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Limited outside space needn‘t stop you growing an impressive display of flowers and edibles, installing water features or even having a stab at keeping bees Continue reading...

Burnout from two years of battling Covid pandemic has created flood of departures and public concern, says surveyA record number of more than 400 workers in England have left the NHS every week to restore their work-life balance over the last year, according to a new analysis of the workforce crisis hitting the health service.The flood of departures comes with staff complaining of burnout and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder following two years of battling the Covid pandemic. There are now concerns that the exodus is impacting the quality of care, with more than a quarter of adults saying they or an immediate family member had received poor care as a result of the workforce problems. Continue reading...

Foreign nationals studying in Dnipro on their struggle to leave the city as Russian forces advance

The model, 41, on his dangerous youth, micro-managed middle age, dancing with J-Lo and seeing giant pictures of his crotch in Times SquareMy childhood, in Essex, was run-of-the-mill. My parents were grafters, starting businesses from home, and they were both very present in my life while also deeply committed to their jobs. It was instilled into me that nothing is earned unless you work for it.How I avoided serious injury in my teens remains a mystery, given how stupid my friends and I were. We’d climb the steepest hills and descend on roller-skates passing busy junctions; as we got older, we drove cars too fast into hedges and fields. I had an appetite for risk until 27, when mortality became very real. Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has invited Ukraine's 'friends' to join the fight against Russia's assault, adding that weapons would be provided for them.Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian president clarified that Ukraine was not surrendering. 'I’m here. We won’t lay down our arms. We will defend our state,' he said in a video posted on social media.Fierce fighting broke out in Kyiv as Russian forces failed to push their way towards the city centre from multiple directions in the early hours of Saturday

State Ballet of Siberia performs as fans say it’s not performers’ fault they have ‘despot as leader’

More than 50 years after they were forcibly removed from their homes, the former residents of Britain’s last colony in Africa are challenging the UK’s claim to the archipelago. After a five-day journey across the ocean, which they returned from this week, a small delegation of Chagos Islanders made an emotional return to their homeland. They were there to symbolically lay claim to the islands for Mauritius, in the hope of eventually resettling there. Olivier Bancoultwas just four-years-old when his family was deported to Mauritius from the Chagos Islands. We follow his journey

Travellers angry with ‘poor’ communication as many try to take first holiday since pandemic beganTravellers were left frustrated on Saturday after British Airways announced it had cancelled all short-haul Heathrow flights before midday due to technical problems.The cancellations were unrelated to cyber-attacks and involved hardware issues, the company said. Continue reading...

There’s lots of savoury 'umami’ flavour packed into this bowl of aromatic comfortThere are lots of uses for this charred red pepper sauce. It’s lovely tossed through pasta, but you could also serve it with jarred butter beans or as a soup, each time with the zingy salsa spooned on top to cut through the richness. If you’re going with the pasta, feel free to be creative with the shape you use; gnocchi, pappardelle or paccheri are all great options. It may not look as if there’s much going on in the ingredients list for the sauce, but, trust me, you’ll want to eat it straight out of the blender with a spoon.UK readers: click to buy these ingredients from Ocado Continue reading...

Writing a book helped Stephanie Foo come to terms with how childhood traumas impacted her outwardly successful adult lifeIn 2017, Stephanie Foo was slapped with a complex PTSD diagnosis. She was dumbfounded.Foo, a successful podcast producer on shows like This American Life, had heard of PTSD – the disorder associated in popular culture with war veterans who witnessed death, or had guns held to their heads. She knew those afflicted were frequently revisited by traumatic memories, often in flashbacks playing before their eyes. Continue reading...

In the space of six series, the crime drama set in 1920s Birmingham has become a ratings hit, spawning theme pubs, fashion lines and festivals. How did it become a cross-cultural phenomenon?When Shane Milligan picks up the phone, the plasterer and part-time magician from Kent launches straight into an impression of a character he feels he embodies so fully that he sometimes loses sight of himself. “By order of the Peaky Blinders, this place is under new management!” he bellows in guttural Brummie from his home in Gravesend.The line comes early on in Peaky Blinders, the Birmingham-set gangster drama that is about to come to a presumably bloody conclusion in its sixth series on BBC One and Netflix. In the episode, Arthur Shelby (played by Paul Anderson), the tortured brother of crime boss Tommy (Cillian Murphy), has just violently taken over a London jazz club owned by Italian capo Darby Sabini. Continue reading...

