Wednesday: Australia’s island state opens to the mainland as NSW further eases restrictions. Plus: Christine Anu’s beloved itemsGood morning. Tasmania is reconnecting to the mainland today, reopening borders to all vaccinated Australians just in time for Christmas. Two Liberal backbenchers have thrown their support behind bringing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange home. And Warwick Thornton’s must-see Indigenous vampire hunter series hits the small screen this week.Covid restrictions in New South Wales will ease today, including those for unvaccinated people, despite epidemiologists urging caution amid rising case numbers and the Omicron variant. The NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, said the government would “look at all options”, but the emergence of the Omicron strain and rising numbers would not affect the relaxing of restrictions. It comes as Tasmania reopens its borders to the rest of the country and two Virgin flights into Queensland are forced into isolation for Christmas after an infected passenger was detected onboard. Continue reading...

Cluj-based judge Cristi Danileţ has been suspended over two videos he posted on platform last yearA prominent judge in Romania has been suspended from his position for posting videos on TikTok in a move that has drawn widespread criticism, and condemnation from the US embassy.Cristi Danileţ, a judge in Romania’s northern city of Cluj, was suspended on Monday by the superior council of magistrates over two videos he posted on TikTok last year, which a panel decided amounted to “behaviour that affects the image of the justice system”. Continue reading...

Council says no action was taken over slave trader memorial despite ‘significant’ community concernsBristol had not considered removing the statue of Edward Colston before its toppling by protesters, despite “significant concerns” about its presence among the local black community, the city council’s head of culture has said.Jon Finch spoke at Bristol crown court on day two of the trial of the four people accused of helping to pull down the memorial to the slave trader, roll it to Bristol harbour and dump it in the River Avon. Continue reading...

Airline plans to transfer 35 routes to new subsidiary BA Euroflyer later in 2022, with fares starting at £39British Airways will return to short-haul flying from London Gatwick next year, the airline has said as it confirmed the go-ahead of its planned subsidiary, BA Euroflyer.BA, which stopped flying from the West Sussex airport soon after the Covid pandemic started, will relaunch its short-haul leisure network in late March 2022, ending a break of almost two years. Continue reading...

Syarhei Tsikhanouski was arrested in 2020 as he prepared to challenge Alexander LukashenkoBelarus has sentenced the husband of the opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to 18 years in prison for challenging the authoritarian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, and helping to spark the biggest demonstrations in the country’s modern history.Syarhei Tsikhanouski, a popular video blogger, was arrested in 2020 as he campaigned to run for president against Lukashenko, whom he compared to a cockroach. He was charged with organising mass unrest and inciting social hatred. Continue reading...

High levels of previous infection in province at centre of outbreak may be behind relatively low level of severe disease, expert says

All 11 countries to be removed from list as concerns about importing variant diminish

The UK health secretary opened the Commons debate on Plan B Covid restrictions by highlighting that the Omicron variant is more transmissible than Delta. The growing cases in the UK is mirroring what happened in South Africa, with the observed doubling time for Omicron taking two days.Javid said that although there are just 4,713 confirmed cases, scientists estimate the real number of people getting infected every day is 42 times higher, at about 200,000 Continue reading...

Managing policing and other public services should be about people, not data, writes Derrick Joad, while Simon Marlow-Ridley thinks the job of Met commissioner is too big for one personWhat Dal Babu’s article on policing (The Stephen Port scandal is another betrayal of public trust. The UK deserves better policing, 10 December) demonstrates is how the prevalent cult of “managerialism” blights so much of public life. This is a cult that overvalues “good management” and devalues the task of doing.Managerialism insists everything must be managed in the correct way, as taught by business schools and promoted by politicians as the answer to everything. Neither politicians, auditors nor commentators were aware of the approaching failure of Carillion, the outsourcing giant, because it was “managed” correctly. What Babu describes is the very negative consequence of the adherence to this cult in the police service. Continue reading...

