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Families facing severe hunger are wading through crocodile-infested waters in search of water lilies to eat. Susan Martinez and photographer Peter Caton return with Action Against Hunger to find that the dire situation they reported on in March has only worsenedDesperate families in flood-ravaged villages in South Sudan are spending hours searching for water lilies to eat after another summer of intense rainfall worsened an already dire situation.People have no food and no land to cultivate after three years of floods. Fields are submerged in last year’s flood water and higher ground is overcrowded with hungry people, in what is quickly becoming a humanitarian crisis.Nyanyang Tong, 39, on her way to the Action Against Hunger centre with her one-year-old son, Mamuch Gatkuoth, in Paguir Continue reading...

Exporters move away from traditional Dublin to Britain routes to avoid Brexit red tapeVolumes of goods shipped directly from Ireland to the EU on new Brexit-busting ferry routes have rocketed by 50% in the past six months as exporters seek to avoid travelling across land through Great Britain, according to official data.Figures published by the Irish Maritime Development Office (IMDO) show significant traffic diverted away from the traditional routes between Dublin and Britain to some of 32 new ferry services direct to ports such as Le Havre, Cherbourg and Dunkirk in France and Zeebrugge in Belgium. Continue reading...

Barbados has declared singer Rihanna a national hero during its republican celebrations in Bridgetown. The country's prime minister, Mia Mottley, said, ‘On behalf of a grateful nation, but an even prouder people, we therefore present to you, the designee, for national hero of Barbados, ambassador Robyn Rihanna Fenty may you continue to shine like a diamond.' Rihanna accepted the honour to cheers from the crowd. The ceremony was part of celebrations as Barbados became the world’s newest republic.

The Parkers Arms in Lancashire is fully booked for Christmas but its owner fears new variant could flatten festive spirit

From ultra-processed junk to failing supply chains and rocketing food poverty, there are serious problems with the way the UK eats. Will the government ever act?When I was younger, and at war with my own body, I was a sucker for diets. I tried The Rotation Diet (Lose Up to a Pound a Day and Never Gain it Back), The Beverly Hills Diet (a 35-day programme, but I never made it past the first three days) and numerous punitive low-fat regimes involving raw carrots and dry crispbread. None of them lasted long, but each time I broke a diet, I would soon be looking around for another, equally unrealistic, weight-loss plan. No matter how similar the new diet was to the last, it gave me a sense that I was doing something productive about what I saw as the problem of my body.Personal weight-loss diets have a lot in common with obesity policies in England and beyond. For a start, the sheer quantity of these policies is astonishing. Earlier this year, two researchers based at the University of Cambridge – Dolly Theis and Martin White – published a paper showing that from 1992 to 2020, there were no fewer than 689 separate obesity policies put forward in England. Like failed diets, almost none of these initiatives have been realised in any meaningful way. Instead, their main effect has been to remind people with obesity that the government views the mere existence of their bodies as a “crisis”. Continue reading...

He did triathlons, bodybuilding and mountain climbing and became sceptical of the Covid jab. Then, at 42, he contracted the virusIt was one of those rare, almost magical, summer evenings. Warm enough to sit outside in a T-shirt, listening to birdsong; warm enough to stay out late, savouring a meal; warm enough not to notice night settling in, the visitor that slipped into the party unannounced.It was 11 June 2021. Jenny McCann sat in the garden of her home in north London with her twin brother, John Eyers, their parents, Lyn and Derek, and Jenny’s husband and children. It was her son’s 10th birthday party. John and their parents had come down from Southport in Merseyside for the weekend to celebrate. Jenny made Lebanese lamb and parathas. The adults were buzzed on wine, the kids on birthday cake. “Life felt really good,” says Jenny. Continue reading...

Sonia Warner, who oversaw government grants given to Nigerian organisations, was the victim of unconscious discriminationThe Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office racially discriminated against a black senior civil servant after launching an inquiry into her sex life, an employment tribunal has ruled.Sonia Warner, a civil servant for 33 years who oversaw government grants given to Nigerian organisations, was the victim of unconscious discrimination when she was “pushed away”, “disowned” or “othered” by colleagues, it concluded. Continue reading...

