by Aamna Mohdin, Vikram Dodd and Dan Sabbagh on (#5QV4J)
Harbi Ali Kullane, ex-comms director for former PM of Somalia, is said to be in shock after arrest of his son, Ali Harbi AliThe father of the suspect in the inquiry into David Amess’s killing, was a committed anti-extremist who risked his own life trying to thwart hate groups, his friends and colleagues have said.Amess, 69, was stabbed to death on Friday just after midday while holding his constituency surgery in his role as MP for Southend West in an Essex church. A man aged 25 was arrested at the scene and continues to be held in custody. Continue reading...
Roberto Gualtieri has a clear lead over his rival Enrico Michetti of the far-right Brothers of ItalyExit polls in Rome’s mayoral election runoff indicate a clear advantage for the centre-left candidate over a contender from the far-right Brothers of Italy.Roberto Gualtieri, a former economy minister, was leading with between 59% and 63% of the vote shortly after polling stations closed on Monday, ahead of his rival, Enrico Michetti, who had between 37% and 41%. Continue reading...
Two men appear in court in The Hague accused of murder of crime reporter Peter R de Vries in JulyA modified firing pistol believed to have been used to kill the Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries was found in the alleged getaway car of the two men on trial for his murder, a court has heard.On the opening day of the suspects’ trial in The Hague, held under high security, prosecutors said witnesses, security camera footage and scientific evidence all pointed to Delano G, 21, being the shooter and Kamiel E, 35, acting as the getaway driver. Continue reading...
From being pelted with stones in Greece to receiving a papal welcome in Rome, the giant girl’s migrant trek from Syria to Manchester provoked powerful responsesIn Greece, far-right protesters threw things at her as she walked through the streets, local councillors voted to ban her from visiting a village of Orthodox monasteries, and protests in Athens meant her route had to be diverted. In France, the mayor of Calais raised objections to her presence.At times, the 8,000km journey across Europe of a 3.5m-tall puppet child refugee highlighted the hostility experienced by refugees who have been travelling along the same route from the Syrian border to the UK for years. Elsewhere, this ambitious theatrical project has triggered the scenes of welcome its artistic directors hoped to inspire when they embarked on this walk in July. Continue reading...
Arnaldo Otegi’s statement before 10th anniversary of end of campaign goes further than previous apologiesA leading leftwing Basque nationalist politician and former Eta member has said the violence the terrorist group used in its quest for independence “should never have happened” and it ought to have laid down its arms far earlier than it did.Speaking as Spain approaches the 10th anniversary of Eta’s decision to abandon the armed campaign, Arnaldo Otegi, the general coordinator of the Basque coalition party EH Bildu, said the pro-independence Basque left would never forget the victims of terrorist violence. Continue reading...
The Oscar winner is a compelling lead in an unconventional drama about an ageing prostitute in the Korean capitalYoun Yuh-jung made history earlier this year by becoming the first Korean to win an acting Oscar, for her role as the bluff, pro-wrestling-loving grandma in the Korean-American drama Minari. But following a long career break after her boundary-pushing 1960s appearances, she had already built up strong previous form playing other unconventional late-life characters back in Asia. In this 2016 drama, her long face and semaphoric blink are put to strong use playing an elderly prostitute in Seoul – she is a “Bacchus lady”, named for the energy drink the ladies pep their clients up with.Youn’s character, So-Young, is at a clinic dealing with an occupational hazard – being diagnosed with gonorrhoea – when her doctor is stabbed by his Filipino lover, who claims he is refusing to pay alimony for their child Min-ho (Choi Hyun-jun). After the woman is arrested, So-Young takes it upon herself to look after the child – communicating with the broken English she learned working as a prostitute on US military bases. After this typically Korean pileup of calamity and farce, The Bacchus Lady subsides into something more reflective and mournful. Youn insists that her vagina is “still young” – but her assignments with johns seem to consist as much of consoling them about their fading years as the sex. Continue reading...
Trial into second charge due to take place this week after death of Emiliano Sala in January 2019A man has admitted a charge relating to the flight in which the Argentinian footballer Emiliano Sala was killed when the plane he was travelling in crashed into the sea off the Channel Islands while en route to the UK from France.David Henderson, 67, was involved in the arrangement of the flight that was bringing 28-year-old Sala from Nantes to Cardiff in January 2019. Continue reading...
