Statement signed by 13 former senior officials condemns ‘unprecedented’ assault on Fed’s independence

Every living former head of the Federal Reserve condemned an “unprecedented” attempt by the Trump administration to weaken the US central bank’s independence, after the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into its chair, Jerome Powell.

Ex-Fed chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen warned similar prosecutorial attacks in other countries had led to “highly negative consequences” for the cost of living – and argued they had “no place” in the US.

• Super Cup final defeat by Barcelona spells the end

• Madrid are four points off Catalan club at top of La Liga

Xabi Alonso has left Real Madrid after just over seven months as the head coach. The club’s former midfielder has gone “by mutual agreement” after defeat by Barcelona in the Spanish Super Cup final on Sunday and with his team four points behind the Catalan club at the top of La Liga.

Alonso officially started on 1 June after a successful spell at Bayer Leverkusen, where he won the domestic double in 2023-24 and led the team to the Europa League final. After overseeing Madrid’s run to the Club World Cup semi-finals he began impressively, winning 13 of his next 14 games, the exception being a heavy derby defeat by Atlético Madrid.

After Apple chose Gemini to power Siri, Alphabet surpassed Apple to become second-most valuable company in world

Google’s parent company hit a major financial milestone on Monday, reaching a $4tn valuation for the first time and surpassing Apple to become the second-most valuable company in the world.

Alphabet is the fourth company to hit the $4tn milestone after Nvidia, which later hit $5tn, Microsoft and Apple.

• Darren Fletcher will get option to join Carrick’s staff

• Money available for transfers and Rúben Neves a target

Manchester United expect to confirm Michael Carrick as the interim manager on Tuesday, with finance to be at the 44-year-old’s disposal to strengthen the squad should a target for the long term become available.

The announcement of Carrick’s appointment is scheduled for Tuesday and Darren Fletcher, who has taken charge of two games since Ruben Amorim’s sacking, will be given the opportunity to be part of the coaching team. Carrick wants Jonathan Woodgate, who worked alongside him at Middlesbrough, to be part of his backroom staff.

Actors, doctors and human rights leaders sign letter calling for restoration of medical care to ‘collapsed’ system

Dozens of artists, including Cynthia Nixon, Mark Ruffalo and Ilana Glazer, have joined with doctors, human rights leaders and humanitarian organizations to call for the immediate restoration of medical care in Gaza in a letter addressed to the state of Israel and world leaders.

“Israel’s systematic attacks on hospitals and unlawful blockade have collapsed Gaza’s healthcare system,” says the letter, which was shared exclusively with the Guardian. “Through its policies and military activities, the government of Israel has deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza and then denied the very help that could save them.”

This could be your year to worry less about your waistline and spend more time at the movies

We are now more than a week into 2026, and it might shock you to know I’m feeling quite cheery. All the professional emails I’ve waited a month to send are out. The grout in my shower is scum-free. The music at the pharmacy is normal again. If you’re like me, and you find the holiday season a grim and lonely time that involves too much booze, too much food, too much Mariah Carey and not enough routine, the start of the new year is more than welcome.

The one thing that dampens my cheer at being dragged back to my desk for the comfort of drudgery – besides the endless and brutal news headlines – is the New Year’s resolution. The tradition of picking a few things to promise yourself to do (or not do) in the spirit of wellness is centuries old, dating back as far as 2000BC. Not sure what the Babylonians were resolving to do. Tidy up the storage closet in the ziggurat? Finally finish that tower they’d been thinking about? Try not to get sold into slavery (again)?

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Data for 2025 will be good news for the Met and the mayor Sadiq Khan as they bat away claims of a lawless city

• Capital’s murder rate drops to lowest in more than a decade

The number of murders in London in 2025 is drawing attention for being the lowest in more than a decade. Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, say figures show their policies and plans are working, which are best summed up as tough on crime, tough on the complex causes of crime.

Has the Met turned a corner and can Khan shake off claims he presides over a city where crime is out of control?

Exclusive: ClimatePartner analysis shows how move would risk plunging Earth further into climate catastrophe

US plans to exploit Venezuela’s oil reserves could by 2050 consume more than a tenth of the world’s remaining carbon budget to limit global heating to 1.5C, according to an exclusive analysis.

