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Up to 17 US missionaries and family members kidnapped in Haiti – reports
Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists
Abuse, threats, aggression: the fear that stalks MPs on Britain’s streets
French villagers bid to stop Tory donor Aquind laying cable under Channel
Pressure mounts on ex-DoJ official Jeff Clark over Trump’s ‘election subversion scheme’
Female directors wait longer than men for their big break, report reveals
Macron and the ‘French Trump’ trap Gaullism’s heirs in a political vice
Thousands rally in Sudan’s capital to demand military rule
How Dalí’s ‘lips’ sofa began life … on the back of an envelope
From Fortnite to Fifa, online video game players warned of rise in fraud
Gandhi in heels? Maria Callas statue hits the wrong note
Pregnant women at risk from NHS workers’ mixed messages over safety of jab
Covid news live: Gordon Brown urges rich nations to send vaccines to Africa; UK cases stay high
Concern over jab delay for pupils in England as age group cases soar
What’s the value of a confirmatory PCR test? | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters
The dark side of wellness: the overlap between spiritual thinking and far-right conspiracies
El Alamein, Dresden and a cold war spy: the incredible life of Victor Gregg
I’m sad at work and don’t know what to do with my life
Elizabeth Strout: ‘I’ve thought about death every day since I was 10'
Spies next door? The suburban US couple accused of espionage
Gen Z on how to save the world: young climate activists speak out
Priti Patel considering police protection for MPs after David Amess killing
The debilitating effects of long Covid have just begun to hit economies | Torsten Bell
Hawks on all sides ready to swoop if Iran drags feet on nuclear talks
‘Nobody ever put hands on me before’: flight attendants on the air rage epidemic
The US has a silent pig pandemic on its doorstep once again
Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain’s secret propaganda war
‘Lives at risk’ in Melbourne detention hotel after three asylum seekers test positive for Covid

Up to 17 US missionaries and family members kidnapped in Haiti – reports

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 10:29 PM PDT

Children were reportedly among those abducted by gang members on their way home from an orphanage

As many as 17 American Christian missionaries, including children, were kidnapped in Haiti on Saturday, according to US media reports that cited security officials.

The kidnapping happened as the missionaries were leaving an orphanage in the crisis-engulfed Caribbean nation, according to the New York Times.

Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 01:00 AM PDT

Newly declassified papers show shocking role played by Britain in slaughter

A propaganda campaign orchestrated by Britain played a crucial part in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century, shocking new evidence reveals.

British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to urge prominent Indonesians to "cut out" the "communist cancer".

Abuse, threats, aggression: the fear that stalks MPs on Britain’s streets

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 11:00 PM PDT

Spending on security increased hugely in the wake of Jo Cox's murder – but the problem is growing

The constituent who "sidled up" to an MP to describe his make of car and where he had been driving it over the weekend… Another who warned an MP that they knew which school her children attended… An MP forced to act as a security guard at his own constituency surgery, ejecting someone who had become aggressive and abusive… Family members confronted … Staff regularly abused.

As MPs contacted each other to discuss the horrific news that another of their number had been killed while fulfilling their basic duties, the list of their own grim experiences flowed immediately and at length. "Talking with colleagues this afternoon, there isn't one of us, not one of us, who couldn't give you a list of alarming examples of things that have been said or done in a constituency surgery," said a cabinet minister.

French villagers bid to stop Tory donor Aquind laying cable under Channel

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 12:00 AM PDT

Energy firm and director Alexander Temerko have given £1.1m between them to Conservatives

French mayors and residents along the Normandy coast are campaigning to block a project for a cross-Channel electricity cable backed by a Ukrainian-born businessman who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative party.

Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain's business secretary, is due to decide this week on whether to give the go-ahead to a £1.2bn project for the 148-mile cable between Normandy and Hampshire. The firm says the link, which will run through Portsmouth, could supply up to 5% of Britain's electricity needs.

Pressure mounts on ex-DoJ official Jeff Clark over Trump’s ‘election subversion scheme’

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 11:00 PM PDT

Former assistant attorney general faces possible disbarment and charges after report details machinations on Trump's behalf

Jeffrey Clark, a former top environmental lawyer at the Trump justice department accused of plotting with Trump to undermine the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is facing ethics investigations in Washington that could lead to possible disbarment, as well as a watchdog inquiry that might result in a criminal referral.

