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Outdoor groups of up to 30 people and indoor meetings of up to six will be allowed, but social distancing to stay inside venues

State fund trying to recover billions in alleged losses from corruption scandal, according to court filingsMalaysia’s now-defunct 1MDB state fund is suing subsidiaries of Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Coutts & Co to recover billions in alleged losses from a corruption scandal at the fund, according to court documents seen by Reuters.1MDB is claiming $1.11bn (£785bn) from Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Bhd, $800m from JP Morgan (Switzerland) Ltd and $1.03bn from a Swiss-based Coutts unit, and interest payments from all of them, according to the lawsuit. Continue reading...

Undercover officer Vince Miller accused of lying after saying he slept with ‘Madeleine’ only onceAn undercover police officer has been accused of lying to a public inquiry by a woman who said that he deceived her into a sexual relationship that she regards as rape.The woman, known only as Madeleine, told the inquiry that the police spy, Vince Miller, deceived her into a sexual relationship that lasted a couple of months. He has claimed that they had a sexual encounter that lasted one night. Continue reading...

Policy shift aims to counteract hesitancy around viral vector jabs in older people

Locals believe bodies were dumped in river because cremation sites are overwhelmed

Inquest told security services should have shared intelligence about threat from Fishmongers’ Hall attackerThe chief probation officer for England and Wales has accused MI5 of failing to sound the alarm about Usman Khan attending an event in London where he killed two people, an inquest has heard.Sonia Flynn, the executive director of the probation service, said the security services should have stepped in when Khan’s possible attendance at the event in Fishmongers’ Hall was raised at a series of public protection, or “Mappa”, meetings MI5 attended. Continue reading...

UK settlement scheme closes on 30 June, but Home Office has 320,000 applications to processHundreds of thousands of European citizens could find themselves in limbo after 30 June and left without documented legal rights to remain in the UK if the Home Office does not clear a backlog of more than 320,000 applications for post-Brexit residency status, campaigners have warned.There are just 50 days to go before the government’s EU settlement scheme closes and the most recent government statistics show that of the 5.3m applications, 4.98m have been processed so far. Continue reading...

Maurice Kirk allegedly sent letter containing white powder to government minister Rebecca PowA former vet stalked a Conservative MP for more than a year and sent a letter containing white powder to her home, a jury has heard.Maurice Kirk, 76, was apparently upset at what he regarded as Rebecca Pow’s failure to help him in a legal battle against South Wales police. Continue reading...

Israeli police published dramatic CCTV video from a road near the Old City in Jerusalem of a white car being pelted with stones by Palestinian demonstrators, before the driver reverses and hits one of them. The car then speeds forward, hitting another person and colliding with a wall.An armed Israeli police officer runs in to protect the driver, believed to be Israeli, who faces more rock-throwing.Tensions have soared in recent days in advance of the now-delayed Israeli court ruling on whether authorities were able to evict dozens of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, just outside the Old City, and give their homes to Jewish settlers

Portugal is only major European ‘sun and sand’ destination on list of countries for quarantine-free travel

West Midlands Trains workers discover email promising one-off payment is ‘phishing simulation test’A rail union has hit out at a “cynical and shocking stunt” after a train company emailed staff to promise a bonus to workers who had run trains during the pandemic – only to reveal it was in fact a test of their cybersecurity awareness.West Midlands Trains emailed about 2,500 employees with a message saying its managing director, Julian Edwards, wanted to thank them for their hard work over the past year under Covid-19. The email said they would get a one-off payment as a thank you after “huge strain was placed upon a large number of our workforce”. Continue reading...

Man rescued after sudden gusts shattered panels on bridge in Longjing cityA man was left stranded on a glass-bottomed suspension bridge in north-eastern China after sudden gale-force winds shattered the transparent panels around him.The man was on the 100-metre-high bridge at Piyan Mountain in Longjing city, when it was hit by sudden strong weather, the local tourism department said. Continue reading...

