A growing number of people are rediscovering their love of plastic bricks in later life and boosting the Danish company’s bottom line
In a cosy cafe in Kingston upon Thames on the outskirts of London, nine people gather in the early evening to drink and talk. To the casual observer it may look like a book club, but when the friends reach into their bags it’s not paperbacks they produce – but packs of Lego.
Geoff Lay, who organised the gathering, worked in software development before recently starting Noble Brick, a Lego-focused events organisation.
More than 100 undercover officers spied on tens of thousands of mainly leftwing activists over decades
Prosecutors are examining whether to bring criminal charges against 12 former police officers who were involved in spying on political groups.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is examining a file of evidence that the officers may have committed wrongdoing while working in controversial undercover operations.
Labour has promised a ‘fundamental rewiring’ of power. But some areas are years into their devolution journey while others scramble to get started
Apart from the joyous hyperactivity that comes with suddenly making it to No 10, there are good reasons why Andy Burnham seems to be a prime minister in a hurry. If he decides that his first term is going to run to its maximum length, he has three years, which is a maddening time-frame: too long for him to just tinker here and there, set out his long-term vision and then ask the electorate for permission to do more, but probably too short to start and finish many of his key projects. His chosen solution, it seems, is a mixture of the strategies he would use for each approach, which includes running at some issues at breakneck pace.
So it is with his specialist subject: devolution for England. The huge changes now afoot actually began under Keir Starmer, with the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act passed earlier this year. Areas that previously had two tiers of local government will see them replaced with new unitary councils. But the most historic move centres on regional mayors – what the government calls “strategic authorities” – and a shift that the Whitehall PR machine is hyping up as a “fundamental rewiring of the way our country works, surrendering power that for too long has been held in Westminster and Whitehall”. In principle, this is unquestionably worth celebrating. But it also gives rise to a whole range of increasingly urgent and awkward questions.
The move sends the right signal. While we’re at it, can we ban using ringtones and scooting on the sidewalk?
Imagine driving in Italy, with its narrow, cobblestone streets and scooter enthusiasts. I find it hard enough to drive in Los Angeles, a city designed specifically with the automobile in mind. I’d probably squash a pedestrian or two trying to navigate Italian roads.
The modern world is just too hectic for the ancient streets of Europe, so Italy is considering doing the only sensible thing it can: outlawing texting in crosswalks. The Italian government’s updated draft of its highway code proposes fines of €75 or more for anyone caught sending a DM, updating their LinkedIn, finishing Wordle on the fifth guess, or anything else phone-related that might make them miss an oncoming metal projectile. I’m sure most people will risk the slap on wrist to get that message off, but it at least sends a signal to the Italian people that paying attention to traffic is actually kind of important.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
A retired software engineer and a planetary scientist disagreed about putting up flags and nationalising private companies, but were they worlds apart on legalising drugs?
• Want to meet someone from across the divide? Click here to find out how
Some young people are teaching in countries like South Korea as education funding is gutted and recent grads face a tough job market in their own countries
A year ago, Arianna Marie, 25, was struggling to control the students in her Florida elementary school classroom.
She was living with her parents to save on rent and quickly feeling her passion for teaching dry up, even though it was her first job since graduation.
Forget about patchy internet connections and dead spots in the house. These WIRED-tested, multi-room mesh Wi-Fi systems will keep your whole house online.
While social media is rife with AI celebrity deepfakes, videos featuring late night TV hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart are are easier to create than other kinds of deepfakes and potentially more disruptive.
Президент Трамп заявил, что Вашингтон заключил крупнейшую в истории нефтяную сделку с Венесуэлой, благодаря которой США, по его словам, обеспечили контроль над более чем 65 млрд баррелей доказанных запасов нефти в Венесуэле «без каких-либо затрат для американских налогоплательщиков».
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) during a campaign event in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 31, 2026. | Ben Hendren/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Until recently, Natalie Harp was an omnipresent but low-profile aide to President Donald Trump: always there, but rarely part of the story herself. That changed abruptly earlier this month, when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who is currently running for reelection, name-dropped her in a speech.
Trump “doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar,” Ossoff told supporters at a rally.
The line was a reference to reporting on Trump’s catering-cart maneuver as he was flying back from Turkey in July; Harp and other Trump aides joined the president on an alternate plane by way of a catering cart, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was left behind on Air Force One.
The “Natalie” jab from Ossoff quickly took on a life of its own, spurred by a furious response from the Trump White House and right-wing media. Somewhat lost in the flurry of attention on Harp was Ossoff himself — but Greg Bluestein, chief political reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast, told Today, Explained that the remark was “by design.”
