In 1996 Aotearoa ditched the ‘first past the post’ system for a mechanism that creates a more diverse government

Italy experts to decide on new measures on Monday; Greece reports 13 deaths in one day; more than half of France’s nurses close to burning out

Schemes to reclaim city streets for pedestrians are flourishing during the Covid-19 pandemicWhere once there was parking, now there are decks. At the start of the year, Rotterdam’s Witte de Withstraat was a car-choked thoroughfare. Today, cars are banned after 4pm, locals stroll leisurely down the middle of the road and special wooden terraces have taken the place of parking spaces.“The terraces are a fantastic solution,” says Iris Wulffraat, teh owner of Eetcafé Opa (‘Cafe Grandpa’) and Bierboutique. “They give the extra space we need right now. And they’ve been decorated in a very attractive way – there’s a completely different energy to the area now.” Continue reading...

Palestinians across Middle East suffering unprecedented poverty, says Philippe LazzariniPeople in Gaza are searching through rubbish to find food as Palestinians battle unprecedented levels of poverty, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.Across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and elsewhere, Palestinian refugees are suffering at new depths because of the pandemic, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency chief, Philippe Lazzarini. “There is despair and hopelessness,” he said in an interview. Continue reading...

Lee Meng-chu is accused of filming Chinese troops gathering at the border with Hong Kong during protests in 2019A Taiwanese man detained in China and accused of endangering national security appeared on Chinese television on Sunday evening, “confessing” to illegally filming military exercises in a city bordering Hong Kong during protests there last year.Human rights organisations accuse China of regularly forcing detainees to deliver public confessions broadcast on television, in a country where the opaque judicial system remains subject to the ruling Communist party. Continue reading...

As the election approaches, 12 experts and commentators in New Zealand give their view on where Labour has succeeded and failed

On Saturday Michael Kovrig had his first contact with diplomats since January, saying he was determined to come home

Former Catholic school teacher from Lismore victim, who spent 461 days behind bars, alleges he was the victim of an extortion racketFormer Catholic school teacher Garry Mulroy has flown out of Phnom Penh, protesting his conviction for indecent assault against children and alleging he was the victim of an extortion racket.The Australian had spent the past week in a safe house in the Cambodian capital amid fears for his safety after he was released from prison in Siem Reap, in the north-west, where he was serving a two-year prison term for assaulting six boys. Continue reading...

Alistair Wilson was shot three times on his doorstep but the case remains unsolved

Jackson tracks the journeys of the men and women trafficked by ships that delivered them into slavery – or often a watery graveThis year has seen a proliferation of freshly commissioned shows examining racism in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Enslaved (BBC Two, Sunday), however, predates the death of George Floyd, and would surely have been prominently screened regardless of this year’s events. After all, it has a bona-fide superstar presenter in Samuel L Jackson, alongside Afua Hirsch of the Guardian and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici.Clearly aware that there have already been numerous slavery documentaries, this four-part series seeks to tell a different story by uncovering new evidence. Full of wide, breathtaking aerial shots of the rivers and coastline of west and central Africa, where the slave trade flourished, it tracks the slave ships’ journeys from Africa to Brazil, the US, the Caribbean or, says Jackson, “the bottom of the ocean”. Up to 1,000 slave ships are thought to have ended up as wrecks. Using new diving technology to locate and examine some of these sunken ships, the series aims to offer a fresh perspective. Continue reading...

Unofficial early results show first round voting has narrowed field to leftist incumbent and rightwing nationalistVoters in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus are to face a stark choice between candidates in a run-off presidential election deemed crucial for the resumption of peace talks that could end 46 years of ethnic division on the Mediterranean island.Following a campaign fraught with allegations of overt meddling from Ankara, the 200,000-strong electorate cast votes yesterday in a first-round contest that narrowed the field to a pro-reunification moderate and a Turkey-backed nationalist who wants two clear states on the island. Continue reading...

Monday: Nationals MP trades barbs with One Nation leader over $23m grant for Rockhampton stadium. Plus: US president claims he no longer has Covid-19Good morning, this is Imogen Dewey bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 12 October. Continue reading...

Candian woman sends back pilfered ceramics, blaming them for years of bad luck

Exclusive: industry leaders say government should show scientific basis for restrictions

Announcement comes after growing protests, but critics say it does not go far enoughNigeria’s government has dissolved an infamous police unit plagued with allegations of extrajudicial killings and abuse after days of protests against police brutality.A wave of outrage had been fuelled over the last week by the emergence online of graphic footage and shared experiences of abuses by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, commonly called Sars. Continue reading...

