World news | The Guardian

Wyangala and Mole River projects on hold and Warragamba raising under review, with new premier Dominic Perrottet open to alternatives

Suspected death happened after small boat capsized near Dunkirk while several people were rescuedAnother person is believed to have died attempting to reach the UK across the English Channel, government sources have said.The French authorities told UK officials on Wednesday that the latest suspected death happened after a small boat capsized near Dunkirk. Several other people were rescued. Continue reading...

Thursday: Emissions pledges at Cop26 could limit global temperature rises to below 2C. Plus: Bee Gees star commemoratedGood morning. The world appears set to meet a major climate milestone, there is hopeful news for long Covid sufferers, and Labor is calling for more jobkeeper paybacks.The world’s emissions trajectory could be on the path to below 2C for the first time. India’s pledge to reach net zero by 2070, initially perceived as an unambitious target, could help keep emissions at a peak of 1.9C this century – though this is still not enough to reach the stated Cop26 target of 1.5C. The Climate Action Network has said the Cop26 summit would still represent “a failure”, unless it agrees concrete financial support to those already dispossessed by climate breakdown. Meanwhile, more than 20 nations and major financial bodies have pledged to halt all funding for overseas fossil fuel development from next year – but China and Japan have declined to sign. Continue reading...

A US defense department report says Beijing could have 700 warheads within six years and more than 1,000 by 2030China is expanding its nuclear force much faster than US officials predicted just a year ago, highlighting a broad and accelerating buildup of military muscle designed to enable Beijing to match or surpass US global power by mid-century, according to a new Pentagon report.The number of Chinese nuclear warheads could increase to 700 within six years, the report said, and may top 1,000 by 2030. The report released on Wednesday did not say how many weapons China has today, but a year ago the Pentagon said the number was in the “low 200s” and was likely to double by the end of this decade. Continue reading...

Brexit minister David Frost will defend current position despite hopes a more positive dynamic is emergingThe British government has downplayed hopes of a breakthrough in a row with France over post-Brexit fishing licences, despite European perceptions of a “constructive” spirit and “positive dynamic”.The French transport minister, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, said he had spoken to his UK counterpart on Tuesday evening. “The spirit is a constructive one,” he said, noting that French fishers had been granted 49 more licences on Monday. Continue reading...

Health minister says wave ‘far from over’ as vaccination rate flatlines and clinics report rising numbers of Covid-19 patients

Amendment to police bill would require home secretary to approve use of new surveillance equipmentTwo Labour peers have demanded greater parliamentary scrutiny of police plans to use surveillance cameras mounted on drones after it emerged that the technology could be deployed by forces across England and Wales.Shami Chakrabarti, the former head of the civil rights advocacy group Liberty, has tabled an amendment to the police bill that would require the home secretary to approve the use of new “weapons, surveillance equipment or investigatory technology”. The amendment was due to be discussed on Wednesday night. Continue reading...

Owen Paterson escapes sanction after MPs vote for shake-up of rules on parliamentary conduct

Rape Crisis Scotland report says officers’ ‘prejudicial attitudes’ leave survivors isolated and anxiousThere is a troubling inconsistency in the police’s response to rape and sexual violence complainers, according to a report from Rape Crisis Scotland, which highlights poor communication, outdated attitudes and lengthy, unclear processes that leave survivors feeling isolated and anxious.Among the “prejudicial attitudes” displayed by officers, one complainer reported that the detective inspector who dropped her case had told her: “You weren’t raped, it was consensual.” Continue reading...

Prix Goncourt judges praise ‘stunning energy’ of 31-year-old’s novel The Most Secret Memory of MenThe Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr has become the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to be awarded France’s oldest and most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.The award, announced on Wednesday at the Drouant restaurant near the Opéra Garnier in Paris, was hailed as “symbolic” by the French literary establishment, 100 years after the prize – presented since 1867 – was first won by a Black author. Continue reading...

Man aged 80 fell or jumped seven storeys to his death, striking another attendeeSwedish pop group Abba have postponed the promotion of an upcoming show for 24 hours, after two people died in a dramatic fall at a tribute concert.On Tuesday night, an 80-year-old man fell or jumped seven storeys to his death at a concert hall in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, in a presumed accident, striking another attendee. Continue reading...

