Australia overall may be at the lower end of OECD vaccination rate tables, but our often derided capital city has gotten the jab done

He’s partied with Queen. Tom Petty had his email. Now one of Australia’s most accomplished rock photographers has been digging through his negativesRock’n’roll photographer Tony Mott has led the kind of life that for the rest of us seems like a surreal dream. Travelling with Paul McCartney. Partying with Queen. He has photographed everyone from Prince to Rihanna to Marianne Faithfull. But when he talks about his work, what’s clear is his unbridled passion and affection for music and its creators, regardless of genre or fame.Rihanna on stage at the Sydney Super Dome, 2008. Continue reading...

Penelope Jackson, 66, is accused of murdering her husband in the kitchen of their Somerset bungalowA woman who stabbed her husband to death left a note saying she had “taken so much abuse over the years” and that she accepted “her punishment”, a court has heard.Penelope Jackson, 66, is accused of murdering her husband of 24 years, the retired army lieutenant colonel David Jackson, in the kitchen of their bungalow on 13 February, Bristol crown court heard. She admits manslaughter but denies murder.In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org Continue reading...

Bishop says church looking into moving urn, amid claims plot was deliberately chosen by extremistsThe church management of a cemetery outside Berlin has said it made a “terrible mistake” by allowing the ashes of a prominent Holocaust denier to be buried in the gravesite of a Jewish-born musicologist.Henry Hafenmayer, a 48-year-old neo-Nazi activist, was laid to rest last Friday at Stahnsdorf South-Western cemetery in Brandenburg in a ceremony that was attended by notorious rightwing extremists including Horst Mahler, the founding member of the Baader-Meinhof group turned neo-Nazi. Continue reading...

Magic FM DJ Emma Wilson says police ‘laughed in her face’ when she reported incident in south LondonA radio DJ has said she believes she was flashed by Wayne Couzens 13 years before he murdered Sarah Everard, but police “laughed in her face” when she reported it.The Magic FM DJ Emma Wilson, known as Emma B, has waived her right to anonymity and claimed that the police officer exposed himself to her in 2008 when she was walking in Greenwich, south-east London with her baby in a pram after dropping her elder child off at school. Continue reading...

Novelist Mark Billingham advises readers to angrily launch a book across the room after 20 non-gripping pages – but almost 40% of people will keep going right to the endName: the 20-page rule.Age: this one’s actually more about page than age. Continue reading...

Mother speaks out after misconduct finding over death of Kelly Hartigan-Burns, who was found unresponsive in a Blackburn police cellThe mother of a vulnerable woman who died after failings by a Lancashire police officer has said a “stray dog” would have received better care.The custody sergeant’s actions amounted to gross misconduct, a misconduct panel ruled. Continue reading...

This gorgeous and moving melodrama finds two women in 1950s Rio under suffocating family expectations – and sees what happens when they are defied‘What do you want from life?” a husband drunkenly yells at his wife in Karim Aïnouz’s gorgeous and very moving melodrama set in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. The man’s wife is Euridice (Julia Stockler) and what she wants is to be a classical pianist. Her husband is angry and hurt: why can’t she just be happy in the kitchen? Adapted from a novel by Martha Batalha, this is the story of Euridice and her sister Guida (Carol Duarte): their inner conflicts and rebellion against the suffocating patriarchy of home.The film beings a few years earlier: Euridice is 18 and applying to study music in Vienna. Her heart is broken when boy-mad Guida runs away with a no-good sailor to Greece, promising to write when she is married. Predictably, she returns with a baby bump and no wedding ring. There’s an appalling homecoming scene when their dad, a baker, violently shoves Guida out of the house; she’s nine months pregnant at the time (and the film never lets us forget that violence can be done to these women at any time of a man’s choosing). Unforgivably, Guida’s dad says that Euridice has left Rio and is living in Vienna. The truth is she’s up the road, married to an insightless oaf. Continue reading...

A single winner would become richer than Adele and prize will be capped at £187m if it rolls over againThe EuroMillions jackpot has reached £184m, making it the largest ever lottery prize in British history.The prize rolled over into Tuesday’s draw when no ticketholders won on Friday. A single winner could now suddenly count themselves richer than the singer Adele – whose net worth is £130m, according to the Sunday Times rich list. Continue reading...

