The Guardian

I grew up watching Coronation Street with my family, breathing in sharply whenever Sophie Webster came on screen. This was 2014, and as the romance between do-gooder Sophie and her runaway love-interest Maddie grew, I’d plan in my head how to say that I was like them. Then, on the night of a mammoth fire, Maddie was hit by a huge explosion from the Builder’s Yard on her way to meet Sophie. Sophie watched on from the other side of the road, screaming Maddie’s name. Maddie died. I didn’t come out

Nothing sparks more joy than seeing Kermit ride a bike.

Embarking on a European tour and collaborating with Róisín Murphy, the fast-rising quartet say the west is wrong to see their progressive politics as unusual in the Arab world

The Gürtel case began with one Madrid mogul. Over the next decade, it grew into the biggest corruption investigation in Spain’s recent history, sweeping up hundreds of corrupt politicians and businessmen – and shattering its political system.

In the suburbs south of Beijing, what could one day be the world’s busiest airport is rapidly taking shape. Nicknamed “the starfish” due to the striking design by Zaha Hadid Architects, the Beijing Daxing international airport is set to open in October, and could eventually handle more than 100 million passengers a year. While the 52,000-tonne steel exoskeleton covering the airport’s six concourses immediately catches the eye, what lies beneath is familiar to many Chinese mega-projects: concret

Few people have the will and the stamina needed to run across a continent or row across an ocean — and even fewer opt to do so alone and unsupported. What makes these endurance athletes different from others who pursue similar challenges as part of a team, or while competing against fellow athletes? Are they simply made of tougher stuff?

Interview with the Cuban artists on the controversial Decree 349 which was brought in by the country’s communist regime to clamp down on artistic expression

Revealed: Natural History Museum pressured to return remains to Gibraltar and Chile

Thousands of pages of internal documents are still being created about a My Health Record technical glitch that the government said was minor and resolved years ago

Ministers have conceded that teachers’ pay has fallen by thousands of pounds a year since the public spending austerity drive began, amid warnings of a “looming crisis” in attracting and retaining new staff. Classroom pay has fallen by more than £4,000 a year since 2010 in real terms, according to a government assessment. Damian Hinds, the education secretary, warned that only a 2% increase can be expected for the next academic year. The admission comes in the Department for Education’s offici

When word spread last week that Darren Weir’s stables had been raided by police, it came of little surprise to most inside in the racing industry. Whispers had been circulating for months, years even, about what was happening behind the scenes at Forest Lodge.

The Labour MP David Lammy has accused the government of “pandering to far-right racism” in its handling of the Windrush row and with its decision to deport about 50 people to Jamaica. In a strong attack on the Home Office, Lammy said its decisions had “killed” at least 11 people who had been wrongly deported back to the Caribbean. These deaths were a “shocking indictment of your government’s pandering to a far-right racism, sham immigration targets and a dog-whistle to the rightwing press,” he

As Malaysia’s ever-expanding capital swallows up their rainforest habitat, the macaques are turning to guerrilla warfare.

The Daily Telegraph has paid “substantial damages” to Melania Trump and apologised “unreservedly” to the US first lady after making a number of false claims about her life in an article. The claims were made in a story entitled The mystery of Melania, which ran on the cover of last Saturday’s Telegraph magazine, but the newspaper has now said it included a number of errors about Donald Trump’s wife which should not have been published. The piece promised to tell the truth on what it describ

Hundreds of people are feared dead after a dam operated by the mining company Vale collapsed in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, releasing a wave of red iron ore waste and causing the worst environmental catastrophe in the country’s recent history. Ten bodies have already been found and more than 300 people remain missing, according to the company. The disaster comes only three years after a similar failure of the Fundão tailings dam near Mariana – co-owned by Vale – which killed 19 people.

Inspired by a book in her local library about matchbox labels from around the world, for the past 10 years Glasgow-based designer Jane McDevitt has been collecting vintage matchboxes. “It was the eastern bloc ones that stood out,” she says, “because they were so contemporary to their time: very mid-century modern and colourful.” She began buying them on eBay and at flea markets, and as her collection grew people started to get in touch with items they had inherited from relatives or found in the

Glasgow-based designer Jane McDevitt interview for the Observer

Write weekly theatre picks and UK theatre listings for The GUIDE (The Guardian). I have 500 words total, so my entries have to be sparky, short and informative.

South Korean artist and photographer KangHee Kim interview for the Observer.

The first time I see ravens, I flush them out of an alpine meadow carpeted with wildflowers. I pause to watch the flock fly off towards the distant, snow-capped peaks, trailed by their echoing croaks, when a man riding by on horseback bumps into me. Irritated, I shoot the man dead, and take his hat. So it goes in Red Dead Redemption 2. Available since October, the video game is set in an imagined version of the American west in the year 1899. It’s a huge release, one of the bestselling video g

Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun was buoyed by thousands of messages during Thai ordeal, says Nourah Alharbi.

Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun denied entry to Thailand by immigration officials en route to Australia.

Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun says she was fleeing abusive family for Australia when she was stopped in Thai airport.

Death toll from period police call ‘Seven Dangerous Days’ is close to record.

Law forces internet providers to censor content deemed ‘toxic’ by the ruling communist government and hand over user data.

Fatalities have occurred in the first three days of the country’s ‘Seven Dangerous Days’.

An op-ed designed to showcase significant Canadian success stories, which seized on the timeliness of a notable national report.

The operators of industrial-scale livestock farms have received millions of pounds of public funds in the last two years, the Guardian can reveal, despite concerns over the spread of US-style factory farming across the British countryside.

After a harrowing week of human tragedy, rescuers find a moment of hope as they return more than 30 turtles to the sea.