Jillian, 57, consultant, meets Alan, 70, medical delivery driverWhat were you hoping for?

Rail industry resists calls from passenger groups to release data on risk of contracting Covid on trains

More restrictions are being considered as the country battles its worst outbreak yet

False claims about vaccines has proliferated on the social network, and on other sites including Twitter and YouTube, says president

Hip-hop star known for his personality, beatboxing and freestyle skills scored his biggest hit in 1989Biz Markie, the New York rapper, beatboxer and producer, has died at age 57.Markie’s representative, Jenni Izumi, said the rapper and DJ died peacefully Friday evening with his wife by his side. The cause of death has not been released. Continue reading...

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Kinaua Biribo says she wants to empower women in the Pacific island nation, where almost 60% of men have perpetrated intimate partner violenceKinaua Biribo is unlikely to win an Olympic medal. When the elimination rounds of her judo category begin later this month, the 27-year-old will be a firm underdog; she has been knocked out in the first round of both of her international competition appearances to date.But Kinaua, whom the Guardian is referring to by her first name as is culturally appropriate, has ambitions far grander than any Olympic medal. She wants to inspire the women of her Pacific homeland and combat the scourge of domestic violence. Continue reading...

In the first of Guardian Australia’s new Saturday quiz series, MasterChef expert Clem Bastow tests your knowledge of the season that just wrapped upDo you miss this season’s contestants like they were treasured personal friends? Do you find yourself whistling the inspirational music stings that accompanied a nailed brief? Have you, too, tried to “MasterChef up” your nightly meals of microwaved leftovers by sprinkling them with finger lime and red salt?Test your knowledge of this season’s rollercoaster ride before the memories fade like the hopes of a contestant who only has 35 seconds left to plate up. Share your score – or own up to it in the comments. Continue reading...

Pros at dealing with long-term Covid restrictions, Melbourne residents share their advice for those in SydneyWe may have escaped the ravages of Covid that have maimed nations elsewhere, but Australians have still endured its consequences through lengthy, disruptive lockdowns.Nowhere is this as intimately understood than in Melbourne, which is now in its fifth lockdown. And as our fellows in Sydney stare down a potentially long road stuck at home, we thought it useful this week to invite Melburnians to offer tips on how best to cope. Continue reading...

Authorities are still struggling to understand the motives and masterminds behind the first killing of a Haitian president since 1915Giovanna Romero remembers her husband, Mauricio, as a caring father who called home every night when he was out of the country on work. He did so as usual on the night of 6 July – from where, exactly, she isn’t sure – to remind her and their children he loved them and tell them to take care.“I’ll call again soon,” the retired Colombian soldier promised – a pledge he would be unable to keep. Continue reading...

Residents of Erftstadt struggle to comprehend how their familiar landscape became treacherous terrainAnatoli Neugebauer is standing just a hundred metres from his family home, at the edge of the Blessem district of Erftstadt, a commuter-belt town 12 miles (20km) south of Cologne. Even though flood waters from the Erft River had begun to recede by midday on Friday, he still had to wade through waist-high brown water just to get inside the stuccoed terrace house.“It’s completely indescribable,” says Neugebauer, 40. “A catastrophe.” Continue reading...

A tornado ripped through Barrie, Ontario in Canada on Thursday, injuring at least eight people and destroying about 25 buildings, CBC reported. Police in Barrie, a town 82km (50 miles) north of Toronto, said they were responding to multiple reports of damage in the south-eastern part of the city. At least four people were hospitalised, according to local authorities. Continue reading...

Scientists believe climate disruption will bring more extreme weather, and humans are making things worseAlmost certainly. Scientists have long predicted climate disruption will lead to more extreme weather, such as heatwaves, droughts and floods. Human emissions from engine exhaust fumes, forest burning and other activities are heating the planet. As the atmosphere gets warmer it holds more moisture which brings more rain. All the places that recently experienced flooding – Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, London, Edinburgh, Tokyo and elsewhere – might have had heavy summer rain even without the climate crisis, but the deluges were unlikely to have been as intense. Continue reading...

