Research among women finds those who eat more UPFs have greater risk of early onset of polyp that can lead to cancer

Women under 50 who have a diet high in ultra-processed foods (UPFs) stand a greater risk of having abnormal growths in their bowel that can lead to cancer, research suggests.

Ultra-processed foods are typically defined as industrially produced products that are often ready-to-eat, contain little in the way of whole foods, fibre and vitamins, and are typically high in saturated fat, sugar, salt and food additives.

Written in 1974, the Bowie-influenced songs on Trixies are set in a fictional south London nightclub, but were shelved when punk took the band in a new direction. Now, after Squeeze’s 50th anniversary, they’re seeing the light of day

In September 1974, when they were hopeful teenage unknowns in Deptford, Squeeze created a concept album, Trixies, set in a fictional south London nightclub. Believing they had come up with a substantial work, they recorded the 10 tracks on a borrowed Revox tape machine and expected the world to fall at their feet. But nothing happened. “All our friends liked it,” says singer and lead guitarist Glenn Tilbrook, who turned 17 just before the recording. “But that was the only feedback we had.”

The album was shelved, but less than five years later, the band began a run of classic hits, including Cool for Cats and Up the Junction, which had songwriting duo Tilbrook and fellow guitarist and vocalist Chris Difford hailed as heirs to Lennon and McCartney. Now, after recently celebrating 50 years as one of British pop’s best-loved bands, the pair have finally done their teenage vision justice. A fully rerecorded Trixies will be released in March 2026. Taster track, Trixies Pt 1, arrives this week and suggests that all the Squeeze hallmarks of melody, romance and storytelling were there from the beginning, even if few people heard them.

Study estimates 53,000 females have died on South Georgia since 2023, with ‘dramatic impact’ on future of the species

Bird flu has wiped out half of South Georgia’s breeding elephant seals, according to a study that warns of “serious implications” for the future of the species.

The remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean is home to the world’s largest southern elephant seal population. Researchers estimate 53,000 females died after bird flu hit in 2023.

Brentford were tipped to struggle this season but Thiago’s goals have helped them climb up the Premier League table

By WhoScored

On a crisp November afternoon in Brentford, Igor Thiago did what record signings are supposed to do: score twice. The Brazilian’s double against Newcastle took his goal tally this season to eight in 11 Premier League games, second only to Erling Haaland, and offered further proof that Brentford’s £30m gamble in the summer of 2024 was a wise one.

Brentford fans must have had their doubts last season. After arriving from Club Brugge to replace Ivan Toney, Thiago’s first season was quiet, disjointed and frustrating. Two knee injuries restricted him to just eight appearances, 168 minutes and no goals.

(Young)
After 2018’s mellow Honey, the beloved Swede’s heady comeback pairs production worthy of Daft Punk and Moroder with deep romantic realism

At the end of last year, during her triumphant gig at the O2, Charli xcx brought Robyn out onstage. In a sense, it was just the latest in a series of guest appearances on the Brat tour: a string of collaborators from the album and its ensuing remixes – Lorde, Billie Eilish, Troye Sivan and Addison Rae among them – had turned up at different shows to perform their parts live. But as well as contributing her verse to their remix of 360, Robyn also took centre stage, performing her peerless 2010 single Dancing on My Own. Released when at least some of Charli xcx’s audience were still in nappies, it didn’t sound remotely like a throwback even in the context of a gig based around one of 2024’s most acclaimed and agenda-setting pop albums: the star of the show’s willingness to cede the spotlight to her felt like evidence of Robyn’s influence over contemporary pop.

You can see why the Swedish singer-songwriter carries so much clout among pop stars of the mid-2020s. When she opened an album with a track called Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do, she wasn’t joking: after launching as a 90s teen-pop star produced by Max Martin, she rejected the usual strictures placed on female pop – walking away from not one but two major label deals due to lack of artistic control – and seemed intent on following a more idiosyncratic, complex, messy path. She never saw being in the centre of mainstream pop as antithetical to making music with depth, or that touched on contentious issues. Despite the worldwide success of her debut, Robyn Is Here, her second album, My Truth, went unreleased outside Sweden because her US-based label baulked at Giving You Back, a song about an abortion she’d had in 1998: when asked to remove the song, Robyn refused.