The calculation highlights how any moves to further exploit the South American nation’s oil reserves – the largest in the world, at least on paper – would put increasing pressure on climate goals, and risk plunging the Earth further into climate catastrophe.

Self-governing island stresses it is member of Nato, which is looking at improving Arctic defences, through Denmark

Greenland’s government has said it “cannot under any circumstances accept” Donald Trump’s desire to take control of Greenland, as Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, said the organisation was working on ways to bolster Arctic security.

At the start of a critical week for the vast Arctic island, a largely self-governing part of Denmark, the US president restated his interest in the strategically located, mineral-rich territory, saying the US would take it “one way or the other”.

Piet Mondrian found fame, fortune and glory with his grid-like paintings filled with basic colours. But did many of his ideas come from Marlow Moss? Our writer celebrates an extraordinary British talent who died in obscurity

In 1972, the mighty Kunstmuseum in the Hague bought three paintings by a little known British artist called Marlow Moss. The prestigious art gallery was keen to show the enormous influence of Piet Mondrian – the famous Dutch painter acclaimed for his black grids lit with bold blues and brash yellows – on such lowly also-rans as Moss.

Yet, should you visit the Kunstmuseum today, you’ll find the Moss works positioned front and centre, while a similar piece by the great Mondrian, who would later become the toast of New York, is hidden behind a pillar. Why the volte-face? Because it is now widely recognised in the art world that it was as much Moss who influenced Mondrian as the other way round, at least when it came to the double or parallel lines he started using in the 1930s to add tension to his harmonious abstract paintings, one of which hammered last May for $48m.

Demonstrations initially focused on economic issues but as they have grown and become political the regime has responded with deadly force

• Iran crisis live – latest updates

A protest movement in Iran that started as a small demonstration by shopkeepers in Tehran over a weakening currency has exploded into the largest nationwide uprising in years against the country’s theocratic leaders.

Fearing a threat to its decades-old grip on the country, the government has responded with deadly force. Rights groups have reported that hundreds of people have been killed by security forces and the state-backed Basij militia.

Behaviour among non-human species could help keep groups together in face of social challenges, says study

Same-sex sexual behaviour among non-human primates may arise as a way to reinforce bonds and keep societies together in the face of environmental or social challenges, researchers have suggested.

Prof Vincent Savolainen, a co-author of the paper from Imperial College London, added that while the work focused on our living evolutionary cousins, early human species probably experienced similar challenges, raising the likelihood they, too, showed such behaviour.

Paramount also files lawsuit seeking disclosure of financial information related to $82.7bn agreement

Paramount Skydance plans to nominate directors to Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) board to vote against the approval of its deal with Netflix, and filed a lawsuit seeking disclosure of financial information related to the $82.7bn (£61.4bn) agreement.

In a letter sent to WBD investors on Monday, Paramount said it would nominate directors for election at the company’s annual meeting, which is usually held in June, to try to derail the deal with Netflix, which was agreed in December.

The Africa Cup of Nations has been a brilliant display for a continent carrying no doubt about quality on the pitch

More than any other continental tournament, there is always a sense with the Africa Cup of Nations that it is a referendum on the continent’s football generally. Perhaps it’s because so many of the players are familiar to those who habitually watch the European leagues or the Champions League, but the question is less about individual quality of players – that is a given – than it is about organisation and structures. Somewhere in the background, perhaps, lurks Pelé’s notorious prediction, made in 1977, that an African team would win the World Cup by the end of the 20th century. Is a World Cup win for Africa any closer than it was half a century ago?

In Morocco at this year’s edition of the tournament, there has been an extra element: the country’s status as World Cup co-hosts with Spain and Portugal in 2030. What are facilities like? Is the infrastructure there? This question is readily answered: in terms of stadiums, pitches and hotels, Morocco is already well on the way to being able to stage the World Cup. All six cities hosting games at this Cup of Nations are candidates for 2030.

