Director of al-Hawl camp describes chaotic scenes as Kurdish guards fled and government fighters arrived. Will Christou reports from al-Hawl

The children crowded the wire fence, waiting for the guard to turn his back, and made a break for it. They pumped their little legs furiously but did not make it far in the squelching mud, and were quickly chased back inside, grinning and joking to their friends in Bosnian as another guard scolded them, his rifle swinging by his side while he wagged his finger.

Their mothers, foreigners who travelled to Syria to allegedly join Islamic State (IS) and its blood-soaked caliphate, stood silently behind them. Each had their belongings packed in a bag beside them, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

From commuters reliving disaster to teens stuck in deja vu – the time-loop movie turns repetition into revelation. We round up the best of this oddly resilient subgenre

An Italian-Spanish remake of Groundhog Day, with a cynical nature presenter doomed to repeat the same 24 hours while reporting on a stork colony in the Canary Islands. The best thing about it is the Italian title: È già ieri (It’s Already Yesterday).

There’s no shame in not knowing what he’ll say next: neither does he. But that didn’t stop many claiming to make sense of it

In weeks like this, the mask slips somewhat. Politicians love the illusion of control. It’s the special power that differentiates them from us lower orders. They are the ones pulling all the levers. Nothing ever happens that takes them unawares. They are the ones with answers to everything. They need it to be this way. Not just for their own psyches but for ours. It’s somehow comforting.

And then along comes Donald Trump and our emperors have no clothes. Their limitations on view to everyone. Scrabbling around just to stand still. Trying to make sense of the world in real time, just like the rest of us. Making it up as they go along.

The Box, Plymouth
Roof-felters, bawdy boozers, off-duty sailors, whip-wielding dominatrixes … this 100th birthday show in Cook’s home town is an exuberant celebration of working-class frivolity

Generally, you get two versions of England in art: it’s either bucolic vistas, rolling hills, babbling brooks and gambolling sheep – or it’s downtrodden, browbeaten, grim poverty and misery. But Beryl Cook saw something else in all the drizzle and grey of this damp old country: she saw joy.

The thing is, joy doesn’t carry the same critical, conceptual heft in art circles as more serious subjects, so Cook has always been a bit brushed off by the art crowd. They saw her as postcards and posters for the unwashed, uncultured masses, not high art for the high-minded. But she didn’t care: she succeeded as a self-taught documenter of English life despite any disdain she might have encountered. And now, on what would have been her 100th birthday, her home town of Plymouth is throwing her a big celebratory bash.

Coogler’s vampire thriller swept the Oscar nominations over Chloé Zhao’s tearjerker and Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture thriller. This genre-defying drama about the black experience could now rule awards season
• Full list of nominees
• Sinners becomes first film in history to earn 16 Oscar nominations

Agree with them or not, these Oscar nominations deliver a pert slap to the accepted assumptions of awards season. The industry had been expecting landslides for classy upmarket fare such as Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and also for Josh Safdie’s delirious comedy Marty Supreme. And that’s what they got.

But perhaps no one expected these titles to get quite as colossal a smackdown as they got from Ryan Coogler’s vampire drama thriller Sinners: a violent, high-energy fantasia about racism, music and the black experience, which has soared ahead with 16 nominations – the most for any film in 97 years of the Academy Awards. Whatever happens on the night itself, Ryan Coogler has made Oscar history.

John Harris is joined by Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey to discuss Donald Trump’s climbdown on tariffs over his move to buy Greenland. Plus, Labour MP Andrew Gwynne is to stand down, which could open the way for Andy Burnham to take his seat

Ukraine president accuses EU leaders of waiting for direction from Donald Trump in blistering speech at Davos

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has taken aim at Europe in a fiery speech at Davos, accusing leaders of being in “Greenland mode” as they waited for leadership from Donald Trump on Ukraine and other geopolitical crises rather than taking action themselves.

The Ukrainian president’s call to arms, targeting some of Kyiv’s top allies, capped a week of extraordinary diplomatic drama at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort, where European leaders scrambled to end a standoff with the White House over Greenland, and several western leaders – led by Canada’s Mark Carney – called for stronger pushback against Trump’s territorial ambitions and political whims.

