A decade on from psychologist Steven Pinker’s declaration that violence is declining, historians show no sign of agreeing a truceTen years ago, the psychologist Steven Pinker published The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he argued that violence in almost all its forms – including war – was declining. The book was ecstatically received in many quarters, but then came the backlash, which shows no signs of abating. In September, 17 historians published a riposte to Pinker, suitably entitled The Darker Angels of Our Nature, in which they attacked his “fake history” to “debunk the myth of non-violent modernity”. Some may see this as a storm in an intellectual teacup, but the central question – can we learn anything about the future of warfare from the ancient past? – remains an important one.Pinker thought we could and he supported his claim of a long decline with data stretching thousands of years back into prehistory. But among his critics are those who say that warfare between modern nation states, which are only a few hundred years old, has nothing in common with conflict before that time, and therefore it’s too soon to say if the supposed “long peace” we’ve been enjoying since the end of the second world war is a blip or a sustained trend. Continue reading...

Could you calm someone living in a war zone? Meet five counsellors facing up to terrible challengesI joined the Liverpool Fire Brigade in 1968 at the age of 16. I transferred to North Wales, before eventually joining South Wales Fire and Rescue Service nearly three decades later. I was brought up in a Christian home; my father was a minister right here in the valleys. For a long time, I never wanted to be involved, formally. Eventually, I trained for the ministry, jointly leading a church, and missions in Uganda. On one such trip, I found my calling. Continue reading...

An impoverished teen seeks to escape the clutches of a human trafficker in Alexandre Moratto’s complex dramaBrazilian director Alexandre Moratto’s follow-up to his award-winning debut Socrates, 7 Prisoners delves into the subject of modern slavery through the eyes of 18-year-old Mateus (Christian Malheiros, excellent). In order to support his family, Mateus takes a job in the city, but finds himself imprisoned and working off a seemingly endless debt to his employer (Rodrigo Santoro). His initial reaction is desperation and anger, but Mateus is smart and negotiates with his captor on behalf of his fellow workers. The rather on-the-nose storytelling grows increasingly complex and interesting the further that the protagonist ventures into morally ambiguous territory.In cinemas and on Netflix from 11 November Continue reading...

David Owen condemns Cabinet Office’s ‘waste of public money’ in four-year bid to stop part of archive’s releaseThe Cabinet Office has been accused of a “grotesque abuse” of public funds in a freedom of information battle over the personal diaries of Lord and Lady Mountbatten in which costs are now expected to exceed £600,000.Andrew Lownie, the author and historian, has fought a four-year legal battle over the papers that are in an archive saved for the nation after a fundraising campaign. They are now held at Southampton University. Continue reading...

The theatre and film actor on staging a pair of Julian Barnes stories, playing Emperor Palpatine, and finding peace in isolationIan McDiarmid, 77, has distinguished himself as a theatrical all-rounder. He made his name on stage as an actor of incisive authority and is internationally known as Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films. Between 1990 and 2002, he ran – with Jonathan Kent – the Almeida theatre in London with tremendous flair. He is touring a one-man show, The Lemon Table – his adaptation of a pair of acerbically funny Julian Barnes stories: one about Sibelius in old age, the other about a sixtysomething concert-goer with zero tolerance for coughers, chatterers and mobile-phone users.What first drew you to Julian Barnes’s stories?

The daughter of the Indonesian president responds to our story about the propaganda war waged against himMy father, Sukarno, the first elected president of Indonesia, was put under house arrest in March 1967 a few days after I was born. He was 67. In the months before, there had been a bloodbath in the country in which he lost many trusted friends and allies. The year before, he had sent my mother, who was pregnant with me, to Japan, her homeland, advising her to return to Indonesia when the situation improved.It never did. Three years later, in 1970, I saw my father for the first time, on his deathbed. My mother and I had not been allowed to return to the country and we had been living in France. My father died a few hours after our plane from Paris landed. Thanks to the despotic rule of the second president – General Suharto – I was not able to see my father alive, although my mother had tried repeatedly to enter Indonesia. Continue reading...

Artefacts reflect joys and sorrows of a community persecuted in Spain since Catholic reconquest in 1492It doesn’t look like a place of legend, but the narrow Carrer de la Cera is the birthplace of la rumba catalana, the infectiously rhythmic stepchild of flamenco created by Barcelona’s Gypsy community in the 1950s and popular today throughout the world.Now the city’s gitanos have their own museum, a tiny, vibrant space on the Carrer de la Cera, which lies in the multicultural el Raval neighbourhood. The museum will open its doors on Sunday. Continue reading...

