Residents of the mid-north coast of New South Wales have described anxious waits for rescue in the dark as unprecedented flooding has struck the Manning river and inundates homes and businesses across the region.
The State Emergency Service has warned another 200mm of rain was predicted in the next 24-48 hours, further swelling the Manning river which has already surpassed its 1929 record flood level.
Burning, worsened by global heating, overtook farming and logging as biggest cause of destruction of tropical forests
The destruction of the world’s forests reached the highest level ever recorded in 2024, driven by a surge in fires caused by global heating, according to “frightening” new data.
From the Brazilian Amazon to the Siberian taiga, Earth’s forests disappeared at a record rate last year, losing an area the size of Italy to agriculture, fires, logging and mining, according to analysis from the University of Maryland hosted on Global Forest Watch.
Average spend of £757 includes tickets, accommodation, £75 on food and drink, £60 on merchandise plus travel and new outfits
Oasis fans are expected to splash out more than £1bn on the reunion tour including tickets, accommodation, food, drink, outfits and merchandise, according to research that found a quarter of ticket holders would have been happy to spend even more.
The band’s comeback concerts after a 15-year hiatus are expected to be the most popular, and profitable, run of gigs in British history.
The Sicilian fishing village is watching the salvage of Mike Lynch’s superyacht for answers to the causes of the tragedy
Some say that the late tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s superyacht, Bayesian, sank because it was vulnerable to high winds that drove the vessel past its point of stability. Others insist that a chain of human errors led to the incident that claimed seven lives, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
But in the quiet Sicilian fishing village of Porticello – where on 19 August 2024 the Bayesian was caught shortly before dawn in a violent storm while anchored off coast – everyone knows the truth lies 50 metres below the surface, in the wreckage of a yacht that divers, floating cranes and underwater drones are still struggling to bring back from the depths of the ocean.
There is an opportunity staring centre-left parties in the face – if they reject the male gaze distorting our politics
‘The boys are alt-right.” This seems to be the new consensus on far-right politics propagated in numerous articles and podcasts. But the media’s obsessive focus on the young men allegedly fuelling the rise of the far right isn’t just empirically flawed – it misses a much more significant shift in public opinion among young people. While many surveys show a large gender gap in support of far-right parties and policies, it is young women who stand out as the more politically interesting demographic, as they are turning in ever greater numbers towards the left.
The idea that young people in general, and young men in particular, disproportionately support the far right has been around for a while.In a classic 2012 study, the German political scientist Kai Arzheimer characterised the “typical” voter of far-right parties in Europe as “male, young(ish), of moderate educational achievement and concerned about immigrants and immigration”.It is frequently used to explain the rise of Donald Trump, while in Europe there has been an explosion of articles claiming that young people, particularly young men, are “driving far-right support”. But is the recent rise of Europe’s far right truly due to the disproportionate support of young men? And are young people really becoming more rightwing?
Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today
The global food system has been captured by a few rapacious companies that profit from public ill-health. We need a radical overhaul
Our food system is killing us. Designed in a different century for a different purpose – to mass produce cheap calories to prevent famine – it is now a source of jeopardy, destroying more than it creates. A quarter of all adult deaths globally – more than 12 million every year – are due to poor diets.
Malnutrition in all its forms – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity – is by far the biggest cause of ill-health, affecting one in three people on the planet. Ultra-processed foods are implicated in as many as one in seven premature deaths in some countries.
Exclusive: Married volunteer diggers discover stone relief at site of Roman fort Vindolanda in Northumberland
A striking Roman depiction of the winged goddess of victory has been discovered near Hadrian’s Wall by volunteers helping archaeologists on an official excavation.
The stone relief was found by a Merseyside couple at Vindolanda, the site of the important Roman fort near Hexham, Northumberland.
From Elon Musk to his own board, anyone who has come up against the OpenAI CEO has lost. In a gripping new account of the battle for AI supremacy, writer Karen Hao says we should all be wary of the power he now wields
The short-lived firing of Sam Altman, the CEO of possibly the world’s most important AI company, was sensational. When he was sacked by OpenAI’s board members, some of them believed the stakes could not have been higher – the future of humanity – if the organisation continued under Altman. Imagine Succession, with added apocalypse vibes. In early November 2023, after three weeks of secret calls and varying degrees of paranoia, the OpenAI board agreed: Altman had to go.
