Spanish singer, 82, had already been accused of sexually assaulting two female former employees The Spanish singer Julio Iglesias, who has been accused of sexually assaulting two female former employees, is also alleged to have ordered some women who worked for him to undergo tests for sexually transmitted diseases, local media have reported. The sexual assault allegations against the 82-year-old singer, whose career spans six decades, were published on Tuesday after a three-year joint investigation by the Spanish news site elDiario.es and the Spanish-language TV network Univision Noticias. Continue reading...

Blue-chip consultancy’s boss says firm has an AI ‘workforce’ of 20,000 agents operating alongside its 40,000 staff Business live – latest updates McKinsey is asking graduate applicants to “collaborate” with an artificial intelligence tool as part of its recruitment process, as competence with the technology becomes a requirement in competing for top-level jobs. The blue-chip consultancy is incorporating an “AI interview” into some final-round interviews, according to CaseBasix, a US company that helps candidates apply for posts at leading strategic consulting companies. Continue reading...

US president says Jamie Dimon was wrong to suggest he was undermining independence of central bank Business live – latest updates Donald Trump has hit out at the JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon, saying the Wall Street executive was wrong to suggest he was undermining the independence of the Federal Reserve. The US president and his administration have come under fire for their attacks against the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, who is now facing a criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice over alleged “abuse of taxpayer dollars” linked to renovations to the central bank’s headquarters in Washington. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news Economic conflicts between major powers are the greatest risk facing the world over the next two years, according to experts polled ahead of next week’s Davos summit. Among 1,300 business leaders, academics and civil society figures surveyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), “geoeconomic confrontation” was identified as the most pressing threat. Continue reading...

After Guardian writers shared their choices, readers responded with picks from films including Withnail and I, Emily the Criminal and Chopper The fact that he manages to save a kid’s life while remaining a sweary alcoholic without an ounce of dignity and self-respect … is positively heartwarming. GusCairns Continue reading...

We’d like to hear from young people, parents and teachers about how Elon Musk’s controversial chatbot is affecting you Degrading images of real women and children with their clothes digitally removed by Elon Musk’s Grok tool continue to be shared online, despite widespread alarm and a pledge by the platform to suspend users who generate them. While some safeguards have been introduced, the ease with which the AI tool can be abused has raised urgent questions about consent, online safety and the ability of governments worldwide to regulate fast-moving AI technologies. Meanwhile, the misuse of AI to harass, humiliate and sexually exploit people – particularly women and girls – is rapidly escalating. Continue reading...

US owner scraps auction after bids from private equity firms fail to meet its £2bn sale expectations, report says Business live – latest updates Coca-Cola has reportedly abandoned plans to sell its Costa Coffee chain after bids from private equity firms failed to meet its expectations. The US soft drinks company halted discussions with remaining bidders in December, according to the Financial Times, ending a months-long auction process. Continue reading...

A supreme court ruling is expected later today, though it is unclear what it will be Welcome to our US politics live blog. The Supreme Court could issue a ruling today on the legal challenge to President Trump’s global tariffs, which if upheld by the court, would upend one of the US president’s key policies and further disrupt the world economy. Continue reading...

The eccentric, sharp-eyed sitcom was so loved that it was once the fastest-selling DVD ever. A quarter of a century on from its Channel 4 debut, why has it fallen so far off the radar? There are few British comedy shows that were as popular, yet now completely extinct, as Phoenix Nights. The sitcom – which ran for just two series between 2001-2002 – is set in a fictional working men’s club in Bolton, and was a huge hit of the physical media era. Its second series was once the fastest ever selling UK TV show on DVD, shifting 160,000 copies in its first week of release. However, it is now 25 years since it was first broadcast on Channel 4, and it does not feature, nor has it ever, on any streaming service. Instead, it’s confined to dodgy fan uploads on YouTube and the secondhand DVD market. It is also almost entirely absent from all of the major publications’ best TV of the 21st century listicles. Nevertheless, it remains a programme like few others. Distinctly northern and working class, it crucially uses neither as the butt of its jokes. In the same way that The Royle Family turned the everyday routine of watching TV, bickering, having a brew and asking each other what they had for tea into a relatably funny yet poignant shared living-room experience, Phoenix Nights invites people through its sparkling tinsel curtains into the familiar yet fading glory of clubland. Continue reading...

Barrister turned novelist Harriet Tyce is playing a blinder in the fourth series of the show. As a thriller writer myself, I recognise the traits that make her such a formidable Faithful This time last year a rumour swept through the close-knit British crime-writing community, not whispered in a quiet moment in the billiard room but shared on group chats and message boards. The producers of The Traitors were recruiting contestants for 2026, and wanted one of us to take part. Of course they did! The Traitors is a controlled, lower-stakes, stylised version of the golden age country house whodunnit, which is itself a controlled, lower-stakes, stylised version of real-life murder. It is crime writers’ job to examine the dark side of human behaviour. Betrayal of trust and manipulation are all in a day’s work. We often write from multiple perspectives, identifying with victim, perp and detective, giving us a unique kind of empathy. We spent the rest of the year wondering who it would be. (I didn’t get the call.) Last November, in that howling no man’s land between the finale of Celebrity Traitors and the transmission of series four, I went along with 13 fellow crime novelists to the Traitors Live Experience in Covent Garden. Despite being professional pattern-finders with highly tuned powers of observation, none of us at the replica round table guessed that the Chosen One was among us, and had already completed her stint on the real thing. Continue reading...

