In seven days my young alter ego is cyberbullied and attacked while exploring clubs, casinos and horror games, all with parental controls in place. Is the platform safe for children – or an ‘X-rated paedophile hellscape’?
I am an eight-year-old girl, standing near-naked in a room full of strangers.
As the room spins and zooms upon me and people glide around me, I clock my features.
Eucalyptus production is dominated by large multinationals that convert farmland and forest into monoculture plantations
Razor-straight rows of eucalyptus clones flank the Baixa Verde settlement in north-eastern Brazil. The genetically identical trees are in marked contrast to the patches of wild Atlantic forest – one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth – that remain scattered across the region.
Surrounded by nearly 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of eucalyptus plantations, Baixa Verde is a rare example of a local victory over a multinational in Brazil. The rural settlement owes its existence to nearly two decades of legal battles over land rights – but the fight is not over yet.
Aircraft erupted into a fireball after takeoff at Louisville international airport, killing at least seven and injuring 11
Dozens of air safety investigators are set to arrive in Kentucky on Wednesday to piece together evidence on how a UPS cargo plane crashed and erupted into a huge fireball, killing at least seven people and injuring a further 11.
At least 28 National Transportation Safety Board agents will start searching for clues about the possible cause of the disaster, which saw the UPS plane crash shortly after takeoff at the Louisville Muhammad Ali international airport, leaving behind a fiery trail of destruction on the ground and a huge plume of black smoke.
Ukraine’s general staff denies claims its troops have been encircled but military analysts say situation has deteriorated sharply in recent days
Moscow’s forces appear to be tightening their grip on Pokrovsk, as street fighting continues in the strategic eastern Ukrainian city, much of which now lies in ruins.
Ukraine’s general staff on Wednesday denied Russian claims that its troops had been encircled, saying efforts were under way to reinforce the flanks around Pokrovsk and the nearby town of Myrnohrad.
Experts find artefacts left behind in Caral showing how population survived drought without resorting to violence
Archaeologists in Peru have found new evidence showing how the oldest known civilization in the Americas adapted and survived a climate catastrophe without resorting to violence.
A team led by the renowned Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady, 78, concluded that about 4,200 years ago, severe drought forced the population to leave the ancient city of Caral, and resettle nearby.
Suspect is in custody after car ‘deliberately’ rammed into pedestrians and cyclists on Île d’Oléron; aide to far-right National Rally MP among the injured
At least nine people were injured, the mayor of Dolus-d’Oleron, Thibault Brechkoff, said in a post on Facebook.
He stressed the “deliberate” nature of the incident, and said that local authorities were setting up a crisis centre to coordinate their response.
Video shows man trying to kiss and embrace Claudia Sheinbaum, highlighting both security risk and harassment faced by Mexican women
Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, has been groped by a man as she mingled with citizens on the streets of Mexico City, raising questions about both the lack of presidential security and the level of sexual harassment faced by the country’s women.
A video of the incident on Tuesday shows a visibly drunk man trying to kiss the president on the neck and embrace her from behind, as she removes his hands and turns to face him, before a government official steps in and places himself between them.
Man who returned to UK last month after being sent back to France in September is flown back again
An Iranian man who returned to the UK on a small boat after being sent back to France under the “one in, one out” scheme has been removed for a second time, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said on Wednesday.
The man was flown back to France, despite continuing to insist he is a victim of modern slavery.
Her first book outraged Australian critics – but now she’s scooped the UK’s top nonfiction prize. She talks about female anger, becoming cool at 82 – and why winning made her feel like a stunned mullet
When Helen Garner was announced as the winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction in London on Tuesday night, the 82-year-old Australian author was 16,000kmaway in Melbourne, watching the ceremony on a live stream at home on what was for her Wednesday morning. When the big moment came, she heard “the winner is …” – and then the feed froze. “We were going, ‘Oh God!’ Running around. We didn’t know what to do. The timing was like something in a comedy.” Congratulations immediately rushed in, which is how she knew she’d won the £50,000 (A$100,000) prize for How to End a Story, an 800-page collection of her astoundingly frank diaries, kept between 1978 and 1998.
Garner is still grappling with her win when we speak a few hours later. “I’m a stunned mullet,” she says, sitting in her study, wrapped in a lilac shawl and with glasses on a cord around her neck. “I didn’t think I had a chance.” She has absolutely no idea what she said in her thank you speech: “I think I’m in shock.”
Close encounters reported almost daily as bears intrude into residential areas and attack and sometimes kill people
Japan has deployed troops to the northern prefecture of Akita to help contain a surge in the number of bear attacks that have terrorised people in the mountainous region.
Unexpected encounters with bears are being reported almost daily in the lead up to hibernation season as the animals forage for food. The bears have been roaming near schools, train stations, supermarkets and even at a hot springs resort.
Pour over baked apples for a delicious dessert inspired by Bonfire Night toffee apples
Lyle’s golden syrup comes in the most ornate and nostalgic of tins, but the syrup inside often proves almost impossible to extract entirely. Turn what might otherwise be wasted into this luxurious toffee sauce to savour on Bonfire Night, especially when drizzled generously over cinnamon baked apples with scoops of vanilla ice-cream.
