‘China and the US are not conducting consultations or negotiations on tariff issues,’ foreign ministry spokesperson says
Canadians head to the polls in a federal election overshadowed by fury at Donald Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty and fears over his escalating trade war.
In the final days of a month-long campaign – described by all party leaders as the most consequential general election in a lifetime – the US president yet again re-inserted himself into the national discussion, with fresh threats to annex the country.
Comments from foreign minister Sergei Lavrov about ‘ownership’ follow suggestions from Trump that Ukraine could cede Crimea
At the European Commission’s midday press briefing, the chief spokesperson Paula Pinho has just been asked about the EU’s reaction to Donald Trump’s comments over the weekend after he met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.
She said:
President Zelensky has been very much aligned with the EU position, and vice versa., we’ve been very much aligned with President Zelensky on the position with regard to peace and negotiations regarding a ceasefire agreement, where absolutely the position of Ukraine is the determining position.
We’ve also heard, indeed, the comments by President Trump after these talks, and we welcome those comments that go in the sense of also acknowledging that the attacks of Russia on Ukraine, which, by the way, continued over the weekend, cannot be accepted.
ICJ holding hearing about Israel’s obligation to facilitate aid to Gaza and the West Bank amid the outlawing of Unrwa
Tehran has accused Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to dictate US policy in negotiations after the Israeli prime minister repeated calls for Iran’s entire nuclear infrastructure to be dismantled.
The US and Iran have so far held three rounds of indirect talks, mediated by Oman, aimed at sealing a deal that would block Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon but also lift crippling economic sanctions imposed by Washington.
Israel’s fantasy that it can dictate what Iran may or may not do is so detached from reality that it hardly merits a response.
What is striking, however, is how brazenly Netanyahu is now dictating what President Trump can and cannot do in his diplomacy with Iran…
The Lunar Hatch project aims to blast eggs into space, hoping that aquaculture will provide protein for astronauts on missions
At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything special about the sea bass circling around a tank in the small scientific facility on the outskirts of Palavas-les-Flots in southern France. But these fish are on a mission.
When fully grown, they will produce offspring that will be the first to be launched into space as part of a scientific project called Lunar Hatch that is exploring whether sea bass can be farmed on the moon – and eventually Mars – as food for future astronauts.
Solar storms as intense as a 1921 superstorm have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario – and we are unprepared
On 14 May 1921, a powerful solar storm – called the New York Railroad storm – caused the northern lights to illuminate New York City’s night sky. On Broadway, crowds lingered, enjoying “flaring skies” that remained undimmed by city lights. The following morning, excess electric currents shut down the New York Central Railroad’s signal and switching system in Manhattan, stopping trains. A fire broke out in a railroad control tower that was located at Park Avenue and 57th Street. Smoke filled the air. Along a stretch of Park Avenue, residents “were coughing and choking from the suffocating vapors which spread for blocks”.
When a solar storm’s electrically charged particles envelop Earth, they cause geomagnetic storms that generate electric fields in the ground, inducing electric currents in power grids. Solar storms as intense as the 1921 superstorm have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario in which modern power grids, communication systems, and other infrastructures collapse for months. Such a collapse of power grids would likely also lead to nuclear power plant accidents, whose radioactive emissions would aggravate the overall catastrophe.
Mark Leyse is a nuclear power safety advocate with a degree in nuclear engineering
I couldn’t imagine life without hooks, wires and straps. Then Covid came along and suddenly I couldn’t bear any of it
I still remember getting my first bra. It was soft, white cotton mesh with embroidered pink flowers. It served no discernible purpose other than to make sure I wasn’t the last girl in my class to get one. But to my 12-year-old self, it signified womanhood: what glamour, what sophistication, twirling in front of the mirror. I look just like Madonna, I thought. (I did not.) After this, more or less unthinkingly, I wore a bra every day for 20 years. There was the inevitable push-up phase, the simple T-shirt bra phase, the somewhat classier black lace phase. It was a non-negotiable step of getting dressed, even if I was just lounging around the house.
All this changed in March 2020. I contracted Covid, which turned into long Covid; for three and a half years my life ground to a halt. Among an ever-rotating inventory of symptoms, one of the most persistent was an intense pain in my sternum, just above my solar plexus. Every time I tried to put on a bra, it would make it even worse and I would start struggling to breathe.