The drama didn’t stop there. After his removal, Altman’s most loyal staff resigned, and others signed an open letter calling for his reinstatement. Investors, including its biggest, Microsoft, got spooked. Without talent or funding, OpenAI – which developed ChatGPT and was worth billions – wouldn’t even exist. Some who had been involved in the decision to fire Altman switched sides and within days, he was reinstated. Is he now untouchable? “Certainly he has entrenched his power,” says Karen Hao, the tech journalist whose new book, Empire of AI, details this saga in a tense and absorbing history of OpenAI. The current board is “much more allied with his interests,” she says.
Taku Etō’s remarks drew fury as cost of rice has nearly doubled in a year amid soaring food prices
Japan’s agriculture minister has resigned after saying he never buys rice because he gets it free, a remark that drew public fury in a country facing soaring food prices.
Taku Etō’s resignation has added to pressure on the prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, whose failure to rein in soaring rice prices and address a wider cost of living crisis has angered voters ahead of upper house elections in July.
A tourist says four people holding pistols and a machine gun boarded the boat and forced passengers to drain their bank accounts
A Spanish tourist has recounted how an armed gang calling themselves “river pirates” robbed her and her family aboard a boat travelling down the Amazon River in Peru.
In a video on TikTok, one of the tourists, Elisabet de la Almudena, said she experienced the “worst day of her life” on 14 May, when four armed assailants holding pistols and one machine gun boarded the boat she was travelling on with her parents and six-year-old daughter. She said the gunmen forced them to open banking apps on their phones and empty their accounts.
Brian Murphy says deportations appear to flout court order and says ‘if they want to turn the plane around, they can’
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to not let a group of migrants being flown to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities after saying they appeared to have been deported in violation of a court order.
US district judge Brian Murphy in Boston during a hastily arranged virtual hearing said that while he was not going to order the airplane to turn around, that was an option the Department of Homeland Security could employ to comply with his order.
Zelenskyy says Putin ‘trying to buy time’ after phone call with Trump; EU lays on further sanctions and more coming up. What we know on day 1,183
Pope Leo confirmed to Giorgia Meloni his willingness to host in the Vatican the next round of negotiations to try to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Italian prime minister said on Tuesday. “Finding in the Holy Father confirmation of the readiness to host the next talks between the parties in the Vatican, the prime minister expressed deep gratitude to Pope Leo XIV for his unceasing commitment to peace,” said a statement from Meloni. Leo, elected two weeks ago, said on 14 May that the Vatican could act as a mediator in global conflicts, without specifically mentioning Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Separately the Italian prime minister said she had talks with other European leaders and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, over next steps.
“It was agreed to maintain close coordination between the partners with a view to a new round of negotiations aimed at a ceasefire and a peace agreement in Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy accused Russia of “trying to buy time” to continue the war, a day after the US president, Donald Trump, discussed the war with the Russian president,Vladimir Putin. Their two-hour phone call, as Peter Beaumont and Pjotr Sauer write, failed to deliver any meaningful concessions from Moscow. The Germandefence minister,Boris Pistorius, also accused VladimirPutin of “playing for time” and not really being interested in peace in Ukraine.
In its regular assessment, the Institute for the Study of War said on Tuesday: “Russia must explicitly acknowledge the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president, government, and constitution and Ukraine’s sovereignty in order to engage in meaningful, good-faith negotiations.” Putin must also agree to a ceasefire before negotiation of a final peace settlement. The ISW said Russia was trying to expand its list of demands when it should be preparing to make concessions.
After the European Union on Tuesday adopted its 17th round of sanctions against Russia centred on the “shadow fleet” of oil tankers, human rights violations and hybrid threats, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said a further, 18th package was already being prepared with further “hard-hitting” measures. The UKgovernment has also announced 100 new sanctions on Russia across Russian military, energy, financial sectors and those conducting “Putin’s information war against Ukraine”.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said he expected Russia within days to present broad outlines for a ceasefire with Ukraine that would let the US assess whether Moscow is serious. “At some point here fairly soon – maybe in a number of days, maybe this week hopefully – the Russian side is going to present the terms,” Rubio told a Senate hearing.
At least one civilian was killed and 13 injured in Russian attacks across Ukrainian regions over the previous day, regional authorities said on Tuesday. The ISW assessed that Ukrainian forces have recently advanced in Kursk oblast and near Borova and Toretsk; while Russian forces recently advanced in Kursk oblast and near Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, and Novopavlivka.
