Foreign offices: the Britons who work from home – abroad

Covid has forced many people out of workplaces. Some have saved money by moving overseas

When the coronavirus lockdown forced Mason Palmer, 26, to start working from home, the digital content creator had a rethink about where that home was and in July he moved from Bristol to Milan. “I’ve always loved travelling to Italy,” he says. “I was always going over there; it was like an expensive hobby.”

He did not expect his boss to necessarily be on board with his plans and suggested that he move to working for the company, Working Word, on a freelance basis. But the firm was open to the idea and his boss kept him on staff. “Now I’m like the unofficial Milan branch,” he laughs.

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‘Frustrations at US policies’ behind Melania Trump statue, says artist

Brad Downey says first lady shows contradiction between US’s position on race in 2020

The American artist behind a controversial statue of the US First Lady Melania Trump, unveiled this week in bronze in her native Slovenia, has defended the work as a representation of the contradictions of her husband’s presidency.

Brad Downey, a conceptual artist from Kentucky based in Berlin, said the statue that replaced an earlier wooden carving destroyed in an arson attack in July, was motivated by his “frustrations with the policies of my birth country.”

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Coronavirus live news: UK records 4,422 new daily cases; France reports record rise

Doctors in England urge tighter restrictions; number of cases worldwide passes 30 million; scaled-down Oktoberfest in Munich begins. Follow all the developments

Kenya’s chief public prosecutor, Noordin Haji, has ordered a probe into $71m in “irregular procurement” linked to the coronavirus by the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa).

Hard-pressed Kenyan hospital staff have staged strikes to highlight what they say are scandalous practices by the authority, which purchases medication and equipment for the nation’s public hospitals, AFP reports.

France has joined a string of other countries in reporting yet another record increase in infections today.

French health authorities reported 13,498 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday, setting another record in daily additional infections since the disease started to spread in the country.

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US deploys additional troops and armoured vehicles to eastern Syria

The move follows a number of clashes with Russian forces now stationed along the Turkish border

The US military has stepped up its deployment of troops and equipment in north-eastern Syria after a rise in tensions with Russia in the region.

US central command “has deployed Sentinel radar, increased the frequency of US fighter patrols over US forces, and deployed bradley fighting vehicles to augment US forces” in the area, which is controlled by the US and its Kurdish allies, spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement.

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Coronavirus is ‘not going away,’ warns WHO’s Dr Mike Ryan – video

The World Health Organization warned the coronavirus is ‘not going away,’ as the current global weekly death toll temporarily plateaued at around 50,000.

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergencies programme said countries entering the winter season had ‘a lot of work to do’ to avoid Covid-19 cases rising and developing countries would also struggle after nine months of pressure on their health systems

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Trump under fire for ‘shocking’ Covid failures as ex-adviser turns against him

Olivia Troye attacks Trump and says he called his own supporters ‘disgusting people’ he no longer had to shake hands with

The coronavirus pandemic moved to the centre of the US election again on Friday, as a former senior official on the White House taskforce turned on Donald Trump.

Related: 'He’s paying attention to people like us': Trump’s messages resonate in Wisconsin

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Canada unveils ‘swirl, gargle and spit’ Covid test for school-aged children

Test, which is only offered to children in British Columbia, involves gargling saline solution and spitting it into a tube

Authorities in Canada have unveiled a new non-invasive coronavirus test that avoids the need for intrusive nasal swabs, in a development which they hope will making testing easier and more accessible for students as they return to schools.

The new testing method, unveiled Thursday, is a significant departure from the standard – and often painful – nasopharyngeal swab, which remains the most common method of detecting Covid-19.

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Dozens jump from migrant rescue ship in attempt to reach Sicily

Italian coastguard rescues 124 people, who had been waiting 10 days to disembark

Dozens of people have jumped from an NGO migrant rescue ship in an attempt to reach Sicily, after the crew waited 10 days for authorisation to disembark their passengers.

The Spanish NGO Open Arms said 124 of the 273 refugees and migrants on its Proactiva Open Arms boat, leaped into the water during the largest-known incident of its kind.

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Trump ‘associates’ offered Assange pardon in return for emails source, court hears

WikiLeaks founder was asked to reveal source of leak damaging to Hillary Clinton, hearing told

Two political figures claiming to represent Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a “win-win” deal to avoid extradition to the US and indictment, a London court has heard.

Under the proposed deal, outlined by Assange’s barrister Jennifer Robinson, the WikiLeaks founder would be offered a pardon if he disclosed who leaked Democratic party emails to his site, in order to help clear up allegations they had been supplied by Russian hackers to help Trump’s election in 2016.

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More migrant women say they did not consent to surgeries at Ice center

AP review finds no evidence of mass hysterectomies but files show growing allegations of operations women did not fully understand

Sitting across from her lawyer at an immigration detention center in rural Georgia, Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez unbuttoned her jail jumpsuit to show the scars on her abdomen. There were three small, circular marks.