Terrible scenes seen in India of a healthcare system in collapse are being repeated across the border

Molly Stuart’s film about a woman imprisoned for refusing to do military service paints a fascinating portrait of a country riven by conflictIn this rousing, unabashedly left-inflected documentary, we meet Atalya Ben Abba, a young Israeli woman staring down the barrel of the mandatory military service everyone in the country must do when they come of age. But Atalya doesn’t want to play any part in the state apparatus that makes the occupation of Palestine possible. Instead, she proclaims herself a conscientious objector, and must face time in prison. While her brother Amitai gets where she’s coming from, others in her family – her mother Alona, sister, father, grandparents – find it harder to understand Atalya’s point of view, especially the members of the older generation who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust.On the other hand, footage here proves that Zionist extremism permeates every generation: frothy-mouthed young Israeli rightwingers show up at the demonstrations where Atalya speaks only to counterprotest and demand that Atalya and other objectors “go back to Berlin”. Still, Atalya’s story and the testimony of some of her fellow objectors who hope for a political and diplomatic solution to the conflict suggests that the younger generation’s attitudes may be shifting, even if Atalya’s nephew learns about joining the army as early at the first grade. Continue reading...

Indian Americans scramble to secure oxygen canisters for family members, desperately work to raise funds and pressure US legislators to lift vaccine patentsSince the pandemic began, Fatima Ahmed has lost 29 of her family members in India and one in the US to Covid-19.A few days ago, her uncle died in his car as he was driving back home from a hospital in Hyderabad, a city in southern India. “All the hospitals were at capacity, so they couldn’t take him in,” said Ahmed. “He pulled over and he called the rest of the family, the khandan – before he passed.” Continue reading...

Judge sides with health minister, meaning almost 10,000 Australians in India cannot return until ban ends on FridayThe federal court has rejected an urgent bid to overturn the India travel ban, meaning 9,500 Australians stranded there will not be able to return until after it is repealed on Friday.On Monday Justice Thomas Thawley dismissed the first two grounds seeking to overturn the ban after hearing the first half of the challenge brought by 73-year-old Gary Newman, an Australian man stranded in Bangalore since March 2020. Continue reading...

Judge declines to overturn flight ban after hearing first half of legal challenge; Morrison government promises $4bn in infrastructure spending in budget; NSW Covid ‘missing link’ eludes authorities. Follow the latest updates

Officers in riot gear clashed with Palestinian demonstrators outside al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem, in ongoing violence that has raised international concern.Tensions were particularly high as Israel marked Jerusalem Day, its annual celebration of the capture of the city, including the walled Old City that is home to Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy places, in 1967.Al-Aqsa, an Islamic holy site, has been a focal point of violence in Jerusalem at the height of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Video showed Palestinians hurling rocks at police and police firing stun grenades

Photojournalist Hugh Kinsella Cunningham has been embedded with Congolese soldiers in the DRC’s ‘triangle of death’. The elusive insurgents they are hunting have pledged allegiance to Islamic StateAt the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, in a vast territory that ranges from the lofty Rwenzori mountains to the lush rainforest of the Semliki valley, one of the world’s most active militant groups is responsible for the massacre of hundreds of civilians.The ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) was originally an opposition rebel group from Uganda rooted in a radical agenda of religious militancy. Taking advantage of the regional power vacuum, the group fled to Beni territory in neighbouring DRC to find shelter from the Ugandan army. Continue reading...

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern said there was no evidence the attack at a Countdown store was an incident of domestic terrorismFour people have been injured, three critically, after a stabbing attack at a supermarket in the New Zealand city of Dunedin.Police said a suspect had been arrested and taken into custody after the incident at a Countdown supermarket on Monday afternoon. Two supermarket staff members were among those injured. Continue reading...

Bus attack comes after jihadist group denies atrocity at secondary school that killed at least 50 peopleAt least 11 people have been killed and dozens injured in the bombing of a bus in Afghanistan’s southern Zabul province.The blast took place late on Sunday night, said Zabul’s provincial governor’s spokesman Gul Islam Sial, adding that 25 people were injured including women and children who were in critical condition. Continue reading...

Mayor overseeing a green regeneration in city where temperatures can already surpass 40CLike every Athens mayor, Kostas Bakoyannis is acutely aware of the illustrious heritage of one of the world’s oldest cities. After all, he says, it is busts of Pericles and his mistress Aspasia that adorn the entrance of the neoclassical town hall. From the windows of his cavernous office, he can glimpse the Parthenon through the jumble of concrete buildings and antennas.But Bakoyannis prefers to talk about the present, not least his plans for fountains, parks and trees – antidotes to the afflictions of more modern times. Continue reading...

Brad Hazzard says AFR story that identified man was ‘appalling’, and warned it would undermine public health• NSW restrictions: what you can and can’t do under new coronavirus rules

Here are the current coronavirus hotspots in New South Wales and what to do if you’ve visited them

Singer-songwriter recognised for her ‘immense impact on music across the world and incredible repertoire’Taylor Swift is to become the first female artist to win the global icon Brit award.The US singer will be presented with the prize on Tuesday during the ceremony at the O2 Arena in London. Continue reading...

