Officials say the Birch nightclub had contravened multiple safety regulations and that the basement had no fire safety exit
Four members of the same family on their first holiday to Goa were among the 25 killed in a deadly fire at a nightclub in the popular Indian tourist state on Saturday night.
Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds fake agencies using the social media platform to dupe Kenyans into paying for nonexistent jobs in Europe
Lilian, a 35-year-old Kenyan living in Qatar, was scrolling on TikTok in April when she saw posts from a recruitment agency offering jobs overseas. The Kenya-based WorldPath House of Travel, with more than 20,000 followers on the social media platform, promised hassle-free work visas for jobs across Europe.
“They were showing work permits they’d received, envelopes, like: ‘We have Europe visas already,’” Lilian recalls.
There is a bread and circuses feel to this scandal. A wise public would see red flags; instead it sees entertainment
One upside of adversity is art, inspiring cultural output that seeks to process and channel suffering. “I’ll say one thing about Thatcher, some fantastic songs were written during her reign,” said the Irish singer Christy Moore once – before belting out a goosebump-raising rendition of Ordinary Man by Peter Hames, a song about the 1980s recession. That is, so far, the only upside of the publication of Olivia Nuzzi’s book American Canto, an affliction to journalism, politics and publishing: there has been some fantastic writing since it all kicked off.
Masterful reviews. Very funny commentary. Scathing analysis. But first, a summary of events for readers of this column, most of whom I assume are well-adjusted, offline people, with better things to do with their time than follow what can only be described as a niche beef. Nuzzi is (or perhaps was, keep reading) a celebrated US political journalist who had a “digital affair” with Robert F Kennedy Jr while he was running for president, broke all sorts of journalistic rules while doing so, and was fired from her job at New York magazine. RFK Jr went on to become Donald Trump’s anti-vaccine health secretary, Nuzzi has published a book about the whole affair, and her ex-fiance Ryan Lizza – another political journalist – has been dripfeeding revelations about how she cheated on him, and a litany of other personal and professional transgressions. There are no heroes here.
A rich, buttery crumb, a hint of bittersweet coffee, a spot of icing and a cherry on top … better gift them before you scoff them
These festive cookies are inspired by The Nutcracker’s Land of Sweets sequence, in which coffee and sugar plums are two of the flavours used to conjure a fanciful world of decadent diversion. Anything from a hard candy to a candied fruit can qualify as a “sugar plum” and, in the case of these cookies, the sugar plum is represented by the amarena cherry. Coffee’s bitterness balances the sweetness of the fruit and the rich butteriness of the dough, while the oat flour adds a dash of shortbread-like delicateness.
AB InBev unveils its ‘de-alcoholisation’ annex at Magor site as demand for once ‘lousy’ low- or no-alcohol beer rises
A “de-alcoholisation facility” sounds like somewhere to check in after a boozy Christmas, but in the new annexe of a brewery in south Wales they are extracting hangovers from beer.
With demand for no-alcohol and low-alcohol (“nolo”) beer taking off in the UK, the hi-tech brewing apparatus enables the plant at Magor, which produces more than 1bn pints of Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois a year, to make the increasingly popular teetotal versions too.
More than 1,000 words used as far back as 325BC to be collected for insight into past linguistic landscape
It is not likely to be a hefty volume because the vast majority of the material has been lost in the mists of time. But the remnants of a language spoken in parts of the UK and Ireland 2,000 years ago are being collected for what is being billed as the first complete dictionary of ancient Celtic.
The dictionary will not be huge because relatively few words survive, but experts from Aberystwyth University say they expect they will end up with more than 1,000 words.
We can move from defensive crouch to position of strength but only if we use the economic cards we have against US coercion
Europe is on a trajectory towards nothing less than “civilisational erasure”, the Trump administration claims in its extraordinary new National Security Strategy, a document that blames European integration and “activities of the European Union that undermine political liberty and sovereignty” for some of the continent’s deepest problems.
Everybody should have seen it coming after Washington’s humiliating 28-point plan for Ukraine. JD Vance’s shocking Munich speech in February, in which he suggested that Europe’s democracies were not worth defending was an early red flag. But the new words still land as a shock. The security document is the clearest signal yet of how brutally and transactionally Washington wants to engage with the continent. It marks another phase in Trump’s attempt to reshape Europe in his ideological image while at the same time abandoning it militarily. US policy, the paper says, should enable Europe to “take primary responsibility for its own defence”.
