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2 weeks 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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3 weeks 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.
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3 weeks 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 | Helen Pidd |Shaun Walker |Hannah Moore |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin
Shaun Walker is the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent and author of The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West. He tells Helen Pidd about the history of Russia’s ‘Illegals’ programme, and how Russian intelligence operates in western countries today. “It’s become much harder for Russia to send its operatives abroad,” Shaun tells Helen.
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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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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Kiran Stacey |Helen Pidd |Hattie Moir |Eleanor Biggs |Tom Glasser |Courtney Yusuf | +1 more
Runcorn, a town in Cheshire, has not been the most politically interesting place in recent memory. In fact Runcorn and Helsby has been a safe Labour seat for decades. Then the MP Mike Amesbury resigned after punching a constituent, triggering a byelection. Now Reform UK are nipping at Labour’s heels in the battle for the ward. Helen Pidd has been out in the town to find out what voters think about the government and Nigel Farage.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Lanre Bakare |Courtney Yusuf |Homa Khaleeli
When Guardian arts and culture correspondent Lanre Bakare was growing up, he learned the same Black British history as many of us did. It was a series of singular events: the docking of the Windrush in 1948, unrest in Notting Hill or Brixton, the murder of Stephen Lawrence. All important, but all firmly focused on the capital.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Helen Pidd |Libby Brooks |Eli Block |Tom Glasser |Natalie Ktena |Joel Cox | +1 more
On paper it does not sound like something that would spark nationwide interest. Last week the UK supreme court gave its judgment on a case brought by a women’s group against the Scottish government over the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. But its judgment – that the word “woman” in equality law refers only to biological sex – has upended years of legal interpretation. And the news of the ruling led to celebrations, protest and an outpouring of emotion.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Catherine Pepinster |Hannah Moore |Rudi Zygadlo |Homa Khaleeli
Pope Francis was working until the end. On Easter Sunday, the 88-year-old head of the Catholic church offered an Easter greeting to the crowds in St Peter’s Square who had gathered for mass. By the next morning, after months battling pneumonia and bronchitis, he had passed away. From the beginning, the first Latin American pope wanted his papacy to be different.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Catherine Pepinster |Rudi Zygadlo |Homa Khaleeli
Pope Francis was working until the end. On Easter Sunday, the 88-year-old head of the Catholic church offered an Easter greeting to the crowds in St Peter’s Square who had gathered for mass. By the next morning, after months battling pneumonia and bronchitis, he had passed away. From the beginning, the first Latin American pope wanted his papacy to be different.