Tragically, the president’s second term is already more lawless and more authoritarian than any in US history
In his first 100 days back in office, Donald Trump has made a strong case that his second term will be by far the worst presidential term in US history. So many of his flood-the-zone actions have been head-spinning and stomach-turning. His administration seems to be powered by ignorance and incoherence, spleen and sycophancy. Both he and his right-hand man, Elon Musk, with their resentment-fueled desire to disrupt everything, seem intent on pulverizing the foundations of our government, our democracy, our alliances as well as any notions of truth. Tragically, Trump’s second term is already more lawless and more authoritarian than any in US history.
The name was good enough for actor Kevin Costner and Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson, to say nothing of an actual saint, Kevin of Glendalough. Maybe the papal connection could make it cool again
I don’t think I’m imagining a collective amusement at “a bloke called Kevin”, as one headline put it, becoming the camerlengo, or interim pope and conclave organiser. The Vatican is such an incense-scented swirl of robes and ritual, history and high camp that it feels pleasingly incongruous that the person temporarily presiding over all its weird arcana is the very ordinarily named Cardinal Kevin Farrell.
But is there a kind of snobbery to it? That’s something the Kevins of France know all about. The name became exceptionally popular there in the early 1990s, especially among working-class families, peaking in 1994 when 15,000 babies were called Kevin. It caught on, the thinking goes, thanks to the prominence of a handful of US pop culture Kevins at a time when people were starting to be more adventurous in naming their kids, including Kevin from Home Alone (1990), Dances with Wolves-era Kevin Costner (1990) and Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys.
The endlessly quoted 1975 comedy remains both a clear product of its era and a timelessly funny masterwork
It was with some surprise, as I gathered my recollections of Monty Python and the Holy Grail before its 50th anniversary this week, that I realised I had seen it in full only once, back when I and the film were both considerably younger. It felt like more. The first fully narrative feature by Britain’s best-loved TV sketch troupe is among the most fondly, frequently and recognisably referenced comedies in all cinema; the film’s best scenes are hard to separate from various everyday quotations or pub impressions thereof. Some comedy is made not so much to stand as individual art than to be absorbed into our collective comic language, and so it is with Monty Python, their best work a stew of endlessly imitable idioms and accents, to be relished with or without context.
In all truth, I remembered laughing at Monty Python and the Holy Grail more vividly than I remembered exactly what I was laughing at. For this I must blame my late father, whose laughter – loud and barking, often a beat ahead of lines already known and eagerly anticipated – I perhaps recall more vividly than my own. The film was one of a jumbled canon of comedies that, over the course of my childhood, he eagerly presented to my brother and I as apices of the form, with hit-and-miss results. (Paper Moon? Wholly shared joy. Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines? He chuckled alone.) Monty Python and the Holy Grail was among the hits: some giggling fits are too giddy not to catch on.
Voters in twin-island Caribbean nation to determine representatives amid Trump tariffs and rising cost of living
Voters in the twin-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) are going to the polls today in a parliamentary election described by analysts as one of the most unpredictable in decades.
Soaring crime levels, Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, and the rising cost of living have dominated the race between the two main parties, the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) and the United National Congress (UNC). Voters will choose the 41 members of the lower House of Representatives for a five-year term.
Paraag Marathe travelling from San Francisco on Monday
Doubts among owners over Farke despite promotion
The Leeds chairman, Paraag Marathe, is flying in from San Francisco on Monday for talks with Daniel Farke over the manager’s future.
The American will attend Monday’s Championship game against Bristol City at Elland Road, with Leeds needing to win to move back to the top above Burnley on goal difference with one game remaining, before meeting Farke later in the week.
Chinese national, 27, reportedly returned to Japan’s highest mountain days after first rescue to retrieve his phone
A university student has been rescued from the slopes of Mount Fuji twice in the space of a week – the second time during an attempt to retrieve his mobile phone.
The hapless climber, a 27-year-old Chinese national who has not been named, was airlifted from Japan’s highest mountain last week, only to be the subject of a second search four days later.
Liberals favored to beat Conservatives in contest influenced by anger over threats to sovereignty and growing trade war
Canadians head to the polls in a federal election overshadowed by fury at Donald Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty and fears over his escalating trade war.
In the final days of a month-long campaign – described by all party leaders as the most consequential general election in a lifetime – the US president yet again re-inserted himself into the national discussion, with fresh threats to annex the country. “We don’t need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state,” he told Time magazine on Friday.
