UK economy unexpectedly contracts by 0.1% in January in blow to the chancellor ahead of spring statement; Friedrich Merz declares: ‘Germany is back’
Let’s look at the GDP figures in more detail.
The 0.9% drop in production output in January, which came after 0.5% growth in December, was mainly caused by a 1.1% slump in manufacturing while mining and quarrying also declined. Basic metals and metal products were down along with pharmaceutical products.
The diagnosis may have brought up feelings of anger and unfairness about the care you didn’t receive as a child. Could your brother offer you solace and support?
Last year, I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. I have told a few people, but not my family, other than my brother, and I don’t know if I should. They live abroad.
I have a lot of unresolved childhood issues, which I’ve mostly been able to put aside. But the diagnosis is making it harder to deal with the hurt, resentment and unfairness of it all.
Philippine ex-president Rodrigo Duterte is appearing by video link before judges at the international criminal court.
Duterte would follow the proceedings through a video link, a court spokesperson said.
To some Duterte’s arrest this week came as a sudden shock. But for years many brave Filipinos, from priests, politicians, pathologists, to relatives of the victims and journalists, have worked tirelessly, in and out of the spotlight, to expose the horrors of the deadly campaign and collect enough evidence to hold Duterte to account.
Edgar Charles Frederick, 79, was killed in the hit-and-run incident in Nairobi on Thursday
A British national has died in Kenya after being struck by a government vehicle that was part of the president’s motorcade.
Edgar Charles Frederick, 79, was killed on Thursday as President William Ruto’s motorcade made its way to a public engagement in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Not for Australia the brutal humiliation meted out on camera to Ukraine in the Oval Office. Nor Canada’s escalating war of invective and retaliatory sanctions.
The duo count Elton and Rage Against the Machine among their fans, but being two Black women in a largely white, male scene means working twice as hard. The duo discuss winning over the mosh pit – and why they’ve banned synths
Nova Twins vocalist-guitarist Amy Love is trying to make me feel better about the litany of things that have gone wrong during our one-hour chat. She and her bandmate Georgia South enteredthe shabby-chic dressing room of London’s Omeara in a whirlwind of denim, arraying themselves on the mismatched armchairs after a soundcheck that didn’t entirely go to plan – my Dictaphone broke, South’s battling a cold, I realised I had the wrong notebook with me … We’re all feeling a little frazzled as trains rumble by and South boils the kettle for a Lemsip.
The fact chaos swirls around Nova Twins is fitting, perhaps. Their brand of boot-stomping rock takes the pop and R&B music they’d grown up with and distorts it to hell. Nu-metal adjacent, they play a kind of grimy rap-rock with the energy and hooks of the pop end of punk.
Tom Lowndes was a sound designer on McLeod’s Daughters before reinventing himself as a ‘time-travelling DJ’ who fast became a global festival phenomenon
“I think DJing is the professional wrestling of the music industry,” he says. “Wrestling, in the end, no matter how good it is, it’s still people pretending to fight. The DJ, no matter how good you are, you’re still pretending to be a musician.”
As the UK, Australia and Denmark mount joint diplomatic push, grieving families fear Laos’ investigation into the suspected methanol poisonings won’t deliver justice
The poolside bar at the Nana backpackers hostel in central Laos should have been an idyllic spot for a free happy hour on a mid-November evening.
Among those staying at Nana were two pairs of best friends – 19-year-old Australians Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles, and Freja Vennervald Sorensen, 21, and Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, from Denmark. All four were drawn to south-east Asia’s famed backpacking route that has for decades enticed young travellers seeking carefree, sun-drenched moments.
My freedom of information request revealed the inane use of ChatGPT by the tech secretary. Is this the future? I hope not
Two tech-related things made me laugh this week. One was Donald Trump’s childlike exuberance at seeing the dash panel of a Tesla on the White House lawn, and his wondrous exclamation that “everything is computer”.
The other was equally hilarious, also tied to politics. Keir Starmer stood up yesterday in Hull and said waste would be thrown by the wayside and the civil service would lose its bloat … thanks to the transformative effects of AI.
