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Hot divorcee summer: get ready for big hats, hot sex and don’t-care energy

Fresh out of wedlock and in the mood for some fun? Join your newly single sisters in the glow-up to end all glow-ups

‘Sorry babe I’m a divorced mum on a buffet of magnesium glycinate, ashwagandha, peptides, and sertraline, covering a mortgage alone during late stage capitalism, idgaf about your opinion anymore,” wrote Meghan McTavish, an Australian divorce-fluencer, who went viral a couple of years ago because, even after her split, her parents refused to take down her wedding photos.

This might be the core of hot divorcee energy: an unvarnished devil-may-care spirit that seems to have captured the cultural moment this summer. So, of course, you’re wondering how this differs from the brat, last year’s aspirational muse – who also, emphatically, did not care what the world thought (though if you’re still confused about the difference between that and 2024’s hot girl summer, I suggest you go back in time and take last year’s module again).

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Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:14 GMT
Starmer’s on the brink and who knows what will happen next: hope for the best, Britain, and prep for the worst | Frances Ryan

As senior cabinet ministers move against the PM, his words of defiance seem moot. I’m planning ahead – which is more than he has ever done

A news report last week described how growing instability means millions of Britons are building up a stash of cash, tinned food and torches at home. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought there is no better litmus test of how things are going for a country than whether the populace is stockpiling emergency rations.

Watching Keir Starmer stubbornly cling on to his leadership as members of his cabinet and MPs move against him, it seems only a matter of time before the PM himself is prepping. With the end moving closer, you half expect Starmer to barricade himself in Downing Street with a jumbo pack of baked beans and a carton of cigarettes.

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist

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Tue, 12 May 2026 08:11:39 GMT
The car park that changed British art: Bold Tendencies at 20

Two decades after it opened in a multi-storey in Peckham in London, the space has redrawn the map for how to present art – with rooftop cocktails and the pink staircase that launched a thousand selfies

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when rooftop bars weren’t really a thing. A time before pop-ups and contemporary outdoor sculpture parks. A time even, if you can bear to think of it, before immersive art. Way back in 2007, there was none of that – the UK was an experiential art wasteland. And then Bold Tendencies showed up, chucked a whole load of sculptures in a multi-storey Peckham car park, painted a staircase bright pink, built a cocktail bar on the roof, and changed everything.

Now going into its 20th summer season, Bold Tendencies is celebrating two decades of sometimes sun-drenched, often windswept and drizzly arts programming. In that time, it has welcomed more than 3 million visitors into its concrete edifice behind Peckhamplex cinema, commissioned dozens of new artworks, hosted countless recitals and performances, built an auditorium and a concert hall, and drawn the roadmap for countless art experiences that have come in its wake.

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Tue, 12 May 2026 10:36:33 GMT
Seven-day weeks and ‘debt bondage’: China’s first electric car plant in Europe mired in allegations of worker abuse

The BYD factory being built in Szeged, Hungary, is facing scrutiny after reports of EU labour laws being violated among the Chinese migrant workforce

Multilingual signs in most airports in the EU opt for English, but in Hungary, there is also Chinese, making it easy for migrant workers flying in to staff China’s first electric car plant in Europe – due to open in 2027.

The third language was introduced in 2019 as the recently ousted leader Viktor Orbán embarked on a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China, positioning himself as its most reliable friend in Europe.

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Tue, 12 May 2026 05:00:15 GMT
Why does everyone hate Keir Starmer? – podcast

Aditya Chakrabortty on the Labour leader’s predicament – and if he may be the last prime minister of the two-party system

In these highly polarised times, dunking on the prime minister – and this PM in particular – is the one thing that seems to unite people in fury, disappointment and loathing. So as he rolled his sleeves up to address the nation on Monday morning, after one of the worst election results in Labour’s history, Keir Starmer had quite the job on his hands.

The Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty was watching – and wincing. “There are times when I watch Keir Starmer promising he’s going to change,” he said. “He looks to me like a guy on the verge of divorce, holding flowers from the nearest petrol station and saying: 'Trust me. Honestly, it’s going to be different this time. Honestly, love, stick with me.’” But why does there seem to be such antagonism towards the Labour leader – and can anyone guide the party out of the mess they have found themselves in?

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Tue, 12 May 2026 02:00:11 GMT
‘I couldn’t breathe’: the sinister spread of France’s killer seaweed

After a series of deaths on the beaches of Brittany, one bereaved family set out to prove the foul-smelling bloom was to blame

When her phone rang at around 5pm on 8 September 2016, Rosy Auffray was still at work. It was one of her daughters, distressed, calling to tell her that their father, Jean-René, had not come back from his daily run. Only the family dog had returned, alone and exhausted. Rosy rushed back home.

When she arrived, Rosy noticed that the dog was behaving bizarrely: she refused to walk, then collapsed under a bush. Her fur stank of rotten eggs, of overflowing sewers. Rosy knew where that smell came from: the mudflats roughly three miles from the family home in Brittany, where seaweed had been accumulating and putrefying. The soggy, decomposing seaweed stretched for miles along the shore, sometimes as much as five feet thick, killing other plants and suffocating fish and small birds.

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Tue, 12 May 2026 04:00:14 GMT
Third minister resigns after Keir Starmer tells cabinet he is not stepping down – UK politics live

Alex Davies-Jones resigns after shortly after Jess Phillips and Miatta Fahnbulleh, becoming third minister to step down

Here are some pictures from No 10 this morning.

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, is now being interviewed on the Today programme. Nick Robinson, the presenter, is asking him if he knows whether Keir Starmer has decided how to respond to the pressure on him to resign. Jones is avoiding the question, as he did on Sky News earlier. (See 7.43am.)

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Tue, 12 May 2026 12:50:30 GMT
Jess Phillips becomes second minister to resign from Starmer government

Safeguarding minister joins Miatta Fahnbulleh in publicly calling for PM to quit after heavy election losses

One of Keir Starmer’s most influential ministers, Jess Phillips, has resigned from the government, calling for Keir Starmer to quit and saying she has grown tired of seeing “opportunities for progress stalled and delayed”.

Starmer told his cabinet earlier on Tuesday he would fight on as prime minister, saying the threshold for a leadership challenge had not been met. Phillips is known to be a close ally of the health secretary, Wes Streeting.

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Tue, 12 May 2026 12:03:43 GMT
Burnham allies warn against quick ‘coronation’ of Streeting if Starmer quits

Assurances being sought that Greater Manchester mayor could stand for byelection, though MP Marie Rimmer says she will not stand aside

Allies of Andy Burnham have warned against a “coronation” for Wes Streeting as the next prime minister and called on Labour’s ruling body to allow the mayor to stand for the leadership.

As Keir Starmer attempted to face down mounting calls for his resignation on Tuesday, sources close to Burnham demanded immediate assurances from Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) that he would not be blocked from contesting a parliamentary byelection.

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Tue, 12 May 2026 11:35:00 GMT
Wes Streeting faces narrow road to Labour members’ favour

Health secretary’s soft-right credentials put him at a disadvantage even with reduced membership under Starmer

“Country first, party second” is a mantra Keir Starmer and his cabinet have repeated since being in opposition, seeking to draw a dividing line between Labour and their Conservative predecessors’ inclination for self-destruction.

But party members do matter in politics – and a key problem for Wes Streeting, one of those with ambitions to succeed Keir Starmer, is that many of Labour’s do not like him.

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Tue, 12 May 2026 05:00:15 GMT

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