Official MoD survey also finds nearly one in 10 have been subject to non-consensual sexual activity, and a third have been groped or touched

Nearly one in 10 women serving in the British military have been subjected to an assault or other non-consensual sexual activity in the previous year, according to the first official survey of sexual harassment across the armed forces.

A third said they had been groped or touched in a way that made them feel uncomfortable, according to the Ministry of Defence, and two-thirds reported at least one form of sexual harassment or sexualised behaviour, proportions significantly higher than their male counterparts across the army, navy and air force.

• Morgan Rogers expected to keep place at No 10

• Guéhi in line to join Scott in not making match squad

Jude Bellingham is poised to start on the bench for England’s World Cup qualifier against Serbia on Thursday, with Thomas Tuchel expected to keep faith with Morgan Rogers in the No 10 role.

Bellingham has missed England’s past four games but has been recalled for this week’s internationals against Serbia and Albania. The 22-year-old midfielder is one of four No 10s in the squad and has been pushing for a space in the starting lineup.

Advocates say conservative states’ push to define gender as ‘biological sex’ would backslide on decade-old language within the UN

A row over the definition of the term “gender” threatens to bog down pivotal talks at the Cop30 climate summit.

Before the UN talks in Brazil, hardline conservative states have pushed to define gender as “biological sex” over their concerns trans and non-binary people could be included in a major plan to ensure climate action addresses gender inequality and empowers women.

Shawan Jabarin says US colleagues and funders have distanced themselves from West Bank-based Al-Haq over the sanctions

Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights organization based in the West Bank, is not new to adversity. But since the group was sanctioned by the Trump administration in September, its world has shrunk.

Today, staff work without pay because their banks closed their accounts. US-based funders have pulled away. YouTube has pulled hundreds of the group’s videos documenting Israeli forces’ human rights abuses against Palestinians. Perhaps most upsetting, US-based groups that had long collaborated have gone quiet, fearful that communications with Al-Haq may draw the attention of an administration that has made clear they are a target.

A proposal touting 50-year mortgages could double interest payments and worsen inequality

Would you like to buy a crumbling shack for $2m dollars? Well then, you’re in luck, because that just about sums up the state of the housing market right now. Housing, particularly in places with a decent job market, has become increasingly unaffordable in the US. That’s partly thanks to quantitative easing during the pandemic, which supercharged housing inflation. The median American home price in January was $418,000, about a 45% increase from $289,000 five years ago, per Redfin data. Wages haven’t gone up at the same rate, and housing prices compared to income have reached an all-time high.

In post-pandemic America, there are three groups of people. First, there are those who own their home outright and those who bought a house before the pandemic, then refinanced during the historically low interest rates we saw in 2020 and 2021. Many of those homeowners are now sitting on large piles of equity.

The bestselling author champions female trailblazers in an enjoyable anthology for all ages

Women make up roughly 50% of the population but only feature in about 0.5% of recorded history. In Feminist History for Every Day of the Year, Kate Mosse, the bestselling author of Labyrinth, celebrates can-do women and gives history’s trailblazers their due. Aimed at teenage readers but just as enjoyable for adults, this anthology comprises bite-sized stories of female achievement and the centuries-old fight for equality. As Mosse notes in the introduction, it is about women “who refused to accept the limitations put on them, who campaigned and marched, battled and challenged the status quo to change the world for the better”.

The book features a mixture of famous and lesser-known figures: artists, writers, scientists, academics, sportswomen, educators and politicians. There’s primatologist Dian Fossey; avant garde painter Amrita Sher-Gil; Britain’s first black headteacher Beryl Gilroy; Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai; Ethiopian politician and humanitarian Senedu Gebru; racehorse trainer Florence Nagle; computer programmers Ada Lovelace and Dorothy Vaughan; and actor and music hall star Josephine Baker, who was also a pilot and agent in the French resistance during the second world war. Not all the assembled achievers are straightforwardly heroic – Marie Stopes may have founded Britain’s first ever birth control clinic in 1921, but she also believed in eugenics.

