Category Archives: Media

The Oxford vaccine: the trials and tribulations of a world-saving jab

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Amid bemusement from scientists at the deluge of often undeserved criticism, the Guardian pieces together the story behind the vaccine’s successes and failures

In January 2020, when most of the world slept soundly in ignorance of the pandemic coming its way, a group of scientists at Oxford University got to work on a vaccine to save the planet. They wanted it to be highly effective, cheap, and easy to use in even the poorest countries.

Prof Sarah Gilbert, Prof Andrew Pollard and others pulled it off. With speed crucial, they designed it and launched into trials before bringing in a business partner. The giant Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca would manufacture it, license it around the world – and not make a profit until the pandemic was over.

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‘The thought is unbearable’: Europeans react to EU plans to cut British TV

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EU media critics say post-Brexit plans could pave way for more homegrown content

It was during a trip to Brighton for an English language course in 1984 that the young German student Nicola Neumann first discovered British television.

“The elderly couple who put me up tried really hard to educate me further, so we’d sit in front of the telly together every evening and then talk about the programmes afterwards,” she said.

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‘The pressure is unbearable’: final days of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily

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Newspaper’s closure shows how pro-democracy movement and press freedom are being crushed

On Wednesday morning, the Apple Daily reporter Angel Kwan was at a government press conference for the Hong Kong census when her phone started buzzing with notifications. Six days earlier, hundreds of police had raided her workplace, arrested her bosses and seized dozens of computers. On Monday, the company board had said it would have to shut the paper unless authorities unfroze its finances.

As she stood holding her microphone towards the government official, Kwan did not dare look at her phone and the news it heralded: Apple Daily was shutting down. Today.

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Love Island earns ITV £12m before new series as advertisers jostle to take part

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The most commercialised show on British television has signed up nine official partners

Love Island has netted ITV more than £12m in revenues even before the first episode of the new series of the hit reality show airs on Monday, as sponsors and advertisers rush to attach themselves to the most commercialised show on British television.

With uncertainty over Covid restrictions scuppering holidays abroad for a second successive year, the arrival of the feelgood summer juggernaut could not be more perfectly timed to tap into a viewer and advertising boom.

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The Guardian view on Hong Kong’s Apple Daily: gone but not forgotten | Editorial

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The outspoken tabloid’s closure is a chilling moment. But as Beijing silences dissent, the spirit of resistance endures

Apple Daily is dead. At midnight on Wednesday, Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy news outlet closed, forced out of business after authorities froze the assets of the 26-year-old tabloid and arrested executives and journalists. Through its outspoken support for protests, it had come to stand for resistance itself: for the freedom to know what is happening, to challenge authorities, and to imagine and demand another Hong Kong.

Beijing is determined to crush that resistance. Each day it turns the screws further. Many have fallen silent already, but Apple Daily was defiant. Its owner, Jimmy Lai, already jailed over a protest, could face life in prison due to further charges under the draconian national security law. The editor-in-chief and chief executive of its parent company have been charged with conspiracy to collude with “external elements” after 500 officers raided its headquarters last week. Authorities say that the case relates to articles calling for sanctions on the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, some published before the imposition of the security law, which is not supposed to be retroactive. This vindictive action marks the criminalisation of journalism. On Wednesday, the company announced it was closing overnight, citing employee safety and staffing levels after officers arrested its lead opinion writer.

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‘A haven for free-thinkers’: Pakistan creatives mourn loss of progressive arts space

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‘Tragic’ closure of Sabeen Mahmud’s community venue T2F in Karachi comes as PM Imran Khan accused of fostering censorship and intolerance

Danial Shah turned to Sabeen Mahmud, for help with his first photo exhibition when all other organisations refused to show his work. Shah’s photographs cover political and cultural issues, such as local elections and women’s rights. Some refused to work with him on political grounds, while others did not reply at all.

