World news | The Guardian

Analysis: Although the fatwa against Rushdie was issued more than 30 years ago, the threat never went awaySalman Rushdie spent nine years in hiding following the issue of a notorious fatwa authorising his killing.Though he will be loth to return to that kind of existence, the attack on him last week will most likely lead to a drastic rethink of his security.

Manchester City player and alleged ‘fixer’ accused of ‘callous indifference’ to 13 young women they allegedly attackedThe Manchester City footballer Benjamin Mendy raped women in locked “panic rooms” in his isolated mansion from which they believed they could not escape, a court has heard.The 28-year-old French international defender abused his wealth and fame to lure women back to his gated Cheshire home and rape them when they either said no or were too drunk to consent, a jury at Chester crown court heard on Monday. Continue reading...

Dan Harrison, who beat Kim Harrison to death, had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia for 15 yearsThe family of a man who beat his father to death an hour after absconding from a psychiatric ward has claimed the killer was not given the help he needed for his mental health problems in the years before he launched the fatal attack.Dan Harrison, 37, punched, kicked and stamped on Kim Harrison, 68, a retired chest specialist, at his home in Clydach, Swansea, after becoming increasingly paranoid and believing that his mother, Jane Harrison, was in danger from her husband. Continue reading...

Power blackouts after wholesale prices soar as a result of Russia’s invasion of UkraineSoaring international energy prices have brought power blackouts to Europe as Kosovo said it could no longer afford to import electricity, adding to fears that tensions with Russia will plunge the continent into crisis this winter.Consumers in the Balkan state have been told they will be allowed six hours of power at a time, punctuated by two-hour breaks, according to a spokesperson for its energy distribution company, KEDS. Continue reading...

Impact of ‘traumatic period’ still lingers with those now based in UK – and their families – 75 years onAfter living in Britain for nearly half a century, Pabitra Ghosh is still gripped by a rootlessness borne after being displaced from modern-day Bangladesh as a child.When a communal riot broke out in 1950, Ghosh, then five, fled with his family across the newly carved Indian border from East Pakistan. The train journey was both “bedlam” and “traumatic” as they abandoned their home to start afresh in Kolkata. Continue reading...

London-based Portuguese sprinter says he feared for his safety during the stop – his third in last two yearsThe police watchdog is to review how an athlete who has been repeatedly pulled over was stopped again, this time by seven armed officers.Ricardo dos Santos, a Portuguese sprinter based in London, said he released video of the incident in central London on Sunday morning to show that young black people continued to face “over-policing”. He said he feared for his safety during the stop – his third in the last two years. Continue reading...

MoD sources accuse other parts of Whitehall of failing to do enough to help Afghans who worked with British forcesTwo RAF flights carrying as many as 500 Afghans who worked with British forces and their relatives are landing in the UK each month from Pakistan but there is deep frustration within the Ministry of Defence about how the rest of government is struggling to accommodate arrivals.It comes as the Taliban and western allies mark the first anniversary of Nato’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Continue reading...

Comedian says his show ‘is what it is, for those who enjoy it,’ after complaints at Edinburgh fringeThe comedian Jerry Sadowitz has hit back at Edinburgh fringe promoters who cancelled one of his shows, accusing them of “cheapening and simplifying” his act.The Pleasance theatre cancelled Sadowitz’s second show of two on Saturday because it said the content was “extreme in its racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny.” Continue reading...

Michael Rowell, 34, from Hampshire is thought to have slipped on to rocks in Alps while skiing with friendAn experienced British skier fell to his death while attempting to traverse an off-piste slope with a friend in the French Alps, an inquest heard.Michael Rowell, 34, from Farnborough, Hampshire, who had skied since he was five, is thought to have slipped and fallen 24 metres (80ft) from an edge on to rocks. Continue reading...

Firms need to find smarter ways of working that will fit in with how people want to live, says consultancyThe typical UK worker is going into the office less than 1.5 days a week – with Friday the most popular day to work from home, according to a global survey.The consultancy Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA) surveyed 43 offices in the UK, covering nearly 50,000 workers, in June and July. Continue reading...

Emma Greville tells jurors she was trying to pull Giggs away from her sister when his elbow hit her in faceRyan Giggs assaulted his then girlfriend “with lots of force” before turning to her younger sister and saying: “I’ll head-butt you next,” a court has heard.Emma Greville, the sister of Giggs’s former girlfriend Kate Greville, told jurors he was “extremely angry” during an altercation at his home on 1 November 2020. She said the former footballer became angry as he tried to retrieve a mobile phone from her sister’s hand, leading to a “scuffle” on the floor. Continue reading...

