Teenagers routinely see content promoting weight-loss drugs, steroids and skin-whitening creams, research finds Children are being “bombarded” with harmful products online, including weight-loss drugs, steroids and skin-whitening chemicals, a study has found.Research conducted for the children’s commissioner for England found that teenagers were routinely exposed to harmful products on social media, video games and apps. Continue reading...

10 Feb 2026 20:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Kalshi says ‘incredible weekend’ after $145m in bets on Bad Bunny’s opening song and guests during half-time showOnline prediction market Kalshi hit a daily record on Super Bowl Sunday, surpassing $1bn in trading volume, the company announced on Tuesday.Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, called it an “incredible weekend”, telling CNBC that “Kalshi was the biggest brand of the Super Bowl this year, without running a Super Bowl ad”. Continue reading...

10 Feb 2026 18:28 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Markets did not like the decision to suspend share buy-backs – and investors will want clarity about what happens nextThe clearing of the decks continues apace at BP. The last chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, got the heave-ho in December. Last month brought news of hefty write-downs on the troublesome low-carbon energy assets in solar and biogas. Now comes an admission that the current debt-reduction measures aren’t enough to ease the strain on an over-extended balance sheet. Share buy-backs are being suspended.Buy-backs have become the essential symbol of financial virility in today’s oil industry. At the right price, they represent an efficient use of excess capital and are a way for managements to send obligatory signals about “financial discipline”, meaning refraining from empire-building adventures. Continue reading...

10 Feb 2026 16:57 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Residents of the UK’s most expensive flats have won a court case over defective pipework. If their homes are shoddily built, what hope do the rest of us have? Even multimillionaires can’t escape Britain’s cowboy builders, it seems. Last week, residents of One Hyde Park, the UK’s most expensive flats, won a £35m court case against the contractor that built their homes. The high court ordered the construction company Laing O’Rourke to fix defective pipework that was discovered to be causing problems in 2014, only three years after the luxury development was completed.At the other end of the economy, tens of thousands of families are facing damp and mould issues also caused by botched building works. A National Audit Office investigation revealed in October last year that a staggering 98% of external insulation fitted under the previous government’s home-improvement schemes was installed so ineptly that it will have to be repaired or replaced.Phineas Harper is a writer and curator Continue reading...

11 Feb 2026 07:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

In Lancashire, I met people living with dangerous levels of Pfas, including in their food. The government is failing themLast week, on the morning the government published its Pfas action plan, I got a worried phone call from a woman called Sam who lives next door to a chemical factory in Lancashire. Sam had just been hand-delivered a letter from her local council informing her that after testing, it had been confirmed that her ducks’ eggs, reared in her garden in Thornton-Cleveleys, near Blackpool, are contaminated with Pfas.Pfas – per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment – are a family of thousands of chemicals, and I have been reporting on them for years. Some, including those found in the eggs Sam and her family have been eating, have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including certain cancers. Continue reading...

10 Feb 2026 15:32 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Readers respond to an editorial and letters on the decline of town centres and the need to redesign public spacesRegarding your editorial (The Guardian view on high-street decline: a symbol of failure in a discontented nation, 3 February), saving high streets requires four things that the Treasury, the dead hand of government innovation, won’t like.First, it requires an overhaul of the business rates system, and second, a new tax for online business. Third, it requires compelling landlords to charge reasonable rents. Continue reading...

10 Feb 2026 16:53 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta to collectively invest $600bn on artificial intelligence this yearHello, and welcome to TechScape. Today in tech, we’re discussing the Persian Gulf countries making a play for sovereignty over their own artificial intelligence in response to an unstable United States. That, and US tech giants’ plans to spend more than $600bn this year alone.Bitcoin loses half its value in three months amid crypto crunchHow cryptocurrency’s second-largest coin missed out on the industry’s boomFiles cast light on Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to cryptocurrencyWhy has Elon Musk merged his rocket company with his AI startup?Hail our new robot overlords! Amazon warehouse tour offers glimpse of futureSocial media companies are being sued for harming their users’ mental health – but are the platforms addictive?Anthropic’s launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies Continue reading...

10 Feb 2026 14:45 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN