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Nasireyah residents demand officials resign as deaths rise to 64 after Covid hospital infernoThe death toll from an overnight inferno in a Covid hospital ward in southern Iraq has risen to 64, amid rising anger and questions about the competence of the country’s health sector.The blaze was the second in a coronavirus unit in the past three months. More than 80 people died in a Baghdad hospital in April. In both cases the fires were thought to have started after oxygen tanks ignited. Continue reading...

Fans in Italy are overjoyed; fans in England are proud; and fans in Turkey are not happyThe Azzurri inspired the world with that special Italian sprezzatura, a dogged work ethic and a confident swagger. They established a new generation of players while honouring the old guard. They lived up to their potential and exceeded the hopes of their fans. They understood who they were in establishing their identity on the field and stuck to their gameplan. Continue reading...

Prof Chris Whitty has warned that maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, as Boris Johnson announced that most social distancing and mask rules would be lifted on 19 July.

Tuesday: nursing union calls for funding to immunise aged care workers as Sydney outbreak grows. Plus: Scott Morrison’s popularity takes a hitGood morning. Leaders will gather today for the first “war game” meeting of Operation Covid Shield, the federal government’s revamped vaccine rollout strategy. And Australian tennis champion Ash Barty is dominating Wimbledon.The federal government should fund a state government-operated vaccination blitz of aged care workers, according to the main nursing union, who say it is “enormously frustrated” and “angry” at the commonwealth’s repeated failures, lack of urgency and blame-shifting. Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) federal secretary Annie Butler wants the federal government to fund the program that would vaccinate staff in their workplaces as initially intended. “It makes sense to us to fund the states and let them manage an on-site vaccination program for aged care, and then we can get it done,” she says. Continue reading...

Superman, Lethal Weapon, The Omen, Scrooged – the movie director’s CV tracked Hollywood’s most bankable genres from the 80s onwardsRichard Donner was the classic studio director and an action blockbuster maestro, the Michael Curtiz of the VHS age; he was the great inventor, or reinventor, of so many Hollywood genres and styles. When Hollywood invented the “franchise property”, Donner was at the centre of things. His macho Lethal Weapon movies with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover were far from enlightened on sexual politics. But they gave a black man equal billing with a white man in a top-flight Hollywood movie: rare in 1987 and rare even now.Related: Richard Donner, director of Superman and The Goonies, dies aged 91 Continue reading...

Non-Russian producers now required to mark their bottles as sparkling wineIf anything is guaranteed to get French wine producers in a fizz, it is the suggestion that champagne can be made anywhere outside the Champagne region in France.As a protected appellation, the term is jealously guarded and legally defended. As the Champagne committee’s website clearly states: “Champagne only comes from Champagne.” Continue reading...

VkusVill apologises for promotion, saying it had ‘hurt the feelings’ of customers and staffAn upmarket Russian supermarket chain has issued a public apology after it posted an advert featuring a lesbian couple who shopped at its store.VkusVill’s decision to pull the ad has provoked an angry backlash from Moscow liberals and other Russian LGBTQ allies, who have criticised the supermarket chain’s “cowardice” and said they would be boycotting the store. Continue reading...

Kate not experiencing symptoms but self-isolating according to government guidelines, says Kensington Palace

Former MP has privacy concerns about Jenkins report into workplace culture based on ‘first-hand’ experience with Morrison government

Vatican says Francis is alert and in good overall condition after operation to remove part of his colonPope Francis is alert, breathing without assistance and in a good overall condition after surgery to remove part of his colon, the Vatican has said.The 84-year-old is expected to stay in hospital for seven days barring any complications, following his three-hour operation on Sunday night by a 10-person surgical team at Gemelli hospital in Rome, the Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said in a statement on Monday. Continue reading...

