3 h. ago The Guardian view on peace in Gaza: the relief is real, but Trump’s promise of a ‘golden age’ rings hollow | Editorial

Hostage and prisoner releases are bringing joy to families. But there is no guarantee that the ceasefire will end Palestinian sufferingThe reprieve brought by the end of fighting in Gaza is immense. In Israel, the release of the living hostages has led to widespread elation. In Gaza and the West Bank there are also celebrations, as up to 2,000 Palestinian detainees start to be released – though there is distress, too, due to uncertainty about who is being freed and where they will be sent. In northern Gaza, people can finally return to dig through rubble for the remains of an estimated 10,000 missing people.As recently as three weeks ago, the likelihood of a ceasefire appeared remote. But it has taken effect, and on Monday Donald Trump travelled from Jerusalem, where he was cheered in the Knesset, to Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. There, he joined a high-powered peace summit of more than 20 world leaders, including Sir Keir Starmer. The plan for peace begun there is due to be c...

Politics

3 h. ago The Guardian view on the online scam industry: authorities must not forget that perpetrators are often victims too | Editorial

A lucrative sector is spreading fast as criminal enterprises force abused and trafficked workers to cheat othersA Chinese court last month sentenced 11 people to death over their roles in a illegal scam empire along the border with Myanmar. But it won’t end a noxious multibillion-dollar industry that devastates the lives of two sets of victims. The first are those cheated out of money, often by people posing as potential romantic or business partners in what are known as “pig‑butchering” schemes. The second are those who are forced to cheat them, working in conditions amounting to modern slavery.The recent study, Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds, by Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo, paints a terrifying picture of the sector. Workers are trafficked into heavily guarded, prison-like compounds, where they are routinely abused and tortured for failing to meet targets, or extorted for ransoms. Others take the jobs willingly, but find that they cannot repay ru...

Events

28 h. ago The Guardian view on gen Z protests: these movements share more than an interest in anime | Editorial

A new global wave of unrest is unfolding, driven by generational discontents and taking cues from each otherAfter a quarter-century of existence, the global triumph of Monkey D Luffy – a fresh-faced and rubber-bodied pirate captain – had seemed almost complete. The One Piece manga series, of which he is the freedom-fighting hero, had become the bestselling of all time, with more than 500m copies bought. The anime was a similar hit, with viewers immersing themselves in over a thousand episodes following his struggle against the World Government, a corrupt and tyrannical oligarchy.Yet Luffy has now found a new lease of life as inspiration to protesters in a wave of youthful unrest across continents. His crew’s flag – a skull and crossbones crowned with his jaunty straw hat – has appeared from Morocco to Madagascar in recent days. Indonesians enthusiastically adopted it this summer, in a riposte to the president’s urging to fly the national standard. Officials were so alarmed that...

Events

3 d. ago The Guardian view on an AI bubble: capitalism still hasn’t evolved to protect itself | Editorial

Warnings about inflated tech stocks suggest investors never learn and central bankers learn too lateThe message from global regulators this week was blunt: the AI boom is driving stocks to dotcom-bubble highs – and the world is finally listening. With so much cash riding on so few firms, any loss of faith could send shares tumbling and drag down the wider economy. China’s proposed export controls on rare earths add a fresh threat: not just to sentiment, but to advanced chip supply chains themselves. It’s a long way down from such dizzying heights if gravity reasserts itself.Warnings from the past abound in Charles Kindleberger’s history of financial crises, Manias, Panics and Crashes, which begins with tulip mania in 1636. What commonly happens, he wrote, is “that some event changes the economic outlook. New opportunities for profits are seized, and overdone.” Once the mistake is realised, there’s a panicked exit with a crash in the price of “whatever has been the subject of the man...

Politics

3 d. ago The Guardian view on AC Milan playing a ‘home’ game in Perth: the clue should be in the name | Editorial

Famous European football clubs should not be shunted around the globe in search of sports promoters with deep pocketsFootball clubs are community assets, possessing a value, history and meaning which cannot be captured on a balance sheet. They belong to the cities and towns that have sustained them over the decades. For the vast majority of supporters, the sense of identity and matchgoing rituals associated with following their team are worth as much as the occasional trophy or glorious victory.That culture becomes harder to maintain, however, if your club’s next game is taking place 5,000 miles away. European football’s governing body, Uefa, this week announced that it will allow a Spanish league fixture between Villarreal and Barcelona to take place closer to Cuba than Catalonia, in Miami’s Hard Rock stadium. This will be followed, in February, by the relocation to Australia of an Italian Serie A match between Milan and Como. Global sports promoters, rubbing their hands ...

