Preliminary research provides rare insight in to the reptile’s habits and movement across urban landscapes
New research has revealed surprising details about the secret lives of crocodiles swimming through Florida’s waterways, including the long distances some travel in search of food and shelter, and their ability to slither unnoticed through populous neighborhoods.
The preliminary study provides rare insight into the habits and habitat of the species in a state more commonly associated with its estimated 1.5 million alligators. Florida has a non-hatchling population of about only 2,000 American crocodiles, the researchers say, which made it difficult initially to find and tag a sufficient number of the reptiles in urban areas in order to observe them.
When Robert F Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign for the presidency in August 2024, throwing his support behind Donald Trump, he promised to continue fighting to “make America healthy again”. Kennedy’s criticism of ultra-processed foods and big food companies became a central feature of the Trump campaign. And after Trump was elected, he nominated Kennedy to be his secretary of health and human services.
Yet, just days before naming Kennedy, Trump nominated another senior official to his administration: Susie Wiles, a longtime lobbyist whose clients have included the same big food companies Kennedy has critiqued for their role in pushing ultra-processed foods into kitchens and grocery stores across the US. The two stood in stark contrast: a critic and a lobbyist for the food industry standing side-by-side the president-elect.
Andoni Iraola’s side host Liverpool on Saturday and look like one of the league leaders’ toughest away assignments
At any time in the Premier League, there is a model club to follow. In recent years such a label has been attached to Brentford and Brighton. Before that Southampton’s managerial recruitment and scouting network was feasted on, Mauricio Pochettino moving on to manage Tottenham before Virgil van Dijk, Sadio Mané and Adam Lallana also left to join Liverpool and became Champions League and Premier League winners there.
This year’s model? Undoubtedly Bournemouth, Liverpool’s seventh-placed opponents on Saturday, replete with candidates for Anfield’s next rebuild. Virgil van Dijk and Andy Robertson phased out for Dean Huijsen and Milos Kerkez? Simple, ideal solutions – the young Spaniard and Hungarian have been outstanding this season – but in this era of tightened profit and sustainability, perhaps beyond the realms of financial feasibility. The £65m Tottenham were asked to pay for Dominic Solanke last summer is an indicator of how hard a bargain a club owned by Texan billionaire Bill Foley are likely to drive.
Cousin of prospective US health secretary shares disturbing tale involving blender for his Senate confirmation hearing
“Trying not to upset the French” could be a chapter in a Debrett’s guide to etiquette and manners, one that may have been taken to heart by the government this week with its decision to change the name of a new submarine. The Astute-class attack vessel is still being built, but on Sunday night, the Royal Navy announced that what was to become HMS Agincourt would, instead, be given the more Franco-friendly name of HMS Achilles. Up pops Grant Shapps, the former Conservative defence secretary, to dust off his opportunism and accuse the navy of bending to Labourite “woke nonsense”. It’s just like riding a bike!
Hamas has announced it will release Yarden Bibas on Saturday, the Israeli father of a young family kidnapped to Gaza who have been one of the most enduring symbols of Israel’s hostages in the coastal strip.
The Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida said on its Telegram channel that Bibas would be released with Keith Siegel, a joint US citizen, and Ofer Calderon, who also has French nationality.
News that the singer had done a slot in New York’s Comedy Cellar was met with derision, but she has always walked a fine line between comedy character and over-the-top pop star
New York’s famed Comedy Cellar has long been known as a testing ground for hot young talent. The Greenwich Village club hosted stand-ups like Ray Romano and Jon Stewart early in their careers, and although tourists now flock to the venue in the hope of seeing an A-lister do a surprise drop-in, young comics can still get their start there. Case in point: last weekend, Madonna did a set at the Comedy Cellar. You may be able to draw nearly 2 million people to Rio’s Copacabana beach for a concert, but in the cutthroat world of comedy, you still have to start from the bottom.
A report in the Sun said that Madonna tested out material for about 30 minutes, and that she was accompanied to the club by her friend Amy Schumer, who later went on Howard Stern to big up Madonna’s act. “She has something in her that’s interested in standup and she knows that, like anything else, you have to work really hard on it. She is kind of working on her set and it’s not cringey,” Schumer told Stern. “She’s funny! She’s got jokes. She’s got things to say. She’s got tea.”
M23 rebel group swept into Congolese city after a rapid advance in recent weeks
People living in Goma on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern border with Rwanda have spoken of their fear and acute hunger after the M23 rebel group swept into the city earlier this week.
“We are very afraid. This situation feels hopeless,” said Judith Saima, a 28-year-old merchant in Goma, where heavy fighting that cut the city off from the outside world and left bodies piling up in the streets only subsided two days ago.
Melania Trump, Sabrina Carpenter and the Princess of Wales are among those turning up the volume
It’s big. It’s bouncy. And it’s back. From the catwalks to Capitol Hill, hair with added volume is trending. Raised at the roots and curled at the ends, big and bold hair has knocked relaxed, beachy waves off the hairstyle charts.