Fabrice Luchini is a fading politician railing against leftwing malaise in Nicolas Pariser’s ambitious, frustrating dramaNicolas Pariser’s second film is a much-needed attempt to address the woes of the modern left: a conceptual exhaustion in the face of ever-mutating 21st-century capitalism, and loss of connection with its base. But though Alice and the Mayor dances playfully around this predicament, it ultimately flounders. Fabrice Luchini plays Paul Théraneau, the socialist mayor of Lyon, once an ideological big-hitter who now feels like he “stopped thinking 20 years ago”. So he engages 30-year-old philosophy graduate Alice (Anaïs Demoustier) as a futurologist to write him idea-filled memos that will put intellectual lead back in his pencil.A possible nod, or rebuke, to real-life former Lyonnais mayor (and French interior minister) Gérard Collomb, Alice and the Mayor doesn’t take the May-to-December romance route you might expect and remains commendably focused on diagnosing leftwing malaise. Pariser, who also scripted, teasingly captures the reactive, eternally firefighting madness of the modern political operation (“He’s got five minutes for you in three minutes”), as well as the danger that Alice’s ideas drive will become just another fad. The leads both nail their unease in the maelstrom: Demoustier calmly watchful but tension crimping her lips, while Luchini – in his second recent civic-minded film after 2015’s Courted – often has a taken-aback expression that suggests a man trying to locate a marble rattling around in his own head. Continue reading...

Broccoli is magnificent. Broccoli is a superfood. Even if you’re normally not a fan, these smoothies, toasties, stir-fries and pasta dishes will get your mouth wateringI have two children: a three-year-old who hates broccoli and won’t eat it, and a six-year-old who tells me that broccoli is his favourite vegetable, but still won’t eat it. They should eat broccoli, because broccoli is magnificent. It’s a one-stop shop for fibre, protein, iron, potassium, calcium, selenium, magnesium, and vitamins A, B, C, E and K. We should all be eating more broccoli, even if – like my kids – we don’t want to. Here are 10 recipes sure to entice even those adamant that it’s not for them. Continue reading...

Is it possible to keep your home free of rats, mice, moths and ants without killing them? And which ones should you get rid of – and which should you learn to live with?They turned up in shifts, all through the course of lockdown: mice, ants, weevils, moths, a fox and, on one unhappy occasion, a magpie in the kitchen. I have been obliged to show the door to all manner of wildlife, with varying degrees of success. The magpie was eager to leave. The ants less so. The moths are still with us.It’s easy to get angry with household pests, and sometimes – on encountering a particularly rapacious mouse, say – it’s possible to wish them great harm. But most people, I suspect, would rather be as humane as possible when getting rid of invaders. And even when kindness can’t stop you killing things, squeamishness often will. Unfortunately, many pest control products still associate effectiveness with lethality. The ant trap I bought says it “destroys ants and their nests!” I really just wanted them off the worktop. Is it possible to keep your home pest-free using only humane, nonlethal means? Continue reading...

Twenty years ago in South Africa people were dying unable to access expensive antiretrovirals. The creation of the Global Fund was gamechangingIn 2001, at the age of 22 – when I thought my life had just begun – I was diagnosed with HIV. At that time, the diagnosis felt like a death sentence. Every day, I waited for my hour to die.However, after two months of waiting, death didn’t come. Continue reading...

Since the interim government of Ethiopia’s Tigray region fled after rebel fighters advanced into Mekelle, a ‘unilateral ceasefire’ has been announced. More than 7,000 captive Ethiopian soldiers walked from Abdi Eshir for four days Continue reading...

