by Toby Helm, Michael Savage and Peter Walker on (#5KJHK)
Ex-chancellor Sajid Javid is made health secretary but Boris Johnson’s authority suffers blow from resignationMatt Hancock has resigned as health secretary after Tory MPs, ministers and grassroots Conservatives defied Boris Johnson and demanded he be dismissed from the government.The minister fell on his sword after a day that began with senior Tories observing a deliberate silence over Hancock’s future – seemingly to test public opinion in their constituencies – before many later broke ranks to insist he had to go. Continue reading...
The author of the apocalyptic novel Leave the World Behind reflects on its parallels with the Covid pandemic, the genius of Lorrie Moore and why he is looking forward to letting his kids run feral outsideRumaan Alam was born in 1977 and raised in Washington DC. He is the author of three novels, the latest of which, Leave the World Behind, got rave reviews when it came out in hardback last year. The story of two families, one white, one black, thrust together in a Long Island holiday home amid apocalyptic events, it was described by the Observer as “simply breathtaking… as terrifying and prescient as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”. Now out in paperback, it is being turned into a film by Sam Esmail (Mr Robot) starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. Alam lives in Brooklyn with his husband, David Land, a photographer, and their two adopted sons.A lot of reviewers called your book “prescient”, given that you wrote it before the pandemic. What’s your take on that?
Thought 25 years apart in age, their ideas are locked in sync. Andreas Kronthaler, husband of the couture queen, reveals his plans for the maverick fashion houseOn 21 March 2020, days before Britain’s initial lockdown, Vivienne Westwood shared her first isolation address to the nation. Royalty, of sorts, she delivered it in her trademark fashion: she spoke of saving the planet and her new manifesto, while donning couture – and surrounded by curiosities – in her south London home.These impassioned speeches became a year-long weekly occurrence. Westwood offered anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and a stern rebuke of the arms trade; in wig, blue dress and floral-print platforms, she spoke of the need to rescue the oceans, while standing in her tiled bathtub. Continue reading...
After years in New York, a move to Laguna Beach for a nature-lover was like coming homeMarcus Hay still clearly recalls the moment he decided to move to Laguna Beach in California. He was having lunch with his partner in a restaurant overlooking the ocean. “Everybody looked so happy and the sun was shining,” he says. “We were in our black clothes from New York and stood out like sore thumbs. But we said to ourselves: ‘This could be our future.’ After being in Manhattan for 13 years, I was ready for a sea change.”For the Australian stylist, whose clients include American homeware brands such as CB2, West Elm and Williams Sonoma, it was also something of a throwback to his childhood. “When I grew up in Sydney, I lived right on the beach,” he says. “I used to spend a lot of my childhood fascinated with rock pools.” Continue reading...
Many married women cannot prove settled status to employers and councils because of a mix-upWomen who applied for EU settled status in the UK under their married names may struggle to access jobs and housing because of a government computer anomaly, it has emerged.Many have been left unable to prove their status to councils and employers because they have been wrongly registered to the EU settlement scheme (EUSS) in their birth names. Continue reading...
Local media say victims of the fire in central China were boarding pupils aged between seven and 16At least 18 people have been killed and 16 injured after a fire broke out at a martial arts school in central China, according to the local government.Official state news agency Xinhua reported that all victims were boarding pupils, while local media said they were aged between seven and 16. Continue reading...
Actor addresses pressures facing men and women in entertainment industry in Guardian podcastThe actor Rafe Spall has spoken candidly about his struggles with his weight throughout his acting career, and the pressures of losing weight to look like a “normal guy”.Speaking on the Guardian podcast Comfort Eating with Grace Dent, the actor, who has appeared in films including Men in Black: International and Just Mercy, spoke about a recent “big-profile” job he did for television where his weight became a concern for production staff. Continue reading...
With infections at highest since January, country is introducing curbs for non-vaccinatedRussia has finally admitted it has a vaccination problem – but with an “explosion” of new cases driving the country’s daily toll to its highest since January, the question is whether that public realisation has come too late.Just 11% of Russia’s 146 million population is fully vaccinated – whether due to vaccine skepticism, doubts about Sputnik or other Russian-made vaccines, or “nihilism”, as a Kremlin spokesperson has suggested. Continue reading...
On a visit to Paris, US secretary of state Antony Blinken says deal is at risk if Tehran fails to make concessionsThe United States and France have warned Iran that time is running out to return to a nuclear deal, voicing fear that Tehran’s sensitive development program could advance if talks drag on.On the first high-level visit to Paris by president Joe Biden’s administration, secretary of state Antony Blinken and his French hosts saluted a new spirit of cooperation after four years of turbulence under Donald Trump. Continue reading...
