Middle East crisis live: Iran launches broad retaliatory attacks after US strikes over downed helicopter

• The author argues that traditional, discreet diplomacy has been replaced by a performative and brash style of international relations. • This shift is attributed to a modern culture of short attention spans, likened to "TikTok-addled" behavior.

• Catastrophic flooding across Nepal and China has resulted in more than 1,000 deaths, marking one of the region's deadliest weather events. • The disaster was triggered by intense monsoon rains that caused widespread landslides and flash floods, destroying critical infrastructure and displacing thousands.

• Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Drago Bosnic released a video on August 31, 2026, alleging that President Trump and the Pentagon are targeting civilians globally. • The authors argue that the U.S. military has maintained an unspoken practice of routinely targeting non-combatants from World War II to the present day.

Liberal party figure tells inquiry he never asked Jean Nassif ‘for payments for political outcomes’ as lawyer tells him she is ‘gobsmacked’ by his ‘obfuscation’The younger brother of Dominic Perrottet has insisted he never asked a fugitive property developer for money for political outcomes – including at a meeting at fine-dining restaurant Nobu in Crown Casino, an inquiry has heard.On Tuesday, the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) heard that developer Jean Nassif had withdrawn from a scheduled videolink appearance from Lebanon later this week, after Charles Perrottet faced questions about the dinner meeting between the two men in Melbourne in May 2021. Continue reading...

Three projected victories are ‘a message’ to US that Carney ‘has the support of the Canadian people’, says one lawmakerCanada’s ruling Liberal party has swept three special elections in a result that showed voters backing the prime minister, Mark Carney, after his face-off with the US president, Donald Trump.The Canadian Press, Canada’s national news agency, projected Liberal victories in Chicoutimi-Le Fjord in Quebec, Beaches-East York in Toronto and North Vancouver-Capilano in British Columbia. Continue reading...

FCA chief, Nikhil Rathi, warned of ‘adverse consequences’ if challenge made to settlement, court filings allegeThe boss of the UK’s financial regulator is accused of threatening a consumer group with “adverse consequences” if it blocked a £9.1bn compensation scheme meant to settle the motor finance scandal.Legal documents reviewed by the Guardian said the alleged comments by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) chief executive, Nikhil Rathi, amounted to “an inappropriate intervention by a public official”. Continue reading...

Christine Edzard’s The Man With the Plan tours the country with a timely message about tackling want, disease, squalor, idleness and ignoranceA new film that addresses issues fundamental to the new prime minister’s declared mission will star Simon Callow as a historical British political figure.The hero of The Man With the Plan is William Beveridge, who helped to lay the foundations of the postwar welfare state. It shows that the Liberal peer was much more radical than is usually assumed – and certainly far more so than Churchill anticipated when he asked Beveridge to draw up a report into the future of Britain’s fragmented social insurance and national health system after the second world war. Continue reading...

Youth club closures, unaffordable housing and social media cited as factors contributing to a sharp decline in wellbeingThe number of young people with no close friends has risen fivefold since 2014 as a result of growing up in a “bleak world” dominated by austerity, the pandemic and social media.New research paints a sobering picture of how 11- to 24-year-olds in England are increasingly lonely, isolated and “disconnected” from themselves, peers and wider society. Continue reading...

Increase coincides with proscription of Palestine Action last year which has led to thousands of arrests for allegedly supporting the protest groupAlmost half of all terrorism arrests in Great Britain since the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers in 2001 have come in the past year, official data shows.There have been 6,539 arrests for terror-related activity in Great Britain since the 2001 attacks and 3,021 of those arrests were in the year ending 31 March 2026, according to the Home Office. Continue reading...

Seven-year-old girl and aunt, 34, killed while four others injured in incident near Middlesbrough last WednesdayA 23-year-old man has been charged with murder after a house fire killed a seven-year-old girl and her aunt, police said.Officers were called to reports of a blaze at Birchington Avenue in Grangetown at 5.23am on 26 August. Continue reading...

As families await news of missing loved ones, the disaster is a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is creating a fast-growing threat. Plus, the town considered India’s ‘Jurassic Park’It has been hard not to despair while watching the ruinous floods swallow parts of Nepal, and harder, still knowing that the agony compounds each passing day for dozens of Indian families whose members remain unaccounted for.Social media is awash with desperate pleas, photos and details of the young and old, men and women, from Mumbai to Kolkata, posted by families searching for traces of life. The disaster unfolded when a melting glacier slammed into the valley below, unleashing a deadly cascade of rock and ice down the Bhote Kashi River, which flows from Tibet into Nepal. Continue reading...

Author and Kentucky native, who celebrated the farming world of his home state and warned of the excesses of industrial society, died at homeWendell Berry, the Kentucky-born author and agrarian whose poems, stories, novels and essays celebrated the farming communities of his native state and warned of the excesses and misjudgments of an industrial, commercialized society, has died aged 92.His daughter, Mary Berry, confirmed on Monday that he died in his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. Continue reading...