Laramba’s Indigenous residents fear they are at risk of long-term illness and say they need to know who is responsible for fixing the problem. Features editor, Lucy Clark, introduces this story about contaminated drinking waterYou can read the original article here: ‘It makes us sick’: remote NT community wants answers about uranium in its water supply

Total number of injured still not known after truck carrying gasoline overturned around midnight in the Sanmarie area

Scandinavian countries say Omicron is spreading rapidly and expect record number of daily infections

More than 3,500 people sign petition opposing plan for cemetery with Muslim funeral parlour and prayer roomsPeople rarely move to Oswaldtwistle, locals say. The 11,000 residents of the town outside Blackburn are mostly descendants of miners and textile workers, with some saying the last significant conflict was the 19th-century power-loom riots. But a dispute over a cemetery is now causing division.The Blackburn billionaires Mohsin and Zuber Issa – the new owners of Asda – have proposed building a cemetery with up to 35,000 burial plots alongside a Muslim funeral parlour and prayer rooms to allow traditional Muslim burial rites on the site. Continue reading...

Emphasising that nobody should cancel their Christmas Day plans, Scotland's first minister has urged people socialising before and immediately after 25 December to limit their indoor socialising to no more than three households

Olaf Scholz frustrates journalists with vague and formulaic answersLess than a week into his tenure, Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is already reminding the rest of the world of one of his rarer political talents: an ability to frustrate journalists with answers so vague and formulaic they once earned him the nickname “Scholz-o-matic”.Social Democrat Scholz, who will govern in a “traffic light” coalition with the Green party and the liberal Free Democratic party, on Sunday left his Polish counterpart, Mateusz Morawiecki, none the wiser about his plans for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, which Poland has urged its western neighbour to scrap. Continue reading...

First minister asks public to keep festive celebrations ‘as small as your family circumstances allow’

A new study suggests interrupted hypnagogia, a technique beloved of Salvador Dalí and Thomas Edison, can boost creativityName: The semi-lucid dream trick.Age: At least 90 years old. Continue reading...

Survivor of 1975 Northern Ireland attack says he agreed to settle because of plan to halt Troubles prosecutionsA survivor of the Miami Showband massacre during the Troubles in Northern Ireland has hit out against the “lies” of the British government as he and other victims of the atrocity agreed to £1.5m in damages over suspected state collusion with loyalist terrorists.Three members of the Miami Showband were killed by loyalists in a bomb and gun attack when their bus was stopped near Newry in 1975 as they travelled back to Dublin from a gig. Continue reading...

Christmas attraction in Rio Branco is painted in the blue of mayor’s party – then traditional red, then back to blueChristmas has never been white in Rio Branco, a sweltering Amazon river town where December temperatures often soar close to 40C.This year it may not be red either, owing to a politically charged ding-dong over the colour of a Santa’s grotto that has been erected by the city’s Jair Bolsonaro-supporting government. Continue reading...

Amateur boxer punched 16-month-old to death in Keighley, West Yorkshire, while mother found guilty of allowing the death

Experts have recorded no seismic activity from Cumbre Vieja volcano since Monday nightA volcano that has been spewing lava in the Canary Islands for almost three months has quietened but scientists warned the lull did not necessarily mean the eruption was over.Experts recorded no seismic activity from the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma island since Monday night, the Canary Islands’ volcanology institute tweeted. Continue reading...

Political parties reach new coalition agreement to form government 271 days after elections in MarchDutch political parties have reached a new coalition agreement, paving the way for the country’s caretaker prime minister, Mark Rutte, to form his fourth successive government a record 271 days after general elections in March.The text of the accord between Rutte’s rightwing liberal VVD party, the progressive D66, Christian Democrat CDA and orthodox Christian party Christen Unie will be presented to the parties’ MPs on Tuesday and the whole parliament on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Whether it is to commemorate a lost loved one, bask in their independence or mark a new stage of life, many people now get inked when they are older. Six tell their storiesFor many older people, tattoos came with baggage. Now, social mores have changed and for those in their 60s, 70s and 80s: “The stigma associated with prisoners’ tattoos, or sailors or misfits getting them, has disappeared,” says Louise Krystahl, a tattoo artist. That may be why she now gets a lot of clients over the age of 60, who feel ready for their first tattoo at her studio, Inkscape, in Bexhill-on-Sea. She once tattooed a ladybird on the wrist of a woman in her 80s.“For older people, it’s usually a sentimental reason, not just that they fancy a butterfly,” says Krystahl. “Some of them have a new lease of life, or want to tick it off their bucket list.” The pandemic, she says, may have spurred on others: “I think people are doing stuff they have thought about for a long time and it has given them the impetus.” Continue reading...

