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Jens Stoltenberg says Georgia and Bosnia-Herzegovina may be at risk from Putin

Volunteers in the German capital greet war-weary refugees with offers of accommodation, food and clothing

Pop star challenges perceptions of pregnancy by wearing black negligee to Dior show at Paris fashion weekIt was a moment of pure joy at a Paris fashion week sobered by the shadow of war. Rihanna sailed into the Dior show like a galleon in full sail, pregnancy bump lightly veiled in a sheer black negligee of lace-trimmed dotted Swiss tulle. The veteran fashion critic Tim Blanks, who quizzed the pop star backstage as to whether she was expecting a boy or a girl – she wasn’t telling – described her as “the most radiant expectant mother … a real ray of light on a dark joy.”

Residents say shelling of Schastia and Volnovakha is revenge for standing up to ‘Russian aggression’

Team GB Paralympic swimmer Ellie Robinson on whether she thinks a combined Games would be a good thingIn our age of inclusion, is holding two separate events – the Olympics and the Paralympics – outdated? Could combining them give world-class Paralympians the widespread exposure they deserve? I spoke to Ellie Robinson, Team GB Paralympic swimmer and one of the presenting team for the Paralympic Games on Channel 4.Hi Ellie! How’s today going?

An exhibit invites visitors to imagine how it may have felt to live on the brink of nuclear annihilation. I don’t want toMondayThe nearest thing New York has to the Imperial War Museum in London is the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, built on and around the USS Intrepid, a hulking great aircraft carrier parked at Pier 86 on the Hudson River. It is the obligation of every school age-child in greater New York to attend this museum at least once a year, and on the last day of mid-winter recess, we do. Continue reading...

Iñupiaq musher Apayauq Reitan is poised to make history – but circumstances were very different when she faced Rosebud Summit three years agoThe snow was blowing sideways as the blizzard engulfed Rosebud Summit. Alone with her dog team more than 3,500ft up in Alaska’s forbidding White Mountains, then 21-year-old musher Apayauq Reitan struggled to find the trail during the 2019 Yukon Quest.“The only way for me to tell where it was was by walking in front of the team and sinking into the snow up to my hips,” said Reitan. Continue reading...

Inquest says Martha Mills would probably not have died of sepsis if King’s College hospital doctors had heeded warningsA 13-year-old girl who died after contracting sepsis in an NHS hospital probably would have survived if doctors had identified the warning signs and transferred her to intensive care earlier, a coroner has ruled.Martha Mills, from London, described by her parents as “bright, healthy, enthusiastic”, was the first ever child to die at King’s College hospital (KCH) with a pancreatic injury of the type she sustained in a fall from her bike on an off-road family trail in Wales while on holiday last year. She was transferred to the south London hospital because it is one of three national centres for the care of children with pancreatic trauma. Continue reading...

Fire reported at nuclear plant after Russian shelling, as France warns ‘worst is yet to come’ based on Macron call with Putin

Deputy PM defends response to invasion after criticism the government has acted too slowly over sanctions

Otaci is a Moldovan border town, on the opposite side of the Dniester river lies the Ukrainian city of Mohyliv-Podilskyi. As refugees spill over the bridge that links the two, local people are rallying together to provide them with warm food, shelter, internet and free onward travel in cars and taxis.Since Putin's invasion of Ukraine started on 24 February, more than 1 million people have fled across the closest borders. The conflict could see the 'largest refugee crisis this century', the UN refugee agency has warned, with up to 4 million people fleeing the country in the coming weeks and months. So far, more than 98,000 refugees have entered Moldova, Europe's poorest country

As the festival returns from Covid-enforced hiatus, over half of the acts announced so far feature womenPaul McCartney, Kendrick Lamar and Olivia Rodrigo have been announced as among the stars performing at this summer’s Glastonbury festival.Out of the 89 names announced so far, 48 are women or acts that include female artists, meeting festival co-organiser Emily Eavis’s previously stated intention for Glastonbury to achieve gender parity on its bill. “Our future has to be 50/50,” she told the BBC in 2020. Continue reading...

He wants to nod off to Tarantino films, she wants intimacy and a decent sleep. Both parties make their case – and you deliver a verdict

The film director and her director of photography, Ari Wegner, discuss their Oscar nominations, filming through the pandemic – and what it’s like for a woman to make a western• Contains spoilers for The Power of the DogWhat a fantastic cackle Jane Campion has. The only woman twice nominated for a best director Oscar could come off a bit austere: colossal CV, monochrome uniform, touch of Michael Haneke to the knitwear. But that laugh! It first barks out in the introductions then sticks around the whole time, so infectious you start guffawing at things that aren’t funny. It’s warm and straightforward, and so is she.When I come into the room, Campion is hugging Ari Wegner on the couch. Wegner, 38, was the director of photography (DOP) on The Power of the Dog; she wears a padded kimono, blue grandad shirt and bright red trousers. Campion is recounting how she went to Tate Britain and ate this and that and isn’t it great New Zealand has reopened its borders! “It’s fabulous! Til the next lurgy-burgy or whatever!” Omicron is no match for Kiwi bonhomie. Continue reading...

