A moment that changed me: I was hit by an SUV – and it made me reconsider my drinking and screen time

I was in New Orleans for work, without travel insurance, when the car crashed into me. In the months I spent recovering, I began to think seriously about how I treated my health

The SUV slammed into me at a crosswalk, where I had right of way. It was 2024 and I was on the first night of a work trip to New Orleans. Time slowed down as I flew 2 metres through the air and crashed on to the road in what felt like slow motion. When I managed to stand up, there were waves of adrenaline juddering through me. My friend, Brandy, and a group of strangers helped me to the side of the road, and it was then that I remembered my annual travel insurance had expired the week before. In a prim, defensive tone, like a dowager who’d just had a fainting spell and resented all the fuss, I insisted that I was perfectly fine and didn’t need an ambulance. Then I blacked out.

The paramedics arrived and, despite my protests, they wouldn’t take no for an answer. On the stretcher, I started calculating how much money I had in my current account, how much I could put on a credit card and how much I could plausibly ask to borrow from my parents. My lack of insurance was entirely due to my own fecklessness, but being forced to run these sums with a head injury, after begging not to receive help that I obviously needed, was an almost comically bleak experience.

Published: February 25, 2026, 6:45 am

What is the national maternity and neonatal investigation and why was it launched?

From racism to staff shortages, the interim report found a host of deep-rooted issues affecting women and babies

• NHS maternity units often cover up harmful errors in childbirth, report finds

• Cruel comments, racism and cover-ups: key findings from England’s maternity care report

On Thursday, a damning interim report published after a national investigation into England’s maternity services found deep-rooted issues affecting women and their babies, including insensitivity from maternity staff, racism and discrimination, and chronic staff shortages. Below is an exploration of what led to the report and what happens next.

Published: February 26, 2026, 12:01 am

NHS maternity units often cover up harmful errors in childbirth, report finds

Damning inquiry into services in England reveals falsification of medical records after ‘negligent’ care

• What is the national maternity and neonatal investigation and why was it launched?

• Cruel comments, racism and cover-ups: key findings from England’s maternity care report

Hospitals that cause harm and injury to women and babies during childbirth often resort to a “cover-up” of their mistakes, falsify medical records and deny bereaved parents answers, a damning report has found.

“Negligent” care has devastating emotional and psychological consequences for families, disputes between maternity staff have a “disastrous” impact on mothers, and ethnic minority and poorer women have worse outcomes because of racism and discrimination, Lady Amos said.

Banning families from being involved in investigations into the mistakes they encountered.

Conducting inquiries into errors which families think are poor quality and do not properly reflect what occurred.

Driving distressed families to instigate legal action as a way of getting at the truth after they were “denied openness and honesty in the aftermath of harm and bereavement”.

Failing to treat families who have lost a baby with compassion.

Published: February 26, 2026, 12:01 am

Mumsnet calls for under-16s social media ban with cigarette-style health warnings

Resembling cigarette packet warnings, the ads highlight dangers and urge people to email MPs

Mumsnet has launched a campaign to introduce a ban on social media for under-16s featuring health warnings in the style of those on cigarette packets.

The deliberately provocative national advertising campaign calls for all social media to be banned for children under the age of 16. The images on billboards and social media make a number of stark statements related to health.

Published: February 26, 2026, 7:28 am

Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more

A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives

There’s not much to love about big tech these days. So many ills can be laid at its door: social media harms, misinformation, polarisation, mining and misuse of personal data, environmental negligence, tax avoidance, the list goes on. Added to which, Silicon Valley’s leaders seem all too keen to cosy up to the Trump administration, to shower the president with bribes – sorry, gifts – and remain silent about his worsening political overreach. And that’s before we get to the rampant “enshittification”, as the tech writer Cory Doctorow describes it, which means that by design many big tech products have become less useful and more extractive than they were when we originally signed up to them.

