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Russia jails LGBT nightclub owner and two staff under extremism law in the country's first case since the Supreme Court banned the LGBT movement.

McIntosh doubles down on call for Liberal ‘rebrand’. Follow today’s news liveGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastChalmers defends house price forecastsThe government has been facing some heat over the cooling house market around Australia with falling auction clearance rates, and forecasts that house prices in Sydney and Melbourne could fall more than $100,000.Auction clearance rates in Brisbane came up on the weekend, if you compare the preliminary numbers from the week before. They also came up in Adelaide. They came up nationally in aggregate, as I understand it. But in Sydney and Melbourne, we saw some softness there, that actually predated the budget announcements.It doesn’t make a lot of sense to replace one big distortion that Howard and Costello introduced when they made that big policy mistake in 1999 and ruined the housing market for too many people, especially young people; [it] doesn’t make sense to replace that big distortion with another big distortion.And so we’re applying this CGT discount – there’s still a discount, just calculated differently to reflect real gains – we’re applying it fairly and neutrally across the board so that we don’t introduce another big distortion and repeat the mistakes.Some people think that we’re stuck in the past and our policies need to resonate with the Australia of today and the future. So I think it’d be a really good time for us to revisit our values.If things aren’t resonating, and if people are actually latching on to our policies and believing in that, but they’re not wanting to vote for us, then maybe we need to do something about the brand,I want us to have more cut-through on our policies. I worked for John Howard back in the day, and my patch, we were the Howard battlers, we’re the Menzies Forgotten people, and we’re Tony Tradie. So we are pretty much the heartland of Australia. And when the heartland of Australia tells you that you need to get more cut-through to get more voters on your side, then you need to listen to the people. Continue reading...

Venezuela earthquake Highlights: Some 774 buildings were badly damaged in back-to-back quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that struck on Wednesday evening, including 189 buildings that have totally collapsed

Exclusive: Activist tells of his life as one of India’s most prominent political prisoners and his opposition to the government of Narendra ModiPrison is hardest at sunset. As the thousands of prisoners incarcerated in Delhi’s most infamous jail are cast out of their cells and forced into the dank yard until darkness falls, prisoner number 626714 feels the punishing dread begin to rise.Yet the inmate – better known as Umar Khalid – was recently moved to discover that another political prisoner, exiled at a camp thousands of miles from India, wrote of the very same feeling more than 150 years ago. Continue reading...

Settlement requires archbishop to write apology letter to each survivor and implement child protection reformsThe San Francisco Catholic archdiocese has agreed to pay $395m to settle more than 500 lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by church officials, plaintiffs’ attorneys said Monday.Salvatore Cordileone, the San Francisco archbishop, will have to write an apology letter to each survivor as part of the settlement. Continue reading...

The prospective new prime minister will need to deliver on his ability to communicate – and get the big decisions rightWhen Keir Starmer welcomed Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, outside No 10 on Monday, the attire fitted the moment: dark formal suits, polished leather shoes. Almost 200 miles to the north, when Andy Burnham strode into the engine hall of the People’s History Museum in Manchester, the vibe could not have been more different.Dressed in his trademark dark T-shirt and jacket, Burnham could just as easily have been walking down the street outside. He even began with a joke about his thigh-skimming running shorts, after he was pictured going for a jog the morning after announcing his return to parliament, telling the assembled audience he had bought a new pair as it was “either do that or change the decency laws”. Continue reading...

The justices allowed Fed governor Lisa Cook to stay in her job while she fights the Republican president's effort to fire her over allegations of mortgage fraud, which she has denied.

Increase comes after seven-year campaign by mothers of victims for a change in the minimum sentence for domestic murderOffenders who kill their current or ex-partner face spending an extra 10 years behind bars, with a new minimum sentence of 25 years in England and Wales, under plans announced by David Lammy.The increase, announced by the justice secretary on Monday, comes after a seven-year campaign by mothers of victims for a change in the minimum sentence for domestic murder. Continue reading...