World news | The Guardian

Despite being busy with a new album, the musician and public transport enthusiast is also running an elevator serviceWith his slicked back Berlin-era Bowie haircut and fine wool suit, New Zealand singer-songwriter, public transport advocate and now, operator of Whanganui’s Durie Hill Elevator, Anthonie Tonnon cuts a dapper figure and looks right at home in the rich wooden interior of the 102-year-old lift. Continue reading...

Winning conserve, made with Seville oranges and orange blossom, is being sold at Fortnum & MasonA nine-year-old girl has become the youngest ever winner of the world marmalade award, beating thousands of contestants from across the globe.Flora Rider from the Isle of Wight impressed the judges with her marmalade made from Seville oranges and orange blossom from her local supermarket. The conserve, which was made on only her second attempt, is now on sale in Fortnum & Mason after being reproduced professionally as a result of winning the prize. Continue reading...

‘Eco schemes’ to be supported are undefined and three-quarters of €387bn CAP budget will go to intensive farming, say criticsThe environmental claims of a newly agreed €387bn (£330bn) EU farming subsidy policy have been described as a “paper reality”, despite a commitment that a quarter of its budget will be spent on “eco schemes”.A new five-year common agricultural policy (CAP) was provisionally agreed by the European parliament, European Commission and the 27 member states on Friday after two and a half years of negotiations. Continue reading...

EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way for more homegrown contentIt was during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.“The elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the programmes afterwards,” she said. Continue reading...

Parole Board says Pitchfork, who raped and killed two 15-year-old girls in 1980s, is ‘suitable for release’Robert Buckland, the UK justice secretary, is to ask the Parole Board to reconsider its decision to approve the release of the child killer and rapist Colin Pitchfork.The double murderer was jailed in 1988 after raping and strangling 15-year-olds Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in Leicestershire in 1983 and 1986. Continue reading...

Queues for any jab grow with only 2% of Iranians vaccinated and fifth wave breaking

(Columbia)

Ruth Borthwick on how singing songs from Ladies of the Canyon and Blue sustained her courage on a dangerous tripSinging songs by Joni Mitchell, whose album Blue turned 50 this week (Joni Mitchell’s Blue: my favourite song – by James Taylor, Carole King, Graham Nash, David Crosby and more, 22 June), kept me going as I trekked through lion country in Uganda in 1981. As a solo traveller, I had been frustrated by my attempts to visit safari parks in Kenya – no pedestrians allowed. But people told me about Chobe, a reserve on the Nile in Uganda; once fashionable with chic Europeans, it was now down on its luck after Idi Amin’s disastrous regime. After hitching through dusty and dangerous country, I reached the derelict gates to find that there was no transport and I would have to walk the five miles through the bush to get to the lodge and a bed for the night.I summoned up my courage and prayed a that lion wouldn’t consider me tasty as I warbled my way through Ladies of the Canyon and Blue. The horizon eventually filled with the sea that was the Nile, half-submerged hippos glistening in the shallows. This was one river I didn’t wish to skate away on.

Cases of transnational repression found in 28 countries are ‘just the tip of the iceberg’, say rights researchersChina is using its unprecedented economic clout across vast swathes of Asia and the Middle East to target Uyghur Muslims living beyond its borders through a sprawling system of transnational repression, a new report says.Beijing’s crackdown on Xinjiang province, where more than 1 million people are thought to have been detained in a network of internment camps in recent years, has coincided with a rise in efforts to control Uyghurs living overseas, the report found. Continue reading...

Newspaper’s closure shows how pro-democracy movement and press freedom are being crushedOn Wednesday morning, the Apple Daily reporter Angel Kwan was at a government press conference for the Hong Kong census when her phone started buzzing with notifications. Six days earlier, hundreds of police had raided her workplace, arrested her bosses and seized dozens of computers. On Monday, the company board had said it would have to shut the paper unless authorities unfroze its finances.As she stood holding her microphone towards the government official, Kwan did not dare look at her phone and the news it heralded: Apple Daily was shutting down. Today. Continue reading...

Victim left partially paralysed after being shot while walking to school in Kesgrave in September, court hearsA teenager who shot a 15-year-old boy in the face with a double-barrelled shotgun has been found guilty of attempted murder.The victim was left partially paralysed after being shot from a distance of only 1.5 metres while walking to school in Kesgrave, near Ipswich, last September, a trial at Ipswich crown court heard. Continue reading...

