Long-delayed findings on Russia’s influence over UK politics reveals that the British government and intelligence agencies failed to conduct any proper assessment of Kremlin attempts to interfere with the 2016 EU referendum.Parliament’s intelligence and security committee revealed the findings in a long overdue report that said ministers, in effect, ignored allegations of Russian disruption
Beijing’s attempts to violently force Muslim minorities to assimilate have finally caught the attention of politiciansAt last it appears that the British government is willing to address what is perhaps the greatest ongoing human rights atrocity on the planet: the mass incarceration and mistreatment of Uighurs and other minority Muslim people of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. On Sunday, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, publicly recognised the “gross and egregious human rights abuses” under way there, despite the denials of the Chinese ambassador, Liu Xiaoming.The ambassador’s denials were to be expected: they are invariably China’s first response when challenged about the mistreatment of its own citizens. Indeed, the mass internment of large sections of the Uighur and other minority populations were denied until the evidence became incontrovertible, after which the argument moved to the treatment of the inmates. How long were they being imprisoned for? What were the conditions they were being held under? Why had they been detained? Continue reading...
Rules allowing up to 22 hours of solitary confinement for young offenders could continue, in move lawyers say is ‘very concerning’The Ministry of Justice has said that new rules that allow youth detention facilities to hold children in solitary confinement for up to 22 hours a day to prevent the spread of Covid-19 could remain in place for two years despite lockdown measures being relaxed for the rest of the UK.Lawyers have told the Guardian that time out of cells and access to education are still being severely curtailed in many facilities across the country. Continue reading...
Senate Covid-19 committee hears aviation staff excluded from jobkeeper are choosing between paying rent and buying groceriesQantas says government support for aviation may need to continue beyond March next year because airlines are in the middle of the biggest crisis the industry has ever faced.The Senate select committee on Covid-19 heard evidence on Tuesday regarding the impact of job losses and uncertainty across aviation businesses. Continue reading...
From cookies masquerading as seashells to multicoloured pinwheels and salty savouries, there is something here for everyoneBiscuits – like so much of life post-lockdown – may never be the same again. We are no longer content with a stale Hobnob for our tea break. Now, we want homemade gooey, chewy perfection.The obvious crowd-pleaser is the chocolate chip biscuit. But, home-bakers, it is not your only option. (By biscuits, we mean everything from chocolate digestives to custard creams – including cookies and, controversially, jaffa cakes – but not the soft and flaky scone-like “biscuits” often plonked on plates in the US.) With that in mind, and baking trays at the ready, here’s a roundup of delicious and unexpected biscuit recipes – and not a chocolate chip in sight. Continue reading...
She has worked as an accountant, competed on The X Factor and had her songs banned from TV. Now she’s using her profile to change a toxic cultureIn the quest to find a perfect spot for her router, Tiwa Savage has to disrupt her four-year-old son Jamil’s TV time. He puts up a mild protest but soon moves on to another engagement. “He’s so understanding about the nature of my job,” she says. “At least now I get to spend more time with him than usual.”Even in more normal circumstances, family life is frequently disrupted – Savage is Nigeria’s biggest female pop star. After more than a decade of success, she is now wielding her influence to tackle rape culture, as her country has what she calls “a #MeToo moment”. Continue reading...
The corporate regulator feared the changes could undermine the Australian market’s global reputation as a safe place to investThe treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, watered down laws requiring companies to keep the market fully informed despite the corporate regulator warning against key changes, Guardian Australia can reveal.Frydenberg said his move, made in May using emergency Covid-19 powers, was aimed at protecting companies from the “threat of opportunistic class actions for allegedly falling foul of their continuous disclosure obligations if their forecasts are found to be inaccurate”. Continue reading...
Governments have special obligations because they made the decision to shut down swathes of the economyIt wasn’t so much a tale of two economies, as a tale of two emphases.In Sydney, the central bank governor was geeing up the government to limit the severity of the “costly scars” associated with the economic downturn triggered by Covid-19 by making direct transfers to business and households, and borrowing for infrastructure. Continue reading...
by Daniel Boffey and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels on (#55Y76)
Euro rises as heads of state finally thrash out agreement on day fiveEU leaders have reached a historic agreement on a €750bn coronavirus pandemic recovery fund and their long-term spending plans following days of acrimonious debate at the bloc’s longest summit in nearly two decades.As the meeting reached its fifth day, the 27 exhausted heads of state and government finally gave their seal of approval to a plan for the EU to jointly borrow debt to be disbursed through grants on an unprecedented scale, in the face of an economic downturn not seen since the Great Depression. Continue reading...
