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Wednesday briefing: Can we turn around the growing school readiness crisis?

Good morning. Teaching four- and five-year-olds has always involved patience, care and flexibility. What many reception teachers say they did not sign up for was spending large chunks of the school day managing toileting, feeding and basic self-care because growing numbers of children are arriving without those skills in place. New data points to a widening gap in England and Wales between what parents believe “school ready” means and what classrooms are actually experiencing – with consequences not just for teachers, but for every child in the room. And the long shadow of coalition-era austerity cuts to local services and Sure Start is exacerbating the problem in more deprived areas. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Felicity Gillespie, chief executive of Kindred², the organisation that carries out the school readiness survey, to find out how widespread the problem has become for teachers, what is driving it, and what might actually help. Here are the headlines. Five big stories Iran | The US has announced plans to hold multi-day military exercises in the Middle East as it deploys what Donald Trump has called an “armada” led by the USS Abraham Lincoln to the region as part of a tense standoff with Iran. UK politics | The Labour party’s civil war over the Gorton and Denton byelection has intensified after Andy Burnham accused Downing Street sources of lying about his decision to apply to stand in the Manchester seat. Minneapolis | Gregory Bovino, the border patrol commander who has become the public face of the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, was expected to leave the city as the Trump administration scales back the federal presence there after a second fatal shooting by officers. UK news | Two red flood warnings – meaning danger to life – are in force for rivers in south-west England as Storm Chandra brings heavy rain and strong winds to many areas of the UK. US news | Antibiotic use in US meat production spiked 16% in 2024, representing the highest increase since the government began tracking data, a new federal report shows. In depth: ‘This isn’t about blaming and shaming parents’ “Teachers and parents are telling us that this is a national crisis,” Gillespie tells me. “We’re now seeing almost 40% of children arriving for their very first day at school without the basic life skills they need to be able to access learning.” That figure has risen steadily in recent years, from around one-third of children in 2023 and 2024 to 37% this year, according to teachers surveyed. The knock-on effects extend well beyond the first few weeks of school. Teachers report that children who start reception without basic skills are much less likely to reach a good level of development by the end of the year, and many struggle to catch up with peers who were school ready. The disruption also affects entire classes, with staff reporting higher stress, lower morale and less time for structured learning, as teachers are repeatedly pulled away to manage care needs. *** The long shadow of abandoning Sure Start The report does not break results down by income, but teachers and parents consistently link readiness issues to cost-of-living pressure and longer working hours. One reception teacher quoted in the survey describes children “in at 7.30am and being picked up at 6pm”, adding: “That’s why you don’t read, that’s why you don’t do your homework, that’s why you don’t know these things … because your parents are having to work every hour under the sun.” Gillespie says parents repeatedly point to “increased pressure – the rising cost of living, their inability to get access to health visitors in the way they used to, the closure of Sure Start”. Those pressures are showing up directly in classrooms. This year’s report, for the first time, asked teachers to break down where lost teaching time is going. On average, 1.4 hours a day – the equivalent of a full school day each week – is spent supporting the toileting needs of children who are not potty trained when they start school. Because this data was not collected in previous years, it is not possible to compare trends, but it illustrates how much time is being diverted away from learning towards basic care. The Sure Start programme was designed to equalise the educational and life chances of socially and economically disadvantaged children, through childcare, play sessions and parenting advice among other things. It was accessed by millions of children, but was heavily scaled back between 2010 and 2019 as a result of austerity-driven cuts to council funding, with the biggest losses falling in more deprived areas, as exclusive reporting by Patrick Butler showed at the time. This chart from the school readiness report shows how many more children are arriving at school without basic skills, with big leaps in the north-east, West Midlands, north-west and London, all places where deep poverty is rife. *** Screens, attention and the early years This isn’t the only challenge primary schools face. Evidence suggests screen use among very young children has risen sharply, with implications for language, attention and social development. Almost all two-year-olds now watch screens daily, often for more than two hours, while close to 40% of three- to five-year-olds use social media. Reception teachers describe children struggling to sit still, hold a pencil or speak in full sentences, becoming frustrated when tasks are not instant, and showing weaker creativity, problem-solving and hand-eye coordination – patterns many link to early and excessive screen exposure. Primary school staff now cite screen use – by children and parents alike – as the single biggest factor affecting school readiness, though Gillespie is careful to emphasise context. With almost all two-year-olds now spending some time on screens each day, Gillespie accepts “that horse has probably bolted” – but argues that parents need help to understand why it is a problem for development. What matters most in the early years is the two-way “serve and return” interaction between a child and a caregiver, she explains, which drives brain development. Sitting passively in front of a screen, she says, is like the child’s brain playing tennis – but with no one on the other side of the net. *** Why the early years matter so much “Lots of us think real education is what happens at school,” Gillespie says. “That it’s GCSEs and A-levels that really count. But actually the most significant period of brain development happens much earlier.” Between birth and the age of five, children’s brains are developing at their fastest rate. Language, emotional regulation and social skills formed in those years are strongly linked to later educational outcomes, mental health and wellbeing. “That’s why the early years are the foundation for everything that follows,” she says. “If we miss those opportunities, it becomes much harder – and much more expensive – to put things right later.” *** A gap in expectations, not