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Joint Coalition party room meeting avoids net-zero talk; second day of Berejiklian Icac hearing; Victoria and NSW record 15 Covid deaths overnight; ACTU calls on Labor to oppose regional trade agreement. Follow latest updates

In a country where gay sex is against the law, it can be almost impossible for the LGBT community to access services tackling domestic violence – and during the pandemic, lockdowns saw abuse soarAll photos by DeLovie Kwagala* Names have been changed. Since these interviews took place all the subjects have ceased living with their abusers and are finding ways to heal Continue reading...

Launch, possibly from a submarine, comes as US, South Korean and Japanese spy chiefs meet for talks in SeoulNorth Korea launched a ballistic missile – possibly from a submarine – into the Sea of Japan, South Korea’s military has said, in the latest in a series of tests by Pyongyang over recent weeks.One ballistic missile was launched about 10:17am local time from the vicinity of Sinpo, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said, where North Korea keeps submarines as well as equipment for test firing submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Continue reading...

Actor says he was up for role in Pierce Brosnan 007 film but fluffed it after night out with future BondThe actor Mark Strong has revealed he fluffed an audition to be a Bond villain because he went out drinking the night before with Daniel Craig.Strong – best known for his roles as Lord Henry Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, Merlin in the Kingsman films and Daniel Milton in the medical drama Temple – said he was up for a role as a villain in a Pierce Brosnan 007 movie, but a night out with Brosnan’s eventual successor scuppered his chances. Continue reading...

Terror content just one of ‘cocktail of harms’ that are subject to growing online engagement, report finds

Analysis: reasons for surge may still be unclear, but one point of growing consensus is that action is required

Health officials have been unable to link more than half of the cases, possibly indicating further undetected spread in the community

A sword believed to have belonged to a crusader who sailed to the Holy Land almost a millennium ago has been recovered from the Mediterranean seabed thanks to a sharp-eyed amateur diver. Though encrusted with marine organisms, the metre-long blade, hilt and handle became noticeable after undercurrents apparently shifted sands that had concealed it. The location, a natural cove near the port city of Haifa, suggested it had served as a shelter for seafarers, said Yaakov Sharvit, director of the authority's marine archaeology unit. The sword, believed to be about 900 years old, will be put on display after it is cleaned and restored

The first female Wiggle, who had an outsize influence on the group, says she is leaving to focus on her family and PhD

Emergency services at scene after blast in western Scottish town that was heard several miles awayTwo adults and two children were taken to hospital after an explosion at a house in Ayr that caused severe damage, with the blast being heard for miles around. Residents were evacuated from part of the Kincaidston area.Police, firefighters and the ambulance service – including an air ambulance – were at the scene in Gorse Park, a residential street in the town in western Scotland, after reports of an explosion just after 7pm on Monday. Continue reading...

Latvia has closed schools, restaurants and entertainment venues for a month; UK reports 49,156 new cases and 45 Covid-linked deaths

Trial of Dennis Hutchings, who was 80, has been adjourned for three weeks after he contracted the virusAn army veteran whose trial at Belfast crown court over a Troubles shooting was adjourned due to his ill health has died after contracting Covid-19, it has been reported.It is understood that Dennis Hutchings died on Monday. The trial had been adjourned for three weeks after he contracted Covid. Continue reading...

This series opener didn’t disappoint, as battle commenced in the wake of Kendall’s biblical backstab, and the Roys became mired in more dirty corporate double-dealing

Australia’s Covid-19 vaccination certificates can be displayed digitally on a series of apps, developed by both state and federal governments. However experts claim they’re able to hack into these apps and fake these certificates – all in under 10 minutes.Laura Murphy-Oates speaks to software engineer Richard Nelson and reporter Josh Taylor about the key flaw that’s undermining this whole systemYou can also read: Continue reading...

Chancellor said to be keeping wary eye on inflation amid pressure from PM and Tory colleagues to spendWith less than a fortnight to go before Rishi Sunak’s budget, the message from the Treasury is, “don’t expect fireworks”. There have been pyrotechnics aplenty offstage, however, as the chancellor tries to hold the line against big-spending colleagues – not least the prime minister himself.After a spat with Kwasi Kwarteng burst into the open last weekend over backing for businesses hit by the energy crisis, with a Treasury source effectively accusing the business secretary of lying, Boris Johnson weighed in on Kwarteng’s side from his Marbella bolthole. Continue reading...

