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The GuardianSport

Sack the vibe: goodbye Bazball and hello England’s search for a cricketing soul | Barney Ronay

There have to be consequences for Rob Key and Brendon McCullum but English cricket’s problems lie much deeper and will be much harder to fix It seemed fitting, as the final moments ticked down at the Sydney Cricket Ground , as the day, the match, the tour seemed to ooze and melt a little at the edges under a hard white January sun, that Ben Stokes should finish this Ashes series still standing, but only just. It was at least a suitably slapstick final session in front of a scattered, holiday-ish crowd. Australia custard-pied their way to a victory total of 160, narrowly avoiding falling pianos, dangling off giant clocktowers along the way. Continue reading...

Last updated 17h ago
The GuardianWellness

Attempt to overturn the Gambia’s ban on FGM heard by supreme court

Case brought by Muslim leaders and MP follows failed 2024 bid and seen as part of global anti-women’s rights backlash A group of religious leaders and an MP in the Gambia have launched efforts to overturn a ban on female genital mutilation at the country’s supreme court. The court case, due to resume this month, comes after two babies bled to death after undergoing FGM in the Gambia last year. Almameh Gibba, an MP and one of the plaintiffs, tabled a bill to decriminalise FGM that was rejected by the country’s parliament in 2024. Continue reading...

Last updated 5h ago
The GuardianPolitics

US actions in Venezuela put the 2026 World Cup in disgraceful company | Leander Schaerlaeckens

In 1934 and 1978, Fifa’s big event was given over to authoritarian aims. There’s no more doubt that 2026 will be the same By 1934, it was entirely evident what Benito Mussolini was up to. Italy’s dictator had already consolidated power, colonized Libya and annexed the city of Rijeka. He nevertheless got to stage the second-ever World Cup, managing it with a heavy hand and even supplanting the Jules Rimet trophy with a far larger one. Hosting and winning that World Cup didn’t sate his expansionist appetites. By the end of decade, Mussolini would take Ethiopia, annex Albania and back Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. It was equally well established in 1978 that General Jorge Videla’s military junta in Argentina, which had taken over two years earlier, was maintaining its grip on power through systematic detention, torture and murder . Still, protestations from other nations were ignored and the World Cup kicked off. Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on May 12. You can preorder it here . He teaches at Marist University. Continue reading...

Last updated 21h ago
The GuardianPolitics

Saudi Arabia accuses UAE of helping Yemeni separatist leader flee crisis talks

Rift deepens as Riyadh says Aidarous al-Zubaidi, leader of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, was helped to flee Yemen Saudi Arabia has accused the United Arab Emirates of smuggling a UAE-backed separatist Yemeni leader out of the country after he failed to turn up for crisis talks in Riyadh on Wednesday. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said Aidarous al-Zubaidi had fled the port city of Aden for Abu Dhabi under Emirati supervision, deepening a diplomatic row between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Continue reading...

Last updated 20h ago
The GuardianPolitics

‘Shadow fleet’ ships moving sanctioned oil reflagged to Russia at rising rate

Lloyd’s List analysis suggests 40 suspicious vessels joined Russian registry last year, with 17 reflagged last month Forty ships accused of belonging to a large “shadow fleet” moving sanctioned oil for Venezuela and others were reflagged to Russia last year in an apparent attempt to gain Kremlin protection from American seizure. Analysis by the shipping intelligence publication Lloyd’s List suggests that of those, at least 17 suspicious vessels joined the Russian registry over the past month, compared with 15 ships in the previous five months of 2025. Continue reading...

Last updated 18h ago
The GuardianPolitics

Maduro is gone, but his regime is intact. The circumstances tell a story | Alejandro Velasco

In the early fray of foreign interventions, evidence is largely circumstantial. But here the circumstances tell a powerful story As late as Saturday afternoon, fires continued to smolder in parts of Caracas. Residents throughout the city, stunned and anxious, filled grocery stores and gas stations, stocking up before a future unknown. Everywhere the question hung in the air like the smoke still clouding Venezuela’s capital: what next? After months of military buildup, deadly strikes at sea and a looming ground war, the United States made good on its threats to attack Venezuela in a dramatic overnight raid that ended with Nicolás Maduro in a New York City jail cell. Yet 48 hours later, little else appeared different in Caracas: Maduro’s inner circle remained in place; state institutions remained in their control; streets were calm, if tense, while authorities called on people to return to their daily lives. In other words: move along, nothing to see here. Alejandro Velasco is an associate professor of history at New York University Continue reading...

