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Egyptian government using pandemic to tighten control of media and quash dissent, rights group reportsJournalism in Egypt has effectively become a crime over the past four years, Amnesty International says, as authorities clamp down on media outlets and muzzle dissent.As the number of coronavirus infections in Egypt continues to rise, the government is strengthening its control over information instead of upholding transparency, the London-based rights group said in a report released on Sunday. Continue reading...

Somalia reports rapid rise in Covid-19 deaths; 98 people die in one New York nursing home; Singapore eases restrictions as second wave subsides

For the over-ambitious airline’s bondholders, investors and lessors, survival means the lesser of two evilly large lossesAs one of Norway’s greatest exports, A-ha, put it, in their classic 1980s hit Take on Me, it’s no better to be safe than sorry. This advice may appear ever more overwhelmingly wrong to those who bet their kroner on the vision of the two Bjorns, Kjos and Kise, the co-founders turned chief executive and chairman of Norwegian Air.The pair wisely exited the scene last year after an extraordinary ride during which they turned Norwegian from a small local carrier into a global pioneer of low-cost, long-haul air travel, and eventually established bases all around Europe. With half an eye on transatlantic links and another on a booming short-haul operation, Norwegian became a dizzying array of subsidiaries whose complexity could not disguise the fact that it was heading for financial disaster. Continue reading...

A shortage of technical experts in EU regulatory authorities means companies can carry on invading our privacyOn 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became law throughout the European Union. Because it’s a regulation rather than a directive, implementation is not left to the discretion of states; it became part of the legal code of every member of the EU, including the UK at the time. In essence, the GDPR is a set of rules designed to give EU citizens more control over their personal data. The drive behind the regulation was the need to bring the historical patchwork of laws and obligations around personal data, privacy and consent across Europe up to speed and make them fit for purpose in a world dominated by surveillance capitalism. On the face of it, the GDPR looks like a formidable legal instrument.At any rate, in the run-up to its implementation, the prospect of it seemed to scare the wits out of companies and organisations large and small. It was a gold mine for legal and data-protection consultants. Even amateurs such as me were often approached by small community groups terrified that their email list would get them into trouble because they hadn’t explicitly asked every individual on it for their approval. Continue reading...

UK refuses request from Brussels for Northern Ireland presence for second timeThe Irish border question threatens to derail Brexit talks again as the depth of the row over the EU’s desire to have an office in Belfast is revealed.The UK’s paymaster general, Penny Mordaunt, has written to the EU to firmly reject a repeated request for an office in Northern Ireland: “The UK cannot agree to the permanent EU presence based in Belfast,” she wrote. Continue reading...

In move condemned by UN, refugees including Rohingya detained amid rise in xenophobia

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has appeared in public for the first time in almost three weeks, according to state media, following speculation that he had been seriously ill following heart surgery. The authenticity of the images, taken at a fertiliser factory opening and published on the website of the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, could not be immediately verified

Other ideas to ease lockdown reportedly include wearing face masks and a reduction from 2 to 1 metres distancing

The three-time Hugo award winner is one of the biggest names in modern scifi. She talks about overcoming racism to rewrite the futureIn 2018, NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three consecutive Hugo best novel awards for science fiction and fantasy. Her first award had been in 2016, for her novel The Fifth Season, and its two sequels, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, won in the following years. Yet speaking on the phone from her home in coronavirus-hit Brooklyn, Jemisin says she never thought she’d be published. “I honestly didn’t think I had a chance. You just didn’t see characters like me in fiction,” she says.Growing up in Mobile, Alabama and New York, Jemisin was an avid reader, making up her own stories from the age of eight, but the lack of black women writing science fiction and fantasy, the genre she loved, made her believe it wasn’t for her. “We were all exposed to nothing but white dude fiction, occasionally young white women fiction, and if that’s how you’ve grown up, then that is what is normal.” Continue reading...

