Global gender tracker assesses how governments address violence, strengthen women’s economic security and support unpaid caring

Coronavirus has hit few sectors harder than air travel, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs and uncountable billions in revenue. While most fleets were grounded, the industry was forced to reimagine its futureWhen an airline no longer wants a plane, it is sent away to a boneyard, a storage facility where it sits outdoors on a paved lot, wingtip to wingtip with other unwanted planes. From the air, the planes look like the bleached remains of some long-forgotten skeleton. Europe’s biggest boneyard is built on the site of a late-30s airfield in Teruel, in eastern Spain, where the dry climate is kind to metallic airframes. Many planes are here for short-term storage, biding their time while they change owners or undergo maintenance. If their future is less clear, they enter long-term storage. Sometimes a plane’s limbo ends when it is taken apart, its body rendered efficiently down into spare parts and recycled metal.In February, Patrick Lecer, the CEO of Tarmac Aerosave, the company that owns the Teruel boneyard and three others in France, had one eye cocked towards China. Lecer has been in aviation long enough to remember flights being grounded during the Sars epidemic in 2003. This year, when the coronavirus spread beyond Asia, he knew what was coming. “We started making space in our sites, playing Tetris with the aircraft to free up two or three or four more spaces in each,” he told me. Continue reading...

Variegated monstera disappears from orchid house in Christchurch amid boom in popularity of valuable floraA rare and valuable houseplant has disappeared from the Christchurch Botanic Gardens in New Zealand, amid a boom in the popularity of unique indoor greenery.A variegated monstera – one of the world’s most prized indoor plants – went missing from the gardens earlier this month. Its distinctive white and green leaves make it potentially valuable on the black market. Continue reading...

If the country is to honour the pandemic’s spirit of collective solidarity there must be a genuine commitment to healthcare and educationNew Zealand’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been a master-class in inclusive communication. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the country as a “team of six million”. The top public health official, Ashley Bloomfield, said: “The virus is the problem, not people ... people are the solution”.But the policies arising out of the pandemic, especially in the run-up to New Zealand’s election on 17 October, have not always been as inclusive as the communication. There’s a mismatch between universalist rhetoric in the pandemic response, and policy offerings that seem to give up on universalism in public services. Continue reading...

Police fire shots as crowds of demonstrators demand a vote on secession from IndonesiaUnrest has flared in the restive Indonesian region of Papua with police firing shots during a protest by hundreds of university students in the provincial capital, Jayapura.The group was demonstrating against plans to extend a special autonomy law that protestors say has not done enough to help people in one of the country’s poorest regions. Continue reading...

Milestone is known toll of months of Covid pandemic that has changed everything, from power balances to everyday lifeThough an inevitable milestone for months, its arrival is still breathtaking.Deaths from Covid-19 exceeded 1 million people on Tuesday , according to a Johns Hopkins University database, the known toll of nine relentless months of a pandemic that has changed everything, from global balances of power to the mundane aspects of daily life. Continue reading...

Johns Hopkins University data points to rises in countries that seemed to have slowed spread

Security law has largely stamped out anti-government protests, but the opposition is finding new ways to fightTony Chung spends his days in fear and solitude. For the 19-year-old activist, who became the first political figure to be arrested under Hong Kong’s national security law, the spectre of prison looms large.Chung was arrested in late July with three other former members of the pro-independence group Studentlocalism – which he founded at the age of 15 – on suspicion of inciting secession under the law. Continue reading...

Survey by Adoption UK finds 17% of adopted children are suspected of having foetal alcohol spectrum disorderOne in four adopted children are either diagnosed with or suspected to have a range of conditions caused by drinking in pregnancy, according to a recent survey of nearly 5,000 adopters in the UK.Among the adopters surveyed by the charity Adoption UK, 8% of children had a diagnosis, and a further 17% were suspected by their parents to have foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), the neurodevelopmental condition characterised by difficulty with impulse control, as well as behavioural and learning difficulties. Continue reading...

