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Chief negotiator, David Frost, claims bloc struggling to get used to ‘independent actor in its neighbourhood’The European Union is expected to ask for more time to ratify the Brexit trade deal, the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator has said as he laid the blame for continuing UK-EU tensions at the door of Brussels.David Frost claimed that a resolution to now strained relations required a “different spirit” from the EU, in comments made less than 48 hours before a crunch meeting between Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove and a senior European commission figure. Continue reading...

Amendment would have given UK courts a role in determining if genocide is taking placeMinisters have been accused of making a “mockery of democracy” by blocking a clear vote on giving the UK courts a role in determining whether a genocide is taking place.The issue, wrapped up in the trade bill, will now return to the Lords where the proposal for a role for the UK courts – driven by allegations that Uighur Muslims are suffering a genocide at the hands of the Chinese government – is likely to be inserted for a third time. Continue reading...

President Emmanuel Macron is right to want to face up to a dark chapter in French historyIn a recent speech on Islamist extremism, Emmanuel Macron described France as “a country with a colonial past and traumas it still hasn’t resolved, with facts that underpin our collective psyche. The Algerian war is part of this.” Mr Macron has made similar remarks throughout his presidency. An estimated five million French residents have links of some kind to Algeria, and the shadow cast by the colonial experience is long and divisive. Nostalgic exiles and French military veterans, led by the ex-paratrooper Jean Marie Le Pen, were instrumental in the formation of the far-right Front National.The Algerian diaspora in France has a rather different take on the age of empire. Previous presidents have simply steered clear of a war associated with national humiliation, savage violence and imperialist racism. But in a country with one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe, Mr Macron has concluded that this official amnesia has become untenable. Continue reading...

Debbie French says firm provided more flammable version of panels by default as part of marketing strategyThe executive who sold the cladding used on Grenfell Tower knew it could burn but did not tell customers, she has admitted to the public inquiry into the fire.Debbie French, the UK sales manager for Arconic from 2007 to 2014, said the company provided the more flammable version of the panels by default in a marketing strategy that recognised a fire-retardant version that “drastically increases fire resistance” was less likely to secure contracts on price. Continue reading...

Temporary accommodation will not now be used as ‘additional capacity’ to house asylum seekers at the site

Arrest warrant issued over alleged role in cum-ex trades that defrauded the state of million of eurosInterpol has added New Zealand citizen Paul Mora to its list of most wanted criminals, after German authorities issued an international arrest warrant over the former London banker’s alleged involvement in a multimillion euro tax fraud scheme.Mora, 53, is one of six people charged in 2017 by Frankfurt prosecutors over the “cum-ex” scandal, a complex derivatives juggling act that siphoned taxpayer’s money from German state coffers, causing estimated damages of more than €113m. Continue reading...

Megrim is caught in abundance off the coast of Cornwall, but until now has been much more popular in Spain than the UK. It’s hoped a new name might change all thatName: Cornish sole.

Hopes of key International Criminal Court appointment threatened by the UK’s refusal to act on UN rulingsThe UK’s “colonial approach” to the Chagos Islands may yet damage hopes that a British QC will be appointed chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in succession to Fatou Bensouda.Karim Khan is the current favourite for the position. But the UK’s refusal to recognise two adverse international court judgements on the ownership of the Chagos Islands, a British claimed territory in the Indian Ocean, has stymied plans for consensus to build around Khan for the post. Continue reading...

Explainer: the rules UK government is putting in place to prevent spread of new variants

Police arrest three men accused of demanding money from mourning relatives for spaces in Tropea graves

Man is alleged to have been Nazi SS guard at Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945German prosecutors have charged a 100-year-old man with 3,518 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served during the second world war as a Nazi SS guard at a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin.The man is alleged to have worked at the Sachsenhausen camp between 1942 and 1945 as an enlisted member of the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, said Cyrill Klement, who led the investigation of the centenarian for the Neuruppin prosecutors’ office. Continue reading...

