"Out of nowhere, one person stood up and said, 'Man overboard,' and it was really intense because every single person on the boat shot up immediately."
“I know what it feels like to be attacked for just doing your job,” James said. “But I also know what it feels like to overcome adversity. And so I stand on solid rock.”
Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breaches
It is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.
Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say.
Staff are being advised to travel in mixed groups and carry panic alarms as incidents of intimidation spread
They have travelled thousands of miles to care for the most vulnerable people in society. But care workers recruited overseas to fill much-needed roles are increasingly facing racist abuse in the UK, industry insiders have warned, as the country’s immigration debate becomes increasingly toxic.
Staff working with elderly and disabled service users have been advised to travel to work in racially mixed groups and carry panic alarms. The measures follow a surge in reports of “verbal abuse and spitting” from strangers since the summer, said Nadra Ahmed, the executive chair of the National Care Association (NCA), which represents about 5,000 providers.
It’s Keir Starmer’s turn to muddle through a problem that none of his predecessors solved: can his cash-poor nation afford to offend a superpower?
It has all the makings of a gripping spy novel.
Two young men accused of passing secrets to China, who vigorously protest their innocence, are swept up in a swirling political intrigue with a shadowy semi-mythical figure (in the shape of veteran Downing Street national security adviser Jonathan Powell) at its heart. Yet the story dominating domestic headlines as MPs returned from recess this week is not fiction, or at least not entirely.
Pasta with a rich sauce flavoured by chilli and sweet onions, followed by spice-enhanced poached pears with a nutty topping
My farmers’ market (and my beds) are full of swiss chard. It is one of the few edible plants I could cope with this year – it grows with such ease and grows back so quickly after each picking that I feel it is the ultimate kitchen gardener’s friend. It is a great bedfellow for mushrooms, which lend a bit of meatiness to those leaves. With those, I also like to add ancho, a rich, full-bodied but not spicy chilli that is readily available in flaked form in many supermarkets around the country (nora or guajillo are good substitutes), while the feta, like queso fresco in Mexico, adds a lovely, tangy saltiness. It’s a dish for those Sundays when you are low on time, but want a rich, soothing feast.
“It was maybe 10 minutes of consistent, perpetual, automatic rounds being let off. …It went on for so long. And people just started running,” a witness said.
Provision of internet access to scam centres being investigated as Starlink swiftly becomes Myanmar’s biggest internet service provider
A powerful bipartisan committee in the US Congress says it has begun an investigation into the involvement of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite business in providing internet access to Myanmar scam centres, blamed for swindling billions from victims across the world.
The move comes as it was revealed that large numbers of Starlink dishes began appearing on scam-centre roofs in Myanmar around the time of a crackdown in February that was supposed to eradicate the centres, according to a investigation by Agence France-Presse
Computers running software will still work but steadily become more vulnerable to viruses and malware
From Tuesday Microsoft will no longer offer free support as standard for Windows 10, an operating system that is used by millions of computer and laptop owners around the world.
Figures for September suggest four in 10 of those using Microsoft Windows worldwide were still using Windows 10, despite the introduction of its successor, Windows 11, in 2021.
Once a stalwart of Hong Kong’s journalism scene, Wang Jian has found a new audience on YouTube, dissecting global politics and US-China relations since the pandemic. To his fans, he’s part newscaster, part professor, part friend
On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. “I am very sensitive to what Trump does,” Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. “When Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn’t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism, plus a little bit of small-town shrewdness, plus a little bit of ‘I have money.’”
Wang was sitting next to a rack of clothing – the shirts and jackets the 58-year-old newsman wears professionally – and sipping a seemingly bottomless cup of green tea that would eventually give way to coffee. By 11pm, he would walk across the room and snap on a set of ring lights, ready to carry on an unbroken string of chatter for a YouTube news programme that he calls “Wang Jian’s Daily Observations”. It was a slow news night but he would end up talking until nearly 1am. This was his second broadcast of the day. Different time zones, he explained to me, different audiences.
