Carey Mulligan on Syria, playwright James Graham on the Troubles … the Imperial War Museums’ new podcast brings celebrities and experts together to understand recent armed strugglesComedian and author Deborah Frances-White is sitting at a table, in the shadow of a Spitfire which soars above her head. She is being interrogated on everything she knows about one of the most violent conflicts in recent decades. What comes to mind when she thinks of the Yugoslav wars? “I think of words like Milošević, Serbo-Croatia, Bosnia … I think there’s a star on the flag?” she flounders. “I remember there was a Time magazine cover with a man at the end of the war.”Frances-White is in the hot seat because she is a guest on Conflict of Interest, a new podcast from the Imperial War Museums (IWM) – the Spitfire above her head is hung from the ceiling of its London museum’s atrium, and her interrogator is Carl Warner, the IWM’s head of narrative and curatorial. Continue reading...

Spate of road collapses blamed on Italian capital’s underground tunnels, sewers and ancient quarries

Human rights judgment follows legal challenge begun in 2013 after Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing revelationsThe UK spy agency GCHQ’s methods for bulk interception of online communications violated the right to privacy and the regime for collection of data was unlawful, the grand chamber of the European court of human rights has ruled.In what was described as a “landmark victory” by Liberty, one of the applicants, the judges also found the bulk interception regime breached the right to freedom of expression and contained insufficient protections for confidential journalistic material but said the decision to operate a bulk interception regime did not of itself violate the European convention on human rights. Continue reading...

Fazze offered money to YouTubers and bloggers to falsely claim jab was responsible for hundreds of deaths

Zhu Keming rescued runners during cross-country mountain race in which 21 other competitors diedA shepherd has been hailed as a hero in China after it emerged that he saved six stricken runners during an ultramarathon in which 21 other competitors died.Zhu Keming was trending on Weibo on Tuesday, three days after a 100km (60-mile) cross-country mountain race in the north-western province of Gansu turned deadly in freezing rain, high winds and hail. Continue reading...

Charities post photographs of dead babies and toddlers said to have left Libya in dinghies in recent daysPhotographs have emerged of the bodies of babies and toddlers washed up on a beach in Libya, highlighting the human tragedy of the migration crisis on Europe’s borders.According to one of the charities that posted the photos on Twitter, the children had been travelling with their parents on one of the many dinghies that set off from Libya in recent days. Continue reading...

Moderna becomes second manufacturer to announce successful trial results in adolescents

Black Lives Matter activist was shot in the head at party in Peckham, south-east LondonPolice are hunting four men who burst into a party before shots rang out, leaving the Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson critically injured with a gunshot wound to the head.The Metropolitan police believe Johnson, who came to prominence last year as protests for racial justice sprang up across Britain, was not specifically targeted, nor was the shooting linked to her activism. Police think the mother of three was probably an unintended victim. Continue reading...

A new documentary, The Falconer, follows Rodney Stotts, who found fulfillment in working with raptors and inner-city kidsFalconry is a profession with roots in the ancient Middle East and medieval Europe but one of its practitioners is making some history of his own.Related: I'm a falconer - and there's nothing like watching a bird you trained in action Continue reading...

Observers say mistrust of government, disinformation and a lack of urgency mean vaccine take-up has been slow

Four family contacts of a coronavirus case announced earlier on Tuesday also test positive

Move comes amid preparations in Tokyo for the Olympics, which are due to be held from 23 July despite a raging fourth waveThe US has urged its citizens to avoid all travel to Japan, where concern is rising over new variants of the coronavirus, but officials insist the move will not complicate preparations for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.The state department on Monday issued its highest Level 4 travel warning for Japan, where a month-long state of emergency has helped reduce cases in Tokyo but failed to have a significant impact on the country’s fourth wave of Covid-19 infections. Continue reading...