Man told police he was mimicking style of TV series’ suave master criminal, Assane DiopA man told police he was mimicking the style of the suave master thief in the French TV series Lupin when he attempted to rob the bar of a church oratory in northern Italy.Donning a leather jacket, similar to the one worn by the protagonist of the Netflix show, the 21-year-old, who has not been named, said he waited for the church bells to ring so as to muffle the sound of him smashing through the glass door of the oratory’s bar on Saturday night. Continue reading...

Nightmarishness meets nostalgia as Jamie Dornan and Judi Dench star in a scintillating Troubles-era coming-of-age taleThere is a terrific warmth and tenderness to Kenneth Branagh’s elegiac, autobiographical movie about the Belfast of his childhood: spryly written, beautifully acted and shot in a lustrous monochrome, with set pieces, madeleines and epiphanies that feel like a more emollient version of Terence Davies. Some may feel that the film is sentimental or that it does not sufficiently conform to the template of political anger and despair considered appropriate for dramas about Northern Ireland and the Troubles. And yes, there is certainly a spoonful of sugar (or two) in the mix, with some mandatory Van Morrison on the soundtrack. There’s a key climactic scene about how you disarm a gunman in the middle of a riot if you have no gun yourself, which has to be charitably indulged.But this film has such emotional generosity and wit and it tackles a dilemma of the times not often understood: when, and if, to pack up and leave Belfast? Is it an understandable matter of survival or an abandonment of your beloved home town to the extremists? (Full disclosure: my own dad left Belfast for England, though well before the era of this film.) Continue reading...

Landmark judgment will apply to thousands who may otherwise have been sent back to home countriesThousands of victims of trafficking who have been left to languish in the immigration system for years should be granted leave to remain, the high court has said in a landmark ruling.Prior to the ruling, people the UK government accepted were foreign victims of trafficking could be sent back to their home countries, where they might be at risk of being trafficked again by the same criminals. Continue reading...

The writer has refused to sell Hebrew translation rights to her latest novel Beautiful World, Where Are You due to her stance on the Israel-Palestine conflictSally Rooney has turned down an offer from the Israeli publisher that translated her two previous novels into Hebrew, due to her stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict.The Irish author’s second novel Normal People was translated into 46 languages, and it was expected that Beautiful World, Where Are You would reach a similar number. However, Hebrew translation rights have not yet been sold, despite the publisher Modan putting in a bid. Continue reading...

Organisers of exhibition on history of British fascism say parallels can be drawn with current thinkingA surge in Covid-19 conspiracy theories risks boosting antisemitism, hate crime campaigners have warned after the opening of an exhibition shedding light on interwar British fascism and its parallels today.The Wiener Holocaust Library in London is staging the exhibition – focusing on the motivations and propaganda of British fascists and their European peers in the 1920s and 30s – out of concern about the recent growth of far-right ideas and populism in the UK and abroad. Continue reading...

The Hull Fair, one of Europe’s largest travelling fairs, has returned after a break due to the coronavirus pandemic. More than 250 rides and stalls have returned to the city for the annual event which was last postponed during the second world war. The fair began in 1279 and was extended to an 11-day event in 1752. The fair runs until 16 October this year Continue reading...

An executive assistant in Adem Somyurek’s office tells commission she was told to work on ALP factional activities instead of minister’s portfolios

The former minister says ‘despite all his other faults, Barnaby Joyce can count, and the majority of the room is in favour of credible action’

Labor and environmental groups are demanding that General Electric stop offshoring jobs and invest in renewable energyKevin Smith, of Salem, Virginia, worked at General Electric for about 20 years before the town’s plant was shut down at the end of 2019, and the work moved to a factory in India.“It was a total shock because of how things had been going, with all the overtime we were working, everything just seemed great, like there was no way this was happening. All I wanted to do was wake up, that I had a nightmare, but that wasn’t the case,” said Smith, 50, who was one of about 265 GE workers who were laid off due to the closure. Continue reading...

