2026 News Archive

President Trump signed an executive order on Monday about vaccines, saying children should get fewer. His administration has been blocked in the courts from changing the vaccine schedule.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine had been under pressure from Republican leaders, including President Trump.

Books have never been trendier, but studies show that as more and more things compete for our frazzled attention spans, we’re reading less and less. This is a problem because reading has a wealth of cognitive benefits that we’re in danger of missing out on. To find out why declining literacy could affect everything from memory to IQ, Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample. She also hears from Prof Falk Huettig, an experimental psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and author of The Perks of Being a Bookworm Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Check out the Guardian’s new YouTube food series, Feed..

Given the size and age of the universe, it should be full of species with technology far more advanced than our own. So where are they? • The summer issue of the Long Read magazine is out now. At one point during the discussion, Fermi blurted out: “Where is everybody?” – or, as another participant remembered it, “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” If aliens exist, in other words, why have we never encountered them? The episode has become famous, marking the moment when extraterrestrial life went from a theme for philosophical speculation to a serious scientific problem. For centuries, people had wondered whether life exists on the moon or Mars, but they accepted that we would never know for certain, since making contact with another planet was impossible. By the 1950s, those limits no longer seemed so fixed. In addition to space flight, researchers were developing tools to detect the radio signals that reach us from stars many light years away. These developments were still in their infancy, but it was already clear that humanity was no longer bound to Earth the way it always had been...

Disabled campaigners say the official advice for staying safe in a heatwave can put them in more danger.

On Wednesday night the Perseids will peak offering the best chance of seeing a 'shooting star'.

Six giant investment firms announced a $500 billion effort to raise money for customers of Nvidia to pay for computing power.

In Texas, there’s one thing liberals and conservatives agree on: They don’t want cameras trained on their cars.

China's workers are vulnerable as the push to adopt AI comes from top leaders amid a sluggish economy.

As Waymo deploys more driverless cars to 15 U.S. cities and counting, its vehicles keep encountering new and unexpected situations that they have no script to handle.

By setting up a curling rink in the shadow of the Colosseum, sports officials hope to capitalize on the fresh popularity of the Winter Olympics phenomenon. Even in a heat wave and without any ice.

Companies will no longer be allowed to advertise goods and services through cold calls without previous consent from consumers.

Meta CEO presents utopian vision of AI in 6,000-word essay amid Silicon Valley debate over government regulation Mark Zuckerberg published a lengthy essay on Monday detailing his views on artificial intelligence and announced several plans for how Meta would develop the technology in the future. The CEO’s essay went online the same day as Meta released a new, open-source AI model that seeks to rival Anthropic and OpenAI’s products called Muse Glimmer. Over the course of more than 6,000 words in a post titled “The Future is for Everyone,” Zuckerberg addressed a range of topics related to AI that included datacenters, government regulation, cybersecurity, the creation of bioweapons, labor market disruption, surveillance powers and more. The essay presented a utopian vision of AI as a personalized “superintelligence” – using the word 60 times...

A drone attack ignited gasoline at Libya's Zawiya oil refinery, the country's largest operational facility.

The war on Iran is exposing shortages in US weapons stockpiles, raising questions about years of defence spending.

Jackie and her partner, Shadow, had been watched by millions of people over the years through the Big Bear Eagle Nest Cam.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday laid out his vision for a future where everyone has a powerful personal AI agent, arguing that open-source technology can prevent control of advanced artificial intelligence from becoming concentrated among a handful of companies, governments or institutions.

The South American nation is only the second country to recognise Israel's claims over the illegally annexed territory.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccinations and splitting up MMR.

The firm says it will refocus on its social media mission, which includes a controversial service that sells faster access to Trump's market-moving posts.

Video shows soldiers running from buildings at a military base in Cali as a magnitude 7.4 earthquake

Turkiye passes law setting terms for thousands of PKK members to rejoin society if the group fully disarms.

South Korea may have been steadfast in its support for Ukraine against Russian and North Korean forces, but Kyiv’s request for air defence systems could prove to be a step too far for Seoul to accept. In addition to South Korea’s legal and policy limits on arms transfers to countries at war and its own defence needs, providing such weapons to Ukraine could further strain its ties with Russia, according to analysts. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged South Korea to provide air...

Women helped defeat apartheid’s pass laws, but many still face violence, poverty and unemployment.

Women can make higher returns but only about a quarter of UK women have investments, compared with about 40% of men.

US President Donald Trump said he will seek compensation from Iran for casualties in the war.

