Health agency says the rates of myocarditis are not higher than expected and no causal link has been found to mRNA jabsSome teenagers and young adults who received Covid-19 vaccines have experienced heart inflammation, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group said, recommending further study of the rare condition.In a statement dated 17 May, the CDC’s advisory committee on immunisation practices said it had looked into reports that a few young vaccine recipients, predominantly male adolescents and young adults, developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. Continue reading...
Journalist defends 1995 Panorama special saying he and Diana stayed friends after the broadcastMartin Bashir has said he “never wanted to harm” Diana, Princess of Wales with the Panorama interview, adding: “I don’t believe we did.”The journalist’s reputation is in tatters following Lord Dyson’s report that he used “deceitful behaviour” to land his world exclusive 1995 interview. Continue reading...
Contest returns for its 65th edition after being postponed last year due to the coronavirus pandemicMåneskin, representing Italy, have won the 65th Eurovision song contest, which was held in Rotterdam on Saturday night. Their entry, Zitti e buoni, scored 524 points in the grand final, which was broadcast across Europe and around the globe.The UK’s entry, Embers, sung by James Newman, finished last, failing to win a single point. It was the only Eurovision act to receive 0 after the juries of all 39 countries allocated their 12 points. Continue reading...
We were seen as a ‘bunch of wallies’ by the likes of Tony Hall, says Richard Eyre, an ex-board memberAn atmosphere of “total contempt” coloured all dealings of BBC managers with their board of governors in 1995, as journalist Martin Bashir and his Panorama bosses were cooking up their covert interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, according to Sir Richard Eyre, who sat on the BBC board at the time.It led to a complete lack of communication about the controversial programme, which has, two and half decades later, now earned the corporation a devastating public rebuke from the future king and forced the resignation of its former boss, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, from his chairmanship of the National Gallery on Saturday. Continue reading...
by Zevonia Vieira in Dili and Tjitske Lingsma on (#5J59Z)
The trial of defrocked priest Richard Daschbach, charged with sexual abuse of 14 girls, is dividing the small, deeply Catholic countryLita grew up in a poor family in a hamlet surrounded by the spectacular mountains of Oecusse in Timor-Leste. When she was 11 years old she went to live in Topu Honis shelter home, in the mountainous, forest-encircled village of Kutet.The shelter was run by Richard Daschbach, a now-defrocked 84-year-old US priest who founded the facility in 1992. Continue reading...
The perceived wisdom has been that children do not suffer severely from the virus. Yet they are now in Brazil, Indonesia and IndiaEmergency physician and leading epidemiologist in Brazil, Dr Fatima Marinho, is seeing symptoms of Covid-19 in children that starkly contrast with the message that has been relayed globally throughout the pandemic that children do not appear to suffer severely from the virus.Severe muscle aches, diarrhoea, coughing, abdominal pain and hospitalisation – all of these are happening to children with Covid-19 in Brazil, Marinho says. Continue reading...
Next year’s review of the corporation will be ‘beefed up’ as Dyson report into Diana interview sees ex-boss Lord Hall resign postMinisters pledged on Saturday to intervene to restore trust in the BBC by conducting a wider-than-anticipated review of its operations next year, as recriminations grew over its controversial Panorama interview in 1995 with Diana, Princess of Wales.The fallout from an independent report by Lord Justice Dyson into the programme 26 years ago prompted the dramatic resignation on Saturday of the corporation’s former director-general, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, from his post as chair of the board of trustees of the National Gallery. Continue reading...
Scientists, unions and teachers concerned after data cut from Public Health England report ahead of shift on face masksDowning Street leaned on Public Health England not to publish crucial data on the spread of the new Covid variant in schools, documents seen by the Observer have suggested. Scientists, union officials and teachers said that the lack of transparency was “deeply worrying”.The focus of their anger concerns the pre-print of a PHE report that included a page of data on the spread of the India Covid-19 variant in schools. But when the report was published on Thursday 13 May, the page had been removed. It was the only one that had been removed from the pre-print. Days later, the government went ahead with its decision to remove the mandate on face coverings in English schools. Continue reading...
