Would you hand in your phone at the door in exchange for a free bottle of wine? One restaurateur has tried that – and there are now many other gambits that are encouraging us to connect Name: Phone bans. Age: Their provenance is considerable; their time is now. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Tim Dowling14 Sept
There’s been a huge backlash against Reform UK after the party received £72m from two crypto billionaires over the weekend. Paul Nowak, the TUC leader, said the money showed democracy was ‘in crisis’. Labour is pushing for tighter restrictions on political donations which could be retrospective, but Reform is confident this will not affect its new war chest. How much does this money change the political landscape? And with Labour receiving millions from unions, will its new rules backfire? Please keep sending your comments and questions to politicsweeklyuk@theguardian.com . Please follow and subscribe to the Politics Weekly YouTube channel here Continue reading...
The Guardian•Presented by Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey, produced by Nada Smiljanic, music by Axel Kacoutié; the executive producer is Maz Ebtehaj14 Sept
‘It’s not a given, that’s the reality,’ Kerr says in Budapest Athletes cautious over BBC’s informal shortlist policy It should be the biggest no-brainer of the sporting year. After a summer where athletics has captured hearts and headlines, and made so many fans fall back in love with it again, either Amy Hunt or Josh Kerr should win the award for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. The bookies’ odds suggest many others think the same way: Hunt is the even-money favourite, Kerr is second, with Harry Kane a stride or two back in third. Yet Kerr knows he cannot take anything for granted. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Sean Ingle14 Sept
Judges uphold ruling that financier tried to ‘frustrate’ investigations into harassment claims against him The former hedge fund boss Crispin Odey has lost a legal challenge to overturn his lifetime ban from the City for trying to “frustrate” investigations into sexual harassment allegations against him. A ruling by judges at the upper tribunal upheld the ban imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in March last year , while reducing a proposed fine of £1.83m to £1.53m. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent14 Sept
Military chief had pulled country out over ‘Harry-Meghan nonsense’ but U-turned after clarification from the palace Uganda has U-turned on its decision to withdraw from the Duke of Sussex’s Invictus Games after the country’s military chief said he had been reassured by King Charles that there was “no problem” with its participation. Last week, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the eldest son of the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, made the surprise announcement the country would not participate in the games in a post on X. He said he was motivated by his respect for the king amid division over the “Harry-Meghan nonsense”. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Rachel Hall14 Sept
After 2025’s wildly lucrative reunion, the Gallagher brothers will tour the UK, Ireland and US, and revisit the Hertfordshire site of their greatest live triumph Oasis have finally confirmed new tour dates for 2027, including their long-rumoured return to Knebworth for a run of shows 30 years after they played a historic two nights at the Hertfordshire venue in 1996. “Start the celebrations!”, the band said in a statement. “After a period of reflection, The Most Damaging Pop Cultural Force In Recent British History” – a quote from a Guardian opinion piece about the band – “has declared itself fit for purpose and will once again return to lift the spirits of the people. Come witness the fitness. It shall be a sight to behold.” Continue reading...
The Guardian•Laura Snapes14 Sept
Rainbow clouds are not uncommon in Australia but rarely photographed, and experts say they get their colours when light is diffracted around ice crystals Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Rainbow clouds shone over parts of Victoria over the weekend, in an unusual visual phenomenon known as iridescent clouds. Photographs of the spectacle were taken by onlookers in the Melbourne suburbs of Mount Waverley and Caroline Springs. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Jack Larkin14 Sept
Batteries now meet almost half of the grid’s dispatchable power needs during hours of highest demand Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Australia’s dependence on gas for power during the evening, when the grid is under the most pressure, has fallen by almost nearly 70% over the past year as batteries surged in, replacing the fossil fuel . Gas generation during the busy early evening, between 5pm and 8pm, fell by 67% in the year to August, as large-scale batteries continued to come online and half a million home batteries were installed under the government’s subsidy program, analysis by consultancy EnergyEdge found. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Petra Stock14 Sept
Newly collated data also shows Indigenous Australians experiencing disproportionally high rates of infection Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Rates of reported gonorrhoea and infectious syphilis have increased by more than 50% across Australia over the past decade, with experts warning of concerning rises among women. Newly collated sexual health data from UNSW’s Kirby Institute shows 42,393 gonorrhoea notifications and 5,986 infectious syphilis notifications were recorded in 2025. The figures represent 10-year increases of 57% and 56%, respectively. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Achol Arok14 Sept
Exclusive: Advocate says homeless clearances should be halted after man is hospitalised during confrontation in Brisbane park Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast A homeless man was shot with a Taser by police after attempting to take his own life during a tent city clearance, sparking calls for mental health considerations when dealing with move-on orders amid Queensland’s homelessness crisis. On 1 September, Moreton Bay city council rangers gave six homeless residents 24 hours to leave Pelican Park north of Brisbane, where Martin* had been living in a camper trailer, to make way for a kite festival this weekend. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Andrew Messenger14 Sept
