The federal government faces accusations of invoking the National Security Information Act to interfere in case against barrister Bernard CollaeryAttorney general Christian Porter has been accused of abusing the National Security Information Act after interfering in court proceedings to screen documents held by Woodside Petroleum in a case against barrister Bernard Collaery.Collaery is on trial for his role in exposing Australia’s bugging of Timor-Leste during oil and gas negotiations. Continue reading...

Hamimah Tuyan, the widow of the 51st and final victim of 2019's Christchurch shooting, addresses the gunman, Brenton Tarrant, in court, telling him his death elevated him from hero to martyr. Zekeriya Tuyan battled for 48 days after 18 surgeries before succumbing to his injuries. Tuyan's statements come after three days of family members of victims addressing Tarrant and the court

Scientists are using 3D-printed hexagons to create artificial reefs after a super-typhoon brought devastation

Government has spent less than £2,000 a year promoting guidelines to help visitors respect wildlife and landscapes

Nationwide the need for aid at food banks and pantries has surged amid worst unemployment rate in modern timesNeisha Davis cradles brown paper lunch bags in the crook of one arm, while holding on to Demitri, her wriggling baby son, in the other and keeping a careful eye on Naya, her four-year-old daughter, as she runs around the church car park with another little girl.It’s hectic but the free packed lunches have become a crucial part of their daily nutrition. So everyday at noon the family make the two-mile journey from Homewood, a low income predominantly African American Pittsburgh neighbourhood with no grocery stores, to the East End Community Ministry’s pop-up lunch stall in East Liberty. Continue reading...

The men of the MGTOW movement aim to live their lives with no female contact. The idea began on the fringes of the internet – so how has it made it all the way to the White House?

Speculation about the appointment has been ongoing for Abbott, who has previously praised the ‘solidarity’ of nations with ties to the UKHe has previously praised the “solidarity” of the English-speaking nations that share strong bonds with the UK. Now the former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, is tipped to be appointed to advise the UK – his birthplace – on how to seize trade opportunities post-Brexit.The Guardian understands there’s been speculation in Australian government circles for some time that Abbott – a social conservative who was prime minister for nearly two years until he was toppled in a snap party vote in 2015 – was in line for a British trade advisory role of some form. Continue reading...

Court hears a mixture of defiance, anger and sadness on third day of hearing to decide gunman’s sentence, with more victims choosing to speakOn the first day, many of those coming to address the terrorist in court seemed hesitant. The next day, the mood seemed to change as more victims appeared emboldened to speak of their rage. By the third day – Wednesday – the floodgates had opened.“My 71-year-old dad would have broken you in half if you had challenged him to a fight,” Ahad Nabi told a hearing in Christchurch, New Zealand, to determine whether the Australian gunman would ever leave jail. Continue reading...

It can be traumatic for women to lose their hair, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but your hair doesn’t need to be a symbol of fragilityI had breast cancer in 2002. It came back a second time this year. I had a double mastectomy and chemo. I have had reconstructive surgery but expect more. It’s been a rough year. Mostly I am proud of getting through all this. But I am concerned about my daughter’s wedding, which is in six weeks.I have a wig for Zoom calls, but it doesn’t look great and it is not me. I bought it online; because of Covid I could not go to a wig shop. I have very little hair, a quarter inch, but you can still see my scalp. I don’t know what to do for my head. Do I wear a wig that is hot and not me? Do I go with my own hair and look like a man with a crew cut, but wear it as a symbol of pride for a tough year? Do I wear a scarf that will hide my head but not the fact that I have no hair? Continue reading...

The inspirational Australian has been honoured by the ICC for the way she has contributed to the game both on and off the fieldFrom an orphanage in India to the International Cricket Council hall of fame, via four World Cup titles and a distinguished international and domestic career, Lisa Sthalaker’s journey has been truly extraordinary.Sthalaker was just three weeks old when her parents adopted her from an orphanage in Pune and, after four years living in America and Kenya, the family settled in Australia, where Sthalaker set out on the path to becoming one of the world’s most formidable female cricketers. Continue reading...

