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Event took place near where Ava White was killed after a Christmas lights switch-on last monthHundreds of people have turned out to pay their respects to 12-year-old Ava White at a vigil held in her memory. She was fatally stabbed in Liverpool city centre on 25 November after a Christmas lights switch-on.On Saturday, family, friends and others gathered in Church Street, close to where the incident happened, to pay tribute to her. Hundreds of balloons, some in the shape of the letter A, were released at the start of the vigil. Many people wore hoodies with Ava’s face on and others had her name written on their faces. Continue reading...

Pontiff uses visit to Greece to highlight plight of migrants and refugees, and voice concern over threat to democracyPope Francis has used a trip to Greece to hit out at Europe for the divisions it has exhibited over migration while also warning against the perils of populism.In Athens, on the second leg of a Mediterranean tour that has highlighted the plight of migrants and refugees, the pontiff also expressed concern over democracy’s retreat globally. Greece has long been on the frontline of the refugee crisis. Continue reading...

Health secretary announces change to travel rules in bid to control spread of the new Omicron variant

In the suburbs hardest hit by Covid restrictions, the economic and psychological recovery has been slow to comeSydney barista Minh Bui rarely used to have time to sit down at her own cafe, but this weekday morning she’s in no rush. It’s just her and two women seated in the corner.Asked how business is at her Liverpool cafe since Sydney’s lockdown lifted, Bui motions to the empty seats around her. Continue reading...

As the major parties move into campaign mode, we look at the electorates where a handful of votes either way may determine who holds powerThe only political maxim worth remembering several months out from an election is that no one can predict how it will play out.Absolutes can change at a moment’s notice, and for the most part the voters who decide elections haven’t begun paying attention. Continue reading...

The Palestinian bookseller whose shop was destroyed in the most recent conflict in Gaza on how it has been crowdfunded back into existence – three times bigger

Frances and Jan Newell painstakingly uncovered their mother’s role in facilitating the escape of Jews and political dissidents from Berlin to BritainFor decades, more than 100 mouse-nibbled fruit boxes, tea chests and old leather suitcases sat untouched in a 3-metre pile in the backyard shed of Frances Newell’s home in suburban Melbourne.They were stuffed with thousands of letters – some in German, others in English – that she had kept when her father moved out of their family home in Castlemaine in the 1990s. Continue reading...

Next week, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov receive their Nobel peace prizes. In a rare interview, Muratov says he fears the world is sliding towards fascismThe last time a journalist won a Nobel prize was 1935. The journalist who won it – Carl von Ossietzky – had revealed how Hitler was secretly rearming Germany. “And he couldn’t pick it up because he was languishing in a Nazi concentration camp,” says Maria Ressa over a video call from Manila.Nearly a century on, Ressa is one of two journalists who will step onto the Nobel stage in Oslo next Friday. She is currently facing jail for “cyberlibel” in the Philippines while the other recipient Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, is standing guard over one of the last independent newspapers in an increasingly dictatorial Russia. Continue reading...

NCA says Osagie Aigbonohan used series of online aliases to form relationships with victims including terminally ill womanA romance fraudster conned a victim out of thousands of pounds and targeted hundreds of others, including a terminally ill woman, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).Osagie Aigbonohan, 40, used a number of aliases to contact women online through dating and social media sites, and in one case cheated a woman out of almost £10,000, the agency said. Continue reading...

Japanese and Korean are in top five choices in UK this year at online platform DuolingoWhether it’s down to Squid Game or kawaii culture, fascination with Korea and Japan is fuelling a boom in learning east Asian languages. Japanese is the fastest growing language to be learned in the UK this year on the online platform Duolingo, and Korean is the fourth fastest.Most of the interest is driven by cultural issues, the firm said in its 2021 Duolingo language report, which will be published tomorrow and analyses how the 20 million downloads of its platform are used. Continue reading...

The actor on her hopes for Brixton’s new theatre, an offbeat western and the sophistication of African artAdjoa Andoh was born in Bristol in 1963 and grew up in Wickwar, Gloucestershire. A veteran stage actor, she starred in His Dark Materials at the National Theatre and in the title role of an all-women of colour production of Richard II at the Globe in 2019. On TV, Andoh plays Lady Danbury in Bridgerton, which returns next year, and she will appear in season two of The Witcher on Netflix from 17 December. She lives in south London with her husband, the novelist Howard Cunnell, and their three children. Continue reading...

