The Guardian·Saturday, January 17, 2026

The Guardian - Saturday, January 17, 2026

10 stories~15 min

Listen to this episode

Hear all 10 stories summarized and read aloud.

▶Play on Tera.fm

Stories Covered

Rare twins born in DRC raise cautious hope for endangered mountain gorillas

Virunga park ranger says babies are well cared for by mother Mafuko but high infant mortality makes first weeks critical It was noon by the time Jacques Katutu first saw the newborn mountain gorillas. Cradled in the arms of their mother, Mafuko, the tiny twins clung to her body for warmth in the forest clearing in Virunga national park, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring in Virunga, has seen dozens of newborns in his 15 years as a ranger. But, h

Read original →

Uganda’s opposition leader ‘taken by army’ as Museveni nears re-election

Bobi Wine flown to unknown location, his party says, hours after security forces allegedly killed 10 of his campaigners The Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine was taken from his house and brought to an unknown location on Friday, his party said as President Yoweri Museveni closed in on a landslide re-election. Wine’s National Unity Platform party said on Friday evening in a post on X that an army helicopter had landed in his compound in the capital, Kampala, and “forcibly taken him away to an

Read original →

Controversial US study on hepatitis B vaccines in Africa is cancelled

$1.6m project drew outrage over ethical questions about withholding vaccines proven to prevent disease The controversial US-funded study on hepatitis B vaccines among newborns in Guinea-Bissau has been halted, according to Yap Boum, a senior official at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “The study has been cancelled,” Boum told journalists at a press conference on Thursday morning. Continue reading...

Read original →

Extreme rainfall inundates South Africa and Mozambique

Flood warning raised to highest level with roads washed away and rain forcing evacuation of Kruger national park Large areas of north-eastern South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique have been inundated for several days with exceptionally heavy rainfall. Some locations in South Africa recorded hundreds of millimetres of rain over the weekend, such as Graskop in Mpumalanga, where 113mm fell in 24 hours, and Phalaborwa, which recorded about 85mm of rainfall. Rain has continued to fall across the r

Read original →

Cloth wraps treated with ‘dirt cheap’ insecticide cut malaria cases in babies

Soaking fabrics in a commonly used insect repellent is a simple and effective tool as mosquito bites become more common during daytime, study shows From Africa to Latin America to Asia, babies have been carried in cloth wraps on their mothers’ backs for centuries. Now, the practice of generations of women could become a lifesaving tool in the fight against malaria. Researchers in Uganda have found that treating wraps with the insect repellent permethrin cut rates of malaria in the infants carrie

Read original →

Trump administration says deporting college student trying to surprise family was a ‘mistake’

Any Lucía López Belloza was detained at Boston’s airport in November and flown to Honduras two days later US citizens and permanent residents: have you been racially profiled by ICE? The Trump administration apologized in court for a “mistake” in the deportation of a Massachusetts college student who was detained trying to fly home to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving. But the administration still argued that the federal government error should not affect her immigration case. Con

Read original →

CIA chief visits Maduro successor as Machado vows to become Venezuela’s president

John Ratcliffe meets Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas less than two weeks after his agents helped to oust her precedessor The CIA chief whose agents reputedly played a key role in abducting Nicolás Maduro has flown to Venezuela to meet his successor as the sidelined opposition leader, María Corina Machado, vowed she would become the country’s first elected female president. Machado’s comments were broadcast on Friday, a day after she handed her Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump in recognition of

Read original →

Brazil’s Bolsonaro finds novel way to reduce 27-year sentence: reading books

Former president convicted for coup plot to take advantage of law that knocks four days off jail term for each book read Jair Bolsonaro’s lawyers appear to have been reading up on the country’s penal code and have found a way to help their client reduce the 27-year prison sentence he received last year for plotting a coup: by reading books. There is only one problem: the former far-right Brazilian president has never been known as a bibliophile. “Sorry, I don’t have time to read,” Bolsonaro once

Read original →

Canada PM hails strategic partnership with China to adapt to ‘new global realities’

Mark Carney holds talks with Xi Jinping on rare Beijing trip as Canada seeks to diversify trade links away from US Business live – latest updates Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China as he held talks in Beijing with President Xi Jinping, the first visit by a Canadian leader in eight years. Addressing Xi in the Great Hall of the People, Carney said: “Together we can build on the best of what this relationship has been in the past to create a

Read original →

Julio Iglesias denies sexual abuse claims of two former female employees

Women allege Spanish singer subjected them ‘to inappropriate touching, insults and humiliation … in atmosphere of control’ The Spanish singer Julio Iglesias has broken his silence over allegations that he sexually abused two women who worked in his Caribbean mansions, saying he has never “abused, coerced or disrespected any woman”. The 82-year-old entertainer, whose career spans six decades, had been accused by two female former employees who allege they had been sexually assaulted and subjected

Read original →