Ukraine’s military said it has launched another investigation into the “Anne of Kyiv” brigade, trained in France, after a media report alleged financial misconduct among some commanders, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The Ukrainianforeign minister,Andriy Sybiha, called on the G7 to reduce its price cap on Russian seaborne oil to $30 per barrel. The current cap is $60. Ukraine is attending G7 talks in Canada this week.
In an interview with the Guardian, Winston Peters says the world faces the ‘most uncertain time’ in 80 years ahead of talks with Australia's foreign minister
The Pacific must be protected from becoming a military zone amid China’s growing push for influence in the region, New Zealand’s top diplomat Winston Peters has warned ahead of a meeting with his Australian counterpart Penny Wong.
Peters, who is New Zealand’s deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, told the Guardian that his country has a good relationship with China.
Ki Soon-do’s soy sauce has been served to Donald Trump and gained Unesco heritage protection. It is recognition that is 370 years in the making
In the lush foothills of Damyang county, South Jeolla province, rows of earthenware jars stand under the Korean sky. Inside each clay vessel, a quiet transformation is taking place, one that has been occurring on this land for centuries.
This is the domain of Ki Soon-do, South Korea’s sole grand master of traditional aged soy sauce, where patience isn’t just a virtue but the essential ingredient in her craft.
Climate Change Committee says original goal of a 75% emissions cut by 2030 will now be delayed by up to six years
The UK’s climate watchdog has warned that Scotland needs to take “immediate action at pace and scale” to cut its emissions after ministers axed a series of policy pledges.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC), an official advisory body, said ministers in Edinburgh needed to take urgent action to curb emissions from buildings and transport to cut Scotland’s overall emissions to nearly zero by 2045.
Abandoned a target to cut car miles by 20% by 2030.
Dropped a pledge to rapidly decarbonise homes by mandating low-carbon heating systems.
Cut funding for tree planting.
Missed targets to restore degraded peatland.
Ignored calls for a plan to cut meat and dairy consumption, and failed to use their powers to tax air travel more heavily.
Health of adolescents worldwide has reached a ‘tipping point’, authors of Lancet commission analysis warn
Almost half a billion adolescents worldwide will be living with obesity or overweight and 1 billion at risk of preventable ill health by 2030, according to an international report.
While adolescent mortality has declined by more than a quarter over the past two decades, comprehensive analysis of global data calculated that in five years, at least half of the world’s 10- to 24-year-olds will be living in countries where preventable health problems such as HIV/Aids, early pregnancy, depression and poor nutrition pose a “daily threat to their health, wellbeing and life chance”. Young people’s health has reached a “tipping point”, the authors warned.
Search engine revamp and Gemini 2.5 introduced at conference in latest showing tech giant is all in on AI
Google on Tuesday unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence technology to accelerate a year-long makeover of its search engine that is changing the way people get information and curtailing the flow of internet traffic to other websites.
The next phase outlined at Google’s annual developers conference includes releasing a new “AI mode” option in the United States. The company says the feature will make interacting with its search engine more like having a conversation with an expert capable of answering a wide array of questions.
Patrick Butler and Josh Halliday honoured for their coverage of ‘enraging and heartbreaking’ DWP scandal
The Guardian journalists Patrick Butler and Josh Halliday have won the Paul Foot award for their coverage of how vulnerable British carers were taken to court for accidentally claiming the allowance alongside part-time work.
The pair uncovered how carers were prosecuted even though many had tried to report their earnings to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Immigrant rights advocates say White House violated court order and ask judge to order nearly a dozen people’s return
Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.
Lawyers for the migrants made the request in a court filing on Tuesday directed to US district judge Brian Murphy, who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.
Officials say ship must be operated by specialized harbor pilot as investigation into crash that killed two continues
The Mexican navy has said that the pilot navigating the training ship Cuauhtémoc during its Saturday night crash into the Brooklyn Bridge was New York-based.
“The ship must be controlled by a specialized harbor pilot from the New York government,” Admiral Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles said at a press conference.
Gen Michael Guetlein of Space Force will be in charge of defense system that could cost $540bn over 20 years
Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will move forward with developing the so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense system that he envisions will protect the United States from possible foreign strikes using ground and space-based weapons.
Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the Oval Office, Trump also said that he wanted the project to be operational before he left office. He added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.
Every Manchester City supporter wanted the opportunity to celebrate one final Kevin De Bruyne goal or assist at the Etihad Stadium but they were denied it by an almost unbelievable open goal miss.
