Toy becomes a popular symbol of workplace fatigue after manufacturing error gave it a frown instead of a smile
On 17 February China will celebrate the start of the year of the horse, the zodiac sign symbolising high energy and hard work. But the runaway success of a defective stuffed toy suggests that many Chinese are not feeling the vibe.
A red horse toy produced by Happy Sister in the city of Yiwu in the west of China was meant to wear a broad grin, but a factory error meant it hit the shops sporting a despairing grimace. Because the smile was placed upside down, the horse’s nostrils could be interpreted as tears.
Maduro’s Sorbonne-educated successor is talking up an era of ‘reform and opening up’ modelled on China’s post-Mao boom
After years of political and social upheaval, hunger and despair, the Great Helmsman departs and is replaced by a francophile economic reformer who catapults a traumatised country into a new era of prosperity and growth.
That is what happened in China half a century ago when the croissant-loving communist Deng Xiaoping became paramount leader after Chairman Mao Zedong’s 1976 death and set in motion one of history’s biggest economic booms.
As it grapples with two fatal tragedies, questions emerge over how to protect the country from more landslides – its deadliest natural hazard
New Zealand could experience an increase in landslides – its most deadly natural hazard – as global warming triggers more intense and frequent storms, experts have warned in the wake of two landslide tragedies in the North Island.
New Zealand’s landscapes are scarred with the evidence of landslides – they are responsible for more than 1,800 deaths since written records began – more than earthquakes and volcanoes combined.
Kazakh No 5 seed beats Polish second seed 7-5, 6-1
Rybakina to play Jessica Pegula or Amanda Anisimova for place in final
Elena Rybakina took a significant step towards her second grand slam title as she overpowered and outplayed the second seed Iga Swiatek in the quarter-finals of the Australian Open, advancing 7-5, 6-1 to end Swiatek’s hopes of completing the career grand slam this year.
This immense victory sends Rybakina, the fifth seed and 2023 Australian Open finalist, into her fourth grand slam semi-final. It has been nearly four years since the 26-year-old made her first breakthrough by winning Wimbledon in 2022, and although she has won numerous big titles and established herself as one of the best players in the world, she has failed to drag herself over the line at the grand slams.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, co-directed by Daniel Roher, delves into the world of AI through the lens of personal anxiety
Are we barreling toward AI catastrophe? Is AI an existential threat, or an epochal opportunity? Those are the questions top of mind for a new documentary at Sundance, which features leading AI experts, critics and entrepreneurs, including Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, with views on the near-to-midterm future ranging from doom to utopia.
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell and produced by Daniel Kwan (one half of The Daniels, the Oscar-winning duo behind Everything Everywhere All At Once), delves into the contentious topic of AI through Roher’s own anxiety. The Canadian film-maker, who won an Oscar in 2023 for the documentary Navalny, first became interested in the topic while experimenting with tools released by OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT. The sophistication of the public tools – the ability to produce whole paragraphs in seconds, or produce illustrations – both thrilled and unnerved him. AI was already radically shaping the filmmaking industry, and proclamations on the promise and peril of AI were everywhere, with little way for people outside the tech industry to evaluate them. As an artist, he wondered, how was he to make sense of it all?
There is no doubt that the Australian is a fine player but the brilliance of Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner means a grand slam title is still a slim prospect
There are two ways to look at this. Either Alex de Minaur is not good enough to beat Carlos Alcaraz – and Jannik Sinner, for that matter – or the world’s top two players are in a class of their own. Sadly, for Australia’s top-ranked player, both things are true.
De Minaur’s 7-5, 6-2, 6-1 quarter-final defeat by Alcaraz on a hot, breezy evening at the Australian Open on Tuesday was a humbling experience. The manner of his performances in the opening four rounds suggested that he was ready to push the world No 1. But as the evening unfolded, De Minaur’s chances faded in all-too-familiar fashion.
Three boys in Texas die after falling into icy pond, while outages mean many in US south still without power
A colossal winter storm was responsible for more than 40 deaths as it brought more snow to the north-east and maintained icy conditions in the south, leaving many across the US without electricity.
The deaths were registered in more than a dozen states afflicted by severe cold, according to reports. There were still about 550,000 power outages in the nation on Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.us. Most of the outages were in the south, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Officials warned that it could take days for power to be restored.
