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Jordi Cuixart and eight others leave prison after being pardoned for their roles in the failed bid to secede in 2017The head of one of Catalonia’s biggest pro-independence groups has urged the Spanish government to think about “future generations and not just parliamentary stability” as he and eight other separatist leaders were released from prison after being pardoned for their roles in the failed bid to secede almost four years ago.Jordi Cuixart, the president of the influential grassroots association Òmnium Cultural, said he was pleased to be free after serving more than three-and-a-half years of a nine-year sentence for sedition. Continue reading...

PC Benjamin Monk of West Mercia force convicted at Birmingham crown court of 2016 killing

Being cut, aged 10, led to extraordinary pain and complications in childbirth. Now Hussein’s campaign to end mutilation has led to a staggering change in attitudesSadia Hussein had been in labour for three days when she felt she could take no more. She could hear her mother crying in the distance, pleading with God to save her daughter’s life.But even though things were clearly not progressing as they should have been, the women in her small Kenyan village were resistant to the idea of sending her to hospital. Her mother told her that doctors would “tear her apart” with a pair of scissors; that, at home, they could at least use a razor. “So now, on top of the overwhelming pain of labour, there was this continuous cutting,” Hussein recalls. Continue reading...

From the joyous escapism of In the Heights and Cruella to the powerful storytelling of The Mauritanian, our readers reveal their movie highlights of the last six months• See our critics’ picks of the best films of 2021‘Exactly what cinema should be’: arthurpoppy Continue reading...

Exclusive: leak reveals law promotes liquified natural gas and will lock in fossil fuel use for decades, says NGOA leaked draft of a key EU policy designed to cut carbon emissions in shipping, one of the world’s biggest polluters, has been described as an environmental disaster for “promoting” liquified natural gas, a fossil fuel, as an alternative to heavy oil.The decision, says an NGO that has analysed the plans, will ‘lock in the use of fossil fuels for decades to come and make the EU’s target of net emissions neutrality by 2050 unreachable. Continue reading...

A decade after civil war broke out, women who fled to Lebanon are still struggling to build a life amid the country’s unfolding economic crisisMillions of Syrians have fled fighting over the past 10 years. The vast majority of refugees – more than 3.5 million – are living in Turkey, but more than 850,000 are living in informal settlements in Lebanon. Continue reading...

Controversial vaccine to be given only by request later this year when Moderna and Pfizer will dominateThe federal government has announced it will shelve the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine by October, suggesting it will have enough supplies of other vaccines to meet “allocation horizons” for vaccinating the population by the end of the year.The government released a revised planning document on Wednesday outlining how it intended to direct supplies over the rest of the year. Continue reading...

Based on a real 1979 military coup, this year’s Oscars submission from South Korea captivates with alliances, betrayals – and a climax worth waiting forThis is a suspenseful but fiendishly complex political thriller from South Korea, which was the country’s submission for best international film for the most recent Oscars, though it didn’t make the final five shortlist. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a solid film, but viewers whose introduction to Korean cinema was director Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which rightly won all the big prizes the year before, should be warned not to expect anything quite as audacious or accessible here.In fact, director Woo Min-ho’s drama feels aimed more at a domestic audience, covering as it does the tense days in 1979 when a military coup and an assassination determined who would ultimately come to power. Although based on actual events, a disclaimer at the beginning warns that some dramatic licence has been taken to tell the story, which was in turn based on a novel. At the centre of the story is President Park (played by Lee Sung-min), who has been the top dog for 18 years. His de facto second in command is the head of the Korean CIA, Kim Gyu-pyeong (Lee Byung-hun, excellent), a narrow-faced civil servant who shuttles diplomatically between Seoul and Washington DC, where another compatriot, Park Yong-gak (Kwak Do-won), is testifying before a US congressional committee and threatening to publish a memoir that will spill the beans about corruption in the highest ranks of the government. Continue reading...