Online censors blocked Peng Shuai’s post on Weibo of Zhang Gaoli’s alleged assault over several yearsThe Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has apparently accused a former vice-premier of sexual assault, engulfing the highest echelons of Beijing’s ruling Communist party in a #MeToo scandal for the first time.Authorities scrambled to stop the allegations from spreading, with online censors even appearing to block the word “tennis”. Continue reading...

Lady Gaga inhabited her role in upcoming drama House of Gucci off screen and on for a year and a half. Was the ‘psychological difficulty’ she suffered as a result worth it?A Star Is Born was both a blessing and a curse for Lady Gaga. A blessing because it put her at the centre of a commercially successful, Oscar-nominated film, thereby rocketing her to the top of a profession of which she had very little experience. A curse, too, because she was essentially just playing herself; a singer who went from performing in drag bars to commanding huge stages in very little time. Quick, without looking, tell me the name of the character Lady Gaga played in A Star Is Born. You can’t, can you? You’ve always just called her Lady Gaga.This means that she ultimately had two options after A Star Is Born. She could abandon her movie career in the knowledge that she had blurred the line between character and performer more successfully than any actor working today, or she could find another role. A role not so heavily steeped in her own biography. A role that would finally prove to the world that she was an actor of the highest calibre. Continue reading...

Joint investigation by UN and Ethiopia details accounts of torture and killing of civilians, and gang-rapesWar crimes and other crimes against humanity may have been conducted by all sides in the bloody year-long civil war in Ethiopia, according to a joint investigation by the UN and the country’s human rights commission.The most comprehensive report yet into the conflict, which has centred around the rebel province of Tigray, includes a string of first-hand accounts of massacres, torture and sexual violence in a war that began almost exactly a year ago. Continue reading...

Carmaker is ‘overcoming difficult situations’, including global shortage of computer chipsBMW earned bigger profits than expected in the third quarter of 2021 after a focus on more expensive cars and electric vehicles helped the German premium carmaker to ride out a global shortage of computer chips.Profits before tax rose to €3.4bn (£2.9bn) between July and September, a 38% increase compared with 2020 and a 52% increase on 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit, BMW said on Wednesday. Continue reading...

England’s deputy chief medical officer says he fears infection is spreading into older age groups

The Western Australia police officer who rescued Cleo said when she was reunited with her mother there were ‘big hugs, kisses and lots of tears’

PCs Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis admit misconduct over images shared on WhatsAppA police officer made degrading and sexist insults about two murdered women as he shared pictures from the scene where they were found with a colleague photographing their bodies and also sharing the images via WhatsApp.The two Metropolitan police officers pleaded guilty on Tuesday after sharing photographs from the crime scene they were supposed to be guarding in a London park, where two sisters, Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46, were found stabbed to death. Continue reading...

Celebrity-backed funder pulls support from seven frontline charities helping migrants as winter approachesSeven charities working to provide food, water, blankets and other essential aid to refugees in northern France have warned that they might have to stop their work because celebrity-backed funder Choose Love is ending its financial support.The charities provide a lifeline to refugees who are hoping to seek sanctuary in the UK, often attempting Channel crossings by small boats. The deteriorating weather as winter approaches makes living conditions for the estimated 2,000 migrants in Calais, who are destitute and often forced to sleep outside, more precarious. Continue reading...

Prime minister Scott Morrison says he will ‘get the job done’ to mend relationship with France; Malcolm Turnbull slams ‘bullshit’ plan for nuclear-powered submarines; Queensland will only open international borders for ‘safe’ countries; Liberal MP Tim Smith will ‘never drink alcohol again’ while in public life; Victoria records 941 new Covid cases, NSW 190. This blog is now closed

Western Australia police release footage of Cleo Smith moments after she was found at a Carnarvon property. Detective sergeant Cameron Blaine, who was one of four officers to raid the house, said the four-year-old was energetic and 'very trusting and open' with officers Continue reading...

Experts say while party failed to win a seat they may have denied Boris Johnson a landslide by splitting voteNigel Farage’s Brexit party may have saved up to 25 Labour seats in the Midlands and the north at the 2019 general election, denying Boris Johnson a landslide majority of 130, according to new analysis.Farage’s party failed to win a single seat in December 2019 as Boris Johnson sought to hammer home the message that the Conservatives would “get Brexit done”. Continue reading...