effort One thing that remains clear is that parents might not realise the extent of the problem. Nearly 90% of parents believe their child is school ready when nationally only 63% are, according to teachers. At the same time, more than one in five parents think it is acceptable for a child to start school not toilet trained, and almost half do not believe children need to be able to dress themselves independently by reception. “This isn’t about blaming and shaming parents,” Gillespie says. “It’s about acknowledging that there is a genuine gap in understanding about what being school ready actually means – and then getting that information out clearly and early.” That distinction matters, particularly in a media landscape primed for culture-war takes. After last year’s report, a Telegraph column asked why people should “bother” having children if they “can’t be arsed” to raise them properly. Gillespie is blunt about that framing. “You can’t control how people receive information,” she says. “But finger-wagging doesn’t help anyone.” *** Send and mental health are also part of a complex picture The report says that special educational needs and disabilities (Send) form a growing part of the school readiness picture. Of parents, 9% say their child has a formal Send diagnosis, while 21% strongly suspect additional needs. One headteacher quoted in the report says: “The number of complex-needs children that we have now is astronomical,” while another describes Send as “one of the biggest funding challenges” facing schools. However, the survey also captures some unease among staff about how Send is understood and supported. A small number of teachers express concern that suspected Send can sometimes be used to explain developmental delays – in language, toileting or independence – before those issues have been fully addressed. As one reception teacher puts it, parents may “pin it down to Send, which might not even be true”, potentially delaying early support that could help children make progress sooner. Mental health issues are also affecting parents, which may be contributing to some children not being school ready. The campaign group Make Mothers Matter has this morning released new data having surveyed thousands of mothers across Europe. Of the 800 spoken to in the UK, 71% said they felt overloaded, with 47% stating that they suffer from mental health issues, including 25% suffering from depression. Three-quarters of them were working mothers trying to balance their jobs with care duties, the responsibility for which remains unevenly spread in many households. The mothers surveyed said they handle up to 71% of household and caregiving tasks alone, regardless of whether they are employed or not. *** What could help Kindred² has welcomed the government’s announcement that new guidance on screen use for under-fives will be published this spring. The organisation is also part of a coalition of early years groups producing practical, government-backed resources for parents, including a national potty training guide and the starting reception framework, which sets out clearly what children are expected to be able to do when they begin school. “The message from parents is really clear,” Gillespie says. “They want information earlier, they want it to be simple, and they want support – not judgment.” If there is an optimistic note in this year’s data, it is that consensus: teachers, parents and policymakers increasingly agree that school readiness is not a niche education issue, but a national one – and that getting the early years right could make everything that follows a little easier. What else we’ve been reading Oliver Laughland’s latest dispatch for Anywhere but Washington is essential reading and watching to understand what is happening in Minneapolis. Aamna Mohdin, newsletters team Zoe Keziah Mendelson urges everyone to “put down the poison satan make-you-stupid machines” and quit Instagram so we all stop doing Meta’s unpaid labour. Martin Donald Trump understands better than most world leaders that attention is power. Catherine De Vries makes a compelling argument on why Europe needs to stop being so reactive. Aamna Keith Stuart has interviewed Jade Scott, one of the most recent bunch of television’s The Traitors, about her interest and history in gaming, which began with Minecraft. Martin Some of our most beloved TV characters have never been on screen. From ugly naked guy to the various prime ministers on The Thick of It, Stuart Heritage has a wonderful roundup of the best ones. Aamna Sport Cricket | The wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was the surprising inspiration for Harry Brook’s century celebration as the England white-ball captain led his side to a one-day international series victory against Sri Lanka with a thrilling, unbeaten 136. Tennis | Top seed Carlos Alcaraz is within two victories of a career grand slam after piling more major pain on home hope Alex de Minaur in a largely straightforward Australian Open quarter-final victory, secured 7-5, 6-2, 6-1 in 136 minutes on Rod Laver Arena. Football | Manchester United fear Patrick Dorgu could be out for a prolonged period because of the muscle injury he sustained in Sunday’s 3-2 win at Arsenal. The front pages “‘Mass murder’: medics reveal grim reality of Iran’s hidden death toll,” is the splash on the Guardian on Wednesday. The Telegraph has “Starmer led ‘witch-hunt’ against Iraq veterans”. “Washington links Ukraine security guarantee to territorial concessions,” says the FT. “Fake jobs for sale to cheat system on migrant visas,” is the lead story at the Times, while the Express opts for “Quelle totale farce!” “Pubs U-turn to save Britain’s locals from extinction - but no help for restaurants facing April tax hikes,” says the i. “Half measures,” quips the Mirror. “Six years of chemo when I only needed six months,” is the lead at the Metro. The Sun has “Run for the hills, Katie”, and the Star “Away at the Races.” Today in Focus Can Syria keep the world safe from IS fighters? Syrian government forces have seized swathes of territory from Kurdish groups – including camps holding IS prisoners. Will Christou reports on why this is a dangerous moment. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Leith, Edinburgh’s historic port, has for centuries been a gateway for people and ideas. It is now a hub of creativity for artists, startups, and a vibrant food and drink scene, which has been amplified by the 2023 tramline connection to the city centre. The Leith immortalised in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting has largely faded, but the area is not entirely gentrified. Two recent successful campaigns have galvanised locals: one to stop Waterstones opening near the independent Argonaut Books; and the other to return the benches used by day-drinkers on the Kirkgate, which had been removed by the council. The area comfortably accommodates its different aspects, blending a strong, village-like community with the dynamic energy of a city, fueling a quiet but noticeable boom. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

