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If you’re on Mastodon, you might notice new author bylines appearing alongside articles — including those from The Verge.

Click on the byline, and you’ll jump directly to the author’s fediverse account, allowing you to track their work wherever it’s posted.

You can see how author bylines appear beneath articles in this post, which links you to Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko’s profile.

It can also lead to a person’s profile on Threads, Flipboard, WordPress with ActivityPub, PeerTube, and others.

Mastodon is working to open up the feature to more outlets, too, but it currently requires “manual review” to prevent “malicious sites framing users as their authors.” However, Mastodon plans on launching “a self-serve system” to manage the sites authors can appear from in the future.

Even though it’s not widely rolled out just yet, it does seem like a neat way to quickly find out who wrote an article and check out their other work across multiple platforms.

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Fifteen years ago I moved to France with my husband and a burgeoning baby bump, lured by low property prices and the chance to quit our jobs as teachers.

After years of cuts, austerity and Covid, I’d begun to worry the place I’d be returning to might feel as alien as France did when I’d first arrived, with its unfathomable bureaucracy, shops that closed on Mondays and habitual lunchtime (and sometimes morning) drinking.

I was concerned about poor public services (with councils in England absorbing a 27% real-terms cut in core spending power since 2010, who wouldn’t be?).

I’ve noticed worn flooring and thoroughly chipped paintwork across the buildings in my children’s schools, and can’t help but worry about the effect this must have on pupil and staff morale.

Having arrived at my local surgery to register seven new patients, I was worried I might be given short shrift – the last thing overworked staff need is an increase in demand.

Using an app for medical care (unheard of back in 2009, when nobody I knew yet owned a smartphone – and still not routinely used in France), I’ve had to ask for clarification several times on how to get a repeat prescription.

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Embury, who had been living alone but continued to work with her husband after they split up years ago, took out a £250,000 loan against her home, on which she had already paid off a mortgage, in the hope of saving the family business, but in vain.

Some expressed fears for the safety of trans-identified relatives in the current political climate, such as a woman from the West Country who said her teenage daughter was transgender and felt “concerned by the aggressive and inhumane discussion of marginalised people”.

She’d “like to vote Lib Dem” but felt that the party had not centred “the harms of Brexit to our businesses, healthcare, communities and culture” sufficiently in their election campaign.

Scores of women, from across the political spectrum, said immigration was a main concern: Politicians, they told the Guardian, should “close our borders immediately”, and “tighten UK security”.

Helena, a 47-year-old teacher from Worcester who voted Labour in 2019, said parties could win her support by, among other things, “addressing immigration decisively, listening to the concerns of ordinary voters and investing in the skills of young people in this country” – views that were widely shared by respondents, various of whom expressed fears over soaring crime and poorly managed integration of migrants affecting schools and other public services.

Elizabeth, a 72-year-old retired civil servant from London, said social care, child poverty and the cultural sector were among her top concerns and she would “reluctantly” vote Labour.

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With Rishi Sunak embarking on a marathon day of campaigning, beginning with a pre-dawn visit to a distribution centre and closing with a late-night rally, Tory ministers and aides sought to contrast these efforts with what they termed Starmer’s “part-time” approach.

Calling the attacks “laughably pathetic”, the Labour leader said his comments in a radio interview the day before had simply been to set out how he tried to keep Friday evenings aside for his family and would if elected prime minister, adding: “But I know very well it’s going to be really difficult to do it.”

John Mann, a former Labour MP and now peer, who is the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, called the Conservative attacks “dangerous”, noting that parliament did not sit on Sundays due to Christian traditions.

A Tory campaign video posted on social media and emailed to supporters shows an imaginary voter in July 2025 struggling with power cuts, unpayable bills and closed schools, ending with the message: “48 hours to stop a Labour supermajority.”

Sunak’s penultimate day of campaigning focused on seats that would ordinarily be safely Conservative, including an early morning visit to a supermarket in Witney, Oxfordshire, formerly David Cameron’s constituency.

Asked if it was right for Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, to claim that Starmer might clock off when pressing military decisions needed to taken, Sunak said: “I do worry about our country’s security, as there are deep concerns about it.

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Police officers began detaining the protesters, who were standing on the pavement at English Grounds outside Southwark crown court in central London, on Tuesday morning after being given directions by a judge.

Katharine Amberley, 56, Terrance McGinty, 76, Anne Richards, 66, Elizabeth Simpson, 73, Brian Barker, 60, Jane Leggett, 73, and Yvonne Hayward, whose age was not given, appeared at Southwark crown court on Tuesday afternoon.

A judge released all the individuals on bail on condition they did not come within the vicinity of Southwark crown court until a contempt proceedings hearing on 27 September.

