Le Journal

Tom Burgis on Donald Trump’s friend Ronald Lauder, a billionaire with business interests in Greenland“The thing to remember, always, with Trump is that everything is about the psychodrama,” the Guardian investigations correspondent Tom Burgis tells Helen Pidd. “Everything is who’s in his ear, what bit of his vanity or insecurity has been activated.”In this episode, Tom explains the backstory to the US president’s interest in Greenland. According to John Bolton, the former national security adviser, the story began in 2018 with a conversation between Trump and the billionaire Ronald Lauder. Continue reading...

Major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field may make northern lights visible far more south than usualThe aurora could be visible across Canada and much of the northern tier of US states on Monday night, and possibly even further south, following a major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field, a forecast shows.The forecast, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather prediction center, comes amid intense geomagnetic and solar radiation storms, said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at the center. Continue reading...

Move comes as peers prepare to vote on an amendment to a bill that would enact a ban within a year of the bill passingMinisters have launched a consultation into whether to ban under-16s from using social media as part of a package of measures designed to curb mobile phone use among young people.Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, announced the consultation on Monday as the government responds to mounting pressure for stricter curbs on social media use for younger teenagers. On Monday afternoon, Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey, became the latest high profile figure to add her name to those in support of a ban. Continue reading...

Just when it seemed that another match would be dominated by the dreariness of a debatable video assistant referee decision, a moment of majesty from Charalampos Kostoulas provided a pertinent reminder of the beauty that football can provide.With his side staring at what would have been a controversial defeat, the 18-year-old Kostoulas found himself facing away from the Bournemouth goal near the penalty spot when the ball bounced towards him in the first minute of injury time. A touch on his chest bought time to set himself, before a wonderful bicycle kick sent the Amex Stadium wild. Continue reading...

The real world is way worse than Westeros – so why not let this heartwarming underdog tale of a simple soul and his ethereal squire be your safe space‘Bless their little cotton socks!” is not a response one expects to have to any of the inhabitants of Westeros, the land of the bloody, violent, incestuous and often depraved series of Game of Thrones. But the endearing protagonists of the latest spin-off of the franchise, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, invite it.Their names, as in the George RR Martin novellas on which the series is based, are Dunk – short for Ser Duncan the Tall – and Egg. Dunk (Peter Claffey, a suitably tall former Irish rugby union player, last seen in Bad Sisters) was squire to a hedge – non-noble – knight, Ser Arlan of Pennytree (Danny Webb), who took the boy under his wing but never quite got round to knighting the man before dying. We first meet Dunk burying his mentor under an old elm tree and taking up his arms against the sea of troubles that are about to engulf him. Dunk is a simple soul (very simple, some might say – he may look like a medieval Jack Reacher, but inside he is more of an eager but baffled labrador) and sets out to find a lord he can himself serve as a hedge knight. Continue reading...