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The GuardianDiplomacySub-Saharan Africa
LeBron James once raged against the machine. Increasingly, he helps prop it up

LeBron James once raged against the machine. Increasingly, he helps prop it up

LeBron James was once one of the world’s most outspoken athletes. Now he’s plugging a predictions market and an authoritarian leader There was a time when LeBron James’s views on abuses of political power were considered dangerous enough that Donald Trump’s allies told him to shut up and dribble. But over time, James has become less outspoken. After he built a reputation as a voice on social issues and human rights, anti-government protesters in Hong Kong burned his jersey over what they saw as his lack of support for their campaign. Alongside plenty of other US athletes, he has barely spoken on politics during Trump’s second term in power. There was the recent dismal sight of him promoting a prediction market (although at least he kept his clothes on). Now he is happily associating with – and helping promote – an authoritarian leader. On Sunday, Angola’s president, João Lourenço, welcomed two of the most famous people in America – James and Will Smith – to his presidential palace.

23h ago
The GuardianImmigrationEurope
The spectre of ‘remigration’ is haunting Europe. Slovenia in 1992 gives us a blueprint for this state terror | Miha Mazzini

The spectre of ‘remigration’ is haunting Europe. Slovenia in 1992 gives us a blueprint for this state terror | Miha Mazzini

In February that year, the Slovenian government officially deleted 25,000 citizens, turning them overnight into illegal immigrants So much of your daily life – your job, your health, your home – hinges on the fact that your name is in a government database. Are you a legal citizen of your country, with everything that entails? You are, until an anonymous bureaucrat hits a key one night and strips it all away, turning you into an illegal immigrant. It happened in Slovenia in 1992. “I took my son to register for secondary school. The clerk rifled through the papers, then stared at me as if refusing to see the boy standing right next to me. Finally, she said: ‘But you don’t have a son. He doesn’t exist.’” I can’t forget the look on the face of the woman who was telling me this story. It was a mixture of deep hurt and bewilderment, with a pause after every sentence, as if she were walking through a minefield. During the research for my book Erased, I compiled countless stories like this: stories I once would have thought impossible. Miha Mazzini is a writer, film-maker and anthropologist

4h ago
The GuardianHumanityRussia
Revealed: how Russia uses mobile ‘super-app’ Max to spy on its citizens

Revealed: how Russia uses mobile ‘super-app’ Max to spy on its citizens

Research shows tens of millions of people are being forced to use platform that amounts to ‘backdoor’ on their device Over the past 18 months, tens of millions of Russians have been forced to install a new app on their phones – a violet-blue button designed for messaging and payments, called Max. Authorities have touted it as a patriotic alternative to Telegram and WhatsApp; Russian glitterati have promoted it in rap videos and comic routines. This summer, it became the country’s most-used messaging app.

2h ago
The GuardianAIAustralia
Artists boycotted this portrait prize over AI entries. Now they’re back to take them on

Artists boycotted this portrait prize over AI entries. Now they’re back to take them on

After two years shunning the Brisbane portrait prize, several artists are entering again, with some First Nations painters counting on another AI – ‘ancestral integrity’ – to help them win Poised above the lady in the red dress is a claw. Its metallic fingers grasp to pluck its prize from a jumble of other women while she looks dreamily upward, as if to say “Who, me?” The woman in the red dress is Australian comedian Alice Fraser, as photographed on stage. The other women – generic superheroes and 1950s housewives – were created using the generative AI software Krea.

17h ago
The GuardianWar & ConflictIsrael & Palestine
At least 21 killed after Israeli-hit building in Gaza City collapses

At least 21 killed after Israeli-hit building in Gaza City collapses

Rescue workers say search for dozens of people hampered by lack of heavy machinery A building housing about 100 displaced Palestinian families has collapsed in Gaza City, killing at least 21 people in their sleep, including 11 children, forcing rescuers to dig through the rubble with their bare hands as they search for dozens of people believed to be trapped. A rescue team from Gaza’s civil defence said they had recovered the bodies of five children among the victims, while 25 injured people were taken to hospital. Medical sources said rescuers could hear the voices of people trapped beneath the rubble as they tried to reach them.

1d ago
The GuardianSustainabilitySouth Asia
Climate crisis probably weakened glacier that caused devastating Nepal-Tibet floods, first study finds

Climate crisis probably weakened glacier that caused devastating Nepal-Tibet floods, first study finds

Scientists say global heating was a destabilising factor in collapse of 200,000 sq metre glacier in August Climate breakdown probably weakened the glacier that collapsed causing catastrophic floods and killing hundreds of people in Nepal and Tibet last month, the first scientific study of the disaster has found. Researchers identified unusually warm conditions before the glacier’s collapse, which sent an avalanche of 110m cubic metres (3,885 cu ft) of snow and ice into the valley below. This triggered flash floods on an almost unprecedented scale, hitting communities downstream without warning.

