by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5NNDX)
Campaigners say Britons are facing problems with Home Office over rights to return to UKMinisters have been accused of breaching their promise to secure the post-Brexit rights of thousands of British nationals who settled in the EU and married foreigners.Campaigners at British in Europe (BiE) have written to the Foreign Office minister Wendy Morton and the immigration minister Kevin Foster telling of the “heartbreak” and “distress” endured by British citizens who are facing problems with the Home Office over their rights to return home to the UK. Continue reading...
Ashleigh, 33 and Matt, 32, met at a fancy dress party in Vancouver. They live in London with their son and three-legged catMatt had been living in Vancouver for a year when he was invited to a student fancy dress party in the spring of 2014. “I’d moved to study for a master’s degree in entomology,” he says. “Coming from Ohio, it was the biggest city I’d ever lived in. I’d never even ridden a city bus before.” The event had a lumberjack theme, popular at Canadian house parties at the time. “Everyone had to dress up in plaid and overalls, and there was a giant wooden Jenga game. You had to wear a hard hat to play,” he says. When he spotted Ashleigh across the room, he couldn’t resist going to say hello. “I thought she looked just like Kate Bush. I’d recently discovered her music, so I went to speak to her.”Ashleigh had moved to Vancouver from Toronto to be with her boyfriend, but it wasn’t working out. “I had a job in a museum, but was living in a cockroach-filled apartment and had no friends. I wanted to meet new people,” she says, and an acquaintance invited her to the party. When Matt approached, she was busy trying to negotiate the party playlist with another guest. “I used to have a student radio show and was really into music,” she says. They talked for a while before Matt got the courage to tell her she looked like Kate Bush. “People have actually said that about me before,” she says. Continue reading...
by Elias Visontay (now) and Amy Remeikis (earlier) on (#5NMZ7)
No word on whether Victoria’s lockdown will be lifted next week as state reports 71 cases; prime minister says ‘this cannot go on forever’ as he discusses path out of pandemic; NSW reports 818 new cases and three deaths; parliament returns in locked-down ACT. Follow updates live
Armed forces minister also confirms Britain will urge Americans to delay departure from capital at G7 talksThe UK is preparing to appeal to the Taliban to extend the 31 August deadline for western forces to leave Kabul, while accepting it will not be able to airlift everyone eligible to leave Afghanistan.The armed forces minister, James Heappey, confirmed the UK would try to persuade the Americans to stay longer in Kabul at a G7 meeting on Tuesday. Speaking to Sky News he also said the UK was prepared to urge the Taliban to agree to extend the deadline, regardless of the US decision. Continue reading...
A run on Ilkley Moor promises panoramic views. But what about the bogs and boulders en route – and my terrifying lack of fitness?My favourite part of childhood summer holidays with my dad was our trip to the Yorkshire Dales agricultural show, a respite from his usual gruelling regime of mountain walks and examining dead fauna. Between prize rams and displays of trimmed leeks we watched the fell-running races: infants and gnarled pensioners scampering up and then down a sheer crag, all for a biscuit and a certificate.“Look at the little bastards!” Dad would exclaim, gesturing incredulously, plastic pint glass slopping bitter as wiry five-year-olds whizzed past, legs a blur. Lumpen by his side, mouth crammed with cake, I would feel an obscure longing: why wasn’t I a fearless, muddy-kneed dynamo? Continue reading...
Home Office last year ignored advice to remove veto from local councils on accommodating asylum seekersAfghan asylum seekers arriving in Britain could experience problems securing suitable housing after ministers ignored the advice of their own officials about how to increase the pool of available accommodation.Pressure on asylum and refugee accommodation is likely to increase due to the influx of Afghans fleeing the Taliban. Guardian analysis has revealed that almost a quarter of the UK’s 44,825 asylum seekers supported by the Home Office are housed in just 10 local authorities, nine of which are among the most deprived in the country. Continue reading...
The pet-mad population reacted with fury after the animals were put down due to biosecurity concernsA decision by Taiwan authorities to euthanise 154 cats found in an attempted smuggling operation has sparked outcry and calls to change laws and increase penalties.Coast guards intercepted a fishing vessel from China on Thursday about 40 nautical miles off the coast of Kaohsiung, on Taiwan’s southern tip. After Covid screening, officials boarded the fishing boat the following day and discovered 62 cages containing the cats, including Russian Blue, Ragdoll, Persian American Shorthair, and British Shorthair breeds. Continue reading...
