Guardian Seascapes reporter Karen McVeigh tells Madeleine Finlay about a recent trip to the Galápagos Islands, where mounds of plastic waste are washing up and causing problems for endemic species. Tackling this kind of waste and the overproduction of plastic were the topics on the table in Ottawa this week, as countries met to negotiate a global plastics...

He pitched slave-ship dramas to Ingmar Bergman, cast Marlon Brando as a bisexual man and wrote a Malcolm X screenplay that horrified the FBI. Why was this cinephile spurned by Hollywood?It’s fair to say James Baldwin wasn’t a fan of The Exorcist. “It has absolutely nothing going for it,” he wrote in his 1976 memoir-meets-criticism collection The Devil...

Stuart Potts is an unlikely do-gooder – a former crack addict who has hit rock bottom more than once. But since 2020 he has offered hundreds of homeless people a bed in his small flat – and for many of them, it has been life-changingWhen Jade and John came across Stuart Potts early this year, they were sleeping rough in Manchester city centre. It was...

After the trauma of losing their spouse and breadwinner to the Sundarbans’ great predator, women are cast out by their superstitious communities. But they are coming together to rebuild their livesNobody saw exactly what happened in the minutes leading up to Aziz Murad’s death. But when his friends got back to the boat where they had left him, they...

Genetics alone can mean a 21% greater risk of early death, research finds, but people can improve their chancesA healthy lifestyle may offset the impact of genetics by more than 60% and add another five years to your life, according to the first study of its kind.It is well established that some people are genetically predisposed to a shorter lifespan....

Ministers should hold their nerve as it is not yet clear what the regulator, Ofwat, will proposeThe contagion merchants are out in force at Thames Water. If the country’s biggest water company goes under, runs the argument from assorted bondholders and City bankers, we will all pay a price. Other water companies will pay more for their capital, shoving...