Finch one of eight men arrested over alleged involvement in discussions about sexually abusing children and swapping material depicting abuse

The precise dysfunctional family film set a template for the writer-director’s oeuvre and gave Gene Hackman and his on-screen offspring some of their greatest roles“I had a rough year, dad.”The whole of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums builds to those six words, one syllable each. The line carries the weight of a family entombed by two decades of failure, depression and personal rancor, but finding some small path forward, a moment of reconciliation that might keep their disappointments from defining their future. Anderson has a gift for packing big emotions into small gestures – think about the look of recognition on Bill Murray’s face when he finally meets Max Fischer’s father in Rushmore – and this father-son moment pays off the countless other details that make it possible. This is why Anderson’s best work holds up so beautifully on repeat viewings: they’re dense with feeling, yet ruthlessly economical. Continue reading...

The acclaimed novelist on chemotherapy, growing up gay in Ireland and writing his first poetry collection at the age of 66In June 2018, Colm Tóibín was four chapters into writing his most recent novel The Magician, an epic fictional biography of Thomas Mann that he had put off for decades, when he was diagnosed with cancer. “It all started with my balls,” he begins a blisteringly witty essay about his months in hospital; cancer of the testicles had spread to his lungs and liver. In bed he amuses himself by identifying the difference between blood clots (a new emergency) and cancer: “Boris Johnson would be a blood clot … Angela Merkel the cancer.”He has seen off both Johnson and Merkel. In the month when he hopes he will have a final scan, he has just been awarded the David Cohen prize (dubbed “the UK Nobel”) for a lifetime achievement in literature. The author of 10 novels, two short story collections, three plays, several nonfiction books and countless essays, Tóibín has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times and won the Costa novel award in 2009 for Brooklyn, about a young Irish woman who emigrates to New York in the 1950s, made into an award-winning film in 2015. He is surely Ireland’s most prolific and prestigious living writer. Continue reading...

Millions of children worldwide are at risk of abuse and exploitation in institutions, often to attract funding from donors, says Lumos charityImmediate action must be taken to prevent trafficking and exploitation of children in orphanages, according to a report published on Monday.International children’s charity Lumos says that an estimated 5.4 million children worldwide live in institutions that cannot meet their needs and neglect their rights and where they are exposed to multiple forms of exploitation and harm. Continue reading...

Our countdown of the best films released in the UK during 2021 continues with an engrossing adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story

Hu Xijin is China’s most famous propagandist. At the Global Times, he helped establish a chest-thumping new tone for China on the world stage – but can he keep up with the forces he has unleashed?On 2 November, the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai posted a long message on the social media site Weibo, accusing China’s former vice-premier, Zhang Gaoli, of sexual assault. As soon as the post went live, it became the highest-profile #MeToo case in China, and one of the ruling Chinese Communist party’s largest public relations crises in recent history. Within about 20 minutes, the post had been removed. All mentions of the post were then scrubbed from the Chinese internet. No references to the story appeared in the Chinese media. In the days that followed, Peng made no further statements and did not appear in public. Outside China, however, as other tennis stars publicly expressed concerns for her safety, Peng’s apparent disappearance became one of the biggest news stories in the world.It wasn’t long before Hu Xijin stepped into the story. Hu is the editor of the Global Times, a chest-thumpingly nationalistic tabloid sometimes described as “China’s Fox News”. In recent years, he has become the most influential Chinese propagandist in the west – a constant presence on Twitter and in the international media, always on hand to defend the Communist party line, no matter the topic. On 19 November, he tweeted to his 450,000 followers that he had confirmed through his own sources – he didn’t say who they were – that Peng was alive and well. Over the next two days, he posted videos of Peng at a restaurant and signing autographs in Beijing. Continue reading...

