Fisheries bill to also ensure sustainable and ‘climate smart’ fishingThe automatic right of EU vessels to fish in British waters, in accordance with the EU’s common fisheries policy, is to be ended under the fisheries bill introduced to parliament today.There will also be measures to ensure sustainable fishing and “climate-smart” fishing in UK waters, added since the last version of the bill which had to be abandoned. This is in line with the government’s environmental commitments, and provisions to provide financial support to fishing communities. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison may pat heads and spout calming words, but he and his government are playing with the factsThink of it as a hypnotist’s trick, because that’s what it is. Scott Morrison says it over and over: there is no dispute about the need to take action to reduce Australia’s emissions. No dispute. You are getting sleepy. No dispute.In fact there is a dispute, and a serious one. By failing to do what is necessary, the government Morrison leads maintains a serious dispute with what the climate science tells us needs to be done both in Australia and internationally to avert the most dangerous risks associated with global heating. Continue reading...

Emails reveal architect and builders discussed how cladding was not fire-resistantThe architect, builders and fire engineer who worked on the disastrous Grenfell Tower refurbishment knew the cladding system would fail in the event of a fire more than two years before 72 people were killed, according to emails revealed at the public inquiry on Tuesday.Staff at architects Studio E, the fire engineer Exova, the facade installer Harley, and Rydon, the main contractor, discussed how the cladding system they were planning to wrap around the 120-home apartment block was likely to fail in the event of a fire. Continue reading...

Man infected by colleague who appeared not to have symptoms when virus was transmitted

Amnesty attacks heavy-handed response to protests as Adama Barrow clings to powerHuman rights groups have criticised authorities in the Gambia after police arrested 137 people, injured dozens and detained prominent journalists amid protests calling for the president to honour a pledge to step down after three years in office.Adama Barrow came to power after the election in 2016, ending 22 years of brutal dictatorship by Yahya Jammeh and inspiring widespread hopes for reform. Continue reading...

Nations scramble to extract citizens from Wuhan as first death is recorded in Beijing

Indigenous affairs minister says Cashman’s membership of advisory group on voice to parliament is untenable after letter is used to discredit Bruce PascoeThe Aboriginal businesswoman Josephine Cashman has been sacked from her government advisory role, after allegations that she provided a faked letter from a senior Aboriginal leader as part of a campaign to discredit the author Bruce Pascoe.In a brief statement the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Ken Wyatt, said Cashman’s actions were “not conducive to the constructive and collaborative approach” needed on the advisory council on an Indigenous voice to parliament. Continue reading...

Mustafa Sanalla says country facing disaster as blockade disrupts oil productionWorld powers will be complicit in the collapse of the rule of law in Libya if they do not do more to call out the countries backing those responsible for disrupting the country’s oil exports, the head of the Libyan national oil corporation has said.Mustafa Sanalla said too many western powers were happy to let the countries meddling in Libya sign non-intervention agreements that they had no intention of honouring. Continue reading...

Artist revealed last year that the chorus of her Grammy award winning song, which also topped the Triple J listener poll, used a sample of Sydney traffic light sounds

Police and prison staff attacked as five gang members sentenced for murder of 19-year-oldViolence broke out in the dock and the public gallery as five gang members were jailed for life over the murder of a 19-year-old man in north London last year.Police officers and prison staff at the Old Bailey were attacked as the five defendants were sentenced on Monday for murdering Kamali Gabbidon-Lynck in Wood Green in February 2019. Continue reading...

Review led by Ed Miliband tasked with suggesting ways the party might find a path to powerGimmicky policies, horrible inefficiency and factional promotions are among the catalogue of errors behind Labour’s dismal performance at the general election, according to party members.The damning comments on Labour’s campaign form part of an early release of views gathered by a team headed by the former party leader Ed Miliband consisting of MPs, union leaders and party members. They have tasked themselves with analysing Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign and suggesting ways the party might find a path back to power. Continue reading...

