Researcher in Kerala rainforest sounds alarm after being told frogs had died after being handled by humans
A group of endangered “galaxy frogs” are missing, presumed dead, after trespassing photographers reportedly destroyed their microhabitats for photos.
Melanobatrachus indicus, each the size of a fingertip, is the only species in its family, and lives under logs in the lush rainforest in Kerala, India. Their miraculous spots do not indicate poison, as people sometimes assume, but are thought to be used as a mode of communication, according to Rajkumar K P, a Zoological Society of London fellow and researcher.
The temptation is to sit at home and hibernate, but beating the winter blues can be done. Here’s how to embrace the coldest and arguably most beautiful season
Stephanie Fitzgerald, a chartered clinical psychologist, used to dread winter. Like many, she coped by keeping busy at work and hibernating at home, waiting for the cold, dark days to be over. But this approach wasn’t making her happy. So she sought out the science that would help her embrace the winter months, rather than try to escape them. In her resulting book, The Gifts of Winter, she writes: “I fell deeply in love with winter … It is a captivating and truly gorgeous season.”
How did she change her mindset – and can the 42% of us who say summer is our favourite season learn to love winter too?
Students blame reliance on phones plus pressure of accommodation costs for lack of social life
More than two-thirds of students in UK university halls feel lonely or isolated, blaming accommodation costs and over-reliance on phones for limiting their social life.
One in three students in halls of residence – 33% – are lonely or isolated at university often, with another 37% feeling that way occasionally, according to a poll by Opinium commissioned by the student accommodation provider PfP Students.
On a frontline where Russia has made the most gains in recent weeks, drone pilots wonder how long they can keep up the fight
In a warm bunker, lined with wooden logs, it is Dmytro’s job to monitor and help the drone crews on the frontline. Perhaps a dozen video feeds come through to his screen on an increasingly hot section of the front, running roughly from Pokrovske to Huliaipole, 50 miles east of Zaporizhzhia city.
Dmytro, 33, is with the 423rd drone battalion, a specialist unit only formed in 2024. He cycles through the feeds, on Ukraine’s battlefield Delta system, expanding each in turn. The grainy images come from one-way FPV (first person view) drones; clearer footage, with heights and speed, from commercially bought Mavic drones; at another point there is a bomber drone, available munitions marked in green.
Growth in the US economy – and the president’s political survival – rest on AI. The EU must use its leverage and stand up to him
The unthinkable has happened. The US is Europe’s adversary. The stark, profound betrayal contained in the Trump administration’s national security strategy should stop any further denial and dithering in Europe’s capitals. Cultivating “resistance Europe’s current trajectory in European nations” is now Washington’s stated policy.
But contained within this calamity is the gift of clarity. Europe will fight or it will perish. The good news is that Europe holds strong cards.
Johnny Ryan is director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties
The video game derived thriller series should be terrifying, but it’s often side-splitting. Its second outing adds excellent guest spots from Justin Theroux, Kumail Nanjiani and Macaulay Culkin
The west doesn’t get much wilder than in Fallout. The show takes place 200 years into a post-nuclear apocalypse where most humans are scratching out an existence in a stricken wasteland California of sand dunes, outlaw gangs and mutated monsters. Resources are scarce. Life is cruel. Death is a constant. It should be terrifying. Instead, it’s often hilarious.
A wicked sense of humour elevated the first season of Prime Video’s well-received, no-expense-spared adaptation of the long-running video game franchise. An early episode opened with one faction dumping newborn pups into an incinerator – in case you were wondering who the bad guys were – and those flashes of satirical glee gave Fallout an edge over gloomier post-apocalyptic shows such as The Walking Dead or The Last of Us.
Audit finds on average adults wait twice as long as children for assessment and more than 10 times as long to be treated
Adults with eating disorders in England are waiting up to 700 days for vital treatment, according to a report.
The stark figures were revealed in the first report of the National Audit of Eating Disorders (NAED), which looked at access to eating disorder services across the country.
Mourners crowded around a sea of flowers behind the Bondi Pavilion on Tuesday, quietly singing a traditional song of peace. Shalom, shalom, they whispered in unison, grief settling in like the grey clouds above.
The emotional intensity of the moment was suddenly broken by shouts: “Albo must go”, and then a rejoinder, “What did you do? You’re in the parliament too.” The singing stopped. Confused, I looked over.
