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Evacuation order given as floods approach Forbes; Katherine lockdown extended as nine Indigenous Northern Territory residents test positive to Covid; Victorian pandemic bill declared ‘urgent’ as debate continues; MPs demand Victorian opposition leader condemn party members who appeared at protest overnight; Victoria records 797 new Covid-19 cases and eight deaths; NSW records 212 cases and two deaths – follow all the day’s news

Tremor felt overnight across region, from Edinburgh to Ballycastle in Northern IrelandResidents of western Scotland received a bump in the night after an earthquake shook the region in the early hours of Tuesday.A quake with a magnitude of 3.1 occurred shortly before 2am with its epicentre 11 miles north-west of the town of Lochgilphead, 88 miles north-west of Glasgow, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. Continue reading...

Belgium to act amid rising cases and hospital admissions; Irish cabinet ‘extremely concerned’ by rise in cases after lockdown ended

This interactive tells the stories that have long been kept out of our history books. It shows evidence of mass killings from 1788 until 1927: a sustained and systematic process of conflict and expansion Continue reading...

National terror threat raised as counter-terrorism police ‘strongly believe’ dead attacker to be Emad al-SwealmeenA suspected suicide bomber blew himself up with a homemade device outside a maternity hospital in Liverpool, forcing the national terror threat level to be raised for the first time in months amid fears of another potential attack.Counter-terrorism police last night said they “strongly believed” the dead man to be Emad al-Swealmeen, 32, who had travelled in a taxi to Liverpool Women’s hospital from an address he had recently rented a few miles away. Continue reading...

Tuesday: Barnaby Joyce says the Nationals didn’t sign up to the Cop26 pact. Plus: how to pack away your winter coats safelyGood morning. Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has said the government is happy with Australia’s current 2030 emission targets and had a go at the Cop26 chair. And experts have called for more climate-sensitive housing developments across the country to mitigate increasing temperatures and other impacts of climate change.Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce said his party did not sign the final communiqué of the Cop26 climate summit and has mocked the summit’s chair, Alok Sharma, for his emotional reaction to the watering down of language on coal. “The Nationals did not sign it. I did not sign it,” Joyce told the ABC about the Cop26 pact signed by the Australian government on Sunday. “We are happy with our targets … we said that we wouldn’t be changing our 2030 targets.” Joyce ridiculed Sharma for becoming emotional as he told vulnerable nations he was “deeply sorry” for the way the process had unfolded. Continue reading...

Jewellery, cash and precious stones taken during burglaries of luxury London properties in December 2019Three members of a gang have been jailed for their part in the UK’s biggest burglary spree, a £26m series of raids on celebrity homes likened to a Hollywood movie.Italian nationals Jugoslav Jovanovic, 24, Alessandro Maltese, 45, and Alessandro Donati, 44, stole £26m of cash, jewellery and gems in 13 days in December 2019. Continue reading...

Sanctions to target ‘people, airlines, travel agencies and everyone involved in this illegal push of migrants’The EU has agreed on new sanctions against Belarus targeting “everyone involved” in facilitating the transport of people to Belarus’s border with Poland, where thousands are stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather.The EU accuses Alexander Lukashenko’s regime of waging a “hybrid attack” against the bloc by allowing people from the Middle East who are desperate to reach the EU to fly into Minsk then head for the Polish border. Continue reading...

Analysis: Lukashenko’s strategy seems to have backfired, with a united European Union placing sanctions against his regimeThere was chaos at the border. Thousands of Middle Eastern refugees and migrants had massed at the crossing point to the European Union, hoping for a better life. Many had been taken to the barbed-wire fence on state-funded buses, after the authoritarian leader made good on years-long threats “to open the gates to Europe”. But when people arrived, the hope of a better life collided with police teargas and stun grenades.This was not a scene from the Polish-Belarus border this week, but Greece’s land border with Turkey less than two years ago. Continue reading...

Houses built to the fence line with dark roofs and tiny backyards leave their owners at the mercy of the climate crisis, experts say

Police search comes after ‘significant intelligence’ about Sarah Benford, who was 14 when she went missingDetectives are to begin digging an area of land in connection with the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl from a care home more than 21 years ago.Sarah Benford was last seen in Kettering, Northamptonshire, on 6 April 2000, before a murder inquiry was launched three years later. Continue reading...

