WHO tells members to redouble efforts to stop spread as Israel turns away UK passport holders

People in tier 4 areas must stay at home over Christmas and not meet up with other householdsBoris Johnson has announced new tier 4 restrictions for London, the south-east and east of England, amid a surge in Covid-19 cases and alarm about a new strain of coronavirus spreading rapidly in the region. Continue reading...

Anne Sacoolas was charged with causing the teenager’s death by dangerous driving 12 months agoThe Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has told Harry Dunn‘s parents it will continue to pursue the prosecution of their son’s alleged killer, despite the High court ruling she had diplomatic immunity.Anne Sacoolas was charged with causing the teenager’s death by dangerous driving 12 months ago after a fatal road crash outside a US military base in Northamptonshire on 27 August last year. Continue reading...

Organiser of concert by Raphael says first of two weekend concerts complied with health guidelinesDespite a recent surge in infections and fears that the festive period could propel Spain into a third wave of the coronavirus, 5,000 people attended a concert in Madrid on Saturday night by the singer Raphael.The concert, marking his 60 years in showbusiness, was held at the WiZink Center in the capital. Continue reading...

People urged to stay local after chaotic scenes at London railway stations before new measures took effect

Zak Kostopoulos’s family say murder charges must be brought in a case that has exposed deep homophobiaDays after his death in the heart of Athens, the image of Zak Kostopoulos began to appear across the city centre, on buildings and nondescript office blocks, the marble steps of neoclassical mansions, walls and columns.On Gladstonos street there were also words, some sprayed, some stencilled, some handwritten, but all amounting to the same thing: a memorial to a man who dared to be different. Continue reading...

There is a 'long way to go' before a return to normality, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has warned, after saying a new Covid variant was 'out of control' in the UK. Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show and Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Hancock suggested the new tier 4 restrictions announced on Saturday may have to remain in place for several months until vaccines have been administered across the country

Lockdown has not been kind to our beautiful selves, but now it is time to shape up. Emma Beddington gets to work on her pre-Christmas, full-body makeover. But where to begin?How do you look at the moment? It’s a loaded question, I know. “Asking me to choose one physical feature I feel bad about is like asking me to choose my least-favourite family member since lockdown,” says my friend F. An unscientific poll of friends and acquaintances reveals a tally of 2020 woes: worry wrinkles, “maskne”, “Zoomface”, “presidential” hair and Covid kilos. “Weird grief seeps out of me and my eyes are tired,” read one extremely relatable response.Eating more, exercising less, sleeping badly, scrolling and worrying constantly… barring some boastful Instagram blowhards, we are all looking and feeling suboptimal as 2020 draws to a distinctly unfestive close. My own tally is standard but dismal: I look like a parboiled potato, in both face and body. Continue reading...

Matt Hancock’s remarks come after millions of people in London and the south-east put under new tier 4 measures

City has been divided on ethnic lines leading to vital services not functioningPolls have opened in the city of Mostar in the first local elections in 12 years following a dispute between parties representing the city’s two main ethnic groups that paralysed municipal institutions for more than a decade.The city of 100,000, known for its picturesque Ottoman architecture, became one of the symbols of the devastating conflict in Bosnia in the 1990s, when its famous stone bridge was destroyed. The bridge was reconstructed in the early 2000s, but the city remains divided along largely ethnic lines. Since the end of the conflict, the west side of the city is mostly populated by Croats, and the east side by Bosniaks. Continue reading...

European fisheries chief hits out as talks on trade and security deal go down to the wireMichel Barnier has been told by the European fishing industry that his latest offer to the UK amounts to selling coastal communities “down the river” as negotiators continue to haggle in Brussels over a post-Brexit trade and security deal.The EU and UK negotiating teams remain at loggerheads on the future rights of EU fishing fleets in British seas, with Downing Street warning there will not be a deal without a significant shift from Barnier in the coming hours. Continue reading...

Crowdfunder allows Kanwal Ahmed to keep sharing advice on sex, violence… and cookingA social media star has been dubbed Pakistan’s Kickstarter Oprah after her groundbreaking digital talk show in which women talk about taboo issues such as marital rape, cyberbullying and femicide was saved by fans.Filming started this week on the new series of Conversations With Kanwal, in which presenter Kanwal Ahmed, 31, sheds light on issues that are rarely talked about within families, let alone in the public arena, after fans raised more than five million rupees (around £23,000) in less than a week using the online crowdfunding platform. Continue reading...

