Is it true that … coffee aids digestion?

Caffeine can improve the digestive system and lead to better gut health, but try to avoid it after noon or if you have irritable bowels

Is sipping a coffee after a heavy meal actually good for helping you digest it? “For some people, absolutely,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London. “But it’s not always a good idea.”

Caffeine stimulates the gut, increasing muscle contractions, she says, which for many people helps food move through the digestive system “at a nice pace” before being excreted.

Published: February 2, 2026, 8:00 am

HMRC thinks I am someone else – and it’s costing me £450 a month

Tax authority has associated a stranger’s national insurance number to my own, and is charging me as if I have two jobs

In November, HM Revenue and Customs randomly associated someone else’s job to my national insurance (NI) number. I can see where they work, when they started, their payroll number and how much they are earning.

HMRC is now taxing me as if I have two jobs, earning twice as much as I do, and adding on a tax adjustment for the tax it thinks I didn’t pay last year. It’s costing me about £450 a month in extra tax and NI contributions.

Published: February 3, 2026, 7:00 am

Ultra-processed foods should be treated more like cigarettes than food – study

UPFs are made to encourage addiction and consumption and should be regulated like tobacco, say researchers

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter regulation, according to a new report.

UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to the parallels in widespread health harms that link both.

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:00 am

UK privacy watchdog opens inquiry into X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes

Information Commissioner’s Office to investigate whether Elon Musk’s firms have complied with data protection law

Elon Musk’s X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people’s consent.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data protection law.

Published: February 3, 2026, 2:49 pm

French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit

Prosecutors’ announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media firms

• Europe live – latest updates

Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.

“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.

Published: February 3, 2026, 3:29 pm

Disastrous start for US TikTok as users cry censorship

New US-owned app struggled with a storm and was accused of blocking content critical of Trump – can it recover?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you from Doha, where I’m moderating panels about AI and investing as part of the Web Summit Qatar.

I want to bring your attention to the impact of a Guardian story. In December, we published a story, “‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases”, about grieving families and law enforcement officers who say that Meta and Snapchat have slowed down criminal investigations. (The tech companies contend that they cooperate.) This month, Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to compel social media platforms to respond to warrants in 72 hours.

Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails show

Tesla discontinues Model X and S vehicles as Elon Musk pivots to robotics

What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots

The slopaganda era: 10 AI images posted by the White House – and what they teach us

Apple reports record iPhone sales as new lineup reignites worldwide demand

South Korea’s ‘world-first’ AI laws face pushback amid bid to become leading tech power

Can you guess our screen time? A priest, pensioner, tech CEO and teenager reveal all

Published: February 3, 2026, 2:18 pm

Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies

Pearson, Experian and others fall sharply after startup unveils software to automate a range of professional services

European publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence firm Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments.

Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.

Published: February 3, 2026, 4:01 pm

Barnsley rebranded UK’s first ‘tech town’ as US giants join AI push

Minister announces Microsoft, Cisco and Adobe to help apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses

In 2002 Barnsley toyed with a redesign as a Tuscan hill village as it sought out a brighter post-industrial future. In 2021 it adopted the airily vague slogan “the place of possibilities”. Now it is trying a different image: Britain’s first “tech town”.

The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has anointed the South Yorkshire community as a trailblazer for “how AI can improve everyday life” in the UK.

Published: February 3, 2026, 12:01 am

Elon Musk merges SpaceX with xAI at $1.25tn valuation

Aerospace business and artificial intelligence firm to unite for IPO as world’s most valuable private company

• Business live – latest updates

Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a $1.25tn (£910bn) merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year.

The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”.

Published: February 3, 2026, 7:25 am

‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report

Annual review highlights growing capabilities of AI models, while examining issues from cyber-attacks to job disruption

The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.

Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu.

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:00 am

Requiem for a film-maker: Darren Aronofsky’s AI revolutionary war series is a horror

The once-lauded director of Black Swan and The Wrestler has drowned himself in AI slop with an embarrassing new online series

If you happen to find yourself stumbling through Time magazine’s YouTube account, perhaps because you are a time traveller from the 1970s who doesn’t fully understand how the present works yet – then you will be presented with something that many believe represents the vanguard of entertainment as we know it.

On This Day … 1776 is a series of short videos depicting America’s revolutionary war. What makes On This Day notable is that it was made by Darren Aronofsky’s studio Primordial Soup. What also makes it interesting is that it was created with AI. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it is terrible.

Published: February 2, 2026, 12:11 pm

Iron Lung review – YouTuber Markiplier crash lands with big-screen sci-fi horror

Online gaming legend Mark Fischbach writes, directs and stars in this feature about a convict on a vague intergalactic mission – but his barebones production has nothing to show

William Goldman’s old showbiz maxim continues to apply that nobody knows anything. Independently financed horror movie Iron Lung has been smuggled into multiplexes without the usual promotional hoopla, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.

