In northern France, friends and relatives of those who died in the tragic crossing on Wednesday are desperate for answersOn Saturday Gharib Ahmed spent five hours outside the police station in Calais, desperately waiting for news. “It was so cold. There was no answer,” he said. Ahmed was seeking confirmation that his brother-in-law Twana Mamand was one of 27 people who died in the Channel on Wednesday after the flimsy dinghy taking them to the UK sank. “I want to see his body. I have to understand,” Ahmed told the Guardian.Relatives of the mostly Iraqi Kurds who perished in the world’s busiest shipping lane spent the weekend in a state of anxiety and confusion. Ahmed said he last heard from his brother-in-law at 3am on Wednesday, around the time Twana set off in darkness from a beach near Dunkirk. After two days of silence, Ahmed travelled with his wife, Kale Mamand – Twana’s sister – from their home in London to northern France, arriving on Friday night. Continue reading...

In less than a year, millions of football fans will descend on Qatar to cheer on their favourite teams in the 2022 World Cup. They’ll be greeted by dozens of shiny new hotels, restaurants, roadways, and seven glistening new football stadiums. It will be a proud moment for Qatar, and for the entire region, which has never previously hosted a World Cup.Pete Pattisson, who has been reporting on the preparations for nearly a decade, says this new infrastructure has come at a cost. Pattisson’s reporting shows 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in the course of World Cup preparations – many from sudden, unexplained causes.Pattison tells Michael Safi about some of the workers who have lost their lives, and why the wage and labour changes recently introduced by Qatar’s government fall shortRead more: Continue reading...

After tense campaign, early results show about two-thirds in favour of law giving legal basis for Covid pass

After British founding family was forced to cede control, focus of attention turns to AsiaIt began with a sheepskin slipper in 1825, but Clarks is moving out of its comfort zone in a battle for survival under new Chinese leadership.The British footwear institution, founded by Quaker brothers Cyrus and James Clark, shifted from comfort to fashion after the desert boot inspired by James’ great grandson Nathan Clark’s time in Burma in the 1940s, became the footwear of choice for The Beatles, Oasis and generations of reggae artists.“You get born in Clarks and you die in Clarks but from 10 to 70 you don’t want them,” says one industry insider. Continue reading...

Police appeal for further information after attack at address in SouthhallA 16-year-old boy has been named as the victim in a fatal stabbing in west London.Rishmeet Singh died from a stab wound inflicted during a fight involving a group of people at about 9pm on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Expectations of salvaging 2015 deal low amid fears Iran is covertly boosting nuclear programmeTalks between world powers and Iran on salvaging the 2015 nuclear deal will resume in Vienna on Monday after a five-month hiatus, but expectations of a breakthrough are low.The talks could liberate Iran from hundreds of western economic sanctions or lead to a tightening of the economic noose and the intensified threat of military attacks by Israel. Continue reading...

The performer will be the first Black woman to enter the mausoleum, in recognition of her wartime workIn November 1940, two passengers boarded a train in Toulouse headed for Madrid, then onward to Lisbon. One was a striking Black woman in expensive furs; the other purportedly her secretary, a blonde Frenchman with moustache and thick glasses.Josephine Baker, toast of Paris, the world’s first Black female superstar, one of its most photographed women and Europe’s highest-paid entertainer, was travelling, openly and in her habitual style, as herself – but she was playing a brand new role. Continue reading...

Milos Zeman performs inauguration ceremony from cubicle after testing positive for coronavirusThe Czech president, Milos Zeman, has appointed the leader of a centre-right alliance, Petr Fiala, as prime minister in a ceremony he performed from a plexiglass cubicle after testing positive for Covid-19.Fiala leads a bloc of five centre and centre-right opposition parties that won an election in October, ousting the incumbent Andrej Babiš and his allies. Continue reading...

Lyricist of West Side Story who went on to write music and lyrics for acclaimed works including Sweeney Todd and Into the WoodsStephen Sondheim, who has died aged 91, was a leading light of musical theatre over the course of more than six decades, from the moment in 1957 when he achieved renown as Leonard Bernstein’s lyricist for West Side Story. He went on to establish a place for himself with intelligent, unconventional works such as Company (1970), Sweeney Todd (1979) and Into the Woods (1987), which brought him a following appreciative of the new departures he made, even if his chosen path was not obvious or easy.Sondheim saw himself as heir to Oscar Hammerstein II, who had written the lyrics for Oklahoma! (1943) and South Pacific (1949). Many expected him to revive the floundering American musical, supplying new perceptiveness, relevance and verve. Continue reading...

