opinion

Amid police brutality allegations, Law Enforcement Conduct Commission inquiry hears protesters ‘largely peaceful’ Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast An inquiry into a Sydney rally against the Israeli president has so far found protesters were “largely peaceful” and there is “limited evidence of physical violence on the part of the protesters”. The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (Lecc) kicked off its probe into the February protest at Sydney’s town hall a

Of the dozens of countries approached to water down their laws, Australia appears to be the only one considering it, publishers’ group says Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast AI has already been trained on the works of Australian artists including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave without compensation, the peak global body for music rights has claimed, as the Australian government has been warned against giving in to “strong-arming” from tech companies seeking to w

Report reveals that a shady mobser-turned-informant may have been involved in helping cover up murder An in-depth investigation by the New York Times is raising further questions about the high-profile OJ Simpson case, in which the former football player was accused in the 1990s of killing his ex-wife – and whether a shady mobser-turned-informant may have been involved in helping cover up the murder. The Times’s investigation revealed that California prosecutors were unable to fully investig

Premier Ben Carroll says two-year limit will be in place on 1 January if re-elected, while Greens say there should be no fares Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Public transport fares in Victoria will be capped at $30 a week if the Labor government is re-elected next month. The premier, Ben Carroll, on Monday said the fare cap would begin on 1 January, the day after half-price fares end. The discounted fares were introduced after a period of free public tr

Premium paid over French counterparts has risen to almost £30 a megawatt hour, analysis by lobby group finds British steelmakers have been pushed further behind European rivals on electricity costs after the US-Israeli war on Iran caused a surge in global gas prices. The premium paid by the British industry over its French counterpart has risen to almost £30 a megawatt hour (MWh), its highest level in three years, according to analysis by the lobby group UK Steel. Continue reading...

Passengers urged to ‘share the carriage, not the noise’ as guidance sets out £100 penalties for nuisance behaviour Andy Burnham has announced a crackdown on “headphone dodgers” who play loud music on public transport, as he extends his promise to give voters “breathing space” in the confines of a train carriage. The prime minister will unveil a campaign against nuisance behaviour on public transport on Monday, alongside guidance allowing local transport authorities to levy fines of up to £100

Independent senator Monique Ryan throws her support behind fellow crossbencher after Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain episode Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Jacqui Lambie has criticised a One Nation cartoon mocking the Tasmanian senator’s health struggle with vaginal prolapse. The latest cartoon, part of Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain series, took aim at the Albanese government’s Digital Duty of Care legislation, which targets online safety. Continue r

The United States should stand unequivocally with Ukraine against Russia.

Antibody patterns in the blood may help doctors identify people at risk so they can be treated earlier, research shows Patterns of antibodies in people’s blood could predict the onset of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) a decade before diagnosis, according to research that raises hopes for catching the condition early. Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, the two main forms of IBD, are typically treated only after symptoms appear, when the gut has already been damaged. But scientists found

Donald Trump has abandoned the Western order.

Judge orders government to notify her by 8pm ET Sunday whether its position changed from Friday’s court filing Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday that “restoration work will begin” on 15 November to a historic public golf course in Washington DC despite a federal judge’s court order to pause his plans over environmental and historic preservation concerns. US district judge Ana Reyes had ruled earlier this year that the federal government must give notice before any substantive cons

Jan Crawford had praised man who asked Democratic candidate whether he would disavow Muslim Brotherhood CBS ’s chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford has apologized for and deleted a social media post praising a man who questioned Democratic Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about the Muslim Brotherhood during a town hall on Saturday. On Sunday, Crawford, who initially joined CBS in 2009, wrote on X: “Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall. I deleted that twee

Greens senator for WA says complaints regarding his behaviour towards women not about ‘accountability’ but rather ‘factionalism’ Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Jordon Steele-John has accused an internal faction within the Greens of playing “nasty political games” and the leader, David Shoebridge, of pressuring him to take leave after complaints about his conduct were made public last week. The 32-year-old Greens senator released a six-page statement on S

