Ireland stops its system of mandatory hotel quarantine for travellers arriving in the country; UK records another 31,348 cases

Emergency visa plan will not resolve Britain’s road transport crisis, says industry as majority blame Brexit in pollThe government’s emergency programme to issue temporary visas to thousands of lorry drivers is far too little to resolve Britain’s supply-chain crisis and is unlikely to attract them to the UK, haulage chiefs have warned.Downing Street on Saturday night confirmed hastily compiled plans to add 5,000 HGV drivers and 5,500 poultry workers to a visa scheme until Christmas, to help the food and fuel industries with shortages. Continue reading...

Travel agents report Australians’ interest in cruising increasing 40% each month since June, with one analyst describing it as ‘the Teflon market for travel’On 16 September, Miami-based Oceania Cruises, a luxury culinary-focused cruise company that is a division of Norwegian Cruise Lines, set an all-time, single-day booking record. It was driven by the introduction of its newest ship, Vista, due to take its first passengers in April 2023. Nearly half the available inventory of Vista’s inaugural season was sold in one day. These were new cash bookings, 30% of which came from people booking with the company for the first time.It’s hard to know what this means for Australia. According to Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), 1.34 million Australians took a cruise in 2018, one of the highest rates in the world by population, yet international travel is currently off limits. Continue reading...

In what’s been described as a ‘paradigm shifter’ for psychiatry, Australian clinical trials are exploring the therapeutic benefits of illegal substancesIt was out of desperation that Michael Raymond found himself sitting in a remote retreat in the Peruvian Andes, sipping a cup of bitter tea.Raymond had reached breaking point. His 16-year career as an electrical engineer in high–security situations for the Australian air force had seen him deal with near-death experiences, crashes, casualties and “the aftermath of human remains”. Continue reading...

NSW Health and hospital codes of conduct restrict staff from speaking to media, leading to scarce insight into their experiences

Four corpses taken to main square and hung from cranes by Afghanistan’s Islamist regimeTaliban authorities in the western Afghan city of Herat killed four alleged kidnappers and hung their bodies up in public to deter others, a local government official has said, in a sign of Afghanistan’s new rulers’ return to their harsh version of Islamic justice.Graphic footage shows the dead bodies of at least four men with their clothes covered in blood hanging from cranes in the city’s main squares as people watch. Continue reading...

Police hunting killer of teacher, 28, in south-east London study CCTV footage of mystery figureDetectives hunting a man of interest in the Sabina Nessa murder inquiry believe that a “reflective red item” the suspect was seen carrying on the night of her death may have been used in the attack.CCTV footage of the figure shows him looking over his shoulder, putting up his hood and attempting to conceal the red item on the night of Nessa’s death in Kidbrooke, south-east London. Continue reading...

The historian and TV presenter on the story of former slave Olaudah Equiano and the significance of Black History MonthHistorian and broadcaster David Olusoga has been the face of a decolonial turn in British broadcasting that, in recent years, with series including the Bafta-winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners, A House Through Time and Black and British: A Forgotten History, has inspired new conversations about injustice in the story of Britain and Britishness in living rooms across the country. Anticipating this year’s Black History Month (October), he has contributed a foreword to the republication by Hodder & Stoughton of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the memoir of an 18th-century formerly enslaved man that is also widely recognised as a foundational text of Black British literature.What led you to get behind this republication of Equiano’s memoir?

All eyes are on Xi Jinping as expectation grows that the government will have to intervene to protect small creditorsIn May 2020, Chen (not his real name) decided to invest 300,000 yuan (£34,000) in property in the north-eastern Chinese city of Shenyang. “I thought the price was not too expensive and I had some extra money so I invested it,” he said. “I thought it was going to be all right because Evergrande is such a big name and enterprise.”Chen was following in the footsteps of countless fellow Chinese, getting in on a booming property market that had turned big cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai into some of the world’s most expensive, amid the huge transfer of the population from rural to urban areas. Continue reading...