1d ago
The GuardianWorld CupSwitzerland
FA chair Hewitt demands Infantino release records of failed World Cup plan

FA chair Hewitt demands Infantino release records of failed World Cup plan

Letter sent before Fifa council meeting on 15 October Infantino under pressure before presidential election The Football Association’s chair, Debbie Hewitt, has written to Gianni Infantino, demanding that Fifa releases all documents relating to his abandoned World Cup sell-off plan and the decision to lift the USA striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension during last summer’s tournament. The Guardian revealed last month that Hewitt and other members of the Fifa council were lobbying for an independent review of the proposed Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) sell-off and the Balogun controversy. Their requests have been formalised in a letter sent to the Fifa president and his deputy, Mattias Grafström.

14h ago
The TelegraphWorld CupSwitzerland
FA demands Infantino releases World Cup sell-off and Balogun files

FA demands Infantino releases World Cup sell-off and Balogun files

The head of the Football Association has written to Gianni Infantino demanding the release of all material related to his £15bn World Cup sell-off plot and the Folarin Balogun saga. Debbie Hewitt, the FA chair and Fifa vice-president, called for an independent review of Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in the tournament to private investors in a move involving individuals with links to Donald Trump.

18h ago
BBCWorld CupSwitzerland
FA chair demands Infantino release World Cup sell-off documents

FA chair demands Infantino release World Cup sell-off documents

Gianni Infantino was first elected as Fifa president in 2016 Fifa president Gianni Infantino has been told to release all documents relating to his controversial plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup in a letter sent by Football Association chair Debbie Hewitt. Hewitt, a Fifa vice-president, said that the Fifa Council should also receive a written explanation for the cancelled suspension of United States forward Folarin Balogun at the World Cup.

18h ago
The GuardianScandalEngland
Lifeboat station in Portsmouth forced to temporarily shut after far-right action

Lifeboat station in Portsmouth forced to temporarily shut after far-right action

RNLI facility had been affected by attempts by activists to stop asylum seekers landing in boats from the Channel A lifeboat station on the south coast of England near the spot where far-right activists tried to stop asylum seekers landing has been forced to temporarily close, it has emerged. The station in Portsmouth shut after it and other sites run by the RNLI were targeted by people objecting to the lifeboat charity going to the aid of people trying to get to the UK on small boats.

20h ago
The TelegraphScandalSouth East England
Anti-migrant protesters target blind charity... after mistaking it for the RNLI

Anti-migrant protesters target blind charity... after mistaking it for the RNLI

A blindness charity has been forced to tell anti-migrant protesters that it is “not the RNLI” after receiving a wave of criticism. Protesters against the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), which brought hundreds of migrants ashore this month after rescuing them from a small boat, have mistakenly hounded the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) online.

2d ago
The GuardianImmigrationAustralia
Labor’s plans for visa overstayer detention centres branded a ‘Donald Trump twist’ on immigration

Labor’s plans for visa overstayer detention centres branded a ‘Donald Trump twist’ on immigration

Australian Greens senator compares government’s policy to ICE as Tony Burke calls it a ‘ridiculous claim’ Get our new political email, free app or daily news podcast The federal government’s move to reopen detention centres for visa overstayers, overseen by compliance officers, has drawn comparison from the Greens and advocates to Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown in the United States. The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, was careful to downplay any similarities when he announced the federal government’s immigration plan on Thursday, which includes reducing the roughly 77,000 unlawful non-citizens in Australia.

1h ago
The GuardianEconomyUnited Kingdom
UK government borrowing costs fall as Bank of England outlines new bond-selling plan – business live

UK government borrowing costs fall as Bank of England outlines new bond-selling plan – business live

BoE lays out proposal to sell UK bonds back to the government, and end the asset purchase scheme launched after the GFC Bank of England urged to slow or halt bond-selling to slash UK borrowing costs The Guardian view on the Bank of England’s £120bn bill: power without accountability Newsflash: Britain’s economy has been more productive since Tony Blair’s first election win than previously thought. A new measure of measuring productivity, just released by the Office for National Statistics, shows that annual productivity growth since 1997 has been stronger than it had estimated in the past.

