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Exclusive: Prof Kamila Hawthorne says delays and uncertainty mean patients feel ‘helpless and forgotten’Patients are developing cancers and enduring so much pain that they cannot climb stairs because of the 7.2 million-strong waiting list for NHS scans and treatment, Britain’s top GP has said.Prof Kamila Hawthorne, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the record delays for care and the uncertainty for patients about when they would finally be seen was leaving people feeling “helpless and forgotten”. Continue reading...

Yevgeny Prigozhin had criticised the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov

A day of pomp and solemnity was punctuated with moments of unintended mischief and mirthNever work with children or animals is an old adage, but someone forgot to tell King Charles. From the unruly horses that insisted on walking sideways, to five-year-old Prince Louis’s double-handed balcony waves, it was a coronation day of pomp and solemnity punctuated with moments of unintended mirth.Fashion provided some early talking points. Penny Mordaunt, widely considered to have stolen the show with her sword-holding prowess, was dressed in a bespoke outfit which some said bore a striking resemblance to the colour and logo of the bargain-basement high street chain Poundland. Continue reading...

Victorian capital’s CBD recorded most fatal heroin overdoses in country between 2020 and 2022, with 12,000 syringe kits now handed out each month

Exclusive: Former US intelligence analyst says he warned authorities about activities of Ike EkweremaduA former US intelligence analyst warned the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to investigate the activities of a senior Nigerian politician before he trafficked a man to London in an attempt to harvest his kidney, the Guardian can reveal.On Friday, Ike Ekweremadu was sentenced to more than nine years in prison for being the driving force in a plot to harvest a kidney for his sick daughter in the first organ trafficking conviction under the Modern Slavery Act. Continue reading...

Observers split on whether armed forces’ high-profile ceremonial role could help or hinder their imageThe British military deployed 9,000 personnel in ceremonial and supporting duties on Saturday’s coronation, nearly 5% of all the UK armed forces, in the largest display of official pageantry for more than 70 years.But the carefully choreographed effort, eight months in the planning, comes at a time when recruitment is falling and the image projected by the army on parade is, some observers say, far removed from the needs of the modern military. Continue reading...

Exclusive: HSBC and NatWest staffers seconded to shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds’s teamLabour has been criticised for giving global banks access to parliament after taking an HSBC staffer into its shadow business team, despite the financial giant coming under fire over its links with China.One senior policy manager from HSBC has been seconded to the team of Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, and has been given a parliamentary pass since February. Continue reading...

Police say man and woman admitted to hospital with serious injuries after incident in DartfordTwo people were shot at a house in Kent in what witnesses described as a “chilling” hostage situation involving a standoff with police.The incident in Priory Road, Dartford, happened on Saturday afternoon. Kent police said a man and a woman were admitted to hospital with serious injuries consistent with gunshot wounds. They remain in a serious condition. Continue reading...

Fumio Kishida pays reciprocal visit to Yoon Suk-yeol as rows over Japanese occupation are soothedJapan’s prime minister has expressed sympathy for the suffering of Korean forced labourers during Japan’s colonial rule, as he and his South Korean counterpart renewed their resolve to overcome historical grievances and strengthen cooperation in the face of shared challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear programme.Comments by the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Sunday during his second summit in less than two months with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, are being closely watched in Seoul. Continue reading...

Stuart Murphy says other cities in running but stresses chances of either northern city hosting opera companyLiverpool and Manchester are “really strong contenders” to be the new home of the English National Opera (ENO), its chief executive has said, after the cultural body was forced to leave London.Stuart Murphy, who steps down later this year, said three potential bases would be selected by the end of May and a winner chosen by the end of this year. Continue reading...

Syria’s membership of Arab League suspended in 2011 after bloody crackdown on street protestsArab League foreign ministers have adopted a decision to readmit Syria after more than a decade of suspension, consolidating a regional push to normalise ties with President Bashar al-Assad.The decision said Syria could resume its participation in Arab League meetings immediately, while calling for a resolution of the crisis resulting from the country’s civil war, including the flight of refugees to neighbouring countries and drug smuggling across the region. Continue reading...

ASA reports rise in complaints about ads that mislead customers about benefits of treatments like BotoxThe advertising watchdog is banning growing numbers of advertisements that exaggerate the benefits of health and beauty treatments such as Botox, lip fillers and diet aids.The Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) action is part of a crackdown against beauty clinics and manufacturers of aesthetic products over how they promote themselves. Continue reading...