As Swift rereleases 2012’s Red, her fans want to know – but you can buy a red scarf on the singer’s websiteTaylor Swift runs a close second to Ezra Pound for having devotees scour every word of their hero’s writing in search for a deeper meaning. Those on social media may have spotted “Swifties” in a lather over a recent reference to the pop star’s mysterious red scarf.Like a BBC Radio 4 discussion of Pound’s The Cantos, the forensic analysis of Swift’s famous winter accessory may have left some on social media perplexed. As a result, Nadia Khomami has prepared a guide for uninitiated Guardian reader. Continue reading...

Rental scooter speeds capped in 700 areas of the French capital including around key tourist attractionsRented electric scooters are being forced to slow down to just above walking speed in many areas of Paris under rules coming into force on Monday, operators have said.In 700 areas in the French capital, including around key tourist attractions such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre museum, rental scooter speed will be capped at 10km an hour (six miles/h). Continue reading...

Experts warn rules will be hard to enforce, as country records highest Covid infection rate in western Europe

Fenster’s employer says he is flying out of the country, days after he was sentenced to 11 years in jailThe US journalist Danny Fenster has been released from prison in military-ruled Myanmar, just days after a closed court sentenced him to 11 years in jail for a series of charges including incitement and visa violations.Fenster’s employer, Frontier Myanmar, an independent outlet, said on Monday afternoon that he had been released and was on a flight out of the country. Fenster, 37, was arrested in May 2021 at Yangon international airport as he tried to fly back home to Michigan. He has spent five and a half months in prison. Continue reading...

We would like to hear from people in the Liverpool area about the event on SundayCounter-terrorism police and MI5 are investigating a car explosion at Liverpool Women’s hospital that killed one person and injured another. Three people remain in custody after a taxi exploded at 10.59am on Remembrance Sunday.We would like to hear from people who have been affected or have any further information on the explosion. Continue reading...

Dr Salman Butt wins compensation for being described in 2015 press release as someone who legitimises terrorismThe home secretary, Priti Patel, has apologised to a Muslim man after the government falsely described him as an extremist hate preacher.Dr Salman Butt, chief editor of the Islam21c website, was named in a 2015 press release entitled: PM’s Extremism Taskforce: tackling extremism in universities and colleges top of the agenda, as someone who legitimises terrorism. When he took legal action against the government, it initially attempted to defend the libel claim by using a defence of “honest opinion”. But it has now agreed to delete his name from the press release and pay him compensation and his legal costs. Continue reading...

In her TV concert special, the singer got personal in an interview with Oprah Winfrey about her dreams of a nuclear family, fixation with her weight loss and how much she can deadliftAdele opened up about the pain of her divorce, losing the dream of a nuclear family, commentary over her weight and her strained relationship with her late father in a candid, ranging interview with Oprah Winfrey.During the sit-down in Winfrey’s rose garden, recorded prior to her first concert in more than four years for the CBS special Adele One Night Only, the singer revealed she felt “embarrassed” that she couldn’t make her marriage to Simon Konecki “work”. Continue reading...

Israel’s decision follows similar move by US; Austria vaccination rate ‘shamefully low’, says chancellor Alexander Schallenberg

Matt Kean says Glasgow climate summit has ‘accelerated where the market was already going’

