US secretary of state also said he was confident of ‘positive resolution’ on Denmark
in Paris
In other news, a former French senator has been found guilty of drugging a fellow politician in order to sexually assault her, in a case that has shaken French politics.
Pacifism is core to modern European culture, but a ‘no arms’ attitude risks leaving artists and film-makers short of answers when facing military aggression and political threats
One reason why art – painting, literature, film, theatre, all of it – is so important to society is that it creates spaces that can tolerate difficult answers to difficult questions. This makes art the opposite of politics, where politicians are under constant pressure to give easy answers to difficult questions.
I was thinking about this distinction this month while watching the European film awards, this continent’s answer to the Oscars, which has moved its annual ceremony to January this year as it seeks to position itself as a major tastemaker for grownup cinema.
AlphaGenome can analyse up to 1m letters of DNA code at once and could pave way for new treatments
Researchers at Google DeepMind have unveiled their latest artificial intelligence tool and claimed it will help scientists identify the genetic drivers of disease and ultimately pave the way for new treatments.
AlphaGenome predicts how mutations interfere with the way genes are controlled, changing when they are switched on, in which cells of the body, and whether their biological volume controls are set to high or low.
We’ve had declarations of obsession, we’ve had notification of their matching rings … can someone please throw some cold water over this press tour love-fest?
Even though it isn’t released for another fortnight, you may already have formed strong opinions about Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. Perhaps you hold the position that the novel is a text so sacred that any adaptation whatsoever is equivalent to sacrilege. Or maybe you are excited to see what a noted iconoclast such as Fennell will do with something as fusty as a 179-year-old book.
Either way, it is likely that your key takeaway from the Wuthering Heights press tour so far is that it’s getting a bit much. It has now been revealed that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have matching rings decorated with two hugging skeletons and the phrase “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”.
A new book and podcast tell the story of a 1 in 12, a venue that used community and artistic passion as bulwarks against poverty and grim politics. Its founders and key acts recall gigs, plays and pranks on the NME
“Things were getting grim,” says Gary Cavanagh, reflecting on Bradford in the early 1980s. “There was a hell of a lot of unemployment, and people were thrown on the scrap heap.”
Cavanagh was working for Bradford’s claimants union in 1981, helping the city’s poor and unemployed get benefits, when a government report stated that one in 12 dole recipients were defrauding the state. So he and some friends reclaimed this statistic – which they thought was ludicrous – as an identity. “We became the 1 in 12 Club,” he says.
Family members and lawyers say Pakistan’s former PM suffered dangerous blockage in right eye while in prison
Pakistan’s incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan is facing severe eye damage and is being denied proper access to medical treatment while in solitary confinement, according to officials from his political party.
Khan, 73, considered to be Pakistan’s most high-profile political prisoner, has been in jail since August 2023. He is serving sentences for corruption and leaking state secrets, which he has claimed are part of a state-sponsored campaign to keep him out of power.
Midfielder speaks out on politics before World Cup
Goretzka open to summer move to England from Bayern
The Germany international Leon Goretzka has said Donald Trump’s actions have left him feeling “not onlyGerman but also European”. The US president has recently threatened to take Greenland by force and called Europe “weak” and “decaying”.
Goretzka, who hopes to make the Germany squad for the World Cup in the US, Canada and Mexico this summer, told Die Zeit: “Of course, I’m aware of the political debates. I still expect it to be a great tournament – it will promote football there, and show many people want an incredibly exciting game.Donald Trump makes us feel not only German but also European.”
Croix Bethune, Jameese Joseph and Emily Sams scored their first international goals and the United States went on to beat Chile 5-0 on Tuesday night in Santa Barbara, California.
Emma Sears and Trinity Rodman also scored for the US, who haven’t conceded a goal in five matches and haven’t lost in six.
Director in charge of investing in programming outside London will take over Tim Davie’s role while corporation seeks permanent replacement
The BBC has named senior executive Rhodri Talfan Davies as its interim director general, as the corporation continues the search for a permanent replacement for Tim Davie.