• Ryan Coogler’s ghost story breaks records

• One Battle After Another in second with 13 nods

• Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Frankenstein score nine apiece

• Mescal, Clooney, Paltrow and Wicked snubbed

• Full list of nominees

Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s critically and commercially acclaimed supernatural thriller, has become the first film to be nominated for 16 Academy Awards.

The film starring Michael B Jordan as twin brothers setting up a blues club in 1930s Mississippi while battling racism and vampires has so far taken $368m worldwide. It is nominated for trophies including best picture, director, leading actor, supporting actor (for the British actor Delroy Lindo), supporting actress (for British-Nigerian actor Wunmi Mosaku) and the Academy’s inaugural casting prize.

Incident outside Opera House that left two people in critical condition is not being investigated as terrorism, police say

Six people have been injured after a knife attack at a demonstration in Belgium on Thursday evening, police said.

Two of the victims were in a critical condition in hospital after the incident in the port city of Antwerp near the Operaplein (Opera Square), police spokesperson Wouter Bruyns said.

Speculation has spread over whether Burnham will attempt to return to pursue a Labour leadership bid

Keir Starmer’s allies have launched a “Stop Andy Burnham” campaign to prevent the Labour mayor from returning to parliament after the resignation of a Manchester MP triggered a byelection.

Multiple members of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) predicted it would be impossible for Burnham to make it through the selection process given the number of Starmer loyalists on the body desperate to avoid a leadership challenge.

Search-and-rescue teams worked through the night at the campground, but there had been no progress in finding missing people, officials say

New Zealand is ‘full of grief”, the prime minister has said, after landslides tore through a house and busy campground, leaving two dead and at least six victims still missing.

Police said emergency crews were still searching for at least six people, including two teenagers, believed missing beneath the debris of a landslide, which struck a Mount Maunganui campsite on Thursday morning. Police were attempting to contact another three people. Families enjoying the summer school holiday were among the campers. Recreational vehicles and at least one structure were crushed, images showed.

Majority US-owned venture includes Larry Ellison’s Oracle, private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX

TikTok announced on Thursday that it had closed a deal to establish a new US entity, allowing it to sidestep a ban and ending a long legal battle.

The deal finalized by ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, sets up a majority American-owned venture, with investors including Larry Ellison’s Oracle, the private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX owning 80.1% of the new entity, while ByteDance will own 19.9%.

More than 30,000 households left with defects after ‘catastrophic failure’ of Tory government schemes

Members of parliament have called for the Serious Fraud Office to investigate the UK’s home insulation sector, after thousands of householders suffered ruined homes, big financial losses and months of disruption from the “clear and catastrophic failure” of two Conservative government schemes.

More than 30,000 households were left with defects, some of them severe, including mould, water ingress and damage to the fabric of walls, with about 3,000 dwellings so badly damaged they presented immediate health and safety risks to occupants.

Ellison testified against Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder and her ex-partner who was sentenced to 25 years in prison

The Disgraced former cryptocurrency executive Caroline Ellison has been released from federal custody after serving about 14 months for her involvement in the multibillion-dollar FTX fraud scandal. Ellison was previously head of FTX’s associated trading arm and the on-again, off-again romantic partner of the crypto exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.

Ellison, 31, was sentenced to 24 months in prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to seven charges, including wire fraud and money laundering. She featured prominently as a witness for the prosecution of Bankman-Fried, testifying that her former paramour directed her to commit crimes. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Guardian analysis shows images are the same, with Nekima Levy Armstrong looking composed in original but sobbing after alteration

The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying, a Guardian analysis of the image has found.

The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image. Armstrong was one of three people arrested on Thursday in connection to a demonstration that disrupted church services in St Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday. Demonstrators alleged that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, was the acting field director of the St Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. Bondi announced the arrests on social media on Thursday morning.

Giel Malual and John Kuei trekked from Dungeness to John o’Groats to raise funds for new schools in Sudan

When Giel Malual set out to walk the length of the UK to raise money to open a school for displaced children from his home country of Sudan, he did not expect the welcome he would receive from the British public.

“All the houses that we slept in, all the welcome that we were given, all the warmth and the support, the cheers and the encouragement that we have received, it has been overwhelming,” said Malual, who completed the 900-mile walk over a month with his friend John Kuei, who is also from Sudan.

