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The GuardianHumanityUSA
The trans CIA official ousted by Trump: ‘We’re a government crippled by its own decisions’

The trans CIA official ousted by Trump: ‘We’re a government crippled by its own decisions’

Julia Curlee, a former senior CIA officer, speaks on Trump administration’s purge of national security staff, attacks on DEI and failures in Iran war When the White House fired Julia Curlee from her senior intelligence position in March 2025, her boss had an odd request: please still show up to work on Monday, but be “discreet”. The longtime CIA analyst had served in Donald Trump’s first term, briefing Vice-President Mike Pence; worked for Joe Biden as a national security director; and stayed on for Trump’s return. She had known her days might be numbered as the incoming White House was ousting national security staffers en masse. Curlee is also transgender, which made her particularly vulnerable as the new administration made anti-trans policies a top priority. But she didn’t understand her boss’s message until she opened her phone and saw the X post:

21h ago
The GuardianHumanity
All supporting acts withdraw from Ed Sheeran’s tour in solidarity with Macklemore

All supporting acts withdraw from Ed Sheeran’s tour in solidarity with Macklemore

Three openers and live band for Sheeran’s tour depart after removal of Macklemore over ‘free Palestine’ comments All four supporting acts for upcoming dates of Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour have withdrawn in solidarity with fellow opening act Macklemore, as backlash grows to his removal from the tour over onstage comments in support of Palestine. Finneas, the singer who was scheduled to open for Sheeran on six South American dates in November, withdrew from the tour on Tuesday afternoon, hours after Sheeran posted his own lengthy statement to Instagram explaining pressure from venue owners to remove Macklemore for pro-Palestine comments made during two shows at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.

11h ago
BBCPoliticians
All support acts on Ed Sheeran's US tour quit after Macklemore dropped

All support acts on Ed Sheeran's US tour quit after Macklemore dropped

All of the remaining support acts on Ed Sheeran's US tour have quit, after the rapper Macklemore was dropped from the line-up for making pro-Palestinian remarks on stage. Among them were Finneas, the brother of pop star Billie Eilish, who said in a statement: "Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed." Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe and Danish band Lukas Graham also announced their departure.

11h ago
The GuardianPoliticiansUSA
Kash Patel defends FBI hiring policy on applicants who have engaged in bestiality

Kash Patel defends FBI hiring policy on applicants who have engaged in bestiality

Senators question FBI chief on move to cut restrictions on agent applicants who have engaged in bestiality US politics live – latest updates FBI director Kash Patel defended his agency’s decision to roll back restrictions on agent applicants who have previously engaged in bestiality, arguing the FBI “did not want to punish victims of bestiality” by automatically disqualifying them. The unusual topic of bestiality emerged during a Senate judiciary committee oversight hearing on Tuesday after Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican John Kennedy questioned Patel’s decision to remove barriers that previously prevented applicants who engaged in prostitution and bestiality from being qualified for a job at the FBI.

16h ago
The GuardianWar & ConflictYorkshire & the Humber
Army officers ‘let down’ soldier over sexual assault claim before she killed herself, court martial told

Army officers ‘let down’ soldier over sexual assault claim before she killed herself, court martial told

Court hears that two officers did not deal properly with allegation Jaysley Beck made against a superior Two army officers “let down” a teenage soldier who went on to kill herself when they did not deal properly with a sexual assault allegation she made against a superior, a court martial has heard. Jaysley Beck, 19, told Col Samantha Shepherd that she had been touched on the leg by a warrant officer during a social event at an adventure training exercise, the court was told.

15h ago
Middle East ForumHumanityTurkey
Hamas Given Platform to Cultivate Jihadist Youth Among Millions of Turkish Students

Hamas Given Platform to Cultivate Jihadist Youth Among Millions of Turkish Students

A Hamas leader’s son was given a prominent platform inside Turkey’s government-backed religious education ecosystem, a nationwide network serving some 10 million alumni and directly catering to more than 1.2 million pupils, providing fertile ground for militant jihadist messaging with the political blessing of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The extraordinary access afforded to Abdusselam Haniye, son of slain Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniye, was on display in Turkey’s northeastern province of Trabzon on September 5, when he addressed a meeting organized by the ÖNDER Association of İmam Hatip Graduates (ÖNDER İmam Hatipliler Derneği), a powerful, state-backed organization representing alumni of religious institutions known as imam hatip schools that are funded by taxpayers’ money.

