The guardian

Over 100mm of water fell across multiple catchments with communities warned of potential isolation by floodwaters into next week.

Seqwater notified Pine Rivers and Moreton Bay region residents that the North Pine dam would start flood releases on Saturday evening. More than a dozen flood warnings have been issued across the region by the Bureau of Meteorology and a flood watch is in place for catchments between St Lawrence and Brisbane. Queensland’s south-east is back on flood watch with more than 100mm of rain dumped on several soaked catchments, and dams releasing water ahead of more wet weather.

Labour says it is 'simply staggering' department authorised the move amid a cost of living crisis.

All polling is subject to the usual tender process, ensuring the best value for taxpayers’ money.” “He should not need to spend a small fortune on focus groups to hear what the British public are telling him: they want serious action to help with the cost of living crisis, starting with the adoption of Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas to fund cuts in energy bills.” “At the start of the pandemic, the Treasury justified their spending on focus groups and polls as an emergency measure to test the impact of different policy options, but now this is little more than a taxpayer-funded vanity exercise for a chancellor desperate to repair his image.

With the poorest disproportionately hit by the cost of living crisis, senior Tories are demanding emergency action from Treasury.

“Everyone is feeling the effects of the cost of living crisis, which is fuelled by the highest inflation in 40 years,” said Jack Leslie, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation. “With rapidly rising food prices and soaring energy bills driving the recent inflation surge, low-income families are at the sharp end. According to the Bank of England’s forecasts, the UK is on course for the second-biggest fall in average household disposable incomes since the mid-1960s. Doing so swiftly in the months ahead will be logistically challenging, but it can be done – whether through the benefits system or via a heavily reformed warm home discount scheme.” The finding, revealed by the Resolution Foundation thinktank, comes soon after official inflation figures showed inflation soaring to 9% in April, its highest level for 40 years. The disparity has widened as poorer households spend a greater share of their income on energy. This is the largest gap recorded since 2006.

Mothers shocked by the cost as charities urge government to step in.

We have also legislated for the right to flexible working, and shared parental leave and pay, to better support eligible working parents.” “I left all of my life and family in Kyiv. It’s very hard to realise everything has changed,” she said. But after speaking to UK-based Ukrainian mothers, she realised that it would be unaffordable and finish too early in the day. Kateryna Chernyaeva, 43, arrived in London from Kyiv only last week with her son Dima, 12, and is now trying to find a school for him that also runs after-school clubs, to fit around her work. She had hoped that Sofia would be able to attend a summer camp during the holidays at relatively low cost, like in Ukraine before the war. In the long term, she said, government help is needed for the “thousands” of women she thinks will be affected.

You can't fault the former health secretary's proposals for improving patient care, but his slick prose fails to acknowledge the damage inflicted on the NHS ...

The prose, in a word, is emollient. But this is also the work of a consummate politician. Specifically, he writes, he wants to eliminate the 150 avoidable deaths that occur in the NHS every week. If I read this correctly, Hunt is suggesting that his blueprint for the health service is so radical it may transform the provision of healthcare for the British public as dramatically as the inception of the NHS three-quarters of a century ago. To my surprise, he sat and actually listened, even when I told him that pretending to the public he could build a safer “seven-day NHS” without increasing doctor numbers was not only dishonest but “completely moronic”. Zero, it turns out, is a thoughtful, serious and well-written book that tackles an immensely important subject. In the worst cases – and Hunt describes numerous examples of neonatal deaths and failures of care in painstaking, heartrending detail – bereaved relatives can be left fighting for years as NHS institutions close ranks, covering up their wrongdoing. More disconcertingly still, while researching this book, Hunt contacted me to ask if he could discuss where he’d gone wrong in the junior doctor dispute. Given that he was the longest serving health secretary in NHS history, why didn’t he impose his vision while in office, rather than waiting for the tumbleweed of the backbenches to write about it? Even today, six years after the dispute limped to an ignominious end (Hunt duly imposed his despised new contract), my casual mention in the doctors’ mess that he has written a book about, of all things, patient safety triggered a volley of anatomically robust invective. “Delivering the safest, highest quality care in the NHS post-pandemic could be our very own 1948 moment.” On a bitterly cold weekend in October 2015, the views of 20,000 junior doctors, freezing in our scrubs as we marched on Downing Street, were encapsulated in one unforgettable placard. No other health secretary in NHS history has incensed the medical profession quite like its longest serving incumbent.

