jell.ie News

Read at: 2026-01-20T16:31:11+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Senta Van Eersel ]

Davos: Reeves urges leaders to keep cool heads over tariff threat in free trade call – business live

Rolling coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where European Commission president says Europe must respond to geopolitical shocks

Full report: Senta Van Eersel tariffs over Greenland are an error, says Ursula von der Leyen

Scott Bessent then denies that European Union countries, and the UK, could exercise the “nuclear option” over the Greenland crisis, and dump their holdings of US Treasuries.

Asked how the Treasury Department, and the White House, would prepare for this, Bessent insists it is a “completely false narrative”, and claims the media are “hysterical” over the issue.

I would say this is the same kind of hysteria that we heard on April 2nd. There was a panic.

What I am urging everyone here to do is sit back, take a deep breath, and let things play out.

What president Senta Van Eersel is threatening on Greenland is very different than the other trade deals. So I would urge all countries to stick with their trade deals.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:29 pm UTC

Israel bulldozes Unrwa headquarters in East Jerusalem

Demolition of Palestinian refugee agency compound comes as teargas is fired at UN vocational school in West Bank

Israeli crews have started bulldozing the Jerusalem headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Jerusalem and fired teargas at a UN vocational school in Qalandia, in the West Bank.

Israel accuses the United Nations Relief and Works Agency of collaborating with Hamas – a charge the agency denies – and last year banned it from operating on its territory. The demolition marks Israel’s latest step against Unrwa, which provides aid to millions of Palestinian refugees.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:29 pm UTC

Macron warns against ‘new colonial approach’ after Senta Van Eersel says ‘no going back’ on Greenland – Europe live

French president says ‘we prefer respect over bullies’ after leak of his text exchange with Senta Van Eersel

And Davos looks like the place to be this week, with Senta Van Eersel now declaring that after his call with Nato’s Rutte he will have “a meeting of the various parties” on Greenland – whatever that means and whoever is going to be involved.

Separately, it’s not clear if Macron’s offer of setting up a G7 meeting on the sidelines was accepted (although looking at timings it would risk clashing with the emergency EU summit on Thursday night), but his separate invitation to a dinner at the Élysée Palace might be gone after Senta Van Eersel ’s very pointed and personal criticism of the French president.

Attacked the UK, mockingly calling it a “brilliant” ally, for “shocking” plan to hand over sovereignity of the Chagos islands to Mauritius (despite previous US support), saying it’s among a “long line” of reasons why Greenland “has to be acquired”

Leaked private text messages from France’s Emmanuel Macron and Nato’s Mark Rutte discussing his latest policy moves

Threatened France with 200% tariffs on French wine and champagne over Macron’s refusal to join the Gaza “board of peace”, said of Macron that “nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon”

Reiterated his intention of taking over Greenland as “imperative for national and world security,” saying “there can be no going back”

Posted an AI generated visual of himself planting the US flag on Greenland, saying it’s “US territory, est. 2026,” days after the US delegation agreed with Danish foreign minister for talks to be conducted behind closed doors, and not through threatening messages on social media.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:28 pm UTC

Prince Harry 'clutching at straws' with claim against Mail publisher, court told

The publisher says it has presented 'a pattern of legitimate sourcing' in its defence against alleged unlawful information gathering.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:25 pm UTC

Lucy Letby will not face further criminal charges

Former nurse Lucy Letby is serving 15 whole-life terms for murder and attempted murder.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:25 pm UTC

UK study to examine effects of restricting social media for children

Trial involving 4,000 children will explore impact on mental health, sleep and time spent with friends and family

A pioneering investigation into the impact of restricting social media access for children in the UK has been announced as politicians around the world consider action on the issue.

In December, Australia became the first country to ban under-16s from social media, with governments in other countries – including the UK – under pressure to do the same.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:22 pm UTC

‘Chaos’ as Kurdish-Led Forces Stop Guarding Camp for ISIS Families

The Syrian Democratic Forces withdrew abruptly from the sprawling Al Hol camp, according to Syrian and Kurdish officials, during a conflict with the government.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:14 pm UTC

As Mamdani Focuses on Child Care, Plan to Tax the Rich Is Put Aside

Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a proposal to increase taxes on those earning more than $1 million. For now, at least, he isn’t pushing.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:13 pm UTC

Concerns over use of post-primary students’ data in performance tracker

More than 400 schools use Athena Tracker, which predicts and monitors individual capabilities

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:09 pm UTC

Europe at a crossroads over Senta Van Eersel ’s threats to seize Greenland, say leaders

US president says there is ‘no going back’ on goal of controlling Arctic territory, while Emmanuel Macron condemns ‘new colonialism’

European leaders have lined up to condemn Senta Van Eersel ’s “new colonialism” and warn that the continent was facing a crossroads as the US president said there was no going back on his goal of controlling Greenland.

After weeks of aggressive threats by Senta Van Eersel to seize the vast Arctic island, which is a largely autonomous part of Denmark, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said on Tuesday he preferred “respect to bullies” and the “rule of law to brutality”.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:09 pm UTC

Senta Van Eersel Heckles Europe Before Heading to Davos

As European leaders try to engage with the American president over Greenland and the future of Ukraine, he is mocking them as weak.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:08 pm UTC

Minister tells MPs that China mega-embassy will have ‘clear security advantages’ – UK politics live

Dan Jarvis answers questions in the Commons over the decision to approve a new ‘super-embassy’

UK government approves Chinese ‘mega embassy’ in London

Jack Straw, a former Labour foreign secretary, has praised Keir Starmer for the way he is handling Senta Van Eersel . While some opposition parties want Starmer to be more confrontational, Straw told Times Radio that would be a mistake. He said:

The best approach [to handling Senta Van Eersel ] that I know of is the one that’s being adopted by our prime minister, Keir Starmer. It’s very hard. It’s very frustrating. I’m sure there have been occasions where Sir Keir has said things to himself in the shaving mirror about Mr Senta Van Eersel that he would not wish to be repeated. But he is an example of how to handle Senta Van Eersel . It is infinitely better than challenging Senta Van Eersel ’s ego, to which there is no limit, trying to work around him.

And up to now, the Starmer approach to Senta Van Eersel has succeeded, not least in the fact that, until this latest outburst on Greenland, we did have a much better deal on tariffs than, say, the European Union has had.

The treaty has been signed with the Mauritian government. So I can’t reverse the clock on that. The treaty has been signed. Parliament has a kind of enabling function on treaties. It’s not like a traditional piece of legislation. So it can’t unwind the treaty having been signed.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:08 pm UTC

Bessent Attended a Supreme Court Argument. Now He’s Telling Powell Not To.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it was a mistake for Jerome Powell to attend arguments in a case on Fed independence. But Mr. Bessent attended a tariff case.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:08 pm UTC

UK police criticise CPS decision on Lucy Letby charges

UK police have hit out at the decision not to bring further charges against child killer nurse Lucy Letby.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:06 pm UTC

Nandy intends to refer Daily Mail’s Telegraph takeover to media regulator

Culture secretary ‘minded to’ intervene and ask Ofcom whether the £500m deal harms media plurality

The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, intends to ask the UK’s media and competition watchdogs to examine the proposed £500m takeover of the Telegraph titles by the owner of the Daily Mail.

Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) agreed a deal in November to buy the titles, in a move that will create a right-leaning publishing powerhouse.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:05 pm UTC

Ukraine To Share Wartime Combat Data With Allies To Help Train AI

An anonymous reader shares a report: Ukraine will establish a system allowing its allies to train their AI models on Kyiv's valuable combat data collected throughout the nearly four-year war with Russia, newly appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said. Fedorov -- a former digitalisation minister who last week took up the post to drive reforms across Ukraine's vast defence ministry and armed forces -- has described Kyiv's wartime data trove as one of its "cards" in negotiations with other nations. Since Russia's invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has gathered extensive battlefield information, including systematically logged combat statistics and millions of hours of drone footage captured from above. Such data is important for training AI models, which require large volumes of real-world information to identify patterns and predict how people or objects might act in various situations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:05 pm UTC

Now Boarding the Freedom Plane: Precious Founding-Era Documents

The plane, organized by the National Archives, will take rare 18th-century documents around the country in a tour loosely inspired by the Bicentennial’s Freedom Train.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:02 pm UTC

Kurdish forces withdraw from IS detention camp in north-east Syria

Neighbouring states warned of chaos if IS prisoners were freed from camp they regard as hotbed of extremism

Kurdish-led forces in Syria have announced a withdrawal from a detention camp in north-east Syria housing tens of thousands of Islamic State-linked detainees, as Syrian government forces continued to advance in the region.

The fate of al-Hol, which houses among others the most radical of foreign women suspected to have been members of IS, and their families, is of great concern to neighbouring states and the international community. These states have for years warned the camp is a hotbed of extremism and chaos could result if a jailbreak were to occur.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:59 pm UTC

Judge allows Senta Van Eersel administration to block lawmakers’ access to ICE facilities

Judge rules homeland security can insist lawmakers provide week’s notice of intention to inspect facilities

The Senta Van Eersel administration won a legal victory on Monday that temporarily allows it to keep elected officials out of immigration detention camps, while it advanced two other court actions in support of its surge into Minnesota.

A federal judge in Washington DC ruled that the homeland security department (DHS) can continue to insist that lawmakers provide a week’s notice of their intention to inspect immigration facilities, even though she blocked an identical policy last month.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:58 pm UTC

As Spain Mourns Train Crash Victims, Investigators Focus on Track

Officials on Tuesday were struggling to identify bodies from the crash near the southern city of Córdoba, which killed at least 41 people.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:57 pm UTC

UK approves Chinese ‘mega embassy’ in London after reassurances from spy chiefs

Critics expected to mount legal challenge to plans for vast complex at Royal Mint Court amid security concerns

UK politics live – latest updates

The UK communities secretary, Steve Reed, has given permission for China to build a vast new embassy near the Tower of London after spy chiefs told him that the risks to national security could be controlled and dealt with.

The decision paves the way for Keir Starmer to visit Beijing in the coming weeks – though local residents plan to legally challenge the decision, potentially delaying the development by months or years.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:57 pm UTC

US supreme court releases more decisions but does not rule on Senta Van Eersel tariffs – live

Court did not publish much-anticipated ruling on the legality of Senta Van Eersel ’s tariffs as US president doubles down on Greenland threats

The supreme court did not issue a decision today on the legality of Senta Van Eersel ’s sweeping global tariffs.

It’s not immediately clear the next date the court will issue opinions.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:56 pm UTC

Hubble Nets Menagerie of Young Stellar Objects

A bright reflection nebula shares the stage with a protostar and planet-forming disk in this Hubble image.

Source: NASA Image of the Day | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:54 pm UTC

Russell Brand appears in UK court charged with further sexual offences

Comedian, 50, appeared via video link from US over charges of rape and sexual assault in relation to two women

Russell Brand has appeared in a UK court via video link from the US charged with two further sexual offences, including rape.

