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The GuardianHumanityIslamic World
Fresh concerns raised over Gaza doctor held by Israel for 23 months without charge

Fresh concerns raised over Gaza doctor held by Israel for 23 months without charge

Independent Israeli professor says Hussam Abu Safiya’s life will be at risk until he receives proper medical treatment An independent professor who reviewed the medical records of a prominent Gaza doctor held in an Israeli prison without charge for nearly 23 months has raised serious concerns about his health. Hussam Abu Safiya was detained at work on 27 December 2024 and later held in solitary confinement at Rakefet, a notorious underground prison.

8h ago
The GuardianHealth AlertsUSA
The vaccine limbo in the US is worsening the measles outbreak

The vaccine limbo in the US is worsening the measles outbreak

Earlier doses for children, a focus on unvaccinated adults, a risk strategy based on geography – here’s how a functioning ACIP would address the measles outbreak The US has announced three deaths associated with measles last week, among them a seven-month-old baby in New York and a postpartum woman in Pennsylvania, underscoring the need for a more aggressive vaccination approach – but US recommendations haven’t changed. Dismantling the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) made it harder for the US to respond to the measles outbreak, with vaccine recommendations staying the same during a historic rise in cases and deaths, four former advisers say.

22h ago
BBCSex & IdentityLondon
Anti-homosexuality laws in Trinidad and Tobago overturned

Anti-homosexuality laws in Trinidad and Tobago overturned

A UK court has overturned laws criminalising same-sex intimacy in Trinidad and Tobago. London's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), the Caribbean island's final court of appeal, ruled the laws were not in keeping with the "fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life." The judgement is the result of an 11-year legal battle brought by dual-citizen Jason Jones, 62, who said he hoped it would "accelerate the fight for full equality." Jones had successfully challenged the laws in 2018 in Trinidad's High Court, however the ruling was overturned on appeal by the Trinidadian government.

17h ago
The GuardianCombat SportsCanberra
Australia to introduce mandatory reporting after OpenAI hack to combat artificial intelligence ‘going rogue’

Australia to introduce mandatory reporting after OpenAI hack to combat artificial intelligence ‘going rogue’

Government flags criminal law changes to ensure companies can’t argue in future ‘that someone didn’t know the computer was loaded’ OpenAI won’t face criminal penalties over the Medicare hack but the prime minister has flagged changes to Australia’s criminal law to crack down on future breaches by artificial intelligence companies. Anthony Albanese on Tuesday released the recommendations of a “rapid review” into the June breach but not the findings or the report itself. maintaining security controls across all stages of development and deployment; identify and manage serious risks associated with their models; provide mandatory notification of incidents to the Australian government rapidly; allow independent evaluation of their models; maintain and publish safety and security frameworks to ensure good governance, risk management, and transparency; and respond to updated standards and rules as technologies change.

1d ago
The GuardianPoliticiansLondon
Whitehall is too ‘tame, reactive and risk-averse’, says UK’s top civil servant

Whitehall is too ‘tame, reactive and risk-averse’, says UK’s top civil servant

Antonia Romeo pledges to ‘rewire’ civil service by incentivising and rewarding top performers Whitehall is too “tame, reactive and risk-averse”, the cabinet secretary has said, as she set out a “completely new approach” to managing the performance of civil servants. With Andy Burnham and his deputy, Louise Haigh, in the audience, the UK’s most senior civil servant, Antonia Romeo, gave a lecture saying she would bring radical change to Whitehall as it deals with uncertainty caused by AI and global political tensions.

7h ago
The TelegraphPoliticiansLondon
Whitehall boss: Civil Service must urgently improve productivity

Whitehall boss: Civil Service must urgently improve productivity

Civil servants must urgently improve productivity, the Cabinet Secretary will declare, as she heralds the biggest overhaul of the British state in more than 170 years. Dame Antonia Romeo will use her first speech as Britain’s most senior mandarin to call for the Civil Service to be reimagined in “the most fundamental way” to address low public trust in the Government and the emergence of AI.

1d ago
The GuardianElectionsKolkata
Disgraced former leader Sheikh Hasina plans return to Bangladesh from exile

Disgraced former leader Sheikh Hasina plans return to Bangladesh from exile

Former prime minister faces death penalty upon return after being sentenced in absentia over deaths in 2024 uprising Sheikh Hasina is “confident” she will return to Bangladesh in December, according to exiled members of her party, after the disgraced former prime minister applied for a new passport this week. Hasina has been living in self-imposed exile since August 2024 when she was toppled from power by a mass uprising against her authoritarian rule. She crossed the border to India, where she has since been allowed to live freely in Delhi.

