PM also confirms that the first repatriation flight for Britons in the region has taken off
She says “we will always offer protection to genuine refugees” and outlines how the UK has taken in Ukrainian and Hong Kong refugees.
She says “restoring control at our borders is not a betrayal of Labour values”. She says we must attract high-skilled workers. And that “the privilege of living in this country forever must be earned”.
In his new book, the celebrated author explains why we need ‘consciousness hygiene’ to defend ourselves from AI and dopamine-driven algorithms
Each day when you wake up, you come back to yourself. You see the room around you, feel your body brush against your clothes and think about your plans, worries and hopes for the day. This daily internal experience is miraculous and mysterious, and the subject of Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears.
It also may be under siege, Pollan said. He recently suggested that people need a “consciousness hygiene” to defend our internal world against invaders that are trying to move in. Our ability to sit with our thoughts and perceive the world, he argues, is increasingly disrupted by algorithms engineered to tickle our dopamine receptors and capture our attention. Meanwhile, people are forming attachments to non-human chatbots, projecting consciousness on to entities that do not possess it.
Actor Katie Leung narrates this genre-bending debut in which an Victorian Arctic explorer is catapulted into our brave new world
The Ministry of Time opens in the middle of a job interview. The applicant, a nameless British Cambodian civil servant, is in line for a role that involves working with expats of “high-interest status and particular needs”. When she asks where these expats come from, she is told: “History.” The interviewer adds, casually, “We have time travel.”
Listeners concerned about the practicalities of this time-hopping tale will be reassured by our protagonist’s observation that contemplating the physics leads to a “crock of shit”, so it is best not dwelled upon. “All you need to know is that in your near future, the British government developed the means to travel through time but had not yet experimented with doing it.” Her job, then, is to act as minder or “bridge” to individuals removed from their eras and bounced into the present.
The court of justice said Portugal had committed serious infringements of EU environmental law
Portugal has been fined €10m (£8.7m) by the EU’s court of justice for failing to comply with environmental laws that require it to protect biodiversity. It has also been ordered to pay €41,250 a day until it complies with a previous court order in 2019.
The court said it was imposing the maximum fine possible to “encourage” Portugal to bring the infringement to an end.
The Trump administration is reportedly closing a controversial immigration jail in Texas where three detainees died and a measles outbreak has forced more than a dozen others into quarantine.
Plans are advancing for the shuttering of Camp East Montana, part of the Fort Bliss army base, less than eight months after it opened, the Washington Post said on Wednesday.
Trade court directs customs to repay importers with interest after supreme court ruled tariffs unlawful
A US trade court judge on Wednesday ordered the government to begin paying potentially billions of dollars in refunds to importers who paid tariffs that the supreme court said last month were collected illegally. Richard Eaton, a judge of the US Court of International Trade in Manhattan, ordered the government to finalize the cost of bringing millions of shipments into the US without assessing a tariff, according to a court filing. He ordered the refunds to be made with interest.
When merchandise is brought into the United States, an importer pays an estimated amount at entry which is then finalized around 314 days later, a process known as liquidation. Eaton directed Customs and Border Protection to finalize the entry cost on shipments without the tariff being assessed, resulting in a refund.
Photojournalist Stefanie Glinski speaks to Iranian photographer Mohammad Mohsenifar, who has been documenting the attacks on the Iranian capital over the past week
Iranians woke up on Thursday to a new round of explosions in Tehran, on the sixth day of war since the US and Israel launched attacks that have so far killed more than 1,200 people, including the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The casualties include 168 children who were killed at a school in the southern province of Hormozgan; thousands more people have been injured.
People mourn the killing of Ali Khamenei along Enghelab Street in Tehran on Sunday
The country’s network of footpaths is growing – with hopes they will develop local economies and better preserve the environment
Follow the yellow footprints along Brazil’s newest long-distance trail, and they will take you through lush green forests and sandy shrubland, past sweeping vistas and bizarre rock formations, into grottos and rural communities.
Spanning 186km (115 miles) of paths once used by 19th-century merchants, the Caminhos da Ibiapaba is the first waymarked long-distance footpath in Brazil’s north-east region, adding to a growing network of hiking trails in the country.
