More than 700 people have died in the Mediterranean this year. But Sea-Eye, a German charity, is fighting hard to save livesAmani clutches her son, Mohammed, as she is pulled from an unstable wooden boat in the Mediterranean. “Please help. My baby is soaked in water and freezing,” says the 23-year-old Syrian refugee.It’s shortly before 2am, last Monday and about 80 miles (130km) from the Libyan coast a group of maritime emergency responders from the Sea-Eye 4 are on patrol. Continue reading...
More public services to go online, encouraging Germans to move away from paper forms and faxesGermany’s infamously unwieldy and old-fashioned bureaucracy is to be given a welcome digital boost with a new law to make electronic identification easier and more efficient.Whether registering a new residency, a baby or a car, or applying for child support or a driving licence, German citizens will in future be able to do so by mobile phone in combination with an existing identity card. Continue reading...
Analysis: reported death of Boko Haram’s leader will increase the influence of Islamic State affiliatesFor more than a decade, Nigerian security services and their international supporters have struggled to end Boko Haram’s brutal reign of terror over north-eastern Nigeria.But few observers of the conflict are celebrating – even though it appears increasingly likely that Abubakar Shekau, the Islamist extremist movement’s notoriously violent leader, is dead, its strongholds overrun and remaining fighters scattered. Continue reading...
Beijing is using ‘cognitive warfare’ to undermine trust in the island’s government, says officialA Taiwanese official has accused China of spreading fake news about the Covid-19 outbreak on the island, saying this was why the government was publicising and refuting instances of false information circulating online.After months of keeping the pandemic under control, Taiwan is dealing with a surge in domestic infections, and the whole island is under a heightened state of alert with people asked to stay at home and many venues shut. Continue reading...
Life-support systems at Scott Base are operating beyond their lifespan, with leaking buildings and old electrics in one of Earth’s harshest climates“You start to see some wear and tear. We’re starting to see failures and risks with things … that keep people alive and fed, watered and so on. If the failures are significant, you basically only have one option: to leave.”Simon Shelton has visited Antarctica 19 times, sometimes staying through the long, dark winters, and has seen first-hand the gradual decline of Scott Base, New Zealand’s only outpost on the continent, and a hub of scientific research, particularly on the impact of the climate crisis. Continue reading...
There is only one way to really make a change in New Zealand is to raise the bottom more rapidly than the middle“Today, we close a chapter on our past.” So said New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, on Thursday, as she launched a budget that included the largest increases to benefits since the 1940s. But although she should be congratulated for finally taking concrete steps to attack poverty and inequality, there is a real danger of celebrating too soon.Child poverty is one of our much-lauded prime minister’s signature issues, and she has committed herself to ambitious targets that require hardship rates to be cut by as much as two-thirds by 2028. If achieved, this would be an exceptional feat, a rapid reduction that would place New Zealand among the world’s best performers. Continue reading...
Commissioner acknowledges need for reform, as officers speak of ‘helplessness’ at escalating problemThe Queensland police service says it is examining proposals to bring social workers or other specialists to domestic violence incidents, after releasing a documentary where officers speak candidly about their “helplessness” and “frustration” at the escalating problem.Police responses to domestic and family violence have come under intense scrutiny in the past month, since the death of Gold Coast mother Kelly Wilkinson and admissions of systemic failures. Continue reading...
by Anne Davies Photographs by Mike Bowers on (#5J4CZ)
Two months after rains fell in the north, billions of litres of water are finally coursing down the Baaka-Darling system, rejuvenating the Menindee Lakes and farming communitiesIn late March parts of Queensland were deluged by rain. Cars were swept from roads and flash floods inundated towns as rivers broke their banks.Billions of litres of water flowed across flood plains into creeks and from creeks into the rivers that stretch like fingers across the region. Continue reading...
by Presented by Anushka Asthana with Hazem Balousha a on (#5J49P)
Guardian journalist Hazem Balousha describes living in, and reporting from, Gaza, under heavy bombardment, while historian Rashid Khalidi discusses the history of the Palestinian struggle for statehoodAnushka Asthana talks to Hazem Balousha, a Guardian correspondent who lives in Gaza. He describes living in, and reporting from, the strip, which was under heavy bombardment from last Monday until the agreement of a ceasefire on Friday. The latest conflict started after Israel attempted to evict Palestinian residents from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in east Jerusalem and Israeli police stormed the Jerusalem compound which is home to al-Aqsa mosque after days of worsening clashes. Hamas issued an ultimatum for Israel to withdraw forces and as soon as that passed started firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. Hazem discusses the impact the bombardment has had on him, his family and other Gaza residents, and examines what would need to change for life to improve for them all.Anushka also talks to Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian American professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University in New York and the author of the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine about the history of the Palestinian struggle for statehood. Continue reading...
by Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent on (#5J42Z)
Health secretary agrees government has ‘moral responsibility’ to address what happened in 1970s and 80sMatt Hancock has said compensation will be paid to people people infected by contaminated blood products and their relatives if is recommended by the public inquiry into the scandal.Appearing at the inquiry on Friday, the health secretary agreed the government had a “moral responsibility” to address what had happened. Continue reading...
