A correspondent's live weather report was interrupted by a dog who snatched her microphone and ran off with it. Nadezhda Serezhkina, who works for the Russian-language broadcaster Mir TV, could then be seen running after the dog who still had the colourful microphone in its mouth. The dog, and the damaged microphone, later joined Serezhkina for the end of her live broadcast Continue reading...
by Luke Henriques-Gomes (now) and Matilda Boseley (ea on (#5G72S)
PM says Australia’s failure to reach vaccine target is due to three million doses that never arrived; Jacinda Ardern says quarantine-free travel between Australia and New Zealand will commence 19 April. This blog is now closed
With the Games just months away, the regime’s sports ministry says it wants to protect athletes from the ‘global health crisis’North Korea’s sports ministry said on Tuesday that it will not participate in the Tokyo Olympics this year to protect its athletes amid the coronavirus pandemic.The decision was made at a meeting of North Korea’s Olympic committee, including its sports minister Kim Il guk, on 25 March the ministry said on its website, called Joson Sports. “The committee decided not to join the 32nd Olympics Games to protect athletes from the global health crisis caused by the coronavirus,” it said. Continue reading...
Photographer Prashanth Vishwanathan captured a network of community dairies providing a lifeline to off-grid farmers in Maharashtra, helping to keep milk fresh as temperatures rise. All pictures are from Climate VisualsAs global temperatures climb, a lack of refrigeration makes a big impact on people trying to make a living from farming. Especially dairy farms.There are more than 75 million smallholder dairy farmers in India. Most are in off-grid areas without refrigeration, or reliant on expensive and polluting diesel generators. This locks people out of national supply chains, and farmers have to spend hours transporting milk to markets, or sell at a lower price to middlemen. In Maharashtra, western India, a network of community dairies has been set up, using sustainable refrigeration technology, where people can bring their milk to be tested, chilled, and sold on. Continue reading...
One of the world’s most celebrated bass players has worked with everyone from Adele to Elton John, the Who and D’Angelo. But the Welsh musician has hidden from the spotlight – until nowBy his own admission, Pino Palladino is not a man much accustomed to giving interviews. “Very reticent,” he nods during a Zoom call, his accent speaking noticeably louder of his childhood in Cardiff than his current home in LA. “You know, there was a time when I was featured in all sorts of musicians’ magazines, and then I just thought to myself, ‘Move over, there’s people out there that actually need the publicity.’ Not to blow smoke up my own arse,” he adds hurriedly, “but really I just didn’t want to see or hear from myself.”It’s a remark in keeping with the astonishing career of one of the most celebrated bass players in the world. It’s hard not to blanche when you consider the sheer number of records that have been sold featuring his work. He played on not one but two of the biggest selling albums of the 21st century: Adele’s 21 and Ed Sheeran’s Divide, as well as with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, Simon and Garfunkel and Keith Richards. They’re the biggest names in a startlingly diverse back catalogue of collaborations: Palladino’s playing is the thread that links Perfume Genius with Phil Collins, Harry Styles with Chris de Burgh, and Nine Inch Nails with De La Soul. Indeed, his versatility and omnipresence is a running joke within the music industry. When another fabled bass player, Pink Floyd’s Guy Pratt, got married, he opened his groom’s speech with the words: “I’m only here today because Pino couldn’t make it.” Continue reading...
Finds include 1980s time capsules, old collection boxes and a nativity scene with figures heads ‘taken clean off’Ten years on from Christchurch’s devastating earthquake, the Catholic Diocese has discovered that it is missing a pair of angels.As work continues to deconstruct the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on Barbadoes Street – extensively damaged in the 2011 quake, along with most of the central city – many treasures thought lost have been recovered. Continue reading...
Boris Johnson is hoping to improve relations with rising superpower but many roadblocks stand in his wayGeorge Osborne, the former British chancellor, tells the story of how, soon after Narendra Modi had been elected prime minister of India in 2014, he and the then foreign secretary, William Hague, alighted on a plan to fly immediately to India to make sure they were the first through the door to congratulate the new leader of the world’s largest democracy.They decided to take the only British politician who seemed to know Modi well, Priti Patel, now home secretary, then recently appointed the government’s “India diaspora champion”. There was a pushback in the Whitehall system due to Modi’s record of stirring up inter-community violence in Gujarat – a Republican president in 2005 even banned him from travelling to the US – but the pair decided that the Anglo-Indian relationship was finally ready to shed the layers of imperial legacy. “If we are not going to engage with India, who are we going to engage with?” Osborne asked. Continue reading...
