‘Christians complained about the stuffed buzzard wearing a crucifix round its neck. Birds can’t be Christians, they said. It’s the most complaints we ever got’

The first time I saw what was to become Shooting Stars was Vic Reeves – AKA Jim Moir – doing The Big Quiz during Vic Reeves Big Night Out live. I’d never seen anything like it. It was full of meaningless questions and had an attitude. I remember thinking: “There must be something we could do with that.”

Demand by US that it take control of Arctic island is for many a reminder of troubling imperial past

On a bitterly cold recent morning in the Canadian Arctic, about 70 people took to the streets. Braving the bone-chilling winds, they marched through the Inuit-governed territory of Nunavut, waving signs that read: “We stand with Greenland” and “Greenland is a partner, not a purchase.”

It was a glimpse of how, for Indigenous peoples across the Arctic, the battle over Greenland has become a wider reckoning, seemingly pitting the long-fought battle to assert their rights against a global push for power.

Famous people who speak out are often derided, but throughout time artists have used the platform they have. And if not now, when?

One of the most discordant and yet banal things about looking to the US today is how celebrity, its greatest cultural output, largely carries on as normal amid scenes of profound distress. Award ceremonies are televised, bespoke couture is pulled for the red carpet, some new film fills your social media timeline. It feels galling that a country can encompass such a sense of anguish at the same time as such glamour and wonder. And given that we are condemned to witness ICE’s transformation into a lethal, paramilitary force, such an event as the 68th Grammy awards, broadcast last night, feels at once insignificant and more important than ever as all the world watches.

The Grammys saw perhaps the most uninhibited and genuinely furious rebuke of ICE and Donald Trump that we have seen so far from celebrity figures – particularly considering that just last month, the Golden Globes was viewed as having largely ignored politics, save for a few “ICE Out” pins worn by stars including Ariana Grande and Mark Ruffalo. Grammy attendees went further. Billie Eilish followed up her call for celebrities to speak up against ICE, saying that “no one is illegal on stolen land … I feel that we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, our voices do matter and the people matter.” Perhaps most movingly, considering his stated concern around the mass deportation of Latino people, album of the year winner Bad Bunny said: “ICE out. We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we are humans and we are Americans … the only thing that is more powerful than hate is love.” These came alongside celebrations of immigration from Olivia Dean and Shaboozey.

Peter Mandelson has resigned his Labour party membership after new details of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein came to light. But why did Labour ever decide to appoint him as US ambassador? Pippa and Kiran chat through what No 10 knew and when

With less than six months until kickoff, Guardian readers share their experiences of buying World Cup tickets – or deciding not to

The 2026 World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada is less than six months away. Fifa’s ticketing process has been met with demand and controversy. Security concerns for fans traveling to the US have risen.

We asked readers to share their experiences of buying World Cup tickets – or deciding not to. These are some of the stories we received.

From the Cure winning their first Grammys to a posthumous award for Chick Corea, it was a night of heartening wins and robust politics
• Grammy awards 2026: list of winners

There are arguments to be made about the efficacy or not of celebs making political statements at awards ceremonies – some might say it is just as impotent as celebrities endorsing US presidential candidates. In the case of last night’s Grammys, we hardly need musicians to reiterate that what ICE is doing is morally reprehensible. And yet the sheer force and variety of these statements was bracing, making it clear that the issue should remain paramount in any context.

Darren Jones making statement to MPs following Epstein files revelations

Peter Mandelson “leaked a sensitive UK government document to Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary that proposed £20bn of asset sales and revealed Labour’s tax policy plans”, the Financial Times is reporting.

In his story, Jim Pickard says:

The memo, dubbed “Business Issues”, was written on June 13 2009 by Nick Butler, who at the time was special adviser to the then prime minister Gordon Brown.

The confidential document, which was released by the US Department of Justice as part of a tranche of millions of files relating to Epstein, had been sent to British government officials including cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood.

It is right that Peter Mandelson is no longer a member of the Labour party. Disciplinary action was underway prior to his resignation.

Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes destroyed the lives of so many women and girls, and our thoughts remain with his victims.

Lady Lawrence tells high court she is ‘a victim all over again’ owing to alleged unlawful information gathering

The mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence has said she felt she had been “taken for a fool” by the publisher of the Daily Mail, after she was told about allegations it had targeted her with unlawful information gathering techniques.

Appearing at the high court in London, Doreen Lawrence said she felt angry because of the trust she had placed in the Daily Mail, owing to its coverage of her son’s case.

British Medical Association members back further action as part of long-running row over pay and jobs

• UK politics live – latest updates

Resident doctors in England have voted in favour of continuing industrial action over the next six months, the British Medical Association has announced.

Ninety-three per cent of medics voted in favour of continuing industrial action in a new ballot. The turnout was 53%.

Labour suspended Norris, 66, last year after his original arrest on suspicion of child sexual abuse offences

Dan Norris, a former Labour minister and now an independent MP, has been arrested for a second time on suspicion of rape, sexual assault, voyeurism and upskirting.

Labour suspended Norris, 66, who defeated Jacob Rees-Mogg at the last election, last year after his original arrest.

Residents of 16 houses on Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl express relief after repeated floods caused by climate crisis

A row of homes in a village in south Wales is to be bought by a local authority and demolished as they can no longer be protected from flooding caused by the climate crisis.

It will cost Rhondda Cynon Taf county borough council more than £2.5m to buy the 16 riverside properties, pay for legal costs and help to rehouse dozens of residents.

Vladimir Motin was on sole watch when his vessel crashed into the Stena Immaculate near the Humber estuary

The Russian captain of a ship that crashed into an oil tanker off the Yorkshire coast has been found guilty of killing a crew member in the collision.

Vladimir Motin, a 59-year-old from St Petersburg, was on sole watch when his ship, the Solong, collided into the Stena Immaculate oil tanker near the Humber estuary on 10 March last year. Mark Angelo Pernia, a 38-year-old Filipino man, was killed in the wreck.

Only a few people will be allowed to cross in either direction daily

More than 400 European former top diplomats and officials have urged the EU to increase pressure on Israel to end “excesses and unremitting violations of international law” over Gaza and the West Bank.

The statement, due to be sent to EU leaders on Monday, calls on the bloc and its member states to take action in line with its support for a UN resolution for a two-state solution and a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

The 67-year-old, who killed five women in Ipswich within weeks in 2006, pleads guilty at Old Bailey to his sixth murder victim

A serial killer who was convicted of five murders 20 years ago has admitted killing a sixth victim, the teenager Victoria Hall.

Victoria was 17 when she disappeared during a night out more than 25 years ago. On Monday, Steve Wright admitted her kidnap and murder in September 1999, as well as the attempted kidnap of Emily Doherty, then aged 22, in Felixstowe the day before.

Distributors breathe a sigh of relief as the documentary defies the disastrous opening many anticipated to land a screen average of £212 on its first weekend of release

Melania, Brett Ratner’s authorised documentary about the current US first lady, has opened at No 29 in the UK box office chart on its first weekend of release. The film, which cost Amazon $40m to buy and $35m to promote, screened in 155 cinemas across the UK and Ireland, taking £32,974 overall, with a site average of £212.80.

This result will have the distributors breathing a sigh of relief as – despite the modest takings – this is far from the disaster many anticipated. The scale of the rollout was unprecedented in the UK documentary sector, where most titles are capped at around 25 locations.

Charge is designed to protect much-loved monument from overtourism, but not all visitors like the idea

Teresa Romero is in Rome to celebrate a milestone birthday and one of the first things she did on Monday was visit the Trevi fountain to participate in the ritual of tossing a coin into the waters of the late baroque masterpiece.

But before the Portuguese tourist could get close to the fountain, she had to hand over €2 (£1.70) – the cost of an access fee that has finally been enacted by Rome council officials after years of discussions.

Here are details that have emerged about the ex-minister’s relationship with the convicted child sex offender

• UK politics live – latest updates

Peter Mandelson has resigned from the Labour party over his links to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Here’s how the depth of their relationship – both before and after Epstein’s conviction for sexual crimes – has come to light.

Croydon school’s principal says success of Olivia Dean and Lola Young is a ‘brilliant celebration’ of free arts education

As the Grammy winners took to the stage in Los Angeles on Sunday night, one common thread emerged: many had once walked the halls of a comprehensive school in Croydon, south London.

British performers Olivia Dean, who won the prestigious gong for best new artist; Lola Young, who took home best pop solo performance for Messy; and FKA twigs, who won best dance/electronic album for Eusexua, all attended the Brit school in Selhurst. As did Raye, who earlier in the week received the Harry Belafonte best song for social change award for Ice Cream Man.

Airports, road signs, animal warnings … Margaret Calvert revolutionised how Britain looked and her brilliantly clear designs are still used today. We meet the font legend and Porsche lover

Stuffed with a barrage of road signs, artful modernist chairs and all the tools of her trade, Margaret Calvert’s studio occupies the ground floor of her trim terrace house in Islington, London. She still draws by hand, using coloured pencils, ink pens and gouaches, echoes of a simpler time when there were neither computers nor gazillions of Pantone colour options. “There was also no such thing as graphic design back then,” she says. “It was just called commercial art.”

Only a handful of graphic designers have had a typeface named after them. One of the earliest was the 18th-century Italian Giambattista Bodoni, whose fonts have conferred on him a kind of immortality. But his efforts were not to everyone’s taste: William Morris was said to have loathed Bodoni’s letters, grumpily raging at their “sweltering hideousness”.

The president called the ceremony ‘garbage’, but in reality it was a celebration of artists whose commercial success was matched by boundary-pushing boldness

Donald Trump, it seems, did not much enjoy the 2026 Grammys. Shortly after the conclusion of the ceremony’s live broadcast in the US, there he was on Truth Social, calling it “the worst”, “garbage”, “unwatchable” and threatening to sue host Trevor Noah.

Perhaps that was the reaction the Recording Academy wanted. You could, if you wished, divine a certain Maga-baiting intent not just in the decision to give the album of the year award to Bad Bunny – a Puerto Rican who attracted criticism from the Trump administration after he was booked to headline the SuperBowl LX half-time show – but the choice of the Buena Vista Social Club, a Broadway hit based on the 1997 album of the same name featuring veteran Cuban musicians, as the best musical theatre album: the latter two weeks after the New York Times reported that Cubans settled in Florida are being deported in record numbers.

This year, there has been a significant softening of the dry January trend. But why?

Name: Damp January.

Age: New.

In need of a February pep talk? Our fashion expert’s must-haves are here to lift your mood

• How to dress in cold weather

Let’s get real. Few of us look or feel at our most fabulous in February. It’s been cold and dark for, what, 18 months? Feels like it. Getting dressed feels less stylish self-expression than huddling for warmth.