The warm reception given to Ukrainians starkly reveals the hostility to other desperate refugees on the Belarus borderAt the train station in Przemyśl in Poland, thousands of refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine get off the carriages every day, seeking asylum in Europe. As they arrive, dozens of Polish border guards and soldiers distribute food, water, blankets and hot tea with a smile.I look on as the soldiers help Ukrainian women and children with their heavy luggage. I watch as they play with the children and caress their faces. As the scene unfolds, I can’t help but think that this is the same border force which, for months, a short distance north, along the same eastern border, has been violently pushing back asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who attempt to cross the frontier from Belarus. Continue reading...

To celebrate the release of The Batman, Guardian writers have written about their all-time favorite Caped Crusader films from Adam West to Ben AffleckOf all the superheroes, DC Comics’ Batman is now endowed with the most Dostoyevskian seriousness. It wasn’t always like this. And, in my heart, my favourite Batman is the first movie version, from 1966, which grew out of the wacky TV show in the era of Get Smart and I Dream Of Jeannie and Mad magazine. As kids, we watched the program religiously on TV, which is where I caught up with the film about Batman and Robin taking on Joker, Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler – never dreaming that it was anything other than deadly serious. I watched it in the same spirit as I now watch Michael Mann films. I was thrilled by the (genuinely) propulsive and exciting “dinner-dinner-dinner-dinner” theme tune (how I resented the vulgar playground joke about what Batman’s mum shouts out of the window to get him in at mealtimes) and quivered at the brilliant, psychedelically conceived title-cards for fights: BAM! I also fanatically pored over the novelisation tie-in – Batman vs The Fearsome Foursome.

As sandstorms ruin crops and drought worsens food shortages, mothers are walking miles to feed their children at clinicsAfter four vicious storms in as many weeks and the worst drought in 40 years, there are fears that the hunger crisis facing 2 million people in southern Madagascar could become a famine. With record low rainfalls in the Grand Sud region, USAid’s Famine Early Warning Network is warning that large-scale humanitarian support will be needed until next year.Food shortages have been compounded by three cyclones and one tropical storm that have ravaged parts of the south and east of the country since late January. The most recent hit the south-east coast on 22 February, affecting thousands of people. Continue reading...

The cheese, made by Michael Spycher of Mountain Dairy Fritzenhaus, comes from a small dairy that works with just 12 farmersA Gruyère from Switzerland has been named as the top cheese for the second consecutive time at the World Championship Cheese Contest in Wisconsin.The cheese from Bern, Switzerland, made its maker, Michael Spycher of Mountain Dairy Fritzenhaus, a three-time winner. Spycher also won in 2020 and 2008. The cheese, called Gourmino Le Gruyère AOP, earned a score of 98.423 out of 100. Continue reading...

This wildly entertaining series starring John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon as Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin explores the tragedies told so bombastically in Tiger King … and never tips into parodyOf all the true-life dramas that have made their way to our screens lately, Joe vs Carole (Peacock/Now TV) is the most perplexing. It is hard to see why it needed to be made, given that the sheer outrageousness of the Joe Exotic/Carole Baskin big cat feud already seen in Netflix’s bombastic documentary Tiger King (though this new show is based on a podcast, rather than that series). It is also hard to see how the makers would ever be able to shape a story so far-fetched that if it were not true, it would be beyond the realms of possibility to seem in any way believable.Yet here we are, with an eight-part drama that seems to have pulled it off. I say this cautiously, based on the first three episodes which were made available for review in advance. It is hugely entertaining, striking just the right tone, half absurd, half empathic, aware of its own limitations (those CGI wild animals would make the live-action Lion King blush) and playing up the flawed characters at the heart of it. But for all its extravagance and wildness, it may turn out to be more sensitive than the Netflix series. Continue reading...

