World news | The Guardian

Image of man battling serpents is confirmed as preparation for renaissance artist’s masterpieceA 16th-century drawing of a nude man, seen from behind, has been identified as a study by Michelangelo for his monumental masterpiece, the ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.The red chalk drawing has been linked to one of the figures battling serpents on the Worship of the Brazen Serpent painting. It is thought to date from 1512, shortly before Michelangelo painted that final section of one of the world’s most famous works of art, which he had started in 1508. Continue reading...

Foreign affairs chief tells Munich security conference provision of ammunition has to be solved quickly

Move by retailer described as ‘heartbreaking’ as cost of staple products continues to riseCo-op stores in England have resorted to putting baby formula behind the tills in some stores to stop them from being stolen.A Brighton shop took action as the cost of living crisis continues to hit people up and down the country. Continue reading...

Polls put businessman ahead of the two main parties in next weekend’s elections seen as key ‘inflection point’ for African countryPolls in Nigeria have placed outsider candidate Peter Obi in the lead before presidential elections next weekend, heralding potentially sweeping change in Africa’s most populous nation.A win for Obi, a 61-year-old businessman turned politician, would overturn politics in Nigeria, ending decades of dominance by the two main establishment parties. Continue reading...

Pyongyang confirms rapid launch drill after warning of strong response to upcoming US-South Korea military exercisesNorth Korea has fired a ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said, after Pyongyang warned of a strong response to upcoming US-South Korea military drills.Japan’s coastguard also said North Korea fired what could be a ballistic missile on Saturday. Continue reading...

David Prior helped arrange a meeting between NHSX and the private care company Teladoc, said to be keen to expand in the UKThe former Tory minister who chaired NHS England helped arrange a meeting for an American private health firm that paid millions of pounds to the investment bank that employed him.David Prior emailed Matthew Gould, a senior NHS executive, in February 2021 asking him to “have a conversation” with Jason Gorevic, chief executive of Teladoc, a multibillion-pound virtual medicine firm. Continue reading...

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Home Office rejects suggestions strikes by Border Force staff in Calais, Dunkirk, Dover and Coquelles impacting wait timesChildren and teachers returning to the UK from half-term school trips have endured delays of more than six hours at Calais, amid strike action by Border Force staff.P&O Ferries told customers that long wait times were “due to the queues at border control who are also on strike”, though the government rejected suggestions that industrial action was having an impact on wait times. Continue reading...

Bodies found in vehicle transporting 52 people, in deadliest incident linked to people-smuggling in countryBulgarian prosecutors have charged six people over the deaths of 18 Afghans who suffocated in a truck abandoned near the capital, Sofia.The bodies were found inside a vehicle on Friday, in the deadliest incident linked to people-smuggling in Bulgaria as the country struggles with a rise in illicit border crossings. Continue reading...

The Gulf state bank’s offer to buy the English Premier League team has been criticised by humanitarian organisations, LGBTQ+ fan clubs and advocacy groups for football governanceA Qatar-led bid to take over Manchester United should not be entertained because of concerns about state influence and human rights abuses in the country, rights groups say.Fears about an offer to buy the club have been raised by Amnesty International’s Manchester branch, which said it had been contacted by fans who were very worried by the news. Continue reading...

Attempted assassinations and abductions made public as Iranian broadcaster forced to quit London for US after safety concernsPolice and the security services have foiled 15 plots by Iran to either kidnap or kill British or UK-based individuals it considers “enemies of the regime”, counter-terrorism police revealed on Saturday.The toll of attempted assassinations and abductions was made public hours after a London-based Iranian broadcaster announced it had moved operations to the US after mounting safety concerns against its journalists from Tehran. Continue reading...

Doctors’ interpretation of state law prevents procedure, family tells Washington Post, despite baby’s fatal illnessIn a few weeks, a Florida couple will have to bid farewell to their child shortly after the baby is delivered, a gut-wrenching reality created by the US supreme court’s elimination of nationwide abortion rights last year.Because of a new Florida law that bans abortion after 15 weeks except under certain circumstances, Deborah Dorbert has become one of many women having difficulty accessing necessary abortion procedures after the supreme court overturned the rights granted by the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision. Continue reading...

