friend unaccountably not seen for years, and, as swiftly, recognise this as an explicable illusion because, like all her admiring readers, I have met her through her beautifully written, quietly bestselling novels, including The Past and Late in the Day (2019) – and now through her bold new book, Free Love. It is not that her writing is autobiographical, more that she has the gift for bringing everything she has, sees and knows to the characters she creates. As soon as she is sitting down, we order a pot of Ceylon tea for two – our excuse, we agree with relief, for shedding our face masks. There is so much to talk about, I say. Continue reading...

Award-winning journalist says comments about businessman were in the public interestThe Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will appear in court in London next Friday to defend herself against an accusation of defamation brought by Arron Banks, the multi-millionaire businessman and outspoken backer of Brexit. The case concerns a remark made in a talk at the Ted technology conference by Cadwalladr in April 2019, and a related tweet.In the widely viewed 15-minute talk about the pernicious effects of Facebook on the democratic electoral process, Cadwalladr spoke about the 2016 Brexit referendum and noted briefly that Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign, largely funded by £8m from Banks, the largest donation in British political history, had been found by the Electoral Commission to have broken electoral and data laws. Continue reading...

At least 22 tourists died in freezing temperatures after being stranded in their vehicles in northern Pakistan, where thousands had flocked to enjoy the snow.Some 1,000 vehicles are still stranded in Murree, 40 miles north-east of the capital Islamabad.'The local people are delivering blankets and food. Now we are only allowing vehicles carrying blankets and food towards Murree,' Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan's interior minister, said.Army platoons and paramilitary forces have been deployed to help the civil administration in rescue operations, he said. Continue reading...

Eighteen-year-old and 15-year-old to appear at Thames magistrates court after incident in OctoberTwo teenagers have been charged with manslaughter and arson after an 88-year-old woman was killed in a fire in east London.Metropolitan police officers were called to reports of a fire at a residential address in Queens Park Road, Romford, in October where Josephine Smith was pronounced dead at the scene. Continue reading...

The writer, 59, on working in a disco, being an introvert and growing up JewishIn college I worked as a tour guide on the Costa del Sol. It was a weird scene. I saw some wild stuff; some violence I’d like to forget. I lived in one hotel room with four or five people for a while. I worked in a discotheque. But it inspired my first attempt at really writing. I needed to get it all down.I think most writers have impostor syndrome. On the one hand you think, “I suck, I’ve got nothing to say, this isn’t working at all,” and the next moment you have the hubris to say, “I’m going to write 500 pages and people are going to pay me to read it.” Continue reading...

The Queen’s favourite child, under siege in the press as he awaits a critical court ruling, is not the first obnoxious royal. But he has damaged ‘the Firm’ – and it will have to changePrince Andrew, the Duke of York, KG, GCVO, CD, ADC, turns 62 next month. It is long past the age at which a man is expected to stop being a cause of concern and embarrassment to his parents. And yet Andrew, who is said to be the Queen’s favourite child, has exposed his mother to the greatest threat to the royal family’s reputation in living memory.As he awaits the decision of a New York judge, Lewis Kaplan, in the sex assault case brought by Virginia Giuffre, the prince finds himself in the deeply unedifying position of trying to evade court with a secret silencing deal struck by his late friend and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. Continue reading...

The artist’s £3m Cotswolds pile, which has remained empty and unrenovated since 2005, has been described as an ‘eyesore’When Damien Hirst bought a historic manor in the Cotswolds he had grand plans. The crumbling 19th-century Toddington Manor, which the world’s richest artist bought for £3m in 2005, would be restored to its former glory, turned into his family home and be a spectacular gallery for his personal art collection.But years 17 years after its purchase, the property remains uninhabited and covered in scaffolding and tarpaulin. Locals have branded it an “eyesore,” a “white blob” and “a blight on the countryside”. Continue reading...

At least 30 wounded as aid workers report seeing children among casualties in Tigray regionAn airstrike in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray has killed 56 people and wounded at least 30 in a camp for the internally displaced, two aid workers have said.Both aid workers, who asked not to be named, said the number of dead has been confirmed by the local authorities. Continue reading...