The next pick in our ongoing series of comfort movie favourites is Steven Spielberg’s defining shark thriller
What makes a film “feelgood”? If it’s not a romcom, or otherwise setting out to impart warm fuzzies, familiarity plays a big part. I’ve seen Jaws so many times that watching it now truly feels like sinking into a warm bath.
It’s always been my favourite film; I’ve read the book, got the hat, seen the play. (Did you know that, on set, the animatronic shark was called Bruce?) Far from keeping me out of the water, Jaws stoked my interest in marine life, even inspiring me to get my scuba qualification.
It can take years to properly evaluate if a prospect works out. But here are a few early takes on the ups and downs from this year’s selection process
Grading NFL drafts right after they happen is like grading a meal after you order it: all you know is what was said on the menu. That said, drafts do tell you a great deal about how NFL teams think about themselves at a particular point in time – what they need, where they’re lacking, and how they want it all to come together. Whether right or wrong in the end, there’s no more clear indicator of team philosophy than the annual three-day exercise, and that’s why it’s important beyond the players who are actually selected.
While it will be years before we know how wise each move was in the 2025 draft, here are those who benefited most and least, as well as the decisions we feel are worthy of applause, and the ones that had us shaking our heads.
The platform was, of course, set by Jürgen Klopp. Arne Slot made note of that through the medium of song.
This is a fun thought from Robert Winiker: “Would it be an idea to stage a joint celebration with the title win five years ago, which was cancelled due to the pandemic? With Jürgen Klopp and the players included?”
There’s a crude fascination in seeing the contents of a literary celebrity’s therapy sessions, but no one comes out of it well
Motherhood is a state of continuous loss that is meant to culminate when the dependent baby becomes an independent adult. Joan Didion survived this, as many mothers have, by keeping constant watch over her adopted daughter Quintana, fearing “swimming pools, high-tension wires, lye under the sink, aspirin in the medicine cabinet”. She also survived it, as fewer mothers have, by writing obsessively about the loss she feared. In her arid, fevered masterpiece Play It As It Lays, published when Quintana was four, the narrator’s breakdown is precipitated by her daughter’s long-term hospitalisation with an unnamed mental disorder. A Book of Common Prayer is about the disappearance of the protagonist’s criminal revolutionary daughter. “Marin was loose in the world and could leave it at any time and Charlotte would have no way of knowing” – a description that could be applied to motherhood in general.
The coddling failed. Quintana drank to self-medicate for anxiety and by 33 she was an alcoholic whose therapist wanted her mother to participate in the treatment. And so in 1999 Didion, who had hitherto protected her inner life with her trademark dark glasses and stylish sentences with their wilfully “impenetrable polish”, found herself seeing Freudian analyst and psychiatrist Roger MacKinnon. Now her notes on their sessions have been, in my view misguidedly, gathered from her archive and packaged as a book.
Captivating film based on a true story follows an older man, and the man caught burgling his home, on a poignant journey to lay his wife to rest
Love is a many-splendored thing in this idiosyncratic, highly stylised debut from Vietnamese film-maker Nguyễn Lê Hoàng Phúc. Blurring the lines between genres and styles, the first half of the film unfurls through a technique commonly seen in silent cinema: the iris shot. Within a circular frame we see a burglary gone wrong, a puzzling plaster cast in the shape of a woman and the burgeoning of a strange friendship, all set within an ordinary flat.
Inspired by a news story, the central premise is at once macabre and moving. Inside the plaster cast is the body of the owner’s wife, who died 10 years ago. Having caught a young burglar (Psycho Neo) red handed, the older man (Lưu Đức Cường) asks for his help on an unusual quest: transporting the body to the couple’s chosen resting place in a faraway desert. Though powered by love, it’s also a journey towards death.
We would like to hear from Liverpool fans all over the world and their highlights of the season after the team’s Premier League victory
It’s been a formidable season for Liverpool, who were crowned Premier League champions after beating Tottenham 5-1 at Anfield. They have won a record-equalling 20th league title bring them level with Manchester United.
It’s the club’s second title in 35 years, although they had chances to potentially win three trophies. Still, manager Arne Slot couldn’t have asked for a much better first season after taking over from the legendary Jürgen Klopp.
Alleged attack on facility holding African detainees raises fresh questions over US military operations in region
Yemen’s Houthi rebels say 68 people have been killed and 47 injured in a US strike on a detention centre holding African migrants in the city of Saada.
The rebel group, which governs north-west Yemen, said the shelter was under the supervision of the International Organization for Migration and the Red Cross and targeting it “constitutes a full-fledged war crime”. The US military had no immediate comment.