Here are the current coronavirus hotspots and Covid-19 public exposure sites in Sydney, regional New South Wales and Canberra, and what to do if you’ve visited them

A German former soldier recalls his childhood in a 1966 memoir that has a chilling lesson for our own eraHorst Krüger (1919-1999), a German journalist and writer, originally wrote this evocative memoir in 1966 after attending the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, where 22 former SS camp guards and lower officials were brought to justice for their part in the deaths of more than a million people.Looking round the courtroom, Krüger saw only ordinary men who had built a solid and respectable existence for themselves after the war, their appalling crimes forgotten until uncovered by a courageous state prosecutor, Fritz Bauer. Here for example was Wilhelm Boger, “an upright, reliable bookkeeper”, “a man you could depend on, who readjusted to life, who was able to sleep at night and who certainly had colleagues and friends and a family”. And yet, the court was told, apart from participating in countless selections, gassings, mass shootings and executions, he was personally responsible for “holding a sixty-year-old cleric in the prisoners’ kitchen under water until he was dead; shooting a Polish couple with three children with a pistol from a distance of about three metres; kicking to death the Polish general Dlugiszewski, who had been starved until he was practically a skeleton”, and many other similar acts of sadism and brutality. Continue reading...

Tens of thousands to be issued with warnings to submit applications for post-Brexit scheme or risk losing rightsTens of thousands of EU citizens living in the UK will be issued with a formal 28-day notice if they have failed to apply for post-Brexit settled status within a week, the government has warned.The notices will tell them to submit an application or risk consequences which include losing their rights to healthcare and employment. Continue reading...

Arrest of journalist who publishes under the name Li Ping is the first of a writer at the pro-democracy newspaperThe editorial writer for Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper has been arrested, the latest move in a media crackdown under the national security law that saw hundreds of police raid its newsroom and arrest senior figures last week.Police confirmed the arrest of a 55-year-old man in Tseung Kwan O on Wednesday morning, “on suspicion of conspiring to collude with foreign countries or foreign forces to endanger national security”. Continue reading...

At least 31 people killed since start of June amid government attacks on Idlib areaAbout 5,000 civilians in the north-west of Syria have been forced to flee their homes after more government shelling targeting the contested area, a local aid agency said.At least 31 people have died since the beginning of June, victims of Bashar al-Assad’s forces hitting civilian buildings in southern Idlib province. The buildings included a hospital, displacement camp school, and a White Helmets headquarters. The number of dead includes three children and a civil defence worker who was killed in an attack on the town of Qastoun on Saturday. Continue reading...

The first trial under the new law is a landmark moment for the financial hub’s fast-changing legal traditionsThe first trial under Hong Kong’s new national security law will be held without a jury, a landmark moment for the financial hub’s fast-changing legal traditions.Tong Ying-kit, 24, was arrested under the new law the day after it came into effect when he allegedly drove his motorbike into a group of police officers during protests on 1 July last year. His trial begins on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Prime minister has been elevated from a DJ in 2018 to ‘some kind of celestial being’ this year in traditional puppet eventA New Zealand pub, known for its lifesize puppets of New Zealand politicians, has unveiled one of Jacinda Ardern, who called it “a cross between some kind of celestial being and something from Game of Thrones”.The Backbencher pub, opposite the parliament house in Wellington, has been creating politician puppets for 30 years, and on Tuesday night unveiled its second puppet of the prime minister. Continue reading...

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Canada leads more than 40 countries in voicing concern over Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet, sparking clash at UNCanada has led more than 40 countries in expressing serious concerns over Beijing’s repressive actions in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet, prompting a furious response from Beijing over Canada’s colonial history.The exchange at the UN human rights council on Tuesday marks the latest downturn in relations between Canada and China, which have deteriorated steadily as the two countries clash over human rights, trade and allegations of “hostage diplomacy”. Continue reading...

• Blazes occurred on National Indigenous Peoples Day• Graves found at former Christian residential school last monthTwo Catholic churches on First Nations reserves in western Canada have been destroyed by overnight fires that investigators are treating as suspicious.Early Monday morning, fires consumed both the Sacred Heart church, on territory of the Penticton Indian Band and the St Gregory’s church, on the territory of the Osoyoos Indian Band. Both churches, constructed largely of wood, were more than a century old. Continue reading...

