
Frida loves cycling everywhere, while Frantz likes to slow down and smell the roses. You decide who is getting a rough ride
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Bikes are a quicker way to get around. We should use them so we can enjoy more of our destination
Continue reading...At a party event in a school hall in Lewisham, people told me how disillusionment with Labour has led to this moment
“How many?”
On the end of the phone is a nice press officer for the Greens, head full from a long day in Gorton, Manchester, showing off their would-be MP. And now, as Friday’s sky turns indigo, I’m calling about reports from Lewisham, south London, that tomorrow they’re expecting a flood of 500 Green activists. This comes as a surprise to the party’s own news machine.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...After experiencing the strangeness of the Academy Awards with her last film The Brutalist, the indie actor has reunited with its creators for period curio The Testament of Ann Lee. But what she’d really like to get her teeth into is a certain dino franchise
Stacy Martin is “not a religious person”. Still, the actor insists things have happened in her life that have made her realise there’s “a whole expanse of things that are unexplainable”. Once, at home in north London, she noticed a lightbulb flickering. She couldn’t solve the mystery: no matter how many times she changed it, the bulb continued to blink. Instead of consulting the internet, Martin went to see her psychic, a tea leaf reader she meets annually, booking in under a fake name.
The psychic suggested that someone was trying to communicate with her. “I was like: ‘What if I just start talking to this person that apparently wants to talk to me?’” says Martin. “And so I did. And that light never flickered again.” Martin prefers not to use the word ghost, but she’s aware there are things the mind can’t make sense of; things the body somehow knows.
Continue reading...England have the squad depth, but France have a returning hero and hosting duties for the potentially decisive finale
What are you most looking forward to? Let’s hope it stops raining at some stage. Because if Matthieu Jalibert, Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Henry Arundell, Manny Feyi-Waboso, Louis Rees-Zammit et al have a licence to thrill with a dry ball this could be an eye-catching championship.
Continue reading...Many people are now opting for minimal contact with their parents and other relatives. But while this can provide time to think, it is fraught with emotional complexities
When her mum called her, stress would ring through Marie’s body like an alarm going off. So “I stopped answering the phone,” she says. She forms the words purposefully, as if reading from a script. This was one of the “boundaries” she discussed carefully with her therapist three years ago when she reached a point of crisis in managing her maternal relationship.
She has never explained her decision to her mother, but it followed a lifetime of what Marie, who is in her 40s, feels has been rejection, shaming and feeling like the “black sheep of the family”. Marie’s mother, she says, would always make everything about herself. “Everything I did was just … everybody has it worse. You know, I’d say, ‘I don’t feel very well’ and she’d reply: ‘Yes, well, I’ve got diabetes.’ I was scared to have a voice.”
Continue reading...Russia’s invasion forced Ukrainian men of all ages to the frontlines, most with no experience of combat. Tracy McVeigh spoke to five soldiers about how life in the army transformed them and their relationships
After his mother died when he was very young, Valentyn Polianskyi was raised in the Kherson region by his aunt and his grandmother.
Continue reading...PM says he is sorry for believing ‘lies’ told by former Labour minister and that he too is ‘angry and frustrated’
Keir Starmer has attempted to reboot his faltering premiership, apologising for appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and urging his MPs to unite behind him.
The prime minister gave a lengthy speech on Wednesday about community cohesion, but faced a barrage of questions about his leadership after one of his most turbulent days since entering Downing Street.
Continue reading...Cranston report highly critical of systemic failings and missed opportunities around deaths of at least 33 people
Loss of life was avoidable in the worst mass drowning from a small boat crossing in the Channel, a public inquiry has found.
The 454-page report by the former high court judge Sir Ross Cranston is highly critical of failings around the deaths of at least 24 men, seven women and two children in November 2021, four of whom are still missing.
Continue reading...Shas Sheehan challenges refusal to remove 25,000 tonnes of waste causing ‘grave environmental hazard’ near school
A 25,000-tonne illegal waste dump next to a primary school in Wigan presents “a grave environmental hazard” and should be cleared, the chair of the Lords environment committee has told the government.
Shas Sheehan challenged the refusal of the Environment Agency to clean up an illegal waste dump in Bolton House Road in the Greater Manchester town, given the agency was spending millions clearing up illegal waste deposited in Kidlington, Oxfordshire.
Continue reading...Bank indicates anti-inflation measures in Rachel Reeves’s budget likely to pave way for rate cuts in months ahead
Bank of England policymakers have left interest rates unchanged at 3.75%, but indicated that lower inflation as a result of cost-of-living measures in Rachel Reeves’s budget should pave the way for cuts in the months ahead.
The nine-member monetary policy committee (MPC) voted to leave borrowing costs on hold, despite forecasting weaker growth and lower inflation than at its last quarterly forecast in November.
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