The comedian will have you in stitches, but she can also leave you speechless. Katherine Ryan talks to Eva Wiseman about breast implants and potty training – and the jokes even she wouldn’t risk todayKatherine Ryan has named her autobiography The Audacity, a word (she explains) most commonly used to indicate disapproval. “Like, ‘HOW DARE she carry herself with that wicked abundance of self-belief? How AUDACIOUS!’” It is the perfect title. The absolute perfect title for a memoir by a comedian equal parts louche and lurid, famous for her uncompromising attitude, convincing invulnerability and refusal to self-deprecate. Her cover photo, shot when she was nine months pregnant, sees Ryan lucent and blonde in an ice-blue gown trimmed with marabou feathers, holding aloft in her left hand her favourite of her three tiny dogs.It is these small dogs that greet me at her front door, and an entirely other lady. Instead of TV’s Katherine Ryan, be-lashed and dazzling, a happy cross between Christine Baranski and Taylor Swift, I’m welcomed by real-life Ryan, makeup-less in leggings, immediately offering me a plate of halloumi salad and a selection of milks for my tea. A breast pump sits on the counter beside a bag of golden hair extensions and outside, by the dainty heated swimming pool, her 12-week-old baby Fred sleeps gently in his pram. The atmosphere is one of Californian tranquillity in the London suburbs, only punctured slightly by her description of a man lowering his anus on to a bed post. Continue reading...

Asylum seekers are pawns in a conflict between Poland and BelarusOn the outskirts of the Białowieża forest – which bestrides the border between south-east Poland and Belarus – a group of seven Iraqi Kurds make their weary way towards the Polish hamlet of Grodzisk.The latest miles of their journey have been from Belarus – crossing back and forth twice, deported after their first and second attempts. Now a third time: through sub-zero temperatures, across the primeval forest’s marshy terrain. Among them are two children: an eight-month-old girl and a two-year-old boy. When we came upon them, they were afraid to get up off the ground and begged us not to call the police, whispering: “They’ll kill us.” Continue reading...

Figures delayed as police and borders bills pass through parliamentThe Home Office has failed to release its annual stop-and-search data, prompting concern that the figures will reveal a further increase to disproportionate targeting of black people.At the same time, the department is refusing to publish the results of its own public consultation into its heavily criticised “anti-refugee” legislation. Continue reading...

The close aide to Hillary Clinton has written a tale spliced with pain but blind to her boss’s weak spots

As No 10 ham-fistedly let the scandal spread, was this about saving an old Brexit ally or protecting the PM himself?A Conservative MP who entered parliament in 2010 began to receive what he described as a series of “unusually persistent” texts from his Tory whip last week. The member in question had been part of the Conservative intake that followed the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009.The arrival of this new group at Westminster – many of them with impressive previous careers outside politics – was supposed to demonstrate, as David Cameron said at the time, that his party was reforming its ways, ridding itself of sleaze. Continue reading...

The trailblazing director on how #MeToo inspired her first feature in more than a decade, the revisionist western The Power of the DogThe Power of the Dog is the first feature film Jane Campion has directed in 12 years. That it happened at all is down to her picking up Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name and not being able to put it down.“I was actually thinking of retiring before I did this film,” she says, matter of factly, “but then I thought, ‘Oh man, this is gonna be a big one.’ I’d read the book and loved it and afterwards I just kept thinking about it. When I made a move to find out who had the rights, that’s when I knew it had got me. I needed to do it.” Continue reading...

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy reflects movingly on the death of Jack and other sad eventsThe Observer Magazine of 10 March 1974 featured a very moving account by Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy of some of the tragedies that befell the Kennedys, serialised from her memoir Times to Remember.After her husband Joe’s debilitating stroke, she recalled a lunch between him and Herbert Hoover – ‘Joe, who cannot speak, and Mr Hoover, who cannot hear’ – in New York, 1962. ‘And so poignant, inexpressibly sad, when each of them from time to time through the meal wept silently.’ Continue reading...

Try to imagine events through her eyes. If you hold on to your position, believing her to be selfish, nothing will changeThe question My youngest daughter has ignored me since I divorced her mother some years ago. She didn’t even visit when I suffered from cancer and had chemotherapy. When she got married, my partner and I were not allowed to attend. I’ve never met her child, yet her husband’s father, who is in the same situation as me, widowed with a new partner, is allowed to visit and see my grandchild. I also have a married son with children and they all are fine with me and my partner.Now, before my elderly mother’s birthday, she says I can visit her so that the party won’t be the first time we meet again. I can’t get over the fact that she has been so selfish and ignored me for years, even when I was so ill with cancer. I’m livid that I’ve been treated this way. I don’t know what to say if I visit her. Continue reading...