The Monty Python star accidentally started a fire in his home while recovering from surgery before being pulled to safetySir Michael Palin has revealed how an elderly neighbour pulled him to safety after he accidentally set fire to his house while recovering from heart surgery.The Monty Python star, 76, said he had open-heart surgery in September to repair two valves and was told by doctors to relax at home. Continue reading...

With TV sport firmly on the bench, can Zoom darts, Ukrainian table tennis and backyard basketball help armchair fans get their fix?For fans of televised sport, there will always be that golden Sunday, in July last year, when the broadcast of a topsy-turvy Wimbledon final overlapped with a British Grand Prix and England’s blockbuster victory in the Cricket World Cup. Oh my Djokovic: an unimprovable time to be an armchair spectator, an afternoon of channel-hopping and ad-dodging, hurrying wees and tea brews, juggling screens and streams and replays till we sweated like athletes ourselves.Unthinkable, then, that 10 months on, the sport schedules would be empty. Wimbledon 2020 is off. The cricket season has been picked apart. Everything from motorsport to football to darts has been put on hold while the world deals with coronavirus. Continue reading...

We asked Guardian readers about their experiences as New Zealand entered level 3 of its coronavirus lockdownI went back to work on Tuesday. It was exciting to start the day with a sense of purpose after five weeks of time melting into itself. It was a little discombobulating to dust off my clothes, boots and tool belt, and hunt out my bag and lunch box. It was so nice to be in my car, music turned up and travelling fast. I was nearly skipping when I got to work. It was exciting to see my work colleagues – we are a small team of three and we spend long hours working together, arguing and laughing. The first day was very physical – ripping out a wire fence, moving a cut-down tree – it’s going to take at least two weeks for my body to get used to the work again. Kylie Toka, fencer, Marton, Rangetikei Continue reading...

North Korean state media has released pictures purportedly showing the leader attending the opening of a fertiliser factoryThe North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has appeared in public for the first time in almost three weeks, according to state media, following speculation that he had been seriously ill following heart surgery.The state news agency KCNA released photographs purportedly showing Kim opening a fertilizer plant in Sunchon, north of the capital Pyongyang. Continue reading...

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announced that assault-style weapons will be banned after the murder of 22 people in the worst mass shooting in the country’s history in Nova Scotia last week. The government gun control campaign had initially been derailed by the coronavirus pandemic Continue reading...

Sajid Hussain, who wrote about human rights violations, went missing in MarchA Pakistani journalist living in exile in Sweden and who had been missing since March has been found dead in a river.Sajid Hussain, who was granted political asylum in Sweden in 2019 after fleeing Pakistan, had been missing since 2 March. He was last seen boarding a train to Uppsala, a city 35 miles (56km) north of Stockholm. Continue reading...

NHS launches inquiry after Guardian investigation exposes senior official trading protective gear amid pandemic

Few signs yet that PM’s coronavirus illness and new baby have made him a different leader

Emergency food drops for thousands of young people unable to work or fly home

The coronavirus response in South Africa is an eerie throwback to apartheid. State control needs to be carefully monitored across the continent

Bamber is serving life sentence for killing his parents, sister and her twin boys in 1985Lawyers representing Jeremy Bamber, who is serving a whole life sentence for killing five members of his family in 1985, will ask the high court to review the refusal of the Crown Prosecution Service to disclose evidence they believe could undermine his conviction.They claim the material was made available to an author working on a televised drama about the killings, but not to his defence team. Continue reading...

