2 h. ago Former civil engineer with Dumfries and Galloway Council 'raised Kirkcudbright Bridge concerns years ago'

Alan Johnstone, who was the principal engineer responsible for council owned bridges, says he had been investigating the possibility of a new bridge before his retirement.

Politics

3 h. ago ‘Even with segregation, they dressed up and danced’: the radical joy of 1960s Indigenous deb balls

In 1966, 16-year-old Norma Ingram was ‘presented’ to Sydney society. Now her granddaughter, the playwright Dalara Williams, has written a play celebrating the historic vibrancy of RedfernGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailOn a Friday night in April 1966, 16-year-old Norma Ingram was one of seven young Aboriginal women formally “presented” as part of the inaugural Sydney Indigenous debutante ball at Paddington Town Hall. “It was a lot of that old English stuff, ‘coming out into society’,” the Wiradjuri woman says of the event, which was attended by some 200 Aboriginal people.Revellers passed under a boomerang arch to enter the hall, which was festooned with Indigenous motifs in ochre colours. Ingram wore a white ballgown. “We were all just teenagers,” she says of her debutante cohort. “It was fun for us, and we made a whole lot of new friends.” Continue reading...

Culture

3 h. ago Debenhams' £1.5k watch with 'timeless design' now costs 88% less

Shoppers could get the 'expensive' timepiece for a fraction of its usual retail price

Economics

6 h. ago Dunelm's 'really cute' £32 lamp 'looks beautiful lit up' and 'gets compliments'

Home decor shoppers love Dunelm's 'beautiful' £32 lamp with a 'whimsical' design that looks 'really cute'

Economics

6 h. ago AI may help us cure countless diseases – and usher in a new golden age of medicine | Samuel Hume

AlphaFold, which uses AI to find a protein’s structure, has only been around since 2020 but has already had a meteoric impactAlphaFold might be the most exciting scientific innovation of this century. From Google DeepMind, and first reported in 2020, it uses artificial intelligence to figure out a protein’s 3D structure. The technology has already been used to solve fundamental questions in biology, awarded the Nobel prize (in chemistry – to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper) and revolutionised drug discovery. Like most AI, it’s only getting better – and just getting started.A protein’s structure gives us clues about its function, and helps us design new drugs. AlphaFold, which was trained on a huge database of experimentally solved structures called the Protein Data Bank, predicts a protein’s structure based on its amino acid sequence.Solving a decades-old problem: the structure of the nuclear pore complex, one of the biggest structures in the cell. This complex is the guardian of ent...

Politics

9 h. ago Raw, romantic and radical: Joan Baez’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

With her Diamonds and Rust album turning 50, we rate the standout tracks from the American folk singer and political activistAs with a lot of her 60s peers, Joan Baez seemed slightly out of place in the 80s. She only released two studio albums that decade but came out swinging on Recently. It’s a steely rebuttal of her ex-husband’s memoir, which was downbeat about both their marriage and 60s radicalism: “You could say we failed but I prefer remembering the way we were.” Continue reading...

Politics

12 h. ago ‘We won’t be deterred or scared’: Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community fights for right to march in Pride

Some want to oppose ban, others are nervous, but all see it as a warning sign under Viktor Orbán’s governmentMarching with a pink, white and baby blue transgender flag, Corvus gathered with thousands of others in a central square of Budapest this week. The 20-year-old started transitioning last August but cannot change their gender or name legally in Hungary, where an authoritarian rightwing government is cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights.Corvus wasn’t asking for an overhaul of transgender policy or anything particularly radical, however. They were asking simply for the right to be able to take part in a Pride parade. “The government wants to silence our voice and deny our existence,” they said. “They will not succeed.” Continue reading...

Politics

12 h. ago ‘At 60, the bulk of your life is lived. What’s left now?’ Ralph Fiennes and Uberto Pasolini on their ripped and radical take on The Odyssey

The actor and director on why The Return took 30 years to make, their joy at persuading Juliette Binoche to join them – and the punishing regime that earned Fiennes his battle-scarred physiqueUberto Pasolini likes to say he has been thinking about adapting The Odyssey for 30 years – 10 years longer than it took Odysseus to win the Trojan war. A nephew of the director Luchino Visconti, the 67-year-old Italian film-maker has lived in London for 50 years. Pasolini, who won a Bafta for producing The Full Monty, first approached Ralph Fiennes to play Odysseus in 2011, after the actor had made his directorial debut with Coriolanus, believing Fiennes might also be able to direct the film.They got as far as a location scout in Turkey, where Fiennes, then about to play Prospero in a Trevor Nunn production of The Tempest, practised his “Such stuff as dreams are made on” speech in an abandoned outdoor amphitheatre at dusk. “It was me and two goats,” recalls Pasolini over a video chat. “I get t...

