Announcement comes amid signs Tehran may be open to resuming stalled talks on 2015 nuclear dealIran has amassed more than 120kg of 20% enriched uranium, well above the level agreed to in the 2015 deal with world powers, the head of the country’s atomic energy agency has told state television.“We have passed 120 kilograms,” said Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation. “We have more than that figure. Our people know well that [western powers] were meant to give us the enriched fuel at 20% to use in the Tehran reactor, but they haven’t done so. Continue reading...
by Daniel Hurst Foreign affairs and defence correspon on (#5QJ0F)
Embassy in Canberra describes former Australian PM as ‘a failed and pitiful politician’ after he raised concerns that Beijing ‘could lash out disastrously’
Andrej Babiš’s populist ANO party narrowly behind Together three-party grouping in parliamentary pollPrime minister Andrej Babiš’s centrist party on Saturday narrowly lost the Czech Republic’s parliamentary election, a surprise development that could mean the end of the populist billionaire’s reign in power.The two-day election to fill 200 seats in the lower house of the parliament took place shortly after details emerged of Babiš’s overseas financial dealings in the Pandora Papers. Babiš, 67, has denied wrongdoing. Continue reading...
Lack of EU staff adding to shortages: ‘There aren’t enough to deliver care we need’Ministers are being warned of a mounting workforce crisis in England’s hospitals as they struggle to recruit staff for tens of thousands of nursing vacancies, with one in five nursing posts on some wards now unfilled.Hospital leaders say the nursing shortfall has been worsened by a collapse in the numbers of recruits from Europe, including Spain and Italy. Continue reading...
A crashed Kia Rio and a dead man found by police soon after incident in which a child was also injuredA woman has been taken to hospital after she was hit by a car and then stabbed while with a child in Cumbria.Police are investigating an incident that occurred at about 2.30pm on Saturday in the Woodend area in Egremont. Continue reading...
Mali president’s office pays tribute to the courage of Gloria Cecilia Narváez as it confirms her releaseA Franciscan nun from Colombia kidnapped by jihadists in Mali in 2017 has been freed, Mali’s presidential office said.The statement on the presidential Twitter account paid tribute to the courage of Gloria Cecilia Narváez, who was held for four years and eight months. Continue reading...
Home Office fears PM views aggressive targeting of women and girls as ‘mere wolf whistling’ amid moves to create specific offenceBoris Johnson has infuriated the home secretary by overruling attempts to make public sexual harassment a crime. This has prompted concern at the Home Office that the prime minister views the issue as mere “wolf whistling”, rather than the aggressive targeting of women and girls going about their daily lives.Sources say tensions have emerged between Johnson and Priti Patel, and other senior Home Office figures, after he blocked plans to make public sexual harassment a specific offence. Continue reading...
Man, 37, said to be killed by falling decor in set change during Rimsky-Korsakov operaA performer at Moscow’s renowned Bolshoi theatre was killed on Saturday in an accident on stage during an opera, the theatre said.The Bolshoi, one of Russia’s most prestigious theatres, said the incident occurred during a set change in Sadko, an opera by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Continue reading...
Firestorms used to be a rare phenomenon, but in December 2019 the tiny town of Nerriga faced one of what would be many of the Black Summer seasonJustin Parr has been working frantically all morning helping to build a defence for Nerriga. He’s managed only a handful of hours of decent sleep since his 22-hour overnight firefight on Thursday, but he’s not feeling fatigued. While the volunteer firefighter has known since he was a boy it was his duty to protect his community, this is the first time the threat has ever got so close.Parr and his small brigade have just received much-needed support. Earlier that morning, a strike team with eight Rural Fire Service (RFS) trucks from towns closer to Canberra arrived, joining the three based in Nerriga. Continue reading...
Coalition partner, the Green party, demanded Kurz go after prosecutors announced investigationThe Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said on Saturday that he plans to step down in an effort to defuse a government crisis triggered by prosecutors’ announcement that he is a target of a corruption investigation.Kurz, 35, said he has proposed that the foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, be his replacement. Kurz himself plans to become the head of his Austrian People’s party’s parliamentary group. Continue reading...
