World news | The Guardian

A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Venezuela to Hong Kong

Last year, Jair Bolsonaro declared Brazil had reached ‘the tail end’ of one of the world’s worst outbreaks. Three months later the country has lost almost 100,000 more livesIt was midway through February when André Machado realized Brazil’s coronavirus catastrophe was racing into a bewildering and remorseless new phase. “The floodgates opened and the water came gushing out,” recalled the infectious disease specialist from the Our Lady of the Conception hospital in Porto Alegre, one of the largest cities in southern Brazil.Related: Experts warn Brazil facing darkest days of Covid crisis as deaths hit highest level Continue reading...

The Metropolitan police announce that Wayne Couzens, 48, a serving police constable with the force, was on Friday charged with kidnapping Sarah Everard from a London street and murdering her. The announcement says Couzens will appear at Westminster magistrates' court on Saturday. The Met pays tribute to Everard's family for their 'fortitutde and forbearance'; they remain supported by specialist officers

The Korean-American actor has spent his career living a dual existence. He speaks about the Oscar buzz around his new film Minari, and why he loves the Fresh PrinceGrowing up, Steven Yeun had two personalities. At school, he says, he was subdued, but at home, or the Korean church his family attended, he was more assertive. Seeking a kindred spirit for this sense of dislocation, he found one on TV, sat on a throne as the Prince of Bel-Air. “I was really drawn to Will Smith,” Yeun remembers. “When you think about the Fresh Prince, it was kind of that concept. He’s caught between places, just trying to be himself.”Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading...

He earned a fortune at Goldman Sachs, but now the banker wants the financial sector to reassess its values and tackle the climate emergency

Mexican street snacks, stuffed with prawns and corn, then rolled and fried; and a chewy chocolate dessert inspired by a classic Japanese cakeFood that comes in a roll will always mean one of two things. One, that it can be eaten by hand, which makes it feel relaxed and informal – wraps, sausage rolls, sushi, burritos, spring rolls and so on. And second that, as well as the roll’s exterior, which is delicious in itself, there is also the promise of the filling, as in a crepe, roulade, arctic roll and so on. This always makes rolls feel exciting. I offer both today: the taquito is relaxed and informal, the mochi a spectacular, filling-filled ta-da! Continue reading...

Reclaim These Streets appeals to people not to go to event and will announce details of ‘virtual gathering’A vigil in south London in response to the disappearance of Sarah Everard has been cancelled, organisers said.Organisers Reclaim These Streets planned to host a demonstration on Clapham Common in south London on Saturday, near to where the 33-year-old, whose body was formally identified on Friday, went missing. But organisers said that despite their attempts to work with police to ensure the vigil could go ahead safely, they now felt it could not go ahead. Continue reading...

The second season of the UK spin-off has been a huge hit. Ahead of the final, Ellie Diamond, Lawrence Chaney, Tayce and Bimini Bon Boulash spill the beansOn Thursday nights, drag queen Tayce settles in to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK with his housemates. “We sit around, get some food, watch the thing, then have a couple of bevs after,” he says, talking from his bedroom in London. The experience is a little different for Tayce than for most viewers; he is also one of the finalists in this year’s competition. One of his flatmates, A’Whora, was also on the show, just missing out on a top-four spot. “She’s upstairs now,” Tayce says, in his nimble Newport lilt. In ordinary times, the queens taking part in what he calls “the Olympics of drag” would be out in the world, watching at viewing parties in pubs and bars, appearing at Drag Race-themed events. But for now, they’re at home, like everyone else. “Live it up,” he says, grinning.Along with Ellie Diamond, Bimini Bon Boulash and Lawrence Chaney, Tayce is about to compete in the final of Drag Race UK. (The queens use the pronouns she/her in drag; out of drag, Bimini is non-binary and goes by they/them, while the others use he/him, hence the joyous jumble.) This is the anglicised, rough-around-the-edges, wildly spirited spin-off of the US mothership. So far, the second season has been spectacular. The final was filmed in November, but with multiple endings, like Game Of Thrones – meaning none of them know who has won until the episode is broadcast. Alan Turing as a high-concept trouser suit. There was a perfect Katie Price impression, asserting that “nipples are the eyes of the face”. There was H&M-gate, in which host RuPaul berated a contestant for performing in a shop-bought dress, inciting a fierce debate about the economics of drag in a pandemic. Covid tore the season in half, inserting a seven-month break into filming; one contestant did not return after a positive test. The contestants launched UK Hun, a Eurovision parody song and inescapable earworm that became a bona fide Top-40 hit. Bing bang bong. What’s the best version of RuPaul’s Drag Race? It’s UK, hun. Continue reading...