Luxon, who has spent just a year in parliament, will be the party’s fifth leader in as many years after he replaced Judith CollinsNew Zealand’s opposition has announced a new leader, former airline boss Christopher Luxon, after its leader Judith Collins flamed out of the role last week.The National party emerged from its caucus meeting on Tuesday to announce Luxon, a political novice and former Air New Zealand chief executive, would be taking the party’s helm. He will be National’s fifth leader in as many years, and will work alongside deputy Nicola Willis. The party was forced into a new leadership vote last week, after leader Judith Collins self-destructed in an ill-fated attempt to take down political rival Simon Bridges. Continue reading...

The star has left behind a profound body of work – and a permanent, inimitable impression on his industryIn the 1976 classic Storm Boy, the great Yolŋu actor David Dalaithngu delivers a line that became immortalised in Australian cinema. “Bird like him, never die,” he says, describing the pelican Mr Percival.The substance of that line can apply to the man himself, who will live on through the light and shadow of the cinema, on to which he left a permanent and inimitable impression. Continue reading...

Pandemic lockdowns and continued expansion in China helped the Danish company to continue building its global toy empireLego, the world’s largest toymaker, has awarded its 20,000 employees three extra days of holiday and a special bonus after a year of bumper revenues.The succession of pandemic-forced lockdowns has seen demand for Lego’s signature plastic bricks soar alongside a rapid expansion in China. Continue reading...

Lawyers ask court to review ruling that overturned Cosby’s conviction, arguing it could set a dangerous precedentProsecutors asked the US supreme court to review the ruling that overturned Bill Cosby’s conviction, arguing in a petition Monday that a decision announced in a press release does not give a defendant lifetime immunity.Prosecutors said the ruling could set a dangerous precedent if convictions are overturned over dubious closed-door deals. They have also complained that the chief judge of Pennsylvania’s high court appeared to misstate key facts of the case when he discussed the court ruling that overturned Cosby’s conviction in a television interview. Continue reading...

The case, which the UN says could amount to genocide, was brought under the legal premise of universal justiceArgentina’s justice system will investigate allegations of war crimes committed by the Myanmar military against that country’s Rohingya minority under a court ruling upholding the principles of “universal justice”.The appeals court decision, which Agence France-Presse has seen, overturns a lower court ruling rejecting a request for an investigation by the British-based Burmese Rohingya Organisation (BROUK). Continue reading...

Ex-president’s chaotic style resulted in presidential daily briefing being delivered more regularly to Mike PenceDonald Trump’s “fact-free” approach to the presidency created unprecedented challenges for intelligence officials responsible for briefing him, according to a newly released account from the CIA.The 45th president’s chaotic and freewheeling style, and his disinclination to read anything put in front of him, resulted in the presidential daily briefing, or PDB – a crucial security update including information about potential threats to the US – being delivered more regularly to Vice-President Mike Pence instead, the report states. Continue reading...

Four sentenced for the murder of the 15-year-old who was fatally shot and stabbed outside his homeA 14-year-old boy has been jailed for at least 16 years for the murder of schoolboy Keon Lincoln, who was stabbed and shot outside his home. Keon, 15, was fatally wounded in a “short and brutal” attack by a group of youths in Handsworth, Birmingham, on 21 January, the trial heard.The judge at Birmingham crown court lifted restrictions on naming the 14-year-old boy who was accused of firing the fatal shot as Yussuf Mustapha. Three others were also sentenced for murder. Continue reading...

Health secretary says: ‘If this variant is no more dangerous than Delta, then we won’t keep measures in place for a day longer than necessary’

Six-year-old boy has been at the centre of a bitter custody battle between relatives in Italy and IsraelIsrael’s top court has ruled that a six-year-old boy who was the sole survivor of a cable car crash in northern Italy must be returned to relatives there within the next couple of weeks.Eitan Biran has been at the centre of a bitter custody battle between relatives in Italy and Israel since his parents were killed in the Stresa-Mottarone aerial tramway crash on 23 May. Continue reading...

Sajid Javid has announced changes to the UK's coronavirus vaccine booster programme, including advising that all adults in the country should be offered third doses from just three months after their second vaccinations. Speaking in the Commons, the health secretary outlined this and other changes aimed at speeding up booster vaccinations as the government scrambles to limit the spread of the new Omicron variant

More than 150,000 homes without power on Monday, with damage thought to be worst since 2005More than 150,000 homes across the UK were facing a fourth night without power after Storm Arwen wreaked havoc, bringing down trees and electricity lines.The Energy Networks Association (ENA) said damage caused by Friday’s storm was some of the worst since 2005. More than a million homes lost power with 155,000 nationwide still waiting to be reconnected on Monday afternoon. Continue reading...

