World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Myanmar military ruler extends coup with promise of elections in 2023
US launches emergency airlift to rescue Afghan allies at risk of Taliban’s revenge
Tokyo 2020 Olympics: BMX joy for GB and Australia, tennis and gymnastics – live!
Anger as Poland plans law that will stop Jews reclaiming wartime homes
Tourists rescued from burning Med resorts by flotilla of boats
Trump tries to defend ‘just say the election was corrupt’ demand
Sky News Australia banned from YouTube for seven days over Covid misinformation
Police review teen killings in search of catalyst for spike in murders
Tulsa race massacre: 19 bodies reinterred as protesters demand criminal investigation
US consultants lined up to run fund that owns Israeli spyware company NSO
New York sculpture Vessel faces calls for closure after fourth jump death
Coronavirus live news: UK chancellor ‘pushes PM to relax holiday rules’; mass testing amid China outbreak
Is Covid-19 on the run in the UK?
As Delta spreads, Pfizer and Moderna get set for a booster shot to profits
America mulls vaccine mandates – will they work?
Shailene Woodley: ‘Authenticity is my love language’
Listen up: why indie podcasts are in peril
Eimear McBride: ‘Women grapple with shame because we’re held to a higher standard’
In search of the crypto-criminals
Jimmy Savile: 10 years on, what has changed in uncovering abuse?
Lily Allen: from chart-topping handbag kid to the heart of London’s West End
Births, marriages and deaths left unregistered after systems failure
Doggerland: Lost ‘Atlantis’ of the North Sea gives up its ancient secrets
Tunisia shows that democracy will struggle if it can’t deliver prosperity
Out of control and rising: why bitcoin has Nigeria’s government in a panic
Baked barnacles, scorched cherries: the disastrous impact of heatwaves on plants and animals
The Observer view on the Royal Navy’s operation in the South China Sea | Observer editorial
Australia Covid update: NSW reports 239 new cases and seven ICU patients in their 20s
Refugees hit hardest as deadly floods sweep across continents
Massive landslide sweeps away portion of road in India – video
Buried in concrete: mafia architecture – in pictures

Myanmar military ruler extends coup with promise of elections in 2023

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 10:52 PM PDT

Six months after seizing power, junta says it will lift state of emergency by August 2023

Myanmar's junta chief has said elections will be held and a state of emergency lifted by August 2023 – extending the timeline given when the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi six months ago.

In a televised address, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing said "we will accomplish the provisions of the state of emergency by August 2023".

US launches emergency airlift to rescue Afghan allies at risk of Taliban’s revenge

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 01:15 AM PDT

Evacuation flights start before visas are issued as insurgents make sweeping gains in provinces

America has launched emergency airlifts for Afghans who worked with its armed forces and diplomats, evacuating hundreds who are still waiting for their visas to the United States on military flights.

Only people in the final stages of a long, slow and bureaucratic visa process are eligible for the airlift, but bringing applicants to the continental US in large numbers is still unprecedented in recent years, officials working on the programme say.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics: BMX joy for GB and Australia, tennis and gymnastics – live!

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 02:04 AM PDT

Games schedule | Results | Medal table | Full coverage
Sign up for the Guardian's daily Olympic briefing
In pictures: the best images from day eight in Tokyo
Get in touch! Email Daniel, tweet @unitedrewind or post BTL

10.04am BST

Gymnastics: Skinner gets 15.033 and 14.800, 14.916 combined, and that could be enough for a medal.

10.03am BST

Tennis: Zverev takes the first set against Khachanov 6-3; his first serve and forehand look too much at the moment.

Anger as Poland plans law that will stop Jews reclaiming wartime homes

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 12:45 AM PDT

Daughter of Holocaust survivor pledges to continue her fight for family property seized by Nazi occupiers

A few years ago, Shoshana Greenberg stood outside a building in Lodz, Poland, once owned by her family, with an old photograph in her hands and tears running down her face.

Greenberg, now 74 and living in Tel Aviv, was on a quest to reclaim property lost during the Holocaust. Her father was head of a prominent, wealthy Jewish family in Lodz that owned industrial buildings, residential homes and holiday properties.