Last updated 22h ago
The GuardianWellness

After Trump’s attack, we Venezuelans need to know what comes next – authoritarianism or democracy | Jesús Piñero

There is palpable tension: not because anyone trusts the president and the US, but because now there is opportunity for change Jesús Piñero is a historian at the Central University of Venezuela In 1936, Venezuelans learned for the first time what it meant to transition towards democracy. While this was not the only period of transition the country would experience (since the process that began in 1958 consolidated a more open and enduring political regime), the transition of 1936 was longer and more complex, resembling the one Venezuelans are now experiencing after the capture of Nicolás Maduro on 3 January 2026. Coromoto Escalona, a 35-year-old woman, was preparing her baby’s feeding bottle when she heard some strange noises in the house. It was two o’clock in the morning. She wondered whether the fridge had broken down, since it sometimes made strange noises when it was damaged. Her eldest daughter, who was scrolling on WhatsApp, shouted from her room: “Mum, they’re bombing us.” The two of them stopped what they were doing, grabbed the essentials – the feeding bottle, water and some food – and ran to an underground room in their house, an old colonial mansion in La Pastora, a working-class neighbourhood in central Caracas. Jesús Piñero is a journalist and a historian at the Central University of Venezuela Continue reading...

Last updated 0h ago
The GuardianPolitics

Syria announces ceasefire in Aleppo after three days of clashes with Kurds

US envoy welcomes pause in hostilities in contested region although it is unclear whether deal will hold Syria’s government has announced a ceasefire after three days of clashes with Kurdish fighters in Aleppo, which has led to more than 140,000 people being displaced. The pause in the fighting, which was the most intense in the country for more than six months, came into effect at 3am local time (midnight GMT). Under the terms of the ceasefire, Kurdish militants were to leave the three contested neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Ashrafieh and Bani Zaid, where clashes were happening. They would be provided safe passage to the north-east of the country, which is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and be allowed to take light arms with them. Continue reading...

Last updated 1h ago
The GuardianWellness

Grok being used to create sexually violent videos featuring women, research finds

AI tool also used to undress image of woman killed by ICE agent in US, says research Elon Musk’s AI tool Grok has been used to create sexually violent and explicit video content featuring women, according to new research, as the British prime minister added to condemnation of images it has created. Grok has also been used to undress an image of Renee Nicole Good , the woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in the US on Wednesday, and to portray her with a bullet wound in her forehead. Continue reading...

Last updated 5h ago
The GuardianWellness

Hundreds of nonconsensual AI images being created by Grok on X, data shows

Sample of roughly 500 posts shows how frequently people are creating sexualized images with Elon Musk’s AI chatbot New research that samples X users prompting Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok demonstrates how frequently people are creating sexualized images with it. Nearly three-quarters of posts collected and analyzed by a PhD researcher at Dublin’s Trinity College were requests for nonconsensual images of real women or minors with items of clothing removed or added. The posts offer a new level of detail on how the images are generated and shared on X, with users coaching one another on prompts; suggesting iterations on Grok’s presentations of women in lingerie or swimsuits, or with areas of their body covered in semen; and asking Grok to remove outer clothing in replies to posts containing self-portraits by female users. Continue reading...

Last updated 18h ago
The GuardianPolitics

Some want to ban geoengineering research. This would be a catastrophic mistake for our planet | Craig Segall and Baroness Bryony Worthington

We’ve already geoengineered the planet through the careless release of greenhouse gases. Now we need a plan to manage the risks we’ve set in motion A few months ago, Marjorie Taylor Greene, then a Georgia representative, held a hearing on her bill to ban research on “geoengineering”, which refers to technological climate interventions, such as using reflective particles to reflect away sunlight. The hearing represented something of a first – a Republican raising alarm bells about human activity altering the health of the planet. Of course, for centuries, people have burned fossil fuels to power and feed society, emitting greenhouse gases that now overheat the planet. Unfortunately, her hearing waved past an urgent debate that policymakers are confronting around the world: after centuries of accidental fossil-fuel geoengineering, should we deliberately explore interventions to cool the planet and give the energy transition breathing room? Craig Segall is the former deputy executive officer and assistant chief counsel of the California Air Resources Board. He is also former senior vice-president of Evergreen Action and a longtime climate advocate. He has academic seats at the University of Edinburgh, New York University, and the University of California at Berkeley The opinions in this piece are his own. Baroness Bryony Worthington was created a life peer in 2011, giving her a seat in the UK’s House of Lords where she served as Shadow Energy Minister She has over 25 years of experience working on climate, energy and environmental policy in the NGO and public sectors, and in the private sector. Continue reading...

