New Victorian Covid-19 restrictions have been announced in response to a growing number of cases in a Melbourne suburbs coronavirus outbreak. Can you leave home? Is mask-wearing compulsory? Are schools closed? Is travelling permitted? What is the 5km radius for? Here are the new rules
Litoria mira has been declared a new species, despite looking very similar to the Australian green tree frogAn Australian scientist has discovered a new species of frog, the “chocolate frog”, in rainforest swamps of New Guinea.Steve Richards, a frog specialist at the South Australian Museum, first found the spotted the cocoa-coloured creature in 2016 in incredibly challenging habitat. Continue reading...
Officials confirm deaths during Friday protests marking a month of demonstrationsFour people have died in Colombia as tens of thousands of protesters marked a month of demonstrations across the country, while talks between the government and the national strike committee were stalled.Related: Colombia politician tells protesters hurt by police to ‘stop crying over one eye’ Continue reading...
Psychiatrist tells court Samantha Azzopardi has ‘rare but dramatic’ disorder which involves ‘extreme lying’A disturbed woman who created bizarre and false identities as a nanny, a talent scout and a pregnant and abused teen is a pathological liar at high risk of reoffending, a Melbourne court has found.Samantha Azzopardi, who created false backstories for herself around the world, was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison in Victoria over her latest inventions. Continue reading...
Liberal William Amos stepping down from some duties and ‘seeking assistance’ after urinating in cup during online sessionA Canadian MP is temporarily stepping down from some duties and is “seeking assistance” after being caught on camera urinating during parliamentary proceedings, a month after being caught on camera naked during another virtual appearance.“Last night, while attending House of Commons proceedings virtually, in a non-public setting, I urinated without realizing I was on camera,” said William Amos, a member of Justin Trudeau’s ruling Liberal party, in an apology posted to Twitter late on Thursday. Continue reading...
by Sam Jones in Madrid and Uki Goñi in Buenos Aires on (#5JD28)
Newsreader confuses Bill Shakespeare, 81, ‘the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine’ with ‘one of the most important writers in the English language’In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.The gaffe of, well, Shakespearean proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer vaccine. Continue reading...
British PM criticised for hosting rightwing Hungarian leader seen as ally of Vladimir PutinBoris Johnson raised “significant concerns” about media freedoms and human rights with Viktor Orbán, No 10 has said, after sustained criticism of the prime minister’s decision to meet the Hungarian leader.Prior to the meeting in Downing Street, Orbán had insisted he was right to describe Muslim refugees as “invaders”. Continue reading...
Old languages are far from dead – and knowledge of their subtleties advances by the dayA new two-volume ancient Greek-English lexicon has just been published by Cambridge University. The work of over 20 years, it defines 37,000 words. One might wonder why such a thing might be needed. After all, Liddell and Scott’s Greek dictionary, with its early-20th-century revisions, has served scholars well since 1843. And isn’t ancient Greek a dead language anyway?By no means. Scholars constantly broaden knowledge of the language. The later 19th century saw a profusion of Greek texts excavated in Egypt, where the dry sands preserved millions of papyrus fragments – not just literature but bills, letters and even magical spells, full of new usages that are still being studied (not all of this is reflected in the new lexicon). In recent decades, the canon has broadened towards the abundant Greek writing produced under the Roman empire – though, since the new dictionary advances only to the second century AD, it, alas, omits much of this material. Continue reading...
Looters have plundered Italy’s cultural sites for years, but a crackdown by art police means recent trade has not been as fruitfulBy day, the tombaroli, or tomb raiders, marked out the spot. They used long, pointed tools to pierce the earth , beneath which there was a passage that would take them to Roman homes replete with treasure in Civita Giuliana, a suburb of ancient Pompeii, about 700 metres north-west of the main archaeological park.By night, they dug a network of tunnels. Each was about 40 metres long, starting from their home or abandoned buildings in the countryside area close to the site, and connected to the passage, from where they hammered through ancient walls as they made their way into the homes to seize their loot. Continue reading...