Private equity groups signal interest as brands mixing comfort, heritage and durability soar during Covid pandemic

Nutri-Score system fails to take account of health benefits of meats like jamón ibérico, say farmersSpain’s Iberian pork producers are hoping their famous meats will follow in the wake of olive oil and be excused from a new traffic-light food labelling scheme, arguing it fails to take account of what they claim are the health benefits of jamón ibérico.Spain is in the process of implementing the Nutri-Score system, which grades foods from a green A to a red E on packaging. The voluntary scheme has been billed as a way to help EU countries advance towards bloc-wide food labelling by the end of 2022 as part of the European commission’s “fair, healthy and environmentally friendly” Farm-to-Fork strategy. Continue reading...

Court tells professors to apologise to 81-year-old woman who claims they defamed her late uncleA Warsaw court has ordered two prominent historians to apologise to an elderly woman who claimed they had defamed her late uncle, in a case seen as critical to independent Holocaust research in Poland.Prof Jan Grabowski of the University of Ottawa and Prof Barbara Engelking of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research were accused of defaming Edward Malinowski, a wartime mayor, by suggesting he gave up Jews to Nazi Germans. Continue reading...

Head of organising committee in Japan, Yoshiro Mori, under pressure to step down as anger growsThe International Olympic Committee (IOC) has condemned derogatory remarks about women by the head of the Tokyo 2020 Games organising committee, Yoshiro Mori, as “absolutely inappropriate”.The unusually strong intervention came after Mori complained last week that meetings tended to drag on because “competitive” women in attendance “talked too much”. Continue reading...

Latest updates: health secretary tells MPs that people who try to evade hotel quarantine rules could face up to 10 years in jail

A French teen ski champion navigates sexual exploitation by her male coach in Charlène Favier’s difficult but impressive debutIs this a tale of abuse, or forbidden love? Or is there something insidious in asking that question, suggesting an ambiguity that will err leniently on the side of love? Slalom is the debut feature by director and co-writer Charlène Favier, who has indicated that it is drawn from personal experience and her own teen years growing up in the ski resort of Val-d’Isère in south-eastern France. It is impeccably acted and beautifully shot, although I wondered if it is burdened by a softcore-tasteful aesthetic and a tactful reluctance to take its own narrative implications very far. The movie finishes on an unresolved chord, as if we have left the story months or years before the actual scandalous denouement. But it is arguably faithful to the mood of messy bewilderment and frustration that governs the ongoing situation.

Tunisian director of multi-award-winning The Silences of the Palace broke the mould with films about the trauma suffered by generations of womenMoufida Tlatli, the pioneering Tunisian film-maker hailed as the first Arab woman to direct a feature film, has died aged 73. News media said that she died on Sunday, with the news confirmed by the Tunisian ministry of culture.Tlatli remains best known for her breakthrough 1994 feature The Silences of the Palace, a lyrical study of a woman’s return to an abandoned royal residence, which tackled the themes of exploitation and trauma as experienced across generations of Arab women. It won a string of international awards, including the Sutherland trophy at the London film festival for the most “original and imaginative” film of the year, and was named as one of Africa’s 10 best films by critic and director Mark Cousins. The film was inspired by her mother’s difficult life; in 2001, Tlatli told the Guardian she “was riven with guilt … It was so insupportable, exhausting, suffocating.” Continue reading...

The company faces an existential crisis: will it significantly reform or risk its licence?The ball is now firmly in the Crown Resort board’s court.It is facing an existential decision. It must either offer up a major program of reform for the company to the NSW regulator, the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority (ILGA), including enhanced money-laundering protections and a wholesale cleanout of its board, or lose its Sydney casino licence – and possibly licences in other states. Continue reading...

