Rayner defends pause to local council overhaul
The cabinet minister tells the BBC she wanted to ensure the plans could survive potential legal actions.
Politics
How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden | Martin Gelin
In 2022, my country entered a new era of cruelty. It will take more than one election to get the old, tolerant Sweden back Last year, a baby named Emanuel was born in Sweden. Before his first birthday, his parents were told that Emanuel could no longer stay in the country. The department of migration ordered his removal, alone, to Iran – despite the ongoing war. Emanuel’s parents were legally in the country. They had Swedish residency permits, but the laws that allowed them to stay were tightened after the baby’s birth, and the family got sucked into a Kafkaesque maze of official hurdles, designed to limit migration to Sweden. Continue reading...
Trump-a-palooza: why are Republicans avoiding the president’s convention? – podcast
Donald Trump has thrown a convention to amp up the Republican base ahead of the midterm elections, but not everyone is thrilled about it. Dozens of officials running for re-election have stayed away, choosing instead to campaign locally. Are they worried about Trump’s current unpopularity weighing down their ticket? This week Jenna Amatulli is in for Jonathan Freedland and speaks to Guardian US politics correspondent Rachel Leingang Watch Jonathan Freedland on our new Politics Weekly YouTube channel Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com Subscribe to The Guardian Investigates podcast and listen to season 2 of Black Box Continue reading...
JD Vance pitches himself as Trump’s political heir on day two of Republican midterm convention
Vice-president dog-whistled, exaggerated claims of success and echoed Trump talking points to excited audience JD Vance made a clear pitch that he should be the heir to Donald Trump on Thursday night, closing out the Republicans ’ midterm convention with a blistering speech that featured exaggerated claims of success, criticism of Democrats as “lunatics” and an aggressive dismissal of a protester waving a Mexican flag. Speaking in Dallas, the vice-president showed he could channel the basest instincts of his boss, filling his remarks with dog whistles and echoing Trump’s false claims that Democrats “cheered” the 7 October massacre of Israelis. Continue reading...
Putin arrives in India for Brics summit set to be dominated by Iran and Ukraine wars
Russian president is due to meet his Iranian counterpart during visit, while Chinese leader Xi Jinping also set to attend summit Vladimir Putin has arrived in India’s capital of Delhi ahead of an 11-member Brics summit set to be dominated by wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as economic challenges. The Russian president and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, were due to hold talks with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, while Chinese leader Xi Jinping was also expected to attend the two-day meeting. Continue reading...
We want to move beyond elections, face of India's 'cockroach' movement tells BBC
It has been a rollercoaster ride for 'cockroach' party founder Abhijeet Dipke who gained celebrity status overnight.
Trump ally resigns from post leading inquiry into alleged conspiracy against president
Joe diGenova led investigation focused on intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in 2016 election An ally of Donald Trump said on Thursday that he had resigned from his post leading a Department of Justice investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against the Republican president. “I did in fact resign,” Joe diGenova told the Associated Press, calling it an “honor and a privilege” to serve Trump and the justice department. Continue reading...
Canada offers air defense support for Ukraine as Zelenskyy visits
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney hosted the president of Ukraine in Calgary, where he grew up alongside a large community of Ukrainians Canada offered support Thursday to boost Ukraine’s air defenses and help replenish its drone stocks, as the countries pledged to deepen their alliance during a visit by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Prime minister Mark Carney hosted the president of Ukraine in Calgary in the western province of Alberta, where the Canadian leader grew up among a large community of people with Ukrainian heritage. Continue reading...
NASA Answers President’s Call to Establish United States Space Academy
Less than two weeks after an Executive Order was signed to create the first United States Space Academy, NASA-led work is in full swing to make the academy a reality and shape the future of America’s aerospace workforce and leadership. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman chaired the first Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy […]
2030 Winter Olympics boss departs amid turmoil
Edgar Grospiron leaves his position as president of the organising committee for the 2030 French Alps Winter Olympics just 18 months after his appointment.
French FA accuses Infantino of ‘seriously damaging’ football as it withdraws support
‘Image and unity’ of game affected, FFF president says It will consult sacked former Fifa official Kevin Lamour The French Football Federation’s president, Philippe Diallo, said Gianni Infantino had “seriously damaged the image and the unity of football” as he announced the end of France’s support for the Fifa president’s re-election. The FFF’s executive committee unanimously voted on Thursday to withdraw its backing, which had been formalised at the end of June. Diallo referred to “events during the World Cup” which had “flagrantly gone against the way we believe our sport should be run” and to Infantino’s World Cup sell-off plan, which was revealed in July and scrapped after a widespread backlash. Continue reading...