In 1940, thousands of the dictator’s opponents were summarily shot and thrown into mass graves. Now these are being openedTrowel-heap by trowel-heap, brushstroke by brushstroke, a skull rises from a pillow of ochre earth. Its empty eye sockets stare up at the October sky and its jaw gapes, as if still screaming, gasping for air or remembering what happened on the other side of this bullet-bitten cemetery wall a year after the Spanish civil war had ended.Between 16 March and 3 May 1940, 26 Republican soldiers, workers, communists and trade unionists were summarily tried and shot dead in the central Spanish city of Guadalajara. Continue reading...
by Martin Chulov in Deir ez-Zor, Syria on (#5QHP0)
The site of Islamic State’s last stand is now the most hotly contested pocket of the Middle EastFrom a ridge known locally as Baghouz Mountain, the most contested corner of the Middle East resembles an oasis: it’s a splash of green on a desert horizon stretching from the banks of the Euphrates to a sprawling area of new homes housing new – and unruly – neighbours.Little moves in the heat of the day. The river that has sustained Iraq and eastern Syria through the ages comes alive at night, and so does the town of al-Bukamal, where smugglers, militia members, proxy groups, mercenaries and the armies of three nations have all taken prominent stakes since the juggernaut of Islamic State was defeated here three years ago. Continue reading...
by Martin Chulov Middle East correspondent on (#5QHF2)
Country’s two main power stations stop working due to fuel shortage plunging cities into darknessLebanon’s electricity grid collapsed on Saturday after its two main power plants ran out of fuel, plunging much of the crisis-ridden country into darkness for at least two days.The nationwide blackout marks a new low for the crumbling state, which has struggled to source dollars to pay market rates for fuel in the wake of a profound financial collapse that has decimated the local currency and forced the economy to a halt. Continue reading...
Police appeal for witnesses after shots fired into shop in crowded part of Newham on FridayPolice are appealing for witnesses after three men were shot in a barber’s shop in east London.The Metropolitan police said officers were called to reports of a shooting in Upton Lane, Newham, just before 7pm on Friday. Continue reading...
Nine people detained in connection with the deaths in Orenburg region bordering KazakhstanTwenty-nine people have died from alcohol poisoning this week in a region near Kazakhstan after consuming locally produced spirits that contained methanol, Russian authorities said.Investigators looking into the production and sale of the illegal spirits said nine people had been detained in connection with the deaths in the Orenburg region in the southern Urals, 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) south-east of Moscow. Continue reading...
Sentence of 20 years for alleged critic of regime was upheld a day after controversial football deal was sealedThe sister of a Saudi aid worker jailed for tweeting criticism of the regime has spoken of her shock and anger after the Saudi-led takeover of Newcastle United was approved just 24 hours after the state upheld her brother’s 20-year sentence.Areej al-Sadhan said she had not spoken to her brother, Abdulrahman, for years and warned Newcastle fans that the club’s reputation was now firmly tied to the actions of the Saudi regime and its de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman. She claimed her brother had been repeatedly abused in custody and called on the UK government to properly investigate who controls the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) that now owns 80% of Newcastle. She said the club would now be “complicit in partnering with a savage person who murders people and tortures them”. Continue reading...
Comments made as talks begin in Qatar to discuss allowing foreigners and at-risk Afghans to evacuateThe Taliban has ruled out cooperation with the US to contain extremist groups in Afghanistan, staking out an uncompromising position on a key issue ahead of the first direct talks between the former foes since the US withdrew from the country in August.Senior Taliban officials and US representatives are to meet on Saturday and Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Continue reading...
Independent force will look into judgment supporting former officer Rhona Malone’s claim of victimisationAn independent review has been ordered after a tribunal found evidence of a “sexist culture” in Scotland’s armed policing.The case was brought by former officer Rhona Malone against Police Scotland alleging sex discrimination and victimisation. Continue reading...