Since the conflict began in February, YouTube has taken down channels including that of the pro-Kremlin journalist Vladimir Solovyov. Channels associated with ...

YouTube did not provide a breakdown of the taken-down content and channels but Mohan said much of it represented Kremlin narratives about the invasion. “We are not planning to close YouTube,” the minister said. And so we’ve used that policy to take unprecedented action.”

Group call for fresh taxation of wealthy to tackle cost of living crisis and gulf between rich and poor.

Djaffar Shalchi, a Danish multimillionaire engineer and property developer, said: “You don’t win people’s trust by holding events like Davos, where the world’s rich and powerful meet behind layers of security. “It’s outrageous that our political leaders listen to those who have the most, know the least about the economic impact of this crisis, and many of whom pay infamously little in taxes. Tax the delegates attending Davos 2022.”

Moscow considers prisoner swap for Putin ally; Russia bans 963 Americans including president Biden from entering the country.

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, who has objected to Sweden and Finland joining Nato, held phone calls with the leaders of the two countries on Saturday and discussed his concerns about terrorist organisations. The last discussions between the two sides took place on 22 April, according to Russian news agencies. He said making concessions would backfire on Ukraine because Russia would hit back harder after any break in fighting.

With sobering crises like Ukraine and the cost of living, it's no surprise the appetite for venting behind a microphone is waning, says Guardian columnist ...

In that context, who cares about a view of the world that seems to extend no further than a set of studio walls? The war in Ukraine has provided a sobering reminder of the importance of on-the-ground reporting and journalistic expertise. Morgan’s ratings suggest that, in the UK at least, the appeal of endless “talk” has its limits. If something happens, the point is not to go out and understand it, but to quickly take a position and sound off about it: your job is not really to cover the news, but to see if you can make headlines yourself. Talk-based radio has probably never been as high-profile as it is now, and the millions who listen to such voices as the US podcaster Joe Rogan – said to have sold his show to Spotify for £75m – shows that the market for a mixture of comedy, ranting, conspiracy theory and “debate” is huge. Even if Morgan’s show – and, indeed, TalkTV itself – prove beyond rescue, they are one small part of a change that may well be here to stay, born in the madly polarised world of American news broadcasting and then taken to its logical conclusion by social media.

Other lives: School teacher and busy participant in sport and amateur dramatic productions in the north-east.

Eddie joined Hartlepool Operatic and Dramatic Association in the early 70s, making his directorial debut with Blithe Spirit in 1974. He was born Richard Edward Gratton in Thornley, Co Durham, the son of Dick (also Richard Edward), a coal miner, and Elizabeth (nee Hardman), later a Methodist preacher. He rarely travelled at weekends during the cricket season without his kit and made appearances for clubs as far south as Nottinghamshire.

Wasps have always had a bad press. But Dr Seirian Sumner, who has spent her life studying them, argues they are sophisticated, socially complex and ...

