World news | The Guardian

As Emmanuel Macron opens a museum dedicated to the exonerated Jewish soldier, ultra-nationalists led by Éric Zemmour again question his innocenceMore than a century after he was exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer whose false conviction for treason sparked bitter controversy, has erupted into France’s presidential race amid far-right attempts to question his innocence.Emmanuel Macron last week personally inaugurated the first museum dedicated to the Dreyfus affair, a historical collection exhibited in the house of Émile Zola, the writer and best-known defender of the persecuted officer, in Médan west of Paris. Continue reading...

With a new governing coalition yet to be formed and jab refusal high, experts worry the country is unprepared for a surge in casesConcerns are mounting in Germany about a rapidly growing and hard to predict fourth wave of Covid-19 this autumn, as the government is in transition and flatlining vaccination rates lag behind those in the rest of western Europe.An increasingly mobile population, a largely dismantled pop-up testing infrastructure and reduced staffing at hospitals have led some experts to warn that the government is facing a resurgent virus with less resolve than at previous stages of the pandemic. Continue reading...

The actor, 65, on growing up in a loving family, recognising her partner, and getting more interesting while the parts she is offered get less interestingMy earliest memory is jumping off a little stone wall in the garden in Australia. I called it my jumping wall. It felt at least 30ft high and enormously brave. It was probably lower than knee height. It’s my first memory of an adrenaline rush. My dad was in the army and we were posted all around the world. I went to Australia on a boat with my family when I was three. It was gorgeous. I learned to speak with a thick Australian accent.It was a childhood of impermanence: very happy, very unhappy. Nothing lasted longer than two-and-a-half years: friendships, schooling, climate, geography, our home. We were a very loving family, but that was your only constant. That’s why, eventually, my two older brothers and I were sent to boarding school in England. There was this need for equilibrium, steadiness and security. I don’t consider myself to have had an unfortunate childhood. It was just strange. Continue reading...

TPLF fighters say they have captured Dessie, the furthest south they have reached since JulyTigrayan forces said on Saturday that they had seized the strategic town of Dessie in Ethiopia’s Amhara region where tens of thousands of people have sought refuge from an escalation in the conflict.Fighters with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had pushed Ethiopian government forces from Dessie and were advancing toward the town of Kombolcha, a TPLF spokesman, Getachew Reda, said by satellite phone from an undisclosed location. Continue reading...

Prime minister’s comments come after news that doctors advised the monarch to rest for two weeksBoris Johnson has said the Queen is “on very good form” after speaking to her this week.The prime minister’s comments come after it was announced on Friday that the 95-year-old monarch, who pulled out of speaking at Cop26 and recently spent a night in hospital, had been advised by doctors to rest for at least another two weeks and not to undertake any official visits, prompting fears over her health. Continue reading...

Irish actor Aisling Bea on writing This Way Up in lockdown while filming the new Home Alone movie reboot, women’s inner lives and her abiding love of potato wafflesWhen it comes to comedy, there is little Aisling Bea can’t turn her hand to. After training as an actor, she began performing standup in her mid 20s and quickly became a rising star of the scene, winning the Edinburgh fringe’s So You Think You’re Funny? competition in 2012 and landing a nomination for best newcomer at the festival the following year. The Kildare-born comic’s chatterbox charisma readily translated to the screen; Bea soon became a panel show fixture, while continuing to land roles in sitcoms on both sides of the pond. In 2019, she wrote and starred in her own Channel 4 comedy-drama, This Way Up, playing Áine, an exuberant and quick-witted EFL teacher who struggles with her mental health. The show’s combination of giddy humour and emotional heft was a winning one, and a second, pandemic-crafted series aired this summer. Television mastered, the 37-year-old is now segueing into film – specifically the new Home Alone reboot, Home Sweet Home Alone, in which she takes on the role of panicked matriarch Carol.Updated versions of beloved family films from the 1980s and 1990s tend to elicit a strong response online. How have you found the reaction to Home Sweet Home Alone so far?

Mohamed Mussa, 27, a Dutch national who lived in Wandsworth, was reported missing on SundayPolice are appealing for information after the body of a man was found in the River Thames.Mohamed Mussa, 27, known to his friends as Mussa, was reported missing on Sunday. Continue reading...

