UK prime minister hits out after Paris reacted with fury to announcement of defence pactBoris Johnson has reopened the rift with Paris over the Aukus defence and security deal, urging the French to “prenez un grip about this and donnez-moi un break”, after he and Joe Biden discussed deepening the pact.The prime minister was speaking in Washington, where he attended a dinner on Tuesday evening with the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, after meeting the US president at the White House. Continue reading...
Built as a gift from Mao Zedong, the National Theatre in Mogadishu had been shuttered since civil war broke out in 1991Somalia has hosted its first movie screening in 30 years under heavy security as the conflict-ravaged country hopes for a cultural renewal.The event was held at the National Theatre of Somalia, which has a history that reflects the tumultuous journey of the Horn of Africa nation. Continue reading...
Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, the deputy chief medical officer, appeared before the Commons education committee over the decision to offer Covid vaccines to 12- to 15-year-olds, after the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation (JCVI) had said the benefits were too small.Whitty told MPs said any time in school missed as a result of being inoculated should be balanced against the potentially longer period lost as a result of being infected.
by Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent on (#5PW00)
Police can issue warnings in policy change unveiled by Scottish lord advocate in response to high death tollIndividuals caught in possession of class A drugs in Scotland could be issued with a police warning rather than facing prosecution, in a significant policy shift announced by the country’s new lord advocate as a direct response to the ongoing drug death crisis.Dorothy Bain, who was appointed to the role in June, said the decision to give police discretion over class A drug offences did not amount to decriminalisation but told MSPs there was “no one size fits all response” to dealing with drug addiction. Continue reading...
A man confronted a female nurse at a pharmacy in Quebec for giving his wife a Covid-19 vaccine ‘without his authorization’Police in the Canadian province of Quebec are searching for a man they suspect of punching a nurse in the face for giving his wife a Covid-19 vaccine without his consent, a police spokesman said on Wednesday.The man confronted the female nurse on Monday morning in the office of a pharmacy in the city of Sherbrooke, about 155 kilometres (96 miles) south-east of Montreal, where she was assigned to administer vaccines, a police spokesman, Martin Carrier, said by phone. Continue reading...
House evokes most iconic of parties with mirrored catwalk, white trouser suits and kaftansMilan “looks lively again, people are out for dinner and enjoying themselves”, reports British fashion designer Kim Jones, whose Fendi show fired the starting pistol as the Milan catwalks return to full speed. “Or at least, that’s how it looks from what I can see out of the car window when I’m on my way back to the hotel after work. I’m happy that fashion week is back, but I’m still pretty much isolated. I’m double vaccinated but I can’t risk getting a positive result and not being able to work.”
From its classical dome bathtub to its vanishing ceilings, godfather of postmodernism Charles Jencks turned a terraced house into a madcap monument to his voracious ideas. What was it like to live there?The first challenge facing visitors to Charles Jencks’s house is choosing which knob to push on the front door. Two identical brass fixtures flank the entrance to 19 Lansdowne Walk in Holland Park, the first indication that this is no ordinary west London pile. Push the correct one and you enter a bewildering oval lobby lined with numerous mirrored doors and topped with a ceiling of intersecting ovals that appears to taper upwards to infinity. The faces of Pythagoras, Erasmus and Hannah Arendt peer down from a mural, above a frieze of gnomic inscriptions about the cosmos. There’s a lot to digest already – and you’ve barely stepped through the front door.
Daniela Adamcova, say police, is a Slovakian who once lived in LA and designed jewellery for Hollywood starsA woman rescued from a Croatian island with no memory of how she got there, where she came from or who she was, has been identified as a Slovakian former designer who had lived in the US and made jewellery for celebrities including Diana Ross.Croatian police on Wednesday named the woman as Daniela or Dana Adamcova, 57, adding that her identity had been established after friends and acquaintances from Croatia and Slovakia recognised her from a photograph released on Monday. Continue reading...
Diego y yo is expected to become most valuable Latin American artwork ever publicly soldA sorrowful Frida Kahlo self-portrait which shows her cheating husband, Diego Rivera, in the centre of her forehead, is expected to smash auction records as it becomes the most valuable work of Latin American art ever publicly offered for sale.Sotheby’s announced on Wednesday it was offering for sale a 1949 painting titled Diego y yo (Diego and I) with an estimate in excess of $30m. Continue reading...