‘The world condemns that behaviour and Australia strongly so,’ foreign minister Marise Payne says

Boris Johnson condemns ‘reckless’ actions of Vladimir Putin, as Ukrainian president tells Europe to ‘wake up’ to the perils

Website reportedly available at only 17% of normal levels in Russia, hours after broadcaster revives radio technology to reach Ukraine and parts of Russia

Shane Stone doubled down on the comments on Friday, saying he had started a conversation about not rebuilding in disaster-prone areas

Experts say nutrients from the land flushed into the sea by heavy rains can attract fish and other animals to feed – this can then attract sharks

Happiness feels selfish and wrong when my friends sleep and wake up in detentionThese are the hardest days, and they are slowly passing. This early morning, before the sun had risen, I was remembering Nauru. Continue reading...

The National Gallery of Victoria’s exclusive show will also feature more than 100 works from Picasso’s contemporaries

Students, mostly Nigerian, stranded in town 40km from the northeast border which has become a war zone

Clive and Valerie Warrington were found with stab wounds at separate locationsPolice have been granted extra time to question a man arrested on suspicion of the murders of a divorced couple in Gloucestershire.Clive and Valerie Warrington were found by emergency services with stab wounds at separate locations on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Stan Grant tells Sasha Gillies-Lekakis to leave ABC show in response to question about media coverage depicting ‘Ukraine as the good guy and Russia as the bad guy’

Speeches are made about violence against women and girls on first anniversary of Everard’s murderHundreds of people have gathered at a vigil in Clapham Common to commemorate and pay their respects to Sarah Everard, who was abducted and murdered a year ago.A crowd walked through Clapham North to the Clapham Common bandstand, the same monument where hundreds of flowers were laid last year when Everard’s abduction and murder first came to light. Continue reading...

President will stand again in April and vows to ‘explain our project with clarity and commitment’Emmanuel Macron has announced he is standing for re-election, in a letter published in a number of local newspapers in France.The president, like all potential candidates, had until 6pm local time to announce he would run in the April election and to present the country’s constitutional court with 500 signatures from MPs and other elected officials supporting his bid. Continue reading...

Five incidents that explain why the former education secretary’s knighthood has been condemned as a reward for failureGavin Williamson’s knighthood, announced by Downing Street on Thursday, has been condemned by opposition parties as a reward for failure, given the widespread criticism of his record as education secretary and mishaps in other roles. Here are some notable moments of his public ignominy. Continue reading...

Crews were called to fire at Dalton Mills on Thursday lunchtime as whole of building affectedMore than 100 firefighters are tackling a fire at a historic mill in West Yorkshire used as a filming location for television series including Peaky Blinders and Downton Abbey.Flames and black smoke could be seen in the air above Dalton Mills, a Grade II-listed building, in Dalton Lane, Keighley. There are no reports of any injuries. Continue reading...

Experts say Palau should be wary of entering into a programme that could leave it open to exploitation and harm its imagePalau’s new digital residency programme could leave it open to cryptoscammers and corruption, critics have warned, arguing that not enough due diligence has been done on the scheme.The programme allows foreigners to buy an e-residency card which in turn allows them to start companies and sign documents, among other things. Most importantly, when the relevant legislation is passed, it will allow them to trade in cryptocurrencies, useful for residents whose countries, like China, do not allow it. Continue reading...

Thousands of Russians flee country as rumours spread government is preparing clampdown

Lobby group says Ukraine war makes it ‘untenable’ for directors to be involved in Belarusian firms as wellA leading business lobby group has called on British directors to resign from the boards of Russian companies to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine.The Institute of Directors said the war in Ukraine meant it was “untenable” for British directors to remain on the boards of Russian companies, adding that any directors of Belarusian firms should also quit. Continue reading...

We have already seen indiscriminate use of cluster munitions, and the firing of ballistic missiles and rocket artillery

Figures better reflect cost of repairing houses made using defective blocks, say campaignersNew figures showing the true cost of rebuilding houses built with defective blocks that “crumble like Weetabix” could end the “torture” for thousands of homeowners hit by the Mica building scandal in Ireland, campaigners have said.They have given a cautious welcome to a government commissioned report which they say more accurately reflects rebuilding costs. Continue reading...

Legislation will reduce waiting times and allow 16- and 17-year-olds to change legal gender for first timeThe Scottish government has introduced long-awaited legislation to simplify how an individual changes their legal gender, which proposes dropping the need for medical and psychiatric reports, reducing the waiting time from two years to three months and allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to apply for the first time.Shona Robison, the social justice secretary, said the reforms were significant not only for transgender people but “in saying who we are as a nation”, as she made a Holyrood statement on Thursday afternoon to launch the bill. It is unusual for a statement to be made introducing legislation in the chamber, reflecting the tensions surrounding the plans, which have been fiercely contested within the governing Scottish National party and across the parliament. Continue reading...

