Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s new book The Sex Lives of African Women examines self-discovery, freedom and healing. She talks about everything she has learned

Season now has a health warning and people may lose associations of joy, relaxation and celebrationBeware summer! The season we used to anticipate as the lightest, brightest, balmiest time of the year now comes with a health warning.For the first time in the UK, the Met Office issued an extreme heat advisory this week. The warning was very staid, very British, but a clear shift away from the ethos of Keep Calm and Carry On. The amber alert urged precautions against adverse health effects for vulnerable populations, pressure on water resources, potential power cuts and increased likelihood of transport delays. Given the temperatures were only a little over 30C for a few days, this might seem risible to people living in far hotter parts of the world, but it is part of a growing global conversation that is fundamentally challenging how we think about summer in a climate-disrupted world. Continue reading...

The Whip Smart author explores consent, bodies and boundaries in a poignant and frank collection of essays that celebrates the power to say ‘no’Several years ago, the New York writer Melissa Febos went to a cuddle party, in which people pay money to engage in non-sexual intimacy with strangers. The events are designed to meet the needs of those suffering from what psychologists call “skin hunger”, or a lack of human touch. Attendees in pyjamas sit amid pillows, duvets and blankets stroking and hugging each other or holding hands. Sessions typically begin with a short workshop about boundaries and consent. Touching around “bikini” areas is forbidden; participants must seek permission and receive a clear “yes” before any physical contact; everyone gets to practise saying “no”.But, despite the clear messaging, Febos is uneasy. When a man asks to spoon her, she is reluctant but allows him to do it anyway. Another requests a cuddle; rather than say no, she suggests they hold hands, prompting him to look annoyed and ask if he can massage her instead. Afterwards, Febos is unnerved. It wasn’t just the air of entitlement among the men that disturbed her. “It was how powerful my instinct was to give them what they wanted, as if I didn’t have a choice.” Continue reading...

Some accommodation providers refuse to defer breaks despite Covid quarantine decision

PM wants to echo Blair’s promise of an ‘opportunity society’ and energise those who feel left behindBoris Johnson intends to mimic aspects of Tony Blair’s political project in the hope of winning over more voters in former Labour heartlands, Downing Street sources have revealed.While the Conservatives’ 2019-intake MPs are more likely to model themselves on Margaret Thatcher than the former Labour prime minister, No 10 insiders said Johnson had been studying Blair’s approach. Continue reading...

Eddie, 79, human rights activist, meets Gisela, 65, teacherWhat were you hoping for?

Chaotic scenes in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane as protesters demand end to lockdowns

Move by international body set up to implement post-war peace deal follows attempts to downplay 1995 Srebrenica massacreThe top international official in Bosnia has outlawed denial of genocide in the Balkan country to counter attempts by Bosnia’s Serbs to deny the scope of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Europe’s only post-second world war genocide.Valentin Inzko, the outgoing head of Bosnia’s Office of the High Representative, or OHR, introduced the changes to the country’s criminal code on Friday, bringing in prison sentences of up to five years for genocide denial and for the glorification of war criminals, including naming of streets or public institutions after them. Continue reading...

Tokelau, one of the most inaccessible atolls in the world, can only be reached by small boat, but received boxes of vaccine this weekThe elders of Nukunonu atoll in Tokelau at the wharf on Monday morning, dressed in white and singing songs, held a banner that said: “Welcome”.In the distance, a small inflatable boat made its way to them carrying a New Zealand defence officer dressed in full protective gear and 12 precious boxes. Inside the boxes were just over 700 doses of Pfizer vaccine, enough to cover the 346 residents of Nukunono who are eligible for the vaccine. Continue reading...

This agonising, intimate programme gives family and friends’ side of the singer’s complicated story, as a riposte to Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary AmyIt is now 10 years since Amy Winehouse’s death at the age of 27, and Reclaiming Amy (BBC Two) is a short, sad, sweet film that sees her family and friends give their side of the singer’s complicated story. It is narrated by her mother Janis, and does not attempt to hide its position as a riposte to Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy, which, Janis says, “claimed to tell the real story about our daughter”. The implication is that it did not, and certainly her father, Mitch, has reason to address some of the criticisms it levelled at him. Here, he claims he had a nervous breakdown after its release.“The way Amy turned out wasn’t because she wasn’t raised right,” insists her lifelong friend, Michael, and we see plenty of clips of how she was raised. There are home videos and photographs of her on the day she was born, at three, at five. There is footage of her playing Rizzo in a school production of Grease, and her star power is plain to see even then. She practically blows the other Pink Ladies off the stage. Continue reading...