The country has no testing capacity for the B.1.617.2 strain and medics are concerned about resilience of health system

For some, living in a van is their culture or a symbol of resistance. But for many others it is the only possible response to our growing housing crisis – and proposed legislation could make life much harder for them

Company founded by three Spanish friends hopes to tap into demand for new sources of proteinThere are no gargantuan mastiffs or shepherds on quad bikes watching over the hundreds of thousands of newborn animals that tumble and crawl around an unlikely farm among the wind turbines, motorways and patchwork fields of this corner of Castilla-La Mancha, in central Spain.Nor are there any fences to pen them in. Plastic tubs, shelves and the insulated walls of a unit on a windswept industrial estate do the job perfectly well. But whatever Origen Farms lacks in land, tradition and rural romance, it aims to make up for in innovation, enthusiasm and resilience. Continue reading...

In an excerpt from her new book, Sinéad Stubbins offers a guide to decor that tells a lie – you have this whole thing figured outThe thing they don’t tell you is that parties change when you get older. You have this idea that once you graduate from sticky floors and vodka in plastic cups you’ll suddenly get invited to sophisticated dinner parties every weekend. Parties where everyone is drinking tempranillo and saying thought-provoking things, where the apartment is scented like linen and figs and is washed in a warm orange light.Big wooden bowls of pasta materialise from nowhere and there are delicate salads of shaved pear. Somehow there is never a mess to clean up. Everyone is wearing white trousers. Continue reading...

He was a demonic emperor who stabbed citizens at random and let Rome burn. Or was he? We go behind the scenes at a new show exploding myths about the ancient world’s favourite baddieNero comes with a lurid reputation. “The main thing we know about him is his infamy,” says Thorsten Opper, curator of the first British exhibition devoted to the Roman emperor. “The glutton, the profligate, the matricide, the megalomaniac.” Also, the pyromaniac: famously, Nero “fiddled while Rome burned”, or at least strummed his kithara to one of his own compositions, The Fall of Troy, while a fire, supposedly begun by him, destroyed three of Rome’s 14 districts and seriously damaged seven.His afterlife on the page and screen is certainly arresting. Nero inspired some of the greatest Renaissance and baroque operas, notably Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Handel’s Agrippina, which chart the emperor’s adulterous love for Poppaea, who became his second wife. In the epic 1951 movie Quo Vadis, Peter Ustinov played Nero as entirely unhinged: a mincing, purple-swathed toddler in a man’s body. Christopher Biggins took him on in I, Claudius, the classic BBC adaptation of Robert Graves’s novel, and made him power-hungry, baby-faced and quite, quite mad. Continue reading...

A documentary about the persecuted Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh shows her courage and her symbolic importance to the resistance movementThis clandestinely shot documentary about Iranian human-rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh reveals what superheroism looks like in the real world. As significant as the tireless work in lawyer’s cabinets, drab constitutional courts and prison visiting rooms is her symbolic importance: her sinewy persistence and true courage in standing up to Iran’s dogmatic regime have the potential to ignite such qualities in others, and unlock the collective action needed to shift this sclerotic society.Narrated by Olivia Colman, the film details how this one-time journalist began practising law in 2003, specialising in representing minorities, opposition activists and minors on death row – all groups denied the human rights Iran’s clerics claim are incompatible with Islamic values. Sotoudeh was arrested for endangering state security in 2010, and served more than two years in Tehran’s Evin prison, where she undertook a 50-day hunger strike. Continue reading...

West Midlands police said they arrested a 24-year-old woman from Worcester over incident on SaturdayA woman has been arrested on suspicion of racially abusing a pub doorman in Birmingham after footage of the alleged incident was viewed over two million times on social media.West Midlands police said they arrested a 24-year-old woman from Worcester on Monday after a video showed a customer apparently shouting racist abuse towards a member of security staff outside a Wetherspoon’s pub on Saturday night. Continue reading...

Psychologists in Scandinavia have been researching how people in bars rate their own attractiveness as the evening progresses – regardless of how drunk they feelName: Sexy time.Age: Not important, this is all about attractiveness. Continue reading...

Rights groups condemn arrests in Ho city as illegal and say those held have been denied access to lawyers

Police operations in London, Coventry, Birmingham and Colchester took place during week of actionEight men have been arrested in early morning raids as part of an investigation into scam texts claiming to be from Royal Mail.The men were arrested on suspicion of fraud involving “smishing” texts claiming to be from delivery firms. Continue reading...

