A campaign group of health professionals is urging parents to stop surveilling their children. I couldn’t agree more

News just in: the sky is blue, water is wet, and tracking our kids’ every move with phones or AirTags is causing a “deeply concerning” increase in anxiety among young people, according to more than 70 psychologists, doctors, nurses and health professionals who have come together to urge parents to “reconsider whether the surveillance childhood we are sleepwalking into is really benefiting our children”. They add: “We are implicitly telling them that the world is unsafe,” and warn that constant monitoring prevents kids learning the skills and developing the autonomy necessary to navigate real life.

“It’s so normal to want to keep our children safe,” says Clare Fernyhough, co-founder of campaign group Generation Focus. “But there is no evidence that tracking makes them any safer.”

Marco Rubio lays out three-point plan as US signals interior minister must back acting president, Delcy Rodríguez

The Trump administration has reportedly put Venezuela’s hardline interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, on notice that he could be next to fall if he does not support the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has been in power since Nicolás Maduro was seized on Saturday.

Reuters reported that US officials are “especially concerned” that Cabello, long seen by many as the regime’s real No 2, could sabotage Washington’s plan to keep key figures from Maduro’s inner circle in place in the name of stability while pursuing a transition and unrestricted access to Venezuela’s oil.

Sarat Sampada founders Harjeet Singh and Jyoti Aswati say allegations are ‘baseless, biased and misleading’

Police have raided the home of one of India’s leading environmental activists over claims his campaigning for a treaty to cut the use of fossil fuels was undermining the national interest.

Investigators from India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) claim that Harjeet Singh and his wife, Jyoti Awasthi, co-founders of Satat Sampada (Nature Forever), were paid almost £500,000 to advocate for the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty (FFNPT).

Authorities respond as federal officers launch major operation targeting Somali residents

Officials in Minneapolis reported a shooting involving federal agents on Wednesday, with local sources claiming that a female driver who was observing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents was shot in the face.

Federal authorities have been conducting a major immigration enforcement operation in the Minnesota city in recent days tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

Exclusive: Move follows outcry over use of Grok to digitally remove clothing from images of women and children

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The influential Commons women and equalities committee has decided to stop using X after the social media site’s AI tool began generating thousands of digitally altered images of women and children with their clothes removed.

The move by the cross-party committee places renewed pressure on ministers to take decisive action after the site was flooded with images including sexualised and unclothed pictures of children, generated by its AI tool, Grok.

• Real attendance closer to 34,000 than 62,429 announced

• Marketing push fails to attract fans to watch ailing club

West Ham’s official attendance of 62,429 for their 2-1 defeat by Nottingham Forest was almost twice as high as the number of fans who went through the turnstiles at the London Stadium on Tuesday night.

The club have an increasingly apathetic fanbase and were unable to convince a big crowd to turn out for a crucial clash in the battle against relegation from the Premier League. It is understood the real attendance was closer to 34,000 than the figure given by West Ham on their website.

• Chivers also had long spell with Southampton

• He scored 13 times in 24 games for England

The former Tottenham, Southampton and England striker Martin Chivers has died at the age of 80. Chivers, a League Cup and Uefa Cup winner with Spurs, won 24 caps from 1971 to 1973, scoring 13 goals.

“It is with immense sadness that we announce the passing of our legendary former striker Martin Chivers,” Spurs said. “We extend our deepest sympathies to Martin’s family, friends and former teammates at this incredibly sad time. Our players will wear black armbands during this evening’s fixture against AFC Bournemouth. Rest in peace, Martin. One of the all-time greats.”

Reading for pleasure rates are shockingly low in young people. So we should all get behind a new drive to turn them into avid readers. Why not start with books about art?

A girl on the cusp of adolescence gazes down at a book. Her left hand rests against her flushed pink cheeks, while her right clutches the pages, ready to turn to find out what happens next. She has porcelain-like skin and golden hair seemingly full of air, executed in textures that contrast with the scratchy, loose marks that make up her shirt and the book’s pages. When I look at this drawing, I am struck by how the artist, the American-born impressionist Mary Cassatt, has perfectly captured the all-consuming sensation of being submerged in a book – the feeling that the whole world is dissolving around you. For a moment, only that story matters.

Cassatt, who worked in Paris for most of her adult life when women were finally beginning to be accepted as artists (and deserving of state-funded art education), was hailed for her intimate portrayals of women and children. They are glimpses into their minds, their private worlds, yet they also emphasise intellect and ambition. Young Girl Reading is one such example. I often wonder if she is reading something like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, published nearly three decades before, which tells the story of the four March sisters, who are figuring out their journey to womanhood themselves.