The Guardian writer’s collection of her columns is a droll and open-hearted bite-size readIn 2018, when things seemed bleak, both in her personal life and in the world at large, the journalist Hannah Jane Parkinson started writing a column for the Guardian on small things that gave her joy. The idea, she freely admits, was nabbed from JB Priestley, who wrote a book some 70 years earlier called Delight. “If this grouchy Yorkshireman could take the time to sit down and document his everyday exultations,” she reasoned, “then I, someone whose default is a sort of droll cynicism, could do the same.”After three years of celebrating dogs in parks and night buses, regional accents and the subtle pleasure of closing browser tabs – a period that spanned the onset of a pandemic, when even small pleasures were in short supply – the column came to an end in September. Now Parkinson has turned it into a book, gathering together more than 100 entries, each one short and snappy as befits the theme. Continue reading...

Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidentsFlicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him. Continue reading...

Protesters say post-dictatorship interim government has failed them politically and economicallyHundreds of pro-military Sudanese protesters have rallied for a second day in Khartoum, in an escalation of what the prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, called the “worst and most dangerous crisis” of the country’s precarious transition.The protesters are demanding the dissolution of Sudan’s post-dictatorship interim government, saying it has failed them politically and economically. Continue reading...

Local MP who was killed on Friday mentioned campaign almost every week in parliament in recent yearsPoliticians from all sides of the political spectrum have joined a campaign to make Southend-on-Sea a city, in honour of the local MP Sir David Amess who was fatally stabbed on Friday.Southend is one of several towns competing for city status as part of the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations in 2022. Amess championed Southend’s case for city designation for more than two decades, mentioning it almost every week in parliament in recent years. Continue reading...

French president attends memorial for those killed and lays flowers at bridge over the SeineEmmanuel Macron has described a bloody police crackdown on Algerian anti-war demonstrators 60 years ago that led to many deaths as an “unforgivable” crime.Attending a memorial for those killed, Macron laid flowers at a bridge over the River Seine which marked a starting point for the protests in October 1961 that led to one of the darkest chapters of French postwar history. Continue reading...

The giant Italian pie was the centrepiece of the star’s Big Night film. Now he’s invited me round to his house to make it• Now try cooking Tucci’s timpano yourselfGetting your homework marked by Stanley Tucci is terrifying. Not because he is scary. On the contrary. He has impeccable, courtly manners. It’s terrifying because of what is at stake. I prise off the lid to the plastic box and turn its contents towards him, shyly. Tucci plucks a single chilled meatball from the one kilo throng, each the size of a large marble, and pops it into his mouth. He nods slowly, then smiles. “Perfetto,” he says, simply. Thank Christ for that. The meatballs, made to his own detailed recipe, are a key part of a grandiose cooking adventure we are embarking upon today, here in his kitchen. They need to be right.In 1996, Tucci introduced the world to one of his family’s great culinary traditions, courtesy of the movie Big Night, which he starred in, co-wrote and co-directed. In the film, set in 1950s America, Tucci plays a recent Italian immigrant who, along with his chef brother, runs a struggling Italian restaurant on the shore not far from New York City. To raise its profile, they decide to stage a special dinner which, they have been told, will be attended by the great American-Italian singing star Louis Prima. The centrepiece of this magnificent, delirious feast will be a timpano. Continue reading...

Bedfordshire safeguarding team issues warning after reports children are copying Netflix show’s violent challengesA council in the south of England has advised parents not to let their children watch the Netflix show Squid Game, after reports children as young as six are copying its violent challenges.The education safeguarding team from Central Bedfordshire council sent an email to parents and guardians in the district urging them to “be vigilant after hearing reports that children and young people are copying games and violence from hit new Netflix series Squid Game, which is rated 15”. Continue reading...

