Restrictions were due to end but Hong Kong extends social distancing measures for 14 days

Trade tensions between the two countries heighten as China imposes barley tariffs, but Australian ministers insist ‘there is no trade war’The Chinese embassy in Canberra has declared it is “nothing but a joke” for Australia to claim vindication over the growing global support for an international review into the handling of the coronavirus outbreak.The comments come as trade tensions intensify over China’s decision to hit Australian barley imports with tariffs of more than 80% – a move that Australia will consider challenging through the World Trade Organization. Continue reading...

New research also warns that half of those with a problem are not getting the help they need

Police appeal for witnesses continues after murder of law student described as ‘truly remarkable’Three men have been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Aya Hachem, 19, who died after she was shot in Blackburn on Sunday.The second year law student at Salford University was gunned down from a car on Sunday afternoon on her way to Lidl supermarket in the town’s centre. Continue reading...

About 300 localities without confirmed virus cases are allowed to resume economic activities, but Amlo warns to maintain discipline

Female genital mutilation being inflicted on girls stuck at home as circumcisers go door to door

Action comes over articles Papua New Guinea commerce minister William Duma says imply he was corruptPapua New Guinea’s commerce minister is suing the Australian Financial Review over a series of articles about a multinational oil company’s dealings in the small Pacific nation, court documents show.Earlier this year, the AFR published a series of articles about ASX-listed Horizon Oil’s dealings in PNG in 2011, which named William Duma, the former minister for petroleum and current commerce minister. Continue reading...

After two months of coronavirus lockdown, Italy takes cautious steps towards normality

Boy, 15, denies murdering 17-year-old Tyrone Hayman with ‘Rambo-style’ knife in Bristol flatA 15-year-old boy stabbed another teenager to death with a “Rambo-style” knife during an argument over a phone charger, a jury has heard.The defendant, who cannot be identified due to his age, is accused of murdering Tyrone Hayman, 17, in Bristol. Continue reading...

‘It was inspired by a hectic night at a club we ran – people were taking their clothes off and hanging from ceiling pipes’We never wrote a love song in the Kaiser Chiefs. At the time of I Predict a Riot, I was inspired by tracks like Sharp Darts by the Streets, songs that were gritty and real. The inspiration for the verses came from me DJing at the Cockpit in Leeds, and at the end of the night we’d drive home past this club called the Majestyk. There was always a big snarl-up there, loads of people in the road, police everywhere. Continue reading...

Foreign states are increasingly active in this new chapter of the long-running conflict

Plans being drawn up are expected to cover most passengers, with exemptions

Test funded by federal government cuts wait times to 45 minutes, but Queensland Health has vetoed the rollout

Firefighters pull two girls out of house fire but despite attempts to revive them, both died at the sceneThree-year-old twin girls have died in a house fire in New South Wales.The girls were pulled from the house at Batlow, near Tumut, by firefighters on Monday morning, NSW police said in a statement, but despite efforts to revive them both died at the scene. Continue reading...

League of Youth has sent out messages of peace and goodwill every springtime for decades

India extends Covid-19 lockdown but eases many restrictions; South Africa reports highest daily new cases; World Health Assembly to begin

The world’s fifth largest weapons buyer is eating up its reserves - and its political cloutSaudi Arabia may be forced to forego new weapons contracts and delay already-agreed weapons purchases as a financial crisis grips the kingdom, experts predict.The expected delay of new weapons deals could have long-term political repercussions for the country under the rule of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler who has waged a bloody war with neighbouring Yemen. Continue reading...

This year’s meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body will be held virtually, and the stakes couldn’t be higher

Trafficking victims and others around world unable to get help during pandemic, says study

Barack Obama attacks Trump’s virus response; Russia sees 9,709 new confirmed cases in past 24 hours; China reports five new Covid-19 cases

Monday: Family of Kylie Moore-Gilbert deny reports she was tortured in an Iranian prison. Plus, rare long-necked dinosaur found in VictoriaGood morning, this is Emilie Gramenz bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Monday 18 May. Continue reading...

After ‘disappointing’ talks, UK fears coronavirus crisis has distracted EU leadersBritish negotiators fear Michel Barnier has been unable to get EU leaders to focus on Brexit trade and security talks as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, as Downing Street prepares to publish a draft treaty this week in an effort to reboot the process.David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, believes his EU counterpart recognises the need to budge on key issues, including fisheries, over which France, the Netherlands and Spain have imposed a tough line. Continue reading...

