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

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


'Half-friends is not a concept': UK should decide who its allies are, says Macron

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 09:00 PM PST

'History and geography don't change – I don't think British destiny is different to ours,' says French president

Emmanuel Macron has warned that Boris Johnson's government has to decide who its allies are, insisting that "half-friends is not a concept".

"What politics does Great Britain wish to choose? It cannot be the best ally of the US, the best ally of the EU and the new Singapore … It has to choose a model," the French president said, in an interview with the Guardian and a small group of other media.

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Cori Bush says she's moving office away from GOP extremist over safety concerns

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 06:27 PM PST

Democratic congresswoman said Marjorie Taylor Greene and her staff refused to wear masks and berated her

The Democratic representative Cori Bush said she is moving her office away from that of Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene due to safety concerns after Greene and her staff berated her and refused to wear masks.

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India blocks mobile internet at sites of farmers’ protest

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 02:04 AM PST

Demonstrators begin hunger strike outside Delhi after week of clashes with police

India blocked mobile internet services in several areas surrounding Delhi on Saturday as protesting farmers began a one-day hunger strike after a week of clashes with authorities that left one dead and hundreds injured.

Angry at new agricultural laws that they say benefit large private buyers at the expense of producers, tens of thousands of farmers have been camped at protest sites on the outskirts of the capital for over two months.

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Myanmar military vows to abide by constitution amid coup fears

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 11:34 PM PST

Armed forces release statement saying remarks by general about political system were misinterpreted

Myanmar's armed forces have said they will protect and abide by the country's constitution and act according to law, amid concerns in the country that the military might attempt to seize power.

In an official statement on Saturday, the military said recent remarks by its top general about abolishing the constitution were misinterpreted by media and some organisations.

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Malawi sex workers protest at 'targeted police brutality' after Covid-19 curfew

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 12:45 AM PST

Petition urges government to extend closing times for bars as women go hungry and are forced to skip HIV medication

Dozens of sex workers took to the streets of Malawi's capital Lilongwe on Thursday to protest against what they described as "targeted police brutality" following new Covid-19 restrictions.

The protests were led by the Female Sex Workers Association (FSWA), which has about 120,000 members across the country, according to its national coordinator, Zinenani Majawa.

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Putin signs last-minute extension to nuclear weapons treaty with US

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 09:57 AM PST

Russian president spoke to Joe Biden earlier in the week about arms control pact due to lapse in February

Vladimir Putin has signed a bill extending the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States a week before the pact was due to expire.

Both houses of the Russian parliament voted unanimously on Wednesday to extend the New Start treaty for five years. Putin and the US president, Joe Biden, had discussed the nuclear accord a day earlier, and the Kremlin said they agreed to complete the necessary extension procedures in the next few days.

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GameStop shares surge again as Robinhood restores trading

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 09:57 PM PST

App helping to fuel share-buying frenzy allows 'limited buys' after a $1bn cash injection to safeguard trades

Shares in companies including videogame retailer GameStop soared again on Friday, as an army of small investors taking aim at Wall Street regained access to amateur share trading platform Robinhood.

The app, weaponised by activist small investors to trap hedge funds in a "short squeeze" that has cost them $20bn on paper by some estimates, had suspended buying of stocks such as GameStop, cinema chain AMC and BlackBerry on Thursday.

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Japanese woman hid mother's body in freezer for 10 years over fear of being evicted

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 08:38 PM PST

The 48-year-old reportedly told police she was worried she would be forced to move out of the flat she shared with her mother

A Japanese woman who said she hid her mother's corpse in a freezer in her apartment for a decade told police she feared eviction if the death was discovered, according to reports.

Yumi Yoshino, 48, was held "on suspicion of abandoning and hiding a female body" found on Wednesday inside the freezer in a Tokyo apartment, police said.

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Third night of protests in Poland after abortion ban takes effect

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 03:03 PM PST

Thousands join rallies in Warsaw and other cities after delayed ban finally becomes law

Thousands have protested for a third consecutive night in Warsaw and other parts of Poland after the country's rightwing government implemented a court ruling imposing a near-total ban on abortion.

Protesters have defied coronavirus restrictions and sub-zero temperatures to rally after the controversial judgment was given legal force on Wednesday.

