World news | The Guardian

Energy costs, staff pay rises and inflation have left schools unable to pay for repairs, mental health services and tripsSecondary school heads across England are warning MPs of cuts to mental health provision, school trips and essential building repairs because rising costs and energy bills are wrecking their budgets.Ahead of the government’s autumn statement on 17 November, headteachers are telling local MPs and councillors about their struggles to adjust their budgets to cover unexpected costs of hundreds of thousands of pounds in higher pay and bills. Continue reading...

Activists fear for their safety after limited UK riposte to assault on demonstrator outside Chinese consulateHong Kong migrants who fled repression by China said they fear for their safety and are calling on the UK government to take a bolder stance after a pro-democracy protester was beaten in the grounds of a Chinese consulate two weeks ago.The assault in Manchester drew swift condemnation from activists and politicians across the Commons as videos circulated showing a senior Chinese diplomat forcefully grabbing a pro-democracy protester’s hair before the protester was wrestled to the ground and beaten by a group of men. Continue reading...

Scholz’s coalition government seems uncertain about what sort of relationship it wants with BeijingRussia’s war in Ukraine has woken Germany up to the risk of having an economy that is too reliant on raw materials provided by an autocratic strongman. But as the Germany chancellor, Olaf Scholz, heads to Beijing at the end of this week, there are questions as to whether he would rather leave lessons from the recent past at home in Berlin.Scholz is the first representative of a liberal democracy to be granted a state visit to China since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan in 2019, and will be the first major political leader to meet Xi Jinping since the Chinese president consolidated his power with a shake-up at the top of the Communist party. Continue reading...

Criticism of Suella Braverman is mounting, with the home secretary under fire over her handling of an immigration centre in Kent. The Guardian’s John Harris is joined by the former Conservative MP and justice secretary, David Gauke, and economist Miatta Fahnbulleh, to look at what this says about Rishi Sunak’s political judgment, and the Conservatives’ immigration policy Continue reading...

Cooke Aquaculture, which has a history of environmental controversies, acquired Tassal after shareholders backed billion-dollar deal

Tax Office finds more than half major mining, energy and water companies paid nothing in 2020-21, a three-year high

New York attorney general’s office says CBS executives conspired with a Los Angeles police captain to conceal sexual assault allegations against MoonvesCBS and its former president, Leslie Moonves, will pay $30.5m as part of an agreement with the New York attorney general’s office, which says the network’s executives conspired with a Los Angeles police captain to conceal sexual assault allegations against Moonves.Under the deal announced Wednesday by the attorney general, Letitia James, the broadcast giant is required to pay $22m to shareholders and another $6m for sexual harassment and assault programs. Continue reading...

Intercontinental ballistic missile is believed to have suffered in-flight malfunction, says Seoul, as Japan PM criticises ‘outrageous’ launchNorth Korea’s launch of a suspected new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) may have been a failure, military chiefs in South Korea have said. The missile was one of three fired on Thursday morning.The ICBM was fired from the suburbs of Pyongyang but then appeared to have failed during normal flight after the separation of the propellant and warhead sections, defence sources told multiple South Korean media outlets. Continue reading...

Planning tribunal backs council decision to block proposal which Tasmanian Aboriginal community says would scar culturally significant landmark

Tuo Shilei said his son was delayed in receiving treatment due to strict lockdown conditions in city of LanzhouThe father of a three-year-old boy who died from carbon monoxide poisoning in north-west China said strict Covid-19 policies “indirectly killed” his son by causing delays obtaining treatment.The boy’s death on Tuesday sparked outrage on social media and is the latest incident to trigger blowback against China’s strict zero-Covid policy. Continue reading...

Det Sgt Andrew Lonergan ‘formed the view’ that the woman knows the location of the missing boy

Ghibli Park, which opened this week, offers an immersive glimpse into the worlds created by the likes of Hayao Miyazaki, but don’t expect any rollercoaster ridesFans of Studio Ghibli have begun flocking to a new theme park based on films made by the beloved anime hit factory that opened in Japan this week.Set in a little over seven hectares of green parkland in Aichi prefecture, about 250km west of Tokyo, Ghibli Park has no rollercoasters or other rides. Its aim, instead, is to immerse visitors in the worlds created by the studio’s co-founder and director, Hayao Miyazaki. Continue reading...