The substitute Diogo Jota scored on his Premier League debut as a relentless Liverpool came from behind to deservedly beat a dogged Arsenal10.02pm BSTPaul Wilson’s match report from Anfield has arrived, so I’ll leave you with that. Thanks for your company and musical tips - goodnight!Related: Diogo Jota makes rapid impact as Liverpool sink Arsenal9.59pm BST“It is telling that for Jota’s goal, the only player who appealed for handball was Guendouzi who was standing behind him and off to the side,” says Graeme Thorn. “None of the four Arsenal defenders between him and the goal, with a much better view, bothered to complain. Plus the referee was in an excellent position (closer than most of the Arsenal defenders) to see if it did brush the arm.”Watch the replay - it’s clear. It hits his thigh, his arm and then his right foot. I loathe VAR. Continue reading...

Thursday: Trump takes on Joe Biden in first TV debate as tax records revealed. Plus: novelist Richard Flanagan on the beauty of a disappearing worldGood morning, this is Emilie Gramenz bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 29 September. Continue reading...

US warned Mustafa al-Kadhimi it will withdraw diplomats if Baghdad fails to prevent rocket attacksIraq’s prime minister has rallied allies to help stop the US from closing its embassy in the country after the Trump administration threatened to withdraw its diplomats if Baghdad fails to stop persistent rocket attacks.The ultimatum was delivered over the weekend by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to Mustafa al-Kadhimi, and was followed by a small-scale evacuation from the fortified mission in what officials saw as a statement of intent. Continue reading...

Christian Lueth of Alternative für Deutschland was already suspended after allegedly describing himself as a ‘fascist’The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has fired a prominent official following reports that he made comments suggesting that migrants could be killed.The party confirmed Monday that Christian Lueth, who was already suspended from his post as parliamentary spokesman in April after allegedly describing himself as a “fascist,” had his contract terminated with immediate effect. Continue reading...

Dozens have been killed in clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over a disputed area in the south Caucasus region, with international calls mounting for an immediate ceasefire.Tensions between the countries have been growing for months over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an enclave legally considered to be part of Azerbaijan, but which has been run by ethnic Armenians since it declared independence in 1991.Fighting was reported overnight on 27 September and throughout the following day, with both sides accusing each other of using heavy artillery, targeting civilians and deploying foreign mercenaries

Sweden, Finland and Estonia to jointly assess new information on 1994 sinking of MS Estonia

John Atkinson arrived at hospital 90 minutes after terror attack and later died of blood lossA victim of the Manchester Arena attack who had to wait more than 40 minutes after the bombing to be evacuated from the scene told a paramedic: “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”, a public inquiry has heard.John Atkinson, 28, was not taken from the blast site for 46 minutes, before being carried on a cardboard advertising hoarding to a casualty clearing station. Continue reading...

Move halts slump in share price after money-laundering claims and US-China spat

A selection of comments from across the political divide on PM’s handling of pandemic

Victoria’s second wave of coronavirus was caused by a mix of bad luck and bad management

8,000 pupils and 350 teachers self-isolating in Liverpool; ONS says infection rates higher among those who travelled abroad

Charles Michel says British ‘face a dilemma’ over whether to lower regulatory standardsThe UK will be flooded with cheaply produced food should it lower its regulatory standards after Brexit, Brussels has warned, echoing a new animal and child welfare campaign backed by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.On the eve of a crunch round of negotiations in Brussels over the UK’s future trade and security relationship with the EU, the European council president, Charles Michel, said Boris Johnson’s government faced a major choice with just three months left of the transition period in which the UK remains in the single market. Continue reading...

The controversy around BLM fashion highlights the systemic racism that the movement is trying to changeFormula One has banned drivers from wearing clothing bearing messages while performing official duties. The decision came after Lewis Hamilton wore a top at the Tuscan Grand Prix on 13 September that said “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor”.Since March, celebrities have not shied away from wearing clothing in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM) at high-profile events – but not without a backlash. The Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka was told to “keep politics out of sport” when she brought seven face masks with the names of different victims of police brutality to the US Open. Almost 2,000 people complained to Ofcom – which has yet to decide whether to investigate – about the BLM necklace worn by Alesha Dixon on Britain’s Got Talent (only a few weeks after the programme received 24,500 complaints – later dismissed by the regulator – about a performance by the dance group Diversity that was inspired by the police killing of George Floyd). Continue reading...