The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doomIn August 1974, the CIA produced a study on “climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems”. The diagnosis was dramatic. It warned of the emergence of a new era of weird weather, leading to political unrest and mass migration (which, in turn, would cause more unrest). The new era the agency imagined wasn’t necessarily one of hotter temperatures; the CIA had heard from scientists warning of global cooling as well as warming. But the direction in which the thermometer was travelling wasn’t their immediate concern; it was the political impact. They knew that the so-called “little ice age”, a series of cold snaps between, roughly, 1350 and 1850, had brought not only drought and famine, but also war – and so could these new climatic changes.“The climate change began in 1960,” the report’s first page informs us, “but no one, including the climatologists, recognised it.” Crop failures in the Soviet Union and India in the early 1960s had been attributed to standard unlucky weather. The US shipped grain to India and the Soviets killed off livestock to eat, “and premier Nikita Khrushchev was quietly deposed”. Continue reading...

The non-binary comedian’s hit TV show draws heavily on an often troubled life. They talk about addiction at 14, the loving parents who kicked them out, the older men who abused their trust – and the happiness they eventually foundAt the beginning of the pandemic Mae Martin’s first TV series, Feel Good, was broadcast on Channel 4 to great acclaim. Just recently, the second series came out on Netflix to even greater acclaim. While most of us have disappeared in lockdown, Martin has become a star.Feel Good is a disarmingly autobiographical love story. It tells the story of a character called Mae struggling with relationships, addiction, identity and life on the comedy circuit. Mae is attracted to men and women, but to women more, particularly women who identify as straight. The first series focuses on Mae’s relationship with Georgina, a teacher who had previously only slept with men and is reluctant to admit to her super-straight, super-posh friends that she and Mae are living together. Mae is a mix of streetwise and naive – reckless, precocious, promiscuous, self-absorbed and a bag of nerves. Continue reading...

WA’s four-day lockdown for people in Perth and the Peel region ends, while the Northern Territory announces some restrictions for Darwin and Alice Springs post-lockdown, and South Australia announces immediate end to restrictions. What are the reasons you can leave home? Is mask-wearing compulsory? Is travelling permitted? Here’s what you can and can’t do

Former president rails against jail sentence as armed supporters mass outside his homeSouth Africa’s ex-president Jacob Zuma has lashed out at the judges who this week gave him a 15-month jail term for absconding from a corruption inquiry, comparing them to the white minority apartheid rulers he once fought.Zuma spoke at his home in Nklandla, in a rural part of Kwazulu Natal province, where hundreds of his supporters, some of them armed, were gathered to prevent his arrest. Continue reading...

The Suez Canal Authority has held the Ever Given and its crew in a lake between two stretches of the waterway since it was dislodged on 29 MarchThe owners and insurers of the Ever Given container ship that blocked the Suez Canal in March have announced that a formal settlement had been agreed in a compensation dispute, and the canal authority said the vessel would be allowed to sail on 7 July.The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) has held the giant ship and its crew in a lake between two stretches of the waterway since it was dislodged on 29 March, amid a dispute over a demand for compensation by the SCA. Continue reading...

Britain could have regulated the City and attracted green investment from inside the EUGiving up membership of the EU is changing the UK economy. But not in the way the headlines suggest. Last week there was much crowing that Brexit Britain had secured a £1bn electric vehicle hub in Sunderland, where Nissan will produce a new all-electric car model and its partner Envision will build a huge battery factory. This was good news. But there was less focus on the fact that the units built will be tailored to rules set by Brussels.Ministers are coy about what was paid to keep the Japanese car giant here. States often dangle economic carrots to attract investment. The UK would have done so had we stayed in the EU. Instead, with Britain outside the bloc, Nissan had the upper hand in negotiations. If the plant had gone somewhere else, it would have been a clear signal that Britain was a less attractive destination outside the EU than it was within. Without the investment, ministers could have credibly been accused of betraying “red wall” voters. Continue reading...

James Duddridge made the slip-up in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991.

Call for withdrawal of Eritrean forces from war-torn region and restoration of rebel governmentRebels in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region have accepted a ceasefire “in principle” but posed strict conditions for it to be formalised.Notable among those conditions was the withdrawal from the region of Eritrean forces as well as fighters from the neighbouring Ethiopian region of Amhara, who have been supporting the Ethiopian army during the eight-month long conflict. Continue reading...

