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French fishers ended their protest around the Channel island of Jersey on Thursday.French trawler crews, angered by limits on access to British fishing grounds, had sailed in a flotilla to Jersey earlier on Thursday to register their protest.Representative Hugo Lehuby said the French government needed to proceed with retaliatory measures such as the one suggested by France’s sea minister, Annick Girardin, to cut power supplies to Jersey if its fishers are not granted full access to UK waters under the post-Brexit trading terms

Family of Lynda Mahabir will be able to join her in UK without paying large immigration feesThe Home Office unlawfully prevented the children and husband of a Windrush generation woman from joining her in the UK, separating the family for almost three years in a manner the high court ruled represented “a colossal interference” in her right to family life.In a significant judgment that could help many others from the Windrush cohort to bring close relatives to the UK, the family of Lynda Mahabir, who was barred entry from the UK for almost 40 years, will now be able to join her in Britain without paying thousands of pounds in immigration fees. Continue reading...

Foreign ministry responds to west’s human rights claims, saying countries should ‘face up to their own problems’China has rejected accusations of human rights abuse and economic coercion, made by G7 foreign ministers, accusing them of “blatantly meddling” in China’s internal affairs, calling their remarks groundless.“Attempts to disregard the basic norms of international relations and to create various excuses to interfere in China’s internal affairs, undermine China’s sovereignty and smear China’s image will never succeed,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin. “They should not criticise and interfere with other countries with a superior mentality, and undermine the current top priority of international anti-epidemic cooperation.” Continue reading...

Part of a unique Hollywood household with three stars on the walk of fame, the much-loved character actor, currently starring in The Artist’s Wife, veers characteristically off-script to reflect on his storied 60-year career“Wait a minute, let me tell you about this first,” says Bruce Dern, embarking on what I think is his fifth discursive anecdote in six sentences. “Did you ever see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Do you remember when Brad Pitt comes in and tries to wake me up?” he asks.You mean when Pitt (playing the fictional stuntman Cliff Booth) visits your character (a fictionalised version of the real-life George Spahn, who owned the ranch where the Manson family set up camp)? Continue reading...

Here are the current coronavirus hotspots in New South Wales and what to do if you’ve visited them

Proposals for 5,000-sq-metre building detailed in document submitted to the council by mayorAmsterdam is preparing to build an out-of-town five-storey “erotic centre” with two bars, 100 small rooms and an “erotic entertainment” venue such as a strip club as it downsizes its red-light district.The plan for the 5,000-sq-metre building has been detailed in a document submitted to the council by mayor Femke Halsema as the city seeks to find a commercial partner for the enterprise. Continue reading...

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The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world Continue reading...

In 1960, she walked past hateful protesters to become the first Black child at a Louisiana school – and was then taught alone for a year. She discusses fear, forbearance and her fight for a better future

NZ government carves NSW out of trans-Tasman bubble for 48 hours from midnight Thursday NZ time

23 protesters and one police officer killed after general strike over unpopular tax reform met with heavy-handed responseMass protests were held across Colombia on Wednesday after a night of unrest in the capital city, as street violence continued after more than a week of angry anti-government demonstrations.Twenty-three protesters and one police officer have been killed in the unrest that began with with a general strike over an unpopular tax reform but has grown into an outburst of rage over poverty exacerbated by the pandemic, human rights abuses and the authorities’ heavy-handed response to protests. Continue reading...

Jury convicts Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, over knife killing committed in 2019Two American students have been sentenced to life in prison by a Rome court for the murder of Italian police officer Mario Cerciello Rega.After almost 13 hour of deliberation, a jury convicted Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, of murdering Cerciello Rega, who had only just returned to duty after his honeymoon when he was stabbed to death, aged 35, on a street in central Rome in July 2019. Continue reading...

Ex-footballer was shot with Taser weapon and kicked twice in head, in what prosecution says was use of unlawful force

British government grants full diplomatic status after months of refusing to accede to EU demandsA row over the status of the EU’s ambassador to the UK has been settled, with the British government granting full diplomatic status after months of refusing to accede to Brussels’ demands.In a joint statement, the UK foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, and EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish minister, said agreement had been struck in the margins of a G7 summit. Continue reading...

Debut video includes clips of couple on royal engagements, with William joking: ‘these guys are filming everything’The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have become YouTubers, launching their own channel on the global video-sharing site with a fast-edited promotional video showing them at work and play.Their YouTube debut post begins with the couple sitting on a sofa. Prince William jokes with Kate while pointing to the camera and people behind it, saying: “Be careful what you say now because these guys are filming everything.” Continue reading...

President Reuven Rivlin chooses another candidate to build a government after Benjamin Netanyahu fails to meet deadlineIsrael’s president has tasked the head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, with forming a government after Benjamin Netanyahu failed to do so, leaving the country’s longest-serving leader facing a fresh challenge to his historic hold on power.Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party won the most seats in a March election and was given 28 days to build a majority coalition government. But that deadline passed on Tuesday, allowing Reuven Rivlin to choose another candidate. Continue reading...

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have launched their first official YouTube channel with a 25-second reel of clips taken from official royal engagements.

