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Postal workers in Canada have gone on strike after the government warned of an “existential crisis” and ordered sweeping changes to the national service – including an end to door-to-door delivery within the decade. The union representing Canada Post employees described the proposed changes as “an attack” on its workers who have struggled to compete with a surge in private courier services. The strike, announced by the union late on Thursday, marks the second time in the last 12 months that the country’s postal services have ground to a halt. Mail and parcels will not be processed or delivered for...

Many professors in the US south, particularly in Florida, South Carolina and Texas, are considering leaving their state because of the impact the political climate is having on education, according to a new survey by the American Association of Professors. Of those interviewed in the survey, roughly a quarter of respondents said they applied for a job in higher education in another state since the start of 2023. Heather Houser worked as a professor in the English department, teaching American literature and environmental humanities, at the University of Texas at Austin for 14 years. Like the growing number of professors...

Keir Starmer is facing demands from Labour MPs to reprimand Donald Trump’s administration after the US president falsely claimed London wanted to “go to sharia law” under its “terrible mayor”, Sadiq Khan. In an address to the UN general assembly, Trump said: “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed. Now they want to go to sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.” The development will cause further discomfort in No 10 after Trump was last week honoured with an unprecedented...

Aerial footage shows a crowd of tens of thousands of people marching through central London on Saturday in a protest organised by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. The Metropolitan police believe about 110,000 people attended his ‘unite the kingdom’ demonstration and about 5,000 a Stand Up to Racism counter-march

Keir Starmer must obey his “legal duty to act to prevent a genocide”, Greta Thunberg has told the Guardian while travelling onboard an aid flotilla heading for Gaza. The Swedish activist said there was a “huge absence of those whose legal responsibility it is to step up” under international law, and called out the UK prime minister before a potential meeting this week with Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog. In a message to Starmer, who has been urged by his own MPs not to meet the Israeli head of state on Wednesday, Thunberg said: “The words we will use to describe...

For quite some time, the leftist political establishment has been accusing President Donald Trump of abandoning the US Constitution. Now they have me wondering why that’s supposed to be a criticism. Just last week The New York Times, the establishment’s chief house organ, boosted the arguments of writer Osita Nwanevu in a column headlined: “Abolish the Senate. End the Electoral College. Pack the Court.” Why? Because “The left can’t win without a new Constitution.” He’s hardly the first Democrat to say so. I’ve noticed that whenever the Constitution stands in the way of something the left wants at the moment,...

Russia is preparing its troops for new offensives instead of getting ready to stop the war in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday, ahead of talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday. “[Putin] is certainly not getting ready for a ceasefire and war end,” the Ukrainian president said in his nightly address. He added, without providing specifics, that Russia was moving its troops for new operations on Ukrainian soil. “There is no sign that the Russians have received signals to prepare for a postwar situation.”

After finding fame and fortune in Riverdance and other stage shows, Michael Flatley is to seek a new role: president of Ireland. The Irish American dancer and impresario planned to move back from Monaco to Ireland and would seek nomination in the upcoming election, a Dublin court heard on Friday. An affidavit submitted during a high court case in relation to a legal dispute over renovations at Flatley’s mansion said the 67-year-old was “to seek nominations to run for president of Ireland”. An election for the largely ceremonial post must take place in the 60 days before 11 November, when...

Australia will refuse any US request to join a “hypothetical” conflict with China over Taiwan and won’t make any advance commitment, the defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, has said, amid reports Washington is seeking such promises in discussions over the Aukus submarines. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, also pushed back on such a request, alluding to America’s own position of so-called “strategic ambiguity” on whether the US would militarily respond in a conflict over Taiwan. He said Australia wanted to see “peace and security” in the region. Following multiple reports this week that the Pentagon was seeking guarantees from Australia...

Shotgun pellets and bullets that contain lead are to be banned for almost all uses, ministers have said, in a long-awaited announcement welcomed by wildlife groups. < snip > The change to the law, announced by the environment minister Emma Hardy, will outlaw shotgun pellets containing more than 1% lead, and bullets that have more than 3%.

While Donald Trump – and other western leaders – are taking their time to catch up with reality, it is obvious that Vladimir Putin has no apparent desire to halt the war in Ukraine. A realistic future military and diplomatic strategy for Kyiv has to accept that fact – and formulate a new approach. The past six months have been dominated by the erroneous assumption that it would be possible for Trump to negotiate a ceasefire, even an armistice. That would be followed by the arrival of an Anglo-French led stabilisation force to secure the future of Ukraine. But Putin...