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Coronavirus live news: Coachella festival cancelled; fears over Australian vaccine

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 02:56 AM PST

Shock and anger at EU's move to invoke Brexit clause on Irish border; Fauci says 'virus will continue to mutate' as Democrats aim to fast-track Covid relief plan; Johnson & Johnson one-dose Covid vaccine shown to work

A man has been charged after a suspicious package was sent to a coronavirus vaccine production plant in north Wales.

Kent Police said it was "not a viable device", but it appears to have been intended as an explosive. Anthony Collins, 53, was charged with "dispatching an article by post with the intention of inducing the belief it is likely to explode or ignite".

Malaysia has reported its largest daily increase in coronavirus cases, recording 5,728 new cases and 13 further deaths.

The new cases takes the total of infections in the country to 209,661, and the number of fatalities from the pandemic to 746.

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January's daily UK Covid death toll averages more than 1,000, figures show

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 12:37 AM PST

Confirmation of deadliest month of pandemic comes a year after the UK recorded its first Covid death

More than 1,000 people in the UK have died of Covid on average each day in January, making it the deadliest month of the pandemic so far by the government's count, with more than 28,000 deaths as of Thursday.

Saturday marks the first anniversary of when the UK recorded its first coronavirus death, which occurred on 30 January 2020.

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From lockdowns to pool parties: how Covid rules vary around the world

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 11:00 PM PST

Countries have adopted different rules on business activity, education, socialising and travel

Curfews and lockdowns Restrictions have largely been relaxed in most of Brazil's 26 states, although several continue to limit opening hours for bars, restaurants and shops. A round-the-clock curfew was imposed this week in Brazil's biggest state, Amazonas, after hospitals were overwhelmed.

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Everyday Covid mistakes we are all still making

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 08:38 AM PST

Can we do more as individuals to help slow the spread of coronavirus? We ask the experts

Covid-19 infections in the UK are reducing but remain stubbornly high, despite a month of lockdown measures. So could we be doing more as individuals to curb transmission of the virus? A virologist, a psychologist and a public health expert share their views on some of the Covid-19 mistakes that we are all still making.

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Bernardine Evaristo: the forgotten black British novels everyone should read

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 03:00 AM PST

The Booker-winning novelist is relaunching a series of neglected novels by black British writers. She explains why they deserve a new readership

In today's culture, it's as though black British literary history began relatively recently, and new books are published without reference to or knowledge of what has gone before. This is not the case with white writers. Publishers, critics and readers will often understand where books sit within their literary contexts and cultural ecosystem. We can trace the literary lineage of Douglas Stuart's Booker-winning Shuggie Bain back to the works of James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. Ghosts by Dolly Alderton is in conversation with Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones series and all the novels that were published in its wake, just as Ali Smith's postmodern novels are descendants of Virginia Woolf's modernist oeuvre. And we know that today's historical novels have antecedents in their earlier counterparts.

Our appreciation of literature is deepened when we understand the foundations from which each new generation creates literature anew, but because so much of the body of black British literature hasn't been taught in schools or universities, or immortalised on television and film, or even been widely or seriously reviewed in the media and academia, it's as if each new book is published out of a void.

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Billie Piper: ‘I know about dysfunctional relationships – what it costs to be a woman’

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 12:00 AM PST

After 25 years in the limelight, the actor says she is finally finding her voice as an actor, writer and now director. Does life imitate art?

The first thing Billie Piper says to me is, "It's in your lined paper book, Eugene, I already sent it to them," because she's trying to home school her children while also roaming around her house to escape them and find a better phone signal. We're already on to our third kind of tech in an attempt to video chat. "I'm just so strung out," she says, sitting down, remarking that she looks awful with no makeup on, long blond hair yanked into a ponytail. She laughs at the bleakness: to hell with all this.

The Piper household – her two sons, Winston, 12, and Eugene, eight, her musician boyfriend Johnny Lloyd and their toddler daughter, Tallulah – are enjoying the pandemic as little as the rest of us. "We're OK. We're just cracking on. Everyone's going through it and other people have some terrible situations," she says, first trying to be positive, then admitting the truth: "I've got two boys home schooling and they just hate it. And I hate it. If a teacher hears me losing it down the phone, I'm past the point of caring. The mask has slipped."

