Antibodies found in more than 23% of Indian capital’s residents; Trump admits virus getting worse; Victoria reports record Australian daily tally

Editor of Rappler news site, known for scrutiny of president Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial policies, faces several government lawsuitsMaria Ressa, one of the Philippines’ most prominent journalists, has pleaded not guilty to tax evasion charges in a case she has described as a form of harassment.Ressa, named a Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2018 for fighting media intimidation, is facing several government lawsuits that have caused international concern about hounding of journalists in the Philippines. Continue reading...

The pandemic arrived in the run up to the tourist season, hitting seaside towns hard. We visited Brighton to find out how businesses and beach-goers are adaptingOf all the things coronavirus has taken away from life on Brighton’s seafront, among the saddest must be the high-fives. Previously undertaken without worrying where hands have been and what germs they might be carrying, they are now strongly discouraged: a sign actively bans them. “It says ‘No high-fives’,” says Katie Mintram, with a small laugh. She has run Yellowave beach sports centre – a cafe and several volleyball courts – since 2007. She is navigating her way through a summer that feels very different from normal. “In volleyball, it’s all about high-fives.”Yellowave is on the beach itself. Stepping over the tracks of the Volk’s Electric Railway (still closed) from a very quiet Madeira Drive is like stepping into a parallel world – busy, peopled, thriving, normal. Each of the six courts is full, matches being played by fit, happy people in shorts and bikinis; many of the cafe’s outdoor tables have customers sitting at them. It is nowhere near as bleak as the shuttered snack bars and souvenir shops on the main road. That is because there is a tournament on, explains Mintram – the first of the summer. “If the tournament wasn’t here, it probably would have been a bit more depressing,” she says. Continue reading...

Britain’s 40,000 choirs have all been silenced, brass and woodwind players too. We meet the scientists racing to find out exactly how dangerous blowing instruments and singing are

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews has imposed stage three restrictions across metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire for six weeks from 8 July

Premier Daniel Andrews is considering new restrictions as coronavirus continues to spread in the state as NSW record 16 new cases

Iain Lees-Galloway fired following a tip off to New Zealand’s PM from the opposition leaderJacinda Ardern has fired her immigration minister after being tipped off by the opposition leader that he had engaged in a 12-month-affair with a staffer in his office.New Zealand’s prime minister said on Wednesday that Iain Lees-Galloway had accepted his situation was untenable, and Ardern was concerned that an abuse of power may have taken place. The affair took place over a 12-month period and ended several months ago, Ardern said. Continue reading...

Move by London mayor the latest in row with No 10 over £1.6bn Covid-19 bailout

Gunman surrenders after video recommending 2005’s Earthlings posted on FacebookA gunman in Ukraine armed with an automatic rifle and grenades has surrendered to police and released 13 hostages after the country’s president consented to his demand to recommend the 2005 film Earthlings starring Joaquin Phoenix.The niche film recommendation, delivered by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over Facebook, helped end an hours-long standoff in the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, where 44-year-old Maksym Kryvosh seized a bus and demanded that dozens of government officials admit to being “terrorists”. Continue reading...

Experts say masks reduce the amount of pathogens people inhale and also help stop asymptomatic carriers from spreading coronavirus. So why weren’t the public told much earlier?• Australia’s latest Covid-19 face mask advice

An inquiry into Russian meddling in the Brexit referendum is the first step to show that democracy cannot be manipulatedWas the Brexit referendum swung by Vladimir Putin’s Russia? Under Boris Johnson, we may never know. Unlike the US – where a report into Russian interference in the 2016 election was produced within two months of the vote – Britons have been kept in the dark about Moscow’s meddling. On Tuesday, Mr Johnson rejected a call by MPs on the intelligence and security committee (ISC) for an inquiry into “potential Russian interference in the 2016 vote”. The government claims there was no evidence of “successful interference in the EU referendum” – but how would it know if no one has looked? The lack of curiosity about the protection of the political process from foreign influence is bad news for a liberal democracy built on the idea of safe elections. But it is good news for Mr Putin, who wants western voters to lose trust in their political systems.The ISC report is about a year old. It seems likely that Mr Johnson had blocked its publication for political reasons. If it had emerged that there had been no assessment of the seriousness of the threat that Russia posed to our democracy last year, then without a majority in parliament he might have been forced to concede one. After December he could brush off calls for an inquiry. Given the steady stream of revelations about Mr Putin’s well-oiled campaign to interfere in elections across Europe, it ought to be obvious that there should be an appraisal of how many Russian financiers, trolls, hackers and provocateurs were allowed to influence the most important political choice the country has faced in decades. Continue reading...

Simon Lawrence tells inquiry he offered no such assurances about cladding materialThe project manager on the Grenfell Tower refurbishment has denied assuring the block’s landlord its new cladding panels “would not burn at all”.The public inquiry into the disaster that killed 72 people was shown a witness statement from David Gibson, head of capital investment at the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, that claimed Simon Lawrence of Rydon said the plastic-filled panels were “inert”. In fact they were highly combustible and the inquiry has already deemed they were the primary cause of the fire’s spread. Continue reading...

Commission will consider ‘full range of options’ for statue of Victorian imperialistAn inquiry set up to look into the potential removal of a statue of the Victorian imperialist Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University’s Oriel College has said it will consider “a full range of options” before making its final recommendation next year.Oriel College’s governing body set up an independent commission of inquiry last month after members voted in favour of removing the statue following a sustained, student-led campaign that began five years ago and was reignited by recent Black Lives Matter protests. Continue reading...