20h ago
Irish IndependentAIUSA
Microsoft exec called AI the ‘largest theft of labour’ in history, court records show

Microsoft exec called AI the ‘largest theft of labour’ in history, court records show

A Microsoft executive called the training of artificial intelligence models the “largest theft of labour in human history,” according to a legal brief filed by the New York Times and unsealed Thursday. In another instance, according to the brief, that same executive called it “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.” The comments come from Brent Hecht, Microsoft’s director of applied science, and headline a legal brief filed by the New York Times and other news publications in their high-profile copyright case against the tech giant Microsoft and the AI company OpenAI.

1h ago
The GuardianImmigrationUSA
No Land to Stand On by Mahmoud Khalil review – a searing account of political imprisonment

No Land to Stand On by Mahmoud Khalil review – a searing account of political imprisonment

The Palestinian Columbia student snatched by ICE writes about his Kafkaesque ordeal with a quiet fury Mahmoud Khalil was completing a master’s degree at Columbia University when, in March 2025, plain-clothed officers from the Department of Homeland Security snatched him from his home in New York and took him to an immigration detention centre; he was then transferred to another facility in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles away. As a green card holder, Khalil has permanent US residency, but secretary of state Marco Rubio had determined that his continued presence in the country would have “adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”, and sought his deportation under a legal provision dating back to the McCarthy era. Khalil was released on bail in June 2024 after a federal judge ruled his detention unconstitutional, but the Trump administration is still trying to have him removed. Khalil – who was born to Palestinian parents in a refugee camp in Syria – had been targeted because of his advocacy on behalf of pro-Palestinian protesters during campus protests over Columbia University’s links to Israel. They were calling for Columbia to cut its ties with Israeli academic institutions and companies profiting from Israel’s onslaught on Gaza; in response, the university called in the NYPD. There was no suggestion that Khalil had done anything unlawful, and no criminal charges were brought against him; the government had simply identified him as an influential pro-Palestinian voice on campus, and for that reason alone they wanted him gone. He spent a total of 104 days in detention, missing the birth of his son.

2h ago
The GuardianWellnessUSA
Hundreds of ageing Americans may not get results of Alzheimer’s study due to Trump cuts

Hundreds of ageing Americans may not get results of Alzheimer’s study due to Trump cuts

Shutdown of study is latest for Trump administration, which has canceled, frozen and otherwise disrupted more than 5,700 medical research grants over two years Scientific funding cuts imposed by the Trump administration may force researchers to close a study on Alzheimer’s disease risk among 600 ageing people without sharing the results of cognitive tests with participants – even though researchers have all the data to do so. The Trump administration canceled a federal research grant studying two low-income, majority Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in August. Researchers were given 90 days to shut down the study – more than five months earlier than planned. Now, they lack the time and money to assess data collected from trial participants.

21h ago
The GuardianScandalIran
Iranian security forces coordinated killing, torture and sexual abuse of protesters, says Amnesty

Iranian security forces coordinated killing, torture and sexual abuse of protesters, says Amnesty

Leaked documents and testimony reveal extent of regime’s crackdown in 2022 and how it paved the way for more brutal killings of protesters this year Iranian security forces “coordinated” the killing, torture and sexual abuse of hundreds of people who took part in the women-led nationwide protests in September 2022, according to leaked state documents and interviews. Tens of thousands of people, including children, took to the streets of towns and cities across Iran after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, after her arrest by the “morality” police for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations.

1d ago
The GuardianWar & ConflictIslamic World
Watching NAZA was like peering through a window – and seeing the machinery of killing in Gaza | Mahmoud Mushtaha

Watching NAZA was like peering through a window – and seeing the machinery of killing in Gaza | Mahmoud Mushtaha

For so long I wondered why I survived while family and friends were killed. Now I know the only difference between life and death may have been an AI algorithm The lights go down, and for a moment I forget I’m watching a screen. It fills with a rooftop in Tel Aviv at night, black and grey. The camera pans down. Through windows, we see people watching screens of their own – couples holding each other close, following the news, eating food. They appear absorbed in their own worlds, and why wouldn’t they be? That’s the thing I can’t get past as a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, watching this apparent tranquillity: this must be it – this must be what safety actually looks like. Just an evening uninterrupted, with no military aircraft flying overhead or drones buzzing incessantly. Meanwhile, men and women on the rooftop above them calmly talk about how they decided how many Palestinian civilians would die on any given night. Mahmoud Mushtaha is a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, and the author of Sobrevivir al genocidio en Gaza (Surviving the Genocide in Gaza). This article is based on a piece first published in +972 Magazine

20h ago
The GuardianPublic PolicyUSA
Trump’s love of fossil fuels is about more than money | Moira Donegan

