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Vatican says pontiff had general anaesthetic during operation for diverticular stenosis of the colonPope Francis “reacted well” to planned intestinal surgery on Sunday evening at a Rome hospital, the Vatican has announced.In a statement late in the evening, Matteo Bruni, a Holy See spokesman, said Francis, 84, had general anaesthesia during the surgery necessitated by a stenosis, or narrowing, of the sigmoid portion of the large intestine. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson to press ahead with final stage of unlocking in England amid huge rise in infections

Monday: Two-thirds of staff at Covid-stricken aged care facility aren’t vaccinated. Plus: how to entertain kids in lockdownGood morning. Covid cases are dropping around the country, but the flaws in the aged care vaccine rollout continue to emerge. Two-thirds of staff working at a Sydney aged care facility in the midst of a Covid outbreak are unvaccinated, SummitCare’s chief operating officer has confirmed. Three aged care residents at the facility in Sydney tested positive on Saturday night, while two staff members were infected last week. NSW reported 16 locally acquired cases on Sunday, more than halving Saturday’s high of 35. Gladys Berejiklian, said 13 of the new cases had spent their entire infectious period in isolation. “We are seeing numbers go the right way. But I do say cautiously that that could still bounce around,” she said. Meanwhile a group of St George Illawarra Dragons players are under investigation for potentially breaching lockdown orders after being caught at the house party of a veteran player.In Covid news abroad, Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, has been admitted to hospital as a precautionary measure after testing positive last week. And the US will soon see surges in cases of the highly infectious Delta variant in areas where vaccination rates are low, Anthony Fauci has predicted, calling resistance to vaccination “sad” and “tragic”. Continue reading...

Prime minister defies warnings from his own MPs concerned that bill to shake up health service will prove gift to LabourBoris Johnson is set to spark a political row this week by announcing plans to seize greater control of the NHS, despite warnings that the “power grab” will see ministers blamed for delays in treatment and closure of local hospital units.The prime minister has told the new health secretary, Sajid Javid, to put the long-awaited health and care bill before parliament despite Javid’s own misgivings and concerns among hospital bosses and doctors’ leaders. Continue reading...

Deadly blaze that killed four people and forced evacuation of 10 villages is now close to being under controlAuthorities in Cyprus have said a deadly forest fire that was the worst to hit the island in decades was close to being brought under control after water bombing by Greek and Israeli aircraft.Fanned by strong winds, the fire broke out on Saturday afternoon and swept through the southern foothills of the Troodos mountain range as the country grappled with a blistering heatwave. Continue reading...

A legal arrangement set up in the wake of a mental health crisis has left the singer with little control of her personal or professional affairs. Laura Snapes and Sam Levin describe how she’s challenging the situation in courtThis episode first aired on our global news podcast Today in Focus.Britney Spears shot to global fame in 1998 with her hit single Baby One More Time, released when she was 17. It was the first of a string of hits that made her a millionaire many times over. But the rapid rise came not without cost for her personal life. A mental health crisis led to a very public breakdown, and in 2008 she was placed under a a conservatorship which, overseen by her father, took control of her finances and many of her personal affairs. Continue reading...

Militants’ advance continues as Britain nears end of its two-decade deployment to countryThe Taliban’s rapid advance through northern Afghanistan continued on Sunday with more than a dozen districts falling to the militants, as Britain entered the final days of its two-decade deployment to Afghanistan.More than 300 members of the Afghan security forces fled across the border into Tajikistan to escape the militants, and Badakhshan and Takhar provinces are now largely under Taliban control, beyond the respective regional capitals. Continue reading...

Xavier Bettel attends as a precautionary measure after testing positive last week

Irish foreign minister hits out at Brexit minister over provocative article on Northern Ireland protocolThe EU fears that Boris Johnson wants to “dismantle” the Northern Ireland protocol, the Irish foreign minister has said, as relations between Brussels and London deteriorated again after remarks by the Brexit minister David Frost in the past 24 hours.Simon Coveney told RTÉ on Sunday that EU leaders feared the worst after what he felt was a provocative article written by Lord Frost and the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, in the Irish Times on Saturday. Continue reading...

