by Ruth Michaelson in Cairo and Fiona Harvey on (#5S5Q1)
Green experts and human rights activists are concerned the hardline Cairo regime will suppress any civil society actionConcern is growing over plans to host a UN climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh next year, in what will be a crucial summit if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C.Several green experts and human rights activists have told the Observer they fear the ability of civil society groups to protest at the summit will be curtailed by Egypt’s authoritarian regime, reducing the pressure that can be brought to bear on leaders and ministers from the nearly 200 countries expected to take part. Continue reading...
Alexander Hardcastle, who helped resurrect Agrigento, was as famous as Howard Carter, but died in penury. Now he’s back in the spotlightIn the 1920s, the discovery of ancient ruins in Sicily, now the largest archaeological site in the world, was celebrated with excitement in British newspapers. It was hailed with much the same level of enthusiasm as was given to Howard Carter and Arthur Evans’s excavations of the treasures of Tutankhamun and the palace of Knossos. Not a natural “showman” however, the name of the man who excavated the site, Alexander Hardcastle, then slowly faded.Now, as an contemporary sculpture exhibition on the site he made his life’s work, Sicily’s Valley of the Temples, marks the centenary of his efforts, there is a fresh push to ensure Hardcastle’s achievements are remembered. This is supported by the British author of a recent biography of the amateur archaeologist. Continue reading...
Soledad O’Brien and the directors of an eye-opening new docuseries, Black and Missing, talk about how media and police bias still affects how missing people are covered and looked forGabby Petito’s disappearance late last summer captured national media headlines and kicked off a well-oiled and coordinated manhunt, with tips pouring in through social media, that nevertheless ended in tragedy. After her remains were found, Petito’s parents thanked law enforcement and the public for their assistance at a press conference. Joseph Petito also made a pointed statement. “This same type of heightened awareness should be continued for everyone,” he told the gathered media. “It’s on all of you, everyone that’s in this room, to do that. If you don’t do that for other people that are missing, that’s a shame, because it’s not just Gabby that deserves that.”“That’s coming from a grieving father,” says Soledad O’Brien to the Guardian. The former CNN anchor and executive producer of the four-part HBO documentary series Black and Missing is vividly recalling the press conference on the phone. “Imagine your own little girl goes missing and you have to chide the media to also look for people of color.” Continue reading...
These philosophical, sometimes grumpy journals, unearthed after the doyenne of suspense fiction’s death, shine a light on her dual identities, the contempt she felt for other people and her erotic misadventuresWhen Patricia Highsmith looked in the mirror, she saw both a lover and a killer. Early on, the reflected face had a fetching feline allure, but out of sight another facet of Highsmith seemed to belong, she said in 1942, in “a terrible other world of hell and the unknown”. As she aged, what she saw through the “evil distorting lens of my eye” changed: now a gravel-voiced, fire-breathing ogre stared back. Highsmith knew that there are always “two people in each person”, and in 1953 a nightmare confirmed this duality. She dreamed that she was incinerating a naked girl who shivered in a wooden bathtub; the funeral pyre was set with papers, presumably Highsmith’s manuscripts. Waking up, she admitted: “I had two identities: the victim and the murderer.”The characters in Highsmith’s novels accordingly come in pairs, doubles who are casualties of a fracture in what she called “the universal law of oneness”. Upright Guy and devious Bruno in Strangers on a Train begin as opposites but end as psychic twins after they exchange homicides. Tom in The Talented Mr Ripley kills the alluring Dickie, then assumes his identity. In the lesbian romance The Price of Salt, matronly Carol and girlish Therese merge, then are sundered by social disapproval: murders, which for Highsmith were “a kind of making love”, are here replaced by orgasms. Continue reading...
Linda Greenhouse does a fine job of raising the alarm about the conservative conquest and what it means for the rest of us – it’s a pity she does not also recommend ways to fight backLinda Greenhouse’s byline became synonymous with the supreme court during the 30 years she covered it for the New York Times. She excelled at unraveling complex legal riddles for the average reader. She also had tremendous common sense – an essential and depressingly rare quality among journalists.Both of these virtues are on display in her new book, which chronicles “12 months that transformed the supreme court” after the death of the liberal lion Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the obscenely rapid confirmation of her conservative successor, Amy Coney Barrett. Continue reading...