After a meeting at Mahmud’s community space, T2F, in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, she agreed to host his exhibition. But Mahmud, a 40-year-old human rights activist who oversaw a programme of progressive arts at T2F, did not get to see Shah’s first exhibition. She was murdered a few months after their meeting.

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Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, symbol of pro-democracy movement, to close

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Tabloid founded by Jimmy Lai and targeted by police raid last week will print final edition on Thursday

Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, will shut down online at midnight on Wednesday and print its final edition on Thursday, in a move observers fear signals the death knell for press freedom in the territory.

The paper and its activist founder, Jimmy Lai, had become symbols of the pro-democracy movement and a thorn in the side of Hong Kong’s government and police, making it a prime target in the government’s efforts to stifle Hong Kong’s media.

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‘The blackest day’: Apple Daily’s demise comes as no surprise

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Analysis: a palpable chill has run through the Hong Kong media, amid warnings about ‘fake news’

The fate of Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s bestselling tabloids, should not come as a surprise. On the day Jimmy Lai, its founder, was sentenced to 14 months in prison in April, a commentary in the pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao called for a ban on Apple Daily in order to “close national security loopholes”.

The 72-year-old media tycoon and his 26-year-old newspaper have been among the most high-profile critics of Beijing and the controversial national security law (NSL), which they deem “draconian”, but which the authorities say is “necessary”. The law bars secession, subversion and foreign collusion.

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Hong Kong police arrest editorial writer at Apple Daily newspaper

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Arrest of journalist who publishes under the name Li Ping is the first of a writer at the pro-democracy newspaper

The editorial writer for Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper has been arrested, the latest move in a media crackdown under the national security law that saw hundreds of police raid its newsroom and arrest senior figures last week.

Police confirmed the arrest of a 55-year-old man in Tseung Kwan O on Wednesday morning, “on suspicion of conspiring to collude with foreign countries or foreign forces to endanger national security”.

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Top Nicaraguan journalist flees country amid escalating crackdown

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  • Carlos Fernando Chamorro: ‘They won’t silence journalism’
  • Chamorro’s sister among 19 jailed in pre-election crackdown

Nicaragua’s most prominent journalist has fled the country for a second time after police raided his house during a widening crackdown on opposition figures by the country’s Sandinista rulers.

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the editor of the Confidencial website and a member of one of the country’s most influential political families, said on Tuesday he had left the Central American country to “safeguard his freedom”.

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Hong Kong leader refuses to say how media can avoid arrest in wake of Apple Daily raids

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Carrie Lam denies arrest of senior editorial figures at pro-democracy paper and seizure of its assets was an attack on press freedom

Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has refused to clarify how journalists can avoid breaking the vaguely defined national security law following the raid and prosecution of journalists at a pro-democracy newspaper.

At a regular press conference on Tuesday the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, defended the arrest of senior Apple Daily executives under the national security law (NSL) – two of whom have been charged with conspiracy to commit collusion with a foreign country – as well as the raid of its newsroom and freezing of assets.

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Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

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Ask Philippa: meet the Observer’s brilliant new agony aunt

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As psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry becomes our new agony aunt, she reveals why helping you with your worries will help us all. Plus, a special welcome from Jay Rayner

John Dunton founded the Athenian Mercury in the 1690s. A paper that consisted of readers’ questions and the answers. His idea was that readers could send in dilemmas to be answered by a panel of experts, the Athenian Society. But his great innovation was that they could do so anonymously and this has remained a feature of problem pages ever since. Poor old Dunton could have done with some advice himself, because he ended his days in poverty as he was a better innovator than he was a business person. He blamed his woes on other people rather than taking responsibility for his own failings. I think an agony aunt today might have spotted that for him and possibly saved him from destitution.

His panel of experts, depicted as 12 learned men with him in the centre in an engraving at the top of the pages, were largely fictitious. It was just Dunton and a couple of mates who went through all the letters in a coffee shop.

