A tax that has reduced plastic bag consumption in Sweden by more than three-quarters in four years is being abolished on Friday, despite warnings that the move could lead to usage rising back towards previous levels. Since the introduction of the 3 kroner (£0.21) tax in May 2020, plastic bag usage in the country has…
Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature Hannah Ellis-Petersen Kamala Harris may never have visited Thulasendrapuram, a sleepy village in south India, but its residents claim to be some of her most devoted fans. It was here, in among the verdant rice paddies and groundnut farms of rural…
Dozens of divorce applications were wrongly approved due to a computer error, the high court has heard. A hearing in London on Wednesday was told that 79 divorces were incorrectly approved after the applications were submitted a day before the law allows. An online system failed to detect that the submissions came a year after…
Good morning. The day after budget day is normally when the most thorough and considered budget analysis starts to emerge, and rarely has there been more to chew over than there was in Rachel Reeves’s first budget as chancellor – a mamoth, £40bn-tax-raising fiscal reset with huge consequences for Britain for the rest of the…
New South Wales Labor has been accused of trying to minimise the impact of a once-in-a-generation drug reform summit amid last-minute changes and concern from experts over transparency. The long-promised NSW drug summit begins on Friday in the regional city of Griffith before hearings in Lismore and Sydney. All but the opening speeches in Griffith…
A Woolworths employee has confronted the supermarket’s board over the huge disparity between her $26 hourly rate, which she describes as “not a living wage”, and the high salaries of executives. Jo Wright, who works on the supermarket floor in a New South Wales southern highlands store, told the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday…
North Korea has test launched a long-range missile that is theoretically capable of striking the US mainland, in another display of defiance by the regime amid growing warnings over its troops’ participation in the war in Ukraine. US officials said they believed the launch was that of an intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM] but did not…
The father of an 11-year-old boy killed in a school crash says he cannot comprehend life without his “beautiful son”, as another child injured in the incident leaves hospital. Jack Davey died after a car ploughed through a fence and into a school yard on Tuesday afternoon, hitting a group of Auburn South primary school…
Concerns are growing about the health of Xu Zhiyong, China’s most prominent imprisoned human rights lawyer, who is thought to have been on hunger strike for nearly a month. Xu, a scholar and leading figure in China’s embattled civil rights movement, started his hunger strike on 4 October, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an…
In the days leading up to the election, mysterious monuments continue to pop up in cities across the US, poking fun at candidate Donald Trump and his supporters. On Wednesday in Maja Park in Philadelphia, a large statue of Donald Trump was propped up. Titled “In Honor of a Lifetime of Sexual Assault”, the monument,…
