Armed police arrest man who is believed to have entered over the walls of the Palace of WestminsterA man has been detained by armed police after breaching security to enter the grounds of the Houses of Parliament.The man is believed to have entered over the walls and was stopped in New Palace Yard. It is not being treated as a terrorist incident. Continue reading...

Marcus Lamb, 64, whose Daystar network reaches an estimated 2bn viewers worldwide, had pushed alternative therapiesMarcus Lamb, the co-founder of the leading Christian TV network Daystar who railed against Covid-19 vaccines, has died of Covid-19. He was 64 years old.Lamb, who was the chief executive of the conservative network that reaches an estimated 2 billion viewers worldwide, died on Tuesday, weeks after contracting the coronavirus. Continue reading...

People across Europe share their views on German chancellor and role she has played in the EUAfter 16 years in office, Angela Merkel is stepping down on Thursday as chancellor of Germany. The former UK prime minister Tony Blair said she had “often defined modern Germany” and Romano Prodi, Italian prime minister between 2006 and 2008, said a new European strategy and the next-generation EU would be part of the “great legacy” she leaves.People across Europe share their views on her leadership in Germany and the role she has played in the European Union. Continue reading...

We would like to hear from those who have been without power and have been affected by storm damageFor thousands of residents across the UK, Wednesday marks the sixth day without power due to damage caused by Storm Arwen. Fallen trees and electricity lines have leftmany residents without power, and it is thought that power may not be restored until Friday.If you have been affected by Storm Arwen and are still without power, we would like to hear from you. Continue reading...

Police search Albuquerque firearms supplier after owner claimed he ‘may know’ where live rounds came fromAuthorities are pursuing new leads on possible sources of live ammunition involved in actor Alec Baldwin’s fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of a western, as they searched the premises of an Albuquerque-based firearms and ammunition supplier.The search took place after a provider of firearms and ammunition to the ill-fated movie production Rust told investigators that he “may know” where live rounds came from, describing ammunition he received from a friend in the past that had been “reloaded” by assembly from parts. Continue reading...

Authorities retrospectively identified case of Covid variant from October, raising fears of global spread

Scribner has responded to the news that Anthony Broadwater has been cleared of the crime at the centre of Lucky by ceasing to distribute the bookAlice Sebold’s publisher Scribner is pulling her 1999 memoir Lucky from shelves after a man was cleared of the rape at the heart of it.Anthony Broadwater was convicted of raping Sebold in 1982, and spent 16 years in prison. He was exonerated last week after a re-examination of the case found serious flaws in his arrest and trial. Continue reading...

Exotic pet ownership in the UK has grown 60% since 2000, according to the wildlife charity Born Free. But escaped wild animals are also a growing concern for their potential to spread disease, and the impact an invasive species might have on nature. The Guardian visits BeastWatch, an organisation of volunteers that specialises in the safe retrieval of exotic pets, and Bristol Zoo to see how wild animals are kept in captivity and ask if new laws can address some of the issues

The cats and dogs that helped us through the pandemic are increasingly being dumped in the street or handed over to charities – and shelters are dealing with the fallout

Proposed amendments to Sex Discrimination Act may not be enough to see legislation pass lower house this week

Research suggests serious bouts of illness with coronavirus may significantly damage long-term health

Christian Porter announces retirement on Facebook; George Christensen and Llew O’Brien cross floor after question time; sixth case of Omicron variant confirmed in NSW; Indigenous woman dies in custody in Melbourne; Victoria records 1,179 new Covid cases and six deaths; NSW records 251 cases; ‘significant flooding’ across Queensland town of Inglewood – follow the day’s news live

