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National Audit Office says political chaos has delayed proposed measures to improve recruitment in EnglandThe government has delayed several key reforms to social care staffing in England due to political chaos caused by the collapse of the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss governments and a Whitehall recruitment freeze, it has emerged.Work to create new training places and develop the low-paid care workforce was supposed to start in September but has been delayed by at least six months. Continue reading...

Manchester's Museum of Austerity uses AR to depict real people with disabilities who fell through society's safety netIt is impossible to look away from the shimmering figures that emerge in what appears at first to be an empty room. And that is the point.Through a headset donned at the entrance of Museum of Austerity, which opened at the Home theatre in Manchester on Wednesday, holograms of people glow in eerie augmented reality. Approaching them, they feel real and touchable but also ghostly and ephemeral, which they are: they are real people who died when our societal safety net did not catch them.The Museum of Austerity installation, an English Touring Theatre (ETT) co-production with National Theatre Immersive Storytelling Studio and Trial & Error Studio, will be at Home Manchester from 8 to 11 November 2023. Each session lasts 45 minutes, running 11.30am-9.15pm, Wednesday to Saturday. Continue reading...

Paul Papalia says significant failures' were uncovered by internal investigation into death of youth detainee at Casuarina prison

Woman rushed to Flinders Medical Centre with serious injuries after incident near AdelaideA 32-year-old woman has been left with serious injuries after a shark attack at Port Noarlunga Jetty in South Australia.SA Ambulance Services said the woman was bitten on the head at around 1:20pm at the beach, which is south of Adelaide. Continue reading...

Regime can no longer afford all its diplomatic missions, including some to longtime allies such as Angola where it has maintained ties since 1975While Kim Jong-un basks in the afterglow of his recent visit to Russia, North Korea is scaling back its presence overseas, with reported plans to close almost a quarter of its diplomatic missions blamed on its sanctions-hit economy.While the regime moves closer to China and Russia amid new tensions on the Korean peninsula, years of UN-led sanctions have forced it to close embassies and consulates in as many as a dozen locations, including those in countries Pyongyang views as longtime allies. Continue reading...

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CEO rules out financial compensation but consumer group chief and small business ombudsman say 200GB offer is token' and inadequate

Exclusive: document tendered in high court shows half a dozen have been in detention for more than a decade

Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party are seeking a fourth consecutive term and are accused of harassing the rival BNP partyIn Bangladesh, there is no more room left in the prisons. In the last two weeks alone, almost 10,000 opposition leaders, supporters and activists have been arrested after protests broke out against the ruling government, led by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.Thousands of other political prisoners have already been inside these cells for months, many facing dozens, perhaps hundreds, of criminal charges. Rajshahi central jailhas a capacity of about 4,000 prisoners. It now holds more than 13,600. Continue reading...

Eoin Mac Giolla R's judgment says child safety department failed to properly plan for arrival of baby

Domestic economy more resilient than previously expected', Reserve Bank says in quarterly statement

Canal Productions liable in gender discrimination suit filed by Graham Chase Robinson, while De Niro found not personally liableRobert De Niro's production company was found liable on Thursday by a jury for gender discrimination and retaliation, and ordered to pay $1.3m to the Hollywood star's former assistant.The 80-year-old actor and director was not found personally liable by the jury in New York after a two week trial. Continue reading...

Calls over pothole incidents hit 6,000 in usually benign summer months amid substandard' roadsVehicle breakdowns caused by Britain's pothole-ridden roads reached record levels this year, according to the RAC.The motoring organisation said it received almost 6,000 calls for pothole-related incidents from July to September - its highest total for the relatively benign summer period since it started collecting data in 2006. Continue reading...

England's chief medical officer says more realistic conversations needed about some treatments' side-effectsEngland's chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, has called for a cultural shift in medicine away from maximising lifespan and towards improving quality of life in old age, arguing that sometimes this means less medicine, not more".Speaking before the publication of his 2023 annual report, which this year focuses on health in an ageing society, Whitty said doctors needed to have more realistic conversations with patients about the risk of some treatments extending life at the expense of quality of life and independence. Continue reading...

A man in his 30s died in St Peters after his motorcycle and a car collided just after midnight

Documents lodged with corporate regulator also show the rightwing advocacy group spent $3.4m campaigning against Indigenous voice proposal

Surge in population and faltering supply of new housing means Australia's property market is likely to lose momentum

Frontier Touring announces new tickets to Swift's five Australian shows will be released at 10am on Friday, with a ticket resale market launching in two weeksMore tickets to Taylor Swift's Melbourne and Sydney shows are going on sale on Friday, with Ticketek also announcing a date for the highly anticipated resale of tickets.Swift's Eras tour broke Australian records earlier this year in June, when more than four million people tried to snap up about 450,000 tickets for the five concerts, to take place in Melbourne on 16 and 17 February, and Sydney on 23-25 February 2024. Continue reading...

