by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5KWZM)
Home Office figures caused speculation that number of Europeans in UK had been underestimatedLast week, the Home Office announced it had received 6m applications for the EU settlement scheme, prompting some to conclude the number of Europeans living in the UK was almost double previous estimates.Some on social media claimed that it meant 9% of the UK’s population of 67 million was now made up of Europeans. Continue reading...
It’s been dubbed ‘tangping’ – shunning tough careers to chill out instead. But how is the Communist party taking the birth of this new counterculture?Name: Low-desire life.Age: People – young ones especially – have been rebelling, dropping out, rejecting the rat race for pretty much ever, since the rat race began. But in China, it’s becoming more common. On trend, you might say. Continue reading...
by Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent on (#5KWAQ)
Cyberspace regulator claimed the company had illegally collected users’ personal dataChina’s cyberspace regulator has ordered smartphone app stores to pull Didi Global Inc’s app after it alleged the ride-hailing company had “illegally collected users’ personal data”.On Sunday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it had told Didi to make changes to comply with data protection rules, four days after its initial public offering (IPO) in New York, which raised $4.4bn (£3.2bn) – the biggest Chinese overseas IPO in the first half of the year. Continue reading...
Officials to be investigated after film appears to show patrol boat firing shots at a vessel carrying 64 people in the MediterraneanProsecutors in Sicily have launched an investigation against the Libyan coastguard after footage emerged appearing to show officials firing on a boat of migrant families in the Mediterranean Sea.On 30 June, rescue workers from the German organisation Sea-Watch recorded the Libyan coastguard patrol vessel coming dangerously close to the small wooden boat and apparently firing shots in an attempt to force the 64 people onboard back to Libya. Continue reading...
Priest and human rights activist was denied bail despite being weakened by Parkinson’s and CovidIndia’s oldest political prisoner, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest who was denied bail as his health deteriorated, has died, prompting an outpouring of anger among lawyers, writers, politicians and activists.Father Stan Swamy, a priest and human rights activist who spent five decades fighting for the rights of the tribal community in the state of Jharkhand, was arrested in October 2020, charged under draconian terrorism laws and held in judicial custody. Continue reading...
Event in Georgian capital cancelled after protesters storm activists’ headquarters and attack journalistsOrganisers have cancelled a Pride march in Georgia after far-right demonstrators stormed LGBTQ activists’ headquarters and attacked journalists in violence that the country’s prime minister appeared to blame on the event itself.Video and photographs showed anti-gay protesters scaling a three-storey building to break into the headquarters of the Tbilisi Pride march in the Georgian capital, while elsewhere men with long beards in priests’ clothing punched and kicked journalists, with as many as 20 injured. Continue reading...
Influenced by British bands, the Zamrock movement dominated the 1970s until social unrest and Aids dismantled it. As a new documentary is released, Witch frontman Jagari takes a break from gemstone mining to tell his extraordinary life storyEmmanuel Chanda works as a gemstone miner in the Zambian countryside, blasting apart rock faces in search of amethyst. Surrounded by rock and noise, there’s a poetic similarity to what he is best known for: electrifying a nation as the frontman of Witch, the most popular band in 1970s Zambia who released five full-length albums in as many years and were the driving force for the decade’s Zamrock movement. Blending African rhythms with garage rock inspired by imports from the country’s former British colonisers, they were dubbed their country’s own Beatles, and were renowned for incendiary, seven-hour live shows led by Chanda, for whom the stage was simply too small.Nearly 45 years on from his last studio recordings with the band, Chanda – known as Jagari, after Mick Jagger – has regained some of his stardom. A new documentary by Gio Arlotta, Witch: We Intend to Cause Havoc, has just been released, and traces the band’s legacy from the mines of the Zambian Copperbelt province to festival stages in Europe after an unlikely revival that, in the late 2010s, brought Witch out of Africa for the first time. Continue reading...
by Nazia Parveen Community affairs correspondent on (#5KWJM)
Victim’s family say antisemitic attack on bus and at tube station was because of his ‘obviously Jewish’ appearanceA Jewish man who suffered antisemitic abuse twice in an hour in central London was physically threatened because of his appearance, his family have said.The man, named only as Yosef, was on his way home when he was subjected to a “torrent of abuse”, with threats also being made to his life. Continue reading...
by Nino Bucci (now) and Matilda Boseley (earlier) on (#5KW80)
New Zealand restarts the travel bubble with Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the ACT; infected aged care resident at SummitCare home in NSW was not vaccinated. Follow latest updates
Authorities called assailant a ‘lone wolf’ domestic terrorist who had been politically radicalisedPolice in Hong Kong have told citizens that mourning the death of a man who stabbed a police officer last week is “no different to supporting terrorism”, as the case was taken over by the national security department.The comments followed the stabbing of an officer in the back on Thursday night by a 50-year-old man at Causeway Bay. Police said the man then took his own life. The 28-year-old officer sustained a punctured lung in the attack and remains in hospital in a critical condition, according to local media. Continue reading...