In a might-makes-right world, US allies, not to mention the emerging powers of the global south, would begin to hedge their bets in dangerous ways What is wrong with resurrecting the prerogative of major powers to claim a sphere of influence in which they dictate and others must follow? That idea informs the “Donroe Doctrine” behind the US invasion of Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump seems to believe that, as the world’s strongest military power, the United States should be allowed to invade other countries at will. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, says “the real world” is “governed by strength”, by “power”, so we should get used to it. There is a beguiling simplicity to this abandonment of the norms long designed to govern the behavior of states big and small. China has touted it as the reality that its Asian neighbors must live with. Russia, a third-tier power by comparison but still a nuclear-armed regional heavyweight, has periodically treated the boundaries of post-Soviet states as mere suggestions. But do we really want to return to the law of the jungle in which the guy with the biggest stick calls the shots? Continue reading...

This week, Trump’s granddaughter announced she definitely doesn’t want to go into politics. Expect a run for office very soon Last week Kai Trump, Donald Trump Jr’s daughter and the president’s eldest grandchild, publicly declared she had no plans to run for office. The 18-year-old appeared on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, where she stated that “politics is such a dangerous thing … I think if both sides met in the middle, everyone would be so much more happier.” (Maybe tell that to your grandpa, kid.) “To be honest with you,” she said, “I stay out of politics completely … I don’t want anything to do with politics.” Look, I know you’re still very young, Kai, so here’s a little advice from an old lady: maybe work just a teeny bit harder at keeping a safe distance from politics. It has not gone unobserved that the influencer and golfer has made a lot of content about life behind the scenes at the White House. She’s also launched an apparel collection, which she’s modelled on the White House lawn. And, notably, she spoke at the 2024 Republican national convention (RNC), where she insisted Trump was “just a normal grandpa”. I don’t know about that; my grandad didn’t invade Venezuela. Kai, by the way, stressed to Logan Paul that she was the one who decided to speak at the RNC; it was “literally all my idea”. But the nasty media, she noted, spun it otherwise. “[They said] ‘Oh well, that’s like a political plan that was put in place, to like get more voters or anything like that’.” Well, yes, because it was a political convention. They tend to be, you know, political. Continue reading...

Fraser plays a hapless Tokyo-based actor working for a firm that offers bespoke therapeutic role-play services in director Hikari’s silly and saccharine film Brendan Fraser is a bland and ingratiating presence in this glib, silly and pointless film from Japanese actor turned director Hikari. It is bafflingly complacent in its sentimentality and its sheer, fatuous implausibility, which makes it valueless and meaningless as drama and comedy. Fraser plays Phillip, a hapless unemployed actor from the US who a few years previously came to Tokyo to do a goofy TV ad for toothpaste and, having no friends or family back home, simply stayed on. He lucks into a weird new source of income: working for a “rental family”, based on firms in Japan which really do offer bespoke therapeutic role-play services, such as errant spouses, deceased loved ones or unsatisfactory co-workers – people who can be chatted with, or mourned, or yelled at for cathartic purposes. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Claire Waxman says justice system risks collapse and no other viable way to drastically reduce courts backlog A potential government U-turn on changes to jury trials risks breaking a justice system on the brink of collapse, the new victims’ commissioner for England and Wales has warned. The justice secretary, David Lammy, must face down MPs and the legal profession over proposals to reduce the number of jury trials or “we will not have victims coming into the system”, said Claire Waxman. Continue reading...

Semi-automated offside technology was not available High number of bodies in the box prevented its use The delay in ruling out a Manchester City goal for offside in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup win at Newcastle was extended because semi-automated offside technology could not be used in the incident. It took more than five minutes for a check to determine that Erling Haaland was offside and had interfered with play by holding the defender Malick Thiaw, with the referee Chris Kavanagh disallowing what would have been a second goal of the night for City’s new signing Antoine Semenyo. Continue reading...

Judiciary chief threatens swift punishment after Trump says US will intervene if Iran begins executing demonstrators Iran protests: live blog updates Hundreds of gunshot eye injuries found in one Iranian hospital Iran protests: what we know so far about the anti-government demonstrations The Iranian government has signalled that detained protesters are to face speedy trials and executions, defying a threat by the US president, Donald Trump, to intervene if authorities continue their crackdown. The comments from Iran’s chief justice on Wednesday came as human rights groups warned that executions of protesters could take place soon. A 26-year-old protester, Erfan Soltani, was slated to face execution on Wednesday, the first anti-government demonstrator to be given a death sentence. It was unclear whether the execution had proceeded or not, as authorities typically carry out death penalties at dawn. Continue reading...

