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Chinese labour schemes aimed to cut Uighur population density – report
Australia's attorney general comes forward to deny historical rape allegation
Coronavirus live news: Ukraine sees record levels of hospitalisations; Explosion hits Dutch testing centre
Meghan 'saddened' by allegations of bullying at Kensington Palace
Nicola Sturgeon gives evidence to Alex Salmond inquiry amid calls to resign - live updates
'Two sessions': China expected to unveil new controls on Hong Kong
Neera Tanden withdraws as Cabinet nominee after facing opposition
Tokyo Olympics add 12 women to executive board in late gender equality push
SoundCloud announces overhaul of royalties model to 'fan-powered' system
Japanese billionaire looking for people who 'push the envelope' for moon flight
Connecticut yard sale bowl turns out to be 15th-century Chinese artifact
'Our rescue cat rescued us': how pets provided unconditional love in lockdown
What's in a vaccine and what does it do to your body?
Dolly Parton gets vaccinated with Moderna jab she helped fund
Auckland lockdown threatens to split 'team of five million'
Smile for the camera: dark side of China's emotion-recognition tech
Galician noir: how a rainy corner of Spain spawned a new TV genre
Fitbit Sense review: a good smartwatch that fails on sustainability
Pig in clover: how the world's smallest wild hog was saved from extinction
'I am a woman who wants': on disability and desire
‘It's radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power
Australian facing extradition from Morocco to Saudi Arabia arrested hours after meeting his baby, wife says
Donations, fees and sales: the funds that maintain the White House’s ‘museum quality’
Bunny Wailer, last surviving founder member of the Wailers, dies aged 73
Australia news live: Christian Porter says he is entirely innocent of historical rape allegation
Civilian deaths in conflict plummeted during pandemic, report finds
FBI views Capitol insurrection as domestic terrorism, says Christopher Wray – video
CDC chief warns of ‘potential fourth surge’ of coronavirus in US – video
A smuggled bird and fuel protests: Tuesday's best photos

Chinese labour schemes aimed to cut Uighur population density – report

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 12:08 AM PST

Accidental publication adds to growing body of evidence of Beijing's efforts to persecute minority

Chinese labour programmes in Xinjiang are designed at least partly to reduce the population density of the Uighur ethnic minority group, according to a study accidentally published online.

The Chinese report, by academics of Nankai University, was taken down in mid-2020, but a copy was archived by the academic Dr Adrian Zenz. It adds to the growing body of evidence of Beijing's concerted efforts to persecute Uighurs in what human rights experts and some governments have labelled cultural genocide.

Australia's attorney general comes forward to deny historical rape allegation

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 11:31 PM PST

Christian Porter reveals he is figure at centre of accusation dating back to 1988 and says the alleged incident 'simply did not happen'

Australia's attorney general, Christian Porter, has dismissed a historical rape accusation against him as "entirely untrue" after outing himself as the subject of claims made by a woman who took her own life last year.

Fronting the media for an at-times tearful news conference, Porter also resisted calls to stand aside as the country's first law officer amid growing criticism of how the conservative government has handled accusations of rape and sexual assault.

Coronavirus live news: Ukraine sees record levels of hospitalisations; Explosion hits Dutch testing centre

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 01:38 AM PST

Ukraine records 3,486 people hospitalised in the past day; Dutch police say explosion at a coronavirus testing location may have been intentional; Japan trying systematic random and targeted testing

9.38am GMT

Japan's government plans to extend a state of emergency over the coronavirus for Tokyo and three neighbouring prefectures by two weeks, until March 21, Reuters reports.

While new coronavirus cases have fallen significantly from a peak in early January, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike said on Tuesday the pace of decline had slowed, expressing concern that it may not be enough to lift restrictions.

9.24am GMT

A top Chinese political advisory body has said that concerns about China using vaccines to influence other countries are "narrow-minded," Reuters reports.

Guo Weimin, spokesman for the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said some suspect China is using Covid-19 vaccines to "expand our geopolitical influence."

"This idea is extremely narrow-minded", Guo said at a news conference. China's President Xi Jinping has pledged to make China's vaccines a "global public good."

The Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday reported that the United States is working with allies Japan, India and Australia on a plan to distribute COVID-19 vaccines in Asia to counter the influence of China.

Meghan 'saddened' by allegations of bullying at Kensington Palace

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 12:15 AM PST

Aide alleged in 2018 that Duchess of Sussex's behaviour had driven out two personal assistants, say reports

The Duchess of Sussex is "saddened" by a report that claims she faced a bullying complaint during her time at Kensington Palace, her spokesman has said.

The Times reported that a complaint was made in October 2018 by Jason Knauf, then the Sussexes' communications secretary, which alleged Meghan had driven two personal assistants out of the household and was undermining the confidence of a third staff member.