Overlapping crises have pushed the fragile east African country to the ‘cusp of humanitarian catastrophe’, with one in four facing food insecuritySuch was the horror that erupted in her village earlier this year that Fadumo Ali Mohamed decided she had no choice but to leave. Through the Lower Shabelle region of Somalia, she walked for 30 kilometres, along with her nine children, eventually getting help to reach the capital by car.Now in Mogadishu, she is one of more than 800,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in the capital living in cramped, informal settlements with limited access to food, water and healthcare. She doesn’t like to recall the violence she fled. Continue reading...
A sailing holiday with my dad and his mate didn’t sound too promising. But when I took the tiller in the middle of the night, I had a teenage epiphanyMy dad had a pal called George who had a boat. It was a sailing boat but not a very big one – 25ft long. I don’t think you could call it a yacht; it didn’t seem very … yachty. I’m trying to downplay its yachtiness, and how privileged my childhood was, but it’s hopeless. I was on a bloody yachting holiday, OK?Anyway, despite his boat’s modest size, George was quite adventurous once aboard. One summer, he invited my dad to help him sail it from the west coast of Scotland (I’m thinking maybe Oban) down to the south coast of England. I was 15 or 16 at the time and my dad took me – grumpily, adolescently – along for the ride. Continue reading...
She spent a year in her room as a teenager, and now makes heart-wrenching documentaries about people looking for safe spaces in record shops, on goth cruises – and even on the set of Game of ThronesThere are many wonderful moments in the films of Jeanie Finlay but my current favourite is in Seahorse, her intimate and profoundly moving 2019 documentary about the struggles of transgender man Freddy McConnell to conceive and give birth to his own child. The scene takes place during a party at Freddy’s mum’s house as a room full of family friends, all women, talk to Freddy about the clothes he’ll wear during pregnancy.Related: ‘It’s so normalised you think it’s part of your job’: the woman who lifted the lid on harassment in TV Continue reading...
James and ViviAnn Du Fermoir-de-Monsac want to create an atmosphere where those who don’t fit the vision of an ideal bride feel comfortableOn the third floor of a typical Alsatian building in Strasbourg, a door opens on to a bright atelier, dotted with mannequins draped in bridal wear. This is where James and ViviAnn Du Fermoir-de-Monsac live and work, designing couture wedding gowns watched over by their cheerful mascot – a yellow parakeet named Adam. And they do it in drag.The pair say seeing clients in their drag personas creates an atmosphere where people can be accepted for who they are. They know the traditional experience of buying a wedding dress is not always easy for everyone in a world where the vision of an ideal bride is often still someone thin, white and able-bodied. Continue reading...
At a press briefing, Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins made an unintentional X-rated error, telling Kiwis that they should socially distance when they 'spread their legs'. Continue reading...
As Melbourne continues to record new Covid cases, Victoria has announced a statewide lockdown. Is there a travel radius limit? Is mask-wearing compulsory? Is there a curfew? Here are the rules
Chris Hipkins said the Delta variant was ‘like nothing we’ve dealt with so far’The arrival of the Delta strain in New Zealand has prompted the country’s Covid-19 response minister to question the efficacy of its ambitious elimination strategy – an approach that has been the backbone of the country’s pandemic response.Chris Hipkins told current affairs programme Q+A on Sunday that Delta raised “big questions about the long-term future of our plans”. Continue reading...
Their success depends not on providing solutions but on ginning up, by any means necessary, the conservative baseThe pandemic has upended all our lives, leaving many of us frightened and confused. But if the weekend’s angry anti-lockdown protests reflected genuine pain in the community, they also showed how, in a complicated international emergency, rightwing grifters have seized an opportunity.If you look for Covid truth on Telegram and Gab, you’ll uncover the online equivalent of a crowded outdoor market, dominated by shouting stall holders. Continue reading...
More than 30 people were fined $1,000 each at the Blacktown Christ Embassy Sydney church gathering, just hours before stronger lockdown measures came into force
Defence secretary says processing hubs will be used for those Britain has ‘an obligation to’Britain plans to establish offshore asylum centres for Afghan refugees in countries such as Pakistan and Turkey, as ministers admit that the UK will not be able to rescue those eligible for resettlement before troops leave Kabul.The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said in a newspaper article on Sunday that the UK planned to establish a series of processing hubs across the region outside Afghanistan, for Afghans it had “an obligation to”. Continue reading...