If ministers want to boost reading and maths scores in schools, they must involve parents, according to social mobility expertsBev Wong, a single parent from Brixton, south London, would never have taken her teenage daughters to visit a university like Oxford. It wasn’t just that she and other mums in her community didn’t believe elite universities wanted black state school kids. They also couldn’t afford the public transport to get there.But after being approached in her local church, Wong became part of Parent Power, a programme run by the prestigious King’s College London and the community organising charity Citizens UK. The aim of the project was to listen to what was deterring under-represented parents from encouraging their kids to go to selective universities, and then train groups of parents up to talk to others and campaign for a level playing field in education for their children. Continue reading...

People urged to stay home and not to drive on flooded roads as parts of state hit by worse flooding than in 2011

Figures show funding surged 40% in 2021, amid growing demand for content by streaming platformsOlivia Colman and Josh O’Connor were last on screen together as the Queen and Prince Charles, but since then the stars of The Crown are among an array of A-listers who spent part of pandemic in Ireland where film and TV production has hit record levels.Figures released by Screen Ireland show that industry investment surged 40% in 2021, beating the previous record levels of 2019 despite Covid restrictions. Continue reading...

Alfredo Cristiani and former military officers to face trial in long process to bring killings’ masterminds to justiceProsecutors in El Salvador have charged the former president Alfredo Cristiani over the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests that sparked international outrage.Prosecutors also announced charges against a dozen other people, including former military officers, over the massacre. The list of charges will apparently include murder, terrorism and conspiracy. Continue reading...

Amanda Seyfried is surprisingly passive as convicted con artist Elizabeth Holmes in an adaptation that’s not daring enough to be a thriller and can’t decide how camp it wants to beAmanda Seyfried has gone all-in to play the part of fallen Silicon Valley CEO Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout (Disney+, from Thursday), opting for the kind of immersive performance that is as hungry for awards as Nicole Kidman’s prosthetic nose. By all accounts, the real Holmes was a shapeshifter, adjusting her voice and her look as her star rose, and Seyfried embraces every bit of that transformation, from the scruffy 19-year-old in business-suit cosplay to the full face of slap and infamous black polo neck. Just as Dopesick dated its action by its characters’ hairstyles, this does it with eyeliner. The thicker it is, the closer we are to the moment Arthur Fleck becomes the Joker.Holmes was once the youngest female, self-made billionaire in the US. She was on magazine covers, touted as the next Steve Jobs, whom she idolised, and her company, Theranos, promised to transform medicine by allowing blood tests for a plethora of ailments to be carried out with a single drop of blood. But the concept ran away from the science, and the science never caught up. Screeners for the show came with a request that reviewers do not give away any plot details, but I think it’s safe to say that Holmes – who was found guilty of fraud and deceiving investors just weeks ago – found notoriety, if not the sort she was searching for. Continue reading...

Two people, including an SES volunteer, have died after being swept away in Queensland flood waters, bringing the toll to four. This blog is now closed

Reports say artillery rounds and large blasts were heard in Ukrainian capital; Russia vetoes UN resolution deploring invasion of Ukraine

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said to his nation on Friday that 'we must withstand tonight' as he warned of an impending Russian assault on Kyiv and other cities across the country.In his address, Zelenskiy declared that Ukraine 'cannot lose the capital'.The invasion of Ukraine began early on Thursday with missile strikes on cities and military bases, followed by a multi-pronged ground assault that rolled troops in from separatist-held areas in the east; from the southern region of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014; and from Belarus to the north.

Government says black rhino population is growing and also gives permission to hunt 10 leopards and 150 elephantsThe South African government has granted annual hunting and export permits for big game including 10 critically endangered black rhinoceros and a similar number of leopards.It also gave permission for more than 100 elephants to be killed, in keeping with international laws on the trade of endangered species, saying its elephant population was growing and that fewer than 0.3% were hunted each year. Continue reading...

