Up to 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries lack basic reading skills, with learning losses seen from US to EthiopiaThe scale of the number of children who have lost out on their schooling during the pandemic is “nearly insurmountable”, according to UN data.Up to 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read or understand a simple text, up from 53% pre-Covid, the research suggested. Continue reading...
The country’s golden beaches have turned black as debris released from a sunken ship continues to wreak environmental and economic havocWhen Adnan Sheikh took his family on holiday to Sri Lanka last October, he booked them into a hotel for two weeks in Sarakkuwa beach, just off the coast from where the X-Press Pearl cargo ship caught fire and sank five months previously.Sheikh had been charmed by the online pictures of golden sandy beaches. But when the family arrived, it was a different story. Continue reading...
by Caitlin Cassidy (now) and Matilda Boseley (earlier on (#5VC50)
Labor leader outlines election priorities; nation records 76 Covid deaths; Peter Dutton warns against Russia invasion of Ukraine; giant ram survives 4.7 magnitude earthquake in WA. Follow all the latest news
The multi-hyphenate talks about the rerelease of his groundbreaking drama Shortbus and the changes in how we view sex in the past 15 yearsIt’s a little more than 15 years since John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus exploded – interpret that verb as lewdly as you like – into cinemas, and in a sense, it feels a whole lot longer. Which is not to say that Mitchell’s brazenly queer, joyously sex-positive comedy, about a female sex therapist pursuing the orgasm she’s never experienced at New York’s raunchiest underground club, is outdated. Rewatched today, as it enjoys a rerelease in US cinemas, it veritably hums with erotic vigour and philosophical playfulness, a presciently liberated film with its eye on the future of sexual connection, in all its poly, nonbinary possibilities.It’s just that it’s hard to imagine film-making this proudly and playfully carnal coming out of the American indie scene now: we’re living through a remarkably chaste period of cinema, perhaps marked by post-MeToo caution and responsibility, as film-makers reconsider the boundary between exuberance and exploitation. With its copious unsimulated sex scenes, Shortbus certainly raised some eyebrows in 2006 – but it could well be a lightning rod today, throwing a wrench into debates over who is allowed to depict what on screen. Continue reading...
Among the manifold complexities of the global supply chain, a simple principle holds: corporations will always go where their costs – and their responsibilities – can be kept to an absolute minimum‘It’s like a little Puerto Rico – we’re basically run by the US,” said Allan, as we drove around San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras and the country’s largest manufacturing centre one day. “Here there is more ‘freedom’,” he added, doing air quotes. Allan had spent most of his adult life working as a production manager for companies such as Gildan and Hanes, making socks and underwear for American bargain shoppers. All of this garment manufacture now takes place behind the gates of Honduras’s export processing zones.When export processing zones (EPZs) proliferated in the 1980s and 90s, their boosters claimed that the employment opportunities inside them would lift up local economies. Allan’s story showed the holes in that argument. After all, he wasn’t just a low-paid garment worker: he was management. He had done everything right. And now, he said, he was moving to Canada. Continue reading...
‘They can have Rogan or Young. Not both,’ writes musician in an open letter to his management that has since been taken down from his websiteNeil Young has demanded that his music be removed from Spotify due to vaccine misinformation spread by podcaster Joe Rogan on the streaming service, saying: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”In an open letter to his manager and record label that was posted to his website and later taken down, Young wrote: “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. Please act on this immediately today and keep me informed of the time schedule.” Continue reading...
A new version of the movie available to Chinese audiences transforms the anarchist message of the originalThe ending to David Fincher’s 1999 cult classic film Fight Club has been changed in China, sparking outrage among fans.Film fans in China noticed over the weekend that a version of the Brad Pitt and Edward Norton movie, newly available on streaming platform Tencent Video, was given a makeover that transforms the anarchist, anti-capitalist message which made the film a global hit. Continue reading...