In a joint statement with other close friends, including Albert Brooks and Martin Short, the comedians pay tribute to the Reiners after their deaths
US comedy luminaries Billy Crystal, Larry David, Martin Short and Albert Brooks have come together to remember their friend and peer Rob Reiner, hours after the director’s son was charged with the murder of his parents.
Nick Reiner, 32, has been in custody since Sunday evening, hours after his sister, Romy, reportedly discovered the bodies of Rob and Michele Reiner in their Los Angeles home. Police said the couple had suffered fatal stab wounds.
In successful challenge, X argued the video wasn’t excessively offensive and was an objective record of a ‘public event of historical and political significance’
The Australian classification review board has overturned a decision to block Australians seeing footage of the shooting of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on social media after Elon Musk’s X appealed against the ruling sought by the eSafety commissioner.
After Kirk’s death at Utah Valley University on 10 September, the eSafety commissioner applied to the board to have video of the shooting classified in Australia. The video was ruled to be “refused classification”, which allowed eSafety to serve notices on social media platforms ordering them to geo-block the posts from view for Australia-based users.
38-year-old boxer hangs up gloves at peak of career
Last fight was domination of Canelo Álvarez in September
Undefeated world super middleweight champion Terence Crawford announced his retirement from boxing on Tuesday, hanging up his gloves three months after a career-defining victory over Canelo Álvarez.
The 38-year-old from Nebraska, who dominated Mexican legend Álvarez in Las Vegas in September to claim the undisputed super middleweight crown, announced his decision in a video posted on social media.
Move comes amid escalating campaign against Maduro as Venezuelan government condemns ‘grotesque threat’
Donald Trump has ordered “a total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, ramping up pressure on the country’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.
The move comes amid an escalating campaign by the Trump administration against Maduro that has included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, which have killed dozens of people.
Giuffre’s family calls the success of her posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, ‘bittersweet’ after her death in April
A posthumous memoir by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s best-known accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has sold 1m copies worldwide in just the two months after its release.
Publisher Alfred A Knopf announced on Tuesday that more than half the sales for Nobody’s Girl came out of North America; in the US, the book is now in its 10th printing after an initial run of 70,000 copies. Giuffre’s book, co-written by author-journalist Amy Wallace, was published in early October.
Border conflict has roots in colonial maps and long-standing ‘sibling rivalry’
Thailand and Cambodia have been locked in a border dispute for more than a century, which exploded again in the summer of 2025. Peace efforts have had mixed results and fighting continues.
A historical dispute over lines drawn on colonial maps is often used as a pretext for simmering nationalism. The two countries have had what one historian called a “sibling rivalry” for decades, fanned by competing claims to the region’s rich cultural heritage, including ancient temples in disputed areas.
Development is latest in case in which carmaker accused of falsely marketing and overstating self-driving capabilities
A California regulator has put on hold an order to suspend Tesla sales in the state, the latest development in a case in which it accused the electric vehicle maker of falsely marketing and overstating self-driving capabilities.
The decision grants a reprieve to Tesla in a case that could force it to halt sales in its biggest US market.
Ruapehu is emblematic of question facing New Zealand: how to prevent rural regions – and the country at large - from hollowing out
For generations, two centres of gravity in New Zealand’s central Ruapehu region had enough pull to entice people to the area and keep them there: the mountains and the mills.
Mount Ruapehu, the country’s largest active volcano, lured people to its snowy slopes for work and play, while the local mills – run by the region’s largest employer, Winstone Pulp International – kept generations of families in employment.
German Chancellor says this remains a far-off prospect; Zelenskyy says negotiations on peace deal could soon be finalised. What we know on day 1,393
Under post-ceasefire guarantees provided by the United States and Europe to Ukraine, peacekeepers could in certain circumstances repel Russian forces, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told ZDF public television in an interview, adding that this remained a far-off prospect. Pressed by interviewers for details on the possible security guarantees floated by the United States in Monday’s Berlin talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Merz said the guarantors would need to repel Russian forces should there be a violation of any ceasefire terms.
“We would secure a demilitarized zone between the warring parties and, to be very specific, we would also act against corresponding Russian incursions and attacks.We’re not there yet,” he said. “The fact that the Americans have made such a commitment – to protect Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire as if it were Nato territory – I think that’s a remarkable new position for the United States of America,” Merz said.