Exclusive: handover delays across England are also causing permanent harm to those needing urgent carePeople are dying in the back of ambulances and up to 160,000 more a year are coming to harm because they are stuck outside hospitals unable to be offloaded to A&E, a bombshell report has revealed.Patients are also dying soon after finally getting admitted to hospital after spending long periods in the back of an ambulance, while others still in their own homes are not being saved because paramedics are trapped at A&E and unable to answer 999 calls, said the report by NHS ambulance service bosses in England.A patient died after spending about an hour in an ambulance outside Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge on 24 October. The patient had suffered a cardiac arrest. The hospital said the patient had “remained in the ambulance due to significant pressures on A&E”.John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, last week apologised for the “agony” endured by the family of Richard Brown, who died on the stairs outside his flat in Glasgow after waiting five hours for an ambulanceA patient died of a cardiac arrest in Worcestershire royal hospital in Worcester on 4 October after waiting five hours in an ambulance outside. Paramedics warned A&E staff the patient was having trouble breathing but the patient died despite being rushed into the resuscitation room.A woman died in eastern England last month after waiting an hour for an ambulance crew to reach her on what should have been a seven-minute response. No crews were available in the 50 miles between Cromer and Waveney in Norfolk, so an ambulance from Ipswich in Suffolk had to answer the 999 call. Continue reading...

We find out what happened to the young cast of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s StoneAs fans prepare to mark the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first film adaptation of JK Rowling’s hit series, on Tuesday, rumours abound of a potential reunion, with reports that members of the main cast have been issued with invitations for a one-off show.As Potterheads fantasise about the gang getting together one last time, we take a look at where the cast members are now and the paths their careers have taken in the years since. Continue reading...

Countries across the Commonwealth hold ceremonies to commemorate the servicemen and women who have fallen in the line of duty since the first world war. The service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall returned to normal after attendance last year was limited in response to the coronavirus pandemic Continue reading...

No 10 sources says ministers had not seen leaked plan to wind down testing and self-isolation

People in Old Bexley and Sidcup say their faith has been undermined but they are still likely to vote ToryResidents in Old Bexley and Sidcup are vacillating over whether to return the Conservatives to power in an upcoming byelection that will test their loyalty following the high-profile corruption allegations that have beset the party.Gillian Moore, 64, a poll clerk and retired bank receptionist, said the sleaze row and the government’s mishandling of the pandemic response had undermined her faith in the Conservatives. Continue reading...

In the first of a short series on Australian housing, Elias Visontay examines how Victoria’s planning system is failing residents and the environmentWhen Jade Seenarain and his wife Aideanna bought the plot for their home in Truganina in Melbourne’s west in 2015, the couple thought they were buying into a leafy, suburban dream.They planned to build their ideal home and thought their lives would look something like the highly idealised vision presented by the Elements estate developers. Continue reading...

Border Force staff express concern at Priti Patel’s proposed tactic of forcing boats back to FranceBorder Force guards, who the government says will be asked to turn refugee boats in the Channel around, are considering applying for a judicial review to stop the tactic from being used.Officers from the PCS union have said they are prepared to launch a high court challenge to the lawfulness of Priti Patel’s plans. The home secretary has maintained that the tactic of intercepting and sending back boats to France would be within the law. Continue reading...

The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world Continue reading...

Chancellor announces measure that will come into effect on Monday as country faces record numbers of casesAustria will place millions of people not fully vaccinated against coronavirus in lockdown as of Monday in an effort to deal with a surge in infections, the country’s chancellor has said.“We must raise the vaccination rate. It is shamefully low,” Alexander Schallenberg told a news conference on Sunday, announcing the measure after a video call with the governors of Austria’s nine provinces. Lockdowns for two of the provinces, Upper Austria and Salzburg, were announced on Friday, but Sunday’s move extends that to the whole country. Continue reading...

Nick Carter says Russia has become bigger threat in eastern Europe, but he doesn’t think it wants ‘hot war’The outgoing head of the UK’s armed forces has said the military will have to be ready for war with Russia after recent tensions in eastern Europe, but he does not believe Vladimir Putin really wants “hot war” with the west.Gen Sir Nick Carter said Russia was now a greater threat in eastern Europe than it was when he started in the role eight years ago, as he gave a series of interviews before his departure as chief of the defence staff at the end of the month. Continue reading...

There is a silence around the death of a baby, and a greater hush around the issue of termination for foetal anomaly. Laura Doward shares her life-changing experienceI’m looking at my name, handwritten in capital letters, neat as a button. Considering asking for another form to rewrite it, make it shakier.“Foeticide,” the doctor is saying. Continue reading...

