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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...

Analysis shows half of the most-deprived areas in England have not benefited from investmentA proposal to curb ministerial influence over the £4.8bn levelling up fund after claims of possible bias in favour of Tory seats has been rejected by the government.Analysis has revealed more than half of the 100 most deprived areas of the country have not yet benefited from the fund. The awards are under fresh scrutiny after former chancellor Rishi Sunak told an audience in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, that he changed funding formulas to divert money from “deprived urban areas”. Continue reading...

The women – aged 48 and 39 – died after the offender opened fire on them as they sat in a car in Revesby on Saturday night

Two victims including pregnant woman in serious condition, according to Israeli hospital officials, while police say suspected attacker turned himself inA gunman opened fire at a bus near Jerusalem’s Old City early on Sunday, wounding eight Israelis in a suspected Palestinian attack that came a week after violence flared between Israel and militants in Gaza, police and medics said.Two of the victims were in serious condition, including a pregnant woman with abdominal injuries and a man with gunshot wounds to the head and neck, according to Israeli hospitals treating them. Continue reading...

Volodymyr Zelenskiy warns Russian troops against shooting from nuclear plant; blasts heard in Melitopol; Ukraine claims to have shot down Russian fighter jet

Suspect from New Jersey is accused by prosecutors of ‘preplanned’ attack on author in New York before being remanded without bailThe man suspected of stabbing the novelist Salman Rushdie at a literary festival in western New York pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault at a court appearance on Saturday.District attorney Jason Schmidt alleged on Saturday that Hadi Matar, 24, took steps to purposely put himself in position to harm Rushdie, getting an advance pass to the event where the author was speaking and arriving a day early bearing a fake ID. “This was a targeted, unprovoked, preplanned attack on Mr Rushdie,” Schmidt alleged. Continue reading...

Thérèse Coffey ‘set out to minimise evidence’ on studies including research into deaths of benefit claimants and help for vulnerableMinisters have been accused of deliberately attempting to hide the impact of the government’s wide-ranging welfare reforms by concealing a range of official reports on benefits.Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said she would not publish five reports or research on the benefit cap, deaths of benefits claimants, the impact of universal credit (UC), and benefit sanctions, and that she had no plans to publish two further reports on unpaid carers and work capability assessments. Continue reading...

Emergency services search scene after man in 20s said to have been in stretch of water in Lakeside, DoncasterA body has been found in a lake in South Yorkshire after emergency services responded to reports that a man had got into difficulty, police have said.Emergency services were contacted at about 4.30pm about the man, aged in his 20s, being in the stretch of water in Lakeside, Doncaster. Continue reading...

Pleasance theatre cancels Scottish comic, saying his material ‘does not align with our values’The Scottish comedian Jerry Sadowitz has had his Edinburgh fringe show cancelled by the venue after complaints from staff and audience members.Sadowitz played just one night, on Friday, before the Pleasance banned him from performing again. His show was entitled Jerry Sadowitz: Not for Anyone and carried a warning that it contained “strong language and themes some may find distressing”. Continue reading...

Transferring critically endangered species within Europe to broaden the gene pool is more difficult with Britain outside the EUBreeding programmes designed to save critically endangered species are being jeopardised by Brexit, with zoos warning they are being prevented from transferring animals such as rhinos and giraffes by red tape created by the UK’s departure from the EU.The animal health regulation was passed in 2016 before the EU referendum, but came into force in April 2021. There have been no reports that the UK dissented from the regulation. Continue reading...

The RBA is looking into the idea of a central bank digital currency as cryptocurrencies continue to gain popularity

William Lodewyk Crowther, later premier of Tasmania, mutilated the corpse of Aboriginal man William Lanne in 1869Get our free news app, morning email briefing or daily news podcastHobart city councillors will decide on Monday whether to remove the city’s controversial statue of William Lodewyk Crowther, who in 1869 mutilated the body of the Aboriginal man William Lanne.On 4 August, the council’s community, culture and events committee voted unanimously to recommend the removal of the statue from Franklin Square in central Hobart. The vote followed years of requests from the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and an art project designed to foster public discussion about the statue’s future.Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Continue reading...