Maximiliano Contenti’s horror flick attempts to unpick voyeurism but lacks the sophistication of others in the genreNostalgia for idiosyncratic analogue film style is the simplest explanation for the recent giallo revival – but maybe there’s more to it than that. This most stylised of horror modes is perfect for our over-aestheticised age, so the newcomers – such as Berberian Sound Studio, Censor and Sound of Violence – make artists and viewers accessories to violence, often unleashed through that giallo mainstay, the power of the gaze. Set almost entirely in a tatty Montevideo rep cinema, Uruguayan slasher The Last Matinee joins this voyeuristic club, even if it ends up more in the raw than the refined camp.On a rainswept night in 1993, engineering student Ana (Luciana Grasso) insists on taking over projectionist duties for a screening of Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (an in-joke – it was released in 2011 and was directed by Ricardo Islas, who plays the killer here). She shuts herself in the booth, trying to ignore the inane banter of usher Mauricio (Pedro Duarte) – but neither have noticed a heavy-set trenchcoated bogeyman enter the auditorium to size up that night’s film faithful: three teenagers, an awkward couple on a first date, a flat-capped pensioner and a underage kid stowaway (Franco Durán). Continue reading...

The broadcaster, 51, talks about his first memories, last meal, lockdown resets and his brainier older brotherI always felt like the second fiddle to my older brother Marcel, who I thought was impossibly brilliant and mature and seemed to be reading more or less from the womb, although I’m two years younger, so I wouldn’t have known that first-hand. I was the sideshow: the funny one, the ridiculous one my grandparents said was “good with my hands”, which at five or six I embraced. It was only as I got older I realised it meant, “might not want to stay in school past 14 or 15”.From childhood I’ve always found anxiety in the most unlikely places. Aged six I remember watching maypole dancers skipping around and braiding these ribbons into beautiful patterns at my Ssouth London primary school and even though I was still in the infants and wouldn’t be doing it for years, I thought, “I’m never going to be able to fucking dance around a maypole.” All through my life I’ve tended to experience future events in a negative way. It’s always been a source of looming discomfiture. Continue reading...

The pop superstar on her extraordinary year – the Bond theme, that Vogue cover, the success of her second album – and hosting Saturday Night LiveIt’s a measure of what Billie Eilish’s life has been like in 2021 that she woke up one morning last month, rolled over to check her phone and found out she’d got seven Grammy award nominations. She’d overslept the actual announcement. “I was up late, watching Fleabag. Again!”We’re speaking over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. “This is my third time watching Fleabag. I’ve literally just paused it, again, to do this interview. Andrew Scott is my favourite actor in the world! And Phoebe [Waller-Bridge] is so fucking good, I can’t stress it enough. When I met her at the Bond premiere, I was trying not to blow smoke up her ass the entire night.”

British authorities accused of interrogating parents who came seeking help when their daughters went missingDetails of how police attempted to criminalise British families whose children were trafficked to Islamic State (IS) in Syria are revealed in a series of testimonies that show how grieving parents were initially treated as suspects and then abandoned by the authorities.One described being “treated like a criminal” and later realising that police were only interested in acquiring intelligence on IS instead of trying to help find their loved one. Another told how their home had been raided after they approached police for help to track down a missing relative. Continue reading...

Brian Cox is punchy, David Harewood candid and Miriam Margolyes raucously indiscreetIn a bonanza year for memoirs, Ruth Coker Burks got us off to a strong start with All the Young Men (Trapeze), a clear-eyed and poignant account of her years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1980s. While visiting a friend in hospital, Burks witnessed a group of nurses drawing straws over who should enter a room labelled “Biohazard”, the ward for men with “that gay disease”. And so she took it upon herself to sit with the dying and bury them when their families wouldn’t. Later, as the scale of fear and prejudice became apparent, she helped patients with food, transport, social security and housing, often at enormous personal cost. Her book, written with Kevin Carr O’Leary, finds light in the darkness as it reveals the love and camaraderie of a hidden community fighting for its life.Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl (Penguin), an exuberant account of Paris Lees’s tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where “the streets are paved wi’ dog shit”. Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders’ institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter. Continue reading...