He’s lived within a boulder, hatched a nest of hen’s eggs, and now plans to encase himself in a beehive. Is this France’s most extreme performance artist –and how does he go to the toilet?Last month, in a smart gallery in Paris, the back of a sculpture was removed and a man was lifted out. He looked around, disoriented, as his body slowly unfurled. A doctor rushed to his side and, after inspecting him, announced he was in good health. The crowd cheered. He’d been in there for seven days.Abraham Poincheval, possibly France’s most extreme performance artist, specialises in surreal feats of endurance, often in tight spots. He has lived inside a rock for seven days, and a stuffed bear for 13. For this latest work, Hartung, he decided to look at a painting by abstract artist Hans Hartung for seven days straight. He even built a special contraption for it: an aluminium shell of a man sitting on a block, looking down a large square funnel. Continue reading...
Victorian Covid-19 restrictions are easing further as the Melbourne coronavirus outbreak comes under control. Is the 25km travel limit being lifted? How many visitors are allowed? Is mask-wearing compulsory? Are schools closed? Here are the new rules
Despite chronic pain and deadly infections, Palestinians wounded in protests three years ago still hope to recover without surgerySitting on his hospital bed, with external fixators screwed into his right leg, Mohammed al-Mughari has been in pain and on medication since he was shot in the leg more than three years ago.He lives with a chronic bone infection – from bacteria now resistant to most antibiotics. Doctors, including in Jordan and Egypt where he sought treatment previously, have all recommended that an amputation could end his long-term suffering, but he has steadfastly refused. Continue reading...
The Guardian’s outgoing Jerusalem correspondent Oliver Holmes talks to predecessor Ian Black about how much – and how little – the job has changed over the yearsIt was the end of the 1980s and the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Ian Black, was talking shop with his competitor at the Sunday Times, the late Marie Colvin. “We were discussing when there might be a Palestinian state,” Black recalls of their conversation in Jerusalem. “We thought maybe it would happen in two or three years.”Israel and the Palestinian territories were deep into the first intifada, an uprising against the occupation that lasted from 1987 until the early 90s. It was a period in which violence spiked, but also a time of nascent hope that the lengthy military grip over Palestinian life might finally end. Continue reading...
by Justin McCurry in Tokyo and agencies on (#5KWDT)
Number rose after officials in Atami checked residential registers rather than relying on reports of missing people following mudslideOfficials in Japan have dramatically raised their estimate of the number of people still missing after a mudslide ripped through a seaside town at the weekend.Reports said three people had died in the disaster, which occurred after days of torrential rain in Atami, a famous hot spring resort about 60 miles (90 km) south-west of Tokyo. Continue reading...
Mayor aims to remove all reference to former Yugoslav leader Marshall Tito from street in RadenciThirty years after Slovenia achieved independence, a bitter dispute over a street that since 1979 has been named in honour of Marshal Josip Broz Tito has highlighted how the former leader of the federation of Yugoslavia continues to divide opinion in central Europe.A municipal decree changing the name of Tito Road, or Titova cesta, in Radenci, a town in north-east Slovenia, to Cesta osamosvojitve Slovenije, or Road of Slovenian Independence, has been debated in the country’s highest court. A referendum was even mooted as a solution in the face of opposition. Continue reading...
The daughter of an octogenarian aged care resident who has tested positive to Covid is outraged that two-thirds at the Baulkham Hills home’s staff are unvaccinated, and that families were not told
The passenger death toll from the crash was 47, officials said, and three civilians on the ground were also killedAll 96 passengers on the Philippine air force plane that crashed on Sunday have been accounted for, military chief Cirilito Sobejana has said. The passenger death toll from the crash was 47, while 49 military personnel were injured, Sobejana told Reuters in a phone message.The Department of National Defence said on Sunday that three civilians on the ground were also killed, and that four civilians were injured when the Philippine military aircraft carrying troops crashed and burst into flames after missing the runway in the south of the country. Continue reading...