In a developing country reliant on its tourist industry, the rapidly eroding ‘smiling coast’ shows the urgent need for action on climate changeWhen Saikou Demba was a young man starting out in the hospitality business, he opened a little hotel on the Gambian coast called the Leybato and ran a beach bar on the wide expanse of golden sand. The hotel is still there, a relaxed spot where guests can lie in hammocks beneath swaying palm trees and stroll along shell-studded pathways. But the beach bar is not. At high tide, Demba reckons it would be about five or six metres into the sea.“The first year the tide came in high but it was OK,” he says. “The second year, the tide came in high but it was OK. The third year, I came down one day and it [the bar] wasn’t there: half of it went into the sea.” Continue reading...

Children’s Society criticises practice of placing unaccompanied minors in hotels with limited careRecord numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are being accommodated in four hotels along England’s south coast, a situation that the Children’s Society has described as “shocking”.About 250 unaccompanied children who arrived in small boats are thought to be accommodated in hotels, which Ofsted said was an unacceptable practice. Continue reading...

France seeks greater European co-operation, but talks exclude Priti Patel after diplomatic rowEU ministers are meeting in Calais on Sunday to discuss how to stop people crossing the Channel in small boats, but without the UK home secretary, Priti Patel, whose invitation was rescinded following a diplomatic row with France.France has invited representatives from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the European Commission to the meeting, which was called last week after 27 people hoping to claim asylum in the UK died making the perilous crossing. Continue reading...

An increase in red tape and charges means headaches for those sending gifts to EuropePeople preparing to send Christmas parcels to family and friends in Europe face being caught out by post-Brexit red tape and charges that threaten to take some of the joy out of gift-giving.A warning has also been sounded that some of those who have sent gifts to the EU this year have encountered problems ranging from delays and unexpected charges to items going missing. Continue reading...

Recently discovered scenes from Homer’s Illiad show how the influence of the epic poem spread far and wideArchaeologists always hope for a mosaic. Roman-British sites have yielded some remarkable treasures, from writing tablets at Vindolanda near Hadrian’s Wall to curse tablets at Bath, but there is something magical about seeing tesserae – the little coloured tiles of a mosaic – emerge from beneath the soil. And few have been more remarkable than those recently found in Rutland, which depict scenes from the latter part of Homer’s Iliad.There may be debates about the skill of the mosaicist but the scenes have sequential movement and energy that we might more commonly associate with a comic strip. The first shows the duel between Achilles – the greatest Greek warrior of the war of Troy – and Hector, his Trojan counterpart. They fight on chariots: the golden-haired, highly muscled Achilles on the left, the smaller, tunic-wearing Hector on the right. Achilles is naked, cementing his status as the most heroic figure. Hector is literally smaller (even his horses look a little smaller). He is putting up a brave fight, but we’re in no doubt who is the alpha male. Continue reading...

The next congress will have the opportunity to elect a new supreme court, attorney general and state auditorsHondurans head to the polls on Sunday in the first general election since US federal prosecutors laid out detailed evidence of intimate ties between drug smugglers and the Honduran state.The country’s past three presidents, as well as local mayors, legislators, police and military commanders have been linked to drug trafficking in what US prosecutors have described as a narco-state. Continue reading...

Tag, conkers, Simon Says and hide and seek are not just for children, there are adults who take them very competitively, too. Amelia Tait meets the competitors for whom kids’ games have become a career. One, two, three…Steve Max has no memories of playing Simon Says as a kid. He probably did – the centuries-old command game is beloved by adults who need children to be quiet (and put their hands on their head) for a little while – but Max only recalls playing Duck, Duck Goose and kickball at summer camp. No matter. At the ripe old age of 59, Max now plays Simon Says at least two or three times a week.Max is one of a handful of professional Simon Says callers across the globe. He leads the game after First Holy Communion ceremonies, in the middle of corporate all-staff meetings, and even during America’s National Basketball Association (NBA) games. “If you think about it, there’s really only one rule: only do it if my command is preceded by ‘Simon Says’,” Max says over the phone from New York, “And yet people are just terrible.” Continue reading...

