Thursday: Police union describes federal integrity commission as a ‘protection racket’ for MPs. Plus: Australia’s race for a Covid-19 vaccineGood morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 12 November. Continue reading...
Frantic stock sell-offs across sector anticipating ‘monopoly’ rules, with Alibaba shopping site shares falling 9.8%Hundreds of millions of dollars have been wiped off the value of China’s biggest internet companies following two days of frenetic selling with investors fearing Beijing plans to curb the power of homegrown tech firms.Shares in Alibaba, a Chinese version of Amazon, dropped by 9.8% on Wednesday, while its rivals, Tencent, and JD.com, fell by 7.4% and 9.2% respectively. Continue reading...
Government says it will not give in to protesters call to resign after ceasefire agreement seen as capitulationThe office of Armenia’s prime minister has said that it will not allow the opposition to seize power by force, as heated protests have continued for a second day after the signing of a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh seen as a capitulation.Several thousand protesters defied martial law on Wednesday to gather in downtown Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, and call for the prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation. On Monday evening, he signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire that ceded territory to Azerbaijan that had been won in a bloody war in the 1990s. “Nikol is a traitor,” the protesters chanted. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen, South Asia correspondent on (#5A896)
Government will also oversee news appearing on Facebook and TwitterIndia’s government has ordered that all online news, social media and video streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are to be subject to state regulation, raising fears of increased censorship of digital media.The ministry of information and broadcasting, which regulates and censors print newspapers, television, films and theatre, will also have jurisdiction, under the new order, over digital news and entertainment platforms in India. Continue reading...
It’s time to reflect on the weaponising of a certain Fox News-adjacent look that dominated his four years in officeThe age of Trump was an ugly one. An ugliness in profound and harrowing senses – racism, lies and callousness – extended into a literal ugliness that, while in no way as significant as the president’s actions, has often made the past four years feel like an assault on the senses. This administration has looked and sounded like no other, just as it has acted like no other. The nastiness of Trump’s pronouncements has many times been made more shocking by his language: the barked, capitalised tweets littered with errors and exclamation marks; the misogyny underscored by snickering profanity. Every unmasked public appearance has been a visceral reminder of a shirking of leadership and responsibility in the face of a public health crisis. Continue reading...
Hong Kong has plunged further into crisis, as a new law imposed by Beijing allowing the disqualification of 'unpatriotic' opposition members led to the immediate disqualification of four sitting legislators.The move prompted the entire pro-democracy caucus to announce their resignation, and was heralded by the opposition politician Claudia Mo as 'the death-knell of Hong Kong’s democracy fight'
Plans include making one in three Eixample streets “green zones” and creating 21 public squaresBarcelona has launched an ambitious 10-year plan to reclaim the city’s streets from cars and cut down pollution with the creation of green spaces and public squares.One in three streets in the heavily polluted central Eixample district – the 20th-century grid devised by the engineer Ildefons Cerdà – will become green zones under the scheme, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists, and 21 public squares will be created at intersections so that no citizen is more than 200 metres from a square or small park. Continue reading...
Storm of paddywhackery cliches in promo for Hollywood film stuns critics – and even the leprechaun museumA trailer is all that Ireland has seen of Hollywood’s latest romantic comedy, but that has been enough to declare an Irish accent emergency.Wild Mountain Thyme stars Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan as star-crossed lovers – and farmers – on an emerald isle posing as Ireland. Continue reading...
Tate & Lyle Sugars is warning supermarkets of sugar and syrup supply issues next yearTate & Lyle Sugars, a prominent corporate backer of Brexit, has warned of sugar and syrup shortages in Northern Ireland in the new year, due to lack of clarity over the UK and EU trade relationship.The company is the largest cane sugar brand in the UK and supplies the main supermarkets in Northern Ireland. It has advised retailers to draw up contingency plans to source sugar and syrup from elsewhere, because it will struggle to get its products to them next year, according to ITV News. Continue reading...
Service at Westminster Abbey marked 100 years since body of unknown soldier was laid to restWearing face coverings and standing apart, people across the country observed a two-minute silence on Wednesday to mark Armistice Day against the backdrop of a pandemic that has caused well over a million deaths globally.At Westminster Abbey the silence was led by the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the prime minister and leader of the opposition. Continue reading...
