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Exclusive: Countdown lexicographer urges families to read, talk and play word games to help language development Children’s vocabulary is shrinking as reading loses out to screen time, according to the lexicographer Susie Dent, who is urging families to read, talk and play word games to boost language development. The Countdown star’s warning comes as the government prepares to issue advice to parents for the first time on how to manage screen use in under-fives, amid concerns that excessive screen time is damaging children’s language development. Continue reading...

The Labour Party has been accused of ‘wanting to make it harder for journalists to report the truth’.

Cognitive health in later life is ‘strongly influenced’ by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments, say researchers Reading, writing and learning a language or two can lower your risk of dementia by almost 40%, according to a study that suggests millions of people could prevent or delay the condition. Dementia is one of the world’s biggest health threats. The number of people living with the condition is forecast to triple to more than 150 million globally by 2050, and experts say it presents a big and rapidly growing threat to future health and social care systems in every community, country and continent. Continue reading...

The Constitution, designed to achieve unity, ‘may ultimately complicate that ambition’, not ‘because it was weak and inflexible’ but ‘rather because it was sufficiently flexible and strong’

Having rubbished the health ministry’s figures, they are now saying what matters is the civilian-to-militant ratio. See that for what it is, says Ben Reiff, deputy editor at +972

Campaigners welcome criminalisation of non-consensual AI-generated explicit images but say law does not go far enough Victims of deepfake image abuse have called for stronger protection against AI-generated explicit images, as the law criminalising the creation of non-consensual intimate images comes into effect. Campaigners from Stop Image-Based Abuse delivered a petition to Downing Street with more than 73,000 signatures, urging the government to introduce civil routes to justice such as takedown orders for abusive imagery on platforms and devices. Continue reading...

A digital archive of the world's first Irish language newspaper has been launched by the University of Galway.

A group of Cambridge University students on a training dig have helped discover a burial pit containing the remains of at least 10 people, possibly Vikings or Saxons.

The debate over banning under-16s from social media should raise deeper questions about who controls democracy’s digital infrastructure, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

The AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award is a major new funding scheme from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Its aim is to grow the UK’s capacity for doctoral research in the arts and humanit...

Elon Musk is in the crosshairs of French prosecutors as they probe X and Grok for allowing deepfake nude images, antisemitic content and child pornography.

Residents of Sebastia say heritage project is pretext for massive land grab and expansion of Jewish settlements

Report covering 23 conflicts over last 18 months concludes more than 100,000 civilians have been killed as war crimes rage out of control An authoritative survey of 23 armed conflicts over the last 18 months has concluded that international law seeking to limit the effects of war is at breaking point, with more than 100,000 civilians killed, while torture and rape are committed with near impunity. The extensive study by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights describes the deaths of 18,592 children in Gaza, growing civilian casualties in Ukraine and an “epidemic” of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Continue reading...

Three bishops accuse British government of contributing to ‘culture of impunity’ in the occupied territory Three prominent Church of England bishops have accused the UK government of contributing to a “culture of impunity” in which Israel has accelerated its de facto annexation of the West Bank. Guli Francis-Dehqani, the bishop of Chelmsford, Rachel Treweek, the bishop of Gloucester, and Graham Usher, the bishop of Norwich, visited Palestinian Christian communities in the occupied West Bank last week. Continue reading...