DUP tells newly appointed Stormont leader he is expected to stand down when party chooses new leadershipNewly appointed Stormont first minister Paul Givan has been told he will be expected to resign as part of the DUP leadership transition.Party officers do not want to see Givan leave his post as joint head of the devolved executive before the next leader is in place and ready to appoint a successor. Continue reading...
Three main rivals congratulate candidate whose election is likely to unlock talks on reviving nuclear dealEbrahim Raisi, the hardline head of Iran’s judiciary, has been hailed the country’s new president after his three main rivals congratulated him on his victory and preliminary results showed he had secured 17.8m votes, a huge 14.5m more than his nearest rival.With 90% of the votes counted, Iranian officials said 28.6 million people had cast their ballots. More than 41 million did so in 2017. Continue reading...
Sea of rainbow flags in the capital as campaigners warn against rising tide of homophobiaThousands marched through central Warsaw on Saturday in an “equality parade”, amid what campaigners say has been a rising tide of homophobia in Poland in recent years.LGBT rights have become a central part of a wider struggle in the country between liberals, who stress the need for a more tolerant and inclusive society, and religious conservatives, who denounce what they say is an attempt to subvert traditional values in the predominantly Catholic nation. Continue reading...
Passerby who recognised signs of stroke thought to be a blond-haired health worker from OceaniaA woman whose husband collapsed outside a central London coffee shop after suffering a stroke is now hoping to find the “guardian angel” who saved his life.Mathew O’Toole, 47, was working in London when he collapsed outside Ole & Steen on Wigmore Street at about 8.30am on 10 June. Continue reading...
The hardline head of the Iranian judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, has been congratulated by his three main rivals on his victory in the country's presidential election after preliminary results showed he had secured 17.8m votes, a huge 14.5m more than his nearest rival
Resurgence of virus in west Africa infected 16 people and killed 12 since outbreak in FebruaryAn Ebola outbreak in Guinea that started in February, infecting 16 people and killing 12, has been declared over, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.Health authorities were able to move swiftly to tackle the resurgence of the virus, which causes severe bleeding and organ failure and is spread through contact with body fluids, after lessons learned from previous outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Continue reading...
Kilt-wearing fans helped tidy up Leicester Square, where many gathered to cheer on Scottish teamScottish football fans who had descended on the British capital were photographed helping to clear the streets of London before Friday night’s much-anticipated Euro 2020 game between Scotland and England at Wembley stadium.Fans wearing kilts and draped in Scotland flags were seen picking up rubbish in Leicester Square, where many had gathered to celebrate and cheer on the Scottish team before the fixture, which ended in a scoreless draw. Continue reading...
John Stevens reveals he questioned the prince as a witness in 2005 about a note his then wife had writtenThe former Metropolitan police chief John Stevens has disclosed that he questioned Prince Charles over allegations that he had plotted to kill Diana, Princess of Wales.Charles was interviewed as a witness in 2005, during a three-year investigation into Diana’s death in a Paris car crash in 1997, the Daily Mail reported. Continue reading...
More showers expected in south of England, northern Scotland and Northern Ireland but rest of UK expected to be largely dryFlood warnings are in place across England this weekend after parts of the south-east endured a month’s worth of rainfall in 24 hours.The Met Office has forecast outbreaks of rain to hit the south late on Saturday afternoon into Saturday night. The Environment Agency has issued 39 flood alerts in London and surrounding areas, Kent, parts of the home counties, the West Midlands and Wiltshire. Continue reading...
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair for being Soviet spies, but their sons have spent decades trying to clear their mother’s name. Are they close to a breakthrough?“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs…… ” So goes the opening sentence of Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar, referring to the Jewish American couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and sent to the electric chair exactly 68 years ago today. Their execution casts a morbid shadow over Plath’s book, just as it did over the United States, and it is seen by many as the nadir of America’s engagement with the cold war. The Rosenbergs are still the only Americans ever put to death in peacetime for espionage, and Ethel is the only American woman killed by the US government for a crime other than murder.During their trial, Ethel in particular was vilified for prioritising communism over her children, and the prosecution insisted she had been the dominant half of the couple, purely because she was three years older. “She was the mastermind of this whole conspiracy,” assistant prosecutor Roy Cohn told the judge. But questions about whether she was guilty at all have been growing louder in recent years, and a new biography presents her in a different light. “Ethel was killed for being a wife. She was guilty of supporting her husband,” Anne Sebba, author of Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy, tells me. And for that, the 37-year-old mother of two young children had five massive jolts of electricity pumped through her body. Her death was so brutal that eyewitnesses reported that smoke rose out of her head. Continue reading...