Row between leader and deputy holds up reshuffle while Rachel Reeves’ promotion looks set to inflame tensions with party’s leftKeir Starmer handed his deputy, Angela Rayner, a major promotion on Sunday night after a day of fraught negotiations and power battles. He also sacked his shadow chancellor and promoted his close ally, Rachel Reeves, to the role in a move likely to further inflame tensions with the party’s left.The reshuffle of Starmer’s shadow cabinet was derailed by a prolonged standoff with Rayner, who was locked in talks with the party leader’s team for hours on Sunday. It came after leaked plans to sack her as party chair and national campaigns coordinator triggered an outcry. Continue reading...

Spread of Indian Covid variant has not deterred PM from return of cinemas and indoor hospitality and permitting mixing at home

Thursday: federal government to pledge $4bn for major projects to aid economic recovery. Plus, why are sperm counts declining among western men?Hello, and happy Monday. Sydney is on Covid standby, China’s rocket (or parts of it) landed, and the federal budget comes out tomorrow (which people already have plenty to say about). It’s Imogen Dewey with the main stories for you this morning, plus a podcast about those plummeting sperm counts.The Morrison government will allocate more than $4bn to infrastructure projects in Tuesday night’s budget as part of efforts to lock in economic recovery after the pandemic and drive down unemployment. While such investments improve the productive capacity of the Australian economy, the program will also help lay the groundwork for an election contest either late in 2021 or early next year. New analysis meanwhile shows the government last year spent just 16 cents out of every $100 addressing the climate crisis, and that spending on the environment and climate programs has fallen by nearly a third since the Coalition was elected eight years ago. (The Australian Conservation Foundation is calling for policy reform matched by investment.) The government preannounced a number of measures on Sunday, including $353.9m in spending for women’s health initiatives, and signalled that more than $10bn will be committed to aged care. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg yesterday told the ABC the royal commission had confirmed the sector was “in dire need of reform”. Continue reading...

Tory Jonathon Seed, who was running in Wiltshire, was told 30-year-old offence debarred him, contradicting earlier assurancesA Tory candidate to be a police and crime commissioner (PCC) has withdrawn on the eve of counting after it emerged he had a 30-year-old conviction for drink-driving.Jonathon Seed has been debarred from becoming a PCC due to a historical driving offence that had come to light, the Conservative party said in a statement. Continue reading...

Scotland’s first minister makes assertion in phone call with Boris Johnson on Sunday evening• Elections 2021 live - latest news and reactionNicola Sturgeon has told Boris Johnson that a second independence referendum is “a matter of when, not if” after the Scottish National party secured a historic fourth term at Holyrood on Saturday with a pro-independence majority of MSPs returned despite tactical voting by pro-union supporters.Scotland’s first minister made the assertion in a telephone call with the prime minister on Sunday evening, despite senior Conservative figures questioning her mandate. Continue reading...

Police are looking for witnesses after the brawl inside the Oxford Street department store

French president speaks of difficulties in coordinating efforts during pandemic due to lack of central powers in health

Najla El-Mangoush subjected to personal abuse after demanding withdrawal of Turkish troops and mercenariesLibya’s first female foreign minister has come under pressure to resign and been subjected to personal abuse seven weeks into the job, after she called for Turkish troops and mercenaries to leave her country.Najla El-Mangoush, a lawyer and human rights activist, was appointed foreign minister by the country’s interim prime minister, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, after he faced a backlash for backtracking on promises that 30% of ministerial posts would go to women. Continue reading...

Calls for restraint as thousands gather to celebrate lifting of nation’s six-month state of emergency

The remnants of China’s largest rocket plummeted back to Earth, plunging into the Indian Ocean near the Maldives, according to Chinese state media and people in Oman and Jordan who captured footage of its light in the sky.Most of the rocket debris burned up in the atmosphere, according to the China Manned Space Engineering Office

Activists claim Rai regulary breaks its own code of ethics when it should be setting example to rest of industryActivists opposed to racism, homophobia, antisemitism and sexism in the Italian media have written to the public broadcaster, Rai, urging it to stop promoting “intolerable” content.Rai apologised recently for the use of blackface in its shows, and advised editors to stop airing productions in which performers wear makeup to imitate black people, but stopped short of an outright ban. Continue reading...

