Sotheby’s to auction digital artefact, This Changed Everything, more than 32 years after world wide web first proposedSir Tim Berners-Lee will sell an NFT representing the source code of the world wide web at Sotheby’s, the auction house has announced, more than 32 years after his first proposal for the project was dismissed by a supervisor as “vague, but exciting”.The sale, proceeds from which will be used to benefit initiatives that Berners-Lee and his wife, Rosemary Leith, support, is the first time the auction house’s historic artefacts division has been able to sell such a “digital-native artefact”. Continue reading...
Anger, confusion and despair are the keynotes of this one-night-in-a-city film that leads towards a horrendous scene of abuseA one-night-in-the-city movie from Hungary with an ensemble cast interconnecting and interrelating in bizarrely unexpected ways; the city in question is perhaps Budapest, though it was filmed in Cluj, in Romania. The keynotes are anger, confusion and despair, and to some degree the film could have been opaque or contrived but its malaise ultimately finds expression in a truly horrible #MeToo moment, one of the most brutally plausible and unsettling I have seen in any film recently.The cast are various: the organisers of a protest against the reactionary government have a row over competency, and an associate of theirs has a romantic moment with a Mohawk-haired teen son of a sourly depressed pastor and his angry wife. A woman has a furious row with a rude and supercilious sales assistant in a flower shop. Her husband is enraged to hear of a sad romantic escapade in the past and their 10-year-old daughter turns out to have magic powers. They have a link with an intimate and experimental “living room theatre” troupe whose deeply unpleasant director is a predatory rapist, furnishing this movie with the climactically horrendous scene near the end. And so it goes on, with the various lives playing out more or less simultaneously. Continue reading...
Arrests of opposition figures, including revered former guerrillas, represent ‘last gamble of a dictator’s family’Nicaragua’s Sandinista rulers have launched an unprecedented crackdown on the country’s opposition, arresting a string of prominent critics of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, in an apparent attempt to crush any serious challenge in November’s elections.Six opposition figures were arrested at the weekend, including revered former guerrillas who fought alongside Ortega during the campaign to topple the dictator Anastasio Somoza and went on to serve in the first Sandinista government. Continue reading...
Four experts from DR Congo’s Goma Volcano Observatory took the trail up Mount Nyiragongo last week to get a closer look at the volcano which last month spewed rivers of lava and forced the evacuation of a city Continue reading...
Ancient Roman building with ‘magnificent frescoed walls’ appears to have been survived a fireAn ancient Roman building has been found during excavations at a former cinema in the northern Italian city of Verona in what has been described as a “miniature Pompeii”.The discovery was made during excavations in the basement of Astra cinema, which is undergoing renovation after lying abandoned for more than 20 years. Continue reading...
Agreement struck on Monday night and details expected to be announced on Tuesday morningDetails of a trade deal between the UK and Australia will be announced on Tuesday morning, the Guardian understands.A Department for International Trade spokesperson confirmed that the broad terms had been struck on Monday night, after Boris Johnson and the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, had dinner at Downing Street. Continue reading...
by Harry Taylor (now); Kaamil Ahmed ,Martin Belam and on (#5K1BN)
Nearly 40,000 new cases reported in Brazil in last 24 hours; hospitals in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta already at 75% capacity; Bangkok cancels vaccine appointments
The hosts dominated in Seville but Sweden, who defended superbly, may rue a golden chance passed up by Marcus Berg10.05pm BSTAnd here’s a report from the master, Sid Lowe.
Tuesday: Murugappans expected to be released from detention on Christmas Island but are unlikely to return to their home town. Plus: translating international potato varietiesGood morning! There’s good news today for the Biloela family and their supporters, with the family set to be released after nearly two years in detention on Christmas Island. We also have news on Australian emergency departments struggling with an overloaded system and more on the ongoing government mishandling of the vaccine rollout in the aged care sector. Hungry for more? Check out our recommended reads for everything you need to know about Australian spuds.The Biloela family will soon be reunited on the Australian mainland, where the youngest daughter, Tharnicaa, is being treated in hospital after suffering sepsis and pneumonia while in detention on Christmas Island. The immigration minister, Alex Hawke, is set to announce today that the Murugappan family will be released from detention. Hawke will use his ministerial discretion to allow the family to return but the government is not expected to make any substantive changes to their visa status, which is still being argued in the courts. It’s expected the family will be initially reunited in Perth while Tharnicaa is in hospital. Continue reading...