Surgery in isolated market town has had no applicants, leaving one doctor serving a population of 2,000Nestled among towering Cumbrian hills and accessible by just a handful of roads, Alston Moor is said to be the highest market town in England. There are few amenities on the doorstep – getting a takeaway delivery is out of the question – so it may not immediately seem like the most desirable place for a doctor to settle down, especially if they are used to the hustle and bustle of a city.But what may have been a bit of a challenge in the past has now become a major headache for the town, one of the most remote places in England, which is in desperate need of a GP. A nine-month-long search has so far yielded not a single application. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen South Asia correspondent on (#5S5NN)
As a boy, the Tamil director saw movies made in the market where he worked. Now he’s India’s choice for awards gloryAs a child labourer working in the flower markets of Madurai, there was nothing more exciting for PS Vinothraj than when the film crews would descend. He would put down his sacks of petals and look up in awe at the camera operators who sat atop cranes to get dramatic sweeping shots. It was, to his nine-year-old mind, intoxicating. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. “My passion for cinema was born in that flower market.”The odds were stacked heavily against him. Vinothraj was born into a poverty-stricken family of daily wage labourers in Tamil Nadu. He left school, aged nine, to support his family after his father died and by 14 was working in the sweatshops of Tiruppur. Continue reading...
by Michael McGowan (now) and Justine Landis-Hanley (e on (#5S5EA)
Almost 90% of Victoria has had first dose of Covid vaccine as state records 1,275 new cases and four deaths; NSW records 176 cases and two deaths as state nears 95% first vaccination dose milestone; two more NT communities in lockdown after nine new cases on Saturday; 16 Covid cases in ACT; thunderstorm warning for south-west WA and severe weather warnings in place across NSW. This blog is now closed
Eric Zemmour and others who stir up hatred are likely to fail electorally but have huge unchallenged cultural powerEric Zemmour is unlikely to be the next president of France. In the first place, he is not yet officially a candidate. Second, his repellent brand of racist, far-right codswallop already has a well-established mouthpiece: Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally (formerly the National Front).That said, Zemmour is doing well in opinion polls and is significantly influencing the election agenda. Known as a TV pundit and polemicist, his latest bestseller, France Has Not Had Its Final Word, is a pseudo-intellectual requiem for “the death of France as we know it”, by which he means white, Catholic France. In short, Zemmour claims Muslims are out to capture the state. Continue reading...
There’s no reason to carry the weight of your mother’s decisions. You need to take control of her secrets by writing them down in orderThe dilemma I have kept secrets for my mother for many years. She has had several extramarital affairs and I am the only one who knows about these. She has never held back in telling me about her feelings for the people she has been involved with. She despises my father and tells me whenever we meet of his failings and of her disappointments in life. She discusses – and has discussed since I was 10 – leaving him, but she has never gone through with this.I am now in my 50s. To her friends and the rest of the family, she is considered kind and compassionate. She is, though, a troubled woman. However, my daughter considers her to be the perfect grandmother and has invited her to her graduation ceremony. There are not enough tickets so I will not be able to attend. I am crushed by this. I wonder if I have reached the point where I should cut her out of my life. Continue reading...
by Emma Graham-Harrison in Gereshk, Helmand on (#5S5KT)
The staff are unpaid, the drugs are running out. Gereshk hospital can only watch as tiny infants succumb to treatable diseasesShirin has paid heavily for both Afghanistan’s conflict, and its abrupt end in Taliban victory. Three years ago her husband lost his leg when a roadside bomb hit his bus. Then in the summer the militants’ victory brought peace to her corner of Helmand, but a halt to the foreign aid funds that paid her salary as a hospital cleaner and kept the family afloat.They fell behind on rent, were evicted from their home and began running out of food. Three weeks ago, worn down by cold, hunger and disruption, Mohammad Omar died from wounds that had never fully healed, leaving her a single mother to their four children. Continue reading...
China’s move was in protest at Baltic country allowing the opening of a diplomatic office using the name TaiwanChina has officially downgraded its diplomatic ties with Lithuania to the “charge d’affaires” level in protest at Taiwan establishing a de facto embassy in Vilnius.Lithuania allowing Taipei to formally open an office using the name Taiwan was a significant diplomatic departure that defied a pressure campaign by Beijing, which tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the global stage. Continue reading...
Further footage of missing tennis star from Chinese state media rejected by WTA amid widespread scepticism that she is free and wellFresh videos of missing tennis star Peng Shuai were posted by Chinese state media on Sunday morning, amid growing global pressure for Beijing to provide verifiable evidence of her whereabouts and safety.The latest footage, released by Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of state newspaper the Global Times, appears to show the player being introduced at a youth tennis match in Beijing. Hu said on Twitter – a platform that is officially banned in China – that the footage was taken on Sunday but this claim could not be verified. Continue reading...
