92 m. ago In the Green Heart by Richard Lloyd Parry review – neocolonial jungle fever

An intensely political story of a new father’s escape with his baby through a rainforest during wartimeRichard Lloyd Parry, a longtime foreign correspondent whose experiences of war and regime change are recorded in his remarkable 2005 memoir In the Time of Madness, can be said to know whereof he speaks. Many of that book’s issues, including the psychic damage he incurred from events he witnessed in Indonesia, East Timor and Afghanistan in the 1990s and early 2000s, are reinflected in this, his first novel.Kit and Lara live in a remote village in the deep rainforest. She works for a small, undependably financed NGO. He’s a stay-at-home husband, living for their baby daughter Helen. While Lara presents as impulsive yet practical and barely able to contain her own energy, Kit is dreamy, internalised, exhibiting a calmness that falls easily into dissociation. “This is your life,” she shouts at him shortly before they leave the UK, “a day of your life, and it requires your presence.” He...

Politics

92 m. ago 'Disney ghost village' stands frozen in time with hundreds of 'mini castle' homes

Burj Al Babas was once meant to be a Disney-like haven that would be built with hundreds of mini castles. It offered the glam lifestyle of Europe's royal for those tired of Monaco and France

Politics

2 h. ago Josh Barrie On the Sauce at All My Gods: Nuclear daiquiris in a temple of darkness

Praise be for this this charming sanctity

Events

2 h. ago Horoscope today: Your daily guide for Friday, August 15, 2025

Read what the stars mean for you today, from XX to Gemini

Politics

2 h. ago Alison Goldfrapp: Flux review – Melody and meaning evaporate in mid

Goldfrapp said in 2023 that she wanted to challenge herself with her solo work, but she seems less edgily present here than she did with her bandmate Will Gregory

Politics

3 h. ago Limitless: Live Better Now review – Chris Hemsworth has absolutely no sense of rhythm

The Thor star’s documentary about improving his mental resilience sees him trying to learn the drums. But given how dreadful he is, promising to join Ed Sheeran on stage may have been a mistake So, you know how there was once the Era of All the Chrises? Pine, Evans, Pratt, Hemsworth. And they all looked the same, especially Pratt ‘n’ Evans and Pine ‘n’ Hemsworth (plus Hemsworth had 17 brothers who also looked the same, which felt like an unnecessary layer of complication). Then Evans became Captain America and Hemsworth became Thor and that sorted things out a tad, although Pratt ran interference as Star-Lord in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise for a bit.Anyway. Limitless is a reality-documentary sort of thing by the Hemsworth one (if you need further elucidation, he is Australian and looks like a handsome teddy bear with an unparalleled fitness regime). In the first series he investigated ways to deal with stress and shock, and how to slow the ageing process and other ills tha...

Politics

3 h. ago ‘What about our lives?’: emotions run high in frontline Ukrainian city over ceding land to Russia

Trump’s talk of ‘land swaps’ as a simple transaction belies grim reality of what it would mean for people in Zaporizhzhia The city of Zaporizhzhia, an industrial hub in south-east Ukraine, is as good a place as any to grasp the stakes of freezing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along its current frontlines, or of implementing a “land swap for peace” deal as envisioned by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.Since Russian troops began rolling into Ukraine in February 2022, Zaporizhzhia, with its broad avenues and Stalin-era apartment blocks, has been a 30-minute drive from the frontline. It has been under near-constant attack from missiles and drones. On Sunday, a Russian guided air bomb hit a bus station, wounding 24 people – just another day of suffering in a city that has known many of them. Continue reading...

Politics

3 h. ago Loneliness is rife among young men. It’s time to get offline and talk to each other | Alexander Hurst

It’s tempting to scoff, but don’t dismiss the data. Modern man’s failure to forge real, meaningful friendships is bad for everyoneAt first I was startled when the psychologist Angelica Ferrara told me that most of the time it’s women, not men, who want to write about her research into male loneliness. But this is the crux of the issue, isn’t it? That we men need to talk, and we don’t: not nearly enough, anyway.Since 1990, there has been a sharp decline in how many people men say they are close to, says Ferrara, who is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. In the US, two-thirds of men aged between 18 and 23 think that nobody really knows them; one third haven’t seen anyone outside their household in the past week; only a fifth say they have friends they can really count on; and a staggering 69% of young men think “no one cares if men are OK”.Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...