Is Trump’s $5,000 midterm pledge a new low? - The Latest
Donald Trump has pledged a payment of $5,000 to every adult American citizen if the Republicans win in the November midterms. The outlandish proposal, which would cost over $1tn, immediately raised legal and ethical concerns. It comes as the president’s approval rating has hit a record low, hovering at about 38%. Lucy Hough speaks to global editor Devika Bhat – watch on YouTube Continue reading...
Can Trump really pay $5,000 to every American adult?
Analysts question if the US president's election year offer is workable, legal or affordable.
Can Trump deliver on his offer to pay $5,000 to every American adult?
Analysts question if the US president's election year offer is workable, legal or affordable.
TV presenter v secret son: the succession dispute engulfing a Ugandan kingdom
Family of late King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV reveal son’s existence as they reject committee’s choice of cousin as new monarch A traditional Ugandan kingdom has become engulfed in a bitter succession dispute after the family of a king who recently died rejected the selection of a television news anchor as his successor. King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV, who became the world’s youngest reigning monarch when he took the throne in the kingdom of Tooro in 1995 at the age of three, died on 27 August in the US, where he was receiving cancer treatment. Continue reading...
Another big James Talarico interview is punted to YouTube due to FCC threats
Jimmy Kimmel will be interviewing Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico "under unusual circumstances," posting the interview directly to YouTube, rather than airing it on TV during Jimmy Kimmel Live. In Wednesday night's episode, Kimmel said this was out of concern for retaliation from the Trump administration's FCC: [Trump's] FCC has threatened me, threatened our […]
Trump’s promise of $5,000 ‘dividend’ for US citizens after midterms met with incredulity
Critics call bid for Republican votes ‘bribery’ and point to potential $1.2tn cost added to existing national debt Donald Trump’s promise of a $5,000 “Trump dividend” for every US citizen if Republicans retain control of the US Congress in November’s midterm elections has sparked incredulity and accusations of bribery. “If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the unprecedented Republican midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump dividend.” Continue reading...
Kimmel says interview with Talarico won’t air on TV after threats from Trump’s FCC
Host says he’s interviewing Senate candidate ‘under unusual circumstances’ and it will be posted on YouTube Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel has said an upcoming interview with the Democratic Senate candidate from Texas James Talarico will not air on ABC, the US network that broadcasts his show, after the federal media regulator “threatened” his show, ABC and its local affiliates. “Tomorrow night I’ll be interviewing James Talarico under unusual circumstances,” Kimmel said during his opening monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday. Continue reading...
Vance appears to walk back Trump’s offer of $5,000 ‘dividend’ if Republicans win midterms – US politics live
Vice-president suggests payment would not go to all and would be paid for by tariff revenues despite supreme court rulings against much of Trump’s program US citizens will receive $5,000 if Republicans win midterms, Trump claims Sign up for the US Breaking News email Vice-president JD Vance will give the keynote address tonight, though Donald Trump is scheduled to make closing remarks to bring the made-for-television RNC event in Dallas to an end. “If the American people give Republicans another chance to govern, we’re going to create more prosperity,” Vance told Fox News after Trump’s speech last night. Continue reading...
UK ministers explore raising price of water for some users amid shortages
Environment Agency says talks under way about increasing prices for industrial users to try to reduce poor water management Ministers are exploring making water more expensive for some users, in the face of severe supply shortages. Despite the UK being a famously wet country, the precarious nature of the water supply has been made particularly acute this summer, with almost three-quarters of England and all of Wales in drought and 27 million people facing restrictions on their water use. Continue reading...
Ex-Tory campaign chief pleads guilty over election bet
Anthony Lee passed confidential information to his wife Laura Lee about when the 2024 election would be held.
Ex-Tory campaign chief pleads guilty over election bet
Anthony Lee passed confidential information to his wife Laura Lee about when the 2024 election would be held.
Flamingo Revolution: The Albanians protesting to bring down the elites – video
Thousands of protesters are flooding the streets of Tirana in the biggest unrest Albania has seen since the collapse of communism. It began as the “flamingo revolution”, sparked by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s plans for a luxury mega-resort on a public nature reserve island. But the protests have since grown into a wider challenge to Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government, which is accused of selling off Albania’s coastline to the elites. Matthew Cassel travels to Albania to see how an environmental fight over one island has escalated into a political battle over the country’s future. Continue reading...
