'People are not following Covid-19 measures'

The sentencing of seven of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy campaigners for unlawful assembly will send a message not just to Hong Kong, but to Beijing and the rest of the world about whether there is still an independent judiciary, the former Democratic Party chairperson and legislator Emily Lau has said. “We would like to…

The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature says he thought the phone call telling him he’d won was a cold caller. Luckily, Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was persuaded not to hang up. Speaking to the BBC’s Ros Atkins, he says he was making a cup of tea when the phone rang, telling the…

Pandora Papers reveal a completely unacceptable situation, says Oxfam International’s Max Lawson.

At least 45 people were killed and some 150 were injured in a crush at a crowded Orthodox Jewish festival in Israel. The Lag B’Omer festival near Mount Meron had attracted tens of thousands of pilgrims. Eyewitness Menachem Engel, who was attending the festival, said he was about 100m away from where the incident happened….

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Marki-Zay has said if he wins the election, he would “probably” rescind the 2018 law criminalising lawyers and activists who help asylum seekers. He told Stephen Sackur, of BBC News’s Hardtalk programme, he would have to look at the details but there was “no simple answer”. Watch the full interview on…

Psilocybin, a psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms, is as effective at reducing symptoms of depression as conventional treatment, a small, early-stage trial of 59 people has found. Those taking part in Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research’s trial were given either psilocybin or a common antidepressant called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)….