Health experts emphasize need for even those who have had disease to get inoculatedNew cases of Covid-19 are declining across most of the US, even in some states with vaccine-hesitant populations.But almost all states where cases are rising have lower-than-average vaccination rates and experts warned on Sunday that relief from the coronavirus pandemic could be fleeting in regions where few people get inoculated. Continue reading...
Some summit spouses must have trust issues – why else would they turn up?It could be said that anyone who voluntarily attends their partner’s office party is either a masochist or has trust issues. So, why, then, do the spouses of world leaders feel obliged to turn up to global summits?Ordinarily, it appears that their only duty is to make small talk with their fellow spare parts while their other halves chew over the big issues of the day. At the G7 meeting in Cornwall this weekend, the Wags and Habs were also required to admire Boris Johnson’s latest child when he was rolled out before their beachfront BBQ. Continue reading...
Brexit ministers always intended to ignore the agreement they signed and blame the EU for the consequences, argues Adrian Ward. Plus letters from Mike Pender, Steve Fildes, Chris Webster and Amin KassamIf you make an agreement with someone, you have to honour it (Boris Johnson to face pressure from EU on Northern Ireland, 12 June). If you unilaterally decide to change the terms, you have broken the agreement and the other party will not trust you to keep your word in future and may penalise you.But Boris Johnson and his ministers knew exactly what they were doing in December 2019 to “get Brexit done” and never had any intention of sticking to the agreement over Northern Ireland – get it signed, then just ignore it and blame the EU for all the repercussions. Johnson’s political playbook, page one.
by Lanre Bakare Arts and culture correspondent on (#5K0QZ)
Historians aim to document small labels, record shops, pirate radio stations and clubs that helped scene thriveChingford Sainsbury’s may be an unlikely setting for an encounter that helped capture a key part of British cultural history, but MC Navigator’s weekly shopping trip to his local supermarket would prove crucial.Navigator, one of the leading figures in the jungle and drum’n’bass scene in the 1990s, bumped into Uncle 22 – another important player – who had been under the radar for years and was picking up some bits with his mum. Continue reading...
Men who want to look good used to be disparaged and labelled vain. But times are finally changing…Until recently, male motivation for looking good or strong was often born from an inherent desire for us to feel and appear more successful, competitive, virile and powerful – what some now refer to as toxic masculinity.Of course, there have always been men who’ve enjoyed discussing clothes, watches, even grooming regimes but, for many, this open appreciation of what they wore was often merely a game of one-upmanship disguised as an appreciation of the finer things in life. Think of the 1980s and its bullish Wall Street status stamps, such as pinstripe suits and red braces (Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko); the scene in American Psycho where rival stockbrokers battle over business cards, like a game of Top Trumps. Or in the 1990s, when showing off got even easier and even off-duty symbols such as underwear, jeans and luggage were plastered with a riot of logos. Continue reading...
Rachel de Souza warns use of websites partly to blame for normalising abuse in schools in EnglandCurbs on children’s access to online pornography need to be brought in urgently to stop the spread of an activity that is partly to blame for normalising sexual harassment in schools, according to the new children’s commissioner for England.Dame Rachel de Souza is urging governments and tech companies to introduce age verification checks. She warned that access to hardcore pornography was shaping children’s expectations of relationships and was partly to blame for thousands of testimonies of sexual harassment by schoolchildren published on the Everyone’s Invited website over the last few months. Continue reading...
Student Owen Hurcum is ‘humbled’ to serve the oldest city in Wales, and aims to put Bangor’s peacocks on the mapWhen Owen Hurcum, a part-time archaeology master’s student at Bangor University, climbed to the stage to accept their position as the newly appointed mayor of Bangor, they felt “hugely humbled” to represent their community.What is even more unique about Hurcum, 23, is who they are: non-binary, queer and agender. They made history in this year’s local and mayoral election by becoming the first openly non-binary mayor of any city in the world. Continue reading...
A fifth of EU-wide income disparity is down to the difference between countries, with those in the euro area faring worstEconomists generally study inequality – how big income gaps between households are – at the national level. That’s understandable given it’s where major policy choices tend to happen, but this can sideline other issues such as global inequality (income inequality between individuals around the world is traumatically high but encouragingly falling). Fascinating new research looks to fill another such gap: inequality trends across the EU.Unsurprisingly, EU-wide inequality is high – similar to that of Latvia, the third-most unequal EU member – but it’s lower than in the United States. Importantly, 20% of EU inequality is down to income gaps between rich and poor member states, while just 1% in the US relates to differences between the states. The importance of these gaps in determining overall inequality between individuals across the EU helps explain the most interesting finding of the research: EU inequality has declined post-financial crisis, but in the euro area inequality has been slightly increasing. Continue reading...