Tourists rescued from burning Med resorts by flotilla of boats

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 03:01 PM PDT

Six dead from wildfires raging across Turkey, Italy and Greece as temperatures hit 40C

Holidaymakers have been evacuated from beaches by rescue boats in Turkey after wildfires threatened hotels in the Aegean resort of Bodrum.

Coastguard vessels were joined by private boats and yachts to bring the tourists to safety, according to Turkish media on Saturday. Videos posted online showed people wheeling their suitcases along the road while smoke from forest fires billowed into the sky.

Trump tries to defend ‘just say the election was corrupt’ demand

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 10:15 AM PDT

Ex-president claims he was not trying to subvert democracy
Trump restates election lie that fraud to blame for Biden win
Giuliani: 'I committed no crime' while working for Trump
What did Jim Jordan know about the insurrection and when?

Donald Trump insisted on Saturday that when he told senior justice department officials to "Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me", he was not attempting to subvert US democracy, but to "uphold the integrity and honesty of elections and the sanctity of our vote".

Sky News Australia banned from YouTube for seven days over Covid misinformation

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 09:40 PM PDT

Digital giant issues strike after channel posted videos denying the existence of disease and encouraging people to use discredited medication

Sky News Australia has been banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after violating its medical misinformation policies by posting numerous videos which denied the existence of Covid-19 or encouraged people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.

The ban was imposed by the digital giant on Thursday afternoon, the day after the Daily Telegraph ended Alan Jones's regular column amid controversy about his Covid-19 commentary which included calling the New South Wales chief health officer Kerry Chant a village idiot on his Sky News program.

Police review teen killings in search of catalyst for spike in murders

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 11:45 PM PDT

Pilot scheme hopes to discover patterns that will help prevent more deaths

Measures are being introduced to try to identify what is driving rising murder rates in the wake of a spike in teenage deaths in some of the UK's homicide hotspots.

All homicides in London, Birmingham and south Wales will be reviewed by the authorities in an attempt to learn from the chaotic sequences of events that often preempt a death.

Tulsa race massacre: 19 bodies reinterred as protesters demand criminal investigation

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 11:33 AM PDT

Bullet found with one set of remains that showed trauma
Anthropologist tells crowd: 'We are not done'

The bodies of 19 people exhumed from an Oklahoma cemetery during a search for victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre were reburied in a closed ceremony on Friday, despite objections from protesters outside the cemetery.

US consultants lined up to run fund that owns Israeli spyware company NSO

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 10:47 AM PDT

Investors in talks to transfer management of Novalpina Capital to Berkeley Research Group, following long-running dispute

Public investors in the private equity firm that owns a majority stake in the Israeli spyware company NSO Group are in talks to transfer management of that fund to Berkeley Research Group, a US consulting firm.

New York sculpture Vessel faces calls for closure after fourth jump death

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 08:26 AM PDT

Boy, 14, died after jumping from 150ft midtown structure
Site closed in January after two deaths and reopened in May

The Hudson Yards development in midtown Manhattan is facing calls to dismantle the Vessel, its huge sculptural centrepiece, after a fourth person in less than two years jumped from the 150ft structure.

Coronavirus live news: UK chancellor ‘pushes PM to relax holiday rules’; mass testing amid China outbreak

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 02:09 AM PDT

Latest updates: Rishi Sunak says restrictions 'out of step' with international rivals, according to media reports; China battling worst caseload in months

10.09am BST

Statistics suggest that very little seems to have changed since 19 July, when the government ended all restrictions on socialising in England.

In London, people travelled less after so-called "freedom day" than during the weeks before, according to Transport for London figures. Elsewhere in the UK, where restrictions vary, there appeared little change in public transport activity. Restaurants and pubs saw a slight increase, but are still a long way off pre-pandemic levels.

10.04am BST

Russia reported 22,804 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, including 2,484 in Moscow, taking the official national tally since the pandemic began to 6,288,677.

The government coronavirus task force said 789 people had died of coronavirus-linked causes in the past 24 hours, pushing the national death toll to 159,352, Reuters reports.

Is Covid-19 on the run in the UK?

