As guards dismantle barricades at airport, leadership holds talks on how the spoils of power will be shared

Citizens tell of ‘absolute feeling of depression’ after last American troops left country overnightArifa Ahmadi* started her first day under full Taliban control by burning her jeans and any other clothes that the Taliban would be likely to disapprove of as the nation woke up to a new era after the last American troops left the country overnight.Ahmadi is a part of the generation that has grown up during the past 20 years and enjoyed freedom, education and employment under a government backed by the west – but lost her job after the Taliban took over the country. Continue reading...

My Kid Could’ve Done That! invited 15 artists to create work alongside their children. From leaking breasts to hours in front of childrens’ TV, the results are admirably honestAt five years of age, Astrid might well be the youngest exhibition curator of all time.“I’m really looking forward to deciding where the art goes,” she says, demonstrating a natural instinct for her new role. “And I’ve really enjoyed working with Daddy too!” Continue reading...

Moscow correspondent Sarah Rainsford told by officials that her visa would not be renewedThe BBC’s Moscow correspondent has used her final dispatch before her expulsion from Russia by the Kremlin to warn that the country was “moving in reverse” when it came to free speech and press freedoms.Sarah Rainsford recorded the moments after she was pulled aside by authorities at the airport on a return trip to Moscow and informed that Russia’s FSB security service had banned her from life from the country. Continue reading...

Population returns almost to level recorded after famine that killed 1m and forced millions more to emigrateIreland’s population has surpassed 5 million for the first time since the aftermath of its 19th-century famine.The republic reached the milestone in April, reflecting a combination of net migration and natural increase, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Six guards facing criminal cases after footage showed widespread abuse of detainees at Tehran facilityIranian prosecutors have opened criminal cases against six guards at Tehran’s Evin prison after footage showing widespread abuse of detainees at the facility leaked out last week.The judiciary said “some” prison guards were in detention after a three-day investigation into mistreatment and grim conditions at Evin. Zabihollah Khodaeian, a judiciary spokesperson, said authorities had also summoned two guards and punished others. He did not elaborate on the penalties or identifying the suspects. Continue reading...

It’s easy to put off tender discussions, but successfully addressing the most emotional subjects always starts with listeningThere’s a conversation you’re avoiding. It feels important, the stakes are high, there are strong feelings involved and you are putting it off: “The time isn’t right”; “I can’t find the words”; “I don’t want to get emotional”.But delaying doesn’t solve anything and anticipation is often far more uncomfortable than the conversation itself. Getting started might involve some awkward moments, but, after that, the situation is open for discussion and exploration. Continue reading...

Once a year, we pupils were given total freedom, whether we chose to go to the zoo or get on the dodgems. I decided to surprise my mother with a visitThe best day of my school year was always the same: 29 May. It was known as Founder’s Day which, in most schools with such pretensions, meant being forced to dress in your best clothes, sing a hymn in Latin and then listen to some old bloke telling you how to live a good and righteous life. Doesn’t sound promising, does it? Except that at our school, it was different. We may have had the Latin hymn but, after that, we were told we must leave the school and go wherever we wanted (within legal limits, I suppose, though I don’t ever remember that being spelled out). This may not sound that spectacular, until you realise that this was a school for blind and almost-blind children.You were also presented with five shillings, which I suppose was intended as a survival kit, but which we realised could buy 60 penny chews, or a dirty book from the top shelf of the newsagents, which the one boy with a bit of sight could read to you with the aid of a powerful magnifying glass. Continue reading...

Police say Benjamin Green, 41, lived with Maddie Durdant-Hollamby in house where pair were found dead on FridayPolice have named a man suspected of murdering 22-year-old Maddie Durdant-Hollamby before killing himself and confirmed that he was in a relationship with her.Officers confirmed that Benjamin Green, 41, lived with Durdant-Hollamby at his house in Kettering, where they were both found dead shortly after 1pm on Friday after police went to the property after a report of concern for her welfare. Continue reading...