Inflicting suffering on millions in the region won’t solve the wider dispute between ethnic nationalism and the stateWhen Ethiopia’s government under prime minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military offensive to dislodge the Tigray region’s dissident leadership, he promised a rapid surgical operation.The war, which began on 3 November as the world was focused on the US election, has instead come at a staggering cost. There is no end in sight. Millions of Tigrayans are now in dire need of assistance. Continue reading...

The Moonlight director on how making his epic TV adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize-winning The Underground Railroad compelled him to fully confront the history of slavery, as well as his own damaged childhoodBarry Jenkins first heard the history of the Underground Railroad from a teacher when he was six or seven years old. The school lesson described the loose network of safe houses and abolitionists that helped enslaved people in the American south escape to free states in the north in the 19th century. Jenkins as a wide-eyed kid imagined an actual railroad, though, secret steam trains thundering under America, built by black superheroes in the dead of night. It was an image, he recalls, that made “anything feel possible”. “My grandfather was a longshoreman,” he says. “He came home every day, in his hard hat and his tool belt, and his thick boots. And I thought, ‘Oh, yes, people like my granddad, they built this underground railroad!’”That childhood image returned to Jenkins, now 41, when he read an advance copy of Colson Whitehead’s novel about that history, which builds on that same seductive idea. That was in 2016. Both Jenkins and Whitehead were on the edge of career-defining breakthroughs: Jenkins’s film Moonlight was about to be released (and would go on to win the Oscar for best picture) and Whitehead’s book The Underground Railroad was about to be published (going on to receive the National Book Award and the Pulitzer prize). All this was to come, though, when the pair met. “I was familiar with Colson as an author,” Jenkins told me last week on a screen from his home in Los Angeles. “And once I read his book, I knew for sure I absolutely want this. And I’m not that guy. Usually I’ll read something and I go, well, that might make a great film, and then I’ll just leave it. But this one, it’s all hands on deck, we have to get this.” Continue reading...

If victory eludes us in the row over fishing rights around Jersey, the prospect of Macron at No 10 has much to recommend itIf this week has demonstrated anything, it’s that war with France is one of few policies to still enjoy true cross-party support. Brexiters are happy because they crave armed conflict with the uppity frogs above all else. Remainers are happy because they always said Brexiters craved armed conflict with the uppity frogs, and they crave being proved right in a losing cause.Other than being paid by the government not to work, it’s hard to think of another idea in recent years that everyone has rallied around with such enthusiasm. In fraught times, we ought to be grateful for these fleeting bursts of unity. Continue reading...

From Chekhov to Capote to Harry Potter, Toby Jones is one of our most brilliantly versatile actors. So why do people keep trying to tell him who he is?I approach the café from the station side, and there’s Toby Jones under the awning. With anxious charm, he doffs his hat. It’s a week since London reopened for outdoor socialising after another lockdown and we are not yet quite OK: there is graffiti by the gates about a totalitarian regime; an abandoned face mask flies from a tree. Despite doomy weather we have decided to meet in Jones’s local park – it’s a novelty still, the thrill of communicating in person. A pleasure.But, do I get this, too, he asks, as we sit down with our coffees? “Do you now sort of freak out when you have appointments? Do you find yourself becoming neurotic about them – in a way that is not useful?” He has spoken before about his bafflement at the idea that actors must be interviewed, at the idea that he should be able to package his life and work into a neat and digestible timeline, so interviewing him I am prepared for resistance. What he offers instead, though, is a gentle analysis of how a person becomes themself. Continue reading...

Francis condemns ‘virus of individualism’ that is hampering global vaccination efforts in message to Vax Live concert

An estimated 13 million women in the UK are living with the menopause. So why are so many enduring the turmoil of its symptoms without help and support? It’s about time that changed. Portrait by Suki Dhanda. Illustration by Anna KiosseWe are witnessing a tipping point: the rise of Menopause Power: a growing activist movement which will change the Change in the same way that Period Power fought period poverty and stigma. On social media, on podcasts and in newspapers, there’s a huge menopause conversation, as confrontational as it is celebratory. I’ve just produced a Channel 4 documentary, Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause, and there’s nowhere we don’t go: losing jobs to hot flushes, vaginal dryness, memory loss, orgasms after menopause, and the shocking misinformation we’ve been fed on hormone replacement therapy.But above all, we give the menopausal taboo the kicking it has long deserved. As Davina McCall, who’s presented everything from Big Brother to Long Lost Family and had her first hot flush at 44, says: “I was advised not to talk about it, that it was ageing and a bit unsavoury, but clearly that didn’t work out very well, because I’m sitting here talking to you… I’m not going to be ashamed about a transition that half the population goes through.” Continue reading...

