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A wide-ranging crackdown and leftist rhetoric have stirred fears of a return to the apogee of MaoismFifty-five years ago, China was in turmoil. Mao had launched the Cultural Revolution to eradicate opposition in the party and cleanse the country’s political soul, using the power of the masses. It would last a decade and claim well over a million lives; 36 million people were hounded, including Xi Jinping’s father, who had previously been a senior leader. The current president was himself denounced and spent years living in bleak rural poverty.Unsurprisingly, Mr Xi has spoken scathingly of the Cultural Revolution in the past. Yet many now see growing echoes of the era. The Communist elders who survived the disaster sought to cage the power of the leader through consensus and new conventions. Under those, Mr Xi would be expected to step down as general secretary of the party – the role that gives him real power – next autumn, after 10 years. But putative successors have been sidelined or ousted, and dismantling term limits for the presidency, his other position, was a clear sign he plans to continue. The overt hostility to foreign influences is growing. A personality cult is flourishing; new textbooks on Xi Jinping Thought tell young schoolchildren that “Grandpa Xi Jinping has always cared for us … ” Continue reading...

Six year-old Eitan Biran, who is at centre of custody battle, reportedly taken to Israel by grandfatherItalian prosecutors have launched an investigation after a six-year-old boy who was the only person to survive a cable car crash in Italy in May was taken by his grandfather to Israel, against the wishes of other members of his family amid a bitter custody battle.Eitan Biran, whose parents and two-year-old brother died in the Stresa-Mottarone aerial tramway crash on 23 May, has been at the centre of a custody battle between relatives in Italy and Israel. Continue reading...

Islamic dress code will be compulsory as new regime enforces gender segregation in AfghanistanThe Taliban have announced that women in Afghanistan will only be allowed to study at university in gender-segregated classrooms and Islamic dress will be compulsory, stoking fears that a gender apartheid will be imposed on the country under the new regime.On Saturday, the Taliban raised their flag over the presidential palace on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, signalling that their work governing the newly formed Islamic emirate had begun. The white banner bearing a Qur’anic verse was hoisted by Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the prime minister of the interim Taliban government. Continue reading...

Christina McAnea points to rise in national insurance and says PM is pushing social care sector towards collapseThe general secretary of the UK’s biggest union has warned this could be the year of industrial action over pay as workers “feel they have had enough” with low wages, a national insurance rise and universal credit cut after working hard during the pandemic.Christina McAnea, who took on the role at Unison in January, also told Boris Johnson that his “smoke-and-mirrors” offer on social care and the mandatory Covid-19 jab policy for care workers was putting the sector at risk of collapse, with many unvaccinated staff having already received notice they were at risk of dismissal. Up to 10% of care staff could lose their jobs because of refusing to be vaccinated by November, worsening the sector’s existing workforce shortages. Continue reading...

Legend has it that the crown will remain out of reach until all members of the 1951 team have diedThe myth of Mayo’s curse remains intact after Tyrone clinched the All-Ireland football championship title. Hopes of County Mayo winning their first title since 1951 were dashed yesterday when they lost to Tyrone.Mayo have not won the Gaelic football final for 70 years since they beat County Meath. Legend has it that a curse was placed on the team by an enraged priest after they apparently failed to pay their respects to a funeral they passed on their homecoming journey following the victory. The story goes that the side would not win again under the curse until all the members of that team had died, as the Observer reported last week. Continue reading...

Remote learning and its detrimental effect on their study have forced many teenagers to rethink tertiary educationMorgan Vella and his friends used to hold high ambitions for what life would look like after graduating high school: leaving their regional Victorian town for university in the city, enjoying a world of busy dormitories, student bars and lecture theatres.But two years and seven lockdowns later, the Kyabram P-12 College year 12 student says a lot of his friends have simply “given up” and plan to complete their Victorian College of Education (VCE) certificate without an Atar. Continue reading...

Missed opportunities, gaps in correspondence and a failure to plan ahead. If this was a vaccine race, did Australia fall at the first hurdle?

She was a crucial part of a cultural movement in the 1980s. Now a first solo exhibition in 15 years will allow her work to shineFrom the 1980s to the early 2000s, artist and archivist Rita Keegan fervently collected and preserved newsletters, leaflets, photographs and exhibition literature from the British Black arts scene. “It [didn’t] matter how fabulous the show – if you didn’t have the ephemera, it was hard to say that you existed,” she told the Art Newspaper last summer. “It’s very easy to be written out of history, if you don’t have those pieces of paper.”Boxes and files stored behind the sofa in Keegan’s living room and a garden “shedio” in her south London home are a portal to the past, specifically, into the seminal British Black arts movement founded in 1982. This pivotal moment in art history saw artists such as Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Denzil Forrester, Lubaina Himid and Maud Sulter galvanised to create and curate works together in the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton uprisings and in response to their marginalisation from the mainstream art world. Continue reading...