Storms have submerged entire neighborhoods and sent homes tumbling down hillsides, causing more than 30,000 to fleeMore than 30,000 people have been displaced by heavy rains in south-east Brazil that have killed 54 people and left 18 missing.The storms have caused floods and landslides, submerging entire neighborhoods and sending homes tumbling down hillsides in the states of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro. Rains subsided by Monday, but were expected to resume later this week in some areas. Continue reading...

Global equity sell-off deepens and oil falls below $59 as death toll from coronavirus rises, sparking fears over economic impact

Housing officers are using their local knowledge to spot abuse and exploitation, particularly ‘cuckooing’ of vulnerable residents by drug gangsHousing associations are playing a growing role in tackling county lines crimes, using their knowledge of local communities to spot early signs of abuse and exploitation.In the north west of England, the exploitation of young people by drug gangs – known as “county lines” crime – is a serious problem, not just in poorer areas but in York, Harrogate and places with good transport links. Now lawyers, housing associations and police are building networks of support to try and provide innovative solutions to the crisis. Continue reading...

Baghdad embassy cafeteria believed to have been struck in rare direct hit in fortified Green Zone

Ivor Perl and Susan Pollack were 12 and 13 when they were transported to Auschwitz. On the 75th anniversary of the concentration camp’s liberation, they tell their storiesOn 27 January 1945 Soviet soldiers entered the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp in south-west Poland. The site had been evacuated by the Nazis just days earlier. Thus ended the largest mass murder in a single location in human history.Precise numbers are still debated, but according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German SS systematically killed at least 960,000 of the 1.1 million to 1.3 million Jews sent to the camp. Other victims included approximately 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet PoWs and at least 10,000 from other nationalities. More people died at Auschwitz than at any other Nazi concentration camp. Continue reading...

Appearance of Kim Kyong-hui next to the North Korean leader at a performance puts paid to talk of executionKim Jong-un’s aunt has appeared in public for the first time in more than six years, ending speculation that she had been purged or executed after helping her nephew establish himself as North Korea’s leader.The official newspaper of North Korea’s ruling party, the Rodong Sinmun, showed Kim Kyong-hui seated next to Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, at a performance to mark the lunar new year at a theatre in Pyongyang on Saturday. Continue reading...

Fears expressed over inquiry descending into ‘blame game’ among corporates involved in construction, design and claddingThe companies which wrapped Grenfell Tower in combustible cladding will finally face public scrutiny when the inquiry into the loss of 72 lives restarts this week.Around 200,000 unseen documents, from private emails to phone transcripts and commercial agreements, will be released during 18 months of hearings examining decisions taken in the months and years before the fire, its immediate aftermath and the role of the UK government. Some of the evidence are expected to contain explosive revelations. Continue reading...

At least 22 people killed and more than 1,100 injured, with fatalities likely to increaseA powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake in eastern Turkey has killed at least 22 people, with the death toll expected to rise as rescuers search for survivors under the rubble in freezing winter conditions.The quake late on Friday injured a further 1,103 people in hardest-hit Elazig and Malatya provinces and was followed by more than 390 aftershocks, 14 of which had magnitudes above 4 and were felt as far away as Iran and Lebanon. Continue reading...

From stars who don’t age to the Love Island pout, the ‘tweaked’ look is becoming the new normal. But what is it doing to us?Do you know what a tweakment is? I didn’t, not really, until I was lying on my back with a woman dressed in white poised to inject a needle into my face. Tweakment sounds cute, right? Well, tweak does. Like in the Mary Poppins song: “My father gave me nose a tweak.” A tweak is a gesture of affection, like pinching the cheek of a toddler. Tweak tweak.A tweakment is a minor cosmetic procedure, one that doesn’t involve being cut open or going under general anaesthetic or hiding from the world for a fortnight. (Actually, it might involve the last.) The word has come to prominence over the past few years, and is used to cover many different techniques and therapies, mostly done to your face. Continue reading...

Combat Stress says decision to turn down new cases was taken ‘with great sadness’A mental health charity for military veterans is no longer able to take new cases in England or Wales because of a funding crisis.Combat Stress said its income has fallen from £16m to £10m in this financial year partly because of a cut in its NHS funding support, and said the decision to turn down new cases had been taken “with great sadness”. Continue reading...