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‘We have more in common than what separates us’: refugee stories, told by refugees

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In One Thousand Dreams, award-winning photographer Robin Hammond hands the camera to refugees. Often reduced by the media’s toxic or well-meaning narratives, the portraits and interviews capture a different and more complex tale

Robin Hammond has spent two decades crisscrossing the developing world and telling other people’s stories. From photographing the Rohingya forced out of Myanmar and rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to documenting the lives of people in countries where their sexuality is illegal, his work has earned him award after award.

But for his latest project the photographer has embarked on a paradigm shift: to remove himself – and others like him – from the process entirely. Instead, as part of an in-depth exploration of the refugee experience in Europe, the stories of those featured are told by those who, arguably, know them best: other refugees.

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Hongkongers queue to buy Apple Daily copies after editor-in-chief arrested

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Public outpouring of support for tabloid after raid on offices by national security police

Hongkongers queued at city news stands before dawn on Friday to buy the latest edition of the Apple Daily newspaper, a day after national security police arrested its editor-in-chief and four other directors.

On Thursday morning hundreds of officers from the Hong Kong police national security department raided the homes of the employees, including editor-in-chef Ryan Law, and the Apple Daily newsroom for the second time in less than a year. It froze millions of dollars in company assets.

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Two journalists killed in Mexico, meaning three dead so far this year

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Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera shot dead Thursday, and Enrique Garcia killed Wednesday, apparently during work as ride-hail driver

Prosecutors in southern Mexico said reporter Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera was shot to death Thursday, and another journalist was killed just west of Mexico City, bring to three the number killed so far this year in the country. Two other reporters have disappeared.

The prosecutor’s office in the southern state of Oaxaca said Sánchez Cabrera was riding a motorcycle with another person on a rural road when gunmen opened fire on them.

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‘Worst of times’: Hong Kong media defiant amid police crackdown

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Apple Daily hits back after executives arrested in second raid on pro-democracy paper’s newsroom

Apple Daily’s journalism has ruffled feathers since its establishment in 1995. A populist Hong Kong tabloid owned by Jimmy Lai, a pro-Trump media mogul and now jailed activist, the paper is fond of sensational crime stories, celebrity gossip, and investigations into government scandals and corruption. It’s a vocal supporter of the pro-democracy movement, a thorn in the side of police, and has become a symbol of resistance against Hong Kong’s crackdown.

Hong Kong’s police commissioner has accused it of creating hatred. Pro-Beijing media have called for it to be shut down. Lai has said the paper is on the right side of history.

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Brenda Myers-Powell: she was pimped out, left for dead – then survived to fight for other girls

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As a teenager, she became a prostitute on the streets of Chicago. When a customer attacked her, she vowed to escape, dedicating her life to women’s safety and happiness

Nobody can tell Brenda Myers-Powell’s story better than Brenda herself. It’s what she has been doing since escaping 25 years of abuse and sexual exploitation to transform herself into a beacon of hope and compassion for women in desperate circumstances.

Now 63, she is the co-founder of the Dreamcatcher Foundation, a US-based non-profit set up in 2008 to fight human-trafficking in the Chicago area, and the vivacious, multiple wig-sporting star of an acclaimed 2015 documentary about her work, also called Dreamcatcher. In late June, her memoir, Leaving Breezy Street, will be published in the UK, and a film adaption is already on the cards.

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Hong Kong police arrest editor of Apple Daily newspaper – video

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Ryan Law, the editor-in-chief of Apple Daily, has been arrested along with four other directors of the pro-democracy newspaper on suspicion of collusion with a foreign country or 'external elements' to endanger national security. The newspaper's owner, Jimmy Lai, is serving a jail sentence on charges relating to pro-democracy protests in 2019

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Hong Kong police arrest editor-in-chief of Apple Daily newspaper in morning raids

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Ryan Law among five directors detained under national security legislation imposed by Beijing

Hong Kong national security police have arrested the editor-in-chief and four other directors of the Apple Daily newspaper in early morning raids involving more than 100 officers, in the latest crackdown on the media.

The police force’s national security department said the five directors had been arrested on suspicion of collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security. All were arrested at their homes, at around 7am.

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