Bluesteinspoke with Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about Ossoff’s disciplined, savvy messaging strategy, his political rise, and why his rhetorical jabs at Trump are fueling speculation about an Ossoff 2028 presidential run.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
It’s time on this show, Greg, that we remind people who Jon Ossoff is. I’m told that is a job with which you can help.
I go way back with Sen. Ossoff. The first time I met him, or at least I talked to him, was way back in early 2017 where I got a call out of the blue from a name, a number I didn’t recognize, and the voice on the line said, “Hi, I’m Jon Ossoff and I’m running for US House, this special election.” And I said, “Well, welcome to the show. There’s about 17 other candidates already in the race.”
And he goes, “Well, I’ve got something they don’t. I have John Lewis’s endorsement, and I have about $250,000 in cash commitments.” So I was like, “Okay.”
It still was an uphill battle because we’re talking about a deep red Republican seat in the northern suburbs of Atlanta at a time when all those suburban seats were still Republican. So I said, “Okay, good luck, sir.”
But lo and behold, he became a national figure in that loss.
So you’ve been covering Sen. Ossoff just about as long as anybody. At any point over the course of that almost-decade, did you expect “Natalie” from him?
No. I mean, look, you expect him to be really, really careful and calculated about what he says. Even back then, he rarely uttered an imprecise statement. There have been times where folks have caught him off-message, but it’s been very, very rare even at the beginning of his political career, certainly now.
When he uttered the “Natalie” line that sparked a thousand thought pieces and national takes and all that, that was done by design.
Tell us a bit about his backstory for people who have forgotten who Jon Ossoff is.
When I first got that call in early 2017, I had no idea who he was. Little did I know he’d become a national figure that we’d be talking about in the context of a presidential campaign not even a decade later.
He’s a former documentarian, a former intern of the legendary Georgia Congressman John Lewis, whose parents, especially his mom, were involved in Democratic politics in Georgia, but definitely not household names — definitely not a known quantity when he called me all those years ago to say “I’m running.”
Ossoff came within a whisker of an outright win, which would’ve been a huge, monumental upset. But in the process, he showed that Democrats have a path with suburban voters that long voted Republican in the Trump era. He started with the sort of campaign slogan of “Make Trump Furious.”
He was leaning into the Democratic activism, but then within weeks shifted his message toward a more friendly, more mainstream argument about bringing jobs to the district, bringing more tech-savvy investment to the district.
When he announced for US Senate against David Perdue, very few people gave him a shot when he got in the race. But that race ended with this epic double-header runoff because Rev. Raphael Warnock was also in the race against [Sen.] Kelly Loeffler. Democrats hadn’t won in Georgia in decades. So it was an epic election and a real nail-biter to the end.
Ossoff becomes the first Jewish US senator in Georgia history, Warnock becomes the first Black US senator in Georgia history, and together they flip control of the Senate and allow Joe Biden to to actually implement some of his broad-ranging agenda those first two years that they were in office.
It makes a lot of noise when Ossoff helps flip the US Senate along with Warnock. And he’s making a lot of noise now with “Natalie.” But I can’t say that I feel like he’s made a lot of noise in the intervening six years. What’s he been like as a senator?
That’s by design. It’s only been really recently where he’s been very willing to go on the national cable shows, to talk to national reporters more, to do a lot of the things that you see other nationally prominent Democratic figures do much more regularly.
We both know there are folks in Washington who love going to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and they love going to this or that luncheon or this or that dinner. Sen. Ossoff is much more likely to quietly go home and spend time with his two kids.
I’m not just saying that because that’s the senator I know. He is much more reserved and guarded about his private life and will bend over backwards to figure out ways to get back to Georgia — even when there are important votes, [he’ll] find ways after those votes to get back for events with his kids and that kind of thing.
It feels a little contrary to think about this guy who keeps a low profile, who wants to go back home to Georgia to be with his family, who doesn’t want the limelight, because as you’ve already mentioned, he isn’t just running for reelection in the Senate right now. Everyone seems to believe that he’s running for president.
I’m going to go out on a limb saying that I believe him when he said publicly — and privately too — to folks all over the spectrum, media folks and activists and supporters and you name it, that he is focused on this election and he’s not running for president.
If someone like Sen. Ossoff wins by a huge margin over Mike Collins in an important battleground state that is tilted both ways the last decade, the chatter will not stop. It’ll only get louder.
[He is] someone who is adept at making the arguments that so many core Democratic voters want to hear about President Trump, but at the same time can win over swing voters like he has in 2021. And he’s already seeming like he’s certainly making that outreach to them in 2026.
