Stephan Knoll and Tim Whetstone resign over allowances scandal, while David Ridgway leaves in response to reshuffleTwo South Australian ministers have quit over an allowances scandal and a third has stepped down, forcing premier Steven Marshall into a major cabinet reshuffle amid the coronavirus pandemic.Th transport minister, Stephan Knoll, and the primary industries minister Tim Whetstone tendered their resignations on Sunday after wrongly claiming accommodation allowances available to country-based MPs. Continue reading...
Residents of Khabarovsk march over the arrest of popular governor Sergei FurgalHuge anti-government demonstrations erupted in Russia’s far east on Saturday over the arrest of a popular governor who was replaced this week by a Kremlin appointee who has never lived in the fraught region.Residents of Khabarovsk near the border with China took to the streets en masse for the third Saturday in a row after governor Sergei Furgal was arrested by federal law enforcement and flown to Moscow on murder charges this month. Continue reading...
Protesters demanded London mayor Sadiq Khan cancel Silvertown road tunnel projectThree Extinction Rebellion activists were arrested and taken into custody after locking themselves to a rig in the middle of the Thames to protest against a planned road tunnel underneath the river in south-east London.The keys to the locks around the protesters’ necks were delivered to the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, with a note asking him to come and talk to them. However, the mayor’s office issued a statement ignoring the request and confirming plans to build the Silvertown tunnel are continuing. Continue reading...
Jed Foster claims he suffered abuse and anti-traveller hatred after being remanded in custodyAn innocent man who spent weeks in prison accused of murdering PC Andrew Harper before proceedings against him were dropped is taking legal action against the police.Jed Foster, 21, was charged over the killing in August 2019 after being among 10 suspects arrested at a caravan park near the site of the fatal incident where Harper died after being dragged along a road by a getaway car in Berkshire. Continue reading...
Green co-founded band with Mick Fleetwood in 1967 and was behind a string of hitsTributes have been paid to Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green after he died “peacefully in his sleep” aged 73.A statement from Swan Turton solicitors, acting on behalf of his family, said: “It is with great sadness that the family of Peter Green announce his death this weekend, peacefully in his sleep. A further statement will be provided in the coming days.” Continue reading...
Police have arrested a man and four women on suspicion of the murder of Lee McKnightPolice have launched a murder investigation after a man’s body was found in a river in Carlisle.The body of 26-year-old Lee McKnight was found in the River Caldew in the Blackwell Hall area, near Cummersdale, at about 5.30am on Friday. Continue reading...
Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly
On 1 March, photographer Jon Tonks left New Zealand on a Pacific cruise. Twenty eight days later, the boat docked in San Diego, amid a pandemic. What happened in between?The cruise ship MS Maasdam left New Zealand on the evening of 1 March, steaming out of Auckland’s Waitemata harbour into the Hauraki Gulf, where it headed north. The route was to San Diego via Fiji, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Hawaii. On board the Holland America Line ship were around 1,200 passengers, including Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians and French holidaymakers. The 542 crew included Dutch, Americans, Germans, Venezuelans and Filipinos. There were also a handful of entertainers and guest lecturers along for the ride, including Jon Tonks, a portrait photographer from Bath, who ended up with a portrait of a cruise that didn’t go to plan.Covid-19 was certainly a thing at the beginning of March, but it was still considered mainly a China thing. The Maasdam wouldn’t be going anywhere near China. Questionnaires were handed to passengers, about symptoms and where they’d been before, but then they were good to go. Still, Tonks says that friends had joked before he left: “Good luck on your corona cruise.” Continue reading...
A study in the Lancet suggests the world’s population will peak in 2064. If so, the consequences will be profoundThe battle to feed humanity has been lost, Paul Ehrlich warned in his influential 1968 treatise, The Population Bomb. The world’s population was growing faster than the Earth could sustain, he predicted, and catastrophe loomed. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”That doomsday message turned the entomologist into a celebrity and galvanised population control and environmental movements for years after. But another social wave gathering at the time would help prove his forecasts wildly wrong. Continue reading...