France condemns ‘cowardly attack’ at Jeddah ceremony for foreign diplomatic staffSeveral people have been wounded in an explosion in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah during a ceremony to commemorate the end of the first world war attended by staff from foreign diplomatic missions, officials have said.“The embassies involved condemn this cowardly attack, which is wholly unjustified,” the French foreign ministry said. “They call on the Saudi authorities to shed as much light as they can on this attack, and to identify and hunt down the perpetrators.” Continue reading...
They’ve kept us warm for thousands of years, but a new study says open fires may cause more pollution than the traffic on a busy roadName: Open fires.Age: As old as mankind. Continue reading...
The classic northern pie gets the Felicity Cloake treatmentMeat and potato pie, meat and ’tatie pie (as Simon Hopkinson calls it, rather than “tattie”), or simply meat pie, is a straightforward name for a straightforward dish. There are no doubt hundreds of different varieties from around the pie-eating world, but here I’m interested in the “oh-so-delicious looking – and smelling!” version Hopkinson recalls from childhood visits to Bury Market with his mother. Indeed, the Salford-born poet John Cooper Clarke has said they’re the thing he misses most about the north: “You can’t get them south of Birmingham. There’s a warning for any readers who might be thinking of going south. Take your own meat and potato pies.” Alternatively, dust off your rolling pin and get baking. Continue reading...
Covid-19 has already put 3 million young Europeans out of work. The scars for these under-25s could take a decade to healA decade ago, the global financial crisis left deep scars in terms of destroyed opportunities and unemployment for young people. In Europe in particular, youth unemployment persisted. Now the Covid-19 crisis threatens to do the same thing to the under-25s. Yet, none of the leaders of France, Italy or Spain, nor the president of the European commission, prioritised youth unemployment in their latest policy speeches. At the highest political level, the focus must be on averting the risk of a lost generation. Bold policies will be needed.During the financial crisis, the US youth unemployment rate increased from about 10% to 19%, while in the European Union it increased from 16% to 26%. The rate in the EU only returned to its 2008 level in 2018, while the spike in US youth unemployment was overcome more rapidly. Even in the recovery, some EU countries fared much worse than the EU average. In Greece, Spain and Italy, youth unemployment in 2019 was still higher than it was before the 2008 crash. Continue reading...
‘If there isn’t good news by then ... time is up,’ says senior EU diplomatA summit of EU leaders on 19 November is now viewed by Brussels as the final deadline for a draft Brexit deal, with negotiations on Britain’s future trade and security relationship with the bloc set to go to the wire.The teams of negotiators working in London had hoped to be able to pass on a deal to MEPs for scrutiny by 18 November to allow time for parliamentary ratification but the talks remain difficult, according to sources on both sides. Continue reading...
Six border collies from around world to take part in series of live experimentsThe search for the world’s smartest dog kicks into gear on Wednesday, as contenders compete in a livestreamed event to be crowned top of the canine class.Researchers in Hungary have spent more than two years searching for dogs who could recognise the names of their different toys, advertising for owners to come forward on social media. Continue reading...
The Victoria Cross recipient must provide newspapers’ lawyers with documents that will reveal if the inquiry proposes to make adverse findings against himThe Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith has been ordered to hand over crucial documents that will reveal whether a war crimes inquiry proposes to make adverse findings against him.Roberts-Smith, the country’s most decorated living soldier, is currently suing the Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers for defamation in the federal court over a series of articles he says wrongly characterised him as a war criminal. Continue reading...
The Danish actor is reportedly first in line to play ‘dark wizard’ Gellert Grindelwald in the third Harry Potter prequelHannibal star Mads Mikkelsen is set to replace Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts 3, it has been reported.According to Deadline, Mikkelsen is in talks to join the cast of the third instalment of the JK Rowling-scripted fantasy series, which had been derailed by the failure of Depp’s libel action against the Sun. Depp said he had been “asked to resign” by Warner Bros, the producing studio, and had left the project. Continue reading...
Flooding left thousands trapped for days without food or water and death toll may never be knownAcross a sea of putrid mud a metre or so deep, Marvin Argueta pointed to the remnants of what a week ago was his home on the banks of the Chamelecón River. He had lost everything – but he still considers himself lucky.“If we hadn’t got out in time, we all would have died,” said Argueta, 22, who along with his wife and four children abandoned their house when the flood waters reached waist height in the middle of the night. “A friend of mine lost his entire family.” Continue reading...