We’ve entered into a Faustian pact with these companies: “While it’s brilliant to have access to high-quality products and software, very often for ‘free’, it’s important to remember that there is a trade-off involved – often of our personal data and privacy,” says Lisa Barber, tech editor at Which? We give these companies our attention and our information, which they then turn into big bucks and apparently unassailable monopolies.

Published: February 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Keen bosses, strange mistakes and a looming threat: workers on training AI to do their jobs

Some say the technology is devaluing their work, while others reckon it is not yet – and might never be – good enough to replace them entirely

Workers grappling with the rapid growth of artificial intelligence have said they feel “devalued” by the technology and warned of a downward trajectory in the quality of work.

Recent analysis by the International Monetary Fund found AI would affect about 40% of jobs around the world. Its head, Kristalina Georgieva, has said: “This is like a tsunami hitting the labour market.”

Published: February 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Treasury calls in Blair thinktank to advise on using AI across public services

Unimpressed tech equity campaigners compare move to ‘inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse’

Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.

James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Published: February 25, 2026, 4:51 pm

Nvidia quarterly earnings show immunity to AI bubble fears as it cashes in on data center boom

Chipmaker’s quarterly earnings surpassed Wall Street’s expectations every quarter for multiple years now

Nvidia released its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, with the chipmaker revealing higher than expected revenues and extending its yearslong streak of surpassing Wall Street’s sky-high expectations.

The company receives the vast majority of its revenue from its data center business, which has been buoyed by the tech industry’s immense investment into AI infrastructure. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported 75% year-over-year growth of this vertical to $62.3bn. The world’s most valuable publicly traded company, Nvidia has dominated the chip market as its processing units have become the backbone of the artificial intelligence boom. The company also posted an enormous total profit for the fiscal year: $120bn.

Published: February 25, 2026, 10:09 pm

Facial recognition error prompts police to arrest Asian man for burglary 100 miles away

Exclusive: Alvi Choudhury claiming damages against Thames Valley police after biased technology confused him with man looking ‘10 years younger’

Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.

Alvi Choudhury, 26, a software engineer, was working at the home he shares with his parents in Southampton in January when police knocked on his door, handcuffed him and held him in custody for nearly 10 hours before releasing him at 2am.

Published: February 25, 2026, 1:36 pm

Tech legend Stewart Brand on Musk, Bezos and his extraordinary life: ‘We don’t need to passively accept our fate’

He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, but for the next 10,000 years

Stewart Brand thinks big and long. He thinks on a planetary scale – as suggested by the title of his celebrated Whole Earth Catalog – and on the longest of timeframes, as with his Long Now Foundation, which looks forward to the next 10,000 years of human civilisation. He has had a lifelong fascination with the future, and anything that could get us there faster, from space travel to psychedelic drugs to computing. In fact, he was arguably the bridge between the San Francisco counterculture of the 60s and present-day Silicon Valley: in his commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs eulogised the Whole Earth Catalog and Brand’s philosophy, and echoed its farewell mantra: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

You could say that Brand has also lived big and long. He is now 87 years old, in the final chapters of an eventful and adventurous life that has crossed paths with some of the most consequential events and figures of his era. He has been a writer, an editor, a publisher, a soldier, a photojournalist, an LSD evangelist, an events organiser, a future-planning consultant, even a government adviser (to the California governor Jerry Brown in the late 70s). “There was a time when people asked me, ‘What do you do?’ I said, ‘I find things and I found things,’” says Brand, as in he is a founder. He is speaking from a library where he likes to work in Petaluma, California, not far from his houseboat in Sausalito. “I’m always searching for good stuff to recommend, and good people.”