Slip by James Duddridge at funeral of liberation leader derided as evidence of enduring colonial attitudesJames Duddridge, the UK’s minister for Africa, appeared to confuse Zimbabwe with Zambia in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991. He was respected across the continent as one of a generation of Africans who fought to free their nations from colonial rule. Continue reading...

Mayfield Park will be watered using wells discovered while archaeologists were on siteManchester’s first public park for more than a century will use recently uncovered wells from the Victorian era to provide a sustainable source of water.The 2.6-hectare (6.5-acre) Mayfield Park will sit behind Piccadilly station and provide play areas and floodable meadows. The £1.4bn development’s greenery will be watered using three Victorian wells that were discovered while archaeologists were on site to catalogue historical features of the site. Continue reading...

Later this month, in one of the most ambitious live artworks ever staged, a giant puppet will trek from the Syria-Turkey border to Manchester, in a moving-theatre show of solidarity with asylum seekersOn the last Tuesday of July, a big little girl will step out into a Turkish city, a few miles from the Syrian border, to begin an 8,000km trek to Manchester. Little Amal is nine years old and is searching for her mother, who went off to find food and never returned. She is the central, and only, character in a spectacularly ambitious theatre project. The Walk will face down international Covid restrictions in a visionary act of solidarity with the plight of refugees, defiance of the borders that put their lives in danger, and belief in the humanity of ordinary people faced with a global humanitarian crisis.Little Amal’s intercontinental odyssey will be hard to miss in the eight countries whose borders she will cross between July and November, because she is 3.5 metres (nearly 12 feet) tall. She’s a puppet, who will be enabled to make her epic walk by relays of puppeteers, several of whom are themselves refugees. She will bear a single message, on behalf of all the thousands of displaced children who will come out to meet her along the way: “Don’t forget about us.” Continue reading...

Companies must have human rights and environmental obligations, say TUC and Amnesty InternationalAlmost 30 organisations have joined forces to call for the UK to follow in the footsteps of its European partners by introducing corporate accountability laws requiring companies to undertake human rights and environmental due diligence across their supply chains.The groups, including the TUC, Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International, say systemic human rights abuses and environmentally destructive practices are commonplace in the global operations and supply chains of UK businesses, and voluntary approaches to tackle the problem have failed. Continue reading...

We’re all so desperate to get away. But were our summer trips as good as we remember? Famous travellers tell their sorry tales Continue reading...

Celebrities including the comedian David Walliams and actor Jim Broadbent have called on their fellow Britons to 'get back to the rhythm of life', by getting vaccinated against Covid.In the film, which is to the tune of a song from the 1966 musical Sweet Charity, Broadbent enters an empty theatre before celebrities including Walliams, actors Asa Butterfield, Colin Salmon, Derek Jacobi and Don Warrington, and singer Nicola Roberts take the stage to perform the song.More than 44.8 million people in the UK have received at least one jab while almost half of adults have received a second dose

Robert Jenrick, the UK’s communities secretary, suggested coronavirus control measures in England such as the legal requirement to wear face coverings in enclosed public settings would be left up to personal choice after the final stage of the roadmap."We trust the British public to exercise good judgment, people will come to different conclusions as you say," Jenrick told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

From giant clams to zebra shark, marine biologists want to replace lost and vanishing species at sea but face unique obstacles – not least rampant overfishingKneeling on the seabed a few metres underwater, I pick up a clam and begin gently cleaning its furrowed, porcelain smile with a toothbrush. It’s a giant clam but a young one and still just a handful. Here in Fiji, giant clams or vasua as they are known, were so heavily overfished for their meat and shells that by the 1980s they were thought to be extinct locally. Australian clams were imported to start a captive breeding programme, and subsequent generations of their offspring have been released on coral reefs across Fiji. They’re still vulnerable to fishing and poaching, but if carefully guarded the giant clams do well and have become symbols of healthy corals reefs inside well-managed marine protected areas.A key to their early survival is rearing them in cages to keep them safe from predators until they’re large enough to survive by themselves. However, the cages also exclude herbivorous fish, so the clams can easily get overgrown by seaweed, which is where the regular toothbrushing comes in. Continue reading...

