World news | The Guardian

PM warns Russian success would spell end of freedom in Ukraine and compares invaded nation’s struggle to UK Brexit vote

Donna Ferguson recalls nine interviews since 2017 that charted dashed dreams and suffering mingled with hopeWhen I first met Richard Ratcliffe, back in 2017, his wife Nazanin had just been told that she could face an additional 16 years in an Iranian prison.He had, by then, been separated from his three-year-old daughter Gabriella for half her life: she was captured as an 18-month-old baby along with her mother, and would spend the next three years in Iran, living with her grandparents. Continue reading...

Elderly residents are wary of the jab even as Omicron spreads, and critics say zero-Covid policy is not sustainableWhen nearby neighbourhoods went into lockdown, Liu Li started stocking up. The 42-year-old Chinese magazine worker bought vegetables, fruit, medicine and other supplies, adding to stores of basics she had maintained since the pandemic began. Last Sunday a resident in the community where Liu lives with her mother, in Changchun city, Jilin, tested positive. Everyone was ordered inside.The fresh lockdown has, so far, been OK. “I live a normal life,” she says. “I work when there are tasks for me. If there aren’t any, I talk to my mother, watch TV, or play with my cat.” Continue reading...

Event was Russian leader’s ‘best attempt to look like Donald Trump’, commentator says on his Fox News showVladimir Putin was “channeling his inner Trump” when he staged a huge rally in Moscow to trumpet his invasion of Ukraine, Sean Hannity said on Friday.On a day when the Russian foreign minister praised Fox News for “trying to present some alternative point of view”, and amid controversy over Fox News hosts and guests repeating Russian disinformation, Hannity also mocked Joe Biden and read out a Kremlin statement attacking the US president. Continue reading...

Russia has a chance to limit the damage by engaging in ‘meaningful’ talks, says Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid fierce shelling in the south

Chairman of Indian Creek village tells media residents don’t want Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to land helicopter thereProtests by local residents have forced the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to cancel a trip to a Belize village that was scheduled to kick off their Caribbean toursidents.Opposition to the royal excursion had arisen from a dispute between residents of Toledo district and Flora and Fauna International, a conservation charity Prince William is a patron of. Continue reading...

Former PMs join campaign calling for trial of Russian president and those around him over invasion of Ukraine

Tournament favourites chase down a World Cup-record 278 for victory, their fifth out of five in this year’s event4th over: India 15-1 (Yastika Bhatia 2, Shafali Verma 1)Brown looks to make up for her ordinary first over and she does immediately, with the big wicket of Mandhana, bringing Yastika Bhatia to the crease. Bhatia uses the first ball to get her eye in, before a well run two off the next ball to get off the mark quickly. Brown gives away the first extra of the match with a wide, followed by a dot ball and then another wide. This has shades of Australia’s series against India late last year when they just couldn’t stop bowling wides. Hopefully Brown has got that out of her system now. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Maria Adonyeva, who gave arts centre at least £380,000, also steps down as Tate patronThe wife of a Russian businessman who at one stage pleaded guilty to defrauding the Kazakh government out of $4m (£3m) has stepped down as a patron of the Tate and from a prestigious advisory board at Somerset House, where she was a major donor.Maria Adonyeva, who has a London-based charitable foundation and has been pictured as recently as 2018 on her husband’s yacht with close friends, including the actor Melanie Griffith, has given at least £380,000 in the past two years to Somerset House, where she sat on the arts centre’s development advisory board. Continue reading...

The PM seems in his element in the role of ‘war leader’, but have voters forgotten their anger?Since his premiership nearly sank a few weeks ago, Boris Johnson has done more foreign travel and frantic diplomacy than in all his previous years as prime minister combined.He has made phone calls almost daily to Volodymyr Zelenskiy as the war with Russia rages, and won praise from the Ukrainian president during his emotive video address to the House of Commons. Continue reading...