The judge added that the group had turned up “mob-handed” outside the court.

A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: “Officers were given directions by a judge to arrest 11 activists on suspicion of contempt of court.

The activists were holding placards outside Southwark crown court which the judge determined could be interpreted as influencing a jury.”

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The stakes, already remarkable, were raised even higher after the Supreme Court on Monday ruled Trump is entitled to considerable immunity from prosecution, a development that some concerned Democrats say makes it more urgent for Biden to step aside.

The president who still thinks of himself as the stuttering kid so poor he had to wear nuts and bolts as cufflinks to a ninth-grade dance is still holding on to hope that this can be the latest time he comes back after being written off.

Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the closest of Biden’s political allies, told CNN he would like to see the president counter the narrative of being too old and incompetent for the job by doing more public events, town halls and interviews.

The debate performance has so shaken Democrats that even stalwarts like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told local reporters back home in Rhode Island on Monday that he wants a fuller accounting of the president’s health.

As dark as the mood is among some aides — including those who feel the wind knocked out of them after years of internalizing a related Biden mythology that he always delivers in a crunch — others are hoping to prove wrong people who never believed in him.

Phil Murphy, the New Jersey governor who called Biden the “comeback kid” at a fundraiser he hosted with the president on Saturday night, said that at their dinner table they had a wide-ranging, coherent conversation that covered, by his telling, Ukraine, the Middle East, wage growth, job creation, dealing more effectively with corporations, and expanding prekindergarten and community college.

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Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday became the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to call on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, a huge moment for the Democratic Party as Doggett says publicly what many lawmakers and elected officials had been speculating about privately.

“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson.

Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw.

President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said in his statement.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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Here, young people told the Guardian of their heartfelt concerns about the job market, the economy, housing, international conflicts and climate change.

Earache Records sits in Sneinton Market, in the constituency of Nottingham East, alongside many other arty, independent businesses selling chocolates, art prints and craft beer.

Just over the constituency border, on a patch of grass on Nottingham University’s campus, a makeshift camp has been set up made up of students and young people across the city who want to voice their objection to the war in Gaza.

Patrik Hermansson, a senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, says: “Our work, which includes polling, shows that young people feel disconnected from politics.

According to 2021 census data, Hyson Green has more households deprived across the joint four metrics of education, employment, health and housing than most other areas of the county.

She knows that many young people are not completely aligned with Labour policies, but she says she tells wavering voters: “I’m not asking you to put your faith in just a political party, I’m asking you to do this with me, to do this together, to have trust not in politicians delivering things for you, but in our ability to create a movement that makes sure that they happen.”

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Motorists who currently benefit from a hefty discount for driving zero-emissions vehicles in London’s congestion zones will have to pay the standard charge from the end of next year.Transport for London (TfL) announced that from 25 December 2025, drivers who previously paid £10 for a year’s exemption from congestion charges will have to pay the standard £15 daily fee.The move has been criticised by environmental groups and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) but is supported by the Green Party.TfL said the discount had been part of a phased scheme to tackle London’s toxic air.

It said that ending the discount “will maintain the effectiveness of the congestion charge, which is in place to manage traffic and congestion in the heart of London”.Currently 112,318 cars and vans are registered for the discount, according to figures obtained from TfL.

Of these, 15,782 are private hire vehicles.Oliver Lord from campaign group Clean Cities called the change “puzzling”.

Alex Pierce, from electric car support company GoinGreen, said “environmentally and economically, this makes no sense”.He said customers who buy electric cars “because they are cheaper and hassle free when you want to go into central London…will go back to buying diesel or hybrid which is worse for the environment”.The FSB said the scheme should be extended to help business owners who already face heavy costs and have invested in electric infrastructure.

But the Green Party said these incentives “were always going to be time limited”.Caroline Russell AM said: "If every Londoner drives an electric car we won’t tackle congestion, air pollution or the climate crisis.

“The best solution to any concerns about unfairness in changes like this is to move to smart, fair road user charging.”

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Recriminations have begun to fly around the Conservatives as a senior figure called the last few weeks the “worst campaign in my lifetime” and criticised the party for failing to tackle the threat from Reform.

However, a number of Tory candidates, advisers and officials are deeply frustrated with how he has run the campaign after calling a July election against the advice of his key strategist Isaac Levido.

One senior Tory party figure said on Monday it had been the “worst campaign in my lifetime”, saying that while Sunak was wholly to blame for the early election, there was a feeling that Levido could have pushed back more against the July date and that Conservative HQ should have “taken the fight to Reform” earlier.