Related: Ice hysterectomy allegations in line with US's long and racist history of eugenics | Moira Donegan

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Amal Clooney quits UK envoy role over ‘lamentable’ Brexit bill

Exclusive: prominent human rights lawyer writes to foreign secretary with stinging denunciation

Amal Clooney, the high-profile human rights lawyer, has resigned from her position as the UK’s special envoy on media freedom in protest at the government’s intention to breach international law through the internal market bill.

In a stinging denunciation of Boris Johnson’s threat to override Britain’s international treaty obligations in the EU withdrawal agreement, the barrister described the government’s actions as “lamentable”.

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US warns Afghan women of increased risk of extremist attack

Message from the US embassy comes during long-postponed direct talks between the government and the Taliban

The United States has warned women in Afghanistan that they are at increased risk of attack by extremist groups.

The US embassy in Kabul warned on Thursday that “extremist organisations continue to plan attacks against a variety of targets […], including a heightened risk of attacks targeting female government and civilian workers, including teachers, human rights activists, office workers, and government employees.”

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QAnon conspiracy theory gaining ground in UK, analysis shows

Followers believe that Donald Trump is waging secret war against ritual child abusers

A conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against an elite who engage in ritual child abuse is growing across UK social media, Guardian analysis has found.

The QAnon conspiracy theory is propelled by an unlikely coalition of spirituality and wellness groups, vigilante “paedophile hunter” networks, pre-existing conspiracy forums, local news pages, pro-Brexit campaigners and the far right.

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‘Times have changed’: Barbadians in Reading welcome republic plans

Caribbean island intends to remove Queen as head of state, 54 years after gaining independence

An old saying Peter Small learned from his father growing up on Barbados sprang to his mind this week as the Caribbean island declared its intention to remove the Queen as head of state: “Don’t give me a fish. Teach me how to fish.”

Fifity-four years after independence, Barbados stands ready to cast off the final vestige of its colonial past having learned much from its British overlords, Small believes. “The time is right. And the people are ready,” added the grandfather, 75, who lives at the heart of a close community of Barbadians in Reading, home to one of the largest diasporas outside of Barbados.

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Brexit: consortium of companies led by Fujitsu wins £200m Irish Sea contract

Deal is the first concrete implementation of the special arrangements for Northern Ireland

A £200m contract to implement Brexit checks on goods in the Irish Sea has been won by a consortium of companies led by Japanese company Fujistu.

HMRC announced on Friday that a two-year contract for the new trader support service (TSS) had been awarded to a consortium led by the tech company and its partners, the Customs Clearance Consortium, an organisation run by customs expert Robert Hardy and the Institute of Export and International Trade.

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CDC makes U-turn on Covid testing guidelines that prompted backlash

  • Agency now says all contacts of known carrier should get tested
  • Previous advice was reportedly rewritten by Trump officials

The most prominent US agency for delivering public health advice on Friday reversed key guidelines about who should get tested for coronavirus that were published just a month ago.

Related: Trump under fire for 'shocking' Covid failures as ex-adviser turns against him

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Mutant virus: should we be worried that Sars-CoV-2 is changing?

Scientists tracking the virus have uncovered a major mutation, but it may not be as scary as it sounds

Scientists have had eyes on Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, since the beginning of this pandemic.

They can see it is evolving, but it is happening at a glacial pace compared with two other viruses with pandemic potential: those that cause flu and Aids. That is good news for efforts to develop vaccines and treatments, but scientists remain wary that anything could still happen.

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Lockdown measures and rising anger in Madrid as Covid takes hold again

As cases rise sharply, the regional government has floundered. From Monday, the worst-affected areas face new restrictions

People in the queue to be tested for Covid-19 at the Buenos Aires health centre in south Madrid on Friday morning were met with a bleak but polite homemade sign.

It still bore the previous day’s information, spelled out in marker pen: consultations – by phone and in person – 483; Covid consultations, 19; PCR tests, 78; and number of staff absent, 13.

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Belarus could bring down ‘another iron curtain’ across Europe

UN investigator warns of ‘catastrophic’ stiuation with more than 10,000 protesters ‘abusively arrested’

A United Nations investigator has warned of the danger of “another iron curtain” falling across Europe during an ill-tempered debate in Geneva on alleged human rights violations in Belarus.

“Let’s not allow another iron curtain to descend on the European continent,” Anaïs Marin, the UN’s special rapporteur on Belarus, said, in an urgent session of the body’s 47-member human rights council that also heard from the Belarus opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

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Covid test and trace: how does UK compare with other countries?

Successful schemes in South Korea and Germany show speed and targeting are key

As chaos continues to engulf Britain’s test and trace system, attention has focused on how successful other countries have been in using testing and contact-tracing to suppress coronavirus transmission.

While many have embraced test/trace regimes, comparing the relative successes – and failures – is complicated by the fact that different countries count things even as basic as the number of daily tests using different methods.

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