The ‘traffic light’ parties all want progress but have different ideas about what that means on business and green issuesIn Unterleuten, a bestselling novel by the German novelist Juli Zeh, the inhabitants of a village outside Berlin are shocked to find out that a plot of land on their doorstep has been earmarked for a gigantic wind farm.One of the characters, a birdwatcher called Gerhard Fliess, knows what to do: he calls an old friend at the local environment ministry to remind him that the countryside around Unterleuten is the habitat of an endangered species of sandpiper. Surely that will halt the bulldozers. Continue reading...

As attacks on Palestinians worsen, we speak to farmers, settlers, Israeli human rights activists, and the mother of a three-year-old boy left injured in a raidThe assault was already under way when, having hastily collected her youngest child from a neighbour, Baraa Hamamda, 24, ran home to find her three-year-old son, Mohammed, lying in a small pool of blood and apparently lifeless on the bare floor where she had left him asleep. “I thought that’s it, he’s dead,” she says. “He won’t come back.”Mohammed wasn’t dead, though he wouldn’t regain consciousness for more than 11 hours, having been struck on the head by a stone thrown through a window by an Israeli settler, one of dozens who had invaded the isolated village of Al Mufakara, in the West Bank’s rocky, arid south Hebron hills. Continue reading...

Women in Westminster rally to support Tory MP Caroline Nokes after culture secretary’s denialNadine Dorries was embroiled in a row with fellow Tory MP Caroline Nokes this weekend after the culture secretary dismissed her allegations of inappropriate touching against the prime minister’s father.Dorries said she had known Stanley Johnson for 15 years and described him as a gentleman. She rejected Nokes’s claim that he had “smacked her on the backside” at the Conservative party conference in 2003. “I don’t believe it happened,” she said in an interview with the Daily Mail. “It never happened to me. Perhaps there is something wrong with me.” Continue reading...

Corruption allegations swirling round the country’s football scene mirror a wider malaiseFrom his hideaway in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to where he dramatically fled on the eve of his conviction for fraud three years ago, Zdravko Mamić, once the most powerful figure in Croatian football, turned to his Facebook account last Thursday to rub salt in some wounds.“Netflix: let Narcos go, come here,” he wrote in reference to the hit TV show about the wholesale corruption of Mexico and Colombia by narcotic gangs. “For the last weeks and months I have been quietly working on judicial reform, and today you can see another one in a series of results of what we started together.” Continue reading...

The ‘Persian Leopards’ are going great guns on the football field, but at nuclear talks in Vienna a far more dangerous game is being playedThere is a strikingly topsy-turvy, Saturnalian feel to recent qualifying matches for the 2022 football World Cup. Saudi Arabia (population 35 million) beat China (population 1.4 billion). Canada lead the US in their group. Four-time winners Italy failed to defeat lowly Northern Ireland.Pursuing an unbeaten run full of political symbolism, unfancied Iran are also over the moon after subjugating the neighbourhood, as is their habit. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the UAE all succumbed to the soar‑away “Persian Leopards”. Continue reading...

Designer brand reaps the benefit of Ridley Scott’s movie telling the story of the killing of firm’s ex-bossWhen is murder good for business? When it is made into a Hollywood movie, for one – and when that film stars Lady Gaga. House of Gucci, the Ridley Scott feature released last week to mixed reviews, has sent interest in the Gucci brand soaring.Searches for Gucci clothing were up 73% week on week, according to e-commerce aggregator Lovethesales.com on Friday, with a leap of 257% for bags and 75% for sliders. The figures suggest that the luxury brand stands only to gain from Hollywood’s telling of the story ofthe glamorous Patrizia Reggiani, who hired a hitman in 1995 to kill her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, the former head of the fashion label. Continue reading...

The leaders of Idaho’s Christ Church are making concerted efforts to enter mainstream amid complicated financial arrangementsThe son of pastor Douglas Wilson of the controversial Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and a close associate have made significant inroads into mainstream culture in America with a successful streaming cartoon based on a book published by the church’s own imprint.The Guardian has previously reported on how the church, which aims to create a theocracy in the US, has increased its power and influence in its home town, while also campaigning vociferously against efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Those developments come amid a broader rise in the right wing across the US. Continue reading...

