-
2 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Nino Bucci |Eli Block |Hattie Moir |Elizabeth Cassin |Sami Kent
Last week, in a trial followed all over Australia and across the world, Erin Patterson took the stand. She is accused of three counts of murder, and one of attempted murder, allegedly by poisoning her relatives with deadly mushrooms inside four separate dishes of beef wellington. As the Guardian Australia justice and courts reporter Nino Bucci explains, Patterson has always denied the charges.
-
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.
-
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?
-
4 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Jenny Stevens |Kate McCusker |Ivor Manley |Elizabeth Cassin
“There’s lots of chat at the moment about #SkinnyTok,” Jenny Stevens, the Guardian’s deputy features editor, tells Helen Pidd. “The TikTok influencers, TikTok users, who are documenting their extreme weight-loss journeys. “I’ve looked through that hashtag and I think, wow, some of these people are really, really unwell.
-
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?
-
1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Patrick Wintour |Eli Block |Eleanor Biggs |Rudi Zygadlo |Elizabeth Cassin | +1 more
“We must call this what it is. It is extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous.”Last week, the words of British foreign secretary, David Lammy, in the House of Commons on Israeli cabinet ministers’ calls to “purify Gaza” marked a shift in the UK’s position on Israel’s offensive. Lammy announced that Britain would be suspending negotiations with Israel over a new free trade deal.
-
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.
-
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.
-
1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Lucy Hough |Eleanor Biggs |Kate McCusker |Ivor Manley |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin
“I worry a lot about a kind of world war one-type scenario,” former White House Russia adviser Fiona Hill tells Lucy Hough, “in which the prevailing system is broken down, and you get a whole outbreak of conflicts that meld together.”“People are always asking: ‘What should we be worried about in the future?’ We should be worried about the here and now.”Fiona reflects on what another term of Trump and Putin in power means for Europe and the rest of the world.
-
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.