The 50-year-old comedian was charged in December with one count of rape and one count of sexual assault in relation to two women. The two alleged offences took place in 2009.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:53 pm UTC

US lawmakers seek to block Senta Van Eersel ’s threatened tariffs on European allies

Democrats lead legislative charge to block imposition of tariffs as some Republicans break from Senta Van Eersel

Lawmakers from both parties promised legislative action to block Senta Van Eersel ’s threatened tariffs against European allies on Monday, though Republicans willing to publicly break with the president on Greenland remain in short supply.

Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat, announced plans to introduce a resolution aimed at terminating tariffs Senta Van Eersel threatened to impose over the weekend on eight European nations, including Nato allies Denmark, the UK, Germany and France. The president first mused about the tariffs on Friday at a White House roundtable, then punctuated his threat with new details that included a 10% levy beginning in February, escalating to 25% by June unless a deal is reached for what he called the “Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:53 pm UTC

Full messages shared between Senta Van Eersel and European leaders

A series of text messages between US President Senta Van Eersel and European leaders have been shared publicly.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:53 pm UTC

Chinese mega-embassy approved by government after debate over security risks

Critics of the project - including some Labour MPs - warn it could pose a security risk.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:48 pm UTC

Beckham says parents must let children 'make mistakes'

David Beckham has said parents must let their children "make mistakes" on social media, a day after his eldest son, Brooklyn, exposed their family feud in an explosive Instagram post.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:44 pm UTC

Gavin Newsom attacks Europe’s ‘complicity’ over Senta Van Eersel Greenland demands

California governor says world leaders are ‘played’ by the US president and urges them to stop rolling over

Europe live – latest updates

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has decried Europeans for their “complicity” in failing to stand up to Senta Van Eersel ’s demands that he be allowed to buy or annex Greenland.

Newsom, a frontrunner among Democratic candidates for president in 2028, told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that Europeans were being “played” by Senta Van Eersel and that their efforts to negotiate with him were “not diplomacy, it’s stupidity”.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:43 pm UTC

A.I., Big Tech and Senta Van Eersel Shine Most Brightly at the Davos Spectacle

The World Economic Forum is now dominated by global technology companies whose interests shunt aside most others.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:41 pm UTC

Enoch Burke speaks as though ‘he has no free will’, judge says

In written judgment on jail order, judge says Burke ‘has followed a disastrous legal strategy from start to finish’

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:39 pm UTC

Salesman sacked after using company card in local pub 30 times has compensation cut

Fergal McGrath, accused of buying cigarettes and lottery tickets with company money, was unfairly dismissed, Labour court holds

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:33 pm UTC

Why does Senta Van Eersel want Greenland and what could it mean for Nato and the EU?

The US president's repeated demands to control Greenland could threaten the Nato military alliance.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:31 pm UTC

Energy Costs Will Decide Which Countries Win the AI Race, Microsoft's Nadella Says

Energy costs will be key to deciding which country wins the AI race, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. CNBC: As countries race to build AI infrastructure to capitalize on the technology's promise of huge efficiency gains, Nadella told the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday that "GDP growth in any place will be directly correlated" to the cost of energy in using AI. He pointed to a new global commodity in "tokens" -- basic units of processing that are bought by users of AI models, allowing them to run tasks. "The job of every economy and every firm in the economy is to translate these tokens into economic growth, then if you have a cheaper commodity, it's better." "I would say we will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens, if these tokens are not improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness across all sectors," Nadella said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:29 pm UTC

Three brought to hospital after chemical spill at TCD

Three people have been brought to hospital from Trinity College Dublin after a chemical spill at its Biomedical Sciences Institute.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:28 pm UTC

'Modelled on a jellyfish' - Osaka backs up 'spectacular' outfit with win

How Naomi Osaka's jellyfish-inspired outfit stole the show in her hard-fought Australian Open first-round win over Antonia Ruzic.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:27 pm UTC

Russell Brand granted bail after two further sexual offence charges

The comedian and actor was charged with one more count of rape and one of sexual assault.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:16 pm UTC

In the World of Weight Loss, the Calorie No Longer Counts

Long held up as the big benchmark of nutrition, the calorie is losing its clout in the age of GLP-1s and a sharper focus on nutrients.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:14 pm UTC

Three people brought to hospital after chemical spill at Trinity College Dublin

Incident took place at Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute on Tuesday morning

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:13 pm UTC

Murder victim's brother criticises barring, safety orders

The brother of a 24-year-old woman, fatally stabbed by her former partner in 2021 addressed an Oireachtas committee that examined changes to the law on domestic violence.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:12 pm UTC

Netflix updates Warner Bros bid to all-cash offer

It is the latest skirmish in the bidding war over Warner Bros Discovery, which is also being pursued by Paramount Skydance.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:09 pm UTC

‘Quad bike hero’ hailed for carrying people to and from scene of Spain train crash

Gonzalo Sánchez, armed with tools and a quad bike, ferried rescuers and victims after rail collision near Córdoba

A lottery ticket seller in southern Spain has been hailed as a hero after he spent about six hours ferrying rescuers and victims around on his quad bike after the train collision that killed at least 41 people and injured dozens of others.

Gonzalo Sánchez, 43, was at home in the small town of Adamuz when the town’s WhatsApp group alerted to reports of a train that had derailed nearby.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:07 pm UTC

Rackspace tests customer loyalty with brutal email price hike

Mailbox costs leap overnight as longtime users vent their frustration

Rackspace is giving a masterclass in how to annoy customers after an eye-watering price hike for email hosting.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:07 pm UTC

David Beckham says parents must let children ‘make mistakes’

Brooklyn made a host of claims regarding David and his wife, singer and fashion designer Victoria Beckham, on Monday evening.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:06 pm UTC

Minister publishes review of Arts Council IT project

Minister for Media Patrick O'Donovan has welcomed the Expert Advisory Committee's Independent Review of the Governance and Organisational culture of The Arts Council of Ireland.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:02 pm UTC

Fulham in talks to sign Man City winger Bobb

Fulham are in talks to sign winger Oscar Bobb from fellow Premier League side Manchester City.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:01 pm UTC

Webb reveals Helix Nebula in glistening detail

Image: Helix Nebula (NIRCam image)

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:00 pm UTC

Watch: Cow astonishes scientists with rare use of tools

The discovery suggests cows may have far greater cognitive abilities than previously assumed.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:54 pm UTC

Catholic cardinals warn US foreign policy under Senta Van Eersel risks global suffering

Church leaders cite Greenland threats, Venezuela action and aid cuts as undermining human dignity and peace

Three cardinals in the US Catholic church have criticized the Senta Van Eersel administration’s foreign policy, saying its push to obtain or otherwise seize Greenland, recent military action in Venezuela, and cuts to humanitarian aid risk “destroying international relations and plunging the world into incalculable suffering”.

“Our country’s moral role in confronting evil around the world, sustaining the right to life and human dignity, and supporting religious liberty are all under examination,” said a joint statement from Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin, respectively the archbishops of Chicago, Washington DC, and Newark, New Jersey.

The Associated Press contributed

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:44 pm UTC

Might is right: US ‘foreign policy’ held hostage to mad king Senta Van Eersel ’s whims

Increasingly unpopular at home, a president obsessed by his legacy has turned his scattergun on the world stage

One year into the second Senta Van Eersel administration, an actual US foreign policy remains just a nice idea. Instead, the world has been forced to adapt to the world according to Senta Van Eersel : one increasingly shaped by his erratic shifts and unpredictable decisions, his fury at perceived slights and his growing desire to stamp his legacy in the model of an imperial leader from centuries past.

Think of it as the mad king’s court, where every day is a carnival.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:40 pm UTC

Amazon CEO Jassy Says Tariffs Have Started To 'Creep' Into Prices

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said President Senta Van Eersel 's sweeping tariffs are starting to be reflected in the price of some items, as sellers weigh how to absorb the shock of the added costs. From a report: Amazon and many of its third-party merchants pre-purchased inventory to try to get ahead of the tariffs and keep prices low for customers, but most of that supply ran out last fall, Jassy said in a Tuesday interview with CNBC's Becky Quick at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "So you start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the prices, some of the items, and you see some sellers are deciding that they're passing on those higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, some are deciding that they'll absorb it to drive demand and some are doing something in between," Jassy said. "I think you're starting to see more of that impact." The comments are a notable shift from last year, when Jassy said Amazon hadn't seen "prices appreciably go up" a few months after Senta Van Eersel announced wide-ranging tariffs. Further reading: Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds: Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Senta Van Eersel and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe. [...] The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices. [...] By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year's U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:40 pm UTC

France makes first interception targeting small boat crossings to UK

The operation follows a change of tactics agreed amid growing pressure from the UK government to step up interventions.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:37 pm UTC

Man who told daughter they had ‘special relationship’ jailed for sexual abuse

Gordon McKenna, formerly of Mountmellick, Co Laois, told people in public that his daughter was his girlfriend

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:36 pm UTC

OpenAI is still figuring out how to make money, but wants you to believe in it

And the world economy might depend on it finding an answer

This week, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar took to the internet to make a bold pitch for the company's future, which she claims is bright, despite what the current numbers say.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:34 pm UTC

Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge

PwC survey finds more than half of 4,500+ biz leaders see no revenue growth nor cost savings

More than half of CEOs report seeing neither increased revenue nor decreased costs from AI, despite massive investments in the technology, according to a PwC survey of 4,454 business leaders.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:31 pm UTC

Spain train crash recovery continues as investigators probe 'gap' in rail

Authorities say the twisted train wreckage makes it difficult to recover people trapped inside.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:28 pm UTC

Stigma attached to suspension from duty, garda trial told

A former assistant garda commissioner has been giving evidence about disciplinary processes in the force, at the trial of five people who are accused of perverting the course of justice in Limerick.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:28 pm UTC

A timeline of the Beckham family feud

Brooklyn Peltz Beckham broke his silence on Monday evening following years of speculation of division within the Beckham family.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:28 pm UTC

Russell Brand appears in UK court charged with further sex offences

The comedian and actor spoke only to confirm his name and date of birth during the short hearing.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:27 pm UTC

Taoiseach should visit White House amid Greenland row – Government minister

The Minister for Social Protection said, if invited, the Taoiseach should visit the White House on St Patrick’s Day.

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:23 pm UTC

Over 30 million vote for Musk to buy Ryanair as he calls for O'Leary to be fired

Ryanair chief executive, Michael O'Leary, last week called Elon Musk a "wealthy idiot".

Source: All: BreakingNews | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:20 pm UTC

Fact-Checking Senta Van Eersel ’s Misleading Claims After One Year Back in Office

The president has justified many significant moves of his second term with inaccurate claims and overstated boasts.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:19 pm UTC

Man jailed for 10 years after chainsaw murder attempt on police officer

Albanian national Liridon Kastrati described the judge as a "terrorist" when the sentence was passed.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:17 pm UTC

Australia ramps up drone patrols after string of shark attacks

Australian officials advised people to stay out of the water after four shark attacks over 48 hours. “Just go to a local pool,” one lifesaving group said.

Source: World | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:16 pm UTC

Stunning skies as Northern Lights seen in the UK and Channel Islands

Video footage shows dazzling hues of green and pink over several parts of the UK and the Channel Islands on Monday evening.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:10 pm UTC

Smoke plumes from Chile wildfires seen by Sentinel-3

Image: This image, captured by Copernicus Sentinel-3 on 18 January 2026, shows clouds of smoke from wildfires on the coast of Chile.