Two deaths reported on Saturday, the first since January 2021, as China continues to pursue ‘zero-Covid’ strategy

Lance Franklin tonight has the chance to become just the sixth VFL/AFL player to kick 1000 career goals.The rest of the AFL world is talking about it, but John Longmire doesn’t feel the need. The Sydney Swans coach says Lance Franklin’s looming milestone speaks for itself.

Experts say social support, honesty and generosity key to wellbeing, as Afghanistan and Lebanon struggle in global rankingFinland has been named the world’s happiest country for the fifth year in a row, in an annual UN-sponsored index that ranked Afghanistan as the unhappiest, closely followed by Lebanon.The latest list was completed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading...

Megachurch says Houston, who has stepped down as leader of the church, breached its code of conductHillsong has been forced to “apologise unreservedly” after the church’s founder, Brian Houston, was found to have engaged in conduct “of serious concern” by the church.Following media reports on Friday, the church’s global board said in a statement that Houston had breached Hillsong’s pastor code of conduct in two incidents over the past decade. Continue reading...

Zelenskiy calls for meaningful talks with Moscow; Biden warns Xi on ‘consequences’ of backing Moscow; fighting reaches centre of Mariupol

Contenders hope to use the status as a springboard for social and economic recoveryBradford, County Durham, Southampton and Wrexham county borough have been shortlisted to become the UK next city of culture, it has been announced.The finalists were whittled down from a record 20 bids to eight longlisted regions, which also included Cornwall, Derby, Stirling, and the district of Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon. Continue reading...

Woman’s sole carer charged with murder after body found in Greenacre homeThe sole carer of a woman has been charged with murder after her emaciated body was found in Sydney’s south-west, police say.Paramedics went to a Greenacre home on Friday morning to respond to a medical episode. Continue reading...

Emma Pring, 29, who had PTSD and depression, killed herself after insufficient observation in Maidstone hospital, jury concludesThe death of a young woman at a privately run hospital could have been prevented, an inquest has concluded.Emma Pring, 29, killed herself while an inpatient at Cygnet hospital in Maidstone in April 2021.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. Continue reading...

Family of freed British-Iranian detainee Anoosheh Ashoori had to pay last-minute fine in cashThe family of the British-Iranian detainee Anoosheh Ashoori had to scramble at the last minute to raise £27,000 to pay a fine to the Iranian government, delivering the money in cash to the authorities in Tehran’s Evin prison for it to be counted and authenticated.The Iranian government told British Foreign Office negotiators late on Monday that his release would be blocked unless the fine, linked to his 10-year jail sentence, was paid the following day. Ashooori was released along with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe on Wednesday after the UK paid Iran a longstanding £400m debt. Continue reading...

Sergei Lavrov says only Fox is presenting an ‘alternative point of view’ rather than ‘information terrorism’Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has praised Fox News for its coverage, appearing on the Russian state-controlled RT network to hail the right-leaning US cable channel, whose primetime host Tucker Carlson has played down the invasion.“We know the manners and the tricks that are being used by the western countries to manipulate media, we understood long ago that there is no such thing as an independent western media,” said Lavrov, speaking in English in a studio interview on Friday. Continue reading...

High court last week ruled that Metropolitan police had breached rights of vigil organisersThe Metropolitan police will appeal against a high court ruling that they breached the rights of the organisers of a planned vigil for Sarah Everard in their handling of the event.The Met said it had “taken time to consider with great care the decision itself and the wider implications for policing” and planned to appeal against the ruling “to resolve what’s required by law when policing protests and events in the future”, in a statement published on Friday. Continue reading...

Treasurer says he’s conscious premiums too high for many people in disaster-prone areas, but says more work needed on a proposal to extend reinsurance scheme

Daniel Andrews was gearing up for a fight with lobby groups, but the main prize was in the electorateFor the second time in a month the Andrews government this week unfurled a big social reform to be funded by a levy on business.And for the second time in a month, it provoked outrage from the usual quarters, including the state opposition, the federal government and industry groups. Continue reading...