Peter Hain says government must demand proper proof of life of Emirati royal after third image appears on Instagram within daysThe UK government has been urged to intervene to find out whether the Emirati royal Princess Latifa has been genuinely freed from house arrest by her father, after a third Instagram photo appeared in as many days showing her in a Dubai shopping mall.The latest photo showed Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, a daughter of the ruler of Dubai, looking at the camera blankly next to a clairvoyant at a coffee table. Continue reading...

Analysis: ‘Air piracy’ is just latest act of Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal campaign against his opponentsBelarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has unleashed a brutal campaign against his opponents. More than 35,000 people have been arrested, thousands have been tortured or abused, and 400 political prisoners are currently behind bars. Earlier this week a 50-year-old opposition activist, Vitold Ashurok, died in a penal colony. The official cause of death was “heart attack”. His widow believes he was murdered.It is against this dark and repressive backdrop that the extraordinary events of Sunday took place. According to state media, Lukashenko personally authorised the forced downing of a Ryanair plane as it flew over Belarusian airspace between Greece and Lithuania – a real-time hijacking. He even dispatched a MIG-29 fighter jet to ensure the pilot complied after being informed of a fake bomb threat. Continue reading...

Spokesperson dismisses Wall Street Journal claims based on ‘previously undisclosed’ intelligence

Corporation appoints team to look at effectiveness of policies and practice, particularly around whistleblowersThe BBC’s governing body has launched an investigation into the culture of its news operation, as ministers said the circumstances of Martin Bashir’s interview with Diana, Princess of Wales could be used to justify reform of the national broadcaster.The BBC’s board said it was confident the corporation’s internal processes had improved in the period since Bashir used fake invoices to gain the trust of Diana’s brother in an attempt to secure a Panorama interview with the royal. Continue reading...

Analysis: jihadists regroup after Boko Haram ‘defeat’ in the north-east while secessionist forces grow in south-east“Can our president keep us safe when we travel to any part of this country?” said Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, months before the former military dictator won the Nigerian presidency on a wave of mass anger at jihadist violence and corruption. “Is your life better today than it was six years ago?”Halfway through his second term, the same questions are being levelled at him. As an insurgency in the north-east has persisted – and grown in recent years – security crises have proliferated around the country. Criticism has mounted against his administration, including from within his own party. Continue reading...

Agreement between Tehran and IAEA means wider talks on US lifting sanctions can recommenceIran and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have overcome their differences to seal a one-month “stop-gap” extension of limited UN inspections of Iran’s nuclear activities.The agreement, lasting until 24 June, comes despite the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, claiming on Sunday that the previous three-month agreement had expired and implying it might not be replaced. Continue reading...

Analysis by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Syrian partner SIRAJ and Finance Uncovered looks at how ‘reconstruction tax’ has been spentUm Ahmed left everything when she and her four children fled their home south of Damascus at the beginning of a decade-long civil war – toys scattered around all corners of the house, the certificates she earned when she qualified as a pharmacist.After moving repeatedly, they now live in the Rukn al-Din neighbourhood of the capital in a gloomy rental flat. It is a far cry from their previous home, which was filled with light from dawn until dusk. Continue reading...

Michael O’Leary made comments as EU, US and UK consider action against act of ‘air piracy’Ryanair’s chief executive has said he believes that agents of the Belarusian KGB were travelling on the plane that was diverted to Minsk on Sunday, as EU leaders prepared to meet to discuss what action to take against Belarus.Belarusian police arrested opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, after forcing their Ryanair flight to land in the Belarusian capital, sparking outrage from European leaders, who have called the plane’s grounding a hijacking and act of “air piracy”. Continue reading...