Politics

4 d. ago The Guardian view on Trump and the ceasefire deal: hope at last, but the real work is just beginning | Editorial

This is the best prospect of ending Israel’s war in Gaza since it began. But a long-term solution remains distantDonald Trump called the pause in hostilities he has brokered the first step to a “strong, durable and everlasting peace”. No one can do more to determine the outcome than the US president. This was, for him, a modest statement, acknowledging that Israel and Hamas had agreed to the first phase of his plan – it being their decision, not his, to break a multi-point agreement into a multi-stage discussion. Two parties so far apart agreed on one thing: both would rather defer the really difficult issues.In Israel and Gaza, there was joy – however tentative – at the announcement. An end to the annihilation, the release of all hostages and the resumption of large-scale aid have all been desperately needed. There is every reason to fear that this will not lead to a lasting peace, and every reason to strive to ensure that it does. In finally reining in Benjamin Netanyahu, and...

Economics

6 d. ago The Guardian view on political chaos in France: the gift that keeps on giving to Marine Le Pen and the far right | Editorial

Influential abroad, Emmanuel Macron’s strategic errors at home are bringing mainstream French politics into disrepute at a crucial momentIn Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 play No Exit, hell is portrayed as a locked room in which characters are condemned to fall out and squabble for all eternity. Ever since foolishly calling a snap election which delivered a deadlocked and divided national assembly, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has found himself trapped in a modern political version of the same plot.On Monday morning, the third prime minister Mr Macron has appointed in just over a year became the latest to throw in the towel, after only 27 days in the job. Hours after unveiling his ministerial team, Sébastien Lecornu stood down following a backlash from centre-right allies, who objected to the number of carryovers from François Bayrou’s previous administration. By Monday evening, Mr Macron had persuaded Mr Lecornu to conduct a round of last-ditch negotiations to try to resolv...

Politics

6 d. ago Millions of car buyers could share £8billion payout after finance scandal

City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority has published details of an industry wide compensation scheme

Economics

7 d. ago The Guardian view on Trump’s Gaza plan: the bloodshed must end, but this proposal betrays Palestinians | Editorial

An end to the annihilation, and the release of Israeli hostages, is urgently needed. But lasting peace cannot be built on the denial of basic rightsTwo years after the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, in which militants killed about 1,200 Israelis, and amid the genocide in Gaza, in which Israel has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, the need for peace has never been more urgent. Palestinians are desperate for an end to starvation and airstrikes. Israelis want the war to end for the sake of remaining hostages and soldiers. Violence has reverberated across the region. Momentum has been growing around Donald Trump’s proposal, with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas grudgingly indicating acceptance under US threat.With indirect talks between Israel and Hamas beginning in Egypt on Monday afternoon, there are frail hopes of progress at last. Yet both parties have made it clear that they reject major parts of the 20-point US plan, which begins with an immediat...

Politics

1 week ago The Guardian view on Tilly Norwood: she’s not art, she’s data | Editorial

The first 100% AI actor is a cause for alarm. But the human connection of great acting can never be replacedThe threat to human creativity from technology took another step closer this week with the appearance of Tilly Norwood, the first 100% AI-generated actor. Unsurprisingly, her unveiling at the Zurich film festival in a comic sketch called AI Commissioner caused an outcry. Emily Blunt described the film as “terrifying” and the actors’ union Sag-Aftra condemned it as “jeopardising performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry”.There is much that is problematic about Norwood, not least the message her “girl-next-door vibe” sends to young women. But the more serious point is that her face has been made from those of real actors without their knowledge or consent. Her lighthearted debut masks the fact that she is part of a new model of media production that rides roughshod over longstanding norms and laws governing artists and their work. Hollywood has been anticipating Norwood...

