Parents raise the alarm as Nadhim Zahawi admits he has no idea how many 12- to 15-year-olds have been vaccinatedMinisters have been accused of losing a grip on the Covid vaccination programme for teenagers with headteachers and parents describing a “haphazard” and “incredibly slow” rollout that is causing disruption in schools in England.They raised the alarm as Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, admitted he had no idea how many 12- to 15-year-olds had had their jabs, with early figures suggesting the government has little hope of hitting its target of vaccinating them all by half-term Continue reading...
Medical student Milad Rouf imprisoned for 15 years for doorstep attack that disfigured junior doctor Rym AlaouiA medical student who threw acid over his ex-girlfriend while disguised in a fat suit has been jailed for 15 years.Milad Rouf put on the disguise, which also included makeup and sunglasses, before throwing sulphuric acid over Rym Alaoui, his ex-girlfriend and a former colleague, when she came to the door of her home in May. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi and Aakash Hassan i on (#5QFCQ)
Supinder Kour and Deepak Chand were killed after being identified as a Sikh and Hindu, say witnessesTwo teachers have been shot dead by militants in a school in the Indian region of Kashmir, the latest in the spate of civilian killings that have targeted minorities and heightened tensions in the troubled state.Three assailants entered a government school in Eidgah, in the region’s capital, Srinagar, on Thursday morning and shot dead the principal, Supinder Kour, and her colleague, Deepak Chand. Continue reading...
by Daniel Boffey in Brussels and Piotr Sauer in Mosco on (#5QFB7)
Some believe Kremlin sees gas prices as chance for Gazprom to pressure west to speed up Nord Stream 2 approvalThe natural gas market has entered uncharted territory. The movements in the price of gas on Wednesday had been, in the words of one analyst, “unprecedented since the year dot of gas liberalisation in Europe”. In record swings, Dutch wholesale gas, a European benchmark, soared by 30% within one period of three or four hours from an already eye-watering level.These are chilling numbers for European governments with winter stretching ahead, and when the EU sneezes, the UK, heavily reliant on imports from across the Channel, also catches a cold. Continue reading...
by Hosted by Gabrielle Jackson with Lenore Taylor and on (#5QF84)
An investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption led the now former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to resign. While she denies any wrongdoing, her resignation has ignited a fresh debate about how to properly hold public officials to account. Lenore Taylor and Mike Ticher speak to Gabrielle Jackson about the role of anti-corruption commissions in holding politicians accountableRead more: Continue reading...
Now 73, the star of Hannah and Her Sisters shines in Jason Blum’s new horror. She talks about why audiences are hungry for mature movies, and her unhappiness at becoming an accidental poster girl for cosmetic surgeryIn 1973, Barbara Hershey – then known as Barbara Seagull, for reasons we’ll get into shortly – went on the popular US talkshow The Dick Cavett Show and torpedoed her career. She was on alongside her then partner, the actor David Carradine, but when Hershey/Seagull walked out on stage, she could hear their eight-month-old baby crying off-camera. So she ran off and returned with the little boy, named Free. Unfortunately, Free continued to fret. So Hershey/Seagull breastfed her baby live on air. Cavett was stunned and so, clearly, were the producers, who cut to commercials.“Did you breastfeed the baby earlier or was that my imagination?” Cavett asked when they returned, Free now fed. “I did it,” Hershey, then 25, replied, entirely unabashed. Continue reading...
by Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent on (#5QET2)
Popular drama’s use of real South Korean number leads to thousands of prank calls and textsNetflix has edited out a phone number that appears in its hit series Squid Game after a South Korean woman and others who use similar combinations were deluged with calls – with some callers even asking to join the show’s life-or-death games.The South Korea-made production has topped Netflix popularity charts in 90 countries since its launch last month and is on track to become its most watched series ever. Continue reading...
Zanzibari novelist becomes first black African writer in 35 years to win prestigious awardThe Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.Gurnah grew up on one of the islands of Zanzibar before fleeing persecution and arriving in England as a student in the 1960s. He has published 10 novels as well as a number of short stories. Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee, said that the Tanzanian writer’s novels – from his debut Memory of Departure, about a failed uprising, to his most recent, Afterlives – “recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world”. Continue reading...