Newspaper staff gather outside court ahead of appearance of editor-in-chief Ryan Law and chief executive Cheung Kim-hungTwo executives from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily have appeared in court, charged with collusion after authorities deployed a sweeping national security law to target the newspaper critical of Beijing.Editor-in-chief Ryan Law and chief executive Cheung Kim-hung are accused of colluding with foreign forces to undermine China’s national security over a series of articles that police said called for international sanctions. Continue reading...
Acting prime minister says ‘if other people have agendas that is a matter for them’ as speculation Barnaby Joyce is lining up for top jobAs leadership speculation erupts once again in his party, the Nationals leader Michael McCormack says he is going about his business in an orderly fashion “but if other people have agendas, that’s a matter for them”.The junior Coalition partner has convulsed this week about climate change policy, with McCormack and the resources minister, Keith Pitt, publicly warning prime minister Scott Morrison against pushing forward with any concrete commitment on net zero emissions by 2050. Continue reading...
The storm struck the suburb of Papatoetoe, causing extensive damage to homesOne person has died and two people have been injured after a suspected tornado hit a shipping container site in the New Zealand city of Auckland on Saturday morning.Fire crews were also attending about 100 calls after the tornado ripped through the suburb of Papatoetoe, bringing down trees, tearing off roofs and smashing windows, Stuff reported. Continue reading...
Understanding the connection between humans, animals and the environment is key to planning for future pandemics, experts warnIn late 2019, Kirby Institute virologist Prof Stuart Turville was looking for another job.“The funding rates were too low to survive,” he says. Continue reading...
Michael McCormack has a few things to say about nibbling mice, coffee drinkers and inner-city activistsIt’s always an interesting ride when Michael McCormack serves as acting prime minister.The last time the Nationals leader stepped into the role was January, when Scott Morrison took a quick holiday. Continue reading...
Aggrieved tenants forced to pay fees as real estate agents outsource rent collecting feel little choice but to pay upWhen Max* moved into a new rental property in Queensland earlier this year, one of his first questions, naturally, was how to pay the rent.So he called his new real estate agency, Harcourts Chermside, a Brisbane firm which boasts of its “high ideals and standards”. The agent sent Max an email explaining that a third-party company called RentPay was its “primary and preferred” method of collecting rent. Continue reading...
One firm’s attempt to regain control of illegal cultivation shows Wellington’s lack of leverage over its largest trade partnerIt is the story of a global superpower, a smuggling operation, pestilence and a small hairy fruit.Ubiquitous on supermarket shelves and in lunchboxes, the humble kiwi is New Zealand’s most valuable horticultural export. Recent battles for control of the fruit, however, have shone a light on tensions in New Zealand’s relationship with China. Continue reading...
Clearly the death of Liberal England has been prematurely foretold, but more will be needed to turn a stunning byelection win into a successful revivalIt is often hard to try to derive a national message from a single byelection. The effect on party morale usually dwarfs that felt on government policy. The election of Liberal Democrat Sarah Green as the MP for Chesham and Amersham, a commuter-belt seat north-west of London, stuns on both counts. The result will make Conservative MPs in relatively liberal and educated constituencies very jumpy. But it will also slow the progress of Boris Johnson’s planning reforms. Voters in bucolic Buckinghamshire plainly feared that these would make it easier for developers to concrete over the countryside.What the result shows is that the Liberal Democrat cause is not a hopeless one. With just 11 parliamentarians and languishing at 7% in national polls, Sir Ed Davey appeared to be taking his depleted ranks and marching them towards the sound of gunfire. Chesham and Amersham has been held by the Conservatives since its creation in 1974. Yet Ms Green overturned a 16,000-strong Tory majority to take the seat by just over 8,000 votes, a swing of 25%, and upset the odds. The energy of the Tories’ vaccine bounce seems dissipated. Clearly the death of Liberal England has been prematurely foretold. Continue reading...
Georgia Laurie gives interview about attack that left her sister Melissa recovering in hospitalA British woman has described beating a crocodile on its snout while it grabbed her other hand as she fought to save her twin sister from the reptile.Georgia Laurie, 28, said she feared her sister, Melissa, was dead when she saw the crocodile drag her underwater after they went for a swim in a lagoon in Mexico. Continue reading...
NSW premier has started dating leading Sydney lawyer Arthur Moses SC who last year represented her at an Icac hearing into her ex-loverThe NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has begun dating a prominent barrister who represented her during an anti-corruption inquiry into her former lover, the disgraced ex-MP Daryl Maguire.The premier’s sister, Mary, posted a photo to Instagram on Friday night of Berejiklian and Arthur Moses SC with the caption: “After work Friday feels with these two … Glad and her boo.” Continue reading...