Janette Beckman has spent four decades documenting underground movements from London’s punks and the birth of hip-hop to LA gangs and illegal girls’ fight clubs. How does she win her subjects’ trust?It was the tension between Janette Beckman’s shyness and her curiosity about people that helped spark a career photographing subcultures. “I realised that having a camera gave you licence to go up to strangers and say, ‘Hi, I’d like to take a picture of you,’” she says. This epiphany jump-started a 45-year adventure in street photography, documenting the punk and two-tone youths of 70s Britain, the birth of hip-hop in New York, Latino gang members in Los Angeles, bikers in Harlem, rodeos, rockabilly conventions and demonstrations from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter.As we talk on a video call, 62-year-old Beckman gives me a tour of her home studio in New York, just off the Bowery where the famous punk venue CBGB used to be. There’s a Salt-N-Pepa snowboard, a Keith Haring painting and gold discs from hip-hop stars Dana Dane and EPMD. On one strip of wall hang a selection of images from Occupy Wall Street in 2011, “for a book,” she says. And on another are pinned a vast selection of her images, for her monograph Rebels: From Punk to Dior. Continue reading...

Political officials and diplomatic and activist sources describe stealth campaignSaudi Arabia used “incentives and threats” as part of a lobbying campaign to shut down a UN investigation of human right violations committed by all sides in the Yemen conflict, according to sources with close knowledge of the matter.The Saudi effort ultimately succeeded when the UN human rights council (HRC) voted in October against extending the independent war crimes investigation. The vote marked the first defeat of a resolution in the Geneva body’s 15-year history. Continue reading...

Former attorney general will not recontest his seat of Pearce in Western Australia at next year’s federal election

1 December 1936: Crowds flock to south London to watch flames devour the vast glasshouse, which had stood on Sydenham Hill for 82 yearsFleet Street, Monday night

Longstanding plague of child abuse and extreme abortion laws fuel crisis, report saysAn average of two girls between 10 and 14 give birth every day in Paraguay, thanks to a toxic combination of widespread child abuse and draconian abortion laws, according to a new Amnesty International report.Paraguay has one of the highest rates of child and teen pregnancy in Latin America, a region that, as a whole, has the second-highest rates in the world. Continue reading...

Advocates say the law, which will come into force next week, is the first to take drug checking out of a legal grey zone and protect the practiceNew Zealand has enshrined protections for drug checking in law, in what advocates say is a world first.The country’s new law to protect pill testing – where organisations chemically test illicit drugs to monitor for dangerous contaminants – has been voted in by the government, and is expected to pass into law next week. Continue reading...

Bonenkai - or end of year - party season kicks off in December with some reluctant to join the workplace traditionNot everyone in Japan is looking forward to observing the time-honoured tradition of drinking, eating, and drinking some more with groups of colleagues, even as the country begins to rediscover its gregarious side after 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic.December usually marks the start of the bonenkai (forget-the-year) party season, when men and women who spend hours together in the workplace get together for an evening of nomunication, a portmanteau of the Japanese verb to drink [nomu] and communication. Continue reading...

The RNLI has confirmed an incident took place following claims a lifeboat crew was blocked from going to sea by people opposing the rescuing of refugees in the Channel. Hastings, which has a population of about 100,000, is on the frontline of the small boat arrivals. Refugees have been landing on its beach since 2019 but in line with the overall tripling of numbers this year there has been a huge increase, particularly in the last month.

Wednesday: Australians with adult sons and daughters living abroad told their children don’t count as ‘immediate family’. Plus: best music and films of 2021Good morning. International border restrictions are stopping families reuniting at Christmas. Documents reveal the federal government was warned of the worsening security situation in Afghanistan in July. And the Guardian announces its selection of best albums and films for 2021.Australians with adult sons and daughters living abroad are being told their children don’t count as ‘“immediate family” and don’t warrant exemption for entry into the country in the lead-up to Christmas. It comes as more countries impose travel restrictions on visitors from other parts of the world in order to try to contain the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. In October, prime minister Scott Morrison announced changes to allow parents of Australian citizens to be classified as immediate family, allowing them to travel to Australian jurisdictions with 80% double-dose vaccination rates. But the same change has not been applied to adult sons and daughters of Australian citizens, who are non-citizens, live abroad, and are no longer considered dependent on their parents. “The stupid thing is that if we were in England, and our daughter was here, we could come in as a parent of an Australian citizen, but when it’s the other way around, she can’t,” one parent told Guardian Australia.