Police are accused of unlawfully killing thousands of civilians between 2016 and 2019 during drug crackdownThe international criminal court’s chief prosecutor has sought authorisation to open an investigation into crimes against humanity during the Philippines’ deadly “war on drugs”, in one of her last acts before stepping down this week.Fatou Bensouda asked judges at the world’s only permanent war crimes court to authorise an investigation into allegations that police unlawfully killed as many as tens of thousands of civilians between 2016 and 2019. Continue reading...
Hot weather bakes in disadvantage. Regenerating natural and living ecosystems will help us allA century ago the British critic and crime writer GK Chesterton declared that crime fiction is the poetry of the city. Chesterton’s point was that the city is more attuned to the poetry of contemporary life than the country, but his observation also hit upon something no less important, which is that the structures that shape social and economic life are visible in their concentrated forms in the urban environment.This is especially true when it comes to the impacts of global heating. As our cities get hotter the inequities embedded in them are intensifying rapidly. A 45C day in Sydney’s inner city isn’t fun, but residents of the affluent suburbs close to the centre tend to live in well-appointed, air-conditioned houses and apartments, as well as enjoying easy access to beaches, parks, pools and libraries where they can find refuge from the heat. Continue reading...
by Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent on (#5K23A)
Analysis: some observers say Beijing may well seek to undermine Nato unity in response to being accused of posing a systemic challenge to western valuesWhen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was established on 4 April 1949, its mission was to counterbalance armies from the Soviet Union that were stationed in central and eastern Europe after the conclusion of the second world war.After Emmanuel Macron, the current leader of one of its founding members, France, called it “brain-dead” in 2019, some analysts said the alliance will have to look for a new unifying mission to keep itself relevant in the new age of great power competition between the US and China. Continue reading...
Dean Morrice described by judge as ‘dangerous neo-Nazi’ who pumped out racist propaganda onlineA former Ukip member who posted violent racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic propaganda online and collected the means for making bombs has been jailed for 18 years.Dean Morrice had ball bearings, pipes and instructions for an improvised explosive device (IED) by the time his home was raided last year, and the judge at Kingston crown court said it was “fortunate” that police arrested him when they did. Continue reading...
Patrik Schick’s sensational long-range goal knocked the stuffing out of Scotland4.28pm BSTSteve Clarke speaks to the BBC. “It was quite an even game, I don’t think there was much in it. Obviously they were a little bit more clinical with their chances. Losing the goal with a second-phase set play was disappointing and we went in at half-time on the back foot, then the boy’s hit a wonderful strike from just inside our half. It was a shot that got blocked that fell perfect for them. So those moments went against us. When we had our chances to get back, we didn’t take them. It’s a good learning experience. We didn’t come here to learn, but you still learn your lessons, that’s what happens. I thought we played decent. At times we played some good stuff. Lots to learn for everybody. I’ll have a good think about it. We’ll go back to base camp, lick our wounds for 24 hours, then get ready for the game on Friday.”4.22pm BSTThe hero of the hour, Patrik Schick, talks to the BBC. “The first game is so important and we are happy to have won this game. It’s always hard to play against us, because we have a lot of hard-working players. Scotland was a tough opponent, but we were ready. I saw the keeper off his line, I checked already in the first half. I thought maybe this situation will come. I knew he stays very high, so when the ball came, I quickly checked where he was standing, and it was a nice goal. Croatia will be a little bit different but we will prepare.” Continue reading...
Investigators have found 3,787 fragments as items in house from people who disappeared suggest killings may go back yearsInvestigators digging under the house of a suspected serial killer on the outskirts of Mexico City have found 3,787 bone fragments so far, apparently belonging to 17 different victims.Prosecutors in the state of Mexico, which borders Mexico City, suggested the grisly finds may not end there. In excavations carried out since 17 May, authorities have dug up the floors of the house where the suspect lived. They now plan to extend the search to the soil beneath several other rooms he rented out on the same property. Continue reading...
Volunteers respond to politically polarised film footage from Israel and the Palestinian territories in this critical look at interpretationEven though he tries to maintain a cool, scientific demeanour, Israeli director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz finally lets slip a twinge of despair at the end of this interesting geopolitical Rorschach test. Alexandrowicz sits studiously behind a monitor as he invites a succession of volunteers to enter an adjacent booth. There, they have a choice of 40 clips to watch, snippets of life in Israel, while he asks them to share their thoughts on what they see. Half of the clips are from rightwing Israeli sources; the other half are from B’Tselem, an Israeli human-rights organisation that aims to document abuses of power in Palestinian territories.Alexandrowicz quickly zeroes in on the pensive Maia, a Jewish American who supports Israel, but brings an insistent scepticism to everything she watches. He is the director of pro-Palestine documentaries such as The Inner Tour (2001) and The Law in These Parts (2011) – and believes her to be his ideal audience: a possible convert. Continue reading...
