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Berlin wary of setting legal precedent as talks near completion on reconciliation deal for atrocities against Herero and Nama tribes

Latest updates: prime minister says he is concerned by findings of report that found Martin Bashir had acted deceitfully to secure interview

Duke accused royal family of ‘total silence and total neglect’ as he told of his and his wife’s struggles

News agency decision to fire Emily Wilder criticised after rightwing media highlight her previous activism in collegeThe Associated Press has fired a news associate, Emily Wilder, for violating the company’s social media policies, a move that drew backlash from journalists after it became clear that Wilder had been targeted by rightwing media outlets for her pro-Palestinian activism in college.Wilder confirmed to the Guardian that she was “terminated for violating the company’s social media policies in their News Values and Principles sometime between my start date on May 3 and yesterday”. Wilder said the AP did not detail which of her tweets broke its policies. Continue reading...

Demolition of mosque in Uttar Pradesh was ‘violation of rule of law’, says Indian MPA local administration accused of illegally tearing down a mosque in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has filed a police case against nine local Muslim leaders who challenged the demolition.On Monday, Masjid Gareeb Nawaz Al Maroof in Barabanki district was bulldozed without notice after it was declared an illegal structure by the local administration, which had contested its presence. Continue reading...

State department had offered a $7m reward for Abubakar Shekau, believed killed or badly injured

The South African artist’s latest installation asks sexual violence survivors to choose a song to articulate their agonyThe event that shaped Gabrielle Goliath’s life as an artist happened when she was nine years old: a schoolfriend was killed in an act of domestic violence, the details of which have never been clear. “It would have been an accident,” she says, from her home in Johannesburg, 30 years on. “But, you know, when these things happen within a family, no one outside of those four walls knows exactly what went on.” She commemorated her friend in a 2010 photographic work, Berenice 10-28, which invited 19 young black women – so-called “surrogates” – to sit for a portrait, each representing one of the 19 years that Berenice had missed.The work that brings the South African artist to Edinburgh is another powerful act of remembrance, this time focused on the survivors of assault. This Song Is For … is the centrepiece, and emotional core, of The Normal, the reopening show at the university’s Talbot Rice Gallery. It bends the idea of the dedication song into a reflection on the worldwide problem of sexual violence against women and those who don’t conform to gender norms, through the testimonies of five individuals. Continue reading...

UN chief says both sides have responsibility to start ‘serious dialogue’ about causes of conflictWorld leaders have hailed a ceasefire that took hold in the early hours of Friday morning and vowed to help rebuild Gaza, after an Israeli bombing campaign that killed more than 230 people and Palestinian rocket attacks that killed 12 in Israel.The United Nations secretary general urged Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers to observe the ceasefire and called on global leaders to develop a reconstruction package “that supports the Palestinian people and strengthens their institutions”. Continue reading...

Region including Benidorm and Alicante has a much lower Covid infection rate than Spain as a whole

Rainfall totals across UK exceed monthly average with flood warnings in England and WalesThe UK is on track for its wettest May on record, with further heavy rain forecast as lockdown rules start to lift.According to provisional figures from the Met Office’s national climate information centre, Wales has already recorded 129% (110.6mm) of its average rainfall for the whole of the month, while the UK as a whole has had 88% (61.1mm). Continue reading...

From Disney’s blond teenager to Tim Burton’s surreal reimagining and an all-black Pirelli calendar, Lewis Carroll’s character has had many lives and looks. A new V&A exhibition charts them allA blue dress trimmed with white, plus long hair swept back from the forehead by a ribbon, always means Alice. When Gwen Stefani wears a black satin headband and a blue-sky corset edged with snowy lace in the video for What You Waiting For, she is Alice. No surname required. When the supermodel Natalia Vodianova balances on a marble mantelpiece in Balenciaga ankle boots and a sky-blue mini dress, with a bunny’s tail fashioned from a whisper of Fortuny-pleated white silk plissé on the pages of Vogue, she is Alice. Alice’s look, now 150 years old, is as recognisable as a Batman or Superman costume. She is an icon, a fashion fairytale. Should you so wish – for about £20 – you can be Alice.

Guess the date the story first appeared to be in with a chance of winning prizes including a ticket to a Masterclass of your choiceTo mark the Guardian’s bicentenary, we are running a competition for readers. We have selected six stories that have appeared over the past 200 years. There is a link between them, but just to make it a little spicier we will not be telling you what that link is.