Boris Johnson has said French officials need to 'prenez un grip' amid continued anger at the US and UK's recent submarine deal with Australia. France recalled its ambassadors from both countries in response to Sunday's announcement. On Wednesday the prime minister said: 'It is not exclusive. It is not trying to shoulder anybody out. It is not adversarial towards China, for instance. It is there to intensify links and friendship between three countries'
Disney+’s new drama imagines what the world would look like if there was just one man left on Earth … by sidelining the women who would be in control. What a waste of timeThere is much to say about the protagonist of Y: The Last Man (Disney+ in the UK), had we but time and space. For the sake of practicality, let us confine commentary to this: having a whining slacker manbaby as the sole surviving male after a mysterious plague wipes out the rest of XY humanity and upon whom the future of everything depends feels … yeah, about right. Why not get this last undeserved heap of attention, resources and every other goddamned thing shovelled at your emblematically incompetent ass?I should possibly have recused myself from watching the series until I was in a better mood. On the other hand, there’s something inescapably irritating about switching between looking at the television screen and a phoneful of real-life headlines and not being able to pick out much difference between the fictional dystopia and reality. Continue reading...
At least 10 bullets hit car carrying Serhiy Shefir with driver in surgery after being struck three timesA top adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has survived an assassination attempt that officials suggest is tied to a political battle with criminal and corrupt interests, including the countries’ oligarchs.At least 10 bullets struck the car of Serhiy Shefir, an aide and longtime friend of Zelenskiy, on Wednesday as he travelled through the village of Lesnyky toward the capital, Kyiv. Continue reading...
Christian Democrat continuity candidate Armin Laschet is struggling to live up to his briefAngela Merkel’s shoe size is 38, she revealed to a rain-sodden, momentarily confused audience at an election rally on the Baltic coast on Tuesday night. That is relatively small – 5.5 in UK sizes – which means her shoes should not be too hard to fill. “That’s manageable,” Merkel said.As the German chancellor chuckled mischievously, she gestured towards the man on her left, a 33-year-old tax auditor who is running to inherit the north-eastern constituency she has held since it was created in 1990. But her comment also applied to the man on her right, Armin Laschet, who is meant to lead the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) into the post-Merkel era as her designated continuity candidate at Sunday’s national election. Continue reading...
Content deal over author of children’s classics such as Matilda and the BFG is firm’s biggest to dateNetflix has acquired the works of Roald Dahl, the author of children’s classics including Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the BFG, in the streaming company’s biggest content deal to date.The agreement struck by Netflix, which already has a deal in place with the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC) to license 16 titles, will help it build its content arsenal in the streaming wars against rivals including Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max. Continue reading...
With her naughty stories and cutting remarks, the comic actor spares no blushes – but her account is poignant tooI’m quite sure you picked up this book hoping I’d make you laugh,” Miriam Margolyes writes in her memoir, This Much Is True. She more than delivered. When I was reading it this book on a train, a stranger asked if I was OK because I was crying with laughter at Margolyes’s description of her interview to study English literature at Oxford (“‘Do you like Milton?’ the tutor barked. I did like Milton and could honestly say so. ‘DAMN GOOD POET,’ she boomed, slapping her thigh like a principal boy in pantomime. This convinced me Somerville College would not be the place for me”), and then, many decades later, acclimatising to global fandom after playing Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films (“Usually when Jews are mobbed in Lithuania, it’s to kill them, but this was because of Harry Potter”). And, of course, there’s the sex. “I am now better known for my naughty stories than almost anything else,” she writes, a little regretfully, although that then sparks a thought about the hilarity of penises (“Such an odd dangler to have”).Margolyes is one of Britain’s most prolific actors, whose career began with the Cambridge Footlights in one of its more legendary phases, not that she has any sentimentality about it. She was the only girl in the show and the boys showed her “studied cruelty”: John Cleese, Bill Oddie and Graham Chapman were “total shits,” she writes. “My dislike of that whole, largely male, world of comedy has never left me.” The Footlights lot “thought I was a jumped-up, pushy, overconfident, fat little Jew”. Continue reading...