Trump’s love of fossil fuels is about more than money | Moira Donegan

The US decision to remove limits on coal and gas plant emissions is rooted in a perception of manliness in these industries You can impress a certain kind of person at a party by reciting the fact that there are more yoga instructors in the US than there are coalminers. In fact, the disparity is greater than this catchy phrasing suggests: there are actually more yoga instructors in the US than there are people employed in the entirely of the coalmining industry, miners and otherwise. It’s not even especially close: about 38,000 people in the US work in coal, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to about 100,000 yoga instructors who are registered with the Yoga Alliance, an industry group. If you looked only at the numbers, you might think a politician would be incentivized to talk about the interests of the yoga industry, about the dignity that yoga jobs give to American families, or about the need to foster growth in the yoga industry, more than they talk about these things for coal; after all, yoga, not coal, is putting food on the table in more American households. But no politician would ever talk about the interests of yoga teachers, or wax poetic about their role in the American dream, the way they do with coal miners; if they did, they’d be laughed out of the room. And we all know why: yoga is thought of as decadent, cosmopolitan and feminine, while coal mining is imagined as hardscrabble, honorable and masculine. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

22h ago
The GuardianScandalUSA
US Institute of Peace files emergency motion to block carving of Trump’s name into facade of its headquarters – as it happened

US Institute of Peace files emergency motion to block carving of Trump’s name into facade of its headquarters – as it happened

This live blog is now closed. Sign up for the US Breaking News email Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican congresswoman from South Florida, made a rare public break with President Trump in a new ad, pushing back against Trump’s hardline immigration policy. “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said, speaking directly into the camera.

6h ago
The GuardianInformationUSA
Bad news this week for Trump – but Fox viewers might have missed it | Margaret Sullivan

Bad news this week for Trump – but Fox viewers might have missed it | Margaret Sullivan

The network continues to cater to its presidential ‘audience of one’, downplaying his supreme court loss and more Two breaking stories roiled US politics this week and immediately got big play on most news sites. The supreme court surprisingly rejected – for now – Donald Trump’s attempted restrictions on mail-in ballots, a blow to Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

20h ago
The GuardianInformation
Trump asked Americans to help him whitewash national parks. They revolted instead

Trump asked Americans to help him whitewash national parks. They revolted instead

The DOI placed QR codes in national parks, inviting visitors to report content deemed ‘negative about either past or living Americans’. Instead, it became a mode of resistance Over the past year and a half, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a campaign to censor American history at US national parks and federal lands. As part of Executive Order 14253, “Restoring truth and sanity to American history”, the Department of Interior (DOI) ordered park rangers to review all signs, brochures, books and films for content that “inappropriately disparages” Americans by suggesting that the United States was “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”. It’s resulted in dozens of sign removals across the US, most of them related to slavery, Indigenous history and the climate crisis.

1d ago
The GuardianHealth AlertsUSA
Pennsylvania asks CDC for emergency help as measles outbreak spreads

Pennsylvania asks CDC for emergency help as measles outbreak spreads

State reportedly asks for Epi-Aid support unless federal agency recognizes four local measles-related deaths Pennsylvania is seeking emergency assistance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a major measles outbreak spreads across the state. The state warned the request could be withdrawn unless the federal agency publicly recognizes four measles-associated deaths reported by the state. The Pennsylvania department of health has begun the process of requesting CDC emergency support known as an Epi-Aid, Reuters reported on Thursday.

16h ago
The GuardianHealth AlertsUSA
Republican senator blames Trump administration policies for measles deaths in Pennsylvania

Republican senator blames Trump administration policies for measles deaths in Pennsylvania

Health committee chair Bill Cassidy said fatal outbreak of disease is a ‘terrible legacy’ for Trump administration US politics live – latest updates Senator Bill Cassidy, the Republican chairman of the US Senate health committee, blamed the Trump administration’s vaccine-skeptical approach for ‌recent measles deaths in Pennsylvania and challenged Donald Trump’s pick for surgeon general to directly state that vaccines do not cause autism on Wednesday. Cassidy, a Louisiana physician who chairs the panel, said three people in Pennsylvania had died of measles, with a fourth death under review, because ​of misinformation and misguided policies. His remarks come as the US grapples with its worst measles outbreak in over three decades.

1d ago
The GuardianHealth AlertsUSA
Trump administration changes how it counts measles deaths amid Pennsylvania outbreak

Trump administration changes how it counts measles deaths amid Pennsylvania outbreak

CDC announces changes to how it reports measles deaths as Pennsylvania continues to confirm more cases The Trump administration has changed the way it counts measles deaths amid an outbreak in Pennsylvania, which on Sunday saw the third apparent measles-related death in the state reported by a local coroner. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now using data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is a way to track mortality trends over time, according to a note published to the agency’s website on 4 September.

3d ago