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Exclusive: Boris Johnson announcement on Tuesday will end 30 years of gradual disarmament

Analysis: the evidence for side-effects is scant but governments have other factors to consider

Four women share their feelings on why the killing and subsequent outcry could be a turning point

Parisians told that the French capital may face another lockdown to contain ‘violent third wave’

Move is first major rule change in months and means people can travel from those countries to England

Brother of Syrian man aims to force Moscow to investigate possible role of Wagner Group in his killing

Leading obstetrician and gynaecologist and father of actor Jamie Dornan reportedly had Covid

Readers respond to the police crackdown during the vigil on Clapham Common which followed the death of Sarah EverardWith regard to your coverage of the vigil for Sarah Everard in Clapham Common on Saturday, it seems that the morality of the gathering is being used as a justification for the breaking of lockdown rules, and for the consequent potential for coronavirus to spread (Cressida Dick refuses to quit over vigil policing and dismisses ‘armchair critics’, 15 March).There can be no argument against the validity of the reasons for the protest, but in itself that’s not a justification for the form it took. A picture of a woman being arrested has been widely circulated and discussed, whereas the significance of almost every other picture of the protest, which show people crowded together, against the rules, seems to be largely ignored. Continue reading...

‘Alarming’ report from disability royal commission released just hours after March 4 Justice protests

Previous chair of NSW party’s women’s council, Jess Price-Purnell, says failure a ‘really, really poor message to send’The National party has failed for almost six months to fill a key leadership position designed to boost female representation in politics, despite internal pressure to do so.The failure to replace Jess Price-Purnell as chair of the New South Wales Nationals women’s council has been labelled by some in the party as “a disgrace”. Continue reading...

Last sighting of cartoon was in mid-December when he was filmed refusing to shake Jair Bolsonaro’s hand at a health ministry eventHe is a national treasure credited with helping free South America’s largest nation from the scourge of polio and saving countless Brazilian lives.But in Brazil’s latest hour of need Zé Gotinha – a tear-shaped animation who has spent the last three decades promoting vaccination – has gone missing in action, as efforts to halt one of the most devastating Covid outbreaks on Earth fall afoul of the country’s toxic politics. Continue reading...

As the spectacular Cornish bio-domes turn 20, their creators reveal how they were inspired by a lost civilisation – and a load of washing upI had successfully turned a long-disused garden in Cornwall into the Lost Gardens of Heligan and was looking for another big project. I started thinking about an epic setting to showcase the world’s most important plants. Horticulture didn’t seem to be taken seriously, and I wanted to make people think differently about our environment and relationship with plant life. Continue reading...

Fears Syrian government carrying out ‘degrading’ exhumations to erase identities and forensic evidenceFadwa Hallak’s memory of what happened the day her husband died is blurry.Ibrahim Rahawi was killed by shrapnel in either an airstrike or missile attack in 2015 during the siege of Aleppo – one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters of Syria’s long war. Continue reading...

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rules that God ‘cannot bless sin’

Prime minister joins policing minister in rejecting calls for Cressida Dick to stand downBoris Johnson has insisted he has full confidence in Britain’s most senior police officer, Cressida Dick, despite anger at her force’s handling of a vigil for Sarah Everard at the weekend.The prime minister said he was “very concerned” about the images that surfaced from the event on Saturday night after Everard’s death, but promised the government would make sure women felt “properly heard and addressed” when they made complaints of sexual assault or harassment. Continue reading...

Scott Higgins, 32, threatened to stab his partner with a kitchen knife at her home in Greater ManchesterA man who terrorised his partner and their three children at knifepoint has been jailed for 18 months.Scott Higgins, 32, had forced Andrea Kenny to flee for her life after he threatened to stab her with a kitchen knife before mounting a violent assault on the home she had been temporarily sharing with her mother, the court heard. Continue reading...

They’re ugly and they clog up your cupboards. But just like vinyl spun back into fashion, the compact disc could tooIn 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 allWhen compact discs started arriving on the shelves of Woolworths in the 1980s, liberated boomers set about chucking out all the vinyl clogging up their entertainment centres. After an investment in a three-disc changer and some CD towers, they could rest easy in the assurance that they were future-proofed. A couple of decades, and a few music industry meltdowns later, no one wants CDs any more. Music is now nebulous, swirling round us like a particularly tuneful dust storm or, in the case of Gary Barlow’s new album, a fart in a lift. Continue reading...

