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Failure to maintain Covid support measures will push firms into bankruptcy, says Labour

Website crashes and queues form outside pharmacies as certificates become available for travel

UK has ordered 60m doses of vaccine that is also critical part of effort to vaccinate developing world

From his breakthrough in Deliverance to a memorable turn in Toy Story 3, the authenticity of Beatty’s middleman gone bad made him the perfect co-star – and often stole the show

Picasso was so enthralled by African art, he used it to start a revolution. But did it give rise to a fantasy of Africa that still endures? British-Nigerian artist Shonibare tells us why he’s revisiting that seismic momentIn 1998, in a hilarious work called Diary of a Victorian Dandy, Yinka Shonibare inserted himself, impeccably attired, into the sitting rooms, drawing rooms, billiards rooms and bedrooms of high society Victorian Britain, invariably causing a sensation in each of the perfectly mocked-up photographs. The work mimics William Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress, but instead of ending up in Bedlam, like Hogarth’s protagonist, Shonibare the Dandy triumphs over white society at everything from financial dealing to fine conversation. It all climaxes with him having a great time in a brothel with no apparent guilt or punishment. Well, it was the 1990s – and Shonibare was a bona fide Young British Artist. Also, he says with a laugh, “Hogarth was the first YBA.”Shonibare has played plenty of games with art and history since, including refitting a model of HMS Victory – that most British of all vessels, the flagship of the Battle of Trafalgar – with sails of (supposedly) African batik fabric and sticking it in a giant bottle. But now the British-Nigerian artist is turning his attention to the birth of modern art in Picasso’s Paris. Not many artists come away from an encounter with Pablo looking good. A 2012 Tate exhibition about the Spaniard and modern British art left Henry Moore and Francis Bacon looking very small indeed. But Shonibare engages with the old Minotaur in a relaxed, funny yet profoundly insightful way. Continue reading...

Standoff between DUP and Sinn Féin blocking ratification of Arlene Foster’s designated successorA dispute between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) over an Irish-language act is threatening to derail the Northern Ireland assembly and executive.Arlene Foster was due to resign as first minister at 1pm on Monday but a standoff between the two biggest parties at Stormont is blocking her designated successor, Paul Givan, 39, from taking the post. Continue reading...

Helen, 47, and Ray, 49, met in 1999 when she interviewed his band for a magazine. They got together in 2001 and now live in Staffordshire with their two sonsHelen landed her dream job at the end of the 1990s, working as a writer for Total Guitar magazine. She was living in Bath, travelling across the country for gigs whenever she got the chance. In May 1999, she went to Reading to interview the band Witness, who were supporting Hurricane #1, and met the lead guitarist, Ray. “The band were so friendly and down to earth,” she remembers. “I met a lot of musicians who were egotistical, but Ray wasn’t like that.”Witness had been working on their first album in Bristol, where Ray was based at the time. “We’d done a few interviews, but that one felt like a big deal,” he says. “We were worried about what to say and I thought she might ask lots of technical guitar questions that I didn’t know how to answer.” But the interview went “really well” and he was taken with Helen. “She caught my eye and I thought: ‘She’s nice.’” Continue reading...

The Chicago rapper’s last album spent 47 weeks in the UK chart, testament to the power of his raw, introspective tracks. He discusses his journey out of crime and drug use towards being one of rap’s biggest stars“Every day a battle, I’m exhausted and I’m weary / Make sure I smile in public, when alone, my eyes teary / I fought through it all, but that shit hurt me severely.” Even acknowledging the widespread vulnerability and emotional honesty in today’s rap scene, these are still startling lyrics for a US No 1 hit. They’re written by 22-year-old Chicago rapper Polo G, and taken from Rapstar, the lead single on his new album, Hall of Fame. The track also reached No 3 in the UK in April, and his previous album The GOAT has spent 47 weeks on the UK album chart, with his brand of mournful melodic rap perhaps particularly appealing during the introspection of lockdown. A candid but tense meeting with him shows the reality of those lyrics.His recent success means his schedule is filling to the point where our video call gets repeatedly pushed back due to flights and late-night chatshow recordings. When it does happen, the camera shows the ceiling of a car as he is driven to the bank. The disorienting whirl of album promo is taking its toll. “It’s kind of stressful: the constant ‘we need you to do this’,” he says. “But it’s just a matter of me getting back into the loop of the world opening back up.” Continue reading...

Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays James Brooke, a British adventurer who became the White Rajah of Sarawak, in a film that fails to probe the complexity of its fascinating subjectWhile the name James Brooke might seem obscure to many viewers, his exploits in south-east Asia, retold here in Michael Haussman’s adventure biopic, are not so foreign. After all, they inspired Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. Brooke’s stranger-than-fiction journey from ex-soldier in the Bengal army to becoming the White Rajah of Sarawak, which once attracted the attention of Errol Flynn, is especially ripe for the silver screen. Alas, Edge of the World fails to do justice to this fascinating and deeply complex chapter in British colonial history.The film begins with Brooke (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) arriving in picturesque Sarawak via boat, along with his cousin Arthur (Dominic Monaghan) and nephew Charley (Otto Farrant), both army men. Their presence is immediately met with suspicion and hostility from the local aristocrats, especially Prince Mahkota (Bront Palarae). Brooke’s courageous efforts during a pirates’ siege, however, lead to his being crowned Rajah, much to the dismay of Mahkota. As Brooke strives to establish the domain as a sovereign nation, his reign faces Mahkota’s bloody attacks, not to mention criminal charges from the British empire. Continue reading...

The immigration minister, Alex Hawke, is set to announce the Murugappan family will be released from detention on Christmas Island

Facebook messages from the Italian student killed in Cairo in 2016 show his concerns about studying in the countryThe Facebook messages written by the Cambridge student Giulio Regeni in the weeks leading up to his murder give the lie to any notion he was a spy or political agitator.Even before he left England, Regeni was concerned about the risks he might face doing his thesis on trade unions in Egypt, a sensitive subject in the country. Continue reading...

Our photographer looks back on three days of politics and demonstrations during the summit in Carbis BayWith more than 6,000 police deployed to Cornwall for the G7 summit in Carbis Bay, there were surreal sights everywhere: armed officers on residential streets, snipers on rooftops, marine units in St Ives harbour and battleships in the sea. Many residents revelled in the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the action as world leaders and diplomats were convoyed into Carbis Bay, while others objected to the draconian restrictions which included a so-called “ring of steel” around the neighbourhood. Continue reading...

Two new cases are children who were in isolation as authorities say lower numbers are proof that restrictions ‘are working’. This blog is now closed.

The latest satire-fable from Elia Suleiman is as droll as ever, but while there’s a kernel of seriousness here it too often lapses into elusive mannerismThe Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman, dishevelled yet dapper at all times and never without his hat, saunters across continents in this new movie, fixing the amusingly surreal tableau scenes he comes across with a mildly perplexed gaze. He doesn’t talk and smiles just once, when a tiny little bird (a digital creation) flies into his hotel room and drinks water from a cup while is working at his laptop. Suleiman is the holy fool who is no fool.The premise for this film that he is playing himself: travelling abroad from Nazareth, coming first to Paris and then to New York, trying to speak to producers about getting his latest film made. (In real life, he must surely be more diplomatic and persuasive than his alter ego here, the Suleiman who maintains an enigmatically satirical silence in the face of one producer’s obtuse idiocy.) Everywhere he looks, often in eerily deserted streets – surely Suleiman was shooting on very early summer mornings – he finds scenes of choreographed absurdism, gently but pointedly ridiculing the pomposity of uniformed officialdom. The title itself sounds like some lost Talking Heads track describing a place where things happen in a dream. Continue reading...

Round-the-clock tracking condemned as ‘Trojan horse’ giving government vast surveillance powers that violate human rightsMore than 40 human rights organisations have condemned the Home Office’s introduction of 24-hour GPS monitoring of people on immigration bail in an expansion of surveillance powers that has involved no consultation process or parliamentary debate.The new policy marks a shift from using radio frequency monitors (which alert authorities if the wearer leaves an assigned area) to round-the-clock GPS trackers (which track a person’s every move), while also giving the Home Office new powers to collect, store and access this data indefinitely via a private contractor. Continue reading...