In last-minute change of plan, Prince Charles steps in to lay wreath on her behalf at the CenotaphThe Queen pulled out of Remembrance Sunday commemorations after spraining her back.The monarch, 95, had been under doctors’ orders to rest for almost a month after spending a night in hospital in October, but, until the last minute, was expected to attend a service at the Cenotaph in London on Sunday. Continue reading...

Restaurant workers once lived on coffee and cigarettes. Now more chefs are cooking for one other, making food good enough to end up on the menuNaturally, you would assume chefs eat well at work. These are food lovers surrounded by great produce doing long hours at weird times. Surely rustling up tasty staff meals is an established perk of the job? And in that assumption you would be wrong.When Sam Grainger, chef-owner of Belzan in Liverpool, started cooking 15 years ago, staff meals were “non-existent. You heard of it in hotels and Michelin kitchens that didn’t open until 6pm. But in full-on, city-centre, 11-to-11 places, you often didn’t have time. If you said, ‘I’m taking my break,’ you might be shunned for leaving someone else in a mess. Chefs lived on coffee, energy drinks, cigarettes.” Continue reading...

Dan Savage is the world’s most influential sex columnist, who regularly offends both conservatives and liberals with his radical views. On the 30th anniversary of his column he tells Eva Wiseman how, for all the controversy, what he’s really interested in is how to make long-term relationships workDan Savage is not easily shocked, but recently, well. A few weeks ago he got a letter. A 24-year-old man wanted advice – he’d taken his partner, bisexual, older, to meet his parents for what both thought would be the first time. Except, it turned out he’d met them a decade earlier, when he’d joined them for a threesome. On Zoom from Seattle, Savage chuckles darkly and adjusts his cap. “I was like, oh God,” he says. “It’s all my fault! I felt implicated. Because I helped create a world where middle-aged, married, straight couples can have threeways.” He shrugs. He’s right.His advice column started as a joke; soon it cracked open, and revealed a map to new ways of living. When Savage Love launched 30 years ago in Seattle’s alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger, the idea was that a gay man – Savage, then 26 and working in a video shop – would give sex advice to straight people. “Hey Faggot!” each letter began. Early questions were easy. “Things like, what’s a butt plug? How do you give a good blowjob?” Straight people had always intuited that their gay friends knew more about sex than they did, “which is true, not because gay people are magic, but because we have to communicate about sex. Straight people get to consent and then… stop talking.” “Use your words!” he tells straights today, often. With the 1990s came the internet, and suddenly most of the answers were immediately Googlable. But the letters kept on coming. “Right away, it was no longer a ‘how to’ column but a ‘why?’ Why did they do that? Why did I do this? And what happens now?” Continue reading...

Although his allies call the charges against him ‘farcical’, Seán Binder could face years in jail when trial begins this weekSeán Binder belongs to the band of committed humanitarians who rushed to Greece at the height of the refugee crisis. In other countries, and at other times, his idealism might have been celebrated.But the 27-year-old law student, who has spent the past two years in London, is a man living in fear. Though forced to abandon volunteering, the German-born Irishman and his Syrian friend, Sarah Mardini, are perhaps the most famous aid workers in Greece, for all the wrong reasons: a criminal investigation has hung over their heads for the past three years. Continue reading...

Whatever the sobriety or otherwise of the three MPs in the news last week, a tipple or two at high altitude is a national institutionLike every soldier, Ben Wallace knows that sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. As Owen Paterson’s inferno of sleaze engulfed the Tories, the defence secretary lit a little tealight of his own. It was put about that a couple of SNP MPs, David Linden and Drew Hendry, and Labour MP Charlotte Nichols got pissed on a ministerial trip to Gibraltar. Like anyone who has been accused of being smashed on a flight, they deny the allegations. Wallace said the alleged conduct risked “undermining respect for parliament”.Rubbish. The only lapse of judgment is Wallace’s, in thinking anyone would care. If there is a cause that enjoys comprehensive cross-party, cross-demographic national support, it is drinking on the plane. Well, that and drinking at the airport. Not yet in the cab to the airport, although driverless cars may change that. But everyone knows that once you get through security, the complicated part of the trip is over. Continue reading...