Georg Riekeles is associate director and Varg Folkman a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre
While country’s return to global stage has filled many Syrians with pride, domestically old grievances threaten efforts to rebuild the state
Lying in bed recovering after his latest surgery, Ayman Ali retells the story of Syria’s revolution through his wounds. His right eye, lost in an attack on a rebel observation post he was manning in 2012, is covered by yellow medical tape. Propped against the wall is a cane he uses to walk, after a rocket attack in 2014 left him with a limp.
For 14 years, Ali dreamed of freedom and of justice. A year after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad, he has his freedom but not his justice. The man he was dreaming of holding accountable – a member of his extended family who was a part of an Assad militia – had already fled the country by the time Ali returned to his home in Damascus.
From digging trenches and building walls, to learning survival skills, Poland is increasingly aware of risks posed by its eastern neighbours
Cezary Pruszko still remembers the civil defence training of his Communist-era schooldays – map reading, survival skills, and a sense that the danger of war was real and ever present.
“My generation grew up with those threats. You didn’t have to explain why this mattered,” said the 60-year-old Pruszko, as he refreshed those skills at an army base outside Warsaw on a recent frosty Saturday morning. With dozens of other Polish civilians, he toured a bomb shelter, fitted gas masks and practised striking sparks from a flint to start a fire.
Painting of Enlightenment figure, whose constitution for the island inspired revolutionaries in US, is up for auction
Thirty years ago, a painting by the British artist Sir William Beechey was sold as “portrait of a man”.
The anonymous buyer, however, knew precisely who the unnamed man in the picture was: Pascal Paoli, the 18th-century Corsican independence leader and icon of the Enlightenment.
Until she reached her 50s, the actor was a constant presence on stage and screen. Then the offers disappeared. Now, as her renaissance continues, she is taking on Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals
After six decades as an actor, Patricia Hodge says she still gets nervous before a play opens. “I think nerves are always the fear of the unknown,” she says. “Particularly with comedy, where there is no knowing how the audience will react: you’ve got to surf that.”
We meet on a sunny winter morning at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond, south-west London, where Hodge is about to appear in The Rivals, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Richard B Sheridan play, in which she plays the ironic – sorry, iconic – Mrs Malaprop. “You’re sort of in a tunnel, your entire being is focused on this,” she says. She was here in rehearsals until 11pm the night before. Today, she is sitting at a table with a large coffee. Does she enjoy this bit, the putting together of a play? “I think it’s love-hate actually. The process is really why I do theatre.” She says she finds it energising, “but it’s also very trying, and you just don’t want to be left with your own limitations”.
He is the prickly, hotheaded journalist who uncovered the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and torture at Abu Ghraib prison. Making Cover-Up, a film about his astonishing life and countless scoops, was never going to be easy
One morning last month, Seymour Hersh set off to buy a newspaper. The reporter walked for 30 minutes, covered six blocks of his neighbourhood, Georgetown in Washington DC, and didn’t see a single sign of life. No newsstands on street corners selling the glossies and the dailies. No self-service kiosk where you can slide in a dollar and pull out a paper. “Finally, I found a drugstore that had two copies of the New York Times in the back,” Hersh recalls. He bought one for himself. He can’t help but wonder whether anybody bought the second.
Hersh was born in Chicago in 1937, the year the Hindenburg airship blew up and the aviator Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific. That makes him a man of hot metal, the media’s ancient mariner, with metaphorical newsprint on his fingers and a cuttings file that reads like an index of American misadventure. Hersh has been a staff writer at the New York Times and the New Yorker. He’s broken stories on Vietnam, Watergate, Gaza and Ukraine. But the free press is in crisis, newspapers are in flux and investigative journalism may be facing a deadline of its own. “I don’t think I could do now what I did 30, 40, 50 years ago,” says the now 88-year-old. “The outlets aren’t there. The money’s not there. So I don’t know where we all are right now.”
Donald Trump has said Volodymyr Zelenskyy “isn’t ready” to sign off on a US-authored peace proposal aimed at ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, at the end of three days of talks between Washington and Kyiv in Florida.
“I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal, that was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he hasn’t,” Trump claimed as he spoke with reporters on Sunday night.
Escalation comes after Thai soldier was killed and four others wounded in clashes, more than a month after Donald Trump oversaw ceasefire agreement
Thailand has launched airstrikes along its disputed border with Cambodia, after both countries accused one another of breaching a ceasefire deal brokered by Donald Trump.
Thailand’s military said airstrikes were launched after one of its soldiers was killed and four others wounded in clashes along the countries’ tense border on Monday morning. Thailand’s air force said it was using aircraft to strike military targets in several areas, accusing Cambodia of mobilising heavy weaponry and repositioning combat units.