1d ago
The GuardianLiteratureWest Midlands
‘We are dream-walking into a desperate situation’: the Booker prize winner on his sci-fi alien invasion wakeup call

‘We are dream-walking into a desperate situation’: the Booker prize winner on his sci-fi alien invasion wakeup call

He is a sci-fi titan but M John Harrison has just exploded into the mainstream – with The End of Everything, an apocalyptic novel set on the Kent coast. Does he really think we have no hope left? With his twinkling eyes and silver ponytail, M John Harrison doesn’t seem anything like his 81 years. The M stands for Michael, Mike to his friends. And last night he became the oldest author to win the Booker prize for fiction, for his 13th novel, The End of Everything. Our interview is delayed because of wifi issues, which is fitting given that the novel is about – among many things – what happens when non-human intelligence takes over. The End of Everything is the first sci-fi novel to have won the prize in its 58-year history, which is almost as long as Harrison has been writing. “It’s interesting,” he replies, when asked if he feels vindicated, “that something that has an SF-adjacent feel can be regarded as a serious book and given the Booker prize. My problem has always been that I don’t believe in genre. I don’t believe in it in any way.” He gently wags his finger at me. It is a bit like having coffee with a cheerier, more neatly bearded Gandalf – it will surprise no one that, in his youth, Harrison read The Lord of the Rings every year for a decade.

8h ago
The GuardianLiteratureLondon
Judging this year’s Booker prize taught me our humanity cannot be captured by algorithms and data | Rebecca Liu

Judging this year’s Booker prize taught me our humanity cannot be captured by algorithms and data | Rebecca Liu

As the demand for information and transparency about our lives increases, these brilliant books dealt with shadows, mystery, privacy and intimacy The first box of submissions for the 2026 Booker prize arrived by courier a few days before Christmas. As I made my way through 19 books over the next six weeks (they start you off at a leisurely pace) I spotted a theme: God is back. In novels set from antiquity to our contemporary world, from romances to comedies to thrillers, characters reached for transcendence and absolution and found themselves mired in all manner of sin, or at least spiritual confusion. Priests were popping up everywhere; people sought comfort in the ancient texts; near-biblical bouts of extreme weather would prove either cleansing or calamitous. The boxes continued to arrive month after month, making me feel as though I was part of a very generous but exacting book club. There was the excitement of – as was the chair of this year’s judging panel Mary Beard’s method of choice – reaching your hand into the box, playing lucky dip to choose your next adventure. There was the joy of spotting recurring themes. Publishers decide which of their books to submit for consideration, and I’ve heard that it can lead to agonising second-guessing about what the judges may like (the preponderance of priests may have been due to the poet Patricia Lockwood, who wrote the wonderful memoir Priestdaddy, being on the panel). I heard reports of one publisher declaring: “Mary Beard hates sex scenes.” “I don’t hate them,” she said when I told her this, “but they can’t be bad.” She was true to her word. In our first meeting, I made the case for a novel I enjoyed. She later emailed us a description of a penis in it that was admittedly clumsy.

1d ago
The GuardianHumanitySouth West England
Grenades, grief and a deepening political divide: five takeaways from Sonia Gandhi’s new memoir

Grenades, grief and a deepening political divide: five takeaways from Sonia Gandhi’s new memoir

From the assassinations of her husband and mother-in-law to press stonewalling under Modi, Belonging offers an insider’s account of India’s political evolution Few love stories have been as closely entwined with a nation’s history as that of Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi. The former’s much-awaited political memoir, Belonging, offers a strikingly candid account of her journey from a small town in Italy to the highest echelons of power in India – all for love, she says. The veteran Congress party leader has been fiercely protective of her personal world. In Belonging, she opens up for the first time about the extraordinary twists and turns of a life that has largely unfolded in full public view. (The Guardian’s Hannah Ellis-Petersen has a rare in-person interview with Gandhi, and you can read an excerpt from the book here.)

