Matthew Doyle, who stepped down as the No 10 head of communications last March, had the whip removed on Monday
Families of nurses and carers have said they fear being torn apart under an immigration crackdown condemned as “an act of economic vandalism”, Josh Halliday reports.
Q: You are here being hosted by UK Finance. But the financial services sector does not like your plans for a windfall tax on banks. Have you dropped your support for that?
ICE lawyers in New York City earn more than $100,000 a year, enjoy generous benefits and post about rich social lives. Their work is vital to Trump’s deportation agenda
One morning last June in an immigration courtroom in New York City, a lawyer named Estefani Rodriguez looked as if she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She was a prosecuting attorney for the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Her job was to present immigration judges with motions to kick non-citizens out of the United States – to switch on the deportation machine.
Rodriguez is in her late 30s, with long hair and full cheeks. According to the website of the Dominican Bar Association, her parents are immigrants from the Dominican Republic. In online photos, she sports a wide smile. But on this day, as she covered one of some 60 immigration courtrooms housed in labyrinthine federal buildings in lower Manhattan, she seemed to churn with angst. Repeatedly she touched her hands to her mouth, then under her glasses, then back to her mouth, and then she rubbed and rubbed her eyes.
As the men’s football World Cup looms, the region’s prowess is often seen in terms of inspirational hardship, but the political will to treat sport strategically is lacking
The US is preparing to co-host the 2026 World Cup while also deciding who is allowed to attend. For the Caribbean, that contradiction is familiar. In nearly a century of men’s World Cup football, only four Caribbean nations have ever qualified.
This year, more finally will, but many of their supporters, especially Haitians, will be unable to travel to cheer them on, blocked by immigration rules that sit uneasily beside sport’s language of unity.
A creative way to use up leftover gherkin brine that can be tweaked to suit your own tastebuds through experimental use of optional extras
Depending on country, region, household or restaurant, every cook makes tartare sauce in their own way. Inspired by Auguste Escoffier’s exceptionally simple tartare, I’ve given his recipe a zero-waste twist by using whole boiled eggs and swapping in pickle brine from a jar of gherkins or capers to replace the vinegar. Everything else is optional: tarragon, mustard, cayenne … add what you like or have in store.
Traditionally, tartare sauce is delicious with fish and chips, calamari or in a chicken sandwich, but I also like it tossed through potato salad with tinned sardines and radicchio. It’s also great as a dip with crudites and on top of a steaming jacket potato.
More young Americans are taking on side gigs to explore their passions and make extra cash while navigating an unstable job market
Aashna Doshi, a software engineer at Google, is constantly monitoring her headspace. “This way I don’t burn myself out,” she said. “And I stay a lot more consistent with my podcast and content creation work.”
On top of her day job in the tech giant’s security and artificial intelligence department, Doshi also publishes social media content about working in tech and her life in New York City, and records podcasts – sometimes all three in a day.
Critics say restricting social media app risks harming communications between state, military units and public
A Russian crackdown on the Telegram social media app risks damaging its own army and soldiers, pro-war bloggers have warned, as the platform’s founder refused to bend to pressure from Moscow.
Russia’s communications watchdog said on Wednesday that the app – used by more than 60 million Russians each day – would begin slowing nationwide, accusing it of failing to address earlier regulatory violations.
Israeli PM is expected to press the president to take a harder line over Iran’s nuclear program
A Washington DC grand jury declined to indict six Democratic lawmakers who were denounced by Donald Trump after they made a video urging troops to refuse illegal orders.
Federal prosecutors had sought an indictment against the Democrats who participated in the video, including Elissa Slotkin, Mark Kelly, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, who all have military and intelligence backgrounds.
Heineken is to cut up to 6,000 jobs globally over the next two years – close to 7% of its workforce – as the Dutch brewer struggles with falling demand for beer.
The company, which makes Heineken, Amstel and Tiger, said the cuts would come from brewing and white-collar roles among its 87,000-strong global workforce as it faced “challenging market conditions”.
The Swedish-based drinks manufacturer Oatly has been banned from using the word “milk” to market its plant-based products, after a ruling by the UK supreme court.
The alt-milk manufacturer has been in a long-running legal battle with the trade association Dairy UK after Oatly trademarked phrases associated with the dairy sector.
The YouTube gaming star’s weird and divisive adaptation of his obscure horror film is a game within a film about a game – and hints at new directions for storytelling
Something weird struck me early on while watching the movie Iron Lung, which has so far taken $32m at the box office, despite being a grungy low-budget sci-fi thriller adapted from an independent video game few people outside of the horror gaming community have even heard of. Set after a galactic apocalypse, it follows a convict who must buy his freedom by piloting a rusty submarine through an ocean of human blood on a distant planet. Ostensibly, he’s looking for relics that may prove vital for scientific research, but what he finds is much more ghastly. So far, so strange.