Monday: States and territories pushback against plans to ease lockdown at higher vaccination rates. Plus: expert advice on making video chats less awkwardGood morning. Scott Morrison is facing more resistance on the plan to reopen as NSW braces for another day of record Covid cases. Evacuation efforts continue in Afghanistan as Australia grants more than 100 visas to former local staff, a day after rejecting them. And as you sip your money coffee, find out how caffeine became the world’s most dominant drug.Scott Morrison insists that growing case numbers is not a reason to abandon the national plan to open up the country once vaccination rates hit 70% and 80%. But some state leaders are not so sure, warning that the worsening Covid crisis in New South Wales could be a dealbreaker. On Sunday, NSW hit yet another record of 830 new cases and three deaths, bringing the toll in the current outbreak to 71. Continue reading...
In this extract from her new book, New Zealand writer Megan Dunn describes her time answering the phone at Belle de JourI got a job at Belle de Jour in 1998. I was 24 years old and had just graduated from art school. What did I need next? Life experience.The neon sign hung in the window of the ranch slider. The massage parlour logo was of a vintage femme fatale: a raven-haired Betty Page-ish beauty with bright red lips who wore a cheetah V-neck and elbow-length black gloves and toked a cigarette in a cigarette holder. Like Lauren Bacall. One of those classic screen sirens, a quip at the ready. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Slim? You just put your lips together and… Continue reading...
Nilofar Bayat begins rebuilding her life in Spain after days of fear for her life under Taliban ruleWhen the Taliban entered Kabul, Nilofar Bayat, the captain of Afghanistan’s female national wheelchair basketball team, knew she had to get out.“There were so many videos of me playing basketball. I had been active in calling for women’s rights and the rights of women with disabilities,” she said. “If the Taliban found out all of this about me, I knew they would kill me.” Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#5NMS1)
Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese provinceLabour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response. Continue reading...
Ahmad Massoud issues warning as militant group seeks to assert control around Kabul airportOne of the main figures still leading Afghan opposition to the Taliban’s takeover of the country, Ahmad Massoud, has warned that a new civil war is inevitable without a comprehensive power-sharing agreement.Massoud, the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who opposed the Taliban in the 1990s and was assassinated two days before 9/11 in 2001, told the Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV channel that war was “unavoidable” if the Taliban refused dialogue. Continue reading...
West Midlands police still want to speak to Sohail Khan and Ishaaq Ayaz after a man, believed to be Mosin Mahmood, handed himself inWest Midlands police have arrested a man and are searching for two other suspects in connection to an “appalling” homophobic hate crime in Birmingham’s Gay Village in which two men were abused and then cut with broken bottles.The man, believed to be Mosin Mahmood, 31, handed himself in following an appeal in which he was named along with two others. He was arrested on suspicion of wounding and remains in custody. Continue reading...
Leader of Social Democratic party recently became first Swedish leader ever to lose a motion in parliamentStefan Löfven said on Sunday that he will step down as Swedish prime minister and head of the Social Democratic party in November, after seven years in power.The unexpected announcement – made during his annual summer speech – came before next year’s general election and after Löfven in June became the first Swedish leader ever to lose a motion in parliament. Continue reading...
Pair allegedly charged €150 for ‘ancestral’ ceremonies involving psychotropic substancesSpanish police have arrested a couple over accusations they were carrying out rituals – billed online as “international ancestral medicine” – involving an array of banned substances ranging from toad venom to ayahuasca.The couple, aged 42 and 38, allegedly ran an association that performed ceremonies involving psychotropic substances for as much as €150 (£129) a session. Weekend retreats were also on offer at a cost of up to €350 (£300). Continue reading...
Tory MPs celebrate the demise of a ‘hugely expensive white elephant’, while other northern leaders dismayedNorthern leaders have reacted with dismay to further claims that HS2’s eastern leg to Leeds may be scrapped, while some “red wall” Tory MPs celebrated the mooted demise of a “hugely expensive white elephant”.All summer, leaks from Whitehall have suggested the government is set to ditch plans to extend the high-speed rail to Leeds. The latest, in the Sunday Mirror, quoted an anonymous source as saying that halting the eastern leg will save £40bn and “there’s no way we’re going to see this built in our lifetimes”. Continue reading...
