World news | The Guardian

Emergence of ‘great exhibition’ messages seems to undermine ethics adviser’s finding, says LabourBoris Johnson’s ethics adviser has been accused of failing to investigate a potential “funds for favours” scandal after the prime minister was cleared of rule-breaking over his Downing Street flat refurbishment.Christopher Geidt shut his investigation without commenting on Johnson seeking funds for the works from a Conservative donor while promising to consider plans for a “great exhibition”. Expectations also faded that another inquiry, led by parliament’s standards commissioner Kathryn Stone, would go ahead. Continue reading...

Ellie, 27, charity worker, meets Tom, 27, auditorEllie on TomWhat were you hoping for?

Critics fear Hun Sen’s meeting with military ruler Min Aung Hlaing gives legitimacy to the ruling juntaCambodian prime minister Hun Sen has met Myanmar’s military ruler Min Aung Hlaing, amid criticism of the first visit by a head of government since the army seized power from an elected government last year.Hun Sen was greeted by an honour guard and red carpet when he arrived on Friday, just as protests by coup opponents broke out in other parts of the country over fears his trip will provide more legitimacy to the ruling junta. Continue reading...

Social workers struggled to provide effective help for Alexander Tekle, one of four friends who all killed themselves, coroner saysOverworked social workers struggled to put in place effective measures to support a vulnerable Eritrean teenager seeking asylum who went on to kill himself, an inquest has concluded.The death of Alexander Tekle, who died a few months after turning 18 and less than a year after arriving in the UK, was a tragedy, the Westminster coroner Bernard Richmond said. Tekle killed himself in December 2017 in Mitcham, south London.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. Continue reading...

Inquiry into government gatherings widened to include former aide’s allegation and photographed cheese-and-wine get-together

Rawah Arja was determined to write a YA novel for – and about – teenage boys in Western Sydney. She tells Zoya Patel about how she created a story about religion, rivalries, romance, racism and redemption in The F TeamHear more episodes of Book It In here.The F Team by Rawah Arja is published by Giramondo. Continue reading...

It was audacious. An old-school bank robbery that kept the northern rivers town of Murwillumbah guessing for decades. Has it now been solved?The bank building has been standing squarely on the corner of the main street for 133 years. Quietly doing its business as the generations strolled past. Unassuming and solid with its thick brick walls and flat roof. Its unassailable strongroom was once considered the most secure place to stash the cash of the region. But it was not, as it famously turned out, impregnable.In the sweltering summer of 1978 hippies still roamed the hills around the Tweed valley. What is now suburban sprawl around the New South Wales northern rivers town of Murwillumbah was dairy farms and wooden farm houses. There were large agricultural and farm supplies stores; it was a subtropical, rural place of cows, cane and banana plantations. No one locked their doors. Across town the plume of white steam rose from the sugar mill. In the shadow of the great mass of the extinct volcano that is Wollumbin Mount Warning, it was, says former mayor Max Boyd, “a quiet little country town”. Continue reading...

Senior lawyers question motives of attorney general, who says she could refer acquittal to court of appealSenior lawyers have accused the attorney general for England and Wales of politically-driven meddling after she announced she could refer the acquittal of the Colston Four to the court of appeal.Suella Braverman said she was contemplating the highly unusual move after an outcry from Conservative MPs following the jury’s verdict on four Black Lives Matter protesters who toppled a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol. Continue reading...

Wolf Volcano, the tallest mountain in the Pacific archipelago, began erupting shortly before midnight on WednesdayThe tallest mountain in the Galápagos islands has erupted, spewing lava down its flanks and clouds of ash over the Pacific Ocean, according to Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute.A cloud of gas and ash from Wolf Volcano rose to 3793 meters (12,444 feet) above sea level following the eruption that began shortly before midnight on Wednesday local time, the institute said. Continue reading...