If the UK and EU’s wrangling over the agreement is to end, both sides must honour their commitment to pragmatismBrexit, by definition, was always going to be disruptive. And the harder the Brexit, the greater the disruption.Leaving a customs union and a single market, even if you subsequently secure a free trade agreement, means the reintroduction of customs formalities, regulatory checks and other non-tariff barriers. And if you agree with the European Union that part of the state will de facto remain in the EU’s customs territory and its internal market for goods, those frictions will be within the UK. Continue reading...
From his breakthrough in Deliverance to a memorable turn in Toy Story 3, the authenticity of Beatty’s middleman gone bad made him the perfect co-star – and often stole the show
Picasso was so enthralled by African art, he used it to start a revolution. But did it give rise to a fantasy of Africa that still endures? British-Nigerian artist Shonibare tells us why he’s revisiting that seismic momentIn 1998, in a hilarious work called Diary of a Victorian Dandy, Yinka Shonibare inserted himself, impeccably attired, into the sitting rooms, drawing rooms, billiards rooms and bedrooms of high society Victorian Britain, invariably causing a sensation in each of the perfectly mocked-up photographs. The work mimics William Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress, but instead of ending up in Bedlam, like Hogarth’s protagonist, Shonibare the Dandy triumphs over white society at everything from financial dealing to fine conversation. It all climaxes with him having a great time in a brothel with no apparent guilt or punishment. Well, it was the 1990s – and Shonibare was a bona fide Young British Artist. Also, he says with a laugh, “Hogarth was the first YBA.”Shonibare has played plenty of games with art and history since, including refitting a model of HMS Victory – that most British of all vessels, the flagship of the Battle of Trafalgar – with sails of (supposedly) African batik fabric and sticking it in a giant bottle. But now the British-Nigerian artist is turning his attention to the birth of modern art in Picasso’s Paris. Not many artists come away from an encounter with Pablo looking good. A 2012 Tate exhibition about the Spaniard and modern British art left Henry Moore and Francis Bacon looking very small indeed. But Shonibare engages with the old Minotaur in a relaxed, funny yet profoundly insightful way. Continue reading...
Standoff between DUP and Sinn Féin blocking ratification of Arlene Foster’s designated successorA dispute between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) over an Irish-language act is threatening to derail the Northern Ireland assembly and executive.Arlene Foster was due to resign as first minister at 1pm on Monday but a standoff between the two biggest parties at Stormont is blocking her designated successor, Paul Givan, 39, from taking the post. Continue reading...
Helen, 47, and Ray, 49, met in 1999 when she interviewed his band for a magazine. They got together in 2001 and now live in Staffordshire with their two sonsHelen landed her dream job at the end of the 1990s, working as a writer for Total Guitar magazine. She was living in Bath, travelling across the country for gigs whenever she got the chance. In May 1999, she went to Reading to interview the band Witness, who were supporting Hurricane #1, and met the lead guitarist, Ray. “The band were so friendly and down to earth,” she remembers. “I met a lot of musicians who were egotistical, but Ray wasn’t like that.”Witness had been working on their first album in Bristol, where Ray was based at the time. “We’d done a few interviews, but that one felt like a big deal,” he says. “We were worried about what to say and I thought she might ask lots of technical guitar questions that I didn’t know how to answer.” But the interview went “really well” and he was taken with Helen. “She caught my eye and I thought: ‘She’s nice.’” Continue reading...
The Chicago rapper’s last album spent 47 weeks in the UK chart, testament to the power of his raw, introspective tracks. He discusses his journey out of crime and drug use towards being one of rap’s biggest stars“Every day a battle, I’m exhausted and I’m weary / Make sure I smile in public, when alone, my eyes teary / I fought through it all, but that shit hurt me severely.” Even acknowledging the widespread vulnerability and emotional honesty in today’s rap scene, these are still startling lyrics for a US No 1 hit. They’re written by 22-year-old Chicago rapper Polo G, and taken from Rapstar, the lead single on his new album, Hall of Fame. The track also reached No 3 in the UK in April, and his previous album The GOAT has spent 47 weeks on the UK album chart, with his brand of mournful melodic rap perhaps particularly appealing during the introspection of lockdown. A candid but tense meeting with him shows the reality of those lyrics.His recent success means his schedule is filling to the point where our video call gets repeatedly pushed back due to flights and late-night chatshow recordings. When it does happen, the camera shows the ceiling of a car as he is driven to the bank. The disorienting whirl of album promo is taking its toll. “It’s kind of stressful: the constant ‘we need you to do this’,” he says. “But it’s just a matter of me getting back into the loop of the world opening back up.” Continue reading...
Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays James Brooke, a British adventurer who became the White Rajah of Sarawak, in a film that fails to probe the complexity of its fascinating subjectWhile the name James Brooke might seem obscure to many viewers, his exploits in south-east Asia, retold here in Michael Haussman’s adventure biopic, are not so foreign. After all, they inspired Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. Brooke’s stranger-than-fiction journey from ex-soldier in the Bengal army to becoming the White Rajah of Sarawak, which once attracted the attention of Errol Flynn, is especially ripe for the silver screen. Alas, Edge of the World fails to do justice to this fascinating and deeply complex chapter in British colonial history.The film begins with Brooke (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) arriving in picturesque Sarawak via boat, along with his cousin Arthur (Dominic Monaghan) and nephew Charley (Otto Farrant), both army men. Their presence is immediately met with suspicion and hostility from the local aristocrats, especially Prince Mahkota (Bront Palarae). Brooke’s courageous efforts during a pirates’ siege, however, lead to his being crowned Rajah, much to the dismay of Mahkota. As Brooke strives to establish the domain as a sovereign nation, his reign faces Mahkota’s bloody attacks, not to mention criminal charges from the British empire. Continue reading...
Facebook messages from the Italian student killed in Cairo in 2016 show his concerns about studying in the countryThe Facebook messages written by the Cambridge student Giulio Regeni in the weeks leading up to his murder give the lie to any notion he was a spy or political agitator.Even before he left England, Regeni was concerned about the risks he might face doing his thesis on trade unions in Egypt, a sensitive subject in the country. Continue reading...
Our photographer looks back on three days of politics and demonstrations during the summit in Carbis BayWith more than 6,000 police deployed to Cornwall for the G7 summit in Carbis Bay, there were surreal sights everywhere: armed officers on residential streets, snipers on rooftops, marine units in St Ives harbour and battleships in the sea. Many residents revelled in the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the action as world leaders and diplomats were convoyed into Carbis Bay, while others objected to the draconian restrictions which included a so-called “ring of steel” around the neighbourhood. Continue reading...
The latest satire-fable from Elia Suleiman is as droll as ever, but while there’s a kernel of seriousness here it too often lapses into elusive mannerismThe Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman, dishevelled yet dapper at all times and never without his hat, saunters across continents in this new movie, fixing the amusingly surreal tableau scenes he comes across with a mildly perplexed gaze. He doesn’t talk and smiles just once, when a tiny little bird (a digital creation) flies into his hotel room and drinks water from a cup while is working at his laptop. Suleiman is the holy fool who is no fool.The premise for this film that he is playing himself: travelling abroad from Nazareth, coming first to Paris and then to New York, trying to speak to producers about getting his latest film made. (In real life, he must surely be more diplomatic and persuasive than his alter ego here, the Suleiman who maintains an enigmatically satirical silence in the face of one producer’s obtuse idiocy.) Everywhere he looks, often in eerily deserted streets – surely Suleiman was shooting on very early summer mornings – he finds scenes of choreographed absurdism, gently but pointedly ridiculing the pomposity of uniformed officialdom. The title itself sounds like some lost Talking Heads track describing a place where things happen in a dream. Continue reading...
Round-the-clock tracking condemned as ‘Trojan horse’ giving government vast surveillance powers that violate human rightsMore than 40 human rights organisations have condemned the Home Office’s introduction of 24-hour GPS monitoring of people on immigration bail in an expansion of surveillance powers that has involved no consultation process or parliamentary debate.The new policy marks a shift from using radio frequency monitors (which alert authorities if the wearer leaves an assigned area) to round-the-clock GPS trackers (which track a person’s every move), while also giving the Home Office new powers to collect, store and access this data indefinitely via a private contractor. Continue reading...
Withdrawal from long-term partnership catastrophic, says Brac, affecting women and girls’ education and those in extreme povertyThe UK government’s funding cuts to the world’s largest international non-governmental organisation are a “gut punch” after a successful 10-year £450m partnership, according to a director.Asif Saleh, executive director of Brac Bangladesh, said the cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of girls without an education, millions of women and girls without access to family planning and hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty without support. Continue reading...