Biden, Jagger, Mirren… as celebrity septuagenarians (and their seniors) steal the spotlight, we salute the resilience of those who have lived long enough to know good times always returnAmong the many effects of the pandemic is the attention that has been given to senior citizens, who have been disproportionately affected by death and illness from Covid-19. Broadly speaking, the focus has revealed two opposing impulses: to protect and to abandon. But neither reaction necessarily involves respect for the older population.One of the hallmarks of western modernity is the celebration of the new and a concomitant devaluing of the old. It’s all part of a highly successful system of thought, at least in material terms, that prioritises progress over tradition. Inevitably, the new is associated with youth, the outdated with age. Thus the solemn duty of the elderly is to get out of the way, and allow the next generation to make its mark. Continue reading...

Campaigners claim women face ‘impossible’ choice between feeding their child naturally or being inoculated against Covid-19

Member for Richmond for nearly 30 years influenced Coalition policies for much of the 1970s and 80sA former deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Doug Anthony has died, aged 90, in a rest home in north-east New South Wales.He died peacefully in the Heritage Lodge aged-care home in Murwillumbah on Sunday morning, his family said. Continue reading...

Scotland and Wales also reduce five-day festive window for indoor mixing to one day

Areas will move to tier 4, where a new ‘stay at home’ message will be introducedBoris Johnson has announced new tier 4 restrictions for London, the south-east and east of England, amid a surge in coronavirus cases and alarm concerns about a new strain of coronavirus spreading rapidly in the region. Continue reading...

We’ve watched more telly than ever this year. Our standards may have dropped – but then Covid does cause loss of tasteI know it is tedious to look back on 2020 and force everything through the prism of coronavirus – “Hey, remember that absolute horrorshow of a year we all just-about lived through? Well, let’s look back on the horror again, shall we?” – but it is slightly unavoidable when recapping what is arguably the weirdest year in television since the format was invented. We have, each of us, watched more TV in the last nine months than at any other time in our lives. And yet, with so little of it being newly produced, there has been an odd staleness to our viewing habits. I’m bored of live TV and I’m bored of box sets, so what else is there to do? Read a book? Behave.The first thing we need to confront is the short-lived Zoom era of Lockdown 1.0, which wasn’t very good. It’s harsh of me to single people out, but The Steph Show on Channel 4 was an early example of form clattering up against need, as a cheery Steph McGovern tried to hold together a light magazine show from the comfort of her own home. Yes, it was rubbish (and the less-constrained Steph’s Packed Lunch studio variation shows that the desperately-broadcasting-from-a-house was the faulty part, not the rest of the show’s format), but crucially it started airing on 30 March – the date we still thought we’d all be back at work within a couple of weeks – and the sheer fact that someone tried to launch a magazine show to keep us all entertained in the middle of a history-shaping global emergency is something to be commended. Continue reading...

‘Acting urgently critical’ as new strain will lead to greater numbers of infections, expert says

The comedian and the activist talk about the US election, racism and social media

The pandemic and its attendant recession have left millions across the country with little money and little to celebrateThere will be no presents under the Christmas tree this year for Sierra Schauvilegee and her children. Schauvilegee lost her as a nurse when the residential care facility she worked for permanently closed down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Finding new work has proved impossible.“This is the first year my children will not open a single gift, nothing under our tree,” said Schauvilegee, who lives in Ingalls, Kansas. “I used all my savings to survive and I begged my mother to move in until I received rental assistance and food stamps, that is all I literally have.” Continue reading...

Policing a serious concern as co-operation with EU authorities remains up in the airSignificant concerns have been expressed over the UK’s preparedness for leaving the EU by an influential group of MPs less than two weeks before Brexit day on 31 December.The Commons’ Brexit select committee has called on the government to ensure there is a robust contingency plan in place in the next fortnight to cope with the fallout as it criticises the lack of an “overall state of readiness” for business and citizens. Continue reading...

Late-summer temperatures may prove unbearable for some visitors, posing threat to vital holiday industryIncreased heat in Mediterranean countries is making the traditional summer beach holiday season in late July and August untenable for many northern Europeans. Tropical nights, where the temperature does not drop below 20C, are increasing and a recognised danger to health. The changing climate does have a plus side: beach and inland resorts that used to be too cold for comfort in spring and autumn are now a pleasant temperature.Related: Europe heatwave: cities take steps to limit effects of record temperatures Continue reading...

The Spice Girl and the Olympic boxer talk about forging their own career paths, their experiences of domestic violence and growing up in Leeds

Florrie, 47, makeup artist, and James, 47, singer/songwriter and music teacherWhat were you hoping for?

Moderna’s is the second Covid-19 vaccine to receive such approval, following Pfizer’s vaccine, which uses the same technologyThe Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized a vaccine developed by Moderna and federal researchers, the second Covid-19 vaccine to receive such approval for emergency use across the US.The vaccine’s emergency authorization brings the second drug to prevent Covid-19 to the American public within a week, and millions of doses are expected to begin immediate distribution to health workers and long-term care residents. Continue reading...

