More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates sign open letter calling for immediate ramping up of food production More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for “moonshot” efforts to ramp up food production before an impending world hunger catastrophe. The coalition of some of the world’s greatest living thinkers called for urgent action to prioritise research and technology to solve the “tragic mismatch of global food supply and demand”. Continue reading...

The Olivier-winning star ‘excited and honoured’ to take the lead in the UK premiere of Marie and Rosetta, a 1940s-set two-hander from George Brant Beverley Knight is to play Sister Rosetta Tharpe in a drama about the gospel singer and guitarist who became known as “the godmother of rock’n’roll”. Written by US playwright George Brant (best known for the drone-pilot drama Grounded), Marie and Rosetta explores the personal and professional partnership between Tharpe and Marie Knight, with whom she toured and recorded. First staged off-Broadway in 2016, the play will have its UK premiere as a new co-production between the Rose theatre in Kingston, south-west London, and Chichester Festival theatre this summer. Continue reading...

Chief inspector of prisons issues warning after surge in weapons and drugs flown into high-security facilities in England and Wales Drones have become a “threat to national security”, the prisons watchdog has said, after a surge in the amount of weapons and drugs flown into high-security jails. Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, called for urgent action from Whitehall and the police after inquiries found that terrorism suspects and criminal gangs could escape or attack guards because safety had been “seriously compromised”. Continue reading...

It’s free, it’s sensible and it makes workers happy. The government needs to accept that this is the new normal You would be hard-pressed to find a single positive side-effect of the pandemic. If there is one, it is the growing numbers of people who now work from home. Half of workers work from home for at least part of the week now, and many workplaces have thrived because of it. Zoom meetings save time and wasteful travel, employers are free to hire talent from anywhere in the country, and employees have escaped escalating property prices in London and steep commuting costs. Working from home (WFH) has been a boon for the climate, too; according to one US study, two to four days of remote working a week lowers carbon emissions by between 11% and 29%. Yet WFH is now coming under accelerating attack. JP Morgan will now require employees to spend five days a week in the office and other big companies may soon follow suit. A perverse strain of rightwing thought opposes almost any social progress that improves other people’s lives. This Scrooge-like instinct yearns to make work as grindingly hard and low-paid as possible. Recall Jacob Rees-Mogg pacing civil service offices like the Child Catcher, leaving “sorry you were out when I visited” notes on employees’ desks in 2022. The same age-old sentiment prompted the CBI chair, Rupert Soames, to savage Labour’s flagship anti-gig economy employment rights bill on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, warning that the new bill would force businesses to let people go. Continue reading...

Study says 61,353 non-combatants were killed or wounded in 2024, an increase of 67% on the previous year Civilian casualties from bombing or other explosive violence have reached their highest level globally in more than a decade, an annual study has concluded, reflecting the intense bombing of Gaza and Lebanon and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a monitoring group, said 61,353 non-combatants had been killed or wounded during 2024, an increase of 67% on last year, previously the largest amount it had counted since it began its survey in 2010. Continue reading...

Prohibition would bring the NHS, schools and local councils into line with government departments Schools, the NHS and local councils will be banned from making ransomware payments under government proposals to tackle hackers. In a crackdown on such cyber-attacks, operators of critical national infrastructure will be barred from bowing to demands when criminal gangs hold IT systems hostage. Continue reading...

Briton fights hard for 7-6 (4), 6-2 win over Ekaterina Alexandrova Raducanu faces Amanda Anisimova in second round in Melbourne Just a few games into Emma Raducanu’s first contest of the new season, it was clear that an uncomfortable day lay ahead. Having been forced to withdraw from her first scheduled tournament, Raducanu arrived at the Australian Open rusty and undercooked. Under the heightened stress of a grand slam first round match, Raducanu’s serve was completely out of control, double faults cascading from her racket. As was the case with Jack Draper on the exact same court less than 24 hours earlier, the end goal for any player in this situation is simple: survive for another day so that there are more opportunities during the tournament to improve. Raducanu showed off her survival instincts by fighting through a self-sabotaging 15 double faults to deliver a hardfought 7-6 (4), 6-2 win over Ekaterina Alexandrova, the 26th seed, in the first round of the Australian Open. Continue reading...

