The Adelaide festival is facing an unprecedented leadership crisis after three board members resigned this weekend.
The journalist Daniela Ritorto, the Adelaide businesswoman Donny Walford and the lawyer Nick Linke have stepped down since the board’s controversial decision to dump the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 writers’ week program.
As synthetic personas become an increasingly normal part of life, meet the people falling for their chatbot lovers
Lamar remembered the moment of betrayal like it was yesterday. He’d gone to the party with his girlfriend but hadn’t seen her for over an hour, and it wasn’t like her to disappear. He slipped down the hallway to check his phone. At that point, he heard murmurs coming from one of the bedrooms and thought he recognised his best friend Jason’s low voice. As he pushed the door ajar, they were both still scrambling to throw their clothes on; her shirt was unbuttoned, while Jason struggled to cover himself. The image of his girlfriend and best friend together hit Lamar like a blow to the chest. He left without saying a word.
Two years on, when he spoke to me, the memory remained raw. He was still seething with anger, as if telling the story for the first time. “I got betrayed by humans,” Lamar insisted. “I introduced my best friend to her, and this is what they did?!” In the meantime, he drifted towards a different kind of companionship, one where emotions were simple, where things were predictable. AI was easier. It did what he wanted, when he wanted. There were no lies, no betrayals. He didn’t need to second-guess a machine.
Independents muscle in on craze for the black stuff with dark beers that use same nitrogen process as Irish favourite
Famously, according to the advertising slogan anyway, Guinness is good for you. But for the past couple of years, Guinness has been practically inescapable.
Backed by its owner Diageo’s £2.7bn marketing war chest, the brand has shaken off its “old man” reputation, becoming a staple of gen Z pub culture, exploiting its Instagrammable colour scheme and social media trends such as the “splitting the G” drinking game.
Counselling should help, but it sounds as if you need to slow down and give yourself time to grieve
I am 37 years old, happily married and have two children, who came along quickly after we got married in my late 20s. I instantly fell in love with them. However, I wasn’t really emotionally or practically ready, and developed postnatal anxiety.
I’ve always cared about the climate crisis, and since after having kids, and knowing it will affect their lives more than mine, I became motivated to make changes. We live a very “green” life.
The ‘put her in a bikini’ trend rapidly evolved into hundreds of thousands of requests to strip clothes from photos of women, horrifying those targeted
Like thousands of women across the world, Evie, a 22-year-old photographer from Lincolnshire, woke up on New Year’s Day, looked at her phone and was alarmed to see that fully clothed photographs of her had been digitally manipulated by Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, to show her in just a bikini.
The “put her in a bikini” trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women. The fake, sexualised images were posted publicly on X, freely available for millions of people to inspect.
The president’s inability to tell right from wrong fuels his increasingly dictatorial, illegal and erratic behaviour
Donald Trump made 30,573 “false or misleading” claims during his first term, according to calculations published in 2021 by the Washington Post. That’s roughly 21 fibs a day. Second time around, he’s still hard at it, lying to Americans and the world on a daily basis. Trump’s disregard for truth and honesty in public life – seen again in his despicable response to the fatal shooting in Minneapolis – is dangerously immoral.
Trump declared last week that the only constraint on his power is “my own morality, my own mind”. That explains a lot. His idea of right and wrong is wholly subjective. He is his own ethical and legal adviser, his own priest and confessor. He is a church of one. Trump lies to himself as well as everyone else. And the resulting damage is pernicious. It costs lives, harms democracy and destroys trust between nations.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
Does central London really need another fancy Italian restaurant? Well, yes, apparently it does …
Does the area around Sloane Square in central London really need another fancy, Italian-leaning restaurant that serves up tortellini in brodo and veal Milanese? Well, yes, apparently it does. One Saturday lunchtime late last year at Martino’s was hectic even in the delightful reception area, where we were waiting to check in a coat with the elegantly uniformed front-of-house ladies. All the tables in this hot new all-day brasserie were booked and busy, and plenty of walk-ins were champing at the bit for cancellations.
Actually, “delightful reception” is not a phrase I’ve often uttered, or even thought, but this is a Martin Kuczmarski restaurant, so the small things tend to add up to a larger picture – this cocoon-like holding pen keeps would-be queuers away from the diners. Why was I so charmed by this weird, crisply officiated bends chamber that operates as a liminal space between the real grubby world outside and the glitzy, sexy, mock-Italian trattoria inside? Well, it turns out that’s because it solved a problem that I didn’t even realise I had.
Caleb Williams dropped back, pump-faked and found DJ Moore wide open down the sideline for the go-ahead touchdown.
His latest clutch throw propelled the Chicago Bears to yet another improbable comeback win and kept their breakout season going for at least another round of the postseason.
Photojournalist Julia Kochetova and reporter Dan Sabbagh stayed with Da Vinci Wolves battalion as infantry and drone pilots rotated from Ukraine’s eastern frontline
It is just before dawn, the December temperature a couple of degrees above freezing; time for troop rotations to start across Ukraine’s 750 mile front.
