12 h. ago Dark series 'The Institute' adaptation gets author Stephen King's thumbs up

Stephen King shares his thoughts on adapting his books for screens, emphasizing the importance of staying true to his stories

Culture

13 h. ago Fate of Aukus nuclear submarine deal may be delayed months as UK and Australia wait on Trump review

Snap Trump administration review of the $360bn deal announced a month ago will extend well beyond initial 30-day timeframeGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAustralia and the UK potentially face months of more uncertainty over the future of the Aukus agreement, amid expectations a snap Trump administration review of the nuclear submarines deal will extend well beyond its initial 30-day timeframe.The author of Britain’s Aukus review, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, said both countries would contribute to the Pentagon assessment but warned there was “a way to go” yet before advice to US President Donald Trump was settled.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago The kindness of strangers: stranded on a deserted back road, three bikies swapped my busted tyre

Just like in a movie, they pulled up around me, engines bubbling ominously, all leather and gang colours. I thought, ‘This is it – they’re gonna kill me’Read more in the kindness of strangers seriesIt was late, dark and a storm was brewing. I’d been helping a friend do some work at a property in the Colo valley, north-west of Sydney, and was heading home at about 11pm. As I was driving across the Colo River Bridge, there was a sudden, loud bang. I’d hit a pothole and my front driver’s side tyre had blown, just about swallowing my hatchback with it.It was 1988 and, in those days, the area around Colo was pretty rough. It was full of bikies – proper bikies, not the drug-running kind that don’t even have bikes nowadays. The back roads around there are mainly deserted and can be eerie at the best of times. Continue reading...

Transport

1 week ago The kindness of strangers: when I was stranded on a deserted back road, three bikies changed my busted tyre

Just like in a movie, they pulled up around me, engines bubbling ominously, all leather and gang colours. I thought, ‘This is it – they’re gonna kill me’ Read more in the kindness of strangers seriesIt was late, dark and a storm was brewing. I’d been helping a friend do some work at a property in the Colo valley, north-west of Sydney, and was heading home about 11pm. As I was driving across the Colo River Bridge, there was a sudden, loud bang. I’d hit a pothole and my front driver’s side tyre had blown, just about swallowing my hatchback with it.It was 1988 and, in those days, the area around Colo was pretty rough. It was full of bikies – proper bikies, not the drug-running kind that don’t even have bikes nowadays. The back roads around there are mainly deserted and can be eerie at the best of times. Continue reading...

Transport

2 w. ago What would you do with a scarily lifelike doll of your own mother? This is what a seven

Polish photographer Aneta Grzeszykowska captured her daughter interacting with an eerie silicone replica of herself in her dark and humorous series MamaIn one photograph taken by the Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska, her seven-year-old daughter Francziska stands on the weedy banks of the Liwiec River, dressed in a purple swimsuit and denim shorts. Francziska has her face turned towards the boggy water; beside her, sitting inside a wheelbarrow, is her mother’s torso.In the next ambiguous image, Francziska holds her mother’s head underwater. In the another, the two float, Ophelia-like, side by side. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘People like happy endings. Sorry!’ Squid Game’s brutal finale hits new heights of barbarity

As the shockingly violent anticapitalist hit returns, its star and creator talk about spinoffs, the dangers of desensitisation, David Fincher’s mooted remake – and why they couldn’t say no to tie-ins with McDonald’s and UberWhen season two of Squid Game dropped, fans were split in their response to Netflix’s hit Korean drama. While some viewers loved the dialled-up-to-11 intensity of everything – more characters, more drama, more staggering brutality – others found the tone relentlessly bleak. And this was a show whose original concept – a cabal of rich benefactors recruit poor people to compete in bloodsports for cash – was already plenty dark. Anyone hoping the show’s third and final season, arriving this week, will provide a reprieve should probably just rewatch Emily in Paris instead.“The tone is going to be more dark and bleak,” says series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, through an interpreter. “The world, as I observe it, has less hope. I wanted to explore questions like, ‘What is t...

Sport

2 w. ago ‘You don’t brag about wiping out 60‑70,000 people’: the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files‘It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright – very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission.”I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco opposite the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The year is 2004, and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, aged 83, has agreed to be interviewed for a book I’m writing for the 60th anniversary of that fateful mission. Van Kirk informs me, with the trace of a smile, that this will probably be the last interview in his life. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Stephen Fry turns back on Harry Potter author JK Rowling, calling her a 'lost cause' over trans views

Star joins Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint in publicly distancing themselves from Rowling’s views on gender identity and trans rights

Culture

4 w. ago 'Dark underbelly' of the world's most famous legal brothel exposed in horrifying new documentary

Six-part A&E documentary series, Secrets of the BunnyRanch, is exposing the dark underbelly of the brothel

Politics