‘Meta owes us an explanation,’ group says as organizers fear censorship after account goes dark for several hours The coalition leaders behind nationwide pro-democracy protests that have drawn millions of Americans to the streets in recent years were frustrated when its Instagram account was temporarily shut down during its latest demonstration on Saturday . The No Kings movement’s account went dark for several hours while protests focused on increasing early voter turnout were underway, spar

A girl called Àìná was captured by an African king and later taken to England to become Sarah Forbes Bonetta, protege of the imperial monarch When she was seven years old, Bayo Randle’s great-great-grandmother Sarah Forbes Bonetta was presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle as a “diplomatic gift” from an African king. Victoria would go on to pay for Bonetta’s education, approve her marriage to one of west Africa’s wealthiest men, and become godmother to her eldest daughter. Continue r

Exclusive: Former health secretary says upfront investment in support is needed ‘if we are going to end the Neet crisis’ Ministers should cut welfare spending to fund more employment support if it wants to end the youth Neet crisis, the author of a government-led review has said. Alan Milburn, the Tony Blair-era health secretary, told the Guardian he believed ministers should reduce benefits payments to help pay for more employment support, opening a potentially contentious debate within the L

Officials allege congresswoman, whose home was raided by federal agents, or family violated law to obtain citizenship Tom Homan , Donald Trump’s “border czar”, has said that the Republican presidential administration could “of course” strip Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of her citizenship and deport her. Homan’s comments during a Saturday appearance on Fox News were the first remarks explicitly mentioning denaturalization and deportation in connection with Omar that were attributed by

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Agency changes wording on website as Texas-based chemical firm continues manufacture of plastic containers The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly backtracked on a claim that the US has phased out two of the most dangerous Pfas compounds – Pfoa and Pfos. The EPA has found that virtually no level of exposure to either in drinking water is safe, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies Pfoa as “carcinogenic to humans” and Pfos as “possibly carcinogenic”. Still,

Female colleague says she was forced out shortly after incident with Luke Campbell, Hull and East Yorkshire mayor A Reform UK mayor is under police investigation for allegedly showing “naked and sexualised” images of himself to a female member of staff. Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxing champion and the mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, is understood to have been questioned under caution by Humberside police earlier this month. Continue reading...

It’s a perfect storm of protesters with heartfelt grievances and others set on conflict. The key here is the sense of betrayal that united them on the streets The first thing I learned on the streets of Paris this weekend is that there is no arguing with teargas. I arrived at Place de la République just after 1pm yesterday. The mood was festive until police started firing volleys of teargas into the square from Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple. I didn’t see the inciting incident – if there even was o

Exclusive: Play anonymously published in 1596 was collaboration between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, according to computer analysis Dramatic new evidence concludes that the play Edward III should be added to William Shakespeare’s canon, and also that it was a major collaboration with his contemporary rival Christopher Marlowe. The history was published anonymously in 1596, and it has long been thought that Shakespeare wrote at least a few scenes. However, Dr Rory Loughnane, a leading s

Scrutiny committee looks into financing of Manchester Life project as PM promises ‘full transparency’ A £55m loan to Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owner will be investigated as part of a review into a fund for housing projects while Andy Burnham was mayor. The prime minister has faced weeks of scrutiny over his links to Manchester City’s super-rich owners after the club was found guilty of boosting its income by £900m in a nine-year breach of financial rules. Continue reading...

Imagine anger as a sign not of moral failure or justified outrage but the desire to care for another Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life Anger is an emotion we are taught to manage, control and suppress. But what if anger is, as poet David Whyte says, one of the deepest possible forms of compassion available to humankind? Philosophers and theologians have long distinguished between virtuous and non-virtuous anger. Aristotle

Enough with the sex toys, already.

ONS data for England and Wales shows 26% of heterosexual divorces in 2025 followed 20 years or more of marriage Most couples are aware of the dreaded “seven-year itch”, when the honeymoon period wears off and real life starts to bite. Now official data has shown that couples in England and Wales are more likely to split after 20 years. According to Office for National Statistics figures, more than a quarter of all divorces between opposite-sex couples happened after 20 years or longer of marri

Long careers spent covering politicians have taught David Brooks and Jeffrey Goldberg the importance of putting politics in its place.

