Officials in Texas city issued boil water notice and set up water distribution centers after main line break on Saturday

More than 100,000 residents in the Texas border city of El Paso were left with little to no water after a main break over the weekend, and it was expected to take till midweek for operations to return to normal, officials said.

The break in the 36-inch water main line happened late Saturday night in El Paso, which has a population of about 700,000, officials said. Gilbert Trejo, an official with El Paso Water, called it “an event of unprecedented proportion”. He said the break was made even more impactful because of “the way the pipeline itself was designed along with how different connections of smaller lines were made to it”.

• Spurs make Atlético Madrid offer worth up to £34.6m

• Former Chelsea man keen on Premier League return

Tottenham are confident of beating Aston Villa to the signing of Conor Gallagher from Atlético Madrid after making an offer worth up to €40m (£34.6m) for the England midfielder.

Talks with Atlético are ongoing but Gallagher is understood to be keen to move back to the Premier League to boost his chances of making England’s World Cup squad, having made just four starts in La Liga this season. Spurs are in the market for midfield reinforcements after Rodrigo Bentancur sustained a hamstring injury that is likely to keep him sidelined for three months. The club have identified the 25-year-old as their primary target.

• PGA offers re-entry to LIV Golf players via new program

• Koepka stands to miss out on at least $50m in equity

Brooks Koepka is returning to the PGA Tour just five weeks after bolting from LIV Golf, agreeing to a one-time program for elite players that comes with a financial penalty that could rank among the largest in sports.

Koepka plans to resume his PGA Tour career in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines at the end of the month. But he will not be eligible for PGA Tour equity grants for five years, he will not receive FedEx Cup bonus money in 2026 and he cannot play signature events unless he earns his way in.

Man charged with maliciously damaging building after blaze at historic Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson

The FBI says that a suspect in the arson fire at a historic Mississippi synagogue admitted to targeting the institution because of its “Jewish ties”.

Stephen Spencer Pittman was charged on Monday with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive, the FBI said.

Robert McBride, deputy to Trump ally Lindsey Halligan, is latest in series of dismissals

The number two prosecutor in the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of Virginia has been fired, according to two people familiar with the matter, the latest in a series of dismissals in an office that is leading controversial criminal prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James.

Robert McBride, a former federal prosecutor in Kentucky, was brought in late last year to serve as the deputy to Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally who the president installed as the acting US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia in September. McBride was dismissed after declining to lead the Comey prosecution, which a judge threw out in November after ruling Halligan was unlawfully appointed, one of the people said. (The justice department is appealing the ruling.)

⚽️ FA Cup updates from the 7.45pm GMT kick-off at Anfield
⚽️ Fourth-round draw | Talking points | Send Michael a mail

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, who will surely be looking over his shoulder now that Xabi Alonso is available, speaks to TNT Sports:

We have made a few changes but a few have to play here that have played so many games. That means we have a strong line-up.

We know that Conor Bradley is out for a long time. He was progressing and getting better and better. Now, he is injured. But that doesn’t really help us either. Now, we don’t have a lot of options with the players that are out.

Airstrikes would be ‘one of the many options on the table’ says press secretary Karoline Leavitt as Iranian regime seeks to downplay protests

• ‘The streets are full of blood’: Iranian protests gather momentum as regime cracks down

• Iranian student killed during protests was shot in head ‘from close range’

• Analysis: Unpredictable Trump weighs up Iranian pleas for help against calls for restraint

• People in Iran: share your views on the current situation

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, has said communication lines with the US remain open, as the Trump administration continues to weigh the option of military strikes.

“This channel of communication between our foreign minister (Abbas Araghchi) and the special envoy of the president of the United States is open,” Baghaei said, in apparent reference to Steve Witkoff.

Always opposes interference in other countries’ internal affairs, maintains that the sovereignty and security of all countries should be fully protected under international law, and opposes the use or threat of use of force in international relations.

Maitlin Paige White accused of soliciting donations as Matthew Childress, whose daughter died at Camp Mystic

A Florida woman allegedly posed as the grieving father of a teenager who died in July’s deadly Camp Mystic flooding in Texas and tried to raise money, leading to her being criminally charged with online impersonation, according to authorities.

According to court records reviewed by multiple outlets, Maitlin Paige White, 28, of Crestview, Florida, is accused of posing as Matthew Childress and soliciting donations in the days after the death of his 18-year-old daughter, Chloe Childress, who was working as a counselor at Camp Mystic in Kerr county, Texas.

A flood of non-consensual deepfake bikini shots on X is putting the UK’s Online Safety Act to the test

The unleashing on X (formerly Twitter) of a torrent of AI-generated images of women and children wearing bikinis, some in sexualised poses or with injuries, has rightly prompted a strong reaction from UK politicians and regulators. Monday’s announcement that X is being investigated was Ofcom’s most combative move since key provisions in the Online Safety Act came into force. None of the other businesses it has challenged or fined have anything like the global reach or political clout of Elon Musk’s social media giant. Whatever happens next, this is a defining moment. What is being defined is the extent to which some of the wealthiest companies on the planet are under democratic control.