The mounting scrutiny of the ex-assistant attorney general, who led the justice department's environment division for almost two years and then ran its civil division, was provoked by a report from the Senate judiciary committee whose Democratic chairman, Richard Durbin, has asked the DC bar's disciplinary counsel to examine Clark's conduct and possibly sanction him.

Female directors wait longer than men for their big break, report reveals

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 01:45 AM PDT

A huge equality gap in top jobs and pay has been highlighted between women TV documentary-makers and male colleagues

Television documentary teams in Britain today are full of ambitious and capable women but most of them have to wait much longer than their male colleagues to become directors and earn a bigger wage.

The findings of the campaigning group We Are Doc Women (WADW), released this weekend, have revealed that gender equality is still a goal, not a reality, in factual programme-making.

Macron and the ‘French Trump’ trap Gaullism’s heirs in a political vice

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 10:00 PM PDT

With just months to go before presidential polls, the centre-right Les Républicains, under pressure from both flanks, are scrambling for a suitable candidate

Six months before a presidential election and France's mainstream right finds itself squeezed – between the hammer and the anvil as they say here – without a candidate and facing an existential threat from either side.

On one flank are the far-right Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, a polarising television pundit who wants to talk about immigration, identity and Islam – the three i's – and ban "non-French" names such as Mohamed.

Thousands rally in Sudan’s capital to demand military rule

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 05:51 PM PDT

Protesters say they want the government of prime minister Abdalla Hamdok dismissed and replaced by the military

Thousands of pro-military protesters have rallied in central Khartoum, vowing not to leave until the government is dissolved in a threat to Sudan's transition to civilian rule.

The protest on Saturday comes as Sudanese politics reels from divisions among the factions steering the rocky transition from two decades of dictatorship under president Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by the army in April 2019 following weeks of mass protests.

How Dalí’s ‘lips’ sofa began life … on the back of an envelope

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 11:30 PM PDT

Newly opened archive of art patron's papers reveals a previously unseen sketch for the surrealist work

One of the world's best-known pieces of furniture, Salvador Dalí's Mae West lips sofa, started life as a sketch on the back of an envelope, research in the archive of a Sussex country house has revealed.

The sketch was unearthed at West Dean near Chichester, the former home of Dalí's patron Edward James, and experts say it reveals the extent to which James was involved in the creation of the 1930s sofa. Alongside the lobster telephone, also the result of a collaboration between Dalí and James, it is one of the emblems of the surrealist movement.

From Fortnite to Fifa, online video game players warned of rise in fraud

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 10:01 PM PDT

After games boom in pandemic, gangs are using phishing and malware to cheat fans out of money and reveal their personal data

Players of online video games such as Roblox, Fortnite and Fifa are being warned to watch out for scammers, amid concerns that gangs are targeting the platforms.

Multiplayer games boomed during the pandemic lockdowns as people turned to socialising in virtual spaces.

Gandhi in heels? Maria Callas statue hits the wrong note

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 12:45 AM PDT

Critics compare figure of famous soprano erected in Greek capital to an Oscar statuette

Drama in life, drama in posterity. For Maria Callas, Greece's greatest diva, there is, even 44 years after her death, no let up from the artistic wrangling that was her lot.

But this time the uproar is focused on a statue erected at the foot of the ancient Acropolis, opposite the Roman theatre where the world-renowned opera singer made her debut.

Pregnant women at risk from NHS workers’ mixed messages over safety of jab

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 11:45 PM PDT

Expectant mothers tell helpline that midwives are advising them against vaccines despite threat posed by virus

• Coronavirus – latest updates

• See all our coronavirus coverage

Pregnant women are being advised by some health professionals not to have the Covid vaccine despite an edict from the NHS that they should encourage them to get the jab. One in six of the most critically ill Covid patients requiring life-saving care are unvaccinated pregnant women, figures released last week show.

Yet messages sent to the Vaccines and Pregnancy helpline, launched on 20 August to help pregnant women navigate information about the vaccine, suggest that some midwives are advising against the jab.