Extreme right-wing views and the wellness community are not an obvious pairing, but ‘conspirituality’ is increasingly pervasive. How did it all become so toxic?It was the afternoon of 4 July 2020, and Melissa Rein Lively’s video was about to go viral. A PR executive in Arizona, she already had the appearance of a person for whom a viral video was part of the plan, but with the super-groomed blondeness better suited to a branded beauty tutorial than a clip of face masks being torn from their racks. “Finally we meet the end of the road. This shit is over, we don’t want any of this any more!” she screams, holding the phone camera in one hand and tossing face masks with the other, in a video that swiftly became known as QAnon Karen. When two employees at the Scottsdale branch of Target confront her, she continues, “Why? I can’t do it cause I’m a blonde white woman? Wearing a fucking $40,000 Rolex? I don’t have the right to fuck shit up?”Rein Lively had always thought of herself as a spiritual person. Her interests were grounded in “wellness, natural health, organic food”, she lists for me today from her home in Arizona, “yoga, ayurvedic healing, meditation, etc.” When the pandemic hit she started spending more time online, on wellness sites that offered affirmations, recipes and, on health, the repeated message to “Do your research.” She’d click on a video of foods that boost immunity and she’d see a clip about the dangers of vaccines. “A significant number of influencers previously focused on wellness and spirituality,” she noticed, “seemed to become dominated with what we now understand to be QAnon content.” QAnon is the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is fighting a deep-state cabal of Satanic paedophiles. It originated on far-right message boards before entering online wellness communities, where it found a largely female following, who continue to share phrases like “Save the Children”. The phrase was first used by QAnon believers spreading the false claim that Hillary Clinton abused children and drank their blood. Today that phrase is seen on social media posts by yoga teachers and wellness influencers speaking out against human trafficking. Continue reading...

As America readies to protect its pork industry, the Dominican Republic has been accused of using an outbreak of African Swine Fever to wipe out smaller producersA pandemic is silently sweeping across the globe – and it is not Covid-19. Since African Swine Fever (ASF) was confirmed in the Americas more than two months ago, the deadly pig disease is now on six continents and on the doorstep of the US.Samples taken in the Dominican Republic tested positive for ASF in July and in neighbouring Haiti in September. Continue reading...

With schools struggling to vaccinate before winter arrives, ministers are urged to allow children to receive vaccines at different venues• Coronavirus – latest updates• See all our coronavirus coverageMinisters are facing demands to allow younger teenagers to attend Covid vaccination centres, amid concerns that jab rates among this age group are three times lower in England than Scotland.The vaccination rate among 12- to 15-year-olds in England currently stands at just 14.2% according to official data, compared with 44.3% in Scotland. The huge disparity has led to complaints that England has been held back by administering vaccinations solely through schools. Continue reading...

A huge equality gap in top jobs and pay has been highlighted between women TV documentary-makers and male colleaguesTelevision documentary teams in Britain today are full of ambitious and capable women but most of them have to wait much longer than their male colleagues to become directors and earn a bigger wage.The findings of the campaigning group We Are Doc Women (WADW), released this weekend, have revealed that gender equality is still a goal, not a reality, in factual programme-making. Continue reading...

A positive lateral flow test, followed by a negative PCR, still means a reasonable chance of Covid-19After a wave of cases in which a positive lateral flow device (LFD) test was followed by a negative PCR test, a private laboratory handling swab tests has been suspended.But conflicting results are not a new problem. Back in June, when secondary school students with a positive LFD were retested with a PCR check, over one in eight came back negative. And even without laboratory problems, it is unclear why a negative PCR should trump a positive LFD. Continue reading...

The novelist took the slow road to success but is now a Pulitzer-winner and a bestseller. As she returns to her much-loved creation Lucy Barton, she discusses childhood, loneliness – and perseveranceThree years ago, Elizabeth Strout was in New York sitting in on rehearsals for the stage version of her novel My Name Is Lucy Barton (a show that came to the Bridge theatre in London, directed by Richard Eyre) and was watching Laura Linney, an actor for whom she has the fondest regard, inch her way into the part. Linney stepped into the rehearsal space, pushed her spectacles on to the top of her head and started to murmur something about her character’s ex-husband – William. Strout, overhearing, exclaimed: “Oh William!” It was as if Linney had given her permission: she would write another Lucy Barton novel because William deserved a story of his own. Oh William! became the title of her new book and it has all the familiar pleasures of her writing: the clean prose, the slow reveals, the wisdom – what Hilary Mantel once described as “an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue” – the qualities that led to Strout winning the Pulitzer for fiction. But did she ever find out what was in Linney’s mind? “Laura has no memory of the moment at all, she was in her zone, doing whatever she was doing,” she laughs.She is talking on Zoom – and as women of more or less the same age (she is 65), we find ourselves bonding instantly, commenting on our lame reflexes with technology, marvelling that we are able to talk at what seems an arm’s stretch and with the Atlantic between us. We confess to a dislike at having to look at ourselves on screen and reassure each other we look fine. Strout is sitting in what I guess to be her study, with pale yellow walls, books and paintings – a calm, civilised room. It feels absurdly easy to talk to her, as if we were catching up after a long gap. Continue reading...