‘We are grateful to feed families, I’m happy to put a smile on people’s faces, I’m very happy. It is what it is’

Singapore agrees to vaccine ‘dose swap’ with Australia; NSW confirms 1,164 cases and three deaths; lockdown extended to 17 September in ACT; Victoria records 76 new cases; AMA says vaccinations for healthcare staff must be mandatory. Follow the latest updates live

As the Roy siblings strategise their next moves, get one step ahead with our at-a-glance stats of their potential for success (or, more likely, disaster) Continue reading...

To disrupt colonial power inequalities, the global south needs to take more controlThere have been many studies published recently on the prevalence of racism in the international aid sector.They have ranged from definitions of racial equity within global development, to the experiences of black, indigenous and other people of colour working in the sector, to the British government’s delayed sub-inquiry into racism as part of a larger inquiry into the culture and philosophy of UK aid. Continue reading...

They brawled with the Sex Pistols, gaffer-taped a journalist to the Eiffel Tower and got thrown out of Sweden twice. Now, for their 18th album and final tour, the punks seem to be maturing at lastAs Jean-Jacques Burnel drily admits, the Stranglers had “a bad reputation for quite a while”. During the punk years, their many outrages ranged from being escorted out of Sweden by police with machine-guns (twice) to gaffer-taping a music journalist to the Eiffel Tower, 400ft up, upside down, without his trousers. However, the singer and bass player says the biggest outcry actually came when they got themselves a keyboard player.“It was seen as sacrilege,” he laughs, recalling this supposed affront to the ramshackle garage punk ethos. “And worse than that – he had a synthesiser. We were called heretics and ostracised. Nobody wanted anything to to do with us. But look what happened a couple of years later: synth pop!” Continue reading...

The 34 outlets catering to students at four universities will offer only a single meat option four days a weekStudents at universities in Berlin will from this winter swap currywurst and schnitzel for seeds and pulses, as campus canteens in the German capital make heavy cuts to their meat and fish options.The 34 canteens and cafes catering to Berlin’s sizeable student population at four different universities will offer from October a menu that is 68% vegan, 28% vegetarian, and 2% fish-based, with a single meat option offered four days a week. Continue reading...

Director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said virus’ reproduction rate remained under one, meaning cases would continue to dropNew cases of Covid-19 have continued to drop in New Zealand, in a promising early indication that the country’s strict lockdown is working and its latest outbreak may be coming under control.The country announced 49 new cases on Tuesday – dropping for the second day in a row, down from 53 cases on Monday and 83 on Sunday. It is the lowest number of new cases reported in the country in six days. Continue reading...

Cal Fire chief warns of ‘fire activity that we have never seen before’ as fleeing residents clog roadsThousands of residents have been forced to evacuate the tourist town of South Lake Tahoe as the raging Caldor fire draws closer, prompting chaotic scenes and clogged roads as residents rush to leave the area.Monday’s fresh evacuation orders, unheard of in the city, came a day after communities several miles south of the lake were abruptly ordered to evacuate as the wildfire raged nearby. Continue reading...

New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced 1,164 new cases of locally acquired Covid-19, and three more deaths. Intensive care nurse at Liverpool hospital, Michelle Dowd, described how physically and emotionally hard the work in ICU is caring for Covid patients. She said, 'These patients are some of the sickest we've ever seen. They require so much support and monitoring and physical care. We're in layers of PPE, sometimes for hours at a time'► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

Floods came after unexpectedly heavy rains, with as much as 90mm per hour hitting the city through the nightAucklanders have been forced to evacuate their homes in the middle of the night due to flash flooding, after New Zealand’s largest city was hit by unexpectedly heavy rainfall.Evacuations were carried out in the suburbs of west Auckland and nearby townships, such as Kumeu and Piha, with firefighters having to use jet skis to reach motorists trapped in their cars, according to the New Zealand Herald. Continue reading...