But there are reasons to be cheerful – or, more to the point, things that can bring you cheer. There is Valentine’s Day. (I will never understand why people like to sneer about Valentine’s Day. A daft festival of joy in the bleakest moment of the calendar. Take the win!) I’ve also found a shirt that will be your new favourite layering piece. And a very fun jumper for £54. Read on for the lowdown.

The once-lauded director of Black Swan and The Wrestler has drowned himself in AI slop with an embarrassing new online series

If you happen to find yourself stumbling through Time magazine’s YouTube account, perhaps because you are a time traveller from the 1970s who doesn’t fully understand how the present works yet – then you will be presented with something that many believe represents the vanguard of entertainment as we know it.

On This Day… 1776 is a series of short videos depicting America’s revolutionary war. What makes On This Day notable is that it was made by Darren Aronofsky’s studio Primordial Soup. What also makes it interesting is that it was created with AI. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it is terrible.

Warm, funny and heartbreaking, The President’s Cake tells the story of a brutal ruler and a girl forced to make him a present in a time of sanctions-induced hardship. Its Iraqi director Hasan Hadi remembers his own fearful childhood

There were no cinemas in Iraq in the 1990s, when Hasan Hadi was growing up under Saddam Hussein’s regime. But he still managed to fall in love with films – after a family member roped him into helping her distribute VHS tapes of banned foreign movies. “I was a kid,” says the 37-year-old, “so no one would suspect me of smuggling. I’d put the tapes up my shirt or in my bag.”

Hadi started secretly watching the films, too, everything from Bruce Lee to Tarkovsky. At night, he crept into the living room after everyone had gone to bed, keeping the volume low in case his family woke up.

Labour’s Prince of Darkness has always been reckless and greedy. The only question is how it took this long for him to meet his reckoning

This is The End, Beautiful Friend, The End. There have been many Peter Mandelson resignations. Twice from the cabinet, once as the UK ambassador to Washington. But the announcement late on Sunday night that Mandelson was resigning from the Labour party somehow felt more final.

In the past, there had always been get out clauses. Unexpected routes back to the centre of power. Not this time. Somewhat late in the day, the establishment had closed every door. For the first time in decades, Mandy was truly on his own. You might ask what had taken everyone so long. Mandelson hadn’t exactly made much effort to hide his tracks.

The president and his supporters joining forces to decide what audiences read and see seems straight from a fascism playbook

Two events, juxtaposed, tell us a great deal about what is rapidly taking shape in the US. In one, Melania Trump releases a glossy documentary, Melania, an account of her return to the White House. Amazon outbid others to secure the rights to the documentary, spending $75m (£54m) in total, and ticket sales so far suggest that this was, shall we say, not a purely commercial venture.

In the other, the Washington Post is set to cut up to 200 jobs early this month, including the majority of its foreign staff and a sizeable chunk of its newsroom. Both Melania and the Washington Post are backed by Jeff Bezos. His two decisions, to invest in state propaganda and divest from the fourth estate that supposedly holds power to account, reveal much about how capital and authoritarianism join forces to decide what audiences read and see.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Waymo’s cars were first rolled out in San Francisco, but the English capital’s old roads, pelican crossings and jaywalkers may pose issues for AI

At the end of the 19th century, the world’s major cities had a problem. The streets were flooded with manure, the unintended consequence of dependence on horses as the major form of transport. In this sea of filth, the infant car industry smelled an opportunity. The Horseless Age, a US car magazine, claimed in 1896 that, with the spread of motorcars, “streets will be cleaner, jams and blockades less likely to occur, and accidents less frequent, for the horse is not so manageable as a mechanical vehicle”. The streets did eventually become cleaner, but not safer. Cars brought huge benefits to society, but also huge challenges. By the end of the 20th century, cars and motorbikes were implicated in more than a million deaths a year around the world, as well as contributing to pollution and suburban sprawl.

This story is often told to show that the inevitable march of innovation brings both solutions and problems. However, there was nothing inevitable about US cities becoming dominated by cars. As the historian Peter Norton describes in his book Fighting Traffic, it was a direct result of lobbying by the US car industry. It campaigned for the removal of public transport, the banning of jaywalking and the redesign of streets. The advent of the car in the US is a useful cautionary tale as we consider the introduction of self-driving cars into our lives – especially in the UK.

Jack Stilgoe is a professor in science and technology studies at University College London

The PM has told Labour it is in the ‘fight of our lives’ against Nigel Farage’s challengers. To win, it must first agree on a line of attack

After the past fortnight in which Labour’s internal bickering has once again distracted attention from government decisions that will affect real lives, it’s worth remembering how Keir Starmer briefly lifted his party’s gaze from its own navel to a higher purpose a few months ago.

That was back in September, the previous occasion when Andy Burnham’s name was being bandied around, when the prime minister seemed to galvanise Labour’s conference by telling it “we’ve got the fight of our lives ahead of us” against Reform UK and “racist” policies that would “tear the country apart”. This would be a “different battle”, he warned, because Labour was up against opponents who represented a strain of rightwing politics alien to a Britain that had never faced “a proposition like Reform before”. He has reiterated this view several times since, not least in a pre-Christmas interview, in which Starmer said that while he could still “sleep at night” under the Conservatives, that wouldn’t be the case if Nigel Farage’s party was in power.

Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography

Not to mention my dad’s lifesize wooden sheep. All homes are wacky in little and large ways. Instagram pundits please stand down

‘Your home isn’t weird enough.” So says the US interior designer Lily Walters. Her popular Instagram series urges people to make their homes “personal and slightly unhinged”, suggesting what they need is an alligator toilet flush, a decorative stained-glass traffic cone, or a snail-adorned table.

The statement makes me feel as if Walters might not see inside many homes (odd, given her job), because all homes are weird! And not cultivated and curated to add a whimsical touch of eccentricity, but properly weird, verging on disturbing. In the room I’m working in, there’s a feather-filled shrine to various dead hens, two candles in the shape of Saint Lucy’s eyes, a stuffed Australian magpie, a wig, three pewter goats and a French revolutionary cockade made from a jam pot lid (an illustrative selection; there’s much more).

Winning a career grand slam at 22 is confirmation the world No 1 is on a unique path and justified the decision to jettison long-time coach

There were many things that could have rushed into Carlos Alcaraz’s mind following his attainment of a goal he has chased his entire life, the career grand slam, achieved by defeating Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open.

He could have thought about the immense hard work and discipline it took to achieve all of this, his comically large, tight-knit team and family that faithfully follows him around the world or even how close he came to losing his semi-final two days earlier.

Trump’s presidency has brought a windfall to billionaires while hurting the poor. In these conditions, democracy cannot survive

Trump ran on a promise to lower costs on day one, but a year into his presidency, the real beneficiaries are his billionaire donors. Instead of making life more affordable for everyday Americans, Trump has used the presidency to enrich himself and his billionaire allies, while making the largest cuts to Medicaid and food assistance in history and leaving working families behind.

As families struggle with rising costs, Trump has effectively turned the White House into a slush fund, running the federal government like a personal ATM. Public money, political favors and government power are funneled to his friends and family businesses, while regulatory agencies and enforcement mechanisms are hollowed out or weaponized for profit. His oligarch allies, from big tech executives to big oil barons, are already seeing massive returns on their political investments. This is not democracy. It is a hostile corporate takeover and working people are being exploited.

Joseph Geevarghese is the executive director of Our Revolution. Rashida Tlaib is a US representative for Michigan

Europe’s India and Vietnam deals signal a historic shift away from coercion towards cooperation that respects developing countries’ sovereignty

For the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s trade pact with India was the “mother of all deals”. Seen from the other end of the telescope, it looked like the mouse of all deals, with just €4bn (£3.5bn) in tariff reductions – a rounding error in a €180bn trading relationship. But that misses the point: this is about economic heavyweights resetting the terms of their cooperation because of Donald Trump’s use of tariffs as a tool of economic and political compulsion.

Last week marked a turning point. In upgrading ties with Vietnam in the wake of its India deal, Europe is no longer trying to lock Asian partners into fixed industrial roles. The EU wants Hanoi to move into hi-tech production. That shift will probably displace Vietnam’s labour-intensive manufacturing elsewhere. India is an obvious beneficiary, able to absorb that demand.

Inadequate food supplies and collapsing rainforests must be recognised as national security threats – not pigeonholed as green issues

Ecosystems and national security used not to be mentioned in the same breath all that often – unless environmental campaigners were doing the talking. For years, climate and nature experts have struggled to get across the message that species extinctions, dead rivers and deforestation are an existential threat to people as well as animals and plants. As George Monbiot wrote last week, the publication of a government report thought to have been authored by intelligence chiefs, about the threats to the UK’s national security from biodiversity collapse, should be viewed as a step forward. The risks have become too extreme to be ignored.

The document is a national security assessment, not a scientific report. The data that it relies on comes from other sources. But the warnings that it contains about the UK’s heavy dependence on food and fertiliser imports, and the probable consequences of nature depletion, must be heeded. Originally due to be published in the autumn, the review appears to have had some sections removed. An earlier version is reported to have included warnings about the risks of “eco-terrorism” and the growing likelihood of war between China, India and Pakistan due to competition over a shrinking water supply from the Himalayas.

Readers on regenerating town centres and making high streets attractive community spaces again

High streets have been changing throughout my lifetime (I’m 82 and had a high-street business for more than 20 years) and they have somehow survived with precious little government help (Labour risks election wipeout unless it improves Britain’s high streets, study finds, 28 February). In my postwar rural Essex village, we had three butchers, two newsagents, two bakers, two ironmongers, three general stores (one a dairy) plus a potpourri of haberdashery, hair stylists, two sweet shops and an electrical shop that had every plug and wire known to man.

There was consternation when the dairy went self-service, but soon everyone was shopping with a basket. Then came the grocery chains – the butchers and bakers disappeared, and the main haberdasher closed. But the village adjusted and other enterprises appeared. The next watershed was out-of-town shopping (driven by local government poverty and the temptation of a new village hall in exchange for planning permission for a superstore) that pulled that rug away.

Perinatal mental illness is eminently treatable, and women and their partners should not suffer in silence, says Dr Livia Martucci

Every day, many new mothers continue to suffer in silence, as highlighted in your article (Seven out of 10 UK mothers feel overloaded, research reveals, 28 January). The Royal College of Psychiatrists revealed postnatal depression harmed up to 85,000 new mums in England last year.

Maternal suicide is one of the leading causes of death among women between six weeks and a year after birth. Perinatal mental illness accounts for 34% of all deaths in this group during this period. Untreated prenatal and antenatal mental illness also affects unborn infants, potentially putting them at risk of premature birth and low birth weight. Parents may find it difficult to bond with their baby once they are born, which can contribute to attachment issues.