Amid financial pressures on household and school budgets, the theatre company is expanding access with free plays Six young actors step into the spotlight as a reverent silence descends on the hall at City Academy in Bristol. A boy steps forward to pose a central question: “What does it mean to be young in Britain in 2026?” Union jack flags flash across the backdrop as three girls excitedly debate a Spice Girls reunion concert, before the focus swings back to the young boy wrestling with mode

Development by UK firm Nscale heralded by ministers as largest of its kind in the country loses its anchor tenant The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies. The development by the British firm Nscale, heralded by ministers as the country’s largest AI datacentre when it was announced in 2025, was planned to open at Loughton in Essex next year. Continue reading...

The genetic changes that made the human brain may have made us uniquely vulnerable to Alzheimer’s.

States like Missouri and Iowa are choosing to not take up exemption designed to help low-income people keep coverage during hardship Some conservative states that have rejected hardship exemptions for the new Medicaid requirements may be choosing not to due to political reasons, experts say. New federal work requirements for Medicaid, slated to come into effect on 1 January, mean that adults enrolled through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion will have to work, attend school, vol

Exclusive: rules on same-sex wards could lead to delays in care, discrimination and animosity between groups, finds internal assessment Trans people could face delays and a greater risk of “corridor care” under new NHS England guidance that means they will no longer be able to use same-sex wards, according to an internal report. An NHS England impact assessment, seen by the Guardian, stated that trans people may also potentially experience discrimination and this could lead to them “avoiding a

Overall, economic sentiment for Trump is poor, but small businesses seem fairly confident, according to several surveys There are 34m small businesses in the United States. They employ approximately half of the country’s workers and generate about half of the country’s GDP. They’re an important voting block. So how are they feeling about the economy as we head into November’s midterm elections? Overall, economic sentiment for Donald Trump is poor but small business – admittedly a diverse demo

Hundreds at Lisbon tent camp demand action on housing, as Giorgia Meloni says march in Italian capital exploited by ‘hooligans’ The angry protests that have convulsed Spain and France in recent weeks have spilled over to Italy and Portugal, with rioters clashing with police and setting property on fire in Milan, and a tent encampment springing up in Lisbon over the weekend. A march in central Milan on Saturday to protest against rising living costs began peacefully but ended with masked rioter

Americans have grown accustomed to her kind of fraud.

Many Americans have decided that their country’s problem is that it has too many police officers. In fact, it has too few.

Lengthy meeting heard grumbles about ‘blue wall’ policies and ‘Ming vase’ tactics but no real rancour As political showdowns go, this week’s gathering of Liberal Democrat MPs, billed by some as a crunch moment for Ed Davey, was a touch underwhelming. “I had expected a damp squib,” one attender put it. “It was damper than I thought.” Far from generating a mass of opposition to Davey’s leadership, let alone a formal challenge to his position, the lengthy gathering in a Commons committee room on

Green leader in England and Wales calls ‘debates about words’ unhelpful and denies recent motion was controversial Zack Polanski has said Zionism in its current form is racist, that no country has a right to exist and that the controversial Green party motion on the issue was not controversial. The leader of the Green party in England and Wales gave an unapologetic interview to the BBC on Sunday two weeks after his party approved a motion equating Zionism with racism. Continue reading...

In attempting to turn a public space in DC into an enclave for elites, Trump is moving the US capital closer to Graceland When is a tree not a tree? When it’s an obstacle to a par-3. If a tree falls in the middle of a golf course, does it make a sound? Yeah, probably. I wasn’t there, but I have to assume, based on my limited knowledge of the laws of physics. What I do know is that Donald Trump’s crusade to clear more than 400 trees for the purposes of redeveloping East Potomac Golf Links int

Large cordon in place around Angel Row area of city centre after ‘shocking incident’ in the early hours of Sunday A police officer is in hospital after being shot in the foot in Nottingham in the early hours of Sunday. Nottinghamshire police said the officer had approached two suspects in the city centre when he was struck by a bullet. The force said the two suspects, a woman and a man, fled the scene and were being sought by police. Continue reading...

