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Haute couture show in Paris starts with Charlotte Casiraghi on horseback in honour of maison’s founderThe best outfit in which to weather a pandemic? Try a bouclé suit, two-tone kitten heels and a chain-strap handbag with a double C logo.In defiance of all business forecasts, Chanel is emerging from two challenging years for retail virtually unscathed. Revenues at the luxury brand grew by double digits in the first six months of 2021, the most recent period for which earnings have been published, and the house expects soon to return to 2019 levels of profitability. Strong demand has led to eye-watering price hikes, with some classic handbag styles now priced at 40% more than in the first months of 2020. In anxious times, it seems a Chanel handbag is the gold bullion of fashion. Continue reading...

From London to North Carolina, Guardian readers share their tributes to and memories of the singer and actorMy parents had just split up, and my mum, caring for two young daughters, took us to Bournemouth for a few days to get away. It was the year Jurassic Park came out and she would have been about 36, a few years older than I am now. She found a tape of Bat Out of Hell in a bargain bin at a service station on the drive there and the second she put it into the tape player in the car and heard the opening track, she was hooked. As kids, we loved it too – it was so fun, theatrical and a bit naughty. We played that tape over and over on our car journeys. I saw how his music empowered my mum and made her feel good at a very vulnerable and painful time. He has brought her pure joy since she found that tape and his songs remind me of the close bond my mum, sister and I share. Vicky, 33, editor, London Continue reading...

Actor who has a form of dwarfism says the studio’s pride in casting a Latina Snow White is undercut by stereotypes retained elsewhereGame of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage has taken aim at Disney for what he called its “fucking backwards” forthcoming live action adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.Dinklage, who stars in Joe Wright’s new film, Cyrano, accused the studio of double standards by attending to racial diversity in its cast but falling back on other damaging stereotypes. Continue reading...

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, says 'a number of events' at No 10 and Whitehall are being investigated under lockdown laws.

Vrije Universiteit will also return €250,000-plus it received in 2021 for rights centre that denied forced labour camps exist in XinjiangA decision by a leading Dutch university to refuse all further Chinese funding for a controversial study centre has sparked fresh concern about Beijing’s apparent attempts to influence debate at European educational institutions.Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit (VU), the fourth largest university in the Netherlands, has said it will accept no further money from the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing and repay sums it recently received. Continue reading...

Mining magnate’s appointment as an Officer of the Order of Australia likely to spark controversy

Canadian photographer Simone Engels was stunned to spot a huge white structure apparently floating far from any ice sheetClear winter skies and the promise of a recent evening’s beautiful sunset led photographer Simone Engels to a nearby park on Vancouver Island. But as she trained her lens on the pinkish hue of the landscape of the Pacific coast, she was shocked to see a large, iceberg-like shape on the horizon.“It was this huge, shiny, three-dimensional tubular structure,” she said. “It looked so real.” Continue reading...

Grace Tame, assault survivor who helped change law, called ‘childish’ and told she should return Australian of the year awardA sexual assault survivor who sparked a national conversation about the treatment of women and sexual assault in Australia has found herself at the centre of another fiery debate over expectations on women to smile in public.Grace Tame won last year’s Australian of the year prize after her advocacy was instrumental in overturning a Tasmanian law preventing survivors from speaking publicly about their assault. Continue reading...

This chilly Tunisian debut follows young a female killer who traps her victims by pretending to need a voice app to speakHere is a stylised and self-aware serial killer drama in black-and-white, broken down into nine “nights”. A young woman called Nada (Nour Hajri) picks up men in bars, playing on their protective gallantry or predatory instinct for weakness, by pretending to be vocally impaired and needing a voice app on her phone to speak. She goes home with them after a few drinks and horror ensues. But Nada finds herself vulnerable in falling for a young woman at her workplace, Noura (Rym Hayouni), who herself begins to realise what is happening in Nada’s after-hours existence.Black Medusa comes from first-time Tunisian film-makers Youssef Chebbi and Ismaël, who may conceivably be fans of Ana Lily Amirpour’s cult monochrome vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. There is a scene when Nada is walking one of her victims back to his apartment and a couple of cats wander into view that reminded me of Amirpour’s very cat-friendly movie. And Nada’s deadpan and implacable avenger might put you in mind of Carey Mulligan’s assailant in Promising Young Woman. Continue reading...

