Fast-spreading blazes destroy 20,000 hectares of forest and force 1,500 people to be evacuated from homesFirefighters are working to put out wildfires that have spread quickly across parts of south-western Sardinia, destroying 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of forest and forcing 1,500 people to be evacuated from their homes.Many agricultural businesses and private properties have been damaged by the fires, which began on Saturday in the province of Oristano. Continue reading...
Evidence given via video link from Kabul concerned a key allegation that the former soldier murdered handcuffed man• Download the free Guardian app; get our morning email briefing“A big soldier”, an Australian SAS trooper, kicked a handcuffed Afghan villager down a steep embankment, before the man’s body was later seen being dragged into an orchard, a court has heard in a pivotal day of evidence in Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial.The first Afghan witness in the trial, Mohammed Hanifa Fatih, appeared by video link from Kabul. He told the federal court he and his uncle Ali Jan were captured and handcuffed by Australian troops in the village of Darwan on 11 September 2012. He said he saw Ali Jan being kicked down a steep embankment, and his body was later found near an orchard. Continue reading...
He has dressed Beyoncé and Lady Gaga – and now he’s dressed Birmingham. As his ‘infinity pattern’ is unveiled, the artist talks poverty, class – and why he’s not interested in being a ‘good immigrant’Approaching Birmingham New Street station on the train, you’ll normally spot the scaly curves of Selfridges’ landmark Future Systems-designed building nestling in the cityscape. But right now, rising into the summer sky in its place, is a bright pink and black structure. Startling, cheering and entirely unmissable, Infinity Pattern 1 is a giant installation by the multidisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada. He was formerly best known as a fashion designer, whose beautifully tailored and elegantly architectural pieces have been worn by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. Now the 44-year-old has tailored a distinctive look for the Selfridges store, said to be the height of three jumbo jets, surrounding the building during a year of restoration.Infinity Pattern 1 is Yousefzada’s first piece of public art, selected by Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery from an international shortlist. “You can read it clearly from a long way away and that was something we considered when we were selecting,” says Jonathan Watkins, Ikon’s director. “We wanted it to ring out from afar. The fact that Osman comes from Birmingham, but is so cosmopolitan and such a Renaissance man, it’s wonderful that he was the one who won.” Continue reading...
by Naaman Zhou (now) and Matilda Boseley and Mostafa on (#5MK2K)
NSW reports 145 local Covid-19 cases overnight; no lockdown announcement for Victoria today after 11 new local cases recorded; SA to lift lockdown from midnight tomorrow and another vaccine record. Follow the latest updates
After a rapid start, vaccination rates have slackened – but complex, highly personal decisions lie beneath the slowdownYolette Bonnet, 60, the chief executive of a group of community health clinics in underserved neighborhoods across Palm Beach County, Florida, got vaccinated. Perhaps this would be unremarkable, except that she got her shot Thursday, more than seven months after she was eligible to get the vaccine with ready access as a healthcare provider.Related: Republican governor says ‘time to start blaming unvaccinated’ for rise in cases Continue reading...
Thirty-nine-year-old taken to hospital after ‘very distressing’ incident in central LondonA woman has been attacked with a knife at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park in London, police said.The 39-year-old was taken to hospital after the attack at the site where people gather for public speeches and debates. Continue reading...
After more than a year of closure, the Spitalfields Trust has announced the reopening and renewal of Dennis Severs’ House. Severs came to Spitalfields in 1979 and bought a derelict house. He reconfigured it to tell the story of a fictional family who had lived there since its construction in 1724 Continue reading...
The MSC’s coveted blue tick is the world’s biggest, and some say best, fishery ecolabel. So why is it in the headlines – and does it really do what it says on the tin?This month, two right whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence were found entangled in fishing gear. One, a female, was first spotted entangled off Cape Cod last year, but rescuers were not able to fully free her; the other, a male, is believed to have become entangled in the Gulf.Hunted to near extinction before a partial whaling ban in 1935, North Atlantic right whales are once more critically endangered, with only 356 left. The main threat remains human contact: entanglement in fishing gear, and ship strikes. Fatal encounters, caused in part by the whales’ migratory shift into Canada’s snow crab grounds, have soared: more than a tenth of the population died or were seriously injured between 2017 and 2021, mostly in Canada and New England. Continue reading...