Stephen Barclay, the minister for the Cabinet Office, refused multiple times to apologise for the deaths and suffering caused by Covid, after a parliamentary report called the government's early response to the pandemic one of the UK's 'worst ever' public health failures. The report, led by two former Conservative ministers, concluded that 'groupthink' and a deliberately slow approach meant the UK fared 'significantly worse' than other countries.Speaking on LBC, Barclay repeatedly declined to apologise to families who lost loved ones, saying: 'We followed the scientific advice and the knowledge we had at the time'

As mandatory checks began, not everyone in the queue for the Pryzm club was prepared

An ensemble cast of Guardian reporters and editors reflect on why investigative journalism is so important for a healthy democracy and what it feels like, on a more personal level, to be going up against powerful governments, tax-dodging billionaires, institutional racism, human rights abuses and moreSupport investigative Guardian journalism

Federal health minister Greg Hunt has celebrated Australia’s vaccination rate passing that of major global powers, including the US and the EU.“We’ve now passed the [United States], we’ve passed Israel, we’ve passed the [European Union] over the weekend, Germany and the OECD,” Hunt told RN Breakfast on Monday.Victorian Labor MP Luke Donnellan has resigned from cabinet after an Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission hearing heard he had paid for other people’s party memberships.In explosive evidence given on the first morning of public hearings, federal Labor MP Anthony Byrne said that Donnellan, the Victorian minister for disability, ageing and carers, and the minister for child protection, had paid for party memberships. Continue reading...

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has attended celebrations for the 76th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' party of Korea. Kim made a speech to a gathering of officials, the KCNA news agency said. State media showed Kim addressing a room full of officials, with little social distancing, masks or other Covid measures apparent. Kim urged officials to focus on improving citizens' lives in the face of a 'grim' economic situation

Dowries, illegal since 1961, still cause 20 deaths a day in India. But Babawayil has had no divorces or violence against women since it banned themBabawayil, in the foothills of the Zabarwan mountains by the Sind River, is a typical village in Indian-administered Kashmir. Groups of men and women sit on their lawns breaking open green husks of walnuts, freshly gathered from the giant trees shading the sleepy hamlet. Other villagers are busy in the paddy fields bringing in the harvest. Harud, the harvest season, is usually busy.Most of the 150 households make their living from farming and weaving pashmina shawls. Continue reading...

Exclusive: UK scientist says giving booster jabs rather than sharing doses fairly will cause hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths

The award has put a spotlight on the struggle of journalists and activists fighting President Rodrigo Duterte’s attacks on press freedomThe news that journalist Maria Ressa has been awarded the Nobel peace prize has been greeted with joy by defenders of human rights in the Philippines.Ressa last week became the first Filipino journalist to be awarded the prestigious prize, which she shared with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov. Continue reading...

Michael Baker said lack of discussion with independent experts was a ‘stark contrast’ to earlier pandemic decisions

The creation of the modern, interconnected world is generally credited to European pioneers. But Africa was the wellspring for almost everything they achieved – and African lives were the terrible costIt would be unusual for a story that begins in the wrong place to arrive at the right conclusions. And so it is with the history of how the modern world was made. Traditional accounts have accorded a primacy to Europe’s 15th-century Age of Discovery, and to the maritime connection it established between west and east. Paired with this historic feat is the momentous, if accidental, discovery of what came to be known as the New World.Other explanations for the emergence of the modern world reside in the ethics and temperament that some associate with Judeo-Christian beliefs, or with the development and spread of the scientific method, or, more chauvinistically still, with Europeans’ often-professed belief in their unique ingenuity and inventiveness. In the popular imagination, these ideas have become associated with the work ethic, individualism and entrepreneurial drive that supposedly flowed from the Protestant Reformation in places such as England and Holland. Continue reading...