Readers respond to letters and Amy-Jane Beer’s Country Diary on the death of loved ones and wildlife visitations

Regarding the letters (30 January) in response to Amy-Jane Beer’s Country Diary (27 January), after our mother died I visited my parents’ grave to check on the gravestone to which her name had been added after our father’s. It was midwinter with deep snow, and I arrived to find a robin perched on the stone. It didn’t fly away, but jumped down to the ground and then hopped on to my shoe. I was even able to touch his head. After a while he flew off. My father’s name was Robin Eden.
Tom Eden
Midhurst, West Sussex

• I was also moved by Amy-Jane Beer’s Country Diary about her sister’s death and the comforting visitations by two birds. At the funeral service of an old friend a few years ago, we filed out of the crematorium to the strains of The Lark Ascending, one of his favourite pieces of music. Guess what was the first thing we saw and heard as we entered the crematorium garden?
Lesley Atkinson
Newbury, Berkshire

Duckingham Palace | Child-friendly train travel | Australian Open | Apostrophe confusion | Washing duvet covers

Following the revelation that King Charles’s hens live in Cluckingham Palace (‘I wasn’t going to be diverted,’ says King Charles about campaign on the environment, 28 January), we are proud to reveal that our flock of egg‑laying ducks lives at Duckingham Palace. It has cutout wooden duck silhouettes on the gables, wooden wine boxes for nesting and straw bedding.
Val Bott
Chiswick, London

• Rather than the French train operator SNCF keeping some carriages child-free (Sure, kids can be annoying – but making public spaces ‘child-free’ is wrong, 1 February), it could follow Deutsche Bahn and provide family coaches instead. These bookable spaces offer parents a comfortable journey with their children, among fellow travellers and their families.
Annabel Gibb
York

⚽ Transfer interactive: deals from Europe’s top five leagues
⚽ 7pm GMT deadline | Follow us on Bluesky | Email John

The centre-forward to whose leaving I refer is Jean-Philippe Mateta. You can’t argue with numbers, I don’t suppose, and he’s done a fairly good job in patches, I just can’t get on board with a striker so bad at finishing one-on-ones. If Milan are seriously prepared to give £30m for a 28-year-old, I’d say thank you very much.

In an effort to save themselves – an effort that ought, perhaps, to have been made in the summer, strengthening a team doing brilliantly to give it a chance of performing both domestically and in Europe – they’ve taken Evann Guessand on loan from Villa. I can’t say I like what I’ve seen so far, but perhaps Oliver Glasner’s system suits him more than Unai Emery’s.

Pep Guardiola’s side would be on top of the league had they not consistently struggled to hold leads

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

The focus had been on Arsenal. They had not won in three Premier League games before this weekend and it was reasonable to ask how secure their position at the top of the table was. But the impact of their wobble was not that their lead was eaten into, but that they missed opportunities to extend it, because those in the chasing pack were also dropping points.

In their six league games since the New Year fixtures, Arsenal have dropped seven points. But City in the same period have dropped 11, as have Aston Villa and Liverpool. Fulham have dropped 10, Everton have dropped nine, Brentford and Newcastle have dropped eight, Chelsea seven and Manchester United six; hardly anyone in the top half of the table has closed the gap on Arsenal at all, which is why, after Saturday’s comfortable win at Leeds, their lead remains at six points.

• Mercedes principal insists their new car is within rules

• ‘Other teams are finding excuses before they have started’

Toto Wolff has dismissed claims from rival teams over the legality of Mercedes’ new engine, insisting it is within the regulations. The Mercedes team principal said that the onus lay with the other manufacturers who had missed an opportunity and that they should get their “shit together”.

The row over whether Mercedes and Red Bull have stolen a march on the opposition in their engine design has dominated the buildup to the new season and Wolff notably did not rule out other teams protesting against the legality of their engines after they are used competitively for the first time at the Australian Grand Prix on 8 March.

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For a man who is raging against the dying of the light, Cristiano Ronaldo is doing a good job of throwing a blanket over the fire. And by throwing a blanket, what Football Daily really means to say is throwing a hissy fit, a wobbly, a tantrum. The legendary footballer, reduced to something of a tap-in artist these days in a league of – at best – questionable quality, seemingly threw his toys out of his Bugatti on Sunday after deciding that not enough investment has been made in his club, Al-Nassr, in comparison to the other Saudi ones.

Timo Werner is still only 29! Was he born on a leap day or something? To borrow from football cliches, when we talk of Peter Pan footballers, it is usually because they are 35 or something like that, and still full of running. A James Milner type. Timo seems like he should be 37 and in Saudi Arabia or the USA USA USA, not still 29 and at his theoretical peak … oh, he is in the USA USA USA. Someone check his birth certificate!” – Matt Atkinson.

Although Arsène Wenger certainly does not lack creativity when it comes to proposing changes to the rules of the game (see ‘daylight’ for example), I’d like to pose an idea to him: let’s reduce the game time of every match to one half of 45 minutes. This solves the whole problem of injuries due to fixture congestion, probably maximises effective playing time, and – most importantly – gives my favourite team Spurs a chance at actually winning games” – Yannick Woudstra.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

The 28-year-old has rebuilt from crushing disappointment in the skeleton four years ago to become Britain’s best hope for Winter Olympic gold at Milano Cortina

“Excitement is definitely the word I’d use,” Matt Weston says as the world No 1 and the reigning world champion in the skeleton looks ahead to the start of the Winter Olympics this week. Weston has just won the skeleton World Cup, winning five out of seven races and finishing second to his teammate, Marcus Wyatt, in the two others.

The 28-year-old is clearly Team GB’s strongest hope for a gold medal at Milano Cortina and enthusiasm and belief pours out of him. “I’m just so excited,” he says. “The pressure is higher, it’s a bigger event, and there are a lot of eyes on me. But at the same time there’s that confidence heightened by the momentum and the results I’ve got behind me. I know I can perform.”

• Itoje missed start of camp to attend mother’s funeral

• Arundell makes first England start in three years on wing

Jamie George will captain England in their Six Nations opener against Wales on Saturday with Maro Itoje named on the bench while Henry Arundell has been selected for a first start in three years.

Itoje missed the start of England’s training camp in Girona to attend his mother’s funeral in Nigeria and Steve Borthwick has opted to name the second row among the replacements. Itoje has a remarkable record of appearing in every minute of England’s matches for the last six Six Nations campaigns but Alex Coles and Ollie Chessum assume second-row duties against Wales.

Core X programme is working to lift match officials from underrepresented communities into the professional game

“If you can’t manage personalities on the field and you can’t articulate your decisions, refereeing might not be for you,” says Dan Meeson, Professional Game Match Officials’ development director. We are in the cafe area of the Burleigh Court hotel, tucked away on Loughborough University’s campus, where a promising group of officials are being put through their paces by the elite refereeing body as they try to reach the top level.

The 29-strong group forms part of the Core X programme, designed to elevate into the professional game match officials from historically underrepresented ethnic communities who operate at semi-professional level. The programme, launched in 2023, runs in collaboration with the Football Association and is supported by the advocacy group Bamref. It accounts for more than three‑quarters of Black, Asian and mixed-heritage referee promotions into the professional game.

The Gunners had home comforts while the other teams had to travel long distances and cope with inferior facilities

Arsenal are world champions. It’s a weird thing to say about the team fourth in the WSL, albeit with a game in hand, and who failed to qualify automatically for the Champions League quarter-finals and face a two-leg knockout phase playoff. However, the 3-2 defeat of the Copa Libertadores champions, Corinthians, by the Uefa Champions League holders secured their global title. If Arsenal had lost – and at times it felt as if they were trying to – it would have been quite the spectacle given how much the tournament favoured them. Arsenal were in season and match fit, unlike Gotham FC and Corinthians, and not only did Fifa stick the tournament in England, it placed it in London and the final in Arsenal’s ground. The Gunners were in their own beds and benefiting from the elite facilities at their training ground and the backing of their fans, while the three other sides (the Moroccan champions AS Far completed the quartet) had to travel long distances, stay in hotels and manage with inferior facilities. A rethink is needed if this tournament is going to be taken seriously, with timing and location top of the agenda. Suzanne Wrack

Nine years in, the appeal of lots of Grade One races, cheaper tickets and accommodation make Dublin the place to go

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, had two reasons to be cheerful after the Irish Champion Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival on Sunday. His seven-year-old mare, Brighterdaysahead, had just won the feature race. And she was cheered back to the winner’s enclosure by a sellout crowd that included several thousand visiting racegoers from Britain.

“The Dublin Racing Festival has been a great success and certainly it’s the first time you’ve seen a lot of English people coming over for the racing,” O’Leary said. “It’s a great festival in its own right, and they’re all very welcome. I hope they flew Ryanair.”

Since his airline has nearly two-thirds of the market for flights between the UK and Ireland, it was more of a certainty than a hope. For decades, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, in Paris in early October, was British racegoers’ big weekend abroad, and reckoned to be the second-biggest annual exodus of British fans for a sporting event, with only the Le Mans 24-hour race drawing more. Less than a decade into its existence, however, the DRF is coming up fast on the Arc’s inside.

Exclusive: Charities and experts fear changes to special needs education in England may weaken legal protections

• UK politics live – latest updates

Ministers have been warned that any dilution of legal rights for disabled children and their families would cross “red lines”, as the government prepares substantial changes to special education needs and disabilities (Send) provision in England.

The Disabled Children’s Partnership, which represents more than 130 charities and professional groups, has written to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, and MPs to raise concerns that the overhaul will “come at the expense of children’s legal protections”.

Allegations prompt questions about officials’ contentions that there isn’t evidence to investigate third parties

The disclosure of more than 3m files related to Jeffrey Epstein suggests that other men were involved in his sexual abuse, prompting questions about officials’ contentions that there isn’t evidence to investigate third parties for potential involvement in the late financier’s crimes.

Some newly released documents contain allegations that Epstein provided victims to other men. Documents released in prior disclosures, as well as court documents, also point to others’ possible criminal involvement with Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Exclusive: Andy George, who has been subject to several investigations, believes there is an effort to marginalise the views of those he represents

“I tell you now, there is an attempt by some of the longer serving chief constables to get rid of me,” says Ch Insp Andy George. “I can guarantee I know exactly what they think of me: that I’m a wee upstart, so I am, that doesn’t know my place,” he adds with a smile.

The eldest son of a Protestant mother from Armagh in Northern Ireland and a father who was born in Malaysia but served in the British army, George is the longest-serving president of the National Black Police Association (NBPA).