Uncomfortable honesty from the model and actor in an examination of what it means to be paid for your beauty and the boundaries of powerOne afternoon, Emily Ratajkowski’s therapist took her up to the roof and presented her with a bowl of water balloons. Ratajkowski had awoken from a dream where she had been fighting, in a terrible rage, but when she tried to hit out it was “like being a ghost,” she explained, “something without a body”. Her therapist had suggested she throw things to access her anger, but the balloons were too colourful. They popped too gently. So her therapist handed her a jar and told her to think of someone she wanted to punish. It flew from her hand and shattered noisily against the wall. The essays she went on to write, now published in a collection titled My Body, read as those shards of glass, landing with purpose.A couple of times I was reading her book in public, and acquaintances made variations on a snort at the idea of a collection of feminist essays by a person such as Ratajkowski, a model and actor who became famous dancing in a thong in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines video, whose Instagram glitters with nudes and shots advertising her bikini collection. There was a similar noise internationally in 2020 when New York Magazine published one of these essays, Buying Myself Back, about the many ways in which she does not own her image, from attempting to buy a piece of art that is a screenshot of her face to the sexual assault by a photographer who later sold three separate books of Polaroids he’d taken of her that night. After people read it, the noise quieted. Rather than simply a story written from a place of great power and privilege, it was a story about that power and about that privilege. About the boundaries of a power that lies solely in beauty. Hers, readers found, was an extreme version of a reality familiar to many women who had also been forced to consider where their image ended and their self began. Continue reading...

Supported workers still more likely to lose jobs, but sector shortages cushion worst anticipated effectsStaff who were placed on furlough are six times more likely to lose their jobs than other workers – but the end of the scheme had little impact on the levels of unemployment, an assessment of the programme has revealed.There had been concerns that with more than a million workers still on the scheme when it came to an end last month, its withdrawal could lead to a spike in unemployment and dent the UK’s stuttering economic recovery from the pandemic. Continue reading...

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have spoken out about paid family leave and the Capitol attack – but is that what Americans want from royal celebrities?Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, appear to have embarked on a new course in recent weeks as they seek to define their lives in America by adding political issues and influence into their established interests of being royal humanitarians embracing US celebrity norms of wealth, fame and talkshows.First it was Meghan, cold-calling two Republican US senators – West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito and Susan Collins of Maine – to urge them to support paid family leave provisions in Joe Biden’s languishing Build Back Better legislation. Continue reading...

Reprogramme your thinking from “everyone is horrible” to “everyone is lovely”, says Philippa Perry. It can turn your life aroundThe dilemma I’m only now able to get back into society after 20 months of having to isolate. Due to medical complications, I was only recently vaccinated and had been completely solitary out of fear of dealing with Covid. I was ill with a life-threatening infection at one point during lockdown and luckily got through that, but it showed me how alone and vulnerable I am.I have also been made redundant. I have been applying for jobs, and going to interviews. Inevitably, I am being rejected and even when I’m not, my value is being questioned and negotiated down. Continue reading...

The Zambian-born writer published 49 books and sold more than 140 million copies worldwideAuthor Wilbur Smith died at his home in South Africa on Saturday after a decades-long career in writing, his office said. He was 88.With 49 titles under his belt, Smith became a household name, with his swashbuckling adventure stories taking readers from tropical islands to the jungles of Africa and even Ancient Egypt and World War II. Continue reading...

Monarch will lead commemoration of war dead at National Service of Remembrance in London, despite recent order to restThe Queen will attend the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph, leading the nation in commemorating the war dead. The monarch, 95, has been under doctors’ orders to rest for almost a month. She spent a night in hospital on 20 October undergoing preliminary tests.The event will be given added poignancy by a return to pre-pandemic numbers of participating veterans and military, as well as onlookers. Continue reading...

Deaths at Litoral penitentiary part of wave of prison violence that has claimed more than 280 livesAt least 68 prisoners have been killed and 25 injured in a jail in the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador after bloodletting between rival gangs broke out on Friday night, the attorney general’s office said on Saturday.The latest massacre occurred in the Litoral penitentiary, the same jail where at least 119 inmates lost their lives a little more than a month before in the country’s deadliest ever prison riot. Continue reading...