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Covid news live: Gordon Brown urges rich nations to send vaccines to Africa; UK cases stay high

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 01:54 AM PDT

Follow all the latest on the coronavirus pandemic from the UK and around the world

See all our coronavirus coverage

The BBC have a good interview with Professor Sarah Gilbert, Covid vaccine creator who argues that the experimental technologies that helped develop vaccines in record time have expanded scientific ambitions.

The architect of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid jab, says vaccine development has been transformed and says others should now be developed to tackle other priority pathogens - like Mers, Zika and Ebola.

There's a lot of vaccine development that we need to do now that we can do it.

Concern over jab delay for pupils in England as age group cases soar

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 02:00 AM PDT

With schools struggling to vaccinate before winter arrives, ministers are urged to allow children to receive vaccines at different venues

• Coronavirus – latest updates

• See all our coronavirus coverage

Ministers are facing demands to allow younger teenagers to attend Covid vaccination centres, amid concerns that jab rates among this age group are three times lower in England than Scotland.

The vaccination rate among 12- to 15-year-olds in England currently stands at just 14.2% according to official data, compared with 44.3% in Scotland. The huge disparity has led to complaints that England has been held back by administering vaccinations solely through schools.

What’s the value of a confirmatory PCR test? | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 01:30 AM PDT

A positive lateral flow test, followed by a negative PCR, still means a reasonable chance of Covid-19

After a wave of cases in which a positive lateral flow device (LFD) test was followed by a negative PCR test, a private laboratory handling swab tests has been suspended.

But conflicting results are not a new problem. Back in June, when secondary school students with a positive LFD were retested with a PCR check, over one in eight came back negative. And even without laboratory problems, it is unclear why a negative PCR should trump a positive LFD.

The dark side of wellness: the overlap between spiritual thinking and far-right conspiracies

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 02:00 AM PDT

Extreme right-wing views and the wellness community are not an obvious pairing, but 'conspirituality' is increasingly pervasive. How did it all become so toxic?

It was the afternoon of 4 July 2020, and Melissa Rein Lively's video was about to go viral. A PR executive in Arizona, she already had the appearance of a person for whom a viral video was part of the plan, but with the super-groomed blondeness better suited to a branded beauty tutorial than a clip of face masks being torn from their racks. "Finally we meet the end of the road. This shit is over, we don't want any of this any more!" she screams, holding the phone camera in one hand and tossing face masks with the other, in a video that swiftly became known as QAnon Karen. When two employees at the Scottsdale branch of Target confront her, she continues, "Why? I can't do it cause I'm a blonde white woman? Wearing a fucking $40,000 Rolex? I don't have the right to fuck shit up?"

Rein Lively had always thought of herself as a spiritual person. Her interests were grounded in "wellness, natural health, organic food", she lists for me today from her home in Arizona, "yoga, ayurvedic healing, meditation, etc." When the pandemic hit she started spending more time online, on wellness sites that offered affirmations, recipes and, on health, the repeated message to "Do your research." She'd click on a video of foods that boost immunity and she'd see a clip about the dangers of vaccines. "A significant number of influencers previously focused on wellness and spirituality," she noticed, "seemed to become dominated with what we now understand to be QAnon content." QAnon is the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is fighting a deep-state cabal of Satanic paedophiles. It originated on far-right message boards before entering online wellness communities, where it found a largely female following, who continue to share phrases like "Save the Children". The phrase was first used by QAnon believers spreading the false claim that Hillary Clinton abused children and drank their blood. Today that phrase is seen on social media posts by yoga teachers and wellness influencers speaking out against human trafficking.

El Alamein, Dresden and a cold war spy: the incredible life of Victor Gregg

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 11:15 PM PDT

A celebration of the achievements of the Britain's oldest para veteran, who died last week aged 101

I first met Victor Gregg on a freezing afternoon in 2009 when we were to talk about his experiences in the second world war.

He was 90 and had sent me an email saying he would pick me up at Winchester station. When I arrived there was no sign of him. After 10 minutes a car parked up the road flashed its lights. It was Vic practising a routine he had learned more than 50 years earlier in the Western Desert, when Rifleman Gregg was assigned to Vladimir Peniakoff, the founder of "Popski's Private Army", a unit of British special forces. Vic's job was to drive thousands of miles, alone, through the dunes, carrying stores and intelligence to Popski's contacts. Vic said Popski had told him: "Before you go in, suss out how you are going to get out." This was a life lesson for Vic, I had just been "sussed out" by him before going further.