Drone strike on Ukrainian passenger train kills five and Poland urges Musk to cut Russia’s Starlink access. What we know on day 1,435
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused nearly 2 million military casualties – killed, wounded or missing – between the two countries, according to a study published on Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US thinktank. Moscow’s forces have borne the brunt of the losses, with as many as 325,000 killed out of an estimated total of 1.2 million casualties since the war began nearly four years ago. Ukrainian forces have also suffered major losses – between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties, of which between 100,000 and 140,000 were killed – from February 2022 to December 2025. “Combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties may be as high as 1.8 million and could reach two million total casualties by the spring of 2026,” the thinktank said. UN monitors say civilian casualties have reached almost 15,000 verified deaths since 2022 but that the actual total “is likely considerably higher”.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told NBC in February 2025 that his country had lost nearly 46,000 troops since 2022, with tens of thousands missing or taken prisoner, numbers which analysts consider an underestimate. Russian losses remain a closely guarded state secret, with the last official figures from the Ministry of Defence released in September 2022 putting the toll at 5,937, according to Agence France-Presse. The BBC’s Russian service and the Mediazona outlet, which rely on publicly available data such as death notices, have identified more than 163,000 Russian soldiers killed in four years of war, while acknowledging that the actual number is likely higher.
A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in north-eastern Ukraine has killed five people in an attack denounced as terrorism by Zelenskyy. Prosecutors said fragments of five bodies had been found at the scene of the strike on the train, which occurred on Tuesday near a village in the Kharkiv region. In a post on Telegram, Zelenskyy said the train was carrying more than 200 passengers, including 18 in the carriage that was hit. “Each such Russian strike undermines diplomacy, which is still ongoing, and hits, in particular, the efforts of partners who are helping to end this war,” he wrote.
The train bombing was part of a wave of Russian drone and missile attacks that left 10 dead across the country and dozens wounded, with the injured including two children and a pregnant woman. Three were killed and 32 wounded in a drone strike on Odesa that also inflicted “enormous” damage on a power facility, according to the private energy firm DTEK. The energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, said 710,000 residents of Kyiv remained without electricity and heating in the aftermath of Russian attacks – conditions which could turn deadly in the freezing winter cold. Other casualties occurred in the regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Poland’s foreign minister has urged Elon Musk to cut Russia’s access to the Starlink satellite internet service, which the tech billionaire owns. RadosławSikorski – who is also the country’s deputy prime minister – spoke out after the US-based Institute for the Study of War said that the Russian army uses Starlink satellites to guide its drone attacks deep into Ukraine. He posted on X: “Hey, big man, @elonmusk, why don’t you stop the Russians from using Starlinks to target Ukrainian cities. Making money on war crimes may damage your brand”. Musk denied in 2024 that Starlink terminals had been sold to Russia; according to Ukrainian intelligence services, the Russian army has obtained terminals through third countries rather than any official contract with Musk.
Singer’s former assistant alleges he sexually assaulted her when she worked for Manson Records between 2010–2011
A judge in Los Angeles has reinstated a lawsuit against heavy metal star Marilyn Manson under a new law enabling old sexual assault cases to be heard in court.
The lawsuit, filed in May 2021 by a former assistant to the musician, had been dismissed in December because it exceeded the statute of limitations, a maximum time period for initiating legal proceedings after the related events took place.
Crash that killed 67 was ‘100% preventable’, says NTSB chair at hearing that addressed history of missed opportunities
National Transportation Safety Board members were deeply troubled on Tuesday over years of ignored warnings about helicopter traffic dangers and other problems, long before an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk collided a year ago, killing 67 people near Washington DC.
The placement of a helicopter route in the approach path of Reagan national airport’s secondary runway created a dangerous airspace and a lack of regular safety risk reviews made it worse, the board said. That was a key factor in the crash along with air traffic controllers’ over reliance on asking helicopter pilots to avoid other aircraft.
Report emerges as Trump signals he may reduce the surge of ICE and other federal agents in the state
As federal immigration crackdowns in Minnesota continued on Tuesday, an initial report to Congress from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) obtained by various news outlets indicates that two officers fired their guns at Alex Pretti during his fatal shooting.
The report emerged as Donald Trump signals he may begin reducing the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in the state.
Vow to bring ‘stability and clarity’ to the UK’s approach to Beijing on first visit by a British prime minister in eight years will be sorely tested
Keir Starmer has travelled to China with a vow to bring “stability and clarity” to the UK’s approach to Beijing after years of what he described as “inconsistency” under the Tories, but a series of issues may get in the way of his efforts to improve relations with the economic powerhouse.
Poet laureate tackles ‘daunting’ commission from Yorkshire Cancer Research to mark charity’s centenary year
Cancer is a subject the poet laureate Simon Armitage has always shied away from. “I find it very daunting,” he said. “I’ve lost friends and family to cancer.”
But when he was commissioned to write a poem to mark World Cancer Day, he was forced to confront the realities of the disease. “I think I saw part of my task as being slightly demystifying and maybe de-mythologising or de-demonising cancer a little bit to myself,” Armitage said.