Case of Elnaz Hajtamiri, taken from Ontario home by three men with police equipment in January 2022, had stumped investigatorsThe ex-boyfriend of a Canadian woman who was abducted by fake police officers has been charged with first-degree murder, marking the latest twist in a high-profile kidnapping case that had appeared to stump investigators for nearly two years.Elnaz Hajtamiri was dragged from a property in an Ontario beach community on 12 January 2022 by three men with police equipment who forced their way into the home and hauled her barefoot through the snow to a waiting vehicle. Continue reading...

Majority of migrants rescued in Matehuala were from Central and South America and included 34 childrenAuthorities have found 123 people from Central and South America trapped in a trailer in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, the country's immigration agency said on Thursday.Officials from the state attorney general's office found the people in Matehuala, a city on the border of Nuevo Leon, on Wednesday after a local reported hearing cries for help from a locked trailer box. Continue reading...

Legal advocate for detainees says government could be liable for compensation if it failed to free people

Orlando Fraser promises crackdown on squeamish' charities turning down donations on moral groundsThe head of England's charity regulator has promised to crack down on squeamish" charity boards who reject large cash donations from corporations or wealthy philanthropists on moral grounds.Orlando Fraser, the chair of the Charity Commission, said the regulator may intervene where trustees have rejected or returned donations simply because their personal worldviews or preferences" were incompatible with those of the donor. Continue reading...

At least 20 others injured in Jenin city and refugee camp, as IDF says it is conducting counter-terrorism raids

Armed drones attack two airbases and explosive device targets patrol in most widespread strikes in a single day

Thousands move south as Israeli forces inch closer to two big hospitals in north where many have sought refuge

Tory allies claim she is reflecting the views of a silent majority' who are too often ignored at WestminsterGetting rid of Suella Braverman, if you are Rishi Sunak, is not as easy as it might first appear.The home secretary has already handed the prime minister several opportunities, none of which have been taken up. Continue reading...

At freedom of information tribunal, Guardian says it has not been publicly explained how such data might be useful to attackersThe Home Office should publicly reveal the cost to the taxpayer of providing security to the royal family, a barrister representing the Guardian has told a tribunal.The news organisation has brought a legal case arguing that disclosure of the figure would enable a more informed public discussion about the costs and benefits of the monarchy. Continue reading...

The architect of the illegal Catalonian 2017 referendum has signed an unlikely deal to support Spains's socialists back into government in return for amnestyDespite the fast-moving, wildly unpredictable and frequently improbable turns Spanish politics has taken of late, very few pundits could have predicted the scenes that played out in Belgium on Thursday.A little after 2pm, a 60-year-old Catalan politician and fugitive from Spanish justice addressed a packed conference at the Brussels press club. As reporters brimmed with questions that would go unanswered, Carles Puigdemont appeared to be relishing his moment. Continue reading...

Opposition leaders accuse first minister and deputy of misleading Holyrood after they are forced to retract statements about message requestsHumza Yousaf has apologised for shortcomings" with the release of government WhatsApp messages, as he faced new secrecy allegations over legal advice and private emails written during the Covid crisis.The first minister apologised unreservedly" on Thursday after the UK Covid inquiry challenged the accuracy of parliamentary statements made last week by him and his deputy, Shona Robison, about its requests for access to WhatsApp messages. Continue reading...

Inequalities between rich and poor areas and white and black communities widening, according to child mortality dataBlack babies in England are almost three times more likely to die than white babies after death rates surged in the last year, according to figures that have led to warnings that racism, poverty and pressure on the NHS must be tackled to prevent future fatalities.The death rate for white infants has stayed steady at about three per 1,000 live births since 2020, but for black and black British babies it has risen from just under six to almost nine per 1,000, according to figures from the National Child Mortality Database, which gathers standardised data on the circumstances of children's deaths. Infant death rates in the poorest neighbourhood rose to double those in the richest areas, where death rates fell. Continue reading...

PM's WhatsApp messages show he felt odd' to bash the cops' having only seen footage of some argy bargy'Boris Johnson said it felt odd" to bash" Metropolitan police officers who had interrupted the Sarah Everard vigil as all he had seen is footage of some argy bargy".The prime minister's WhatsApp messages from March 2021 were shown during the Covid inquiry as Priti Patel gave evidence. Continue reading...

Increase in discrimination, vandalism, graffiti and abusive behaviour since outbreak of Israel-Hamas warSchools across England are struggling with the emotional turmoil set off by the terrorist attacks on Israel last month and the impact on students, parents and teachers.Specialist organisations such as the Community Security Trust and Tell Mama say they are seeing a big increase in reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia involving schools and pupils since the 7 October attacks and Israel's invasion of Gaza. Continue reading...

