The tiny Australian town was surprised but got into the spirit, selling daft pork sausages and random access rissoles while celebrating a dusty agricultural show it will never forgetIn April 2013 word got out that Daft Punk planned to launch their album Random Access Memories from a regional Australian town barely anyone had heard of.Dubbed the “cotton capital” of Australia, the small town (population 2,000) with the evocative name of Wee Waa in the Narrabri shire of New South Wales was not much known as a dance music hub. The news, which began with murmurs about Sony label reps scoping the area for locations, seemed just bizarre enough to be true. Daft Punk, after all, were never great adherents of the traditional album rollout – and, with the revered French duo announcing their split this week, it’s worth taking ourselves back to their strangest one. Continue reading...

You don’t get joy from work – not many people do, says Eleanor Gordon-Smith – but you won’t get more of it sitting at the computer promising yourself you’ll work soon.I have always had a problem with work, I don’t have much internal motivation to do any and a lot of anxiety about it. Now I am supposed to be working from home I feel even more disengaged. I get up at 11am, then procrastinate around the internet for a few hours.I do appreciate having a salary and it would logically make sense to try and keep my job. My colleagues are all running themselves ragged working and home schooling and all that stuff. I hate the idea of all that rushing about. How can I change my attitude, and persuade myself do a few hours work every day? Continue reading...

At least 62 inmates have been killed in jails in three cities, with 800 police required to quell the violenceSixty-two inmates have died in riots at prisons in three cities in Ecuador as a result of fights between rival gangs and an escape attempt.Edmundo Moncayo, director of prisons, said in a news conference on Tuesday that 800 police offices have been helping to regain control of the facilities. Hundreds of officers from tactical units had been deployed since the clashes broke out late Monday. Continue reading...

In letter to Tehran, human rights advocate outlines six-month investigation into disasterMany high level Iranian officials should be charged for the shooting down of a Ukrainian commercial airliner in January 2020, a UN human rights expert has said, describing the killing of the 176 people aboard as a “profound and serious indictment” of the country’s civil and military authorities.Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, delivered a 45-page letter to the Iranian government which was made public on Tuesday, outlining her findings from a six-month investigation into the disaster, and complaining about the lack of Iranian cooperation, which has left many of her questions unanswered. Continue reading...

Poet whose outlook spanned anarchism, ecology and small business, as founder of the City Lights Bookstore in San FranciscoLawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, artist, activist and founder of San Francisco’s famous City Lights Bookstore, who has died aged 101 of interstitial lung disease, was the least “beat” of the Beat Generation. In addition to a political commitment that blended anarchism and ecology – he loathed the motor car, calling it “the infernal combustion engine” – he had an instinctive business sense, founded on the philosophy of small is beautiful. City Lights, which he started in partnership with the magazine editor Peter Martin in the early 1950s, is still among the most welcoming of shops, with its tables and chairs, sheaves of magazines, and signs saying: “Pick a book, sit down, and read.”Ferlinghetti discouraged interviewers and seekers of personal information. “If I had some biographical questionnaire to answer, I would always make something up,” he once said. Different reference books give different dates of birth, and one published story had it that he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the place of the pissoir in French literature. For many years, he listed his dog, Homer, as City Lights’ publicity and public relations officer. The poet recalled that Homer Ferlinghetti received regular mail, but that his public relations career stalled when he peed against a policeman’s leg. For this act of citizenship, he was immortalised by his master in the poem Dog. Continue reading...

Vincent Muscat jailed for Maltese journalist’s killing on same day three others re-arrested in the caseOne of three men accused of planting and detonating the car bomb that killed the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 has pleaded guilty to the crime and been sentenced to 15 years in prison.Vincent Muscat is the first person to be convicted of the killing, which has embroiled Malta’s ruling Labour party in political scandal and led to the resignation of its prime minister in late 2019. Continue reading...

Monument in north Africa commemorates the fascist leader’s earlier role in the Rif war of the 1920sThe last public statue in Spain of the former dictator Francisco Franco has been removed from the city gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city on the north-west African coast.Without much fanfare, a group of workmen took down the statue on Tuesday, using a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away at the brick platform on which the statue stood, before lifting it off by a chain around its neck and carting it away in bubblewrap on a pickup truck. Continue reading...

