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Vulnerable and immunocompromised people anxious about 19 July end to Covid rules

The Jamaican legend on the importance of Black Lives Matter, his 800m challenge and lessons of parenthoodThe fastest man in history is pondering just how much more destructive he could have been in the super spikes that have swung a wrecking ball at so many world records. Briefly, there is a battle between Usain Bolt the diplomat and Usain Bolt the competitor. The competitor wins. “Me and a friend were talking about this the other day,” he tells the Guardian. “And I was like, ‘should I be upset?’ Because I know over the years everyone has tried to make spikes different and better but …”Bolt stresses he is not worried about the current crop shredding his 100m world record of 9.58sec or his 200m best of 19.19sec. Yet he sounds uneasy about where the arms race in shoe technology will lead. “How can I argue if World Athletics decide that it’s legal? I can’t do anything about it. The rules are the rules. I don’t think I’ll be fully happy, but it’s just one of those things.” Continue reading...

Distraught parents have gathered outside a boarding school in north-western Nigeria after gunmen kidnapped 140 children, the latest in a wave of mass abductions targeting schoolchildren and students in the country. About 1,000 students and pupils have been abducted in Nigeria since December, with most eventually released after negotiations with local officials. Monday’s raid at the Bethel Baptist high school was at least the fourth mass school kidnapping in Kaduna state over the period

Proposed legislation also allows home secretary to impose extra fees for visa applicationsThe UK will block visas for overseas visitors if the home secretary believes they are refusing to cooperate in taking back rejected asylum seekers or offenders.In proposed legislation published on Tuesday, Priti Patel and future home secretaries would have the power to suspend or delay the processing of applications from countries that do no “cooperate with the UK government in relation to the removal from the United Kingdom of nationals of that country who require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom but do not have it”. Continue reading...

Activists call on Britain to acknowledge its role in efforts to erase Indigenous cultureThe United Kingdom is facing growing calls to re-examine the troubling legacy of its colonial history in Canada after the discovery of more than 1,000 unmarked graves at former residential schools for Indigenous children.At least 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend such church-run schools as part of the campaign to strip them of their cultural identity, and amid anger over Catholic church’s role in operating the institutions, churches across the country have been set on fire. Continue reading...

Close contacts of people in England who have tested positive for Covid will not need to self-isolate if they have received both of their Covid jabs, or if they are under 18, the health secretary, Sajid Javid, has told the Commons. People will still need to self-isolate if they test positive for the virus. 'This new approach means we can manage the virus in a way that's proportionate to the pandemic while maintaining the freedoms that are so important to us all,' Javid said.

28-year-old reported missing after failing to show for work at Tokyo school where she was last seen on 1 JulyPolice in Japan are searching for a British woman who has not been seen for almost a week, with her family describing her disappearance as “completely out of character”.Alice Hodgkinson, 28, was reported missing after she failed to turn up for work at an English conversation school in Tokyo. Continue reading...

He was able to exist so easily in my world that it helped me feel happier there tooIn the summer of 2015, I attended UK Black Pride (an annual event celebrating African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American and Caribbean-heritage LGBTQI+ people). It is one of the few places where I feel truly among family. My difference as a queer person of colour disappears in the sea of black and brown faces dancing in the sunshine – jumping around to the likes of Mark Morrison’s Return of the Mack and Jazzy Jeff’s Summertime; songs that also bring back memories of London in the 90s, the London of my teens.I come from a working-class, multicultural, east London community, but, after graduating from university, I also graduated to the middle classes. At UK Black Pride, I was reminded how far away I now felt from that world and, in that instant, recognised why love seemed to elude me. I dated men from my “circle”: men I’d met working as a lawyer or through university friends. Men who were middle class. Men who were often (but not always) white. Continue reading...