Police express ‘serious doubts’ after Jewish symbol absent in images of Gil Ofarim published by German mediaCCTV footage published in the German media appears not to show the Star of David pendant that a Jewish German singer alleged a Leipzig hotel had told him to “put away” before he would be allowed to check in.In an emotional Instagram video post on 5 October, Gil Ofarim claimed that an employee at the Westin hotel in Leipzig, in eastern Germany, had asked him to cover up the symbol of Jewish identity. Continue reading...
Announcement follows junta chief being barred from summit over failure to commit to de-escalationMyanmar’s military has announced plans to release more than 5,000 prisoners, days after the junta chief was blocked from attending an upcoming regional summit over his failure to commit to de-escalating the country’s crisis.A total of 5,600 people arrested or subject to arrest warrants for taking part in anti-coup protests since the military seized power in February would be released, it was announced on state TV on Monday, though it is not clear when they will be freed. Continue reading...
French historians had hoped for outright apology for police attacks on Algerians during peaceful protestFrench historians have accused the president, Emmanuel Macron, of failing to fully admit the state’s responsibility in the police killing of scores of Algerians at peaceful protests 60 years ago.Furthermore, they have called on authorities to make the historical archives fully available for researchers, to allow them to investigate mass killings that even today remain shrouded in official secrecy. Continue reading...
Police investigating suspected murder of boy found fatally hurt at Glasgow rail station arrest 16 year oldA teenager has been arrested in connection with the death of a 14-year-old boy who was found fatally injured at a railway station in Glasgow.Justin McLaughlin was found seriously hurt at High Street station at around 3.45pm on Saturday. He was taken to the city’s Queen Elizabeth University hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later. Continue reading...
You can just imagine the pitch: ‘The vagina candle woman is going to have a frenzy of orgasm chats with stunned couples in crisis. Think of the meme potential!’Have you ever actually read the first edition of Goop? It’s an astonishingly normal 200-word email in which Gwyneth Paltrow explains she doesn’t only eat brown rice and seaweed, as people think she does – she actually eats normal food, just in quite a healthy way, and anyway here’s a recipe for turkey ragu. Looking at it now, it’s like peering at an ancient relic from a civilisation that no longer exists: an amulet preserved from a past version of an internet, where a celebrity could break the shackles of only being represented via film junkets and glossy magazines to reach out and teach people how to make banana nut muffins using whole grain flour; where a gleaming, $250m lifestyle industry could be built from a single moment of honesty. Now look: it makes more financial sense for Paltrow to sell jade rollers and hair serum than be in another Iron Man movie, and we all know what “conscious uncoupling” and “I steam-clean my vagina” mean. What a heady 13 years it has been.Anyway, let’s talk about your orgasms lately. Not been very good, have they? What? Does it make you uncomfortable when I make intense eye contact with you and say “orgasm” like that? While affecting a smirk that can only be described as “defiant”? Well get used to it, buddy. Sex, Love & Goop is an absolute frenzy of them. Continue reading...
What is it like to go without a partner when you long for one – and when even a fleeting sexual connection feels impossible?When a woman named Alana coined the term “incel” in the late 90s, she couldn’t have predicted the outcome. What started as a harmless website to connect lonely, “involuntary celibate” men and women has morphed into an underground online movement associated with male violence and extreme misogyny.In 2014, Elliot Rodger stabbed and shot dead six people in California, blaming the “girls” who had spurned him and condemned him to “an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires”. There have since been numerous attacks by people who identify with incel culture, including Jack Davison, who killed five people in Plymouth this summer, before turning the gun on himself. In the darkest corners of the internet, incel groups have become a breeding ground for toxic male entitlement, putting them on hate crime watchlists across the UK. Continue reading...
An installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale shows how camp residents have transformed the raw materials of aid to preserve their heritage and cultureWhen the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp started to overflow in 2013 it was so big it had become Jordan’s fourth-largest city. The camp, Za’atari, housed a staggering 150,000 people, and the influx of new arrivals meant that another camp had to be built a few kilometres away.Za’atari had been plagued by design flaws that were linked to violence and disorder, so when Azraq opened in 2014 as a “model camp” for the region it was heralded as a chance to rectify those problems. But it wasn’t as simple as that. Continue reading...
Frank Herbert’s novel, now adapted for cinema with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, is finally getting the recognition it deserves, agree authors including Neil Gaiman and Jeff VanderMeerIf science fiction has an answer to fantasy’s The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien’s epic saga of the battle to defeat the Dark Lord, Sauron – then Frank Herbert’s Dune has to be a strong contender. Published in 1965, it is the story of the desert planet Arrakis, known as Dune; of the rare and priceless “spice” that can be found there; of the Atreides family, sent to Dune’s dangerous surface to rule; of its native Fremen people, who are capable of surviving in this inhospitable environment. Of the giant sandworms, hundreds of metres long, which hunt beneath the sands, and of Paul Atreides’ reluctant ascent to messianic status. And it is finally getting the mainstream attention it deserves, thanks to Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation, out in the UK on 21 October.I first read Dune when I was 18. It left behind deep, haunting memories: Paul Atreides chanting the Litany against Fear as his humanity is tested by the Gom Jabbar; the first appearance of a sandworm, vast and magnificent; the complexity of Paul’s rise to become the Bene Gesserit’s Kwisatz Haderach, the Fremen’s Mahdi (like much of the Fremen’s culture, the word is lifted from the vocabulary of Islam). As one character puts it: “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.” Continue reading...
Mother describes girl’s disappearance as ‘very unusual’ as police continue air, land and sea search at MacleodWestern Australian police hold grave fears for a missing four-year-old girl on the state’s northwest coast as detectives investigate the possibility she was abducted.Cleo Smith was last seen by her parents about 1.30am on Saturday at the Blowholes campsite at Macleod, north of Carnarvon. Continue reading...
by Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent on (#5QTSE)
UK’s ‘detain first, ask later’ approach is hampering state’s ability to identify victims, say charitiesMore than 4,500 people have been held in immigration detention in the UK before being released into the community and only then identified as potential victims of trafficking, official figures for the past five years show.Charities claim the figures demonstrate a “detain first, ask later” attitude that runs counter to the fight against modern slavery and suggest others are probably being deported without having been referred for support. They fear the situation will be exacerbated by the nationality and borders bill, which they say makes it harder to identify victims. Continue reading...
Boxing helped prizefighter Arifonso Zvenyika overcome real hardship. Now he teaches the sport he loves to aspiring fighters in a Harare ghettoBeneath a corrugated iron roof in the crowded Harare suburb of Mbare, a group of boys darts back and forth across a smooth concrete floor, firing a series of rapid punches into the air.A wiry older man, dressed in low-slung tracksuit bottoms and flip-flops, watches their moves, encouraging them to “Jab! Jab! Jab!”. Continue reading...
by Valerie Baeriswyl / AFP / Getty Images on (#5QTR6)
Celebratory wakes, lavish funerals, fanfare bands and dramatic displays are just some of Haiti’s death rites, which, like its weddings, are often extravagant social events despite the country’s poverty Continue reading...
Commonwealth Rutherford fellow and his family face deportation from UK amid conflicting messages from departmentA scientist conducting groundbreaking research into renewable energy is facing deportation with his family to Sri Lanka, where he experienced torture, after receiving contradictory information about his case from the Home Office.Dr Nadarajah Muhunthan, 47, his wife Sharmila, 42, and their three children, aged 13, nine and five, came to the UK in 2018 after Muhunthan, who is working on thin-film photovoltaic devices used to generate solar energy, was given a prestigious Commonwealth Rutherford fellowship. The award allowed him to come to the UK for two years to research and develop the technology. His wife obtained a job caring for elderly people in a nursing home. Continue reading...