How did Britain’s worst rapist evade capture for so long?Everyone has a similar reaction when they see Reynhard Sinaga for the first time. It was the same whenever a new reporter came into the Manchester crown courtroom and stared into the dock. Sitting there, smiling, between three hulking security guards, was a small man with thick-rimmed hipster glasses, playing with the shiny, shoulder-length hair he had not cut since his arrest in June 2017. Him? That’s Britain’s worst rapist? Predators come in all shapes and sizes, but Sinaga’s “worst ever” billing was hard to square with the boyish figure in the lumberjack shirt, scribbling notes behind the bulletproof glass as a stream of nervous young men went into the witness box to testify against him.The Guardian was present at three out of Sinaga’s four trials, and Sinaga often seemed to be enjoying himself. He would cock his head to one side, as if studying a nature documentary, as he watched videos of himself raping dozens of men who had made the mistake of going back to his flat after a drunken night out. The prosecution tried to persuade the judge, Suzanne Goddard QC, that Sinaga didn’t need to see the films he had recorded on two iPhones, one perched on a dresser for long shots and another handheld for closeups. But Goddard reluctantly ruled that he should be allowed to see the evidence in order to mount what seemed to be a hopeless defence: that he wasn’t a sexual predator, but a harmless deviant. He just happened to be irresistible to young, usually straight men, who would pretend to be asleep as part of a sexual fantasy in which Sinaga would penetrate them on camera, sometimes for hours on end. Continue reading...

Prime minister says signing of document will end years of argument and divisionBoris Johnson has formally signed the EU withdrawal agreement, smiling as he described it as a “fantastic moment” for the country.His enthusiasm came in sharp contrast to the sombre tone of EU officials, who earlier added their signatures to the document before it crossed the Channel. Continue reading...

Singer imprisoned for nine years for getting teenagers to send him explicit picturesA former star of The X Factor has been jailed for nine years for sexually exploiting seven teenage boys.Danny Tetley, from Bradford, was described as “a despicable creature with very few redeeming features” for encouraging the youngsters to send him explicit pictures in exchange for money. Continue reading...

Huge locust swarms in east Africa are the result of extreme weather swings and could prove catastrophic for a region still reeling from drought and deadly floods. Dense clouds of the ravenous insects have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya, in the region’s worse infestation in decades Continue reading...

Andrea Riseborough does her best in a horror reboot that offers murders, maggots, corpses, a haunted house … and zero scares“It’s happening again! It’s NEVER going to end!” That’s a cop, locked up in a secure psychiatric facility after shooting half his face off, ranting about the curse that drove him insane. His words may also be a healthy response to news that Sam Raimi has rebooted The Grudge haunted-house franchise. (Brief history: Takashi Shimizu directed the decent original and a sequel in Japan and made two out of three of the subpar Hollywood follow-ons.) Raimi produces here while directing duties pass to 30-year-old American Nicolas Pesce, who has come up with this franchise oddity: a mainstream horror movie with arthouse sensibilities, a potentially interesting streak of bleak realism and naturalistic performances – but zero scares. Forget about chilling to the bone, The Grudge barely drops below room temperature.Related: Top 20 J-horror films – ranked! Continue reading...

Supreme court justice ‘reserves judgment’ in case of Meng Wanzhou, whom the US is trying to extradite on charges of fraudThe Canadian court tussle over the arrest of a Huawei telecoms executive has been put in limbo after a judge adjourned the case that pits the United States against China.Washington is seeking extradition of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in December 2018 during a flight stopover in Vancouver. Continue reading...

News Corp owner was the only media baron the prime minister saw in his first three monthsBoris Johnson saw Rupert Murdoch for a “social meeting” on the day he signalled his intention to seek a general election last year, according to new transparency disclosures.Johnson saw the media billionaire on 2 September, the day when Downing Street briefed that he would be seeking an autumn election if his Brexit plans were thwarted. In the event the election was pushed back to December. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

Prince Charles greets world leaders at the Holocaust remembrance day at fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem. The British royal addressed politicians on Thursday during commemorations marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp Continue reading...