Observers are undecided whether the TV channel is setting the agenda or reflecting a reactionary shiftCNews, the Paris-based news channel whose heated talkshows on crime and immigration has led critics to call it a “French Fox News”, this month hit record viewing figures, leading to concerns on the left that its focus on law and order and national identity could boost the far-right Marine Le Pen at next year’s presidential election.The free-to-air news channel, which is part of the Canal+ group owned by the French industrialist Vincent Bolloré, has more than doubled its viewers over the past two years with its unique brand of raucous current-affairs debate shows, where well-known right-wing commentators thrash out their views with political figures from across the spectrum, and news bulletins that are often led by stories on crime and immigration. Continue reading...
Private lenders hampering responses to pandemic in poorest countries, say activists outside HSBC in LondonActivists at a demonstration outside the annual general meeting of HSBC in London have demanded the bank and other financial giants provide debt relief to African countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.In an attempt to highlight the role of private creditors in the debt crises of the world’s poorest countries, campaigners with “drop the debt” banners gathered outside HSBC’s AGM at the Southbank Centre. Continue reading...
I was carefully selected to help my parents with their new television. It’s not over yetMy husband and child stood on the front step waving me off. White handkerchiefs aloft and fluttering in the breeze, faces sombre, they wished me well. Continue reading...
It is understood the text of the joint declaration will call German atrocities ‘genocide’ but omit the words ‘reparations’ or ‘compensation’Germany has to agreed to pay Namibia €1.1bn (£940m) as it officially recognised the Herero-Nama genocide at the start of the 20th century, in what Angela Merkel’s government says amounts to a gesture of reconciliation but not legally binding reparations.Tens of thousands of men, women and children were shot, tortured or driven into the Kalahari desert to starve by German troops between 1904 and 1908 after the Herero and Nama tribes rebelled against colonial rule in what was then named German South West Africa and is now Namibia. Continue reading...
Some facilities say they experienced challenges preparing residents after being given short notice that medical teams would be arrivingThe Morrison government was scrambling to administer first doses of Covid vaccines to unvaccinated aged care homes across Victoria on the first day of a week-long lockdown, as federal ministers refuted criticism of the program’s rollout.Facilities hurriedly prepared residents for rushed vaccines on Friday as the commonwealth raced to vaccinate neglected populations within the highest priority group it had initially promised to two months ago. Continue reading...
Journalists and activists targeted in most wide-reaching crackdown since days of Soviet UnionChurch bells rang in the city of Byarozawka as hundreds of mourners laid Vitold Ashurak to rest. They draped the white-red-white flag favoured by the Belarusian opposition over his body, as local police kept a wary eye on the funeral.Sentenced to five years in prison after last year’s mass demonstrations against Alexander Lukashenko, the 50-year-old protest leader survived less than one. When Ashurak’s body was returned to his family, his head was entirely covered in bandages – only his mouth was visible, a family friend said. Continue reading...
Obaida Jawabra was weeks from turning 18 when he was shot by an Israeli soldier, after a life shaped by arrests and imprisonmentRoute 60, the north-south artery that carves its way through the West Bank, is both the lifeblood of the region and a source of daily fear.Flanked in parts by 2.5-metre-high (8ft) separation barriers, military checkpoints and watchtowers crewed by Israeli snipers, the 146-mile highway that starts and finishes in Israel but passes Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, has been the scene of many fatal attacks and violent clashes. Continue reading...
The star of Peaky Blinders on his late colleague, how he convinced the producers to cast him rather than Jason Statham as Tommy Shelby – and returning to the monster-movie genre in A Quiet Place Part IICillian Murphy, star of the new horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II, is something to behold: X-ray eyes at once penetrating and ethereally blue, cheekbones so pronounced you could stretch out and go to sleep on them. Unfortunately, the beholding will have to wait. We have barely exchanged greetings over Zoom when his voice breaks up, the screen freezes and the room falls silent. A quiet place, indeed.We switch to phones. We can do this, I tell him. “I have faith,” he replies, in a soothing Cork accent that compensates for the lack of visuals. Murphy’s gift for intensity has made him a natural fit for characters damaged (Dunkirk, The Edge of Love) or outright villainous (Batman Begins, Red Eye), but today he is quick to laugh and keen to talk. He is speaking from a flat in Manchester, where he is staying while he shoots the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders. That stylish crime drama, which rocketed from BBC Two cult success to global phenomenon, revolves around a 1920s Birmingham gang led by Murphy as the vicious Tommy Shelby. With his eyes, looks could kill – although he keeps razor blades in the brim of his cap, just in case. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#5JC5X)
Dominic Cummings’ litany of claims against the government should be formally investigated, say familiesBoris Johnson is facing a growing clamour to bring forward the start of the coronavirus public inquiry after Dominic Cummings’ allegations triggered a “political pantomime” that disrespects the victims of the pandemic, their relatives said.The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, which represents thousands of grieving people, called for an urgent start to the inquiry, which is due to begin in spring 2022. Continue reading...