Streets and homes flooded with sewage in Karachi as downpours overwhelm outdated waste system in country’s largest cityThree days of monsoon rains have killed at least 90 people and damaged at least a thousand homes across Pakistan, the country’s national disaster management agency has said.Streets and homes were flooded with sewage water in Karachi on Tuesday, where the city’s outdated drainage and waste systems were overwhelmed by another spell of heavy rain. Continue reading...

Drop in spending between end of March and early July caused emissions to fall by 4.3m tonnes, study says

Phil Hogan gave more detail about his trip but said he was exempt from lockdown restrictions

Prime minister makes another coronavirus U-turn days before return to classrooms

Ofqual chiefs and Williamson face MPs; secondary school pupils in Scotland to cover faces from Monday as Wales reviews schools mask guidance

Dozens who arrived on small boats due to be put on charter flights over next two daysDozens of asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are due to be put on charter flights over the next two days, while lawyers have launched last-minute high court challenges to prevent their removal.At least seven have mounted challenges which will be heard on Tuesday evening to try to prevent them being forcibly removed from the UK. Continue reading...

Decision to rename Squaw Valley ski resort reached after consulting with Native American groups and research on the termCalifornia’s popular Squaw Valley ski resort will change its name, officials announced Tuesday.The decision was reached after consulting with local Native American groups and extensive research into the etymology and history of the term “squaw”, said Ron Cohen, president and COO of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows. Continue reading...

The textbook, which has now been recalled, includes passages that critics believe endorse China’s authoritarian rule and are ‘straight out of the party playbook’A textbook used in some Victorian schools includes portions that repeat Chinese Communist party propaganda and features a controversial map in which China claims most of the South China Sea in contradiction of Australian government policy.The Guardian can reveal concerns about the material have prompted the publisher, Cengage Learning Asia, to recall unsold copies of the textbook, which the Melbourne-based authors said they had written to suit the course design of the Victorian senior school subject Chinese language, culture and society. Continue reading...

Netanyahu puts Dominic Raab under pressure over UK refusal to abandon nuclear agreementThe Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has urged Britain and other EU states to end what he described as their “outrageous and absurd” support for the Iran nuclear deal.In talks in Jerusalem with Netanyahu and the Israeli foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, found himself under pressure over Britain’s decision to oppose the planned US “snapback”, or reinstatement, of all sanctions on Iran. Continue reading...

Serial killer Michel Fourniret will be interviewed about nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin after wife withdraws alibiFrench investigators are hoping a notorious serial killer will finally solve the mystery of what happened to a nine-year-old girl who disappeared on her way home from school 17 years ago.Michel Fourniret, known as the Ogre of the Ardennes, was jailed for life in 2008 for killing seven girls and young women. He subsequently admitted other murders, including that of the British language student Joanna Parrish in 1990, and has been linked to other killings. Continue reading...

Palestinians fear ‘catastrophe’ amid weak healthcare, economic toll and increased tensions with Israel

Exclusive: Thomas Young used cut-up method to treat translation of Egyptian relic as mathematical problem, papers showNobody knew how to read hieroglyphs when two 19th-century scholars set out to decipher the inscribed texts on the ancient Egyptian Rosetta Stone, one of the British Museum’s most famous treasures.Now notes have been discovered among one of the scholars’ papers in the British Library that reveal the extent to which the translation was treated as though it was a mathematical problem. Continue reading...

Businesses and psychologists say country is still reeling from its earlier confinement

Go with it, and Christopher Nolan’s high-concept action romp will leave you ripping off your face mask for air, even as you wonder what it was all aboutWho shall save cinema? Not James Bond apparently. There’s been a brand-new Daniel Craig spectacular ready to go since Easter, arguably just the thing to get punters’ actual bums back on actual seats. But Team 007 is wimping out, unwilling to splurge their product irreversibly into some potential new ruinous lockdown – and Disney has suffered a comparable bottle-loss, dumping its live-action version of the Mulan legend on to streaming services.So it’s up to the mighty Christopher Nolan to take the heroic, morale-boosting gamble and open his big new film in cinemas. Tenet is a gigantically confusing, gigantically entertaining and gigantically gigantic metaphysical action thriller in which a protagonist called The Protagonist battles cosmic incursions from the future while time flows backwards and forwards at the same time. There’s a 747 plane that crashes into a warehouse and then uncrashes back out of it, for reasons that are not immediately obvious. Continue reading...

