Thursday: Queensland closes its borders to residents of the NSW capital. Plus, a mechanic sings the praises of simple, silent electric carsGood morning, this is Richard Parkin bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Thursday 30 July. Continue reading...

Six months after first cases emerged in US, hospitals are under strain in multiple states

Isolation period could be increased by three days as concern over second wave ‘very high’ in NHS

Grant Shapps returned to the UK on Wednesday after curtailing his holiday in Spain to deal with the fallout from the government’s decision to impose quarantine restrictions on travellers arriving from the country. The transport secretary said he felt sorry for people whose holidays had been affected, but defended the government’s decision, saying Spain’s rate of new infections was now as high as it had been at the peak of the crisis

Sanctions designed to discourage anyone from funding Syrian regimeHafez Bashar al-Assad, the eldest son of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, is named in the latest list of 14 senior Syrian regime officials and entities sanctioned by the US State Department under the so-called Caesar Act.The designations, focusing on the “barbarous First Division of the Syrian Army”, are the second wave of sanctions to be applied under the act following the first move by the US State Department on 17 June. Continue reading...

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, levels of hunger and poverty are going to rise. Given this, the abolition of DfID is a serious mistakeThis week’s warning from Unicef is stark. Without immediate action, children under five will die in their tens of thousands in the coming year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The UN agency estimates that an additional 6.7 million children will become dangerously under-nourished unless at least $2.4bn can be mobilised. The risk is that 10,000 more children a month will die.Hunger is not confined to poor countries: the call for 1.5 million more children in England to get free school meals is evidence of that. Ministers ought to act at home. But acute hunger is a much more acute problem in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. What’s more, Unicef is far from alone in pointing out the vulnerability of the world’s poorest people to coronavirus. The World Bank is pencilling in the first increase in poverty in two decades. The International Monetary Fund says deep recessions in advanced countries are having a marked impact of remittances – worth $360bn in 2018 – into low income and fragile states. Continue reading...

Authorities were tipped off that militants planned to destabilise country, according to state newsBelarusian authorities said they had detained dozens of Russian private military contractors days before Belarus’s presidential vote, a sign of escalating tensions between the two neighbours.Belarus’s authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who is seeking a sixth term in office in the 9 August vote, has repeatedly accused Russia of trying to force Belarus to abandon its post-Soviet independence. Throughout his 26-year rule, the 65-year-old has relied on Russian subsidies and political support but has fiercely resisted Moscow’s efforts to gain control over the country’s economic assets. Continue reading...

Céline Sciamma’s 2011 sophomore effort has become an unlikely hit thanks to South Korea’s own feminist reckoning – and the clever use of merchandise

Cellar reportedly found on plot used by suspect in disappearance of British girl from Portuguese hotel in 2007German police searching an allotment plot used bythe prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have reportedly found a cellar once believed to have belonged to a garden house which was torn down at the end of 2007.German media have been reporting on the apparent development, though police have yet to comment. Continue reading...

Moore will take over as director general of Secret Intelligence Service from Sir Alex YoungerBritain’s former ambassador to Turkey has been named as the next director general of MI6 to replace Sir Alex Younger, who is due to step aside at the end of the year.Richard Moore, currently political director at the Foreign Office, is the surprise pick by Downing Street, who had been expected to favour Tom Hurd, a senior Home Office official and Eton schoolmate of Boris Johnson. Continue reading...

Chief executive of NHS Confederation tells MPs staff are ‘exhausted’; Oliver Dowden tells people to book holidays but be prepared to quarantine

Both sides seeking deal to secure continuous trade once Brexit implemented on 1 JanuaryThe UK is close to sealing a “continuity” trade deal with Japan that will mirror that of the EU pact that Britain will no longer be part of next January.But in order to strike an agreement in time for it to be ratified by the Japanese parliament, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, has had to drop her ambitions for preferential treatment for British food exports. Continue reading...