Vatican says pontiff had general anaesthetic during operation for diverticular stenosis of the colonPope Francis “reacted well” to planned intestinal surgery on Sunday evening at a Rome hospital, the Vatican has announced.In a statement late in the evening, Matteo Bruni, a Holy See spokesman, said Francis, 84, had general anaesthesia during the surgery necessitated by a stenosis, or narrowing, of the sigmoid portion of the large intestine. Continue reading...
Monday: Two-thirds of staff at Covid-stricken aged care facility aren’t vaccinated. Plus: how to entertain kids in lockdownGood morning. Covid cases are dropping around the country, but the flaws in the aged care vaccine rollout continue to emerge. Two-thirds of staff working at a Sydney aged care facility in the midst of a Covid outbreak are unvaccinated, SummitCare’s chief operating officer has confirmed. Three aged care residents at the facility in Sydney tested positive on Saturday night, while two staff members were infected last week. NSW reported 16 locally acquired cases on Sunday, more than halving Saturday’s high of 35. Gladys Berejiklian, said 13 of the new cases had spent their entire infectious period in isolation. “We are seeing numbers go the right way. But I do say cautiously that that could still bounce around,” she said. Meanwhile a group of St George Illawarra Dragons players are under investigation for potentially breaching lockdown orders after being caught at the house party of a veteran player.In Covid news abroad, Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, has been admitted to hospital as a precautionary measure after testing positive last week. And the US will soon see surges in cases of the highly infectious Delta variant in areas where vaccination rates are low, Anthony Fauci has predicted, calling resistance to vaccination “sad” and “tragic”. Continue reading...
by Denis Campbell and Aubrey Allegretti on (#5KW62)
Prime minister defies warnings from his own MPs concerned that bill to shake up health service will prove gift to LabourBoris Johnson is set to spark a political row this week by announcing plans to seize greater control of the NHS, despite warnings that the “power grab” will see ministers blamed for delays in treatment and closure of local hospital units.The prime minister has told the new health secretary, Sajid Javid, to put the long-awaited health and care bill before parliament despite Javid’s own misgivings and concerns among hospital bosses and doctors’ leaders. Continue reading...
Deadly blaze that killed four people and forced evacuation of 10 villages is now close to being under controlAuthorities in Cyprus have said a deadly forest fire that was the worst to hit the island in decades was close to being brought under control after water bombing by Greek and Israeli aircraft.Fanned by strong winds, the fire broke out on Saturday afternoon and swept through the southern foothills of the Troodos mountain range as the country grappled with a blistering heatwave. Continue reading...
by Presented by Rachel Humphreys and reported by Laur on (#5KW38)
A legal arrangement set up in the wake of a mental health crisis has left the singer with little control of her personal or professional affairs. Laura Snapes and Sam Levin describe how she’s challenging the situation in courtThis episode first aired on our global news podcast Today in Focus.Britney Spears shot to global fame in 1998 with her hit single Baby One More Time, released when she was 17. It was the first of a string of hits that made her a millionaire many times over. But the rapid rise came not without cost for her personal life. A mental health crisis led to a very public breakdown, and in 2008 she was placed under a a conservatorship which, overseen by her father, took control of her finances and many of her personal affairs. Continue reading...
by Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul and Dan Sabbagh on (#5KW1T)
Militants’ advance continues as Britain nears end of its two-decade deployment to countryThe Taliban’s rapid advance through northern Afghanistan continued on Sunday with more than a dozen districts falling to the militants, as Britain entered the final days of its two-decade deployment to Afghanistan.More than 300 members of the Afghan security forces fled across the border into Tajikistan to escape the militants, and Badakhshan and Takhar provinces are now largely under Taliban control, beyond the respective regional capitals. Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5KVYT)
Irish foreign minister hits out at Brexit minister over provocative article on Northern Ireland protocolThe EU fears that Boris Johnson wants to “dismantle” the Northern Ireland protocol, the Irish foreign minister has said, as relations between Brussels and London deteriorated again after remarks by the Brexit minister David Frost in the past 24 hours.Simon Coveney told RTÉ on Sunday that EU leaders feared the worst after what he felt was a provocative article written by Lord Frost and the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, in the Irish Times on Saturday. Continue reading...
Slip by James Duddridge at funeral of liberation leader derided as evidence of enduring colonial attitudesJames Duddridge, the UK’s minister for Africa, appeared to confuse Zimbabwe with Zambia in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991. He was respected across the continent as one of a generation of Africans who fought to free their nations from colonial rule. Continue reading...