The brothers recreate a family photo and talk about how they came back from a huge fallout – and a best man’s speech starring a puppet testicleJustin and Dan Hawkins are the Lowestoft brothers behind rock band the Darkness. Puncturing the genteel Dido and Keane-era mainstream of the early noughties with their stadium rock and low-cut catsuits, their music had a short-lived period of ridicule before their debut album Permission to Land went on to sell 3.5m copies. At the peak of their commercial powers they won three Brit awards, an Ivor Novello, and penned the modern Christmas classic, 2003’s Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End). The band split in 2006 after the release of their second album, but they’ve since reformed and released five more records. They are currently on tour. Continue reading...

The decluttering queen on Japanese comfort food, learning to take breaks and her love for a black bearBorn in Tokyo, Marie Kondo, 37, was 19 and studying sociology at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University when she launched a consulting business to help people declutter and organise their homes. In 2014, she published her first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up; it has been translated into 44 languages and sold more than 13m copies worldwide. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2015 and has a hit Netflix show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Her latest book is Joy at Work: Organising Your Professional Life. She is married with three children and lives in Los Angeles.What is your earliest memory?

I’ve had hundreds of chances to become a better husband over the years – and I’ve seized none of themI am sitting at the kitchen table. My wife is standing at the sink with her back to me, washing something up while telling me about all the upcoming social obligations she has managed to extract us from.“Is it a good idea,” I ask, “us never going anywhere again?” Continue reading...

Rescue workers in Chongqing searched the debris into the night after Friday’s blast with one survivor in a critical conditionA lunchtime explosion at an office canteen killed 16 people in southwest China and injured 10 others, authorities said.A gas leak is the suspected cause of the blast on Friday, the Chongqing city government said in an online statement. Continue reading...

Leaked video shows Tennis Australia boss saying organisation is choosing to stay out of public despite pressure to explain its travel advice to players

UK experts say protection against hospitalisation still 90% three months after booster; Germany also cuts isolation for boosted people after a Covid contact

Attack on media denounced as police say bodies of two Haitian reporters had ‘large-caliber bullet wounds’Two Haitian journalists have been killed by gang members while reporting in a conflictive area south of Port-au-Prince, as a surge in violence continues to shake the Caribbean nation.One of the journalist’s employers and some media reports said the men had been shot then burned alive, but police did not confirm this. A police statement said only that the bodies had “large-caliber bullet wounds”. Continue reading...

But Tony Blinken warns progress impossible while Russia escalates pressure along border and ‘gaslights’ worldThe US secretary of state, Tony Blinken, has said that a diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine crisis was still possible and preferable, but warned that progress was impossible while Russia continued to escalate pressure along the border.Blinken was speaking after a virtual meeting of Nato foreign ministers and before a week of intensive diplomacy in Europe aimed at fending off a threatened Russian invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading...

25m-high hill had ‘teething problems’, an initially negative reaction and cost almost double its budget of £3.3mLondon’s heavily criticised Marble Arch Mound is to close this weekend.The 25m-high human-made hill, which sits at the corner of Hyde Park and Park Lane, will no longer be open after Sunday. Continue reading...

Stefan R murdered man he had met on dating portal, cut up his body and left parts around BerlinA Berlin teacher has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of another man that the judge said was carried out as part of “cannibalism fantasies”.The 42-year-old, identified only as Stefan R, in keeping with German privacy rules, was also convicted of disturbing the peace of the dead after a trial that opened in August. Continue reading...

The people who harass me are executives and electricians; ordinary people. They can’t imagine I’m simply motivated by wanting to save livesOn Christmas Eve I received an email to let me know I’d been added to the “accused” list on a website called Nuremberg NZ. “Kind regards”, ended the sender. Those behind Nuremberg NZ want people like me to have “thier (sic) day of reckoning” in a similar way to how Nazi war criminals were tried after the second world war. According to the website, my crimes are “misleading the public” and “supporting a government to perform medical experiment (sic) on it’s (sic) citizens”. Nuremberg NZ gives people the opportunity to leave a comment about each accused and to vote on whether they should be listed. User bennyman88 comments with one word, “Murderer”, and votes “agree”.Great Barrier Island is about 90 kilometres off the coast of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. Completely off-grid, the island is home to about 1,000 people and boasts calm bays and surf beaches as well as a dark sky sanctuary, natural hot springs, and native forests. In 2015, island local Gendie Somerville-Ryan started the ‘No Barriers: Small Island Big Ideas’ event series based on the BBC programme Big Ideas. The first event’s theme was pandemics and brought together a virologist, a young adult fiction writer, a sociologist, and a representative from Civil Defence to discuss how the island’s residents should behave if a pandemic was sweeping the world, killing all in its wake. Continue reading...