The red-hot eruption from the volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma was accompanied by flashes of lightning early on Saturday. A study published in 2016 by the journal Geophysical Research Letters found lightning can be produced during volcanic eruptions because the collision of ash particles creates an electrical charge
The comedian, 62, on growing up shy in Middlesbrough, losing his dad, meeting Vic Reeves, and the deep contentment of fishingI was quite a shy boy. Growing up in Middlesbrough, I felt a bit of an outsider. My three elder brothers are funny and boisterous and I was in awe of them. I felt like an appendage. It’s probably the curse of being a younger kid. I’ve seen some become the loudest because they fight for their place, and others retreat to the fringes. I was in the latter group.If you’re the quietest at home, it’s tough to find a voice. I’ve always been quite a good mate to have because of that. If I ever did make a connection with anyone, it was very precious to me. My friendships are everything. Continue reading...
Lockdown and ‘looking after the grandmas’ may have kept the Rage Against the Machine guitarist away from recent protests – but he refuses to be silencedTom Morello has made more than 20 albums, as a founding member of Rage Against the Machine – the political rap-rock band who have sold 16m records, and whose 1992 track Killing in the Name has become a perennial protest anthem – and of the bands Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. He also plays solo under the name the Nightwatchman, and has toured with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. His unique approach to the guitar, which he has self-deprecatingly described as “making R2-D2 noises”, has led to him regularly being voted as one of the greatest guitar players of all time. His latest album, The Atlas Underground Fire (released on 15 October), features a series of collaborations recorded in lockdown – with Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Damian Marley and Bring Me the Horizon, among others. He is a celebrated “nonsectarian socialist” political activist, famed for performing at demonstrations – he played at Occupy events across the US and Europe – and a co-founder of the nonprofit “social justice” organisation Axis of Justice.You recorded your new album in lockdown. Did the pandemic also mean you missed out on the ongoing protests in the US?
First president after 1979 Islamic revolution clashed with clerics and fled to exile in France a year laterAbolhassan Bani-Sadr, who became Iran’s first president after the 1979 Islamic revolution before fleeing into exile in France, has died aged 88.He died on Saturday at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris following a long illness, his wife and children said on Bani-Sadr’s official website. Continue reading...
Buildings near the crater on the Spanish island were engulfed by lava on Saturday morningBuildings near the volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma have been engulfed by rivers of lava, with the drama of the red-hot eruption intensified by the spectacle of flashes of lightning.The magma destroyed at least four buildings in the village of Callejon de la Gata, witnesses said. Continue reading...
The comedian and her dad recreate a childhood photo and talk about early days in India, agoraphobia and swapping banking for comedyBorn in New Delhi in 1969, Sindhu Vee spent her childhood in India and the Philippines, before throwing herself into academia, getting degrees from Oxford, Montreal and Chicago universities. In her early 40s, she traded the world of investment banking for standup comedy. Her career quickly ascended, with appearances on QI, Have I Got News for You, Radio 4 and Netflix’s forthcoming adaptation of Matilda. She lives in London with her husband and three children; she is currently touring her new show Alphabet. Continue reading...
A sandstorm made by powerful winds whipping up dust from the ground has engulfed Barretos and surrounding towns north of the city of São Paulo. The storms were triggered by the worst drought to hit Brazil in nine decades, which depleted hydroelectric reservoirs, forcing the grid operator to fire up more expensive thermoelectric plants and the government to implement a 'water scarcity' power rate. Continue reading...
Taiwan reiterates it is a sovereign nation after Xi says its ‘separatism’ is biggest ‘danger to national rejuvenation’China’s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to realise “reunification” with Taiwan by peaceful means, after a week of heightened tensions in the Taiwan Strait.Taiwan responded shortly after by calling on Beijing to abandon its “coercion”, reiterating that only Taiwan’s people could decide their future. Continue reading...
