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Seven townships around Hawkesbury River remain evacuated as SES warns flood water can contain sewage, debris and dead animals

Washington says Beijing’s tit-for-tat sanctions will only focus attention on its ‘genocide’ against UighursThe US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has warned that China’s tit-for-tat sanctions against two Americans in the growing dispute over Beijing’s treatment of Uighurs were “baseless” and would only shine a harsh spotlight on the “genocide” in Xinjiang.“Beijing’s attempts to intimidate and silence those speaking out for human rights and fundamental freedoms only contribute to the growing international scrutiny of the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang,” Blinken said in a statement on Saturday. Continue reading...

The team whose quarantine serenade went viral are playing the long game to the NRL promised landBefore the Kaiviti Silktails rugby league team finished their Covid-19 quarantine they had become worldwide heroes. Individually singing from 35 Juliet balconies in the Sydney Sofitel Hotel, they serenaded the world with three gospel hymns, going viral with more than million hits and delivering a Fiji-style thank you to the staff and guards who had nursed them to the promised land.Their joyous gratitude was a refreshing contrast with the complaints and social media moping of other quarantined athletes, and announced the arrival of something unique. Continue reading...

Radio presenter shouted multiple expletives and appeared to be ad-libbing bulletin before being taken off airAn ABC radio presenter shouted an expletive twice during a late-night news broadcast in Adelaide before being abruptly taken off the air.The national broadcaster has said it is investigating the incident and making sure the staff member is OK. Continue reading...

William Fernandez was in Wormwood Scrubs, west London, on charges also including indecent exposurePolice are searching for a man who was mistakenly released from prison.William Fernandez, 24, was being held on remand at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in west London while awaiting trial. The Metropolitan police said he was arrested and charged with sexual assault, indecent exposure and possession of a class B drug in April 2020. Continue reading...

This year’s event focuses on the link between harming the natural world and disease outbreaks like Covid-19Cities around the world were turning off their lights on Saturday for Earth Hour, with this year’s event highlighting the link between the destruction of nature and increasing outbreaks of diseases like Covid-19.In London, the Houses of Parliament, London Eye, Shard skyscraper and neon signs of Piccadilly Circus were among the landmarks flicking the switches. Continue reading...

Queensland police contradict earlier reports from health authorities that man hosted a party for 25 guests after being told to self-isolate

Eighteen arrested after some demonstrators sit on Metrolink line creating ‘significant disruption’Related: Police under fire for 'assault' of journalist at Bristol protestEighteen people have been arrested after protesters blocked tram lines in Manchester, police said. The “kill the bill” protest – held on Saturday to demonstrate against the government’s new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill – was described as “largely peaceful” by Greater Manchester police. Continue reading...

The popularity of betting on the web surged among Australians during last year’s coronavirus lockdownsOnline casinos that appear to be targeting Australian gamblers, without an Australian licence, have not been shut down despite the communications regulator making a crackdown on illegal operators an enforcement priority.Ten apparently unlicensed online casinos marketed to Australians remain accessible two months after the Australian Communications and Media Authority told Guardian Australia that it was aware of the sites and they “all fall within our compliance priority activities”. Continue reading...

At least one foreign worker among those killed after assault on Palma, near a huge gas projectIslamist militants seized control of a town in northern Mozambique, killing several people including at least one foreign worker, near a huge gas project involving France’s Total and other energy companies, security sources said on Saturday.Militants raided the town of Palma in the northern province of Cabo Delgado on Wednesday, forcing nearly 200 people including foreign gas workers to be evacuated from a hotel where they had sought refuge. Continue reading...

Beacon hospital chief is believed to have sent his children to St Gerard’s school, where staff received jabs

British summer time officially starts at 1am on Sunday 28 March, when we all lose an hour of sleep but gain sunlightIt is time once again to try to work out which of your electronic gadgets automatically adjust for clock changes, and which do not. British summer time (BST) officially starts at 1am on Sunday 28 March, when the clocks go forward an hour to 2am. The clocks on ovens and cars can generally just be ignored – they will be correct again in six months’ time.It does mean we lose an hour’s sleep, although if you are in a house with small children and/or animals, you will know that your waking hours are governed much more by when they need attention rather than what it says on your clock. Continue reading...