Do you think that if he does end up there, we’ll look back at Nataliegate as a big moment for him where it was just clear that this guy had the stuff? Or does this feel like, a week and a half out or whatever it is now, that it’s already fading into the background?
The biggest takeaway from that to me was how — and I think Jonathan Martin from Politico was the first to say it — Ossoff was essentially the nation’s assignment editor because it spurred countless stories for the next week and a half about who Natalie Harp is.
It was Ossoff who showed that he has this extraordinary staying power in the media. These rallies — he doesn’t hold them every day or every week. These are like once every month or so rallies.
The stagecraft is impressive. He’s got these multi-camera shots that are immediately farmed out to all these social media accounts who amplify them. It’s very, very impressive how he pulls this off. And they’ve become these sort of national spectacles that have inevitably given rise to more ruminations about whether he’ll run for president or not, but also of course boost his campaign itself.
That to me was one of the takeaways — that he has this impressive grip on not only what the media’s covering, but triggering them to cover even more of it.
Страна уже однажды предприняла попытку стать членом Евросоюза, но передумала. Теперь на решение жителей небольшого островного государства могут повлиять Дональд Трамп, Владимир Путин, судьба Гренландии и перспективы рыболовства в Исландии.
Promoter Warren confirms Briton recovering in hospital
Croat accepts he lost first eight rounds before victory
Moses Itauma has been urged “not to give up” by Filip Hrgovic, the new IBF world heavyweight champion, who stopped the 21-year-old Briton with a dramatic and stunning turnaround in their title fight late on Saturday night at London’s O2 Arena.
Itauma was taken to hospital in a precautionary measure after the fight and Frank Warren, his promoter, confirmed to the Guardian on Sunday morning that his young heavyweight was still under medical observation.
Deal agreed between Avanti West Coast and Aslef is first to be approved by Burnham government
Train drivers have secured a significant pay rise after the threat of strike action was floated on busy routes across the UK, including on the busy London-Manchester line.
The deal, which was agreed on Saturday between Avanti West Coast and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (Aslef) union, is the first to be approved by Andy Burnham in his premiership.
Tottenham are in advanced talks to sign Iliman Ndiaye from Everton, with Richarlison set to move in the opposite direction as part of separate negotiations.
Burnt out on wrist buzzes and notification overload? A new crop of minimalist wearables promises to collect your health data without demanding your attention.
Когда ИИ-агент пишет код, почти все деньги уходят не на его «мысли» и не на ваш диалог с ним, а на многократную пересылку уже отправленного. Я измерил это на 40 реальных сессиях разработки в Claude Code и Codex — вот из чего на самом деле складывается счёт...
The presidential aide spent much of her early life in Southern California, where she was home-schooled and attended a mega-church on Sundays, her brother said.
The four-seat gain Democrats need to win control once seemed all but out of reach. Odds are looking up, though the party still faces a tough path, with toss-up races in a half dozen (mostly red) states.
Dolly Parton's songs traveled far beyond Nashville. Across Africa, musicians embraced her stories of hardship, heartbreak and humble beginnings — and made them their own.
Tariffs continue to rile all kinds of American businesses more than a year after Trump unveiled his first set of tariffs — including a comic book store owner in Ohio.
Inside the US state department, critics are still attacking a shuttered office established to counter foreign propaganda. Now, some of its work is also being resumed
A botched leak of purportedly explosive government files to a prominent conservative online personality was supposed to offer proof of what the Trump administration and its allies have long alleged: that a little-known office inside the US state department, created to fight foreign propaganda, had secretly become a tool for domestic censorship.
Two former high-ranking officials at the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a target of Republican ire that lost its funding in 2024 and was disbanded after Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025, say the documents show nothing of the kind.
Angie Nixon won one of the biggest upsets in US midterm primaries – and if elected, the Democrat would be the first African American senator in Florida history
The Democratic establishment had the money, the machinery and the candidate with national name recognition. Angie Nixon had a bookshop called Café Resistance and a grassroots campaign for the Senate. On primary election night in Florida, Nixon won in arguably the biggest upset of the primary season. But at least one person was not shocked: Angie Nixon herself. “We weren’t surprised,” the 42-year-old reflects after overcoming a vast fundraising disadvantage to defeat Alex Vindman, a combat veteran who testified against Donald Trump during his first impeachment. “We actually knew we were going to win; we just didn’t know that we were going to win by that much. We put in the work and so super excited about the outcome. It shows that good old-fashioned grassroots organising will beat big money each and every day.”