Evidence is mounting that Northern Ireland is failing. A different constitutional future seems increasingly likelyA powerful new play has just opened at Belfast’s Lyric theatre. The Border Game, by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney, is a fractured love story and a sharp political satire about the legacy of partition. Its setting is an abandoned customs hut on boggy ground beside a broken barbed-wire fence that marks the border between Northern Ireland, where Henry lives, and the Republic, where Sinead lives. The play is moving, honourable, and just a little bit messy. You get the impression the ending might change in the course of its run. But somehow this rawness at the edges seems quite befitting.The former lovers, who still appear to be in love, attempt to tell each other why they separated, each of them wounded by the conviction that it was the choice of the other. They have survived, but they are haunted by the proximity of others who did not. There is a ruinous sense of responsibility to the dead. Resorting to desperate hilarity, they come up with a word: “Borderfucked. Twelve letters. The condition of being fucked economically, socially and psychologically due to the stroke of a pen. Common in Ireland, the Middle East, and all over the fucking world.”Susan McKay is an Irish writer and journalist whose books include Northern Protestants – On Shifting Ground Continue reading...
Press groups and rights activists hail peace prize won by vocal critic of Philippine president Rodrigo DuterteVeteran Philippine journalist Maria Ressa has said her Nobel peace prize was for “all journalists around the world” as she vowed to continue her battle for press freedom.Ressa, co-founder of news website Rappler, and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov were awarded the prize on Friday for their efforts to “safeguard freedom of expression”. Continue reading...
The Australian composer has returned to performing after a 10-year break. He writes about fame, failure and his surprise comebackIn 2003, I booked a tiny venue for Melbourne fringe festival, to perform a show I had tortuously titled Navel: Cerebral Melodies With Umbilical Chords. It was a sort of dark, ridiculous cabaret, and a desperate attempt to shake off the pain of all the rejections I had been getting (agents/record companies/the dude who approves small loans at the bank), by showcasing my various “talents”, which arguably included unusually clear diction, considerable manual dexterity, and a love of cheap double entendre. (Which is to say there were some outstanding jokes about fingering.)Navel was a gamechanger for me, because I knew I had an unusual toolkit, and although I knew I had a tendency to play the clown, I didn’t by any stretch think of myself as a comedian. But that night, everything changed: the 30-odd weirdos perched on bar stools and chaises longues laughed. A lot. Continue reading...
It started in bed one morning when I realised I hadn’t had an original thought for months. I needed someone to make me wake upFor some reason it takes me two and a half hours to email my life coach. I write “email life coach guy” on my to-do list. I have a really long shower. I riffle through a stack of unopened New Yorkers, and pretend I am either going to read them, or leave them in my building’s lobby for my neighbours to claim, and in the end I do neither. I watch a 20-minute YouTube video about Amir Khan’s boxing career (“The legendary speed of Amir Khan!”), then check Wikipedia to see how he fared in the fight the video was trailing (an embarrassing knockout). I send three tweets and scroll Instagram. I stand at the fridge and eat some hummus with a plain cracker for no reason at all. Finally, I sit and write the email. It is 36 words long. Tomas, the life coach, writes back almost immediately. That was the absolute last thing I wanted.The pandemic was broadly fine for me. I worked at home anyway, so I didn’t have any shock adjustment to make. I didn’t (and still don’t) have any children to look after, so there wasn’t any particular agony with my many lives layering on top of each other in a confined space. My girlfriend, Hannah, and I did the usual things to stay sane when confronted with seemingly endless periods of time and no real social life: jigsaws, taking too long to cook dinner, a Sopranos rewatch. Continue reading...
Morals and duty clash in le Carré’s tale of a bookseller caught in a spy leak• Fintan O’Toole on the last twist in le Carré’s tale• Writers reveal their favourite le Carré
The Queen drummer and singer-songwriter on former girlfriends, forgetting lyrics and liking red wineBorn in Norfolk, Roger Taylor, 72, is an original member of the band Queen, which formed in 1970. Their hits include Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You and Radio Ga Ga. Taylor’s new solo album is Outsider, and he is currently on tour in the UK. The Queen + Adam Lambert’s Rhapsody European tour takes place next year. Taylor is married, has five children and lives in Surrey and Cornwall.When were you happiest?