Politics

1 week ago The Guardian view on the Manchester synagogue attack: a tragic wake

An assault of this kind was widely feared. Now that it has happened, Britain faces a choice between deeper division and greater toleranceThe attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester was outrageous. It took two innocent lives, and several others were injured. Yet it could have happened almost anywhere. It is an event with wider national meaning and lessons. On Thursday morning, Britain looked over the edge into one of the dark places to which modern public life has been heading. Having looked and seen, Britain now needs to learn and step back.The violence began around 9.30am, just as morning prayers were being held on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most solemn and sacred day. The synagogue was inevitably well attended. Yet within a short period of time, two Jewish victims lay dead from stabbing, with four others injured, outside what ought to be a place of prayer and community. The attacker was then himself shot and killed, possibly as he attempted to get inside t...

Events

1 week ago The Guardian view on climate policy: Britain needs clean power, not culture wars | Editorial

Kemi Badenoch’s plan to scrap the Climate Change Act is reckless. Ed Miliband offers a bolder, fairer vision. The future must be built on renewablesLet’s scrap Britain’s successful climate law so we can burn more gas, lose investment and have higher bills. Crazy as it might seem, that is the message of Kemi Badenoch’s new energy strategy. The Conservative leader proposes to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act in favour of a plan to “maximise oil and gas extraction”, and remove all legally binding carbon targets. It’s pitched as pragmatism. But it’s a lurch into ideological self-harm.Britain’s energy problem isn’t its climate legislation, which is admired globally, backed by industry and supported by the public. It’s that this country remains too dependent on volatile fossil fuels. Emissions targets are not the reason for high bills. It is gas prices, which skyrocketed after Russia invaded Ukraine. They set UK electricity prices. In Europe, they don’t – that’s why bills are lower...

Events

2 w. ago The Guardian view on catastrophe in Darfur: The world has looked away, but Sudan’s civilians can’t wait any longer | Editorial

A brutal war has been fuelled by outside powers. Diplomatic efforts must be intensifiedWhen the history of the 21st century is written, the name of El Fasher will surely appear on its bleakest pages. The besiegement of the city by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has lasted more than 500 days. Families are surviving on animal feed. An estimated 260,000 civilians face a terrifying choice: to stay and die of starvation or in an airstrike – or attempt to flee and face rape, robbery and death.El Fasher is the last major city in Darfur still defended by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) – and allied fighters – in the bloody and unrelenting struggle with the RSF, which has lasted almost two and a half years. Yet a conflict that has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis has remained largely ignored as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have consumed international attention. In the runup to the UN general assembly in New York last week, the US finally appeared to be ma...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on AI and jobs: the tech revolution should be for the many not the few | Editorial

Britain risks devolving its digital destiny to Silicon Valley. As a TUC manifesto argues, those affected must have a greater say in shaping the workplace of the futureIn The Making of the English Working Class, the leftwing historian EP Thompson made a point of challenging the condescension of history towards luddism, the original anti-tech movement. The early 19th-century croppers and weavers who rebelled against new technologies should not be written off as “blindly resisting machinery”, wrote Thompson in his classic history. They were opposing a laissez-faire logic that dismissed its disastrous impact on their lives.A distinction worth bearing in mind as Britain rolls out the red carpet for US big tech, thereby outsourcing a modern industrial revolution still in its infancy. Photographers, coders and writers, for example, would sympathise with the powerlessness felt by working people who saw customary protections swept away in a search for enhanced productivity and profit. Unlice...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on the 2025 Booker prize: bringing posh bingo to the BookTok generation | Editorial

With this year’s shortlist announced live to the public, Britain’s most prestigious literary award is finding ways to engage new audiencesWith its reputation for stuffiness and elitism, the Booker prize may seem unsuited to the age of social media. Back in the 1980s, when writers’ spats and affairs made headlines, the winning ceremony was televised by the BBC. It was the book world’s Oscars. Today, the idea of tuning in to watch the dinner-suited literati tuck into supper in London’s oak-panelled Guildhall seems preposterous. But the UK’s most prestigious literary prize still needs to reach as wide an audience as possible. How do you sell “posh bingo”, as Julian Barnes memorably dubbed it, to the BookTok generation?It is no longer enough to tell people what they should be reading. Readers expect to be part of the conversation – to be in the bingo hall. This year’s shortlist was announced live by the chair and former Booker prizewinner Roddy Doyle at an event at London’s So...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Nato airspace incursions: Russia is testing European and US will. It won’t stop here | Editorial