Stonewall’s corporate funding halves against backdrop of US attacks on DEI and freezing of aid for LGBTQ+ causes

LGBTQ+ charities in the UK are operating in a newly “hostile environment”, experts have warned, as the ripple effect of Donald Trump’s attacks on equalities programmes sharpens financial pressures.

The concerns come as yearly accounts submitted by Stonewall, the UK’s biggest LGBTQ+ charity, revealed corporate donations had more than halved in the last financial year, falling from £348,636 in 2024 to £143,149 in 2025.

Ship has long been part of shadow fleet used to dodge western sanctions. It had no oil onboard – but was it carrying Russian weapons?

A massive, rusty crude oil tanker floating north through the Atlantic has become the centre of global interest after it was followed for days and eventually seized by US forces while Russia’s military rushed towards it.

Despite not carrying any oil, the 300-metre-long ship is clearly of value. Theories for why range from speculation that high-value Russian weapons are hidden in the hull, to the ship’s potential to become a symbolic trophy in a transatlantic power struggle between Washington and Moscow.

There is no guarantee the Norwegian would restore a sense of positivity like he did first time round – and failure would be a nightmare

Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s prime candidacy to become Manchester United’s interim manager for a second time appears the latest faulty strategic move by Jason Wilcox, the club’s director of football, and the chief executive, Omar Berrada.

Solskjær, whose previous tenure at United seems to place him ahead of another favoured candidate in Michael Carrick, has to be a success. If not, Sir Jim Ratcliffe will surely file his hiring alongside the Ruben Amorim, Dan Ashworth and Erik ten Hag fiascos, for which Wilcox‑Berrada are fully or partly responsible.

On the fifth anniversary of the January 6 riots, late-night hosts discuss the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite history as ‘peaceful protests’

Late-night hosts observed the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection and recapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s first day in a US court.

Arson attack that left parts of German capital in darkness for days stirs outrage over infrastructure insecurity

• Europe live – latest updates

When Silke Peters bought a crank radio and a camping stove just after the start of Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, her husband thought she was “a little crazy”. “He put me down, only half-jokingly, as a prepper,” she said, referring to the kind of person who stockpiles in case of catastrophe.

For almost four years, the items gathered dust in the cellar of the Peters’ two-room flat in Zehlendorf, a well-to-do district of Berlin. But in recent days the windup radio – with its inbuilt torch and charge point – has come into its own during Germany’s longest power cut since the second world war.

The Voice of Hind Rajab has stunned audiences with its use of the real-life audio of a girl’s call for help after her family’s car was attacked by an Israeli tank in Gaza. Its director explains why she had to tell Hind’s tragic story

When Kaouther Ben Hania heard Hind Rajab’s voice for the first time, she was in Los Angeles airport scrolling through social media. The five-year-old’s cry for help cut through the clamour around her. This was in February 2024 and Hind had already been dead for at least a week, left to bleed out among the corpses of six of her relatives after their car was targeted by an Israeli tank, leaving it with 335 bullet holes, according to the Forensic Architecture research group.

More than 20,000 Palestinian children were killed in two years of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, according to UN estimates. Another 82 have been killed since 10 October when a ceasefire was declared and then routinely breached. The pictures of the dead have often been published online, including those of Hind, showing her dressed in pink with a floral tiara, or smiling in an oversized academic cap and gown, but her voice also remains to haunt the world after her death.

In a bad season for big-money transfers in the Premier League, maverick Frenchman has been a notable exception

By WhoScored

“There are moments I just want to shout at him and there are moments I want to kiss him.” Such is Pep Guardiola’s relationship with Rayan Cherki: part exasperation, part adoration.​ Guardiola is football’s master of fine-tuning. He has polished footballers until their natural instincts have become dictated by a system of control, structure and repetition above individual sparks of brilliance. Cherki, however, feels different – a sharp, unpredictable edge that Guardiola has left intact.

The 22-year-old, who arrived from Lyon in the summer for £34m​, is already testing Guardiola’s philosophy of shaping players rather than accommodating them. His approach to Cherki feels very different to previous big signings. When Jack Grealish arrived from Aston Villa for £100m in 2022, he was one of English football’s most audacious, improvisational talents – a player unafraid of expression.

It’s either a simple yet effective way to appreciate the passage of time – or a reminder to do your own thing without pausing for explanation

Name: 365 buttons.

Age: New. This is a 2026 thing.