Spring-like conditions will make it feel more like May than February, say forecastersIt could feel more like May than February for much of the UK this week, with forecasters predicting a spell of warm weather and the first signs of spring in the coming days.In a likely welcome development for Britons still living under coronavirus lockdowns, clear skies and sunshine have been forecast for parts of the country for the rest of the week. Continue reading...

Donald Trump tried to wreck the agreement. Can the Biden administration and Tehran find a solution?

President of Kiribati says China will provide ‘technical assistance’ to convert land in Fiji into a working farm to ‘supply produce to Kiribati’A block of land the government of Kiribati bought in Fiji half a decade ago – ostensibly to serve as a refuge when their country disappeared under a rising ocean – will be transformed into a commercial farm to help feed the i-Kiribati people, with “technical assistance” from China.The president of Kiribati, Taneti Maamau, announced last week that China would help fulfil his administration’s plan to resume farming on a 22 km sq parcel of land in Fiji, sparking widespread speculation the land would be gifted or sold to China. Maamau has ruled out any military application – “any land or sea base” – for the land. Continue reading...

French star is being investigated over an incident with a female actor at his Paris home in 2018The French actor Gérard Depardieu has been charged with rape and sexual assault, allegedly committed in 2018 against an actor in her 20s, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.An initial investigation into the rape accusations against Depardieu, 72, was dropped in 2019 for lack of evidence but reopened last summer, leading to criminal charges filed in December, the source said. Continue reading...

Figures on left accuse party of trying to keep Corbyn-endorsed candidate Anna Rothery off ballotLabour has been accused of a “stitch-up” after scrapping its all-female shortlist in the race for the next mayor of Liverpool, with one candidate threatening legal action if the decision is not reversed.The party reopened the selection for a mayoral candidate on Tuesday shortly before ballots were due to go to party members, with none of the existing candidates invited to apply. Continue reading...

Education and childcare prioritised in cautious lockdown roadmap after disastrous Christmas relaxation

Proposal is attempt to find compromise on issue after two rejections in Commons

Mark Drakeford defends slower approach to ending restrictions on socialising and reopening schools

News Corp-owned channel is garnering millions of views across digital platforms with a slew of far-right conspiraciesThe US conspiracy network Infowars has been banned from most social media platforms, but Alex Jones, its presenter, is still delivering his incendiary broadcasts on the internet, pumping out his message that the election of Joe Biden as president is part of a plot by globalists and the deep state to bring about “the takedown of America”.And that’s the mild version. Continue reading...

Transport for London says extension of lane rental scheme will boost walking and cyclingWorks that dig up pavements and disrupt pedestrians and cyclists in the capital will now be charged in the same way as roadworks that block traffic, under plans announced by Transport for London.The lane rental scheme will be extended to cover pavements from May as part of London’s push to encourage more walking and cycling journeys. Continue reading...

During school visit prime minister reveals doubts over ‘abusing or attacking people’Boris Johnson quit journalism for politics because he felt guilty about “abusing or attacking people” without putting himself in their shoes, he told a group of schoolchildren on Tuesday.“I was like a journalist for a long time, I still am really, I still write stuff,” he told pupils at Sedgehill Academy in south-east London. “But when you’re a journalist, it’s a great, great job, it’s a great profession, but the trouble is that you sometimes find yourself always abusing people or attacking people.” Continue reading...

Photographer Jill Mead has been capturing scenes on the streets of London during the latest lockdown – from the security staff guarding empty offices, to night-time boxers, a virtual carnival performer, influencers on Bond Street and a home hairdressing session Continue reading...

