UNHCR-backed pilot sought to process claims in the community from those whose initial applications had been rejectedA groundbreaking scheme overseen by UNHCR to process women’s asylum claims in the community rather than by locking up the applicants in detention has led to only one being granted leave to remain in the UK, according to a report.The aim of the pilot scheme was not to boost granted rates of asylum claims but to demonstrate that the asylum process could be successfully managed in the community without the need to lock women up, something the United Nations refugee agency said it had succeeded in doing in the report published on Monday. Continue reading...
A new collection of photographs reveals the lives survivors have built and the legacies they have passed down the generationsThe film and photographic images that emerged from the Holocaust, often in a blurrily dark monochrome, instantly became the visual definition of evil in the 20th century. So to set this brutal iconography against the cheerily crisp colours of modern English suburban homes in springtime – complete with armchairs, French doors on to patios, bright tulips in pots – might risk accusations of superficiality, or worse.But when the people in these apparently mundane locations are themselves survivors of the Holocaust, the sheer joyful fact of their existence becomes a triumphant rejoinder to the unimaginable cruelty and depravity of three-quarters of a century ago. The new images are collected together in Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors, which opens later this week to coincide with world Holocaust day, at the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) gallery in Bristol after a showing at the Imperial War Museum in London. Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#5VB9B)
PM has asked Cabinet Office to conduct inquiry into allegations, says spokespersonBoris Johnson has ordered a formal inquiry into allegations by the Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani that she was sacked as a minister after being told her “Muslimness” was “making colleagues uncomfortable”.In a brief statement early on Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister has asked the Cabinet Office to conduct an inquiry into the allegations made by Nusrat Ghani MP. Continue reading...
by Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent on (#5VB9C)
Young Chinese women want to get educated and prioritise their careers, a trend that has alarmed the authorities battling a demographic crisisEarly this month, China’s state news agency Xinhua posted a video reminding young Chinese men born in the year 2000 that they are now finally eligible to get married. “Post 00s have reached legal marriage age,” it declared.The hashtag swiftly popped up in the “top-searched list” of Weibo hot topics, but many read it as the government’s attempt to put pressure on them. “Who dares to get married these days? Don’t we need to make money?” one questioned. “Stop nagging me!” said another. Continue reading...
by Caitlin Cassidy (now) and Matilda Boseley (earlier on (#5VB19)
Novavax vaccine recommended for use in Australia; nation records at least 58 Covid deaths; health minister suggests reseller ‘hoarding’ a factor in shortage of rapid antigen tests; EU and US issue Covid travel warnings for Australia. This blog is now closed
He could request Frank Sinatra before he could speak, and recites Noël Coward lyrics, but what does the singer-songwriter enjoy behind closed doors?The first song I remember hearing
In recent years the People’s Liberation Army has ratcheted up its missions, which it says are training drills, to near-daily frequencyChina’s air force flew 39 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Sunday, the largest daily number since record-breaking incursions in October.Taiwan’s Ministry of Defence said it had tasked aircraft in response, issued radio warnings to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pilots and deployed missile defence systems to monitor the activity. Continue reading...
Ex-leader targets UK foreign secretary’s remarks on potential China aggression in the Indo-Pacific, adding Britain suffers from ‘relevance deprivation’The former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has accused Liz Truss of making “demented” comments about Chinese military aggression and urged the British foreign secretary to hurry “back to her collapsing, disreputable government”.Keating, in a blistering op-ed, also said Britain “suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation” and its tilt to the Indo-Pacific lacks credibility. Continue reading...