Stephan Balliet is accused of shooting dead two people after failing to storm a synagogueA German neo-Nazi who has gone on trial for a deadly antisemitic shooting at a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle nine months ago has claimed he plotted the attack because of refugees coming into Europe.Stephan Balliet, 28, was brought by helicopter to the court and his hands and feet were shackled as he appeared in the dock. He said he had felt “superseded” by the hundreds of thousands of refugees who entered Germany in the summer and autumn of 2015. Continue reading...

Report was sent to Downing Street in October last year, in time for publication before the general election

Country says Britain is seeking to distract from a loss of status due to the Brexit crisis

A comprehensive review led by a former CDC director blames Trump for a chaotic approach to ‘life-and-death information’

Teenager Qamar Gul and her younger brother fought a battle with an insurgent group who stormed their villageAn Afghan girl shot dead three Taliban fighters after they killed her parents because they supported the government, local officials have said.The incident happened last week when a group of 40 insurgents stormed the village of Geriveh, in central Ghor province, where 16-year-old Qamar Gul was living with her parents and brother. Continue reading...

Wellwishers line the streets of Ashington, Northumberland, to honour football greatThe grandchildren of the World Cup winner Jack Charlton have paid tribute to “a proud Englishman, a proud northerner and a proud honorary Irishman” at his funeral.Before the private family service there were remarkable scenes in his home town of Ashington, Northumberland, where thousands of people lined the streets to pay their respects. Continue reading...

As lockdown restrictions continue to ease, Guardian readers tell us what pastimes and skills they’ve discovered – and rediscovered – during the pandemicDuring lockdown, my husband and I have taken daily walks in the countryside that have kept us sane and given us a break from the monotony of confinement. Along the way, I have collected stones to paint. Looking for ways to engage the five-year-olds in my class (and missing them a bit too), I painted each stone to look like them and used them to make videos, games and to tell stories. The children loved them and it made some of their lessons a little more meaningful in what has been a challenging time. Anna Clow, 52, early years teacher, Lyon, France Continue reading...

The Russia report confirms it: the government had reason to suspect a violation of our democratic processes and ignored itThe conclusion of the Russia report is damning not for what it says, but for what it cannot. Neither the British government nor intelligence agencies made any effort to investigate the alleged hacking of the UK’s most significant democratic event in generations.Related: Russia report reveals UK government failed to investigate Kremlin interference Continue reading...

Exclusive: Activist says €750bn fund shows leaders not treating global heating as emergencyGreta Thunberg has accused EU politicians of failing to acknowledge the scale of the climate crisis and said its €750bn Covid-19 recovery plan does not do enough to tackle the issue.The climate campaigner said the package of measures agreed by EU leaders proved that politicians were still not treating climate change as an emergency. Continue reading...

Opponents of lockdown holding Jews increasingly responsible for spread of virusA leader of Germany’s Jewish community has expressed alarm at the spread of antisemitic conspiracy theories relating to coronavirus in the country, including attempts to downplay the Holocaust.Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews, said Jews were increasingly being held collectively responsible for the spread of the virus and compared the situation to narratives around the plague in the Middle Ages. Continue reading...

The app is treated as suspect because of its Chinese ownership. But the way it gathers data is no different from other tech giantsIt’s a tough time to be a TikToker. The video-sharing platform owned by the Chinese technology giant ByteDance has been censured in India, accused of “spying” by the president of the United States, and has provoked the ire of former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith in the UK. Listen to the prognostications of some politicians or visit certain corners of the internet and you’d think TikTok was a deep-state plot to capture your data so it can be mined by Chinese spies.The truth is more complicated. We happily hand over just as much data to plenty of other apps, including many based in Silicon Valley, and much of the same data we produce when using apps such as TikTok is also posted on YouTube and shared through Facebook. If we’re worried about Chinese snooping, then it’s worth remembering the revelations first aired seven years ago about the US National Security Agency eavesdropping on all our communications. While TikTok may have been described as a “data-collection service”, the same could also be said of Facebook or any other popular social media platform. Continue reading...

Morterone’s population rises to 29 after birth of baby DenisPeople living in Italy’s smallest village are celebrating the arrival of a new inhabitant – the first baby born there in eight years.The population in Morterone, a mountainous community in Lombardy, rose to 29 after the birth of a baby boy, named Denis, on Sunday. Continue reading...

Bloomsbury says books were a lockdown hit, with children’s division revenue up 27%The backlash against JK Rowling’s views on transgender law reform has failed to dent the popularity of the Harry Potter author’s books, with publisher Bloomsbury saying they have proved a lockdown hit, pushing revenues at the group’s children’s division up more than a quarter.The company, which publishes all of the author’s Harry Potter books, said its consumer publishing arm grew sales by 28% to £31.4m. The children’s division grew by 27% to £18.7m, with Bloomsbury highlighting Rowling’s titles as a “bestseller”. Continue reading...

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...

Intelligence and security committee publishes long-delayed findings on Russian influence over UK politics

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...

Additional 496 cases raise fears of a possible cover-up at Shrewsbury and Telford trust

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...

As coronavirus community transmissions rise in the state, here are the current hotspots and what to do if you’ve visited them

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...

Queensland’s work health and safety prosecutor files three charges over the deaths of four people in the Thunder River Rapids ride tragedy

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...

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

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.

The Covid-19 welfare payment are set to be extended but at lower rates. Follow all the latest news and updates, live

Average income falls 4.5% in May compared with start of outbreak, thinktank says