From Abba to Bucks Fizz, dancing grannies to French diplomacy, our quiz requires some serious song contest chops to get 12 points – or a perfect 20Vampires, naked apes and free booze! The wildest Eurovision performances ever

The potential arrival of a highly transmissable variant could overwhelm health systems already struggling after military coup

Rising number of UK cases of India variant to push back Brussels decision by two weeks

Ahead of a livestreamed version of the festival, here are some of the biggest and best performances from years gone by Continue reading...

A wave of anti-government protests entered their fourth week on Wednesday as unions, student groups and others demand social change amid intermittent talks between the government and strike organisers Continue reading...

More than a thousand women in Bargny, and many more in the other villages dotting Senegal’s sandy coast, process fish – performing a crucial role in one of the country’s largest exportsSince her birth on Senegal’s coast, the ocean has always given Ndeye Yacine Dieng life. Her grandfather was a fisher, and her grandmother and mother processed fish. Like generations of women, she now helps support her family in the small community of Bargny by drying, smoking, salting and fermenting the catch brought home by male villagers. They were baptised by fish, these women say.But when the pandemic struck, boats that once took as many as 50 men out to sea carried only a few. Many residents were too terrified to leave their houses, let alone fish, for fear of catching the virus. When the local women did manage to get their hands on fish to process, they lacked the usual buyers, as markets shut down and neighbouring landlocked countries closed their borders. Without savings, many families went from three meals a day to one or two. Continue reading...

The fake wellness guru owes more than $500,000 in fines, penalties and interestAuthorities have again raided the home of con woman Belle Gibson, who faked brain cancer, to try to recoup her unpaid fines.The Melbourne woman was fined in 2017 for falsely claiming she cured herself of brain cancer with natural remedies, including diet and alternative therapies. Continue reading...

Friestat Clinic apologises for ‘tragic mistake’ which local media said the patient did not initially recognise because of his illnessAn Austrian hospital amputated the wrong leg of a patient, it said on Thursday, blaming human error for what it called a “tragic mistake”.The elderly patient was suffering from many illnesses, the Freistadt Clinic, in a town of the same name near the Czech border, said in a statement. Previous sicknesses have affected his legs, to the point that his left leg required amputation. Continue reading...

Covid certificates designed to open up tourism across bloc; two doses of AstraZeneca jab 85% to 90% effective against symptomatic disease

Aya Hachem was killed in drive-by shooting after dispute between tyre firm owners, jury hearsA student who was shot dead in the street amid a dispute between two neighbours in Blackburn was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, a court has heard.Aya Hachem, a 19-year-old law student, was a killed in a drive-by shooting on 17 May last year. Continue reading...

Baffling stunts and bizarre lyrics are de rigueur at europop’s premier competition – so it takes quite something to make this listAt Eurovision, you have three minutes to impress the world. While an unforgettable song and stonking vocals are key to getting douze points, how else can you make your performance stand out? With bewildering stunts, surreal lyrics and distracting props, of course! With the biggest event in europop returning this week, let’s revisit some of the weirdest performances over the years – the ones that really made Terry Wogan and Graham Norton wince. Continue reading...

Novel, which weaves together the stories of Mexican migrants with those of a US family on a road trip south, was picked for the prize by a Barcelona libraryEarlier this year, a library in Barcelona submitted a nomination for its favourite book of the year: Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. On Thursday, thanks to Biblioteca Vila De Gràcia, Luiselli was named winner of the world’s richest prize for a novel published in English, the €100,000 (£86,000) Dublin literary award.“It’s a beautiful, relatively small library in Barcelona who nominated me,” said Luiselli. “I’m going to kiss its rocks one day, because I probably won’t be able to kiss its librarians because of Covid.” Continue reading...

Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy attack Penguin Random House India for putting out book by a prime minister they say has mishandled Covid and persecuted writers

In the 1970s and 80s QC John Smyth abused boys who attended camps where Justin Welby workedThe archbishop of Canterbury has issued a “full personal apology” to survivors of sadistic abuse perpetrated by a QC in the 1970s and 80s against public schoolboys who attended Christian holiday camps.Justin Welby, who worked as a dormitory officer at the so-called “Bash camps” in the 1970s, said: “I am sorry this was done in the name of Jesus Christ by a perverted version of spirituality and evangelicalism … I continue to hear new details of the abuse and my sorrow, shock and horror grows.” Continue reading...

Cases have risen from a daily total of about 5,000 in early March to a record 35,000 this week amid relaxed restrictions and a low vaccination rateIt is 1am and intensive care doctor Vanina Edul is trying vainly to remember the names of all the Covid patients who have died on her watch.The 47-year-old physician still remembers the first patient she saw die of Covid last year. “He was 60 years old and we were surprised because that was young for that long-ago time. We thought only old people died. How wrong we were,” she says. Continue reading...