The film was also written, directed and financed by one person – the YouTube gaming superstar Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach – who also stars. But that’s not the weird part, either. The weird part is that watching the film Iron Lung feels like watching Fischbach play Iron Lung the game. Maybe it’s the fact that he spends most of the movie sitting at the sub’s controls, trying to figure out how to use them correctly – like a gamer would. Maybe it’s that, as the film progresses, he has to solve a series of environmental puzzles linked by various codes, computer read-outs and little injections of narrative – just like in a video game. Long periods of the movie involve Fischbach trying to decide what to do next, the camera close up on his confused face. This is incredibly similar to watching his YouTube videos about playing Iron Lung, an experience he often found bewildering. It was the most metatextual experience I’ve had in the cinema since The Truman Show – but I’m not sure this is what Fischbach intended.
(Capitol) Spanning 1974-77, this collection shows Wilson was capable of stunning pre-rock’n’roll homage – on the previously unheard Adult/Child – while also writing wayward songs about organic food
We Gotta Groove – The Brother Studios Years, a new 73-track box set, picks up the story of the Beach Boys at a deeply peculiar juncture in their career. On the face of it, they were back on top. Their commercial fortunes had been revived by the huge success of some timely compilations: in the US, 1974’s Endless Summer sold 3m copies, while 20 Golden Greats became Britain’s second-biggest-selling album of 1976. Their leader Brian Wilson was apparently, miraculously, match fit after years of addiction and mental health struggles. “BRIAN IS BACK!” ran the advertising slogan for 15 Big Ones, the first Beach Boys album to bear his name as sole producer since Pet Sounds, and the first to be made at their newly founded Brother Studios. Buoyed by a media campaign that included an hour-long TV special, it duly became their most successful album of new material in 11 years.
But, as ever with the Beach Boys, it was more complicated than it initially seemed. As a succession of features noted, Wilson didn’t seem to be terribly well at all. A Rolling Stone writer dispatched to meet him was startled when Wilson asked him for drugs midway through the interview, and expressed grave doubts about Eugene Landy, the controversial psychologist supposedly responsible for Wilson’s recuperation. A Melody Maker journalist who saw the Beach Boys live that summer declared that Wilson “shouldn’t be subjected to being propped up onstage”, noted that he looked visibly distressed and made no musical contribution. Rather than a triumphant return, 15 Big Ones was a hastily thrown-together mess of cover versions and wan new material, its sessions marked by disagreements, not least over whether Wilson was even capable of producing an album. The band’s members openly disparaged it on release: Dennis Wilson bluntly described one track as a “piece of shit”. The public who bought it seemed to lose interest quickly: the Beach Boys did not score another Top 10 album of new material for 36 years.
With human sporting dramas fighting for space amid the geopolitics, the Winter Olympics are a reminder that the essence of sport remains noble and valid
The Guardian’s sports coverage is different – and shaped by more than just the action on the pitch (or slopes). Help keep it free and independent today by becoming a supporter
My kids don’t like sport. Either playing or watching. This isn’t an affectation – my daughter once turned down a ticket to the Women’s World Cup final. We get along fine. But, given my job, it can limit the teatime conversation at home.
On Sunday night, however, for a few moments, they accidentally watched the TV as Ilia Malinin of the USA went head-to-head with Shun Sato of Japan to determine who would lead their country to gold in the team figure skating at the Winter Olympics. They were transfixed. Although they know nothing about ice skating – correction, we know nothing about ice skating – it was obvious that Malinin’s flawed, riskier routine would ace the more fluent, more conservative Sato. It did.
The radical project is an attempt to preserve wildlife in one of Europe’s most light-polluted countries, but can they persuade local people they will still feel safe?
Two yellowing street lamps cast a pool of light on the dark road winding into the woods outside Mazée village. This scene is typical for narrow countryside roads in Wallonia in the south of Belgium. “Having lights here is logical,” says André Detournay, 77, who has lived in the village for four decades. “I walk here with my dog and it makes me feel safe and gives me some protection from theft.”
Belgium glows like a Christmas decoration at night, as witnessed from space. It is one of the most light-polluted countries in Europe, with the Milky Way scarcely visible except in the most remote areas.
Jim Boyling tells public inquiry senior managers turned blind eye to long-term relationships with three women
An undercover officer who deceived three women into sexual relationships said his superiors did nothing to prevent him from doing so, the spycops public inquiry has heard.
Jim Boyling, who infiltrated environmental and animal rights activist groups for five years, said senior managers turned a blind eye to undercover officers having deceitful sexual relationships with women, often lasting years. His managers adopted an attitude of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, he said.
The foodstuff was apparently listed as an interest on a job résumé, according to a viral social media post. It might make you stand out, but not in a good way
Competition in the jobs market is ferocious, so today’s applicants must attempt to stand out. However, it now transpires, not too much. Online debate has been raging over one employment hopeful’s decision to list “olive oil” as an interest on their CV, after an anonymous account on social media claimed that doing so had blown the applicant’s chance of an interview.
In their eyes, this failure of judgment in providing an acceptable interest was a dealbreaker. It spoke completely to the prospective candidate’s character, and it had nothing good to say there. It rendered everything else on the page moot.