The rapper and businessman is the focus of an intimate three-part documentary, premiering at Sundance, following his highs and lowsMuch like Jesus Christ, the friction between Kanye West and the general public comes from an attunement to the grandeur of his own destiny that can read like delusional arrogance. His first album as a rapper, 2004’s The College Dropout, is littered with nods to his significant place in history and how they foretell an auspicious future. He mentions his mother’s arrest at “the tender age of six” for Oklahoma City’s sit-in protests, declaring “with that in my blood, I was born to be different”. As he’d have it, it was no mere coincidence that on the fateful night of his near-death experience in a 2002 car crash, he was brought to the same hospital where Notorious BIG drew his final breaths. In one of the comedic skits breaking up the tracklist, a snot-nosed character delivers a line that rings out like a broad artistic statement of purpose for its writer: “This was meant to be.”And indeed, it was. Many of the claims that skeptics took as boastful chest-puffing – that he’d be one of the greatest emcees to ever pick up a mic, that he’d revolutionize hip-hop and fashion in his own image, that he would attain such notability as to make him one of the main characters of planet Earth – were borne out with time and recast as extreme yet correct self-assurance in the face of insecurity. (Crucially, The College Dropout is also shot through with feelings of inadequacy, West’s anxiety about living up to the stratospheric standards he feels God has set for him.) Though his belief in himself may have been expressed in the language of borderline-pathological ego, his later successes retroactively transformed that mentality into a defiant assertion of worth. The future’s context brings clarity to the past deeds and words of a confounding, complex figure, but in the new documentary jeen-yuhs, that cuts both ways to shed some insight on the chaos that’s engulfed West as of late. Continue reading...
by Guardian staff and Agence France-Presse on (#5VB54)
Mugler’s daring collections came to define the 1980’s power dressing. He later dressed Beyonce and Lady GagaFrench designer Manfred Thierry Mugler, known for the powerful-shouldered, cinch-waisted silhouettes that reigned over fashion in the 1980s, died on Sunday at the age of 73 of “natural causes”, according to his agent.A former ballet dancer, Mugler’s bold collections – presented at highly stylised, themed runway shows – were at the forefront of the structured, decadent style that came to be known as “power dressing”. Continue reading...
Journalist Marian Kupu recounts the moment of the eruption and the panic that followedTonga is used to natural disasters, but they have never experienced anything like the last week.“We’ve experienced tropical cyclones, but this is so new and no one will ever forget this, ever,” says Marian Kupu, a journalist for BroadCom Broadcasting FM87.5 in Tonga. Continue reading...
Vicky McClure and Adrian Lester star in this slick police thriller full of bomb factories and banter. Just go in thinking CSI: Peckham or Line of Bomb Duty and you’ll have a great timeThere will come a point, I suppose, when all the police departments have been discovered by broadcasters’ drama teams and mined to exhaustion. Within a few years, possibly, we will be gamely struggling to evince interest in the workings of Polzeath’s Anti-Jaywalking Squad (who is the mysterious stranger who keeps crossing against the lights?) or the Snettisham Window Box Protection Unit (when Mrs Addlestrop’s hyacinths are brutally uprooted, Claire Goose as DCI Crumblebum must catch the culprit before he starts on her lobelia). But for now there are still unplumbed sectors where real drama is to be had.So to new ITV series Trigger Point, created by Daniel Brierley, produced by the company owned by Line of Duty’s Jed Mercurio and built round that series’ woefully underused actor Vicky McClure. She plays an “expo”, a member of the Metropolitan Police bomb disposal squad called – wildly unconvincingly, but maybe that’s just me – Lana Washington. Her partner in bomb disposition is Joel “Nut” Nutkins (I suspect this time it’s not just me), played by Adrian Lester, with whom she served in Afghanistan. Continue reading...
Monday: Australia’s offshore processing system on Nauru will cost taxpayers nearly $220m over the next six months. Plus: can a sick note make you better?Good morning. Australia’s offshore processing regime on Nauru will cost taxpayers nearly $220m over the next six months. Russia has sent troops close to Ukraine’s borders. And Google warns that an upcoming Australian court ruling could have “devastating impacts” on the internet.Australia’s offshore processing regime on Nauru will cost taxpayers nearly $220m over the next six months as it holds 107 people on the Pacific island. Brisbane firm Canstruct International has been awarded a new extension – its eighth non-competitive contract extension – for $218.5m to provide six months of “garrison and welfare services” on Nauru. The company’s total revenue from island contracts over the past five years now totals more than $1.8bn. It currently costs Australian taxpayers more than $4m a year to hold one person within the Nauru offshore regime – a little over $11,000 per person per day. Continue reading...
