Concerns raised over confusion between Home Office and councils over who will house arrivalsAfghans evacuated to Britain are facing homelessness and destitution amid confusion over plans to house them, MPs say. And essential supplies meant for newborns and mothers, largely provided by volunteers, are not always reaching them, leading to concerns over their ongoing care.Most families have been moved out of quarantine into “bridging” hotels. But some, including traumatised British citizens, are scrambling to find accommodation. Others are being sent far from their support networks. One man who has lived in north London for 23 years, told the Guardian he was suffering from depression after being sent to a hotel hundreds of miles from relatives. Another was told to board a bus with his sick baby daughter to Liverpool, despite having an emergency housing claim in London. Continue reading...

Lauren Anne Dickason is charged with killing two-year-old twins and their six-year-old sister soon after arriving from South AfricaA woman has appeared in court charged with murdering her three young daughters just weeks after the family arrived in New Zealand from South Africa.Lauren Anne Dickason appeared in court on Saturday morning in the port city of Timaru, and a judge remanded her to a hospital for a mental health evaluation, a court spokesperson said. Continue reading...

Campaigners call for parades to be re-routed as up to 13,000 people expected to converge in city centreCampaigners against anti-Catholic bigotry and anti-Irish discrimination will gather in protest around vulnerable churches on Saturday, as Glasgow braces itself for the largest gathering of Orange marchers since the pandemic.More than 30 of the controversial Protestant parades will converge in the city centre to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first Battle of the Boyne parade, with potential turnout estimated from 5,000 to 13,000. Hundreds of police officers are expected to be deployed on the day, with 32 streets closed until mid-afternoon to facilitate the marchers. Continue reading...

Bouteflika, an independence war veteran, was ousted during pro-democracy protests in 2019Algeria’s longest-serving president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was ousted in 2019 amid pro-democracy protests after two decades in power, has died aged 84.The state television announcement on Friday, citing a statement from the office of the current president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, did not provide the cause of death. Continue reading...

Animal and Plant Health Agency says infected animal was dead and has been removed from the farmA single case of BSE – an infection commonly known as “mad cow disease” – has been confirmed on a farm in Somerset.The Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) said the infected animal was dead and had been removed from the farm. Continue reading...

President Xi Jinping faces serious test of his financial reforms as struggles of property giant send ripples through real-estate sectorThe crisis engulfing Evergrande, China’s second-biggest property company, is the greatest test yet of President Xi Jinping’s effort to reform the debt-ridden behemoths of the Chinese economy. It could also be the most significant test that China’s financial system has faced in many years.As angry protesters occupied the headquarters of the troubled property developer in recent weeks, some analysts have described the Evergrande crisis as “China’s Lehman Brothers moment”. Only this time it’s a credit-fuelled housebuilder that suddenly can’t pay its $300bn debts, rather than a blue-chip investment bank that many assumed was too big to fail but was instead thrown to the wolves 13 years ago. Continue reading...

One woman’s modest mission to restore law and order to the streets has divided a cityAll Anne Moran wants is a civilised city where people politely stick to the left on the footpath.The Adelaide councillor is tired of cyclists, scooters, smartphone zombies and meanderers ricocheting off each other, creating mayhem on the (ahem) thriving streets of her city. Continue reading...

Just two weeks before the bombshell, senior ministers from both countries met and declared they were ‘committed to cooperation’. How did it all go so wrong?

Overhaul in England aims to simplify travel by scrapping traffic light system and changing testing requirements

Canada already shares intelligence with Australia, the UK, the US and New Zealand but was not included in Aukus pactJustin Trudeau is facing harsh criticism from political rivals after Canada was excluded from a new international defence pact, days before the country votes in a federal election.Australia, the United Kingdom and the United State on Wednesday announced a new intelligence sharing agreement meant to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Continue reading...