The UK’s biggest pop star returns, singing of compulsive hedonism over 80s dance-pop – remind you of anyone?Spotify has chosen to promote Ed Sheeran’s new single by sitting it at the head of a playlist of his previous hits. The “plays” column of the latter makes for mind-boggling reading: the figures look less like streaming statistics and more like long-distance phone numbers. Every track is immediately recognisable – you could have spent your every waking hour engaged in a dogged attempt to avoid the music of Ed Sheeran and you’d still know exactly what they were and who they were by within seconds of them starting. He’s spent the last decade enjoying the kind of success that, in one sense at least, brooks no argument: even his loudest detractor couldn’t argue against his ability to write one song after another that attains a weird kind of omnipresence, hits that evolve into inescapable facts of daily life.This is not a state of affairs that Bad Habits looks likely to change. That Sheeran has trailed it as a “surprise” and “mad” tells you more about his innate populism than the song itself: it’s a well-written, extremely commercial pop song, cowritten by regular collaborators Fred Gibson and Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid, the latter of whom also had a hand in earlier Sheeran hits Shape of You, Photograph and Bloodstream. Continue reading...

Loss of 100,000 hauliers due to Covid and Brexit will cause food ‘rolling power cuts’, experts warnThe country is facing a summer of food shortages likened to a series of “rolling power cuts” because of a loss of 100,000 lorry drivers due to Covid and Brexit, industry chiefs have warned.In a letter to Boris Johnson they have called for an urgent intervention to allow eastern European drivers back into the country on special visas, similar to those issued to farm pickers, warning that there is a “crisis” in the supply chain. Continue reading...

Increase is probably due to highly contagious Delta variant, says pandemic response chief

Friday: defence minister accuses activist of showing malice in defamation suit. Plus: dossier of rape allegations against Christian Porter made publicGood morning. Peter Dutton has accused refugee activist Shane Bazzi of showing malice in the minister’s defamation suit, citing a tweet labelling him a “cunt” and a “fucken scumbag”. Bazzi denies that he defamed Dutton and is using the defences of fair comment and honest opinion, invoking Dutton’s statement that he didn’t know the “she said, he said” details of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins’s allegation of rape. In his reply Dutton argues that Bazzi cannot rely on honest opinion because his “rape apologist” tweet was “actuated by actual malice”.New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian has warned this is the “scariest period” the state has faced during the pandemic after reporting 11 new local Covid cases on Thursday. Meanwhile a police investigation into the limousine driver who sparked Sydney’s current Covid outbreak has expanded to include the company that employed him to drive international aircrews to and from Sydney airport. Continue reading...

Travellers from Britain will not need to quarantine on return from Majorca, Ibiza and Menorca

Public inquiry into June 2017 disaster hears that Robert Black failed to mention numerous risks and problems following reviewThe former boss of Grenfell Tower’s management body repeatedly failed to alert residents and councillors overseeing its work to serious fire safety issues and has admitted to “keeping the board in the dark”.Robert Black, who was chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) at the time of the fire, did not tell boards at the council and the arm’s-length management body about problems with smoke extractors at Grenfell, a deficiency notice issued by London fire brigade on the tower, or problems with fire doors at another block that suffered a fire. Continue reading...

The outspoken tabloid’s closure is a chilling moment. But as Beijing silences dissent, the spirit of resistance enduresApple Daily is dead. At midnight on Wednesday, Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy news outlet closed, forced out of business after authorities froze the assets of the 26-year-old tabloid and arrested executives and journalists. Through its outspoken support for protests, it had come to stand for resistance itself: for the freedom to know what is happening, to challenge authorities, and to imagine and demand another Hong Kong.Beijing is determined to crush that resistance. Each day it turns the screws further. Many have fallen silent already, but Apple Daily was defiant. Its owner, Jimmy Lai, already jailed over a protest, could face life in prison due to further charges under the draconian national security law. The editor-in-chief and chief executive of its parent company have been charged with conspiracy to collude with “external elements” after 500 officers raided its headquarters last week. Authorities say that the case relates to articles calling for sanctions on the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, some published before the imposition of the security law, which is not supposed to be retroactive. This vindictive action marks the criminalisation of journalism. On Wednesday, the company announced it was closing overnight, citing employee safety and staffing levels after officers arrested its lead opinion writer. Continue reading...