Video footage shared by Ukrainian news outlet HB apparently shows a Ukrainian man attempting to block a Russian military convoy. The 30-second clip shows a man standing in front of what appear to be military vehicles. As the vehicles try to swerve around him, the man jockeys to the side, seemingly in an attempt to block their progress.The clip has gone viral online, with comparisons being drawn to the 'tank man' of Tiananmen Square.

Marise Payne flags further action over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after allies announce they will personally sanction Vladimir Putin and Russia’s foreign affairs minister, Sergei Lavrov

Thirty-second clip shared by Ukrainian news outlet HB shows a man standing in front of what appears to be military vehicles

Core meltdowns due to operational challenges cause concern even as direct strikes to facilities remain remote possibilityConcerns are mounting about the safety of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors and the possibility of an ecological disaster in the midst of the Russian invasion.Experts said that those reactors, at four power plants around the country, had layers of safeguards to prevent a catastrophic meltdown of their cores, but in a full scale war of the kind Vladimir Putin has unleashed, there was a heightened risk of those safety layers all failing at once. Continue reading...

An armoured vehicle has been filmed crashing into and then crushing a civilian car in a Kyiv suburb. Before the incident, recorded from multiple angles, the vehicle was being driven down a main road leading through a residential area. Separate footage showed that the driver survived after local residents helped free him from the wreckage. It is not yet clear whether Russian or Ukrainian forces were driving the vehicle.Russian forces are approaching Kyiv from the north and north-east, Ukraine's army said, with many fearing that the capital could fall on the second day of Moscow's offensive

Australia has the grain to meet increasing demand off the back of a strong harvest, but getting it out of the country will be a challenge

Footage shows newborn babies after they were moved to a makeshift bomb shelter from a neonatal intensive care unit at a children's hospital in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine, the New York Times reported. Dr Denis Surkov, chief of the neonatal unit at Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Children's Clinic hospital, said in a statement: 'This is our reality'

The designer best known for putting men in feminine clothes, now dresses women in masculine clothesGender fluidity is not just Harry Styles in a feather boa. It can also be a woman in an elegantly oversized double-breasted trouser suit, like the model who opened Gucci’s first Milan fashion week show in two years.“Seven years ago I designed a menswear collection, and everyone told me I had invented gender fluidity,” shrugged the designer Alessandro Michele backstage. “I was like, my definition of masculinity is broad, OK?” (Funny, now, to recall the furore caused by a man in a pussy-bow blouse, as recently as 2015.) Continue reading...

Can the reboot of arguably the most iconic and influential crime procedural of them all, which returned after a 12-year hiatus, justify its existence in 2022?Until this week, it had been 12 years since Law & Order, the crime procedural that spawned a world of spinoffs and entrenched the perspective of police and prosecutors on television, aired a new episode.A lot has changed since the flagship show, which premiered on NBC in 1990 and returned to the network for its 21st season on Thursday, went on hiatus in 2010. (For one, the 20th season finale was about a menacing blog.) Crime procedurals – shows in which law enforcement solve a case over the course of a single episode – remain popular; they composed six of the top 10 most-watched scripted broadcast shows in 2020. Law & Order’s most successful spinoff, Special Victims Unit, is now the longest-running live-action primetime series in history with 23 seasons. But a decade’s worth of video evidence of racist police brutality, particularly against Black Americans, has put TV shows where police are always the protagonists under fair scrutiny. Continue reading...

A woman is being hailed on social media after she confronted a heavily armed Russian soldier and offered him sunflower seeds – so that flowers would grow if he died there on Ukraine’s soil. 'You’re occupants, you’re fascists,' she shouts, standing about a metre from the soldier.'Take these seeds and put them in your pockets so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here'

The institution suffered a devastating attack by Islamic State in 2014. Eight years on, an international effort has seen it reopen as ‘a lighthouse of knowledge’The university library in Mosul, which was bombed by Islamic State militants, has opened its doors again, describing itself as a “lighthouse of knowledge” which is “once again burning bright”.Founded in 1921, the library was ransacked and bombarded by missiles during the IS occupation of the city, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 books and manuscripts destroyed. It was reopened on 19 February by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with financial support from Germany and book donations from around the world, including over 20,000 from the UK. Continue reading...