Hollywood actor plans to run for senator with Eurosceptic party ISP, saying she is ‘fed up with quarrelling politicians’The Italian screen legend Gina Lollobrigida has said she is running in general elections next month because she is “fed up with quarrelling politicians”.Lollobrigida, who turned 95 in July, is endeavouring to become a senator with the Sovereign and Popular Italy party (ISP), a new Eurosceptic, anti-Mario-Draghi political alliance that opposes sending arms to Ukraine and “warmongering Atlanticism”. Continue reading...

PM believed to be in Greece on second summer break in three weeks amid ‘zombie’ government accusations

Those without a male relative to act as a mahram are in legal limbo and unable to travel long distancesHasina* cannot send her two daughters to school, because they are teenagers and high school is banned for girls in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.But she cannot take them out of the country to finish their education because she is a divorced single mother, and women are barred from long-distance travel without a male “guardian” to escort them. Continue reading...

Novel by writer, who lived in Devon until fatal heart attack, was made into a film starring Robert RedfordNicholas Evans, the bestselling author of The Horse Whisperer, has died at the age of 72.In a statement, United Agents said the “much-loved” writer had died following a heart attack on Tuesday. “He lived a full and happy life, in his home on the banks of the River Dart in Devon,” it added. Continue reading...

James Chessell sends email to staff after both he and the Nine chairman were the subject of an email attack by James Packer

The actor, severely injured in a car crash on 5 August, had been legally declared dead, but had life support maintained to facilitate organ donationAnne Heche has been taken off life support, a family representative said, following the announcement of her death on Friday.Heche, 53, had been severely injured in a single-vehicle car crash on 5 August, and had suffered a “severe anoxic brain injury”, according to a statement to CNN by Heche’s family. Her “brain death” was confirmed on Friday, meeting a legal definition of death in California, but it is understood life support was maintained to facilitate organ donation. A family representative said she had been “peacefully taken off life support” on Sunday. Continue reading...

Japan PM Fumio Kishida sends offering but stays away from Yasukuni, which honours class-A war criminalsJapan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, sent a ritual offering to a controversial war shrine on Monday – the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the second world war – as one of its wartime victims, South Korea, called for an end to historical tensions.Kishida apparently decided to stay away from the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo to avoid antagonising South Korea and China, but three of his ministers have made the pilgrimage in recent days. Continue reading...

Public advised to avoid Moss Side as police investigate death of young man found with serious injuriesPolice have launched an investigation into the death of a man after a firearm was discharged on Claremont Road in Manchester.Greater Manchester police responded to reports of a shooting in the early hours of Monday morning when they found a man aged between 18 and 25 with serious injuries. Continue reading...

Pacific country had recorded no community transmission of the virus until last week, and healthcare is struggling to copeAfter dodging the Covid-19 pandemic for two years, the Marshall Islands is grappling to control the spread of infections, which have tripled since the first community transmissions were detected a week ago.The number of positive cases in the north Pacific nation, which has a population of about 60,000 people, has skyrocketed to more than 3,000 cases with four Covid-linked deaths and seven hospital admissions. Continue reading...

Health Foundation finds stark health inequalities between people in worst-off and wealthiest parts of EnglandA 60-year-old woman in England’s poorest areas typically has the same level of illness as a woman 16 years older in the richest areas, a study into health inequalities has found.The Health Foundation found a similarly stark, though less wide, gap in men’s health. At 60 a man living in the most deprived 10% of the country typically has the burden of ill-health experienced by a counterpart in the wealthiest 10% at the age of 70. Continue reading...

Police say a NSW man, 63, will face court following Sunday shooting that led to evacuation of airport

Songwriter behind hits including 1998 Eurovision winner, and Quentin Tarantino’s father-in-law, dies at homeSvika Pick, a prolific songwriter and musician who was known as Israel’s “king of pop” and by the moniker the Maestro, has died at the age of 72.He died on Sunday in his home. The cause of death is yet to be announced. Continue reading...

Reports claim former prime minister’s senior cabinet colleagues were unaware he allegedly swore himself into three ministry positions

Ralph Henry Reese, co-founder of project that offers exiled writers refuge, says attack should serve as wake up call – and call to actionMoments before Salman Rushdie was nearly murdered at a public event in western New York on Friday, he had signed up to become a roving envoy for writers in mortal peril, agreeing to travel across the US to encourage cities to provide asylum and protection for artists in need.The bitter irony – that within minutes of having made this pledge Rushdie was himself stabbed 10 times on stage – was revealed by the event’s moderator, who was also injured in the assault. Continue reading...