Australia says China’s claims to disputed islands are ‘invalid’ and are not consistent with UN convention on law of the seaAustralia has declared “there is no legal basis” to China’s territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea, marking an escalation of recent tensions with Beijing and bringing Canberra further in line with Washington.The declaration, made in a submission to the United Nations on Thursday, comes after the United States hardened its position earlier this month, accusing Beijing of a “completely unlawful … campaign of bullying” to control the sea. Continue reading...
David Connell and his wife, Margaret, were separated for weeks in Italy after catching coronavirus on the Costa Luminosa. For days, David didn’t know if his wife had survivedDavid Connell had to pack his wife Margaret’s luggage quickly. She was sick, lying on the cabin’s bed, conscious but barely.Her knitting and a book were already in her bag, he threw in some essentials and put both their phones in his pocket for safekeeping. They were headed from their cruise ship to a hospital in Italy, which on 22 March was one of the countries most heavily infected by Covid-19. Continue reading...
by Lyanne Togiba in Port Moresby and Ben Doherty Paci on (#564KH)
A spike in cases in the capital Port Moresby threatens to overwhelm the country’s health systemCoronavirus latest updatesPapua New Guinea’s Covid-19 outbreak could overwhelm its health system within days, the country’s pandemic chief has warned, as masks have been made compulsory in the capital, and the government has called in the World Health Organization and the military for help.PNG’s pandemic response controller, David Manning, said a dedicated isolation unit established in the capital Port Moresby to treat Covid-19 could soon be overwhelmed if current infections trends continue. Continue reading...
Brussels has the authority to borrow for the EU as a whole in response to the coronavirus-induced economic crisis. But cuts to national budgets are not the way to repay bondholdersThe European Union is a global heavyweight in trade and climate. But in political terms, it is puny. For all the Brexit conspiracy theories of a “United States of Europe”, the EU has no federal government. Brussels is not the continent’s capital, but home to its bureaucracy. The club’s power lies with member states that zealously guard their interests and scrupulously defend their sovereignty. They often recoil from shared burdens and a collective will.The EU is not hiding plans of integration, it just has none of any note. Over the last three decades, the appetite for greater political and fiscal union has been shrinking, not growing. The EU’s budget in 1993-1999 was 1.25% of the club’s gross national income (GNI); for the next six years, beginning in 2021, the proposed budget of €1.07tn is just a shade over 1% of GNI. This seems too thin a sliver of European wealth for a continent that faces a possible ruinous recession caused by coronavirus. Continue reading...
by Lucy Campbell (now); Jessica Murray and Aamna Mohd on (#563M9)
PM says government did not understand Covid-19 in early weeks; UK death toll rises by 138 to 45,677; ONS figures suggest cases in England stable or possibly rising
Judges’ ruling comes after relatives challenge original decision to limit its scopeThe role the Russian state played in the death of a woman in the Wiltshire novichok poisonings may be examined in a British court after a successful legal fight by her family.Relatives of Dawn Sturgess argued her inquest should look at who may have ordered the attack from Moscow, claiming there is deep public interest in finding out as much about the atrocity as possible. Continue reading...
The recovery package promises deeper integration between European countries. Here’s why I think it won’t workDuring the early years of the eurozone crisis, I remember gauging its depths by the rapidly diminishing half-life of the celebrations that followed every European Union summit. Premature proclamations that the crisis was over inspired hope, which caused the money markets to rebound. But then, at some point, gloom would unfailingly return. As the years of austerity for the many and socialism for the few ground on, that point arrived sooner after each EU summit.Could it be that, at long last, this sad pattern has been broken by last week’s summit, which resulted in a brand new, €750bn post-pandemic EU recovery fund? Continue reading...
Party’s lawyer said private messages were presented selectively and without contextLabour’s most senior lawyer under Jeremy Corbyn formally warned the party that an internal report on antisemitism was deliberately misleading and relied upon improperly obtained private correspondence, leaked documents show.Thomas Gardiner, Labour’s director of governance and legal until last month, wrote that the report should not be circulated because party employees’ emails and WhatsApp messages had been “presented selectively and without their true context in order to give a misleading picture”. Continue reading...
