Chagossian people would be allowed to fish in area now teeming with life since ban was introduced in 2010

One of the most precious marine reserves in the world, home to sharks, turtles and rare tropical fish, will be opened to some fishing for the first time in 16 years under the UK government’s deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

Allowing non-commercial fishing in the marine protected area (MPA) is seen as an essential part of the Chagossian people’s return to the islands, as the community previously relied on fishing as their main livelihood. But some conservationists have raised the alarm, as nature has thrived in the waters of the Indian Ocean since it was protected from fishing.

Artemis II mission was due to begin as early as next week and astronauts have spent almost two weeks in quarantine

Nasa has postponed its historic mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again, after issues arose during a critical test of its most powerful rocket yet.

The US space agency had planned to launch the Artemis II mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as next week, but announced overnight that it would be delayed until March, without specifying a date.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

• Elon Musk merges SpaceX with artificial intelligence company xAI

UK grocery inflation has dropped to a nine-month low, in welcome news for UK households, and the Bank of England.

Worldpanel by Numerator has reported that like-for-like grocery price inflation eased back to 4.0% in January, the lowest level since April last year.

For most shoppers, January is all about resetting household budgets, and this year was no exception. While grocery sales continue to grow and inflation eased to its lowest level in months, value remained front of mind for many – with own label hitting a record high, accounting for more than half of all grocery spend.

Gold prices have stopped falling overnight. If the froth is removed from the market, gold may again start to offer some signals as to market perceptions of political risk (concerns over the perceived shift in US international standing and risk-averse investors’ questions around the rule of law having motivated some of the initial rise in price).

A burgeoning set of Muslim creatives and intellectuals are thriving amid the backdrop of Zohran Mamdani’s rise. We ask 18 of them about this historic moment in New York City life

Against the backdrop of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral rise is a dynamic scene of Muslim creatives and intellectuals who are helping usher in a new era for New York City. Their prominence represents a rebuke of the ugly Islamophobia that defined the period following 9/11, and is in many ways an outcrop of the mass movement for Palestinian rights forged over the last two years. We ask 18 Muslim New Yorkers to discuss their work and what this moment means.
How Muslim New Yorkers are changing the city’s cultural landscape

So-called ‘reactionary centrist’ pundits proclaimed that there was a global ‘vibe shift’ in favor of the right. They were wrong

Recent exercises in taking stock after one year of Trump 2.0 – for many an eternity of terrifying news and political traumas – tended to leave something out: the fact that, a mere 12 months ago, plenty of pundits (and politicians, for that matter) were instructing us to accept that a global “vibe shift” in favor of the right had taken place. And that, in the face of what supposedly “felt” like a landslide, resistance was pointless and “cringe”.

Well, it doesn’t feel like that today. But understanding why observers not generally in the pro-Trump propaganda business rushed to portray the spirit of the age as effectively far-right is important. A way of thinking occasionally dubbed “reactionary centrism” plays an important role; it could yet again become influential in hindering or at least holding up post-Trump radical reforms which US democracy desperately requires.

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University

• Palace did not sign Everton winger after he had medical

• McNeil’s partner criticises ‘cruel’ football world

Dwight McNeil’s partner has claimed Crystal Palace provided no explanation for pulling out of a move to sign him from Everton on transfer deadline day and accused them of toying with the winger’s mental health.

McNeil stayed at Everton after Palace decided not to proceed with a £20m deal at the last minute despite the 26-year-old having completed his medical and agreed terms on a four-and-a-half-year contract. It is understood the collapse of Jean-Philippe Mateta’s £30m move to Milan, after the France striker failed a medical, prompted Palace to change their offer to an initial loan with an obligation to buy at the end of the season.

Prosecutors summon tech billionaire and company’s ex-CEO for questioning as part of expanded investigation

• Europe live – latest updates

Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.

“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.

Zelenskyy says Putin ‘taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorise people’, as Kyiv hits lows of -20C

More than 1,000 residential buildings in Kyiv were without heating on Tuesday after a massive Russian air attack during one of the coldest nights of the winter, with temperatures in the capital falling to -20C.

Overnight, the Kremlin fired 450 attack drones and more than 70 missiles across the country. The strikes caused damage in five Kyiv districts and injured at least nine people. Flames consumed an apartment on the upper floors of a Kyiv building.

Marius Borg Høiby, 29, pleads not guilty to most serious charges in trial that has embarrassed the royal family

The son of Norway’s crown princess has pleaded not guilty to four counts of rape on the first day of his trial for multiple offences, a legal saga that has embarrassed the royal family and raised questions over domestic abuse in Norway.

Appearing in front of a packed courtroom at Oslo district court on Tuesday morning, Marius Borg Høiby also denied charges including abuse in close relationships and filming women’s genitals without their knowledge.