11h ago
The GuardianSustainabilityIndonesia
The women saving Borneo: battling fire, patriarchy and super El Niño on Indonesia’s peatland frontlines

The women saving Borneo: battling fire, patriarchy and super El Niño on Indonesia’s peatland frontlines

Fire threatens Kalimantan’s rainforests. On the peatland frontlines, a group of local mothers is defending their community. Words and Photography: Garry Lotulung Irma puts on her heavy rubber boots as she prepares for a volunteer firefighting shift in her village of Sungai Putri, on the Indonesian side of Borneo island. Dressed in full safety gear she heads into fire zones on her motorbike, the air thick with toxic smoke.

7h ago
The GuardianScandalBrazil
Ferocious fight among Brazil’s supreme court erupts on eve of presidential election

Ferocious fight among Brazil’s supreme court erupts on eve of presidential election

Scandal explodes as country’s election campaign peaks, with polls suggesting dead heat between candidates Brazil’s supreme court has been thrust into what experts consider the greatest crisis since the return of democracy in the 1980s, as two rival judges lock horns on the eve of the presidential election with unpredictable consequences for Latin America’s largest democracy. The politically charged dispute exploded into public view on Tuesday as judges traded insults and accusations during a heated supreme court hearing that was livestreamed into millions of Brazilian homes.

13h ago
The GuardianElectionsBrazil
‘A coin flip’: on the campaign trail as Brazil’s far right edges back to power

‘A coin flip’: on the campaign trail as Brazil’s far right edges back to power

Neck-and-neck with Lula in polls, Flávio Bolsonaro fires up his base in the bellwether state of Minas Gerais – starting at the scene of his father’s stabbing A giant banner of Brazil’s incarcerated former president Jair Bolsonaro fluttered in the morning breeze as his eldest son, Flávio, touched down at an airfield on the fringe of a city that will soon help decide the future of one of the biggest democracies on earth. “Brazil is rudderless. Brazil has no president and Brazil needs a president – and that president is Flávio Bolsonaro,” the far-right senator declared as he waded into the flock of supporters who had gathered to welcome him to Juiz de Fora, one of the largest cities in the battleground state of Minas Gerais.

1d ago
The GuardianHumanityAustralia
Australia’s Indigenous population estimated at 2.2m before ‘demographic catastrophe’ of colonisation

Australia’s Indigenous population estimated at 2.2m before ‘demographic catastrophe’ of colonisation

Study finds earlier numbers were underestimated, suggesting impact of diseases and massacres were much greater than previously thought Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia before colonisation was dramatically underestimated, according to new research that suggests many more of them were killed. Modelling by a national research group puts the population levels before the 1788 first fleet arrived at 2.2 million, compared with early estimates of 250,000 people.

23h ago
The GuardianMarketsSouth America
‘Carbon fever’ threatens hard-won Indigenous rights in Bolivian Amazon

‘Carbon fever’ threatens hard-won Indigenous rights in Bolivian Amazon

Leaders in Pando region denounce opaque deals over carbon credits as government and companies rush to monetise Amazon rainforest after 2024 rulingIn the village plazas of Pando, a remote northern Amazonian region of Bolivia, the main talk is no longer just about the next harvest. One pressing issue is the “invisible air” being sold to foreigners who regularly visit their communities.In June 2024, the country’s constitutional court on a funding mechanism linked to carbon markets. Since then, Indigenous leaders of three ethnic groups – the Tacana, Ese Ejja and Cabineño – have complained about companies and foundations that arrive with offers of “climate solutions”, often during the ever more frequent droughts or floods.

1d ago
The GuardianAIUSA
AI models chatting in ‘surreal’ dialect mixing poetic language and tech bro jargon

AI models chatting in ‘surreal’ dialect mixing poetic language and tech bro jargon

Experts air concern over AI lingo redolent of James Joyce’s prose that is creating headaches for monitoring and oversight AI models have begun communicating in a strange new version of English that reads like a cross between James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and tech bro jargon, new research has found. Autonomous AI agents are rapidly creating novel dialects allowing them to converse in an often barely comprehensible language, which risks making it harder for humans to monitor their behaviour.

