US president heads to Chequers as former Meta executive Nick Clegg says UK must learn to be less reliant on US technology
Jennifer Rankin is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent.
Keir Starmer’s government is expected to soon begin talks with the EU to negotiate Britain’s entry into the EU’s €150bn (£130bn) defence loans scheme.
The bigger picture here is the real importance, when we have seen the return of war to our continent, that what we are doing is making sure we don’t fragment European defence production at this moment.
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© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
We’d like to hear from people across France about how they view Thursday’s strikes
Around 800,000 people are expected to join marches across France on Thursday.
French trade unions across many sectors from schools to transport have called for the nationwide strike to oppose unpopular budget plans.
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© Photograph: Michel Euler/AP
© Photograph: Michel Euler/AP
© Photograph: Michel Euler/AP
Tennis legend told diagnosis was ‘really, really bad’
Borg also recalls drug use after early retirement
Björn Borg, the five-time Wimbledon tennis champion, has said he is taking life “day by day, year by year” after his “extremely aggressive” prostate cancer diagnosis.
The former world no1, who won 11 grand slam titles before retiring aged 25, revealed the diagnosis in the final chapter of his autobiography, which will be published this week in the UK and next week in the US. The Swede is in remission, having had an operation in 2024, but described the diagnosis as “difficult psychologically”.
Read Bjorn Borg’s interview with Simon Hattenstone on theguardian.com from 4pm UK time on Thursday
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© Photograph: Colorsport/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Colorsport/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Colorsport/Shutterstock
A thriller-like account of the influential men and women who opposed Hitler and paid a terrible price
On 10 September 1943, a loose group of well-connected friends met in a small apartment in the Charlottenberg area of Berlin. The host was Elisabeth von Thadden and the nominal reason for the get-together was her younger sister’s 50th birthday. Really, though, this was a cover story for nine influential people meeting to discuss what should happen now that it was clear that Hitler was losing the war.
Otto Kiep, a former diplomat, talked hopefully about how Mussolini’s recent toppling meant that Italy was ready to make peace with the allies, while political hostess Hanna Solf gleefully anticipated the moment when Hitler fell: “We’ll put him against a wall.” Meanwhile, Von Thadden herself, a devout Protestant and former headteacher of an elite girls’ school, warned of the humanitarian crisis that would follow the end of hostilities. For those who gathered on that late summer’s day for tea, sandwiches and a particularly unappetising food item called “war cake”, Germany’s rebirth as a democratic nation state felt so near that they could almost touch it.
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© Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
© Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
The phenomenal response to an article we published on this question led to detailed cognitive research – and the findings have implications that go way beyond gamers
Five years ago, on the verge of the first Covid lockdown, I wrote an article asking what seemed to be an extremely niche question: why do some people invert their controls when playing 3D games? A majority of players push down on the controller to make their onscreen character look down, and up to make them look up. But there is a sizeable minority who do the opposite, controlling their avatars like a pilot controls a plane, pulling back to go up. For most modern games, this requires going into the settings and reconfiguring the default controls. Why do they still persist?
I thought a few hardcore gamers would be interested in the question. Instead, more than one million people read the article, and the ensuing debate caught the attention of Dr Jennifer Corbett (quoted in the original piece) and Dr Jaap Munneke, then based at the Visual Perception and Attention Lab at Brunel University London.
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© Photograph: Monika Wisniewska/Alamy
© Photograph: Monika Wisniewska/Alamy
© Photograph: Monika Wisniewska/Alamy
Jonathan Millet makes his fiction feature debut with an ambitious slow-burn thriller that opens up a complex world of pain
The face of a Syrian refugee is the enigmatic key to this slow-burning drama-thriller, the fiction feature debut of French film-maker Jonathan Millet; it is hard, blank, withdrawn, yet showing us an inexpressible agony, a suppressed, unprocessed trauma, complicated by what is evidently a new strategic wariness. The refugee is Hamid (played by Adam Bessa), a former literature professor from Aleppo who is now in Strasbourg in France in 2016, having suffered torture in Damascus’s notorious Sednaya prison, and the killing of his wife and infant daughter.