Trump’s comments on the Falkland Islands reflect a fractured US-UK relationship
President suggested US might not help UK if Argentina tried to seize Falklands – a new low for UK-US ‘special relationship’ Last week, Donald Trump suggested in an interview with the British TV channel GB News that he might not help the UK if Argentina tried again to seize the Falkland Islands . It was a new low for UK-US relations. The “special relationship” (Winston Churchill’s phrase) was never perfect, but the UK helped the US on countless occasions, from Korea to Iraq to Afghanistan. The US often stood by the UK as well – although not during the Suez Crisis of 1956, but Ronald Reagan’s government provided significant intelligence and logistics support to Britain during the dust-up over the Falklands in 1982. That relationship is fading fast. Continue reading...
'Significant casualties' after fire on cargo ship in eastern China
President Xi Jinping has called for urgent search and rescue efforts.
Trump’s repeated threats to ‘wipe out’ Iran are normalizing mass violence | Mohamad Bazzi
The president’s latest warning barely registered, written off as typical behavior. But the threats have real-world consequences As the US and Iran fought around the strait of Hormuz last week, Donald Trump issued one of his typical threats. In an interview with a Fox News correspondent, Trump said Iran would be “totally wiped out as a country” if it retaliated for the latest wave of US air strikes. That threat by the US president to wipe out another country generated few headlines , even during a relatively slow news week by Trump administration standards. Continue reading...
Tourists in England face nightly levy on hotel and Airbnb stays under new plans
Labelled a tourist tax, proposals would give mayors power to decide how revenue raised should be invested UK politics live – latest updates Holidaymakers will face a nightly levy on hotel and Airbnb-style stays in England under plans ministers are due to outline to give mayors new powers. The idea, labelled a tourist tax, was first raised by Keir Starmer’s government in November and is similar to a scheme running in Scotland. It would allow mayors to charge a fee to visitors staying overnight and decide how the revenue raised should be invested. Continue reading...
Russian drones kill at least nine in strikes targeting warehouses and ports in Ukraine – Europe live
The strikes come after it was revealed that Ukraine’s president Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s plane was almost hit by a drone when leaving Moldova this week Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Nato allies interrupted a Russian plot training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints. Two 1,400 km subsea fiber-optic cables linking Svalbard to mainland Norway lie as deep as 2,700 metres below the sea’s surface. They carry vast amounts of satellite data downloaded at the SvalSat satellite ground station, the world’s largest and part of NASA’s Near Space Network. Continue reading...
Watch: Is Trump's $5,000 election pledge legal?
The US president has said every American will get $5,000 (£3,700) if the Republican Party wins November's midterms.
Trump pledges $5,000 to every adult American if Republicans win November elections
The controversial offer was made in a speech at the party's first-ever convention in the middle of a US presidential term.
How the fate of a small furry animal reveals the ecological tragedy of Israel’s war on Lebanon | Hisham Younes
The Syrian rock hyrax depends on the fragile landscapes of the border region. Alongside other environmentalists, I have been documenting the destruction of its habitat Wars are usually measured in the number of people killed, homes destroyed and towns erased. Far less attention is paid to what happens beneath the rubble. Across southern Lebanon, repeated large-scale detonations are not only causing human tragedy by demolishing villages , they are also destroying the ancient limestone habitats that have sheltered colonies of rock hyrax for centuries. As founder and president of Green Southerners, an environmental organisation documenting the ecological effects of war in southern Lebanon, I have been helping colleagues to record the damage inflicted on forests, wildlife and fragile ecosystems across the border region. Continue reading...
US citizens will receive $5,000 if Republicans win midterms, Trump claims in lengthy convention speech
President makes offer that would cost US over $1tn and asks voters to ‘pretend that I’m on the ballot’ despite being deeply unpopular among electorate Donald Trump pledged to pay every adult citizen in the US $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections, during a marathon speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in which the president assailed Democrats as “radical” and defended his unpopular war in Iran. The outlandish proposal, which would cost over $1tn, immediately raised ethical concerns. But it laid bare the extent of the Republicans’ concern about their prospects in the pivotal November elections. Continue reading...