Tahir Ahmed Naseem is latest victim of violence connected to blasphemy lawsA Pakistani man on trial for blasphemy has been shot dead in a courtroom, in the latest violent incident connected with the country’s blasphemy laws.Tahir Ahmed Naseem had been in prison since his arrest in 2018, allegedly after claiming he was a prophet. He is a member of the Ahmedi sect, which is persecuted in Pakistan where they have officially been declared non-Muslims. Continue reading...

Exclusive: closure of borders means biological parents from other countries have not been able to meet their childrenAs many as 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers in Russia for foreign families have been left stranded in the country by the coronavirus pandemic and closure of international borders, the Guardian has been told.The babies, some born as far back as February, are being cared for mainly by hired caregivers in rented apartments in Moscow, St Petersburg, and other Russian cities. Continue reading...

Duchess of Sussex suing owner of Mail on Sunday and Mail Online in privacy battleLawyers for the Duchess of Sussex have claimed five female friends who spoke anonymously to a US magazine to defend her against British tabloid bullying are entitled to a “super-charged right of confidentiality” as she fought to protect their identities in her privacy battle against the Mail on Sunday.Forcing her to make public their names was an “unacceptable price to pay” for pursuing her legal action over publication of extracts from a private letter she wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, 75, the high court in London heard. Continue reading...

European nations fear extension of arms sale ban would result in Iran leaving 2015 nuclear dealThe US may be forced to accept a UN code of conduct restricting conventional arms sales to Iran, since it is struggling to win unanimous support at the UN security council for a formal extension of the existing UN ban, which expires in October.European nations fear a formal extension of the ban would result in Iran leaving the nuclear deal. Continue reading...

Critics of the Helms amendment, which currently prevents the use of aid to fund abortion services abroad, say it is ‘deeply rooted in racism’The first bill to repeal a US law preventing aid from funding abortion services overseas was introduced to congress on Wednesday.Democratic congressswoman Jan Schakowsky said the Helms amendment, a policy introduced in 1973, was “deeply rooted in racism” and must be replaced to allow US money to be used to support safe abortion services worldwide. Continue reading...

The death of George Floyd in the US sparked the UK’s biggest anti-racism protests in centuries. We spoke to 50 young people at the heart of these rallies Continue reading...

First local case in three months reported over the weekend in holiday spot of Da Nang

Actor says when he was younger he wasn’t told Palestinians lived on land that became the Jewish stateSeth Rogen has said he was “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel” as a young Jewish person, stoking controversy around the country’s sometimes fraught relationship with many North American Jews.The Canadian-US actor, who attended Jewish camp and whose parents met on a kibbutz in Israel, said the fact that the Jewish state was created on land where Palestinians were living had always been omitted. Continue reading...

The 47-year-old man was found dead in his cell on Wednesday, authorities sayWestern Australia has recorded its third Aboriginal death in custody in less than two months after a prisoner in the state’s north took his own life.Authorities have confirmed the 47-year-old man was found dead in his cell at Roebourne regional prison, 500km south-west of Broome, on Wednesday. Continue reading...

This engaging, philosophical film unpicks the challenges faced by a young mother trying to reconnect with the life she had before her son’s birthA woman leaves her boyfriend to visit her mum in Buenos Aires, taking their three-year-old son with her – not sure yet if it’s a holiday or a breakup. She hasn’t worked since her son was born and is having an emotional and intellectual crisis. She feels almost non-existent. “I don’t see myself. Who am I?”This is an elegant, elusive debut from the Argentinian playwright Romina Paula, who picks away at the fantasy that motherhood leads to instant fulfilment. Her film is like an arthouse version of the sitcoms Motherland and Catastrophe, with fewer laughs and more philosophical introspection. It has the feel of a feminist essay that has been semi-dramatised for screen – with Paula starring as a fictional version of herself and her real-life mum and son Ramón playing themselves. Continue reading...

The musician, 77, exiled to London under Brazil’s military dictatorship says he fears the president’s ‘ultra-reactionary bunch’ will not let go of power easilyHalf a century has passed since agents of the Brazilian dictatorship appeared on the doorstep of the music legend Caetano Veloso and announced: “You’d better bring your toothbrush.”Six months of detention and confinement later he was forced into European exile, spending the next two and a half years as a resident of Chelsea, West Kensington and Golders Green, where he would rehearse what remains his most celebrated album, Transa, in the vestry of a local church. Continue reading...

