Bookmarks (30575)

Not since pre-internet days has there been such a resurgence in romantic letter writing. Elle Hunt hears the stories behind the handwritten dispatches – and whether the senders lived happily ever after IRLIn March last year, as lockdown was starting to seem inevitable, Lauren turned to her colleague Paul with a proposition: “Will you be my penpal?” Though they had worked together for two...

El Salvador’s president is consolidating power and seems intent on rewriting the country’s constitutionAmong the colourful houses of Comunidad Iberia, an impoverished neighbourhood of San Salvador, the dark glass cube of the Urban Centre for Welfare and Opportunities (or Cubo in its Spanish acronym) is an eye-catching piece of urban architecture. Inside local children take art classes, read in the library and play online...

The removal of Gen Robert E Lee’s statue – a target for Black Lives Matter protesters – from Monument Avenue has sparked a debate on public art in VirginiaAll but one plinth is now bare on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia.Where once stood enormous statues glorifying Confederate leaders, on a thoroughfare that memorialized a white supremacist past in the former capital of the Confederacy,...

Haitian deportees arriving from Texas say they were ‘rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals’ When Evens Delva waded across the Rio Grande with his wife and two daughters, he had dreams of starting a new life in Florida. But less than a week later, he and his family stepped on to the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, the sweltering and chaotic capital of Haiti,...

It’s Auf Wiedersehen to the chancellor this weekend as Germany goes to the polls. But what has been her impact on politics across Europe and on the global stage? The filmmaker and gay rights activist Rosa von Praunheim once confessed that he loved Angela Merkel, but hated her Christian Democratic Union party.This sense of Merkel as a morally attractive, quasi-presidential figure above petty partisanship...

Victoria reports 779 new cases and two more deaths; UK government to wind up furlough support this weekFears for 1 million UK furloughed staff with Sunak set to end schemeNew York City’s vaccine mandate for school staff blocked by judge‘We feel we’re not going to get really sick’: why the pandemic hasn’t dissuaded ocean cruisersDutch protesters march through The Hague against ‘corona pass’ 9.43am...

Tough controls on immigration, a restricted role for European courts, a new politics of patriotism: why is the EU’s former Brexit chief negotiator, now running for the French presidency, sounding more and more like a Eurosceptic? As his Brexit diaries are published in English, he reveals allMy Secret Brexit Diary, Michel Barnier’s blow-by-blow account of the Brexit negotiations, is at times quite a dry...

All the day’s news, as it happened. This blog has now closedNSW frontline medical staff gagged as health system braces for Covid peakNSW and Vic restrictions; Vic hotspotsVaccine rollout and rates tracker; Cases and data tracker5km and 10km from home map: check your travel radiusGet our free news app; get our morning email briefing 8.45am BST Enjoy your evening, all, and thanks for having...

Police describe arrest of 38-year-old man early on Sunday morning as ‘significant development’A 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of the London schoolteacher Sabina Nessa, Scotland Yard has said.The man was arrested at 3am on Sunday at an address in East Sussex in what police described as as “significant development”. Continue reading...

In June 1940, a Dutch salesman, acting as a consul in Lithuania, issued Jewish refugees with pseudo visas to escape Europe. His remarkable story is only now being toldHe helped save more Jewish lives than Oskar Schindler, but while the brave deeds of the German industrialist were known around the world because of an Oscar-winning film, few know the name Jan Zwartendijk, a Dutch...

Can the fastest man on the planet become a chart-topping reggae star?Hang on,” I can’t help thinking as I wait for Usain Bolt – the Usain Bolt, Fastest Man In The World Usain Bolt – to magically appear on the laptop screen in my kitchen. Bolt has released a reggae album with his childhood friend and manager Nugent “NJ” Walker, and I’ve been granted...

After 10 years of bloodshed, foreign allies are seeking to rehabilitate the Syrian leaderFor almost a decade he was a pariah who struggled to get a meeting abroad or even to assert himself on his visitors. Largely alone in his palace, save for trusted aides, Bashar al-Assad presided over a broken state whose few friends demanded a humiliating price for their protection, and weren’t...

The director’s new documentary weaves together hours of unseen footage to dispel many myths about the band’s final months. John Harris, who was involved in the project, tells the inside storyOn paper, the idea looked brilliant. In the opening weeks of January 1969, the Beatles were working up new songs for a televised concert, and being filmed as they did so. Where the event...

Critics say the leader has hijacked the gathering by getting bogged down in voting issues and losing sight of a focus on policyWhen Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, stood up to huge cheers to address her party’s conference on Saturday, the slogan “Stronger Future Together” was projected on the big screen behind her and all around the vast hall.Before what had been billed as...

A former model has launched a website to help online creatives compare deals with brands to prevent exploitationPublic support for workers’ rights and pay equality may be growing but at least one group feels left out: Gen-Z professionals in the modern and comparatively nebulous field of online content creation and influence.It’s a state of affairs that Lindsey Lee Lugrin, a former model with a...

The biotechnology is comparable to traditional breeding methods and vital to create livestock resistant to disease, droughts and heatwaves, says groupLeading UK researchers, vets and farmers have urged ministers to free livestock science of unnecessary legal curbs as the country prepares, post-Brexit, to ease gene-editing rules. Such a move would allow the creation of new breeds of animals resistant to disease, heat and drought,...

The Pacific island nation wants clarity on the legal responsibilities owed to its people related to climate changeVanuatu will ask the International court of justice for an advisory opinion on the rights of present and future generations to be protected from climate change.With a population of about 280,000 people spread across roughly 80 islands, Vanuatu is among more than a dozen Pacific island nations...

Enthusiast marks album’s 30th anniversary with 150km ride around Adelaide using Strava to sketch naked babyGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingThe naked Nirvana baby has been recreated yet again – this time on the unsuspecting streets of Adelaide.Pete Stokes rode about 150km on a single-speed bike to sketch the outline of the famous Nevermind cover. His efforts, tracked by GPS-based...

Prominent pro-democracy group Hong Kong Alliance voted to disband after many of its leaders were arrested The Hong Kong pro-democracy group that organised three decades of vigils commemorating the victims of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square massacre has voted to disband in the face of China’s sweeping clampdown on dissent.The Hong Kong Alliance was one of the most prominent symbols of the city’s former political plurality,...

Analysts say North Korea’s apparent desire for engagement is part of a push to get the US to ease crippling sanctionsThe influential sister of North Korea’s leader said that an inter-Korean summit could take place, but only if mutual “respect” and “impartiality” are guaranteed.The statement on Saturday was the second in two days by Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister and key adviser. She had...

After the success of the chancellors’s £70bn programme, there is uncertainty about the future direction of the economyThe biggest state intervention in the UK’s labour market in peacetime comes to an end this week when the government finally winds up its furlough support.Barring an unlikely last-minute change of heart, a wage subsidy that has been in place for 18 months and has cost £70bn...

The country’s pandemic policy has left many of its overseas citizens feeling alienated – a failure to amend election law could cement thatWhat makes a New Zealander outside of New Zealand? An accent (which can be lost), or a passport (which can be bought)? Is it a set of irrevocable rights, an identity that anyone can claim and no one can question? Or does...

Travel agents report Australians’ interest in cruising increasing 40% each month since June, with one analyst describing it as ‘the Teflon market for travel’On 16 September, Miami-based Oceania Cruises, a luxury culinary-focused cruise company that is a division of Norwegian Cruise Lines, set an all-time, single-day booking record. It was driven by the introduction of its newest ship, Vista, due to take its first...

Judge granted temporary injunction and referred the case to a three-judge panel while mandate was set to go into effect MondayNew York City schools have been temporarily blocked from enforcing a vaccine mandate for teachers and other workers by a federal appeals judge, days before it was to take effect. Related: CDC overrides advisory panel to back Pfizer booster for Americans with high-risk jobs...