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• ‘Keeps me grateful’: how volunteering can help older adults

  06-01-2025 18:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Older adults who volunteer have reduced risk of mortality, more optimism and feel less depressed and lonelyBy the time she turned 61, Amy Laskey had gained a lot of time. Previously, she had been working full time in municipal finance, raising a son and helping to take care of an elderly parent. But then her parent passed away, her child grew up, and she retired.In place of those duties Laskey, now a 64-year-old retiree in New York City, started volunteering. She participates in conversation pra
  
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• US trade war will hurt UK growth, Bank of England governor warns; Tesla’s European sales fall again – business live

  24-04-2025 08:50 via theguardian.com
  
  Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsThere are signs that some investors are looking to move money out of US assets and into Europe instead, fund manager Jupiter says this morning.Jupiter told shareholders that there was “elevated market volatility” across asset classes in April “as a result of trade policies” (a reference to the crash, and partial rebound, after Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcement).We also see early-stage e
  
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• Nine killed and dozens injured in ‘massive’ Russian missile attack on Kyiv

  24-04-2025 08:50 via theguardian.com
  Several districts across city targeted in one of most devastating air attacks against Ukraine for monthsEurope live: latest updatesAt least nine people have been killed and more than 70 injured in Kyiv after Russia carried out one of the most devastating air attacks against Ukraine for months, with Kharkiv and other cities also targeted.Waves of drones as well as ballistic and guided missiles struck the Ukrainian capital early on Thursday. There were explosions for much of the night, beginning a
  
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• Ofcom announces new rules to force tech firms to keep children safe online

  24-04-2025 08:36 via theguardian.com
  
  Companies will be legally required to block children’s access to harmful content or face hefty finesSocial media and other internet platforms will be legally required to block children’s access to harmful content from July or face large fines, Ofcom has announced.Tech firms will have to apply the measures by 25 July or risk fines – and in extreme cases being shut down – under the UK’s Online Safety Act. Continue reading...
  
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• Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt review – an exquisite tale of first love

  24-04-2025 08:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The poet’s debut novel is a transcendent portrait of gay desire that pays homage to the English literary tradition Seán Hewitt, the author of two acclaimed poetry collections and an equally acclaimed memoir, now publishes his debut novel Open, Heaven – a tender, skilled and epiphanic work which I suspect will meet the same response. It takes its title from William Blake’s poem Milton, which speaks of wandering through “realms of terror and mild moony lustre, in sof
  
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• Evidence of alien life, a clue about the rise of colon cancer, and a new colour? – podcast

  24-04-2025 08:20 via theguardian.com
  Madeleine Finlay and Ian Sample discuss three intriguing science stories from the week. From a hint at alien life on a distant planet to a clue in the search for answers over why colon cancer rates are rising in the under 50s, and news from scientists who claim to have found a colour no one has seen beforeAre we alone? New discovery raises hopes of finding alien life
  Childhood toxin exposure ‘may be factor in bowel cancer rise in under-50s’
  Hue new? Scientists claim to have found col
  
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• Étoile review – a ballet show that’s absolutely not on pointe

  24-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  This drama about dancers could have been as fun as Fame in tutus. Instead, it is a jarring, cringe-inducing mess. Wait till you see Simon Callow as an evil billionaire!At first, Étoile looks as if it’s shaping up to be Fame in pointe shoes. One character even knowingly quotes the “This is where you start paying, in sweat” speech. This would be fine – great, even, because who didn’t love the quintessential 80s series about the high-energy kids from New York Ci
  
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• Shot from the hip! A street level view of 1970s New York – in pictures

  24-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Mark Cohen’s photographs of his daily walks in New York show the world viewed from the height of a child – revealing fresh threats, thrills and perspectivesContinue reading...
  
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• Revolut tracking staff behaviour with points-based ‘Karma’ bonus system

  24-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Booming fintech company gives details of initiative to improve working culture as profits more than doubleRevolut has been tracking staff behaviour, granting or docking points on an internal “Karma” system that is feeding into the UK bank’s decisions on bonus payouts.The practice was detailed in Revolut’s annual report, which showed that profits had more than doubled last year, jumping 148% to £1bn in 2024. That increase was due to a rise in subscriptions, and reven
  
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• Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII review – mesmerically peculiar portrait of band on cusp of greatness

  24-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason are space rock whippets in the burning Italian sun in this outrageously indulgent yet vivid and beguiling music documentaryHere they are: Pink Floyd in 1971, amazingly young, amazingly thin, like four space-rock whippets standing mysteriously on their hind legs in the burning Italian sun. Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Nick Mason are performing “live at Pompeii” in this mesmerically peculiar and outrageously indulgent music documentar
  
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• Labour’s great nature sellout is the worst attack on England’s ecosystems I’ve seen in my lifetime | George Monbiot