Israeli police fired stun grenades towards Palestinians who threw rocks and petrol bombs at officers outside Jerusalem’s flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque on Friday, hours after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire in Gaza. Police raids at the mosque and clashes with Palestinians during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan had led in part to the war between Israel and Hamas
by Emma Graham-Harrison and Akhtar Mohammad Makoii on (#5J424)
Parents admit murdering film-maker Babak Khorramdin and to killing daughter and son-in-law years beforeAn Iranian couple have been arrested for drugging, murdering and dismembering their film-maker son, Babak Khorramdin, 47, and also confessed to killing their daughter and son-in-law in the same way years earlier.The case has stunned Iran, where it has been splashed across the front pages of newspapers with headlines including “Society in shock” and “Occupants of terror house”. Continue reading...
MailOnline published actor’s identity as complainant in rape case against French directorAssociated Newspapers has paid substantial damages and apologised to actor Sand Van Roy for revealing her identity as a complainant in a rape case against the French film director Luc Besson.In May 2018, Van Roy filed a complaint with French police alleging that she had been raped by Besson. She expected to remain anonymous, as is her right under French law, but details of her complaint were leaked and reported in the French press, breaching her right to anonymity, the high court heard. Continue reading...
Analysis: usually guarded Duke of Cambridge reveals pent-up fury as he comments on BBC’s handling of Panorama interviewHe delivered it to camera in a calm and measured tone. But the Duke of Cambridge’s actual words had devastating impact and betrayed a fury pent up for a quarter of a century.He spoke of “deceit” of “lurid and false” claims, of cover-ups, woeful incompetence and his “indescribable sadness” over Lord Dyson’s findings on the BBC’s handling of the now infamous Panorama interview. Continue reading...
The Carnavalet, devoted to the city’s history, has been shaken out of its dusty and confusing former shapeOne of the first cities in Europe to award itself a museum devoted to its own history, Paris will soon have one of the continent’s most modern as the Musée Carnavalet reopens this month following a spectacular five-year, €58m (£50m) renovation.Opened in 1880 at the suggestion of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who realised 20 years earlier that the mammoth programme of urban renewal he was carrying out would obliterate much of the city’s past, the museum had not been overhauled since. Continue reading...
Dutch cycling union claims city has turned on them by making centre more difficult to navigateIts reputation is that of an idyll for cyclists, a city freed from the torment of cars. But while Amsterdam remains a model to most of the world, there are signs of trouble in paradise.A series of developments have led the Amsterdam branch of the Fietsersbond, the Dutch cyclists’ union, to claim the municipality has turned on them, unfairly prioritising pedestrians in the city’s historic centre. Continue reading...
by Sufian Taha and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem, on (#5J3PW)
Many people fear that with no political solution, violence will return again and againAfter four wars in 13 years, or four battles in a single conflict punctuated by intermittent periods of calm, many Israelis and Palestinians on Friday expressed a weary sense of deja vu about the latest Gaza ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.“Life will return, because this is not the first war, and it will not be the last war,” said a shop owner, Ashraf Abu Mohammad, in Gaza. “The heart is in pain; there have been disasters, families wiped from the civil registry, and this saddens us. But this is our fate in this land, to remain patient.” Continue reading...
News agency decision to fire Emily Wilder criticised after rightwing media highlight her previous activism in collegeThe Associated Press has fired a news associate, Emily Wilder, for violating the company’s social media policies, a move that drew backlash from journalists after it became clear that Wilder had been targeted by rightwing media outlets for her pro-Palestinian activism in college.Wilder confirmed to the Guardian that she was “terminated for violating the company’s social media policies in their News Values and Principles sometime between my start date on May 3 and yesterday”. Wilder said the AP did not detail which of her tweets broke its policies. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi and Mohammad Sartaj on (#5J3MT)
Demolition of mosque in Uttar Pradesh was ‘violation of rule of law’, says Indian MPA local administration accused of illegally tearing down a mosque in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has filed a police case against nine local Muslim leaders who challenged the demolition.On Monday, Masjid Gareeb Nawaz Al Maroof in Barabanki district was bulldozed without notice after it was declared an illegal structure by the local administration, which had contested its presence. Continue reading...