The belt and road initiative is ensnaring vulnerable countries in debt via corrupt infrastructure projects. Slavery reparations from former colonial powers could help turn the tide
2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame has appeared stony faced beside prime minister Scott Morrison during the 2022 Australian of the Year morning tea at The Lodge. Tame has not shied away from criticising the PM during her year in the spotlight. The sexual assault survivor and 2021 Australian of the Year has regularly commented on the government's controversial handling of a number of alleged sexual assault and harassment scandals► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube
Istanbul airport was forced to shut down while motorists were trapped in cars around Athens as rare heavy snow falls across southeast EuropeEurope’s busiest airport shut down in Istanbul on Monday while schools and vaccination centres closed in Athens as a rare snowstorm blanketed swathes of the eastern Mediterranean, causing blackouts and traffic havoc.The closure of Istanbul Airport – where the roof of one of the cargo terminals collapsed under heavy snow, causing no injuries – grounded flights stretching from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and Asia. Continue reading...
Five men were sentenced to 30 years each in prison in a ruling hailed as vindication for survivors who have spent years fighting for justiceIndigenous women raped by paramilitaries during Guatemala’s brutal civil war have triumphed in court, when their aggressors were sentenced to 30 years each in prison.In a verdict hailed as a vindication for survivors who have spent years fighting for justice, a tribunal convicted five former paramilitary patrolmen of crimes against humanity for the rape of five Maya Achi women in the early 1980s. Continue reading...
The first feature from Jamie Dack, about a relationship between a 34-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl, boasts a breakout performance for newcomer Lily McInernyPalm Trees and Power Lines, a remarkably sharp-eyed and bruising debut from writer-director Jamie Dack, opens in the distended, languid stretch of a teenage summer. Lea, played in a stunning first turn by newcomer Lily McInerny, is 17 years old and bored. She lives with her single mother, harried and yearning Sandra (Gretchen Mol), somewhere in small-town, coastal California – palm trees and power lines, railroad tracks and modest homes – and floats through the days with sunbathing, YouTube makeup tutorials, and trips to the cheap ice cream chain store with her lustful best friend Amber (Quinn Frankel).Lots of films mistake glamorizing and maturing adolescence for capturing it, but Dack’s feature, developed from her 2018 short of the same name, is saturated with the teenage. The actors are fresh-faced and gangly, and Dack has a keen ear for the vacuity and experimental crudeness of teenage conversations – boys ranking girls they know on a 10-point scale, girls playing along to hang, fart jokes, generally talking about nothing. Lea spends a good portion of the first 15 minutes prone – on the ground, on the floor with Amber, on the couch, on a lounge chair, in the backseat of someone’s car during passionless sex with a clueless boy – and the camera is there with her, on her level, hemmed by the smallness of her world.Palm Trees and Power Lines is showing at the Sundance film festival with a release date to be announced Continue reading...
Five teenagers already held before 14-year-old arrested in Stretford where attack occurredPolice have arrested a sixth teenager following the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Kennie Carter in Manchester.Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said the teenager was found with stab wounds to the chest on Thirlmere Avenue in Stretford at about 7pm on Saturday. Continue reading...
Juan Ponce de León statue came down hours before king arrives on island to mark 500 years since founding of capital San JuanA statue of the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León has been toppled in Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, hours before a visit to the Caribbean island by Spain’s King Felipe VI.The capital’s mayor, Miguel Romero, criticized the incident on Monday as an “act of vandalism” in remarks to news outlet El Nuevo Día, but sought to downplay the significance of the incident and the extent of the damage. Continue reading...
by Angela Giuffrida in Rome and agencies on (#5VC2J)
Ex-pontiff blames editorial ‘oversight’ for previous statement he was absent from 1980 meeting over suspected paedophile priestThe former pope Benedict XVI has admitted providing false information to a German inquiry into clerical sexual abuse.Benedict, who resigned as the global leader of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, said on Monday that he had attended a meeting with local church officials in 1980 to discuss a suspected paedophile priest. He blamed a previous written statement to German investigators – in which he said he was absent from the meeting – on an editorial error. Continue reading...