As cybercriminals increasingly target the job market, antipoverty advocates say punitive welfare rules leave job seekers particularly vulnerable“I can’t stop kicking myself,” Rose* says.The 51-year-old has just lost $10,000 to scammers – a life-changing amount for the mother of three.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Supermarket says cameras used to detect accidental wrong scans while experts say the technology is ‘punitive’ and call for reforms to protect privacy

‘Privatisation does not work. It has been a disaster for New South Wales and under Labor it stops,’ leader Chris Minns says

Research students turn to US and Europe instead of waiting for Department of Home Affairs to approve study in some Stem fields

More than 2 million tourists visit Australian coastal town annually, but a spate of injuries blamed on surfers not wearing leg ropes is raising tempersAmid the perfect blue rolling waves of Byron Bay’s beaches, a menace lurks.It’s not sharks or stingers that are spoiling the vibes at perhaps Australia’s most famous tourist town, but out-of-control surfboards. Continue reading...

The Office star says disappearance of Laurel Aldridge, 62, from West Sussex is ‘very out of character’The actor Mackenzie Crook has made a public appeal for information about his sister-in-law, who has gone missing in West Sussex.Police have urged people to check their outbuildings for Laurel Aldridge, who has been missing from the Walberton area, near Arundel, since Tuesday. Crook, best known for playing Gareth in The Office, said the family were “obviously really worried”. Continue reading...

UK prime minister says Kyiv needs more ammunition, air defence, heavy armoury and longer range weapons

Aurélien Pradié removed after failing to join party in backing President Macron’s plan to raise retirement ageFrance’s conservative rightwing Les Républicains party sacked Aurélien Pradié as deputy party leader on Saturday, after he failed to join the party in backing President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age.Macron wants the French to retire at 64 instead of 62, a policy he says would save France’s creaking state pension system from collapse but which has sparked protests across the country. Continue reading...

Wang Yi also says China is preparing to outline position on Russian war against UkraineChina’s most senior diplomat has described the shooting down of a balloon by the US as “absurd and hysterical”, as well as an abuse of the use of force.Speaking on stage at the Munich security conference on Saturday, Wang Yi said: “It does not show the US is strong; on the contrary it shows it is weak”. The foreign affairs director said he believed the shooting down was part of an attempt to divert attention from the domestic problems of the Biden administration. Continue reading...

More than 100 workers at Balfour Beatty will stop work across three consecutive weekendsRailway engineering workers are to stage a series of 48-hour strikes in a dispute over pay, the RMT union has said.More than 100 workers at the infrastructure company Balfour Beatty will walk out from 3-5 March, 10-12 March and 17-19 March, after rejecting a 5.5% pay offer. Continue reading...

Actor said he is ‘celebratory person rather than somebody there to roast other actors’It might be one of the hardest jobs in showbusiness, but there are certain tricks to being a good awards show host: insider-outsider status; personal jokes that punch up, never down; a zinger delivery; and keeping Will Smith’s wife’s name out your mouth.This year, the Baftas chose Richard E Grant to host the 76th annual film awards ceremony, which takes place at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday. The celebrated actor, 65, is tasked with making a three-hour statue ceremony entertaining for celebrities in the theatre and the millions of punters watching at home. Continue reading...

Revised legislation for England, Wales and Northern Ireland will broaden the definition of treasureA rise in the number of detectorists unearthing historical artefacts has prompted an effort to broaden the legal definition of treasure to help museums to acquire important items.The heritage minister, Stephen Parkinson, said some items had been lost into private ownership rather than displayed publicly in museums, due to the wording of the Treasure Act 1996. Continue reading...

Move follows agreement from employers on lowest-paid workers and review of salary gradesStrikes by university staff over the next two weeks have been called off after a breakthrough in negotiations over pay, pensions and working conditions, unions have announced.Five unions – Unison, UCU, GMB, Unite and EIS – issued a joint statement with the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) confirming three days of strikes will be suspended following talks at the conciliation service Acas, though discussions will continue. Continue reading...

