British government also rejects president’s claims on sovereignty over Falkland Islands as he suggests wanting to make Argentina a ‘world military power’

The British government has denied it is engaged in negotiations to lift a ban on selling arms to Argentina that has been in place since the Falklands war.

Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, told the Daily Telegraph his government had begun speaking to the UK about the restrictions.

Space agency is investigating after Maven abruptly stopped communicating to ground stations over the weekend

Nasa has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade, though the US space agency said it was trying to re-establish a communications link.

Maven abruptly stopped communicating to ground stations over the weekend. Nasa said this week that the spacecraft had been working fine before it went behind the red planet. When it reappeared, there was only silence. “Telemetry showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind [Mars],” Nasa said in a statement.

States’ attorneys general argue agency has failed to properly evaluate mifepristone’s safety since initial 2000 approval

Texas and Florida have launched the latest lawsuit seeking to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone, following the US Food and Drug Administration’s recent approval of a new generic version.

In the lawsuit, filed late on Tuesday in federal court in Wichita Falls, Texas, the states’ Republican attorneys general argue that the FDA has failed to thoroughly evaluate the drug’s safety and effectiveness since its initial approval in 2000 and disregarded the risks to the women who take it.

Howlingly funny comedy, jaw-dropping documentaries and astonishing drama … it’s been another fantastic year of TV. Our countdown of the very best continues
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Veteran set decorator Lauri Gaffin has spent a career dressing up films from indie classics to blockbusters. Her new photographic memoir takes us behind the scenes of this ever-changing job – and on the hunt for wolves’ penis bones

Probably the most disgusting online trend of 2025, this has led to pictures of people’s excrement all over the internet. Please make it stop ...

Name: Parasite cleanses.

Age: The earliest written records of what were probably parasitic infections in humans are from Egyptian medicine, between around 3000 and 400BC.

Late-night hosts discussed Fifa’s award to Donald Trump as his administration escalates tensions with Venezuela

Late-night hosts mocked Donald Trump for gleefully accepting the inaugural Fifa peace prize ahead of the World Cup in the US.

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

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some brilliant new paperbacks, from a festive mystery to a kaleidoscopic ode to the animal kingdom

Over 120 years ago, a monumental work recording more than 500 species of tree in Britain and Ireland was published. A new version focuses on the pioneering images it contained

Habba’s resignation comes despite administration’s efforts to keep her in place after court rulings found she was unlawfully serving in the role

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba says she is resigning as top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, she announced on social media.

Habba’s resignation came after district and appellate court rulings which found she was unlawfully serving in the role, a powerful post charged with enforcing federal criminal and civil law.

90,000 people advised to take shelter after 7.5-magnitude quake, with 20 injuries reported

A powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake has shaken north-eastern Japan, injuring more than 20 people and triggering a tsunami of up to 70cm in Pacific coast communities.

The earthquake and tsunami warnings prompted orders for about 90,000 residents to evacuate their homes, although the warnings were later downgraded to advisories.

West African Ecowas forces sent to country after group of soldiers announced dissolution of government on state TV

West African troops were deployed to Benin on Sunday after what the country’s president described as an unsuccessful coup attempt.

Benin’s president, Patrice Talon, said on Sunday that the situation was “totally under control” after security forces acted to end a coup attempt by a group of soldiers who attacked state institutions.

Judiciary says a criminal case has been opened after online images showed a number of unveiled female competitors

Judicial authorities in Iran have arrested two organisers of a marathon held on an island off the country’s southern coast after images emerged showing women taking part in the race without hijabs.

The arrests on Saturday come as the authorities face increasing criticism from ultraconservatives who accuse them of inadequate efforts to enforce a mandatory headscarf law for women amid fears of growing western influence on the Islamic republic.

Italian sweets, Irish smoked fish, honey cakes in Belgium … travel writers choose the stores and local delicacies they make a beeline for when travelling

I fell in love with Belgian snacks when cycling the amateur version of the Tour of Flanders some years ago. The feed stations along the route were crammed with packets of Meli honey waffles and Meli honey cake. I ate so many that I suffered withdrawal symptoms after finishing the last of them at the end of the 167-mile route.

A documentary so damning it surely marks the end for Diddy, and grotesquery of a different kind in a Palme d’Or-winning film. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Amanda, 56, a performance assessor, meets Paul, 53, a networks manager

What were you hoping for?
An adventure, engaging company, good food.