Is Burnham trying to appease Trump? Or Reform? What other reason is there for these North Sea oil plans? | George Monbiot
Climate catastrophe is on our doorstep – yet Labour’s impending approval of further drilling will bring more pain for negligible gains Pinch yourself, it’s happening again. Here is a Labour government spending a vast amount of political capital to earn tiny material gains while risking huge political losses. It occurred repeatedly under Keir Starmer, and now – with the impending decision to approve further gas and oil drilling in the North Sea – it is happening under Andy Burnham. You rack your brains to explain it, but no rational explanation comes. Burnham is studiously cryptic about his reasons. His clearest statement to date goes as follows: “There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that.” Does he mean that oil and gas workers are struggling? If so, this decision will be of little use to them. The Jackdaw gasfield, likely to be approved this week, will generate a grand total of 27 direct full-time jobs . The Rosebank oilfield, whose approval is likely to follow soon, will support 450 UK-based jobs during its lifetime. Yet the UK’s net zero economy directly employs 300,000 people , and a further 400,000 jobs are planned. The rest of the green economy employs more than 600,000 . A just transition for fossil fuel workers, securing jobs in the green economy, is better for everyone. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
‘Fundamentally unfair’: Burnham must overhaul migration reforms, says TUC general secretary
Paul Nowak says changes to immigration rules risk overstretching social care and fuelling far-right sentiment Andy Burnham must overhaul Shabana Mahmood’s migration reforms or risk overstretching social care and fuelling far-right sentiment, the TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, has warned. Speaking ahead of the TUC’s annual congress in Brighton next week, Nowak welcomed the “sense of optimism” around Burnham’s fledgling government, but he urged the PM to act in a series of areas, including migration and the cost of living. Continue reading...
‘Scots are the kindest people on earth!’ Meet the Americans moving to Scotland
Since Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, there has been a 63% rise in Americans renting properties in Scotland. Politics is one reason – but there are many other surprising motivations … Four years ago, when Tammi Gaw, a 50-year-old property adviser, moved from Washington DC to Glasgow with her Scottish partner, friends and family laughed at her. “People back home kept asking me: ‘Ha ha, why would you want to move to Scotland, where it rains all the time?’ Now those same people are asking me: ‘Hey, how do I move there?’” They are not alone. According to data from Rightmove , 28% of inquiries from Americans about buying a home in the UK are about Scotland, a larger number than for London. And a recent survey from lettings platform Goodlord reported a 63% rise in the number of Americans renting properties in Scotland since Donald Trump’s re-election in November 2024. Continue reading...
John Major’s rise from obscure whip to PM part of new National Theatre season
Play is one of eight world premieres in programme with global conflict and political upheaval at its heart A new play about John Major’s rise to power, written by James Graham, will premiere at the National Theatre in London next year, as part of a season that puts political upheaval and global conflict at the heart of its programme. Major reunites Graham with Jeremy Herrin, the director behind the acclaimed parliamentary drama This House. It will chart Major’s emergence from relatively obscure whip to prime minister, taking over from Margaret Thatcher at a pivotal moment in Britain’s relationship with Europe. Continue reading...
‘They poison the population’: Swedish Muslims challenge far right ahead of election
Ask-a-Muslim campaign takes to streets as country faces prospect of extremists entering highest levels of government Not far from one of Scandinavia’s biggest shopping malls, Kashif Virk stood on the pavement, handing out flyers and smiling at those who passed by. On a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, the Swedish-born imam had taken to the street to invite people to ask him anything they had ever wanted to know about Islam. For years, Sweden’s far right has peddled its own, distorted view of Islam, portraying it as being at odds with Swedish values. The Ask-a-Muslim – or Fråga en Muslim – campaign, conceived by Virk in 2017, was his way of fighting back. Continue reading...
Trump claims he will give $5,000 to every American if Republicans win the midterms as he defends Iran war and tariffs– live
President provided no details about where the money would come from or the legality of the incentive Republicans look to ‘midterm convention’ to overcome Trump unpopularity Sign up for US Breaking News email Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of a longtime New Hampshire senator and former governor, has won the Democratic nomination in the race for Chris Pappas’s former House seat. Stefany Shaheen’s mother Jeanne Shaheen is a former governor who has represented New Hampshire in the Senate since 2009. The younger Shaheen’s family ties to the Democratic establishment – and accusations of nepotism – became a point of attack by her opponent in the primary race. Continue reading...
Instagram boss says users will be ‘overwhelmed’ with brand content in algorithm-free world
Adam Mosseri says platform’s algorithm ‘feels like a black box’ but company trying to give users more control after Labor announces opt-out plan Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our new political email , free app or daily news podcast Instagram’s chief executive has said users will have a worse experience in an algorithm-free world, seeing more brand-related content, and spend less time on the app. The comments come as the Australian government plans to give users the option to opt out of algorithms , with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announcing plans on Tuesday to require social media platforms to prompt users to choose between a feed of algorithm-recommended content or a reverse chronological feed of the pages users follow. Labor also plans to introduce a range of measures designed to address online harm on the sites. Continue reading...
Iran war will not end until after November US elections, says Trump
The president also tells reporters he does not think oil prices will come down until after the crucial November vote.