Published: February 25, 2026, 12:00 pm

Resident Evil Requiem review - there’s plenty of life in the undead yet

Fear, fights and feverish fanservice collide in this celebration of Resident Evil’s recent and retro legacy
PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2; Capcom

There’s often an undercurrent of existential fatigue in games that look back at their legacy. Dark Souls III’s dying kingdom, Metal Gear Solid 4’s decrepit Snake. So when Capcom showed us an ageing Leon Kennedy entering the ruins of the police station that marked the start of his journey from rookie cop to hardened veteran, it felt tinged with ennui as much as nostalgia. That self-reflective swansong for this 30-year series may still happen one day, but Requiem isn’t it. Even at its dourest and most pensive, this is less a song for the dead, more a knees-up in honour of the rocket launchers and typewriters that came before. Leon may be getting on a bit, but this is Capcom as energised, devious and goofy as ever.

Leon’s old scars will have to wait, anyway. Requiem’s new blood is FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft. Equal parts tenacious and nervous, she’s a fitting lens on the horror portion of Requiem’s split focus between disempowered terror and cathartic action. The story opens with Grace – more acquainted with desk work than field ops – tasked to go over a crime scene at a gutted hotel. She knows the place well, since it holds some horrific memories for her. Still, she heads off with little more than a flashlight and a pistol you’ll never find quite enough ammunition for to feel safe.

Published: February 26, 2026, 1:46 pm

Why Xbox’s corporate shake-up matters for everyone who plays games

With ​i​ts longtime figureheads stepping aside, Microsoft’s gaming division faces a pivotal moment​, raising questions about whether ​i​t can still balance creative ambition with corporate strategy​ in the age of AI

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

And so it’s all change at Xbox. Last Friday it was announced that the CEO of Microsoft’s gaming division, Phil Spencer, is to retire, while its president Sarah Bond is resigning. In their place, a new partnership: Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is promoted to chief content officer, while the new CEO is Asha Sharma, who moves from her post as president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product.

In a company-wide email, Spencer stated that he would stay on until the summer in an advisory role before, “starting the next chapter of my life”. For her part, Bond issued a statement on her LinkedIn account: “I’ve decided this is the right time for me to take my next step, both personally and professionally.” It was all extremely good natured, but its doubtful these airy missives tell the full tale.

Published: February 25, 2026, 12:30 pm

Pieced Together review – poignant narrative game gathers bittersweet fragments of a friendship

Glowfrog Games; PC
Short but very sweet tale asks the player to compile a scrapbook of mementoes telling the story of a heartfelt bond that frays over time

There are few things sadder than the end of a close friendship. Whether it happens in a sudden moment of betrayal or after years of gradual separation, the feelings of loss can stay with you for a lifetime.

This is the theme of Pieced Together, a quiet, charming narrative game about best pals Connie and Beth, who meet at school in the 1990s and form an immediate, seemingly inseparable bond. Through the ingenious medium of an interactive scrapbook, we play as Connie, glueing in photos, notes and memories of her friend after years of separation. The game begins with several attempts to write Beth a letter, before we cut-out, stick and sort the story of their lives together.

Published: February 25, 2026, 11:00 am

New GLP-1 pill helps patients lose up to 8% of body weight, trial shows

Orforglipron led to greater weight loss than semaglutide tablets and could offer more effective oral alternative to jabs

A new daily pill could be a more effective GLP-1 tablet for weight loss, according to a clinical trial that may pave the way for an improved non-injection alternative to Wegovy and Mounjaro.

The drug, called orforglipron and manufactured by Eli Lilly, is prescribed for type 2 diabetes and targets the same GLP-1 receptors as oral semaglutide. Like semaglutide, it lowers blood sugar levels, slows digestion and suppresses appetite. Unlike semaglutide tablets, it does not need to be taken on an empty stomach.

Published: February 26, 2026, 11:39 am

Tropical plants flowering months earlier or later because of climate crisis – study

Changes threaten ecosystems as flowering falls out of sync with fruit-eating, seed-dispersing animals and pollinators

Tropical flowers are blooming months earlier or later than they used to because of climate breakdown, with potentially “cascading impacts across ecosystems”, according to a study of 8,000 plants dating back 200 years.