Nicola Sturgeon gives evidence to Alex Salmond inquiry amid calls to resign - live updates

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 01:48 AM PST

Scotland's first minister is appearing before MSPs, amid multiple allegations that she broke the ministerial code

9.46am GMT

Mitchell asks Sturgeon if she was aware there were complaints made by females. You set yourself up as a champion for women yet didn't pay much attention to complaints.

Sturgeon says she was not aware of allegations of sexually inappropriate behaviour by Alex Salmond.

9.38am GMT

Asked by Mitchell what went wrong, Sturgeon repeats that the government made "a mistake, a very serious mistake" in how it handled the investigation into Alex Salmond.

She says the legal advice shows the Scottish government was confident of defending the judicial review brought by Salmond and that if it were not for the mistake, we do not know who would have won the review.

'Two sessions': China expected to unveil new controls on Hong Kong

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 07:00 PM PST

Delegates descend on capital for week of pomp and pageantry including unveiling of 14th five-year plan

China is expected to unveil new political controls on Hong Kong at this week's meeting of its rubber-stamp parliament, which is also likely to showcase President Xi Jinping's further consolidation of power.

Beijing plans to ensure only "patriots" – Communist party loyalists – can run Hong Kong, according to a speech by a top Chinese official ahead of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC).

Neera Tanden withdraws as Cabinet nominee after facing opposition

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 05:06 PM PST

Republican senators, and one Democrat, cited Tanden's tweets in opposing her nomination for director of the budget office

Joe Biden's pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, has withdrawn her nomination after she faced opposition from key Democratic and Republican senators over her past controversial tweets.

Her withdrawal marks the president's first failure as he seeks Senate confirmation for his cabinet nominees.

Tokyo Olympics add 12 women to executive board in late gender equality push

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 07:05 PM PST

Organising committee's board now consists of 42% women
Committee will be dissolved after this year's Games

The Tokyo Olympics has made a symbolic gesture toward gender equality by appointing 12 women to the body's executive board, which will now have 19 women among its 45 members, or 42%.

To accommodate the new women, the size of the board was increased from 35 to 45. Several resignations on Tuesday also created more space.

SoundCloud announces overhaul of royalties model to 'fan-powered' system

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 04:54 PM PST

Streaming company says it will start directing money from subscribers to the artists they actually listen to

SoundCloud announced on Tuesday it would become the first streaming service to start directing subscribers' fees only to the artists they listen to, a move welcomed by musicians campaigning for fairer pay.

Current practice for streaming services including Spotify, Deezer and Apple is to pool royalty payments and dish them out based on which artists have the most global plays.

Japanese billionaire looking for people who 'push the envelope' for moon flight

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 07:28 PM PST

Yusaku Maezawa, an online fashion tycoon, needs to fill eight spare seats on the lunar spaceship being developed by SpaceX

It's the sort of chance that comes along just once in a blue moon: a Japanese billionaire is throwing open a private lunar expedition to eight people from around the world.

Yusaku Maezawa, an online fashion tycoon, was announced in 2018 as the first man to book a spot aboard the lunar spaceship being developed by SpaceX.

Connecticut yard sale bowl turns out to be 15th-century Chinese artifact

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 03:32 PM PST

Bowl is worth between $300,000 and $500,000 and about to go up for auction in New York at Sotheby's

Talk about your yard sale finds. A small porcelain bowl bought for $35 at a Connecticut yard sale turned out to be a rare, 15th-century Chinese artifact worth between $300,000 and $500,000 that is about to go up for auction at Sotheby's.

The white bowl adorned with cobalt blue paintings of flowers and other designs is about 6in inches (16cm) in diameter. An antiques enthusiast came across the piece and thought it could be something special when browsing a yard sale in the New Haven area last year, according to Sotheby's.

'Our rescue cat rescued us': how pets provided unconditional love in lockdown

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 10:00 PM PST

As the pandemic enters its second year, Guardian readers celebrate the animals that helped them navigate a difficult 12 months – from dogs to guinea pigs to cows

What's in a vaccine and what does it do to your body?

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 01:44 AM PST

There are all sorts of different vaccines but many of them share specific types of ingredients. Josh Toussaint-Strauss talks to Prof Adam Finn to find out what is in most conventional vaccines, as well as what's going on in our bodies when we take them – and why the Covid jabs work differently

Dolly Parton gets vaccinated with Moderna jab she helped fund

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 04:18 PM PST

Iconic country music star sings a vaccine version of Jolene while getting inoculated in Nashville

Dolly Parton has been inoculated with the Covid-19 vaccine that she helped to fund.