Craig Bromfield was a ‘ragtag’ youngster when the legendary football manager changed his life by inviting him into his family. So what went wrong?• Read an extract from Bromfield’s book hereCraig Bromfield stands on the steps of Sunderland’s Seaburn beach, staring into the past. “It was 9.30am on a Saturday, freezing,” he says. “My brother Aaron’s in the sea just in his pants and I’m running along here, backwards and forwards, thinking I’m the bloke off Chariots of Fire. Then Aaron gets out and runs up these steps, waving at me, and Brian’s just walking along here with his entourage.”He didn’t know who Brian Clough was. But Aaron explained, Craig approached him and it changed his life. The date, 20 October 1984, is etched in Craig’s mind. He was 11, Aaron was 12, and Clough was a legendary football manager and former player. As a manager, he had achieved the impossible twice – first with Derby County, then with Nottingham Forest. He had taken these two modest clubs from the old second division to champions of football’s top tier for the first time in their respective histories. Then, in 1979 and 1980, he went one further, winning the European Cup in successive years with a Forest team composed largely of rejects and has-beens. Continue reading...

Ahead of G20 meeting, PM warns of ‘difficult geopolitical events’ echoing those that ended Roman empireA failure by world leaders to commit to tackling the climate emergency at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow could prompt “very difficult geopolitical events” including mass migration and global competition for food and water, Boris Johnson has said.Speaking before the start of a gathering of leaders from the G20 industrialised nations in Rome, where he will push for countries to arrive in Glasgow with fixed plans to cut emissions, Johnson said the chances of success hung in the balance. Continue reading...

Latest Delta variant outbreak is testing the limits of people’s patience with aggressive containment measuresOn Friday, the Beijing Daily published an intricate graphic identifying two people sick with Covid-19 and everyone they had infected, detailing the spread of the latest Delta outbreak in the country. The map came amid growing frustration, some panic, and rare protests over the ramifications of China’s effort to remain a “zero Covid” country.Since the first coronavirus cases were reported nearly two years ago, China has run a zero-tolerance Covid policy. Its success in preventing the virus from spreading across the vast country serves as a stark contrast to the situations in many western countries. Since last year, fewer than 100,000 cases have been officially recorded, among a population of about 1.4 billion. At least 4,634 have died. Continue reading...

Beautifully shot documentary successfully explains the Dublin singer-songwriter’s appeal by focusing on what his songs mean to fansEven if you’re not into his lumpen folk-rock polemics, this documentary and concert film goes a long way to explaining Dublin singer-songwriter Damien Dempsey’s unshakeable home-crowd following, and why – as we see at the beginning of Ross Killeen’s reflective film – he is able to pack out a series of gigs every Christmas. Dempsey’s story makes a fine case for music as personal balm, but juxtaposing it with three of his fans’ personal histories deepens the scope of his art into a true act of public communion and shared healing. At least, if the deluge of tears streaming down concertgoers’ cheeks here is anything to go by.The three Dubliners we hear from are elegant recovering heroin addict Nadia, who “gave up on life” after her brother’s murder; boxing coach Packy, gripped by social phobia since his teens and witness to the alleyway shooting of a friend; and longbearded Jonathan, a reformed alcoholic once traumatically attacked by a schoolteacher, who has discovered new meaning in life. The Dublin street-life nuggets – shot in beautifully desolate black and white by cinematographer Narayan van Maele – could be straight out of Dempsey’s lyrics. Unsurprisingly, there are close correspondences in the musician’s past: the shy working-class boy who started to sail close to the wind after his parents’ divorce and had his road to Damascus moment after being beaten senseless by 15 people. “It was a good little left-right,” he says. “It put me on a better path.” Continue reading...

With the survival of our species at stake, meet six activist groups who refuse to go quietlyOcean Rebellion, a group that fights to protect the high seas, emerged from the broader Extinction Rebellion movement in 2020, when it became clear that ocean degradation required singular focus. Cofounders Rob Higgs and his partner, Sophie Miller, are both artists who create theatrical stunts to convey its message. Continue reading...

