WARNING: This video contains scenes some viewers may find distressing.A 6.2-magnitude earthquake on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island has killed dozens of people, injured hundreds and damaged many buildings, the country’s disaster mitigation agency said. The epicentre of the quake was six kilometres north-east of Majene city at a depth of 10 kilometres and hit at 1am local time. Rescuers are still probing the rubble
Revelations about London company reinforce suspicions that Beirut, and not Mozambique, was intended destination of ammonium nitrateThe company used to ship a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate to Beirut port, where it caused a devastating explosion last August, has been linked to three influential businessmen with ties to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a new investigation has found.The revelations about Savaro Limited – a London shelf company that was deregistered at Companies House on Tuesday – have amplified suspicions that Beirut had always been the cargo’s intended destination, and not Mozambique, its official endpoint. Continue reading...
Kim Jong-un smiles and waves at huge parade in Kim Il-sung Square, Pyongyang, designed to show military progressNorth Korea has included a developmental ballistic missile designed for launch from submarines in the military hardware put on show at a parade that punctuated leader Kim Jong-un’s calls to expand his nuclear weapons program.Thursday night’s parade celebrated a major ruling party meeting at which Kim vowed maximum efforts to bolster his nuclear and missile program to counter what he described as US hostility. Continue reading...
Though questions remain that still need answering, there are encouraging signs that proof of immunity to Covid-19 could help people return to normality
Canadian academic whose work on democratic socialism had an impact across the globeLeo Panitch, who has died aged 75 from Covid-19, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, was a Canadian researcher, teacher and public intellectual whose work had a profound impact on the thinking of democratic socialists in several continents, not least in the UK.He worked on two main questions: could social democratic parties become capable of transforming capitalist societies rather than just periodically managing them? And what did globalisation mean for socialists facing that challenge – was it really the end of the nation state, as received opinion held? Continue reading...
Spy Princess is based on Noor Inayat Khan, killed in France while working as a British spy in second world warThe story of the daughter of an Indian Sufi mystic, who was killed while a British secret agent fighting with the French resistance in the second world war, is to be told in a TV drama series.Noor Inayat Khan, who was captured by the Gestapo and executed in Dachau concentration camp, will be portrayed by Freida Pinto, star of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Continue reading...
A timeline of what was promised and what has been delivered so farIn mid-March, the World Health Organization had a simple message to countries on how to tackle the spread of coronavirus: test, test, test. In the chaotic months of mixed messaging and policy U-turns that followed, the UK government developed a chronic habit of over-promising and under-delivering, not least when it came to testing.We look back at the major events in the buildup of the UK’s testing regime, what was promised and what has happened since. Continue reading...
‘I am very confident there will be a change,’ Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta says as new law goes into effectArgentina’s historic decision to legalize abortion will help spur reform across Latin America, the country’s gender minister has told the Guardian, as a new law allowing the practice goes into effect.The bill passed by congress on 30 December made Argentina the first major Latin American country to legalize abortion. It will be signed into law on Thursday evening by the president, Alberto Fernández, marking a turning point for a region where the Catholic church has been a major cultural and political influence for centuries. Continue reading...
Friday: Washington heads into a militarised virtual lockdown ahead of inauguration. Plus: how to care for your outdoor furnitureGood morning, this is Imogen Dewey, bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 15 January. Continue reading...
White House coronavirus taskforce reports advocate for ‘aggressive action’ amid 23m confirmed cases in USAs coronavirus continues to tear across the US without any sign of slowing down, officials have warned there is a “full resurgence” in most major population centers – and that the country could see an additional 92,000 deaths in less than a month.There have been more than 23m confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US and 385,503 deaths, Johns Hopkins University’s most recent data revealed. Continue reading...
Governor of Amazonas says situation critical as alarming details emerge about breakdown of health system in state capital ManausHealth workers in Brazil’s largest state are begging for help and oxygen supplies after an explosion of Covid deaths and infections that one official compared to a tsunami and said could be linked to a new variant.Related: Coronavirus live news: curfew in Brazil's largest state after surge in fatalities; record deaths in Sweden Continue reading...
by Emmanuel Akinwotu in Lagos and Samuel Okiror in Ka on (#5CT1Z)
Bobi Wine’s challenge to Yoweri Museveni seen as emblem of Africa-wide generation gapUgandans have cast their votes after one of the most keenly watched and violent election campaigns in a generation, as the pop star turned politician Bobi Wine tries to unseat Yoweri Museveni from his 34-year rule.Delays were seen in the delivery of polling materials in some places, including where Wine voted in the capital and opposition stronghold of Kampala. After he arrived to the cheers of a crowd and cast his ballot, Wine made the sign of the cross and then raised his fist and smiled. He said he was confident of victory. Continue reading...
