In 1993, she squeezed a $333m settlement from a Californian energy company in a scandal over contaminated water. Three decades later, she has a new target in her sights – and it’s global

When Erin Brockovich woke to find 30 emails from people from the same town, she realised something was going on. People email Brockovich all the time because of what happened in 1993, when she was instrumental in suing Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) on behalf of residents of the town of Hinkley, California, whose groundwater had been contaminated. The case resulted in a settlement of $333m – then the largest ever payout for a direct-action lawsuit. When she was immortalised by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, she became the hero we didn’t know we needed, a modern day Joan of Arc. She had won against PG&E with no formal legal training.

The emails she received a few weeks ago were about datacentres. In April, she put a callout on her website asking for anyone with concerns about one near them to get in touch. Within a month, 3,862 people had replied. Tech companies have needed datacentres to power their technology “for ever”, she says, but the new ones being built to power AI? “This feels like Hinkley on steroids.”

Experts raise alarm as firms aiming to maximise assets and sell for profit become more involved in vital public services

• ‘Financial pandemic’: £1 in every £11 spent on UK public contractors goes to private equity

• Nurseries, vets and shops: the sectors where private equity plays a big role

Private equity companies have slowly and invisibly increased their involvement in public services – from elderly care homes to fostering placements for vulnerable children – with some unintended consequences.

Take Compass Community, a private equity-backed firm which provides children’s homes, fostering services and schooling for children with special educational needs (Send).

Air conditioning can bring significant benefits but also real harms. The answer is for it to take its place alongside a comprehensive state plan for climate adaptation

As Britain reels from Europe’s worst ever heatwave, many households are, for the first time, seriously considering air conditioning. Leftists have often been critical of AC, pointing out that there are cheaper, more ecological ways to combat severe heat. But with decades of underinvestment leaving the UK dismally unprepared to handle further heatwaves, is it time to rethink the progressive position on air con?

Like many new technologies, air conditioning can bring significant benefits but also real harms, contributing to external air temperatures and global emissions. Dogmatically denying these harms, as AC boosters tend to, is unhelpful, but likewise refusing to explore how mechanical air-cooling systems could play a more productive role in progressive climate adaptation is just as blinkered.

Phineas Harper is a writer and curator

As tens of thousands are freed, female survivors are increasingly reporting gender-based violence in the compounds, previously thought to hold mainly men

Late one evening in October 2023, Sarah* felt labour pains starting. It was 11pm, but at the cyberscam compound inside Laos’ Golden Triangle, workers were logging on for a long night shift, scamming Americans online.

Every night, workers sat at their computers until the early hours, building fake profiles of glamorous, jet-setting women on Facebook and Instagram. Sarah trawled the web to find older men to target with messages, where she fawned over their jobs, asked how their day had been and exchanged photos of luxury travel and beach trips. Each conversation she had was meticulously designed to follow a multi-day script, and monitored by bosses who walked up and down the long rows of desks.

They used to mean crusties, hippies, all-male lineups, near riots and burning toilets. Now, from Dorset to Inverness, there’s a festival – and a costume – for everyone. What caused this boom? And is there a dark side?

It’s 7pm on the first day of Gala festival in Peckham Rye park and dry ice drifts into the trees as grime MC Novelist, born just miles away, raps about a south London bus. “Four eight four! Going on raw on the 484,” he spits with a grin, bouncing like the sweaty moshpit in front of him. There are already hands in the air for this hyperlocal elegy when the DJ teases the next instrumental, Skream’s unmistakable Midnight Request Line – dubstep’s greatest ever anthem.

Gala is one of the first festivals of the now overflowing British summer season. That same weekend, Black Water County kicked off the Cursus cider and music festival in Dorset, Fatboy Slim headlined the Radio 1 Big Weekend in Sunderland, and scores more fizzed into action, from Elderflower Fields in East Sussex to Devauden in south Wales, Slam Dunk in Hertfordshire, Dot to Dot in Nottingham, as well as Sidmouth jazz and blues festival and Chippenham folk festival.

After the England captain announced his international retirement, we look back at the highs and lows of the all-rounder’s incredible career

Makerfield MP on course to be PM will argue for more decision-making in regions and communities as he sets out 10-year platform for government

Andy Burnham will pledge to deliver “good growth in every postcode” by overseeing a significant transfer of power out of Whitehall to local communities as he sets out his case for a decade as UK prime minister.

In his first major speech since winning the Makerfield byelection, Burnham will argue for decision-making to be devolved to regions and communities to drive economic growth locally, replacing the current top-down national model.

Almost £24.4bn of government money went to private equity-run firms in year to April 2025, Guardian analysis shows

• ‘Treating children like cattle’: what happens when private equity takes over a UK care home?

• Nurseries, vets and shops: the sectors where private equity plays a big role

One pound in every £11 of UK government spending on contractors went to private equity-controlled companies last year, research shows, including key services such as transport, waste management and healthcare.

Politicians and economists have raised concerns over the “financial fragility and sharp cost cutting” created by private equity-backed firms, which often have high levels of debt, and the “conflicting interests” in running public services for maximum profit.

President says ‘we always hold onto hope’ as discovery of earthquake survivors spurs fresh search efforts despite dwindling chances of survival

• Mortuary in Caracas ‘overwhelmed’ as Venezuela struggles to respond after earthquakes

A man and his teenage son were found alive under the rubble in Venezuela on Sunday, in a town about 40km north of the capital Caracas, AFP journalists reported, as the death toll from last week’s twin earthquakes passed 1,450.

The discovery of survivors in Caraballeda was made by French and American rescue teams nearly four days after back-to-back quakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck, completely destroying nearly 200 buildings in the area.

Spending watchdog says high-speed rail project must be put on stable footing to avoid repeat of costly past failures

Revised plans for HS2 should not be put into action until the government is confident they can be delivered, according to the public spending watchdog.

The project to build the high-speed railway must be put on a stable footing to avoid a repeat of past failures, the National Audit Office (NAO) said in a report.