After embarking accidentally on his career, Pappenheim has created innovative soundscapes for theatre, opera and radioMax Pappenheim’s journey into sound design comprises a series of happy accidents. Music – and especially organ music – was his first love. He spent a year as a cathedral organist and it was only his predilection for experimentation and finding “the weirdest corners of the repertoire” that stopped him from pursuing a professional career in liturgical music.Instead, he went to Cambridge University, read classics and began teaching at a school in the Midlands. There, he was asked to direct a musical, Sweeney Todd, and it was then the ground began to shift beneath his feet. Continue reading...
by Ismail Einashe and Adriana Homolova on (#5GVSN)
Investigation finds one in six were solo and under 15, as experts say cross-border cooperation ‘nonexistent’At least 18,000 unaccompanied child migrants have disappeared after arriving in European countries including Greece, Italy and Germany.An investigation by the Guardian and the cross-border journalism collective Lost in Europe found that 18,292 unaccompanied child migrants went missing in Europe between January 2018 and December 2020 – equivalent to nearly 17 children a day. Continue reading...
Painting has helped one of Britain’s most revered actors survive Covid restrictions and the loss of a child. We join the actor for an art class that never quite happensIf you go down to the woods today, you may just come across Juliet Stevenson dangling from a branch, fumbling to photograph the light falling through a caterpillar hole on a particularly disobliging leaf, with her partner Hugh chuckling, resigned, as yet another quick stroll turns into a day trip. Upside down Juliet Stevenson has been a rare constant of Suffolk’s lockdown landscape, even as snow buried it and tides hacked away at its crumbling coastline. The 64-year-old has been all over the East Anglian country, leaving a trail of snow angels on her quest to find its most picturesque – and acrobatic – angles.What’s an actor to do when the West End goes dark? All that creative energy must go somewhere – and this actor is training the newly discovered painter’s eye that has kept her sane over lockdown. “By the time you get to my age,” she says, when I question why painting would be the basis of our interview, “you become too settled into the skills you know you have. I can sort of do my job. I know quite a lot about parenting. But to be absolutely at the beginning of something – at square one – it’s just a great feeling.” Continue reading...
Two months into Covid vaccine rollout the Coalition is reviewing initial plan to send dedicated teams into nursing homes to deliver jabsThe federal government still has no clear plan for vaccinating aged care workers under the age of 50 and the initial strategy of inoculating staff at their workplace is now “under review”.Aged care workers, the main route of Covid-19 transmission into aged care facilities, have widely reported missing out on vaccinations despite being prioritised in phase 1a of the rollout. Continue reading...
A railway worker in India sprung into action after a six-year-old boy fell on to the tracks at a train station in Mumbai. The child was with his partially sighted mother and was struggling to get back onto the platform before Mayur Shelke ran up and scooped him to safety. Continue reading...
The elderly millionaire fell prey to con artists posing as Chinese security officials who told her she was the victim of identity fraudA 90-year-old Hong Kong woman has been conned out of US$32m by fraudsters posing as Chinese officials, police have said, in the city’s biggest recorded phone scam.Police said on Tuesday that scammers had targeted an elderly woman living in a mansion on The Peak, Hong Kong’s ritziest neighbourhood. Continue reading...
A ‘double mutant’ strain, lack of medical supplies and the relaxation of lockdowns have combined to foment disasterIndia has seen a terrifying increase in coronavirus cases in the past few weeks. Monday saw another new record when the country racked up 273,810 new cases, with no sign that the surge is abating.The capital, New Delhi, was placed in lockdown for a week from Monday, and Maharashtra state, the centre of the surge and home to the financial capital, Mumbai, further tightened restrictions on shops and home deliveries from Tuesday. Continue reading...
Man kept under police guard in Queensland hospital burns unit on counts including breaching domestic violence orderCharges against a man accused of murdering Gold Coast mother Kelly Wilkinson and setting her alight have been heard at a Queensland court.A lawyer who spoke with the accused man says no one could have predicted the tragedy. Continue reading...
