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The Australian National University’s Ben Phillips says the number of people living below the poverty line is set to rise to 3.82 millionAn extra 330,000 people will be thrown below the poverty line when the federal government reduces the coronavirus supplement after Christmas, analysis shows.Modelling by the Australian National University’s Ben Phillips shows the $100 reduction to the fortnightly supplement from 1 January would see the number of people in Australia living in poverty increase to 3.82 million. Continue reading...

Monthly trip from Brussels by 2,400 MEPs and staff standing in way of hitting 2030 targetThe EU must consider establishing Brussels as the sole base of the European parliament, breaking its historic links to Strasbourg, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, an internal report has advised.The decision would involve a treaty change and a major row with the French government but the study’s authors say it is clear the EU needs to “rationalise” despite the symbolic importance of the Alsatian city as a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation. Continue reading...

In the UK, 60% of respondents have a favourable view, the highest on recordMore people hold a favourable view of the European Union than not in every member state surveyed in a new poll, while positive opinions in Britain – which left the bloc in January – are the highest on record.A Pew Research Center study of eight EU countries also found more than half of respondents felt confident Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron would do the right thing, but far fewer showed as much trust in Boris Johnson. Continue reading...

In becoming the first solo man to grace the cover of US Vogue – and in a dress – the singer has cemented his place at the vanguard of the movementHarry Styles was unveiled as the first solo male cover star of US Vogue last week – and in a dress to boot. He wore a custom-made, lace-trimmed Gucci ballgown dressed with a tuxedo jacket.Nine men have featured on the cover previously, but always as part of a couple. They include Kanye West, Justin Bieber and Styles’ former bandmate Zayn Malik. The cover of the December issue was photographed by Tyler Mitchell, who in 2018 became the first black photographer to shoot a US Vogue cover, featuring Beyoncé. Continue reading...

Jury hears that attack on Louise Smith by Shane Smith left her unrecognisableA vulnerable and impressionable 16-year-old girl was “cruelly and brutally” murdered by her aunt’s husband in a sexually motivated attack, a jury has been told.The attack on Louise Smith by Shane Mays was so violent that she was left unrecognisable, the court heard. Continue reading...

No one wants a noise complaint due to a vigorous home HIIT session. Here experts give their tips on how to proceed, from hula-hooping to brushing up on your yogaWith gyms in England closed for the second time this year, neighbourly relations may have been strained by YouTube workouts and online high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions. Is that thundering on the floor in the flat above ever going to stop, or is it just the short bit where your upstairs neighbour does a few burpees before collapsing (another thud) in a heap? If you are the one making the noise, does the weight of your guilt count as extra resistance? For the sake of indoor exercisers and flat-dwellers everywhere, here are some expert tips on keeping the noise down. Continue reading...

Airline to run 20% of flights for rest of 2020 but says vaccine news has boosted bookings

Despite the president’s anti-Muslim policies, the margin between Trump and Biden among Muslim voters was closer than experts predictedDr Khalid Khan is an internal medicine physician in Houston, Texas. Even in the face of a pandemic that has cost almost quarter of a million American lives and administration that often seemed to demonize Islam, the doctor and self-proclaimed devout Muslim cast his ballot for Donald Trump.“When you eat a dish, you might not like every ingredient. But you like the whole dish. We should take the good and leave the bad,” Khan said, comparing the US president to a mediocre meal. Continue reading...

We want to hear from people living and working in Hull about how Covid has impacted themWith 770 cases per 100,000, Hull is soon to become the city with the highest cases in England, with the council leader saying that it has been “forgotten” by central government.We want to hear from local people, schools and business about their experiences. We’re also interested in hearing from those who are working directly with the pandemic, whether it’s with the NHS or local test and trace. Continue reading...

CEO tells inquiry letter did not reflect miner’s ‘close consultative approach’ to Indigenous peopleMining giant Fortescue Metals Group has said it regrets the offence caused by a letter it sent threatening legal action if an application for permission to destroy Aboriginal heritage sites in the Pilbara was not progressed.Fortescue’s chief executive, Elizabeth Gaines, told a federal parliamentary inquiry the letter concerned “points of law” to be considered by a Western Australian government committee and “did not reflect Fortescue’s close consultative approach with Aboriginal people”. Continue reading...

About 4,000 people have been told to quarantine as close contacts of known cases as SA reintroduces restrictions. Follow the latest updates

Organisation says Black Lives Matter movement reaffirmed commitment to changing name to MSI Reproductive ChoicesMarie Stopes International (MSI) is to change its name in an attempt to break its association with the family planning pioneer.From Tuesday, the abortion and contraception provider, which operates in 37 countries, will abbreviate the initials and go by the name MSI Reproductive Choices. Continue reading...