Next up for Guardian Australia’s new Saturday quiz series, sports writer Geoff Lemon tests your grasp of the GamesThat special time has come around again: Olympic time. Like Christmas but more expensive, even when the quadrennial is sliced up pro rata. Speaking of slicing up, anyone get the feeling that the IOC boss, Thomas Bach, would make a good Bond villain? As Tokyo’s Games are held with a modern pentathlon pistol held to the city’s head, hearing Brisbane’s name announced for 2032 sounded less like congratulations and more like handing down a carceral sentence. An Olympic Games costs the venue billions, but the IOC always sucks out a fat profit. Maybe that’s why the terminology is “host cities”.But running! Jumping! Competitively pretending that we know a lot about taekwondo or solo kayaking! Ben Johnson going faster than the speed of sound! Or was that the sound of speed! Equestrian showjumping departure parties with all the trimmings! Exciting new young persons’ sports, like climbing and skateboarding! The Olympics are hip, they’re cool, they have a battery-powered boombox on their shoulder. Continue reading...

New Zealand has long fought to have indigenous remains held overseas returned – now it’s reckoning with its own colonial legacyIn 2009, Āwhina Twomey received a phone call from a friend and member of her Rangitāne o Wairau iwi (tribe), asking if she could be in the South Island by 4am the following Saturday. She baulked at the early start, but then she heard the reason: Canterbury Museum had agreed to repatriate her tūpuna (ancestors), or kōiwi tangata (ancestral remains) to her iwi.It had taken the iwi 70 years of battling the museum, and now their ancestors were coming home. Continue reading...

Champion of social justice and women’s rights in Egypt before and after the assassination of her husband, President Anwar SadatJehan Sadat, who has died aged 88 of cancer, spent most of her life promoting social justice and women’s rights in Egypt. She continued to campaign decades after her husband, President Anwar Sadat, was assassinated, on 6 October 1981, by militants in the army avenging the imprisonment of fellow Islamists and condemning the 1978 Camp David accords that he had signed with Israel.As a girl in Cairo, Jehan had explored the streets of her neighbourhood of Al-Manial, attributing her self-confidence to her supportive parents. She said that her fight against gender inequality started during her schooldays, when she was encouraged to focus on subjects such as sewing and cooking in preparation for marriage rather than the sciences that would lead to a university career. “I have always regretted that decision. I would never allow my daughters to close off their futures that way,” she wrote in her autobiography, A Woman of Egypt (1987). Continue reading...

Bill could mean 10 years in prison for LGBTQ+ people and those who support their rightsDraft anti-gay legislation submitted to Ghana’s parliament could propose up to 10 years in jail for LGBTQ+ people as well as groups and individuals who advocate for their rights, express sympathy or offer social or medical support, in one of the most draconian and sweeping anti-gay laws proposed around the world.Support for intersex people would also be criminalised and the government could direct intersex people to receive “gender realignment” surgery, said the draft legislation. Continue reading...

Former Manchester United player is accused of controlling and coercive behaviour against Kate GrevilleFormer Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs allegedly kicked his ex-girlfriend in the back and threw her out of a hotel bedroom while she was naked, a court has heard.The former Wales player, 47, is accused of controlling and coercive behaviour against Kate Greville, 36, between August 2017 and November 2020. Giggs appeared at Manchester crown court, where he entered a not guilty plea. Continue reading...

The rapper delivered snippets of his new album to a confused stadium of attendees in Atlanta, teasing a possible return to form after recent controversiesThe circular ring of screens at the top of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta went dark at 9.42pm on Thursday. The crowd released a brief, approving cheer at the sign of progress, only to realise that the show had still not begun. “It’s Kanye West,” said Christopher Hicks, a music executive living in Atlanta who attended the listening party with his teenage son, before the music began to play. “You’ve got to expect chaos.”Related: ‘He’s a star, Gap is benefiting from that’: will Kanye West save the clothing giant? Continue reading...