Growing numbers of Russians are leaving the country, fearful of possible martial law and the war’s consequencesAlexei Trubetskoy knew he had to get out the moment he woke up and looked at his phone on the morning of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine.“I got up, checked the news in disbelief and realized I had to leave as soon as I can,” he said. Trubetskoy, who runs an English language school in Moscow, bought a ticket to Sri Lanka on the same day. Continue reading...

EU accuses UK of lagging behind as Whitehall source says it is ‘weeks behind where it should be’

Suddenly, brutally, the invasion of Ukraine has taken member states back to the founding principle of the European projectInterpreters in the European parliament usually sound so monotonous and mechanical that even well-rested listeners have trouble staying awake. But when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, addressed a parliamentary session via video link on Tuesday, something extraordinary happened: the person relaying his words into English was so moved that he audibly fought to hold back his tears. “We’re fighting … just for our land … and for our freedom,” he said, then sniffed, his voice almost breaking as Zelenskiy, wearing a khaki T-shirt in what looked like a bunker, declared: “Despite the fact … that all our cities of our country are now blocked … nobody is going to enter and intervene with the freedom and our country.”This is just one example among many, of how Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine is shaking Europeans to the core. Having long believed that war was impossible on the continent, they are shocked – and embarrassed – that Ukrainians must not only defend their country against Russian aggression, but must also defend democracy, freedom and the right of sovereign states to determine their destiny – the very principles that underpin the European Union.Caroline de Gruyter is a Europe correspondent and columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, and Foreign Policy Continue reading...

Paralympic Committee banned Russian and Belarusian athletes after threats of Beijing boycott over Ukraine conflict

The singer and style icon answers your questions on becoming ‘Blondie’, a lifetime cheating death – and the secret to a good cover versionHey, Debbie, in Face It [Harry’s memoir], you discussed the creation of the Blondie persona. How intentional were your choices in character curation, and why did you choose to adopt a persona in the first place? ChloSchmoI think we’re all seeing images or performances that we like and absorbing and amalgamating them. As a kid, the beautiful women on the silver screen were fairytale versions of what life is for a woman, because when I was coming up there was no such thing as women’s lib. A persona gave me freedom, a world of my own. You pick a character that you love and then it becomes you. Continue reading...

Netflix’s wretched new documentary tackles recent murder cases while having a title that could have been used for a gameshow. It needs to show some respectThere is a chance that, in years to come, we’ll look back at 2022 as Netflix’s Age of Grifters. Almost every show to hit it big so far this year has had a gruesome element of real-life deceit to it. There was The Tinder Swindler documentary, then Inventing Anna. And now Worst Roommate Ever.You may already have seen Worst Roommate Ever, because it is in Netflix’s top 10. And if you have watched it, there is a chance that this will be because the concept of bad roommates is universal. One old roommate of mine, for instance, locked himself out, smashed a window to get in then refused to pay for repairs. Another shaved his beard into the sink and didn’t clean up. Terrible behaviour. The worst. Continue reading...

Most London Underground services come to halt again as about 10,000 RMT members go on 24-hour strikeLondoners have struggled for a third day to move around the capital as a strike by tube workers brought much of the transport system to a standstill.Most London Underground services were completely halted on Thursday as about 10,000 staff in the RMT union went on a second 24-hour strike this week, following a walkout on Tuesday, in a row over jobs and pensions – a stoppage that also led to widespread disruption for Wednesday morning rush hour. Continue reading...

Union calls for closure of loophole that allows Russian cargo into UK on ships registered elsewhere

Royal left to live in Abu Dhabi in 2020 following allegations over business dealings relating to Saudi ArabiaSpain’s self-exiled former king, Juan Carlos, is thought to be considering a return home after prosecutors shelved three separate investigations into his financial affairs, citing insufficient evidence, the statute of limitations, and the monarch’s constitutional immunity.The 84-year-old left Spain for Abu Dhabi in August 2020 after a series of damaging allegations were made about his business dealings that further dented his already battered reputation and embarrassed his son, King Felipe. Continue reading...

Police say death of businessman who made his fortune in oil and gas is unexplained but not suspiciousA Ukraine-born oligarch has been found dead at his home in unexplained circumstances, Surrey police have said.Officers are treating the death of 66-year-old Mikhail Watford, who made his fortune in oil and gas after the demise of the Soviet Union, as unexplained. But they said it was not thought to be suspicious. Continue reading...

Beijing dismisses as ‘fake news’ claims that Chinese officials had some knowledge of Russia’s plansChina has vehemently denied a report that it asked Moscow to delay its invasion of Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics, denouncing it as “fake news”.“This kind of rhetoric is to divert attention and shift blame, which is utterly despicable,” Wang Wenbin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Thursday when asked by journalists about the New York Times report published on Wednesday. Continue reading...