• Innovation means every player being digitally scanned

• Infantino: Move will ensure more accurate decisions

Every player at this summer’s World Cup will have their own physically accurate “AI avatar” that will be used in taking VAR decisions.

The innovation, which will involve every player being digitally scanned and leaves the possibility of size mattering in future offside calls, was part of a package of technological measures announced by Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, as he made a keynote appearance at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.

‘I have outtakes of them all standing up – there’s no safety equipment and they’re not hanging on to anything. They just said to me, “Hurry up, Beez!”’

At the age of 12 I was working for the Clash, handing out flyers. I looked older than I was and got to see all the punk bands before getting into reggae sound systems. Multicultural Bristol was a great place to grow up, and by the time I was 14 or 15 I’d be going out late most nights and coming home mid-morning.

Having failed the entrance exam to be a gas fitter, I enrolled on an audio-visual course – one of Thatcher’s new National Training Initiatives. I specialised in photography and started documenting all those nights out – my friends and the scenes I was already part of – offering an insider’s perspective. Photography also gave me an opportunity to explore new environments. If there’s something you’re not sure about, a camera is a good way to have a look at it, be part of it, and then learn from it.

Miles Cross sentenced to 14 years in prison for selling the substance to four people via an online suicide forum

A man who sold a deadly chemical online to help people kill themselves has been jailed in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK.

Miles Cross, 33, pleaded guilty to four counts of intentionally doing an act capable of encouraging or assisting suicide and was sentenced at Mold crown court on Wednesday to 14 years in prison.

By the expansionist logic of the president and his advisers, the US is entitled to annex just about anywhere

‘We do need Greenland, absolutely,” Donald Trump told the Atlantic on 5 January, with the hand-wavy follow-up, “We need it for defence.” His adviser Stephen Miller was more aggressive still in an interview with CNN, saying: “The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? … The US is the power of Nato … obviously Greenland should be part of the United States.” His wife, Katie Miller, posted an image on X of a map of the country papered over with the US flag, with the caption “soon”. It’s hard to orientate sensibly towards things that happen on X these days: if she had posted a Grok-generated image of Greenland in a bikini, would that be more or less concerning?

Still, we’re right to be concerned. There is no comfort to be had from old-era ideas such as: “Maybe they’re just sabre-rattling about Greenland to distract from the matter of Venezuela”, or “surely the foundational principles of Nato, a defensive alliance, will prevent the US from any act of aggression towards its own allies?”

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

In this week’s newsletter: Stranger Things’ climactic showdown is the latest pop culture spectacle to feel like its been ported straight from a console. The industries’ reciprocally influential relationship can be to everyone’s gain

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It had begun to feel like an endurance test by the end, but nonetheless, like the sucker I am, I watched the Stranger Things finale last week. And spoiler warning: I’m going to talk about it in general terms in this newsletter. Because approximately 80% of the final season comprised twentysomething “teenagers” explaining things to each other while using random 1980s objects to illustrate convoluted plans and plot points, my expectations were not high. After an interminable hour, finally, something fun happens, as the not-kids arm themselves with machine guns and molotovs and face off against a monstrously gigantic demon-crab. Aha, I thought – the final boss battle!

The fight was like something out of Monster Hunter, all scale and spectacle with a touch of desperation. For a very long time, video games sought to imitate cinema. Now cinema (and TV) often feels like a video game. The structure of Stranger Things’ final season reminded me a lot of Resident Evil: long periods of walking slowly through corridors, with characters exchanging plot information aloud on their way to the action, and occasional explosions of gunfire, screeching monsters or car chases. Those long periods of relative inaction are much more tolerable when you’ve got a controller in your hands. I am all for TV and film embracing the excitement, spectacle and dynamism of video games, but do they have to embrace the unnecessary side-quests and open-world bloat, too?

UK and France ready to send peacekeeping troops, PM tells House of Commons

• UK politics live – latest updates

MPs will have a debate and vote before any UK troops are deployed on peacekeeping duties in Ukraine, Keir Starmer has announced at prime minister’s questions.

Speaking after Britain and France said they would be willing to send troops if there was a peace deal, following discussions at a wider summit in Paris, Starmer was pressed by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, as to why he was not making a full Commons statement.

The son of acclaimed director Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner faces two counts of first-degree murder

Nick Reiner, the son of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, will appear in court on Wednesday for arraignment on two counts of first-degree murder in the killing of his parents.

The 32-year-old has been in custody since last month, hours after the acclaimed director and actor, 78, and his wife Michele, 70, a photographer, were found dead in their Los Angeles-area home. Authorities allege that Nick Reiner fatally stabbed the couple.