Residents of Sebastia say heritage project is pretext for massive land grab and expansion of Jewish settlements

The Byzantine-era church lies half hidden in the shade. Roman columns rise from among the olive trees, even older ruins linked to Israelite kings are overgrown. To the west, the Mediterranean is just visible on the horizon. To the north and south are the hills of the occupied West Bank.

In the small town of Sebastia, a hundred metres or less east of the ruins, everyone is very worried.

Marius Borg Høiby arrested on suspicion of assault and threats with knife as mother faces questions over Epstein

The son of Norway’s crown princess, Marius Borg Høiby, has been arrested on new charges just days before the start of his rape trial, as his mother continues to face questions over her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The Oslo police district said Høiby had been arrested on Sunday evening on suspicion of assault, making threats with a knife and violating a restraining order.

Volunteer workers say increasing case numbers and dozens of dead birds raise fears spread is wider than recorded

Members of the public and charity volunteers are working to contain a suspected outbreak of bird flu among swans in the Thames Valley, amid signs that confirmed cases are continuing to rise.

Since October, 324 cases of bird flu in swans have been recorded by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha), which is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Of these, 39 were recorded in the first four weeks of 2026 alone.

With some of Ukraine’s most valuable biodiversity sites and science facilities under occupation, experts at Sofiyivka Park in Uman are struggling to preserve the country’s natural history

In the basement laboratory of the National Dendrological Park Sofiyivka, Larisa Kolder tends to dozens of specimens of Moehringia hypanica between power outages. Just months earlier, she and her team at this microclonal plant propagation laboratory in Uman, Ukraine, received 23 seeds of the rare flower.

Listed as threatened in Ukraine’s Red Book of endangered species, Moehringia grows nowhere else in the wild but the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine. Of those 23 seeds, only two grew into plants that Kolder and her colleagues could clone in their laboratory, but now her lab is home to a small grove of Moehringia seedlings, including 80 that have put down roots in a small but vital win for biodiversity conservation amid Russia’s war with Ukraine.

The US president tried to kill offshore wind projects – now four are back under construction

Construction has resumed on four offshore wind mega-projects after they survived a near-fatal attack by Donald Trump’s administration thanks to rulings by federal judges. These are being seen as victories for clean energy amid a wider war being waged on it by the Trump administration.

The windfarms are considered critical by grid planners as America faces an energy affordability crisis. Together, the four projects will contribute nearly five gigawatts of energy to the east coast, enough to power 3.5m homes.

A US judge will decide if, as research suggests, a chemical tyre additive is harming endangered fish species

Last week, a district judge in San Francisco, California, presided over a three-day trial brought by west coast fishers and conservationists against US tyre companies. The fishers allege that a chemical additive used in tyres is polluting rivers and waterways, killing coho salmon and other fish. If successful, the case could have implications far beyond the United States.

Counterculture comedy One Battle After Another wins four awards, including best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor for Sean Penn

Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy One Battle After Another continued its march to Oscars glory at the London Critics’ Circle film awards on Sunday evening, taking four awards, including best picture, director, screenplay and supporting actor for Sean Penn.

In his speech to pick up the screenplay award, Anderson said he wanted to share the award with the Guardian’s Xan Brooks for his review of Brett Ratner’s Melania, which was published on Friday. “It was one of the best pieces of writing,” said Anderson. “Pretty damn good.”

Businessman, who says he is a ‘big, bullish believer’, would combine Scunthorpe steelworks with Italian plant

• Business news – latest updates

The British investor Michael Flacks is reportedly “very” interested in buying British Steel and combining it with another plant in Italy, in a deal that would create one of Europe’s largest metals groups.

The businessman’s Miami-based investment group, Flacks Group, which specialises in buying distressed companies, is working with bankers to prepare a bid for government-controlled Scunthorpe steelworks, the Financial Times reported.

Exclusive: Underdrawing suggests attempt to debunk myth that former wife of Henry VIII had sixth finger

Anne Boleyn’s Hever “Rose” portrait is one of history’s most iconic faces, with her “B” pendant, her French hood, her dark eyes and a red rose in her right hand. Now a secret that has remained hidden for nearly 500 years has been discovered beneath the layers of paint.

Scientific analysis of the painting at Hever Castle, her childhood home in Kent, has uncovered evidence that an Elizabethan artist sought to create a “visual rebuttal” to claims that Henry VIII’s ill-fated wife was a witch with a sixth finger on her right hand.

William Blake House in Northants accused of mismanagement after revelation it paid one of its own trustees £1m

A group of families have called for an urgent inquiry into a charity caring for their highly vulnerable disabled relatives which is under threat of closure after running up debts of £1.6m in unpaid taxes and paying £1m to one of its own trustees.

Earlier this month, a judge gave the charity, William Blake House, just weeks to pay off its debts to HMRC or face a winding up order. The charity’s accounts show auditors have routinely questioned whether it is a viable business.

Lawsuit accuses Marco Rubio and state department of imposing ‘nationality based ban on legal immigration’ based on an ‘unsupported and demonstrably false claim’

House speaker Mike Johnson is set to swear in Christian Menefee, a Democrat who recently won a runoff election for a reliably blue seat in Texas.

Menefee’s victory, however, means the margin in the House is even more slim: 218 Republicans to 214 Democrats. His current term will end at the end of the year, and he’ll have to start campaigning almost immediately for the 2026 midterms. But this time, it will be for a new district, after the GOP-controlled legislature successfully gerrymandered the state’s congressional map.

Auditor calls renewable energy targets ‘unrealistic’ unless ‘EU ups its game’ in mining, refining and recycling of metals such as rare earths

The EU is struggling to free itself from dependence on China and countries in the global south for critical minerals and rare earths needed for everything from smartphones to wind turbines and military jets.

A damning report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in Luxembourg found that the bloc’s targets for 2030 were “out of reach” because of lack of progress in domestic production, refining and recycling.

Trump supporter Júnior Pena falsely claimed migrants being rounded up, including Brazilians, were ‘all crooks’

A rightwing Brazilian influencer who claimed Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown targeted only “crooks” has been arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey.

Júnior Pena, whose full name is Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, declared his support for the US president in a recent video message to his hundreds of thousands of social media followers.

Responding to critics of policy, Pedro Sánchez says Spain is choosing path of ‘dignity, community and justice’

• ‘Like a gift from God’: workers welcome Spanish amnesty

Spain’s prime minister has pushed back against critics of plans to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, asserting that Spain is choosing the path of “dignity, community and justice”.

The 46-second video, which features Pedro Sánchez speaking in English with subtitles in Spanish, was posted on social media at the weekend. “Some say we’ve gone too far, that we’re going against the current,” he said. “But I would like to ask you, when did recognising rights become something radical? When did empathy become something exceptional?”

Gold and silver prices recover early losses, after choice of Kevin Warsh as next Fed chair triggered heavy losses in precious metal prices

• Plunge in price of gold and silver rattles global stock markets

UK house prices have also fallen – although it’s a better picture if you adjust for seasonal factors.

The average price of a UK property fell in January, to £270,873, down from £271,068 in December, according to Nationwide Building Society.

“The start of 2026 saw a slight pick-up in annual house price growth, which rose to 1.0% in January, after slowing to 0.6% in December. Prices increased by 0.3% month on month in January, after taking account of seasonal effects.

“Housing market activity also dipped at the end of 2025, most likely reflecting uncertainty around potential property tax changes ahead of the Budget. Nevertheless, the number of mortgages approved for house purchase remained close to the levels prevailing before the pandemic.

Dozens of eCourier workers who deliver vital NHS samples claim they are classed wrongly as self-employed

Dozens of drivers are taking legal action against a Royal Mail-owned courier service, arguing that they are entitled to workers’ rights.

The 46 drivers are classified as self-employed by eCourier. They work around the clock making deliveries, including transporting vital blood and tissue samples to and from NHS hospitals.

New Mexico attorney general accuses Meta of failing to safeguard children against trafficking and sexual abuse

Meta’s second major trial of 2026 over alleged harms to children begins on Monday.

The landmark jury trial in Santa Fe pits the New Mexico attorney general’s office against the social media giant. The state alleges that the company knowingly enabled predators to use Facebook and Instagram to exploit children.

A bit like Reddit for artificial intelligence, Moltbook allows AI agents – bots built by humans – to post and interact with each other. People are allowed as observers only

On social media, people often accuse each other of being bots, but what happens when an entire social network is designed for AI agents to use?

Moltbook is a site where the AI agents – bots built by humans – can post and interact with each other. It is designed to look like Reddit, with subreddits on different topics and upvoting. On 2 February the platform stated it had more than 1.5m AI agents signed up to the service. Humans are allowed, but only as observers.

After playing Elphaba in Wicked, packing out a tent at Worthy Farm and returning to Les Misérables, the star is headlining the Palladium with songs that sum up her life

Congratulations on your pregnancy. Have you been singing to your bump?
Sort of inadvertently, because I’m back at Les Mis so by osmosis, she’s getting Boublil and Schönberg every night. I’m hoping she comes out waving a red flag and marching as soon as she walks. I haven’t sort of sat and sung to her, but I sing all the time and everything’s for her now.

You’re performing your biggest solo concert to date, at the London Palladium. How do you put a set list together?
It depends on whether you’re working for someone or for yourself. You have to do what other people want a lot of the time, which is totally fine – most of the stuff I’m asked to do is from my catalogue and I love it. Only one or two songs fill me with dread if I see them on a requests sheet. And to be honest, I always get to them and they’re fine anyway. But putting a show like this together is completely different because it’s about me and my life. The concert is based on ideas we had last year for my Glastonbury set where it was very much music to music, quick introductions, keep it moving. That was right for that gig but this time I am exploring what these songs mean and who I am now. I’m going to talk to the audience in a different way to how I have before. I’ve shied away from singing more than one song from the same show in the past. But I’m playing the London Palladium while carrying my daughter. And Jenna in Waitress goes through everything while carrying her child. I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to sing songs that really relate to what’s going on so there will definitely be more than one song from Waitress.

The formidable Mullan delivers a tender performance in Sean Robert Dunn’s first feature, playing a cranky local historian obsessed with his obscure, unscrupulous ancestor

Peter Mullan brings his formidable presence to this quirky dramedy from first-time feature director Sean Robert Dunn: he is angry and weary, disillusioned but kind-hearted, someone who got his feelings hurt a long time ago … but wouldn’t dream of making a fuss about it.

It’s Mullan who gives weight and flavour to a film that might otherwise be a bit watery and unsure quite how sharp a sting it wants to deliver.

