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Christopher Nolan’s film baffled audiences – all they wanted in this most bewildering of years was to see a giant ape and a dinosaur going at it for 15 roundsIn any other year, Godzilla vs. Kong could be filed as just another bloated, unoriginal franchise flick. But this hasn’t been any other year. It’s a year that has seen trips to the movies stolen away by a global pandemic, as all blockbuster releases have either been postponed or shifted to a streaming-only release. This being the case, Godzilla vs. Kong has been welcomed as a thunderous return for the big-screen experience. And the numbers show it. The fourth film in Legendary’s MonsterVerse raked in more than £206m ($285m) at the worldwide box office during its opening days, the highest debut of any American film in the pandemic era. There is a strong chance that it could outperform MonsterVerse’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which was a financial disappointment in the pre-pandemic era in 2019, grossing $383m worldwide during one of Hollywood’s most lucrative years.The joy with which Godzilla has been hailed contrasts with the muted response to the highest-performing Hollywood film during the pandemic: Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. After a seemingly endless number of delays to its release, Tenet was hyped by both the industry and the press as the film that would “save cinema”. For good reason: it was a new big-screen outing for a director who pushes the technological limits of film-making, bedazzling audiences with advancements in visuals, sound and cinematography. Everything Nolan touches turns to gold, it seems. Continue reading...

When the great painter died, 200 macabre photographs of elephant carcasses were found in his studio. They were by Peter Beard – and they propelled the artist into the heart of darknessIf you look into the eyes of a portrait, especially a self-portrait, by Rembrandt, you seem to see a “soul”. Such religious ideas and readings have shaped the story of art from its very beginnings and continue to seduce us today. But Francis Bacon was the first artist to paint people as animals. His subjects are rendered without souls, as flesh and bone, as blood and brain – in short, as animated meat. This ruthless Darwinian vision of the struggle of life makes him one of the most unnerving of artists. And his radical eye for humankind’s natural history gives a certain resonance to his friendship with one of the most brilliant wildlife photographers of the 20th century.After the Irish-born British painter died in 1992, more than 200 photographs of dead elephants were found in his London studio. They were given to him by Peter Beard, who took many of them from an aeroplane flying low over the grasslands of Kenya. The two would converse avidly about Beard’s images of these great, grey giants slowly rotting into monuments of white bone and ivory in the African sun. They inspired some of Bacon’s most pungent thoughts about art and life. “I would say the photographs of elephants,” he said, “are naturally suggestive.” What he saw was “a trigger – a release”. Continue reading...

Some have missed the heartbreak of a funeral, others the joy of a pregnancy, but all are celebrating Australia-New Zealand travel

At least 150 people killed in Indonesia and Timor-Leste after tropical cyclone Seroja hit regionIn Tasitolu, a suburb in the west of the capital, Dili, Batista Elo balances his young daughter on his hip as he stands in flood waters that reach up his thighs.“I saved my family first and after that just got into the belongings, but there were some things that didn’t get saved,” recalls Batista of the wild Saturday night when his home was suddenly flooded. Continue reading...

Australia has accused the EU of ‘semantics’ after European Commission said just one shipment of 250,000 AstraZeneca doses has been formally blocked, but Coalition says AZ has not been able to secure an export licence from Europe

Four crew jump off stern as Dutch ship listed dangerously, while remaining eight airlifted off deckA Dutch cargo ship is adrift in the Norwegian Sea after all of its crew members were airlifted, with some having to jump into the rough waters to be rescued.The Eemslift Hendrika, which was carrying several smaller boats from Bremerhaven in Germany to Kolvereid in Norway, made a distress call Monday, reporting a heavy list after stormy weather displaced some of its cargo. Continue reading...

Footage posted by the Norwegian Coast Guard shows the rescue of 12 crew members of a stricken vessel in the North Sea. Crew onboard the Eemslift Hendrika made a distress call on Monday, reporting a heavy list after stormy weather displaced some of its cargo. Some of the crew had to jump into the water because the vessel was leaning so much. All of the 12 were brought to safety. The 111 metre (366 feet) Netherlands-registered ship, which was transporting smaller yachts, had lost power in its main engine and was now drifting towards land. Continue reading...

Lucy Maino faced intense online harassment over clip in incident that critics say highlights misogyny in PNGMiss Papua New Guinea has been stripped of her crown after sharing a video of herself twerking on TikTok, with critics saying the incident reveals a deep-seated culture of misogyny in the country.Lucy Maino, 25, who has also served as co-captain of Papua New Guinea’s women’s football team, faced intense online harassment after she shared a video of herself twerking on the video-sharing app TikTok. Continue reading...

