Daily orforglipron tablets led to greater weight loss than semaglutide tablets, offering potential oral alternative to Wegovy and Mounjaro
A new daily pill could be a more effective GLP-1 tablet for weight loss, according to a clinical trial that may pave the way for a non-injection alternative to Wegovy and Mounjaro.
The drug, called orforglipron and manufactured by Eli Lilly, is prescribed for type 2 diabetes and targets the same GLP-1 receptors as oral semaglutide. Like semaglutide, it lowers blood sugar levels, slows digestion and suppresses appetite. However, unlike semaglutide tablets, it does not need to be taken on an empty stomach.
At least 10 FBI employees connected to an investigation of Donald Trump have reportedly been dismissed following revelations that the agency subpoenaed personal records of current FBI director Kash Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in the years before Trump returned to office.
The ousters, reported by CBS News and CNN, were linked to the federal investigation led by former justice department special counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that were found at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort after his first term.
With tech bros investing in vast underground homes to shield them from future horrors, a slew of ‘bunker-buster’ dramas like Paradise and Silo are asking: do they know something we don’t?
Sam Altman’s got one – although Mark Zuckerberg’s is, apparently, bigger. Peter Thiel’s is described as “mega” and located in New Zealand. These days, a doomsday bunker (or, in Elon Musk’s case, an “apocalypse resort”) is de rigueur for any self-respecting billionaire – enough to make you wonder if they know something we don’t.
A slew of recent dramas suggests that we are fascinated by such impressive underground real estate. Most audacious is Paradise on Disney+, in which tech-billionaire Samantha Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) funds a staggeringly elaborate building project under the not-so-subtle codename “Versailles”. Unlike Clive Owen’s Andy Ronson in A Murder at the End of the World, saving a few hand-picked individuals isn’t enough for this girl-boss-cum-tech-bro. Instead, Redmond has gone a step further, building “the world’s largest underground city”, an ersatz all-American suburb, accommodating 25,000 people while a climate catastrophe plays out above their heads.
The US has lost factory jobs amid promises of a tariff-led renaissance
Workers at Whirlpool, the US’s largest appliance manufacturer and a champion of Donald Trump’s tariff policies, are criticizing the company for cutting jobs at an Iowa plant while bolstering production in Mexico.
The job cuts at Whirlpool come as the company has continued to support the Trump administration’s trade policies and claimed they will help bolster US manufacturing. Trump’s trade policies appear to have done little for US manufacturing so far. The US has lost 83,000 factory jobs since Trump took office in January 2025.
Will US intelligence learn its lessons from the Iraq war, and just how badly their legitimacy has been undermined?
Four years ago, on 24 February 2022, the Russian military began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, having already occupied Crimea since 2014. Tensions between Ukraine’s government and western leaders on one side and the Kremlin on the other had been escalating for years, but war did not seem like a foregone conclusion, at least not to key European politicians and even to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president.
Zelenskyy hadn’t even packed an emergency suitcase, though talk of war was everywhere. All that changed at 4.50am that Thursday morning. Russian missiles rained down on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, and Russian troops invaded the eastern flank of the country on three different fronts. Zelenskyy and his family fled to an undisclosed location amid threats of Russian assassination squads. What has become the largest war on European soil since the second world war, what Putin has blandly called a “special military operation”, had begun.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York
After the star made a fresh denunciation of the US president at an alternative State of the Union event, Trump returned fire at length on Truth Social, calling De Niro ‘sick and demented’
Donald Trump has responded to a recent podcast appearance by Robert De Niro, in which he called the president “an idiot”.
Speaking on Monday’s episode of The Best People with Nicole Wallace, De Niro, who has long criticised the politics, morals and competence of Trump, said: “He’s an idiot. We gotta get rid of him. He’s gonna ruin the country.”
The ongoing battle over who will own the iconic film studio is set to have a major impact on what we, the viewers, get to watch in the future
It’s not unusual for a corporate merger to take months and months to actually finalize, but even by those standards, the bidding for ownership of Warner Bros Discovery has been drawn out. Netflix made a deal to buy the Warner Bros side of the company – its studio and streaming businesses – late last year, but Paramount Skydance has been undeterred, aggressively pursuing what it claims to be a better offer for the entire WBD operation. After several failed attempts at a hostile takeover, WBD is considering a final Paramount offer, to which Netflix will have the opportunity to counter. What we have is what learned cinema scholars might refer to as an Alien v Predator situation, in honor of Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox: whoever wins, we lose.
That is to say that for cinema devotees, casual viewers and people working in the film industry, the ideal outcome would be for Warner Bros to continue as its own entity: an entertainment company making movies and TV series. But that’s clearly not going to happen – nor are any number of relatively superior options floated last year, like the idea of Apple, who worked with the studio on the global smash and Best Picture nominee F1, buying Warner instead. They’re still a massive corporation, but they’ve shown a willingness to spend on major (and theatrically released!) projects like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, and have such a thriving business in other areas that they could afford to run Warner as a real studio, trying to continue the company’s recent hot streak.