Detectives believe a candle left burning on top of a piano may have caused the instrument to smoulder and emit toxic fumes inside the residence at GoonengerryNeighbours have left flowers at the entrance to a northern NSW property where twin girls died following a house fire thought to have started after a candle was left burning.Police and ambulance paramedics performed CPR on the four-year-old sisters but they were unable to be revived. Continue reading...

An increasing number of women are selling their eggs for as much as $20,000 a cycle to cover essential costsMy eyes flutter open. I’m surrounded by four nurses holding me upside down. They shake me back and forth, urging the blood back to my head. As I regain consciousness I wonder: is this worth it? That “it” is the $10,000 question.Seven months ago, I received my acceptance to Columbia University’s School of Journalism. I was absolutely stunned to be admitted, but even more shocked by the $116,000 price tag – and that was just for tuition. The school, whose education is widely considered the golden standard in journalism, would provide me with unparalleled access, in an industry I currently felt immobile in. Continue reading...

The crash sparked an inferno that also injured at least three people on the highway between Mexico City and Puebla stateA transport truck has smashed into a toll booth and six other vehicles on a highway in central Mexico, leaving at least 19 people dead and three injured, authorities said.The brakes on the truck apparently failed before it crashed into the toll booth and then the vehicles on Saturday, igniting a large fire on the highway connecting Mexico City with Puebla state. Continue reading...

Assa wollumbin found in Wollumbin national park and will likely be listed as critically endangered

People in England will be able to book their Covid-19 booster jab a month before they are eligible from Monday

Musician went on to perform in breakaway group with former vocalist Ali Campbell and Mickey VirtueFormer UB40 member Astro, real name Terence Wilson, has died after a short illness, his current band has confirmed.The musician went on to perform with breakaway group UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro. Continue reading...

Conference in Lourdes recognised that church had allowed abuses to become ‘systemic’Senior members of France’s Roman Catholic hierarchy knelt in a show of penance at the shrine of Lourdes on Saturday, a day after bishops accepted the church’s responsibility for decades of child abuse.But some of the survivors of the abuse – and lay members supporting them – said they were still waiting for details of compensation and of a comprehensive reform of the church. Continue reading...

More than 350 people linked to organised crime are being tried, with biggest names yet to be judgedItaly struck an early blow on Saturday against the country’s powerful ’Ndrangheta organised crime group, convicting 70 mobsters and others in a first, crucial test of the largest mafia trial in more than three decades.Judge Claudio Paris read out verdicts and sentences against 91 defendants in the massive courtroom in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme. Continue reading...

Protesters link woman’s death by septic shock to new restrictions on ending unviable pregnancies“Her heart was beating too,” thousands of protesters across Poland chanted on Saturday during demonstrations sparked by the death of a pregnant 30-year-old woman in hospital. Her family say that the hospital staff refused her life-saving health care because they were afraid of breaking the country’s strict abortion law.Demonstrators were joined by senior opposition politicians, including Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council. Continue reading...

Australia’s plant-based meat market is booming, with increasingly sophisticated production techniques aiming to earn a place on carnivores’ plates. Assistant news editor Shelley Hepworth recommends this story about meat alternatives

Exclusive: Taxpayer cost of offshore processing regime revealed as government remains silent on where $400m wentThe cost to Australian taxpayers to hold a single refugee on Nauru has escalated tenfold to more than $350,000 every month – or $4.3m a year – as the government refuses to reveal where nearly $400m spent on offshore processing on the island has gone.Australia currently pays about $40m a month to run its offshore processing regime on Nauru, an amount almost identical to 2016 when there were nearly 10 times as many people held on the island. Continue reading...

Person alleged to have made threat during a phone call to a female Labour politicianA British national has been arrested in Ireland on suspicion of making threats to kill a sitting Labour MP.A 41-year-old man was detained in the Cork suburb of Douglas on Saturday and brought to the Brideswell Garda station for questioning. Continue reading...

Marília Mendonça, one of Brazil’s biggest singers and a Latin Grammy winner, has been killed in a plane crash on her way to a concert. Her press office said their plane crashed between Mendonça’s home town of Goiânia and Caratinga, a small city 220 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. The aircraft was around seven miles from Caratinga, her destination for that evening’s gig.

Dyfed-Powys police say woman held on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter has been released under investigationPolice in Wales have arrested a woman on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter following a paddleboarding incident a week ago that has now claimed a fourth death.The suspect, who police said was from south Wales, has been released under investigation. Continue reading...