All plans are on hold now and I can’t work out if I need a bit more or a bit less of my mother’s spiritAnxiety is still the first feeling of which I am aware every morning. First as a sense of unease as I regain consciousness and then physical and mental distress as I reconnect with the reality of the new normal. It can still take me a couple of hours of hiding under the duvet before I feel brave enough to get up and have breakfast. Some things have changed, though. Thankfully my dreams are no longer quite so terrifying. Rather, they have switched into something more distant and desolate where I am disconnected from the present. One night I dreamed first I was with my son, who was learning to fly in the Lofoten Islands – somewhere I’ve never been (nor have I watched the TV series Twin) and would not be unable to place on a map of Norway – and then that I was in a spaceship with Buzz Aldrin as we were flying to the edge of the solar system. Buzz didn’t seem that pleased to have me for company. What’s also changed is that during the day some of the anxiety now dissipates into sadness and depression. Sadness both at the scale of the crisis – we are now well past the chief scientific adviser’s “best result” death toll of 20,000, with no end in sight – and at my own personal losses. In particular the separation from my family, friends and colleagues. In the early days of the lockdown I was somehow able to kid myself that maybe the quarantine wouldn’t last that long. But now it’s sunk in that the government is making things up as it goes along, life may not return to normal for many months and that all plans will have to be put on hold. I remember my mother telling me how she and some friends danced down Piccadilly during an air raid in the second world war (I’m assuming they were a bit pissed) before a warden angrily shepherded them into a shelter. I can’t quite work out whether I need a bit more or a bit less of that sort of spirit. Continue reading...

Sydney aged care home reports 13th coronavirus-related death as three more residents test positive, while Tasmania to lift north-west lockdown. Follow live• Sign up to get coronavirus updates delivered to your email every weekday evening

Wild bison could once again roam over Saskatchewan after a herd welcomed its first calf since 1876When Europeans settlers first set their eyes upon North America’s Great Plains, vast seas of bison stretched as far as the horizon. But, more than a century ago, the last of the thundering herds that stampeded across the grasslands disappeared.But the birth of a wild bison calf has renewed hopes that rebuilding sustainable herds is now a step closer. On 22 April, a herd in Wanuskewin heritage park, an Indigenous-run conservation area in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, grew by one member — the first time a calf had been born on the territory since 1876. Continue reading...

Hundreds of indigenous queens are elected each year in Guatemala. Photographer Julia Zabrodzka presents this little-known part of modern Mayan cultureAngelica Cardona, with a microphone in her hand, stands among a group of candidates. Her voice reverberates firmly from the stage: “The art of weaving forms part of our Mayan identity. Nowadays, however, cheap printed fabrics are replacing our ancestral hand-woven textiles. This is how capitalism is killing our culture and preventing us from putting our heart in each artisanal piece we produce.” Her last words sound like a cry of protest. Seems rather like a leftwing party’s rally than a beauty pageant, doesn’t it? Well, indigenous queen elections are not typical beauty contests. Continue reading...

Family provides details of Errol Graham’s fatal decline as part of court action against DWPErrol Graham, a 57-year-old grandfather who died of starvation when his benefits were cut off, had become so mentally ill that his family believe he pulled out two of his own teeth with pliers, they have revealed.Fresh details of Graham’s decline, and the traumatic impact on his relatives of his lonely death and subsequent inquest, are revealed in a witness statement filed as part of the latest phase of a legal action taken by the family against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Continue reading...

Many of China’s ambitions are in clear conflict with our national interests. It’s time to reshape our relationship with BeijingThe last time Australia had a coherent and effective policy on China was when John Howard was prime minister. Howard emphasised the positives in what was then a much simpler trading relationship.Then, in Deng Xiaoping’s famous words, China was hiding its capabilities and biding its time. The Peoples’ Liberation Army was nowhere near the military powerhouse it is today. The Communist party’s forced annexation of much of the South China Sea was two decades in the future. Continue reading...

He’s played a revolutionary hero, a horny teen – now Gael García Bernal is a reptilian choreographer in Ema, and locked down in Mexico city. Just don’t ask him to move to LA when all this is overAt the start of the century, the director Alfonso Cuarón was casting Y Tu Mamá También, the bawdy but plangent road movie he had written with his brother Carlos about two oversexed Mexican teenagers, the wealthy Tenoch and his poorer, grungier friend Julio. “Alfonso called me very excitedly,” recalls Carlos Cuarón. “He said: ‘I know who’s going to play Julio! I’ve seen him in Alejandro’s movie.’” Alejandro González Iñárritu, that is, whose ferocious dog-fighting drama Amores Perros was about to be released. “I said: ‘No, no, I’ve found Julio; I saw the perfect actor in this short film, De Tripas, Corazón. He’s incredible: his eyes, the way he manages silence ...’”Eventually, the brothers realised they were talking about the same person: Gael García Bernal, who was then just 21. The son of theatre actors, he had become a star in his early teens on the Mexican soap opera El Abuelo y Yo (Grandpa and I) before decamping to London to study at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Iñárritu plucked him out mid-term for Amores Perros and he stole that movie as the twitchy-hipped tearaway who was every bit as feral as his champion rottweiler. His mutable features could switch from cherubic to lupine to gravely smouldering; his nerve endings felt exposed like frayed electrical wires. Continue reading...

