World news | The Guardian

Thursday: more than half the recommendations from the banking royal commission abandoned or delayed. Plus: will edible hemp get you high?Good morning, this is Tamara Howie bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 19 January. Today we examine the lack of action on the banking royal commissions recommendations and the controversial ways Donald Trump is seeing out his days in power. Plus we’re expecting more news from the Australian Open Covid chaos.It has been almost two years since Kenneth Hayne, the banking royal commissioner, handed his final report to the treasurer, yet more than half of the recommendations from the inquiry have been abandoned or delayed. Analysis by Guardian Australia of all 76 of Hayne’s recommendations shows that 44 recommendations have yet to be implemented and five have been abandoned, despite the treasurer’s claims that more than 70% of the recommendations had been implemented. Ben Butler’s analysis says Josh Frydenberg has linked the dumping of key recommendations to stimulating the economy as consumer advocates fear lessons from royal commission have been lost. Continue reading...

Fishers ‘losing their livelihoods’ as delays hamper exports to the EU and trucks return emptyFishing lorries from Scotland and Devon have descended on Westminster to stage a protest against the Brexit red tape they say is either delaying or ruining exports of their fresh shellfish to the EU.Trucks with slogans including “Brexit carnage” and “Incompetent government destroying shellfish industry” parked metres from Downing Street on Monday, but they stopped short of carrying out their threat last week to dump fresh fish close to No 10. Continue reading...

Gus Jaspert’s extraordinary step comes amid claims of a climate of fear in the UK overseas territory

Respiratory masks already compulsory in Bavaria over fears of coronavirus mutations

Analysis: bereaved families concerned that lessons were not learned after first wave

The police stories: Two former Western Australian and NSW officers speak out about what they saw during their time in uniform

Watchdog says none of the officers who opened fire on pickup truck in Ontario in November have spoken to investigators

Police found evidence of neglect at Brithdir nursing home including dehydration and pressure soresVulnerable residents of a care home in south Wales, owned and run by a doctor, died after suffering from alleged neglect including dehydration, malnourishment and pressure sores, an inquest has heard.Police uncovered evidence of “general neglect” when they investigated Brithdir nursing home, near New Tredegar, Caerphilly, the inquest on six residents aged in their 70s and 80s was told. Continue reading...

Director-general warns of ‘catastrophic moral failure’ if richer countries hoard treatment

Pilot launched after study suggested black people were six times more likely to be stopped than white peopleBritain’s biggest police force will start recording the ethnicity of people stopped in their cars in a move aimed at stopping the alleged targeting of people for “driving while black”.It follows a spate of cases last year when people were stopped and found to be innocent. Continue reading...

‘Pills were just starting to flow in Britain. We thought: “What will this sound like in a club with people off their heads?”’The origins of All Together Now go back to 1981. Michael Foot had been the centre of tabloid outrage after wearing what the papers called a “donkey jacket” at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. He later revealed that it was an £800 coat from Harrods which the Queen Mother had actually complimented him on, but the outrage made me angry. I thought the soldiers in the trenches would be more annoyed with the top brass that sent them to the front than, decades later, a Labour party leader’s attire. I’d trained as a history teacher and this incident inspired me to read more about the first world war. I chanced upon an article about the unofficial truce in 1914, when British and German troops came out of the trenches to play football with each other for Christmas. I wrote a song called No Man’s Land and we recorded it for a John Peel session. A couple of years later Paul McCartney released Pipes of Peace, with the same theme. I thought: “Bastard!” Continue reading...

Viva party’s departure deprives Conte of majority, with crunch votes on Monday and Tuesday

Doctors and opposition parties urge Labour-led government to speed up distribution

Country was expanding at a faster rate than before the coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2020China’s economy has posted its strongest growth in two years after completing a rapid recovery from the slump caused by the Covid-19 pandemic at the start of 2020.Although the 2.3% annual increase in activity for the world’s second biggest economy was its slowest since 1976, by the final three months of last year China was expanding at a faster rate than before the crisis. Continue reading...