The award-winning standup is known for his exuberance, but, as he writes in his memoir, he has had to dodge snobbery throughout his career. He discusses family, fame and being funnyRob Beckett is one of those comedians without whom many TV formats would collapse. He is an accomplished standup who made his debut in 2009, at 23, performing anywhere that would have him, often not even for petrol money. He has a rare combination of warmth and edge. He can present Wedding Day Winners with Lorraine Kelly without making her seem square; do a pitch-perfect double-act with Romesh Ranganathan that makes the audience feel as though they are included in the friendship; pack out the Hammersmith Apollo with a solo show for which his notes amount to 10 words; and hold his own on Mock the Week, famous for its bear-pit atmosphere and comic-eat-comic sensibility.We meet in a cafe in south‑east London, a greasy spoon that the owner says has been there since 1932 (they dated it from the fly-posted film billboards in an old photo). Strangers open up with Beckett in the room; I have never had a conversation so intently eavesdropped. It is partly that he has natural charisma, partly because he has a celebrity gloss – slightly exaggerated features, not classically handsome so much as screen-ready – and partly because what he is saying is novel and his delivery is vivacious and so incredibly fast. Continue reading...

Restaurant plants Japanese flag in seafood dish moulded in shape of islands that are also claimed by South KoreaA simple bowl of curry is at the centre of the latest row in a long-running territorial dispute between Japan and the Koreas.Media in North and South Korea reacted angrily after an online media report about a seafood curry sold in Japan that includes mounds of rice shaped to resemble the Takeshima islands, which Koreans refer to as Dokdo. Continue reading...

A 48-year-old man has been charged by police after allegedly stealing a monitoring tag from a shark he accidentally caught

The leader of the nuclear-armed country says there is ‘no basis’ to believe US actions are ‘not hostile’ during military exhibitionNorth Korean leader Kim Jong-un reviewed a rare exhibition of weapons systems and vowed to build an “invincible” military, as he accused the United States of being the “root cause” of instability.In an apparent continued effort to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul, Kim also said his drive to build up his military isn’t targeted at South Korea and that there shouldn’t be another war pitting Korean people against each other. Continue reading...

Allowing the virus to become endemic would mean the regular closure of schools and businesses and thousands of deaths each yearAs New Zealand switches from elimination to suppression, those who argue that Covid-19 will become endemic and part of our lives either do not understand or ignore what this would actually mean.Elimination has always been a tricky word because it implies eradication. But we have only ever eradicated one human disease – smallpox – and are close with several others. Continue reading...

The CBD and Darling Harbour were ghost towns, but Newtown, Redfern and Kings Cross were vibing as pubgoers braved the Monday night rain to toast ‘freedom day’

The offensive marks the end of a ceasefire declared in June in a political conflict that has claimed thousands of livesTigray forces say Ethiopia’s government has launched its threatened major military offensive against them in an attempt to end a nearly year-old war.A statement from the Tigray external affairs office alleged hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian “regular and irregular fighters” launched a coordinated assault on several fronts. It blamed Ethiopian forces and those from the country’s Amhara region, where much of the recent fighting has occurred after Tigray forces retook much of their own region in June. Continue reading...

Actor recounts conversation about casting of disabled roles and ridicules billionaires’ space raceThe Succession star Brian Cox has said authentic casting, where roles are reserved for actors with the same lived experiences as a character, ignores the “craft of acting”.Cox, who plays the media tycoon Logan Roy in the hit HBO show, said he had spent a lot of his recent time off from filming watching movies, including Russell Crowe as a mathematician with mental illness in A Beautiful Mind and Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Continue reading...

Holidaymakers say they were given just hours to pay back cash claimed though credit cardsRyanair has been accused of barring passengers who pursued chargebacks against the airline during the pandemic from taking new flights this year – unless they return their refunds.An investigation by MoneySavingExpert (MSE) has found that holidaymakers who sought refunds from their credit card provider have faced last-minute demands of up to £600 if they want to board a Ryanair plane. Continue reading...

Early handling and belief in ‘herd immunity’ led to more deaths, Commons inquiry finds

Visitors from Britain and the US among those permitted as country seeks to boost its crucial tourism sector

Penelope Jackson heard to say ‘I thought I’d get his heart but he hasn’t got one’ on recorded emergency callA 66-year-old former military administrator stabbed her 78-year-old husband at their Somerset home and told a 999 operator: “I thought I’d get his heart but he hasn’t got one,” a murder jury has been told.Penelope Jackson allegedly murdered her husband, David, a retired army lieutenant colonel, on 13 February at their home in the coastal village of Berrow, claiming he was abusive and controlling. Continue reading...