Austrac chief Nicole Rose says the financial crimes ombudsman is ‘putting the whole industry on notice to lift their game’

Ibac has been granted an interim injunction, with the matter returning to court Thursday

ACT senator says caps are the only way to stop ‘wealthy entities from exerting undue influence’ on elections

Pastor quit church in March after being charged with concealing information about alleged child sexual offences committed by his father. He has pleaded not guilty

StandWithUs places ad in the Weekend Australian and asks readers to email Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong about issue

Medical groups ‘optimistic’ as October budget commits to initial consultation but urge Labor to provide greater detail and more resources

Letter in a bottle from overcrowded Kent processing centre compares facilities to prison and says sick people are held thereA note thrown over the fence by a young girl at the Manston processing centre begging for help has compared facilities to a prison and claimed that pregnant women and sick people were being held there.Witnesses said they saw security guards at the site ushering detainees back inside when members of the press were walking by the fence. The girl was among a group of children who broke past them at the controversial Kent centre where concerns are growing over the mental health of people detained for weeks in cramped and unhygienic conditions. Continue reading...

Doctors and nurses report seeing hungry children on a daily basis as they urge government to actDoctors and nurses have called for a major expansion of free school meals to combat the growing risk of malnutrition, obesity and other health conditions affecting children in low-income families hit by the cost of living crisis.A letter signed by scores of clinicians and health experts said NHS professionals were seeing the impact of hunger and poor nutrition in their work every day following a recent doubling in food insecurity across the UK. Continue reading...

Charity’s analysis finds widespread disruption to NHS services and ‘vast backlog of time-sensitive cardiac care’More than 30,000 heart patients in England have died needlessly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, amid continuing ambulance delays, inaccessible care and soaring waiting lists, a report says.The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said significant and widespread disruption to heart care services was still driving a surge in excess deaths. Continue reading...

The 24-year-old’s body was found on a beach north of Cairns in 2018, prompting international manhunt

Kunti Kamara given life sentence for complicity in crimes against humanityA Paris court has made history in convicting a former Liberian rebel commander for complicity in crimes against humanity under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”.Kunti Kamara was also found guilty acts of barbarity, including torture, cannibalism and forced labour during the country’s first civil war more than 25 years ago. He was given a life sentence. Continue reading...

Chief constables most to blame for crises sapping legitimacy of policing, says Police Federation leaderPolice chiefs have been covering up the misogyny suffered by female officers and staff, and must stop using gagging orders to silence victims, the leader of rank and file officers has revealed.Steve Hartshorn, chair of the Police Federation, which represents 130,000 officers up to the rank of chief inspector, said there should be a “hostile environment” for corrupt officers. He told the Guardian that chief constables bore the brunt of the blame for the crises that were sapping the legitimacy of policing. Continue reading...

‘Complexity and uncertainty’ ahead as NHS struggles to deliver standard of care patients deserve, says Amanda PritchardThe NHS in England is facing even tougher challenges now than when Covid-19 struck, the service’s boss has said.The many problems confronting the health service meant it was harder now for it to do its job, and it would become even more difficult, said Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s chief executive. Continue reading...

This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war hereMaksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv, has given an update on the situation in his western region of Ukraine. He said that aside from one air alert, the night was quiet. In the last 24 hours, he said that 100 people arrived in the region on evacuation trains from the east of the country, and that 544 people departed for Poland.The pro-Russian authorities in the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), one of the areas of occupied Ukraine that Russia has claimed to annex, have reported that two civilians were killed and two others injured overnight by shelling from Ukrainian forces. The claims have not been independently verified. The DPR is recognised as a legitimate authority by only three UN member states: Russia, Syria and North Korea. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Olivier de Schutter says cuts could violate human rights laws, calling instead for higher taxes on richThe United Nations’ poverty envoy has warned Rishi Sunak that unleashing a new wave of austerity in this month’s budget could violate the UK’s international human rights obligations and increase hunger and malnutrition.Olivier de Schutter, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, said he was “extremely troubled” by likely multibillion-pound spending cuts – including possible real-terms reductions in welfare payments to millions of the nation’s poorest families. Continue reading...

Unite survey of 600 parliamentary staff show quarter had experienced or witnessed bullyingMPs’ staff report being undermined, humiliated and shouted at in public, having doors slammed in the office and bullied for asking for a pay rise in anonymised evidence given to an inquiry by the Speaker of the House of Commons.Two unions, Unite and the GMB, said the current system for supporting those who work for MPs was not adequate in submissions to the Speaker’s conference on employment of members’ staff. Continue reading...