Coronel admitted to acting as a courier between Joaquín Guzmán and other members of the Sinaloa cartel while he was in prisonEmma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of the imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán has been sentenced to three years in a US prison, after she pleaded guilty to helping the Sinaloa drug cartel.Before her sentencing in a federal court in Washington, Coronel, 32, pleaded with US District Judge Rudolph Contreras to show her mercy. Continue reading...

Move over, Miracle on 34th Street and Elf. As we face another troubled festive season, there will be some surprisingly saucy viewingName: Blue Christmas films.Age: New. Continue reading...

French-American war hero is first Black woman inducted into Paris mausoleum for revered figuresJosephine Baker, the French-American civil rights activist, music hall superstar and second world war resistance hero, has become the first Black woman to enter France’s Panthéon mausoleum of revered historical figures – taking the nation’s highest honour at a moment when tensions over national identity and immigration are dominating the run-up to next year’s presidential race.The elaborate ceremony on Tuesday – presided over by the French president, Emmanuel Macron – focused on Baker’s legacy as a resistance fighter, activist and anti-fascist who fled the racial segregation of the 1920s US for the Paris cabaret stage, and who fought for inclusion and against hatred. Continue reading...

Shelters outside Dunkirk used by the 27 who died at sea dismantled in latest attempt to disperse refugeesArmed French police have broken up a makeshift migrant camp outside Dunkirk where the 27 people who died at sea last week stayed before they drowned in the Channel.The basic site, by a canal outside the Grand-Smythe suburb, had no toilets or running water, but was nevertheless used by several hundred people, mostly Kurds from Iraq or Iran, hoping to travel illegally to the UK. Continue reading...

Lara Logan compares top US infectious diseases expert to Dr Josef Mengele who experimented on Jews in concentration campsA Fox News commentator stoked outrage by comparing Dr Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, to Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death”.Lara Logan, a host on the Fox Nation streaming service, was discussing Omicron on Fox News Prime Time on Monday night, amid fears that the new variant will trigger a new wave of Covid cases and further deepen political divisions over how to respond. Fox News has consistently broadcast misinformation about Covid and measures to contain it. Continue reading...

Concern over pipeline system route bypassing Kyiv echoed by Britain’s foreign secretaryBritain’s foreign secretary has joined a last-minute push to urge Nato allies to block the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, warning that Moscow would exploit its position if Europe nations became reliant on it for energy.Liz Truss, at her first Nato foreign ministers meeting in Riga, also warned that Russia would be making a strategic mistake if it invaded Ukraine, promising an economic and diplomatic response by Nato. Continue reading...

The Monarchy | Scott’s Antarctic diary | MPs’ unintelligence contest | Parliamentary role modelsCongratulations to the Republic of Barbados for having the confidence and maturity to dispense with the Ruritanian nonsense of monarchy (Report, 30 November). I live in hope that one day we will see the same thing happen here.

PM says government does not want people to cancel events such as Christmas parties and nativity plays

Father Sergiy, who claims Vladimir Putin works for Satan, urged believers to ‘die for Russia’

Deployment of weapons or troops in Ukraine by Nato would trigger strong response, Russian president saysVladimir Putin has warned Nato countries that deploying weapons or soldiers to Ukraine would cross a “red line” for Russia and trigger a strong response, including a potential deployment of Russian missiles targeting Europe.Nato countries have warned Putin against further aggression against Ukraine as foreign ministers gathered in Latvia to discuss the military alliance’s contingencies for a potential Russian invasion. Continue reading...

Equality campaigners say remarks made as Barbados became a republic are ‘start of a grown-up conversation’The Prince of Wales’s acknowledgment of the “appalling atrocity of slavery” that “forever stains our history” as Barbados became a republic was brave, historic, and the start of a “grown-up conversation led by a future king”, equality campaigners have said.Uttering words his mother, the Queen, would be constitutionally constrained from saying, Prince Charles’s speech, at the ceremony to replace the monarch as head of state in the island nation, did not demur from reflecting on the “darkest days of our past” as he looked to a bright future for Barbadians. Continue reading...