State resolutions are under-utilized right now and could be a significant mobilizing factor for the Democratic party

The Democrats hold in their hands constitutional means yet unused to check the Trump regime’s ruthless attempt to impose a police state. That the Democrats thus far have failed to create this oppositional political center of gravity may be because the method has been lost to history, not wielded effectively for 113 years. Focused on the ICE outrages, however, this political instrument can be revived in the 16 states where the Democrats control the governorships and both chambers of the state legislatures, as well as introduced in states with mixed power.

Before the enactment of the 17th amendment in 1913, state legislators and not the voters selected US senators and regarded them frequently as their agents. It was a common practice for legislatures to send what were called “orders of instruction” urging senators and sometimes members of the House of Representatives to take a particular stand on important issues. The orders were not binding, but had significant force given the power of legislatures and political parties to decide who would hold Senate seats. These resolutions were variously called instructions, petitions and memorials.

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to the Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist

Advocates call for further disclosures after Trump’s justice department released more than 3m files last week

The release of about 3m Jeffrey Epstein investigative files has failed to quell outrage over justice department officials’ handling of these disclosures, with advocates claiming potentially millions of documents are still being withheld.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was required to disclose all investigative files by 19 December under The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). While the justice department did release some documents on that date, last week’s disclosure came nearly six weeks after this deadline.

Bezos has not publicly responded to several letters sent by Post staffers urging him to curb potential layoffs

While Washington Post employees remain in the dark about an impending round of cuts that could dramatically reshape the publication, the man that many hoped could soften or stop the blow, owner Jeff Bezos, has remained silent.

So far, three staff-organized letters sent by Post employees to Bezos imploring him to protect the Post’s robust coverage have gone unanswered.

Farmers oppose the reintroduction of brown bears in Max Keegan’s immersive and beautiful documentary that resists snap judgments

There are two endangered species native to the Pyrenees featured in this immersive and rather beautiful documentary shot in Ariège, southwestern France, by British film-maker Max Keegan. The first is the brown bear, which was hunted out of existence in the region by the early 2000s. Now the bears are back, around 70 of them, thanks to efforts by conservationists backed by the European Union. The film opens with footage of a 200kg delivery by helicopter, lowering a crate on to the mountainside out of which a bear comes thundering out.

The airmail delivery is necessary because of local opposition – farmers are barricading the roads, painting “no to bears” on the tarmac, saying that bears kill their livestock. Shepherd Yves, 63 – flat cap, cigarette dangling from his mouth – is against the reintroduction of the bears. He is training Lisa, a shepherd in her 20s, but their way of life is the other endangered species, with few young people joining the industry.

In the professional era, there is a common denominator that suggests France and Ireland might be worth backing

All that performance data, all those fixture permutations. All the gym sessions and marginal selections. Not to mention all those finger-in-the-wind tournament previews. But what if identifying the winner of the 2026 Six Nations basically involves overlooking all of that – and is shaped by an underlying factor so simple that it is staring everybody in the face?

Interested in finding out what this magic bullet might be? OK, here goes. Without cheating (or consulting your new friend Monsieur AI), spot the common link in the following sequence of years: 2022, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002, 1998, 1994, 1990, 1984, 1981, 1978, 1975, 1972, 1969 and 1967? Tricky, isn’t it? Even years, odd years, irregular gaps … if you were a statistician seeking a mathematical pattern you would be sat there gazing at the numbers for a long time.

Having rubbished the health ministry’s figures, they are now saying what matters is the civilian-to-militant ratio. See that for what it is

Israel’s official and unofficial spokespeople are in damage control mode after a senior military official admitted last week that Israel accepts the death toll published by Gaza’s health ministry, which currently stands at more than 70,000. This comes after two years in which Israel and its supporters took every opportunity to disparage and dismiss the health ministry’s figures, arguing that they were overblown or fabricated by Hamas.

That prestigious list of repudiators, to name just a few, includes spokespeople for Israel’s government and military, then-US president Joe Biden, US Congress, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chief Jonathan Greenblatt, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and any number of talking heads at influential thinktanks and policy centres. Adding credibility to their denials were prominent media outlets around the world that often described Gaza’s health ministry as “Hamas-run”, thereby encouraging readers and viewers to treat the death toll with suspicion.

Ben Reiff is deputy editor at +972 magazine

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Will Arsenal regret Nwaneri move? Have Sunderland traded brilliantly again? We run the rule over every team’s business

The foot injury sustained by Mikel Merino made the last few days of the window a bit more interesting for Arsenal supporters, although in the end there was no big signing. Deadline-day links to Sandro Tonali of Newcastle and Leon Goretzka came to nothing, and Arsenal missed out to their north London rivals Tottenham on the 18-year-old Scotland striker James Wilson. They did sign the England Under-19 defender Jaden Dixon from Stoke but will Mikel Arteta regret allowing Ethan Nwaneri to join Marseille on loan with Merino poised to be out for at least two months? Ed Aarons

The actor says her historic 2002 best actress Oscar did not open doors in Hollywood, as studios remained wary of stories led by black performers

Halle Berry, the only black woman to have won the best actress Oscar, says her 2002 victory “didn’t necessarily change the course of my career”.