UN committee raised concerns over government policies including scrapping the Māori Health Authority and funding cuts for Indigenous services
A United Nations committee has warned New Zealand is at serious risk of weakening Māori rights and entrenching disparities for the Indigenous population, in its most critical review of the country’s record on racial discrimination.
Last month, the UN’s committee for the convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (CERD) examined New Zealand’s record as part of its eight year review cycle for signatories to the convention.
China’s ambassador summoned over alleged weekend incident that saw Chinese J-15 fighter aircraft twice train their radar on Japanese F-15s
The diplomatic dispute between Japan and China appeared to deepen over the weekend after Chinese military planes were accused of locking their radar on to Japanese fighter jets near the Okinawa islands.
Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, vowed to “respond calmly and resolutely” to the alleged incident, saying her country would take all possible measures to strengthen maritime and airspace surveillance and closely monitor Chinese military activities. The country’s foreign ministry also summoned China’s ambassador on Sunday. China’s government has roundly rejected Japan’s accusations, instead lodging its own counterprotests.
The singer posted a photo of the pair smiling cheek to cheek and a video of them eating sushi together while in Japan
Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau have launched their relationship on Instagram, after the singer posted a photo of the pair smiling cheek to cheek and a video of them eating sushi together while in Japan.
Perry’s post appeared to confirm the pair are in a relationship, after months of speculation about a possible romance between her and the former Canadian prime minister.
Buffalo score three touchdowns in final five minutes
Patrick Mahomes intercepted three times in defeat
Indianapolis lose QB Daniel Jones to torn achilles
The Buffalo Bills (9-4) rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Cincinnati Bengals (4-9). Josh Allen threw for three touchdowns and ran for one, and Christian Benford scored the go-ahead TD on a 63-yard interception return. Allen’s 40-yard TD rush broke his record for the longest by a Bills quarterback. Buffalo flipped the game with big plays on defense on a snowy afternoon. Benford and defensive end AJ Epenesa intercepted Joe Burrow on consecutive plays from scrimmage, leading to the Bills scoring three touchdowns in a span of 4:20 in the fourth quarter.
Home Office drive to stop small boats crossing Channel is handing more power to people smugglers, report finds
The UK’s policy to stop asylum seekers from crossing the Channel in small boats has led to an increase in violence, deaths and smuggler control, but has not deterred arrivals, according to a report by human rights organisations.
The 176-page report from Humans for Rights Network, includes contributions from 17 refugee and human rights organisations operating in northern France and six in the UK.
Exclusive: Justice secretary to announce measures aimed at countering illicit finance as well as bribery in public services
The UK will no longer be a haven for dirty money and dictators’ laundered assets, David Lammy is to promise as he announces a new anti-corruption strategy also aimed at tackling bribery and other misconduct across government and public services.
Setting out the plan in a speech in London on Monday, Lammy, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, will announce a series of initiatives including extra funding for an elite anti-corruption police unit.
Gunmen abducted 315 pupils and staff last month from St Mary’s school in Niger state as part of spate of kidnappings
Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 100 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school last month, a UN source and local media said on Sunday, though the fate of another 165 students and staff thought to remain in captivity remained unclear.
In November 315 students and staff were kidnapped from St Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger state, as the country buckled under a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Boko Haram abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok.
Forward may be dropped from Champions League squad
Saudi clubs set to renew interest during transfer window
Mohamed Salah could be omitted from Liverpool’s Champions League trip to Milan to play Inter on Tuesday after his outspoken attack on the club and Arne Slot.
Salah’s future at Anfield is in question after the incendiary interview he gave at Leeds on Saturday, in which he accused the club of throwing him under a bus. The 33-year-old also claimed he no longer has a relationship with Slot, who omitted the forward from his starting lineup for a third game in succession.
Dodgy character names, zero subtlety, a dubious approach to female roles … Russell T Davies’s show about fishfolk is entertaining – but feels like a wasted opportunity to make genuinely great TV
The fishmen cometh. Or, to put it another way – The War Between the Land and the Sea, the long-awaited Doctor Who spin-off from Russell T Davies concentrating on the adventures of Unit rather than the double-hearted man from Gallifrey, is finally here.
RTD stalwart Russell Tovey stars as Barclay, an everyman figure who soon – two excellent puns incoming – finds himself out of his depth, nay a fish out of water, as he is forced to take the lead in the geopolitical crisis that surrounds him. Barclay is a low-level clerk with Unit who, through the kind of bureaucratic snafu that you may in your salad days have believed was confined to fictional romps aimed largely at children over the festive period until age and experience poured slugs into them, ends up being part of the operation sent to deal with the discovery by a group of Spanish fishers of – well, fishmen. Fishfolk.
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