For 500 years, the painted wooden effigy of St George that adorns a chapel in the Spanish town of Estella has been locked in a silent struggle against his old foe, the dragon. Today, however, the saint faces a different battle thanks to a feat of restoration that has prompted comparisons with the infamous “Ecce Homo Monkey Christ” and exasperated the mayor.An attempt to freshen up the 16th-century polychrome statue has left St George with a rosy pink face and a bold, red-and-grey suit of armour. The restoration is believed to have been carried out by a handicrafts teacher at the request of the parish authorities of the Church of St Michael.

The mayor of Estella, which lies south-west of Pamplona in the Navarre region, is demanding to know why the council was not consulted before the work went ahead. Koldo Leoz told the Guardian: “The parish decided on its own to take action to restore the statue and gave the job to a local handicrafts teacher. The council wasn’t told and neither was the regional government of Navarre.”(theguardian)…[+]

A secret MI5 report that resulted in Northern Ireland’s police covertly prioritising intelligence-gathering over fighting crime has been made public after almost 40 years.

The report resulted in detectives of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) – now the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) – being ordered never to arrest a suspected terrorist without consulting the force’s intelligence-gathering section.

Detectives were also told that anyone who was arrested could be recruited as an agent rather than charged with a criminal offence. As a consequence, a number of British agents are now known to have been involved in murders, bombings and shootings, while continuing to pass on information about their terrorist associates. What cannot be known is whether the strategy eventually helped to resolve the 30-year conflict known as the Troubles – during which more than 3,500 people were killed – or whether it prolonged it.(theguardian)…[+]

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who has been accused in France of straining the country’s secular foundations by seeking to mend ties with the Catholic church, has held an unusually long meeting with Pope Francis.The two men spoke for nearly an hour in the official papal library in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the longest time the pontiff has spent in a meeting with a head of state.

The Vatican said the pair discussed protection of the environment, migration, and multilateral commitment to conflict prevention and resolution, especially in relation to disarmament. They also spoke about prospects for resolving conflicts in the Middle East and Africa and the future of Europe, it said. At the end of the private audience, Macron gave the pope a rare copy of Georges Bernanos’ 1936 novel The Diary of a Country Priest.

“I’ve read this book many times and it has done me good. It is a book that I have always loved very much,” the pope told Macron, who was accompanied in the public part of the meeting by his wife, Brigitte. The pontiff gave Macron a medallion of Martin of Tours, a 4th-century saint who is depicted cutting his cloak in half to give to a beggar in winter. “This means the vocation of those who govern is to help the poor. We are all poor,” the pope told Macron as he gave him the medallion.(theguardian)…[+]

Nine EU member states are set to sign off on the establishment of a joint European military intervention force, an initiative which has won the backing of the UK as it seeks to maintain defence ties after Brexit. Spearheaded by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the European force will be designed to deploy and coordinate forces rapidly to deal with crises around the world.

Defence ministers from France, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Estonia, Spain and Portugal were expected to sign a letter of intent in Luxembourg on Monday. Since the election of its new government, Italy has backtracked on its initial support, but Rome has not ruled out the country’s future involvement. Macron outlined his vision of strategic autonomy for European defence in a keynote Sorbonne speech last September. The development has caused some anxiety within Nato, where officials are concerned about any duplication of roles and distancing from the US. Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, is in Luxembourg for discussions on European security and defence, before a summit of the military alliance in Brussels next month.(theguardian)…[+]

Health authorities in Australia have launched a major inquiry into a disgraced gynaecologist who mutilated and performed unnecessary operations on dozens of women over decades. One patient died after Dr Emil Shawky Gayed operated on her and failed to administer appropriate treatment. The New South Wales (NSW) Department of Health has announced that it has set up an independent special counsel investigation and a dedicated telephone line at each of the hospitals where the surgeon worked. It encouraged women affected by Gayed – who has been banned from practising for three years – to get in touch.

What has become a burgeoning public health scandal in Australia’s most populous state follows an investigation by Guardian Australia into the conduct of Gayed at one of the hospitals where he worked in the regional town of Taree, 310km (190 miles) north of Sydney. Dozens of women in and around the mid-north NSW coastal town have sustained infections, psychological trauma and other complications because of treatment they received from Gayed at the Manning Rural Referral hospital. Gayed performed a hysterectomy on one woman even though she could have been offered treatment of painkillers and bed rest. The woman never consented to a hysterectomy, an investigation by the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) found.(theguardian)…[+]

Allies of Angela Merkel have called for the German leader to be given more time to set up new bilateral migration deals with other European countries, as she returned empty-handed from an emergency mini-summit in Brussels. Sunday’s gathering of 16 European leaders had been hastily assembled to offer a lifeline to the German chancellor, as her interior minister, Horst Seehofer, is threatening to unilaterally turn away migrants already registered in another EU country at German borders unless the chancellor can come up with a European solution to the problem by 1 July.

