[
    {
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "My son killed himself after falling for an online scam. I heard it happen \u2013 and vowed to protect other children",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2026\/oct\/14\/brandon-guffey-gavin-killed-himelf-online-scam-sextortionist",
        "words": "2326",
        "section": "Society",
        "date": "2026-10-14T04:00:45Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/d9509b81074661197923a77bdb4c724f9332cead\/587_0_2913_2330\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Anna Moore",
        "description": "Gavin Guffey was 17 when he was targeted by a \u2018sextortionist\u2019 on Instagram. His father Brandon has spent four years fighting for justice, and for social media companies to do more to safeguard young users",
        "text": "What were the last words Brandon Guffey said to his son Gavin? Four years on, he still struggles with this question. \u201cThat last exchange, it bothers me constantly,\u201d he says. \u201cI think I said, \u2018Goodnight, buddy. I love you,\u2019 and he said, \u2018I\u2019ll see you in the morning.\u2019 I sincerely hope that\u2019s what I said. The truth is, I\u2019ll never know for certain.\u201d\n\nThe exchange happened in 2022, on a hot July in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where, just weeks before, Guffey had won the Republican ticket to stand for the state\u2019s House of Representatives. The election was three months away, Guffey\u2019s head was buzzing with politics, and he\u2019d spent that evening at a local event.\n\nThe house was still when he returned home just before midnight. His wife, Melissa, had gone to bed; his two younger sons, Callahan, 4, and Coen, 16, and both family dogs were sleeping too. The only sounds were the summer cicadas and the frogs calling from the nearby creek \u2013 and also the laughter of his 17-year-old-son, Gavin. He was gaming in his bedroom, headset on, talking with friends. It was the long summer break between school and starting college. \u201cI often say Gavin was living his best life at that point,\u201d says Guffey. \u201cHe\u2019d just got comfortable in who he was. He wasn\u2019t trying to \u2018fit in\u2019 or please anyone. He was looking forward to starting college and pursuing his dream of becoming an art teacher.\u201d\n\nA call came in on Guffey\u2019s phone. He wishes he\u2019d never taken it. The idea that Gavin might have needed his dad when he was unavailable, talking politics on the porch outside, is almost too much to bear \u2013 but in the hour that followed, Gavin\u2019s life hurtled towards darkness.\n\nA friend request came in on Gavin\u2019s Instagram from BellaJanet28. They shared friends \u2013 their exchange shows that Gavin thought she was a volleyball player from a local college. Guffey still hasn\u2019t been able to bring himself to read the conversation that took place between them, but he knows that BellaJanet28 suggested a game of truth or dare, which led to Gavin sending intimate photos, and then a sextortion attempt. BellaJanet28 demanded money, otherwise the images would be shared with all Gavin\u2019s contacts.\n\nAt about 1.30am, Guffey saw Gavin on the landing, where they had that last exchange. Moments later, a terrifying sound, a crash, like a bowling ball, boomed from the bathroom, where Guffey found his son lying on the floor. The smell of gunpowder, the blood soaking into his socks, Melissa\u2019s screams, still haunt and horrify him. \u201cI\u2019ll never stop replaying it,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re etched into me for ever.\u201d\n\nGuffey is a South Carolina state representative now, and a leading advocate for child online safety. In his own state he has seen through new levels of safeguarding. Just a year after Gavin\u2019s death, through Guffey\u2019s campaigning, \u201cGavin\u2019s Law\u201d was passed in South Carolina, making sextortion a felony and education about it mandatory in all schools. Last year, Guffey won more sweeping reforms that will require social media companies to activate safety features when users in South Carolina are under 16, including parental permission for the account, and prohibitions on direct marketing, the \u201cinfinite scroll\u201d, and automatic video playback, which are all associated with prolonged screen time. He has founded a non-profit, Less Than 3, which campaigns on these issues, and supports affected families; he regularly shares Gavin\u2019s story in schools, churches and community centres.\n\nNow Guffey has written a book about it. Tomorrow Needs You is a hard, harrowing read \u2013 and brutally honest. In all sorts of ways, Guffey has blamed himself. Did his career play a part? Most of Guffey\u2019s working life had been spent in business, building up a landscaping supply yard, which he still ran, but in 2020, he had joined the county council and was now moving towards a seat in the statehouse.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a big seat. This was a big race that got a lot of coverage,\u201d he says, \u201cand Gavin had already gone viral in the middle of it.\u201d On a night out, Gavin had spotted the Lamborghini belonging to the basketball player LaMelo Ball, mooned beside it and posted the image on Twitter\/X. \u201cI gave him a speech about the Guffey name, and not to mess it up,\u201d says Guffey. (Gavin duly posted an apology \u2013 \u201cSorry Melo, I won\u2019t show my ass like that again\u201d \u2013 with two thumbs-up emojis.) \u201cGavin had seen friends lose college scholarships for something stupid they said on Twitter,\u201d says Guffey. \u201cTo him, everything stays online. These images were never going to go away.\u201d\n\nEven putting his political career aside, Guffey felt he had failed as a father, as a role model. \u201cSitting there that night, I was already asking myself, \u2018Why couldn\u2019t he come to me? Was he so worried about being vulnerable?\u2019\u201d says Guffey. \u201cIt took a tragedy for me to really start diving deep into myself and saying, \u2018I\u2019ve been doing this wrong my whole life.\u2019\u201d\n\nGuffey himself was brought up by a teenage mum, who was tough \u2013 she worked three jobs and carried a brick in her handbag \u2013 and taught her son to be tough too. \u201cShe was scared I didn\u2019t have a male influence, and she pushed me towards that masculine side where \u2018boys don\u2019t cry\u2019, you suck it up whatever happens,\u201d he says. \u201cMy entire family, this community, that\u2019s the mindset. Man up. Rub some dirt on it.\u201d\n\nAnd then, there was the gun that Gavin had used to act on that terrible, split-second decision. It belonged to Guffey, who had taken it on a recent camping trip for protection, then left it on a high shelf, intending to lock it away. \u201cI didn\u2019t know that the majority of suicides are impulsive,\u201d says Guffey. He has since been told that the median length of time between making the decision to take your life and the act itself is only 20 minutes, but when there\u2019s a gun involved, it can be less than three. (Hence the name of his non-profit.) He has got rid of his guns now. \u201cI\u2019d been so focused on protecting my family from outside threats, I didn\u2019t realise the dangers that can come from within the home,\u201d he says. \u201cThe tool I had to protect my son ended up being the tool he used to take his life.\u201d\n\nAt first, the weight of grief and failure felt too much to carry. Guffey says he couldn\u2019t go 15 minutes without feeling he was breaking down. At times, he drank too much \u2013 to the stage of passing out on the path outside his home. It was his son Coen taking him aside and saying how hard it was to see his dad like this that served as a wake-up call. \u201cI was trying to numb myself,\u201d he says. \u201cI haven\u2019t cut out drinking but I don\u2019t keep alcohol in my house now. I\u2019ve learned that whatever emotion I feel when I start drinking is just amplified.\u201d\n\nThat talk with Coen marked a broader turning point. \u201cThe only way I could function was to think that two boys were watching to see how I coped, and I was teaching them whether I wanted to or not,\u201d he says. \u201cDads are great at giving advice. We\u2019re just horrible at following it. So what I\u2019ve tried to do since then is think, \u2018What advice would I give to Coen?\u2019, and then try to do that.\u201d\n\nThe immediate support from his community helped. From the night it happened, their house, he says, became like a \u201csmall city\u201d, filled with people who brought food, took the rubbish out, cared for four-year-old Callahan. \u201cPeople I was polar opposite of politically just came out to be there,\u201d he says. \u201cNothing makes you realise how silly half the stuff we fight about is until you experience loss like that.\u201d\n\nMeeting Gavin\u2019s friends was another comfort. Just 48 hours after his death, Guffey invited everyone who had known Gavin to a local community space to share their memories. \u201cI knew Gavin as a son,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted their perspective, a full picture of who he was.\u201d He discovered that when Gavin used to leave the house at 4am \u2013 Guffey had always thought he was going to the gym before school \u2013 he\u2019d really been picking up friends who\u2019d stayed out too late and were trying to get home. And the reason so many of Gavin\u2019s clothes seemed to get lost \u2013 and Guffey\u2019s too, including his hat which had gone missing \u2013 was that Gavin had given them away to friends. \u201cI wanted all the stories, no matter how mad or bad,\u201d he says, \u201cand they brought a lot of joy.\u201d\n\nGavin\u2019s phone had quickly provided police with a clear picture of the exchange that had led to his suicide. Guffey\u2019s first impulse was to pull out of the election and throw himself into the pursuit of \u201cBellaJanet28\u201d. Although Meta had closed that Instagram account after a subpoena, someone with the same profile picture and friends list, using the name BellaJanet30, was now contacting Gavin\u2019s family members. It isn\u2019t believed that Gavin had been targeted because of Guffey\u2019s career \u2013 it was probably a random approach \u2013 but the sextortionist had followed events since and was now demanding money from Melissa, Coen, Gavin\u2019s 14-year-old cousin and Guffey himself, in exchange for the images. One message featured a headline story involving Hunter Biden, superimposed with a picture of Gavin. The implication was clear.\n\nTwo days before what would have been Gavin\u2019s 18th birthday, a little less than a month since his death, Guffey received a message from BellaJanet30 that said, \u201cDid I tell you your son begged for his life?\u201d, with a laughing face emoji. Guffey messaged back, \u201cI will find you. I will end you. You will regret this.\u201d\n\nAmid all of this, the prospect of \u201cpolitics\u201d, of fighting an election and serving the community seemed impossible. \u201cThe last thing I wanted to do was handle other people\u2019s problems. I didn\u2019t feel qualified any more,\u201d he says. Guffey told Melissa that he was standing down but her response was unequivocal. \u201cShe said,\u201d recalls Guffey, \u201c\u2018Absolutely not. You\u2019re one of the few people who can actually make a change. Go down there and save the next Gavin.\u2019\u201d\n\nIn some ways, this mission has saved Guffey, too, and kept him moving forward. Where once, Guffey knew nothing about sextortion \u2013 one of the fastest-growing online crimes against children \u2013 there are now few who know more.\n\nGuffey is a passionate advocate for the repeal of section 230 in the US which gives platforms legal immunity from the content they carry because it is user-generated. \u201cI would love to see no social media for any minor,\u201d he says, \u201cbut if the tech companies could be held civilly liable for what they are delivering to children, they would prioritise safety over profits.\u201d\n\nThe investigation into BellaJanet28 by the FBI and South Carolina law enforcement required new levels of patience, says Guffey. \u201cIt was like holding my breath underwater.\u201d The breakthrough came through bank verification numbers that enabled agents to trace financial transactions linked to the account.\n\nIn January 2025, the suspect believed to be responsible for Gavin\u2019s sextortion, Hassanbunhussein Abolore Lawal, was extradited from Nigeria. Guffey and Melissa attended his first court appearance in Columbia, South Carolina, where he pleaded not guilty to charges including child exploitation resulting in death, cyberstalking and coercion. \u201cI waited for him to come out, so full of rage and anger and anxiety that I cracked a rear molar,\u201d says Guffey. \u201cAs soon as he appeared, my wife just broke down and then it became about protecting her, not anger towards him. He wouldn\u2019t look at us.\u201d The pretrial is scheduled for December.\n\nIn the short time since Gavin\u2019s death, there has been some progress, Guffey believes. \u201cFor the first couple of years, I was only getting calls from teens who were going through it, and I\u2019d try to convince them to go to their parents,\u201d he says. \u201cNow I\u2019m getting calls from the parents, whose teens have told them and they\u2019re coming to me for help.\u201d But nothing he does ever feels like enough. \u201cIf you were to ask me what I\u2019ve accomplished, I wouldn\u2019t be able to tell you, because it\u2019s go, go, go,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is my grieving. Everyone does it differently and this feels like what I should be doing. I have to use that anger sometimes, just to get up, get going and through the days.\u201d\n\nGavin has stayed with him every moment, he says, in a crowd, in an audience when Guffey gives a speech, and at home when he walks through the door. He sees grief as a kind of \u201cweather system \u2026 you\u2019re always under it\u201d, Guffey says. \u201cAnd you carry an umbrella at all times.\u201d\n\nThough people often tell Guffey how \u201cstrong\u201d he is, that\u2019s not how he feels. \u201cStrength implies choice,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve done has been survival. When Gavin died, I made a vow that his death would not be meaningless. My mission until the day I die will be to try and make sure no other teenager feels as trapped, ashamed and hopeless as he did that night.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Ukraine is littered with landmines on a scale last seen in Vietnam. How can they be removed?",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/oct\/14\/landmines-ukraine-demining-drones-ai",
        "words": "1129",
        "section": "World news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T04:00:43Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/46134225b48b134289a14fc9742e86eaf0eb737f\/1330_739_2439_1951\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Amy Hawkins in Kharkiv region. Photographs by Julia Kochetova",
        "description": "Faced with deadlier threats, demining groups are coming up with new ways of working using drones and AI",
        "text": "Crouched over on her hands and knees in a field of weeds, Olena Kabanova is digging into the ground. With a shovel and a steady hand, the 58-year-old digs out a neat square around the spot where a mine detector has sensed a suspicious object.\n\nFour years ago, this field in eastern Ukraine was occupied by Russian soldiers. Now back under Ukrainian control, it is littered with landmines. Civilians such as Kabanova are trying to make the land usable again.\n\nLandmines are a scourge of conflict zones. Littered across contested territory, they leave land unusable for years after a war has ended. Removing them is an expensive and dangerous job. And the use of long-range drones in Ukraine, which is often described as the most mine-contaminated country in the world, is increasing the scale of the problem.\n\n\u201cWhat we\u2019re now seeing is the massive increase in the use of drone-delivered munitions,\u201d says Paul Heslop, the programme manager for mine action at the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine. \u201cWhat already was a very high-intensity battle area is now potentially, through the use of drones on both sides, becoming a much wider area of contamination and a scale that we haven\u2019t seen since the Americans were dropping cluster munitions on the Ho Chi Minh trail.\u201d\n\nThe task of clearing landmines from Ukraine is replete with challenges. Drone and missile attacks make working outdoors unsafe; humanitarian workers are sometimes directly targeted. And newer, deadlier threats are also appearing. They include the POM-3, a small cylindrical mine used by Russian forces that could be mistaken for an abandoned vacuum flask. It is detonated by the vibrations of approaching footsteps.\n\nPOM-3 mines mean there are \u201cspecific villages that we just completely avoid\u201d, says Anda Riza, a unit commander of the Halo Trust, the largest international humanitarian demining organisation in Ukraine, which employs Kabanova in the field in Kharkiv. The types of landmines are \u201cconstantly developing and evolving\u201d, says Valeriia Shumska, Riza\u2019s colleague.\n\nBut the technological innovation that is emerging from the conflict is also helping deminers to come up with new ways of working, which they hope are quicker and safer than the traditional hands-and-knees approach. The advances are being supported by the $1.5bn funding that has poured into Ukraine\u2019s demining sector since the start of the full-scale invasion.\n\nTake Kabanova\u2019s job. Digging out a patch of land could take up to 45 minutes. But a new machine can do it in five. Called the DMR-7, it is a small, tank-like vehicle fitted with a hosepipe that shoots out jet flows of compressed air.\n\nThe tank is operated by a human using a remote controller who stands at a safe distance away. The operator manoeuvres the tank into place and then, with a loud mechanical whirring and plumes of dirt billowing skywards, the DMR-7 uses the force of compressed air to blast away a small patch of soil. It is a bulky, expensive alternative to a shovel, but it\u2019s one that deminers hope can make one of the most dangerous parts of the demining process quicker and safer.\n\nThe DMR-7 is just one of a host of new pieces of kit that the Halo Trust is experimenting with in Ukraine. Other technologies include AI-powered image analysis, ground-penetrating radar and devices that can detect explosive material, not just metal.\n\nJust as drones have transformed the battlefield, they have also created new opportunities for humanitarians. Before 2022, much of Halo\u2019s surveillance work \u2013 looking for signs of explosives \u2013 was done with binoculars and maps. Now it is done with drones, and satellite imagery, which can be analysed with the help of AI.\n\nBut war has also led to innovations in anti-drone technology. Drone jamming systems, used by both Russian and Ukrainian forces, can interfere with humanitarian work. Halo has lost several drones to jamming and spoofing attacks.\n\nAnd the advances in new technology are not spread equally between providers.\n\nIn a field adjacent to one that Kabanova is working in, staff from the state emergency services are also clearing mines. Under the glare of the late summer sun, Mykyta Shulzhenko, the head of the mechanised demining unit, says his colleagues have started using drones for surveillance. But they are not yet able to use AI to analyse the drone-captured imagery. \u201cI really hope this kind of technology will be implemented soon in our work,\u201d he says.\n\nThe Halo Trust alone spent nearly \u00a350m in Ukraine in the year to 31 March 2025, dwarfing the state\u2019s annual budget of \u00a328.6m for a programme to clear agricultural land of mines and unexploded ordnance. And there are dozens of other demining organisations with overlapping responsibilities and approaches. Responsibility for the sector is split across multiple government agencies. Attempts to reform the country\u2019s mine action law to bring it in line with international standards have faltered.\n\nIhor Bezkaravainyi, a deputy economy minister who leads the country\u2019s work on demining, wants to streamline the policymaking process to create one cabinet-level office to oversee the whole sector. But progress has been slow. Asked why, he offers a weary shrug: \u201cBecause, people.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about a new law, it will mean that some government bodies will lose responsibility, and, they think, power,\u201d Bezkaravainyi says.\n\nOne person who has worked in Ukraine\u2019s demining sector puts it more bluntly: \u201cThe biggest barrier to demining Ukraine is the government of Ukraine.\u201d\n\nBezkaravainyi says: \u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about an ordinary situation with mine action \u2026 the conflict has ended, and the government does not exist \u2026 in Ukraine, it\u2019s the opposite situation.\u201d\n\nThat leads to a host of regulatory and bureaucratic barriers. For example, deminers are often prevented from using vehicles that are driven directly by a person, with health and safety standards requiring that the vehicles are operated remotely. Riza says: \u201cWe know for a fact that doing it remotely is much slower than having a person in the cab. That continues to be our biggest challenge.\u201d\n\nHeslop argues that the Ukrainian authorities are overly broad in their categorisation of land as being contaminated by mines, an approach that risks wasting time and money on clearing land that wasn\u2019t dangerous in the first place. \u201cJust because it was occupied by the Russians doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it was contaminated,\u201d he says. \u201cLand is only contaminated if it\u2019s got fucking explosives in it.\u201d\n\nBut deminers across the sector agree that technological advances will accelerate their ability to release Ukraine\u2019s richly fertile land for civilian use at a much faster rate than has been possible in the past.\n\n\u201cThis is the cutting edge of technology,\u201d says Heslop. \u201cThis is where the humanitarian mine action sector is going through the biggest pivot in the last 30 years.\u201d\n\nAdditional research by Illia Dyadik and Artem Mazhulin\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Beau Lamarre-Condon previously visited farm where he later tried to sink bodies, court told",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2026\/oct\/14\/beau-lamarre-condon-trial-shown-alleged-murder-scene-reconstruction-bullet-holes-ntwnfb",
        "words": "994",
        "section": "Australia news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T02:15:09Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/c7353883a4020f91a39432693c6eefc5f11b6887\/271_0_6880_5504\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Kat Wong",
        "description": "Jury also shown 3D reconstruction of Paddington terrace outlining prosecution version of alleged murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies",
        "text": "Beau Lamarre-Condon previously visited a farm where he later tried to sink the bodies of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, the prosecution has told a Sydney court.\n\nThe rural property belonged to the family of a man the police officer had met on a dating app and the two visited the farm together months before the alleged murders.\n\nLamarre-Condon, 31, has been accused of shooting dead Baird and Davies with his police service weapon in Baird\u2019s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.\n\nHe has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.\n\nThe prosecution on Wednesday read out a statement from Michael Cella who was 20 years old when he spoke with police in 2024. Cella said he matched with Lamarre-Condon on the dating app Hinge in March 2023.\n\nThey began seeing each other, with the pair going to Bondi Junction to watch Hunger Games and the Taylor Swift movie in late 2023. They also ate sushi together.\n\nIn November 2023, Lamarre-Condon invited the younger man on a weekend trip to a cabin.\n\nBut because the proposed trip was too expensive, Cella invited the officer to go to his family\u2019s hobby farm in Bungonia.\n\nThe property had four dams, animals, a fence and a front gate with chains and a padlock, the court heard on Wednesday.\n\nOn 6 November, they drove around the area, looked at the animals and stayed overnight, with Lamarre-Condon recording the farm and posting it to his Instagram story with the Taylor Swift song You Belong With Me.\n\nCella later learned about Baird when he saw Lamarre-Condon\u2019s Instagram posts with him.\n\n\u201cBeau told me they were friends. I sensed there was something more and Beau was not telling me everything,\u201d Cella said in his 2024 statement read to the jury.\n\nCommunication between Lamarre-Condon and Cella slowed significantly about mid-November 2023 and the latter soon lost interest.\n\nHe received some messages from Lamarre-Condon in January 2024 but ignored them, blocked his contact number and deleted their text message conversation, the court heard.\n\nDays later, he received a call from a number with no called ID and did not answer, followed by a message on the encrypted messaging app Signal from a contact with the name Bob. Cella did not respond.\n\nAfter the deaths of Baird and Davies, Lamarre-Condon allegedly made an unsuccessful attempt to sink their bodies at the bottom of a dam at Cella Farms, the prosecution has said.\n\nThey were later found at the fenceline of a monastery about 20km from the property.\n\nBallistics expert discusses bullet trajectories The defence has not disputed the officer attempted to clean up the scene or dispose of the bodies, claiming he \u201cpanicked considerably\u201d after acting in self-defence.\n\nBut the events inside Baird\u2019s home are contested.\n\nThe defence has argued the couple were accidentally shot in two separate struggles.\n\nThe prosecution has told the court that Lamarre-Condon shot Baird twice in the kitchen before shooting Davies through a bedroom door.\n\nA computer-generated video outlining the crown\u2019s version of events was played to the New South Wales supreme court jury earlier on Wednesday.\n\nThe 3D recreation of the Paddington terrace on the morning of the shootings allowed the jury to see the alleged path Lamarre-Condon took through the home. The reconstruction included photos of bullet holes and marks.\n\nThe potential trajectory of the bullets was also highlighted.\n\nBefore the video was shown, justice Natalie Adams said it was the crown case that Baird was shot at close range but the defence argued he was shot from further away.\n\nThe judge warned the kitchen was not shown to scale and that not all the evidence relevant to the angle or distance of the shot to Baird\u2019s head had been adduced.\n\nThe NSW police firearms examiner Lucas Van Der Walt said he was more certain of the trajectory of the bullet through the bedroom door because it had passed 35mm thick wood.\n\nVan Der Walt told the court that \u201cstippling\u201d had been found on the door around a bullet hole that the prosecution alleged was covered with putty and a plastic hook.\n\nStippling is the pattern made by gun shot propellant particles. The closer a target is to a barrel, the smaller the spread pattern would be, Van Der Walt said on Wednesday.\n\n\u201c[It] is going to pepper itself into that softer surface \u2013 in this case a painted door,\u201d he told the jury.\n\nThe court was shown a video of police taking the door from Baird\u2019s bedroom and shooting it with the same gun and ammunition that was allegedly used by Lamarre-Condon.\n\nThe pictures of both the original and test bullet hole were compared and shown to the jury. Van Der Walt said there was a \u201cvery similar spread pattern of the propellant particles impacting with the paint and the wood in the door\u201d.\n\nHe suggested the muzzle of the firearm was 10 to 20cm away from Davies when it was discharged.\n\nOn the side of the door the bullet would have exited, he noted the splintering looked more opaque in the original hole, but he said that was because wood putty had been used to fill the hole.\n\nDefence lawyer John Stratton SC suggested the bullet hole could have been created if there was a body in front of the door, but Van Der Walt said the \u201cclear stippling\u201d would prevent that scenario.\n\nAsked why there was no other bullet marks or bullets found in the room, the expert said it could have hit a hypothetical pillow, jacket or similar item.\n\n\u201cIf that bullet continued and penetrated any of these surfaces and that object was removed and discarded, we\u2019ll never find that bullet,\u201d he told the court.\n\nBullets shot in this way fell to the ground, he said, and given the scene had been cleaned extensively, a casing could have been picked up by cleaners, Van Der Walt told the jury.\n\nThe trial before justice Adams continues.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
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    {