Company’s Australian arm underpaid 3,130 employees from 2010 to 2018 and breached three awardsThe cosmetics company Lush has admitted to underpaying its Australian workers more than $4m over nearly a decade.An internal investigation found the company’s Australian arm underpaid 3,130 employees over eight years from 2010 to 2018, and breached three awards, due to “inadequate” workplace processes. Continue reading...

He’s played a teen tearaway, a racist cop, a conman and a serial killer. But can he play a cellist? The star talks about his role in Yorgos Lanthimos’s first film since The Favourite – and making a jazz documentaryIn his time, Matt Dillon has been about as quintessentially American a screen presence as you can imagine. From his early blazing-youth roles in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders and Rumble Fish; through more mature parts like the leader of an addict “family”in Gus van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy; to a whole later catalogue of cops and lowlifes, Dillon has exemplified a hard-bitten homegrown working-class cool that you wouldn’t immediately picture outside the boundaries of American film.But of late, he has explored some challenging byways of international art cinema. He played an astronaut in French director Alice Winocour’s Proxima; he was austerely chilling as a serial killer in Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built; and he is currently working with the celebrated Iranian photographer and film-maker Shirin Neshat. Continue reading...

Hamilton has just equalled the record of seven F1 world championships – many believe he is the greatest driver of all time. And this year, more than ever, he has been leading the fight against racismAt the end of 2019, Lewis Hamilton had a realisation about Formula One. “I was looking at pictures of all the teams – they do these team photos in front of the garage or on the track – and they’ve posted all these pictures and I’m like, there are no people of colour in any of these teams.”Hamilton says he had always thought that his presence and his incredible success would “spark change”. Somewhat naively, he now acknowledges he thought his career as the world’s most successful racing driver – along with the presence of his dad, Anthony, and his racing driver brother, Nicolas – would be enough to “open up doorways” for others. The realisation that after all these years it wasn’t happening led him to rethink. Continue reading...

Storm hits Caribbean coast less than two weeks after Hurricane Eta carved a swathe of destructionHurricane Iota has made landfall on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, threatening catastrophic damage to the same part of Central America already battered by equally strong Hurricane Eta less than two weeks ago.Iota had intensified into a dangerous Category 5 storm early on Monday, but the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said it weakened slightly to Category 4, with maximum sustained winds of 155mph (250km/h). It made landfall about 30 miles (45km) south of the Nicaraguan city of Puerto Cabezas, also known as Bilwi. Continue reading...

Kylie’s music has been a constant among the uncertainty – for five straight decades, she’s made us rush to the dance floorIt would have taken a brave soothsayer to predict, back in the 1980s, that Kylie Minogue was on track to become Australia’s most enduring pop icon. Like the legion of soap actors to follow, the young Neighbours star broke onto the charts with an inauspicious piece of pop fluff – a cute cover of The Loco-Motion that had all the hallmarks of a one-hit wonder.Three decades later and Kylie (who needs just one name – as far as I’m concerned, there is no other Kylie) has become the first woman to have number one albums in the UK for five decades straight, capped off by her latest release, Disco. Continue reading...

Deal will effectively limit scrutiny of unlawful and damaging compliance checks

Scottish politicians react angrily to PM calling it Tony Blair’s ‘biggest mistake’Politicians across the spectrum have reacted angrily after Boris Johnson dismissed devolution as “a disaster north of the border”.During a Zoom call with around 60 northern Conservative MPs on Monday evening, the prime minister described devolution as “Tony Blair’s biggest mistake”. Continue reading...

Tuesday: Family of murdered mother and children call for coercive control laws. Plus: new coronavirus vaccine is 95% effectiveGood morning, this is Tamara Howie bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 17 November. Continue reading...

Territory had its first documented case in early November and on Monday officials announced 26 confirmed Covid-19 cases

German chancellor says she does not currently have the backing of state leaders

MEPs might not be able to seal any agreement until three days before transition period endsA European parliament vote to seal a Brexit trade deal could be delayed until 28 December, three days before the end of the transition period, under an emergency EU plan.With less than seven weeks to go before the UK leaves the single market and customs union, it emerged on Sunday that negotiations on access to British fishing waters had not progressed since the summer. Continue reading...