Political rivals and human rights campaigners criticise use of inflammatory campaign material by Vox partyHuman rights groups and politicians in Spain have spoken out after a court ruled that a controversial and false election poster for the far-right Vox party should not be withdrawn because it is legitimate political expression, and because the unaccompanied foreign minors it depicts in a relentlessly negative light are “an obvious social and political problem”.The poster, which Vox used as part of its campaign in May’s bitterly contested Madrid regional election, was put up in a busy rail station in the capital and shows a hooded and masked dark-skinned youth alongside a white Spanish grandmother. It incorrectly suggests that refugee and migrant children in state care receive 10 times more in benefits each month than the average Spanish grandmother does in pension payments. Continue reading...

Four men were jailed for up to 20 years after violent raid on monastery in 2019, says Human Rights WatchFour Tibetan monks were sentenced to up to 20 years jail in secret trials with no apparent evidence of criminal wrongdoing after a violent raid on a monastery in 2019, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, which calls for their release.The raid, details of which the rights organisation says have come to light for the first time, was sparked by police obtaining a phone, accidentally left at a cafe, containing WeChat messages to people in Nepal and evidence of a donation to an earthquake relief effort. Continue reading...

Hospitals struggle to cope as senior paediatrician says cases rising rapidly among minors

Travellers from UK who are double-vaccinated or have recovered from an infection will no longer require quarantine

‘Cows are my favourite animal, so why not buy some?’ says William Woods of his thought processWhen William Woods won €1,000 (£860) in a prize draw the 10-year-old knew exactly what to do: buy a herd of calves.Lockdown had disrupted schooling and impeded meeting friends so spending days in a field tending his own herd seemed a no-brainer for the young farmer. Continue reading...

Although four vaccines are available, some shots are deemed by some more desirable than others

Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty townsA seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by. Continue reading...

Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commanderUS forces shut off the Bagram airfield’s electricity supply and did not notify the base’s senior Afghan officer when they departed on Friday, prompting puzzlement and anger among Afghan soldiers there.The airfield’s new commander, Gen Mir Asadullah Kohistani, only discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, he said on Monday. Continue reading...

High court says home secretary must bring back Sudanese man so his trafficking and torture claims can be investigatedPriti Patel must bring back to the UK a small boat asylum seeker she removed to France in the next 14 days, the high court has ruled.In a ruling published on Tuesday, the day that Patel launched her nationality and borders bill, which she hopes will make it easier to remove asylum seekers who arrive in small boats, Mr Justice Wall ordered that the home secretary use her “best endeavours” to bring back a 38-year-old Sudanese asylum seeker from Darfur who can only be identified by the initials AA. Continue reading...

Courtney Harriot, Paul Green and Cleveland Davidson jailed for allegedly trying to rob police officerThree innocent black men who were jailed nearly 50 years ago over a corrupt police officer’s claims they tried to rob him have had their convictions overturned by the court of appeal.Courtney Harriot, Paul Green and Cleveland Davidson, all aged between 17 and 20 at the time, were arrested on the tube in London while travelling from Stockwell station in February 1972. Continue reading...

Nation with Hans Christian Andersen-inspired football song is hoping for fairytale win against EnglandPeople dancing on buses is not something you see every day in Denmark. Rule-abiding Danes tend to keep their celebrations low-key – but not this summer.Football fans brought traffic to a standstill in Aarhus after Denmark beat the Czech Republic in the Euro 2020 quarter-finals and even scaled public transport to broadcast their euphoria and belt out another round of Re-sepp-ten – first a hit for Denmark’s national team at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. The anthem’s crowd-sourced lyrics are laden with Hans Christian Andersen imagery and feel particularly apt this year. Continue reading...

Parliament fails to renew law barring Arab citizens from extending citizenship rights to spousesThe Israeli parliament has voted down an extension to controversial legislation that bars Arab Israelis from extending residency or citizenship rights to Palestinian spouses, in an early blow to the country’s new coalition government.After a marathon all-night voting session that ended on Tuesday morning, the Knesset decided not to renew the law in a 59-59 vote. The outcome is widely seen as a stinging defeat for the prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who failed to unite the coalition’s disparate ideological wings in what he reportedly himself referred to as a “referendum” on the new government. Continue reading...