        "id": "1c88a0e34897e7852ddc9d96f3b1897224b9d528",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/4ee2194c2726a4e1036af3bd9aea34f455528d26\/658_0_6743_5395\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Family of Indigenous woman found dead in Melbourne mourn \u2018vibrant, beautiful young girl\u2019",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2026\/oct\/14\/family-mourn-jayda-bonner-indigenous-woman-found-dead-melbourne-ntwnfb",
        "words": "332",
        "section": "Australia news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T03:37:02Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/4ee2194c2726a4e1036af3bd9aea34f455528d26\/658_0_6743_5395\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Douglas Smith Indigenous affairs reporter ",
        "description": "Police have charged a 31-year-old man with the alleged murder of Jayda Allen Bonner, whose body was found in a Carlton apartment on Saturday",
        "text": "The family of a young Indigenous woman found dead in an apartment complex in Melbourne\u2019s inner-north on Saturday say they are \u201cabsolutely crushed and shattered\u201d by her death.\n\nJayda Allen Bonner, 21, was found dead on the fifth floor of an apartment block on Cardigan Street, Carlton on Saturday at about 1.45am.\n\nPolice on Wednesday charged a 31-year-old man with murder. He was expected to appear in the Melbourne magistrates court that afternoon.\n\nThe man presented himself at a police station on Monday, police said.\n\nA 60-year-old man who was initially arrested has been released without charge.\n\nSign up for the Breaking News Australia email Bonner\u2019s aunt, Kellie Carter-Bell described her niece as a \u201cvibrant, beautiful young girl\u201d who was \u201cfed to the wolves because the system didn\u2019t listen\u201d.\n\nCarter-Bell said Bonner had been with her partner, who was 10 years her senior, since she was 15 years old.\n\nBonner lived with Carter-Bell in Melbourne as a young child and attended school in Carlton.\n\nHer aunt said \u201cshe was a beautiful family girl\u201d, who had hopes of moving back to Queensland to be with \u201cher mob and to work in the community\u201d.\n\n\u201cJayda wanted to share her own knowledge of what she could [do] to help her community,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve heard from her school teachers what a beautiful, vibrant young lady she was.\n\n\u201cShe had a lot of dreams and aspirations \u2026 She looks exactly like her mother, which is beautiful.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s someone this world shouldn\u2019t have lost.\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t save my niece, so I feel worthless and useless at the moment.\n\n\u201cThe family is absolutely crushed and shattered \u201cWe don\u2019t want her to ever be forgotten.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "feadbcedf0dab4061cbfcdf69298e393aae5269e",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/461d064cfe98335b0bdbed60f3824c89a8794839\/0_0_4320_3456\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "\u2019How do you explain the deletion of 130 million names?\u2019 Why Indian voters are on the streets",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/oct\/14\/india-protests-election-commission-gyanesh-kumar",
        "words": "1427",
        "section": "World news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T02:09:22Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/461d064cfe98335b0bdbed60f3824c89a8794839\/0_0_4320_3456\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shaikh Azizur Rahman",
        "description": "Anger at electoral roll changes has boiled over, sparking a crisis for Narendra Modi\u2019s Hindu nationalist government",
        "text": "Born into a small village in West Bengal, Shahida Fakir had always taken her vote for granted. That was, until it was suddenly taken away. She presented officials with her Indian birth certificate and family land documents from the village going back to 1962.\n\nBoth her parents had been on the electoral roll going back decades, so she showed proof of that too. But when the final revised voter list came out in April, Fakir was not on it.\n\nThe 38-year-old migrant worker, born into a poor Muslim family, was not alone. Since last year, 130 million names \u2013 more than the population of Japan \u2013 have been removed from India\u2019s electoral roll through a process known as SIR, or special intensive revision. In the nearly eight decades since India\u2019s independence, never have the voter rolls shrunk by such a huge amount over such a short time.\n\nThe Narendra Modi government has called SIR a legitimate exercise to clean up the electoral rolls. Overseen by the election commission, tens of millions of dead and duplicate names have been removed. Yet so have the names of millions of living Indian citizens.\n\nCritics allege that the pledge to \u201cpurify\u201d India\u2019s voter roll of illegal immigrants has instead been used for more sinister purposes \u2013 disenfranchising tens of millions of Muslims, other minorities, and poor and lower caste communities, who are largely not BJP voters.\n\nIn a matter of weeks, nationwide anger at SIR has boiled up and spilled out on to the streets of India\u2019s biggest cities, presenting a formidable challenge to the government. Over the weekend, Delhi was transformed into a high-security fortress of barricades, roadblocks and tens of thousands of police and paramilitaries who detained thousands of people, as they attempted to stop youth-led protests calling for the man who oversaw SIR, the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, to step down immediately.\n\nOn Monday, opposition parties \u2013 who have decried SIR as a \u201cweapon for vote theft\u201d by the Modi government \u2013 drew tens of thousands of supporters as they marched through the capital and presented a petition to the supreme court, demanding Kumar\u2019s resignation. The youth-led Cockroach Janta party (CJP) movement, who were behind the call for Saturday\u2019s action, have vowed to \u201cfight on\u201d in their protests against SIR.\n\nOpposition and civil society leaders allege that SIR has already given the BJP an electoral advantage in states such as Bihar and West Bengal, claims the party denied. Others say the exercise has had even more concerning implications: under changes to SIR unilaterally implemented by Kumar, the election commission has become the arbiter of Indian citizenship, a sweeping overreach of its remit.\n\nThe consequences are already playing out in West Bengal, where Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) recently came to power and began a crackdown on \u201cillegal\u201d immigrants, complete with several new detention centres. Civil society groups say Muslims excluded by SIR are being targeted.\n\nFakir was among them. Just three months after the voter list was published \u2013 and while her hearing to challenge her exclusion was pending \u2013 she was picked up by police and accused of being an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant.\n\nIn July she was pushed over the border to Bangladesh, a country she had never been to nor had any connection with, and remains stuck there. \u201cI have all the documents to prove I am an Indian citizen,\u201d she said in a tearful phone call from the Bangladesh border village where she has been sheltering. \u201cI fell on their feet and begged the police not to send me to Bangladesh but they pushed me over the border.\u201d\n\nA Bangladesh border guard officer confirmed Fakir\u2019s account. \u201cWe checked all her documents and are convinced that she is an Indian citizen,\u201d they said. In September, her family submitted a petition to the supreme court challenging her deportation. The Indian government was given a month to respond.\n\n\u201cAll I want is to return to my family and my home in India. I am waiting desperately for that day,\u201d she said. The backlog of millions of voters in West Bengal challenging their exclusion means it could be years before Fakir\u2019s case is heard.\n\nThose across West Bengal who have been stripped of their votes speak of their terror of being accused of being an alien in their own land. Some have had benefits taken away. Mohammad Hedayet Ullah Siddiqui, 80, from the North 24 Parganas district, said his grandfather had been a freedom fighter for Indian independence and three generations of his family were on the voter rolls. Yet after SIR, Siddiqui described his \u201chumiliation\u201d on finding his name gone.\n\n\u201cWith my name erased from the voter list, I am in constant terror. What if they send me to a detention camp?\u201d he said. \u201cI cannot bear to think about being separated from my children and grandchildren at this age, especially when all my ancestors have been buried in India.\u201d\n\nCritics say the problems began in 2023, when the Modi government changed the process for appointing the three-body election commission, giving majority control to the government for the first time. Within a matter of months, the Modi-led panel had appointed Kumar as the election commissioner in spite of opposition objections.\n\n\u201cFor decades, the election commission was one of our more credible, independent bodies, but now that has been eroded,\u201d said Ronojoy Sen, a senior fellow at the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore.\n\nBy the following year, the new election commission body had begun SIR, starting in Bihar, where it immediately raised concerns among human rights groups after more than 6 million names were removed. Not long after the revisions, the BJP won a landslide victory in the Bihar state elections.\n\nDespite concerns over SIR rumbling on for months, it did not spark national protests until the Indian Express newspaper last month revealed that two members of the election commission had raised 14 objections to how voters were being excluded from the rolls, but they were unilaterally overruled by Kumar.\n\n\u201cIndia has always been a flawed democracy but at least citizens felt they had the right to vote and that elections were regular and fair,\u201d said Sen. \u201cSIR has taken away that right. From how it has been conducted, it\u2019s difficult to see how the motive was anything other than to enhance the election prospects of the BJP.\u201d\n\nThree former election commissioners have openly criticised SIR as a \u201chostile exercise\u201d that has undermined the sanctity of the country\u2019s electoral rolls by focusing on the exclusion \u2013 rather than inclusion \u2013 of voters. OP Rawat, a former chief election commissioner, described changes to the voter registration form as \u201cwrong and illegal\u201d.\n\nAshok Lavasa, who was an election commissioner between 2018 and 2020, called for the SIR to be scrapped. \u201cAn unfair procedure has been imposed on millions of people in the country, and you have the judiciary which has validated that,\u201d he said last month. \u201cHow do you explain the deletion of 130 million names?\u201d\n\nNone have been more vehement in their opposition than SY Qureshi, who was chief election commissioner between 2010 and 2012. \u201cThis is a national harassment exercise designed to throw Muslims off the electoral roll,\u201d he claimed. \u201cThe only way to restore the credibility of India\u2019s elections is to restore those deleted voters.\u201d\n\nThe BJP has denied any political involvement or motive in the SIR process, accusing the opposition Congress party of \u201cjealousy\u201d over its recent electoral victories and saying any deleted voters can simply re-enrol. The BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said the allegations were \u201cdisinformation\u201d and part of an opposition campaign \u201cbeing orchestrated to create an atmosphere of division and anarchy\u201d.\n\nNonetheless, the election commission has appeared to accept some flaws in the process. Late last week, it belatedly put a cap on the number of voter deletion forms \u2013 which allow people to submit objections on behalf of others \u2013 after incidents in which people submitted thousands of forms targeting legitimate Muslim voters.\n\nPublic anger, meanwhile, has continued to build. In Delhi, where the SIR exercise left millions of people off the draft list, protests are expected to continue this week.\n\nA Delhi resident for 30 years, Prashant Tandon, 60, said he could not believe it when a notice came to his door, questioning his life as a voter. \u201cIf someone doubts my citizenship, they should produce evidence against me,\u201d he said furiously, adding that he would be protesting alongside the young people. \u201cI should not have to prove that I am an Indian citizen.\u201d\n\nAdditional reporting Aakash Hassan\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "85e39a13516923790b78f146dc0e0aa1fc1cab09",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/f2e487439ab0f0c7d6d3a09625b5c24fafe301e3\/1028_0_6880_5504\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "The IMF says we need to make \u2018urgent choices\u2019. But are they choices the Albanese government is willing to make?",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/grogonomics\/2026\/oct\/14\/imf-world-economic-outlook-urgent-choices-albanese-australia",
        "words": "930",
        "section": "Business",
        "date": "2026-10-14T02:01:04Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/f2e487439ab0f0c7d6d3a09625b5c24fafe301e3\/1028_0_6880_5504\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Greg Jericho",
        "description": "The IMF is not a body that needs to worry about elections or the political cost of interest rates or inflation",
        "text": "The IMF on Tuesday released its latest World Economic Outlook, suggesting \u201cResilience Under Strain, Urgent Choices\u201d. But the choices are ones a government wishing to win an election would likely ignore.\n\nThe IMF, as a rule, always sees a need to cut spending and lower taxes. Given its history of lending money to countries in severe debt, that\u2019s no shock, and, even if the austerity it prescribed ruined lives, the IMF is very much in the Margaret Thatcher \u201cthe medicine is harsh but the patient requires it\u201d mould.\n\nThat\u2019s important given what it thinks are \u201curgent choices\u201d.\n\nBut first we always get a sense of how the IMF see the world when we look at the titles of its outlook. A year ago, it was Global Economy in Flux, Prospects Remain Dim, followed by Global Economy: Steady amid Divergent Forces. That, as I suggested at the time, was an extraordinary way to describe a world where Donald Trump was threatening Greenland and had just launched an insurgency into Venezuela.\n\nSince then, of course, there has been nothing \u201csteady\u201d, and the IMF outlooks went from Global Economy in the Shadow of War to Global Economy in Crosscurrents of War and Technology.\n\nNow apparently all is resilient despite the strain.\n\nFor Australia the update slightly downgrades forecasts for economic growth over the next couple years. The big downgrades, though, came last October, before the US and Israel\u2019s war on Iran:\n\nClick here if this graph does not display\n\nThe downgrades since April are all margin of error stuff.\n\nThe forecast for economic growth this year has Australia in the top half of the advanced nations of the OECD, and only behind the US among the G7 nations:\n\nClick here if this graph does not display\n\nSimilarly, the forecast for inflation is not much changed from April \u2013 up a bit, but the IMF still thinks inflation will be below 3% by next year:\n\nClick here if this graph does not display\n\nThere has been a report that this will mean Australia\u2019s inflation is among the highest across the OECD next year. But, to be honest, so long at it is between 2% and 3%, arguing over who has the lowest is pretty silly.\n\nAnd yes, Australia is expected to see its unemployment rise by more than most OECD economies but it will remain lower here than three of the G7.\n\nClick here if this graph does not display\n\nI also would happily take the IMF\u2019s prediction for unemployment in 2026 of 4.4% and 4.7% next year, given currently (at least until Thursday) it is 4.6%.\n\nOver the next five years (at which point predictions get very ropey) the IMF sees pretty weak growth, inflation within the target range and unemployment not going above 4.8%\n\nClick here if this graph does not display\n\nWould that be so bad? I\u2019d prefer unemployment closer to 4% but, right now, given the ructions in the economy, steady inflation below 3% and unemployment lower than 4.8% is a pretty nice combination.\n\nThese things never come true though (see above), so perhaps more relevant are the \u201curgent choices\u201d that the IMF thinks needs to be made.\n\nOne chapter of the outlook examines how governments respond to cost of living shocks such as the US-Israel war on Iran or Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.\n\nIt notes government can either provide income support to (mostly) low-income households or it can suppress prices by, for example, cutting the fuel excise or subsidising energy costs (two policies the Albanese government undertook).\n\nThe IMF found that (and prepare to be shocked) price-suppressing policies suppressed prices and thus lowered current inflation and also the inflationary expectations of the following year.\n\nBy contrast, providing households with income support raised consumption by more (again not a shock) but it actually raised inflation not only in the current year but the expectation for inflation in the following year:\n\nClick here if this graph does not display\n\nNow you might think that makes it obvious that if you want to lower the burden of inflation the best policy is to suppress prices and actually lower inflation.\n\nBut no.\n\nThe IMF says these figures show that \u201cduring cost-of-living crises, governments should preserve price signals and rely primarily on temporary, targeted income support for the most vulnerable\u201d.\n\nAnd why? Well mostly because price suppression costs more, and the IMF hates government spending \u2013 especially if it increases a budget deficit.\n\nThe IMF looked at measures by European countries in 2020 to 2023 and found income support helped the lowest 20% of households slightly more than price suppression \u2013 but the other 80% were all worse off.\n\nClick here if this graph does not display\n\nI have some sympathy with the IMF not worrying too much about higher income households but this ignores the reality that cutting fuel excise or subsiding energy costs actually lowers inflation and thus helps keep interest rates lower.\n\nDoes anyone really think the RBA would have kept rates down last year if the government increased income support and, as a result, increased inflation?\n\nThe IMF is not a body that needs to worry about elections or the political cost of interest rates or inflation.\n\nAs such, its advice is nice to consider but I suspect the Albanese government will look at the finding and thank the IMF for confirming that the best way for a government to lower inflation is to lower prices of things such as energy and petrol, and to do so again if needed.\n\nGreg Jericho is a Guardian columnist and chief economist at the Australia Institute\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "1e930c2010ed2f9e6b0fc9292b31cbf5c6b9b725",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/bb75bc756f72fded7e1c23d0d4d437bba79cf254\/422_0_1350_1080\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Court overturns Tanya Plibersek\u2019s protection order which stalled controversial NSW goldmine ",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2026\/oct\/14\/federal-court-overturns-tanya-plibersek-protection-order-nsw-goldmine-mcphillamys-blaney",
        "words": "530",
        "section": "Environment",
        "date": "2026-10-14T01:58:38Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/bb75bc756f72fded7e1c23d0d4d437bba79cf254\/422_0_1350_1080\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Lisa Cox Environment and climate correspondent",
        "description": "Federal court overrules decision by former environment minister for the McPhillamys goldmine development at Blayney",
        "text": "The federal court has overturned a rare protection order issued by former environment minister Tanya Plibersek under Indigenous heritage legislation, which the company said effectively blocked a controversial goldmine in the central west of New South Wales.\n\nRegis Resources challenged the decision by the former minister to issue the order in 2024 under section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.\n\nThe Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation asked the minister to protect the headwaters and the springs of the Belubula River as a site central to creation stories.\n\nThe company said at the time the protection order, while affecting only part of the site and not the area intended to be mined, would make its McPhillamys goldmine development at Blayney unviable.\n\nThe order blocked the company from building a tailings dam in the headwaters of the Belubula River.\n\nIn a decision on Wednesday morning, Justice James Stellios ruled the order was invalid. The reasons for the court\u2019s decision will be published on Friday.\n\nAccording to the ABC, Stellios said on Wednesday the court\u2019s decision and his reasons \u201csay nothing about the merits of the claim ... whether it\u2019s a significant area or under threat of injury or desecration ... those are matters within the authority of the minister ... not the jurisdiction of this court.\u201d\n\nAt a three-day hearing last year, Regis Resources argued it had been denied procedural fairness and the government made errors in the process it followed before issuing the protection order.\n\nThe company\u2019s lawyer, Perry Herzfeld SC, argued a blue-banded bee Dreaming story that influenced the government\u2019s decision to protect the area was not raised until two years after the initial application for a section 10 order was made.\n\nIn a statement, the company said it anticipated the current environment minister, Murray Watt, \u201cwill be required to redetermine the application for a Section 10 Declaration, having regard to the relevant findings made by Justice Stellios in the judgment\u201d.\n\n\u201cToday\u2019s federal court judgment is a significant and welcome step forward for the McPhillamys Gold Project,\u201d managing director Jim Beyer said.\n\n\u201cThe judgment finding that the Section 10 Declaration is legally invalid vindicates the position we have held since the Declaration was made in August 2024, and we are extremely pleased the Court has agreed.\u201d\n\nRegis Resources said because any process to redetermine the protection order application could be protracted and \u201cor for the outcome not to be in Regis\u2019 favour\u201d, the company was still pursing an alternative approach to the development.\n\nThe company said that plan would involve co-disposal of filtered processed ore and waste rock into a single facility \u2013 referred to as an Integrated Waste Landform \u2013 \u201cand entirely avoids the area impacted by the declaration\u201d.\n\n\u201cAfter considerable delay and uncertainty, and more than two years of time lost, we are eager to move forward,\u201d Beyer said.\n\n\u201cWe look forward to engaging constructively with the Department through the redetermination process, and to advance one of Australia\u2019s largest undeveloped gold projects \u2013 one with the potential to deliver lasting economic and social benefits to the Central New South Wales region and our broader stakeholder community.\u201d\n\nComment has been sought from Watt.\n\nwith AAP\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "9cc68440ce7d05cb733f986197066a690526a205",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "An eerie trip inside Thailand\u2019s oldest amusement park, deserted after flooding",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/ng-interactive\/2026\/oct\/14\/siam-amazing-park-thailand-oldest-amusement-park-flooded",
        "words": "755",
        "section": "World news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T01:36:25Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/c8e6aac90082786880b93054a9dd80a3f35864f5\/236_0_2000_1600\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Oliver Holmes in Bangkok. Photography: Chanakarn Laosarakham",
        "description": "Siam Amazing Park was forced to close after rising water damaged rides and left parts of the park inaccessible",
        "text": "With its mouth agape, the giant lion\u2019s head is frozen in a roar. No water rushes down the log flume that descends from its heights, while at ground level, the vast amusement park stands empty of noise and activity except for leaves blowing in a light breeze.\n\nWelcome to Siam Amazing Park, billed as the longest-running amusement park in south-east Asia, and certainly in Thailand. Up to a million people rush in every year for thrills on rides like the Boomerang, an orange rollercoaster that loop-the-loops at 80km\/h (50mph), or to splash around under the tropical sun in one of the world\u2019s largest wave pools.\n\nIt now stands empty, after being closed late last month when it started raining in Bangkok and did not stop for days. It could take more than six months for the park to reopen.\n\nManaging director Wuthichai Luangamornlert sits in an airconditioned conference room at the park\u2019s entrance. Below his office, rows of turnstiles stand empty where just days before, thousands of tourists and local visitors were eagerly pushing through.\n\nHe was not too alarmed when the rains began at the end of September. The area on the outskirts of Bangkok has seen heavy rains before \u2013 the megacity itself is built on floodplains and has a network of muddy canals and pumps to drain water.\n\n\u201cWhen it rains a lot, it will dry off and the water will go away by the next morning,\u201d he says. But the next morning came and it was still raining, and the day after, it was still raining. \u201cThe water level keeps rising. So that\u2019s when we knew that it was not normal.\u201d\n\nAfter three days, the sewers filled up and much of the park turned into a giant lake, with the water level reaching around knee height. Many of the motors and electrical systems that power the rides were damaged. Buildings around the park are still marked with lines of silt \u2013 the markers a flood leaves behind.\n\nWuthichai\u2019s father, Chaiwat, who opened the park in 1980, is famous in Thailand for his rags-to-riches tale, and kept prices discounted so the average Thai family could afford a rare visit. The son is now managing things, and says it is odd how rapidly his mindset changed from that of little concern to the reality of having the park closed for six months, or longer. \u201cIt happened within a few hours,\u201d he says.\n\nThis story of unstoppable rising water is one told across the city, where the government declared a flood disaster across all 50 districts. For days, people were forced to use boats to get to their destroyed homes, and those who did not have boats used inflatable pool toys. Weeks later, only puddles are left, although many canals are full and the rainy season is not over.\n\nClimate scientists warn the world is indeed experiencing a slow-moving crisis as the planet bakes due to human-induced heating, although it is too early to attribute Bangkok\u2019s rains to climate breakdown, and the picture is complicated by an abnormally strong El Ni\u00f1o, a cyclical weather pattern that brings violent extremes.\n\nIn the water section of the amusement park, dry water slides drop directly into murky flood waters, while deck chairs stand abandoned. Small fish have entered the once-chlorinated waters, making their home in waters turned green with algae which were previously bright azure.\n\nThe wider park \u2013 which was built to be bursting with children, laughter and blaring music \u2013 remains spectacularly eerie.\n\nStalls offering rice and spicy meat as well as American-style food such as hotdogs stand empty, although their price boards remain outside.\n\nWuthichai says the park\u2019s primary concern was their several hundred staff. The business is not as strong as it was before the Covid pandemic, he says, when they were forced to close but did not make redundancies. Several rollercoasters are foreign-made and need specialised parts and labour from Europe or Japan that could take months to arrive. At least the double-decker carousel at the park entrance is bespoke and locally made, he adds.\n\nThe owners expect the cost of repair, and the lost revenue from being closed, to reach millions of US dollars. Short of cash, they have asked for a debt holiday from banks, help from the government, and are also considering offers to buy the park.\n\n\u201cThere are people who are still interested, still making appointments all the time,\u201d says Wuthichai, who sits next to his adult son, the third generation of the family business. \u201cWe have not made a decision yet.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "bbf12bb6847aeb02a0116117637dda17665ef060",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/ab6acf63704348be134cd6ee94b515a51d0a50f0\/596_0_5258_4209\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "USWNT returnees earn 2-2 draw against Spain, an early World Cup wake-up call",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/oct\/13\/uswnt-spain-friendly-ashley-sanchez-mallory-swanson",
