Countries’ drop in scores in annual table comes amid ‘worrying trend’ of backsliding in established democracies
The UK and US have sunk to new lows in a global index of corruption, amid a “worrying trend” of democratic institutions being eroded by political donations, cash for access and state targeting of campaigners and journalists.
Experts and businesspeople rated 182 countries based on their perception of corruption levels in the public sector to compile a league table that was bookended by Denmark at the top with the lowest levels of corruption and South Sudan at the bottom.
A succulent, richly seasoned lamb pie filled with honey carrots and almonds, followed by a cardomom- and orange-spiked desert
There is little as pleasing to cook in the depths of the winter as a pot of enticingly fragrant, slow-braised meat. A shoulder of lamb is one of my favourite cuts; you, or a friendly butcher, will need to trim away its excess fat, a job that will reward you with an exquisite flavour that marries beautifully with bold spicing. Here, we travel to Morocco, with sweetly aromatic ginger, turmeric and cinnamon, and follow that with cardamom, cream and rhubarb for pudding. A sumptuous, colourful feast to stave off any February blues.
Podcast by Adam Batty and BBC 6 Music DJ Afrodeutsche follows the leads to Leeds
The hunt for clues about the life of the masked rapper MF Doom had taken Adam Batty to some strange places, none more so than a remote-control car shop in the market town of Otley, West Yorkshire.
Rumour had it that Doom, who died in Leeds in 2020, had spent thousands in the shop. Other sightings placed him in the indie venue the Brudenell Social Club.
MF DOOM: Long Island to Leeds is available on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 10 February.
With Britain sliding down the index of transparency and voters angry, the looming election bill fails to solve the key issue: the toxicity of political donations
With grimly apt timing, the annual Transparency International (TI) corruption perceptions index lands today. The news is not good. The world is growing more corrupt as it becomes less democratic. As for us, Britain is sliding downwards on the perceptions scale, seen at its lowest so far for probity.
Once ranked in the top 10, at eighth place in 2017, we are now in 20th position. The UK’s score for corruption in government and public office has worsened according to this year’s Economist Intelligence Unit expert assessment. This index was sampled between January 2024 and September 2025 – before the current Peter Mandelson scandal – but it absorbs the last decade of misgovernance, fraudulent Brexit electioneering and Boris Johnson misdeeds. The chances are that next year’s ratings will take us further down this slimy slope. Unless, that is, prompt and radical action is taken to put up guardrails and close loopholes to protect against corruption of all kinds.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Monday 30 April, ahead of May elections join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat is Labour from both the Green party and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party? Book tickets here or at guardian.live
Christopher Duddy was shooting a film in Hawaii when disaster struck. For 28 hours he choked on fumes near a lava lake, fighting to get to safety
The 1993 erotic thriller Sliver should have ended differently: Zeke, played by William Baldwin, was scripted to fly a helicopter towards an active volcano, after Sharon Stone’s character, Carly, reveals she’s the killer. The pilot, Craig Hosking, had been tasked with flying low over Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano, accompanied by the director of photography, Mike Benson, and his assistant Christopher Duddy, to film the bubbling lava and white plumes of smoke escaping from the Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent. It was a clear day on the Big Island when Duddy watched a corkscrew trail form in the smoke behind the helicopter, and he remembers thinking: “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this.”
It was November 1992, and a big storm was due to hit the area, so they were shooting as much footage as they could along the coast, capturing the rainforest and brilliant blue ocean shimmering against the black lava of the volcano, before the weather disrupted production. But as they dipped over Puʻu ʻŌʻō for a second time, the helicopter’s engine failed. Their visibility faded as thick smoke engulfed them. Duddy jolted his eyes away from the camera monitors towards the open doors and saw that they were heading straight for a cliff. There was a loud crash as the rotor sheared off on impact and the helicopter went into freefall.
Israel’s security cabinet has approved plans that pave the way for more settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory
A White House official has reiterated Donald Trump’s opposition towards Israel annexing the West Bank, after Israeli plans were announced that would pave the way for more settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The measures, announced on Sunday, included allowing Jewish Israelis to buy West Bank land directly, and extending greater Israeli control over areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises power. It was unclear when the new rules, approved by Israel’s security cabinet, would take effect but they do not require further approval.
Other countries benefit from the Trump brain drain as administration wages war on academia and research
Wali Malik no longer has to worry that a rightwing bureaucrat – or influencer – will decide his research is “woke”.