Exclusive: deal in which UK government would take stake in Sizewell C would risk inflaming geopolitical tensionsMinisters are closing in on a deal that could kick China off a project to build a £20bn nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast and pump in tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer cash instead – a move that would heighten geopolitical tensions.The government could announce plans to take a stake in Sizewell C power station, alongside the French state-backed power giant EDF, as early as next month, ahead of the Cop26 climate summit. Continue reading...

The country faces ‘Dutch-style’ political era with main parties neck and neck before Sunday’s pollGermany is braced to enter a new “Dutch-style” political era after federal elections on Sunday, as a knife-edge vote points to months of complicated coalition wrangling.Outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel joined the campaign trail at a rally in the western city of Aachen on Friday night in an attempt to help her designated successor from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Armin Laschet, close the gap on the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD). Continue reading...

Host dismisses Anti-Defamation League after organization urges network to drop himAfter the Anti-Defamation League renewed its call for Tucker Carlson to be fired from Fox News for voicing the racist “great replacement” theory about immigration, the primetime host had a pithy response: “Fuck them.”Related: ‘Rudy is really hurt’: Giuliani reportedly banned from Fox News Continue reading...

The men, who were detained by Beijing in 2018, were released hours after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was freed in CanadaTwo Canadian citizens who were detained by Beijing for more than 1,000 days have arrived back in Canada on Sunday morning, greeted by the country’s prime minister, Justin TrudeauThe plane carrying Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor arrived in Calgary, a location which had not been publicly disclosed. They were met and embraced by Trudeau on the tarmac. The plane had left Chinese airspace around 7.30pm Ottawa time, just hours after US authorities reached an agreement allowing Chinese Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, to return to China in exchange for admitting wrongdoing in a fraud case. Shortly before Trudeau spoke, Meng boarded a chartered flight organised by the Chinese government to Shenzhen, Chinese state media reported. Zhao Lijian, ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson, said her return was enabled by the “unremitting efforts of the Chinese government”. Continue reading...

Memorial service on 29 November will take place more than a year after Ratana was shot dead at south London custody centreA special memorial service for Metropolitan police sergeant Matiu “Matt” Ratana, who was shot and killed on duty last year, will be held so police officers get the chance to say a final farewell to their colleague.A memorial service is to be held on Monday 29 November, more than a year after Ratana was shot dead at a south London custody centre, in place of a usual full force funeral, which could not be held because of Covid-19 restrictions. Continue reading...

Proof of vaccination or negative test made mandatory for public venues as social-distancing measures are lifted

England and Wales victims’ commissioner says there needs to be more onus on police to protect publicPolice need to do more to make the streets safe for women and girls after the death of Sabina Nessa, the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales has said.Dame Vera Baird, who said she attended a vigil in Wood Green, London, in honour of the suspected murdered 28-year-old primary school teacher, on Friday evening, said there needs to be more onus on police to protect the public than on women to take precautions. Continue reading...

My creativity can be traced back to my heritage, to the skin colour that defined how I was perceived. But, like my ancestors, I wouldn’t accept defeat

The Nobel laureate has produced plays, poems, essays and even inspired a pop duo but he hasn’t written a novel for nearly half a century - until nowAt 87, Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian icon. His plays have been performed around the world, his poems anthologised, his novels studied in schools and universities, while his nonfiction writing has been the scourge of many a Nigerian dictator. He was imprisoned for 22 months during the Nigerian civil war in the late 1960s for attempting to broker peace; his activism led him again into exile two decades later during the era of General Sani Abacha, military ruler of Nigeria, when the environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged.In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel prize in literature and became the first African laureate, but his status in Nigerian letters was secured long before then. For a generation of young Nigerian writers, his work has been transformative. It has inspired artists, too – in Lagos, many display their skill by painting famous faces, his among them. There was even a musical duo called Soyinka’s Afro. Continue reading...

The world’s most famous teen activist opens up about how she’s been transformed since she started her school climate strike in 2018 Continue reading...

