Crane was working on a high-speed rail project when it collapsed and hit the passing train, causing it to derail and briefly catch fire
At least 22 people in Thailand have been killed and scores injured after a crane collapsed onto a passenger train, derailing it on Wednesday, officials said.
Footage from the scene verified by Agence France-Presse showed the crane’s broken structure resting on giant concrete pillars, with smoke rising from the wreckage of the train below.
Ras ‘Ein al ‘Auja is a small community of about 135 families – and the only one remaining in this part of the Jordan valley
Five decades in the south Jordan valley were ending in a day, and Mahmoud Eshaq struggled to hold back his tears. The 55-year-old had not cried since he was a boy, but as he dismantled the family home and prepared to flee the village where his whole life had played out, he was overwhelmed by grief.
While Eshaq’s children loaded mattresses, a fridge, sacks of flour and suitcases of clothes into a truck, masked soldiers escorted a teenage Israeli shepherd down the main village road, where he posed for photos on his donkey, flashing a V sign.
South East Water blames bad weather as pubs are forced to close, toilets overflow and people go without showers
As the residents of Tunbridge Wells trudged down their sodden high street in the pouring rain, the idea that they had run out of water – for the second time in just a few weeks – seemed farcical.
At the end of November the local water treatment centre, which had been flagged as at risk by the regulator in 2024, was forced to shut down, leaving 24,000 households without water for two weeks. The Drinking Water Inspectorate later said this outage was foreseen and was due to a lack of maintenance at the site.
Exclusive: Refugee status granted despite attempt by former home secretary James Cleverly to block 26-year-old’s claim
A Palestinian citizen of Israel has been granted asylum in the UK on the basis of a “well-founded fear of persecution” despite a former home secretary’s attempt to block the claim.
Hasan (not his real name) is believed to be the first Palestinian with an Israeli passport to be given refugee status in the UK. But the decision came only after two about-turns by the Home Office and a protracted legal battle.
An economic recovery could still change the parties’ fortunes. But the days when only two parties were licensed to supply Britain with prime ministers are gone
Unpopular politicians take consolation in the thought that opinion polls are sometimes wrong and often describe the wrong thing. They capture the moment but don’t predict the future. A midterm poll measures how much voters like the government. A general election asks whether the opposition is trusted to take over. It isn’t the same question.
Labour’s hopes for recovery rest on that distinction. The plan is that economic growth and governing competence will boost general wellbeing in the coming years. That will dial up the risks associated with other parties, especially for Reform UK. Voters who lack enthusiasm for the prime minister may be persuaded to stick with him if the alternative is Nigel Farage.
An incredible smoked haddock paste for toast, crackers or crudités, and a moreish and indulgent multi-mushroom-topped pastry
Two key elements at the heart of Portuguese eating culture are couvert and pastry. A couvert, comprising bread, butter, pickled or garlic carrots, cheese and fish paté (often sardine), comes as standard at every Portuguese restaurant and family dinner table alike, as it does at our restaurant Luso, where our fish paste is an ode to this way of dining. The mushroom tart, meanwhile, celebrates the Portuguese love of pastry and is a take on a traditional savoury tart. While such tarts are unlikely to feature solely mushrooms (they’re much more likely to be mixed vegetable tarts), we like to focus on the incredible varietals of this single ingredient.
Donald Trump has threatened to “take very strong action” if Iranian authorities begin executing anti-government protesters this week, as the reported death toll from the crisis surged past 2,500.
“If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action,” Trump told CBS News in an interview broadcast on Tuesday night, hours before the US president was due to be briefed on the scale of casualties inside Iran.
How do you retain a space of democracy in a world that is reverting to violent conquest? By building a protective moat of federalism around it
‘He keeps encouraging me … to choose between Europe and the US. That would be a strategic mistake for our country,” Keir Starmer said in response to Ed Davey’s question in the House of Commons last week, about whether a US move against Greenland would mean the end of Nato.
What about Europe, though? As Danish and Greenlandic ministers prepared to face JD Vance in the White House, the question was would Europe finally choose between Europe and the US? Will its leaders have the courage to tell the full truth – that the US isn’t simply abandoning its allies and destroying the international order but is now in the position of active and hostile predation by force – and more importantly, to act on it? To offer Denmark moral and material backing, and Greenland a future of self-determination and membership, rather than subservience to US resource plunder?
Donald Trump has already set the tone by saying the US will seize Greenland “one way or the other”, and no part of the triumvirate around him is trying to hide their imperial intentions any more. Not the nepotists and grifters amassing ever greater private fortunes. Not the white supremacist ideologues drawing inspiration from Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer! to post “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage”, via official US government social media accounts. Not the techno-nihilists salivating to mine every bit of Greenland’s mineral resources and rule their own neofeudal city states on its coast.
When Trump says that the only constraint on his exercise of power is “my own morality”, that means there is no constraint. Like Vladimir Putin, he will keep grabbing until someone imposes a limit on him.
Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir, Generation Desperation, is published this month
After a 21-year-old employee was raped and killed by her supervisor in 2021, campaigners ensured conditions at the factory were overhauled. But its order book never recovered
Ask the women working at Natchi Apparels in the historic city of Dindigul in Tamil Nadu and many will describe the turnaround in their working conditions in the garment factory over the past five years as extraordinary.
On 5 January 2021 the decomposing body of Jeyasre Kathiravel, a 21-year-old Dalit woman who was an employee of Natchi, then an H&M Group supplier, was found on a strip of farmland a few miles from her village after she failed to return home following a shift on New Year’s Day.
Sam Nelson is ready to beat some more bad guys – and this time he’s on the Berlin metro. Shenanigans will ensue!
Do you remember the lazy, hazy days of summer 2023, when Idris Elba got on a plane and it was hijacked? It was in a programme called Hijack. For seven effortlessly bingeable hours supposedly showing the adventure in real time, our man on the pressurised inside deduced complex situations from misplaced washbags, sent coded messages via fruit cartons and dying men’s phones, saved lives, averted disasters, and got Kingdom Flight 29 landed safely by Holly Aird so that he could return to his family, even though viewers agreed the scenes with them in between the plane bits were very boring indeed.
And he wasn’t even a policeman like Bruce Willis in Die Hard or a counter-terrorist federal agent like Kiefer Sutherland in 24! Or a pilot, which might also have been useful. He was Sam Nelson, a business negotiator. He had extreme business negotiating skills and he beat the bad guys. Who turned out not to be terrorists but a crime syndicate that wanted to short shares in the airline. Which was a bit weird, but never mind. And one of the bad guys escaped, but the point is Sam was a hero and Elba was the only man who could have played him and made it work. He was a mighty, implacable force. The rock on which this fragile, teetering edifice of nonsense was built.
Society should only eject fellows for fraud or other defects in their research, says Paul Nurse
The president of the Royal Society has reignited a row over Elon Musk’s association with the body by arguing that fellows should only be ejected for fraud or other defects in their research.
In an interview with the Guardian, Paul Nurse defended the academy’s decision not to take action against Musk – who was elected a fellow in 2008 – despite claims the tech billionaire had violated its code of conduct, including by his role in slashing US research funding as part of the US “department of government efficiency”.
He had threatened her, locked her up and absconded with one of their daughters. Palmer knew she and her girls needed to escape – but it would involve huge risk and total reinvention
In the summer of 1989, Karen Palmer bought a used car for cash, filled it with belongings – some clothes, toys, one pot, one pan and a shoebox of photos – and “disappeared” with her new husband and two young daughters. She didn’t tell her mother, her friends or her neighbours where she was going. She gave no notice to her employers and landlord, leaving items out on her apartment balcony as a sign she still lived there.
“I have such a clear memory of the day we left Los Angeles,” says Palmer. “It was this weird combination of fear and exhilaration, heart pounding, driving into the unknown.” Palmer was fleeing her ex-husband, Gil, the man she feared, and the father of her two daughters, Erin and Amy, then seven and three.
On the anniversary of his death aged 69, stars from Sigourney Weaver to Sharleen Spiteri, Tom Felton to Harriet Walter, remember the wit, charm and endless generosity of one of Britain’s best-loved actors
Results for 2025 risk further unsettling economies about China’s trade practices and overcapacity, and their own over-reliance on Chinese products
China has reported a strong export run in 2025 with a record trillion-dollar surplus, as its producers brace for three more years of a Trump administration set on slowing the manufacturing powerhouse by shifting US orders to other markets.
Beijing’s resilience to renewed tariff tensions since Donald Trump returned to the US presidency last January has emboldened Chinese firms to shift their focus to south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America to offset US duties.
South Korean president Lee Jae Myung had his work cut out, picking up his drumsticks alongside Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi, a former heavy metal drummer
If international diplomacy is as much about tone as substance, the leaders of South Korea and Japan seem to have nailed it.
In a scene few anticipated, South Korean president Lee Jae Myung and Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi spent the last moments of a crucial summit seated behind matching drum kits in matching blue uniforms as they bashed out hit song Golden from Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters and BTS’s Dynamite.
President speaks to CBS News about killing of woman by ICE agent and defends immigration crackdown
Donald Trump has defended his administration’s increasingly violent immigration crackdown, describing the 37-year-old woman killed by federal agents as likely a “wonderful person” whose “tough” actions justified a lethal response.
Trump’s comments, made during an interview with CBS News after touring a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, came as tensions continue to rise in Minneapolis days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good at the wheel of her SUV on a residential street last week.
Colvin refused to give up seat to white woman in Alabama in 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks’ act of defiance
US civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin, arrested at age 15 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks’ similar but more famous act of defiance, died on Tuesday at age 86.
