As mink comes under the spotlight, many stars wouldn’t be seen dead in fur – but it remains a feature of certain luxury brands

Story of BBC journalist Martin Bashir’s dealings with Princess of Wales is of searing public interestIt was just six days before transmission that Buckingham Palace learned that the BBC’s Panorama programme was to broadcast Martin Bashir’s compelling, explosive – and now highly controversial – interview with Diana, Princess of Wales.In the palace press office, there was dismay and resignation. “Then everybody looked at each other and said: ‘Martin who?’” recalled Dickie Arbiter, then an assistant palace press secretary. Continue reading...

From Iran to Venezuela to Russia, once-chided national leaders enjoy the sight of US democracy in actionRivals and enemies of the US have come together to revel in the messiest US election in a generation, mocking the delay in vote processing and Donald Trump’s claims of electoral fraud in barely veiled criticisms of Washington’s political activism abroad.“What a spectacle!” crowed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “One says this is the most fraudulent election in US history. Who says that? The president who is currently in office.” Continue reading...

Citizens urged to report suspected breaches of controversial security lawHong Kong police have received more than 2,500 tip-offs since the launch of a hotline for people to report suspected breaches of the city’s sweeping national security law.The multi-platform hotline, which opened on Thursday, allows Hong Kongers to report information directly to national security police via text message, email, or WeChat. Continue reading...

Mass demonstrations have exposed underlying anger at political and religious interference in people’s everyday lives

This month, the tuna melt gets a grilling. Can it ever be microwaved? Are cranberries and pistachios ingredients too far? Should we look beyond mature cheddar for the topping?The tuna melt has had a busy 2020. In May, Bloomberg reported that Reddit had recorded a 30% surge in mentions for the melt over lockdown, during which the Virginia senator Mark “Two Slice Man” Warner went viral with his Instagram tuna melt tutorial. As Bloomberg put it of the melt’s apparent Stateside work-from-home renaissance: “One of the world’s great sandwiches is making a comeback.”Warner’s “soon-to-be-world-famous” method certainly made global headlines – but bizarre ones. His monstrous concoction of half-drained tuna hastily mashed into dollops of mayo on untoasted bread, then microwaved, was, observers finally concluded, a deliberate wind-up (“I can’t get my wife and kids to eat these any more!”) to publicise a public health message about regular hand-washing. But that did not stop Warner’s Democratic colleague Kamala Harris from replying with her own guidance. Yes, the woman aiming to be vice-president of the United States of America found time to school the world in the ways of the tuna melt. How to Eat is not making this up. This is not a fever dream. It happened. Continue reading...

We want to hear from people living and working in the Liverpool region about their coronavirus experiences

I thought I didn’t have a lot on, but working up disaster scenarios in my head – from the US election to the pandemic – is the closest I have come to a full-time jobThe first Wednesday in November is national stress awareness day. This year, that was the day after the US elections – a sick joke that the organisers probably didn’t appreciate, being too busy taking a bath and exercising. It fell in the middle of a week dedicated internationally to stress awareness, which ends today, so you should feel free to go back to the way you were before: highly stressed, but oblivious to it. If you want to remain aware, the best way to measure cortisol, the primary stress hormone, is by analysing your earwax, according to a study from University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Alternatively, you could count the unbelievably stupid things you have done over the week.Stress is usually considered an internal state – something amiss in your mind that the outside world can perceive only by a slight squeak to your voice. (You might also get a stress headache, but only in an advert.) Really, though, it is where the internal meets the external that the problems start. Distraction, absent-mindedness: none of this would matter if you hadn’t also put your phone in the fridge and your wallet in the bin and set loose a cascade of errors to which catastrophic lateness for everything is the background music. Continue reading...

Rights groups say poll, which Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD is expected to win, is ‘fundamentally flawed’Myanmar is preparing to go to the polls for the country’s second general election since the end of full military rule, a vote that is expected to return Aung San Suu Kyi to power, but will exclude about 2.6 million ethnic-minority voters.While Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy rose to victory on a wave of optimism in 2015, this year’s elections are overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, an economic crisis and intense conflict in parts of the country – where the military has been accused of atrocities reminiscent of those inflicted on Rohingya in 2017. Continue reading...

Exclusive: the Melbourne man, who is being prosecuted under new national security laws, says he has never lived in ChinaA Chinese-Australian community figure charged with a foreign interference offence has vowed to fight the charge and issued a spirited defence of his reputation, saying he has “nothing to hide”.Di Sanh Duong, who uses the name Sunny, told Guardian Australia he has been accused of working on behalf of the Chinese Communist party – allegations he rejects. Continue reading...