Labor claims dinner at Club Taree raised $18,000 from four donors and gave them access to premierGladys Berejiklian has said she cannot remember whether she attended an “intimate fundraising dinner” at Club Taree in May 2018, where Labor claims illegal property donations were made.Labor used question time in New South Wales parliament on Wednesday to ask about the event and donations made to the campaign of the mid-north coast MP Stephen Bromhead, the member for Myall Lakes, in 2018. Continue reading...
She went platinum by plugging Bach into 20th-century machines, and was soon working with Stanley Kubrick. But prejudice around her gender transition pushed Wendy Carlos out of sightThis summer, an 80-year-old synthesiser pioneer suddenly appeared online. She had been silent for 11 years, but now something had appeared that she just wouldn’t tolerate. “Please be aware there’s a purported ‘biography’ on me just released,” wrote Wendy Carlos on the homepage of her 16-bit-friendly website, a Siamese cat and a synthesiser behind her portrait. “No one ever interviewed me [for it], nor anyone I know,” she went on. “Aren’t there new, more interesting targets?”Given that Carlos is arguably the most important living figure in the history of electronic music, it’s remarkable that Amanda Sewell’s Wendy Carlos: A Biography is the first book about her. This is the musician who pushed Robert Moog to perfect his first analogue synthesiser, from which pop, prog, electronica and film music flourished. Her smash-hit 1968 album Switched-On Bach made the Moog internationally famous and became the second classical album ever to go platinum in the US. Then came her extraordinary soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Tron. She made an ambient album five years before Brian Eno did, and jumped from analogue machines to do leading work in digital synthesis, but worried that her status as one of the first visible transgender artists in the US would overshadow it. Continue reading...
by Lisa Cox (now) and Amy Remeikis (earlier) on (#5A77V)
Greg Hunt says coronavirus vaccine to be rolled out from March, NSW to make QR codes mandatory for venues from 23 November. Follow updates• Follow our global coronavirus live blog
Special rapporteur on racism and xenophobia believes there is a misconception that biosurveillance technology is without biasRobotic lie detector tests at European airports, eye scans for refugees and voice-imprinting software for use in asylum applications are among new technologies flagged as “troubling” in a UN report.The UN’s special rapporteur on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Prof Tendayi Achiume, said digital technologies can be unfair and regularly breach human rights. In her new report, she has called for a moratorium on the use of certain surveillance technologies. Continue reading...
The 18-year-old autism campaigner and international children’s peace prize finalist on why diagnosis of the condition for girls urgently needs improvingEach morning Siena Castellon synchronises her morning routine to music with the same 30-minute playlist. Different songs act as time markers. “The trick is to choose music you love and to listen to the same playlist every day,” explains the teenager.When Wonderwall by Oasis comes on she knows she should be brushing her teeth. By the time Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey is playing she is walking out the door. Continue reading...
England began its second nationwide lockdown on 5 November. Before-and-after photographs reveal the impact of the first days of the four-week stay-at-home order in which all non-essential shops and venues have to close.The Shambles in York city centre. Photographs by Richard Saker Continue reading...
Joe Biden’s win gives the globe a better chance of averting climate catastrophe, but major obstacles remainEnvironmentalists have been heartened by Joe Biden’s victory as, if the US rejoins the Paris agreement as expected, it will give the world a much better chance of averting climate catastrophe. However, there are still hurdles to overcome to rein in emissions and keep warming to within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Continue reading...
Crown would be compensated by up to 10.5 times the negative financial impact of new casino licence conditionsMoves are afoot to limit potential compensation claims for hundreds of millions of dollars by Crown Resorts if the New South Wales regulator imposes conditions on its casino licence.A private member’s bill to be introduced by the independent state MP Justin Field on Wednesday aims to override agreements entered into by former premier Mike Baird in 2014 which require NSW taxpayers to compensate Crown by up to 10.5 times the negative financial impact caused by any new conditions imposed on the licence. Continue reading...
by Justin McCurry in Tokyo and agencies on (#5A7JD)
Outrage after members the band were shown holding Fu Bao, the first panda to be born in South Korea, as part of a trailer for their online reality showAnother K-pop act has sparked outrage in China after members of the globally popular girl band Blackpink were shown holding a baby panda – drawing accusations that they had risked harming the health of a national treasure.Last month, the K-pop phenomenon BTS were criticised in China after the band’s leader, RM, cited the “history of pain” shared between South Korea and the US, who fought alongside each other in the Korean war. China came to the aid of North Korean forces during the 1950-53 conflict and suffered significant losses. Continue reading...
