Speculation has spread over whether Burnham will attempt to return to pursue a Labour leadership bid Keir Starmer’s allies have launched a “Stop Andy Burnham” campaign to prevent the Labour mayor from returning to parliament after the resignation of a Manchester MP triggered a byelection. Multiple members of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) predicted it would be impossible for Burnham to make it through the selection process given the number of Starmer loyalists on the body desperate to avoid a leadership challenge. Continue reading...

The first landslide hit a house in the community of Welcome Bay on New Zealand’s North Island at 4:50am on Thursday, police say Landslides hit a house and a campground in New Zealand on Thursday, leaving at least two dead while emergency crews were trying to rescue others buried in rubble, officials said. The first hit a house in the community of Welcome Bay on New Zealand’s North Island at 4:50am, police said. Two people escaped the house, and the bodies of two who were trapped inside were recovered hours later, the emergency management minister, Mark Mitchell, said. Continue reading...

Fifa chief says he has been ‘hammered’ for 2026 prices Fans’ group tells Infantino to focus on cheap tickets Gianni Infantino made a joke about British football fans’ behaviour and defended ticket prices for this summer’s World Cup in North America during a speech to world leaders on Thursday. Fifa’s president addressed concerns around the staging of this summer’s finals in the US amid rising domestic tensions there, telling the World Economic Forum in Switzerland how there had been “a lot of critics” before Qatar 2022. Continue reading...

Blueprint presented by Jared Kushner shows unified Gaza run by Palestinians, with Rafah crossing to open next week Amid the hullabaloo and self-congratulation of Donald Trump’s “board of peace” launch in Davos, his administration laid out specific plans for the short- and long-term future of Gaza, aimed at a lasting peace. The blueprint set out on Thursday was extremely ambitious. It envisages a unified Palestinian-run Gaza, which represents a rebuff to the aims of Israeli extremists, including some in the governing coalition, who have sought the deportation of Gaza’s population and the building of Israeli settlements in its place. Continue reading...

Giel Malual and John Kuei trekked from Dungeness to John o’Groats to raise funds for new schools in Sudan When Giel Malual set out to walk the length of the UK to raise money to open a school for displaced children from his home country of Sudan, he did not expect the welcome he would receive from the British public. “All the houses that we slept in, all the welcome that we were given, all the warmth and the support, the cheers and the encouragement that we have received, it has been overwhelming,” said Malual, who completed the 900-mile walk over a month with his friend John Kuei, who is also from Sudan. Continue reading...

Campaigners hail U-turn during legal challenge over proposed centre an ‘embarrassing climbdown’ The government has been forced to admit its own planning approval for a major AI datacentre should be quashed after it failed to fully consider the climate impact, in what campaigners described as “an embarrassing climbdown”. Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, had overruled opposition from a local council to grant permission for a hyperscale datacentre on greenbelt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire in line with Labour’s pledge to enable faster private investment in AI. But her successor, Steve Reed, has admitted the reasons for not requiring an environmental impact assessment were “inadequate” and that “permission should be quashed”. Continue reading...

Misinformation technology could be deployed at scale to disrupt 2028 US presidential election, AI researchers warn Political leaders could soon launch swarms of human-imitating AI agents to reshape public opinion in a way that threatens to undermine democracy, a high profile group of experts in AI and online misinformation has warned. The Nobel peace prize-winning free-speech activist, Maria Ressa, and leading AI and social science researchers from Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale are among a global consortium flagging the new “disruptive threat” posed by hard-to-detect, malicious “AI swarms” infesting social media and messaging channels. Continue reading...

I was surprised by the dormant ringlets springing to life as I hunched over the basin, squishing in conditioner to define each tendril Read more summer essentials My housemate has a special phrase for some of my old photos: “Ima’s whiteface era” – hair seared straight down the middle with brassy blond highlights. Where I grew up, in a regional coastal town, the gold standard was sandy blond beach babe. Continue reading...

It was supposed to give Gaza a future, but the US president is using it to attack the UN, international law and multilateralism One glance at the logo of the Board of Peace tells you all you need to know. It is the globe and laurels of the UN – only gold, because this is Donald Trump’s initiative, and showing little of the world beyond North America. The charter of the board, formally launched in Davos on Thursday, suggests that this is less America First than Trump Always. It is not “the US president” but Mr Trump himself who is named as chair, for as long as he wishes. He can pick his successor, decide the agenda and axe whomever he chooses – even if they have coughed up the $1bn demanded for permanent membership. It is the institutional expression of his belief that he is bound not by law but “my own morality, my own mind”. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Growing concerns about the impact of smartphones on the youngest children must be addressed The first UK government guidance on young children’s use of tablets, smartphones and other screens, expected in April, cannot come soon enough. The laissez-faire approach to the boom in social media, handheld devices and other digital technology was arguably nowhere less suitable than when such machines were placed in front of babies. The Department for Education’s ongoing Children of the 2020s study has found that 98% of two-year-olds watch screens on a typical day for more than two hours. Those who spent the most time had smaller vocabularies, and were twice as likely as other children to show signs of emotional and behavioural difficulties. Correlation must not be mistaken for causation. This is still a relatively new area of research, and much remains uncertain. But the findings of a recent survey by the charity Kindred Squared, combined with observations by teachers, are highly concerning. Answers from 1,000 primary-school staff revealed that 37% of four-year-olds arrived without basic life skills such as dressing and eating in 2025 – up from 33% two years earlier. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