Australians like to think of ourselves as rebels but culturally we love rules, and aren’t always kind to rule-breakers

Transport secretary says Sue Gray will be using incident in her report, and ‘we’ll wait to see what she says’

Departure comes after parliamentary committee found he failed to ensure watchdog ‘acted independently and impartially’

‘Accumulation of errors’ resulted in death of 28-year-old Johann Ofner during filming for Bliss N Eso hip-hop videoA stuntman filming an underground poker game scene for a hip-hop music video was shot dead in 2017 with a sawn-off firearm that should never have been on set, a Brisbane coroner has found.“An accumulation of errors” resulted in the death of Johann Ofner, coroner Donald MacKenzie said in inquest findings handed down in Brisbane on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The Blur and Gorillaz frontman apologised to Swift, claiming that a ‘conversation about songwriting’ in the LA Times was ‘reduced to clickbait’Taylor Swift has called out Damon Albarn, lead singer of Blur and later of Gorillaz, on Twitter after the British musician told the LA Times she “doesn’t write her own songs”.“I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this,” the American singer, 32, tweeted at Albarn. “I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.” Continue reading...

Up to 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries lack basic reading skills, with learning losses seen from US to EthiopiaThe scale of the number of children who have lost out on their schooling during the pandemic is “nearly insurmountable”, according to UN data.Up to 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read or understand a simple text, up from 53% pre-Covid, the research suggested. Continue reading...

The country’s golden beaches have turned black as debris released from a sunken ship continues to wreak environmental and economic havocWhen Adnan Sheikh took his family on holiday to Sri Lanka last October, he booked them into a hotel for two weeks in Sarakkuwa beach, just off the coast from where the X-Press Pearl cargo ship caught fire and sank five months previously.Sheikh had been charmed by the online pictures of golden sandy beaches. But when the family arrived, it was a different story. Continue reading...

Labor leader outlines election priorities; nation records 76 Covid deaths; Peter Dutton warns against Russia invasion of Ukraine; giant ram survives 4.7 magnitude earthquake in WA. Follow all the latest news

The multi-hyphenate talks about the rerelease of his groundbreaking drama Shortbus and the changes in how we view sex in the past 15 yearsIt’s a little more than 15 years since John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus exploded – interpret that verb as lewdly as you like – into cinemas, and in a sense, it feels a whole lot longer. Which is not to say that Mitchell’s brazenly queer, joyously sex-positive comedy, about a female sex therapist pursuing the orgasm she’s never experienced at New York’s raunchiest underground club, is outdated. Rewatched today, as it enjoys a rerelease in US cinemas, it veritably hums with erotic vigour and philosophical playfulness, a presciently liberated film with its eye on the future of sexual connection, in all its poly, nonbinary possibilities.It’s just that it’s hard to imagine film-making this proudly and playfully carnal coming out of the American indie scene now: we’re living through a remarkably chaste period of cinema, perhaps marked by post-MeToo caution and responsibility, as film-makers reconsider the boundary between exuberance and exploitation. With its copious unsimulated sex scenes, Shortbus certainly raised some eyebrows in 2006 – but it could well be a lightning rod today, throwing a wrench into debates over who is allowed to depict what on screen. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Workers in Portugal picking berries ending up on the shelves of Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Tesco allege exploitative conditions

Among the manifold complexities of the global supply chain, a simple principle holds: corporations will always go where their costs – and their responsibilities – can be kept to an absolute minimum‘It’s like a little Puerto Rico – we’re basically run by the US,” said Allan, as we drove around San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras and the country’s largest manufacturing centre one day. “Here there is more ‘freedom’,” he added, doing air quotes. Allan had spent most of his adult life working as a production manager for companies such as Gildan and Hanes, making socks and underwear for American bargain shoppers. All of this garment manufacture now takes place behind the gates of Honduras’s export processing zones.When export processing zones (EPZs) proliferated in the 1980s and 90s, their boosters claimed that the employment opportunities inside them would lift up local economies. Allan’s story showed the holes in that argument. After all, he wasn’t just a low-paid garment worker: he was management. He had done everything right. And now, he said, he was moving to Canada. Continue reading...

Transparency International ranking reveals decade of standstill on tackling corruption, with many countries reaching historic lows in 2021

‘They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,’ writes musician in an open letter to his management that has since been taken down from his websiteNeil Young has demanded that his music be removed from Spotify due to vaccine misinformation spread by podcaster Joe Rogan on the streaming service, saying: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”In an open letter to his manager and record label that was posted to his website and later taken down, Young wrote: “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.” Continue reading...

A new version of the movie available to Chinese audiences transforms the anarchist message of the originalThe ending to David Fincher’s 1999 cult classic film Fight Club has been changed in China, sparking outrage among fans.Film fans in China noticed over the weekend that a version of the Brad Pitt and Edward Norton movie, newly available on streaming platform Tencent Video, was given a makeover that transforms the anarchist, anti-capitalist message which made the film a global hit. Continue reading...