Police say boy aged 3 died in hospital after being recovered from water near NewburyA three-year-old boy drowned after falling into a canal in Berkshire, police have said.The child and his mother, who survived, went into water that reached a depth of about 3 metres, where the canal meets the River Kennet. Officers said it was not immediately clear how it had happened, though the incident was not being treated as suspicious. Continue reading...

A sandstorm has combined with already high air pollution to turn the sky over Beijing an eerie orange. Air quality indexes recorded a “hazardous” 999 rating on Monday as commuters travelled to work through the thick, dark air across China’s capital and further west. Large-scale deforestation is considered a factor in the spring dust storms that are relatively common at this time of year and are usually attributed to winds blowing across the Gobi desert

Camps for refugees are growing as old rivalries between Fulani herders and Dogon farmers are exacerbated in Mali’s war on Islamist militants

Armin Laschet under pressure after Christian Democrats record worst ever results in two state elections

Behind the noisy women in the streets are others watching how small the prime minister has been in a moment when he needed to be big

The Covid-adapted 63rd Grammys in Los Angeles represented a night to celebrate female artists with Billie Eilish, Megan Thee Stallion, Dua Lipa, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift taking top awards. A mix of recorded and live performances took place on five separate stages

Judge brands acts ‘unspeakable evil’ after Cory Breton and Iuliana Triscaru were locked in a toolbox and thrown in lagoonThree men convicted of the “sadistic” murders of two drug dealers whose bodies were locked in a toolbox and submerged in a Queensland lagoon have been sentenced to life in prison.A fourth man found guilty of manslaughter will serve 12 years behind bars. Continue reading...

Former Liberal staffer and Grace Tame among those to address tens of thousands of protesters calling for an end to gender-based violenceBrittany Higgins’ voice shook as she addressed the crowd outside Parliament House in Canberra.She had decided at the last minute to speak to more than a thousand people, mainly women, holding signs calling for justice for women, for sexual assault survivors and for Higgins herself, who has alleged she was raped by a colleague inside Parliament House. Continue reading...

Prime minister grilled in parliament; attorney general’s lawyers say ‘trial by media’ against Porter should end with start of court proceedings; Queensland calls on Canberra to consider Covid vaccine rollout in PNG. Follow the latest

The Covid-restrained Grammys were a mostly female-fronted affair, with wins for Billie Eilish, Megan Thee Stallion, Dua Lipa, Beyoncé and Taylor SwiftIt was a historic, triumphant night for women in music at the 2021 Grammys, as a range of female artists took home the top awards. HER took home song of the year for the Black Lives Matter anthem I Can’t Breathe, Taylor Swift became the first woman to win album of the year three times, and the rapper Megan Thee Stallion won both best new artist and best rap performance for her Savage remix with Beyoncé, now the most awarded singer (male or female) and female artist of all time.Related: Grammy awards 2021: the full list of winners Continue reading...

Path near centre of Kent town is focus of inquiry by Met police and local forceOfficers investigating the murder of Sarah Everard have cordoned off an area in the town of Sandwich, Kent.The 33-year-old went missing while walking home from a friend’s flat in south London on 3 March, and her body was found on 10 March. Continue reading...

This thorough portrait of the artist as an adolescent uncovers the passions and environmental factors that shaped the rock great’s singular styleAt 63, the singer-songwriter Nick Cave cuts an urbane, almost sanctified figure. Currently based in Brighton, this erudite career artist’s recurring preoccupation, since the 2015 death of Arthur, one of his teenage sons, has been transmuting profound grief into beauty.For many decades, though, Cave fronted a series of bands whose confrontational performances dealt in threat, derangement and deeply corporeal concerns. In his 20s, he was a goth poster boy, a heroin addict whose musings on toxic masculinity and God, outlaws and perdition fuelled a succession of swaggering bands and a lasting myth. Continue reading...

