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The TelegraphEducationNew York
How children’s YouTube entertainer Ms Rachel became the ‘cuddly face’ of the pro-Palestine movement

How children’s YouTube entertainer Ms Rachel became the ‘cuddly face’ of the pro-Palestine movement

From Andy Pandy onwards, children’s TV has been an apolitical sanctuary where parents can relax, knowing their little ones are being entertained by hosts as politically neutral as Topsy and Tim. It is an unwritten rule that presenters – whether on Blue Peter or CBeebies Bedtime Stories – steer clear of controversial topics both inside and outside the studio.

5h ago
The GuardianScandalLondon
Ranulph Fiennes’ stepson appeals for funds to ‘locate and safeguard’ the explorer

Ranulph Fiennes’ stepson appeals for funds to ‘locate and safeguard’ the explorer

Alexander Millington-Cotes is concerned for welfare of the 82-year-old, who hasn’t been seen in public for two years The stepson of Sir Ranulph Fiennes has launched a crowdfunder to pay for “specialist legal advice” in an attempt to locate the explorer, who hasn’t been seen in public for more than two years. Alexander Millington-Cotes, 31, has set a target of £55,000 for the fundraiser, to enable him to instruct lawyers to “locate and safeguard” Fiennes.

2d ago
The GuardianPoliticiansNorth West England
Burnham dodges questions on Heathrow third runway as project faces four-year delay

Burnham dodges questions on Heathrow third runway as project faces four-year delay

Airport chiefs say 2035 operations deadline unachievable as critics say new delay makes case for project ‘even more dubious’ Plans for a third runway at Heathrow are once again up in the air after the prime minister refused to say whether he backs the “contested” project which is delayed by up to four years. Over the weekend it emerged that ​Heathrow no longer expects to meet the original 2035 deadline. Instead, the airport hopes to secure planning permission by 2029 and then open the runway “within a decade”, meaning it would not be operational until 2039.

1d ago
The TelegraphElectionsNorth West England
Burnham refuses to back ‘contested’ Heathrow third runway

Burnham refuses to back ‘contested’ Heathrow third runway

Andy Burnham has refused to back plans for a third runway at Heathrow in a break with previous government enthusiasm for the £49bn scheme.The Prime Minister said the runway was a “contested issue” and primarily a matter for Londoners, whose views should be taken “seriously” when considering the proposals. The apparent shift in the government’s position – decades into debate about Heathrow expansion – will anger union chiefs at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool.

1d ago
The GuardianScandalUnited Kingdom
As it happened: ‘Orange Order can wait for weeks,’ claims DUP leader as controversial march delayed amid huge protest

As it happened: ‘Orange Order can wait for weeks,’ claims DUP leader as controversial march delayed amid huge protest

DUP’s Gavin Robinson says loyalists have ‘steadfast determination’ to march on Catholic enclave in Portadown Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill, at the scene of the counter-protest this morning also spoke alongside Mary Lou McDonald. O’Neill said she had called on Northern Ireland secretary Chris Bryant to intervene. She told reporters: “Does anybody think that this is a good idea? No right-minded person would make this decision. “I still do not know the answer to this question - why, after 28 years of determination to block a march down this road, the Parades Commission thought that this was the right idea today to bring this mess back onto this community?” Local MP Carla Lockhart, from the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, posted this morning on X describing the marchers as a “dignified grouping of men, walking silently down Garvaghy Road”. She included a photo of the small group in suits, wearing orange silk sashes and black bowler hats and carrying a banner. “There is no threat, no triumphalism, not even music. There is nothing to fear. The rule of law must prevail,” she wrote.

1d ago
The GuardianScandalNorthern Ireland - East
Drumcree standoff shows Northern Ireland’s troubled past still threatens its peace

Drumcree standoff shows Northern Ireland’s troubled past still threatens its peace

Governments will be hoping row over the contentious Orange Order march down Garvaghy Road can be defused Like a ghost from its troubled past Drumcree has unexpectedly reappeared to remind people of how far Northern Ireland has changed in 30 years but also how easily history can undermine the present, if imperfect, peace and stability. Three decades ago parts of Northern Ireland came to an almost annual standstill as Protestant Orange Order protesters blocked roads in support of members wanting to march down what they called its traditional route, the Garvaghy Road, on the Sunday before the annual 12 July parade.