Available via Pan Macmillan, 10hr 16min

For Black adolescents, a recent study found negative experiences around race in online spaces outweighed the good

People of color have long critiqued social media filters for perpetuating Eurocentric beauty standards. In one TikTok video, a young Black woman who used the app’s glow filter was vexed that her brown eyes transformed to blue. In another video, a user wrote that she liked a face-altering filter until she realized that it generated the appearance of a smaller nose. Now, new research shows that such filters, along with a collection of other race-related online experiences, can negatively affect Black adolescents’ sleep and ability to concentrate on schoolwork the following day.

A new study published in the JAMA Network that looked at Black adolescents’ exposure to online racism – including traumatic videos of police violence, online racial discrimination and racial bias perpetuated by AI – can cause increased anxiety and depression. On average, Black adolescents experienced six race-related online experiences everyday – 3.2 of which were online racism, and 2.8 of which were positive.

Lewis was fined $5m and given three years probation by New York judge over ‘brazen’ insider trading scheme

Joe Lewis, the British billionaire and former owner of Tottenham Hotspur FC, is to be pardoned by Donald Trump over a 2024 conviction for his part in a “brazen” insider trading scheme.

Lewis, 88, was fined $5m (£3.8m) and given three years probation by a New York judge last year but was spared jail time after pleading guilty to involvement in a plan that prosecutors said was designed to enrich his friends, lovers and employees.

People in immediate area were in respiratory distress after a tanker truck spewed a plume of anhydrous ammonia gas

Hundreds of people were evacuated from a city in Oklahoma and others were told to shelter in place after a tanker truck that was leaking in a hotel parking lot spewed a plume of anhydrous ammonia gas, authorities said Thursday.

The gas release happened shortly before 10pm on Wednesday. People in the immediate area were in respiratory distress and at least 36 people were taken to a local hospital, city officials said at a news conference.

The writer, who was born in a refugee camp in Germany after the war, won the Wodehouse prize for comic writing for her debut A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

The British-Ukrainian novelist Marina Lewycka, best known for her comic debut A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, has died aged 79 from a degenerative brain condition, her agent has confirmed.

Lewycka’s fiction often drew on her Ukrainian heritage and her family’s experiences as refugees. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, published in 2005 when she was 58, became an unexpected international bestseller and was translated into 35 languages. It won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic writing, was longlisted for the Man Booker and shortlisted for the Orange prize for fiction.

What the Tesla tycoon wants his billions can’t buy: being able to get a true laugh

As I’ve written before, the world is being burnt down around us by some of the biggest losers in history. It is painful to watch. In difficult times like these, it is important to try to find silver linings.

For me, the brightest of these linings shines from Elon Musk, who is one of the worst contributors to today’s “world vibe”. He has an unbelievable amount of money, and therefore power. He has the president’s bandaged ear. He bought Twitter, made it horrible, and now spends a concerning amount of time on there, like a guy who brought alcohol for the party so you have to let him hang out.

Then they said, look, wait a second. We both just ate a pile of shit and we don’t have any more extra money. We both just gave the $100 back to me and we both ate a pile of shit. This doesn’t make any sense. And they said, no, no, but think of the economy, because that’s $200 in the economy, basically, eating shit would count as a job.

In this week’s newsletter: Fear of retribution from the unpredictable president has left climate summit negotiators feeling nervous and vulnerable

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Under Donald Trump, America has not only jettisoned any effort to deal with the climate crisis, but has also attempted to stymie moves by other nations to shift to cleaner forms of energy, such as solar and wind.

The climate crisis is “the greatest con job perpetrated by the world”, Trump told the UN in September, urging other governments to stick to oil and gas (preferably drilled in the US, of course) and ditch the “scam” of renewable energy.

World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds

Fossil fuel projects around the world threaten the health of 2bn people

China’s CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for past 18 months, analysis finds

California governor calls Trump ‘an invasive species’ at Cop30 climate talks

Tussles break out between protesters and security at Cop30 in Brazil

The temperature at Cop30: Trump’s absence better than a US wrecking ball | Oliver Milman

Longlegs director Osgood Perkins takes us on a dark journey to the woods in a creepy and visually inventive nightmare with a killer lead performance

For the past few years, horror cinema has sometimes felt as fraught with toxic romance as a particularly cursed dating app. From manipulated meet-cutes (Fresh; Companion) to long-term codependence (Together) to the occasional success story (Heart Eyes), it’s clear that romantic relationships are mostly blood-stained hell, and a couple going to a secluded location together is a fresh level of it.