‘Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended,’ says Biden; ‘At 12 o’clock tonight, the last American troops left Kabul airport, on which account Afghanistan was completely liberated and independent,’ say Taliban

Senior officials at the World Health Organization have cited stagnating vaccination rates and low uptake in poorer countries as reasons so many Covid deaths are predicted.'Last week, there was an 11% increase in the number of deaths in the region – one reliable projection is expecting 236,000 deaths in Europe, by 1 December,' WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said.Kluge attributed the higher transmission to the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant, an 'exaggerated easing' of restrictions and measures, and a surge in summer travel.While about half of people in Europe are fully vaccinated, vaccination uptake in the region has slowed, Kluge said.Europe has registered about 1.3 million Covid deaths

The Portuguese director’s stately cine-memoir about his singular life was shot nearly four decades ago but withheld at his request until his death, aged 106The remarkable Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, who died in 2015 at the age of 106 and made movies right until the very end, often seems to me a film-maker from a statelier, almost pre-cinematic era: an epistolary director or manuscript-culture director. Here is what could be called his testamentary film, a personal cine-memoir or cine-meditation. It was shot in 1982, but withheld from release at the director’s request until after his death, which would be much further off than anyone imagined. It has only now found a release in the UK. Continue reading...

At least three people dead and trail of explosive booby traps left across Araçatuba in São Paulo stateBank robbers armed with explosives and high-powered rifles have plunged a Brazilian city into terror early Monday, taking civilians hostage and even putting some on their cars while making their escape.Video shared on social media showed a booming shootout and men dressed in black marching hostages down a street in Araçatuba, 320 miles from São Paulo and home to almost 200,000 people. Continue reading...

Hospitality staff in areas such as Cornwall and Lake District suffer barrage of complaints from angry and impatient visitorsIt was supposed to be the summer to rekindle the joy of the great British holiday, with demand for 2022 domestic breaks already rising. But hospitality staff in many tourist hotspots beg to differ, saying they have suffered a barrage of complaints from “impatient” visitors and “Tripadvisor warriors”.Restaurant and hotel owners said visitors were regularly complaining about slow service amid high demand, and that some had seemingly struggled to adapt to the change from their usual all-inclusive getaway abroad. Continue reading...

Analysis: forging an acceptable agreement with new Afghan regime will require careful diplomacyThe history of war is littered with losing parties struggling to accept the terms or even the fact of their defeat. At the end of the first world war, Germany’s then chancellor Philipp Scheidemann announced: “May the hand wither that binds us in such shackles.”Some of the demands by the US and its allies on how the Taliban must behave now contain similar self-denial. It is as if the US remains in control of Kabul, as orders are issued on future Taliban actions ranging from the release of refugees to the future makeup of the government, its counter-terrorism policies and the place of women in society. Continue reading...

US should work with international community to help Afghanistan run government functions, Wang Yi says

Western G7 powers are meeting Turkey, Qatar and Nato in Doha to discuss how Kabul airport could be reopened

Aboriginal man in 50s becomes first Indigenous death with Covid; NSW jails locked down; 52 of Victoria’s new cases linked; Labor senator Alex Gallacher dies; truck drivers block M1 in Queensland vaccination protest. Follow updates

Firefighters have battled a high-rise blaze in Milan that spread rapidly through a 20-storey residential building and poured black smoke into the air. Residents were evacuated and the city's mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said there were no reports of injuries or deaths. He added that firefighters were kicking down doors, apartment by apartment, to make sure there were no residents left behind. The 60-metre (200ft) tall building, part of a recent development project, was designed to look like the keel of a ship and included an aluminium sail on its roof, which burned and fell to the street in pieces

Governments told educating children safely must be ‘primary objective’ as new school year begins

He played some of the most memorable characters of all time on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street - then became a brilliant comedy director. What is he most proud of?I ask Frank Oz if he feels like the Paul McCartney to Jim Henson’s John Lennon, the one left behind to carry the flame after his revered creative partner suddenly and shockingly died. Oz takes a deep breath and turns his head to the side, thinking.If you grew up in the 1970s and 80s, your childhood was shaped by Henson and Oz and their work with the Muppets, just as the kids who grew up in the 50s and 60s did so in the shadow of Lennon and McCartney. Even if you weren’t a devoted fan of the Muppets themselves, you couldn’t help but take in their influence osmotically, what with The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, the Muppets movies and Labyrinth swirling in the atmosphere. I was pretty much raised on the Muppets, just as I now raise my own kids on them, and I cannot remember a time when Henson and Oz’s creations were not stamped in my mind’s eye. Continue reading...