Deadline to apply for post-Brexit permit now 30 September amid fears many Britons would lose rights at end of JuneFrance has extended its 30 June application deadline for new post-Brexit residency permits, allowing thousands of British nationals an extra three months to secure local healthcare, employment and other rights.A French interior ministry spokesperson said on Thursday that the deadline to apply for the country’s withdrawal agreement residence permit had been extended until 30 September “for the whole country”, following earlier statements by the Côtes d’Armor prefecture in Brittany and other local authorities. Continue reading...

Animal rights campaigners applaud decision by firm known for its fur-trimmed parka jacketsCanada Goose, the outerwear brand known for its fur-trimmed parka jackets, has announced that it is to end the use of fur in its products.The company will stop purchasing fur by the end of this year, and cease manufacturing products with it no later than the end of 2022. Continue reading...

Palestinians face repression from Israel and Palestinian Authority, human rights watchdog saysThe latest flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip has been accompanied by a “catalogue of violations” committed by Israeli police against Palestinians in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, according to research from Amnesty International.Arab citizens of Israel have been subjected to unlawful force from officers during peaceful demonstrations, sweeping mass arrests, torture and other ill-treatment in detention, and police have failed to protect Palestinians from premeditated attacks by rightwing Jewish extremists, the human rights watchdog said on Thursday. Continue reading...

Ghostwriter Barry Coleman says he was given two ‘awful’ weeks to finish an entire book with the Rolling Stone – then the singer pulled the plug in case it was too dullBarry Coleman still remembers the day in 1983 when he was called by his editor at the publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson and told: “We’ve got a problem. Can you come in … tomorrow?”“The urgency was a bit disorienting,” he recalls. “Something had clearly gone horribly wrong.” Continue reading...

Court publishes 31-page document first sent to Scott Morrison containing allegations the former attorney general strenuously deniesA dossier of rape allegations against former attorney general Christian Porter, which was sent to the prime minister Scott Morrison earlier this year, has been made public for the first time, including allegedly contemporaneous diary entries.On Thursday the federal court released the entire 31-page document which was first circulated to a group of politicians including Morrison, Labor’s Senate leader Penny Wong and Greens MP Sarah Hanson-Young in February. Continue reading...

Victoria turning away people from Sydney hotspots; Queensland warns residents against travel to NSW. This blog is now closed

The tiny country has the highest death rate in Latin America after the centre-right government abandoned social restrictionsEnrique Soto, a senior cardiologist in Uruguay knew that, at the age of 65, he was at higher risk of Covid-19. His 40-year-old son Marcos had warned him as much but Soto replied he could not abandon his patients.When Soto died at the beginning of Uruguay’s devastating recent second wave of infections his death became emblematic of the disaster that has unfolded in recent months in the tiny South American country. Continue reading...

Defamation trial hears SAS soldier’s testimony will be in direct contradiction to the Victoria Cross recipient’s evidenceAn SAS soldier witnessed Ben Roberts-Smith machine-gun an unarmed prisoner with a prosthetic leg to death, in direct contradiction of the Victoria Cross recipient’s evidence, a court has been told.The soldier – anonymised on the witness list as Person 14 – told Roberts-Smith during a clandestine meeting in 2018 he had seen him shoot the unarmed man in a village called Kakarak in Uruzgan province in 2009, the federal court heard on Thursday. Continue reading...

Following Uefa’s decision to block a planned LGBTQ+ rainbow stadium protest at Munich’s Allianz Arena, football stadiums elsewhere in Germany pledged to light up in rainbow colours instead during the Euro 2020 match against Hungary Continue reading...

Large crowds have queued in Hong Kong to buy the final edition of the Apple Daily. The closure of Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy newspaper comes one week after five high-profile staff were arrested, the company's office raided and millions of dollars in assets frozen in Beijing's crackdown on the media outlet. Sales of the newspaper began at 1am with some vendors selling out of copies within hours

Million copies printed of last issue as journalists at newspaper that was forced to close mourn ‘historical moment’Across Hong Kong on Thursday morning the queues stretched for hundreds of metres, wrapping around corner after corner. Starting before dawn, crowds in the city of 7.5 million people lined up for hours to buy the final print edition of the Apple Daily newspaper, forced to close by authorities which had accused it of national security offences.Normally selling 80,000 copies a day, they printed a million. It was in such hot demand that by mid morning Hongkongers were crowdsourcing an online spreadsheet of convenience stores that still had copies for sale. Continue reading...

