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Millions of tonnes of fuel, oil and minerals are extracted from the region – but some communities have little to show for it but devastation

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have named their new arrival with the royal family in mindAs the Duke and Duchess of Sussex welcome their new baby, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, to the world, many are curious to know what the names of Prince Harry and Meghan’s second child and first daughter mean.Lilibet refers to the Queen’s nickname within the family, and was first used when Princess Elizabeth was just a toddler and unable to pronounce her name correctly. Continue reading...

Child named after the family nickname for the Queen, the baby’s great-grandmotherThe Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced the birth of a daughter they have named Lilibet “Lili” Diana Mountbatten-Windsor.Harry and Meghan’s daughter, who was born in hospital in California on Friday, weighed 7lb 11oz (3.4kg) and has been named after the family nickname for the Queen, the baby’s great-grandmother. Her middle name was chosen to honour her late grandmother Diana, Princess of Wales, the couple said. The baby is the Queen’s 11th great-grandchild and is eighth in line to the throne. Continue reading...

Accusation comes as security services warn of an escalation in violent discourse in the country

Boris Johnson has pledged to give details of how UK will meet its climate targets before Cop26

Former PMs, presidents and ministers sign letter saying richest should pay two-thirds of $66bn needed

Artwork in building slated for demolition faces uncertain future, though city has pledged to save it

Pontiff fails to issue direct apology for church’s role in residential schools where children were abusedPope Francis has said he was pained by the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former Catholic school for indigenous students in Canada and called for respect of the rights and cultures of native peoples, but stopped short of the direct apology some Canadians had demanded.Speaking to pilgrims and tourists in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican during his weekly blessing, Francis urged Canadian political and Catholic religious leaders to “cooperate with determination” to shed light on the finding and to seek reconciliation and healing. Continue reading...

Home secretary accused of deflecting blame from government policies after letter to social media companiesPriti Patel has been accused of attempting to deflect blame from the UK government’s failure to assist refugees after she told social media companies to remove posts that “glamourise” migrant crossings.The home secretary wrote to firms on Saturday urging them to do more to remove “totally unacceptable clips” that she said promote “lethal crossings”. Continue reading...

When I discovered the dreadful toll of the pandemic in Costa Rica, I realised there were worse things than holidaying at homeI’d been aware, for a while, that wealthy friends had resumed travelling, and a few months ago – in the first flush of vaccination optimism and with Covid rates in New York plunging – it looked easy. Perhaps we can do this, I thought. Countries reliant on tourism dollars were reopening. Airline prices were still low. It was, I told myself, safer to go to Costa Rica than to Florida. If Jet Blue thought it was OK to travel to San Jose, then that was good enough for me. Besides which, I thought, with stubborn servility, if it really was dangerous to fly to Central America, the US government wouldn’t let me do it. (Ha.)That was in late March. Last summer we had, along with everyone else lucky enough to be able to leave the city, rented a minivan and, after driving north for three hours – the minimum journey required to clear the extraordinary inflation-hitting resort rates near New York – sat out August in a house in Massachusetts. There was no question of flying to England or anywhere else, and if we missed seeing friends and family, there was some consolation in having that option removed. Of course, people still flew last summer. But their circumstances were generally so different from our own that it removed the pain of decision-making. Continue reading...

Former leader of Revolutionary Guards rounds on ex-central banker in bruising first debateIran’s presidential election candidates have engaged in a fiery and bruising first television debate, during which one promised to put another, the former governor of the central bank, on trial for treason and ban him and other members of the government from leaving the country.The threat to put Abdolnaser Hemmati on trial was made on Saturday by the former leader of the Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezaei, currently secretary of the Expediency Council. He claimed the Iranian currency had been devalued so much by Hemmati that “the train of the revolution has turned into a scooter”. Continue reading...

Roundup of opposition activists took place in May around date of swearing-in ceremony for President Yoweri MuseveniA new wave of repression in Uganda has led to the abductions of dozens more opposition activists by security forces and at least one alleged death. Several hundred people are thought to have been detained without trial in the east African country in secret prisons where they are subjected to a brutal regime of mistreatment. The country has suffered a series of crackdowns aimed at stamping out dissent since campaigning began for presidential elections late last year.The trigger for the most recent repression by security services appears to have been the swearing-in ceremony of Uganda’s veteran president, the 76-year-old Yoweri Museveni, in May. Continue reading...