Online gaming legend Mark Fischbach writes, directs and stars in this feature about a convict on a vague intergalactic mission – but his barebones production has nothing to show

William Goldman’s old showbiz maxim continues to apply that nobody knows anything. Independently financed horror movie Iron Lung has been smuggled into multiplexes without the usual promotional hoopla, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.

Though Markiplier is approaching the horror genre from a notionally fresh angle – by adapting Dave Szymanski’s eponymous space-submarine sim – he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth; this is Moon in dimmer light. Beset by ominous rumbles and mounting doubts about the state of mankind, the begrimed and squalid craft singlehandedly piloted by Fischbach’s straggle-haired convict Simon is indistinguishable from the average teenage bedroom. Our hero staggers round this intergalactic deathtrap completing vaguely specified missions – ram this, repair that, download something or other – like a harassed dad ticking off his Sunday to-do list. In this, Simon proves more proficient than Fischbach’s offscreen self, who is either stumped by or oblivious to the film’s fundamental issues.

The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their most rewatched comfort films is a trip back to 1992 for the unique rock comedy

When the conversation of the most overrated band in history crops up I often want to put Queen forward as my suggestion. Their omnipresent hits represent the worst of bands who favour stadium-sized grandeur over true ambition. However, I can never truly get behind the idea of trashing Freddie and co when their music helped create one of my most beloved scenes in cinema history.

Early in 1992’s Wayne’s World, a bunch of rockers squeeze into an AMC Pacer with custom flames painted on the side. As they drive past the automarts, car washes and beef stands of downtown Chicago, Bohemian Rhapsody plays on the car stereo. The song’s operatic verses are used for laughs (the “Let me go” line becomes a cry for help from a friend who is partied out and might “honk” in the backseat) while the breakdown in the middle creates space for a spot of high-speed headbanging. To me it’s as thrilling a car scene as anything in Bullitt or the Mad Max franchise.

Robin Vanbesien’s documentary uses the killing of Mawda Shawri in Belgium as the starting point to explore the dehumanising machinery of border policy

Here is an insightful but perhaps over oblique Belgian documentary that sets itself an ambitious goal: to expose the hidden infrastructure of state coercion that supports European migration policy, even down to the point of using reductive language such as “immigrant”. It arrives at these abstractions via the horrific story of the 2018 killing of Mawda Shawri, a two-year-old German-born Iraqi Kurd shot during a bungled border control raid on the van she was travelling in with her parents.

Director Robin Vanbesien reveals this tragedy through documents and testimony read out for the audience of activists seen here. The infant’s body is dumped in a bin bag by the presiding officers, and her parents, Phrast and Shamden, refused access; the lies of the police, who played to the myth of immigrant barbarity by claiming Mawda had been thrown on to the highway by her fellow passengers; the justice system closing ranks by putting the onus of responsibility on the van driver for dangerous conduct that supposedly forced the police officer to fire.

From Lord of Winterfell to lover of ornithology, the actor reveals his lifelong love of birding as host of a hugely listenable RSPB podcast. Plus, a gripping investigation into the police

On the face of it, the RSPB picking Ned Stark as the host of the new series of their podcast seems odd. But it turns out he’s been a birder since childhood, who crams in birdwatching between acting gigs. He’s warm and honest in his first podcast, chatting to fellow ornithology lover Elbow’s Guy Garvey about spotting different species while working abroad, recognising bird song and the meditative joy of watching the feathered creatures. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes fortnightly

As the film’s megahit song Golden looks likely to sweep everything in awards season, its singer Ejae explains why she’s ready to step out from behind her animated alter ego

‘The directors were crying, the producer was crying, and I thought: Oh my gosh, this is an incredible musical world.” It was February 2025, and Ian Eisendrath was conducting an orchestra through the final flourishes for the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. He knew that the team had built something special – “but I never thought it would be like this,” he laughs, marvelling at what came next.

Mere weeks after its release in June, the animated film – about Korean girl band Huntr/x who battle soul-hungry demons through song – became Netflix’s most-watched title ever. The film’s soundtrack, a fleet of emotionally charged, devilishly catchy hits crafted by real K-pop heavyweights, became a platinum-rated phenomenon all its own.

Barbican Hall, London
Robert Treviño’s sure hand led the London Symphony Orchestra through mystical Messiaen and cinematic Rachmaninoff with Patricia Kopatchinskaja precise and playful in Márton Illés’s Vont-tér

Back in 2017 a little-known young American, Robert Treviño, stepped in at short notice to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Third Symphony – the most substantial in the repertoire – for the first time. It was a seriously exciting debut. The year after, Treviño pulled off a similar coup in Zurich, establishing a career that has since caught fire across Europe. It has taken nearly a decade, but Treviño – this week announced as the new principal conductor of Bucharest’s George Enescu Philharmonic – is finally back with the LSO. It was worth the wait.

Treviño isn’t a flamboyant figure on the podium; his beat is tidy, his gestures deceptively contained. But there’s a coiled-spring muscularity and authority to his delivery that translated across the repertoire in this bizarrely programmed sequence. Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No 2 was the crowd-pulling second half, but before that a magnificent 20th-century oddity and something even odder from the 21st.

Theo Zhykharyev, the Ukrainian wizard working low-profile under this brand since 2017 has pivoted to a new realm which blends ferocious energy with freewheeling fun

From London
Recommend if you like Devo, Home Front, Snõõper
Up next New album Bridge of Sacrifice released 13 March

Theo Zhykharyev is one of those brilliant weirdos capable of turning wild ideas into reality. Since starting Powerplant as a bedroom recording project in 2017, a couple of years after he left Ukraine to study in London, he has released records built around fizzing electro-punk, dungeon synth and treble-heavy hardcore, concocting Dungeons & Dragons-inspired role-playing adventures to accompany some of them, while slinging visually arresting DIY merch through his Arcane Dynamics label. Yet even coming amid an output this freewheeling, his upcoming new record is full of surprises.

This funny and subversive novel reckons with life under martial law in late-70s Pakistan

Mohammed Hanif’s novels address the more troubling aspects of Pakistani history and politics with unhinged, near-treasonous irreverence. His 2008 Booker-longlisted debut, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, was a scabrously comic portrait of General Zia-ul-Haq in the days leading up to his death in a suspicious plane crash in 1988. Masquerading as a whodunnit, it was a satire of religiosity and military authoritarianism. Dark, irony-soaked comedy that marries farce to unsparing truth-telling was also the chosen mode for other vexed subjects, from violence against women and religious minorities in Our Lady of Alice Bhatti to the war machine in Red Birds.

Hanif’s prickly new novel confirms his standing as one of south Asia’s most unnervingly funny and subversive voices. The story kicks off right after ousted socialist PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is put to death by army chief turned autocrat Zia. Following the execution, disgraced intelligence officer Gul has been posted to OK Town, a sleepy backwater where he “would need to create his own entertainment and come up with a mission to shine on this punishment posting”.

Writing towards the end of the first world war, the poet, novelist, journalist and suffragist Benson here dreams of a secure peace

The Secret Day

My yesterday has gone, has gone and left me tired,
And now tomorrow comes and beats upon the door;
So I have built To-day, the day that I desired,
Lest joy come not again, lest peace return no more,
Lest comfort come no more.

As the 20th book in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series is published, the author shows no signs of slowing down – scripting films, opening a bookshop and making plans to rebuild his hometown

Watching Jeff Kinney sign books is akin to watching an elaborate piece of performance art. Backstage at a theatre in Chester, where the author is continuing his UK tour, three folding tables heave under the weight of thousands of copies. Kinney wheels round the table on a swivel chair, signing as he goes. He is a picture of total focus.

Today Kinney is signing copies of Partypooper, the 20th book in his blockbuster Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Every copy bears the phrase “Over 300 million books sold”. To put that into perspective, Kinney has sold more books than Led Zeppelin have sold albums. If you’ve had – or been – a child of reading age at any point over the last couple of decades, Kinney is a rock star. And nowhere is that clearer than at his sold-out event later that evening, as he is custard-pied while a crowd of 800 children and parents scream with excitement.

Fifteen years after her explosive memoir of growing up in Pakistan’s ruling political dynasty, the author has written a devastating account of the abuse she has since endured. She talks about a life on the run and finally settling down

Had Fatima Bhutto been left to her own devices, her devastating forthcoming memoir would have been almost entirely about her relationship with her dog, Coco. “I know it sounds nuts,” she laughs. And it’s true that being dog-crazy doesn’t quite track with the public perception of Bhutto as a writer, journalist, activist and member of Pakistan’s most famous political dynasty. But the pandemic had forced something of a creative unravelling and when Bhutto took stock, she found herself only really able to write about Coco. Her agent politely suggested her memoir might need something more. A second draft was written, then abandoned.

“Until I thought, what if I just tell the truth? And then it fell out of me – it didn’t even pour, it fell.” In around three weeks Bhutto had reworked her draft and, in the process, revealed a shocking chapter of her life that she’d kept secret from everyone around her.

At a family gathering over Christmas, I took on my 76-year-old mother once again at virtual bowling. Could I finally best her?

My mother bore me. My mother nurtured me. My mother educated me. She has a resilience unmatched, a love all-forgiving. She is the glue that holds our family together. But right now, I am kicking her ass at video game bowling, and it feels good!

In the 00s, my mum was the best Wii Bowling player in the world. She was unbeatable. Strike after strike after strike. The Dudette in our family’s Big Lebowski. So when she said she was coming to visit us in Canada, I thought the time was right to buy the updated Nintendo Switch Sports version of her favourite game. She’s 76 now, and I might finally have a chance of beating her, I thought, especially if I allowed myself a cheeky tune-up on the game before she arrived.

​In the fiercely competitive market ​of the online multiplayer game, Highguard​’s rocky start means it now has a lot to prove

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In the fast-paced, almost psychotically unforgiving video game business, you really do have to stick the landing. Launching a new game is an artform in itself – do you go for months of slowly building hype or a sudden shock reveal, simultaneously announcing and releasing a new project in one fell swoop? The latter worked incredibly well for online shooter Apex Legends, which remains one of the genre’s stalwarts six years after its surprise launch on 4 February 2019. What you don’t do with a new release, is something that falls awkwardly between those two approaches. Enter Highguard.

This new online multiplayer title from newcomer Wildlight Entertainment has an excellent pedigree. The studio was formed by ex-Respawn Entertainment staff, most of whom previously worked on Titanfall, Call of Duty and the aforementioned Apex Legends. They know what they’re doing. But the launch has been … troubled.

From rhino-sized Rhyhorns to worm-like Diglett, visitors to PokéPark Kanto will roam a forest populated by lifelike Pokémon statues when the attraction opens next week

In Japan, February is normally a period of quiet reflection, a month defined by winter festivals in Sapporo’s snowy mountains and staving off the cold in steaming hot springs. Traditionally, international tourists start to arrive with the blossoms in spring – but thanks to the opening of Pokémon’s first ever amusement park on 5 February, this year, they are likely to come earlier.