Civil rights stalwart Colin Prescod says term risks avoiding real conversation about racism and systemic behaviourThe outgoing chair of the Institute of Race Relations has decried the widespread use of “nonsense” unconscious bias training, claiming it is an obvious sidestepping of tackling racial injustice.The civil rights stalwart Colin Prescod, who is stepping down after 43 years, likened the modish phrase to the 1970s term “racial awareness”. Continue reading...

The PM promises to ‘reach out’ to any opposition politician who wants to discuss how the voice will work as he kicks off a national week of action on the referendum

The premier, Dominic Perrottet, had said he was appalled and disgusted by the situation

Officials say three attackers also dead as police and paramilitary forces clear building in gun battleMilitants launched a deadly suicide attack on the police headquarters of Pakistan’s largest city on Friday, with the sound of gunfire and explosions rocking the heart of Karachi for several hours.Two police officers, a ranger and a civilian were killed and 14 others wounded, said Murtaza Wahab, a government spokesman in Sindh province, where Karachi is located. Two suicide bombers were killed and at least one blew himself up after entering the police building, officials said. Continue reading...

‘Electronics and optics’ among wreckage of suspected surveillance craft shot down off South Carolina after recovery efforts endThe US has finished work to recover sunken remnants of the Chinese balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina and the debris reinforces that it was for spying, officials have said.The White House national security spokesman, John Kirby, said the wreckage included “electronics and optics” but declined to say what the US had learned from it so far. Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy urges west to speed up its support as world leaders gather at Munich security conference

UK PM expected to urge leaders at Munich Security Conference to ‘double down on our military support’ for Kyiv

Peta Bradley won bronze at the ice swimming world championships after training in a NSW country dam

Zelenskiy speaks at Munich security conference as Scholz, Macron and Kamala Harris are in Germany; French leader says Ukraine needs more support

Munich security conference also saw Scholz defend Germany’s steady approach in supporting Ukraine

PM is embarking on frantic weekend of diplomacy in attempt to break post-Brexit deadlockRishi Sunak faces the threat of a fresh Conservative rebellion as he sets off on a weekend of frantic diplomacy in an attempt to break the post-Brexit deadlock in Northern Ireland.With some in his party fearing an intervention by Boris Johnson, the prime minister has been warned his proposed deal on the Northern Ireland protocol does not go far enough after talks with unionists in a Belfast hotel on Friday. Continue reading...

The 400-year-old Grade II-listed Brightwell Manor in Oxfordshire boasts five acres and a moat fed by its own natural springBoris Johnson is understood to have agreed to buy £4m nine-bedroom Grade II-listed Georgian manor house in Oxfordshire.The former prime minister and his wife Carrie have in recent weeks viewed Brightwell Manor, in the picturesque village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell near Wallingford. The Guardian has been told they have now made an offer which has been accepted. Continue reading...

Ukraine president tells world leaders in Munich to ‘hurry up’ before Putin gains military advantage

Residents of Eskdale, in New Zealand, recount fears on night of flooding as they return to salvage belongings and rescuers continue search for bodiesCrouched in the dark, gripping the slick corrugated iron, Michael and Kelly McKendry hauled themselves and their daughter on to their rooftop. A few feet below, the flood moved in a seething brown mass, roiling under the gutters. “I couldn’t feel anything, I was just doing,” says Kelly. “As we went out our kitchen window, we heard a woman go past in the water screaming.”Almost a week after Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand, the couple have returned to find the green valley where they made their home a moonscape. Orchard vines are stripped from the wires, cornfields are flattened, and everything is coated in a metres-thick layer of iron-grey sludge. Motorhomes and caravans lie tossed across the landscape, windscreens smashed, metalwork caved in, some upside down and stacked on top of one another, others submerged to their roofs in the mud. The railway line running through the valley has buckled in on itself, twisted into looping ribbons. One house has been carried almost a kilometre from its foundations, logs impaled through walls shredded like damp cardboard. Continue reading...