Emmanuel Macron has blamed his coronavirus infection on a combination of negligence and bad luck and urged his compatriots to stay safe in a self-shot video. The French president was isolating with symptoms that included headaches, fatigue and a dry cough. 'Despite everything I caught this virus,' Macron said. 'Perhaps, doubtless, a moment of negligence, a moment of bad luck too.'

Home secretary says mayor has ‘thrown senior officer under bus to save his own skin’The home secretary has attacked the mayor of Greater Manchester as the area’s chief constable stepped down after the force was placed in special measures.Ian Hopkins said he was bringing forward his retirement in the wake of a damning report by inspectors that found the force had failed to record 80,000 crimes, a fifth of all offences, in the year to 30 June. Continue reading...

Looking back at the year, Katharine Murphy sits down with Labor MP Andrew Giles and Liberal MP Fiona Martin to discuss Australia’s other epidemic: loneliness. With coronavirus exacerbating the country’s feelings of isolation, which age groups have been hit hardest? How has social media use increased loneliness among young people? And what measures will the government take to solve the problem? Continue reading...

EU chief responds in final hours to Boris Johnson’s request for Brussels to seal deal

Aristóteles Sandoval was shot in the back in bathroom in Puerto Vallarta, and died soon afterwards at local hospitalThe former governor of Mexico’s violence-wracked western state of Jalisco has been shot dead in a restaurant bathroom in the popular beach resort of Puerto Vallarta.Aristóteles Sandoval was dining with four others when at around 1.40 on Friday he got up from the table and went to the toilet, where the killer shot him in the back, said the state attorney general, Gerardo Octavio Solís. Continue reading...

Thirty-five entries from around the world added to 2020 list of national traditions

UN agencies say millions at risk if aid can’t reach areas of country stricken by floods, violence and Covid-19Parts of South Sudan are facing a “catastrophic” conflict-fuelled famine, humanitarian groups warned on Friday.Three UN agencies have called for a halt to violence to allow urgent access to parts of Jonglei state, where they said people have already run out of food because of insecurity, flooding and the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading...

Ali Haberstroh’s directory lists nearly 4,000 independent businesses in Toronto, Halifax, Calgary and VancouverIn cities and towns around the world, darkened shopfronts and shuttered businesses have become an all-too-familiar symptom of the economic collapse triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.But while small businesses and local retailers struggle with lockdowns and restrictions, e-commerce giants like Amazon have raked in billions in new profits. Continue reading...

7 February 1927 – 23 September 2020

Under cover of nightfall, groups of local volunteers board tiny boats to track down the fish mafia and protect the ecosystem

Self-defence forces called out to provide food, blankets and fuel to motorists after sudden snowfallMore than 1,000 people in Japan were forced to spend the night in their cars on Thursday after record snowfall blanketed parts of the country.The first few motorists traveling on an expressway connecting Tokyo with Niigata on the Japan Sea coast found their route blocked on Wednesday evening, according to media reports. Continue reading...

Last chance, or life-enhancing - for some in the UK this festive season the need to get away overrides the potential risks

‘Legally and morally wrong to expect seafarers to work indefinitely while depriving them of their fundamental rights’

Christmas travel plans up in the air after Sydney cluster grows to 28 and Qld, WA, Victoria and Tasmania announce new border restrictions and quarantine measures

The artist’s documentary, Cockroach, tells the inside story of the 2019 demonstrations against mainland China’s brutal clampdown – a tough task when he’s not allowed to returnWhen Ai Weiwei was growing up in China, it was customary for people from the mainland to look down their noses at Hong Kongers. “We thought they had no serious culture. We thought they were colonial subjects only interested in making money and martial arts films. They weren’t political,” the exiled 63-year-old artist recalls over WhatsApp from the back of a car parked in Lisbon.That childhood view gets turned on its head in Ai’s deeply moving documentary Cockroach, about the Hong Kongers who took to the streets to protest against overweening Chinese rule last year. It’s they who become cultured, utopian and offered political resistance to the mainland’s barbarous clampdown. Continue reading...

The man, whose identity is suppressed, was convicted in February of killing the British backpacker in New ZealandThe man who murdered British backpacker Grace Millane and dumped her body in a forested area in New Zealand has lost an appeal against his conviction and prison sentence.The man, whose identity is suppressed, appealed to New Zealand’s court of appeal in August but it found against him on Friday. Continue reading...