        "words": "948",
        "section": "Football",
        "date": "2026-10-14T01:19:10Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/ab6acf63704348be134cd6ee94b515a51d0a50f0\/596_0_5258_4209\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Pablo Iglesias Maurer at Subaru Park",
        "description": "The US were on the verge of losing two straight at home, but second-half goals from Ashley Sanchez and Mallory Swanson saved a draw",
        "text": "It was nearly time for the panic button. Maybe not to press it, but to look at it \u2013 to acknowledge that it\u2019s within reach. A listless, shorthanded US women\u2019s national team were struggling against Spain, down 2-0, and facing the ignominy of two straight decisive losses at home after Saturday\u2019s 3-0 drubbing in Washington DC.\n\nThen two players who had just returned to the team after long absences turned the tide. Ashley Sanchez and Mallory Swanson, after international scoring droughts of 1,648 days and 801 days, respectively, each scored in the second half to earn a 2-2 draw with the defending World Cup winners.\n\nThe result may have avoided the worst-case scenario, but the way it unfolded will give US fans pause. Just 255 days from the 2027 World Cup, the results raise fresh questions ahead of the side\u2019s return to World Cup qualification in late November. But of course, there are caveats. Both teams were missing key players, with the World Cup still nine months away there\u2019s plenty of time to course-correct.\n\nRather, the matches served as a helpful reminder to what many \u2013 including USWNT head coach Emma Hayes \u2013 already knew ahead of them: Spain, the top-ranked team in the world, are the first team in decades that can legitimately outclass the US women, who have long been the international standard bearers for the sport.\n\n\u201cThey are world-class. We are still in progress,\u201d Hayes said afterward. \u201cI didn\u2019t learn anything I didn\u2019t already know.\u201d\n\nHayes made four changes from the starting lineup she rolled out against Spain on Saturday, handing Manchester United goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce the start in goal, tapping Ashley Sanchez and Claire Hutton in midfield and attempting to shore up her backline with Angel City fullback Gisele Thompson.\n\nThe US fared better in the game\u2019s opening 10 minutes than they did for much of Saturday\u2019s decisive loss, but were once again nearly undone by an early defensive lapse around the 15 minute mark. Spain attacker Clara Pinedo easily split US defenders Emily Fox and Kennedy Wesley with a perfectly timed run, and her driven, close-range effort from the far side of the box challenged Tullis-Joyce but did not find the back of the net.\n\nSpain\u2019s pair of goals came 15 minutes later, on opposite sides of the half hour mark. The first came courtesy of two-time Ballon D\u2019Or winner Alexia Putellas, who made easy work of a close-range tap-in at the near post. The ball arrived at her feet after a lovely, patient nine-pass sequence by the Spaniards; Barcelona midfielder Clara Serrajordi\u2019s ensuing cross traversed the six-yard box, was deftly stepped over by Spanish midfielder Clara Pinedo and found Putellas alone to finish her 43rd international goal.\n\nSix minutes later, the US handed Spain another. Under duress, Tullis-Joyce played a pass through her own central defenders and directly towards Putellas, who strode forward and threaded an angled ball through to OL Lyonnes midfielder Salma Paraluello, who smashed her effort off the underside of the crossbar and into goal, silencing the 18,648 in attendance in Chester, Pennsylvania.\n\nOnce again missing center back Naomi Girma and midfielder Sam Coffey, the US were exposed badly in central defense; Spain, despite missing three-time Ballon D\u2019Or winner Aitana Bonmat\u00ed and a host of others, were rarely challenged \u2013 at least not until the games reached its closing stages, and introductions from the bench turned the tide.\n\n\u201cWe see the importance of the squad depth and how are players are developing, especially the less experienced ones,\u201d Hayes said, referring to the changes for both sides.\n\nThe US finally found the back of the net at the 50th minute on the counterattack. Midfielder Lindsey Heaps collected the ball in the US box and played it upfield to Portland Thorns forward Sofia Wilson, who did well to fight off a defender and sprint upfield, eventually playing across to Sanchez, who rounded her defender and struck an inch-perfect finish past Spain keeper Misa Rodr\u00edguez and into the far-side netting. On an otherwise forgettable night, Sanchez was consistently in dangerous spots for the US.\n\nThe US finally managed to seize a bit of control in the dying moments of the match, after both teams made wholesale changes, with the US equalizer once again coming on the counterattack. US debutant Kate Del Fava did well to gain possession in her own half and found Kansas City Current forward Michelle Cooper with a 40-yard, lofted ball. Cooper ran into its path, found Chicago Stars forward Mal Swanson with a cross and Swanson did well to finish from the top of the area. Improbably, US midfielder Lily Yohannes very nearly won the game for the US in the final minute of stoppage time, with her effort parried just wide by Rodr\u00edguez.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think the group coming in the second half did themselves any harm,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cThey were fearless.\u201d\n\nThe USWNT have faced a host of elite opponents this year and experienced varying results against top-10 competition like Japan, Brazil and Canada, yet they continue to struggle against Spain, winless against La Roja six years. In the interim, Spain have emerged as a dominant force, sharing the same possession-based, positional-play style the Spanish men have employed for decades. Spanish clubs have been rapidly professionalized over the last decade and those same clubs have pumped millions into youth development, populating the Spanish women with a steady stream of young prospects.\n\nThe US women will look ahead now to a match against a much lesser opponent, albeit one with much higher stakes: they\u2019ll meet El Salvador in the quarter-finals of the Concacaf W Championship with direct qualification to the 2027 World Cup at stake on 27 November in Mansfield, Texas.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "417cd5944ab55c10bacd65b06b8e8c7a778d6282",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/a62dbaf9a1d991850d4d543b0d64137641d6236f\/527_0_5000_4000\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Chalmers denies Albanese overruled him on ATO credit card ban after PM says \u2018I will get it done\u2019",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2026\/oct\/14\/jim-chalmers-denies-anthony-albanese-rolled-him-over-credit-card-payments-for-tax-bills",
        "words": "538",
        "section": "Australia news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T00:10:16Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/a62dbaf9a1d991850d4d543b0d64137641d6236f\/527_0_5000_4000\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Tom McIlroy Political editor",
        "description": "Treasurer\u2019s comments come after prime minister revealed he intervened to delay a controversial ban on such payments to the tax office",
        "text": "Jim Chalmers has denied being rolled by Anthony Albanese after the prime minister personally intervened to stop a tax office ban on credit card payments a day before stopgap funding was announced.\n\nAfter sustained criticism of the government\u2019s handling of the ban on tax bills being paid by credit card, Chalmers last week announced new funding for the ATO to ensure card payments could continue until the end of the financial year.\n\nAlbanese has since revealed that he acted after discussions with Andrew McKellar, the boss of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), earlier than previously known, prompting suggestions that Albanese had undermined his treasurer.\n\nBut, when asked if he had been rolled, Chalmers denied the prime minister went over his head to intervene on the ATO\u2019s decision to ban credit card payments.\n\n\u201cIf you just let me set it out for you, [the] prime minister and I were in discussions on Wednesday of last week,\u201d he said on Wednesday morning.\n\n\u201cHe had a view and I agree with it, that we needed to step in to provide this longer transition period to allow the ATO the time to get it right. We had the same view.\u201d\n\nSign up for Guardian Australia\u2019s Politics, really newsletter here\n\nAlbanese said at Parliament House on Tuesday night that he had acted when concerns were raised with him. \u201cAndrew [McKellar] did text me last Thursday morning and by Friday morning we had an announcement,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cThat was an example of a relationship that takes time to develop. That trust, where you can have a discussion and say, \u2018It is in hand, I agree with what you are saying and I will get it done.\u2019\u201d\n\nThe tax commissioner, Rob Heferen, announced this month that the ATO would stop accepting credit card payments for tax bills from 1 December. The move followed a ban on surcharges announced by the Reserve Bank.\n\nHeferen said continuing to accept card payments would cost the ATO almost $200m a year, as those costs could not legally be passed on to card users.\n\nBut some business owners, particularly smaller operators, use credit card payments as a cashflow tool, managing their liabilities by using credit when required. Estimates suggest about 5% of small businesses use credit card payments for tax bills.\n\nThe ATO is an independent authority and the government cannot direct the tax commissioner\u2019s decisions.\n\nChalmers told ABC radio on Wednesday he was involved in the conversations with ACCI as well, describing the intervention as a joint decision with the prime minister.\n\n\u201cI have an open door,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve met with ACCI in recent weeks, in fact, and we were engaging on these issues as well.\u201d\n\nHe said he had discussions with Albanese before he and the assistant treasurer, Daniel Mulino, took a proposal to ministerial colleagues.\n\nThe shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson, told News24 the intervention was more evidence of Albanese overriding Chalmers.\n\n\u201cThe prime minister has a kink for punishing small businesses and a fetish for humiliating his treasurer,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cSo I say this is a consistent pattern of behaviour where the prime minister constantly goes in, overrides his treasurer, humiliates him in public. I suspect it\u2019s going to sour the relationship somewhat.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "3082f63ff0528bb2e874c1239551b8d412d34bb9",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/2935b7e812af783543a25a219521041a3c97878b\/915_0_5000_4000\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Russia arrests Japanese journalist on allegations of spying",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/oct\/14\/russia-detains-japanese-journalist-suspicion-spying",
        "words": "572",
        "section": "World news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T01:05:25Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/2935b7e812af783543a25a219521041a3c97878b\/915_0_5000_4000\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Justin McCurry in Tokyo",
        "description": "FSB security agency said reporter was arrested on island of Sakhalin, alleging he was collecting information about Russia\u2019s defences",
        "text": "Russia has arrested a Japanese journalist on the far east island of Sakhalin and accused him of spying, in the latest sign of rising tensions between Moscow and Tokyo.\n\nRussian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova identified the reporter as Yuki Imai, from the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, adding that he had been accused of \u201cconducting espionage activities on Russian territory\u201d.\n\nImai, a reporter at the newspaper\u2019s bureau in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin, was reportedly preparing to return to Japan when he was arrested for allegedly collecting information on Russia\u2019s defence capabilities, according to Russia\u2019s Tass news agency.\n\nRussia\u2019s FSB security agency claimed the journalist had intended to pass the information on to Japanese intelligence.\n\nThe FSB published a video showing masked officers storming a hotel room, pushing a man to the floor and handcuffing him. The man was flown to Moscow, where a court ordered he be held in pre-trial detention. It did not say when the arrest or court hearing occurred. The charges carry up to 20 years in prison.\n\nJapan\u2019s foreign ministry urged Moscow to extend \u201cfair and impartial treatment\u201d to the detained journalist. \u201cThe Japanese embassy \u2026 in Moscow and the consulate general in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk lodged a request with the Russian authorities for the prompt provision of information, as well as for humanitarian consideration and fair and impartial treatment,\u201d an official told Agence France-Presse.\n\nThe Hokkaido Shimbun said in a statement that it was aware of the announcement by Russian authorities but it was \u201cstill confirming the details\u201d.\n\n\u201cEnsuring the safety of the journalist is our top priority, and we are responding accordingly,\u201d it said.\n\nImai\u2019s arrest comes amid rapidly deteriorating ties between Japan and Russia, triggered by Tokyo\u2019s support for Ukraine and a longstanding dispute over sovereignty of islands belonging to the Kuril chain near Sakhalin that are known in Japan as the Northern Territories. Japan claims the four islands closest to its territory \u2013 the nearest is less than 4km from Hokkaido.\n\nRussia regards Japan as an \u201cunfriendly\u201d country because it has joined western sanctions over its war \u2060in Ukraine. Russia has arrested several citizens of \u201cunfriendly\u201d countries in recent years, accusing them of working for western intelligence services.\n\nIn 2023, US journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges, later sentenced to 16 years in prison before being released in a 2024 prisoner swap.\n\nThe FSB said it had \u201copened a criminal case against the Japanese national\u201d, and that he had been placed in pre-trial detention, Russian news agencies reported, citing the agency.\n\nRussian media reported he would remain in custody until 12 December.\n\n\u201cAttempts by Tokyo to use its correspondents in Russia \u2026 to gather information aimed at undermining the security of our state is regrettable,\u201d Zakharova said, alleging this was \u201cnot an isolated case\u201d.\n\nThe Kurils have been under Russian control since the end of the second world war, when Soviet forces seized the islands in the final days of the conflict, forcing about 17,000 Japanese citizens to leave and, over time, replacing them with a similar number of Russians.\n\nIn 2022, Moscow scrapped a programme that allowed former residents to travel to the islands to visit the graves of their ancestors in protest at Japan\u2019s support for Ukraine.\n\nRussia\u2019s president, Vladimir Putin, visited one of the disputed islands in August, causing an \u200buproar in Japan. Tokyo has \u200csaid it would continue \u200bimplementing sanctions against \u200bRussia and supporting Ukraine.\n\nWith Agence France-Presse and Reuters\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "94dd63bb1b305a4aee046772f9df90112d897b54",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/6c6088ed45016225a2f6c8776ed0f9bba7677a16\/720_0_7200_5760\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy decries \u2018absolutely unjust\u2019 lack of warning from allies after Kyiv plant strike",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/oct\/14\/ukraine-war-briefing-zelenskyy-decries-absolutely-unjust-lack-of-warning-from-allies-after-kyiv-plant-strike",
        "words": "679",
        "section": "World news",
        "date": "2026-10-14T01:04:32Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/6c6088ed45016225a2f6c8776ed0f9bba7677a16\/720_0_7200_5760\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Guardian staff and agencies",
        "description": "Donald Trump has denied intelligence sharing with Ukraine had stopped, while demanding that Kyiv halts strikes on Russian refineries. What we know on day 1,694",
        "text": "A Russian ballistic missile struck a power plant in Kyiv on Tuesday evening without Ukraine receiving advance warning from its western allies, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The president said Ukraine\u2019s systems picked up the missiles only as they were nearing the city. \u201cThis is absolutely unjust: when they are destroying our infrastructure, and Ukraine is not even receiving early warnings about ballistic missile launches,\u201d he added. US officials made explicit threats over the weekend to their Ukrainian counterparts that the Trump administration was on the brink of halting intelligence sharing with Kyiv.\n\nDonald Trump has denied intelligence sharing had stopped, telling reporters on Tuesday: \u201cWe are helping them, and we are sharing intel. We want the war to end, so we\u2019re working with them and Russia on getting the war to end.\u201d Trump has demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries and has blamed Zelenskyy for the rise in fuel prices in the US. On Friday the US president announced a deal with Vladimir Putin to import diesel from Russia, dropping previous US sanctions.\n\nTwo people also died in a strike on a high-rise apartment building in the capital on Tuesday night, according to Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, who said apartments were on fire and being evacuated. A further 21 injuries were reported. Emergency \u200ccrews were battling fires in apartments throughout the building and residents were being \u200cevacuated.\n\nZelenskyy has said he has proposed new talks with \u2060US \u200benvoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The proposal follows talks in \u200bthe US last week \u200cat which Witkoff and Kushner told \u200ca Ukrainian delegation that a deal allowing Russian diesel exports was aimed at drawing Moscow back to negotiations. In a video \u200caddress on Tuesday night, Zelenskyy also reiterated that Ukraine supported president Donald Trump\u2019s proposed \u200benergy truce as long as Russia observed it. \u201cOur team has sent the American side the \u2060relevant proposals regarding possible next meetings and \u200bconversations,\u201d he said.\n\nTrump is facing cross-party calls on Capitol Hill to ditch his controversial diesel deal with Russia. A group of six Republican and six Democrat senators has jointly warned that the lifting of sanctions to allow Moscow to sell the fuel is \u201ca gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our allies\u201d. The US president has defended the decision as he seeks to increase supply and so bring down soaring pump prices ahead of critical stateside elections next month, which will decide control of Congress.\n\nThe EU has opened new areas of negotiations with Ukraine, marking a key step in Kyiv\u2019s long path to join the bloc. Ukraine took a step forward in \u2060its membership bid on Tuesday, opening talks \u2060on \u200binternal market and competitiveness standards, Irish minister of state for \u2060European affairs Thomas Byrne said, after Hungary dropped its objections. The move came after Ukrainian lawmakers passed legislation protecting the rights of the Hungarian-speaking minority in western Ukraine, which has long caused tensions with Budapest. Hungary had blocked Ukraine\u2019s EU membership bid, officially submitted days after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in February 2022.\n\nSuspected Russian drones struck two cargo ships off Bulgaria on Tuesday, sinking one vessel and leaving 11 sailors missing in the latest spillover from the Ukraine war in the Black Sea. Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev summoned the Russian ambassador after drones struck a Ukrainian-owned cargo ship, the Chelsea 3, while another vessel, the Guinea-Bissau-flagged cargo ship Dignity, was also hit and sank farther north off the coast. Radev called the attacks \u201cabsolutely unacceptable\u201d and said Bulgaria was seeking Nato and EU assistance. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen called the attacks \u201canother front of escalation of the Russian war in Ukraine\u201d.\n\nThe Russian Defence Ministry on Tuesday said its air defences overnight shot down 604 Ukrainian drones across the country and the Sea of Azov. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 417 drones targeted the Moscow region. Most were downed far away, while 65 were intercepted as they approached the Russian capital. A school, two private houses and a car were damaged in the attack in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow, governor Vladislav Shapsha said.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "f35d7af0af028588ccd0b48c7bf1b57e504cd446",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/e271df08581834ee52b239de772f333abc348bb2\/0_410_1536_1229\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Flying foxes in NSW and Victoria face mass starvation amid food shortages ",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2026\/oct\/14\/flying-foxes-in-nsw-and-victoria-face-mass-starvation-amid-food-shortages",
        "words": "631",
        "section": "Environment",
        "date": "2026-10-13T14:00:06Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/e271df08581834ee52b239de772f333abc348bb2\/0_410_1536_1229\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Petra Stock",
        "description": "Rescuers respond to surge in callouts for the vulnerable bat species, which usually feeds on blossoms and tree nectar ",
        "text": "Flying foxes are starving en masse across New South Wales and parts of Victoria, with wildlife rescuers responding to a surge in reports of \u201cexhausted and emaciated\u201d adults and skeletal pups.\n\nMost reports involved grey-headed flying foxes, listed as vulnerable under federal environment laws and which usually feed on the blossoms and nectar of native trees.\n\nThey are now facing food shortages across NSW, from the northern rivers to the south coast, according to the state\u2019s environment department. Rescue organisations in Victoria are also experiencing an uptick in callouts, particularly in East Gippsland and Castlemaine.\n\nMany local bat or wildlife rescues have been calling for donations to help.\n\nRachael Smethurst, the bat coordinator at Fawna wildlife rescue on the NSW mid-north coast, said the organisation was receiving 50 to 90 calls each day \u2013 more than the total number of callouts for bats in the previous nine months.\n\nThe bats were starving, she said. \u201cThey\u2019re coming into back yards to eat ornamental fruit trees and eating a lot of ripe and unripe cocos palms. They\u2019re crawling around on the ground eating unripe dropped fruit, and quite literally dropping out of trees due to starvation.\u201d\n\nFlying foxes were staying in back yards because they lacked the energy to fly back to camp, she said. Many were already dead, including pups that had been born prematurely.\n\nSign up for the Breaking News Australia email Wildlife rescue organisation Wires said the mass starvation event was likely the result of habitat loss and a dry winter, with poor seasonal flowering of eucalypts and other natives.\n\n\u201cMany malnourished and dehydrated female flying foxes are in the final month of their gestational period and are tragically losing their young. They just haven\u2019t got the nutritional health or strength to produce milk or carry to full term,\u201d the organisation said.\n\nSome animals were displaying unusual behaviour as they struggled to find food and water. \u201cThey\u2019re eating off the ground, drinking water from the grass after the rain, and hanging too low in trees.\u201d\n\nWires wildlife vet Dr Vere Nicolson said caring for premature pups was \u201clabour intensive and not universally successful\u201d, with the response made more challenging due to the number of animals involved.\n\nTamsyn Hogarth, director of the Fly By Night Bat Clinic, said rescuers in Victoria were seeing many \u201cexhausted and emaciated\u201d bats and starving babies \u201clike little skeletons\u201d, which appeared to be coming from NSW.\n\nBats spending time in people\u2019s back yards during the day was a red flag, she said. \u201cThey\u2019re so hungry they\u2019re actually eating during the day, away from the safety of the camp,\u201d she said. There were a lot of dead pups under trees, and incidents with barbed wire, dog attacks and electrocution had also increased.\n\n\u201cWe don\u2019t know for sure what is causing this particular incident, but food shortages can be aggravated by climatic events such as drought and El Ni\u00f1o conditions,\u201d a NSW environment department spokesperson said.\n\nThe state\u2019s health department reminded the community to avoid touching or handling bats, after 43 people were assessed having been scratched or bitten in the past two weeks.\n\nPeople were encouraged to report sick or dead bats to their local wildlife rescue, Hogarth said. That enabled volunteers to check for pups, rehabilitate animals where possible, and help ease the suffering of others \u2013 although access to veterinarians able to provide euthanasia was challenging, with so many reports coming from regional or rural areas.\n\nHogarth said grey-headed flying foxes usually gave birth to one young per year, so the loss of so many pups would have a \u201cterrible ripple effect\u201d for the species. The food shortages followed thousands of heat deaths this summer, and came amid disruptions to Melbourne\u2019s Yarra Bend camp from freeway construction works. \u201cThey\u2019re copping it everywhere, they can\u2019t catch a break.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "9628209da86be775f485fecfaf7dd63b1c87160b",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/0014492a58ead1f95fdc67295f9e6362ae103309\/365_0_4587_3669\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Fostering in crisis: can flexible care models fix England\u2019s child placement shortfall?",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2026\/oct\/14\/fostering-in-crisis-can-flexible-care-models-fix-englands-child-placement-shortfall",
        "words": "800",
        "section": "Society",
        "date": "2026-10-13T23:01:39Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/0014492a58ead1f95fdc67295f9e6362ae103309\/365_0_4587_3669\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Jessica Murray Social affairs correspondent",
        "description": "New recruitment campaign to target adults in their 30s and 40s in bid to create 10,000 new foster care places",