As Slovenia takes over the EU presidency, its prime minister warns that the west cannot impose its liberal views on central EuropeSlovenia’s prime minister Janez Janša, a rare EU ally of Hungary’s right to outlaw the promotion or portrayal of homosexuality to children, has claimed that imposing “imaginary European values” on central Europe could lead to the union’s collapse.Janša, who publicly backed Donald Trump in his attempt to overthrow the US presidential election result, leads Slovenia as it takes the EU’s rolling presidency, steering the bloc’s agenda for the next six months. He is a deeply controversial figure, whose political career includes being jailed while battling for Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia and an overturned conviction for corruption. Continue reading...

People will be able to tour platforms on Kingsway station that have remained closed since WW2A hidden underground tram station in the centre of London, which stood in as the Avengers HQ on the big screen, is to open to the public for the first time since its closure almost 70 years ago.People will be able to tour the platforms and halls of the Kingsway station, which allowed passengers on doubledecker trams to interchange between the once-comprehensive networks north and south of the Thames. which closed after the second world war. Continue reading...

The dance that depends on what Covid prevents – close physical intimacy – is not only a cultural passion but also now a threatened source of income for many workers. Photographer Anita Pouchard Serra has been documenting how dancers are surviving the crisisIn a pretty little plaza next to a railway track, there is proof that not even a pandemic can keep us apart.Five couples lean in, cheek to cheek, marking steps that mirror the circuitous route of life. If there is a map, it rises out of a portable speaker, and the melancholic poetry of a tango. Continue reading...

After hundreds of unmarked graves were found at Canada’s former Catholic-run residential schools, churches in First Nations territories have been destroyed by suspected arsonFor more than a century, the clapboard church set amid rolling hills in western Canada has been a spiritual home to the Upper Similkameen Indian Band.To build St Anne’s, residents of Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve #2 travelled 40 miles to the closest town, hauling lumber back to their community by horse and wagon. Continue reading...

Industry says any suggestion by Coalition government that airlines are price gouging is ‘insulting and bizarre’• Families of Australians stranded overseas devastated after arrivals cap slashedInternational airlines claim they could be forced to suspend services to Australia from next week after national cabinet agreed to halve the number of people allowed to enter the country – and they say any suggestion of price gouging is “insulting and bizarre”.From 14 July, overseas arrivals will be slashed from 6,070 to 3,035 a week – crushing the hopes of thousands of Australians stuck overseas and looking to get home. Continue reading...

Two residents of SummitCare home at Baulkham Hills taken to hospital as a precaution and facility is in lockdown; Queensland records one new local case. This blog is closed

A company specialising in children’s sports clothing has relocated to avoid the costs and bureaucracy caused by leaving the EUDuring the Wimbledon championships, Steve and Adriana Walkington are run off their feet. Their fast-growing company, Zoe Alexander, which they set up in Canterbury a few years ago, provides chic tennis clothes for children aged between four and 12.Orders pile up at this time of year from people in the UK, from the European Union, the US, the far east, Canada and Japan. The business is benefiting from a surge in interest in tennis across the globe. Continue reading...