The superstar producer nearly quit music during lockdown. Now he’s starting a ‘new phase’ with a TV show. He discusses therapy, paparazzi – and being tucked in by Robin WilliamsMark Ronson has been a DJ longer than he hasn’t: his entire adult life, sometimes working four or five nights a week, since he was 18. “What is that?” He casts his mind back and counts. “Twenty-five – no, 27 years. Jesus.”In this time, he has been a staple of the New York scene, the studio partner of Amy Winehouse and a superproducer of artists from Ghostface Killah to Lady Gaga. He has his own instantly recognisable, vintage-leaning sound and is the invisible touch on songs that define not just years but decades. Continue reading...
Painstaking research deciphers carvings of religious bounty dating back almost five centuriesFor almost 500 years, the arch that connects the largest Gothic cathedral in the world with its Renaissance sacristy has offered visitors a sumptuous, if little glimpsed – and even less studied – vision of religious bounty.The 68 beautifully carved plates of food that adorn the archway in Seville’s cathedral offer rather more than bread and wine. Continue reading...
by Vikram Dodd Police and crime correspondent on (#5MK7Z)
£4.5m monument at national memorial arboretum in Staffordshire will be unveiled on WednesdayIf PC Fiona Bone had turned a different way, if she had been sick that day, if her degree in film production studies had led to more work, her father, Paul, would have not spent the last nine years grieving.For officers and their families, the difference between life and death in policing can be terribly slight. Continue reading...
by Martin Chulov Middle East correspondent on (#5MK6Y)
Senior Iraqi figures say Qaani lacks authority as standoff between the militias and the state continuesOn a baking early summer evening last month, Iran’s man in Iraq sat down in Baghdad with a group of militiamen to try to bring calm to the capital’s foreboding streets.Assembled in a room were leaders of the most feared militias in the land, men who had days before taken over a checkpoint leading to the seat of power, and were planning a military parade of their own through the Iraqi capital. Among them sat Esmail Qaani, an Iranian commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force – a clandestine group at the apex of the Iranian military’s foreign operations, which had been instrumental in Iraq’s affairs through war, insurrection and now relative peace. Continue reading...
Fighting between Rwandan forces and insurgents linked to Islamic State breaks out in Cabo DelgadoForeign troops sent to reinforce local security forces in Mozambique have clashed with Islamist militants for the first time, as the conflict in the east African country moves into a new and potentially dangerous phase.Rwandan soldiers who recently arrived in Mozambique fought a series of engagements against the extremists last week. Few reliable details of the fighting, which took place near Mozambique’s border with Tanzania, have emerged, but officials claim the insurgents suffered dozens of casualties. Continue reading...
Vice foreign minister Xie Feng described relations between the superpowers as a ‘stalemate’ in discussions with US deputy secretary of state Wendy ShermanChina has blamed the US for what it called a “stalemate” in bilateral relations and accused Washington of “demonising” Beijing as high-level face-to-face talks began in the Chinese city of Tianjin.Vice foreign minister Xie Feng urged the US “to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy,” the official Xinhua news agency reported. Continue reading...
Jacinda Ardern said it was the ‘right step’ to allow return of woman and her children from TurkeyNew Zealand has agreed that a suspected member of Islamic State who grew up in Australia can be repatriated from Turkey along with her two young children, a decision prime minister Jacinda Ardern said was “not taken lightly”.The woman was a dual Australian-New Zealand citizen until Australia revoked her citizenship and refused to reverse the decision, prompting a furious response earlier this year from Ardern, who accused Australia of shirking its responsibilities. Continue reading...
Video captures the moment a huge rockfall hit the Sangra valley in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh on Sunday, destroying a bridge, cars and killing at least nine tourists.
