The Guardian Articles

In Monday’s

big NHS speech

“This elective reform …

Apart from sanitation, medicines, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what did the Romans ever do for us? asks an exasperated Reg in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

One answer, according to a new study, is widespread cognitive decline across Europe, courtesy of …

A patient in Louisiana has become the first human in the US to die of

bird flu

The Louisiana department of health reported on Monday afternoon that a patient who had been hospitalized in the state with the first human case of avian influenza has now died.

Don’t you just hate this time of year? The promise of Christmas giving way to the bleak reality of January. Cold mornings fading to grey by mid-afternoon. Nothing to look forward to except filling in your tax return. Bunkering down and praying to wake up some time in April.

And …

For the past six months, “things can only get better” had seemed a redundant hope. And then along comes a headline to disprove it (

Elon Musk turns on Nigel Farage and calls for new leader of Reform, 5 January

• My prediction for 2025 was that …

Private hospitals will provide NHS patients in England with as many as a million extra appointments, scans and operations a year as part of the government’s drive to end the care backlog.

The move represents a significant expansion of the independent sector’s role in helping the health service tackle the …

The Garrahan paediatric hospital in Buenos Aires swarms with patients, parents and medical workers. Families stand shoulder-to-shoulder waiting for appointments, while staff race between dozens of operating rooms. In wards decorated with cartoon characters, mothers and fathers rest cheeks on their children’s.

The Garrahan treats more than 125,000 patients each …

Good morning.

South Korea finds itself embroiled in its gravest political crisis since democratisation in the 1980s. Turmoil erupted just over a month ago, when president Yoon Suk Yeol imposed martial law on the evening of 3 December – the first such declaration in 45 years – claiming to shield …

A man accused of raping an Australian flight attendant in the early hours of New Year’s Day has been refused bail before a hearing in Fiji’s high court.

Ilaisa Tanoa Degei, 24, a farmer from Navosa, on Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu, appeared before a magistrate, Mareta Tikoisuva,

Tributes have been paid to the former socialist prime minister Costas Simitis, who with dogged determination guided Greece into the eurozone and took the vital steps to ensure it was ready to host the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

News of Simitis’s death at the age of 88 was met on …