Governments told to focus on stopping young from taking up habit that killed 8 million people in 2019Smoking killed almost 8 million people in 2019 and the number of smokers rose as the habit was picked up by young people around the world, according to new research.A study published in the Lancet on Thursday said efforts to curb the habit had been outstripped by population growth with 150 million more people smoking in the nine years from 1990, reaching an all-time high of 1.1 billion. Continue reading...
The health secretary has admitted it 'wasn’t possible' to test all hospital patients discharged into English care homes for Covid, as he tried to salvage his reputation after a series of bombshell allegations made against him by Dominic Cummings. Hancock said: 'We worked as hard as we could to protect people who live in care homes,' but did not deny the central allegation that he promised all patients would be tested before being discharged to homes last March
UN rights chief says Israel attacks on Gaza could constitute war crimes and accuses Hamas of firing indiscriminate rocketsThe UN’s main human rights body will launch an investigation into “systematic discrimination and repression” in Israel and Palestine, with the aim of identifying what it said were the root causes of recent Gaza bloodshed.The proposal for unprecedented levels of scrutiny of alleged abuses, called at the request of Muslim states, was passed by the 47-member UN human rights council on Thursday. Continue reading...
Exclusive: both privatised job providers and employers are unsatisfied with the regime, a draft report saysPrivatised job agencies concluded welfare mutual obligations did not “improve the likelihood of employment” for jobseekers in unreleased evidence to a government-commissioned review of the Disability Employment Services (Des) program.Guardian Australia on Thursday revealed a report by Boston Consulting Group had found recent reforms to the $1bn a year scheme had delivered a windfall to privatised job agencies but not improved outcomes for the unemployed. Continue reading...
Rawdah Mohamed’s Instagram image opposing a proposed hijab ban in France went viral in AprilRawdah Mohamed, the Somali-Norwegian model whose protest against a proposed ban on the hijab in France went viral, has been announced as editor of the soon-to-be-launched Vogue Scandinavia.Mohamed will become the first hijab-wearing editor of colour at a fashion magazine in the west. Continue reading...
Family of Mary Bastholm, who disappeared in 1968, were hoping to get closure to put her to restThe family of a teenager suspected to have been a victim of the serial killer Fred West have expressed sadness that her remains have not been found after the basement of a Gloucester cafe was excavated by police.Relatives of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm, who vanished in 1968, said they still hoped the mystery of what happened to her will one day be solved. Continue reading...
Swiss say terms unacceptable despite Brussels’ claims they are better than those offered to UKSwitzerland has walked out of talks on a closer trading relationship with the European Union despite being offered better terms than the UK in key areas, EU officials have claimed.On Wednesday the country’s foreign minister, Ignazio Cassis, pulled the plug on long-running discussions with the EU, saying that Berne’s conditions were “not met”. Continue reading...
UK is pushing for agreement to stop use of tax havens by companies such as Google, Apple and AmazonA global tax deal that would impose a minimum 15% tax on the profits of big international tech companies could be given the green light ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall next month, as the UK government pushes for a deal.Talks between the US president, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and the other leaders of the richest seven nations are understood to be delicately balanced as they seek to hammer out a framework agreement before they meet in Carbis Bay on 11 June. Continue reading...
France’s move to prevent the import of Covid variant B.1.716.2 – now on the increase in the UK – could deter British film-makers and press from attendingBritish participation in at the Cannes film festival is under threat after new quarantine regulations put into place by the French government as the country seeks to successfully exit lockdown.After delays caused by Covid, the festival confirmed it would take place in early July, but France has announced a seven-day isolation period for visitors from the UK in response to rising concerns over the Covid variant B.1.617.2, first detected in India. The move is likely to affect thousands, both among the press corps and industry delegates, and large numbers of unregistered attendees. Continue reading...