Triptych’s 21st-century variations comment on technology, consumerism, sex and the planetAdam is a busy robot poring over the codes of creation. The climate disaster has imprisoned the devil in a block of ice. And a social media sinner is lashed to a hashtag for all eternity while a Terminator stalks through a charnel house hell.The Garden of Earthly Delights is once again in full, admonitory bloom. More than five centuries after it was completed, Hieronymus Bosch’s masterpiece is being reimagined and reinterpreted by 15 international artists using everything from sound art and sculpture to painting, video, installation, gifs and digital animation. Continue reading...
Queensland announces reopening plan; Liberals hear climate plan; Victoria and NSW release Covid numbers; Tasmania snap lockdown to end tonight; Icac hearings begin into Gladys Berejiklian; Barnaby Joyce ‘hopes’ climate won’t split the Coalition. Question time begins in Canberra. Follow the latest updates live
He blew the doors off in the 60s as part of an upstart generation of actors. As he releases a new film and tries his hand at novel-writing, is he about to make a clean getaway from the movie business?Michael Caine is 88 and walks with a stick. He has a gammy leg and a dodgy spine and reckons the only time he leaves the house these days is when his wife has the time to take him out for a drive. The other week he was sent a screenplay that had his character running away from a bunch of crooks, and this made him laugh – the very idea he could play it. “I can’t walk, let alone run,” he says. “And I’m more or less done with movies now.”He was winding down anyway, hadn’t shot a film in a year, and then sneaked in one last movie, Best Sellers, just before the pandemic struck. He doubts he will ever make another, which is fine by him, no great loss. He’s got his knighthood and his Oscars; what does he have left to prove? He says: “I’ve done 150 movies. I think I’ve done enough.” Continue reading...
Voters invested hope in the idea of leaving the EU. But a few years of queues and chaos could further erode public trustWhat must it be like to be in the inner circles of this government, watching the economy bounce from crisis to crisis? Shortages mount, while livestock that suddenly cannot be put into the food chain is slaughtered and sent to rendering plants. Ships are diverted from UK ports because no drivers can be found to transport their cargo once it is offloaded. In response to ministers’ threats to suspend the trading arrangements for Northern Ireland – that we are now told the government never believed in to start with – there is reportedly pressure within the EU to begin preparations for a trade war.The prime minister goes off to Marbella, where he pretends to paint pictures; the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is said to be pinning his hopes for an easing of the current energy crisis on a “wet, windy and mild” winter. Yet the Conservative party is still ahead in the polls, apparently shored up by the weakness of the Labour party and the clear, optimistic narrative that Boris Johnson has so far managed to project on to events. And I wonder: in cabinet meetings and ministerial get-togethers, do they laugh at the apparent absurdity of it all, or anxiously exchange estimates of when the roof might finally start to fall in?John Harris is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
They blagged a fortune off their label after promising to be ‘the German Beatles’ – then went wild in the countryside making experimental krautrock. But was there more to Faust than pneumatic drills and nude donkey rides?Jean-Hervé Peron, former bassist and vocalist with Faust, would like to get something straight about his old band – specifically, the period in the early 1970s when they were living in a commune in Wümme, a rural area outside Hamburg. Faust’s time in Wümme is one of the great sagas in the history of experimental rock, which begins with their wily late manager, Uwe Nettelbeck, somehow convincing Polydor that they were signing not a recently formed collection of Hamburg musicians who would prove to be the most uncompromising band in an uncompromising era for German rock – even by the standards of fellow travellers Can, Kraftwerk and Amon Düül II, Faust’s eponymous 1971 debut album was a provocative, revolutionary, flat-out weird listen – but “the German Beatles”.Faust’s keyboard player, Hans-Joachim Irmler, thinks their manager played on the fact that Polydor had lost both the actual Beatles, who had been signed to the label for a year while still performing in Hamburg, and Jimi Hendrix “because they didn’t care enough”, concentrating their attention on the lightweight, upbeat brand of Mitteleuropean bubblegum pop known as schlager. Having extracted a reputed DM 30,000 (roughly £160,000 today) out of the company, Faust decamped to an old school in Wümme, at which point the story gets more legendary still. Vast quantities of drugs were taken and the wearing of clothes was optional. Meals were frequently taken in the nude and the band’s original drummer, Arnulf Meifert, rode a donkey naked through a nearby village. Continue reading...