Gardaí attempting to establish at what point 66-year-old man died before alarm was raised at shop in CarlowPolice suspect that a dead man who was brought to a post office in Ireland by two men trying to claim his pension had died just hours before the incident.Gardaí have ruled out foul play, with a postmortem revealing he had died not long before the alarm was raised at Hosey’s shop and post office in the town of Carlow, in County Carlow. Continue reading...
Lawmakers and regional delegates will vote for successor to Sergio Mattarella, who steps down on 3 FebruaryItalian parliamentarians will begin casting their votes for a new president on Monday after the scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi abandoned his dream of becoming the next head of state.More than 1,000 lawmakers and regional delegates will participate in the complex secret ballot, described as being akin to the appointment of a new pope, that could go through several rounds before a successor to Sergio Mattarella, who is due to step down on 3 February, is elected. Continue reading...
by Andrew Roth in Moscow, Dan Sabbagh and Lisa O'Carr on (#5VAZ7)
Warning greeted with shock and some scepticism in Kyiv but aide says it fits ‘logical chain’Ukraine is reacting “seriously” to UK Foreign Office allegations that Moscow has plans to invade the country and install a puppet government, a senior government adviser has said, adding that Kyiv is resisting Russian efforts to destabilise its government and economy.The extraordinary Foreign Office claims that Moscow may topple the government and install Yevhen Murayev, a former MP who controls a pro-Russia television station, were met with shock and some scepticism in Ukrainian political and media circles on Sunday. Continue reading...
Former security and diplomatic chiefs warn that country is at risk of economic collapse as Taliban begin talks in NorwayAfghanistan can only be saved from state collapse and widespread starvation if the definition of legitimate humanitarian aid to the country is broadened, some of Britain’s most senior former security and diplomatic chiefs have said.The group, including two former national security advisers, a former chief of defence staff and a former ambassador to Afghanistan, write in a letter published in the Guardian that the aid that can be sent to the Taliban-controlled country without fear of sanctions is too restricted. Continue reading...
by Presented by Laura Murphy-Oates. Produced by Jane on (#5VAWS)
All summer we’ve seen the highly contagious Omicron variant rip through most of Australia, as a record number of people continue to get sick and die from the virus.Laura Murphy-Oates speaks to a paramedic and a senior ICU nurse, who say the health system is being pushed to the limitRead more: Continue reading...
Ex-minister says she was rebuffed after telling Boris Johnson she was told she lost job because of her faithThe row over Islamophobia gripping the government deepened on Sunday as the former minister Nusrat Ghani claimed the prime minister told her he “could not get involved” after she told him party whips had blamed her sacking on her “Muslimness”.Ghani’s claims have rocked the Tory party at a critical time for Boris Johnson, as he awaits a make-or-break inquiry into lockdown-flouting parties in Downing Street. Continue reading...
Monarch stayed at Windsor Castle over Christmas as a precautionary measure as Covid cases roseThe Queen has flown by helicopter from Windsor Castle to Sandringham where she will spend the next few weeks, it is understood.The monarch normally hosts her family at Sandringham over the holidays, and on Christmas Day the royals attend church nearby. Continue reading...
Crushing poverty is forcing starving displaced people to make desperate choicesThe temperature is dropping to below zero in western Afghanistan and Delaram Rahmati is struggling to find food for her eight children.Since leaving the family home in the country’s Badghis province four years ago, the Rahmatis have been living in a mud hut with a plastic roof in one of Herat city’s slums. Drought made their village unliveable and the land unworkable. Like an estimated 3.5 million Afghans who have been forced to leave their homes, the Rahmatis now live in a neighbourhood for internally displaced people (IDP). Continue reading...