Partners and spouses are being kept apart by Home Office delays in processing revised versions of entry permits to BritainA British woman has told how she had to separate her six-year-old son from his French father because post-Brexit rules prohibited her spouse from returning with her to the UK for a new job without prior Home Office approval.After 11 years in France, the couple, who work in highly skilled jobs in the defence industry, decided to move back to the UK and thought it would be as simple as getting on a Eurostar train. Continue reading...

National Crime Agency, Border Force and Australian Federal Police seize drugs worth £160m on yacht off PlymouthSix men including a Briton have been arrested off the coast of Plymouth after authorities seized more than two tonnes of cocaine worth about £160m.Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said an operation involving its personnel as well as the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Border Force arrested the British man from Stockton-on-Tees and five Nicaraguans aboard a Jamaican-flagged yacht 80 miles out to sea. Continue reading...

Discover real variety in these gluten-free dishes: moreish noodles with lime and crab chilli oil, tropical lentil pancakes with mango and coconut relishes, and a rich baked polenta with feta and spiced tomatoesThe increased interest in gluten-free recipes garners strong opinions. On the one hand, coeliacs can find the confusion between them and those who have chosen a gluten-free diet frustrating (and possibly dangerous). Those who elect to go gluten-free, meanwhile – often on the grounds that they just feel much better without it – are equally baffled by the frustration (and even antipathy) that their choice inspires in others. For my part, while my diet will never be gluten-free simply for the sake of it, mealtimes are all the more interesting and varied for occasionally omitting it. Continue reading...

A retired bishop faces a bigger tax bill after swapping his old diesel VW for an environmentally friendly vehicleA retired bishop who replaced a polluting diesel car with a much greener plug-in hybrid model has described the government’s environmental policies as “completely mad” after his road tax rose from zero to £480 a year.The Rev Robert Paterson, who lives near Evesham in Worcestershire, was hit with the bill after switching to a secondhand BMW 330e plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), which claims a maximum fuel economy of 200 miles per gallon, and emits only 32g of CO per km, according to its official rating. It cost about £33,000. Continue reading...

She’s already broken out of Nashville to become an unconventional pop superstar. Now she’s stretching the limits of country again – with the help of psychedelics and a four-poster bed in her studioIt is mid-morning in Nashville and Kacey Musgraves is padding around her new home, looking in the fridge and checking on her dogs while she talks. She moved in in April, after spending a year having it renovated. From what I can see on Zoom, the results of her renovations are exceptionally tasteful, in a very upmarket boutique hotel way: everything – walls, furniture, the floor – seems to be in shades of muted, natural off-white. As with the breakfast she’s just finished – which involved a very specific kind of rosemary sourdough, an equally specific kind of slow-cultured, grass-fed butter “from this place in Atlanta” and a “pretty fucked-up” Japanese machine that steams bread – it seems to suggest someone doing very well for themselves, which indeed Musgraves is.In 2018, her fourth album, Golden Hour, finally broke through, fulfilling the line about her that people had used from the start: “The country star for people who hate country music.” It went platinum in the US, made the top 10 in the UK, topped umpteen end-of-year critics’ lists and won four Grammys, including album of the year. It’s not unknown for a country artist to receive the latter award – the [Dixie] Chicks won it in 2007, as did Taylor Swift in the days when she was still country’s brightest young star rather than an all-conquering pop behemoth, and Glen Campbell in 1969 – but it doesn’t happen often. Continue reading...

Despite its unpopularity, the ruling LDP party looks unassailable. The country is stagnating because of itJapan will soon have a new prime minister. Not because there is a general election coming up – although there is – but because the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP), the deeply unpopular Yoshihide Suga, abruptly resigned last week. Following a series of local election defeats, an Olympics staged against the public will, and a related fifth Covid wave that has pushed Japan’s medical system into “disaster mode”, Suga’s approval rating had plummeted to its lowest since the LDP’s return to power in 2012. Resignation was surely a wise decision, one that put the party first.Given how disastrous the last few months have been, one might imagine that Suga’s replacement – almost certainly a man – would have his work cut out to avoid catastrophe in the general election. But that’s not how Japanese democracy works. Continue reading...