A crew of four from Da Vinci Wolves battalion are loading up into an M113 armoured personnel carrier at a secret location ready to be driven out to a safe point. From there they will walk to their position and remain on the front for 10 or 12 days.
Drone pilots of Da Vinci Wolves battalion prepare to return to the frontline.
Palestinian academic rejects accusations of hypocrisy, saying board resisted attempts to remove Thomas Friedman, while cancelling her invitation this year
The Adelaide festival board did not dump a Jewish columnist from its 2024 lineup at Adelaide writers’ week, despite being lobbied by a group of 10 academics – including Randa Abdel-Fattah – to do so.
On Saturday South Australia’s premier, Peter Malinauskas, claimed that the board had dumped the New York Times pro-Israel columnist Thomas Friedman in 2024, and reiterated his support for the festival board’s decision on Thursday to remove Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian Australian academic, from this year’s program.
Australian authorities are assessing the damage after one of the worst heatwaves in years resulted in bushfires igniting across the country’s south-east, with one person dead, hundreds of homes and structures lost, thousands of hectares burned and entire towns evacuated.
A state of disaster remained in place across much of Victoria on Sunday as thousands of firefighters and emergency service workers continued to battle blazes that were “expected to rage “for weeks”.
Ilia Malinin, a red-hot favorite for gold at next month’s Milano-Cortina Olympics, cruised to a fourth consecutive national title at the US Figure Skating Championships on Saturday while Madison Chock and Evan Bates captured a record seventh national ice dance crown.
Malinin, who separated himself from the field in St Louis with a remarkable performance in Thursday’s short program, returned to score 209.78 points in the free skate for a 324.88 total in his final tune-up for the Olympics.
Residents battle bitter winter cold inside unheated apartments; Ukraine confirms UN to hold emergency meeting Monday on Russian ballistic missile attack. What we know on day 1,418
Engineers in Kyiv scrambled on Saturday to stabilise a power grid brought to the brink by a campaign of Russian strikes, including one two nights ago. The city’s residents huddled against bitter winter cold inside their unheated apartments on Saturday as engineers worked to restore power, water and heat. Prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said that the power situation in the capital was still difficult, as the grid was badly damaged and people were using more electric heaters because of the cold.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha confirmed Saturday the UN security council would hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss Russia’s latest large-scale attack on Ukraine, which used an Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile. “The meeting will address Russia’s flagrant breaches of the UN Charter,” Sybiha wrote on X.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, said major attacks by Russia on Friday “have resulted in significant civilian casualties and deprived millions of Ukrainians of essential services, including electricity, heating and water at a time of acute humanitarian need.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov spoke with representatives of the United States on Saturday as Kyiv and Washington seek to agree on a framework to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. “We continue to communicate with the American side on practically a daily basis,” Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram app.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said on Saturday that 600,000 residents were without electricity, heating and water after a Ukrainian missile strike. In a statement posted on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said that work was under way to restore supplies, but that the situation was “extremely challenging”.
A Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at an oil depot in Russia’s southern Volgograd region, officials said Saturday. Ukraine’s General Staff said Saturday it had struck the Zhutovskaya oil depot overnight. In a statement on Telegram, it said the depot is supplying fuel to Russian forces, adding that damage was being assessed. Ukraine’s military said that besides the oil depot in Volgograd, it had struck a drone storage facility belonging to a unit of Russia’s 19th Motor Rifle Division in Zaporizhzhia, southern Ukraine, as well as a drone command and control point near the eastern city of Pokrovsk.
An overnight Ukrainian drone attack injured at least four people and damaged several buildings in Russia’s southern city of Voronezh, the governor of the Voronezh region said on Sunday. An emergency service facility, seven apartment buildings and six houses were damaged as a result of the attack, the governor, Alexander Gusev, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia’s defence ministry said Saturday that its forces used aviation, drones, missiles and artillery to strike Ukrainian energy facilities and fuel-storage depots on Friday and overnight. It did not immediately specify the targets or damage.
UN and many western countries as well as human rights groups say that in the absence of a meaningful opposition the election is neither free, fair nor credible
Voters in war-torn Myanmar queued up on Sunday to cast their ballots in the second stage of a military-run election, following low turnout in the initial round of polls that have been widely criticised as a tool to formalise junta rule.
Myanmar has been ravaged by conflict since the military ousted a civilian government in a 2021 coup and detained its leader, Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking a civil war that has engulfed large parts of the impoverished nation of 51 million people.
Rhythm guitarist helped guide the legendary jam band through decades of change and success
Bob Weir, the veteran rock musician who helped guide the legendary band the Grateful Dead through decades of change and success, has died at age 78, according to a statement posted to his verified Instagram account on Friday.