The South African artist’s latest installation asks sexual violence survivors to choose a song to articulate their agonyThe event that shaped Gabrielle Goliath’s life as an artist happened when she was nine years old: a schoolfriend was killed in an act of domestic violence, the details of which have never been clear. “It would have been an accident,” she says, from her home in Johannesburg, 30 years on. “But, you know, when these things happen within a family, no one outside of those four walls knows exactly what went on.” She commemorated her friend in a 2010 photographic work, Berenice 10-28, which invited 19 young black women – so-called “surrogates” – to sit for a portrait, each representing one of the 19 years that Berenice had missed.The work that brings the South African artist to Edinburgh is another powerful act of remembrance, this time focused on the survivors of assault. This Song Is For … is the centrepiece, and emotional core, of The Normal, the reopening show at the university’s Talbot Rice Gallery. It bends the idea of the dedication song into a reflection on the worldwide problem of sexual violence against women and those who don’t conform to gender norms, through the testimonies of five individuals. Continue reading...
by Julian Borger in Washington, Oliver Holmes in Jeru on (#5J35W)
UN chief says both sides have responsibility to start ‘serious dialogue’ about causes of conflictWorld leaders have hailed a ceasefire that took hold in the early hours of Friday morning and vowed to help rebuild Gaza, after an Israeli bombing campaign that killed more than 230 people and Palestinian rocket attacks that killed 12 in Israel.The United Nations secretary general urged Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers to observe the ceasefire and called on global leaders to develop a reconstruction package “that supports the Palestinian people and strengthens their institutions”. Continue reading...
Rainfall totals across UK exceed monthly average with flood warnings in England and WalesThe UK is on track for its wettest May on record, with further heavy rain forecast as lockdown rules start to lift.According to provisional figures from the Met Office’s national climate information centre, Wales has already recorded 129% (110.6mm) of its average rainfall for the whole of the month, while the UK as a whole has had 88% (61.1mm). Continue reading...
From Disney’s blond teenager to Tim Burton’s surreal reimagining and an all-black Pirelli calendar, Lewis Carroll’s character has had many lives and looks. A new V&A exhibition charts them allA blue dress trimmed with white, plus long hair swept back from the forehead by a ribbon, always means Alice. When Gwen Stefani wears a black satin headband and a blue-sky corset edged with snowy lace in the video for What You Waiting For, she is Alice. No surname required. When the supermodel Natalia Vodianova balances on a marble mantelpiece in Balenciaga ankle boots and a sky-blue mini dress, with a bunny’s tail fashioned from a whisper of Fortuny-pleated white silk plissé on the pages of Vogue, she is Alice. Alice’s look, now 150 years old, is as recognisable as a Batman or Superman costume. She is an icon, a fashion fairytale. Should you so wish – for about £20 – you can be Alice.
Guess the date the story first appeared to be in with a chance of winning prizes including a ticket to a Masterclass of your choiceTo mark the Guardian’s bicentenary, we are running a competition for readers. We have selected six stories that have appeared over the past 200 years. There is a link between them, but just to make it a little spicier we will not be telling you what that link is.
From Abba to Bucks Fizz, dancing grannies to French diplomacy, our quiz requires some serious song contest chops to get 12 points – or a perfect 20Vampires, naked apes and free booze! The wildest Eurovision performances ever
A wave of anti-government protests entered their fourth week on Wednesday as unions, student groups and others demand social change amid intermittent talks between the government and strike organisers Continue reading...
by Carley Petesch/AP; photography by Léo Corrêa/AP on (#5J37Z)
More than a thousand women in Bargny, and many more in the other villages dotting Senegal’s sandy coast, process fish – performing a crucial role in one of the country’s largest exportsSince her birth on Senegal’s coast, the ocean has always given Ndeye Yacine Dieng life. Her grandfather was a fisher, and her grandmother and mother processed fish. Like generations of women, she now helps support her family in the small community of Bargny by drying, smoking, salting and fermenting the catch brought home by male villagers. They were baptised by fish, these women say.But when the pandemic struck, boats that once took as many as 50 men out to sea carried only a few. Many residents were too terrified to leave their houses, let alone fish, for fear of catching the virus. When the local women did manage to get their hands on fish to process, they lacked the usual buyers, as markets shut down and neighbouring landlocked countries closed their borders. Without savings, many families went from three meals a day to one or two. Continue reading...
