After several disappointing failures, SpaceX’s Starship — the mammoth rocket that Elon Musk hopes to use to take people to Mars — is back on the launchpad for a 10th test flight on Sunday night. The test is highly important for Mr. Musk and SpaceX, which hopes to show that the spacecraft is capable of … Read more
‘Enslaved grandparent syndrome” – sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But that’s what some psychologists in Spain are calling the childcare burden faced by older people in that country, where 35% of people over the age of 65 take care of their grandchildren several days a week. In my London neighbourhood, the sight of a grandparent pushing … Read more
Silicon Valley is full of hubris and hugely wealthy and macho men who think they are victims, the former politician and Facebook executive Nick Clegg has said. The former leader of the Liberal Democrats makes the claim in a new book chronicling his three careers as an MEP in Brussels, an MP and deputy prime … Read more
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/aug/22/martin-rowson-russia-israel-peace-talks-cartoon
There is a Russian proverb: don’t blame the mirror if your face is crooked. I first came across it as the epigraph to The Government Inspector, Gogol’s 1836 masterpiece satirising corruption and hypocrisy in the provinces of the tsar’s empire. The phrase sprang to mind last week when I learned that a 21st-century government inspector … Read more
The second Trump administration has been worse than Canada’s worst nightmare. The largest military force in the history of the world, across a largely undefended border, is suddenly under the command of a president who has called for our annexation. Canada could not be less prepared. The possibility of American aggression has been so remote, … Read more
It was night in Ukraine when President Trump met President Putin in Alaska – a night during which Russia shelled only frontline Ukrainian cities. People in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro and even Kharkiv could sleep, but they did not. They were waiting for news from Alaska. I was also awake and watching the news feed, … Read more
Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU. The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented. … Read more
Oil has made Norway extremely rich. We have the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, which was established with petroleum revenues in 1990. Headed by the wealthy banker and art investor Nicolai Tangen, the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), has a current value of more than 20 239bn Norwegian kroner (£1.4tr). With holdings in about 8,500 … Read more
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/aug/20/nicola-jennings-on-ukraine-peace-talks-cartoon