Politics

4 h. ago Attendance Allowance rules older people should know or DWP payments could stop

Nearly 1.7 million State Pensioners receive either £73.90 or £110.40 each week on the non-means tested benefit from the DWP.

Politics

6 h. ago What Vladimir Putin says and what he REALLY means are two very different things. Commentary on the Alaskan summit by MARK GALEOTTI

The US President is arguably the most powerful and influential leader in the world, but he craves the approval of his peers. He admires Putin's strong-man image.

Politics

7 h. ago What your bouquet says about you: Secret meanings behind flowers and the variety you should NEVER send

The little-known aster flower, native to Japan, has become a popular choice in bouquets for its associations with love - but several other flowers also have secret meanings.

Politics

8 h. ago Night Always Comes review – Vanessa Kirby gets lost in poverty thriller

A woman is forced to take extreme measures to save her family home in an initially stressful yet ultimately meandering Netflix dramaThere’s been a recent overkill of stories told about the super-rich, glossy films and shows set in ostentatious houses filled with characters as superficially on trend as they are painfully out of touch. It felt like needed escapism as we crawled out of the very worst of the pandemic, with The White Lotus, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu and Glass Onion all hitting a sweet spot, but it’s grown rather tiring, as Sirens, The Better Sister and Your Friends and Neighbors have felt less eat the rich and more what if we just admired their kitchens instead.It’s become especially uninteresting as the gap between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us has widened, food prices up and empathy down. That particular anger pulses through Night Always Comes, a well-intentioned yet often inert Netflix drama based on the 2021 novel by Willy Vlautin. It’s told over one awful ...

Politics

8 h. ago Stephen King meets The Office in the best Literary Fiction out now: THE EXPANSION PROJECT by Ben Pester, WATCHING OVER HER by Jean

Anthony Cummins reviews the best Literary Fiction out now.

Politics

10 h. ago JK Rowling claims Sturgeon created a 'dystopian nightmare' in foul

JK Rowling has published a review of Nicola Sturgeon’s Frankly - and the Harry Potter author has not held back

Politics

10 h. ago JK Rowling blasts Sturgeon memoirs as a 'shameless denial of reality and hard facts' in scathing review

Author JK Rowling has penned a scathing review of Nicola Sturgeon 's hotly anticipated memoirs on the day it was officially launched.

Politics

10 h. ago Thousands of users’ personal data — including their IDs — were leaked from a popular male revenge dating app

A widely downloaded new app invites men to review the women they’ve dated, and asks for photo ID to verify their identity. What could possibly go wrong?

Politics

11 h. ago JK Rowling rips into Nicola Sturgeon's memoir in brutal foul mouthed review

JK Rowling has published a scathing review of Nicola Sturgeon's memoir, Frankly, on her website.

Politics

11 h. ago Thousands of users’ personal data — like their IDs — were leaked from a popular male revenge dating app

A widely downloaded new app invites men to review the women they’ve dated, and asks for photo ID to verify their identity. What could possibly go wrong?

Politics

12 h. ago Countries urged to ‘hold the line’ in Geneva plastics treaty negotiations

Talks continue amid warnings from environmental groups over being ‘sold out’ without meaningful or legally binding measuresTalks between nations to hammer out a plastics treaty to end plastic pollution continued behind closed doors in Geneva on Thursday, the final day of negotiations, as civil society groups urged countries to “hold the line” to secure a strong agreement.With time running out to seal a deal between 184 countries, environmental groups expressed concern that frontline communities, Indigenous people and others suffering the worst impacts of the world’s growing plastic crisis were being “sold out” in an effort to secure a treaty, without meaningful or legally binding measures that would address the scale of the problem, “at any cost”. Continue reading...

Politics

14 h. ago Truck Festival 2025 review: A raging indie rock party you don't want to miss

REVIEW: Truck Festival 2025 saw Bloc Party, Nothing But Thieves, Kasabian and Courteeners rule the roost at Hill Farm in Oxfordshire and Daily Star's Sam Huntley was in rock heaven

Events