Italian PM triples original pledge on global vaccine donation; UK records 166 new Covid deaths

Email sent by officials potentially compromises safety of Afghans who may be eligible to relocate to the UKA second data breach by the Ministry of Defence in the space of a few days that could compromise the safety of Afghans has emerged.Defence officials sent an email that had the email addresses and some names of 55 people, which could be seen by all the recipients. Continue reading...

Khadija Okkarou had accused members of a ‘dangerous gang’ of kidnapping and torturing her for two monthsEleven men accused of kidnapping and gang-raping a Moroccan teenager have been each sentenced to 20 years in prison, the victim’s lawyer said on Wednesday, in a case that stirred national outrage.Khadija Okkarou, then 17, went public about the abuse in a video posted online in 2018. It was a rare move in the conservative north African country. Continue reading...

Analysis: Joe Biden has cleared the decks to focus on China. But how imminent is the danger?It may have been an inelegantly, even ineptly, executed pivot, gratuitously alienating key allies, but by leaving Afghanistan and forming the Australian, US and UK security pact in the Indo-Pacific, Joe Biden has at least cleared the decks to focus on his great foreign policy challenge – the systemic rivalry with China.Yet the concern now is how quickly this rivalry could escalate, especially in Taiwan. The linchpin of the US alliance system in south-east Asia, Taiwan is the biggest island in the “first island chain”, the group of islands that keeps China blocked in. It is China’s next target, and as the former British prime minister Theresa May pointed out, no one quite knows if the west is prepared to fight to save Taiwan or whether the new tripartite pact in some way places a new obligation on the UK to come to the country’s defence. Continue reading...

During the White House daily press briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked for additional details about Joe Biden’s call with the French president Emmanuel Macron today, after which it was announced the French ambassador would return to Washington.Psaki noted that the phone call between the two leaders lasted about 30 minutes, and she said it was a “friendly” conversation. “[Biden] acknowledged that there could have been more discussion,” she said.

US and Australia not going back on cancelled €56bn submarine contract despite talk with French leaderFrance has agreed to return its ambassador to the US and Joe Biden has vowed not to cut Paris out of key future defence decisions in the Indo-Pacific after a phone call designed to calm French fury after he struck a submarine deal with Australia and the UK behind Emmanuel Macron’s back.In a joint statement, issued after the phone call ended a five-day standoff between the leaders, the two men agreed to meet in Europe in late October, probably at the G20 summit, to discuss how to improve consultations in future. Continue reading...

Serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper had been warned by prison authorities that he was vulnerablePeter Sutcliffe, the convicted serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper, refused to be shielded in prison in the months before he died from the coronavirus, an inquest has heard.Sutcliffe had been warned that he was vulnerable to Covid-19 by authorities at Frankland Prison near Durham. Continue reading...

The German chancellor has been an anchor of stability in turbulent times. Her departure raises big questions about the futureWhen Angela Merkel’s successor is identified in elections this Sunday, that person will be the first new holder of Europe’s most powerful elected office for 16 years. The mere change of leadership will be a shock for the whole continent. Germany is the EU’s foremost economic power (although France sees itself as a political equal).That strength has generally been wielded with deference to the wider European interest. Or rather, the two interests have been conflated. A culture of atonement for the past has made Germany especially committed to the EU’s founding mission – peace and prosperity by means of cross-border integration. For the continent’s smaller members, that has sometimes felt like integration on terms dictated by Berlin, especially when it comes to budget austerity. European solidarity is the key to German foreign policy, but aversion to public debt is its sacred economic creed. That has made for uncomfortable diplomacy within the eurozone. Continue reading...

His closeness to Trump has not helped and if agreement were struck by 2024 it would be considered rapid progressThree reasons. First, Britain exports more to the US than to any other country. When added together, the countries of the European Union count for more, but almost 15% of the UK’s goods exports went to the US last year. The US is also the No 1 country for UK services exports. Continue reading...

The results raise questions about the future of Erin O’Toole’s party, which has lost ground under conservative and liberal candidates

Former health secretary said ministers were worried if they paid compensation to haemophiliacs it might set a precedentA push in the 1980s for compensation for haemophiliacs infected with Aids through contaminated blood was “doomed to failure” because of opposition from Margaret Thatcher and the Treasury, a former health secretary has said.Norman Fowler, who was secretary state for health and social security between 1981 and 1987, told the infected blood inquiry that ministers were worried if they paid compensation to haemophiliacs it might set a precedent. Continue reading...

US president outlines plan at Covid summit, bringing America’s global donation to over 1.1bn doses amid backlash over boostersJoe Biden has announced that the US will donate an additional 500m Covid-19 vaccines to low- and middle-income countries around the world, bringing America’s total global donation to more than 1.1bn doses.The US president outlined the plan on Wednesday at a virtual coronavirus summit where he urged world leaders to “go big” in tackling the pandemic and closing the vaccination gap with poorer nations. Continue reading...