When the Pultizer-prize winning poet was asked to collaborate with the former Beatle on a book, he gained a unique insight into the creative process behind the band’s biggest hitsTowards the end of 2016 I had a phone call from an unfamiliar number. The voice, though, was immediately familiar. The newly elected Donald Trump introduced himself quite matter-of-factly. He lost no time in getting to the point: would I be willing to come to Washington to serve as his “Poetry Supremo”?That Sir Paul McCartney turns out to be such a brilliant mimic shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Like almost all great writers, he’d apprenticed himself to the masters of the trade: Dickens, Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll. All apprenticeships are characterised by caricature and impersonation. Continue reading...

Astrology, the royal family, immigration: can two strangers agree on anything?• Click here if you’d like to dine across the divideNickie, 68, StockportOccupation Setting up an astrology company, after a career in sales Continue reading...

Number of commuter trips made in mid-October was just 45% of pre-Covid figure, industry says

Students and activists in group that British foreign ministry hopes will be ‘the first of many’ in coming monthsA group of LGBT+ Afghans has arrived in Britain, the first since the Taliban’s return to power in August caused panic among gay and transgender Afghans, who feared persecution and even death under the Islamists’ rule.The evacuation of the 29 Afghans is “hoped to be the first of many” in the coming months, Britain’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, hours after a Taliban spokesman said LGBT+ rights would not be respected. Continue reading...

South Korean president meets pontiff and gives him a cross made of barbed wire taken from demilitarised zoneThe South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, has made a fresh attempt to have Pope Francis visit North Korea, at a meeting at the Vatican where the two leaders discussed peace efforts, Yonhap news agency said.Moon gave Francis one of 136 crosses created with barbed wire from a fence in the demilitarised zone, the division across the peninsula for the past 68 years. Continue reading...

Booster jabs in UK can now be given to certain vulnerable people sooner than six months after a second dose; Russia reports 1,163 new Covid deaths

Tribunal ordered Canadian government to pay compensation to children who suffered discrimination in welfare systemJustin Trudeau’s government has launched a last-minute court appeal against a ruling that would require it pay billions of dollars to First Nations children who suffered discrimination in the welfare system.Minutes before a court deadline on Friday afternoon, the government filed papers indicating it planned once again to fight a human rights tribunal decision ordering the compensation payment. Continue reading...

On Tuesday, CDC advisers will make more detailed recommendations on which children should get vaccinatedThe US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday paved the way for children ages five to 11 to get Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.After the FDA cleared kid-size doses – a third of the amount given to teens and adults – for emergency use, up to 28 million more American children could be eligible for vaccinations as early as next week. Continue reading...

Prince Harry and Meghan join WHO in urging leaders to honour promises to help low-income countriesPrince Harry and Meghan have joined the World Health Organization (WHO) and Save the Children in appealing to G20 leaders meeting this weekend to honour promises to send Covid-19 vaccines to low-income countries where just 3% of people have had a jab.It is one of the most directly political initiatives at a high-profile political summit by the former royal couple since they left the British royal household. Continue reading...

Teaching was once her career backup plan, but now the innovative and inclusive Rebecca West is shortlisted for a major awardEveryone remembers their favourite teacher. Rebecca West still can’t bring herself to call hers by his first name, even though, 20 years on, she’s friends with Paul on Facebook. But she’ll never forget the example that her geography and legal studies teacher Mr Fields set her as a student, before teaching was even on her radar as a career.“He let kids have honest opinions,” West says. “We felt comfortable to air a conflicting argument in the classroom because he would let us have those conversations. It was very inspirational to have someone treat us like young adults.” Continue reading...

The legal battle had waged for more than a decade and raised questions over satire and the need to protect vulnerable childrenCanada’s supreme court has ruled that a comedian had the right to mock a disabled teen singer – including joking that he wanted to drown him – in a case that raised questions over satire and the need to protect vulnerable children.The 5-4 decision from the country’s top court ended a legal battle of more than a decade that had probed the limits of artistic freedom. Continue reading...