Court of appeal decision hailed as victory for LGBTQ+ community that could encourage other African countries to follow suitGay rights campaigners expressed joy at the Botswana court of appeal’s decision to uphold a ruling that decriminalised same-sex relationships, saying the country’s judiciary had set an example for other African countries.The government had appealed a 2019 ruling that criminalising homosexuality was unconstitutional. The ruling had been hailed as a major victory for gay rights campaigners on the continent, following an unsuccessful attempt in Kenya to repeal colonial-era laws criminalising gay sex. Continue reading...

‘I’m completely happy that we fall within the noble tradition of the one-hit wonder in the UK’We had played the showcase night at New York’s CBGB, but didn’t stand out, so we tried instead playing alongside performance artists in East Village. People showing up to watch avant garde performance art bought our cassette, and we became part of this groovy little scene of really enthusiastic people. Continue reading...

UK accused of having a labour market akin to modern slavery that encourages people to make risky crossingsSenior French ministers have accused the UK of operating a labour market akin to slavery and called on London to open safe routes for migrants, as the two governments continued to deflect blame for last week’s drownings in the Channel.The criticism came hours after France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, held a crisis meeting with European ministers and border agencies to discuss the migrant emergency around the Channel ports. Continue reading...

Watchdog advises widening of booster vaccination scheme to tackle new coronavirus variant

The former British colony is about to become a republic, and we Barbadians can cast off our label of Little EnglandOn 20 October, in a joint sitting of parliament, Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, described the removal of Queen Elizabeth as the head of state and the decision to become a republic as a “seminal moment” in our country’s history. We have reached the day that this becomes a reality, as Barbados embarks on its new path, cutting the umbilical cord that bound it to its former colonial master, the United Kingdom.It begins on Monday evening, when Dame Sandra Mason will be installed as the first president of Barbados. That event, at which public participation will be extremely limited due to Covid protocols, but which will be beamed across the internet, will have the Prince of Wales in attendance as representative of the Queen.Suleiman Bulbulia was a member of the republican status transition advisory committee in Barbados and is a columnist for Barbados Today Continue reading...

Company expects higher profits for final months of 2021 as customers in Europe face soaring energy costsRussia’s state gas company has reported record earnings for the third quarter of the year after profiting from a global gas crisis that has ignited historic energy market highs across Europe.Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, said it expected even higher profits for the final months of the year as its customers in Europe brace for a winter energy crisis and record high costs. Continue reading...

As new travel restrictions come into effect, we answer the key questions

Commons standards committee’s anti-sleaze proposals also include written contracts for outside workMPs should face a complete ban on working as paid consultants and ministers should be more open about any potential conflicts of interest, parliament’s internal standards watchdog has proposed among a series of new anti-sleaze rules.Other recommendations in the report from the Commons standards committee include an obligation for MPs to have a written contract for any outside work, available for inspection if needed, and which would spell out that they cannot lobby on behalf of the employer. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Some may predate earliest cases of new variant found in South Africa last week

Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford call for Cobra meeting and tougher travel rules amid spread of Covid variant

Outgoing German chancellor’s choice of soundtrack for military tattoo hints at uncharted hinterlandAngela Merkel has left Germans wondering how well they really know the chancellor who has governed them for 16 years, after picking a song by the punk rocker Nina Hagen as the soundtrack for her military leaving ceremony.Merkel, whose Social Democrat successor, Olaf Scholz, is expected to be sworn in as chancellor next week, will be given a customary military farewell in the courtyard outside the defence ministry on Thursday evening. Continue reading...

Locals in Barcelona accuse religious foundation in charge of Gaudí‘s masterpiece of highhandednessA gigantic 12-pointed star was installed on Monday on one of the main towers of the basilica of the Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece that has been a work in progress since 1882.But the star is unlikely to brighten the mood of local residents whose lives have been blighted for years by the city’s biggest tourist attraction, which before the pandemic brought 60,000 visitors a day to the area. Continue reading...

Teenager is charged with murder of 12-year-old and possession of bladed articleA teenage boy has appeared in court charged with the murder of a 12-year-old girl in Liverpool city centre.Ava White had been in the city with friends on Thursday following a Christmas lights switch-on when she suffered “catastrophic injuries” in an assault at 8.39pm, Merseyside police said. Continue reading...