Although she remained a largely unsung figure in the civil rights movement for decades, Colvin’s 1955 act of rebellion inspired Parks and others and helped form the basis for the federal lawsuit that outlawed racial segregation in US public transportation.
Administration issues warning to US citizens: ‘Leave Iran now’ – key US politics stories from 13 January at a glance
Donald Trump has told Iranians to keep protesting and said help was on the way, in the clearest sign yet that the US president may be preparing for military action against Tehran.
“Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday. He added that he had cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials until the “senseless killing” of protesters stopped.
In speech, president delivers triumph assessment, claiming US prices are down despite official data showing otherwise
Donald Trump claimed victory on the economy after 12 months back in office on Tuesday, declaring it to be the “greatest first year in history” as many Americans express alarm over the cost of living.
In a stream-of-consciousness speech at the Detroit Economic Club, the US president delivered his gold-tinted view of how the economy has fared on his watch. Prices were down, he claimed, despite official data showing otherwise, and productivity was “smashing expectations”.
US president says ‘help is on its way’, as reported death toll rises into the thousands and concerns Tehran may carry out first protest-related execution, that of Erfan Soltani
For the first time in days, Iranians were able to make calls abroad from their mobiles on Tuesday, according to reporting by Associated Press. Texting services have not been restored, however, and nor has the internet.
Although Iranians were able to call abroad, they could not receive calls from outside the country, several people in the capital told Associated Press. The internet remained blocked, they said, though it is possible to access some government-approved websites.
Cloudfare - an internet infrastructure provider, and one of several companies and monitors tracking the status of internet traffic in Iran – said traffic volumes have remained “at a fraction of a percent of previous levels”. Its latest update as of 01:00 UTC (which is about three hours and 30 minutes ago), shows a continued widespread blackout. Iran has been under an internet shutdown since Thursday night.
Brief windows of connectivity were observed on Friday, but these did not last, according to Cloudfare.
Netblocks, an independent global internet monitor, also notes that while some phone calls from Iran are connecting, there is “no secure way to communicate” and the general public remain cut off from the outside world.
‘We call on other countries to do the same’ says foreign minister; major fires after Ukraine targets Russian drone plant at Taganrog. What we know on day 1,421
The Estonian government has banned 261 Russians who fought in Ukraine from entering Estonia. “This is only the beginning,” said Markus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister. “We call on other countries to do the same.” Estonia, which borders Russia, has called for a Europe-wide visa ban on Russian veterans of the Ukraine war, and has gained support from Baltic and Nordic countries. Its interior ministry estimates as many as 1.5 million Russians have taken part in the invasion, about half of them having served on the frontline.
Estonia’s interior minister, Igor Taro, said the threat posed was “not theoretical”, adding that the Russians had “combat experience and military training, and may often have a criminal background”. The interior ministry said those who had committed atrocities in Ukraine had “no place in the free world”. The move was praised the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrij Sybiga, who called entry bans a “necessary security measure” and “a clear signal that impunity will not be tolerated”.
Ukraine said its forces struck a drone manufacturing plant in the western Rostov region of Russia where the governor reported a local state of emergency there after two “enterprises” were hit. Various reports identified the target as the Atlant Aero plant at Taganrog making Russia’s Molniya strike and surveillance drones as well as parts for Orion drones. Video footage and photographs showed buildings well ablaze.
Two Greek-owned oil tankers were hit in the Black Sea on Tuesday, one of which was scheduled to load Kazakh oil on Russia’s coast, officials said. The Maltese-flagged Matilda and Liberian-flagged Delta Harmony did not sustain major damage and there were no injuries, Greece’s maritime ministry told Agence France-Presse. The Matilda was headed to load Kazakh oil at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal near Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk when it was attacked, Kazakh state energy firm Kazmunaygas said. Ukraine has previously targeted the shared CPC terminal as it seeks to deprive Russia of oil revenue.
Russia struck cities across Ukraine overnight into Tuesday in one of its biggest attacks of the new year so far, killing at least four people and knocking out heat and power, exposing millions to dangerous winter cold.
At least four displaced Palestinians killed when strong winds caused walls to collapse onto their tents and a one-year-old boy died of hypothermia
Strong winter winds collapsed walls onto flimsy tents for Palestinians displaced by war in Gaza, killing at least four people, as dangerous living conditions persist after more than two years of devastating Israeli bombardment and aid shortfalls.
A ceasefire has been in effect since October, but aid groups say that Palestinians broadly lack the shelter necessary to withstand frequent winter storms.
K-pop band to start tour in April after nearly four-year hiatus due to all seven members needing to complete South Korea’s mandatory military service
The BTS comeback is upon us: the K-pop septet has announced a 2026-2027 world tour, kicking off in South Korea in April and running through to March 2027 with more than 70 dates across Asia, North America, South America, Australia and Europe.
The tour marks the group’s first headline performances since their 2021–22 Permission to Dance on Stage tour.
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