Administration on brink of collapse as Matteo Renzi pulls his party from ruling coalitionItalians have responded with a mix of anger, perplexity and calls for the entire government to be sent packing after the country was plunged into political mayhem once again.The Giuseppe Conte-led administration is teetering on the brink of collapse after the former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, pulled his small Italia Viva party from the ruling coalition. Renzi said his party was not to blame for triggering the crisis, but that it had been going on for months. He argued that his ministers had shown courage in leaving their posts, and blamed their departure on the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and weak strategy in rebuilding the tattered economy. Continue reading...
by Jamie Grierson Home affairs correspondent on (#5CV4R)
Allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises at RAF Coltishall in NorfolkA third former military site being used as temporary housing for asylum seekers is facing allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises, it has emerged.The Home Office has been housing asylum seekers in a former officers’ mess at RAF Coltishall, north of Norwich, since April last year. The Norfolk site has not received as much scrutiny as two similar facilities, Napier Barracks in Kent and Penally Barracks in Pembrokeshire, which have been dogged by allegations of cover-ups, poor access to healthcare and legal advice, and crowded conditions. Continue reading...
Mike Pompeo’s designation of Houthis as foreign terror group will block food and other aid, senior humanitarian saysThe US designation of the Houthi movement in Yemen as a terrorist organisation is likely to lead to a famine on a scale not seen for 40 years, the UN’s most senior humanitarian official has said.Mark Lowcock, the director general of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, called for the decision to be reversed, saying the cost of food was likely to rise by as much as 400%, way beyond the reach of many aid agencies. Continue reading...
Minister concedes there are ‘teething issues’ as No 10 says affected businesses will be compensatedThe government has faced sustained criticism in parliament from Conservative MPs representing fishing areas, including in Scotland, over red tape and delays caused by the introduction of the post-Brexit fishing regime.With some Scottish seafood exporters warning they face possible bankruptcy amid a suspension of road deliveries due to border delays, the environment secretary, George Eustice, conceded the sector faced “teething issues” and “some additional administration”. Continue reading...
by Guardian staff and Associated Press on (#5CTT8)
The surviving member of duo Siegfried & Roy has died of cancer in Las Vegas after his magic partner died last yearGerman news agency dpa is reporting that illusionist Siegfried Fischbacher, the surviving member of the duo Siegfried & Roy, has died in Las Vegas at age 81. The New York Times is also reporting Fischbacher’s death.According to the Times, Fischbacher’s publicist said the cause of death was pancreatic cancer. Dpa said Thursday that Fischbacher’s sister, a nun who lives in Munich, confirmed his death of cancer. “He was at home in Las Vegas,” Sister Dolore told dpa. She said she talked to her brother on the phone before he died and they prayed together. Continue reading...
Ahead of the 10th Foo Fighters album, their frontman recalls the music and scenes that made him – from punk gigs in Chicago to sleeping on floors in Italian squatsBefore I was a teenager, I started playing music in my bedroom by myself. I fell in love with the Beatles, then began to discover classic rock. I went from Kiss to Rush to AC/DC, but in 1983 I discovered punk rock music through a cousin in Chicago. My world turned upside down. My favourite bands were Bad Brains and Naked Raygun; I listened to Dead Kennedys and Black Flag. My introduction to live music came when my brother took me to a punk show in a small bar in Chicago. I didn’t have that festival/stadium/arena rock experience; I just saw four punk rock dudes on the stage, playing this fast three-chord music, with about 75 people in the audience climbing all over each other. It changed my life. One of the most prolific scenes in hardcore American punk rock was in Washington DC, just across the bridge [from Grohl’s home town of Springfield, Virginia]. So I started going to see bands like Minor Threat and Fugazi. By the time I was 14, I was cutting and dyeing my hair and wearing leather jackets. All I wanted to do was leave school, jump in a van and tour shitty basement clubs with my punk band. Continue reading...
As the David Bowie biopic Stardust is released, we take a look through the greatest music star portrayals – from Johnny Cash and Billie Holiday to Ian Curtis and Ray CharlesSome inspired casting made this biopic fiercely watchable – and it’s a movie that doesn’t quite conform to either of the genre’s two templates: underdog rise or tragic downfall. Dennis Quaid is the rock’n’roll wild man Jerry Lee Lewis, the insurgent 50s star who married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra, played by Winona Ryder – to the horror of the US and that of his other cousin, the preacher Jimmy Swaggart, played by Alec Baldwin. But Lewis stays unrepentant and defiant to the end. A fascinating dramatisation of how sex, evangelical passion and rock’n’roll euphoria are all close cousins in the American family. Continue reading...