‘Attacks day after day’: Odesa in Russia’s crosshairs as war pivots back to Black Sea

Outside the Kadorr apartment complex in Ukraine’s Black Sea city of Odesa, about 500 metres from the seafront, residents and rescue workers mill around in freezing temperatures. Above an office on the 25th floor, a block of wall has been blown out by a Russian drone. Below, rubble and glass have been moved quickly into piles as owners survey cars crushed by the falling masonry. Anastasia, 35, who lives in a nearby block, was displaced to Odesa from Donetsk after the Russian invasion and occupation in the east. Now she is contemplating the implications of the strike. “I was sleeping. I thought it was a dream at first as the building shook. I didn’t hear the explosion but I heard another Russian Shahed drone that was extremely loud. It had been quite quiet since I’ve been here. Recently it’s started to feel more dangerous. I haven’t decided whether to move, but right now I’m scared.” She is not alone. Russian strikes against Odesa have escalated sharply in recent months, as conflict centred on the Black Sea has heated up again after it had settled into stalemate. Ukrainian strikes late last year on oil tankers in Russia’s shadow fleet, and farther afield on the Russian naval base at Novorossiysk, coincided with renewed Russian attention on Odesa. Vladimir Putin has long claimed Ukraine’s main port as Russian, and in December he threatened to cut the city off from the sea. Taking Odesa, or even placing it under naval blockade, remains far beyond Moscow’s reach. Ukrainian naval missile batteries sank its warships, including most famously the Moskva,at the beginning of the war. So instead Russia has pounded the city with missiles and drones. The biggest recent strike, on 13 December, in which 160 drones and missiles targeted energy infrastructure, left large parts of the city without water and electricity for days on end, marking the beginning of a period of almost daily attacks. In his office in Odesa, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s navy, Dmytro Pletenchuk, brings out a calendar for the month of January so far. “Shahed. Shahed. Shahed … There are two days this month without attack,” he says. It is 19 January. 16 days of rockets and missiles in total. “The Russians attack the energy infrastructure day after day and night after night because it is so cold now they think we must capitulate. “Right now the situation in the Black Sea is like a chess board. There’s no way for anyone to move. We’ve pushed the Russian warships away to Novorossiysk, but Russian aviation still controls the air over large parts of the Black Sea. So now it is a grey zone, 25,000 km of sea turned into a grey zone.” That has meant a war fought at long range, but no less violently, as Ukraine has pursued crucial Russian oil shipments, and Moscow has tried to target Kyiv’s key economic lifeline, its export of agricultural products by sea. “It has escalated since the autumn when Russia increased the frequency of its shelling of Ukrainian ports,” Pletenchuk said. In tandem with that effort – as elsewhere across Ukraine – has been Moscow’s targeting of civilian energy infrastructure, which Ukrainian officials say is intended to “disconnect” the country from the grid. According to the governor of the Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, in military terms the Black Sea is an asset for the country’s defence but also a complicating factor. “On the one hand it is nature’s barrier protecting us,” he said. But unlike other cities farther inland, including the capital, whose air defences are layered like an onion around it, the sea makes it more difficult to construct the same defence in depth, creating vulnerabilities to long-range strikes by drones fired from Russian-occupied Crimea and from missiles. “The worst attack was 13 December,” Kiper said. “After that massive attack at least 60% of the total Odesa region was without electricity, with no water, no heat and no water supply. It depends on wider situation in the country, but there are houses and districts without electricity now for up to 10 hours a day.” Among those responsible for protecting Odesa is Lt Col Denys Nosicov, the head of the territorial defence groups in the south. “The last couple of months have seen the enemy uses combined attacks by rockets and Shahed drones,” he said. “The aim is to put psychological pressure on the population of the Odesa region. They want to damage our morale. So everyday we have Shahed attacks. At the same time we are seeing Russian psychological operations on social media.” How important Odesa and the Black Sea remained to Moscow’s ambitions last year was underlined in a recent statement of Ukraine’s chief of staff Oleksandr Syrski. “The Russian aggressor sought to end the war against Ukraine, but planned to do so by devastating us, imposing its terms from a position of strength,” he said. “They attempted to seize the remaining territories of Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as the right bank of Kherson, and aimed to reach Odesa to completely cut off our access to the sea.” That was echoed at the beginning of January by the country’s president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy. “They definitely want to cut off Odesa and other cities in terms of infrastructure,” he said. “They are striking and killing both people and the economy by reducing our export capabilities through the maritime corridor.” With 90% of Ukraine’s agricultural produce exported by sea through the Odesa region’s ports, shipping routes have been turned into a war zone. “The Black Sea, which feeds us and is an integral part of our economy, is also our weak spot,” the Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko told the Wall Street Journal in a recent interview. All of which, says Nosicov, requires Ukraine to treat all elements of the Russian threat on land, sea and air with equal seriousness. “Even now we are preparing Odesa for a circular defence with anti-tank traps, kill zones and mines,” he said. “We will always take this Russian threat seriously, even if I believe that Putin giving an order to take Odesa would be the biggest Russian defeat in this region.” While Russia appears only able to strike at a long range, it is freezing civilians who bear the brunt of its attacks. At the Lyceum for Construction and Architecture, a trade school in the centre of Odesa, its director, Igor Chernenko, is supervising the cleanup and repairs after his institution was hit recently by three Shahed drones. With no heating, the smell of smoke permeates Chernenko’s office, where he is bundled up in a winter coat and hat in a place that once hosted more than 320 students and 72 staff. “The strike happened on 13 January at around 2.40am. A duty night guard had been in the basement and she called to say everything was shaking. When I arrived at 4am the building was still on fire. “I can’t think why the Russians would hit here. My only thought is that they don’t want us to prepare workers who will rebuild Ukraine.” He leads the Guardian on to a second-floor roof covered in snow where two of the drones punched through, shattering windows of an office building a block away and showering a neighbouring tower in shrapnel. “Among the most valuable things we lost was our archive, which we’ve kept since 1945. To be honest the situation is just getting worse. Before that we had attacks once a week but now it’s every night. “What they are doing it. It’s because Odesa is a pearl next to the sea. The Russians still think it belongs to them. And the person who heads Russia thinks like a terrorist.”