1d ago
The GuardianPublic PolicyLondon
‘You were right’: Ed Miliband tells critics Labour was wrong on Gaza

‘You were right’: Ed Miliband tells critics Labour was wrong on Gaza

Foreign secretary will tell party’s conference ‘we are not here to accept the status quo but to change it’ Ed Miliband will tell campaigners and party members who raised the plight of Palestinians they were right that Labour’s approach had not been enough, saying he was heeding the calls of millions of people by imposing sanctions on Israeli settlements. The foreign secretary will tell the Labour party conference that the government will take more explicitly progressive foreign policy positions under Andy Burnham, and that the UK will be a leader among like-minded countries in a new age of diplomacy.

18h ago
The GuardianHumanityKenya
Kikuyu Land review – the colonial-era misery behind our morning cup of tea

Kikuyu Land review – the colonial-era misery behind our morning cup of tea

The impact of colonial then corporate agricultural development is unravelled in a sobering documentary that takes a dramatic turn when a family secret is discovered The central highlands of Kenya are renowned for their lush tea plantations, which stretch as far as the eye can see. Most of the field workers come from the Kikuyu community, whose farming traditions span centuries. In Andrew Harrison Brown and Bea Wangondu’s sobering documentary, these resplendent vistas are also enshrouded in misery. Opening with a televised speech by Evelyn Baring, the colonial governor of Kenya during the 1950s, the film lays out the imperialist impetus behind Britain’s agricultural development of the country. The Kikuyu people were stripped of their ancestral lands, their labour extracted to enrich their colonisers. This system of inequality continues until now, with multinational corporations taking up the playbook of exploitation left by colonial control. An investigative journalist, Wangondu also appears on screen weaving together a multitude of narratives. There’s the decades-long struggle for justice undertaken by Mr Mungai, a pastor and activist who has fought numerous court cases to reclaim his family land. Wangondu talks to plantation workers of past and present, whose harrowing ordeals of physical and sexual violence have been swept under the carpet by both corporate indifference and government corruption. We also hear from an officer in the national intelligence service, who reveals the gruesome methods used by the state to dispose of its critics. These interviews conjure a menacing atmosphere of intimidation and retaliation, from which there seems no way out.

16h ago
The TelegraphHumanityFrance
Bardella faces allegations of anti-Semitism over ‘old messages’

Bardella faces allegations of anti-Semitism over ‘old messages’

Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s National Rally (RN) party, has angrily denied allegations that he wrote a series of virulently anti-Semitic messages when he was a teenage activist. In the messages, published by Mediapart, an investigative website, Mr Bardella is alleged to have written: “All the banks are owned by Jews.” The website also quoted him as having written in a chat: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.” Another of his alleged messages said: “And that is what they want: a New World Order dominated by Israel, with Jerusalem as the capital, of course.” The messages are potentially damaging as they directly challenge the RN’s long-standing assertion that it has “de-demonised” the party from its racist and anti-Semitic past.

3h ago
The GuardianHealthcareTexas
Why has abortion faded from America’s national conversation? | Moira Donegan

Why has abortion faded from America’s national conversation? | Moira Donegan

The US has already grown used to the horror caused by abortion bans. And Republicans have sought to quash the stories Abortion has faded from the headlines since the Dobbs decision of 2022, and Republicans like it that way. In the immediate aftermath of the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, as millions of women lost access to the dignity and self-determination that abortion provided them, clinics shut their doors, and the extent of Dobbs’s horrendously adverse public health implications started to become clear, abortion was always, it seemed, in the headlines. There were plenty of stories. There was the first known woman to die as the result of an abortion ban; and then the second; and then the third. There were the various lawsuits and ballot initiatives that for a while turned access off and on and then off again in various states; then there were the state supreme court elections, races that were newly transformed by the abortion debate and on which the health and status of a state’s women now relied. There were the clinics that shut their doors in Republican-controlled states, many of which had provided the essential, stigmatized care for decades, under hostile conditions, with persistence and innovation and determination that were staggering. But the stories have faded from the headlines as the years have gone by. Feminism has gone dramatically out of style, with the big women’s rights NGOs wounded enough by Dobbs and attacks from the Trump administration that they have been largely unable to push their agenda in either media or policy, and algorithmic social media driving a rise in gender conservatism and politicized misogyny, particularly among young men. But maybe more importantly, abortion has ceased to be a story because the horrors of abortion bans have ceased to be news: the US has grown used to the swift and dramatic erosion of women’s health and status that has followed Dobbs, grown used to the horror stories and upward ticking body counts, grown into ease, and even a kind of compliant boredom, with women’s death and indignity.