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 11:00 PM PDT

A fall in case numbers last month raised hopes that Britain may be reaching herd immunity, but experts warn against complacency, given uncertainty about new variants and autumn's return to school

John Edmunds has been at the centre of the unravelling of the Covid-19 pandemic since cases first appeared in January 2020. A member of Sage, the government's scientific advisory group, and a professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, he has consistently warned ministers about the threats posed by the disease.

These risks have often been clear in their nature. But today, 18 months after Covid-19 first appeared, he believes the nation stands at a point of maximum uncertainty about the future of the pandemic.

As Delta spreads, Pfizer and Moderna get set for a booster shot to profits

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 04:05 PM PDT

The firms are already taking the lion's share of earnings from the market, as this week's results will show

Praised for preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths and allowing a return to more normal life, Covid vaccines will also substantially benefit some pharmaceutical companies.

In June, analysts estimated the global market for the vaccines could be worth $70bn (£50bn) this year, but the figure could be even higher as the Delta variant of coronavirus spreads and scientists debate whether people will need booster shots.

America mulls vaccine mandates – will they work?

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 11:00 PM PDT

Experts say mandates could be a logical step to contain the spread of the virus as cases of the Delta variant rise

Mask wars return as communities split over new guidance

As cases of the Delta coronavirus variant have risen and vaccination rates slowed, several US businesses and institutions have announced they will now require vaccinations from employees.

Shailene Woodley: ‘Authenticity is my love language’

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 12:00 AM PDT

Despite being only 29, Shailene Woodley already has 25 years' acting experience under her belt. Here, the star of Big Little Lies and Divergent talks about being free-willed, her hippy passions and her late-night calls with Kate Winslet

The one and only time Shailene Woodley beams during our time together – a long conversation over Zoom, on a bright weekday morning – is when my young son sneaks into the room in which I'm bent over a laptop, points at the stranger appearing on-screen, and asks, not quietly, "Who's that?"

There is nothing to do but introduce them.

Listen up: why indie podcasts are in peril

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 12:00 AM PDT

As big spenders such as Amazon and Spotify fill our ears with more commercial, celebrity-driven fare, can grassroots, diverse shows survive?

Miranda Sawyer picks 20 indie podcast gems

The British Podcast Awards were different this year. Held in a south London park, they had a boutique festival feel, with wristbands and tokens for drinks, an open-sided tent for the actual awards, and people lounging on blankets in front of the stage. There were also sponsor areas – those small, picket-fenced areas where invitees could drink and mix with brand bigwigs. Awards are expensive to stage, and to give any sort of a professional sheen, money is needed. In 2017, the BPA sponsors included Radioplayer and Whistledown, an independent audio creator. In 2021, the BPA was "powered by Amazon Music". Spotify, Stitcher, Audible, Acast, Global, BBC Sounds, Podfollow and Sony Music also dipped into their sponsorship pockets. Clearly, podcasting has gone up in the world.

Over the past 18 months, podcasting has hit the corporate big time. Apple, long the most recognisable name in podcasting, its iTunes chart being the public measure of any show's success, is attempting, clumsily, to move from being a neutral platform that hosts shows into one that makes money from podcasting (by, for example, charging creators for highlighted spots).

Eimear McBride: ‘Women grapple with shame because we’re held to a higher standard’

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 01:30 AM PDT

The novelist on her first book of nonfiction – about women and disgust – and the complexities of prize culture

Eimear McBride, 44, is the bestselling author of three novels: A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, which won the Women's prize for fiction and the Goldsmith's prize, The Lesser Bohemians and Strange Hotel. Her first work of nonfiction, Something Out of Place: Women and Disgust, is the result of an invitation by the Wellcome Collection to explore its museum and library, housed on Euston Road in London. She lives in east London with her family.

How did your new book come about?
Wellcome was a place where I was a temp, back in the old days before I was a full-time writer. I worked in the library: I was the stack monkey. So when I was asked about doing this, I was very open to the idea; I've always been fond of Wellcome. I didn't go to university, so I'd never had the experience of spending a lot of time just reading.

In search of the crypto-criminals

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 02:00 AM PDT

Secretive gangs are hacking the computers of governments, firms, even hospitals, and demanding huge sums. But if we pay these ransoms, are we creating a ticking time bomb?