Near my home in Melbourne’s inner city sits a dilapidated but grand old house. In the nearly four years I’ve lived nearby, it has sat empty, falling deeper and deeper into disrepair, its garden becoming more wild, creating more and more problems for us as its neighbours.
There’s the pile-up of hard rubbish that often spills into neighbouring properties and onto the street. There are the bugs and rodents drawn to the place, which, of course, visit us as they come and go. And there are the worrying crashes, shouts and foul language you can occasionally hear from the house’s temporary inhabitants as you walk by.
Our homesteading journey began with self-sufficiency and a dream, but it evolved through loss and social media fame
Our homesteading experiment began before tradwives, before Donald Trump, before Covid-19. It was the summer of 2015 when we were all sure no one would vote for a former reality TV star. I was 25 years old and desperate for a security blanket, working a sales job and looking for excuses not to return to college.
My husband, Patrick, and I had talked about farming since our first date. We wanted goats. At his 2-acre property in a quiet suburb of Portland, Maine, we kept a few chickens and a scrawny vegetable garden.
Lawyers demand in updated lawsuit that Columbia University graduate student be released from custody
Mahmoud Khalil felt as though he was being kidnapped when he was handcuffed and shackled and rushed from New York to immigration detention in Louisiana last weekend, his lawyers wrote in an updated lawsuit demanding that the Columbia University graduate student be released from custody immediately.
The activist has told his lawyers that agents who arrested him at his university housing last Saturday night, in front of his eight-month pregnant wife, never identified themselves.
The midwest princess embraces her roots with a queer country banger about pleasure that toys with the genre’s gender and class cosplay
It’s easy to forget that in the year that Chappell Roan became one of the world’s biggest pop stars, she only released one single. Good Luck, Babe! came out in April 2024, precipitating the explosion of the US pop star as a live phenomenon who made pop hyper fun and queer again, while also remaining strikingly principled about how far she was willing to go for her art.
When streaming demands that pop stars pebbledash releases in order to stay buoyant on playlists, her disinclination to capitalise on Good Luck, Babe!’s success with more material is reflective of Roan’s confidence in her way of doing things, whether persisting with a vision that her previous label rejected – and being totally vindicated for it – or using her recent Grammys win to call for labels to provide musicians with proper healthcare. The tactic has paid off: in the absence of new songs, Pink Pony Club – the song Atlantic dropped her over – reached UK No 1 last week, almost five years after its original release. Her debut album, 2023’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, has been in the UK Top 10 since June, taking two separate weeks at No 1.
Dutchman says his job is not to please people as he sets out on road for a fifth consecutive F1 drivers title in Melbourne
On the eve of what might be the hardest fought championship of his career opening in Melbourne this weekend one thing is clear, Max Verstappen will not go gently into that night. The defending Formula One world champion, never one to shy away from speaking his mind, a compelling character trait reflected in his driving, is eyeballing the opposition and demanding they bring it on.
The 27-year-old took his fourth consecutive F1 title last season, the toughest since his first, the titanic battle with Lewis Hamilton that ended controversially in Abu Dhabi, in 2021. In both, when the Dutchman was pushed to the limit, to scrap tooth and nail, he was uncompromising, an elbows-out battler, obdurate, driven by belief in himself and the righteousness of the Verstappen cause.
Twelve people taken to hospital with minor injuries after flight forced to divert about 30 minutes after takeoff
An American Airlines flight heading from Colorado Springs to Dallas-Fort Worth was forced to divert about 30 minutes after takeoff to make an emergency landing at Denver on Thursday evening, whereupon one of the plane’s engines dramatically caught on fire on the tarmac.
Passengers were swiftly forced to evacuate, including via wing and emergency slide, and could be seen running for safety through thick smoke with flames behind them.
Soldier Edan Alexander could be released along with remains of four other Israeli-US nationals, but unclear what Hamas will ask for in return
Hamas has said it is ready to free an Israeli-US soldier held hostage in Gaza and hand over the remains of four other Israeli-US nationals in what may be a breakthrough in continuing negotiations over the fragile ceasefire in the devastated territory.