10h ago
The GuardianImmigrationUnited Kingdom
Angela Rayner stands by attack on care worker visa reforms ahead of Labour conference

Angela Rayner stands by attack on care worker visa reforms ahead of Labour conference

Housing secretary says Home Office moved goalposts with ‘disruptive’ change to permanent residence rules Angela Rayner has stood by her criticism of Home Office reforms that would make it harder for foreign care workers to claim permanent residence in the UK, describing them as “disruptive”. Last year, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, announced that low paid migrants on jobs below graduate level would have to be in the country for 15 years before applying for settlement. Rayner previously attacked the plans as being “un-British”.

2d ago
The GuardianCrime & SafetySouth West England
Counter-terror police investigate Iran link over suspected bomb plot at RAF base used by US

Counter-terror police investigate Iran link over suspected bomb plot at RAF base used by US

Five men arrested on terrorism charges after explosives found near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire Counter-terrorism police are investigating whether Iran is behind a suspected bomb plot after armed officers found explosives on three vans parked minutes from an RAF base used by the US military. The Guardian understands that after five men were arrested on terrorism charges, investigators were examining materials found in the vans, with an initial view being they were consistent with improvised explosive devices.

15h ago
Irish IndependentWar & ConflictSouth West England
Police declare major incident at UK's Fairford air base, used by US air forces

Police declare major incident at UK's Fairford air base, used by US air forces

British police said on Sunday they had arrested several men on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act and the army was examining a number of vehicles after security was stepped up at a British air base used by US air forces in southwest England. The British government gave authorisation to the US to use RAF Fairford to carry out strikes on Iranian missile sites that are attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

1d ago
The GuardianAIUSA
AI leaders have known about the extinction threat for decades | Judith Levine

AI leaders have known about the extinction threat for decades | Judith Levine

Scientists and entrepreneurs knew the dangers of AI a quarter-century ago. But animated by curiosity and profit, they went ahead anyway Over the past few weeks, many of us have struggled to concoct a mental image of brains in the cloud jumping their “sandbox”, sneaking onto the internet, recruiting “swarms” of other “agents” to cheat on a test, and, after discussing the ethics of the act, hacking into a wiki platform with the weird name Hugging Face. We knew that artificial intelligence was devouring our jobs, degrading our kids’ education, and deepfaking our politics; that datacenters were sucking up our water and electricity and sending us the bills. But until 8 September, when the Anthropic computer scientist Jacob Coxon posted his existential terror on Twitter/X, few of us suspected AI might be endangering our survival.

12h ago
The GuardianHumanityUSA
Trump’s deportations to third countries violate human rights, UN experts warn

Trump’s deportations to third countries violate human rights, UN experts warn

Sending migrants to countries they do not come from can have deadly consequences and must be halted, says report The deportation of thousands of migrants from the US to third countries has set off a “cascade of human rights violations” that could have “deadly” consequences, two dozen UN human rights experts have warned. Since Donald Trump returned to power in 2025, the US government has been offering millions of dollars to foreign governments to take in migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, with no ties to their countries. Deals have been struck with 35 nations, nearly a third of them in Africa.

5h ago
The GuardianEducationMassachusetts
Decades of fossil fuel influence paved way for Trump’s assault on university research, study says

Decades of fossil fuel influence paved way for Trump’s assault on university research, study says

Fossil fuel firms have spent years trying to regulate climate research by donating to US universities, study authors argue Recent attacks on US universities by the Trump administration have built on decades of efforts by libertarian donor networks, fossil fuel companies and conservative thinktanks to reshape university governance and increase outside influence, according to a new study. The authors of the new perspective study argue that the erosion of university autonomy has left colleges more vulnerable to corporate interests, especially within climate and energy research.