As poverty and lost livelihoods fuel threats in the home, those who have found refuge still risk their lives walking miles in search of waterThe setting sun brings a warm glow to the huts in the village of Umoja in Samburu county, Kenya. Christine Sitiyan sits outside her home with her beadwork, carefully running the thin thread through tiny bead holes, hoping she can finish the colourful belt she is making before darkness sets in. The traditional belt can fetch 3,000 Kenyan shillings (£20), enough to cover her needs for a month.This tranquil scene is very different from her troubled past. Like many girls in her community, Sitiyan never finished school but was married off as a young teenager. Seven years later, with two children, she left her husband, unable to endure the beatings from a man she says could no longer fend for the family in an increasingly harsh environment. Continue reading...

It was my first day on a local paper when I went to visit a bereaved family with a seasoned reporter. It shaped all the values I took into my journalistic careerI was 19 when, in September 1987, I got a fortnight’s work experience on my local free newspaper, the Kingston Guardian, in south-west London. It was a small but dedicated team of reporters operating out of an office in Twickenham and they were incredibly generous, taking me under their collective wing and sending me out on all kinds of assignments. By the end of the two weeks, I had a handful of bylined pieces and had written my first investigative feature – a tug-of-love dog ownership dispute over a whippet. But the moment that changed me came on the very first day, on a story that I didn’t even write.The team had suggested I go out in the evening with an older reporter on a “death knock” – going to visit a family after a death. They didn’t call it a death knock and it wasn’t one of those notorious tabloid visits, when a reporter turns up out of the blue and confronts a bereaved family. It had been agreed in advance with the parents of the deceased, a 17-year-old schoolboy who had died in a car accident, not long after passing his driving test. It was the kind of awful, accidental death that happens regularly, all over the country. Continue reading...

Police release photo of Cleo Smith in hospital and have body camera footage of the moment she was found; a 36-year-old man is in custody but no charges have been laid; ‘We were looking for a needle in a haystack and we found it,’ acting WA police commissioner says; Carnarvon mayor says he never gave up hope – follow the latest news about her rescue

Gangs put aside their differences make video calling on the public to get the vaccine after Māori minister came up with the ideaSeven New Zealand gang leaders, representing four of the countries most well-known street gangs, have joined forces in a video urging their communities to get vaccinated, in a concept that was conjured up by a government minister.The video was commissioned by the minister for Maori development, Willie Jackson, after a discussion with gang leaders, who then provided footage that was edited by Jackson’s son, Hikurangi, the Herald reported. Continue reading...

Police say four-year-old recovered after they broke into a house about 1am and a man is in custody

Wednesday: French officials say confidence with Australia has been ‘completely shattered’. Plus: new projects in the pipeline could result in the equivalent of 5% of global emissionsGood morning. France is furious over the growing scandal of a leaked text message from the French president to Scott Morrison, and world leaders continue to make pledges to fight the climate crisis at Cop26.French officials have vented their fury at the leaking of a text message from Emmanuel Macron to Morrison, as the prime minister faces accusations he has put his personal political interests ahead of healing the rift. “Confidence has been completely shattered,” a close adviser to Macron said, calling the release of the text “a pretty crude and unconventional tactic”. “It is not the kind of thing that is likely to improve relations between France and Australia,” the adviser said. The message, in which the French president asked Morrison whether to expect good or bad news on the submarine project, was shared to reinforce Australia’s position that France wasn’t blindsided about the cancellation of the $90bn submarine deal, but France argued it showed that Macron “did not know what stage the discussions had got to”. Continue reading...

Michaelia Cash in urgent meetings with MPs in government’s third attempt at revising bill

Ex-president, ordered to testify as a witness, says he is accountable to ‘the French people, not to a court’Nicolas Sarkozy has appeared in court as the first former French president to be ordered to testify as a witness – but refused point blank to answer any questions.“It is an essential principle of democracies known as the separation of powers, and as president of the Republic I do not have to account for the organisation of my office or the way in which I exercised my mandate,” he told the court in Paris on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Northumberland landmark, named Ascendant, is intended as tribute for Queen’s platinum jubilee yearFor its supporters, the 55-metre-tall turbine-blade-like sculpture jutting out of an isolated Northumberland hilltop will attract tourists and be a fitting tribute to Queen and Commonwealth.For opponents it will be “ecological vandalism” that spoils the landscape, an artwork that would not look out of place in communist-era eastern Europe. Continue reading...

