Chatbot tries to change subject after serving up unrelated user’s mobile to man asking for rail firm helpline

The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, called it “the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use”. But Barry Smethurst, 41, a record shop worker trying to travel by rail from Saddleworth to Manchester Piccadilly, did not agree.

Waiting on the platform for a morning train that was nowhere to be seen, he asked Meta’s WhatsApp AI assistant for a contact number for TransPennine Express. The chatbot confidently sent him a mobile phone number for customer services, but it turned out to be the private number of a completely unconnected WhatsApp user 170 miles away in Oxfordshire.

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We explain why Israel chose this moment to attack Iran.

How Kelcy Warren, one of Trump’s biggest industry backers, and his pipeline firm are likely to flourish in his second term

Kelcy Warren was among the top donors for Donald Trump’s 2024 White House bid, personally pouring at least $5m into the campaign and co-hosting a fundraiser for the then presidential hopeful in Houston.

Trump’s win appears to already be benefiting Warren and Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline and energy firm of which he is co-founder, executive chair and primary shareholder.

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Israel is the main source of terror and instability in the Middle East. But the west continually turns away from this reality

As the G7 issues a statement declaring that Israel has a “right to defend itself”, you have a right to ask if you are losing your mind. Israel launched an unprovoked onslaught on Iran. Its excuse – that Tehran may acquire a nuclear weapon – renders its attack illegal under the UN charter, which forbids wars justified by the claim of a future threat.

“Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” declares the G7 statement. Even though Donald Trump’s intelligence chief testified three months ago that the US intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. Even though it’s Israel that actually possesses nuclear weapons, while refusing to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and refusing International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. Even though, as progress was being made in nuclear talks between Iran and the US, Israel targeted Iran’s chief negotiator and proceeded to exterminate scientists, including their families, alongside countless other civilians, including children, an athlete, a teacher, a pilates instructor. Even though Israel’s leader is subject to an arrest warrant, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. And even though Israel has erased Gaza in a genocidal frenzy, and subjected the illegally occupied and colonised West Bank to an escalating pogrom, attacked southern Lebanon and Beirut, and invaded and occupied Syria. No country in the Middle East is as great a source of regional instability and terror as Israel: it’s not even close.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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Exclusive: poll shows 62% of women and 47% of men across political spectrum say economy and inflation getting worse

Women across the political spectrum are more concerned about the state of the US economy and inflation under Donald Trump than men are, according to a new exclusive poll for the Guardian.

More Democrats than Republicans are now concerned about the economy following the president’s return to power. But pessimism was higher for women even among Republicans and independents, according to a new Harris poll.

More women said they are very worried about food prices (52% of women compared to 39% of men)

More women said they’re spending more time trying to find deals or go to more affordable stores (36% versus 26%)

More women said their financial security is getting worse because of their difficulty in affording essential goods and services (55% versus 46%)

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Five residents of Lake Worth Beach – just 10 miles from Trump’s Maga fortress – share their stories of survival as an immigration crackdown takes its toll

Lake Worth Beach, a small coastal city of about 45,000, sits in the shadows of Donald Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-A-Lago. A 10 minute drive from “Maga”
HQ, it is sometimes optimistically referred to as “mini San Fran”, with a largely progressive, white middle class occupying its beachfront bungalows and a local economy built on tourism, retail and construction.

It is also home to many undocumented and temporary visa migrants, who work at fruit farms and restaurants, landscape gardens and support the area’s affluent households. Though data on undocumented people is notoriously hard to collect, the 2024 census estimates that nearly half of the city’s residents are Hispanic and include Guatemalans (many of whom are Indigenous Maya), Mexicans and Venezuelans.

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Catholic church says it won’t make nearly $1m interest payment but calls fraud accusation ‘extreme stretch’

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans is planning to default on paying a nearly $1m interest payment on more than $41m in bonds it sold in 2017, leading lawyers for the people who purchased the church’s debt to allege in open court that it had engaged in “the definition of securities fraud”.

An attorney for the archdiocese countered that the allegation is “an extreme stretch”.

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Wealthy Gulf countries are alarmed and anxious about Israel and Iran’s new war.

In the second episode of Along the Green Line, reporter Matthew Cassel heads north to the occupied West Bank, visiting Tulkarm, a Palestinian city under siege by Israeli forces. Tens of thousands of residents have been forced from their homes, but just over the border in Israel, residents here are experiencing a very different reality.

In this three-part series we're traveling along the 1949 Armistice line or ‘Green Line,’ - once seen as the best hope for a resolution - and meeting Palestinians and Israelis living just kilometres apart.

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IDF ‘looking into’ incident in central Gaza, as over a hundred die in recent days near or along routes to distribution sites

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Eleven Palestinians were killed or injured on Tuesday morning after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd waiting for food trucks in central Gaza, civil defence officials in the devastated territory have said.

More than a hundred Palestinians have died in recent days after being targeted by the Israeli military in Gaza as they gathered near food distribution centres or on routes along which trucks were expected to travel.

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