Father of one victim and brother of the other arrested in connection with the murders

Support workers in Edinburgh making contactless deliveries of methadone to vulnerable clientsRecovering heroin addicts in Edinburgh who need to self-isolate are now receiving home deliveries of methadone, as experts call for further creative thinking to save lives.With Scotland’s drug deaths rate expected to have risen even higher when annual figures are published this summer, there have been warnings of another public health emergency on top of the coronavirus pandemic, as addicts abandon their substitute treatment prescriptions because of lengthy pharmacy queues, become estranged from support services, and risk overdose by turning to more dangerous alternatives when street supplies of heroin disrupted. Continue reading...

Rival Benny Gantz to take over as PM of Israeli unity government after 18 monthsBenjamin Netanyahu has been sworn in as Israel’s prime minister, heading a unity government in which he will rotate the leadership with his former rival, Benny Gantz, in a deal that could see the annexation of large parts of the West Bank.The coalition agreement ends a deadlock that has dragged on for more than 500 days. In that time, the country has held three back-to-back elections with neither side clinching an outright victory. Continue reading...

As southern Europe begins to emerge from lockdown, new rules of tourism take shape

Three badly injured and traumatised women found on roadside 60 miles from HarareZimbabwean opposition activists and a member of parliament have described torture, humiliation and repeated sexual assaults after being abducted by suspected state security services.The three women, all leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change’s youth movement, were arrested at a roadblock guarded by police and soldiers on Wednesday at a protest in Harare against the state’s failure to provide for the poor during the country’s Covid-19 lockdown. Continue reading...

Cooking and clearing up has been relentless – and that’s without adding a special birthday cake to my range of signature dishes

Green campaigners say giving subsidies to all cars would be missed opportunityCarmakers are negotiating with the EU and UK for subsidies to help boost demand for new vehicles, but campaigners are concerned that the stimulus could end up paying for pollution unless emissions restrictions are imposed.The carmakers argue that subsidies would help kickstart demand as lockdown measures ease and factories reopen, preventing tens of thousands of job losses amid a global slump in car orders. Continue reading...

Instead of phoning up for your takeaway, try cooking them at home with Rob Allison’s recipes

The Cabinet Office minister has said he is confident children and teachers will be safe if they return to the classroom, but admitted the risk remained of contracting Covid-19. Appearing on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, Michael Gove said: ‘The only way ever to ensure that you never catch coronavirus is to stay at home completely. There’s always, always, always in any loosening of these restrictions a risk of people catching the coronavirus’

While France, Italy and Spain stay cautious and look for domestic tourists, Greece hopes to capitalise on its handling of the crisis by opening its doors in July

Boris Johnson is ignoring the concerns of regional mayors and starving them of the funding they need to keep their communities safeTwo weeks ago, I joined the eight other English regional mayors on a phone call with the prime minister. We had a friendly discussion about the release from lockdown and the need for the regions to be empowered to lead recovery within a national framework.

Family’s first statement on Moore-Gilbert, who has been held in Tehran since September 2018, says she is in good health ‘considering her situation’The family of detained Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert have denied reports she has attempted suicide in an Iranian prison, or that she has been tortured by the country’s Revolutionary Guards.Moore-Gilbert’s family have not spoken publicly since the Cambridge-educated Melbourne University lecturer was summarily arrested at Tehran airport in September 2018. Continue reading...

Thousands of works will disappear from galleries as rent rises and a stand-off with city government take their toll

Lockdowns around the world continue to loosen as China reports highest level of internal travel since February

