The artist and film-maker remembers the pioneering documentary producer behind films such as RBG, The Square and An Inconvenient Truth, who has died aged 66Diane has left. When someone close passes away, we feel that a part of ourselves left together with them. A part of our understanding of the world, a link in our interpersonal network, our previous value judgment and actions in the past have all been misplaced because of the passing of a close friend.This sense of misplacement is sometimes very strong and clear, almost like the lack of a lit candle on the shore of a river or a pile of extinguished charcoal in cold weather. We cannot envisage it before people disappear from our life. When they do disappear, we suddenly become aware of the fact that the light and warmth, which vanished with their passing, are lost for ever. They are irreplaceable and will never return. No matter what happens in the future, whatever is lost is lost for ever. Continue reading...

She was kicked off her school team for being a girl – then played for her country and became manager of the women’s team at 31. She discusses how she helped put women’s football firmly on the mapWhen Hope Powell reminisces about the childhood that she spent scurrying across the streets of south London, she thinks of football. Perhaps that is no surprise: over the past 40 years, it has given her a career of firsts – after a trophy-laden playing career, she became England’s first female coach, first Black coach and youngest coach. Today, the 54-year-old is the manager of Brighton in the rapidly growing Women’s Super League (WSL).Over the course of Powell’s career, the women’s game has evolved beyond recognition. Her football education began in the late 70s, just a few years after the Football Association lifted its ban on women’s football, in 1971. She idolised Kevin Keegan and Ray Wilkins, but had no female players to look up to. She and her brothers would knock on the doors of their friends’ houses, then take to the football cages on her council estate for games of rush goalie to 3-a-side. Continue reading...

Feelings still running high a decade after 80 Traveller families were evicted from Essex siteOn the day residents of Dale Farm, then one of the largest unauthorised Traveller sites in Europe, were due to be evicted a decade ago, pupils at the nearby primary school were handed special stones they could squeeze as they walked into their morning assembly. The teachers wanted to remind everyone that the school remained a safe and welcoming place.But the helicopters above and the violent scenes that unfolded pierced through and reinforced what the local community had been bracing for: 80 families, including vulnerable children, would find themselves homeless and unsure of where to go. Continue reading...

The Depeche Mode frontman answers your questions, on his new covers album, taking early dance lessons from Mick Jagger and the right way to load a dishwasherDid you accomplish everything you set out to on [forthcoming album] Impostor? MrBeelzebubI was really burned out after the last Depeche Mode tour, then Rich [Machin, long-time musical partner in Soulsavers] and I started talking about songs and artists who had influenced us. Before we knew it, we were making a Soulsavers record with me as frontman that paid homage to those songs, but was almost a new piece of work. I realised that the choices were songs that put me where I am, suggested where I have been and where I might be. They are songs [such as Dan Penn/James Carr’s Dark End of the Street or Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet] that reflect on lives lived. I would not have known how to sing these songs when I was 18. Continue reading...

Survey after Pandora Papers leak finds 90% of Conservative and 85% of Labour voters objectA majority of the public, including Conservative voters, support tougher action against tax avoidance, according to an opinion poll after the revelations in the leaked Pandora Papers about widespread use of offshore tax havens by some of the world’s wealthiest people.Among Conservative voters in the 2019 general election, 90% agreed that tax avoidance by large companies was “morally wrong even if legal”, the poll found. Continue reading...

Relaxing six-month gap between second and third doses would speed up rollout, says former health secretaryJeremy Hunt has called for the government to cut the time required between Covid vaccine doses to allow more booster jabs to be given as concern grows about the pace and organisations of the latest rollout.Speaking in the Commons, the former health secretary said: “If you look at the higher hospitalisations, cases and death rates [in the UK] compared to countries like France and Germany, the heart of it is not actually things like mask-wearing and Covid passports, it is their higher vaccine immunity.” Continue reading...