Birth rate remains stubbornly low despite series of government initiatives encouraging couples to have bigger familiesJapan’s new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has given hope to couples struggling to conceive with a pledge to cover expensive fertility treatments with health insurance, but experts warn the change will do little to avert a demographic crisis.Suga, who took office in September, identified depopulation as a major challenge for Japan during his campaign to succeed Shinzo Abe as PM and repeated his determination to tackle the low birth rate during his first policy speech in parliament. Continue reading...

A single government department should take charge of the program to ensure clear lines of responsibility, interim report saysWhen hotel quarantine resumes in Victoria, police should be on site 24 hours a day and infection control experts should be “embedded” in each facility, an inquiry set up to examine the system’s previous failings has recommended.The inquiry’s interim report, released on Friday, also suggests all staff working in quarantine hotels should be properly paid “with terms and conditions that address the possible need to self-isolate in the event of an infection or possible infection” of coronavirus. Continue reading...

In 16 minutes, the liar-in-chief offered a downright dishonest take on the election that risked inciting violence

Tycoon ordered to pay costs as justices find that emergency laws comply with constitutionThe high court has rejected Clive Palmer’s challenge against Western Australia’s border ban.In orders pronounced on Friday, five justices of the court unanimously held that the state’s quarantine directions and the emergency management law authorising them do not breach the constitution. Continue reading...

Latest updates: people travelling from Germany and Sweden must self-isolate; Johnson thinks people will have ‘as normal a Christmas as possible’

Italy records highest daily fatalities since April as Greece announces national lockdown

Twelve people infected so far with new strain against which vaccines may be ineffective

Former Bond girl Tsai Chin confounds expectations brilliantly as an older woman who gets mixed up with the Chinese mafiaSentimentalising, patronising and generally disrespecting our elders is by now enough of a movie trope that any title including the words “grandma” or “grandpa” causes an involuntary shudder. That Lucky Grandma isn’t one of those films is mostly down to its star, Tsai Chin, whose many attributes include the ability to conduct full conversations with a lit cigarette suspended from her bottom lip. One look at Grandma’s stern face tells us she did not come to play.Related: Tsai Chin: 'What was it like being in bed with Sean Connery? Fine' Continue reading...

Bill now needs approval from upper house before becoming lawActivists in Italy have hailed a vote in the lower house of parliament to pass a bill that would make violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime.The bill, which passed successfully despite months of protests from far-right and Catholic groups, now needs approval from the upper house, where it is backed by the ruling coalition parties, before becoming law. Continue reading...

Hashim Thaçi was guerrilla leader during 1990s war for independence from SerbiaKosovo’s president, Hashim Thaçi, a guerrilla leader during the country’s war for independence from Serbia in the 1990s, has resigned to face charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity at a special court based in The Hague.Thaçi announced his resignation at a news conference in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. He said he was taking the step “to protect the integrity of the presidency of Kosovo”. Continue reading...

Latest U-turn follows growing pressure for more support to protect jobs and the economy as second wave hitsRishi Sunak has announced the government will extend furlough until March next year as the second coronavirus wave and renewed lockdown measures threaten to drive up unemployment.In a major climbdown for the government after multiple changes to its economic support packages in recent weeks, the chancellor said the Treasury would continue to pay 80% of workers’ wages. Employers will only need to pay the cost of pension and national insurance contributions. Continue reading...

Two whale-watchers off Avila beach had a terrifying experience when a humpback overturned their kayak and seemed to nearly swallow them.The women surfaced and shortly after, other kayakers and paddleboarders came to help them and check they had not been hurt

Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump still have paths to victory in the US election but the contest is narrowing substantially. In this episode of Full Story, Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor and Simon Jackman from the US Studies Centre discuss what’s unfolding and what a Biden presidency would mean for Australia Continue reading...

Abdallah Wazri sentenced after journey from Morocco in which woman and baby girl drownedA boat captain who smuggled migrants from Morocco to the Canary Islands has been jailed for eight years and ordered to pay more than €160,000 in compensation after a woman and a one-year-old girl drowned while attempting to reach Europe last year.Another woman is believed to have died in the accident but her body has never been found. Continue reading...

Experts say extreme animal hoarding cases are linked to poverty, isolation and ageing populationHealth officials in Japan have found 164 emaciated dogs crammed into a tiny house, in the latest case of animal hoarding that experts say is linked to poverty, isolation and the ageing population.The parasite-infested animals were found in a 30 square-metre (323 square feet) house in Izumo, a city in western Japan, last month following complaints from neighbours. Continue reading...

