Why not emulate private schools with class sizes, playing fields, music facilities and modern languages?Just as many of us are thinking ahead to winter and a possible next wave of Covid, worrying about whether schools have proper ventilation and what emergency measures you might have up your sleeve if a major outbreak occurs, you choose to put Latin at the top of your agenda. Well, not quite top because you also managed to signal the end of BTecs (a disaster in the making). Perhaps you were using your Latin splash to hide that announcement.You’re also keeping very quiet about what is happening with the GCSE marking – the results only days away for my offspring. I can’t work out which is going to be more exciting: hearing his results or listening to your convoluted explanations as to why a) this year’s teacher assessment method was perfect and b) why – even though it’s been perfect – we’ll all have to go back next year to the one-off, high-stakes, unnecessary obstacle of GCSEs. Continue reading...

Four people who were so ill that they barely remember their time in the ICU meet the doctors and nurses who held their handsIn a light-filled studio in east London, a petite woman in scrubs receives a bouquet of flowers from a tall man, dressed smartly, only faintly out of breath.The room is thick with emotion. They are strangers, but stare at each other with wonder in their eyes. And then Dr Susan Jain, an intensive care consultant at Homerton university hospital, breaks the silence with a laugh. Continue reading...

Covid pandemic has accelerated shift to online purchases, with big brands buying up startups

Rise in women taking employers to court citing event as proof of unfair dismissal and discrimination

With quarantine scrapped for UK holidaymakers returning from France, we select chateaux, hotels and B&Bs across the country Continue reading...

Israeli military says strikes target rocket launching site as balloons aim to pressure Israel to ease restrictionsIsraeli aircraft bombed Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian enclave, Israel’s military said.There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the strikes on Saturday that targeted what the military said was a rocket launching site and a compound belonging to Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza. Continue reading...

Esteban, 31, stores and shipping assistant, meets Sofia, 29, midwifeWhat were you hoping for?

Trees, grasses and wildlife are returning as Lord Randal Plunkett recreates a vanished landscape in County MeathLord Randal Plunkett strides through the hip-high grass of Dunsany, a 650-hectare (1,600-acre) estate in the middle of Ireland, trailed by an invisible swarm of midges and his four jack russell terriers: Tiny, Lumpy, Chow and Beavis & Butt-Head.The cattle and sheep are long gone, so too are the lawns and many of the crops. In their place is a riot of shrubs, flowers and trees, along with insects and creatures that call this fledgling wilderness their home. Continue reading...

Victim was found unresponsive with head and chest injuries in a home in Doonside on WednesdayFive teenagers, including two as young as 13, have been charged with murder after the death of a 16-year-old boy found with severe injuries in Sydney.The boy was found unresponsive with head and chest injuries in a home in Doonside on Wednesday afternoon. Continue reading...

The Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation offers aid to dissident athletes while organising opposition to the regime’s sportwashing efforts

Police say the woman did not realise the door of the animal’s cage was open and was immediately attackedA young woman working at a safari park in Chile has died after a tiger attacked her, police said.The woman, who has not been identified by police, was among staff cleaning and carrying out maintenance work on Friday in the big cats’ enclosure of a safari park in the city of Rancagua, 90km south of the capital Santiago. Continue reading...

Government says it will ‘deploy entire defensive capability’ and Amhara region threatens attack against Tigray forcesEthiopia’s spreading conflict has escalated after the government warned that it could deploy its “entire defensive capability” against the restive Tigray region after advances by rebels into neighbouring regions.After the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebuffed calls on Friday to withdraw from the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions, the government in Addis Ababa said the rebels were testing its patience and threatening the ceasefire called in June. Continue reading...

British-Iranian labour rights activist’s sentencing coincides with deteriorating relations between western allies and IranThe UK government has hit out at reports that a British-Iranian labour rights activist has been given a sentence of 10 years in Tehran for participating in an outlawed group.A Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that London “strongly” condemned the sentence handed out to Mehran Raoof, a former teacher from north London. Continue reading...