The president of the Pacific island state of Palau has told the Cop26 summit that parallels could be drawn between the climate crisis and the traditional Palau story of a boy who grew into a giant and 'wouldn’t stop growing ... depleting all the natural resources'. Surangel Whipps Jr said the story was 'eerily reminiscent' of today’s climate crisis. Speaking about the environmental impact on island nations, he added: 'There is no dignity to a slow and painful death: you might as well bomb our islands'

The environment secretary has welcomed France's step back from threats to impose a blockade on British boats and goods in a dispute over post-Brexit fishing licenses. George Eustice denied the UK had acted in any way improperly and said it continued to abide by its obligations. France has been infuriated that some of its small boats are being denied permission to fish in waters around the UK and Channel Islands. 'We had an agreement on fisheries that we all concluded at the end of last year. We've been implementing that in good faith,' he said

At least 15 people killed and dozens wounded after twin blasts at hospital in KabulAt least 15 people are believed to have been killed and 34 wounded after two explosions followed by gunfire hit Afghanistan’s biggest military hospital in Kabul, a Taliban security official has said.The explosions took place at the entrance of the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan hospital in the city centre and security forces had been sent to the area, the interior ministry spokesman Qari Saeed Khosty said. Continue reading...

Severe cash shortages, fluctuating prices and protests rife after dissolution of civilian governmentSudan has been hit by a severe cash shortage as most banks and cash machines remain closed one week after a military coup prompted a nationwide strike by bankers.About 90% of bankers were taking part in a civil disobedience campaign, said Ibrahim Abdel-Raheem, who works at the Workers National Bank in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. “We knew that going on strike as bankers would cripple the economy,” he said. “Banks are the backbone of the economy.” Continue reading...

Médecins Sans Frontières manager says migrants being pushed back are often dangerously weakAn international aid worker has warned of more deaths at Poland’s border with Belarus, describing how desperate and often dangerously weakened migrants including very young children are being pushed back across the frontier.Crystal van Leeuwen, a medical emergency manager with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said NGOs must urgently gain access to a secure militarised zone on the Polish side and that migrants’ claims for international protection must be respected. Continue reading...

Some defences are at risk of failure but private owners cannot be forced to make upgrades

From the tragic disappearance of beloved first pet, Perky, to Blackie the con artist kitten, the writer recalls how cats have long crept into her workI was a cat-deprived young child. I longed for a kitten, but was denied one: we spent two-thirds of every year in the north woods of Canada, so if we took the cat with us it would run away and get lost and be eaten by wolves; but if we did not take it with us, who would look after it?These objections were unanswerable. I bided my time. Meanwhile I fantasised. My drawings as a six-year-old are festooned with flying cats, and my first book – a volume of poems put together with folded sheets and a construction-paper cover – was called Rhyming Cats, and had an illustration of a cat playing with a ball. This cat looked like a sausage with ears and whiskers, but it was early days in my design career. Continue reading...

Haibatullah Akhundzada said to have visited religious school in Kandahar, confounding rumours of his deathThe Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, made a rare public appearance in the southern city of Kandahar, Taliban officials announced on Sunday, contradicting widespread rumours of his death.Akhundzada, known as the leader of the faithful or Amir ul Momineen, had not been seen in public even after the Taliban’s August takeover of the country, giving rise to the speculation. Continue reading...

Screenwriter of biopic about the radical poet says the industry must do more to get women behind the camera lensA new film about a 19th-century poet and early feminist is crying out to be filmed through a woman’s lens, but it is likely to be directed by a man because there is such a shortage of female directors, according to one of Britain’s leading screenwriters.Paula Milne has written a feature film inspired by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who campaigned against social injustice, including slavery and child labour, while living in fear of her own father. Milne believes that such a story, with its many contemporary parallels, should be filmed by a woman, because of the natural empathy that women have for one another, but that is unlikely to happen. Continue reading...

As London’s ‘local’ paper hits troubled times, we examine the profitable past and challenging future for Britain’s provincial pressWhat job title did George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, and the late Labour leader Michael Foot both hold? It is a pub quiz teaser, but one that becomes easier if you add the names of journalists Max Hastings and Paul Dacre to the list.The answer is that all four of them have at one time edited the Evening Standard, the London local newspaper that has long stood alongside Britain’s major national titles, mainly by virtue of covering a vast capital city and serving a captive audience of commuters. Continue reading...

The Stranger Things star on viral fame, the challenges of dyslexia, and convincing her actor parents she wanted to follow in their footstepsNew York-born Maya Hawke, 23, began her career in modelling before making her screen debut as Jo March in the BBC’s 2017 adaptation of Little Women. She was Linda “Flowerchild” Kasabian in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and plays Robin in Netflix hit Stranger Things. Hawke now stars in Mainstream, directed and written by Gia Coppola. She lives in New York and is the daughter of actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.Your new film Mainstream is a satire on viral fame. Are people too reliant on their mobile phones nowadays?