Aston, Marvin, JB and Oritsé recreate their audition photo and reflect on backflips, friendships, reuniting and turkey farmingFinalists on 2008’s X Factor, JLS – short for Jack the Lad Swing – are one of the show’s most successful acts. Celebrated for their R&B-infused pop and slick dance routines, the band reached No 1 with their first single, Beat Again, while their debut album won multiple Brit and Mobo awards, and went quadruple platinum. They released three more albums and a condom range, before splitting in 2013. Oritsé Williams and Aston Merrygold went on to pursue solo careers in music, Marvin Humes is thriving as a TV and radio host, while JB Gill pivoted to turkey farming in Kent. Their new album, JLS 2.0, came out on 3 December, and they complete their comeback tour on 12 December at Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball at London’s O2.Aston Merrygold

Delays prompt energy regulator to threaten enforcement action and increase compensation paymentsThousands of people are still without power eight days after Storm Arwen caused major damage to parts of the UK network.The latest figures from the Energy Networks Association (ENA), the national industry body, show about 9,200 homes were without power on Friday evening. Continue reading...

Cherry Kearton popularised nature like a Victorian David Attenborough – using bold techniques to get close to his subjects, as a new exhibition shows

11 May 1914: The British wildlife photographer tells the Guardian about filming animals ‘unmolested and unharassed in their native wilds’

Going vegan has never been more popular – but some people who try it and then decide to reintroduce animal products face shocking treatmentIn 2015, Freya Robinson decided to go vegan. For more than a year, the 28-year-old from East Sussex did not consume a single animal product. Then, in 2016, on a family holiday in Bulgaria, she passed a steak restaurant and something inside her switched. “I walked in and ordered the biggest steak I could have and completely inhaled it,” she says. After finishing it, she ordered another.For the previous year, Robinson had been suffering from various health problems – low energy levels, brain fog, painful periods and dull skin – which she now believes were the result of her diet. She says her decline was gradual and almost went unnoticed. “Because it’s not an instant depletion, you don’t suddenly feel bad the next day, it’s months down the line. It’s very, very slow.” In just over a year, the balanced plant-based food she cooked daily from scratch, using organic vegetables from the farm she works on, and legumes and nuts vital for protein, had, she felt, taken a toll on her body. Continue reading...

Dazzling debuts, a word-of-mouth hit, plus this year’s bestsellers from Sally Rooney, Jonathan Franzen, Kazuo Ishiguro and moreThe most anticipated, discussed and accessorised novel of the year was Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber), launched on a tide of tote bags and bucket hats. It’s a book about the accommodations of adulthood, which plays with interiority and narrative distance as Rooney’s characters consider the purpose of friendship, sex and politics – plus the difficulties of fame and novel-writing – in a world on fire.Rooney’s wasn’t the only eagerly awaited new chapter. Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s magnum opus The Books of Jacob (Fitzcarraldo) reached English-language readers at last, in a mighty feat of translation by Jennifer Croft: a dazzling historical panorama about enlightenment both spiritual and scientific. In 2021 we also saw the returns of Jonathan Franzen, beginning a fine and involving 70s family trilogy with Crossroads (4th Estate); Kazuo Ishiguro, whose Klara and the Sun (Faber) probes the limits of emotion in the story of a sickly girl and her “artificial friend”; and acclaimed US author Gayl Jones, whose epic of liberated slaves in 17th-century Brazil, Palmares (Virago), has been decades in the making. Continue reading...

Aldi, McDonald’s, Ikea and Marmite jump on the festive bandwagon with branded jumpers, pants, hats and baublesA Lidl bit of style goes a long way. After the supermarket chain scored a surprise hit with its own-brand trainers, rivals are looking to capitalise on the “mundane” trend which has seen clothes emblazoned with the logos of everyday brands become surprise fashion icons.Aldi, McDonald’s, Ikea and Marmite have all jumped on the bandwagon with jumpers, hats and even Christmas baubles after Lidl’s trainers, decorated with the store’s garish corporate colours, became a social media sensation. Continue reading...

Insurgents shoot villagers going to a market on the same day UN peacekeeping convoy attacked, killing one personMilitants have killed at least 31 people in central Mali when they fired upon a bus ferrying people to a local market and attacked a UN convoy in the north of the country in a region racked by a violent insurgency.The bus was attacked on Friday by unidentified gunmen as it travelled its twice-weekly route from the village of Songho to a market in Bandiagara six miles (10km) away, said Moulaye Guindo, the mayor of the nearby town of Bankass. Continue reading...

