17 h. ago ANDREW GRIFFITH: Almost four million people are signed off with no requirement to find a job. That's not fair on all the hard

If you ever wanted to know what the warning lights flashing red on the economy look like: this is it. Unemployment up for the tenth month in a row.

Society

20 h. ago ALISON MCGOVERN: 'People are working hard but there are still too many being left behind'

Employment Minister Alison McGovern writes for The Mirror saying the government 'will ensure that everyone has the chance to succeed' as new job figures published

Politics

56 h. ago Netanyahu’s Gaza City outrage fulfils his messianic fantasy of a Greater Israel. The world must stop him | Nimer Sultany

Ignore suggestions that further occupation would be temporary. Act now! This outrageous landgrab is ethnic cleansing in plain sightIt is hard to describe in words the pain of witnessing your people being destroyed for more than 670 days. It is even more unfathomable to contemplate another Israeli escalation, after witnessing so much suffering and so many crimes committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. How can this be allowed in full view of the world for so long? Will the world stand by?Israel’s security cabinet declared this escalation when it approved a plan to “fully occupy” the Gaza Strip and attack concentrations of population, starting with Gaza City itself. The consequences of this newest military onslaught are foreseeable and predictable. In May 2024, Israel attacked Rafah despite international warnings and in defiance of an international court of justice order – Rafah no longer exists. In November and December 2024, Israel attacked the northern towns of B...

Politics

62 h. ago Just 1% of people can find the elephant hidden in incredibly hard optical illusion

A mind-bending optical illusion has left people scratching their heads as they try to spot the hidden elephant in the image - but can you see it?

Politics

7 d. ago Millet: Life on the Land review – phallic forks and suggestive wheelbarrows enliven a landscape of toil

National Gallery, LondonThere’s a undeniably erotic charge to Millet’s paintings of gloomy hard work – reminding us that, behind the hoes, these are real people with real desiresThe figures in Jean-François Millet’s 1859 painting The Angelus, a French icon that’s come to the UK on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, seem extremely odd on close inspection. Their faces are obscure, their bodies intriguing under their shapeless work clothes. What age are they? How are they related? The man is quite young, his top shirt button loose, although his legs are as stiff as a doll’s, inside thick, rough-cut trousers. It’s harder to tell the woman’s age because she stands in profile, a breeze pressing her heavy skirt against her legs, as she clasps her hands. They might be a married couple or, as this painting’s unlikely fan Salvador Dalí claimed, mother and son. Their physicality is intense. The phallic prongs of a thick wooden potato fork and wheelbarrow shafts add to the feeling that, now ...

Politics

9 d. ago Mass shooting at Hard Summer music festival afterparty as at least two people shot dead

The horror unfolded at around 1am local time as revellers attended an unofficial afterparty following the Hard Summer music festival in downtown Los Angeles, California

Events

3 w. ago The Guardian view on Maga and Jeffrey Epstein: the truth about Donald Trump and conspiracy theories | Editorial

The US president is struggling to close down speculation about the case that those close to him have promotedDonald Trump has thrived on conspiracy theories – “birtherist” lies that Barack Obama was born outside the US; the lunacies of the Q-Anon movement; false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. All centred on the idea that the “deep state” was lying to, and thus cheating, ordinary people. Mr Trump was their tribune.It’s hard not to feel schadenfreude now that he’s at the sharp end of a theory that he at times encouraged and allies eagerly pushed: claims that the prison death of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein might not be suicide after all, and that wealthy and well-connected associates were trying to hush up connections to the financier. Mr Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised that “truckloads” of documents would help reveal the truth and claimed that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now”.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this ...

Politics

3 w. ago I just got my first conviction in my 50s for driving 4mph above the speed limit while rushing my ill father to hospital. This is the cynical reason hard

Earlier this week I found myself in the dock of a London court receiving the news that for the first time in my 50-something years I now had a criminal conviction.

Science