Judge quashes earlier decision by tribunal that accommodation should be provided until all Covid restrictions are liftedA high court judge has quashed a ruling that said refused asylum seekers who are destitute must be given accommodation during the pandemic until all Covid restrictions are lifted.At least 1,000 asylum seekers currently in accommodation are thought to be affected by Tuesday’s decision and are now at risk of being made street homeless. Continue reading...

Ebrahim Raisi’s engineered win is dispiriting for those inside and outside the country. But the nuclear deal’s resurrection is still possible and necessaryThe election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s new president is a dispiriting moment for those in the west striving to revive the nuclear deal. The Iranian electorate is hardly more enthusiastic. Battered by the economic fallout from Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement, the Covid pandemic and the inability of Hassan Rouhani’s reformist government to deliver on promises and overcome obstruction by the clergy and Revolutionary Guard, voters were offered only an engineered election in which Mr Raisi’s victory was all but certain.While past elections were tightly controlled – and the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei retained ultimate control regardless of the outcome – they have nonetheless been genuinely competitive. This time, leading reformists and centrists were removed as 600 candidates were whittled down; just four stood in the end. Mr Raisi’s 62% of the vote came on a turnout of 48%; in Tehran just 26% voted. While participation has at times been low, this was an all-time nadir for a presidential race in the Islamic Republic, and 3.7 million people spoiled their ballots. Continue reading...

Remarks attributed to emirate ruler Sheikh Mohammed’s daughter come a day after a photo of her in Spain appeared onlineA statement issued by Princess Latifa’s lawyers, purporting to come from the daughter of Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, declared she could now “travel where I want” a day after a picture of her in Madrid airport appeared online.The brief remarks are the first time that Latifa has been quoted since her dramatic flight from the emirate three years ago, though the lawyers, Taylor Wessing, insisted they should only be reported as coming directly from the princess herself. Continue reading...

My friend Mike Schultz, who has died aged 64 after suffering a heart attack, was a social scientist working in policy application and evaluation in the field of international development. He had a particular interest in forest peoples, having lived with and studied a tribe in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1980s.Mike was born in Surrey and grew up in the village of Stanton St John, near Oxford, the second of four children of June (nee Mattheson), a research scientist, and Donald Schultz, a professor of engineering. At Magdalen College school in Oxford, where he and I first met, Mike did well academically and was active in sports, music and drama. After his A-levels he had two gap years, much of which he spent travelling, then went to King’s College, Cambridge, to study social anthropology, graduating in 1980. Continue reading...

More people view China as a security threat than an economic partner, while US standing improves under Joe Biden, Lowy Institute survey suggestsThe Australian public’s trust in the Chinese government has collapsed after a year of trade sanctions while the Morrison government has received a mediocre score for its handling of the worsening relationship.The Lowy Institute’s annual poll shows that, for the first time, more Australians view China as a security threat than an economic partner, despite the country remaining Australia’s biggest trading partner. Continue reading...

Suspect Steve Bouquet charged with deaths and injuries of cats in Brighton, after CCTV footage foundA security guard has appeared in court accused of killing and injuring 16 cats in a spate of attacks that left police stumped for months.

Valérie Bacot admits shooting Daniel Polette, who had raped her aged 12 and had four children with herTo their neighbours in the small village of Baudemont, in the Burgundy region north of Lyon, the Polette family seemed perfectly normal.They were discreet and did not socialise, but when they did villagers remarked that the four Polette children were well brought up and polite. Continue reading...

The National Trust hopes to open temporary public space next summer as part of longer-term plansA Manchester viaduct, which has not been used for more than 50 years, could reopen next summer as a transformed urban green space with hopes it will emulate New York’s High Line as a “park in the sky”.Trains ran on the grade II listed Castlefield Viaduct, built in 1892, to Manchester Central railway station until it closed in 1969. Continue reading...

Draft law is intended to prosecute offences against the environmentLegal experts from across the globe have drawn up a “historic” definition of ecocide, intended to be adopted by the international criminal court to prosecute the most egregious offences against the environment.The draft law, unveiled on Tuesday, defines ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. Continue reading...

David Frost claimed any attempt by Brussels to take UK content out of the protected quotas would not be good for European TV viewers, adding the government was in favour of 'free circulation of audiovisual goods'.