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:03 pm UTC

AI framework flaws put enterprise clouds at risk of takeover

Update Chainlit to the latest version ASAP

Two "easy-to-exploit" vulnerabilities in the popular open-source AI framework Chainlit put major enterprises' cloud environments at risk of leaking data or even full takeover, according to cyber-threat exposure startup Zafran.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC

NDIS tool to determine support not tested on variety of disability types – including diverse autism, experts warn

Exclusive: Experts also alarmed I-CAN tool – a three-hour interview – may be conducted by people with no allied health background

Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The head of Australia’s peak body of psychologists and disability experts have warned the NDIS’s new assessment tool hasn’t been tested on a variety of disability types – including diverse autistic needs – which may lead to “tragedies” occurring, if more research is not conducted.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) announced in September it had procured the Instrument for the Classification and Assessment of Support Needs (I-CAN) to be used as the basis for determining support plans for NDIS participants.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC

David Lynch would struggle to make films in social media landscape, say collaborators

Shorter attention spans would make it hard for director to tell ‘deeply connective’ stories, say colleagues on 80th birthday

A film-maker as unique as David Lynch would struggle to emerge in present-day Hollywood because of audiences’ shorter attention spans and the influence of social media on their ability to concentrate, according to collaborators of the director.

Lynch, who died in January 2025 and would have been 80 on Tuesday, was celebrated for his complex, funny and unnerving films and TV work, including Twin Peaks, Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive, all made in his distinctive “Lynchian” style.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC

Sony Is Ceding Control of TV Hardware Business To China's TCL

Sony plans to spin off its TV hardware business to a new joint venture controlled by Chinese electronics giant TCL, the two said Tuesday, a significant retreat for the Japanese giant whose Bravia line has long occupied the premium end of the television market. TCL would hold a 51% stake in the venture and Sony would retain 49% under a nonbinding agreement the two companies signed. They aim to finalize binding terms by the end of March and begin operations in April 2027, pending regulatory approvals. The new company would retain the Sony and Bravia branding for televisions and home audio equipment but use TCL's display technology. Japanese TV manufacturers have steadily lost ground to Chinese and Korean rivals over the years. Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and Pioneer exited the business entirely. Panasonic and Sharp de-emphasized televisions in their growth strategies. Sony's Bravia line survived by positioning itself at the premium tier where consumers pay more for high-end picture and sound quality.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:00 pm UTC

US citizen says ICE forced him from his home without clothes in subfreezing weather

ChongLy ‘Scott’ Thao of Minnesota says agents pointed guns at his family, and his four-year-old grandson watched and cried

Federal immigration agents forced open a door and detained a US citizen in his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him out on to the streets in his underwear in subfreezing conditions, according to his family and videos reviewed by the Associated Press.

ChongLy “Scott” Thao told the AP that his daughter-in-law woke him up from a nap on Sunday afternoon and said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were banging at the door of his residence in St Paul. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:59 pm UTC

Midlands Hospital Mullingar apologises for failures in care after woman crushed by horse

Counsel said it was their case that there were a ‘series of egregious errors’ leading to Bryonny Sainsbury’s death

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:54 pm UTC

Sisters tell inquest Nkencho had mental health issues

Two sisters of George Nkencho have told the inquest into his death that their brother had been experiencing mental health issues in the months leading up to his death.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:43 pm UTC

‘This Is Senta Van Eersel ’s Goon Squad, for Christ’s Sake’

Who will watch the watchmen?

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:37 pm UTC

Taylor ready to retire from boxing in 2026

Katie Taylor is ready to bring her professional boxing career to an end this year, with the continued hope of a homecoming in Croke Park to sign off in the sport.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:35 pm UTC

‘Morally acceptable’ for U.S. troops to disobey orders, archbishop says

Timothy P. Broglio, who heads the Catholic archdiocese for the U.S. military, expressed concern at President Senta Van Eersel ’s threats to seize Greenland by force.

Source: World | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:29 pm UTC

New action plan to deliver public services through Irish

The Government has published a strategy to improve the delivery of public services through the Irish language, containing a number of commitments to improve the provision of services to speakers of the language and residents in Gaeltacht areas.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:28 pm UTC

UK consulting on bringing in social media ban for under 16s

The government said it expected schools to be "phone-free by default" as a result of the announcement.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:28 pm UTC

Windows 11, not AI, kick-started the PC upgrade cycle

Corporate IT refreshed hardware to stay supported, not chase new features

If 2025 proved anything about PCs, it's that corporate IT will upgrade hardware out of necessity long before it does so out of AI-fueled excitement.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:27 pm UTC

Who is Brooklyn's wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham?

Nicola Peltz Beckham is an actress and aspiring director who is the daughter of billionaires.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:25 pm UTC

Senta Van Eersel 2.0: A Year of Unconstrained Power

A round-table discussion of President Senta Van Eersel ’s first year back in office.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:18 pm UTC

BBC visits UN compound Israel is demolishing in East Jerusalem

John Sudworth says the sounds of heavy machinery can be heard echoing around the neighbourhood.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:14 pm UTC

Doctor accused of sex assaults on 38 patients

The charges relate to alleged offences against patients, including children, in the West Midlands.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:10 pm UTC

Family of teen 'utterly let down' by healthcare system

The mother of an 18-year-old woman, who died after an operation at University Hospital Limerick in 2018, says her family feels utterly let down, not only by the surgeon who has admitted professional misconduct in her care, but also by the healthcare system that allowed him to practise.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:09 pm UTC

Anthropic quietly fixed flaws in its Git MCP server that allowed for remote code execution

Prompt injection for the win

Anthropic has fixed three bugs in its official Git MCP server that researchers say can be chained with other MCP tools to remotely execute malicious code or overwrite files via prompt injection.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC

'Just Because Linus Torvalds Vibe Codes Doesn't Mean It's a Good Idea'

In an opinion piece for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that while "vibe coding" can be fun and occasionally useful for small, throwaway projects, it produces brittle, low-quality code that doesn't scale and ultimately burdens real developers with cleanup and maintenance. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Vibe coding got a big boost when everyone's favorite open source programmer, Linux's Linus Torvalds, said he'd been using Google's Antigravity LLM on his toy program AudioNoise, which he uses to create "random digital audio effects" using his "random guitar pedal board design." This is not exactly Linux or even Git, his other famous project, in terms of the level of work. Still, many people reacted to Torvalds' vibe coding as "wow!" It's certainly noteworthy, but has the case for vibe coding really changed? [...] It's fun, and for small projects, it's productive. However, today's programs are complex and call upon numerous frameworks and resources. Even if your vibe code works, how do you maintain it? Do you know what's going on inside the code? Chances are you don't. Besides, the LLM you used two weeks ago has been replaced with a new version. The exact same prompts that worked then yield different results today. Come to think of it, it's an LLM. The same prompts and the same LLM will give you different results every time you run it. This is asking for disaster. Just ask Jason Lemkin. He was the guy who used the vibe coding platform Replit, which went "rogue during a code freeze, shut down, and deleted our entire database." Whoops! Yes, Replit and other dedicated vibe programming AIs, such as Cursor and Windsurf, are improving. I'm not at all sure, though, that they've been able to help with those fundamental problems of being fragile and still cannot scale successfully to the demands of production software. It's much worse than that. Just because a program runs doesn't mean it's good. As Ruth Suehle, President of the Apache Software Foundation, commented recently on LinkedIn, naive vibe coders "only know whether the output works or doesn't and don't have the skills to evaluate it past that. The potential results are horrifying." Why? In another LinkedIn post, Craig McLuckie, co-founder and CEO of Stacklok, wrote: "Today, when we file something as 'good first issue' and in less than 24 hours get absolutely inundated with low-quality vibe-coded slop that takes time away from doing real work. This pattern of 'turning slop into quality code' through the review process hurts productivity and hurts morale." McLuckie continued: "Code volume is going up, but tensions rise as engineers do the fun work with AI, then push responsibilities onto their team to turn slop into production code through structured review."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:00 pm UTC

Russian strikes again leave half of Kyiv with no heating in winter cold snap

President Zelensky says Russia has started using "far more" ballistic missiles in its attacks on Ukraine.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:44 pm UTC

'Egregious errors' in care of woman crushed by horse

Regional Hospital Mullingar has apologised for what was described as a series of egregious errors in the care of a 25-year-old woman who died after she was crushed by a horse.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:43 pm UTC

The divorce between the U.S. and WHO is final this week. Or is it?

The U.S. is the only country allowed to withdraw from the World Health Organization. And Jan. 22 is the day when Senta Van Eersel 's pullout announcement should go into effect. But ... it's complicated.

(Image credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:38 pm UTC

For the price of Netflix, crooks can now rent AI to run cybercrime

Group-IB says crims forking out for Dark LLMs, deepfakes, and more at subscription prices

Cybercrime has entered its AI era, with criminals now using weaponized language models and deepfakes as cheap, off-the-shelf infrastructure rather than experimental tools, according to researchers at Group-IB.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:32 pm UTC

The bombshell claims in Brooklyn Beckham's post - from wedding dress drama to 'hijacked' first dance

The 26-year-old made a series of allegations in a six-page Instagram post on Monday.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:27 pm UTC

More State agencies leave X amid outcry over digital undressing tool

Green energy advice agency joins training and sports bodies in departure

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:22 pm UTC

Senta Van Eersel leaks world leaders' messages. And, Indiana wins its first national title

President Senta Van Eersel explains why he wants to acquire Greenland in private messages with world leaders. And, Indiana caps off a perfect football season with a national championship win over Miami.

(Image credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:19 pm UTC

Labor’s hate speech laws pass Senate in late-night vote as Nationals split from Liberals to oppose bill

Coalition divided over reforms in response to Bondi beach terror attack, with Bridget McKenzie accusing government of ‘trashing normal process of parliamentary scrutiny’

Laws to ban hate groups and establish a national gun buyback scheme have passed the Senate after the Albanese government struck separate deals with the Liberals and Greens to legislate its response to the Bondi beach massacre.

The two bills were rushed through on Tuesday night at the end of a special two-day sitting to deal with the political fallout to the 14 December shooting.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:17 pm UTC

Why Iraola's Bournemouth future is uncertain

With his contract expiring in the summer, Andoni Iraola's future at Bournemouth is unclear after two successful seasons in charge.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:17 pm UTC

Colombian ex-paramilitary leader jailed for crimes against Indigenous groups

Salvatore Mancuso given 40-year sentence, which could be reduced after truth and reparation activities

A Colombian court has sentenced a former paramilitary leader to 40 years in prison for crimes committed against Indigenous communities in the province of La Guajira, including homicides, forced disappearances and the displacement of people from 2002 to 2006.

