Escalation of violence between the volatile neighbours makes a Qatar-mediated ceasefire appear increasingly shaky

Pakistan carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday, Afghanistan’s government spokesperson said, hours after Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan in the latest escalation of violence between the volatile neighbours that made a Qatar-mediated ceasefire appear increasingly shaky.

At least three explosions were heard in Kabul, but there was no immediate information on the exact location of the strikes in the Afghan capital, or of any potential casualties.

I overheard the news from Clarke Gayford on a dancefloor at 2am. I’m thrilled for our former first couple

I got the news that Aotearoa’s most (internationally) famous prime minister is moving to Sydney in a way that is only possible in New Zealand. I was at the final Splore festival in Tāpapakanga at the weekend (one of our longest-running and arguably most beautiful festivals) when Clarke Gayford, Jacinda Ardern’s husband, popped up next to me on the dancefloor dressed as a giant toadstool. “Yeah, we’re moving to Sydney,” he said to a man in funereal pirate garb. “Can’t wait!”

Maybe it was the joy of a perfect tracklist at 2am, maybe it was getting this breaking news from the horse’s mouth, but I felt thrilled for our former first couple. Like Splore, NZ has the hungover malaise of a party being cancelled and the lights going out.

Johanna Cosgrove is an award-winning actor/writer/comedian. She will perform her show Sweetie at the Melbourne international comedy festival and is now in NZ filming an exciting top-secret feature film

OpenAI-powered assistant will help to ‘understand overall service patterns’, company says, as move sparks backlash

From hospitality workers to retail employees, the exaggerated “customer service voice”, often mocked in internet memes as wildly different from someone’s real voice, has long been a cultural trope. Fast-food giant Burger King is now taking that voice one step further, saying it will detect whether employees are using words like “please” and “thank you” through the assistance of artificial intelligence.

On Thursday, Burger King announced it is rolling out a new AI chatbot connected to employee headsets at hundreds of locations in the US as part of a platform called BK Assistant, powered by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Democracy Volunteers says it saw 32 cases of apparent collusion – the highest levels in its 10-year history

An election observer group has raised concerns over people appearing to collude on voting in the Gorton and Denton byelection.

Democracy Volunteers, an organisation founded by Dr John Ault, and supported by the Conservative peer and psephologist Prof Robert Haywood, deployed four accredited election observers across the constituency.

Chelsea must keep their heads at Arsenal, Anthony Gordon faces his old club and a key return for Sunderland

Unai Emery has seen most things in this game but he has never won at Wolves. In three and a half years at Villa, he has lost two and drawn one of his three away games at Molineux. Twelve months ago they lost this fixture 2-0 and this week Emery shared his poor record to stress the difficulty of the challenge facing his side, particularly given they have won just one of their past five matches in all competitions. Emery even mentioned his visit to Wolverhampton with Arsenal in 2019, when his team trailed 3-0 at half-time and lost 3-1. For Emery, there is no better time to break his duck, with the schedule dictating that Villa could move nine points clear of fifth-placed Chelsea, who visit Villa on Wednesday, before Liam Rosenior’s side travel to Arsenal on Sunday. Victory would enhance Villa’s chances of returning to the Champions League but also pile pressure on a direct rival. Ben Fisher

Wolves v Aston Villa, Friday 8pm (all kick-offs GMT)

Bournemouth v Sunderland, Saturday 12.30pm

Burnley v Brentford, Saturday 3pm

Liverpool v West Ham, Saturday 3pm

It is a peculiarity particular to Crystal Palace that a season of such upheaval and unrest could still end up with Oliver Glasner’s side winning another trophy. Having left the pitch after last week’s first leg with supporters calling for the Austrian manager to be sacked in the morning, Maxence Lacroix and Evann Guessand made it a much more harmonious evening for Glasner and his side.

After being fortunate to escape from last week’s trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina with a 1-1 draw, it could have been very different if Zrinjski Mostar had equalised just before Guessand settled the tie late on. But having been demoted from the Europa League to the Conference League after winning the FA Cup last season, Palace’s first European campaign will continue against either the Cypriot side Larnaca – who they lost to during the group stages – or Mainz from Germany in the last 16.

Experimental therapy of applying stem cells during surgery could be ‘major milestone’ in treatment of birth defects

Giving stem cells to unborn babies diagnosed with spina bifida while they have in utero surgery could be “a major milestone” in the treatment of birth defects, doctors say.