Exclusive: Morrison government’s new minister in charge of disability scheme says it’s on track to be ‘more expensive than Medicare’Linda Reynolds has signalled the Morrison government will top up funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme in Tuesday’s budget but she warns there are “hard discussions” ahead regarding the sustainability of the current funding model.In Reynolds’ first significant interview in the portfolio she gained following the Brittany Higgins furore, the minister in charge of the NDIS said she needed to open a conversation about the scheme because it was “now on the trajectory of being more expensive than Medicare”. Continue reading...

President seeks to strike balance as he marks 200 years since emperor’s death by laying wreath at tombEmmanuel Macron has marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, telling France the controversial former emperor “is part of us”.The French president laid a wreath at Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides in Paris after giving an address at the Institute of France. Continue reading...

Bronze cannon disappeared from seabed, where it had lain for 425 years, the day after it was discovered

Experts say many people may not be getting care they need as GP diagnoses of depression fall

Video shows Olivier Dubois saying he was seized by rebel group linked to al-QaidaA French journalist has been kidnapped by jihadist rebels while working in Mali’s northern city of Gao, the chief of Reporters Without Borders has announced.A video released on Wednesday shows Olivier Dubois saying he was seized by the al-Qaida-linked group JNIM on 8 April. In the video he calls on his family, friends and authorities to work for his release. The video could not be independently verified. Continue reading...

Officers hope to jog memory of witnesses to last movements of police community support officer found dead in Kent

‘Green pass’ will apply to travellers who have recovered from Covid, been vaccinated or tested negative

Duchess granted summary judgment after lawyers argue publisher advanced its defence dishonestlyThe Duchess of Sussex has won her copyright claim over a personal letter to her estranged father which, the high court heard, she had drafted on her iPhone and worked on for many hours before transcribing by hand.Meghan shared the draft with Prince Harry and a senior Kensington Palace aide, Jason Knauf, “as this was a deeply painful process that they had lived through with her,” her lawyer said. Continue reading...

Nepal has been hardest hit to date, while concerns are growing in Pakistan and Bangladesh

Contracts to increase capacity handed to 17 companies, some of whom had donated to Conservatives

The conservative African country insists it is ‘not yet ready’ for gay rights as campaigners say the flawed legislation sanctions rapeThe Ugandan parliament has passed a controversial sexual offences bill which further criminalises same-sex relationships and sex work.The laws were passed by MPs this week, reiterating sections of legislation first enforced in the country by British colonial rule. They condemn same-sex couples who perform acts deemed against the “order of nature” to 10 years’ imprisonment. Continue reading...

Next month’s runoff election pits the 51-year-old teacher against the far-right daughter of the country’s 90s autocratBy law, any president of Peru must be born on Peruvian soil. But few of the country’s past leaders know that soil like the frontrunning candidate in the current electoral race – the son of Andean peasant farmers, who grew up in poverty.On a recent morning, Pedro Castillo wore a woollen poncho, sandals made from old car tyres and a traditional wide-brimmed straw hat as he tended to his cows on his farm in Chugur, a tiny hamlet seven hours’ drive from the city of Cajamarca. Continue reading...

Parents of Ayaz Younus, 25, who died when his car was stuck in flood waters, allowed out of hotel quarantine to farewell son in SydneyThe parents of a man who died when his car was trapped in New South Wales flood waters have farewelled their son at a prayer service in Sydney after flying in from Pakistan.Ayaz Younus, 25, was travelling to his first day at a new job in Glenorie on 24 March when his car got stuck in flood waters and he was unable to escape. He was on the phone to emergency services for almost 40 minutes before he died. Continue reading...

Gary Newman, an Australian in Bangalore, files suit against Greg Hunt for failing to consider alternatives before pausing flights from the Covid-ravaged regionThe federal court will hear an urgent legal challenge to Australia’s India travel ban, after a 73-year-old Australian in Bangalore launched a challenge.On Wednesday Gary Newman filed the case against health minister Greg Hunt’s determination that people who have been in India in the past 14 days cannot return to Australia. Continue reading...

Revealed: EU chief negotiator’s diaries, The Great Illusion, give blow-by-blow account of moves behind UK’s departureBritain’s post-Brexit future was determined by “the quarrels, low blows, multiple betrayals and thwarted ambitions of a certain number of Tory MPs”, the EU’s chief negotiator has said in his long-awaited diaries.The UK’s early problem, writes Michel Barnier in The Great Illusion, his 500-page account, was that they began by “talking to themselves. And they underestimate the legal complexity of this divorce, and many of its consequences.” Continue reading...

Man in his 50s tests positive for Covid in NSW; Cricket Australia to fly players to Sri Lanka or the Maldives to await lifting of India travel ban. Follow latest updates

Rights groups warn many more survivors face being locked up after MPs back Home Office changeMore victims of trafficking will be locked up in detention and forcibly removed from the UK after MPs approved a change in Home Office rules relating to this vulnerable group, campaigners have warned.MPs recently confirmed what is known as a statutory instrument. This change in rules relating to the detention of trafficking victims comes into force on 25 May and will require them to provide a higher standard of proof that they should not be detained. Continue reading...