Stable genius? How a defective ‘crying horse’ toy went viral in China

On 17 February China will celebrate the start of the year of the horse, the zodiac sign symbolising high energy and hard work. But the runaway success of a defective stuffed toy suggests that many Chinese are not feeling the vibe. A red horse toy produced by Happy Sister in the city of Yiwu in the west of China was meant to wear a broad grin, but a factory error meant it hit the shops sporting a despairing grimace. Because the smile was placed upside down, the horse’s nostrils could be interpreted as tears. Despite the manufacturing error, the toy has become an unexpected success with shoppers after going viral on Chinese social media and capturing a zeitgeist of corporate fatigue and worker burnout. It also taps into a broader trend for so-called “ugly-cute” toys, popularised in recent years by characters such as Pop Mart’s toothy monster Labubu. “People joked that the crying horse is how you look at work, while the smiling one is how you look after work,” Zhang Huoqing, owner of Happy Sister, told Reuters. By mid-January she said she was receiving daily orders of more than 15,000 units, prompting the factory to open up 10 additional production lines. Many Chinese white-collar workers have endured the notorious 996 system, which requires employees to work 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The practice is exalted by tech entrepreneurs including Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, but has been increasingly criticised since 2021 when an employee of a e-commerce company died suddenly after finishing a late-night shift. The 966 practice was outlawed that year, but long overtime hours are still common. “This little horse looks so sad and pitiful, just like the way I feel at work,” wrote an online buyer of the toy, by the name of Tuan Tuan Mami, according to SCMP. “Consumer products and internet memes can act as outlets for discussing work pressure, especially on platforms like Xiaohongshu, where consumer culture and emotional expression are tightly intertwined,” Jacob Cooke, the CEO of WPIC Marketing + Technologies, an e-commerce consulting firm, told Business Insider. Meanwhile, wholesale orders for the “crying horse” have been placed from South Africa, east Asia and the Middle East. Its image is expected to appear on a new range of merchandise in the coming year. Zhang never discovered who sewed the horse’s snout on upside down. “Since we can’t figure out exactly whose mistake it was, we’ll just give everyone a bonus,” she said.

Can Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez become a Latin American Deng Xiaoping?