by Oliver Holmes and Hazem Balousha in Gaza City on (#5J569)
A ceasefire is finally in force, but traumatised families have little hope as they recall collapsing buildings and deaths of loved onesAs they emerge from hiding, people living in Gaza City have had to adapt their memories. So deformed is this small place on the coast that a mental map of its roads and landmarks from two weeks ago is largely useless today. Shortcuts to avoid traffic may no longer work, as craters dot back streets and rubble blocks roads. Locally famous high-rises no longer exist.Eleven days of bombardment have buckled the city. Air attacks shook the ground so violently that some bomb sites appear as if buildings have been pulled into the earth rather than hit from above. Continue reading...
by Bethan McKernan Middle East correspondent on (#5J54W)
Image believed to be of 35-year-old who fled father Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in 2018Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai, whose plight has captivated the world since a daring attempt at escaping her father across the Indian Ocean, appears to have been photographed in public for the first time in years.In a picture posted to Instagram two days ago by both former Royal Navy member Sioned Taylor and another user, Princess Latifa is seated with two women at a cafe table in what Taylor identified as Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates. Continue reading...
The writer – and grandson of Gabriel García Márquez – on Mexican folklore, his early love of horror and learning to live with the family’s literary legacyMateo García Elizondo, a 34-year-old writer from Mexico, may come from literary stock – his paternal grandfather is Colombian heavyweight Gabriel García Márquez and his maternal grandfather is Mexican literary giant Salvador Elizondo – but he is carving his own path at the forefront of a burgeoning scene in Spanish language literature. He has published a novel as well as written scripts for films and graphic novels. His writing is also included in Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists 2, which was published last month. He was born in Mexico City, where he still lives.How do you see the overall health of literature in Spanish?
In first interview since February coup, Min Aung Hlaing says deposed leader is in good healthMyanmar’s junta leader, Min Aung Hlaing, has said deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi is healthy at home and will appear in court in a few days, in his first interview since overthrowing her in a coup in February.The coup has plunged the south-east Asian country into chaos. An ethnic armed group opposed to the ruling junta attacked a military post in a northwestern jade-mining town while other violent incidents were reported from other corners of Myanmar. Continue reading...
If the trade secretary agrees to Canberra’s demands for no tariffs on agriculture, it sets a dangerous precedent for other, bigger dealsFarming is the tail that wags the dog in all trade talks. Agriculture might be worth less than 1% of GDP in the UK and Germany and less than 2% in France and Italy, yet the emotional connection with food makes it a critical subject when negotiators sit down to hammer out a deal.According to the latest World Bank data, the sector contributed only 3.3% to global GDP – and in Australia, which is in controversial and secretive talks with the UK about a free trade agreement (FTA), it made up just 2.1% of GDP in 2018. But Dan Tehan, Australia’s trade minister, has placed agriculture front and centre by insisting that any deal with the UK must be covered by tariff-free and quota-free arrangements. Continue reading...
Protests also taking place in other UK cities, including Bristol, Peterborough and NottinghamThousands of protesters have gathered in central London in solidarity with the people of Palestine.Organisers have estimated that more than 180,000 people are in Hyde Park for pro-Palestinian protests. Continue reading...
by Oliver Holmes in Gaza City, Peter Beaumont and Bet on (#5J3Z7)
World leaders welcome ceasefire but Hamas and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu remain belligerentTens of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza have begun returning to their homes to inspect the devastation from 11 days of Israeli airstrikes in its war with Hamas.Gaza City, on the Mediterranean coast, had been warped by the attacks, with holes in the skyline where high-rise buildings had collapsed, their remains sprawling into the street. Cars mounted pavements to avoid craters. Continue reading...