⚽ Europa League updates from the 8pm GMT kick-offs ⚽ Live scores | Table | Follow us on Bluesky | Mail John The later games Celta Vigo v Lille Dinamo Zagreb v Steau Ferencvaros v Panathinaikos Nice v Go Ahead Eagles Rangers v Ludogorets Red Bull Salzburg v Basel Roma v Stuttgart Braga v Nottingham Forest Utrecht v Genk Bologna 0-2 Celtic Brann 1-2 Midtjylland Fenerbahce 0-1 Aston Villa Freiburg 0-0 Maccabi Tel Aviv Malmo 0-1 Red Star Belgrade PAOK 0-0 Real Betis Viktoria 1-0 Porto Young Boys 0-1 Lyon Continue reading...

Celebrity chef warns UK government’s plans for higher business rates from April ‘simply will not work’ The celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has accused the government of cooking up a kitchen nightmare at restaurants across the country with tax changes that he says will make hospitality businesses “lambs to the slaughter”. Ramsay, whose company operates 34 restaurants in the UK including Bread Street Kitchen, Pétrus and Lucky Cat, said the industry was “facing a bloodbath”. He said restaurants were closing every day as a result of rising business rates, which came on top of higher energy, staffing and ingredient costs and little growth in consumer spending. Continue reading...

France selection for Six Nations caused a huge stir but England’s head coach has no need to spring any shocks Steve Borthwick names his England squad for the Six Nations on Friday and as much as we do not know about the precise makeup of the chosen party, there is plenty that we do. As much fun as it may be to imagine Borthwick rocking up at Twickenham in a sharp navy suit, ice-white trainers and a few selection bombshells in his pocket, the England head coach is not about to borrow from Fabien Galthié’s playbook. Galthié’s decision to omit Damian Penaud, Grégory Alldritt and Gaël Fickou has created such a stir because it is radical by any measure but the point here is that Borthwick’s squad, in comparison to England’s closest rivals for the Six Nations title, is significantly more settled. He has a couple of injury concerns, as is always the case at this time of year, and he is expected to reward the recent form of the uncapped Greg Fisilau with a call-up, but what is likely to be most telling is how few surprises it contains. Continue reading...

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Met says allowing protest would risk serious disorder, including from local residents Far-right Ukip supporters will be stopped from marching through Tower Hamlets for fear of serious violence, including from local residents, Scotland Yard has said. The Metropolitan police said it was not a ban, as the march on 31 January calling for mass deportations can take place in another part of London. Continue reading...

After a bombastic speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump backed away from his threat to impose tariffs on European countries In the past few days, Donald Trump turned the US presidency into a tool for his personal glory and vengeance. On Saturday, he threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on a bloc of European countries until Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the US. The next day, Trump texted Norway’s prime minister, saying his failure to win the Nobel peace prize is one of the reasons he’s intent on seizing control of Greenland. After being snubbed for last year’s award, Trump said he no longer felt the need “to think purely of peace.” By Tuesday morning, as European leaders continued to absorb the shock of Trump’s threats and insults, the president posted an AI-generated meme that showed him planting a US flag on the island, flanked by his vice president and secretary of state. “Greenland. US Territory. Est. 2026,” the image said. (Trump shared another image, also apparently edited by AI, that showed him sitting alongside a map of the US that includes Canada, Greenland and Venezuela, as he spoke with European leaders assembled at the White House.) Later on Tuesday, when he was asked at a press conference how far he was willing to go to acquire Greenland, Trump responded tersely: “You’ll find out.” Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University Continue reading...

Richard Wells and Neil Debenham charged with conspiracy to defraud over collapse of Safe Hands pre-paid scheme Two men have been charged after a fraud investigation at a pre-paid funeral firm that left tens of thousands of people “out of pocket” when it collapsed. About 46,000 customers lost the money they had saved up to pay for their funeral when Safe Hands went bust in 2022. Continue reading...