Casual workers and international students among ‘newly food insecure groups’, Foodbank report saysDemand for food relief has risen by 47% on average during Covid-19, Australian charities say, with the trend driven by growing numbers of international students and casual workers asking for help.In a report to be released on Monday, Foodbank surveyed about 500 charities once a month between April and September, as well as 1,000 Australians aged 18 and older who had experienced food insecurity in the past 12 months. Continue reading...

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners admits malfunction was so bad no candidate could finish exams, which cost nearly $5,000 and require months of studyMore than 1,400 aspiring GPs around Australia have had their career paths thrown into chaos by technical faults that forced the cancellation and rescheduling of key exams.The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the body that administers the exams, has acknowledged the technology used to allow general practice registrars to sit the exams remotely using their own computers – a Covid-19 measure – suffered such a serious malfunction that not one of the 1,436 candidates was able to complete the first of the two exams on Friday. Continue reading...

Modelling shows moving towards a net zero emissions economy would unlock financial prospects in sectors including renewables and manufacturingAustralia could unlock an investment boom of $63bn over the next five years if it aligns its climate policies with a target of net zero emissions by 2050, according to new economic modelling.The analysis, by the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC), finds the investment opportunity created by an orderly transition to a net zero emissions economy would reach hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050 across sectors including renewable energy, manufacturing, carbon sequestration and transport. Continue reading...

Libyan forces holding Italian crew demand release of footballers convicted of people smugglingAt two docks on opposite shores of the Mediterranean, two sets of families have been drawn into a small international crisis as the fate of 12 Italian fishermen held in Libya appears to hinge on that of four Libyan footballers jailed in Italy for people smuggling.In Mazara del Vallo, in Sicily, family members have been calling for the immediate release of 12 men, part of a crew including six Tunisians, whose vessel was seized on 1 September by Libyan patrol boats accusing them of fishing in territorial waters. They were taken to Benghazi, Libya, where the warlord Gen Khalifa Haftar reportedly ordered them detained unless Italy released the four Libyans whose families claim were wrongly convicted. Continue reading...

Country lauded as success in managing pandemic on verge of new blanket closures

Exclusive: targets on returning patient care to pre-pandemic levels ‘impossible’ to meet, say trusts

Nets could be used to clog propellers and halt boats, says former Royal Marine in chargeThe Home Office is considering permitting the use of nets to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel in small boats to the UK to claim asylum, according to a former Royal Marine tasked with preventing the journeys.In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Home Office’s clandestine channel threat commander, Dan O’Mahoney, said nets could be used to clog propellers and bring boats to a standstill as they attempt the crossing over the Dover Strait. Continue reading...

About 40 unidentified people armed with metal bars and using fireworks as projectiles tried to storm a police station in the Paris suburbs on Saturday night, officials have said. Police posted this video showing a barrage of fireworks going off in the direction of the police station in Champigny-sur-Marne, about nine miles south-east of the city centre. Continue reading...

In the aftermath of the second world war, my friend Stuart King, who has died aged 98, believed that aircraft could be used for peace rather than war. As an RAF engineer he was able to put that belief into practice by helping to create Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a Christian missionary organisation that also acts as a humanitarian air service, flying life-saving supplies into countries that need them.Stuart was born in Wandsworth, south London, to Alfred Sendall-King, a telephone engineer, and Hetty White, a teacher. Moving to Cardiff in 1937, he attended Cardiff Technical College and read engineering at the University of Wales. Enrolling in the RAF in 1941, he joined No 247 Squadron to support the Normandy landings. Continue reading...

Armenia and Azerbaijan accuse each other shelling civilian areas and escalating clashesHopes that a Russian-brokered ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan would hold have been dashed after each side accused the other of shelling civilian areas and escalating two weeks of fierce clashes.Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said that overnight shelling by Armenian forces on the country’s second largest city, Ganja, had left seven people dead and 33 wounded including children, less than 24 hours after the halt to fighting was supposed to take effect. Continue reading...

Jonathan Van-Tam says UK must act quickly to avoid history ‘repeating itself’

Duchess of Sussex speaks of ‘almost unsurvivable’ online abuse she has experiencedThe Duchess of Sussex has revealed she was told last year she was the “most trolled person in the entire world” in a podcast in which she opened up about the “almost unsurvivable” online abuse she has experienced.Meghan and her husband, the Duke of Sussex, joined three Californian high school students during an episode of their podcast, Teenager Therapy, and discussed topics including mental health stigma, self-care and online abuse. Continue reading...

Windows smashed and vehicles damaged after assailants try to force entry into stationAbout 40 unidentified people armed with metal bars and using fireworks as projectiles tried to storm a police station in the Paris suburbs on Saturday night, officials have said.Police posted a video showing a barrage of fireworks going off in the direction of the police station in Champigny-sur-Marne, about nine miles (15km) south-east of the city centre. The assailants tried to force entry into the station but failed to do so. Continue reading...