Analysis by data experts finds the figure has increased from about 16,000 at this stage of admissions process in 2019About 28,000 students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who applied to go to university are without an offer just days before A-level results are due to be published, according to data experts.In what promises to be one of the most competitive university admission rounds in recent memory, analysis by DataHE found the total number of 18-year-olds not holding an offer has increased from about 16,000 at this stage in the admissions process in 2019 to 27,850 in 2022. Continue reading...

Covid-induced inflation, drought in Canada and global instability are putting the squeeze on key ingredients of a national staple• Get our free news app, morning email briefing or daily news podcastTakeaway businesses are feeling the pinch as prices surge for cooking oil and potatoes – two key ingredients of an Australian staple: fish and chips.Justin Quinton, the owner of Saltmine Fish and Chips in the New South Wales Hunter region, told Guardian Australia his Salamander Bay eatery previously used a blend of cottonseed, canola and sunflower oil. Continue reading...

Experts argue system lacks proper monitoring and effectively ‘disappears’ people, sometimes for decades

Some comedians at Edinburgh fringe express concern after promoter pulls Sadowitz’s second performanceJerry Sadowitz had his show cancelled at the Edinburgh fringe because its content was “extreme in its racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny,” promoters have said.The comedian, whose material has for decades been provocatively and unashamedly offensive, had what was meant to be the second of two shows pulled because of an unprecedented number of complaints, the Pleasance theatre in Edinburgh said. Continue reading...

As farms look further afield for labour, investigation finds Kent pickers saying they struggle to pay fees charged by unlicensed brokersIndonesian labourers picking berries on a farm that supplies Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco say they have been saddled with debts of up to £5,000 by unlicensed foreign brokers to work in Britain for a single season.Pickers at the farm in Kent were initially given zero-hours contracts, and at least one was paid less than £300 a week after the cost of using a caravan was deducted, according to payslips and other documents seen as part of a Guardian investigation. Continue reading...

Chance encounter on Facebook led Reena Verna, 90, to visit family home she was forced to abandon in 1947For decades, Reena Verna would return to her home in Rawalpindi in her dreams. She would wander down the narrow lane to the three-storey house and walk through the rooms where she had lived with her five siblings, parents and an aunt for the first 15 years of her life.But for 75 years, this was a home located across a seemingly impenetrable national border, one Verna could only visit as a painful memory. That was, until July this year. Now 90 years old but still sprightly, a chance encounter on a Facebook group helped her find and visit the family home she was forced to abandon 75 years ago, located in what is now Pakistan. Continue reading...

Drawn to the prospect of a job abroad, people such as Banyu signed up to a language course. From there, their debts to brokers grewSitting in a caravan in the hot Kent countryside, Banyu’s face is etched with worry. It is July and he is less than a month into a job picking fruit at Clock House farm near Maidstone, which supplies strawberries, raspberries and other soft fruit to leading supermarket chains.He says he arrived from Indonesia this summer £5,000 in debt to an unlicensed broker in Bali, handing over the deeds to his family home as surety. He only has a six-month visa for the picking season and is scared that the work is not as lucrative as he hoped. Continue reading...

At the same point in 2021 there had been just 11,300, as campaigners say forcible removal is not acting as deterrentMore than 20,000 people have been detected crossing the Channel in small boats so far this year, government figures show.Saturday marked the third time the total has topped 600 in a day since the start of 2022, with 607 people detecting crossing the Channel in 14 boats – the equivalent of about 43 people per vessel. Continue reading...

Author is off ventilator and able to talk after suffering stab wounds to his neck, stomach, eye, chest and thigh in New York attack

Ukraine president says soldiers firing from Zaporizhzhia facility will become a ‘special target’; main bridges to Russian-occupied territory in Kherson likely to be unusable, says British military intelligence

This week’s hustings show many members are unenthusiastic about Sunak or Truss – and might even prefer the current PMAs Conservative party members filed into the latest leadership hustings at a baking hot Cheltenham racecourse, very few among this important electorate seemed enthused by the two-way race.Neither of the runners – foreign secretary Liz Truss nor ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak – excited much Tory passion, nor seemed the subject of heavy betting. Some of those who attended, and who will decide the identity of the new prime minister, suggested they had come along out of duty, to choose the least worst option on offer. Continue reading...