The modernist maestro had carte blanche to build a great museum. The result? A breathtaking icon hopeless for displaying art. British architect David Chipperfield relives his gargantuan repair jobNever has so much praise been lavished on so dysfunctional a building. The last major project of modernist master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie is a perfectly square temple of steel and glass, raised above the street on its own granite acropolis. Built in 1968, not far from the recently erected Berlin Wall, it was intended to symbolise the freedoms of the west, its big black roof enclosing an epic column-free hall for the display of modern art. It has long been venerated as a 20th-century Parthenon, the ultimate example of Mies’s pursuit of “universal space”.But as a museum, it has always been a disaster. Ever since it opened, the New National Gallery has been dogged by cracking windows, heavy condensation and awkward display spaces, presenting a curatorial nightmare for its staff. Beneath the impractical grand hall are subterranean galleries for the permanent collection that have the dreary feeling of a windowless office complex. It is one of the most extreme examples of the quest for purity of form trumping the demands of function. Continue reading...

A lawyer for the Afghans says legal proceedings are a last resort, and that Immigration New Zealand have been ‘completely flat-footed’In the video, New Zealand flags are burning. Their edges curl and the stars of the southern cross turn black, crumbling into the soil of a Kabul backyard. The flags are printed on sheet after sheet of paper: certificates of appreciation, thanks, and recognition of service to New Zealand.The family burning them has held on to them for the past decade, memorialising the translation services they provided for New Zealand troops in Afghanistan. Now, those papers have become a potentially deadly hazard. Continue reading...

After 18 months of remote learning, some students will re-enter classrooms as the capital sees a fall in coronavirus infections

How contagious is the Delta Covid variant? Take charge of this interactive and watch how small changes in isolation or reproduction rates of Covid-19 can affect our battle against it.One important characteristic of viruses and other pathogens is how contagious or infectious they are. One key measure of this is the R0, or basic reproduction number, which indicates how many new cases one infected person generates.

IAEA ‘deeply troubled’ by indications the 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon was operatingNorth Korea appears to have restarted a nuclear reactor that is widely believed to have produced plutonium for nuclear weapons, the UN atomic watchdog has said in an annual report.The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has had no access to North Korea since Pyongyang expelled its inspectors in 2009. The country then pressed ahead with its nuclear weapons programme and soon resumed nuclear testing. Its last nuclear test was in 2017. Continue reading...

A celebration of the Jamaican producer and performer who has died aged 85. Perry was often hailed as a genius and was a major influence on Bob Marley. He also pioneered dub and roots reggae styles Continue reading...

US forces have launched a 'defensive' military strike in Kabul against a vehicle carrying 'multiple suicide bombers' from the Islamic State’s local affiliate in Afghanistan who were aiming to attack the airport, American officials have said.There was no immediate word on casualties and few other details have so far emerged about the incident, which may have triggered a second blast in a nearby house.Witnesses reported an explosion near Kabul airport and television footage showed black smoke rising into the sky. Taliban officials confirmed the US account. According to some reports, a child died in the second blast

Follow all the latest on the Covid-19 pandemic from around the world

Police charge Lee Peacock with murdering Sharon Pickles and Clinton Ashmore in WestminsterA man has been charged with the murders of two people who were stabbed to death within hours in central London.Lee Peacock, 49, was charged with the murders of Sharon Pickles and Clinton Ashmore in Westminster, the Metropolitan police said. Continue reading...

Project including UK’s tallest ceramic sculpture is raising profile of town often overlooked by holidaymakersTourists have long tended to bypass the Cornish town of St Austell on their way to the surfing beaches of Cornwall’s north coast or the bays and creeks of the south, while artists have have been drawn by the crystal-clear light of St Ives and Newlyn.But thanks partly to a public art project inspired by its once-great china clay industry, and the impending arrival of a Cornish answer to The Angel of the North, St Austell is enjoying something of a renaissance. Continue reading...

