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‘I didn’t know what to do’: collapse of providers of high-end digs leaves students in shock

Cost of living crisis and drop in international students hits market for purpose-built accommodation

“It was dead in the middle of summer, it was a shock,” says Nathalie Sriwiboonrattan. The fourth-year game design student at Abertay University was at home with her family thousands of miles away in Thailand when she discovered the owner of her Scottish studio flat had abruptly gone bust.

“I was like, my hands are tied. I’m not in the country. I don’t know what to do,” she says. Sriwiboonrattan was forced to act quickly to secure new housing for the academic year, which has just begun, paying £850 to have her possessions moved.

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:00:47 GMT
Tom Cruise’s Digger has flopped spectacularly – but I think it is a misunderstood masterpiece

Alejandro G Iñárritu’s film may be about to become one of the biggest bombs Hollywood has ever seen – but it is destined to be re-evaluated with time

  • This article contains spoilers for Digger

I feel for film critics, I really do. Tom Cruise’s latest film Digger put them in an impossible position: you can’t really talk about it without spoiling what makes it, in my eyes, a masterpiece. Or completely terrible – as many, many critics have argued over the last week, without being fully free to say why.

That is not their fault: media screenings around the world opened with a plea from Warner Bros to not spoil the film’s central reveal. This seems like it may have been a misstep, because curiosity and Cruise alone were clearly not enough to get bums on seats. Digger is now projected to lose around $150m, after taking a paltry $20m globally in its opening weekend. Warner Bros is trying to make the best of a bad situation, first crowing about the stinker reviews – “insufferable” and “smug” have been repeated a lot – then pivoting to a new sell: the Yanks don’t get it, so it must be good.

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:39:03 GMT
Social care for disabled adults is in as much crisis as support for elderly people – so why is the government silent about it? | John Harris

Working-age adults such as my son, who is autistic, face a fragmented and unreliable system, yet ministers talk only of a national care service for older people

Seemingly brilliant conference speeches are often followed by a hangover, and so it has arguably proved with Andy Burnham’s. It was, it has to be said, something of a triumph, but there is now a familiar sense of nagging angst over how his big idea of a national care service is actually going to work. But equally, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to be more generous and patient. The policy issues are vast. The new PM’s commitment to serious change is clear. And having been urgently needed for years, the basics of what he wants – personal, home-based care delivered free at the proverbial point of need – will be on their way if Labour wins the next election.

Here, though, is a question that is much less finely balanced. Neither Burnham’s speech nor the much shorter address given by Yvette Cooper, the new health and social care secretary, contained a single mention of what roughly half of England’s social care budgets are spent on: provision for working-age disabled adults. Why not? I get the politics: fixating on older people’s care and the pensions triple lock makes everything clear and relatable. But England’s fragmented, unreliable system for younger disabled adults is in need of the same radical level of reform, and it’s the source of just as much fear and worry for the people who either depend on it, or eventually will do.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:00:48 GMT
Pasture lives: the rebel cheesemakers preserving an Alpine tradition

A story of storico ribelle, produced by a small group of mountain herders according to a traditional farming system based on seasonal and rotational grazing

My journey into the world of storico ribelle began with a shared passion for photography and the mountains. A close friend of mine lives in the Orobie Alps. He loves the mountains and the natural environment that surrounds him, and we share the same passion for photography. When I finally went to visit him, I discovered a way of experiencing the mountains that was very different from the one I knew growing up in the Apennines, where I come from.

What struck me was not only the landscape, but the relationship people still have with it. Here, I discovered a world where the mountain is not simply a place to visit or explore, but a place to live and work. A world where cheese is still a tradition rather than an industrial product, and where the rhythms of the seasons, the animals and the daily work of the alpeggiatori – the mountain herders – are still deeply connected.