The soldiers who died defending an island in the Black Sea from an air and sea bombardment told an officer onboard a Russian navy warship to 'go fuck yourself' when asked to surrender. There were 13 border guards stationed on Snake Island, a roughly 16-hectare (40-acre) rocky island owned by Ukraine that sits about 186 miles (300km) west of Crimea, when Russian troops bombed the island on Thursday. All 13 soldiers died after refusing to surrender

Beijing is walking a diplomatic tightrope but crisis also offers the opportunity to express grievances against its adversaries

UK defence minister rebuffs pleas from Ukrainian and some Conservative MPs to implement no-fly zone over Ukraine

With the threat of invasion from China ever present, people’s fears are playing out in eastern Europe

Foreign secretary goes on diplomatic drive to rally support for peak sanctions measure

As the invasion enters its second day, Ukrainians reel from the shock of the attack and the capital Kyiv is braced for the arrival of Russian forces after Putin unleashed a full-scale ground invasion and air assault that quickly claimed dozens of lives and displaced at least 100,000 people

Scott Morrison confirms new sanctions against Russian oligarchs as China eases trade restrictions; Australia records at least 28 Covid deaths as mask mandates relaxed in NSW and Victoria; Queensland emergency services receive 1,000 calls for help amid floods. This blog is now closed

She thinks butter belongs in the fridge; he thinks it’s fine sitting out. We air both sides of a domestic disagreement – and ask you to deliver a verdict

Diplomats consider if Russia can be removed as a permanent member of the UN security councilAn effort is under way to isolate Vladimir Putin diplomatically by challenging Russia’s right to a permanent seat of the UN security council on the grounds that Russia took the seat from the defunct Soviet Union in 1991 without proper authorisation.Diplomats are also looking to see if there is a basis for removing Russia from the presidency of the council. Continue reading...

Anti-war protesters have demonstrated around the world to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

State branch no longer has to rely on federal intervention – but that doesn’t mean the federal division has given up on influencing selections

Vitali Klitschko, now mayor of Kyiv, says he will join his brother Wladimir in a ‘bloody war’ against Russian invaders

The site Mahatma Gandhi lived at during 1917-30 is getting a very costly makeover many think is meant to distort his legacyLike most things in Mahatma Gandhi’s life, his ashram in the Indian city of Ahmedabad was simple and austere. Yet between 1917 and 1930, these modest white bungalows, set on the bank of the Sabarmati river in the state of Gujarat, were the beating heart of Gandhi’s non-violent freedom struggle against British rule and his experiments in upending India’s oppressive caste system.Gandhi – who would eventually lead India to independence and remains a global icon for peace – left the Sabarmati ashram in 1930, never to return, and in the years since, it has become one of India’s most sacrosanct sites. It is where Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu and most recently Donald Trump all paid a visit to during their trips to India. Continue reading...

Analysis: a new pact will be worse for Israel than the old one and Iran’s influence in the region has grown in recent yearsThe US decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal was an immense personal achievement for former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a leaked video, he boasted that he had personally convinced Donald Trump to scrap the 2015 accord between Tehran and world powers.“I had to stand up against the whole world and come out against this agreement,” Netanyahu told members of his Likud party in the clip from 2018. “And we didn’t give up.” Continue reading...

Judge finds Tony Witmann had PTSD and was ‘genuinely remorseful’ but victim fears she will never recoverA former soldier who tied up a woman at gunpoint while trying to get his cat back from Melbourne’s Lost Dogs Home has been jailed for six years.Tony Wittman was armed with an assault weapon and dressed in full-military style clothing when he went to the Home in January 2021, causing victim Bailey Scarlett to initially believe he was a legitimate police officer due to his appearance.Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Continue reading...