World Health Organization has called on government to impose tighter virus curbsIndonesia’s government has said small businesses and some shopping malls can reopen despite warnings that loosening curbs could spark another Covid wave.President Joko Widodo said measures imposed in early July would continue until 2 August as the Delta variant spreads across the country, which has been overtaking India and Brazil as the world’s virus epicentre. Continue reading...
Environment Agency issues five flood warnings across southern England and 19 flood alerts including parts of WalesTorrential rain has flooded roads and tube stations in London after thunderstorms hit the south of England on Sunday.Barts Health NHS trust declared a major incident after the flooding led to problems at Whipps Cross hospital and Newham Hospital in the east of the city. Continue reading...
Allen’s climbing partners were rescued from world’s second highest mountainA Scottish climber has died in an avalanche on K2 as he attempted to take a new route to the summit.Rick Allen was attempting to climb the world’s second highest mountain to raise money for the Partners Relief & Development charity. Continue reading...
Driver reportedly fell asleep on journey between Frankfurt and Pristina, the capital of KosovoAt least 10 people have died after a bus swerved off a highway and crashed in Croatia, police have said.The incident, believed to have happened when the driver fell asleep early on Sunday, has left at least 44 others injured, some seriously. Continue reading...
Edina Olahova, 29, son Raza Haris Ali, 9, and a family friend, Mohammad Asim Raza, 41, were survived by Raza’s sonA man, woman and child have died in Loch Lomond, bringing to six the number of people who have been killed after getting into difficulty in the water in Scotland in 24 hours.Edina Olahova, 29, and her son Raza Haris Ali, nine, died along with a family friend, Mohammad Asim Raza, 41, on Saturday evening. Continue reading...
Parts of London were left waterlogged after heavy thunderstorms on Sunday. The Met Office has issued an amber warning for storms covering London and parts of the home counties where homes and businesses are at risk of flooding, lasting until 7pm on Sunday. Pudding Mill Lane station was under what appeared to be at least a foot of water, and cars were left stranded underneath a bridge in Worcester Park
by Presented by Michael Safi with Nina Lakhani ; prod on (#5MJYH)
Michael Safi hears from Nina Lakhani on how 15,000 Mexicans, including journalists and politicians, appeared on a list of possible targets for surveillanceThis episode first aired on our global news podcast, Today in Focus.In March 2017, a 38-year-old freelance reporter named Cecilio Pineda Birto was shot dead in Altamirano, a town in the southern Mexican region of Tierra Caliente – a battleground for organised crime factions. His phone vanished from the crime scene. A few weeks earlier, a number connected to that phone had been selected as a possible surveillance target by a client of the spyware company NSO Group. Continue reading...
The killing of its president came amid growing violence, poverty and disaffection with politicsOn Friday, Haiti buried its assassinated president, Jovenel Moïse, at a funeral itself marred by unrest, with shots fired outside. The truth about his killing may have gone to the grave with him. Much remains uncertain, and a senior government minister has suggested that the “big fishes” behind it are still at large.But the more important question is what the future holds for a desperately poor, unequal and troubled country. The murder is the latest iteration of a long-running political crisis, in which Haitian elites and foreign powers call the shots while ordinary people suffer. It is a bitter paradox that the people of the world’s first black republic, born of a successful slave revolt, have rarely had a chance to seize their destiny since. Continue reading...
Labour blames Tories for cuts to neighbourhood officers after Boris Johnson unveils policing policiesMinisters have been accused of “hypocrisy that knows no bounds” after Boris Johnson said he would increase efforts to get more police on the street despite having cut the number of frontline officers.The prime minister said the government would “redouble our efforts, to continue to put more police out on the street, and to back them all the way”. Continue reading...
by Justin McCurry at Fuji International Speedway on (#5MJXG)
Host country sets aside its concerns – at least for now – to cheer wins in judo and skateboardingTwo days of Olympic sport in Tokyo have created a moral dilemma for millions of people in the host country who had hoped the day would never come when Japan’s athletes would win their first gold medals of the summer.Having invested so much in opposing the Games, would it then be possible, in good conscience, to take pleasure in the feats of the athletes once they became an inevitability? Continue reading...
