Chancellor-in-waiting put forward proposal to relax debt brake and backing of Greens is tantamount to getting deal through
Germany’s conservative chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has said he has secured the support of the Green party for his radical plan to increase spending on defence and infrastructure after marathon talks that went through the night, paving the way for its approval in parliament.
“Germany is back,” Merz said in Berlin on Friday. “Germany is making its large contribution to the defence of freedom and peace in Europe.”
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© Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke/EPA
© Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke/EPA
Eight of the world’s leading women’s clubs, including big-name sides from the US and Europe, will compete in a new, lucrative seven-a-side tournament in Portugal during the week leading up to this season’s Women’s Champions League final there, the Guardian can reveal. It will kick off a series of global “grand slam” events that is expected to run beyond this year.
The independently run competition, funded by private US-based investment, has a prize pot believed to extend to a significant seven-figure sum that may rival the money on offer for the Women’s Champions League finalists.
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© Photograph: Ariana Ruiz/PI/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Ariana Ruiz/PI/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
Moves by US, UK and other donors to cut aid mean ‘high malnutrition rates, starvation and death’, say experts
Cuts to food assistance by the US, Britain and others are already leading to more people starving to death around the world, experts have warned.
As the United Nations and other agencies try to understand just how badly President Donald Trump’s announced 83% cut in funding to USAid will affect the world’s most vulnerable people, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has said its aid provision in Somalia is being reduced, after last month’s estimate that 4.4 million people in the east African nation will be pushed into malnutrition from April because of drought, global inflation and conflict.
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© Photograph: Hassan Ali Elmi/AFP/Getty Images
© Photograph: Hassan Ali Elmi/AFP/Getty Images
Light, airy sponge meets sticky syrup topping – and it’s entry-level to make, too
This simple British pudding is a nod to tradition, and a nostalgic, school dinner favourite. With its light, airy sponge and sticky treacle topping, it’s comforting and indulgent. Quick to prepare and best served warm with custard or cream, it’s ideal for rounding off a long Sunday lunch, or for brightening a rainy afternoon. It’s a guaranteed crowdpleaser with minimal effort.
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© Photograph: Yuki Sugiura/The Guardian. Food styling: Benjamina Ebuehi. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Áine Pretty-McGrath.
© Photograph: Yuki Sugiura/The Guardian. Food styling: Benjamina Ebuehi. Prop styling: Anna Wilkins. Food styling assistant: Áine Pretty-McGrath.
From the workplace to romance to friends, everything you need to know about rejection – and how to move on from it
Rejection is an inevitable part of the human experience, but despite suffering major and minor rebuffs throughout our lives, every time it happens still feels painful. From the first “no thanks” from someone you fancy at school to the kick in the stomach of a “we have decided to move forward with another candidate” letter, every rejection dents our ego.
Humans are hardwired to crave acceptance. “It’s in our blood,” says Hilda Burke, a psychotherapist, couples counsellor and author. In early human societies, she explains, “to be rejected by your community would have posed a serious threat, as individuals did not have the resources to survive alone. We are pack animals.”
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© Photograph: Sun Lee/The Guardian
© Photograph: Sun Lee/The Guardian
For all the fraternal rhetoric, the alliance has always been asymmetric. It seems Washington under Trump sees it as immaterial
It’s not really about the tariffs.
Not for Australia the brutal humiliation meted out on camera to Ukraine in the Oval Office. Nor Canada’s escalating war of invective and retaliatory sanctions.
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© Photograph: Darren England/AAP
© Photograph: Darren England/AAP
The diagnosis may have brought up feelings of anger and unfairness about the care you didn’t receive as a child. Could your brother offer you solace and support?
• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a problem sent in by a reader
Last year, I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. I have told a few people, but not my family, other than my brother, and I don’t know if I should. They live abroad.
I have a lot of unresolved childhood issues, which I’ve mostly been able to put aside. But the diagnosis is making it harder to deal with the hurt, resentment and unfairness of it all.
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© Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
© Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
Edgar Charles Frederick, 79, was killed in the hit-and-run incident in Nairobi on Thursday
A British national has died in Kenya after being struck by a government vehicle that was part of the president’s motorcade.