Threat from jihadists had widely been perceived to be extinguished, but recent clashes suggest otherwise
On the road running from Maiduguri’s airport to the city, the freshly repainted walls of a girls’ college stood in defiant opposition to a years-long campaign by the jihadists of Boko Haram to make good on their name, which translates as “western education is forbidden”.
At a nearby roundabout on the outskirts of the capital of Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state, three uniformed men sprinted after a cement truck, hoping to collect a road levy. As the driver sped away, they slowed down in the 42C heat, smiled regretfully, and waited for the next heavy duty vehicle to pass.
Ten men nicknamed ‘grandpa robbers’ accused of stealing jewellery worth millions from American TV star in 2016
Ten people nicknamed the “grandpa robbers” by French media are to go on trial charged with stealing jewellery worth millions of euros from the American reality TV star Kim Kardashian when she attended Paris fashion week in 2016.
The suspects, whose ages range from 35 to 78, will appear in a court in the French capital on Monday afternoon at the start of a month-long trial in which Kardashian, 44, will testify in May.
Turki al-Sheikh had booked a second date before Saturday’s dramatic slugfest although loser’s promoter fears for fighter
“I want my revenge, man,” Conor Benn said quietly in the early hours of Sunday morning as his bruised face reflected his emotional pain after he lost against Chris Eubank Jr in a wild brawl at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. “I want my revenge.”
Those typical boxing words echoed the misguided clamour for a rematch with Eubank Jr. Eddie Hearn admitted that he would prefer Benn to move back down two divisions to welterweight but the promoter grinned helplessly: “The public, His Excellency, everybody’s going to want the rematch.”
Booker-nominated writer Deborah Levy is thrilling audiences with her play about a psychoanalyst dealing with a very unusual patient, seized with anxiety about modern life. She explains how it came about
Two years ago, Deborah Levy came across a cartoon that sparked her imagination. It featured a Freud-like figure sitting opposite a rabbit on an analyst’s couch. Levy, a three-times Booker nominated novelist and award-winning author of nonfiction, had began her career as a playwright but had not written a script for 25 years until she came across the image. “As soon as I saw it,” she says, “I heard dialogue in my mind: a conversation, a serious, difficult conversation between a professor and a rabbit, about contemporary anxiety. I knew it was a play,” says Levy.
The premise may seem absurd but that is precisely the point – absurdism is a way of dealing with themes that have proved, in the wider world, divisive and even explosive to debate. Because the two-hander includes a rabbit, it makes space for humour, for misunderstandings.
From the Canadian elections to universities and civil society, the campaign to turn the tide against anti-liberal nationalists is at last underway
Liberals of all countries, unite! Just as anti-liberal powers outside the west are becoming stronger than ever, the assault on everything we stand for has been joined by the United States. Against this massed onslaught of anti-liberal nationalists we need a determined fightback of liberal internationalists. Canada’s election this week can contribute a strong mounted brigade.
A core insight of liberalism is that, if people are to live together well in conditions of freedom, power always needs to be dispersed, cross-examined and controlled. Faced with the raw, bullying assertion of might, whether from Washington, Moscow or Beijing, we now have to create countervailing concentrations of power. In the long history of liberalism, a free press, the law, labour unions, a business community kept separate from political power, NGOs, truth-seeking institutions such as universities, civil resistance, multilateral organisations and international alliances have all served – alongside multiparty politics and regular free and fair elections – to constrain the men who would be kings.
Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist
Palace’s best-paid player shows his class, Ipswich meet their fate and Mateo Kovacic sounds a warning
In April 1964 a side from north London came to Anfield with Liverpool one good result from winning the league, and conceded five. “Arsenal did little to allay the general suspicion that they were there just to be sacrificed,” Eric Todd wrote in his report for the Guardian. This time it was Tottenham but otherwise, for anyone whose memory stretches back 61 years it was a familiar story. Time and again Spurs meekly surrendered possession in dangerous areas, and while they defended in numbers – which suggests willing – they did so with terrifying inefficiency, which suggests poor organisation. Their focus is now fully on the Europa League, but if Liverpool had been a little more ruthless this would have been truly another real embarrassment in a season full of them. In April 1988 it was Spurs themselves who came to Anfield with Liverpool needing one point to guarantee the title. It had been a terrible season for Tottenham, and they were only just outside the bottom three. They lost 1-0. “Tottenham remain in the relegation penumbra,” wrote Stephen Bierley in his Guardian report. “Strange it seems that nobody much under the age of 30 will remember them being champions. Who would have thought it?” Simon Burnton
Caffeine can increase fat oxidation, but there are more effective ways to change your body composition
‘When you talk about ‘burning fat’, you’re talking about the oxidation of body fat; the breakdown of lipids into fatty acids to use them as fuel,” says Bethan Crouse, a performance nutritionist from Loughborough University. It’s the process that needs to occur for someone to lose weight or go through “body recomposition”; losing fat and gaining muscle.
