The Guardian
2 days ago
Experts warn of threat to democracy from ‘AI bot swarms’ infesting social media
Misinformation technology could be deployed at scale to disrupt 2028 US presidential election, AI researchers sayPolitical leaders could soon launch swarms of human-imitating AI agents to reshape public opinion in a way that threatens to undermine democracy, a high profile group of experts in AI and online misinformation has warned.The Nobel peace prize-winning free-speech activist Maria Ressa, and leading AI and social science researchers from Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale are among a global consortium flagging the new “disruptive threat” posed by hard-to-detect, malicious “AI swarms” infesting social media and messaging channels. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
'We have clear red lines': Greenland’s PM says Trump's demands have been unacceptable – video
The US must respect Greenland's sovereignty, the integrity of its borders and international law, the self-governing territory's prime minister has said. Jens-Frederik Nielsen, speaking before an EU summit on Greenland, asked for calm talks and added that Greenland wanted to remain within the Kingdom of Denmark, the EU and NatoEurope news: latest updates Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Why did Trump chicken out in Greenland row? | The Latest
The US president has backed down in the row over Greenland after threatening Europe with tariffs and the potential use of military force. After talks with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, Donald Trump said the 'framework of a future deal' had been agreed for the territory to allow the US to build its military presence there. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian's Europe correspondent Jon Henley Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Ubisoft cancels projects and announces restructure in fight to stay competitive
Video game publisher to cancel Prince of Persia remake and close studios after several difficult yearsThe video game publisher behind the Assassin’s Creed series has cancelled six projects including a remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as it fights to stay competitive in the global gaming market.Ubisoft announced a sweeping reorganisation and said it would cancel six games, sending its shares to their lowest level in more than a decade on Thursday. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
‘It’s the underground Met Gala of concrete murderzone design’: welcome to the Quake Brutalist Game Jam
Quake Brutalist Jam began as a celebration of old-fashioned shooter level design, but its latest version is one step away from being a game in its own rightA lone concrete spire stands in a shallow bowl of rock, sheltering a rusted trapdoor from the elements. Standing on the trapdoor causes it to yawn open like iron jaws, dropping you through a vertical shaft into a subterranean museum. Here, dozens of doors line the walls of three vaulted grey galleries, each leading to a pocket dimension of dizzying virtual architecture and fierce gladiatorial combat.Welcome to Quake Brutalist Jam, the hottest community event for lovers of id Software’s classic first-person shooter from 1996. First run in 2022, the Jam started out as a celebration of old-school 3D level design, where veteran game developers, aspiring level designers and enthusiast modders gather to construct new maps and missions themed around the austere minimalism of brutalist architecture. Continue reading...
The Guardian
2 days ago
Trump’s bold economic promises on the campaign trail have led to a policy salad
The president’s scramble to win back voter affection after negative polls has led him to spew incoherent proposals“A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper,” Donald Trump promised Americans on the eve of the presidential election. During the US president’s first year back in office, however, food prices rose faster than they did during Joe Biden’s last.Facing negative poll numbers, Trump is taking a tack that few Republicans have dared contemplate before: spewing out a rain of often incoherent proposals to signal he feels voters’ pain, in order to recapture their affection. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
ActionAid to rethink child sponsorship as part of plan to ‘decolonise’ its work
Development charity’s new co-chief executives signal shift from controversial sponsor a child scheme launched in 1972 to long-term grassroots fundingChild sponsorship schemes that allow donors to handpick children to support in poor countries can carry racialised, paternalistic undertones and need to be transformed, the newly appointed co-chief executives of ActionAid UK said as they set out to “decolonise” the organisation’s work.ActionAid began in 1972 by finding sponsors for schoolchildren in India and Kenya, but Taahra Ghazi and Hannah Bond have launched their co-leadership this month with the goal of shifting narratives around aid from sympathy towards solidarity and partnership with global movements. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Trump’s rambling Davos speech rehashes warped ideas of US supremacy
The president’s fixation on ‘piece of ice’ Greenland carries an echo of Vladimir Putin’s claims about CrimeaThe good news headline from Donald Trump’s trip to Davos was that he seemed to rule out force for now in his urgent quest to acquire Greenland. The bad news: he started talking about Iceland as well.What might have been a big reveal about the next step in Trump’s imperial ambitions was more likely a slip, though all speculation about the workings of the presidential brain is by now a guess at best. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Why is the UK investing in £6.45bn Kraken when it doesn’t need public money? | Nils Pratley
Given the software company’s size and funding options, British Business Bank’s investment looks like mission creepThe state-owned multi-tentacled British Business Bank has never been a simple organisation to understand, but at least one could vaguely grasp its intended role in life. “Our mission is to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK,” declares its website.Jolly good. For decades, complaints have been heard about gaps in the financing ecosystem for startups and for promising young UK companies, particularly those in tech-related and life science fields, or those spinning out of universities. So one can applaud the existence of a large and distinctly British source of capital to “crowd in”, as politicians like to say, private venture funds. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