Witness Change, a project for the Open Society Foundation, photographed 1,000 people who left their homes for a new life, and found a common thread of humanity in the dreams that sustain them
Union’s former legal adviser throws weight behind fellow leftwinger and frontrunner Steve TurnerThe leftwinger Howard Beckett has pulled out of the race to succeed Len McCluskey as general secretary of the Unite union at the last minute to throw his weight behind the frontrunner Steve Turner.Beckett announced the decision on Friday as ballot papers were about to be printed. It followed failed talks earlier in the week to select a leftwing unity candidate to take on Gerard Coyne. Continue reading...
In One Thousand Dreams, award-winning photographer Robin Hammond hands the camera to refugees. Often reduced by the media’s toxic or well-meaning narratives, the portraits and interviews capture a different and more complex tale
The author of At Night All Blood Is Black discusses the unheard African voices of the first world war and the inspiration for his violent antiheroDavid Diop, the first French novelist and the first writer of African heritage to win the International Booker prize, along with his translator Anna Moschovakis, likes to seek out stories in historical gaps and missing narratives. He was struck by emotion when reading the letters of young French men fighting in the trenches of the first world war – shellshocked teenagers faced with the unmeasurable carnage of trench warfare, a sacrificed generation who often died before their letters reached home.The novelist, who was born in France but spent his childhood in Dakar, Senegal, after his French mother and Senegalese father met at university in Paris in the 1960s, was floored by the young soldiers’ “intimacy with war”. His novel, At Night All Blood Is Black, is a gripping, twisty account of industrial warfare, colonialism, violence, youth and friendship. It was a massive critical hit and bestseller in France, winning several prizes across Europe. After more than 100 years of first world war literature, in all forms and all languages, critics found something new in Diop’s modern take. It was “hypnotically compelling”, the Booker judges said. Continue reading...
by William Costa in Asunción, Uki Goñi in Buenos Ai on (#5K7N1)
Strained and underfunded health systems, economics and misinformation have all led to a surge in deathsThe cold, tired and desperate relatives camped outside the Barrio Obrero general hospital in Asunción don’t need charts or datasets to confirm what they can see with their own eyes.As Paraguay records the world’s highest daily proportion of Covid deaths, the huddled families wait for news of their loved ones – and for the sudden requests for medicine and supplies that the country’s chronically underfunded health system cannot provide. Continue reading...
ACT magistrate Glenn Theakston says Witness K appeared to be motivated by justice rather than personal gainWitness K has been spared jail time for his role in exposing Australia’s 2004 bugging of Timor-Leste with a Canberra court finding he appeared to be motivated by justice not personal gain.The former Australian Secret Intelligence Service officer stood behind a wall of black panels, invisible to the packed courtroom, as he was sentenced on Friday to a three-month suspended term of imprisonment and a 12-month good behaviour order. Continue reading...
Coalition of rights groups demanding Frontex be defunded claim EU policies have ‘killed over 40,555 people since 1993’Activists, captains of rescue ships and about 80 human rights organisations across the world have launched an international campaign calling for the European border agency to be defunded and dismantled.In an open letter sent last week to the European Commission, the Council of the EU and the European parliament, the campaign coalition highlighted the “illegal and inhumane practices” of the EU border agency, Frontex, which is accused of having promoted and enforced violent policies against migrants. Continue reading...
Brittany resident Xavier Bouget, 80, has a constant companion in his rescue pigeon, BlanchonWhen 80-year-old Xavier Bouget goes for a ride on his bicycle, a majestic white pigeon rides on his hat. When he tinkers in his workshop, she pecks at the drill bits and nails. And when he waters his garden, she observes from his shoulder.Bouget, a retiree from the north-west French region of Brittany, befriended the bird, who he named Blanchon, when it was a chick and now it tags along with him everywhere, sitting on his shoulder or walking along beside him. Continue reading...
Animal ‘exterminated’ after it bounded through the city, injuring four peopleHunters have shot and killed a brown bear in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo after it rampaged through the city, injuring four people, including a soldier.Authorities in Sapporo tweeted on Friday that the bear had been “exterminated”, with a local television station saying hunters had shot the bear. Continue reading...
by Helen Davidson in Taipei, and agencies on (#5K7F4)
Public outpouring of support for tabloid after raid on offices by national security policeHongkongers queued at city news stands before dawn on Friday to buy the latest edition of the Apple Daily newspaper, a day after national security police arrested its editor-in-chief and four other directors.On Thursday morning hundreds of officers from the Hong Kong police national security department raided the homes of the employees, including editor-in-chef Ryan Law, and the Apple Daily newsroom for the second time in less than a year. It froze millions of dollars in company assets. Continue reading...