Hillsong plans to hold Sunday services at Grade II-listed former theatre after locals objected to Islamic centreAn international megachurch whose founder has been accused of concealing child sexual abuse has bought a renowned former theatre in north London after a campaign to prevent it from being converted into an Islamic centre.Hillsong, which until earlier this year counted the pop star Justin Bieber among its members, plans to hold Sunday services at the site. The church operates in 30 countries and has 12 branches in the UK. Continue reading...

Mayor’s plan follows Putin announcing a weeklong nationwide paid holiday to stop spread of virus

A group of Bury and Rochdale residents who have lived through experiences such as prison, addiction, mental health problems and homelessness came together and called themselves the Elephants Trail. They want to be voice for others, hold local power to account – and, now, make films about what’s happening in their town. This is the second film in a collaborative video series called Made in Britain.This video references suicide and self-harm.

Driver made it to safety after HGV ended up partially submerged on Thursday morning, say rescue teamA lorry has fallen into the harbour in Bristol city centre.Emergency services were called to the scene early on Thursday after the HGV ended up partially submerged in the water, with the cab perched on the dock. Continue reading...

Fifteen questions on general knowledge and topical trivia plus a few jokes every Thursday – how will you fare?This time last week it was Thursday, and now here we all are again facing 15 questions on general knowledge and topical trivia plus a few jokes. All your favourites are here: a Doctor Who reference to spot, a Kate Bush answer to avoid, the beloved Pokémon round, Ron from Sparks, and some twisty little anagrams along the way. It is very silly, just for fun, and there are no prizes, but let us know how you got on in the comments.The Thursday quiz, No 26If you do think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers, please feel free to email martin.belam@theguardian.com but remember, the quizmaster’s word is always final, and if you question it too much you might find yourself stuck in a certain Korean TV show. Continue reading...

Announcement comes as Scottish report says open-pen salmon farms pose substantial risk to wild populationNorway is to introduce new traps to protect wild salmon after experts warned they could become endangered as a result of contact with their farmed counterparts.Farmed fish and non-native pink salmon carry various diseases and lice, and in recent years have spread from Russia across the Norwegian coastline, reaching Britain and mainland Europe. Continue reading...

A man has been arrested after allegedly stealing a journalist’s phone straight from his hands during a live broadcast in Egypt.

Scott Morrison will also appear on Nine’s commercial breakfast TV show. No doubt we’ll have one of the favoured radio shows pop up as a media alert soon.Penny Wong is now in the ABC radio studios speaking to Fran Kelly on ABC RN. Continue reading...

Detectives remain hopeful of finding four-year-old alive as they say all signs point to abduction on Saturday morning

Essex fire service receives more than 120 calls, as Met Office warns unsettled weather likely to continueEmergency services have received a high number of calls from people reporting flooding after southern England was hit overnight by heavy rain and strong winds from a storm moving in from France.The Met Office issued a yellow rain warning covering most of southern England for Wednesday night and into Thursday, meaning people living there could experience transport delays, flooding and power issues. Continue reading...

Global heating is having a deadly impact on Nicaragua’s sugar cane workers, who toil in temperatures of up to 45C

In widely shared footage of the incident, the man can be seen snatching the reporter’s phone during a live broadcast in EgyptA man has been arrested after allegedly stealing a journalist’s phone straight from his hands during a live broadcast in Egypt.Mahmoud Ragheb, a reporter for the news site Youm7, was filming the aftermath of an earthquake live from the streets of Cairo when a man on a motorbike sped past and seized his phone. Continue reading...

Dame Cindy, the first in her family to graduate from university, rose to become a pro-vice chancellor at the University of AucklandThe first Māori woman to be named governor-general of New Zealand, Dame Cindy Kiro, has been sworn in at an intimate ceremony in parliament, where she said she hopes to use the role to reach out to marginalised communities.Dame Cindy, who is of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu and British descent, became the country’s 22nd governor-general – Queen Elizabeth’s representative in New Zealand. Continue reading...