Planning a trip across state borders during the school holidays or a weekend away? Before you leave home, check our state-by-state guide to coronavirus travel restrictions to see if you can travel into our out of Sydney city suburbs, from NSW to Qld, between Victoria and South Australia or to NZ
New Covid restrictions for the greater Sydney region have been extended for another week and a partial lockdown introduced. Can you have visitors? Is mask-wearing compulsory? Is travelling permitted? Here’s the full list of what you can and can’t do in NSW
‘If something’s out there, let’s seek it out, and it is probably a foreign power,’ says chair of Senate foreign relations committeeIf the idea that we are being visited by aliens seems too much to contemplate, the thesis that the extraordinary-looking craft are the work of terrestrial adversaries seems only slightly less far-fetched – and at the same time, deeply troubling for US security experts.In pressing for the Pentagon’s UFO report to be published, congressional leaders briefed on the intelligence have pointed to the urgent security threat implied by the “unexplained aerial phenomena”. Continue reading...
Judge Peter Cahill has sentenced Derek Chauvin, the white former police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck until he died, to 22 and half years in prison.The judge acknowledged 'the deep and tremendous pain' felt by the Floyd family and others, but he said the sentence was not based on public opinion
Student, who returned from New York, says NSW Health is putting up frustrating obstacles while she is ‘guessing whether my father will be alive tomorrow’
It’s entirely possible the Nationals’ new leader will blow himself – and the Coalition – to smithereensIt’s been a week where problems broke containment lines.Sydney battled its scary coronavirus outbreak, locking down local government areas by Friday. In Canberra, Barnaby Joyce managed to barge his way back to the deputy prime ministership despite the best blocking efforts of his opponents. Continue reading...
Despite being busy with a new album, the musician and public transport enthusiast is also running an elevator serviceWith his slicked back Berlin-era Bowie haircut and fine wool suit, New Zealand singer-songwriter, public transport advocate and now, operator of Whanganui’s Durie Hill Elevator, Anthonie Tonnon cuts a dapper figure and looks right at home in the rich wooden interior of the 102-year-old lift. Continue reading...
Winning conserve, made with Seville oranges and orange blossom, is being sold at Fortnum & MasonA nine-year-old girl has become the youngest ever winner of the world marmalade award, beating thousands of contestants from across the globe.Flora Rider from the Isle of Wight impressed the judges with her marmalade made from Seville oranges and orange blossom from her local supermarket. The conserve, which was made on only her second attempt, is now on sale in Fortnum & Mason after being reproduced professionally as a result of winning the prize. Continue reading...
‘Eco schemes’ to be supported are undefined and three-quarters of €387bn CAP budget will go to intensive farming, say criticsThe environmental claims of a newly agreed €387bn (£330bn) EU farming subsidy policy have been described as a “paper reality”, despite a commitment that a quarter of its budget will be spent on “eco schemes”.A new five-year common agricultural policy (CAP) was provisionally agreed by the European parliament, European Commission and the 27 member states on Friday after two and a half years of negotiations. Continue reading...
by Kate Connolly in Berlin, Angela Giuffrida in Rome, on (#5KHEE)
EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way for more homegrown contentIt was during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.“The elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the programmes afterwards,” she said. Continue reading...
by Jamie Grierson Home affairs correspondent on (#5KHCF)
Parole Board says Pitchfork, who raped and killed two 15-year-old girls in 1980s, is ‘suitable for release’Robert Buckland, the UK justice secretary, is to ask the Parole Board to reconsider its decision to approve the release of the child killer and rapist Colin Pitchfork.The double murderer was jailed in 1988 after raping and strangling 15-year-olds Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in Leicestershire in 1983 and 1986. Continue reading...
Ruth Borthwick on how singing songs from Ladies of the Canyon and Blue sustained her courage on a dangerous tripSinging songs by Joni Mitchell, whose album Blue turned 50 this week (Joni Mitchell’s Blue: my favourite song – by James Taylor, Carole King, Graham Nash, David Crosby and more, 22 June), kept me going as I trekked through lion country in Uganda in 1981. As a solo traveller, I had been frustrated by my attempts to visit safari parks in Kenya – no pedestrians allowed. But people told me about Chobe, a reserve on the Nile in Uganda; once fashionable with chic Europeans, it was now down on its luck after Idi Amin’s disastrous regime. After hitching through dusty and dangerous country, I reached the derelict gates to find that there was no transport and I would have to walk the five miles through the bush to get to the lodge and a bed for the night.I summoned up my courage and prayed a that lion wouldn’t consider me tasty as I warbled my way through Ladies of the Canyon and Blue. The horizon eventually filled with the sea that was the Nile, half-submerged hippos glistening in the shallows. This was one river I didn’t wish to skate away on.