The vocalist breaks her long silence to talk about grieving for her daughter, her pioneering work with Tricky on Maxinquaye and finally making an album she’s 98% happy with…Martina Topley-Bird is struggling with her voice today. “It was awful last night,” she says, croakily, down the line from her home in Valencia. “My first interview in 11 years and then this happens!” As it turns out, Topley-Bird’s will hold out for well over an hour. But it won’t always take her to where she wants to go. She’s agreed to an interview to promote Forever I Wait, her first album since 2010’s Some Place Simple, but she doesn’t enjoy talking about herself; she’s fully aware of her tendency to let conversations drift, leave sentences unfinished, not quite pin down the message she wants to deliver. Speaking to her can be like listening to some of her dreamier music: captivating, meditative, yet somehow with a sense of her barely being there at all. A typical anecdote might grind to a halt midway through: “But yeah… I don’t know… sorry, vagued out again!”There is also a subject that is never going to be easy to talk about. In 2019, Topley-Bird’s daughter, Mazy, also known as Mina, killed herself at the age of 24. She had suffered a psychotic episode following a gig with her band 404 and died after being admitted to West Park hospital, Darlington. An inquest led to the coroner saying he would make two prevention of future death reports to reduce the risk of patients self-harming on the ward. At the time, Topley-Bird put out a statement saying: “Sweet baby, life won’t be the same without you.” But she hasn’t spoken since. She’s said in advance today that the subject can be broached, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. “I’m only just beginning to process it,” she later admits. Continue reading...

Harry’s HRH is to be removed, with earlier inclusion blamed on an ‘administrative error’Prince Harry is to have his royal title dropped from the credits of an exhibition at Kensington Palace showing the dresses of his mother Diana, Princess of Wales.A week ago, the Diana exhibits came with a display panel that said “Lent by HRH [his royal highness] the Duke of Cambridge and HRH the Duke of Sussex”, the Sunday Times reported. But Harry’s HRH is to be removed with its inclusion blamed on “an administrative error”. Continue reading...

The Italian artist may have wanted to brush Beatrice Hastings out of his life, but artifical intelligence has thwarted him by enabling a re-creation of the workNo one wants to be reminded of a failed relationship by having the ex’s portrait hanging around. After Amedeo Modigliani and his lover, Beatrice Hastings, broke up, the Italian artist is thought to have obliterated her memory by painting another woman’s likeness over his portrait of her.So he might not be too happy to learn that science has now brought back that “lost” portrait, using artificial intelligence, an X-ray and 3D-printing to re-create the painting, with full colour and textured brushstrokes. Continue reading...

Backlog of 305,000 applications in post-Brexit settlement scheme prompts calls for extension of 30 June deadlineHundreds of thousands of European citizens face legal limbo if the Home Office fails to clear a backlog of more than 300,000 applications before the EU settlement scheme closes at the end of this month, campaigners have warned.With about three weeks to go before the deadline for EU workers and their families to apply for permanent residency in the UK, campaigners say anxiety and confusion remain over the rights of the 305,000 who have applied and are waiting for a decision, with many fearing that they risk a loss of rights similar to that experienced by the Windrush generation. Continue reading...

Aid agencies write to Foreign Office minister as pressure grows on Boris Johnson ahead of Commons voteUK aid cuts of 42% will leave about 70,000 people without health services and 100,000 without water in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement, before the deadly cyclone season, the Foreign Office minister for Asia has been warned.A private letter sent to him last week by a group of aid agencies working in the area comes before a vote on Monday designed to force ministers to guarantee they will restore UK aid to 0.7% of gross national income next year. Continue reading...

Rivers are especially vulnerable to water abstraction and global heating, but now there is hope for River ChessConservationist Allen Beechey remembers a time, in the 1990s, when trout swam along the River Chess as it meandered through the centre of his home town of Chesham. “It was a gentle, reassuring sight and it helped trigger my love of nature,” Beechey said last week.Then came the droughts, the river dried up – sometimes for several years at a stretch – and the fish died out. They have yet to come back to the Buckinghamshire town. Continue reading...

Local media reported villagers fought back with catapults and crossbows after being assaulted by soldiers during a search for armsMyanmar’s security forces have reportedly killed 20 people in clashes with villagers armed with catapults and crossbows in the Ayeyarwady river delta region. If confirmed, the death toll would be one of the worst days of violence in the country in nearly two months.Khit Thit Media and the Delta News Agency reported that 20 civilians had been killed and more wounded on Saturday, after villagers tried to fight back when soldiers assaulted residents in what they said was a search for arms. Continue reading...