After years of political and social upheaval, hunger and despair, the Great Helmsman departs and is replaced by a francophile economic reformer who catapults a traumatised country into a new era of prosperity and growth. That is what happened in China half a century ago when the croissant-loving communist Deng Xiaoping became paramount leader after Chairman Mao Zedong’s 1976 death and set in motion one of history’s biggest economic booms. Some believe it might also turn out to be an apt description of the situation in today’s Venezuela after its “Gran Timonel”, Nicolás Maduro, was toppled and replaced by his Sorbonne-educated vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez. In her first address after filling the dictator’s shoes, Rodríguez hinted at plans to launch her own period of “reform and opening up” – just as Deng did after a heart attack ended Mao’s life and his catastrophic 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. “Where Chavismo has had to rectify [itself], it does so,” Rodríguez said in a speech with echoes of Deng’s 1978 plea for Chinese communists to “emancipate their minds” after that decade of bloodshed and upheaval. Declaring the start of a “new chapter” in Venezuela, Rodríguez called for revamped oil laws to help foreign firms access the world’s largest proven reserves and pledged closer ties with Washington, despite its “kidnapping” of Maduro. “Venezuela has the right to relations with China, with Russia, with Cuba, with Iran … and with the United States,” said Maduro’s substitute, who some have started calling “Delxiaoping”. Critics see efforts to portray Rodríguez as a Latina Deng as a spin campaign to obscure her role in helping Maduro wreck Venezuela’s democracy and her responsibility for the feared intelligence agency, Sebin, while vice-president. “They’re trying to make her more palatable. Delcy is now going through a face wash,” said Andrés Izarra, an exiled former minister under Maduro and his mentor, Hugo Chávez. But sinologists say they understand why leaders of the United Socialist party of Venezuela might look to the Communist party of China for inspiration as they seek to leave behind years of social and economic chaos – without losing political control. “The Deng Xiaoping reform era is a very interesting model for Venezuela,” said Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross director of the Center on US-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. “They need to open up to the outside world and get the economy going … If she [Rodríguez] has brains, she will economically reform because, my God, she’s got to get their oil industry back pumping and irrigating her government with some funds.” Venezuela’s interim leader is soon expected to make an official visit to the US – the first by a Venezuelan president in more than 25 years – although it seems unlikely she will appear at a Texas rodeo sporting a 10-gallon cowboy hat, as Deng did in 1979 to signal Beijing’s desire to engage with the world. But China’s authoritarian experience suggests anyone expecting a political thaw to accompany economic reform in Venezuela will be bitterly disappointed. Schell recalled how Deng briefly flirted with political reforms in the 80s. “There were village elections – even some higher-level county elections were allowed … Publishing bloomed. Media suddenly opened up. Universities were much freer and there was almost nothing you couldn’t talk about,” he said. But deep down, Deng remained wedded to his “four cardinal principles” philosophy that insisted the party’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” could not be challenged. “The fundamental structure of the polity did not change,” Schell said. Any hope of democratic change evaporated in June 1989 when Deng ordered troops to clear protesters from Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed. Schell also said he suspected Venezuela’s current leaders would be reluctant to cede power and predicted Rodríguez – who didn’t seem “a Jeffersonian Democrat” – would “go very cautiously” when it came to political reform. “They are the elite, and they do not want to give up their privileges … a bit like the Chinese Communist party. They did not want to give up theirs either and migrate into a multiparty [system], where they had to actually compete politically.” “Venezuela is not China, but autocracies do have some common chords,” Schell added. Maduro’s heirs have shown clear signs of wanting to follow in the footsteps of Deng, whose economic pragmatism was captured by the phrase: “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” Long before Maduro’s abduction, he and his close allies repeatedly visited China to understand how it became the world’s second largest economy and helped millions lift themselves from poverty after decades of famine and violent political extremism. During a 2023 trip to Shanghai, one prominent Maduro envoy, Rafael Lacava, told his hosts: “From the economic point of view we are in a transition and this transition looks to the Chinese model … We strongly believe that this is the model we need to follow in the coming years.” Those visits resulted in the creation of five special economic zones in Venezuela, inspired by the areas Deng set up to attract foreign investment in south-east China in the 1980s. Phil Gunson, an analyst in Caracas for the International Crisis Group, said Chavista intellectuals had been pondering the need for Deng-style change for several years. Rodríguez, who was put in charge of Venezuela’s oil industry and economy after becoming vice president in 2018, was one of the key proponents of such thinking, alongside her brother, Jorge. “They have been seeking controlled economic reform for a while,” Gunson said, noting how Rodríguez oversaw a modest economic recovery by partly dollarising the economy and courting business leaders and foreign investors. She has travelled frequently to China since becoming Maduro’s foreign minister in 2014. A central goal now was reviving Venezuela’s decrepit oil industry by reversing Chávez’s 2007 nationalisation in order to attract tens of billions of dollars of foreign investment. “It was one thing to shut out foreign firms at the height of a commodities boom … while oil was $120 a barrel. But now it’s less than half that and there’s a desperate need for inward foreign investment because [state oil company] PDVSA simply cannot revive the oil industry on its own,” Gunson said. Ricardo Hausmann, a Venezuelan economist and former minister who runs Harvard’s Growth Lab, said it was possible a China-style economic opening was the “gameplan” of Rodríguez’s new regime, which Donald Trump has unexpectedly backed while sidelining the opposition movement led by the Nobel peace laureate María Corina Machado. But Hausmann said he believed such an effort would fail, doubting foreign investors and oil companies would risk their money in a place ExxonMobil’s CEO recently called “uninvestable”. If the strategy does succeed, the long-term consequences for Venezuelan democracy could be dire. Frank Dikötter, the author of several books about China, said the heirs of the Great Helmsman had used the “socialist modernity” pioneered by Deng to “build up an economy which has given them enough clout to enforce and enhance limits on democracy … with much greater controls on every aspect of life.” Today, under Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao, the east-Asian country is the world’s No 2 economy, but also its largest and most sophisticated surveillance state. Schell said he suspected Trump had decided to ditch Machado because he felt comfortable with Venezuela becoming an economically prosperous autocracy, so long as it obeyed Washington. “That’s why he didn’t bring Machado back. He doesn’t want someone with a Nobel prize and a lot of woolly ideas about democracy.”