James Merlino details financial support on offer to people who have had property damaged in the floods and wild weatherThousands of Victorians remain without power, days after a deadly storm lashed eastern parts of the state.Emergency management commissioner Andrew Crisp confirmed 39,000 homes remain without power on Sunday, down from 300,000 immediately after the storm, which began on Wednesday night. Continue reading...
It’s half a century since Sir Ian McKellen first played Hamlet. Now he’s starring as the Dane again – at 82. He talks about his extraordinary life, why he’ll never write his memoir – and his one lasting regretOh, birthdays,” Sir Ian McKellen growls, on the occasion of his 82nd. “At my age I don’t do birthdays.” The wider world has not yet been informed, however, and cheerful cards have come in stacks to McKellen’s London townhouse. Messages chime in on his computer and two landline phones ring on his desk, one after the other. “But, darling,” McKellen says, answering a call and interrupting a well-wisher mid flow, “I’m trying to avoid it all this year.” Guilt, he explains to me, later. He leads us through to a sitting room. “Actors don’t need this special attention, I’ve realised. We get cards and presents on first nights. Everyone makes a fuss of us. Birthdays are wonderful things for people who don’t get treated as special all year round.”McKellen throws himself down in a winged armchair and croaks out an epic smoker’s laugh, one of those laughs that begins in silence (mimed really) and soon becomes an extended hum in the back of the throat, then a wheezy bark. Devoted to his cigs, he will step out on to his riverside balcony whenever he needs one, staring out over the Thames while he puffs, pulling on a tweedy overcoat if it’s cold. Between times he sucks on Polo mints. One goes into McKellen’s cheek, now. The rest of the packet he leaves perched on his tummy in reach. “Where were we?” he asks. “Birthdays?” Continue reading...
Despite Covid restrictions, pubs are getting ready for supporters to see their team take on EnglandEd Thomas has never shown the European Championships in his bar, but this time he’s hung up the bunting and will watch his team play their first Euro 2020 opening match with muted glee.But who to support in today’s England v Croatia game, a “rematch” of the 2018 World Cup semi-final? For Thomas is half-Croatian and half-English. Continue reading...
With famous users leading a rebrand, pleasure accessories lose their stigma in a £90bn health and wellness boomLily Allen has one. Cara Delevingne has one. Dakota Johnson has developed her own range. Is the celebrity sex toy 2021’s answer to the celebrity perfume?For some, getting busy has been the last thing on the menu during the pandemic. Study after study, from India to Italy, has revealed that lockdown libido loss is real and that stress has killed the buzz in the bedroom. Sexual wellness, on the other hand, has reached a dizzying peak. Not only has the conversation around sexual pleasure changed for generation Z, but the industry attached to it – from apps to toys, herbal supplements to specialist oils – is also booming. Continue reading...
As a government civil servant, I was burnt out from working on Brexit and Covid and needed a change of scene. Trekking the length of Britain is just the tonicIt’s 7.30pm on 29 April and I’m standing alone on the highest hill in this part of Cornwall. The sun is bright and eager, dancing with dainty flashes on the waves west towards Newquay. But I’m wrapped in everything I have – two pairs of thick socks, leggings, trousers, T-shirt, two long-sleeved T-shirts, jumper, fleece, jacket, snood, hat – and still the wind reaches its long fingers down my neck to grip my spine. It is one degree above freezing; in less than a week it will snow on Dartmoor.In fact, this is more than a hill. This is Castle an Dinas, one of those iron age forts to which schoolchildren are taken to be underwhelmed by ditches and mounds. The dog walkers who came up earlier weren’t cowed by antiquity: each allowed their charges to mess, tongues wagging. Watching the deposits stirs in me something I was repressing. For the four days I’ve been on the road, public toilets have been there when needed. A threshold is about to be crossed. I’m going wild. Continue reading...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not the only great supreme court justice to have made her name with dissent in the name of progressThe late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent collar is a small part of a larger history. Unlike some other high courts, the US supreme court accepts strong dissent. Ginsburg stood in the tradition of John Marshall Harlan – the only justice with the courage, foresight, humanity and constitutional vision to object to the odious 1896 Plessy v Ferguson decision that approved racial segregation.Related: How the Word is Passed review: After Tulsa, other forgotten atrocities Continue reading...