Unlike the rollercoaster-filled thrills of Tokyo Disney Sea or Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, PokéPark Kanto is essentially a forest populated by models of the creatures from the perennially popular games. Nestled in the quiet Tokyo suburb of Inagi, half an hour from the city centre, the park is a walkable forest with more than 600 Pokémonin it. Where the Mario-themed Super Nintendo World slots neatly into the massive Universal Studios Japan, PokéPark Kanto is hidden in the back of the less glitzy, funfair-esque Japanese theme park Yomiuri Land.

I’ve been a games journalist since 2007, but still there isn’t much video games coverage that feels like it’s specifically for people like me. So I’m creating a home for it: Mothership

Whether you’re reading about the impending AI bubble bursting or about the video game industry’s mass layoffs and cancelled projects, 2026 does not feel like a hopeful time for gaming. What’s more, games journalists – as well as all other kinds of journalists – have been losing their jobs at alarming rates, making it difficult to adequately cover these crises. Donald Trump’s White House, meanwhile, is using video game memes as ICE recruitment tools, and game studios are backing away from diversity and inclusion initiatives in response to the wider world’s slide to the right.

The manosphere is back, and we’ve lost mainstream feminist websites such as Teen Vogue; bigots everywhere are celebrating what they see as the death of “woke”. Put it all together and we have a dismal stew of doom for someone like me, a queer woman and a feminist who’s been a games journalist and critic since 2007.

Almeida theatre, London
In a bloody, brilliant, full circle Rupert Goold bows out as artistic director of the Almeida with a timely revival of the musical he first staged here in 2013

The term “yuppie” conjures visions of shoulder pads, Filofaxes and liquid lunches. This is the world Patrick Bateman inhabits and Bret Easton Ellis’s narcissistic banker is every inch the embodiment of it – a creature of Wall Street’s hedonistic heyday, blinging in designer-wear as he swings his axe at high-end escorts and the homeless.

So Rupert Goold’s decision to resurrect this musical adaptation of Ellis’s ghastly 1991 masterpiece is not without risk. Don’t these singing yuppies seem ridiculously passé now in their boxy suits and Ralph Lauren underwear? The satire is amped to 10, licking its lips, it seems, as it sends up the 1980s. But it never spirals into kitsch and our contemporary world of toxic masculinity, Trumpian capitalism and Insta-fuelled solipsism slowly, chillingly, creeps out of it.

Playhouse, Sheffield
Two siblings growing up in a high-rise search for escape and liberation in this idiosyncratic and infectious drama with a beautiful script by Debris Stevenson

Debris Stevenson is not only a playwright but a grime poet. That is apparent in this lyrical two-hander, full of imagination and whimsy, about twins whose close sibling ties bring intimacy, ambition and fantasies of taking flight. But it also sets their place in the world: he is the genius of the family and she, by comparison, is defined as the “idiot.”

Both Daisy (Jess Senanayake) and Luke (Tyrese Walters) are neurodivergent, growing up in a high-rise block, aged 11 when we first meet them. She is navigating dyslexia and ADHD, trying to live authentically within herself while Luke is in denial of his autism, and it takes some time to see him as anything but a clever and supportive brother.

Leicester Square theatre, London
The veteran standup deconstructs the science of laughter before scrolling back to his youth and a 1970s brought pungently back to life

‘We’re here, folks, to laugh”, and “See? We’re laughing!” There’s a lot of this reflexive shtick at the start of Stephen K Amos’s touring show: lots of thinking aloud about laughter, and reminding us that’s what we’re here to do. One routine asks whether and why animals laugh, and another – all amygdala this and endorphins that – considers what laughter does to our brains. Yet another drolly explores the Venn diagram that unites the laugh, the orgasm and the sneeze.

This all bespeaks a certain confidence from the veteran that his 75-minute offering will keep the laughter flowing. And it does, if not in the most adventurous way. Later in the show he tells us that Now We’re Talking! is a departure for him; “I wanted to be more honest.” But the show is notable not for the novelty of its thinking, or any sense that we’re being granted intimacies. Its hallmark is convivial, consensual good fun, in which Amos ventures orthodox opinions and relatable observations about a-changin’ times, social media and dumbed-down modernity.

Hope Mill theatre, Manchester
Amy Gavin’s production amps up the dangerous dance of desire and violence between these troubled ex-spouses but loses the delicate balance between comedy and malice

Noël Coward’s 1930 play, revived by Her Productions just a couple of months before another production comes to the Royal Exchange across town, is famous for its balance of comedy and malice. At its centre are acrimoniously divorced couple Amanda and Elyot, who bump into each other while honeymooning with their new spouses. Soon the fierce love that first brought them together has rekindled and they abscond together, initiating a dangerous dance of desire and violence.

Both the play and director Amy Gavin’s production are at their best when trembling on the knife-edge between carnality and cruelty. After a gratingly broad first act introduces us to the protagonists and their insipid new partners, things settle when we arrive in Amanda and Elyot’s Parisian bolthole and get drawn into their tumultuous relationship. Here there’s a sense of how quickly love can sour into contempt, as the pair alternately sizzle and spar, a slap never far from a kiss. Gavin’s intervention of projecting recorded images from the couple’s stormy marriage on the surface behind them unnecessarily hammers home what we can already see playing out.

The Girl, based on Samantha Geimer’s memoir, will revisit ‘one of Hollywood’s most notorious scandals through the eyes of the person most misrepresented by it’

A new movie will explore the notorious Roman Polanski statutory rape scandal from the perspective of the 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer.

The Girl, based on Geimer’s 2013 memoir The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, will trace her time in the famous director’s orbit in the 1970s, her experience being subjected to sexual assault and the media maelstrom that followed after Polanski, then 43, was arrested in 1977 on charges of statutory rape and lewd and lascivious act with a child.

Around the country, arthouse film programs hosted in galleries and independent cinemas are booming – and their audiences are filled with young viewers

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For a quarter century, In the Mood for Love has remained one of cinema’s most romantic texts; it only makes sense that audiences swooned when Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art programmed the Wong Kar-wai film at its Australian Cinémathèque in late 2025. Two sessions in the venue’s 220-seat main cinema sold out swiftly. A third session was added at short notice on a night the 20-year-old site isn’t usually open, and neared capacity, teeming with eager viewers.

And not just classic cinephiles, either. The film, says Amanda Slack-Smith, Australian Cinémathèque’s longstanding curatorial manager, “got out to a lot of communities. We’re seeing a lot of intergenerational families coming in – older parents with their 50-year-old kids, and they’re bringing their kids.”

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Musicians delivered impassioned speeches during a star-packed night that saw Lamar become the most-awarded rapper of all time

• Grammy awards 2026: list of winners

• Anti-ICE protests, brilliance by Bieber and the Dalai Lama’s first win: the 10 biggest moments at the 2026 Grammys

Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar took home major Grammy awards during a night that saw musicians hit back at Donald Trump’s ICE occupation.

From Justin Bieber to Carole King, artists wore anti-ICE pins while others also spoke out during their speeches. Bad Bunny, who is performing at the Super Bowl next weekend, took home three awards, for album of the year, best música urbana album and global music performance, and used his time on stage to call out anti-immigration sentiment.

Actor says he has struggled with the backlash to his decision to play Albus Dumbledore in the new Harry Potter show, and says books are about ‘kindness versus cruelty’

John Lithgow has called JK Rowling’s views on transgender rights “ironic and inexplicable”, saying that backlash to his decision to play Albus Dumbledore in the upcoming Harry Potter series “upsets me”.

Speaking on stage at Rotterdam film festival after a screening of his latest film, Jimpa, the 80-year-old actor was asked about how he felt about Rowling’s views. Rowling serves as an executive producer on the upcoming series, which is being produced by HBO and will be one of the most expensively produced television shows of all time.

The US lawyer on her fearsome reputation, the criticism she faced for advising Harvey Weinstein, and how 40 years of legal experience did not prepare her for the Epstein files

If Lisa Bloom had been advising Peter Mandelson or the then Prince Andrew before their calamitous attempts at reputation-salvaging television interviews, she would have encouraged them to listen beforehand to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims – or, at the very least, to their lawyers – to understand something of what the women endured.

“Or even just watch some of the powerful documentaries that have been made, centering the victims, telling their stories,” Bloom says, pausing for a moment, closing her eyes and shaking her head to convey silent incredulity. “I’d have wanted them to become really enlightened about it. But you really can’t instil compassion in someone if they don’t have compassion. It’s hard to implant it in there.”

Cat-sitting can only be relied upon for pocket money, but it has enriched me in other ways. The most unexpected benefit has been finally meeting my neighbours

I am a crazy cat lady, except for one small obstacle: I do not own a cat. Though my boyfriend and I discuss names for cats, like other couples do for children, renting in London has put a stop to adding one to our family. So I had pushed dreams of filling the cat-sized hole in my life to one side, only allowing myself momentary relapses when friendly cats crossed my path in the street. That was until I stumbled across the best solution to being reluctantly feline free: becoming a cat-sitter.

It started when I decided to quit my job. Faced with the daunting prospect of living without a guaranteed salary, I was lured in by social media videos promising that any number of “simple” side hustles would make me happier, richer and freer.

Dyson’s latest hard-floor vacuum is an expensive indulgence you probably don’t need – but might still want

• The best cordless vacuum cleaners, tested

With the best vacuum cleaners perfectly capable of cleaning both carpet and hard floors, investing in a second device that specialises in one or the other might seem like an unnecessary luxury. While Dyson’s £429.99 PencilVac Fluffycones looks positively affordable next to its £749.99 V16 Piston Animal, it’s a hard-floor specialist that can’t tackle carpets or particularly big cleans, and it won’t replace your existing vacuum. However, indulge me for a moment, because if you have any hard floor that needs regular sweeping for dust, hair and crumbs, it’s an accessible, flexible and friendly little cleaner.

The PencilVac is small for a Dyson and comes with a free-standing charging dock rather than the usual wall mount. It’s clearly designed to sit in the corner of a kitchen or dining area and be brought out for a quick sweep-up whenever needed. It’s also handy for a quick nip around a pet’s favourite hangouts, or for a sweep of your bathroom floor.

Skip the predictable and the perishable this year: from a double-cup flask to a table tennis set, we’ve handpicked gifts they’ll love long after the big day

• The best flower delivery for every budget

Valentine’s Day: love it or love to hate it, there’s no denying it can feel manufactured to make you spend your hard-earned cash on cheap stuffed toys, out-of-season red roses and unimaginative chocolates. But with the right gift, it can be a great opportunity to show your partner how much you care, and how well you truly know them.