The ABC News correspondent offers a sobering glimpse of a man unfit to govern and the chaos wreaked by an ego unable to grasp its own ineptitudeA statue in the US Capitol honours Clio, the marmoreal muse of history. Floating above the political fray, she rides in a winged chariot that allegorically represents time and has a clock for its wheel. Looking over her shoulder as she writes in a stony ledger, she tracks events in serene retrospect. The journalists who nowadays report on happenings in Washington work at a more frantic, flustered tempo, racing to catch up with the chaos of breaking news. Jonathan Karl, a correspondent for ABC News, seems to be permanently breathless. In Betrayal, he runs for cover during an emergency lockdown at the White House, with grenades detonating in the distance. He is roused after midnight by the announcement of Trump’s Covid diagnosis; later, he has to rush to the hospital, ditch his car and scramble into place before the presidential helicopter lands on a strip of road that is suddenly “the centre of the broadcast universe”. And on 6 January Karl keeps up a live commentary as the Capitol is invaded by a mob determined to lynch Vice-President Mike Pence – reviled as a “pussy” by Trump because he refused to overturn Biden’s victory – on a makeshift gallows.The Capitol was designed as a classical temple consecrated to democracy, which is why Clio is at home there: picture the Parthenon on steroids, topped by the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica. In Betrayal, however, it is the set for a mock-heroic battle between thugs in horned helmets wielding fire extinguishers as weapons and politicians who prepare to fight back with ceremonial hammers torn from display cases and a sword left over from the civil war. Aghast and incredulous, Karl exhausts his supply of synonyms; this final act of the expiring Trump regime is nuts, weird, crazy, kooky and bonkers. Continue reading...

Millions of workers have been leaving jobs that offer long hours and low pay – and for many the release has been exhilaratingOne morning in October, Lynn woke up and decided she would quit her job on the spot that day. The decision to quit was the climax of a reckoning that began at the start of the pandemic when she was first laid off from a job she had been in for three years.“I’ve always had the attitude of being a really hard worker,” Lynn said, explaining that she believed her skills made her indispensable to this company. “That really changed for me because I realized you could feel totally capable and really important when, really, you’re expendable.” Continue reading...

With the government divided over voter ID, integrity and religious discrimination legislation, the PM announced a bill everyone could get behindScott Morrison, at the end of a wild penultimate parliamentary sitting week, looked to change the conversation on Sunday, hoping that something fresh to talk about may be a prelude to calmer times.Rather than agonising over the wildness of his own MPs, Morrison sought refuge in the wildness of social media. The prime minister flagged new powers forcing global social media giants “to unmask anonymous online trolls” in a move he characterised as “world-leading”. Continue reading...

British beekeepers call for stricter labelling on supermarket blends to identify the countries of originBritish beekeepers are calling for a requirement on supermarkets and other retailers to label cheap honey imports from China and other nations with the country of origin after claims that part of the global supply is bulked out with sugar syrup.The UK is the world’s biggest importer of Chinese honey, which can be one sixth of the price of the honey produced by bees in Britain. Supermarket own-label honey from China can be bought for as little as 69p a jar. Supermarkets say every jar of honey is “100% pure” and can be traced back to the beekeeper, but there is no requirement to identify the countries of origin of honey blended from more than one country. The European Union is now considering new rules to improve consumer information for honey and ensure the country of origin is clearly identified on the jar. Continue reading...

People are more than the job that they do. Don’t let your friends and family decide for you – let this relationship run its courseThe question I’m a 24-year-old guy studying for my masters while working part-time for a management consultancy and I’m also a qualified associate accountant. I recently met a woman on a dating app after being single for a year since the start of the pandemic. She’s a similar age to myself and we’ve been dating for two months. She’s very attractive and nice, and we have a good time together – she can make me laugh.There is a red flag, though. Although she is in her mid-20s she still lives at home and seems to have no plans or ambitions to move to living independently. Plus, despite having a part-time job, she doesn’t contribute to the household bills. Now I understand that rent is high and people are staying with their parents for longer, but she isn’t even planning on going to college or progressing further in her career. She spends most of her money on going out with friends, holidays and hobbies. Continue reading...