With millions of young followers, Olajide Olatunji is one of Britain’s biggest internet stars – now the man behind the acronym explains why he is revealing his personal sideDuring the past couple of months, the internet star KSI has been prolific on YouTube, because what else has there been to do? He has asked subscribers to tell him their jokes and recorded himself reacting to them. He has filmed himself playing scary video games (“I’m shaken”), invited his haters to insult him (“Why am I doing this?”) and responded to pressing personal questions from superfans, including this corker: “Who is your barber?” Captivity, it turns out, will spark a boom time for content. “If anything, it’s moving faster now,” says KSI, during a video chat on a Thursday afternoon in April. “People have time on their hands!”KSI stands for “Knowledge, Strength, Integrity”. It is the alias of Olajide Olatunji, a 26-year-old from Watford, who happens to be one of the most successful YouTubers in the history of YouTube – a product and exemplar of our very online culture. (Friends call him JJ.) More than 20m people subscribe to his main YouTube channel, which he registered in 2008, when he was 15 and still at school and uploading videos of himself playing Fifa. This was before most of us, least of all grown-ups, came to realise that recording yourself playing video games in your bedroom might actually turn out to be lucrative. “I have African parents,” Olatunji says. “They wanted me to be the kind of person who becomes a doctor.” When he was asked to leave school, at 16, acrimoniously (grades troubles), family relationships became strained, though his parents needn’t have worried. At the time of writing, Olatunji’s videos have been viewed more than 5 billion times. He has 5.7m followers on Twitter and an Instagram audience of 8m. Even his secondary YouTube channel has 10m subscribers. At a moment when numbers like these really seem to matter – culturally, financially, anthropologically – Olatunji is overloaded with them. Continue reading...

Danish transition out of lockdown has become the model for Boris Johnson’s government as it tries to convince teachers to return

The charity says it has provided funds to compensate those sent to Australia by the Fairbridge Society, many of whom suffered physical and sexual abuseFormer child migrants sent from the UK to Australia by the Fairbridge Society may be a step closer towards receiving compensation for sexual and physical abuse, after the Prince’s Trust said it was providing funds to allow survivors to make claims.Many of an estimated 2,500 child migrants sent to most Australian states by the Fairbridge Society between 1912 and 1970 were sexually abused, as well as regularly beaten. Continue reading...

The US president has used the pandemic to provoke a wider confrontation but Beijing should not be regarded as an enemyDonald Trump’s histrionic threat last week to “cut off the whole relationship” with China produced a scornful response from Beijing. “Such lunacy is a clear byproduct of the anxiety the US has suffered since China began its global ascent,” the Global Times, the Chinese government’s mouthpiece, commented. The “Washington elites” were in a panic over the pandemic, it claimed.While the tone was unfortunate, neither assertion wholly lacked truth. The US and its western allies do have concerns – some legitimate, some exaggerated – about China’s rise to superpower status. And the mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis by Trump, who appears increasingly unbalanced, makes China’s president, Xi Jinping, look undeservedly competent by comparison. Continue reading...

In a black-and-white thinking culture, how should we consider the richness of who we are in old age?

Willard, whose career was reinvigorated by his work on the mockumentaries of Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest, was a beloved and ubiquitous presence in US comedyFred Willard, an actor whose career was dotted with innumerable indelible cameos playing genial buffoons in unfortunate roles of authority, has died aged 86.The news was first broken by Jamie Lee Curtis, the wife of Christopher Guest, in whose mockumentaries – including Best in Show and A Mighty Wind – Willard won a new army of fans. Continue reading...

It wasn’t the Premier League and the stands were empty. But it was a live match – at last

The brother of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was one of several protesters arrested at an anti-lockdown demonstration in Hyde Park. Between 50 and 70 people defied social distancing guidelines to gather close together at Speakers’ Corner

Concerns remain worldwide over new infections as businesses, beaches and borders reopen

Statistics now coming to light show that Covid-19’s elderly victims have paid a heavy priceSweden’s health authorities are blaming the country’s death toll – which is higher than in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland – on the fatality rate in care homes. Continue reading...

The show gardens at Chelsea take a year to plan, so what do you do when the highlight of the horticultural calendar is cancelled? Five designers talk plan BsDesigned by Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg Continue reading...

The region’s overcrowded and underfunded prisons have become centres of disease, with inmates rioting for better protectionCoronavirus – latest global updatesThe last time Víctor Calderón saw his son, Miguel, alive was on the eve of Venezuela’s coronavirus shutdown in mid-March.Seven weeks later he saw a photograph of Miguel’s bullet-riddled body displayed on a police computer alongside dozens of fellow prisoners at Los Llanos prison in the western state of Portuguesa. Continue reading...

A summary of the major developments in the coronavirus outbreak across Australia

Suspect in murder of Jemal Ebrahim in Seven Sisters ‘remains in the community’, Met saysPolice have said a “dangerous individual” is at large after the murder of a 23-year-old in north London.Jemal Ebrahim was found stabbed in Russell Road, Seven Sisters, on Wednesday evening and later died in hospital. Continue reading...