South Australia announces rule changes for interstate arrivals as ACT records first case of variant. This blog is now closed

Greg Hunt says TGA and Atagi to decide on Pfizer vaccines for children by the end of the yearThe Australian government says Covid vaccines could soon be rolled out for children as young as five as Victoria reported nine deaths and the NSW health minister, Kerry Chant, warned of “an uptick” in Omicron cases in metropolitan Sydney.The federal health minister, Greg Hunt, said on Saturday that the regulators – the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation – were set to decide on giving Pfizer to children by the end of the year. Continue reading...

Normally, planes are in constant motion, pinballing between continents. But in March 2020 all that came to a halt. What did it mean for our jobs, our horizons – and the planet?

Adriana, 27, reporter, meets Streisand, 27, freelance reporterAdriana on StreisandWhat were you hoping for?

US and Australia become latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases

The dwindling number of places available for the metropolis’s Muslims are becoming religious battlefieldsUntil a few weeks ago, no one had given much thought to the car park outside sector 37 police station in Gurgaon, a satellite city to India’s capital, Delhi. But for the last few Fridays the dusty, litter-strewn patch of concrete has become a religious battlefield.This week as a Hindu nationalist mob assembled in their usual saffron, roars of their signature slogans “Jai Shri Ram” (Hail Lord Ram) and “hail the motherland” filled the air. Then a cry rang out: “The Muslims are here.” And the mob began to charge. Continue reading...

Poll takes place as human rights groups express fears over record of successor Adama BarrowGambians are heading to the polls on Saturday for the first time since the former president Yahya Jammeh was forced into exile after 22 years in power.Jammeh, whose rule was marred by allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings and rape, fled to Equatorial Guinea in 2017 when United Nations-backed regional coalition forces staged a military intervention after his refusal to concede electoral defeat. Continue reading...

Despite a review finding one in three parliamentary staffers have been sexually harassed, behaviour inside the building shows no sign of improvementAllegations of abuse and accusations of widespread sexism. Bullying and harassment particularly of women. A cabinet minister stood aside pending an investigation into claims by a former staffer that their relationship was at times “abusive”. Even by the low standards of the Australian parliament, it was a week of horror in Canberra.The final sitting week of parliament for the year began with a long-awaited report on sexual harassment and cultural issues within the parliament, which found one in three parliamentary staffers “have experienced some form of sexual harassment while working there”. Continue reading...

More than 100 cases of new variant have now been found in England; Strict social distancing will be required in Ireland’s bars and restaurants with mandatory table service and a maximum of six people per table

Met asked to investigate reports of alleged breaches of Covid lockdown rules at No 10

Is anyone safe from the knife-wielding puppet in this rebooted 80s horror classic? Certainly not people who shop at New Jersey yard salesMy editor was not born when Child’s Play came out in 1988 and so looked at me blankly when I begged and pleaded with her not to make me review Chucky (Sky Max), the latest screen incarnation of Don Mancini’s possessed doll – AKA the most famously malevolent inhabitant of the uncanny valley and one that traumatised for life anyone who saw the switchblade-wielding horror (“Wanna play?”) at too tender an age.So, here I am and here, most definitely, is Chucky once more. It’s exactly the same Good Guy doll, with exactly the same backstory – parcelled out in a flashback or two in each of the eight episodes – and the fear is real. At least for viewers of my generation. Maybe the younger folk, who don’t come trailing clouds of monstrous formative trauma and/or have been hardened by the real-life horrors of the internet, will fare better. Let me know, if you can. I’ll be behind the sofa, hyperventilating. Continue reading...

Government privately being urged by advisers to tell people to work from home as UK cases of variant hit 134UK ministers have been warned they cannot wait for new research on the Omicron variant and must act now to prevent a potentially “very significant wave of infections” that risks overwhelming the NHS.A 75 further cases of the variant have been identified in England, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Friday night, bringing the total number of UK confirmed cases to 134. The head of the agency, Dr Jenny Harries, said: “We have started to see cases where there are no links to travel, suggesting that we have a small amount of community transmission.” Continue reading...

Katharine Murphy speaks to the executive director of Essential about how Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are polling post-Covid lockdowns and the sexual harassment allegations in Parliament HouseRead more: Continue reading...

Once a place ‘where careers go to die’, in Vegas you can see the big stars up close – and it makes sense for AdeleLas Vegas shows once conjured images of early-bird dinner specials, corny magicians and Cole Porter standards sung to happily clapping coach parties. But with another of the world’s biggest pop stars signing on to perform in the city, namely Adele, the Vegas concert residency is further cemented as a glamorous and lucrative rite of pop passage.Her fourth album, 30, released last month, became the biggest-selling album of the year in the US after just three days on sale. That is the kind of popularity that warrants a stadium tour – indeed, she played to nearly 3 million punters across the 120-show stretch of her previous 2017-2018 world tour. Continue reading...