A trial in the US found that applying stem cells from the mother’s placenta to her baby’s spine while it was being repaired was safe and improved the child’s mobility and quality of life.

Pete Hegseth has threatened to cancel $200m contract unless it is given unfettered access to Claude model

Anthropic said Thursday it “cannot in good conscience” comply with a demand from the Pentagon to remove safety precautions from its artificial intelligence model and grant the US military unfettered access to its AI capabilities.

The Department of Defense had threatened to cancel a $200m contract and deem Anthropic a “supply chain risk”, a designation with serious financial implications, if the company did not comply with the request by Friday.

• RFU due to confirm shake-up of rugby’s top division

• Knighthead Capital Management in early discussions

Birmingham City’s owner, Knighthead Capital Management, is among a number of American investors exploring the purchase of potential new franchises in Prem Rugby before a radical shake-up of the sport due to be ratified by the Rugby Football Union on Friday.

The RFU council will vote at Twickenham on proposals to ringfence the 10-team Prem with no promotion or relegation until 2030, when a staged expansion is planned, beginning with the addition of two more teams.

Federal judge in Oregon rejects bid to overturn Biden-era agreement to protect endangered fish populations

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A federal judge in Oregon sided with salmon against the Trump administration on Wednesday, ordering the federal government to change hydropower system operations long considered at the heart of native fish populations’ sharp decline.

At the center of the dispute are eight dams and reservoirs on the Columbia and Snake Rivers in the Pacific north-west that have created devastating obstacles for salmon and steelhead unable to breach their deadly turbines or navigate through the large, warm, artificial pools. The federal agencies and their supporters, which include a group of utilities, water managers and farming organizations, argued that reservoir drawdown would put power reliability in peril.

Martin O’Neill delivered a little piece of history in what will surely be his final European fixture as a manager. He created such wonderful memories for Celtic’s support in this domain during his first tenure that departing with a smile felt appropriate. In Stuttgart, Celtic won their first competitive game in Germany. It took them 17 attempts. “The evening is nothing to do with me,” said O’Neill with needless self-deprecation.

Luke McCowan’s goal inside 30 seconds was irrelevant in the broader context of this tie. Stuttgart’s 4-1 canter in Glasgow a week earlier ensured that. Still, a game that had the whiff of irrelevance for Celtic delivered unexpected cheer. The statistics will show Stuttgart spent much of the evening camped in Celtic’s half – the hosts had 24 attempts at goal – but the Scottish champions played with a diligence and discipline that is worthy of huge credit. Sebastian Tounekti should even have delivered a second Celtic goal in the closing minutes. By then, Stuttgart were going through the motions.

Coroner finds Jeremy Webb’s death in 2022 caused by mammalian meat allergy – one of only two known cases, with other fatality in US in 2024

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On a June night in 2022, 16-year-old Jeremy Webb was camping with friends on the New South Wales Central Coast, north of Sydney, when he vomited after eating beef sausages.

Struggling to breathe, the teenager ran from the campground to knock on the window of a nearby camper van, and asked the occupants to call an ambulance. Then he collapsed.

About 30 seals had died as of Thursday, nearly all of them weaned pups, amid the rise of avian influenza

An outbreak of a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has killed more than two dozen elephant seal pups in California, leading to the temporary closure of seal-viewing areas at a popular Bay Area park.

California’s Año Nuevo state park is home to an elephant seal colony with about 5,000 seals during the marine mammals’ breeding season, which runs from mid-December through March. Researchers said about 30 seals had died as of Thursday, nearly all of them weaned pups, amid the rise of avian influenza.

Company walks away from planned takeover as co-chiefs say deal ‘no longer financially attractive’

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Netflix has walked away from its planned takeover of Warner Bros Discovery, declining to raise its offer for the media conglomerate’s storied Hollywood studios and streaming business after it determined a sweetened rival offer from Paramount Skydance to be “superior”.

In a statement on Thursday evening, Netflix co-chief executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said that “at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive”.

For 67 minutes, Nottingham Forest were at risk of matching an unwanted record. At that point Fenerbahce were 2-0 up and full of belief that they could achieve the miracle their head coach, Domenico Tedesco, had been manifesting since their 3-0 first-leg defeat in Istanbul.