On Fox News, presenter uses first interview since leaving Good Morning Britain to again question Prince Harry and Meghan’s accountPiers Morgan has given Tucker Carlson on Fox News his first TV interview since leaving Good Morning Britain after criticising the Duchess of Sussex and has claimed he has the “universal support” of the British public in the row.Morgan left his job on the ITV breakfast show last month after he questioned whether Meghan had been telling the truth when she and her husband, Prince Harry, gave their tell-all interview to Oprah Winfrey. Continue reading...
Thursday: Australia’s vaccine-hesitant populations need engagement for international borders to reopen. Plus: can a pain machine create empathy?Good morning. Welcome back after the long weekend. Today we have plenty of Covid news, including Australia’s need to tackle vaccine hesitant populations and a round-up of international issues – including the French elite dining out despite restrictions.Australia risks never achieving herd immunity to Covid-19 unless it ramps up its strategy for engaging with vaccine hesitant populations, health experts have warned. There are concerns Australia’s vaccine hesitancy rates – which were as high as 36% in mid-March – will remain high without early and intense targeting of hesitant groups. Herd immunity could require 65%-90% of the population to be vaccinated, and will likely be required before international borders reopen. Stephen Duckett, health program director at the Grattan Institute, said Australia’s efforts to engage and persuade vaccine-hesitant residents needed to be greater than foreign countries because of our reliance on the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been acknowledged as the “likely” cause of a blood clot in a Victorian man last week. Continue reading...
Officers searching for missing 19-year-old find body in a pond in Epping Forest, EssexPolice looking for missing west London student Richard Okorogheye said the body of a man has been found in a pond in Epping Forest, Essex.Enquiries are under way to identify the body. The family of the missing 19-year-old are being supported by specially trained officers and kept updated with developments. Continue reading...
by Joshua Kelly, Axel Kacoutié and Phil Maynard, as on (#5G6RX)
Huge numbers of listeners have been tuning in to our podcast series about the fishermen imprisoned on drugs chargesFour members of the Today in Focus team – presenter Anushka Asthana, producer Josh Kelly, executive producer Phil Maynard, and composer and sound designer Axel Kacoutié – talk about the success of our audio miniseries. You can listen to the Freshwater Five series here. Continue reading...
Conspiracy theorist was fighting Connecticut court sanction in defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of victims of the shootingThe US supreme court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by the Infowars host, Trump ally and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was fighting a Connecticut court sanction in a defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of some victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.Related: Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ordered to pay $100,000 in Sandy Hook case Continue reading...
Dr Anthony Isaacs thinks the Labour leader must unite the party and restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn, but Bruce Sawford has lost hopeNo new opposition leader could have been expected to gain much media attention in their first year against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the government has clearly benefited from the vaccine rollout. But after a promising start, Keir Starmer’s declining poll ratings (Keir Starmer: one year in, Labour leader’s popularity has plunged, 2 April) indicate that his cautious style and lack of defined policies have failed to gain traction. The pandemic has, paradoxically, opened the way to an alternative agenda that plays to Labour’s strengths of promoting social solidarity and investment in public services. Starmer must embrace the opportunity of the waning infection rates to move the fight away from equivocation and abstention over Tory culture wars to ground of Labour’s own choosing.Your editorial (2 April) points to Labour’s need for a transformative agenda that both rallies the party and speaks to the wider public. To bring this about, Starmer must first unite the party. Restoring the whip to Jeremy Corbyn would be an important symbolic gesture, opening the way for the party’s factions to work together in devising popular policies to combat the corruption and market failures epitomised by our current government. The second task is to unite opposition parties around an electoral strategy as the only hope of preventing continued Tory dominance. That will be a true test of leadership.