New Zealand could see more deadly landslides as climate crisis triggers intense storms, experts warn

New Zealand could experience an increase in landslides – its most deadly natural hazard – as global warming triggers more intense and frequent storms, experts have warned in the wake of two landslide tragedies in the North Island. New Zealand’s landscapes are scarred with the evidence of landslides – they are responsible for more than 1,800 deaths since written records began – more than earthquakes and volcanoes combined. In January, a series of tropical storms swept through the North Island, bringing torrential rain and causing two fatal landslides. On Thursday morning, a landslide crashed into a holiday park, in Mount Maunganui in the eastern city of Tauranga, burying six people. Authorities have confirmed they are unlikely to be alive. Earlier that morning, another landslide tore through a house south of the city, killing two. On Wednesday, Tauranga city council evacuated 150 people from 30 homes in to assess a new slip posing a “risk to life”. As it grapples with the tragedies, questions have emerged over how the country can better protect itself from landslides and the increasingly extreme weather that can trigger them. New Zealand sits on a tectonic boundary, which pushes up land and creates slopes, and has a maritime climate with high rainfall – factors, which combined, make it prone to landslides. Humans are also responsible for reshaping the landscape including through deforestation, and cutting into slopes for transport and housing, says Martin Brook, professor of applied geology at the University of Auckland. “Land use change has been so profound, that we just aren’t resilient,” he said, adding that while mapping landslide susceptibility in regions had increased, the next step would be using that data to better inform planning decisions. Global warming, meanwhile, is already intensifying tropical storms that can set off landslides, said Dr Thomas Robinson, senior lecturer in disaster risk and resilience, specialising in landslides, at the University of Canterbury. “The more we have intense storms, the more frequently they occur, the more landslides we’re going to have, and then the more impacts we’re going to experience,” he said. Storms in recent years have wreaked havoc across New Zealand. In 2023, roughly 800,000 landslides were caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, making it one of the most extreme landslide-triggering events ever recorded globally, according to Earth Sciences New Zealand. “The losses and the impacts are increasing,” Robinson said. “We need to have a really serious conversation nationally and internationally about how we’re going to manage the risks we’re faced with.” Professor of climate science at Victoria University of Wellington, James Renwick, said, increasingly, storms were causing “devastation and misery” to the country. “To stop such events becoming worse, to stop them overwhelming our abilities to adapt, we must stop adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the air,” he said, adding government and business leaders had to find ways to decarbonise the economy as soon as possible. Politicians have traded accusations in recent days over the coalition government’s climate change policy, which includes slashing targets for reducing emissions, and its decision to scrap a Labour government-era NZ$6bn resilience fund for communities, set up in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle. The government had “dragged their heels on issues around climate change”, Labour leader Chris Hipkins told media on Tuesday. “Almost every major action New Zealand was taking to really tackle the challenge of climate change has been wound back under [the government’s] leadership.” Finance minister, Nicola Willis accused Hipkins of politicising the tragedy and said the government had made “significant allocations of funding towards infrastructure, flood resilience [and] roading repair … needed to respond to the effects of climate change”. Hipkins responded that the broader debate around climate change was “legitimate”. Meanwhile, the Tauranga city council has ordered a local inquiry into the Mount Maunganui event, while prime minister Christopher Luxon is seeking advice on a government inquiry, after questions emerged over whether local authorities could have done more to prevent the deaths. Members of the public say they alerted emergency services to the potential threat before the landslide occurred, while others have pointed out the mountain’s history of landslides. Despite the dangers landslides pose, they “don’t stick in our psyche” in the same way earthquakes might, said Robinson. The latest tragedies may go some way to shifting that mindset, he said. “If anything good can come out of this, then having a better and broader understanding of landslide risk and how to prepare for them is a positive.”

Ukraine war briefing: Nearly 2 million military casualties to date, study finds, with Russia bearing brunt of losses

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused nearly 2 million military casualties – killed, wounded or missing – between the two countries, according to a study published on Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US thinktank. Moscow’s forces have borne the brunt of the losses, with as many as 325,000 killed out of an estimated total of 1.2 million casualties since the war began nearly four years ago. Ukrainian forces have also suffered major losses – between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties, of which between 100,000 and 140,000 were killed – from February 2022 to December 2025. “Combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties may be as high as 1.8 million and could reach two million total casualties by the spring of 2026,” the thinktank said. UN monitors say civilian casualties have reached almost 15,000 verified deaths since 2022 but that the actual total “is likely considerably higher”. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told NBC in February 2025 that his country had lost nearly 46,000 troops since 2022, with tens of thousands missing or taken prisoner, numbers which analysts consider an underestimate. Russian losses remain a closely guarded state secret, with the last official figures from the Ministry of Defence released in September 2022 putting the toll at 5,937, according to Agence France-Presse. The BBC’s Russian service and the Mediazona outlet, which rely on publicly available data such as death notices, have identified more than 163,000 Russian soldiers killed in four years of war, while acknowledging that the actual number is likely higher. A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in north-eastern Ukraine has killed five people in an attack denounced as terrorism by Zelenskyy. Prosecutors said fragments of five bodies had been found at the scene of the strike on the train, which occurred on Tuesday near a village in the Kharkiv region. In a post on Telegram, Zelenskyy said the train was carrying more than 200 passengers, including 18 in the carriage that was hit. “Each such Russian strike undermines diplomacy, which is still ongoing, and hits, in particular, the efforts of partners who are helping to end this war,” he wrote. The train bombing was part of a wave of Russian drone and missile attacks that left 10 dead across the country and dozens wounded, with the injured including two children and a pregnant woman. Three were killed and 32 wounded in a drone strike on Odesa that also inflicted “enormous” damage on a power facility, according to the private energy firm DTEK. The energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, said 710,000 residents of Kyiv remained without electricity and heating in the aftermath of Russian attacks – conditions which could turn deadly in the freezing winter cold. Other casualties occurred in the regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Poland’s foreign minister has urged Elon Musk to cut Russia’s access to the Starlink satellite internet service, which the tech billionaire owns. Radosław Sikorski – who is also the country’s deputy prime minister – spoke out after the US-based Institute for the Study of War said that the Russian army uses Starlink satellites to guide its drone attacks deep into Ukraine. He posted on X: “Hey, big man, @elonmusk, why don’t you stop the Russians from using Starlinks to target Ukrainian cities. Making money on war crimes may damage your brand”. Musk denied in 2024 that Starlink terminals had been sold to Russia; according to Ukrainian intelligence services, the Russian army has obtained terminals through third countries rather than any official contract with Musk.