Withdrawal from long-term partnership catastrophic, says Brac, affecting women and girls’ education and those in extreme povertyThe UK government’s funding cuts to the world’s largest international non-governmental organisation are a “gut punch” after a successful 10-year £450m partnership, according to a director.Asif Saleh, executive director of Brac Bangladesh, said the cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of girls without an education, millions of women and girls without access to family planning and hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty without support. Continue reading...

Prolific supporting actor also appeared in All the President’s Men, Nashville, The Big Easy and Hear My SongNed Beatty, the Oscar-nominated character actor who in half a century of American movies, including Deliverance, Network and Superman, was a booming, indelible presence in even the smallest parts, has died. He was 83.Beatty’s manager, Deborah Miller, said Beatty died on Sunday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by friends and loved ones. Continue reading...

Ocean plastic has become a route for invasive species that threaten native animals with extinction, with Japan’s tsunami sending nearly 300 species ‘rafting’ across the PacificJapan’s 2011 tsunami was catastrophic, killing nearly 16,000 people, destroying homes and infrastructure, and sweeping an estimated 5m tons of debris out to sea.That debris did not disappear, however. Some of it drifted all the way across the Pacific, reaching the shores of Hawaii, Alaska and California – and with it came hitchhikers. Continue reading...

As a big summer of sport begins, Barney Ronay traces our reporting lineage back to giants such as Cardus and CLR JamesSport has been an indivisible part of the Guardian almost from day one. Six weeks after the paper was launched as a weekly in May 1821, its first sports report appeared: four paragraphs of horse racing, tucked away on page 3.“Races this week have been very numerously attended,” the un-bylined reporter noted, putting this down to “the comfortable circumstances of the labouring classes, which have enabled them spare time for attendance, and also to appear in better clothes”. Continue reading...

Decades of war and grinding poverty have forced more Afghans into risky double lives to surviveWhen Zainab met her first client almost two years ago, she was drunk, drugged-up, and had passed out by the time he started raping her. She had never touched alcohol before, but was told she’d be better off unconscious. Terrified, she reluctantly agreed.The man was gone when the then 18-year-old woke up; her body in pain, her thoughts filled with regret. Continue reading...

With inquiry due to publish report, family hope for answers amid allegations of official corruptionNearly 30 years ago, in May 1992, a young student wrote to his MP, Virginia Bottomley. “I am a man at the absolute end of my tether,” said the letter. “I have reached the end of my resources, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. Just over five years ago my younger brother Daniel was murdered … Since that day, my mother and I have spent almost every waking moment in a horrible and debilitating battle to expose the truth about why Daniel met such a horrible death.”That young man, Alastair Morgan, is still waiting for an answer as to why Daniel Morgan, a private detective, was found dead with an axe in the back of his head in the car park of a south London pub in 1987. The inquiry into the murder that has cost around £16m and taken eight years is due finally to publish its findings on Tuesday after earlier plans for publication were halted by the home secretary “for national security and duties under the Human Rights Act”. The panel’s report will run to 1,200 pages. Continue reading...

Côte d’Azur is among areas where French far-right leader seeks to make inroads in regional elections this month

As island faces new outbreak and mistrust of Chinese jabs, Beijing objects to donations from US and JapanVaccines are the latest flashpoint inflaming cross-strait tensions between China and Taiwan, as the latter tries to fend off its worst coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began with a mostly unvaccinated population and the former rails against outside assistance from Taipei’s allies.Global vaccination drives are widely seen as the only way out of the Covid-19 pandemic, but in Taiwan, just 3% of the population has received at least one dose. Now the island is battling hundreds of cases a day and does not have enough vaccines for its 23.5 million people. Continue reading...

The arrival of the MSC Orchestra has rekindled tensions over the pros and cons of the giant vesselsFrom his booth facing the gondola station at St Mark’s Square, the photographer Maurizio Torresan is as much a witness to the ebb and flow of Venice’s high tides as he is to its tourists.The last time he took a photo of a packed square was on 21 February 2020, two days before the annual Venice carnival was abruptly cut short as the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Continue reading...