Exclusive: pioneering surveys aim to use data to drive ‘positive and lasting change’ in arts sector

Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are realSome will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy. Continue reading...

Thousands join March 4 Justice rallies across Australia. 'I am marching today because respect for women comes from the top and we demand better from our parliamentary leaders,' one attendee tells Guardian Australia. Another calls for greater diversity among the nation's politicians, saying: 'People in parliament do not look anything like the people they represent.' Another marcher, a member of the trans community, says: 'We deserve safety and justice.' Survivors of abuse say women should be able to speak out without fear about traumatic events without worrying about being branded liars. A Melbourne protesters, Angela, says: 'I am here because misogyny needs to end' Continue reading...

The acclaimed Swedish director’s Projekt Europa will have a UK residency in Kent and collaborate with migrant theatre-makersMaria Aberg was having one of the busiest times of her 20-year theatre career when the pandemic hit. But a month after theatres closed last spring, she was almost ready to give up on being a director despite a sparkling track record. Much of it was down to the disappointment of an aborted season of European theatre she had conceived for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which meant years of work down the pan. “It was completely devastating,” she says.Aberg had begun preparing the RSC season, Projekt Europa, just after the EU referendum in 2016, and its focus on European theatre felt profoundly personal. “I’m a Swede who has lived in Italy, Berlin, Ireland and then in the UK for 20 years [she moved to London to study drama at Mountview]. I consider myself totally European. It was the culmination of years of interest and curiosity about European theatre-makers.” Continue reading...

Tens of thousands of people attended the March 4 Justice rallies across Australia calling for an end to gender-based violence and workplace harassment Continue reading...

In the few areas not retaken by Assad’s forces, people gather to reiterate the same demands protesters made a decade agoKasem’s teenage years were spent living under siege in the city of Homs, where friends and relatives disappeared in regime prisons and her family lived much of the time without electricity, struggling to secure food and medicine. All the while, Bashar al-Assad’s air force dropped barrel bombs and cluster munitions on their neighbourhood.When the city fell, the Kasems were faced with a choice millions more would make during the course of the war: stay and face Assad’s troops, who would treat them like terrorists, or flee to Idlib province – also unstable, but at least outside regime control. Continue reading...

Photographs seen by the Guardian testify to the gruesome death suffered by prominent community leader

Prime minister says 2020 police statistics have only reinforced government’s commitment to crackdownAn increase in charges over gun crime in New Zealand – despite sweeping reforms introduced after the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019 – has shown the need for further restrictions, the government and campaigners agree.The deaths of 51 people at al-Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic centre two years ago led to a sweeping ban on a range of semi-automatic rifles and large ammunition magazines and a gun buy-back scheme, which removed about 60,000 guns from circulation. Continue reading...

Despite inoculation suspensions across Europe, authorities and experts say there is no link between the Covid-19 vaccine and blood clotsSeveral European countries, including Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands and Ireland, have temporarily suspended the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine following concerns about deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and blood clotting. Meanwhile, Italy, Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg and Lithuania have stopped inoculations from one particular batch of 1m doses that was sent to 17 countries.Related: Scott Morrison says AstraZeneca vaccine is safe for Australians after reports of blood clots Continue reading...

Metropolitan police chief stands firm after criticism from London mayor and home secretary

Exclusive: ‘draconian’ 307-page police, crime and sentencing bill is being rushed through, charities, unions and faith communities say

Embroiled in a career-threatening crisis, the Met commissioner had not one word of criticism for her officers’ actions

Dick ‘not considering position’; investigations ordered by Priti Patel and Sadiq Khan; government adviser says policing ‘from handbook of abusive men’

State election results could be sign tide is turning against conservatives as country gears up for national pollAngela Merkel’s party has slumped to historic lows in two former stronghold regions at state elections, in a sign that the tide may be turning against Germany’s conservatives just as the country gears up for a national vote in six months’ time.The incumbent Green premier of Baden-Württemberg and the Social Democrat leader of Rhineland-Palatinate both look certain to retain their offices in the two south-western states, after exit polls showed significant losses for the second-placed Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Sunday. Continue reading...