The actor, whose forthcoming directorial debut The Chronology of Water spent eight years in development, said women in the industry should ‘print our own currency’
Kristen Stewart has spoken out against “the violence of silencing” female directors in the film industry, which she described as being “in a state of emergency”.
Speaking at the Academy Women’s Luncheon on Tuesday, Stewart said her fellow women in film should reject tokenism and “print our own currency”.
New York traded away two of their best players in an extraordinary few hours. But they could finally have made a decision that makes sense
It’s rare to see a franchise accept what everyone else already knows – that what they’ve built isn’t working. The Jets didn’t just tweak their roster at the deadline; they detonated it. In a dizzying few hours, they dealt cornerback Sauce Gardner to the Colts and defensive lineman Quinnen Williams to the Cowboys.
Fifa is to press ahead with plans to develop new proposals for protecting player welfare without consulting the international trade union Fifpro, in a move that will intensify a long-simmering dispute between the two bodies.
A meeting of the Fifa professional players consultation forum has been scheduled in Rabat, Morocco, for this Saturday, with the player unions of several nations invited, but not Fifpro, which represents more than 65,000 members and 72 national unions, including England’s Professional Footballers’ Association.
Supporters displayed tifo in Holmesdale End at game
Tension between clubs built over Europa League battle
The Football Association has charged Crystal Palace with misconduct after their fans held up a graphic banner about the Nottingham Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, during the 1-1 draw at Selhurst Park between the teams in August.
There was been tension between the clubs all summer after both clubs indirectly went head-to-head for a place in this season’s Europa League, before it was decided Forest would enter Uefa’s second-tier competition at the expense of Palace. A white-hot atmosphere surrounded the fixture and Palace supporters in the Holmesdale End held aloft a banner of Marinakis.
Lurking at the fringes of electronic music, artists such as Richie Culver, Rainy Miller and Iceboy Violet are confronting the alienation and deprivation of the UK’s north
‘What kind of god builds a world on this forgotten town?” Richie Culver seethes on Curse, closing out his dark, cinematic album I Trust Pain. He’s referring to Withernsea, a faded seaside resort near Hull, where he grew up and then desperately wanted to leave. “I remember feeling so resentful,” he says. “I heard Tracey Chapman’s Fast Car and thought: is this song about me?” He duly got out aged 17, eventually settling in London and finding success as a visual artist and musician.
But in recent years, the 46-year-old began hearing younger avant garde musicians “talking about their satellite towns” in other often forgotten corners of the north. “I’d never looked at the north like that, in the way these artists are unravelling these narratives.” Having dabbled in music for decades, he was inspired by these acts to embark on his first serious records, with Withernsea as his muse – finally seeing his old town as “ripe for storytelling”.
Fourth in the series will be directed by horror-comedy specialists Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, AKA Radio Silence
Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are to reunite for a new Mummy movie, the fourth in the series of films featuring Fraser as adventurer Rick O’Connell that are part of what has become known as Universal Studio’s Monsters franchise.
According to Deadline, Fraser and Weisz are lined up to return to an as-yet-untitled project to be directed by horror-comedy specialists Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, AKA Radio Silence, who previously made Ready or Not, Abigail and two instalments in the Scream series, Scream and Scream VI.
It has been one week since Hurricane Melissa made landfall. The storm’s strength has been record-breaking. To better understand the situation on the ground, I called up Natricia Duncan, the Guardian’s Caribbean correspondent, who is based in Jamaica, the country most affected. We spoke about the impact of the hurricane, and how people navigate living under constant climate precariousness.
For parents who have buried infants born too soon, a device like the AquaWomb is a miracle in waiting – and an impossible choice
Beth Schafer lay in a hospital bed, bracing for the birth of her son. The first contractions rippled through her body before she felt remotely ready. She knew, with a mother’s pit-of-the-stomach intuition, that her baby was not ready either.
At just 23 weeks of gestation, her son teetered on the cliff edge of viability, the fragile threshold where modern medicine offers any promise of keeping babies alive.
Pontiff says authorities must address the spiritual rights of those held in custody amid immigration crackdown
Pope Leo has called for “deep reflection” in the US about the treatment of migrants held in detention, saying that “many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now”.
The Chicago-born pope was responding late on Tuesday to a range of geopolitical questions from reporters outside the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, including what kind of spiritual rights migrants in US custody should have, US military attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela and the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East.
Global stock markets have fallen sharply amid concerns that a boom in valuations of artificial intelligence (AI) companies could be rapidly cooling.
Markets in the US, Asia and Europe have fallen after bank bosses warned a serious stock market correction could lie ahead, after a run of record stock market highs led some companies to appear overvalued.
Regulator found ads for mechanics skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers targeted women
The French equalities regulator has ruled that Facebook’s algorithm for placing job adverts is sexist, after an investigation found that adverts for mechanic roles skewed towards men while those for preschool teachers were targeted at women.
The Défenseur des Droits watchdog said the Facebook system for targeted job ads treated users differently based on their sex, and constituted indirect discrimination. The regulator recommended that Facebook and its parent company, Meta, took measures to ensure adverts were non-discriminatory, giving the company three months to inform the French body of the measures.
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