Prime minister Yair Lapid says nothing final until ‘last envelope is counted’ as Likud’s rightwing coalition partners see support surgeBenjamin Netanyahu has thanked voters for a “huge vote of confidence” as his rightwing religious bloc extended its lead with about 87% of all votes counted in the country’s fifth election in four years.The former prime minister’s Likud party appears to have added one seat to the 30 it held in the last Knesset. But a surge in support for his new far-right allies, the Religious Zionists, and what appears to be a poor showing for two pro-Arab rights parties and the leftwing Meretz party, means the scandal-plagued former leader is at present the most likely candidate to be able to form a coalition government in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Kerry Chant expected to reiterate importance of vaccine boosters as Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and XBB tipped to become dominant

Jury agrees with officer’s assertion that he feared for his life when he shot 28-year-old dead outside Huddersfield in 2017A Huddersfield man who was shot dead by police on the M62 in West Yorkshire nearly six years ago was lawfully killed, an inquest has found.A jury on Wednesday agreed with the police’s version of events, that the officer who shot 28-year-old Yassar Yaqub had feared for his life. Continue reading...

Labour leader questions PM over small boat arrivals and overcrowding at Dover site; Sunak to attend Cop27 after earlier refusal to goThis is from Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham, who has been engaging in the time-honoured lobby practice of U-turn counting.Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, said he was “delighted” Rishi Sunak will now be attending the Cop27 summit in Egypt. And he said he completely agreed with Sunak’s comment that “there is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change”.It’s extremely good news that Rishi Sunak will continue to champion the UK’s climate leadership and Cop26 legacy with Alok Sharma. I look forward to also attending Cop27 to highlight how the net zero review is an opportunity to better deliver greater prosperity and economic growth. Continue reading...

Lorry traffic is turning picturesque village into ‘wild west’, say residents after death of Eloise JacksonA seven-year-old girl died when she cycled into a lorry outside her home, an inquest heard, as residents expressed anger over the number of HGVs turning the picturesque Wiltshire village where she lived into the “wild west”.Eloise Jackson had only recently learned to ride when she fatally collided with the wheels of a moving HGV metres outside her front door on 13 July 2021, a coroner was told. Continue reading...

Police joked in WhatsApp group about raping female colleague and Tasering children and people with disabilitiesTwo Metropolitan police officers have each been sentenced to three months in prison after being found guilty of sharing racist, homophobic, misogynistic and ableist messages in a WhatsApp group with the officer who murdered Sarah Everard.PC Jonathon Cobban, 35, and Joel Borders, 45, who has left the force, joked on the encrypted messaging platform about beating and sexually assaulting women, raping a colleague and using Taser weapons on children. Continue reading...

Protesters baselessly alleging electoral fraud and refusing to accept defeat to Lula have been blocking roads since electionBrazilian football ultras keen to reach away games have been hailed as democratic heroes after breaking through road blockades set up by far-right supporters of president Jair Bolsonaro, who refuse to accept his defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s tightly contested presidential election.Pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators baselessly alleging electoral fraud have been blocking roads and highways across the country since Sunday night, causing chaos, cancelled flights and fears of fuel shortages. On Tuesday morning, Brazil’s supreme court ruled that the federal highway police must immediately take measures to clear the roads. Videos showed that some police officers were encouraging the protests. Continue reading...

Israeli politics has been shifting rightwards for decades, but this new coalition could go further than any beforeAn hour after the election exit polls predicted a comeback for former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night, Israel’s Channel 13 switched from vote count drama to its satirical late-night current affairs show, Wonderful Country.The host was immediately joined by a comedian sporting round glasses, a yellow tie, knitted kippah and bulging fake belly, made up to look like the country’s new political kingmaker, the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir. Brandishing a pistol – as Ben-Gvir did recently in a Palestinian neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem – he danced his way across the set before taking a seat. Continue reading...

Corruption at FTSE 100 firm described as endemic at sentence hearingGlencore flew cash bribes to officials in Africa via private jet amid “endemic” corruption within the mining company, a London court has heard, in sentencing of the first ever UK corporate conviction on charges of bribing another person.Third-party agents used Glencore’s money to bribe officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, causing harms worth $128m, a sentencing hearing at Southwark crown court heard. Continue reading...