Hastily convened Russia-Ukraine ‘military to military’ working groups to take place in UAE from Friday. What we know on day 1,430

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “Russians have to be ready for compromises” as his envoys rushed to Abu Dhabi for two days of trilateral meetings bringing together the US, Ukraine and Russia. The peace talks simultaneously involving Russia and Ukraine mark one of a handful of times the warring parties have convened in one forum since 2022 and the early days of the war. “I hope [the] Emirates know about it. Sometimes, we have such surprises from the American side,” Zelenskyy said of the talks, suggesting they were called by the US at short notice. “It will be the first trilateral meeting in the United Arab Emirates,” said Ukraine’s president, who spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Everybody has to be ready [for compromise], not only Ukraine, and this is important for us,” Zelenskyy said. Steve Witkoff, one of the US envoys, said the Abu Dhabi proceedings would take the form of “military to military” working groups. He met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday and a Kremlin spokesperson said: “It was agreed that the first meeting of a trilateral working group on security issues will take place today in Abu Dhabi.”

More details had not been released at time of writing, and it was not clear whether Russian and Ukrainian officials would meet face-to-face. White House representatives have for months been alternating between talks with the Russians and Ukrainians – usually appearing to bestow their greatest favour on the Russian side and prioritising Moscow’s concerns, to the consternation of Kyiv and its other allies. In 2025, Donald Trump feted Vladimir Putin with a meeting in Alaska that proved unproductive, and also announced direct talks between Putin and Zelenskyy that never happened.

Trump repeated at Davos on Wednesday his oft-stated belief that Zelenskyy and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, were close to a deal. Zelenskyy said a draft deal was “nearly, nearly ready” and that he and Trump had agreed on the issue of postwar security guarantees. He said the UK and France had already committed to forces on the ground.

The French navy has intercepted a Russian tanker, the Grinch, in the Mediterranean suspected of being part of the “shadow fleet” that enables Russia to export oil despite sanctions, writes Jason Burke. “The operation was carried out on the high seas in the Mediterranean, with the support of several of our allies,” said Emmanuel Macron. The UK announced it had provided support. At Davos, in a blistering speech criticising European allies, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said they should be playing a more muscular role in targeting the “shadow fleet” and complained that it remained too easy for Russia to bypass sanctions, and to continue mass-producing missiles and other ordnance.

Blueprint presented by Jared Kushner shows unified Gaza run by Palestinians, with Rafah crossing to open next week

Amid the hullabaloo and self-congratulation of Donald Trump’s “board of peace” launch in Davos, his administration laid out specific plans for the short- and long-term future of Gaza, aimed at a lasting peace.

The blueprint set out on Thursday was extremely ambitious. It envisages a unified Palestinian-run Gaza, which represents a rebuff to the aims of Israeli extremists, including some in the governing coalition, who have sought the deportation of Gaza’s population and the building of Israeli settlements in its place.

It used to be a breath of fresh air – TV’s most relatable reality show. Now it features shouting matches and bad-tempered confrontations, and the biggest loser is the viewer

For the past year, The Traitors has had a massive problem. No, not the parade of indistinguishable white male contestants. Nor the way it increasingly kills off its most likable characters too early (RIP Jessie). Not even the fact that the disproportionate number of people of colour who leave the show early suggests it has a big problem with unconscious bias. Actually, sorry: let me rephrase. The Traitors has two massive problems.

But here’s the one that defines this series: what the point of the show actually is. The celebrity version blew the previous regular season of The Traitors out of the water. It was absolutely charming, featuring a bunch of lovely people playing a gripping game while committing the politest series of murders possible. It smashed the normal version in every sense: ratings, watchability, how instantly it hooked you. And it was always going to be that way, given that this is a show that functions best when you’re rooting for as many contestants as possible. So when nearly every player is one you’re already familiar with, it inevitably makes for more gripping TV than a series where you spend the first two weeks going: “Sorry, there’s a guy in there called Jack?”

At Davos the French president wore a pair of shades made by Maison Henry Jullien to cover up a burst blood vessel in one eye

The world leaders and company executives meeting in Davos this week were meant to be discussing the most complex and alarming geopolitical crisis most could remember.

Instead, all eyes were on Emmanuel Macron.