The musician and composer on a magical performance by Udo Kier, a west African drumming app and where to find a taste of PalestineDamon Albarn was born in east London in 1968. Interested in music from a young age, he studied at East 15 Acting School and then Goldsmiths, where he co-founded the band that helped kick off Britpop. As well as recording eight studio albums with Blur, Albarn also co-created Gorillaz and the Good, the Bad & the Queen, spearheaded the collaborative organisation Africa Express and has scored stage productions including Monkey: Journey to the West and Dr Dee. He lives in Notting Hill, west London, with his partner, Suzi Winstanley. On 12 November, Albarn releases his second solo album The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows on Transgressive Records. Continue reading...

The reggae musician and producer, 68, talks about Bob Marley, Linton Kwesi Johnson, police intimidation, impressing his dad and writing songs in prison to vent his angerMy very first memory is meeting my dad. I was small and because he worked in America, I only knew him from the photo that sat on the mantelpiece. It’s because of my dad that I made every effort to become a musician. He said to me, “You should find a decent job, because if you make music, you’ll never eat a decent meal in a decent restaurant.” Well, I’ve eaten some nice meals in some nice restaurants!I know my dad is proud of me. He never told me to my face, but he would brag about me to his friends. To my face he’d say, “Are you still trying to play that guitar?” That was our running joke. I made a point of giving him a copy of every release and production I’d ever made, to the point where if I wanted some of my old stuff, I would have to go to him to get a copy. Even then he’d only let me borrow it. Continue reading...

The Nobel prize-winning gynaecologist counts Michaela Coel, Jill Biden and a small army of Congolese women among his fans. Yet he still won’t call himself a heroIn 1984,at the age of 29, Dr Denis Mukwege moved to France from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to complete his training as a junior obstetrician. It was his first trip to Europe, and he had spent half his life savings on the air fare. The city of Angers was to be his home for five years, but he struggled to make it one. He would arrange to view flats and on arrival would be told that they had just been let. It took him a while to figure out that it was his skin colour that was making apartments disappear. He finally found a home in a houseshare with other students.When he took up his training position, he was astonished at how well staffed and equipped the hospital was compared with the one he had come from in the DRC, which delivered the same number of babies annually with just two doctors, as opposed to 30. Mukwege was already far more experienced than his peers in France. He had gained expertise beyond his years working in a small, under-resourced hospital where he operated on women and girls by torchlight and often broke away, mid-surgery, to consult medical literature for instructions. Continue reading...

Sir Tom Winsor says random searches of officers’ WhatsApp and social media could act as deterrentRandom phone searches for police officers should be carried out to check for inappropriate jokes and racist, sexist and homophobic slurs, the chief inspector of constabulary has said.Sir Tom Winsor said trawling WhatsApp and social media could act as a deterrent, much in the same way that the random drug testing of police officers does. Sir Tom also spoke of his revulsion over officers taking photographs of the murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry before sharing them in a group message with colleagues. Continue reading...

Large crowds had gathered to collect leaking fuel after a bus struck the tanker in a Freetown suburbAn oil tanker has exploded near Sierra Leone’s capital, killing at least 92 people and severely injuring dozens of others after large crowds gathered to collect leaking fuel, officials and witnesses said on Saturday.The explosion took place late on Friday after a bus struck the tanker in Wellington, a suburb just to the east of Freetown. Continue reading...

Austin Mellor plunged into the cold Irish Sea to save a woman caught in a riptide. The Guardian Angel treats him to a safer adrenaline fix on an indoor ski slopeWhen Austin Mellor was in year seven, a boy in his year was being bullied. It had been going on for a while, and Mellor hated it. One day he snapped and gave the bully a black eye. It worked. The bully stopped.When Mellor’s mum, Julie, found out, she was worried. “She says I’m one of those people who goes out of their way to help others, even when I probably shouldn’t,” says Mellor, now 25 and an estate agent in Greater Manchester (who certainly would no longer advocate resorting to violence). Continue reading...

The assault sent vacationers scurrying and raises fears that drug cartel rivalries could doom a lucrative tourist industryFifty years ago, Cancún was little more than a hurricane-battered fishing outpost, but it mushroomed into a tourist mecca thanks to massive government investment – and by the 1980s it was firmly established as the crown jewel of Mexico’s tourist industry.Millions of tourists from around the world descend annually on the destination and the Riviera Maya, which unfolds to the south. Continue reading...

