
Jacob Wulfson’s fellow airmen decided his fate after a court martial at RAF Lakenheath – a distressing week for Sarah Steele, the academic he assaulted
When Sarah Steele woke up on the morning of 2 December 2023, she found herself in a pool of cold water in a bathtub. She was naked and in the apartment of an American fighter pilot she had met in person for the first time the night before. She was confused. Her head hurt, and so did her neck.
This was the account Steele, a British academic, provided to prosecutors. They later accused the pilot, Capt Jacob Wulfson, of drugging and strangling Steele in his apartment in the east of England, and penetrating her vagina with his penis without her consent.
Continue reading...Our lovable yet unruly boxer Dusty forced me to wonder: if a dog has no morals, how do you teach it to be ‘good’?
When I carried my beautiful two-month-old puppy into our home for the first time, I couldn’t have imagined the scene six months later, as I led her through my local park experiencing such a toxic cocktail of emotions – guilt, regret, powerlessness – that I had tears in my eyes. It was a walk that many dog owners will recognise as having “gone badly”. My exuberant dog, Dusty, had approached another dog that did not wish to play with her. This shouldn’t have happened. I should have been able to call her back. Maybe I should have just kept her on the lead. Maybe I shouldn’t have got a dog in the first place.
Dusty started barking, jumping and circling the owner and her dog at high speed. “Do you want to have a dogfight?” the owner asked curtly, while I lunged around on the ground, all dignity jettisoned. “My dog just wants to play with yours,” I protested. “But mine doesn’t want to play,” she replied. “If you just let yours off the lead for a moment,” I countered, “I think mine would calm down. I promise you, she’s not aggressive.” Her reply: “So what do you call this?” Checkmate. As the seconds and then minutes passed, with Dusty still evading my reach, I began to wonder how long this might go on. Would the police have to be called?
Continue reading...Cornwall's housing crisis is forcing young people to live in vans. As second homes and short-term holiday lets drive up house prices, a growing number are turning to van life to stay in the place they love. The Guardian meets young people who say their van brings them freedom but also uncertainty, as they struggle to find water, safe places to park and secure a future
Some details in this film have been changed for safety reasons
Continue reading...To stay popular with the public – and his backbenchers – he’ll need to make big changes fast. That means changing the way the government borrows
A Labour leader arrives, shirt and smile ironed into place, in his hands a big idea. He has polished one slogan, prepped three anecdotes, memorised eight bullet points. He wants more cash for vital services, or workers to have a stake in their employers, or to take some utility into public control. Not so big an idea, really, but, right on cue, the attacks come from almost every side – breathless lobby reporters, sententious columnists, zombie Blairites. And they all agree on one fatal thing: the bond markets will never wear it.
The death sentence having been pronounced, all that remains for the politician’s proposal is a pauper’s funeral.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...In a chilling new book, theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says we’re back on the brink – and this time, leaders chronically lack the nous of Kennedy and Khrushchev. So why is he against rearming?
Should European members of Nato be rearming in the face of the Russian threat? And if not, I ask Carlo Rovelli, why not? The Italian theoretical physicist seems a good person to answer these questions since his timely new book, 85 Seconds to Midnight, is subtitled A Physicist’s Argument against Rearmament.
Rovelli, 70, brown eyed, genial, with enviably luxuriant grey locks, removes his glasses before answering. “The idea of the Russian military being a threat to Europe is ridiculous. Russia can’t even get to Kyiv! A few years ago, Russia had 4% of the world’s military spending and Nato had 40%.”
Continue reading...From global loanwords and garbled Italian, the slang of the children of millennials doesn’t just share elements with Minionese – it may have absorbed it
I was four years old when Despicable Me was released in cinemas and the banana-coloured, overall-clad Minions took the world by storm. By the time I was seven, my siblings and I were using The Official Minion Manual to teach ourselves Minionese.
Minionese is, of course, the made-up language spoken by Kevin, Stuart, Bob and company, which consists of a combination of melodic gibberish and variations on genuine vocabulary from a diverse array of world languages. When the Minions shout “kanpai” (“cheers” in Japanese) or “para tú!” (a variation on the Spanish “para ti”), it might remind you of how gen Alpha slang, which primarily consists of nonsensical words such as “cap” and “mogging”, also draws on world languages. Consider the Bulgarian scat origins of “skibidi”, for example.
Continue reading...Delcy Rodríguez says rescuers from others countries arriving in Venezuela over coming hours after two powerful quakes hit capital
Volunteers, medics and relatives of victims have raced to the Altamira area in Caracas hoping to help save survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings there.
“I live far away [but] ... I came here riding my motorbike as fast as I could,” said José Morillo, as he arrived outside a block of flats called Residencias Obelisco.
Continue reading...The highest UK temperatures are expected across the east and southeastern England while heatwave-related deaths climbed across Europe
Farryn Stock
Over in the UK, South East Water has announced a temporary hosepipe ban in Kent amid growing strain from the ongoing heatwave (31C today, 33C tomorrow).
“To safeguard that shared supply and prevent any homes from facing a sudden loss of water, we sadly need to ask our communities to not use their hosepipes immediately. We are deeply sorry for the disruption this causes, and we are incredibly grateful to everyone helping us protect Kent’s water.”
Continue reading...Human Tissue Authority says bodies not transferred to freezer in time due to insufficient storage needs
Bodies in the mortuary at the NHS trust at the centre of the health services biggest ever maternity care scandal were found in a state of “advanced deterioration” due to not being transferred to a freezer in time, inspectors have said.
Human Tissue Authority (HTA) inspectors who visited Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust in March discovered eight bodies in a state of advanced decomposition due to not being transferred to a freezer within a sufficient timeframe.
Continue reading...LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollution
The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world from Chile to Ireland, a report has found.
In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications.
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