Ruslan Kostylenkov says officers beat and sexually assaulted him to make him confessA defendant in a controversial Russian extremism case has accused the police of beating and sexually assaulting him in order to obtain a confession, the latest accusation of police torture in a high-profile trial in the country.In a courtroom statement on Friday, Ruslan Kostylenkov accused five police officers of tying him to a chair, beating him in the kidneys, and then sodomising him with the handle of a kitchen mallet so that he would confess on camera to belonging to an anarchist organisation. Continue reading...
by Bethan McKernan in Istanbul and Alex Hern on (#563TD)
Law would give authorities power to regulate content on large social media sitesTurkey’s parliament is preparing to vote on a bill that would effectively block sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube unless they comply with strict new regulations, as Ankara significantly steps up its efforts to control social media content.The draft legislation would force social media companies with more than 1 million daily users in Turkey to establish a formal presence in the country or assign an in-country representative who would be legally accountable to the Turkish authorities. Continue reading...
Outgoing international development secretary says Britain’s ‘world superpower’ status will remain after merger with FCO, despite fierce criticismsBritain’s status as a world superpower in development is in “safe hands” under Dominic Raab, according to the international development secretary, as she prepares to leave her post.In an interview with the Guardian, Anne-Marie Trevelyan expressed sadness at leaving the Department for International Development (DfID), whose work is “truly impactful” and “doing good”, she said. But she said she has seen passion and enthusiasm in the foreign secretary towards helping developing countries become stronger. Continue reading...
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...
Company has previously resisted calls to change branding, saying it was named after American cheesemaker Edward William CoonThe Australian cheese brand Coon will change its name to help “eliminate racism” following a campaign stating the product name was offensive to Indigenous Australians.Friday’s announcement by Saputo, the dairy company that owns Coon, “to retire the Coon brand name”, comes after a decades-long effort to rename the cheese, including an unsuccessful 1999 complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission from Indigenous activist Dr Stephen Hagan. Continue reading...
US Secretary of state calls for countries to triumph over Beijing’s ‘new tyranny’ as four Chinese nationals charged with visa fraudUS secretary of state Mike Pompeo has called on “free nations” to triumph over the threat of what he said was a “new tyranny” from China.“Today China is increasingly authoritarian at home, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else,” Pompeo said in a speech on Thursday that offered a stark view of Washington’s rivalry with Beijing. Continue reading...
Iran promises political response after several passengers were reportedly injured when Mahan Air plane quickly changed altitudeTwo US fighter jets came close to an Iranian passenger plane over Syrian airspace, causing the pilot to change altitude quickly to avoid collision and injuring several passengers, Iran’s official IRIB news agency reported.The agency initially said a single Israeli jet had come near the plane but later quoted the pilot as saying there were two jets that identified themselves as American. Continue reading...
Behrouz is a storyteller and each of his tales is a journey into a life enriched by resistance and survivalBehrouz draws with his finger an imaginary rectangle on the table and pointing to a spot on its outer edge says: “that’s where we lived, on the margins of the village”.The village of Behrouz’s childhood is located in the deprived Kurdish province of Ilam – itself in the outer western edge of Iran, near the border with Iraq. Continue reading...
The teenager’s violent death has inspired a broader movement against PNG’s endemic domestic abuseFor six full days 19-year-old Jenelyn Kennedy suffered. Her legs and arms were chained, witness statements to police say, her mouth gagged.They allege she died from being beaten, locked in her room. Her young children in a room down the hall. Continue reading...
Launch of projectile from satellite into orbit ‘threatens the peaceful use of space’The US and UK have accused Russia of testing an anti-satellite weapon in space, in the latest sign that a space-based arms race is heating up.General John Raymond, the head of the new US Space Force, said the alleged test of a projectile, conducted on 15 July, was “further evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems, and consistent with the Kremlin’s published military doctrine to employ weapons that hold US and allied space assets at risk.” Continue reading...
First section of Elizabeth line will not open as planned in summer 2021, board saysThe heavily delayed Crossrail will not open as planned in summer 2021 because of delays caused by coronavirus, its board has said.The troubled railway, from Berkshire to Essex via central London, was originally expected to open in December 2018 but repeated delays have pushed it back. Continue reading...