Drone attack that Ukraine blamed on Russia blew hole in painstakingly erected €1.5bn shield meant to allow for final clean-up of 1986 meltdown site

The protective shield over the Chornobyl disaster nuclear reactor in Ukraine, which was hit by a drone in February, can no longer perform its main function of blocking radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has announced.

In February a drone strike blew a hole in the “new safe confinement”, which was painstakingly built at a cost of €1.5bn ($1.75bn) next to the destroyed reactor and then hauled into place on tracks, with the work completed in 2019 by a Europe-led initiative. The IAEA said an inspection last week of the steel confinement structure found the drone impact had degraded the structure.

US and Ukraine to hold third day of discussions in Florida as Emmanuel Macron says there is ‘no mistrust’ between Europe and White House. What we know on day 1,382

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

Ukrainian and US officials will hold a third straight day of talks in Miami on Saturday, with Washington saying the two sides agree that “real progress” would depend on Russia’s willingness to end the war. Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have been meeting top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov and Andrii Hnatov, the chief of staff of Kyiv’s armed forces. “Both parties agreed that real progress toward any agreement depends on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps toward de-escalation and cessation of killings,” said a summary of the talks.

The US and Ukrainian officials “also agreed on the framework of security arrangements and discussed necessary deterrence capabilities to sustain a lasting peace”. The talks in Florida come after Witkoff and Kushner met Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Tuesday to discuss a US plan to end the conflict but the Russian president rejected parts of the proposal and threatened that Russia was “ready” for war if Europe started it.

Emmanuel Macron has said there is “no mistrust” between Europe and the US, a day after a report claimed the French president had warned privately there was a risk Washington could betray Ukraine, reports Oliver Holmes. “Unity between Americans and Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential,” Macron said during a visit to China on Friday. “And I say it again and again, we need to work together.”

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said they held “very constructive” talks with the Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, on Friday over an EU plan to use Russian frozen assets to fund Ukraine, which Belgium has so far refused to endorse. The EC, along with most European governments, prefers a “reparations loan” using Russian state assets immobilised in the European Union due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We agreed that time is of the essence given the current geopolitical situation,” von der Leyen said after the meeting in Brussels. Moscow’s ambassador to Germany, meanwhile, warned that the plan to use frozen Russian assets would have “far-reaching consequences” for the EU. “Any operation with sovereign Russian assets without Russia’s consent constitutes theft,” Sergey Nechaev claimed.

Russian drones struck a house in central Ukraine, killing a 12-year-old boy, officials said, while long-range Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted a Russian port and an oil refinery. In Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, a Russian drone attack overnight to Friday destroyed a house where the boy was killed and two women injured, said the head of the regional military administration, Vladyslav Haivanenko. In Russia, Ukrainian drones attacked a port in the Krasnodar region on the border with Ukraine, sparking a fire at the Temryuk seaport and damaging port infrastructure, officials said. Ukrainian drones also aimed deeper inside Russia, attacking the city of Syzran on the Volga river, said the mayor, Sergei Volodchenkov, without providing more details. Unconfirmed media reports said Ukrainian drones hit an oil refinery in Syzran.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said a Ukrainian drone struck and damaged a high-rise building in Grozny, capital of Russia’s southern Chechnya region, and vowed to retaliate within a week. The drone had caused no casualties, he said on Friday.

Vladimir Putin has told the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, that Russia is ready to continue “uninterrupted” shipments of oil to India, signalling a defiant stance to the US as the two leaders met in Delhi and affirmed that their ties were “resilient to external pressure”. The statement, made on Friday after the annual India-Russia summit, appeared to be directed at western countries – particularly the US – that have attempted to pressure New Delhi into scaling back its ties to Moscow, reports Hannah Ellis-Petersen.

Late-night hosts discussed Hegseth’s deflection of international outrage on to his admirals, Trump’s changed auto standards and new photos of Epstein’s island

Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s renaming of the Institute of Peace, Pete Hegseth’s ongoing Venezuela scandal and a new batch of photos from Epstein Island.

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

Kristi Noem said the list of countries from which travel to the US is prohibited will increase to an unspecified number

• US politics live – latest updates

The US plans to expand the number of countries covered by its travel ban to more than 30, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, has announced.

Noem, in an interview on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle on Thursday evening, was asked to confirm whether the Trump administration would be increasing the number of countries on the travel ban list to 32.

Strike comes amid congressional turmoil over legality of US attacks on suspected drug smugglers

The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks.

Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization”.