French and EU vessels could face ‘rigorous checks’ in British waters if Paris carries out threatsBoris Johnson vowed to do “whatever is necessary” to protect British fishers, with French and EU vessels put on notice of “rigorous” checks when in British waters and even tariffs on goods if Paris acts on its recent threats.As France prepared to act on its plan to tie up British goods in red tape at ports in a row over fishing licences, the prime minister said he intended to ask Emmanuel Macron to see past the “turbulence” in British-French relations. Continue reading...

Ryan Robert told court he had got ‘carried away in the moment’ during violence in Bristol in MarchA protester has been convicted of trying to endanger the life of a police officer during clashes following the “kill the bill” protests in Bristol last spring.Ryan Roberts, 25, was captured on camera pushing pieces of burning cardboard underneath two police vans, and placing industrial bins around an already partially burnt-out police car and setting them on fire, Bristol crown court heard. Continue reading...

Jury at Bristol crown court finds retired accountant guilty of murdering ex-soldier David Jackson

American president moves to repair relationship after France was blindsided by security pactJoe Biden has moved to repair his damaged personal and political relationship with Emmanuel Macron by acknowledging that the announcement of a security and technology pact that blindsided France was a “clumsy” episode handled with a lack of grace.The US president and his French counterpart met at France’s Vatican embassy in Rome on Friday, ahead of the G20 leaders’ summit this weekend, for their first in-person discussion since an astonished Macron was left feeling betrayed and humiliated by September’s security deal. Continue reading...

Monarch can undertake ‘light, desk-based duties’ and aims to attend Remembrance Sunday serviceDoctors have advised the Queen to rest for at least another two weeks and not to undertake any official visits, Buckingham Palace has said.It means the 95-year-old will not attend the Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on the eve of Remembrance Sunday, though she hopes to be at the Cenotaph for the Remembrance Day service itself. Continue reading...

Despite officials from New Zealand and the United Nations hoping that Tokelau would vote for independence, the islands have resistedIn 2006, two lacquered wooden chests and a crate of champagne were ferried 507km from Samoa to Tokelau, a collection of atolls scattered across the Pacific which are home to 1,500 people. Over three days the chests were carried between atolls to collect ballots in a referendum on whether Tokelau should move, finally, towards self-governance.Since 1946, Tokelau – one of the most remote places in the world – has been classed by the United Nations as a non-self-governing dependent territory: a colony. First colonised by Britain in 1877, in 1925 Tokelau was essentially given to New Zealand, which has administered it since. Continue reading...

Pope Francis has urged world leaders to offer 'concrete hope' to future generations. In a special message for BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day, before the Cop26 summit in Glasgow next week, the pontiff said climate change and Covid-19 had 'raised numerous doubts and concerns about ... the way we organise our societies'. These global crises could only be overcome through 'a renewed sense of shared responsibility for our world', he added

Sense of chaos and trepidation, as well as excitement, permeates city ahead of opening of climate summitIt isn’t raining as Maria Azul flies into Glasgow airport from Buenos Aires, but there are so many clouds in the sky she knows it will pour down soon enough.It is Azul’s first visit to the city, as part of a Cop26 delegation of frontline activists from Latin America and the Caribbean and she has been duly warned the late autumn weather is “incredibly windy and rainy”. Continue reading...

Entire output including CBeebies will be constantly analysed for impartiality breachesThe BBC is to appoint external investigators to assess the impartiality of its coverage of contentious topics.The corporation’s director general, Tim Davie, announced on Friday the BBC’s entire output – including children’s programming, documentaries and educational material – will in the future be constantly analysed for any impartiality breaches as part of a series of rolling external investigations. Continue reading...

Analysis: British government is not entirely innocent but Paris knows forceful rhetoric should only go so farIn January 2017, Emmanuel Macron, in third place in the race to be the next president of France and seen by some as an electoral bubble waiting to burst, staged a photo opportunity in the fish market of Le Guilvinec in Brittany. “Brexit will not go well because Brexit cannot go well,” Macron told fishers who had raised their concerns about the future. “But I’ll make [the fishing problem] a red line in our negotiations with the UK.”Macron’s seizing of the Élysée Palace later that year was hugely buoyed up by the turnout in the coastal region. Close to a third of voters in Brittany gave him their vote in the crucial first round of the 2017 contest, a greater proportion than in any other region of France. Continue reading...

