Sector urges government to ramp up in-reach Covid vaccination teams ahead of looming one-dose deadline

As the NSW Covid outbreak continues and millions of Australians struggle to access the financial support they need, the state and federal governments have announced increased Covid support payments. Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor and head of news Mike Ticher discuss if this expansion of financial support has hit the markRead more: Continue reading...

Delegation from militants meets Chinese foreign minister as Beijing seeks to extend influence in AfghanistanThe US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said that Beijing’s interest in Afghanistan could be a “positive thing”, after China gave a warm and very public welcome to a senior Taliban delegation.Nine officials from the militant group, which is eager for political recognition to bolster the impact of its military victories across much of Afghanistan, met China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in the coastal city of Tianjin on Wednesday. Continue reading...

President attempts to crush simmering insurrection with unprecedented offensive against Deraa al-BaladBashar al-Assad has attacked a former opposition stronghold with missiles and artillery shelling in an attempt to crush a simmering insurrection, in an unprecedented development in Syria’s decade-long war.Deraa al-Balad and its surrounds, a district of Deraa city in the southern province of the same name, was targeted with heavy weaponry in tandem with a ground push on three axes from two Syrian army divisions and allied Iran-backed militias early on Thursday morning, in a large offensive which continued throughout the day. Continue reading...

Latest updates: new infections rise second day in a row; figures came ahead of publication of Public Health England’s latest vaccine surveillance report

Two industries overtake hospitality sector as number on scheme drops by 590,000 after taper kicks in

India’s only all-women news organisation is the subject of an award-winning documentary. The film-makers explain their inspiring courage and energyA woman explains how a group of four men repeatedly broke into her house and raped her; six times so far. Did she go to the police? Yes, but officers refused to investigate. Instead, they threatened her and her husband. “These men can do anything. They can even kill us,” the victim says to the reporter, Meera, who is filming on her smartphone. As Meera leaves, the woman’s husband tells her that she is their only hope. “We don’t trust anyone except Khabar Lahariya.”Khabar Lahariya is India’s only all-female news organisation. Based in Uttar Pradesh, its journalists passionately believe in reporting rural issues through a feminist lens. Continue reading...

Analysis: Xi Jinping wants his country to appear more lovable, but critics say Beijing’s efforts are too superficialChina’s appointment of a new ambassador to the US has shone a light on the ongoing debate among analysts about how Beijing communicates with its biggest competitor, the future of its “wolf warrior” diplomacy and how Xi Jinping’s call to “tell a good China story” might work in practice.The debate over the “wolf warrior” style – under which, as the Chinese ambassador to Sweden said on Swedish public radio in 2019, “we treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns” – comes amid a burst of positive publicity that delighted Beijing’s propaganda officials: the foreign coverage of the herd of 15 wandering Asian elephants in southern China that captured the country’s imagination and led Chinese vloggers to travel hundreds of miles to take selfies with them. Continue reading...

Alla Mousa is accused of 18 counts of torturing people in military hospitals in Homs and DamascusA Syrian doctor has been charged in Germany with crimes against humanity for allegedly torturing people in military hospitals in his homeland and killing one of them, German federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.The federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe said in a statement that Alla Mousa, who came to Germany in 2015 and practised medicine before he was arrested last year, was accused of 18 counts of torturing people in military hospitals in the Syrian cities of Homs and Damascus. The allegations include charges that Mousa tried to make people infertile. Continue reading...

The government’s words at the global education summit are completely at odds with its behaviour. Whatever the event achieves will be despite its UK hosts, not because of themWith all the fanfare Covid would allow, the global education summit opened in London this week. Ahead of the meeting, the minister for European neighbourhood and the Americas was on rousing form. “Educating girls is a gamechanger,” Wendy Morton said, going on to describe what a plan would look like to do just that.The UK, co-hosting the summit with Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, plans to raise funds for the Global Partnership for Education, from governments and donors. The UK government has promised £430m over the next five years. Continue reading...

First Washington press conference stresses “mutual exploration, understanding and adaptation”China’s new envoy to the US, Qin Gang, struck a conciliatory tone in his debut press conference upon arrival in Washington DC on Wednesday.“I believe that the door of China-US relations, which is already open, cannot be closed,” Qin said, adding he would “endeavour to bring [bilateral] relations back on track, turning the way for the two countries to get along with each other … from a possibility into a reality. Continue reading...