To help you avoid tat that won’t last – or will get shoved to the back of a cupboard – we’ve rounded up 38 thoughtful ideas to last well beyond 14 February. From a massage candle and toys to spice up your sex life to a bakery guide and a two-person flask for your next adventure, our cliche-free guide will help you find a gift that’s original, personal and will definitely get you in their good books.

Our resident squirrel gnaws through packs of supermarket nuts and finds a surprisingly mixed bag

• The best supermarket natural yoghurts

Nuts are a nutritious whole food and my family’s go-to snack, but they are expensive and vary wildly in quality: some are stale and bitter, while others are creamy, sweet and well balanced.

The combination of nuts in a mixed bag matters enormously, too. After all, if your least favourite nut dominates a particular packet, it will be a chore to get through. Also, some nuts are more expensive than others, with macadamia, pecans and cashews fetching a higher price per kilo than the humble peanut (which is actually a legume), say. The formula affects both price and profit, so for today’s test I’ve listed the most prominent nuts in each packet to help you choose one that suits you.

Exercising in winter can feel brutal without the right kit. Here’s how runners, hikers and outdoor swimmers keep cosy when the temperature drops

• The best moisture-wicking underwear, socks and base layers

There’s a glorious smugness that can only be experienced by exercising outdoors in winter conditions. The fresh air, the endorphins, the reduced risk of heart disease – they’re all nice bonuses, but nothing beats that knowing nod from another rain-drenched runner, or the horrified faces of nearby dog walkers as you stride confidently into the sea for a winter dip. There’s only one catch. In order for that intoxicating feeling to exceed the very real sting of the cold, you’ll need to make sure you’re suitably layered up.

Whether you’re running, hiking or outdoor swimming, there’s some sage advice that applies across the board: “Always start by checking the weather forecast,” advises Richard Shepherd, purchasing director at mountain sports retailer Ellis Brigham. “What you wear should match the conditions you’re likely to experience. It’s the key to staying safe and comfortable outdoors.”

A rather luxuriant cheat’s way to fill that savoury pie/tart hole in your life

No time to make shortcrust? Bought puff pastry makes an instant (and decadent) alternative. Yes, I know you can buy ready-rolled shortcrust, but I wouldn’t: it’s trash. If this column didn’t have a 30-minute time constraint, I’d blitz 200g plain flour and 100g cold cubed salted butter to sand, then add one egg yolk and a tablespoon of cold water, then blitz for a few seconds, and no longer, until it just comes together. I’m unorthodox, so I then tip the pastry straight into a pie dish, quickly pat it into place and freeze for 15 minutes. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 180C(160C fan)/350F/gas 4, before removing the paper and baking beans and tipping in the filling – it’s really not very much work. But it does add 20 minutes to proceedings, which disqualifies the recipe from this column. So it’s bought, pre-rolled puff pastry instead.

Enrol in the school of wok and get sizzling with a simple stir-fry and a classic hotch-potch noodle dish. Follow the ‘wok clock’ and both are ready in about half an hour

Stir-frying, as its name suggests, is the technique of frying while continuously stirring or circulating heat, and it is the heat that’s all-important. Stir-frying is all about wok hei, or ‘wok’s air’ in English, which you can think of as the ‘height of fire’, or the level of heat. It’s said that Chinese cooks have good wok hei if they have a true understanding of the heat of their wok and how to handle it in all situations, and a stir-fry’s success is based on the quality of the cook’s wok hei.

A multi-multi-million-pound paean to ‘the black stuff’ turns out to be rather underwhelming

The new Guinness Open Gate Brewery, with its tours, gift shop and dining options, has appeared in Covent Garden, slap-bang in the centre of London’s most nosebleedingly expensive real estate.

This multi-multi-million-pound paean to “the black stuff”, where Guinness disciples can make pilgrimage, has been on the capital’s horizon for what seems like an era. The project has been tantalisingly dangled as an opening for some years, then delayed umpteen times, because, quite understandably, erecting a purpose-built, gargantuan, multi-floor Willy Wonka’s Booze Factory in the West End of London for a corporate behemoth is no easy feat. Imagine the layers of global, bureaucratic, cross-platform multi-media team Zooms that had to happen to hone the ultimate Guinness experience. So many Is to dot and Ts to cross, particularly, because food is a central part of the venture, with two restaurants on site – The Porter’s Table and Gilroy’s Loft – where exec chef Pip Lacey is serving non-challenging yet hearty menus, as well as a courtyard pie stall by Calum Franklin.

Sometimes, all that’s required for supper is simply stewed Mediterranean vegetables and potatoes with a dollop of yoghurt on top …

The world over, you’ll find home cooks trying to turn bags of potatoes into dinner, myself included. Sometimes, my answer is a Sri Lankan potato curry, or a Gujarati one. Perhaps a slow-cooked Spanish omelette if it’s a date night with Hugh at the kitchen island (like this Friday) but today, the solution is Greek. Yahni is the Greek word for a style of cooking: vegetables braised in plenty of olive oil and tomatoes, until tender. It’s a way of being, a vote for the simple and the slow and the good (but it is also dinner, if you wish).

There are lots of guidebooks for parents of young children – but what happens when your offspring hit adulthood? A psychotherapist shares her guiding principles for raising grownups

When one of my daughters turned 18, our relationship hit a crisis so painful it lasted longer than I knew how to bear. I was a psychotherapist, trained in child and adult development, yet I was utterly flummoxed. Decades have passed since then, but when I recently spoke to her about that time, a flood of distress washed through me as if it were yesterday.

This is how my daughter, now a mother herself, put it when I asked her to describe that era:

Eric’s libido always outstripped Bea’s, but with the perimenopause she experienced a surge of desire. Is Eric fully onboard with their new ménage à trois?
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

When I kissed him in front of Eric during a meet-up in a bar, the chemistry was pretty electric

Our youthful enthusiasm was starting to falter when a child came out of a cottage with a basket, sent by his mum

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

It was 1974 and my school friends and I decided to backpack around Tasmania in the middle of winter – go figure. We were three mates in our late teens, without a clear plan.

After arriving on the ferry, we hopped on a train owned by a mining company and travelled through the wild and unpopulated Tasmanian west coast to Queenstown. It was all forest and mountains, and so utterly freezing we sat in our sleeping bags on the train to try to warm up.

Their views differ on the Green party leader, but did the fellow Irish women agree on how to police demonstrations?

Ruth, 30, London

Occupation Consultancy

We have now lost £22,000 and now can’t afford to book a new date for the ceremony

Two days before my wedding last May, my 23-year-old brother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and underwent emergency surgery.

I had bought cancellation cover 18 months previously from The Insurance Emporium (TIE) and immediately submitted a claim as we cancelled the wedding.

Some families have lost up to £10,000 after being duped into sending money to fraudsters’ bank accounts

Foreign students attending independent schools in the UK are being targeted by fraudsters seeking to intercept their fee payments, according to new research.

Some families have lost up to £10,000 after being duped into sending money to the bank account of a criminal, after receiving a fake email from the school bursar.

Earn money and other rewards by linking friends and family up to companies you use, from banks to energy firms

How much do you love your energy company – enough to recommend it to a friend? How about if £50 was up for grabs?

Richard from Suffolk is a customer of Octopus Energy, and now eight of his family and friends are, too, after he recommended the provider to them all through its referral scheme. “I really think [referral schemes] are a good idea. It’s an incentive to swap – without it, I think people wouldn’t bother switching and would carry on as they were,” he says.

Try to focus on the long term, be clear about your priorities, and resist withdrawing money early

All employers must automatically enrol their employees in a workplace pension scheme if they meet the eligibility criteria: the employee must be a UK resident, aged between 22 and state pension age, and earning more than £10,000 a year, £192 a week or £822 a month, in the 2025/26 tax year.

Every second, 11m bits of information enter our brains, which then efficiently prioritise them. We need to learn to work with the process, rather than against it

It’s believed that we have about 50,000 thoughts a day: big, small, urgent, banal – “Did I leave the oven on?”. And those are just the ones that register. Subconsciously, we’re constantly sifting through a barrage of stimuli: background noise, clutter on our desks, the mere presence of our phones.

Every second, 11m bits of information enter our brains. Just 0.0004% is perceived by our conscious minds, showing just how hard our brains are working to parse what’s sufficiently relevant to bring to our attention.

Caffeine can improve the digestive system and lead to better gut health, but try to avoid it after noon or if you have irritable bowels

Is sipping a coffee after a heavy meal actually good for helping you digest it? “For some people, absolutely,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London. “But it’s not always a good idea.”

Caffeine stimulates the gut, increasing muscle contractions, she says, which for many people helps food move through the digestive system “at a nice pace” before being excreted.

TikTok says it’s the ultimate wake-up call. But does the fitness craze have any downsides – apart from waking up the neighbours?

If you’re an avid viewer of online fitness content (or live below someone who is) you’re probably familiar with TikTok’s 50 jumps challenge. The basic premise is simple: you jump 50 times as soon as you wake up, for 30 days straight. Reach the end of the month and you’re supposedly in for a world of benefits.

The jumps, reassuringly, don’t need to be too extreme. Think gentle bouncing with a soft knee bend, rather than tuck jumps. Some content creators show themselves with arms by their sides, swaying their hips as they go; others have their arms crossed over their chests and maintain a strict up-and-down momentum. Some would find their natural home in a moshpit, others at a dance party. Nobody, yet, seems to have purchased a bedside trampoline.

We are living longer and longer, but many of us are unprepared for the challenges age brings, says the novelist and psychotherapist Frank Tallis

We have never lived so long, so well, nor had more available advice on how to do so: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat ultraprocessed foods; lift weights, get outside, learn a language. Cosmetics – or surgery – have never been so available, so advanced, nor so widely used; we take for granted medical procedures that previous ages would have considered miracles. And something’s clearly working: average global life expectancy is the highest in recorded history. The fastest growing demographic is now the over-80s.

There is much public hand-wringing about the burdens this ageing population will place on health and care systems, and on younger people. But what is far less talked about, argues the clinical psychologist Frank Tallis in his new book, Wise, is how to get older well: not just in physical, but in mental good health.

With a North American licensing deal under its belt, the reinvented high-street giant is growing again under new owners and a global strategy

French Connection is back on the trail of global expansion with the aid of its cheeky initials-based slogan that made it so popular in the late 1990s.

The label once known for clothes bearing FCUK is seeking to reinvent itself again under the ownership of a group of British entrepreneurs based in the north of England who rescued it in 2021.