She survived a troubled youth – and a spell in prison – to forge a new life for herself as a writer and campaigner. Now, despite the pain of revisiting those years, she’s telling her story in fullParis Lees always knew she would write the story of her life. She knew it when she was a teenager in Hucknall, just north of Nottingham, getting beaten up in alleyways, imagining that her bullies would get to read about her in the paper. She knew when she told her auntie Rachael that when she was older, her life would be like Sex And The City, going to book launches and parties, meeting politicians, wearing nice clothes. She knew when an author visited her university during her graduation, and her mother told her it would be her one day. “It was a bit of a running joke,” she says. “I’ve always known. I just had to write this book.”That book is What It Feels Like For A Girl, a memoir that reads like a novel, written in dialect, Trainspotting-style. Here, it is a Nottingham/east Midlands slang, where “right” is “rate” and “myself” is “mysen”, though Lees has only the bare bones of that accent today. She arrives for lunch almost an hour after we agreed to meet, outside a cafe in Canary Wharf in London, not far from where she lives. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, a fast-talking, 10-to-the-dozen whirlwind in a black hoodie and PVC trousers, hiding for a moment behind tinted Gucci specs in the freezing-cold shadows of metal-and-glass skyscrapers. She didn’t sleep last night, she says, out of nerves. She is anxious about discussing the book, and has been dithering at home, picking up things to give me or show me. She hands over a finished copy of the memoir, wrapped in black tissue, which peels off to reveal a bold, brash neon jacket, with a photograph of young Lees on the cover. In thick eyeliner, hair piled high, she looks like a club kid from two decades before her time. “You tell me how bright this is! Doesn’t it just grab your attention?” she says, beaming. Continue reading...
After an enforced hiatus, the contest is back. As the hopefuls don their sequins, here’s how to succeed at the gloriously OTT pop jamboreeTo some, it’s a cultural cringefest. To others, it’s the World Cup of music. But no matter your spin, the Eurovision Song Contest remains one of the world’s most-watched television programmes, with the last edition, in 2019, attracting more than 180 million viewers. Founded in 1956, it has inspired and outlasted countless reality singing franchises owing to its mix of big voices, over-the-top staging and a fervent nationalism, as artists sing for themselves and their countries. Winning songs can be brash or beautiful; they just need to cultivate votes across the public and a professional jury across Europe (and Australia). Past winners include a bearded drag queen from Austria, a Finnish metal band wearing latex monster masks, and Céline Dion, who, despite having no connection to Switzerland, was scouted to sing for them before she was a global megastar.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...
The singer-songwriter on her Buddhist faith, her mother, and not missing sexBorn in Canada, kd lang, 59, won her first Grammy in 1988 for her duet with Roy Orbison on the song Crying. The following year she won a second for her album Absolute Torch And Twang. Her 1992 album, Ingénue, went multiplatinum and includes the Grammy-winning hit Constant Craving. On 28 May, she releases makeover, a collection of remixes. She lives in Calgary.What is your greatest fear?
Last year the football star twice fought Boris Johnson on food poverty – and won 2-0. Now he has a new goal: helping the 383,000 British kids who have never owned a bookImagine being Marcus Rashford. You’re just going about your business, playing football for Manchester United and England, being an everyday sporting superstar. Then you put out a Twitter thread suggesting that the country’s poorest children need to be supported better in the pandemic, and it’s the government’s responsibility to help them. And the tweets go viral. And the public agrees with you. And suddenly you’re no longer just a footballing hero, you’re a leader, a sage, Mahatma Rashford, Marcus Mandela, a footballing messiah. Just imagine being Marcus Rashford, a supremely successful footballer, a shy young man who has never really shared an opinion publicly before, and you’re now dictating government policy. How profoundly must it change you?Ordinarily, after all, footballers are interviewed about football. And yet today we’re meeting to talk about child literacy, Rashford’s latest passion. He tells me he didn’t start reading properly till he was 17 (which, let’s remember, is only six years ago). Once he started, he couldn’t stop. He mentions his favourite book, Relentless by Tim Grover, the personal trainer who took some of the world’s greatest athletes, including Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, and made them even better. Relentless is a self-help book about how to maximise your potential. Its subtitle is From Good To Great To Unstoppable. And unstoppable is what Rashford aims to be – not just in football, but in all walks of life. Continue reading...
Children’s charity faces claims it failed vulnerable children and misled donors after shutting down activities in the countryOne of the world’s largest children’s rights charities has admitted it “made a number of mistakes” when it left Sri Lanka abruptly last year, amid accusations it had misled the public and donors and failed 20,000 vulnerable children in the country.Former employees and provincial governors who spoke to the Guardian described Plan International’s exit as “irresponsible”, “cynical and indefensible”. Continue reading...