Home secretary accuses force of being biased against rightwing protesters and favouring groups such as Palestine Solidarity CampaignAlistair Carmichael (Lib Dem) says every day 6,000 crimes go unsolved. If the home secretary does not have confidence in the police, or thinks she could do a better job, she should say so, he says.Diana Johnson (Lab), chair of the home affairs committee, says her committee backs the idea of operational independence for the police. It is a concept that goes back to 1885. If the government wants to change that, it should be debated in parliament, she says. Continue reading...

Jozef Puska faces mandatory life sentence after Ashling Murphy was murdered in January 2022A man has been found guilty of killing a primary school teacher last year, in a case that shocked Ireland.Ashling Murphy, 23, a popular local teacher and musician, was murdered as she jogged along a canal near Tullamore, central Ireland, in January 2022. Continue reading...

Chapman is first Black songwriter to win the award, after a 2023 Luke Combs's version helped the song gain newfound popularityTracy Chapman has become the first Black songwriter to win the Country Music Awards' song of the year - 35 years after the relevant number was a hit for her.It was 1988 when Chapman's dulcet tones and guitar plucks emanated from seemingly every speaker with her smash Fast Car. On Wednesday night in Nashville, during the CMA's ceremony, it won a top award, Rolling Stone first reported. The annual award ceremony is one of the largest celebrations of country music. Continue reading...

UK ministry of defence says Russian military overextended'; Hungary says EU should not start membership talks with Ukraine

Backing for socialist government hinged on proposed amnesty for activists involved in 2017 attempt to separate Catalonia from SpainToday we live in a democracy worse than yesterday," the conservative People's party deputy secretary Miguel Tellado wrote following news of an agreement between the socialists and Junts.Spain's socialist party and Catalan separatist party Junts have confirmed that they have reached a deal for Junts to support a Socialist-led government, Reuters reported. Continue reading...

At least three politicians were funded to attend three-day inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event, register of members' interests shows

Advocates push for limit on rent rises as PropTrack report finds vacancy rate slipped to 1.02% in October

Blue Lagoon temporarily closes as spate of earthquakes prompt fears of volcanic eruptionOne of Iceland's most popular tourist attractions has closed after the Reykjanes peninsula was hit by about 1,000 earthquakes in 24 hours, a seismic swarm" that has prompted fears of an imminent volcanic eruption.The Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa south-west of Rejkjavik, announced it would close its doors on Thursday for a week after a particularly powerful earthquake hit just after midnight followed by about 800 smaller quakes. Continue reading...

French president tells Paris conference that world must pursue a humanitarian ceasefire to save lives

Accused, 14, blows kiss to his parents during brief appearance on charges of murder and possession of a knifeA 14-year-old boy accused of stabbing another teenager to death in Leeds blew a kiss to his parents as he made his first court appearance on Thursday.Alfie Lewis, 15, was attacked in the upmarket Horsforth suburb on Tuesday afternoon as children were leaving two nearby schools. Continue reading...

Home secretary also condemned for undermining police by claiming they were biased when handling protests

Home secretary criticised for likening pro-Palestine protests in London to sectarian marches

McOnie - who choreographed Jesus Christ Superstar, On the Town and Carousel - takes over from Tim SheaderRegent's Park Open Air theatre in London has appointed Drew McOnie as its new artistic director, in a rare case of a choreographer being given the top job at a major British theatre. McOnie will replace Tim Sheader who has cemented the outdoor theatre's reputation for musicals and takes over at the Donmar Warehouse in the new year.McOnie is no stranger to Regent's Park, having choreographed its hit 2016 revival of Jesus Christ Superstar, which had two sold-out seasons at the theatre, transferred to the Barbican and toured the UK and the US. He directed and choreographed On the Town there in 2017 and choreographed Carousel in 2021. Continue reading...

After finding that the Friends actor wanted Efron to play him in a film, the latter, who had already played a younger Perry in 17 Again, expressed his agreementZac Efron said he would be honoured" to play Matthew Perry in a film that the Friends actor had been planning before his death on 29 October.In an interview with Sirius XM in 2022, Perry said that he had asked Efron to play the lead role in a film that Perry had written and planned to direct, but that Efron had said no". The project was mentioned again in the wake of Perry's death by the actor's friend Athenna Crosby, who told People magazine that Perry's movie was a biopic and that he wanted Zac Efron, who's played him already to play him again because he said he did such a good job". Continue reading...

UK's 43 police forces have all referred domestic abuse victims to Home Office in last three years, finds watchdogVictims of domestic abuse across the UK are being reported to immigration officials when they turn to the police for help, according to data published by an independent watchdog.The UK's 43 police forces have all referred victims or survivors of abuse to immigration enforcement in the last three years, prompting urgent calls for a reform of the system. Continue reading...

Energy firm's lawsuit looks for indefinite block on group's protesters targeting its infrastructure

Report identifies lack of aerial surveillance and personnel as contributing to deaths when small boat sank in 2021

Community groups say Labor government's incentive for short-term accommodation owners could double state's rental housing supply