Video footage challenges official claims that the cause of death was unrelated to man’s arrestVideo footage of a police officer kneeling on the neck of a Romany man who later died in an ambulance is being shared among Czechs on social media, leading many to compare his treatment to that of George Floyd.The video, shot on 19 June, shows three police officers in Teplice, a town in the north of the Czech Republic, detaining a Romany man on the floor. As one officer holds the man’s feet, another appears to kneel on his neck, and a third tries to handcuff him. Voices of several Roma bystanders are heard in the video. Continue reading...

Hubert Caouissin’s lawyer says his client did not intend to kill four members of Troadec familyA man will go on trial today accused of murdering a family of four and dismembering their bodies after he became convinced they were hoarding gold hidden from the Nazis in a basement in western France.Hubert Caouissin was obsessed that he and his wife were being cheated out of their share of what he believed to be the treasure and was spying on his brother-in-law, Pascal Troadec, in the hope of tracing it. Continue reading...

Law calls into question church’s ‘freedom of organisation’ and threatens ‘freedom of thought’, letter claimsThe Vatican has made an unprecedented intervention urging the Italian government to change a proposed law that would criminalise homophobia over concerns it will infringe upon the Catholic church’s “freedom of thought”.A letter delivered by the British archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary of relations with states, said parts of the legislation violated a treaty made between Italy and the Catholic church in the 1920s that secured the freedoms and rights of the church, Corriere della Sera reported. Continue reading...

Latest updates: Frost says the post-Brexit relationship with the UK is ‘settling down’ but it will be bumpy for some time

Health officials warn Kent accommodation could be site of ‘enduring’ Covid transmission

The serious anti-poaching message of this savanna-set family drama gets lost in the comic register of a US sitcomThe days of Africa-set films featuring white protagonists using glowing savannas as set dressing for first-world problems seemed to be numbered, but hold on: here is a fist-bitingly self-regarding family drama with Philip Winchester and X-Men’s Rebecca Romijn as Jack and Lauren Halsey, a seemingly dream couple off on a dream safari with son Noah and daughter Zoe, and her pothead boyfriend Billy. “Penny for them,” Lauren actually says to Jack, as they are Cessna-ing in. What is on this buff oilman’s mind, though, is that he has just been put on extended leave following an industrial accident.His secret soon spills too, and Jack is so desperate to please his wife that he ignores safari-park protocol and lets them get too close to the fauna: a female rhinoceros and calf. “Wait, we shouldn’t be getting between them, right?” says Billy, a brief lapse into sensible ideas. One upended van later, with Jack’s leg gored, no mobile phone reception or water, and diabetic Lauren’s insulin levels running on empty, the Halseys find themselves in a world of hurt. Continue reading...

Protest leaders have agreed to pause mass marches as hospital ICUs struggle to cope with surging coronavirus casesRelated: ‘This is a revolution’: the faces of Colombia’s protestsMarisol Bejarano, an intensive care unit doctor at El Tunal hospital in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, has watched people die – slowly and far from family – since the pandemic began. Continue reading...

Sydney’s Bondi cluster grows to 21, while Queensland opens borders to Victorians. Follow all the latest updates

As the two countries crack down on smuggling, those forced to cross the border ‘for survival’ face a perilous journeyKarim Jan* spent the festival of Eid al-Fitr sitting in the scorching May sun as he had spent the previous five days, waiting in a long queue of traffic to get into Iran. Like hundreds of other drivers, Jan came to this desolate town of Mand, on the Pakistan border with Iran, from across Balochistan.As they waited, some drivers slept in their Iranian pickup trucks , known as Zamyads, while others slept out under the open sky. Continue reading...

TikTok users have posted videos of themselves swinging their arms after vaccination to prevent aches

As the legendary album turns 50, the musicians it inspired – and those who inspired it – tell us which track means the most to them and why Continue reading...

Critics say failing to allow family members to join skilled workers will undermine post-pandemic recoveryIn February 2020, Craig Hurn, 53, temporarily left his wife and daughter in Cape Town to scope out the job market in New Zealand. After beating six other candidates for one job, he secured an essential skills visa and began preparing to move his family over.“We saw Craig’s CV and we thought, ‘Oh my God, he can walk into the job,’” says his employer, who struggled to find any workers with the highly specialised qualifications to fill the position. Continue reading...