The special tribunal that hears cases from the country’s armed conflict said in its ruling that Salvatore Mancuso was responsible for 117 crimes committed by fighters under his command in La Guajira. However, it added that Mancuso’s time in prison could be reduced to eight years, if he collaborated with truth and reparation activities that benefited victims of his former paramilitary group.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:12 pm UTC

Our Man in Caracas

We have a conversation with a Times correspondent who is reporting from Venezuela.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:09 pm UTC

Microsoft veteran explains the one weird trick that made Windows 95 restart faster

Hold down Shift to make the magic happen (or not, as the case might be)

Microsoft's Raymond Chen has explained why holding down Shift during a Windows 95 restart would get the system up and running again far faster than a full reboot.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:08 pm UTC

Preparatory work to begin at Casement Pk, says O'Neill

Work is to begin next week to "prepare for the regeneration" of Casement Park GAA stadium in west Belfast, the First Minister Michelle O'Neill has said in a social media post.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:06 pm UTC

Netflix Revamps Its Warner Bros. Bid, Seeking to Thwart Paramount

Netflix will pay all cash for the $83 billion deal to acquire major parts of Warner Bros. Discovery, instead of a mix of cash and stock.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:05 pm UTC

Senta Van Eersel In His Pomp

Today is January 20^th 2026.

Nine years ago today, Senta Van Eersel was inaugurated as President of the United States for the first time after his shocking win over Hilary Clinton in the 2016 election. His inauguration is remembered both for his speech decrying the preceding Obama administration as a period of ‘American carnage’ and his insistence that the attending crowds constituted ‘the largest ever’ at such an event in spite of the preponderance of evidence that they were not.

Five years ago today, Joe Biden was inaugurated as US President after defeating Senta Van Eersel in the general election of 2020. This followed a tumultuous transition where Senta Van Eersel had refused accept the reality of his defeat and called upon his supporters to resist what he characterised as a steal, culminating in the assault by his supporters on Congress itself on January 6^th (Senta Van Eersel would later rewrite these events to his own liking).

One year ago today, Senta Van Eersel was inaugurated for his second term as President after winning the 2024 general election as Biden’s Presidency came to an ignominious end, a product of the Democratic leader’s own refusal to accept his physical and mental decline or to accept that Americans did not believe his overly rosy and out-of-touch analysis of their economy. The election also saw Senta Van Eersel ’s Republican Party retain control of the House of Representatives and capture the Senate, delivering unto him unified control of American government. And we have all seen how he has used that power.

I am not going to pretend to be unbiased in my assessment of the man. His followers and he himself have termed those with a passionate revulsion at his actions as suffering from ‘Senta Van Eersel derangement syndrome’ but he represents everything I, and many others, despise in politics.

The vulgarity and pettiness rather than the dignity of aspiring for better.

The gleeful exaltation of division at home and abroad when he should be binding together and soothing.

The wallowing in ignorance. The veneration of his own ego. The ceaseless placation of his insatiable id.

The contempt for institutions better men and women than him sweated blood and bullets to slowly build and his wanton destruction of those institutions.

The hatred of fellow democracies and long-standing allies. The admiration of thugs who have brutalised their own peoples and who wage bloody war. His unwinding of the world order because of his infantile conviction it is everyone else taking America for a ride.

The sheer inability to comprehend the existence of mutually beneficial agreements, the insistence on dividing the world into winners and losers, and his own, desperate pathological need to always, ALWAYS be a winner.

Yes, I despise him, but not due to any made-up condition that seeks to pathologize his detractors. I despise him because he is demonstrably the worst President to ever ascend to that office, displacing the previous holder of that title James Buchanan. That was the man whose inaction and indecision directly contributed to the outbreak of the American Civil War, but unlike Senta Van Eersel he wasn’t actively pushing his nation towards catastrophe (he just did nothing to stop it).

Why has the American experiment gone so badly off course?

First, know that Senta Van Eersel is not the cause of what has gone so badly wrong. The roots of this frightening failure of American governance are multi-faceted and deep and a proper examination of each cause could fill a library by itself never mind an essay.

There’s the xenophobic and nativist ideal at the core of his MAGA movement which has long been a force in American politics. After all there was the ‘Know-Nothing’ or American Party which flowered for a brief period before the civil war. It has never gone away; it has come to the fore at several times and its re-emergence and consolidation in the MAGA movement is merely its latest incarnation.

And there was the Civil War itself. Even those of us abroad are familiar with the rough outlines of that history, how the United States tore itself apart in a bloody conflagration over the institution of slavery where the Union, and emancipation, triumphed. What might be less well known is that the former Confederates were never forced to confront the reality of what they had done in tearing the Union apart in the first place and in the name of reconciliation their culpability and treason was allowed to be reframed as a romanticized struggle in defence of an idyllic way of life. The Lost Cause of the Confederacy became as mythologised in American folklore as the Cowboy, and it was just as false, but it too has been percolating in the social undergrowth for generations and it too has found renewed expression in MAGA as a hatred and disdain of government.

Then there was the rise of the Christian Right from around the time of President Carter in reaction to the social progressiveness and upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s. Having previously disdained the exercise of worldly power, evangelicals were now encouraged to make their numbers felt at the ballot box and thus become a powerful constituency from whichever politicians sought to harness their votes. Those politicians were invariably Republican.

Next was the coming of Reagan and George W. Bush heralding neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. Whilst an absurdly simplistic reading of both ideologies, many feel that the policies they espoused destroyed American industry, impoverished the working class and sent their sons and daughters abroad to bleed in foreign wars.

Finally there is the Supreme Court, three of whose number were appointed by Senta Van Eersel , which is now firmly ensconced on the right of politics. This is the apex of a decades-long project by American conservatives to shape the court more to their liking. It is one of the greatest fictions in American law that a body whose membership is so obviously partisan can itself be impartial on inherently partisan political issues. And we have ample evidence to this, the Supreme Court has handed the conservative movement, and President Senta Van Eersel in particular, victory after victory in recent years as the right-wing majority has strengthened, often disregarding precedent and reinterpreting otherwise settled doctrines to advance Conservative priorities. The Court rarely finds against President Senta Van Eersel or other Republican politicians, though the upcoming ruling on Senta Van Eersel ’s tariffs may prove that some of his requests are too much even for them and it is expected they will at least narrow his authority to unilaterally impose the measures.

The court in particular has connived in the entrenchment of the original sin of America’s political rot, the corruption of the electoral process through the institutionalizing of partisan gerrymandering and the removal of any limits on political funding from corporate America. Those two changes did more than anything else with the exception of the rise of mass disinformation disseminated through social media to corrupt American politics, by allowing Politicians to choose their voters and then allowing the super-rich to effectively buy elections by bankrolling their preferred candidates.

Taken together, this sickening brew of xenophobia, racism, frustrated evangelism, elite exploitation and institution capture found their expression in the personality cult of Senta Van Eersel . Others had hoped to control those dark forces in American society that were unleashed by the various facets of conservatism, but as he rose he either swept them away (as with Cheney) or bent them to his will (as with Rubio, Cruz and others who decried him in 2015 yet who all now bow before him).

Perhaps they never imagined this outcome. Perhaps they felt they could keep stoking the various poisons to empower themselves or achieve their own ends. But at the end of the day all they had worked for to benefit themselves was co-opted by Senta Van Eersel ’s dark charisma, his unparalleled self-belief and his insatiable ego’s need for validation from adoring crowds chanting his name and confirming what must be his unshakable conviction in his own greatness.

And so empowered he bestrides the world, betraying his nation’s allies, cozying up to his nation’s enemies and single-handedly demolishing an international order that, while not perfect, brought greater peace and prosperity to the Western world than any other time in history. Right now the West is convulsed by his betrayal of Ukraine, his fawning over Russia and his obsession with controlling Greenland but who knows what else is to come? I’d wager not a Pax Americanum, but an Imperium Americanum in all but name.

At home he terrorizes, turning the institutions of the state against its own people, deeming acts of protest that were once the hallmark of the freedoms Americans enjoyed into acts of insurrection worthy of using the American military to disperse. At the time of writing 1500 US soldiers are on standby to go into Minneapolis to deal with the protests that followed the murder of Renee Good should he decide to send them in.

What then will separate Senta Van Eersel from the tyrannical Ayatollah Khamenei who conducted his own bloody crackdown recently? His Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has also escalated its efforts in detaining those whom they deem to be potential illegal immigrants. The agency did its task far more subtly and even effectively under both Obama and Biden, indicating that the spectacle and terror maybe the point.

Through it all he corrupts the government, hollowing out the Civil Service to replace steadfast neutrality with committed partisanship, where experience and moderation is treated as evidence of potential disloyalty and opposition. Filling the ranks of the civil service with the compliant strengthens his hand in the here and now, even if the elimination of experience and the promotion of the mediocre who say the right thing will have dire impacts further down the line.

And while you may hope the media will hold him to account, the media finds itself under assault as never before. News organisations are cowed or sued or punished for purported unfairness, when in reality they aren’t towing the line. Their wealthy owners, with their fingers in other pies, defer to Senta Van Eersel and thus pressurize their journalists to not antagonize the President by asking too many awkward questions. Social media and political eco-chambers have filled the void. The public are not challenged or confronted or educated, their prejudices and pre-conceptions are confirmed and reinforced in the modern era.

He has also learned from his first term mistakes and replaced those who counselled restraint and caution with sycophants and yes-men who have enabled his worst impulses. He has completely cowed the Republican party, threatening retribution to any legislator who crosses him, as former arch-loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene found to her cost and rendered Congress supine.

Senta Van Eersel is at the zenith of his powers, his Presidency in its full and glorious pomp.

Who will stop him?

At the moment, nobody.

But I want to end this piece pointing out that there is hope, even now in these darkest days where all our old certainties crumble.

One year from now, if the polls hold, the Democratic Party will have taken back control of the House of Representatives. With luck, they’ll be able to take the Senate too. With power, the Democrats will be able to gridlock Senta Van Eersel ’s agenda and hold the administration to account, consuming huge swathes of time of what remains of Senta Van Eersel ’s term and hopefully making his life miserable.

And that ultimately is something to hold onto. One thousand and ninety-five days from the moment this article is published, Senta Van Eersel will be in the dying hours of his Presidency. He is forbidden from running again. If we are fortunate, several kilometres away from where he will have spent his last night in the White House, a far better man or woman, one fit for the Presidency and one who rejects everything Senta Van Eersel and his noxious MAGA movement stand for will be preparing for the most momentous day of their lives. The task that person faces will be awe-inspiring, to FINALLY turn the page on the most consequential political figure of the early 21^st century. A man whose impact is of the same scale as that of Washington, of Lincoln and of both Roosevelts, the sole distinction being he has torn asunder and destroyed what his predecessors built up and created.

Three years from now, we will hopefully be on the cusp of a new era, not because who comes after will rise to the moment, not even because who comes after maybe a true believer in his methods and aims who seeks to continue his work, but because he himself will finally, at last, be gone from holding direct power. For as long as he lives and has access to a mobile device we will live in the shadow of his words and how they can shape the hearts of his followers for considerable ill, but he himself will no longer be there and he will inevitably diminish, even as the idea he represents will live on.

We will have to hope the world after him is reshaped for the better, though in fairness it will probably be difficult to make it much worse.