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev tells security forces to ‘use lethal force without warning’The president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has promised an uncompromising crackdown on demonstrators in the country, telling security forces they should “use lethal force without warning” against protesters he called “bandits and terrorists”.On Friday, relative calm returned to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city and the centre of recent tumult, and some residents ventured out for the first time in several days. They found looted shops, shattered glass and many burnt-out cars, with the grim atmosphere intensified by the thick mist enveloping the city. Continue reading...

Footballer accused of eight sexual offences against five women bailed until 24 JanuaryThe Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy, who has been accused of a series of serious sex offences against young women, has been freed on bail.The 27-year-old has been in custody for just over four months, since first being arrested and charged on 26 August last year, and was freed on Friday after a bail hearing at Chester crown court. Continue reading...

Limits on restaurant opening times imposed in Okinawa and parts of Hiroshima and Yamaguchi

It’s good for mental health, a study found, but what’s it like being an older person at the skatepark?Skateboarding in middle age can help people feel empowered and reduce the chance of mental health issues such as depression, according to a study.Dr Paul O’Connor, 46, who published the research and is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Exeter, said he wanted to look at what ageing in a subculture would be like. Continue reading...

Analysis: CSTO may be an alliance but decision to intervene was almost certainly taken in MoscowThe old joke about the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact was that it was the only military alliance to attack itself, after its tanks rolled into Prague in 1968 to crush a reform movement there.With the deployment of troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to Kazakhstan on Thursday, some heard “eerie echoes” of the so-called Prague spring of 1968, and the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. Continue reading...

Housed in a custom space made from cast-offs, the Japanese artist’s cartoon girls blend fairytale lore with 60s-inspired protest, and have become more introspective though no less impressively wrought in cardboard and wood“Stop the bombs” reads the angry red writing in the storm cloud thought bubble above the little girl in a pale blue dress. Like all the children in the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s paintings, she has puppydog eyes and a toddler’s outsized head, yet her posture is pure bruiser. There are tiny animal fangs at the corners of her mouth. Of the paintings, drawings and sculptures in Nara’s latest exhibition, she is the closest to the pint-sized characters with big dark feelings that he began making in the 1990s, some of contemporary art’s most recognisable creations.Those early works, where tots sweetly clutched knives or took fag breaks, blended Japanese kawaii – cuteness – with mischief and menace. Partly thanks to Nara’s alignment with the pop art titan Takashi Murakami’s Superflat movement, he reached a global art audience and a wider public. Both artists mined the Japanese weakness for baby-faced adorableness, an infantilising that Murakami linked to the trauma of Hiroshima. Yet where Murakami’s trademark smiley acid-faced flowers and phallic mushrooms channel the surface sheen of a depthless mass-produced world of cartoons and commerce, Nara’s appeal has always been universal human emotion. “My works’ roots are my childhood, not pop culture,” he explains. “Around me there were orchards, sheep and horses; I read fairytales rather than comics.” Continue reading...

Restoring and moving 750,000 volumes and ancient manuscripts expected to take five yearsIt is known as Ireland’s “front room”, where esteemed visitors including the Queen, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been taken to get a sense of the “land of saints and scholars”.Biden, vice-president at the time, was so moved by the atmospherics in the dimly lit, barrel-vaulted hall when he visited Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2016 that he came back a year later to contemplate the history of its old library, known as the Long Room. Continue reading...

French president spoke alongside Ursula von der Leyen, who pledged an ‘architecture of European security’Emmanuel Macron has said the EU needs a “frank, exacting” dialogue with Russia to defuse tensions, as he called for new security arrangements on the continent.The French president was rebuffed by other EU states in June when he and the then German chancellor, Angela Merkel, made a surprise proposal for a summit with Vladimir Putin. Continue reading...