Teachers Naomi and Huw Beynon, 41 and 49, met at a salsa class in 2005. They live with their children in SwanseaNaomi Lewis was nursing a broken heart at the start of 2005, after splitting up with her boyfriend a few months earlier. She had recently moved into a new flat in Swansea, alone, and befriended Saffron, a woman who lived above her in the building. “In January, Saffron went on a bad blind date to a salsa class,” she says. “Although there was no spark, she loved the dancing and begged me to go back with her. I’ve got two left feet and didn’t fancy it, but she persuaded me.”When they arrived, Saffron’s date from the previous week was there – and he had brought a friend. “I’d not long broken up with someone and I went with my friend Julian because it seemed like something to do on a Wednesday night,” says Huw Lewis. While Saffron told Naomi that Julian’s friend “was cute”, Naomi insisted Huw wasn’t her type. But after the class they got chatting and realised they had a lot in common. “We discovered we were both teachers and that both our parents were from the Welsh valleys,” remembers Naomi. Their personalities clicked; when Huw went to the toilet, Naomi told her friend she was going to marry him. “I must have had a special power,” laughs Huw. “I don’t think she’d even had a drink. When I started talking to her, I really liked her. She was quirky and interesting.” Continue reading...

The Victorian government has downgraded most parts of Sydney to ‘orange’ but is standing firm on quarantine for the Australian OpenThousands of Victorians stranded in Sydney will be able to return to their home state after border restrictions were eased for most parts of Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Wollongong.Twenty-five out of 35 greater Sydney council areas have been downgraded from “red” to “orange” as of 6pm Monday, Victorian premier Daniel Andrews announced on Monday. Continue reading...

Figures from England and Wales raise questions about IOPC’s efficiency as police forces’ watchdogFewer than one in 10 British police officers found to have potentially committed gross misconduct by the watchdog are dismissed, the Guardian can reveal.Figures released by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) show 641 officers in England and Wales may have so seriously breached standards that they were liable to be sacked between 2015 and 2020, but just 54 (8.4%) were fired after disciplinary action was conducted internally. Continue reading...

Aditya Singh allegedly stayed in secure area of O’Hare international airport after becoming too afraid to return home to California

Musician and maker of ‘heroic’ Netflix documentary warns his country is on a dangerous pathWhen the black Brazilian rapper Emicida imagines his country’s whitewashed history, he sees a textbook missing a succession of key pages.In his songs and on stage, the São Paulo-born musician tries to correct that skewed telling, remembering the lives and times of black Brazilian academics, artists and activists in the hope of changing Brazil’s future. Continue reading...

At least 12 of 22 gold miners survived the blast in eastern Shandong province, note sent to surface suggestsTwelve workers trapped underground after an explosion at a gold mine in eastern China a week ago are still alive, according to a note retrieved from the site, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing local authorities.A total of 22 workers were trapped in the Hushan mine, in Shandong province, after the blast on 10 January. It was not until 30 hours later that the accident was reported, however, leading to severe criticism of those responsible and the sacking of two senior local officials. Continue reading...

Owner of Supercheap Auto and Rebel posts record profit and joins Toyota in volunteering to forego subsidies in move welcomed by treasurerThe federal treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has welcomed Super Retail Group’s decision to voluntarily return $1.7m of wage subsidies to the Australian government, while Labor has called for other rebounding retailers to follow its lead.Super Retail Group – the owner of brands including Supercheap Auto, Rebel and Macpac – announced the decision on Monday, as it revealed a record $170m net profit after tax. Continue reading...

Two men in their 20s were arrested and remain in police custody after the incident in Southall

Heavy rain could lead to further collapses, rescue workers fear, as thousands of homeless seek refugeTorrential monsoon rains have hampered the hunt for survivors of Friday’s powerful earthquake on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, as the death toll rose to at least 81, with thousands left homeless.Excavators and cranes were deployed across the devastated seaside city of Mamuju, where buildings were reduced to a mass of twisted metal and chunks of concrete, including a hospital and the regional governor’s office. Continue reading...

Former senator Surangel Whipps Jr promises to stand by allies US and Taiwan when he takes office on ThursdayPalau’s president-elect has vowed to stand up to Chinese “bullying” in the Pacific, and said the small archipelago nation will stand by its alliances with “true friends”, the United States and Taiwan.Fifty-two-year-old Surangel Whipps Jr, a supermarket owner and two-time senator from a prominent Palauan family, will be sworn in as the new president on 21 January, succeeding his brother-in-law Tommy Remengesau Jr. Continue reading...