Workers and residents exposed to dangerous levels of toxic dust in wake of 2019 fire, lawyers claimFrench and Paris authorities are facing further legal action over worrying lead levels around Notre Dame Cathedral in the wake of the devastating fire two years ago.Lawyers for a branch of one of the country’s most powerful unions, which has joined forced with a health association and local residents, will submit a legal case on Tuesday for “endangering life … by persons unknown”. Continue reading...

Suspects aged 15-39 accused of attempting to make the explosive TATP in makeshift hostel laboratoryHong Kong’s national security police say they have arrested nine people on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activity after uncovering what they described as an attempt to make explosives and plant bombs across the city.According to police, the suspects were aged 15-39 and included six secondary school students, a teacher, an unemployed person and a management-level university employee. Continue reading...

The eight-hour journey provided plenty of time to snuggle up on the back seats - and it turned out this wasn’t just a holiday romanceA meet-cute on the Annapurna trail might sound like the premise for a romcom, but, at 19, I was thin-skinned, surly and hadn’t developed the knack of talking to girls my age. Besides, I wasn’t there for a holiday romance; I was in Nepal with my best friend, Sam, and his mother, in whose home I was living at the time.It says a lot about my state of mind back then that I deemed a bumper quiz book essential for a walking holiday in Nepal. After two solid performances, my Cambridge college was through to the quarter-finals of University Challenge, and bringing the book was a sign that I was finally taking it seriously. Continue reading...

Gladys Berejiklian will announce on Wednesday if greater Sydney lockdown will continue beyond Friday night

Larry Rudolph wishes Spears ‘all the health and happiness in the world’ as singer’s future remains uncertain amid conservatorship battleBritney Spears’s manager Larry Rudolph, who has managed the singer since her mid-90s breakthrough, has resigned and said the singer possibly intends to retire.In a letter sent to Spears’ conservators, father Jamie Spears and Jodi Montgomery, and first reported by Deadline, he wrote: Continue reading...

NSW flags lockdown announcement on Wednesday; police investigate Cairns hotel quarantine escapee; Australian Grand Prix cancelled

Covid pandemic means only a limited number of VIPs will be allowed in 68,000-seat stadium

Man charged with assault and obstructing police after incident involving chief medical officerA second man has been charged with common assault and obstructing police after England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, was accosted in a central London park, the Metropolitan police said.Jonathan Chew, 24, of no fixed address, was charged on Monday and will appear at Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday. Continue reading...

You’ve seen the film, now read the director’s own novelisation. And it turns out that his way with words is infectious and funQuentin Tarantino’s most recent film, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, seemed to split audiences along generational lines. Despite its charms and Tarantino’s customary flair, I came out of it frustrated and a bit bored, wondering if it was finally time to divorce this film-maker who’d shaped the sense of cinematic possibility of anyone who grew up in the 1990s. Tarantino’s essential shallowness, which in the past he has alchemised as aesthetic vitality, and his adolescent moral outlook had come to seem dismayingly inflexible: I didn’t feel he could surprise me any more. But everyone a couple of decades older than me, who remembered the late 1960s televisual and cinematic golden-age Hollywood so lovingly elegised, seemed to adore the film.Now Tarantino has surprised us all by turning his hand to writing books, beginning with this novelisation. It’s far better than I expected it to be. Anyone who admired the movie will have a great time with this spin-off work. Interestingly, it is not a straightforward translation of the events in the film. The two versions of Rick and Cliff’s story do share a number of scenes, but even those are altered and lengthened and there numerous new scenes and characters, some of them real-life figures (Steve McQueen has a cameo). Continue reading...

Unseen is an ongoing series of polaroids taken during the past 15 months of pandemic and lockdowns in London. Using household cleaning products, photographer Nicola Muirhead ‘disinfected’ each image to metaphorically reveal this unseen virus in her pictures Continue reading...