Thin characterisation and a superficial critique of wealth inequality post-apartheid keep Uga Carlini’s fiction in first gearThe colourful opening of Uga Carlini’s Angeliena suggests a giddy ride awaits: the camera follows a suitcase plastered with travel stickers moving along a conveyor belt at an airport. But such vibrant detail only points up the film’s lack of emotional substance. A parking attendant for a posh hospital in South Africa, Angeliena (Euodia Samson) dreams of travelling the world, she adorns her little shack with tourist posters from faraway lands. At work, Angeliena brings a glow to the austere parking lot, pinning red roses that she grows herself to the windscreen wipers of fancy SUVs.Such sweet-natured actions are presumably intended to endear Angeliena to us, yet reduce her to a unidimensional worker with a heart of gold. The thinness of the characterisation is made more pronounced by the cartoonishly evil Dr Mitchell (Colin Moss), the hospital owner and Angeliena’s antagonist, a spewer of Trumpian one-liners. Ludicrously, the film takes a tone-deaf turn when Angeliena is revealed to be suffering from an unnamed muscular atrophy that motivates her to finally embark on her world trip. Out of the blue, she develops facial tics. The only affecting sequences are the few-and-far-between gatherings between Angeliena and her eccentric female friends. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5QH92)
Green social prescribing, where people are referred to nature projects, on the rise across UK“It sounds dramatic, but this place saved my life,” says Wendy Turner, looking out over the Steart salt marshes in Somerset. “I am really loving the colours of all the marsh grasses at the moment, and the flocks of dunlin and plover. The light is just so beautiful.”Turner was once a high-flying international project manager. “But the Covid pandemic resulted in me losing everything – my business and my home – and I had years of abuse in a marriage.” In July 2020, she attempted suicide and woke up in A&E. Continue reading...
Facility in Tripoli overcrowded after 5,000 migrants arrested in the country in past weekAt least five migrants have been shot dead at a Tripoli detention centre amid a mass escape from the overcrowded facility.Libyan security forces have detained more than 5,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers mostly from sub-Saharan Africa in a crackdown over the past week, housing them in crowded, unsanitary detention centres, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR has said. Continue reading...
Routinely outshone in the polls by Jacinda Ardern, Collins now faces a challenge from a rival right-wing party“There are three ways in which opposition leaders end being opposition leaders,” the National party’s leader, Judith Collins, says: “one, they give up – well, that’s not happening. Two, they get rolled – that’s not happening, and three, they become prime minister. That’s the one I’m after.”Collins may be resolute in her desire to bag the country’s top leadership role, but the opposition’s dismal ratings are hard to ignore. Recent polls show the party’s ratings have slumped to 23%, Collin’s preferred prime minister ranking is trailing that of prime minister Jacinda Ardern by 39 points, and the leader of the smaller rival right-wing Act party has overtaken her in the popularity contest. Continue reading...
Cuthbert Mutukwa fears disastrous consequences for home country if UK cuts go ahead as it nears ‘mine-free’ statusA Zimbabwean man who helped clear hundreds of landmines from the Falkland Islands has urged Britain not to go ahead with cuts that would see the government pull funding from his home country just as it nears “mine-free” status.Cuthbert Mutukwa, 42, left his family in Zimbabwe to work for two years de-mining the Falkland Islands, the British overseas territory that was peppered with about 13,000 mines by Argentinian forces during the 1982 war. Continue reading...