Presidential terms ‘reset’ to allow Russian leader to run for presidency twice more in his lifetimeVladimir Putin has signed a law that will allow him to run for the presidency twice more in his lifetime, potentially keeping him in office until 2036.The Russian president signed the legislation on Monday, ending a year-long process to “reset” his presidential terms by rewriting the constitution through a referendum-like process that his critics have called a crude power grab. Continue reading...
Ex-ministers and serving Tory MPs among those criticising decision to cut UK foreign aid by a thirdBoris Johnson has been told by a number of Tory former ministers and serving MPs that he risks jeopardising Britain’s leadership at the G7 and the Cop26 climate summit this year if he goes ahead with plans to cut UK aid by a third over two years.Sir David Lidington, who was Theresa May’s de facto deputy prime minister, will tell an Institute for Government conference on the G7 on Tuesday: “Sadly, the proposal to drop the UK’s commitment to 0.7% [of gross national income] will make it harder to achieve the prime minister’s ambitious objectives for both the G7 and the climate summit.” Continue reading...
The Israeli prime minister’s efforts to remain in power face a double-pronged challenge, as he attends a Jerusalem courtroom for his corruption trial. Meanwhile critical talks on his political future were held after last month’s inconclusive election.The witness testimony and evidence stage of a case assessing whether the 71-year-old leader is guilty of bribery, fraud and breach of trust – repeatedly delayed because of the pandemic - began on Monday morning
We have to make a credible case that western opposition to China’s policies is not geopolitical manoeuvring“Wholly counterproductive”, was how Newcastle academic Joanne Smith Finley described China’s sanctions on her, along with a series of British politicians and lawyers, as punishment for their advocacy for the Uyghurs. That was putting it mildly. But is it the case that western sanctions on China will be, by contrast, productive? Sadly, that seems unlikely.International outrage at China’s policies of incarceration and social coercion in Xinjiang continues to grow. As someone who has been engaged with the region for two decades, I see that as much needed. But it’s crucial the energy being generated is put to good use. The gloves may be off, but what is the strategy? Continue reading...
Prince Bandar bin Sultan has reportedly sold Glympton Park to family of King Hamad bin Isa al-KhalifaA Saudi prince has sold a large country estate in the Cotswolds to the king of Bahrain for more than £120m.Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a senior Saudi royal as well as former ambassador to the US and former director general of the Saudi intelligence agency, has reportedly sold Glympton Park estate to the family of Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and his son Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Continue reading...
Even finally winning the most prestigious award in your field can’t stop you from being drowned out by pesky time-keepersIn the Guide’s weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you’ve been burning to know the answer to – and settle it, once and for allWinning an Oscar is the highlight of a career. It’s peer validation on the largest possible stage. As your name is called and you approach the podium, your heart bursts and your head spins. You look out and see every famous person on Earth, all staring straight at you. Beyond them, cameras are beaming your face into hundreds of millions of homes. Time to gather your thoughts and articulate exactly what this means to you. Continue reading...
About 6cm settles on Orkney, substantial falls seen in Manchester and Sheffield and flurries in southLarge parts of Scotland and the north of England – and even as far south as London – had snow flurries on Monday morning as temperatures dropped by an average of 11C overnight.The Arctic winds responsible for the snow showers are expected to continue into the week, with most of the country at risk of snow or hail on Tuesday as temperatures will struggle to rise above 9C, even in the south of England. Continue reading...
I started listening to tales of yore in 2019, when long drives with my infant son became essential. They soothed him to sleep – and transported me to a different worldFans of Paul Cooper’s podcast Fall of Civilizations will know that it usually begins in a particular way. A traveller, often far from home, encounters a ruin that hints at a vast and forgotten story of the past.Hiding from bandits in the desert, the Italian nobleman Pietro della Valle takes shelter in the shadow of the crumbling Ziggurat of Ur. Clambering through the rubble of a once magnificent site of Roman Britain, an unknown poet of the eighth or ninth century writes an elegy to the broken “work of giants”. Continue reading...
Westworld actor tells Vogue she is reverting to Shona spelling, saying ‘I’m taking back what’s mine’Thandie Newton has said she will reclaim the original Shona spelling of her name for use in her professional career, declaring: “I’m taking back what’s mine.”For more than 30 years, the actor, born Melanie Thandiwe Newton Parker, has been known by an anglicised version of her name since the “w” was dropped “carelessly” from her first acting credit. Continue reading...