Keir Starmer walks tightrope over myriad issues in quest to bolster China ties

Keir Starmer has travelled to China with a vow to bring “stability and clarity” to the UK’s approach to Beijing after years of what he described as “inconsistency” under the Tories, but a series of issues may get in the way of his efforts to improve relations with the economic powerhouse. Human rights One of the thorniest issues on the agenda is the case of Jimmy Lai, the jailed former media tycoon and one of Hong Kong’s most famous pro-democracy voices. Lai is a British citizen and was found guilty by a Hong Kong court of national security offences last month that the UK sees as politically motivated. Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, has called for his immediate release and summoned the Chinese ambassador after his conviction. Lai faces spending the rest of his life in prison, amid increasing fears about his physical condition. Starmer is under pressure to do what he can to secure his release. He may also raise the fate of the Uyghurs, a persecuted Muslim minority in China who have been co-opted into forced labour programmes. The UK has a long tradition of defending human rights and as a former human rights lawyer, Starmer is likely to bear this responsibility heavily. Taiwan President Xi could raise Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its territory, although it is an issue China wants the west to stay out of. Unification is one of Xi’s main priorities and he has not ruled out the use of force to achieve it. Under his rule, aggression towards Taiwan has increased, with intense military intimidation and non-military attacks and harassment designed to convince or coerce Taipei to give up the territory. US intelligence believes Xi has ordered the military to be ready to win a fight for it by 2027, making this a crucial year. The UK does not recognise Taiwan as a state and has no diplomatic relations with it. China threatened to cancel high-level trade talks with the UK last year over a government minister’s visit to the territory, but they ultimately did go ahead after diplomats privately scrambled to contain the fallout with Beijing. Starmer is likely to tread carefully. Embassies The UK government finally gave the green light to China to build a controversial new mega-embassy near the Tower of London last week, years after it was first approved by Boris Johnson in his time as foreign secretary. Beijing has made the embassy a priority in the UK-China relationship. Xi raised the matter directly with the prime minister in their first phone call in August 2024, so the decision came at a helpful time for Starmer. MPs from across the political spectrum had voiced their opposition to the application, warning of the risks of espionage from the huge site, which sits close to data cables that run into the City of London. But it was signed off after spy chiefs reassured ministers that the risks could be managed. It could be years before the development is actually built, however, as local residents plan a legal challenge. Government insiders hope the decision will give them some leverage over a reciprocal decision for the UK’s crumbling embassy in Beijing, which had been blocked because of the row. National security There is deep concern in the UK, from across the political spectrum, over China’s attempts to spy on politicians and infiltrate critical infrastructure. Last November MI5 issued an espionage alert after an attempt to recruit parliamentarians through two LinkedIn profiles linked to the Chinese intelligence service. China has sanctioned several MPs and peers. While in 2014, the UK imposed sanctions on groups alleged to have targeted politicians, journalists and critics of Beijing in an extensive cyber espionage campaign. Beijing has also been accused of harassing Hong Kong pro-democracy activists in the UK and suppressing criticism by an academic at a British university. And that’s all before China’s attempts to infiltrate British critical infrastructure. Downing Street has insisted Starmer is “clear-eyed” about the national security threat China poses at home – and abroad – and will not flinch from raising difficult issues. This could include pressing Xi on Russia’s war in Ukraine. China has always insisted it is neutral in the conflict but has quietly supplied Moscow with finance, components and crucial diplomatic cover. The prime minister could ask the Chinese president to use his leverage with Vladimir Putin to stop the fighting. Economic ties The central purpose of Starmer’s trip – and the reason he is taking a 50-strong business and cultural delegation with him. As important as any deals which are actually signed, however, is the symbolism of the first British prime minister in eight years visiting China – and what that says about the UK’s focus on growth and prosperity. The PM will also want to secure ongoing investment in key national infrastructure such as steel. But in the grand scheme of Beijing’s international relationships, the UK is a relatively small player. Even though China, the world’s second biggest economy, is the UK’s third biggest trading partner, Britain is not even in Beijing’s top ten, with the Chinese apparently more interested in the EU bloc. Starmer will be keen to give Xi the big sales pitch. However, China will regard closer political ties with the UK as a big win, especially as it advances its own global ambitions as the US recedes from its role as the most significant and stable ally to most western nations. Trump reaction Donald Trump is an unpredictable ally, and his views on China are known to be particularly trenchant. So much so that after Mark Carney visited Beijing, the US president threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if the US’s northern neighbour did any trade deal with Beijing. The Canadian PM quickly clarified his country had no intention of pursuing a free trade deal. But Trump’s threat was a warning shot to other western nations keen to deepen their own economic ties with China, which Downing Street will have noticed. The government has highlighted Starmer’s good relationship with Trump, and pointed out that the president is planning to travel to Beijing himself in April. Starmer will also be under pressure to get assurances from China on its intentions towards the Chagos islands after Trump spectacularly U-turned on his support for the deal.