Alcohol’s allure was powerful when we were growing up and those born after us consume far less. Now booze is falling out of fashion, is it time to assess old habits?My first job in journalism was editing a free magazine called Rasp. In 1995, we ran a competition for a year’s supply of Two Dogs lemon brew, the Australian alcopop. Two Dogs tried to send us 365 bottles, and I negotiated them up to 1,000, indignant that a bottle a day could constitute a “supply”. It is the only time I’ve ever played hard ball. Nobody entered the competition because we didn’t have any readers, and nor did we have any staff. The two of us, me and the designer, drank the whole lot in the space of two months. A constant drip feed of 4.5% ABV, all day. If anybody asked – there was a much larger team upstairs running TNT, a freesheet for expat Australians – we’d say it was a British tradition, going back to medieval times, when workers would sip ale because of the contaminated water supply. “But medieval ale would have been more like 0.5%,” they might have protested, except they were also constantly drunk, and at lunchtime we’d all go to the pub, 60 people in crocodile formation marching down the street, like a misbegotten nursery outing.So the cliche of the drunken journalist happens to be true, but in the early 90s it was also true of teachers. Dave Lawrence, 56, co-author of Scarred for Life, of which more shortly, remembers his teacher training: “There was a pub across the road and at lunchtime, all the teachers would head over there, and all afternoon they would reek of booze.” It wasn’t really sectoral – this was just generation X. Colin Angus, a senior research fellow in the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group, is 39. He’s not generation X, which is usually defined as those born between 1965 and 1980. But in his pre-academic career in electrical wholesaling, “Everyone was always talking about the good old days of long, boozy lunches.” Continue reading...
Relationship between Biden’s US and Johnson’s post-Brexit UK remains complicated and inevitably transactionalWhat a difference a month makes.In August Joe Biden was being denounced in the British parliament for a “shameful” retreat from Afghanistan that blindsided the UK and other allies. The US president reportedly took a day and a half to return prime minister Boris Johnson’s call. Continue reading...
Long queues didn’t deter Aucklanders hoping to get their first taste of takeaway food and coffee in more than a monthThousands of Aucklanders who had been deprived of greasy fries, burgers and spicy chicken for more than a month have flocked to their local fast-food joints to celebrate the easing of lockdown restrictions.Queues began to build late Tuesday ahead of the rule change at midnight. One eager customer pitched a tent to be first in line for KFC, while cars snaked around parking lots in anticipation of a McDonald’s fix. Throughout the day, the demand did not let up, with cafes reporting serving hundreds of takeaway coffees before 9am. Continue reading...
Seismologists believe 5.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Mansfield Wednesday morning is ‘probably largest in 175 to 200 years’Victoria appears to have escaped widespread damage and no injuries have yet been reported after a major earthquake shook Melbourne.Geoscience Australia said the magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit the Mansfield region, about two hours north-east of Melbourne, about 9.15am. Emergency services reported tremors as far north as Dubbo and Sydney, both about 700km from the epicentre. Continue reading...
by Presented by Nosheen Iqbal with Kate Connolly; pro on (#5PTYA)
German voters will elect a new chancellor for the first time in 16 years on Sunday, as the Angela Merkel era endsGermans will go to the polls on Sunday in what many analysts are calling the most important and unpredictable election in the country in a generation. The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly, talks to Nosheen Iqbal about how, for the first time in 16 years, Angela Merkel will not be standing for election, meaning Germany will have a new leader.It comes after a turbulent period in which a eurozone debt crisis changed the shape of European politics. That was followed by a migration crisis, in which Merkel gained plaudits and harsh criticism when she threw open Germany’s borders and famously said: ‘We can do this.’ There was Brexit, of course, and then the crisis that Germany and the wider world is still dealing with: the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading...
Experts welcome Xi Jinping’s announcement at UN as hugely influential, but concerns remain over domestic emissionsPresident Xi Jinping has announced that China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, using his address at the United Nations General Assembly to add to pledges to deal with climate change.Depending on how the policy is implemented, the move could significantly limit the financing of coal plants in the developing world.
Ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi uses debut on international stage to deliver sustained attack on WashingtonIran’s new ultra-conservative president has used his debut on the international stage to deliver a sustained assault on US, denouncing sanctions as “crimes against humanity” and hailing what he called the end of Washington’s hegemony.“Sanctions are the US new way of war with the nations of the world,” President Ebrahim Raisi told the UN general assembly in a pre-recorded address from Tehran. Continue reading...
US diplomat raises concerns after Nayib Bukele makes outlandish claim on Twitter and replaces judges to permit future re-electionThe top US diplomat in El Salvador has warned of “a decline in democracy” in the country, whose president, Nayib Bukele, recently changed his Twitter profile to read “the coolest dictator in the world”.Speaking after the state department put five Salvadoran supreme court justices on a list of “undemocratic and corrupt actors”, the US embassy chargé d’affaires in San Salvador said the action was taken because the justices voted to allow the president’s re-election, “which is clearly not allowed under the constitution”. Continue reading...
Presenters Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas are purring and the new contestants are defying gravity. Yes, the tonic that is Bake Off returns for a 12th seriesThe year may come when the return of The Great British Bake Off (Channel 4) is not a tonic, a comfort, and a joy that’s all the finer for being low-key. This is not that year. Series 12 shows no early signs of staleness.It helps that the Bake Off’s casting process, dedicated to showing that the kind, self-deprecating charm of the hobbyist cuts across every social boundary with the possible exception of class, feels more pointedly celebratory of diversity than ever. Continue reading...