The NSW government knows the more it is held up against the Coalition in Canberra, the better it looks despite its own shortcomings

The opposition is ahead in the polls. Whether that translates into a win – and what it would mean for the federal election – isn’t certain

The costs were more than twice the amount the city budgeted for affordable and supportive housingThe truck convoy that paralyzed much of downtown Ottawa for nearly a month cost the city more than C$36m, officials have said, and the figure is expected to rise in the coming weeks.A memo released by the city on Friday said policing costs accounted for the vast majority of the $36.3m bill. Continue reading...

Chancellor believed to be considering cut in fuel duty among measures to tackle cost of living crisisRishi Sunak has promised that tax increases are “done” as he dropped a heavy hint that he is preparing measures to tackle the rising cost of living in next week’s spring statement.The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said this week that Sunak had announced more tax rises in two years – worth 2% of GDP – than Gordon Brown did in a decade. Continue reading...

Russia claims to be ‘tightening noose’ around south-eastern port city as thousands still stranded

The woman freed from six years’ detention told her MP about the fraught last moments in Iran and the bliss of her returnEven as she entered the airport clutching her British passport for the first time in six years, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said she could not believe she was finally about to return home to her husband and daughter.The last moments of her ordeal in Iran, where she had been held by the regime, in effect as a hostage, on trumped-up charges, were far from straightforward and fraught with anxieties. Continue reading...

Brexit opportunities minister says people will find Partygate scandal ‘fundamentally trivial’ in the context of war in Ukraine. This live blog has now closed.

Details emerge of deaths of a Kharkiv Pride volunteer, an actor, and an American visiting his partner

Analysis: UK government claimed EU exit would let it change employment law, but it has not yet done soTo the layperson, the unceremonious sacking of 800 P&O Ferries workers may look like a consequence of Britain leaving the EU, with any legal action by the trade unions turning into the first big test of workers’ rights post-Brexit.Despite Boris Johnson’s assurances that Britain’s departure from the EU would be better for UK workers, there have been fears it would be seen by the government as an opportunity to erode workers’ rights in a bid to increase competitiveness. Continue reading...

Fuel sellers in Narvik say they will not sell to crew of Ragnar, which is owned by Vladimir StrzhalkovskyA 223-foot (68-metre) luxury yacht owned by a former KGB agent and longtime acquaintance of Vladimir Putin is currently stranded at a Norwegian port after locals’ persistent refusal to sell it fuel.The vessel, called Ragnar, an old norse word meaning “warrior”, is owned by Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, and its crew has been told by Norwegian fuel suppliers in the northern port of Narvik to “row home” or “raise the sails”. They say they will not refuel it because of the owner’s links to the Russian president. Continue reading...

Alexei Mordashov sold most of 34% stake in world’s biggest tourism operator to entity controlled by his wife

Child Q to launch civil proceedings against Met and school ‘to ensure this never happens again to any other child’The child at the heart of a racism scandal, sparked after she was subjected to a strip-search at school that involved exposure of intimate body parts, has launched legal proceedings against the Metropolitan police and her school.The 15-year-old black schoolgirl known only as Child Q thanked the “thousands of people across the world” who offered her support, after it emerged this week that she was strip-searched by officers in her school without parental consent and in the knowledge that she was menstruating. Continue reading...

Actor Omar Sy and TV crew attacked by hooded assailants while filming Netflix heist series in Paris suburbFrance has charged seven youths over a massive robbery from a film crew shooting the new season of the hit Netflix heist series Lupin.The TV unit, along with the series’ principal actor, Omar Sy, were filming in the Pablo-Picasso district of the Parisian suburb of Nanterre on an afternoon in late February when they were attacked by about 20 hooded assailants. Continue reading...

Experts suggest all-time low smoking rates may be thanks to less socializing and more time with kidsIn the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, more Americans drank heavily and used illicit drugs – but apparently fewer smoked.US cigarette smoking dropped to a new all-time low in 2020, with one in eight adults saying they were current smokers, according to survey data released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Adult e-cigarette use also dropped, the CDC reported. Continue reading...