Philip Lowe backs government spending but warns against the Reserve Bank creating money saying ‘there is no free lunch’Australia would risk long-term economic and social “scars” without the government borrowing to fund programs aimed at reducing the severity of the Covid-19 downturn, the head of the central bank has said.The Reserve Bank governor, Philip Lowe, said in a speech on Tuesday that the path ahead in the jobs market was expected to be “bumpy” and he emphatically backed the need for government spending to limit the damage to the economy. Continue reading...
Guardian Australia analysis and map shows how the pattern of Covid-19 has changed by region and throughout Sydney. Live data updates will track the numbers throughout New South Wales
Senate inquiry told of a network of pages linking to white supremacist content overseasA major Muslim advocacy group has expressed concern that Australia is importing rightwing extremist content from Britain, the US and Europe through social media platforms, and says it has identified what appears to be “inauthentic behaviour” between a network of pages in Australia that links to white supremacist content overseas.The Australian Muslim Advocacy Network has used a submission to the Senate inquiry into foreign interference through social media to warn that rising extremism undermines security, social cohesion and, ultimately, democracy. The group points out that 12 micro-parties with discriminatory anti-Muslim policies ran at the last federal election – “the largest number of groups that we have recorded”. Continue reading...
The country’s requirement that expats must visit at least once every three years should be reviewed in these changed timesEarly last year, in what now seems like another world, I nabbed bargain flights from London to Sydney. My parents were already there, visiting, so my sisters flew from Wellington to join us.We spent a pleasant two weeks together, with the unspoken understanding that it would be another couple of years before we saw each other again – such was the frequency of visits I’d fallen into since leaving New Zealand in 2015. Continue reading...
by Julie Moschion, Greg Jericho, Brendan Coates, Step on (#55YXJ)
As the federal government changes the supplement from $550 to $250 a fortnight, economists reveal why jobseeker should be permanently raisedThe Morrison government has announced changes to jobseeker that will cut the $550-a-fortnight coronavirus supplement to $250 from 28 September, reducing the total jobseeker payment for about 1.6m Australians from $1,100 to $800 a fortnight.Experts say the supplement has been vital in raising many Australians, including children, out of poverty for the first time. Its effect on the economy has been positive, with the extra $663m in cash being spent by consumers supporting small business, as well as keeping the housing sector afloat by allowing people to keep up rent and mortgage payments. And it is popular: most Australians are opposed to reducing the payment.
Beijing claims its re-education camps in Xinjiang are needed to combat Islamic terrorism, but Dilara’s experiences tell a different storyBy the standards of Chinese officialdom, Dilara is surely the perfect minority. She doesn’t wear a headscarf. She drinks beer. Pretty and outgoing, she socialises often with Chinese friends.If you closed your eyes and heard her speak Mandarin, you would never guess she had greenish eyes and brown hair, that she isn’t Han – the dominant ethnic group in China – but Uighur, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people who call Xinjiang province, in the far west of China, their homeland. Continue reading...
Guardian Australia analysis and map shows how the pattern of Covid-19 has changed by region and throughout Melbourne. Live data updates will track the numbers as the Vic lockdown continues
by Matilda Boseley and Australian Associated Press on (#55YRQ)
Guests from the UK, Ireland, Italy and Vanuatu among those evacuated without injuryMore than 60 backpackers and pub-goers have escaped after a fire engulfed a backpackers hostel in Bundaberg in central Queensland.
Newsnight presenter could not understand the lack of empathy for Jeffrey Epstein’s victimsThe Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis has said she only realised the significance of her interview with the Duke of York after watching the footage.The Prince Andrew interview in November 2019, in which he was grilled over his relationship with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, won scoop of the year at the Royal Television Society Awards while the BBC’s flagship current affairs show was also named daily news programme of the year. Continue reading...
Tuesday: Oxford University’s experimental coronavirus vaccine generates strong immune response. Plus, inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s worldGood morning, this is Emilie Gramenz bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 21 July. Continue reading...
Court told he did not reveal feelings for an accuser because he feared for his marriageThe former Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke has admitted not telling police the truth when they asked him about one of the women he is accused of sexually assaulting, saying he feared it would destroy his marriage.Giving evidence at his trial on Monday, he also admitted trying to cover up a separate affair with another woman, who is not one of the two complainants, for similar reasons. Continue reading...
