More than 1,200 vendors operating in the UK and worldwide, offering false documents for as little as £25

Electricity lines down, farm deliveries blocked and thousands are without proper supply of drinking waterA week of relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip has destroyed power lines, smashed water pipes beneath roads and left human waste spilling out of the ground.With 188 Palestinians having been killed, and families trapped under rubble, fears are mounting of a deepening humanitarian crisis in the enclave, where 2 million people live under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade in place for 14 years. Continue reading...

Parents pay tribute to George Arthur Hinds as two adults remain critically injured in hospital

Wiener Holocaust Library in London has gathered testimonies and photographs of forced evacuations at end of second world warFirst-hand accounts from survivors of Nazi death marches, which formed a last ruthless chapter of the genocide, are to go on display with testimonies translated into English for the first time.During the death marches, tens of thousands of people died on roadsides of exhaustion, shot for failing to keep up, or murdered in seemingly random massacres as the Nazis moved people from concentration camps before liberation by the allies, leaving a trail of blood across Europe. Continue reading...

Refusal to recognise British Indian Ocean Territory stamps is latest move to assert Mauritian sovereigntyStamps issued by the British Indian Ocean Territory could soon be rendered invalid after the United Nations’ Universal Postal Union (UPU) council recommended they no longer be recognised, in the latest step rejecting the UK’s claim to the Chagos Islands.The move by the UPU, the second oldest international organisation, is in recognition of Mauritian sovereignty over the strategically important islands in the Indian Ocean and is the first of what is likely to be many by UN specialised agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization and International Monetary Fund. Continue reading...

A rush for escape as Israeli forces bombed the building that housed the US news agency and Al JazeeraOn Saturday, Israeli forces bombed the office which houses Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza, alleging that Hamas military intelligence was operating inside the building.Twelve AP staffers and freelancers were working and resting in the bureau when the Israeli military telephoned a warning, giving occupants of the building one hour to evacuate. The AP journalist Fares Akram told how he escaped the building. Continue reading...

Health secretary’s comments come amid mounting concerns over spread of Indian B.1.617.2 variant

Country widely considered to have had one of best pandemic responses now racing to contain outbreak

After a series of events combined to reignite clashes, a wave of communal violence broke out that could take years to healAbd al-Fattah Iskafi, 71, has lived in his house on a tree-lined street near the historic Damascus Gate entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City since he was six years old. But he has spent decades locked in a court battle with hardline Jewish settlers over whether he has the right to stay.Families in his Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood who also face losing their homes have been “destroyed psychologically” by the long legal fight, he says. But as lawyers prepared this month for a final showdown in Israel’s highest court, fallout from the case spread far beyond their neighbourhood. Continue reading...

Military says it struck senior Hamas officials as rockets continue to be fired into IsraelAn Israeli air attack on a three-storey building in Gaza City has killed eight children and two women from an extended family, according to residents, in the deadliest single strike since the fighting began this week.Efforts to recover casualties from under the rubble of the house on the edge of Shati refugee camp were ongoing. Continue reading...

Tim Pallas announces plans to strip single-gender social clubs of land tax concessions traditionally afforded to charitiesThe Victorian government has taken a swipe at exclusive men’s only clubs, announcing plans to strip them of land tax concessions traditionally afforded to charities and social associations.Victoria’s treasurer, Tim Pallas, is preparing to deliver the state’s 2021 budget next Thursday, and staring down an eye-watering bill from the devastating Covid-19 second wave. In order to raise revenue Pallas has announced new land tax measures, expected to bring in an extra $2.7bn over the next four years. Continue reading...

Her track Peng Black Girls was a love letter to womanhood, and a huge lockdown hit. Now the rising south-London star is ready for her closeup.Photography by Suki Dhanda. Styling by Barbara Ayozie Fu Safira.In the depths of a bleak Covid winter, very few of us were feeling peng. With Zoom meetings and state-mandated daily walks our only form of socialising, there was little to dress up for, and few opportunities for us to feel beautiful.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...

New restrictions, including a mandate on mask-wearing and limits on gatherings in the capital, Taipei, will stay in place for two weeks

The violence in Gaza and Jerusalem has made the conclusion to the Muslim holy month a somber event for manyThe sound of the call to prayer resonated through Astoria Park in Queens, New York, on an Eid that saw sunny weather and an opportunity for human connection after a year spent apart during the pandemic.The conclusion to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is usually marked with a celebratory breakfast, new clothes, and a chorus of “Eid Mubaraks” and “Alhamdulillahs.” Continue reading...