The case is the first involving a hamster in the care of an owner following pet shop outbreakA hamster surrendered to authorities by its owners has tested positive for Covid-19 and more than 2,200 hamsters have been culled, Hong Kong officials have said, as the city grapples to contain an outbreak of the virus.On Tuesday officials ordered the killing of hamsters from dozens of pet shops after tracing a Covid-19 outbreak to a worker and asked people to surrender any of the animals bought on or after 22 December. Continue reading...
The most satisfying lives are those which involve challenge, fear and struggle, says psychologist Paul BloomThe simplest theory of human nature is hedonism– – we pursue pleasure and comfort. Suffering and pain are, by their very nature, to be avoided. The spirit of this view is nicely captured in The Epic of Gilgamesh: “Let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, dance and play day and night… For such is the destiny of men.” And also by the Canadian rock band Trooper: “We’re here for a good time / Not a long time / So have a good time / The sun can’t shine every day.”Hedonists wouldn’t deny that life is full of voluntary suffering – we wake up in the middle of the night to feed the baby, take the 8.15 into the city, undergo painful medical procedures. But for the hedonist, these unpleasant acts are seen as the costs that must be paid to obtain greater pleasures in the future. Challenging and difficult work is the ticket to survival and status; boring exercise and unpleasant diets are what you have to go through for abs of steel and a vibrant old age, and so on. Continue reading...
Dutch military police say man taken to hospital and that his age and nationality have not yet been determinedA stowaway was discovered in the wheel section under the front of a freight plane that arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport from South Africa on Sunday, Dutch military police have said.“The man is doing well considering the circumstances and has been taken to a hospital,” the police in charge of Dutch border control said in a statement. Continue reading...
Bloc would unify to respond within days, says official on eve of foreign ministers’ meetingThe EU will be ready to launch sanctions against Russia within days of a military attack on Ukraine, a senior official has said, as the volatile security crisis enters a critical phase.EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday are expected to issue a further warning to Moscow amid simmering tensions over Russia’s buildup of 100,000 troops and heavy weapons along its border with Ukraine. Continue reading...
In the city’s favelas, a new generation of ‘narco-pentecostals’ are embracing Christian symbols“Pastor, do you think we could hold a service at my house next Thursday?” the peroxide-haired gangster wondered, cradling an AK-47 in his lap as he took a seat beside the man of God.A few months earlier, the 23-year-old had bought his first home with the fruits of his illegal work as a footsoldier for one of Rio de Janeiro’s drug factions. Now, he wanted to give thanks for the blessings he believed he had received from above. Continue reading...
Kay-Achim Schönbach said it was ‘nonsense’ that Russia wanted to invade its neighbour and that Kyiv would never win back CrimeaThe chief of Germany’s navy has resigned after arguing at a livestreamed event that Putin “deserves respect” and Kyiv will never ever win back annexed Crimea – comments that Ukraine’s ambassador in Berlin said “massively” called into question Germany’s trustworthiness.Vice-admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, who has led Germany’s entire naval force and represented it externally since March 2020, made his comments at a talk organised by a thinktank in Delhi on Friday. Continue reading...
Thirty years ago, Jay Rayner sat down for lunch with a Holocaust denier and rising star of the far right. So how did Ewald Althans end up working in the arts and marrying his Taiwanese boyfriend?I sent Ewald Althans a message suggesting we meet in a coffee shop, not far from my East Berlin hotel. I thought it might be a more relaxed place in which to talk. He declined. “I do not feel too comfy any more sitting in a cosy place having an intense talk about National Socialism, Hitler, Auschwitz, etc,” he texted back. “I suggest we have a nice long walk.” I felt terribly naïve. After all, he had a point. Sitting in a Berlin coffee shop, chatting openly about the Nazis, really might not be the best way to go. I agreed to wait for him at the hotel. It required patience; he sent me repeated messages apologising for being late. “No worries,” I replied. “It’s been 29 years since we last met. I can wait another hour.”Despite both the three decades that had passed and the Covid mask, I recognised him immediately. He wore drainpipe jeans ripped at the knee instead of an expensive sculpted suit, and his once straw-blond hair was now grey. Nevertheless, it was still recognisably him: the man once tipped to lead Germany to a new fascist glory. We turned out of the hotel and began to stroll down one of Berlin’s sun-dappled, tree-lined avenues. “So,” I said, “You’re no longer a neo-Nazi then?” He laughed, but did not answer. Perhaps he didn’t consider it a question deserving of a response. Continue reading...