Cholera has largely been beaten in the west, but it still kills tens of thousands of people in poorer countries every year. As we search for a cure for coronavirus, we have to make sure it will be available to everyone, not just to those in wealthy nations. By Neil SinghWe log in every day at 7.45am. One by one, we join an array of faces on our screens. We doctors aren’t used to video-conferencing like this, and still greet each other with excited waving hands. Since the coronavirus crisis began, these daily virtual meetings have proved an invaluable way to keep up to speed on clinical guidelines, in-house protocols and staff wellbeing – all of which are changing every day.But these meetings also bring us news that we take more personally: how many of our patients have symptoms? How many have tested positive? How many have died? These are important questions, for sure, but my public health training reminds me to think globally. The coming year will see developments that will allow us to bring the virus under control in the west, but what about in other countries? I cannot help but think of my relatives in India, and what this pandemic will mean for them – not just now, but in the future. The really important question is not who will die of coronavirus tomorrow, but in 200 years’ time. Continue reading...

Israel’s foreign ministry reminds Egypt of peace deal after sci-fi drama El-Nehaya airsAn Egyptian science fiction drama that predicts Israel’s destruction has provoked an angry reaction from the Jewish state, including from the country’s foreign ministry, which reminded its neighbour of a decades-old peace deal.Set in the year 2120, the series called El-Nehaya, meaning The End, imagines a bleak future with cloned robots, battered skyscrapers, and relentless violence. Continue reading...

Public Service Commission warned site of possible liability for defamatory content on its public servantsA leading federal government agency sent a legal letter to a volunteer-run transparency website hosting freedom of information documents, warning that “website operators may be liable” for defamatory content published on their website.The Australian Public Service Commission denies it intended to threaten the not-for-profit Right to Know website when its chief legal counsel sent a letter in October, demanding the site remove “defamatory material”. Continue reading...

The euro area is suffering its worst contraction ever, as the French economy suffers its biggest plunge since the second world war

A flypast over Capt Tom Moore’s house by a wartime Spitfire and a Hurricane was broadcast live on BBC Breakfast to mark the second world war veteran’s 100th birthday.The centenarian, who has helped to raise over £30m for the NHS during the coronavirus crisis with a sponsored walk around his garden, has been appointed an honorary colonel

Infections then spread between staff and patients, as some healthcare workers worked six shifts while symptomatic

Graham Walters was almost at coast of Antigua when he called for assistanceA 72-year-old man from Leicester has rowed solo across the Atlantic but may miss out on the record to become the oldest person to do so after he had to be towed in to port at the end of his journey.Graham Walters was just six miles from the coast of Antigua, the end of his journey, when his boat was blown off course by strong winds, and he would have ended up past the island and facing days’ more rowing if he had not accepted the assistance of the local coastguard. Continue reading...

The PM’s partner has been on one emotional rollercoaster, and now faces anotherWhen Carrie Symonds was last seen in public, at the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey, her arm linked through Boris Johnson’s and beaming a wide smile, no one could have foreseen what drama the next seven weeks would hold.From that day on 9 March to Wednesday’s surprise announcement that she had safely given birth to a “healthy baby boy”, the 32-year-old fiancee of the prime minister has endured an extraordinarily stressful time. Continue reading...