Police treating the deaths of a man and a woman found at a house in Higher Walton as suspiciousPolice have arrested a man on suspicion of murder after two people were found dead at a house near Preston.Lancashire constabulary said officers found the bodies of a man and a woman at the property on Cann Bridge Street in the village of Higher Walton on Saturday afternoon. Continue reading...
Firefighters describe feeling ‘helpless’ after battling blaze that left two girls and two boys dead in Melbourne suburb of WerribeeFour children have died in a fire that tore through a home in Melbourne’s south-west, in the early hours of Sunday morning.Police on Sunday confirmed a 10-year-old and three-year-old boy, and a six-year-old and one-year-old girl had died in the fire, which started at a house in Mantello Drive in Werribee at about 1am. Continue reading...
Police made the arrest at the scene of a disturbance in the city centre where the man diedA 60-year-old man has died following a disturbance in Manchester city centre.Greater Manchester police (GMP) said a “group of people” were involved in the incident on Dantzic Street, near the Printworks leisure venue, to which officers were called on Saturday at just after 8pm. Continue reading...
Government calls on officials to provide evidence of the tennis player’s whereaboutsThe UK government has joined the mounting chorus of concern over the apparent disappearance of tennis star Peng Shuai, urging the Chinese authorities to offer “verifiable evidence” of her whereabouts and safety.Peng, a former doubles world No 1, has not been seen or heard from publicly since she accused a former high-ranking Chinese government official on 2 November of forcing her to have sex after playing tennis at his home. Continue reading...
Activist Joel Keys says unionism would benefit from confronting, not avoiding, the things it finds most difficultHe was the teenage supermarket worker who shocked MPs examining loyalist anger in Northern Ireland by claiming that sometimes violence “was the only tool you have left”. Joel Keys left the committee chair, Tory MP Simon Hoare, “chilled and appalled” and he faced a media backlash.Six months on Keys, now 20, has not disappeared into oblivion after his 15 minutes of fame. Nor has he abandoned his position on violence. He has ambitions to become a local politician representing young loyalist communities that he describes as “goldmines” left behind by unionist parties and education leaders. Continue reading...
A visit to arrest Russell on an outstanding warrant turned to tragedy. His family want an explanationThere are bullet holes in Pam Saha’s laundry wall. There’s also a bullet mark in the floor and, nearby, what appears to be a bloodstain. There’s another reddish stain, with the pattern of a boot in it, visible in flaking paint on thefloor. None were there before NSW police arrived 10 days ago.The officers came to Saha’s house in north-western Sydney to arrest her nephew Stanley Russell, and ended up shooting him dead. The circumstances surrounding it are now the subject of an internal investigation. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Convery and Luke Henriques-Gomes on (#5S5AW)
Food relief organisations say they are helping more people than ever before. But this is not a good news storyFood banks in Australia were overwhelmed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Whole industries shut down, shedding jobs, and vulnerable people were suddenly more numerous and visible than ever. The demand for food relief exploded, and the charity sector went into overdrive.But the unique circumstances of the pandemic obscure a much more insidious problem. Continue reading...
The American businesswoman, and the prime minister’s ex-lover, is to let officials at London City Hall see extracts from her diariesA fresh inquiry has opened into Boris Johnson’s relationship with Jennifer Arcuri after the US businesswoman dramatically agreed to assist officials, paving the way for the prime minister to face possible criminal investigation.Arcuri has formally offered to help the Greater London Authority (GLA) ethics watchdog by allowing it to inspect extracts of her diary entries chronicling her affair with Johnson and agreeing to be questioned for the first time by investigators over the relationship. Continue reading...
Memorial to novelist would be by Thames, which would evoke her suicide by drowningConcerns have been raised about a planned statue of Virginia Woolf overlooking the Thames, which has been called insensitive because of the way she killed herself.The memorial the author, designed by Laury Dizengremel, would be positioned on a park bench overlooking the river on Richmond riverside in south-west London, where she lived for about a decade from 1914. Continue reading...
A large fire has broken out in a building on Boulevard des Capucines, near the Place de L’Opéra in central Paris, sending clouds of smoke rising into the air. People were told to avoid the area, which is popular with tourists, as fire crews tackled the blaze
Relatives and support groups claim that the sector has been ‘left behind’ as the rest of society opens upDozens of care homes are still denying people access to their elderly relatives 20 months after the pandemic began, according to support groups.Although ministers have urged care homes to allow relatives to visit, groups including the Relatives & Residents Association and Unlock Care Homes say that many are still unable to see elderly residents. Continue reading...