When there’s only space for one meat-free option on the menu, chefs often now ditch dairy for vegan alternatives. Is this the end of veggie dining?The recent explosion in vegan food has not been without pushback. Mainly from bolshily indignant meat-eaters who take it as a personal affront. But could a far more peaceable group, vegetarians, also be finding all that vegan energy a bit, well, irritating?Anecdotally, their beef (now seitan) is that the current zeitgeisty cool surrounding plant-based food is increasingly pushing vegetarian options off menus. Vegetarians are asking: who moved my cheese? They are seeing their halloumi burgers, sour cream-dressed burritos or blue cheese and mushroom wellingtons removed in favour of vegan meat-free dishes. There is low-level grumbling at this new dairy-free landscape, talk of being “screwed” by vegans and, as one Guardian colleague describes it, “a little silent war” developing between the rival groups. Continue reading...

A boy using plastic bottles tied to himself and his clothes to keep afloat has arrived at Spain’s north African territory of Ceuta after swimming across the Spain-Morocco border. The child was spotted in the water by soldiers on El Tarajal beach before he attempted to climb the wall into the city. The migration attempt comes as an estimated 8,000 people - including 2,000 minors - made it to the Spanish territory in recent days before the majority were sent back. Spain has accused Morocco of disrespect for the European Union and willingness to risk the lives of children and babies in a diplomatic row between the countries

Analysis: the PM has spent big on tackling social issues, but it will still take New Zealand only halfway to meeting her child poverty goal

As poaching of date mussels wrecks Naples’ reefs, police joined biologists to find the gangs behind itAfter a three-year investigation into two organised crime groups in Italy’s Campania region that included wire taps, surveillance and nearly 100 suspects, police cracked down with a dozen arrests in March – not for offences linked to drugs or prostitution, but for the illegal harvesting of a small mollusc.Known as date mussels, Lithophaga lithophaga are cigar-shaped shellfish that make their homes inside limestone, secreting an acid that slowly carves out a tunnel in the rock. They take decades to grow – anywhere from 18 to 36 years to reach just 5cm in length – and can live for more than 50 years. Continue reading...

His career has taken him from Shakespeare to Star Trek – and soon he will be swimming with sharks on TV. He discusses longevity, tragedy, friendship and successI think I’m arriving good and early for my interview with William Shatner when I click on our video chat link 10 minutes ahead of time. But Shatner has arrived even earlier: there he is, as soon as my Zoom screen opens, poking away at his computer. “I like to get in early to ease my mind. But it’s OK, I can meditate afterwards,” he says. His tone is often heavily ironical, as if he is daring you to accuse him of playing a joke on you. This has led to much discussion from fans about “the Shatner persona”, although Shatner scoffs at the phrase. “I don’t know what that even is,” he says.I think they think you play up to their expectations, I say. Continue reading...

Bulgaria focused on protecting the economy over saving older people from Covid. Ultimately, it will achieve neither

As his new play The Spank opens in Italy, the writer talks about the power of ludicrous ideas, the crisis facing the middle class – and why he can’t get white liberals off his phoneHanif Kureishi has been reflecting on toxic masculinity. He has heard a lot about it in the past year and it has entered the fiction he has been writing over lockdown – at quite a rate by the sound of it – and sparked stories about predation, sexual misdemeanour and “what’s going on between men and women”.But he is just as interested in the benign, everyday dynamic between male friends. Most of the men he knows are good people, he says, who get together to talk about music and books, tease each other and chew the cud about life. He misses them now, locked away in his study in west London, although he has grownup sons up the road for company (they live with their mother). There’s the dog, too, which they take to the park together most days. Continue reading...

Health minister had said for anyone uncertain about AstraZeneca, there would be enough of Pfizer vaccine later in yearHealth minister Greg Hunt has assured the president of the peak body for doctors that the government’s position on vaccination has not changed and that people eligible for their Covid-19 vaccine should not wait to get vaccinated.It follows comments made by Hunt to the ABC on Thursday morning that for anyone uncertain about the AstraZeneca vaccine, there will be enough of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. Continue reading...

Government claims largest rise in welfare payments in ‘more than a generation’ as it seeks to tackle pressing social problems as well as post-pandemic recoveryNew Zealand’s centre-left government has unveiled what it called the largest boost to welfare payments in “more than a generation” as the centrepiece of its budget, and pledged to fuel a Covid-19 recovery by addressing the country’s most pressing social problems.“Previous downturns have made inequality worse,” said Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, in written remarks to reporters in the hours before the budget was announced. “We’re taking a different approach.” Continue reading...