Suella Braverman says she is thinking about unusual move, after Tory outcry over protesters’ acquittalThe attorney general has said she is “carefully considering” whether to refer the Colston statue case to the court of appeal after a jury cleared four protesters of criminal damage over the toppling of the monument.Suella Braverman announced she was contemplating what would be a highly unusual move after an outcry from Conservative MPs following the jury’s verdict on Wednesday. The former cabinet minister Robert Jenrick suggested the rule of law had been undermined, while Tom Hunt, a vice-chair of the parliamentary Common Sense Group, said he was “deeply concerned by the precedent set here”, despite jury decisions not setting legal precedents. Continue reading...

Newly discharged conscripts to hand back items including socks and bras, to be washed and reusedNorwegian conscripts are to return their underwear after completing military service for the next recruits, as the army struggles with dwindling supplies due to Covid.Norway, which guards Nato’s northern borders and shares a border with Russia, calls up about 8,000 young men and women for military service every year and until recently allowed newly discharged conscripts to leave barracks with the underwear they were issued. Continue reading...

Singer’s legal team attempt to discredit anonymous accuser after she changes timeframe of allegations in 1965Lawyers for Bob Dylan have formally denied allegations of child sexual abuse made against him in a lawsuit from an anonymous woman filed in August 2021.The lawsuit claims that Dylan groomed the woman, referred to as JC, when she was 12 years old and sexually abused her. Dylan, it is claimed, aimed to “lower her inhibitions with the object of sexually abusing her, which he did, coupled with the provision of drugs, alcohol and threats of physical violence, leaving her emotionally scarred and psychologically damaged to this day”. Continue reading...

Sotheby’s to sell designs and artwork of François Catroux, decorator to the stars, and his wife, Betty, muse to Yves Saint LaurentIn 1970s Paris, Betty Catroux and her husband, François, were the glittering couple at the heart of French high society and what used to be known as the international jet set.She was the androgynous model and darling of the French designer Yves Saint Laurent, he the self-taught interior decorator who transformed the mansions, grand apartments and chateaux of the super-rich or royal, among them the Rothschilds, Diane von Furstenberg and, later, Roman Abramovich. Continue reading...

Princess Cruises’ ship was at centre of 2020 outbreak in Sydney which resulted in over 900 cases and 28 deaths

Visitors stop for selfies with 9ft representation of fertility symbol from pre-Columbian Mochica culture but phallus already damagedThe newly erected statue of a grinning man with an enormous phallus has prompted delight and rage in an archaeological hotspot in northern Peru where it has been on show since the beginning of the year.Although perhaps not anatomically correct, the crimson fibreglass structure is a faithful representation of a ceramic vessel from Peru’s pre-Columbian Mochica culture, whose people lived in the region between 150 and 700 AD. Continue reading...

Justin Trudeau calls revellers who partied onboard flight ‘idiots’ as three airlines refuse to fly them homeA group of passengers who filmed themselves partying without masks onboard a chartered flight from Montreal to Mexico face being stranded after three airlines refused to fly them home to Canada.Sunwing Airlines cancelled the return charter flight from Cancún that had been scheduled for Wednesday and Air Transat and Air Canada also both said they would refuse to carry the passengers. Continue reading...

NSW to ban dancing and singing in venues and suspend non-urgent elective surgery amid 38,625 new Covid cases; Queensland considers delaying school year start amid 10,953 new cases; Victoria records 21,728 cases, South Australia 3,707, ACT 1,246 and Tasmania 1,489; home affairs minister defends Djokovic visa decision. This blog is now closed

Modelling predicts 6,000 people could be hospitalised with Covid in the second half of January

President ‘appalled’ at the large numbers of Filipinos not vaccinated ‘galloping in our community’

‘We came for safety, not to play tennis’. Refugees and asylum seekers speak out against their harsh treatment

WHO chief says calling variant ‘mild’ is not accurate; Philippines president orders arrest of unvaccinated people who violate stay-at-home orders

Proposal for hair regrowth on public healthcare insurance by Lee Jae-myung criticised as populist by opponentsSouth Korea’s ruling party presidential candidate has ignited a fierce debate after proposing that the country’s public healthcare insurance should cover hair loss treatment.Lee Jae-myung’s proposal this week has triggered a flood of messages of support on online communities for people suffering hair loss – but also prompted accusations that it was a bald attempt to win votes. Continue reading...