Famously serious Oscar-winner gave rare insight into what might be the real Leo with his commercial break antics

The fact that nobody really knows anything about Leonardo DiCaprio is well-established at this point. Indeed, the best joke of Nikki Glaser’s Golden Globes monologue last night revolved around that fact that DiCaprio gives so little of himself away that the only things she could find to joke about him were his notoriously younger girlfriends and an obscure magazine interview he gave when he was 17, where he announced that his favourite food was “pasta, pasta and more pasta”.

However, DiCaprio then went and instantly gave some of himself away. A camera remained on him during a commercial break, and it caught him giving one of the most flamboyant demonstrations of his personality ever seen.

Severe weather, driven by two low-pressure systems merging, is expected to bring power outages and hazardous road conditions

Atlantic Canada is under widespread weather warnings for snow, freezing rain and strong winds as a winter storm moves across the region. In Newfoundland, up to 40cm of snow fell on Sunday, along with wind gusts of about 74mph, creating blizzard-like conditions.

The storm began late on Sunday and is forecast to persist until Tuesday morning. Freezing rain warnings are in place across Nova Scotia, including Annapolis and Kings counties, while parts of New Brunswick could get up to 25cm of snow on Monday.

We would like to hear from Iranians living in Iran or abroad about how the crisis has affected your life and those of your friends and family

Iran foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said Iran is “not seeking war, but is fully prepared” for war, as he warned adversaries against any “miscalculation”.

It comes after Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that Iran has reached out and proposed negotiations, as he considers “very strong” military options against the regime over the deadly Iranian crackdown on protestors in the country, which has reportedly killed hundreds.

It was hard for me to quit Elon Musk’s poisoned platform, but I urge others to do the same, especially in light of Grok’s imagery of women and children

Some wars can’t be won. It can be hard to come to terms with this fact when you’re still on the battlefield, but if somehow you manage to step out for a moment, then the truth will become obvious. You have lost, the people on your side have lost, the villains have won and, if anything, you should have run away a long time ago.

My own sad epiphany about Twitter, now known as X, came in the immediate aftermath of the US election in 2024. I’d spent a lot of that year lying to myself, ignoring the increasing volume of abuse I’d been receiving and the fact that no one ever read my linked pieces any more, but that week I realised I had to stop. I had to leave X for good.

Journalists call on homeland security officials to reduce law-enforcement confrontations as tensions flare

After a year in which US journalists faced a dramatic increase in violence from law enforcement, news organizations and advocacy groups have recently tried to better protect reporters through outreach to the Department of Homeland Security.

Over the last four months, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a collection of New York news outlets have sent letters to the Department of Homeland Security attempting to open dialogue to reduce confrontations between law enforcement officers and journalists at protests, especially over efforts to deport alleged undocumented immigrants.

Haul represents country’s largest seizure at sea, with officers digging bales out from vast amount of salt

Spanish police have made their largest seizure of cocaine at sea after finding almost 10 tonnes of the drug hidden among a cargo of salt on a merchant ship off the Canary Islands.

Detectives and anti-drug prosecutors investigating a multinational criminal group alleged to be exporting “enormous quantities” of cocaine from South America to Europe had identified a suspect ship that had set off from Brazil, the Policía Nacional said in a statement on Monday.

Emmy-winning actor and director allegedly touched child inappropriately on set of The Cleaning Lady TV series

Authorities in New Mexico issued an arrest warrant recently for the director and Emmy-winning actor Timothy Busfield to face a child sexual abuse charge.

An investigator with the Albuquerque police department filed a criminal complaint in support of the charge, which says a child reported that Busfield touched him inappropriately. The acts cited in the warrant – issued on Friday – allegedly occurred on the set of The Cleaning Lady, a TV series Busfield directed and acted in.

Timothée Chalamet celebrated his 30th birthday by embracing his unc status – and Sabrina Carpenter has used the word to describe her record producer. Why is it suddenly everywhere?

Name: Unc.

Age: Younger than you might think.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Lawyers for Adichie and her husband serve Euracare hospital with legal notice after death of 21-month-old

The Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has accused a Lagos hospital of negligence after the death of one of her 21-month-old twin boys.

Nkanu Nnamdi died on 6 January after a brief illness. He was one of twin boys born to Adichie and Ivara Esege, a doctor, in 2024 by surrogacy, eight years after the birth of their first child, a girl.