When Covid stalled his film work, the writer took revenge on the virus in the form of a poem about Britain, Brexit and the pandemic – exclusively extracted hereWhere do you start with the pandemic? It may have been one of the most universally shared moments in history but that collective experience was instantly refracted into billions of entirely unique memories. How also do you address the weird paradox that for many the pandemic was an uncomfortable blend of positive and negative? “Me being at home was great for the children, but we’ve had to close our business.” “It was nice to spend more time with the family, but we lost my uncle.” It’s a mesh of contradictions; the cheerful banging of pans mingling with the distant screech of an ambulance siren. The pre-pandemic era feels both a long time ago and yesterday. As we emerged from lockdown, everything was both totally different and kind of the same.And how do I respond to the pandemic as a writer and a director? Like many working in film and television, I had mixed fortunes. My film, The Personal History of David Copperfield, never made cinemas around the world, but it got shown on streaming platforms. As a writer, I’m used to working at home anyway, and, though work slowed, it never went away. I’m currently starting up a shoot we shut down eight months previously and I feel both blessed and guilty to have been one of the lucky ones. Strangely, although I thought about it often, my response to the pandemic won’t be a film or TV show. Unexpectedly, it’s emerged spontaneously as a poem. Continue reading...

In our new column, we air both sides of a domestic disagreement – and ask you to deliver a verdict

Historians, film-makers and forensic scientists try to answer question once and for all as centenary nearsIt is the shot that a century later still echoes around Ireland as an unanswered question: who killed Michael Collins?On this much, everyone agrees: a bullet to the head killed the revolutionary leader on 22 August 1922 near Béal na Bláth, a village in County Cork, during Ireland’s civil war. Who did it, and why, remains a source of controversy and speculation that now bubbles as strong as ever. Continue reading...

A four-hour stroll on the fells followed by a pint, a bite and a place to rest your head – with a waterfall out the backStart Green Dragon pub Hardraw

Thanks to an online search error, an architect transformed a tumbledown building into a three-bedroom houseMelanie Schubert and partner Paolo Vimercati didn’t set out to buy a derelict double garage when they were looking for a new home. In one online search, Schubert forgot to include a minimum value – “and this was the cheapest property you could buy here”, she says. As architects, the couple realised that, with planning permission, this seven-metre-square plot with no garden in south-east London might just be a route to the best possible home for their budget. Continue reading...

Queensland health minister Yvette D’Ath says many went interstate ‘knowing what the rules are’

The cases of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, arrested in 2018, have prompted accusations of ‘hostage diplomacy’On a drizzly December day in 2018, Huawei’s chief financial officer landed in Vancouver international airport after a 12-hour flight from Hong Kong.Meng Wanzhou, whose father founded the telecoms giant Huawei, planned to stay just a few hours in the coastal Canadian city before traveling on to Mexico. Continue reading...

Analysis: Experts say it is first time since start of pandemic that sustained decline is recorded out of lockdown

Veteran presenter, who quit after eight shows, says technical faults and other problems ‘would have killed him’ if he had carried onAndrew Neil has revealed that he came close to having a breakdown while at GB News and believes “it would’ve killed me to carry on” due to the technical problems at the channel.The veteran broadcaster, 72, resigned last week from his role as the rightwing network’s lead presenter and chairman after weeks of speculation about his future. Continue reading...

Issue of whether royal had been notified about the case had previously been contestedThe Duke of York has received court papers relating to a sexual assault lawsuit, US officials have confirmed.The complainant, Virginia Giuffre, is seeking damages after alleging Prince Andrew sexually assaulted her, a claim he vehemently denies. Continue reading...

Hampstead theatre, London

Recent history suggests Liberals and Nationals have little to fear from Craig Kelly and One Nation, but the dynamics of the next vote are unclearOne of the federal government’s Queensland MPs was enjoying some downtime at home recently, watching the reality show SAS Australia. They were interrupted by a sudden jolt – not an abseiling mishap or some other epic fail by a hapless contestant – but the sudden appearance during an ad break of their former colleague Craig Kelly.You may remember him as the Liberal backbencher with brimming feelings and wild theories on pretty much everything. Kelly parted ways with the government back in February. These days, he’s the federal leader of the United Australia party, fronting ads for Clive Palmer’s political operation. Continue reading...