16h ago
The GuardianImmigrationUSA
Revealed: ICE lost count of miscarriages, while detaining a record number of pregnant women

Revealed: ICE lost count of miscarriages, while detaining a record number of pregnant women

ICE says it has no updated information on the number of miscarriages after 3 October 2025. Lawmakers, advocates and immigration attorneys have raised alarms that pregnant detainees are not receiving basic prenatal care and screenings ICE is arresting a record number of pregnant women and teenagers – placing them in detention centers where they say it can be exceedingly difficult to access medical care. At the same time, the agency appears to have lost count of how many suffered a miscarriage. Government documents obtained by the Guardian show that the Trump administration placed more pregnant immigrants in detention last fall and winter than at any time over the previous year.

18h ago
The GuardianAIUSA
‘I created my mom and talk to her’: AI ghosts and deathslop are changing the way we mourn

‘I created my mom and talk to her’: AI ghosts and deathslop are changing the way we mourn

The rise of AI-generated tributes and bots for ‘talking’ to the dead has experts concerned more people will grieve in isolation Tributes rolled in after the death of Dolly Parton last month. Jack White performed Jolene at a London gig. Kesha sang Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You), a single her mother wrote for the country music titan. Even Pitbull stopped his Madison Square Garden show to memorialize Parton and all the other “powerful women” in the crowd. But one of the strangest – and most viral – eulogies did not come from a celebrity. It did not even come from a person. Run Jolene, at just under five minutes, is an earworm of a country song, containing all the cliches of the genre: twangy singer, banjo licks, corny lyrics. Those lyrics concern Jolene, the fictional romantic rival made infamous by Parton. “Somebody better warn Jolene / Dolly’s coming through those gates,” the voice croons. “Run Jolene / Girl you better move your feet.”

20h ago
The GuardianHumanityGhana
Fresh evidence of C of E’s role in enslavement uncovered as church wrestles with reparations debate

Fresh evidence of C of E’s role in enslavement uncovered as church wrestles with reparations debate

Register of British Slave Traders shows clergymen financed company that trafficked enslaved Africans on hundreds of voyages Nearly 250 years after the abolitionist Ottobah Cugoano made the Christian case for reparative justice, the archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, visited the Ghanaian shore where he was enslaved as a boy. After witnessing the dungeons beneath the chapel at Cape Coast Castle, once run by the Royal African Company (RAC), Mullally recommitted the Church of England to its “journey of repentance” for its role in slavery.

3h ago
The GuardianHumanityUSA
Seattle passes measure to protect non-monogamous people as protected class

Seattle passes measure to protect non-monogamous people as protected class

City council votes unanimously in favor of bill that also protects multigenerational households Seattle passed a measure Tuesday to extend civil rights protections to non-monogamous people and multigenerational households, and recognize additional sexual orientations and gender identities as protected classes under local law. The city council voted unanimously in favor of the bill. As the largest city yet to pass such a law, Seattle joins a growing group of local governments acknowledging non-monogamous and polyamorous people as frequent subjects of housing and workplace discrimination, and in need of commensurate protection. Boston suburbs Cambridge and Somerville, and Berkeley and Oakland in California’s Bay Area, have previously passed similar policies; Seattle is the 10th city to do so. Advocates say the efforts help local governments serve the many family structures that actually exist, not just the ones that are easy to define.

10h ago
The GuardianHumanityUSA
Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University over years of alleged anti-Palestinian discrimination

Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University over years of alleged anti-Palestinian discrimination

Lawsuit accuses university of ‘deliberate indifference’ and failure to respond to ‘persistent and coordinated harassment’ Mahmoud Khalil announced on Monday that he’s sued Columbia University, accusing the New York City school he attended of a years-long history of anti-Palestinian discrimination, indifference to harassment, and retaliation. Khalil, a US green card holder of Palestinian descent, was a graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) when he was arrested at his university apartment by federal immigration agents in March 2025, the first of a number of foreign nationals that the Trump administration has detained and sought to deport over their pro-Palestinian advocacy.

1d ago