Controversial £100m education centre to be built next to parliament, but opponents may launch appealA controversial Holocaust memorial and education centre is to be built in the heart of Westminster at a cost of more than £100m after the government gave it the go-ahead following a public inquiry.The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the decision, saying there was “something uniquely powerful about locating a memorial to the Holocaust right next to the centre of the UK’s democracy”. Continue reading...

We’d like to hear from people living in Tunisia about the political situationA decade after the revolution that sparked the Arab Spring, Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, has suspended parliament for 30 days and dismissed the prime minister Hichem Mechichi in what critics have described as a coup. On Monday, Saied announced a month-long nationwide curfew.We would like to hear from people in Tunisia who are affected by the current political situation – what are your concerns? Have you taken part in the protests last week? What is the political atmosphere where you live ? Continue reading...

ITV is cancelling the TV talent show before it ‘fizzles out with a whimper’. After a decade of plummeting ratings, we remember its highs, lows … and Chico Time

Kristian Pulkownik, 33, is yet to formally apply for bail after he was arrested on Saturday following a so-called freedom marchAn alleged Sydney anti-lockdown protester accused of punching a police horse called Tobruk will remain behind bars after refusing a Covid test that was a prerequiste for him to appear in court.Kristian Pulkownik, 33, is yet to formally apply for bail after he was arrested on Saturday following a march in Sydney’s city centre where thousands of people defied coronavirus restrictions to attend. Continue reading...

People coming to the aid of the Wet’suwet’en nation to stop a pipeline are using direct action that is prompting terror chargesThe night of 28 November, Samantha Brooks, 24, hunched over the railway tracks near Bellingham, Washington, about 32km (20 miles) south of the Canada-US border and installed a “shunt,” according to trial documents obtained by the Guardian.Related: Dakota access pipeline: court strikes down permits in victory for Standing Rock Sioux Continue reading...

Catholic church had denied 13-year-old girl sexually assaulted and killed in 1955 a funeral due to arcane ruleThere had never been so many people at a funeral in the history of Montedoro, a village suspended in time among wheat fields and abandoned sulphur mines in central Sicily.Its 1,500 inhabitants had waited for this moment for more than half a century, and on Wednesday gathered in hundreds in solemn prayer in the village church around a small white coffin. Continue reading...

Fourteen questions on general knowledge and topical news trivia plus a few jokes every Thursday – how will you fare?Have you been enjoying the Olympics? Then why not go for gold yourself with the challenge of the Thursday quiz. A mix of general knowledge and topical trivia questions, all laced with a smattering of jokes, the ever-present Kate Bush, the odd irritating anagram, and a hidden Doctor Who Easter egg for you to find. It is just for fun, but let us know how you get on in the comments.The Thursday quiz, No 14 Continue reading...

Different restrictions for different local government areas leads to confusion – and that’s a disaster for compliance

Health experts say surge in cases amid Olympics could overload hospitals unless action taken

Foreign secretary says government will not ‘hold country back’ because some are not getting vaccinated

Former No 10 adviser pressed for appointment to be hurried through, saying he had ‘ordered it’ from PM

The inflammatory condition causes swelling of the limbs and affects more people in the UK than Parkinson’s or MS. For years it has been overlooked, but now awareness is finally growingFive weeks after being diagnosed with cervical cancer, Corinne Singleton was declared to be in remission. She skipped out of the oncology ward that day, ready to make the most of her retirement. Little did she know that her health challenges were far from over. “To be honest,” says Singleton, five years later, “the cancer was a breeze compared with the lymphoedema.”About a month into her recovery, Singleton, 60, noticed some unusual swelling of her upper thigh. “I just thought I must have banged it,” she says. When it persisted after two weeks, she realised, with a sinking feeling, what was the likely cause. She had learned about lymphoedema early on in her treatment for cancer, as a possible side effect of radiotherapy. “I remembered thinking: ‘I hope I don’t get that one’,” she says. Continue reading...

In the last month, devastating weather extremes have hit regions across the world. From flash floods in Belgium to deadly temperatures in the US, from wildfires in Siberia to landslides in India, it has been an unprecedented period of chaotic weather. Climate scientists have long predicted that human-caused climate disruption would lead to more flooding, heatwaves, droughts, storms and other forms of extreme weather, but even they have been shocked by the scale of these scenes

Fuelled by summer heatwaves, wildfires have swept through more than 1.5m hectares of Yakutia’s swampy coniferous taiga, with more than a month still to go in Siberia‘s annual fire season Continue reading...