An academic and a football fan who were held in the United Arab Emirates claim Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi oversaw physical abuseTwo British men formerly detained in United Arab Emirates are campaigning to prevent a senior Emirati official from becoming the next president of Interpol, accusing him of personal involvement in their arrests and torture.Academic Matthew Hedges, who was imprisoned in the UAE for seven months, and football fan Ali Issa Ahmad, detained while on holiday in Dubai for wearing a Qatar football shirt, accuse Major General Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi of overseeing their detention and physical abuse. Continue reading...
Commuters on the 8.30 train to Leeds are dismissive about levelling up after Boris Johnson’s broken promises on HS2Few travellers would disagree that the Transpennine Express makes for a splendid journey across the rugged spine of northern England, snaking through beautiful green valleys and picturesque stone villages, from Manchester Piccadilly to Leeds railway station. But perhaps many would quibble with the use of the word “express”.It took just over an hour to traverse the 35 miles between the two cities on the 08.30 from Manchester on Friday – less an intercity bullet train than a rural heritage experience. The long-promised high-speed link was intended to cut the time to 25 minutes, but last week the government announced that it had abandoned those plans, along with the HS2 eastern section to Leeds. Continue reading...
Thousands of people gathered in central Vienna to protest against new tough pandemic measures in Austria. Whistling, clapping, blowing horns and banging drums, protesters – many of them far-right supporters – streamed into Heroes’ Square on Saturday. With daily infections still setting records, the government said it would put the countryt back in lockdown from Monday and make it compulsory to get vaccinated from 1 February
2.2 magnitude quake reported just outside Roybridge on Friday follows tremor near LochgilpheadScotland has been hit by its second earthquake in less than a week, in a tremor that a seismologist described as “quite unusual” because people could actually feel it.The British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded a 2.2 magnitude earthquake just outside Roybridge, near Spean Bridge, in the Highlands, shortly before 9.30pm on Friday. Continue reading...
Belarus said to be directing smaller groups of people to multiple points along the EU’s eastern frontierPoland has said Belarus has changed tactics in the border crisis by now directing smaller groups of people to multiple points along the European Union’s eastern frontier.Though there have been signs of the crisis easing, the defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, said he expected the border showdown to continue for some time. Continue reading...
John Sweeney reported on the women wrongly jailed for murder. Now, 22 years on, he fears we have not seen the end of a modern witch-huntChild abuse is an evil thing but it’s always worse when the perpetrator is the state. Twenty-two years ago this month, Sally Clark was convicted of murdering her two baby boys, Christopher and Harry, and blaming it on cot death. She was sentenced to life in prison. There was a secret sentence, crueller even than that. The murder charge meant that in the family court, behind closed doors, she lost the right to be a mother to her surviving son, and that extra cruelty broke her. The British state committed child abuse by depriving her third boy of his mother for no good reason.The question at the heart of Sally’s tragedy – and those of Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony – was not, “Who murdered this child?” but, “Was there a crime?”. And the truth was there had been no crime. In none of these cases was there any good evidence of child abuse, let alone child murder. There is a fourth case, that of Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian mother who lost four children. She is still in prison. These tragedies are examined in a major new series by Discovery +, released this weekend, on which I am interviewed. Continue reading...
The short but brilliant career of the printmaker is explored at her first European retrospective in Madrid, 22 years after she diedTheir creator is long gone, but Belkis Ayón’s figures live on in syncretic shadow and silhouette, forever slipping between realms and roles, borders and beliefs.Over the course of a short but brilliant life whose final years were profoundly marked by the chaos that the collapse of the Soviet Union visited on her native Cuba, Ayón established herself as an artist whose technical skills were matched only by the haunted and hallucinatory intensity of her imagination. Continue reading...
The actor, 30, talks about learning tenacity, gaining an MBE, meeting Tom Hanks and her pole-dancing addictionIt’s fun to write MBE after your name occasionally. I got the honour in 2019 for services to drama. I have complex feelings about it and it hasn’t made any tangible difference to my career, but it solidified my sense of responsibility. I’m a big advocate for youth arts access and young people often ask me about the MBE, so it’s cool to show them what’s possible. It’s almost an ambassadorial role. Hopefully I’ll get invited to those ambassador’s parties where they serve pyramids of Ferrero Rocher.My mum taught me tenacity. I was raised by a Ugandan single mother in Essex. Immigrants want to succeed and find a stable life, of course, but it’s also quite easy in a foreign country to accept your position and settle for a perceived glass ceiling. Mum never did that. She was always striving and studying. She’s got degrees coming out of her ears. She showed me I didn’t have to place restrictions on myself. Continue reading...