The ‘rules-based order’ Davos craves has bigger problems than Trump: it represents a world that no longer exists
The global economic system doesn’t even benefit its US and European creators any more – let alone indebted nations or emerging giantsDonald Trump represents everything that the Davos crowd hates – and it is unlikely they are any more well-disposed towards him after being forced to listen to more than an hour of the president’s rambling speech today. He is a protectionist, not a free trader. He thinks the climate crisis is a hoax and is suspicious of multilateral organisations. He prefers power plays to dialogue and he doesn’t have any time for the “woke” capitalism that Davos has been keen to promote, with its focus on gender equality and ethical investment. The shindig’s organisers, the World Economic Forum (WEF), had to agree to sideline those issues in order to secure Trump’s appearance.For decades, anti-globalisation protesters have sought to shut down the WEF. Thanks to Trump’s threat to take over Greenland, their prayers may soon be answered. In today’s world, Davos is an irrelevance and it seems fitting that Trump should be on hand this week to deliver the coup de grace to the liberal international rules-based order that the WEF prides itself on upholding. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Animal Crossing’s new update has revived my pandemic sanctuary
After years away revisiting my abandoned island uncovers new features, old memories and the quiet reassurance that you can go home again• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereNintendo’s pandemic-era hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons got another major update last week, along with a £5 Switch 2 upgrade that makes it look and run better on the new console. Last year, I threw a new year’s party for my children in the game, but apart from that I have barely touched my island since the depths of lockdown, when sunny Alba was my preferred escape from the monotonous misery of the real world. Back then, I spent more than 200 hours on this island. Stepping out of her (now massive) house, my avatar’s hair is all ruffled and her eyes sleepy after a long, long time aslumber.I half-expected Alba to be practically in ruins, but it’s not that bad. Aside from a few cockroaches in the basement and a bunch of weeds poking up from the snow, everything is as it was. The paths that I had laid out around the island still lead me to the shop, the tailors, the museum; I stop by to visit Blathers the curatorial owl, and he gives me a new mission to find a pigeon called Brewster so that we can open a museum cafe. “It’s been four years and eight months!” exclaims one of my longtime residents, a penguin called Aurora. That can’t be right, can it? Have I really been ignoring her since summer 2021? Thankfully, Animal Crossing characters are very forgiving. I get the impression they’ve been getting along perfectly fine without me. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
TR-49 review – inventive narrative deduction game steeped in the strangest of wartime secrets
PC; InkleThe UK game developer’s latest is a database mystery constructed from an archive of fictional books. Their combined contents threaten to crack the code of realityBletchley Park: famed home of the Enigma machine, Colossus computer, and, according to the premise of TR-49, an altogether stranger piece of tech. Two engineers created a machine that feeds on the most esoteric books: treatises on quantum computing, meditations on dark matter, pulp sci-fi novels and more. In the mid-2010s, when the game is set, Britain finds itself again engulfed by war, this time with itself. The arcane tool may hold the key to victory.You play as budding codebreaker Abbi, a straight-talking northerner who is sifting through the machine now moved to a crypt beneath Manchester Cathedral. She has no idea how it works and neither do you. So you start tinkering. You input a four-digit code – two letters followed by two numbers. What do these correspond to? The initials of people and the year of a particular book’s publication. Input a code correctly and you are whisked away to the corresponding page, as if using a particularly speedy microfiche reader. These pages – say, by famed fictional physicist, Joshua Silverton – are filled with clues and, should you get lucky, further codes and even the titles of particular works. Your primary goal is to match codes with the corresponding book title in a bid to find the most crucial text of all, Endpeace, the key to understanding the erudite ghosts of this machine. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Driving test cheating up 47% in Great Britain, prompting road safety concerns
DVSA says increase to 2,844 recorded cases in year to end of September is down to more cheating and better detectionAttempts to cheat on driving tests in England, Scotland and Wales increased by 47% in a year, figures show, raising concerns about road safety.There were 2,844 cases recorded in the year to the end of September 2025, according to figures by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), up from 1,940 during the previous 12 months, and 1,274 in 2018-19. Continue reading...
The Guardian
4 days ago
Head of US Africa bureau urges staff to highlight US ‘generosity’ despite aid cuts
Email sent to diplomats by state department office’s new boss is labelled ‘racist’ after dismissing Africa as a priorityUS diplomats have been encouraged to “unabashedly and aggressively” remind African governments about the “generosity” of the American people, according to a leaked email sent to staff in the US state department’s Bureau of African Affairs this January and obtained by the Guardian.“It’s not gauche to remind these countries of the American people’s generosity in containing HIV/Aids or alleviating famine,” says the email. Continue reading...