PM likely to abandon promises on immigration, greenbelt protection and charging patients for missing GP appointments

Only 11 out of 53 charges of rape heard by service justice system in past three years led to guilty chargesA scandal over sexual abuse in the submarine service has deepened as it emerged that eight in 10 rape charges tried by military court martial over the past three years ended without conviction.The service justice system heard 53 charges of rape between 2019 and 2021, of which just 11 ended in guilty charges, according to Ministry of Defence figures. Continue reading...

Eleven emergency callers used Korean word for ‘crushed to death’ 13 times hours before incidentSouth Korea’s National Police Agency on has raided local police departments in the capital, Seoul, and the city’s Yongsan district office as it investigates whether official ineptitude contributed to a crowd surge that killed 156 people in the neighbourhood of Itaewon.The raids came a day after the national agency acknowledged Seoul police failed to act for hours despite receiving at least 11 emergency calls from pedestrians warning about a swelling crowd of Halloween revellers getting out of control ahead of the crush on Saturday in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel. Continue reading...

Moscow’s climbdown comes two days after large convoy of ships moved record tonnage despite warnings

Exclusive: CT Group’s activities on behalf of energy, tobacco and property firms raise questions over potential conflict of interestSir Lynton Crosby’s CT Group was lobbying ministers on behalf of a coal trader, a tobacco company, and property firms at the same time as providing political advice to Boris Johnson, the Guardian can reveal.The Australian election guru returned to provide “strategic political advice” to Johnson and his party after the Partygate scandal earlier this year, with the then prime minister promising discontented Conservative MPs in February that Crosby would be playing a bigger role. Continue reading...

Commission to focus on detention of journalist and political leader Zhanbolat Mamai after nationwide protestsThe state of human rights in the vast, mineral-rich central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan, including the continued detention of opposition leaders, is to be formally examined by senior UK parliamentarians including the former director of public prosecutions Lord MacDonald.He will lead an independent investigation into the detention and treatment of Zhanbolat Mamai, the leader of the unregistered opposition Democratic party in Kazakhstan. Continue reading...

Anonymous letter warned Lord Monteagle not to attend opening of parliament on 5 November 1605More than six centuries after Edward III first enshrined the crime of treason in English law, the letter that thwarted one of the most infamous acts in the nation’s history is to go on public display.The anonymous “Monteagle letter”, of 26 October 1605, warned the peer Lord Monteagle not to attend the opening of parliament on 5 November, “for they shall recyeve a terrible blowe this parleament and yet they shall not seie who hurts them”. Continue reading...

‘Extraordinary sale’ of 350 lots of seized customs contraband is valued collectively at about €1mFrance’s finance ministry is auctioning off customs contraband in an “extraordinary sale” featuring platinum bars seized en route to the UK, designer handbags, valuable historic coins, several collections of uncut diamonds and 2,016 bottles of vodka.The 350 lots – valued collectively at about €1m – also include a Volkswagen Golf stopped at France’s border with Spain and found to contain 480 kilograms of cannabis resin. Continue reading...

Sicilian mobsters said to have received more than €5m for farmland that was stolen or non-existentJudges in Italy have handed down prison sentences to 91 people, including alleged mafia members, following a large-scale EU agricultural subsidies fraud.According to magistrates in the city of Messina, Sicilian mobsters fraudulently received more than €5m (£4.3m) in subsidies between 2010 to 2017, including funds for thousands of hectares of “ghost” farmland in the east of the island that was either non-existent, stolen from farmers or owned by the Italian state or regional government. Continue reading...

UK dismisses Moscow’s accusations of Royal Navy involvement as ‘false claims of an epic scale’Moscow will “shortly” summon the UK ambassador to Russia, Deborah Bronnert, over its accusation that “British specialists” had been involved in a Ukrainian drone attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the Russia foreign ministry has said.Russia has, without providing evidence, repeatedly blamed the UK for Saturday’s audacious attack, in which a swarm of drones attacked Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Continue reading...

Tenants Queensland says the hike is far more than the average increase of 35% that renters seek advice over

Experts say Australia is ‘definitely still in a rental crisis’ but there is only so much people can pay

Parliamentary budget office report shows high income earners will benefit most from negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions