Two men who survived a US airstrike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean clung to the wreckage for an hour before they were killed in a second attack, according a video of the episode shown to senators in Washington.
The men were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible communications equipment. They also appeared to have no idea what had just hit them, or that the US military was weighing whether to finish them off, two sources familiar with the recording told Reuters.
Rinaldo Nazzaro says detention of suspected Base members in Spain justifies ‘resistance … by any means necessary’
After Spanish police and Europol’s counter-terrorism section arrested three suspected members of the Base – a globally proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group – in the eastern province of Castellón, its American leader living in Russia was defiant and signalled further actions.
In a text message to the Guardian, Rinaldo Nazzaro called the arrests another “example of political persecution” by world governments that are “further justifying our resistance to its hegemonic rule by any means necessary”.
ACIP vote follows two postponements and contentious meeting and comes as RFK Jr pushes for vaccine delay
After a delay and an unusually contentious meeting, a federal vaccine advisory panel was expected to vote on Friday whether to change the longstanding recommendation that all newborns be immunized against hepatitis B.
The first day of the meeting of the advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) on Thursday was marked by heated debate over restricting access to the hepatitis B vaccine for infants and a decision to defer the vote by a day to give members more time to review the wording. The panel, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on how to use vaccines, had twice before postponed the vote.
Michael Dell’s $6.25bn gift spotlights how the super-rich use ‘charity’ to win access, favour and influence
Pity the billionaire class. The 0.001% are so unpopular these days that when tech billionaire Michael Dell and his wife announced the donation of $6.25bn into the “Trump Accounts” of 25 million children, one of the largest single philanthropic donations in American history, Dell had to hurry to assure us that his was not at all about currying favor with Donald Trump.
Connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt will love the music put out by A Colourful Storm, the Melbourne-based DJ’s indie label
From Melbourne Recommended if you like the C86 compilation, AU/NZ jangle-pop, Mess Esque Up next Going Back to Sleep out now
Melbourne-based DJ Moopie, AKA Matthew Xue, is renowned for engrossing, wide-ranging sets that can run the gamut from gelid ambient music to churning drum’n’bass and beyond. He also runs A Colourful Storm – a fantastic indie label that massively punches above its weight when it comes to putting out charmingly moody experimental pop music, from artists as disparate as London-based percussionist Valentina Magaletti, dubby Hobart duo Troth, and renowned underground polymath Simon Fisher Turner.
In 2017, the label released I Won’t Have to Think About You, a compilation of winsome, C86-ish indie pop. Earlier this year, it put out Going Back to Sleep, a quasi-sequel to that record which also functions as a neatly drawn guide to some of the best twee-pop groups currently working. Sydney band Daily Toll, whose 2025 debut A Profound Non-Event is one of the year’s underrated gems, contribute Time, a seven-minute melodica-and-guitar reverie. Chateau, the duo of Al Montfort (Terry, Total Control) and Alex Macfarlane (the Stevens, Twerps), push into percussive, psychedelic lounge pop on How Long on the Platform, while Who Cares?, one of Melbourne’s best new bands, channel equal parts Hope Sandoval and Eartheater on Wax and Wane.
Elsewhere, Going Back to Sleep features tracks from San Francisco indie stalwarts the Reds, Pinks and Purples; minimalist Sydney group the Lewers; and sun-dappled folk-pop from Dutch duo the Hobknobs. It’s an unassuming compilation that’s almost certain to become well-loved and frequently referenced among connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt. Shaad D’Souza
The British Museum is infused with Sufi spirit, Henry VIII’s storied Ottoman dagger gets its own show, Rego’s art is renewed and a Fabergé sets a new record – all in your weekly dispatch
Henry VIII’s Lost Dagger A curious quest for the Tudor tyrant’s lost, highly phallic dagger in the house where modern gothic began.
• Strawberry Hill House, London, until 15 February
Digging a trench alongside your vegetable bed is an easy way to dispose of food and plant waste, and enrich soil for next year’s crops
On a visit to our friends’ house recently, the subject of food waste came up. They haven’t got a tucked-away spot to set up a compost bin or heap in their garden, and their local council doesn’t collect. They had put their effort into bokashi composting in the past, but with a baby on the way I suspect they’ll have more than enough to do without taking on the added responsibility of caring for a bucket of fermenting kitchen scraps.
But as they’re already accustomed to burying their bokashi-ed vegetable peelings, it got me thinking about how low effort and high impact trench composting can be for those without room for a larger system. Trench composting is the simple process of putting your compostable matter – fruit and vegetable waste, plant material from the garden, grass clippings, leaves, etc – into a trench near where you’re planning to grow your crops next year. Over the coming months, this organic matter will slowly decompose, enriching the soil and improving its structure, making it ready to welcome the following season’s plants. No further effort is required from you to engage in this ancient approach.
Gary Walters managed the president’s official residence for 37 years – now he’s sharing his most vivid recollections
Gary Walters has a “special feeling” about the White House East Wing. He met his future wife Barbara when she worked in the visitors’ office there. But asked to contemplate the wing’s destruction by Donald Trump, the former chief usher evidently still believes that discretion is the better part of valour.