Edgar Charles Frederick, 79, was killed on Thursday as President William Ruto’s motorcade made its way to a public engagement in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
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© Photograph: Donwilson Odhiambo/Getty Images
© Photograph: Donwilson Odhiambo/Getty Images
The duo count Elton and Rage Against the Machine among their fans, but being two Black women in a largely white, male scene means working twice as hard. The duo discuss winning over the mosh pit – and why they’ve banned synths
Nova Twins vocalist-guitarist Amy Love is trying to make me feel better about the litany of things that have gone wrong during our one-hour chat. She and her bandmate Georgia South entered the shabby-chic dressing room of London’s Omeara in a whirlwind of denim, arraying themselves on the mismatched armchairs after a soundcheck that didn’t entirely go to plan – my Dictaphone broke, South’s battling a cold, I realised I had the wrong notebook with me … We’re all feeling a little frazzled as trains rumble by and South boils the kettle for a Lemsip.
The fact chaos swirls around Nova Twins is fitting, perhaps. Their brand of boot-stomping rock takes the pop and R&B music they’d grown up with and distorts it to hell. Nu-metal adjacent, they play a kind of grimy rap-rock with the energy and hooks of the pop end of punk.
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© Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
© Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
Tom Lowndes was a sound designer on McLeod’s Daughters before reinventing himself as a ‘time-travelling DJ’ who fast became a global festival phenomenon
Tom Lowndes wants to tell me a theory.
“I think DJing is the professional wrestling of the music industry,” he says. “Wrestling, in the end, no matter how good it is, it’s still people pretending to fight. The DJ, no matter how good you are, you’re still pretending to be a musician.”
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© Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian
© Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian
As the UK, Australia and Denmark mount joint diplomatic push, grieving families fear Laos’ investigation into the suspected methanol poisonings won’t deliver justice
The poolside bar at the Nana backpackers hostel in central Laos should have been an idyllic spot for a free happy hour on a mid-November evening.
Among those staying at Nana were two pairs of best friends – 19-year-old Australians Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, and Freja Vennervald Sorensen, 21, and Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, from Denmark. All four were drawn to south-east Asia’s famed backpacking route that has for decades enticed young travellers seeking carefree, sun-drenched moments.
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© Composite: PA/Supplied
© Composite: PA/Supplied
My freedom of information request revealed the inane use of ChatGPT by the tech secretary. Is this the future? I hope not
Two tech-related things made me laugh this week. One was Donald Trump’s childlike exuberance at seeing the dash panel of a Tesla on the White House lawn, and his wondrous exclamation that “everything is computer”.
The other was equally hilarious, also tied to politics. Keir Starmer stood up yesterday in Hull and said waste would be thrown by the wayside and the civil service would lose its bloat … thanks to the transformative effects of AI.
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© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
© Photograph: WPA/Getty Images
Watching the abandoned house nearby descend into disrepair frightened Alexandra Hansen. Until the day she started hearing music and smelling incense
Near my home in Melbourne’s inner city sits a dilapidated but grand old house. In the nearly four years I’ve lived nearby, it has sat empty, falling deeper and deeper into disrepair, its garden becoming more wild, creating more and more problems for us as its neighbours.
There’s the pile-up of hard rubbish that often spills into neighbouring properties and onto the street. There are the bugs and rodents drawn to the place, which, of course, visit us as they come and go. And there are the worrying crashes, shouts and foul language you can occasionally hear from the house’s temporary inhabitants as you walk by.
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© Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design
© Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design
Our homesteading journey began with self-sufficiency and a dream, but it evolved through loss and social media fame
Our homesteading experiment began before tradwives, before Donald Trump, before Covid-19. It was the summer of 2015 when we were all sure no one would vote for a former reality TV star. I was 25 years old and desperate for a security blanket, working a sales job and looking for excuses not to return to college.
My husband, Patrick, and I had talked about farming since our first date. We wanted goats. At his 2-acre property in a quiet suburb of Portland, Maine, we kept a few chickens and a scrawny vegetable garden.
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© Photograph: kirsten lie-nielsen
© Photograph: kirsten lie-nielsen
Lawyers demand in updated lawsuit that Columbia University graduate student be released from custody
Mahmoud Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped when he was handcuffed and shackled and rushed from New York to immigration detention in Louisiana last weekend, his lawyers wrote in an updated lawsuit demanding that the Columbia University graduate student be released from custody immediately.
The activist has told his lawyers that agents who arrested him at his university housing last Saturday night, in front of his eight-month pregnant wife, never identified themselves.
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© Photograph: Jeenah Moon/Reuters
© Photograph: Jeenah Moon/Reuters
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