Diego Balasso says 121kg animal began to smell him then threw him to the ground

Coalition will fund extra days for reservists who have lost their jobs and upgrade capital works on defence propertiesThe Morrison government says it will bring forward $1bn of planned defence spending over the next two years in a stimulus package that includes upgrading capital works on defence properties and funding extra days for reservists who have lost their jobs during the pandemic.The package, to be unveiled on Wednesday, includes a $300m capital works program, including repairs to the defence estate in bushfire-affected regions on the south coast of New South Wales, as well as RAAF bases in East Sale, Pearce, Wagga Wagga and Amberley, the Albury/Wodonga military area and Blamey barracks. Continue reading...

Russian opposition critic remains in a coma in hospital in Berlin

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya tells MEPs ‘intimidation didn’t work’ after two allies detainedThe Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has vowed that the country’s movement for democratic change will not give up, despite the arrest of two allies working for a peaceful transition of power.Speaking to the European parliament’s foreign affairs committee from exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, Tikhanovskaya said the authorities had responded with threats and intimidation to the coordination council, set up by the opposition to bring about non-violent change. But, she insisted: “The intimidation didn’t work. We will not relent. We demand to respect our basic rights. We demand all political prisoners be free.” Continue reading...

Almost 400 people are being transferred to alternative accommodation after police decide the hotel fails to meet standardsNearly 400 returned travellers staying in the Travelodge Wentworth hotel in Sydney are being transferred to alternative accommodation after New South Wales police determined the hotel failed to meet the quarantine program’s standards.The move came after guests complained they’d found hair, toenails and dirt in their rooms. Continue reading...

Veteran MP says ‘profit became more important than care’ and federal funding for sector must be boostedThe Victorian Liberal Russell Broadbent has fired a broadside about aged care, describing recent events in his home state as a “disaster waiting to happen” and calling on Scott Morrison to boost investment in not-for-profit care.Broadbent resigned from two parliamentary positions in protest against the government’s treatment of aged care in his electorate in 2017, and on Tuesday told Guardian Australia he had been attempting to sound a warning about the sector’s vulnerability for years “but I was ignored completely”. Continue reading...

Hospital in Cape York guilty of ‘systemic failures’ after turning away a sick child in 2017, who later died from a serious bacterial infection

Once I flew kites and dreamed of being a teacher. Now it’s hard to see a better future for me or my family

NGOs and MPs fear appointments to Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office reflects unbalanced prioritiesThe UK’s ambassador to the EU is to become political director of the newly merged Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), one of seven senior officials who will form the core of the leadership team when the department launches next week.Tim Barrow is one of five appointees from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office chosen to serve on the board of the FCDO. Two further appointments are officials from the Department for International Development (DfID). Continue reading...

Labor says the latest statistics make the legislated rises in compulsory superannuation from 9.5% to 12% more important than everAustralian workers took more out of their superannuation accounts in the June quarter than they put in – the first time net contributions have been negative since the compulsory retirement savings scheme was introduced in 1992.Labor seized on the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority quarterly statistics, released on Tuesday, saying they show the effect of $33bn withdrawn so far under the early release scheme. Continue reading...

Venezuela’s official Covid-19 death toll stands just over 300, but hospital employees suggest the true situation may be far worseAs they are hauled into Maracaibo’s University hospital, pale, wheezing and panicked, a recurring cry emerges from the mouths of coronavirus patients in this bedraggled Venezuelan metropolis.“Save me!” they plead as they enter A&E, according to hospital staff too scared to give their names. “Please don’t let me die!” Continue reading...

