General news

Follow @GeneralnewsUK

• Trump’s tariffs may be perilous for small, heavily indebted countries in global south

  06-04-2025 13:07 via theguardian.com
  
  Garment workers in countries such as Cambodia among those who fear they will lose pay cheques if companies move production elsewhere“This is very messed up. If Trump wants Cambodia to import more American goods: look, we are just a very small country!”Khun Tharo works to promote human rights in the Cambodian garment sector, which employs about 1 million people – many of them women. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• TV tonight: people with facial differences make a tough decision

  17-04-2025 07:20 via theguardian.com
  
  A thoughtful new series in which Jono Lancaster speaks to patients in a specialist clinic. Plus: who will be hired in the Apprentice final? Here’s what to watch this evening10pm, Channel 4
  Terry was left with severe burns after his uncle set him on fire. Mia developed alopecia after her grandparents died. Another Mia hopes facial feminisation surgery can make her feel more herself. In this thoughtful series, activist Jono Lancaster invites people with facial differences to a clinic where w
  
  Read more

• Putin’s play for an Indonesian airbase was always likely to fail – but Russia has wider ambitions

  17-04-2025 07:13 via theguardian.com
  
  Russia remains a key arms supplier in South-east Asia, and Trump’s unstable leadership is providing more opportunities to make inroadsA defence industry report claiming that Russia requested a permanent base for its warplanes in Indonesia’s remote Papua region, right on Australia’s northern doorstep, sent Canberra into a tailspin. But in Indonesia, it was the frenzy whipped up in Australia’s tight election campaign that came as the real surprise.Foreign policy and defence
  
  Read more

• ‘This platform gave me everything’: street performers rue end of busking at Leicester Square

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Westminster Council said it was ‘left with no choice’ but to bring in a controversial ban due to noise complaintsTommi has been a living statue for 20 years, endeavouring to stay rooted to the spot amid hailstones, loose dogs and teasing teenagers.But even he was moved by the news that Leicester Square would no longer host street performers, calling time on one of London’s most renowned tourist-friendly quirks. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Pop goes the budget: Roy Lichtenstein works expected to raise £26m at auction

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Forty of the late pop artist’s distinctive works will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York next monthForty works from the private collection of Roy Lichtenstein, one of the world’s best-known pop artists, will go on sale for the first time at auction next month.The works, comprising paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints, chart four decades of Lichtenstein’s career. They include his shift from abstract expressionism to pop art in the 1960s, his exploration of
  
  Read more

• Like the Ritz for wildlife: the joy of recreating England’s ancient hedges

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Up and down the country, volunteers are coming together to plant more of these nature-rich reservesThe 30-metre ridge runs across the moor near Yar Tor on Dartmoor, one of several faint lines that crisscross the land like aeroplane contrails. Although the open moorland looks wild, we are standing on some of the UK’s oldest farmland. These ridges, called reaves, are the ghosts of farming’s most wildlife-rich legacy: hedges.“These reaves sadly have no function today other than to
  
  Read more

• GPs in England will be able to claim £20 for every time patient is not sent to hospital

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Surgeries will be able to claim money if doctors refer patients to an out-of-hospital setting in bid to cut waiting listsGPs in England will be paid £20 each time they decide not to send a patient to hospital under a government scheme to help reduce the NHS waiting list.Family doctors will be able to claim the money if they instead refer patients for tests and treatment in an out-of-hospital setting, such as a health clinic, or to see a community-based specialist. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Can we stop pretending a trade deal with Trump will be a gamechanger for the UK. It won’t | Martin Kettle

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  I’m not saying Britain should refuse every sort of free trade agreement with the US, but there may be options that better suit Labour’s purposeIt’s a deal. The words sound good. Most human beings are primed to think of a deal as desirable in itself. It isn’t hard to see why. Agreement is generally better than disagreement. In most aspects of life, shaking hands under shared rules makes sense. So it takes a bit of effort to think more objectively. But it is important to do
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• A third of UK school staff report ‘physical underdevelopment’ in poor students

  17-04-2025 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A survey of more than 14,000 staff also found schools having to step in to provide basic household itemsA third of school staff have seen “physical underdevelopment” in students due to poverty, with schools in England stretching their budgets to buy basic household items such as cookers, bedding and clothes for pupils whose families are struggling.A survey of more than 14,000 school staff, published at the National Education Union’s annual conference in Harrogate, found that th
  
  Read more

• ‘Why would he take such a risk?’ My censor and me

  17-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Online dissent is a serious crime in China. So why did a Weibo censor help me publish posts critical of the Communist party?It is 2013. For four full months, Liu Lipeng engages in dereliction of duty. Every hour the system sends him a huge volume of posts, but he hardly ever deletes a single word. After three or four thousand posts accumulate, he lightly clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released. In the jargon of censors, this is a “total pass in one click” (一键
  