Instead they were treated to Omar Marmoush performing a tribute act to the Belgian, rifling in a goal-of-the-season contender against Bournemouth to move his team one step closer to Champions League qualification.
Translator Deepa Bhasthi’s pick of 12 of Mushtaq’s ‘life-affirming’ tales about women’s lives in southern India becomes the first short story collection to win the £50,000 award
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, has won this year’s International Booker prize for translated fiction, becoming the first short story collection to take the award. The stories were originally written in Kannada, the official language of the state of Karnataka in southern India.
Described by the author and chair of judges Max Porter as “something genuinely new for English readers: a radical translation” of “beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories”, Heart Lamp’s 12 tales chronicle the lives of women in patriarchal communities in southern India. They were selected as well as translated by Bhasthi, the first Indian translator to win the award. She chose them from around 50 stories in six collections written by Mushtaq over a 30-year-period.
The actor received a lifetime achievement award from the Better World Fund at an event with little fanfare and few recognisable guests
Kevin Spacey’s Cannes comeback is a discreet, low-key affair. The promenade is home to a gaggle of evening sunbathers while the steps to the beach club contain neither fans nor protesters. It is what is known in the trade as a soft relaunch.
Spacey is guest of honour at the Better World Fund’s gala dinner, where he is receiving a lifetime achievement award for “excellence in film and television”. It marks a return to the limelight for the two-time Oscar-winner, whose career stalled after allegations of sexual assault and misconduct by more than 30 men. This is the actor’s first visit to Cannes since 2016, one year before the #MeToo movement began.
Afterparty at the Palace, a gala night of celebration at Selhurst Park. If this is Premier League season that has, in the view of its critics, featured far too little jeopardy, then this result mattered little but the evening will be remembered as the night Crystal Palace brought the FA Cup home.
For the record, Palace were victors via two goals from Eddie Nketiah, a deflected free-kick and another Eberechi Eze strike. In truth, the main event did not arrive until after full time and the end of Selhurst Park’s 101-year wait to show off a major trophy.
Southampton are accelerating plans to appoint Will Still as their head coach. If Saints make sufficient progress in the coming days, they hope the 32-year-old will be in the stands when they host Arsenal on Sunday. Still, born in Belgium to English parents, left the Ligue 1 side Lens last week citing personal reasons and a desire to be closer to family in England.
He took his steps into coaching at Preston’s academy, during an internship from a college course, but has spent all of his professional career in Belgium and France, also working at Sint-Truiden, Beerschot, Lierse and Reims.
Tim Kaine condemns secretary of state for admitting Afrikaners while cancelling refugee schemes for others
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has defended the Trump administration’s controversial decision to admit 59 Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees after Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, claimed they were getting preferential treatment because they were white.
Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, challenged Rubio to justify prioritising the Afrikaners while cancelling long-standing refugee programmes for other groups that have been more documented as victims of conflict or persecution.
The struggles of Tottenham and Manchester United in the league leave this game meaning nothing and everything
Gatwick on Tuesday morning was full of Spurs fans. They were in the Pret a Manger, they were in the Pizza Express, they were in the Wagamama, but mostly they were standing gawping at the destination board, which featured a baffling number of Vueling flights to Bilbao, a squeezing of the schedule that led to inevitable delays and confusion.
The queue for the three open booths at passport control in Bilbao was a vast python of white shirts, speckled with the occasional tree green or purple. The bus into town was almost entirely Spurs, with a handful of businessmen and a bewildered older couple returning from their holidays, who admitted they had no idea their city was hosting a major European final.
‘Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t – we tried’
Djokovic will work with fellow Serb Dusan Vemic
Novak Djokovic says he and Andy Murray felt they “couldn’t get more” out of their short-lived partnership. The 24-time grand slam title winner parted ways with his former on-court rival Murray last week following six months working together.
Djokovic has entered the Geneva Open as a wildcard as he builds towards the French Open, which begins on Sunday.
Continued restrictions come as opposition leader says Israel is becoming pariah nation that ‘kills babies as a hobby’
Two days after Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was lifting the siege of Gaza, Israel is still blocking food from reaching starving Palestinians, the UN has said, as the leader of the country’s centre-left Democrats party said his country was becoming a pariah nation that “kills babies as a hobby”.
Only five trucks of aid had reached Gaza by Tuesday afternoon and aid workers had not been given permission to distribute even that token shipment, Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office (Ocha) told a Geneva press briefing.