Director general of health says country is following similar trajectory to UK, with vast majority of hospital cases being unvaccinated

Death of 18 people forces more social restrictions even as city-state expands quarantine-free travel to eight countriesSingapore’s healthcare system is at risk of being “overwhelmed” by surging coronavirus infections, government officials warned on Wednesday, a day after the city-state expanded quarantine-free travel as it shifts its approach to dealing with the pandemic.The health ministry reported 18 deaths on Wednesday – Singapore’s highest toll in a single day – and 3,862 more cases, just shy of the record 3,994 tallied the day before. Continue reading...

Polish health minister says explosion in cases needs to be urgently addressed; Singapore records 18 deaths and 3,862 new cases

Home secretary informs Commons of change despite no information suggesting any specific new dangerThe threat level against MPs has been raised to “substantial”, the home secretary, Priti Patel, has told the Commons, with police saying they would now work with MPs to review the security they receive.Patel, making a statement on MPs’ security after the killing of the Conservative MP Sir David Amess on Friday, urged them to take the “change in risk seriously” following a review by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. Continue reading...

Suspension will take effect from 11.59pm on Wednesday and will last until further notice

Crew prepare for mission to evacuate four dogs stranded on Spanish island between rivers of red-hot lavaAn unprecedented drone operation is being prepared to rescue four dogs stranded for weeks between rivers of red-hot lava streaming from an erupting volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma.The emaciated dogs are stranded in two empty water tanks in the town of Todoque, flanked by slow-moving lava flows from the Cumbre Vieja volcano that erupted on 19 September . Continue reading...

Sculpture and its futuristic creator held for 10 days, possibly in fear she is part of spying plotShe has been described as “a vision of the future” who is every bit as good as other abstract artists today, but Ai-Da – the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist – hit a temporary snag before her latest exhibition when Egyptian security forces detained her at customs.Ai-Da is due to open and present her work at the Great Pyramid of Giza on Thursday, the first time contemporary art has been allowed next to the pyramid in thousands of years. Continue reading...

Labour’s Mike Kane urges legislation after Catholic priest was denied entry to crime scene after MP’s stabbingCatholic priests’ right to give the last rites to the dying, including at crime scenes, should be enshrined in forthcoming legislation in the wake of the killing of David Amess, an MP has said.Labour’s Mike Kane has proposed the “Amess amendment” to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, which is being scrutinised in parliament and the House of Lords. Continue reading...

Moscow calls for aid to avert refugee crisis but also demands more inclusive government in KabulRussia has hosted the most high-profile international talks on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power, calling for an injection of aid to help the crippled economy but also demanding a more inclusive government.Senior Russian diplomats made clear that formal recognition of the Taliban regime was not on the table until it does more to improve human rights and broadens an all-male cabinet, most of them clerics from the Pashtun ethnic group. Continue reading...

Hampshire police chief admits decision by misconduct panel opens service up to lack of transparency accusationsA police chief has admitted a decision by a misconduct panel to grant lifelong anonymity to a male officer who harassed a female domestic abuse victim opened the service up to accusations of a lack of transparency.The specially trained domestic officer bombarded the young woman with messages as he pursued an “improper emotional relationship” with her after being assigned to work on her case, the panel heard. Continue reading...

Helen Haines will work to secure numbers in parliament after Scott Morrison told her the government will not allow debate on her bill

Family who were sent to Turkey despite lodging asylum claims take case to European courtFive years to the day after a family of Syrian refugees were bundled on to a plane and deported to Turkey despite having lodged asylum claims in Greece, they are taking their case to the European court of justice.In an unprecedented step, a Dutch firm of human rights lawyers announced on Wednesday that it had filed a lawsuit against Frontex, the EU border agency that operated the flight, and was seeking damages on behalf of the family. Continue reading...

Penelope Jackson, 66, admits manslaughter but denies murder, saying husband was abusiveA retired accountant who killed her “abusive” husband has told a jury she stabbed him to death after a row over a birthday meal.Penelope Jackson, 66, said she took a new kitchen knife upstairs to kill herself but instead attacked her husband, former army Lt Col David Jackson, 78, when he told her she was pathetic. Continue reading...

