Tech company denied illegally recording and circulating private conversations to send phone users targeted ads

Google agreed to pay $68m to settle a lawsuit claiming that its voice-activated assistant spied inappropriately on smartphone users, violating their privacy.

A preliminary class action settlement was filed late on Friday night in the San Jose, California federal court, and requires approval by US district judge Beth Labson Freeman. Smartphone users accused Google, a unit of Alphabet, of illegally recording and disseminating private conversations after Google Assistant was triggered, in order to send them targeted advertising.

European retailers urge traders to adhere to commitments after Brazilian lawmakers drop forest protection agreement

Leading British and European retailers are trying to salvage the core elements of the Amazon soy moratorium after the world’s most successful forest protection agreement was wrecked by Brazilian lawmakers and abandoned by international traders.

In an open letter, high street brands including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda warn the breakdown this month of the 20-year-old agreement will damage consumer confidence in Brazil and the shipping firms unless new arrangements are put in place to ensure grain production is not linked to deforestation.

Some parts of city were buried under nearly 60cm of snow and over 500 flights were cancelled Sunday

Toronto is beginning to dig itself out from the largest snowfall in the city’s history, a process which officials say is likely to take “several days”.

Some parts of Canada’s largest city were buried under nearly 60cm of snow and more than 500 flights were cancelled Sunday after Toronto’s main airport was snowed in.

• Ex-Fifa boss shows support for boycott calls

• Security concerns over tournament have risen

Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter on Monday suggested he supports fans boycotting World Cup matches in the United States this year due to security concerns.

Blatter gave his support to comments from Swiss anti-corruption lawyer Mark Pieth, who worked with Fifa on potential reforms when Blatter was president, saying fans should stay away from the US for the tournament.

The ligament that connects your foot bones can cause severe heel pain when inflamed. Here’s how to avoid that

Recently, I decided to go for a jog after not running at all for more than [redacted] years. I did a half-marathon a couple of presidential administrations ago, so surely it would be fine? It was! Until the next morning, when I rolled out of bed, put my feet on the floor and felt a sharp pain in my heel.

Plantar fasciitis, my old nemesis.

Strengthen the muscles of the feet. Silverman suggests doing toe curls (with your feet flat on a towel, grip the towel with your toes and scrunch it towards your body) or marble pickups (using your toes to pick up marbles or similar objects from the floor).

Stretching. Specifically, stretching the calf muscles and the achilles tendon. Regularly stretching and massaging these areas “can help to not only assuage the inflammation, but prevent it from coming back”, says Aiyer.

Increase activity levels gradually. Allow your body to get acclimated to increases in activity levels rather than suddenly ramping up. Basically, don’t do what I did.

Wear the right shoes. Choose a shoe that’s too supportive, and your foot muscles can weaken over time, says Silverman. But choose a shoe that’s not supportive enough, and you may expose your plantar fascia to more direct trauma. Rather than sweating this Goldilocks challenge, Silverman says you should “choose footwear that matches the environment and activity”.

The US cites the ‘wisdom’ of historical immigration policy. But nation states in the Americas have spent more time with open borders than closed

Late last year, Donald Trump’s White House published a new National Security Strategy (NSS) outlining its vision for the world. At the time, the plan raised alarm for dismissing European alliances (now largely confirmed after Trump threatened Nato allies over Greenland), previewing interventions in Latin America (also largely confirmed by recent military action in Venezuela), and aligning closely with the priorities of the Kremlin.

The document also demonizes immigrants. In one widely cited passage, it even claims that “unchecked migration” has gotten so out of control that Europe is facing imminent “civilizational erasure”. On these grounds, the plan makes ending “The Era of Mass Migration” a top priority for the US.

Starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, this gets off to a promising start, but the plot twists are derivative and the tacked-on violence descends into exasperating silliness

Sam Raimi is back with this violent black comedy scripted by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, set on a desert island where two plane-wreck survivors are facing off. It’s a movie whose entertaining initial premise and shrewd satire are finally damaged by Raimi’s need to juice everything up with spurious “horror” flourishes for the fanbase, on-brand gore eruptions that aren’t really scary and undermine the film’s believability, turning everything into silliness. The poster and promotional materials promise a “horror” film, but that isn’t really what this is. But what is it? Well, it’s a desert island parable that owes something to JM Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton and to … how to say it? … other dramas. No spoilers, but Raimi appearing to borrow from a recent Cannes Palme d’Or winner was not, as they say, on my bingo card.

Rachel McAdams plays nerdy Linda Liddle, a single woman living alone with a caged bird. She’s devoted to her job. She is an extremely smart researcher in a corporation, but is passed over for promotion by the charmless misogynists running the firm: useless, untalented males in Patrick Bateman suits who depend on her work. Chief among these odious sexists is new CEO Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O’Brien, a vacuous smoothie and nepo princeling whose late father, the company founder, valued Linda enough to promise her a VP position – a promise on which the hateful Bradley now smugly reneges.