Ditching the traditional suit and tie for understated all black ‘is as calculated as any Westminster suit, just aimed at a different audience’

With Labour blocking Andy Burnham from returning as an MP, the so-called “king of the north” came out wearing a simple black V-neck jumper with dark denim jeans. The Greater Manchester mayor, appearing at the launch of a Class Ceiling report at the city’s Whitworth gallery on Monday, looked quietly, subtly, the outsider.

It might not sound like much. But that is the point of Burnham’s largely unnoteworthy look, which tends to involve Left Bank intellectual-adjacent black-on-black. In direct contrast to his tie-wearing colleagues in parliament, Burnham’s style feels particularly symbolic.

Leather, lace and an unexpected accessory or two will perfectly complement bold trousers

If you’re wearing tight clothes and flashing your ankles, you may want to make some bold changes

Is your wardrobe cringe? Does it make you look out-of-touch and cause younger and cooler people to look upon you with pity? Do you really want me to answer that? Never mind, I’m going to anyway, so buckle up. Brutal honesty is very January, so I will give it to you straight. But before we get down to dissecting your wardrobe, two quick questions for you. Do you put full stops in text messages? Were you baffled by Labubus? If the answer to those two questions is yes, then I’m afraid the signs are that your wardrobe is almost certainly cringe.

Being cringe is essentially being old-fashioned, but worse. Being old-fashioned is what happens when you grow older with grace and dignity. Cringe is when you lose your touch while convincing yourself you are still down with the kids.

In a city packed with bakeries, how do you find the best? I risked tooth decay to track down the quintessential blend of crisp pastry, an oozy centre and sugary cinnamon

Open sandwiches (smørrebrød), meatballs (frikadeller), crispy pork belly (stegt flæsk) … There are many must-eat dishes for food lovers visiting Denmark, though perhaps nothing springs to mind as readily as the Danish pastry. But how are you supposed to choose from the countless bakeries on offer? And once you have decided which to visit, which pastry to eat? As a long-term resident of Copenhagen and pastry obsessive, I took on the Guardian’s challenge to find the best Danish pastry in town.

Let’s get started with the shocking fact that Danish pastries are not actually Danish. In Denmark they’re called wienerbrød (Viennese bread) and made using a laminated dough technique that originated in Vienna. There’s also no such thing as a “Danish” in Denmark – there are so many different types of pastry that the word loses meaning. What we know as a Danish is a spandauer – a round pastry with a folded border and a circle of yellowy custard in the middle. Then there’s the tebirkes, a folded pastry often with a baked marzipan-style centre and poppy seeds on the top; a frøsnapper, a twist of pastry dusted with poppy seeds; and a snegl, which translates as “snail” but is known as a cinnamon swirl in English.

From a bioluminescent nightime sea to rare wildlife, natural wonders are on tap in the Gothenburg archipelago

Out on the water, paddling across the straits between two small rocky islands, the dusk fades and the stars appear. Jennie has done her best to coach me in local geography before darkness, showing me the map with its patchwork of islands and bays, and describing the shape of each landmark. All to no avail. I’m more than happy to be lost at sea, leaning back in my kayak to gaze at the constellations, occasionally checking that the red light on the stern of her kayak is still visible ahead. We stop in the sheltered lee of an island and hear a hoot. “Eurasian eagle owl,” says Jennie. “They nest here.” Then she switches off all the lights. “Let’s paddle slowly close to shore. Watch what happens.”

As soon as we move, the sea flickers into life, every paddle stroke triggering thrilling trails of cold, blue sparkles. When we stop, I slap my hand on the surface and the sea is momentarily electrified into a nebulous neural network of light, like some great salty brain figuring out this alien intrusion. Below that, squadrons of jellyfish pulse their own spectral contribution.

From accessible urban strolls to multi-day treks through world heritage-listed sites, walkers are spoiled for choice

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There has never been a better time to be a hiker in Australia. Once solely the province of experienced backcountry bushwalkers, the country’s ever-expanding network of hiking trails now offers something for walkers of all abilities.

According to Ausplay, almost 4 million Australians go bushwalking each year, making it the third-most popular form of physical activity in the country, and in 2025 the AllTrails app saw an almost 300% year-on-year increase in distance walked by Australian users. The largest growth has been in long-distance hikes, and it’s no surprise the boom in trail construction is continuing across the country, with multiple big-ticket walks slated to break ground this year.

For the last eight years, Finland has topped the list of the world’s happiest countries. Our writer embarks on a tour to discover their secret

I’ve been visiting the happiest country on Earth every year since I was a baby. At first glance, Finland doesn’t seem like an obvious breeding ground for happiness. In midwinter the sun only appears for two to five hours a day and temperatures can plummet to below -20C. (It would seem a warm-year-round, sunny climate is not a prerequisite to happiness.)

The World Happiness Report is based on a survey in which people rate their satisfaction with life – and the Finns have been happiest with their lot for the last eight years. Not short of marketing savvy, Visit Finland latched on to this with a “Masterclass of Happiness” advertising campaign. And it’s probably no coincidence that Lonely Planet named Finland in its 2026 Best in Travel guide as a country “for finding happiness in wild places”.

The answers to today’s problems

Earlier today I set you these three problems about the number 11. Here they are again with solutions.

1. Funny formation

odd positions: 9,7,5,3,1 sum to 25;

even positions: 8,6,4,2,0 sum to 20.

An offhand comment from my mother meant we suddenly owned a donkey. I loved him – but was embarrassed when I had to ride him to school

I was four when Cocolo accidentally became part of our family, so my memories are a bit patchy and predominantly sensory (I still remember the pleasant feel of his furry ears). But my mum has filled me in on the details.

We’d gone to live in Jerusalem for a year as my dad was doing some work over there. For a Sunday treat we sometimes went to the American Colony hotel for a buffet lunch, and on one such occasion Mum was chatting with the doorman. A man was passing in the street leading a donkey, and Mum casually told the doorman that she’d always wanted a donkey.

The series in which readers answer other readers’ questions explores an ancient, vexed musical conundrum

• Readers reply: to shred or not to shred? Is it OK to throw out sensitive documents?

I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves. I know a so … you get the gist! Why does a song sometimes get stuck in our heads? (And good luck stopping this one now!) Laura Ashton, Haslemere, Surrey

Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday.

In-person interactions break down barriers in east London, as AI startups also try to bridge communication divide

Wesley Hartwell raised his fists to the barista and shook them next to his ears. He then lowered his fists, extended his thumbs and little fingers, and moved them up and down by his chest, as though milking a cow. Finally, he laid the fingers of one hand flat on his chin and flexed his wrist forward.

Hartwell, who has no hearing problems, had just used BSL, British Sign Language, to order his morning latte with normal milk at the deaf-run Dialogue Cafe, based at the University of East London, and thanked Victor Olaniyan, the deaf barista.

Amateur conservationist and social media influencer Theerasak 'Pop' Saksritawee has a rare bond with Thailand’s critically endangered dugongs. With dugong fatalities increasing, Pop works alongside scientists at Phuket Marine Biological Centre to track the mammals with his drone and restore their disappearing seagrass habitat. Translating complex science for thousands online, Pop raises an urgent alarm about climate change, pollution and habitat loss — before Thailand’s dugongs vanish forever

Networks created after police killed George Floyd were reactivated to challenge Trump’s mass deportation policy

Cory never expected he’d spend hours each day driving around after immigration agents, videotaping their moves. The south Minneapolis resident is “not the type of person to do this”, he said.

The dangers of what he’s doing, even after the killings of two observers, largely stay out of his mind when he’s watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents – even when he’s gotten hit with pepper spray. In quieter moments, it occurs to him that agents likely know where he lives. Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old whom agents killed while he was filming them, “100% could have been me”, Cory said.

She’s gone from ‘queen of the soaps’ to Loose Woman known for her outspoken opinions and rockstar son Matty Healy. Now sober, she is enjoying another reinvention

Denise Welch doesn’t seem the kind of woman who would turn up with an entourage. But here she is having her hair primped in a makeshift changing room by two people. One tickling her fringe, the other tweaking her tufts. Blimey, I say, have you got two assistants? She grins. “No. There are three.” And now it turns out she’s got a fourth. I offer to make her a cup of coffee. She warns me she’s fussy. “Three teaspoons of Coffee-Mate, please.”

Welch is having a moment. She calls it, with a fabulously camp flourish, her renaissance. The actor and Loose Women regular has hardly been invisible in recent years. But this is on another level. For most of the 2000s, she has been best known for dishing out blithe opinions about anything and everything, and being the mother of the 1975’s frontman, Matty Healy. Now, though, it’s the acting that’s getting the attention. Earlier this month, she returned to the drama series Waterloo Road as the hopeless French teacher Steph Haydock after a 15‑year absence. This time around, she’s a supply teacher and is even more hopeless. Welch has also got parts in the new Russell T Davies drama series Tip Toe, the Josh Pugh sitcom Stepping Up, both on Channel 4, and the adaptation of Graham Norton’s novel Forever Home.

App endured a major outage and user backlash over perceived censorship. Now it’s facing an inquiry by the California governor and an ascendant competitor

A little more than one week ago, TikTok stepped on to US shores as a naturalized citizen. Ever since, the video app has been fighting for its life.

TikTok’s calamitous emigration began on 22 January when its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to sell the app to a group of US investors, among them the business software giant Oracle. The app’s time under Chinese ownership had been marked by a meteoric ascent to more than a billion users, which left incumbents such as Instagram looking like the next Myspace. But TikTok’s short new life in the US has been less than auspicious.

We’d like to hear from graduates about how they’re faring with paying back student loans. Have you experienced large increases in outstanding debt?

In last year’s budget Rachel Reeves froze the salary threshold for plan 2 loan repayments for three years from April 2027 – which means borrowers will have to pay even more towards their student loans as they benefit from pay rises.

Student finance is made up of a tuition fee loan, which covers course fees and is paid directly to the university, and a maintenance loan, which is designed to help with costs such as rent and food.

We would like to hear from people living in a house share where there is a large age gap between housemates

New data from SpareRoom shows that almost four in 10 flatmates now live in multi-generational households, where the age difference between the oldest and youngest adult is 20 years or more.

Do you live in a house share where there is a large age gap between housemates? What impact does that have on your living arrangements? Do you enjoy living with people of different ages? What positives and negatives does it bring?

We’d like to hear from people in Jenrick’s Newark constituency about how they feel about him defecting to Reform UK

After months of denials, Robert Jenrick finally defected to Reform UK last week.

Nigel Farage called it the “latest Christmas present I’ve ever had”, while Conservative MPs called him a “coward” and a “traitor”.

Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their winter encounters with nature

Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.

The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a whether it’s a winter flower, something lurking in a pond or a fascinating bug.

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