With Wisconsin and Michigan called for Joe Biden, the Democrat is tantalisingly close to securing the 270 electoral college votes needed to declare victory

Measure comes despite more than 43% of the country’s male population being smokers, including leader Kim Jong-unNorth Korea’s supreme people’s assembly has introduced smoking bans in some public places to provide citizens with “hygienic living environments”, state media KCNA reported.The tobacco-prohibition law aims to protect the lives and health of North Koreans by tightening the legal and social controls on the production and sale of cigarettes, KCNA on Thursday quoted the legislature as saying. Continue reading...

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What do you do if your dog is chewing your computer lead or your moggy keeps deleting your emails? Animal behavioural experts give their advice for harmonious homeworkingI am sitting at my computer, in my office at the end of the garden, typing. On the other side of the door, the cat is staring at me through the glass. It is a hard stare. I know the cat wants to come in so that he can climb on to my desk and walk back and forth across my keyboard, deleting files and pressing Send prematurely. He knows that, if he does this with sufficient persistence, I will eventually feed him, even though I have already fed him. Anything, just to get a little work done. So the door remains shut, and I’m getting a stiff neck from trying not to make eye contact.Pets were meant to be the great beneficiaries of the pandemic: with so many people furloughed or working from home, the dogs and cats of Britain would finally receive the attention they craved. And the food. Soon, however, people discovered that home-working and pet-owning were not entirely compatible. Cats don’t care if you are in the middle of a Zoom meeting. Dogs don’t understand deadlines. Some parrots make so much noise during the day that one charity recently reported a 70% annual increase in those needing rehoming. In the spring, the whole awkward arrangement seemed charmingly temporary but, as England locks down for a second time, many pet owners still have not found the right balance between work and the animals they care for – between cat and keyboard. Continue reading...

Fears Coalition’s integrity commission won’t be able to publicly probe systemic issuesTransparency campaigners have warned the drafting of the Coalition’s proposed federal anti-corruption commission would prevent it from holding public inquiries into relatively benign failures of integrity policies, undermining its ability to prevent future corruption.Many state-based corruption agencies have the power to hold public inquiries into systemic integrity issues, like the failure of lobbying laws or gaps in the donation disclosure systems. Continue reading...

HMRC says six held over alleged fraud linked to ‘eat out to help out’ and bounce-back loans

Abiy Ahmed says defence forces mobilised in Tigray region ‘to save the country’Fighting has been reported in northern Ethiopia after the country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, ordered a military response to an “attack” by the ruling party of the restive Tigray region on a camp housing federal troops.Analysts and diplomats have been warning for weeks that a standoff between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) could plunge Ethiopia into a bitter and bloody civil conflict. Continue reading...

Lucy McHugh, 13, was killed by Stephen Nicholson in woods near her home in July 2018Police and social workers missed chances to protect a 13-year-old girl who was stabbed to death by a man after she threatened to reveal he had been sexually abusing her for more than a year, an independent review has found.Social workers did not take effective action even after Lucy McHugh’s school flagged up their concerns that she had an older boyfriend who could be sexually exploiting her, the review concluded. Continue reading...

Judge says 49-year-old was suffering ‘disease of the mind’ at the time and believed sacrificing the infant would save the worldA father who believed he was saving the world by tossing his baby into the Tweed River has been found not guilty of murder on the grounds of mental illness.Justice Helen Wilson returned her special verdict to the NSW supreme court on Wednesday saying the terrible tragedy was a result of the father “labouring under such a defect of reason” he did not know what he was doing was wrong. Continue reading...

President prematurely claims victories while Biden projects confidence as counting continues in key states

There is a huge mental health treatment gap across Africa, but in one Nigerian hospital, music therapy is having a positive impactThe music comes on – a soft blend of guitar, saxophone, piano – and people sit still at first, then heads start to sway to the sound. Some hum along; mostly they sing, or laugh and dance. At the end, when quiet returns, their mood is assessed – as it was when the session started.Once or twice a month, Bola Otegbayo brings a team of singers and instrumentalists into this psychiatric unit at University College hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, Nigeria. Otegbayo realised a few years ago that some of her patients were lonely even though their loved ones visited and caregivers provided succour. So she began to share music. Now she is a musicologist alongside her main job as a renal technologist.

Fears the 150km long A-68A iceberg, which broke away from Larsen C ice shelf in 2017, could disrupt wildlife and shipping routesA massive Antarctic iceberg the size of a small country is heading for the island of South Georgia with concerns it could disrupt the British territory’s economy and its wildlife.Iceberg A-68A broke off the Larsen C ice shelf on the east of Antarctica’s peninsula in July 2017 and is about the same size as South Georgia, where it’s feared it could be heading. Continue reading...