They have the sort of names that only teenage boys or aspiring Bond villains would dream up (REvil, Grief, Wizard Spider, Ragnar), they base themselves in countries that do not cooperate with international law enforcement and they don't care whether they attack a hospital or a multinational corporation. Ransomware gangs are suddenly everywhere, seemingly unstoppable – and very successful.

In June, meat producer JBS, which supplies over a fifth of all the beef in the US, paid a £7.8m ransom to regain access to its computer systems. The same month, the US's largest national fuel pipeline, Colonial Pipeline, paid £3.1m to ransomware hackers after they locked the company's systems, causing days of fuel shortages and paralysing the east coast. "It was the hardest decision I've made in my 39 years in the energy industry," said a deflated-looking Colonial CEO Joseph Blount in an evidence session before Congress. In July, hackers attacked software firm Kaseya, demanding £50m. As a result, hundreds of supermarkets had to close in Sweden, because their cash registers didn't work.

Jimmy Savile: 10 years on, what has changed in uncovering abuse?

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 10:45 PM PDT

As TV revisits the scandal, the author of an acclaimed play about it asks what the media and key institutions have learned – and whether survivors are now treated any better

Journalistic parlour game question: what are the most significant news stories of the past decade? Few would argue with the pandemic and Brexit. Not far behind, perhaps, is the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Not many stories change our world. This one did. It transformed how we deal with allegations of sexual assault. We reassessed our attitude to celebrity. We saw more clearly than ever how morally corrupt institutions could be. It was the harbinger of the #MeToo movement.

Lily Allen: from chart-topping handbag kid to the heart of London’s West End

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 11:15 PM PDT

The singer is back in front of a live audience this week, playing 'a woman with a real point of view' in a spooky new play, 2:22 – A Ghost Story

There, in the background, wearing drop pearl earrings, is 13-year-old Lily Allen dressed up as a little lady-in-waiting. Cinema audiences watching Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth when the film of that name came out in 1998 might have been concentrating on the queen's courtly dancing in the middle of the frame, but yes, it really was Allen playing a mini royal favourite in director Shekhar Kapur's lavish production.

Now, more than two decades later, the 36-year-old singer-songwriter is taking centre stage as an actress in the West End, appearing in a spooky new play, 2:22 – A Ghost Story, which opens this week.

Births, marriages and deaths left unregistered after systems failure

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 01:30 AM PDT

Computer outage, staff shortages and pandemic disruption causing turmoil for families and businesses in England and Wales

The Home Office was accused last night of causing "turmoil for families" after a failure in its online system for registering births, deaths and marriages created frustration and anger across England and Wales.

As people reported being unable to register their important "life events" – with resulting disruption to their plans to travel, claim benefits and take out savings plans among a range of other knock-on effects – local authorities were warning of further serious delays.

Doggerland: Lost ‘Atlantis’ of the North Sea gives up its ancient secrets

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 01:45 AM PDT

The land mass that linked Britain to continental Europe was rich in early human life until it flooded

The idea of a "lost Atlantis" under the North Sea connecting Britain by land to continental Europe had been imagined by HG Wells in the late 19th century, with evidence of human inhabitation of the forgotten world following in 1931 when the trawler Colinda dredged up a lump of peat containing a spear point.

But it is only now, after a decade of pioneering research and the extraordinary finds of an army of amateur archaeologists scouring the Dutch coastline for artefacts and fossils, that a major exhibition is able to offer a window into Doggerland, a vast expanse of territory submerged following a tsunami 8,000 years ago, cutting the British Isles off from modern Belgium, the Netherlands and southern Scandinavia.

Tunisia shows that democracy will struggle if it can’t deliver prosperity

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 12:30 AM PDT

Political liberty has been overturned – with majority support. That will delight authoritarians everywhere

Implicit in US and western support for pro-democracy movements and transitions around the world is an assumption that, given a free choice, a system of elected, representative government is what people will always naturally prefer. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if a majority believes democracy doesn't work for them?

Emerging testimony from Tunisia, the latest country to face a crisis over how it is run, suggests many citizens welcomed the forceful suspension of a democratically elected parliament that had failed to address people's problems and was widely reviled as a self-serving oligarchy.
Mohammed Ali, 33, from Ben Guerdane, seems to typify this view. "I think what happened is good. I think that's what all the people want," he told the Guardian after last week's surprise move by Kais Saied, Tunisia's president, to seize power and impose a state of emergency. Local politicians and western critics called it a coup.