Irish criminal disappears after leading BBC film crew to gang behind infamous Boston heistSome of the most precious paintings in the world, a billion-dollar haul including work by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas and Manet, were stolen from a gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, in an audacious heist 30 years ago. But now, just as a British detective closes in on what he believes are the best clues so far to the masterpieces’ hiding place, his key contact, an Irish gangster, has disappeared.Martin “the Viper” Foley, a well-known convicted criminal who has operated on the fringes of gangland political violence in Ireland for half a century, has suddenly dropped out of negotiations, according to Charles Hill, a leading art sleuth. And Foley’s promise to reunite the public with these great works, including Vermeer’s The Concert, the most valuable missing artwork in the world, has vanished with him. Continue reading...

While briefings take place in Westminster, I and my staff in York are still waiting to find out how bad restrictions will beBased on leaks and speculation that restaurants and bars in a huge area of the country far from Westminster were to be shut, as a northerner I spent last week wondering if my York restaurant, the Rattle Owl, was actually northern. Scotland had gone. Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds were mooted next, all in local lockdown. York was not.That was midweek. Then, on Friday, the Daily Mail flagged York as red and the Guardian reported that most of Yorkshire would be included. The fate of my business (and my supply chain) is now dependent upon highlighter pens, someone crunching numbers, and journalists’ cosy relationships with factional politicians, until the full announcement on Monday. Continue reading...

Lurid speculation about the death of Rhea Chakraborty’s actor boyfriend has become a media obsessionIt was a muted finale to a saga that has rivalled the wildest movie storylines. On Wednesday, the Bollywood star Rhea Chakraborty stepped out of the Byculla women’s prison in Mumbai, released on bail after 28 days in jail.Over the previous four months, she had been vilified in a media spectacle that became a national obsession in India. She was accused of playing a role in the death of her boyfriend, fellow Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput, 34, who killed himself in his apartment in Mumbai on 14 June. Continue reading...

Kerr’s half-mile line has delighted visitors to Arbroath for 85 years; with a last blast of nostalgia it has blown its last whistle“It’s a bit excessive, but if you can do it, why not?” a train driver shouts to a crowd as he shovels extra coal into the firebox of a navy blue 1930s miniature steam engine. Children clap as the huge plume of steam engulfs them and the engine’s whistle sounds. “It is the finale after all,” shouts the driver as the train starts to move.The finale he refers to is the last outing of Scotland’s oldest miniature railway – Kerr’s, in Arbroath, north-east Scotland. Declining visitor numbers over recent years have left the family with no choice but to close their doors after 85 years, says John Kerr, whose grandfather Matthew built the railway in 1935. Continue reading...

Newly unearthed files reveal that the author and his wife were under Soviet surveillance while fighting in civil warThey had a common enemy in General Franco’s fascist-backed army, but that did not stop legions of communists, revolutionaries and anarchists in 1930s Spain warring among themselves, fuelled by internecine rivalries and paranoia.Now, new evidence has emerged that one of the most famous international fighters on the Republican side of the Spanish civil war was under surveillance by communist military intelligence. Continue reading...

In Montgomery, the steady flow of tourists from across the border is seen as mixed blessingSharon and Tommy Gee, who run the Spar store in Montgomery, a picturesque town in mid-Wales a mile from the English border, admit they are worried.They operate a friendly shop and are keen both to serve their local community and give a warm welcome to the many visitors drawn by the castle, the cafes, the pubs and the good hiking and cycling routes. Continue reading...

Parents of Xynthia Hawke speak out after trial in France hears how anaesthetist botched ventilation during caesareanHanging in Clare and Fraser Hawke’s Somerset home is a photo of a group of people standing outside, eyes closed and faces tilted to the sun.“Every time I look at it, I think of Xynthia,” says Clare. “She loved the sun, the sunset, the colours. She loved nature and being outdoors. Just before she was due to give birth, we went into the tiny hospital courtyard and stood like this, our faces to the sun.” It is one of the last memories Clare has of her daughter. Shortly after this brief sunny interlude in 2014, Xynthia, 28, was on life support in an irreversible coma. She would never see her baby boy, delivered by emergency caesarean. Continue reading...

Northern mayors threaten legal action over what Andy Burnham describes as ‘an active choice to level down’Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageMayors of some of the UK’s biggest city regions were threatening legal action against the government last night as they went into open revolt against “grossly unfair” financial support for workers in northern England facing new local lockdowns.As No 10 desperately tried to win over council leaders before announcing new lockdown rules for the north-west and north-east on Monday, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester and former health secretary, said Boris Johnson was leaving himself open to court action on grounds of discrimination, particularly against people in low-paid hospitality jobs across the north. Continue reading...