Expats separated from loved ones say Australia’s tightening travel rules leave them with an ‘impossible choice’Australians living overseas say a federal government rule change that could see them trapped if they return to visit family and friends might force many to abandon trips altogether.Expats living abroad have told Guardian Australia they fear that could mean missing out on farewelling elderly relatives. Continue reading...

A Zoom meeting of prime ministers and presidents was never going to be a particularly smooth affairThere was what looked like a virtual walkout, veiled criticism of certain nations, a video address from the US president and of course, technical issues: this is diplomacy in the age of Zoom.Presidents and prime ministers of Pacific nations, including Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern, logged on for the leaders’ meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) on Friday morning, the most important diplomatic gathering in the Pacific. Continue reading...

I fancy myself a federationist, but when Victoria closed down, I am ashamed to admit that the old serpent of NSW schadenfreude re-awoke in meLast time there was a national cabinet in Australia, I was a somewhat dyslexic six-year-old to nine-year-old and the nation was in great peril. And even then the national war cabinets were not along the lines of the Covid national cabinet – the states were beneath making war policy and had no part in it.Since those days I have seen a gradual accretion of powers to the federal sphere. There was certainly no federal health ministry at federation and, at the last pandemic in 1918-19, quarantine seemed to be the chief health business the federal government was engaged in. A formal federal health ministry was not brought into being until after the pandemic in 1921. As for a federal education ministry, it came into being in 1968, and the first minister was John Gorton. Continue reading...

The Taliban has captured an Afghan provincial capital after pleas for reinforcements by local security forces went unheeded, in a major blow to the western-backed government.Officials in the city near the border with Iran said that government forces had called for reinforcements for more than a week, but their appeals went unanswered.

Exclusive: PM continued tour of Scotland despite at times being ‘side-by-side’ with official, source says

President among those hailing first-ever victory in relay event that takes country’s Olympic medal haul to 38Italy continued its summer of incredible sporting success by clinching gold in the men’s 4x100m relay at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.It was the country’s first-ever victory in the men’s relay and brings the total number of medals won by Italy so far at this Olympics to 38 – placing it seventh in the medals table, the highest among countries from mainland Europe. Continue reading...

Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, has been taken to hospital after a protester threw a rock at his head during a demonstration led by nurses and other workers in the eastern Caribbean island.The protest was organised by unions representing nurses, police and other workers who claimed that the government planned to mandate vaccines for certain employees. Gonsalves clarified that he would not make vaccines mandatory

Boris Johnson’s comments come as ex-miners fight to save their ‘raided’ pension fundIn a neatly decorated terraced house in the old mining village of Stanley on the outskirts of Wakefield, 64-year-old ex-miner Ian Hoggan pulled out a banner showing a miner crucified on a colliery wheel, with the words “Save our pensions.”Hoggan, who worked down a pit here in Wakefield and one at Selby, now devotes a large portion of his time to fight for millions of pounds of pensions savings to be returned to miners and their families, many of whom are struggling financially. Continue reading...

Artur Shumak and Yuri Moisevich leave 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games village as investigation into efforts to force sprinter home continue

Suspect left knife behind after fleeing commuter transit, with two people seriously injuredA man has stabbed at least 10 passengers on a commuter train in Tokyo, seriously injuring two people.The suspect left a knife behind as he fled and was arrested later on Friday in Tokyo, according to NHK public television. The Japanese capital is hosting the Olympics, which end on Sunday. Continue reading...

John Cole charged with murder after Logan Mwangi, 5, was found dead in the Ogmore River in BridgendA trial date has been set for three people charged following the death of a five-year-old boy whose body was discovered in a river in south Wales.Logan Mwangi was found dead in the Ogmore River near Pandy Park in Bridgend after police were called to a report of a missing child at 5.45am on Saturday. Continue reading...