Island’s status and surveillance technology making China ‘single greatest priority’ for MI6China is at risk of “miscalculating through over-confidence” over Taiwan, said the MI6 head, Richard Moore, in a statement clearly intended to warn Beijing to back off any attempt to seize control of the island.Giving a rare speech, Britain’s foreign intelligence chief said in London that China was at risk of “believing its own propaganda” and that the country had become “the single greatest priority” for MI6 for the first time in its history. Continue reading...

Season three of the daddy issues drama speaks volumes about the monstrous Man Club that rules society – and even billionaire’s daughter Shiv Roy can’t escape its sadistic clutchesEveryone eats their share of dung beetle surprise on Succession – HBO’s unrepentant daddy issues drama – but the women’s portions come heavily seasoned with the patriarchy’s favourite ingredients: sexism and misogyny. Even billionaire’s daughter Shiv Roy (played by Sarah Snook) can’t escape it. “It’s only your teats that give you any value,” her brother Kendall (Jeremy Strong) shouts after she rejects his offer to join him in another one of his patricidal business plans. Even before then, he couldn’t help but put a pin in her dreams of taking over the company: “You are too divisive … you’re still seen as a token woman, wonk, woke snowflake.”“I don’t think that, but the market does,” he explains. Continue reading...

Dr Nadarajah Muhunthan and his family faced deportation to Sri Lanka where he experienced tortureThe Home Office has U-turned on plans to deport a leading scientist carrying out groundbreaking research into affordable forms of solar energy and allowed him and his family to remain in the UK.Initially, the Home Office rejected the asylum claim lodged by Dr Nadarajah Muhunthan, 47, who has been living in the UK since 2018 with his wife, Sharmila, 42, and their three children, aged 13, nine and five. Continue reading...

Legal challenge brought by unionist politicians contests that Brexit deal conflicts with 1800 Acts of UnionThe Northern Ireland Brexit protocol has not “shattered” the constitutional status of Northern Ireland within the UK, as some unionists have argued, a government lawyer has told a court in Belfast.Tony McGleenan QC was opening his defence of the protocol against a legal challenge brought by a group of unionist politicians including the Traditional Unionist Voice leader, Jim Allister, the former Labour party MP Kate Hoey and the former Brexit party MEP Ben Habib. Continue reading...

While many in East Sussex town have rushed to help when refugees arrive on the beach, some are less welcomingTen days ago, people stood on the beach in Hastings and tried to prevent a lifeboat crew from going into the sea to rescue a group of refugees in a flimsy dinghy. According to a witness, they were shouting at the RNLI: “Don’t bring any more of those, we’re full up, that’s why we stopped our donations.”Meanwhile, a group from the same town calling itself Hastings Supports Refugees has set up what is thought to be the first emergency response team run by volunteers to welcome the bedraggled, traumatised newcomers and provide them with hot food and drinks, dry clothes and a warm welcome as soon as they come ashore. Continue reading...

Continuing our series of exposés about the British TV industry, women remember being assaulted for three years straight, denied work once they become mums and batting off men who are ‘famously handsy’• ‘My colleagues ignored me for a year’: what it’s really like to work in TV as a disabled personThe television industry has a problem with the way it treats women. According to a survey by Film + TV Charity, 39% of female employees have experienced sexual harassment at work, while 67% have experienced bullying. Bectu, the union that supports TV and film workers, found that two-thirds of those who had experienced abuse did not report it for fear of being blacklisted.Other studies have reported mothers being prevented from working due to childcare issues, and a serious female under-representation in leadership positions, despite Ofcom finding that women make up around 45% of TV roles. Continue reading...

Dick Pound defends IOC saying it was able to reach missing Chinese tennis star while others could notA senior Olympic official has defended his organisation’s efforts to confirm the safety of Peng Shuai, dismissing criticism as “silly” and saying no one else had been able to get in touch with the tennis star who went missing after publishing allegations of sexual assault.Dick Pound, who has held a variety of posts with the IOC over 45 years and is the chairman of Olympic Broadcasting Services, rejected criticism of the IOC for giving minimal information after its president, Thomas Bach, spoke with Peng via video link last week. Some had accused the IOC of seeking to not anger Beijing and prioritising the commercial relationship over the safety of athletes. China is due to host the Winter Olympics in February. Continue reading...