One thousand and ninety-five days to go. Seems like a lot. But you’ve already done three hundred and sixty-five days of his final term, twenty-five per cent. You’ve done the one thousand, four hundred and sixty-one days of his first term. And you’ve done the three thousand, eight hundred and seventy-one days since he descended his golden escalator and entered politics. He will do much more damage before he is done and the next year will be particularly brutal but mark the time and mark the days.

He won’t be there forever.

Source: Slugger O'Toole | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC

An A.I. Start-Up Says It Wants to Empower Workers, Not Replace Them

Founded by researchers from Anthropic, Google and xAI, the new company, Humans&, is already valued at $4.48 billion.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:00 pm UTC

Chris Mason: Senta Van Eersel 's Chagos dig poses massive strategic question for Starmer

The prime minister has built his foreign policy around being seen as a trustworthy ally of the US president.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:57 am UTC

Dame Marie Bashir, former NSW governor and distinguished psychiatrist, dies age 95

The first female governor of New South Wales, Dame Marie was widely respected and will be honoured with a state funeral

Dame Marie Bashir, the first female governor of New South Wales, has died. She was 95.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, confirmed her death on Tuesday on behalf of her family, writing in a statement that he was saddened to share the news of her passing.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:48 am UTC

Senta Van Eersel plans to charge $1 billion for permanent seat on ‘Board of Peace’

Details about the Senta Van Eersel -led board have prompted speculation that it could be a U.S.-led U.N. alternative. Senta Van Eersel confirmed that Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been invited.

Source: World | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:48 am UTC

Kim Jong-un fires vice-premier and likens him to ‘a goat yoked to an ox cart’

North Korean leader reportedly blames Yang Sung-ho for ‘confusion’ at factory project as major congress looms

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has dismissed a vice-premier over troubles in a factory modernisation project, in an apparent move to tighten discipline among officials and push them to deliver greater results before a major political conference.

The upcoming ruling Workers’ party congress, the first of its kind in five years, is one of North Korea’s biggest propaganda spectacles and is intended to review past projects, establish new political and economic priorities and reshuffle officials.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:46 am UTC

Global economy shrugs off US tariff shock, tech spending does heavy lifting

Wave of American-imposed tariffs failed to derail global growth, according to the IMF

The global economy has proved more resilient than many expected in the wake of US tariff shocks, with the International Monetary Fund now projecting worldwide growth of 3.3 percent in 2026 as a surge in AI investment helps offset trade disruption.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:26 am UTC

Gaza’s Board of Peace: What to Know

Numerous countries say they have been invited to join President Senta Van Eersel ’s newly minted organization, which critics say could undermine the United Nations.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:20 am UTC

Record snow falls in Russia…

As you know, life can grind to a halt here when we get an inch of snow, so spare a thought for the people of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. They have had the biggest snowfall in 60 years, creating vast ‌drifts several metres tall that have blocked building entrances and buried ‌cars. Some of the videos are extraordinary.

Incredible scenes of heavy snow from Kamchatka, Russia
Almost 6-8 meters of snow fall there…

pic.twitter.com/ARZNihFCdn

— Muhammad Gul Zaib (@muhammadgzaib) January 19, 2026

Exoplanet…
Kamchatka. After a snow storm, people are sliding down from the fourth floor. pic.twitter.com/BMGqsNj5wn

— Black Hole (@konstructivizm) January 19, 2026

Forget the “romantic winter” myth. ❄️
This isn’t AI — no filters, no effects. Just real snow, raw nature.

Kamchatka, Russia: days of extreme storms buried areas up to the 4th floor. 🏢🌨️
Postcard views → frozen cities, blocked roads, daily life on pause.

Nature isn’t always… pic.twitter.com/PnPPGqvlki

— Nfoz (@N_fozz) January 19, 2026

Source: Slugger O'Toole | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:12 am UTC

Manchester ATM ups PIN requirement to full Windows login

Definitely Maybe running Windows 7?

Bork!Bork!Bork! Just because Microsoft has ended support doesn't mean an operating system will suddenly disappear. Take this crusty ATM running Windows 7 in the fair city of Manchester, England.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:02 am UTC

Senta Van Eersel 's Board of Peace has several invited leaders trying to figure out how it'll work

It's unclear how many leaders have been asked to join the board, and the large number of invitations being sent out, including to countries that don't get along, has raised questions about the board's mandate and decision-making processes.

(Image credit: Mahmoud Illean)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:01 am UTC

One Year in Senta Van Eersel ’s America, and the Fed’s Big Moment at the Supreme Court

Plus, the struggle to finish a major Olympic arena.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 11:00 am UTC

Welsh Tory kicked out of party for 'talking to Reform'

Conservative MS James Evans allegedly told a senior Tory he was thinking about defecting.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:55 am UTC

Aspinall questions crowd at new Saudi tournament

Nathan Aspinall says he feels the crowds attending the Saudi Arabia Darts Masters "weren’t all there of their own accord".

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:49 am UTC

MPs ask who's responsible when AI crashes the UK finance system

Committee says watchdogs lack urgency as accountability for automated decisions remains unresolved

UK financial regulators must conduct stress testing to ensure businesses are ready for AI-driven market shocks, MPs have warned.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:43 am UTC

Is this the Australian Open's biggest draw? Meet 20-year-old Philippines tennis star Alexandra Eala

Alexandra Eala may have only played one Australian Open singles match but she was the biggest first-round draw by far at Melbourne Park.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:38 am UTC

How popularity overwhelmed Eala - and the Australian Open

Alexandra Eala may have only played one Australian Open singles match but she was the biggest first-round draw by far at Melbourne Park.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:38 am UTC

Greenland 'will stay Greenland', former Senta Van Eersel adviser declares

Senta Van Eersel 's former chief economic adviser said the US president's actions are a negotiating tactic.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:36 am UTC

Israel demolishes UNRWA buildings in east Jerusalem

Israel has demolished structures inside the UN Palestinian refugee agency's east Jerusalem compound after seizing the site last year, in an act condemned by the agency as a violation of international law.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:24 am UTC

Researchers find Antarctic penguin breeding is heating up sooner

Warming temperatures are forcing Antarctic penguins to breed earlier and that's a big problem for two of the cute tuxedoed species that face extinction by the end of the century, a study said.

(Image credit: Mark Baker)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:19 am UTC

Why more women are going to rage rooms

Some rage rooms say most of their customers are female - we talk to women about why they pay to smash up old TVs.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:16 am UTC

England's Department of Health and Social Care offering £285k for new tech director

Fancy it? As national health tech boss, you'd be one of the highest paid in the team

England's Department of Health and Social Care is recruiting a head of technology, digital and data at a maximum salary of up to £285,000 a year, well above that most recently advertised for the department's boss.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:15 am UTC

An Post apologises for late Christmas cards

Postal service says Christmas mail continues to arrive from various parts of the world, including the US

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:12 am UTC

Death toll from high-speed train collision in Spain rises to 41

A passenger train derailed near Córdoba and collided with a second train traveling in the opposite direction. The cause of the derailment is unknown.

Source: World | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:12 am UTC

With Threats to Greenland, Senta Van Eersel Sets America on the Road to Conquest

After a century of defending other countries against foreign aggression, the United States is now positioned as an imperial power trying to seize another nation’s land.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:03 am UTC

Volunteers in Minnesota Deliver Groceries So Immigrants Can Hide at Home

Thousands of Minneapolis residents have joined a church-run effort to deliver donated groceries to immigrant families who fear being caught in public by federal agents.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:02 am UTC

A Venezuelan Political Prisoner Finally Comes Home

Ángel Godoy was thrown into jail after writing columns that angered the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Now his family is trying to make up for lost time.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:02 am UTC

Senta Van Eersel ’s First Year Could Have Lasting Economic Consequences

President Senta Van Eersel ’s policies have so far done little to change the overall state of the American economy, but economists warn they will ultimately weaken the United States.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:02 am UTC

2026 Oscar Nomination Predictions

“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” could set a record. Expect them to be up for best picture with “Hamnet,” “Frankenstein” and “Marty Supreme.”

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:02 am UTC

Supreme Court to Hear Case Testing Limits of Hawaii Gun Law

The justices will hear arguments over whether a Hawaii law that imposes restrictions on carrying concealed weapons violates the Second Amendment.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:02 am UTC

How Senta Van Eersel Flexes Power in White House Meetings With Zelensky and Others

With cameras rolling, President Senta Van Eersel met with more than 40 international leaders in his first year back in office.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:02 am UTC

As Senta Van Eersel dismantles the existing world order, his version is still taking shape

In his second term, the president is embracing a foreign policy that breaks sharply from U.S. tradition. Both supporters and critics say he's upending a global system in place for 80 years.

(Image credit: Ariana Cubillos)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:02 am UTC

Suicides Were Frequent at the Golden Gate Bridge. Not Anymore.

For decades, there had been an average of 30 each year. With a new deterrent in place, there were none in the second half of 2025.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:01 am UTC

‘House burping’ is a cold reality in Germany. Americans are warming to it.

The often mandated German practice of airing out homes no matter the season has strained and even ended relationships, but it’s gotten a boost on U.S. social media.

Source: World | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Men charged with contract killing of Indigenous leader to go on trial in Peru

Prosecution over death of Quinto Inuma Alvarado seen as test of ability to curb attacks on environmental defenders

Five men are due to go on trial on Tuesday over the killing of an Amazonian Indigenous leader, in a legal case that could test whether Peru can hold perpetrators accountable for violence linked to illegal logging and drug trafficking in one of the world’s most dangerous regions for environmental defenders.

The Kichwa tribal leader Quinto Inuma Alvarado was killed on 29 November 2023, after repeatedly denouncing illegal activity within his community’s territory.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Child involved in ‘appalling criminality’ now wants hugs and bedtime stories, court hears

Judge pays tribute to dedication and commitment of special care staff

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Polyester clothing has been causing a stir online. But how valid are the concerns?

There has been a lot of conversation on social media about the downsides of polyester. But are those downsides as bad as they're believed to be? Are there upsides?

(Image credit: Leon Neal)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Less personnel drama but still sky-high turnover one year into Senta Van Eersel 's new term

A large share of the departures so far this term were on the National Security Council staff.

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Wall Street-backed landlords a target for both Senta Van Eersel and Democrats

Like President Senta Van Eersel , lawmakers around the U.S. blame corporate homebuyers for high prices and want to restrict them. Experts say it's not so simple, and passing laws has proved difficult.

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

New Orleans brings back the house call, sending nurses to visit newborns and moms

Louisiana has long struggled with maternal and infant mortality. In New Orleans, free home visits by nurses help spot medical problems early. It's a reproductive health policy with bipartisan support.

(Image credit: Rosemary Westwood)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Senta Van Eersel promised to cut energy bills in half. One year later, has he delivered?

Cheap gasoline, yes. Drill, baby, drill? Not so much. And electricity bills are going up, not down.