Buckingham Palace also said it aims to improve diversity of staff as Queen’s annual financial accounts releasedBuckingham Palace has admitted it “must do more” in terms of diversity and is “not where we would like to be” as figures show people from ethnic minority backgrounds make up 8.5% of its staff.It also emerged that Prince Charles funded Harry and Meghan with a “substantial sum” until the summer of 2020. Harry had told Oprah Winfrey that his family had “literally cut me off financially” in the early part of last year. Continue reading...

From the Irish civil war to anti-apartheid protests, a new exhibition delves into the legendary Guardian picture libraryIt was in 1905 that the Manchester Guardian published its first ever photograph, of the Angel Stone in Manchester Cathedral. Three years later, the paper hired its first staff photographer, Walter Doughty. In many ways the story of photography at the Guardian mirrors the story of the 20th century itself. And it’s a story that’s currently being told in a new exhibition, The Picture Library, at the Photographers’ Gallery, London, opening this week. Continue reading...

Medical charity says abuse and attacks have escalated as more migrants are intercepted at sea and camps become increasingly overcrowdedIncreasing violence towards refugees and migrants held in Libyan detention centres has forced Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to suspend its operations at two facilities, the medical charity said.MSF said its teams witnessed guards beating detainees, including those seeking treatment from MSF doctors, during a visit to the Mabani detention centre in Tripoli last week. Continue reading...

‘A crisis is brewing’, experts warn, with contaminated water exposing villagers to increased risk of cancer and affecting children’s brain developmentNine members of Pankaj Rai’s family have died from cancer over the past 20 years. But the 25-year-old farmer from Bihar only found out their deaths were likely a result of arsenic poisoning when his father got sick.In 2017, Pankaj took his father, Ganesh Rai, to the Mahavir Cancer Institute & Research Centre in Patna. Ganesh had stage 4 kidney cancer. But Dr Arun Kumar, a scientist at the institute, identified the severe skin lesions on his body as signs of arsenic poisoning. Continue reading...

For the hardline conservatives ruling Poland and Hungary, the transition from communism to liberal democracy was a mirage. They fervently believe a more decisive break with the past is needed to achieve national liberationIn the summer of 1992, a 29-year-old Hungarian with political ambitions made his first visit to the US. For six weeks he toured the country with a coterie of young Europeans, all expenses paid by the German Marshall Fund, a thinktank devoted to transatlantic cooperation.America had long fascinated Viktor Orbán, but he seemed disengaged and unaffected as the group walked around downtown Los Angeles, which was still reeling from the Rodney King riots two months earlier. One Dutch journalist on the trip recalled that the eastern Europeans in the group preferred to spend their daily stipends on “a Walkman and other electronics” rather than on food or fancy hotels. The free market and cutting-edge technologies certainly appealed more to Orbán than American debates and struggles over equality, justice or the rights of people of colour. Continue reading...

Campaigners fear for victims of trafficking, modern slavery and the elderly as 30 June deadline loomsCampaigners for EU citizens have warned that the Home Office’s plan to send 28-day enforcement notices to anyone who has not applied for settled status by the 30 June cut-off date is a “recipe for disaster”.“We know the types of people who will not be making applications. They are the vulnerable, people like victims of trafficking, modern slavery, the elderly, children. Continue reading...

First Nation in southern Saskatchewan says discovery is ‘most significantly substantial’ find yet in CanadaA First Nation in southern Saskatchewan has discovered hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of another former residential school for Indigenous children.A statement from the Cowessess First Nation and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations, which represents Saskatchewan’s First Nations, said on Wednesday that “the number of unmarked graves will be the most significantly substantial to date in Canada.” Continue reading...

US found link between vaccines and cases of inflammation in adolescents and young adults, but say benefits outweigh risksThe US Food and Drug Administration will add a warning to the Covid vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna about rare cases of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults, the agency announced on Wednesday.US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory groups, meeting to discuss reported cases of the heart condition after vaccination, found the inflammation in adolescents and young adults is likely linked to the vaccines, but that the benefits of the shots appeared to clearly outweigh the risk. Continue reading...

Analysis: Royal Navy ship sailing near Crimea may also be test of Beijing reaction to territorial reachBritish ministers will have been under no illusions that the decision to sail HMS Defender into disputed waters off the coast of Russian-annexed Crimea would provoke a reaction from the Kremlin.A dispute about whether warning shots were fired or not is beside the point – although if they were, they were miles out of range. Because even if the west considers Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, to be still part of Ukraine, the Russians do not and will act accordingly. Continue reading...