Cillian Murphy reprises his haunted gang boss in Steven Knight’s muscular film spin-off – as a wartime clash with Nazis and family betrayal pulls him back to Birmingham
After six TV series from 2013 to 2022, which caused a worrying surge in flat cap-wearing among well-to-do men in country pubs, Peaky Blinders is now getting a hefty standalone feature film, a muscular picture swamped in mud and blood. This is the movie version of Steven Knight’s global small-screen hit, based on the real-life gangs that swaggered through Birmingham from Victorian times until well into the 20th century. Cillian Murphy returns with his uniquely unsettling, almost sightless stare as Tommy Shelby, family chieftain of a Romani-traveller gang, a man who has converted his trauma in the trenches of the first world war into a ruthless determination to survive and rule.
As we join the story some years after the curtain last came down, it is 1940, Britain’s darkest hour and Tommy is the crime-lion in winter. He now lives in a huge, remote mansion, far from the Birmingham crime scene he did so much to create, alone except for his henchman Johnny Dogs, played by Packy Lee. Evidently wearied and sickened by it all, Tommy is haunted by his ghosts and demons: memories of his late brother, Arthur, and dead daughter, Ruby, and working on what will be his definitive autobiography. (Sadly, we don’t get any scenes of Tommy having lunch with a drawling London publisher or agent.)
Conspiracy claims have erupted over the star’s appearance. These days, I can’t blame people for endless skepticism
Last week, my ex-wife texted me. She usually does that when my son falls off his skateboard or learns a new expletive to say on the playground. This time was different. “Have you seen Jim Carrey?” she asked, apropos of nothing we had discussed previously. It was as if she was asking me if I’d seen her misplaced keys.
“No, I have not seen Jim Carrey. Have you looked under the couch?” I replied.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
Only one person working job that today would be called ‘deportation officer’ has died from act of violence, Guardian review shows
Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, homeland security officials have consistently argued that deportation officers are facing unprecedented threats.
To better understand the dangers facing those officers, the Guardian examined the agency’s own tracking of its fallen officers, as well as recent violent incidents targeting immigration officers flagged by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
A spot of ‘equine therapy’ marks Chinese year of the horse as designer turns fashion week show into a moment
Speaking after her show at Paris fashion week, the British designer Stella McCartney marked 25 years in the industry by letting slip that she was to receive the most prestigious French accolade, the Légion d’honneur, on Thursday – and making a jumper using yeast.
Never mind that she has not turned a profit since 2017. The fashion designer knows how to turn a show into a moment, opening with “some equine therapy” in the form of a dozen dancing horses to mark the Chinese year of the horse, and closing it with a vest that said “My dad’s a rock star” in front of a grinning Paul McCartney who sat front row next to Oprah Winfrey.
British former champion hits out at former colonial rulers
‘I’m hoping countries unite and take Africa back’
Lewis Hamilton has called for a movement to “take Africa back”, claiming the continent is being “controlled” by European powers. On the eve of the new Formula One season in Melbourne, the seven-time champion outlined his ambition to compete in a grand prix on African soil.
But the 41-year-old, F1’s first black race driver, did not stop there. He suggested former colonial rulers still exerted undue power in the region and called for action to reverse that influence. “I’ve got roots from a few different places there, like Togo and Benin,” he said. “I’m really proud of that part of the world.
IG Metall says it will continue fighting for workers’ rights despite failing to win majority on employee body
Europe’s largest trade union has said it will continue to fight for the rights of workers at Elon Musk’s Tesla factory near Berlin, despite failing in its attempt to secure control of the plant’s works council.
IG Metall had hoped to gain majority rights on the elected body of employees that negotiates everything from working hours to pay deals with company management.
Paul Quinn researched case despite having little interest in news websites, jury hears at Manchester crown court
An alleged rapist who is suspected to have evaded justice for nearly 20 years carried out an “exponential” rise in online searches about the case when it emerged police were investigating a new suspect, a court has heard.
Paul Quinn, 51, is accused of raping and violently beating a woman in 2003 in an attack that led to the wrongful conviction of Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison in what jurors were told was one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Britain.
