US authorities reportedly investigate claims that Meta can read encrypted WhatsApp messages

A lawsuit filed last week alleges tech firm ‘can access virtually all’ private communications, a claim the company has denied

US authorities have reportedly investigated claims that Meta can read users’ encrypted chats on the WhatsApp messaging platform, which it owns.

The reports follow a lawsuit filed last week, which claimed Meta “can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications”.

Published: January 31, 2026, 1:01 pm

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

From the person who scrolls on the toilet to the one without any social media, what do their digital habits tell us?

• Will Storr: we have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones – can we get it back?

Dayeon, 16: the teenager who spends less than an hour a day on screens

Published: January 31, 2026, 6:00 am

AI-generated news should carry ‘nutrition’ labels, thinktank says

The Institute for Public Policy Research also argues that tech companies must pay publishers for content they use

AI-generated news should carry “nutrition” labels and tech companies must pay publishers for the content they use, according to a left-of-centre thinktank, amid rising use of the technology as a source for current affairs.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said AI firms were rapidly emerging as the new “gatekeepers” of the internet and intervention was needed to create a healthy AI news environment.

Published: January 30, 2026, 6:00 am

How the right won the internet | Robert Topinka

In the second part of our series on digital politics, we look at how online provocateurs have advanced extreme political ideas – and watched them seep into the mainstream

• Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

• Part one: How liberals lost the internet

The internet has totally changed the way in which politics is conducted. As established in the first piece in our series, liberals have totally failed to grasp this fact. The right, however, are thriving in this new world. Future historians studying the role that fringe online ideas played in the US republic’s demise will be spoiled for choice. One episode in particular comes to mind: Tucker Carlson, a former primetime speaker at a Republican convention, inviting a white supremacist livestreamer, Nick Fuentes, on to his YouTube show in 2025 for a chat in which he talked about the influence of “organised Jewry” in the US.

Carlson spent years echoing white nationalist talking points on his Fox News show, but Fuentes’ style – combining Nazi salutes with cheeky grins – places him beyond the pale for broadcast television. However, under the logic of YouTube, the meeting of these two major influencers is almost inevitable. Platforms incentivise audience cross-pollination, which is why Fuentes routinely livestreams with figures such as Adin Ross and Andrew Tate, who are known more for their homophobia and misogyny than their thoughts on ethnostates.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

Published: January 31, 2026, 8:00 am

Urban Outfitters, Dreams and Royal Parks cafes criticised for use of gig economy app

TUC urges ministers to bring forward changes to protect workers amid concerns over apps such as Temper

The fashion retailer Urban Outfitters, the bed specialist Dreams and the operator of several Royal Parks cafes have been criticised for the use of the gig economy app Temper to take on staff – some of whom can end up earning below minimum wage.

The TUC is urging the government to bring forward promised reforms to protect gig economy workers amid concerns that those hired by apps such as Temper are missing out on significant employment rights including sick pay, rest breaks, holiday pay and a minimum hourly rate.

Published: January 31, 2026, 11:00 am

What to know about the jury trials of Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube

Hundreds of parents, teens and school districts have claimed social media is intentionally addictive and harmful

Social media companies will have to answer to a jury – for the first time – for allegations that their products are intentionally addictive and harmful to young users’ mental health. Hundreds of parents, teens and school districts sued Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, leading to a series of landmark trials that began this week. Jury selection in the first case started on Tuesday in Los Angeles court.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is among the big tech CEOs who are expected to testify. Both sides are likely to bring in experts to hash out the science behind alleged addiction to social media.

Published: January 31, 2026, 10:00 am

Abusers using AI and digital tech to attack and control women, charity warns

Exclusive: Smartwatches, Oura rings, smart home devices and Fitbits being weaponised, says Refuge

Domestic abusers are increasingly using AI, smartwatches and other technology to attack and control their victims, a domestic abuse charity says.

Record numbers of women who were abused and controlled through technology were referred to Refuge’s specialist services during the last three months of 2025, including a 62% increase in the most complex cases to total 829 women. There was also a 24% increase in referrals of under-30s.

Published: January 30, 2026, 7:00 am

Electric ​cars ​go ​mainstream as ​adoption ​surges ​across ​rich and ​developing ​nations

A wave of affordable Chinese-made EVs is accelerating the shift away from petrol cars, challenging long‑held assumptions about how transport decarbonisation unfolds

• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Last year, almost every new car sold in Norway, the nature-loving country flush with oil wealth, was fully electric. In prosperous Denmark, which was all-in on petrol and diesel cars until just before Covid, sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) reached a share of 68%. In California, the share of zero-emissions vehicles hit 20%. And at least every third new car now bought by the Dutch, Finns, Belgians and Swedes burns no fuel.

These figures, which would have felt fanciful just five years ago, show the rich world leading the shift away from cars that pump out toxic gas and planet-heating pollutants. But a more startling trend is that electric car sales are also racing ahead in many developing countries. While China is known for its embrace of electric vehicles (EVs), demand has also soared in emerging markets from South America to south-east Asia. BEV sales in Turkey have caught up with the EU’s, data published this week shows.