Staff of Yorkshire’s Tan Hill Inn plan best-dressed snowman competition for guests trapped by Storm ArwenSixty-one people face a fourth night snowed in at Britain’s highest pub with a best-dressed snowman competition planned on Monday to pass the time.Guests who had travelled to the 17th-century Tan Hill Inn in the Yorkshire Dales on Friday night to watch an Oasis tribute band have been trapped ever since as Storm Arwen hit the UK, with staff laying on pub quizzes, board games and karaoke for entertainment. Continue reading...

From their exhilarating collaborations to a supper for two that ended in tears, the director shares his most personal memories of the musicals legend who took theatre to extraordinary new heightsHe kept a selection of grooming utensils in his guest bathroom: nail scissors, implements for trimming nose hair, that sort of thing. He had a slightly shambolic air, and a listing gait, like a grad student impersonating a grownup, or as if his nanny had brushed his hair for him that morning. He would rock his head back when he talked and often spoke with his eyes closed, like someone communing with a higher power, which he probably was. His latest enthusiasms were always near the surface – to hear him speak about Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet, for example, was to make one want to go and see it all over again (he actually flew a group of his New York friends to London to see the production). He was equally expressive in his condemnation of work he didn’t care for. He was passionate, opinionated, uningratiating, sharp as a knife.Until his later years, when he chose to spend more time in Connecticut, he was all New York. Steve saw everything: he taught me how to calculate exactly the amount of time it would take to walk to each individual theatre by judging how many blocks east to west (five minutes per block) and north to south (two minutes). For this particular wide-eyed Brit, Steve’s life on East 49th Street was a dream of New York in the 20th century. A beautiful brownstone, wood-panelled, with walls full of framed word games and puzzles. A grand piano looked out on a walled garden filled with vines and flowers. Continue reading...

From designing homewares to recording music, many who fled to Europe are building independent lives against the oddsPieces of fabric of various vibrant shades fill the Naples studio where Paboy Bojang and his team of four are working around the clock to stitch together 250 cushions for their next customer, The Conran Shop.They are not long from dispatching their first orders to Selfridges and Paul Smith, and with requests for the distinctive cotton cushions with ruffled borders flooding in from around the world, they will be busy for months to come. Continue reading...

Woman and man left hotel where they were in quarantine after testing positive for Covid-19

Gallup survey reveals the two countries have the world’s highest levels of trust in scientists, with 62% saying they trust them ‘a lot’

Study calls on Home Office to integrate gender and trauma sensitivity into asylum systemVictims of sexual violence face further abuse and trauma as a result of the UK asylum process and are systematically let down by authorities, according a report.The research found that gender-insensitive and sometimes inhumane asylum interviews, sexual harassment in unstable asylum accommodation and a lack of access to healthcare and psychological support were just some of the factors compounding the trauma of forced migrants in the UK. Continue reading...

The governing body is pushing to make the game more welcoming for women – but is change happening fast enough?Towards the end of the Queen’s Gambit, the Netflix show that helped supercharge the new chess boom, Beth Harmon crushes a series of top male grandmasters before beating Vasily Borgov, the Russian world champion. Fiction, though, remains sharply separated from fact. As Magnus Carlsen was reminded before starting his world title defence in Dubai last week, there is not a single active woman’s player in the top 100 now that Hou Yifan of China, who is ranked 83rd, is focusing on academia. The lingering question: why?For Carlsen, the subject was “way too complicated” to answer in a few sentences, but suggested a number of reasons, particularly cultural, were to blame. Some, though, still believe it is down to biology. As recently as 2015 Nigel Short, vice president of the world chess federation Fide, claimed that “men are hardwired to be better chess players than women, adding, “you have to gracefully accept that.” Continue reading...

Storm Arwen brought wind gusts of almost 100mph late on Friday, before weakening and drifting towards continental Europe. Heavy snow and the severe gale wreaked havoc on road and rail transport across the UK and forced the cancellation of Sunday’s Premier League football match between Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur in north-west England Continue reading...

Painstaking effort to locate two campers continues in rugged bushland north of Dargo after murder charges laid

Clarence House denies claim in new book that Charles asked about ‘complexion’ of Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s future childrenThe private office of the Prince of Wales has dismissed as “fiction” claims in a new book that Prince Charles was the royal who speculated on the skin colour of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s future children.The American journalist and author Christopher Andersen, a former editor of the US celebrity news magazine People, alleges in the book that Charles made the comment on the day Harry and Meghan’s engagement was announced in November 2017. Continue reading...