Harry and Meghan have left the UK for the US. But can they just walk away from the Firm?It was a historic breakaway movement that divided the country, and will keep constitutional experts busy for years. Not Brexit, obviously, but Megxit, or Prince Harry and his wife Meghan’s decision to effectively resign from the royal family.On 8 January, they confirmed plans to raise their son, Archie, overseas, free from the constraints of palace life and a media the prince felt was hounding his wife much as it once did his late mother. Continue reading...

Pro-democracy activists and police clash on the streets, captured vividly in this daring, dynamic and visually stunning documentaryThe artist Ai Weiwei is emerging as a ferociously productive documentary film-maker, with two other feature credits just this year: Vivos, about the abduction of protesting students in Mexico, and CoroNation, about the spread of Covid-19 in and from Wuhan. But here is his dynamic and visually stunning Cockroach. Apart from anything else, it’s a spectacular action movie that begins with a shot that had me gasping: a Hong Kong protester on a rooftop is cornered by police and, in an attempt to escape, he tries climbing down the unstable scaffolding on the front of the building, with other protesters at street level screaming their alarm. The result is heartstopping.Cockroach is about the passionate pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, which was triggered by the introduction of the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill by the pro-Chinese Hong Kong government in 2019, exposing protesters to extradition to the Chinese mainland and effectively destroying that minimum of 50 years’ judicial independence and autonomy that the Hong Kong people were promised at the 1997 handover. “Cockroaches” is how the protesters feel they are seen by the Chinese authorities: their proud sense of democratic independence is seen as laughably irrelevant by an increasingly belligerent national government – and the same goes for any human rights. A banner proclaims that they are going the same way as Tibet and the Uighurs, and the whole of Hong Kong is going to be a scorched-earth monument to Beijing’s new obsession with alpha-dog nationalism. Continue reading...

Osborne-era hopes for trade have been eclipsed by worries over national security and human rights abusesIn 2003, the Cabinet Office decided to allow the Chinese state-backed Huawei telecommunications network to start supplying BT for the first time. Nobody bothered to put a note on the security implications into the red box of the then business secretary, Patrica Hewitt. A minor discussion, solely on the competition implications, did take place.The then head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, used to daily cooperation with BT to secure wire taps, was shocked and concerned when he heard of the plan, but was told: “It is nothing to do with you. These are issues we can control.” Continue reading...

Last week it was revealed that more than $300,000 from the public purse was spent in defamation proceedings after the speaker of the New Zealand parliament, Trevor Mallard, wrongly accused a former parliamentary staffer of being a rapist. On Wednesday Mallard fronted up to parliament’s governance and administration committee and apologised to the house and all New Zealanders for his “mistake”, a word he used three times in the first 90 seconds of the hearing.Reading from a prepared statement, Mallard acknowledged his mistake was in saying that the allegations against the individual, in the context of the 2019 Francis review into bullying and harassment of staff at parliament, amounted to rape, that his understanding of the definition of rape at that time was incorrect and that the alleged conduct did not amount to rape. Continue reading...

Tech giant says proposed code requiring payments to publishers ‘still falls far short’ of being workable and wants it further weakenedGoogle has rejected a bargaining code designed to force it and other tech groups to pay publishers for news they use on their websites, even though it has already been watered down after a fierce lobbying campaign by the search giant.In a post to Google’s official blog, the company’s Australian boss, Mel Silva, said the proposed code would “fundamentally break how search engines work”, complained it would involve giving news publishers special treatment and slammed the “final offer” method that is to be used to resolve how much should be paid for news as “unfair and unprecedented”. Continue reading...

A flatback sea turtle has been filmed defending itself from a tiger shark attack off the Western Australia coast. A team of researchers at Murdoch University’s Harry Butler Institute and Western Australia’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation & Attractions captured the vision after mounting a camera on the turtle’s shell during a project at Roebuck Bay. Despite the mismatch in size, the turtle uses aggressive biting lunges at the shark before making a hasty escape to safety Continue reading...

Over the decades many of the city’s stone markers have been submerged in concrete, but a plan is underway to restore themBuried for years under Mumbai’s new roads and ever-increasing layers of development, the British passion for cartography is set to rise up on the city’s streets again thanks to a project to preserve its colonial milestones.When workers from Mumbai municipal corporation (BMC) were demolishing unauthorised buildings three years ago, they unearthed a basalt stone marker with a pyramidal top and a Roman numeral on it – a British milestone and one of 16 laid out in the early 19th century on the road between Horniman Circle and Sion, then the city’s outer limit. Continue reading...

Justice minister says: ‘Now it will be clear, that if both parties do no consent to sex, then it’s rape’Denmark has strengthened its rape laws by criminalising sex without explicit consent.The new law passed by parliament on Thursday also widened the circumstances that could constitute rape – under the old legislation, prosecutors had to show the rapist had used violence or attacked someone who was unable to resist. Continue reading...