The Fukushima towns frozen in time: nature has thrived since the nuclear disaster but what happens if humans return?

The UK government didn’t want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I’m not surprised

The 16-month battle to reveal the truth about Sydney Water’s poo balls

Powering up: how Ethiopia is becoming an unlikely leader in the electric vehicle revolution

‘My Tesla has become ordinary’: Turkey catches up with EU in electric car sales

The electric vehicle revolution is still on course – don’t let your loathing of Elon Musk stop you joining up

Published: January 31, 2026, 7:00 am

We have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones: can we get it back?

My use of mobile phones has been compulsive – has it been for better or for worse?

• From a priest to a pensioner, a teenager to a tech CEO: can you guess our screen time?

In 2003, the Stanford social scientist BJ Fogg published an extraordinarily prescient book. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do predicted a future in which a student “sits in a college library and removes an electronic device from her purse”. It serves as her “mobile phone, information portal, entertainment platform, and personal organiser. She takes this device almost everywhere and feels lost without it.”

Such devices, Fogg argued, would be “persuasive technology systems … the device can suggest, encourage, and reward.” Those rewards could have a powerful effect on our relationship with these devices, akin to gamblers pumping quarters into slot machines.

Published: January 31, 2026, 6:00 am

Six great reads: ‘Fafo’ parenting, what tech does to us, and Patrick Bateman’s legacy

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Published: January 31, 2026, 6:00 am

There’s a reason that Wii Bowling remains my mum’s favourite game | Dominik Diamond

At a family gathering over Christmas, I took on my 76-year-old mother once again at virtual bowling. Could I finally best her?

My mother bore me. My mother nurtured me. My mother educated me. She has a resilience unmatched, a love all-forgiving. She is the glue that holds our family together. But right now, I am kicking her ass at video game bowling, and it feels good!

In the 00s, my mum was the best Wii Bowling player in the world. She was unbeatable. Strike after strike after strike. The Dudette in our family’s Big Lebowski. So when she said she was coming to visit us in Canada, I thought the time was right to buy the updated Nintendo Switch Sports version of her favourite game. She’s 76 now, and I might finally have a chance of beating her, I thought, especially if I allowed myself a cheeky tune-up on the game before she arrived.

Published: January 30, 2026, 10:00 am

Mass grave in Jordan sheds new light on world’s earliest recorded pandemic

Researchers tell ‘human story’ about crisis during plague of Justinian, which killed millions in Byzantine empire

A US-led research team has verified the first Mediterranean mass grave of the world’s earliest recorded pandemic, providing stark new details about the plague of Justinian that killed millions of people in the Byzantine empire between the sixth and eighth centuries.

The findings, published in February’s Journal of Archaeological Science, offer what researchers say is a rare empirical window into the mobility, urban life and vulnerability of citizens affected by the pestilence.

Published: January 31, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Innovating weather science’: Met Office launches new two-week forecast

Weather service research concludes that less accurate probability-based predictions are still considered helpful

The Met Office is to lean into one of Britain’s favourite pastimes – talking about the weather – by launching a new two-week forecast.

At present, the publicly funded weather and climate service offers a seven-day forecast on its website and app with an hourly breakdown for the first five days and then a three-hourly breakdown for the final two days.

Published: January 30, 2026, 4:56 pm

SpaceX reportedly mulling Tesla merger or tie-up with Elon Musk’s xAI firm

Rocket company examining feasibility of both options before potential $1.5tn stock market flotation, report says

• Business live – latest updates

SpaceX is reportedly considering a potential merger with the electric carmaker Tesla, or a tie-up with artificial intelligence firm xAI, as Elon Musk looks at options to consolidate his global empire.

The rocket company is examining the feasibility of a tie-up with Tesla or xAI before a huge potential stock market float, according to Reuters.

Published: January 30, 2026, 8:38 am

Mike Morgan obituary

Champion of respiratory medicine who was passionate about building bridges between academics and clinicians

Mike Morgan, who has died aged 75, was a leading figure in respiratory services in Leicester for more than 30 years. He also championed respiratory medicine at the highest level. It had long been a poor relation compared to other areas of medicine but, as the national clinical director for respiratory disease at NHS England from 2013 to 2019, Morgan ensured it was prominent in the national long-term strategy set out in NHS England’s 10-year health plan in 2019. The aim was to transform outcomes by diagnosing diseases earlier with greater access to spirometry (a lung function test) and to increase provision for the key treatment, pulmonary rehabilitation.

When Morgan began working as a consultant respiratory physician at Glenfield hospital in Leicester in 1988, he joined a small team, with two other doctors (today there are more than 20 respiratory specialists). They faced a huge challenge: respiratory diseases such as chronic pulmonary obstructive disease (COPD) were widespread. Not only can they result in disabling breathlessness and blight sufferers’ lives, they are also a leading cause of death.

Published: January 30, 2026, 3:20 pm

Madeline Horwath on the mistakes of evolution – cartoon

Continue reading...

Published: January 31, 2026, 11:00 am