From Neil Young to Keith Richards, a generation of musicians revered Phil and Don’s haunting music• US music star Don Everly dies aged 84Among the hundreds of hours of outtakes from the recording sessions that eventually became the Beatles’ Let It Be album, there is a version of Two of Us, taped on 25 January 1969. As John Lennon and Paul McCartney harmonise, the latter says to the former: “Take it, Phil”, a reference to Phil and Don Everly, the duo upon whom the pair had originally attempted to model themselves. On an early holiday, Lennon and McCartney attempted to impress local girls by telling them they had a band back home and they were “the British Everly Brothers”.Shortly afterwards, the pair temporarily stopped working on the song entirely and began performing a ragged cover of Bye Bye Love instead. It’s both oddly sweet – a fleeting moment where the ill-tempered sessions actually achieved their aim of returning the Beatles to their roots – and oddly telling. At the end of a decade in which they had done more than anyone to alter rock music entirely, shifting its parameters until it was occasionally unrecognisable from the state in which it had started the 60s – and rendering the likes of Don and Phil Everly old news in the process – John Lennon and Paul McCartney still wanted to sound like the Everly Brothers. Throughout it all, McCartney later wrote, “their music echoed through my mind”. Continue reading...
Candidates keen to pitch how they would ensure the union protects workers’ rights during change to working patternsWith phrases such as “second-tier workers”, “keystroke surveillance” and “presenteeism” rolling off their tongues, it is clear the three candidates vying to become Unite leader see white-collar Britain’s shift to working from home as a key battleground.Ahead of the election results being announced on Thursday, all three contenders for the job told the Guardian how they would ensure the union protects workers’ rights during one of the biggest changes to the world of work for half a century. Continue reading...
Performer who became part of the French resistance will be moved to the mausoleum in NovemberThe remains of Josephine Baker, a famed French-American dancer, singer and actor who also worked with the French resistance during the second world war, will be moved to the Panthéon mausoleum in November, according to an aide to President Emmanuel Macron.It will make Baker, who was born in Missouri in 1906 and buried in Monaco in 1975, the first Black woman to be laid to rest in the hallowed Parisian monument. Continue reading...
Boogie Nights star reportedly cast as Carrie Bradshaw’s best friend in HBO Max series And Just Like That …Nicole Ari Parker has been billed to replace Kim Cattrall in the Sex and the City reboot, following the backlash that accompanied the news that the era-defining show’s most iconic character was done with the series.Ari Parker, known for starring in the acclaimed series Empire as well as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, will reportedly replace Cattrall as the fourth member of the New York friend group. According to the Mail on Sunday, Ari Parker, 50, will play Carrie Bradshaw’s new best friend, documentary-maker Lisa Todd Wexley. Continue reading...
An anti-lockdown protest held in Melbourne on Saturday was one of the most violent the city has had in 20 years, Victoria’s top police officer says.Thousands gathered in the streets leading to more than 200 arrests and at least nine police officers being hospitalised
Season four of the drama based on Margaret Atwood’s novel has seen Elisabeth Moss’s June in near-constant peril. However, it seems her latent rage could be the thing that sets her freeI find myself wondering why I am still so invested in The Handmaid’s Tale on a weekly basis, as the camera slowly closes in on Elisabeth Moss’s face, her character June pained and broken by cruelty after cruelty. The apocalyptic drama is coming to the end of its fourth run, and when this season began, it found itself boxed into an inevitable corner. How could it sustain the story far beyond Margaret Atwood’s novel, without keeping its characters in a cage, and becoming an unrewarding display of relentless misery?It had begun to go around in circles. June would defy the rules, escape the authorities, get captured, undergo torture, and then begin the whole cycle again. It made it hard for viewers to feel satisfaction in her victories. What was the point in rooting for her, if she would inevitably end up back at the start? Continue reading...
A lawyer for Afghan nationals who supported Australia’s embassy accuses government of spin as they wait for more information about visa approvalsThe Australian government says it has granted humanitarian visas to more than 100 Afghan nationals who worked at its embassy, a day after telling them their visa applications had been rejected.The conflicting information has created confusion as thousands try to flee the Taliban regime. Continue reading...
Embracing its strange past is a blessing for Trasmoz as thousands flock to its witchcraft attractionsTucked into the foothills of northern Spain, the village of Trasmoz attracts thousands of tourists each year. For many, the allure is not its half-ruined castle nor stunning mountain backdrop but rather a curious quirk of history: Trasmoz is Spain’s only excommunicated and cursed village.“So far, being excommunicated and cursed hasn’t been bad for us,” said Lola Ruiz Diaz, one of the 47 or so people who live all year round in Trasmoz, some 50 miles north-west of Zaragoza. “It’s turned out to be a point in our favour.” Continue reading...