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Meera Sodha's vegan recipe for Gujarati whole mung dal with sambharo | The new vegan

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 02:30 AM PST

A wholesome mung bean dal set off nicely by a sweet-sour cabbage and carrot relish

Mung beans are considered very lucky to the average Gujarati. These are the beans that their bones are built of, and not just because of their general prevalence. Mostly, they're eaten wet like a dal, as in today's dish, though sometimes they are dry-fried or sprouted with lots of garlic, cumin and lemon. Uncooked, they're a popular bean at religious ceremonies – I still have a pocketful that were blessed at my wedding, as well as some from when I moved into my new house. Today, they are just here as an idea for dinner, but I wish you good luck in cooking them.

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Patricia Lockwood: 'That's what's so attractive about the internet: you can exist there as a spirit in the void’

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 01:00 AM PST

The 'poet laureate of Twitter' and author of the acclaimed memoir Priestdaddy has written her first novel. She discusses politics, finding her voice, and her experience of long Covid

The day before my interview with the poet, essayist, memoirist and novelist Patricia Lockwood, the attempted coup took place in Washington DC. She, like myself and millions of others, followed it online, scrolling for hours, watching as President Trump continued to incite his fans by posting untruths about the election. Whatever divide ever existed between the real and virtual worlds was as decisively shattered as the Capitol's windows.

"WHAT A DAY TO BE SITTING ON YOUR BUTT IN FRONT OF THE COMPUTER, EH," Lockwood emailed me from her home in Savannah, Georgia, using the all-caps and no-punctuation style that all of us who spend too much time online recognise as meta sarcasm: sarcasm but also sarcastically mocking the obviousness of the sarcasm.

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‘I’ll be wearing full Met Gala looks to the pub’: how we’ll get dressed after lockdown

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 01:00 AM PST

Longing to get your glad rags on – or fully converted to the tracksuit? Fashion insiders reveal their lockdown looks and predict what we'll be wearing post-pandemic

Picture this: the very first celebratory night out you will have when the vaccine sets us free. Maybe you're in a fancy restaurant, maybe your local pub. Cosy around a friend's kitchen table, or on a packed dancefloor. What are you wearing? Are you desperate to wriggle back into a party dress and brave your highest heels? Or have sweatpants spoilt you for anything that doesn't have an elasticated waistband and a fleece lining?

For a year, most of us have had the same hobbies (Netflix and going to the park) and as a result have worn pretty much the same thing (loungewear and puffer jackets). But post-vaccine, we are set to split into two style tribes. For every 21st-century swell desperate to re-enact the roaring 20s, there is someone who has found solace in the soft textures of lockdown. Culture responds to trauma in a kaleidoscope of ways. After all, in the first half of the decade that followed the first world war and the Spanish flu pandemic, F Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, while TS Eliot wrote The Waste Land.

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Try before you binge! How to find your new favourite TV show

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 12:00 AM PST

It's not always best to begin at the beginning: from Mad Men to Seinfeld here are the later episodes you should watch first

Never trust a pilot. When you watch the first episode of any TV show, you are watching an act of desperation. A pilot episode has to lay out the premise, introduce the characters, differentiate itself from its peers and convince an audience of semi-attentive viewers to keep watching. Plus, don't forget, it's a complete fumble. Chances are it was written before it was cast, so the writer had no idea of the chemistry of the performers. The music might be off, or the direction, or a million other things.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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Heavy snow, icy conditions and torrential rain to hit UK

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 01:17 AM PST

Yellow warning for ice covers much of north-east England and Scotland with flood warnings in place further south

Heavy snow flurries will hit parts of the UK in the coming days, with treacherous icy conditions and heavy rain also affecting many people.

A yellow warning for ice covers much of north-east England and large parts of Scotland until 11am on Saturday, bringing dangerous conditions for motorists.

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The Guardian view on the Arab Spring, a decade on: a haunting legacy | Editorial

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 10:30 AM PST

High hopes in the region soon turned to exhaustion and despair. But the movement is not over

It is sometimes said that the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, when asked in 1972 about the influence of the French Revolution, replied: "Too soon to tell." Though the tale is apocryphal – he was referring to the student revolts of 1968 – it reminds us that the world's great events may look quite different from another temporal perspective.

In January 2011, Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled by protests triggered by the self-immolation of a street vendor weeks earlier. Within days, tens of thousands of Egyptians had flooded into Tahrir Square, forcing Hosni Mubarak from power and transforming the nascent movement into a true phenomenon. Yet a decade after the region rose up against its dictators, authoritarianism has a tighter grip than ever, and its people are drained or traumatised. Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, is in the throes of its worst human rights crisis for decades. Poverty has deepened, with the pandemic and falling oil prices exacerbating the impact.