Alicia Keys reflects on 20 years of stardom, going makeup free and where she gets her ‘grit energy’In 2016, when Alicia Keys released her sixth studio album, Here, she celebrated the launch with a gig in New York’s Times Square. An article written in the Guardian by a journalist who was on the promotional junket described the machinery of her management system at the time, as functioning “like an onion”. A formidable, multi-layer of managers, confidants, coaches, assistants, a personal film crew and various people with ambiguous job functions formed around Keys, like a “shock absorber”. Fast forward to 2021. I am waiting to interview Keys via Zoom on the day she launches a special edition of Songs in A Minor, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking award-winning debut album that started it all. When she appears on screen there is no “onion”, no entourage, no shock absorber. Just her. She is sitting on a light-coloured sofa in front of a floor-to-ceiling wall of immaculately lined-up books. And she is trying to pull a jumper on. Her voice – smooth, deep and slightly gravelly – calls out, “Good morning!” and as she inches in to take her position close to the screen, she smiles so fully that every crevice of her face lights up.Looking at a barefaced Alicia Keys, hair pulled back into a bun, one can’t help marvel at how much she still resembles the 20-year-old who made her 2001 TV debut singing Falling on The Oprah Winfrey Show. (Winfrey, who calls herself Alicia’s “mother-sister-friend” has since said, “Even before she belted out the first soulful notes of the lyrics that made her famous, I could feel the power of her presence.”) Following the God-like endorsement of the influential Winfrey (and the backing of Clive Davis, the legendary music producer who gave Keys her big break), the song topped the charts. The album sold millions (10.5m physical sales and 645.8m streams to date) and Keys was nominated in six Grammy award categories. She won five of them and has since gone on to win 10 more. Keys is still awestruck that she, and the album that brought her global fame, still have a presence today. Continue reading...

On the eve of her biggest ever UK show, the figurative artist recalls a 70-year ‘non-career’ tackling fascism, abortion, tragedy and the solidarity of womenWhen a Paula Rego retrospective at Tate Britain was first suggested three years ago, it was welcomed as an irresistible – an inevitable – proposal. For, as the show’s curator Elena Crippa observes, there is only a handful of contemporary female artists who have achieved comparable status. And there are not many artists who have made women their subject in the inward, intense and complicated way that Rego has over the decades – painting them in pain, power and surrender. This is the largest show of her career, with more than 100 pieces – paintings, collages, drawings, pastels, etchings, sculptures – many never seen in this country before. It will be a chance to unriddle the stories the paintings tell and to celebrate an artist of fabulous – in every sense – talent. And, as with any well-curated retrospective, it will be a way in to the narrative of Paula Rego’s own life.In the weeks before the show’s opening, Rego – now 86 – has been gamely answering questions back and forth with me over email, with her daughter, Cas Willing, as secretary. And what has emerged as one of the remarkable things about her is that, undeterred by age and its challenges, she still goes to work every day in her Camden studio, in north London. Almost 20 years ago, I met her there and will never forget the thrill of feeling backstage – for there is a theatrical element to her work, a coming together of props, an undertow of drama. I recall a lifesize horse, racks of clothes and a couch given to her by an analyst – appropriately, given her interest in the collective unconscious (she started analysis in 1966). And it is in this studio that she continues to work with her leading lady, Lila Nunes, loyal model and friend (she is, like Rego, from Portugal). Continue reading...

Gathering at player’s Shellharbour home on Saturday night was banned under NRL biosecurity bubbleNew South Wales police and the NRL integrity unit are investigating a number of St George Illawarra Dragons players for potentially breaching lockdown orders and bursting the league’s strict biosecurity bubble.A group of Dragons players is under investigation after a party at the house of a veteran player, Nine News reports. Continue reading...

Constitutional court agrees to hear challenge to 15-month prison-term, as Zuma rallies political supportJacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, appeared on Saturday to have won a reprieve from imminent imprisonment on contempt of court charges after the country’s most senior judges agreed to hear his challenge to a 15-month jail sentence awarded last week.Police were ordered to arrest the 79-year-old by the supreme court if he did not surrender to authorities by Sunday after he failed to appear before a corruption inquiry earlier this year. Continue reading...

Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green tell of their pioneering vaccine work but warn the battle is far from over

The singer talks about indie films and apple fritters, bike rides and books in bedEarly bird or lie-in? I’ve been an early riser for years. One Sunday, very soon, I’m going to set my alarm for 4am, go and sit in my local wood and, if I don’t get arrested, listen to the dawn chorus.Sunday brekkie? We’ve got a 9-, 12- and a 16-year-old. Our house is like a restaurant with all the different eggs, avocados and pancakes. The battle is getting them off their screens to gather around the table. Continue reading...

New research finds that those living and working alone during the pandemic have suffered the worst effects of allWorking from home during the coronavirus pandemic has caused increased levels of loneliness and mental distress, according to new research into how workers have been affected by the crisis.With ministers still debating how to manage the return to workplaces in the wake of Covid restrictions, a study by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) found that the biggest increases in mental distress and loneliness during the pandemic were felt by the most isolated group – those working from home and living alone. However, in a finding that surprised researchers, people working from home and living with others also experienced a significant increase in loneliness not felt by those working outside the home. Continue reading...

Storm kills one person in St Lucia and a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman in the Dominican RepublicCuba prepared to evacuate people along the island’s southern region on Sunday amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.The government on Sunday opened shelters and moved to protect sugarcane and cocoa crops ahead of the storm, whose next target was Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County where the high-rise condominium building collapsed last week. Continue reading...

As the west departs, the Taliban are resurgent. They say they have changed – but misogyny and brutality still mark their ruleThe public flogging in Obe district, captured on video that quickly went viral this spring, was a mistake, a local Taliban judge admitted. Commanders were angry.As the footage spread between urban Afghans, who shared it on their smartphones, it revived memories of darker times when the militants ruled the country, and an outpouring of revulsion. Continue reading...

Direct your energy into your creativity and do what you want to doThe question I am a nearly 40-year-old woman and I’ve recently realised that I have no idea what would make me happy. I’m married with children and a good career. We’re financially comfortable. I have nothing to complain about. Yet beneath the surface, I feel a sort of numb despair at life. I find no joy in anything. I dislike my job and feel disconnected from my family. I sleep poorly, which doesn’t help; sometimes at night I get so angry with myself for not being able to achieve this basic human function that I wish I would just die.The one thing I’ve always wanted in life is to be a writer. I’ve had three books brought out by a large publisher, but they were unsuccessful. So, although people say I should be proud, I see myself as a failure. I keep telling myself not to give up, but increasingly it’s hard to find a reason to keep trying. I just cling to my old dream out of habit, and because it’s a vanishing spark of hope in an otherwise grey landscape. Continue reading...

Six people on board a private plane were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, the identities of the other four people are not knownAll six people on board a private plane, including two American missionaries, were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, southwest of capital Port-au-Prince, according to media reports and a missionary group.The plane went down on Friday evening en route from an airport in Port-au-Prince to the southern coastal city of Jacmel, typically a short flight, reported the Miami Herald, citing a statement by the National Civil Aviation Office (NCAO). Reuters could not independently confirm the report. Continue reading...

Twenty people are still missing and two are dead after houses were obliterated in the mudslideMore than 1,000 rescuers have arrived at a Japanese town hit by a deadly landslide on Saturday that killed two people.The rescuers climbed onto cracked roofs and searched cars thrown onto engulfed buildings, as more rain lashed the area. Continue reading...

Foreign-based fans slept in cars and even planned marriage proposals to be at the scene of Euro 2020 quarter finalThey came from Berne, Berlin, Luxembourg and Dubai, some forgoing a night’s sleep as they drove across the Alps or took red-eye flights. Some of the more ardent football fans bought tickets two years ago; others bagged them in the last-minute rush that followed England’s historic win over Germany on Tuesday.They were rewarded with an extraordinary, emphatic, exhilarating 4-0 victory over Ukraine, and those inside the stadium sang till their voices gave out. Continue reading...