In a bad-tempered meeting at Old Trafford, United and City showed they are far from the finished product Sign up for our free newsletter here While London has a host of top-flight clubs and Liverpool have been regular contenders, the story of the Premier League can almost entirely be told with Mancunian main characters. From Manchester United’s decade-plus of dominance under Sir Alex Ferguson to Manchester City’s emergence among the oil baron class, with a grip made firmer under Pep Guardiola’s guidance, it seems one must always beat a Manchester club to the title. Never before has the trophy spent more three seasons before returning to one of these two clubs, with a pair of three-year roadshows in the mid-2000s and mid-2010s. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Jeff Rueter14 Sept
My job made me the envy of the cool girls; it made me visible. Then Johnno, Stevo and Whack paid a visit In the summer of 1982, at the age of 14, I was hired to work in the ticket office and kiosk at the Sale Memorial Pool in Victoria’s Gippsland region. The cool girls at school, who did not usually acknowledge me, were seething with jealousy. It was a sought-after job in a time before fast-food outlets and chain supermarkets. I was anxious because I didn’t look like the girls who usually worked at the pool. The Dolly magazine cover-girl types. They were tanned, used raspberry lip gloss and Impulse body spray, and wore stretchy boob tubes over their crocheted bikini tops. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Allison Harding14 Sept
Pauline Hanson’s gas policy and the party’s relationship with Rinehart is examined in a new Guardian podcast series, The Populist Listen: The Populist: Aeroplanes and bulldozers | Episode 1 – podcast Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast One Nation has come under fire for quietly shelving support for a new domestic gas reservation policy in preference for a policy that favours the party’s billionaire patron, Gina Rinehart. The Albanese government has announced it will establish a new reservation policy for Australia’s east coast, requiring gas exporters to supply a portion of the gas they produce to the domestic market. The policy is aimed at “modestly” supplying the domestic market to put downward pressure on prices for consumers. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...
The Guardian•Sarah Martin Senior correspondent14 Sept
Abigail Bradshaw says ‘enormous’ amounts of money required to update systems that people now expect to be constantly available Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast One of Australia’s top intelligence agencies has warned that AI attacks could exploit the country’s old technology, as the government negotiates its guardrails on artificial intelligence’s rapid development. The chief of Anthropic, developer of Claude, has warned AI bots could swarm the internet within a year and called to “slow the pace” of development with support from the head of OpenAI and Elon Musk . Continue reading...
The Guardian•Luca Ittimani14 Sept
Toronto film festival: Saipan standout Éanna Hardwicke is a soulful gay man looking for a missing friend in a striking yet muddled debut It’s not normal to regularly contemplate mortality in your twenties, to ask questions about where we might go after we die and whether any part of our legacy will even matter in the years following. But for gay men in the 1980s, death was everywhere. In David Turpin’s intermittently impactful debut Ancestors, the director tries to make a connection with those men who lived through the very worst years of the Aids crisis. Turpin, born in 1982, might not have the first-hand experience but he bears the scars passed on from generation to generation and like many young gay men coming of age in the years after, likely experienced a watered down version of the shame and fear those before him once felt. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Benjamin Lee in Toronto14 Sept
Some of the arguments inconsistent with ‘available evidence, science and established physiology’, say pair Two leading experts have withdrawn from Lucy Letby’s defence team over concerns about the “scientific credibility” of some of its evidence. The former neonatal nurse is challenging her convictions for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Josh Halliday North of England editor14 Sept
Samusocial de Paris documents signs of violence after detention and transfer under ‘one in one out’ scheme Multiple injuries including bruising and fractures have been documented by a health service supporting people returned to France under the controversial “one in, one out” scheme. The pilot scheme, which the French call “one for one”, involves one asylum seeker who crosses the Channel in a small boat being returned to France in return for another in northern France being legally brought to the UK to claim asylum. The scheme is due to end on 1 October . Continue reading...
The Guardian•Diane Taylor14 Sept
Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Keys. Phone. Wallet. What day it is. The names of people to whom we’ve just been introduced. Where we parked the car. The shopping list we wrote to remind us what Tin groceries we need. The dog we’re supposed to be walking. Dozens of umbrellas. The name of the hotel we’re staying in. Assorted birthdays. Why we walked into a room. The list of things your scatterbrained Football Daily forgets with alarming frequency is so long that we’re genuinely struggling to remember most of the things that should feature on it. While our absentmindedness tends not to upset anyone other than ourselves or our nearest or dearest, we can’t even begin to imagine the bowel-loosening horror of completely forgetting something so simple and blindingly obvious that it enrages the majority of the 74,161 football fans in attendance while bringing the already snakebelly low reputation of your entire profession into even more disrepute than it was less than 24 hours previously. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Barry Glendenning14 Sept
Advocates and experts describe the Trump administration’s climate rollbacks as gifts to polluters at expense of planet The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to formally repeal carbon pollution standards for coal- and gas-fired power plants, according to reports. The Trump administration’s latest climate rollback is expected to come as soon as Monday on the sidelines of the G20 energy ministers’ meeting in Houston, Texas, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Guardian staff and agencies14 Sept
The actor’s latest promotion has stirred outrage but will no doubt be good for the prediction markets hoping to lure in young men Prediction markets are a cynical business. Many customers will lose money, and the real product may just be the delightful dopamine hit that comes in that brief window between placing a bet and its outcome – which is statistically more likely to be a disappointment than a victory. So the bettor has to think they are buying more than their own fleecing. Continue reading...
The Guardian•Jane McManus14 Sept