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Dr Amy Orben says there are no ‘one-size-fits-all answers’ given importance of access to online informationA leading academic tasked by the UK government with reviewing the effects of smartphones on teenagers has suggested blanket bans are “unrealistic and potentially detrimental”.Amy Orben, from the University of Cambridge, will lead the work on children and smartphone use that has been commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) along with a team of other academics from a number of UK universities. Continue reading...

A man set himself and his car on fire on Amsterdam's iconic Dam Square on Thursday, police said, in what they suspected was a possible attempt to take his own life.

Meghan McCain continued her war of words Thursday with actor Carrie Coon, who plays "Laurie" in Season Three of HBO Max's hit series The White Lotus. Coon told The Hollywood Reporter that McCain must have felt "gratified" at seeing a conservative character on the show — a woman who lives in Austin, Texas named "Kate" played by actor Leslie Bibb. In Episode Three, "Kate" reveals to her friends, "much to their amazement, that she voted for Donald Trump in the recent U.S. election."Coon told The Hollywood Reporter that the "Trump" twist was part of a larger story line about transgenderism that was cut after Trump's November victory.Coon said that writer and director Mike White "had intended for Coon’s character to have a more extensive backstory before Trump’s executive orders targeting transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans made the plot line appear too fleeting.""I do think people like Meghan McCain and her community are really gratified to see a conservative person on television. I have conservative people in my life who reached out to me to say that was an awesome conversation, because I don’t think it vilifies Kate," Coon said in reference to Kate's suggesting that she voted for Donald Trump. McCain posted to X, "Yes Carrie, I am 'gratified' that the conservative character represented on White Lotus is the responsible, family-oriented one not making a fool of herself. Unlike the progressive liberal you're representing who is sleeping with hotel staff and showing her t--- to everyone." ALSO READ: 'The Hard Reset': Here's how the U.S. is exporting terrorism around the world The spat has been raging since March when McCain thanked President Donald Trump for supporting cancer treatments during his State of the Union address. McCain posted on social media, "This is the first time I can remember crying during a state of the union. Thank you President Trump. This is so beautiful. Anyone who has been impacted by brain cancer knows how special this is." Coon commented under the post, "Who's gonna tell her?" in reference to McCain's father, the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was no fan of Trump and who died of brain cancer in 2018. Meghan McCain responded with a meme of the conservative "Kate" giving a smirk. McCain posted that she couldn’t decide if she should "still watch White Lotus tonight since one of the stars decided to tweet some nasty c--p at me.” But fellow conservative Megyn Kelly told McCain, “Watch it anyway. Virtually every star in every movie and TV show hates conservatives, who could watch nothing if the prerequisite were: the ppl on screen could possibly like me or be like me.” Read The Hollywood Reporter article here.

President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay £626,000 in legal fees after a lawsuit he brought in England was thrown out of court, said The Guardian.Trump sued Orbis Business Intelligence, a consulting firm founded by Christopher Steele, who penned an extensive memo that claimed Trump was conspiring with Russia to win the 2016 election. The dossier also alleged that as a result of those relationships in Russia, Trump was "compromised." The dossier made waves after accusations — which Trump denies — that he participated in "perverted" sex acts.Trump brought a data protection claim in 2022, which was dismissed in 2024. Judge Karen Steyn said at the time, “There are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed."ALSO READ: Here's why Trump supporters can't see through his lies Trump was then ordered to pay Orbis’s costs “of the entire claim.” That includes an initial payment of £290,000. During a January hearing, he was ordered to pay the fees within 28 days or his lawyers "would be prevented from addressing the court in April on a future argument about Orbis’s legal fees." Indeed, the Guardian reported that Trump was prevented from participating in a three-day hearing to decide the total bill. Judge Jason Rowley announced the fee on Thursday, and the president now owes £626,058.98.Read the full report here.

Prince Harry said on Thursday he hoped Britain's charity regulator would "unveil the truth" after it opened a compliance case into his charity Sentebale following accusations from its chair that he was guilty of "bullying at scale".

CNN's Dana Bash on Thursday mocked President Donald Trump for leveling tariffs against an island that are inhabited solely by penguins."No one is safe from President Trump's new tariffs, not even penguins," she said. "A remote island near Antarctica that is home to mainly penguins, no humans, is now subject to a 10 percent American tariff. This is not a joke. We are not kidding. These penguins, who do not trade goods or services with the United States as far as we know, are on the receiving end of a new tax."Bash said that there were serious questions, however, raised by Trump's decision to launch a trade war against a penguin island."In addition to it just being ridiculous, there is the question of how did this even happen?" she wondered.Trump's tariffs actually included two places, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, that are Australian territories near Antarctica and have no human inhabitants.ALSO READ: 'For what purpose?' Ex-officials question DOGE staffer accessing children's private dataNPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith said that the inclusion of the penguin island in the tariff package was an indication that "essentially, this was put together very quickly even though Donald Trump has been talking about this very thing for years."Conservative panelist Jonah Goldberg argued that the slapdash nature of the tariff rollout would spell big political trouble for Trump going forward."We heard [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick, just before the show, came on saying... 'Trust Donald Trump to run the global economy,'" he said. "And there are lots of people, small businesses. they're going to go out of business. There are small businesses that are going to suffer. There are lots of consumers who are going to have to pay more at the grocery store. And we're supposed to trust them to run the global economy, and they're taxing penguins. And it goes to the credibility of the administration."Watch the video below or at this link. - YouTube www.youtube.com

Mette Frederiksen, who met island’s new and outgoing PMs, says she wants to cooperate with Trump on Arctic securityThe Danish prime minister has put on a show of unity with Greenlandic leaders in her first visit to the Arctic island since Donald Trump’s renewed threats to acquire the territory, telling the US: “You cannot annex another country.”Speaking onboard an inspection ship in front of a military helicopter, alongside Greenland’s new prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, and its outgoing prime minister, Múte B Egede, Mette Frederiksen switched from Danish to English to address the diplomatic standoff with the Trump administration. Continue reading...

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee from southern city of Rafah in one of war’s biggest mass displacementsAn Israeli bombing of a school turned shelter in Gaza City has killed at least 27 people, rescuers said, and hundreds of thousands in the Rafah area are fleeing in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war amid Israel’s newly announced campaign to “divide up” the Gaza Strip.Three missiles hit Dar al-Arqam school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood on Thursday afternoon, the civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal said, killing several children and wounding 100 people. Continue reading...