My friend Chris Walker, who has died of pneumonia aged 66, worked as a GP in Sheffield for more than 30 years, first at the radical practice in Darnall, then at Park medical centre until his retirement in 2014. He developed a special interest in working in the fields of drug rehabilitation and migraine.Chris was born in Epsom, Surrey, the second of four children of Emma (nee Lewis), a nurse, and Derek Walker, a psychiatrist. The family moved to Painswick, Gloucestershire, and Chris went to Wycliffe college, then on to study medicine at Sheffield University. After graduating he travelled with friends overland to Africa in a self-assembled Unimog vehicle that resembled a mini-tank. Continue reading...
There’s almost always a profound reason someone chooses to take up a combat sport as an adult, Jenny Valentish learns at a women’s Muay Thai retreatA curious audience has gathered at the top of the steps of the beach in Victoria’s Bellarine peninsula, gawking at the 24 women having at each other on the sand.“LEAN BACK!” comes the instruction on the wind. That’s if you value your head.Top: Heather Rain with her training partner Teah Curwen, dodging dogs and walkers on the beach in Ocean Grove while concentrating on the drills.
Paris haute couture fashion week saddened by death of French designer at 73The opening of Paris haute couture fashion week, trailed as a celebratory return to live catwalk shows, was overshadowed by the death of the fashion legend Manfred Thierry Mugler.The unexpected announcement of Mugler’s death at the age of 73 made a dramatic start to fashion’s most theatrical week. Haute couture produces showstopping, headline-grabbing gowns for the upcoming red carpet season and for the world’s most extravagant parties. The pedestrian business of hemlines, which other fashion weeks concern themselves with, has no place here. Couture week had been hailed as a cheerful post-pandemic celebration of live fashion, with twice as many physical catwalk shows scheduled as last season, but the news of Mugler’s death, which came just days after a Louis Vuitton show paid tribute to the late Virgil Abloh, moved the mood music dial to bittersweet. Continue reading...
WikiLeaks founder is seeking to appeal against ruling that he can be sent to US to face espionage chargesThe WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be able to go to the supreme court to challenge a decision allowing him to be extradited to the US to face espionage charges.However, the high court refused him permission for a direct appeal, meaning the supreme court will first have to decide whether or not it should hear his challenge. Continue reading...
WikiLeaks co-founder is seeking to appeal against ruling that he can be sent to US to face espionage chargesWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be able to go to the supreme court to challenge a decision allowing him to be extradited.However, it refused him permission for a direct appeal, meaning the supreme court will have to decide whether or not it should hear his challenge. Continue reading...
Violent clashes broke out between police and people protesting against Covid-19 restrictions in Brussels on Sunday. Police used teargas and fired water cannon in an effort to disperse protesters. Authorities said about 50,000 people took part in the demonstration in the Belgium capital, which coincided with similar protests in other European cities.Protesters hurled projectiles outside the European Union's diplomatic service and metal barriers were thrown at officers in a metro station
In a new documentary premiered at Sundance, Wood claimed she was ‘coerced into a commercial sex act under false pretences’The actor Evan Rachel Wood has accused the rock musician Marilyn Manson of raping her on the set of the music video for his 2007 single Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand).In Phoenix Rising, a new documentary about her life and career which premiered at the 2022 Sundance film festival, Wood said that during a previously discussed “simulated sex scene”, Manson “started penetrating me for real” once the cameras were rolling. Continue reading...
Crocodile meat began to grow in popularity in Thailand when pork prices surged after a shortage caused by the spread of African swine fever. Wichai Roongtaweechai, who owns a farm and a restaurant specialising in crocodile meat, says he has seen sales of crocodile meat go up by 70% Continue reading...
by Andrew Roth in Moscow, Dan Sabbagh, Lisa O'Carroll on (#5VB40)
State department says dependants of staffers must leave the country amid growing tensions over Russia’s military buildupThe US and UK are withdrawing diplomats’ families from Ukraine, but the EU has said dependants will stay put for now, amid heightened fears of a Russian invasion.The state department told the dependants of staffers at the US embassy in Kyiv that they must leave the country. It also said that non-essential embassy staff could leave Ukraine at government expense. Continue reading...