The fake wellness guru owes more than $500,000 in fines, penalties and interestAuthorities have again raided the home of con woman Belle Gibson, who faked brain cancer, to try to recoup her unpaid fines.The Melbourne woman was fined in 2017 for falsely claiming she cured herself of brain cancer with natural remedies, including diet and alternative therapies. Continue reading...
Friestat Clinic apologises for ‘tragic mistake’ which local media said the patient did not initially recognise because of his illnessAn Austrian hospital amputated the wrong leg of a patient, it said on Thursday, blaming human error for what it called a “tragic mistake”.The elderly patient was suffering from many illnesses, the Freistadt Clinic, in a town of the same name near the Czech border, said in a statement. Previous sicknesses have affected his legs, to the point that his left leg required amputation. Continue reading...
Aya Hachem was killed in drive-by shooting after dispute between tyre firm owners, jury hearsA student who was shot dead in the street amid a dispute between two neighbours in Blackburn was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, a court has heard.Aya Hachem, a 19-year-old law student, was a killed in a drive-by shooting on 17 May last year. Continue reading...
Baffling stunts and bizarre lyrics are de rigueur at europop’s premier competition – so it takes quite something to make this listAt Eurovision, you have three minutes to impress the world. While an unforgettable song and stonking vocals are key to getting douze points, how else can you make your performance stand out? With bewildering stunts, surreal lyrics and distracting props, of course! With the biggest event in europop returning this week, let’s revisit some of the weirdest performances over the years – the ones that really made Terry Wogan and Graham Norton wince. Continue reading...
Novel, which weaves together the stories of Mexican migrants with those of a US family on a road trip south, was picked for the prize by a Barcelona libraryEarlier this year, a library in Barcelona submitted a nomination for its favourite book of the year: Mexican author Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. On Thursday, thanks to Biblioteca Vila De Gràcia, Luiselli was named winner of the world’s richest prize for a novel published in English, the €100,000 (£86,000) Dublin literary award.“It’s a beautiful, relatively small library in Barcelona who nominated me,” said Luiselli. “I’m going to kiss its rocks one day, because I probably won’t be able to kiss its librarians because of Covid.” Continue reading...
Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy attack Penguin Random House India for putting out book by a prime minister they say has mishandled Covid and persecuted writers
In the 1970s and 80s QC John Smyth abused boys who attended camps where Justin Welby workedThe archbishop of Canterbury has issued a “full personal apology” to survivors of sadistic abuse perpetrated by a QC in the 1970s and 80s against public schoolboys who attended Christian holiday camps.Justin Welby, who worked as a dormitory officer at the so-called “Bash camps” in the 1970s, said: “I am sorry this was done in the name of Jesus Christ by a perverted version of spirituality and evangelicalism … I continue to hear new details of the abuse and my sorrow, shock and horror grows.” Continue reading...
Cases have risen from a daily total of about 5,000 in early March to a record 35,000 this week amid relaxed restrictions and a low vaccination rateIt is 1am and intensive care doctor Vanina Edul is trying vainly to remember the names of all the Covid patients who have died on her watch.The 47-year-old physician still remembers the first patient she saw die of Covid last year. “He was 60 years old and we were surprised because that was young for that long-ago time. We thought only old people died. How wrong we were,” she says. Continue reading...
When there’s only space for one meat-free option on the menu, chefs often now ditch dairy for vegan alternatives. Is this the end of veggie dining?The recent explosion in vegan food has not been without pushback. Mainly from bolshily indignant meat-eaters who take it as a personal affront. But could a far more peaceable group, vegetarians, also be finding all that vegan energy a bit, well, irritating?Anecdotally, their beef (now seitan) is that the current zeitgeisty cool surrounding plant-based food is increasingly pushing vegetarian options off menus. Vegetarians are asking: who moved my cheese? They are seeing their halloumi burgers, sour cream-dressed burritos or blue cheese and mushroom wellingtons removed in favour of vegan meat-free dishes. There is low-level grumbling at this new dairy-free landscape, talk of being “screwed” by vegans and, as one Guardian colleague describes it, “a little silent war” developing between the rival groups. Continue reading...
A boy using plastic bottles tied to himself and his clothes to keep afloat has arrived at Spain’s north African territory of Ceuta after swimming across the Spain-Morocco border. The child was spotted in the water by soldiers on El Tarajal beach before he attempted to climb the wall into the city. The migration attempt comes as an estimated 8,000 people - including 2,000 minors - made it to the Spanish territory in recent days before the majority were sent back. Spain has accused Morocco of disrespect for the European Union and willingness to risk the lives of children and babies in a diplomatic row between the countries