Ulta Beauty ‘paused’ advertising campaign with the magazine because of Alexi McCammond’s tweetsControversy around the new Teen Vogue editor in chief Alexi McCammond continues after she apologized for tweeting anti-Asian remarks in 2011.McCammond apologised for the tweets in 2019 and again this week, calling them “offensive, idiotic” posts. On Thursday she posted a new statement to Twitter in which she said: “I’ve dedicated my career to giving a voice to the voiceless, and the last thing I’d ever want is to make anyone – especially our Asian brothers and sisters in particular – feel more invisible,” she wrote. “And I know that that is a unique source of pain in all of this, too: That historically the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community has been left out or ignored in critical conversations around race, racism, justice and equality. I am determined to play a part in changing that.” Continue reading...

Analysis: the police’s handling of the Sarah Everard vigil raises questions over whether authorities are going too farDefending the Metropolitan police’s handling of Saturday night’s Sarah Everard vigil, assistant commissioner Helen Ball argued the force had to act “because of the overriding need to protect people’s safety” from the threat of coronavirus. Yet last year’s Black Lives Matter protests in some 300 US cities did not cause a spike in cases there, a July report from the National Bureau of Economic Research found. The outdoor air played a part in dispelling the virus and, in cities with big rallies, infections even fell because those who did not take part stayed home instead of shopping or eating out – activities that carry a greater risk.While not an exact parallel with the Clapham Common event, it suggests even huge and noisy protests, where thousands of people are shouting and chanting, are not necessarily cauldrons for infection. And they can be done safely, according to the human rights organisation Liberty. For example a socially distanced rally was held in Tel Aviv in April last year against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with thousands of people shouting and waving banners each in their own space, two metres apart. Continue reading...

The government’s proposal on criminalising the streaming of offensive content is open to misuse and could lead to unnecessary harassmentTwo years on from the horrific mass murders at Al-Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch, we know the grief is fresh in the hearts of many. As we think about those directly and indirectly impacted, we must also continue to think about what needs to change.In December 2020, the report of the royal commission into these events was made public. The findings were a disappointment in not holding any person or agency negligent, though the body of the report detailed a number of failings. The government has committed to implementing the 44 recommendations, with some announcements already made. Continue reading...

The popularity of personal mobility devices is surging – as is public opposition to their useIt’s peak hour on Brisbane’s busy riverside bikeway. Among the riders are scores of commuters zipping along on e-scooters, wearing business clothes and toting satchels or small backpacks. It looks like fun – a door-to-door commute in the fresh air, free from traffic jams, crowded buses and trains, and without the hassle of a hot and sticky pedal up Brisbane’s hills.Worldwide e-scooter use is booming, forecast to surpass half a billion rides globally this year. Touted as cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly, they’re a “last mile” solution authorities hope will encourage more people on to public transport and out of their cars. Continue reading...

One of the greatest world middleweight boxing champions of all timeMarvin Hagler, who has died aged 66, is recognised as one of boxing’s greatest champions, holding the world middleweight title from 1980 to 1987, but his fabled status is assured because of one never-to-be-forgotten night in the old open-air arena at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, in 1985, when he fought and defeated his great rival Thomas Hearns in one of the most thrilling contests the sport has ever produced.Related: Marvin Hagler, middleweight boxing's towering champion, dies aged 66 Continue reading...

Letta to lead second largest party in Draghi government as Giuseppe Conte in talks to lead Five Star MovementA former Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta, has been elected leader of the centre-left Democratic party (PD), the second largest party in Mario Draghi’s government, as another former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was in talks to become leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S), its largest.Letta takes over from Nicola Zingaretti, who abruptly quit the party’s leadership earlier this month over what he called an “unending stream” of criticism, and was elected on Sunday with 860 votes in favour and two against. Continue reading...

Vote for Scottish Conservatives in Holyrood election only way to halt push for independence, says leaderThe Scottish Tories could deny the Scottish National party a majority at Holyrood, Ruth Davidson has insisted.Davidson said that the SNP winning an overall majority’s in May’s Scottish parliament election was no longer the “nailed-on near-certainty” that polls had once predicted. Continue reading...