The belt and road initiative is ensnaring vulnerable countries in debt via corrupt infrastructure projects. Slavery reparations from former colonial powers could help turn the tide

Dfat upgrades its travel advice as more than 100,000 Russian troops mass on border

2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame has appeared stony faced beside prime minister Scott Morrison during the 2022 Australian of the Year morning tea at The Lodge. Tame has not shied away from criticising the PM during her year in the spotlight. The sexual assault survivor and 2021 Australian of the Year has regularly commented on the government's controversial handling of a number of alleged sexual assault and harassment scandals► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

A rare snowstorm has hit the capitals of Greece and Turkey, disrupting traffic, closing schools and coating the cities’ tourists sites in white

Istanbul airport was forced to shut down while motorists were trapped in cars around Athens as rare heavy snow falls across southeast EuropeEurope’s busiest airport shut down in Istanbul on Monday while schools and vaccination centres closed in Athens as a rare snowstorm blanketed swathes of the eastern Mediterranean, causing blackouts and traffic havoc.The closure of Istanbul Airport – where the roof of one of the cargo terminals collapsed under heavy snow, causing no injuries – grounded flights stretching from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and Asia. Continue reading...

Chinese tech giant Tencent says ownership dispute behind rebranding of prime minister’s account to ‘Australian Chinese new life’

Five men were sentenced to 30 years each in prison in a ruling hailed as vindication for survivors who have spent years fighting for justiceIndigenous women raped by paramilitaries during Guatemala’s brutal civil war have triumphed in court, when their aggressors were sentenced to 30 years each in prison.In a verdict hailed as a vindication for survivors who have spent years fighting for justice, a tribunal convicted five former paramilitary patrolmen of crimes against humanity for the rape of five Maya Achi women in the early 1980s. Continue reading...

UK transport secretary says testing rules for travellers into country will change from 4am on 11 February; new France rules come into force

‘While our people suffer in camps and in prison we can’t enjoy the game even if we want to. It hurts’

The first feature from Jamie Dack, about a relationship between a 34-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl, boasts a breakout performance for newcomer Lily McInernyPalm Trees and Power Lines, a remarkably sharp-eyed and bruising debut from writer-director Jamie Dack, opens in the distended, languid stretch of a teenage summer. Lea, played in a stunning first turn by newcomer Lily McInerny, is 17 years old and bored. She lives with her single mother, harried and yearning Sandra (Gretchen Mol), somewhere in small-town, coastal California – palm trees and power lines, railroad tracks and modest homes – and floats through the days with sunbathing, YouTube makeup tutorials, and trips to the cheap ice cream chain store with her lustful best friend Amber (Quinn Frankel).Lots of films mistake glamorizing and maturing adolescence for capturing it, but Dack’s feature, developed from her 2018 short of the same name, is saturated with the teenage. The actors are fresh-faced and gangly, and Dack has a keen ear for the vacuity and experimental crudeness of teenage conversations – boys ranking girls they know on a 10-point scale, girls playing along to hang, fart jokes, generally talking about nothing. Lea spends a good portion of the first 15 minutes prone – on the ground, on the floor with Amber, on the couch, on a lounge chair, in the backseat of someone’s car during passionless sex with a clueless boy – and the camera is there with her, on her level, hemmed by the smallness of her world.Palm Trees and Power Lines is showing at the Sundance film festival with a release date to be announced Continue reading...

Five teenagers already held before 14-year-old arrested in Stretford where attack occurredPolice have arrested a sixth teenager following the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Kennie Carter in Manchester.Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said the teenager was found with stab wounds to the chest on Thirlmere Avenue in Stretford at about 7pm on Saturday. Continue reading...

Furious response from MPs and bereaved after revelation of celebration held indoors in contravention of Covid restrictions

Juan Ponce de León statue came down hours before king arrives on island to mark 500 years since founding of capital San JuanA statue of the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León has been toppled in Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, hours before a visit to the Caribbean island by Spain’s King Felipe VI.The capital’s mayor, Miguel Romero, criticized the incident on Monday as an “act of vandalism” in remarks to news outlet El Nuevo Día, but sought to downplay the significance of the incident and the extent of the damage. Continue reading...

Ex-pontiff blames editorial ‘oversight’ for previous statement he was absent from 1980 meeting over suspected paedophile priestThe former pope Benedict XVI has admitted providing false information to a German inquiry into clerical sexual abuse.Benedict, who resigned as the global leader of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, said on Monday that he had attended a meeting with local church officials in 1980 to discuss a suspected paedophile priest. He blamed a previous written statement to German investigators – in which he said he was absent from the meeting – on an editorial error. Continue reading...