Recognizing the physical and psychological tells is half the battle, says author Emma Gannon

• How to start … anything: expert tips for trying something new

What do you do when you come to a hard stop? When work has got too much, even friendships feel like a drain and you feel like you simply can’t keep going with your life as it currently is?

For Emma Gannon, the answer was extreme but non-negotiable: an entire year of nothing – or close to it. Gannon, the London-based author of fiction, nonfiction and the Hyphen newsletter, burned out with a bang in late 2022. While on a spa weekend with a friend, she had a panic attack, her first ever.

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The last time Manchester United tried to milk a few extra million quid, last summer, the club embarked on an ill-timed and ill-thought out post-season tour of Asia, which quickly turned into a PR farce. The 1-0 defeat against the “Asean All Stars”, a scratch, invitational side that had never previously played together, didn’t help but the tour was plagued by their fatigued, uninterested players looking utterly fed up, some of them sulking, yawning and even sticking their middle fingers up at fans who had come out to watch them play. Around £8m-£10m was estimated to have been generated, but at what cost?

Emerging stars are starting to critique Trump’s immigration crackdown – defying the genre’s legacy of conservatism

Thanksgiving did not go the way that Frank Ray had anticipated.

The country singer had invited his family up from Texas to Tennessee for the holiday, with plans to deep-fry a turkey, explore Nashville, and take in a show at the Grand Ole Opry. But on Thanksgiving morning, Ray received an unsettling call: TSA had flagged his sister’s husband, Juan Nevarez-Porras, at El Paso international airport due to insufficient documentation required to fly.

In 1978, Soviet scientists stumbled upon a family living in a remote part of Russia. They hadn’t interacted with outsiders for decades. Almost half a century later, one of them is still there

In the summer of 1978, a team of geologists exploring southern Siberia found something rarer than diamonds. While searching for a helicopter landing site amid the steep hills and forested canyons of the western Sayan mountains, their pilot caught sight of what appeared to be a garden, 150 miles from the nearest settlement. Hovering as low as he could, he saw a house. No people were visible, but someone was clearly tending the garden. He and his geologist passengers were shocked to find a dwelling in an area long considered too remote for human habitation.

When the four geologists set up camp 10 miles away, it was the mysterious homestead that was first in their mind. Who could live here? Were the inhabitants the last Mohicans of the Brezhnev era? The geologists ventured to the settlement bearing gifts – and a pistol, just in case. They were greeted by a disheveled old man dressed in patched-up sacking cloth. This was Karp Osipovich Lykov, the patriarch of the family. Inside a tiny, dark cabin, the geologists found Karp’s two adult daughters, Natalia and Agafia, weeping and praying. Four miles away, by the riverside, lived Karp’s two middle-aged sons, Savin and Dmitry. It soon became apparent that none of the members of this ageing family had interacted with outsiders in decades.

With filibustering slowing the pace to a crawl, there is no chance the legislation will get through – unless the government shows some backbone

The assisted dying bill is about to die, killed off by a small coterie of peers against the will of the House of Commons and voters who have supported the right to die for decades. Can the government let this happen? Keir Starmer, who has voted in favour of the legislation, needs to summon the spirit of Harold Wilson’s 1960s reforms. He has the powers to push it through, whatever it takes.

If the Lords block this, it should be their last gasp. Their outrageous behaviour illuminates everything grotesque about the upper house. There is no telling with any certainty how the vote would go among this eclectic parade of 844 who range from good to very bad indeed, but plainly opponents of the bill think they would lose as they filibuster to prevent a vote at all. Back in the Lords tomorrow and then for seven more Fridays, at this pace there is no chance it will get through in time, unless the blockers give up immediately.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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How can a Normal understand what it feels like to turn my head and suddenly feel like the floor has smashed violently into my face?

A couple of years ago I experienced something that turned my world upside down. I mean that literally (and I mean literally literally). I experienced vertigo. Specifically benign paroxysmal positional vertigo.

I personally have a huge issue with the inclusion of the word “benign”, just because something isn’t going to kill you doesn’t mean it’s not going to make you feel like you might die. Trying to explain BPPV makes me sound like a spiritual healer, because it happens when tiny crystals in your inner ear shift out of place. Yes, tiny crystals. The shifting of the tiny crystals tells your brain that your body is tumbling in space, but in a fun twist – it isn’t. The earth can suddenly and completely jolt off its axis while you are standing still, let alone turning your head.