Israel plans to start work next month on a bypass that will close off the heart of the occupied West Bank to Palestinians and cement the de facto annexation of an area critical for the viability of a future Palestinian state. The road is a key part of the blueprint for a vast illegal new settlement in the E1 area east of Jerusalem, which would fragment the occupied West Bank. The far-right Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the plans were intended to ‘bury the idea of a Palestinian state’

• Israel poised to start construction of bypass through heart of West Bank

• Israel pushes ahead with vast illegal settlement in heart of West Bank

Members of foreign staff send letter to billionaire owner Jeff Bezos urging him to change course

The Washington Post has consistently produced high-quality, news cycle-leading reporting over the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic and unpredictable second administration. But that work has been produced under a cloud of uncertainty and rumors of widespread job cuts.

Those long-rumored cuts now appear to be close, with staffers expecting the ax to drop in early February – though nothing is certain. Inside the Post, staffers have tossed around estimates of potential cuts, with most exceeding 100, which would represent more than 10% of the newsroom – but no one really knows how widespread the cuts will be – or in fact if they will happen at all. The sections most likely to be affected by the cuts include sports, metro and foreign, according to staffers who spoke with the Guardian.

Liverpool and Tottenham are in different situations but face the same problem: a manager in the hot seat but few ideal options

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Another weekend, another few days of soul-searching for Liverpool and Tottenham. Liverpool had been on a 13-game unbeaten run before Saturday’s defeat to Bournemouth, but nobody could claim a string of results that included home draws with all three promoted clubs was convincing. Spurs had won just two of their 13 league games before Saturday’s away draw at Burnley, which was salvaged only thanks to an injury-time goal from Cristian Romero.

For both, European competition had offered some relief – Liverpool looked very good in a 3-0 win away to Marseille while Spurs, at least in the first half, produced probably their best performance since August in beating Borussia Dortmund 2-0 – but the sad truth is that the vast majority of European sides these days simply cannot live with the physicality of the Premier League. That’s not to say that Bournemouth or Burnley are better than Marseille or Dortmund, but it is to say that the challenge they pose a Premier League side is less.

As a war correspondent I’ve seen this strategy used before. Putin is weaponising the savage eastern European winter

In the winter of 1993, during the siege of Sarajevo, people burned books and furniture to keep warm. Water froze in pipes. Electricity vanished for the duration of the war. Children slept in coats and hats, their breath visible in dark rooms. Cold itself became a weapon of war.

I remember, when I was reporting from the Bosnian capital, seeing doctors operating by candlelight or wearing camping headlamps. I remember old people chopping wood in the park in the centre of the city until there were no trees left, then dragging it home on sledges. I remember the ground being too frozen to bury the many dead on the football pitch, which later became a cemetery. I remember a terrible, frozen day when I went to an old people’s home near a frontline and counted dead body after dead body, all frozen in their sleep.

Return of police sergeant Ran Gvili’s body should pave way for progress on second phase of Trump ceasefire plan

The remains of the Israeli police sergeant Ran Gvili, who was killed fighting Hamas-led militants on 7 October 2023, have been returned to Israel.

Militants took Gvili’s body to Gaza to use as a bargaining chip. He was the last of 251 people captured that day still held in the territory.

Rapper, now known as Ye, apologises to his family and to the Black community and says he loves Jews, blaming his bipolar disorder for his ‘poor judgment and reckless behaviour’

Kanye West has taken out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal apologising for his antisemitic behaviour. “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite,” he wrote. “I love Jewish people.”

In a letter titled “To Those I’ve Hurt”, he attributed his inflammatory actions, including making profoundly offensive statements and selling T-shirts bearing swastikas, to his bipolar-1 disorder, which he said he developed as a result of medical oversight failing to diagnose a frontal-lobe injury sustained in a car crash in 2002.

To Those I’ve Hurt:

Twenty-five years ago, I was in a car accident that broke my jaw and caused injury to the right frontal lobe of my brain. At the time, the focus was on the visible damage – the fracture, the swelling, and the immediate physical trauma. The deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed.

Holding multiple jobs without your employer’s knowledge has boomed in the age of hybrid working. Is it a canny response to job insecurity – or a fast track to getting fired?

Name: Polygamous working.

Age: It’s really a post-pandemic phenomenon.

If there’s one thing more beautiful than a goal in the 92nd minute it is a goal in the 96th, however ugly it actually is

The most romantic line ever written was sprayed on a dirty old wall somewhere in Italy and repeated everywhere else. You’re as beautiful as a goal in the 90th minute, the graffiti goes, and this was as beautiful as it gets until it got better. The board had gone up at the Ciutat de Valencia stadium on Friday night when Elche embarked upon a move that could have come from a cartoon or a console, the final scene in a film. Escape to Victory only more so, it started the way Michael Caine planned it, all arrows and crosses and ping-ping-ping, and finished the way Pelé actually played it: a picture of perfection which earned them a 2-2 draw in the derby at Levante. Or so it goes.