After Huawei ban and extradition suspension, next on the list are nuclear power and higher educationWhen Mike Pompeo meets a group of Conservative backbench MPs on Tuesday who have been pressing for the UK to take a harder line on China, it will not be for a victory lap as some in Downing Street might hope.The hawkish US secretary of state wants to encourage the Conservative rebels to keep pushing for Britain to go further than banning Huawei from 5G phone networks and suspending the extradition treaty with Hong Kong. Not they need much encouragement. Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#55Y3Z)
Cross-party consensus builds as foreign secretary also bans export of riot control kit to cityConservative MPs and Labour are calling for the wholesale overhaul of relations with China after the government suspended extradition with Hong Kong and banned the export of riot control equipment following Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law on the territory.Announcing the measures to the Commons, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, stressed the desire for continued cooperation with China, but said the actions were “a reasonable and proportionate response” to the law, which effectively criminalises most political dissent. Continue reading...
As Britain cuts itself off from the modern world amid the delusions of Brexit, Ireland is playing its part with growing assuranceIn the archipelago of offshore European islands we inhabit, a new nation is growing in importance. This new nation is not the divided, tragi-comic “global” Britain of Boris Johnson’s sloppy and incontinent imagination. It is not even the independent Scotland whose birth Mr Johnson is himself doing much to foster – though one day it may be, given his slapdash premiership.The new nation is the Irish Republic. There are three connected reasons for saying a 98-year-old nation is new. The first is Ireland’s latest government, which took office in June. For almost a century, Irish politics have been shaped by the civil war of 1922-23. Ever since then, the country has been ruled either by Fine Gael, which is descended from the group that supported the treaty of 1921 with Britain, or, more often, by Fianna Fáil, whose forebears rejected it. Continue reading...
Julio Faerman allegedly bought the apartment with cash linked to money launderingA high court judge has allowed the seizure of a £5m luxury London apartment allegedly bought by a Brazilian businessman using “corrupt funds” linked to the multibillon-dollar Petrobras “Operation Carwash” money-laundering scandal.Judge Johannah Cutts accepted that, as part of an investigation, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) could seize a Kensington property linked to Julio Faerman. Faerman is a middleman accused of funnelling tens of millions of dollars into Swiss bank accounts as part of a long-running and elaborate bribery scheme at the Brazilian state-run oil company. Continue reading...
Lengthy wait could prematurely force some into residential facilities, aged care groups warnMore than 100,000 older Australians are waiting for at-home care packages they have already been approved for, with aged care groups warning the stagnating waiting list could prematurely force some into residential facilities.Updated figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released on Monday show 103,599 Australians were waiting for a home care package they had been approved for at the end of March, meaning the waitlist had shrunk by just 838 places since the end of December 2019. Continue reading...
Charity report finds many vulnerable women struggled to access food, water and soapWomen seeking asylum in the UK have described a significant increase in unsafe and unsanitary living conditions during the Covid-19 crisis, according to a report from a coalition of charities.The report, published by Sisters Not Strangers, which collated evidence from nine charities supporting refugee and asylum-seeking women, paints a picture in which those living in the most precarious of circumstances have been made even more vulnerable during lockdown. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor on (#55Y51)
Document on Russian interference into UK politics blocked by Boris Johnson before electionThe long-awaited Russia report from the UK parliament’s intelligence and security committee is due to be released on Tuesday morning, nine months after its publication was blocked by Boris Johnson before the general election.An examination of the reach of the Kremlin into UK politics and public life, the document is the product of 18 months’ work by a cross-party committee taking evidence in secret from British intelligence and independent experts. Continue reading...
The future of Israel-Palestine lies in it becoming a federal democracy with liberal valuesFor now, the coronavirus crisis appears to have stayed Israel’s outright annexation of the West Bank. Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial – he’s been accused of bribery, fraud and “breach of trust” – has been newly invigorated, a development that may further delay the announcement. But talk of annexation is beside the point. Fifty-three years of occupation and settlements have produced their own reality. Ironically, it is a reality that may give hope to those who seek justice in Israel-Palestine.For many in the movement for Palestinian rights, the Oslo process – which began in 1993 and was ostensibly designed to produce a Palestinian state alongside Israel – appeared too limited in its ambitions. The Palestinian struggle has evolved from being a struggle for national rights, a 19th-century ideal, to one focused on human rights, a timeless, universal ideal. Indeed, while there are Palestinians who are committed to an ethnic Palestinian state, many are not. Personal dignity, an inclusive state, the freedom to preserve cultural identities (or not), freedom of movement and the pursuit of a life lived free of racial or ethnic fetters – those are our ideals. Continue reading...