In the UK, Sumner has been sequencing DNA from the guts of wasp larva (an elegant pastime if ever there was one), in order to understand what exactly wasps eat, and what pests they might best control. If Sumner were to produce a film about wasp research – one that could outshine the hokey science of The Wasp Woman – it would be a period drama starring a pair of American entomologists named George and Elizabeth Peckham. During the early 1900s this charismatic husband-and-wife team made sport of chasing wasps around Wisconsin in their attempts to understand the hunting behaviour of the insect. Bees are a crucial cog in the mechanics of global agriculture. As Sumner writes: “Of all the social insects, it is these simple-societied wasps that we humans have most in common with.” And they may contribute in lesser ways to the pollination of many other plants. A solitary hunting wasp gave rise to the social wasp (at some point in time, a wasp lost the ability to hunt and gained the ability to exploit pollen: the “original bee”). Boutique wasp societies, such as the hover wasp, which live in groups of around half a dozen, or the Polistes, which Sumner has studied in Panama for more than 15 years, offer an easy-to-manipulate testing ground for hypotheses about the emergence of social living. She was recommended to Professor Jeremy Field, a world expert in social wasps who was recruiting for a project in Southeast Asia. Sumner was excited about the adventure, but uneasy about the occupational hazards. Sumner tells me that one PhD student of hers, Robin Southon, observed that the odd male Polistes will even hang out at the nest and help feed the brood (albeit only briefly). “Perhaps it’s a trade-off,” she says, “where they get to stay at home a bit longer, provided that they help out.” It’s impossible not to draw parallels with the negotiations we make in our own lives. In Malaysia, Sumner hand-painted thousands of hover wasps in order to keep track of them. She too once feared their presence: “I was the one to scream and run away, probably louder than anyone else, to be honest.” In fact, she tells me, she was “tricked” into studying them. Aristotle, Shakespeare, The Wasp Woman – it’s all part of a vast catalogue of anti-wasp media that she wearily describes in her book Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps. We disparage the snobbishness of WASPs. The Wasp Woman epitomised the nightmarish (and somewhat sexist) association we have with the archetype.

Activists say woman's death is an example of people with serious mental health problems being detained without adequate care.

I want to tell the people what these detention centres do to the people’.” In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. I want the people to know what happened to me. The proposal would aim to address the disproportionate impact of the policy on citizens from New Zealand, which has long argued it is “corrosive” to the relationship to deport people who have lived most of their lives in Australia. “The incoming Labor government is in a good position to hold the investigation into immigration detention that has long been needed,” he said. Detainees said the woman had mental health issues and had requested her medication be given to her earlier in the morning.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, YouTube has taken down more than 70000 videos related to the conflict.

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Dr Lubna Karim, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, says the plight of British youngsters now reminds her of when she worked in a Romanian orphanage.

I shared the same frustrations as many of my CAMHS patients, who had in many cases waited years to see me. As well as acute mental health problems, similar difficulties are experienced by families seeking a diagnosis for autism and ADHD. Many of them were not considered “high risk” and therefore not prioritised. By the time I saw her in CAMHS, her mother told me she was eating only one stick of celery a day. Sadly, she was one of many in the same position. I knew this was the field of work I wanted to work in, and hoped that early intervention would have a profound impact upon the outcomes of children who need help. A record 420,314 children and young people a month are being treated for mental health problems, according to the latest NHS figures.

“Open referrals” are under-18s who are being cared for by child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) or are waiting to see a specialist, having been ...

While it was positive that more and more under-18s are receiving psychological support, he said, “the rise in the number of young people seeking help from the NHS is relentless and unsustainable. She said not just the prevalence but also the severity and complexity of youth mental health problems had increased in recent years. Nihara Krause, a consultant clinical psychologist and the founder of stem4, said that while more under-18s were getting help, it was unclear from the figures how many received effective treatment. A survey of GPs published last month by the youth mental health charity stem4 found that half said CAMHS were rejecting half of referrals they made of under-18s suffering from anxiety, depression, conduct disorder and self-harm because their symptoms were not seen as severe enough. Mental health charities welcomed the fact that an all-time high number of young people are receiving psychological support. “Open referrals” are under-18s who are being cared for by child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) or are waiting to see a specialist, having been assessed as needing help against treatment thresholds.

Ministers remain unable to decide on ways to help as energy firm boss warns soon 40% could be in fuel poverty.

These could include a VAT cut or bringing forward the income tax cut that Sunak has planned for 2024. Others including the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, have lodged a public plea for lower taxes, in an unusual show of disunity. Speaking on BBC One’s Sunday Morning show, Lewis said: “I read emails from customers regularly, I listen in on calls and, frankly, some people are at the edge. “What we do know is that we are seeing a significant number of people in fuel poverty. Yet the Conservatives are doing little to help.” She said many people were “juggling long hours and multiple jobs just to scrape by”. However, with wages failing to keep up with 9% annual inflation, many of those struggling to make ends meet are already in jobs.