Controversial proposals for Tübingen are an attempt to deter car use in the city, with larger vehicles paying the mostThe mayor of the southern German city of Tübingen has attracted praise and scorn alike for a new plan to increase parking fees by 600% in an effort to discourage cars – especially large ones – from the city.Boris Palmer, a member of the Greens party, has won initial support for his proposal, which would see the annual parking fee for SUVs rise from 30 euros to 180. Continue reading...

Group said ‘deeply flawed and incoherent’ proposals would impact thousands of bars and pubs

Kidbrooke community wants to honour primary school teacher’s life despite feeling shocked and scaredFriends and neighbours of Sabina Nessa, a teacher who was found dead at the weekend, have described feeling scared and overwhelmed following her suspected murder, but determined to honour her life with a peaceful vigil.The community of Kidbrooke in Greenwich, south-east London, have organised a vigil at 7pm on Friday evening in Pegler Square, Kidbrooke, inviting those who cannot be there in person to light a candle on their doorstep at the same time. Continue reading...

Minsk accused of abandoning migrants at frontier in attempt to put pressure on EUFour people stranded on the border between Poland and Belarus have died in recent days, officials have said, amid continuing allegations that Minsk is abandoning migrants at its frontier in an attempt to put pressure on the EU.Polish authorities said three people, including an Iraqi man, were found dead, from hypothermia and exhaustion, on the Polish side of the border on Saturday, and the body of a woman was seen on the Belarus side on Sunday. Continue reading...

Actor shares personal experience to draw ‘flames of controversy away from vulnerable women’Uma Thurman has railed against the “horror” of Texas’s draconian new abortion law and called for the ban to be lifted, as she opened up about an abortion she had as a teenager.Writing for the Washington Post, the actor described her abortion publicly for the first time, calling it her “darkest secret”. She wrote about how she was “accidentally impregnated by a much older man” in her late teens and decided to terminate the pregnancy. Continue reading...

Family of Wiltshire victim Dawn Sturgess calls on home secretary to initiate full judge-led investigationThe family of a woman killed in the Wiltshire novichok poisonings has warned that delaying the start of a full judge-led investigation into her death could put more lives at risk and is calling on the home secretary, Priti Patel, to speed up the process.Relatives of Dawn Sturgess and her former partner Charlie Rowley are pressing for a public inquiry into her death in July 2018 but are increasingly concerned the full hearing may not begin until 2023. Continue reading...

Workshops teach public first aid and prepare them to assist armed forces in event of attack by ChinaOn a quiet workday morning last week, air raid sirens rang out across Taiwan. The eerie wailing horn would be the first warning to the island’s 23.5 million residents of an incoming attack by their neighbour across the Taiwan Strait, the People’s Republic of China.On the streets of the capital, Taipei, people carried on with their day, just as they did when an earthquake drill on Friday told them to “stop, drop and hide” in mass text alerts, and just as they do when China sends dozens of air force planes screeching towards Taiwan. Continue reading...

Michael Fakhri says Thursday’s meeting will not be promised ‘people’s summit’ on tackling world’s nutrition crisisThe UN global food summit is “elitist and regressive” and has failed in its goal of being a “people’s summit”, according to the special rapporteur on food rights.As world leaders prepare to attend the virtual event on Thursday, which aims to examine ways to transform global food systems to be more sustainable, Michael Fakhri said it risked leaving behind the very people critical for its success. In an interview with the Guardian, Fakhri said neither the worsening impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the right to food, nor fundamental questions of inequality, accountability and governance were being properly addressed by the meeting. Continue reading...

Irish government figures come days after M&S says it is scrapping 800 lines due to ‘excessive paperwork’Exports from Great Britain to Ireland fell by almost £2.5bn in the first seven months of the year with Brexit emerging as a major factor, according to official Irish government data.The figures from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) come just days after Marks & Spencer said it was scrapping 800 product lines from its stores in the republic of Ireland because of “excessive paperwork” and health controls on food. Continue reading...

Damien Bendall, 31, appears in court on four counts of murder after bodies found at house in DerbyshireA 31-year-old man has been remanded in custody charged with four counts of murder after a woman and three children were found dead in a house in Derbyshire.The bodies of John Paul Bennett, 13, Lacey Bennett, 11, their mother, Terri Harris, 35, and Lacey’s friend, Connie Gent, 11, were discovered at a property in Killamarsh, near Sheffield, on Sunday morning. Continue reading...