Flashing is a sexual offence, victims say it can have a lifelong impact and experts say it can lead to escalating crimes against women. Why is the police response so often dismissive?Cathkin Braes country park, in south Glasgow, is beautiful. You can see the city and, behind it, the mountains. Clara (not her real name), a 35-year-old community worker from Glasgow, went there in March to enjoy the view from her campervan. As she relaxed, she looked over and saw a car parked beside her, with the passenger window rolled down. A man was staring at her, and masturbating. He clearly relished her visible fright. “That is what was turning him on,” Clara said. “His head was nearly out of the passenger window, staring at me.”Because she was in a campervan, it wasn’t easy to get away quickly: Clara had to get out to fold away some seats. “I decided to jump out,” she says, “and when I looked at him, he was wiping ejaculation off his dashboard and looking at me.” She took a photograph of his car numberplate and drove away. But the man realised what she had done and gave chase. For 15 minutes, he tailed her through the streets of Glasgow. Frightened for her life, Clara drove to a police station, but the man turned off before she arrived. Continue reading...
Preparatory work for ‘redoing’ of The Potato Eaters – savaged in his lifetime – to feature in exhibitionA collection of Vincent van Gogh’s preparatory drawings sketched ahead of a planned “redoing” of The Potato Eaters, a masterpiece brutally slated by buyers, friends and family at the time of its painting, are being exhibited for what is believed to be first time.The Dutch artist considered his depiction of a peasant family from the village of Nuenen in Brabant eating a meal of potatoes as one of only four of his works that could be regarded as important, alongside The Bedroom, Sunflowers and Augustine Roulin (La berceuse). Continue reading...
Nina Hoss and Lars Eidinger give finely acted performances as they play twins brought back together through illness – but who is saving who?Fine performances are at the heart of this film from Swiss writer-directors Véronique Reymond and Stéphanie Chuat, which rather resembles a classy television drama that might, in British terrestrial terms, be spread over three successive Sundays.Nina Hoss plays Lisa, an author and dramatist suffering from an emotional and professional block. Her life is on hold because her beloved twin brother Sven (Lars Eidinger), a celebrated classical stage actor in Berlin, has cancer, though he is now in remission due to the bone marrow transplant which she has been able to give him. Lisa comes to the clinic to bring him back temporarily to the chaotic family apartment in the city where their widowed mother Kathy (Marthe Keller) lives. The film’s original title is Schwesterlein and when we first see Sven he is sitting on the hospital bed with his headphones on, listening to Brahms’s song: “Schwesterlein, Schwesterlein, wann gehn wir nach Haus?” (“Little sister, little sister, when are we going home?”) Continue reading...
Residents living in buildings that have to be demolished due to defective blocks describe anguish“The house is going to fall. There is no doubt about that; it’s just a matter of when,” says Angeline Ruddy as she shows how her external walls are crumbling before her eyes.She and her family, including three small children, have lived with the threat of the walls collapsing around them for the past 12 years in a slow-motion disaster that has blighted an estimated 20,000 homes in of one of the most picturesque parts of Ireland. Nobody knows just how many homes have been hit by the so-called mica disaster but there are reports that homes across other counties are now being identified as part of the catastrophe. Continue reading...
A court in New York has granted the royal’s lawyers permission to see the confidential agreeement between his accuser and the late financierPrince Andrew will have a chance to review a 2009 settlement agreement that he hopes will shield him from a civil lawsuit accusing him of sexually abusing a woman two decades ago, when she was underage.In an order made in New York on Wednesday, US district judge Loretta Preska granted permission for Andrew’s lawyers to receive a copy of the confidential agreement between the late financier Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre. Continue reading...
Homes collapsed after the quake struck 100km east of Quetta in Balochistan, and officials fear the death toll could riseA 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit southern Pakistan in the early hours of Thursday, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 200, government officials said.The quake struck Balochistan at 3am local time and at a depth of around 20km (12 miles), the US Geological Survey said. Continue reading...