A test that could predict your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia is beginning NHS trials. Readers share their reasons on whether they would take it or notA five-minute test that could predict your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or another type of dementia in up to 15 years’ time is beginning NHS trials.There are more than 850,000 people in the UK who have dementia, and the condition affects one in 14 people over the age of 65 and one in six people over 80. Continue reading...

Care company is suspected of cheating 90-year-old British woman out of her savingsSpanish police investigating a care company that allegedly cheated at least one elderly and vulnerable British customer out of her savings and property have arrested two women and seized €45,000 in cash.The women – one British and one Spanish – were arrested in the south-eastern province of Murcia last week on suspicion of aggravated fraud, falsifying documents and false administration. Continue reading...

Force says it is discouraging the activity this year along with organised events because of Covid

‘Dad dos’, or ‘Dadchelor parties’ – one last blow out for a father-to-be – are on the up. Are they just an excuse for a bender, or a crucial celebration for the modern, hands-on father?‘Take a moment to say goodbye to your old life.” This is what Kit Harington said earlier this year, when asked what advice he’d give to fellow new parents. The actor, best known as the angst-ridden bastard prince Jon Snow in the fantasy series Game of Thrones, regretted not having held a proper celebration before the birth of his son in January.Harington said he would have liked to mark the occasion “with a kind of stag”. “You’re so prepped about gearing up for being a parent that you forget. And then it’s too late. It’s gone.” Yet it’s the kind of sob story that’s likely to invite eye-rolls from mothers, for whom this approach to having a baby is not a matter of negotiation. Continue reading...

The British author on isolation, community and writing a novel set during the coronavirus pandemicLast December, in the depths of lockdown, Sarah Moss picked up a copy of Winter Papers, an annual anthology of new Irish writing. The 46-year-old and her family had recently moved from Coventry to Dublin, and although Irish lockdown was less restrictive than the Britain version, Moss was feeling, she says, “completely frozen”. For nine months, the pandemic had been impossible to absorb, not only personally, but as a writer – until it showed up in Winter Papers. “It was only a glimpse of it in essays and stories,” Moss says, but for the first time she thought: “This is a thing we can write about. And it was such a relief.”The permission given in that moment triggered an extraordinary burst of activity. Moss’s eighth novel, The Fell, was written in a frenzied few months and centres on the story of two neighbours in a remote village in the Peak District. At the beginning of the novel, Kate, a single mother of a teenage son, and her elderly neighbour, Alice, are both struggling with lockdown, not just the logistics but the guilt of complaining when they are supposed to be grateful simply for being alive. It’s perfect material for Moss, who in previous novels has examined the interplay between human systems and the natural world – specifically, how seemingly small domestic manoeuvres can throw one up against the vast planes of history, in ways tragic and absurd. In The Fell, Alice wonders if “maybe she’ll die without ever touching another human”, but also whether it’s OK to put frivolous items such as Hula Hoops on the list when Kate offers to do her shopping for her. Kate, meanwhile, asks, “When did we become a species whose default state is shut up indoors?” and, in an action that triggers the drama of the novel, sneaks out of the house for a rule-breaking walk. The Fell is a funny, savage novel about the very recent past, and seems to do the impossible: hold a story that is still unfolding immobile enough to integrate into fiction. Continue reading...

Permanencia Voluntaria has rescued hundreds of films and is seeking to challenge attitudes towards its legacyFrom demons, ghosts and vampires to Martians, mad scientists and spurned lovers, the heroes and heroines of 20th-century Mexican popular cinema faced more than their share of enemies.Few foes, however, have proved quite as formidable as the combined adversaries of time, critical snottiness and oblivion – not to mention the odd earthquake. Continue reading...