Hospitals across Australia are bracing for increased demand for specialised treatment and rehabilitation after winter Omicron wave

Reforms to the state’s assisted reproductive treatment laws are set to come into effect on Monday

First minister of Scotland also jokes she never thought she would look back fondly on Theresa May as PMNicola Sturgeon has said Boris Johnson is the only prime minister she has worked with who was “a disgrace to the office”.Speaking at a panel event at the Edinburgh fringe on Saturday afternoon, hosted by broadcaster Ayesha Hazarika, she said: “I disagreed with David Cameron, I disagreed with Theresa May, I disagreed with Boris Johnson, but he’s the only one who’s actually disgraced the office of prime minister. The sooner he’s gone, the better.” Continue reading...

Exclusive: Survey for Observer reveals striking lack of enthusiasm for foreign secretary, or her rival Rishi Sunak, and nostalgia for Boris JohnsonLiz Truss holds a commanding 22-point lead over Rishi Sunak in the race to become the next Tory leader and prime minister, according to an exclusive poll of party members for the Observer.With less than three weeks to go before the September 2 deadline for voting, the survey by Opinium of 570 Conservative members puts the foreign secretary on 61% and the former chancellor on 39%. Continue reading...

Ten fire engines dispatched to the scene of blaze covering 900m by 600m area of grassland in EnfieldAbout 70 firefighters are tackling a grass fire in north London.An area of grassland measuring about 900m by 600m is alight and 10 fire engines were dispatched to the scene on Rammey Marsh in Enfield after being called at 12.59pm. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Labour calls for the price cap to remain at £1,971 as charities warn Tory leadership candidates of catastrophic impact on the cost of livingLabour leader Keir Starmer is to call for a ban on crippling energy price rises this autumn in a move that would save the average household more than £2,000 a year on gas and electricity bills, the Observer can reveal.The demand to freeze the energy price cap at the current £1,971 level – blocking the regulator Ofgem from allowing a huge anticipated rise to around £3,600 in October – will place intense pressure on the Tory leadership candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to follow suit when one becomes prime minister. Continue reading...

Before he was stabbed, the author said ‘a lot of people today live with similar threats’ to those made against himSalman Rushdie believed his life was “very normal again” and that fears of an attack were a thing of the past, he had told an interviewer just two weeks before he was stabbed on stage in New York on Friday.The novelist, who remained in hospital yesterday, was knifed several times, including in the neck and abdomen. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said his liver had been damaged and that he was likely to lose an eye. Continue reading...

Motive for violence at New York event remains unclear, with author in hospitalDetails have begun to slowly emerge about Hadi Matar, the man who has been charged with the attempted murder of the author Salman Rushdie.Matar, 24, was arrested on Friday after allegedly storming the stage of a literary event in New York and stabbing Rushdie as he prepared to speak. Rushdie’s agent said the novelist suffered stab wounds to his arm and liver in the attack, would probably lose an eye and couldn’t speak because he had been put on a ventilator. Continue reading...

Politician’s office says move comes after ‘intense exertion’, while adviser denies reports of a strokeThe prime minister of Mali, Choguel Maïga, has been ordered by his doctor to rest after months of intense exertion, his office said on Saturday, while an adviser denied media reports that he had been hospitalised after having a stroke.“After 14 months of working without a break, the prime minister, head of government, Choguel Kokalla Maïga was placed on forced rest by his doctor,” his office said on its Facebook page. “He will resume his activities next week, God willing.” Continue reading...

Foreign ministry warns US not to place Russia on its list of state sponsors of terrorismUkrainian president Zelenskiy’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Saturday the war could only end with the return of the Crimea peninsula and the punishment of the Russian leaders who ordered the military invasion, saying on Twitter:The Kyiv Independent reports that the Ukrainian military has shot down a Russian fighter jet, as well as four Russian drones. Continue reading...