Questionnaire completed by 10,000 people finds sobriety on rise, with women slightly more abstemious than men
One in four adults in England do not drink alcohol, with increasing numbers of men and young people deciding to stay sober, according to a survey.
The figures, which come from a questionnaire of 10,000 people as part of the Health Survey for England, found that almost a quarter (24%) of adults in England had not drunk alcohol in 2024, an increase from just under a fifth (19%) in 2022.
Some in Hampshire constituency happy to vote for former Tory MP again but others find defection ‘quite alarming’
For Jamie Jewell, the pub owner at the Golden Lion, there has been radio silence from his local MP, Suella Braverman. In January last year, the MP for Fareham and Waterlooville visited the pub, offered to help the owners with removing a protected tree that was damaging the property, and posted photos with the staff on her Facebook page and for local media.
Jewell has not heard back from her since. “I’ve sent emails saying ‘we need support here’ and never received a response. Not even an acknowledgment,” Jewell said.
It’s with good reason that The Rainbow Serpent by Dick Roughsey has continued to be an Australian children’s classic for 50 years.
This beloved work, which was first published in 1975 and is competing in Guardian Australia’s reader poll of the best Australian children’s picture books of all time, tells the powerful creation story of the Rainbow Serpent from the perspective of Roughsey (1920-85), a senior Lardil man from Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and a gifted author and artist, whose traditional name was Goobalathaldin, meaning “rough seas”.
Now the remaining people have to look after all the animals, all the living things which were men and women in the beginning but who were too afraid of old Goorialla to remain as people. The shooting star racing across the sky at night is the eye of Goorialla – watching everyone.
Starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn as lovers on the run from shadowy forces in Nicaragua, the French auteur’s quasi-thriller is intentionally puzzling – and all pleasure
From a squad of young soldiers stationed in the middle of the Djiboutian desert to a stubborn plantation mistress refusing to abandon her estate amid a brewing civil war, Claire Denis’s films have placed some of cinema’s most alluring stars in some of the world’s most volatile environments.
Stemming from her memories growing up as a child throughout West Africa, the legendary French film-maker has possessed a career-long fascination with the everlasting ripples of colonial oppression and its lingering psychic effects on native communities.
Shift raises concerns of increase in antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’, which sicken millions of people annually
Antibiotic use in US meat production increased 16% in 2024, representing the highest increase since the government began tracking data, a new federal report shows. The data covers “medically important” antibiotics that are also used in humans, including widely used drugs such as the Z-Pak.
The shift is raising fears of an increase in antibiotic-resistant “superbugs”, or pathogens that are difficult to treat because they evolve to become immune to drug treatments. These already sicken millions of people annually, and many of the drugs carry other potential health risks, as well, including cancer.
Elena Rybakina* (5) 3-2 Iga Swiatek (2) The duo exchange points as the game moves to 30-30, before a backhand dragged wide by Swiatek gives the opening to secure the hold Rybakina. After a brief baseline exchange, Swiatek is sent deep and forced into a forehand that looks to go just high and wide, giving the hold to the fifth seed.
Elena Rybakina (5) 2-2 Iga Swiatek* (2) A more straightforward, but not altogether simple, hold for Swiatek.
CBS announced in July that Late Show would end in May, more than 30 years after 1993 debut under David Letterman
The final episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will air on 21 May, the host has announced.
Colbert, who has hosted the show since 2015, revealed the date on Monday during a taping of NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers to air on Tuesday night. Colbert will appear on Meyers’s show as a guest.
Planet closer to destruction as Russia, China and US become more aggressive and nationalistic, says advocacy group
Earth is closer than it has ever been to destruction as Russia, China, the US and other countries become “increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic”, a science-oriented advocacy group said on Tuesday as it advanced its Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds until midnight.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist members had an initial demonstration on Friday and then announced their results on Tuesday.
Joël Guerriau sentenced to four years in prison after spiking lawmaker’s champagne with ecstasy
A French court has found a former senator guilty of drugging a female lawmaker with ecstasy with intent to sexually assault her.
Joël Guerriau, 68, was sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday, of which 18 months must be behind bars.
In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support for rape and sexual abuse on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Seven out of 10 mothers in the UK feel overloaded and almost half have a mental health issue such as anxiety or depression, new research has revealed.
The survey of mothers’ experiences in 12 European countries also found that most of those in Britain still do the majority of household tasks and caregiving work alone, and that the UK was among the worst for motherhood disadvantaging a woman’s career.
71% of UK mothers feel overloaded – 4% more than the 67% European average
47% of UK mothers suffer from mental health issues, including burnout, compared with 50% in Europe as a whole
31% of UK respondents felt motherhood had a negative effect on their career, higher than the 27% average, with Ireland the highest on 36%
Connexion