Photographer Maroussia Mbaye spoke to women who said crushing social stigma, poverty and lack of traditional support systems had left them with no choice but to commit infanticideMbeubeuss is one of the biggest rubbish tips in Africa and Senegal’s largest open cemetery for murdered children. In the past three years, the bodies of 32 infants have been recovered from the site by the waste-pickers who work there.Looking at the high rate of infanticide in Senegal, it seems the main reasons for it are shame about pregnancy outside marriage and a loss of traditional support for young women. Continue reading...

Flights have reportedly been cancelled and checkpoints set up to verify travellers’ health status amid Delta

The fanboy director’s exhaustive doc follows Ron and Russell Mael over their 50-year career as pop’s great arch humoristsOver a whopping two hours and 20 minutes, film-maker Edgar Wright consummates a gigantic act of fanboy love for the glam art-pop duo Sparks, who hailed from California but found fame in Britain on Top of the Pops in the 1970s. Fronted by brothers Ron and Russell Mael, Sparks have continued recording and touring through good times and bad while amassing a fanatical following. Ron is the deadpan one at the piano with the Chaplin/Hitler moustache, and Russell the more extravagant and dishy lead singer.Related: ‘We have a hostility to being boring’: Sparks, still flying in their 70s Continue reading...

With Finland now open to vaccinated travellers, the 20,000 pristine islands off its south-west coast make for an appealing post-pandemic tourFinland has dealt with the pandemic much better than a lot of other countries. It still has one of the lowest rates of both confirmed cases (about 103,851 at time of writing) and coronavirus-related deaths (currently 982) in Europe, a feat many have attributed to a strategy of rapid lockdowns and stringent travel restrictions.It did all this in typical Finnish style: without shouting about it. Perhaps this quiet demeanour is related to the country’s deep connection with the natural world, where shouting usually isn’t necessary. More than 90% of Finland is either forest or water, and the country’s jokamiehenoikeus (right to roam) gives anyone living in or visiting Finland access to all that nature, including a lot of privately owned land. Continue reading...

Activists fear a ‘dangerous precedent’ being set as Copenhagen uses a report that deems Damascus safe to deny residency statusDenmark’s attempt to return hundreds of Syrians to Damascus after deeming the city safe will “set a dangerous precedent” for other countries to do the same, say lawyers who are preparing to take the Danish government to the European court of human rights (ECHR) over the issue.Authorities in Denmark began rejecting Syrian refugees’ applications for renewal of temporary residency status last summer, and justified the move because a report had found the security situation in some parts of the country had “improved significantly”. About 1,200 people from Damascus currently living in Denmark are believed to be affected by the policy. Continue reading...

Melvin Van Peebles and Perry Henzell made seminal 70s films – now their kids have recovered their fathers’ would-be classicsJustine Henzell and Mario Van Peebles both know what it’s like to grow up on movie sets as the child of a groundbreaking director. Henzell was six in 1972 when her father, Perry, finished The Harder They Come, Jamaica’s first full-length feature, starring the reggae legend Jimmy Cliff as a fugitive whose musical success coincides with his criminal notoriety. Van Peebles even starred in his father Melvin’s third film, the 1971 underground hit Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which is credited with inspiring the Blaxploitation genre.As adults, each of them has now had a hand in rescuing and restoring great movies by their fathers that might otherwise have been lost or neglected: Henzell’s more ruminative second feature No Place Like Home, which was lost for more than 20 years, and Van Peebles’s stylish, Nouvelle Vague-tinged 1967 debut The Story of a Three-Day Pass, overlooked at the time and later overshadowed by the more incendiary Sweetback. Henzell laughs when I remark on her father’s momentum in getting started on his second feature so quickly after the first. “He may have had momentum but he had no money,” says the 55-year-old, the ocean lapping at the Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, shoreline behind her. “The film was shot in fits and starts as the cash came in. He was completely broke after The Harder They Come. He’d been carrying those cans around the world himself trying to sell it. The film still hadn’t repaid its investors and here he was making something even more experimental.” Continue reading...