Industry body says analysis of HMRC data shows structural rather than teething problems with BrexitBritish food and drink exports to the EU fell by £2bn in the first three months of 2021, with sales of dairy products plummeting by 90%, according to an analysis of HMRC data.Brexit checks, stockpiling and Covid have been blamed for much of the downturn, but the sector has said the figures show structural rather than teething problems with the UK’s departure from the EU. Continue reading...
by Jamie Jackson at the Johan Cruijff Arena on (#5K74T)
The Netherlands are into the last 16 via the kind of solid display that is just fine during a tournament’s group stage. Frank de Boer entered Euro 2020 much maligned for his deployment of a 3-5-2, scepticism that was hardly eased by a wobbly opening victory. Yet following a win built on the rock-solid Matthijs de Ligt in defence, De Boer’s men have given him the best riposte: six points from six, which also means that players can be rested when North Macedonia visit on Monday.Temperatures in the high 20s made this a sultry evening for a contest in which De Ligt’s return from injury was key. De Boer’s system suddenly appeared rounded, the Juventus man’s ability to sense danger and kill it pulling the standard of the rearguard up towards the convincing quality of the Netherlands in attack. Continue reading...
Working party at Churchill College disbands after dispute over event about British PM and racismChurchill College has halted a critical examination of its founder, Winston Churchill, by abruptly ending the role of a working party set up last year in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.Initially intended as a year-long programme called “Churchill, race and empire”, the Cambridge college has ended the effort after a dispute between the college’s leadership and the working party, whose members had been planning a mass resignation over what it called interference in a planned event. Continue reading...
Guardian Australia FOI shows federal government ‘revising history’ by claiming earlier versions existed, experts sayExperts have accused the federal government of “revising history” by describing the current national Covid aged care plan as the “7th edition” when no prior editions of the document exist.The aged care royal commission in October 2020 criticised the Coalition for failing to establish a dedicated plan on how to deal with the virus in aged care and recommended it take “immediate action” to “publish a national aged care plan for Covid-19”. Continue reading...
Readers J Gwynfryn Jones, Bill Bradbury and Tom Challenor are not surprised by the finding of institutional corruption against the Met. Mary Pimm and Nik Wood think it’s time for a duty of candour on public bodiesSo, an independent inquiry set up to review the murder of the private detective Daniel Morgan has found that the Metropolitan police were “institutionally corrupt” and that the Met commissioner held up the inquiry’s work (Daniel Morgan murder report: six critical findings in focus, 15 June). Our home secretary has let it be known that she has full confidence in the Met commissioner. Who was it who said that a corrupt government needs a corrupt police force?
The French singer says radiation has left her in immense pain, and fears a natural death would bring ‘even more physical suffering’Françoise Hardy, the French pop songwriter who found fame in the 60s yé-yé movement, has said she feels “close to the end” of her life in a new interview.Hardy, 77, told Femme Actuelle that in 2018 she was diagnosed with a tumour in her ear. It followed her diagnosis with lymphatic cancer in the mid-2000s, and a hospitalisation in 2015 that led to her being placed in an induced coma. Her life was saved when doctors administered a novel form of radiation. Continue reading...
by Nazia Parveen Community affairs corespondent on (#5K6BA)
Report into May 2017 tragedy says there were missed opportunities to prevent or minimise ‘devastating impact’ of Salman Abedi’s attackThe Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi should have been identified as a security threat on the night of the attack, a public inquiry has found.Sir John Saunders, chair of the inquiry, found there were “serious shortcomings” and a number of missed opportunities by those in charge of security to prevent the May 2017 attack. Saunders said he considered it likely Abedi would still have detonated his device if confronted, “but the loss of life and injury is highly likely to have been less”. The attack killed 22 people and injured hundreds more. Continue reading...
The singer-songwriter recalls the life-changing joy of playing in an orchestra, the beauty of her first braids and being empowered by EternalThe first orchestra I played in was Birmingham School, a concert orchestra. The first time I played in a symphony orchestra was this powerful, life-changing experience, like the first time I took a plane – you know, when the engine kicks in and you’re about to take off? Playing with the brass section behind us and full woodwind, I was blown away by the magnitude of the sound. Continue reading...
The resort of Saint-Valery on the Bay of the Somme normally sees thousands of British and Belgian visitors, but this year its restaurants and hotels are half-emptyWith the approach of the summer holidays, the two French seaside towns of Saint-Valery-sur-Somme and Le Crotoy would normally be gearing up for the annual wave of tourists from neighbouring Belgium and, above all, from the UK.The resorts sit opposite each other across the majestic Bay of the Somme, a wetland of shifting sands and tides where the tranquil river suddenly expands into a spectacular estuary opening up into the Channel. The bay is a popular stop-off for British travellers heading to Paris and the south of France, as well as a place of pilgrimage for its war memorials, museums, cemeteries and battle sites. Continue reading...
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