Abuse, intimidation, death threats: the vicious backlash facing former vegans

Going vegan has never been more popular – but some people who try it and then decide to reintroduce animal products face shocking treatment

In 2015, Freya Robinson decided to go vegan. For more than a year, the 28-year-old from East Sussex did not consume a single animal product. Then, in 2016, on a family holiday in Bulgaria, she passed a steak restaurant and something inside her switched. “I walked in and ordered the biggest steak I could have and completely inhaled it,” she says. After finishing it, she ordered another.

For the previous year, Robinson had been suffering from various health problems – low energy levels, brain fog, painful periods and dull skin – which she now believes were the result of her diet. She says her decline was gradual and almost went unnoticed. “Because it’s not an instant depletion, you don’t suddenly feel bad the next day, it’s months down the line. It’s very, very slow.” In just over a year, the balanced plant-based food she cooked daily from scratch, using organic vegetables from the farm she works on, and legumes and nuts vital for protein, had, she felt, taken a toll on her body.

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Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila

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Dog noises, name calling, claims of abuse: a week of shame in Australian politics

Despite a review finding one in three parliamentary staffers have been sexually harassed, behaviour inside the building shows no sign of improvement

Allegations of abuse and accusations of widespread sexism. Bullying and harassment particularly of women. A cabinet minister stood aside pending an investigation into claims by a former staffer that their relationship was at times “abusive”. Even by the low standards of the Australian parliament, it was a week of horror in Canberra.

The final sitting week of parliament for the year began with a long-awaited report on sexual harassment and cultural issues within the parliament, which found one in three parliamentary staffers “have experienced some form of sexual harassment while working there”.

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Maxwell prosecutors: ‘sexualized’ photo of young girl displayed outside Epstein bedroom

Prosecution and defense argue about several photographs that might be presented at sex-trafficking trial in New York

  • This article contains depictions of sexual abuse

Ghislaine Maxwell’s child-sex trafficking trial took a shocking turn Friday when prosecutors brought one of Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous massage tables into the courtroom.

By bringing this green, folding table into the courtroom, and then expanding it, prosecutors are working to bolster allegations that Epstein and Maxwell sexually abused teen girls under the pretext of giving him a massage.

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‘It’s just a cold’: Biden explains coughing during speech – video

The US president, Joe Biden, has said his coughing during a speech addressing the November jobs report on Friday is due to a cold.

'What I have is a one-and-a-half-year-old grandson who had a cold who likes to kiss his pop,' Biden said, responding to a question from a reporter after the speech

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Michigan shooting: suspect’s parents missing after pair charged with manslaughter

  • Police in Oakland county hunting Jennifer and James Crumbley
  • Son Ethan, 15, charged with murder over deadly school shooting

The parents of a boy who is accused of killing four students at Oxford high school are missing and being searched for by law enforcement after the pair were also charged as part of the investigation into the mass shooting in Michigan.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

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Emmanuel Macron accused of trying to ‘rehabilitate’ Mohammed bin Salman

Human rights groups criticise French president’s planned meeting with crown prince in Saudi Arabia

Human rights groups have criticised Emmanuel Macron’s planned meeting with Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, which will mark the first one-on-one public meeting of a major western leader with the crown prince since the state-sponsored assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

For three years since the 2018 murder, western heads of state have avoided direct one-on-one meetings with the crown prince in the kingdom. The US president, Joe Biden, has even avoided speaking to the future king in what has widely been seen as an attempt to avoid conferring legitimacy on the de facto ruler.

But Macron’s move suggests at least one major western leader is ready to formally re-establish ties to the crown prince directly, less than a year after US intelligence agencies released a report stating they believed that Prince Mohammed had approved the murder of Khashoggi.

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Prosecutor announces Michigan shooter’s parents to be charged with manslaughter – video

A prosecutor in Michigan filed involuntary manslaughter charges on Friday against the parents of a boy who is accused of killing four students at Oxford high school. 'Gun ownership is a right but with that right comes great responsibility,' Karen McDonald said at a press conference on Friday morning.

The parents were summoned to the school a few hours before the shooting occurred after a teacher found a drawing of a gun, a person bleeding and the words 'help me', McDonald revealed

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Top Trump official to plead the fifth to Capitol attack committee

John Eastman, linked to efforts to stop Biden certification, to invoke constitutional protection against self-incrimination

Former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who was connected to efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win on 6 January, will plead the fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

The move by Eastman, communicated in a letter to the select committee by his attorney, is an extraordinary step and appears to suggest a growing fear among some of Trump’s closest advisers that their testimony may implicate them in potential criminality.

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Christopher Luxon is out of step with most New Zealanders – can he really challenge Ardern? | Morgan Godfery

The new National leader is a millionaire, anti-abortion, ex-CEO who owns seven homes and is against increases to the minimum wage

In the end, the party of business picked the businessman. Former National party leader Simon Bridges is out – again – and former Air New Zealand chief executive and MP for Botany, Christopher Luxon, is in.

In hindsight it seems like it was always a done deal. Sir John Key, the former prime minister and National party leader, was a prominent supporter while outgoing leader Judith Collins was running an “anyone but Bridges” policy, effectively handing the leadership to Luxon (and making him a hostage to her and her faction’s demands in the process). Political commentators were picking Luxon as a future leader before entering parliament and, only one year later, here he is.

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Joe Biden pledges to make any Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘very, very difficult’

Washington and Kyiv say Moscow has massed troops near border ahead of planned US-Russia video summit

Joe Biden he said he would make it “very, very difficult” for Russia to launch any invasion of Ukraine, which warned that a large-scale attack could be planned for next month.