Iota due to collide with north-eastern Nicaragua overnight, and has maximum sustained winds of 160mph, reaching category 5Hurricane Iota exploded into a catastrophic category 5 storm on Monday and bore down on a remote Central American coastal region already reeling from another major storm, Hurricane Eta, with efforts to evacuate villagers hampered by shortages of fuel for boats.Iota is the record 30th named storm of an extraordinary Atlantic hurricane season. Such activity has focused attention on climate change, which scientists say is causing wetter, stronger and more destructive storms. Continue reading...

Jonathan Roper says Celotex was ‘dishonest’ in second test of foam boards after they failed first oneExecutives who sold combustible insulation for use on Grenfell Tower perpetrated a “fraud on the market” by rigging a fire test and making “misleading” claims about it, a public inquiry has heard.Celotex, a subsidiary of the French construction materials company Saint-Gobain, behaved in a “completely unethical” way, admitted Jonathan Roper, a former assistant product manager. Continue reading...

Dawn raids in Puglia lead to about 40 arrests of suspected members of the ‘fifth mafia’An emerging mafia that ran a protection racket extorting €50 (£45) a coffin from funeral homes has been raided by hundreds of police in one of the largest ever such busts in the southern Italian region of Puglia.Dawn raids centred on the city of Foggia led to the arrest of some 40 alleged members of a criminal organisation described by Italian authorities as the country’s “number one public enemy”. Continue reading...

Public radio station blames technical glitch for publishing premature death notices onlineReports of the deaths of about 100 unfortunate celebrities have been greatly exaggerated by a French public radio station, which mistakenly published the obituaries of, among others, a very-much-alive Queen, Brigitte Bardot and Pelé.Radio France Internationale (RFI), the French equivalent of the BBC World Service, on Monday blamed “a technical problem” and apologised for the error, which saw the death notices appear on its website and partner platforms including Google, Yahoo! and MSN before being hastily taken down. Continue reading...

Tests reveal novichok used to poison opposition leader was different from Salisbury strainWestern security agencies believe the Kremlin intended to kill the opposition leader Alexei Navalny and only failed to achieve the deadly goal because of quick thinking by first responders when he suddenly fell ill in August.The conclusion from lab tests is that Navalny was poisoned using a potentially milder strain of novichok than the one used in the Salisbury attack, pointing to an active chemical weapons programme in Russia capable of producing different variants of the poison. Continue reading...

Stephen Ellison hailed a hero as footage of him rescuing student goes viral on social mediaA British diplomat has been hailed as a hero after he dived into a river to save a drowning Chinese woman in a rescue that was filmed and then went viral on social media in China and the UK. The incident happened on Saturday.Stephen Ellison, 61, consul general in Chongqing, was walking by a river in a nearby village when the woman, 24, slipped on rocks into the deep water. Continue reading...

Manufacturer of cookers linked to five deaths tells inquest it was not aware of risk of carbon monoxide building upThe manufacturer of cookers linked to five deaths in Cornwall has told an inquest it was not aware of the risk of carbon monoxide building up if its appliances were used with the grill doors closed.Three men and two women died of carbon monoxide poisoning in two separate tragedies in Cornwall after they used Beko gas cookers. Continue reading...

PM says Swedes not observing public health guidance as well they did in the spring

Countries reject package over attempts to link funding to respect for rule of lawThe EU is facing a crisis after Hungary and Poland vetoed the bloc’s historic €1.8tn (£1.6tn) budget and coronavirus recovery plan over attempts to link funding to respect for democratic norms.The move unravels months of negotiations over the scale and terms of the EU’s spending and sets the stage for a stormy videoconference meeting of the bloc’s leaders on Thursday. Continue reading...

Proposed law would allow police to detain and search anyone convicted in the past 10 years without a warrantProposed new laws that would allow New South Wales police to “stop, detain and search” anyone convicted of a serious drug offence in the past decade are “unjust” and would give police “extraordinary” power to target marginalised groups, legal and civil liberties groups have warned.The government’s drug supply prohibition order bill, introduced to parliament last month and supported by the Labor opposition, would introduce a two-year pilot program in four local government areas allowing police to “search convicted drug dealers and manufacturers, as well as their homes and vehicles, at any time without a warrant”. Continue reading...

Maia Sandu wins presidential run-off by a landslide after vowing to fight corruptionThe opposition candidate Maia Sandu has won a landslide victory in Moldova’s presidential elections, easily defeating the pro-Russian incumbent, Igor Dodon.Sandu, a former World Bank economist who has supported closer ties with the EU, won the run-off by harnessing voters’ anger over a long history of political scandals and exhaustion with endemic corruption, including the theft of $1bn from Moldovan banks in 2014-15. Continue reading...