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Rebecca Shaw is a Guardian Australia columnist

After a bombastic speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump backed away from his threat to impose tariffs on European countries

In the past few days, Donald Trump turned the US presidency into a tool for his personal glory and vengeance. On Saturday, he threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on a bloc of European countries until Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the US. The next day, Trump texted Norway’s prime minister, saying his failure to win the Nobel peace prize was one of the reasons he’s intent on seizing control of Greenland. After being snubbed for last year’s award, Trump said he no longer felt the need “to think purely of peace”.

By Tuesday morning, as European leaders continued to absorb the shock of Trump’s threats and insults, the president posted an AI-generated meme that showed him planting a US flag on the island, flanked by his vice-president and secretary of state. “Greenland. US Territory. Est. 2026,” the image said. (Trump shared another image, also apparently edited by AI, that showed him sitting alongside a map of the US that includes Canada, Greenland and Venezuela, as he spoke with European leaders assembled at the White House.) Later on Tuesday, when he was asked at a press conference how far he was willing to go to acquire Greenland, Trump responded tersely: “You’ll find out.”

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

No one is suggesting the sort of decision Brooklyn made is taken lightly, but support networks and the language of therapy seem to lessen the sting

As we continue to unpack the meaning of the Beckham family feud, I don’t think enough attention has been paid to the roast chicken. Perhaps you were busy having a life in December and missed it. But this week’s explosion by Brooklyn Beckham was the culmination of a chain of events triggered last month when Victoria Beckham, advisedly or otherwise, chucked a like at her son’s video of a roast chicken on Instagram.

For some, the takeaway was that Brooklyn’s chicken looked undercooked. For others, it was a reminder that you could draw a face on a balloon and achieve roughly the same level of sentience as Brooklyn in his cooking videos. All of which was to miss the point: that according to the new semiotics of family alienation, Brooklyn’s mother, by liking his post, had crossed a fraught boundary between “NC” (no contact) with her son to “VLC” (very low contact). Had Brooklyn not blocked her and the rest of the family immediately, she may have gone the whole hog and escalated to LC – “low contact” – at which point all bets would’ve been off.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

With Plaid Cymru and the SNP leading polls in their respective nations, can the United Kingdom continue in this – or any – form?

If you were the leader of a democracy, you would hope that the people you govern would, at the very least, want the state itself to exist. It shouldn’t be too much to ask. And yet, if the polls are to be believed, the United Kingdom is in a very interesting position. By the end of May, it is likely that the largest party in three of the four constituent countries of the UK will want the larger polity in which they operate to break apart.

The SNP is currently the overwhelming favourite to have the most seats in the Scottish parliament in the upcoming elections. In Wales, there was polling last week suggesting that the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru was on course to be the largest party inside the Welsh Senedd, just four seats short of a majority. Even more astonishing is that the Welsh Green party was also predicted to get 11 of the 96 seats. This would mean that there would be a majority of parties inside the Welsh parliament whose official policy was for Welsh independence. In Northern Ireland, the party with the most seats at present is Sinn Féin.

Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist. He publishes a regular newsletter on Welsh politics

For a decade, the autonomous territory in Syria has been a bastion of gender equality. It holds important lessons for the fight against authoritarianism

A year ago, I was in north-east Syria, in the Kurdish-dominated area known as Rojava, listening to some of the most determined women that I have ever met. On my first day there, I went to a huge conference where one after another, women in Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian dress roused the audience to chants of “Jin! Jiyan! Azadi!” (Woman! Life! Freedom)!.

When I visited, this region of Syria had for more than a decade been governed not by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but by an autonomous administration (the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, or Daanes). Its commitment to equal rights has been remarkable – every institution it set up relied on power-sharing between men and women. No wonder many of the women I met there sounded optimistic about their future. “This will be a century of women’s freedom,” one said to me. “We are in solidarity with women in resistance throughout the world.”

Natasha Walter is the author of Before the Light Fades and Living Dolls: the Return of Sexism

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I thought my articles and radio shows made an impact on people. A notice in the staffroom suggested otherwise

I recently spent a day at a secondary school in Birmingham. I agreed to do it because I like being in Birmingham and I like going to schools, and also because the teacher asked nicely. It was only the day before that I read the invitation properly and saw, to my horror, that I was leading what they call a Deep Learning Day. What could they learn from me? Moreover, what could they learn deeply from me?