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 06:00:49 GMT
To cull or not to cull: Greenland debates fate of world’s slowest shark

As trawlers compete with Greenland sharks for halibut and cod, conservationists and fishers clash over what to do about misunderstood species

‘When I accidentally catch a shark, I bring it to my dogs,” Henrik Jensen, a 27-year-old from Greenland’s west coast, says casually. “I don’t let it back down because [the sharks] bully me and cut my lines.”

Jensen has fished for halibut in Ilulissat, Greenland’s third largest town, for a decade. He works an hour north of the town’s main iceberg-laden fishery, which sustains the livelihood of nearly 400 fishers. There, the halibut are bigger and more plentiful, but so are the Greenland sharks.

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:00:47 GMT
‘If it’s too slick, it looks like a fashion mag’: Peter Zumthor on his £110m rammed concrete gallery

It is one of the world’s finest collections, full of Monets, Miros and Picassos. But is the great Swiss architect’s extension for the Beyeler Foundation a worthy addition? Or is it a bit luxury boutique?

In the early 1960s, when Peter Zumthor was a teenage apprentice in his father’s cabinet-making workshop, he designed his first cupboard. He later recalled the satisfaction of fitting the door so perfectly that it closed “with a special sucking sound”, saying his father instilled in him “the Basel pride in the well-built object”.

Six decades on, with a fleet of globally celebrated projects to his name, the 83-year-old Swiss architect is back in Basel, beaming with the same local pride. He is gazing out at his latest well-built object, which is also his first project here: a monolithic new gallery that looks chiselled from the earth, its layers of pale crumbly concrete hammered into shape, its big oak and bronze doors – their handles wrapped with leather cord – closing with that same satisfyingly expensive Swiss swoosh.

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:00:46 GMT
US bombers pulled from RAF Fairford base after suspected terror plot

Aircraft leave Gloucestershire base to return to US following arrest of dual British-Iranian national in central London

The US Air Force has pulled its bombers from RAF Fairford following an investigation into an alleged planned terror attack at the base.

The bombers were redeployed back to their home bases in the US, according to a Pentagon official who was not authorised to discuss sensitive military movements and spoke on Sunday on condition of anonymity.

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Sun, 04 Oct 2026 21:25:03 GMT
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor launches legal action against police over Epstein raids

Former prince to challenge whether Thames Valley police acted lawfully over searches relating to his arrest

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is taking action against Thames Valley police to challenge the legality of search warrants that led to his arrest earlier this year, a judicial spokesperson has said.

A private high court hearing is due to take place before Mr Justice Hilliard on Thursday to determine whether documents related to the the former Duke of York’s call for a judicial review can be made public; with Thames Valley police in opposition.

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:00:31 GMT
Average five-year fixed mortgage rate hits 6% for first time in three years

Banks and building societies raise prices as turmoil in bond markets increases expectations of base rate rise

The average cost of a five-year fixed-rate mortgage has hit the 6% barrier for the first time in three years, as jitters in the money markets make the loans more expensive for lenders to offer.

Figures from financial information provider Moneyfacts show the average is now 6.00%, its highest point since September 2023, while the average two-year fixed rate is not far behind at 5.98%, its highest since December of the same year.

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:39:37 GMT
15-year-old loses hand in clash with French police during school protest – Europe live

Hundreds of schools in France remain closed amid planned demonstrations across the country

The conservative People’s Party is very pleased with the announcement.

“At last,” they say on their X, with a slick election video – set to the EU’s anthem “Ode to Joy” – to go along with it.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called a snap election for 29 November, just days after rightwing parties blocked his minority government’s emergency measures on housing amid widespread protests (9:10).

The election will take place on Sunday, 29 November, the earliest possible date procedurally.

In a fierce address, Sánchez framed the election as choice between “regressing” under a “far-right coalition” or “keeping moving forward” with his progressive administration (9:04, 9:09, 9:17).

He said the election will be about who will guide Spain through a period of disruption amid high political tensions, global instability, climate emergency, and uncertainty posed by the rise of AI (9:13).

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Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:16:38 GMT

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