US secretary of state tells Russian foreign minister he will defend American interests against any aggression from Moscow

Priti Patel demanded that findings be handed over prior to publicationThe independent panel investigating the Daniel Morgan scandal is refusing the home secretary’s demands to hand over its report before it can be published, as senior police sources say nothing in the case affects national security.Priti Patel provoked fury on Tuesday by demanding the findings be handed over for review prior to publication, angering both the Morgan family and members of the panel conducting the inquiry. Continue reading...

Joe Biden takes tougher line in phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu, but Israel and Hamas deny truce is imminent

Viola Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, massacre, was seven when a white mob attacked the city’s 'Black Wall Street' in 1921, killing an estimated 300 African Americans.

Boris Johnson likes to pretend that free-trade deals are easy and have no downside. Talks with Australia are proving him wrongThere is agreement across the Conservative party that free trade is a good thing, in theory. Unity is harder to sustain over practical detail, as has become clear through negotiations on a deal with Australia.The agreement has immense symbolic value. It would be the first substantial post-Brexit deal that was not a rollover of terms that were available under EU membership. The prime minister sees it as the enactment of his “global Britain” rhetoric. The government is determined to have such a trophy ready in time for next month’s G7 summit. Continue reading...

Advocates say delays have a huge impact on the lives of terminally ill people in the last months of their livesSome 130 people diagnosed with a terminal illness died before Centrelink granted them access to the disability support pension last year, new data reveals.The figures were provided to the Senate in response to questions from the Greens senator Rachel Siewert, who described them as “unacceptable”. Continue reading...

Grattan Institute report says industry can’t keep asking federal government for support, and underlying problems such as ageing population and rising healthcare costs need to be addressedAustralia’s private health insurance industry is in a “death spiral” and the federal government and the industry must agree on significant overhauls if the system is to be sustainable into the future, a report from health thinktank the Grattan Institute says.The causes of the malaise are well documented and include an ageing population, increased use of healthcare services, and rising healthcare costs that drive up premiums and make health insurance less affordable – and less attractive – to young and healthy people in particular. Continue reading...

Progress suggests agreement may be possible before Iranian presidential election in JuneUS and Iranian negotiators are are aiming for a final round of talks in Vienna next week on the terms for Washington’s re-entry to the nuclear deal, the Iranian chief negotiator has said, implying a deal is possible before the Iranian presidential election in June.The delegations, meeting in Vienna in a fourth round of talks, agreed on Wednesday to return to national capitals to receive final instructions on the remaining red lines before a definitive round of talks starting on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Madrid says lives of children are being deliberately put at risk in diplomatic dispute

Massed mourners hail the dictator’s flower-clad body in a film that gives long-lost footage a new and unnerving lease of lifeFor this very disquieting film, which is like a two-hour bad dream, Sergei Loznitsa has assembled hitherto unseen footage in colour and black-and-white that was shot in the Soviet Union in 1953; it shows the official obsequies for the death of Stalin, whose body is seen lying in state, surrounded by lush flowers, like a Marxist-Leninist Ophelia. All this was reportedly intended for an official film, but, as the Khrushchev era advanced, and Stalin’s reputation declined, there was evidently no enthusiasm for editing and presenting this footage in the right spirit, and so it was allowed to languish, forgotten.And what is so extraordinary is that these scenes of people shuffling along in the streets, obediently reading newspaper reports, listening to speeches, presenting wreaths, were clearly intended to be edited as ambient material, doubtless accompanied with a strident voiceover. Loznitsa doesn’t do this. He just presents long stretches of eerily fascinating scenes, the long national pageant of sleepwalker-solemnity, like a live feed from some reverential television broadcast. (You can imagine some Dimbleby-esque commentator for the actual funeral scenes at the end.) Continue reading...

We would like to hear from EU citizens who have encountered issues at the UK border and other difficulties related to the policyFollowing Brexit, some EU citizens have been caught up in the UK’s “hostile environment” policy and have reported being held in airport detention rooms and sent to immigration removal centres.We would like to hear from EU citizens about how they have been affected by the “hostile environment” policy. Continue reading...

Children in their early teens have lived through four wars, with the fear, loss and trauma that brings

London fire chief told Kensington and Chelsea leader works could compromise safety but warning was not passed on to right peopleThe London fire brigade warned the leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea that refurbishments could compromise fire safety and cause deaths, but he did not pass it on to housing officials in charge of works at Grenfell Tower.The deputy commissioner of the London fire brigade, Rita Dexter, told Nicholas Paget-Brown, then council leader, in 2015 of “a serious risk to the safety of residents” caused by refurbishment and urged the council to devise a “strategy for assessing that risk and taking appropriate remedial action”, the inquiry into the disaster heard on Wednesday. Continue reading...