With high profit margins and low risk of long jail time, Catalonia is now the marijuana capital of Europe, police warnThe decor is nightclub chic meets Turkish opium den. The lighting, soft pink and electric blue. And, were it not for the sweet waft of marijuana, it could be the lobby of a Las Vegas boutique hotel. In fact, it’s one of Barcelona’s 156 cannabis clubs, known as asociaciónes.The idea was a quiet place where you could buy and smoke marijuana, often grown by members, and only on the premises, but many are now businesses and, police say, fronts for drug mafias. With the collapse of tourism, the cannabis business is one of very few thriving in Catalonia, but beyond the low lights and chilled vibe of the associations, darker forces are in play. An internal report by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police, claims “Catalonia is the epicentre of Europe’s illegal marijuana market” and has become a net exporter of cannabis to other European countries. Continue reading...

The activist discusses a new film that follows her life and the role autism played in her journey from troubled child to eco championFor a teenager who first became famous for skipping school, Greta Thunberg has come a long way. The 17-year-old from Stockholm is today a global champion of the environment movement and the uncompromising scourge of climate crisis deniers. In the process, she has earned the disdain of Donald Trump and the plaudits of figures including the pope and David Attenborough. For good measure, Time made her the magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019.It is an astonishing journey that will be brought to our screens this week with the release of I am Greta, a 97-minute documentary that follows the activist, who has autism, on trips round the world as she raises the banners of green concern among young campaigners. Continue reading...

Seven year old was inside four-wheel drive when it was stolen on Saturday night

White House doctor doesn’t say if president is negative; Ireland sees record daily infections

Even if achievable, the strategy would kill too many people, say scientists

After civil war, decades of corruption and then the blast that ripped through Beirut this summer, things could hardly get any worse. But they haveIn early September, Mohammed Khaldoon sold a necklace his sister had given him and scrounged what he could from friends and family. He gave the sum total, $400, to a smuggler in his hometown of Tripoli, northern Lebanon, and took to sea, with 49 others in a rickety boat headed for Cyprus.“He left without saying goodbye,” said Fatima Mohammed, who gave him the necklace. “The boat was small but the smuggler said it was only needed for a 200-metre trip and then they would move to a bigger one. He took all their food, water and bags and left them with nothing.” Continue reading...

Donald Trump accuses his rival of being soft on China. If a crisis erupted over Taiwan he is not above exploiting it electorallyHow does Joe Biden lose? Dozens of national and swing-state polls dating back to the spring have consistently given him a winning lead. Nearly all now predict Biden will defeat Donald Trump handily on 3 November. Depending on how key states break, it could be a landslide – plus a Democratic clean sweep of Congress.Even if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2016, Biden, whose national lead is 10%, is still projected to win the popular vote by 7%. He still wins battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona and, with them, the electoral college that was Hillary Clinton’s undoing four years ago. All Trump’s clumsy and divisive efforts to change the dynamic of the race have failed so far. His Covid-19 histrionics won him scant sympathy. It seems the die is cast. Continue reading...

PM says Australia must move ‘very cautiously’ to open up to all but a handful of low-risk Covid countriesScott Morrison has confirmed Australia will move “very cautiously” to reopen quarantine-free travel with a “handful” of countries, raising the prospect Europe and the United States will be excluded until 2022 unless a Covid vaccine is available.Morrison made the comments at a doorstop in Redbank, campaigning with Queensland’s Liberal National party leader, Deb Frecklington, and targeting the Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk over the state’s reluctance to remove its state border travel ban. Continue reading...

Unless the world’s big powers act, the fragile ceasefire is unlikely to holdThe fact that Azerbaijan and Armenia have gone back to war at a moment of acute global crisis is deeply dismaying. In March, the UN called for a global ceasefire in support of the bigger battle against coronavirus. Its appeal has been widely ignored. The conflict in the South Caucasus echoes ongoing, heedless violence in several Middle East countries where, it seems, enmity trumps humanity. War is its own disease.Renewed fighting over the Armenia-held Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which erupted last month and has killed or displaced thousands of civilians, vividly underscores the dangers inherent in the crumbling of the international, rules-based order. Regional powers initially failed to intervene or, in the case of Turkey, fanned the flames. The EU looked on as war engulfed its borders. The US did nothing. Continue reading...

Officials say 65 people were on board the bus when it was hit by a train two hours east of Bangkok

As coronavirus restrictions ease in Victoria, here are the current hotspots and what to do if you’ve visited them