However, the source said some people around the cabinet table had argued that the Tories should just ignore Nigel Farage’s party, and the campaign had been too frightened to tackle Reform’s arguments head-on for fear of offending voters who sympathised with them.

They also said candidates in tight marginal seats were getting zero financial or practical support, even on social media, and there was frustration that Conservative HQ had either overspent in the run-up to the election or wrongly thought it would get a last-minute deluge of funding.

Many Conservative candidates are upset that they do not feel as supported by CCHQ as they were in 2019, with top party figures and cabinet ministers having to spend time defending or winning their own seats rather than on national strategy.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he wants to “build a wall in the English Channel” in a leaked recording, in which he heaped praise on Donald Trump and the hardline Republican response to immigration.

Speaking to young Conservative activists, Rees-Mogg doubled down on his backing for the former US president, saying he took the right approach by building a border wall.

Rees-Mogg, a popular figure among Tory party members, is likely to be influential in the Conservative leadership race if he retains his seat.

Those who have given public backing to the former president, who has been convicted on 34 felony counts, include the Conservative former prime ministers Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, who said Trump’s return would be a “big win for the world”, and the former MPs Andrea Jenkyns and Jake Berry.

Speaking before a pub crawl in March organised by a Young Conservative group, Rees-Mogg said: “Every so often, I slightly peek over the parapet, like that image from the second world war of the man looking over the wall, and say if I were an American, I would vote for Donald Trump and it’s always the most unpopular thing I ever say in British politics, but I’m afraid it’s true.

The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has also been a champion of Trump, appearing at multiple rallies in the US and suggesting he wants to mirror the Republican candidate’s success in mounting a takeover of the right.

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Labour’s win would be well deserved, the most-trusted party earning votes to change the wretched state we’re in, with Starmer boasting an approval rating of +16 to Sunak’s -25.

Younger and newer MPs are keenest: Rachel Blake, likely to win Cities of London and Westminster, who I followed last week, is a typical pro-PR campaigner.

Keir Starmer has seemed in favour before, saying in 2020 that people “feel their vote doesn’t count”, but he wisely kept it out of the election campaign: the Tories would seize any chance to distract from the cost of living and the NHS.

The real coalitions enabled by PR oblige smaller parties to engage realistically with actual government, unlike Reform and the Greens’ tempting fantasy manifestos.

It was in Tony Blair’s manifesto; he commissioned but never enacted Roy Jenkins’s plan for reform, which remains a good blend of keeping MPs attached to constituencies while adding proportional balance.

Remember when the two-party pendulum swings, one day the opposition will thunder in and dash away your achievements: Sure Start’s protected funding was gone, Every Child Matters ripped out and tax credits shredded in 2010 by George Osborne.

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While Trump celebrated the ruling, many legal and political analysts sounded the alarm about its implications, with some arguing it places presidents above the law.

Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, wrote early Monday afternoon that she would introduce articles of impeachment against the court in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Congress has the authority to impeach and convict Supreme Court justices, a key check on the judiciary’s power.

Only one justice has ever been impeached—Justice Samuel Chase in 1804 after Congress accused him of refusing to dismiss biased jurors and of excluding defense witnesses in two politically sensitive cases.

Even if Democrats were to support impeachment, it would likely face hurdles due to Republicans’ narrow control of the House of Representatives.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision to grant legal immunity to a former President for crimes using his official power sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation,” wrote House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

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Biden has not given any indication he will end his re-election bid after a stumbling debate performance last week.

But it’s a scenario that was discussed during a tense call between the campaign’s aides and donors Sunday.

“This has this unique twist to it with Harris still being a part of the campaign and being considered part of the campaign from the get-go,” said Kenneth Gross, a senior political law counsel at Akin Gump and former associate general counsel for the Federal Election Commission.

Gross said he was unsure if Harris would be unable to access the funds if she remained the party’s vice presidential nominee without Biden.

Claire Rajan, a former FEC litigation attorney who leads Allen & Overy’s political law group, also agreed Harris could likely access the funds as the party’s presidential nominee, but was doubtful she could do so as the running mate to a different standard-bearer.

Rajan and Gross also noted that if Biden steps aside, the funds could be transferred to a charity or a super PAC, which would not be able to coordinate with the campaign.

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British female politicians have become the victims of fake pornography, with some of their faces used in nude images created using artificial intelligence.

Political candidates targeted on one prominent fake pornography website include: the Labour deputy leader, Angela Rayner; the education secretary, Gillian Keegan; the Commons leader, Penny Mordaunt; the former home secretary, Priti Patel; and the Labour backbencher Stella Creasy, according to Channel 4 News.

While some are crude Photoshops featuring the politician’s head imposed on to another person’s naked body, other images appear to be more complicated deepfakes that have been created using AI technology.