Like Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, Super Frenchie follows the unusual life of a daredevil, this time ski base jumper Matthias GiraudThe moments that skier Matthias Giraud lives for are a blip on the screen, less than a fourth the length of a standard playback button. Again and again in Super Frenchie, a new documentary covering the career of the ebullient French ski base jumper, Giraud plunges down the peak of an otherwise barren mountain, sails off a cliff, front flips and parachutes away from certain death in a matter of seconds with the grace and seamlessness of a dancer.Related: ‘Nothing can be taken at face value’: should we ever trust the recorded image? Continue reading...

Mark Lowcock says funds slashed affect key issues on G7 agenda, as party rebels prepare to vote for reversalA senior UN diplomat has warned Boris Johnson that his decision to slash overseas aid is tarnishing international faith in Britain’s trustworthiness at a crucial moment, as he called on the government to back Tory demands for a swift reversal of the cuts.With Conservative rebels increasingly confident they have enough votes to inflict a humiliating government defeat before the G7 meeting in Cornwall late this week, the head of the UN’s office for humanitarian affairs said Johnson had demonstrated “a failure of kindness and empathy” that was undermining Britain’s reputation. Continue reading...

The Benedictine abbey on the Hebridean island reopens tomorrow after a £3m renovation funded by bake sales and sponsored walksA Christian community on a tiny Hebridean island which for centuries has attracted pilgrims from all over the world will reopen on Monday after a mammoth campaign raised £3.75m to save it from closure.The Iona community, centred on a Benedictine abbey in whose grounds John Smith, the late Labour leader, is buried, has spent the past three years making its buildings fit for the 21st century. The upgrade includes the installation of a renewable energy system and connection to superfast broadband. Continue reading...

Vulnerable people pushed out of accommodation as summit adds to seasonal rush for roomsVulnerable homeless people have been moved out of hotels in Cornwall to make way for police and government officials attending this week’s G7 summit, a local charity claims.Disc Newquay has said that many people who have been living in hotel rooms under rolling short-term contracts during the pandemic had been told to leave, before the summit of the world’s seven largest advanced economies at a luxury hotel in Carbis Bay. Continue reading...

It’s time to break free, says Mariella Frostrup. They may be acting from the most caring of motives, but you can’t allow your family to prevent you being your best possible selfThe dilemma I am a woman in my early 30s. I have financial independence, a job I love, my own home, wonderful friends, and pets I adore. Despite all of this my parents, who I love dearly, still treat me as if I’m 10. How I spend my money (even on groceries) is monitored. New clothes or books are noted and commented on. I would like to try new hobbies, but my mother always comes up with a reason why I shouldn’t. With my father it’s more about my physical safety: I’m not allowed to travel or take jobs in certain cities.I’ve tried moving away, limiting calls and only visiting once a week. This has not been successful. I feel like I am incapable of functioning without their opinion or presence, but is that because I need them, or because of how I’ve been raised? Continue reading...

Victorian health authorities are concerned about the recent spread of the more infectious Covid strain, first identified in India, in the communityTwo members of a West Melbourne family who visited New South Wales last month before testing positive for Covid-19 have been found to have the Delta variant of Covid-19.It’s the second time the variant – first identified in India – has been found in the community in Australia, following a Sydney couple testing positive in May. Continue reading...

How does Australia’s coronavirus vaccine rollout compare with other countries, when will Australia be fully vaccinated and when will you be eligible to get your dose? We bring together the latest numbers on daily new Covid-19 cases, as well as stats and live data on total vaccination figures in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and other states.

Offer a welcome boost for Taiwan, which says China has interfered with its attempts to secure vaccines internationally

Police still searching for more bodies after gunmen on motorcycles attacked seven villagesA gang of cattle thieves have killed 66 people in raids on seven villages in north-west Nigeria’s Kebbi state, police say.Dozens of assailants on motorcycles attacked seven neighbouring villages in Danko-Wasagu district on Thursday, Kebbi state police spokesman Nafiu Abubakar told AFP on Saturday. Continue reading...

Highly contagious new variant probably came through an importation from overseas via hotel quarantine, infectious diseases expert says

Belgian teenagers will receive Pfizer jab; Italy second in Europe for numbers fully vaccinated

Many social media users applaud termination of author’s account, but some have said move is a blow to freedom of speechThe author Naomi Wolf has been suspended from Twitter after using it to spread myths about the pandemic, vaccines and lockdown.Wolf, who wrote the influential feminist work The Beauty Myth, holds staunch anti-vaccine views. Last month she told a US congressional committee that vaccine passports would “re-create a situation that is very familiar to me as a student of history. This has been the start of many, many genocides.” Continue reading...