Trapped at home all day means heating bills are likely to mount up. Try these simple – and ingenious – ways to keep yourself toastyWith many of us working from home, shielding or just following the requirement to stay in our houses, it’s going to be an expensive winter if we have the heating running all day. Last week, the writer and Guardian columnist Frances Ryan, who has been shielding since last spring, asked people on Twitter to share tips on how to keep warm and keep the bills down, and the hundreds of replies were ingenious and helpful. In 2020, National Energy Action, the charity that campaigns to end fuel poverty, which is linked to 12,000 deaths in a “normal” year, said that a second wave of Covid-19 over winter could be “catastrophic”. So write to your MP about that, and check to see if you are eligible for any schemes to help pay bills. In the meantime, here are a few ways you can keep warmer, cut down on fossil fuel consumption and keep costs down. Continue reading...
Coalition at risk amid fallout from tax authorities wrongly ‘hunting down’ thousands of familiesThe Dutch government will decide on Friday whether to step down over an escalating scandal in which tax officials wrongly accused thousands of parents of fraud, plunging many families into debt by ordering them to repay childcare allowances.The opposition Labour party leader, Lodewijk Asscher, who was social affairs minister in the previous government, resigned over the affair on Thursday, denying he knew the tax authority was “wrongly hunting down thousands of families” but conceding a failing system had “made the government an enemy of its people”. Continue reading...
Legend says at least six ravens must be kept at the castle or the kingdom will fallOne of the ravens at the Tower of London is feared to have died, in a potentially gloomy omen for Britain. It means that the tower is close to having fewer than six ravens, a level that would spell doom for the kingdom, according to legend.Ravenmaster Christopher Skaife confirmed that one of the birds, Merlina, known as the queen of the tower’s unkindness of ravens, is presumed dead after being missing for weeks. Continue reading...
Andrei Konchalovsky’s account of the day Red Army soldiers and KGB snipers opened fire on strikers is a rage-filled triumphAnger burns a hole through the screen in this stark monochrome picture from veteran director Andrei Konchalovsky: a gruelling re-enactment of the hushed-up Novocherkassk massacre in western Russia in 1962, when Red Army soldiers and KGB snipers opened fire on unarmed striking workers, killing an estimated 80 people. It was a day of spiritual nausea for the Soviet Union, which had only just entered Khrushchev’s new de-Stalinised era of supposed enlightenment – a postwar civilian bloodbath that was the Soviets’ Sharpeville, or Kent State, or Bloody Sunday, or indeed the Corpus Christi massacre in Mexico City that featured in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma.Yuliya Vysotskaya – a longtime Konchalovsky player – plays Lyuda, a Communist party official and single mother who lives in a tiny flat in Novocherkassk with her 18-year-old daughter Svetka (Yuliya Burova) and grizzled old dad (Sergei Erlish). There are terrible food shortages, yet Lyuda is a loyal and uncomplaining party member who not so secretly pines for the good old days of Josef Stalin, when the Soviet Union was bathed in glorious wartime destiny and when things seemed to be better all round. Now she is having a furtive affair with a cynical and bleary married committee official who doesn’t even seem to like her that much. Continue reading...
Fishing industry plunged into crisis as smaller firms face huge post-Brexit obstaclesDeliveries of Scottish seafood to the EU from smaller companies have been halted until Monday, 18 January, after post-Brexit problems with health checks, IT systems and customs documents caused a huge backlog.Scottish fishing has been plunged into crisis, as lorry-loads of live seafood and some fish destined for shops and restaurants in France, Spain and other countries have been rejected because they are taking too long to arrive. Continue reading...
by Luke Henriques-Gomes and Christopher Knaus on (#5CTDB)
The American says he first tested positive in November and tournament organisers argue he is therefore not infectiousThe US tennis player Tennys Sandgren is bound for Melbourne after Tennis Australia reportedly intervened so he could board a charter flight despite testing positive for coronavirus.In a series of tweets on Thursday, Australian time, Sandgren initially suggested he would not be able to board the flight for the Australian Open, writing “Covid positive over thanksgiving” and “Covid positive on Monday”. Continue reading...
Australian quarantine authorities have contacted Melbourne man who found the bird saying they are concerned about disease threatA racing pigeon that survived a 13,000km Pacific Ocean crossing from the United States to Australia now faces being euthanised as a quarantine risk.Kevin Celli-Bird said he discovered that the exhausted bird that arrived in his Melbourne backyard on Boxing Day had disappeared from a race in the US state of Oregon on 29 October. Continue reading...
Victoria police say the woman’s husband – the father of the children – is assisting detectives but it would be unfair to presume culpabilityA woman and her three young children have been found dead at a home in Melbourne’s north.Victoria police said the woman’s husband, and the father of the three children, was assisting with the investigation but people should not presume culpability on that basis because “that would be grossly unfair”. Continue reading...