Richard Ratcliffe walks away with head held high and huge support after 21-day hunger strikeSurrounded by brightly painted pebbles, posters and paintings calling for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, Richard Ratcliffe brought his 21-day hunger strike to an end on Saturday, clinging on to hope his actions have made a difference to his wife’s fate.He walked away from his makeshift camp outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as he wanted to: not in an ambulance but with his head held high – at the last possible moment there was a chance he could reverse the damage he has inflicted on his body. Continue reading...

The drive to get the population vaccinated is gathering momentum despite the issue dividing families and straining friendshipsIt’s fair to say the people in the northern rivers of New South Wales generally do not like being told what to do by the government.In a region with a free-thinking, anti-authoritarian reputation, and a long history of anti-vaccination sentiment, the requirement to get the Covid jab for work or leisure purposes was never going to find a warm welcome. Continue reading...

Teargas and live bullets used to break up demonstration in Khartoum against the military coupSudanese security forces killed at least five people on Saturday and injured dozens more when they used teargas and live bullets to break up a protest in Khartoum against a military takeover of the government.Protesters defied a military shutdown of the city to call for a return to civilian rule, as plain-clothed snipers reappeared on the streets on Saturday. On Friday, coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan cemented his hold on power by swearing in a new ruling council that excluded the main civilian coalition. Continue reading...

The author of On Tyranny on the lack of historical literacy, how local news has been replaced by Facebook, and why novels matter to himTimothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University and the author of books about the 20th-century history of central Europe, including Bloodlands, which examined the devastating consequence of Hitler and Stalin’s simultaneous reign of terror over civilian populations, and won the 2013 Hannah Arendt prize for political thought. In 2016, after the election of Donald Trump, Snyder wrote a short book, On Tyranny, which provided 20 brief lessons – “Defend Institutions”, “Remember Professional Ethics”, “Read Books” – from the 20th century that might help readers protect democracy against dictatorship. It topped the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction in 2017. A new edition of the book, with illustrations by the German-American Nora Krug, whose graphic memoir Belonging confronted Germany’s Nazi past, has just been published.What prompted you to want to make this graphic version of On Tyranny?

Campaigners in Devon celebrate return of passenger trains after 50 years, a first step to reversing the Beeching closuresOn the rugged northern edge of Dartmoor, a small army of workers in high-vis vests is readying Okehampton station to welcome the first regular passenger train since 1972. The canopies and picket fences are being repainted in the original dark greens and warm yellows of the long-departed Southern Railway.It’s a historic moment for local campaigners, who have been fighting for decades to reconnect the Devon town to the national network and open up this lesser-visited part of the national park. “It’s quite extraordinary – almost unbelievable,” says Tom Baxter, 68, the secretary of the Dartmoor Railway Association, watching the painting from a gleaming green bench on the platform. “I used to travel on the line when it was British Rail and I was here when it closed in the 1970s. Local railways were seen as a bit of a nuisance at the time – they wanted to get rid of them.” Continue reading...

Survey reveals people avoiding vaccination and healthcare when ill for fear of being found out by authoritiesUndocumented migrants reveal they have been forced to avoid the Covid vaccine, dodge medical help when ill, give up jobs and take up more cramped accommodation during the pandemic, in a study that suggests the virus exacerbated the “deadly effects” of the government’s “hostile environment” immigration policies.Almost half of the group said explicitly that they were afraid of trying to obtain the vaccine because of their immigration status, or were hesitant because they did not have enough information about it. Several said that they had to buy their own PPE to ensure they could keep working. One was eating just one proper meal per day to save money after losing work, while another volunteered for a charity in exchange for hot meals. Continue reading...

Levels of PM 2.5 particulates hit 20 times safe levels as agricultural fires add to city’s air pollution crisisAuthorities in Delhi have announced that schools are to close for a week as the Indian capital’s pollution control body warned of a looming health emergency due to smog.Delhi is ranked one of the world’s most-polluted cities, with a hazardous mix of factory and vehicle emissions and smoke from agricultural fires turning its air a toxic grey every winter. Continue reading...