The Guardian
4 days ago
Big tech continues to bend the knee to Trump a year after his inauguration
Inside the big rewards tech titans have reaped from caving to Trump. Plus, a look at the US datacenter boom and the effects of Australia’s social media banHello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the Guardian’s US tech editor.One year ago today, Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States. Standing alongside him that day were the leaders of the tech industry’s most powerful companies, who had donated to him in an unprecedented bending of the knee. In the ensuing year, the companies have reaped enormous rewards from their alliance with Trump, which my colleague Nick Robins-Early and I wrote about last month after Trump signed an executive order prohibiting states from passing laws regulating AI. Trump has sponsored the tech industry with billions in government funding and with diplomatic visits that featured CEOs as his fellow negotiators in massive, lucrative deals. Continue reading...
The Guardian
4 days ago
Macron tells Davos of shift towards 'a world without rules' – video
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, told the World Economic Forum, in Davos, that the world was sliding away from democracy and international law towards autocracy and violence.'It's a shift to a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest,' he said on Tuesday. Imperial ambitions were resurfacing, he added, and Donald Trump's tariff war aimed to 'weaken and subordinate' EuropeEurope live Continue reading...
The Guardian
4 days ago
Why the UK won’t retaliate to Trump tariffs over Greenland – The Latest
Keir Starmer has played down the possibility of retaliatory tariffs on the US, after Donald Trump threatened them against Nato allies unless they support his plan to take Greenland. At an emergency press conference, Starmer said tariffs would be the “wrong thing to do”.Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s senior political correspondent, Peter Walker – watch on YouTube Continue reading...
The Guardian
5 days ago
A beginner’s guide to Arc Raiders: what it is and how you start playing
Embark Studios’ multiplayer extraction shooter game has already sold 12m copies in just three months. Will it capture you too?Released last October Arc Raiders has swiftly become one of the most successful online shooters in the world, shifting 12m copies in barely three months and attracting as many players as established mega hits such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. So what is it about this sci-fi blaster that’s captured so many people – and how can you get involved?So what is Arc Raiders? Continue reading...
The Guardian
5 days ago
Starmer: ‘We don’t want a trade war’ – podcast
Keir Starmer has held an emergency press conference in response to Donald Trump’s tariff threats over Greenland. Pippa and Kiran discuss what the UK prime minister said and how it may be received Continue reading...
The Guardian
5 days ago
Out of sight: spectacular HS2 tunnels offer glimmer of hope for stalling project
Despite much soul-searching over UK’s inability to build infrastructure, two sections of HS2 under Chilterns are being hailed for their engineeringSeventy metres down, in deep incognito beneath a disguised ventilation shaft in the Chilterns countryside, lies HS2’s buried treasure: two 10-mile tunnels, built to avoid an area of outstanding natural beauty, eerily spectacular in gleaming concrete.They are, laments a staffer on the high-speed railway scheme, what all of the route should look like by now: pristine, fully constructed, and just waiting for a railway to run through them. Continue reading...
The Guardian
6 days ago
‘Brazen’ political influence of rich laid bare as wealth of billionaires reaches $18.3tn, says Oxfam
Governments opting for oligarchy while brutally repressing protests over austerity and lack of jobs, charity report saysThe world saw a record number of billionaires created last year, with a collective wealth of $18.3tn (£13.7tn), while global efforts stalled in the fight against poverty and hunger.Oxfam’s annual survey of global inequality has revealed that the number of billionaires surpassed 3,000 for the first time during 2025. Since 2020, their collective wealth grew by 81%, or $8.2tn, which the charity claims would be enough to eradicate global poverty 26 times over. Continue reading...
The Guardian
6 days ago
Uganda’s president calls opponents 'terrorists' in victory speech
Yoweri Museveni wins seventh term but poll criticised by observers and rights groups over repression of opposition and internet blackoutUganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, fresh from winning a seventh term in office at 81, said on Sunday that the opposition were “terrorists” who had tried to use violence to overturn the election results.Official results showed Museveni winning a landslide with 72% of the vote, but the poll was criticised by African election observers and rights groups due to the heavy repression of the opposition and an internet blackout. Continue reading...
The Guardian
6 days ago
Davos 2026: the last-chance saloon to save the old world order?
Donald Trump will lead the largest US delegation ever at the World Economic Forum, as others plan a fightback against his policies including his latest tariff threats“A Spirit of Dialogue”: the theme for this year’s World Economic Forum, the gathering of the global elite in the sparkling Alpine air of Davos, seems a heroic stretch, when star guest Donald Trump has spent the past year smashing up the world order.The president will touch down alongside the snowcapped Swiss mountains with the largest US delegation ever seen at the WEF, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the special envoy Steve Witkoff. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 week ago
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