Some families looking to private firms or abroad as overwhelmed labs struggle to process DNA testsEight months after the end of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh that left more than 5,000 people dead, many soldiers are still missing. In Armenia, families are desperately looking for news about their loved ones. There is a growing lack of trust around DNA tests and a lack of information, leading to mounting pressure on the government.Larissa Dureyan has been looking for her 20-year-old son Mxitar since October. He began his mandatory military service in July 2019 and was serving in Fizuli when war broke out in September last year. Continue reading...

President says he is ‘exasperated’ by reports of vaccine hesitancy in the capital amid slow rollout

Rights chief calls for concerted global action, citing recent violations in China, Russia and EthiopiaThe UN rights chief has called for concerted action to recover from the worst global deterioration of rights she had seen, highlighting the situation in China, Russia and Ethiopia among others.“To recover from the most wide-reaching and severe cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes, we need a life-changing vision, and concerted action,” Michelle Bachelet told the opening of the UN Human Rights Council’s 47th session. Continue reading...

Kremlin blames new cases on reluctance to take up vaccine; Indonesia reports 14,536 new cases, taking it past 2m

‘Systemic mismanagement’ by Home Office has led to complaints over delays and low offers to claimantsLabour has called on the government to remove the handling of the much-criticised Windrush compensation scheme from the Home Office so it can be run by a neutral, independent body, after two years of complaints from claimants about delays and low compensation offers.In a letter to the home secretary, Priti Patel, the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said there had been “systemic mismanagement” of the “unacceptably slow” scheme, and recommended that placing it under an independent body would “help restore faith in the process and get compensation quickly to people who have been so appallingly treated”. Continue reading...

Few teams have ever deserved to make progress as much as Denmark did on a thrilling night in Copenhagen. Players who, just nine days ago, were traumatised to see Christian Eriksen suffer cardiac arrest in the middle of their first match produced a momentous performance on the same pitch, emerging as glorious victors over Russia to set up a last 16 showdown with Wales.Mikkel Damsgaard and Yusuf Poulsen ignited celebrations before Artem Dzyuba put them on pause by converting a penalty and news filtered through that the group’s other match, between Belgium and Finland, was not going the way the Danes needed. But that changed as Group B reached a dramatic climax and Denmark confirmed second spot thanks to magnificent goals by Andreas Christensen and Joakim Mæhle. Continue reading...

Tuesday: Barnaby Joyce’s reinstatement shows Nationals are ‘not listening’, rural women say. Plus: easy and comforting soups to cook in bulkGood morning. Barnaby Joyce will dominate the day’s news as he officially takes the top job at the Nationals, and concerns continue to grow about the Coalition’s climate policy. As winter settles in, we’ve got delicious soup recipes to warm your soul and get you through the lazy nights.Barnaby Joyce will be sworn in as deputy prime minister today, a move dubbed “astounding” by prominent women from rural Australia, who say it proves the Nationals are “not listening” to them. The founding member of Australian Women in Agriculture, Alana Johnson, said Joyce was one of many in the parliamentary party trapped in a “male culture of politics” dominated by “power plays between the boys”. Joyce’s return has also reignited concerns about Australia’s climate policy, after a week when senior Nationals expressed open hostility about the government adopting a net zero emissions target by 2050. A majority of voters say they fear Australia will be left behind on climate change unless the government prioritises serious action. Joyce deflected questions yesterday about whether he would make fresh climate policy demands when he renegotiated the Coalition agreement with Scott Morrison. Continue reading...

Italian designer says fashion cannot survive in exclusively virtual formSuch is Giorgio Armani’s eagerness for getting back to holding physical fashion shows that not even a nasty fall resulting in a fractured shoulder and 17 stitches 20 days ago could stop him from holding his first show in 16 months on Monday evening in Milan.Addressing the rumours that he had recently been in hospital, the 86-year-old designer explained to waiting press after taking his bow at his spring/summer 2022 menswear show that he fell down the stairs while leaving the cinema but wanted to reassure everyone that he was fine and still raring to go. Continue reading...