Two men seen leaving the stolen Sesame Street costume with apology note were unable to be located by police dog squadA $160,000 Big Bird costume has been returned after being stolen from a circus in Adelaide by the self-proclaimed “Big Bird Bandits”.The 213cm-tall, bright yellow costume reportedly made of ostrich feathers, was found dumped near the south-western end of the circus, with a note saying “no harm” had come to “Mr Bird”. Continue reading...
US president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris have spoken of the need to dismantle systemic racism during an address to the nation following the guilty verdict in Derek Chauvin’s murder case. ‘Today, we feel a sigh of relief’, Harris said. ‘Still, it cannot take away the pain. A measure of justice isn’t the same as equal justice.’ Biden said ‘such a verdict is also much too rare’, adding that saying systemic racism is ‘a stain on our nation’s soul’
Researchers in Canada find that population did not make the 6,000km roundtrip in 2018-2019As the ice melts at pace in the Arctic, the mining and shipping industry has carved itself an opportunity out of the crisis. Meanwhile, the marine ecosystem is left to coping with the heat, noise, pollution and the cascade of other changes that come with the upheaval of the environment.Now researchers have found a whale species that typically migrates away from solid sea ice each autumn and returns every summer to feast on tiny crustaceans did not make the 6,000km (3,700-mile) roundtrip in 2018-2019. Continue reading...
George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer touched off a new civil rights uprising that rippled across the worldThe jury’s guilty verdict on the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd signaled the conclusion of a historic police brutality trial and a key moment for policing and for the battle for racial equality in America.Observers have talked about this case being so significant that it will stand as a watershed between the way law enforcement was held to account in the US before George Floyd was pinned by the neck under Chauvin’s knee, and after. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor on (#5GV7K)
Junior minister had indicated he was preparing to quit over concerns about prosecutions of Northern Ireland veteransJohnny Mercer has been abruptly dismissed as a junior defence minister after accusing Boris Johnson of breaching a commitment to implement a controversial pledge to prevent veterans who served in Northern Ireland from being prosecuted.The junior minister was preparing to quit on Wednesday but his resignation was accepted by the chief whip early on Tuesday evening, eager to put a stop to speculation he was on the brink of departure. Continue reading...
Disillusionment among French progressives could open the door to a Marine Le Pen presidencyIt was less than 10 years ago that France last elected a Socialist party president, but it now seems like another age. The unpopular reign of François Hollande, who stood down after one term, was the precursor to an electoral implosion for the party of Jean Jaurès and François Mitterrand. In 2017, as Emmanuel Macron successfully redrew the political map from the centre, the Socialist presidential candidate received a humiliating 6% of the first-round vote. In the subsequent general election, the party’s presence in the National Assembly was reduced to a miserable rump of 30 MPs.“Things can only get better”, to use a phrase from happier times on the European left. But for French progressives, the danger is that they get even worse. A year out from the next presidential election, every opinion poll points towards another second-round duel between President Macron and Marine Le Pen. Accordingly, last weekend, the fractious forces of the left met to try to agree on a united front. But after inconclusive talks it seems likely that the progressive vote will be split between at least two presidential candidates: Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the radical left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), and whoever the Socialist party and the French Greens put forward. A first-round defeat for all concerned would be virtually guaranteed. Continue reading...
If it’s a problem in the city, it’s worse in the country. We look at one town as an example of the obstacles faced by people looking for adequate mental health care in rural and remote areas
by Jason Burke Africa correspondent and Zeinab Mohamm on (#5GTH0)
Déby had ruled for 30 years and won a sixth term in elections last weekChad’s president, Idriss Déby, has died from wounds sustained in combat, the country’s military has said, sending shockwaves through the region as rebel forces continued to advance on the capital N’Djamena.The extraordinary announcement of the 68-year-old’s battlefield death on Tuesday came days after an election in which he won a sixth term in office, extending his 30-year, increasingly authoritarian rule. Some observers fear there could be extensive fighting in the strategically important central African country before a stable political settlement is reached. Continue reading...