As a very strange edition of the festival draws to a close, our film critic predicts who will walk away with the Palme d’Or and other prizes – and awards his own alternative BraddiesSo it actually happened – the Cannes film festival defiantly took place in the era of Covid, and two months later than usual, in sweltering July. More tourists, but fewer actual festival-attenders from the media. Some streets were eerily quiet and the legendary bar, Le Petit Majestic, usually packed with movie-world people, getting drunk, exchanging cards and crowding densely out into the street every night until three in the morning, was doing hardly any business.Masks were worn throughout all films, though not on the hallowed red carpet, and every 48 hours we had to report to a special tent for Covid testing: it was not possible to enter the Palais without having the vital QR code for “Negatif” on your phone. The whole business was a bit laborious and discombobulating but this was a great logistical triumph for the festival. The only Covid casualty was the French star Léa Seydoux, who couldn’t come, having tested positive. Continue reading...

Farkhad Akhmedov had contested 2017 decision but has now reached an agreement over divorceAfter almost five years of fighting a high court ruling that awarded the UK’s largest ever divorce payout, a Russian billionaire has reached a settlement with his ex-wife.Farkhad Akhmedov and Tatiana Akhmedova have been embroiled in the most expensive family feud in history since a London high court judge awarded Akhmedova a £450m divorce payout in 2017. Continue reading...

Justin Kurzel shies away from depicting the Port Arthur massacre itself but outstanding performances mean it’s still a highly unsettling storyAustralian director Justin Kurzel has made his most purely disturbing film since his debut Snowtown in 2011. Like that film, Nitram is based on a real-life case of murder and family dysfunction (which incidentally also applies to Kurzel’s version of Macbeth). And he has four outstanding performances from Judy Davis, Essie Davis, Anthony LaPaglia and Caleb Landry Jones.The Port Arthur massacre in 1996 was perpetrated by a violently disturbed young man, Martin Bryant, who shot and killed 35 people at a Tasmanian tourist site with a semi-automatic rifle bought legally; he was apparently inspired by the UK’s Dunblane massacre one month earlier. The Australian government took immediate steps to limit the sales of weaponry. Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant have dramatised Bryant’s own deeply disturbed home and family environment and the utterly bizarre twists that his life had taken in the time leading up to the shooting. His pre-murder existence has a stranger-than-fiction quality that would be worthy of feature film treatment, even if the killings had never happened. Continue reading...

Severe flooding has caused devastation in Germany and Belgium, where the death toll has risen to more than 120 as emergency services continued their search for many hundreds more still missing. No loss of life has been reported in Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, but flash floods swept through the Swiss villages of Schleitheim and Beggingen, several towns in the Grand Duchy were evacuated and thousands were told to leave their homes in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht

This Taiwanese sci-fi about an investigation in which the suspects’ minds are injected into a host body starts promisingly, but quickly ditches any complexityDabbling in a myriad of already weary tropes first pioneered by The Matrix trilogy, this Taiwanese sci-fi crime thriller Plurality could have put a fresh twist on big-budget Hollywood efforts, but falls flat on both the production design and the narrative front.The young son of a city councillor is the latest victim in a string of kidnappings targeting children with disabilities or facial disfigurements, and the police become convinced that the perpetrator is one of the five passengers who have died in a mysterious bus crash. Thanks to a new technology, they are able to use the vegetative body of a criminal on death row into which to inject the brain fluids of the suspects. (These include a shady businessman, a spoiled dropout, a reticent college student, a father estranged from his daughter, and the bus driver.) As the police try to extract information from these evasive subjects, the more gruelling the interrogation becomes, the more violently the five identities wrestle for control of their corporeal host, which leads to explosive revelations and bloodshed. Continue reading...

Cyril Ramaphosa says ‘good number’ of those who planned violence and looting had been identifiedThe wave of protest and looting that swept across much of South Africa over the past week was planned by enemies of democracy in a deliberate effort to sow chaos, the president has said.Speaking to reporters in some of the areas worst hit by the unrest, Cyril Ramaphosa said authorities had identified “a good number” of those who planned and coordinated the violence, the worst in South Africa since the end of the apartheid regime in 1994. Continue reading...