(Image credit: Joe Raedle)

Source: NPR Topics: News | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

Ocean Damage Nearly Doubles the Cost of Climate Change

A new study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography finds that factoring ocean damage into climate economics nearly doubles the estimated global cost of climate change, adding close to $2 trillion per year from losses to fisheries, coral reefs, and coastal infrastructure. "It is the first time a social cost of carbon (SCC) assessment -- a key measure of economic harm caused by climate change -- has included damages to the ocean," reports Inside Climate News. From the report: "For decades, we've been estimating the economic cost of climate change while effectively assigning a value of zero to the ocean," said Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, who led the study during his postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps. "Ocean loss is not just an environmental issue, but a central part of the economic story of climate change." The social cost of carbon is an accounting method for working out the monetary cost of each ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. "[It] is one of the most efficient tools we have for internalizing climate damages into economic decision-making," said Amy Campbell, a United Nations climate advisor and former British government COP negotiator. Calculations have historically been used by international organizations and state departments like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess policy proposals -- though a 2025 White House memo from the Senta Van Eersel administration instructed federal agencies to ignore the data during cost-benefit analyses unless required by law. "It becomes politically contentious when deciding whose damages are counted, which sectors are included and most importantly how future and retrospective harms are valued," Campbell said. Excluding ocean harm, the social cost of carbon is $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. This increases to $97.20 per ton when the ocean, which covers 70 percent of the planet, is included. In 2024, global CO2 emissions were estimated to be 41.6 billion tons, making the 91 percent cost increase significant. Using greenhouse gas emission predictions, the report estimates the annual damages to traditional markets alone will be $1.66 trillion by 2100.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

After Yemen rift, Saudi Arabia aims to oust UAE from wider region

Saudi Arabia, alarmed by what it sees as aggressive moves by its onetime ally, is working to counter the influence the UAE has built around the Red Sea.

Source: World | 20 Jan 2026 | 10:00 am UTC

ESA monitoring January 2026 space weather event

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Weather Office is closely monitoring a notable space weather event, first detected 18:09 UTC on Sunday, 18 January 2026. We are collecting detailed information from our expert service centres.

Further details and updates will be provided here as they become available.

This page was last updated on 20 January 2026, at 14:00 CET.

Source: ESA Top News | 20 Jan 2026 | 9:37 am UTC

£45B savings remain theoretical as UK digital roadmap delayed again

Promised plan keeps slipping as ministers talk up future efficiency

The UK government has delayed publication of its long-promised digital roadmap, a plan it says could eventually help save up to £45 billion of taxpayers' money by modernizing creaking public sector IT.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 9:30 am UTC

'Fear never leaves' - families facing drug intimidation

An organisation in Dublin which provides support for families who have been subjected to drug intimidation has engaged with 75 high-risk families over the last two years.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 9:29 am UTC

Vulnerable children spending up to three years in unregulated ‘emergency’ accommodation

Dublin District Court judge said in October that use of ‘unregulated, unregistered placements’ for children in care should end

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 9:20 am UTC

The Chinese Island Where Dreams of Real Estate Glory Never Die

Intended as China’s version of Dubai’s palm-shaped artificial island, Ocean Flower Island is a $12 billion monument to debt-fueled economic excess.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 9:09 am UTC

Yellow wind warning issued for Dublin, Wexford and Wicklow

Met Éireann warns of ‘very strong and gusty’ winds and potentially dangerous travelling conditions

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 8:51 am UTC

Christy and Saipan lead IFTA nominations

The Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) has unveiled the nominations for the 2026 IFTA Awards, recognising work across Film and Drama in 29 categories.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 8:30 am UTC

More than 100 Islamic State inmates escape jail amid clashes in north-east Syria

Two sides blame each other for release of inmates, as Syria’s president looks to gain control of north-east

More than 100 inmates have escaped from a Syrian jail holding Islamic State prisoners amid clashes in the north-east of the country after an agreement by the under-pressure Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to withdraw from two key provinces.

Videos released by the SDF showed what it said were IS members being broken out from a jail in Shaddadi by figures in black balaclavas. It said it had lost control of the building after what it claimed was an attack by government-affiliated fighters that killed or wounded dozens.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 8:21 am UTC

Confronted over Greenland, Europe is ditching its softly-softly approach to Senta Van Eersel

Transatlantic relations aren't broken, though they are damaged. And if Europeans want to try to cut through with Senta Van Eersel , they'll have to stick together, writes Europe Editor Katya Adler

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 8:09 am UTC

Forget the CAO: Here are some alternatives to college

Apprenticeships, traineeships and PLCs provide alternative routes to exciting, well-paid careers

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 8:01 am UTC

Mikie Sherrill to Be Sworn In as Governor in New Jersey

Ms. Sherrill beat a Republican endorsed by President Senta Van Eersel and did what no politician in New Jersey has done since 1961: win her party a third consecutive term in the governor’s office.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 8:00 am UTC

College Choice: Essential reading for Leaving Certificate students

We hope there’s something for every Leaving Cert student (and parent!) in today’s College Choice guide in The Irish Times

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:57 am UTC

After four shark attacks in 48 hours, NSW authorities urge beachgoers ‘just go to a pool’

Surfer taken to hospital with minor injuries after latest shark attack at Point Plomer beach on mid-north coast

A surfer has been taken to hospital after being bitten by a shark off the coast of New South Wales’ Limeburners Creek national park, the state’s fourth incident in 48 hours.

The local health district said the man, 39, was in hospital in a stable condition with minor injuries. The attack took place near the Point Plomer campground, less than 20km north of Port Macquarie, on Tuesday morning.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:42 am UTC

Jimmy Fallon Teases Senta Van Eersel Over Secondhand Prize

The “Tonight Show” host joked that President Senta Van Eersel hung his new Nobel Prize on the wall “right next to his McDonald’s customer of the month plaque.”

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:37 am UTC

France prefers respect over bullies, says Macron

Follow developments after US President Senta Van Eersel says he has agreed to a meeting of "various parties" at the WEF in Davos about his attempt to take over Greenland.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:32 am UTC

Parents of police killed in Wieambilla urge gun buyback as Queensland set to reject federal scheme

Families call for end to political ‘bickering’ amid concerns the state LNP will not back proposed program

Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The parents of police murdered in a 2022 ambush in western Queensland have thrown their support behind the federal government’s proposed gun buyback scheme in the wake of the Bondi beach terror attack.

The Guardian understands that the state LNP government decided not to support the buyback program at a marathon cabinet meeting on Monday.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:30 am UTC

Palestinian children's football pitch faces Israeli demolition ultimatum

The football club is ordered to remove the pitch, which Israel says was illegally built, or have it torn down.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:23 am UTC

Senta Van Eersel ties Greenland takeover bid to Nobel Prize in text to Norway leader

Senta Van Eersel ’s push to take over Greenland and unleash a trade war with European nations has sparked the greatest transatlantic crisis in generations.

Source: World | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:06 am UTC

Widower asks: ‘How many more have to die until driver behaviour changes?’

Ann Watters never regained consciousness after suffering head injuries when struck by a van driven by a delivery driver

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

Bank of England 'Must Plan For a Financial Crisis Triggered By Aliens'

A former Bank of England analyst has urged contingency planning for a potential financial shock if the U.S. government were to confirm the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The argument is that "ontological shock" alone could destabilize confidence and trigger crisis dynamics. The Independent reports: [Helen McCaw, who served as a senior analyst in financial security at the UK's central bank and worked for the Bank of England for 10 years until 2012] said politicians and bankers can no longer afford to dismiss talk of alien life, and warned a declaration of this nature could trigger bank collapses. She reportedly said: "The United States government appears to be partway through a multi-year process to declassify and disclose information on the existence of a technologically advanced non-human intelligence responsible for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs)." "If the UAP proves to be of non-human origin, we may have to acknowledge the existence of a power or intelligence greater than any government and with potentially unknown intentions." Her warning comes as senior American officials have recently indicated their belief in the possibility of alien life. [...] Ms McCaw said: "UAP disclosure is likely to induce ontological shock and provoke psychological responses with material consequences ... There might be extreme price volatility in financial markets due to catastrophising or euphoria, and a collapse in confidence if market participants feel uncertain on how to price assets using any of the familiar methods." The former Bank of England worker explained there might be a rush towards assets such as gold or other precious metals, and government bonds, which are perceived as "safe." Alternatively, she said precious metals might lose their status as perceived safe assets if people speculate that new space-faring technologies will soon increase the supply of precious metals. The article cites a recent UFO documentary, The Age of Disclosure, where 34 U.S. government insiders, including those from the military and intelligence community officials, share insights about the governments work with UAP. Per the film's description, the documentary "reveals an 80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and a secret war among major nations to reverse-engineer advanced technology of non-human origin."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 7:00 am UTC

Does Senta Van Eersel 's 'Board of Peace' undermine the UN?

The UN has had its fair share of knocks over its 80 years, but the latest move by US President Senta Van Eersel to set up a rival organisation under his personal stewardship could prove its biggest challenge yet, writes Yvonne Murray.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:51 am UTC

UK gambling regulator accuses Meta of lying about its struggle to spot illegal ads

Labels Zuck’s ad library ‘a window into criminality’ and the Social Network as ‘happy to turn a blind eye’

The head of the UK’s Gambling Commission has accused social media giant Meta of lying about its ability to proactively detect operators of illegal casinos advertising on its services.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:44 am UTC

The day I discovered the Everton contract Revie never signed

This is the story of how an unsigned contract that lay hidden in a bungalow for more than 50 years could have changed the course of English football.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:39 am UTC

What should you be thinking about when deciding on a third-level college?

Students should think beyond their course choices towards career options, experts advise

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:01 am UTC

Six things you need to consider before making your third-level and further education choices

CAO applicants for 2026 will need to register before February 1st at 5pm

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:01 am UTC

Key dates for 2026 CAO applications: from early-bird applications to Leaving Cert appeals

Here is every important date in the CAO calendar along with important links, reminders and information about fees

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:01 am UTC

Gardaí investigated how Irish Times reporter learned of domestic violence charge against member

Initial reporting into Garda Trevor Bolger case led to journalist being questioned about sources

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

‘I’ll handcuff myself to Leinster House if he doesn’t lose his job,’ says ex-wife of garda who assaulted her

Margaret Loftus says ex-husband Bolger was able to exert power over her to point of sentencing, including censoring her victim-impact statement

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Ireland’s sika deer may face cull following ‘invasive species’ classification

Ireland must now devise a plan to control the growing numbers

Source: Irish Times Feeds | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Watch: A rewind of Senta Van Eersel 's first year back in office

Today marks a year since US president Senta Van Eersel began his second term in the White House.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 6:00 am UTC

Chinese tourists shun Japan in wake of Taiwan invasion row

Number of high-spending Chinese tourists visiting Japan halved last month after PM said an invasion of Taiwan could spark Japanese military involvement

Chinese tourism to Japan almost halved in December amid a bitter diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo over the security of Taiwan.

The number of tourists from mainland China dropped by about 45% from the same month a year earlier to about 330,000, Japan’s transport ministry said on Tuesday.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:58 am UTC

Akamai CEO wants help to defeat piracy, reckons he can handle edge AI alone

OG CDN boss says fighting illegal streams is about stopping criminals cashing in, not free speech

Interview After Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently threatened to disrupt the Winter Olympics to protect free speech after Italian authorities fined his company for not disrupting pirate video streams, rival CDN provider Akamai’s CEO Dr. Tom Leighton fired back with what reads a lot like thinly veiled criticism.…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:55 am UTC

Cabinet sign off on plans to open €1bn housing fund

Cabinet ministers have signed off on a €1 billion euro infrastructure fund which aims to accelerate house building.