Fourteen-year-old was found dead in a storm drain in June 2020 six days after setting off from home on his bike Six years after Noah Donohoe’s bike ride across Belfast ended in a tragedy that mystified Northern Ireland, an inquest is seeking answers. Opening statements at Belfast coroner’s court on Thursday marked the formal start of an attempt to fathom what happened to the 14-year-old schoolboy, who left his home on 21 June 2020 and was found six days later dead in a storm drain. Continue reading...

Dr Madeline G Reinecke says any policy focused on protecting children must broaden its scope beyond traditional social media platforms, while Alexandra Cocksworth says real connections are crucial. Plus a letter from Ali Oliver The government’s consultation surrounding whether to ban social media for under-16s responds to widespread concern about digital harms (UK ministers launch consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s, 19 January). We in the Neuroscience, Ethics and Society (Neurosec) team at the University of Oxford contend that such investigations should extend also to whether young people should have access to generative AI. In the case of social media, ministers and commentators have focused on features like addictive feeds and age limits; our research team’s work with young people shows that we must also reckon with such considerations – among many others – in an era of AI-driven technologies. To be sure, concerns about mental health, social comparison and addictive design certainly apply when thinking about young people’s experiences online, but the digital world of 2026 includes far more than Instagram and TikTok. AI-based chatbots are increasingly present in young people’s lives across a host of domains, from education to companionship. And adolescence is a formative stage for developing social understanding, one’s sense of identity and so on. This raises urgent questions, such as: at what age should young people have access to AIs simulating friendship or intimacy? What safeguards are needed to protect young minds from manipulation and dependency grounded in artificial “connection”? Continue reading...

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture has restored eight key areas of the medieval souk, notes Luis Monréal Your long read article is a powerful account of the impacts of Syria’s civil war on the city of Aleppo (Out of the ruins: will Aleppo ever be rebuilt?, 20 January). However, in stating that “All the reconstruction efforts so far are local”, it overlooks significant international involvement. Since 2018, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has restored eight key areas of the medieval souk in Aleppo’s old city, with ongoing rehabilitation planned, reviving shops and covered markets. AKTC’s efforts have motivated traders to privately restore their own shops in peripheral areas of the souk, delivered according to local standards. UN organisations such as Unesco and UN-Habitat are also helping to restore elements of the city’s historic centre. Continue reading...

Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle programme will reportedly not return for third series The Duchess of Sussex’s latest Netflix lifestyle show failed to crack the top 1,000 most watched programmes on the platform, figures suggest, amid reports that it will not return for a third series. The second series of With Love, Meghan ranked 1,124th most watched shows between July and December 2025, with 2 views, according to data, coming below the second season of Miraculous: Tales Of Ladybug & Cat Noir, as well as programmes several years older including Downton Abbey. Continue reading...

An article about Hamnet reminded Sean Kaye-Smith of the moving film The Other Side of the Underneath Re Zoe Williams’ thought-provoking article (The crying game: what Hamnet’s grief-porn debate says about women, cinema – and enormous hawks, 16 January), the tensions between grief-art and grief-porn have been around for decades in British cinema, never more so than when Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath was released in 1973. In addition to being the only British feature film to be directed by a woman in the whole of the 1970s, this powerful and harrowing work openly declared its theme to be “women’s pain”, and anyone who has seen the film would strongly affirm that it lives up to its brief. There is still nothing else like it, for the rawness of its emotions and the haunting quality of its visuals. Continue reading...

Watching in horror | Nobel prizes | Spell check, please | Delightful country diaries | Perceptions of ‘south’ I was surprised that your feature (‘What did I just watch?’ The TV shows that utterly baffle us – but we can’t switch off, 20 January) did not include a mention of the popular show News at Ten. When I started watching this years ago, the plotlines more or less made sense, but recently they’ve become increasingly deranged, particularly since the introduction of the weirdly orange-coloured character, “Donald”. However, like many people, I am glued to the show with a mixture of horror and fascination. Clare Griffel Bristol • Maybe we should forget the peace prize and award Donald Trump the Nobel prize in physics for his ability to distort reality? Tom Stewart Romsey, Hampshire Continue reading...

The US president has backed down in the row over Greenland after threatening Europe with tariffs and the potential use of military force. After talks with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, Donald Trump said the 'framework of a future deal' had been agreed for the territory to allow the US to build its military presence there. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian's Europe correspondent Jon Henley  Continue reading...

High court ruling marks first time a foreign state has been held liable for domestic servitude by its envoy on UK soil The United Arab Emirates must pay a victim of human trafficking more than £260,000 after being exploited by one of their diplomats in London, the high court has ruled. Lawyers representing the woman said it was unprecedented for a court to order a foreign state to pay for domestic servitude by a diplomat on UK soil. Continue reading...