Verphy Kudi, 19, left her daughter, Asiah, alone for nearly six days while she went to London and CoventryThe mother of a toddler who starved to death after she left her alone for almost six days to go partying has been jailed for nine years.Verphy Kudi, now 19, abandoned her 20-month-old daughter, Asiah, in Brighton while she went to London and Coventry to celebrate her birthday, go to a concert and attend a friend’s party. Continue reading...

Four brass memorial plaques embedded in street remember Jews and resistance fightersMore than 75 years after they were murdered in the gas chambers or shot, gay victims of Nazi persecution were remembered with “stumbling stones” laid in Amsterdam this week.The Netherlands has about 8,500 Stolpersteine, (stumbling stones), the brass memorial plaques embedded in the street that call on passers-by to remember individual victims of the Nazi genocide and oppression, a mental “stumbling” that forces pedestrians to reckon with the past. Continue reading...

Analysis: public opinion shifting, but reaction from authorities may have related more to crackdown on fame cultureIt felt like a turning point. The arrest of one of China’s biggest pop stars on rape allegations had raised hopes that authorities were finally addressing the country’s #MeToo movement.So many recent cases of harassment, abuse or violence against women had been swept under the carpet, excused or smothered by political censorship. But this was Kris Wu, known in China as Wu Yifan: a ubiquitous megastar with numerous international high-end brand endorsement deals. Continue reading...

Don’t be ashamed. Shame is for the other people in your life who failed you, says Annalisa BarbieriAs a child, I stole a pair of my mother’s high-waisted, pink and white nylon knickers and wore them under my short trousers to school. I was six years old and not getting what I needed from her. I felt I couldn’t access her. She was physically and emotionally unavailable, and in a marriage that was “on the rocks”, as she used to say. I had also tried to tell my parents I was being physically, sexually and emotionally abused at school, but they scolded me for telling lies and not concentrating on my work.I’m now in my 60s. I’ve been in therapy for many years, and have come to understand my parents’ difficulties and, more importantly, myself. Recently, I have felt the old, suppressed urge to buy women’s underwear online. But I’m conflicted, confused and haunted by other people’s messages. This might be because I grew up in a country dominated by religion. Continue reading...

Controversial commercial comes as series of homophobic attacks are reported across SpainSnickers in Spain has pulled a controversial advertisement and apologised for any “misunderstanding that may have been caused” after the 20-second film was widely condemned for being homophobic.The advert shows the Spanish influencer Aless Gibaja ordering a “sexy orange juice” while a friend trades puzzled looks with the waiter. The waiter responds by handing Gibaja a Snickers ice-cream bar, and after a bite, Gibaja appears to transform into a bearded man with a deep voice. Continue reading...

Malta, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Ireland overtake UK in fully jabbed percentages

U-turn over those who worked for British media follows outcry from newspapers and broadcastersThe foreign secretary has agreed to consider allowing Afghan journalists who worked for the British to flee to the UK if their lives are endangered by the resurgence of the Taliban, after an outcry from a coalition of British newspapers and broadcasters.Dominic Raab signalled the policy U-turn on Friday, saying he recognised the bravery of the Afghan journalists. A scheme that was set up to offer a safe haven to Afghans who worked with the British will be expanded to include those who worked as journalists, it was reported. Continue reading...

A new series on Covid’s global political impact starts by looking at how the pandemic has fuelled turbulence in Latin America and the CaribbeanFor Filipe da Silva, hitting the streets was about staying alive.“Unfortunately, Brazil elected a murderer,” the 28-year-old declared as he and thousands of fellow protesters streamed through the seaside city of Fortaleza last month to decry the president’s bungling of a Covid epidemic that has killed more than half a million people. Continue reading...

Green pass rule has prompted some protests but not on same scale as similar scheme in France

Some of north-eastern area’s 500 structures are remarkable for their architecture and cooling abilitiesNo two are alike: some look like stone igloos, others more like deep pits. Now a regional government in Spain wants some of its network of 500 ice houses officially declared as assets of cultural interest.During Europe’s “mini ice age” that lasted from about 1600 to 1850, snow often fell in places that had never seen it before. The prolonged cold snap led to the widespread construction of ice houses, nowhere more so than in Aragón, which produced some extraordinary arquitectura del hielo (ice architecture) in the form of vast, stone refrigerators. Continue reading...