Spending on security increased hugely in the wake of Jo Cox’s murder – but the problem is growingThe constituent who “sidled up” to an MP to describe his make of car and where he had been driving it over the weekend… Another who warned an MP that they knew which school her children attended… An MP forced to act as a security guard at his own constituency surgery, ejecting someone who had become aggressive and abusive… Family members confronted … Staff regularly abused.As MPs contacted each other to discuss the horrific news that another of their number had been killed while fulfilling their basic duties, the list of their own grim experiences flowed immediately and at length. “Talking with colleagues this afternoon, there isn’t one of us, not one of us, who couldn’t give you a list of alarming examples of things that have been said or done in a constituency surgery,” said a cabinet minister. Continue reading...

With courage and ambition, those born into the reality of global heating are leading the way in confronting it. Ahead of the crucial Cop26 conference, we talk to young activists around the world. Introduction by author Olivia LaingWhen I was 20, I dropped out of university to live on a road protest. I was terrified by the oncoming apocalypse of climate change, and loathed the short-term, environmentally catastrophic logic that prioritised road-building over trees. The data, even in 1997, was clear: human activity was heating the globe, with increasingly devastating effects. Time was short, and a sea change in behaviour was required.Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since then, and very little has been achieved, thanks in large part to corporate interests invested in maintaining our dependence on non-renewable resources. Far more people understand and accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and yet we seem paralysed by despair, caught in a spell of inertia, even as the most lurid of predictions – floods, fires, plagues – come to pass. Continue reading...

Restrictions will ease in Victoria from 11.59pm Thursday despite state reporting 1,838 Covid cases and seven deaths; NSW records 301 infections, 10 deaths, and ACT 33 cases; NSW schools reopen on Monday and community sport will also return

Protesters say they want the government of prime minister Abdalla Hamdok dismissed and replaced by the militaryThousands of pro-military protesters have rallied in central Khartoum, vowing not to leave until the government is dissolved in a threat to Sudan’s transition to civilian rule.The protest on Saturday comes as Sudanese politics reels from divisions among the factions steering the rocky transition from two decades of dictatorship under president Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by the army in April 2019 following weeks of mass protests. Continue reading...

Footage teases bleak and violent vision for Dark Knight’s latest instalment, due for release on 4 MarchWarner Bros has unveiled its trailer for The Batman, which features Robert Pattinson’s first bone-crunching turn as a DC Comics superhero.The trailer unveiled on Saturday at the DC Fandome event shows Pattinson’s Dark Knight methodically taking down bad guys despite being outnumbered and his Batsuit absorbing multiple bullets. Continue reading...

After the black summer bushfires it is time for politicians to act on global heating, Greg Mullins says. Assistant news editor Rosemary Bolger recommends Calla Wahlquist’s profile about courage and crisis on the fire front

The Booker-winning author on starting late as a writer, her clear recall of growing up in Cairo, and the TV programme that kept her going during lockdownPenelope Lively, the author of many novels and short story collections, is the only writer to have won both the Booker prize (in 1987, for her novel Moon Tiger) and the Carnegie Medal, an award that recognises an outstanding book for children and young adults (in 1973, for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe). Among her memoirs is Oleander, Jacaranda, about her childhood in Cairo before and during the second world war. Her latest book, Metamorphosis: Selected Stories, spans 40 years of writing. She lives in London.You edited Metamorphosis yourself. Was it hard to choose which stories to include?

Counter-terrorist officers say attack on MP linked to Islamist extremismCounter-terrorism detectives are investigating whether David Amess was specifically targeted for attack by a man who stabbed the MP multiple times, then waited for police to arrest him.The suspected terrorist attack just after midday on Friday, at the constituency surgery of the backbencher for Southend West, has stunned Westminster and forced a review of MPs’ security. Continue reading...