So it’s not surprising when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) starts to feel uneasy on her weekend away with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) early on in the new and much-concealed horror movie Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for about a year, which we gather early on has marked the time Liz has bolted from past relationships. Still, she seems optimistic about this one. She thinks she knows Malcolm pretty well, and their early scenes together are neither as dotted with red flags nor as suspiciously idyllic as other recent characters in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a wary, deadpan sense of humor, and Malcolm has a slightly slurred-together accent as he explains some oddities about his family-owned cabin in the woods (like the fact that he has a creepy cousin who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are complementary. They seem comfortable together.

(Polydor)
It’s a difficult second album for the chart-topping singer, in more ways than one – but her sombre songcraft ends up being spectacular

In theory, the making of Celeste’s second album should have been plain sailing. Boosted by a win in the BBC Sound of 2020 poll, and her single A Little Love appearing on the John Lewis Christmas ad the same year, her debut album Not Your Muse entered the charts at No 1, spawned two big hits – Stop This Flame and Strange – and ultimately went gold. That’s the perfect starting place from which to make a second album: success, acclaim and attention, but not on the kind of overwhelming scale that seems ultimately paralysing, where it’s impossible to work out how you can follow it up.

And yet, the making of Woman of Faces has clearly been attended by some difficulty. Celeste has talked openly about butting heads with its producer, Jeff Bhasker, whose hugely impressive CV includes work with Harry Styles, Taylor Swift and Kanye West: she commissioned string arrangements from British composer and conductor Robert Ames, but Bhasker “didn’t let me use [them]”. Last month, she was on Instagram, protesting that her label was showing “very little support of the album I have made” and had threatened to drop her entirely if she “didn’t put two particular songs” on its track list. This accusation caused a certain degree of eyebrow-raising, not least because Celeste is signed to the same label that singer Raye complained about in 2021, insisting they had refused to allow her to release a debut album: Raye subsequently left the label, released the album herself to vast success and noted that record companies might be better served allowing artists to “always create with a sense of purpose, rather than the means to sell”.

Billionaire populist Andrej Babiš insists he will meet legal obligations before taking office but does not explain how

Andrej Babiš, the self-proclaimed “Trumpist” billionaire who won last month’s Czech election, has refused to sell his huge business empire, but insisted he will resolve a conflict of interest that threatens to bar him from becoming prime minister.

Babiš, whose ANO party finished a comfortable first in the October vote but failed to secure a majority in parliament, said in a social media post on Thursday he would not sell his Agrofert farming, food processing and chemicals conglomerate.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

Metals firm denies allegations as more problems emerge for founder Sanjeev Gupta after loss of key UK operation

Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel is under investigation in Romania for embezzlement and tax evasion, adding to the metals tycoon’s difficulties after the loss of his key British operation.

Romania’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement last week that they raided seven homes and the registered office of an unnamed company. The office published a video – blurred to make identification more difficult – which appeared to show officers in helmets and body armour entering a property at night.

Lots include the annotated shooting script for Die Hard and a hand-drawn Halloween card from his Harry Potter co-star Rupert Grint

Alan Rickman’s obsessive attention to detail is revealed in the copious annotations he made on all his scripts, as a number of film-related items from the late actor’s personal collections are put up for auction including screenplays from Die Hard and Harry Potter.

Propstore, the Los Angeles and London-based auction firm that specialises in entertainment industry memorabilia and recently sold a Star Wars lightsaber for £2.7m, is staging a three-day sale in which a number of lots originating from the Alan Rickman archive will be available.

Some content created with advertisers is no longer visible, which could mean loss of revenue, officials say

The EU has opened an investigation into Google Search over concerns the US tech company has been “demoting” commercial content from news media sites.

The bloc’s executive arm announced the move after monitoring found that certain content created with advertisers and sponsors was being given such a low priority by Google that it was in effect no longer visible in search results.