Her appearance on I’m A Celebrity sealed her headline-grabbing reputation. Now all eyes are on the former nurse and novelist as she is appointed the new culture secretary. Her fellow MPs and political insiders have plenty to sayThere have been 13 culture secretaries in the past 14 years. Most came and went without troubling the attention of even close followers of politics. Who, after all, remembers Matt Hancock’s brief stint three years ago? Or what about (or perhaps, who is) Jeremy Wright? Or Baroness Morgan of Cotes? Public indifference, however, is unlikely to be the response to the woman who last month was made secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport.Nadine Dorries is by almost universal agreement a “character”. Whether it’s a good or bad character seems to be a secondary issue to the fact that she is forthright and reliably quotable. She’s someone who is known for speaking her mind, and then changing it, for her moral stands and political falls, for her down-to-earth charm and long-running feuds. More than anything she is defined in the public imagination by her participation, as a sitting MP, in 2012’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Continue reading...

The region used to be almost synonymous with magic realism but recent bestselling fiction draws on a legacy of dictatorship, poverty and sinister folkloreA young man follows the bloody trail of his CIA father, through Paraguayan torture chambers and the sites of Andean massacres. An Ecuadorian artist fantasizes about running a scalpel through the tongue of her mute twin. In a Buenos Aires cemetery, teenage fans devour a rock star’s rotting remains.These grisly scenes – and many more like them – populate the pages of Latin America’s recent bestselling fiction. From the Andes to the Amazon and to the urban sprawl of some of the world’s biggest cities, a ghoulish shadow has been cast over Latin American literature. Continue reading...

Harlow joins seaside resorts on charity’s list of 52 vulnerable areas in England and WalesIt was conceived as an “essay in civilisation”, but some have argued that Harlow has on occasion fallen short of this lofty ambition. Now a new analysis heralds fresh woe for the Essex new town – designed in 1947 – by labelling it one of the places in England and Wales most “at risk” from the fallout of the pandemic, which could spill over into support for rightwing extremism.Of 336 councils, researchers identified 52 – including Harlow – where Covid is believed to have caused community tension and could inspire far-right activity. A report out on Monday from the Hope not Hate charitable trust says each of the places suffered a significant downturn in the pandemic, has a history of slow recovery from economic shocks and displays “less liberal than average” attitudes to migration and multiculturalism. Continue reading...

Martin Indyk’s well-woven biography is sympathetic to the preacher of realpolitik condemned by many as a war criminalAs secretary of state, Henry Kissinger nursed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war to a close. The disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel ultimately yielded a peace treaty. The Syrian border remains tensely quiet. Unlike Vietnam, in the Middle East Kissinger’s handiwork holds.The Sunni Arab world has gradually come to terms with the existence of the Jewish state. Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. Relations with Saudi Arabia are possible. Continue reading...

NSW premier marks 1 November as ‘an exciting day’ as regional travel reopens as state records 177 Covid cases

Attack in interim capital comes weeks after car bomb targeted Aden’s governorAt least 12 civilians have been killed in a blast near the airport of Aden, the Yemeni government’s interim capital, a senior security official told AFP.There were also serious injuries, said the official, adding that the cause of the blast on Saturday was unknown. Another security official confirmed the death toll. Continue reading...

Speaking to the G20 summit by video, China’s president stresses vaccine cooperation and economic stabilityChina’s president, Xi Jinping, has called for mutual recognition of Covid-19 vaccines based on the World Health Organization’s emergency use list, according to a transcript of his remarks delivered to leaders of the Group of 20 leaders’ summit, published by the official Xinhua news agency.Speaking to the participants in Rome via video link, Xi said China had provided more than 1.6bn Covid shots to the world, and was working with 16 nations to cooperate on manufacturing doses. Continue reading...

PM raises concerns about possible block on UK exports by France due to dispute about fishing rightsBoris Johnson has told the European Commission president that French threats to hold up British exports in response to a dispute over fishing licences were “completely unjustified”, as the ports of Calais and Boulogne warned of an impending disaster.During a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen at the G20 summit in Rome, the prime minister raised his “concerns about the rhetoric from the French government”, a government spokesman said. Continue reading...