Robbie Williams has said he bought Eric Morecambe’s glasses for £20,000 at auction as the comedian was an “uncle of sorts” whose “spirit has been salve for my soul”. The singer said he cried “happy, childlike tears” after winning the bidding war last month with a final offer far exceeding the £2,000 to £4,000 estimate.…

Two in three retirees who rent privately owned homes live in poverty and the problem will get worse, a new report has found. Most older working Australians who rent do not have sufficient savings to keep paying rent in their retirement, according to the report from the Grattan Institute. More than half of households aged…

The Greens say Labor must drastically cut the pay of the national broadband network’s chief executive in exchange for their support on a bill to block any future privatisation of the publicly owned network. The party’s amendments to Labor’s bill include a salary cap for senior executives, placing a legal obligation on NBN services to…

Narco-musical Emilia Pérez has won best European film at Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars amid the fallout from its star’s past racist and Islamophobic social media posts. Karla Sofía Gascón – the star of the film and the first transgender woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar – did not attend the ceremony…

The Greens have conceded the loss of the Victorian state seat of Prahran to the Liberals, while the result in the once-Labor stronghold of Werribee remains too close to call. The Greens leader, Ellen Sandell, said on Sunday the result in the inner-Melbourne seat was close but that it was clear the minor party will…

Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, is now neck and neck with Labour largely because its stance on immigration is proving attractive to floating voters, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer. The rise of the populist rightwing party is causing increasing concern in the Labour high command and among the many Labour…

The Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in medical research funding for universities, hospitals and other scientific institutions by reducing the amount they get in associated costs to support such research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said that it was reducing the amount of “indirect” medical research funding going to institutions, which will…

Israel prison authorities confirm 183 Palestinian prisoners freed on Saturday Israel’s Prison Service confirmed it had released 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees on Saturday during the fifth exchange of the Gaza ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. It said in a statement that “183 terrorists were transferred from several prisons across the country”, before they…

A Labour minister has been sacked and suspended from the party after messages were exposed in which he said he hoped a pensioner who did not support him would die before the next set of elections. Andrew Gwynne, who was a health minister, was also accused of writing a series of other messages containing racist…

Gavin Newsom, the California governor, signed laws on Friday setting aside $50m to help the state protect its policies from challenges by the Trump administration and defend immigrants amid the president’s mass-deportation plans. One of the laws allocates $25m for the state’s department of justice to fight legal battles against the federal government, and another…