The ruling could set a precedent; in states that have restrictive regulations, injunctions could be granted to allow the procedureActivists on both sides of Mexico’s abortion debate are bracing for a potentially historic supreme court hearing on Wednesday which could lead to decriminalisation across the country.The case before the five judges of the high court’s first bench involves an injunction granted in the eastern state of Veracruz, which ordered the local legislature to remove articles from its criminal code pertaining to abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Continue reading...

Oliver Dowden has dismissed the idea that coronavirus testing at airports could avoid the need for travel restrictions such as the two-week quarantine placed on people returning to the UK from Spain. 'It's not the case that you can simply test somebody and be sure they don't have the disease,' the culture secretary told BBC Breakfast. 'At this stage, it's just not the case that we can simply test at the border and give people that assurance.'

Latest updates: how has Covid-19 progressed where you live? Check the week-on-week changes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern IrelandThe map shows local authorities where the number of cases has increased week-on-week and where it has fallen. Some of this is due to natural fluctuations, especially in areas where there are very few cases, and so a rise from 1 to 2 is a doubling. Increased testing also means that more cases may be being detected than previously, although the impact of this between one week and the next is likely to be slight. Continue reading...

The country’s mild competency over coronavirus can appear to be stone-cold genius compared with the UK’s blundering mess‘I think being a woman is like being Irish,” wrote Dublin-born novelist Iris Murdoch, “everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the time.” I sometimes think this sentiment reflects my own wariness as an Irish person of taking too many compliments from overseas, and explains why I find congratulations for the country’s current government a bit unsatisfying.The Economist recently called Ireland “an unlikely diplomatic superpower”, while a leader on these pages praised the “enviable beauty” of the Irish political climate. After years of alternating between calling Ireland’s Brexit tactics cynical and naive, even the Telegraph this month praised Ireland for “taking over the Eurozone” and “extending their grip” on the continent’s institutions. Having negotiated its way through the Brexit morass, swerved the worst of Covid-19, secured a seat on the UN security council, and won a historic EU judgment that means they have the right to insist the world’s richest country does not pay us any tax – hurrah! – Ireland’s place in the global hierarchy appears on the rise, and the UK has continued marvelling at the shrewd cunning of their plucky little neighbour. Continue reading...

Airport calls for passenger Covid-19 tests comes as it reports 96% fall in travellers

Photographer James Oatway of MSF witnessed the misery caused by this preventable disease, as vaccination programmes are disrupted around the world Continue reading...

Australia experienced deflation for the year to June and economists expect the Covid-19 recession will keep prices lowAustralia has recorded the largest ever quarterly fall in inflation of 1.9% after the Morrison government temporarily made childcare free due to the coronavirus crisis.Economists expect the country’s Covid-19 recession will result in a prolonged period of low inflation, forcing retailers to cut prices or keep them low and crushing workers’ hopes of a pay rise. Continue reading...

Signs Victorian coronavirus infections are dropping, but authorities caution it is too soon to say the second wave has peaked

The onset of Covid-19 has devastated immunisation programmes, leaving huge numbers of infants unprotected from deadly diseases

Around the world, whether seated in bubbles or next to teddy bears, customers are coming to terms with the new norms of eating out Continue reading...

Amateur photographer Alberto di Lenardo’s work was, for many years, hidden away in a secret room. Now the unguarded moments he captured are being published in An Attic Full of Trains Continue reading...

Pair of bronze statues shows a male figure kneeling and bowing before a ‘comfort woman’ in South KoreaJapan has reacted angrily to statues in South Korea that appear to depict the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, prostrating himself before a young woman who represents tens of thousands of wartime sex slaves.The pair of bronze statues, set up in a privately run botanical garden in the eastern county of Pyeongchang, shows a male figure kneeling and bowing before a seated “comfort woman” – a euphemism for the tens of thousands of girls and women, mostly from the Korean peninsula, who were forced to work in frontline brothels run by the Japanese military before and during the second world war. Continue reading...