My friend Chris Walker, who has died of pneumonia aged 66, worked as a GP in Sheffield for more than 30 years, first at the radical practice in Darnall, then at Park medical centre until his retirement in 2014. He developed a special interest in working in the fields of drug rehabilitation and migraine.Chris was born in Epsom, Surrey, the second of four children of Emma (nee Lewis), a nurse, and Derek Walker, a psychiatrist. The family moved to Painswick, Gloucestershire, and Chris went to Wycliffe college, then on to study medicine at Sheffield University. After graduating he travelled with friends overland to Africa in a self-assembled Unimog vehicle that resembled a mini-tank. Continue reading...

There’s almost always a profound reason someone chooses to take up a combat sport as an adult, Jenny Valentish learns at a women’s Muay Thai retreatA curious audience has gathered at the top of the steps of the beach in Victoria’s Bellarine peninsula, gawking at the 24 women having at each other on the sand.“LEAN BACK!” comes the instruction on the wind. That’s if you value your head.Top: Heather Rain with her training partner Teah Curwen, dodging dogs and walkers on the beach in Ocean Grove while concentrating on the drills.

Paris haute couture fashion week saddened by death of French designer at 73The opening of Paris haute couture fashion week, trailed as a celebratory return to live catwalk shows, was overshadowed by the death of the fashion legend Manfred Thierry Mugler.The unexpected announcement of Mugler’s death at the age of 73 made a dramatic start to fashion’s most theatrical week. Haute couture produces showstopping, headline-grabbing gowns for the upcoming red carpet season and for the world’s most extravagant parties. The pedestrian business of hemlines, which other fashion weeks concern themselves with, has no place here. Couture week had been hailed as a cheerful post-pandemic celebration of live fashion, with twice as many physical catwalk shows scheduled as last season, but the news of Mugler’s death, which came just days after a Louis Vuitton show paid tribute to the late Virgil Abloh, moved the mood music dial to bittersweet. Continue reading...

WikiLeaks founder is seeking to appeal against ruling that he can be sent to US to face espionage chargesThe WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be able to go to the supreme court to challenge a decision allowing him to be extradited to the US to face espionage charges.However, the high court refused him permission for a direct appeal, meaning the supreme court will first have to decide whether or not it should hear his challenge. Continue reading...

WikiLeaks co-founder is seeking to appeal against ruling that he can be sent to US to face espionage chargesWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be able to go to the supreme court to challenge a decision allowing him to be extradited.However, it refused him permission for a direct appeal, meaning the supreme court will have to decide whether or not it should hear his challenge. Continue reading...

Violent clashes broke out between police and people protesting against Covid-19 restrictions in Brussels on Sunday. Police used teargas and fired water cannon in an effort to disperse protesters. Authorities said about 50,000 people took part in the demonstration in the Belgium capital, which coincided with similar protests in other European cities.Protesters hurled projectiles outside the European Union's diplomatic service and metal barriers were thrown at officers in a metro station

In a new documentary premiered at Sundance, Wood claimed she was ‘coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretences’The actor Evan Rachel Wood has accused the rock musician Marilyn Manson of raping her on the set of the music video for his 2007 single Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand).In Phoenix Rising, a new documentary about her life and career which premiered at the 2022 Sundance film festival, Wood said that during a previously discussed “simulated sex scene”, Manson “started penetrating me for real” once the cameras were rolling. Continue reading...

Crocodile meat began to grow in popularity in Thailand when pork prices surged after a shortage caused by the spread of African swine fever. Wichai Roongtaweechai, who owns a farm and a restaurant specialising in crocodile meat, says he has seen sales of crocodile meat go up by 70% Continue reading...

State department says dependants of staffers must leave the country amid growing tensions over Russia’s military buildupThe US and UK are withdrawing diplomats’ families from Ukraine, but the EU has said dependants will stay put for now, amid heightened fears of a Russian invasion.The state department told the dependants of staffers at the US embassy in Kyiv that they must leave the country. It also said that non-essential embassy staff could leave Ukraine at government expense. Continue reading...

About half of British staff in Kyiv reportedly scheduled to return to UK in response to threat of Russian invasionSome British staff and dependants are being withdrawn from the embassy in Ukraine in response to a growing military threat from Russia, the Foreign Office has said.Officials said there were no specific threats to British diplomats, with about half of the staff in Kyiv reportedly scheduled to come home to the UK. Continue reading...

NDIS participants will be able to use their core funding to pay for RATs, but disability groups say they should be free