As wildfires continue to cause devastation in Los Angeles, Madeleine Finlay speaks to Albert van Dijk, professor of water science and management at the Australian National University, about how rising temperatures are causing rapid swings in extreme weather Clips: CBS News, CBS Sunday Morning, King 5 Seattle Climate crisis ‘wreaking havoc’ on Earth’s water cycle, report finds Continue reading...

His meal-replacement business is worth hundreds of millions, but Collier’s rise to the top has been far from easy. He discusses bodybuilding, bullies and why nutrition is more polarising than politics When James Collier got married to Melanie nearly 10 years ago, his dad paid for the honeymoon. Collier’s businesses weren’t exactly booming, but he had a good feeling about a new venture. “I was on the beach checking my emails, and I said to Mel: ‘I think this is going to do all right, this one.’ And that was an underestimation.” It certainly was. Sales of Huel, the meal-replacement brand Collier launched in 2015, topped £214m last year. Pre-tax profits tripled to £13.8m. Huel – a product mainly made of oats, pea protein and flaxseeds, which comes in powder, drink, snack bar and meal-pot forms – is sold in 25,000 shops worldwide, including 70% of UK supermarkets. The company was most recently valued at £440m, but has since had investment from Morgan Stanley. Just how rich is Collier now? Continue reading...

Fadi al-Wahidi’s condition is deteriorating, say hospital staff, who do not have medication needed to treat him It was about 3pm on 9 October when a small group of Al Jazeera journalists arrived at the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The team say they were reporting on the displacement of Palestinian families after Israel launched its third offensive on the area, turning it into an unrecognisable wasteland of rubble. Among them was the cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi, who moved ahead and began recording as his team set up their equipment. “At the time, none of us were aware that the IDF was close by,” says the 25-year-old from his bed at al-Helou hospital in Gaza. “But suddenly, the sound of gunfire surrounded us.” Continue reading...

Tokyo remains, in the world’s imagination, a place of sophistication and wealth. But with economic revival forever distant, ‘tourism pollution’ seems the only viable plan The yen is low, and everybody is coming to Tokyo. If that sounds familiar, it’s not because I’m being coy or hedging my bets; it is the only information to be found in most English-language coverage of Japan’s capital in the aftermath of the pandemic. I can’t stop reading these accounts. After nine years in the country, you’d think I would have learned enough Japanese to liberate myself from the Anglo-American internet, but I’m afraid I’m stuck with flimsy stories about the tourist uptick for the time being. Part of the reason that so much coverage of the city where I live errs on the side of optimism is that Tokyo remains lodged in the postwar American imagination as a place of sophistication and wealth, good taste and cultural authenticity, with a reputation for deferential hospitality. Never mind that this was the calculated effect of bilateral postwar public relations campaigns, a boom in exportable middlebrow culture and fearmongering about Japanese industrial dominance. Continue reading...

Building with links to Labour and Tories earmarked for disadvantaged young people wins National Lottery funding A 319-year-old Grade II-listed building in the heart of Bristol that was the headquarters of the precursor to the modern Labour party has been awarded £4.7m for a major renovation. Kingsley Hall is deeply woven into Bristol’s history and has been witness to various social movements. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Costs of UK cleanup will reach £9.9bn a year in UK if emissions of ‘forever chemicals’ remain uncontrolled Industry using ‘tobacco playbook’ to fend off ‘forever chemicals’ regulation The cost of cleaning up toxic forever chemical pollution could reach more than £1.6tn across the UK and Europe over a 20-year period, an annual bill of £84bn, research has found. The number of British pollution hotspots is also on the rise. If emissions remain unrestricted and uncontrolled, the costs of cleanup will reach £9.9bn a year in the UK, according to the findings of a year-long investigation by the Forever Lobbying Project, a cross-border investigation involving 46 journalists and 18 experts across 16 countries. Continue reading...

Wang Xing was abducted in Thailand by increasingly bold crime gangs operating in Myanmar, putting an entire tourism industry at risk Wang Xing thought he was travelling to a casting call with film producers in Thailand. The 22-year-old Chinese actor, also known by his stage name Xing Xing, had been communicating on WeChat with people he believed were Chinese employees of a major Thai entertainment firm, according to Thai police. One of them greeted him at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport and led him through security, before telling him that the plan – to stay at a nearby hotel – had changed. Instead they drove 500km to Mae Sot in western Thailand. Continue reading...