The militant Islamist organisation announced in a statement on Friday that it was ready to release the Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, who holds American citizenship, along with the remains of four other dual Israeli-US nationals.
Fearing release of distressing material, lawyers have petitioned a Santa Fe court to seal records to protect the family’s right to privacy
A representative for the estate of actor Gene Hackman is seeking to block the public release of autopsy and investigative reports, especially photographs and police body-camera video, related to the recent deaths of Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa, after their partially mummified bodies were discovered at their New Mexico home in February.
Authorities last week announced Hackman died at age 95 of heart disease with complications from Alzheimer’s disease as much as a week after Arakawa, 65, died from a rare rodent-borne disease, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Hackman’s pacemaker last showed signs of activity on 18 February, indicating an abnormal heart rhythm on the day he probably died. The couple’s bodies weren’t discovered until 26 February.
She’s the breakout star of the cult banking drama who went on to play Amy Winehouse and has now been handpicked by Steven Soderbergh for his latest thriller. But at 23, a shock diagnosis changed her world
Marisa Abela finds it very difficult to go to the gym. Not for the usual reasons – lack of time or motivation – but because she says the reception she gets there is “insane”. The actor lives near the City of London, and her local gym is nestled between the gigantic, glinting glass offices of the capital’s financial district – which also happens to be the natural habitat of Yasmin Kara-Hanani, the hyper-privileged and extravagantly troubled junior banker Abela plays in the hit BBC drama Industry. And it’s not just while she’s exercising – that swarm of real‑life bankers desperate to tell Abela how much they love the show means meals out can be an issue, too. “If I tried to go to a salad bar at lunchtime in the City …” she trails off, looking slightly dazed.
Abela isn’t just highly recognisable for her part in Industry, a satire of the reckless, hedonistic, egomaniac-littered world of finance that since its 2020 debut has blossomed from niche concern to TV’s spiciest workplace drama. The 28-year-old also gets stopped in the street for being “the girl who played Amy Winehouse”. (Recently, people have finally started to ask her if she is Marisa. “And I’m like, ‘Yes, I am!’” she says, with mock grandeur.) Last year, she starred in Back to Black, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of the late singer, an oddly paced film rescued by Abela’s performance, which combines Winehouse’s trademark wit and stubborn iconoclasm with an endearing vulnerability. In her hands, Amy was, above all, a doting daughter and an adorably guileless romantic.
The documentary maker has received constant death threats from Jackson fans ever since his devastating Leaving Neverland aired. He reveals why he had to make a follow-up
‘I’ve kept company with very violent people for a very long time,” says documentary-maker Dan Reed, in his office whose location has to be kept secret – I was led here, from a decoy address, by the Channel 4 publicist. “I’ve had murderers try to find me. I’ve had people threaten to shoot me who are armed. I’ve been threatened many, many times. I don’t want to say I’m a tough guy, but the needle doesn’t go into the red until I’ve got something quite specific. The threats delivered face to face I took seriously. People trying to find my home address to post me a parcel I took seriously. People in China sending me emails? I don’t take so seriously. They’re going to have to get on a plane.”
OK, well he does sound like a tough guy, or at least a foreign correspondent of the old school, and that’s fair enough. From the Kosovan war (The Valley, 1999) to the Russian mafia (From Russia With Cash, 2015), Reed’s films have long been threaded together by the reasonable fascinations of the hard-hitting documentary-maker – corruption, crime, natural disaster, war.
You don’t need to hold sympathy for Mahmoud Khalil’s views to see why his targeting is an immense threat to free expression
The dust is starting to settle on the conflicting reports emerging after immigration officers’ arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University protest leader and green card holder, last weekend – and Americans should be alarmed by the similarities to authoritarian regimes’ speech policing.
The White House has confirmed the arrest took place under a law granting the secretary of state unilateral power to act when given “reasonable ground to believe” an immigrant’s “presence or activities in the United States … would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the country.