A coalition appears inevitable after two surveys suggest almost equal support for CDU and former favouriteThe race to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor remains completely open two days before western Europe’s most populous country goes to the polls, with the latest predictions showing the leading parties almost neck and neck.Two leading polls published on Friday ahead of Sunday’s election indicate the Social Democrats (SPD) have lost their lead over the Christian Democrats (CDU). One, carried out by Civey for the broadcaster ZDF, showed the SPD to be stable on 25%, but the CDU to have risen to 23%. A poll released later in the day for the polling institute Allensbach for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung showed the race to be even tighter, with the SPD on 26%, the CDU on 25%. Continue reading...

Rally to demand government action on climate crisis is first worldwide since start of pandemicHundreds of thousands of people in 99 countries have taken part in a coordinated global climate strike demanding urgent action to tackle the ecological crisis.The strike on Friday, the first worldwide climate action since the coronavirus pandemic hit, is taking place weeks before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK. Continue reading...

Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Éric Zemmour slug it out in much-publicised two-hour debateTwo men; two completely different visions for France.In a debate that lasted more than two hours, the hard-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the hard-right Éric Zemmour, expected to be a presidential candidate, went head to head on prime-time television on Thursday evening. Continue reading...

Find out who is leading the polling to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor of GermanyGermans go to the polls this Sunday to elect a new Bundestag, or federal parliament. The result – after coalition negotiations likely to involve two or three parties – will decide who will succeed Angela Merkel, who is standing down after 16 years as chancellor.A two-way coalition between the conservative CDU and the German Greens had long looked the most likely outcome, but in recent weeks the SPD’s Olaf Scholz has performed well in televised debates and his party has taken a lead in the latest polls. Continue reading...

With her generous features and a dolorous countenance, the German chancellor has been an artist’s dreamSixteen years is a very long time in politics, and since 2005 we’ve had Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron (and Nick Clegg), Theresa May and Boris Johnson – while the Germans have just had Angela Merkel. It usually takes time to get the hang of drawing a politician, particularly one from a foreign country, and Merkel was no exception. I’d only just about got a handle on the SPD’s Gerhard Schröder when he was replaced by the CDU’s first female leader, and my first attempts were a little shaky and somewhat speculative. Was she a Thatcherite? Would she be pro-Bush, like Blair, or continue Schröder’s opposition to the war in Iraq? Would she be easy to draw? Continue reading...

Citizen Lab confirms human rights campaigner probably hacked by a government client of NSO Group from 2015 to 2020Even in death, there was little peace for Alaa Al-Siddiq.When the body of the 33-year-old Emirati activist, who died in a car accident in Oxford in June, was shown in a viewing to mourners at Regent’s Park Mosque, a number of her close friends stayed away. Continue reading...

New agreement between Nauru and Australia on offshore processing; NSW records 1,043 local cases and 11 deaths; more than half of over-16s now vaccinated; Victoria records 733 new local cases and one death; WA records one new case, ACT records 19 new cases, zero cases in Qld. Follow all the day’s news

A childhood encounter with a hyena inspired Hawa Jama Abdi’s first verse. Now she is part of an arts project designed to encourage women storytellers - and unite all SomalisWhen Hawa Jama Abdi was eight years old, she got lost in a forest and found herself in the path of a hyena. In her place, many would have run, some would have frozen – but Jama Abdi, the blind daughter of Somali pastoralists, kept her cool, and composed her first poem. The verse ran:I lived in fear of you, day and night

Fourteen also rescued in operation hampered by strong winds, low visibility and sub-zero temperaturesFive climbers have died after a blizzard on Mount Elbrus, Europe’s highest peak, Russia’s emergencies ministry has said.Thursday’s incident happened when a group of 19 climbers were at an altitude of over 5,000 metres (16,000ft). Continue reading...

After years of avoiding crime films, he’s back as a mafioso in the Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark. He talks about being adopted and getting into acting – and saves a surprise for the end

Since 2015, the outgoing German chancellor has largely relied on a sole Hamburg designer for her wardrobeA four-storey house set a discreet distance away from Neuer Wall, Hamburg’s luxury designer strip, holds the secrets to Angela Merkel’s successful sartorial style.Except that fashion designer Bettina Schoenbach, who has her studio here on ABC Strasse, has taken something of a vow of silence over her association with Merkel, who became her client after winning the 2005 election. Continue reading...