Regular exercise can increase rates of fat oxidation, Crouse says. (When we work out at low-moderate intensity, fat provides the majority of the fuel for working muscles. As intensity increases, this will shift more towards carbohydrates.) However, she says, “There’s not necessarily a food that burns fat.” For a food to oxidise fat, consuming it would have to “replicate the effects of exercise”.
An impassioned plea to save our rivers combines poetry and adventure
Tracking a river through a cedar forest in Ecuador, Robert Macfarlane comes to a 30ft-high waterfall and, below it, a wide pool. It’s irresistible: he plunges in. The water under the falls is turbulent, a thousand little fists punching his shoulders. He’s exhilarated. No one could mistake this for a “dying” river, sluggish or polluted. But that thought sparks others: “Is this thing I’m in really alive? By whose standards? By what proof? As for speaking to or for a river, or comprehending what a river wants – well, where would you even start?”
He’s in the right place to be asking. In September 2008, Ecuador, “this small country with a vast moral imagination”, became the first nation in the world to legislate on behalf of water, “since its condition as an essential element for life makes it a necessary aspect for existence of all living beings”. This enshrinement of the Rights of Nature set off similar developments in other countries. In 2017, a law was passed in New Zealand that afforded the Whanganui River protection as a “spiritual and physical entity”. In India, five days later, judges ruled that the Ganges and Yamuna should be recognised as “living entities”. And in 2021, the Mutehekau Shipu (AKA Magpie River) became the first river in Canada to be declared a “legal person [and] living entity”. The Rights of Nature movement has now reached the UK, with Lewes council in East Sussex recognising the rights and legal personhood of the River Ouse.
The most heated puzzle about the drinking straw is “does it have one hole or two?” (This debate periodically goes viral and for those who want to suck up its delicious complexities I recommend this chat with mathematician Jordan Ellenberg.)
Today’s puzzles are also about straws, but are much less controversial.
The ursine protagonists are largely relegated to fart-gag sidekicks in this phoned-in attempt at a dystopian sci-fi
When George Michael recorded Careless Whisper, there can be no doubt his ultimate ambition for it would have been to soundtrack a garish animated sequence in which two anthropomorphic bears gambol through a prairie of giant fungus experiencing ecstatic visions as hallucinogenic spores rain down on them. Such is the frantic way of this Chinese cartoon franchise, as relentless and exhausting as ever in its 11th feature-film instalment. Five minutes in, before the credits, it has crammed in a post-apocalyptic prologue, oodles of eco-babble, a time-travelling tyke and an avalanche.
This latest one jumps on the fungal-panic bandwagon: Saylor (voiced by Nicola Vincent in the English-language version) has nipped back 100 years to locate the original spores at the root of a pestilence that has eradicated most of life on Earth. It turns out that hapless nature guide Vick (Chris Boike), seen polluting the forest with his tourists, was responsible for spreading them After Saylor fails to kill the mushroom in the cradle, the pair – along with Vick’s forest buddies, the bears Bramble (Joseph S Lambert) and Briar (Patrick Freeman) – are whisked back to the future. They discover a fungus-carpeted nightmare of a planet, overshadowed by a giant skyscraping toadstool.
Dashing through labyrinthine courses of tunnels, jumps and seesaws at breakneck speed, agility shows prioritise skill over pedigree. But can Tim Dowling last the course?
Before every dog agility event, the human handlers walk the course as a group – without the dogs – wandering slowly round the ring with one hand or the other outstretched. It’s an eerie thing to watch, like a crowd of bleary eyed tourists wearily progressing through an airport.
But it’s important: the dogs don’t get to try the course beforehand, so their handlers have to formulate a strategy to guide their pets from jump to tunnel to seesaw in the correct order.
We want to hear from people about their tipping habits
People in the US are tipping less than they have in years, with gratuities falling from a Covid pandemic peak.
Average full-service restaurant tips in the fourth quarter of 2024 fell to 19.3%, a six-year low and down from a high of 19.9% in the first quarter of 2021, according to data from Toast.