  Read more

• What’s next for British Steel? – Politics Weekly UK

  17-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The future of the steelworks in Scunthorpe has been hanging in the balance after the government stepped in to try and save it from collapse. So what happens next for the UK steel industry and the people of Scunthorpe? And why does it matter for our national security? Kiran Stacey speaks to Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a national officer for the GMB union in Scunthorpe, and the Guardian’s political correspondent Eleni Courea Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Venice’s €5 tourist fee returns – and will double for last-minute day-trippers

  17-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  City authorities still hope the scheme, which made an unexpected €2.4m last year, will help tackle overtourismVenice’s entrance fee will resume from Friday, with the main novelty this year being that last-minute day-trippers will pay double.Last year, as part of an experiment aimed at dissuading day visitors during busy periods, Venice became the first major tourist city in the world to charge people to enter. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• ‘My heart broke’: director Ryan Coogler on mourning Chadwick Boseman, rebooting Black Panther and his new movie Sinners

  17-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The highest grossing Black film-maker of all time is known for his superhero movies and reinventing the Rocky franchise. Now he’s made his most personal film yet – and it’s a vampire thrillerWe’re supposed to be talking about movies, but Ryan Coogler has family on his mind when we have our video call – parents, siblings, twins, ancestors and, most of all, his two daughters. “It’s all good, kids not up yet,” the director says in his Oakland drawl. H
  
  Read more

• How RFK Jr’s mixed messages on vaccines are impacting scientific research – podcast

  17-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As a measles outbreak expands across the US, comments by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr have come under scrutiny. Kennedy has said that the best way to prevent measles is to get vaccinated – but he has also caused alarm among paediatricians, vaccine experts and lawmakers by promoting vitamin A and nutrition as treatments for measles and questioning the safety testing of the MMR vaccine. He also recently announced a US-led scientific effort to establish the cause of what he terms the
  
  Read more

• #1 Happy Family USA review – a truly special comedy that’s packed with 00s nostalgia

  17-04-2025 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Ramy Youssef’s surreal tale of a Muslim family in post-9/11 America is quietly subversive TV that’s full of laughter – and painfully realNot content with co-creating the brilliant (albeit frequently watch-through-your-fingers) dramedies Mo and Ramy, and starring in the latter, Ramy Youssef has turned his attention to a riotous animation for adults. Like the Egyptian-American comic’s previous work, #1 Happy Family USA is all about the modern Muslim experience, feeling adri
  
  Read more

• Temu and Shein drop US ad spending as they face tariffs on even small sales

  17-04-2025 05:29 via theguardian.com
  
  E-tailers also hiking prices after Donald Trump ends ‘de minimis’ exemption for cheap shipments from China and Hong KongTemu and Shein are cutting back their spending on US social media advertising as they lose an exemption on tariffs for many of their shipments from China and Hong Kong.The online e-tailers, both of which ship low-priced China-made goods direct to US shoppers, had been on an ad spree until recently. But under an executive order from Donald Trump, as of 2 May their sa
  
  Read more

• Trump’s trade war: the view from China – podcast

  17-04-2025 04:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As the Washington-Beijing trade war grows deeper, who will blink first? Amy Hawkins reportsAfter a fortnight in which Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs evolved into an escalating trade war with China, a sense of defiant nationalism has been building in the east Asian country. The Chinese foreign ministry has even been sharing historic video clips from the former leader Mao Zedong:“As to how long this war will last, we are not the ones to decide … We’ll
  
  Read more

• ‘Who is going to face Mr Trump’: Canada leaders’ debate dominated by US crisis

  17-04-2025 03:23 via theguardian.com
  
  Mark Carney’s Liberals have surged in the polls since Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada, scuppering Conservative calls for change after Trudeau eraPrime Minister Mark Carney said the key question in Canada’s upcoming election is who is best to deal with Donald Trump as he faced his Conservative rival in a French-language leaders’ debate on Wednesday.Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said during the debate Canada needs change after a decade of Liberal party ru
  
  Read more

• Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy hails ‘good progress’ on minerals deal talks

  17-04-2025 02:35 via theguardian.com
  
  Ukrainian president says legalities almost finalised and officials signal US concessions in talks that are progressing ‘quite fast’; deadly Shahed strike on Dnipro. What we know on day 1,149Minerals deal negotiators have made “good progress”, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Wednesday. A senior official with knowledge of the negotiations told Agence France-Presse that newer drafts of the US-Ukraine accord appeared not to recognise previous US military
  
  Read more

• ‘Book brigade’: US town forms human chain to move 9,100 books one-by-one

  17-04-2025 02:01 via theguardian.com
  
  A small Michigan community banded together to help a beloved local bookstore move its stock to a new storefrontResidents of all ages in a small Michigan community formed a human chain and helped a local bookshop move each of its 9,100 books – one by one – to a new storefront about a block away.The “book brigade” of about 300 people stood in two lines running along a sidewalk in downtown Chelsea on Sunday, passing each title from Serendipity Books’ former location di
  
  Read more

• Fifty years on, New Zealand’s tribunal upholding Māori rights faces a turning point