Thirty years after his death, the rich life of the Spanish Gypsy singer is depicted through 10 illustrated episodesIn death, as in life, the legendary flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla continues to confound expectations, cross borders and demand that his blistered and blistering voice be heard.The revered, beloved and sometimes controversial cantaor died of lung cancer in July 1992, aged just 41. But as the 30th anniversary of his death looms, the singer born José Monge Cruz is being reincarnated in the black-and-white pages of a new graphic novel intended as a homage to Camarón, the music he created and the comic book itself. Continue reading...
Ninety wait for justice as infection controls prevent juries from sitting for two yearsSt Lucia has not been able to hold a homicide trial for two years, because courtrooms are too small to safely seat a jury under Covid rules, the Caribbean nation’s director of public prosecutions has said.The build-up of untried cases is one of the most extreme examples of the damaging impact of the pandemic on access to justice globally. Rule of law has deteriorated around the world, the World Justice Project found. Three-quarters of the countries evaluated for its Rule of Law Index experienced a decline in 2021. Continue reading...
Chair of parliamentary group says such games are too much like gambling-industry products linked to problem bettingBritain’s lottery operator should be banned from using the national lottery brand and logo to promote online instant-win games that may lead to problem gambling, according to the chair of a group of MPs examining gambling harms.Carolyn Harris, the Labour MP and chair of the all party parliamentary group for gambling-related harm, said the online games now offered by the lottery operator, Camelot, were similar to harmful betting products promoted by the gambling industry. They also give a smaller proportion of revenues to good causes compared with the draw-based games. Continue reading...
Seminal work by scholar and future politician Eric Williams, shunned for decades, is issued by mainstream imprintIn 1938, a brilliant young Black scholar at Oxford University wrote a thesis on the economic history of British empire and challenged a claim about slavery that had been defining Britain’s role in the world for more than a century.But when Eric Williams – who would later become the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago – sought to publish his “mind-blowing” thesis on capitalism and slavery in Britain, he was shunned by publishers and accused of undermining the humanitarian motivation for Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act. Continue reading...
by Paul Lashmar, Nicholas Gilby and James Oliver on (#5VAKA)
Pamphlets attacked the president and foreign ministerShocking new details have emerged of Britain’s role in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century.Last year the Observer revealed how British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to incite prominent Indonesians to “cut out” the “communist cancer”. Continue reading...
The fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday reminds us that history and geography mean that now, as then, the fates of the two countries are entwinedAlmost 50 years ago, in the early hours of 2 February 1972, the British embassy in Dublin was gutted by fire. This was not an accident. A huge crowd had gathered in protest outside the lovely Georgian terrace in Merrion Square all through the previous day. They cheered as young men climbed across the balconies and smashed a window. They threw in some petrol and lit it. A fusillade of petrol bombs was unleashed from the crowd. People chanted the slogan they had learned from the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965: burn, baby, burn. The police did nothing to stop the attack.I was 14 at the time, so I wasn’t there. But some of my older friends were and I wished I had been with them. The assault was organised by the IRA, but most ordinary, peaceful Irish people approved of it. It seemed like the right thing to do, a reasonable response to the massacre the previous weekend in Derry of 13 unarmed civilians by the first battalion of the British army’s Parachute Regiment. A woman waiting for a bus in Dublin told the Irish Times: “I felt outraged that the British should do this and I felt that whatever the rights and wrongs, they would know how we felt when we burned down their embassy.” Continue reading...