Mayfield Park will be watered using wells discovered while archaeologists were on siteManchester’s first public park for more than a century will use recently uncovered wells from the Victorian era to provide a sustainable source of water.The 2.6-hectare (6.5-acre) Mayfield Park will sit behind Piccadilly station and provide play areas and floodable meadows. The £1.4bn development’s greenery will be watered using three Victorian wells that were discovered while archaeologists were on site to catalogue historical features of the site. Continue reading...
Later this month, in one of the most ambitious live artworks ever staged, a giant puppet will trek from the Syria-Turkey border to Manchester, in a moving-theatre show of solidarity with asylum seekersOn the last Tuesday of July, a big little girl will step out into a Turkish city, a few miles from the Syrian border, to begin an 8,000km trek to Manchester. Little Amal is nine years old and is searching for her mother, who went off to find food and never returned. She is the central, and only, character in a spectacularly ambitious theatre project. The Walk will face down international Covid restrictions in a visionary act of solidarity with the plight of refugees, defiance of the borders that put their lives in danger, and belief in the humanity of ordinary people faced with a global humanitarian crisis.Little Amal’s intercontinental odyssey will be hard to miss in the eight countries whose borders she will cross between July and November, because she is 3.5 metres (nearly 12 feet) tall. She’s a puppet, who will be enabled to make her epic walk by relays of puppeteers, several of whom are themselves refugees. She will bear a single message, on behalf of all the thousands of displaced children who will come out to meet her along the way: “Don’t forget about us.” Continue reading...
by Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent on (#5KVVR)
Companies must have human rights and environmental obligations, say TUC and Amnesty InternationalAlmost 30 organisations have joined forces to call for the UK to follow in the footsteps of its European partners by introducing corporate accountability laws requiring companies to undertake human rights and environmental due diligence across their supply chains.The groups, including the TUC, Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International, say systemic human rights abuses and environmentally destructive practices are commonplace in the global operations and supply chains of UK businesses, and voluntary approaches to tackle the problem have failed. Continue reading...
Celebrities including the comedian David Walliams and actor Jim Broadbent have called on their fellow Britons to 'get back to the rhythm of life', by getting vaccinated against Covid.In the film, which is to the tune of a song from the 1966 musical Sweet Charity, Broadbent enters an empty theatre before celebrities including Walliams, actors Asa Butterfield, Colin Salmon, Derek Jacobi and Don Warrington, and singer Nicola Roberts take the stage to perform the song.More than 44.8 million people in the UK have received at least one jab while almost half of adults have received a second dose
Robert Jenrick, the UK’s communities secretary, suggested coronavirus control measures in England such as the legal requirement to wear face coverings in enclosed public settings would be left up to personal choice after the final stage of the roadmap."We trust the British public to exercise good judgment, people will come to different conclusions as you say," Jenrick told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
From giant clams to zebra shark, marine biologists want to replace lost and vanishing species at sea but face unique obstacles – not least rampant overfishingKneeling on the seabed a few metres underwater, I pick up a clam and begin gently cleaning its furrowed, porcelain smile with a toothbrush. It’s a giant clam but a young one and still just a handful. Here in Fiji, giant clams or vasua as they are known, were so heavily overfished for their meat and shells that by the 1980s they were thought to be extinct locally. Australian clams were imported to start a captive breeding programme, and subsequent generations of their offspring have been released on coral reefs across Fiji. They’re still vulnerable to fishing and poaching, but if carefully guarded the giant clams do well and have become symbols of healthy corals reefs inside well-managed marine protected areas.A key to their early survival is rearing them in cages to keep them safe from predators until they’re large enough to survive by themselves. However, the cages also exclude herbivorous fish, so the clams can easily get overgrown by seaweed, which is where the regular toothbrushing comes in. Continue reading...