Liverpool MP and family questioned by officers as Scottish supporters celebrated Euro 2020 match nearbyKim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, has accused the Metropolitan police of institutional racism after she and her family were stopped by officers in central London last month.Johnson, who became Liverpool’s first black MP when she was elected in 2019, said they had arrived in Covent Garden near the end of the England v Scotland Euro 2020 match when they found themselves surrounded by police officers. Continue reading...

NSW Health agrees to request for St Joseph’s College Year 12s to access Covid vaccine as many boarders are from Indigenous or remote communities

Just a few footsteps separate bed and bathroom in an unusual rental that appeared on CraigslistBeing single can be tough. But should you be so despondent about your lack of a partner that you can barely make it from the bed to the bathroom, one Vancouver apartment might be the answer.An ad for a “micro studio” posted on Craigslist this month described the apartment – which includes new flooring, a window and a single bed, but does not include a kitchen – as “ideal for a single individual looking to live downtown at an affordable rate, and who does not need much space”. Continue reading...

Canberra says allegation Australia is ‘working in the shadows’ to sabotage emergency use of Chinese vaccines in Papua New Guinea ‘absolutely not’ true

Caffeine makes us more energetic, efficient and faster. But we have become so dependent that we need it just to get to our baselineAfter years of starting the day with a tall morning coffee, followed by several glasses of green tea at intervals, and the occasional cappuccino after lunch, I quit caffeine, cold turkey. It was not something that I particularly wanted to do, but I had come to the reluctant conclusion that the story I was writing demanded it. Several of the experts I was interviewing had suggested that I really couldn’t understand the role of caffeine in my life – its invisible yet pervasive power – without getting off it and then, presumably, getting back on. Roland Griffiths, one of the world’s leading researchers of mood-altering drugs, and the man most responsible for getting the diagnosis of “caffeine withdrawal” included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, told me he hadn’t begun to understand his own relationship with caffeine until he stopped using it and conducted a series of self-experiments. He urged me to do the same.For most of us, to be caffeinated to one degree or another has simply become baseline human consciousness. Something like 90% of humans ingest caffeine regularly, making it the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world, and the only one we routinely give to children (commonly in the form of fizzy drinks). Few of us even think of it as a drug, much less our daily use of it as an addiction. It’s so pervasive that it’s easy to overlook the fact that to be caffeinated is not baseline consciousness but, in fact, an altered state. It just happens to be a state that virtually all of us share, rendering it invisible. Continue reading...

Justice in England and Wales is on its knees, with huge court delays adding to the suffering of crime victims and grieving familiesJustice is grinding to a halt. The handcuff-rattling home secretary, Priti Patel, likes announcing draconian new sentences – but without adequate police, prisons and, above all, law courts to hear cases, her bombast is empty.Justice delayed is justice denied when a four-year-old alleged victim of sexual abuse has to wait so long – purely for lack of court time – that they could be aged eight before their case reaches court. What will they remember? The defence can make a reasonable argument to the jury that after so long, such a young child’s memory will be unreliable. That’s not exceptional, just one case I have come across while interviewing solicitors. Continue reading...

Our night in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh was hot, satisfying and as cheery as you could ever hope forA couple of years ago, before the world shut down, the Guardian sent me to the Edinburgh festival to write a piece on all of the nude shows taking place that year (there was a record number). This is the type of extremely fun commission that journalists dream of, and this particular piece resulted in me being on the cover of G2, smiling, with the strapline: “Fifteen naked people, and that was just Monday!”It was a work trip that was as much fun socially as it was professionally. The weather was glorious, for the most part, and the atmosphere buoyant. A few people I knew were also there for the festival, and I had time to see them. In particular, a woman I had known tangentially a decade ago, when we both lived in Oxford. At the time, we were both sleeping with men. I was at a college of further education; she was studying at drama school. She was fun and smart and free-spirited, but our paths only crossed at parties. I couldn’t in all certainty tell you if we’d ever had a sober conversation – but I am pretty sure we had kissed a lot of the same guys. Continue reading...

