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The Canary news website announces closure after ‘vicious campaign against us’

19 October 2026 at 09:52

Leftwing outlet said it had faced ‘multiple attacks’ and ‘malicious lies’ which made its situation unsustainable

The leftwing news site the Canary has announced that it is closing indefinitely. Earlier this year the media outlet was blocked from accessing funds and has faced allegations of internal turmoil.

The outlet, founded in 2015 at the height of support for the then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said in a social media post it would be closing “for the foreseeable future”.

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© Photograph: sjscreens/Alamy

© Photograph: sjscreens/Alamy

© Photograph: sjscreens/Alamy

From little acorns … to his 1,000th article for the Guardian country diary

17 October 2026 at 08:00

As Mark Cocker approaches a landmark for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper, he is still inspired by powerful encounters with nature

In the autumn of 1987, Mark Cocker sat in a field near Norwich and watched a jay burying acorns for the long winter ahead. He described the scene in his first country diary for the Guardian. Thirty-nine years on, some of those jay-planted acorns will be mature oaks now, and Cocker is completing his 1,000th diary for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper.

In his next diary, he will reflect on the changing birdlife around Flint Clough, in the Peak District, where he first marvelled at rare birds aged 12 after devouring bird books in his bedroom. As a boy, he would find cuckoo, golden plover, ring ouzel and twite, a once-common bird which is now virtually extinct in England.

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© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

‘Well-known individual’ tries to secure permanent injunction against Guardian and ITN

16 October 2026 at 14:20

Lawyers tell high court that client could harm himself if serious allegations against him are made public

A “well-known individual” is trying to secure a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to prevent them from publishing details of serious allegations made against him.

At a high court hearing on Friday, the claimant’s legal team said there was a serious risk that he could harm himself should the allegations be made public.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

One thing must now be clear to Andy Burnham. The rightwing press is on a war footing – and he’s the enemy | Jane Martinson

13 October 2026 at 03:00

Farage was its champion, now it’s Badenoch – and the aim is the PM’s defeat at all costs

While the merits of a so-called Britannia shield to protect Britain from missiles and drones are debatable, the Conservatives’ proposal did achieve one thing last week: the very idea of the shield was used to anoint a political leader.

In a significant development, little observed amid the hullaballoo of news events, Kemi Badenoch’s uncosted, pie-in-the-sky plans to build a £10bn anti-missile system were enthusiastically heralded by the rightwing press. It was not just a matter of the plans themselves being lauded, even by outlets that must know them to be ridiculous. More significant is what it said about the champion chosen by these media organisations in their offensive against the Labour government and Andy Burnham.

Jane Martinson is an academic and Guardian columnist. She is a board member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group, and writes in a personal capacity

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© Illustration: Guardian Design/Anaïs Mims/Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design/Anaïs Mims/Guardian Design

© Illustration: Guardian Design/Anaïs Mims/Guardian Design

Ian Berry obituary

11 October 2026 at 12:11

Photojournalist whose arresting images captured human disaster from Vietnam to Aberfan, and most notably in apartheid South Africa

On 21 March 1960, a crowd gathered outside a police station in a Transvaal township, part of a nationwide protest against apartheid pass laws used to control where black South Africans could live, work and travel. A young British photojournalist pushed his way to the front and took a few pictures of police across the fence who were standing atop their armoured personnel carriers. With nothing much happening, he turned back and headed for his car. Then – without warning – there was the sound of heavy gunfire.

The photographer, Ian Berry, who has died aged 92, captured images of the carnage, which soon became known around the world as the Sharpeville massacre. Dozens of demonstrators were killed, many shot in the back as they fled, and hundreds were injured in what turned out to be a turning point in the country’s history.

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© Photograph: Ian Berry/Magnum Photos

© Photograph: Ian Berry/Magnum Photos

© Photograph: Ian Berry/Magnum Photos

Telegraph owner poised to make newsroom job cuts in investment promise U-turn

10 October 2026 at 06:31

Exclusive: German media group Axel Springer said to be planning between 50 and 100 editorial redundancies

The new owner of the Telegraph is preparing to make significant job cuts to its newsroom, just months after stating it would invest in the title to make it the “leading centre-right media outlet in the English-speaking world”.

Axel Springer, the German media company overseen by its billionaire chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, is understood to be examining proposals that would make between 50 and 100 journalists redundant.

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© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

© Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Farewell, Marina Hyde. Thank you for brightening so many of our days | Letters

9 October 2026 at 12:15

Readers gasp at the news that their beloved columnist is leaving the Guardian after 25 years

How could you let this happen (It’s true: this is my final column. You have exactly 24 hours to complain before my inbox self-destructs, 2 October)? You have some truly great writers, and for them I will continue to support the Guardian, but it’s Marina Hyde’s column that many of us look forward to most. She is uniquely and reliably smart, funny and spot-on. Is it money? Like Nye Bevan with consultants, fill her mouth with gold if you have to; you can clean it up afterwards. But I fear I’m too late, and all that’s left to say is: Thank you, Marina, for brightening so many of our days, and for putting our thoughts so brilliantly into words. And thank you, Guardian, for giving her the space to do so.
Richard O’Brien
Highbridge, Somerset

• The honour is all ours, Marina. It’s devastating news to know that I can no longer laugh, cry, squirm, gasp, disagree and love your columns. I have looked forward to reading your words for the last 25 years and you will be very much missed. Thank you, and go well.
Gill Empson
Aston-on-Trent, Derbyshire

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© Photograph: Jay Brooks/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jay Brooks/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jay Brooks/The Guardian

The Social Reckoning review – Aaron Sorkin’s jittery sequel with all-new evil puppet Zuckerberg

7 October 2026 at 09:00

Jeremy Strong’s slow-talking Facebook founder turns into a cameo, background to a thriller about a whistleblower that somehow never mentions Trump

Here is a film for all those people who solemnly deplore social media in conversation but haven’t quite got round to deleting their accounts. Sixteen years have gone by since The Social Network, written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher; this was the addictive, obsessive-compulsive movie about the birth of Facebook in Harvard’s macho-competitive cauldron of student sexism and nerdy self-pity, starring Jesse Eisenberg as the fast-talking, arrogant, not-necessarily-evil genius Mark Zuckerberg. Now Sorkin is back with a sequel of sorts, directing his own script – and now Zuckerberg is basically evil, but also weirdly slow talking, as if all the zinging, smart-alecky Sorkinesque dialogue energy of the first film has been siphoned away in early middle age and dispersed among the insurgents in the new cast.

Sorkin’s jittery, funny, syncopated style is unmistakable, as distinctive in its way as David Mamet, although he has one joke about “spatula” being a Yiddish word that he has borrowed from Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. It is the story of how in 2021, Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire was challenged by courageous whistleblower-employee Frances Haugen and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz, who were on a mission to tell the world how Zuckerberg, scared by falling revenue, changed the algorithm so that engagement was supercharged by rage bait and hate speech, malice and envy. Facebook, moreover, didn’t factcheck political ads, thus driving a huge, nationwide surge in extremist groups and teen bullying and becoming a major player in the Capitol riots. (Having said that, this film does not say aloud the word “Trump” and rather cravenly declines to specify Maga activity.)

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© Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

© Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

© Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

Court Filings In A.I. Suit Invoke Copyright Law, Culture and Sports

4 September 2026 at 20:18
Filings made Friday in The New York Times’s closely watched lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft included a range of copyright law and cultural references.

© Zack DeZon for The New York Times

The New York Times claims in a lawsuit that OpenAI and Microsoft infringed on publishers’ copyrighted material by using their articles to train artificial intelligence.
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