Josh Frydenberg says Daniel Andrews’ government has ‘a lot of questions to answer’ over its Covid-19 response, as NSW reports three new cases. Follow live

Victims and the bereaved describe how their lives have been changed since the Australian terrorist’s massacre“Good afternoon to everyone except you,” Wasseim Alsati Daragmih told the terrorist. There was a ripple of laughter in the courtroom and a smile from the Australian man who had shot him.It was the afternoon of the second day of sentencing for the man who stormed two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019, killing 51 people and wounding dozens more – including Darragmih. Continue reading...

Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of supply chains, which rely on the labour of black and brown workers. The deep inequalities won’t be fixed by injecting funds at the topIs the UK governed by parliamentary democracy or big businesses? It is a question that should concern us all, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between the two, as the government hands out multimillion-pound contracts to private firms with dubious track records, and ministers revolve between roles at big banks and government. Last week, the line between UK aid and private businesses was called into question, as the Department for International Development (DfID) announced the decision to direct £4.85m of taxpayers’ money towards the work of large retailers including M&S, Tesco and Primark.The DfID funding is intended to support large companies to fix vulnerable supply chains and ensure that “people in Britain can continue to buy affordable, high-quality goods from around the world”. These aims, along with the fact that UK brands have been entrusted to deliver them, set off alarm bells for labour rights campaigners like myself, who advocate for better working conditions in the global garment industry. Continue reading...

Hans Sloane ‘pushed off pedestal’ and placed with artefacts putting his work in context of British empireThe British Museum has removed a bust of its founding father, who was a slave owner, and said it wanted to confront its links to colonialism.Hartwig Fischer, the institution’s director, revealed the likeness of Sir Hans Sloane has been placed in a secure cabinet alongside artefacts explaining his work in the context of the British empire. Continue reading...

Ecuador stood up for the Galápagos, but other countries don’t stand a chance against the 17,000-strong distant-water fleet

Curb on 1m-member ‘Royalist Marketplace’ comes after legal threat from Thai governmentFacebook has blocked access within Thailand to a group with 1 million members that discusses the country’s king, after the Thai government threatened the company with legal action.The decision, which has been criticised by human rights experts, comes as pro-democracy rallies spread across Thailand, with some protesters calling for reform to the monarchy. Continue reading...

Achievement comes following Nigeria vaccination drive, with last cases of wild virus recorded four years agoAfrica is expected to be declared free from wild polio, after decades of work by a coalition of international health bodies, national and local governments, community volunteers and survivors.Four years after the last recorded cases of wild polio in northern Nigeria, the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) is expected to certify that the continent is free of the virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis and in some cases death. Continue reading...

Tactic was used 1,100 times a day between April and June, and lower proportion led to arrestsStop and searches in London rose by 40% during lockdown and a lower proportion of them led to arrests, figures show.The tactic was used 104,914 times between April and June, equating to more than 1,100 times a day. Continue reading...

Ambreen Naeem, whose son and husband were murdered in the mosque attacks, tells Australian terrorist he has failedAt first, Ambreen Naeem’s five-year-old son didn’t understand what had happened to his father and older brother when they did not return home from Friday prayers.“I had to tell him that his father and Talha were very brave but that they were not coming home,” said a statement from Naeem, 45, that was read in the Christchurch high court on Tuesday during the sentencing of Brenton Tarrant, the Australian terrorist who murdered her husband and eldest son and 49 others. “I told him that they were in a better place because they had been so good and so brave.” Continue reading...

One dead and 28 rescued from block of flats south of Mumbai that caved in amid monsoon rainOne person has died and at least 100 people are feared trapped in the debris of a five-storey building that collapsed to the south of India’s financial capital of Mumbai, according to authorities in Maharashtra state.The building, which contained around 47 flats home to 200 people, caved in on Monday evening, a police statement said. Sachidanand Gawde, a spokesman for the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), told reporters that emergency workers had retrieved the body of one victim. Continue reading...

Janna Ezat, whose son Hussein Al-Umari was one of 51 people killed in 2019's Christchurch shooting, came face-to-face with the gunman in court, telling 29-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, she forgave him. "I have decided to forgive you, Mr Tarrant, because I don’t have hate, I don’t have revenge," she said during victim statements. "The damage is done. Hussein will never be here. I have only one choice: to forgive you."