In the second episode of a new series, reporter Matthew Cassel travels across the West Bank to document what daily life looks like under deepening Israeli occupation. In this episode he travels from Bethlehem to Nablus, to ask those living there if a Palestinian state is possible amidst an increasingly entrenched settler network.
A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives
There’s not much to love about big tech these days. So many ills can be laid at its door: social media harms, misinformation, polarisation, mining and misuse of personal data, environmental negligence, tax avoidance, the list goes on. Added to which, Silicon Valley’s leaders seem all too keen to cosy up to the Trump administration, to shower the president with bribes – sorry, gifts – and remain silent about his worsening political overreach. And that’s before we get to the rampant “enshittification”, as the tech writer Cory Doctorow describes it, which means that by design many big tech products have become less useful and more extractive than they were when we originally signed up to them.
We’ve entered into a Faustian pact with these companies: “While it’s brilliant to have access to high-quality products and software, very often for ‘free’, it’s important to remember that there is a trade-off involved – often of our personal data and privacy,” says Lisa Barber, tech editor at Which? We give these companies our attention and our information, which they then turn into big bucks and apparently unassailable monopolies.
Theatre says it will harness art ‘to inspire societal shifts towards restorative relationship with nature’
From “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” to “one touch of nature made the whole world kin”, some of the most famous lines in William Shakespeare’s works are about the relationship between humans and the environment.
It is this connection with the bard’s work that has inspired Shakespeare’s Globe to launch its first climate playwriting prize for 2026, which it says will harness the skills of storytellers and artists to “inspire societal shifts towards a restorative relationship with nature”.
Some say the technology is devaluing their work, while others reckon it is not yet – and might never be – good enough to replace them entirely
Workers grappling with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence have said they feel “devalued” by the technology and warned of a downward trajectory in the quality of work.
Murderous governments and armed groups always considered reporters like Marie Colvin a nuisance – now they see them as legitimate targets
A friend wrote to me last week to tell me that my name appeared in the Epstein files. “But it’s for a good cause,” he wrote. “Nothing sinister.”
In 2012, shortly after my friend and colleague Marie Colvin was killed in Homs, Syria, I met with the now-disgraced Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen. Rød-Larsen was a renowned fixer who had negotiated the 1993 Oslo accords.
Janine di Giovanni is a war correspondent and the executive director of The Reckoning Project, a war crimes unit in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza. She is the author of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
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Spurred on by a vision of the Shakers’ founding leader, Celia Rowlson-Hall masterminded the whirl of movement in Mona Fastvold’s feverish film
‘I’ll tell you something I’ve not told anyone,” says Celia Rowlson-Hall. “This might make me sound a little wild, but I don’t care.” The choreographer is recounting her experience on The Testament of Ann Lee, a fever dream of a film starring Amanda Seyfried as the leader of 18th-century Christian sect the Shakers, whose ecstatic prayer rituals could involve dancing for days. “The night before we started filming, I was sleeping and, literally, the ghost of Ann Lee was over my bed with angels around and she said: ‘Go forth!’” Rowlson-Hall laughs at herself for revealing this. “Was that my imagination allowing myself to go forth? Maybe, probably,” she smiles. “It was so intense that I will never forget it.”
In Mona Fastvold’s film, we see Lee, a blacksmith’s daughter from Manchester, having vivid religious visions that trigger her evangelism. Much like creative visions, I say. Maybe in a different time Lee would have been an artist? “She was an artist, without a doubt,” says Rowlson-Hall. To be an artist, she continues, “you have to believe in more than just what you see in front of you. It’s a concoction of faith and drive, a little delusion and a lot of energy. Like gunpowder.” Lee definitely had those qualities, leading the Shakers to the US, preaching piety, pacifism, celibacy and the confession of sins, and inspiring devotion as well as ire.
We’d like to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to assist with your social life or important life decisions
Lots of people now use chatbots as personal assistants, not just for work but in everyday life and social interactions. We want to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to navigate your social life or significant life decisions.
Have you ever drafted a breakup text using AI? Or crafted a message to delicately cancel plans? Have you consulted AI on whether to take, or quit, a job? Or sought advice from a chatbot on a tricky friendship or relationship?
Cancelled flights and petrol shortages are disrupting daily life across the island. We want to hear from people living in Cuba about what it’s like right now
Severe fuel shortages are disrupting daily life across Cuba after the US tightened its oil blockade on the island. International flights have been cancelled and petrol stations have closed with people reportedly struggling to access fuel.
The US has threatened any country that sends oil to Cuba with increased tariffs, claiming the island’s government is a threat to US national security and comes amid wider tensions between Havana and the Trump administration.
