Workers at the US Department of Labor are organizing a protest ahead of the scheduled meeting of Elon Musk’s staff at the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) with the management at Frances Perkins Building in Washington DC at 4pm on Wednesday. “Lower-level IT supervisors were basically asked to plan to stay late after the 4pm…

Local elections in nine councils across England are to be postponed for a year as part of devolution measures that will reorganise local government in those areas, Angela Rayner has announced. The communities secretary, who is also the deputy prime minister, said her department had agreed to delay elections in half the areas that were…

Keir Starmer has decided not to travel to Paris for next week’s international summit on artificial intelligence, despite the attendance of other world leaders including Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi and JD Vance. Sources have told the Guardian that the prime minister will not attend the summit, the latest in a series of international AI conferences…

Researchers have peered inside an ancient scroll that was burned to a crisp in the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago. The scroll is one of hundreds found in the library of a Roman mansion in Herculaneum, a town on the west coast of Italy that was wiped out when Mount Vesuvius…

Private sector companies added more jobs than expected in January, furthering the case for a stable labor market that allows the Federal Reserve time as it contemplates its next policy move, ADP reported Wednesday. The payrolls processing firm said companies created a net 183,000 jobs on the month, slightly more than the 176,000 in December,…

A group of major publishers in the US are suing the state of Idaho over a book-banning law. HB 710, enacted last July, forbids anyone under the age of 18 from accessing books deemed “harmful to minors”, including those depicting “sexual conduct”, in school or public libraries. The ban extends to classics and bestsellers, including…

Scientists have produced kangaroo embryos through in vitro fertilisation for the first time, in a development they say could help conservation of endangered animals. Australian researchers at the University of Queensland made the eastern grey kangaroo embryos using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a technique widely used in human IVF, in which a sperm is injected…

A badger captured glancing up at a graffiti version of itself has won the Natural History Museum’s people’s choice award for wildlife photographer of the year. The image was taken by a British photographer, Ian Wood, on a quiet road in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex. After residents started leaving food scraps on the pavement for…

A marketing executive at a party balloon company has lost a sex discrimination claim lodged after his female boss said “sorry boys” as she revealed that a woman had won an award. Nathan Blakeley, 27, was left so deflated after missing out on a prize at the Christmas party that he launched legal proceedings against…

Spanish police investigating an online gang, which swindled prospective puppy-buyers out of more than €150,000 (£125,000) by duping them into paying for nonexistent dogs and fictitious vets’ bills, have arrested six people and frozen 14 bank accounts. Officers from the Policía Nacional began looking into the gang – which was based in the Basque province…