© Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
© Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
Israel Katz appears to have declared a new phase in the Israel Defense Forces’ offensive in the wake of visit by Marco Rubio
As well as facing relentless bombardments, Gaza City, the biggest built-up area of the territory, is being gripped by a famine caused by Israel’s restrictions on aid.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a globally recognised organisation that classifies the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition, declared last month that an “entirely man-made” famine was taking place in Gaza City and its surrounding area.
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© Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters
© Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters
© Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters
Rachel Reeves says move is a ‘vote of confidence’ in British economy as she prepares to open firm’s first UK datacentre
Google has said it will invest £5bn in the UK in the next two years to help meet growing demand for artificial intelligence services, in a boost for the government.
The announcement, which comes as Google opens its new datacentre in Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, is expected to contribute to the creation of thousands of jobs, the US tech company said.
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© Photograph: Jeff Blackler/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Jeff Blackler/REX/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Jeff Blackler/REX/Shutterstock
Linklater’s ahead-of-the-curve adaptation of a 1999 play about an alleged rape is reconfigured to try and reflect current concerns
Richard Linklater’s 2001 movie Tape, and Stephen Belber’s 1999 play that preceded it, were ahead of the curve in their targeting of male sexual violence, blurred lines of consent, performative apologies and self-victimising aggressors. Now comes a remake from Hong Kong for the post-#MeToo era. It makes a few updates, such as situating the film in an Airbnb apartment (instead of a motel room), where two old high-school friends convene. But, somewhat too reverential towards the original, this new version from director Bizhan Tong doesn’t do enough either conceptually or aesthetically to dig down into today’s shifted gender battle lines.
In Tong’s scenario, flippant lifeguard and small-time drug-dealer Wing (Adam Pak) invites his straight-laced school buddy Chong (Kenny Kwan) over to shoot the breeze at his apartment. Initially they smoke spliffs and banter testily about their diverging life paths; the latter, now going by the anglicised name of Jon, has become a promising low-budget film-maker. But steering the conversation to a touchy subject – Wing’s former sweetheart Amy (Selena Lee), whom Jon later slept with – Wing goads his so-called friend into confessing he raped her. Then he delivers the coup de grace: the room has been sprinkled with webcams that have videoed their exchange.
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© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
A century from now, a literature scholar pieces together a picture of our times in a novel that quietly compels us to consider the moral consequences of global catastrophe
The sheer Englishness of Ian McEwan’s fiction may not be fully visible to his English readers. But it is clearly, and amusingly, visible to at least this Irish reader. It isn’t just McEwan’s elegiac, indeed patriotic, attentiveness to English landscapes – to the wildflowers and hedgerows and crags, to the “infinite shingle” of Chesil Beach, to the Chilterns turkey oak in the first paragraph of Enduring Love. Nor is it merely the ferocious home counties middle-classness of his later novels, in which every significant character is at the very least a neurosurgeon or a high court judge, everyone is conversant with Proust, Bach and Wordsworth, and members of the lower orders tend to appear as worrying upstarts from a world in which nobody plonks out the Goldberg Variations on the family baby grand. No, McEwan’s Englishness has most to do with his scrupulously rational, but occasionally and endearingly purblind, liberal morality: England’s most admirable, and most irritating, gift to politics and art.
These thoughts were provoked by a brief passage in McEwan’s future-set new novel that describes the “Inundation” of Britain after a Russian warhead goes off accidentally in the middle of the Atlantic, causing a tsunami that, combined with rising sea levels, wipes out everything but a Europe-wide archipelago of mountain peaks. In these entertainingly nihilistic pages, the fate of that other major chunk of the British Isles is not mentioned. Presumably Ireland, with its dearth of high peaks, fared badly as Europe drowned. But from McEwan’s future history, you’d never know it. I began to think of What We Can Know as another of McEwan’s deeply English stories. It has, I thought, the familiar partialities of vision. Has Brexit, endlessly backstopped by those pesky six counties, taught English liberals nothing?
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© Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt/The Guardian
© Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt/The Guardian
© Photograph: Lydia Goldblatt/The Guardian
It was the place to be through the 1980s, a nightclub where Johnny Rotten and Kim Wilde rubbed shoulders with the Beastie Boys and, er, Mel Smith. David Koppel’s new book captures it all
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© Photograph: David Koppel/©David Koppel
© Photograph: David Koppel/©David Koppel
© Photograph: David Koppel/©David Koppel
A new wellbeing hotel on the tiny outpost of Styrsö in the Gothenburg archipelago is a perfect base for a relaxing, restorative break
If you came to stay on the tiny island of Styrsö (steer-shuh) in the Gothenburg archipelago in the late 19th or early 20th century, there was a good chance it was because you had tuberculosis. The island had already begun to appeal to city folk who came here for fresh air, sea baths and peace, but the sanatoriums set up by the renowned Dr Peter Silfverskiöld gained such a positive reputation that the isle became known as a health resort. Those glory days have long since faded but Kusthotellet, a new hotel dedicated to wellbeing, aims to tap back into the restorative vibe.
The conditions that first drew health-seekers to the island still pertain. It’s tucked away and protected from winds, but the lack of high ground nearby means the sun shines on its southern coast from dawn to dusk, and there’s no pollution. “This island is such a peaceful place – you can really relax and recharge your batteries,” Malin Lilton, manager of Kusthotellet, told my companion and me. “As soon as you get on the ferry your pulse rate goes down and you start breathing in the good air.”
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© Photograph: Amanda Falkman
© Photograph: Amanda Falkman
© Photograph: Amanda Falkman
The actor, who was cleared of historical sexual assault allegations in 2020, says he has withdrawn as a result of a social media campaign against him
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Craig McLachlan has withdrawn from the Australian production of Cluedo after a backlash to his casting seven years after he was accused of, and denied, touching, kissing and groping his female co-stars without their permission.