Since 2014, at least $90m of government funding for Indigenous communities has been given to 10 of Australia’s biggest companies under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. This money is meant to tackle the enormous gap in employment and wealth between Indigenous people and the rest of the population.Indigenous affairs editor Lorena Allam explores whether these funds are going to the right place

Prosecutors in Sicily alleged to have wiretapped conversations involving at least 15 journalists

Hopes rise of lifting Trump sanctions and bringing Iran and US to compliance in two monthsA broad roadmap designed to rescue the Iran nuclear deal undermined by Donald Trump has been agreed in talks in Vienna, with the aim of bringing Iran and the US back into compliance in as little as two months.Two working groups have been set up to examine the economic sanctions on Iran that the US will need to lift to come back into compliance with UN security council resolutions, and the steps Iran will need to take to bring its nuclear programme in line with the terms set out in the 2015 deal. Continue reading...

Evidence ‘consistent with causality’ but vaccination programme must continue, says drug safety specialist

Europe’s drug regulator denies finding connection between the AstraZeneca jab and rare blood clotting syndrome despite official’s claims earlier

Hughes’ work ranged from hard-hitting overseas reports, to sport and television writing as well as candid accounts of coping with cancer

Analysis: contrasting national outcomes highlight how easily UK could blow its chances

Anglo-Swedish company ‘solely’ to blame, says EU commissioner as bloc misses April vaccination target

As heartbreak coincided with the pandemic, the Wye Oak songwriter’s cerebral coping mechanisms failed. Her stirring new album confronts her emotional blindspotsAs the promo cycle for Jenn Wasner’s second album as Flock of Dimes kicked in recently, she felt eager to get back to work. Then she was struck by a new feeling. “Oh, but I don’t want to do anything?” she recalls from her green sofa on a sunny day in Carrboro, North Carolina, sounding bemused. “I would like to read my book and lie in the sun. A thought like that was so novel to me.”Over the past decade, Wasner seemed to have an unusually healthy relationship to her work. In 2011, she and fellow Baltimorean Andy Stack experienced a breakthrough with their third album as indie-rock duo Wye Oak, the ruminative and stormy Civilian: rave reviews, syncs on The Walking Dead and One Tree Hill, 200 gigs in one year. Burned out by their moment in the sun, Wasner decided to abandon the pursuit of career growth to remain connected to her music and unencumbered by external expectations, following in the footsteps of her irreducible hero, Arthur Russell. Continue reading...

Labour leftwingers and Tory libertarians oppose them, while Keir Starmer’s position appears flexible

There’s still no justice for the 64 lives lost in a 2015 nightclub fire. Our Oscar-nominated film Collective tells their story“We were asked to make a list of values that bring success or failure in life. With success I trust friendship, solidarity, hard work, altruism, study. With failure I trust selfishness, deceit, submission.”Alex Hogea was 18 when he wrote this in one of his high-school tests. One year later, in October 2015, he was a victim of the fire in the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest. He died four weeks later in Vienna from several bacterial infections that he contracted while hospitalised in Bucharest. Alex was one of 64 people at the club killed by either the fire or negligence in the Romanian healthcare system. Continue reading...

Russian opposition figure has fever, cough and has lost weight, according to legal team member who visited himAlexei Navalny’s lawyer has said confirmed that the opposition leader is “seriously ill” after reports emerged that he had been transferred to a prison sick ward for a respiratory illness and had been tested for coronavirus.The Kremlin critic said in a note published on Monday that he was coughing and had a temperature of 38.1C (100.6F). Several prisoners from his ward had already been treated in hospital for tuberculosis, Navalny wrote. Hours later, the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia reported he had been moved to a sick ward and tested for coronavirus, among other diseases. Continue reading...

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...

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...

Next stage of easing of lockdown will mean non-essential retail can reopen, among other changes

Dozens are still missing and thousands have been left homeless after a tropical cyclone hit over the weekend

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...

Only people with immunity will be allowed to perform umrah; Italy death toll reaches 111,326

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...

President Buhari condemns ‘act of terrorism’ after gunmen destroy part of prison walls in Owerri, Imo state

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...

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...

Reindeer breeder rescues man after bad weather foils attempt to cross over mountains from Sweden

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...

The Square Mile has the UK’s best paid workers, but it’s tough for the people whose jobs rely on them

Restrictions in city contrast with those in Spanish capital as Agut and Can Soteras shut for good

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...

Officials interpret criticism of plans for new Istanbul waterway as direct challenge to civilian government