Shot put champion Gong Lijiao quizzed about boyfriends and settling down into ‘a woman’s life’The Chinese state media channel CCTV has been roundly criticised after a TV anchor described an Olympic medallist as a “manly woman” and asked her if she had plans for “a woman’s life”.Gong Lijiao, 32, won a gold medal in the women’s shot put on Sunday with a personal best of 20.58 metres. It was the first gold medal in a field event for any Chinese athlete ever, and the first gold for an Asian athlete in shot put. Continue reading...

Family was targeted in hate campaign on social media after appearing in a food chain’s adA Russian lesbian family who received death threats after they appeared in an advertisement for the food chain VkusVill say they feel safe in Barcelona and accepted for who they are.The family were targeted in a hate campaign on social media after they appeared in the ad. The company later apologised and replaced the photo with one of a heterosexual family. Continue reading...

Social pressure and group mores have become less powerful as people become tired of staying home

Maya Da-Rin’s subtle, poetic debut engages with the hidden lives of the Desana people of BrazilHere is a mysterious and opaque movie, a feature debut from 42-year-old Brazilian artist and film-maker Maya Da-Rin. It does not give up its meaning easily, or perhaps at all. Newcomer Regis Myrupu won the best actor prize at the Locarno film festival for his understated performance as Justino, a member of the indigenous Desana people working as a security guard at a container port in Manaus harbour in northern Brazil. He is a widower, fussed over by his affectionate daughter Vanessa (Rosa Peixoto), who has just got into medical school at Brasília and will have to move away very soon and may not see her dad for many years. And perhaps that is what has caused a strange, profound unease in Justino. He suffers from a fever which is resistant to diagnosis. He becomes dreamy and inattentive at work and is called to see the stern head of human resources, who after some perfunctory inquiries about his mental health gives him a warning. Continue reading...

Swedish company took legal action against Cambridgeshire-based Glebe Farm Foods over oat drinkA family-run company sued by Oatly for alleged trademark infringement has won a legal battle against the multimillion-pound firm.The Swedish oat milk company Oatly brought legal action against Glebe Farm Foods, a Cambridgeshire-based company that specialises in producing gluten-free oats, accusing them of attempting to take “unfair advantage” of Oatly’s trademarks with their oat drink called PureOaty. Continue reading...

Thirteen-year-old’s Olympic bronze medal adds to boom in number of people picking up a board

Court hears Troy Van Den Bemt was shot dead at a bottle shop by an undercover officer who was monitoring himUndercover police officers tailing a group of suspected armed robbers deny they knew of a plan to allow the men to commit a crime if they could not be safely arrested first, the Victorian coroner’s court has heard.Coroner Jacqui Hawkins is holding an inquest into the death of Troy Van Den Bemt, who was killed in 2018 by an officer who had been monitoring the armed robber and his associates as part of an operation in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Continue reading...

We wanted to bid on a property. But auctioneers speak quickly, and this one had a strong Glaswegian accentMy girlfriend Claire and I had both been to Scotland just once before: me as a kid; Claire for a medical school interview. I’m English, she’s Canadian, and we met in the French Alps in 2016, quickly grew close, travelled around Europe, then got it into our heads that we should move to Glasgow. Wanting a project, we looked at auction listings and found an apartment in Pollokshields, Southside. It needed some love, but the starting price was £10k. Before deciding to bid, I’d spent a few nights sleeping in my van across the street from it. I liked it.With Claire away, I ventured to the sale alone. It was my first time at a property auction. I took my seat and waited patiently. The problem was auctioneers speak fast, and this one had a strong Glaswegian accent: I was really struggling to follow. Thankfully, a brochure on my seat contained the details for every lot, while a screen behind the stage displayed its corresponding number. I ticked off each sale in my copy as we went, counting down. Continue reading...