Far from being isolating, for some older Australians single life has major benefits – from a closer attachment to friends and community, to the joy of doing things on your own termsBeing “self-partnered” is not just for those in their 20s or 30s, but for some seniors too.Although being alone in the later years of one’s life often comes with a stigma of loneliness attached, some people just prefer living life on their own terms – whether it means not having to share the bed, or eat dinner on anyone else’s schedule. Here, five happily single seniors share their stories. Continue reading...

Work has stopped but the bills have not. As we moved into the second week of this lockdown, panic once again settled inI love my job, my workmates and the people I work for at a sports bar on the Mornington Peninsula.We have a steady flow of tourists all year round and our regulars are extremely loyal to “their local”. For me, work is my life – my workmates and customers are like an extended family and I wouldn’t change that for the world. Continue reading...

Traditional owners are standing together to protect the Fitzroy – a ‘beautiful, living water system’. Just watch out for the bird-sized spiders …A Nyikina man, Mark Coles Smith, and his fellow travellers began their 400km journey down the mighty Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) on a flood plain covered in giant spiders.“Bird-sized” spiders were clinging to the canopy, jostling for space on branches protruding above flood water that stretched for kilometres in every direction. Continue reading...

The author of a debut novel about diversity in the workplace on how black people act around white people, embracing her hair, and what’s changed a year after George Floyd’s murderZakiya Dalila Harris was born and raised in Connecticut and is currently based in Brooklyn. Now a full-time writer, she previously worked in book publishing, an experience she draws on in her highly anticipated debut novel, The Other Black Girl, which combines thriller with social satire to tell the story of Nella, the only black employee at a fictional publishing house, until Hazel joins the company. The book charts how the two become frenemies, explores the challenges of surviving in a systemically racist workplace, and was the subject of a 15-way auction prior to publication in the US.What were your own experiences in publishing and how have they played into the book?

Tourism chiefs slam the ‘unfair’ downgrading after invasion of football fans

Parts of the continent potentially face a decade of crisis. These two measures are more important than any other in avoiding itThere are so many good causes in the world it is often difficult to know where aid money should go. As leaders line up to attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, the most effective destinations for aid money have become clearer – a global vaccination programme and improving girls’ education.This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where so much can go wrong over the next 10 years – a population explosion, massive biodiversity loss, desertification, famine and mass migration to mention just a few – that unless we focus our efforts on vaccines and girls’ education, whatever is done to alleviate poverty or tackle the climate emergency will be threatened or even sabotaged in almost every other region of the world. Continue reading...

Novelist Carlos Dávalos says his homeland has an unenviable choice in bitterly divisive presidential election“Peru has always been a gloomy country; it’s not the Caribbean,” says the writer and journalist Carlos Dávalos as the traffic rolls down the Gran Vía in Madrid on a sunny June morning. “There’s that sense of a kind of Andean melancholy.”Although Dávalos’s debut novel, La Furia del Silencio (The Fury of Silence), has drawn comparisons with both The Catcher in the Rye and Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning Roma, the coming-of-age tale is profoundly, and inescapably, Peruvian. Continue reading...

The Finnish artist’s work was hugely influenced by her passion for the great outdoors – in particular the tiny island of KlovharunIn 1964, when she was in her 50s, the Moomin creator Tove Jansson settled on her dream island. Klovharun in the Finnish archipelago is tiny – some 6,000 sq metres – and isolated, “a rock in the middle of nowhere”, according to Jansson’s niece, Sophia. It has scarcely any foliage, no running water and no electricity. Yet for Jansson, it was an oasis. For 18 years she and her partner Tuulikki Pietilä spent long summers there, heading out from Helsinki as soon as the ice broke in April, leaving only in early October. The island meant “privacy, remoteness, intimacy, a rounded whole without bridges or fences”.Klovharun encapsulates something of Jansson’s originality as an artist and writer – and her human presence. Her illustrated Moomin books, which began to be published just after the second world war, brought her phenomenal acclaim and devotion. The tales of amiable troll creatures have been taken to generations of hippy hearts; their pear-shaped faces have adorned a million ties. Their marketing triumph – in which Jansson enthusiastically participated – has overshadowed her other achievements as a painter, novelist, short-story writer, anti-Nazi cartoonist, and designer of magazine covers. Success may also have obscured how ambivalent she was, how often on the cusp of identities. She was brought up in Finland speaking Swedish, had male and female lovers, told her stories in pictures and in prose, lived on water as well as land. More and more she appears as a pioneer. Not least in her crystalline descriptions of the natural world. Continue reading...