UN criticises the proposals as so damaging they risked Britain’s ‘global credibility’Not a single European country has decided to support the UK government’s controversial asylum plans, with the UN on Saturday night criticising the proposals as so damaging they risked Britain’s “global credibility”.Six weeks after the home secretary, Priti Patel, unveiled a sweeping immigration overhaul that included deporting migrants who enter the UK illegally to safe countries such as “France and other EU countries”, sources have said the Home Office has been unable to persuade any European state to sign up to the scheme. Continue reading...

Popular aids sold by £29bn industry don’t cut obesity, says Australian studyThere is insufficient evidence to justify recommending herbal and dietary supplements to help people to lose weight.That is the emphatic view of researchers who will present studies on the effectiveness of supplements at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) to be held online this week. Continue reading...

Divorce rates may be falling but there is only one demographic that bucks this trend … older couplesIf the announcement last week that Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced took observers by surprise, it nonetheless conforms to a growing trend of later-life separation. Bill Gates is 65, and his soon to be ex-wife is 56. In the UK the over-65s buck the trend of falling divorce rates. They’ve even earned their own demographic designation: silver splitters.A grey social revolution is under way with people in their late 50s and 60s increasingly leaving marriages just when they’re expected to be most settled. A number of factors are at play but two in particular stand out. One is children going off to college or leaving home. While the empty-nest syndrome may prompt melancholy, it can also end the obligation to “stay together for the children”. It’s probably no coincidence that the Gateses’ youngest child is 18. Continue reading...

Markets have been on a dazzling run since Pfizer’s trial results. Now there is reason to worry that things are going too farSix months ago exactly – on 9 November last year – Pfizer unveiled interim data from trials of a vaccine candidate known as BNT162b2, developed in partnership with German firm BioNTech. The numbers were far better than expected: 90% efficacy in preventing Covid.“Today is a great day for science and humanity,” declared Albert Bourla, the company’s chief executive, a judgment that clearly still stands half a year later. Even as the pandemic still rages – appallingly in India, Brazil and many other places – the arrival of effective vaccines has been a turning point in the crisis. Continue reading...

Criminals have been using social media – from dating sites to local community groups – to find, threaten and control people in debtLocal WhatsApp groups have been one of the silver linings of the pandemic, creating community ties and support networks. Yet loan sharks are increasingly using these groups to extort money from their victims, according to England’s Illegal Money Lending Team (IMLT), an organisation that prosecutes illegal lenders and supports victims.Such lenders are also targeting their victims online – the IMLT’s 2020 victim statistics report shows that one in 10 victims met the loan shark via social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Snapchat and Facebook, or through dating websites. Criminals are also creating their own WhatsApp and Facebook groups that appear to be for local communities but are actually ways to maintain control over their victims, according to Tony Quigley, the head of the IMLT. “It looks like a local community group,” he said. “They will say ‘come and join the group’, ‘see what’s going on’. But it has a more sinister side to it.” Continue reading...

New guidance calls for Church of England to review monuments for ‘contested heritage’ and relocate or remove themThe Church of England is to review thousands of monuments in churches and cathedrals across the country that contain historical references to slavery and colonialism, with some expected to be removed.Guidance to be issued this week encourages the C of E’s 12,500 parishes and 42 cathedrals to scrutinise buildings and grounds for evidence of contested heritage, and consult local communities on what action to take. Continue reading...

The prime minister’s claim that he is defending British fishers rings hollow in light of his Brexit dealOh, what a lovely war! The summer silly season arrived early for the Brexiters and their Fleet Street cheerleaders, and didn’t they enjoy it! In a week that commemorated the death of Napoleon, and on the eve of today’s Europe Day, which celebrates peace and unity across a continent for which greater generations of Britons fought and died, they picked a foolish scrap with the French for old times’ sake, then claimed a spurious victory.It sometimes seems nothing changes, which is just how Little Englanders like it. The sad thing is, they do not realise how very stupid – and deeply insular – they make Britain appear to the rest of the world. Thousands are dying each day in India. Real battles threaten communities around the globe. But what’s the big news for foreigner-baiting tabloids? The imaginary “Battle of St Helier”, a fake story told with sick relish, bad puns and shameful jingoism. Continue reading...