Formal identification yet to take place but officers believe man to be Cole, last seen in Walthamstow on 21 JanuaryThe body of a 32-year-old man who went missing last month has been found in a north London canal, police have said.While formal identification is due to take place at a later date, police believe the man to be Nathan Cole and have informed his family, who are being supported by specialist officers. Continue reading...

Trial heard trio from far-right group discussed using ceramic knife to stab French president in 2018A French anti-terror court convicted three people on Friday over a plan to attack President Emmanuel Macron after a trial that threw the spotlight on a radical far-right online group.The three men, part of a Facebook group known as the “Barjols”, were convicted for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act after the court heard how they discussed using a ceramic knife to stab Macron in 2018 at a first world war commemoration. Continue reading...

Chris Licht says Lemon’s comment that Republican ‘isn’t in her prime’ left him ‘disappointed’CNN’s chairperson Chris Licht has reproached Don Lemon for his sexist on-air comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, whom the news anchor had said “isn’t in her prime”.Licht issued a stern rebuke against Lemon on Friday, saying the anchor’s comments had left the chairperson “disappointed”, according to a recording of his daily editorial call, obtained by the New York Times. Continue reading...

Footage seems to show 10 officers training to neutralise one man using fabric bannersHow many police officers does it take to neutralise a single unarmed protester? According to a video purported to be from China, it takes at least 10 highly disciplined members of law enforcement, as well as some bespoke blue banners.In footage that emerged on Thursday, black-clad officers are shown practising a drill to surround a single person holding up a white piece of paper – an item that became the symbol of the anti-lockdown protests that rocked several major Chinese cities at the end of last year, and the demonstrations against the security laws imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. Continue reading...

19 women aged 62 to 91 take case to Haarlem district court for abuse from 1951 to 1979Nineteen women in the Netherlands have accused an order of Catholic nuns of years of forced labour while locked up in convents, saying they were “abused on industrial scale”.The case before the Haarlem district court relates to about 15,000 teenage Dutch girls who were the wards of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd at convents across the country from 1951 to 1979. Continue reading...

World Food Programme calls for urgent $125m injection after being forced into axing supplies into Bangladesh refugee camps by 17%The UN has been forced to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees by 17% and has warned of “unconscionable” further cuts in April as a result of dwindling international donations.The World Food Programme (WFP) said it needs $125m (£104m) urgently to avoid the further cuts. Continue reading...

Alison Rose becomes group’s second-highest-paid boss as bank reports largest profits since 2007NatWest has been accused of “unjust” profiteering as it handed its boss Alison Rose a £5.2m pay package and upped its bonus pool for bankers, after the bailed out lender made its biggest profit since 2007 on the back of higher mortgage costs for customers.The bank – which is still 44%-owned by the taxpayer – revealed on Friday that Rose’s pay had soared by 46% from £3.6m a year earlier, partly because of the higher value of shares doled out as part of her long-term incentive plan. Continue reading...

Jeffrey Donaldson says ‘big moment’ looming in Rishi Sunak’s effort to cut a post-Brexit deal with EU

Zelenskiy to speak at Munich security conference; Ukrainian officials says negotiations to extend grain deal will start next week

Isla Bryson case has led to climate of growing hostility towards trans people, say equality campaignersThe furore surrounding the placement of transgender offenders in Scottish prisons has sharpened personal safety fears across Scotland’s LGBTQ+ community, the Guardian has been told.Soon after Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation on Wednesday, Scottish equalities campaigners expressed unease at the loss of such a visible LGBTQ+ ally. Continue reading...

Minette Batters accuses ministers of ‘dereliction of duty’ in failing to ensure safety of agricultural importsBritain is in danger of a “disastrous” food scandal, owing to lax post-Brexit border controls on agricultural imports, the leader of the UK’s biggest farming organisation has warned.Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, accused ministers of a “dereliction of duty” in failing to ensure food and other agricultural imports were safe. She warned that the government had failed to learn the lessons of the horsemeat scandal of 2013. Continue reading...