“All the presidents and first ladies have made changes in one manner or another – some larger than others,” Walters, 78, says with the measured cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime guarding privacy. “One of the things that I have seen not commented on was back to when the West Wing was built.
An eco-masterpiece, icy intrigue, cyberpunkish cyborgs, memory-eating aliens and super-fast travel sends the world spinning out of control
Circular Motion Alex Foster (Grove)
Alex Foster’s novel treats climate catastrophe through high-concept satire. A new technology of super-fast pods revolutionises travel: launched into low orbit from spring-loaded podiums, they fly west and land again in minutes, regardless of distance. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, our globe starts to spin faster. Days contract, first by seconds, then minutes, and eventually hours. It’s a gonzo conceit, and Foster spells out the consequences, his richly rendered characters caught up in their own lives as the world spirals out of control. As days become six hours long, circadian rhythms go out of the window and oceans start to bulge at the equator. The increasing whirligig of the many strands of storytelling converge on their inevitable conclusion, with Foster’s sparky writing, clever plotting and biting wit spinning an excellent tale.
When There Are Wolves Again EJ Swift (Arcadia)
There are few more pressing issues with which fiction can engage than the climate crisis, and SF, with its capacity to extrapolate into possible futures and dramatise the realities, is particularly well placed to do so. Swift’s superb novel is an eco-masterpiece. Its near-future narrative of collapse and recovery takes us from the rewilding of Chornobyl and the return of wolves to Europe, through setback and challenge, to 2070, a story by turns tragic, alarming, uplifting, poetic and ultimately hopeful. Swift’s accomplished prose and vivid characterisation connect large questions of the planet’s destiny with human intimacy and experience, and she avoids either a too-easy doomsterism or a facile techno-optimism. We can bring the world back from the brink, but it will require honesty, commitment, hard work and a proper sense of stewardship.
Seventy years after the Montgomery bus boycott, policies hiding in plain sight continue to ravage the Black community
Friday is the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott, which began because Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white person, as required by law. While her brave act brought national attention to the civil rights movement and triggered student sit-ins to end segregation across the south, it also subjected her and her husband, Raymond, to constant death threats. Consequently, like many other Black families fleeing Jim Crow south’s racial violence, in August 1957, Rosa and Raymond moved up north to Detroit.
When the Parks arrived in Detroit, they and other Black people did not have to sit at the back of the bus. Nonetheless, the city was permeated by a quieter but no less pernicious type of racism: racist policies, which are any written or unwritten laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity. In my book Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America, I demonstrate how racial covenants, redlining, urban renewal, blockbusting, predatory mortgage lending and racialized property tax administration have stymied the Black community.
Bernadette Atuahene is the Duggan Professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, the Executive Director of the Institute for Law and Organizing, and the author of Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America
Musk, the electric car maker’s chief executive, has argued that the cheaper option, launched in the US in October, will reinvigorate demand by appealing to a wider range of buyers.
(Domino) Blooming strings, mellifluous guitars and airy vocals make Melody Prochet’s fourth album a calming place to visit – even if there’s a lack of standout tracks
French musician Melody Prochet, AKA Melody’s Echo Chamber, never struggles to find a supporting cast. Her self-titled 2012 debut was produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker. On second album Bon Voyage (2018) she teamed up with Swedish psychedelic rock band Dungen, whose guitarist Reine Fiske popped up again on 2022’s Emotional Eternal and now features on Unclouded. Prochet’s fourth album is produced and partly co-written by composer Sven Wunder, and its dizzying array of contributors also includes Josefin Runsteen (opulent strings) and DJ Shadow collaborator Malcolm Catto (percussive fizz).
Still, somehow Prochet retains her own singular vision. Borrowing a title from a quote by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki – “You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good” – Unclouded takes her airy vocals and baroque dreampop into brighter terrain. Some tracks have a 90s vibe, reminiscent of Saint Etienne or Lush. Others have a feel that can only be accurately described in horticultural terms: the blooming strings of the really lovely Broken Roses, or the sprinkles of xylophones that make Burning Man sound like, well, a Japanese garden.
Between 2004 and 2024, the number of male centenarians has tripled from 910 to 3,100. During the same period, the number of female centenarians almost doubled from 7,400 to 13,600.
Project will make the famously confusing London landmark easier to navigate and more accessible
“Everything leaks,” says Philippa Simpson, the director of buildings and renewal at the Barbican, who is standing outside the venue’s lakeside area and inspecting the tired-looking tiles beneath her feet.
Water seeps through the cracks into the building below and serves as a reminder of the job facing Simpson and the team who are overhauling the 43-year-old landmark.
We know from recent hacks, and even the Snowden revelations, how vulnerable information gathered is to theft and misuse
One thing to remember about the modern world is that nothing online is ever secure. M&S and Jaguar taught us that. Edward Snowden taught us that. Every week, it seems, some giant corporation sees its system collapse at the touch of a button in an attic.
The government this week opened a consultation on its plan for nationwide facial recognition and surveillance. You would need only put your face outdoors and walk down the street and authorities will know and record it. Of course we will be assured that all will be kept secure. It will not. Cash or conspiracy will find it out and it will leak.