More than 700 people have died in the Mediterranean this year. But Sea-Eye, a German charity, is fighting hard to save livesAmani clutches her son, Mohammed, as she is pulled from an unstable wooden boat in the Mediterranean. “Please help. My baby is soaked in water and freezing,” says the 23-year-old Syrian refugee.It’s shortly before 2am, last Monday and about 80 miles (130km) from the Libyan coast a group of maritime emergency responders from the Sea-Eye 4 are on patrol. Continue reading...
More public services to go online, encouraging Germans to move away from paper forms and faxesGermany’s infamously unwieldy and old-fashioned bureaucracy is to be given a welcome digital boost with a new law to make electronic identification easier and more efficient.Whether registering a new residency, a baby or a car, or applying for child support or a driving licence, German citizens will in future be able to do so by mobile phone in combination with an existing identity card. Continue reading...
Analysis: reported death of Boko Haram’s leader will increase the influence of Islamic State affiliatesFor more than a decade, Nigerian security services and their international supporters have struggled to end Boko Haram’s brutal reign of terror over north-eastern Nigeria.But few observers of the conflict are celebrating – even though it appears increasingly likely that Abubakar Shekau, the Islamist extremist movement’s notoriously violent leader, is dead, its strongholds overrun and remaining fighters scattered. Continue reading...
Beijing is using ‘cognitive warfare’ to undermine trust in the island’s government, says officialA Taiwanese official has accused China of spreading fake news about the Covid-19 outbreak on the island, saying this was why the government was publicising and refuting instances of false information circulating online.After months of keeping the pandemic under control, Taiwan is dealing with a surge in domestic infections, and the whole island is under a heightened state of alert with people asked to stay at home and many venues shut. Continue reading...
Life-support systems at Scott Base are operating beyond their lifespan, with leaking buildings and old electrics in one of Earth’s harshest climates“You start to see some wear and tear. We’re starting to see failures and risks with things … that keep people alive and fed, watered and so on. If the failures are significant, you basically only have one option: to leave.”Simon Shelton has visited Antarctica 19 times, sometimes staying through the long, dark winters, and has seen first-hand the gradual decline of Scott Base, New Zealand’s only outpost on the continent, and a hub of scientific research, particularly on the impact of the climate crisis. Continue reading...
There is only one way to really make a change in New Zealand is to raise the bottom more rapidly than the middle“Today, we close a chapter on our past.” So said New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, on Thursday, as she launched a budget that included the largest increases to benefits since the 1940s. But although she should be congratulated for finally taking concrete steps to attack poverty and inequality, there is a real danger of celebrating too soon.Child poverty is one of our much-lauded prime minister’s signature issues, and she has committed herself to ambitious targets that require hardship rates to be cut by as much as two-thirds by 2028. If achieved, this would be an exceptional feat, a rapid reduction that would place New Zealand among the world’s best performers. Continue reading...
Commissioner acknowledges need for reform, as officers speak of ‘helplessness’ at escalating problemThe Queensland police service says it is examining proposals to bring social workers or other specialists to domestic violence incidents, after releasing a documentary where officers speak candidly about their “helplessness” and “frustration” at the escalating problem.Police responses to domestic and family violence have come under intense scrutiny in the past month, since the death of Gold Coast mother Kelly Wilkinson and admissions of systemic failures. Continue reading...
by Anne Davies Photographs by Mike Bowers on (#5J4CZ)
Two months after rains fell in the north, billions of litres of water are finally coursing down the Baaka-Darling system, rejuvenating the Menindee Lakes and farming communitiesIn late March parts of Queensland were deluged by rain. Cars were swept from roads and flash floods inundated towns as rivers broke their banks.Billions of litres of water flowed across flood plains into creeks and from creeks into the rivers that stretch like fingers across the region. Continue reading...