The Fire Within You review – overheated family Christmas boils up too many stereotypes
Venice film festival: Edoardo De Angelis’s claustrophobic drama brings a raging mother up from Naples for the holidays, with a capon. What could possibly not go wrong? If there were a Golden Lion award for the most Italian film in Venice competition it would go to Edoardo De Angelis’s squawking domestic spat of a picture which contains an imperious matriarch, a pained Catholic priest, an argumentative family, and food, so much food. Bowls are stirred and pans are brandished. Pots are seen rattling angrily on the stove. The festival organisers like to deploy a little judicious home cooking when it comes to the selection and De Angelis is already a favoured guest, having opened the 2023 event with his war drama Comandante . But I fear they may have miscalculated with this one. It’s overdone, on the turn and too liberally salted with tears. It’s liable to provoke the occasional stab of heartburn. At the head of the table sits the incorrigible Angela (Vanessa Scalera). She’s up from Naples (where she was presumably once a girl from the backstreets, begging in rags) to supervise Christmas Eve dinner at her son’s book-lined apartment in Milan. Angela’s a relic of the old world, breezily unreconstructed and openly disgusted by the woke state of her grandchildren. “One’s a gay dancer and the other’s a vegetarian,” she scoffs. They in turn are perturbed by the fact that she has brought in a live chicken to be cooked as the main course. Who’s going to catch it? Who’s going to kill it? What even is this creature, exactly? “It’s not a hen, it’s a capon,” sighs middle-aged Anto (Lino Musella), who dearly wishes his mother had never come at all. She’s a beautiful woman, he says, but she smells. Continue reading...
Met police launch inquiry into alleged overseas donations to Reform UK
Scotland Yard confirms it is investigating allegations broadcast by Channel 4 News after undercover sting The financial scandal around Reform UK has deepened as police expanded their investigation into allegations of illegal foreign donations and the elections watchdog said it was considering regulatory steps. Police confirmed on Wednesday they would broaden their inquiries into Reform after Channel 4 News broadcast an undercover sting by a group called Verbatim, in which a reporter posed as a foreign donor seeking to fund Reform. Continue reading...
Uganda to withdraw from Invictus Games ‘out of respect for King Charles’, says military chief
Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba announces decision to pull out in post on X, citing tensions over ‘Harry-Meghan nonsense’ Uganda is withdrawing from the Duke of Sussex’s Invictus Games, the country’s military chief has said, out of respect for King Charles amid division over the “Harry-Meghan nonsense”. Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of the Ugandan president, made the surprise announcement in a post on X on Wednesday. Continue reading...
The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s oil deal: Venezuela pays for his vanity | Editorial
The US president seized a nation’s natural wealth in a modern-day version of gunboat diplomacy to feed his ego – not to lower Americans’ fuel bills Imperialism does not require a flag to be planted or a governor dispatched. It can be a powerful nation deciding who governs a smaller, weaker country, and on what terms and for whose benefit its resources will be developed. Donald Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, putting his deputy – Delcy Rodríguez – in his place as president, and then her signing a deal handing a fifth of the country’s proven oil reserves to the US , amount to a modern version of 19th-century gunboat diplomacy. Regime change supplied America’s commercial concession. This won’t bother Mr Trump. But it should. The US president has oversold his neocolonial spoils. The additional production Venezuela is supposed to bring online might bring down oil prices eventually, but not anytime soon. Crucially, what Mr Trump calls “t he biggest oil deal in history ” won’t cause the price at the pump to fall before November’s midterms. When so many American voters are struggling to pay energy bills , it’s hard to see how unrealised Orinoco Belt riches are going to help Republican candidates. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here . Continue reading...
‘It’s a good start’: prominent Israelis welcome UK sanctions on illegal settlements
Ed Miliband’s intervention was ‘inevitable’ after Israeli government and security failures, say former ministers and diplomats Prominent Israelis have welcomed new UK sanctions as a necessary response to settlement expansion and spiralling violence in the occupied West Bank. The intervention was described – by the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, a former prime minister, an ex-head of the army and former ministers and diplomats – as an “inevitable consequence” of Israeli government and security failures. Continue reading...
Why is Trump silent on UK sanctions against Israeli West Bank settlements? – The Latest
The foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, is facing a backlash over the government’s sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank after the chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said the safety of British Jews could be at risk. Miliband has rejected the warnings, emphasising that ministers can confront the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government while also fighting antisemitism. US president Donald Trump, however, has failed to comment on the UK government’s action. Lucy Hough speaks to diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour Continue reading...
Trump’s top six falsehoods about 9/11 as 25th anniversary nears
US president often brings up al-Qaida attack that struck his home town New York City almost 25 years ago Donald Trump often brings up September 11, the devastating al-Qaida attack that struck his home town New York City almost 25 years ago. His recollections of that day have repeatedly included exaggerations and falsehoods – including this week, when he shared an anecdote at a White House event commemorating the attacks that appears to be untrue. Continue reading...
