
When is it OK to go shirtless? What time can you start drinking on holiday? And can you ask a stranger to apply your sunscreen? Experts explain the behaviour that’s hot this summer – and what’s really, really not
Summer means a loosening of rules and norms. Eating with your fingers is suddenly encouraged, near-nakedness is everywhere and a 6am airport pint is unremarkable. It’s a hot, sticky recipe for social chaos and – if you share my view on showing off ungroomed feet – possibly the end times of human civilisation. Here, then, is everything you need to know about summer etiquette.
Continue reading...The actors Lindsay Duncan and Charles Dance, alongside director Peter Webber, pay tribute to a practical joker, unpretentious craftsman and ‘very cool guy’
Lindsay Duncan, co-star, Reilly, Ace of Spies (1983) and Blackbird (2019)
Continue reading...Last week’s Timms report shows how disability is still vilified. But some pragmatic fixes would help both claimants and the economy
“Broken Britain” has become the favourite narrative of the right in recent months. The playbook goes like this: politicians and pundits alike exploit genuine concerns about squeezed services and living standards to propagate a sense of division and despair. Meanwhile, the parts of the state that actually need radical change are then either ignored or misrepresented, if only because their worst impact tends to be felt by the very marginalised communities the hard right scapegoats.
Few areas demonstrate this more than the disability benefits system. Reading the damning Timms report – the government’s landmark review into the personal independence payment (Pip) in England and Wales – last week, I was struck by the gulf between reality and rhetoric. The disability benefits system is “not fit for purpose” and “dehumanising” for claimants, the report found, yet scroll through a news site or switch on talk radio and there’s tumbleweed when it comes to substantive ideas to reform it, especially from figures typically eager to declare the nation’s institutions at risk of imminent collapse.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...He was elected mayor of Istanbul in 2019, and had announced his candidacy for the 2028 presidential elections. But Ekrem İmamoğlu is now behind bars, and his trial, on charges including fraud and organised crime, could take 12 years
This piece first appeared in the Dial
There’s a Turkish saying, “Silivri soğuktur”: Silivri is cold. You’ll hear it from journalists, politicians and activists after they say something critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. The kind of comments that could send them to the notorious prison complex in Silivri, where it would take months before they saw a judge.
For decades, Silivri was considered a “sayfiye yeri”, a place for cottages, country and summer houses. All around the complex are small family-run farms and villas with private pools, protected by watchdogs. Construction of the Marmara Prison complex began in 2005 and lasted three years. It contains eight closed correctional institutions and an open prison where the court is located. It is Europe’s largest prison complex.
Continue reading...Along with the rice fields, a centuries-old infrastructure that treated water as a gift to be shared is disappearing
I Putu Partayasa pushes his fingers into the soil as he squats at the edge of a rice terrace. They come up dry. His field has water; his neighbour’s does not. “We have a big problem in the dry season,” he says. “Fifteen years ago, we have water every day. But today it’s getting less.”
The 52-year-old, who goes by the name Parta, is lucky because his plot sits high enough in the irrigation system so that he still gets his share of water. He fears he knows where the rest is going. “Companies take our water,” he says, “and bring it to the tourism places.” He gestures at the terraces below, a patchwork of green and brown that was once all green. “The forest is getting smaller. The springs are drying.”
Continue reading...The new BBC documentary is so wondrous and awe-inspiring it will make you feel like a child again – and in Chris Packham, it has a presenter for the ages
Evolution is a coronation. With this new, five-part BBC nature documentary, the presenter Chris Packham is effectively crowned the successor to David Attenborough. And a worthy one, I think most would agree.
Packham has all the great man’s passion for his subject and the willingness and ability to share his knowledge as accessibly as possible. He treads the line between assuming nothing and not infantilising his audience as nimbly as Attenborough does.
Continue reading...UAE says Iranian cruise missiles hit two oil tankers in strait, killing a crew member and wounding eight
Resurgent oil and fuel prices could cement a fourth interest rate rise in Australia this year if Donald Trump’s renewed conflict with Iran is not resolved within a week, economists warn.
US missile strikes on Iran and Trump’s announcement of a new maritime blockade has lifted oil prices to their highest point in the month since the two countries agreed to a peace deal.
Continue reading...Shock development based on ‘new information and evidence’ renews debate over security of politicians
British counter-terrorism police are now leading the investigation into the death of the former MP and Reform spokesperson Ann Widdecombe in a shock development that has renewed the debate over the security of politicians.
Widdecombe’s body was found with serious injuries by the ambulance service at her home in Haytor Vale, Devon, at 11.40am on Thursday. A 28-year-old man from Rotherham is being held in custody on suspicion of her murder.
Continue reading...The head of Reform UK refused the security, which was a similar level to that received by the leader of the opposition, because he considered it inadequate
Today MPs are expected to pass the so-called Hillsborough law bill – which is officially known as the public office (accountability) bill – after the government dropped its insistence on provisions that would in practice have given the security services an opt-out. Before it becomes law, the bill will still have to go through the Lords.
Libby Brooks has a good account of what led up to this in her First Edition briefing.
We have shown that true power belongs to ordinary people.
We did not stay silent, we were not ground down, we were not afraid to speak truth to power.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Analysis of nearly 2,500 articles finds almost three-quarters made no reference to global heating
Most of the UK media stories about the record-breaking heatwave that struck in June failed to mention the climate crisis, analysis has found.
Nearly 2,500 articles about the extreme heat – when temperatures topped 37C, a record for the time of year – appeared in the UK’s nine main national daily media publications. But nearly three-quarters of them – about 72% – left out any mention of global heating or the climate, according to the analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Continue reading...