He doesn’t have to fear government retaliation for speaking his mind or following the science wherever it may lead. And like others who have left a polarized United States for the calmer pastures of Austria, he need not fear his lab being decimated because the president decided he wants to deport the people who work there.
The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has defended the actions of police at a rally against Isaac Herzog’s visit, after video footage emerged showing officers repeatedly punching a number of protesters.
The premier on Tuesday rejected suggestions his own anti-protest restrictions had created what he deemed to be an “impossible situation” for police dealing with thousands of protesters outside Sydney’s Town Hall.
As Team GB’s Mia Brookes stood at the top of a 150ft‑high ramp before her final jump of the big air competition, she had the pounding heavy metal of Pantera blasting her ears, and the smell of an Olympic medal in her nostrils.
To grab it, though, the snowboarding sensation knew she would have to land a trick she had never attempted before on snow – and one so dangerous that she feared it would put her in hospital.
Head coach says he expected backlash after taking role
I’m not a massive name and have a different character’
Liam Rosenior has opened up on the ridicule directed at him since he became Chelsea’s head coach, saying he expected the backlash and revealing it has affected his family.
Speaking with honesty and positivity, the 41-year-old was keen to stress that he will not allow the discussion around his personality, looks and coaching background to stop him from doing his job. Rosenior has said previously that he knows “a lot of people in this country have been laughing at me” since his appointment as Enzo Maresca’s replacement last month.
Fellow athletes defend friend after president’s attack
Chloe Kim and Eileen Gu have weighed in on Donald Trump’s attack on Hunter Hess after the freeskier said he was ambivalent about representing the US during the president’s immigration crackdown.
“I think in moments like these, it is really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another for all that’s going on,” said Kim, the two-time Olympic gold medalist whose parents are South Korean immigrants and who has faced racism throughout her career.
Our current approach to mental health labelling and diagnosis has brought benefits. But as a practising doctor, I am concerned that it may be doing more harm than good
Someoneis shot, and almost dies; the fragility of life is intimately revealed to him. He goes on to have flashbacks of the event, finds that he can no longer relax or enjoy himself. He is agitated and restless. His relationships suffer, then wither; he is progressively disturbed by intrusive memories of the event.
This could be read as a description of many patients I’ve seen in clinic and in the emergency room over the years in my work as a doctor: it’s recognisably someone suffering what has in recent decades been called PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. But it isn’t one of my patients. It’s a description of a character in the 7,000-year-old Indian epic The Ramayana; Indian psychiatrist Hitesh Sheth uses it as an example of the timelessness of certain states of mind. Other ancient epics describe textbook cases of what we now call “generalised anxiety disorder”, which is characterised by excessive fear and rumination, loss of focus, and inability to sleep. Yet others describe what sounds like suicidal depression, or devastating substance addiction.
The great topmost sheet of the mass, that where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of travelling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning … Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one.
After a reckless shopping spree, I ditched contactless payments and bank cards to see how far £200 cash in hand would get me – and if I could improve my spending habits
If I’m lucky, I can just about squeeze a £20 note into the back of my phone case, which holds the device I reflexively tap to pay for almost everything. But this week was different. After a reckless coffee-and-clothing spending spree made a mighty dent in my bank account, I decided I needed to take action. Self-control was one option, but another more drastic route was blunt-force restriction. I would ditch contactless payments, along with debit and credit cards. Instead, I would spend a week relying solely on cash.
After subtracting the lavish lattes and Asos deliveries that had massively inflated my average weekly spend, I allowed myself £180 for the basics, including food and travel. For safety, I gave myself an extra £20. The first task was to take out £200 in cash from the ATM. But what the hell was my pin number? Thanks to contactless capabilities, I hadn’t used this all-important combination of digits in more than a year. Googling how to find it, I discovered I’d have to wait three to five working days to get a letter reminding me of it in the post. This wouldn’t do. I decided to head to my local bank to explain my predicament.
Celestial spectacle will be at its most impressive on 28 February, when Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will align across the sky
Space enthusiasts are in for a treat at the end of this month as six planets will appear close together in the night sky.
The phenomenon, known as a planet parade or planetary alignment, occurs when at least four or five planets can be seen altogether, according to Nasa. On 28 February, stargazers will have the chance to spot Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune aligned closely across the sky – making this a rare planetary display.