Merz accuses AfD of ‘ethnic cleansing’ policy and cancels call with Trump
German chancellor attacks Alternative für Deutschland after far-right party’s win in Saxony-Anhalt election Europe live – latest updates Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz , has accused the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) of seeking “ethnic cleansing” with its “remigration” drive, after the nativist party’s seismic weekend victory in a state election. In his first public confrontation with the AfD since Sunday’s shock outcome in Saxony-Anhalt , Merz said at a raucous parliamentary debate that the far-right party would take an axe to one of the pillars of the German economy with a racist campaign of mass deportations. Continue reading...
Farage is clearly struggling – I saw that for myself. But his legacy will be a poison that runs deep | Andy Beckett
The mood at the Reform conference was volatile and brittle. But the forces massing further to the right of the party are testament to its impact For much of the time since Nigel Farage resumed the Reform UK leadership two long years ago, his party has been an island of relative stability in the increasingly rough sea of British politics. While other parties plunged queasily in the polls, messily purged dissidents, argued publicly about their direction and changed leaders, Farage dominated Reform UK and gave impregnably self-assured interviews. The party’s popularity moved steadily upwards, comfortably above that of all the others. It is a paradox that a new party with wildly expectant members, not many experienced politicians and few properly worked-out policies became the pole around which the country’s political debate revolved, and yet this seemed to do no harm to Reform’s chances of winning the next general election. As with rising rightwing populist parties across the world, Reform’s tendency to make it up as it went along appeared to be not a weakness but, for many voters, much of its appeal. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Hurrah, lie-ins may be good for us – if only I can convince my five-year-old daughter | Arwa Mahdawi
CEOs may like to get up at the crack of dawn and go for a run, but I prefer optimising my life with lie-ins, trashy films, swearing and coffee This evening I’m going to tuck my five-year-old into bed and read her a chapter from one of her princess books, followed by a summary of research recently presented at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology. Once upon a time, I’ll tell her, there was a scientist called Dr Nawon Lee who authored a study that found having a weekend lie-in may be very good for you and can protect against high blood pressure. Our accomplished protagonist Dr Lee said: “People should not feel lazy or guilty for sleeping a little longer on the weekend.” And the moral of this story, dear child, is that you should try not to wake your mothers up at 6am every day. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that all the peer-reviewed science in the world will convince my early riser to have a weekend lie-in. Still, as a big fan of sleep and someone who has never once felt guilty for hitting the snooze button, I have to say I feel vindicated by this new study. CEOs can get up at 4am and run 10 miles before eating five foraged mushrooms if they want to, but I’m going to protect my heart health by sleeping in, any opportunity I can get, thank you very much. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here . Continue reading...
State handouts, 10,000 lasers – and Trump’s election: six things we learned from the Elon Musk film
Alex Gibney’s marathon documentary delivers numerous eye-raising insights into the broligarch’s business deals, early idealism and apocalyptic appetite for fathering children Veteran documentarian Alex Gibney’s film about the richest broligarch on the planet has been one of the most eagerly anticipated films at the Venice film festival this year. The Oscar-winning 72-year-old, who has in previous films taken on the US military, the Catholic church, Vladimir Putin and Scientology, has been investigating the tech tycoon’s ascent and speaking to people in his orbit since late 2022, before his Maga turn and Trump 2.0. The result clocks in at just under four hours and presents a comprehensive answer to how on earth one man managed to amass so much money and political influence. It is shocking less for any individual new pieces of information Gibney has unearthed than for its totality. Here are six things the film tells us: Continue reading...
‘Cantona’s a Kwengletarian!’ Inside the maximalist, magical mentality of rising London Irish rapper Kibo
The masterful Harrow MC behind the year’s funniest, most inventive UK rap debut explains how his parents sparked his ravenous outlook – and why he’s wrestling his peers A few Guinnesses into an interview in his local Irish boozer, and 26-year-old Harrow rapper Kibo is cooking. We’re talking football. As a kid, he preferred playing Fifa Street – where ordinary players backflip off walls to score incomprehensible bicycle kicks – to regular realistic Fifa. “If I’m gonna play a video game, I want to do some shit I can’t do in real life,” he says. He’s drawn to similarly miraculous footballers: Balotelli , Drogba in his Chelsea days, Ronaldinho and his dad’s favourite, Eric Cantona: “Oh God, with his collar popped, looking like Kanye West?” Kibo then recites Cantona’s 2019 Uefa president’s award speech – a mash-up of King Lear and philosophical musings on war and science – to near perfection. Magic is at the heart of Kwengletarianism, “the idea of being in a place that’s very grey, and trying to find a prismatic iridescence in it”, that underpins Kibo’s sensational album Kwengletaria: Ragamyff. (Cantona? “He’s a Kwengletarian to the nth degree.”) During his long rise through London’s rap scene, canonised by co-signs from Skepta, JME and Dave, Kibo has become a rare MC from Harrow, the town that produced Kate Nash and Jai Paul but no rappers of note. “It’s awesome,” he says of its lack of rap tradition, “a complete blank slate” to be as imaginative as he wants. Kwengletaria finds the myth in the mundane: on the track Bakerloo Dragon, a normal tube journey becomes a cruising broken-beat roller aboard a fire-spitting Bakerloo line train. I tell him my train to Harrow was one of these flame-graffitied dragons. “But did you get any sparks?” he asks enthusiastically. “You get sparks after Stonebridge Park!” Continue reading...