Man arrested after driving erratically fails to convince officers over ID from ‘Errant Republic of Menda Lerenda’A Spanish man who had eaten hash cakes before he was pulled over by police for driving erratically has been fined €2,001 (£1,680) after failing to convince officers he had immunity because he was a diplomat for an “individual and mobile” republic.Earlier this month, Guardia Civil officers in the northern Spanish region of La Rioja ordered the 28-year-old to pull over after noticing that his Volkswagen Golf was zigzagging across the road and that he was on his mobile. Continue reading...

Joe Trupia of Citizen Brick added his own unique spin to sell toy molotov cocktails and figurines of the Ukrainian presidentSince the Russian invasion of Ukraine, numerous fundraisers have been launched to help Ukrainians in need, from GoFundMe campaigns to Airbnb bookings.But one Chicago artist chose a singular figure in the crisis and began to design a Lego-style figurine of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Continue reading...

President’s five-minute address to flag-waving crowd is re-aired from start after ‘technical failure’

Pontiff asserts Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign state and to defend itself against Russian invasion

Family says he was taken from home in Iranian capital by armed guards only 48 hours after being releasedMorad Tahbaz, the British-Iranian given a furlough as part of a deal to release Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Annoosheh Ashoori has been returned to Evin prison in Tehran under armed guard only 48 hours after being released.His family said he was taken from the family home in Tehran in a black car with three armed guards and his wife standing by in tears. Continue reading...

Analysis: Safe in his palace, Syrian leader appears to have given Moscow carte blanche to airlift his army

William and Kate’s visit seen as attempt to persuade countries not to follow Barbados in ditching monarchyThe UK should be helping Caribbean nations sever ties with the monarchy rather than sending the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on a charm offensive, Caribbean experts and Windrush campaigners say, predicting that Barbados’s decision to remove the Queen as head of state may have a domino effect across the region.The royals will embark on a tour of Jamaica, Belize and the Bahamas on Saturday that is widely viewed as an attempt to persuade other Caribbean nations not to follow Barbados’s example, after the Queen was said to have been dismayed by the island’s move. Continue reading...

Labour and unions demand immediate action including suspending licences of parent company DP World

Food supply fears as Biden plans to warn Chinese president against providing military support for Russia

Monument to evolutionary theorist and TV scriptwriter in Mountain Ash celebrated by campaignersWhen she arrived to study at the University of Oxford, Elaine Morgan was mistaken for a cleaner because of her broad south Wales valleys accent.But she went on to be a scriptwriter, evolutionary theorist and trailblazing feminist, and on Friday a statue of the Welsh renaissance woman was unveiled in the town of Mountain Ash, where she tried to change the world from her desk. Continue reading...

The company said its request covered all adults over the age of 18, including for those at higher risk due to age or comorbiditiesModerna late on Thursday sought emergency use authorization from US health regulators for a second Covid-19 booster shot, as a surge in cases in some parts of the world fueled fears of another wave of the pandemic.The US biotechnology company said its request covered all adults over the age of 18 so that the appropriate use of an additional booster dose of its vaccine, including for those at higher risk of Covid-19 due to age or comorbidities, could be determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and healthcare providers. Continue reading...

Two Afghan men jailed for 50 years who say they were forced by traffickers to drive boats among many asylum seekers sentenced for people smugglingHanad Abdi Mohammad is haunted by nightmares.They start as soon as he opens his eyes in a cell in the squat, whitewashed prison building on the Greek island of Chios. Continue reading...

Known as the ‘six triple eight’, battalion was only group of African American women to serve overseas during second world warThe only all-Black, all-female second world war battalion will be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal after Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill on Monday to honor the women’s efforts.The 6888th central post directory battalion, also known as the “six triple eight” was the only group of African American women to serve overseas during second world war. Created in 1944, it included 824 enlisted Black women and 31 officers from the women’s army corps, the army service forces and the army air forces. Continue reading...