Enrico Giovannini announces commission to investigate ‘technical and organisational causes’ of crash

A community project on the Lamu archipelago trains women in preserving this vital ecosystem and provides business loansKenya’s mangroves have been harvested for centuries, the timber used in shipbuilding and for ornate doors and furniture as well as shipped across the Indian Ocean and around the world.The Lamu archipelago accounts for more than half of Kenya’s mangrove forests. But across the country an estimated 40% of this precious commodity has been degraded, as more mangroves have been cut to provide construction materials and charcoal for cooking, and oil leakages from cruise liners and ships that pass along the coast kill off young saplings. The area has become one of the most degraded marine ecosystems in east Africa. Continue reading...

The vast majority of pork in Italy is produced intensively indoors, with smaller, outdoor pig units close to extinction

The actor, who has been the subject of multiple sexual misconduct allegations, is to play a detective in Franco Nero’s film about a man wrongly suspected of child abuseKevin Spacey, the actor who has faced numerous allegations of sexual misconduct over the past four years, is set to return to film acting with a small role as a detective in an Italian crime drama.Spacey, 61, will play a police officer investigating the case of a man – played by the director, Franco Nero – who can draw people by listening to their voices, despite not being able to see and is wrongly accused of sexually abusing children. Continue reading...

Anne-Marie Trevelyan urges people not to travel to country on coronavirus amber list ‘unless you have to’

People’s Defence Force says at least 20 officers died and police station seized in fighting on SundayDozens of Myanmar security force members have been killed in fighting, rebel fighters have claimed, as Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in person at a court hearing for the first time since her government was overthrown by the military in February’s coup.In one battle on Sunday, the People’s Defence Force (PDF) – a civilian anti-junta movement that fights back against security forces with homemade weapons – said at least 20 police had died and a police station had been seized in the town of Moebyel in Shan state in the country’s eastern fringe. Continue reading...

Party sources say reports Jodi McKay will be asked to stand down come from opponents ‘trying to engineer a leadership change’A shellshocked New South Wales Labor party is struggling to absorb the implications of the Upper Hunter byelection amid new rumblings over Jodi McKay’s leadership and speculation she will soon face a challenge.However, a transition in the leadership is no longer simple in NSW Labor, once known for its particular brand of hard-arse politics. Continue reading...

Review into Leppinton Triangle purchase finds it ‘unusual compared to Australian public service norms’An independent review of the $30m Leppinton Triangle purchase has concluded the federal infrastructure department failed to take “all reasonable steps” to achieve value for money for taxpayers.The review, conducted by Sententia Consulting and tabled at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, found it was “curious” the department didn’t seek external expertise on property acquisition and “unusual” that it asked valuers to consider the land’s industrial purposes. Continue reading...

The third photo essay in our series of work in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation focuses on the Batwa people in Uganda. The photojournalist Esther Mbabazi travelled to Bwindi national park and spent time photographing several families of the nomadic hunter-gatherers

The fight for justice has been left to individuals to champion – but we’re growing in numberThere was a time when support for the Palestinian cause was fed to Arabs with their mothers’ milk. I am of a generation that grew up in the shadow of the Camp David agreement and the assassination of the president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, for what was seen as a betrayal of the Palestinians. Until Camp David in 1978, Egypt had been Palestine’s main ally and the strongest military power in the region after Israel. The peace treaty returned Sinai to Egypt in exchange for recognition of Israel. With that normalisation, Egypt closed the door to any sort of Arab military assistance to the Palestinians for ever.We inherited that era’s bitter disappointment. Palestine had been such an integral part of Arab identity for so long that it came to be known as “the case” or “the file” – an urgent unresolved issue at the heart of our world. After the Camp David agreement, “the case” went from being a rousing call for solidarity to something more melancholy and scattered. Continue reading...

In April 2020, Walker’s home was subjected to repeated attacks that left her in fear for her life. And yet the police brought only two charges of criminal damage. She talks about her ordeal – and why the law must changeIt was a warm, sunny Saturday in May 2020 but Sophie Walker was locked inside her house in north London, in the dark, with her 10-year-old daughter. She had drawn all the curtains and was sitting well away from the windows, doing jigsaws, listening to the country singer Kacey Musgraves and counting down the hours until her husband came home from work.Walker, who was the founding leader of the Women’s Equality party (WEP), had good reason to be fearful. The next morning her neighbour, whom she had asked to keep an eye on the house, would call to tell her his CCTV had captured a man hanging around outside her house at 4am. Later that day, she discovered the embers of a fire smouldering in her back garden. “Near the fire was a vodka bottle with petrol in it and a big pile of wood. The word ‘cunt’ was scrawled on the path in graffiti.” Continue reading...

Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore race to contain clusters as experts warn jabs must be distributed more evenly

In latest twist in extraordinary election saga, clerk of the house has locked the doors, preventing parliament from conveningIn dramatic scenes in the Pacific country of Samoa, the government has refused to convene parliament and allow a transition of power, locking the prime minister-elect and her supporters out of the parliament building.Samoa’s parliament was due to convene on Monday to swear in a new government, more than a month after a knife-edge election, which has been followed by legal challenges, the calling of a second vote, and intense constitutional manoeuvring. Continue reading...

It is not clear who carried out last week’s attack on Waikato hospital, which downed computers and phone linesA major New Zealand hospital faces a second week of disruption as it struggles to fix its computer system following a massive cyber attack.The attack on Waikato district health board (DHB), which began on Tuesday, has been described by its chief executive, Kevin Snee, as “probably the biggest cyber-attack in New Zealand’s history”. Continue reading...

Fourteen people, including a child, have died when a cable car linking Italy’s Lake Maggiore with a nearby mountain in the Alps plunged to the ground. The cable car fell from the Stresa-Alpine-Mottarone line near Lake Maggiore in Stresa, smashing into the wooded area which does not have road access as it approached the station nearly a mile above the lake

Rio Tinto’s reputation is in pieces, but the laws, policies and power imbalances that allowed the blast to happen remain largely unchangedThe Western Australian government has refused to commit to a moratorium on approving the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites, despite the recommendation of a federal inquiry which found that the laws are “unfit for purpose”.The recommendation was made by an inquiry into Rio Tinto’s destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites at Juukan Gorge on 24 May 2020. Continue reading...

Monday: Carbon emissions not linked to Australian land and agriculture increased by 7% in 15 years. Plus, the rural communities besieged by miceGood morning. New analysis of Australia’s contribution to the climate crisis, the one-year anniversary of the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters, and tensions are still high in Gaza. Plus, residents report from the heart of the mouse plague. This is Imogen Dewey with the main stories on Monday 24 May.Scott Morrison’s claim Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling does “not stack up”, with recent analysis finding fossil fuel and other emissions not linked to the land and agriculture increased by 7% over the past 15 years. The government is also under scrutiny for its “women’s budget”, delivered earlier this month. New analysis of the Coalition’s eighth budget reveals it spent 30 times more on tax cuts than it did on women’s economic security. Continue reading...

More than 500 homes have been destroyed by the lava that has poured into villages, officials and survivors sayAt least 15 people died when torrents of lava poured into villages after dark in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, destroying more than 500 homes, officials and survivors said on Sunday.The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo on Saturday night sent about 5,000 people fleeing from the city of Goma across the nearby border into Rwanda, while another 25,000 others sought refuge to the north-west in Sake, the UN children’s agency said on Sunday. Continue reading...

Iran has provided no information about cause of explosion in Isfahan that injured at least nine workersA complex that houses a factory that makes Iranian drones has suffered a major explosion days after Israel had claimed that Iran was providing drones to Hamas in Gaza.The blast at the weekend injured at least nine workers at the petrochemical factory in Isfahan. The Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (Hesa), which produces a variety of aircraft and drones for Iranian and pro-Iranian forces, is located in the complex owned by Sepahan Nargostar Chemical Industries. Continue reading...

Casualties reported after cable car with 15 passengers collapsed near Lake Maggiore in northern ItalyItaly was in shock on Sunday after a cable car crashed to the ground in a northern Italian beauty spot, killing 14 people including a nine-year-old child.The cable car is believed to have been carrying 15 people on the 20-minute ride between the resort town of Stresa and the Mottarone mountain in the Piedmont region when it plummeted into the woods near Lake Maggiore shortly after midday. Continue reading...