Government faces accusations it is taking Covid-fighting supplies intended for developing countriesJustin Trudeau is facing growing pressure to speed up Canada’s sluggish distribution of the coronavirus vaccine, as the country fends off accusations that it is taking supplies of the drug meant for developing countries.The federal government drew sharp criticism last week when it announced that it would draw on Covax, a mechanism created to fairly distribute Covid-19 around the world, for its supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Continue reading...

A widely shared video appeared to show Colombian guerrillas backing a candidate – but an ornithologist spotted something awryAn attempt to influence the Ecuadorian elections with a fake video purportedly showing leftwing guerrillas endorsing one of the candidates was thwarted by a ground-dwelling bird and a keen-eared ornithologist.In the video, shared on social media before the election’s first round on Sunday, three masked and armed men stood before the red and black flag of the ELN – Colombia’s largest remaining guerrilla force – and expressed their support for the leftist candidate Andrés Arauz. Continue reading...

Surge testing begins in parts of city after four cases of mutation found in two households in Moss Side

Exclusive: Sheer quantity of abusive material hindering detection while Facebook move to greater encryption is a further blowThe vast, and growing, volume of child abuse material being created and shared online is threatening to overwhelm police efforts to tackle it, senior officers have told the Guardian.And the situation is likely to worsen, National Crime Agency (NCA) child abuse lead Rob Jones warned, if social media sites such as Facebook press ahead with further encryption of messaging services. Continue reading...

Medical experts say the jab is effective against severe infection, as researchers work to adapt vaccines against variants and experiment with mixing inoculationsAustralian health authorities have moved to calm concerns about the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after a small-scale study suggested its efficacy against mild to moderate infections from the the South African variant of the virus could be as low as 10%.AstraZeneca is going through the Therapeutic Goods Administration approval process now and is slated to be rolled out from April. Continue reading...

Former guest and second hotel quarantine worker test positive, joining worker who is confirmed to have the UK Covid variant. Follow live

Safety expert expresses doubt that team conducting eviction of protesters have requisite skillsHeavy machinery such as cherry pickers being used in the vicinity of the Euston tunnel could destabilise it, says a safety expert who has raised a number of concerns about the way the eviction of the HS2 protesters is being carried out.Peter Faulding, who has worked in specialist rescue for a number of decades, is advising the legal team for the protesters in the case now being brought by Dr Larch Maxey, 48, one of the activists in the tunnel against HS2 in the high court on behalf of all of the activists in the Euston tunnel. Continue reading...

Musical effort by former National Security Council figure Dan Kritenbrink is hailed as a ‘full assault on the art of rap’The US ambassador to Vietnam has recorded an original rap and music video ahead of Tet, the lunar new year, risking inevitable ridicule by styling himself as “the boy from Hanoi”.“I’m from Nebraska. I’m not a big city boy,” raps Dan Kritenbrink in the song, released on the US embassy in Hanoi’s Facebook group. “Then three years ago I moved to Hanoi.” Continue reading...

Muslim Council of Great Britain brings case against policy preventing burials on unproven health grounds

Those who rose up against dictatorship believe their example will inspire another generationTen years ago they were overthrowing Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Now they are in exile in Britain, under threat of imprisonment by the military regime. For Cairo’s revolutionaries, it has been a long journey of high hopes and broken dreams.“I was part of a historical moment,” says Sayed, 39. He was working in the Middle East in December 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunisia, set himself on fire in a protest against his treatment by local officials. Fuelled by social media coverage, the incident sparked protests around the region, including in Egypt, where crowds flocked to Tahrir Square in Cairo demanding the overthrow of Mubarak. Continue reading...

Māori party co-leader said he had chosen to wear cultural dress in defiance of dress code which requires men to wear tiesThe Māori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi has defied the order to wear a tie in the New Zealand parliament’s debating chamber – and was promptly ejected by the Speaker.“It’s not about ties it’s about cultural identity mate,” Waititi said as he left the chamber, local media reported. Continue reading...