I’m sad at work and don’t know what to do with my life

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 10:00 PM PDT

You've been working hard to tick the expected boxes, maybe it's time to find and tick you own

The question I am 37, have a lovely husband and a wonderful child, and a job in the creative industries. The problem is that I haven't been happy in my career for a long time and have felt very stuck, and every now and again I end up crying because I just don't know what to do with my life. I was an over-achiever at school (worked hard, got the grades, went to a good university), but am now in a role where there is little progression and I'm not sure I even want to stay in this career.

I am realising that I have spent so much time trying to do what is expected of me that I have absolutely no idea what it is that I want to do. I also cringe at how much I put up with in my 20s. I chased men I knew deep down I didn't really like and took on all kinds of extra tasks at work with the promise that it would look good on the CV, but got few promotions.

Elizabeth Strout: ‘I’ve thought about death every day since I was 10'

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 01:00 AM PDT

The novelist took the slow road to success but is now a Pulitzer-winner and a bestseller. As she returns to her much-loved creation Lucy Barton, she discusses childhood, loneliness – and perseverance

Three years ago, Elizabeth Strout was in New York sitting in on rehearsals for the stage version of her novel My Name Is Lucy Barton (a show that came to the Bridge theatre in London, directed by Richard Eyre) and was watching Laura Linney, an actor for whom she has the fondest regard, inch her way into the part. Linney stepped into the rehearsal space, pushed her spectacles on to the top of her head and started to murmur something about her character's ex-husband – William. Strout, overhearing, exclaimed: "Oh William!" It was as if Linney had given her permission: she would write another Lucy Barton novel because William deserved a story of his own. Oh William! became the title of her new book and it has all the familiar pleasures of her writing: the clean prose, the slow reveals, the wisdom – what Hilary Mantel once described as "an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue" – the qualities that led to Strout winning the Pulitzer for fiction. But did she ever find out what was in Linney's mind? "Laura has no memory of the moment at all, she was in her zone, doing whatever she was doing," she laughs.

She is talking on Zoom – and as women of more or less the same age (she is 65), we find ourselves bonding instantly, commenting on our lame reflexes with technology, marvelling that we are able to talk at what seems an arm's stretch and with the Atlantic between us. We confess to a dislike at having to look at ourselves on screen and reassure each other we look fine. Strout is sitting in what I guess to be her study, with pale yellow walls, books and paintings – a calm, civilised room. It feels absurdly easy to talk to her, as if we were catching up after a long gap.

Spies next door? The suburban US couple accused of espionage

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 11:00 PM PDT

Jonathan and Diana Toebbes's story is like a fictional spy caper, blending an all-American couple with technology and betrayal

When accused spies Jonathan and Diana Toebbe were escorted into a West Virginia court to be arraigned on espionage charges, they looked as any middle-aged, suburban couple might: struck by a dramatic turn in circumstances that comes when placed in an orange jumpsuit and restricted by manacles.

But the story of the Toebbes, 42 and 45, is now about as far from typical suburbia as you can get. It's a story that reads like a fictional spy caper, blending a seemingly normal couple with high technology and low espionage.

Gen Z on how to save the world: young climate activists speak out

Posted: 16 Oct 2021 11:00 PM PDT

With courage and ambition, those born into the reality of global heating are leading the way in confronting it. Ahead of the crucial Cop26 conference, we talk to young activists around the world. Introduction by author Olivia Laing

When I was 20, I dropped out of university to live on a road protest. I was terrified by the oncoming apocalypse of climate change, and loathed the short-term, environmentally catastrophic logic that prioritised road-building over trees. The data, even in 1997, was clear: human activity was heating the globe, with increasingly devastating effects. Time was short, and a sea change in behaviour was required.

Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since then, and very little has been achieved, thanks in large part to corporate interests invested in maintaining our dependence on non-renewable resources. Far more people understand and accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and yet we seem paralysed by despair, caught in a spell of inertia, even as the most lurid of predictions – floods, fires, plagues – come to pass.