With negotiations deadlocked, Moscow is continuing to build up its military forces for a possible invasionRussia has sent troops more than 4,000 miles to Ukraine’s borders and announced sweeping naval drills as Moscow expands its preparations for a potential attack on Ukraine as negotiations appear at a deadlock.Six Russian landing ships capable of carrying main main battle tanks, troops and other military vehicles travelled through the Channel en route to the Mediterranean last week in a deployment that could bolster an amphibious landing on Ukraine’s southern coast if Vladimir Putin orders an attack. Ukraine’s military intelligence has claimed that Russia is hiring mercenaries and supplying its proxy forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with fuel, tanks and self-propelled artillery in preparation for a potential upsurge in fighting. Continue reading...
by Eva Wiseman, Rowan Moore, Jay Rayner, Susie Orbach on (#5VAJ6)
As people in England are told to return to the office, five Observer writers assess the impact of the last two years on work, home – and our wider social frameworkI’ve read and thought more about office life over the last two years than I have at any time over the previous two decades when I worked in one. I say worked, but of course from this distance I can see that what I called office work might not quite stand up in a court of law, being comprised of equal amounts gossip, tea-runs and shouting passive aggressively at computers, alongside the clattery typing I am paid for. Continue reading...
Monika was too busy with her young family to join the early protests against Poland’s strict abortion laws. But when she became pregnant with her fourth child, she realised she had to act
Campaigners say compulsory menu labelling could put too much emphasis on calorie countingA Big Mac has 508. Wagamama’s hot chicken katsu curry has 1,089. And a large mixed grill with chips at Wetherspoon’s has 2,052. But will knowing how many calories are in a restaurant meal help make a difference to the UK’s obesity epidemic?From April, all cafes and restaurants run by companies with more than 250 staff will be obliged to include calorie counts for each item on their menus. The government hopes this will encourage people to make healthier choices and nudge restaurants towards offering healthier options. Continue reading...
Tory MPs, ministers and Downing St staff divided on whether to back prime minister, ahead of findings on lockdown breachesEarly last week a call came into the office of a senior cabinet minister from one of Boris Johnson’s team at Downing Street. No 10 was frantically lodging requests across departments for members of the government to go on the media the following morning to defend the prime minister – and face the inevitable barrage of near-impossible questions about “partygate”.Texts were exchanged. Agonised faces were pulled. Would it be a good idea? What was to be gained for the minister concerned? Was it just a hospital pass that required a decent excuse? In the end, a judgment was reached by the minister’s closest officials. “We have to do it, don’t we?” one said. “If we say no it will be a declaration of fucking war.” Continue reading...
Caitríona Balfe is the luminous star of Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-tipped Belfast. She talks about how modelling almost broke her, bonding on set with Judi Dench and her childhood during the TroublesCaitríona Balfe can remember the exact moment she realised she was done with being a model. It was the mid-2000s and Balfe was 27-ish, she thinks. It had been almost a decade since she’d been scouted in a Dublin supermarket while rattling a tin for a multiple sclerosis charity. She had done pretty well, walking in runway shows for Louis Vuitton and Chanel, flitting between Paris, Milan and New York. Balfe and her friends called themselves “the blue-collar models” – they weren’t the 0.1% of supermodels, the household names, but the next rung down.Now, though, Balfe was in Dallas, doing a well-paid but soulless shoot for a catalogue. After each set-up, a producer would ping a little bell to indicate they needed to fast-change to the next outfit. At her age, in that youth-fixated business, Balfe knew the clock was ticking. She’d handled just about as much blunt rejection as she could take for one lifetime. “The shows were fun and exciting, but with catalogues, you’re just standing there like a clothes horse – literally,” says Balfe. “And you know, ‘This is not what I want to be doing with my life.’ Continue reading...
With an exhibition featuring unseen photos of the singer opening in London, his son talks about his father’s passion for sport – and the night he was shotZiggy Marley was only eight years old when his mum and dad – the reggae great Bob Marley – were shot in an apparent assassination attempt inside their home in Kingston, Jamaica. But he remembers it like yesterday.“Cops came for us children in the middle of the night and carried us away to a secret hideaway up in the hills – no one really knew what was happening. It was scary but it was kind of exciting,” he says. Continue reading...
World news | The Guardian