Researchers looked at flowers from a range of countries, including Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana and Thailand, home to the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, but also the most understudied.

Published: February 25, 2026, 7:00 pm

Can degrowth save the climate? – podcast

Since the 1960s, global GDP has been rapidly rising and living standards have reached record highs. But something else has been rocketing up too – carbon emissions. For years, scientists and economists have been asking: is it possible to grow without heating and polluting the Earth? And as the climate becomes more unstable, the issue is only becoming more urgent. Madeleine Finlay hears from two economists arguing for a change in how we measure a country’s success. Nick Stern is professor of economics and government at the London School of Economics and an advocate of green growth, an approach to growth that prioritises green industry. Jason Hickel is a political economist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona who advocates degrowth, shrinking parts of the economy that do not advance our social and ecological goals.

Catch up with all the pieces in the Beyond Growth series

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Published: February 26, 2026, 5:00 am

Ayahuasca psychedelic DMT shows promise as depression therapy

Study finds participants saw reduction in depressive symptoms as researchers welcome ‘promising’ results

A phase II clinical trial has found dimethyltryptamine (DMT), one of the psychoactive components traditionally used in the Amazonian psychedelic ritual ayahuasca, might be a promising therapy for depression.

The psychedelic pharmaceutical company Small Pharma (now Cybin UK) sponsored and designed the trial, which was led by Dr David Erritzoe, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Imperial College London. The results were published in Nature this month.

Published: February 25, 2026, 1:00 pm

How ancient Scottish rocks throw ‘snowball Earth’ theory up in the air

Researchers discover rare periods of a few thousands years when climate unexpectedly awoke from slumber

During the ”snowball Earth” period about 700m years ago, Earth’s climate shut down. The planet was encased in ice and insulated from seasonal variations: spring, summer, autumn and winter all stopped. Or at least that was the theory.

Recent examination of some ancient rocks from the west coast of Scotland has now overturned that thinking, suggesting there were periods during snowball Earth when the climate woke up.

Published: February 25, 2026, 6:00 am

Waitrose suspends sale of mackerel because of overfishing

Supermarket chain says it will point customers to herring and other species to protect threatened Atlantic stocks

Waitrose has become the first UK supermarket to suspend the sale of mackerel because of overfishing and will start pointing customers toward herring and other species.

The Marine Conservation Society warned last year that stocks were at breaking point owing to overfishing, and it downgraded mackerel from a three to a four on its five-point Good Fish Guide sustainability scale.

Published: February 26, 2026, 1:06 pm

‘A gift that falls from the sky’: why farmers are using Etna’s ash as fertiliser

Falling volcanic ash has for years been viewed as a nuisance. But a Sicilian project has discovered its agricultural potential and wants to spread the word

In the Sicilian town of Giarre overlooking Mount Etna, Andrea Passanisi, a tropical and citrus fruits producer, uses an unusual fertiliser on his 100-hectare (247-acre) stretch of land: volcano ash.

Like hundreds of farmers and citizens of rural towns perched on the slopes of Europe’s highest and most active volcano, the 41-year-old’s family has had to deal with the nuisance of falling volcanic ash for generations. But it is only in recent years that the quantity of ash has become so excessive that it required an alternative approach.

Published: February 26, 2026, 2:00 pm

A deafening nuclear fusion reactor: why you wouldn’t want to hear the sun

Sunrise is a majestic spectacle – but we should be grateful for the miles of vacuum between us and the star

Dawn on a still morning is a majestic spectacle, as sunlight spills silently across the landscape and the Earth gradually emerges from darkness. Sunrise has inspired countless pieces of music striving to express this soundless experience in audible form. But if we could actually hear the sun, it would be deafening.

The sun is a giant nuclear fusion reactor, converting hydrogen into helium and releasing massive amounts of energy in the form of heat – and sound. Sound is essentially vibration and needs a medium to travel through.

Published: February 26, 2026, 6:00 am