Brazilian president savaged for ‘macabre’ and ‘slovenly’ response to pandemic and ‘deliberate neglect’ of Indigenous peopleJair Bolsonaro should be charged with crimes against humanity and jailed for his “macabre” reaction to a Covid outbreak that has killed more than 600,000 Brazilians, including a disproportionate number of Indigenous citizens, a congressional inquiry has found.Two of the most dramatic accusations against the Brazilian president – murder and genocide of the country’s Indigenous populations – were removed from a previous draft of the report on Tuesday night after talks between opposition senators serving on the inquiry. Continue reading...

A volcano blasted ash two miles into the sky after erupting on Japan's southern island of Kyushu on Wednesday.

Plane’s owner said pilot had been involved in airspace infringements, Cardiff crown court hearsThe owner of a light plane that crashed into the sea, killing the professional footballer Emiliano Sala, had ordered the pilot not to fly the aircraft, a jury has been told.Fay Keely said she told the plane’s operator, David Henderson, that pilot David Ibbotson, who also died in the crash, should not fly the plane after she was notified of two airspace infringements he was involved in by the UK aviation regulator. Continue reading...

Villeneuve’s take on the sci-fi classic starring Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac and Zendaya has been given room to breathe, creating a colossal spectacleIf there can ever be a moment of triumph for a director, when the anxiety of influence is vanquished – for a bit, anyway – then Denis Villeneuve might have achieved it. This eerily vast and awe-inspiring epic, a cathedral of interplanetary strangeness, is better than the attempt a generation ago by an acknowledged master.David Lynch’s Dune from 1984 was an interesting, rackety, flawed movie that attempted to cram the entirety of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel into its running time – the result was like Flash Gordon without the laughs. Villeneuve, with his co-writers Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth, has used less than half the book (with a second episode to come) and allowed it room to grow: to breathe and drift through unimaginably vast reaches of fictional galaxies, with images of architecturally enormous spacecraft moving into view, or delicately lowering themselves on to alien landscapes of parched and austere beauty, particularly the ravishingly pure desert landmass of “Dune”, the contested planet itself. Star Wars’ debt to Dune, and now Dune’s debt to Star Wars, has been extensively discussed (amusingly, Dune gives us moving holograms rather like the one in which Princess Leia first begged Obi-Wan Kenobi for help). But this blockpulverising film feels more like TE Lawrence’s imperious version of The Phantom Menace. This is how it ought to have been. Continue reading...

Animal charity says gangs shipping diseased dogs to UK mainlandNorthern Ireland has become a gateway for an “abhorrent” multimillion-pound illegal trade in puppies in Britain in what has been called the new drugs trade by animal welfare investigators.A BBC and Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals investigation found puppies were being bred in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and illegally moved across to Great Britain through Belfast port to cater for the rocketing demand for pets during the Covid lockdown. Continue reading...

Lawyers hail judgment as landmark case for English nationals injured or killed abroadA woman whose husband was killed in a car crash in Egypt during an excursion booked through the hotel they were staying in has won permission to sue the hotel in the English courts, in a judgment her lawyer says will have significant implications for other English nationals injured or killed abroad.Sir Ian Brownlie QC, a leading international lawyer, died aged 77 in 2010 in an accident in which his daughter from his first marriage, Rebecca, whose two young children were in the vehicle, was also killed. The driver was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Continue reading...

Analysis: 95-year-old monarch has been to Wales and Ascot in the last week and has key events coming upThe Queen’s 11th-hour cancellation for medical reasons of a long-planned visit to Northern Ireland comes at a busy period for the 95-year-old monarch, and is a decision that will not have been taken lightly.Much preparation goes into official visits. On this occasion the Queen was due to meet members of the community at Hillsborough and attend a service of reconciliation and hope at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, marking the centenary of partition and Northern Ireland’s foundation, alongside Boris Johnson. Continue reading...