Ceremony began as the most downbeat in Olympic history but finished in spectacular fashion

Exclusive: Prof Robert West says rhetoric about caution is ‘a way of putting blame on public’

Mourners and officials dive for cover as teargas and black smoke spread into ceremonyMourners and dignitaries including a US delegation rushed for cover amid reports of gunfire and teargas outside the funeral on Friday of late Haitian president Jovenel Moïse.There were no immediate reports of injuries after hundreds of protesters clashed with police outside the private ceremony. Shots erupted and teargas and black smoke wafted into the event. Protesters’ cries carried over religious leaders speaking at the funeral. Continue reading...

Cross-party group says proportion of positive tests analysed for variants among red list arrivals has plunged

Move by justice ministry against the Insider seen as revenge for helping reveal Kremlin’s role in assassination attemptsRussia has named a local partner of the Bellingcat investigative journalism collective as a “foreign agent” in an apparent act of revenge for helping reveal the Kremlin’s role in the Salisbury poisonings and assassination attempts by the security agencies.Russia’s justice ministry on Friday named the Insider, an investigative website, along with five journalists for other publications as “foreign agents”, a label that implies the news agencies and individual reporters are taking foreign money to influence Russian politics. Continue reading...

The country’s perilous waters have made or broken past leaders. The climate crisis will only make things worseThe footage of a torrent of muddy water engulfing the broad thoroughfares of Zhengzhou, China, may look like a scene from an apocalyptic sci-fi movie. But for China’s leaders, these images speak not only to a dystopian future but also to the struggles of the past – and to the issue of the Chinese Communist party’s mandate to rule.Related: China floods: thousands trapped without fresh water as rain moves north Continue reading...

Britain is eroding global reputation for conserving its historic assets, culture bodies are warning

Unesco expresses concern that ‘substantial harm’ would be caused by proposed cut-and-cover road tunnelUnesco has confirmed a warning that Stonehenge could be stripped of its world heritage site status, over its concern that a road tunnel, backed by the government, will irreversibly damage an area of “outstanding universal value”.A report to Unesco’s world heritage committee setting out concerns about the £1.7bn A303 road tunnel was approved unchanged on Thursday. Continue reading...

The Oscar-winning creator of Get Out and Us has released a mysterious new poster for a film called Nope, causing mass speculation onlineYesterday, seemingly out of the blue, Jordan Peele announced the name and poster of his third movie. The film is called Nope and the poster is a picture of an ominous-looking storm cloud hovering above a mountain village. Do we know what it’s about? Nope. Do we have any sort of insight into the film whatsoever? Nope. Would it be a good idea for us to attempt to extrapolate the premise for the film using nothing but a one-word title and a picture of a cloud? Nope. Are we going to do it anyway? Sure, why not.☁️ pic.twitter.com/iiDRwVLmbr Continue reading...

Information-gathering always was a speciality of President Paul Kagame. Modern technology has simply extended his remitIt was a silver BlackBerry, surprisingly heavy in the hand, belonging to a businessman who had flown from Kigali to South Africa to visit the exiled former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya. The businessman, Apollo Kiririsi Gafaranga, boasted that he had bought it in Qatar.“It cost me $10,000,” a friend of Karegeya’s remembers the businessman telling them. “It’s a model you can only buy in the Middle East, a phone you can’t be tracked on.” Karegeya picked it up, weighed it, and put it back down on the counter where it was charging. “You’ve been robbed,” the ex spy chief joked. Continue reading...

Businessman Barry Pring sustained fatal injuries when hit by car in Ukrainian capital in February 2008There was no conspiracy to kill a British businessman who died in a hit-and-run incident in Ukraine while celebrating his first wedding anniversary, a judge has concluded.Barry Pring, an IT consultant, sustained fatal injuries when he was hit by a car while waiting for a taxi on a carriageway outside a restaurant in Kyiv on 16 February 2008. Continue reading...

The film-maker’s latest thriller Old marks yet another step back into the public’s good graces after a string of misfiresLike a mushroom – one of the appetizing yet poisonous species, perhaps – M Night Shyamalan thrives in dark, contained spaces. His latest film Old isn’t physically enclosed, the majority taking place on an idyllic tropical inlet with gorgeous vistas of sand, sky and surf, though its visitors will soon learn that this beckoning setting wants to kill them and isn’t so easily escaped. But narratively speaking, it’s a tighter and more focused movie than we’ve seen from the film-maker in some time, and not so coincidentally, it finds him in top form. Planting nearly a dozen characters in a fixed locale, plunging them into terror, and letting the tension mount plays to the strengths of an unpredictable artist who shines under minimal, Twilight Zone-style parameters. The corollary to this notion reveals the fatal flaw that’s dealt his reputation and career so many ups and downs over nearly 30 years of film-making: a tragic excess of ambition.Related: Old review – M Night Shyamalan’s fast-ageing beach horror is top notch hokum Continue reading...