Analysis: Fear and uncertainty of the Obama years could return as Kim Jong-un revives nuclear ambitionsNorth Korea’s recent missile launches signal that the regime has reverted to familiar tactics to attract the attention of the US. Although the rest of the world will take little comfort from this return to “normality”, after a six-month pause Pyongyang last weekend launched what it claimed were new long-range cruise missiles capable of hitting Japan, followed hours later by the test launch of two ballistic missiles into the sea, apparently from a train.Then came the clearest sign since its last nuclear test in 2017 that the North is not about to abandon its project to build a viable deterrent, with satellite images showing it was expanding a uranium enrichment plant at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex. Continue reading...

Third day of demonstrations ends in a standoff between officers and protesters at the city’s war memorial

Six companies warned not to put profit before lives as report shows less than 1% of almost 6bn doses have gone to low-income countriesAmnesty International has accused six pharmaceutical companies that have developed Covid-19 vaccines of fuelling a global human rights crisis, citing their refusal to sufficiently waive intellectual property rights, share vaccine technology and boost global vaccine supply.After assessing the performance of six Covid-19 vaccine developers – Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Novavax – Amnesty International claims that all are failing to uphold their own human rights commitments and warns they should not be putting profit before the lives of people in the world’s poorest countries. Continue reading...

Retirement village developer had claimed squatters rights over New South Wales mum’s family land

This year marks the 30th anniversary of film-maker Derek Jarman’s canonisation by an activist group of gay male nuns known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. At the time in 1991, Derek Jarman was the most prominent person in the UK living openly with HIV. He was outspoken, radical and unapologetically queer. The perfect antidote, in the Sisters’ eyes, to Ian McKellen’s acceptance of a knighthood in the 1991 new year honours Continue reading...

Northern Ireland police detain suspects aged 24 and 29, with three others already charged with murderAnother two men have been arrested over the killing of the journalist Lyra McKee in Derry in 2019, police in Northern Ireland have said.The two men, aged 24 and 29, were arrested in the city early on Wednesday morning and will be interviewed later. Continue reading...

More than 200 arrested as Daniel Andrews condemns ‘ugly scenes’ and describes actions of protesters as ‘insult to the vast majority of tradies’

Doses will help South Korea boost full vaccination rates, and UK will get same number back later in year

10.11am BSTAnd breathe. Another hectic day today, but we’ll leave it there for tonight. Here’s what we learned today:9.55am BSTVictoria police say they arrested more than 200 people today.The deputy commissioner Ross Guenther says approximately 300 people attended today’s protest at the Shrine of Remembrance, but it was difficult to pin down a specific number:We estimated that there were probably around 300. There could have been more there. It is very difficult because they were both on the east and western sides of the shrine and moving around, so out of that, I would say at least probably 20-30% of those who have received infringement notices. It could be higher, but this event only finished an hour ago, so we are yet to assess that. I know even as I came in here this evening, we have units patrolling around the city that are still picking up people for breaching the directions. Continue reading...

Sharon Graham is believed to be first in the job to miss annual event but says it is ‘definitely not a snub’The new leader of Unite will miss Labour’s annual conference, saying she needs to prioritise her job of sorting out industrial disputes.Sharon Graham, who was elected as Unite leader on a promise to take the union “back to the workplace”, is believed to be the first in the job to miss the annual event. Continue reading...

Refugees, Russian sympathisers and half-dressed footballers: Germany’s forever chancellor had words for them allAngela Merkel’s 16-year tenure at the top of German politics will leave lasting legacies in many fields, but the art of political oratory is unlikely to be one of them. When the chancellor addresses the public she is rarely snappy and quotable, and she has even admitted she didn’t believe in governance by speech-making. “The idea that a person can touch other people so much with words that they change their minds is not one I have ever shared, but it’s a beautiful idea nonetheless,” she told Der Spiegel in 2016.And yet during her decade and a half in power, which is set to end after Sunday’s election, there have been numerous additions to German dictionaries that sum up something about her leadership, be it phrases she used herself or those that others used to describe changes in the country she has led. Continue reading...

As a child in Afghanistan, she pretended to be a boy in order to get an education, before starting her own women’s news agency. Now living in Britain, her fight continuesJust over a month ago, Zahra Joya left her house in Kabul to walk to her office, as she had been doing every day. From this small office, Joya, a journalist, ran Rukhshana Media, the news agency she founded last year to report on the stories of women and girls across Afghanistan. By the time she returned home in the afternoon, however, men with guns were on street corners and her sisters were shut inside their house, shaking with fear. In just a few hours, normal life had been obliterated.“Right to the end, on that afternoon of 15 August, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” she says. “It was like a bad dream. Even on that day, it just seemed impossible that the Taliban could come to power so quickly, wipe away 20 years and drag us all back to the past.” Continue reading...

