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...
by Helen Sullivan (now); with Nadeem Badshah ,Lucy Ca on (#5NY98)
‘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...
by Josh Halliday North of England correspondent on (#5NYHE)
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...
by Nino Bucci (now) and Amy Remeikis (earlier) on (#5NXVM)
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
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...
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
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...
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...
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...
The nation’s Delta outbreak continues to grow, with Auckland likely to remain in lockdown for at least another fortnightNew Zealand’s Covid-19 outbreak continues to spread, with 83 cases announced on Sunday – a new daily high for this outbreak.All but one of the new cases were found in Auckland, with the other in Wellington. Continue reading...
Alar Karis is the only candidate on the ballot after current president Kersti Kaljulaid lost favour with lawmakersEstonia is gearing up for an unusual presidential election in parliament. There will be only one candidate in Monday’s vote, a situation unprecedented since the Baltic state regained its independence 30 years ago.President Kersti Kaljulaid’s five-year term expires on 10 October, and lawmakers in the 101-seat Riigikogu parliament must elect a new head of state to replace her in the largely ceremonial post. Continue reading...
The delays and opposition to the long-awaited Harbour Bridge ramp are emblematic of a city still not at peace with cyclistsOne of the world’s most feted pieces of transport infrastructure currently lets down an increasingly popular mode of transport: the bicycle.Currently, the 2,000 cyclists who cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge’s dedicated cycleway daily must dismount and battle 55 steps on the north side. The number of cyclists struggling on the stairs looks only set to grow: cycling in Sydney’s inner city has doubled in the last two years. Continue reading...
Switching from waging an insurgency to administering an entire country again is a daunting challenge the group must urgently addressBy Wednesday morning the last US troops will have left Kabul and the day will break on a country entirely controlled by the Taliban, the last shadow of American threat banished.It is still uncertain what this second iteration of the caliphate will look like, but with foreigners finally gone, the shape of the new Afghanistan will come into sharper focus. Continue reading...
by Vanessa Thorpe Arts and media correspondent on (#5NWHS)
Stones post montage of clips from drummer’s almost 60-year career with bandHe thought it would last a year at most, but Charlie Watts’s run as drummer with the Rolling Stones lasted nearly six decades. This weekend surviving band members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood united to bid a public farewell to the man whose rhythms powered their many hits, who died last Tuesday aged 80.After commenting individually on the loss last week, the Stones have released a video tribute featuring key moments of Watts’s career. The two-minute clip, posted on social media, includes an interview in which the drummer, a lorry driver’s son from Wembley, revealed that when he joined the band in 1963, he thought it might last a year. Continue reading...
by Vanessa Thorpe Arts and media correspondent on (#5NWQ6)
Many shops plan to open early for the arrival of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You next monthWhen they were children they lined the streets in their witch hats and capes, keen to pick up the latest Harry Potter title as bookshops opened their doors at midnight. Now they are a little older, the prospect of a tussle with some millennial emotions could see them queuing around the block again on 7 September, as dozens of bookshops plan to open early for the arrival of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You.In a nationwide promotional push, prompted by signs of big public demand, freshly printed copies of the Irish author’s third novel are to be served to customers with special commemorative merchandise as they enjoy a coffee and pastry. Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#5NWNR)
Chaotic airlift ends after taking around 14,000 people out of Taliban-controlled countryThe final UK evacuation flight purely for Afghan nationals has left Kabul airport, ending an often chaotic process in which about 14,000 people were airlifted out of Afghanistan by British forces in less than two weeks, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.Any further flights to leave Kabul under the UK’s evacuation operation will also have UK diplomatic and military personnel onboard. It is thought any further flights would be able to transport those still needing evacuation, but would now also include personnel travelling back to the UK. Continue reading...
Student and English teacher Mursal Rasa Jamili, 23, was evacuated to the UK from Kabul with her two sistersMursal Rasa Jamili, a 23-year-old final-year university student and English teacher in Kabul, was evacuated to the UK with her two sisters. Here she explains what happened during her last days in Afghanistan.Sunday 22 August Continue reading...
Passenger boat carrying more than 100 people reportedly sank after being hit by two cargo vesselsMore than 20 people have died and about 50 remain missing in Bangladesh after a passenger boat carrying more than 100 people sank in a large pond.The accident occurred in the Bijoynagar area in the Brahmanbaria district on Friday evening, local police official Imranul Islam said. He said rescuers recovered at least 21 bodies by late Friday. Local news reports, quoting the area’s top government administrator, Hayat-Ud-Dola, said about 50 people were missing. Continue reading...
Greg Epstein, unanimously elected by his fellow university chaplains, says: ‘I want to be a positive force’Harvard University, originally founded with a mission to educate clergymen in order to minister to New England’s early Puritan colonists, has a new chief chaplain. His name is Greg Epstein – and he is an atheist.Epstein, author of Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, has been the university’s humanist chaplain since 2005 before being unanimously elected by his fellow campus chaplains as the university chaplains organization’s new president, the New York Times reported. Continue reading...
When her partner left her with a newborn one dark Finnish winter, Anna Härmälä didn’t crumble. Inspired by Fleabag, she turned her pain into raw, funny cartoons“It’s Finnish winter in complete darkness, and it’s raining ice. And then you can’t sleep, and the baby is screaming, and you’re too tired to get up, but if you don’t get up, there is no one else there.” Anna Härmälä is describing February 2015, when her partner walked out on her and their five-week-old baby. In order to remember, she has to inhabit the “brutal darkness” of that time. “There was extreme tiredness, a deep sadness, moments of despair – but also moments of great love and purpose. That first year was a crazy rollercoaster. It was absolutely… ” She pauses, and breathes in, searching for the right word. What is the word for how it feels when your partner has an affair and abandons you with a newborn? How do you explain it? Härmälä, a Finnish art teacher and children’s book author, started drawing comics.The comics are raw and funny and painful, thrusting the reader straight into the moment of crisis: Härmälä, ravaged with tiredness, contemplating the droopiness of her breasts and eyebags; intimate conversations with friends; snapshots of the messy loneliness of life stranded with a newborn. The drawings feel so immediate that it’s easy to believe you are reading the story in real time – yeah right, as if a newly single mother, desperately trying to survive, would be likely to sit down each day and create beautiful narrative art about it. Continue reading...
Researchers say the tiny island in Greenland – roughly 30 metres across – was exposed by shifting pack iceScientists have discovered a new island off the coast of Greenland, which they say is the world’s northernmost point of land and was revealed by shifting pack ice.“It was not our intention to discover a new island,” polar explorer and head of the Arctic station research facility in Greenland, Morten Rasch, said of the find last month. “We just went there to collect samples.” Continue reading...
by Helen Sullivan (now and earlier); Nadeem Badshah , on (#5NW6C)
UK foreign secretary ‘deeply saddened’ by UK deaths; US officials warned over ‘specific’ threats; US military believes there was only one suicide bomber