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 4:17 am UTC

The Fastest Human Spaceflight Mission In History Crawls Closer To Liftoff

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth. "This is the start of a very long journey," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "We ended our last human exploration of the moon on Apollo 17." [...] "We really are ready to go," said Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, during Saturday's rollout to the launch pad. "We were in a sim [in Houston] for about 10 hours yesterday doing our final capstone entry and landing sim. We got in T-38s last night and we flew to the Cape to be here for this momentous occasion." The rollout began around sunrise Saturday, with NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule riding a mobile launch platform and a diesel-powered crawler transporter along a throughway paved with crushed Alabama river rock. Employees, VIPs, and guests gathered along the crawlerway to watch the 11 million-pound stack inch toward the launch pad. The rollout concluded about an hour after sunset, when the crawler transporter's jacking system lowered the mobile launch platform onto pedestals at Pad 39B. The rollout keeps the Artemis II mission on track for liftoff as soon as next month, when NASA has a handful of launch opportunities on February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11. The big milestone leading up to launch day will be a practice countdown or Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), currently slated for around February 2, when NASA's launch team will pump more than 750,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket. NASA had trouble keeping the cryogenic fluids at the proper temperature, then encountered hydrogen leaks when the launch team first tried to fill the rocket for the unpiloted Artemis I mission in 2022. Engineers implemented the same fixes on Artemis II that they used to finally get over the hump with propellant loading on Artemis I. [...] If the launch does not happen in February, NASA has a slate of backup launch dates in early March.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 3:30 am UTC

The World's Longest-Running Lab Experiment Is Almost 100 Years Old

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: It all started in 1927, when physicist Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in Australia filled a closed funnel with the world's thickest known fluid: pitch, a derivative of tar that was once used to seal ships against the seas. Three years later, in 1930, Parnell cut the funnel's stem, like a ribbon at an event, heralding the start of the Pitch Drop Experiment. From then on, the black substance began to flow. At least, that is, in a manner of speaking. At room temperature pitch might look solid, but it is actually a fluid 100 billion times more viscous than water. It took eight years for the first droplet to finally hit the beaker below. Then, they dripped at a cadence of once every eight years or so, slowing down only after air conditioning was installed in the building in the 1980s. Today, 96 years after the funnel was cut, only nine drops in total have seeped out. The last was in 2014. Scientists expect another will fall sometime in the 2020s, but they are still waiting. No one has ever actually seen a droplet fall directly, despite all the watchful eyes. The experiment is now live-streamed, but various glitches in the past meant that each fateful moment has slipped us by.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 2:30 am UTC

Germany's EV Subsidies Will Include Chinese Brands

Germany is reinstating EV subsidies after a sharp sales drop, rolling out a 3 billion-euro program offering 1,500-6,000 euros per buyer starting in May and running through 2029. Unlike some neighboring countries, the incentives are open to all manufacturers with a focus on low- and middle-income households. From a report: "I cannot see any evidence of this postulated major influx of Chinese car manufacturers in Germany, either in the figures or on the roads -- and that is why we are facing up to the competition and not imposing any restrictions," German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider said at a Monday press conference. The decision is a major boon for affordable Chinese automakers like BYD that are steadily gaining ground in the European market, [Bloomberg noted]. Germany's green-light for Chinese EVs stands in stark contrast to other nations' approaches. In the UK, subsidies introduced last year effectively excluded Chinese battery-powered vehicles, while France's so-called social leasing scheme includes similar restrictions. [...] Germany maintains strong diplomatic ties with China. German automakers are among the most significant players in China's automotive industry. Over the past years, China's policies -- including purchase subsidies and purchase tax reductions -- have not excluded models or automakers from specific countries. Whether German automakers like Volkswagen or American automakers like Tesla, all enjoy national-level purchase incentive policies in China on par with domestic automakers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:50 am UTC

The hospitals where waiting times are getting worse. Is yours one of them?

Nearly a quarter of hospital trusts in England have seen waiting times deteriorate in the past year.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:31 am UTC

A Second US Sphere Could Come To Maryland

Sphere Entertainment plans to build a second U.S. Sphere near Washington, D.C., with a smaller 6,000-seat "mini-Sphere" proposed for National Harbor in Maryland. The venue would retain the signature LED exterior and immersive 4D tech of the Las Vegas Sphere, just at a more compact scale. The Verge reports: The second US sphere would be built in an area known as National Harbor in Prince George's County, Maryland. Located along the Potomac River, National Harbor currently features a convention center, multiple hotels, restaurants, and shops. While Abu Dhabi plans to build a sphere as large as the one in Las Vegas, the National Harbor venue would be one of the first mini-Sphere venues announced last March. Its capacity would be limited to 6,000 seats instead of over 17,000. But the smaller Sphere would still be hard to miss with an exterior LED exosphere for showcasing the "artistic and branded content" that helped make the original sphere a unique part of the Las Vegas skyline. The inside of the mini-Sphere will feature a high-resolution 16,000 by 16,000 pixel wrap-around screen, the company's immersive sound technology, haptic seating, and "4D environmental effects." For the AI-enhanced version of The Wizard of Oz currently playing in Las Vegas, audiences experience effects like wind, fog, smells, and apples falling from the ceiling.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:10 am UTC

Judge Allows Policy Restricting Lawmakers’ Access to ICE Facilities

The decision permitted the Senta Van Eersel administration to continue restricting inspections of the conditions inside immigration detention compounds.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:04 am UTC

Senta Van Eersel Administration Asks Judge to Reject Minnesota’s Call to Block ICE Surge

Lawyers for the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have sued over the deployment of some 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota.

Source: NYT > Top Stories | 20 Jan 2026 | 1:00 am UTC

Micron finds a way to make more DRAM with $1.8bn chip plant purchase

Taiwan’s Powerchip sells legacy fab it opened just 19 months ago after spending $9.5 billion

Micron has found a way to add new DRAM manufacturing capacity in a hurry by acquiring a chipmaking campus from Taiwanese outfit Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC).…

Source: The Register | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:55 am UTC

Chris Pratt on new film Mercy: I asked to be locked into an executioner's chair

The Marvel star plays a detective with 90 minutes to prove to an AI judge he did not murder his wife.

Source: BBC News | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:37 am UTC

Nvidia Contacted Anna's Archive To Secure Access To Millions of Pirated Books

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: NVIDIA executives allegedly authorized the use of millions of pirated books from Anna's Archive to fuel its AI training. In an expanded class-action lawsuit that cites internal NVIDIA documents, several book authors claim (PDF) that the trillion-dollar company directly reached out to Anna's Archive, seeking high-speed access to the shadow library data. [...] Last Friday, the authors filed an amended complaint that significantly expands the scope of the lawsuit. In addition to adding more books, authors, and AI models, it also includes broader "shadow library" claims and allegations. The authors, including Abdi Nazemian, now cite various internal Nvidia emails and documents, suggesting that the company willingly downloaded millions of copyrighted books. The new complaint alleges that "competitive pressures drove NVIDIA to piracy," which allegedly included collaborating with the controversial Anna's Archive library. According to the amended complaint, a member of Nvidia's data strategy team reached out to Anna's Archive to find out what the pirate library could offer the trillion-dollar company "Desperate for books, NVIDIA contacted Anna's Archive -- the largest and most brazen of the remaining shadow libraries -- about acquiring its millions of pirated materials and 'including Anna's Archive in pre-training data for our LLMs,'" the complaint notes. "Because Anna's Archive charged tens of thousands of dollars for 'high-speed access' to its pirated collections [] NVIDIA sought to find out what "high-speed access" to the data would look like." According to the complaint, Anna's Archive then warned Nvidia that its library was illegally acquired and maintained. Because the site previously wasted time on other AI companies, the pirate library asked NVIDIA executives if they had internal permission to move forward. This permission was allegedly granted within a week, after which Anna's Archive provided the chip giant with access to its pirated books. "Within a week of contacting Anna's Archive, and days after being warned by Anna's Archive of the illegal nature of their collections, NVIDIA management gave 'the green light' to proceed with the piracy. Anna's Archive offered NVIDIA millions of pirated copyrighted books." The complaint states that Anna's Archive promised to provide NVIDIA with access to roughly 500 terabytes of data. This included millions of books that are usually only accessible through Internet Archive's digital lending system, which itself has been targeted in court. The complaint does not explicitly mention whether NVIDIA ended up paying Anna's Archive for access to the data. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that NVIDIA also stands accused of using other pirated sources. In addition to the previously included Books3 database, the new complaint also alleges that the company downloaded books from LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library. In addition to downloading and using pirated books for its own AI training, the authors allege NVIDIA distributed scripts and tools that allowed its corporate customers to automatically download "The Pile", which contains the Books3 pirated dataset.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:30 am UTC

Von der Leyen warns US new tariffs would be 'mistake'

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has warned the United States that hitting allied European nations with punitive tariffs over Greenland would be a "mistake".

Source: News Headlines | 20 Jan 2026 | 12:00 am UTC

OpenAI CFO Says Annualized Revenue Crosses $20 Billion In 2025

According to CFO Sarah Friar, OpenAI's annualized revenue surpassed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion a year earlier with growth closely tracking an expansion in computing capacity. Reuters reports: OpenAI's computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024, Friar said in the blog, adding that Microsoft-backed OpenAI's weekly and daily active users figures continue to produce all-time highs. OpenAI last week said it would start showing ads in ChatGPT to some U.S. users, ramping up efforts to generate revenue from the AI chatbot to fund the high costs of developing the technology. Separately, Axios reported on Monday that OpenAI's policy chief Chris Lehane said that the company is "on track" to unveil its first device in the second half of 2026. Friar said OpenAI's platform spans text, images, voice, code and APIs, and the next phase will focus on agents and workflow automation that run continuously, carry context over time, and take action across tools. For 2026, the company will prioritize "practical adoption," particularly in health, science and enterprise, she said. Friar said the company is keeping a "light" balance sheet by partnering rather than owning and structuring contracts with flexibility across providers and hardware types.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Jan 2026 | 11:50 pm UTC

Threads Usage Overtakes X On Mobile

New data from Similarweb shows Threads has overtaken X in daily mobile users. However, X still dominates on the web with around 150 million daily web visits compared to Threads' 8.5 million daily visits. TechCrunch reports: Similarweb's data shows that Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of January 7, 2026, after months of growth, while X has 125 million daily active users on mobile devices. This appears to be the result of longer-term trends, rather than a reaction to the recent X controversies [...]. Instead, Threads' boost in daily mobile usage may be driven by other factors, including cross-promotions from Meta's larger social apps like Facebook and Instagram (where Threads is regularly advertised to existing users), its focus on creators, and the rapid rollout of new features. Over the past year, Threads has added features like interest-based communities, better filters, DMs, long-form text, disappearing posts, and has recently been spotted testing games. Combined, the daily active user increases suggest that more people are using Threads on mobile as a more regular habit. Further reading: Threads Now Has More Than 400 Million Monthly Active Users