Coroner says case of Tiffany Stevens, 27, and her young children is ‘one of the saddest I have heard’A mother who was “fixated” on suicide for more than a decade fatally drugged her two young daughters before killing herself, an inquest has heard.Tiffany Stevens, from Bolton, had feared 18-month-old Darcey Stevens and three-year-old Casey-Lea Taylor would be put into care after her death, the inquest heard.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. Continue reading...

PM sought funds for flat refurb from Tory donor while promising to consider plans for mystery eventBoris Johnson has been accused of corruption after it emerged that he sought funds for his flat refurbishment from a Conservative donor while promising to consider plans for a mystery “great exhibition”.The prime minister is facing fresh questions after newly published WhatsApp messages with the Tory peer David Brownlow show Johnson called parts of his Downing Street residence a “tip” and asked for “approvals” so his decor designer, Lulu Lytle, could “get on with it” in November 2020. Continue reading...

The Oscar-nominated film-maker, known for The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, has died of natural causesPeter Bogdanovich, Oscar-nominated writer and director, has died at the age of 82.The film-maker, whose many credits included The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc? and Paper Moon, died of natural causes according to his daughter Antonia Bogdanovich. Continue reading...

Foreign secretary asserts western solidarity against Putin’s threats, but MPs challenge her on Russian influence in UKMassive coordinated sanctions threatened against Russia if it launches military action against Ukraine will hit the high-level Russian elite and its ability to carry out financial transactions, Liz Truss, the UK foreign secretary, told MPs on Thursday, as she warned the west could not afford to be seen to reward Moscow in crucial talks next week.Her remarks appear indirectly to confirm that if Russia mounts an incursion into Ukraine it could be excluded from Swift, the messaging network used by 11,000 banks in 200 countries to make cross-border payments. Continue reading...

Witnesses in Almaty describe scenes of chaos in streets as Russian ‘peacekeepers’ arrive in country

There was a supportive mood for the statue topplers in a city known for its political activismMelody Beard will forever rue the moment she took her youngest daughter to use the toilet and missed the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston being thrown into Bristol’s harbour.The 40-year-old had, like many on that day, joined protests in the city’s centre, along with her husband and two children. Continue reading...

Sjrdan Djokovic says his son is being ‘persecuted’ as protesters gather in Belgrade after Australian detentionNovak Djokovic’s family have said he is the victim of “a political agenda” aimed at “stomping on Serbia” as protesters in Belgrade called for his release and Serbia’s president insisted “the whole country” was behind him.The 34-year-old world tennis No 1, who was born in the Serb capital, is in detention in an immigration hotel in Melbourne pending a legal challenge to Australia’s decision on Wednesday to cancel a visa that would allow him to play in the Australian Open. Continue reading...

Comments made during a recent general audience at the Vatican criticisedWhether millennials prefer to raise plants and pets over children for financial and environmental reasons or because they’re lazy and entitled has been hotly discussed in recent years. Now Pope Francis has waded in, saying that not having children is “selfish and diminishes us” and that people are replacing them with cats and dogs.

High virus spread could see ‘testing demand exceeding laboratory and public health capacity’, officials said in February 2021

Latest figures bring UK total for the past seven days to 1,272,131, up 29% on week before

Several countries are ramping up pressure amid Omicron wave, but sceptics say mandates will be hard to police

Marvin Rees rejects claim he should have removed statue, saying he could not afford to waste political capital on issueThe verdict in the trial of the Colston Four has little to do with efforts to tackle racism in Bristol, the city’s mayor has said as he defended himself against criticism for not acting sooner over the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston.Speaking to the Guardian after three men and a woman were cleared of criminal damage in toppling the statue in 2020, Marvin Rees said the fate of the statue was symbolic but he had “no reaction” to the verdict. Continue reading...