Foreign minister Marise Payne says Australia stands up for its citizens but that does not mean it’s interfering with China’s legal systemThe Australian government has rejected China’s claims of meddling after Canberra called for the detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei to be treated humanely, while the head of the security committee has labelled the accusation as “absurd”.Chinese authorities have confirmed that Cheng – an anchor for the Chinese state-owned English-language news channel China Global Television Network – has been formally arrested “on suspicion of illegally providing state secrets to foreign forces” after nearly six months of detention. Continue reading...

Media mogul is accused of foreign collusion and is the highest profile figure arrested under the national security lawHong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai will remain in jail after the city’s highest court sided with authorities to keep him in jail pending further legal arguments, in the first real legal challenge to the national security law.On Tuesday, the court of final appeal gave the department of justice leave to appeal against a high court decision to grant Lai bail while he awaits trial on foreign collusion charges under the national security law. Continue reading...

Impeachment managers will present scene in harrowing detail using video and audio recordings

Supervisor promptly reversed the action after noticing lye measurements suddenly changing wildlyLocal and federal authorities are investigating how a hacker was able to remotely gain access to a Florida city’s water treatment plant in an unsuccessful attempt at what could have amounted to a mass poisoning. Continue reading...

Confidential UN report reveals Pyongyang was acting in violation of international sanctionsNorth Korea maintained and developed its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes throughout 2020 in violation of international sanctions, said a UN diplomat with knowledge of a confidential report given to security council members on Monday.The report by independent sanctions monitors said Pyongyang “produced fissile material, maintained nuclear facilities and upgraded its ballistic missile infrastructure”, and continued to seek technology for those programmes from abroad. Continue reading...

Micronesian sub-grouping walks out over selection of new secretary-generalThe Pacific Islands Forum – the Pacific’s most influential regional body – is in disarray after nearly one-third of its member countries quit en masse.The countries of the Micronesian sub-grouping – Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, and Nauru – have all abandoned the forum over the selection of the new secretary-general for the forum, following the election of Polynesia’s candidate in defiance of a long-standing convention that dictated it was the Micronesia’s turn to provide the forum’s leader. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson to announce new restrictions on UK arrivals to protect vaccine rollout

Vera Wülfing-Leckie, my former wife, who has died aged 66, was a lover of Africa, a homeopath and a translator.Vera’s father had been a Russian prisoner-of-war. Her mother had fled before the advancing Russians from what became East Germany. The cold war seems distant now, but to Vera’s parents the threat was very real. It explained their settling in Lörrach, Germany, close to the border, from where they could get quickly into Switzerland. Despite her many accomplishments, that same sense of apprehension informed Vera’s childhood, her life and her death. Continue reading...

Tuesday: Democrats dismiss Trump’s legal defence that impeachment is unconstitutional. Plus: open letter calls for Eddie McGuire to resignGood morning. Strap yourselves in for a busy day of US politics as Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway. There’s a lot of Covid concerns cropping up today – could Toowoomba’s local health facilities handle a mass outbreak if a quarantine facility was built there? And what now if the AstraZeneca vaccine doesn’t work against the South African variant? If that’s too much politics and Covid for you, scroll down for the sex, drugs and witch of Kings Cross. Continue reading...

My father, William Deans, who has died aged 69 from cancer, started every day with a quiet moment over a coffee, reading the Guardian, occasionally breaking the contented silence to discuss the latest news with his wife, Geraldine. William would then take the cryptic crossword aside and work on it periodically throughout the day, solving each clue with steady determination. His love for crosswords in his retirement can be seen as a natural progression from his successful career at Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ).In 1984, after several years working as a researcher and lecturer at universities, William moved with his family to Cheltenham to take up a post at GCHQ. While his work there remains secret, we do know that he left his mark at the organisation as a well-liked team leader and respected mentor. William thrived in the intellectually stimulating environment of GCHQ and, in recognition of his contributions, William and Geraldine were invitees at one of the Queen’s garden tea parties. Continue reading...

