2 w. ago Drivers urged to carry one essential item in their car next week

With a heatwave just around the corner and temperatures expected to break 30C, these simple but essential steps from experts can help ensure your safety and comfort on the road

Transport

2 w. ago The Survivors review – a murder mystery so intense you’ll watch through your fingers

This adaptation of the bestselling Australian crime novel is full of twists, turns and red herrings. Its focus on the terrible grief of bereaved mothers makes it a cut aboveI hope you have had enough time to recover from Robyn Malcolm’s barnstorming performance as a harrowed wife and mother labouring under burdens no one should have to endure in the acclaimed After the Party, because here comes another one.The Survivors is a six-part adaptation of Jane Harper’s bestselling Australian crime novel of the same name, by Tony Ayres – who did the same for Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap 10 years ago, which followed families fracturing under the weight of a moment’s lost control, and who wrote Stateless in 2020 about lives intertwining at an Australian immigration detention centre. This is a writer who doesn’t shy away from the pain human beings can inflict on one other. The Survivors is technically a murder mystery but its real subject is grief and terrible, terrible guilt. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Disabled celebrities urge Keir Starmer to scrap ‘inhumane’ benefit cuts

Exclusive: More than 100 people including Liz Carr and Rosie Jones sign letter criticising Pip and universal credit changesMore than 100 of the UK’s most high-profile disabled people, including Liz Carr, Rosie Jones, Ruth Madeley and Cherylee Houston, have called on the prime minister to abandon “inhumane and catastrophic plans to cut disability benefits”.In an open letter to Keir Starmer before a planned Commons vote next month, they argue that the government’s plan to reduce eligibility to personal independence payment (Pip) and the health component of universal credit is a matter of “survival” and “basic human rights”. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago What goes ‘bump’ in the night is actually helping to ensure humanity’s survival

Researchers have found that lesser known nocturnal pollinators’ roles are just as important to help keep food on our tables

Events

3 w. ago Trump’s mass federal cuts disrupt LA wildfire recovery: ‘It’s coming tumbling down’

Doge has gut staff at Fema, EPA and the army corps, who are crucial for helping survivors get back on their feetOn 13 April, Tess McGinley was working in her Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) cubicle in Los Angeles, calling people who had lost their homes in the January wildfires, when her team was told to stop what they were doing and leave the office immediately.McGinley, a 23-year-old team leader for AmeriCorps, the US agency for national service and volunteerism, was helping Fema by reviewing wildfire survivors’ cases to ensure they received housing assistance. Over the past six weeks, she and her seven teammates had reviewed more than 4,000 cases and made hundreds of calls to survivors. Now, even as the team drove home after their jobs were cut, their government phones kept ringing. “Survivors just kept calling us And we weren’t able to help,” McGinley said. Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago The UK has spoken out against the ‘monstrous’ human catastrophe in Gaza. Why won’t Australia do more? | Donald Rothwell

Foreign minister Penny Wong has called the risk to babies ‘horrifying’ but there is more Australia could do to make its position on Gaza clearGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe humanitarian situation in Gaza has reached a breaking point, with 2.1 million Palestinians trying to survive human catastrophe on the strip.While there is a very faint flicker of hope that Israel is considering a change of direction with its rigid Gaza blockade, any relaxation of the blockade will take many weeks to be undone, given the starvation and malnutrition Palestinians have endured.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news emailDonald Rothwell is professor of international law at the Australian National University Continue reading...

Politics