The restoration of a Spanish ‘railway cathedral’ reminds us how seductive train travel can beEarlier this month, a 12-metre-long model train carriage was deposited at Barcelona’s El Prat airport, which the Spanish airports authority controversially plans to expand. “More trains, less planes” was the accompanying message from Greenpeace activists, who intend to take their model on a European tour in the coming months.As they do so, a celebratory stop-off at the French-Spanish border might be in order. In a village high in the Pyrenees, Europe’s most stunning railway station is to be restored to its former glory, and the line it majestically served reopened. Completed in 1928, Canfranc international station was conceived as a railway “cathedral” as grand as anything that the world’s greatest cities could offer. Overlooked by mountains, the vast edifice is 240 metres in length and has 365 windows and 156 doors, dwarfing London’s St Pancras; but mere numbers cannot convey the sense of grandeur evoked by its architecture and ravishing setting. Intended to combine in one building the French and Spanish border stations, Canfranc is a moving monument to the internationalist spirit and pride in architectural achievement that marked the golden age of rail. Continue reading...
Following Brazilian swimmer Susan Schnarndorf’s road to the 2016 Games, we see the athlete’s willingness to deal with the impact of multiple system atrophyHere is a film that accomplishes the difficult task of capturing the heroic trials of its subject without overly valorising and mythologising the real person. It is reminiscent of the excellent Time Trial documentary about cyclist David Millar, which ruminated on the turmoil that comes with the waning power of a once exceptional athlete’s body. Here, the struggle is even more heartbreaking, as the film recounts the road to the 2016 summer Paralympics of Brazilian swimmer Susana Schnarndorf, a six-time Ironman Triathlon winner who now suffers from multiple system atrophy (MSA), a rare neurological disorder.Though dealing with a terminal illness, A Day for Susana has a matter-of-fact, fly-on-the-wall approach as it calmly chronicles the two years leading up to the Paralympics where Schnarndorf competed in numerous championships. As MSA affects the human body slowly, causing autonomic and mobility impairments, it proves exceptionally difficult for the 48-year-old Schnarndorf to not only train but to pick the right category to compete in – these latter are divided according to the severity of the disability. As a result, her individual race times change drastically from one year to another. Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#5MJW1)
FoI figures from Home Office indicate that nationals of particular countries who commit crimes appear more likely to be removedPeople from Caribbean countries such as Jamaica appear to be disproportionately targeted for deportation from the UK if they commit crimes, according to Home Office data obtained by the Guardian following a year-long freedom of information battle.One pressure group said the high percentage of Jamaican nationals deported was particularly glaring given their greater likelihood of having family ties in the UK, and warned that it could further erode the trust of people affected by the Windrush scandal. Continue reading...
by Lanre Bakare Arts and culture correspondent on (#5MJMH)
Mason, who was a rabbi before turning to comedy, was known for his sharp wit and piercing social commentaryJackie Mason, the rabbi-turned-comedian who was known for his pugilistic, self-deprecating stand-up routines has died at the age of 93.Mason died on Saturday in Manhattan after being in hospital for more than two weeks, the celebrity lawyer Raoul Felder said. Continue reading...
CEO Jacek Olczak says product should be treated like petrol cars, which will be outlawed from 2030The chief executive of tobacco business Philip Morris International has called on the UK government to ban cigarettes within a decade, in a move that would outlaw its own Marlboro brand.Jacek Olczak said the company could “see the world without cigarettes … and actually, the sooner it happens, the better it is for everyone.” Cigarettes should be treated like petrol cars, the sale of which is due to be banned from 2030, he said. Continue reading...