‘Ruin and decay bring a chance of rebirth’: Hidetaka Miyazaki on uniting players in a damaged world
As FromSoftware’s new multiplayer game The Duskbloods nears release, the legendary game director behind Dark Souls talks connection, pessimism and of course, feet Since 2009’s Demon’s Souls, Japanese video game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has shown the world a different way to think about game design. His games defy convention with punishing fights, obscure rules, and unknowable, inhospitable worlds. The “Soulslike” genre – named after Demon’s Souls and its sequel Dark Souls – is now ubiquitous, influencing multimillion-sellers from God of War and Star Wars: Jedi to Hollow Knight. Miyazaki’s most recent success, 2022’s Elden Ring , which credited Game of Thrones author George RR Martin as a co-creator, sold over 30m copies and inspired Alex Garland to adapt it for the big screen at A24. It earned Miyazaki a spot on Time magazine’s “most influential” list, an accolade he shares with just one other game developer: Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyazaki is now 51 and has been FromSoftware’s president since 2014, elevated from game designer to CEO after the success of the Souls series. He has a cherubic face that could pass for 35. He rarely speaks publicly, and never on camera. When he does speak, he answers questions like one of his characters – softly, sadly, his head bowed, making eye-contact only when I am speaking. Outside the studio where we speak is the sprawl of Tokyo’s Shinjuku, an ever-changing maze where tourists get lost and pop-up stores appear and vanish without a trace. Today, a J-pop band performs in the square as the cicadas scream from the trees. A gilded statue of Malania, one of Elden Ring’s toughest bosses, looms over this dimly lit conference room inside From’s headquarters, a bonfire checkpoint away from the chaos. Continue reading...
Tell us: do you think AI has made Google search better or worse?
As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting. “AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, wrote last August . In May, the company said more AI is coming . Continue reading...
Announcing the Packaging Council Election Candidates for 2026!
Announcing the 17 nominees for the inaugural Python Packaging Council election, and how to vote in the election.
Get Ready: 2026 Python Packaging Council Nominations Opening Soon!
The inaugural Python Packaging Council election nomination period opens on Tuesday, July 28th, 2:00 pm UTC and closes on Tuesday, August 11th, 2:00 pm UTC.
crates.io: development update
Another six months have passed since our last development update , and the crates.io team has been busy. Here's a summary of the most notable changes and improvements made to crates.io since then. Source Code Viewer Crate pages now have a "Code" tab that lets you browse the contents of published crate versions directly on crates.io. This shows you the exact files that cargo downloads when you add a crate as a dependency, which might differ from the linked repository. This makes it much easier to audit your dependencies, including files that never appear in the repository, like the normalized Cargo.toml files that cargo generates. The viewer comes with a file tree sidebar with search functionality, syntax highlighting, and GitHub-style line selection, where clicking or dragging line numbers produces shareable #L10-L20 URLs. Under the hood, the server now builds a zip file for every published version. Since the .crate files that cargo consumes are gzipped tarballs without random access support, a background job re-packs each of them into a seekable zip archive plus a JSON manifest describing the contained files. Both are served from our static CDN. The frontend then fetches only the manifest and loads each file on demand with an HTTP range request. Because of this architecture, browsing crate sources essentially adds no load on the crates.io API servers. Existing crate versions have been backfilled, so this works for old releases too. The rendering library behind the code viewer is a diff renderer at heart, and that's no accident: a version-to-version diff viewer built on the same infrastructure is currently in the works. This will allow you to review exactly what changed between two published versions, right on crates.io. Stay tuned! Untangling crates.io Accounts from GitHub At the end of May, the crates.io team accepted RFC #3946 . Crates.io accounts always have been tightly coupled to GitHub: signing in means "Log in with GitHub", and your crates.io identity is your GitHub username. The RFC changes that. It introduces usernames that are native to crates.io and independent of linked GitHub accounts, as a prerequisite for eventually supporting login via other identity providers. The implementation of crates.io usernames has started, but there is still a lot left to do, most visibly the ability to change your crates.io username. After that is complete, there will be future RFCs and implementation for signing in with identity providers other than GitHub. Since all of this touches authentication and account security, we are deliberately taking it slow and rolling these changes out in small, carefully reviewed steps. Advisories and Suggestions In our January update we introduced the "Security" tab, which shows security advisories from the