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Jérémie Queyras, 28, created painting over months of sessions at his studio where pair struck up unlikely bond

Over months they met secretly in a studio in the government quarter of central Berlin – a young artist and his subject, the former German chancellor Angela Merkel. For hours at a time, while Jérémie Queyras painted her portrait, they bonded, Merkel has said, chatting “about all and sundry”. Sometimes they were silent, or they listened to classical music, taking it in turns to let each other choose the pieces.

The result of what Merkel, 71, called their “little adventure” was unveiled to an invited audience of family, friends and a handful of art critics this week in the neo-baroque Bode-Museum in Berlin.

In one area 76% of fishing boats were followed, with baby dolphins learning the technique from their parents

Bottlenose dolphins in the Adriatic are increasingly following trawlers to scavenge for food, with baby dolphins learning the technique from their parents, a study has found.

“These days the easiest way to find [bottlenose dolphins] is to look for trawlers,” said Giovanni Bearzi, a co-author of the study and the president of Dolphin Biology and Conservation in Italy. “Many of them are followed by the dolphins that go to forage and scavenge in their wake.

From Times Square to the Norwegian parliament and even in fighter jet cockpits, the choreographed row is everywhere

The fans have done it, in their thousands, in the stadiums. The players have done it on the pitch. Pretty much anyone who was there did it in New York’s Times Square. Norwegian MPs did it in parliament.

Prince Sverre Magnus, third in line to the Norwegian throne, rowed in an Oslo subway carriage. Care home residents in their 90s rowed in rural Norway and Norwegian Royal Air Force pilots rowed in their F-35 fighter jets.

Researchers say Stelios Kouloglou’s device was compromised after he joined European parliamentary committee

NSO Group’s hacking software was repeatedly used against a member of the European parliament while he was conducting an investigation of spyware abuses in Europe, according to a new report.

Researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said they could not attribute the attacks against Stelios Kouloglou to any particular government operator of Pegasus spyware. But their investigation found the attack against the Greek now-former MEP bore the hallmarks of a previous hacking campaign against exiled Russian and Belarusian journalists in Europe.

President says Washington’s relationship with Nato is ‘not reciprocal’ and ‘they were not there for us’ in Iran war

Donald Trump has said it is “ridiculous” for the US to continue its “one sided” relationship with Nato, less than a week before a summit of the military alliance in Ankara.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that “They were not there for us!!!” and Washington’s relationship with Nato “is not reciprocal”.

Migratory giant petrel discovered near Hawks Nest north of Newcastle infected with H5. Testing under way to determine if it’s highly pathogenic H5N1 strain

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New South Wales has its first suspected case of the deadly H5 bird flu in a giant petrel that was found near Hawks Nest, north of Newcastle, on the state’s coast.

If CSIRO testing confirms it is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain, it would mark the first detection of the deadly disease on the Australian east coast.

State opposition tells court it will not take any steps to disendorse MP while legal proceedings under way

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A Victorian Liberal MP who sued her party to stave off a meeting that will determine her political future has been handed a temporary lifeline.

Moira Deeming launched an eleventh-hour supreme court challenge against the Victorian Liberal party president, Brian Loughnane, and the party on Friday morning, seeking a temporary injunction to stop the meeting.

Premier apologised over organised crime in some of Victoria’s largest construction projects, in op-ed that claimed a royal commission would not solve the issue

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Jacinta Allan has admitted that criminals have infiltrated some of Victoria’s largest construction projects – but has again rejected growing calls for a royal commission into alleged corruption involving unions and labour hire companies.

In an opinion piece published in the Age on Thursday night, the premier wrote that “we now know that criminals operated on some of Victoria’s construction sites” during projects dubbed by the Labor government as the Big Build.

Ebony Bell convicted and handed community work order following assault on senator and second ‘gratuitous act of violence’ while on bail

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A woman has been handed a community work order for punching Lidia Thorpe outside the MCG over claims the independent senator disrespected her mother.

Ebony Bell was initially told to undertake an anger management course after her 2024 attack on Thorpe, but committed a second “gratuitous act of violence” while on bail, the Melbourne magistrates court was told in June.

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A teenager has been charged with murder after a 15-year-old boy was discovered with fatal stab wounds outside a community medical centre.

AAP reports the boy was found critically injured outside Craigieburn Community hospital in Melbourne’s north about 7.50pm on Wednesday. A staff member from the clinic rushed to his aid and delivered CPR but he died at the scene.

Law comes into effect that critics fear will further erode rights of Uyghurs and Tibetans, as well as allow Beijing to pursue dissidents abroad

A new ethnic unity law has come into effect in China despite warnings from Taiwan, the United Nations and rights groups that it could threaten freedoms, especially for minorities.

The Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress aims to forge a “shared” national identity among ethnic groups, for example by strengthening the status of Mandarin as the official language. But overseas campaigners have argued it will further degrade the rights of ethnic minorities, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, that Beijing is accused of persecuting.

Unmarried man and woman whipped 21 times each because they had violated province’s version of Islamic law

A young couple in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province have been publicly caned after a Sharia court convicted them of violating Islamic law by kissing during a TikTok livestream.

The court ordered the couple, a 22-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, to be whipped with a rattan cane 21 times each for kissing without being married. At least 100 people witnessed the caning, carried out by a group of people wearing robes and hoods on a stage in Bustanussalatin City Park in Banda Aceh.