More than 1,000 rescuers have arrived in Atami, a Japanese town hit by a landslide on Saturday that killed two people. The rescuers climbed on to cracked roofs and searched cars thrown on to engulfed buildings, as more rain lashed the area.About 20 people are still missing after the huge landslide, which was caused by days of heavy rain that swept away homes in central Japan. Television footage showed a torrent of mud crushing some buildings and burying others in Atami, a resort town south-west of Tokyo, while residents ran as it crashed over a hillside road

The cult director talks about his first UK release – about a man’s obsession with a cowboy jacket – surreal dreams, and why he won’t kill off Flat Eric, the yellow puppet that launched his careerThe name “Quentin” clearly operates as a lucky charm if you’re an idiosyncratic film-maker, especially if you deal with sudden death, craziness and Z-movie Americana. But only one Quentin – the French one, the weirder one – can these days genuinely be called a cult director. Quentin Dupieux’s films are admired, even loved, in France; puzzled over in the US; and as yet, largely unknown in the UK. That may change with the arrival of Deerskin (2019), his first theatrical release in Britain. It’s about that most universal of themes: a man’s morbidly, even murderously obsessive passion for a cowboy jacket.Starring French box-office fixture Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and respected art-house regular Adèle Haenel (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Deerskin is a very black comedy – although its colour scheme is bizarrely dominated by shades of suede-like beige. Its hero, Georges, is a man obsessed with a tasseled buckskin blouson, the sort once seen on the sleeves of LPs by 60s California bands who fancied themselves as western bandits. On a Skype call from Uzès in the south of France, Dupieux, who sports a dense shrubbery of black beard and a dishevelled mop of hair one hesitates to call “Borisian”, explains that Georges’s jacket is a garment that has haunted the director himself for 20 years, ever since he used it in a music video. Continue reading...

Jubilant fans took to the streets to mark the team making it through to the Euro 2020 quarter-finalsFirst came the beer, then the delirium and, as sure as Harry Kane in front of goal, the collective hangover.Thousands of England fans celebrated through the night as the Three Lions sailed through to the Euro 2020 semi-final with a 4-0 drubbing of Ukraine. Continue reading...

With new cases soaring by 25% President Cyril Ramaphosa warns of massive resurgence of infections

Her marriage to the prolific author Paul Theroux fell apart in 1990. He has written about the divorce, now she tells her side of the storyIn 1996 the author Paul Theroux wrote a short story about the final evening of a marriage, where the characters talk poetically and drink champagne. “The reality”, writes Anne Theroux today, “was different.”I arrive at the café early, but Theroux had arrived earlier still. She greets me from the far side of a wisteria- strung patio, elegant in the shade. We are meeting to discuss her memoir, based on a diary she kept in 1990, the year her marriage was collapsing, and over the course of our conversation we stumble only once, but in quite an unexpected place. “I’m not a writer,” she says, her voice suddenly a little ragged. But, you are, I insist – you have written a book. “I would never describe myself as a writer just because I’ve written one book.” Why? “I suppose I think Paul would be quite cross if I claimed to be a writer.” I will claim it for her then, only partly out of political spite. Continue reading...

Alcohol addiction has long been romanticised in films, TV shows, books and adverts. Let’s stop glossing over the destructive drudgery and sheer sorrow of the diseaseWhen I was 21, I decided I should make a proper effort to be a writer. I knew what I needed: countless films and television shows had told me. I needed a typewriter, fags and a bottle of whisky. I acquired them, and set myself up at the kitchen table. Yep, I thought. Now I am the business. I was Dorothy Parker, Carson McCullers, Raymond Chandler. So I would die miserably – who cares? I was 21, and still immortal.It seems whatever our role in life, our culture offers us a way for alcohol to be central to it. Alcohol, in its various guises, tells us who we are. In TV drama, for example, are you a beautiful woman with a demanding job? Then every night you must go home to your spacious kitchen, perch at the island and pour half a bottle of white wine into a spotless and weirdly huge glass. Continue reading...