King Abdullah’s half-brother says he will disobey the army’s orders not to communicate with outside worldJordan’s estranged Prince Hamzah bin Hussein has said in a voice recording that he will disobey orders by the army not to communicate with the outside world after he was put under house arrest.The half-brother of King Abdullah and the former heir to the throne said in the recording released on Monday by the country’s opposition that he would not comply after being barred from any activities and told to keep quiet. Continue reading...
Singer also generates $2.2m in sales of NFTs, including one linked to an unreleased song sold for $490,000Pop singer the Weeknd has donated $1m (£722,000) in food aid to Ethiopia, amid the ongoing conflict in the country’s Tigray region.“My heart breaks for my people of Ethiopia as innocent civilians ranging from small children to the elderly are being senselessly murdered and entire villages are being displaced out of fear and destruction,” he wrote on Instagram. “I will be donating $1 million to provide 2 million meals through the United Nations World Food Program and encourage those who can to please give as well.” Continue reading...
Whether it is Vera Brittain or Elena Ferrante, women’s relationships have provided succour in troubled times, writes Lucy JagoWhat I miss most about pre-lockdown life is not festivals, or even foreign travel, but time with my female friends. The malaise, I believe, is widespread, so here are some books in which to immerse yourself in complex, occasionally wounding, but always irreplaceable female friendships.In Sula, by Toni Morrison, Nel and Sula are best friends in a poor, black Ohio community, where women can take many roles but not that which Sula chooses, free from social and sexual restraint. She is shunned by everyone, even Nel, whose marriage crumbles in the face of Sula’s seductive presence. Nel mourns for years but comes to understand, as Sula does before her, that it was not her husband she was missing but the relationship with her best friend. Morrison says that it was the women around her, all struggling, all poor, who inspired the book. “The things we traded! Time, food, money, clothes, laughter, memory – and daring. Daring especially …” Continue reading...
Dukes, earls and marquesses, some of them owners of inherited estates, have drawn on public fundsDozens of members of Britain’s land-owning aristocracy have claimed under the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme to pay staff at their ancestral estates and personal businesses.Analysis of publicly available data reveals the names of at least 50 nobles, including dukes, earls, viscounts, barons and marquesses, who have drawn on public funds. Continue reading...
Percentage of churchgoing Americans is steadily falling, and the swirl of rightwing politics and Christianity is playing a key roleFewer than half of Americans belong to a house of worship, a new study shows, but religion – and Christianity in particular – continues to have an outsize influence in US politics, especially because it is declining faster among Democrats than Republicans.Just 47% of the US population are members of a church, mosque or synagogue, according to a survey by Gallup, down from 70% two decades ago – in part a result of millennials turning away from religion but also, experts say, a reaction to the swirling mix of rightwing politics and Christianity pursued by the Republican party. Continue reading...
At least eight people were on the vessel north of Sydney when it caught fire on Sunday afternoonA woman is fighting for her life after suffering critical burns in a boat explosion on the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney.Eight people suffered burns and smoke inhalation in the explosion at Brooklyn near Dangar Island on Sunday afternoon. Continue reading...
Government hopes to jumpstart tourism with mass inoculation programIn Thailand, it’s the all-important tourism sector that has jumped to the head of the Covid-19 vaccination line, with the country’s most popular resort island embarking on a mass inoculation programme two months ahead of the rest of Thailand.The island of Phuket aims to deliver shots to at least 460,000 people – the majority of its population – as it gears up for 1 July, when vaccinated overseas visitors will no longer be required to quarantine. Continue reading...
Petrol bombs thrown at officers in loyalist areas in Newtownabbey and CarrickfergusPolice have come under attack as violence flared during another night of sporadic disorder in parts of Northern Ireland.Petrol bombs and bricks were thrown at officers in loyalist areas in Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus on Sunday night. Continue reading...
Victorian premier says he’s making ‘steady progress’ after a ‘pretty painful’ few weeksDaniel Andrews says he’s making steady progress in his recovery from a serious back injury and is now walking about 18 minutes a day.Victoria’s premier suffered broken ribs and a fractured T7 vertebra after slipping on wet stairs at a holiday home on the Mornington Peninsula on 9 March. Continue reading...