Mariama Sonko is an unstoppable force who continued her work even when she was ostracised by her community in SenegalOutside Mariama Sonko’s home in the Casamance region of southern Senegal pink shells hang on improvised nets that will be placed in mangroves to provide a breeding spot for oysters.Normally, women collecting oysters chop at the branches – a method that can harm the mangroves. But these nets allow them to harvest sustainably, says Sonko, who is trying to revolutionise agriculture in west Africa. Continue reading...

Few view their own country as a direct participant but larger proportion feel EU is part of conflictA majority of Europeans believe a new cold war is under way between the US and its chief geopolitical rivals, China and Russia, according to a report – but few view their own country as a direct participant.Based on polling in 12 member states, the study by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found, however, that more Europeans believed the EU leadership in Brussels was a party to the new international conflict. Continue reading...

Education minister James Merlino says all school and childcare staff will need to have their first jab or a booking by 18 October

Embattled Chinese property giant allays some market concerns despite lack of guidance over $83.5m due on a separate offshore debtChinese property developer Evergrande has said it would pay some of the bond interest due on Thursday, allaying fears of an imminent and messy collapse that had spooked investors.Markets in Taiwan and China reopened lower after a two-day break, catching up with a sharp sell-off around the world triggered by concern over Evergrande’s predicament. Continue reading...

Climate crisis, conflict and Covid stunting progress on nutrition, UN says on eve of food security summitOnly a third of children under two in many developing countries are fed what they need for healthy growth and no progress has been made on improving their nutrition over the past decade.Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency, said in a report published on Wednesday that a combination of crises from Covid-19 to conflict and the climate breakdown had stunted progress on children’s nutrition in 91 countries. Continue reading...

Defence ministry says certain Xiaomi phones have built-in ability to censor sensitive phrasesLithuania’s Defence Ministry has recommended that consumers avoid buying Chinese mobile phones and advised people to throw away the ones they have now, after a government report found the devices had built-in censorship capabilities.Flagship phones sold in Europe by China’s smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp have a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as “free Tibet”, “long live Taiwan independence” or “democracy movement”, Lithuania’s state-run cybersecurity body said on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Earthquake near Mansfield has shaken buildings across Melbourne, with some reports of damage – follow updates live

Elimination still the strategy but PM is relying on luck and people doing the right thing in easing measures while there are still new cases, say experts

Stars pay tribute to ‘dear, funny, kind man’ who played Carrie Bradshaw’s friend Stanford in the popular HBO TV seriesWillie Garson, the actor best known for his role as Stanford Blatch in the original series of Sex and the City, has died at the age of 57.Garson won the hearts of fans of the popular HBO series, which first aired in 1998 and ran for six seasons, playing Carrie Bradshaw’s closest male friend, the talent agent Stanford. Garson also appeared in the follow-up films, Sex and the City, and Sex and the City 2. He was recently reprising the role in a reboot of the TV series, And Just Like That, which is currently in production. Continue reading...

Attitudes towards transphobia also hardening, but viewers more tolerant of swearing if justifiedBritons are increasingly concerned by the use of racist and transphobic language on television but much more tolerant of swearing, according to the media regulator’s latest investigation into changing social attitudes.Ofcom found that attitudes to racist language have hardened, with Britons wanting a very strong justification for its inclusion in programmes. Last summer the BBC had to apologise after broadcasting the N-word during a news report on an allegedly racist attack on a young man. Continue reading...

Average deaths per day day have climbed 40% over the past two weeks in United States; UK figures show 203 further deaths have been reported

Wednesday: Biden hails alliance while Paris fumes after Aukus deal. Plus: exhibition showcases isolation around the nationGood morning. Protesters in Melbourne have been warned to stay away today after a second day of violent clashes between police and construction workers rallying against mask mandates. Labor’s pick for the federal seat of Hunter is under fire for inappropriate social media behaviour. And lockdown is lifting in Ballarat, just in time for an exhibition featuring photographs documenting the pandemic.“The United States has no closer or more reliable ally than Australia,” Joe Biden has said, speaking before a bilateral meeting with Scott Morrison on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York. Biden and Morrison welcomed their new security ties after last week’s announcement that Washington would provide Canberra with advanced technology for nuclear-powered submarines. The deal has infuriated Paris but the federal trade minister, Dan Tehan, insists Australia’s free-trade agreement negotiations with the EU are “business as usual”. Continue reading...

We’re back in the tent for more cake-based mayhem! But who will rise to the occasion – and who will bottom out?9.09pm BSTThere’s going to be a collapse, isn’t there? And I don’t just mean our mental states.9.07pm BSTAh, Jairzeno is going to try to fix the problem with a Bake Off classic – putting it in the fridge and ignoring it. Continue reading...

Masks will no longer be required outdoors as government says country could be at ‘end of pandemic’

Canadian prime minister will stay in power but will be forced to navigate a parliament that he needs to woo in order to survive

Australian Retirement Holdings launched legal action in a bid to stop a woman taking possession of her deceased grandparents’ land