‘I’m due in the summer, and we’re all so excited,’ Mummy Pig, voiced by actor Morwenna Banks, announces on Good Morning Britain
The animated television character Peppa Pig, famed for her love of jumping up and down in muddy puddles, is to have a new brother or sister, the character’s mother has announced.
Peppa Pig, the phenomenally popular children’s show that has been translated into over 40 languages, tells the story of Peppa and her family – Daddy Pig, Mummy Pig and younger brother George, whose most treasured possession is his toy dinosaur.
Delegates hammer out compromise on delivering billions of dollars to protect species and their habitats
Delegates from across the world have cheered a last-gasp deal to map out funding to protect nature, breaking a deadlock at UN talks seen as a test for international cooperation in the face of geopolitical tensions.
Rich and developing countries on Thursday hammered out a delicate compromise on raising and delivering the billions of dollars needed to protect species, overcoming stark divisions that had scuttled their previous Cop16 meeting in Cali, Colombia last year.
China doesn’t even need to “think” about apologising over the way it notified Australia about live-fire naval drills off the Australian coast, the country’s ambassador says.
Xiao Qian told the ABC the drills last Friday and Saturday posed “no threat” to Australia and were “a normal kind of practice for many navies in the world”.
He said the notification of the drills had followed normal international practice, despite Australian authorities first becoming aware of them after they began, from a passing Virgin pilot.
Attorney general indicated justice department would release files related to Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019
The US justice department has released additional filesrelated to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The justice department gave a statement on Thursday evening, saying the release largely contains documents that have been “previously leaked but never released in a formal capacity by the US government”.
VAR is back (to save us all), Plymouth are plotting another upset and Cardiff’s Anwar El Ghazi returns to Villa Park
The trip to Aston Villa looks tricky for Cardiff City, whose main focus is avoiding relegation to League One. Anwar El Ghazi, at least, was delighted with the draw. The Dutchman spent four years at Villa, clinching promotion at Wembley at the end of a loan season in 2018-19 before a permanent move from Lille. El Ghazi scored Villa’s first goal in a playoff final victory over Derby, with John McGinn and Tyrone Mings the only survivors from that team. Both clubs’ futures hinged on that game under the arch: Derby spiralled and faced administration before dropping into the third tier. El Ghazi can count on a hero’s welcome at Villa Park on Friday. Villa, who will visit Club Brugge for a Champions League last 16 first-leg tie on Tuesday, hope to advance to the FA Cup quarter-finals for the first time since ending as runners-up to Arsenal 10 years ago. Ben Fisher
Judge says office of personnel management lacks power to order firings, including those of probationary employees
A federal judge in California has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US defense department and other agencies to carry out the mass firings of some employees.
The US district judge William Alsup said in San Francisco on Thursday that the US office of personnel management (OPM) lacked the power to order federal agencies to fire any workers, including probationary employees who typically have less than a year of experience.
Twenty-two people died in the 2019 New Zealand disaster, mostly US and Australian cruise ship passengers on a walking tour
The owners of an island volcano in New Zealand where 22 tourists and local guides died in an eruption had their criminal conviction for failing to keep visitors safe thrown out by a judge on Friday.
The release of the decision followed a three-day hearing last October for the owners’ company at the high court in the city of Auckland where they appealed against the charges laid by New Zealand’s workplace health and safety regulator after the 2019 eruption of Whakaari, also known as White Island.
This week, Donald Trump continued to dominate the world stage, welcoming a procession of global leaders to Washington, including Keir Starmer. But while the ‘special relationship’ is front and centre in the UK, attention in the US is very much elsewhere. As the president goes full steam ahead with his domestic agenda, there are warning signs for Trump in the polls. So, could he be in trouble at home? And how could the Democrats take advantage?
Jonathan Freedland speaks to Stanley Greenberg, the bestselling author, Democratic pollster and political strategist who played a crucial role in the elections of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair
Several dozen anti-war student protesters gathered outside Columbia University and Barnard College in New York on Thursday to protest against the expulsion of two students who interrupted a class on Israel last month.
Wearing keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestinians, students chanted a series of anti-war slogans amid a heavy New York police department (NYPD) presence outside the sister schools, where only students and faculty with ID cards are allowed in.
Mexico has extradited 29 high-level organised crime operatives to the US, as it faces intense pressure from the Trump administration to show that it is tackling fentanyl trafficking.