But the announcement is only a first step. Ofcom has given no indication of how long its investigation will take. On Friday Downing Street described as insulting the decision to limit the use of the image‑making Grok AI chatbot to X’s paying subscribers. The government said that this amounted to turning the creation of abusive deepfakes into a “premium service”.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The tumultuous start to 2026 should force a reckoning in Brussels and European capitals, and a recognition of the power the EU can exert

Another week, another set of dilemmas for Europe’s beleaguered political class to deal with. On Wednesday Brussels is due to outline the terms of the €90bn loan it has promised to Ukraine, amid internal tensions over whether Kyiv can use the money to buy US as well as EU weapons. On the same day, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is due to meet ministers from Denmark and Greenland, as Donald Trump continues to insist that the US will take ownership of the latter “one way or another”. And as the body count of protesters rises in Iran, the EU is under mounting pressure to do more than merely “monitor” the situation, as the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, somewhat feebly put it over the weekend.

Beyond the crisis management, a deeper reckoning is overdue after a tumultuous beginning to 2026. It has long been a truism that there is a profound mismatch between the EU’s economic heft and its geopolitical clout. But only a year into Mr Trump’s second term, the disjunction looks unsustainable in the “America first” era.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Donald Trump has promised he will ‘shoot at Iran’ if Iranian security services attack anti-government protesters, but analysts suggest the US is not prepared for military action. It comes as the death toll from Tehran’s crackdown on protests soars, and as demonstrations continue to shake the country. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour

It is a perilous time to mess with the principle that rate-setters under an independent system should be free of political pressure

• Ex-Fed chairs condemn Trump’s bid to weaken central bank’s independence

• Trump’s attempts to influence Fed risk 1970s-style inflation and global backlash’

Well said, Jerome Powell. The chair of the US Federal Reserve responded to news of a subpoena from the US Department of Justice with a statement that was extraordinary, necessary and stark.

A criminal investigation into the Fed, and him personally, over the renovation of the central bank’s headquarters is an attempt to bully officials into setting policy according to the president’s whims, said Powell.

Holocaust survivor, educator and bestselling author who was a co-founder of the Anne Frank Trust UK

At the time, in 1940, when the 11-year-old Eva Schloss (then Eva Geiringer), newly arrived from Vienna, played with a group of children that included Anne Frank in the grassy square between their Amsterdam flats after school, she could not have imagined how intimately linked her name and Anne’s would become.

Eva, who has died aged 96, and Anne were not close: although born a month apart and neighbours in Merwedeplein (Anne lived at flat 37 and Eva at 46), they were unalike – Eva athletic, Anne more interested in fashion, films and flirting.

‘Major fights’ broke out Sunday at prison in Davidsboro, county sheriff said, with a dozen others taken to hospital

Three inmates died and a dozen others were taken to hospital with injuries after a “possible riot” on Sunday at a state prison in Georgia, authorities said.

The Washington county sheriff, Joel Cochran, said several “major fights” broke out early Sunday afternoon at a state prison in Davisboro, the Georgia television news outlet WMAZ reported, resulting in 13 prisoners being transported for treatment.

Kicking under-16s off the social platforms is tempting, but it ignores the root of the problem: the older generations who made them so toxic in the first place

Kemi Badenoch is evolving into one of those politicians who, whatever she says, it’s not just likely to be wrong, it’s likely to be the opposite of what’s right. She says Greenland is not a big deal (a “second-order issue” is how she described it to the BBC) – it is a big deal. She says net zero is too expensive – the opposite is true: net-anything-but-zero is a cost we can’t afford.

But her promise to ban under-16s from using social media, echoing Australia’s recent move, is hard to write off completely; people across the spectrum, including Andy Burnham, agree with it. Nobody who has ever met a teenager, or read the news, will be completely at ease with the role of social media in young lives. There are horrific effects, which have been well documented and inadequately addressed ever since the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing suicide and self-harm content online.

Family statement said musician died ‘after a long battle with his mental health’

Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin, the guitarist who was a member of acclaimed British experimental rock band Black Midi, has died aged 26.

A statement from his family said he died “after a long battle with his mental health. A talented musician and a kind, loving man finally succumbed; despite all efforts.

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

• Trump’s attempts to influence Fed risk ‘70’s-style inflation and global backlash’

• Nils Pratley: US bond markets should be in revolt. Fed independence matters

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 his job as coach of Real Madrid, only seven months after arriving for his first day at the club’s Valdebebas training ground. A brief statement announced his departure “by mutual consent” on Monday evening after Madrid’s 3-2 defeat in the final of the Spanish Super Cup against Barcelona the previous night.

He will be replaced, at least in the short term, by his former Real Madrid and Liverpool teammate and friend Álvaro Arbeloa, who was coach of Castilla, Madrid’s B team.

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.

• He wants Woodgate as a coach and will offer Fletcher role

• 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.

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.