        "text": "Viennetta Basterfield, 67, spent two decades fostering more than 100 children in her west London home before she and her husband handed in the reins during Covid.\n\nHer own mother had died when she was nine and she was brought up by another woman who took her in. There was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to dedicate her life to passing that gift on to others.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t say I wasn\u2019t frightened. Every single placement I was frightened because you think, are we going to be OK? Are they going to accept us?\u201d she said. \u201cBut it was the most rewarding thing I\u2019ve ever done. We still have a full house for Sunday dinners, for christmas, for birthdays.\n\n\u201cThe greatest gift you can give a child is to show them that they matter.\u201d\n\nBut she worries about the future of fostering \u2013 she said the bureaucracy around the process was putting people off, and younger generations had more reservations about doing it, especially juggling it with caring for their own children.\n\nOn Wednesday, the government is launching the country\u2019s first national foster carer recruitment campaign, due to declining numbers at a time when there is a growing number of children in care.\n\nThe number of fostering households has dropped 10% since 2021, and the foster care population is ageing, with over one in three foster carers now aged 60 or over.\n\nThe appeal will target adults in their 30s and 40s, urging them \u201cto open their hearts and homes to some of the most vulnerable children in society\u201d, with the aim of creating 10,000 new foster care places by the end of this parliament.\n\nIt will run alongside trials of new foster care models, such as short-term \u201crespite fostering\u201d or fostering at weekends, which the government hopes will make it accessible to a wider range of people.\n\nThe children\u2019s minister, Josh MacAlister, said he wanted the public to respond to the campaign in the same way many did to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, when hundreds opened their homes to refugees.\n\n\u201cThere was this massive national moment where we understood that something was happening and people asked themselves, could we help? We need that kind of moment, to prompt people to have conversations in their homes,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cLots of families won\u2019t be able to do it, but we\u2019re trying to open up fostering to a wider group of people, by making it intergenerational or part-time, for instance.\u201d\n\nHe urged families not to wait for the \u201cperfect moment\u201d. \u201cYou\u2019ve already got a lot of what it takes. Just step forward and start the process and see where you go,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cUnless we rapidly, dramatically expand the foster care system, we will end up with children waking up every single day in residential care who could be in a family home, and children who are sent to live miles away from where they\u2019ve grown up.\u201d\n\nSpeaking at an event ahead of the campagin at Downing Street on Tuesday, Marie-France van Heel, the prime minister\u2019s wife, revealed for the first time that she had wanted to foster children.\n\nShe was put off the idea because of her husband\u2019s job and feeling she had to \u201ctransform myself into a different type of person to be able to give foster care\u201d. \u201cThis campaign is really trying to dispel some of those myths and misconceptions,\u201d she said.\n\nFostering is the primary form of care for looked-after children in England. Out of 81,770 looked-after children, there are about 56,400 children in foster care at any one time.\n\nNew research by the Coram Institute for Children found over half a million adults want to foster and an estimated 3.4 million are interested.\n\nDame Carol Homden, CEO of Coram, said there was a \u201csubstantial pool of people who are open to becoming foster carers\u201d and the charity welcomed the government\u2019s ambitious plans to recruit more.\n\nTheir research has identified certain groups with a higher fostering propensity who could be targeted, including women, larger households and those from minoritised ethnic backgrounds, particularly black households.\n\nBut there also needs to be a focus on retaining current foster carers as well as recruiting new ones, Homden said.\n\nResearch has shown a number of factors are pushing foster carers to leave the sector, including feeling undervalued or ignored by social workers, and financial strain \u2013 the Fostering Network found only 33% of carers report their allowances fully cover the cost of raising a child.\n\n\u201cWe need to see a focus on targeting key areas and groups, clear information and practical support to boost both recruitment and retention of foster carers,\u201d said Homden.\n\nPolling by the Department for Education found that two-thirds (66%) of people believe they could be a good foster carer if practical barriers were removed.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "14f8747b79e463d4fd6a3bbb8ee1975114534f08",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/51f1eeb311025328431f17ae65971a5f0456c15e\/313_0_1875_1500\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Use of AI in job interviews on the rise \u2013 but UK recruiters say they can spot the cheats",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/oct\/14\/use-of-ai-job-interviews-on-rise-uk-recruiters-cheats",
        "words": "588",
        "section": "Technology",
        "date": "2026-10-13T23:01:38Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/51f1eeb311025328431f17ae65971a5f0456c15e\/313_0_1875_1500\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Dan Milmo Global technology editor",
        "description": "Body representing some of Britain\u2019s biggest graduate employers reveals misconduct is at a record high",
        "text": "It is obvious when someone is using AI to drum up answers in a job interview, according to Chris Morrow, who runs a recruitment agency in Manchester.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like they are reading off an Autocue,\u201d he said.\n\nMorrow, who recruits talent for the AI sector, said apps that can listen in and suggest answers in real time were being used during virtual interviews by candidates, who as a result do not get through to the next round.\n\n\u201cWhenever it happens to us, we tend to end the interview. It\u2019s cheating,\u201d he said.\n\nReports of misconduct by graduates during job interviews have reached a record high according to the body representing some of the leading graduate employers in the UK \u2013 with undeclared use of AI during interviews topping the list.\n\nThe Institute of Student Employers revealed in its annual survey that reports of misconduct in applying for jobs had reached a new high, with 92% of employers suspecting or confirming errant behaviour during assessment and selection processes. The figure compares with 85% for the previous year and 78% the year before that.\n\nThe most common form of misconduct was the unauthorised use of AI during interviews and online assessments, with 66% of respondents reporting at least one incident of a graduate misusing AI during an interview.\n\nISE has 290 employer members including Marks & Spencer, Rolls-Royce and Accenture but did not name the respondents who had experienced AI-assisted interviews.\n\nStephen Isherwood, chief executive of ISE, said cheating in interviews could result in candidates getting jobs they were ill-suited for.\n\n\u201cIf you misrepresent yourself, you could end up doing the wrong job,\u201d he said.\n\nIsherwood added that job candidates should do their research and understand the role they are applying for because \u201cthat\u2019s what interviewers are looking for\u201d when applicants get in front of an employer.\n\nMorrow said candidates interviewed by his Digitalent agency tended to inadvertently alert to the fact they were using an AI assistant in video interviews by stalling for time while waiting for the chatbot to produce a response, or using stilted language.\n\n\u201cThere is a delay,\u201d he said. \u201cThe candidate tends to use filler phrases like \u2018That\u2019s a good question.\u2019 The other tell is that a lot of the language they use is not necessarily natural and is super-formal.\u201d\n\nThe next highest instance of AI misconduct during interviews, according to ISE, was applicants using AI to complete online assessments (47%), followed by using the technology to complete online application questions and then using it to write CVs or covering letters (10%).\n\nISE\u2019s 2026 survey also played down the immediate impact of AI on the graduate jobs market. It stated that the hiring market had stabilised this year after an 8% decline last year, rising 4% in 2026, with employers expecting a further 7% rise over the next 12 months.\n\nThe survey contained considerable variation, however, with 40% of respondents reducing their graduate intake and 45% increasing it \u2013 while 15% maintained their current levels of hiring.\n\nIsherwood said any reduction in graduate hiring by companies had been driven by overall economic conditions and not the adoption of AI, which has been widely expected to affect the job market because it offers the ability to automate certain tasks and reduce the need for human workers.\n\n\u201cThey [companies] are not managing down graduate recruitment because of AI. It\u2019s because of economic uncertainty. It\u2019s a tough economic environment,\u201d he said, adding that the concern about AI\u2019s impact on graduate jobs was \u201ctwo or three years down the line\u201d.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "9982ebc74add8f7e840d085fd6f44a4a4a26e8f0",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/811d1efced422c6c30c1bca0abca9083d9861c4c\/1374_912_4298_3438\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "The Cherry Orchard review \u2013 Kristin Scott Thomas makes a modern matriarch in trad, earthy Chekhov",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/stage\/2026\/oct\/14\/the-cherry-orchard-review-kristin-scott-thomas-chekhov-harold-pinter-theatre-conor-mcpherson-ian-rickson-stephen-mangan",
        "words": "610",
        "section": "Stage",
        "date": "2026-10-13T23:01:38Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/811d1efced422c6c30c1bca0abca9083d9861c4c\/1374_912_4298_3438\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Arifa Akbar",
        "description": "This Ranevskaya feels of our time but Conor McPherson\u2019s plain-speaking adaptation, co-starring Stephen Mangan, doesn\u2019t always hit you emotionally",
        "text": "There have been several starry Madame Ranevskayas in recent times. The prodigal Russian landowner, returning to her beloved estate and cherry orchard, was searingly played by Nina Hoss in 2024 and less memorably by Helen Hunt this summer. Now here is Kristin Scott Thomas, who brings a hard-edged modernity that you believe in. She feels of our time, despite the references to dachas and peasants, and could be an upper-middle-class Chelsea mother or minister\u2019s wife, stewing in regret and an unfulfilled life.\n\nIan Rickson\u2019s elegantly directed production uses a plain-speaking new adaptation by Conor McPherson. The pair have previous form on Chekhov, from six years ago, when they brought a pitch-perfect version of Uncle Vanya to the West End. This too is handsome and engaging, the crumbling drawing room of Chloe Lamford\u2019s set design bearing damp patches and a faded grandeur.\n\nDespite Scott Thomas\u2019s modernity, the production itself feels traditional. Chekhov called his final play a comedy, though it subsequently came to be described like his other dramas as tragicomic, and McPherson stays faithful to that original vision. There is much humour here, albeit with moments of wistfulness, and the script is adept at drawing out the dithering ridiculousness of this entitled aristocratic set. There is an earthy, sweary frankness too in how the characters speak.\n\nScott Thomas looks the part as the matriarch, wearing an emotional armour. Her performance is full of subtle inflection, biting her nails with worry, switching on the smiles and warmth as required. When she speaks of the death of her young son, drowned in the estate\u2019s lake, you see her guilt and sadness being quickly hidden away.\n\nStephen Mangan plays Lopakhin, the serf\u2019s son who is still in milky-eyed awe of Ranevskaya, and draws out the social standing of his character. He is aware of his low estimation in the eyes of this family despite his self-made merchant status. He casts nervy glances to Ranevskaya who imperiously ignores his presence on first entry, and always stays something of an overgrown and intimidated schoolboy in the face of this family. It\u2019s an interestingly powerless interpretation, though only half convincing.\n\nThe atmosphere of absurdity and pettiness works well, with endless witterings, funny moments and an atmosphere of languor. There is guitar playing too from clerk Yepikhodov (Shubham Saraf). Peter Wight brings pompous comedy as Ranevskaya\u2019s brother, Gaev, and Ruby Bentall is strong as German governess, Sharlotta.\n\nThe cast, as an ensemble, work well together, each in their own world, yet casting glances over at the other. But some of the edges are softened, such as the fire of student and would-be revolutionary Trofimov (Jack Riddiford). You don\u2019t feel much pathos for the set as a whole, and the drama never quite enters dark or tragic territory. The scene in which the family is faced with a begging peasant certainly confirms their cold entitlement and you register their sense of infringement as this stark outside reality enters their airbrushed world, but it doesn\u2019t hit you emotionally.\n\nThere are other affecting moments though, the biggest from the plot line around adopted daughter, Varya (Vinette Robinson), and her wait for Lopakhin to propose. Her yearning, by the end, is palpable, as is her disappointment when she bears the pain of her family\u2019s fall, along with his ascension. And when the servant Firs (Karl Johnson) is left behind, like a forgotten piece of furniture, you feel the carelessness with which Ranevskaya regards those deemed to be below her. It justifies the end to come for this old world order.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "4a5de4c0b45b5c5349a62de2d877cd0e023508f7",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/efa07eae7656ea0e8ac40f4217cbe03d652ec9e0\/109_203_1022_817\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Cryptocurrency exchange founded by Reform donor Ben Delo sued for \u00a320m",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2026\/oct\/14\/cryptocurrency-exchange-founded-by-reform-donor-ben-delo-sued-for-20m",
        "words": "665",
        "section": "Politics",
        "date": "2026-10-13T23:01:38Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/efa07eae7656ea0e8ac40f4217cbe03d652ec9e0\/109_203_1022_817\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Daniel Boffey Chief reporter",
        "description": "Former investor alleges BitMEX sold products in UK despite not being regulated by Financial Conduct Authority",
        "text": "A cryptocurrency exchange founded by the billionaire Reform UK donor Ben Delo is being sued for \u00a320m over claims that the company mis-sold financial products in the UK.\n\nLewis Barber, who is a software engineer, alleges that BitMEX offered crypto derivative products to investors in the UK, despite not being regulated or approved to do so by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).\n\nThe claim filed at the high court but not yet served on BitMEX contends that under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 such contracts are void and that consumers are entitled to restitution of any bitcoin lost on those trades.\n\nBarber claims that he lost bitcoin between 2018 and 2022 to the value of \u00a320m through trading the derivatives offered by BitMEX, which amplified gains or losses for investors depending on the changing value of the cryptocurrency.\n\nBarber\u2019s lawyers allege he may be one of thousands of non-professional investors in the UK who sustained heavy losses after being sold derivative products by BitMEX in breach of FCA rules and consumer protection laws.\n\nBarber\u2019s claim is against HDR Global Trading Limited, the owner and operator of the BitMEX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange which has been shut down.\n\nBarber\u2019s statement of claim says that BitMEX \u201cconducted promotional campaigns on a worldwide basis and did not exclude the United Kingdom from their reach\u201d.\n\nIt goes on: \u201cThe Defendant placed at least one advertisement in the Times (published on 3 January 2019) which promoted the Defendant\u201d.\n\nThe claim alleges that \u201cthe financial products that it was offering to [Barber] in the United Kingdom did not fall within the scope of financial services regulation in the United Kingdom\u201d.\n\nIt adds: \u201cOn or around 3 March 2020, the FCA issued a warning that the Defendant may have been conducting trading in regulated investments in the United Kingdom without FCA authorisation.\u201d\n\nA spokesperson for BitMex said: \u201cNo such claim has been served on HDR Global Trading Limited.\u201d\n\nGareth Keillor, a partner at Seladore Legal which is representing Barber, said: \u201cThis is a substantial claim concerning losses sustained by Lewis over a number of years.\n\n\u201cLewis\u2019s case is that BitMEX entered into these transactions without the authorisation required under UK law, and that the Financial Services and Markets Act therefore entitles him to recover the bitcoin he lost, or equivalent damages.\n\n\u201cThe proceedings may also have wider relevance. Other UK-based persons may have entered into similar contracts with BitMEX, although whether any individual has a claim will depend on the particular facts and trading history.\u201d\n\nDetails about the case have emerged after BitMEX\u2019s voluntary closure on 23 September 2026, after what it described as a strategic review of the business.\n\nThe Seychelles-based company faces a number of actions internationally. In New York, investors are suing BitMEX for alleged theft of bitcoin and insider trading in a multimillion-dollar class action. The claims have been vigorously denied.\n\nIn Britain, Delo has been in the spotlight over a record-breaking \u00a336m donation to the Reform party. Delo wrote in the Daily Telegraph that he was making the gift to Reform because he wanted a \u201cfair fight and a level playing field\u201d.\n\nDelo, alongside cofounders Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed, pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges in the US for violating the Bank Secrecy Act due to alleged failures to comply with anti-money-laundering procedures.\n\nThey were fined and given custodial sentences, but were granted a pardon by Donald Trump in March 2025.\n\nIn 2024, BitMEX itself pleaded guilty to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act in failing to maintain adequate anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer programmes, and in January 2025 was required to pay $100m (\u00a375m) to the US Department of Justice.\n\nIn his claim, Barber seeks the return of all bitcoin he lost in trading with BitMEX, or damages for trades going back a number of years. Should Barber be successful in his claims, the bill for BitMEX could run into hundreds of millions of pounds, it is claimed by his lawyers.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "2082f1f4a2fd4c8fc871308892f0f0b5bb74aba7",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/674da4764b855a56341ef688b8fc791939c52df7\/545_292_4814_3851\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Stop making sense: focus on sounds to help learn a language, study suggests",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/2026\/oct\/14\/focus-on-sounds-to-help-learn-a-language-study-suggests",
        "words": "526",
        "section": "Science",
        "date": "2026-10-13T23:01:37Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/674da4764b855a56341ef688b8fc791939c52df7\/545_292_4814_3851\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Anna Bawden",
        "description": "Research shows that the best linguists process unfamiliar foreign speech sounds more like non-speech sounds",
        "text": "If you want to get really good at French, Arabic or Hungarian, don\u2019t start with rote learning vocabulary and grammar, focus on how they sound instead, research suggests.\n\nA new study of how humans learn modern languages has found that the brains of the most talented linguists hear foreign terms as random noise, not words.\n\nNormally, when people learn a language, they try to understand it through the sounds of their native tongue. The more different the foreign language\u2019s sounds and pronunciation are from the native language, the harder the new language will probably be to learn.\n\nBut the best linguists master even the trickiest pronunciation much more easily. \u200bTo find out why, researchers at UCL and Tohoku University, Japan, compared the auditory precision of 67 Japanese learners of English by measuring their ability to detect slight changes in pitch, length and tone, in non-speech sounds. Using functional MRI scans, they measured participants\u2019 brain activity as they tried to distinguish between English vowel sounds that do not occur in Japanese.\n\nThey found that those with higher auditory precision mastered the pronunciation of new languages faster and more accurately than other learners and relied less on the brain\u2019s left sensorimotor system (involved in language processing) when processing foreign-language sounds. Instead, their brain activity patterns were similar to those that occur when the brain processes non-speech sounds.\n\nWith less interference from pre-existing patterns of their native language, it was simpler for these learners to accurately process new sounds.\n\nIn contrast, those with lower auditory precision relied more on the brain\u2019s left sensorimotor network when listening to foreign-language sounds. They used the pronunciation patterns of their native language when processing unfamiliar sounds.\n\nThe latest findings challenge stereotypes that Britons are less adept at languages. Prof Kazuya Saito-van Poeteren, the lead author and professor of second language education at UCL Institute of Education, said: \u201cI do not think British people are biologically bad at languages. The problem is more likely to be that many people receive too little meaningful exposure, combined with teaching methods that do not necessarily train the auditory skills needed to make the most of that limited exposure.\n\n\u201cIf you only hear and use the language for a small number of hours each week, having a good ear may make a much bigger difference. Learners with high auditory precision can make very effective use of relatively sparse input, whereas others may need much more exposure before unfamiliar sounds begin to become established,\u201d he said.\n\nThe findings also suggest schools should focus on sounds much more than just grammar and vocabulary when teaching modern languages, he added.\n\n\u201cForeign language education should move beyond an approach based on \u2018more practice\u2019 and towards one that develops learners\u2019 ear for language learning in line with their auditory characteristics,\u201d he said.\n\nResponding to the findings, Prof Padraic Monaghan, professor of cognition at Lancaster University, said: \u201cTraditional language learning relies on structured practice, but our brains are naturally attuned to acquire languages through exposure. This study confirms how vital listening is to learning, though learners vary in their sound sensitivity at least in the early stages of hearing new language sounds.\u201d\n\n\u200b\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "11702149171ae1b4fd9adfd0c2bf5f09533c40ad",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/17b8ddd9a55cd44b9fa61b1b160f6e4a33242b3b\/311_0_4640_3712\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Rules, London\u2019s oldest restaurant, donated to National Trust",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/food\/2026\/oct\/14\/rules-london-oldest-restaurant-donated-national-trust",
        "words": "772",
        "section": "Food",
        "date": "2026-10-13T23:01:37Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/17b8ddd9a55cd44b9fa61b1b160f6e4a33242b3b\/311_0_4640_3712\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Esther Addley and George Francis Lee",
        "description": "Historic eatery in capital\u2019s theatreland given to heritage charity after changing hands only three times in 228 years",
        "text": "When Thomas Rule served his first oyster to diners on Maiden Lane in London\u2019s Covent Garden, \u201cmad\u201d George III was on the throne of England, John Adams was US president and William Pitt the Younger had just come up with a wheeze called income tax to pay for the Napoleonic wars.\n\nMore than two centuries later, Rules, the restaurant Thomas founded in what became the capital\u2019s theatreland, has outlasted nine British monarchs and 45 prime ministers \u2013 but has changed hands only three times. The interior of its four-storey home, stuffed with historic playbills and vintage caricatures and gilded antlers, is little changed from the 19th century, nor has the tone of its determinedly meaty menu \u2013 think rabbit rillettes, shin of veal and roast guinea fowl.\n\nRules was beloved by Dickens and Thackeray, inspired Graham Greene and was a favourite of Charlie Chaplin, Laurence Olivier and Ava Gardner. But even London\u2019s oldest restaurant can feel vulnerable to the winds of change, leading the man who bought Rules in 1984 to take perhaps the most significant step in its long history. JP Mayhew has now donated the restaurant\u2019s historic home to the National Trust, assured that the heritage charity will \u201cprotect this place in a way that no one else could\u201d.\n\n\u201cWith many years of hard work, and some extraordinary strokes of luck, Rules has survived everything from redevelopment plans and changing tastes to the blitz ,\u201d Mayhew said. By taking on the historic and listed 34-35 Maiden Lane, he added , the National Trust would \u201c[safeguard] its bricks and mortar, its famous interior and its invisible atmosphere too. I am grateful to them for believing in this idea and for protecting this building and two centuries worth of stories for people to enjoy forever\u201d.\n\nThe \u00a311m \u201clandmark\u201d gift is one of the most valuable in the National Trust\u2019s recent history, and will mark its first entry into the restaurant business \u2013 although its portfolio includes 39 historic pubs and a number of country house hotels, including Cliveden in Buckinghamshire.\n\nNot that the heritage charity will be taking on the napkin-folding and the slow cooking of pork cheeks. While Mayhew is donating the historic building and its contents, he sold the restaurant business to Ricky McMenemy, its longstanding general manager, in 2022; McMenemy will become a commercial tenant of the National Trust.\n\n\u201cOur involvement, day to day, will probably be very light touch,\u201d said Lucy Porten, a national curator for the charity. \u201cIt will always be run as a restaurant. We will look after [the building and its contents], but we recognise that they will have to evolve if they are going to continue to meet diners\u2019 needs.\u201d\n\nDiners, however, can expect little change to the menu, she said \u2013 and crucially, no scones. \u201cIt\u2019s not a National Trust menu, this is a very successful business in its own right. There will be no scones. That\u2019s not their business.\u201d Nor will there be preferential access or prices for National Trust members, \u201cbecause it is a business, and it has to be successful,\u201d she added. Instead, the charity is exploring options for virtual visits and other ways people could \u201cfeel like they are visiting the space\u201d from afar.\n\nIt was several years ago when Mayhew first approached the National Trust about a possible gift. Porten said while \u201cexcited by the offer\u201d, they looked carefully at whether it was the right organisation to take on the building.\n\nPorten said: \u201cThe nature of the National Trust, and the fact we have this extraordinary ability to take on places inalienably, for ever, means that we have to think about what\u2019s right for now, but also to think about looking after them for future generations. That\u2019s quite a big thing \u2026 It had to be quite a balanced response and decision.\u201d\n\nPart of its value to the trust, she said, lay in helping the charity \u201ctell different histories which are hard for us to tell at our other properties\u201d.\n\n\u201cYou get a sense of all the delicious food which has been enjoyed here, the fine wines that have been consumed, the good company that\u2019s been enjoyed. There\u2019s something in the air about the conversations and the celebrations, the flirtations, the deals that have been struck, the heartbreak. All that hangs in the air, in a very magical way, [as] the backdrop to lots of different historical moments and lives.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s an extraordinary slice of the social history of London, and to have been here for so long - in this site and doing this business \u2013 is a very rare and special thing.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "9ab077bd48d956dc7c5d33e526f1ac5344ddaf24",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/7b5088f5e0909e5150ddb0e2ef56a16db65c1165\/335_0_3331_2666\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "OpenAI employee arrested after recording device found in office",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/oct\/13\/openai-employee-arrested-hidden-recording-device",
        "words": "584",
        "section": "Technology",
        "date": "2026-10-13T22:08:48Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/7b5088f5e0909e5150ddb0e2ef56a16db65c1165\/335_0_3331_2666\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Maya Yang",
        "description": "Discovery of \u2018sophisticated\u2019 gadget adds to company\u2019s list of privacy concerns after hackings by rogue agents",