The country became the world’s newest republic this week. While Britain is still racked by arguments over empire, others have already passed judgmentThe contrast could hardly be more striking. In Britain, the removal of the statue of a slave trader, name changes for institutions and apologies from some who profited from slavery have produced reams of fevered arguments and fulminations. In Barbados, this week’s removal of the Queen as head of state was as calm and straightforward as the process leading to the change.Yes, there was a ceremony to swear in the new president, Sandra Mason (at which Rihanna provided rather more excitement than Prince Charles, as the prime minister, Mia Mottley, had savvily realised). But this symbolic moment was not one of high passion or drama. Continue reading...

Government accused of having emboldened extremists after lynching of Sri Lankan in SialkotA mob in Pakistan tortured, killed and then set on fire a Sri Lankan man who was accused of blasphemy over some posters he had allegedly taken down.Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national who worked as general manager of a factory of the industrial engineering company Rajco Industries in Sialkot, Punjab, was set upon by a violent crowd on Friday. Continue reading...

Analysis: the prince may be prepared to risk a costly lawsuit against the Sun and Mirror, rather than settlingThe legal battle against the Mail on Sunday may finally be over.But for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, another one looms, and this could make it all the way to trial. Continue reading...

Officials say variant’s R number is believed to be above 6, though most cases are mild and no deaths reported

In Guardian Australia’s online culture podcast, Michael Sun and Alyx Gorman bring in Vice Australia’s head of editorial Brad Esposito to chat about the evolution of brands on social media, from cringey posts to identity politics – including a tweet so tone deaf, Brad had to pull his car over to report on it. Then Michael teaches Alyx why breaking a Snapchat streak is an unforgivable faux pas Continue reading...

Emma Tustin sentenced to minimum of 29 years as boy’s father is jailed for 21 years for manslaughterA woman who killed her six-year-old stepson, who had been poisoned, starved and beaten in the weeks before his death, has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 29 years.Emma Tustin, 32, was sentenced for the murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, alongside his father, 29-year-old Thomas Hughes, who was given 21 years in prison for manslaughter. Continue reading...

Proposed register would come into effect in January, a year after near-total ban on abortionThe Polish government are planning to introduce a centralised register of pregnancies which would oblige doctors to report all pregnancies and miscarriages to the government.The proposed register would come into effect in January 2022, a year after Poland introduced a near-total ban on abortion. Continue reading...

Brent Osborn-Smith says his daughter Amelie is grateful to be alive and could return to UK this weekendThe father of a British teenager mauled by a crocodile in southern Africa has revealed he received a text message from a medic who was evacuating her from the scene by air, reading: “You have one hell of a brave girl there, sir.”Amelie Osborn-Smith, 18, was left with her right foot “hanging loose” and hip dislocated after a large crocodile bit her leg while she was swimming in the Zambezi river in Zambia during a break from a white-water rafting expedition. Continue reading...

The death of the musicals legend triggered anguish and a memory of a destabilising telling-offThere aren’t many public figures whose deaths, when announced, can trigger audible anguish, but Stephen Sondheim was one of them. At the end of last week, the alert popped up on my phone. Alone in my living room, I said loudly: “Oh no.” Continue reading...

Margaux Pinot says she feared her partner would kill her, but judge says there is not enough proof of guiltFrench sports stars and politicians have expressed anger at the acquittal of a coach accused of domestic violence against the Olympic judo champion Margaux Pinot, as the state prosecutor launched an appeal.Pinot, 27, a gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics, had serious facial injuries including a fractured nose when she filed a police complaint in the early hours of Sunday. She said her partner and trainer, Alain Schmitt, had attacked her at her flat outside Paris, wrestled her to the ground, verbally abused her, punched her many times, repeatedly smashed her head on to the ground and tried to strangle her. Continue reading...

Sebastian Kurz has sent party in disarray since stepping down as chancellor in OctoberAustria’s ruling conservatives have picked the interior minister, an immigration hardliner, to lead them and the nation after a wave of resignations by senior officials set off by Sebastian Kurz.Karl Nehammer succeeds Kurz as party chief and will lead the coalition government with the Greens. He takes over a party in disarray since Kurz stepped down as chancellor in October because he had been placed under criminal investigation on suspicion of corruption offences. Continue reading...