Russia and India will reshape their defence ties to take account of New Delhi’s push for self-reliance, the two countries said in a joint statement after a summit between president Putin and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
“In response to India’s aspirations for self-reliance, the partnership is currently being reoriented toward joint research and development, as well as the production of advanced defence platforms,” the statement said.
Starmer hails child poverty strategy as a ‘moral mission’ which will include measures to help with childcare and getting families out of temporary housing
Readers may be aware, going into the weekend, that Edinburgh airport had to temporarily suspend flights this morning due to technical issues.
Back to domestic matters and last night’s Premier League clash at Old Trafford. Despite looking absolutely woeful against Liverpool, West Ham managed to nick a point with a late equaliser against Manchester United. Ruben Amorim was pretty miffed it’s fair to say.
Ashes news. Quick plug for our other live blog. It was looking a bit grim for England but then two quick wickets! What a catch by Will Jacks! Rob Smyth has the details.
Cloudflare reports it is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs
Technical problems at internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare today have taken a host of websites offline this morning.
Cloudflare said shortly after 9am UK time that it “is investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs [application programming interfaces – used when apps exchange data with each other].
(Brawl) The violinist sets out on her darkest exploration of yuletide yet, giving a murky and melancholy twist on familiar Christmas standards
Traditional music finds its popular, cosy home in the carol, despite the uncanniness that surrounds the nativity story, and the fraying thread back to the past that each winter brings. A veteran explorer of the season (in 2020’s sparkling Winter Rituals EP with cellist Kate Ellis, and 2022’s starker New Christmas Rituals, with amplified fiddle-playing from André Bosman), Laura Cannell sets out on her best and darkest journey yet here, exploring the time of year when, as she writes on the liner notes, “joy and heartache try to exist together”.
Named after the line in Good King Wenceslas before the cruel frosts arrive, Brightly Shone the Moon begins at the organ – a nod to Cannell’s childhood Christmases in the Methodist chapels and churches of Norfolk. Cannell’s fiddle then quivers around the 16th-century folk melody of O Christmas Tree/O Tannenbaum, as if the carol is swirling in a snowglobe, trying to settle in memory. All Ye Faithful follows, full of murky repetitions of the pre-chorus passages, where choirs usually sing “come let us adore him”. But here, love feels stuck, rooting around like an animal in the ground, a sonic reminder of how smothering and strenuous the winter can be for many.
Netflix is in competition with Paramount Skydance and Comcast, which owns assets including Universal Studios and Sky, to buy the owner of the Hollywood studio Warner Bros, HBO and the HBO Max streaming service.
From tackling child poverty to being honest about Brexit, the party seems to have recognised the growing electoral threat to its left
What does it take for a small child not to recognise their own name? I’ve been thinking about that for days, since reading the Local Government Association’s recent report on a growing crisis in early childhood. We’ve known for a while about children starting school still in nappies, or speaking in Americanisms absorbed from hours stuck in front of YouTube, or even struggling to sit uprightbecause they’ve spent too long slumped over an iPad to develop core muscles. So sadly, it’s not surprising to read of early-years workers telling the LGA they see more and more pre-schoolers who can barely speak, play with others or contain their rage when things don’t go their way. But it was the practitioner who noted that some children“don’t seem to respond to their name” who got to me. You have to wonder how often that child hears a loving adult trying to get their attention. Too often, another practitioner said, “children are not spoken to at home, but offered screens all day” – at mealtimes, out shopping, or in the car – with parents seemingly scared of provoking tantrums if they take the phone away.
The report describes a complex puzzle with multiple causes: poverty, and the parental exhaustion that comes of a hardscrabble life; growing up in a pandemic; changes in early-years provision; and way too much screen time. It can’t be solved by money alone, but certainly won’t be solved without it. So a two-pronged strategy of lifting the two-child limit on children’s welfare payments – as Rachel Reeves did last week – and intervening early wheretoddlers aren’t meeting their milestones makes sense. The Best Start family hubs rolling out gradually nationwide will, we learned this week, get Send (special educational needs and disabilities) co-ordinators, focusing particularly on speech and language. They’ll promote the upcoming National Year of Reading to wean kids off screens and on to books,and more generally attempt, on a shoestring, to mimic the support that their predecessor programme Sure Start once offered parents. There’s not enough funding – there never is – but there are the beginnings of joined-up thinking, accepting that tackling problems in nursery rather than in primary school is easier, cheaper and kinder on everyone involved.
Head coach credits loyalty to his trusty Casio watch for helping him lift the Lisbon club after Ruben Amorim’s messy exit
If there is a stoppage in what is sure to be a supercharged Dérbi de Lisboa on Friday, the Sporting head coach, Rui Borges, will likely look down to check the watch he considers a lucky charm.
The black Casio – bought for €20 while still playing for his hometown club Mirandela in north-east Portugal, 150km inland from Porto – is a symbol of his superstitious nature and one he has maintained on his journey from the obscurity of being an amateur coach to making a mark on the biggest stage in club football.
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