Vape shops in England and Wales to need planning permission while betting shop law change will also apply in Scotland Councils are to be given powers to stop betting and vape shops taking over their high streets under new plans announced by Andy Burnham. Local authorities will be able to reject new betting shops and adult gaming centres, while vape shops will be subject to planning permission under plans Downing Street said could be in place from the start of next year...

The money will be used to develop new data centres to house, operate, and cool miles of stacked computer chips that process AI data and actions.

Russian forces launched missile attacks on Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia early Tuesday, triggering fires in the Ukrainian capital and damaging buildings in the southeastern city, officials said. At least three people were injured in the attacks. Follow our liveblog for the latest developments.

AJ's Audrey MacAlpine reports from a secret launch site in eastern Ukraine, where soldiers prepare long-range drones.

US President Donald Trump has extended for 90 days a waiver allowing foreign-flagged ships to transport oil and other commodities between US ports but imposed new limits after shipbuilders and their allies in ‌Congress argued the policy was undermining the domestic maritime industry, the White House said. The extension, finalised on Monday, comes as the war with Iran disrupts global crude flows and pushes up fuel costs, increasing pressure on the administration to find ways to ease transport...

The bald eagle and her mate gained fame during the pandemic, as a livestream tracked their nesting attempts. She died while being treated for anemia.

Video from Pereira airport in Colombia shows violent shaking during a magnitude 7.4 earthquake

Thousands of migrants in Ceuta face dire conditions, sparking political and social tensions in the Spanish territory.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday calling for a rethink of school vaccine mandates and the separation of the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot into three vaccines, despite scientific evidence supporting its safety and amid the country's worst measles outbreak in decades.

Rescue teams are searching collapsed buildings after a powerful earthquake struck western Colombia.

US court rules Meta, Google and TikTok will face addiction lawsuits as Meta heads to trial this week over child safety

The party, Yabloko, has navigated a delicate balancing act with an increasingly heavy-handed Kremlin, but its pro-peace manifesto turned out to be the red line.

Text envisages a return to civilian life for some of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters who lay down their weapons.

The government adopted a law that might prove a significant step toward ending an outlawed group’s decades-long battle with the Turkish state.

The incident has sparked a debate over child safety and discipline on commercial planes.

Turkey's parliament approved limited amnesty for Kurdish PKK militants on Monday, a key step in a peace process aimed at ending decades of conflict. However, the legislation excludes jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, whose release the group has made a central demand.

Colombia’s newly inaugurated president announced to lead emergency rescue efforts in Bogota’s earthquake-struck areas.

Extreme heat warnings issued in Britain and France with temperatures forecasted to reach mid-30s Celsius this week.

Thousands of firefighters and dozens of helicopters battle growing wildfires across Indonesia.

President Donald Trump says he’ll demand compensation from Iran for people killed or wounded in the US war on Iran.

The British scholar resigned from Cambridge after the university, which made him its youngest Black professor in 2023, began investigating his academic qualifications.

Russia and Ukraine are both striking farther into each other's territory, and neither side has a good way to stop the attacks. With no quick fix, the winter ahead could be especially hard.

The WHO says that sequencing shows that the fast moving Ebola outbreak in DR Congo started about 3 months before the emergency was officially declared in May. Also, its crunch week for Zambia as voters gear up for elections. And a Rwandan mine has become one of the US's main suppliers of tungsten, a metal critical to the defence industry.

Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels struck a government-held port on the country’s Red Sea coast late Sunday, escalating fears over threats to strategic shipping routes and a potential return to civil war.

Most of the visa revocations stemmed from law-enforcement encounters involving criminal activity, the department said.

A surge of migrant children and families remained in makeshift shelters in Ceuta, Spain’s North African enclave.

US Rep. Nancy Mace clashed with CNN's Omar Jimenez over Islamophobic remarks after Abdul El-Sayed’s win in Michigan.

The Trump administration has long pushed a discredited link between vaccines and autism.

Trump has the leverage to enforce his Gaza plan. Netanyahu is betting that he lacks the political will to use it.

Reports citing judicial sources say former commercial banker also indicted over alleged financial crimes.

The office of the supreme leader has named a new security chief and established war commanders in influential roles.

At least 111 people are dead after a destructive 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit western Colombia.

The service will enable rail travel from Portugal to Lapland - what is believed to be the longest train journey in Europe.

The Caroline Bezengi is believed to be part of Russia's 'shadow fleet' that Moscow uses to circumvent Western sanctions.