You don’t have to be good at art to enjoy the mood-enhancing benefits of nature sketching, as our writer finds out on an artist-guided session in London’s Epping ForestHands up, who’s rubbish at drawing? Ha! Bet you’re not as bad as me.For years this rarely bothered me but, like so many of us in the first lockdown, I gloried in previously familiar green city spaces, and longed to record the joy they brought. A quick snap on my phone – destined to join hundreds not looked at again – never quite captured the moment. So I was intrigued to see that Walthamstow-based artist Sharon Drew was running “green sketching” sessions in Epping Forest, on the edge of north London, near her home and mine. Continue reading...

Democratic candidate Joe Biden addressed supporters in Delaware as the presidential race remained too close to call. 'We knew this was going to be long,' Biden said. 'But look: we feel good about where we are. We really do.'Biden added: 'I believe we’re on track to win this election.'Biden emphasised the country had to wait until every vote was counted to determine the winner.

Social media platform said Icke had violated its rules regarding coronavirus misinformation

Joe Biden has vowed to unite the US, as the Democratic hopeful outlined how he would be different to Donald Trump if he were to win the presidential election. Biden was speaking at a campaign event in Philadelphia hours before voting closes

Abused women expected to be ‘meek and subservient’ to receive public sympathy, says QCAmber Heard’s stand against Johnny Depp’s assaults should not have deprived her of public sympathy for suffering the ordeal of domestic violence, a leading human rights lawyer has said.Heard was subjected to death threats and misogynistic attacks on social media during the libel trial that left her feeling “down and beleaguered”, according to Helena Kennedy QC, who met Heard while the case was before the high court. Continue reading...

Tory MP defends strategy as rebels warn they will not vote to extend latest restrictions

Veteran journalist and author whose postings read like a battle roll of the post-colonial wars he despisedRobert Fisk would have been amused, if unsurprised, by the plethora of reactions, from the adulatory to the sharply critical, prompted by the news of his death, at the age of 74. As a journalist, commentator and author, in a five-decade career that focused overwhelmingly on the Middle East, Fisk expressed strong views about who was responsible for the region’s agonies, and provoked equally strong responses.Even a partial list of his postings and assignments reads like the battle roll of the post-colonial wars he despised: post-revolution Lisbon, Belfast, Tehran, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Algiers, Kabul, Sarajevo. Continue reading...

Kujtim Fejzulai deceived mentors in deradicalisation programme, minister says

Surely the more equitable process would be for such lands to be transferred to an appropriately established community trust at no cost, writes Harvey Sanders

Consul general in territory says contingency arrangements in place to bring 300,000 homeCanada has drawn up plans to evacuate hundreds of thousands of its citizens from Hong Kong if needs be, but officials have cautioned they can do little for pro-democracy activists seeking refuge from the Chinese authorities.Jeff Nankivell, Canada’s consul general in Hong Kong and Macao, told a parliamentary committee the federal government had drafted plans to assist nearly 300,000 Canadians living in in the territory if the security situation deteriorated. Continue reading...

Profound passion and anguished terror collide in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Vittorio de Sica’s 1970 Oscar-winner. As the film screens at the UK Jewish film festival, we reassess its astonishing power‘In life, in order to really understand the world, you must die at least once. So it’s better to die young, while there’s time to recover and live again.” The speaker is a middle-aged Italian Jewish businessman of Ferrara, in the early 1940s, attempting to console his heartbroken son, Giorgio – who has been rejected by a young woman, Micòl Finzi-Contini. But these words are to have a terrible ironic significance, because it is Micòl, not Giorgio, who is destined to be taken away by the fascists, along with the rest of her Jewish family, and handed over to Italy’s ally, Nazi Germany, for deportation to the death camps.Together, poor besotted Giorgio and the exquisitely unattainable Micòl are the non-lovers in Vittorio de Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, his profoundly disturbing and mysterious 1970 film about doomed love and fascist horror. To mark the 50th anniversary of this film, which won the best foreign film Oscar and the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival, it is to get a special screening at the UK Jewish film festival, accompanied by a Zoom discussion in which the film’s French star, Dominique Sanda, will take part. Continue reading...

Mid-terrace homes were having basements redeveloped, say neighboursAbout 40 people had to leave their homes after two multimillion-pound mid-terrace houses that were being renovated collapsed “from the roof to ground level” in west London.The two properties on Durham Place in Chelsea, which neighbours said were undergoing basement development works, collapsed shortly before midnight on Monday. Continue reading...

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