Inquest into Frankie MacRitchie’s death recommends more ‘robust system’ to ensure police deal with dangerous dogsA coroner is to write to a police force over the tragedy of a nine-year-old boy mauled to death by a dog during a Cornish holiday, after his inquest heard the animal had been involved in previous attacks.Frankie MacRitchie was killed after being left alone in a caravan with the 45kg dog, an American bulldog crossed with a staffordshire bull terrier called Winston. Continue reading...

Ank Bijleveld joins Sigrid Kaag in resigning, after both were formally censured as interpreters strandedThe Dutch defence minister has became the second cabinet member to resign over the Afghan evacuation debacle.Ank Bijleveld resigned on Friday, following the foreign minister, Sigrid Kaag, out of the door after parliament formally censured them over a crisis that has left dozens of interpreters stranded in Afghanistan. Continue reading...

PM will hope signing of this week’s Aukus deal will help the allies move on from the chaos of KabulBoris Johnson will fly to New York this weekend for his first foreign trip since the Covid pandemic, hoping to cement his relationship with the US president, Joe Biden, after a rocky summer marred by the chaotic Kabul airlift.Two years ago, when Johnson made his first foreign trip as prime minister to the Biarritz G7 summit, the hope was that Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for the man he called “Britain Trump” would help smooth the way for a rapid post-Brexit trade deal with the US. Continue reading...

After five years at the agency tackling organised crime, she is leaving to focus on treatment for breast cancerThe head of the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), sometimes dubbed Britain’s FBI, is stepping down to focus on her fight against cancer.Dame Lynne Owens announced her intention to retire as NCA director general on Friday, after 32 years of service to law enforcement. Continue reading...

Brazil’s president claims he has not received a Covid-19 vaccine – but his immunization records have been locked away for 100 yearsThe Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has signaled that he will snub New York City vaccination rules when he travels to next week’s UN general assembly claiming not to have received a Covid jab.Bolsonaro is the only G20 leader who publicly claims not to have been vaccinated against a disease that has killed nearly 600,000 Brazilians, although the decision to place a 100-year secrecy order on his immunization records means many citizens doubt that claim. Continue reading...

Gearoid Cavanagh and Jordan Devine appear via videolink at Derry magistrates in Northern IrelandTwo men have appeared in court in Northern Ireland charged with the murder of the writer Lyra McKee.Gearoid Cavanagh, 33, and Jordan Devine, 21, both from Derry, appeared via videolink at Derry magistrates’ court on Friday Continue reading...

Poorer diet may explain why the lofty lowlanders are at least 1cm shorter than the previous generationIt is, perhaps, with just a hint of satisfaction that the Dutch office for national statistics has confirmed that the men and women of the Netherlands remain the tallest people on the planet. But the government’s statisticians have had cause to report a further potentially humbling twist: the Dutch are shrinking.For the last six decades, the people of the lowlands have stood imperiously at the top of the world height league table, with the latest data suggesting the average 19-year-old man stood at just over 6ft tall (182.9cm) in 2020, while women born in the same year measured in at 5ft 5in (169.3cm). Continue reading...

Royal’s legal team believed to be contesting service of notice of Virginia Giuffre’s civil sexual assault actionThe Duke of York’s lawyers have one week to challenge a decision that he can be formally notified by the UK courts of the US civil sex assault case against him, the high court in London has said.The high court on Wednesday accepted a request by lawyers for Virginia Roberts Giuffre to formally contact him if necessary about her legal proceedings launched in New York. Continue reading...

The source of the rocker’s enviable eternal youth? In the words of the man himself, it’s avidly rooting out new artists into his 70s (and beyond)I keep reading that we decline in our 70s so I try to keep using my brain. Discovering new music opens my mind and the element of surprise keeps me connected. I feel like I’m mining for diamonds – and when you find the diamond, you know. When I heard Chaise Longue by Wet Leg I got really excited: it’s cheeky, with a wicked groove, but it’s the vocals – they’re almost metronomic. You could ask 100 people to sing it and it wouldn’t sound the same.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...