Exclusive: Force, which had dropped objection to plan, says protests of more than 500 people would impede traffic and require extra resources
China’s proposed “super-embassy” in London would require additional police officers to deal with any large protests involving thousands of people, the Metropolitan police have said before a decision by ministers.
Despite having dropped its official objection to the proposals, the Met “maintains concerns” that large protests of more than 500 people outside the embassy would impede traffic and “require additional police resource”, said the deputy assistant commissioner Jon Savell
Prosecutors are using harsh anti-smuggling laws to jail people who have no connection to criminal offences, say migrants’ lawyers
Former law student Samuel, 19, fled his home town of Geneina shortly after it was ransacked during one of the worst massacres of Sudan’s brutal civil war, which has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 13 million people.
After making it overland to Libya, Samuel spent two days crossing the Mediterranean in June before being rescued by a cargo ship and escorted by the Greek coastguard to Crete.
The people of the Sierra Norte have achieved a rare balance – preserving an ancient way of mountain life while welcoming visitors
When I reach the mountaintop chapel, I slump on the dry stone wall, wheezing in the thin air, marvelling at what combination of brawn and piety must have been needed to build such a thing at such a height. It might not be a Sunday, but I can tell that mass at 3,000 metres must be magnificent. Open walls reach out to the rolling slopes of the Sierra Norte, 35 miles east of Oaxaca City in southern Mexico, with virgin pine in every direction. Somewhere unseen, a brown-backed solitaire bird lifts a lonely song over the valley. Then comes the bark of warring crows and, most exciting of all, the quick peeps of a hummingbird, believed here to ferry messages between the living and dead. At this height, even to a heathen like me, the urge to pay tribute is understandable.
My guide, Eric, who must have a third lung, judging by his ability to tell stories on the climb, becomes quiet and crosses himself before the altar. I’m a little surprised at this show of devotion. Down in the small town of Tlacolula de Matamoros, he had shown us a site the Indigenous Zapotecs used to praise the sacred mountain above – before the Spanish came and plonked a church on the same spot. The colonialists’ intention, Eric explained, was erasure. But when conversion comes at the point of a sword, some resistance seems inevitable. Here, Indigenous signs hide in Catholic icons. Dark stones in holy corners hold animist engravings. Duality is everywhere. Praise whispered in the name of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the mother of Christ to Mexican Catholics, is also meant for Huitzilopochtli, the old sun god.
After years of civil war and precarious peace, Covid-19 and the Beirut explosions of 2020 once again plunged Lebanon into crisis. But photographer Rania Matar has found inspiration for her project Where Do I Go? in the country’s women. ‘Instead of focusing on destruction, I chose to focus on their majestic presence, their creativity, strength, dignity, and resilience,’ she says
Margaret Murphy left her family in Brisbane to make a career for herself in London. Fifteen years on, she and her husband Peter have both grown – but they haven’t grown apart
Margaret Murphy had a lovely house in Brisbane, Australia, and four children when she noticed “a cumulative feeling” that she wanted a different sort of life from that of her husband, Peter. They had been happily married for 30 years but their children had grown up, and in the emptier house their “different expectations” became more pronounced. “I wanted to see the world before I got too old, and have adventures,” she says.
So, at 56, Murphy travelled alone to the UK, where she knew no one, and at 60 started the first full-time job of her life.
The suspect in a car-ramming attack that killed 11 people and injured dozens at a Filipino heritage festival in the Canadian city of Vancouver has been charged with eight counts of second degree murder, prosecutors have said.
More charges were possible against Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, the British Columbia prosecution service said. Investigators ruled out terrorism and said Lo had a history of mental health issues.
Centrists won’t beat Reform UK by echoing its messages. They should emphasise the true unworkability of policies like Brexit
In the middle of an election or the early stages of an administration, populist politics can feel like a liberation. The unsayable is said. Political rules are broken. Constitutional restrictions are flouted. Populist rallies are boisterous, seemingly uninhibited, with enemies of the movement taunted or intimidated.
For many voters, and even some activists and politicians, conventional politics can be boring, with its careful rhetoric and predictably choreographed campaigns, its compromised and complicated centrist policies. Populism promises something much more visceral, with larger-than-life leaders and dramatic national goals: “make America great again”, “take back control”. Digital media, with its constant hunger for brevity and straightforward narratives, is a perfect environment for populism’s seductive claim that politics is actually quite simple.
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