New ONS figures reveal inequality gap growing ever wider before the coronavirus pandemicThe richest 1% of households in the UK each have fortunes of at least £3.6m, according to new official figures that show the inequality gap was yawning even before the pandemic struck.At the other end of the scale, the poorest 10% of households have just £15,400 or less, with almost half burdened with more debts than they had in assets, according to figures released on Friday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Continue reading...

Figures from across the tennis world have weighed in on the controversy surrounding Novak Djokovic's entry – and now hotel detention – in Australia, as the world number one awaits a court ruling on his entry visa after his vaccine exemption was revoked.The 34-year-old is being held in isolation at the Park Hotel in Carlton, Melbourne, awaiting the outcome of an appeal against the decision to cancel the reigning Australian Open champion's entry visa and deport him.Players offered a range of views about Djokovic's predicament. 'In some way, I feel sorry for him. But at the same time, he knew the conditions since a lot of months ago, so he makes his own decision,' said the Spanish player Rafael Nadal

Chief executive expresses ‘deep disappointment’ that bureaucrats ignored government advice

Darren Collins, 56, downloaded thousands of images from police databasesA police worker who illegally downloaded and took home thousands of images, including those showing murder victims and postmortems, has been jailed for three years.Darren Collins, a digital forensic specialist from Stafford, admitted misconduct in a public office last month after being sacked by Staffordshire police for gross misconduct. Continue reading...

Antrim musician Feargal Lynn offers Royal Mail ‘hearty applause’ for successfully delivering letter to himSherlock Holmes might have balked, but the Royal Mail detectives came up trumps when they correctly delivered a letter with an address that was more like an episode of This Is Your Life than a conventional street name and postcode.Writing on Twitter, the County Antrim musician Feargal Lynn said the postal system deserved “hearty applause” for successfully delivering the letter addressed by following a brief history of his family in the area. Continue reading...

Poitier, who has died aged 94, came to fame via a trio of movie roles defined by race and racial differenceFor postwar America, Sidney Poitier became something like the black Cary Grant: a strikingly handsome and well-spoken Bahamian-American actor. He was a natural film star who projected passion, yet tempered by a kind of refinement and restraint that white moviegoers found very reassuring. Poitier was graceful, manly, self-possessed, with an innate dignity and a tremendous screen presence. He also had a beautiful, melodious voice – the result of his childhood spent in the Bahamas, and then struggling early years in New York, trying to make it as an actor and privately studying the voices of mellifluous white radio announcers. He was a traditional, classical actor in many ways, following in the footsteps of Paul Robeson and Canada Lee, but eminently castable in a new generation of modern roles.Almost all his famous movie roles are defined by race and racial difference, particularly that extraordinary trio of movies that came out in one year, 1967. In To Sir With Love, he was the visiting black teacher in swinging London who gets through to the kids by challenging them to be adults. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner he is the black man who wants to marry a young white woman, in an America where this was still illegal in many southern states. (This proposal causes excruciating discomfiture in his fiancee’s liberal parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.) And in In the Heat of the Night he was the black homicide detective forced to assist a bigoted white cop, played by Rod Steiger. Continue reading...

Celebrities join politcians in condemning ‘political harassment’ of Belgrade-born tennis playerSerb politicians and celebrities have described the treatment of Novak Djokovic as shameful scapegoating, as the foreign ministry in Belgrade suggested the world tennis No 1 had been “lured to Australia … to be humiliated.”The 34-year-old champion, who was born in the Serb capital, is in detention in an immigration hotel in Melbourne pending a legal challenge to Australia’s decision on Wednesday to cancel a visa allowing him to play in the Australian Open. Continue reading...

Authorities say they are searching for bandits who terrorised areas of Zamfara state for three daysMore than 100 people have been killed in Nigeria’s troubled northern region, survivors havesaid, as authorities continue to search for bodies and for suspects after three days of violence.Bandits arrived in large numbers in the Anka and Bukkuyum local government areas of Zamfara state on Tuesday evening, shooting and burning down houses until Thursday, according to Abubakar Ahmed, a resident in Bukkuyum. Continue reading...