The author discusses his writing, the movies it created and his own youth, but not all the interviewees in this documentary are quite so gripping
Here, in addition to Paul Sng’s recent documentary about Irvine Welsh, is another one; it is watchable enough, though with less original interview material. The extended footage of Welsh in conversation is certainly engaging, as he discusses his writing and the movies it created, and his own youth in Edinburgh.
Some of the rest of the interviewees aren’t quite so gripping, however, and the film is padded out with a fair bit of redundant anecdotage from people on the subject of getting hilariously wasted in Irvine’s company — or at least his approximate vicinity. As for one 90s ladmag-style story about Irvine doing some kind of Marquis de Sade-themed photoshoot in Ibiza’s Manumission club involving prising apart young women’s buttocks for the camera … well maybe you had to be there.
UK prosecutors are recklessly deploying art against young men in court. That’s why I’m taking parliamentary action to curb it
How often have you slumped into an armchair and surfed various streaming platforms in search of escape? Even if not looking for them, you’ll have been bombarded by a vast array of crime procedurals made in the UK, the US, various continental jurisdictions and further afield. They are set in gritty urban and idyllic rural landscapes; in country houses and even submarines. Whether featuring hardbitten veteran cops or gifted middle-class amateurs, what they all have in common is murder.
Middle England is seemingly addicted to these TV dramas and the books that inspired so many of them. The creativity that produces them is big business. But what if those who write or even just enjoy this form of popular art found themselves prosecuted for real crime, with their work or taste used as evidence of criminality? If you find this possibility ridiculous, spare a thought for the increasing number of young black men and boys charged with “gang-related offences” on the basis of their participation in, or mere engagement with rap and drill music. It’s as though prosecutors were watching The Night Manager and trying to send Hugh Laurie to prison.
Shami Chakrabarti is a lawyer, Labour peer, former shadow attorney general and the author of Human Rights: The Case for the Defence
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Over the last 10 years, the terms of political debate have changed completely – and week by week they seem to get worse
The notion of virtue-signalling – the act of performing progressive stances that don’t cost you anything in order to burnish your own moral credentials – has been around since at least the 00s. Ina political sense, it meant always being the one who reminded others to say “chairperson” not “chairman”; always manning the barricades for signs of bigotry, always being on the right demo. If its values were sound – all we’re talking about, really, is trying to systematise courtesy to others – it was often easy to lampoon, because it felt performative and had a hair-trigger.
But what has risen in its wake – vice-signalling – cannot be seen as its mirror or answer, any more than dehumanisation could be seen as the equal and opposite of decency. They’re not in the same rhetorical category. The term doesn’t bring itself to life; for that you need the US president. Cast your mind back to 2015; although Donald Trump had said he might run for election to the highest office in every cycle this century, his speech in Trump Tower was his first campaign launch, and it was where he announced that he would build a wall between the US and Mexico. In seemingly unplanned remarks – the grammar was off, the structure meandered, the vocabulary was vague and repetitive – he said “[Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and they’re rapists.”
The advent of short-form cricket has pushed bowlers to use new weapons, among them deceptive slower deliveries
Franklyn Stephenson’s throaty chuckle rolls down the phone line. “You know the hardest thing about bowling that ball? I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw how the batsmen were trying to play it! They’d be jabbing here or ducking there, most of them were so clueless!”
Since the earliest days of cricket, bowlers have bamboozled batters with deceptive changes of pace. You can picture those old tricksters now, flannelled and moustachioed, deploying an assortment of sky-high lobs and skiddy, scudding deliveries with a glint in the eye, wreaking havoc on the wealds and downs of southern England.
Elon Musk’s younger brother and the woman were involved for about six months between 2012 and 2013
Jeffrey Epstein engineered an intimate relationship between a woman in his network and Kimbal Musk, who is the brother of Elon Musk and on the board of directors at Tesla, according to emails from the Department of Justice’s recent release of documents involving the convicted sex offender. The younger Musk and the woman were involved for around six months between 2012 and 2013, with Kimbal Musk describing them as “dating”.
In the lead-up to Musk and the woman’s first meeting, Epstein and his longtime associate Boris Nikoliclabored to set them up and bring her to a birthday party Musk was throwing – with Nikolic telling Epstein: “please prepare [the woman] —;)”
2nd over: Australia 12-1 (Inglis 5, Green 0) Cameron Green joins Inglis in the middle. Ireland buzz around but Inglis calms a few nerves with a languid back cut for four through the off side.
Head is run out! Squirts a shot behind square and sets off for as dodgy single, doesn’t get there and is gone!
The riders are having to squint into the sun to see their scores come up. There’s lots of USA support on the slopes, first for 19-year old Bea Kim, who looks happy to settle into fifth, then for the queen of half pipe, Chloe Kim, who is aiming for her third consecutive gold medal in this discipline. Oh and she’s also just finished a degree at Stamford. It’s a cracking start – a big backside 720, frontside 900, and something floaty and turny which the commentators describe as “the penny black” of halfpipe. She immediately settles into first.
Women’s halfpipe qualifying: Thinking about my attempts to stand on a skateboard as young women in baggy snow trousers zig-zag and float across the halfpipe.
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