Once we could be proud of our record on refugees. Not any longerSometimes, a tragic image or story appears set to shift the course of history for the better. The haunting photograph of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in Turkey, shocked Europe in September 2015. He was a toddler from Syria who perished alongside his mother and brother while trying to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing. For a few weeks at least, it seemed as though public horror at how he died might propel the EU to take a more humanitarian approach on asylum. But in recent years, it has become more, not less, hardline, striking unsavoury deals with authoritarian regimes such as Turkey and failed states such as Libya to keep refugees out, regardless of the human rights abuses that are taking place in their detention centres.The tragedy has spread to our own shores, as growing numbers of desperate people try to cross the English Channel, the busiest shipping route in the world, in little more than inflatable dinghies. Twenty-seven people drowned last Thursday, including a pregnant woman and three children. Their stories, like that of Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin, a 24-year-old Kurdish woman fleeing Iraq to join her fiance in the UK, are just starting to emerge. But there is little hope that they will engender a change in the political response. Continue reading...

For bikers, combustive power is one of the thrills of a long-haul trip. But flat batteries and charging points will just become part of exciting new journeysA full tank of gas, a twist of the wrist, the roar of the exhaust as you speed towards the horizon … These are the visceral touchstones of the motorcycling experience, and all are a direct product of petrol-fuelled power, as is much of the biker’s lexicon: “open it up”, “give it some gas”, “go full throttle”. For a motorcycle rider, as opposed to the modern car driver, the journey is a full-body communication game, constantly applying judgment, skill and nerve to control the thousands of explosions that are happening between your thighs in order to transport yourself, upright and in one piece, to your destination.Yet the days of the internal combustion engine are numbered. By 2050 the European Commission aims to have cut transport emissions by 90%, and electric vehicle technology is striding ahead for cars, trucks, buses and even aircraft. But where does this leave the motorcycle? Can this romantic form of transport and its subcultures survive the end of the petrol age? Continue reading...

Green party MP Julie Anne Genter set off for the hospital while already in labour, and gave birth an hour laterNew Zealand MP Julie Anne Genter got on her bicycle early on Sunday and headed to the hospital. She was already in labour and she gave birth an hour later.“Big news!” the Greens politician posted on her Facebook page a few hours later. “At 3.04am this morning we welcomed the newest member of our family. I genuinely wasn’t planning to cycle in labour, but it did end up happening.” Continue reading...

Emergency services rescue 12 people as forecasters warn that a second storm and rain front is on way

Masks to be mandatory in shops and on public transport in Britain; Israel closes border initially for 14 days

Force used against protesters who blocked vehicles amid rising anger over France’s presence in former coloniesAt least two people were killed and 18 injured in western Niger on Saturday when protesters clashed with a French military convoy they blocked after it crossed the border from Burkina Faso, Niger’s government said.The armoured vehicles and logistics trucks had crossed the border on Friday after being blocked in Burkina Faso for a week by demonstrations there against French forces’ failure to stop mounting violence by Islamist militants. Continue reading...

Cancer patients among those struggling to access their coronavirus booster vaccine

Elias Djelloul was arrested in east London on Friday and will appear in court on MondayA 19-year-old man will appear in court next week accused of sharing extremist material.Elias Djelloul was arrested at an address in east London on Friday, the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command said. Continue reading...

Labor accuses Coalition of ‘stealth’ cuts to disability funding as other families complain about recent changes

Analysis: The UK government’s own experts say many journeys are actually organised directly by desperate familiesThe government repeatedly insists that sophisticated criminal networks are driving the Channel crossings by people seeking asylum in Britain. Of all the contested claims advanced by the home secretary on the issue, it remains among the most pervasive.True to form, in the aftermath of Wednesday’s drownings, Priti Patel wasted little time reiterating her determination to “smash the criminal gangs” behind such crossings. Continue reading...

Tens of thousands of homes left without power with yellow weather warnings still in place for many regionsThree people have died after being hit by falling trees as Storm Arwen brought winds of almost 100mph to parts of the UK overnight.A headteacher in Northern Ireland died after a tree fell on his car, another man was hit by a falling tree in Cumbria, and a third died after his car was hit in Aberdeenshire. Continue reading...

A documentary-maker has accused the Cabinet Office of defying the 30-year rule in withholding details of the MI5 exposéThe Cabinet Office has been accused of “delay and deception” over its blocking of the release of files dating back more than three decades that reveal the inside story of the intelligence agent Peter Wright and the Spycatcher affair.Wright revealed an inside account of how MI5 “bugged and burgled” its way across London in his 1987 autobiography Spycatcher. He died aged 78 in 1995. Continue reading...