Former Australian PM wants Boris Johnson to make ‘ambitious pledge’ to support girls at Kenyan summitThe former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has called for Britain to return its aid budget to pre-cuts levels “as soon as possible”.Gillard, who now campaigns for education in lower-income countries as chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), said she wanted the British government to step up with an “ambitious pledge” for global education when it co-hosts the G7 summit next month. Continue reading...

Ian Stewart says a parliamentary inquiry is needed after the state’s human rights commissioner queries the CCC’s findingsThe former Queensland police commissioner Ian Stewart has called for a parliamentary inquiry into controversial findings by the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission that police recruitment practices discriminated against men.The controversial CCC report, released on Wednesday, found 200 men had missed out on joining the Queensland police force because recruiters had favoured women in order to try to meet a 50/50 gender strategy. Continue reading...

State media says at least six people died in the inland city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged in late 2019Back-to-back tornadoes killed at least 10 people in central and eastern China and left more than 300 others injured, officials and state media have reported.Six people died in the inland city of Wuhan and four others in the town of Shengze, about 400km (250 miles) east, in Jiangsu province, local government statements said. Continue reading...

Katie, 25, branding and innovation consultant, meets Jack, 30, actorWhat were you hoping for?

Lod’s mayor has described events as a ‘civil war’ with city filled with rocks, burnt cars and armed police in riot gearA smell of petrol lingered in the air and the synagogue’s metal gate had been completely ripped from its hinges. Inside, a small room filled with colourful books for children had been blackened by smoke. Outside, the skeletons of palm trees stood charred, save for a few bits of green at the top.“Those animals destroyed and burnt,” said Eytan Schnur of his Arab neighbours, who, he said, had torched the Jewish house of worship on Thursday night. “We will rebuild; we’ll build it bigger.” Continue reading...

New Zealand PM’s plea during Christchurch Call meeting comes two years after deadly mosque attack killed 51Tech companies need to make more progress on algorithms that can drive social media users to become radicalised, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said.Along with France, New Zealand is leading a push to rid the world of extremist and terrorist content online – known as the Christchurch Call. Continue reading...

Five years since the Indigenous man died in an Adelaide hospital, prison guards with him in his final hours avoid key questions“I do not recall”, “I don’t remember”, “I cannot recollect” – these were the phrases heard at least 45 times during Friday’s hearings in courtroom nine of the South Australian supreme court.In just two hours of stilted evidence given by two prison guards involved in the restraint and transport of 29-year-old Indigenous man, Wayne Fella Morrison, prior to his death, the coroner gleaned little about the events of 23 September 2016. Continue reading...

About half of the Australians due to return were barred from flying after 40 tested positive to Covid and others were deemed close contactsAbout 80 Australians who were stranded in coronavirus-ravaged India after the Morrison government banned them from returning home have touched down in Darwin on the first post-ban repatriation flight.More than 70 people due to fly were blocked in the final hours on Friday after 40 tested positive for Covid-19 with a further 30 also unable to fly because they were close contacts. Continue reading...

Addition of 2,500 extra services will mean rail network running at levels before start of December lockdown

Australia’s first nonalcoholic bar has opened in Melbourne. So what is a bar for, if not for drinking?It must take steely nerve to open a new hospitality venture in the current climate. Let alone a bar without alcohol.Yet I’ve lost count of the number of friends who sent me excited texts about the opening of Brunswick Aces cocktail lounge, such was the buzz around the opening of Australia’s first nonalcoholic bar. Continue reading...

How do Australia’s two major parties compare on key policies after the federal budget was delivered? Treasurer Josh Frydenberg delivered his budget address on Tuesday, pledging his budget spend would allow Australia to bounce back from a Covid recession by extending tax cuts for business and workers as well as providing a multibillion-dollar boost to aged care, childcare and espousing his government’s plans for housing. In response, opposition leader Anthony Albanese says Labor will establish a new $10bn social housing fund to build 30,000 affordable homes for vulnerable Australians in addition to reforming childcare and aged care Continue reading...

Farmers and residents in NSW and Queensland are still battling surging rodent numbers but they fear the ordeal will stretch on for monthsWarning: graphic images may disturb some readersWhen the mouse plague began in regional New South Wales and Queensland, residents spoke like generals in a war. It was all about strategy, setting the cleverest traps, fortifying houses to keep the enemy out and outsmarting the tiny creatures as they attacked wave after wave.But, six months on, with rodent numbers surging again despite thousands of tonnes of poisons being deployed and devastating floods, conversations about mice have changed. They aren’t foes to be bested any more, they’re more like a giant dark cloud hovering over each town. Continue reading...