Last Wednesday the show’s producers Crossroads Live announced that McLachlan had been cast as Colonel Mustard in a stage adaptation of the 1985 film Clue, based on the boardgame.
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© Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP
© Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP
© Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP
Westminster’s hardening attitudes to immigration are leading anti-racist campaigners to warn a far-right UK government no longer seems unthinkable
“I remember my father marching against the National Front in the 1970s. It felt like it was a minority. The majority of people are still decent. But now, the far right seems legitimised and popular,” Dabinderjit Singh, a retired senior civil servant said.
Singh was reacting to Tommy Robinson’s 13 September far-right “unite the kingdom” rally, which drew 110,000 people to London.
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© Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian
© Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian
© Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian
Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on storytelling, their strangest interactions with fans and bonding over The Lord of the Rings
How does one measure success? For Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the historians behind the hit podcast The Rest Is History, it could be the number of unexpected and overly familiar conversations with strangers. On a holiday high up in the mountains of Bulgaria, Holland was wandering around a secluded monastery when someone called out, “Love the podcast!”
Sandbrook, meanwhile, is used to getting weird looks from fans who find it hard to compute that the man in front of them is one half of the soundtrack to their dog walks and commutes. “The weirdest thing that people say – which I’ve heard more than once – is, ‘My wife and I listen to you in bed every night,’” he says, looking mildly appalled.
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© Photograph: David Fisher
© Photograph: David Fisher
© Photograph: David Fisher
Knowsley is a Labour stronghold. But judging by the polls and the people I spoke to, the messages of the right are truly cutting through
At the weekend, I took the well-worn journey from London to Knowsley in Merseyside. I’ve made this trip so many times that I can execute it with military precision, arriving just in time before the train doors close, even with a toddler in tow this time around. My uncle picked us up from the station and as we turned on to the motorway, I saw St George’s flags hanging over us from the sides of bridges. Union jacks circled the roundabout just before we turned off to go to my auntie’s house. Knowsley is Labour’s fourth-safest seat in the UK, but it felt like a newly minted Reform constituency.
It was a Friday evening, so we opened a bottle of wine and put pizzas in the oven. I was updated on various family milestones – a house sale had gone through, a baby bump was starting to show, the poor dog was on its last legs. My daughter entertained everyone with an energetic rendition of Sleeping Bunnies. Behind her, the BBC News at Six played images of migrants huddled on inflatable boats sailing across the Channel.
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© Illustration: Sébastien Thibault/The Guardian
© Illustration: Sébastien Thibault/The Guardian
© Illustration: Sébastien Thibault/The Guardian
Keir Starmer will have to choose how to spend limited political capital, with most pressing issues ones UK and US do not agree on
Donald Trump has repeatedly described Keir Starmer as a “good man”, distancing himself from the attacks on the UK prime minister mounted by other figures on the US far right such as Elon Musk.
One of the many known unknowns, however, of a Trump state visit is what kind of Trump will show up when a microphone is placed in front of him.
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© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
© Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
A fragrant parcel of baked fish seasoned with herbs and lemon, all rounded off with a fruity, nutty dessert
There is something so simple but so delicious about a parcel of fish. Like unwrapping an edible present, the smell hits you before anything else, which in this case is fennel, thyme and lemon. It is a delicate way to cook fish, so the sauce needs to have some character, and basil, olives and lemon with a slick of olive oil make a beautiful, late-summer seasoning. Round off the feast with a blackberry and crisp almond pastry slice that tastes all the better if you forage your own fruit.
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© Photograph: Emma Guscott Photography/The Guardian. Food styling: El Kemp. Prop styling: Faye Wears. Food styling assistant: Aine Pretty-McGrath.
© Photograph: Emma Guscott Photography/The Guardian. Food styling: El Kemp. Prop styling: Faye Wears. Food styling assistant: Aine Pretty-McGrath.
© Photograph: Emma Guscott Photography/The Guardian. Food styling: El Kemp. Prop styling: Faye Wears. Food styling assistant: Aine Pretty-McGrath.
In 2020, after spending half his life in the US, Song-Chun Zhu took a one-way ticket to China. Now he might hold the key to who wins the global AI race
By the time Song-Chun Zhu was six years old, he had encountered death more times than he could count. Or so it felt. This was the early 1970s, the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, and his father ran a village supply store in rural China. There was little to do beyond till the fields and study Mao Zedong at home, and so the shop became a refuge where people could rest, recharge and share tales. Zhu grew up in that shop, absorbing a lifetime’s worth of tragedies: a family friend lost in a car crash, a relative from an untreated illness, stories of suicide or starvation. “That was really tough,” Zhu recalled recently. “People were so poor.”
The young Zhu became obsessed with what people left behind after they died. One day, he came across a book that contained his family genealogy. When he asked the bookkeeper why it included his ancestors’ dates of birth and death but nothing about their lives, the man told him matter of factly that they were peasants, so there was nothing worth recording. The answer terrified Zhu. He resolved that his fate would be different.
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© Photograph: Sean Gallagher/The Guardian
© Photograph: Sean Gallagher/The Guardian
© Photograph: Sean Gallagher/The Guardian
The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over ...
‘I’m going to throw that thing into a river!” my wife says as she comes down the stairs looking frazzled after putting our four-year-old daughter to bed.
To be clear, “that thing” is not our daughter, Emma*. It’s Grem, an AI-powered stuffed alien toy that the musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, helped develop with toy company Curio. Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.
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© Photograph: Hannah Yoon/The Guardian
© Photograph: Hannah Yoon/The Guardian
© Photograph: Hannah Yoon/The Guardian
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