Belief in importance of democracy high in 53 sampled countries but inequality and big tech companies seen as biggest threatsThe US faces an uphill task presenting itself as the chief guardian of global democracy, according to a new poll that shows the US is seen around the world as more of a threat to democracy than even Russia and China.The poll finds support for democracy remains high even though citizens in democratic countries rate their governments’ handling of the Covid crisis less well than people in less democratic countries. Continue reading...

A new documentary, Street Gang, traces the early days, radical roots and creative energy of the groundbreaking childhood TV showIn 1970, cast members of Sesame Street, still in its first season on public television, traveled the country to gauge interest in the iconoclastic new show and its strange, magnetic array of puppet characters. The program was, at the time, an experiment, both as a madcap mosaic of creative talent, especially puppeteer Jim Henson and his cast of singularly endearing Muppets – and as a test of television’s potential as an educational medium, with eight expert-designed learning objectives measured in test groups of small children.Related: Strings attached: why we’re still in love with puppet TV shows Continue reading...

Ads on the front page, news on the back, and a frankly unbelievable story about a ghost: the Manchester Guardian’s first edition on 5 May 1821 is full of gems. We unearth them in this annotated version Continue reading...

RFE/RL faces threat of raids over refusal to pay fines for not attaching ‘foreign agent’ label to its content

The town of Noto sought to boost tourism in the area where squid is a delicacy

Wednesday: Australian doctors are still struggling to get Covid vaccines. Plus: the photography trick that made the US leader larger than lifeGood morning! AstraZeneca supply issues continue to frustrate Australian doctors and, well, most Australians, too. We’ve also got news on some of the plans for the Coalition’s budget.GPs in Australia are grappling with major vaccine supply shortfalls and are being refused more AstraZeneca doses, despite 1m a week now being manufactured onshore. Guardian Australia spoke with doctors across the country to find out whether early supply issues had eased, but the overwhelming response was that nothing had changed. In many cases, GPs had made direct requests to the federal government for increases to their allotted supply but were rejected. It comes as a survey revealed almost two-thirds of Australians believe the Covid-19 vaccine rollout is not going well. ANU research found that more than half of respondents would be willing to take a “safe and effective” vaccine but eight in 10 are concerned about side-effects. Continue reading...

3 December 1994: When will those responsible for the massacre in Rwanda be brought to justice? As investigators close in, the ex-ministers who ordered the slaughter are living in a hotel across the border in Zaire, desperately trying to rewrite the history of genocideRwanda’s former Minister of Information, Eliezer Niyitegeka, looks more comic than intimidating. He wears a dazzling white suit, afro-hairstyle and has an AK-47 slung across his shoulder. He last set foot in Rwanda in mid-July. He and the other ministers of the ousted Rwanda government have taken refuge over the border in Bukava, Zaire. Not for them the miseries of Goma’s refugee camps. Many have settled into the Hotel Riviera, where comforts include pornographic movies after midnight. The exiled regime’s offices are furnished with computers and a satellite phone. Here they are attempting to rewrite the history of the Rwandan genocide.Related: Thousands massacred in Rwanda Continue reading...

Update says risk in some places, including Portugal and Canaries, no longer ‘unacceptably high’

Two army veterans acquitted of Joe McCann’s murder after judge ruled some evidence inadmissibleTwo former British army paratroopers accused of murdering an Official IRA commander during the Troubles have been acquitted after their trial in Northern Ireland collapsed.The two veterans, known as soldiers A and C, had been accused of murdering Joe McCann on 15 April 1972, in a closely watched trial with political ramifications. Continue reading...

Riot police rampage across streets, shoot protesters and charge at crowds with motorcycles in week of unrest across the countryThe United Nations has condemned the violent repression of protests in Colombia, after clashes between police and demonstrators left at least 18 dead and 87 people missing.In a week of unrest across the country, riot police have rampaged across the smoke-filled streets, shooting protesters at point-blank range and charging at crowds with their motorcycles. Continue reading...

Many Afghans with family still in the country and memories of the Taliban are deeply worried about the withdrawalWhen Australia announced it would withdraw all military personnel from Afghanistan, Farkhondeh Akbari’s dream died a little.“For me and my generation in the diaspora, some of us have been hoping to return back to Afghanistan, our homeland,” the PhD candidate in diplomacy, international politics and strategic studies at the Australian National University says. Continue reading...

Police recorded almost 24,000 far-right crimes last year – the highest level since records began

Visit to Damascus by Gen Khalid Humaidan suggests imminent thawing of relations between regional foesSaudi Arabia’s intelligence chief has travelled to Damascus to meet his Syrian counterpart in the first known meeting of its kind since the outbreak of the Syrian war a decade ago.The meeting in the Syrian capital on Monday is being seen as a precursor to an imminent detente between two regional foes, who have been at odds throughout much of the conflict. Continue reading...

From sweet-talking translators to a symphony of shepherds’ calls, the common currency in this refreshing selection of short films from 19 European countries is amusement