New level of social tensions indicated by sharp increases in confrontational protests and hate crime, finds reviewThe number of protests involving confrontational tactics have increased nearly 20-fold in the past two decades, signalling heightened social tensions, an independent policing review has said.Led by Sir Michael Barber, a former adviser to Tony Blair, the first phase of the review found the number of protests involving confrontational tactics – such as blockades or occupations – rose from seven in 2000 to 126 in 2019. Continue reading...

Contact tracing and compliance with safety measures have helped Italy achieve a stable, low rate of new Covid-19 infections

Can you wash your disposable mask at 20C – and should we still be going for reusable coffee cups? Experts answer your environmental dilemmas

Costs set at NZ$3,100 for the first adult, $950 for each additional adult and $475 for each child

Exclusive: sources inside Qarchak say British-Australian lecturer is unwell as friends and colleagues condemn government’s strategyKylie Moore-Gilbert was tearful, terrified and unwell inside Qarchak women’s prison before she was forcibly moved from quarantine into the general prison population, sources inside the jail have said.Details of Moore-Gilbert’s condition emerged as friends and colleagues publicly condemned the Australian government’s “quiet diplomacy” strategy, which they argue has failed to help her. Continue reading...

Plans mooted to pool strategic resources and lessen west’s dependency on ChinaThe Five Eyes intelligence alliance could be expanded to include Japan and broadened into a strategic economic relationship that pools key strategic reserves such as critical minerals and medical supplies, according to centre-right MPs working internationally to decouple the west from China.The coronavirus crisis has revealed the west’s key strategic dependencies on China, and plans will be announced shortly under Five Eyes auspices for a major increase in production of rare and semi-rare metals from Australia, Canada, and America in order to reduce dependency on Chinese stocks. Continue reading...

Qld on high alert and closing border to greater Sydney after two women become first positive coronavirus cases outside quarantine since May

Officers fined after court says men used unjustified force when they pinned a Preston pensioner down outside his home in 2018Three police officers who brutally bashed a Melbourne pensioner in his front yard have escaped conviction and been fined.Senior Constables Brad McLeod and Florian Hilgart, and Constable John Edney were found guilty of unlawful assault during the arrest in September 2018. Continue reading...

As cases mount in Papua New Guinea, experts warn already fragile services will not be able to combat other diseases such as TB, HIV/Aids and malaria

Company charged under Work Health and Safety Act after deaths of four people on Thunder River RapidsDreamworld’s parent company will plead guilty to charges over the 2016 fatal Thunder River Rapids ride tragedy that killed four people.Ardent Leisure has been charged under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 for allegedly failing to comply with its health and safety duty and exposing individuals to a risk of serious injury or death. Continue reading...

Non-urgent elective surgery cancelled, federal and state government intervene in sector as almost 20% of Victorian aged care facilities affected. In NSW, authorities scramble to contain localised outbreaks in Sydney. Follow live

Three regions in Spain highlighted; global cases doubled in last six weeks; deaths worldwide pass 650,000

Allies release joint statement of ‘deep concern’ over China’s actions in Hong Kong and repression of Uighurs and vow to fight disinformationAustralia has pledged to increase defence cooperation with the US in the South China Sea – but stopped short of making any specific new commitment on freedom of navigation operations, despite American pressure.The two allies have also decided during high-level talks in Washington to set up a working group to push back at false information across the Indo-Pacific region, warning that “state-sponsored malicious disinformation and interference in democratic processes are significant and evolving threats”. Continue reading...

Kept outdoors by coronavirus threat, hundreds view casket of congressman and civil rights iconBorn in Citronelle, Alabama, in the early 1950s, Frankie Blevins grew up with the cruelties imposed by the Jim Crow south: racially segregated drinking fountains, restrooms and restaurants.On her family’s first road trip, her mother packed food to sustain them for the entire trip, knowing they would not be allowed to stop for provisions along the way. Continue reading...