With rural areas of the country left to suffer, aid workers fear funds are drying up as global compassion fatigue sets inDavid Nazaire, a 45-year-old coffee farmer from Beaumont, a small village in rural southern Haiti, was getting ready to harvest when an earthquake struck his home and livelihood. Much of the farming infrastructure – as well as nearby homes, schools and churches – was damaged or completely destroyed. A month later, he and thousands of rural Haitians – those most severely affected by the tremor – are still waiting for relief, and are not expecting it to arrive soon.“The earthquake didn’t destroy our crops, but it did take everything else,” Nazaire says, outside a neighbour’s house, now a pile of rubble beneath plastic roof tiles supported by the remnants of concrete walls. “We were just getting ready to harvest, but that’s lost now.” Continue reading...

Service starting in December will be a charter train only available to those booking holidays through one French operatorWith more Eurostar trains now running again on routes from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, travellers have been awaiting news of ski trains to the French Alps and the reinstatement of other services.But recent news from Eurostar news hasn’t been good. This week the train operator announced that services to Marne-la-Vallée (for Disneyland Paris) wouldn’t run until late March 2022. Then it said no Eurostar services would stop at Ebbsfleet or Ashford in Kent until 2023. Continue reading...

Australia and US pledge stronger ties, EU calls for trade deal and Johnson refuses to rule out getting involved in a conflict involving the islandChina’s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to resist “interference from external forces” as Taiwan welcomed support from major allies after a US-Australia ministerial forum pledged stronger ties with the island and the European parliament called for a bilateral trade deal.Speaking at a meeting of the heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tajikistan via video link, Xi urged members of the grouping to “absolutely resist external forces to interfere [in] countries in our region at any excuse, and hold the future of our countries’ development and progress firmly in our own hands”. Continue reading...

Enforcement of mask rules on public transport to be stepped up as coronavirus cases rise

Exclusive: Summary of sensitivity analysis to be presented at national cabinet says pandemic will continue to be ‘a fire fought on multiple fronts’

Tourism minister announces pilot scheme as NSW records 1,284 new Covid cases and 12 deaths

Ministers assemble for ‘half-time pep talk’ in packed room, contradicting official advice

The PM’s nuclear submarine ‘forever’ partners, Biden and Johnson are on a backslapping unity ticket of ambition on combatting global heating

Jails should not serve as ‘dating centres or media platforms to brag about crimes’, says ministerPrisoners serving life sentences in Denmark are to be prevented from starting new romantic relationships after it emerged a 17-year-old fell in love with Peter Madsen, the murderer of the journalist Kim Wall, while he was in jail.For the first 10 years of their imprisonment, long-term inmates’ contacts, by letter, phone or online, will be limited to people they already knew before they entered prison, under legislation tabled by the social democrat-led government. Continue reading...

My head was edging closer to the gap where it would be crushed. Knowing there was nothing I could do, I felt strangely at ease with my fateI had worked on and off at Argos when they needed seasonal staff since I was 17. By Christmas 2007 I was 21, and I’d picked up regular shifts again. It was December in East Kilbride, and that means it was cold. On this particular morning I was unpacking a delivery in the stockroom, where the heating wasn’t working. I’d come wrapped up for warmth, a long woolly H&M scarf in a looped knot around my neck.The stockroom was across two floors, with an industrial conveyor belt connecting the upper and lower levels. I was on delivery duty upstairs alone, with my colleagues downstairs. The only reason anyone would come up would be to use the staff bathroom. Continue reading...

Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle hopes meeting at his constituency will raise Lancashire town’s profileWhen Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, suggested to Lindsay Hoyle, her UK counterpart, that they hold the G7 speakers’ conference in “his district”, she might not have realised how enthusiastically the Lancastrian would embrace the idea.Hoyle said that Pelosi had asked, “We always go to London, can we get out of London?”, and so this weekend politicians from the world’s richest nations will be descending on the Lancashire market town of Chorley. Continue reading...