The Oman-mediated discussions take place amid a massive buildup of US warships and aircraft in the Middle East
The nuclear talks today are the third between the US and Iran since June 2025, when the US joined Israel’s war against Iran and bombed its nuclear and military sites. It effectively ended the US-Iran talks that were held in the weeks prior to the conflict aimed at reaching a nuclear peace agreement.
As before, the negotiations are being mediated by Oman, which has maintained a policy of neutrality and assumed the role of mediator both within the Arabian peninsula and more broadly across the Middle East. The country lies in the centre of tensions between the US and Iran and is directly vulnerable to maritime instability and regional escalation.
If the talks fail, there is uncertainty over what the US may do regarding a possible military attack against Iran, and when it might act. Questions remain over what this could mean for the wider region, with Iran warning it would retaliate and even attack Israel.
The state-run Oman News Agency has posted photos on social media showing the Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi sat with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Geneva.
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
Artificial intelligence is boosting productivity in the euro zone but it is not yet causing a wave of layoffs due to greater automation of labour, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has claimed.
Testifying to the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs committee this morning, Lagarde said:
“What we are seeing for the moment is that it’s increasing productivity. But we are not yet seeing consequences in terms of labour market and waves of redundancies that are feared, and that you know we will be extremely attentive going forward.”
“Our transformation continues with pace and intensity. We are consistently achieving outcomes that were not possible before our transformation. With our new capabilities and mindset, we have navigated challenges from supply chain to tariffs, and delivered a strong performance in 2025, all while we built the foundations for significant growth for years to come.”
Powerful case studies can’t make up for this book’s superficiality when it comes to the broader issues
‘We are today in need of more humility in how we frame geographies of the mind,” says Gavin Francis, a GP and travel writer. In his new book he attempts to combine both disciplines as he treks the uncanny topography of mental illness.
The journey is divided into chapters that explore various genres of human anguish – clinical anxiety, trauma, bipolar disorder, depression and psychosis – as well as autism and ADHD. He attempts to summarise each condition’s history in roughly 20 pages, evaluate past and contemporary theories, and weigh up the efficacy of treatments. To call this ambitious is to break new frontiers in understatement.
Orbán asked that the mission included experts from Hungary and Slovakia, both of which are affected by the disrupted oil transit via the pipeline
Nordic correspondent
Back in Copenhagen, in the strongest election hint yet, Mette Frederiksen has just shared a picture on social media of the note that she just passed to the speaker of the Danish parliament requesting the floor for “a statement of a special nature.”
‘Index of repression’ includes smears, harassment, job losses and arrests, legal advocacy group says
Palestinian solidarity is being “silenced, criminalised and sanctioned”, according to an advocacy group that says it has recorded more than 900 examples of repression across Britain in the last six years.
People had been targeted with smears, disinformation, harassment, doxing (having private or identifying information published online), visa cancellations, financial blacklisting, loss of employment and arrest, according to the European Legal Support Center, which, along with the research group Forensic Architecture, has created the “index of repression”.
Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise were taken into custody under laws that have outraged LGBTQ+ community and rights activists
Two women have been arrested and detained in Uganda after allegedly kissing in public, an act of “same-sex activity” which can lead to a life sentence in the east African country..
Wendy Faith, a 22-year-old musician known as Torrero Bae, and Alesi Diana Denise, 21, were taken into custody after police raided their rented room in Uganda’s north-west Arua City last week.
Half a century ago, the famed New York venue run by a former marine and folk singer was ground zero for the punk and new wave scenes. Now the bands who played there are being celebrated on a 101-track box set
Fifty years ago, a dive bar in New York’s East Village started to attract attention as a new hub for rock music. Initially, this was a whisper conveyed in a handful of small-circulation music magazines. Then, celebrated musicians, record label executives, hip journalists and photographers, followed by the influencers of that era, began making a beeline for 315 Bowery, the home of CBGB.
Inside, an array of young, unknown artists were making music that would change rock’s sound and look, attitude and aesthetic. These outsiders created a template for punk, spoken word, powerpop, new wave, no wave, mutant funk, hardcore and so much more besides.
Some on the right portray this TikTok phenomenon as tantamount to treason. That says more about them than the fans of Chinese culture
As it’s Chinese lunar new year, it would not be surprising if you’ve found yourself scrolling through some China-inspired content. But before you click the heart on a TikTok of paper lanterns or mouthwatering noodles, think twice. As an unsuspecting citizen, you may well be participating in a geopolitical battle where western civilisation itself is on the line.
This isn’t the plot of a mediocre action thriller on Amazon Prime – this is “Chinamaxxing”, an internet trend that has got some commentators worrying that gen Z are about to topple the west from the inside.
Coco Khan is a writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK
Henderson, made captain when Marc Guéhi was sold to Manchester City in January after Palace were humbled in the Cup by non-league Macclesfield, must be wondering how things have turned sour at Selhurst Park so quickly. Supporters turned on the manager, Oliver Glasner, during the first leg of the Conference League playoff against Zrinjski Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina last week and demanded his sacking after another unconvincing performance in the 1-1 draw.
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