
Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022
Continue reading...After speaking to locals, I still can’t predict the result, but a big, combined effort will be needed. Without a united front the left may splinter and lose
You don’t have to be in Gorton and Denton for long to know that next week’s byelection really matters. If Labour wins in what has been an over-50% solid red-voting area since the second world war, that will calm nerves on its febrile back (and front) benches. If Labour loses, heavy blame will fall on Keir Starmer for fixing the party’s ruling NEC to bar Andy Burnham’s selection, ensuring he couldn’t challenge for the leadership without a Westminster seat.
Few doubt the popular Greater Manchester mayor would have won next week in Gorton and Denton on his home patch. Blocking him is widely seen as grubby Westminster politicking that has weakened, not strengthened, Starmer’s grip on the leadership. For many erstwhile supporters that jiggery-pokery was a turning point, as Starmer seemed willing to risk Reform UK scoring another win in order to stop Burnham, though “stop Farage” has to be Labour’s overwhelming priority.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Mopping floors, dressing up as kids’ entertainers and fishing unmentionable things from swimming pools: the Dyers’ new TV show sees them investing in a caravan park. Can they revive the UK’s love of them?
“You wouldn’t see Olivia Colman doing this bollocks would you?” jokes Danny Dyer as he clears up a dustbin at Priory Hill & Nutts Farm Holiday Park in Kent.
But over the past year – around filming the return of the hit Disney+ series Rivals – the actor, and his daughter Dani, have been spending weekends on the Isle of Sheppey, filming The Dyers’ Caravan Park (Sky One) in an attempt to boost the fortunes of Priory Hill and make caravanning cool.
Continue reading...Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels plus subsidies for cleaner heating has led to clearer air and better health
As a child, Marcel Mazur had to hold his breath in parts of Kraków thick with “so much smoke you could see and smell it”. Now, as an allergy specialist at Jagiellonian University Medical College who treats patients struggling to breathe, he knows all too well the damage those toxic gases do inside the human body.
“It’s not that we have this feeling that nothing can be done. But it’s difficult,” Mazur said.
Continue reading...It caused a scandal in imperial Russia, then became a staple of popular art in the USSR. But when I spied a copy of Ivan Kramsky’s portrait in the film Sentimental Value, it opened a door to an untold case of life imitating art
Sentimental Value is one of those films you have to watch very closely. In the Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest work, which swept the board at the European film awards and is nominated for eight Baftas and nine Oscars, stories are hidden in closeups, half-tones and peripheral objects. Some of these stories are so well hidden, in fact, that they aren’t even apparent to the people who made the film.
In one scene, roughly an hour in, the camera glides down a corridor, and suddenly there she is: a woman’s portrait on the wall. Anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union and later Russia between the 1950s and 2000s, like me, would recognise her instantly. She has been endlessly reproduced: as prints, embroideries, portrait medallions, even on boxes of chocolates. In Britain, people may have encountered her on the covers of various editions of Anna Karenina.
Continue reading...Information content manager Rosie Weatherley says harmful inaccuracies are presented as uncontroversial facts
A year-long commission has been launched by Mind to examine AI and mental health after a Guardian investigation exposed how Google’s AI Overviews, which are shown to 2 billion people each month, gave people “very dangerous” mental health advice.
Here, Rosie Weatherley, information content manager at the largest mental health charity in England and Wales, describes the risks posed to people by the AI-generated summaries, which appear above search results on the world’s most visited website.
Continue reading...Ruling is blow to Trump’s bold assertions of authority and topples key pillar of aggressive economic agenda
The US supreme court declared many of Donald Trump’s tariffs illegal on Friday, in a sharp rebuke that topples a key pillar of the president’s aggressive economic agenda.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court decided that a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies did not provide the legal justification for most of the Trump administration’s tariffs on countries across the world. It is the first time the court has overruled one of Trump’s second-term policies.
Continue reading...Officers being asked to ‘consider carefully whether anything they saw or heard’ may be relevant to review of Epstein files
Former close protection officers to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor are being asked to “consider carefully whether anything they saw or heard” may be relevant to the Metropolitan police’s review of the Epstein files, the force said.
In a statement, the Met said it was identifying and contacting former and serving officers who may have worked closely, in a protection capacity, with Mountbatten‑Windsor.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Josh Simons pressed intelligence officials to investigate reporters, in emails described as ‘McCarthyite smear’
A Labour minister who claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” at a PR agency’s work to investigate journalists on his behalf had been personally involved in naming them to British intelligence officials and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda, the Guardian can reveal.
Josh Simons, who was running the thinktank Labour Together at the time, was also involved in telling security officials that another journalist was “living with” the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. Officials were told by Simons’ team that the former adviser was “suspected of links to Russian intelligence”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Nigel Farage understood to have known of grievance against byelection candidate, whose lawyer described it as resolved ‘minor workplace matter’ of miscommunication
Matt Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection, was accused by a young woman working at GB News of making inappropriate comments which she viewed as sexually harassing, the Guardian can reveal.
The junior staffer complained to HR last year alleging Goodwin had made inappropriate comments, one regarding her appearance, sources say. Goodwin, 44, volunteered an apology after the complaint had been raised.
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