A childcare centre in Sydney’s south-east was targeted with antisemitic graffiti and set alight early on Tuesday morning. Just before 1am emergency services were called to the centre in Maroubra where firefighters extinguished the blaze, but the building sustained extensive damage, NSW police said in a statement. Antisemitic graffiti was found spraypainted on an external…

In his inaugural speech, Donald Trump repeated his intention to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The ocean basin – bounded by the US Gulf coast, Mexico’s eastern states and the island of Cuba – is an an important centre of economic activity, including fishing, maritime transport, and oil and gas…

Thirty-two people are to give evidence in support of the Guardian’s defence of legal action brought against it by the actor and producer Noel Clarke. The details were set out on Monday at the high court in London in a pre-trial review hearing before a defamation and data protection trial, scheduled to start at the…

David Beckham urges World Economic Forum to fight for girls’ rights Next up to receive a Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum tonight is David Beckham. WEF’s Hilde Schwab explains that Beckham is receiving a crystal award for his “extraordinary leadership and humanitarianism in promoting and protecting the rights of the world’s most vulnerable…

Yvette Cooper has announced a public inquiry into the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance club in Southport after confirming the “extremely violent” killer was known to the authorities. The home secretary said the inquiry would provide answers to the families of Axel Rudakubana, 18, who pleaded guilty on Monday to…

Pope Francis has taken the remarkable step of dissolving a Peruvian-based Catholic movement, the Sodalitium of Christian Life (SCV), after years of attempts at reform and a Vatican investigation. The investigation uncovered sexual abuses by its founder, financial mismanagement by its leaders and spiritual abuses by its top members. The Sodalitium on Monday confirmed the…

Donald Trump’s presidency will boost rightwing political forces across Europe, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said, as he announced an offensive “to occupy Brussels”. A Trump ally, Hungary’s long-serving prime minister was speaking as European far-right and nationalist politicians flocked to Washington to welcome the returning US president at Monday’s inauguration. Orbán, who…

Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) program was sued within minutes of Donald Trump being sworn in. The 30-page lawsuit, obtained by The Washington Post, challenges the legality of the government advisory committee Donald Trump claims he has created, by alleging it violates federal transparency rules on disclosure, hiring and other practices. The public…

The United States was launched on a fresh course of disruption and division on Monday as Donald Trump was sworn in as its 47th president, promising a blitz of executive orders, a radical shake-up of the global order and a “golden age of America”. In a ceremony staged indoors in the US Capitol because of…

An Iranian court has sentenced the popular singer Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, known as Tataloo, to death on appeal after he was convicted of blasphemy, according to local media reports. “The supreme court accepted the prosecutor’s objection” to a previous five-year jail term on offences including blasphemy, the reformist newspaper Etemad reported on Sunday. It said…