President says party has ‘unbelievable unity’ to ensure passage in House but some lawmakers remain opposed
Donald Trump traveled to the Capitol on Tuesday to insist that the fractious House Republican majority set aside their differences and pass his wide-ranging bill to enact his taxation and immigration priorities.
In a speech to a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber, the president pushed representatives from districts in blue states to drop their demands for a bigger State and Local Tax (Salt) deduction, and also sought to assuage moderates concerned that the legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, would hobble the Medicaid health insurance program.
George Simion claims presidential election rerun was subject to foreign interference, like last year’s annulled ballot
The defeated ultranationalist candidate in Romania’s presidential election rerun has said he will ask the country’s top court to annul the vote on the same grounds – foreign interference – that led to the original ballot being cancelled last year.
George Simion, who was defeated in Sunday’s runoff by the liberal mayor of Bucharest, Nicuşor Dan, said on Tuesday he would ask the constitutional court to void the ballot “for the same reasons they annulled the elections” last year.
Doug Burgum defends Trump budget slashing green funds, saying AI and Iran pose bigger threats
The US has “plenty of time” to solve the climate crisis,” the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told a House committee on Tuesday.
The comment came on his first of two days of testimony to House and Senate appropriators in which he defended Donald Trump’s proposed budget, dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill”, that would extend tax reductions enacted during Trump’s first term, while cutting $5bn of funding for the Department of the Interior.
Music mogul’s sex-trafficking trial continues as mother of key witness says she was ‘scared about my daughter’s safety’
The federal trial against Sean “Diddy” Combs continued on Tuesday, with Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s mother, Regina Ventura, testifying that she was “scared about my daughter’s safety” and revealing that she had paid Combs $20,000 “to recoup money he had spent” on her daughter “because he was unhappy she was in a relationship with Kid Cudi”.
Casandra Ventura, Combs’s former girlfriend and the key witness in the case, testified last week. Combs, 55, is facing charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He was arrested in September 2024 and has pleaded not guilty.
King Charles’s sojourn will ‘make it clear that Canada is not for sale now, is not for sale ever’
King Charles’s visit to Canada will “reinforce” the country’s sovereignty against threats from Donald Trump, the Canadian high commissioner in the UK has said.
Ralph Goodale reiterated his country’s independence as Charles and Camilla visited Canada House in central London on Tuesday ahead of their trip to Ottawa later this month.
Hospital plans to keep Adriana Smith on life support until August, when doctors will deliver baby via C-section
The fetus of a brain dead Georgia woman who is being kept alive to carry out her pregnancy is continuing to grow, the woman’s mother said late Monday, days after the controversial case exploded into the national news and sparked questions about the ethics of using the state’s anti-abortion law tokeep a woman with no chance of recovery on life support.
“He has his toes, arms, limbs – everything is forming,” the woman’s mother, April Newkirk, told the local news station 11Alive. “We’re just hoping he makes it.”
Move comes one week after Trump announced all US sanctions on Syria would be lifted
The EU has agreed to lift economic sanctions on Syria in an effort to help the war-torn country recover after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
After the decision by EU foreign ministers on Tuesday, the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, wrote on X: “We want to help the Syrian people rebuild a new, inclusive and peaceful Syria.”
Study shows firms in Colorado, including Chevron, have pumped 30m lbs of chemicals in 18 months without meeting all disclosure rules
Colorado oil and gas companies have pumped at least 30m lbs of secret chemicals into the ground over the past 18 months without making legally required disclosures, according to a new analysis.
That’s in spite of first-in-the-nation rules requiring operators and their suppliers to list all chemicals used in drilling and extraction, while also banning any use of Pfas “forever chemicals” at oil and gas sites. Since the transparency law took effect in July 2023, operators have fracked 1,114 sites across the state, but as of 1 May chemical disclosures have not been filed for 675 of them – more than 60% of the total, the analysis says.
There are two questions you need to ask before deciding to watch the 1989 sci-fi action film Arena. One: did you enjoy Rocky? And two: what if Rocky fought a giant space armadillo? Because Arena is for those of us who saw Sylvester Stallone’s tale of a pugilist underdog and liked it well enough – but felt it needed more monsters.
Two people who definitely thought this were the director, Peter Manoogian, and the B-movie impresario Charles Band, whose Empire International Pictures made a raft of other terrific horror and sci-fi throughout the 80s including Re-Animator, From Beyond and the underrated Trancers.
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