This year’s key prizes have gone to writers from Africa and the diaspora. Damon Galgut, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Abdulrazak Gurnah and others explain what winning means to themThis has been a great year for African writing,” announced Damon Galgut, accepting the Booker prize earlier this month for his multilayered novel, The Promise, which tells the story of an Afrikaner family amid the political and social upheaval that followed the end of apartheid. “I’d like to accept this on behalf of all the stories told and untold, the writers heard and unheard from the remarkable continent that I come from.”It was not an overstatement. Galgut’s Booker win comes at the end of a year when many of the literary world’s major awards have been scooped by writers with origins and heritages in the countries of Africa. In June, David Diop’s second novel At Night All Blood Is Black, translated from French by Anna Moschovakis, won the International Booker prize, its visceral story inspired by the accounts of Senegalese riflemen’s experiences in the first world war. In the last few weeks, Senegal has again come to the fore, as Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (The Most Secret Memory of Men) won France’s Prix Goncourt, making its author the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to do so. Continue reading...
My aunt Ann didn’t want a painful decline from Parkinson’s, so I agreed to accompany her to a Swiss assisted dying clinic. Would she find peace in her final moments?Ann is sitting in a windowless and sparsely furnished white room with high ceilings and a red concrete floor. There is a bed in the corner, next to shelves full of medical equipment. She seems small against the large black sofa, her hands clasped together to minimise the involuntary swaying caused by her Parkinson’s disease. She is in pain, she is tired and, for the first time that day, she is getting a little anxious. She is waiting for someone to arrive with the drug that will kill her. Her fear is not of dying; she passed that point a long time ago. She is worried about the pharmacy’s supplies, suddenly scared that the people in whose hands she has put her death could let her down.Ann Bruce, my aunt and my friend, died in Switzerland on 26 June 2021 at the age of 73. She was a quiet, intelligent woman, slender and unassuming, yet determined and plain-speaking. She started her career as a doctor, and ended it as a psychotherapist. She sang, she held legendary dinner parties, and she adored the theatre – she was the master of her successful life. Continue reading...
Emergency crews continue search for victims after flash floods tear through regionEmergency crews in western Canada continued searching on Friday for victims of flash floods and mudslides which tore through the region this week, as survivors described harrowing escapes from the disaster.British Columbia declared its third state of emergency in a year on Wednesday after a month’s worth of rain fell in two days, swamping towns and cities, blocking major highways and leaving much of the province under water. Continue reading...
In a landmark ruling, Kiribati’s chief justice ordered the government to allow high court judge David Lambourne to returnA landmark judgment in the Pacific country of Kiribati has ruled the government’s actions in blocking an Australian, a judge on Kiribati’s high court, from returning to the island were unconstitutional.When David Lambourne left Kiribati in February 2020 to attend a conference in Australia, he thought it would be a brief and uneventful trip. Instead, the Australian judge, who has been resident of the Pacific nation for over two decades, found himself stranded after Covid-19 hit. Continue reading...
A jury on Friday found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on charges related to his shooting dead two people at an anti-racism protest and injuring a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year, after a tumultuous trial that gripped the US
Campaigners say removal of blue badge parking to make way for new defences is in breach of Equality ActDisability rights campaigners are planning a legal challenge against York council after it voted to ban blue badge parking on key streets in the city centre.York Accessibility Action (YAA), an organisation founded by disabled York residents and carers, said the city has become a “no go zone” for many disabled people and there was now no suitable parking within 150 metres of the city centre. Continue reading...
Satellite images reportedly detected construction of secret facility at Khalifa port amid growing US-China rivalryUS intelligence agencies found evidence this year of construction work on what they believed was a secret Chinese military facility in the United Arab Emirates, which was stopped after Washington’s intervention, according to a report on Friday.The Wall Street Journal reported that satellite imagery of the port of Khalifa had revealed suspicious construction work inside a container terminal built and operated by a Chinese shipping corporation, Cosco. Continue reading...
Cartoon series, starring Monkey D Luffy, started life as a manga in 1997 and is a record seller as a comic bookTwo decades after the Japanese cartoon series One Piece introduced the world to a swashbuckling pirate in a straw hat, anime fans are awaiting this weekend’s release of the 1,000th episode.One Piece first appeared in manga (comic book) form in Japan in 1997, with an anime (animated TV series) version following two years later. Continue reading...
Guardian sports writer whose wit and talent redefined what a football column could beIt is not customary to look forward to Monday mornings but, in the heyday of the Guardian’s print sales in the late 1970s and 80s, many readers relished Monday’s paper more than anything else.On a features page would be Posy Simmonds’ weekly dissection of middle-class life. And, further back, stretched across the width of the main sports page, David Lacey would offer his weekly dissection of football. Like Posy’s cartoon strip, this was one of the great institutions of British journalism. Continue reading...
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