Season three of the hit show has made even more headlines than usual. We ask its British creator if he’s had enough yet, if actor Jeremy Strong is doing OK – and if his character Kendall is actually Jesus• Warning: contains spoilersYesterday, like much of the rest of the world, I watched the finale of the third season of Succession. And, like much of the rest of the world, I found myself buffeted by one astonishing twist after another – and a gasp-inducing climax that outdid even those of series one and two. Unlike my fellow viewers, however, pretty much the first thing I see after the end credits roll is the face of Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator, popping up over Zoom and politely attempting to dissuade me from discussing the episode.Unlike other big TV showrunners – who will happily explain, and sometimes over-explain, every single second – Armstrong prefers to remain hands off. He tries not to read the acres of theorising that Succession inspires. Such post-match analyses, he says, can often feel like a tightrope walk. “There’s a bit of me that just wants to find out what the fuck everyone is saying about the show,” he says from his book-lined study in London. “But you can’t. It wouldn’t be good for me psychologically – and it wouldn’t be good for the creative process of doing the show.” Continue reading...

Boris Johnson has not ruled out new restrictions but how effective could they be and what are the political risks

Overwhelming vote to remain with France, but low turnout ‘weighs heavily’ on self-determination process, say observersLow voter turnout at New Caledonia’s independence referendum “weighs heavily” on the French territory’s self-determination process, election observers from the Pacific Islands Forum have said.In Sunday’s referendum, more than 96% of voters were opposed to independence from France, compared with 57% in 2018 and 53% in 2020. Continue reading...

Item containing radiopharmaceuticals lost in transit after being transported between two hospitalsA package of radioactive medicines was found in the street by a member of the public after being lost in transit between two London hospitals.The item, containing radiopharmaceuticals, is thought not to have been secured properly in the vehicle transporting it and, after coming loose, it came into contact with an internal door release and fell out while being moved between Siemens’ Mount Vernon hospital in London and London Bridge hospital in September. Continue reading...

Family, friends and fellow musicians pay their final respects to the man known as ‘El Rey’ (the King) following his death at age 81Mexicans are in mourning for Vicente Fernández, the elaborately mustachioed icon of ranchera music, whose ballads of love and loss, golden baritones and singular stage presence captured the raw emotions of a nation.Fans flocked to his ranch in western Jalisco state, where family, friends and fellow crooners paid their final respects to the man known as “El Rey” (the King) – and often just by the diminutive “Chente.” Continue reading...

Fatemeh Anvari was told her headwear ran afoul of Bill 21, which bars some public servants from wearing religious symbolsThe removal of a Canadian teacher for wearing a hijab in the classroom has sparked widespread condemnation of a controversial law in the province of Quebec, which critics say unfairly targets ethnic minorities under the pretext of secularism.Fatemeh Anvari, a third-grade teacher in the town of Chelsea, was told earlier this month that she would no longer be allowed to continue in the role because her headwear ran afoul of Bill 21, a law passed in 2019. Continue reading...

US citizen is accused of killing 19-year-old in a road crash outside RAF Croughton on 27 August 2019The US citizen Anne Sacoolas is due to face criminal proceedings in the UK, charged with causing the death by dangerous driving of the 19-year-old motorcyclist Harry Dunn.The 44-year-old is accused of killing the teenager in a road crash outside the US military base RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire on 27 August 2019. Continue reading...

Latest updates: health secretary tells MPs no variant has spread as fast as confirmed cases of the variant rise 50% in a day

After a year of criticism over diversity, the Golden Globes have come up with a decent slate of nominees, with Gaga surely the favourite for best actress• Full list of 2020 nominationsThe Golden Globes nomination list has been announced with a solemn introduction from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s president Helen Hoehne, to the effect that the Globes’ much-criticised controlling body was “trying to be better” and that its constituent membership was more diverse than at any other time in its history. Which is better, I suppose, than being less diverse than at any time in its history.At any rate, leading the pack are Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s unashamed heartwarmer about the home town of his early childhood, with seven nominations and Jane Campion’s stark, twisty western-Gothic psychodrama The Power of the Dog, set in 1920s Montana with Benedict Cumberbatch as the troubled, angry cattleman who begins a toxic duel with his new sister-in-law played by Kirsten Dunst and her sensitive teenage son, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. Continue reading...

From massive loss and intense grief, the Marrin Weejali Aboriginal Corporation was born

Animals brought illegally to Colombia by the drug kingpin have been allowed to roam free and are now disrupting the fragile ecosystem.Michael Safi speaks to reporter Joe Parkin Daniels and veterinarian Gina Paola Serna about Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos’Myths and legends continue to surround Colombia’s most notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar 26 years after his death. But his legacy has had an unexpectedly disastrous impact on some of the country’s fragile ecosystems. A herd of more than 80 hippos roam free, the descendants of animals smuggled to Colombia from Africa in the 1980s and now flourishing in the wild.Reporter Joe Parkin Daniels tells Michael Safi that when Escobar was shot dead by police on a rooftop in his hometown of Medellín, the authorities seized his estate and the animals on it. While most were shipped to zoos, the logistics of moving his four hippos proved insurmountable and they were left to wander the Andes. Continue reading...