  24-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The horrifying planning bill, which rips up environmental protections, was drafted with CEOs in mind. We know because Keir Starmer told usThose of us who try to defend wildlife are horribly familiar with bad laws. But we’ve never seen anything like this. The government’s planning and infrastructure bill is the worst assault on England’s ecosystems in living memory. It erases decades of environmental protections, including legislation we inherited from the EU, which even the Tor
  
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• Hiking the Pennine Way 60 years after its creation

  24-04-2025 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The UK’s first national trail was established to help secure a right to roam. To mark its anniversary, our writer takes on a particularly wild sectionHigh on the ridges of the Pennines, somewhere between the waters of Malham Tarn in the Yorkshire Dales and Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish Borders, a 31-year-old woman stands amid a group of mainly male walkers. She’s wearing bell-bottom jeans, a fitted long-sleeve top and an Alice band to keep her hair out of her face in the prevailing we
  
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• Oasis reunion tour ticket scams cost fans more than £2m, Lloyds bank estimates

  24-04-2025 07:06 via theguardian.com
  
  Victims include fans rushing to buy tickets at well over face value, data collected by Lloyds Banking Group suggestsOasis fans have collectively lost more than £2m to scams since tickets for its reunion tour went on sale last year, a major bank has estimated.Lloyds Banking Group based the calculation on the volume of fraud reports made by its own customers. Oasis fans make up more than half (56%) of all reported concert ticket scams so far this year, according to Lloyds’ data, losing
  
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• Magic Circle readmits magician who disguised herself as a man, 30 years later

  24-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Sophie Lloyd, who was expelled in 1991 when her deception was exposed, accepts belated apology from the society Deception has always been an integral part of magic. So when Sophie Lloyd set about attempting to gain access to the formerly male-only ranks of the Magic Circle, she concocted an elaborate disguise.To become the magician Raymond Lloyd, she wore a male bodysuit, wig, gloves to disguise her feminine hands – making sleight of hand even more difficult – and wore “plumper
  
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• Is a US recession on the horizon amid Trump’s tariffs? | Jeffrey Frankel

  24-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Expectations that the Fed will cut short-term interest rates and falling consumer confidence could indicate what is aheadImagine you are sailing a ship through dense fog, looking out for land. Your lookout spots species of birds typically found offshore. It now seems likely that you are approaching land, but it is impossible to know for sure until you see the coastline. If a US recession is land, the “birds” are already swooping into view. But these sightings offer no guarantees of w
  
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• In a bastion of Catholicism, Filipinos mourn Pope Francis and wonder who comes next

  24-04-2025 06:32 via theguardian.com
  
  The nation remembers pontiff’s trip to the Philippines, where he met Typhoon Haiyan survivors in a show of sympathy and humilityAt Quiapo church in central Manila, the pews are filled with worshippers. Latecomers gather near the entrance, clutching fans to ease the stifling heat.A prayer is read out in memory of Pope Francis, known affectionately as Lolo Kiko, or Grandpa Francis, whose image stands framed on the alter. Continue reading...
  
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• Global study on Covid vaccine safety falls victim to Trump cuts

  24-04-2025 06:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Groundbreaking project has produced some of the world’s most comprehensive studies on vaccine efficacy and safetyThe largest ever global study into the safety of Covid-19 vaccines has been terminated just 13 months shy of completion, after becoming caught up in the Trump administration’s sweeping funding cuts.The Global Vaccine Data Network, which was established in 2019 by the New Zealand-based vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris and the US-based vaccinologist Steven Black, has alre
  
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• ‘Morally repugnant’: Brazilian workers sue coffee supplier to Starbucks over ‘slavery-like conditions’

  24-04-2025 06:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Brazil has been the world’s leading coffee producer due to the forced labour of enslaved Africans and Afro-Brazilians“John” was just days from turning 16 when he was allegedly recruited to work on a Brazilian coffee farm that supplies the global coffeehouse chain Starbucks.Soon after his birthday, he embarked on a 16-hour bus journey to the farm in the state of Minas Gerais – only to discover that none of what he had been promised would be fulfilled. Continue reading...
  
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• You final season review – an insultingly rubbish ending

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Penn Badgley’s ‘sexy’ serial killer story was once ludicrously fun. But despite plenty of fan-pleasing cameos and a propulsive twist, the show’s sign-off is so bad that it’s offensiveYou, in which a serial killer and stalker of women, but a sexy one, is somehow fashioned into the hero of the piece, is a fundamentally preposterous show. It washes its hands of plausibility in favour of vocal fry, phones without passwords and quasi-literary second-person monologues. Pe
  
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• Will rising child poverty be Labour’s legacy? – Politics Weekly UK

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The government began to roll out its free breakfast club scheme this week as part of plans to help struggling families. But with predictions that child poverty could increase by the end of this parliament, how serious is Labour about tackling the problem? John Harris hears from a headteacher, and speaks to our political editor, Pippa Crerar Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Who wept for these people?’ Francis’s papacy was defined by compassion for refugees