Fears loneliness among older people could be exacerbated with signal still down after mast blazeThey might live in one of the most picturesque areas of the country but residents of the small village of West Witton in the Yorkshire Dales are having to deal with the loss of a different sort of view: their TV signal stopped working a month ago after a fire.“The wife’s not happy,” said Eddie Hammond, a retired haulier, sitting in the Fox and Hounds pub. “She hasn’t seen Emmerdale in weeks. Mind you, one of the actors lives in the village so at least she gets to see him walk past the house sometimes.” Continue reading...

Who can look after my 95-year-old mum? How do I support my troubled teen? Experts’ top tips for the sandwich generation crushed by conflicting demandsWhen I was born, my grandmother was only 58. Her own parents were both dead, her mother having died in her 70s a few years earlier. I am 58 myself now, but my future grandchildren are still probably some years away. Two of my children are still living at home, with all the needs that entails, while my mother, a sprightly 83-year-old, can have every expectation of living into her next decade. But she will need me more as she ages, and my daughters are, I hope, going to want me to help with their offspring when the time comes. All this means life is likely to get a whole lot busier and more stressful as I get older.Many of my friends are there already – last year, a Bank of Scotland survey found grandparents saved their children almost £4,000 per family – and I sense the frayed edges of lives being pulled in too many directions. How can we survive this squeeze? How do we stop ourselves being spread so thin that there’s nothing left of us, or for us, at a time when we hoped things would be getting easier, not tougher? I put your questions to the experts. Continue reading...

King Mohammed VI asks businessman to form government after his RNI party trounced the long-ruling IslamistsMorocco’s King Mohammed VI has named businessman Aziz Akhannouch to lead a new government after his liberal RNI party thrashed the long-ruling Islamists in parliamentary elections.The king appointed Akhannouch “head of the government and tasked him with forming a new government”, following Wednesday’s polls, a statement from the palace said on Friday. Continue reading...

Nine in ten local areas in the UK have seen a week-on-week rise in Covid-19 cases; Greek authorities to crack down on fake vaccination certificates

The Taliban in Kabul, the removal of the statue of Robert E Lee in Virginia, Emma Raducanu in the US Open and the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks – the most striking images from around the world this week Continue reading...

Nine more people injured, four seriously, after whirlwind rips off roofs and leaves cars upturnedTwo people have been killed and nine injured after a tornado tore through the Italian island of Pantelleria in the Mediterranean, leaving a path of destruction. The whirlwind ripped off roofs and flipped over at least six cars, with residents describing the scene as “apocalyptic”.Four of the nine injured are in serious condition, according to the authorities. A hospital helicopter from nearby Lampedusa island was initially unable to reach the island to provide assistance because of the bad weather. Continue reading...

There are slogans and jingles embedded deep in the psyche of the nation. Find out how well you’ve retained these vintage gems

Mary McCann, charged over deaths of 10-year-old son and four-year-old daughter, failed to appear in courtA judge has issued an arrest warrant for a woman who is accused of killing two of her children in a crash on the M1.Mary McCann, 35, failed to appear before Aylesbury crown court on Friday, where she was to face two counts of causing death by dangerous driving. Continue reading...

Growing debate in Netherlands about colonial past despite government refusal to apologiseThe city of Utrecht could pay for descendants of enslaved people to change their names, a sign of the growing debate in the Netherlands about its colonial past.Many enslaved people were given the names of their owners, plantations or muddled Dutch names, such as Vriesde (based on De Vries) or Kenswil (Wilkens). Continue reading...

Administration greeted with little enthusiasm by Lebanese people desperate for slide into chaos to stopAfter a 13-month feud, a catastrophic economic collapse and in spite of demands for reforms required to unlock desperately needed aid, Lebanon’s politicians have finally agreed to a new government that suggests more of the same.The formation of an administration, headed by the billionaire and two-time former prime minister, Najib Miqati, was on Friday met with relief but little enthusiasm by Lebanese people who had been desperate to stop the slide towards poverty and chaos, brought on by the standoff that had started in the weeks after the devastating explosion at Beirut port. Continue reading...

Declan Jones was sacked from West Midlands police after assaulting 44-year-old man and 15-year-old boyA former West Midlands police officer convicted of assaulting two members of the public, including a 15-year-old boy, while on duty during the first Covid lockdown has been sentenced to six months in prison.PC Declan Jones, 30, was convicted of assaulting a 44-year-old cyclist and a 15-year-old boy on two consecutive days in Birmingham, and was sacked earlier this week for gross misconduct, having been suspended since May last year. Continue reading...