Businesses cite higher costs, customs delays and paperwork as among the problems they faceThe first couple of weeks in January after Brexit were a disaster for Ronald Scordia’s shellfish exporting business. “The truck was late arriving, then took 48 hours to arrive in France, missed the connection on the Friday, and wasn’t able to be sent on until the Monday. You can imagine the quality of the produce when it got there; we lost a lot of money,” he said. Continue reading...

I want to show that we haven’t gone insane in his absence. It doesn’t help that he arrived so close to pickling dayI am in my office shed, rushing to get some work done in order to clear my morning. An hour will do it, I think. Plenty of time.I send my wife a message that says, “Text me when you’ve got him.” A few seconds later she replies with the words: “Nearly home.” Continue reading...

Matt, 32, export administrator, and Holly, 33, executive assistantWhat were you hoping for?

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New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern pledges to fight racism as she joins around 1,000 people to mark the second anniversary of the mosque attacksThe 51 worshippers murdered in the Christchurch mosque attacks almost two years ago by a white supremacist have been remembered at a national service with songs, prayers, speeches and pledges to rebuild the community.New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the governor general, Patsy Reddy, joined around 1,000 members of the community at Christchurch’s Horncastle arena on Saturday for the service. Continue reading...

Federal health minister Greg Hunt released from hospital after leg infectionThe Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has been moved out of intensive care and on to a hospital ward after breaking a bone in his back and several ribs when he slipped on wet stairs earlier this week.Also on Saturday, the federal health minister, Greg Hunt, was released from hospital after a leg infection. Continue reading...

Birx, who was criticised for not standing up to Trump over Covid, takes job with Texas company that says its purifiers clean virus from the airDr Deborah Birx, the former Trump White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, is taking a private sector job, joining a Texas manufacturer that says its purifiers clean Covid-19 from the air within minutes and from surfaces within hours.Birx will join Dallas-based ActivePure as chief scientific and medical adviser, she and the company said on Friday. Continue reading...

Queensland premier says doctor at Princess Alexandra hospital treated two patients with the UK strain of coronavirusA Brisbane hospital doctor who tested positive for Covid-19 after treating two patients with the UK strain of the virus visited a cafe, a gym and a hotel in the hours before she developed symptoms, Queensland Health authorities have confirmed.The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said on Saturday contact tracing was underway after the positive test result triggered a snap lockdown of Princess Alexandra hospital on Friday. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison joins Joe Biden, Yoshihide Suga and Narendra Modi in plan to send 1bn coronavirus vaccines to Asian and Pacific island countries

Police chiefs’ organisation tells forces they must not ignore guidance banning gatheringsPolice forces have been warned not to allow vigils planned by thousands of women in dozens of towns and cities to honour the memory of Sarah Everard this weekend amid frustration about “endemic” levels of violence against women and girls.The Guardian has learned that the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) told forces across England and Wales on Friday that they could not waive lockdown guidance banning gatherings, after it was discussed with the policing minister, Kit Malthouse. The document says that he is “supportive”. Continue reading...

The opposition leader conceded the election weeks ago in an ‘astonishing’ campaignMark McGowan is expected to be returned as premier of Western Australia with an increased majority on Saturday night, in an unsurprising result following a surprising campaign in which attention has been focused on the dwindling fortunes of the Liberal party.Twelve months ago the McGowan government would have expected to win a second term handily at the cost of a few seats. Instead, with a forecast swing of up to 12.5% to Labor, the government is expected to pick up seats and reduce the Liberal party’s numbers in the lower house to low single digits. Continue reading...

Staff and pupils talk of Covid fears and exam worries but improved face-to-face communication

The song, I’ll Teach You by the vocal regime supporters Galasy ZMesta, appears to mock protesters

In A Little Devil in America, Hanif Abdurraqib set out to celebrate black artists across music, dance, comedy and more, who succeeded even when their own country refused to honour themWhen I began A Little Devil in America, I was thinking about Josephine Baker. The title of the book comes from Baker, from her speech at the March on Washington in 1963. It is a speech that is often overlooked. The legacy of the march so often centres on its male speakers (Martin Luther King Jr, A Philip Randolph), and Baker was well past her most notable prime. At 57, she chose to return to the US from France and make a small speech – but also to confront the country she’d left and vowed to not return to. The speech is at times tender, at times funny, at times teeming with rage. There was a fullness to it; Baker considering the vastness of her life and the many lives she’d lived. Her speech is defiant and brilliant, punctuated by Baker aligning her experiences with the national plight of black people in America:You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ’cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world. Continue reading...

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says contact tracing is underway and anyone with symptoms should get tested immediatelyBrisbane’s Princess Alexandra hospital has been placed into lockdown after a staff member contracted Covid-19 from a patient.The staff member had contact with the patient in the early hours of Wednesday and was infectious in the community on Thursday, Queensland Health said in a statement on Friday night. The staff member is a doctor, the ABC reported. Continue reading...