Nintendo Switch 2; Game Freak/Omega Force/Nintendo Work together with a bunch of lovable Pokémon to restore a long-abandoned town in this novel, absorbing game that’s quite unlike others in the series
Bear with me here: Pokémon has always had an environmentalist subtext. As you wander its verdant, creature-filled worlds, collecting species like an acquisitive David Attenborough, you are constantly shown that people and Pokémon should live in harmony. The bad guys in these stories, from Team Rocket to Bill Nighy in the Detective Pikachu film, are always the ones who want to abuse these creatures for personal gain. Otherwise you are shown that people must have respect for Pokémon; both the critters you catch and the ones that exist in the wild. There is a delicate independency between humans and the natural world.
In this new spin-off from the series, we see what happens when there are no humans around. You, a shapeshifting blob of jelly called Ditto, awaken in a half-demolished wasteland that was once, presumably, a lively town. There are some other Pokémon around, confused and lonely, and together you work to restore the place and make it beautiful again. Taking the uncanny humanoid form of your half-remembered former trainer, you learn useful talents from the Pokémon around you: how to water parched grass, dig up weeds and grow flowers, punch rocks until they crumble to clear all the old paths.
A second Iranian ship has been reported in waters close to Sri Lanka and has sought emergency permission to dock, a day after a US submarine sank an Iranian frigate killing more than 80 people onboard.
The Sri Lankan minister Nalinda Jayatissa told parliament that another Iranian vessel was sailing close to Sri Lanka’s territorial waters on Thursday morning. “We are making necessary interventions to resolve this issue, restrict the threat to lives and to ensure regional security,” said Jayatissa.
England’s first task is to stop Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson getting off to a flyer. As Finn Allen showed yesterday, an opener can win a semi-final all by himself.
Will Jacks belts out God Save The King like a peroxide version of a Chelsea pensioner. As soon as it finishes, Harry Brook pops a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. The young chaperones look on with mild curiosity from under their yellow bucket hats.
Australia were frustrated as Iran kept it at 4-0 and now face South Korea in a decider to top Asian Cup group
The goals flowed quickly, easily, and then – when the hosts needed just one more – not at all. Their 4-0 victory over a brave Iran side leaves the Matildas facing an uncertain path to Asian Cup glory, even if they have now booked a place in the quarter-finals.
It was a night that began with fireworks but dissolved in the Gold Coast rain to a turgid trial. Initially there was promise for Matildas fans, but then tiring frustration, made worse by a pair of horror head impacts for substitute Hayley Raso.
The chances of finding one mammal species thought to be lost was ‘almost zero’ and finding two is ‘unprecedented’, biologist Tim Flannery says
Researchers led by the Australian scientist Tim Flannery have made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: that two charismatic marsupial species that had been thought extinct for 6,000 years are alive in rainforest in remote West Papua.
The pair are rare examples of “Lazarus taxa” – species that disappeared from fossil records in the distant past that are later found to have survived.
Harris’s 2024 campaign lacked authenticity and conviction. We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of the past
I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you today. The bad news is, well, everything. As you may have noticed, the world is on fire. The good news, however, is that a savior may be at hand. Kamala Harris, a politician who has never won a presidential primary and lost the popular vote to Donald Trump in 2024, hasn’t ruled out running for president again.
Harris has kept a fairly low profile since November 2024, focusing most of her energy on promoting 107 Days, her account of her truncated presidential run, and appearing as the guest of honour at the 2025 Australian Real Estate Conference. But she has also made it clear that she still has an eye on the White House: in an interview with the BBC last October, Harris said she was “not done” with politics and strongly suggested she might run for president again. Harris echoed these sentiments in a conversation with the podcaster Sharon McMahon last week. “I might,” she said when asked if she will run again.
With her 70th birthday around the corner, we assess the greatest screen outings of everybody’s favourite underrated doyenne of British cinema
Among the bold choices in Luca Guadagnino’s feverish film of William S Burroughs’ novel are the late 20th-century pop and alternative soundtrack (Nirvana, Prince, New Order) for a 1950s story, and the casting of an unrecognisable, orc-like Manville in a trumped-up cameo as the shaman Dr Cotter, who was male in the original book.
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