It’s the hairstyle Melania Trump loosely based her hair on for her official Flotus 2.0 portrait and it’s quickly becoming the signature style for her husband’s cabinet. Just days after being appointed White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt swapped her usual go-to straight and sleek look for it. Last year, Kristi Noem completed her Maga makeover with her previously short cropped hair in a shoulder-length style, alongside new teeth and fluttery fake eyelashes. This week, she posted images of herself attending her first deportation raid as homeland security secretary to X, her hair noticeably groomed and curled under a law enforcement cap. “Did she go to Drybar before this,” commented one user, referencing the hair salon chain that focuses on blow-drys.
The journalist and adventurer Julio Camba wrote exquisite sketches about the strange habits of the English
The first of the myriad anglosajón peculiarities that would bedevil, confound and exasperate Julio Camba in his 15 months as London correspondent for El Mundo revealed itself when a porter tried to help the young Spanish journalist with his luggage as he arrived at Victoria station in December 1910.
“The worker grabbed my suitcase and shouted, so I started to shout, too,” he wrote shortly afterwards. “Given that I’m Spanish, I shouted much more than he did and, finally, he shut up.” Camba swiftly concluded that, unlike their Spanish, French and Italian neighbours, the English were not given to passionate outbursts. Or passion. Or, indeed, outbursts.
Family of Bowman, 44, plead for death sentence to be commuted as lawyers say ‘the system has failed him’
South Carolina is set to execute Marion Bowman Jr, a 44-year-old man who has maintained his innocence and in his final days became outspoken about the brutal conditions on death row.
The state, which has aggressively revived capital punishment after a 13-year pause, is due to kill Bowman by lethal injection at 6pm local time on Friday. It will be the first execution in the US of the new year.
Agreement between farmers, politicians and environmental groups led to a €170m action fund for plant based food
“Plant-based foods are the future.” That is not a statement you would expect from a right-wing farming minister in a major meat-producing nation. Denmark produces more meat per capita than any other country in the world, with its 6 million people far outnumbered by its 30 million pigs, and it has a big dairy industry too. Yet this is how Jacob Jensen, from the Liberal party, introduced the nation’s world-first action plan for plant-based foods.
“If we want to reduce the climate footprint within the agricultural sector, then we all have to eat more plant-based foods,” he said at the plan’s launch in October 2023, and since then the scheme has gone from strength to strength. Backed by a €170m government fund, it is now supporting plant-based food from farm to fork, from making tempeh from broad beans and a chicken substitute from fungi to on-site tastings at kebab and burger shops and the first vegan chef degree.
Five years after we left the EU, people are still paying the price. We’re ready to work with Westminster to forge closer bonds with Europe
John Swinney is the first minister of Scotland
The pantomime season may be over, but when it comes to the government’s much-repeated claim to be pursuing economic growth above all else, the cry of “It’s behind you” is sounding ever louder. This classic panto joke works when everyone in the audience can see something clearly but the character on stage pretends not to. So it is with Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and Rachel Reeves’s attempts to kickstart the economy. Reeves and Keir Starmer are ignoring what is blindingly obvious to everyone else: Brexit is a significant drag on Britain’s growth prospects. They know it’s true but refuse to acknowledge it and, more importantly, to do anything about it.
There is, however, nothing comical about this situation. The hard Brexit negotiated by Johnson took the UK out of the EU, the single market and the customs union and brought an end to freedom of movement. As a result, people are paying the price through higher food bills, lower growth and therefore lower tax revenue that could and should be spent on the NHS.
La Liga president: lack of awareness may aid ‘elitist’ idea
‘What they’re looking for is to generate instability’
The president of La Liga, Javier Tebas, has warned that football cannot afford to overlook the threat posed by A22, whose latest proposal for a European Super League was unveiled in December.
Uefa is currently considering how to respond after A22 launched plans for a Unify League, which follows two previous failed concepts. One option is to authorise the plan and let clubs decide whether to jump ship from the Champions League and other existing continental tournaments. There is little evidence A22 could spark a meaningful breakaway despite holding talks with a number of clubs, but Tebas is concerned that a lack of understanding may help an “elitist” idea gain traction.
Government workers face ominous signs of a president bent on exacting revenge on what he considers ‘deep state’
Federal government workers have been left “shell-shocked” by the upheaval wrought by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency amid signs that he is bent on exacting revenge on a bureaucracy that he considers to be a “deep state” that previously thwarted and persecuted him.
Since being restored to the White House on 20 January, the president has gone on a revenge spree against high-profile figures who previously served him but earned his enmity by slighting or criticising him in public.
The word “illegal” has been one of the terms most strongly associated with migrants in UK parliamentary debates over the past 25 years, research has found.
Findings from the Runnymede Trust, published on Friday, examine how politicians and the media have portrayed migrants, refugees and Muslims in their discourse.
The stark differences between two brothers are thrown into relief as they navigate grief in this moving novel from the Normal People author
Ivan and Peter Koubek are brothers grieving the death of their father from cancer. Ivan is a 22-year-old chess champion with a degree in theoretical physics and former “incel” tendencies, while Peter is a human rights lawyer in his 30s pining for his former girlfriend, Sylvia. Peter is also sleeping with Naomi, a student in her early 20s who sells nude pictures of herself online and who regularly taps him for cash.