1d ago
Daily PostEducationUnited Kingdom
UK moves to stop schools from teaching GCSE in Year 7

UK moves to stop schools from teaching GCSE in Year 7

The United Kingdom government is planning to discourage secondary schools from beginning General Certificate of Secondary Education, GCSE, lessons as early as Year 7, as part of efforts to reform the national curriculum and make the first three years of secondary education more engaging for students. Under the proposed policy, schools will be required to […] UK moves to stop schools from teaching GCSE in Year 7

2d ago
The GuardianEducationEngland
Teaching GCSE topics younger risks turning schools into ‘early exam factories’, Powell warns

Teaching GCSE topics younger risks turning schools into ‘early exam factories’, Powell warns

Lucy Powell says proposals to end widespread practice will be included in overhaul of England’s national curriculum Pushing GCSE subjects on younger pupils risks turning England’s secondary schools into “early exam factories”, the education secretary has said, warning that it is increasing disengagement from education. Lucy Powell wants schools to end the widespread practice of teaching GCSE topics to pupils in year 9 or earlier, before they officially start in year 10, and says she plans to reduce the amount of GCSE content to make it easier to fit into the official timetable.

2d ago
The GuardianScandalSydney
Sydney private school accused of mishandling sexual abuse allegations should be banned from enrolling new students, inquiry says

Sydney private school accused of mishandling sexual abuse allegations should be banned from enrolling new students, inquiry says

Inquiry recommends police investigate allegations of sexual assault and other abuse at Redeemer Baptist school Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast An investigation into a private religious school accused of mishandling allegations of sexual, physical, psychological, spiritual and financial abuse has recommended it be barred from enrolling new students. Former students and teachers of western Sydney’s Redeemer Baptist school told a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry about a string of disturbing allegations.

1d ago
The GuardianHumanityLondon
Ten Lives by Mona Chalabi review – what if we were totally honest about our wealth?

Ten Lives by Mona Chalabi review – what if we were totally honest about our wealth?

The data journalist puts her own finances – and those of ten others from across the economic spectrum – under a microscope How much do you earn? If the question makes you bristle – and I realise we haven’t even met – would you answer it if someone convinced you that your candour might just change the world? In her deliciously original first book, the former Guardian data journalist and illustrator Mona Chalabi sets out to do precisely that. The result – a dazzling mix of journalism, data visualisation and memoir – is both a joy to read and a serious provocation. Chalabi takes aim at our silence and furtiveness around individual income and finances. “Our collective ignorance is sustaining an unfair system,” she argues. Unless we talk more openly about our personal wealth, we will never be able to tackle the economic problems causing insecurity and anxiety for us all.

6h ago
The GuardianHealth Alerts
Bird flu has caused catastrophic die-offs – could a wave of extinctions follow?

Bird flu has caused catastrophic die-offs – could a wave of extinctions follow?

As the IUCN global conservation body prepares to update its red list of endangered species, scientists explain why calculating the true toll of a pandemic is so hard It began with the brown skuas. The migratory seabirds had arrived on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia in 2023, harbouring a deadly passenger. Within months, the southern elephant seals that had come ashore to breed became sick. Mothers and newborn pups were weak and trembling, with many struggling to breathe. What followed was a horrific mass casualty event, caused by the highly infectious avian influenza (H5N1). By 2025, more than 53,000 female elephant seals had died on South Georgia. That is especially alarming, scientists say, because the island is home to more than half of the global breeding population.

4h ago
The TelegraphSex & IdentityUnited Kingdom
Labour’s trans bill is a cynical attempt to keep grievance alive

Labour’s trans bill is a cynical attempt to keep grievance alive

Women’s rights activists have been right to caution that recent victories against gender ideology risk the onset of complacency. The most significant of these was the Supreme Court ruling in April last year to the effect that in the Equality Act 2010, “sex” means biological sex, and not gender identity, a decision that paved the way for a new code of conduct that prohibits males – including those who identify as women – from using women’s toilets, changing rooms and prison cells.

22h ago
O GloboFinance
COP 31: Agreement between BB and Senai to provide up to R$15 million a year to drive Brazil’s industrial green transition

COP 31: Agreement between BB and Senai to provide up to R$15 million a year to drive Brazil’s industrial green transition

The agreement aims to bring Senai’s technical and innovation capabilities together with financing and support from Banco do Brasil to advance research, development and innovation projects focused on the green transition and sustainable transformation of Brazilian industry. BB, Fundação Banco do Brasil (FBB) and Senai will sign the technical cooperation agreement on Wednesday during COP 31 in Turkey. It provides for up to R$15 million a year over the next decade.

21h ago