Bithumb has apologised for staff error that sent customers 620,000 bitcoins instead of 620,000 Korean won, equivalent to a few hundred US dollars
South Korea’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange is scrambling to recover more than $40bn of cryptocurrency after accidentally crediting customers with 620,000 bitcoins during a promotional event last week.
Bithumb said it had corrected most of the mistaken credits, but that about 13bn won ($9m) remained unrecovered after some recipients sold or withdrew the funds before the error was detected.
A luxury Chinese sedan gifted to Fiji is the latest in a string of vehicles donated by foreign countries to deepen partnerships and seek influence in the region
At a ceremony in January, a shiny black luxury sedan rolled into the leafy, rain-soaked ground of Fiji’s state house. It was a gift from China to the Pacific nation’s president, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, who thanked Beijing for the “beautiful limousine”.
The vehicle given was a Hongqi or “Red Flag” car, the same brand used by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, during military parades.
President says Gordie Howe Bridge will open only when US is ‘fully compensated’ – and makes bizarre hockey claim
As Democrats prepare to force a vote in the US House this week on Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, the president posted a lengthy diatribe on his social media platform in which he threatened to block a bridge connecting the US and Canada and made a bizarre false claim that increased trade between Canada and China would include a ban on Canadians playing ice hockey.
Trump began his latest screed against the US’s second-largest trading partner by claiming that “everyone knows, the Country of Canada has treated the United States very unfairly for decades”.
Report prepared by Munich Security Conference warns of ‘suicide of a superpower’ under Trump – key US politics stories from Monday 9 February at a glance
Europe has come to the painful realisation that it needs to be more assertive and more militarily independent from an authoritarian US administration that no longer shares a commitment to liberal democratic norms and values, a report prepared by the Munich Security Conference asserts.
Polling commissioned for the report shows Europeans are increasingly willing to operate without US leadership and say it is no longer necessary.
Officials say rescuers searching for lone survivor after latest attack on what Pentagon says are suspected drug smugglers
The US military’s Southern Command, which oversee operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced that it carried out another deadly strike on Monday, killing two suspected drug smugglers in the eastern Pacific.
The statement said that the latest in what legal experts have called a series of extrajudicial killings by the Pentagon was carried out “at the direction of” the Florida-based combat unit’s new commander, Gen Francis L Donovan, who was sworn in at a Pentagon ceremony last Thursday. Donovan takes over after a US navy admiral, Alvin Holsey, chose to retire over reported disagreements over the boat-strike policy.
Ukraine says deal paves way for ‘large-scale joint projects’ while separately Kyiv opens exports of its locally made weaponry. What we know on day 1,448
Police arrest and use pepper spray on people demonstrating against the visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who is in Australia until 12 February in response to the Bondi beach terrorist attack in December. The violent and chaotic scenes in Sydney came after thousands gathered lawfully near the Town Hall on Monday evening, before attempting to march to state parliament in defiance of a NSW law that effectively bans protesters from marching in designated areas
Fathers of Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, who died after a night out at the Nana backpackers hostel in 2024, say court decision is ‘absolute injustice’
The families of two Melbourne teenagers who died after drinking methanol-laced alcohol in Laos say they have been blindsided by news the workers responsible for serving the drinks received fines of just $185.
Bianca Jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, both 19, were killed by methanol poisoning along with four other tourists after a night out at the Nana backpackers hostel in Vang Vieng, a popular tourist destination in Laos, in November 2024.
Former nanny Scarlett Pavlovich filed suit in three US states alleging author assaulted her in New Zealand in 2022
Federal judges have dismissed three lawsuits accusing the bestselling fantasy author Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting his children’s nanny in New Zealand four years ago.
Scarlett Pavlovich filed a lawsuit against Gaiman and his wife, Amanda Palmer, in Wisconsin in February 2025, accusing Gaiman of multiple sexual assaults while she worked as the family’s nanny in 2022. She filed lawsuits against Palmer in Massachusetts and in New York on the same day she filed the Wisconsin action.
Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone star died aged 71 in January after being rushed to hospital due to breathing difficulties
Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy-winning actor and beloved star of the series Schitt’s Creek and the 1990 hit movie Home Alone, died from a blood clot in her lungs, her death certificate revealed Monday.
The death certificate released by the Los Angeles county medical examiner’s office also listed rectal cancer as an underlying cause.
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