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3 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Richard Norton-Taylor |Alex Atack |Rudi Zygadlo |Sami Kent |Elizabeth Cassin
On Monday, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, told Britain it was facing threats that were “more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the cold war”. It was time, he said, to make Britain a “battle-ready, armour-clad nation”. As the government publishes its strategic defence review, the former Guardian security editor Richard Norton-Taylor tells Helen Pidd there are still serious questions over whether Britain is ready for this new era.
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3 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Moira Donegan |Ruth Abrahams |Alex Atack |Tony Onuchukwu |Elizabeth Cassin
Why is pro-natalism – the idea that society should focus on producing children – a growing movement in the US? The Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan tells Helen Pidd: “This is not something that average people in the US are crying out for. People are having the number of children that they desire and think that they can support, right?
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Andy Hunter |Alex Atack |Eli Block |Elizabeth Cassin
“I was just coming towards the end of writing what was a positive, upbeat overview of the whole day,” Andy Hunter, a Guardian football correspondent based in Liverpool, tells Helen Pidd. “Wrote about how they were memories that would last a lifetime. And then just as I was finishing that and about to send it, I got a call from the desk to say, have you seen what’s just happened?
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Esther Addley |Alex Atack |Tony Onuchukwu |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin
“I felt very ready on the start line. I was like: ‘OK, this is it. This is what we’ve worked for.’”For the British Olympic athlete Lisa Dobriskey, reaching the women’s 1500m final at the London 2012 Games was a huge moment. She’d come fourth in Beijing four years earlier. This was her chance, in front of a home crowd. When the race began, Lisa remembers feeling alarmed at how slow it was because she knew at some point it was going to take off. And then it did.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Alex Atack |Rudi Zygadlo |Elizabeth Cassin
Israeli anti-war activists Yehuda Shaul and Michael Sfard, who formerly served in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), discuss the war in Gaza. Shaul is the founder of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO which publishes testimonies of IDF soldiers. Sfard is an Israeli human rights lawyer who has brought hundreds of cases challenging the demolition of Palestinian homes and the construction of new settlements, and pushed for investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Hannah Moore |Rutger Bregman |Alex Atack |Tom Glasser |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin
“Moral ambition is the desire to stand on the right side of history before it is fashionable, to basically devote your career, your life, to some of the most pressing issues that we face as a species.”Rutger Bregman, historian and author of Moral Ambition, believes that too many of us are in what he calls “bullshit jobs”. “What I see is an enormous waste of talent,” he tells Hannah Moore.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Bethan Mckernan |Alex Atack |Elizabeth Cassin
On Monday, Israeli officials announced they were planning a new military offensive in Gaza, with aims of “conquering” the land and establishing a “sustained presence” there. “The offensive is called Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” Bethan McKernan, the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, tells Lucy Hough. “It’s designed to make sure that there is an indefinite Israeli presence in the strip. That implies that there is no day after the war now.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Mehdi Hasan |Alex Atack |Eleanor Biggs |Joel Cox |Elizabeth Cassin | +1 more
“So many things have shocked me about the past 100 days,” says the Guardian US columnist and author of Win Every Argument, Mehdi Hasan. “Even for me, even the person who was saying it’s going to be so bad, it’s much worse than even I thought.”What’s been shocking to Hasan about Donald Trump’s second term so far is not the policies – they were laid out on the campaign trail – but the lack of resistance.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Hannah Moore |Jessica Murray |Alex Atack |Priya Bharadia |Joel Cox |Elizabeth Cassin
“It’s been absolutely unbelievable,” William Timms, a pest controller, tells Hannah Moore. “Since March, calls have gone up 50%. Usually, I’m dealing with about three or four rodent jobs a day this time of year. And then I’ve got my insect jobs on top. “But I’ve had to put my insect jobs on the back burner, because I’m just being inundated with rat calls. I’m doing about nine or 10 a day at the moment.”Birmingham’s rubbish collectors have been on an all-out strike since early March.
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Mar 6, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Alex Atack |Homa Khaleeli
A few weeks ago, Michael Safi travelled to north-east Syria, an area controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Here, suspected foreign fighters for Islamic State – including those from Britain – have for years been imprisoned without charge and with no idea of when they would be released. Few prisoners in the camp say they are IS members.