Nixon won 56.1% of the vote to Vindman’s 43.9%. The result stirred tensions within the Democratic party in a year defined by the struggle between moderates and economic populists. In Florida – a state that has trended increasingly Republican in recent years and is now Trump’s home state – Democrats have now nominated a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who speaks openly about class war.
The no campaign was well-funded and accused of scaremongering, but the wording of the question may also have made a difference
It was always going to be a close contest. But on the night, the figures showed just how divided Iceland was on the issue of whether or not to restart negotiations with the European Union.
After a nail-biting overnight count, the well-funded no campaign rejoiced on Sunday morning as the broadcaster RUV declared it the winner with about 52.8% of the vote. Given the size of Iceland’s population – barely 400,000 – the margins were tiny.
Inside the US state department, critics are still attacking a shuttered office established to counter foreign propaganda. Now, some of its work is also being resumed
A botched leak of purportedly explosive government files to a prominent conservative online personality was supposed to offer proof of what the Trump administration and its allies have long alleged: that a little-known office inside the US state department, created to fight foreign propaganda, had secretly become a tool for domestic censorship.
Two former high-ranking officials at the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a target of Republican ire that lost its funding in 2024 and was disbanded after Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025, say the documents show nothing of the kind.
I’m the kind of person who shares a genuine compliment often, telling someone who is standing behind me in the airport line that I love their sneakers or letting one of my daughter’s friends know they have a beautiful smile. I also like to do nice things for people, like bringing the veterans that I work with doughnuts and coffee every Monday morning.
I learned to be kind from my grandfather who raised me. He drove the nuns from my Catholic grammar school to their doctors’ appointments, and he shared smiles and jokes with grocery store clerks, neighborhood kids, and almost every soul whose path he crossed. I wanted to follow in his footsteps and engage as often as I could in my own random acts of kindness. I recognized that being kind and giving selflessly to others made me feel good as well, but it wasn’t until recently, 25 years into my career as a trauma psychologist, that I learned about the science behind random acts of kindness.
Research indicates that engaging in random acts of kindness boosts happiness in both those who give and those who receive. A systematic review of 24 studies indicated that performing acts of kindness boosts the well-being of the giver.
One study on the effects of a seven-day intervention—in which people intentionally tried to do nice things for others—found that it didn’t matter if someone was giving to those with whom they had strong ties (family members or friends), or those with whom they had weak ties (strangers). All had equally positive effects on happiness.
Oliver Scott Curry is the research director for Kindlab, a team of researchers who study the causes and consequences of kindness. The group offers tools and programs to help increase kindness; you can even complete the Kindness Quotient, a research-based questionnaire that takes less than five minutes to fill out and gives you an indication of how kind you are compared to others.
I contacted Curry and asked him what he thought about the value and opportunities for kindness in what feels like an incredibly hostile world. “Humans are naturally kind, under the right circumstances,” he tells me.
Indeed, according to research across diverse cultural and economic settings, from the U.S. and Canada to Uganda, India, and South Africa, the well-being rewards one experiences from helping others appears deep-rooted in human nature.
Jonathan Passmore, a psychologist and coach in the U.K., has developed a positive psychology coaching technique called CAKE, which stands for consistent acts of kindness and empathy. I asked him how engaging in CAKE can help teach someone how to spread kindness. “The list of possible actions is limitless,” he says. “I advocate for folks to initially commit to a one-week plan—choosing to engage in one act of kindness per day.” On Monday, for example, you can greet the barista at your local coffee shop by name, and wish them a pleasant day, he offers. On Tuesday, “you could write a handwritten card to a colleague and thank them for something they have done.” Do this for a week, and “one often gets hooked and begins to hold an empathic stance towards most they meet.”
You’re never too young to start. Kindlab offers kindness challenges—skill-building, games, and more—for younger family members. One of my favorites is the kindness walk: a map that reminds and encourages kids to smile at someone they don’t know, give someone a sincere compliment, or pick up litter the next time they take a walk.
Givers often underestimate the positive effect such gestures have on receivers. Undervaluing our kindness may discourage us from engaging in such acts. But engaging in acts of kindness is a straightforward, low-cost, widely available, and valuable tool we can all use with our family, friends, community members, and strangers.
As a psychologist who cares very deeply about people’s well-being, I see engaging in acts of kindness as a win-win. Whether it’s buying a cup of coffee for the person in line behind you at the drive-thru, holding the grocery store door open for someone whose hands are full of heavy bags, or saying hello to a stranger, you will likely boost your own and others’ emotional well-being.
A group of divers from the Hudson Valley Commercial Diving School happened to be at the restaurant where Denise Rivera dropped her engagement ring into the Hudson River.