The singer’s brutally frank documentary about the perils of addiction is an exhortation to those under stress to seek helpWhen the pop star Demi Lovato explains that she wants “to set the record straight about what it was that happened”, in her new documentary Dancing with the Devil, she is not messing around. The first two parts of the film, which were released on YouTube last week, tell the story of Lovato’s relapse into drug use and her near-fatal overdose in 2018. This is the era of selfies, of course, with everything documented and preserved, but a selfie captioned “Demi on crack for the first time” shocked me. This is a brutally frank account of her troubles, with seemingly nothing left out. If anyone remains in doubt that fame is a grim pact for most, and particularly for young women, then this puts the case to the jury, again and again.Dancing with the Devil was the third documentary I had seen in the last month about a famous woman under unimaginable pressure, in unimaginable pain. I watched Framing Britney Spears and saw a charismatic pop star churned up by the spotlight, hounded wherever she went, cracking under the weight of it all. With heavy heart, I watched the difficult, moving Channel 4 film about Caroline Flack, made with the participation of her brave family. It was announced recently that Brittany Murphy, the Clueless star who died at the age of 32 in 2009, will be the subject of a new two-part documentary that promises to “cut through the tabloid noise” and “[craft] a grounded account of Brittany Murphy’s life struggles”. Continue reading...

Key hurdles are size and weight of container vessel, which is as tall as a 20-storey block of flatDredge and pull, dredge and pull. Dislodging a vessel that has become lodged in sand is simple, in theory. If the vessel is as long as New York’s Empire State building is tall, then the process gets more complicated.Dredgers, tugboats and excavators, guided by world-leading consultants in salvaging ships, have been working for days to free the 220,000 tons, 400 metre-long Ever Given that became stuck in the Suez canal last Tuesday. Continue reading...

From electric train sets to Arnold Schwarzenegger action heroes, a new book from Taschen brings together American toy adverts of the 20th century. “Whenever you ask someone, ‘What was your favourite toy?’, there’s an immediate response – everybody had one,” says co-author Jim Heimann. Print adverts for toys are rare now, but these images preserve a snapshot of the society that produced them. At the start of the book, which is chronological, boys are advertised guns and adventures, while girls are sold dolls and kitchenware; gradually, attitudes (and adverts) start to shift. “I wanted to show how toys reflected what was happening at the time,” says Heimann. “It definitely does tell a story.”

A triumphant performance as musical moves from Broadway and the West End to AustraliaIf the world is looking to Australia to lead its primary theatre markets into the future, then it need look no further than Hamilton, which has opened to rapturous applause and an extended standing ovation from a masked, Covid-safe audience at the Sydney Lyric.Hamilton in Australia might not seem like a natural success. The show’s often too-earnest reverence of its colonial founding mythology is at odds with our long-standing refusal to deify our politicians. We certainly don’t study these figureheads and their adventures and misadventures in our schools (it’s a rightful gap – our unwillingness to look beyond our own colonisers and educate our children on Australian Indigenous history, languages and cultures less so). Plus, the local musical theatre sector has a troubling habit of prioritising whiteness when programming and casting shows. Continue reading...

The sumptous interior of a journalist and women’s activist’s home reflects her own life and workNever judge a book by its cover, as the adage goes, but can you judge a writer by her bookshelf? In Cristina Sivieri Tagliabue’s case, it would be a safe bet. On her floating floor-to-ceiling shelves, among the tomes on empowerment and feminism, can be found some of the Italian journalist and activist’s own.Her study on the desire in young Italian women to have plastic surgery, her collected stories on gender equality and her political biography of Emma Bonino all sit proudly on the 11-shelf structure. Continue reading...