A lack of medical supplies is crippling the Covid response, amid an economic crisis sparked by the pandemic and US sanctionsJulia, a community doctor in Havana, was drafted to the intensive care unit soon after Covid-19 first reached Cuba.Last week, her cousin died from the virus. This week, she also tested positive amid a surge in cases which has pushed the island’s vaunted health service to its limits and prompted rare public criticism from Cuban doctors. Continue reading...
by Matilda Boseley (now) and Justine Landis-Hanley (e on (#5NM44)
NSW records 830 new local Covid cases and three deaths; anti-lockdown protest reported on Queensland-NSW border; 19 new cases in ACT; Shepparton accounts for 21 of Victoria’s 65 new local cases; 21 new cases in New Zealand. Follow live
Tom Nichols quotes Abraham Lincoln – on how American democracy can only be brought down from withinLiberal democracy is under attack from within. Institutional trust erodes. Fewer than one in six Americans believe democracy is working well, nearly half think democracy isn’t functioning properly, and 38% say democracy is simply doing meh. Atomization, bowling alone and nihilism have converged at the ballot box.Related: The Reckoning by Mary L Trump review – how to heal America’s trauma Continue reading...
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst gives us a wonderful study of Dickens’s life in 1851, a momentous year for the novelist and Britain as a wholeThe problem with most biographies is that they tend to have only two pace settings. There is the plod of the episodic, one-thing-after-another accounting; parallel to that is the gallop that makes years vanish in pages. Momentum may build, and it may stall, depending on the life being investigated, but that dual speed is the halter that biographical writing struggles to break from.Robert Douglas-Fairhurst isn’t an innovator in restricting his scope to a specific time-frame – Alethea Hayter’s 1965 book A Sultry Month set the standard – but he is surely the first to compass the life of Charles Dickens this way. The year 1851 was momentous both in the writer’s personal circumstances and in the life of the nation and bouncing ideas between the two enables Douglas-Fairhurst to set his own narrative rhythm, at once irresistible and ominous. The Turning Point sees Dickens as a product of his age, “a living embodiment of its energy and ambition”, and identifies the book he was preparing to write, Bleak House, not only as the “greatest fictional experiment of his career” but as a signpost to the future of the novel itself. Typical of this book’s magpie eclecticism is that it notes “turning point” as a phrase gaining currency in mid-Victorian English. Continue reading...
Trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic has soared this year, while life for British exporters looks set to get grimmerIt was supposed to be a deal no UK prime minister could ever agree to, an Irish sea border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Half a year on from Boris Johnson doing exactly that, while denying the fact, the economic consequences are becoming clearer.Figures published by the Irish government last week indicate that a heavy toll for British trade can be added to the political turmoil unleashed by Johnson’s signing up to the Northern Ireland protocol. The data shows evidence beginning to emerge of deeper economic unity on the island of Ireland, at a time when shipments between Britain and Northern Ireland have been disrupted by the Brexit border checks the prime minister promised would never happen. Continue reading...
With more than 17 hours of daily sport, the broadcaster is claiming to have the world’s best Tokyo packageWhen Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympics begins on Tuesday viewers will be spoilt for choice, with more than 1,300 hours of events on offer, almost triple the coverage of the home Games in London 2012, and the broadcaster turning over its flagship channel to the Olympics for a staggering 17.5 hours each day.The wall-to-wall coverage offered by what has become the world’s leading Paralympic broadcaster since it struck an unprecedented TV rights deal for the London Games will see it deliver almost three times more hours than the BBC managed with its restrictive rights deal to broadcast the Tokyo Olympic Games. Continue reading...
Despite £1m spent on the 1876 landmark, last week’s big relaunch in Newcastle was a failureOn 17 July 1876, the world’s largest swinging bridge – a marvel of hydraulic engineering – opened for the first time, allowing access to the upper reaches of the River Tyne.Since that day, the Newcastle Swing Bridge, designed by William Armstrong, one of the greatest names in British engineering, has opened on about 300,000 occasions for the passage of about half-a-million vessels. Continue reading...
It’s all too easy to return to the roles we used to inhabit, but try and see the situation from your mother’s point of viewThe question I am a 43-year-old woman. I have a happy marriage and amazing kids. During lockdown my 76-year-old mother, who is a widow, has coped well, launching herself into reading, gardening and clearing out stuff in the house, with never a word of self-pity.Now that things have opened up and we can visit again, the distance requires that we stay over. My problem is that, on returning to my childhood home, I revert to being a teenager. Continue reading...
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