Hungarians joined the annual Budapest Pride march to support LGBTQ people and oppose a law that limits teaching about homosexuality and transgender issues in schools. Organisers said in a statement the rally would show opposition to 'power-hungry politicians' and reject intimidation of LGBTQ people
Latest updates: Sajid Javid sorry for ‘poor choice of words’ after criticism from victims’ families; Indonesia has extended its Covid-19 restrictions by a week
The company’s stand against illegal Israeli settlements is a small but welcome contribution to an ongoing shift in opinionThere is possibly only one thing worse for social justice movements than getting no recognition, and that is getting too much. Over the past few years, the subversive energy of popular movements for equality, whether #MeToo or Black Lives Matter, has regularly been appropriated by corporations.Big businesses tend to have a good nose for trends that could affect their bottom lines, and so move early to show support for whatever fashionable cause has broken through. There is little actual activism going on here. These solidarity shout-outs are a safe, low-cost way both to get ahead of any internal issues that might end up being exposed, and to win over the sorts of customers who make political change part of their consumer habits. But the appearance of change, rather than any seismic shift, is what these corporates seem to prefer. The year since the Black Lives Matter protests has exposed the gap between internal practices and pledges of support for racial equality in many companies, with employees coming out to protest against what they see as tokenistic gestures. Continue reading...
Viewers complain after rights-holder Discovery puts majority of events behind paywallThe BBC has faced a series of complaints about the lack of live Tokyo Olympics coverage on its channels, after viewers failed to realise the International Olympic Committee has sold the majority of UK television rights to pay-TV company Discovery.During the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics the BBC was able to offer dozens of free livestreams of different sports, revolutionising how British viewers watched the games and providing much-needed publicity to niche events that would not normally have enjoyed their moment in the public eye. Continue reading...
Though in later years he fell from fashion, his rabbinical style in early routines felt very much like live comedy’s native tongueIf Jackie Mason could speak to us now, he’d surely be reporting back on the amusing ways in which Jews do the afterlife. But if we’ll never get to hear that particular hot take (“If it’s in the news,” he used to say, “it’s in the show”), in his long career in comedy Mason made sure to cover his people’s every other trait and proclivity. If anyone ever doubted that Jewish America had created standup comedy as we now know it, Mason – born Yacov Moshe Maza – stood as living proof.That’s part of what made his shows compelling long after his opinions curdled and his comedy fell from fashion. The theatres he played in were like Tardises spinning us back to the so-called Borscht Belt of the Catskill mountains in the 1950s, where Jewish America spent its summers laughing at Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Jack Benny – and Mason himself, who worked as a busboy and a lifeguard there before turning his hand to jokes. He was good at them, so he quit working as a rabbi – a career path followed by his three brothers and all their male forebears – and the rest was comedy history. Continue reading...
The UK has legitimate concerns about the deal, but threatening to tear it up will destroy the trust that’s so vitalTaking responsibility should be the flipside of taking back control. But admissions of responsibility are in short supply in the government document published on the Northern Ireland protocol on Wednesday. According to this, the protocol was the responsibility of (delete according to taste) Theresa May, Hilary Benn or indeed the 2019 parliament. Anyone, in other words, except the people who negotiated it – the prime minister and his chief negotiator, David Frost.The blame shifting should not, however, lead us to ignore the fact that the British government has legitimate concerns about the way the protocol has functioned. Continue reading...
After 40 UK drownings in July, national park says TikTok and Instagram are leading visitors to isolated party spotsDrunk swimming is becoming an “increasing challenge” in the Lake District this summer, a national park spokesman has said, as visitors try to replicate boozy foreign holidays at home.An estimated 40 people have drowned in the UK since the heatwave began on 14 July, triple the normal rate of water deaths, according to the National Water Safety Forum. Continue reading...
Hundreds sign petition after the jobs of Tanya Barson and Pablo Martínez, two senior figures at Macba, are axedA row has broken out in the international art world over the departures of Tanya Barson, the English curator, and Pablo Martínez, the head of programmes, from the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (Macba).The pair departed on 16 July, the day after Elvira Dyangani Ose, the director of the Showroom in London, was appointed as the museum’s new director. Continue reading...
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