As Slovenia takes over the EU presidency, its prime minister warns that the west cannot impose its liberal views on central EuropeSlovenia’s prime minister Janez Janša, a rare EU ally of Hungary’s right to outlaw the promotion or portrayal of homosexuality to children, has claimed that imposing “imaginary European values” on central Europe could lead to the union’s collapse.Janša, who publicly backed Donald Trump in his attempt to overthrow the US presidential election result, leads Slovenia as it takes the EU’s rolling presidency, steering the bloc’s agenda for the next six months. He is a deeply controversial figure, whose political career includes being jailed while battling for Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia and an overturned conviction for corruption. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#5KVR0)
People will be able to tour platforms on Kingsway station that have remained closed since WW2A hidden underground tram station in the centre of London, which stood in as the Avengers HQ on the big screen, is to open to the public for the first time since its closure almost 70 years ago.People will be able to tour the platforms and halls of the Kingsway station, which allowed passengers on doubledecker trams to interchange between the once-comprehensive networks north and south of the Thames. which closed after the second world war. Continue reading...
by Natalie Alcoba in Buenos Aires. Photography by Ani on (#5KVR1)
The dance that depends on what Covid prevents – close physical intimacy – is not only a cultural passion but also now a threatened source of income for many workers. Photographer Anita Pouchard Serra has been documenting how dancers are surviving the crisisIn a pretty little plaza next to a railway track, there is proof that not even a pandemic can keep us apart.Five couples lean in, cheek to cheek, marking steps that mirror the circuitous route of life. If there is a map, it rises out of a portable speaker, and the melancholic poetry of a tango. Continue reading...
After hundreds of unmarked graves were found at Canada’s former Catholic-run residential schools, churches in First Nations territories have been destroyed by suspected arsonFor more than a century, the clapboard church set amid rolling hills in western Canada has been a spiritual home to the Upper Similkameen Indian Band.To build St Anne’s, residents of Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve #2 travelled 40 miles to the closest town, hauling lumber back to their community by horse and wagon. Continue reading...
by Matilda Boseley and Royce Kurmelovs on (#5KVQX)
Industry says any suggestion by Coalition government that airlines are price gouging is ‘insulting and bizarre’• Families of Australians stranded overseas devastated after arrivals cap slashedInternational airlines claim they could be forced to suspend services to Australia from next week after national cabinet agreed to halve the number of people allowed to enter the country – and they say any suggestion of price gouging is “insulting and bizarre”.From 14 July, overseas arrivals will be slashed from 6,070 to 3,035 a week – crushing the hopes of thousands of Australians stuck overseas and looking to get home. Continue reading...
by Royce Kurmelovs (now) and Matilda Boseley (earlier on (#5KVFD)
Two residents of SummitCare home at Baulkham Hills taken to hospital as a precaution and facility is in lockdown; Queensland records one new local case. This blog is closed
A company specialising in children’s sports clothing has relocated to avoid the costs and bureaucracy caused by leaving the EUDuring the Wimbledon championships, Steve and Adriana Walkington are run off their feet. Their fast-growing company, Zoe Alexander, which they set up in Canterbury a few years ago, provides chic tennis clothes for children aged between four and 12.Orders pile up at this time of year from people in the UK, from the European Union, the US, the far east, Canada and Japan. The business is benefiting from a surge in interest in tennis across the globe. Continue reading...
Alicia Keys reflects on 20 years of stardom, going makeup free and where she gets her ‘grit energy’In 2016, when Alicia Keys released her sixth studio album, Here, she celebrated the launch with a gig in New York’s Times Square. An article written in the Guardian by a journalist who was on the promotional junket described the machinery of her management system at the time, as functioning “like an onion”. A formidable, multi-layer of managers, confidants, coaches, assistants, a personal film crew and various people with ambiguous job functions formed around Keys, like a “shock absorber”. Fast forward to 2021. I am waiting to interview Keys via Zoom on the day she launches a special edition of Songs in A Minor, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking award-winning debut album that started it all. When she appears on screen there is no “onion”, no entourage, no shock absorber. Just her. She is sitting on a light-coloured sofa in front of a floor-to-ceiling wall of immaculately lined-up books. And she is trying to pull a jumper on. Her voice – smooth, deep and slightly gravelly – calls out, “Good morning!” and as she inches in to take her position close to the screen, she smiles so fully that every crevice of her face lights up.Looking at a barefaced Alicia Keys, hair pulled back into a bun, one can’t help marvel at how much she still resembles the 20-year-old who made her 2001 TV debut singing Falling on The Oprah Winfrey Show. (Winfrey, who calls herself Alicia’s “mother-sister-friend” has since said, “Even before she belted out the first soulful notes of the lyrics that made her famous, I could feel the power of her presence.”) Following the God-like endorsement of the influential Winfrey (and the backing of Clive Davis, the legendary music producer who gave Keys her big break), the song topped the charts. The album sold millions (10.5m physical sales and 645.8m streams to date) and Keys was nominated in six Grammy award categories. She won five of them and has since gone on to win 10 more. Keys is still awestruck that she, and the album that brought her global fame, still have a presence today. Continue reading...