‘I was simply luckier’: Holocaust survivors warn against forgetting Nazi atrocities

Survivors of Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, laid flowers and candles at the memorial site on Tuesday, as commemorations marking its liberation 81 years ago took place around Europe and beyond. Marking International Holocaust Memorial Day, Jewish leaders across the continent warned against forgetting the extermination of millions, while some of the few remaining survivors urged ordinary people to stand up against populism and extremism. One survivor, Tova Friedman, 87, who is due to address the German parliament on Wednesday, said she would be speaking directly to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in her speech and asking them: “How dare you? Who do you think you are?” The official day of remembrance of Soviet troops’ liberation of the few surviving prisoners of Auschwitz in 1945 from the clutches of their Nazi German captors is 27 January. It was declared the official German day of remembrance in 1996, and officially adopted by the United Nations in 2005. At the Auschwitz memorial site 24 former prisoners braved freezing temperatures to lay wreaths at the “death wall” where German soldiers killed mainly Polish political prisoners. Polish president Karol Nawrocki later joined survivors for a ceremony at nearby Birkenau, the huge site to which Jews from across Europe were transported to be murdered in gas chambers. About 1.1 million Jews were murdered at Auschwitz alone, as well as Poles, Roma and others, including people persecuted for their religious or sexual orientation. At the snow-covered Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in central Berlin, a sea of grey concrete blocks built as an indelible symbol of Germany’s contrition, candles were lit and white roses laid on the slabs. Elsewhere events were held at museums, schools and railway stations across the country while informal gatherings took place in towns and cities across Europe at Stolpersteine, small brass plaques cemented into pavements marking former residences of Jews who were deported to concentration camps. Present-day inhabitants laid candles and flowers on them. In Terezín, site of the former Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic, where thousands of Jews were collected and died or were sent from there to Auschwitz and other death camps, a candlelit procession was due to take place on Thursday evening. The Netherlands marked its national Holocaust memorial day on Sunday with a silent procession through Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter. In Ireland, the government announced more funding for Holocaust education in schools after a survey found 15% of young people had never heard of it and 10% of those aged between 18 and 29 thought it was a “myth”. An estimated 196,600 Jewish survivors are believed to still be alive globally, compared to the 220,000 estimated to have been alive a year ago, according to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Friedman, who is due to address the Bundestag on Wednesday, was five when she and her mother were deported from their home in Gdynia near Gdansk in Poland, to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She likely survived due to a technical malfunction of the gas chambers and, during death marches in January 1945, hid among corpses. “I represent one and a half million children who were murdered and who are not here to speak for themselves,” Friedman told German media. “My story is representative of all their stories because we all had similar experiences. I was simply luckier than them, because I survived.” Together with her grandson, Aron Goodman, 20, who also accompanied her to Berlin, Friedman has a TikTok account called “TovaTok”, in which the two talk about her experience and warn against the growth of antisemitism. Goodman is one of a growing number of surviving relatives choosing to take on the vital task of telling the stories of their parents and grandparents. Friedman, who emigrated to the US where she became a successful therapist, warned against the rise of the populist far-right in Europe. She said she would directly address the AfD, which is up for election in five states this year and is predicted to do well in at least three of them. The anti-immigrant party, which backs policies such as the mass deportation of non-naturalised citizens, has repeatedly called for an end to what it calls “Schuldkult” or a “culture of guilt”, to describe the perpetuation of the memory of Nazi crimes. “I want very much to face up to them, not to hide away from them,” said Friedman. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat warned that antisemitism was more rampant than at any time since the Holocaust, and was “taking on new and disturbing forms”. She also warned of AI-generated content which was being deliberately created “to blur the line between fact and fiction, distort historical truth and undermine our collective memory”. The Frankfurt-based Anne Frank Educational Centre drew attention to a “flood” of AI-generated content being used like propaganda, in which the victims were ridiculed, with the aim of denying or trivialising them. Representatives of the Jewish community across the world, including Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, urged people to show “civil courage” and stand up for democracy at a time when there was a considerable and growing swell in favour of “pushing us as a Jewish community out of public life”. “These forces will continue to grow stronger if society fails to stop these threatening developments,” he warned. Police said they were investigating who was behind the weekend vandalism attack of a memorial in front of the remains of the synagogue in the northern port city of Kiel, which was destroyed in the state-sanctioned attacks on Jewish property in November 1938. Flowers and candles laid at the site were crushed and scattered, local media reported.