Whenever I go to schools, I always come away feeling that I’ve learned a lot more from the experience than any students have learned from me. This visit was no different. I came away enriched, but also completely knackered. I’m in awe of the stamina not only of teachers, but also of students. I mean, a whole day of learning, deep or otherwise, is exhausting. Whichever side of it you’re on, it’s a lot.

A notice on the staffroom wall jumped out at me. Apologies to any teachers reading this, for whom the following might well be a hoary old maxim they’re tired of seeing. It went as follows: Learners remember 10% of what they read; 20% of what they hear; 30% of what they see; 50% of what they see and hear; 70% of what they discuss with others; 80% of personal experience; 90% of what they teach someone else.

This all sounds about right to me, dispiriting as it is for someone who earns a crust writing things for people to read, and talking about things on the radio, only to find out that 90% of the former and 80% of the latter aren’t recalled at all. That’s a lot of wasted ink and keyboard taps and airtime. Disappointing. Disappointing too, for someone who used to present a lot of television, to read that what you see and hear at the same time scores rather better. Though I don’t much miss working on television, I do occasionally feel the need to tell myself that radio and writing are nobler arts which linger longer than television in the minds of the audience. Hmm. Not according to this they don’t.

The high scorers here are fascinating too. They rather explain the power of the modern echo chamber. If 70% of what you discuss with like-minded people sticks, as well as 80% of your personal experience – what’s become known, without irony, as “your truth” – you can see how your truth becomes the truth. And then there’s the strikingly high 90% recall you have of the point of view – valid or otherwise – that you’ve so diligently inflicted on others. Bit negative all this, I appreciate, but there you go. Every day’s a school day.

• Adrian Chiles is a writer, broadcaster and a Guardian columnist

It was supposed to give Gaza a future, but the US president is using it to attack the UN, international law and multilateralism

One glance at the logo of the Board of Peace tells you all you need to know. It is the globe and laurels of the UN – only gold, because this is Donald Trump’s initiative, and showing little of the world beyond North America.

The charter of the board, formally launched in Davos on Thursday, suggests that this is less America First than Trump Always. It is not “the US president” but Mr Trump himself who is named as chair, for as long as he wishes. He can pick his successor, decide the agenda and axe whomever he chooses – even if they have coughed up the $1bn demanded for permanent membership. It is the institutional expression of his belief that he is bound not by law but “my own morality, my own mind”.

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Growing concerns about the impact of smartphones on the youngest children must be addressed

The first UK government guidance on young children’s use of tablets, smartphones and other screens, expected in April, cannot come soon enough. The laissez-faire approach to the boom in social media, handheld devices and other digital technology was arguably nowhere less suitable than when such machines were placed in front of babies. The Department for Education’s ongoing Children of the 2020s study has found that 98% of two-year-olds watch screens on a typical day for more than two hours. Those who spent the most time had smaller vocabularies, and were twice as likely as other children to show signs of emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Correlation must not be mistaken for causation. This is still a relatively new area of research, and much remains uncertain. But the findings of a recent survey by the charity Kindred Squared, combined with observations by teachers, are highly concerning. Answers from 1,000 primary-school staff revealed that 37% of four-year-olds arrived without basic life skills such as dressing and eating in 2025 – up from 33% two years earlier.

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Dr Madeline G Reinecke says any policy focused on protecting children must broaden its scope beyond traditional social media platforms, while Alexandra Cocksworth says real connections are crucial. Plus a letter from Ali Oliver

The government’s consultation surrounding whether to ban social media for under-16s responds to widespread concern about digital harms (UK ministers launch consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s, 19 January). We in the Neuroscience, Ethics and Society (Neurosec) team at the University of Oxford contend that such investigations should extend also to whether young people should have access to generative AI. In the case of social media, ministers and commentators have focused on features like addictive feeds and age limits; our research team’s work with young people shows that we must also reckon with such considerations – among many others – in an era of AI-driven technologies.