Nonconsensual deepfake technology, which takes a photograph of an individual and uses artificial intelligence to strip clothes or create a fake nude photo, has become a growing issue as part of the wider AI boom.

The government in April announced plans to close this loophole and ban the creation of deepfake pornography in England and Wales but the proposed law was dropped when Rishi Sunak decided to call an early election.

The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have pledged to bring it back if they win the next election, meaning it is likely that creation of the images will also be banned.

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The Guardian revealed last week that the board of the struggling water supplier agreed to the payout at a meeting on 27 March.

Gary Carter, GMB national officer, said: “Thames Water has once again shown an alarming lack of transparency.

“It is concrete evidence of why we need to abolish Ofwat and create a new water regulator with real teeth and power.

The campaigner and former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey said: “The dividend illustrates yet again the utter contempt and disdain that the water industry treats regulators and the politicians that oversee it with.

The £150m did not reach external Thames shareholders but did leave the ringfenced portion of the group’s complex corporate structure.

Ofwat is due to publish its draft response to water firms’ five-year business plans on 11 July.

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Starmer is sitting, shirt sleeves rolled up and steaming mug of black coffee in front of him, in a meeting room at the Royal Horticultural Halls in central London before a rally marking the final weekend of the campaign.

The polished wooden table is laden with plates of cakes and piles of teacups and saucers, which rattle slightly when he bangs his fist for emphasis.

While he blames the Tories and their years of chaos – over Partygate, Covid contracts, Liz Truss’s mini-budget – for the disillusionment so many people feel, he does acknowledge the Labour party failed to step up.

This would start with immediate “first steps”, in the first few weeks of power, followed later by transformational change on things like economic growth across the UK, radical reform of the NHS and the green transition.

Starmer, who has faced criticism from the left over his response to the Gaza conflict, dismissed reports that Labour would not recognise a Palestinian state before the end of the peace process as “without foundation”.

But at home, it remains far from clear how Labour would address deep-seated problems like homelessness, higher education funding, adult social care, local government finances and pensions.

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Liam Booth-Isherwood, who was standing in the seat of Erewash, announced he was dropping out of the race and would instead be endorsing the Tory contender Maggie Throup to “stop Labour”.

It follows the controversy over a Reform canvasser who was caught making a racial slur about the prime minister in an undercover investigation.

Mr Farage has faced criticism from across the political divide for failing to tackle accusations of racism within Reform, which have engulfed the party in recent days.

Reform UK withdrew support on Saturday from three candidates over racist remarks, including one who allegedly said black people should “get off [their] lazy arses” and stop acting “like savages”.

Mr Hester, who has donated £15m to the Tory party, apologised for comments he made about Ms Abbott, but claimed they “had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”.

Mr Sunak was criticised for the way he initially responded to the allegations about the major party donor, before eventually condemning the remarks as “racist”.

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Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party has taken the lead in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections on Sunday, initial projections showed, taking it closer to the gates of power than ever before.

After unusually high turnout, the RN bloc leads with 34% of the vote, while left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition is in second with 28.1% and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance slumped to a dismal third with 20.3%, according to initial estimates by Ipsos.

The RN election party in the northern town of Henin Beaumont erupted in celebration as the results were announced – but Marine Le Pen was quick to stress that next Sunday’s vote will be key.

If the RN falls short of an absolute majority and Bardella stays true to his word, Macron might then have to search for a prime minister on the hard left, or somewhere else entirely to form a technocratic government.

The RN has made lavish spending pledges – from rolling back Macron’s pension reforms to cutting taxes on fuel, gas and electricity – at a time when France’s budget might be brutally slashed by Brussels.

But, if implemented, the RN’s spending plans would make France’s deficit soar – a prospect that has alarmed the bond markets and led to warnings of a “Liz Truss-style financial crisis,” referring to the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.

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The infamous photo of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford University’s elitist Bullingdon Club emerged in 2007, 20 years after it was taken.

Cameron’s “coalition of millionaires” was crammed with private school alumni, including the chancellor George Osborne, who wielded the austerity axe.

More recently, a majority of Rishi Sunak’s first cabinet were from private schools, according to figures published in 2022 by the Sutton Trust, a social mobility charity.

Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy echoed this last week when he criticised “a certain kind of public-school smallness” he witnessed among Conservatives.

“I think they’re scared of a backlash, aren’t they?,” said Charlotte Hughes, a campaigner against poverty and benefits cuts, who is also active in her local Labour branch in Greater Manchester.

Their recent experience of precarious work, benefit claims and mouldy housing will be from people turning up at their constituency surgeries.

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