Migrant rights organisations are concerned that those due to fly have not had full access to legal adviceCharities and human rights campaigners have expressed alarm at a decision by the Home Office to charter its first ever deportation flight to Vietnam.The Guardian has learned that the flight is due to take off on Wednesday, though it is unclear why the government has decided to remove the Vietnamese nationals at a time when deportations are at a historically low level due to the pandemic. Continue reading...
Ruling removes limits on some teachers and provincial politicians but maintains ban for police, judges and other civil servantsA Canadian court has struck down part of a disputed Quebec law against public employees wearing religious symbols, removing limits on some teachers and provincial politicians but maintaining the ban for police officers, judges and other civil servants.The 2019 law, which the Quebec government said was designed to preserve secularism in the mainly French-speaking province, prohibits many civil servants, including police officers, from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs and turbans on the job. Continue reading...
Lukasz Koczocik grabbed pike from wall to hold off terrorist attacker Usman Khan near London BridgeThe head porter at Fishmongers’ Hall in London was stabbed in the hand and shoulder by terrorist attacker Usman Khan as he tried to fend him off with an ornamental boarding pike, an inquest has heard.Lukasz Koczocik grabbed the pike after Khan, a convicted terrorist released on licence, had fatally stabbed Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, at a prisoner rehabilitation event on 29 November 2019. Continue reading...
Vladimir Putin’s system is killing the one person who can deliver Russians from their leaderHave you ever watched a person being killed? I will answer for you. You have. You are watching it right now, not in some sick social media experiment, but as Vladimir Putin and his corrupt regime slowly but steadily murder a prisoner. It isn’t the first time they have done that, but this time, their intended victim is Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition, who also happens to be my boss.Navalny has been on hunger strike for 20 days now. He is demanding medical attention from an independent civilian doctor. A basic request, but not when Putin views you as his number one problem. No food, no supplements, just water. His health is deteriorating quicker than world leaders can express concern, as he loses at least 2lbs a day. We got his blood test results last week. I couldn’t read a word of the scribbled note on a scrap of paper. But when we showed it to the doctors, there was that long doctors’ pause everybody knows, followed by their unanimous agreement: “He could die any minute.” He needs urgent treatment in an ICU, starting yesterday. Continue reading...
Ex-chief superintendent, former DCI and solicitor accused of seeking to ‘mask failings’ of policeTwo former South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s lawyer in 1989, when 96 people were killed at Hillsborough football ground, altered police accounts given about the disaster to “mask the failings” of the force, a court has heard.Peter Metcalf, 71, who was a partner at the firm of solicitors that acted for the force, Hammond Suddards, Donald Denton, 83, a police chief superintendent at the time, and Alan Foster, 74, a detective chief inspector, are accused of intending to pervert the course of justice by overseeing and making the alterations. Continue reading...
CDU leader may radiate ‘jovial continuity’ but polls suggest many voters doubt his suitability to succeed Angela MerkelIt is often said of Armin Laschet that he never even wanted to go into politics, but ended up joining the CDU only due to the persistent persuasion of an acquaintance. Four decades on, he is the leader of Germany’s most populous state, leader of the Christian Democrats and the conservative alliance’s candidate for chancellor.If the CDU – which has governed Germany for 51 of the past 71 years – wins September’s federal election, he will step into Angela Merkel’s shoes as the leader of Europe’s largest economy. Continue reading...
Little by little, the way for everyday mortals to become more like the world’s most extraordinary movie star becomes clearer. And this latest stage may be easier than expectedTom Cruise is arguably the most intimidating movie star in existence. He’s less a human being and more a physical manifestation of human willpower. He does his own stunts. He flies his own planes. Back when everyone was worried that Covid would permanently bring the world to its knees, he offered hope; first by driving an actual motorbike off a literal cliff to prove to the world that no virus could stop him from doing loads of knuckleheaded stunts, and second by screaming blue murder at his crew whenever they got closer than two metres to each other. Continue reading...