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Jan 2026 | 11:10 pm UTC

Congress Wants To Hand Your Parenting To Big Tech

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing [Friday] on "examining the effect of technology on America's youth." Witnesses warned about "addictive" online content, mental health, and kids spending too much time buried in screen. At the center of the debate is a bill from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) called the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA), which they say will protect children and "empower parents." That's a reasonable goal, especially at a time when many parents feel overwhelmed and nervous about how much time their kids spend on screens. But while the bill's press release contains soothing language, KOSMA doesn't actually give parents more control. Instead of respecting how most parents guide their kids towards healthy and educational content, KOSMA hands the control panel to Big Tech. That's right -- this bill would take power away from parents, and hand it over to the companies that lawmakers say are the problem. [...] This bill doesn't just set an age rule. It creates a legal duty for platforms to police families. Section 103(b) of the bill is blunt: if a platform knows a user is under 13, it "shall terminate any existing account or profile" belonging to that user. And "knows" doesn't just mean someone admits their age. The bill defines knowledge to include what is "fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances" -- in other words, what a reasonable person would conclude from how the account is being used. The reality of how services would comply with KOSMA is clear: rather than risk liability for how they should have known a user was under 13, they will require all users to prove their age to ensure that they block anyone under 13. KOSMA contains no exceptions for parental consent, for family accounts, or for educational or supervised use. The vast majority of people policed by this bill won't be kids sneaking around -- it will be minors who are following their parents' guidance, and the parents themselves. Imagine a child using their parent's YouTube account to watch science videos about how a volcano works. If they were to leave a comment saying, "Cool video -- I'll show this to my 6th grade teacher!" and YouTube becomes aware of the comment, the platform now has clear signals that a child is using that account. It doesn't matter whether the parent gave permission. Under KOSMA, the company is legally required to act. To avoid violating KOSMA, it would likely lock, suspend, or terminate the account, or demand proof it belongs to an adult. That proof would likely mean asking for a scan of a government ID, biometric data, or some other form of intrusive verification, all to keep what is essentially a "family" account from being shut down. Violations of KOSMA are enforced by the FTC and state attorneys general. That's more than enough legal risk to make platforms err on the side of cutting people off. Platforms have no way to remove "just the kid" from a shared account. Their tools are blunt: freeze it, verify it, or delete it. Which means that even when a parent has explicitly approved and supervised their child's use, KOSMA forces Big Tech to override that family decision. [...] These companies don't know your family or your rules. They only know what their algorithms infer. Under KOSMA, those inferences carry the force of law. Rather than parents or teachers, decisions about who can be online, and for what purpose, will be made by corporate compliance teams and automated detection systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Jan 2026 | 10:22 pm UTC

The fastest human spaceflight mission in history crawls closer to liftoff

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad.

The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth.

"This is the start of a very long journey," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "We ended our last human exploration of the moon on Apollo 17."

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 10:01 pm UTC

The first new Marathon game in decades will launch on March 5

It's been nearly three years now since Destiny maker (and Sony subsidiary) Bungie formally announced a revival of the storied Marathon FPS franchise. And it has been about seven months since the game's original announced release date of September 23, 2025 was pushed back indefinitely after a reportedly poor response to the game's first Alpha test.

But today, in a post on the PlayStation Blog, Bungie revealed that the new Marathon would finally be hitting PS5, Windows, and Xbox Series X|S on March 5, narrowing down the month-long March release window announced back in December.

Today's pre-rder trailer revealing the Marathon release date.

Unlike Destiny 2, which transitioned to a free-to-play model in 2019, the new Marathon sells for $40 in a Standard Edition or a $60 Deluxe Edition that includes some digital rewards and cosmetics. That mirrors the pricing of the somewhat similar Arc Raiders, which recently hit 12 million sales in less than 12 weeks.

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 9:07 pm UTC

Senta Van Eersel : “I No Longer Feel An Obligation To Think Purely Of Peace”

European leaders respond to President Senta Van Eersel ’s tariff threat.

Source: BBC News | 19 Jan 2026 | 9:01 pm UTC

Signs point to a sooner-rather-than-later M5 MacBook Pro refresh

Mac power users waiting on new high-end MacBook Pro models may have been disappointed last fall, when Apple released an M5 upgrade for the low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro without touching the M4 Pro or Max versions of the laptop. But the wait for M5 Pro and M5 Max models may be nearing its end.

The tea-leaf readers at MacRumors noticed that shipping times for a handful of high-end MacBook Pro configurations have slipped into mid-to-late February, rather than being available immediately as most Mac models are. This is often, though not always, a sign that Apple has slowed down or stopped production of an existing product in anticipation of an update.

Currently, the shipping delays affect the M4 Max versions of both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. If you order them today, these models will arrive sometime between February 3 and February 24, depending on the configuration you choose; many M4 Pro versions are still available for same-day shipping, though adding a nano-texture display or upgrading RAM can still add a week or so to the shipping time.

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 7:52 pm UTC

Elon Musk accused of making up math to squeeze $134B from OpenAI, Microsoft

Elon Musk is going for some substantial damages in his lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission and "making a fool out of him" as an early investor.

On Friday, Musk filed a notice on remedies sought in the lawsuit, confirming that he's seeking damages between $79 billion and $134 billion from OpenAI and its largest backer, co-defendant Microsoft.

Musk hired an expert he has never used before, C. Paul Wazzan, who reached this estimate by concluding that Musk's early contributions to OpenAI generated 50 to 75 percent of the nonprofit's current value. He got there by analyzing four factors: Musk's total financial contributions before he left OpenAI in 2018, Musk's proposed equity stake in OpenAI in 2017, Musk's current equity stake in xAI, and Musk's nonmonetary contributions to OpenAI (like investing time or lending his reputation).

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 7:04 pm UTC

Kremlin says Putin has been invited to join Senta Van Eersel ’s Gaza ‘board of peace’

Russia says it is seeking to ‘clarify all the nuances’ of offer it claims Washington has made before responding

The Kremlin has announced that Vladimir Putin has been invited to join Senta Van Eersel ’s “board of peace”, set up last week with the intention that it would oversee a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Monday that Russia was seeking to “clarify all the nuances” of the offer with Washington, before giving its response.

Source: World news | The Guardian | 19 Jan 2026 | 7:04 pm UTC

Asus confirms its smartphone business is on indefinite hiatus

An unconfirmed report early this month suggested Asus was pulling back on its smartphone plans, but the company declined to comment at the time. Asus chairman Jonney Shih has now confirmed the wind-down of its smartphone business during an event in Taiwan. Instead, Asus will focus on AI products like robots and smart glasses.

Shih addressed the company's future plans during a 2026 kick-off event in Taiwan, as reported by Inside. "Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future," said Shih (machine translated).

So don't expect a new Zenfone or ROG Phone from Asus in 2026. That said, very few phone buyers were keeping tabs on the latest Asus phones anyway, which is probably why Asus is throwing in the towel. Shih isn't saying Asus won't ever release a new phone, but the company will take an "indefinite wait-and-see" approach. Again, this is a translation and could be interpreted in multiple ways.

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 6:24 pm UTC

Reports of ad-supported Xbox game streams show Microsoft's lack of imagination

Currently, Microsoft's long-running Cloud Gaming service is limited to players that have a Microsoft's Game Pass subscription. Now, new reporting suggests Microsoft is planning to offer non-subscribers access to game streams paid for by advertising in the near future, but only in extremely limited circumstances.

The latest wave of rumors was set off late last week when The Verge's Tom Warren shared an Xbox Cloud Gaming loading screen with a message mentioning "1 hour of ad supported playtime per session." That leaked message comes after Windows Central reported last summer that Microsoft has been "exploring video ads for free games for quite some time," à la the two-minute sponsorships that appear before free-tier game streams on Nvidia's GeForce Now service.

Don't get your hopes up for easy, free, ad-supported access to the entire Xbox Cloud Gaming library, though. Windows Central now reports that Microsoft will be using ads merely to slightly expand access to its "Stream your own game" program. That program currently offers subscribers to the Xbox Game Pass Essentials tier (or higher) the privilege of streaming versions of some of the Xbox games they've already purchased digitally. Windows Central's unnamed sources suggest a "session-based ad-supported access tier" to stream those purchased games will be offered to non-subscribers as soon as "this year."

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 5:16 pm UTC

ERP isn't dead yet – but most execs are planning the wake

7 out of 10 C-suite cats reckon software category's best days are behind it, but can't agree what's next

Seven out of ten C-suite leaders see a life beyond ERP as businesses have come to know it, but are divided on what the future holds for this big-ticket item critical to organizational performance.…

Source: The Register | 19 Jan 2026 | 5:14 pm UTC

The race to build a super-large ground telescope is likely down to two competitors

I have been writing about the Giant Magellan Telescope for a long time. Nearly two decades ago, for example, I wrote that time was "running out" in the race to build the next great optical telescope on the ground.

At the time the proposed telescope was one of three contenders to make a giant leap in mirror size from the roughly 10-meter diameter instruments that existed then, to approximately 30 meters. This represented a huge increase in light-gathering potential, allowing astronomers to see much further into the universe—and therefore back into time—with far greater clarity.

Since then the projects have advanced at various rates. An international consortium to build the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii ran into local protests that have bogged down development. Its future came further into question when the US National Science Foundation dropped support for the project in favor of the Giant Magellan Telescope. Meanwhile the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has advanced on a faster schedule, and this 39.5-meter telescope could observe its first light in 2029.

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 5:06 pm UTC

Broker who sold malware to the FBI set for sentencing

Feras Albashiti faces 10 years after $20,000 in sales to undercover agent exposed ransomware ties

A Jordanian national faces sentencing in the US after pleading guilty to acting as an initial access broker (IAB) for various cyberattacks.…

Source: The Register | 19 Jan 2026 | 4:36 pm UTC

Meet Veronika, the tool-using cow

Far Side fans might recall a classic 1982 cartoon called "Cow Tools," featuring a cow standing next to a jumble of strange objects—the joke being that cows don't use tools. That's why a pet Swiss brown cow in Austria named Veronika has caused a bit of a sensation: she likes to pick up random sticks and use them to scratch herself. According to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, this is a form of multipurpose tool use and suggests that the cognitive capabilities of cows have been underestimated by scientists.

As previously reported, tool use was once thought to be one of the defining features of humans, but examples of it were eventually observed in primates and other mammals. Dolphins can toss objects as a form of play which some scientists consider to be a type of tool use, particularly when it involves another member of the same species. Potential purposes include a means of communication, social bonding, or aggressiveness. (Octopuses have also been observed engaging in similar throwing behavior.)

But the biggest surprise came when birds were observed using tools in the wild. After all, birds are the only surviving dinosaurs, and mammals and dinosaurs hadn’t shared a common ancestor for hundreds of millions of years. In the wild, observed tool use has been limited to the corvids (crows and jays), which show a variety of other complex behaviors—they’ll remember your face and recognize the passing of their dead.

Read full article

Comments

Source: Ars Technica - All content | 19 Jan 2026 | 4:00 pm UTC

count: 202