A mynah bird that arrived in UAE with a young Afghan refugee has found sanctuary – and a new word – at the ambassador’s residenceA mynah bird that was brought from Afghanistan by a girl fleeing the Taliban has learned to say “bonjour” after finding a new home with France’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.Ambassador Xavier Chatel said he was moved by the little girl, who arrived “exhausted” and carrying the bird, named Juji, at the Al-Dhafra airbase in the UAE during the chaotic evacuations from Kabul. Continue reading...
Canadian prime minister took family holiday on day to underscore bitter legacy of Indigenous residential schools – ‘I regret it’Canada’s Liberal prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has said it was a mistake to take his family on holiday on the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation honouring the lost children and survivors of Indigenous schools.Trudeau flew to Tofino, British Columbia, with his family on Thursday after his own government in June had designated 30 September a federal holiday to underscore the legacy of the so-called residential schools. Continue reading...
Tweed shire mayor says ‘many regions are facing the very real likelihood of their first Covid-19 outbreak’ ahead of the state lifting travel restrictions
Aleksandar Vučić’s comments come as EU leaders ditch proposal to put 2030 deadline for six western Balkan nations to join blocSerbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, has lauded his ties with the Kremlin for shielding his country from the energy crisis at a summit with EU and western Balkans leaders, fuelling fears that China and Russia would be the beneficiaries as the bloc further forestalled over enlargement.Vučić told reporters he had been proven right in maintaining close ties with Beijing and Moscow despite EU concerns, describing Vladimir Putin as the “kingmaker” in energy. Continue reading...
Shadowy figures lurk in Lee Thongkham’s stylised horror, which wrongfoots the audience with jump scares aplentyThai writer-director Lee Thongkham’s horror feature is a giddy, gory little treat. Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain exactly what’s so fab about it without spoilers, so just take our word for it as long as you have the stomach for lots of fake blood and jump scares. Suffice to say that Thongkham is nimble when it comes to wrongfooting the viewer, and there’s some pleasingly pointed satire here as well, sticking it to rich, snobby people who think domestic workers are as disposable as empty washing up bottles.The maid of the title is Joy (bob-haired ingenue Ploy Sornarin), a country girl who gets hired to schlep tea trays up and down the stairs in service to super-wealthy Uma (actor-model-singer Savika Chaiyadej), a woman so ridiculously haughty she dresses like a gameshow hostess for breakfast and always uses a cigarette holder – presumably so the butts don’t touch her lips. Joy has worked out that she’s but the latest in a long line of maids who don’t last long in that household, but when she asks the other servants they get all squirrelly and tell her she’s not to ask any questions. Continue reading...
As a generation, they care deeply about the environment and sustainability - but are also under pressure to change their wardrobe constantly. Which impulse will win?Alessia Teresko, a 21-year-old student from Nottingham, seldom wears the same outfit online twice. Which is why, last month, for a friend’s birthday, she bought a minidress: a 70s-style Zara dress in a swirling print, for which she paid £27.99. On Instagram, she posted a photograph of herself in her new dress, with a caption that read “Besties wknd”. The post racked up 296 likes and with it, Teresko’s Zara purchase was sent to the giant wardrobe in the sky. (Namely, the Depop account, where she resells the clothes she no longer wears.) “I can’t take another picture in it because I already posted it,” says Teresko. “I know that sounds very superficial.”In Edinburgh, 23-year-old Mikaela Loach, a student and climate justice activist, understands the pressure that Teresko is under. “Honestly,” she says, “as someone with a platform, even I feel pressure to be wearing different clothes online.” She buys her clothes secondhand. “Only if I can’t find it secondhand,” Loach says, “will I buy something new and then make sure I’ve done rigorous research on the company.” Continue reading...
Joint bid aims to add musical style that inspired independence to list of intangible cultural heritageAuthorities in Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the capitals of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Republic of the Congo, have submitted a joint bid to add Congolese rumba to the Unesco list of intangible cultural heritage.The list helps demonstrate the diversity of heritage and raises awareness about its importance. If Congolese rumba were to be added, it would join the hawker food of Singapore, sauna culture of Finland and traditional irrigation systems in the United Arab Emirates, among countless other customs on the list. Continue reading...