But with the unorthodox meeting failing to reach concrete conclusions, senior members of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union have rallied around their party leader and called on its sister party, the Bavarian CSU, to adjust their expectations. “I believe there will be progress by the time of the EU summit on Thursday and Friday,” said Günther Oettinger, the European commissioner for budget and human resources. “But there won’t be an agreement of the dimension that some in the CSU are expecting.”(theguardian)…[+]

Police officers gave them flowers, fathers gave their blessing and locals marked the moment with humour as Saudi women took to the streets in their cars after the ban on driving was lifted.

As the clock ticked past midnight on Saturday, a group of women who had been granted licences started their engines, some with fathers or brothers alongside, and others in new cars bought for the occasion. Several women shouted with delight. Others cried, and many more took videos of their first forays at the wheel.

The celebratory mood was mostly confined to pockets of Riyadh and Saudi Arabia’s second city, Jeddah, where the few women who have so far been granted licences were being feted as celebrities. Among them was Fadya Basma, a driver for a ride-sharing company, who is one of the first in Saudi Arabia to legally shepherd men around. “It’s a wonderful day,” she said. “And it will change things. Saudi will never be the same again.” Samar Almogren, a talkshow host and writer, said: “I always knew this day would come. But it came fast. Sudden. I feel free like a bird.”(theguardian)…[+]

The Trump administration says it knows the location of all children in its custody after it separated them from their families at the southern border and is working to reunite them. On Wednesday, in the face of fierce international opprobrium, Donald Trump ordered an end to the practice of separating parents and children held after entering the US without documentation.

According to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fact sheet, 2,053 minors who were separated at the border are being cared for in facilities run by the Department of Heath and Human Services (HHS). On Saturday, groups of Democratic lawmakers toured detention facilities in Texas and elsewhere. Some said there was no clear plan for the reunification process.

The fact sheet on “zero-tolerance prosecution and family reunification” was released that evening. It said any parent must request that their child be deported with them. In the past, DHS said, many parents have elected to be deported without their children. That may be a reflection of violence or persecution they face in their home countries.(theguardian)…[+]

A tweet by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders about her ejection from a Virginia restaurant broke federal ethics rules, a leading expert said. On Saturday, using her official White House account, Sanders posted: “Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington [Virginia] to leave because I work for POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me.

“I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.” Walter Shaub, federal ethics chief under Barack Obama and briefly Trump and now a fierce critic of the administration, responded: “Sanders used her official govt account to condemn a private business for personal reasons … she can lob attacks on her own time but not using her official position.”

The controversy came at the end of a week of fierce debate over a Trump policy which mandated the separation of children from their parents when such families entered the US illegally. Between April and early June, according to federal statistics, more than 2,300 children were taken. On Wednesday, amidst international condemnation and with even Republican supporters in Congress beginning to waver, Donald Trump signed an executive order nominally – but not conclusively – stopping the practice.(theguardian)…[+]

The equality campaigner Christie Elan-Cane has lost a high court challenge against the UK government’s refusal to issue gender-neutral, or X, passports.  Mr Justice Jeremy Baker upheld Home Office policy after the court was told it would affect other legislation, cost too much to change computer records and increase the need for consular support abroad for gender-neutral British citizens. Elan-Cane, who has pursued the issue for more than 25 years, has claimed that non-gendered people suffer discrimination and are being deprived of their “legitimate identity”. UK passports restrict sex designations to male or female. Ten countries permit their citizens to opt for a third category, X, or unknown.

Canada was the most recent to offer its citizens gender-neutral passports. Other country that allow a third option are Australia, Denmark, Germany, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, India, Ireland and Nepal. X passports are approved by the ICAO, the UN agency that regulates international air travel. During the hearing, Kate Gallafent QC, for Elan-Cane, argued that HM Passport Office policy breaches the right to respect for private life, and the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of gender or sex, under the European convention on human rights (ECHR).  She said: “For the claimant, obtaining and using a passport currently involves making a false declaration as to the nature of the claimant’s gender identity, which causes the claimant considerable distress.”(theguardian)…[+]