Grey ball-shaped debris found washed up along shore will be tested by Environment Protection Authority, local council says Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Nine of Sydney’s northern beaches have been closed after ball-shaped debris washed ashore. The Northern Beaches council on Tuesday advised beachgoers to avoid Manly, Dee Why, Long Reef, Queenscliff, Freshwater, North and South Curl Curl, North Steyne and North Narrabeen beaches until further notice. Continue reading...

Factchecker Jesse Stiller and technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker explore why Mark Zuckerberg has announced dramatic changes to Meta’s social platforms, and what they will mean for their 3.3 billion users When Mark Zuckerberg announced dramatic changes to Meta’s social platforms last week – including Facebook, Instagram and Threads – he admitted: “We’re going to catch less bad stuff.” Zuckerberg said Meta would get rid of factcheckers, overhaul its content moderation and boost political content in users’ feeds – all 3.3 billion of them. He argued the company was doing it because the political winds had changed: the public no longer viewed these safeguards as a way of preventing the spread of misinformation, hate speech, or even real-world violence, but as censorship by other means. Continue reading...

Bloomberg News says preliminary talks have taken place but TikTok spokesperson rejects report as ‘pure fiction’ Chinese officials are in preliminary talks about a potential option to sell TikTok’s operations in the United States to billionaire Elon Musk, should the short-video app be unable to avoid an impending ban, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. Beijing officials prefer that TikTok remains under the control of parent Bytedance, the report said, citing sources. Continue reading...

Mark Rutte says Ukraine not yet in the ‘position of strength’ it needs for talks with Russia; Biden says US and allies ‘can’t walk away’. What we know on day 1,056 Ukraine is not in a strong enough position for peace talks with Russia, Nato chief, Mark Rutte, said on Monday. “At this moment, clearly Ukraine is not there, because they cannot at this moment negotiate from a position of strength,” Rutte told EU lawmakers. “We have to do more to make sure by changing the trajectory of the conflict that they can get to that position of strength.” Donald Trump will be sworn into office as US president next Monday after vowing on the campaign trail to bring a swift end to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Rutte said: “We all want this war to end, but above all, we want peace to last. Peace will not last if Putin gets his way in Ukraine, because then he will press ahead … I am convinced that peace can only last if Ukraine comes to the table from a position of strength.” The United States and its allies “can’t walk away” from Ukraine, the outgoing US president, Joe Biden, said on Monday as he prepares to step down next week and hand power to Donald Trump. Biden on Monday marvelled that at the start of the war Putin thought Russian forces would easily defeat Ukraine in a matter of days. It was an assessment US and European intelligence officials shared. Instead, Biden said, his administration and its allies have “laid the foundation” for the Trump administration to help Ukraine eventually arrive at a moment where it can negotiate a just end to the nearly three year old conflict. “Today, Ukraine is still a free and independent country with the potential for a bright future,” Biden said. Hailing US and international support for Kyiv since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, Biden said that the Russian ruler, Vladimir Putin, has “failed to achieve any of his strategic objectives” but that “there is more to do, we can’t walk away”. Volodymyr Zelenskyy countered that the Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, can “come to Kyiv on Friday” after the latter on Monday invited Ukraine’s president to Slovakia. Fico was calling for negotiations “as soon as possible” after Ukraine decided to cut off cheap Russian gas that flows through both their countries to western Europe. It comes after Fico’s trip to Moscow before Christmas to meet Vladimir Putin angered EU countries and protests at home against Fico’s government. Thousands of Slovaks took to the streets on Friday to protest against Fico’s journey and his friendly ties with the Kremlin at a rally called “Slovakia is Europe”. The Kremlin accused Kyiv of “energy terrorism” over what Moscow claimed was an attempted attack on infrastructure for the TurkStream gas pipeline that carries Russian gas to Europe via Turkey, Russian news agencies reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the drone strike was a “continuation of the line of energy terrorism that Kyiv has been pursuing, under the curation of its overseas friends, for a long time”, state news agencies reported. A Ukrainian official said Russian forces were bypassing the logistics hub of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine that they have fought for months to capture and focusing instead on cutting supply lines to it. Maj Viktor Trehubov, a Ukrainian army spokesperson, told the Associated Press on Monday that Russian troops were going around Pokrovsk where Ukrainian defence has kept them at bay. He said the Russians were taking aim at a highway that leads from there to the central Ukraine city of Dnipro. That route is crucial for supplies feeding Ukrainian forces in the entire region. Cutting the highway traffic would also severely weaken Pokrovsk. Italy will sign an agreement with Ukraine and Unesco to rebuild the city of Odesa and its cathedral which was badly damaged by a Russian attack, said Antonio Tajani, the Italian foreign minister. Ukraine said the Orthodox cathedral was damaged when it was hit during a Russian missile attack on the country’s southern port city in July last year. Russia denied responsibility. “As the G7 presidency, we continue to work for a just peace,” Tajani told lawmakers, adding that supporting Ukraine’s energy system was also a priority for Italy, which holds the rotating presidency of the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations until the end of this year. Continue reading...