After 16 years in power, Angela Merkel is to retire as chancellor after a general election on Sunday, leaving a gaping hole in German politics. Merkel announced in October 2018 that her fourth term in office would be the last. The decision marks the first time since 1949 that an incumbent chancellor has not run for re-election. Appointed chancellor for the first time on 22 November 2005, Merkel has been in office for almost as long as Helmut Kohl, Germany’s longest-serving leader, who was in power for just over 16 years

Mass youth protests to hit more than 1,400 locations weeks before Cop26 climate summitA global climate strike by youth protesters on Friday will hit more than 1,400 locations with a message that “change is coming – from the streets”.The strike is the first such worldwide action since the coronavirus pandemic hit, and is taking place just weeks before the vital Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK. Continue reading...

SPD and the Greens have declined to publicly rule out pact with Die Linke but privately voice scepticismAs Germany heads to the polls this weekend, it is the scenario that haunts conservatives’ nightmares and has progressives daring to dream: that after 16 years of conservative-led rule, Europe’s most powerful economy could for the next four years have a full-throated leftwing government.The possibility of a power-sharing deal between the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD), the Greens and the leftwing Die Linke – nicknamed “red-green-red” or R2G – has been highlighted aggressively in recent weeks by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in an attempt to paint a vote for the current frontrunner for chancellor, the pragmatic finance minister, Olaf Scholz, as tantamount to a radical lurch to the left. Continue reading...

Frustration in Auckland has been rising and the cabinet would have been aware it risked losing the crowdOne of the many quotes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte that he probably never said, was that he preferred his generals lucky, rather than able. When it’s a matter of life and death, “give me lucky generals,” he’s reputed to have pleaded.It’s a view that New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern echoed this week when she announced that Auckland – home to about a third of all New Zealanders – was moving out of the strict level 4 lockdown to level 3. Replace “generals” with “policy” and you get a pretty accurate sense of cabinet’s big call this week. In a country that has essentially tattooed “go hard, go early” on to one collective arm and “stay home, stay safe” on to the other, the decision to let about 300,000 people go back to their places of work when Auckland’s still getting 15-30 cases a day in the community is a turning point in the government’s approach to this pandemic. Both in public health terms and politically. A year ago, public opinion wouldn’t have worn such faith in “lucky generals”. But that was a year ago. Continue reading...

Project backed by Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes to supply electricity to Singapore given go-ahead for subsea cable

Sexual health experts urge women not to copy DIY procedure, saying ‘you wouldn’t take out your appendix’

Friday: Australian states and territories will receive fewer Pfizer vaccines in October as frustrated overseas nurses are blocked from NSW hospitals. Plus: Adelaide’s giant pandas begin their mating ritualGood morning. Australian states and territories will receive fewer Pfizer vaccines in October. Foreign nurses are being blocked from work in New South Wales because of bureaucratic hurdles. Josh Frydenberg will make the economic case for Australia adopting a net-zero climate commitment, warning the country has a lot to lose if others believe “we are not transitioning in line with the rest of the world”. And, at the Adelaide Zoo, sex-shy pandas will try it the “old fashioned way” in the hope of conceiving a cub.Leaked figures, seen by Guardian Australia, confirm concerns that the supply of Pfizer vaccines to states and territories will be reduced in October, the critical month that NSW and Victoria intend to reach the 70% vaccination target and push towards further reopening at 80%. The national cabinet told the states and territories their allocations of Pfizer will fall from 10.9m in September to 8.4m in October. Continue reading...

Detectives have also released images of a man they want to speak to and a vehicle they are searching forA 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of the primary school teacher Sabina Nessa, the Metropolitan police said.The 28-year-old is suspected to have been killed as she walked through Cator Park in south-east London, on what should have been a five-minute journey to a pub from her nearby home, at about 8.30pm last Friday. Her body was found in the park the following day. Continue reading...