Though Markiplier is approaching the horror genre from a notionally fresh angle – by adapting Dave Szymanski’s eponymous space-submarine sim – he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth; this is Moon in dimmer light. Beset by ominous rumbles and mounting doubts about the state of mankind, the begrimed and squalid craft singlehandedly piloted by Fischbach’s straggle-haired convict Simon is indistinguishable from the average teenage bedroom. Our hero staggers round this intergalactic deathtrap completing vaguely specified missions – ram this, repair that, download something or other – like a harassed dad ticking off his Sunday to-do list. In this, Simon proves more proficient than Fischbach’s offscreen self, who is either stumped by or oblivious to the film’s fundamental issues.

Published: February 2, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘A mixed blessing’: crowdfunding has changed the way we give, but is it fair and effective?

Millions of dollars have been raised for Bondi hero Ahmed al-Ahmed, while campaigns are backing families hit by Victoria’s bushfires. What does this way of giving mean for the charity sector?

Within hours of the Bondi beach terror attack, the money had already begun to pour in. As images of the tragedy flooded social media, people from around the world donated tens of thousands of dollars to the victims, their families and first responders.

Passing the hat around the neighbourhood or the local pub has always been a staple response in times of crisis. But today, that instinct to open your wallet has been exponentially supercharged via a digital simulacrum: online crowdfunding platforms.

Published: February 2, 2026, 2:00 pm

Nasa delays moon rocket launch by a month after fuel leaks during test

Artemis II mission was due to begin as early as next week and astronauts have spent almost two weeks in quarantine

Nasa has postponed its historic mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again, after issues arose during a critical test of its most powerful rocket yet.

The US space agency had planned to launch the Artemis II mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as next week, but announced overnight that it would be delayed until March, without specifying a date.

Published: February 3, 2026, 12:04 pm

Ultra-processed foods should be treated more like cigarettes than food – study

UPFs are made to encourage addiction and consumption and should be regulated like tobacco, say researchers

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter regulation, according to a new report.

UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to the parallels in widespread health harms that link both.

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:00 am

Elon Musk merges SpaceX with xAI at $1.25tn valuation

Aerospace business and artificial intelligence firm to unite for IPO as world’s most valuable private company

• Business live – latest updates

Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a $1.25tn (£910bn) merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year.

The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”.

Published: February 3, 2026, 7:25 am

Why are women turning to testosterone? – podcast

Just like men, women are increasingly being told by online influencers that the classic symptoms of middle age could be down to low testosterone. In the second part of this miniseries exploring the hormone, Madeleine Finlay finds out what testosterone supplementation is doing for women. She hears from science journalist Linda Geddes, who is taking testosterone for low libido, and from prof Susan Davis, a consultant endocrinologist and head of the Monash University Women’s Health Research Programme. Susan explains what the evidence really shows about the benefits and risks of women taking testosterone

‘Frightening’ how easily women can get hold of testosterone, say doctors

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Published: February 3, 2026, 5:00 am

Did you solve it? The numbers all go to 11

The answers to today’s problems

Earlier today I set you these three problems about the number 11. Here they are again with solutions.

1. Funny formation

odd positions: 9,7,5,3,1 sum to 25;

even positions: 8,6,4,2,0 sum to 20.

Published: February 2, 2026, 5:05 pm

Starwatch: Orion the hunter dominates the February night sky

Straddling the celestial equator, the constellation is visible in both hemispheres

Orion, the hunter, one of the most recognisable constellations in the night sky, is well placed for observation from the northern hemisphere during February. Straddling the celestial equator – the projection of Earth’s equator on to the night sky – the constellation is also visible from the southern hemisphere.

From the UK this week, Orion rises in the east shortly after sunset and is highest in the south at about 2100 to 2200 GMT. By late evening, the constellation dominates the southern sky before setting in the west after midnight. The chart shows the view looking south from London on 2 February at 2000 GMT, although the view will be mostly unchanged for the entire week.

Published: February 2, 2026, 6:00 am

Human-made materials make up as much as half of UK beaches, study finds

Researchers say sediment changes due to waste dumping and coastal erosion intensified by climate breakdown

As much as half of some British beaches’ coarse sediments consist of human-made materials such as brick, concrete, glass and industrial waste, a study has found.

Climate breakdown, which has caused more frequent and destructive coastal storms, has led to an increase in these substances on beaches. Six sites on the Firth of Forth, an estuary on Scotland’s east coast joining the River Forth to the North Sea, were surveyed to better understand the makeup of “urban beaches”.

Published: February 3, 2026, 1:56 pm