Davie, who resigned in November after the row over the BBC’s editing of a Donald Trump speech, will remain in the role until the start of April. Talfan Davies will then take over.
Aircraft carrying 104 personnel damaged lighting tower while making ‘wrong manoeuvre’ after landing
A Qatari military cargo plane carrying security staff in Italy to assist with law enforcement for the Winter Olympics struck a lighting tower on Sunday as it manoeuvred upon landing at Milan’s Malpensa airport, it has emerged.
The aircraft was carrying 104 personnel from the Gulf state’s elite security forces, plus huge jeeps and snowmobiles, as part of an agreement made with the Italian government, despite Qatar not competing in the games.
‘Dobrușa once had a population of 200. Grisa now lived there alone with his 120 ducks and other animals. The two other remaining residents were murdered by a farmer from a neighbouring village’
This was taken in a village in rural Moldova that no longer exists. Thirty years ago, Dobrușa had a population of 200, and was typical of settlements found across the country after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. When this man Grisa moved there in 2000 to start a sheep farm, the population had declined to 70. When this was taken, in July 2019, he was the sole resident of the village. He was 65.
A few months before I took it, the only other remaining residents – a couple in their 40s – were murdered by a farmer from a neighbouring village. Their half-naked bodies were found on the ground. They’d been beaten to death. It was a very dark story and, after this terrible incident, Grisa told me he no longer felt safe living alone there. He was thinking about moving to a bigger village.
Conservative figures such as Riley Gaines and Allie Beth Stuckey are urging their followers to ward off empathy for victims of ICE’s crackdown
Riley Gaines, the former collegiate swimmer turned anti-transgender activist, makes motherhood and femininity a core part of her brand. Her husband, Louis Barker, is a naturalized US citizen who moved to this country from the UK. The couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Margot, in September; Gaines said there was “nothing” she would not do to protect her baby. But do not think that Gaines is at all sympathetic to families targeted by ICE.
This weekend, Gaines spoke on her podcast about Liam Ramos, the five-year-old boy taken by ICE agents from his driveway in Minneapolis. Images of Liam, clad in snowpants and wearing a blue hat with bunny ears, being held by a federal agent prompted widespread disgust in the US. How could a preschooler be considered one of the “dangerous” criminals Trump’s administration rails against?
Beijing’s AI policy is focused on real-life applications but Chinese companies are beginning to articulate their own grand visions
Standing on stage in the eastern China tech hub of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s normally media-shy CEO made an attention-grabbing announcement. “The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution,” Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. “Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI).”
ASI, Wu said, “could produce a generation of ‘super scientists’ and ‘full-stack super engineers’”, who would “tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speeds”.
Ex-first lady sentenced to 20 months for receiving gifts for political favours, as Yoon Suk Yeol awaits rebellion verdict
The wife of South Korea’s ousted president Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for corruption, as her husband awaits a verdict on a high-stakes rebellion charge that could result in the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Kim Keon Hee was sentenced for receiving luxury gifts including a Graff diamond necklace and a Chanel bag from the Unification Church in return for promises of political favours.
In 20 years, Danish capital’s fashion week has pushed for greener standards and catapulted homegrown talent to global success
When it comes to fashion weeks, there used to be four key cities: New York, London, Milan and Paris. While they remain titleholders, a host of other cities from Berlin to Seoul and Lagos have been vying for the same recognition to become “the fifth fashion week”. But so far only one real winner has emerged: Copenhagen fashion week.
On Tuesday, the Danish showcase, which has helped catapult homegrown brands including Ganni into the international spotlight while spearheading sustainability initiatives, kicked off the start of its 20th-anniversary celebrations.
When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free.
Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.
Most people don’t relish being locked in a confined space, in close proximity to strangers, travelling at speed. And yet, so many people do nothing to elevate the experience for others.
I am floored at the enthusiasm of people who stand at the crack of elevator doors waiting for them to open, as if it were 9am at the Black Friday sales. When the doors open, they recoil in surprise – presumably they were expecting to be the first passengers on the maiden voyage of this metal tube sliding up and down the building’s shaft.