Linguist who compiled list of words says they help tell story of life during pandemic

Galia Oz claims late author – hailed as Israel’s greatest – beat and humiliated her in childhood, but siblings say they remember him differentlyThe daughter of the late Israeli author Amos Oz has alleged that her father subjected her to “a routine of sadistic abuse” in a new memoir, claims that have been challenged by his family.Galia Oz, a children’s author, published her autobiography, Something Disguised as Love, in Hebrew on Sunday. “In my childhood, my father beat me, swore and humiliated me,” she writes, in a translation published by the newspaper Haaretz. “The violence was creative: He dragged me from inside the house and threw me outside. He called me trash. Not a passing loss of control and not a slap in the face here or there, but a routine of sadistic abuse. My crime was me myself, so the punishment had no end. He had a need to make sure I would break.” Continue reading...

Nika Melia of UNM charged with inciting violence at 2019 anti-government demonstrationsGeorgian police have stormed the country’s opposition party headquarters and arrested their leader, escalating a political crisis in the former Soviet country that government critics say risks a descent into authoritarianism.In a dramatic morning raid, riot police entered the headquarters of the United National Movement (UNM), using teargas and batons as they arrested its leader, Nika Melia, on criminal charges and detained at least a dozen others. Continue reading...

Simon Bowes-Lyon, the Earl of Strathmore, sentenced to 10 months over attack at Glamis CastleA relative of the Queen has been jailed for 10 months for sexually assaulting a woman at his ancestral home.Simon Bowes-Lyon, 34, the Earl of Strathmore, pleaded guilty to attacking a woman at Glamis Castle, in Angus, Scotland, in February last year. Continue reading...

Not everyone can – or wants to – look after their mental health by getting a sweat on. But there are plenty of other ways to give yourself a boostAs lockdown continues, exercise is often touted as one of the best ways to promote good mental health. But as good as running and cold swimming are if they work for you, they do not appeal to everyone. Nor are they an option if you are ill, injured or living with a disability. I am chronically ill and have been shielding for a year; my greatest exertion has been lifting Oreos from the packet to my mouth.I don’t want to brag, but I have not gone completely mad. When I spoke about this recently on Twitter, I received hundreds of messages from other disabled people who are finding their own ways to look after their mental health in lockdown (with very little physical effort). Here are some of our best tips. Continue reading...

Study suggests infection rates have been much higher across the country than previously thought

President urged to act as rival gangs use death and intimidation in their brutal turf war for control of BuenaventuraClenching a fist, Tatiana Angulo talked about the killings of her neighbours’ two teenage sons.“They got mixed up in it,” said Angulo, 34, who runs a peace theatre group, reenacting the stories of local victims. “We used to be able to hang out and have a laugh on the street corners, but now that’s where the killings happen.” Continue reading...

By resurrecting disco, soft rock and 80s R&B, and bringing spectacle to the world of dance music, the French duo changed the course of pop music again and again

Exclusive: summary from visit last year reveals Chinese officials offered scant details

Four men have pleaded not guilty in a Queensland court to torturing and murdering the victims in 2016Two drug dealers begged for their lives and desperately tried to escape a locked toolbox before it was submerged in a lagoon, a Queensland court has heard.Four men have pleaded not guilty to the allegedly “breathtakingly evil” murders on the opening day of their supreme court trial in Brisbane. Continue reading...

The stars of stage and screen chat about playing witches, seeing ghosts and stepping into another legend’s shoesThey have enjoyed huge success on TV with The Undoing and Killing Eve, respectively, but Noma Dumezweni and Harriet Walter started out on stage. They met in 1999, when Dumezweni played a witch and understudied Walter as Lady Macbeth for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The pair caught up to discuss Dumezweni’s role as Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, theatre ghosts and how Black Lives Matter is shaking up Broadway.Harriet Walter: Noma, we first met at your audition for Macbeth. I have a memory of you and me under a table in a Clapham rehearsal room, whispering some hocus-pocus, and deciding you were the one. Continue reading...