Freddy McConnell says he will apply to the European court of human rights to hear the caseA transgender man has lost his legal battle to be registered as his child’s father or parent in the UK after the supreme court refused to consider his final appeal.Freddy McConnell, a 34-year-old freelance journalist who works for the Guardian, gave birth in 2018 after suspending his hormone treatment. He had hoped to challenge an appeal court ruling this spring that motherhood is defined as being pregnant and giving birth regardless of whether the person who does so was considered a man or a woman in law. Continue reading...

No one could have predicted that a simple family film would have been such a box office smash in 1990 or that it would remain a favorite decades afterTo the news of Disney’s plans to produce a remake of holiday classic Home Alone, director of the genuine article Chris Columbus had words sharper than a toy car on a bare foot. “It’s a waste of time, as far as I’m concerned,” Columbus said in a recent interview with Insider commemorating the 30th anniversary of the film’s release. “What’s the point? I’m a firm believer that you don’t remake films that have had the longevity of Home Alone. You’re not going to create lightning in a bottle again. It’s just not going to happen.”Related: My favourite Christmas film: Home Alone Continue reading...

From a charming cockatiel to cuddly guinea pigs, here are some of the pets you welcomed into your homes during lockdownMy wife was firmly in the ‘cats, not dogs’ camp but our children wanted a dog. When lockdown came chinks appeared in my wife’s armour and I picked up Juno the goldador (a cross breed between a golden retriever and a labrador). It was love at first sight. My wife mocks my devotion. In particular, she laughs at the adoring gaze, once reserved for her, that she says crosses my face several times a day. I have already spent more time picking up poo than I had ever envisaged I might do in my life. But I rarely complain. Our lives were full of joy before Juno, now there’s just a little more around. Adam Montgomery, 54, leadership trainer and coach, Malvern Continue reading...

Ayoub El-Khazzani accused of opening fire with assault rifle in attack on train to Paris in 2015A suspected jihadist gunman whose attack on a packed international train was foiled by three US tourists has gone on trial in Paris.Ayoub El-Khazzani, 31, is accused of opening fire with an assault rifle while carrying near 300 rounds of ammunition on the high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris in August 2015. He was wrestled to the floor and restrained by three American passengers, helped by a British man. Continue reading...

Giorgio Moroder: ‘The lyrics were written by a guy who came to fix my Ferrari. It won me my third Oscar’Before I was in Berlin I auditioned for the part of Princes Leia in Star Wars. I was 15 but looked 12. Harrison Ford was over 30 but looked 19 or 20. We sat in deckchairs to say our lines. George Lucas, bless him, sent me a letter thanking me and saying: “We chose Carrie Fisher, but we’d like to help you.” He introduced me to Steven Spielberg and all these guys. I was offered the part of Lucy Ewing in Dallas, but the seven-year contract scared me because I really wanted to do music. My mother told me to go with my heart, but my agent was so annoyed with me for turning down Dallas that he dropped me. A year later, I met John Crawford [bass/vocals] and joined Berlin. Continue reading...

Tadao Ando’s modernist work in Piccadilly Gardens has divided opinion since 2002To some it is a modernist masterpiece for which “any other city in the world would give their right arm”. To others, it is a concrete carbuncle that should never have been installed on what was once Manchester’s lushest square.Work was set to begin on Monday to demolish the Japanese architect Tadao Ando’s only UK work after sceptics won the battle over what has been called the Mancunian Berlin Wall. Continue reading...

Mank director rails at the risk-averse production strategy of major Hollywood studiosMank director David Fincher has described Todd Phillips’ Oscar-winning Joker as “a betrayal” of mentally ill people.In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Fincher was reflecting on Joker’s surprise success at the box office in a wide-ranging attack on the risk-averse production strategy of the major Hollywood studios. Saying that studios “don’t want to make anything that can’t make them a billion dollars”, he also suggested that occasionally “challenging” material can get support, if there is solid previous evidence of commercial potential. Continue reading...