The escalation in recent days is raising alarm. It forms part of Moscow’s broader pattern of probing and provocationThe sheer volume of headlines tells its own tale. Russian drones over Poland and Romania. Russian fighter jets in Estonian airspace. Russian aircraft buzzing a German naval frigate in the Baltic Sea. Unidentified drones over Copenhagen and Oslo airports. Most recently, in the early hours of Thursday, further drones appearing at other Danish airports.In just over a fortnight, European states have reported a striking spate of incursions into their airspace. Russia has repeatedly denied responsibility and questions remain over individual events: so far, Denmark has said only that a “professional actor” was at work in the airport incidents and that it can’t rule out Russia. But overall, there is a pattern which fits clearly into Moscow’s longer record of provocations and often implausible deniability – and which amounts to a notable escalation. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Ireland’s presidential election: a contest with consequences | Editorial

Since 1990, the heads of state of Britain’s closest neighbour have played important soft power roles. This needs to continueThe idea that the next head of state might be an elected one is as remote from British experience as a visit to the far side of the moon. But it is hardly an unthinkable proposition, and you do not have to travel as far as the moon to see such a process taking place in a smooth and dignified manner. In fact, you only have to travel to Ireland.Next month, Ireland will elect a successor to President Michael D Higgins, who has served two seven-year terms as the occupant of Áras an Uachtaráin (in bygone days the Viceregal Lodge) in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Mr Higgins has done the largely ceremonial job with charm, toughness and imagination. He has been good for Ireland, and good for British-Irish relations at a difficult time. In 2014, he made the first state visit to Britain by an Irish president. He is not a large man, but he leaves big shoes to fill. Con...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on Trump’s support for Ukraine: a welcome but not reliable vote of confidence | Editorial

Having exhausted a failed policy of appeasement, the US president may at last be ready to put pressure on Moscow The judgment of a man who fails to distinguish between aggressor and victim when describing the Russia-Ukraine war is not worthy of respect. Unfortunately, when that man is the US president, his opinion cannot be ignored.Earlier this year, Donald Trump asserted that Vladimir Putin had “all the cards” and urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make peace in terms that resembled surrender. This week, Mr Trump declared that Kyiv might achieve total victory, liberating all territory currently under Russian occupation.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The Guardian view on the climate crisis: green energy is booming – but fossil fuels need to shrink too | Editorial

The planet is nearing dangerous limits. Yet progress on clean energy shows what’s possible. With political will, cooperation can still avert the worst of the climate crisisAll is not lost, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, told the Guardian last week. But the latest planetary health check from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research is a brutal reminder of how close the Earth is being pushed beyond repair. Seven of the nine planetary boundaries are now breached, with ocean acidification added to the danger list. Yet the world has proved that cooperation works: the ozone layer is healing, air pollution controls are working. A decisive test looms at the end of the month, when governments must file new climate pledges, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). This is no time to ease off: the fossil-fuel era must end, and the clean‑energy transition must accelerate.There is real concern that big emitters, including China and the EU, will fall short of what is n...

Events

3 w. ago The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s hate for opponents: practising politics the wrong way | Editorial

The president’s admission is more than bravado. By blurring truth and criminalising dissent, he is dismantling the US’s free-speech order from withinAt Sunday’s memorial for the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump paid a peculiar tribute. Having quoted Mr Kirk’s words of forgiveness, he put aside the script. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” he said. “I hate my opponents, and I don’t want the best for them.” It was a stark and clarifying admission. Mr Trump does not seek to criminalise hate speech so much as to criminalise speech he hates.The US is being dragged into a state of emergency. Speech is framed as terrorism. Satire is rebranded as enemy propaganda. Employers punish workers for personal posts. The predictable result is a chilling climate of surveillance and reprisal, in which citizens learn to keep quiet. The assassination is not just being used to police manners; it is being used to reconstruct the public square so that dissent equals disloyalty, and...

Politics