New Zealand may have moved to curb rising prices but could cheap money have permanently rewritten the rules?It’s hard to disagree with the New Zealand government’s recent assessment that the country’s runaway housing market has moved from mere boom to a bubble that endangers the whole economy. Prices rose a staggering 23% over the past year, putting home ownership way beyond most people not already on the fabled ladder – younger, first-time buyers especially. If it walks like a bubble and talks like a bubble, then it must be a bubble, right?The only problem is that bubbles might not be what they used to be. House prices are being steadily inflated in many other developed economies such as the US and UK. In Australia, prices rose 2.8% in March, the fastest monthly growth for 33 years. But governments are in no hurry to copy Jacinda Ardern’s canary in the coalmine moment, as the renowned Société Générale economist and market sceptic Albert Edwards has dubbed it, and instruct central banks to make dampening prices part of monetary policy. Continue reading...
Family had been told they could not remain together in UK as father travelled by plane, sons by boatA family of asylum seekers from Yemen who were told they could not remain together in the UK because the father travelled to the country by plane and his three sons arrived by small boat have been told their case will be considered together after a Home Office U-turn.The government change of heart emerged days after an announcement from the home secretary that how people enter the UK would have a bearing on the progress of their asylum claim. Priti Patel said asylum seekers should stay in the first safe country they arrive in rather than travelling onwards to the UK. Continue reading...
Great-grandmother Lucille Downer, 85, died after ‘sustained’ attack by two dogs from neighbouring propertyA woman killed in a “sustained” dog attack in her garden after two dogs escaped from a neighbouring property through a hole in the fence has been named as 85-year-old great-grandmother Lucille Downer.Downer’s family paid tribute to her, saying they would “miss her dearly”. Continue reading...
Canal authority says investigation into the cause of Ever Given grounding is nearing completionThe last ships stranded by the grounding of a giant container vessel in the Suez canal passed through the waterway on Saturday, according to the Suez Canal Authority (SCA).More than 400 vessels were stranded in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea when the giant container ship Ever Given became wedged across the vital waterway on 23 March. The ship was freed on Monday. Continue reading...
The singer, 80, on enthusiastic audiences, singing Sex Bomb at 90, meeting a young Michael Jackson and losing the love of his lifeI’ve been singing since I was a kid growing up in Pontypridd in South Wales. I would sing in school. I would sing in chapel. Any chance I got to get up and sing, I took it.I was quarantined for two years with tuberculosis. I was in hospital or confined to my house from 1952 to 1954, from the age of 12 to 14. There was an old gas lamp-post at the end of the street I could see out of the window from our house where the local kids used to gather. I used to think, “When I can walk to the lamp-post again, I’ll never complain about anything as long as I live.” I still see that lamp-post in my mind and think, “What am I complaining about?” Continue reading...
Who wants to turn their excess Easter eggs into chocolate fondant, chocolate cereal clusters and chocolate and hazelnut spread? Bring it on!Can you bake with Easter egg chocolate? Sure you can. After getting my hands on a variety of Easter eggs this year (dark chocolate, caramelised white chocolate, orange-flavoured, nougat-filled mini eggs, the ones with pretzels stuck all over them … ), I found a place for them all: melted and turned into something else. For these recipes, I encourage you to use up whatever chocolate you have. Easter eggs are typically sweetened (even the dark varieties), so taste them beforehand (as I’m sure you have already) and judge if you need to add any salt, for example. Continue reading...
Most marine accidents involve human error, but the real story of how Ever Given came to block global shipping is not so easily explained awayThe trouble started at 5:17am. Ever Given, an Ultra Large Container Vessel (ULCV) loaded with 20,000 containers, had set off up the Suez canal a quarter of an hour earlier from the south, in the bay of Suez.This is how the canal works: ships anchor the night before and wait to set off early the following morning – one convoy southbound from Port Said starting at 3.30am, the northbound one at 5:00am. They meet each other at Great Bitter Lake, where the southbound convoy anchors to let the other pass. Consider a country lane with passing spots, only for ships the height of buildings, travelling at the speed of a scooter. Continue reading...
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