The UK’s departure from the EU was supposed to reinvigorate our fishing industry. Instead, it has forced the country’s last distant-water trawler to sit idleAt 4am on 24 April 2019, 25 brass players, two percussionists and a conductor piled into a coach in Hull for a 200-mile drive to London. It was a Wednesday morning and it had been touch and go whether all of them would be able to get time off from their day jobs to make the trip. Seven hours later, they stood on the quayside at Greenwich, as Princess Anne swung a bottle of champagne at the looming yellow hull of the UK’s newest and biggest whitefish trawler.Many of the people gathered that day had voted for Brexit in the EU referendum and hopes were high that it would usher in a new era for a British industry that had been dwindling for years. The Kirkella was the larger of two new boats built by the private company UK Fisheries in 2018, at a combined cost of nearly £59m, landing fish at Hull for the first time in a decade. The Princess Royal summed up the optimistic mood on the quayside when she offered her congratulations “to the owner for their investment in the future of fishing”. As the bottle smashed against the boat, the players launched into a lung-busting rendition of Hearts of Oak. Before they had even finished playing, recalls Tony Newiss, cornet player and chairman of the City of Hull Band, the heavens opened and everyone got drenched. Continue reading...
The former strategic analyst says the culture of official secrecy is worse today but urges whistleblowers: ‘Don’t wait years till the bombs are falling and people have been dying’When the police arrived, a 13-year-old boy was photocopying classified documents. His 10-year-old sister was cutting the words “top secret” off each page. It seemed their dad, Daniel Ellsberg, had been caught red-handed.But the officers were responding to a false alarm and did not check what Ellsberg and his young accomplices were up to. “It was a very nice family scene,” the 90-year-old recalls via Zoom from his home in Kensington, California. “It didn’t worry them.” Continue reading...
A film about the disputed Salvator Mundi blames the National Gallery for its role in giving credibility to the claim that it was the artist’s lost workThe National Gallery is facing controversy over its role in the tangled story of how the world’s most expensive painting emerged from obscurity before being sold for a staggering £320m, only to vanish again from the public eye.The gallery exhibited the Salvator Mundi in its Leonardo da Vinci exhibition a decade ago when it was an unknown work with doubts about its attribution, restoration and ownership. Continue reading...
Men were charged with arson over blaze that destroyed what was Europe’s largest migrant campFour Afghan asylum seekers have been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Greece for their part in a fire that destroyed the Moria migrant camp in 2020.The men, charged with arson with risk to human life over the fire on the island of Lesbos last September, were found guilty after a court rejected a request by lawyers for three of them to be tried by a juvenile court because they were under 18 at the time. Continue reading...
2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh region left minefields that have continued to inflict casualties, including three recent deathsAzerbaijan says it has handed over 15 Armenian prisoners in exchange for a map detailing the location of landmines in Agdam, a region relinquished by ethnic Armenian forces as a part of a deal to end their short war of 2020.Prisoners of war are a key issue for Armenia, while landmines continue to inflict casualties in Azerbaijan. Two journalists and a local official were killed on 4 June when a landmine exploded in Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar district on territory that was vacated by ethnic Armenian forces in November. Continue reading...
Students have been able to go to pubs and clubs this year, but not lectures. Now universities are saying next semester will be radically differentAustralian universities say campuses will look “radically” different next semester as students return to more in-person learning, although most large lectures will still be delivered online.As many students yearn for a return to the classroom, universities say they are planning to offer in-person learning for up to 90% of courses next semester. Continue reading...
An increased appetite for political donations strengthens the political influence of the wealthiest New ZealandersThe spokesperson for Aotearoa New Zealand’s Green party was genuinely surprised. She had called after I informed them that a major donor to their 2020 election campaign had subsequently pleaded guilty to animal neglect. The spokesperson said the Greens had not known about the neglect when they took her money.They nevertheless refused to donate it onwards. They argued the Incorporated Societies Act required them to hold on to it. As I later found out, that’s not quite true: returning the donation, or donating it to an organisation like the SPCA, seems to be possible according to their party’s charter. Continue reading...
It was a game that felt simultaneously extraordinarily trivial and hugely significant. When Christian Eriksen collapsed four minutes before half-time, needing CPR on the pitch, it seemed inconceivable – unthinkable – that it could continue. As he lay, limp, surrounded by protective and clearly distressed teammates, there seemed a possibility the tournament might be cancelled.And yet, an hour and 45 minutes later, they were back. The sight of Mathias Jensen coming on for Eriksen was hugely poignant, a mundane act lent profundity by context. The assumption, even as news came through that Eriksen was awake in hospital, was that this game at least would have to be postponed. Yet the players and coaches, after being consulted in the dressing room, agreed to play on. Continue reading...
Northern Ireland border row hits G7 summit in Cornwall as prime minister tells other leaders UK is ‘a single country’Boris Johnson was embroiled in an extraordinary public spat with EU leaders over Northern Ireland yesterday as tensions over Brexit boiled over at the G7 summit in Cornwall.After a series of tense bilateral meetings at which the French president Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, told their summit host the UK must implement the Brexit deal in full, an unrepentant Johnson said he had urged his EU colleagues to “get it into their heads” that the UK is “a single country”. Continue reading...