Cases of transnational repression found in 28 countries are ‘just the tip of the iceberg’, say rights researchersChina is using its unprecedented economic clout across vast swathes of Asia and the Middle East to target Uyghur Muslims living beyond its borders through a sprawling system of transnational repression, a new report says.Beijing’s crackdown on Xinjiang province, where more than 1 million people are thought to have been detained in a network of internment camps in recent years, has coincided with a rise in efforts to control Uyghurs living overseas, the report found. Continue reading...
Newspaper’s closure shows how pro-democracy movement and press freedom are being crushedOn Wednesday morning, the Apple Daily reporter Angel Kwan was at a government press conference for the Hong Kong census when her phone started buzzing with notifications. Six days earlier, hundreds of police had raided her workplace, arrested her bosses and seized dozens of computers. On Monday, the company board had said it would have to shut the paper unless authorities unfroze its finances.As she stood holding her microphone towards the government official, Kwan did not dare look at her phone and the news it heralded: Apple Daily was shutting down. Today. Continue reading...
Victim left partially paralysed after being shot while walking to school in Kesgrave in September, court hearsA teenager who shot a 15-year-old boy in the face with a double-barrelled shotgun has been found guilty of attempted murder.The victim was left partially paralysed after being shot from a distance of only 1.5 metres while walking to school in Kesgrave, near Ipswich, last September, a trial at Ipswich crown court heard. Continue reading...
The UK’s biggest pop star returns, singing of compulsive hedonism over 80s dance-pop – remind you of anyone?Spotify has chosen to promote Ed Sheeran’s new single by sitting it at the head of a playlist of his previous hits. The “plays” column of the latter makes for mind-boggling reading: the figures look less like streaming statistics and more like long-distance phone numbers. Every track is immediately recognisable – you could have spent your every waking hour engaged in a dogged attempt to avoid the music of Ed Sheeran and you’d still know exactly what they were and who they were by within seconds of them starting. He’s spent the last decade enjoying the kind of success that, in one sense at least, brooks no argument: even his loudest detractor couldn’t argue against his ability to write one song after another that attains a weird kind of omnipresence, hits that evolve into inescapable facts of daily life.This is not a state of affairs that Bad Habits looks likely to change. That Sheeran has trailed it as a “surprise” and “mad” tells you more about his innate populism than the song itself: it’s a well-written, extremely commercial pop song, cowritten by regular collaborators Fred Gibson and Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid, the latter of whom also had a hand in earlier Sheeran hits Shape of You, Photograph and Bloodstream. Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5KGZW)
Loss of 100,000 hauliers due to Covid and Brexit will cause food ‘rolling power cuts’, experts warnThe country is facing a summer of food shortages likened to a series of “rolling power cuts” because of a loss of 100,000 lorry drivers due to Covid and Brexit, industry chiefs have warned.In a letter to Boris Johnson they have called for an urgent intervention to allow eastern European drivers back into the country on special visas, similar to those issued to farm pickers, warning that there is a “crisis” in the supply chain. Continue reading...
Friday: defence minister accuses activist of showing malice in defamation suit. Plus: dossier of rape allegations against Christian Porter made publicGood morning. Peter Dutton has accused refugee activist Shane Bazzi of showing malice in the minister’s defamation suit, citing a tweet labelling him a “cunt” and a “fucken scumbag”. Bazzi denies that he defamed Dutton and is using the defences of fair comment and honest opinion, invoking Dutton’s statement that he didn’t know the “she said, he said” details of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins’s allegation of rape. In his reply Dutton argues that Bazzi cannot rely on honest opinion because his “rape apologist” tweet was “actuated by actual malice”.New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian has warned this is the “scariest period” the state has faced during the pandemic after reporting 11 new local Covid cases on Thursday. Meanwhile a police investigation into the limousine driver who sparked Sydney’s current Covid outbreak has expanded to include the company that employed him to drive international aircrews to and from Sydney airport. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#5KG2T)
Public inquiry into June 2017 disaster hears that Robert Black failed to mention numerous risks and problems following reviewThe former boss of Grenfell Tower’s management body repeatedly failed to alert residents and councillors overseeing its work to serious fire safety issues and has admitted to “keeping the board in the dark”.Robert Black, who was chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) at the time of the fire, did not tell boards at the council and the arm’s-length management body about problems with smoke extractors at Grenfell, a deficiency notice issued by London fire brigade on the tower, or problems with fire doors at another block that suffered a fire. Continue reading...