After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine – as well as their own
Lee Luda, built to emulate a 20-year-old Korean university student, engaged in homophobic slurs on social mediaA popular South Korean chatbot has been suspended after complaints that it used hate speech towards sexual minorities in conversations with its users.Lee Luda, the artificial intelligence [AI] persona of a 20-year-old female university student, was removed from Facebook messenger this week, after attracting more than 750,000 users in the 20 days since it was launched. Continue reading...
Move comes after pair take up residence at golf course and regularly need to navigate traffic to get to the nearest beachThe second largest city on New Zealand’s South Island has closed a popular road for an entire month in order for a sea lion to nest safely with its pup.Dunedin City council said in a Facebook post it would close John Wilson Drive above the city’s St Claire beach for a month to allow “some special residents to use the road safely”. Continue reading...
Hammer was due to appear opposite Lopez in the action comedy Shotgun Wedding but has requested to step awayArmie Hammer has dropped out of an upcoming film with Jennifer Lopez after messages allegedly sent by the actor were leaked online. Hammer has described the messages and social media response to them as an online attack, calling them vicious and spurious.Hammer, star of movies including The Social Network and Call Me By Your Name, had been set to appear opposite Lopez in action comedy Shotgun Wedding. However, he will no longer take the role. Continue reading...
Prosecutor says there is ‘insufficient evidence’ to charge Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, one of Fiji’s most powerful political figuresFiji’s public prosecutor has dismissed a case against the country’s attorney general, saying there is insufficient evidence to charge him in relation to two bombings in Suva more than 30 years ago.A six-month police investigation into Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s alleged role in the political bombings did not produce sufficient evidence for the public prosecutor to press charges. Continue reading...
Conservationist on a remote Papua New Guinean island finds message from American girl thrown overboard more than 2,500km awayThis bottle was different. Glass, with its lid sealed tight, it contained a handful of rice grains and a few seashells. And a note.In November, on the remote Conflict Islands of Papua New Guinea, conservation ranger Steven Amos was cleaning the beachfront on Panasesa island when he stumbled across something that was not thoughtlessly thrown away, but consciously sent as a message to an unknown recipient, somewhere in the world. Continue reading...
Timetable cuts to be announced Thursday are less than 50% reduction in services that was expectedRail services in Britain will be reduced to 72% of pre-pandemic levels over the next few weeks, and passengers are being asked to check before they travel that their service is running.The cuts, which will be announced from Thursday, are less than the 50% reduction in services that had been expected. Train operators have focused on retaining services at morning and evening peak travel times so that key workers such as NHS staff can get to their workplace. Continue reading...
Chief financial officer received multiple death threats during time in Vancouver, Canadian court toldHuawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, has received multiple death threats – including bullets in the mail – while under house arrest in Vancouver, a Canadian court heard on Wednesday.The threats were revealed during testimony by Doug Maynard, chief operating officer of Lions Gate Risk Management, the company providing her security detail. Continue reading...
Footage shows hundreds of troops resting inside the US Capitol building, one week after it was stormed by a mob of Trump supporters. Over 10,000 members of the national guard have been deployed to Washington DC as the FBI warned far-right groups were continuing to threaten plots before Joe Biden’s inauguration as president on 21 January.
Thursday: Nancy Pelosi labels Trump ‘clear and present danger’ as sixth Republican backs impeachment. Plus: fresh calls to delay OlympicsGood morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 14 January. Continue reading...
Analysis: The attack on the Capitol – and perhaps the Senate losses in Georgia – have prompted some GOP leaders to signal a split even as others back his election lie
Loss of Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva party comes as country struggles with Covid and economic crisesItaly has been plunged into chaos after former prime minister Matteo Renzi withdrew his Italia Viva party from the country’s ruling coalition in a largely unpopular move that could end in fresh elections.The political meltdown, which leaves the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, without a parliamentary majority, comes at the worst possible time for Italy as it struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic and emerge from economic quagmire. Continue reading...
Undeniable movie star charisma can’t save this torturous misfire about a couple who plan a heist during the London quarantineFor the handful of films and shows that were bravely, or often stupidly, marched into production during last year’s shutdown (one that continues to severely damage the industry), two key questions needed to be answered. First, can it be done safely with all precautions taken to protect the health of cast and crew? And second, is this project really worth it, worth all of the myriad difficulties attached, both financial and logistical? For talky heist romcom Locked Down, it appears as if safety was ensured and maintained (unlike many other shoots, no word emerged of on-set infections) but vitally, the small matter of “but should we?” appears to have been crucially, and tragically, overlooked. For not only would the film have been an insufferable bore without a global pandemic raging on but given the added stresses and strains and possible danger involved in making it now, its existence feels like even more of an offence, a head-smashingly redundant waste of time, talent, energy and resources, a shockingly early yet entirely convincing contender for worst film of the year.Related: The White Tiger review – Balzac-worthy satire of submission and power Continue reading...
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