A screen adaptation of the memoir Lucky is no longer in production after the man who was found guilty of the crime at the centre of the story is exoneratedPlans to adapt Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky, about her rape as an 18-year-old, have been dropped, according to Variety.The news comes after the rape conviction at the heart of the 1999 memoir was overturned last week. Anthony Broadwater had spent 16 years in prison after being convicted of the crime in 1982, based largely on Sebold’s identification of him as her rapist on the witness stand, and on microscopic hair analysis by an expert tying him to the crime. The US Department of Justice now rejects such analysis, and Broadwater was cleared last Monday of raping Sebold. “I’m not going to sully this proceeding by saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ That doesn’t cut it,” said the Onondaga county district attorney, William Fitzpatrick. “This should never have happened.” Continue reading...

Andrea Pető was asked to withdraw criticism that a Europe-wide standards group had failed to confront illiberalism in Hungary and PolandA prominent academic has resigned from a Hungarian higher education body, alleging censorship and accusing the top European standards organisation of turning a blind eye to waning academic freedom in central Europe.Andrea Pető, a professor at the Central European University in Vienna, said she had resigned from the Hungarian Accreditation Committee’s humanities subcommittee last week after she was asked to change part of an article she wrote that was due to be published in an academic journal. Continue reading...

The American figureheads and friends discuss their childhoods, their debt to strong women and the illusion of the American dream in a series of candid conversations garlanded with unseen photographsThe season of the coffee table book is upon us. This is a handsome enough example, featuring often startlingly candid conversations between Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen recorded for a podcast of the same name. Having struck up a friendship on Obama’s campaign trail in 2008, the bond between the two men deepened with the years. (Partly, we discover, this is because Michelle Obama and Patti Scialfa, Springsteen’s partner, hit it off.)The title is worth a chuckle. Springsteen might once have been some sort of miscreant, but “renegade” ill befits the 44th president, a man so upstanding you could actually unfurl a flag off him. The subtitle Born in the USA raises a silent eyebrow, too, at the attempt by “birthers” to discredit Obama’s presidency by falsely questioning his citizenship. Continue reading...

Rescuers spotted man sitting on engine of boat after it capsized off south-western Kagoshima prefectureA 69-year-old man has been rescued in rough seas off Japan after spending 22 hours drifting in open water, with one official calling his survival a “miracle”.The man, whose name has not been released, was alone on a boat off south-western Kagoshima prefecture en route to the resort island of Yakushima on Saturday afternoon when it capsized. Continue reading...

Dissident Mohammad Rasoulof blasts against his country’s profligate use of capital punishment that includes making citizens carry out death sentencesMaybe you don’t go to Iranian cinema for nail-biting action and suspense. But that’s what you are given in this arresting portmanteau film, the Golden Bear winner at last year’s Berlin film festival. It is written and directed by film-maker and democracy campaigner Mohammad Rasoulof, who has repeatedly been victimised by the Iranian government for his dissident “propaganda” – most recently, in 2020, with a one-year prison sentence and two-year ban on film-making. As with Rasoulof’s fellow Iranian director Jafar Panahi, a ban of this sort can be finessed, by playing on the government’s strange pedantry and hypocrisy. If the film is technically registered to someone else and shown outside Iran at international film festivals where its appearance boosts Iran’s cultural prestige, the authorities appear to let it slide, though persist with harassment.There Is No Evil consists of four short stories – with twists and ingeniously concealed interconnections – on the topic of the death penalty and how it is poisoning the country’s soul. Hundreds of people are executed a year in Iran, including children. Execution of the condemned criminal is the job of civilian functionaries but also widely carried out by soldiers doing compulsory national service. Continue reading...