Speaking to The Cut’s Monica Corcoran Harel to promote new drama Crime 101, Berry said that she anticipated the victory, for Lee Daniels’ Monster’s Ball, would mean “there was going to be a script truck showing up outside my front door”.

Renowned mixed media artist discusses her new exhibition and how it speaks to her personal experience and a wider concept of technology

With just 13 pieces – 11 art objects and two video installations – artist Sarah Sze’s new showcase at Gagosian Beverly Hills packs a punch into a relatively pared back show. The paintings themselves are substantial – as large as 8ft by 16 ft – and their intricacy compels lengthy gazes. Furthermore, the artist has impeccably arranged the space, conjuring an impactful and holistic experience from start to finish. “I’m always interested in talking with architecture and planning out how you can have an experience that unravels over time,” Sze told me via video interview.

Long known as a masterful practitioner of collage, Sze here draws on landscapes as a general means of organizing the space on her canvas, but then radically alters them to offer experiences that at once feel both subtly familiar and utterly fresh.

As record number of seafarers and cargo ships are abandoned in war zones, crew members stranded in a Black Sea port have shared their dramatic testimony with the Guardian

On the night of 16 July last year, Gaurav Joshi, one of the crew working on a cargo ship stranded at a port in southern Ukraine, was on patrol. The crew of the MT Nathan had found themselves abandoned in a war zone for the past three months after a dispute between the ship’s owners.

It had been a rough few months for Joshi and the 14 other crew, who came from India, Egypt and Turkey. They often spent sleepless nights listening to the distant sounds of explosions caused by Russian bombing and the Ukrainian air defence. “Some nights we could even see the lights and fire in the sky,” says Joshi.

Outcome of meeting uncertain as ‘erratic, temperamental’ presidents could be either ‘confrontational’ or amicable

One month ago, a White House meeting between Donald Trump and his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, would have been unthinkable.

The US raid on Caracas to capture the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, brought already heated relations between them to a boil, with Trump warning the leftist Colombian leader “could be next”, claiming Petro was a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States”.

The last time the Seahawks and Patriots met in a Super Bowl, a dramatic interception by an undrafted rookie changed the history of both franchises

When the New England Patriots faced off against the Denver Broncos in this season’s AFC championship, Malcolm Butler was at home in Houston. He had considered attending the game in Denver or watching on TV in a No 21 Patriots jersey, which he wore in Foxboro for four seasons through the mid-to-late 2010s, but feared he might jinx the outcome. In the end, it was just him and his nerves for company.

Just as Butler was feeling somewhat at peace with that setup, and the Patriots’ prospects, a bad omen intruded: His wifi glitched, delaying the broadcast as the Patriots clung on to a three-point lead in the fourth-quarter. “I was lagging bad,” Butler tells the Guardian. “But I did get the wifi back working. And as soon as I did my phone was ringing like crazy, so I knew something was going right. It’s crazy that we’re back.”

Social media suggests that the combination is a superfood for tired plants. The reality is mould, gnats and the sour smell of rot

The problem
Once you tumble down a houseplant rabbit hole online, suddenly everything in your kitchen starts to look like fertiliser. Using oats and Epsom salts sounds wholesome, thrifty; breakfast for you, breakfast for your plants. But does it help?

The hack
The idea is that oats break down and enrich the soil, while Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) top up magnesium to keep leaves green and glossy. Social media says a spoonful of each will pep up tired plants without the need for proper feed.

There used to be hundreds of pie and mash shops in London. Now there are barely more than 30. Can social media attention and a push for protected status ensure their survival?

Outside it’s raining so hard that the sandwich board sign for BJ’s pie and mash (“All pies are made on the premises”) is folded up inside. The pavement along Barking Road in Plaistow is a blur through the front windows and deserted, and there are only two customers in the shop. Another sign – this one on the counter – says “CASH ONLY”.

Card machine companies often tell proprietor Nathan Jacobi that he’s missing out by not catering to customers who favour cashless transactions. “They’re the ones missing out,” he says. “Cos they ain’t getting pie and mash.”

Valdis Dombrovskis says bloc is ‘ready to engage’ amid meetings with ministers including Rachel Reeves

• Business live – latest updates

The European Commission would be “open-minded” to discussing closer trade ties with the UK, including a customs union, a senior EU official has said.

The EU economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, told the BBC that the European bloc was “ready to engage with an open mind” when asked about a customs union.