Jean-Luc Mélenchon also criticises French TV coverage while National Rally MP hails ‘magnificent’ ceremonyAlmost 9 million people watched King Charles’s coronation live on TV in France, where the pomp and ceremony sickened the radical left while impressing the far right.As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who is close to Charles, attended the service at Westminster Abbey, congratulating the monarchy who he said were “friends to France”, the French media’s massive focus on the event – with souvenir front pages and lengthy TV specials across different channels – caused high emotions across the polarised political landscape. Continue reading...

Case of Noor Jehan in Karachi draws criticism of conditions and renewed accusations of neglect at country’s facilitiesPakistan’s zoos have faced criticism and calls for their closure after the death of a 17-year-old elephant in Karachi.Noor Jehan, an African elephant, which have an average lifespan of 60 to 70 years, was already in poor health when she fell into a pond last month and was unable to get up. She later died. Continue reading...

Davey says King Charles is ‘moving towards trying to look at this issue with greater subtlety’ than governmentThe Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, has called for a national debate over Britain’s role in the slave trade, after the coronation reignited questions over the monarchy’s historical links.He said he wanted a “more open-minded approach” to dealing with questions over the UK’s role in enslaving Africans, praising the path taken by the New Zealand government, which has offered an apology and more than $150m in reparations to Indigenous communities for past mistreatment. Continue reading...

Yevgeny Prigozhin drops plans to withdraw from devastated city after receiving promises of extra arms

Back on the campaign trail just days after giving birth, Paetongtarn Shinawatra is confident of a landslide victoryPaetongtarn Shinawatra’s face beamed from the side of a campaign truck as she addressed crowds of her supporters. “I am happy I have the chance to talk to you, Chiang Mai people,” she said last month. “It’s too bad I could not be there in person.”Then eight-and-a-half months pregnant, Paetongtarn, 36, who is running to become Thailand’s next prime minister, has been unable to travel during the final leg of election campaigning. Instead, in a red jacket, the trademark colour of her Pheu Thai party, she video-called her supporters in Chiang Mai, in the north, from a hospital in Bangkok. Continue reading...

Culture secretary defends Rishi Sunak and says poll setback would not prompt change of strategyVoters are “frustrated and angry” at the Conservative government, a cabinet minister has admitted, as the party comes to terms with the heavy losses it suffered at Thursday’s local elections.Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, said on Sunday that this week’s results, which showed her party lose more than 1,000 local councillors, reflected concerns among voters about the high cost of living. Continue reading...

President of Wrestling Federation of India accused of sexually harassing seven young female wrestlersThey were the first women who brought Olympic glory in the wrestling ring to India. But last week several of India’s top female wrestlers threatened to hand back their medals, accusing the authorities of ignoring their allegations of sexual harassment against the sport’s top official.For the past 15 days, top wrestlers including Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik have staged a protest in the centre of Delhi, sacrificing their rigorous training schedules, sleeping in the rain and facing beatings by police. Continue reading...

Event was most watched broadcast of year but substantially smaller than 29m who watched Queen Elizabeth II’s funeralThe coronation of King Charles was watched by a peak television audience of 20 million Britons on Saturday, according to official viewing figures.This makes Saturday’s event the most watched TV broadcast of the year by some way, but the audience is substantially smaller than the 29 million Britons who watched September’s funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Continue reading...

Many of the 40 people forced to flee after a local stabbing are still traumatised by Andalucían town’s ‘blackest day’Almost 10 months on, Ricardo García Carmona still shudders at the way he spoke to his mother when she appeared on his doorstep with an urgent warning a little after 9am on Sunday 17 July last year. “She said: ‘Let’s go! We need to get out!’”A few hours earlier, his mother told him, a young doorman called Álvaro Soto had been stabbed to death after an argument at the pub where he worked in the small Andalucían town of Peal de Becerro. The alleged killers, like García Carmona’s family, were members of Peal’s Gypsy community, and his mother could not shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Continue reading...

Absence of genres from country’s mainstream music awards has long been source of controversyFrance, the second biggest market for rap music in the world after the US, will host its first awards ceremony for rap, R&B and afro music on Thursday, following years of criticism that the popular genres are woefully under-represented at the country’s mainstream music awards.Rap, R&B and afro dominate streaming downloads in France in what is considered to be a new golden age for French rap, four years after the US hip-hop magazine DJBooth deemed greater Paris area the world’s most successful city for hip-hop. Continue reading...