Ministers have failed to fix hundreds of thousands of dangerous homes in four years since disaster, say campaigners

Apology is timed alongside 50-year anniversary of Polynesian Panther party, a movement founded to fight mistreatment of Pasifika peopleThe New Zealand government will officially apologise for racist raids on Pacific people that took place in the 1970s.On Monday the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the time had come to deliver an apology for the “dawn raids”, when officials would target people believed to have overstayed their visas purely on the basis of their ethnicity. Continue reading...

Move comes after Climate Commission recommended banning petrol and diesel cars by 2023The New Zealand government is introducing subsidies to make electric vehicles thousands of dollars cheaper and new petrol and diesel cars more expensive, as the country tries transition to an emissions-free fleet.The changes follow New Zealand’s Climate Commission recommendations which laid out sweeping changes required to get the country closer to its emissions targets. Continue reading...

Former leader faces raft of charges including that she improperly imported walkie-talkies and flouted coronavirus restrictionsThe trial of ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi will hear its first testimony in a junta court on Monday, more than four months after a military coup.Near daily protests have rocked Myanmar since the coup removed her government in February, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy. Continue reading...

Health experts emphasize need for even those who have had disease to get inoculatedNew cases of Covid-19 are declining across most of the US, even in some states with vaccine-hesitant populations.But almost all states where cases are rising have lower-than-average vaccination rates and experts warned on Sunday that relief from the coronavirus pandemic could be fleeting in regions where few people get inoculated. Continue reading...

Some summit spouses must have trust issues – why else would they turn up?It could be said that anyone who voluntarily attends their partner’s office party is either a masochist or has trust issues. So, why, then, do the spouses of world leaders feel obliged to turn up to global summits?Ordinarily, it appears that their only duty is to make small talk with their fellow spare parts while their other halves chew over the big issues of the day. At the G7 meeting in Cornwall this weekend, the Wags and Habs were also required to admire Boris Johnson’s latest child when he was rolled out before their beachfront BBQ. Continue reading...

Far-right former settler leader Naftali Bennett to be installed as prime minister

Analysis: an unseemly spat over Brexit derailed the UK prime minister’s chance to impress on the global stage

Brexit ministers always intended to ignore the agreement they signed and blame the EU for the consequences, argues Adrian Ward. Plus letters from Mike Pender, Steve Fildes, Chris Webster and Amin KassamIf you make an agreement with someone, you have to honour it (Boris Johnson to face pressure from EU on Northern Ireland, 12 June). If you unilaterally decide to change the terms, you have broken the agreement and the other party will not trust you to keep your word in future and may penalise you.But Boris Johnson and his ministers knew exactly what they were doing in December 2019 to “get Brexit done” and never had any intention of sticking to the agreement over Northern Ireland – get it signed, then just ignore it and blame the EU for all the repercussions. Johnson’s political playbook, page one.

Historians aim to document small labels, record shops, pirate radio stations and clubs that helped scene thriveChingford Sainsbury’s may be an unlikely setting for an encounter that helped capture a key part of British cultural history, but MC Navigator’s weekly shopping trip to his local supermarket would prove crucial.Navigator, one of the leading figures in the jungle and drum’n’bass scene in the 1990s, bumped into Uncle 22 – another important player – who had been under the radar for years and was picking up some bits with his mum. Continue reading...

Foreign secretary decries comments attributed to Emmanuel Macron over post-Brexit trade arrangements

Men who want to look good used to be disparaged and labelled vain. But times are finally changing…Until recently, male motivation for looking good or strong was often born from an inherent desire for us to feel and appear more successful, competitive, virile and powerful – what some now refer to as toxic masculinity.Of course, there have always been men who’ve enjoyed discussing clothes, watches, even grooming regimes but, for many, this open appreciation of what they wore was often merely a game of one-upmanship disguised as an appreciation of the finer things in life. Think of the 1980s and its bullish Wall Street status stamps, such as pinstripe suits and red braces (Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko); the scene in American Psycho where rival stockbrokers battle over business cards, like a game of Top Trumps. Or in the 1990s, when showing off got even easier and even off-duty symbols such as underwear, jeans and luggage were plastered with a riot of logos. Continue reading...