If cellular agriculture is going to improve on the industrial system it is displacing, it needs to grow without passing the cost on to workers, consumers and the environmentAmericans will eat about 2bn chicken nuggets this year, give or take a few hundred million. This deep-fried staple is a way of profiting off the bits that are left after the breast, legs and wings are lopped off the 9 billion or so factory-farmed chickens slaughtered in the US every year. Like much else that is ubiquitous in contemporary life, the production of nuggets is controlled by a small group of massive companies that are responsible for a litany of social and ecological harms. And, like many of the commodities produced by this system, they are of dubious quality, cheap, appealing and easy to consume. Nuggets are not even primarily meat, but mostly fat and assorted viscera – including epithelium, bone, nerve and connective tissue – made palatable through ultra-processing. As the political economists Raj Patel and Jason Moore have argued, they are a homogenised, bite-size avatar of how capitalism extracts as much value as possible from human and nonhuman life and labour.But if chicken nuggets are emblematic of modern capitalism, then they are ripe for disruption. Perhaps their most promising challenger is a radically different sort of meat: edible tissue grown in vitro from animal stem cells, a process called cellular agriculture. The sales pitch for the technology is classic Silicon Valley: unseat an obsolete technology – in this case, animals – and do well by doing good. Continue reading...

Shelters swept away as activists say people stuck in Cox’s Bazar are highly vulnerable to the ‘rapidly changing climate’At least six Rohingya refugees were killed by landslides or drowned in flooding after rain inundated refugee camps in Bangladesh over recent days, deepening the despair among those living there.Knee-deep waters coursed through the camps, battering fragile shelters made of bamboo and tarpaulin and making at least 5,000 people homeless, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR). Continue reading...

To find out the true production cost of a garment is a tortuous process. Here is what you need to know to buy clothes with a clear conscienceWhat is the true cost of a Zara hoodie? In April 2019, David Hachfeld of the Swiss NGO Public Eye, along with a team of researchers and the Clean Clothes Campaign, attempted to find out. They chose to analyse a black, oversized top from Zara’s flagship Join Life sustainability line, which was printed with lyrics made famous by Aretha Franklin: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T: find out what it means to me”. It was an apt choice, because the idea was to work out whether any respect had been paid to the workers involved in the garment’s production, and how much of the hoodie’s average retail price, €26.66 (£22.70), went into their pockets.This was no simple assignment. It took several people six months, involved badgering Zara’s parent company, Inditex, over email, slowly getting limited information in return, and interviewing dozens of sources on the ground in Izmir, Turkey, where the garment was made. The researchers analysed financial results and trading data, and consulted with experts in pricing and production. It was, Hachfeld says on the phone, with dry understatement, “quite a huge project”. Continue reading...

State premiers including Victoria’s Daniel Andrews have criticised the lockdown settings in NSW as too lax

The final season of the longest running animated series in the US will air in 2022Arthur, the longest running children’s animated series in the US, will soon come to an end.PBS Kids plans to end the beloved television show after 25 seasons, said an original developer of the show during a podcast released on Wednesday. The final season will air in 2022. Continue reading...

Report finds the country’s main grocers, Woolworths and Foodstuffs, make huge profits compared with their international counterpartsNew Zealand’s government will consider breaking up its supermarket duopoly to secure more affordable food prices for shoppers, after a new report that found the grocers were making huge profits and charging some of the highest prices in the OECD.David Clark, the commerce and consumer affairs minister, said on Thursday the government would “do whatever it takes to make sure New Zealanders get a fair deal at the checkout”. Continue reading...

DPP reveals police were given rape allegation advice in June, contradicting claims by police commissioner and home affairs minister that case is with public prosecutorThe ACT director of public prosecutions says the Brittany Higgins investigation is currently back in the hands of the Australian federal police, contradicting both the AFP commissioner, Reece Kershaw, and the home affairs minister, Karen Andrews.During an appearance at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Kershaw was asked for an update on the Higgins matter. Continue reading...

A magistrate will look at whether possible failings in the alert system led to the country’s worst floods in decadesA Belgian judge has opened an investigation for possible manslaughter over floods there that claimed 38 lives, the prosecutors office in the city of Liege announced.The investigating magistrate has the task of identifying who might be responsible for “involuntary homicide by lack of foresight or precaution” the prosecutors office said in a statement on Wednesday. Continue reading...