The same thoroughness that made Angela Merkel’s government a pandemic role model is now holding it back

Actor who plays Ken Barlow in Coronation Street says he is looking forward to returning as soon as possible

75% of respondents to a survey conducted by Dating.com said that they preferred the body shape to a more toned oneThe “dad-bod” is making a return, according to a new survey, signaling a forward step for body diversity.Some 75% of respondents to a survey conducted by Dating.com said that they preferred the soft and round male body type to a more toned one. Continue reading...

Gig by Spanish band Love of Lesbian has special permission of the country’s health authorities

The singer, 53, on finding fame, taking good care of herself and what she’s missed most during the pandemicI got picked on a lot at school. I was awkward – tall, thin, with a lot of hair I didn’t know what to do with. I had these growth spurts, so I’d go to school and my clothes would be too small. I wanted to fit in but I never really got there. I think that’s what made me want to be somebody.I’m not a people person. It’s not my gift. People disappoint you, and I’m over being disappointed by people. The only thing I’ve ever really been afraid of is people. Continue reading...

Bristol’s third ‘kill the bill’ demonstration ended in chaos as violence erupted when police moved in to clear out protesters. Dogs, horses, vans and a helicopter were used to drive crowds back into the city centre in an operation that lasted until 1am. Ten arrests were made for offences including violent disorder and assaulting an emergency worker.

More than 90 people – including boy as young as five – reportedly killed on one of the bloodiest days since coupMore than 90 people across Myanmar have been killed by security forces in one of the bloodiest days of protests since a military coup last month, news reports and witnesses said.The lethal crackdown came on Armed Forces Day. Sen Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the junta leader, said during a parade in the capital, Naypyidaw, to mark the event that the military would protect the people and strive for democracy. Continue reading...

The Booker-nominated writer on how growing up between England and Zimbabwe inspired her first novel - and why she started over after reading Germaine Greer’s The Female EunuchNervous Conditions is a novel about yearning and wanting, about black girls – in this case Zimbabwean girls – desiring better for themselves and their loved ones. I wrote it as a fugitive. A fugitive from my first memories and of what my life had become.Related: Tsitsi Dangarembga: 'I am afraid. There have been abductions' Continue reading...

Galasy ZMesta song sparks backlash from opposition figures, who have faced a violent crackdown during demonstrations

A pioneer of British nature writing, Richard Mabey has always been years ahead of his time. So how does he think the pandemic will change our relationship to the natural world?After a year of virus-plagued humans observing with new wonder how wildlife boosts our wellbeing, the conclusion of the man who invented the burgeoning “nature cure” genre is unexpected. Nature, declares Richard Mabey, makes us ill. He was first told this by his fellow writer, Kathleen Jamie, and it made Mabey “think very much more deeply about the whole panoply of what ‘nature’ means,” he says. “Bacteria and viruses and man-eating tigers and predatory Asian hornets are also all part of nature. At times we need to defend ourselves from ‘nature’ but also row back from the value judgments we make about certain parts of the natural world, because we need the whole thing kicking together if the biosphere, including us, is to survive.”Mabey, who has just celebrated his 80th birthday, has been a pioneer in British nature writing and environmental thinking for five decades. He is not a contrarian but has consistently interrogated and challenged prevailing patterns of thinking in more than 30 books (so many it is difficult to conclusively count them). Nature is a “criminally abused word”, he says. And he criticises the simplicity of the assumption that we have been reconnecting with nature in the wake of the pandemic’s lockdowns. “I’m particularly aroused by this term ‘reconnection with nature’, given that we are all every moment every breath of our lives very connected with it. I hate to say any words in support of our great leader but at one point during lockdown Boris Johnson used the phrase: ‘We must be humble in the face of nature.’ He was thereby putting the pandemic on the side of nature. As we hopefully mature in our understandings of our relationship with the world outside, we have to move towards a much more broad-based concept of what nature means. When people say: ‘Yeah! Go out and reconnect with nature! Nature makes you well!’ in fact they are just talking about a cherry-picked selection – trees and birds and flowers.” Continue reading...