A Dublin-based company is promising zero-emission journeys across traffic-choked São Paulo, Latin America’s biggest cityThe skies over Latin America’s largest city are set to witness a futuristic aerospace revolution after the Brazilian budget airline Gol struck a deal that could see it ferry commuters around São Paulo in hundreds of low-cost zero-emission electric air taxis.“It’s going to be an absolute disrupter. We’re going to democratise air travel,” Dómhnal Slattery, chief executive of the group that will provide the aircraft to Gol, claimed in an interview with the Financial Times. Continue reading...
US president and Australian PM welcome new security ties after deal that has infuriated FranceJoe Biden and the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, have welcomed their new security ties after last week’s announcement that Washington would provide Canberra with advanced technology for nuclear-powered submarines as part of trilateral deal with the UK.“The United States has no closer or more reliable ally than Australia,” Biden said on Tuesday ahead of a bilateral meeting with Morrison on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly in New York. Continue reading...
Goncourt secretary defends decision but criticises same judge for writing scathing review of rival workThe jury for France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt, has been engulfed in a row over ethical breaches after the shortlist included a book by the boyfriend of one of the judges.The same judge wrote a scathing review of one of the other contenders for the prize after it had been nominated. Continue reading...
Figures from EU monitoring service for August are highest since it began measurements in 2003August was another record month for global wildfire emissions, according to new satellite data that highlights how tinderbox conditions are widening across the world as a result of the climate crisis.The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service of the EU found that burning forests released 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide last month, mostly in North America and Siberia. This was the highest since the organisation began measurements in 2003. Continue reading...
Spokesperson says agreement in damages case is a milestone in family’s fight for justiceThe family of Harry Dunn have reached a “resolution” with the teenager’s alleged killer, Anne Sacoolas, in their civil claim for damages in the US.Radd Seiger, the spokesperson for the Dunn family, said the agreement was “a real milestone” in the family’s fight for justice and they could now “put this part of the campaign behind them”. Continue reading...
The German chancellor’s record is mixed, but her exit brings home how adrift Europhiles in the UK now areAngela Merkel is used to being unimpressed by British prime ministers. She was appalled by David Cameron’s casual surrender of influence in Europe, all to placate fringe elements in his party. She was stunned, on first sitting down with Theresa May, to discover that there was no plan and no substance behind the “Brexit means Brexit” platitudes.With Boris Johnson there was no danger of disappointment. His style and methods were known in advance to be everything Merkel is not. He is a bumptious improviser; she is a systematic problem-solver. She sifts evidence and builds consensus. He tells lies and divides to rule. Continue reading...
National Trust | New magazine | Letters fan | Misplaced booksDinton Park would not be the only property the National Trust has leased out recently (Outcry over National Trust plan to fence off acres of Wiltshire park for tenant, 19 September). Last year, it offered a 125-year lease to tenants on the Grade-1 listed Bellister Castle in Northumberland. It was given to the trust in 1976, along with the huge Bellister estate, which still has little public access.
Officials say thousands of people fleeing conditions in Haiti removed from encampment, via planes and busesThousands of Haitian migrants at the Mexico-US border in Texas faced a ramped-up US exclusion effort on Tuesday, with six flights to their homeland. On the other side of the border, Mexico had begun bussing some away.Related: White House criticizes border agents who rounded up migrants on horseback Continue reading...
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, painted a stark picture of unsustainable inequalities, runaway climate change and feckless leadership in a speech to the UN general assembly on Tuesday.'I’m here to sound the alarm. The world must wake up,' Guterres said, pointing to gross inequalities in the global distribution of Covid vaccines, among other issues
Key purpose of defence agreement is signal it gives to Beijing, Australia’s former defence minister tells MPsA former Australian defence minister has told MPs that a key purpose of the Aukus defence pact was to tie Britain into the Indo-Pacific region at a time when Canberra is “in the midst of a tense relationship with China”.Christopher Pyne, who held the post until 2019, told the UK’s defence select committee he believed the initial importance of the Australia-UK-US tie-up announced last week was in the messages it sent to Beijing. Continue reading...