Academic’s appointment marks historic moment for Arab world but comes amid political and economic crisis, with some fearing she will be Kais Saied’s pawnSara Medini, political analyst at the Tunisian feminist organisation Aswat Nissa, was in a meeting at work last week when she happened to glance at a news alert on her phone. What she saw left her at first flabbergasted, then delighted.“I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I had misread it,” she said. “I told my colleagues: ‘He’s appointed a woman! He’s appointed a woman!’ Continue reading...
Award-winning artist Maqbool Jan is one of a handful still practising the ancient artform, but without government help he fears it could be lostKashmir’s ancient papier-mache artworks are famous throughout the world. The art form is a staple of the luxury ornamental market, and has a rich and long cultural lineage. It is closely associated with the advent of Islam in Kashmir, and depicts scenes from the Mughal court, Arabic verses from the Qu’ran, Persian poetry, as well as Kashmir’s iconic tourist attractions.However, this ancient art form is vanishing, with only a handful of artisans left practising. Continue reading...
She has made art out of smells, ants, bacteria, spit and vaginal swabs. So what is the US artist about to unveil for her Turbine Hall commission? Yi, who was once a vagabond in London, takes us on an olfactory odysseyAnicka Yi offers me some beetroot crisps. These, along with carrot crisps, are her breakfast, both free of oil and salt. “I can’t eat greens, dairy, sugar, legumes, beans, nuts, seeds, nightshades, spice, alcohol – nothing,” the Korean American conceptual artist explains. “I can only eat grass-fed meat, wild fish, unseasoned all of it, vegetables and a little fruit.”Why? “I have some auto-immune issues and my doctor put me on a protocol to find out if something in my diet is inflaming them.” Poor you, I say, thinking I should wave away any approaching cheese trolley, as we sit chatting in Tate Modern’s members’ room. The diet has made Yi’s three-week trip from New York to London, to install her latest work in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, logistically tricky. Continue reading...
After a tragedy that killed her father, mother and brother, and left her severely scarred, she endured years of taunts and rejection. Now she is fighting for all those with facial disfigurementsTulsi Vagjiani was 10 years old and had been in hospital for several weeks when her bandages finally came off and she asked the nurses to show her what she looked like. She had been warned that she had extensive burns, but they seemed reluctant to let her look – they asked her if she was sure. “The nurses and doctors were like: I don’t think she realises the severity of what she looks like,” says Vagjiani.Vagjiani felt as if she had not changed, even if she was confused about what exactly had happened. “I was just Tulsi – boisterous, loud, confident.” She thought: how bad could it be? “Then I saw myself in the mirror and I was like: oh.” She says it in a quiet voice. “I actually thought somebody drew that face on, because I thought: that’s not me. And then, looking at the person in the mirror, their eyes and mouth moving, I realised: that is me.” Continue reading...
Speakers address crowds at peaceful demonstration held in Eastbourne, where suspect was arrestedAbout 200 people gathered on Tuesday evening for a vigil in memory of the schoolteacher Sabina Nessa, who was killed three weeks ago.The vigil was held in Eastbourne, where the man suspected of her killing was arrested late last month. Continue reading...
Wednesday: Former PM lands on island as tensions with China escalate. Plus: filming to begin on first movie shot in spaceGood morning. Tensions between Taiwan and China are rising as Tony Abbott arrives in the region. The NSW Nationals will vote for a new leader to replace John Barilaro today. And we have more revelations from the Pandora papers.The former prime minister has landed in Taiwan to speak at a regional forum. Taiwan has said Beijing sent nearly 150 fighter jets and bombers into its air defence zone over the first four days of October. President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan will “do whatever it takes to defend itself” and warned of “catastrophic consequences” for the region should it fall. Abbott will deliver a keynote speech at the Yushan forum – an Asian regional dialogue conference – and will meet will meet Tsai and the foreign minister, Joseph Wu. Continue reading...