Emergency resolution would call for Taliban support of plan to enable continued air evacuations, says French president• Afghanistan – live updatesFrance and Britain plan to table an emergency UN security council resolution on Monday calling for the Taliban to back a civilian-run safe zone at Kabul airport that would allow the continued air evacuation of those who want to leave the country, the French president has said.“What we are trying to do is to be able to organise targeted humanitarian operations for evacuations that will not take place through the military airport in Kabul,” Emmanuel Macron told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Continue reading...

Thousands of reservations taken for next summer as holidaymakers seek to avoid missing out on propertiesIt is a conundrum that British tourist boards have struggled for decades to solve: how do you persuade holidaymakers to swap sangria in Spain for Blackpool rock?This year, record numbers of Britons opted for domestic holidays amid pandemic-induced clampdowns on foreign travel. Now, despite this August’s temperamental weather, many appear to be planning a holiday in the UK again next summer. Continue reading...

Parc des Ateliers, Arles, France

Whether we’re yam growers, tech wizards or conspiracy theorists, we’re hardwired to play the status game. But success is not always what it seemsLife is a game. To understand this is to understand why the human world can be so maddening, angry and irrational. The behaviour of racists, transphobes, conspiracy theorists, cult members, religious fundamentalists and online mobbers becomes much more explicable when you realise that humans are programmed by evolution to be obsessively interested in status, and that this obsession is powerful enough to overcome the will to achieve equality, truth or the sense of generous compassion for our rivals.We play games for status incessantly and automatically. We do so because it’s a solution our species has come upon to secure our own survival and reproduction. As a tribal animal, our survival has always depended on our being accepted into a supportive community. But once inside any group, we’re rarely content to flop about on its lower rungs. We’re driven to rise within it. Back in the stone age, increased status meant access to better mates, more food and greater safety for ourselves and our offspring. The more status we earned, the greater our capacity to thrive and produce thriving children. So we’re driven to seek connection and rank, to be accepted into groups and win status within them. This is the game of human life. Continue reading...

She risked arrest, torture and jail to fight racism in 1980s South Africa, and her story is being made into a filmAs a white South African, Sue Dobson risked arrest, torture and imprisonment spying for the black nationalist cause during the latter days of the brutal apartheid regime. She was a middle-class woman in her 20s when she joined the African National Congress (ANC) and infiltrated the white minority government – even having a honey-pot affair with a police official to obtain information, with the full support of her husband, a fellow activist. When her cover was blown in 1989, she fled to Britain, where she sought political asylum after threats to her life.Now, for the first time in 30 years, she is ready to talk publicly about her story – that of a “very ordinary” woman who played an extraordinary part in fighting racism. Continue reading...

Correspondence found in archives shows how ‘pushy’ novelist used ‘collusion, networking and back-scratching’ to win literary awardsAs one of America’s foremost novelists, Philip Roth was awarded nearly every literary accolade, including a Pulitzer prize. It might be assumed that his work spoke for itself in securing these plaudits, but previously unpublished letters reveal he was, in fact, a master of self-promotion, networking and mutual back-scratching.Professor Jacques Berlinerblau, who studied the correspondence while writing a book about Roth, was surprised by how pushy the author was and by his wheeler-dealing with friends and colleagues from the worlds of publishing, literary criticism and academia. “It’s something one would never get from reading his highly autobiographical descriptions of the writer’s lonely life,” he said. Continue reading...

Woman in critical condition and two others hospitalised after emergency services called to festival in BarrowA woman was in a critical condition and two others were also injured after an incident involving a ride at a festival in Cumbria.Emergency services were called to the scene in Cavendish Park, Barrow, at 8.30pm on Saturday after two women and one man suffered injuries, Cumbria constabulary said. Continue reading...

NSW prison outbreaks grow; ACT reports 13 new cases and New Zealand 83. This blog is now closed

Three Texas authors expose the myth that the 1836 battle at a San Antonio mission was about freedom. It was about slaveryAs the ancient American struggle over how much truth to tell about the traditional oppression of minorities bubbles over, with arguments over everything from the teaching of Critical Race Theory to the mention of anything gay in the presence of anyone under 18, this engaging new book about the history of the Alamo arrives at the perfect moment.Related: Our Own Worst Enemy review: a caustic diagnosis of America after Trump Continue reading...