Rebels shoot pilot and set his civilian ⁠plane on fire amid long-running low-level battle for independence in region

Separatist rebels in Indonesia’s restive easternmost region of Papua have shot dead an American pilot and set a civilian ⁠plane on fire, in what a spokesperson for a local militant group described as a “message” to the US and Indonesian governments.

Sebby Sambom, ⁠a spokesperson for the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), named the pilot as Nicholas F Gosselin and said separatist fighters had set his ⁠plane on fire after it landed in the Yahukimo region of Highland Papua province.

Charges yet to be filed over incident in Mukdahan involving 11-year-old, as police seek to establish circumstances

An 11-year-old boy has driven his parents’ truck into a Buddhist procession in Thailand, killing at least nine monks.

CCTV footage shared by a local rescue group showed the moment the monks, wearing orange robes, were run over as they walked in procession along a road. The timestamp on the footage was shortly before 11am local time on Thursday.

Official statement offers the most detailed official account yet of the highly unusual and fatal incident in Beijing

Chinese authorities said the man who flew a small plane into Beijing’s tallest skyscraper last week was a 66-year-old who had mental health problems.

The statement published on Thursday offered the most detailed official account yet of the highly unusual incident that occurred in Beijing’s central business district on the evening of 26 June.

Country is first to join since Australia in 2015 as event director says it ‘continues to welcome the world’

Canada will ​join the Eurovision song contest in 2027, becoming the first new ⁠participant since Australia in 2015, organisers have announced.

Participation is not limited to countries in geographic Europe and instead is open to all members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which Canada joined last week. Australia is an associate member.

• Three of the victims died from suffocation

• More than a million people gathered in Mexico City

Four people died, three ⁠from suffocation, as thousands of fans crowded Mexico City streets during World Cup celebrations, the capital’s health secretariat ⁠said in the early ⁠hours ​of Wednesday.

The deaths occurred near the Angel of Independence landmark, where thousands of fans had gathered to ⁠celebrate Mexico’s 2-0 victory over Ecuador in the last 32.

Trump and US officials opted to keep USMCA alive on short leash of annual reviews rather than longer term renewal

Donald Trump has refused to renew the North American trade pact he once championed as his signature deal, opting instead to keep it alive on a short leash of annual reviews rather than committing to another 16 years.

Wednesday was the deadline built into the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) for the three countries to jointly decide its fate, which is set to expire in 2036.

Eleven-year-old developed symptoms 19 days after encounter in Ontario in ‘exceedingly rare’ case

Doctors in Canada say a child who awoke to find a bat resting on his nose and mouth while visiting an Ontario cottage later died of rabies, in an “exceedingly rare case” that highlights the need for better public awareness.

In a report published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, infectious disease physicians confirmed that the 11-year-old boy died from rabies, a fatality they said probably could have been prevented with greater awareness of how the virus is transmitted.

Security guard Hernán Alberto Gil Flores, 43, initially told rescuers not to tell his wife in case he did not survive

A 43-year-old security guard who survived last week’s devastating earthquakes in Venezuela thanks to a pocket of air in his workstation cabin has been pulled from the collapsed basement of a shopping centre amid huge cheers from international rescue teams.

Hernán Alberto Gil Flores had been trapped for eight days under the rubble of the Galerías Playa Grande in the hard-hit coastal port city of La Guaira since the back-to-back quakes struck.

Fears of resurgence of HIV/Aids amid loss of access to PrEP drugs as at least 40 people arrested in ‘toxic’ climate

A “witch-hunt” is under way in Niger, where dozens of people have been arrested for homosexuality in the west African state following the introduction of a new penal code earlier this year.

Up to 40 people have been arrested and 16 men, including high-ranking military officials, have been imprisoned across the country, according to local media.

Report accuses paramilitary force of crimes including ethnic cleansing in systemic campaign against civilians

The Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during its campaign to capture El Fasher, Amnesty International has alleged.

Many of the crimes, including murder, torture, rape, enslavement and sexual slavery, were carried out as part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians and amounted to crimes against humanity, the human rights organisation said in a report released on Wednesday.

If we don’t know the source, not only do humans remain at risk but wildlife can suffer needlessly via retaliation

While virologists and public health departments were palpitating over the news of an Andes virus infectious disease outbreak on a cruise ship (13 cases, three deaths), in the Democratic Republic of the Congo the Bundibugyo virus, the root of the current Ebola outbreak (currently more than 1,250 cases and at least 362 deaths), was smouldering under the radar.

Bundibugyo virus is a horrifying, highly fatal pathogen. Symptom onset is sudden and includes headaches, diarrhoea, malfunctioning kidneys and liver, and, less frequently, internal and external bleeding (hence the term “haemorrhagic disease”). Grimly, contagiousness remains after death, meaning the family and loved ones of the deceased can be exposed when they wash and clothe the body in preparation for the funeral.

Authorities say rainy season getting deadlier, with Ghana reporting 13 dead and floods hitting Benin, Togo and Nigeria

Floods in Côte d’Ivoire have killed 59 people since May, the communication minister told a cabinet meeting in Abidjan.

There are fears the toll could further rise as rescue teams continue to search for victims during the rainy season, which runs from May until July, the minister, Amadou Coulibaly, added.

Indian prime minister has a habit of collecting awards on his travels, some as their first and only recipient

As Narendra Modi touched down in Seychelles over the weekend, the archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean swiftly bestowed one of its “highest” honours upon the Indian prime minister.

Modi beamed as he accepted the Guardian of the Blue Horizon award from Patrick Herminie, the Seychelles president, complete with a trophy and certificate.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

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