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From personally promising to relocate vulnerable asylum seekers to speaking out against ‘cruel’ policies, the late pope was a voice for the marginalisedOn a glorious spring day almost a decade ago, an Airbus A320 took off from Mytilene airport on the Greek island of Lesbos. For what seemed like an age, a small group of bystanders, including officials and the media, watched in disbelief until the plane veered left over the sun-speckled Aegean Sea and its Alitalia livery could no longe
  
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• Two teens and 5,000 ants: how a smuggling bust shed new light on a booming trade

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Two Belgian 19-year-olds have pleaded guilty to wildlife piracy – part of a growing trend of trafficking ‘less conspicuous’ creatures for sale as exotic petsPoaching busts are familiar territory for the officers of Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), an armed force tasked with protecting the country’s iconic creatures. But what awaited guards when they descended in early April on a guesthouse in the west of the country was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling ope
  
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• The EU fined Apple and Meta – but failed to really hold them to account. Was that to appease Trump? | Alexander Hurst

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Instead of bazooka-level fines on global turnover, this €700m was no more than a slap on the wrist. It’s a missed opportunityThe European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, had some tough words for big tech this week, but it seems that at the last minute, the EU lost its nerve. Under the Digital Markets Act, companies that the EU has designated as “gatekeepers” – that is, digital platforms that provide core services such as search engines, app stores and mes
  
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• ‘Rob just put it down to bad luck’: Lindsey Burrow on her husband, MND and running her own marathons

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Wife of rugby league legend who spent the last five years of his life raising awareness of MND and fundraising for a cure says the game will always be a part of her family’s lifeThis weekend Lindsey Burrow will run the London Marathon. Two weeks later, she will run the Leeds Marathon. And she’s not even what she’d call a good runner. “I think coming from Yorkshire and having that Yorkshire grit,” she says, with a smile, “I’m just quite stubborn.”Bu
  
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• ‘One father threatened to stab the referee’: why does kids’ football bring out the worst in parents?

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  When they’re not shouting at their own children, many of Britain’s soccer dads like nothing more than swearing at the officials, or even trading blows on the touchline. Isn’t this supposed to be fun? A chilly Saturday morning on the Astroturf pitches at Coram’s Fields in central London and several youth football matches are under way. I’m watching an under-11s game. The sound is the thud of boot on ball, the shrill interruption of the referee’s whistle, and a
  
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• NHS ‘routinely failing’ deaf patients in England, report finds

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  RNID survey finds half of sign language users did not understand diagnoses – some terminal – or how their treatment workedDeaf patients face systemic discrimination when it comes to learning about their own health due to NHS failings, with some not understanding that they might have a terminal illness, according to a damning report.The study by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) accuses the NHS of “routinely failing” deaf people. Continue reading...
  
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• Making plans for Nigel: tense Tories wonder whether Badenoch has what it takes to see off Reform | Pippa Crerar

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  With local election punishment looming, Conservative stress bubbled over after Jenrick’s remarks about FarageSome veteran Conservatives are so convinced that Robert Jenrick, the ambitious shadow justice secretary, is intent on striking an election pact with Reform UK that they have nicknamed him “Nigel’s chancellor”.The joke, however, gets to the heart of what many of them fear most: that the Tory party is in such a parlous state that their only hope of survival will be t
  
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• Daily peanut exposure can desensitise allergic adults, study suggests

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  First clinical trial of its kind could be ‘life changing’ for those living in fear of severe peanut reactionAdults with severe peanut allergies can be desensitised by daily exposure, according to the first clinical trial of its kind.After being given steadily increasing doses of peanut flour over a period of months, two-thirds of the trial participants were able to eat the equivalent of five peanuts without reacting. Continue reading...
  
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• British artist claims he has created paint in ‘new’ colour announced by scientists

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Stuart Semple is selling product for £10,000 (or £29.99 to fellow creatives) – but scientists say hue cannot be replicatedA British artist claims to have replicated in paint a colour that scientists say they discovered by having laser pulses fired into their eyes.Stuart Semple created his own version of the blue-green colour based on the US research published in Science Advances, which he is selling on his website for £10,000 per 150ml jar – or £29.99 if you s
  
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• A year of hate: what I learned when I went undercover with the far right

  24-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  Working for Hope Not Hate, I infiltrated an extremist organisation, befriended its members and got to work investigating their political connectionsCharlie, the leader of a white nationalist group, leaned over the sticky pub table. He pointed a big finger at me and locked eyes. “You better not turn out to be an infiltrator for Hope Not Hate,” he said. I froze. Flanked by several of his lieutenants, Charlie watched, waiting for my response. His face softened into a smile. He started l
  
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