This spin on The Wizard of Oz was a Broadway hit in the 70s and became a film with Diana Ross. Now, the tale of Black joy takes Dorothy from a Manchester tower block and BLM protests to the Emerald CityThe Wizard of Oz is a movie masterpiece that still glitters like a ruby slipper. Its stage prequel, Wicked, has been running non-stop since 2003. But there is another, lesser-known spin-off from L Frank Baum’s original novel. The Wiz, which filters the same story through the prism of African American culture, won seven Tonys during its initial Broadway run in 1975. It’s surprising, then, that this musical by Charlie Smalls (music and lyrics) and William F Brown (book) has been revived so infrequently over the years, or that reviews have sometimes been the critical equivalent of the bucket of water with which Dorothy vanquishes the Wicked Witch of the West.The show’s reputation was hardly fortified by Sidney Lumet’s 1978 film version, a notorious flop despite its once-in-a-lifetime cast: Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne, Richard Pryor. The London-born director Matthew Xia, who is now overseeing a retooled version at the Hope Mill theatre in Manchester, adored it as a teenage Michael Jackson fan. “I even played the Scarecrow at school when I was 15,” says the bearded, wiry 39-year-old during a break from rehearsals. “Watching the film recently, I think it’s kind of wacky. Some of the choices are, like: ‘Why have you decided to do that? Why is Dorothy 34 years old?’” Its significance, though, remains undiminished. “It is ultimately an experiment in Black culture taking up space.” Continue reading...

Prime minister tells states to hold tight on border closures as Dominic Perrottet increases fines for isolation breaches and Tasmania introduces tough restrictions

We would like to hear from people in Barbados, and those who are part of the diaspora, on the world’s newest republicAt midnight on Monday, Barbados became the world’s newest republic ending 396 years of the British monarchy’s reign over the Caribbean island. Hundreds of people took part in the celebrations in Bridgetown and Barbadian signer Rihanna was declared a national hero.Whether you live or work in Barbados or are part of the diaspora, we would like to know what this moment means to you. We are also interested in hearing about any celebrations you took part in to mark the occasion. Continue reading...

Grammy-nominated singer, who airport police say was under influence of alcohol, tweeted that ‘Amsterdam security hate black people’Ari Lennox, the Grammy-nominated US R&B singer, has been arrested at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport for disturbing public order.Lennox tweeted about the incident, saying “I’m being arrested in Amsterdam for reacting to a woman racially profiling me … Fuck Amsterdam security. They hate black people … I just want to go home. I’ll never leave my house again.” Continue reading...

The comedian and film-maker seems oblivious to his best material in an uneven life story in need of a punchline or twoMel Brooks is the last comic in the world you can imagine wanting to be Hamlet – although, of course, that role is just another way of getting all the attention. He did play a Shakespearean actor in a 1983 remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy To Be Or Not to Be, but otherwise the Danish you’re most likely to associate with Brooks is the kind you buy in a deli. Now 95, the comedian, screenwriter and director of such beloved spoofs as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie has written his autobiography. As the title might suggest, All About Me! is very much the work of the man who, as a young Jewish comic in the Borscht Belt resorts, got his break as a “pool tummler” (Yiddish for “entertainer”), his job to keep the guests happy and alert, and stop them falling asleep round the swimming pool.Born Melvin Kaminsky, Brooks grew up in working-class Brooklyn, the youngest of four brothers, whose father died when he was two. There’s a priceless opening shtick about seeing Frankenstein as a boy, and worrying that the monster would get him; his mother reassured him that it would have to shlep all the way from Transylvania, find its way to get to South Third Street, then probably eat the Rothsteins downstairs first. The other childhood stuff is fairly mundane: memories of uncle Lee and religious fanatic Louie from Minsk, “clotheslines full of wet wash” and tributes to his mother, “a true heroine”. Continue reading...

Jacqui Lambie question in Senate met with ‘dog noises’ and ‘growling’; Labor targets Coalition over federal integrity bill during question time; new Covid measures for NSW and Victoria as authorities confirm fifth Omicron case; human remains found in search for Russell Hill and Carol Clay; Victoria records 917 cases and six deaths; NSW records 179 cases and three deaths. This blog is now closed