‘There’s no jobs’: struggle and regret in a Welsh town that backed Brexit

• Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz on June 20, 2026, escalating regional tensions by blocking a critical global shipping lane. • Simultaneously, Tehran announced that a negotiating team is traveling to Switzerland to engage in diplomatic talks with the United States.

Elon Musk is a beneficiary of America’s lopsided prosperity – does the country have any appetite for redistribution?As Barack Obama’s presidency was coming to a close, Jason Furman, then chairman of the president’s council of economic advisers, laid out the strides his administration had made to curb the nation’s exorbitant income inequality in “the largest investments in reducing inequality since the Great Society”.Indeed, by the end of 2016, taxes and transfers cut the share of income accruing to the richest 1% of households by just over a fifth, according to estimates from the congressional budget office (CBO), more than under any government since at least Jimmy Carter’s. They raised the slice of income going to the poorest fifth from 3.9% to 7.9%, the highest share since at least 1979.Eduardo Porter is a journalist focused on economics and politics. He writes the newsletter Being There on Substack Continue reading...

For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades raceIn the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza, first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.Runners gather before the start of the marathon Continue reading...

Overwhelming pressure from Labour MPs pushing Starmer towards decision to step downUK politics – live updatesKeir Starmer is expected to announce on Monday that he will step down as prime minister, after overwhelming pressure from Labour MPs to make way for Andy Burnham to become Labour leader.The prime minister and his allies had insisted for weeks that they would fight a leadership challenge from Burnham, or anyone else, before the Makerfield byelection in which Burnham secured a return to Westminster. Continue reading...

Sunday newspapers report that the prime minister is close to announcing when he’ll stand down and set out a timetable for departureGood morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, is expected to resign on Monday and is preparing to set out a timetable for an orderly departure from No 10, according to the Observer.The paper reports that Starmer, who has insisted he would fight any leadership challenge, now recognises his position is untenable after talking with cabinet ministers, party donors and trade union leaders over the last couple of days. Continue reading...

Advocates say the Safe Third Country Agreement forces immigrants to head to an unsafe country: the United StatesIt was the threat of gang violence in Honduras that pushed Carlos and Antonia to flee their home. In 2021, with their toddler, Alejandro, and a handful of belongings, the married couple ventured north hoping to reach safety in the US.The journey, through Guatemala and Mexico, was filled with danger and uncertainty Continue reading...

Bank details at risk as criminals use AI to create fake sites and emails offering pre-release beta test versionLike millions of gamers around the world, you have been waiting years for Grand Theft Auto VI to be released. Now you have the opportunity to play the much-anticipated game before everyone else.An email has arrived inviting you to play a pre-release “beta” version of the game so that you can alert the makers to any bugs before its official release later this year. Continue reading...

Spain’s leading festival of photography showcases the work of more than 300 visual artists in nearly 100 exhibitions across the countryPhotoEspaña, Spain’s leading festival of photography, held its official opening in Madrid this month and by September nearly 100 exhibitions will have showcased the work of more than 300 visual artists in the capital and across the country. Loosely corralled under the theme of reimagining, the exhibitions feature work by major figures in Spanish and international photography and less well-known emerging artists.From the series Invisible Line. Photograph: Alejandro Cartagena Continue reading...

Scores of Alan Latham’s firms were removed by Companies House, including one set up for movie starring Liz HurleyA prolific film producer, whose projects have starred the likes of Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer and Four Weddings and a Funeral’s Anna Chancellor, has had scores of his production businesses forcibly removed from the UK’s companies register, leaving workers unable to chase unpaid fees.Alan Latham, whose low-budget films have previously raised questions over his use of tax credits, has seen 50 of his film businesses compulsorily struck off by Companies House, according to data compiled by the film workers’ union, Bectu. Continue reading...

Even voters for far-right and Eurosceptic parties back closer relations, polling saysTwo-thirds of EU citizens would back Britain rejoining the bloc, while most UK voters say Brexit has been bad for the issues they care about and want closer ties, including levels of integration – such as free movement – long seen as toxic, a survey has found.Ten years after the Brexit referendum, the polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a thinktank, found 66% of respondents across 15 countries felt UK membership was a very good, good or “neither a good nor a bad” idea. Continue reading...

Frontrunner Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups Colombians go to the polls on Sunday in a presidential runoff expected to trigger to a dramatic shift in the country’s decades-long armed conflict, now at its most violent point since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).Polls show the frontrunner is the Trump-admiring far-right lawyer and millionaire businessman Abelardo de la Espriella, who has vowed to abandon President Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the disarmament of all criminal organisations and instead return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups. Continue reading...