Donald Trump raised alarm last week when he refused to rule out military intervention to bring Greenland and the Panama Canal under US control Greenland’s prime minister said on Monday the Danish autonomous territory was open to closer ties with the United States, in areas such as mining, a Greenlandic broadcaster reported. “We need to do business with the US. We have begun to start a dialogue and seek opportunities for cooperation with [Donald] Trump,” Mute Egede said at a press conference in Greenland, according to public broadcaster KNR. Continue reading...

First of five hearings into martial law declaration due to start on Tuesday, while Yoon Suk Yeol remains holed up inside his presidential compound The impeachment trial of South Korea’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, begins on Tuesday, with the constitutional court set to weigh whether to strip him of his presidential duties over a failed martial law bid. Yoon’s December 3 power grab plunged South Korea into its worst political crisis in decades, after he directed soldiers to storm parliament in an unsuccessful bid to stop lawmakers voting down his suspension of civilian rule. Continue reading...

Annual sector review says tax and wage rises and council funding cuts have left services in ‘state of acute precarity’ Charities providing specialist care to thousands of vulnerable adults with learning disabilities and severe autism are having to “evict” residents to avoid insolvency because of tax and wage rises and local authority funding cuts. Non-profit providers say their work is in a “state of acute precarity” with many preparing to cut services, close doors to new residents and effectively evict tenants because the fees councils pay no longer meet the cost of care. Continue reading...

Documents indicate monarch was informed Anthony Blunt was Soviet agent in 1973, though he confessed in 1964 The late Queen Elizabeth II was not told for almost 10 years that Anthony Blunt, a surveyor of the queen’s pictures and a member of the royal household, had confessed to being a Soviet double agent, previously secret security files suggest. Declassified MI5 documents throw intriguing new light on how the security services closely guarded news that the art historian, of the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring, had confessed in April 1964, with records indicating the queen was only informed in 1973. Continue reading...

A historic papal autobiography offers unique insights into the challenges faced by the leader of the Catholic church, but skates over scandals At 88 years of age, Pope Francis is the oldest pontiff for more than a century. Yet, after major surgery in 2023, and persistent knee problems that require the use of a wheelchair, he shows no sign of calling it a day. Now, he has decided that an autobiography, originally planned to be published after his death, should come out to coincide with the Jubilee year he has called for the Roman Catholic church in 2025. As the first ever memoir by a pope, Hope is a publisher’s dream, with a rich backstory culminating in Francis’s election in 2013. It recounts how, as Jorge Bergoglio, grandchild of Italian immigrants to Argentina, he grew up in a sprawling family, loved football and the tango (which he calls “an emotional, visceral dialogue that comes from afar, from ancient roots”), studied chemistry, then joined the Jesuit order and became a priest. After dallying with Peronism and enduring the Argentinian junta, he became the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires. Then, just as he was planning his retirement, Benedict XVI resigned and he was chosen as his successor. Continue reading...

The booker longlisted title takes the debut fiction prize while Adam S Leslie, Sophie Elmhirst and Liz Hyder win fiction, nonfiction and children’s categories Booker longlisted author Colin Barrett has won the Nero book award for debut fiction for his novel Wild Houses. Meanwhile Adam S Leslie has won in the fiction category for Lost in the Garden, while Guardian Long Reads contributor Sophie Elmhirst’s Maurice and Maralyn was named nonfiction winner. Liz Hyder was awarded the prize in the children’s fiction category for The Twelve, illustrated by Tom De Freston. Continue reading...

Francis recalls receiving a ‘large white box’ related to ‘difficult and painful situations’ in his autobiography, Hope Pope Francis has said he inherited a “large white box” full of documents related to various scandals faced by the Catholic Church when he took over from his predecessor. The pontiff makes the revelation in his much-anticipated autobiography, Spera (Hope), which is published on Tuesday. Additional reporting Catherine Pepinster Continue reading...