China has criticised the sale of the business that controls ports in Panama to US investors, saying the Hong Kong-based parent company should “think twice” and that the $22.8bn deal is “power politics” that is not in the country’s national interest.
Shares in the Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison fell more than 6% on Friday after a critical commentary appeared in the Beijing-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong.
Exclusive: It is imperative humans expand their understanding of space, argues Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock
Life must exist beyond Earth, a leading space scientist says, adding it is yet another example of human pride to suppose otherwise.
The British space scientist Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who will be giving the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures this year, said that while science had made giant leaps in the understanding of space, including the sheer size of the universe, there was still much to learn – not least whether humans were alone.
The Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution supported by CGI will be broadcast on the BBC and iPlayer in late December
Whether the Meta boss and his ex-lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg are truly beyond awful is neither here nor there. I thought he was done with factchecking
I am as shocked as I am confused that Mark Zuckerberg is going all-out to block a memoir by Facebook’s former director of global public policy, Sarah Wynn-Williams. I thought information wanted to be free? I definitely heard that speech should be. We know Meta’s revolting oligarch doesn’t write his self-serving public pronouncements, but he should at least make time in his busy Magafication schedule to read them.
Anyway, even if you think the stories in Careless People are untrue – and I don’t, for a single nanosecond – I thought the Meta boss said disinformation wasn’t a thing any more? He recently binned off all his factcheckers to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship”. Yet here we are reading stories of how Meta this week launched an emergency action in the US to ban Wynn-Williams from promoting or further distributing copies of her book. It argued – successfully, for now – that it would face “immediate loss … in the absence of immediate relief”.
Context dictates that England have to be on the front foot in Cardiff – let’s have that as their modus operandi
Play the match, not the occasion. Lap up the theatre, the dramatics, the pyrotechnics, the hostility, if that is what gets you going, but when you cross the white line, play what is in front of you. If there is one message that should have been hammered home to England’s players this week, it is exactly that.
Sport rarely plays out the way we fully expect it to, otherwise the Principality Stadium would not be sold out on Saturday, there would not be a growing sense of belief among Wales supporters that this is the day their desperate run of defeats ends, there would not be a nervousness, a tension among England fans heading to Cardiff. It’s why we love our sport but if England can play the match and not the occasion, they have the potential and the players to put Wales away comfortably.
For years many brave Filipinos have worked tirelessly, in and out of the spotlight, to expose the horrors of the deadly campaign
Facing charges of crimes against humanity and hauled off to The Hague, the arrest this week of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is a pivotal moment for those seeking justice for the many thousands of lives lost during his reign.
Soon after his inauguration in 2016, the then Philippine leader embarked on a violent crackdown on drugs and crime that catalysed a wave of extrajudicial killings. Rights groups say that up to 30,000 people were killed in Duterte’s “war on drugs”.
League Cup final against Manchester City is a chance to continue their dominance despite change of manager
What happens when a leader departs a sporting dynasty? How can the transfer of power cause as little disruption to the team as possible? History has all too often illustrated that it is a far from easy adjustment; that it will take a little time to regroup and recalibrate.
For Chelsea, however, the transition from Emma Hayes’s decade-long reign to new beginnings under Sonia Bompastor appears to have caused barely a ripple. The club are unbeaten, registering 25 wins in 27 games. On Saturday they have the chance to claim the campaign’s first trophy – the League Cup final against Manchester City is a real an opportunity to stamp their mark as the business end of the season begins.
Course was run over 1,129 miles of Alaska wilderness
Holmes has appeared on Life Below Zero
Jessie Holmes, a former reality television star, won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on Friday negotiating the longest-ever course in the event’s history.
Holmes was first to the finish line in Nome on the Bering Sea coast. The race began on 3 March in Fairbanks after a lack of snow forced changes to the route and starting point. That made the normally 1,000-mile race a 1,129 miles slog across the Alaska wilderness. Holmes finished in 10 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes, 41 seconds.