Politics

17 h. ago Killers could serve shorter jail terms for good behaviour in radical overhaul of sentencing, justice minister signals

Shabana Mahmood warned ‘short sentence reform on its own isn’t going to be enough’ to ease the overcrowding crisis as she opened a new 1,500-cell prison

Events

19 h. ago Beyond a fleeting fetishisation – why country wear is more than just an aesthetic

Here, Mark Hogarth, Luxury Style Commentator and Global Brand Ambassador at Harris Tweed Hebrides, explores the history of the look and feel, and why choosing country wear is a quiet act of radicalism in a world that prioritises fast-fashion.

Politics

21 h. ago Sadiq Khan launches £10m investment in London's creative industries

City Hall expects funding to leverage £2.5bn in film investment alone, with British Fashion Council and London Design Festival among those to benefit

Economics

24 h. ago Donald Trump is moving fast and breaking things, but that may result in a better US | Simon Jenkins

The chance of the president succeeding in his radicalism is small, but amid the chaos are challenges to convention that were overdue“Move fast and break things” was Mark Zuckerberg’s motto in launching Facebook 20 years ago. It seemed the antithesis of management-school custom and practice. But it worked, to be imitated after a fashion by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other digital tycoons with similar success. Donald Trump is now seeing if it works in government.The smart money in Washington was that after the fiasco of Trump’s first term, his second would see a more emollient president, one careful of his reputation. He would reach out, consult, become a peacemaker, in his desperation to become a Nobel president like Barack Obama.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

25 h. ago In a sudden shakeup, the University of Louisville's president resigns and her successor is chosen

The University of Louisville’s president has abruptly resigned and her permanent successor has been selected by the school’s trustees, without the customary national search

Politics

31 h. ago Owners of old vehicles face new car tax hike in matter of days

Drivers of vehicles with engines below 1549cc will pay £220 over the 2025/26 year, while larger vehicles with engines above 1549cc will pay £360 from April

Politics

31 h. ago As a geneticist, I will not mourn 23andMe and its jumble of useless health information | Adam Rutherford

Millions paid to give away their most personal data. At least in return they found out more about their earwaxInformation is the most valuable resource on Earth. We shed data from everything that we do, and megalithic corporations hoover it up. With that, they know us better than we know ourselves, and the information we readily give up is used to upsell to us, and manipulate our political and personal views. We are users of social media, but in reality we are the product. Google’s mission was never simply to provide a search engine; it was to curate the world’s information. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the commercial genetic testing company 23andMe was cofounded by Anne Wojcicki, once the wife of one of the Google creators; 23andMe’s mission was to curate the single richest dataset in the known universe, the one you carry around in your cells: your genome.23andMe provided information purporting to be about your personal health and ancestry. All you had to do was spit in a tube...

Science

32 h. ago Scottish firm brings digital boost to growing freelance sector

A Scottish web design firm is tapping into the growing freelance sector with the launch of a new online tool to help organise work from home professionals and small businesses.

Politics

32 h. ago Grand Designs fans slam 'worst property in show's history' as host Kevin McCloud makes comparison

Grand Designs viewers were left far from impressed as they saw architect Howard and interior designer Sarah undertake their most "radical" project yet in Worthing, West Sussex.

Culture

33 h. ago World Cricketers’ Association calls for radical reform of ‘chaotic and confusing’ schedule

The players’ body has hit out at the demands placed on cricketers by an ever more congested calendar

Politics

33 h. ago Grand Designs fans brand home 'the worst in show's history' after couple take three yeasrs to complete £465,000 floating house made of polystyrene

Wednesday's episode featured architect Howard and his interior designer wife Sarah, as they set out to build a radical floating home on a tidal estuary near Worthing.

Economics

33 h. ago Let's put it in language the Signal leakers will understand: what a bunch of pathetic sleazebags | Emma Brockes

The leaking of top-level military secrets was bad enough, but I’m obsessed with Maga’s fratboy lexiconThe Maga-fication of American political discourse, which started, arguably, with Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter in 2015, peaked this week with news of Pete Hegseth referring to European countries in the leaked Signal chat as “PATHETIC”, and enjoyed a detour last Tuesday when Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and former running mate of Kamala Harris, appeared at a town hall in Wisconsin and called Elon Musk “a dipshit”. (This is not the first time he has referred to Musk this way. Right before the election last year, Walz told a crowd: “Look, Elon’s on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dipshit.”)Parking for a moment the perfection of the phrase “skipping like a dipshit” to capture Musk’s very particular style of movement and speech, the range of what can and can’t be said in politics has clearly, radically changed. When you look back on the phrase that caused Hi...

Politics