The Birmingham striker discusses his traumatised past, his ‘big rant’ on a Premier League Zoom call and the fight against racism“It’s going to sound bad, as if I am glamorising it, but it was normal,” Troy Deeney says when he remembers being driven around by his father in a stolen Mercedes-Benz with a drug dealer locked up in the boot. Deeney was just 19 years old and he had played one of his earliest games of professional football for Walsall against Northampton Town. He was a dozen years away from becoming the Premier League football captain who would do so much to force debate around how leading clubs in England could confront enduring racism.Early in 2009, however, Deeney was simply puzzled by another outbreak of chaos in his life. Hearing the hammering and screaming in the boot of the car he turned to his father when they stopped for petrol. “Can you hear that noise, Dad?” he asked. Continue reading...
Mayoral elections this week saw a poor turnout, but brought more good news for progressive parties following the German electionThe surprisingly upbeat autumn for Europe’s centre-left continues. Election wins in Germany and Norway have this week been followed up in the south, where mayoral polls in Italy delivered a string of convincing performances by the Democratic party. Milan, Bologna and Naples all gave strong mandates to progressive candidates; Rome and Turin are likely to follow suit in second round runoffs, which will take place later this month. If all goes well, a nap hand of major cities will be run by centre-left mayors.The results have been greeted with understandable enthusiasm by Enrico Letta, a former Italian prime minister who returned to lead the Democratic party last March. They prove, he said, that “the right is beatable”, after a period in which the far-right Brothers of Italy party and the nationalist League have consistently topped polls. The particularly poor showing by the League, led by Matteo Salvini, and the brutal ejection of the Five Star Movement mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, has led some commentators to assert that Italian populist movements are finally in decline. But suggestions of a political sea change may be a little premature. Continue reading...
While Conservative conference ponders poverty, the town’s most deprived face a £1,000-a-year cut as universal credit is clippedIt is 14 years since the Conservatives last held their conference in Blackpool, but the resort has been on the lips of every cabinet member in Manchester this week.“Children born in Blackpool are no less gifted than those in Beaconsfield but their GCSE results, job prospects and university offers don’t reflect that. That’s wrong,” said Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up. Continue reading...
Experts say the pandemic is multiplying longstanding problems linked to housing and racial inequalityLike clay pressed into a mould, Covid outbreaks tend to conform to the contours of a country’s existing inequalities and cracks, replicating them over again.Social scientists have called the pandemic a “threat multiplier”, taking existing social problems, and compounding their force. In New Zealand, the country’s growing Delta outbreak is now interweaving with longstanding housing affordability crisis and racial inequalities. As the government continues to loosen restrictions, experts say a growing outbreak will make those divides more and more pronounced. Continue reading...
French government pushing EU to take stronger stance in dispute over access to Channel watersThe EU could hit Britain and Jersey’s energy supply over the UK’s failure to provide sufficient fishing licences to French fishers, France’s EU affairs minister has said.Clément Beaune, who is a close ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said action would be decided on within days and discussions were already in motion. Continue reading...
by Hosted by Jane Lee. Recommended by Alyx Gorman. Wr on (#5QC88)
With no way of knowing how long her fertility would prevail, Madison Griffiths did what she felt she had to, with the tools she was afforded. Lifestyle editor Alyx Gorman recommends this personal story
by Bethan McKernan Middle East correspondent on (#5QC89)
Global policing body gives Damascus powers to pursue refugees and dissidents living outside the countryInterpol has allowed Syria to rejoin its communications network, a widely criticised decision that gives Damascus new powers to pursue refugees and dissidents living outside the country.Bashar al-Assad’s regime has remained a member of the global policing body but was subject to several “corrective measures” after the civil war broke out in 2011. It was previously suspended from accessing Interpol’s databases and communicating with other member states regarding requests for international arrests. Continue reading...
