For something that can mean so many different things to different people, the union jack once again appearing in public spaces cannot be ignored. It is there in the crowd shots of the Euros, referred to in the “N” of the logo for the newly launched G

Very little ammunition is required for a culture war these days, so long as your troops are primed to mobilise at the drop of a blog. Julie Tremaine and Katie Dowd, two writers for the online newspaper SFGate, discovered this last month. Their review

1) The weird and unpredictable Trump era is over. In 2018 Donald Trump held a disastrous summit with Putin in the Finnish capital Helsinki. The then US president said he believed Putin’s assurances that Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 US electio

Thousands of Southern Baptists from across the US are heading to Tennessee this week to vote for their next president, a choice laced with tension that could push America’s largest evangelical Christian denomination even further to the right and pote

Democrats across the US cheered last month, as Texas legislators staged a walkout from the statehouse to block the passage of a Republican bill that would enact a number of restrictions on voting access. But the victory seemed short-lived, as the sta

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was established on 4 April 1949, its mission was to counterbalance armies from the Soviet Union that were stationed in central and eastern Europe after the conclusion of the second world war. After E

June is Pride month, and many US corporations are advertising their support for the LGBTQ+ community. A new study, however, has found that 25 companies otherwise eager to wave the rainbow flag have donated more than $10m to anti-LGBTQ+ federal and st

Dr Deborah Birx, then the White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator, hinted to an Obama-era official shortly before the 2020 election she wanted Donald Trump to lose to Joe Biden. Andy Slavitt, a former acting chief of the Centers for Medicaid an

With some notable exceptions – including the UK – where confirmed infections have begun climbing again, the number of confirmed new coronavirus cases appears, once more, to be fading in many countries around the world. But that situation may not last

On the first day of Pride month, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, signed a law banning transgender girls from participating on girls’ sports teams in middle school through college. It was just one of 13 anti-trans bills conservative lawmakers i

“I’m always shocked that it’s 2021 and we’re still having ‘first female’ stories,” says Prof Catherine Heymans. Nevertheless, it is an unavoidable fact that, with her appointment two weeks ago, the renowned astrophysicist not only became the first fe

Chingford Sainsbury’s may be an unlikely setting for an encounter that helped capture a key part of British cultural history, but MC Navigator’s weekly shopping trip to his local supermarket would prove crucial. Navigator, one of the leading figures

Just a few days after the polls closed in Florida’s 2018 general election, Rick Scott, then the state’s governor, held a press conference outside the governor’s mansion and made a stunning accusation. Scott was running for a US Senate seat, and as mo

Women of colour are almost twice as likely to be on zero-hours contracts as white men and almost one and a half times more likely than white women, according to new research. The joint report from the Trades Union Congress and the equality organisati

Britain’s high-end film and television producers are facing a shortage of cameras and other key equipment as the industry struggles to keep up with unprecedented demand for new shows caused by lockdown-induced drama binges. The public’s seemingly ins

Amsterdam has said it will not allow a return to the “nuisance and massive crowds” the city endured before the pandemic, sending a blunt warning that visitors “whose intention is to booze and misbehave, dressed like a penis” should go elsewhere. As m

Caravan parks have recorded a boom in demand as lockdown measures are relaxed, providing an unlikely source of economic growth as overseas travel remains largely off-limits. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show activity in the UK’s ac

It was the summer of 2018 and Australians were sweating. In their hands: a single avocado pear, barely ripe. The price: $9. Could it possibly be worth it? And how many times had it been squeezed? Thankfully, though much has gone wrong in the world si

When Tom Davies and his stepbrother, Greg, were growing up on the edge of Aldridge, a town in the West Midlands, they would pick a point in the distance, a TV mast for instance, and make their way straight there, even if it meant clambering through q

Maurice likes to stay up all night. When he finally settles down at 5am, he makes sure everyone knows he’s there – then he curls up and sleeps all day. “When he’s ready to go to bed, he gives us a good face wash to say ‘hi,’” Jo Little* says, laughin

Just six months into Brexit and relations between Brussels and London have hit a new low with veiled threats of trade wars from the EU if the UK does not comply with an agreement Boris Johnson signed over Northern Ireland almost 18 months ago. What i

I took this photo at the end of January in Balloch, Scotland. I have always wanted to take a picture of a male mandarin duck. It is the bird that made me want to start taking photographs. They are beautiful, with so many stunning colours. At the end

For 45 minutes in the UK morning, a significant chunk of the web did not work. People trying to visit a huge array of websites, from the Guardian through Gov.uk to Reddit, Hulu and the White House, received a blank white page and an error message tel

It was mid-2018 when a convicted narcotics importer met with FBI agents from San Diego and made them a tantalising offer: in exchange for a possible reduction in the importer’s sentence on other charges, would the bureau like a backdoor into the encr

Donald Trump called Joe Biden a “mental retard” during the 2020 election, a new book says, but was reluctant to attack him too strongly for fear the Democrats would replace him with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama. Biden went on to beat Trump by mo

I knew that New Order had done a football song [Italia 1990’s World in Motion], but I was hesitant when the FA asked me to do Euro 96. Fantasy Football with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel was big on TV at the time, so I thought they should sing it a

The rise of digital currencies could lead to a flood of withdrawals from high street banks, risking financial stability and the wider economy, the Bank of England has warned. Threadneedle Street said that stablecoins – a new form of digital asset usu

The historic deal signed this weekend is intended to prevent digital companies such as Google and Facebook from playing a cat-and-mouse game with national tax authorities. G7 finance ministers have established a minimum global corporation tax rate of

Last week, after more than a year of playing in empty stadiums, the England men’s football team finally walked out into the Riverside stadium in Middlesbrough in front of a small, socially distanced crowd. This warm-up game for Euro 2020 was hardly n

No one wants to be reminded of a failed relationship by having the ex’s portrait hanging around. After Amedeo Modigliani and his lover, Beatrice Hastings, broke up, the Italian artist is thought to have obliterated her memory by painting another woma