Brussels repeats warning that renegotiation will mean more instability and insists Brexit protocol is ‘only solution we have’European Union leaders have stressed they are not seeking a “political victory” over the UK as they pushed back sharply against demands that the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol be scrapped.After a two-day trip to Northern Ireland, the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, repeated his warning that a renegotiation would merely lead to more instability for businesses and communities. Continue reading...

Dozens of Hasidic Breslov pilgrims boarded planes in Ukraine with bogus paperwork, border officers say

Jair Bolsonaro is backing a legal move to open up large tracts of indigenous territory to commercial exploitation that tribal members call an ‘extermination effort’More than 5,000 indigenous women have marched through Brazil’s capital to denounce the historic assault on native lands they say is unfolding under the country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.Female representatives of more than 170 of Brazil’s 300-plus tribes have gathered in Brasília in recent days to oppose highly controversial attempts to strip back indigenous land rights and open their territories to mining operations and agribusiness. Continue reading...

Anti-racism movement says ‘actions speak louder than words’ after comments attributing royal assentBlack Lives Matter UK has expressed surprise after the Queen and the royal family were said to support its cause, but the anti-racism movement stressed that “actions speak louder than words”.Sir Ken Olisa, the first black lord-lieutenant for London, revealed to Channel 4 that he had discussed racism with members of the royal household in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the US. Asked whether the palace supported BLM, Olisa said: “The answer is easily yes.” Continue reading...

Former Liberal PM Billy McMahon approved spy agency request to conduct covert operations in Chile, a move later overturned by Gough WhitlamAustralia’s covert overseas spy agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, opened a base in Santiago to assist in the US Central Intelligence Agency’s destabilisation of the Chilean government ahead of the bloody military coup against Salvador Allende’s socialist government 48 years ago today.Declassified Australian government documents prove that in December 1970 Liberal foreign minister and later prime minister, Billy McMahon, approved an Asis request to open the base. For 18 months from 1971, according to the US-based National Security Archive, Asis apparently conducted covert operations in Chile – including handling CIA-recruited Chilean assets in Santiago and filing intelligence reports to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Crunch meeting of world leaders tabled for this month, with Xi key to success of climate summitBoris Johnson is planning to convene last-ditch climate talks with the president of China, Xi Jinping, at a crunch meeting of world leaders later this month, in hopes of breaking the global impasse on climate action before the Cop26 climate summit being hosted in Glasgow this November.Xi will be invited, along with the leaders of about 30 other countries, to a high-level meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York on 20 September, the Guardian has learned. Continue reading...

Locals say cypress trees have been lost and rivers polluted by pesticides and wastewater from wineriesFabio Magro was woken up by the excruciating sound of chainsaws early one morning in late July 2019, and when he looked out of his bedroom window, the unthinkable was happening.It was just a couple of weeks after the hills surrounding his village, Miane, in Italy’s prosecco-producing Treviso province, were declared a Unesco World Heritage site. Continue reading...

Term extended despite backlash, as sources say possible replacements were not to Priti Patel’s tasteMinisters have defied critics and announced a two-year extension to Cressida Dick’s controversial term as commissioner of the Metropolitan police.Dick’s five-year term was due to end in April 2022, and the prospect of her gaining two extra years had triggered a backlash from those wronged by the Met who see it as a reward for failure. Continue reading...

Human rights official says group conducting house-to-house searches and threatening journalistsThe Taliban’s violent crackdown on protests against their hardline rule has already led to four documented deaths, according to a UN human rights official who said the group had used live ammunition, whips and batons to break up demonstrations.Ravina Shamdasani, the UN’s rights spokesperson, told a briefing in Geneva that it had also received reports of house-to-house searches for those who participated in the protests. Continue reading...

Scott Walker to serve minimum 32 years for murder of Bernadette, who called him her father and whose body has never been foundA man convicted of murdering 17-year-old Bernadette Walker, who went missing in July last year and whose body has never been found, has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 32 years.Scott Walker, 51, was found guilty of murdering Bernadette, who called him her father although they were not biologically related, in July. Continue reading...

Company behind Pfizer vaccine expected to file results of trial of five- to 11-year-olds with regulator soon

This week an 80-year-old woman began a 600-mile trek, while a night at the theatre had me out of action for daysJane Dotchin is off on her travels again. For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure, Dotchin is an 80-year-old woman who sets off on horseback from her home near Hexham, Northumberland at around this time every year and treks the 600 or so miles to Inverness, as she has done since 1972. I’m going to pause here to allow all of you who, like me, have just conceived of an entirely new set of life goals to go and get a paper and pen so that you may take all the necessary notes from hereon. Continue reading...