Out of control and rising: why bitcoin has Nigeria’s government in a panic

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 08:00 AM PDT

As leaders around the world grapple with cryptocurrencies, what happened when the African country tried to ban them?

When the Nigerian government suddenly banned access to foreign exchange for textile import companies in March 2019, Moses Awa* felt stuck. His business – importing woven shoes from Guangzhou, China, to sell in the northern city of Kano and his home state of Abia, further south – had been suffering along with the country's economy. The ban threatened to tip it over the edge. "It was a serious crisis: I had to act fast," Awa says.

He turned to his younger brother, Osy, who had begun trading bitcoins. "He was just accumulating, accumulating crypto, saying that at some point years down the line it could be a great investment. When the forex ban happened, he showed me how much I needed it, too. I could pay my suppliers in bitcoins if they accepted – and they did."

Baked barnacles, scorched cherries: the disastrous impact of heatwaves on plants and animals

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 10:00 PM PDT

More than a billion sea creatures across the Pacific north-west perished in this year's heatwave. And it's just a taste of what's to come

When forecasts foreshadowed the Pacific north-west's devastating heatwave at the end of June, marine biologist Christopher Harley was alarmed and intrigued.

Then came the smell, and his feelings somberly shifted.

The Observer view on the Royal Navy’s operation in the South China Sea | Observer editorial

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 10:30 PM PDT

Sailing into imperial delusions is no way to run foreign policy

What would Jack Aubrey have made of it? When Patrick O'Brian's fictitious Royal Navy hero sailed HMS Surprise to the far side of the world, the enemy was the USS Norfolk, a lone American frigate marauding in the Pacific. Full speed ahead from the war of 1812, to 2021, and today's maritime sparring partners are HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain's new £3bn aircraft carrier, and the Chinese People's Liberation Army navy and its 360 "battle-force" ships.

It's hardly an equal fight, though that would not have stopped Captain Aubrey. In any case, the government insists, slightly disingenuously, that it is not courting confrontation by parading modern-day gunboats under Beijing's nose. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, says the aim is "fly the flag for Global Britain". Thus do deluded Brexiters spread their foolish, neo-imperial fantasies to points as distant as the hotly contested South China Sea.

Australia Covid update: NSW reports 239 new cases and seven ICU patients in their 20s

Posted: 01 Aug 2021 01:59 AM PDT

Gladys Berejiklian says higher vaccination rates the 'only way to live with Delta' as Queensland cluster grows to 18 on first day of snap lockdown

Gladys Berejiklian has said New South Wales plans to break vaccination records this month in an effort to control Covid-19, as the state recorded 239 new cases – the equal-highest daily figure in the current Delta outbreak.

The NSW premier on Sunday said higher vaccination rates were the "only way to live with Delta or any other horrific strain that comes along" and urged people in NSW to make August their month to come out and get vaccinated.

Refugees hit hardest as deadly floods sweep across continents

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 09:00 AM PDT

Death toll rises as storms continue to rip through communities, destroying homes and livelihoods

As heavy rains and floods dominate headlines around the world, displaced people and those living in conflict zones are among the worst affected.

Wind and heavy rain from monsoons and typhoons has bombarded much of Asia. There have also been downpours and flash floods in parts of Latin America and Africa.

Massive landslide sweeps away portion of road in India – video

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 08:35 AM PDT

A massive landslide in the Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh in India has led to a road collapsing down the side of a mountain. The footage, captured on 30 July, has been widely shared on social media and Indian news channels. It is not clear whether there were any casualties. There have been incidents of landslides in the area amid heavy rains. Recently a huge rockfall hit the Sangla valley, destroying a bridge, cars and killing at least nine tourists

Buried in concrete: mafia architecture – in pictures

Posted: 31 Jul 2021 06:00 AM PDT

Alessio Mamo has photographed the illegal, brutalist buildings and gaudy, now decaying, villas in the south of Italy that mafia bosses constructed

Words by Roberto Saviano and Lorenzo Tondo