In 1939, thousands of German soldiers, many of them conscripts, were dispatched across Europe. They went armed not only with weapons but with cameras – the famous German Leica and Rolleiflex – in their bags and orders to capture what they saw.

Mainland Scotland was due to drop to less onerous measures on Monday, but some areas to remain at level 2

Five years after Jo Cox MP was murdered in her constituency, her sister is standing for Labour in a crucial byelection there. She explains why she’s ready to take on Cox’s political legacyIt was the most shocking day in British politics this century. On 16 June 2016, a week before the Brexit vote, brooding tensions came to a climax with one horrific act of violence: the murder of Jo Cox. It was only 13 months since she had been elected to parliament as Labour’s MP for Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire. Cox had been a symbol of hope in politics: young, idealistic, popular, a doer who wanted to make a difference. Then she was fatally shot and stabbed outside a library in Birstall, a small market town in her constituency. Her killer, Thomas Mair, a local resident and far-right extremist, shouted “Britain first” as he attacked her.Today, her sister Kim Leadbeater says she has blocked out much of what happened. “I know I haven’t really dealt with the day,” she says. “Maybe I never will. Maybe I’ll never need to.” Leadbeater, a fun-loving extrovert, is virtually whispering. “What’s the point? The only person who’ll suffer is me.” Continue reading...

Devon and Cornwall force to be joined by 5,000 officers from around the UK in its ‘largest security operation’The security cost of hosting next weekend’s G7 summit in Cornwall will exceed £70m if the final bill of policing the meeting of world leaders is in line with the two previous events held in the UK.Around 6,500 police will secure the event at Carbis Bay, near St Ives, on 11-13 June, with more than 5,000 coming from around the country to help the Devon and Cornwall force run what it said is the “largest security operation in its history”. Continue reading...

Tributes lit in the windows of the US consulate building and the European Union’s office are a ‘political show’, says ChinaChina has berated the US and EU consulates in Hong Kong for displaying candles to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre , blasting it as a “clumsy political show” to destabilise the city.Candles were seen lit in the windows of the US consulate building, which is next to the residence of Hong Kong’s Beijing-appointed leader Carrie Lam, and the European Union’s office on Friday night. Continue reading...

Four contractors have differing answers on whether the government contractually obliged them to vaccinate staffThe four private companies responsible for vaccinating the aged care sector have given conflicting accounts about whether the government ever contracted them to inoculate staff, prompting further criticism about the confusing and delayed rollout.The federal government, in the early stages of the rollout, said it would rely on private contractors to vaccinate 183,000 aged care residents and 339,000 staff, using in-reach teams that would attend each facility. Continue reading...

Experts say writing to people on the outside can help prisoners build purpose – but it goes both ways in what can be a difficult relationshipFor the first time since 82-year-old Jan Skilling was a young girl, she has time to spare.Widowed at 40 and responsible for a nest of kids, grandkids, and now “more great-grandkids than I care to count”, Skilling has spent any spare hour since she can remember looking after everyone but herself. So, in 2017, with retirement from her teaching career looming, she knew it was time for a change. Continue reading...

Information minister blames use of platform for ‘activities capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence’Nigeria’s government has announced an indefinite suspension of Twitter in the country, two days after the social media company removed a post from president Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.The information minister, Lai Mohammed, said the government had acted because of “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”. Continue reading...

Arrivals who have had two vaccine doses will only need to show proof of negative antigen test

Decision follows oversight board recommendation over ex-president’s post on Capitol attackFacebook is suspending Donald Trump’s account for two years, the company has announced in a highly anticipated decision that follows months of debate over the former president’s future on social media.“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, said in a statement on Friday. Continue reading...

Nine experts call for ‘full-fledged investigations’ after discovery of remains of 215 Indigenous children at former residential schoolUN human rights experts have urged the Canadian government and the Vatican to hold swift and thorough investigations into the discovery of unmarked graves at a former residential school in British Columbia.The unmarked graves of up to 215 Indigenous children were discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential Schools last week, using ground-penetrating radar. Continue reading...