Amazon is diving into healthcare, teaming up with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the New York bank JP Morgan to create a company that helps their US employees find quality care “at a reasonable cost” and tackle the “hungry tapeworm on the American economy”.

The business giants offered few details on Tuesday and said the project is in the early planning stage. But the move from Amazon, which has long eyed the US’s enormous health market, sent shares in health insurance companies and pharmacy chains into a tailspin.“The ballooning costs of [healthcare] act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” Buffett said in a statement. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country’s best talent can, in time, check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes.”(theguardian)…[+]

The Egyptian politician Mousa Mostafa Mousa has said he will stand in the presidential elections, hours before a nomination deadline was set to make President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi the sole candidate after withdrawals and a boycott call.

Several leading opposition figures had called on Sunday for a boycott of the March election, citing a wave of repression that has cleared the field of challengers to Sisi and left his top opponent in jail. Sisi, a former military commander, was elected in 2014, a year after leading the army to oust the Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. He is expected to easily win the vote, the third since protests in 2011 unseated long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak.Mousa, who leads the Ghad party, told Reuters he was at the electoral commission registering his candidacy after having collected the required number of nomination pledges.(theguardian)…[+]

Every day, early in the morning, the former missile scientist would leave his house in Mosul. Riding buses, or on foot – he could no longer afford petrol – he’d call on friends, check on his mother or visit his sister’s family. Sometimes he’d hunt for cheap kerosene, or try to score contraband books or cigarettes. Most often, he’d meander aimlessly – a traveller in his own city.

In the evening, he’d sit at his old wooden desk, bent over his notebook, recording the day. Most of what he wrote was banal: the price of tomatoes, a quarrel with his wife. But he also wrote his observations of the remarkable events unfolding in Mosul.

“I must live this moment and record it,” reads one entry, from August 2014, two months after the fall of the city. “We live like prisoners serving long jail sentences. Some of us will come out having finished reading dozens of books. Others will be devastated and destroyed.” By the time he stopped writing, he’d filled five volumes. They are the handwritten diaries of a city under occupation, and a chart of how the Islamic State tried to live up to its name – by running a city.(theguardian)…[+]

The British government will be warned on Monday not to ignore the unfinished business of the EU divorce if it wants to secure a Brexit trade and transition deal.

Six weeks after EU leaders gave their blessing to moving the Brexit talks on to future arrangements, frustration is mounting that the UK is “not ready” to complete the divorce, which the EU deems essential for a deal before Britain’s departure on 29 March 2019.In December the EU declared that London had made sufficient progress on the Brexit divorce issues of the Irish border, money and protecting citizens’ rights, but the government is perceived in Brussels to have made little advance since.

The Irish border issue is the most difficult hurdle, but negotiators must also resolve a host of technical matters, including Euratom, police cooperation and the role of the European court of justice. European affairs ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday will issue a “gentle reminder” not to lose sight of these issues, one senior official told the Guardian.“The feeling here in Brussels is that the UK is pushing these on to the back burner and is now focusing more attention on the transition and the future,” the official said. “The message is don’t lose this out of sight, because we want to have it settled as well. And if we don’t have it settled this thing could go to the wire.”(theguardian)…[+]

Their country’s grip of the English language has long been a source of national pride for the Dutch. But some argue a line has to be drawn somewhere and, for the municipality of Amsterdam, that appears to be with the growing use of Shakespeare’s tongue by shops, restaurants and even high-end cheese retailers. The Dutch capital last year launched an initiative to curb the number of shops targeting tourists in its historic centre in its latest attempt to reclaim it for residents. In a court case involving the Amsterdam Cheese company – which has a store on Damrak avenue, a partially filled in canal in the centre – the dominant use of English has been highlighted as a problem.

The owners say they are “Dutch cheese heads” with a mission to “preserve the traditions of the past while embracing the new” and insist that English is the most accessible language to the majority of Dutch customers. The shop, whose slogan is “Say cheese to life”, was ordered to close late last year, losing their first – but not their last – appeal at the Amsterdam district court this week. The company’s advertising, products, pricing and use of the English language were said by the court to be clear indicators that the shop – one of five in the city – was there for the benefit of tourists rather than local consumers. “The official language in the shop is English,” the judge said in summary.(theguardian)…[+]

The Syrian rebel commander stared at photographs of his fighters on the hilly frontline at the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, their pickup trucks stalled in the mud after a torrential downpour of rain. “It’s going to be a tough battle, maybe five or six months,” he said. “[But] we have nobody except Turkey.”The image of the soldiers bogged down in a fight against Kurdish militants captured the central predicament of the Syrian rebel fighters, about 10,000 strong, who are spearheading a battle ordered by Turkey.

