Giles Whittell

London

Sensemaker Editor at Tortoise

Featured in: Favicon

tortoisemedia.com Favicon

nytimes.com Favicon

dailymail.co.uk Favicon

thetimes.co.uk Favicon

bostonglobe.com Favicon

cityam.com Favicon

businessinsider.co.za Favicon

realclearscience.com Favicon

newsminer.com Favicon

theneweuropean.co.uk + 6 more

Articles

Britain’s way back to Europe

2 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Giles Whittell

The EU is changing. Member states are reasserting themselves and power is shifting from the Commission to the Council. That boosts the influence of Council president Antonio Costa and especially of Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. If there is to be an EU-UK defence pact, Tusk will have sign-off.
Elon Musk to spend more time on cars

3 weeks ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

When Elon Musk sided with Trump and bet a large part of his farm on the gargantuan Tesla Cybertruck, the best gloss analysts could put on it was that he would gain more customers in red-state America than he lost in blue. This hasn’t happened. Revenues were down 9 per cent and profits an astonishing 71 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 as Chinese rivals outsold Tesla with cheaper electric cars and Teslas became lightning rods for anti-Musk protest.
Trump backs defence secretary who texted wife of plans to bomb Yemen

3 weeks ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

It turns out Pete Hegseth shared sensitive military information with a Signal group not once, but twice. Last month the US defence secretary was embarrassed but not fired when the Atlantic revealed he told fellow cabinet members and other senior Trump administration officials details of forthcoming air strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebel targets in Yemen.
Signs of extraterrestrial life found on a planet far, far away

4 weeks ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

Life on Earth has found some of the most persuasive evidence yet of life off Earth, and it has only taken four and a half billion years. A water-covered planet 124 light years from our own could be a "hycean world teeming with life," according to researchers at Cambridge University who've been studying gases in its atmosphere that exist on Earth only as a byproduct of life.
Reeves gets a breather from inflation

4 weeks ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

Three years after Putin delivered a seismic upward shock to the cost of living in most advanced economies by invading Ukraine, inflation is back under control – at least in the UK, at least for now. Prices went up slower than expected at an annualised rate of 2.6 per cent last month from 2.8 in February, with more striking slowdowns in food (3 per cent from 3.3), services (4.7 per cent from 5) and average rents (7.7 from 8.1).
IDF changes its story to fit new evidence

1 month ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

Germany has called for an urgent investigation into the killings of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza last month. The Israeli military claimed at first the Palestinians were travelling in “suspicious vehicles” with their lights off at night, but verified video footage recovered from a phone found on one of the dead showed the vehicles had been travelling with lights flashing.
Eleven things to note about the Signalgate fightback

1 month ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

From the moment the Signalgate story broke – in which the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was invited into a group chat that kept top Trump administration officials intimately briefed on impending attacks on Houthi rebels – the White House has been wishing it would go away. So what? It hasn’t. The story is too wild, too telling, too confounding to die, so the administration has had to close ranks and try to neutralise it with a familiar mix of lies, dissembling, distortion, defamation – and truth.
White House accidentally texts top secret war plans to journalist

1 month ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

Four days before the US launched lethal airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen this month, a prominent journalist got a heads-up on a public messaging platform. This wasn’t a hint or a nudge from a covert source.
How Wiz went from zero to $32 billion in five years

1 month ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

Google’s $32 billion acquisition of the Wiz cyber security firm last week was its biggest ever. Other than that it’s worth noting, first, that Wiz’s four founders all served together in Israel’s Unit 8200, which trains IDF soldiers in what used to be called signals intelligence. Second, these founders had already made $320 million between them selling an earlier cyber-security firm to Microsoft.
Why America may have passed peak Musk

1 month ago | tortoisemedia.com | Giles Whittell

When the two astronauts who’ve been stranded in orbit for the past nine months splashed down on Tuesday, a voice from mission control said: “On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home.”So what? Say what you like (or don’t like) about Elon Musk, he has an almost intravenous connection to the American psyche as the man who picked up where Nasa left off and dared to dream again of new frontiers in space.