Iran may have reopened the strait of Hormuz, but a global energy crisis has not yet been averted. The war has already damaged as much as $58bn worth of power infrastructure. Even under the best-case circumstances, these could take years to repair.
Luckily, I think I’ve got a way to get us out of this mess. First we invent some sort of large suction device (technical details to be worked out later). Then we turn it on and hoover up all the rage directed at the Duchess of Sussex. Boom, energy crisis solved.
It is extraordinary how, at a moment when international human rights law is being trampled by bloodthirsty men, one of the most disliked people in the world is a somewhat bland woman. The duke and duchess are currently on a tour of Australia which, predictably, is sending certain tabloids into a tailspin. The Daily Mail appears to have published a piece every 10 minutes criticizing everything from Meghan’s Australian outfits (“stiff, impractical, and worst of all, horribly ageing”) to the guestlist for the women’s wellness retreat at which she’s doing a paid meet-and-greet.
This sort of criticism is nothing new for Meghan Markle. Indeed, on Thursday, she spoke about how much online vitriol she’s received while addressing young people affiliated with an Australian mental health organization about the harms of social media. “[E]very day for 10 years, I have been bullied and attacked,” the duchess said. “And I was the most trolled person in the entire world, man or woman.”
She’s not entirely wrong there. I’m no fan of the Sussexes but the amount of rage Meghan inspires is beyond reason. Her dimwitted but affable husband isn’t exactly universally loved either. But, because of good old-fashioned racism and sexism, she provokes a lot more ire than he does. I mean, Harry wore a Nazi uniform for lolz when he was young, and has been forgiven for it. Meanwhile, Meghan only needs to wear a green dress to a Netflix shindig where most people were wearing black to get the tabloids seething with hatred.
This is not to say, however, that the pair should be beyond criticism. There is obviously a difference between legitimate scrutiny of public figures and obsessive misogynistic outrage around every little thing that Meghan does. I have criticized the Sussexes myself plenty of times in the past for their seeming hypocrisy around their royal titles: they don’t want anything to do with royal life, they keep telling us, and yet they can’t seem to part with their aristocratic honorifics. At a time when frontline humanitarian workers are being murdered in record numbers their efforts to style themselves as great philanthropists can also feel a little out of touch.
It doesn’t matter how rich or famous you are, being relentlessly trolled online can be incredibly damaging. I have a huge amount of sympathy for Meghan in this regard. And I would also gently urge her to get some better PR help. I don’t think you have to be a comms expert to realize that making hyperbolic statements about being the most trolled person in the world – when you’re busy headlining $3,200 wellness retreats and have been handed multimillion-dollar content opportunities – is bound to ruffle some feathers. Senator Ted Cruz has already seized on the “most trolled” remarks to joke that, actually Meghan, Donald Trump has more trolls.
While it isn’t a competition I think I might give the Most Brutally Trolled award to Francesca Albanese, who is the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
For the crime of doing her job and speaking out about the genocide in Gaza, Albanese and her family have faced relentless death and rape threats online. The Daily Mail may not be churning out an article a minute about Albanese’s outfits, but she has been demonized by the Trump administration. Indeed, Trump issued executive order sanctioning Albanese, which means no American person or entity can provide her with “funds, goods or services”.
These sanctions aren’t just a mild inconvenience; they have been called a “civil death”. She can’t use a credit card and her apartment in Washington was seized. A Maine university even cancelled an academic conference in which Albanese was to make an unpaid appearance by Zoom because it was scared of the sanctions. She’s certainly not going around getting paid large speaking fees for women’s wellness retreats. I have a lot of sympathy for Meghan but, at times, I do think that the Duchess of Sussex could do with putting her trials and tribulations in perspective.
A new report called the Global Misogyny News Coverage Tracker analyzed 1.14bn online stories published worldwide between 2017 and 2025 and found misogyny is still not treated seriously by the media. The proportion of articles that include terms relating to misogynistic abuse peaked at 2.2% in 2018, the height of the #MeToo movement, and dropped to 1.3% in 2025. “Men’s perspectives lead coverage and have recently been growing, with 1.5 men quoted for every one woman in misogyny-related stories,” the report notes.
Swalwell, a Democrat, and Gonzales, a Republican, submitted their resignations on Tuesday after lawmakers from both parties threatened to introduce resolutions expelling the men.
Quite confusing considering all the King Georges have been dead for quite a while.
It’s a common pattern by now, isn’t it? A woman dares to suggest that Trump isn’t God’s gift to mankind and the thin-skinned president hits back by calling her stupid or ugly. This time Trump’s ire was aimed at Jessica Tarlov, a liberal Fox News co-host. Tarlov’s crime was pointing out that the president has terrible approval ratings. At which point co-host Greg Gutfeld jumped in to say: “[Trump’s] not a politician.” You heard it here first, folks, presidents are not politicians.
As part of an ongoing campaign of terror against Palestinians, settlers blocked access to a school in the West Bank. When the schoolchildren staged a peaceful sit-in to protest, Israeli forces fired teargas at them.
The war in Sudan is now entering its fourth year and sexual violence continues to escalate. According to a new report by UN Women, the number of women and girls requiring support after experiencing gender-based violence has nearly quadrupled since the start of the war.
The California governor’s Pac spent $1.5m buying and distributing thousands of copies of his book to supporters, representing two-thirds of its total print sales. It’s a shame the Democrats all seem to be more concerned about flogging their books and raising their profiles than fighting for democracy.
If you were taught in school that penguins mate for life, you were taught wrong; many do not. The penguins at the Kyoto aquarium in Japan don’t seem to be the monogamous type anyway. The aquarium has a huge flowchart tracking the romantic entanglements of its penguin community which is updated every year. And by the looks of the 2026 edition, there is more drama than Love Island.
Apparently Naka keeps dropping by his ex-girlfriend’s nest all the time and a penguin called Pon is in the middle of a complex love triangle. No judgment from me, Pon: I’m sure the situation isn’t black or white.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist
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