Zelenskyy has said proposals negotiated with US officials on a peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine could be soon finalised, after which American envoys will present them to the Kremlin. After two days of talks in Berlin, US officials said on Monday they had resolved “90%” of the problematic issues between Russia and Ukraine, but despite the positive spin it is not clear that an end to the war is any closer, particularly as the Russian side is absent from the current talks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson indicated that the Kremlin opposes European participation in talks on ending the conflict in Ukraine based on a US plan. “The participation of the Europeans, in terms of acceptability, does not bode well,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. Peskov also said that the Kremlin had not yet been informed of the results of the latest talks in Berlin on Monday between Zelenskyy and European leaders.
The UN rights chief voiced alarm Wednesday over diminishing freedoms in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, saying restrictions were tightening on freedom of movement, expression and religion. Volker Turk painted a grim picture of events in a presentation to the UN Human Rights Council, the United Nations’ top rights body.
Russian authorities on Tuesday named German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle as an “undesirable organization,” effectively outlawing its operation in the country. Under Russian law, involvement with an “undesirable organization,” including sharing its content, is a criminal offence. In a statement, Deutsche Welle director general Barbara Massing called the designation Russia’s latest attempt to silence independent media.
The Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is now receiving electricity through only one of two external power lines, its Russian management said on Tuesday. The other line was disconnected due to military activity, the management said, adding that radiation levels remain normal. Repair work will begin as soon as possible.
South Africa’s government is in talks with Russia to bring home 17 South African men fighting for Russia in Ukraine, after the men were allegedly tricked on to the frontlines of the war.
Quarterly payments of $200 to be offered via stablecoin or traditional currency in a scheme designed to ease cost of living pressures in the Pacific nation
The Marshall Islands has introduced a national universal basic income (UBI) scheme that offers payments via cryptocurrency, alongside more traditional methods, which experts say is the first scheme of its kind in the world.
Under the program, every resident citizen of the Marshall Islands will receive quarterly payments of about US$200 as part of a government effort to ease cost of living pressures. The first instalments were paid in late November and recipients can choose whether the money is paid into a bank account, by cheque, or delivered as cryptocurrency on the blockchain through a government-backed digital wallet.
“Morning Daniel, (it’s approaching 7am in Western Australia),” opens Karris Evans. “Fox Cricket noted an hour ago that Smith got a head knock in training this morning, so possible concussion has ruled him out.”
The Hay festival president is asking readers for book recommendations that will ‘entice the most reluctant reader’ to help combat the decline in leisure reading
Hay festival president Stephen Fry is backing the organisation’s new campaign to collect recommendations for the most pleasurable books to entice new readers, in a bid to combat falling literacy rates in the UK.
The Pleasure List campaign, run in partnership with the government’s National Year of Reading 2026, will share the “most un-put-downable” reads in the hopes of helping reverse the downward trend of adults reading for pleasure.
Nick Reiner, 32, charged after Rob Reiner and wife Michele Singer Reiner found dead at Los Angeles home on Sunday
Nick Reiner has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the killing of his parents, the acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner and the photographer Michele Singer Reiner, authorities announced on Tuesday.
The 32-year-old, who is being held without bail, has been in custody since Sunday evening, hours after his sister reportedly discovered the couple’s bodies in their Los Angeles home. Police said on Sunday the couple had suffered fatal stab wounds.
Hundreds of swimmers at Bondi have formed human circles – in the beach and in the ocean – in honour of the victims of the attack on a Jewish community event in which 15 people died.
The world-famous beach is known for its early morning swimmers and surfers but many had not returned to the water since Sunday’s horrific events
The two African nations join Haiti and Iran on ban list
Fans may face restrictions when entering US
A proclamation signed by President Trump widened his administration’s ongoing travel restrictions on Tuesday to include 2026 World Cup participants Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.
The two African nations were added to the travel ban list with what the White House statement said were “partial restrictions and entry limitations,” currently the least restrictive category among the full group of nations covered, which now numbers 39 after Tuesday’s announcement. The sweeping travel ban already includes two countries who will participate in the World Cup: Haiti and Iran, both of whom are subject to the most stringent restrictions.
Roberts, who murdered three police officers in Shepherd’s Bush and served 48 years in prison, was released in 2014
Harry Roberts, the triple police killer whose 1966 murders shocked Britain and triggered one of the country’s largest manhunts, has reportedly died aged 89.
Roberts died in hospital last Saturday after a short illness, the Sun reported. He had been living in sheltered accommodation in Peterborough after his release on licence in 2014, after serving 48 years in prison for the killings.
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