Among the prisoners sent to the US was Rafael Caro Quintero, the drug lord who was convicted of the murder of an undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985.
The Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency housed within the Department of Commerce, the Guardian has learned.
On Thursday afternoon, the commerce department sent emails to employees saying their jobs would be cut off at the end of the day. Other government agencies have also seen huge staffing cuts in recent days.
Donald Trump has insisted that Vladimir Putin would “keep his word” on a peace deal for Ukraine, arguing that US workers extracting critical minerals in the country would act as a security backstop to deter Russia from invading again.
During highly anticipated talks at the White House with the prime minister, Keir Starmer, the US president said that Putin could be trusted not to breach any agreement, which could aim to return as much of the land as possible to Ukraine that was seized by Russia during the brutal three-year conflict.
World champion will be remembered for the ‘match of the century’ against American Bobby Fischer in 1972
Soviet chess grandmaster Boris Spassky, who was famously defeated at the height of the cold war, has died at 88, the Russian Chess Federation has announced.
“The tenth world champion Boris Spassky has died at 88,” the federation said in a statement on its website on Thursday, calling it a “great loss for the country”. The statement did not say when he died or from what cause.
The Women’s Super League is considering abolishing relegation as part of a radical proposal to grow the sport that will be discussed by the clubs at a meeting on Friday.
The Guardian has learned that the 23 WSL and Championship clubs have been called to a strategy summit by the newly formed company that runs both competitions, Women’s Professional Leagues Ltd, which will ask them to explore a range of options to increase the profile, sustainability and profitability of women’s football.
The PCC – First Capital Command – formed in a Sāo Paulo prison but is now spreading its tentacles around the world
In September 2020, the Australian Border Force intercepted 552kg of cocaine concealed in 2,000 boxes of frozen banana pulp that had arrived at the port of Sydney on a ship from Brazil.
Two years later, a diver was found floating dead next to 52kg of cocaine near the port of Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia. Police later discovered that he was a Brazilian national who had been attempting to retrieve drugs from a cargo ship’s hull.
The 1890 National Scholars program gives full rides to HBCU students in fields like botany, forestry and food safety
Dr Marcus Bernard was shocked to learn last week that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had suspended the 1890 National Scholars program that funds undergraduate students’ education in agriculture or related fields at about 20 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Bernard is dean of the college of agriculture, health and natural resources at one of those institutions, Kentucky State University. At Kentucky State, close to 40 of the scholars have enrolled since the project’s inception in 1992. Nationwide, the program has supported more than 800 students, according to the USDA.
It has been a midweek of Premier League certainties being secured at both top and bottom. Place Leicester in the certainty category. Defeat at West Ham extended their doomed, zombified lurch towards relegation to 11 league defeats in 12, 12 of 16 in all since Ruud van Nistelrooy replaced Steve Cooper in November.
If Cooper was the wrong man at the wrong club then so, most probably, is the Dutchman. Perhaps nobody had a chance with the squad Leicester assembled to attempt survival. Their performance at the London Stadium was submissive. “That’s the situation we’re in,” said Van Nistelrooy. “The confidence in the run of form is low and then you end up in a mindset of trying not to lose.”
Hendricks plays a Hollywood producer who returns to her home town to shoot a show in this whimsical comedy drama – and she is not someone you want to cross
How much you enjoy Small Town, Big Story will depend on how you feel first about whimsy and second about genre mashups. If your appetite for both is large, then Chris O’Dowd’s creation (he wrote and directed) has plenty to make you happy. If not, you might find the whole thing a little too underpowered to keep you going.
Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men fame, plays hard-bitten TV producer Wendy Patterson. She is in charge of her first big Hollywood production and returns to her tiny home town of Drumbán in Northern Ireland (after 25 years in Los Angeles surrounded by fat-cat bosses and patronising colleagues) to shoot it there. This follows shenanigans by Drumbán’s more colourful and eccentric characters to keep the location scouts from choosing a more tax-advantageous site across the border; these shenanigans include a pig’s head on a stick and a sign saying “Death to the infidels”, which, you know … well, OK, all right. Not even so much from an offence-giving point of view but from an “Is this remotely credible in this particular world?” position.
The cause of Gossip Girl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Michelle Trachtenberg’s death will remain undetermined as her family has reportedly declined an autopsy.