As infections soar to record highs and the vaccine rollout languishes, some fear there is no end in sight for the pandemic

Observers fear pandemic could be responsible for deaths, adding intrigue to freedom protests taking place in Cuba and USFive mostly elderly and retired Cuban military generals have died in recent days in mysterious circumstances, the country’s communist regime has confirmed, adding intrigue to a new round of freedom protests taking place in the island and US.Related: Leftwing rural teacher Pedro Castillo sworn in as president of Peru Continue reading...

The band’s bassist for more than 50 years, who had recently suffered a hip injury, died in his sleep at his Texas homeDusty Hill, bassist for ZZ Top, has died at the age of 72.Hill, who had recently suffered a hip injury, died in his sleep, as confirmed by a statement on Instagram from bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard. Continue reading...

Castillo vows to govern ‘for the people and with the people’ but will face deeply divided CongressA rural school teacher who has never held public office has been sworn in as Peru’s new president pledging to govern “with the people and for the people” in a ceremony steeped in historic symbolism on Peru’s bicentenary of independence from Spain.Wearing his typical wide-brimmed straw hat, Pedro Castillo promised to make sweeping changes to the country in his inaugural speech, he paid homage to Peru’s indigenous people and teachers and vowed to combat corruption, rein in monopolies and boost public spending on education and health. Continue reading...

Police speak with wealthy billboard operator who depicted French president as Nazi leaderEmmanuel Macron is taking legal action against a wealthy billboard operator who displayed posters depicting him as Adolf Hitler.Lawyers for the French president are suing after the large images appeared in the Var in the south of France. Continue reading...

Days after PM’s overthrow fears grow that Kais Saied will undo democratic gains achieved by Arab springTunisia’s president has launched a purge of senior officials, including prosecutors and judges, and taken on judicial powers, days after overthrowing the prime minister and imposing emergency law.Kais Saied’s crackdown has dragged the country deeper into uncertainty days after its elected parliament was suspended for a month in a shock move that brought a decade of faltering democracy to a sudden halt. Continue reading...

Health secretary’s comments came after a week of declining cases ended with 4,000 increase in one day

After weeks of resistance, Scott Morrison announced a rise in the disaster payment as well as a top-up for those on welfare payments

Find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years start of stone-tool industry associated with Homo erectusArchaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of north Africa’s oldest stone age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3m years, an international team has reported.The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in north Africa of the Acheulian stone-tool industry, associated with the human ancestor Homo erectus, researchers told journalists in Rabat on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Two men were standing by to film murder of Dutch journalist as part of plan to post footage online, say policeFootage of the Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries taken shortly after he had been shot in the head in central Amsterdam is thought to have been filmed and posted on the internet by those involved in his murder.Investigators believe two men had been standing ready and waiting for De Vries before he was attacked as part of a plan to film his body and post the images on the internet in order to attract maximum publicity. Continue reading...

Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn is a good directorial fit for the humour and freaky violence of DC’s bad-guy jamboreeDC’s new Suicide Squad movie announces itself as different from the coolly received first film from 2016 simply by adding “The” to the title, maybe sneakily trying for an unacknowledged rebrand or reboot. James Gunn, also in charge of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, is brought on board as director and co-writer. This second Squad outing (if you don’t count last year’s standalone Harley Quinn adventure Birds of Prey) is a long, loud, often enjoyable and amusing film that blitzes your eyeballs and eardrums and covers all the bases. There is Guardians-style comedy mixing humans and talking animals, there is freaky violence – including what I have to say is a gruesomely impressive interior-anatomical shot, showing a knife plunging into the still-beating heart – and there is colossal CGI spectacle for the final act in which a giant thing runs rampant in a city, while the gang look up at it; a trope that has become almost legally mandatory for superhero movies.Viola Davis once again brings a touch of class to the Suicide Squad franchise as the chillingly manipulative security chief Amanda Waller who now springs supervillain Bloodsport (Idris Elba) from jail so that he can head up an elite new crew of misfits, desperadoes and undesirables. These include Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), the ironically belligerent Peacemaker (John Cena), King Shark – a great big talking shark in Hulk-ish stretchy shorts – voiced by Sylvester Stallone, Ratcatcher II (Daniela Melchior), who commands an army of rats wherever she goes, and Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), who fires molten polka-dots at the enemy, revving himself up for the task by imagining that this is his overbearing mother. There is also a kind of B-team of Squadders whose job is to be hilariously expendable. Continue reading...