Mick Fuller says Victoria’s protests put lives at risk but state health authorities have said ‘no known episodes of transmission occurred’NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller has vowed he will go to court to block a Black Lives Matter protest planned for Sydney next week, citing the event’s potential to spread coronavirus.Fuller said rally organisers had filed a formal application for the protest but police would go to the Supreme court to try and stop it from proceeding, after the event garnered more than 1,000 indications of attendance online and 3,000 expressions of interest by Monday evening. Continue reading...
Panic spreads after more than 500 new cases recorded in past two weeks, most of them localCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageOnce named in the same breath as Taiwan and Singapore as an early example of successful virus control, Hong Kong is now in the midst of a worsening outbreak of the coronavirus, with no sign of it slowing down.Hong Kong residents had been living with reduced pandemic-related restrictions in recent months. But in the past two weeks the region has recorded more than 500 new cases, over 400 of them local. Continue reading...
Covid-19 has surged on farms that employ foreign workers, aided by a lack of legal protections and shoddy oversightEarly this year, months before the coronavirus outbreak had been declared a pandemic, Erika Zavala, 35, and Jesus Molina, 36, arrived in Canada. With few opportunities in Mexico, the couple had found jobs under a federal program for seasonal farm workers, and planned to send money home to their family.Related: Canada: three killed in glacier tour bus crash in Alberta Continue reading...
True emancipation of the black mind means questioning every communal understanding we take for grantedA few weeks ago, I sat in the paediatric ward of a private hospital in Lagos waiting on my then 10-week-old son’s vaccinations. In the waiting room, all toys and loud crashing from US cartoons, I took in the sight of a Nigerian woman, her body tinged with the tell-tale redness of poisoned, bleached skin. Two beautiful babies sat, in car seats, at her feet.I exclaimed, “You had twins!” I recognised her from a few weeks before, each of us in the final throes of pregnancy. “I actually had triplets,” she grinned. On cue, her Nigerian husband emerged from the doctor’s office carrying their third child. Awestruck, my son in my arms, I congratulated her on her strength. Continue reading...
Police waited until next day to break up party after being alerted to a gathering on a disused airfieldPolice have said they are determined to track down the organisers of an illegal rave near Bath that was attended by more than 3,000 people and could be heard at least five miles away.Avon and Somerset police were not able to intervene to safely halt the rave on a disused airfield north of the city once it had got under way on Saturday night. Continue reading...
As the first young person in China to engage in Greta Thunberg-inspired Fridays for Future climate strikes, Howey Ou says she has become a target for the authorities who see that activism as a challenge to their control.
Union movement calls for $1bn fund for industrial uses of renewable energy and carbon-neutral projectsAustralian unions are concerned the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission’s focus on gas is too narrow to achieve the energy transformation needed for sustainable manufacturing, Michele O’Neil said.The president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions made the comments on Monday when launching a policy paper on creating jobs through free childcare, subsidies for training places, and more investment in infrastructure and manufacturing. Continue reading...
Man tasked with locking up cathedral cleared of all suspicionThe fire that destroyed a 17th century organ and shattered a stained glass window at Nantes Cathedral started in three different places, the French authorities have said.A 39-year-old man tasked with locking up the cathedral on Friday night hours before the fire was cleared of all suspicion on Sunday after being questioned by police. 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...
Investigation launched into the International Women’s Health Coalition following criticism of ‘toxic’ culture, weeks after Women Deliver CEO issues public apologyA global women’s health organisation has launched an independent investigation into claims that it operated a “paralysing” culture of racism and bullying.The International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), which advocates for women and adolescent girls, will also conduct an internal review. Continue reading...
Government announces current student visa holders studying online outside Australia due to Covid-19 will also be allowed to count study towards work visaAustralia will recommence granting international student visas and allow current students to count online study while overseas in a push to restart international education.The changes, announced by acting immigration minister Alan Tudge on Monday, respond to demands from the university sector to help it attract international students and revive what was Australia’s third-largest export before the Covid-19 recession. Continue reading...