A #MeToo figurehead, a mayor and a hate-speech ideologue among those tipped to put their hats in the ringAt rush hour at Paris’s Saint-Lazare station, activists, including a civil servant in a government ministry and a former climate-change protester, were out canvassing for an unusual would-be candidate for French president.Their choice, Sandrine Rousseau, is a figurehead of the French #MeToo movement against sexual violence, an economist and university vice-chancellor and promises a new form of “punk ecology”. Continue reading...

In 1936, five English schoolboys on a hike died at the whim of a foolhardy teacher – and became fodder for Nazi propaganda. Now the story of populist idiocy is being retold for our timesThe day after the Brexit referendum the playwright Pamela Carter wrote to her German publishers, Suhrkamp, to apologise. “I felt the need to say sorry to a European for the terrible mistake,” she said.Two weeks later in a Dundee hotel, still steeped in bewilderment, she came across a Guardian Long Read I’d written, recalling the events of April 1936, when a group of London schoolboys had set out from their youth hostel in Freiburg, southern Germany, for a hike in the Black Forest. They were led by their charismatic teacher, who ignored numerous warnings and made a series of fatal decisions that resulted in five of them losing their lives. Continue reading...

Scandinavian country declares it no longer considers coronavirus a ‘socially critical’ disease

NSW confirms record high 1,542 cases; Victoria has linked 149 of its 334 new cases to known outbreaks. This blog is now closed

Late one night, I noticed the attic hatch was open. All the puzzle pieces fell into place – someone was in my apartmentIn 1995, when I was 20, I moved to Enumclaw, a farming town in the US state of Washington, to be close to my brother and his family. I rented an apartment. My room was on the top floor but on my first night, lying in bed, I heard footsteps above me. Over the months, I started to notice things going missing. I would buy a six-pack of soda, drink one, come home from work and find only four left. It was the same with packets of soup and ramen noodles. I also noticed that doors I had left open were closed, or vice versa.Mostly, I found it amusing – I assumed that my brother, who had a key, was coming over and eating my food. (Looking back, I should have known it wasn’t him because there would have been dirty dishes everywhere.) Continue reading...

Therapeutic Goods Administration concerned people taking controversial medication instead of seeking proper treatment or vaccine

With at least four women, including a pregnant mother, targeted and killed by Taliban fighters, female ex-officers feel abandoned by the worldNegar Masumi, a female police officer with 15 years of experience, was determined not to flee when the Taliban took control of her home province of Ghor in central Afghanistan.On Saturday night, gunmen, who called themselves Taliban mujahideen, stormed Negar’s home. They took her husband and four of her sons into another room and tied them up. Then they beat Negar with their guns and shot her dead, according to a family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Continue reading...

A struggling healthcare system and inflated prices mean hospital treatment can result in a lifetime of debt for many

As a child, Charlotte Simpson and her family were excluded from many hotels in the deep south. Now she has visited more than 80 countriesThe Christmas after her husband died, Charlotte Simpson went on holiday with her daughter. In their tour group to Morocco were two women who travelled alone. “I felt sorry for them,” Simpson says, laughing. “It seemed preposterous. I would ask them from time to time how they felt and they just loved it. Both ladies said: ‘Seeing you here on the trip, I think you’d really enjoy it.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know what makes anybody think I’d like to be by myself on a trip!’”On her next holiday, Simpson went to China with her sister-in-law. There, they met a woman who was celebrating her 80th. “And she was alone. She had a real spirit of adventure. A very cool lady.” Continue reading...

Moulin Rouge performed a full dress rehearsal two days ahead of the reopening of the cabaret following an 18-month closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Moulin Rouge and Le Lido, emblems of the crazy Parisian nights since 1889, will open again on 10 September. Continue reading...

Hong Kong Alliance leaders face charges under national security law Beijing imposed last yearHong Kong police have charged the group that organises the city’s annual Tiananmen candlelight vigil and three of its leaders with subversion under the national security law, amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent.The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China said that the group, its chairman, Lee Cheuk-yan, as well as vice-chairs Albert Ho and Chow Hang-tung were charged late on Thursday with “inciting subversion of state power”, under the national security law Beijing imposed more than a year ago. Continue reading...

The prime minister was under fire for his record on climate change, Indigenous affairs and economic hardship ahead of 20 September pollJustin Trudeau has been forced to defend his government’s plans for fighting climate change, Canada’s fractured relationship with Indigenous peoples and a growing affordability crisis in the country as the prime minister faced off with contenders ahead of the federal election.For two hours on Thursday evening, federal party leaders from the Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic, Green and Bloc Québécois parties sparred in the only official English-language debate before the 20 September vote. Party leaders debated in French on Wednesday evening. Continue reading...