Open letter backing UN call to action says Covid has exacerbated problems of conflict, climate crisis and inequalityWorld leaders are being urged to act immediately to stop multiple famines breaking out, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and caused by conflict, climate crisis and inequality.In an open letter published on Tuesday to support the UN Call for Action to Avert Famine in 2021, hundreds of aid organisations from around the world said: “People are not starving – they are being starved.” Continue reading...
Educators use physical restraint thousands of time a year and critics say the practice is used as a routine discipline tool, especially against Black childrenAmerica is waiting on a verdict in the closely watched murder trial of Derek Chauvin in Minnesota, which has focused on the former Minneapolis police officer’s use of “prone restraint” that prosecutors say contributed to the death of George Floyd.The manner of Floyd’s death led to a national reckoning on police brutality and racism, but it has also highlighted how the practice of restraining children remains commonplace in Minnesota schools, and in other districts across the country. Continue reading...
Rival Markus Söder concedes in race to succeed Angela Merkel as conservative candidate for chancellorArmin Laschet will run as the conservative candidate to succeed chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s elections in September, after the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the support of senior party leaders and his rival Markus Söder dropped out of the race.Söder, the state premier of Bavaria and leader of CDU sister party CSU, conceded defeat at a press conference on Tuesday, saying he had already congratulated his competitor on the appointment. Continue reading...
The premier says it’s ‘disappointing’ the 87-year-old waited so long to see a doctor at Launceston General hospital and be given a bedThe Tasmanian premier says it is disappointing an elderly man with pneumonia waited nine hours on a plastic chair in a hospital emergency department waiting room before seeing a doctor.It took longer still for the 87-year-old to be provided with a bed at the Launceston General hospital after he presented there last Tuesday. Continue reading...
A father and son confront personal and historic agonies on the road to bury their loved one in the land from where their people were displacedIn Homeward, personal and collective pains weave together to make a quietly searing work. Nariman Aliev’s directorial debut depicts the rootlessness of the Crimean Tatars, as well as his own personal history of displacement. Though having a cross-country odyssey at the centre of its narrative, the film acutely understands what many road trip movies have missed: for marginalised people, the open road rarely equates to freedom. In fact, the Tatars in Homeward are constantly subjected to aggressions from others as well as state surveillance.The journey begins at a place of death: the morgue. Mustafa (Akhtem Seitablaev) is here to pick up the body of his son Nazim (Anatoliy Marempolskiy) who has died in the Russo-Ukrainian war. His other son Alim (Remzi Bilyalov), a college student, sits silently on a nearby bench. It remains unclear at first that the two are related; their body language is awkward as an uneasy, tense distance lingers between them. After retrieving the body, Mustafa and Alim face numerous obstacles, both from themselves and from outsiders, as they attempt to return to Russian-annexed Crimea for the burial. Continue reading...
Much more than $10bn over four years will be needed to fund royal commission recommendations, advocates sayAged care leaders are unimpressed by the Morrison government’s reported plans to spend $10bn over four years on reforms to the sector, saying it’s about a quarter of what’s needed to address the findings of the aged care royal commission.The Grattan Institute, in its response to the aged care royal commission’s report, urged the commonwealth to boost spending on the aged care sector by $10bn a year – considerably more than the $10bn over four years the government is reportedly planning for the sector in the 11 May federal budget to fund recommendations including more home care packages. Continue reading...
Written while he was a teenager, published when he was 23 and rewritten when he was 43, The Carpet People is being honoured with an anniversary edition
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5GTBA)
PM says he is ‘sandpapering’ protocol signed with EU, which he says has been misinterpretedBoris Johnson has said he is trying to get rid of the “ludicrous” Brexit border checks in Northern Ireland by “sandpapering” the protocol he signed with the EU in January 2020.In a TV interview in Northern Ireland he also said the protocol had been misinterpreted and border checks were supposed to be light touch. Continue reading...