Boy, now 16, given rehabilitation order for leading neo-Nazi cell from his grandmother’s house when aged just 13Britain’s youngest ever convicted terrorist, who led a neo-Nazi cell from his grandmother’s house, has been sentenced to a two-year non-custodial rehabilitation order.The boy, now 16, from south-east Cornwall, was just 13 when he first downloaded bomb-making instructions. At 14 he had amassed a stash of terror material and shared far-right ideology including racist, homophobic and antisemitic views in online chatrooms. Continue reading...

Foreign minister says Britain will continue to assess issue according to ‘strict licensing criteria’

Government has not been straight with fishing industry, says Sam Baron of Baron Shellfish in BridlingtonA lobster exporter who is winding up his 60-year-old family business has blamed the government for failing to be honest about Brexit red tape and hidden costs.Sam Baron, who worked alongside his father to set up Baron Shellfish in Bridlington, east Yorkshire, said the government had failed to be straight with the fishing industry. Continue reading...

Coordinated dismissals come in response to expulsion of three EU diplomats by Moscow last weekGermany, Poland and Sweden have each expelled a Russian diplomat in a coordinated act of retaliation over the expulsion of three EU officials by Moscow while the bloc’s foreign policy chief was visiting last week.The tit-for-tat expulsions on Monday underscored the volatility in east-west relations and an erosion of trust among former cold war foes, as the west accuses Moscow of trying to destabilise it and the Kremlin rejects what it sees as foreign interference. Continue reading...

Stabbing of 22-year-old in London prompts outpouring of grief and concerns about crime as lockdown endsSven Badzak had asked his mother, a doctor, to teach him first aid in case someone collapsed in the street after a heart attack or a stabbing. He never knew he would end up being a victim himself.The 22-year-old became one of two people to lose their lives in violence in London this weekend, prompting the prime minister to say he was concerned about a “rebounding” of crime figures as lockdown ends. Fourteen others were wounded in a spate of seven unconnected stabbings on Friday and Saturday. Continue reading...

A piece of clothing that descends from the codpiece and is designed to promulgate while male power should be optionalLast week it was reported that the Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, had decided to keep the requirement that male MPs wear neckties in the New Zealand parliament’s debating chamber after asking members of parliament to write to him about what constitutes appropriate business attire in the House.If there was ever a year to change New Zealand’s anachronistic parliamentary dress code, it should be 2021, when the new parliament is the most diverse and inclusive ever, including 48% women, 11% LGBTQ, 21% Māori, 8.3% Pacific, and 7% Asian New Zealand members. Continue reading...

Bonhams sale entitled ‘British. Cool.’ includes art, fashion, photography and music memorabilia

People in UK and France encouraged to submit work exploring new relationship between two countriesArtists on both sides of the Channel are being encouraged to beat the Brexit blues in a project exploring the new relationship between the UK and France.I Love You, Moi Non Plus aims to highlight how the arts across all disciplines from painting, illustration, photography, music and writing can break down the borders thrown up by Britain’s departure from the EU. Continue reading...

New boss Alexander Neef promises shake-up of 350-year-old institution amid fierce ‘culture wars’ debateThe Paris Opera has vowed to overhaul its recruiting practices as it launched a drive towards greater diversity in the heart of its elite ballet company, orchestra and dance school.The issue has already sparked fierce debate in France, with rightwingers accusing the Opera’s new director general, Alexander Neef, of introducing American-style culture wars into its cloistered arts scene. Continue reading...

Infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon says ‘I don’t think this is the sort of thing that should be privatised’The Wagner Corporation proposal to build a for-profit quarantine facility next to its international airport in Toowoomba has prompted some anxiety among health experts and local clinicians, who fear the region is not equipped to deal with a major Covid-19 outbreak.The property developer has proposed building a quarantine facility five minutes from its Wellcamp airport, as a way of easing the considerable strain on the national quarantine system. Continue reading...