According to Deadline, the actor’s family have chosen not to go forward with an autopsy because of religious reasons. As no foul play is suspected, the decision was not overruled by the medical examiner.
Todd Boehly has said the Premier League should consider selling its global TV rights to Netflix, as he shrugged off tensions with supporters and questions over his model of ownership in rare public remarks.
The Chelsea co-owner also called on Premier League executives to agree on priorities for the future of the competition, saying they should “pull together” to maintain its success. “Premier League content is so valuable because it’s so widely demanded,” Boehly said. “How many global platforms are there? Probably just Netflix. If you’re thinking about how do I launch a global product, you do it in partnership with content like this.
Donald Trump has strongly hinted that he will back a deal in which the UK hands sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, including the Diego Garcia military base, which is jointly used by the US.
“I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country,” the US president told reporters during an impromptu press conference in the Oval Office with Keir Starmer, who is visiting Washington. He added: “I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well.”
Rhianan Rudd, 16, was referred to Prevent by her mother after becoming ‘fixated on Hitler’, inquest told
A teenager who killed herself after becoming the youngest person in the UK to be charged with terror offences had been groomed online by an American “neo-Nazi”, an inquest has been told.
Sixteen-year-old Rhianan Rudd, who was autistic, had been referred to the government’s Prevent counter-radicalisation programme by her mother, Emily Carter, the counsel to the inquest, Edward Pleeth, told the hearing.
The Trump administration is pushing for federal agencies to carry out a large-scale slashing of the federal workforce, demanding plans for hundreds of thousands of possible cuts within weeks.
A White House memo gave officials until 13 March to submit a plan identifying “agency components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or regulation who are not typically designated as essential” during government shutdowns.
Geo Group, an Ice partner, is moving at ‘unprecedented speed’ to build out its monitoring, executive chair says
The Geo Group, the largest single private contractor to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said it was building out its surveillance business to be able to monitor hundreds of thousands or millions more immigrants than it already does.
The Geo Group, a private prison corporation and parent company of BI Inc, has contracted with Ice for nearly 20 years to manage the agency’s electronic monitoring program. It currently tracks approximately 186,000 immigrants using devices such as ankle monitors, smart watches and a facial recognition app, according to public Ice data. Due to increasing demand from Donald Trump’s administration, which has promised mass deportations, company executives said that they expect that number to grow past its previous peak of 370,000 to 450,000 immigrants within the next year. The remarks were made during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday morning.
Canadian event loses three sponsors who also do business in the US to avoid being seen as supporting LGBTQ+ rights
Pride Toronto, one of the largest celebrations of LGTBQ+ people in North America, is reeling from the loss of three major sponsors who have pulled funding after Donald Trump’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes in the US.
Kojo Modeste, the executive director of the Canadian event said that the sponsors who also do business in the US are seeking to avoidbeing seen as supporting LGBTQ+ rights.
Tourism and local officials in Mexico deny any knowledge of proposed follow-up to disastrous 2017 event
When tickets to the second Fyre festival went on sale this week, there was just one concrete detail: it would take place on Isla Mujeres, a tropical island off Cancún, Mexico.
But the festival seems to be repeating its own history as an improvised disaster after the local government in Isla Mujeres denied knowing anything about it.
Enron one of the largest bankruptcy cases in US history
La Liga alleges City distort EU’s internal market
Manchester City have been accused of an Enron-style financial deception by La Liga’s president, Javier Tebas.
Tebas said the Spanish league filed a complaint against City to the European Commission in the summer of 2023, which he says the Commission is investigating. City have not commented on Tebas’s allegations but club sources are aware of them, and strongly refute them.
Amazon Web Services enters emerging race against tech giants days after Microsoft revealed its quantum chip
Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday announced Ocelot, its first-generation quantum computing chip, as it enters the race against fellow tech giants in harnessing the experimental technology.
Developed by the AWS Center for Quantum Computing at the California Institute of Technology, the new chip can reduce the costs of implementing quantum error correction by up to 90%, according to the company.
Users complained of ‘not safe for work’ videos in feeds despite some having enabled setting to filter such content
Meta Platforms said on Thursday it had resolved an error that flooded the personal Reels feeds of Instagram users with violent and graphic videos worldwide.