Mountains, lochs, gourmet menus and single malts … these fabulous holidays offer a true Highland escapePart of the Scottish mainland, but with access only by ferry from Mallaig or an 18-mile walking track, the Knoydart peninsula is properly remote. Doune is a low-slung hotel built from the ruins of ancient cottages and has large-scale views over to the islands of Rum, Skye and Eigg. Today, there are four bothies and cottages. The hotel’s restaurant is the hub, serving organic vegetables from the its garden, shellfish from the neighbouring water and many cheeses from local dairies.

Simon Birmingham says voters chose Morrison government last election as he refuses to rule out similar programs in the futureSimon Birmingham has dismissed criticism of the Coalition’s discredited commuter car park fund, declaring that “the Australian people had their chance and voted the government back in”.The federal finance minister on Sunday also refused to rule out the government embarking on similar programs in the future, although he said it would see “how processes and procedures can be enhanced”. Continue reading...

Two new payment transfer companies will be opening in the Pacific, where fees to send money are among the highest in the worldKereni Vuai has carried a lot of people through the pandemic.Vuai, 27, works full-time at a Sydney nursing home, which pays her AU$1500 a fortnight. She sends almost a third of that - $AU400 – back to family and friends in Fiji, many of whom have lost their jobs since coronavirus caused economic devastation in the tourism-dependent country. Continue reading...

Over the past year, one of New Zealand’s news giants ditched Facebook, pivoted to ‘trust’ and gave shares to employees. Can it survive?

Government urged to provide clarity on relaxing of mask and isolation protocols amid rise in cases

Tedi Fanta Hagos, 25, has been charged with the murder of 60-year-old man in central LondonA man has appeared in court charged with murder after a 60-year-old was stabbed in central London.Tedi Fanta Hagos, 25, of no fixed address, is charged with the murder of Stephen Dempsey outside the Microsoft store in Oxford Circus on 1 July . He is also charged with possession of a knife. Continue reading...

The Doors frontman died on 3 July 1971, but to the pilgrims by his grave, his charisma remains undimmedUnder a grey and menacing sky, fans gathered at Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery on Saturday to pay tribute to 1960s rock singer Jim Morrison on the 50th anniversary of his sudden death.They came despite the threatened – and eventually real – downpour to lay flowers on the stone grave that has been a place of pilgrimage to the Doors frontman for half a century. Continue reading...

Micheál Martin says the UK must engage with the bloc after extension of grace period for movement of chilled meatsThe Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, has called on Downing Street to “reciprocate the generosity of spirit” shown by EU leaders on the Northern Ireland protocol after they extended the grace period allowing chilled meats to be shipped to the nation from Britain.On Saturday, Martin said “warning each other is over” and called for engagement to find solutions through the withdrawal agreement. Continue reading...

Expert warns that plans to drop all legal requirements after 19 July could lead to mass non-compliance

Investment from Nissan and local businesses is boosting optimism and stemming the drain of talent to the south-eastPeople who have not visited Sunderland recently may have been surprised at the news on Thursday that Nissan is investing £1bn into a futuristic electric vehicle hub in the city.Known for its heavy industry and shipbuilding history, Sunderland is overshadowed by its industrial past and may not be the first place that comes to mind when imagining the future of manufacturing. But it should be, according to Patrick Melia, chief executive of Sunderland city council. “It’s a transforming city,” he said. Continue reading...

Tusk, who was Poland’s PM for several years, says he wants to help fight ‘evil’ of country’s rightwing governmentThe former European Union leader and ex-prime minister Donald Tusk has been elected head of the strongest party in Poland’s fragmented opposition.Tusk, 64, said he was returning to Polish politics and to the opposition Civic Platform party to help fight the “evil” of the current rightwing government. Continue reading...