Metropolitan police have now made 11 arrests in connection with the incident in StreathamFour people have been charged with murder following the fatal stabbing of a teenager in south London.The Metropolitan police has made a total of 11 arrests in connection with the incident in Streatham, which happened on Thursday. Continue reading...
The opposition-led administration will be sworn in on Sunday if it can prevail in a confidence vote in the KnessetBenjamin Netanyahu is due to be ousted from office on Sunday by a new Israeli government formed with the primary aim of dethroning the country’s longest-serving leader.A motley grouping of politicians, including former Netanyahu allies turned foes, have set aside bitter differences to put an end to the prime minister’s historic run in power. If successful, it will also break a political stalemate that has seen four snap elections in the country since 2019. Continue reading...
The Booker-shortlisted novelist on teaching himself to read, critics who say he’s not nice enough to white people, and why the Bible still haunts himBrandon Taylor, 32, grew up in Alabama and studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was shortlisted for last year’s Booker prize with his debut, Real Life, a campus novel about a gay black biochemist. His new book, Filthy Animals, is a series of linked stories loosely centred on the sexual tension between Lionel, a black maths postgraduate, and two white dance students, Charles and Sophie. The writer Paul Mendez has called Taylor “a phenomenon… the laureate of young, expensively educated people... pleasuring and harming themselves and each other”. He spoke to me over Zoom from his home in Iowa City.
Jalan Woods-Bell, also 15, died from his injuries in Hayes on Friday morningA 15-year-old boy appeared in court on Saturday charged with the murder of a teenager, named for the first time as Jalan Woods-Bell, who died after being stabbed in west London during the Friday morning school run.Police were called to reports of a fight on Blyth Road in Hayes just before 8.35am. Woods-Bell, also 15, was found with stab injuries and died at the scene. Continue reading...
Protesters turn out in support of a range of causes as the leaders of Group of Seven nations meet for the forum’s 47th summit in Cornwall Continue reading...
Kieffer Moore’s second-half header earned a point for Wales in their opener in Baku4.03pm BSTKieffer Moore speaks to the BBC. “It’s great personally, but it’s a good start for us. We would have liked to have won, but a draw from the first game puts us in a good position. It’s never good going a goal down, but to get one back and see the game out is a big positive for us. It was tough in the heat, but it’s what we expect in a hot climate, and we’re used to it. I’m enjoying it. It’s a big occasion and I’m loving every second of it!”4.00pm BSTWales look much the happier side after this draw. Kieffer Moore is understandably all smiles, receiving the congratulations of his team-mates. The Swiss are more subdued, having dominated the game and created the majority of the chances. But Wales dug in and got their reward for a determined response to going behind. They form a big huddle as Gareth Bale delivers a post-match pep-talk. A big game against Turkey coming up. The Swiss face an even bigger one against Italy, and may reflect that taking off Xherdan Shaqiri wasn’t the greatest idea. Continue reading...
Data leak published by ProPublica fuels calls to tighten up system which sees ultra-wealthy pay little or no taxThe revelation last week that the 25 richest US billionaires have paid very little tax even as their fortunes have soared has reignited demands for wealth taxes on both sides of the Atlantic.An unprecedented leak of “a vast trove” of 15 years of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data to the investigative news site ProPublica has provided a staggering insight into the legal strategies the very rich deploy to avoid tax. Continue reading...
As the often volatile marching season approaches, bitter tensions over the EU protocol grow, along with a belief that NI is being cast adrift by a duplicitous British governmentThey gathered in their thousands at the top of the Shankill Road with banners and drums to send a message to the far side of the Irish Sea, where a treacherous prime minister played his charade in a kingdom no longer fully theirs.Some waved union jack flags, others had union jack masks, one had a union jack balaclava, and they tramped behind marching bands with drums, flutes and cymbals, a percussive shockwave in the Belfast dusk. Continue reading...
Thousands of people have marched in Canada in support of a Muslim family run over and killed by a man driving a pickup truck. Police have described the incident last Sunday as a premeditated attack motivated by Islamophobia. Crowds in London, Ontario, marched five miles on Friday from the spot where the family was killed to a nearby mosque, the site close to where police arrested the attacker. Candlelight vigils were also held to honour the victims and protest against hatred
Scheme is part of wider push for G7 leaders to question China on human rights, Taiwan and Covid-19The Group of Seven rich nations have agreed plans to set up an alternative to China’s belt and road initiative as part of a wide push back against China covering human rights, supply chains, support for Taiwan and demands for Beijing to reveal more about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.But Biden is being urged by other G7 leaders, including the Italian prime minister Mario Draghi, the current chair of the G20, not to push competition with China to the extent that it prevents Chinese cooperation over other critical issues such as the climate crisis. Continue reading...
World news | The Guardian