Officers carrying out inquiries after message to author who voiced support for Rushdie following stabbingPolice are investigating a threat against JK Rowling that was made after she posted her reaction on social media to the attack on Salman Rushdie.Rowling tweeted on Friday: “Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be OK.” Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy vows troops based at Europe’s largest nuclear plant will become ‘special targets’

Documentary reveals how Britain was not only involved in rape and torture but tried to suppress evidenceA former police commissioner resigned after attempts to expose rape and torture by British colonial forces in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising were covered up, a documentary shows.During the 1950s, Britain fought a war in Kenya against the Mau Mau, a movement that fought for independence from colonial rule. The movement was brutally suppressed through the use of widespread detention camps and systemic violence. Continue reading...

Chief secretary to Treasury Simon Clarke says it is ‘pretty odd’ that wealthier people will benefit from paymentsOne of Liz Truss’s key ministerial allies has hinted she might stop wealthy people receiving the £400 energy bills payout coming from the Treasury later this year.The chief secretary to the Treasury, Simon Clarke, said he found it “pretty odd” that high earners would benefit from the payments, which were announced in May by Rishi Sunak, the then chancellor, as part of a £15bn energy support package. Continue reading...

Temperatures predicted to rise to 32C in parts of country, giving way to heavy rain over next three daysParts of the UK will have another day of sizzling temperatures before three days of yellow weather warnings for thunderstorms.An amber weather warning for extreme heat is in place until 11.59pm on Sunday for large parts of the south, east, west, Midlands and north of England as temperatures are predicted to rise to 32C. Continue reading...

Confederation of Passenger Transport says coming week will be ‘critical’ in deciding which services remain viableBus services across England could be axed within days, transport groups have said, as operators decide before a funding deadline whether routes will remain viable.Services in the north-east and South Yorkshire are known to be at risk, but many more routes could be cut back as Covid grants that propped up routes during the pandemic expire. Continue reading...

Russian state-owned firm delivering more gas through TurkStream pipeline than ‘contractually obliged’Gazprom has ramped up flows to Hungary through the TurkStream pipeline that transports gas via Bulgaria and Serbia, a Hungarian foreign ministry official has said.The Russian state-owned company started delivering more gas than it was contractually obliged to on Friday, Menczer Tamás, an official in Hungary’s ministry of foreign affairs and trade, wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday. Continue reading...

Petition accuses Frontex of violating European standards by using contractor that offers low wagesThe EU border agency Frontex has been accused of exploiting staff by using a contractor who it is claimed offers interpreters an effective wage of less than €2.50 (£2.11) an hour.The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, the EU’s best-funded agency with a budget of €754m, is being petitioned by interpreters who work with vulnerable asylum seekers in places such as Greece, Italy and the Canary Islands. Continue reading...

Social media is helping long-lost relatives discover each other after a lifetime separated by the India-Pakistan borderIt was an embrace that held 74 years of pain and longing. As Sikka Khan, 75, fell into the arms of his older brother Sadiq Khan, now in his 80s, the pair wept with simultaneous sorrow and joy. More than seven decades had passed since the brothers, torn apart by the horrors of partition, had seen each other. With Sikka in India and Sadiq in Pakistan, neither knew if the other was alive. Yet both had never stopped looking.But on a crisp January afternoon this year, the pair were reunited along the border that had so devastatingly fractured their family. “Finally, we are together,” Sadiq told his brother, tears streaming down his face. Continue reading...

Annual intake could potentially rise from 160,000 to up to 200,000 places as businesses cry out for skilled workers

Csaba Vasvári’s claims of ‘overreach’ follow freeze on EU funds over concerns about judicial independenceViktor Orbán’s government is “constantly overreaching” its authority to sway the courts, a senior judge has said, in an intervention that will deepen alarm about the rule of law in Hungary.In rare comments that lift the lid on the Hungarian government’s assault on judicial checks and balances, Csaba Vasvári, a senior judge at the Budapest metropolitan court, told the Observer that he and his colleagues on the bench “have been witnessing external and internal influence attempts” for several years. Vasvári, who has worked as a judge for 18 years, is a spokesperson for the National Judicial Council, a self-governing body that has been battling to defend judges’ independence for more than a decade. Continue reading...

One person arrested after shots fired inside airport. Labor’s plan to tackle skills shortages would lift the annual migration cap from 160,000 to between 180,000 and 200,000. Follow the day’s news, live

Stand-up comic Red Richardson on his pedigree comedy childhoodDriving Rik Mayall around would be entertaining work for anyone, but for the young Red Richardson, the job he had in his 20s was the continuation of a childhood bond.Mayall, who died suddenly in 2014 at the age of 56, was a near neighbour in South Devon, but he was also Richardson’s father’s close friend. Continue reading...