If you’re wearing tight clothes and flashing your ankles, you may want to make some bold changes
Is your wardrobe cringe? Does it make you look out-of-touch and cause younger and cooler people to look upon you with pity? Do you really want me to answer that? Never mind, I’m going to anyway, so buckle up. Brutal honesty is very January, so I will give it to you straight. But before we get down to dissecting your wardrobe, two quick questions for you. Do you put full stops in text messages? Were you baffled by Labubus? If the answer to those two questions is yes, then I’m afraid the signs are that your wardrobe is almost certainly cringe.
Being cringe is essentially being old-fashioned, but worse. Being old-fashioned is what happens when you grow older with grace and dignity. Cringe is when you lose your touch while convincing yourself you are still down with the kids.
Briton has been training in Thailand ahead of his return
Tyson Fury is to make his comeback against Arslanbek Makhmudov on 11 April in a fight that will be screened on Netflix. Fury announced his retirement a year ago after successive defeats to Oleksandr Usyk, but has been training in Thailand for his return to the ring.
A venue has yet to be announced for the fight, but it will take place in the UK, making it Fury’s first contest here since he overcame Derek Chisora in 2022.
US president says armada heading towards Iran is ‘prepared to fulfil its missions with violence if necessary’
The threat of a US-Iranian war may be looming closer after Donald Trump warned time was running out for Tehran and said a massive US armada was moving quickly towards the country “with great power, enthusiasm and purpose”.
Writing on social media, the US president said the fleet headed by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was larger than the one sent to Venezuela before the removal of Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and was “prepared to rapidly fulfil its missions with speed and violence if necessary”.
Gergely Karácsony urged people to take to streets in June in pushback against Orbán government’s attack on rights
Prosecutors in Hungary have filed charges against the progressive mayor of Budapest, seeking to fine him months after hundreds of thousands of people heeded his call to take to the streets in defiance of the government’s ban on Pride.
The June march made headlines around the world after the ruling Fidesz party, led by the rightwing populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, backed legislation that created a legal basis for Pride to be banned, citing a widely criticised need to protect children.
In a new weekly column about the world of classical music, Tom Service bemoans Hollywood turning pieces into slop through overuse. Plus: Philip Glass withdraws his symphony from the Kennedy Center
Back in 2008, Transport for London came up with a ruse to dispel antisocial behaviour: it piped classical music into supposedly problematic stations in the crime hotspots of south London. I think that was when I realised just how far the association of classical music with relaxing affect instead of real emotion had gone. Once an entire genre has become associated with relaxification, it’s enough for you to hear the sound of an orchestra and think, “This isn’t for me”. Whatever its BPM, classical music will only be a backdrop, the sound of luxury goods, the sound of cultural anaesthetic.
The playlist included the finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony – music that is obsessive and wild, the sound of barely controlled hysteria, full of harmonic grind and rhythmic assault. This radical and Dionysian music, that was literally made to push communities of orchestras and listeners to their extremes in the early 19th century, was being reduced to calming and inoffensive aural wallpaper.
Charles Victor Thompson would be the first person executed in the US this year for the 1998 shooting deaths
A Texas man who at one time escaped from custody and was on the run for three days after being sentenced to death for fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend nearly 27 years ago was scheduled on Wednesday to be the first person executed in the US this year.
Charles Victor Thompson was condemned for the April 1998 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Glenda Dennise Hayslip, 39; and her new boyfriend, Darren Keith Cain, 30, at her apartment in the Houston suburb of Tomball.
Iraq’s former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has angrily denounced “blatant American interference” in the country’s election after Donald Trump threatened to withdraw US support if he was returned to power.
“We reject the blatant American interference in Iraq’s internal affairs and consider it a violation of its sovereignty,” al-Maliki, who is nominated by the country’s dominant political bloc to return to the premiership, said in a statement on Wednesday.
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