Artillery fired from government-controlled area kills eight civilians and injures others in Idlib provinceArtillery fire from government-controlled territory and airstrikes killed at least eight civilians in Syria’s last rebel enclave on Saturday, most of them children, rescue workers and a war monitor said.The shelling in Ibleen, a village in the southern Idlib province, hit the home of Subhi al-Assi, killing him, his wife and three of his children in their sleep, according to the rescue service known as White Helmets and Idlib’s health directorate. Al-Assi was an administrator in a local health centre. Continue reading...

Matches briefly suspended as downpour hits SW19, with more disruption possible given weather warning

Newly discovered exchanges between the Cider with Rosie author and painter Yasmin David show their joy at finding one anotherAdoring, hidden letters exchanged between the Cider With Rosie author Laurie Lee and the painter Yasmin David, his secret daughter from an illicit affair with a prominent member of the Bloomsbury group, have been unearthed in lockdown.The emotional correspondence, found concealed in an old chest in the David family home in Devon, is full of the pair’s delight at finding each other and contains moving details about their efforts to build a relationship. Continue reading...

Do you know your garganelli from your rigatoni? See if you’ve heard of these pasta varieties in this exclusive extract from Rachel’s forthcoming book, An A-Z of Pasta Continue reading...

Handbags, lap dancing, Botox, comfort food … the columnist recalls how she only had five months to write the feminist bestseller about everythingIt was 2010, the end of a decade that was astonishingly poisonous for women. All the visuals were brutal: Amy Winehouse, bleeding, being chased by paps; Britney Spears’s loss of virginity and her breakdown, being chatshow jokes; the “Charlotte Church Countdown Clock” to her 16th birthday, when she would become legally fuckable.I rang my editor at the Times, and said I wanted to do a thinkpiece on how, in this current awful climate, one could try to be a modern feminist. Was there a way feminism could become popular again? “I’m not feminist, but …” was a common catchphrase, back then, when women tried to talk about inequality, but didn’t want to get dirty feminism all over their shoes. Continue reading...

It was a simple idea: one family, photographed at the same time every year. Zed Nelson has traced Sue and Frank’s transition from new parents to grandparents. What’s it like to see your life pass in front of you?In the summer of 1991, photographer Zed Nelson, then 25, invited a couple of new parents he was acquainted with to visit his London studio. Oh, and bring your baby, he said. At the time he had ambitions to be a travelling photojournalist. Within the year, he would fly out on the first of a series of visits to far-flung conflict zones. But for this, Nelson had in mind a quieter, more domestic project. He set up a backdrop and lights, and he encouraged the visiting parents – a personable couple called Sue and Frank whom he’d met at a party – to pose with their newborn, Eddie. The parents held hands, wild-eyed, visibly shot through with the terror and excitement of parenthood. Eddie, weeks old, oblivious, considered his own fingers and dribbled. It might have been any other family portrait.Except that Nelson invited Sue, Frank and Eddie back to his studio for more portraits, at the same time of year, every year, for as long as they agreed to come. He would chart the evolution of a parenting life, with Sue fixed in position on the right of the picture, Frank on the left, Eddie inching up between his mum and dad. “Same backdrop every year, same lights, same camera, same angle,” Nelson explains, thinking back over the finicky logistics of a project that has run since 1991 without interruption. “Every year I measure out the distances to the inch. It drives us all a bit mad. But we do keep coming back.” Continue reading...

President says America has Covid-19 ‘on the run’ but new cases jumped 10% amid patchy take-up of vaccines across countryJoe Biden has warned that although America has Covid-19 “on the run” the latest variant is of particular concern among those who remain unvaccinated – as the president’s goal of 70% of US adults receiving at least one shot of vaccine by the Fourth of July holiday was set to fall short.New US cases of coronavirus jumped by 10% in the past week as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads, especially where vaccination rates are low. Continue reading...