More than 3,500 refugees have been forcibly deported over the border in recent weeks as fighting continuesWhen fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group in Khartoum in mid-April, Eritrean brothers Abdel and Dahlak* said goodbye to each other in the Sudanese capital.Dahlak, the younger of the two, had some savings, so could afford to flee the city on a bus with other Eritreans. He headed east towards refugee camps in the vicinity of Kassala, a town near the Eritrean border that is home to a large Eritrean community. Continue reading...

Actor Til Schweiger is at the centre of allegations of abuse of power, forcing a reckoning with a ‘toxic’ culture in the creative industriesGermany’s culture minister has been forced to intervene over reports of a “climate of fear” dominating the country’s film sets after numerous allegations of bullying and abuse were made against one of the industry’s biggest stars.Til Schweiger, a multi-award-winning actor and director, has been accused of intimidation, bullying, violent outbursts and verbal aggression on the set of his latest film, Manta Manta – Zwoter Teil. He directed the film, which has been a box office hit since launching in March, as well as starring in it and co-writing the screenplay. Continue reading...

Prime minister returns to Australia on Sunday after joining in pledge to new monarch, a decision backed by colleagues

Experts believe the UK has adopted a segregated immigration policy which favours those fleeing UkraineThe Home Office has been accused of operating an “unashamedly racist” refugee system after refusing to offer people fleeing fighting in Sudan a safe and legal route to the UK, in stark contrast to the schemes offered to those escaping the war in Ukraine.With the final evacuation flight from Khartoum to the UK having left last week, a lack of options from the UK government has crystallised concern that it has adopted a segregated immigration policy. No safe and legal routes have been made available to help Sudanese refugees flee and there is no sign of an announcement outlining a new scheme to deal with the fallout of the conflict. Continue reading...

Award-winning British artist says lack of politicians’ response to attend a screening speaks volumes about ‘what is happening in this country’One of Britain’s leading film and television directors, the award-winning artist Steve McQueen, has expressed his dismay at the lack of response by politicians to his film Grenfell, a powerful visual statement on the devastating London fire of 2017. The UK’s political class has, he says, largely avoided coming to watch it.“Their silence says a lot about what is happening in this country. If MPs are turning their backs on something like this film, what does it mean?” McQueen told the Observer. Continue reading...

Graham Smith, head of Republic, among those detained on coronation route with environmentalists and women’s safety campaigners also held

Peter Kyle rejects predictions Labour will not win enough seats for outright majority in Commons

Deaths of 18-year-old near Dagenham Heathway station and man in late 20s on Mare Street follow that of Walthamstow schoolboyThree people were stabbed to death in separate incidents in east London over a period of less than eight hours as the bank holiday weekend began on Friday.Murder investigations began after the deaths of an 18-year-old and a man in his late 20s, the Met police said, while detectives are still hunting for the killers of a 16-year-old who was ambushed as he left school and stabbed to death. Continue reading...

Jaws star went on to defend Laurence Olivier’s performance in blackface in the 1965 adaptation of OthelloAcademy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss has harshly criticized the Oscars’ new diversity and inclusion standards, saying “they make me vomit.”In an interview with PBS’s Firing Line, the co-star of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller Jaws told host Margaret Hoover that he disagreed with the new set of rules that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has imposed for films to qualify for best picture nominations. Continue reading...

Coronation comes after anti-monarchy protesters arrested in central London. This blog is now closed

One person killed in incident in Nizhny Novgorod region, according to Russia’s interior ministry

Treasurer Jim Chalmers and finance minister Katy Gallagher announce changes ahead of budget tipped to be at or near surplus

Fatal car crash shows a different approach is needed to keep the community safe, leading children and human rights advocates say

Erica Herman files court documents alleging she was forced to sign an NDA about their relationship or lose her jobTiger Woods’s ex-girlfriend has accused him of sexually harassing her while his employee, alleging that the star golfer forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement or be fired from her job.According to a court document filed on Friday and reviewed by Sports Illustrated, Erica Herman dated Woods for more than five years. She was also an employee at his south Florida restaurant The Woods Jupiter before she alleges that she was forced to sign an NDA about the pair’s sexual relationship under the threat of termination, which she argues amounted to sexual harassment. Continue reading...