Washington and Kyiv say Moscow has massed troops near Ukraine’s borders and accuse Russia of planning an invasion.

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Man tortured and killed in Pakistan over alleged blasphemy

Government accused of having emboldened extremists after lynching of Sri Lankan in Sialkot

A mob in Pakistan tortured, killed and then set on fire a Sri Lankan man who was accused of blasphemy over some posters he had allegedly taken down.

Priyantha Diyawadana, a Sri Lankan national who worked as general manager of a factory of the industrial engineering company Rajco Industries in Sialkot, Punjab, was set upon by a violent crowd on Friday.

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‘Heartbreaking’ clean-up of animal corpses as Canada floodwaters ebb

Floods and landslides in British Columbia devastated livestock in ‘easily the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history’

Floods and landslides that battered the Canadian province of British Columbia last month killed hundreds of thousands of farm animals and forced nearly 15,000 people from their homes, new figures revealed, as officials described the scope of the devastation – and the challenges of recovery.

As many as 628,000 chickens, 420 dairy cattle and 12,000 pigs were killed by the floods. An estimated 3 million bees in 110 hives were also submerged.

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Omicron driving record rate of Covid infection in South African province

Officials say variant’s R number is believed to be above 6, though most cases are mild and no deaths reported

The pace of Covid infections in the South African province of Gauteng is outstripping anything seen in previous waves, and officials say Omicron is now the dominant variant.

Angelique Coetzee, the chair of the South African Medical Association, said Omicron’s R number, measuring its ability to spread, was believed to be above 6. The R number for Delta, the dominant variant globally, is estimated to be above 5.

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Poland plans to set up register of pregnancies to report miscarriages

Proposed register would come into effect in January, a year after near-total ban on abortion

Poland is planning to introduce a centralised register of pregnancies that would oblige doctors to report all pregnancies and miscarriages to the government.

The proposed register would come into effect in January 2022, a year after Poland introduced a near-total ban on abortion.

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France stunned as judo star’s coach cleared of domestic violence

Margaux Pinot says she feared her partner would kill her, but judge says there is not enough proof of guilt

French sports stars and politicians have expressed anger at the acquittal of a coach accused of domestic violence against the Olympic judo champion Margaux Pinot, as the state prosecutor launched an appeal.

Pinot, 27, a gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics, had serious facial injuries including a fractured nose when she filed a police complaint in the early hours of Sunday. She said her partner and trainer, Alain Schmitt, had attacked her at her flat outside Paris, wrestled her to the ground, verbally abused her, punched her many times, repeatedly smashed her head on to the ground and tried to strangle her.

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Screen sensation: the single-shot thriller bringing time-travel into the Zoom era

It was shot in a week and premiered to 12 people, but micro-budget sci-fi movie Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has become the breakout success of the year

“We made the film in seven days, shooting non-stop from six in the evening to six in the morning. It was hell. We were always tired. And the cast and crew were always picking on me because my brain would just go completely dead at 2am every day.” Japanese film-maker Junta Yamaguchi is talking about his first feature film, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, which was shot almost entirely inside a real cafe in Kyoto. “We couldn’t film anything during their opening hours.”

But Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes isn’t your average small-scale indie film. It’s a nicely innovative time-travel yarn that asks: in our world of remote working and Zoom calls, what if the face staring back at us from our computer was a version of ourself two minutes in the future? It’s also the latest example of the nagamawashi (long-shot) film, the micro-genre currently putting no-budget Japanese cinema on the map after the success of One Cut of the Dead – the 2017 zombie horror-comedy that became an international cult sensation, grossing over $30m (£22m) worldwide from a $25,000 budget.

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Johnson’s imperial bombast could suck Britain into more deadly interventions | Simon Jenkins

As tensions with Russia and China increase, the prime minister meddles in foreign policy to distract from domestic woes

Relations between the world’s great powers are tenser than ever since the cold war. Troops are massing along Russia’s border with Ukraine. Chinese ships and planes are openly threatening Taiwan. Japan is rearming in response. Turkey is renewing its belligerence towards its neighbours. Russia is backing east-west fragmentation in Bosnia.

Where Britain stands in all this is dangerously unclear, drifting on a sea of Boris Johnson’s gestures and platitudes. The Royal Navy currently has a £3.2bn aircraft carrier waving the union flag in the South China Sea, completely unprotected. China could sink it in an hour. In the Black Sea, a British destroyer provocatively invades Russian waters off Crimea, showing off to the world’s media. Last week, the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, advanced her bid for her party’s leadership by sitting astride a tank in Estonia and warning Russia that Britain “stood firm” against its “malign activity” in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Britain’s outgoing defence chief, Sir Nick Carter, estimates that the risk of accidental war with Russia is now “the highest in decades”.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

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Covid news: 75 more cases of Omicron variant found in England; Ireland announces new restrictions – as it happened

More than 100 cases of new variant have now been found in England; Strict social distancing will be required in Ireland’s bars and restaurants with mandatory table service and a maximum of six people per table

California is reporting its second confirmed case of the Omicron variant in as many days.

The Los Angeles County public health department says a full vaccinated county resident is self-isolating after apparently contracting the infection during a trip to South Africa last month.

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Shell to go ahead with seismic tests in whale breeding grounds after court win

Judgment rules company can blast sound waves in search for oil along South Africa’s eastern coastline

Royal Dutch Shell will move ahead with seismic tests to explore for oil in vital whale breeding grounds along South Africa’s eastern coastline after a court dismissed an 11th-hour legal challenge by environmental groups.

The judgment, by a South African high court, allows Shell to begin firing within days extremely loud sound waves through the relatively untouched marine environment of the Wild Coast, which is home to whales, dolphins and seals.

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