        "text": "OpenAI said it has found a hidden recording device in one of its offices and has referred the matter to the FBI. One of its employees has been arrested.\n\nIn a statement on Tuesday, the San Francisco-based AI company said it discovered the \u201csophisticated recording device\u201d and used one of its \u201cmodels to understand the device and where it had come from\u201d.\n\nThe company has identified \u201cthat a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier\u201d, adding: \u201cAt this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated.\u201d\n\nAbdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested on 9 October, according to a press release from the US Department of Justice.\n\nAlfozan allegedly plugged an encrypted recording device, concealed within toilet paper, into a TV in an executive conference room in OpenAI\u2019s San Francisco headquarters on 28 September. Meetings in the room regularly covered confidential information, the FBI\u2019s press release said. A security sweep conducted two days later revealed the device, according to the justice department. Surveillance footage allegedly documented him walking around the meeting room in the days leading up to its discovery.\n\nAccording to the indictment of Alfozan, he submitted multiple prompts to an AI chatbot about internal details of OpenAI \u2013 \u201cbuilding addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars, \u2018leadership and exec\u2019 locations\u201d, according to the FBI.\n\nHis spouse allegedly submitted multiple prompts to chatbots about \u201cbuilding, customizing, installing, audio recording, testing, obfuscating, and remote accessing a device\u201d, with specific inquiries about \u201c\u2018build[ing] a continuous audio recorder,\u2019 \u2018customiz[ing] wifi \u2026 connectivity,\u2019 \u2018improv[ing] audio and live listening,\u2019 and \u2018encrypt[ing] the SD card\u2019\u201d.\n\nThe same chatbot account allegedly made inquiries that referenced unique identifiers of the device discovered in OpenAI\u2019s offices. After searching a bag left unattended by Alfozan in the headquarters, FBI agents discovered a second identical recording device, according to the indictment.\n\nIf convicted, Alfozan faces five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. He has not made a public comment regarding the indictment.\n\nOpenAI said that it is \u201cgrateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest\u201d and the investigation is continuing.\n\nThe company added: \u201cWe take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance. Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.\u201d\n\nThe incident adds to a growing list of privacy controversies for OpenAI. In June, an agent hacked Australia\u2019s university healthcare system, and earlier this month, California attorney general Rob Bonta issued an investigative subpoena to OpenAI over rogue hacking.\n\nLast week, OpenAI announced it had terminated three safety researchers for allegedly sharing sensitive information in what the company called \u201ca breach of trust\u201d.\n\n\u201cThey violated clear policies on handling sensitive information,\u201d a company statement read.\n\nThe trio of researchers called on the company to adhere to its own promises of transparency made in the wake of the autonomous hacking incidents.\n\nMeanwhile, Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, said in a recent interview that the world should accept \u201cbad things\u201d happening with AI in exchange for its benefits. Around the same time, David Robinson, a top safety leader resigned from the company, citing a \u201cbroken\u201d company culture and warning that AI developers are not \u201cbeing nearly careful enough\u201d with the rapidly advancing technology.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "7d05f14e227a556448a26af2f8548ea9ac11a188",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "\u2018I expect more\u2019: Lisandro Mart\u00ednez hits out at Manchester United hierarchy",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/oct\/13\/lisandro-martinez-hits-out-at-united-hierarchy-after-defeat-at-atletico-madrid",
        "words": "474",
        "section": "Football",
        "date": "2026-10-13T22:48:22Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/4cb74ff9d93db14569507e54cebb9823422bc5fe\/250_0_2500_2000\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Sid Lowe at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano",
        "description": "The Argentinian said the Champions League defeat to Atl\u00e9tico was \u2018a reflection of the mirror of how our club is\u2019, adding: \u2018I expect more from our technical director\u2019",
        "text": "Lisandro Mart\u00ednez has hit out at the Manchester United hierarchy, blaming the lack of investment as their dismal start to the season continued. Goals from Pablo Barrios and Ademola Lookman pushed United to a 2-0 defeat at Atl\u00e9tico Madrid, and the Argentina defender described that as a \u201cmirror\u201d of the way the club are. \u201cTonight it is easy to say the coach, easy to say the players but also we have to see other areas,\u201d he said, pointing upwards.\n\nAsked for his appraisal of the night, Mart\u00ednez said: \u201cReally poor, really poor. I have to control myself a lot but sometimes is a reflection of the mirror of how is our club at the moment.\n\n\u201cIt is annoying, disappointing coming here and I am not seeing my team trying to get an amazing result here.\n\n\u201cI expect more [investment], 100%. I expect more from our technical director [Jason Wilcox]. I have to be honest, as players we have to do more but it is also important when you make a strong squad to be ready for this kind of night. Last season we did everything, we created the base to create an amazing team.\u201d\n\nUnited won 12 of 17 games under Michael Carrick last season but during the summer they made only three major signings \u2013 Carlos Baleba, Andrey Santos and Youri Tielemans \u2013 plus the back-up goalkeeper Karl Darlow on a free transfer from Leeds, and have won only twice in all competitions so far this term. They have suffered the worst start to a league campaign in 40 years.\n\nAsked if the manager had been backed sufficiently, Mart\u00ednez replied: \u201cI don\u2019t think so. He does his best. Every season is different. You can\u2019t stay with what you did last season. The teams knows how you play, they know every detail, if you don\u2019t change next season [it] is a big problem.\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t keep changing, changing, changing the manager. What about other areas?\u201d Mart\u00ednez added, looking up. \u201cI can\u2019t say more.\u201d\n\nWhen Mart\u00ednez\u2019s words were put to Carrick, he said: \u201cI haven\u2019t seen the interview. I have half-heard about it. I think it\u2019s a little bit the emotions of the game [talking]. I have to find out a bit more about it to be honest to decide what and if anything is going to be done. I can\u2019t comment further.\u201d\n\nUnited\u2019s manager also insisted that his side had \u201cfour almost one vs ones\u201d and that he did not understand Leny Yoro\u2019s red card on a night when they could have gone back to Manchester with a different result. \u201cIt is easy to look and think there is something deeply wrong, I understand that, but the players have been great,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s willing, and [they are] disappointed that they haven\u2019t come out of here with something. We think we could have, should have.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "601758ec23e85e0d0700dc7eb1884897f9e471cd",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Man killed by tiger at Yorkshire Wildlife Park named",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2026\/oct\/13\/man-killed-by-tiger-at-yorkshire-wildlife-park-named",
        "words": "798",
        "section": "UK news",
        "date": "2026-10-13T13:44:01Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/f598dec629cd2226f71ea70076ac058641496748\/348_0_2304_1843\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Robyn Vinter North of England correspondent and Nadeem Badshah",
        "description": "William Chapman was pronounced dead at scene on Saturday after scaling fence and entering enclosure ",
        "text": "A man killed by a tiger at a zoo in South Yorkshire has been named locally as William Chapman.\n\nChapman scaled the fence and entered the enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster on Saturday afternoon. Witnesses described seeing Chapman, who has not been officially named by police, walking up to a 200kg male Siberian tiger named Altai, which attacked him.\n\nThe incident lasted only a couple of minutes and Chapman, who is believed to have been in his 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.\n\nChapman had \u201csuffered from significant mental illness\u201d, his family said in a statement, describing him as a \u201cbright, warm and engaging young man\u201d.\n\nThe family said: \u201cThe family are utterly devastated by their loss and are struggling to come to terms with what has happened.\n\n\u201cThe publication and circulation of deeply offensive media content is causing them severe distress at an exceptionally vulnerable time. We ask people to stop doing this.\n\n\u201cWilliam was a bright, warm and engaging young man whom his family dearly loved \u2013 and William loved them back.\n\n\u201cSadly, William suffered from significant mental illness over a number of years and was consequently prescribed strong medication.\n\n\u201cIt will be for the coroner to decide what part this played in his death. We would ask everybody to respect that process.\u201d\n\nVideos in which onlookers urged him not to approach the tiger and to \u201cplay dead\u201d during the attack were shared online in the aftermath, as well as a number of AI-generated fakes. Police advised members of the public to avoid sharing them. They said the man\u2019s family was being supported by specialist officers.\n\nDonald Trump reposted a silent 41-second video apparently showing the attack on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, captioning it: \u201cDon\u2019t ever mess with nature! President DJT.\u201d\n\nA minute later, he posted a 24-second video compilation of lion attacks on people, this one accompanied by jaunty music.\n\nChapman was a child actor who appeared in the ITV programme May Contain Nuts and in the BBC\u2019s True Stories series, according to the website IMDb.\n\nHe previously attended Jackie Palmer Stage School in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.\n\nIn a tribute shared on Facebook, the school said: \u201cWe are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of our former student, William Chapman.\n\n\u201cOur thoughts and heartfelt condolences are with William\u2019s family and friends during this incredibly difficult time.\n\n\u201cWe loved watching William grow, both as a person and as a performer, during his time with us.\n\n\u201cIt was a privilege to be part of his journey, and he will be remembered with great fondness by everyone who had the pleasure of knowing him.\n\n\u201cWilliam will be truly missed, and he will always hold a special place in our hearts. Rest in peace, William.\u201d\n\nYorkshire Wildlife Park was evacuated on Saturday and will remain closed on Wednesday.\n\nDan Swaine, the executive director of place at Doncaster council, said: \u201cAs the relevant licensing authority for the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, I can confirm that, in line with our statutory duties, the council has launched a health and safety investigation.\n\n\u201cWe are also working with multiple agencies, including the police and health agencies, and are supporting the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in response to the incident.\n\n\u201cAt this time, we won\u2019t be commenting further on the individual or the investigation and we ask that the privacy of those involved is respected at this difficult time.\u201d\n\nThe park said staff were receiving specialist support and that Altai, a member of an endangered species, would not be euthanised.\n\nWildlife and zoo experts told the Guardian it was unlikely the wildlife park would have been able to prevent the incident.\n\nAmy Dickman, a professor of wildlife conservation and the director of WildCRU at the University of Oxford, said: \u201cI would not conclude that there was a major issue with zoo safety \u2013 the harsh reality is that it is virtually impossible for zoos to stop people who are very determined to breach safety measures.\u201d\n\nCampbell Murn, a lecturer in conservation science at the University of Reading, who until recently sat on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs\u2019 zoos expert committee, said: \u201cIt\u2019s simply not possible \u2026 at an attraction like Yorkshire Wildlife Park that gets hundreds of thousands \u2013 if not over a million \u2013 visitors a year to keep an eye on everybody all the time.\u201d\n\nHe added: \u201cIf a determined thief wants to get in your house, they\u2019re going to get in your house. You can mitigate risk to a certain point but there\u2019s sometimes no stopping events from happening, unfortunately.\u201d\n\nA spokesperson for the Born Free Foundation, which campaigns to phase out zoos, called for an \u201curgent review\u201d of \u201chow the man managed to enter the enclosure and what happened next\u201d.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "eef12e28fd3ff2193d635119479ade2aa04e186a",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Potter helps England find magic but World Cup playoff format needs rethink",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/oct\/13\/england-greece-women-world-cup-qualifying-playoffs",
        "words": "743",
        "section": "Football",
        "date": "2026-10-13T22:14:28Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/5e92b87cdc00b3e1b174aa848f446f947c657d4b\/605_116_4496_3596\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Tom Garry at the King Power Stadium",
        "description": "Lexi Potter and Lauren James stole the show against Greece but England\u2019s 8-1 aggregate win was one of many lopsided scorelines",
        "text": "If there had been a vidiprinter at the King Power Stadium displaying the aggregate scorelines from the night\u2019s Women\u2019s World Cup qualifying playoffs around Europe, it might have looked more at home on the cricket scoreboard just over a mile further south at Leicestershire\u2019s Grace Road. Sweden 15-0 against Lithuania. Republic of Ireland 12-0 against Kazakhstan. Netherlands 11-0 against Hungary.\n\nHow much, therefore, could be gleaned from England\u2019s 8-1 aggregate win against Greece? It was, irrefutably, a significantly better performance from England, on a night when they got some of their mojo back, they played with a zip and panache, but overall there was plenty to observe but very little new information. After 180 minutes of football and more than 3,000 miles travelled, to all who correctly guessed the outcome a week ago, congratulations, you were correct: the European champions were able to beat a team ranked outside the world\u2019s top 50 over two legs.\n\nIt is tempting to wax lyrical about Lauren James\u2019 first-half display and how she relished in her free role, finding space, driving England up the pitch and toying with the defenders \u2013 truly, she can be the difference-maker in this Lionesses side next summer \u2013 but, when Greece aren\u2019t attempting to mark one of the best forwards in the world, should we be surprised that she delivered two goals and an assist?\n\nIt is similarly tempting to eulogise about the impressive debut of Lexi Potter, who looked at home in the midfield to such an extent that you could be forgiven for thinking it was her 50th cap rather than her first. The 20-year-old, whose intelligent positional awareness, tidy passing and steady tempo allowed those around her to flourish higher up the pitch, can be proud of her display and deserves another start in the next round of the playoffs against Ukraine. But anyone who has watched the Women\u2019s Super League this season already knew Potter would be a terrific addition to this team.\n\nWe could also spend the next 24 hours praising the effectiveness of England\u2019s new wingback system, comment on how adeptly Maya Le Tissier covered for the injured Lucy Bronze, praise the energy of Alessia Russo, rejoice in the debut handed to the London City Lionesses winger Freya Godfrey, who deserved her chance, or hail the ever-reliable goalscoring record of Georgia Stanway \u2013 even scoring with her head, at 5ft 5in \u2013 and examine how she fared in a higher role.\n\nAll of it, though, had to be taken with a great pinch of salt because the opponents were competing against the Faroe Islands and Georgia in League C of the qualifying groups, while England have won five games out of six in League A and must have wished they could have tested themselves against stronger opposition to try to prepare for next summer\u2019s tournament.\n\nEven the locals seemed to realise this was all something of a formality; more than 22,000 tickets were issued but the eventual attendance looked far lower, perhaps with lack of jeopardy surrounding the occasion playing a role in that.\n\nThe DJ at the King Power, one of the night\u2019s star performers, tried their best to create a party atmosphere, as did the pitchside flameflowers pre-match and the exuberance of England\u2019s forward line, but this was a tie that really did very little for the growth of the women\u2019s game.\n\nIt was a rather good advert for the one-legged playoff ties used by men\u2019s football in European qualification paths, single\u2011night matches with tension, competitiveness and a real edge to proceedings, as well as an efficient feel \u2013 it takes the men\u2019s game a window to get through two rounds of playoffs, and the women\u2019s game has another two matches still to go.\n\nThe meetings in November and December with Ukraine \u2013 a side whom England beat 6-1 and 3-0 earlier in this qualifying process \u2013 are unlikely to feel any more challenging.\n\nThat is no fault of England, Greece, nor Ukraine, but rather that of a growing sport still trying to figure out how to develop a qualification system with real balance. When qualifying for the 2023 World Cup, England cruised to 20-0 and 10-0 wins over Latvia.\n\nThe group stage this time, mirroring the new Nations League format, felt much improved, but as the home fans at the King Power felt the need to break into a Mexican wave after just 22 minutes of this second leg, it became clear that the playoffs still need further thought.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "c6209478916709ada9196bc40f4f35b1c265ee41",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Allies did not warn Kyiv of Russian ballistic missile strikes, says Zelenskyy",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/oct\/13\/allies-did-not-warn-kyiv-of-russian-ballistic-missile-strikes-says-zelenskyy",
        "words": "1027",
        "section": "World news",
        "date": "2026-10-13T13:51:50Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/0bdf9ed7b96dc65009d999f39b3c6db73527da07\/532_0_4808_3848\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Luke Harding, and Andrew Roth in Kyiv",
        "description": "Ukrainian president\u2019s comments on \u2018particularly vile\u2019 strikes come after US threatened to halt intelligence sharing",
        "text": "Ukraine received no early warning from its partners about a second night of Russian ballistic missile strikes on civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, including a critical power plant struck after dark, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday.\n\nThe Ukrainian president had earlier described an attack involving five missiles on Monday as \u201cparticularly vile\u201d. He emphasised that receiving intelligence from Ukraine\u2019s western allies \u201chelps saves lives, and this is one of the most critical issues\u201d.\n\n\u201cThis is precisely what helps prevent people from being killed \u2013 when there is an early warning about ballistic missiles,\u201d he wrote on social media. He did not apportion blame for the lack of warning, calling it unfortunate.\n\nMore ballistic missiles were then launched at Kyiv on Tuesday night, striking a key power plant in the capital despite a purported energy ceasefire claimed by Donald Trump. One person also died in a strike on a high-rise apartment building, according to the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, who said apartments were on fire and being evacuated. A further 13 injuries were reported.\n\n\u201cOnce again, \u200cno advance warning from our partners. The main target was energy infrastructure, specifically thermal plant No 4,\u201d Zelenskyy wrote on the social media app Telegram, again without explaining why he thought there had been no warning.\n\nUS officials made explicit threats over the weekend to their Ukrainian counterparts that the Trump administration was on the brink of halting intelligence sharing with Kyiv.\n\nOn Tuesday, however, Trump denied intelligence sharing had stopped. He told reporters: \u201cWe are helping them, and we are sharing intel. We want the war to end, so we\u2019re working with them and Russia on getting the war to end.\u201d\n\nTrump has demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries and has blamed Zelenskyy for the rise in fuel prices in the US. On Friday the US president announced a deal with Vladimir Putin to import diesel from Russia, dropping previous US sanctions.\n\nAsked on Tuesday whether Russia could use proceeds \u200bfrom the \u200bsale to purchase \u200bmore bombs, Trump sidestepped the question. \u201cThat\u2019s \u200ba diesel \u200cdeal, not \u200bfor \u200bus. That\u2019s being released into the world. That\u2019s not being released to us,\u201d he said.\n\nEarlier the president claimed Moscow and Kyiv had agreed an \u201cenergy ceasefire\u201d, something Zelenskyy described as \u201cnews to me\u201d. Ukraine\u2019s leader said his military had not struck Russian oil refineries or energy facilities in the two days following Trump\u2019s Sunday announcement.\n\nThe Kremlin, however, had ignored the \u201cceasefire\u201d and continued to bomb Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure as before, with multiple attacks, he said.\n\n\u201cRussia did not heed the president \u2026 the Russians sent absolutely clear signals that they have no intention of refraining from strikes,\u201d he noted on Tuesday.\n\nUkrainian commanders say American intelligence is not needed to identify targets for deep strikes on Russia, with oil refineries marked on Google Maps. But they say it plays a crucial role in warning of Russian ballistic missile launches, and the takeoff of long-range bomber aircraft.\n\n\u201cIt is deeply unfair that they are destroying our energy infrastructure while Ukraine receives no warnings about ballistic missile launches,\u201d Zelenskyy said in a statement after the Tuesday strikes. \u201cIt is vital that the world does not remain silent about this. And it is crucial that America clearly sees what is happening and who is responsible for the continuation of the war.\u201d\n\nThe blasts could be heard in central Kyiv as Ukraine\u2019s air defences failed to stop the high-speed Russian missile targeting the capital. The missile strikes on Ukraine\u2019s left bank targeted a thermal power plant, Zelenskyy said, and also struck an apartment building leaving both dead and injured in the latest strike on the capital.\n\nZelenskyy warned on Tuesday evening that Russia was planning further strikes with ballistic missiles, telling Ukrainians: \u201cPlease take care of yourselves tonight and tomorrow.\u201d\n\nIn recent months Russia has dramatically stepped up its bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities. It has particularly stepped up its attacks on Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure ahead of the winter, cutting power and water in large parts of Ukraine\u2019s capital as emergency workers race to restore basic utilities. Ukraine, meanwhile, has struggled to shoot down incoming missiles and jet-powered drones and has appealed to partners to boost its dwindling supplies of US-made Patriot missiles.\n\nAccording to the Financial Times, the Trump administration has also threatened to suspend the procurement scheme under which Ukraine\u2019s European allies buy advanced US systems, which are then sent to Kyiv, including badly needed Patriots.\n\nThe Kremlin\u2019s systematic campaign against Ukraine\u2019s power grid has led to widespread blackouts in Kyiv and other cities. Putin\u2019s apparent goal is to shut off heating and electricity for millions of civilians this winter, and to trigger a new wave of refugees into neighbouring EU states.\n\nSpeaking in Warsaw, Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, indicated that cooperation with the US was continuing and said the lack of warning about the Kyiv attack was due to a \u201cspecial type\u201d of Russian weaponry.\n\nOn Monday, Russia also bombarded the city of Kharkiv, destroying a residential building. Sharing footage from the scene, Zelenskyy said four people had been killed and 41 injured. Rescuers spent the entire night searching for people trapped under the rubble, he added.\n\nMeanwhile, 11 sailors were missing after their ship was sunk by a drone attack off the coast of Bulgaria. The incident prompted Bulgaria to summon Russia\u2019s \u2060ambassador.\n\nTwo cargo ships were hit \u2060by drones overnight and one \u200bwas sunk, Bulgarian officials said. Bulgaria stopped short of explicitly accusing Russia of carrying out the attacks but the prime minister, Rumen Radev, said their outcome \u201cbenefits the Russian Federation\u201d.\n\nThe row between Washington and Kyiv is the most serious since last year, when Trump threw Zelenskyy out of the White House.\n\nUkraine\u2019s president has said he is willing to stop hitting Russian oil refineries \u2013 but only on a reciprocal basis and with \u201creal guarantees\u201d that Moscow will cease its attacks on Ukraine\u2019s own energy sites.\n\n\u201cDirect or indirect support for Russia, delaying aid to Ukraine and complicating protection of lives from ballistics \u2013 this is what will definitely not work for peace. A strong America, a strong Europe, strong partners are needed,\u201d he said on Tuesday.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "f60957eccf4a2a056027cddb8d0227196379dfe5",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Burnham to host Zelenskyy at No 10 in show of \u2018rock-solid\u2019 support",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2026\/oct\/13\/burnham-to-host-zelenskyy-at-no-10-in-show-of-rock-solid-support",
        "words": "500",
        "section": "Politics",
        "date": "2026-10-13T21:30:35Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/bd56f99f083394fc778ce997855ce42ce481d469\/90_0_4419_3538\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Peter Walker Senior political correspondent",
        "description": "Prime minister reiterates UK backing after the Ukrainian president\u2019s latest round of difficulties with Donald Trump",
        "text": "Andy Burnham will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Wednesday as the UK seeks to further underline its support for the Ukrainian president, in contrast to his difficulties with Donald Trump.\n\nThe UK prime minister said his message to Zelenskyy and his country would be: \u201cWe are with you for as long as it takes.\u201d\n\nTo coincide with the visit, the UK has said it will move more rapidly in providing Ukraine with British-made lightweight multi-role missiles (LMMs) to help protect it from attacks by a new generation of Russian jet-powered drones.\n\nIn parallel, Burnham and his ministers will push for a full international maritime services ban on exports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).\n\nThe pair have already met twice since Burnham took office in July, when Zelenskyy visited a naval base in Portsmouth in the same month and when Burnham travelled to Kyiv in August.\n\nZelenskyy\u2019s latest visit comes as Ukraine faces increased Russian missile and drone attacks, and after Donald Trump made a deal to buy Russian diesel, called for Ukraine to have a new leader, and announced a supposed ceasefire connected to energy infrastructure that the Ukrainian president said \u201cwas news to him\u201d.\n\nTrump is an often wayward ally for Ukraine, and Zelenskyy has expressed anger at the diesel deal, saying subsequent Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine amounted to a \u201cthanks\u201d from Vladimir Putin.\n\nUK governments have previously welcomed Zelenskyy after difficult experiences with Trump. He met Keir Starmer at Downing Street the day after Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, publicly berated the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office 18 months ago.\n\nDuring that trip Zelenskyy was also hosted by King Charles, who, in a pointedly personal touch, saw the Ukrainian president at Sandringham in Norfolk, which is a royal family home and rarely used for such visits.\n\nAnnouncing the latest Downing Street meeting, No 10 said part of an ongoing \u00a31.6bn package to deliver more than 5,000 LMMs to Ukraine would be sped up to help combat attacks by jet-powered drones.\n\nThese are quicker and higher-flying than the propeller-driven Shahed drones previously used, making them much harder to shoot down, allowing Russia to strike more targets in Ukraine, including in Kyiv.\n\nThe chancellor, John Healey, will separately use meetings at the ongoing International Monetary Fund summit in Bangkok to push other countries to ban Russian LNG.\n\nIn a statement before his meeting with Zelenskyy, Burnham said: \u201cOur rock-solid support to Ukraine is vital for keeping us safe here in the UK and ensuring those on the frontlines have the equipment they need to push back Russia.\n\n\u201cMy message to the Ukrainian people could not be clearer: we are with you for as long as it takes, and we will go further and faster in our support to back your courageous fight for peace in Europe.\n\n\u201cIt is not just the right thing to do, but it\u2019s the necessary thing to do. Russia\u2019s aggression cannot be allowed to succeed on our continent.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "7ca921bfd50d2901ff38ad2fc9f332199e2aa05c",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Intense waves and floods batter California waterfront homes and boardwalks",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/oct\/13\/california-storm-floods",