Officers are treating the death at Arundel as a homicide that may have been witnessed by her three young childrenThe woman whose burned body was found in the backyard of a Gold Coast home has been identified as mother-of-three Kelly Wilkinson.Officers are treating the death of Wilkinson at a home in Spikes Court, Arundal on Tuesday morning as a homicide, with a man who also suffered burns arrested nearby. Continue reading...
by Josh Taylor and Matilda Boseley (earlier) on (#5GSVB)
Queensland premier says people need confidence in vaccine before mass rollout; US secretary of state says countries investing in new coal ‘will hear from US’. Follow all the latest news and updates, live
An intimate portrait of the public intellectual by a former student underlines Said’s mastery of several fields and, 20 years after his death, his contemporary relevance“Long after his death in 2003, Edward W Said remains a partner in many imaginary conversations.” The opening line of Tim Brennan’s biography of Said is true - it’s hard to come up with another thinker who remains so present in his absence. Some 50 or so books have been written about him. His writings are taught in universities across the world. Look on social media and you’ll find him constantly referred to, in easy, familiar terms, by the young across the globe. His portrait is on the walls of the old cities of Palestine, in the company of the martyrs. The events of the past years, not least the Arab uprisings and the counter-revolutionary triumphs that followed them, have been for many of us occasions where we turned to his ideas and his example.Said bestrode not just one world, but several. Just as he was at the same moment a New Yorker and a Palestinian brought up in Egypt, he was also a literary critic, a theorist, a political activist, a musician and more. And if this led to him being “not quite right” in any one world, his genius was to transmute this condition into the engine of ideas around which a considerable part of the intellectual and political life of these worlds came to revolve. Continue reading...
Activists welcome stated intent to fulfil campaign promise and finally elevate a judge ‘that really understands racism’Joe Biden’s promise to nominate an African American woman to the supreme court for the first time holds broad symbolic significance for Darlene McDonald, an activist and police reform commissioner in Salt Lake City, Utah.Related: Biden faces pressure to end practice of rewarding allies with plum foreign posts Continue reading...
Ahtisham Khan arrived in Greece, aged 16, after fleeing Pakistan. A new initiative is helping children like him find a safe home where they can start to rebuild their livesAt some point in his journey to a freer place, Ahtisham Khan came to a fork in the road. Fifty days of travel from his native Pakistan to the plains of northern Greece had been unexpectedly frightening and exhausting.“We had a lot of dreams,” he says, recalling why he and his brother, Zeeshan, left their village close to the city of Haripur in Pakistan. “We were teenagers … we didn’t know what we were embarking on. We did what we had to do to survive.” Continue reading...
While it is tricky to observe rogue waves directly, it is now possible to measure wave height from spaceRogue waves, towering at least twice as high as the other waves present, seem to appear at random. Their rarity makes them difficult to study, and for years they were considered a sailors’ myth. They are especially common off the east coast of Africa, making this a fruitful area for rogue wave research.A key factor is the how the fast-running Agulhas current runs south and collides with ocean swells running north from the Southern Ocean. The current modifies the shape and height of the waves, tending to make them steeper and amplifying them. Continue reading...
Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern worldIn 2008, a satirical blog called Stuff White People Like became a brief but boisterous sensation. The conceit was straightforward, coupling a list, eventually 136 items long, of stuff that white people liked to do or own, with faux-ethnographic descriptions that explained each item’s purported racial appeal. While some of the items were a little too obvious – indie music appeared at #41, Wes Anderson movies at #10 – others, including “awareness” (#18) and “children’s games as adults” (#102), were inspired. It was an instant hit. In its first two months alone, Stuff White People Like drew 4 million visitors, and it wasn’t long before a book based on the blog became a New York Times bestseller.The founder of the blog was an aspiring comedian and PhD dropout named Christian Lander, who’d been working as an advertising copywriter in Los Angeles when he launched the site on a whim. In interviews, Lander always acknowledged that his satire had at least as much to do with class as it did with race. His targets, he said, were affluent overeducated urbanites like himself. Yet there’s little doubt that the popularity of the blog, which depended for its humour on the assumption that whiteness was a contentless default identity, had much to do with its frank invocation of race. “As a white person, you’re just desperate to find something else to grab on to,” Lander said in 2009. “Pretty much every white person I grew up with wished they’d grown up in, you know, an ethnic home that gave them a second language.” Continue reading...
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