Italian Boxing Federation criticised for not acting sooner over Michele Broili, who has numerous Nazi tattoosA boxing title match has sparked a row in Italy after it emerged that one of the contenders had several neo-Nazi tattoos.The boxer, Michele Broili, 28, was defeated on Sunday night in Trieste for the super-featherweight title by Hassan Nourdine, 34, in a match that reignited the debate in Italy on the display of Nazi and fascist symbols. Continue reading...
by Josh Halliday North of England correspondent on (#5PSX9)
Outwood Academy City, in Sheffield, says children were popular and had bright futuresThree children killed during a sleepover were “popular” and “positive” pupils who had bright futures ahead of them, their school has said, as police continued to question a man on suspicion of murder.Terri Harris, 35, was killed along with her children, John Paul Bennett, 13, Lacey Bennett, 11, and Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, 11, who was staying at their house at the weekend. Continue reading...
by Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent on (#5PSVV)
The combat capability of the People’s Liberation Army may still be a ‘work in progress’ but it is catching up through influence and trainingWhen Covid-19 swept across Iran last March, killing more than 1,000 people including the senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it was the Chinese military that Tehran turned to for help. On 19 March 2020, batch loads of testing kits, PPE and face masks arrived in the Iranian capital.In February this year, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began to donate Covid-19 vaccines to counterparts overseas. The Cambodia armed forces have received two batches of 300,000 vaccines; Sierra Leone’s army was given 40,000 doses; United Nations peacekeeping forces secured 300,000. Continue reading...
Troopers Maxwell Nicholls and Declan Coutts deny charges including racially aggravated batteryTwo trainee soldiers in the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment carried out a “persistent” bullying campaign against a colleague from Northern Ireland, suggesting he was a member of the IRA and was involved in car bombings, a court martial has heard.Troopers Maxwell Nicholls and Declan Coutts also allegedly put Trooper Scott Alexander in chokeholds and headlocks, repeatedly soaked his bed with water and stole his ironing board and boots, the panel was told. Continue reading...
Critics condemn move to rename famed theatre 3Olympia as ‘cultural vandalism’For over a century the Olympia theatre has lured big names to Dublin including Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Noël Coward, David Bowie and Tom Waits.But now the historic stage and music venue in Ireland’s capital is embroiled in a drama over its own name. Continue reading...
A new website exposes the misuse of non-disclosure agreements that protect the careers of abusersAnna* was 28 and loving her career in the tech industry when she says a business trip changed everything: she was raped by an older male colleague. She reported the assault to her boss, and the police – but instead of getting the help and support she desperately needed from her company, she says she was pushed into signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) designed to stop her ever talking about what had happened.“I signed a paper and that specific battle ended, but the fight was nowhere near over,” she writes in a testimony about her experience. “I was forced to start everything over with my head still underwater, alone and silenced.” Continue reading...
ECHR also finds ex-KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy and another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, carried out assassinationThe European court of human rights has ruled that Russia was responsible for the 2006 killing of Alexander Litvinenko, who died an agonising death after he was poisoned in London with Polonium 210, a rare radioactive isotope.“Russia was responsible for assassination of Aleksander Litvinenko in the UK,” the court said in a statement on its ruling. Continue reading...
Two Arsenal legends, an unpublished gem, Poppies and more – our cartoonist talks us through some memorable drawingsThe Guardian have granted me a week off from the back-breaking physical labour of drawing football cartoons, so I’m afraid you’ll have to wait another week to read my searing analysis of Ralph Hasenhüttl’s waistcoat game. However, as punishment, I’ve been asked to scour my back catalogue and pick out 10 panels from the last few years that I hate the least. Usually when I’m away from my drawing board, a huge story breaks, so feel free to dip in and out of this selection as you wait for the liveblog to refresh with updates on Pep Guardiola’s shock move to Chippenham Town. Continue reading...
US backyards are home to more tigers than India with experts drawing a line between the popularity of cubs as pets and the market in tiger products for traditional Chinese medicineThe first red flag was the shiny Chevy Camaro with no license plate.“Anything to declare?” asked the US Customs and Border Protection officer. Continue reading...
The right says the German chancellor undermined EU security; Liberals say it was a triumph. But her legacy is far more mixedWhen Angela Merkel steps down as chancellor after Germany’s elections later this month, the tributes will centre on her role as the figurehead of western liberalism; an island of stability, caution and openness in an era marked by turbulence and far-right reaction. She will be remembered “for serious work, stable leadership and having a gift for political compromise”, wrote Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post last week. When she faced off against Donald Trump after his inauguration in 2017, some newspapers dubbed her the new “leader of the free world”.Fundamental to this image is the intervention she made in late summer 2015, at the height of Europe’s refugee crisis. “Wir schaffen das” – we’ll manage this – was Merkel’s public statement as thousands of people, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, were making their way through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans to western Europe. By declaring Germany – and, by extension, Europe – open to refugees, she was making a bold, pragmatic statement of intent. Continue reading...
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