Ingmar Bergman’s powerful 70s series has been reimagined for our pandemic times, with its two leads navigating the pain and frustration of a brutal breakup, and agonising separationIngmar Bergman’s original Scenes from a Marriage miniseries, released in 1973, was blamed for a spike in divorce rates. Whether this was factually true or just felt true enough, it was a recognition of the acuity of Bergman’s depiction of a disintegrating union. Indeed, his series – brought to life by an anguished Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson – has gone on to influence many films and television dramas that have since examined the same subject.It is possible that the new reworking (under the same name) by Hagai Levi (and his collaborator Amy Herzog who co-wrote two of the five episodes) will have the same effect on a pandemic population who have been cooped up with partners for far too long. This take on Scenes from a Marriage (Sky Atlantic) is relentlessly intimate, focusing almost wholly on the one fracturing couple, with an all-killer, no-filler script that captures the impossibility of either saying or construing anything neutrally once the rot has set in. It is also set almost entirely in one house, which may be a dose of reality too far for some. Continue reading...

Incident in which car caught fire happened early on Sunday morning near village of Heath and ReachFour people have died after a single-vehicle road collision in Bedfordshire in the early hours of Sunday morning.Police said the casualties had been confirmed following “highly complex work” by emergency services. Continue reading...

Tuesday: Australians want stronger climate policies as Coalition negotiations continue. Plus: why the Nicholas Building is the creative heart of MelbourneGood morning. The climate crisis is in the news today as politicians prepare for the Cop26 climate summit at the end of the month. NSW enjoys eased Covid restrictions but confusion remains over its vaccination record system. And if you’re dancing your way out of lockdown, we had some expert advice on how to keep your shoes in good nick.As Scott Morrison continues negotiations with the Nationals over climate policy ahead of the Cop26 talks in Glasgow, the latest Guardian Essential poll suggests a majority of Australians want the Coalition to set a higher emissions reduction target for 2030 and a net zero target for 2050. Morrison has been signalling his support for a net zero target for many months and there has been persistent speculation the government may increase Australia’s current 2030 emissions reduction target of a 26-28% cut on 2005 levels. But with some Nationals hostile, and some MPs demanding high price tags before any agreement on targets, the weight of predictions suggest the Coalition is more likely to trumpet a projected overachievement on the current 2030 commitment than increase ambition. Continue reading...

UK records 40,224 new infections as well as 28 further deaths; WHO recommends extra jab for immunocompromised people

The Ugandan novelist, who was tortured in prison over his book The Greedy Barbarian, has been selected by Tsitsi Dangarembga as part of the PEN Pinter prizeThe Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, who was tortured by the Ugandan government in prison over his novel The Greedy Barbarian, has been named this year’s International Writer of Courage by Tsitsi Dangarembga.The award is part of the PEN Pinter prize, which goes to an author deemed to have fulfilled Harold Pinter’s aspiration to “define the real truth of our lives and our societies”. This year’s PEN Pinter winner, the Zimbabwean writer and activist Dangarembga, chose Rukirabashaija as the International Writer of Courage, an award for an author who has been persecuted for speaking out about their beliefs, with whom she will share her prize. Continue reading...

Second convictions for Nadia Ali, headteacher of Ambassadors Home school in Streatham, and her fatherA headteacher and her father have been sentenced for the second time for running an illegal unregistered school in south London after a crackdown by the schools watchdog Ofsted.Nadia Ali, the headteacher of Ambassadors Home school, an unregistered private school in Streatham, was sentenced on Monday to eight weeks’ imprisonment suspended for 12 months, two years after a prior conviction for the same offence. Continue reading...

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Domestic abuse officer accused of asking woman out and ‘sexualising’ relationship, at misconduct hearing in Eastleigh

Fourteen countries likely to take tough stance in future talks about fisheries if access to UK waters does not improveFourteen EU member states are preparing to issue a joint declaration accusing the British government of risking “significant economic and social damage” to their fishing communities, as wider relations appear close to breaking point.In the statement, seen by the Guardian, France, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Cyprus, Portugal, Denmark, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden, Malta and Latvia will call for the UK to act “in the spirit and the letter” of the Brexit deal struck last Christmas Eve. Continue reading...