The country music star, 75, broke into song while getting the Moderna jab and adapted one of her best-known ballads.

Auckland lockdown threatens to split 'team of five million'

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 10:02 PM PST

Checkpoints, swabs and isolation make residents in New Zealand's biggest city question the government's approach to Covid-19

The catch cry of "be kind" – which prime minister Jacinda Ardern impressed upon New Zealand since its first lockdown a year ago – is in danger of being replaced with a less positive mantra as Aucklanders struggle through their second Covid-19 lockdown in a fortnight.

The country's biggest city has been in level-three lockdown since Sunday morning as a result of two cases of community transmission, which were found to have happened while an earlier period of level-three restrictions were in place – threatening to fracture the unity of the "team of five million".

Smile for the camera: dark side of China's emotion-recognition tech

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 10:00 PM PST

Xi Jinping wants 'positive energy' but critics say the surveillance tools' racial bias and monitoring for anger or sadness should be banned

"Ordinary people here in China aren't happy about this technology but they have no choice. If the police say there have to be cameras in a community, people will just have to live with it. There's always that demand and we're here to fulfil it."

So says Chen Wei at Taigusys, a company specialising in emotion recognition technology, the latest evolution in the broader world of surveillance systems that play a part in nearly every aspect of Chinese society.

Galician noir: how a rainy corner of Spain spawned a new TV genre

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 12:56 AM PST

Spanish dramas such as Money Heist have been taking the world by storm in recent years. But why are film-makers now flooding to the country's north-west to make their shows?

Rosa Vargas's arrival in a small town in north-western Spain to investigate the disappearance of a young girl marked an unlikely milestone. Vargas is the fictional police detective in O sabor das margaridas (Bitter Daisies), which, in 2019 became the first series in Galician, a language spoken by fewer than 2.5 million people, to be broadcast by Netflix. The series became one of the top 10 most-watched non-English language shows in the UK and Ireland just a month after its international release.

A decade after Nordic noir captured the attention of international TV audiences, a TV genre some are calling "Galician noir" is emerging from the rainy corner of Spain. HBO made its debut in the Galician language last year with a Spanish-Portuguese miniseries Auga seca (Dry Water), a murder mystery set in the port city of Vigo, and was soon followed by the Galician-produced police thriller La unidad (The Unit) on the Spanish subscription platform Movistar+. More recently, El desorden que dejas (The Mess You Leave Behind), based on a novel by the screenwriter Carlos Montero, premiered on Netflix in December.

Fitbit Sense review: a good smartwatch that fails on sustainability

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 11:00 PM PST

Feature-packed health and fitness-tracking smartwatch has advanced sensors but failure to address screen and battery repairs is poor

Fitbit is attempting to challenge the dominance of the Apple Watch with the Sense: a smartwatch packed with advanced health sensors for stress, heart rate and ECG wrapped up in a neat and tidy package. But be careful, because if you damage the watch, it appears you can't even pay Fitbit to fix it.

It costs £300 and is Fitbit's top model above the £200 Versa 3, which is essentially the same smartwatch without the advanced sensors, plus a cheaper line of fitness trackers.

Pig in clover: how the world's smallest wild hog was saved from extinction

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 10:15 PM PST

The pygmy hog is still endangered but a reintroduction programme in Assam, India, has given it a greater chance of survival

The greyish brown pygmy hog (Porcula salvania), with its sparse hair and a streamlined body that is about the size of a cat's, is the smallest wild pig in the world, and also one of its rarest, appearing on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list as endangered.

Named after the sal grasslands where they were first found, they once thrived in the lush plains of the sub Himalayas from Nepal to Uttar Pradesh. But today, there are thought to be less than 300 in the wild, in Assam, India.

'I am a woman who wants': on disability and desire

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 10:00 PM PST

Cerebral palsy made my body a country of error and pain. It took me years to accept the part of me that craves intimacy

The autumn I was 19, I entered my college dining hall in California just in time to overhear a boy telling a table of mutual acquaintances that he thought I was very nice, but he felt terribly sorry for me because I was going to die a virgin. This was already impossible, but in that moment all that mattered was the blunt force of the boy's certainty. He hadn't said he could never … or "She might be pretty, but" … or "Can she even have sex?" or even "I'd never fuck a cripple" – all sentences I'd heard or overheard by then. What he had done was, firmly, with some weird, wrong breed of kindness in his voice, drawn a border between my body and the country of desire.

It didn't matter that, by then, I'd already done my share of heated fumbling in narrow dorm-room beds; that more than one person had already looked at me and said: "I'm in love with you," and I had said it back. It didn't matter that I'd boldly kissed a boy on his back porch in sixth grade, surprising him so much that the BB gun he was holding went off, sending a squadron of brown squirrels skittering up into the trees. Most of me was certain that the boy in the dining hall was right in all the ways that really mattered. He knew I'd never be the kind of woman anyone could really want, and I knew that even my body's own wanting was suspect and tainted by flaw. My body was a country of error and pain. It was a doctor's best attempt, a thing to manage and make up for. It was a place to leave if I was hunting goodness, happiness or release.

‘It's radical’: the Ugandan city built on solar, shea butter and people power

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 12:00 AM PST

Ojok Okello is transforming his destroyed village into a green town where social enterprises responsibly harness the shea tree

The village of Okere Mom-Kok was in ruins by the end of more than a decade of war in northern Uganda.

Now, just outside Ojok Okello's living-room door, final-year pupils at the early childhood centre are noisily breaking for recess and a market is clattering into life, as is the local craft brewery, as what has become Okere City begins a new day.

Australian facing extradition from Morocco to Saudi Arabia arrested hours after meeting his baby, wife says

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 01:53 PM PST

Family suggests case of mistaken identity after Dr Osama AlHasani, 42, detained in Tangier

An Australian citizen facing potential extradition from Morocco to Saudi Arabia was detained just hours after meeting his newborn child, his wife says.

The wife of Dr Osama AlHasani – a dual Australian and Saudi citizen – has also raised fears about his welfare and says the family is confused about the precise nature of the accusations against him.

Donations, fees and sales: the funds that maintain the White House’s ‘museum quality’

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 12:00 AM PST

System has been used as a point of comparison as Boris Johnson seeks to create a charity to refurbish his Downing Street flat

Jackie Kennedy first visited the White House as a girl. "All I remember is shuffling through," she told Life magazine. "There wasn't even a booklet you could buy." When she became first lady, she set about transforming it from bland and boring into a mansion worthy of a president – but someone would have to pay.

In 1961, Jackie Kennedy founded the White House Historical Association (WHHA) to protect, preserve and guarantee public access to America's most famous address. Three years later, President Lyndon B Johnson created the committee for the preservation of the White House, a group of experts who work to maintain the "museum quality" of its public spaces.

Bunny Wailer, last surviving founder member of the Wailers, dies aged 73

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 09:21 AM PST

Reggae artist and three-time Grammy winner found worldwide fame alongside Bob Marley in the early 1970s

Bunny Wailer, the co-founder and last living member of Jamaican reggae group the Wailers, who took Bob Marley to global stardom, has died aged 73.

His manager Maxine Stowe confirmed his death to the Jamaica Observer. Wailer had been frequently hospitalised since suffering a stroke in July 2020.

Australia news live: Christian Porter says he is entirely innocent of historical rape allegation

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 12:32 AM PST

The attorney general makes a statement in Perth saying he will not step down. This blog is now closed

7.57am GMT

That's where I will leave you for today. Here's what we learned:

7.37am GMT

AAP reports that expert forensic evidence helps prove convicted killer Susan Neill-Fraser suffered a "significant miscarriage of justice" that warrants a retrial, her legal team argues.

The Hobart woman is serving 23 years' jail for killing partner Bob Chappell, who disappeared off the couple's yacht moored on the River Derwent on Australia Day 2009.

There is a significant possibility that the jury would have delivered a different verdict if the evidence of Jones had been before it.

Civilian deaths in conflict plummeted during pandemic, report finds

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 11:00 PM PST

The number of civilians reported killed in explosions nearly halved in 2020 to the lowest level in a decade

The number of civilian casualties in conflicts around the world plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic, a new report shows.

Last year, an average of 10 civilians a day were reported killed by explosive weapons, compared with 18 in 2019, according to analysis by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a London-based charity.

FBI views Capitol insurrection as domestic terrorism, says Christopher Wray – video

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 09:30 AM PST

FBI director Christopher Wray has said the bureau views the Capitol insurrection as a clear act of domestic terrorism. Speaking during a Senate hearing on the 6 January riots, Wray said: 'That attack, that siege, was criminal behaviour, plain and simple, and it's behaviour that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism'

FBI director Christopher Wray testifies over Capitol insurrection – live

CDC chief warns of ‘potential fourth surge’ of coronavirus in US – video

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 07:28 AM PST

The director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, warned that a recent increase in coronavirus cases indicated a fourth surge could occur before a majority of the US had been vaccinated.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the US has recorded more than 28.5m Covid-19 cases and nearly 513,000 deaths. Daily case numbers fell steeply after a peak in January but have started to increase again, boosted by the spread of new variants

A smuggled bird and fuel protests: Tuesday's best photos

Posted: 02 Mar 2021 04:43 AM PST

The Guardian's picture editors select photo highlights from around the world