Labor dubs schedule – which suggests a May election – ‘more of a slouch than a sitting calendar’ as government runs out of time to establish federal integrity commission

Exclusive: Privileges committee says Porter didn’t break rules but calls on all MPs to provide the ‘greatest’ transparency regarding the source of gifts

Billions of these tiny plastic pellets are floating in the ocean, causing as much damage as oil spills, yet they are still not classified as hazardousWhen the X-Press Pearl container ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean in May, Sri Lanka was terrified that the vessel’s 350 tonnes of heavy fuel oil would spill into the ocean, causing an environmental disaster for the country’s pristine coral reefs and fishing industry.Classified by the UN as Sri Lanka’s “worst maritime disaster”, the biggest impact was not caused by the heavy fuel oil. Nor was it the hazardous chemicals on board, which included nitric acid, caustic soda and methanol. The most “significant” harm, according to the UN, came from the spillage of 87 containers full of lentil-sized plastic pellets: nurdles. Continue reading...

Two more Omicron cases confirmed in NSW; Labor targets Coalition on quarantine facilities during question time; sitting calendar for 2022 released; Greg Hunt gives press conference; national cabinet meeting brought forward to Tuesday to discuss response to new variant; NSW floods worsen; Victoria records 1,007 new Covid cases and three deaths; NSW records 150 new cases, no deaths. Follow all the news live

Thousands of migrants, most of them from Iraq and Syria, have attempted to cross the EU border since the summer. The development appeared to signal an escalation of a crisis in which the regime of Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko has encouraged migrants to illegally enter the EU, at first through Lithuania and Latvia. The two Baltic states, along with Poland, are accusing Lukashenko of ‘hybrid warfare’ Continue reading...

On the organisation’s 50th anniversary, former head of photography at Greenpeace International talks about the motives behind the creation of its picture deskFifty years ago, on 15 September 1971, a ship named the Greenpeace set out to confront and stop US nuclear weapons testing at Amchitka, one of the Aleutian Islands in south-west Alaska.Two years later a small boat called the Vega, crewed by David McTaggart, Ann-Marie Horne, Mary Horne and Nigel Ingram sailed into the French nuclear test site area at Moruroa, French Polynesia in the southern Pacific Ocean. Photographers had been using their images for years to publicise situations around the world. But Greenpeace was a young organisation pioneering a new kind of activism: this was the moment they began to realise that capturing images of what they were doing and seeing would play a vital role in their work.Vega boarded by French commandos in Moruroa, 1973 Continue reading...

We celebrate everything from Lil Nas X’s conservative-baiting Montero to Wet Leg’s instant indie classic – as voted for by 31 of the Guardian’s music writers Continue reading...

She overcame racism and abuse to break Hollywood, romanced Brando, dated Elvis to make him jealous, fought hard for civil rights and won an Egot. Now in her 10th decade, she is busier and happier than everRita Moreno pops up on my computer screen in a bright red hat, huge pendant necklace and tortoiseshell glasses. “Well, here I am in my full glory,” she says from her home in Berkeley, California. And glorious she sure is. Moreno is a couple of weeks short of her 90th birthday, but look at her and you would knock off 20 years. Listen to her and you would knock off another 50.Can I wish you an advance happy birthday, I ask. “Yes, you can. Isn’t it exciting?” Moreno is one of the acting greats. But she could have been so much greater. She is one of only six women to have bagged the Egot (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards), alongside Helen Hayes, Audrey Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg and Liza Minnelli. Yet she has spent much of her career battling typecasting or simply not being cast at all. Continue reading...

After the death of her husband, Marilyn Bersey struggled with her identity. But she had been a performer all her life, and suddenly a new world opened up to herWhen Marilyn Bersey, 74, stands on stage and removes her last piece of clothing to reveal her nipple tassels, she triggers the pyrotechnics. From the audience there is “the admiration, the affirmation, the claps, the whoops, the cheers”. Well, she explains: “When I retired, I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those pensioners who sit and knit.”Becoming a burlesque performer may seem an extreme form of resistance to this stereotype, but Bersey, who lives in warden-assisted accommodation in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, had finally stabilised a huge weight loss. At the same time, she was adjusting to life without her second husband, whom she had cared for through Parkinson’s disease. She was searching for a form of exercise and self-expression that would fit the new shape of her life.Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60? Continue reading...