Abandoned by all other international allies and very nearly defeated, Syria’s armed opposition now finds itself waging a battle against Syrian Kurdish militias on behalf of Ankara, a patron that in recent months has pursued geopolitical and national security interests that are far more important to it than the opposition’s aim of ousting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. It highlights the rebels’ deep dependence on Turkey, their one remaining benefactor, and the powerlessness of Syrians to determine the course of a civil war that has now lasted nearly seven years.(theguardian)…[+]

A clear majority of Irish people would vote in favour of liberalising abortion laws and allowing terminations on request up to 12 weeks, according to a poll released as the cabinet prepares to meet to hammer out details of a referendum on the issue.

In response to the question “Will you vote to change the constitution so that the government can legislate for abortion up to 12 weeks, or will you vote not to change the constitution?”, 56% said they would vote in favour, 29% said they would vote against, and 15% said they did not know or offered no opinion.Changing the constitution would mean repealing Ireland’s eighth amendment, which recognises the equal rights to life of a foetus and the mother during pregnancy and in effect bans abortion in almost all circumstances.(theguardian)…[+]

A restaurant in Venice that charged a group of Japanese tourists €1,143 (£994) for four steaks Florentine, a plate of mixed grilled fish, two glasses of wine and mineral water faces fines totalling at least €20,000 (£17,400), according to local media.

The La Nuova Venezia newspaper said police and local authority checks carried out at the Osteria da Luca near St Mark’s Square uncovered breaches of health and safety and food hygiene regulations, as well commercial code infringements including issues over the accurate description of goods. “Together, the infringements – not all of which have yet been formally notified – produce total fines running into tens of thousands of euros,” the paper said. No grounds were found to shut the restaurant down, it said.

The Osteria da Luca – which has a rating of 1.5 stars on Tripadvisor, with 83% of reviews classed as “terrible” – faces further awkward questions from financial crime investigators over its failure to give the group a full receipt detailing their meal.(theguardian)…[+]

The Bollywood epic Padmaavat has opened in cinemas across India under blanket security after months of fierce protests. The film crew has been attacked, sets have been vandalised, hardliners have threatened to mutilate the lead actor and Indian states have pleaded with the supreme court and prime minister to ban the film.Violent mobs rampaged through several Indian cities this week in a last-ditch effort to stop the film, which is based on a five-century-old poem about a Hindu queen, Padmini, who immolates herself rather than be captured by a conquering Muslim ruler. In Mumbai, mobs have set fire to cars. In Gurgaon, a satellite city south of Delhi, people set fire to a bus and pelted stones. A school bus in Haryana state was attacked on Wednesday, while riot police clashed with hundreds of protesters in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat states.There was a heavy security presence outside north Indian cinemas screening the film on Thursday. Indian media reported that several venues had been attacked in Bihar and that a man had attempt to self-immolate outside a cinema in Varanasi.(theguardian)…[+]

The United Nations is investigating two senior figures over allegations of sexual harassment.The World Food Programme’s country director in Afghanistan, Mick Lorentzen, has been suspended while a disciplinary process is under way. Luiz Loures, an assistant secretary general of the UN, and deputy executive director of programme at UNAids, is also the subject of an investigation. The Guardian understands that he has not been suspended.

On Thursday, the WFP announced an overhaul of its sexual harassment policies, following mounting criticism over how UN agencies handle such cases. Last week, a Guardian investigation uncovered a widespread culture of silence surrounding sexual harassment and assault at the UN, with employees feeling unable to report complaints for fear of losing their jobs. Three alleged victims said they had lost their jobs, or been threatened with termination of contract, after reporting sexual harassment or assault. Two cited concerns with investigations, and said there had been errors in transcripts, or that key witnesses had not been interviewed. Alleged perpetrators were allowed to remain in senior positions – with the power to influence proceedings – throughout investigations.(theguardian)…[+]