Six-year-old is now in Israel after alleged abduction by grandfather, four months after tragic accidentThat a single person survived when a cable car crashed in northern Italy was nothing short of a miracle.Eitan Biran, aged five at the time of the accident, is believed to have been saved by the protective embrace of his father, Amit, as the cable car plummeted to the ground. Continue reading...

She explored her gender and sexuality in the 20s, defied segregation in the 40s and inspired Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, a film is bringing her trailblazing achievements to lightIt seems inconceivable that someone like Pauli Murray could have slipped through the cracks of US history. A lawyer, activist, scholar, poet and priest, Murray led a trailblazing life that altered the course of history. She was at the forefront of the battles for racial and gender equality, but often so far out in front that her contributions went unrecognised.In 1940, 15 years before Rosa Parks, Murray was jailed for refusing to move to the back of a bus in the Jim Crow south. In 1943, she campaigned successfully to desegregate her local diner, 17 years before the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. Her work paved the way for the landmark supreme court ruling Brown v Board of Education in 1954 – which de-segregated US schools – to the extent that Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer for the NAACP civil rights group, called Murray’s book States’ Laws on Race and Color “the bible for civil rights lawyers”. Continue reading...

Newly released data from the state government shows the vaccine rollout over time by area

Evacuation of employees, not contractors, ‘splitting hairs’, says HRW, warning of days left to save livesAfghan employees who worked as contractors on UK aid projects fear for their lives after not being granted resettlement in Britain.The Guardian has been in contact with four families who said they had been targeted by the Taliban because they worked for the UK government, and have now been forced into hiding. Continue reading...

As they prepare what could be their final tour after 54 years, the British rock greats reflect on who they lost along the way, how they survived punk – and why Phil is skiving off his vocal practice‘Genesis have always been slightly below the radar,” says keyboardist Tony Banks. “We’ve never been part of a current trend; we don’t tend to get awards; we’re just sort of … there. People that like us really like us, though, and that’s all we care about.”“Below the radar” may be a strange way of describing a band who have sold more than 150m albums. But, then, Genesis have always been peculiarly self-effacing. From their early-70s, Peter Gabriel-fronted iteration, where they quickly ascended to the upper echelons of progressive rock with a combination of theatrical whimsy and fiendish technical complexity, to their slicker, poppier, staggeringly successful 80s years, they remain a wildly popular – yet pleasingly eccentric – proposition. Continue reading...

Arguments flare in the tiny, extremely conservative nation ahead of a vote on finally legalising abortionIt didn’t take long for the debate in San Marino to turn toxic. Soon after campaigning in the lead-up to a referendum on legalising abortion officially got under way, the walls of the tiny country, landlocked within central Italy, were slapped with posters from anti-abortion activists featuring a child with Down’s syndrome. The caption read: “I’m an anomaly, does that mean I have fewer rights than you?”Other posters featured the image of foetus alongside the message: “I’m a child even at 12 weeks, save me!” Continue reading...

Government says it’s ‘working hard’ to ease restrictions next week as country’s case numbers trend steadily down

Discovery made by a local girl comes decades after the bottle was put into the sea by schoolchildren as part of an experiment to monitor ocean currentsA glass bottle that was released into the sea 37 years ago by high school students in Japan has been found on the island of Hawaii, about 6,000km away.Students of the natural science club at Choshi High School in the eastern prefecture of Chiba released the bottle in 1984 as part of a project to investigate ocean currents, Japanese newspaper Mainichi reported. Continue reading...

Ruling on Duke of Edinburgh's will made to protect ‘dignity’ of Queen and her constitutional roleThe Duke of Edinburgh’s will is to remain secret to protect the “dignity” of the Queen because of her constitutional role, the high court has ruled. Philip – the nation’s longest-serving consort – died aged 99 on 9 April, just two months before he would have turned 100.After the death of a senior member of the royal family, it has been convention for over a century that an application to seal their will is made to the president of the family division of the high court. This means the wills of senior members of the royal family are not open to public inspection in the way a will would ordinarily be. Continue reading...

