© Jacqueline Hernandez/Associated Press
© David Guttenfelder/Associated Press
Laid-back clubs proving a hit in London, Birmingham and elsewhere as people look for new ways to socialise
One of the liveliest spots on a Tuesday night in east London’s Brick Lane isn’t a restaurant or a streetwear brand pop-up, it’s a chess club – or chess club-nightclub hybrid, to be exact.
Knight Club is the unlikely crossover between chess and London’s fervent nightlife scene. It was started by Yusuf Ntahilaja, 27, who began his first chess club in August 2023 at a smaller bar in Aldgate, not too far from the current location at Café 1001 on Brick Lane.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
After a colleague had the bright idea of a workplace version of the hit BBC show, I lied and cheated with impunity. Then the strain began to show
There aren’t many people who understand the stress that the celebrity Traitors Cat Burns and Alan Carr have been feeling as their stint wearing that famous green cloak draws to an end – but I do. I spent four weeks lying, cheating and murdering friends and colleagues in our office version of The Traitors.
I almost lost my mind.
Ed Campbell is a journalist who reports on British culture, politics and the internet. He also co-hosts the PoliticsJOE podcast
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
© Photograph: Euan Cherry/BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
Minister says obligations for school boards to ‘give effect’ to the treaty are unfair while critics argue the move will sideline Indigenous education
A plan by New Zealand’s government to scrap a legal requirement on schools to incorporate local Māori culture in classrooms has been condemned by teachers, principals and school boards.
Since 2020, school boards have been obligated to “give effect” to the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document signed in 1840 between Māori tribes and the British Crown and instrumental in upholding Māori rights.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images
© Photograph: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images
© Photograph: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images
When Donald Trump set about dismantling USAID, many around the world were shocked. But on the ground in Sierra Leone, the latest betrayal was not unexpected
Earlier this year, Donald Trump appointed a 28-year-old Doge alumnus, Jeremy Lewin, to oversee his administration’s approach to global aid. Lewin’s primary task has been to gut the US’s aid funding. In an interview with the New York Times, Lewin argued that the traditional approach, which he termed the “global humanitarian complex”, didn’t help poor countries “progress beyond aid”, instead keeping them dependent. The system, he continued, has “demonstrably failed”.
This isn’t just the Trump administration’s view. For decades, there has been a robust debate in academic and policy circles, discussed over drinks by development practitioners, written about by critical economists and postcolonial independence leaders, and percolating into the broader consciousness, that aid isn’t working, or at least not as promised. When the news of Trump’s USAID cuts broke this year, President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia told the Financial Times that cuts in aid were “long overdue” and would force countries such as his to “take care of our own affairs”.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Saidu Bah/The Guardian
© Photograph: Saidu Bah/The Guardian
© Photograph: Saidu Bah/The Guardian
The 22-year-old history student spent almost two years on a popular French quiz show – becoming a multimillionaire in the process. He discusses the importance of curiosity, frugality and 10-11 hours sleep a night
Being a TV general-knowledge quiz champion is a funny kind of fame, because random strangers want to test you on all sorts of trivia. “Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street, a car slows, the window goes down and someone screams: ‘Capital of Brunei?’ I answer and they drive off – it’s amusing really,” says Émilien, a 22-year-old history student who this summer became not only the most successful French gameshow contestant of all time, but the biggest gameshow winner in European history and the world record-holder for the most solo consecutive appearances on a TV quizshow.
And everyone, of course, wants to know how he did it.
Continue reading...
© Composite: Guardian Design; Frederic Scheiber for The Guardian
© Composite: Guardian Design; Frederic Scheiber for The Guardian
© Composite: Guardian Design; Frederic Scheiber for The Guardian
The Berlin airlift was a cold war victory that relied on a persuasive story about starving civilians. But was it true?
We in the west used to play dirty – and during the cold war, we were good at it. Nowadays, we leave grey-zone tactics and hybrid warfare to Russia, which is winning the disinformation war. Europe’s pride in playing by the rules might just be democracy’s achilles heel.
The Berlin airlift is a good example of what we once did well – and have since forgotten. The cold war arguably began and ended in Berlin, bookended by the 1948-9 airlift and the fall of the wall in 1989. The former was the largest air relief operation in history. It supplied Berlin when Stalin tried to force out the western allies. In parallel, the west used radio (RIAS, or Radio in the American Sector, a precursor to the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty), and strengthened soft power with cultural missions such as the British-staged Shakespeare in the rubble, and education through American-run libraries and courses.
Joseph Pearson is a historian who lectures at the Barenboim-Said Akademie and New York University in Berlin. His book The Airlift, is out in the UK and comes out in North America as Sweet Victory, in December.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Associated Press
© Photograph: Associated Press
© Photograph: Associated Press
Facing allegations he insists are politically motivated, Pedro Sánchez has cast doubt on independence of some members of judiciary
Despite spending the past 18 months variously defending his wife, his brother, his party, his attorney general and his government against a relentless slew of corruption allegations, Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has not entirely lost his sense of humour.
Three weeks ago, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the opposition conservative People’s party (PP), rattled off the familiar litany of accusations and concluded by suggesting the man sitting opposite him in congress was neither “a decent or worthy prime minister” but rather a seasoned enabler of corruption. After the giddy applause that greeted Feijóo’s speech from the PP benches had died down, Sánchez rose to his feet and uttered two words.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Julio Munoz/EPA
© Photograph: Julio Munoz/EPA
© Photograph: Julio Munoz/EPA
Giorgia Meloni, Sophia Loren and writer Francesca Barra among prominent figures to have ‘nudified’ photos posted on sexist forums
As she reeled from the discovery of a pornographic website featuring AI-generated images of herself naked, the prominent Italian journalist and writer Francesca Barra said the question that struck her the most came from her young daughter.
“She asked me: ‘how do you feel?’,” Barra, 47, said. “But what I heard was another more subtle question that my pre-adolescent daughter perhaps didn’t have the courage to ask, and that was: ‘If it happened to me, how would I handle it?’.”
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
© Photograph: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
© Photograph: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
Connexion