An ambitious and star-studded new Netflix series looks at the importance and legacy of an amendment that calls for equality and freedomChances are it is the most influential amendment to the US constitution that you aren’t familiar with. Given its impact, it is astonishing how little the 14th amendment is discussed in public life. Americans can’t rattle it off like the first and second amendments – but its words have fundamentally shaped the modern definition of US citizenship and the principles of equality and freedom entitled to those within the country’s borders.Sitting at the crux of these key ideals, the 14th amendment is cited in more litigation than any other, including some of the US supreme court’s most well-known cases: Plessy v Ferguson, Brown v Board of Education, Loving v Virginia, Roe v Wade, Bush v Gore, Obergefell v Hodges. And because these noble notions are embedded in the 14th, it has the remarkable ability to generate both boundless hope (for the promises of that more perfect union aspired to in the constitution’s preamble) and crushing misery (for the failures to achieve such promises). Continue reading...

Coverage of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala criticised by group who say such attitudes ‘discourage women from taking on leadership positions’

UN calls for boat to be rescued, saying ‘immediate action’ needed to ‘prevent further tragedy’The United Nations refugee agency has called for the immediate rescue of a group of Rohingya refugees adrift in their boat in the Andaman Sea without food or water, many of them ill and suffering from extreme dehydration.The UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) said it did not know the exact location of the vessel and understood that some passengers had died. The boat had left southern Bangladesh about 10 days ago and experienced engine failure, it said. Continue reading...

Australian law allows victims who were assaulted overseas to claim compensation, but provision has never been usedA Cambodian victim of an Australian child sexual abuse offender has launched a claim for compensation through the Australian courts, in the first case of its kind.In January, 47-year-old Australian Geoffrey William Moyle pleaded guilty to 11 offences, eight of which related to the sexual abuse of children overseas aged between 10 and 12. The eight offences occurred in Cambodia between 2002 and 2005. Continue reading...

Slovakia has highest death rate in world relative to population; Italy extends ban on non-essential travel

Joint US-Mexican citizen has also been charged with conspiring to help arrange her husband’s escape from prison in 2015Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexico’s most notorious cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, has been arrested in Virginia on drug trafficking charges.In a statement released on Monday, the US justice department said that Coronel, 31 – who is a joint US-Mexican citizen – was arrested at Dulles international airport and was scheduled to make her initial appearance in federal court on Tuesday via video conference. Continue reading...

Researchers estimate that for every person who dies of coronavirus, 8.9 close relatives are bereavedA tidal wave of grief resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic has now swept up 4 million Americans. The official loss of 500,000 people is hard enough to imagine. But for every death that the coronavirus has caused there is “bereavement multiplier” that gives some sense of the true scale of this tragedy.A recent study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) sought to measure the extent of the nation’s grief. Continue reading...

Four-stage plan could pave the way for nightclubs to reopen, sports fans to fill stadiums and holidays in UK to return

Tuesday: Brittany Higgins’ partner leaves job over fears of payback from government ministers. Plus: women do more unpaid work than men, quelle surprise!Good morning, it’s Tamara Howie here on Tuesday 23 February with the latest from the unfolding rape allegations at Parliament House and concerns from human rights agencies and Labor over visa laws. Continue reading...

Inscription on painting that has been subject of debate has been reattributed to the artist himselfIt is an image that has intrigued the art world for more than a century and become synonymous with existential angst, and recently inspired its own emoji, but now some graffiti has added a new layer to the story of Edvard Munch’s most iconic painting, The Scream.A tiny pencil inscription in the top left corner of one of the four versions of the painting, which reads, “Can only have been painted by a madman”, has been the subject of debate over who wrote it – it was originally thought to be by Munch, but was later attributed to a vandal – but new analysis by experts at the National Museum of Norway suggests it is indeed in the hand of the artist. Continue reading...

Condemnation of military comes from around world as Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrestWitnesses have described the moment Myanmar’s security forces opened fire on protesters, killing two people, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets again on Sunday in defiance of the military.A young man and a teenage boy are believed to have been killed in Mandalay on Saturday when police, supported by frontline troops, used live ammunition to break up crowds of protesters opposing the military coup. Continue reading...

Two 15-year-old boys charged with kidnapping after man reported car taken with his children insideTwo 15-year-old boys have been charged with kidnapping after an incident in which a car was stolen with the owner’s two young children still inside.West Midlands police said the pair, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have been remanded into custody, following charge, and are due to appear at Birmingham magistrates court on Monday. Continue reading...