She has four films at Cannes film festival, but instead of strutting the Riviera red carpet the actor is isolating in Paris. She talks creativity, sex scenes and the joy of Bond stuntsLéa Seydoux is coming to Cannes. She’s starring in four pictures at this year’s film festival and our interview is booked for noon on Saturday, possibly on the beach. The beach is good for weird distractions and local colour. I once interviewed Juliette Binoche on the beach at Cannes while she was accosted by wandering vendors trying to sell her straw hats. “Non, merci,” she kept saying. She was very gracious about it.Seydoux is coming to Cannes and then all of a sudden she’s not. The 36-year-old actor has tested positive for Covid: the biggest casualty of an event marked by tight security, 48-hour spit tests and a constant background hum of tension. She was supposed to be on heavy red-carpet rotation. Instead, she has spent the festival isolating in Paris. Continue reading...

The economy is expected to reach a crucial stage in fourth quarter as support for business winds down

At least 110 people have died in devastating floods across parts of western Germany and Belgium. Search and rescue operations are continuing with hundreds still unaccounted for

Government says its Covid app is unlikely to be adjusted to make it less sensitive for weeks

After his father suffered a heart scare, psych-popper Connan Mockasin enlisted him to make an experimental EP. Who knew it would be such a breeze?Nepotism in the music industry is nothing new, but using your connections to get your father a record deal is surely a far rarer occurrence. However, that’s just what Connan Mockasin did for new album It’s Just Wind. The New Zealand musician, whose solo work is best described by the title of his 2013 psych-pop album Caramel – gooey, sweet and there to be chewed on – had long planned to make an album with his dad, Ade, but a bout of ill health on his father’s part focused him.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...

Steve Jones and Paul Cook are suing John Lydon, who has refused to give permission for Pistol to use the band’s musicThe Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook are suing frontman John Lydon over the use of their songs in Pistol, Danny Boyle’s forthcoming TV series about the band.Lydon has said he will not approve the licences for Pistol to use the band’s music unless he is ordered to by a court. Continue reading...

Lawyer of Tim Atkins, who was stomped on by an officer, claims Ibac has failed to set the standard for ‘acceptable conduct for policing in Victoria’The lawyer for a man whose head was stomped on by police has been highly critical of Victoria’s independent anti-corruption body after it found the officer acted lawfully during the arrest.Tim Atkins, who has bipolar disorder, said he was suffering an episode last September when he broke a window at an Epping hospital, before running into traffic to escape police. Continue reading...

Rodney Reed’s case was championed by the reality TV star but celebrities’ role in the criminal justice system is complicatedWhen death row prisoner Rodney Reed found out his execution had been called off – only days before it was to occur – he was sitting in a tiny visiting room at an east Texas maximum-security prison, talking to Kim Kardashian West.The reality TV star had traveled to the Polunsky Unit, an hour north-east of Houston, to visit the condemned man whose cause she had taken up, repeatedly posting photos and firing off tweets in support of his claims of innocence. By the time the Texas court of criminal appeals stayed the execution in November 2019, Reed’s case had attracted other celebrity supporters – from Beyoncé and Dr Phil, to Oprah and Gigi Hadid. Continue reading...

Prime minister said leaders discussed ‘what is working’ in the rollout at national cabinet, and praised Victoria for high vaccination rateScott Morrison has encouraged states to administer AstraZeneca at mass vaccination centres and boost vaccination rates on weekends, in a sign that Australia is shifting away from its GP-led rollout model.National cabinet met on Friday as Delta strain outbreaks of Covid in greater Sydney and Melbourne placed 10 million Australians into lockdown. Continue reading...

Bafta nominee says incident last month followed dispute outside Euston station in LondonActor Ruth Madeley has told how a minicab driver took her wheelchair away after an argument outside a London train station.The Bafta nominee, who starred in the BBC One drama Years and Years, said the man refused to drop her outside Euston station’s accessible entrance because heavy traffic made it “too difficult” and it would “take too long”. Continue reading...

Officers investigating damage to Manchester artwork keeping open mind over motiveThe vandalism of a mural of England footballer Marcus Rashford was “not believed to be of a racial nature”, police have said as they appealed for witnesses.The artwork was attacked hours after England’s European Championship final defeat on Sunday as Rashford and fellow players Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, suffered racist abuse on social media. Continue reading...