The outspoken tabloid’s closure is a chilling moment. But as Beijing silences dissent, the spirit of resistance enduresApple Daily is dead. At midnight on Wednesday, Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy news outlet closed, forced out of business after authorities froze the assets of the 26-year-old tabloid and arrested executives and journalists. Through its outspoken support for protests, it had come to stand for resistance itself: for the freedom to know what is happening, to challenge authorities, and to imagine and demand another Hong Kong.Beijing is determined to crush that resistance. Each day it turns the screws further. Many have fallen silent already, but Apple Daily was defiant. Its owner, Jimmy Lai, already jailed over a protest, could face life in prison due to further charges under the draconian national security law. The editor-in-chief and chief executive of its parent company have been charged with conspiracy to collude with “external elements” after 500 officers raided its headquarters last week. Authorities say that the case relates to articles calling for sanctions on the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, some published before the imposition of the security law, which is not supposed to be retroactive. This vindictive action marks the criminalisation of journalism. On Wednesday, the company announced it was closing overnight, citing employee safety and staffing levels after officers arrested its lead opinion writer. Continue reading...
Deadline to apply for post-Brexit permit now 30 September amid fears many Britons would lose rights at end of JuneFrance has extended its 30 June application deadline for new post-Brexit residency permits, allowing thousands of British nationals an extra three months to secure local healthcare, employment and other rights.A French interior ministry spokesperson said on Thursday that the deadline to apply for the country’s withdrawal agreement residence permit had been extended until 30 September “for the whole country”, following earlier statements by the Côtes d’Armor prefecture in Brittany and other local authorities. Continue reading...
Animal rights campaigners applaud decision by firm known for its fur-trimmed parka jacketsCanada Goose, the outerwear brand known for its fur-trimmed parka jackets, has announced that it is to end the use of fur in its products.The company will stop purchasing fur by the end of this year, and cease manufacturing products with it no later than the end of 2022. Continue reading...
by Bethan McKernan Middle East correspondent on (#5KFNN)
Palestinians face repression from Israel and Palestinian Authority, human rights watchdog saysThe latest flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip has been accompanied by a “catalogue of violations” committed by Israeli police against Palestinians in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, according to research from Amnesty International.Arab citizens of Israel have been subjected to unlawful force from officers during peaceful demonstrations, sweeping mass arrests, torture and other ill-treatment in detention, and police have failed to protect Palestinians from premeditated attacks by rightwing Jewish extremists, the human rights watchdog said on Thursday. Continue reading...
Ghostwriter Barry Coleman says he was given two ‘awful’ weeks to finish an entire book with the Rolling Stone – then the singer pulled the plug in case it was too dullBarry Coleman still remembers the day in 1983 when he was called by his editor at the publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson and told: “We’ve got a problem. Can you come in … tomorrow?”“The urgency was a bit disorienting,” he recalls. “Something had clearly gone horribly wrong.” Continue reading...
Court publishes 31-page document first sent to Scott Morrison containing allegations the former attorney general strenuously deniesA dossier of rape allegations against former attorney general Christian Porter, which was sent to the prime minister Scott Morrison earlier this year, has been made public for the first time, including allegedly contemporaneous diary entries.On Thursday the federal court released the entire 31-page document which was first circulated to a group of politicians including Morrison, Labor’s Senate leader Penny Wong and Greens MP Sarah Hanson-Young in February. Continue reading...
by Quique Kirszenbaum and Peter Beaumont on (#5KF9G)
The tiny country has the highest death rate in Latin America after the centre-right government abandoned social restrictionsEnrique Soto, a senior cardiologist in Uruguay knew that, at the age of 65, he was at higher risk of Covid-19. His 40-year-old son Marcos had warned him as much but Soto replied he could not abandon his patients.When Soto died at the beginning of Uruguay’s devastating recent second wave of infections his death became emblematic of the disaster that has unfolded in recent months in the tiny South American country. Continue reading...
Defamation trial hears SAS soldier’s testimony will be in direct contradiction to the Victoria Cross recipient’s evidenceAn SAS soldier witnessed Ben Roberts-Smith machine-gun an unarmed prisoner with a prosthetic leg to death, in direct contradiction of the Victoria Cross recipient’s evidence, a court has been told.The soldier – anonymised on the witness list as Person 14 – told Roberts-Smith during a clandestine meeting in 2018 he had seen him shoot the unarmed man in a village called Kakarak in Uruzgan province in 2009, the federal court heard on Thursday. Continue reading...
Following Uefa’s decision to block a planned LGBTQ+ rainbow stadium protest at Munich’s Allianz Arena, football stadiums elsewhere in Germany pledged to light up in rainbow colours instead during the Euro 2020 match against Hungary Continue reading...