About half of British staff in Kyiv reportedly scheduled to return to UK in response to threat of Russian invasionSome British staff and dependants are being withdrawn from the embassy in Ukraine in response to a growing military threat from Russia, the Foreign Office has said.Officials said there were no specific threats to British diplomats, with about half of the staff in Kyiv reportedly scheduled to come home to the UK. Continue reading...
UNHCR-backed pilot sought to process claims in the community from those whose initial applications had been rejectedA groundbreaking scheme overseen by UNHCR to process women’s asylum claims in the community rather than by locking up the applicants in detention has led to only one being granted leave to remain in the UK, according to a report.The aim of the pilot scheme was not to boost granted rates of asylum claims but to demonstrate that the asylum process could be successfully managed in the community without the need to lock women up, something the United Nations refugee agency said it had succeeded in doing in the report published on Monday. Continue reading...
A new collection of photographs reveals the lives survivors have built and the legacies they have passed down the generationsThe film and photographic images that emerged from the Holocaust, often in a blurrily dark monochrome, instantly became the visual definition of evil in the 20th century. So to set this brutal iconography against the cheerily crisp colours of modern English suburban homes in springtime – complete with armchairs, French doors on to patios, bright tulips in pots – might risk accusations of superficiality, or worse.But when the people in these apparently mundane locations are themselves survivors of the Holocaust, the sheer joyful fact of their existence becomes a triumphant rejoinder to the unimaginable cruelty and depravity of three-quarters of a century ago. The new images are collected together in Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors, which opens later this week to coincide with world Holocaust day, at the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) gallery in Bristol after a showing at the Imperial War Museum in London. Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#5VB9B)
PM has asked Cabinet Office to conduct inquiry into allegations, says spokespersonBoris Johnson has ordered a formal inquiry into allegations by the Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani that she was sacked as a minister after being told her “Muslimness” was “making colleagues uncomfortable”.In a brief statement early on Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister has asked the Cabinet Office to conduct an inquiry into the allegations made by Nusrat Ghani MP. Continue reading...
by Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent on (#5VB9C)
Young Chinese women want to get educated and prioritise their careers, a trend that has alarmed the authorities battling a demographic crisisEarly this month, China’s state news agency Xinhua posted a video reminding young Chinese men born in the year 2000 that they are now finally eligible to get married. “Post 00s have reached legal marriage age,” it declared.The hashtag swiftly popped up in the “top-searched list” of Weibo hot topics, but many read it as the government’s attempt to put pressure on them. “Who dares to get married these days? Don’t we need to make money?” one questioned. “Stop nagging me!” said another. Continue reading...
by Caitlin Cassidy (now) and Matilda Boseley (earlier on (#5VB19)
Novavax vaccine recommended for use in Australia; nation records at least 58 Covid deaths; health minister suggests reseller ‘hoarding’ a factor in shortage of rapid antigen tests; EU and US issue Covid travel warnings for Australia. This blog is now closed
He could request Frank Sinatra before he could speak, and recites Noël Coward lyrics, but what does the singer-songwriter enjoy behind closed doors?The first song I remember hearing
In recent years the People’s Liberation Army has ratcheted up its missions, which it says are training drills, to near-daily frequencyChina’s air force flew 39 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Sunday, the largest daily number since record-breaking incursions in October.Taiwan’s Ministry of Defence said it had tasked aircraft in response, issued radio warnings to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) pilots and deployed missile defence systems to monitor the activity. Continue reading...
Ex-leader targets UK foreign secretary’s remarks on potential China aggression in the Indo-Pacific, adding Britain suffers from ‘relevance deprivation’The former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has accused Liz Truss of making “demented” comments about Chinese military aggression and urged the British foreign secretary to hurry “back to her collapsing, disreputable government”.Keating, in a blistering op-ed, also said Britain “suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation” and its tilt to the Indo-Pacific lacks credibility. Continue reading...