Sarah Atkinson, professor of screen media, on whether the trend for big, epic films is leading to big, epic runtimesZack Snyder’s Justice League: 4hrs 2mins. The Irishman: 3hrs 29mins. The latest James Bond, the longest ever: 2hrs 43mins. Some of the most hyped films of the past few years have been as known for their length as their plot. So is this the new normal – are films getting longer? I asked Sarah Atkinson, professor of screen media at King’s College London.I loved Tenet, but I remember craving an interval and an ice-cream. Am I the only one feeling films are longer?

People juggle work and Friday prayer as country switches to Saturday-Sunday weekendEmployees and schoolchildren juggled work and studies with weekly Muslim prayers on the first ever working Friday in the United Arab Emirates, as the Gulf country formally switched to a Saturday-Sunday weekend.Some grumbled at the change and businesses were split, with many moving to the western-style weekend but other private firms sticking with Fridays and Saturdays, as in other Gulf states. Continue reading...

Move to appoint Justice Ayesha Malik, who banned virginity tests for rape survivors, described as ‘defining moment’ for the countryPakistan’s top judicial commission has nominated a female judge to the supreme court for the first time in the country’s history.The move to pave the way for Justice Ayesha Malik to join the court has been widely praised by lawyers and civil society activists as a defining moment in the struggle for gender equality in Pakistan. Continue reading...

Free resource proves widely successful with more than 2,000 schools across the UK signing upWhen 12-year-old Rose learned about the Bristol bus boycott in her history class, she felt an immense sense of pride. She knew there was a civil rights movement in the US, but wasn’t aware of the UK’s own struggle for racial justice.“I’ve felt quite proud that there were big stands here as well,” she says. Her schoolmate Ruqiiya, also 12, agrees and spoke of her frustration of initially struggling to find more information about the boycott online. They both love learning about it in class. Continue reading...

Bottega’s famous shade is the chic, punchy, sustainable colour of nowIt doesn’t take a genius to see why green feels aspirational at the precise moment in history when we humans finally seem to be twigging that a green future is the only future that is going to exist. Green is good. Green is the zeitgeist. So, what to wear? Green – but make it fashion.The expression “but make it fashion” means to add a splash of showbiz, but also a hit of sharpness. A dash of syrup, plus a squeeze of lime. If the taste is too vanilla, that’s not fashion. Which is how we have ended up with a colour-of-the-moment that symbolises nature, but actually looks a bit synthetic. The green that is everywhere right now is a flat, saturated, straightforward green. It is not the colour of moss or of olives or of sea foam. Continue reading...

Liz Truss and Simon Coveney meetup comes before talks on protocol with EU Brexit negotiatorThe UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and her Irish counterpart, Simon Coveney, have had a “good and friendly” first meeting over the vexed issue of the Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland, Irish government sources have said.They met for the first time over dinner in London on Thursday night and discussed the Northern Ireland protocol, the wider relationship with the EU, and UN security matters including the crisis in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Continue reading...

‘Like thousands of Australians, I tested positive today to Covid-19,’ Frydenberg tweeted, as the country reported a record 78,000 casesAustralia’s treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has tested positive to Covid-19, he announced late on Friday.As the country deals with a massive rise in case numbers due to the spread of the Omicron variant, with more than 78,000 Covid cases reported in a single day on Friday, Frydenberg tweeted the news that he had joined the statistics. Continue reading...

New book by firebrand author features a Macron-like outgoing leader as well as real-life figures including far-right Éric ZemmourWith the French presidential campaign under way, one of the country’s most provocative writers, Michel Houellebecq, is back with a novel closely linked to the forthcoming election. The 65-year-old author of Atomised and Platform releases the French edition of his 730-page novel Anéantir (Destroy) on Friday, with a sizeable first print run of 300,000 copies.Anéantir begins during a fictional presidential election campaign in 2027. Marine Le Pen has stepped down as leader of the National Rally but far-right candidate Éric Zemmour is still sparking controversy. President Emmanuel Macron is another real-life figure who, while not named, seems to feature, as is Bruno Le Maire, the current economy minister. Le Maire, a friend of Houellebecq, is the inspiration for Bruno Juge, one of the story’s protagonists. Continue reading...

As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted landA convoy of trucks laden with huge black granite rocks trundles along the dusty pathway as a group of villagers look on grimly.Every day more than 60 trucks take granite for export along this rugged road through Nyamakope village in the district of Mutoko, 90 miles east of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Continue reading...