NSW records 291 new cases and one death, Qld 10 cases and Victoria four; violent protests erupt in Melbourne’s CBD. Follow all the day’s news

Mark Drakeford contrasts approach with Boris Johnson as Wales prepares to scrap most restrictions

A sizzling spark between actors can elevate a film, as these amorous double acts showThis was the film that sparked a virtual supermarket tabloid-gossip industry. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play an outwardly respectable married couple, each with a secret kept from the spouse: they are both professional assassins. Then each gets a commission to kill the other. The film is a bit silly, but you can see the dark and dangerous spark between the since-estranged Jolie-Pitts. Continue reading...

The only deaf actor to win an Academy Award discusses going to rehab, speaking out about William Hurt and starring in deaf drama CodaWhen early financial backers of Marlee Matlin’s new film, Coda, expressed their preference for hiring big-name actors to play the roles of two major deaf characters – her onscreen husband and son – she threatened to quit. She told them that deaf actors should play characters written as deaf. “I said: time out. This is not right. It’s not authentic and it’s not going to work. If you go down that route, I’m out, because I don’t want to be part of that effort of faking deaf. I’m glad they listened.”I can’t imagine anyone not listening to Matlin. Speaking from her home in Los Angeles, she is funny and warm, but there is something intense about her, almost intimidating. She sits straight-backed, her focus sharp. She is not a woman to mince her words – which are translated from American Sign Language (ASL) by her longtime interpreter and producing partner, Jack Jason, who is also on the call from his front room. The pair have been working together since 1985, just before she won the best actress Oscar at 21 for her first film role, playing a young deaf woman in the 1986 drama Children of a Lesser God – beating Sigourney Weaver (who was up for Aliens), Jane Fonda, Kathleen Turner and Sissy Spacek. Continue reading...

Tabitha Chawinga, a Malawi international who plays in China, has called for greater safeguards against abuse in her home countryThe international footballer Tabitha Chawinga is calling on Malawi’s football authorities to introduce safeguards to protect women from abuse at all levels of the game.Chawinga, who became the first woman from Malawi to sign for a European football team when she joined the Swedish club Krokom/Dvärsätts IF in 2014, said that she had been forced to strip in public during a match to prove she was female and was regularly trolled on social media about her looks. Continue reading...

Germany is on the green list in more ways than one: from Baltic coastline to the Alps, it has plenty to offer those who like to spend their holidays outdoorsBaden-Württemberg is a popular destination thanks to its university towns (Tübingen, Freiburg, Heidelberg), impressive spread of historic castles and palaces, luxurious spas and cultural scene. Its major natural draw is the sprawling Schwarzwald (Black Forest), which spans about 6,0000 sq km (2,000 sq miles) from the refined spa town of Baden-Baden in the north right down to the border with Switzerland. Dotted with lakes, waterfalls, ravines and moorlands, and threaded with rivers and 18,000 miles of trails, it’s a great place to get lost in, and a paradise for hikers, cyclists, cross-country skiers, kayakers and climbers. There are lots of wonderful towns and villages with cultural offerings throughout the region too, plus wine festivals in autumn and Christmas markets in winter. Continue reading...

Médecins Sans Frontières and Norwegian Refugee Council, active in war-torn Tigray, in talks over banThe Ethiopian government has suspended the work of two international aid organisations for three months, including in the conflict-hit Tigray region, accusing them of spreading misinformation.Ethiopia Current Issues Fact Check, a government-run website focused on Tigray, accused Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) of violating several rules. Continue reading...

Fears of crop damage and impact on food supplies rise as forecaster reports more than 500mm of rain has fallen in three daysMore than 1,100 homes in North Korea were damaged, thousands of people evacuated and farms and roads washed away after days of heavy rains brought flooding, state media reported.The reports come as concern grows about damage to crops and the possible impact on food supplies in North Korea, which is cut off from most foreign imports and aid by self-imposed border restrictions aimed at preventing a coronavirus outbreak, as well as by international sanctions. Continue reading...