Nicola Sturgeon announces move aimed at preventing staff shortages due to NHS Covid app notifications

Trucks, diggers and volunteers try to clear mud and ruined belongings from wrecked homes and businessesA brown line one and a half metres high on the kitchen wall marks where the waters reached when Christian Ulrich’s house was inundated. The electrician stands amid the mud-splattered walls and his voice breaks as he recalls how he had barely enough time after the warning came to reach the cellar to get food and water and send his mother up the stairs. He had just managed to let in the neighbours who had banged on the door for help, when there was an “almighty crash – like an explosion” as a huge wave of water rolled in from the back and front of the house, so strong it pushed out the front door and many of the windows. Continue reading...

Ageing fleet hit by breakdowns and cancellations, with capacity low on services that do run due to Covid

New South Wales announces 136 new local Delta cases with Sydney under the strictest lockdown measures it has experiencedAustralia’s most populous state has declared a “national emergency” as it struggles to contain a record-breaking surge of the Delta variant of Covid-19 amid a lockdown affecting half the country.The state of New South Wales announced 136 new locally-acquired cases of Covid-19 on Friday, with continued community transmission among essential workers, including in supermarkets and pharmacies. Continue reading...

‘Real prospect’ 1998 attack by dissident republicans could have been thwarted, says Mr Justice HornerSecurity forces had a “real prospect” of preventing the 1998 Omagh bombing – the deadliest atrocity of the Northern Ireland Troubles – a Belfast high court has ruled.Mr Justice Horner recommended on Friday that the British and Irish governments each undertake human rights compliant investigations into the bombing, which killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injured 220 people. Continue reading...

With a blaze of indigo and white fireworks lighting the night sky, the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony has started. In a nearly empty national stadium, devoid of any crowd energy, it began with a single female athlete at the centre of the stadium, kneeling. As she stood, the shadow behind her took the shape of a seedling, growing as she walked. A number of athletes were featured in a video that started with the moment Tokyo won the Olympic bid in 2013, before showing images of a world silenced by the Covid pandemic

Left holding the can as your bosses jet off for the summer? Experts explain how to get the best out of it – from avoiding overwhelm to taking the chance to shineWe are approaching the summer holidays, a time when – for those of us still at our desks – workloads increase and responsibilities can soar. Here is some expert advice on how to survive and thrive when you’re the one left behind. Continue reading...

Hungary’s LGBT community expects high turnout for march on Saturday marking end of Pride monthSaturday’s Pride march in Budapest will be “a celebration, but also a protest”, organisers have said, as Hungary’s LGBT community prepares to rally in defiance of an escalating anti-gay campaign by the country’s government.Johanna Majercsik, one of the organisers of Pride month in Budapest, which culminates with the march, said she expected to see many more in attendance than the roughly 20,000 marchers who attended the last Pride march in the city, two years ago. Continue reading...

Amnesty says security forces used live ammunition on protesters while officials blame ‘opportunists’Iran is using unlawful and excessive force in a crackdown against protests over water shortages in its oil-rich but arid southwestern Khuzestan province, according to international rights groups.Amnesty International said it had confirmed the deaths of at least eight protesters and bystanders, including a teenage boy, after the authorities used live ammunition to quell the protests. Continue reading...

In the last seven days the UK government has flailed from one controversy or misstep to the next

The NSW deputy premier’s legal team has launched an attack on the YouTuber’s defence, labelling it ‘rubbish’John Barilaro boasting about pork barrelling government grants may be “the wrong thing to do”, but it does not show the New South Wales deputy premier is a corrupt conman, his lawyers have argued in court.On Friday the federal court held a lengthy pre-trial hearing in the deputy premier’s defamation case against the Youtube comedian Jordan Shanks. Continue reading...

