The Guardian
1 day ago
Not cool: who hacked France’s supermarket fridges?
Whether it was youngsters proving their skills or state sabotage, Europe’s most hacked country was left with a mountain of waste after food began cooking in freezersShortly before midnight last Sunday, the digital thermostats controlling hundreds of supermarket cold aisles across France began to flicker and rise.In a “bizarre and unprecedented” cyber-attack, hackers had remotely overridden the temperature settings on thousands of freezers, fridges and chiller cabinets pushing them from as low as -27C (-16.6F) to well over 50C (122F). Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
Mexican judge sentences three men to 158 years in prison for murders of Australian and US surfers
Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, and their American friend Carter Rhoad, were killed while on a surf trip in Baja California in 2024Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA Mexican judge has sentenced three men to 158 years and nine months in prison each for the murder of two Australian brothers and their American friend during a 2024 surf trip to the state of Baja California.The defendants were declared guilty a week ago of homicide, aggravated robbery, robbery with violence and vehicle theft with violence, crimes committed against Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, and their American friend Carter Rhoad. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
China’s tourists flock to experience a pretend typhoon as ‘dark tourism’ flourishes
The concept of ‘paying to suffer’ soars in popularity, with simulated disasters proving a modern twist on visiting sites of historic tragedies When Leon Lv was looking for somewhere to travel last year, she turned to the Chinese social media app RedNote for ideas. The algorithm took her to videos of people struggling to survive typhoon-strength winds and flash floods.“I never experienced a typhoon. I don’t know how it will feel and what will happen. I just have seen it on the news,” says the 28-year-old from Chongqing in south-west China. “So that’s why I want to go there to have a safe place to experience it and learn something.” Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Brazilian Amazon deforestation falls to lowest on record as pivotal vote looms
Forest clearance at smallest total since records began in 1988 in success for Lula ahead of presidential run-offDeforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen to its lowest level since records began, new government data shows.But whether this globally important success is maintained or reversed is on a knife edge ahead of a presidential election run-off on 25 October between two candidates with sharply different visions for the future of the rainforest and how that affects relations with the US under Donald Trump. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
No 10 leaves option open to impose Chinese EV tariffs if UK joins EU scheme
Beijing warns against ‘discriminatory’ step after France drops opposition to British role in Made in Europe packageNo 10 has left the door open to imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of the Made in Europe package, prompting a warning from Beijing that such a move would be “discriminatory”.Downing Street said on Friday that it would “welcome the objective to have the UK included in the Industrial Accelerator Act” after France dropped its opposition to Britain joining the scheme. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
The Guardian view on the banks: too big to fail cannot mean too big to tax | Editorial
Financiers owe their windfalls and bonuses to higher interest rates. Britain should reclaim more for the public and resist City lobbyingJohn Healey is planning to tax British banks, the Guardian revealed, in the forthcoming budget. It’s about time for the chancellor to act. Banks have been raking it in. The campaign group Positive Money reported this summer that Britain’s four biggest banks made £29bn in the first half of this year, up a fifth on 2025. These windfalls owe more to higher interest rates than better products or services. Households and businesses pay more to borrow. Meanwhile, the Bank of England pays the banks tens of billions in interest on their reserves, with the Treasury footing the bill.The chancellor is said to favour restoring the bank surcharge from 3% to 8%, which could raise around £2bn a year. This would recover a very modest share of the sector’s bonanza. Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, said that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”. Britain’s banks have plenty of feathers. That hasn’t stopped them hissing. The banks say that they already face higher taxes than other companies, that they won’t be able to lend as much, and that their profits won’t last.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...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Brazil’s Lula says he now backs lowering age of criminal responsibility to 16
Lula reverses position on age of responsibility for ‘heinous’ crimes in what many see as a desperate electoral gambitBrazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has announced that he now supports lowering the age of criminal responsibility for “heinous” crimes from 18 to 16, reversing a longstanding policy in what is widely seen as a desperate electoral gambit.The U-turn, which Lula announced during a Thursday night interview with TV Globo, comes with the presidential runoff in just over a week. The incumbent faces an uphill battle to overturn the first-round victory of his opponent, the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who remains slightly ahead at the polls. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
India’s Cockroach Janta party leader arrested amid crackdown on protests
Abhijeet Dipke was detained before planned anti-government demonstrations in DelhiThe leader of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) youth movement, Abhijeet Dipke, was detained by police on Friday and then later formally arrested as authorities cracked down on fresh anti-government protests in the Indian capital.Dipke was detained before a planned Friday evening demonstration he had called in central Delhi, urging supporters of the movement to come out and hold up the Indian flag. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Zelenskyy smiles when asked if Trump is treating him as a 'scapegoat' – video