More than 200mm of rain fell in 24 hours, destroying 900 homes and leaving 40,000 people without power
Cyclone Jude was the third cyclone to hit Mozambique this season. First spotted as a depression last Friday to the south-west of the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, it intensified over the next few days to a moderate tropical storm, affecting northern Madagascar on Saturday and killing at least one person.
Jude strengthened into a tropical cyclone as it tracked westwards over the Mozambique Channel, where sea surface temperatures of close to 30C provided the heat and moisture necessary to fuel the cyclone.
The Elon Musk backlash, boos for JD Vance, Meghan naming protocol, a wombat botherer and – OMG! – buying kittens
To the people who parked their consciences and voted for Donald Trump because they thought he’d slash regulation, cut corporate taxes and eviscerate the federal government to send their stock holdings soaring, I’d like to ask: “How’s that working out for you?” For anyone with a pension, college savings or other assets in the US market this was an unrelaxing week, during which the Dow fell by almost 900 points on Monday and some $4tn (£3tn) was wiped off the S&P 500.
Flamstead residents – tall men, in particular – are under attack from a Harris’s hawk that has gone on a rampage
When Michael Hart went for his morning run in rural Hertfordshire last week, he never imagined that he would be attacked. “I felt something come at me from behind,” said the 31-year-old, who works in IT.
The perpetrator has been quietly stalking the streets of Flamstead for months but in the past fortnight has gone on a rampage, having bumped and slashed more than 20 men, including Hart. A hunt for the serial attacker is under way.
The Bureau by Eoin McNamee; The Mouthless Dead by Anthony Quinn; Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch; The Grapevine by Kate Kemp; Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall
The Bureau by Eoin McNamee (Riverrun, £18.99) Known for his psychologically acute literary reimaginings of real crimes, Irish writer McNamee prefers to explore implications than journey towards a neat ending, and his work is all the better for it. The crime at the heart of The Bureau is fictional, but the narrative has a family connection and the younger McNamee appears as a character. It’s set in 1980s Newry, a Northern Irish city whose proximity to both the border and the Irish sea makes it ideal for criminal enterprises ranging from doctored fuel to bootleg alcohol, the proceeds laundered through the eponymous bureau de change. As the mistress of gangster Paddy Farrell, Lorraine occupies her own morally dubious border space. The murder-suicide, described at the start, looks like a drastic attempt on her part to place the pair of them on an equal footing, but there are enough anomalies to leave room for doubt. This is an astonishingly powerful portrait of a time and place saturated in sentimentality and cruelty, where, despite the ever-present sectarianism, “nobody was on anyone’s side”.
The Mouthless Dead by Anthony Quinn (Abacus, £20)
When Julia Wallace was battered to death in Liverpool in 1931, the guilty party was initially thought to be her husband, William. His alibi involved a telephone message from one RM Qualtrough, summoning him to a fictitious address to discuss business. Qualtrough was never found, but the lack of evidence against Wallace meant his conviction was overturned on appeal. The case, described by Raymond Chandler as “the nonpareil of murder mysteries”, became a cause célèbre. As in John Hutton’s excellent 1979 fictionalisation, 29 Herriott Street, Quinn employs the device of having an interested party looking back at the case. On a voyage to New York, former CID officer Key regales fellow passengers with his part in the story and it gradually becomes clear that he is privy to rather more inside information than came out in court. Well imagined, well researched and well written, The Mouthless Dead provides a highly entertaining – if highly unlikely – solution to a famous unsolved murder.
The disproportionate violence against Indigenous people is deeply felt on and around the reservation, where families must become their own investigators. Words and photography by Wayan Barre
On a cold January evening in 2021, Joey Apachee, a Navajo father of two, set out to meet a friend near the water tower in Steamboat, Arizona. Hours later, he was found beaten to death. However, despite a confession from a suspect, no trial has taken place. Joey’s father Jesse Apachee, a retired police officer, says the family feels abandoned by the Navajo Nation’s justice system.