For Hannah Thorogood, a first generation Lincolnshire farmer, grazing her sheep on solar land gave her a leg-up in the industry On a blustery Lincolnshire morning, Hannah Thorogood paused between two ranks of solar panels. Her sheep nosedived into the grass under their shelter and began to graze. “When I first started out, 18 acres and 20 sheep was as much as I could afford,” said the first-generation farmer. “Now, because I can graze this land for free, I have 250 acres and over 200 sheep. Solar grazing has given me a massive leg-up.” Continue reading...

Exclusive: Discovery comes amid growing concern over lax regulation and children being put at risk by rogue operators Circumcision kits have been found on sale on Amazon UK, highlighting lax regulation as concerns grow about deaths and serious harms to baby boys. In December, a UK coroner issued warnings about insufficient circumcision regulation after the death in 2023 of a six-month-old boy, Mohamed Abdisamad, from a streptococcus infection. Continue reading...

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Stats tell us batters have less reason to be anxious in the 90s than common lore suggests, though the pain and fear of falling short is all too real If you’ve ever been lucky enough to score a century you’ll know how seismic a moment it is when you finally get over the line. Some play the game for a lifetime and never make one, the three-figured kingdom for ever out of reach, a promised land they are destined never to enter. Yet cricket lures you back like a devilish lover. You just can’t quit it. Next time might be your time. It could be you. Why not? In cricket the century is the hallmark of individual success for a batter, the team sport unique in the way that it lauds personal milestones. The Test Match Special statistician Andy Zaltzman says that a century “carves an immutable notch in a player’s history and, at the highest level, an eternal legacy in the annals of the game”. Continue reading...

Policing inspectorate to say force made series of errors in how it gathered and handled intelligence UK politics live – latest updates West Midlands police will be criticised in a report about their handling of intelligence used to justify banning Israeli fans from a football game in Birmingham, the Guardian understands. The inquiry was ordered by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and carried out by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the policing inspectorate. Continue reading...

Uefa’s limitations have set hurdles for women keen to take the next step in coaching despite the increasing demand Mariana Cabral has a coaching CV to be proud of. Born on the small Azores island of São Miguel, she has been in charge of the women’s teams at clubs including Benfica and Sporting, but the 38-year-old is frustrated. “We want more women coaches,” she says. “Who won the Euros? Who won the Champions League? Women – but we are losing so many.” Cabral has her A Licence but is stuck in limbo. Unable to get on a Pro Licence course that would clear a path to more senior head coach roles in an era when women’s teams are increasingly demanding that qualification, she stepped back to become a No 2 in the US. But after one NWSL season with Utah Royals, she left in December in the hope that expanding her experience at another club would help to open a Pro Licence door. Continue reading...

Jessie Buckley and Timothée Chalamet might be winning all of the awards but as Oscar voting begins, these actors also deserve inclusion Every January, if not earlier, awards narratives leading up to the Oscars take shape. While the specifics of the Academy Award nominations are never known in advance, and can always be counted on for some surprises when they’re actually unveiled, critics and pundits and fans all enter into that final stretch with a pretty good idea of who won’t be nominated. Some of this is because of the endless spitballing. But the “won’t” list is also easy to compile because it ultimately houses almost everyone who acted in a movie over the past year. Twenty performances are selected for the Oscars annually, and given the other high-profile awards bodies with additional preferences, category numbers and a never-complete overlap with the Academy, let’s say about 40 are in the broader competition of real possibilities. But there are so many more great performances every year than that, across all sizes, scopes and genres. Continue reading...

While Grok has introduced belated safeguards to prevent sexualised AI imagery, other tools have far fewer limits “Since discovering Grok AI, regular porn doesn’t do it for me anymore, it just sounds absurd now,” one enthusiast for the Elon Musk-owned AI chatbot wrote on Reddit. Another agreed: “If I want a really specific person, yes.” If those who have been horrified by the distribution of sexualised imagery on Grok hoped that last week’s belated safeguards could put the genie back in the bottle, there are many such posts on Reddit and elsewhere that tell a different story. Continue reading...

For Mehdi Taremi and others playing abroad, showing solidarity with their home nation can mean threats and possible detention Mehdi Taremi did what he does best. On Saturday, the Iranian striker turned inside the area and scored for Olympiakos, a well-taken eighth goal of the season for the 33-year-old that clinched a 2-0 win at Atromitos and a place at the top of the Greek Super League. Usually, millions of people in Iran follow every step of Taremi’s European career, one that took off with Porto and has settled in Piraeus via Milan, but not this time. The ruling regime in Tehran has cut the internet and all communications, which meant that residents of the football-loving nation also missed the non-celebration that followed. “It actually has to do with the conditions in my country,” Taremi said. “There are problems between the people and the government. The people are always with us, and that’s why we are with them. I couldn’t celebrate in solidarity with the Iranian people. I know that Olympiakos fans would like me to be happy, but I don’t celebrate the goals, in solidarity with what the Iranian people are going through.” Continue reading...