Daily Mirror reporter shares footage that appears to show police pushing him and hitting him with batonPolice have come under fire for their treatment of a reporter at demonstrations in Bristol on Friday night, during violent clashes between officers and protesters.Daily Mirror journalist Matthew Dresch shared video footage that appeared to show police pushing him and hitting him with a baton as he shouted that he was a member of the press. Continue reading...

Force receives multiple reports of offences after reviewing testimonies on Everyone’s Invited websiteThe Metropolitan police has said it has received multiple reports of offences after reviewing a website featuring anonymous submissions of “misogyny, harassment, abuse and assault”.Scotland Yard said it has reviewed testimonies on the Everyone’s Invited website, a site where people can anonymously share their experiences of abuse. Continue reading...

She’s best known for her dark, difficult roles, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. The actor talks about swinging in the 60s, family tragedy – and why she’s still got It‘That photoshoot was such fun,” Charlotte Rampling says. “I was pinging.”“You were pinging?” Continue reading...

The pop-rap pioneers are back with a new album – a reaction to a year of grief, growing up and getting to know one another againAs the various members of Brockhampton, AKA the self-proclaimed “best boyband since One Direction”, log in to a slightly chaotic eight-way Zoom call, it is quickly apparent that no one is immune to lockdown cliches. The band’s producer Romil Hemnani arrives first, wandering past his laptop cradling a puppy, before returning 10 seconds later holding a different, much larger, dog. There isn’t time for anyone to laugh at my “Not a fan of journalists?” gag after he (the dog, not Hemnani) growls into the camera, before vocalist Joba, AKA Russell Boring, appears sporting shoulder-length hair and a patchy beard that screams “re-open the barbers”. By the time de facto group leader Kevin Abstract emerges, sitting in front of a swimming pool, with his rainbow-coloured dye job, it’s full house on the Zoom bingo card.Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...

Plummeting audience numbers fuel calls for government assistance as famed tablaos struggle to surviveA little after 7.30pm on Wednesday night, a small crowd gathered in a dark, brick-lined bar in central Madrid to sit at candlelit, socially-distanced tables and lose themselves for an hour in the sweat, shouts and blurred hands, hems and heels of a flamenco show.The 16 people in the audience at the Cardamomo tablao, or flamenco venue, were in luck – but then so were the eight performers on stage. Neither flamenco’s iconic place in Spanish culture nor its global status as part of Unesco’s list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity has spared it the pains and penalties of the Covid pandemic. Continue reading...

Campaign website Everyone’s Invited reveals the extent of sexual abuse and harassment in schools and universitiesAnd the stories keep coming. At the end of this week more than 5,800 anonymous testimonials cataloguing acts of sexual harassment, abuse and assault in UK schools have been posted on Everyone’s Invited – and they are still coming.But, the 22-year-old who set up the campaign in June has said that the focus on fee-paying schools risks minimising the issue, which she warns is happening in schools up and down the UK. Continue reading...

Serum Institute boss Adar Poonawalla has rented a Mayfair mansion for £50,000 a week

Six ways to bring some pizzazz to those first socially distanced interactions as restrictions are liftedFrom Monday in England, people from two households will be permitted to meet outdoors in groups of up to six, including in private gardens. While this is exciting, it may also be a little daunting – many of us will have forgotten how to socialise normally during the long months of lockdown. Here’s a quick refresher course on the art of making conversation under current guidelines: Continue reading...

Here are the current coronavirus hotspots and case locations in Queensland and what to do if you’ve visited them

I’m a dab hand with the dog clippers, but no one’s touching my new top knotIn the last month I’ve acquired an absent-minded habit: gathering my hair in a balled-up fist at the crown of my head, to see if I have enough for a top-knot. Not quite.I’m not the only one in the house who needs a haircut; everyone does apart from the middle one, who came back from America looking as if he’d had a quick trim at the airport. But so far the only efforts towards a solution have been directed at the dog. Continue reading...

Nicki, 26, charity worker, meets Kris, 29, musicianWhat were you hoping for?