On the one hand Gareth Southgate may feel gratified but, on the other, he might detect significant cause for concern. Surely Germany will be better than this when they face England at Wembley on Tuesday, an outcome that for most of a chaotic night seemed beyond them, and if they are not then those Euro 96 ghosts will probably be banished at last. They were six minutes from finishing bottom of Group F and this result was an affront to a dogged, clever Hungary side who came close to completing a shock for the ages.It would have been Hungary rolling back the years, albeit a few decades further, in London if the substitute Leon Goretzka had not hammered low past Peter Gulacsi from 16 yards to equalise and break their hearts. Continue reading...

The Queen has held her first in-person weekly audience with the prime minister in 15 months, and informed him she had been speaking to 'your secretary of state for health, poor man'. Her sympathetic comment could be a reaction to the weight of responsibility resting on Hancock because of the Covid-19 pandemic, or could reflect the criticism he has received from the former No 10 aide Dominic Cummings

Police officer shot the former footballer with a stun gun for 33 seconds and kicked him in the headOn his final day alive, Dalian Atkinson felt trapped. Draining physical challenges, from hypertension and kidney disease, had left him weakened and his mental health was crumbling, the jury heard.He had once thrilled tens of thousands of people in football stadiums in England, Turkey and Spain. Now he was causing concern to two of those closest to him: his partner, Karen Wright, and Jonty, the friend whose house he was staying in. Continue reading...

MoD and Moscow disagree over whether shots were fired at destroyer near disputed territoryBritain was unexpectedly embroiled in a diplomatic and military dispute with Russia on Wednesday after Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender briefly sailed through territorial waters off the coast of the disputed territory of Crimea.The warship sailed for about an hour in the morning within the 12-mile limit off Cape Fiolent on a direct route between the Ukrainian port of Odesa and Georgia, prompting Russian complaints and a disagreement about whether warning shots were fired. Continue reading...

Documents showed no more than 12 disabled people lived in the tower but it was in fact home to 37 and 15 died in the fireThe chief executive of the landlord of Grenfell Tower has blamed his staff for allowing the block’s fire safety plan to become 15 years out of date so it failed to account for more than two dozen of the disabled people in the block.Robert Black, the most senior executive at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation (TMO), told the public inquiry into the disaster that the obsolete plan showing no more than 12 vulnerable or disabled people was caused by staff not carrying out managers’ instructions. The tower was in fact home to 37 disabled people and 15 of them died. The inquiry has heard claims from lawyers for the bereaved that the fire was a “landmark act of discrimination against disabled and vulnerable people”. Continue reading...

Lawyers say Valérie Bacot, on trial for murder, is victim of authorities’ gross negligenceLawyers representing a woman who killed her stepfather turned husband after 24 years of violence that started when he raped her at 12 are taking legal action against the French state for “gross negligence” after claims the authorities failed to act on reports she was being abused.Valérie Bacot’s defence team said a summons for liability had been filed with the Paris tribunal. Her lawyers point out that her children twice went to the police to report their father – who was Bacot’s stepfather – for abusing her but no action was taken. Continue reading...

• Three protesters injured and three police hit by arrows• Congress mulls diluting protection for indigenous territoriesRiot police have fired teargas and rubber bullets at indigenous activists protesting outside Brazil’s congress against new legislation that would undermine legal protections for indigenous territories, and open them up to commercial agriculture and mining.Thick clouds of teargas enveloped the demonstrators, including children and the elderly, as police attempted to clear the camp in Brasília on Tuesday where they have been protesting for the past two weeks. Continue reading...

Conference in Berlin also calls for phased withdrawal of all foreign forces from the countryForeign powers and Libya’s new interim government of national unity have called for nationwide elections on 24 December and the phased withdrawal of all foreign forces, starting with some mercenaries in a matter of days.There are thought to be as many as 20,000 foreign fighters in the country on both sides of its civil war, including Syrians under Turkish control, Turkish government forces, Russians in the Wagner Group and Sudanese forces. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Wesley College offered parents discounts of 20%, waived other costs and made a $5m transfer to its scholarship fund last yearAn elite Melbourne private school offered parents fee discounts of 20% last year after it received nearly $20m in jobkeeper subsidies.Wesley College in Melbourne, which charges some of the highest private school fees in Victoria, gave its parents fee rebates, waived other costs and made a $5m transfer to its scholarship fund after it received $18.2m in jobkeeper last year. Continue reading...