From one end to the other Elche had gone, the edge of their area to the heart of Levante’s. There had been a dribble out, a dozen passes, a touch for all of them. A superb assist, three defenders sent the wrong way. And then, two minutes into added time, the finish, Adam Boayar’s astonishing overhead kick sailing into the corner to complete a goal so good it was silly, so pristine as to be almost surreal. As the Ciutat fell silent, teammates piled on and fans in the away corner didn’t so much celebrate as put their hands over their mouths and try not to laugh, barely able to believe this.

Men in custody for allegedly broadcasting content likely to incite hatred from French coast

French authorities have arrested two far-right British activists in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.

An order had been issued on Friday prohibiting British activists from gathering for a planned “stop the boats” protest nicknamed Operation Overlord in the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. The order was due to expire at 8am on Monday but was extended for two days.

Business wing of Christian Democrats aims to scrap legal right to fewer hours, saying people should need permission

The business wing of Germany’s leading Christian Democratic Union party is proposing a ban on the legal entitlement to work part-time, arguing that those wishing to work fewer hours should have to acquire special permission to do so.

Currently, every employee in Europe’s largest economy has a fundamental right to carry out part-time work, with many, particularly women, often needing to do so for reasons relating to childcare or looking after elderly relatives.

If they’re trying to eliminate witnesses, they cannot eliminate us all

His last words, spoken to a woman who had been tackled to the ground and pepper-sprayed by nearby ICE agents, were “Are you OK?” Alex Pretti was an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital; those who knew him recalled, among other things, his devotion to his elderly dog, Joule, who died about a year ago.

In bystander videos taken of Pretti’s death, he can be seen holding up his phone to video ICE agents operating in Minneapolis, and waving cars around him to avoid the officers as they attack other onlookers. After he is dragged away from the woman he was trying to help, a gaggle of ICE officers surround Pretti and force him to the ground, beating and restraining him there as he struggles to free himself.

US senator warned that Republicans would lose elections if prices continue to rise, prompting president to respond ‘fuck you, Ted’

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Ted Cruz warned Donald Trump, his fellow Republican, that he would face a “bloodbath” in the November midterm elections if prices continued to rise, prompting the president to respond, “fuck you, Ted,” the US senator told donors, according to a secret recording of the private conversation obtained by Axios.

Cruz reportedly delivered the reality check to the president in a phone conversation after Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs a few months after returning to the Oval Office in early 2025. The president was unhappy, Cruz said – and yelled and cursed in a conversation with Republican senators.

Exclusive: Lured by false job adverts, they are unknowingly enlisted on arrival and put in mortal danger

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Stephen Oduor was looking forward to starting his new job as a plumber in Russia to support his family after months of unemployment. But soon after landing in St Petersburg from Nairobi with six other Kenyans one afternoon last August, he started feeling something was off.

The man who received them at the airport drove them to a house where their luggage was taken away and they were given black clothes and shoes to wear. Afterwards, they were taken to a police station where they were fingerprinted and forced to sign documents written in Russian, a language they did not understand.

‘I couldn’t think of a line for the chorus – but we had just been to France. I got Baudelaire into the lyrics somewhere, too’

This song was an ode to glam rock. My older sister was really into Marc Bolan and her passion for him and his sound really rubbed off on me. I love the vocal effects and drum sounds on those old records.

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Perhaps Manchester City and Liverpool cruising to recent title wins made us forget that, deep-set in the making of champions, there will be wobbles, difficulties, forks in the road. As Pep Guardiola would happily tell you now, it’s not supposed to be easy. Just look at Liverpool’s attempts to follow up last season’s serene gambol to the title. The message to Arsenal, to quote the late, great Douglas Adams, is: don’t panic. Mind, Adams also penned this passage in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: “What’s that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?” said the barman. “Arsenal without a chance?” “No, no,” said Ford, “it’s just that the world’s about to end.”

Elijah Wood joined protest in Utah’s Park City in memory of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, while Natalie Portman said what is happening is ‘absolutely horrific’

The Sundance film festival, which is currently under way in Park City, Utah, saw a mass protest against the two fatal shootings in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Sunday, along with high-profile interventions from major film industry figures.

Actor Natasha Lyonne was among those spreading social media posts about the protest, called “Sundancers Melt ICE”, which was called for Sunday afternoon. The organisers asked for a 10-minute “respectful” event at sunset on Park City’s Main Street to memorialise Renee Good, who was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on 7 January, and Alex Pretti, who was killed on Saturday by an agent of the Department of Homeland Security.

Fifty killed in one incident as Italian authorities estimate 380 people may have drowned last week

• Europe live – latest updates

Up to 380 people may have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean last week as Cyclone Harry battered southern Italy and Malta, the Italian coastguard has said, as a shipwreck with the loss of 50 lives was confirmed by Maltese authorities.

Just one person, who was hospitalised in Malta, survived the shipwreck, which happened on Friday.