Gorō Miyazaki’s foray into computer generation, a magical tale of a gleeful brat adopted by a witch, falls far short of Ghibli’s hand-drawn outputEighty-year-old animation legend Hayao Miyazaki once described computer-generated imagery as “thin, shallow, fake”. Now Studio Ghibli has made its first ever fully CG feature, and it’s, well, erm … The politest thing to say about Earwig and the Witch is that it’s not a patch on Ghibli’s hand-drawn output, with plasticky-looking characters and an aimless plot. More painfully still, the film-maker responsible is Miyazaki’s son, Gorō Miyazaki (who previously directed the pretty decent Tales from Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill).To be fair, Earwig was made for Japanese TV, but there are so many echoes here of Ghibli films past that it’s impossible not to compare and despair. Like Howl’s Moving Castle, the script is based on a classic children’s book by Diana Wynne Jones; and just like Kiki’s Delivery Service the heroine is a plucky young witch. It begins on the doorsteps of an English orphanage where baby Earwig is left by her rock star mum along with a note: “Got the other 12 witches all chasing me. I’ll be back for her when I’ve shook them off. It may take years.” Continue reading...
Meeting revealed in Senate hearing as Labor seeks answers on 10-day gap between 2019 sexual assault allegation and Liberal staffer’s sackingScott Morrison and then-special minister of state Alex Hawke were both represented at a meeting in April 2019 to discuss dismissing the Liberal staffer who Brittany Higgins has accused of sexual assault.At the 4 April 2019 meeting, revealed at a Senate estimates hearing on Thursday, finance department officials provided advice on the process to terminate the staffer’s employment before the then-defence minister, Linda Reynolds, sacked him the following day. Continue reading...
My parents have been eating pheasants killed on the roads for years and encouraging me to try them. Is this the most ethical approach to meat-eating?Motorists shoot me funny looks as I sheepishly cross a scrubby verge, trying my best to conceal the dead pheasant under my arm. I am in a part of Saddleworth Moor called the Isle of Skye by locals, and have just collected a free meal from the middle of the road.Nobody can agree on how this area of moorland, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, earned its nickname. Some think it comes from a Victorian navvy, who exclaimed in a broad Irish brogue: “Look, there’s an ’ole in the sky,” as he considered a parting in the thick mist above him. Others think it was named after an inn of the same name. But either way, the area should be immediately renamed Pheasant Cemetery. Because, before I picked up my own bird, I counted 46 pheasant carcasses in various stages of decomposition, scattered and splattered on the road over several miles as I drove to Holmfirth for a day out. Continue reading...
Tens of thousands of people flee Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as Nyiragongo threat risesThe risk of further eruptions from the Nyiragongo volcano has led authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to order the evacuation of parts of Goma, causing an exodus of tens of thousands of people from the city.“Current data on seismicity and the deformation of the ground indicate the presence of magma under the urban area of Goma, with an extension under Lake Kivu,” the local military governor, Gen Constant Ndima, said in a public address. Continue reading...
Beloved children’s author who inspired millions of children died at summer home in Massachusetts, say familyEric Carle, the children’s author and illustrator whose classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other works gave millions of children some of their earliest literary memories, has died at age 91.Carle’s family said he died on Sunday at his summer studio in Northampton, Massachusetts, with family members at his side. Continue reading...
Government agency appears to support introduction of system which uses insecticide US termed an ‘environmental hazard’The Scottish government appears ready to approve a banned insecticide blamed for destroying bee populations for use in Scottish salmon farms, according to internal documents seen by the Guardian, as MEPs warn of its potentially “devastating” impact on aquatic life.The insecticide is one of three nicotine-based, or neonicotinoid, chemicals banned by the European Union in 2018 for agricultural use on crops, a decision upheld this month by the EU’s top court, the European court of justice, which rejected an appeal by the Bayer chemical multinational. The ban does not apply to rivers or the sea. Continue reading...