Suzanne Heywood says process was set up to scapegoat the former civil servant and ‘distract attention’The widow of a former top civil servant who was heavily criticised in the UK government’s inquiry into the Greensill affair has described the process as a “travesty” set up to scapegoat her husband and “distract attention” from events after his death.Boris Johnson has already been accused of orchestrating a cover-up over the lobbying scandal after an official review mildly rebuked the former prime minister David Cameron. Continue reading...

Find could prove there were human settlements in area centuries before city was foundedThe discovery of the remains of a Roman road and dock submerged in the Venice lagoon could prove there were permanent human settlements in the area centuries before Venice was founded, researchers say.Scuba divers discovered what appeared to be paving stones beneath the lagoon in the 1980s, but only after more recent research were the relics confirmed to have formed part of a road system. Continue reading...

People are wearing costumes as a protest to the government’s handling of an outbreak that has killed more than 545,000When Klinger Duarte Rodrigues set off for his coronavirus shot last weekend he did so dressed as a South American snake.“A sucuri,” he said, using the indigenous name for the Amazonian water boa whose skin he borrowed for his first dose of AstraZeneca. Continue reading...

Open water advocates say bans and warnings aren’t working and better swimming education will save livesIt has been a week of tragedies in England’s waters. At least 17 people have drowned cooling off in the heatwave, including a man who went missing on a blow-up unicorn in a Wakefield lake and a 16-year-old boy in the River Dee near Chester.On Friday the Coastguard issued a plea to those visiting the coast to leave the inflatables at home and to “think twice” before taking risks in the sea. Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service went further, saying: “We urge people not to go into open water, no matter how hot it is outside.” Continue reading...

NSW premier warns vaccine rollout is crucial to stop the virus seeping into other states as NSW records 136 local coronavirus cases

Visit comes as China tightens control over region’s Buddhist culture and invests heavily in infrastructureThe Chinese leader has made his first visit to Tibet as president as authorities tighten controls over the Himalayan region’s traditional Buddhist culture, accompanied by an accelerated drive for economic development and modernised infrastructure.State media reported on Friday that Xi Jinping had visited sites in the capital, Lhasa, including the Drepung monastery, Barkhor Street and the public square at the base of the Potala Palace that was home to the Dalai Lamas, Tibet’s traditional spiritual and temporal leaders. Continue reading...

Premier Gladys Berejiklian says 53 of the new NSW cases were infectious in the community; taskforce chief John Frewen says vaccines not the best way to deal with immediate outbreak; national cabinet to meet to discuss rollout. Follow live

Medals out of recycled phones, sewage-stopping sand and virtual clapping in the shadow of Covid-19 add up to a very different Olympic GamesThe greatest impact of Covid on the Games, other than the fact it is being held a year late, will be the absence of spectators. Venues won’t be silent, however, with “an immersive sound system” playing “sound created from previous Olympic Games” – which means that vocal ticket holders from many events at London 2012 will, in a manner of speaking, get to attend a second Olympics – while those watching at home will be able to “clap virtually” using an app. Continue reading...

The best records from those lost too soon, including a heavyweight hip-hop opus, a collection of intriguing demos and a haunted swansongThis week’s Welcome 2 America is the third posthumous Prince album to emerge since his death in 2016. Perhaps the most intriguing, however, is Originals, a collection of Prince’s original demos of songs later made famous by other artists (Manic Monday, Love… Thy Will Be Done, Nothing Compares 2 U). A tantalising glimpse into a restless genius’s artistic process. Continue reading...

The speed of the soul singer’s stardom left him reeling. As he releases his best album yet, he explains how he shook off his insecurities – and confronted love, loss and a racist USLeon Bridges leans back on a gold velvet couch at Gold-Diggers, a compound in east Hollywood that includes a hotel, nine recording studios, a bar and a live music venue. Here in Studio 2, sunlight streams down from a skylight, bathing Bridges’ sky-blue madras shirt and buttery-brown leather loafers in a soft glow. His sartorial combination places him somewhere between a soul singer and country star circa 1970.Now 32, Bridges was working as a dishwasher just seven years ago, vying for attention at open mic nights in his home town of Fort Worth, Texas. In 2015, he released his debut album, the Grammy-nominated Coming Home, and soon the sheltered Christian found himself performing his spiritual, gospel-imbued song River on Saturday Night Live and covering Ray Charles for the Obamas at the White House. Music journalists hailed this soul singer/songwriter as the second coming of Sam Cooke. Continue reading...

(Habibi Funk)