Tourists threaten the island’s economic recovery by ignoring Covid protocols, including refusing to wear masks and even making a porn filmA Russian Instagrammer who launched his motorbike off a dock, crashing into the sea. Two YouTube pranksters who fooled a supermarket guard with drawn-on face masks, violating the island’s health rules. A couple allegedly filming porn on a sacred mountain.Bali has hosted a range of badly behaved influencers during the pandemic. And now it’s had enough. Continue reading...

The progressive representative says the Republican extremist’s behavior has ‘raised concerns’ among DemocratsAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene has a “fixation” on progressive members of Congress, and warned that Greene’s behavior has “raised concerns” among Democrats.Greene, a Trump loyalist and a promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, was elected to the House in 2020, and has spent her first months in office harassing Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats. Continue reading...

PM announces acceleration of Covid vaccine programme, saying race could become a ‘great deal tighter’

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urges developed world to donate Covid vaccines to Covax programme

Many civilians in the dangerous border area in the north of Gaza had no chance to find shelter before the shelling beganTo the north of Gaza’s Beit Lahia, before the border wall with Israel is reached, lies an area of agricultural land and villages that curls around the tip of the coastal strip. In times of conflict, its fields and scattered houses are a very dangerous place.Close to one of the main entry points used for invading by Israeli forces, and vulnerable to bombs and artillery, it is also used as a line of defence by Gaza’s militant fighters. Continue reading...

No ‘gross failings’ by teachers found in Bristol Grammar School pupil’s death during school trip to New YorkA coroner is to write to all schools to raise awareness of sepsis after a teenager died with the condition during a school history trip to New York.Ana Uglow, 17, a pupil at Bristol Grammar School, collapsed in a hotel room and was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West hospital just before Christmas in 2019. Continue reading...

Those who communicate online alongside traditional methods show less of a decline in episodic memoryDefiant in the face of Covid isolation, older people across the country ventured online, often for the first time, and mastered technology: reading bedtime stories to grandchildren over Zoom and holding book clubs on Microsoft Teams.Now a UK study has shown that their determination to access and enjoy the internet’s social possibilities could have had another advantage: protecting them against dementia. Continue reading...

Mike Hill is questioned at tribunal over text messages he sent to parliamentary staff memberA married former Labour MP has admitted having wanted a sexual relationship with a parliamentary staff member and getting into her bed after she had rejected his sexual advances.Mike Hill, who represented Hartlepool until March, texted the woman, known only as Ms A, saying he was in love with her, “craved” her body, and describing himself as “emotionally fucked”. Continue reading...

Man who took turn steering boat ‘because he didn’t want to die’ freed, with case opening way for others to appeal their sentences

Passengers refused entry to UK but who cannot get flight home will be allowed to enter on bail conditionsUK ministers have told border officials to stop locking up EU citizens in detention centres, it has emerged.After 48 hours of criticism over “disproportionate” and “heavy-handed” decisions to place EU nationals without the correct paperwork for entry into the UK in immigration removal centres for days, the Home Office has issued new guidance to its border force. Continue reading...

Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan who blogged about migrant workers’ plight, detained by Qatari security servicesA Kenyan security guard in Qatar who has written about the plight of migrant workers has been “forcibly disappeared”, human rights group say.Malcolm Bidali was detained by the Qatari security services over a week ago and is being held in an undisclosed location, according to a coalition of rights groups, which include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Continue reading...

Analysis: a series of combustible events coincided dangerously to trigger worst violence in yearsThe current crisis between Israelis and Palestinians, like so many before, has complex roots in the foundation of Israel in 1948 and after the six-day war in 1967 when Israel captured then Arab-controlled parts of Jerusalem, including the Old City and its holy sites. Continue reading...

Howard Beckett, who is also a member of Labour’s national executive committee, has been suspended from the partyHoward Beckett has reiterated his apology for saying Priti Patel should be deported after he was suspended from the Labour party, with the nominee to lead the Unite union saying some people had read a tweet he sent too literally.Beckett, who is also a member of Labour’s national executive committee, was suspended on Thursday after sending a tweet in response to an attempt to deport two asylum seekers in Glasgow, which was thwarted by protesters. Continue reading...