Much of the political momentum around the antimicrobial resistance crisis has dissipated, but a new report shows the danger to our health has not
Much like the well-known climate threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the importance of critical limits in our environment have long been understood as key to help us avoid calamities. So, when we know the world is facing an escalating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis, but there has been no definitive tipping point established, that leaves us on a potentially perilous path.
This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report that suggests we may have now reached such a critical threshold.
The Traitors has returned to UK screens with its biggest viewing figures ever as 19 celebrities compete to be crowned the winner. The game depends on being able to accurately spot a liar, but are any deception detection methods actually backed up by science?
Madeleine Finlay speaks to Timothy Luke, a senior lecturer in the department of applied psychology at the University of Gothenburg, to find out whether sweating, nervous ticks and reduced eye contact really can alert us to deception, and if not, what can?
A runway show in Gikomba, east Africa’s largest secondhand clothing market, has attempted to highlight the impact of mass clothing imports – and offer a solution
Antony Njoroge paces back and forth, camera in hand, as people bombard him with questions. “What do we do with this? Where should I put it? The light’s better over here! Tony, one second please.” The film-maker and his co-producer Sally Ngoiri are putting the final touches to an event that they never imagined would actually come to life when they first thought up the idea back in May: the first fashion show to be staged in Gikomba, Nairobi, east Africa’s largest secondhand clothing market.
Show and documentary producers Antony Njoroge, left, and Sally Ngoiri
Millions more homes in England, Scotland and Wales face devastating floods, and some towns may have to be abandoned as climate breakdown makes many areas uninsurable, a Guardian investigation has found.
New analysis from the insurance industry, seen by the Guardian, reveals the extent of concern in the sector, with bosses warning that large swathes of housing and commercial property in densely populated areas will be at greater risk.
Every constituency in Great Britain is projected to have increased flood risk in future. In England, 69% of constituencies are likely to have an increase of more than 25% in the number of properties facing flood risk by mid-century. In Wales and Scotland, every area is projected to have a similar rise with many being much worse hit.
Bermondsey and Old Southwark in London and Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire are projected to have about 90% of homes at risk from river and coastal flooding by 2050 – the highest proportions in the country.
Overall London and Yorkshire and the Humber collectively represent more than half of the top 20 constituencies affected by river and coastal flooding, highlighting that the east of England could be most negatively affected.
Surface-water flood risk is likely to be particularly acute in dense urban areas, with 14 London constituencies ranked in the top 20
Bournemouth East shows the largest projected increase in surface-water flood risk, with its low-lying topography and inadequate drainage making it particularly susceptible.
Over the past decade, 110,000 new homes were built in the highest risk flood zones, equivalent to one in 13 of the new homes built. Aviva calculates that if this trend were to continue, 115,000 of the government’s planned 1.5m new homes would also be in the highest-risk flood zones.
The old prime minister is back with a new team, but it can’t last: a democracy can’t have a president with the powers of a king
The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu – who unexpectedly resigned last week before being reappointed four days later – finally cobbled together a new cabinet for Emmanuel Macron to appoint just hours before he left for the Gaza peace summit. Few expect Macron to return from Egypt with a solution to the deepening domestic political crisis he presides over, however. Fewer still have enough trust in a government so subservient to Macron that it can survive the forthcoming deliberations of the National Assembly.
Because this is no conventional parliamentary crisis, but a crise de régime. Inspired by Charles de Gaulle’s vision of executive pre-eminence vested in a quasi-monarchic presidential ascendancy, the governing system established by the Fifth Republic in 1958 no longer functions. Challenged by a hung parliament, a severe fiscal crisis and a volatile international environment, the French state is paralysed.
Pierre Purseigle is a French historian at the University of Warwick
We are in the middle of the NFL bye weeks, injuries are piling up, and selecting the right players for your fantasy football roster can be difficult if you aren’t looking in the right place.
The Dodgers this year lost all six regular-season games against the Brewers, but on Monday night, the payback tour began for the defending World Series champions.
Connexion
New York Post
The Guardian