Damian Hinds says PM’s letter to Emmanuel Macron was ‘exceptionally supportive’ and ‘partnership is strong’A Home Office minister has downplayed the diplomatic row between France and the UK over the refugee crisis in the Channel, insisting it was time to “draw up new creative solutions”.The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, clashed earlier this week over how to deal with people attempting to cross the Channel in small boats as they flee war, poverty and persecution. Continue reading...

The actor-director won a Bafta for his performance in Giri/Haji. Hailed as a star in the making by Olivia Colman​ and others, he discusses the true stories that inspired his new projects behind the cameraWill Sharpe has only been surfing a couple of times, but he really loved it. “So I’m not a surfer, I’m not very good at it, I’ve been twice,” clarifies the 35-year-old English-Japanese actor, writer and director. “But there’s something about being in this huge, loud, ‘other’ force and I never feel calmer than when I’m underwater in the sea. I just really took to it.”Sharpe sees parallels with his work, which has so far included the surreal, darkly funny sitcom Flowers starring Julian Barratt and Olivia Colman that he created for Channel 4, and a magnetic performance as sarcastic, self-destructive Rodney in the BBC drama Giri/Haji, which earned him a Bafta in 2020 for best supporting actor. “When I came back to writing, having been surfing, I found myself reflecting on how there are certain similarities: you have to get everything technically right, but you’re still at the mercy of this much greater power,” he says. “And how 95% of the time you are getting the shit kicked out of you, but the 5% of the time that it works, it’s so exhilarating you just want to do it again straight away.” Continue reading...

Scientists checking for B.1.1.529 variant in two travellers recently returned from southern Africa

From Greece the women are advocating for fellow refugees – and those left behind under Taliban ruleIt is a Saturday morning in November, and Afghan MP Nazifa Yousufi Bek gathers up her notes and prepares to head for the office. But instead of jumping in an armoured car bound for the mahogany-lined parliament in Kabul, her journey is by bus from a Greek hotel to a migrants’ organisation in the centre of Athens. There, taking her place on a folding chair, she inaugurates the Afghan women’s parliament in – exile.“Our people have nothing. Mothers are selling their children,” she tells a room packed with her peers. “We must raise our voices, we must put a stop to this,” says Yousufi Bek, 35, who fled Afghanistan with her husband and three young children after the Taliban swept to power in August. Some around her nod in agreement; others quietly weep. Continue reading...

Ali Smith, Sally Rooney, Roddy Doyle … is there anything can we learn from the first Covid-19 books?• ‘It was a call to arms’: Jodi Picoult and Karin Slaughter on writing Covid-19 into novelsAt the start of the second world war, authors asked themselves if they were going to write about their unprecedented times, or if they should be doing something more useful – joining the fire service, becoming an air raid warden. The phoney war, with its uncertainty and dread, proved hard to write about, but the blitz brought new experiences and a new language that demanded to be recorded or imaginatively transformed. Elizabeth Bowen began to write short stories, somewhere between hallucination and documentary, that she described as “the only diary I have kept”. Set in windowless houses populated by feather boa-wearing ghosts, these are stories that take place in evenings “parched, freshening and a little acrid with ruins”.When lockdown hit last March, some writers offered their services as delivery drivers or volunteered at Covid test centres. Others attempted to make progress with preexisting projects, blanking out the new world careering into being in front of them. But nothing written in the past 18 months can be entirely free of Covid, with its stark blend of stasis and fear. And now, as we see the work made by writers who confronted it head on, questions emerge. Do we really want to read about the pandemic while it is still unfolding? Do we risk losing sight of the long view in getting too caught up with the contemporary? Continue reading...

NSW Teachers Federation president says all options have been exhausted in negotiations with the government to address statewide staffing crisis

Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinkingA Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Maximum alert for wind from 3pm Friday to 2am Saturday on east coast in northern England and Scotland as first winter storm rolls inThe Met Office has issued a rare “red” weather alert, warning of gusts in excess of 80mph in parts of northern England and Scotland as Storm Arwen sweeps in this weekend, bringing high winds and disruption to much of the UK.A man in Northern Ireland was killed after his car was hit by a falling tree in Antrim on Friday. Continue reading...

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