Buckingham Palace says monarch has ‘reluctantly accepted medical advice to rest for next few days’The Queen has cancelled a planned two-day visit to Northern Ireland after advice from her doctors that she should “rest for the next few days”.Buckingham Palace said in a statement: “The Queen has reluctantly accepted medical advice to rest for the next few days. Continue reading...

Nothing to indicate account given by girl’s parents anything other than ‘accurate and truthful’, inspector says

Former coronavirus success story announces month of restrictions including night-time curfew

One of the brightest talents in UK dance music is getting used to bigger stages, thanks to her infectiously fun tracks that draw deeply from black cultural historyNights out are a culmination of so many stimuli: pre-party rituals, journeys through the club and echoes of nightlife that linger into the next day. For Manchester producer and DJ Anz – AKA Anna-Marie Odubote – they are an experience she brings into her work. “I always listen to garage before I go out,” she says in a Mancunian bar, eyeing the entertaining mix of people leaving offices late or getting on the lash early to mark the end of another week. “I want to hear a drum workout at peak time. When they’re about to kick us out the club, I want something big, hands-in-the-air, like: oh my God, where are we going after?”This narrative arc is the inspiration for her new EP All Hours. Bookended by a bright piano intro signifying the waking morning, and a dreamlike synth outro designed to sooth you into sleep as the sun comes up and strangers have passed out on your sofa, each track corresponds to a time of day so listeners can “choose their own adventure” through 24 hours. Continue reading...

Police asked to give urgent update on inquiries into reports of women being drugged via drinks or needlesThe home secretary has requested an urgent update from police on investigations into a spate of reports of women having their drink spiked or being drugged by injection on nights out, the Guardian understands.Priti Patel’s intervention comes after police in Nottingham arrested a 20-year-old man as part of an investigation into spiking, following reports of women being injected with needles in the past fortnight. Continue reading...

A fiscal conservative in the job and a new era of debt limitation could spell disaster for EU countries

Extreme heat can kill or cause long-term health problems – but for many unendurable temperatures are the new normalThe impact of extreme heat on the human body is not unlike what happens when a car overheats. Failure starts in one or two systems, and eventually it takes over the whole engine until the car stops.That’s according to Mike McGeehin, environmental health epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “When the body can no longer cool itself it immediately impacts the circulatory system. The heart, the kidneys, and the body become more and more heated and eventually our cognitive abilities begin to desert us – and that’s when people begin fainting, eventually going into a coma and dying.” Continue reading...

Normally referrals to the privileges committee are waved through on the voices but on Wednesday afternoon Peter Dutton bowled up a rude shock

From a pottery paw print to a treasured tattoo, contributors share their ideas for keeping their pets’ memories aliveMr Horatio Parmouk, our beloved cat, turned up at my house as a stray and never left. He was a large, black tom cat with the sweetest disposition and was named partly after Nelson, partly after a character in Downton Abbey. Everyone loved him; he had his own Facebook page, wore various outfits in return for a cat biscuit or six and even starred in an advert for a hat company. Before he passed, we sponsored a seat at the London Coliseum in his name, so opera-goers can now sit in his seat. He was a real feline character. Cathy Peake, nurse manager, Barnet Continue reading...

French player accused of ‘complicity’ in alleged plot to extort money from former teammate Mathieu ValbuenaA trial is under way of the French international footballer Karim Benzema who is accused of involvement in an alleged attempt to blackmail a former teammate with a sex tape.The Real Madrid striker is accused of “complicity” in the alleged targeting of Mathieu Valbuena, who plays for the Greek Super League club Olympiacos. Investigators claim Benzema encouraged midfielder Valbuena, 37, to pay the blackmailers. Continue reading...

Since leaving Turkey in July, Little Amal, a 3.5-metre (11ft 5in) tall puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian girl, and her entourage of about 25 people have navigated Covid border restrictions to walk across Europe to the UK. Amal, whose name means hope in Arabic, was created by Handspring, the company that made the equine puppets in War Horse. The puppet represents the millions of children forced to leave their homes in desperate situations. The global pandemic has made them more vulnerable than ever Continue reading...