Monday: Frontline healthcare workers, hotel quarantine staff and aged care and disability staff and residents in line for jab from today. Plus: inside the battle to restore Christchurch’s cathedralGood morning – Covid-19 vaccines have started in Australia, Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka won the Australian Open, and a group of Melbourne doctors are being investigated for promoting unproven Covid treatments. It’s Imogen Dewey with the news headlines on Monday 22 February.Australia’s long-awaited vaccine rollout began at a suburban medical clinic in Sydney yesterday, with a second world war survivor first in the queue. About 1.4m doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be rolled out for phase 1a of the federal government’s program, which includes frontline healthcare and quarantine workers, and aged care and disability home residents and staff. (Phase 1b, with about 14m doses, is much wider and won’t begin until later this year.) As Queensland and South Australia start their programs today, the latter’s leader is urging the public to ignore anti-vaccination “propaganda”. Mention of the vaccine sparked boos from the crowd last night at the tennis; in one presenter’s words, “just embarrassing”. Even so, the government is pulling paid ads for their major campaign to increase vaccine confidence off Facebook as they prepare to debate the mandatory news media bargaining code this week – opting instead for “other platforms and traditional media” to combat public health misinformation. Continue reading...

Police and demonstrators clashed again in Barcelona during demonstrations over the jailing of Pablo HasélPolice and demonstrators in Barcelona clashed for a fifth night on Saturday, with thousands taking to the streets across Spain to protest against the jailing of a controversial rapper for glorifying terrorism and insulting royalty in his music and on Twitter.Angry demonstrations first erupted on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasél, 32, and took him to jail to start serving a nine-month sentence in a highly contentious free speech case. Continue reading...

Jasmine Harrison, the youngest woman to make the 3,000-mile journey alone, relished the freedom of doing it all by herselfIt was always during the night when things went wrong for Jasmine Harrison, the youngest woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Like the time her boat hurtled into a huge wave at 19.2 knots and capsized, leaving her with a badly injured elbow.“I was basically thrown at a wall at 20-odd miles an hour. That’s going to hurt, especially in the middle of your sleep,” she said. “Everything happened when I was asleep.” Continue reading...

Tam Dean Burn says he and many other members of the union for actors and other creative workers have no confidence in the leadership of their Brexit-supporting general secretaryI write in the name of 140 Equity trade union members who support the letter sent to the prime minister (Stars including Sir Ian McKellen urge changes to visa rules for artists, 16 February). The post-Brexit situation we face working in Europe is disastrous, with a shift from no visa regulations across the EU to individual European states applying their own requirements, many of which will be impossible to meet.For example, filming in Budapest, one of the main film and TV locations, now requires a Hungarian residence permit for all work. The renegotiation demanded in the letter will not restore a Europe-wide solution. Continue reading...

Guardian analysis shows 7,578 people removed from the UK after 44,225 ‘intelligence-led’ raidsFewer than one in six of more than 44,000 “intelligence-led” Home Office immigration enforcement raids on people’s homes since the introduction of the “hostile environment” policy have resulted in deportations, according to data obtained by the Guardian.According to a freedom of information (FoI) response provided to the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants by the Home Office, between 2015 and 2019 there were 44,225 raids on private homes resulting in just 7,578 people deported. There were also 190 raids carried out on care homes resulting in just 37 care workers removed from the UK. Continue reading...

Analysis: many on the Tory backbenches want Covid restrictions over by end of April

Our pre-pandemic dog days are our destination once more unless we break sharply with the policies and political culture of the early 21st centuryAustralia’s economy performed poorly for most of its citizens in the seven years from the China resources boom to the pandemic. I call these years from 2013 to 2019 the dog days.Unemployment and underemployment remained stubbornly high – in the later years, well above the rates in developed countries that suffered greater damage from the 2008–09 global financial crisis. Wages stagnated. Productivity and output per person grew more slowly than in the United States, or Japan, or the developed world as a whole. Continue reading...