Rachel de Souza warns use of websites partly to blame for normalising abuse in schools in EnglandCurbs on children’s access to online pornography need to be brought in urgently to stop the spread of an activity that is partly to blame for normalising sexual harassment in schools, according to the new children’s commissioner for England.Dame Rachel de Souza is urging governments and tech companies to introduce age verification checks. She warned that access to hardcore pornography was shaping children’s expectations of relationships and was partly to blame for thousands of testimonies of sexual harassment by schoolchildren published on the Everyone’s Invited website over the last few months. Continue reading...

Only a handful of events will be staged this year as producers complain about ‘dithering’ by council and Scottish government

Student Owen Hurcum is ‘humbled’ to serve the oldest city in Wales, and aims to put Bangor’s peacocks on the mapWhen Owen Hurcum, a part-time archaeology master’s student at Bangor University, climbed to the stage to accept their position as the newly appointed mayor of Bangor, they felt “hugely humbled” to represent their community.What is even more unique about Hurcum, 23, is who they are: non-binary, queer and agender. They made history in this year’s local and mayoral election by becoming the first openly non-binary mayor of any city in the world. Continue reading...

Midfielder, 29, required urgent CPR on the pitch during match against Finland but is now stable

A fifth of EU-wide income disparity is down to the difference between countries, with those in the euro area faring worstEconomists generally study inequality – how big income gaps between households are – at the national level. That’s understandable given it’s where major policy choices tend to happen, but this can sideline other issues such as global inequality (income inequality between individuals around the world is traumatically high but encouragingly falling). Fascinating new research looks to fill another such gap: inequality trends across the EU.Unsurprisingly, EU-wide inequality is high – similar to that of Latvia, the third-most unequal EU member – but it’s lower than in the United States. Importantly, 20% of EU inequality is down to income gaps between rich and poor member states, while just 1% in the US relates to differences between the states. The importance of these gaps in determining overall inequality between individuals across the EU helps explain the most interesting finding of the research: EU inequality has declined post-financial crisis, but in the euro area inequality has been slightly increasing. Continue reading...

James Merlino details financial support on offer to people who have had property damaged in the floods and wild weatherThousands of Victorians remain without power, days after a deadly storm lashed eastern parts of the state.Emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp confirmed 39,000 homes remain without power on Sunday, down from 300,000 immediately after the storm, which began on Wednesday night. Continue reading...

It’s half a century since Sir Ian McKellen first played Hamlet. Now he’s starring as the Dane again – at 82. He talks about his extraordinary life, why he’ll never write his memoir – and his one lasting regretOh, birthdays,” Sir Ian McKellen growls, on the occasion of his 82nd. “At my age I don’t do birthdays.” The wider world has not yet been informed, however, and cheerful cards have come in stacks to McKellen’s London townhouse. Messages chime in on his computer and two landline phones ring on his desk, one after the other. “But, darling,” McKellen says, answering a call and interrupting a well-wisher mid flow, “I’m trying to avoid it all this year.” Guilt, he explains to me, later. He leads us through to a sitting room. “Actors don’t need this special attention, I’ve realised. We get cards and presents on first nights. Everyone makes a fuss of us. Birthdays are wonderful things for people who don’t get treated as special all year round.”McKellen throws himself down in a winged armchair and croaks out an epic smoker’s laugh, one of those laughs that begins in silence (mimed really) and soon becomes an extended hum in the back of the throat, then a wheezy bark. Devoted to his cigs, he will step out on to his riverside balcony whenever he needs one, staring out over the Thames while he puffs, pulling on a tweedy overcoat if it’s cold. Between times he sucks on Polo mints. One goes into McKellen’s cheek, now. The rest of the packet he leaves perched on his tummy in reach. “Where were we?” he asks. “Birthdays?” Continue reading...

Despite Covid restrictions, pubs are getting ready for supporters to see their team take on EnglandEd Thomas has never shown the European Championships in his bar, but this time he’s hung up the bunting and will watch his team play their first Euro 2020 opening match with muted glee.But who to support in today’s England v Croatia game, a “rematch” of the 2018 World Cup semi-final? For Thomas is half-Croatian and half-English. Continue reading...