The 80-strong bloat, originally part of the Colombian drug lord’s estate, present an environmental concern as an invasive speciesA group of rampant hippopotamuses, introduced by the late Colombia drug lord Pablo Escobar to his private zoo, are being sterilized by the country’s wildlife services, after mounting concern that the 80-strong herd presented a potential environmental disaster as an invasive species.The so-called “cocaine hippos”, whose number has more than doubled since 2012, were sterilized after worries have mounted over their environmental impact, including a threat to human safety. Continue reading...

Celebrities encourage turnout as response surpasses Jacinda Ardern’s call to administer 100,000 shots

Since 2006, the acclaimed writer has lived in fear for his life, following publication of his exposé on the criminal gangs. The Observer takes a trip back to Naples with him and his mindersOn a Friday in autumn 2006, local newspapers and prosecutors in Italy’s south-western region of Campania received the same anonymous letter. Computer-typed and delivered by hand in the early morning, it detailed the Neapolitan Mafia’s plan to execute a 26-year-old Italian writer. His name was Roberto Saviano and his book, Gomorrah, a devastating denunciation of the Camorra’s criminal activity, was on its way to becoming a bestseller.The unpublished letter, seen by the Observer, refers to a meeting held in a betting office in Casal di Principe, Saviano’s hometown, in which local bosses, known as some of the most violent in the Camorra, decreed that Saviano must die, saying that his murder would take place “when the waters are calm”. Continue reading...

Police say tourists who had been staying in village of Qerret were aged between 31 and 60 years oldFour Russian tourists have been found dead at a beach resort in western Albania, police have said.Albanian police issued a statement on Saturday saying the tourists were found asphyxiated in a hotel sauna in the village of Qerret late on Friday. Continue reading...

Southern Tasmania in lockdown with next 48 hours ‘critical’ and ACT expands travel into regional NSW. This blog is now closed

Marta, 30, project manager, meets Andrew, 33, broadcast journalistMarta on AndrewWhat were you hoping for?

Pentagon says it is also working to relocate any of those relatives to the US, almost two months after Kabul strikeThe Pentagon has offered unspecified condolence payments to the family of 10 civilians who were killed in a botched US drone attack in Afghanistan in August during the final days before American troops withdrew from the country.The US defence department said it made a commitment that included offering “ex-gratia condolence payments”, in addition to working with the US state department in support of the family members who were interested in relocation to the United States. Continue reading...

There is reason for advocates to be optimistic a new bill could pass parliament, but powerful opponents remain

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Witnesses to atrocity in Paris music venue that killed 90 tell court of playing dead and trying to help the woundedBritish and Irish survivors of the 2015 terrorist attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris have told a court how they played dead on the ground in a river of blood to avoid being shot, or crawled across the floor between bodies as gunmen murdered concertgoers one by one.English-speaking witnesses travelled to Paris on Friday to testify at France’s biggest ever criminal trial over the attacks claimed by Islamic State on 13 November 2015, which killed 130 people and injured more than 400 in synchronised suicide bombings and mass shootings across the French capital. Continue reading...

Government will ask court to reverse appeals court decision leaving in place the law that all but bans abortions in the stateThe Biden administration said on Friday it will turn next to the US supreme court its attempt to halt a Texas law that has banned most abortions since September.The move by the justice department comes after an appeals court on Thursday night left in place the law known as Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions at roughly six weeks, or before most women know they are pregnant. The appeals court, the fifth circuit, is among the most conservative in the nation. Continue reading...

Property in Chorley suffered severe fire, with deceased believed to be a man in his 50sA man has died after a house collapsed following an explosion in Lancashire.Emergency services were called to reports of a house fire in Clayton-le-Woods, Chorley, at about 1.20pm on Friday. Continue reading...

Underground space in Basil Street car park, Knightsbridge, costs nearly as much as average UK houseAn underground car parking space opposite Harrods has gone on sale for £250,000 – just under the average price of a UK home and enough to buy a six-bedroom detached house in Middlesbrough.Despite its price tag, the parking space is actually too small to accommodate large cars as favoured by the super-rich, who are the most likely to shell out for the luxury of being able to park in Knightsbridge. Continue reading...

Farhad Bandesh made wine in Iran before he was forced to flee. He has now brought that ancient tradition to Australia. Lifestyle editor, Alyx Gorman, recommends this story about one of the many ways that asylum seekers and refugees contribute to Australia’s vibrant food and wine cultureYou can read the original article here: Taste of freedom: a Kurdish winemaker’s journey from Manus Island to the Yarra Valley. Continue reading...