A new jukebox musical of Carrà’s songs caps a 60-year career for a cultural icon who revolutionised Italian entertainment – and gave women agency in the bedroomAt the beginning of Explota Explota, a new Spanish-Italian jukebox musical comedy set at the tail end of the Franco dictatorship in 1970s Spain, airport employee Maria is making a delivery at a TV studio when she catches the attention of Chimo, the director of a variety show. When she tells him she’s not a dancer, he replies: “No dancer with blood flowing in their veins can resist this rhythm.”He plays her Bailo Bailo, a hit by Italian pop star Raffaella Carrà, who, on top of becoming one of the best known personalities in her native Italy, ended up a sensation in the 20th-century Spanish-speaking world. Where Sweden had Abba, Italy had Carrà, who sold millions of records across Europe. Sure enough, Maria can’t resist Bailo Bailo, and Chimo hires her. Continue reading...

Some 400,000 Australians will share $112m in extra compensation, lawyers sayThe Australian government has agreed to a $1.2bn settlement for a class action brought on behalf of hundreds of thousands of robodebt victims.In a deal struck the day a federal court trial was set to begin, 400,000 people will share in $112m in additional compensation, the firm running the action, Gordon Legal, announced on Monday. Continue reading...

French president says US election chance to pursue sovereignty amid rising populismEuropean leaders must not let up on efforts to construct an autonomous bloc that is capable of resisting the duopoly of China and the US, Emmanuel Macron has said in his first extended response to the US presidential election.The French president said the US would only respect Europe if it was sovereign with respect to its own defence, technology and currency. Warning that US values and interests were not quite the same as Europe’s, he said: “It is not tenable that our international policies should be dependent on it or to be trailing behind it.” The same need for independence applied even more to China, he added. Continue reading...

Belgian film Patrick showcases the average male form, setting it apart from movies that often present it as comedy or combatIn terms of an attention-grabbing tagline, the Belgian movie Patrick had me at “Naturist campsite handyman loses his hammer”. Don’t expect anything saucy, though: Patrick, out on digital platforms on Friday, is a spare, sombre character study, set in a woodland community where everybody happens to be naked. After a few minutes, you stop noticing, even though the film occasionally embraces the absurdism, especially in a fight scene between two angry naked men in a flimsy mobile home.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...

Afghan asylum seeker accused of endangering six-year-old’s life after family tried to reach Greek island of Samos from TurkeyThe father of a six-year-old who died trying to reach the Greek island of Samos from the Turkish coast has been charged by Greek authorities with endangering his son’s life.Abdul*, 25, from Afghanistan, faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. The cause of his son’s death has not been confirmed. Continue reading...

Alfredo Bosco came to Guerrero on assignment to document southern Mexican villages emptied out by conflict. Over repeated visits he documents the region’s storyLife in Guerrero seems to hover at the edge of violence. The threat is pervasive: in the armed men at roadblocks, the empty nighttime streets, the kindling of street protests. Then it erupts, in a brief convulsion. What endures is the wreckage left behind. Continue reading...

16 November 1970 These manmade cathedral-like caves are now so disguised by nature they are part of the landscapeLAKE DISTRICT: One of the most exciting corners of the fell country is the hummocky area of low, craggy hills and scattered woodlands in the shadow of Wetherlam, just south of the Brathay. Here is a tangled countryside of trees and tarns, of old farmhouses with rickety spinning galleries, long deserted quarries, tunnels and shafts, and the most tremendous manmade holes in the district. There are vaulted caverns big as cathedrals and underground passages through the fells – hacked out by men hundreds of years ago and now so disguised by nature they are part of the landscape. You can step out of a wood of birch and blackthorn and find yourself on the brink of a manmade cliff, or crawl through some dark tunnel and discover an underground lake that has never seen the sun.Related: Lake District heritage at risk as thrill-seekers ‘chew up’ idyllic trails Continue reading...

As he departs No 10, his cultural revolution is in the process of being partially unwoundDuring last year’s election campaign, Dominic Cummings made clear what he thought of the accredited lobby journalists who cover Westminster politics for mainstream publications. “Wait til the glorious new government SMASHES the lobby and replaces it with truth and light,” Cummings told the Guardian at the time, following an inquiry about an unrelated story.He was promising that a victorious Johnson government would go to war with the BBC, Channel 4 News and all manner of other news outlets deemed to represent the views of the metropolitan elite and not the 52% of the country who had voted for Brexit. Root-and-branch reform of government communications was the order of the day and journalists who didn’t like it would have to deal with it. Continue reading...

Casino’s counsel claims assumptions were made about rule of law in China and mistake ‘should not be judged severely’Executives at Crown Resorts acted “with bona fides and honesty” in their judgments about the risks of doing business in China before the arrests of 19 staff in 2016, counsel for Crown has told a NSW inquiry.Crown has begun making final submissions to the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority inquiry before the former supreme court judge Patricia Bergin SC. Continue reading...