Last updated 0h ago
Daily PostWellness

Benue herders crisis: How Agatu land was secretly ceded to ‘Indigenous’ Fulani herdsmen [Documents]

Fresh evidence has emerged that could explain the decades-long hostilities between Fulani herdsmen and the people of Agatu Local Government Area (LGA) in Benue State. Documents obtained exclusively by DAILY POST show that part of Agatu land was secretly ceded to Fulani herders in 2017, an act that some said has fueled persistent violence and […] Benue herders crisis: How Agatu land was secretly ceded to ‘Indigenous’ Fulani herdsmen [Documents]

Last updated 1h ago
The GuardianWellness

Kyiv urges stronger action against ‘shadow fleet’ after Russia strikes Ukraine overnight – Europe live

Zelenskyy calls for ‘clear reaction’ from world after strikes including missile attack about 50 miles from Ukraine’s border with Nato member Poland Meanwhile, the country’s prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, offered a bit more detail on the power and water supply outages in the aftermath of the Russian attacks overnight. In a short update on Telegram, she said that work was under way to restore power to “more than 500,000 consumers” in Kyiv, after damage to substations, lines and generation facilities. Continue reading...

Last updated 2h ago
The GuardianWellness

The Guardian view on Ofcom versus Grok: chatbots cannot be allowed to undress children. | Editorial

A wave of humiliating sexualised imagery must prompt regulators and politicians to step up An online trend involving asking Grok, the Elon Musk-owned chatbot, to undress photographs of women and girls and show them wearing bikinis has rightly sparked outrage in the UK and internationally. Earlier this week Liz Kendall, the science and technology secretary, described the proliferation of the digitally altered pictures, some of which are overtly sexualised or violent, as “unacceptable in decent society”. What happens next will depend on whether she and her colleagues are prepared to follow through on such remarks. The government’s generally enthusiastic approach to AI, and the growing role they see for it in public services , do not inspire confidence in their ability to confront such threats. In addition to the deluge of bikini images, the Internet Watch Foundation, a charity, has evidence that Grok Imagine (an AI tool that generates images and videos from prompts) has been used to create illegal child sexual abuse images. Yet while X says that it removes such material , there is no sign of safeguards being tightened in response to bikini images that are cruel and violating even where they do not break the law. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here . Continue reading...

Last updated 16h ago
The GuardianPolitics

UK ministers considering leaving X amid concern over AI tool images

Labour party chair says government having conversations about use of platform in light of sexualised Grok images UK politics live – latest updates UK ministers are considering leaving X as a result of the controversy over the platform’s AI tool, which has been allowing users to generate digitally altered pictures of people – including children – with their clothes removed. Anna Turley, the chair of the Labour party and a minister without portfolio in the Cabinet Office, said on Friday that conversations were happening within the government and Labour about their continued use of the social media platform, which is controlled by Elon Musk. Continue reading...

Last updated 0h ago
The GuardianPolitics

Six years after George Floyd, we must stand against an ICE killing in Minneapolis | Austin Sarat

Barely a mile from Floyd’s murder, an officer killed Renee Nicole Good. We must peacefully say no to this violence On 25 May 2020, America witnessed a stunning act of police brutality when a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, murdered George Floyd . The killer, Derek Chauvin, apparently confident that he would be immune to accountability, did his deed in the open, with other officers standing by and in front of a crowd of onlookers. The video of Floyd’s murder shocked the nation. Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty Continue reading...

Last updated 1h ago
Daily PostPolitics

‘You’re inviting war’ – Russia warns US, European leaders over plan to send soldiers to Ukraine

Russia has said that a plan to send European soldiers to Ukraine is “dangerous,” which has lowered hopes for a quick end to the war that has been going on for almost four years. European leaders and US representatives said this week that after the war, Ukraine will get promises of security. These promises will […] ‘You’re inviting war’ – Russia warns US, European leaders over plan to send soldiers to Ukraine

Last updated 5h ago