Wellington has restricted foreign political donations but its lax approach to Beijing suggests economic interests still trump national security concernsTransparency International announced yesterday that New Zealand is the least corrupt country in the world. This is excellent news, but New Zealand cannot afford to rest on its laurels.Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index assesses whether countries have a corrupt judiciary and public sector. Some other aspects where corruption can also occur, such as political funding, are not included in the index. Continue reading...

Labour says decline in suspects being charged or summonsed is ‘indictment’ of Tory cutsThe proportion of recorded crimes in England and Wales that resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed to court has fallen again, figures reveal, as knife crime surges to a record high.In the year to March 2019, 7.8% of all recorded offences resulted in a charge or a summons, against 9.1% the previous year, figures on crime outcomes from the Home Office show. Continue reading...

Martial arts star Tony Jaa joins the zany police franchise as our heroes head to Tokyo for more no-holds-barred slapstick actionAsian cinema’s wackiest buddy-comedy action franchise is now at the threequel stage and after a period of bewilderment I’ve begun to enjoy its eccentric hyperactivity. The two zany Chinese cops, Qin Feng (Haoran Liu) and Tang Ren (Baoqiang Wang), have already clocked up some misadventures in Bangkok for the first film and New York for the second (which featured a peculiar cameo from Michael Pitt); now the daffy duo rock up in Tokyo, where they have been summoned to tackle a bizarre crime.A local gang boss has been murdered, apparently by a turf rival called Watanabe (Miura Tomokazu) over dinner, but this man insists he’s innocent and demands our heroes find the evidence that will acquit him. The rest of the film is one bonkers digression after another, concerning some strange criminal conspiracies and the shadowy motivations of the victim’s assistant Anna Kobayashi (Masami Nagasawa). Continue reading...

Royal to warn against hatred and intolerance in speech at Holocaust forum in JerusalemPrince Charles is to warn that lessons of the Holocaust are “searingly relevant to this day” as “hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart”.He is due to address world leaders gathered in Jerusalem on Thursday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Continue reading...

NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian expresses condolences to families of the firefighters on boardThree American firefighters have died after a waterbombing air tanker crashed while fighting fires in New South Wales.The NSW Rural Fire Service said in a statement that “contact had been lost with a Large Air Tanker which was working in the Snowy Monaro area” on Thursday afternoon. Continue reading...

Australia can still qualify for the 2020 Olympics if they beat Uzbekistan in the third place playoff on SaturdayA marauding South Korean frontline lead by Kim Dae-won has cut strips through a timid Olyroos defence to seal a 2-0 victory in their AFC U-23 Championship semi-final and deny Australia their first chance to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics.The Olyroos could have qualified for the Games for the first time in 12 years by beating South Korea, but their opponents had other ideas at Bangkok’s Thammasat Stadium on Wednesday night. Continue reading...

Former Scottish first minister faces 14 charges including attempted rape

Tory MPs urge prime minister to deliver project as transport secretary asks for more dataGrant Shapps, the transport secretary, has cast further doubt on whether the government will go ahead with the HS2 rail line by stressing the problem was about capacity rather than speed and making clear he was examining alternatives.Confirming a final decision would be made in February, Shapps said it was essential to get the facts right before embarking on “maybe the biggest infrastructure project, certainly in Europe, and the biggest this country’s ever taken, certainly in peacetime”. Continue reading...

Here we have a government found to have misused taxpayer money to further its political interests. It raises serious integrity issuesThe pressure on Bridget McKenzie over the government’s sport grant program is far from subsiding.It’s been seven days since the auditor general released his damning report, but the calls for McKenzie’s resignation have only intensified. Continue reading...