Headteacher of Kelmscott school in Walthamstow says killing of 16-year-old was ‘darkest of days’A 16-year-old boy was ambushed as he left a school in east London and stabbed to death on Friday in a “senseless attack”.The pupil at Kelmscott school, Walthamstow, was met outside by his attackers who were “waiting for him”, an eyewitness said. He tried to escape but was stabbed a short distance away outside an auto parts store as other pupils watched. Continue reading...

Zakhar Prilepin wounded in explosion in the region of Nizhny Novgorod, Russian state news agency says. This blog is now closed

Football club says how spectators choose to react to God Save the King is a ‘personal choice’The British national anthem has been met with resounding boos at Anfield, with Liverpool fans drowning out the music with heckles before their fixture against Brentford hours after King Charles’s coronation.Liverpool supporters could also be heard chanting “Liverpool, Liverpool” in what has become somewhat of a tradition whenever the national anthem is played at the ground. Continue reading...

US and Riyadh confirm talks amid reports of more airstrikes and gun battles in Khartoum despite threat of sanctionsSudan’s rival factions have arrived in Saudi Arabia for direct talks, after three weeks of clashes in the capital, Khartoum, and the south-western region of Darfur that have killed at least hundreds and wounded many more.Representatives of the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were in Jeddah on Saturday for “pre-negotiation talks” aimed at establishing a durable ceasefire that would allow aid to reach millions of desperate civilians trapped by the fighting. Continue reading...

Contentious MP reacts to arrest of coronation protesters by telling British republicans to emigrateThe Conservative party’s deputy chair, Lee Anderson, has said that anti-monarchist campaigners should emigrate rather than use their right to free speech to protest against the coronation of Charles III.The comments followed the arrest of a number of demonstrators at the king’s coronation, including Graham Smith, the chief executive of the country’s largest republican pressure group, Republic, which was formed in 1983. Continue reading...

After his absence from the Queen’s funeral, the youngest son of the Prince and Princess of Wales was present at the king’s crowning to the delight of fans

Archbishop of Canterbury places crown on Charles’s head during ceremony in front of more than 100 heads of state

The first female Lord President of the Council receives praise on Twitter for her teal dress and sword-wielding

Labour is bridging the Brexit gap but is not yet poised to win a general election. One thing could change that…Rishi Sunak will be grateful that the coronation bank holiday weekend diverts attention away from the electoral bloodbath his party suffered on Thursday. More than 1,000 Conservative councillors lost their seats, and 48 Tory administrations were swept out as voters turned against the government in local authorities across the length and breadth of England.The BBC’s projected national share – which estimates how parties would do had the whole country behaved in a similar way to the places voting last week – put the Conservatives on 26%, down two points on an already awful 2019 performance. Labour won a projected 35 points, up seven on 2019. The nine-point projected Labour lead is the largest in two decades. Continue reading...

Offenders convicted under new law in England and Wales spared jail, analysis carried out by the Observer showsAbusers who strangle their partners are being given lenient punishments that fail to reflect the severity of their crimes, campaigners say, after an Observer analysis of cases prosecuted under a new law suggested inconsistencies in sentencing.Violent offenders who committed attacks in front of children, threatened victims with knives or were convicted of multiple offences are among those spared jail in recent months, according to court records for England and Wales. Continue reading...

The former Italian prime minister was speaking for the first time since he was hospitalised a month agoThe former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has given his first address to the public since being hospitalised a month ago, delivering a video message to party members from his hospital room.“Here I am, here for you, wearing a shirt and jacket for the first time in a month,” the 86-year-old billionaire media mogul said, in a pre-recorded address to a convention of his right-wing Forza Italia party. Continue reading...

Showers in London and around UK mirror ‘atrocious’ weather on Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation day

Last-minute sales and rentals of tents have been boon to small firms as Robert Dyas and John Lewis report 70% increase in salesSome fear soggy cakes and mushy sandwiches. For others, it’s the thought of empty chairs at empty tables, their dreams of a right royal knees-up forsaken under dripping-wet bunting.With heavy downpours predicted across the country, the organisers of coronation street-party organisers are desperately begging, borrowing and panic-buying gazebos. Continue reading...