Fighters prepare to face paramilitaries from Amhara following withdrawal of federal troops from regionInsurgent forces in Tigray are mobilising for new conflict against militia from a neighbouring province in Ethiopia, with thousands of new volunteers joining their ranks after federal forces withdrew following more than eight months of war.Ethiopian federal forces declared a unilateral ceasefire and pulled out of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray province, as well as dozens of other towns eight days ago. Continue reading...

Largely spared an outbreak earlier in the pandemic, the Pacific nation is now grappling with a rising caseload, and a shrinking economyFor most of the pandemic, when Fijians tuned in each night to updates from the country’s health experts, they were greeted with the same message: the nation had reported zero, or one or two cases that day.While most countries around the world grappled with surging Covid cases and overwhelmed health systems, Fiji – a country of about 900,000 people in the south Pacific, about a four-hour flight from Australia – was largely spared a widespread outbreak. Like many countries in the Pacific, the impact of Covid on Fiji was chiefly economic, as tourism-dependent economies contracted, but there were few deaths. Continue reading...

Animal was seized after appearing on TikTok before prime minister Hun Sen stepped inA defanged and declawed lion that was kept in an upmarket neighbourhood of the Cambodian capital has been returned to its owner after the unlikely intervention of prime minister Hun Sen.The 18-month-old cub, weighing 70 kilograms (154 pounds), had been imported from overseas, officials said. It was raised by its owner, a Chinese national, who named it Hima. Continue reading...

Louisa Wall’s comments mark a relatively rare departure from the government’s usually cautious statementsA member of New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s Labour party has denounced alleged human rights abuses by China, including illegal organ harvesting, saying Beijing has no regard for human rights.The comments by MP Louisa Wall mark a relatively rare departure from the government’s typically cautious statements on alleged human rights violations in China. Continue reading...

Prime minister’s announcement that most coronavirus rules will be scrapped is dissected by the pressBoris Johnson’s announcement that most coronavirus restrictions will be lifted from 19 July – while acknowledging that new cases could reach 50,000 a day before then – dominates today’s front pages.The Guardian’s top story, under the headline “Johnson sweeps away lockdown restrictions in Covid-19 gamble”, focuses on the PM raising the possibility of reintroducing restrictions in the autumn, warning the public not to go “de-mob happy” and saying “we will be helped by the arrival of summer and by the school holidays”. Continue reading...

NSW union says the best way to ensure protection for children is to vaccinate their teachers

The failures in maternity care that have been unearthed at hospital trusts around the country over past few years

More cases reported in Africa over last week than at any other point in pandemic; Bangladesh reports record new cases as lockdown extended

More than 500 staff at Royal North Shore hospital, and more than 120 staff at Fairfield hospital, are now isolating and unable to work

Borders bill will allow for charges against migrants ‘knowingly’ arriving in UK without permissionMinisters are to reveal proposals for a suite of new laws paving the way for offshore centres for asylum seekers and criminal charges for migrants “knowingly” arriving in the UK without permission.The nationality and borders bill, formerly known as the sovereign borders bill, has been described by the Home Office as containing “the most radical changes to the broken asylum system in decades” making it harder for those who enter illegally to stay in the UK. Continue reading...

The New York-born film-maker worked on hits ranging from The Twilight Zone to Lethal WeaponRichard Donner, the prolific Hollywood director and producer who helmed some of the biggest hit films of the 1970s and 80s including Superman and The Goonies, has died aged 91.Donner died on Monday, his wife, the film producer Lauren Shuler Donner, told Deadline. Continue reading...

If it becomes law, residing on land without permission would be a criminal offence, threatening a way of life for communities across the UK“I am worried that not everyone knows what is coming,” says Amy, sitting in the truck she has turned into a cosy home for her and her two children. “If this bill is passed it will mean the end of our culture. The end of our way of life.”Amy, who wanted to be known by her first name, lives with her two sons on a small Travellers’ site down a quiet country lane in the west of England, along the edges of an ancient forest. Continue reading...