Style of emceeing based on high-octane, ad-libbed vocals has flourished thanks to its unique way of captivating crowds For the 2015 freshmen cohort of the history degree programme at the University of Lagos, their classmate’s first-semester presentation was so captivating that they began calling him Toby Shang, after the 16th-century Chinese dynasty he had focused on. His crowd engagement that day had been harnessed from his high school days as a ginger-man (energiser) in a three-man band and

The show depicts prisons as places characterised by violence and isolation, with no focus on rehabilitation. It’s depressingly accurate Alex South is a former prison officer and the author of the memoir Behind These Doors The new series of Time is not an easy watch. The opening seconds of Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama show a normal woman on a normal bus, as it drives up a normal road. But to the right of that road is a huge concrete wall, topped with barbed wire and CCTV cameras. The

Magazine group points to restructuring bill but says it ‘remains profitable in the UK for another year’ Profits at Condé Nast’s UK arm slumped by more than a third last year, according to figures published shortly after the billionaire family that owns the luxury magazine group and titles from Vogue to GQ ruled out a sale. The publisher, which enjoyed a bumper 2024 after booking £64m in proceeds from the sale of its UK headquarters Vogue House in London, saw pre-tax profits excluding exception

For more than three decades, Michael Gove has been a leading figure in British Conservatism. As a journalist, government minister and now editor of the Tory bible the Spectator, he has helped shape the right even as it has moved further rightwards. In the latest episode of Radical Thinking, Gove joins Aditya Chakrabortty to discuss the future of the right, his record on Brexit and austerity, and the Spectator’s position on Islam Watch the full episode with Michael Gove here . Aditya

The US condemned the genocide and military rule there, but now that Trump craves its rare earths, that’s all changed. For democracy activists, that’s a disaster Marco Rubio was once adamant that the US had to do everything in its power to end what he described as the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya in Myanmar. In a 2017 letter he signed along with 20 other US senators , Rubio called for “strong multilateral sanctions against specific senior Burmese military officials associated with the gro

Meet some of the elderly residents of Bolotana, in line to be the world’s sixth ‘blue zone’ for its high number of female centenarians When Giovanna Marras opens the door to her home in Bolotana, a mountain village in central Sardinia, her eyes are bright with curiosity as she sizes up her visitors. Her sister, Mariangela, peeks out too, soon ushering her guests inside and handing out dishes of ice-cream. The sisters are full of life, talking animatedly. Giovanna is 101 and Mariangela is 99. S

Birth happens days before Labor and Coalition block bill to ban ‘barbaric practice’ of shackling incarcerated women during childbirth Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast An incarcerated Indigenous woman was shackled to a hospital bed in Queensland while she was in labour last weekend, an advocacy group has said. The birth happened just days before Labor and the Coalition blocked a bill to ban the “barbaric practice” of shackling incarcerated women during chi

Move comes after Trump administration announced restrictions that could slash water supplies Arizona has joined Nevada in its legal battle against the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to their shares of the shrinking Colorado River. The move comes after the interior department announced restrictions this summer that could slash the water supplied to lower basin states – Arizona, California and Nevada – over the next two years depending on the river’s condition. Continue reading...

Hurricane warning in effect from Manzanillo to Cabo Corrientes as storm moves toward Pacific coast Trudy strengthened to a category 2 hurricane as it moved toward Mexico’s south-western and west-central Pacific coast on Saturday, the US National Hurricane Center said. A hurricane warning was in effect from Manzanillo in Colima state to Cabo Corrientes in Jalisco. The latest NHC data showed Trudy with maximum sustained winds of 100mph (155km/h) and about 205 miles (330km) south/south-east of Ca

Exclusive : Research confirms official advice about high-risk properties and warns worsening conditions will make more homes unsafe Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here Almost every home destroyed in New South Wales during the black summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020 was inside the 100 metre buffer zone used to identify properties most at risk, new research has found. The findings are an endorsement of the risk maps used by authorities,