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Latinos dying daily from Covid-19 increase 1,000% in Los Angeles county

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 03:00 AM PST

The average number of daily deaths from coronavirus among the county's Latino residents increased from 3.5 deaths to 40 deaths per 100,000

The average number of Latino residents dying from coronavirus each day in Los Angeles county has increased by more than 1,000% since November, according to county public health officials.

Los Angeles is battling one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the US, amid a winter surge that has left hospitals across the region overwhelmed. LA county's Latino population has faced the brunt of the crisis.

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Western Australia shark attack: surfer reportedly bitten on foot off Gracetown

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 09:38 PM PST

Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development says woman emerged from water with bleeding foot

A surfer has reportedly been attacked by a shark in ocean off the south-west of Western Australia.

A spokesman for the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development said the woman, 46, emerged from the water with a bleeding foot at Cowaramup Bay Beach, Gracetown.

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WHO's Covid warnings were not heeded. Now the world has a new chance to beat the virus

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 11:00 PM PST

If nations make vaccine delivery equitable, step up testing and study variant genomes, the pandemic could be under control by January 2022

A year ago, on 30 January, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the new coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern – the highest level of alarm at our disposal under international law.

At the time there were 98 confirmed cases and no deaths reported outside China. The WHO repeatedly urged all countries to capitalise on the "window of opportunity" to prevent widespread transmission of this new virus.

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'Finally some justice': court rules Shell Nigeria must pay for oil damage

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 09:08 AM PST

Nigerian farmers win claim for compensation in The Hague after 13-year battle

A Dutch court has ordered Shell Nigeria to compensate farmers for major oil spills they say caused widespread pollution.

On Friday an appeals court in The Hague rejected Shell's argument that the spills were the result of sabotage, saying not enough evidence had been provided.

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Brazil: viral rapper becomes unexpected champion of Covid vaccine drive

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 07:05 AM PST

MC Fioti's 'vaccine anthem' remix celebrates coronavirus inoculation with music video shot at biomedical research centre

Leandro Aparecido Ferreira laid bricks and flipped burgers for a living until becoming one of Brazil's most famous funk musicians.

This year, the 26-year-old – whose stage name is MC Fioti – has added a new and unexpected string to his bow: as an unlikely champion of science and vaccinology in a country being pounded by coronavirus.

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Chile police officer sentenced for killing of Mapuche farmer on 'historic day'

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 03:00 AM PST

  • Camilo Catrillanca, 24, was shot during a vehicle chase
  • Case highlights treatment of largest indigenous group

A Chilean police officer has been jailed for killing a Mapuche farmer during a vehicle chase in a case that cast a harsh spotlight on the country's treatment of its largest indigenous group.

Related: Chile: four police officers arrested over fatal shooting of indigenous man

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Coronavirus is an existential crisis that comes from an awareness of your own freedoms | Dr Sarb Johal

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 01:00 PM PST

Book extract: A lot of things will change as a result of this pandemic and it's clear the recovery won't be marked by a discrete event

In 1844, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: "Whoever has learnt to be anxious in the right way, has learnt the ultimate."

I'm no Kierkegaard, but I think he may have been on to something. The anxiety we may be experiencing in these coronavirus times might be something that feels different, deeper, and beyond perhaps your usual fear or anxiety about day-to-day troubles. This feels more existential.

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'We had no paper, no pens, but we had our bodies': the sacred and symbolic in Pasifika tattoos | Lagipoiva Cherelle

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 12:00 PM PST

The New Zealand foreign minister's moko has become international news, but beyond an identifier, our tatau are a link to ancestors, a vessel for our cultures' stories, and a tribute to those who have gone before

Shortly before my interview with six Europeans at a roundtable in Germany, I gently covered my hand tattoo with a skin-toned foundation.

I knew that without the proper context, they would stereotype me in the western sense and presume me either a criminal or at least uneducated or unprofessional. A perception of tattooing common on that side of the world.

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Arlene Foster: EU limit on vaccines into Northern Ireland is 'hostile and aggressive' – video

Posted: 29 Jan 2021 11:57 AM PST

Stormont's first minister branded the EU's triggering of article 16 of Brexit's Northern Ireland protocol to stop the unfettered flow of inoculations from the EU into the region an 'incredible act of hostility'

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