A total of 26,097 patients have died in hospitals, care homes and the wider community after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK, Dominic Raab has said. It was the first time the daily death toll figures have taken into account deaths in care homes and the community as well as those in hospitals between 2 March and 28 April. It marked an increase of 3,811 on the previous figure

New York City's mayor, Bill de Blasio, has apologised for lashing out at the conduct of mourners at a packed funeral for a rabbi who died of Covid-19. In a tweet, the mayor called the large processional 'absolutely unacceptable' and vowed to shut down such gatherings. 'If you saw anger and frustration [in the response] you’re right,' de Blasio said. 'I spoke out of real distress. People’s lives were in danger right before my eyes.'

Nearly 100 cases of the unusual illness linked to Covid-19 have emerged in at least six countries

It’s easy to let standards slip during the lockdown but unlike Will Reeve not all of us see our pantless selves broadcast to the nationAlmost two months into the US shutdown, things are starting to get a little wild in quarantine. Perhaps you’ve stopped brushing your hair or started working in pyjamas. But a Good Morning America reporter took it a step further yesterday – he “went” to work without pants on for a nationally televised broadcast.I have ARRIVED*

Leaked report from stormy visit to Prague tells Andrej Babiš to stamp out ‘oligarchies’The Czech government needs to stamp out “oligarchic structures” in the spending of European funds, a leaked EU report into an alleged conflict of interest centred on the country’s billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has concluded.The report, by the European parliament’s budgetary control committee, calls on Babiš to stand down as prime minister or sell his business, if a conflict of interest is confirmed. Babiš should also renounce his seat at the table in upcoming negotiations on the European Union’s next seven-year budget “until his potential conflict of interests is fully resolved”, the MEPs say. Continue reading...

More than 40 members of indigenous communities have been killed since 2015, and many say settlers have been responsibleNicaragua’s government is actively promoting illegal land grabs and granting concessions to mining and timber companies in indigenous territories, according to a report released on Wednesday.Related: Massacre leaves six indigenous people dead at Nicaraguan nature reserve Continue reading...

Young people likely to challenge Islam and see themselves as less religious than previous generationsTwenty-two-year old Esra, from Mersin, is even more bored than usual this Ramadan. Universities are shut and Turkey has taken the unusual step of placing under 20s, as well as over 65s, under a nighttime curfew, because many Turkish families live in intergenerational households.

Bill de Blasio expresses regret for tweet after intervening when hundreds gathered for a funeral for a rabbi who died of Covid-19: ‘I spoke out of distress’New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, personally oversaw the dispersal of a large, tightly packed Hasidic Jewish funeral on Wednesday, lashing out at the conduct of mourners, sparking angry counter-criticism from community leaders.In a tweet, the mayor called the large processional “absolutely unacceptable”, and vowed to bring social gatherings such as that event to an end while movements are still restricted by coronavirus measures. Continue reading...

How herd immunity and delayed lockdown hampered efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus

After birth of boy Downing Street says PM intends to take paternity leave later this year

Les Inséparables, which depicts the writer’s passionate friendship with a girl who later died, was withheld during her lifetime

More than 60 objections to regulator about claims by world’s biggest oil companyThe world’s biggest oil company has withdrawn an advertising campaign that boasted it was “powering a more sustainable future”, after dozens of complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency.Saudi Aramco claimed in the advert that “real sustainability doesn’t wait until tomorrow”, adding “this is real energy”. Continue reading...

Economic slump in first quarter is worst since 2008 recession, with GDP predicted to fall at annualized 30% in next quarter

Almost 70 veterans have died in the worst known outbreak at a US long-term care facility. Plus, how Democrats can halt Trump’s takeover of the judiciaryGood morning.The number of Americans who have tested positive for coronavirus is now more than 1 million, while almost 60,000 people are confirmed to have died with the disease in the US. If those statistics are too vast to contemplate, then consider this one: at least 68 people have already died at a veterans’ home in Massachusetts after contracting Covid-19, with dozens more infected – the worst known outbreak in a US long-term care facility. Continue reading...