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev calls protesters ‘bandits and terrorists’ and says use of force will continueKazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has said he personally gave the order to security forces and army to “open fire with lethal force” against protesters he called “bandits and terrorists”.In an uncompromising address on Friday, Tokayev said lethal force without warning would continue to be used against violent demonstrators, and also blamed “so-called free media outlets” for helping fan unrest. Continue reading...

After 75 years of performing live – including in mid-century minstrel shows – Rush’s joyful ‘folk funk’ is finally attracting wide acclaim. He talks about his tough childhood, his feud with James Brown and staying true to his Black audience

They have very different boundaries – we air both sides, and ask you to deliver a verdict

Nearly half the female prisoners in Argentina are serving time for drug possession. Photographer Magalí Druscovich visited the Unit 47 prison in Buenos Aires to find out their stories

Exclusive: Measure needed in light of judicial commission’s findings about role of firm, says Lord HainBoris Johnson should bar Bain & Company from lucrative government contracts in light of a judicial commission’s findings about the management consultancy’s “despicable” role in state corruption in South Africa, Peter Hain has said.In a letter shared with the Guardian, the former Labour minister and anti-apartheid campaigner urged Johnson to “immediately freeze all government contracts with Bain” and to advise all public bodies to do the same. Continue reading...

Serbia’s foreign ministry claims the world No 1 was ‘lured to travel to Australia in order to be humiliated’

Decision to close public hammams – most people’s only chance for a warm wash – sparks anger in light of country’s mounting crisesThe Taliban sparked outrage this week by announcing that women in northern Afghanistan would no longer be allowed to use communal bathhouses.The use of bathhouses, or hammams, is an ancient tradition that remains for many people the only chance for a warm wash during the country’s bitterly cold winters. Continue reading...

In 2022 Jacinda Ardern must act on runaway house prices while the central bank should grab inflation by the neckMarch 2020 seems like an age ago. And also like it was yesterday. The month begun more or less like any other March in New Zealand. The weather was typically warm and dry, most people were back in the office or on site, and parliament was sitting after its generous summer recess. In most respects you could mistake March 2020 for March 2019. Except, on 4 March, the country recorded its second coronavirus case after a woman returning from northern Italy, where this strange virus had taken hold, presented with the infection at the border. The number of infections increased again and again as the month unfolded with 647 come 1 April.In the early days of March, government advisers and prime minister Jacinda Ardern were aiming, like the rest of the world, for either “herd immunity” or “flattening the curve”. But when the government’s chief science adviser presented advice on precisely what this meant for the health system – a quick collapse, essentially – Ardern went for the approach her advisers at the universities of Otago and Auckland were advocating: elimination. On 25 March the prime minister made her way to parliament’s debating chamber and in a historic speech announced a national state of emergency and a move to an alert level 4 lockdown. The speech helped generate unprecedented national solidarity. Continue reading...

Memorials to dictator are defended even by those who suffered; they want new generations to know he fostered island’s prosperity and independenceFred Chin fumbles with the combination lock on an old metal gate, the bright turquoise marred by rust spots and grime. On the other side is a long dark corridor and rows of cells. It was here that Chin was detained, tried and sentenced to 12 years in an offshore jail by the totalitarian regime that ruled Taiwan for almost 40 years.“In one and a half years I left this room four times,” says the now 72-year-old, gesturing to the whitewashed walls. “Three times for court, and the last time when I was sent to Green Island. 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, the door was closed.” Continue reading...

Other creators are on edge after arrest of influencer Titus Low, concerned their income streams could soon disappear because of ‘outdated’ laws“Technically, I would guess that 80% of people are criminals according to that law since most of us have downloaded porn before, or if you’ve ever sent a dirty pic to your partner, that too is a crime.”One OnlyFans content creator, who goes by the online handle LucyToday, is among the many in Singapore who fear what the future holds after police decided to charge fellow creator and influencer Titus Low Kaide with transmitting what the police alleged were “obscene materials”. It is the first time an OnlyFans creator has faced prosecution in Singapore for sharing such content via the platform, according to local media. Continue reading...

Company fined 50,000 yuan for ‘errors’ including failing to use China’s names for disputed South China Sea islandsBeijing has fined and issued a warning to 7-Eleven over its website listing Taiwan as a country and displaying maps it said contained erroneous borders for Xinjiang and Tibet.The Beijing municipal government fined the company 50,000 yuan ($7,842) for the “errors” including “wrongful act of assigning Taiwan province as an independent country”. Continue reading...