        "words": "830",
        "section": "US news",
        "date": "2026-10-13T18:25:06Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/0c1255d69f930de984c5e7bdf16b2169f0b84082\/524_0_5236_4189\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Dani Anguiano and Gabrielle Canon",
        "description": "Boardwalk destroyed in Long Beach and homes damaged, while Baja California in Mexico and Las Vegas also affected",
        "text": "Southern California coastal communities are picking up the pieces after a weekend of extreme weather brought flooding that overtook city streets and intense waves battered beachside homes.\n\nThe remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel hit Mexico\u2019s Baja California over the weekend as well as southern California and Las Vegas. While meteorologists noted that Rachel weakened into a post-tropical cyclone as it approached California, it still left a trail of destruction.\n\nFootage showed massive waves crashing into Long Beach homes, destroying a boardwalk and forcing residents to flee. The damage to homes was significant, leaving some at risk of collapse.\n\nAt least nine have been deemed unsafe to enter, the Long Beach Post reported, meaning displaced residents cannot return to retrieve personal items. The storm has cost the city more than $1m from its emergency reserves, according to the outlet.\n\nFarther south, the city of Newport Beach declared a local emergency and briefly closed piers to \u201cprotect public safety\u201d, citing \u201chigher-than-normal surf\u201d that inundated streets.\n\nBy Monday, cleanup work was under way and Newport Beach had reopened the piers, but officials advised residents to exercise caution near the water.\n\nIn Las Vegas, a raging torrent of water rushed over a street near the strip, and the city tied an all-time daily rainfall record for October with 1.08in (2.74cm) of rain into Sunday morning, according to the US National Weather Service.\n\nThe impacts are just a taste of what\u2019s to come across southern California as a historic El Ni\u00f1o unfolds in the Pacific, threatening to unleash severe storms across the region this winter.\n\nAlready, the last five hurricanes in the Pacific all reached major status and saw with winds of at least 111mph (178.6 km\/h), and one set a record for time spent at category 5.\n\n\u201cThis year, just everything that forms is just lasting a long time and getting really powerful,\u201d Phil Klotzbach, a Colorado State University researcher who forecasts and studies storm activity, told the Associated Press, adding that the last month has been \u201cberserk\u201d.\n\nThe El Ni\u00f1o climate phenomenon, characterized by warmer than average equatorial sea surface temperatures, has the potential to supercharge extreme weather around the world. While it\u2019s expected to strengthen through the end of this year and into next, the excess warmth already measured is climbing off the charts. Forecasters have warned its effects could become exceptionally destructive.\n\nIn California \u2013 especially in the southern part of the state \u2013 El Ni\u00f1os typically carry higher risks of severe storms, and with them elevated threats from landslides, debris flows and flash floods. These dangers become more pronounced around recent burn scars, adding hazards to several areas, including in the neighborhoods still recovering from the 2025 Los Angeles firestorm and swaths of Big Sur above Highway 1.\n\n\u201cThis year\u2019s tilt in the odds toward wet and stormy conditions in California will be profoundly unsubtle,\u201d climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a recent analysis, adding that its unlike anything he\u2019s observed before.\n\nThroughout the winter months, El Ni\u00f1o could also add an additional foot of sea level rise in California on top of the 8in to 12in caused by the climate crisis over the last century, according to Michael Anderson, a state climatologist.\n\nAlready, El Ni\u00f1o has elevated sea levels up and down the California coast, from the Mexico border up to the San Francisco Bay Area. Warm waters expanding from an extreme marine heatwave combined with a coastally trapped Kelvin wave \u2013 a large underwater band of warm water \u2013 have already inundated parts of the North American shoreline. More Kelvin waves are likely and California is already bracing for unusually high king tides to hit during holiday weekends this year, arriving near Thanksgiving and Christmas.\n\nWhile the impacts from heavy rains and high surf are each destructive in their own right, when they align and overlap they can cause even more calamity.\n\n\u201cBetween November 2026 and January 2027, I would anticipate multiple significant coastal flood events that are worse in severity and also much more widespread than what we are currently seeing,\u201d Swain said. \u201cEven a moderate storm could bring water levels higher still, and a strong storm would likely produce widespread damaging, and probably historic, coastal flooding.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile, as cities across California begin preparations for intense winter weather, there are still months left before the risks from fire begin to subside. The National Weather Service issued fire weather watches for parts of southern California, including in Los Angeles, as seasonal strong, dry winds align with high temperatures. Forecasters warned that there would be \u201chigh risk for extreme fire behavior with any new fire starts Thursday through Friday\u201d.\n\nWith the threat of fire, heat and sea level rise colliding, as the state readies for more incoming effects from El Ni\u00f1o, Kevin McGowan, the director of LA\u2019s office of emergency management, urged residents to be ready. \u201cPeople should continue to prepare not just for one hazard,\u201d he said during a recent briefing, \u2013 but all hazards.\u201d\n\nThe Associated Press contributed reporting\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "e0750992f5fa659b149f80d1062d2398be46b910",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Leticia McKenna at the double as Matildas\u2019 next generation help trounce Haiti 7-1",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/oct\/14\/matildas-australia-haiti-international-womens-football-friendly-match-report",
        "words": "867",
        "section": "Football",
        "date": "2026-10-13T21:24:14Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/22a91fcf5ca188bf3caf8034a86bfbf84576a27f\/105_0_3316_2652\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Sam Lewis",
        "description": "A brace from the young midfielder, a debut goal for Daniela Galic, and further strikes from Caitlin Foord, Clare Wheeler and Holly McNamara helped the Matildas to a big win in France",
        "text": "A brace from young midfielder Leticia McKenna, a debut goal for Daniela Galic, and further strikes from Caitlin Foord, Clare Wheeler and Holly McNamara helped the Matildas to a 7-1 win over world No 47 Haiti in both teams\u2019 final October friendly in France.\n\nMaking her starting debut to bring up just her fourth cap for Australia, McKenna book-ended the first half with goals from midfield, powering a Wheeler cut-back into the roof of the net 80 seconds into the game before crashing her second in off a tackle just before half-time to finish her own attacking move.\n\nThe rallying-cry of captain Sam Kerr in the huddle before the match was \u201cwe should beat sides like this\u201d, and while the Matildas struggled to break down an organised and physical Haitian side in the first half, with OL Lyonnes midfielder Melchie Dumornay and forward Brittany Raphino an ever-present threat, Australia\u2019s next generation made their impact in a five-goal blitz in the second half.\n\nHaving made four changes to the starting XI that lost 4-2 to Germany on Saturday, including a new-look back-line of Kaitlyn Torpey, Courtney Nevin and Charlotte Grant, alongside McKenna and Alana Murphy in midfield, Joe Montemurro used the opportunity to establish depth in specific positions and develop chemistry in new combinations, with just four international windows left until the Women\u2019s World Cup next June.\n\nThey took some time to find their feet, however. The Matildas often struggled to find clear passages through Haiti\u2019s midfield, while the usual starting front three of Foord, Kerr and Hayley Raso were largely held at arm\u2019s length by some impressive collective defending.\n\nSupported from the stands by a raucous home crowd and a bouncing brass band, Dumornay\u2019s second-minute equaliser \u2013 a charging solo run that began in the centre circle and ended with a low, hard shot into the far corner \u2013 served as a reminder of the talent brimming within this emerging Caribbean nation, and kept Australia on notice.\n\nWheeler was one of Australia\u2019s most impressive first-half performers, covering acres of grass and providing bounce-passes for her teammates, while also enforcing the midfield areas and earning a yellow card for a stomp on Dumornay. Her energy gave Murphy and McKenna, now playing together at Nottingham Forest, more space to navigate, with the latter offering multiple penetrative late runs into the box to latch onto several crosses and cut-backs.\n\nHaiti could have snatched an unlikely lead just after the half-hour mark, though, when a scything through-ball from captain N\u00e9rilia Mond\u00e9sir was missed by Winonah Heatley, allowing Raphino to poke a hopeful toe at the ball in the box. It ricocheted off Mackenzie Arnold and then Grant before bouncing perilously towards an open net, only for Wheeler to hook the ball off the line.\n\nBut McKenna settled Australia\u2019s nerves in the 44th minute after Raso sent a cut-back into a crowded penalty area. The young midfielder kept the play alive, offering a bounce-pass to Raso, whose shot was blocked before falling right into McKenna\u2019s path, whose strong tackle saw it spin past Naila Louissant and into the net.\n\nThe second half was a far more convincing showing from Australia as Montemurro rang in the changes and Haiti began to tire. The floodgates opened in the 52nd minute after a quick transitional pass from Wheeler found Foord down the left wing, who ran at Haiti\u2019s defence as she waited for Kerr to run off her shoulder. The Gotham forward slipped between two defenders before receiving a perfect through-ball, trying to clip the ball past the keeper only for it to deflect off the boot of a sliding Kethna Louis and into the net.\n\nThe two veteran attackers swapped roles barely 10 minutes later as a poor pass from Haiti, whose entire back-line was pulled out of position in an attempt to counter-attack, found Kerr instead. The captain then spread the ball wide for Foord, all alone out on the left, who took a few unchallenged steps into the box before firing past the keeper to make it four.\n\nThis goal triggered four changes for Montemurro\u2019s side, with more emerging Matildas in McNamara, Galic, Remy Siemsen, and Alexia Apostolakis coming on for the final half hour. Galic made an almost immediate impact, scoring her debut goal six minutes later as she controlled a fizzing Murphy through-ball that sliced past two lines of Haiti players before the 19-year-old turned and caressed the ball into the far corner.\n\nThe inexhaustible Wheeler was finally rewarded for her efforts, with a cross-shot from just inside the right side of the box floating over the fingertips of the leaping Louissant before nestling into the far side of the net, while the substitute McNamara made it two goals in two games after she broke a tired offside trap and slipped the ball through a gap in the keeper\u2019s arms to make it 7-1.\n\nIn a window that has seen two generations of Matildas face up against the depth of Germany and the individual threats of Haiti, the gap between Australia\u2019s established core and the players expected to replace them is slowly but surely closing. With a two-game series against Colombia up next, Montemurro now has a happy headache in much-needed depth.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "193579299dee92d551b0b3049bc433952ef648e5",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/55d2e12f2ad5ce300096e439738abaca75528f4e\/555_82_4245_3396\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Barrios strikes after 53 seconds as Atl\u00e9tico pile misery on 10-man Manchester United ",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/oct\/13\/atletico-madrid-manchester-united-champions-league-match-report",
        "words": "870",
        "section": "Football",
        "date": "2026-10-13T21:10:33Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/55d2e12f2ad5ce300096e439738abaca75528f4e\/555_82_4245_3396\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Sid Lowe at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano",
        "description": "Pablo Barrios struck after 53 seconds and Leny Yoro was shown red as Atl\u00e9tico Madrid added to Manchester United\u2019s woes with a 2-0 victory",
        "text": "Michael Carrick had seen it in his players, he said, but no one else can. Not so far in the Premier League, where they have suffered their worst start in 40 years, and not here in Madrid, where Manchester United\u2019s head coach insisted they would embrace the challenge. The reaction was coming, he promised; he had looked at them and was sure of it. Instead, they were a goal down after just 53 seconds and all that came was the old familiar sting, that early opener from Pablo Barrios and a second from Ademola Lookman condemning them to another defeat.\n\nSo much for a reaction, a rebellion: in their place a kind of resignation, a sense that maybe this is just United\u2019s reality: a game that began badly, did not get very much better, and finished even worse. True, the result could have been different, Bryan Mbeumo unable to convert two first-half chances while Bruno Fernandes struck the bar and put an opportunity wide, but that did not diminish the feeling that something is really wrong. It may even have deepened it.\n\nEven the late, harsh red card for Leny Yoro which can be offered in mitigation did not change a simple fact: at the end of another insipid night, United lost. United are lost, perhaps.\n\n\u201cSometimes when it\u2019s not quite going for you, you see who\u2019s really there,\u201d United\u2019s manager said the night before, a message that perhaps hinted at something rotten beneath the surface, but on the opening goal no one was really there. They weren\u2019t there on the left, where Lee Kang-in\u2019s pass sent \u00c1lex Baena into a wide-open space; they weren\u2019t there to close him down as he cut into the area; and they weren\u2019t there on the right either, where Barrios was running through alone. Baena laid across and Barrios\u2019s shot went off Ayden Heaven and into the net.\n\nBarrios held up six fingers, the number of the club captain, Koke, whose mother had died in the hours before kick-off. From the bench Koke\u2019s shirt was raised. All around the Metropolitano, supporters roared. This was set, it seemed.\n\nAlthough another effort from Baena soon hit Lisandro Mart\u00ednez, United did find a foothold and could have found a way back. Mbeumo had two clear chances in quick succession: the first, after nice footwork on the right, went wide; the second, following a neat exchange with Youri Tielemans, was stopped by Jan Oblak on the other side. From the corner, Carlos Baleba headed straight at the keeper.\n\nThat was short-lived, though, Atl\u00e9tico soon asserting themselves, moving the ball with a pace and conviction United couldn\u2019t match. Barrios and Baena couldn\u2019t be controlled, and the spaces they opened were vast. The pressure United applied tended to arrive late or not at all. On the touchline too the contrast was stark: Diego Simeone prowled, Carrick stood motionless in the corner of his technical area, chin in his hand. The Argentinian was booked for waving an imaginary card. Maybe United\u2019s manager could try that. Something, anyway.\n\nBy half-time, Atl\u00e9tico had enjoyed 66% of possession. They could also have had a greater lead. \u00c1lex Grimaldo rattled a superb free\u2011kick off the bar and just before the break Johnny Cardoso\u2019s sweeping finish was ruled out when the video assistant referee revealed a Marcos Llorente handball in the buildup. The second half then began with a neatly floated ball from Barrios setting up Juli\u00e1n \u00c1lvarez to volley against a post. Again, the space, time and the ease with which the move played out was just too big.\n\nAt the other end, Bruno Fernandes then had a wonderful opportunity to level it. Tielemans did superbly to find him, the ball sitting up and Oblak coming off his line to meet him \u2013 the kind of opportunity, in short, that is supposed to end only one way but that this time ended another.\n\nUnited\u2019s captain lifted the ball past the keeper and wide. Soon, Atl\u00e9tico were back again, Baena bending a shot wide, although Atl\u00e9tico appeared to have settled, the game drifting. That perhaps suited United: with Atl\u00e9tico\u2019s threat no longer so present, the ball was theirs for the first time and the lead was still only one, opportunity there. Fernandes, increasingly involved, swung a shot against the bar.\n\nWhich was when it finally, definitively and far too easily fell apart. Suddenly, on 74 minutes, Jonathan David was running through the middle on to a Morten Hjulmand ball. Yoro went with him, grappling as they ran, and the pair fell. Although Glenn Nyberg didn\u2019t give a foul, allowing the move to play out with David scrambling the ball to Lookman, a voice in his ear called him to the screen to watch the challenge again. When he returned, he had a red in his hand.\n\nThe decision felt harsh. It was also the end. Three minutes later, Atl\u00e9tico were running through United again. Grimaldo slotted a pass into David, inside the area and, although his shot was saved by Senne Lammens, Lookman was there to score. Heaven and Fernandes were removed; this was done, nothing left to fight for, not that they had fought much in the first place, the reaction postponed for some other day.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "1e26a2532966b4ea5736e11f4e4c71dde62666cd",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Timber\u2019s touch of class and supersub Saka secure Arsenal win against Lille",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/oct\/13\/arsenal-lille-champions-league-match-report",
        "words": "844",
        "section": "Football",
        "date": "2026-10-13T21:02:51Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/0d1034afbb062cac9a4b41b071c14df91e61072a\/410_382_1834_1468\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Ed Aarons at the Emirates Stadium",
        "description": "Eberechi Eze was also on target as Arsenal scored three goals in seven second-half minutes in a 3-0 win against Lille in the Champions League",
        "text": "Twelve wins in a row and counting. On a night when Arsenal remembered Ken Friar \u2013 the club\u2019s life president who was instrumental in their move from Highbury to the Emirates in 2006 \u2013 it was fitting that Mikel Arteta\u2019s side should rack up yet another Champions League milestone at their home that has become a fortress.\n\nSuch has Arsenal\u2019s dominance been here in recent seasons that when Bukayo Saka slotted home their third against a dogged Lille side, it was the 36th goal they have scored at the Emirates in the league or group stage since returning to Europe\u2019s top table under Arteta three years ago. In those 12 wins, they have remarkably conceded only three times.\n\nArsenal have also now racked up 14 successive league-stage victories in this competition \u2013 three short of Bayern Munich\u2019s record \u2013 even if Arteta\u2019s side were made to work for this one and had to wait until the 64th minute to find the breakthrough. That came from the unlikely source of Jurri\u00ebn Timber after Arsenal\u2019s second-string attack \u2013 and Viktor Gy\u00f6keres in particular \u2013 had looked laboured. But while Arteta may be concerned that it needed the introduction of Saka from the bench along with Martin \u00d8degaard and Kai Havertz to put this game to bed as Eberechi Eze added a second before Saka rounded off the scoring with a third in the space of seven minutes, they never looked in any danger of losing their proud record as Olivier Giroud received a standing ovation on his return to north London.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m sure he is very happy to see how the boys played. But not only that, because I know how proud he felt about what we built,\u201d said Arteta of Friar. \u201cIt\u2019s a really sad day for everyone who loves football. The legacy that Ken is going to leave for this club is going to be for ever.\u201d\n\nArsenal had earlier paid tribute to Friar, who worked his way up from the box office to club secretary before becoming managing director in the 1980s, when his death at the age of 92 was confirmed. The players wore black armbands as a mark of respect. Friar would have been especially proud of their formidable record here under Arteta in this competition that stretches back to the 2023-24 season, when they returned to the tournament after an absence of six years. It is little wonder that Arteta was so reluctant for redevelopment plans to go ahead given the disruption any temporary move away to Wembley or elsewhere would have caused.\n\nDespite the absence of Piero Hincapi\u00e9 and Mart\u00edn Zubimendi after they were both injured during the warm-down after the victory over Leeds on Saturday, the Arsenal manager was still able to make five changes. Lille\u2019s manager, Davide Ancelotti, who worked under his father, Carlo, at Everton and Real Madrid among others before being appointed during the summer in only his second senior role, resisted the temptation to start with 40-year-old Giroud against his former club.\n\nRestored to his favoured right flank after excelling on the left against Leeds, it had not been saying much that Noni Madueke had once again been Arsenal\u2019s most dangerous outlet in a first half in which they struggled to create much against a deep-lying defence.\n\nBruno Guimar\u00e3es and then Mikel Merino spurned decent chances, while Ayase Ueda had the ball in David Raya\u2019s net after Nabil Bentaleb\u2019s shot deflected off Timber and hit H\u00e1kon Haraldsson on the way through, with the video assistant referee confirming the Japan striker was marginally offside.\n\nBut Arsenal lacked creativity without \u00d8degaard and Gy\u00f6keres showing plenty of hustle and bustle yet making little real impact.\n\nIt summed Arsenal\u2019s first half up when he could not get out of the way after Eze forced Berke Ozer into his first proper save and was promptly flagged offside. Ozer then had to scramble the ball away from the feet of the Sweden striker after spilling a shot from Guimar\u00e3es on the stroke of half-time.\n\nThe referee, Felix Zwayer, waved away appeals at the start of the second half when Guimar\u00e3es went down in the area under pressure from Alexsandro but the Arsenal midfielder seemed to be looking for the contact. A wayward effort that almost made it into the upper tier from Madueke was the signal for Arteta to summon \u00d8degaard, Saka and Havertz to get ready.\n\nBefore they had time to be introduced, Arsenal finally found the breakthrough when Madueke picked out Timber to apply a deft finish with his right foot after a brilliant first touch. Saka made an immediate impact by setting up Eze to dispatch the second with his left foot \u2013 possibly with the help of a deflection \u2013 less than three minutes later, before adding a third after combining with Havertz and \u00d8degaard. Lille must have wondered what had hit them.\n\nAs well as the chance to pay their respects to Giroud, the Arsenal fans were treated to a late cameo from the dazzling Max Dowman to round off another very satisfying evening that has become the norm.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "5d11007439b05bdcecddd25ccb0a85dab883bb1f",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/93cc0e130431b9824f3c533c1d51b2d82c72ae3d\/543_0_3333_2668\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "AI in your oven? Anthropic warns models \u2018months away\u2019 from self-replication on smart devices",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/oct\/13\/anthropic-ai-replicators-warning",
        "words": "440",
        "section": "Technology",
        "date": "2026-10-13T20:55:04Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/93cc0e130431b9824f3c533c1d51b2d82c72ae3d\/543_0_3333_2668\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Dara Kerr",
        "description": "Researchers say \u2018AI worms\u2019 could soon infiltrate internet-connected devices amid calls for increased guardrails",
        "text": "Anthropic is warning that some of its artificial intelligence models could soon become \u201cself-replicating\u201d and find ways to infiltrate internet-connected devices, such as smart fridges and automatic vacuum cleaners.\n\nOnce this happens, the company said, the models could power themselves within these devices without the need of datacenters. Such self-replication would represent a major loss of control of a runaway AI model.\n\n\u201cA replicator like this would be challenging to shut down,\u201d Anthropic researchers wrote in a report released on Monday, \u201csince there\u2019s no centralized point to shut off.\u201d\n\nThe company said these \u201cAI worms\u201d, a kind of autonomous malware, could be \u201cmonths away\u201d from gaining such capabilities. Once out-of-control AI systems reach the capability to hack smart devices, they could spread through networks while dodging detection. In a worst-case scenario, Anthropic said, various AI worms could \u201cswarm\u201d together to attack computer hardware.\n\n\u201cWe should aim to harden our systems to make it difficult for such replicators to spread, but also prepare to deal with a world where they are here to stay,\u201d the researchers wrote.\n\nAnthropic\u2019s new report comes as AI safety concerns have reached a fever pitch. Over the past few months, a steady stream of reports have come from AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI, saying their agents are capable of acting on their own and hacking into other companies and government entities.\n\nThe revelations have caused researchers, lawmakers and executives, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to call for a slowdown and increased guardrails on the burgeoning industry. Despite that, both companies have continued apace to develop and release new models.\n\nAnthropic\u2019s \u201cfrontier red team\u201d, the unit tasked with stress-testing AI systems, put together the report released Monday. The idea of the team is to explore the capabilities of their AI models. In the scenario of the self-replicating AI worms, the researchers prompted the agent to hack internet connected devices.\n\nThey found that AI self-replication would only likely work with smaller models and that homes and small businesses would probably be the first target for such attacks. The devices Anthropic lists as susceptible all come with small built-in AI chips, including smart ovens, smart TVs, automatic lawnmowers, security cameras and video-conferencing units.\n\nThe researchers concluded it\u2019s unclear what form the AI replication could take. They said it could be a slow model like \u201cdigital slime mold\u201d, a model that scams people for compute credits or a \u201cpowerful cyber model\u201d that rapidly hacks large facilities such as datacenters.\n\nRegardless, the Anthropic researchers said, they\u2019re expecting a future \u201cawash with agents running on all types of hardware, including some that aren\u2019t under human control\u201d.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "9c3a367183b7383023afecd0fa5bbebeb7c86bf1",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/48df2fe29208c0c5035017777e1fa224757de109\/560_0_4553_3642\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "BBC asks judge to force Trump to sit for deposition as part of his $10bn lawsuit",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/media\/2026\/oct\/13\/bbc-trump-lawsuit-deposition",