The actor says the Weinstein orc was intended as a message to the domineering sexual predator producerOne orc among many in the Lord of the Rings movies was designed to resemble Harvey Weinstein as a “sort of fuck you” to the notorious producer, Elijah Wood, who played the hobbit Frodo in the series, told a Hollywood podcast.“It’s funny,” Wood told the actor Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert. “This was recently spoken about because Dom [Monaghan] and Bill [Boyd, who played hobbits Merry and Pippin] … were talking to Sean Astin [Samwise] about his first memory of getting to New Zealand [where the series was filmed]. Continue reading...
Coroner says a focus will be whether lives might have been saved had police investigated first deaths differentlyThe “competence and adequacy” of the police investigations into the murders of four gay men by the serial killer Stephen Port will be examined at the inquests into their deaths, a jury has heard.One key focus will be whether lives might have been saved if police had investigated the early deaths differently, said Sarah Munro, the assistant coroner for east London. Continue reading...
A new compilation surveys the enduring influence of a German landmark that fuelled a techno revolution from a damp, fungi-riddled bank vault on the old East sideFor electronic music fans, Berlin’s Tresor has long been considered the Valhalla of Germany’s illustrious club circuit. In March 1991, months after the official dismantling of the Berlin Wall, Tresor, the city’s first techno club, opened near Potsdamer Platz. In short order, the club’s vanguard of DJs, eccentrics, punks, goths and artists birthed a new subculture of Teutonic dance music that united the youth movements of east and west on the dancefloor.To commemorate the club’s 30th anniversary, Tresor Records is releasing Tresor 30, a 12-record box set of classic and new techno artists from its in-house label. It runs the gamut from early Detroit techno (Underground Resistance’s 1991 sci-fi epic The Final Frontier; Jeff Mills’ Late Night) to ambient techno (the savant-like Function) and third generation, post-techno musicians (Afrodeutsche, Sophia Saze, Grand River), demonstrating Tresor’s trademark, big tent approach to electronic dance music. Continue reading...
The first trailer for the upcoming fantasy spin-off promises epic action on a vast scale, with “gods, kings, fire and blood”. Resistance is futile!The Game of Thrones finale is still fresh in the mind of the public. Why, it only seems like yesterday since the world came together to witness the culmination of George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire saga, asking itself questions like “WHY IS EVERYTHING SO DARK?” and “WHY HAS MY FAVOURITE TV SHOW GOT MASSIVELY CRAP?”But two and a half years is a long time in the world of intellectual property and, reasoning that it’s still much easier to get viewers to watch a spin-off of something they grew to hate than to make them invest in something new, GoT prequel House of the Dragon is now on the horizon.House of the Dragon will premiere in 2022 Continue reading...
Audrey Hepburn’s star-making turn as Holly Golightly remains as luminous as ever in Blake Edwards’ sweetened yet still bittersweet adaptation of Truman Capote’s novelBreakfast at Tiffany’s was a sacred film in my household growing up. My mother’s VHS tape, fuzzily recorded off TV, was plastered in “do not tape over” warning labels, a defence I might have to explain to someone born 10 years later than I was. The opening credits on this worn copy were briefly disrupted with footage from the 1988 Wimbledon men’s final – still overlaid, in an altogether lovely technological blip, with the wistful strains of Henry Mancini’s Moon River theme. The warning labels dated from shortly after this unfortunate, swiftly aborted overlap.I thus grew up thinking of Breakfast at Tiffany’s as a film that belonged – via the tape, in a most literal and physical sense – specifically to one person. And then, by extension, to me, as a kind of inheritance. We watched it many times in my childhood, when I was rather too young to understand what exactly Manhattan socialite Holly Golightly did with her life – though, in my defence, the film rather sidesteps the issue too. No matter: it was probably one of my first encounters with pure movie star power, or at least one of the first times I recognised it as such. Audrey Hepburn, so perfectly doe-eyed and beehived and brightly funny and winsomely sad, seemed as much to me a force of magic as Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, even if the person she was playing made less sense to me. And not least of all – probably most of all, if I’m being honest – there was a cat. Cats were a cheap and easy way to my heart in a movie: the whiplash of panic and relief I felt over the rash disposal and cute retrieval of Holly’s ginger mog returns to me every time I watch it still. Continue reading...
World news | The Guardian