Novelist Maaza Mengiste on how the Nobel laureate has explored exile in all its forms throughout his careerFor more than three decades, Abdulrazak Gurnah has been writing with a quiet and unwavering conviction about those relegated to the forgotten corners of history. Born in Zanzibar in 1948, Gurnah fled political oppression and settled in England at the age of 18. The author of numerous short stories and essays, as well as 10 novels, he has dedicated his writing career to examining the many ways that human beings can find themselves in exile: from their homes, families and communities and, perhaps most importantly, from themselves. His novels unfold in the intimate spaces created by families, companions and friendships: those spaces that are nurtured by love and duty yet rendered vulnerable by their very nature. In book after book, he guides us through seismic historic moments and devastating societal ruptures while gently outlining what it is that keeps those families, friendships and loving spaces intact, if not fully whole.Many of his books, including his first novel, Memory of Departure (1987), grapple with betrayals and broken promises on the part of the state or those in power, and focus on people who leave home in search of better lives. His second novel, Paradise, which was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker prize, is set just before the first world war and is a heartfelt – and heartbreaking – exploration of the costs of German colonialism and political aggression. In hindsight, it feels like a precursor to his latest novel, Afterlives (2020), which opens in the midst of a 1907 uprising against German colonisers and unfolds to offer us psychologically complex characters who, over generations and through transitions from German to British rule, struggle to maintain their families and communities in a small coastal town in mainland Tanzania. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Lady Newlove confident of cross-party support for amendment, despite PM’s stanceConservative peers and MPs will defy Boris Johnson’s stance that misogyny should not be a hate crime and push ahead with attempts to change the law, the Guardian understands.The former victims’ commissioner and Conservative peer Helen Newlove is leading the charge, tabling an amendment to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, currently at committee stage in the House of Lords. Continue reading...
Ursula von der Leyen says European Commission will decide on next steps to takeThe head of the European Commission has vowed a swift response to a ruling from Poland’s top court rejecting the supremacy of EU law, which has thrown relations between Brussels and Warsaw into a crisis.Ursula von der Leyen said she was deeply concerned by Thursday’s ruling of the Polish constitutional tribunal, which concluded that basic principles of EU law were incompatible with Poland’s constitution. “I have instructed the commission’s services to analyse it thoroughly and swiftly. On this basis, we will decide on next steps,” she said in her first public statement on the matter. Continue reading...
Transplant patients take immune-suppressing drugs and non-vaccinated recipients are more likely to die of infectionHealth systems in Colorado and Washington are removing unvaccinated patients from organ transplant lists, given research that unprotected recipients are much more likely to die from Covid-19.UCHealth in Colorado told a patient on the kidney transplant waiting list that she needed to get vaccinated in the next 30 days or she would be removed from the list. Leilani Lutali told 9News that she was the patient in question, and she hasn’t been vaccinated yet because of her religious views. Continue reading...
In her new memoir, New York City Ballet’s first Asian-American soloist speaks out about racism and sexual bullying in ballet. Now she wants to overhaul the industry from withinWhen Georgina Pazcoguin was 19 years old, she went to see a doctor about her thighs. A dancer at the New York City Ballet, Pazcoguin had previously had what was known among dancers as “the fat talk” with the company’s then leader, Peter Martins. During their meeting Martins had told her she didn’t “fit in”, silently indicating the area between her backside and her knees. And so, following a recommendation from a friend, she visited the office of one Dr Wilcox, who told her she should consume no more than 720 calories a day – the recommended number for the average woman is closer to 2,000 – and gave her some sealed packets of powder. For the next four months, she subsisted on the powder, plus a single chicken breast and two pounds of spinach or lettuce, which would make up her evening meal.“No one wants to be told their body is insufficient,” says Pazcoguin, now 36. “I mean, line is essential in my business; there is a certain aesthetic [that is expected]. But I am not an ectomorph. As a dancer you are staring at your body all day long in a mirror. But to try to intimidate me to make me look like this stick figure? Some women are just born a particular way. And there [should be] flexibility within the ballet world for more body types than just this waif-thin idea.” Continue reading...
The controversial TV pundit recently overtook Marine Le Pen in presidential election opinion pollsHe has been convicted for inciting racial hatred, attacked by historians for claiming the Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain saved French Jews rather than aiding their deportation to death camps, and was this week described by the French justice minister as a dangerous racist and Holocaust denier.But Éric Zemmour, a far-right French TV pundit, is rising so fast in opinion polls for president that one survey this week found he could make the final round of the April election and take 45% of the vote against the centrist Emmanuel Macron. Continue reading...
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