With famous users leading a rebrand, pleasure accessories lose their stigma in a £90bn health and wellness boomLily Allen has one. Cara Delevingne has one. Dakota Johnson has developed her own range. Is the celebrity sex toy 2021’s answer to the celebrity perfume?For some, getting busy has been the last thing on the menu during the pandemic. Study after study, from India to Italy, has revealed that lockdown libido loss is real and that stress has killed the buzz in the bedroom. Sexual wellness, on the other hand, has reached a dizzying peak. Not only has the conversation around sexual pleasure changed for generation Z, but the industry attached to it – from apps to toys, herbal supplements to specialist oils – is also booming. Continue reading...

As a government civil servant, I was burnt out from working on Brexit and Covid and needed a change of scene. Trekking the length of Britain is just the tonicIt’s 7.30pm on 29 April and I’m standing alone on the highest hill in this part of Cornwall. The sun is bright and eager, dancing with dainty flashes on the waves west towards Newquay. But I’m wrapped in everything I have – two pairs of thick socks, leggings, trousers, T-shirt, two long-sleeved T-shirts, jumper, fleece, jacket, snood, hat – and still the wind reaches its long fingers down my neck to grip my spine. It is one degree above freezing; in less than a week it will snow on Dartmoor.In fact, this is more than a hill. This is Castle an Dinas, one of those iron age forts to which schoolchildren are taken to be underwhelmed by ditches and mounds. The dog walkers who came up earlier weren’t cowed by antiquity: each allowed their charges to mess, tongues wagging. Watching the deposits stirs in me something I was repressing. For the four days I’ve been on the road, public toilets have been there when needed. A threshold is about to be crossed. I’m going wild. Continue reading...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not the only great supreme court justice to have made her name with dissent in the name of progressThe late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent collar is a small part of a larger history. Unlike some other high courts, the US supreme court accepts strong dissent. Ginsburg stood in the tradition of John Marshall Harlan – the only justice with the courage, foresight, humanity and constitutional vision to object to the odious 1896 Plessy v Ferguson decision that approved racial segregation.Related: How the Word is Passed review: After Tulsa, other forgotten atrocities Continue reading...

The UK’s departure from the EU was supposed to reinvigorate our fishing industry. Instead, it has forced the country’s last distant-water trawler to sit idleAt 4am on 24 April 2019, 25 brass players, two percussionists and a conductor piled into a coach in Hull for a 200-mile drive to London. It was a Wednesday morning and it had been touch and go whether all of them would be able to get time off from their day jobs to make the trip. Seven hours later, they stood on the quayside at Greenwich, as Princess Anne swung a bottle of champagne at the looming yellow hull of the UK’s newest and biggest whitefish trawler.Many of the people gathered that day had voted for Brexit in the EU referendum and hopes were high that it would usher in a new era for a British industry that had been dwindling for years. The Kirkella was the larger of two new boats built by the private company UK Fisheries in 2018, at a combined cost of nearly £59m, landing fish at Hull for the first time in a decade. The Princess Royal summed up the optimistic mood on the quayside when she offered her congratulations “to the owner for their investment in the future of fishing”. As the bottle smashed against the boat, the players launched into a lung-busting rendition of Hearts of Oak. Before they had even finished playing, recalls Tony Newiss, cornet player and chairman of the City of Hull Band, the heavens opened and everyone got drenched. Continue reading...

The former strategic analyst says the culture of official secrecy is worse today but urges whistleblowers: ‘Don’t wait years till the bombs are falling and people have been dying’When the police arrived, a 13-year-old boy was photocopying classified documents. His 10-year-old sister was cutting the words “top secret” off each page. It seemed their dad, Daniel Ellsberg, had been caught red-handed.But the officers were responding to a false alarm and did not check what Ellsberg and his young accomplices were up to. “It was a very nice family scene,” the 90-year-old recalls via Zoom from his home in Kensington, California. “It didn’t worry them.” Continue reading...