Keir Starmer is considering Aadhaar as model for UK, but detractors warn of ‘digital coercion’ and security breaches
It is often difficult for people in India to remember life before Aadhaar. The digital biometric ID, allegedly available for every Indian citizen, was only introduced 15 years ago but its presence in daily life is ubiquitous.
Indians now need an Aadhaar number to buy a house, get a job, open a bank account, pay their tax, receive benefits, buy a car, get a sim card, book priority train tickets and admit children into school. Babies can be given Aadhaar numbers almost immediately after they are born. While it is not mandatory, not having Aadhaar de facto means the state does not recognise you exist, digital rights activists say.
Staff are being advised to travel in mixed groups and carry panic alarms as incidents of intimidation spread
They have travelled thousands of miles to care for the most vulnerable people in society. But care workers recruited overseas to fill much-needed roles are increasingly facing racist abuse in the UK, industry insiders have warned, as the country’s immigration debate becomes increasingly toxic.
Staff working with elderly and disabled service users have been advised to travel to work in racially mixed groups and carry panic alarms. The measures follow a surge in reports of “verbal abuse and spitting” from strangers since the summer, said Nadra Ahmed, the executive chair of the National Care Association (NCA), which represents about 5,000 providers.
It’s Keir Starmer’s turn to muddle through a problem that none of his predecessors solved: can his cash-poor nation afford to offend a superpower?
It has all the makings of a gripping spy novel.
Two young men accused of passing secrets to China, who vigorously protest their innocence, are swept up in a swirling political intrigue with a shadowy semi-mythical figure (in the shape of veteran Downing Street national security adviser Jonathan Powell) at its heart. Yet the story dominating domestic headlines as MPs returned from recess this week is not fiction, or at least not entirely.
Pasta with a rich sauce flavoured by chilli and sweet onions, followed by spice-enhanced poached pears with a nutty topping
My farmers’ market (and my beds) are full of swiss chard. It is one of the few edible plants I could cope with this year – it grows with such ease and grows back so quickly after each picking that I feel it is the ultimate kitchen gardener’s friend. It is a great bedfellow for mushrooms, which lend a bit of meatiness to those leaves. With those, I also like to add ancho, a rich, full-bodied but not spicy chilli that is readily available in flaked form in many supermarkets around the country (nora or guajillo are good substitutes), while the feta, like queso fresco in Mexico, adds a lovely, tangy saltiness. It’s a dish for those Sundays when you are low on time, but want a rich, soothing feast.
Provision of internet access to scam centres being investigated as Starlink swiftly becomes Myanmar’s biggest internet service provider
A powerful bipartisan committee in the US Congress says it has begun an investigation into the involvement of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite business in providing internet access to Myanmar scam centres, blamed for swindling billions from victims across the world.
The move comes as it was revealed that large numbers of Starlink dishes began appearing on scam-centre roofs in Myanmar around the time of a crackdown in February that was supposed to eradicate the centres, according to a investigation by Agence France-Presse
Computers running software will still work but steadily become more vulnerable to viruses and malware
From Tuesday Microsoft will no longer offer free support as standard for Windows 10, an operating system that is used by millions of computer and laptop owners around the world.
Figures for September suggest four in 10 of those using Microsoft Windows worldwide were still using Windows 10, despite the introduction of its successor, Windows 11, in 2021.
Once a stalwart of Hong Kong’s journalism scene, Wang Jian has found a new audience on YouTube, dissecting global politics and US-China relations since the pandemic. To his fans, he’s part newscaster, part professor, part friend
On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. “I am very sensitive to what Trump does,” Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. “When Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn’t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism, plus a little bit of small-town shrewdness, plus a little bit of ‘I have money.’”
Wang was sitting next to a rack of clothing – the shirts and jackets the 58-year-old newsman wears professionally – and sipping a seemingly bottomless cup of green tea that would eventually give way to coffee. By 11pm, he would walk across the room and snap on a set of ring lights, ready to carry on an unbroken string of chatter for a YouTube news programme that he calls “Wang Jian’s Daily Observations”. It was a slow news night but he would end up talking until nearly 1am. This was his second broadcast of the day. Different time zones, he explained to me, different audiences.
Much of the political momentum around the antimicrobial resistance crisis has dissipated, but a new report shows the danger to our health has not
Much like the well-known climate threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the importance of critical limits in our environment have long been understood as key to help us avoid calamities. So, when we know the world is facing an escalating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis, but there has been no definitive tipping point established, that leaves us on a potentially perilous path.
This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report that suggests we may have now reached such a critical threshold.
The Traitors has returned to UK screens with its biggest viewing figures ever as 19 celebrities compete to be crowned the winner. The game depends on being able to accurately spot a liar, but are any deception detection methods actually backed up by science?
Madeleine Finlay speaks to Timothy Luke, a senior lecturer in the department of applied psychology at the University of Gothenburg, to find out whether sweating, nervous ticks and reduced eye contact really can alert us to deception, and if not, what can?
A runway show in Gikomba, east Africa’s largest secondhand clothing market, has attempted to highlight the impact of mass clothing imports – and offer a solution
Antony Njoroge paces back and forth, camera in hand, as people bombard him with questions. “What do we do with this? Where should I put it? The light’s better over here! Tony, one second please.” The film-maker and his co-producer Sally Ngoiri are putting the final touches to an event that they never imagined would actually come to life when they first thought up the idea back in May: the first fashion show to be staged in Gikomba, Nairobi, east Africa’s largest secondhand clothing market.
Show and documentary producers Antony Njoroge, left, and Sally Ngoiri
Millions more homes in England, Scotland and Wales face devastating floods, and some towns may have to be abandoned as climate breakdown makes many areas uninsurable, a Guardian investigation has found.
New analysis from the insurance industry, seen by the Guardian, reveals the extent of concern in the sector, with bosses warning that large swathes of housing and commercial property in densely populated areas will be at greater risk.
Every constituency in Great Britain is projected to have increased flood risk in future. In England, 69% of constituencies are likely to have an increase of more than 25% in the number of properties facing flood risk by mid-century. In Wales and Scotland, every area is projected to have a similar rise with many being much worse hit.
Bermondsey and Old Southwark in London and Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire are projected to have about 90% of homes at risk from river and coastal flooding by 2050 – the highest proportions in the country.
Overall London and Yorkshire and the Humber collectively represent more than half of the top 20 constituencies affected by river and coastal flooding, highlighting that the east of England could be most negatively affected.
Surface-water flood risk is likely to be particularly acute in dense urban areas, with 14 London constituencies ranked in the top 20
Bournemouth East shows the largest projected increase in surface-water flood risk, with its low-lying topography and inadequate drainage making it particularly susceptible.
Over the past decade, 110,000 new homes were built in the highest risk flood zones, equivalent to one in 13 of the new homes built. Aviva calculates that if this trend were to continue, 115,000 of the government’s planned 1.5m new homes would also be in the highest-risk flood zones.
The old prime minister is back with a new team, but it can’t last: a democracy can’t have a president with the powers of a king
The French prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu – who unexpectedly resigned last week before being reappointed four days later – finally cobbled together a new cabinet for Emmanuel Macron to appoint just hours before he left for the Gaza peace summit. Few expect Macron to return from Egypt with a solution to the deepening domestic political crisis he presides over, however. Fewer still have enough trust in a government so subservient to Macron that it can survive the forthcoming deliberations of the National Assembly.
Because this is no conventional parliamentary crisis, but a crise de régime. Inspired by Charles de Gaulle’s vision of executive pre-eminence vested in a quasi-monarchic presidential ascendancy, the governing system established by the Fifth Republic in 1958 no longer functions. Challenged by a hung parliament, a severe fiscal crisis and a volatile international environment, the French state is paralysed.
Pierre Purseigle is a French historian at the University of Warwick
The request from Prabowo Subianto at the Gaza peace summit in Egypt comes as the Trump Organisation is set to open new properties in Indonesia
Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto has been heard on a hot mic asking Donald Trump if he can meet with the president’s son Eric, as the leaders gathered in Egypt for a summit aimed at securing a lasting peace in Gaza.
Prabowo appeared to be unaware that a live microphone was recording his conversation as he spoke to the president and referenced a region that is “not safe, security-wise”. He then asks Trump: “Can I meet Eric?”
South Korean president urges ‘all-out’ efforts to protect citizens after number of kidnappings in Cambodia soars in recent months
South Korean president Lee Jae Myung has called for “all-out” diplomatic efforts to protect citizens in Cambodia after a university student was lured there by a scam ring and allegedly tortured to death.
At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Lee said “protecting the lives and safety of citizens is the government’s greatest responsibility” and called for all scam victims to be “swiftly repatriated”.
Glide bombs knock out power supply and hit hospital in Kharkiv; Zelenskyy lining up Trump meeting with Tomahawks hot topic. What we know on day 1,329
An oil terminal at Feodosia in the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula was burning on Monday after an attack by Ukrainian drones. A Ukrainian security official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the drones, launched by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service and military special forces, hit at least five reservoirs. The source said drones also hit at least two Russian electrical substations on the peninsula, which Russia took from Ukraine in 2014.
Large heat signatures around the Feodosia terminal were visible on Nasa’s satellite fire monitoring service, Firms, and Crimea’s Moscow-installed governor confirmed the fire. The Feodosia terminal also came under attack last week. Ukraine has launched more than 30 strikes on Russian energy sites since the beginning of August, aiming to hamper funding of the Kremlin’s war machine and also triggering a spike in petrol prices inside Russia. Crimea is among areas that have been hit by fuel shortages and rationing as Russia has lost refining capacity in Ukrainian attacks.
Russian forces attacked Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, with guided bombs on Monday, knocking out power to 30,000 customers, local officials said. The mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said the three bombs damaged a hospital and hit power transmission lines. Four people were injured, mostly by flying glass.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced he will travel to the US this week for talks on the potential US provision of long-range weapons, after Donald Trump said he might supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles. Zelenskyy said a meeting with Trump might take place on Friday and he would also meet with defence and energy companies and members of Congress.
Zelenskyy spoke at a meeting with the EU foreign minister, Kaja Kallas. He said he also would seek further US assistance to protect Ukraine’s electricity and gas networks amid Russian bombardment. Zelenskyy will join a Ukrainian delegation already in the US led by Yulia Svyrydenko, the prime minister.
Kallas said on Monday that the EU had started funding a special tribunal to prosecute the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and other senior Russian officials for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. “We are also calling on other member states, countries, participants to fund it so that the work can really start full-scale because without accountability there is no just and lasting peace.”
Russia’s defence ministry on Monday said its forces had captured two villages in eastern Ukraine: one in the Donetsk region and the other near Kupiansk in the north-east, a largely destroyed city under attack for months. The first corps of Ukraine’s national guard said it had repelled a new attempt by Russian forces to make advances near the town of Dobropillia, which is in the Donetsk region near the logistics hub of Pokrovsk. These versions of events on the battlefield were not independently confirmed.
Russia poses a direct threat and the “icy peace” with the EU could erupt into “direct military confrontation”, Germany’s foreign intelligence chief has warned. Martin Jaeger, head of the BND spy service, told lawmakers that Russia was determined to expand its “sphere of influence further westward into Europe”. Jaeger said Germany was Russia’s “number one target in Europe” given that it was the largest EU economy and played a “leading role in supporting Ukraine”.
The warnings come after incidents in the EU including the incursion of Russian drones into Poland, the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets, and suspected Russian involvement in drone flights that shut down airports. “We must not sit back and assume that a possible Russian attack would come in 2029 at the earliest,” Jaeger said, referring to an earlier intelligence assessment. “We are already under fire today … The means Moscow uses are well known: attempted manipulation of elections and public opinion, propaganda, provocations, disinformation, espionage, sabotage, airspace violations by drones and fighter jets, contract killings, persecution of opposition figures living abroad.”
Long Beach voters have a choice: re-elect the Republican incumbent or the Democrat who seemingly vanished at sea
A political candidate in the New York City suburbs went for a night swim in the Atlantic Ocean this past spring and never returned.
Petros Krommidas’s phone, keys and clothes were found on the sands at Long Beach on Long Island. The 29-year-old former Ivy League rower, who was training for a triathlon, had parked his car just off the picturesque wooden boardwalk.
Film-maker who directed Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give, and wrote Baby Boom and Father of the Bride, says ‘we have lost a giant’
Film-maker Nancy Meyers has paid tribute to the late Diane Keaton, her “friend of almost 40 years” and collaborator on celebrated comedies Something’s Gotta Give, Baby Boom and Father of the Bride.
On Monday, Meyers wrote on Instagram that she’d had a difficult 48 hours since Keaton’s death was announced on Saturday, but “seeing all of your tributes to Diane has been a comfort.”
Research finds kicking the habit halves rate of decline in verbal fluency and slows memory loss by 20%
People who stop smoking in middle age can reduce their cognitive decline so dramatically that within 10 years their chances of developing dementia are the same as someone who has never smoked, research has found.
Kicking the habit halves the rate of decline in verbal fluency and slows the loss of memory by 20%, according to a study of 9,436 people in England, the US and 10 other European countries.
Defense department policy requires outlets to vow not to obtain unauthorized files and restricts access to some areas
Several leading news organizations with access to Pentagon briefings have formally said they will not agree to a new defense department policy that requires them to pledge they will not obtain unauthorized material and restricts access to certain areas unless accompanied by an official.
The policy, presented last month by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been widely criticized by media organizations asked to sign the pledge by Tuesday at 5pm or have 24 hours to turn in their press credentials.
Tim Robinson is hilarious as a man hellbent on taking down a negligent chair manufacturer in this cringe caper full of roaringly good slapstick
Meet Ron Trosper, a faithful office grunt in small town Ohio. Ron works for a company that builds shopping malls, and their latest one is the first for which Ron has been made project lead, despite some of his superiors’ misgivings. Today is his big day. He’s giving a speech at the launch!
Ron is the creation of Tim Robinson, the former Saturday Night Live writer/performer who reinvented the American sketch show in 2019 with I Think You Should Leave. In a new half-hour, eight-episode series that starts as a workplace comedy before sprawling into mystery/thriller territory, his alter ego is a stock Robinson character, a variation on the textbook comic protagonist who has to bear the burden of being the only sane man in every room. Ron is genuinely beset by absurdity, misfortune and other people’s idiocy and selfishness, but always manages to react in a way that makes everyone around him conclude that he is the problem. Whereas Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm met the world’s small annoyances in a rational but insensitive manner, Ron combats them irrationally and too sensitively.
Craig Bellamy cited Nostradamus in the buildup, advising to expect the unexpected given the 4-3 thriller that unfolded the last time these nations met. But while Wales gave Belgium an early fright, two Kevin De Bruyne penalties and a Thomas Meunier strike paved the way to a comeback victory that all but quashes their hopes of automatically qualifying for the World Cup.
Nathan Broadhead, on as a substitute, pulled a goal back but almost immediately Leandro Trossard struck to cap a victory this time featuring just the six goals. Joe Rodon headed in to give Wales a welcome leg up but Belgium stirred to maintain their pristine qualifying record; their last defeat in a qualifier here in June 2015, when Gareth Bale scored to propel Wales towards Euro 2016. Wales will likely have to do it the hard way if they are to reach North America next summer.
Chelsea defender played key role in Euro 2022 triumph and transformed how Lionesses viewed success
Only two footballers have had the honour of captaining England in a senior World Cup final: the late Bobby Moore and Millie Bright, who announced her international retirement on Monday. That alone ensures the 32-year-old’s Lionesses career will leave an indelible mark on English football. Her entry on to the list of England greats had been guaranteed a year earlier, though, as one of the key heroines of the summer of 2022.
When Leah Williamson prepared to raise the Euro 2022 trophy at Wembley after England’s victory against Germany had secured the Lionesses’ first major trophy, she chose to angle it slightly into the direction of the woman next to her, Bright, her vice-captain, so they could lift it together, acknowledging Bright’s major contribution. As the pair held aloft the 60cm-high trophy, weighing 6.7kg, Bright’s tattooed forearm was centre stage in front of the white fireworks erupting behind them in a colourful scene of euphoria.
The former England player Luther Burrell has alleged he was effectively forced to retire after he spoke out about racist abuse he suffered from teammates.
Burrell first alleged he had been the victim of racism while playing for Newcastle in 2022. Among the allegations he made at the time, Burrell claimed a teammate had referred to him as a “slave” and told him to apply sunscreen to his wrists and ankles as that’s “where your shackles were”.
Trump has threatened 100% tariffs after Beijing’s fresh curbs on rare earths, a month before deadline to agree a deal
With nearly a month to go before the deadline for the US and China to reach a deal in their trade war, goodwill between the two countries appears to have been swept off the table in recent days. China announced that it was once again restricting the export of critical minerals, prompting the US president, Donald Trump, to announce tariffs of 100% on US-bound Chinese exports, scuppering – at least for now - hopes that global economic turmoil could be averted.
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