LA judge Brenda Penny declines to suspend James Spears from his role in the court conservatorship that has controlled his daughter’s life for 12 yearsBritney Spears is afraid of her father and will not resume her career so long as he has power over it, her attorney said in court on Tuesday.Los Angeles superior court judge Brenda Penny declined to suspend James Spears from his central role in the court conservatorship that has controlled his daughter’s life and career for 12 years, as Britney Spears’ attorney Samuel D Ingham III requested at the contentious hearing. But the judge said she would consider future petitions for his suspension or outright removal, which Ingham plans to file. Continue reading...
by Presented by Anushka Asthana with Martin Chulov; p on (#5A7HE)
James Le Mesurier died a year ago today. The Guardian’s Martin Chulov describes the immense pressure the co-founder of the White Helmets was under, as he saw the organisation he built appear to be slipping away from himIn November 2019, James Le Mesurier, the British co-founder of the Syrian rescue group known as the White Helmets, fell to his death in Istanbul.The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, knew James well and had spoken to him the week before his death. He tells Anushka Asthana how he began investigating one of the most difficult stories of his career: what led his friend, an internationally celebrated humanitarian, to take his own life? Continue reading...
Hanan al-Barassi was an outspoken critic of abuses in areas controlled by the Libyan National ArmyGunmen have shot dead a prominent female dissident on a busy street in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, in the latest killing of a critic of military strongman Khalifa Haftar.Hanan al-Barassi, an outspoken critic of abuses in the eastern areas controlled by Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), was shot dead in her car in broad daylight on 20th Street, a busy artery in Benghazi’s city centre, rights groups and security officials said. Continue reading...
Deals to ensure UK can go on trading with non-EU countries after Brexit transition must be laid before MPs by WednesdayLiz Truss’s Department for International Trade (DIT) is scrambling to meet a Wednesday deadline for tabling £80bn of trade agreements before parliament, in time for them to come into force in January under standard procedures.Truss’s department has signed a string of “continuity agreements” to ensure the UK can go on trading with non-EU countries on similar terms, when the Brexit transition period comes to an end on 31 December. Continue reading...
Wednesday: physicist Cathy Foley says Australia should be a leader in renewable energy. Plus: Covid-safe rules reshaping live eventsGood morning, this is Tamara Howie bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 11 November. Continue reading...
Matt Wiessler says agreeing to mock-up a bank statement for Martin Bashir ended his career with broadcasterThe graphic designer who said he mocked-up fake bank statements at the request of Martin Bashir in order to obtain an interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, has claimed that his career in the media was derailed when top BBC managers secretly banned him from working for the corporation.Matt Wiessler has said he was made to be the “fall guy” for the actions of Bashir, after it was claimed that the journalist had used false financial records in 1995 to win the trust of Earl Spencer and interview his sister Diana. Continue reading...
The outgoing president has two ‘election defense funds’ – but the small print shows donations will go towards paying off debtDonald Trump has set up a retirement GoFundMe. Well, not exactly – he doesn’t call it a retirement GoFundMe, but his “election defense fund”.Related: 'Make America rake again': Four Seasons Total Landscaping cashes in on Trump fiasco Continue reading...
Party general secretary wanted over corruption allegations in Free State provinceSouth African prosecutors issued an arrest warrant on Monday for Ace Magashule, one of the most powerful politicians in the troubled country and a key figure in the ruling African National Congress.The move appeared to signal a new will by authorities to move against alleged corruption, and is likely to be welcomed by Cyril Ramaphosa, the president, who is under pressure for failing to tackle the problem since taking power almost three years ago. Continue reading...
Hundreds protested the swearing in of Manuel Merino, a key figure in orchestrating Martín Vizcarra’s impeachmentThe head of Peru’s Congress has been sworn as president after his predecessor was controversially ousted in a congressional vote late on Monday, prompting accusations of a coup.The removal of the popular president Martín Vizcarra comes as Peru is reeling from one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, which has left its economy in recession and caused mass unemployment. Continue reading...
Palestinian politician and peace negotiator widely regarded as a moderate and realistThe Palestinian peace negotiator and politician Saeb Erekat, who has died aged 65 after contracting Covid-19, spent much of his life trying – but failing – to resolve his people’s intractable conflict with Israel.In his last role he served from 2015 as secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and worked closely with both Yasser Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas. In the wake of the first of the Oslo accords in 1993 Erekat became a senior official of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank town of Ramallah. Continue reading...
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