Resignations follow withdrawal of more than 70 participants in writers’ week after Palestinian Australian author disinvited
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The Adelaide festival is facing an unprecedented leadership crisis after three board members resigned this weekend.
The journalist Daniela Ritorto, the Adelaide businesswoman Donny Walford and the lawyer Nick Linke have stepped down since the board’s controversial decision to dump the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 writers’ week program.
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© Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
© Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
© Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian
As synthetic personas become an increasingly normal part of life, meet the people falling for their chatbot lovers
Lamar remembered the moment of betrayal like it was yesterday. He’d gone to the party with his girlfriend but hadn’t seen her for over an hour, and it wasn’t like her to disappear. He slipped down the hallway to check his phone. At that point, he heard murmurs coming from one of the bedrooms and thought he recognised his best friend Jason’s low voice. As he pushed the door ajar, they were both still scrambling to throw their clothes on; her shirt was unbuttoned, while Jason struggled to cover himself. The image of his girlfriend and best friend together hit Lamar like a blow to the chest. He left without saying a word.
Two years on, when he spoke to me, the memory remained raw. He was still seething with anger, as if telling the story for the first time. “I got betrayed by humans,” Lamar insisted. “I introduced my best friend to her, and this is what they did?!” In the meantime, he drifted towards a different kind of companionship, one where emotions were simple, where things were predictable. AI was easier. It did what he wanted, when he wanted. There were no lies, no betrayals. He didn’t need to second-guess a machine.
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© Illustration: Matt Chase
© Illustration: Matt Chase
© Illustration: Matt Chase
Independents muscle in on craze for the black stuff with dark beers that use same nitrogen process as Irish favourite
Famously, according to the advertising slogan anyway, Guinness is good for you. But for the past couple of years, Guinness has been practically inescapable.
Backed by its owner Diageo’s £2.7bn marketing war chest, the brand has shaken off its “old man” reputation, becoming a staple of gen Z pub culture, exploiting its Instagrammable colour scheme and social media trends such as the “splitting the G” drinking game.
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© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
© Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
Counselling should help, but it sounds as if you need to slow down and give yourself time to grieve
I am 37 years old, happily married and have two children, who came along quickly after we got married in my late 20s. I instantly fell in love with them. However, I wasn’t really emotionally or practically ready, and developed postnatal anxiety.
I’ve always cared about the climate crisis, and since after having kids, and knowing it will affect their lives more than mine, I became motivated to make changes. We live a very “green” life.
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© Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
© Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
© Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
The ‘put her in a bikini’ trend rapidly evolved into hundreds of thousands of requests to strip clothes from photos of women, horrifying those targeted
Like thousands of women across the world, Evie, a 22-year-old photographer from Lincolnshire, woke up on New Year’s Day, looked at her phone and was alarmed to see that fully clothed photographs of her had been digitally manipulated by Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, to show her in just a bikini.
The “put her in a bikini” trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women. The fake, sexualised images were posted publicly on X, freely available for millions of people to inspect.
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© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
The president’s inability to tell right from wrong fuels his increasingly dictatorial, illegal and erratic behaviour
Donald Trump made 30,573 “false or misleading” claims during his first term, according to calculations published in 2021 by the Washington Post. That’s roughly 21 fibs a day. Second time around, he’s still hard at it, lying to Americans and the world on a daily basis. Trump’s disregard for truth and honesty in public life – seen again in his despicable response to the fatal shooting in Minneapolis – is dangerously immoral.
Trump declared last week that the only constraint on his power is “my own morality, my own mind”. That explains a lot. His idea of right and wrong is wholly subjective. He is his own ethical and legal adviser, his own priest and confessor. He is a church of one. Trump lies to himself as well as everyone else. And the resulting damage is pernicious. It costs lives, harms democracy and destroys trust between nations.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
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© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Does central London really need another fancy Italian restaurant? Well, yes, apparently it does …
Does the area around Sloane Square in central London really need another fancy, Italian-leaning restaurant that serves up tortellini in brodo and veal Milanese? Well, yes, apparently it does. One Saturday lunchtime late last year at Martino’s was hectic even in the delightful reception area, where we were waiting to check in a coat with the elegantly uniformed front-of-house ladies. All the tables in this hot new all-day brasserie were booked and busy, and plenty of walk-ins were champing at the bit for cancellations.
Actually, “delightful reception” is not a phrase I’ve often uttered, or even thought, but this is a Martin Kuczmarski restaurant, so the small things tend to add up to a larger picture – this cocoon-like holding pen keeps would-be queuers away from the diners. Why was I so charmed by this weird, crisply officiated bends chamber that operates as a liminal space between the real grubby world outside and the glitzy, sexy, mock-Italian trattoria inside? Well, it turns out that’s because it solved a problem that I didn’t even realise I had.
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© Photograph: Amy Heycock/The Guardian
© Photograph: Amy Heycock/The Guardian
© Photograph: Amy Heycock/The Guardian
Williams engineers late comeback in playoff debut
Bears erase 18-point hole to stun rival Packers
Chicago earn first playoff win since 2010 season
Caleb Williams dropped back, pump-faked and found DJ Moore wide open down the sideline for the go-ahead touchdown.
His latest clutch throw propelled the Chicago Bears to yet another improbable comeback win and kept their breakout season going for at least another round of the postseason.
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© Photograph: Nam Huh/AP
© Photograph: Nam Huh/AP
© Photograph: Nam Huh/AP
Photojournalist Julia Kochetova and reporter Dan Sabbagh stayed with Da Vinci Wolves battalion as infantry and drone pilots rotated from Ukraine’s eastern frontline
It is just before dawn, the December temperature a couple of degrees above freezing; time for troop rotations to start across Ukraine’s 750 mile front.
A crew of four from Da Vinci Wolves battalion are loading up into an M113 armoured personnel carrier at a secret location ready to be driven out to a safe point. From there they will walk to their position and remain on the front for 10 or 12 days.
Drone pilots of Da Vinci Wolves battalion prepare to return to the frontline.
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© Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian
© Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian
© Photograph: Julia Kochetova/The Guardian
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