10h ago
Daily PostScandal
Ireland players refuse handshakes with Israel, bow heads during anthem

Ireland players refuse handshakes with Israel, bow heads during anthem

Republic of Ireland players declined to shake hands with their Israeli counterparts and bowed their heads during Israel’s national anthem before Sunday’s UEFA Nations League match in Hungary. The Irish team also did not exchange pennants with Israel before kick-off, in a pre-match gesture that came amid controversy surrounding the fixture and the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. […] Ireland players refuse handshakes with Israel, bow heads during anthem

13h ago
The TelegraphFinanceNorth West England
Man City charges no different to doping, says Hull City owner

Man City charges no different to doping, says Hull City owner

Manchester City have been likened to an athlete who wins an Olympic medal through doping by Acun Ilicali, the Hull City owner, after being found guilty of widespread financial rule breaches. Ilicali, who is the first Premier League owner to speak out since the verdict, stressed that he did not know whether City were guilty, but highlighted how it would affect clubs lower down the league if spending rules had been disregarded on such a scale.

39m ago
Irish IndependentScandalUnited Kingdom
Louth TD ‘honoured to stand with the brilliant people of the Garvaghy Road’ during weekend protest

Louth TD ‘honoured to stand with the brilliant people of the Garvaghy Road’ during weekend protest

Louth Sinn Féin TDs Ruairí Ó Murchú and Joanna Byrne joined local councillors and hundreds of residents on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown over the weekend to oppose the Orange Order’s controversial march through the nationalist area, as tensions surrounding one of the North’s most contentious parade routes resurfaced. The contested route for the Orange Order parade, being held for the first time in 28 years after last-ditch court battles on Saturday night failed, focused the spotlight once again on the Garvaghy Road.

10h ago
The GuardianCombat SportsSouth Wales
Frank Warren believes Fury v Joshua fight will go ahead after threat of collapse

Frank Warren believes Fury v Joshua fight will go ahead after threat of collapse

Tyson Fury says Anthony Joshua is ‘trying to pull out’ Promotional tension blamed for late jeopardy Frank Warren believes the proposed fight between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua will still take place in Cardiff in December despite widespread concern on Saturday that the bout could be on the brink of collapse yet again. Warren, who has promoted Fury for years, told the Guardian: “It will still happen because the Saudis will sue the arses off them if it doesn’t. The Saudis are putting up the money. They’re the paymasters and so I think it will happen.” On Saturday morning, Fury had suggested that the fight was in serious jeopardy: “Breaking news. Anthony Joshua and Eddie Hearn are trying to pull out of this fight. They’re saying they’re not gonna fight now. It’s mainly to do with Eddie Hearn’s ego. He’s making up a million different things and threatening ‘we’re not gonna fight, we’re not gonna fight, we’re not gonna fight’. He’s cost us the biggest fight in boxing history. Clown.”

2d ago
The GuardianHumanityUSA
Texas Republican called for public execution of Democratic leaders – report

Texas Republican called for public execution of Democratic leaders – report

Bo French, who is running to lead a state agency, has in the past posted controversial and racist statements online Bo French, a Texas Republican running to lead a powerful state agency, has a history of making controversial social media posts, including calling for the public execution of Democratic leaders, according to a recent investigation from CNN’s KFile team. French, who is running to lead Texas’s railroad commission, has recently faced criticism from members of his own party after making a racist post on social media. Powerful Republicans, including Texas senator John Cornyn, said they would not support French in the upcoming election.

6h ago
The GuardianAIUSA
AI godfathers warn of runaway ‘intelligence explosion’

AI godfathers warn of runaway ‘intelligence explosion’

OpenAI chief scientist also among authors of report on prospect of ‘most consequential technological development in history’ Two of the “godfathers” of modern AI and senior executives at OpenAI and Anthropic have warned governments to prepare for an AI “intelligence explosion”, which they say could be the most consequential technological development in history. A report co-authored by the Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, considered godfathers of modern AI for their work in the field, urges politicians to act now before there is runaway progress in the technology.

7h ago