RustSec database. We have since taken this integration one step further: crates that RustSec has flagged as unmaintained now show a warning banner directly on their crate pages, linking to the corresponding advisory for details and possible alternatives. Thanks to Dirkjan Ochtman for implementing this feature! Related to this, some popular crates have been largely absorbed into the Rust standard library over the years, like lazy_static , which has been superseded by std::sync::LazyLock since Rust 1.80. Crate pages of such crates now show a friendly "You might not need this dependency" banner describing the standard library replacement, and superseded crates in dependency lists get a small light bulb icon with a similar hint. The dataset behind this feature lives in the new rust-lang/std-replacement-data repository, together with a documented inclusion policy: standard library replacements only, every entry must cite the stable std , core , or alloc API and Rust version, and crate maintainers get a notice-and-comment window before an entry is added. New entries can be proposed upstream and can benefit other tools too. Ferris The most delightful change of this cycle: the Ferris on our error pages now follows your mouse cursor with its eyes: Getting a 404 error on crates.io is now slightly less sad. Svelte Frontend Migration Completed In our January update , we announced that we were experimenting with porting the crates.io frontend from Ember.js to Svelte . This experiment has concluded successfully: the new frontend reached feature parity, went through a public testing phase in April, became the default at the beginning of May, and the Ember.js app has been removed from our repository. We designed this change to be invisible for our users, since the new frontend is a 1:1 port of the previous design and functionality. For the team and our contributors, however, it is a big deal: the frontend is now built on a more modern framework, which should make it easier for new contributors to get started. It also allows us to iterate faster, as the source code viewer above demonstrates. We want to thank the Ember.js team for a framework that served crates.io well for many years, and the Svelte team for making the transition so enjoyable. Miscellaneous These were some of the more visible changes to crates.io over the past six months, but a lot has happened "under the hood" as well: Search performance : Relevance-sorted search queries previously ranked every crate matching the query, which could take 1-2 seconds for short or common search terms. Ranking is now bounded to the 1,000 matching crates with the highest recent download counts. Reverse dependencies performance : The reverse dependencies endpoint no longer recomputes the full dependent set on every request. It is now served from a precomputed table kept in sync by database triggers, turning an expensive join into a bounded index scan and greatly reducing the chance of getting a timeout error. New ARCHITECTURE.md : If you've ever wondered how crates.io actually works, our ARCHITECTURE.md document got a complete rewrite. It is now organized around the high-level systems that make up crates.io and how they fit together, and includes walkthroughs of what happens when you run cargo publish , why a typical crate download never touches our API servers, and how download counts are derived from CDN access logs. Definition lists : READMEs now render Markdown definition lists , a widely used Markdown extension. Our markdown renderer comrak already supported them, the extension just wasn't enabled yet. Thanks to @mistaste for this contribution! CDN cache tags : Files uploaded to our static CDN now carry cache-tag metadata, allowing us to invalidate all cached files of a crate or a specific release in a single operation, instead of issuing one invalidation per file URL. Caching improvements : We removed a global Vary: Cookie response header that was preventing our CDNs from caching public API responses and frontend assets effectively. Per-user responses now use Cache-Control: no-store instead, resulting in better cache hit rates at the CDN edge. Accessibility : We have made crates.io friendlier to screen readers: decorative icons are now hidden from the accessibility tree, heading hierarchies have been fixed, and lists are marked up as proper lists. ARIA snapshot tests now ensure that regressions can't slip in unnoticed. We plan to continue to improve crates.io accessibility over the coming months. Git index performance : The background worker's local clone of the git index is now a bare and shallow repository, eliminating roughly 250,000 checked-out files and the full commit history from its disk, improving its performance as we see increased rates of crate publication. The periodic index squashing now goes through the GitHub API instead of generating large git packs locally, which had previously caused out-of-memory failures on the production worker. Feedback We hope you enjoyed this update on the development of crates.io. If you have any feedback or questions, please let us know on Zulip or GitHub . We are always happy to hear from you and are looking forward to your feedback!
Packaging Council Inaugural Election Dates
A new Python Packaging Council (PPC) is being established, with their election of the inaugural PPC will be held in parallel to the 2026 PSF Board election.