São Paulo governor João Doria takes aim at Brazil’s president after his state beat federal authorities to secure first coronavirus vaccines

This blog is now closed. We’ve launched a new blog at the link below:

Hospitals and staff ‘under extreme pressure’, says Simon Stevens, as over-70s invited to get jabs from Monday

Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound’ technique gave his artists’ music an infectious joie de vivre, but the man behind it was damaged, bitter and violentThree years before his death in 2006, I interviewed Gene Pitney. Talk inevitably turned to Phil Spector. He had written Spector’s real breakthrough record – the Crystals’ 1962 No 1 He’s a Rebel – unequivocally one of the greatest singles in pop history, a perfect cocktail of soaring melody, echo-drenched production and Darlene Love’s exuberant vocal. A year before that, he’d sung Every Breath I Take, which, with its rumbling timpani, overload of backing vocals and dramatic orchestration, was one of the few early Spector productions to hint at the more-is-more Wall of Sound approach that would make him a legend. And, moreover, Spector was, as Pitney put it, “kind of a hot news item”: he was awaiting trial for murder.Like a lot of people who knew Spector, Pitney seemed horrified yet oddly unsurprised at this turn of events, as if something like that was bound to happen sooner or later: the booze, the drugs, the evident instability, the obsession with guns and the history of violence towards women. Spector, he suggested, had been in trouble from the start. “I had dinner with him the first day he arrived in New York, and he said to me that his sister was in an asylum and she was the sane one in the family,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’” Continue reading...

Monday: Tennis players frustrated after 70 placed in strict quarantine in Melbourne. Plus: the Indigenous children trapped behind barsGood morning, this is Imogen Dewey bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 18 January. As Donald Trump enters his last week in the White House, the Australian government is looking into potentially adverse effects from the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in Norway, while positive Covid cases have sent preparations for the Australian Open into chaos.Three Australian Open charter flights have now been sent into hard quarantine due to five positive Covid-19 test results among passengers on board (and counting), with around 72 players now unable to train for 14 days. The restrictions have divided players. Those who arrived without any positive tests on their flights are allowed five hours of training and fitness each day. Some players say they were not aware that sharing a plane with an infected person would be classed as close contact. One has been warned for breaching strict isolation rules by “opening his door” to talk to his friends. Still, the tournament is at this stage going ahead. Meanwhile, NSW recorded six new local Covid cases yesterday, including a healthcare worker at a Sydney hospital. Continue reading...

What happens to Vladimir Putin’s opponent after his arrest depends on what officials think they can get away withSince Alexei Navalny emerged as a top critic of Vladimir Putin more than a decade ago, the Kremlin has done its utmost to smother him: tying him up in courtrooms, locking him down under house arrest, and taking his brother as hostage by sentencing him to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.Finally, a decision appeared to have been taken to eliminate him when he was allegedly poisoned by Russia’s FSB spy agency. With that operation a failure and Navalny defying the Kremlin to return to Moscow, Putin’s dilemma remains what to do with one of his most stalwart and effective critics. Continue reading...

Milan fashion week is virtual this year, but Fendi has a six-minute menswear showstopper focusing on lockdown comfortThe first outfit in Fendi’s latest luxury menswear line-up was showcased on Saturday in a music video-style film streamed from a digital-only Milan fashion week. It starred the padded olive silk inner lining of a coat – “the softest part”, said Silvia Fendi – with the smart, structured top layer removed.“This is therapeutic fashion,” explained Fendi, the men’s and accessories creative director of the brand founded by her grandparents 96 years ago, speaking via Zoom from her Milan studio. “It’s impossible to talk about fashion and not to talk about what’s happening in the world right now. It changes the clothes and it changes the way they are presented.” Continue reading...

The actor on filming the third series of the hit Netflix comedy, being taught cinema history by Scorsese – and the perils of toilet-training his cat

The actor on hitting her stride as the spirited star of the Regency romp. Still, she says, she can’t let her grandparents see her steamiest scenes…It was the gift you never knew you needed, and might even have spurned if you had been offered it in advance: an eight-part Regency romance, set in a candy-coloured England where the wisteria forever blooms around the colonnades of pretty much every stately home you’ve ever seen on film.But it’s estimated that 63 million viewers around the world will have tuned into Bridgerton in its first four weeks on Netflix – and it is a success owing, in no little part, to the on-off love affair between a brooding duke and the pearl of the season’s debutantes. In its on phases, this is so steamy and intimate that you’d do well to have one of the series’s many feathered fans to hand. Continue reading...

Cyclone Kimi could rise to a category two system as residents in far north told to bunker downA tropical cyclone has formed off the coast of far-north Queensland, with residents told to prepare to bunker down for gale-force winds and heavy rain.The Bureau of Meteorology on Sunday declared the formation of tropical cyclone Kimi – a category one system – about 140km north-east of Cooktown. Continue reading...