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was asked by Sky News at a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, if he felt he was being made a 'scapegoat' by his US counterpart, Donald Trump, for domestic problems including high diesel prices before midterm elections. Zelenskyy paused for 15 seconds, before he eventually smiled and said: 'This is my answer.'Europe live – latest updates Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
The ultra-rich are spending one million dollars a day fighting California’s proposed billionaire tax
Tech billionaires have raised more than $340m to defeat Prop 40, a one-time 5% wealth tax that will fund healthcare and educationTech billionaires have been dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the fight against a wealth tax in California. They’ve raised more than $340m, and the campaign they’re funding is spending more than $1m a day to defeat the measure, according to state financial disclosures.With the election less than a month away, those funds are being spent at a stepped-up pace. During the first 19 days of September, according to the most recent campaign filings, the opposition campaign plowed through at least $21.2m to fight the billionaire tax – surpassing $1m per day. Voters are being inundated with robotexts, mailers and advertisements that warn a tax on billionaires would “expose all Californians to higher taxes”, as one ad reads. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
British food and drink exports to EU collapse by more than a third since Brexit
NFU analysis of official data shows falls in exports to UK’s largest trading partner since 2019 include 70% for sugar and 74% for egg productsExports of British food and drink to the EU have collapsed by more than a third since Brexit with eggs, chicken and potato producers badly hit, new figures show.Analysis by the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) of HMRC data shows a sharp fall in exports in the year to July compared with the same period in 2019, with sugar dropping the most, down 70%. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Flash floods destroy villages in central Nepal
Landslide blocks river and triggers downstream flooding, while summer temperatures persist in PortugalFlash floods have swept through Nepal’s central Gorkha district after a pre-dawn landslide on 11 October blocked the Budhi Gandaki River, triggering severe downstream flooding. Two villages in the worst-affected Chumanubri rural municipality were reportedly destroyed, with homes, roads and bridges washed away. Part of a hydropower station was also damaged.After river levels surged from 2 metres to nearly 8.5 metres within hours, the national disaster risk reduction and management authority reported that 204 homes were damaged, and more than 650 people had been affected. More than 100 foreign trekkers were stranded in the popular hiking region. The floods come just two months after catastrophic flooding and landslides devastated parts of the country on the border with Tibet, leaving thousands dead or missing. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Museum releases historical photos of island where Amelia Earhart may have crashed
Images from New Zealand aerial survey of Nikumaroro in 1938 offer new clues over aviator’s disappearanceA New Zealand museum has released nearly 50 photos from a 1938 aerial survey of the island where Amelia Earhart is believed to have crash-landed, offering amateur sleuths new evidence to scour for traces of the pioneering aviator and her plane.The black-and-white images were published by the Air Force Museum of New Zealand after renewed interest in one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century, spurred by a US expedition to the Pacific atoll of Nikumaroro in search of new clues. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Penguin Colony review – an Antarctic odyssey of Nazis and Lovecraftian horrors
PC; Origame DigitalThis odd but absorbing adventure sends you waddling across Antarctica in search of an eldritch entity – uncovering a world far stranger than it first appearsA Nazi kneels down on frozen snow, staring at an endless Antarctic horizon. Another holds a gun to his head, ready to end his own life. I direct a small waddling penguin up to them, trying to imagine what it could be thinking. Dismay, perhaps. Likely bewilderment. But then a faint smile seems to break out across its beaky face, as if amused by these silly humans and their misguided belief that they could ever best this howling, harsh landscape.For most games, the idea of playing as a penguin observing Nazis losing the plot near the south pole would be weird enough. But Penguin Colony, developed by Origame Digital, pushes further. This is an audacious, frequently brilliant retelling of HP Lovecraft’s 1936 novella At the Mountains of Madness, in which eldritch horrors are just as common as Nazis. Further weirdness abounds: the many collectibles scattered about this place are not shiny gold objects à la Super Mario or Sonic. Rather, they are words. So tottering about as a semiaquatic bird, you have a unique mission: collect human language. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
AI threatens democracy. But we are not powerless: here’s how to fight back | Carine Fouteau
Tech platforms pillage public-interest journalism for profit. But we have leverage as they sow the seeds of their own downfallCarine Fouteau is president and publishing director of the French investigative news outlet MediapartBig tech companies pose an immeasurable threat: socially, politically, militarily and ecologically. They are also causing a profound crisis of information. The tools they design now serve as weapons of mass destruction against democracy. There is so much at stake that an urgent and broad mobilisation is required.From the harvesting of personal data and the weaponisation of public opinion, to the destruction of jobs, the infringement of civil liberties and environmental damage, ordinary citizens are the main victims of this predatory economy – an economy with an agenda that aligns with the interests of the planet’s most authoritarian and reactionary states.Carine Fouteau is president and publishing director of the French investigative news outlet MediapartMediapart is hosting Hacking Big Tech, a public event about technology, AI and democracy in partnership with the Guardian, in Paris on Saturday 17 October 2026. The conference will be live-streamed free on Mediapart’s website, app and YouTube channel and can be accessed here from 1pm CEST on 17 October Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Revealed: VW, Ford and Tesla batteries linked to destructive deforestation of indigenous lands