        "words": "478",
        "section": "Media",
        "date": "2026-10-13T20:49:53Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/48df2fe29208c0c5035017777e1fa224757de109\/560_0_4553_3642\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Jeremy Barr in Washington",
        "description": "BBC asks US federal judge to compel Trump\u2019s lawyers to schedule deposition after his team canceled initial session",
        "text": "The BBC is asking a federal judge in Florida to force Donald Trump to sit for a deposition as part of the president\u2019s $10bn defamation lawsuit against the British broadcaster.\n\nAccording to a Tuesday filing, the BBC and Trump\u2019s legal team had agreed for him to be deposed on Friday. The BBC\u2019s lawyers wrote to the judge that they have spent months trying to secure a location for the deposition from Trump\u2019s team.\n\nOn 28 September, Trump\u2019s lawyers told the BBC\u2019s counsel that the president \u201cis no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance\u201d.\n\nWhile Trump\u2019s lawyers said they would follow up quickly with a replacement date, they did not, ultimately suggesting that he would be available in the second or third week of January, well after the deadline to complete the discovery portion of the case. Lawyers for the BBC had pledged to keep the location of the deposition confidential.\n\nAs such, the BBC\u2019s lawyers are now asking the judge to require Trump\u2019s team to schedule the deposition.\n\n\u201cPlaintiff chose to file this lawsuit and, in doing so, he accepted the obligations of civil litigation,\u201d the BBC\u2019s motion reads. \u201cThe BBC therefore asks the Court to compel Plaintiff to confirm a date for his deposition, notify the BBC of a secure location where such deposition is possible and any other logistics required to ensure Plaintiff\u2019s safety, and sit for the deposition, as the core rules of discovery require.\u201d\n\nMagistrate judge Enjoliqu\u00e9 Aytch Lett has scheduled a discovery hearing that is likely to touch on the deposition issue for 22 October.\n\n\u201cNearly eight months into discovery, after seven depositions of BBC witnesses, and with only two months of discovery remaining, the BBC still has not been able to depose, and does not even have a schedule to depose, the most central figure in this case: Plaintiff himself,\u201d lawyers for the BBC wrote in the Tuesday motion.\n\nTrump, who has a long history of legal action against media companies, filed a lawsuit against the BBC in December 2025, accusing the network of violating Florida\u2019s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act over the edit of a Panorama documentary that edited together comments he made during a rally on 6 January 2021. The BBC has apologized for the error.\n\n\u201cThe formerly respected and now disgraced BBC defamed President Trump by intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech in a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election,\u201d a spokesperson for Trump\u2019s legal team said in a statement. \u201cThe BBC has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda. President Trump\u2019s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "6438093dd6222dfc0dc38d50ec06e828bf07774e",
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        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "James and Russo lead rout of Greece as ruthless England set up Ukraine playoff",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/oct\/13\/england-greece-womens-world-cup-qualifying-playoff-match-report",
        "words": "828",
        "section": "Football",
        "date": "2026-10-13T20:41:36Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/5e8284ab3ea12995209da9d3a93c0ce5e96b5323\/1024_161_2356_1885\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Suzanne Wrack at the King Power Stadium",
        "description": "Two goals from Lauren James and Alessia Russo helped England to a 5-0 win over Greece (8-1 on aggregate) that sets up a World Cup playoff against Ukraine",
        "text": "A mercurial Lauren James scored two and provided an assist in a thrilling four-goal first 45 minutes against Greece, as England put themselves two games away from securing their place at the World Cup.\n\nJames\u2019s double was matched by Alessia Russo, who scored either side of the break, and her Arsenal \u00adteammate Georgia Stanway was also on the scoresheet, with the Lionesses setting up a playoff final against Ukraine in November and December. It was a clinical and slick statement from England, albeit against a team they should bypass with ease.\n\nAny Greek hopes of arriving in Leicester and launching a Trojan horse-style smash and grab, after a hugely impressive performance in their 3-1 defeat by an \u00adunconvincing Lionesses team in Crete, were quickly dashed.\n\nSarina Wiegman had said on the eve of the game that she wanted to see improvement in the final third. In the King Power Stadium, which had a club vibe to it before kick-off as dance remix after dance remix blared out, the Lionesses responded to their manager\u2019s call, Russo producing the first goal from the first shot and first attack in the third minute.\n\nJames was the architect, the \u00adChelsea player driving forward and picking out the No 9, who shrugged clear of Eleni Markou\u2019s challenge before firing a low shot in.\n\nIt was Russo\u2019s fourth goal in four games for club and country, with the Arsenal forward having gone five Women\u2019s Super League games without a goal before this run, and it was a sign of things to come from a team keen to shake off criticism of their lack of ruthlessness.\n\nJames was in majestic form, her injury worries behind her this season, and England fans were treated to a glimpse of what they missed at the Euros in Switzerland in 2025, when a less than half-fit James struggled and looked frustrated as her body failed to meet her demands on it.\n\nJames has said that the best is yet to come from her and Wiegman agreed. \u201cI think so,\u201d said the manager. \u201cShe was really enjoying herself, scored some great goals, but also picked up some great positions. I thought she looked really fresh and played well.\u201d\n\nOn the Chelsea forward\u2019s use more centrally, having previously been preferred in a wider role, Wiegman said: \u201cAs a winger or inverted winger she does similar things. She can play any position up front, right or left, because she\u2019s right- and left-footed. When she plays on the outside she also gets the opportunity to come inside, and I think she can do both things then, and that\u2019s when she comes to life.\u201d\n\nJames delivered England\u2019s \u00adsecond and fourth in Leicester, her two first-half goals sandwiching \u00adStanway\u2019s header into the far corner from \u00adLauren Hemp\u2019s chipped cross.\n\nFor her first, the 25-year-old \u00adcushioned Maya Le Tissier\u2019s pass before sending a rising drive goalwards with her left foot. Her second was far simpler, the unmarked forward turning in Hemp\u2019s ball from close range.\n\nJob well and truly done, James was withdrawn at half-time in favour of Beth Mead, Wiegman\u2019s jewel safely nestled back in a velvet pouch after shining so brightly.\n\nWiegman leapt on the opportunity presented by the 7-1 aggregate scoreline to rotate \u00adfurther at the hour mark, with Niamh Charles, Jess Park and Freya Godfrey given a chance to demonstrate why they should be on the plane to Brazil should England overcome Ukraine.\n\nWhether the changes took the sting out of the game or England just eased back on the intensity given the margin did not really matter because the home team remained in complete control of the ball. Their more than 50-place superiority in the Fifa world rankings was far more \u00adevident in Leicester than it had been in Heraklion.\n\nRusso was the beneficiary of \u00adEngland\u2019s patience as the clock ticked down, collecting Keira Walsh\u2019s angled pass before she raced clear, stepped around Styliani \u00adKatergiannaki in the Greece goal and rolled the ball into the empty net.\n\n\u201cI think today we played a lot better,\u201d said Wiegman. \u201cWe totally dominated the game \u2026 As soon as we got in behind and we scored that goal that helped and I think after that we were really, really good in the final third.\u201d\n\nUltimately, despite the performance put on there is very little to be learned from a game against a team so far below England\u2019s level. Any slip-up would only ever have been of England\u2019s own making, as the poor defending for Greece\u2019s goal in Crete demonstrated. However, perhaps that sluggishness could be \u00adattributed to a rustiness after a four-month break from international football.\n\nUkraine are up next, the homeless team preparing to face the European champions after a 4-1 aggregate defeat of Slovakia.\n\nEngland met Ukraine in their World Cup qualifying group earlier in the year and secured a 9-1 margin across the two matches, so it would take the most almighty of collapses for the Lionesses to fail to book their place in Brazil now.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "a98cd37b5f01b68cf8c97f2f8eadd238aae8f74a",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/c2674eabec31afc324233fadb79e96fffdfde20e\/222_0_4583_3667\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Pope Leo diagnosed with lung cancer as growth removed during surgery",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/oct\/13\/pope-leo-hospital-operation-growth-lung",
        "words": "543",
        "section": "World news",
        "date": "2026-10-13T11:27:01Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/c2674eabec31afc324233fadb79e96fffdfde20e\/222_0_4583_3667\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Angela Giuffrida in Rome",
        "description": "Vatican says pontiff had lower lobe of right lung removed in \u2018successful, on schedule and as planned\u2019 operation in Rome",
        "text": "Pope Leo has lung cancer, the Vatican said late on Tuesday.\n\nLeo, 71, underwent an operation and had the lower lobe of his right lung removed, with tests confirming a diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma, the Vatican said in a medical bulletin, which followed an earlier statement saying the pope\u2019s operation had concluded \u201csuccessfully, on schedule and as planned\u201d.\n\nThe Vatican added that the diagnosis had been suspected by preoperative tests and was confirmed during surgery.\n\nLeo was in the operating theatre for about three hours and the operation itself lasted approximately 90 minutes.\n\nIn a rare moment of Vatican transparency, Leo said during his angelus prayer on Sunday that doctors had found a small nodule on his lung during a checkup, adding that it was \u201cwell-contained\u201d and detected early.\n\n\u201cThe doctors believe it would be right to intervene and so, following their advice, I have decided to have the operation to remove it,\u201d he said to the crowds gathered in St Peter\u2019s Square.\n\nLeo, who in May last year became the first US-born leader of the Roman Catholic church, is being treated in Rome\u2019s Gemelli hospital, where a large crowd greeted his arrival earlier on Tuesday.\n\nThe Vatican said that Leo had \u201cnow returned to his room\u201d following the operation.\n\nAll of his appointments have been cancelled until 20 October.\n\nUS secretary of state Marco Rubio, a practicing Catholic who has met with the pope, said he and his wife were \u201cunited in prayers\u201d for Leo following the diagnosis. Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese also wished him a quick recovery, saying he was \u201ca voice for peace, humanity and reason in our modern world.\u201d\n\nCardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, said he had seen Leo on Monday night. \u201cWe spoke with great serenity,\u201d Parolin told Rai News. \u201cHe is truly a great example. The announcement came like a bolt out of the blue, nobody expected it. Thank God it was detected immediately, so the operation could take place immediately. Normally, when these things are caught in time, they can be resolved.\u201d\n\nLeo is staying in the 10th-floor private-patient wing but not in the papal suite, which is being renovated.\n\nThe Chicago-born pope, who enjoys sports, especially playing tennis, is generally believed to be in good health. He often makes use of the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo, close to Rome.\n\nLeo travelled to France on a papal visit in September and is scheduled to go to South America in November for a 12-day trip covering 10 cities.\n\nThe weekly papal audience on Wednesday will be led by Luis Antonio Tagle, a cardinal from the Philippines who last week was elected dean of the college of cardinals \u2013 the authority that presides over papal conclaves.\n\nThe Gemelli, located in the north-west of the Italian capital, is renowned for treating reigning popes. Pope John Paul II stayed there so many times that the Vatican worked with the hospital to establish the high-security papal suite.\n\nLeo\u2019s predecessor, Francis, spent more than five weeks in the hospital, being treated for bronchitis, which developed into bilateral pneumonia. He died at home in Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City on 21 April 2025, just under a month after being discharged.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "47ac6a654dd70979938724e53726f3eec332676e",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/d249bf28cbd54e3bdf9eb2c24d4505eef89e4207\/620_0_6198_4960\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Former NFL star Mark Sanchez reaches settlement over stabbing altercation",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/oct\/13\/mark-sanchez-indianapolis-civil-case-stabbing",
        "words": "300",
        "section": "Sport",
        "date": "2026-10-13T20:27:26Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/d249bf28cbd54e3bdf9eb2c24d4505eef89e4207\/620_0_6198_4960\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Guardian sport and agencies",
        "description": "Former NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez has reached an agreement in principle with the truck driver who stabbed him during an altercation",
        "text": "Former NFL quarterback and Fox Sports analyst Mark Sanchez has reached an agreement in principle with the truck driver who stabbed him during an altercation last October, according to the Athletic.\n\nSanchez was stabbed and pepper sprayed by Perry Tole, who was 69 at the time, during the incident in Indianapolis, where the former New York Jets star was due to cover an NFL game between the Colts and Las Vegas Raiders. Prosecutors said Tole used pepper spray and a knife to defend himself \u200bafter Sanchez attempted to enter \u200chis truck during an argument over a parking spot.\n\nTole suffered \u201csignificant injuries to his head, jaw and neck\u201d and \u200cwas seeking damages for his injuries, according to court documents in the civil case. The incident left Sanchez with stab wounds to his torso, and the former quarterback later said the surgeon who operated on him \u201csaved my life\u201d.\n\nLast month, Sanchez\u2019s lawyers filed a motion to plead guilty to at least one charge in his criminal case; that charge has not been specified. He was charged with one felony count of battery resulting in serious \u200cbodily injury, and misdemeanor charges of unauthorized entry of a motor vehicle, public intoxication endangering the life of another, and battery resulting \u200bin bodily injury. A hearing in Sanchez\u2019s criminal case is scheduled for next month.\n\nFox Sports cut ties with Sanchez after his arrest.\n\nSanchez joined Fox in 2021 and also contributed to FS1 studio programming. Before his broadcasting career, Sanchez played 10 seasons in the NFL with several teams, including the Jets, who took him with the fifth overall pick of the 2009 draft. He later played for the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys. He retired in July 2019 and soon after began working with ESPN\u2019s college football coverage before moving to Fox.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "3126ce9f3cf514ce86d4e1a35105f2c3e678e343",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/da4ea25084485353b9189695120198ae84ce7050\/0_0_2500_2000\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Morning Mail: AFL tells Sportsbet to ditch AI players; Anne Aly reveals death threats; and Musk\u2019s electoral play",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2026\/oct\/14\/morning-mail-wednesday-ntwnfb",
        "words": "923",
        "section": "Australia news",
        "date": "2026-10-13T20:06:38Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/da4ea25084485353b9189695120198ae84ce7050\/0_0_2500_2000\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Martin Farrer",
        "description": "League tells gambling partner to stop using AI memes of players to sell products; minister reveals toll after MP says she should be \u2018shamed and stoned\u2019",
        "text": "Morning everyone. Our exclusive lead story reveals how the AFL has told its commercial partner, Sportsbet, to stop promoting its products with AI-generated images and memes of players without their consent.\n\nElsewhere, the small business minister, Anne Aly, has laid bare the scale of abuse facing women in politics after revealing that she has received 19 death threats in the past week alone; figures show Elon Musk has donated US$366m to rightwing political campaigns in the current US election cycle; and Josh Hazlewood stars as Australia beat South Africa in the first Test.\n\nAustralia\n\nVintage Hazlewood | Josh Hazlewood proved his enduring worth to Australia taking 6 for 49 as he spearheaded the dismissal of South Africa for 206 to wrap up a dominant win in the first Test in Durban by 214 runs.\n\nExclusive | The AFL has told its official gambling partner, Sportsbet, to stop featuring its high-profile athletes in AI-generated social media content without player permission.\n\nWildlife crisis | Flying foxes are starving en masse across New South Wales and parts of Victoria, with wildlife rescuers responding to a surge in reports of \u201cexhausted and emaciated\u201d adults and skeletal pups and blaming habitat loss and a dry winter.\n\nAssaults rise | The sexual assault of Australian children has accelerated sharply since the pandemic, surprising researchers who expected rates to have fallen but instead found attacks on boys had risen 15.7%.\n\nAly death threats | Anne Aly has condemned as \u201cracist\u201d and \u201cmisogynistic\u201d comments in parliament calling for her to be \u201cstoned in the square\u201d \u2013 while revealing she has received 19 death threats in the last week alone.\n\nWorld\n\nCash for access | Kimberly Guilfoyle has stepped down as US ambassador to Greece after weeks of allegations that she sought payment from a Trump donor in exchange for access to administration officials.\n\nA Musk win? | Elon Musk has become the biggest political donor of the 2026 US midterm elections cycle, funnelling about US$366m into political groups and campaigns as he backs conservative candidates and rightwing causes. Here are 10 midterm election contests that are a bit under the radar but worth watching.\n\nSaudi strikes | Saudi Arabia has launched a series of strikes on a strategic oil depot on the outskirts of Yemen\u2019s capital Sana\u2019a in an escalation of the conflict between Riyadh and the Iran-backed Houthi forces.\n\nTerror warning | Extremists holding anti-immigration opinions are becoming increasingly likely to consider terrorist attacks against immigration centres and asylum hotels in the UK, the head of MI5 has warned.\n\nFrench protests | More than 160,000 schoolchildren, students and trade unionists have marched in cities across France as protests over high school education continued into a third week and many denounced policing tactics.\n\nFull Story\nHow Firmus went from Australia\u2019s AI \u2018fairytale\u2019 to flop\n\nOur business editor, Jonathan Barrett, speaks to Matilda Boseley about the botched float of tech company Firmus and what it says about the AI investment bubble.\n\nIn-depth\nThe Reserve Bank\u2019s cash rate is at a 15-year high and is squeezing consumer confidence as households struggle with ever-higher bills. Luca Ittimani examines whether the RBA\u2019s rate hikes are working and whether higher unemployment is a price worth paying to beat inflation.\n\nNot the news\nKatie Cunningham is engrossed by Turned On: Dirty Sexy Money, a reality TV series which follows a group of Gold Coast-based adult content creators, each of whom earn enough to rank among the top 1% of users on OnlyFans.\n\nSport\n\nRugby league | Australia start as firm favourites to win the Rugby League World Cup when it kicks off tomorrow night with the hosts taking on New Zealand in Sydney \u2013 but home success is not guaranteed.\n\nAFL | Nick Blakey, one of five Sydney players embroiled in the Pullman Hotel scandal, has been granted his wish to join North Melbourne on a busy penultimate day of the trade period.\n\nFootball | The next round of Champions League matches are under way in Europe this morning with the pick being Manchester United\u2019s visit to Atl\u00e9tico Madrid. Follow it live, plus Arsenal v Lille.\n\nMedia roundup\nTravellers in Port Macquarie will have fewer flights to Sydney to choose from after Rex announced cuts, the News reports, while the Central Western Daily flags the same problem for Orange. Schools are shut and roads are closed as Alice Springs braces for more violent storms, NT News reports. NSW right faction Labor MPs are unhappy about potential electoral blowback from voters over the plan to increase tax on trusts, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.\n\nWhat\u2019s happening today\n\nCourts | A judgment in Sydney on the challenge by the resource company Regis against Tanya Plibersek\u2019s decision to protect part of the McPhillamys gold project is due.\n\nCanberra | Palau\u2019s president, Surangel S Whipps Jr, will give the Pacific\u2019s view on climate, energy and geopolitics at the ANU, while Jordan\u2019s King Abdullah will meet Anthony Albanese.\n\nEnergy | The resources minister, Madeleine King, will addresses the National Press Club at 11.30am.\n\nSign up\nIf you would like to receive this Morning Mail update to your email inbox every weekday, sign up here, or finish your day with Guardian Australia\u2019s Politics, really newsletter, where our political team brings you up to speed on the stories that really matter and what they mean for you. You can follow the latest in US politics by signing up for This Week in Trumpland.\n\nBrain teaser\nAnd finally, here are the Guardian\u2019s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.\n\nQuick crossword\n\nCryptic crossword\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "04a74b819be882caba21b1babfc3d7daa68db031",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/7cb944b82f301a05f383144d4fc168866ab33382\/474_0_5525_4421\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Frank and Percy review \u2013 bromance becomes romance for Ian McKellen and Roger Allam\u2019s dog walkers",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2026\/oct\/13\/frank-and-percy-review-bromance-becomes-romance-for-two-dog-walkers-ian-mckellen-roger-allam",
        "words": "480",
        "section": "Film",
        "date": "2026-10-13T20:05:34Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/7cb944b82f301a05f383144d4fc168866ab33382\/474_0_5525_4421\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Peter Bradshaw",
        "description": "Ian McKellen and Roger Allam reprise their roles for the film version of Ben Weatherill\u2019s play in a star-filled bittersweet comedy about finding love later in life",
        "text": "There is a tender sweetness to this silver-years romance of new experiences and new ideas \u2013 and also some sugary sentimentality, an autumnal woodwind score telling us how to feel, and a bit of sitcom-cartoony characterisation in the all-star gallery of supporting turns. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn\u2019t. But the movie\u2019s easy-going good nature wins out \u2013 and there\u2019s a terrific contribution from Joanna Lumley, playing Belinda, an elegant woman poignantly suffering from early onset dementia. Screenwriter Martin Sherman adapts the two-hander stage-play by Ben Weatherill in which Roger Allam and Ian McKellen originally starred. They return here for the expanded movie version and Sean Mathias once again directs.\n\nAllam plays Frank, a retired history teacher whose wife died of cancer a few short years ago (Belinda is his sister-in-law) and who now likes to walk his dog Toffee on Hampstead Heath. McKellen is Percy, an academic sociologist and climate scientist who can be found there too, with his dog Bruno. Percy is rather acrimoniously separated from his now ex-partner, a waspish and querulously self-pitying figure gamely played by Stephen Fry.\n\nIn their differing ways, the men are lonely; Frank has nothing to do but mope around the garden centre, brooding over memories from his marriage, and volunteering at a charity shop where he has to stand, and Derek Jacobi, as a salaried employee, is allowed to sit. Percy goes in for age-gap dates from a niche website called Papa Search \u2013 some broad comedy cameos here for Ncuti Gatwa and Hugh Skinner \u2013 but he\u2019s not satisfied. His friendship with Frank grows, his mischievous donnish sense of fun vibing unexpectedly with Frank\u2019s stolid northern common sense. Then one day over a drink, Percy asks if it might be quite all right if he kissed Frank. Wonderingly, Frank agrees \u2013 and it is the start of something new; he says: \u201cI felt like I did when I had a cataract removed.\u201d\n\nThis leads Frank to ponder if he is bisexual \u2013 but perhaps it is more that he is simply sexual, and sexual in a way that he never expected to be at this time of life, or any time of life, and could only have been with this individual person. We get some bittersweet comedy as Frank and Percy realise that their social life consists of funerals, and Percy has a startling Yorick moment looking at the churchyard\u2019s headstones. \u201cOh my God! I\u2019ve had him!\u201d\n\nNaturally, the course of true love, or any sort of love, does not run smooth and at one stage Belinda, in a moment of lucidity, tells Frank: \u201cHow lucky you are to have a broken heart at 77!\u201d True enough. It\u2019s a love story as comforting as the cups of tea and slices of cake to which the characters are partial.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "f3498496844b9ed5156acdc7758436c489121cba",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/9d91f85fe67405ffdca8d911d1c431b64d2c3dd2\/363_0_3567_2856\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Duane \u2018Keffe D\u2019 Davis sentenced to 40 years to life over Tupac Shakur\u2019s murder",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2026\/oct\/13\/duane-davis-sentencing-tupac-shakur-murder",
        "words": "585",
        "section": "Music",
        "date": "2026-10-13T19:03:19Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/9d91f85fe67405ffdca8d911d1c431b64d2c3dd2\/363_0_3567_2856\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Uwa Ede-Osifo",
        "description": "\u2018You don\u2019t get to take a man from his family \u2026 and just walk away from it,\u2019 judge says as former gang leader sentenced",