Six new cases in Victoria; Sydney records 97 local cases; WA and Queensland to close border to Victoria

Archie White awarded fine arts degree from East Sussex College aged 96 years and 56 daysA former solicitor from Hastings is believed to have become Britain’s oldest new graduate after receiving a degree in fine art at the age of 96.Archie White, who retired at 92, said he was “not too bothered about being the oldest graduate or not” and had thoroughly enjoyed studying at East Sussex College. Continue reading...

Tedros says ‘accidents happen’ in labs and calls on China to be more transparent

As the country becomes the epicentre of the pandemic, a growing number of volunteer groups have assembled to fill in gaps in the government response

Dumfries course teaches 11- to 18-year-olds how to create a persona, apply makeup and the history of drag“You can use drag to explore anything you want to,” says Natalie Doidge, the organiser of what is thought to be Scotland’s first “drag school” for teenagers, which opens its doors later this month after facing down controversy.“Drag isn’t limited to men dressed as women … and this course opens it out to anyone who wants to try it. It’s an exploration of [oneself] – especially for young people at the upper end of high school, when your life is just beginning and you’re thinking about who want to be. Gender is a performance, after all.” Continue reading...

The 2020 murder of Jenelyn Kennedy rocked Papua New Guinea to its core. Many of us know what it’s like to be covered in bruises under our clothesA year ago women and men across Papua New Guinea came together to protest in the streets. They wore black and held placards calling for an end to violence against women.

Their Adam Driver musical sent Cannes into raptures and Edgar Wright has made an all-star documentary about them. The Mael brothers explain why they’ll always be hopelessly in love with popIn 1974, John Lennon was startled as he was watching Top of the Pops. He rang Ringo Starr. “You won’t believe what’s on television,” he reportedly said. “Marc Bolan is playing a song with Adolf Hitler.”This was Sparks, performing their glorious pop opus This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us. “It was equidistant between the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and the Daleks on Doctor Who,” says Edgar Wright, the director of Baby Driver and Shaun of the Dead, and now a documentary about the duo, The Sparks Brothers. “Fifteen million people saw it. Think of the next generation of bands watching: the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Duran Duran, Joy Division, Squeeze, Vince Clarke. They’re all watching and they’re all thinking the same thing.” Continue reading...

It’s been 50 years this month since Henry Kissinger, the then national security advisor, made a secret trip to the People’s Republic of China. Joan E Greve talks to the Guardian’s China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, to find out how the current diplomatic relationship compares with 1971When president Nixon visited China in 1972 – following the secret trip that Henry Kissinger, his national security advisor, took there in 1971 – it marked a turning point in the cold war and 20th-century history.But a lot has changed since the 1970s, such as China now having one of the largest economies in the world, data security concerns and, of course, Covid-19. So how have US-China relations changed in the 50 years since Kissinger’s visit in 1971? In this week’s episode, the Guardian’s China affairs correspondent, Vincent Ni, shares his thoughts. Continue reading...

Experts say false domestic violence allegations less common than genuine victims who fail to report abuseThe union representing Queensland’s police officers has been criticised for claiming some people seek domestic violence orders to gain an advantage in family law disputes.The Queensland Police Union is aware of such claims against its own members, it says in a submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry considering a change to the Family Law Act. Continue reading...

Africa death toll driven by lack of intensive care beds and oxygen, WHO says; UK also reports 63 more deaths

Latest effort in Washington to punish Beijing for what officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groupsThe US Senate passed legislation on Wednesday to ban the import of products from China’s Xinjiang region, the latest effort in Washington to punish Beijing for what US officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups.The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would create a “rebuttable presumption” assuming goods manufactured in Xinjiang are made with forced labor and therefore banned under the 1930 Tariff Act, unless otherwise certified by US authorities. Continue reading...

Family announces death of 64-year-old just over a week after attack in AmsterdamThe Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries has died just over a week after he was shot in the head in central Amsterdam, the veteran journalist’s family said in a statement released to local media.“Peter fought to the end but was unable to win the battle,” the statement said, according to RTL Nieuws. “He died surrounded by the people who love him. Peter lived by his conviction: ‘On bended knee is no way to be free.’” Continue reading...