Harry Kane back to his lethal best, productivity from set pieces, yet another clean sheet – the fifth out of five at Euro 2020 – and, for the coup de grace, a first England goal for Jordan Henderson on the occasion of his 62nd cap. This was the night when pretty much everything was picture perfect for Gareth Southgate and his players as they set up a Wembley semi-final against Denmark on Wednesday night.As England came home from Rome it was easy to wonder whether football was headed in the same direction and, certainly, the fans of the team who had made it from across mainland Europe into the Stadio Olimpico thought that way. Continue reading...

Australia’s most severe Covid response put systemic problems and lack of trust in the spotlight. Now many are working to make things betterWe don’t realise the value of suburban rhythms, or even see them clearly, until they are ripped away.There are the children clattering up the hill to school and the queue at the post office – including so many ethnicities, every form of dress. There are the men hanging out in the African cafes and the elderly Chinese in tai chi classes at the foot of the public housing towers. Continue reading...

The recently-formed Q-League is a far cry from the camps where some of its players learnt to play using scrunched up plastic bags instead of ballsRafique Mohammed lists the fortnightly rations doled out by United Nations personnel. “One kilogram of rice, a bit of oil.” He thinks for a second. “Dahl, some vegetables. There were a lot of people and little food. It was not ever, ever enough.”It was all Mohammed ate for the first 13 years of his life, having been born inside Nayapara, the densely populated refugee camp and home of stateless Rohingya people who fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Continue reading...

Steve Turner, contender in Unite’s election of a general secretary, says Labour leader must ‘keep promises’One of the leading candidates to run Labour’s most generous union donor has warned Keir Starmer against any attempt to abandon the leftwing pledges he endorsed at the start of his leadership.With thousands of Unite members set to cast their votes this week to decide its next general secretary, Steve Turner, the leading left candidate, said that Starmer must “keep his promise to the members” by resisting demands to shift the party to the right in the wake of its stalling performance. Continue reading...

Cardinal Angelo Becciu becomes the highest ranked Vatican-based church official to be charged with embezzlementA Vatican judge has ordered 10 people, including an Italian cardinal, to stand trial for alleged financial crimes including embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion and abuse of office.Those indicted include Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was fired by the pope last year, the former heads of the Vatican’s financial intelligence unit, and two Italian brokers involved in the Vatican’s purchase of a building in a luxury area of London. Continue reading...

(Forever Living Originals)

The tennis player, 53, on Naomi Osaka and mental health, lion-hearted Andy Murray and defying corny cultural stereotypesI’m mentally consistent. It comes from my upbringing. My mother was a tough cookie; my dad was a hard worker. They were both 10 when the war ended, and those first few years living in Germany were very difficult for them. This mental consistency has helped me navigate the ups and downs of life. It’s also helped me stay grounded when I’ve been winning. I’m never too satisfied or happy and I’m never too desperate. I’ve tried to always keep a middle ground.I didn’t always think I was going to make it. I broke my ankle in 1984, during my first professional tournament, playing against Billy Scanlon. My parents didn’t want me to become a tennis pro, and when I called my mother she said to me, “I told you so, you should have stayed in school.” I questioned myself a lot during the next few months of my rehab. That’s when you find out how much you want it. Continue reading...

Boat carrying migrants from Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Bangladesh was heading towards Italy from Libya when it sankAt least 43 people have drowned in a shipwreck off Tunisia as they tried to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, while another 84 were rescued, humanitarian organisation the Tunisian Red Crescent has said.The boat had set off from Zuwara, on Libya’s north-west coast, carrying migrants from Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Bangladesh, the humanitarian organisation said. Continue reading...

Tehran classified as ‘red zone’ as authorities struggle to import vaccines due to US sanctions

A huge landslide has swept away homes and left 19 people missing at a popular resort town in central Japan after days of heavy rain, local officials say.Television footage on Saturday showed a torrent of mud obliterating some buildings and burying others in Atami, south-west of Tokyo, with people running away as it crashed over a hillside road.

Man who works as a baggage handler at Brisbane domestic airport among new coronavirus cases