Wales is asking its young people to stay and work. Many want to, but there are concerns about lack of opportunityStudents Kyle Davies and Timothy Bird were to be found working on a jet engine in the aerospace centre at the University of South Wales’ Treforest campus, just south of Pontypridd.Both agreed they loved the area – the green hills, the sense of community, the culture and history. But they may have to leave to leave to find work. Continue reading...
Jacinda Ardern says restrictions are needed to prevent a spike in cases, as experts warn any relaxation now would be ‘very dangerous’Auckland, the city at the centre of New Zealand’s Covid outbreak, will remain in level 3 lockdown for another two weeks, despite rising vaccination levels. The decision from prime minister Jacinda Ardern comes as experts remain concerned that an early move out of lockdown could be disastrous, and risk overwhelming the health system.Auckland is closing in on 90% of its population having had one shot; 89% of the region’s population has now had at least one dose, and 70% are fully vaccinated. Continue reading...
Lenilda dos Santos left her home in rural Amazonia, part of a South American exodus driven by a coronavirus-era depressionAs coronavirus tore through the Valley of Paradise, a farm-flanked backwater in the Brazilian Amazon, Lenilda dos Santos, a nurse technician, stood on the frontline clutching hands most feared to touch.“She was a warrior during the pandemic,” said Lucineide Oliveira, a friend and colleague at the town’s small, understaffed hospital. “She’d say: ‘If we have to die, we’ll die. But we must fight.’” Continue reading...
Five global thinkers were each awarded a grant worth £1m to develop their ideas and technologiesCelebrities have joined Prince William in London for the inaugural awards ceremony of his Earthshot Prize, an ambitious environmental program aimed at finding new ideas and technologies around the world to tackle the climate crisis and Earth’s most pressing challenges.Actors and activists strode down a green carpet at Alexandra Palace in north London. Emma Watson, Emma Thompson and David Oyelowo joined Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, in handing out the awards, with a £1m going to each winner. Continue reading...
US artist returns to site for third time to highlight plight of Dead Sea, which is receding by about a metre a yearHundreds of models wearing only white body paint have walked across a stark desert expanse near the Dead Sea, part of the latest photography project of American artist Spencer Tunick.The 54-year-old photographer visited the spot in southern Israel as a guest of the tourism ministry to portray for the third time the shrinking Dead Sea via nude subjects. Continue reading...
Trade body says one in five businesses had to close or cut hours last month for lack of security staffNightclubs are suffering from a growing shortage of bouncers, in the latest staffing squeeze to hit the UK’s economic recovery, with some estimates suggesting venues are having to pay security staff as much as 25% more.The lack of security personnel comes at a time when hospitality businesses are being hit by a cocktail of rising costs and are trying to rebound from months of closures during the pandemic. Continue reading...
Rescuers search for survivors after days of rain bring devastation to south-eastern stateAt least 25 people have died in landslides and floods triggered by heavy rains in south-western India, officials said on Sunday, as rescuers scoured muddy debris for survivors and the military flew in emergency supplies.Residents were cut off in parts of the coastal state of Kerala as the rains, which started to intensify from late on Friday, swelled rivers and flooded roads. Continue reading...
Systematic partisan lying and misinformation from the media, both mainstream and social, has done enormous damage to liberal democracies, the former PM writesThe United States has suffered the largest number of Covid-19 deaths: about 600,000 at the time of writing. The same political and media players who deny the reality of global warming also denied and politicised the Covid-19 virus.To his credit, Donald Trump poured billions into Operation Warp Speed, which assisted the development of vaccines in a timeframe that matched the program’s ambitious title. But he also downplayed the gravity of Covid-19, then peddled quack therapies and mocked cities that mandated social distancing and mask wearing. Continue reading...
Five children were among group of 16 US citizens and one Canadian abducted by gang members after orphanage visitA group of 17 missionaries, including five children, have been kidnapped by an armed criminal gang in Haiti.The group – 16 Americans and one Canadian citizen – were on their way home from building an orphanage, according to a statement from the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, which supports 9,000 children in Haitian schools and sent out a message asking supporters to pray for its members. Continue reading...