Police say the arrests of Sewell and another man in Melbourne followed an investigation into an alleged armed robberyAustralian neo-Nazi Tom Sewell has been charged by police in Victoria over an alleged armed robbery earlier this month.On Friday, counter-terrorism police arrested two men – 28-year-old Sewell and another 22-year-old – and executed search warrants in Eildon Parade in the Melbourne suburb of Rowville. Continue reading...

A group of wild boar surrounded a woman who had just come out of a supermarket near Rome and stole her shopping, rekindling a debate about the animal's presence in Italian towns and cities. A video posted on social media shows the boar pursuing the woman in a supermarket car park in the village of Le Rughe before raiding the shopping bag she is forced to drop. Italian farmers have protested in recent years about wild boar wreaking havoc on their land and causing fatal road accidents

Beds almost at capacity and an estimated 17,000 people with symptoms waiting for treatment

Chileans to elect 155-strong assembly made up of equivalent men and women to set out new framework and enshrine equal rightsWomen’s rights activists in Chile say that the country’s new constitution will catalyze progress for women in the country – and could set a new global standard for gender equality in politics.In a two-day vote this weekend, Chileans will elect a 155-strong citizens’ assembly to write a new constitution for the country – the first anywhere in the world to be written by an equal number of men and women. Continue reading...

Around 70 people due to be evacuated from New Dehli have either tested positive for Covid or are close contacts of cases; PM talks about ‘deeply sensitive’ Middle East situation. This blog is now closed

Crafted from footage locked for years in an archive, Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral focuses on the motivations of the mourners who lived under the brutal regime“At 21.50, due to cardiovascular and respiratory failure, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died,” intones an announcer. A woman takes off her hat, on the verge of tears. A handsome youth in a military uniform stares stoically at his feet. One middle-aged man glances self-consciously at the camera, as if to check it is still watching him, before looking down again. Again and again, our focus is drawn to faces in the crowds all across the Soviet Union. Not all are reverent. Some people shuffle, chat, chew, smoke, even half-smile.The broadcasters’ praise for Stalin becomes ever more ludicrous: “We knew he was the best on our planet … It’s impossible to take your eyes off this infinitely dear face. Your eyes are full of tears, you hold your breath, you are overwhelmed with sorrow shared by millions, hundreds of millions of people.” Continue reading...

More than 70 of the 150 vulnerable Australians booked on the flight have either tested positive or have been deemed close contactsAlmost half the Australians due to fly home on the first post-pause repatriation flight out of India have been thrown off the passenger list after they either tested positive to Covid-19 or were deemed close contacts of cases.Guardian Australia has confirmed that of the 150 vulnerable Australians booked to take the first repatriation flight home from India when the travel ban expires, more than 40 have tested positive to Covid-19. The number who will be unable to fly rises to more than 70 when you factor in the close contacts of those who have tested positive. Continue reading...

Figures show 1,313 cases in the past week, up from 520; United Arab Emirates approves emergency use of Pfizer vaccine for 12-15 year olds; daily infections down from a peak six weeks ago in Philippines

In her first interview since announcing the end of her talk show, the daytime star has called reports of behind-the-scenes bullying ‘orchestrated’In her first on-air appearances since announcing the end of her eponymous daytime talk show, Ellen DeGeneres called the press cycle around allegations of toxicity at her workplace “orchestrated” and “misogynistic”, and elaborated on her reasons for stepping down after 19 years.Related: The end of Ellen’s show signifies how celebrity culture has shifted | Adrian Horton Continue reading...

Canadians have used service as critical lifeline but bus line has struggled with declining revenuesGreyhound Canada will permanently cease its intercity bus operations, the company has announced, as losses mounted and ridership plunged from the effects of coronavirus pandemic. News of the company’s exit comes as a heavy blow to rural communities across the country, which have relied on the company’s services for nearly a century.“It’s been a very tough decision and one we’ve taken with a heavy heart,” Stuart Kendrick, senior vice-president of Greyhound Canada, told the Canadian Press on Thursday. “It’s been a lifeline for many Canadians for more than 90 years. This will have a massive impact.” Continue reading...

‘We all have a job to do’ to stamp out poor behaviour towards women, the prime minister says, as he brushes aside the Queensland MP’s behaviourIt was a little over a month ago that Scott Morrison furrowed the prime-ministerial brow and assured reporters he was taking action against Queensland MP Andrew Laming.In his best ‘I’m-not-angry-I’m-disappointed’ voice, Morrison announced he had ordered the scandal-plagued MP into empathy training after it emerged he had been accused of online harassment and abuse that had left one woman suicidal. Continue reading...