Priti Patel considering police protection for MPs after David Amess killing

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 02:51 AM PDT

Home secretary says safety measures for constituency surgeries under discussion

The home secretary, Priti Patel, has said she is considering offering police protection for MPs at their constituency surgeries, as a review takes place to "close the gaps" in security in the wake of the killing of David Amess on Friday.

Patel said local police forces had already contacted all MPs to advise them about measures to improve their safety, and a review is taking place involving the House of Commons authorities and the police.

The debilitating effects of long Covid have just begun to hit economies | Torsten Bell

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 02:00 AM PDT

A study of German footballers revealed they still weren't fighting fit six months after recovering from infection

The impact of the pandemic on our economy as we attempt to reopen is top of the agenda, with ships on the wrong side of the globe, gas prices rising and surging demand for many goods going unmet. How big and long lasting these effects will be dominated discussions of global financial leaders at last week's annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

But what is hardly discussed and still poorly understood is the continuing impact of Covid-19, specifically on the millions of people who have had it. Governments are only just starting to worry about long Covid's impact on their disability benefits bill, while we know little about Covid's direct effect on productivity.

Hawks on all sides ready to swoop if Iran drags feet on nuclear talks

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 12:15 AM PDT

The regime in Tehran says discussions will resume 'soon', but Israel has already 'greatly accelerated' plans for military action

Coordinated warnings last week from the US, Israel and the EU that "time is short" to revive an agreement curbing Iran's nuclear activities raise a disturbing question: what will opposing governments do if, as seems likely, Tehran's hardline regime continues to drag its feet while accumulating the wherewithal to build a nuclear weapon?

Israel's leaders, as usual, are not mincing words. "Every day that passes, every delay in the negotiations, brings Iran closer to a nuclear bomb. If a terror regime is going to acquire a nuclear weapon, we must act. We must make clear that the civilised world won't allow it," said foreign minister Yair Lapid.

‘Nobody ever put hands on me before’: flight attendants on the air rage epidemic

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 12:00 AM PDT

Although travelers' hissy fits are nothing new, incidences of bad behavior have spiked amid the tense landscape of Covid-19

Alexander Clark had only just boarded the Los Angeles-bound United airliner when the man seated behind him became incensed. As Clark tells it, a flight attendant had repeatedly asked the passenger to alternately stop talking on his phone or don a face mask when, after the fourth ask, the passenger snapped.

"I will find your name, date of birth, and address! I will know your social security number before I get off this plane!" yelled the passenger, who appeared to be in his 30s. He leapt to his feet mid-shout, spittle arcing from his maskless mouth, and stomped over to the male flight attendant.

The US has a silent pig pandemic on its doorstep once again

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 02:00 AM PDT

As America readies to protect its pork industry, the Dominican Republic has been accused of using an outbreak of African Swine Fever to wipe out smaller producers

A pandemic is silently sweeping across the globe – and it is not Covid-19. Since African Swine Fever (ASF) was confirmed in the Americas more than two months ago, the deadly pig disease is now on six continents and on the doorstep of the US.

Samples taken in the Dominican Republic tested positive for ASF in July and in neighbouring Haiti in September.

Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain’s secret propaganda war

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 01:00 AM PDT

Declassified documents reveal how in 1965 a shadowy dirty tricks arm of the Foreign Office incited anti-communist massacres that left hundreds of thousands dead

In early 1965 Ed Wynne, an official from the Foreign Office in London in his late 40s, arrived at the door of a two-storey villa set in the discreet calm of a genteel housing estate in colonial Singapore.

But Wynne was no ordinary official. A specialist from the Foreign Office's cold war propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), he had been assigned to lead a small team. A junior official, four local people and two "IRD ladies", seconded to the unit from London, would join him.

‘Lives at risk’ in Melbourne detention hotel after three asylum seekers test positive for Covid

Posted: 17 Oct 2021 12:50 AM PDT

Detainees have not been vaccinated and socially distancing is 'impossible in the conditions they're in', advocates say

An asylum seeker inside a Melbourne hotel being used as an "alternative place of detention" by Australian Border Force says detainees are frustrated and scared after three of them tested positive for Covid.

Mustafa Salah, 23, has spent the better part of eight years inside Australian detention facilities offshore and within its borders.

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

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