Home secretary says MPs’ surgeries could get police protection but some raise concerns about deterring publicBoris Johnson will lead tributes to Sir David Amess in the House of Commons on Monday as debate rages about how drastically to step up security in the wake of the fatal attack on the Southend MP at his constituency surgery.On Sunday night Amess’s family appealed for public unity, urging people to “set aside their differences and show kindness and love to all”. In a statement, his relatives said they were “absolutely broken” but had drawn strength from the tributes to him from across the political spectrum. Continue reading...
Before his fatal stabbing the Southend West MP had been making plans for a Cop26 children’s parliamentSir David Amess made no secret of where he was going to be on Friday 15 October: details of his constituency surgery at Belfairs Methodist church were pinned at the top of his Twitter account several days in advance.Among those who turned up, according to witnesses, was Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old British-born man whose family had fled to the UK from Somalia. Sources close to the investigation into Amess’s killing indicated on Sunday that Ali had booked an appointment to see the MP. Continue reading...
Exclusive: diplomatic effort by US following Australia cancelling $66bn deal with France not matched by LondonThe US has urged Britain to follow its example and try to repair its relations with Paris in the wake of the row over France’s loss of its submarine contract with Australia.Australia pulled out of the $66bn (£48bn) contract for 12 diesel electric-powered submarines, signed in 2016, to opt instead for nuclear-powered submarines to be developed with America and the UK. The secretive and sudden cancellation of the contract has created a crisis of trust between Paris on the one hand and London, Canberra and Washington on the other. Continue reading...
The tone of France’s presidential election campaign suggests a society that is becoming increasingly illiberalSince the election of Emmanuel Macron as president in 2017, it has been tempting to view French politics in somewhat Manichean terms. Four years ago, Mr Macron won by (comfortably) beating Marine Le Pen in the second round runoff. Until this autumn, it seemed extremely likely that next spring’s election would be a rematch. Division and disarray on the French left, and the continuing slump of the centre-right Républicains party, left voters with a seemingly stark choice: centrist liberalism or far-right nationalism. This normalisation of the Le Pen dynasty was bad enough. But recent polls suggest a more complicated picture; and from a progressive standpoint, perhaps a more disturbing one.The xenophobic right has found a new star in Éric Zemmour, an author and television pundit who made his name on the French equivalent of Fox News. Mr Zemmour has yet to officially declare his candidacy, but this month he outstripped Ms Le Pen in the polls for the first time. Ms Le Pen has been attempting to woo more moderate voters by toning down the inflammatory rhetoric of her party, Rassemblement National (RN). This has given Mr Zemmour an opening. His extreme Islamophobia, culturally supremacist language and focus on immigration have made him a magnet for those disillusioned by Ms Le Pen’s detoxification strategy. Cultivating an independent, erudite persona, he has also been able to attract ultra-conservative Catholics from Les Républicains who would never vote for the RN. Continue reading...
Jethro Watson-Pickering, 23, was in an armoured vehicle that was involved in a collisionA soldier who died during an army training exercise on Salisbury Plain on Friday has been named as Pte Jethro Watson-Pickering.The 23-year-old was from the village of Boosbeck, North Yorkshire, and had been “part of a crew operating an armoured vehicle”, a spokesperson from Wiltshire police said. Continue reading...
Derek Niemann | Snacks in exams | Cop26 | John CraceA big thank you to Derek Niemann for visiting the Isle of Man and writing a country diary about one of its outstanding habitats, the limestone pavements and rock pools of the Scarlett peninsula (13 October). Having read the column since the days of William Condry and Harry Griffin, I believe this is the first Manx country diary; may the tide surging through the wrack which Niemann describes so well bring him back to write more.
Laramba’s Indigenous residents fear they are at risk of long-term illness and say they need to know who is responsible for fixing the problemJack Cool is looking to hitch a lift out of town.The 71-year-old former stockman has lived in Laramba, a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory, for most of his life. Continue reading...
Countries ‘colluded to provoke and stir up trouble’ in region that China claims as its territoryThe Chinese military has condemned the United States and Canada for each sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait last week, saying they were threatening peace and stability in the region.China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and has mounted repeated air force missions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the past year, provoking anger in Taipei. Continue reading...
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