Mines in supply chains of western carmakers linked to widespread deforestation of primary rainforest in nickel-rich lands inhabited by Tolaki people in IndonesiaVolkswagen, Ford and Tesla are among the electric carmakers whose batteries may contain nickel mined in indigenous woodlands plagued by deforestation, an analysis has found, highlighting the struggle to make vehicles that are free from environmental destruction.Corporate disclosures and trade flows from the last two years show mines in the battery supply chains of automotive giants are linked to the loss of trees in Sulawesi, a wildlife hotspot in Indonesia that houses the world’s largest nickel deposits. The metal is widely used in cathodes in car batteries because it boosts energy density and increases range. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
UK could quickly re-enter EU with ‘Switzerland plus’ deal, senior MEP says
Bernd Lange, who was involved in Brexit talks, says deal could be negotiated within months of any decision to deepen tiesThe UK could re-enter the EU in a “Switzerland plus” package that could be negotiated within months of any decision to deepen ties with the bloc, the head of a European parliament committee has said.Bernd Lange, who was heavily involved in Brexit negotiations, said: “I would love to see the UK back.” He said the EU missed the UK in decision-making because of its strong history of promoting open markets and democracy. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
From Dallaglio’s medals to Cantona’s shorts, sporting memorabilia is big business | Emma John
Like transfer fees and ticket prices, mementoes are one more marker of sport’s rampant self-inflationThe auctioneer cradled his gavel in his palm like a pipe, the handle pointing towards him. It gave his patter the air of a Victorian gentleman holding forth by the mantelpiece in a period drama. “Are you bidding, Wilf? You’re waving at me.” Under the hammer was a Barclays Manager of the Month trophy, complete with travel case, but no indication of which Premier League luminary once owned it. It outstripped its estimate and sold for £700.An hour and a half into what Budds auction house dubbed its “Octoberfest” of sporting memorabilia, David Convery at the podium showed no sign of fatigue, save the occasional swig from a water bottle. There were 332 lots in total; Convery regularly manages sales with twice as many. In his three decades as an auctioneer he’s even secured some world-record prices, from the oldest surviving FA Cup to Pelé’s 1970 World Cup final shirt. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Homes with striking interiors for sale in England – in pictures
From a brick stable block renovated into an eco home to a Georgian townhouse painted in atmospheric shades of grey Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
‘A completely unique opportunity’: the secretive process that will decide the BBC’s future – podcast
Every decade, the BBC’s continued existence must be secured through an elaborate multi-year negotiation with the government. But what does charter renewal actually involve – and will it secure the BBC’s long-term future?By Barbara Speed. Read by Carlyss PeerRead the text version hereSupport the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpod Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Tech market sell-off deepens amid fears over US inflation and AI debt
Chip makers and tech investors such as Samsung and SoftBank plunge as potential interest rate hikes spook marketsBusiness news – live updatesLarry Elliott: the global economy is muddling through. But a storm is comingAn accelerating sell-off of AI-linked shares has hit global markets, as fears over rising inflation and future interest rate hikes spooked traders already wary of the heavily indebted sector.South Korea’s benchmark Kospi 200 index, which is heavily skewed towards the companies that make memory chips, fell more than 8% overnight to a six-month closing low, triggering circuit breakers that brought trading to a halt at various points. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
From Mario to machine guns: how Ubisoft Paris made Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Tactics
The studio is swapping the Mushroom Kingdom’s vivid palette for the blood-soaked grit of military action seriesWhere do you go after Mario? It’s a question the team at Ubisoft Paris found itself pondering three years ago after wrapping up work on the charming turn-based tactics adventure, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, sequel to its unexpected crossover hit, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. By melding a rather specialist genre with video gaming’s biggest household name, the developer introduced chin-stroking strategic play to a whole new audience. “Having the opportunity to work with the Mario franchise was a privilege, and it’s still something I’m very proud of,” says level designer director, Julien Vial. “I still remember seeing the first prototype and being blown away by all the possibilities.”Now, Ubisoft Paris has returned with a new project, but this time the studio is swapping the Mushroom Kingdom’s vivid palette for the blood-soaked grit of military action series Rainbow Six. Where Mario and Rabbids saw squishy creatures bounce harmlessly across levels as Mario encased foes in honey, Rainbow Six Tactics, a turn-based tactical spin-off from Rainbow Six Siege, sees balaclava-clad insurgents take shrapnel rounds to the chest. A seamless tonal shift, then. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Pakistan school roof collapse kills at least 34 children and teacher
Another three pupils from al-Khair school in Peshawar in critical condition after search for survivorsAt least 34 schoolchildren and a female teacher have died after the roof of a school collapsed during morning classes in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar.As panicked parents and relatives thronged the site of the privately run al-Khair school to search for their loved ones, rescue workers spent hours pulling children from the rubble. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
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