In the small hours, thousands of people lie in bed, eyes open, mind racing, desperately hoping to nod off. What are they thinking about? We spend a long, long night with the nation’s sleeplessPaul Chan has tried hot tea, hot baths, hot-water bottles, a cold breeze from an open window, mental maths, brainteasers, very slow breathing in bed and very brisk walks around his bedroom. Now, on a random night in October, the 52-year-old from Liverpool tries to get to sleep by imagining that he is James Bond. Why not? Chan is among that enormous proportion of the British public – one in three, according to an NHS estimate – who suffer from routine bouts of sleeplessness. He has just been to the cinema to see No Time to Die and as he closes his eyes for the night, he decides to start at the beginning, mentally recreating the movie in as much detail as he can manage. Scene one. A frozen lake in Norway …A little way north, in Durham, Lucy Adlington is alert, awake, and stuck. The 36-year-old silversmith cannot fall asleep but is hesitant to clamber out of bed for fear of waking the rest of her household. Somewhere between 3am and 4am, she picks up her smartphone and, speaking softly, begins to dictate a voice message. What does it feel like, being awake, alone, out of options, in the smallest and quietest hours of the night? “Like being an animal in a cage,” Adlington says, murmuring into her phone. Continue reading...

The musician on his hair (or lack of), Fox News and his great love: a tiny dog named BagelBorn in New York City, Moby, 56, became a global star with his 1999 album, Play; his records have now sold more than 20m copies. His latest, Reprise, is a collection of orchestral recordings of his classic hits; Gregory Porter covers his song Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? on his new album Still Rising. Moby lives in Los Angeles.What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Singer, 26, was one of Brazil’s most popular singers and a Latin Grammy winnerMarília Mendonça, one of Brazil’s biggest singers and a Latin Grammy winner, has been killed in a plane crash on her way to a concert.The 26-year-old pop star died alongside her producer, her uncle – who worked as her adviser – and both the pilot and co-pilot of the plane. Continue reading...

A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Hong Kong to Khartoum Continue reading...

Island’s foreign minister and premier among people to be stopped from entering mainland and Hong KongChina has said it will hold those who support “Taiwan independence” criminally liable for life, provoking anger and ridicule from the island at a time of heightened tension between the neighbours.For the first time, China has spelled out the punishment that awaits people deemed to back independence for Taiwan – top officials of the self-ruled island among them. Continue reading...

Pre-booking invitations to be sent out five months after second dose as part of effort to speed up programme

WA police say actions of witnesses were ‘heroic’ after incident reportedly involving tiger shark and great white shark

200 daily cases for the first time as PM says it is on track to have ‘amongst the highest vaccination rates in the world’New Zealand has passed 200 daily cases of Covid-19 for the first time in the pandemic, placing it on a worrying trajectory for the summer and raising expert concerns that the growing outbreak could overwhelm the health system.On Saturday there were 206 cases announced – 200 based in Auckland, the city at the centre of the outbreak. There were 73 people in hospital with the virus, seven in intensive care. Continue reading...

The spotlight will now turn from the West Australian town, but that doesn’t mean all of its problems are solved

The fight for Rogers Communications has riven one of Canada’s richest families – and began with an accidental butt dialFor weeks, Canadians have been gripped by a messy public feud splintering one of the country’s richest families. Kicked off by an accidental pocket dial that revealed an executive-level coup attempt, the battle has pitted mother against son, ensnared Toronto’s mayor and drawn comparisons to the HBO show Succession.Two separate groups of directors have proclaimed themselves the rightful stewards of Rogers Communications, a sprawling C$30bn telecommunications and entertainment empire with interests in media, professional hockey, basketball, baseball, football and soccer. Continue reading...

Only those vaccinated or recovered from Covid will be allowed to frequent restaurants and cultural venues in Austria ; UK records 34,029 new infections

Frozan Safi, 29, is believed to be the first women’s rights defender to be killed since Taliban return to powerA 29-year-old activist and economics lecturer, Frozan Safi, has been shot and killed in northern Afghanistan, in what appears to be the first known death of a women’s rights defender since the Taliban swept to power almost three months ago.Frozan Safi’s body was identified in a morgue in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif after she went missing on 20 October. “We recognised her by her clothes. Bullets had destroyed her face,” said Safi’s sister, Rita, who is a doctor. Continue reading...

Anti-establishment Million Mask March group gathered to let off fireworks and demonstrate against the governmentEight police officers have been injured after clashing with hundreds of anti-establishment protesters in Parliament Square on Bonfire Night.Demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes-style masks had gathered at nearby Trafalgar Square at the annual Million Mask March with some throwing fireworks at officers. Continue reading...

Victim’s mother calls for resignation of health boss as families consider suing over assaults on loved onesSenior ministers are resisting calls for an immediate independent inquiry into how a hospital worker was able to attack at least 100 female corpses in mortuaries, as Kent police said they had been inundated with over 200 calls from those fearing