Startled owners hear a loud bang and call the police, who find a black suitcase filled with drugsThe suitcase stashed with cocaine was intended to fall from a light aircraft into the hands of drug traffickers waiting on the ground in Baratili San Pietro, a town of about 1,200 people in Sardinia.Instead it landed on the roof of a home, smashing a solar panel along the way. Continue reading...

Accessible only via an arduous two-day hike or by ferry, the Old Forge in Knoydart is up for sale at offers over £425,000It is known as Britain’s last true wilderness, and anybody making the mountainous two-day trek into the Knoydart peninsula on the west coast of Scotland would surely be dreaming of a thirst-quenching pint at the end of their journey.Listed in the Guinness World Records as mainland Britain’s most remote pub, the Old Forge in Inverie, Knoydart’s main settlement, is also accessible by ferry from Mallaig. But with no connecting roads, any aspiring punter would have to make a hike of nearly 30km across peat bog and looming Munros. Continue reading...

As the US boiled with violence, 1969’s Harlem cultural festival nourished spirits with soul, jazz and gospel. Now, Questlove has turned lost footage of it into a brilliant, pertinent documentaryIt’s 29 June 1969, and at Harlem’s Mount Morris park (now Marcus Garvey park), the 5th Dimension are about to take the stage. The Los Angeles group are already stars, thanks to hits including Up, Up and Away and Aquarius, from the musical Hair, which topped the Billboard charts that spring. But their pop-oriented repertoire, often penned by white songwriters, has kept them off the US’s R&B radio stations and thus from Black audiences. “We’d tried to separate ourselves from the segregation in our society, but we still got caught up in all that,” remembers the group’s founding singer, Billy Davis Jr, today. “And the average Black family didn’t earn enough to come see us at the nightclubs we were playing. They’d seen us on TV, but they’d never seen us live.”That was about to change with their headline performance on the opening day of the Harlem cultural festival. A series of six Sunday concerts that summer, the festival showcased the cream of the era’s soul, gospel, blues and jazz artists before an audience of 300,000, many from the surrounding neighbourhoods. “I looked out and saw a sea of faces, and their response was so loving, so welcoming and exciting,” says Davis Jr’s wife and bandmate, Marilyn McCoo, for whom the festival remains a treasured memory. She’s not alone. Harlemite Musa Jackson, then just a five-year-old, still remembers how the 5th Dimension’s orange costumes, gleaming in the sun, made them look “like Creamsicles”. Continue reading...

Activists say Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime uses televised confessions ‘under duress’ to hold back women’s rights, despite changes in societyKhalimat Taramova, the 22-year-old daughter of a prominent Chechen businessman, sits demurely on a velvet sofa ornately embellished in gold. She is wearing a modest dress and a headscarf. With her on the sofa are three men dressed in suits. They are appearing on Grozny TV, the state television channel of Russia’s Chechen Republic.Only a couple of weeks before the programme was shown on 14 June, Taramova fled her home, where she said she was subjected to violence after going against her family’s wishes. She sought help from a group of women’s rights activists, the Marem project , who let her stay in a flat owned by one of its members in the neighbouring republic of Dagestan. In a video released on social media on 6 June, she pleaded for the Chechen authorities not to come looking for her. Continue reading...

Ruling is part of ongoing fight for rule of law and freedom from discrimination in heart EuropeThe EU executive has launched legal action against Hungary and Poland to defend LGBTQ+ rights in the latest battle over values with the two nationalist governments in central Europe.The announcement that Hungary and Poland’s governments could end up in the EU’s highest court is part of an ongoing existential fight for the rule of law and freedom from discrimination in the heart of Europe. Continue reading...

With her latest movie, Jungle Cruise, out this month, we round up the finest work by the star of The Devil Wears Prada and A Quiet Place Part IIEmily Blunt can make bad films tolerable. Even her talents were stretched, though, by this horror reboot. She lounges demurely on a riverbank in funeral dress while Benicio del Toro grunts and growls and Anthony Hopkins goes full ham. The original director, Mark Romanek, jumped ship to be replaced by Joe Johnston. The result is a wolf’s dinner. Continue reading...