Stanley Kubrick asked a young publicist to write a track for his movie, but didn’t use it. Now we can all hear it

As Russian opposition leader returns to Moscow, flight records show how Kremlin agents have been following him for yearsLess than five months after an apparent novichok poisoning put him in a coma, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was planning to fly into Moscow on Sunday, defying threats by Russian officials that he would be arrested and jailed immediately on arrival.“Russia is my country, Moscow is my city. I miss it,” wrote Navalny in an Instagram post. Continue reading...

From rewilding to marine conservation, these breaks for later in the year have a restorative effect on nature – and holidaymakers, tooThe idea of rewilding – moving away from current forestry and agricultural techniques and allowing nature to thrive – is gaining ground. Continue reading...

The horror writer agrees to let an editor whose cousin was shot and killed by Camorra gangs print his work on gun violenceA non-fiction essay about gun violence by the American horror writer Stephen King will be produced by a tiny publishing house in Scampia, on the outskirts of Naples, known as one of the biggest drug-dealing and arms hotspots in Europe and the setting for the Italian TV drama Gomorrah. Continue reading...

Lai Chi-wai spent 10 hours pulling himself up the tower to raise money for spinal cord patientsLai Chi-wai has become the first in Hong Kong to climb more than 250 metres of a skyscraper while strapped into a wheelchair, as he pulled himself up for more than 10 hours on Saturday to raise money for spinal cord patients.The 37-year-old climber, who was paralysed from the waist down in a car accident 10 years ago, could not make it to the top of the 300 metre-tall Nina Tower on the Kowloon peninsula. Continue reading...

Authorities say blaze in southern suburbs contained but not controlled as emergency warning downgraded to a watch and actAt least one house has been lost and other buildings destroyed as firefighters continue to battle a bushfire threatening lives and homes in Perth’s southern suburbs.On Sunday afternoon incident controller Peter Sutton said while the blaze was now contained the situation remained critical, with significant concerns over fire activity on the southern flank. Continue reading...

Levies to cover the increase in red tape, VAT and customs declarations are hitting trade to the European UnionGovernment ministers describe the post-Brexit headaches that British exporters have suffered since 1 January as mere “teething problems”. But Alex Paul, who jointly runs a successful family business that features in the Department for International Trade’s list of national “export champions”, disagrees. And he wants the real story to be told.Two weeks into the supposed golden era of global Britain, Paul and many other British entrepreneurs, large and small, are running into very serious problems. Continue reading...

The arrival of your grandson won’t sweep away old issues between you and your adult son, says Mariella Frostrup. It’s these you must faceThe dilemma My son, with whom I’ve had a very difficult relationship, recently had a baby. After a lovely and hopeful beginning where he seemed to be softening, he’s returned to his old habits of saying and doing deeply hurtful things with every visit or text.His son is my first grandchild and, of course, such a joy, but it’s not possible to experience the happiness of the baby while receiving such abuse and hatred from him. He’s said in the past that he behaves this way because of his mental illness, which I understand to be anxiety, but I find it is a very selective illness that comes out only at me. Continue reading...

Britain, France and Germany say Tehran has ‘no credible civilian use’ for fuel that it previously pledged not to produceEuropean powers have voiced deep concern over Iran’s plans to produce uranium metal, warning that Tehran has “no credible civilian use” for the element.“The production of uranium metal has potentially grave military implications,” the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany said in a joint statement on Saturday. Continue reading...

A 57-year-old NSW man died on Saturday after losing control of his bike and rolling several timesAustralia’s farmers have offered strong support for federal government moves to improve the safety of ATVs or quad bikes, backing new laws to fit rollover bars after a “horrific” death and injury toll.A 57-year-old NSW man died on Saturday in a crash near Bega after he lost control of his bike and rolled several times. Continue reading...

Profits at the bank are down less than $1bn even in a year when alleged scandal in Malaysia added to Covid woesWhat is $900m to a Wall Street giant like Goldman Sachs? Relatively little, when it counts the drop in profits for a year of record-setting market swings and economic turmoil, all sparked by a pandemic.The firm should regard itself as lucky to be poised for profits of about $7bn (£5bn) for the whole of 2020. That average analyst forecast, compiled by Refinitiv, is a mere 11% drop from the $7.9bn it made in 2019, a year when the phrase “Covid lockdown” had never been uttered. Continue reading...

Here are the current coronavirus hotspots in New South Wales and what to do if you’ve visited them