Hamid asks expatriate Syrians if they know a certain man, showing them a hazy photograph, claiming that this is his cousin. In fact, it is a man who tortured him and Hamid is a member of a ring dedicated to tracking down Syrian war criminals all over Europe. Haunted, exhausted and unhappy, Hamid’s only real relationship is with his elderly mother in a Lebanese refugee camp, with whom he has weekly Zoom calls; this a tender performance from Shafiqa El Till.
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© Photograph: Album/Alamy
© Photograph: Album/Alamy
© Photograph: Album/Alamy
Once teams promote a country, are owned by states or have to reflect government policy, sport becomes a playground for power
High fives all round at Hamas high command. The triumphant clink of Gaza Cola tins pings across the bunker. It’s been a tough week for the lads, what with five of their members being killed in the Doha airstrike, but you’ve got to celebrate the little victories, yeah? And as they use what remains of their fragile satellite internet connection to refresh the Cyclingnews live blog for the final time, the Hamas Grand Tour Disruption Division (Vuelta Branch) can toast an operation executed to perfection: the successful mobilisation of more than 100,000 members of the Madrid battalion to force the curtailment of stage 21 of the Tour of Spain.
“They asked us to quit the Vuelta, but we did not surrender to the terrorists,” said Sylvan Adams, co‑owner of the Israel-Premier Tech team targeted by mass protests that disrupted several stages. On Sunday, huge crowds of protesters in Madrid forced the race to conclude 27 miles short of the finish. And if the rancorous and chaotic last three weeks have taught us anything, it is the sheer number of terrorists that appear to have been operating within pro cycling, albeit many armed with nothing more lethal than energy gels.
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© Photograph: Javier Lizón/EPA
© Photograph: Javier Lizón/EPA
© Photograph: Javier Lizón/EPA
As the Manchester City legend returns to face his former team, we look back at moments that will never be forgotten
On 22 May 2022, in a dictionary definition of carpe diem, De Bruyne shows his greatness with the assist that harvests another title for City, just as Pep Guardiola’s men veer near to losing the plot. After 69 minutes Aston Villa are cruising at 2-0 up and the title is heading to Anfield where Liverpool, drawing with Wolves 1-1, need a goal to seal a famous last-day triumph. But, after City strikes on 76 and 78 minutes, De Bruyne takes charge. A piercing burst along the right prompts a pinpoint cross to Ilkay Gündogan, whose threaded finish on 81 minutes sends the Etihad Stadium ballistic.
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© Composite: Guardian Design
© Composite: Guardian Design
© Composite: Guardian Design
Raquel doesn’t believe ADHD excuses Gina’s bad habits. You decide who needs to brush up on their etiquette
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror
We asked if Abi should stop picking up other people’s litter.
I can hear her swishing and spitting from my room. I have a visceral reaction to it
Living with ADHD is difficult, and anyway, the kitchen is not some sacred food-only zone
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© Illustration: Igor Bastidas/The Guardian
© Illustration: Igor Bastidas/The Guardian
© Illustration: Igor Bastidas/The Guardian
I was the envy of the friends I’d left behind. Now it seems prudent to assess how much that nativism will truly take root here
This time last year, I had just moved back to Britain from the US and was enjoying the almost universal envy of American friends. While they were looking down the barrel of a second Trump presidency with its guarantee of chaos and division, we had elected Keir Starmer by a landslide and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. I remember people congratulating me on the prescience of my move, which I absolutely took even though politics hadn’t been part of my decision (not least because, for most of 2024, I had assumed Trump would lose). Anyway, here we are a year later and who’s laughing now?
I guess the answer to that is Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party, which has somehow managed to harness the anger, disappointment and shame felt by large numbers of people who voted for and were then let down by Brexit, and are now in search of another fire to light. To this extent, the roots of the rightwing march last weekend and the rise of Reform generally feel broadly of a piece with their US antecedents: a case, at least in part, of people clutching at anything that promises to rip up a system that has serially failed to reward them. What has felt shocking to many of us this year, however, is how quickly the political landscape seems to have changed in this country, and how a leader as frivolous as Farage could get anyone to follow him anywhere, let alone in the direction of No 10.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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© Photograph: James Willoughby/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
© Photograph: James Willoughby/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
© Photograph: James Willoughby/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
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