Prince’s lawyer claims settlement between Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein shields him from sexual assault lawsuitPrince Andrew can request the unsealing of a 2009 settlement agreement that his lawyer claims protects him from a lawsuit alleging he sexually assaulted a girl two decades ago, a US judge in New York has said.Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan said in a written order on Thursday that the prince could seek the information to support arguments that the agreement between Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein disallows her lawsuit against the prince. Continue reading...

Warnings Alberta facing collapse of healthcare system; Figures for people aged 16 to 24 in UK take in those who have been infected or vaccinated; more than 70% of China’s population now fully vaccinated

Review of 14 international studies suggests long Covid symptoms in children rarely last longer than 12 weeks

Figures suggest remaining applications being dealt with by the Home Office stands at 450,000New government figures suggest the backlog of applications by EU citizens and their families received by the Home Office for the post-Brexit settlement scheme could be cleared by Christmas.Quarterly figures issued on Thursday showed just over 6.1m applications had been received for the scheme that gives EU citizens, EEA nationals and their families the right to live, work, study or retire in the UK if they were in the country at the time of the EU referendum in 2016. Continue reading...

Friday: Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine deal with the US and the UK sparks international fury. Plus: everyone is listening in Liane Moriarty’s new novelGood morning. The US, UK and Australia’s defence deal has upset not only China and France, but climate experts too. Labor’s national secretary has appealed to Google over misinformation concerns ahead of the federal elections. And the controversial British journalist Piers Morgan has joined News Corp.China has denounced Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine deal with the United States and the United Kingdom, raising the question of nuclear proliferation. The criticism from Beijing came as Morrison said he expected a greater US military presence in the Indo-Pacific and deeper UK defence ties. Continue reading...

Independent Office for Police Conduct informed of incident involving 70-year-old driver stopped over broken brake lightThe Metropolitan police has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct over an incident where an elderly black man was hospitalised after officers pulled over his vehicle in south London.The 70-year-old driver was stopped by traffic officers in Bromley over a broken brake light on Monday afternoon. Continue reading...

Nuclear submarine deal with Australia draws criticism from allies and China amid fears of conflictBritain and the US are battling to contain an international backlash over a nuclear submarine pact struck with Australia amid concerns that the alliance could provoke China and prompt conflict in the Pacific.Boris Johnson told MPs that the Aukus defence agreement was “not intended to be adversarial” to China. But Beijing accused the three countries of adopting a “cold war mentality” and warned they would harm their own interests unless it was dropped. Continue reading...

Sigrid Kaag makes decision to go after lower house passes motion of censure against governmentThe foreign minister of the Netherlands, Sigrid Kaag, has resigned after the lower house of parliament passed a motion of censure against the government over its handling of evacuations from Afghanistan amid the Taliban takeover.In a parliamentary debate on Wednesday, Kaag acknowledged that the government’s slow or muddled response to warnings about the situation in Afghanistan meant some local staff and people who had worked as translators for Dutch troops in the country had not been evacuated. Continue reading...

Nitrogen dioxide levels far exceed average recorded on traffic-clogged Marylebone Road, according to a studyThe amount of diesel pollution on some new trains is 13 times higher than on one of central London’s busiest roads, researchers found.Passengers travelling on board a Great Western Railway carriage running from London to Bristol, procured by the government as part of a £5.7bn scheme, are subject to huge spikes in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution when they switched to diesel from electric. Continue reading...

York Theatre Royal

In My Son, the actor goes from scene to scene without a script trying to find his child, a bizarre new low for pandemic cinemaThe pandemic has subjected us to a brave new world of cinematic experiences: a seance horror on Zoom, Anne Hathaway trying to rob Harrods, Naomi Watts taking phone calls in a forest, films that have shown either admirable ingenuity during an impossible period or that it’s really OK, nay better, at times to just put your tools down and bake banana bread instead.Related: What does Covid mean for the future of pandemic movies? Continue reading...