Duchess of Sussex’s estranged father apologises to the Queen in extracts from documentary to be aired on WednesdayThe estranged father of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, has sought to defend his reputation in a new documentary to be broadcast on Wednesday, but said he fears he will never speak to his daughter or Prince Harry again.Thomas Markle, 75, has already accused his daughter of “cheapening” the British royal family in part of an interview released on Sunday, a day after Buckingham Palace said Harry and Meghan would no longer be working members of the monarchy. Continue reading...

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT OF DEAD ANIMALSAn estimated 1 billion animals have been killed during or as a result of Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season, and experts fear some species now face extinction. Huge numbers of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and other species have been lost, with images of burned koalas and kangaroos fleeing the fire front beamed around the world. Slow-moving native animals have been hit particularly hard.

The Australian government says the case is a ‘very high priority’, but human rights campaigners say quiet diplomacy has failedHuman rights groups and advocates for political prisoners in Iran have urged the Australian government to take a more forceful position in negotiating with Iran for the release of detained academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, but the Australian government continues to insist quiet diplomacy will be most effective.On Tuesday, the Guardian revealed a series of letters hand-written by Moore-Gilbert in Farsi and smuggled out of Evin prison’s notorious Ward 2A, an isolated wing run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. Continue reading...

Talks in Davos raise hope of agreement to find multilateral solution to taxing digital firmsFrance is poised to announce on Wednesday that it is dropping its go-it-alone plan to tax big US tech companies in exchange for Washington’s agreement to press ahead with attempts to find a multilateral solution.Hopes of an agreement were rising in Davos after several days of intense talks involving the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, the US treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, and Ángel Gurria, the head of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Continue reading...

Magistrate dismisses police contention Prof Dianne Jolley is a threat to public safety, after she spends two weeks in jailPolice have been accused of acting in “secret” to obtain key documents in the case of a Sydney professor’s alleged fake harassment campaign.Prof Dianne Jolley, the dean of science at the University of Technology Sydney, was arrested in November for allegedly sending fake threats to herself after the university planned to cancel a Chinese medicine course. Continue reading...

Housewives, grandmothers and students in Delhi at centre of resistance to new citizenship lawsWith a toothless grin and a clenched fist raised to the heavens, 90-year-old Asma Khatun chanted exuberantly. “Azadi,” she cried, using the Hindi word for freedom and joining a loud chorus that rang out across Shaheen Bagh, a neighbourhood in South Delhi that over the past few weeks has become a nationwide symbol of resistance.In her nine decades, Khatun has lived through British colonial rule, the war of independence and India’s bloody partition with Pakistan, but as a housewife she had always stayed behind closed doors and barely brushed with politics. That was until last month. Continue reading...

Men in New Zealand and Spain calculated longitude and latitude to perfectly align both slicesAn Auckland university student has created an “earth sandwich” with a stranger in Spain, after a long search for an accomplice.Etienne Naude, 19, placed a slice of white bread on the ground at Bucklands Beach in Auckland, using longitude and latitude to ensure he was precisely opposite a volunteer he had found in the south of Spain after posting for help on Reddit. Continue reading...

Authorities on alert ahead of lunar new year holiday as 139 new cases of strain detectedChina’s National Health Commission has confirmed human-to-human transmission of a mysterious Sars-like virus that has spread across the country and fuelled anxiety about the prospect of a major outbreak as millions begin travelling for lunar new year celebrations.Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert and head of the health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected, China’s official Xinhua news agency said on Monday. Continue reading...

Leak has shown how Africa’s richest woman built her empire, but how did it happen?Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of the former president of Angola, claims to be a self-made businesswoman, but a cache of documents investigated by the Guardian and partners appears to tell a different story.The Luanda Leaks are a trove of 715,000 emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts that help explain how Dos Santos built a business empire worth an estimated $2bn. Continue reading...

Only known painting by Dutch master while he had psychosis is ‘unmistakably’ his workAfter decades of doubt, a gloomy self-portrait has been authenticated as a genuine work by Vincent van Gogh and the only known work painted while he had psychosis.Self-Portrait (1889) has been in Norway’s national collection since 1910 but its authenticity has been openly questioned since 1970. On Monday, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam announced it was “unmistakably” a work by the artist. Continue reading...