Ahead of Mother’s Day, readers share the best piece of life advice they got from their mums

Sathnam Sanghera speaks out against ‘vicious’ abuse he is receiving over his bestselling book: ‘Empire has been weaponised by the right wing, ever since Black Lives Matter’

Women behind Reclaim These Streets launch emergency action saying force’s decision is unlawfulOrganisers of a vigil for Sarah Everard are launching an emergency legal challenge against the Metropolitan police, arguing their decision to ban the gathering planned for Saturday night is unlawful.Women organising the Reclaim These Streets vigil planned on Clapham Common in south London accused the Met of silencing thousands of women who wanted to “stand up for our right to feel safe on our streets”, after police said the gathering would be unlawful under lockdown restrictions. Continue reading...

Al Garthwaite, organiser of UK’s first Reclaim the Night marches, speaks out ahead of planned Sarah Everard vigilIn order to be good allies, men must talk to and challenge other men about women’s safety, Al Garthwaite, an organiser of the UK’s first Reclaim the Night marches, has said.“Being an ally means standing up and saying: anything that deters women from going out and feeling safe is unacceptable,” Garthwaite said. “We want male allies to talk to other men and help them understand. That’s the most important thing men can do.” Continue reading...

Mexico's famed masked wrestlers take the fight to Covid-19 at a wholesale market, the Central de Abastos in Mexico City. Stallholders and customers were encouraged to wear face masks and use sanitiser. Mexico has recorded more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths, the fourth country to do so. It was the first country in Latin America to begin vaccinating its population Continue reading...

The man, who is now managing director of Macquarie Bank, releases statement saying he remembers discussions with Porter as far back as 1992

Rallies against gender discrimination and violence will take place on 14 and 15 March – here are the details attendees need to knowAcross Australia, survivors and their allies will be calling for gender equality, and justice for victims of sexual assault, through a series of protests under the banner March4Justice.Related: The March4Justice women who are raring to rally: 'A time of reckoning for Australia' Continue reading...

Development threatens to exacerbate what is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis

People evicted from islands off Nigerian city say accusations of oil theft are smokescreen to clear land for developmentComfort Obinna sat in the shade of a mango tree she planted 25 years ago, above a sea of broken blocks of concrete.The rubble covers the compound that used to be her modest home on Tarkwa Bay Beach in Lagos. Now nearly everything the 73-year-old owned, including the space where she farmed her chickens and pigs, has been lost. Continue reading...

Access to Covid vaccines is set to be one of the main talking points when Scott Morrison meets with Joe Biden and the leaders of Japan and IndiaAustralia has been urged to seize a leadership role in promoting health security across the Indo-Pacific, with analysts highlighting efforts by China and Russia to increase their regional influence through “vaccine diplomacy”.Access to Covid-19 vaccines is likely to be one of the main items on the agenda when Scott Morrison joins a virtual meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, and the prime ministers of Japan and India on Saturday morning Australian time. Continue reading...

Denmark, Norway and Iceland halt rollout after 30 ‘thromboembolic events’, but PM says Australia won’t change vaccine’s classificationScott Morrison has sought to reassure Australians that the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is safe after some European countries suspended their rollouts of the jab during an investigation into cases of blood clots.The prime minister said he had discussed the reports with health department secretary, Brendan Murphy, who did not believe there was a need to change Australia’s classification of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Continue reading...

Group is planning event in south London, close to where Sarah Everard disappeared, to ‘remember all women lost to violence’Reclaim These Streets – the group planning to hold a vigil on Saturday evening close to the spot where Sarah Everard disappeared – has said it has been told by police that such action would be unlawful and could bring criminal prosecution and thousands of pounds in fines.The organisation is planning to hold the socially distanced event on Clapham Common, and at least nine others are planned in towns and cities such as Cambridge, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool and St Andrews. Continue reading...

Over 2,000 daily deaths recorded for second consecutive day; strict rules to be gradually relaxed from next week in Portugal

Discovery of remains in search for Sarah Everard causes outpouring of anger as female MPs calls for tougher actionBoris Johnson came under concerted pressure to take action to tackle male violence and misogyny and make the UK safer for women, as the discovery of human remains in the search for Sarah Everard caused an outpouring of anger.The inquiry into the disappearance of the 33-year-old marketing executive added poignancy to the annual International Women’s Day debate in the House of Commons as dozens of female MPs told moving and angry stories of the harassment they had been subjected to. Continue reading...

Vincent Muscat describes spying on the journalist and discussions about how she would be killedThe self-confessed killer of Daphne Caruana Galizia told a court on Thursday that he and two other men used binoculars and a telescope to follow the movements of the investigative journalist for days, before planting and triggering the car bomb that killed her in 2017.Speaking in the presence of journalists and Caruana Galizia’s relatives in hall 22 of the law courts in Malta’s capital, Valletta, Vincent Muscat gave the fullest account yet of the plot to murder the journalist. Continue reading...