The United States only has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans after burning through stockpiles in the Middle East in recent months, an alarming depletion that led to the Trump administration freezing the latest transfer of munitions to Ukraine.The stockpile of the Patriot missiles has fallen so low that it raised concern inside the Pentagon that it could jeopardize potential US military operations, and deputy defense secretary, Stephen Feinberg, authorized the transfer to be halted while they reviewed where weapons were being sent.snipTrump also told Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in...

‘They attack us without provocation’: West Bank town mourns its dead after settler raid Sense of helplessness pervades Kafr Malik where IDF killed three Palestinians after locals resisted masked marauders Julian Borger and Sufian Taha in Kafr Malik The men from Fatah arrived on Thursday morning, hours after the attack on Kafr Malik, to put out more flags along the main streets, adding bright primary colours to a mournful scene, but they did nothing to relieve the all-encompassing sense of helplessness. Three men from this central West Bank town, one a teenager, lay dead and several others were still in...

French police have detained 12 suspects after 145 people reported being pricked with syringes during the country’s annual street music festival, officials said on Sunday. Millions of people took to the streets across France on Saturday evening for the Fête de la Musique, with authorities reporting “unprecedented crowds” in Paris. Before the party, posts on social media had called for women to be targeted during the festivities. The interior ministry said 145 victims across the country had reported being stabbed with needles. Paris police reported 13 cases in the capital. Officials did not say if these were cases of so-called...

One morning earlier this month, Melanie woke up to the news that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) had detained more than 40 migrant workers at a garment factory, as part of a series of raids across Los Angeles. Her high school, located downtown, is not too far away from where the arrests took place. She didn’t want to go to school – but still drove there to complete her final exams...... Embedded in their local communities, teachers are now becoming the biggest advocates and resource distributors for their students, helping them develop longer term resiliency at school and beyond....... Throughout...

Men who engage in the online “manosphere” and the content of Andrew Tate are often able to express a “strong commitment to equal treatment and fairness”, according to research commissioned by Ofcom. Prompted by growing concerns about internet misogyny, researchers for the UK communications regulator followed the journeys of dozens of men through online content ranging from the US podcaster Joe Rogan to forums for “incels” (involuntary celibates). They found that while a minority encountered “extremely misogynistic content”, many users of the manosphere were critically engaged, selective and capable of discarding messages that did not resonate with their values. They...

Donald Trump warned Elon Musk on Saturday that he faces “very serious consequences” if he funds Democratic candidates following the pair’s epic public bust-up this week. The warning, delivered in an interview with NBC News scheduled to broadcast on Sunday, follows days of feuding and threats after Musk called Republicans’ budget legislation an “abomination”. Trump told interviewer Kristen Welker his relationship with the tech mogul was over and warned Musk against choosing to fund Democrats after spending close to $300m in support of Trump’s re-election last year. “If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told...

Keir Starmer has called Israel’s recent actions in Gaza “appalling, counterproductive and intolerable”, as the UK government comes under mounting pressure to take stronger action after the killings of dozens of civilians at food points in recent days. The prime minister told MPs on Wednesday the UK was considering imposing sanctions on members of the Israeli government, but is so far resisting growing calls for a complete ban on arms sales and immediate recognition of Palestine. Starmer was speaking after several attacks at food distribution hubs in recent days left dozens of people dead and hundreds more injured. The attacks...

Artificial intelligence companies have been urged to replicate the safety calculations that underpinned Robert Oppenheimer’s first nuclear test before they release all-powerful systems. Max Tegmark, a leading voice in AI safety, said he had carried out calculations akin to those of the US physicist Arthur Compton before the Trinity test and had found a 90% probability that a highly advanced AI would pose an existential threat. In a paper published by Tegmark and three of his students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), they recommend calculating the “Compton constant” – defined in the paper as the probability that an...

During the 12 months leading up to March, more than 6,000 US citizens have applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely – the highest number since comparable records began in 2004, according to data released on Thursday by the UK’s Home Office. Over the period, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship – with more than 1,900 of the applications received between January and March, most of which has been during the beginning of Donald Trump’s second US presidency. The surge in applications at the start of 2025 made that the highest number...