Government targets party’s ‘softness on standing up to Putin’ to show Reform is out of step with UK public

Labour is setting out to increase its attacks on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK over its stance on Russia, as polling and focus groups show the public are firmly pro-Ukraine and against Vladimir Putin.

One cabinet source said Labour was planning to “take the fight” to Reform on the issues of the Ukraine war and the NHS after “waking up” to the party’s “softness on standing up to Putin”.

2024-25 summer at 1.89C above long-term average ‘will be one of the coolest in the 21st century’, according to one expert

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Last summer was Australia’s second-hottest on a record going back to 1910, at 1.89C above the long-term average, according to data from the Bureau of Meteorology.

The second-hottest summer – coming after the second-hottest winter and the hottest spring on record – included the second-hottest January and the third-hottest December.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email

On 21 February, 12-year-old Ayman al-Hammouni was killed, shot by Israeli fire, video footage seen by the Guardian suggests. Two cameras recorded the circumstances of Ayman's death. The Guardian has used this footage to tell the story of the child’s last moments

On 21 February, 12-year-old Ayman al-Hammouni was killed, shot by Israeli fire, video footage seen by the Guardian suggests. Two cameras recorded the circumstances of Ayman's death. The Guardian has used this footage to tell the story of the child’s last moments

With the mothers of Elon’s kids begging for his attention on social media, he makes much of ‘pronatalism’ – but is that just a fancy word for bad parenting? ‘I don’t know whether I’d describe it as fun,’ says Aimee Lou Wood on the intensity of making The White Lotus. And are ordinary life experiences, bodily imperfections and normal differences being unnecessarily pathologised? Neurologist and author Suzanne O’Sullivan argues just that

Two children a week are killed in the West Bank. Two cameras recorded the circumstances of one such death

The last time Nassar al-Hammouni talked to his son, Ayman, it was by telephone and the 12-year-old was overflowing with plans for the coming weekend, and for the rest of his life. He had joined a local football team and planned to register at a karate club that weekend. When he grew up, he told Nassar, he was going to become a doctor, or better still an engineer to help his father in the construction job that took him away from their home in Hebron every week.

None of that – the football, the karate or his imagined future career – will happen now. Last Friday, two days after the call to his father, Ayman was killed, shot by Israeli fire, video footage seen by the Guardian suggests.