Su Bushy paid tribute to Met Police sergeant who was ‘my partner, friend, confidant, and soul mate’.The partner of Matiu Ratana, the police officer who was killed at a south London station, has paid tribute to the man she described as a “gentle giant” who had touched many lives.“There aren’t really any words for how I am feeling right now about the loss of Matt; about losing someone I loved and was so close to in such a tragic manner,” said Su Bushy, who was with the Metropolitan Police sergeant for five years. Continue reading...

Fighting prompts international calls for immediate ceasefire in dispute over breakaway region

Initial scheme could reach multimillion-pound sum as church braces for findings of independent inquiryThe Church of England has approved an initial compensation scheme for survivors of sexual abuse that could reach a multimillion-pound sum as it braces itself for the findings of an independent inquiry to be published next week.The C of E’s executive body, the Archbishops’ Council, unanimously agreed to draw down reserves for the first payouts to survivors as part of an “interim pilot scheme”. Continue reading...

Actions of French prosecutors follow complaint from former BBC journalist and claims of abuse by three ex-modelsFrench prosecutors have opened an investigation against Gerald Marie, former European boss of the Elite model agency, on allegations of rape, including of a minor.It follows a complaint against the ex-husband of supermodel Linda Evangelista from a former BBC journalist and claims of abuse by three ex-models, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. Continue reading...

Petition says the poets, who were lovers as young men, were ‘the French Oscar Wildes’ and deserve to rest in the mausoleumFrance’s cultural elite are split over whether the remains of two of the country’s greatest poets, Arthur Rimbaud and his lover Paul Verlaine, should be dug up and re-interred in the Panthéon in Paris.The secular mausoleum is home to French greats including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile Zola, Alexandre Dumas and Marie Curie. Now a petition signed by more than 5,000 people, including culture minister Roselyne Bachelot and a host of her predecessors, is calling on president Emmanuel Macron to allow Rimbaud and Verlaine to join them. Continue reading...

Company distances itself from US fascist group as it halts sales of garment in North America

‘It was released as Cold Buttocks in Norway – and Rasta Rockett in France’I was at film school prepping my final project when I saw the Jamaican bobsled team competing at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. I remember thinking: “These athletes don’t seem to think they’re as funny as everyone else does.” That’s what stuck in my head: how often do any of us step outside what’s easy, and do something incredible? Continue reading...

Bars and restaurants could close as city mayor says new cases doubling every six days

Multimillionaire Brexit backer denies assault on young investment banker in 1998Multimillionaire hedge fund manager Crispin Odey has appeared in court accused of assaulting a young investment banker in the late 1990s.Odey, 61, allegedly “engineered” a situation whereby he could invite a junior employee from a major investment bank back to his Chelsea home on 13 July 1998. He is then said to have changed out of his suit into a dressing gown and “launched himself” at the complainant, pushing his hand inside her blouse to grab her breast and putting his hand up her skirt. Continue reading...

Attenborough gave seven-year-old a giant shark tooth found on a family holidayFrom the world-famous Koh-i-noor diamond to the Rosetta Stone, British royals have long been gifted rare objects that campaigners want repatriated to their rightful lands.Prince George, it seems, is the latest in the firing line, after being given a giant prehistoric shark tooth by the environmentalist and national treasure Sir David Attenborough, found on a family holiday to Malta more than 50 years ago. Continue reading...

The playwright’s monologue, staged at the Bridge theatre, reflects the anger and pain of refugees and asylum seekersMy family migrated from Zimbabwe to England in the late 90s. Most of my teens and all of my 20s were shaped by applying for residency. I spent a lot of time feeling unwanted despite giving back to communities and to the arts, representing the UK at international poetry festivals and exchanges, and contributing to the landscape of British theatre.In 2014, I was commissioned to write a play for Leeds Playhouse and Glasgow’s Òran Mór as part of the series A Play, a Pie and a Pint. I wrote Nine Lives, a one-man show about Ishmael, a gay Zimbabwean asylum seeker who is dispersed to Leeds while he awaits the Home Office’s decision on his case. Continue reading...