        "text": "Duane \u201cKeffe D\u201d Davis, the former California gang leader convicted of murder for orchestrating the 1996 fatal shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur, has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.\n\n\u201cFor three years, I\u2019ve heard you say some variation of the same thing \u2026 \u2018Yeah, I was involved in this. But I\u2019m different. I\u2019ve moved on. I got out of Compton. I\u2019m a grandfather now,\u2019\u201d Judge Carli Kierny said Tuesday as she delivered the sentence.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t get to take a man from his family. You don\u2019t get to take his very life, his whole future from him and just walk away from it,\u201d Kierny continued.\n\nOn 7 September 1996, Shakur was gunned down near the Las Vegas strip shortly after a Mike Tyson boxing match. He succumbed to his injuries days later.\n\nFor decades, his murder remained unsolved and one of hip-hop\u2019s most enduring mysteries. Davis is the only person to be convicted in connection to Shakur\u2019s murder.\n\n\u201cIt was hard sitting, listening over and over and over again to someone describe \u2013 bit by bit, how they hunted Tupac Amaru Shakur down,\u201d the rapper\u2019s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, said on Tuesday minutes before Davis was sentenced.\n\nShe described her brother as a father figure. \u201cHe was who God trusted to take care of me,\u201d she told the court.\n\nThe grief from her brother\u2019s murder led Sekyiwa Shakur to be hospitalized several times for depression, suicidal ideation and PTSD, she said.\n\nShe and the rapper\u2019s stepbrother, Maurice Shakur, called for Davis to face the maximum penalty.\n\n\u201cTime to sit down and contemplate what you\u2019ve done to the world, not just to me,\u201d Sekyiwa Shakur said.\n\nDavis stared intently, but appeared stoic as the relatives spoke. He vowed earlier during the hearing to appeal the case.\n\nA confluence of several factors hindered the investigation. The code of silence within street culture made some witnesses averse to police cooperation. Las Vegas police were skeptical about leads from their Compton counterparts, given that the head of security for Shakur\u2019s record label was a former Compton cop.\n\nOrlando Anderson, a gangster and Davis\u2019s nephew, was on law enforcement\u2019s radar as the possible gunman. The night Shakur was killed, the young rap star got into an altercation with Anderson. Las Vegas police interviewed Anderson, but he was never arrested. Anderson later died in 1998.\n\nBut then, in 2023, Davis was arrested on a murder charge.\n\nIt was Davis\u2019s own media tour, touting his status as one of the last surviving eyewitnesses, and a 2019 \u201ctell-all\u201d memoir that led to the breakthrough.\n\nDavis had felt emboldened by a 2008 backdoor deal he brokered with police. He spoke candidly to investigators about Shakur\u2019s shooting, who had actually been seeking information about the death of Christopher Wallace, known as Biggie Smalls or The Notorious BIG. Under a proffer agreement, Davis was not to face charges for any offenses he shared.\n\nIn his memoir, Compton Street Legend, Davis wrote that he and a group of other men targeted Shakur and his entourage, seeking retribution for the scuffle with his nephew.\n\nThe memoir and the interview became central to prosecutors\u2019 case. They argued the details amounted to a confession and that his public remarks voided the proffer agreement.\n\nDuring Davis\u2019s murder trial, his defense team maintained that these details were embellished. They also argued, during the trial, that there was no physical evidence, such as a murder weapon, tying Davis to the Las Vegas slaying.\n\nUltimately, jurors sided with the state.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "d2736135514c0928036e9de2f862a68d5cd36114",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/0c4aa17c77c464d8df2107b7190c07268899bc7b\/1195_291_2394_1916\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Lena Dunham\u2019s Girls returning for limited run at HBO",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/2026\/oct\/13\/girls-hbo-return-lena-dunham",
        "words": "456",
        "section": "Television & radio",
        "date": "2026-10-13T19:39:13Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/0c4aa17c77c464d8df2107b7190c07268899bc7b\/1195_291_2394_1916\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Adrian Horton",
        "description": "Creator and star will return along with Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke and Andrew Rannells for five-episode revival",
        "text": "Girls, the seminal HBO series on millennial strivers that launched the careers of Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Adam Driver and more, will return for a limited run on HBO in 2027.\n\nThe five-episode addendum, set to begin production next year \u2013 a decade after the series finale aired \u2013 will reunite creator and star Dunham, as aspiring writer Hannah Horvath, alongside Williams as Marnie Michaels, Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna, Jemima Kirke as Jessa and Andrew Rannells as Elijah. Judd Apatow will also return as executive producer.\n\n\u201cWe always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell,\u201d Dunham said in a statement. \u201cI\u2019ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn\u2019t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my fortieth birthday, they started talking to me in the shower. And, as you may remember, once this fivesome starts talking it\u2019s pretty hard to get them to stop \u2026\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s rare that you get the chance to return to something that changed your life with the gift of hindsight and a whole new level of gratitude and understanding,\u201d she added. \u201cI love these girls (and boy), our friends at HBO, and all the people who have continued to discover the show and remind us afresh why we do this, which is the joy of being together \u2026 and the chance to wear yellow mesh \u2026\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of one\u2019s twenties to the milestone of turning forty,\u201d said Amy Gravitt, the head of HBO comedy programming. \u201cTo say the world has changed since we last saw Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, Jessa and Elijah is a massive understatement, but we know fans \u2013 old and new \u2013 will be happy to see how they\u2019ve grown and relieved to see that they\u2019re still the Girls we knew way back when.\u201d\n\nOver six headline-generating seasons, from 2012 to 2017, Girls received 19 Emmy nominations and two wins, including for best casting. Dunham, who became a media fixture after writing the show\u2019s pilot at just 23, is returning to the series after the launch of her bestselling memoir Famesick, which dealt with the heady rush of responsibilities and fame during the show\u2019s 2010s heyday. Dunham\u2019s credits since the end of Girls also include the Netflix series Too Much and indie film Sharp Stick.\n\nOther details, including title, plot and additional casting, have yet to be announced. As Dunham wondered in a video teasing the announcement: \u201cI have a question though \u2013 can we still call it Girls? Because we\u2019re old as f-.\u201d\n\nThe news arrives as HBO becomes part of Skydance as the result of the $111bn merger which was made official last week.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "f6d1e31ad50da1550404b0e13650c55b807d7c12",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/5214de04313c4bbfde218995f15a12fe28d42fe2\/688_0_6880_5504\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Enter the Zachbot: Trump\u2019s new press secretary malfunctions on podium debut",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/oct\/13\/katie-zacharia-trump-press-briefing",
        "words": "836",
        "section": "US news",
        "date": "2026-10-13T19:22:02Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/5214de04313c4bbfde218995f15a12fe28d42fe2\/688_0_6880_5504\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "David Smith in Washington",
        "description": "Katie Zacharia\u2019s maiden briefing was excruciating \u2013 at least her predecessor had delivered her propaganda hot",
        "text": "Well, that was weird. Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary, made her debut on the podium on Tuesday with all the warmth, wisdom and political dexterity of an AI avatar.\n\nZacharia was all stilted delivery, nervous tics and lack of eye contact. With an eerie lack of emotion, she served up pro-Trump talking points, took only three questions and vanished after 14 minutes. It was like the West Wing had turned into uncanny valley.\n\nThe Zachbot\u2019s past is indeed a bit of a mystery. The 41-year-old claims to be a lawyer but later a reporter asked when she passed the bar exam and she gave the unconvincing answer: \u201cWhen I moved to China.\u201d She was plucked from relative obscurity for the White House job after a brief gig at the Department of Homeland Security and a stint at the Trump Media and Technology Group.\n\nWearing a dark jacket with big gold buttons on Tuesday morning, she entered the standing-room-only briefing room and stepped on to the podium as Trump\u2019s sixth press secretary. For James Bond fans, that means we\u2019ve reached the Daniel Craig era. For Doctor Who fans, it means the regeneration that brought us Colin Baker (not the show\u2019s golden age).\n\nZacharia has the blond hair, glossy makeup and Fox News aesthetic of her immediate predecessors Kayleigh McEnany and Karoline Leavitt (her name also begins with a \u201cK\u201d \u2013 surely a tell to the AI detectors). But it was Trump\u2019s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, to whom she inadvertently paid homage.\n\n\u201cAttendance is at record highs as enthusiastic, hard-working Americans are lining up and packing arenas to support President Trump and Republicans,\u201d she said of Trump\u2019s campaign rallies, echoing Spicer\u2019s debut that falsely boasted of the biggest inaugural crowd ever.\n\nIn truth, there have been plenty of empty seats at Trump\u2019s rallies this time around and an unusually high number of interruptions from protesters.\n\nThe Zachbot read from prepared notes about Trump\u2019s many great accomplishments, awkwardly glancing up at her audience less than she should, smiling at odd moments and putting the emphasis on all the wrong words. \u201cA great relationship \u2026\u201d (looks down, sighs, sounds like her cat just died) \u201cwith Venezuela\u201d.\n\nIt was bad. Toe-curlingly, don\u2019t-know-where-to-look bad. At least Leavitt had delivered her propaganda hot. Evidently Trump\u2019s communications team have found new and ingenious ways to torture reporters.\n\nThen came questions, first from rightwing Breitbart News, then rightwing Fox News, whose correspondent Peter Doocy wondered whether the US had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine. The Zachbot froze for a millisecond. \u201cI will have to get back to you on that,\u201d came the auto response.\n\nNext up was the rightwing Daily Mail, asking about an alleged bribery scandal involving Kimberly Guilfoyle, the US ambassador to Greece, ex-fiancee of Donald Trump Jr and notorious screamer of \u201cThe best is yet to come!\u201d The Zachbot said coldly: \u201cWe have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team and we wish her well.\u201d\n\nShe nodded awkwardly. It was like every dystopian sci-fi film where the machine informs some hapless human that they will be terminated in 10 seconds.\n\nThe Mail followed up with \u201ca personal question\u201d that would surely never be asked of a male press secretary: \u201cYour family is in California. Your husband, your four children. I\u2019m wondering how you are going to manage that.\u201d\n\nThe Zachbot gave her husband a shout-out and said she loved being with her children. \u201cThe idea of not spending evenings with my kids is completely unacceptable. So my president \u2013 excuse me, my husband \u2013 that\u2019s a good one.\u201d\n\nA slip of the tongue! A glitch! Had someone spilled coffee on a cool, pitiless datacenter somewhere out in the California desert?\n\nThe Zachbot went on: \u201cPresident Trump is the most family-friendly president we have ever had. He has hired more women with families and the fact that he knew I had four kids and he knew this job would be demanding and still placed his trust in me shows I know I\u2019m capable of being able to step up to that.\u201d\n\nThen she stunned everyone by wrapping it up and pledging that Trump would soon answer questions on the South Lawn. It was a tacit admission that the press secretary job is pointless when there is a president who talks all the time. But ironically, although the Zachbot took far fewer questions than others on their debut, she made more news with her Guilfoyle announcement.\n\nHow long can she last? Trump said soon after: \u201cI thought she was very good.\u201d But the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, tweeted an image of the Zachbot beside a lettuce to evoke Liz Truss, who lasted only 49 days as British prime minister.\n\nAnd Anthony Scaramucci, who was Trump\u2019s communications director for just 11 days, a period now known as \u201ca Scaramucci\u201d, tweeted: \u201cThe clock is running. Thus far 1\/11th of a Scaramucci.\u201d\n\nWhen the Mooch is giving you the Grim Reaper treatment, it might be time to self-terminate.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "d34af35929125eb1ce87791afe0d2716d1698acf",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/e5661321eeda463f7a45e77e565c88c02c667c31\/0_0_1875_1500\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Make an old, lumpy bed feel new again. Five mattress toppers that actually work",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/thefilter-us\/2026\/oct\/13\/best-mattress-topper",
        "words": "2183",
        "section": "The Filter US",
        "date": "2026-10-13T19:15:33Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/e5661321eeda463f7a45e77e565c88c02c667c31\/0_0_1875_1500\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Richard Baguley",
        "description": "A topper can make a good mattress great, or change the feel of a mattress to your comfort level. After many nights of testing, we\u2019ve found the best of the best",
        "text": "If you make your bed, you\u2019ve gotta lie in it, but a mattress topper can help make it a more pleasant experience. These pads sit on top of the mattress, adding an extra layer that can fundamentally change the feel, making it firmer, softer or just helping to smooth out bumps and lumps. None of these products can fix an old and broken mattress: if the springs are shot or there is a dip in the mattress the shape of a long-dead relative, you may need a new mattress. But if you are stuck with a mattress that is too hard or too soft, adding a mattress topper can make it juuusssst right.\n\nWhy you should trust me I\u2019ve had nearly sixty years of experience in sleeping, and for over half of that, I\u2019ve been testing consumer products ranging from automatic coffee makers to xBox peripherals for publications including PC World, Reviewed.com, CNET and many others. For all of those publications, I bring an objective scientific eye to testing products and helping consumers make better buying decisions.\n\nHow I tested mattress toppers My wife and I tested eight mattress toppers designed to make an existing mattress more comfortable. We tested each topper on two mattresses: a newer,very firm one and an aging,rather lumpy and squishy older mattress, assessing how easy the toppers were to install, how well they stayed in place and their build quality. Our tests took place over the course of several nights, evaluating how the topper improved our sleep. I also tested to see how each handled differing body weights using weights, how they regulated temperature using an iButton temperature & humidity logger under my back and if they improved the motion transfer of the mattress. For all of these criteria, we considered the improvement over the old mattress that they were tested with.\n\nAfter this review was completed, I donated all of the mattress toppers to furniture banks in Massachusetts that provide household goods to families in need.\n\nFor more, check out our guides to getting a better night\u2019s rest with the best pillow, sleep mask, and comfy PJs.\n\nThe best Mattress Toppers in the US All of the mattress toppers fundamentally change the feel and comfort of the tested mattresses: after all, they are the first layer of contact with your body. Stuck with a plank-like dorm mattress? A soft topper can turn your prison-esque dorm experience into a stay in paradise. Stuck in corporate housing with a mattress that feels like it is stuffed with the lumpy woes of your co-workers? A mattress topper can smooth that out, and is an easy way to make a stay away from home feel more like home.\n\nThe best of the rest What other products did The Guardian test? TempurPedic TEMPUR-Adapt: The Tempur-Adapt memory foam is comfortable, but has a little too much give for side sleepers or heavier users.\n\nSaatvaGraphite Memory Foam: This topper has a comfortably firm feel, but the cooling graphite memory foam didn\u2019t work well, leading to a hot, sweaty sleep experience.\n\nNolahMattress Topper: The higher density polyurethane foam is pleasantly firm to the touch and the wide straps held the topper in place well, but trapped heat and humidity\n\nSilk & Snow Organic Latex Dunlop Plush: While this organic model and its machine-washable organicl cotton cover are comfortable, this topper tended to slide and slip on the mattress over time, despite its straps.\n\nCasper3-inch Topper: The memory foam has an unpleasant waxy smell, and you have to put the cover on yourself, which is like putting a cover onto a malevolent comforter that wants to kill you.\n\nWhat you need to know What are these Toppers made of? Most are made of memory foam, a dense synthetic material that absorbs motion, but does not transmit this motion onwards. It is pretty impermeable to heat, though, so it does tend to trap heat between the surface and flesh.\n\nOthers are made of latex, a form of the same rubber used to make tires. Obtained from the sap of rubber trees, the latex is mixed with air to create a lighter, less dense material that has similar properties to memory foam, but with a biological origin. Talalay latex is vacuum packed and flash frozen to create a different, more open texture with larger air bubbles.\n\nWill any of these toppers fix an old and broken mattress? None of these toppers will fix a mattress where the springs have stopped springing, the foam has stopped foaming or the cat has thrown up on it. Instead, they will help ameliorate issues with an older mattress such as small dips, grooves or lumpy bits. They can also tweak the feel of a mattress towards your comfort level, making them firmer, softer or more luxurious. If your mattress is really uncomfortable, save your cash and buy a new one: we have a list of recommendations here. But if your mattress is just okay, a mattress topper can make it great.\n\nDo I still need a mattress protector? Yes. The majority of the mattress toppers we tested are not washable, and all exclude liquid damage from their warranties. Even the washable ones only allow you to remove the cover and wash it, not the foam or latex inside. A decent mattress protector will keep the mattress dry and cosy if you spill your hot chocolate on a cold winter morning, and you can take them off and throw them in the washing machine.\n\nBefore you buy a mattress protector, though, make sure that it can handle the extra height that many of these toppers add to your mattress. While writing this article, I used a protector from Naturepedic that was deep enough to handle all of the tested toppers.\n\n* * *\n\nOther pieces you might enjoy from the Filter, the Guardian\u2019s guide to buying fewer, better things:\n\nNaturepedic Serenade mattress review: comfort from cotton, wool and coils instead of chemicals\n\nMy wife swears by weighted blankets to sleep \u2013 and now I understand why\n\nThe best sleep masks in the US in 2026: I spent nine weeks testing 32 masks, and these are my favorites\n\nExplore the Filter\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "81db0d8752b710710bc989b5f7a3cca0a57f04d3",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/8f452e396aa5a6050832a7355929b693ba7ecdca\/291_0_1397_1118\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "Netflix unveils first trailer for Greta Gerwig\u2019s Narnia: The Magician\u2019s Nephew",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2026\/oct\/13\/narnia-trailer-netflix-greta-gerwig",
        "words": "376",
        "section": "Film",
        "date": "2026-10-13T19:10:29Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/8f452e396aa5a6050832a7355929b693ba7ecdca\/291_0_1397_1118\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Owen Myers",
        "description": "The fantasy epic based on CS Lewis\u2019s classic stars Daniel Craig, Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep",
        "text": "The first look at Greta Gerwig\u2019s vision for Narnia has been revealed.\n\nToday, Netflix is giving a first look at her vision for CS Lewis\u2019s magical world in the trailer for The Magician\u2019s Nephew, the first chronological book in the beloved series.\n\nWith the soundtrack of Led Zeppelin\u2019s Stairway to Heaven, the trailer opens with magician Andrew Ketterley (Daniel Craig) intoning that \u201csometimes one story is the beginning to all the others\u201d, as he gives a group of kids a magic ring that will transport them to strange and wonderful lands.\n\nElsewhere, the trailer gives a first look at many locations and characters familiar to fans, including Jadis (Emma Mackey, the future White Witch) and Aslan, the mythical lion voiced by Meryl Streep.\n\nThe Magician\u2019s Nephew tells the story of two children in Edwardian England named Digory and Polly (newcomers David McKenna and Beatrice Campbell) who chance upon the Wood Between Worlds, a realm with many portals to different dimensions. There, they witness the birth of Narnia.\n\nIn a trailer premiere event in New York this morning, Gerwig spoke of her longtime passion for CS Lewis\u2019s series. \u201cI don\u2019t remember a time I didn\u2019t know the books,\u201d she said, per Variety. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be who I am without these books.\u201d\n\nThe film, which is Gerwig\u2019s first since her $1bn-grossing megahit Barbie, will open for an eight-week theatrical window on 12 February before it streams on Netflix starting 2 April, in the studio\u2019s first global theatrical release.\n\n\u201cI told Ted [Sarandos, CEO of Netflix] I only know how to make movies for the big screen,\u201d Gerwig said. \u201cHe said: \u2018Make the movie for the biggest screen and trust the process.\u2019\u201d\n\nThe director added that she petitioned Led Zeppelin\u2019s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for permission to use Stairway to Heaven in the trailer.\n\n\u201cI talked to them about a lot of the themes of the film,\u201d Gerwig said, as reported by Rolling Stone. \u201cThey saw the heart and the story and the drama in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s an epic song,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s about the two paths of good and evil \u2026 It is a spiritual quest and a spiritual journey. So to me, this was a song that made sense to introduce the film to the world.\u201d\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    },
    {
        "id": "5bc19c7f06b7a03d92d7da2b98ca74c0de11ff72",
        "thumbnail": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/88991c0f851fca509797f40c53c5028037afcb6c\/0_3498_4997_3994\/500.jpg",
        "showTableOfContents": "false",
        "title": "The Chicks review \u2013 exquisite harmonies and hard-won vindication in anniversary show",
        "url": "https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/culture\/2026\/oct\/13\/the-chicks-new-york-concert-review",
        "words": "882",
        "section": "Culture",
        "date": "2026-10-13T19:05:18Z",
        "image": "https:\/\/media.guim.co.uk\/88991c0f851fca509797f40c53c5028037afcb6c\/0_3498_4997_3994\/1000.jpg",
        "author": "Adrian Horton",
        "description": "Two decades after country music blacklisted the band for their Iraq war protest, the trio celebrate their unapologetic album Taking the Long Way",
        "text": "Last month, with almost no fanfare, the US formally completed its withdrawal of troops from Iraq, after 23 years of violent quagmire. But it was the beginning of that conflict that loomed over New York\u2019s Beacon Theatre on Monday night, where the Chicks played the second of three sold-out shows. In March 2003, eight days before the US invaded Iraq, the country supergroup\u2019s lead singer, Natalie Maines, said on stage in London she was \u201cashamed\u201d that then president George W Bush was from the trio\u2019s home state of Texas, triggering a swift, self-righteous and scarily prescient backlash.\n\nMore than one person at the Beacon wondered aloud where fellow fans were back then, when a single comment, circulated on AM radio and cable news, led to CD-burning protests and death threats. (High school, was a common answer.) I myself was nine, with a child\u2019s stark view of morality and consequence. Our country was at war, I knew, in an impossibly faraway place, and my favorite band bore the cost of criticizing it. One day, I could catch blue-sky hits including Travelin\u2019 Soldier, Landslide and Cowboy Take Me Away on the radio on the way to school; the next, they were gone.\n\nThe incident, AKA \u201cthe blessing\u201d, as Maines put it on Monday, was pointedly addressed on Monday night, at one of a handful of shows commemorating the 20th anniversary of Taking the Long Way, the Chicks\u2019 scorched-earth, chart-smashing retort to what many now recall as early \u201ccancellation\u201d (though it is perhaps more accurately, and ominously, seen as a form of proto-social media, post-truth coordinated harassment). Though it looms large for a particular demographic \u2013 largely white and female, many queer \u2013 I almost didn\u2019t recognize the moment when the band played that 2003 clip on stage as a prelude to their bitter barn-burner Not Ready to Make Nice, because in it Maines is laughing, speaking off-handedly. People forget, it was never supposed to be that serious.\n\nIf only. The band revisited several clips from Shut Up and Sing, Barbara Kopple\u2019s essential 2006 documentary on their fall and rise, throughout this statement of show; in one, a montage of cable news hosts and vox pop randos decry \u201cSaddam\u2019s angels\u201d as \u201ctraitors\u201d who disrespected the troops, spoke too loudly, broke country music\u2019s rah-rah rules.\n\n\u201cWell, imagine that \u2026 we thought that was the worst it could get,\u201d Maines told the rapturous crowd on Monday, still laughing. \u201cNow I would give George W Bush a big kiss. Because now we\u2019re ashamed that the president of the United States is from the United States.\u201d Time has not been kind to the country, unfortunately foreseen on the group\u2019s seminal fourth studio album as hypocritical, vindictive and perhaps irrevocably divided. But it has been kind to the artists formerly known as the Dixie Chicks (they dropped the \u201cDixie\u201d in 2020), whose exquisite, industry-standard harmonies and liberatory bluegrass-pop has aged like fine wine.\n\nThe trio appeared enriched and polished by the two decades since Taking the Long Way\u2019s release \u2013 which included a 14-year hiatus, a couple tours, one more album (2020\u2019s Gaslighter) and one bitterly fractured nation. The album, played in full during the show\u2019s first act, now appears unnervingly prescient, at turns an elegy and a kiss-off to home towns perhaps permanently estranged. Maines \u2013 along with sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer on fiddle and banjo, respectively (and, fitting for their Rick Rubin-aided pivot toward pop and rock, a full backing band) \u2013 kept the 14-track run-through as potent and trained as her never-better vocals, lucid as ever. It was just the songs, interspersed with documentary clips illustrating both the public and the private storms \u2013 the backlash but also young mothering, touring around IVF (So Hard), finding words for, say, a grandmother\u2019s struggle with Alzheimer\u2019s (Silent House).\n\nThe group used brief interludes to shout out collaborators including the Red Hot Chili Peppers\u2019 Chad Smith (who, I learned, played drums on Not Ready to Make Nice); Maines\u2019s father, the renowned pedal steel guitar player Lloyd Maines; Semisonic\u2019s Dan Wilson, who wanted to call the album Undivided and initially proposed an apology ballad (\u201cWe said, \u2018fuck that,\u2019\u201d Maines recalled on stage). They also made nods to Mike Campbell, who lent his experience with Tom Petty to Lubbock or Leave It, the Chicks\u2019s most straightforward rock tune, and the gospel steel guitarist Robert Randolph, whose closing track I Hope, with its outdated faith in disagreeing \u201clovingly\u201d, is afforded some bite via background footage of civil rights protests then and now.\n\nBut perhaps nothing proves a point like a blistering second act that tears through the hits, reminding that even scratching the surface of the group\u2019s electric discography will get a full-throated and complete singalong. From karaoke staple Goodbye Earl into emancipation anthem Wide Open Spaces, a welcome bluegrass down moment in White Trash Wedding into a sublimely record-faithful version of Cowboy Take Me Away, the nine-song finale is more of a mutual catharsis than a concert. By the time the band reaches its torrid finale in Sin Wagon \u2013 the Chicks being perhaps one of few mainstream shows where a fiddle solo is met with raucous applause \u2013 the case is long past made. The incident may have made the Chicks a cautionary tale, but there\u2019s vindication in the long run.\n\nThis text was served up from the Guardian API via Hacking with Swift, and all copyright belongs to Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliate companies. Please don't rely on it for production apps, commercial purposes, or indeed anything important, because the feed might go away at any point in the future without warning and your code will just break."
    }
]