New facility could produce 100m vaccines a year under deal between pharmaceutical company and federal and Victorian governments

First large-scale representations of region are back on display at Uffizi Galleries in FlorenceMaps depicting Renaissance Tuscany are back on display at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence after being hidden from public view for more than 20 years.The wall paintings were commissioned in the late 1500s by Ferdinando I de’ Medici after the republic of Florence’s conquering of its rival Siena led to the creation the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and depict the newly unified territory. Continue reading...

Officials urged to review procedures after accusations 999 calls by people in small boats are being redirected to FranceRefugees crossing the Channel to the UK in small boats are calling on the UK coastguard to review its procedures after claiming officials regularly redirect them to French emergency services after they make 999 calls in what they believe to be the UK part of the Channel.Relatives and survivors of the mass tragedy in the Channel where at least 27 people lost their lives on 24 November said that repeated distress calls had been made to both French and UK coastguards and that the UK had told them to contact the French rescue services. Continue reading...

Netflix’s continued obsession with the pandemic hit has brought a follow-up special, a second season and now a spin-off but enough is enoughTo think of Tiger King is to immediately transport yourself to the heady days of lockdown 2020. Remember it? Remember how filled with artificial purpose we all were? We did Zoom quizzes with all our friends! We made banana bread! We clapped for frontline workers!Looking back, it seems relatively clear that all those things were stupid. Nobody wants to spend more time on Zoom than they have to. Nobody likes banana bread. The clapping didn’t change anything. And as for Tiger King? With the benefit of hindsight, Christ, we chose the wrong show to obsess over. Looking back, Tiger King was grubby and exploitative. Once you’d crossed the “Are these people for real?” hurdle, you found yourself sitting through a carnival of monstrous behaviour. Tiger King was the documentary equivalent of that old Black Mirror episode: as fun as it sounds to watch someone have sex with a pig, at the end of the day you actually have to watch someone have sex with a pig. Continue reading...

‘Philip turned up to meet my parents fully made up, with red lipstick and high heels. My dad locked himself in the bedroom and refused to come out’I had intended to recruit just one female backing singer but when I walked into the Crazy Daisy nightclub in Sheffield, the first thing I saw was Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley dancing. They somehow looked like a unit while being clearly different individuals. I knew they were right. Continue reading...

Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical drama and Jane Campion’s tense western both score seven nominations• Full list of nominationsIn one of the more unexpected comebacks of the year, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced the nominations for its 79th awards ceremony, to be held on 9 January – but not screened on television after broadcaster NBC terminated the contract.Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white drama set in his hometown during the Troubles, has seven nominations, as does The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion’s sexually-charged western set in 1920s Montana. Continue reading...

Communities in five US states are picking up the pieces after a barrage of twistersPowerful tornadoes barrelled through five US states on Friday, levelling houses and factories and bringing down power lines. In Kentucky, the worst-hit state, one tornado alone followed an extraordinarily long and destructive path of more than 200 miles. Continue reading...

White House accused of trying to avoid antagonising Beijing by replacing feed during map presentationThe White House has been accused of cutting the video feed of a Taiwanese minister after a map in the official’s slide presentation showed the island in a different colour to China’s during last week’s Summit for Democracy, in an effort to avoid antagonising Beijing.Reuters news agency reported that during a panel discussion on Friday, the video feed showing Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister, was replaced with audio only. Continue reading...

Death of ‘role model’ Fatiha Sabrin linked to pest control substances found in flats where she livedGrieving pupils at a primary school in east London are “struggling to cope” after one of their brightest and best-loved classmates was killed over the weekend in an incident being linked to pest control chemicals found in the flats where she lived.Rena Begum, the headteacher of Buttercup primary in Shadwell, said the school was in “great shock” after the death of 11-year-old Fatiha Sabrin in Saturday’s incident. Continue reading...