Poisoned Russian opposition leader confirms reports of meeting with German chancellor

Sombre Yom Kippur provides only a temporary pause to debate about tighter lockdown

Pope Francis reportedly declining to meet US secretary of state who says the Catholic church too soft on Beijing

Court of appeal dismisses Home Office’s case against lesbian asylum seeker known as PNThe Home Office has lost a case in the court of appeal against a 27-year-old lesbian asylum seeker it was found to have unlawfully removed from the UK and was forced to fly back to the UK in the summer of 2019.The ruling on Monday follows a seven-year battle for the woman in her search for a place of safety. Continue reading...

Inquiry hears then-executive chairman John Alexander was told of Crown Resorts sale deal with Melco group and ‘didn’t sound happy’A key director involved with negotiating the sale of a major stake of Crown Resorts to Lawrence Ho’s Macau-based casino group has admitted he gave little thought to whether the transaction potentially breached a special “Stanley Ho clause” designed to protect the Sydney casino from ties to organised crime. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Tower Hamlets council members criticise Uighur repression and Hong Kong clampdownChina’s plans to relocate its UK embassy to the East End of London is facing opposition owing to its repression of the predominately Muslim Uighur people and clampdown on dissent in Hong Kong.The embassy is moving from the West End to a large site in Tower Hamlets opposite the Tower of London. Tower Hamlets has the highest proportion of Muslim residents (38%) of any borough in the country, according to the latest census. Continue reading...

Mike Gielen used real name to book aircraft involved in attempt to break wife out of Brussels jail

News Corp Australia columnist Andrew Bolt says Pell is returning ‘ostensibly to empty his Vatican apartment’Cardinal George Pell is returning to Rome five months after a damning report was delivered by Australia’s child sexual abuse royal commission finding he was aware of children being sexually abused within the Catholic Church but failed to adequately act to prevent or stop it.The Catholic News Agency reported Pell on Tuesday would fly to Rome where he formerly held the role as prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, effectively making him the financial controller of the church. Pell has been living at the Archdiocese of Sydney since his acquittal by Australia’s high court in April on historical charges of sexual abuse. Continue reading...

Maltese-flagged vessel moored with 922 passengers onboard after 150 staff test positive

Sacha Baron Cohen said to have test-screened follow-up to his 2006 hit, which was shot during the pandemicReports that Sacha Baron Cohen has filmed and test-screened a sequel to his 2006 comedy hit, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, have gathered pace with the news that a title for the film was submitted to the Writers Guild America.Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan was submitted to the Writers Guild America in recent days, but the page has since been taken down. Continue reading...

Many worked from home during the pandemic, but food factory workers often continued to go to workplacesWe would like to hear from food production workers in factories about their experiences in their workplaces during the pandemic.What are conditions like? What precautions are in place? Continue reading...

Counsel assisting say in final submissions that decision-making breakdown over use of private security meant police ‘preference became the outcome’

Eight new WA Covid cases from cargo ship; Victoria hotel quarantine inquiry told security decision influenced by police preference; Vic records three deaths and five new cases; NSW reports zero. Follow live

Hundreds of thousands of people interviewed without appropriate adult present, report saysPolice officers detained and interviewed hundreds of thousands of vulnerable suspects last year in England and Wales in breach of mandatory safeguards, according to the body that sets standards for those who support vulnerable adults in police custody.The failure by officers to provide an appropriate adult (AA) to people with mental illness, autism or learning disabilities leaves those people at risk of miscarriages of justice, suicide and self-harm, the National Appropriate Adult Network (Naan) says in a report published on Monday. Continue reading...

Crisis triggered by discovery of gas reserves in Mediterranean has upset uneasy relationship between geopolitical rivalsLike others in the Greek officer class, the former V-Adm Vasilios Martzoukos believes in the power of military might. In a career punctuated by crises with Turkey, the threat of armed conflict reinforced his conviction, long ago, that “if you want peace, you prepare for war”.“It’s the strange thing about deterrence,” the retired admiral said. “The more you don’t want war, the more you have to appear ready for it.” Continue reading...