Set in Dublin and rural west Ireland, this fourth novel from the Normal People author Sally Rooney draws on familiar themes of modern relationships, though here they are underpinned by grief. While Ivan tries to understand and process the loss of his father, Peter prefers to distract himself from his feelings with alcohol and prescription drugs.
From a career-detonating collaboration with the Rolling Stones in 1969 to a hypnotic experiment with 13-era Blur, Marianne Faithfull’s career was one of reinvention – yet always underpinned by her wrenching, affecting vocals
Marianne Faithfull’s 60s releases were wildly variable, perhaps because she seems to have been beholden to the whims of producers who didn’t really know what to do with her: one minute she was recording rounded-edged folk – Cockleshells, What Have They Done to the Rain – the next retooling the Ronettes’ Is This What I Get for Loving You? to no great effect. But, occasionally, she rose above it all, injecting her cut-glass delivery with an alarming degree of melancholy, as on Morning Sun. The B-side of her hit This Little Bird, it’s a pretty but slender song, driven by what sounds like a echoing harp, that her voice transforms into something weirdly wrenching: “I’m very sad, tears follow me,” she sings, and she genuinely sounds it.
Twenty-five years on from the first Six Nations, Murrayfield hosts battle between two teams who have come a long way in a quarter of a century
And so we head back to where it all began. The Six Nations is a quarter of a century old. Wednesday will mark 25 years since its opening fixture on 5 February 2000, but of more visceral significance will be Saturday afternoon’s encounter at Murrayfield between Scotland and Italy, a rerun of that first match, bathed in sunshine, when Italy, the new arrivals, announced themselves to the old championship with a shattering 34-20 win over the champions.
Those not yet in middle age may balk at the phrase “champions Scotland”. But it is true. They were quite often champions back then. In 1999 they won the last Five Nations, outplaying the rest in what must still rank as the greatest championship of them all. England squeaked past them at Twickenham in round two, but Scotland had run rings round them all match, just as they would all-comers that year. When England fell to the most dramatic defeat of them all on the final Sunday, against Wales at Wembley, Scotland were crowned worthy champions, having thrashed France in Paris, no less, the day before.
She went from being Jarvis Cocker‘s backing singer to a Grammy-nominated purveyor of ‘wonky funk’, before being set back by chronic fatigue syndrome. But on fourth album Jupiter, she’s learned to ‘ride the waves’
Nao is trying to articulate how it feels to be on the verge of releasing a new album. When this thing that’s been yours and yours alone has to be launched into the world. “It feels really similar to being pregnant,” the 37-year-old mum of two decides. Her answer feels apt; we’re currently sitting in an east London cinema cafe hemmed in by buggies while a mum-and-baby screening of erotic thriller Babygirl plays next door. “It’s really exciting in the beginning, then it gets a bit tedious,” she continues. “And you’re stuck in the process because you need to finish it. Get it out.” Sometimes, she says, it can also be just as painful.
Not that you’d know it from listening to this month’s fourth album, Jupiter, a typically featherlight concoction of pillow-soft soul, experimental R&B and airy acoustic ruminations all anchored by her angelic, otherworldly voice. It also carries just a dash of the electronic-leaning “wonky funk” that saw Nao (born Neo Joshua) hailed as one to watch when she emerged in 2015. But Jupiter’s overarching sense of contentment has been hard won after years spent battling an illness that prevented her from touring.
Uefa are still preambling. I have learned that one side of the draw will be silver and the other side will be blue.
Uefa are going big on the preambles here, so I’ve got time to remind you of the basic rules. There are eight seeded teams and eight unseeded teams. The two seeded teams with the highest league finish will be drawn against the two unseeded teams with the lowest league finish and so on, until everyone’s paired up. So Atalanta will play Sporting or Brugge, and Borussia Dortmund will play the other one, while PSG will play Monaco or Brest and Benfica will get the other one. You can play teams from your own country, and teams you played in the group. Got it? Great.
Eight dropped catches by England amid fielding misery
After a mere 90-year wait, a second woman will finally join Peggy Antonio up on the Melbourne Cricket Ground honours board – take a bow, Annabel Sutherland. The 23-year-old already had a Test double-hundred to her name, scored against South Africa last year: now, she will go down in history as the first woman to ever score a hundred at the G.
By the close, Australia had extended their lead to 252, with the real possibility that Beth Mooney – unbeaten on 98 – will join Sutherland up on that honours board by Saturday evening.
In this week’s newsletter: From the return of Apple’s hit thriller to the most open Oscar race I can remember, this year has so much in store for us culture vultures
Happy New Year! 2025 is upon us and pop-culturally it has the potential to be a belter, with big releases and events aplenty. For a full rundown of everything to watch, listen to and play this year, check out the Guardian arts desk’s exhaustive year-ahead preview.
Here on the Guide, meanwhile, we’re looking at some of the big questions across film, TV and music that we’re anticipating getting answers to this year. Just putting them together has whetted our appetites for the next 12 months. Hopefully they’ll do the same for you.
Connexion