The rapper and businessman is the focus of an intimate three-part documentary, premiering at Sundance, following his highs and lowsMuch like Jesus Christ, the friction between Kanye West and the general public comes from an attunement to the grandeur of his own destiny that can read like delusional arrogance. His first album as a rapper, 2004’s The College Dropout, is littered with nods to his significant place in history and how they foretell an auspicious future. He mentions his mother’s arrest at “the tender age of six” for Oklahoma City’s sit-in protests, declaring “with that in my blood, I was born to be different”. As he’d have it, it was no mere coincidence that on the fateful night of his near-death experience in a 2002 car crash, he was brought to the same hospital where Notorious BIG drew his final breaths. In one of the comedic skits breaking up the tracklist, a snot-nosed character delivers a line that rings out like a broad artistic statement of purpose for its writer: “This was meant to be.”And indeed, it was. Many of the claims that skeptics took as boastful chest-puffing – that he’d be one of the greatest emcees to ever pick up a mic, that he’d revolutionize hip-hop and fashion in his own image, that he would attain such notability as to make him one of the main characters of planet Earth – were borne out with time and recast as extreme yet correct self-assurance in the face of insecurity. (Crucially, The College Dropout is also shot through with feelings of inadequacy, West’s anxiety about living up to the stratospheric standards he feels God has set for him.) Though his belief in himself may have been expressed in the language of borderline-pathological ego, his later successes retroactively transformed that mentality into a defiant assertion of worth. The future’s context brings clarity to the past deeds and words of a confounding, complex figure, but in the new documentary jeen-yuhs, that cuts both ways to shed some insight on the chaos that’s engulfed West as of late. Continue reading...
by Guardian staff and Agence France-Presse on (#5VB54)
Mugler’s daring collections came to define the 1980’s power dressing. He later dressed Beyonce and Lady GagaFrench designer Manfred Thierry Mugler, known for the powerful-shouldered, cinch-waisted silhouettes that reigned over fashion in the 1980s, died on Sunday at the age of 73 of “natural causes”, according to his agent.A former ballet dancer, Mugler’s bold collections – presented at highly stylised, themed runway shows – were at the forefront of the structured, decadent style that came to be known as “power dressing”. Continue reading...
Journalist Marian Kupu recounts the moment of the eruption and the panic that followedTonga is used to natural disasters, but they have never experienced anything like the last week.“We’ve experienced tropical cyclones, but this is so new and no one will ever forget this, ever,” says Marian Kupu, a journalist for BroadCom Broadcasting FM87.5 in Tonga. Continue reading...
Vicky McClure and Adrian Lester star in this slick police thriller full of bomb factories and banter. Just go in thinking CSI: Peckham or Line of Bomb Duty and you’ll have a great timeThere will come a point, I suppose, when all the police departments have been discovered by broadcasters’ drama teams and mined to exhaustion. Within a few years, possibly, we will be gamely struggling to evince interest in the workings of Polzeath’s Anti-Jaywalking Squad (who is the mysterious stranger who keeps crossing against the lights?) or the Snettisham Window Box Protection Unit (when Mrs Addlestrop’s hyacinths are brutally uprooted, Claire Goose as DCI Crumblebum must catch the culprit before he starts on her lobelia). But for now there are still unplumbed sectors where real drama is to be had.So to new ITV series Trigger Point, created by Daniel Brierley, produced by the company owned by Line of Duty’s Jed Mercurio and built round that series’ woefully underused actor Vicky McClure. She plays an “expo”, a member of the Metropolitan Police bomb disposal squad called – wildly unconvincingly, but maybe that’s just me – Lana Washington. Her partner in bomb disposition is Joel “Nut” Nutkins (I suspect this time it’s not just me), played by Adrian Lester, with whom she served in Afghanistan. Continue reading...
World news | The Guardian