Prolific supporting actor also appeared in All the President’s Men, Nashville, The Big Easy and Hear My SongNed Beatty, the Oscar-nominated character actor who in half a century of American movies, including Deliverance, Network and Superman, was a booming, indelible presence in even the smallest parts, has died. He was 83.Beatty’s manager, Deborah Miller, said Beatty died on Sunday of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by friends and loved ones. Continue reading...
Ocean plastic has become a route for invasive species that threaten native animals with extinction, with Japan’s tsunami sending nearly 300 species ‘rafting’ across the PacificJapan’s 2011 tsunami was catastrophic, killing nearly 16,000 people, destroying homes and infrastructure, and sweeping an estimated 5m tons of debris out to sea.That debris did not disappear, however. Some of it drifted all the way across the Pacific, reaching the shores of Hawaii, Alaska and California – and with it came hitchhikers. Continue reading...
As a big summer of sport begins, Barney Ronay traces our reporting lineage back to giants such as Cardus and CLR JamesSport has been an indivisible part of the Guardian almost from day one. Six weeks after the paper was launched as a weekly in May 1821, its first sports report appeared: four paragraphs of horse racing, tucked away on page 3.“Races this week have been very numerously attended,” the un-bylined reporter noted, putting this down to “the comfortable circumstances of the labouring classes, which have enabled them spare time for attendance, and also to appear in better clothes”. Continue reading...
Decades of war and grinding poverty have forced more Afghans into risky double lives to surviveWhen Zainab met her first client almost two years ago, she was drunk, drugged-up, and had passed out by the time he started raping her. She had never touched alcohol before, but was told she’d be better off unconscious. Terrified, she reluctantly agreed.The man was gone when the then 18-year-old woke up; her body in pain, her thoughts filled with regret. Continue reading...
With inquiry due to publish report, family hope for answers amid allegations of official corruptionNearly 30 years ago, in May 1992, a young student wrote to his MP, Virginia Bottomley. “I am a man at the absolute end of my tether,” said the letter. “I have reached the end of my resources, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. Just over five years ago my younger brother Daniel was murdered … Since that day, my mother and I have spent almost every waking moment in a horrible and debilitating battle to expose the truth about why Daniel met such a horrible death.”That young man, Alastair Morgan, is still waiting for an answer as to why Daniel Morgan, a private detective, was found dead with an axe in the back of his head in the car park of a south London pub in 1987. The inquiry into the murder that has cost around £16m and taken eight years is due finally to publish its findings on Tuesday after earlier plans for publication were halted by the home secretary “for national security and duties under the Human Rights Act”. The panel’s report will run to 1,200 pages. Continue reading...
As island faces new outbreak and mistrust of Chinese jabs, Beijing objects to donations from US and JapanVaccines are the latest flashpoint inflaming cross-strait tensions between China and Taiwan, as the latter tries to fend off its worst coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began with a mostly unvaccinated population and the former rails against outside assistance from Taipei’s allies.Global vaccination drives are widely seen as the only way out of the Covid-19 pandemic, but in Taiwan, just 3% of the population has received at least one dose. Now the island is battling hundreds of cases a day and does not have enough vaccines for its 23.5 million people. Continue reading...
The arrival of the MSC Orchestra has rekindled tensions over the pros and cons of the giant vesselsFrom his booth facing the gondola station at St Mark’s Square, the photographer Maurizio Torresan is as much a witness to the ebb and flow of Venice’s high tides as he is to its tourists.The last time he took a photo of a packed square was on 21 February 2020, two days before the annual Venice carnival was abruptly cut short as the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Continue reading...
Apology is timed alongside 50-year anniversary of Polynesian Panther party, a movement founded to fight mistreatment of Pasifika peopleThe New Zealand government will officially apologise for racist raids on Pacific people that took place in the 1970s.On Monday the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the time had come to deliver an apology for the “dawn raids”, when officials would target people believed to have overstayed their visas purely on the basis of their ethnicity. Continue reading...
Move comes after Climate Commission recommended banning petrol and diesel cars by 2023The New Zealand government is introducing subsidies to make electric vehicles thousands of dollars cheaper and new petrol and diesel cars more expensive, as the country tries transition to an emissions-free fleet.The changes follow New Zealand’s Climate Commission recommendations which laid out sweeping changes required to get the country closer to its emissions targets. Continue reading...
Former leader faces raft of charges including that she improperly imported walkie-talkies and flouted coronavirus restrictionsThe trial of ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi will hear its first testimony in a junta court on Monday, more than four months after a military coup.Near daily protests have rocked Myanmar since the coup removed her government in February, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy. Continue reading...