The Instagram statement, posted by his daughter Chloe Weir, said he was surrounded by loved ones when he died. Bob Weir had been diagnosed with cancer in July and “succumbed to underlying lung issues”, the statement said.
In Philadelphia, protesters demanded ICE leave US communities and Trump end warmongering in Venezuela
On a rainy Saturday in Philadelphia, two separate protests, both with a few hundred people, marched from city hall to the federal detention center. They differed slightly in solutions as well as crowd makeup – white older adults dominated the morning’s march organized by the groups behind the No Kings protests, while a more racially diverse crowd swathed in keffiyehs and N95 face masks led the afternoon’s, planned by the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. However, both groups shared a goal: for ICE to get out of American communities and to put an end to Donald Trump’s warmongering in Venezuela.
“From Venezuela to Minneapolis, all we’re seeing is a regime that is scrambling, willing to kill its own citizens, willing to kill foreign citizens, to maintain its power,” said Deborah Rose Hinchey, co-chair of the city’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter.
Award-winning screenwriter tells Desert Island Discs that success has not silenced self-doubt
The award-winning screenwriter Jesse Armstrong has said a writers’ room can feel like “walking on the moon” when it is working well, but has admitted to experiencing impostor syndrome during his career.
Armstrong was behind the hit HBO drama Succession, starring Brian Cox as the global media tycoon and family patriarch Logan Roy, who sets off a power struggle among his four children.
NASUWT says evidence growing that unregulated access affects behaviour in school and harms mental health
One of the UK’s biggest teaching unions has called on the government to ban social media for under-16s over concerns about mental health and concentration.
The Teachers’ Union (NASUWT) wants legislation to be tightened so big tech firms would face penalties for allowing children to access their platforms.
State department says armed ‘colectivos’ appear to be setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for Americans
The United States has urged its citizens to leave Venezuela immediately amid reports that armed paramilitaries are trying to track down US citizens, one week after the capture of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
In a security alert sent out on Saturday, the state department said there were reports of armed members of pro-regime militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence that the occupants were US citizens or supporters of the country.
This steamy queer romance between ice hockey rivals is packed with constant shots of muscular bottoms in fancy hotel rooms. But a bit more character development or emotional investment wouldn’t go amiss
I suspect that Chala Hunter is still on a recuperative retreat somewhere. Until about May, I would think. For she was the intimacy coordinator on Heated Rivalry and she has earned a break.
For those not aware: intimacy coordinators gained prominence in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, when assorted testimonies from actors (largely female) made public and unignorable the shocking fact that actors (largely male) and directors (largely male) will often (largely always) try to get away with more than has been contracted for once they are naked with A N Other person. An intimacy coordinator is there to help arrange scenes and advocate for actors. Think of them as somewhere between a bureaucrat and a contraceptive.
Officials expect charge against Daricka Moore, 24, to be elevated to capital murder, with death penalty considered
Authorities in Clay county, Mississippi, say a man has been taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder following the fatal shootings of six people, including a child, on Friday night.
Daricka Moore, 24, is accused of killing multiple relatives as well as a local pastor before his arrest, according to Clay county sheriff Eddie Scott, who addressed the case during a Saturday news conference. Officials said the charge against Moore, who lives in the county, is expected to be elevated to capital murder, and prosecutors could seek the death penalty if he is determined to be mentally competent.
ICE Out for Good vigils and rallies are being tracked online by Indivisible, the group behind the No Kings protests
More than a thousand protests are planned across the US this Saturday and Sunday after ICE agents shot three people, one fatally, in Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, this week.
“This weekend, people all over are coming together not just to mourn the lives lost to ICE violence, but to confront a pattern of harm that has torn families apart and terrorized our communities,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, an organizer of “ICE Out for Good Weekend of Action”.
Military says it targeted the jihadist group throughout Syria in response to attack on US and Syrian troops in Palmyra
US and allied forces carried out “large-scale” strikes against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria on Saturday, the US military said, in the latest response to an attack last month that left three Americans dead.
Washington said a lone gunman from the militant group carried out the 13 December attack in Palmyra, which killed two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter. The area is home to Unesco-listed ancient ruins and was once controlled by jihadist fighters.
It sums up the uneasy state of affairs at Chelsea that the new head coach winning his first match in charge was not enough to stop the mutiny. This was a controlled, clinical performance from Liam Rosenior’s second string, who strolled into the fourth round of the FA Cup after a 5-1 win over a game but limited Charlton Athletic, but once again the big talking point was the travelling support spewing venom in the direction of their unpopular owners.
Dissatisfaction with the project is not going away. It did not even matter when Rosenior looked at his bench with Chelsea 3-1 up in the second half and decided to give Estevão Willian a runout against tired, lowly Championship opposition. The Brazilian winger is one of the best young players in the world and his runs were soon making Charlton’s defenders dizzy, but even signings like Estêvão have done little to sway the view of a fanbase united in opposition to an ownership almost four years in and still to convince naysayers that their unique vision will bring success.
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