Around the world, professional codes allow officers to use lethal force even when their lives and those of others are not under threat, new research findsPolice departments in major cities across the world give their officers legal impunity to use lethal force even when their lives are not in danger, according to new research commissioned by the Guardian.The study by the University of Chicago and its research partners found that not one police department of the cities surveyed had policies that were consistent with human rights guidelines set forth by the UN when it comes to use-of-force policies. Continue reading...

Air travel restrictions forced firm to burn through £4.2bn in cash to keep afloat as revenues collapsedRolls-Royce has reported a loss of £4bn for 2020 as the jet-engine manufacturer’s business was shaken by the coronavirus pandemic.The FTSE 100 manufacturer revealed it burned through £4.2bn in cash during the year as revenues from servicing passenger aircraft collapsed. It expects to burn through a further £2bn this year. Continue reading...

Users told their pin was incorrect when they tried to log in to the state’s official contact-tracing appNew South Wales residents were left unable to check in to restaurants and other venues on Thursday afternoon using the state’s official Covid check-in app, Service NSW, after it went offline.The outage lasted about four hours and affected the official Service NSW app, although Service NSW said its coronavirus webform check-in was not impacted. Continue reading...

The collapse of ecotourism during the pandemic and moves to lease land to big farms threaten vital conservation corridors

Internal figures leaked amid tit-for-tat with Boris Johnson over claims UK had export ban in place

An insomniac student is haunted by a demonic figure in this flamboyant and stylised waking dream of a filmThere is something visionary about this near-nonsensical, kitsch but atmospheric techno-thriller from Canadian director Anthony Scott Burns. Drawn along on dark somnambulic rhythms, it incorporates elements of fantasy, horror and 80s synthwave aesthetics without giving itself over completely to any of them.A wordless first 10 minutes introduces us to Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone), a runaway student apparently unwelcome or unwilling to return home, waking in spectrally lit parks and falling asleep in coffee shops. Dropping suddenly into surrealistic CGI dreams that track inexorably towards a demonic figure who, if approached too closely, wakes her with a start. Sarah decides to try and climb out of this insomniac bath by enrolling in a university sleep study. It is overseen by Dr Meyer, a Cronenbergian academic in big glasses, but run by a trio of researchers who, like the memory technicians in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, have a loose relationship with scientific protocol. Becoming close to Jeremy (Landon Liboiron), she learns that they are using pioneering technology to observe the subjects’ dreams – and that the same shadowy presence manifests in all of them. Continue reading...

Huge waves swept across swathes of the north-east coast after one of the strongest quakes ever recorded, triggering a nuclear meltdownJapan has observed a moment’s silence to mark the 10th anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and triggered a nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.At 2:46 pm, the moment Japan’s north-east coast was struck by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake on 11 March 2011, people attending private and public service across the affected region bowed and fell silent, some clasping their hands in prayer. Continue reading...

The Guardian learned dozens of staff made complaints to show’s management about presenter’s outburstMultiple staff on Good Morning Britain made complaints to senior managers about Piers Morgan’s comments on the Duchess of Sussex before he quit the show, the Guardian understands.Morgan’s departure from the programme followed the announcement of 41,000 complaints to the regulator Ofcom over remarks on Monday which cast doubt on Meghan’s statement that she had been denied help with mental health issues. Continue reading...

Family court judge says parents failed to help severely overweight children and did not understand worry of West Sussex social servicesTwo teenagers have been removed from their parents’ care after social services raised concerns about their weight to a family court judge. The judge, Gillian Ellis, ruled that the children from Sussex be taken into long-term foster care. She described the case as “very sad and unusual”.Social services staff at West Sussex county council had told a family court judge about their concerns. The local authority had provided Fitbits (fitness trackers) and paid for gym membership for the family, who had also signed up to Weight Watchers. Continue reading...

Researchers in Murcia find exquisite objects at women’s graves later used as sites for elite warrior burialsA burial site found in Spain – described by archaeologists as one of the most lavish bronze age graves discovered to date in Europe – has sparked speculation that women may have been among the rulers of a highly stratified society that flourished on the Iberian peninsula until 1550BC.Since 2013, a team of more than a dozen researchers have been investigating the site of La Almoloya in the southern Spanish region of Murcia. Continue reading...

The $1.2bn package to provide cheap flights has already been dismissed as ‘second-rate’ by tourism sector, as opposition questions scopeLabor has questioned why 13 regions to benefit from half-price flights to boost tourism include marginal seats in Tasmania and Queensland while neighbouring areas miss out.The Morrison government on Thursday unveiled its $1.2bn tourism and aviation rescue package combining discount flights with business loans – but the scheme has already been labelled “second-rate” by the two sectors that warn it is an incomplete replacement for jobkeeper wage subsidies. Continue reading...