  17-04-2025 01:43 via theguardian.com
  
  The Waitangi Tribunal has had a significant impact on Indigenous rights and policy but as it marks its 50th anniversary its role is being questionedIn the 1980s, New Zealand’s department of Māori affairs set aside money for language groups to spend on projects as they saw fit. When Wellington teacher Huirangi Waikerepuru received his group’s share, he used it to challenge the government.He took his complaint to a relatively new body called the Waitangi Tribunal. Formed in 1975 a
  
  Read more

• No plans to allow any aid into Gaza, says Israeli minister

  17-04-2025 01:25 via theguardian.com
  
  Israel Katz says blocking aid is ‘one of the main pressure levers’ on Hamas while military announces it has turned 30% of Gaza into buffer zoneIsrael has said it will keep blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, as it vowed to force Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages from the 7 October attacks.Aid supplies including food, fuel, water and medicine have been blocked by Israel from entering Gaza since 2 March, more than two weeks before the collapse of the ceasefire betwe
  
  Read more

• Scientists hail ‘strongest evidence’ so far for life beyond our solar system

  17-04-2025 01:05 via theguardian.com
  
  Astrophysics team say observation of chemical compounds may be ‘tipping point’ in search for extraterrestrial lifeA giant planet 124 light years from Earth has yielded the strongest evidence yet that extraterrestrial life may be thriving beyond our solar system, astronomers claim.Observations by the James Webb space telescope of a planet called K2-18 b appear to reveal the chemical fingerprints of two compounds that, on Earth, are only known to be produced by life. Continue reading..
  
  Read more

• Re-arm, reassure and spend big: how the Asia Pacific is responding to a new era under Trump

  17-04-2025 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  The US president has upset global norms in the space of weeks, spurring a flurry of defence spending, diplomatic overtures and offers to boost tradeDonald Trump’s return to the White House has stoked fears over Washington’s commitment to the security of its allies in the Asia Pacific at a time when tensions are running high in the region, home to several potential flashpoints.Countries across the region are urgently considering their options in a new era where the US president has si
  
  Read more

• Rice finds antidote to Madrid’s magic and provides glimpse of his ultimate potential | Barney Ronay

  17-04-2025 00:34 via theguardian.com
  
  Arsenal conclusively outplayed Real Madrid, led by brilliant performances from Bukayo Saka and Declan RiceWhere is your magic now? As the night wore on at an increasingly sullen Bernabéu, as the latest keepers of the Real Madrid shirt tried and failed to crank their way up through the emotional gears, this felt a bit like watching a conjuring act gone wrong. Pick a card. Any card. No. Not that one. Wait. Keep your eyes on the ball. The glass. Hang on.Such is the voodoo around Real&nb
  
  Read more

• Michelle Trachtenberg died of diabetes complications, says medical examiner

  17-04-2025 00:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Known for roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gossip Girl, the actor was found dead in FebruaryMichelle Trachtenberg, a popular TV actor, died of complications from diabetes, according to the New York City medical examiner’s office.Trachtenberg, 39, was found dead in February and had recently received a liver transplant, according to NBC News, but the cause of her death had been unclear at the time. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Salty Brine review – daring diva mashup with hella pizzazz

  17-04-2025 00:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Soho theatre, London
  The drag queen’s latest intermingling of Annie Lennox covers, southern gothic literature, Judy Garland and family anecdotes is a bravura feat of idiosyncratic connectionOn his last London visit, Salty Brine mashed up the Smiths’ album The Queen Is Dead, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and episodes from his own life into a pretty extraordinary show. But not a unique one – Brine has made 21 such confections as part of his Living Record Collection project,
  
  Read more

• Postmortems of rescue workers killed in Gaza show ‘gunshots to head and torso’

  16-04-2025 23:31 via theguardian.com
  
  Findings likely to increase pressure on Israel to give a full account of incident amid accusations of war crimeThe Gaza paramedic killings: a visual timelineThe doctor who carried out the postmortems of the 15 paramedics and rescue workers who were killed by Israeli troops in Gaza in March has said they were mostly killed by gunshots to the head and torso, as well as injuries caused by explosives.There was international outcry last month after it emerged that Israeli troops had launched a deadly
  
  Read more

• Martínez and Pavard send Inter past Bayern into Champions League last four

  16-04-2025 23:01 via theguardian.com
  
  With the final kick of a ragged, enthralling two legs Kingsley Coman volleyed too high and San Siro could erupt. The grand old venue had been buffeted by wind and water all ­evening but here was the fire: Inter’s players wheeled over towards their faithful, the stands bouncing to the tune of another legend in the making.European football will miss this stadium achingly whenever it is finally put out to pasture; here it hosted another cocktail of gravitas and exuberance, tense to the la
  
  Read more

• Alexander Isak caps cruise past Crystal Palace and fires Newcastle into third

  16-04-2025 22:44 via theguardian.com
  
  When Eddie Howe fell ill last week and it became clear Newcastle’s manager could be absent for some time, the team’s captain, Bruno Guimarães, convened an emergency meeting of senior players.According to Guimarães, everyone resolved to “keep our standards as high as ever” and subsequent actions have shown they really meant it. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

Follow @GeneralnewsUK on Twitter!