Indigenous people experience violence at alarmingly high rates. According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, in some parts of the US, Indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average. Additionally, 10,123 Native American people were recorded as missing in 2022, though the real tally is probably higher due to inconsistencies in reporting and data collection. In recent years the crisis has expanded to affect more men and boys, who now account for 46% of missing person cases.
The Premier League is almost certain to have a fifth team in the Champions League next season, with the distinct possibility of a sixth too, after the completion of the last-16 ties in European competition.
Progress for Arsenal, Aston Villa, Manchester United, Tottenham and Chelsea, combined with the exit of Roma from the Europa League, means England are overwhelming favourites to claim one of two European performance spots (EPS) for Uefa’s elite competition next season.
Debates about the ‘triple lock’ that underpins our neutrality miss the point. In a Trumpian world, Ireland must finally commit to its own security
The arrival of Trump 2.0 in the White House has disrupted the foreign and defence policies of all states and shattered existing paradigms of world order. Political leaders across the globe are having to assess how they respond to this more unpredictable and precarious world. For Ireland, the task is all the more difficult because the country’s core geopolitical anchors – the US and EU – are under stress.
Donald Trump’s Maga policy challenges Ireland’s political economy, which relies on extensive US investment. Although cordial, taoiseach Micheál Martin’s recent meeting with Trump in the Oval Office provided the US president with the opportunity to level the charge that Ireland “took” the US’s pharmaceutical companies, and that the US now wants them back. Moreover, Ireland is not insulated from the tensions surrounding the emerging trade war between the US and the EU. At the same Oval Office meeting, the taoiseach had to sit and listen to a tirade against Europe, in which Trump claimed the EU was “set up in order to take advantage of the United States”.
US president says discussion with Russia president were productive and could lead to end of ‘horrible bloody war’
Germany is close to unlocking the way to a massive increase in state borrowing and reforming the constitutional debt break as three major parties are reportedly about to reach an agreement on the proposed changes.
The controversial proposal is a key part of the presumed next chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plan for Germany.
The UK is hoping to shape a new global axis in favour of climate action along with China and a host of developing countries, to offset the impact of Donald Trump’s abandonment of green policies and his sharp veer towards climate-hostile countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Ed Miliband, the UK’s energy and net zero secretary, arrived in Beijing on Friday for three days of talks with top Chinese officials, including discussions on green technology supply chains, coal and the critical minerals needed for clean energy. The UK’s green economy is growing three times faster than the rest of the economy, but access to components and materials will be crucial for that to continue.
The kingdom’s old capital is a world heritage site – and it has now honoured its once-biggest industry with a ‘pearling path’ wending through two miles of architectural marvels. But did its car parks really have to be so lavish?
Think of contemporary architecture in the Gulf and you might think of gilded towers rising from the desert, eye-popping “iconic” museums, and artificial islands carved into ever more fanciful shapes. But, sandwiched between the petrodollar glitz of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, there is an enclave that has been quietly bucking the trend.
In Bahrain’s old capital of Muharraq, a place of winding low-rise streets studded with markets and minarets, a project has been under way over the last two decades that goes against the usual penchant for brash bling. It takes the form of a two-mile (3.2km) route that meanders through the densely packed city, linking new public squares and cultural venues, combining careful conservation with daring contemporary interventions. The Pearling Path shows how the treatment of a Unesco world heritage site doesn’t have to mean choosing between preserving a place in aspic, or resorting to Disneyfied pastiche.
(Interscope) It’s back to the dancefloor as the US superstar doubles down on what she does best – albeit with one eye on Madonna, Charli xcx, Taylor Swift and more…
Pop stars spend their careers impaled on the horns of a perennial dilemma: whether to reinvent themselves and show range, or stick to core value variations. With Mayhem, her sixth solo album, her 10th overall, Lady Gaga has dumped the former strategy, which was stuttering of late, for an emphatic reiteration of the latter.
Mayhem marks a wholesale return to dancefloor freakiness, complete with self-quotes (Abracadabra) and a hard-edged electronic takedown of fame (Perfect Celebrity) that would not have been misplaced on her debut album, 2008’s The Fame.
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