Only one team in the history of European club competitions have lost the first leg of a tie by a three-goal margin at home and advanced in the second. Up in the directors’ box, Evangelos Marinakis, more than an interested party on that occasion, presumably had flashbacks of Olympiakos suffering a 4-1 home defeat by Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Conference League two years ago, only to triumph 6-1 in Serbia in the second leg.

European Anti-Fraud Office to look into the former US ambassador’s time as trade commissioner in Brussels

Peter Mandelson is facing an inquiry by the EU’s anti-fraud agency after the European Commission requested the body look into his activities during his time as trade commissioner in Brussels.

The commission said it referred the peer, 72, to the European Anti-Fraud Office, known as Olaf, last week after the US Department of Justice released documents allegedly showing he shared sensitive government information with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Thousands of commuters stranded on major roads after severe weather on Thursday night

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A heavy burst of more than 100mm of rainfall over three hours in Australia’s most populous city has led to flash flooding, sparking evacuations and rescue operations.

There were 42 rescues in Sydney overnight into Friday, with more than 250 personnel across the city responding to about 500 calls for help, particularly in the south-west, the NSW State Emergency Service said.

Hiker disappeared in June 2023, aged 31, after departing for a walk near Cradle Mountain

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Tasmania police have confirmed remains found near the state’s Philosopher Falls last month have been provisionally identified as those of missing Belgian tourist Celine Cremer.

Police said on Friday morning that expert reports had provided “compelling evidence” that the remains were likely hers, extending their condolences to her family, who have have been awaiting confirmation of the remains since being alerted to the discovery.

Law demanding IDs match ‘sex at birth’ also includes bathroom ban provision for trans people in public buildings

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Transgender Kansas residents have begun receiving letters from the state’s department of motor vehicles notifying them that their driver’s licenses will be invalid beginning Thursday, as a new law goes into effect that demands that forms of identification must now reflect the credential holder’s “sex at birth”.

The bill, known as SB 244, also bans transgender people from using bathrooms in public buildings that match their gender identity, and creates a sort of bounty hunter system, in which citizens can sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for $1,000 in damages.

Action relates to corruption case over allocation of government land in Dhaka to a private company

A court in Bangladesh has ordered officials to request an Interpol red notice for the British Labour MP Tulip Siddiq over a corruption case linked to the allocation of government land in Dhaka.

Bangladesh’s anti-corruption commission has alleged Siddiq used her relationship with her aunt, the former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, to influence the allocation of a plot of state-owned land in Dhaka’s Gulshan district to a private company. Siddiq has rejected the claim as baseless and politically motivated.

⚽ Europa League updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off
⚽ Live scores | Read today’s Football Daily | Mail Daniel

On the telly, they’ve just been discussing James McAtee, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he does tonight. City are now in that spot United were under Alex Ferguson, where clubs buy their players because they know the standard can be too high for good ones to make it and respect the managers who keep them around. He’s got a lovely touch and decent vision, but does he have the ability to impose that? We don’t yet know.

Forest actually did pretty well to keep as many players as they did after last season – and getting £52m+£3m for Anthony Elanga was a remarkable piece of business. I’m not sure Anderson will still be around after the summer, whereas Gibbs-White has a contract – but there surely comes a point at which players don’t trust Marinakis with their careers and just want to up sticks from the upheaval.

Largest ever image obtained by specialist telescope in Chile represents scientific and aesthetic breakthrough

Scientists have captured a beautiful image in unprecedented detail of the vast Milky Way galaxy, of which our own solar system is a part.

The stunning image is the largest ever obtained by the specialist telescope in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma) radio telescope, according to the group behind the project.

The anger toward John Davidson’s racist Baftas outburst is understandable. But I’ve had to ask what I owe to others with the condition

I cover Canada for the Guardian, a country spanning six time zones and more than 40 million people, whose stories I get to tell for a living.

I’ve had a successful career but at times, I worry that my work suffers because I have Tourette syndrome (TS).

First lady to preside over meeting on ‘children, technology and education in conflict’ in New York next month

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Melania Trump is set to lead a session of the United Nations security council on Monday, coinciding with the US assuming the body’s rotating monthly presidency, the White House announced.

According to a statement, first cited by CNN, the first lady plans to spotlight education as a tool for fostering tolerance and promoting global peace at the global body, which has its headquarters in New York.