As the bard of Barking tours a new album, he reflects on modern politics, his scraps with the Daily Mail and why he could do with listening a bit moreIn an Exeter pub on a wet Monday morning, Billy Bragg is talking about a day at the Glastonbury festival in 2000. The BBC had signed up an unusual guest for its coverage – Boris Johnson. In the footage (still online), Johnson – then a year from becoming an MP – forgets to get off the train, gets a comedy henna tattoo in Sanskrit, and growls the Clash’s Bankrobber to Bragg in the car: “It’s your philosophy, isn’t it?” he says. “Leftwing approval of theft from capitalists?”“He was trolling me the whole time,” Bragg remembers. “That’s what his MO still is. A wind-up merchant who became prime minister! How the fuck did that happen?” He shrugs. “Modern politics needs things he doesn’t have: accountability and empathy.” Continue reading...

UK environment secretary accuses France of using ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric in escalating disputeEmmanuel Macron’s hopes of being re-elected president may be driving the diplomatic row with France over post-Brexit access to Britain’s fishing waters, the UK’s environment secretary has claimed.George Eustice accused Paris of using “inflammatory” rhetoric in an escalating dispute over a shortfall in licences for French fishing vessels seeking to operate in the coastal waters of the UK and Jersey. Continue reading...

Former NSW premier denies she suspected Daryl Maguire of wrongdoing, despite him being summoned to appear at corruption inquiry

Search for Cleo Smith continues; Victoria records 1,656 cases and 10 deaths, NSW records 268 cases and 2 deaths; ACT records 10 cases; New Zealand records 125 new cases; Victoria storms leave 500,000 people without power – follow updates live

A curious picture of pride, optimism, despair and frustration emerges as the country’s creatives consider their homeland

These holiday firms walk the talk when it comes to minimising their carbon footprints and promoting biodiversityRather than batting the carbon problem back to customers, Scottish minibus tour operator Rabbie’s taxes itself £10 for every tonne of carbon its trips produce. Since 2008, this has raised £120,000 for community and environmental projects, voted for by the team. Projects include the Staffin Community Trust, a charity improving economic prospects for the Gaelic heartlands of Skye; Rabbie’s team has provided hands-on and financial help to build walking paths and plant trees. Rabbie’s prides itself on meeting the balance between the carbon efficiency of coach travel but the nimbleness of self-drive – accessing rural communities that need income from tourism. An extensive environmental and leave-no-trace policy includes modern fuel-efficient vehicles, litter-picking along the way, and washing minibuses where runoff is controlled.

In study of 554 university students, 63 admit to rape, sexual assault and other aggressive forcible actsThe first survey examining sexual violence by male UK students has shone a light on misogyny at universities, with scores admitting to rape, sexual assault and other forcible acts.Of the 554 male students surveyed, 63 reported that they had committed 251 sexual assaults, rapes and other coercive and unwanted incidents in the past two years, according to researchers at the University of Kent. Continue reading...

The winners of the European wildlife photographer of the year awards, run by the German Society for Nature Photography, have been chosen, with a shot by Angel Fitor of Spain pipping 19,000 entries Continue reading...

Equalities minister Liz Truss will consult on plans to allow counselling for non-vulnerable adultsConsenting adults should be able to undergo so-called conversion therapy, the government has recommended.Setting out proposals for how they plan to crack down on “coercive and abhorrent” practices that seek to change sexual orientation or gender identity, the Government Equalities Office said: “We recognise there is a plurality of experience in this area and that there are adults who seek counselling to help them live a life that they feel is more in line with their personal beliefs.” Continue reading...

The actor is an uncanny likeness, but – with its creepy equerries and mountains of pastries – director Pablo Larraín has created a gothic horror out of the princess’s life. They tell us how they made Sandringham her Overlook HotelSpencer, the new film about Princess Diana, is very definitely not The Crown. Not for director Pablo Larraín the comforting grandeur of Peter Morgan’s Netflix series, whose tapestried locations are the scene of inner turmoil as private desires hit the buffers of public duty. Spencer, the imagined story of which takes place over three ghastly days at Sandringham in 1991, veers far more gothic. The Norfolk stately home becomes a kind of Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic The Shining, through whose endless, confusing corridors the camera harries and chivvies Kristen Stewart’s Diana as her psyche crumbles.Stewart and Larraín are with me in a Zoom room: the director has his camera off, a mere black square and a courteous Chilean voice; Stewart, a relaxed, enthusiastic presence in a depersonalised domestic space, wearing a baggy red top, her hair loose and blond. Continue reading...