Rare response from Richard Moore comes after state news agency posted video mocking western intelligenceThe head of MI6 has thanked China’s state news agency for “free publicity” after it posted a James Bond spoof video in response to a statement he made last year that Beijing was the spy agency’s “single greatest priority”.Richard Moore, codenamed C, intervened after Xinhua released an extraordinary four-minute English-language video featuring a pair of supposed British spies, James Pond and an apparent Marvel universe recruit, Black Window. Continue reading...

Fawzia escaped from Afghanistan. Now in London, she’s trying to secure a safe exit for women still strandedJust under three weeks before the Taliban reached Kabul and took control of Afghanistan, 50 of the most powerful women in the country gathered outdoors in a shady spot to discuss how to deal with the approaching danger.Wearing colourful headscarves, some took notes while others listened intently to Fawzia, 48, one of the most senior female judges in Afghanistan. Holding a microphone, she spoke with urgency about the advancing threat and the need to protect the rights that female lawyers, women’s rights activists and journalists had spent decades fighting for. Continue reading...

Having survived teen shame and the Aids crisis, the Broadway actor – and erstwhile escort – is now blazing a trail for silver sexualityThere were things in the first draft of his memoir, says David Pevsner, that his editor thought were “maybe TMI, maybe a bridge too far”. I can’t begin to imagine what was deemed unacceptable, because there is TMI – sample line: “I have always been a copious ejaculator” – on just about every page of Damn Shame, an entertaining, touching and absolutely filthy book. My goodness, the filth! “There is that,” he says with a laugh.Pevsner describes himself, self-deprecatingly, as “a minor player in the entertainment biz”; he’s had small roles in big TV dramas such as Grey’s Anatomy and Modern Family, and bigger roles in small ones. He has been on Broadway, touring productions and off-Broadway hits. He’s not a well-known face, though if you’re a subscriber to his OnlyFans account, where he shares erotic photos and videos of himself, you will be very familiar with his body; Pevsner is, I believe, the only person I’ve interviewed whose erection I have seen. Along the way, to supplement his theatre salary, he has been an escort and a “naked maid”, which had things in common with sex work while also including vacuuming (not a euphemism). He appears, smiling and charming (and dressed), over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Diversions and delays as air traffic controllers forced to switch to backup system at airportA computer glitch at the Gatwick control tower left flights unable to land or take off at Britain’s second biggest airport during the morning peak.Three planes were diverted to other London airports as controllers from Air Navigation Services were forced to shut down the malfunctioning IT and guide planes in under a backup system. Continue reading...

Ultimo lingerie founder is alleged to have called man of Indian heritage ‘a waste of a man’s white skin’ in WhatsApp exchangeThe Conservative peer Michelle Mone is being investigated by the Metropolitan police for an allegedly racist message she is accused of sending to a man of Indian heritage.The recipient of the message, Richard Lynton-Jones, complained to the police last summer that during a disagreement following a fatal yacht collision in 2019, Lady Mone told him in a WhatsApp message he was “a waste of a man’s white skin”. Continue reading...

Politician is accused of travelling from Glasgow to London despite knowing she had symptoms of virusThe former Scottish National party MP Margaret Ferrier will stand trial in August accused of travelling from Glasgow to London in September 2020 knowing she had symptoms of coronavirus and wilfully exposing others to the risk of infection.Ferrier pleaded not guilty to the single charge on Thursday morning at Glasgow sheriff court. Continue reading...

Libertarians, Brexit, Covid: can two strangers find common ground over dinner?

With the actor starring in not one but two iffy thrillers out this month, we take a look over the more successful end of his long, action-packed careerThis futuristic thriller about “surries” – artificial doubles who do the dirty work while their owners stay home – could have had heaps more fun riffing on the disparity between the grizzled older Willis and his blond synthetic doppelganger. Still, it is nice to see him bristling with Rosamund Pike, who plays his glassy wife, and being reunited briefly with his Pulp Fiction nemesis Ving Rhames. Continue reading...