by Presented by Anushka Asthana with Hazem Balousha a on (#5J49P)
Guardian journalist Hazem Balousha describes living in, and reporting from, Gaza, under heavy bombardment, while historian Rashid Khalidi discusses the history of the Palestinian struggle for statehoodAnushka Asthana talks to Hazem Balousha, a Guardian correspondent who lives in Gaza. He describes living in, and reporting from, the strip, which was under heavy bombardment from last Monday until the agreement of a ceasefire on Friday. The latest conflict started after Israel attempted to evict Palestinian residents from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in east Jerusalem and Israeli police stormed the Jerusalem compound which is home to al-Aqsa mosque after days of worsening clashes. Hamas issued an ultimatum for Israel to withdraw forces and as soon as that passed started firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. Hazem discusses the impact the bombardment has had on him, his family and other Gaza residents, and examines what would need to change for life to improve for them all.Anushka also talks to Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian American professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University in New York and the author of the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine about the history of the Palestinian struggle for statehood. Continue reading...
by Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent on (#5J42Z)
Health secretary agrees government has ‘moral responsibility’ to address what happened in 1970s and 80sMatt Hancock has said compensation will be paid to people people infected by contaminated blood products and their relatives if is recommended by the public inquiry into the scandal.Appearing at the inquiry on Friday, the health secretary agreed the government had a “moral responsibility” to address what had happened. Continue reading...
Israeli police fired stun grenades towards Palestinians who threw rocks and petrol bombs at officers outside Jerusalem’s flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque on Friday, hours after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire in Gaza. Police raids at the mosque and clashes with Palestinians during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan had led in part to the war between Israel and Hamas
by Emma Graham-Harrison and Akhtar Mohammad Makoii on (#5J424)
Parents admit murdering film-maker Babak Khorramdin and to killing daughter and son-in-law years beforeAn Iranian couple have been arrested for drugging, murdering and dismembering their film-maker son, Babak Khorramdin, 47, and also confessed to killing their daughter and son-in-law in the same way years earlier.The case has stunned Iran, where it has been splashed across the front pages of newspapers with headlines including “Society in shock” and “Occupants of terror house”. Continue reading...
MailOnline published actor’s identity as complainant in rape case against French directorAssociated Newspapers has paid substantial damages and apologised to actor Sand Van Roy for revealing her identity as a complainant in a rape case against the French film director Luc Besson.In May 2018, Van Roy filed a complaint with French police alleging that she had been raped by Besson. She expected to remain anonymous, as is her right under French law, but details of her complaint were leaked and reported in the French press, breaching her right to anonymity, the high court heard. Continue reading...
Analysis: usually guarded Duke of Cambridge reveals pent-up fury as he comments on BBC’s handling of Panorama interviewHe delivered it to camera in a calm and measured tone. But the Duke of Cambridge’s actual words had devastating impact and betrayed a fury pent up for a quarter of a century.He spoke of “deceit” of “lurid and false” claims, of cover-ups, woeful incompetence and his “indescribable sadness” over Lord Dyson’s findings on the BBC’s handling of the now infamous Panorama interview. Continue reading...
The Carnavalet, devoted to the city’s history, has been shaken out of its dusty and confusing former shapeOne of the first cities in Europe to award itself a museum devoted to its own history, Paris will soon have one of the continent’s most modern as the Musée Carnavalet reopens this month following a spectacular five-year, €58m (£50m) renovation.Opened in 1880 at the suggestion of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who realised 20 years earlier that the mammoth programme of urban renewal he was carrying out would obliterate much of the city’s past, the museum had not been overhauled since. Continue reading...
Dutch cycling union claims city has turned on them by making centre more difficult to navigateIts reputation is that of an idyll for cyclists, a city freed from the torment of cars. But while Amsterdam remains a model to most of the world, there are signs of trouble in paradise.A series of developments have led the Amsterdam branch of the Fietsersbond, the Dutch cyclists’ union, to claim the municipality has turned on them, unfairly prioritising pedestrians in the city’s historic centre. Continue reading...
by Sufian Taha and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem, on (#5J3PW)
Many people fear that with no political solution, violence will return again and againAfter four wars in 13 years, or four battles in a single conflict punctuated by intermittent periods of calm, many Israelis and Palestinians on Friday expressed a weary sense of deja vu about the latest Gaza ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.“Life will return, because this is not the first war, and it will not be the last war,” said a shop owner, Ashraf Abu Mohammad, in Gaza. “The heart is in pain; there have been disasters, families wiped from the civil registry, and this saddens us. But this is our fate in this land, to remain patient.” Continue reading...
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