It was not immediately clear how many people were affected by the glitch. Meta’s comments followed a wave of complaints on social media about violent and “not safe for work” content in Reels feeds, despite some users having enabled the “sensitive content control” setting meant to filter such material.
Israeli team heads to Cairo as end of deal’s first phase approaches, but big differences remain between two sides
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced that he has instructed a delegation to depart for Egypt for talks on continuing the ceasefire in the war with Hamas in Gaza, two days before the first stage of the fragile agreement expires.
The Israeli team is scheduled to leave Cairo, Egypt’s capital, late on Thursday, a statement from the prime minister’s office said. The announcement was made a day after Hamas handed over the bodies of four Israeli hostages, the last due to be released under the terms of the six-week first phase of the deal agreed in January.
About 112 people held in immigration center deep in the jungle are unable to communicate with their attorneys
Lawyers for immigrants from around the world who were deported from the United States and moved to a remote jungle camp in Panama say they have been unable to communicate with their clients since they arrived there.
About 112 deported people are being held in the “San Vicente” immigration center deep in the dense jungle that separates Panama from Colombia, according to Panamanian authorities. Their future is uncertain as they wait to see whether they will be granted asylum in Panama or elsewhere.
Trial-monitoring committee in Dakota Access lawsuit have shared concerns of judicial bias and due-process violations
More than half the jurors selected to hear a case brought by a major energy company against Greenpeace have ties to the fossil fuel industry, and most had negative views of anti-pipeline protests or groups that oppose the use of fossil fuels.
The closely watched trial against Greenpeace in Mandan, North Dakota, showcased the difficulty in seating a jury in oil country, where many make their living in the industry. Greenpeace again on Wednesday sought to move the trial to another venue in the state.
Dream of going from LA to San Francisco in three hours is past deadline, over budget, and after 16 years, incomplete
Californians know their state is a punching bag for Donald Trump’s administration, a “paradise lost” that the president intends to wrest back from the “radical left lunatics”. But when Trump took aim at the state’s much-delayed high-speed rail project earlier this month, saying it was “the worst managed project” he’d ever seen, some of those leftwingers – and more moderate voters – found themselves in the unusual position of conceding he might have a point.
California’s beautiful dream of a bullet train whisking passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours has been more than 16 years in the making, approved by voters but dogged by so many delays, broken deadlines and cost overruns that it has only just reached the initial stages of laying down track.
The jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) has called on the group to disarm and dissolve, a major development that paves the way towards ending the 40-year conflict between militant Kurdish groups and the Turkish state and has far-reaching implications for the rest of the Middle East.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms and I take on the historical responsibility for this call,” Abdullah Öcalan was quoted as saying in a letter read out by political allies in Istanbul. “All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself.”
The London-born US actor on having Richard Attenborough as a mentor, why she loves starring in horror films, and hanging out with the Killers on the set of The OC
Richard I loved because he was like a mentor to me. He’s probably single-handedly done more for my career than anyone else. Just taking me under his wing, putting me in Rada, especially coming off the back of my crazy run on television. I couldn’t tell you how he found me. I don’t think he ever really told me.
Fresh out of jail, does it matter that his 2017 festival was one of the biggest social-media-driven deceptions of our time? Not a bit
“Since 2016, Fyre has been the most talked about festival in the world,” organiser Billy McFarland told a US broadcaster when tickets for Fyre 2 went on sale this week. McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison for wire fraud in 2018, related to his organisation of the first Fyre (he served only four). Whatever you think about the first Fyre – with its limp cheese sandwiches, its disaster-relief-tent accommodation, the absence of advertised headliners, the $26m of unpaid debt, the rats (were the rats influencer hyperbole? Perhaps, but on the other hand the festival happened on the parking lot of an abandoned resort development, and where else is a rat supposed to live?), you have to admit it lived up to one promise: it was legendary.
Wire fraud is any swindling that happens electronically, whether by text, email, phone or social media. It’s so easy to fall on the wrong side of that – you could commit it just by sending a round robin, asking for a million dollars. Really, all that is standing between so many of us and jail is the sucker who will give us a million dollars. It’s really the suckers who belong in prison, if you think about it. Anyway, back to McFarland. “Obviously, a lot of that [talk] has been negative … but if it’s done well, I think Fyre has the chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry,” he said.
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