Police say bricks and bottles were thrown at officers, while some protesters were pepper sprayed

US president offers US equipment to help free the Ever Given, as shipping company Maersk begins rerouting cargoJoe Biden has said the US is looking at what it can do to help free the 400-metre container ship Ever Given from its position blocking the Suez canal as the trade route crisis stretched into a fifth day.“We have equipment and capacity that most countries don’t have. And we are seeing what help we can be,” the US president said on Friday in Delaware. His comments came after a US official said the navy was prepared to send a team of dredging experts to the canal, but was awaiting approval from local authorities. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison says China’s 116.2% to 218.4% levies on Australia’s wine imports are ‘retaliation’Australia’s trade minister threatened to take China to the World Trade Organization on Saturday over its “unjustifiable” decision to increase duties on Australian wine imports for up to five years.Related: Australia and New Zealand welcome sanctions on China over Uighur abuses but impose none of their own Continue reading...

Brazil’s overall death toll now more than 307,000; Spain’s infection rate rose to 138.6 per 100,000 people

Charles Scerri QC finds harassment did occur and complainant was ‘an honest and sincere witness’Three years after an inquiry was ordered into sexual misconduct allegations against former Melbourne lord mayor Robert Doyle when he was chairman of Melbourne Health, the QC who led the investigation has found the harassment did occur and that the complainant was “an honest and sincere witness”.Charles Scerri QC led the investigation on behalf of the government following reports in 2018 that Doyle sexually harassed a woman at the Melbourne Health medical awards ceremony in 2016, touching her on her upper thigh repeatedly under a table and making inappropriate remarks. At the time, Doyle was chairman of the board of Melbourne Health. Continue reading...

Katharine Murphy sits down with the Nationals’ deputy leader, David Littleproud, to discuss the party’s stance on reducing carbon emissions. They discuss how communities in regional areas want to see progress in tackling climate change, and whether the party is ready to address the facts or continue its turbulent stance Continue reading...

Beijing wants to silence critics of its treatment of Uighurs. But the impact will be broaderChina’s response to criticisms of horrifying human rights violations in Xinjiang is clear and calculated. Its aims are threefold. First, the sanctions imposed upon individuals and institutions in the EU and UK are direct retaliation for those imposed upon China over its treatment of Uighurs. That does not mean they are like-for-like: the EU and UK measures targeted officials responsible for human rights abuses, while these target non-state actors – elected politicians, thinktanks, lawyers and academics – simply for criticising those abuses.Second, they seek more broadly to deter any criticism over Xinjiang, where Beijing denies any rights violations. Third, they appear to be intended to send a message to the EU, UK and others not to fall in line with the harsher US approach towards China generally. Beijing sees human rights concerns as a pretext for defending western hegemony, pointing to historic and current abuses committed by its critics. But mostly it believes it no longer needs to tolerate challenges. Continue reading...

Ministers under growing pressure to prevent variants undermining vaccine programme

Report says France did not do enough to halt the 1994 killings, but found no evidence of complicityFrance bears the burden of “heavy and damning responsibilities” in the Rwandan genocide but was not complicit in the slaughter, according to the findings of an official commission set up by President Emmanuel Macron.Up to 800,000 people, mainly from Rwanda’s minority Tutsi ethnic population, were massacred in a wave of killings in 1994. Continue reading...

Ursula von der Leyen has said the EU is transparent and open, and welcomes other countries to be transparent with their exports.Speaking at a virtual summit, she said contracts should be fulfilled before exporting vaccines and should keep reciprocity, which needs to be transparent so supply chains stay intact.The president of the European commission said companies that honour their contracts are important to the vaccine programme, both in Europe and worldwide.

Calls for an independent inquiry into claims against the attorney general are set to continue regardless of any cabinet changesFriends of the deceased woman who made an allegation of rape against the attorney general, Christian Porter, say they will continue to push for an independent inquiry into the case regardless of any imminent reshuffle, and have urged his demotion to the back bench.The prime minister, Scott Morrison, who is expected to strip Porter of his attorney general and manager of government business roles when he rejigs the ministry this weekend, has indicated he is considering advice from the solicitor general about Porter’s current duties. Continue reading...

More areas of the country get mobility restrictions while Hungary and Poland face crises