To be sure, concerns about mental health, social comparison and addictive design certainly apply when thinking about young people’s experiences online, but the digital world of 2026 includes far more than Instagram and TikTok. AI-based chatbots are increasingly present in young people’s lives across a host of domains, from education to companionship. And adolescence is a formative stage for developing social understanding, one’s sense of identity and so on. This raises urgent questions, such as: at what age should young people have access to AIs simulating friendship or intimacy? What safeguards are needed to protect young minds from manipulation and dependency grounded in artificial “connection”?

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture has restored eight key areas of the medieval souk, notes Luis Monréal

Your long read article is a powerful account of the impacts of Syria’s civil war on the city of Aleppo (Out of the ruins: will Aleppo ever be rebuilt?, 20 January). However, in stating that “All the reconstruction efforts so far are local”, it overlooks significant international involvement.

Since 2018, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has restored eight key areas of the medieval souk in Aleppo’s old city, with ongoing rehabilitation planned, reviving shops and covered markets. AKTC’s efforts have motivated traders to privately restore their own shops in peripheral areas of the souk, delivered according to local standards. UN organisations such as Unesco and UN-Habitat are also helping to restore elements of the city’s historic centre.

An article about Hamnet reminded Sean Kaye-Smith of the moving film The Other Side of the Underneath

Re Zoe Williams’ thought-provoking article (The crying game: what Hamnet’s grief-porn debate says about women, cinema – and enormous hawks, 16 January), the tensions between grief-art and grief-porn have been around for decades in British cinema, never more so than when Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath was released in 1973.

In addition to being the only British feature film to be directed by a woman in the whole of the 1970s, this powerful and harrowing work openly declared its theme to be “women’s pain”, and anyone who has seen the film would strongly affirm that it lives up to its brief. There is still nothing else like it, for the rawness of its emotions and the haunting quality of its visuals.

Watching in horror | Nobel prizes | Spell check, please | Delightful country diaries | Perceptions of ‘south’

I was surprised that your feature (‘What did I just watch?’ The TV shows that utterly baffle us – but we can’t switch off, 20 January) did not include a mention of the popular show News at Ten. When I started watching this years ago, the plotlines more or less made sense, but recently they’ve become increasingly deranged, particularly since the introduction of the weirdly orange-coloured character, “Donald”. However, like many people, I am glued to the show with a mixture of horror and fascination.
Clare Griffel
Bristol

• Maybe we should forget the peace prize and award Donald Trump the Nobel prize in physics for his ability to distort reality?
Tom Stewart
Romsey, Hampshire

Mateus Fernandes steels West Ham, Dominic Calvert-Lewin faces a homecoming and Manchester City need Marc Guéhi

• Top scorers: check out the latest standings

The absence of the wantaway Lucas Paquetá has given Mateus Fernandes a chance to take on more responsibility for West Ham. Paquetá, who is said to be nursing a minor back problem, was unavailable again for last week’s win against Spurs but Nuno Espírito Santo’s struggling side coped without the Flamengo target. They called on Fernandes to dictate the flow in midfield and the diligent Portuguese did not disappoint. Fernandes moved the ball cleverly, picked up an assist and looked like that rarest of things: a smart signing from West Ham. They will need the 21-year-old, who joined from Southampton for £38m last summer, to shine again with Paquetá looking unlikely to return against high-flying Sunderland at the London Stadium. Jacob Steinberg

West Ham v Sunderland, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT)

Burnley v Tottenham, Saturday 3pm

Fulham v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Manchester City v Wolves, Saturday 3pm

Bournemouth v Liverpool, Saturday 5.30pm

Nottingham Forest’s first European adventure for almost 30 years was supposed to be a hoot but the mood music that accompanied a slender defeat in Braga felt rather alarming. The fact is Forest failed to perform and a stale display was typified by the chain of errors that culminated in the captain, Ryan Yates, scoring an own goal that proved sufficient to earn the hosts victory.

A swell of the 2,100 away fans who made the trip to northern Portugal relayed their feelings to Sean Dyche and his squad, jeering the players on several occasions. At full time the question on supporters’ lips was a slightly more direct version of: what on earth was that?

• Fifa chief says he has been ‘hammered’ for 2026 prices

• Fans’ group tells Infantino to focus on cheap tickets

Gianni Infantino made a joke about British football fans’ behaviour and defended ticket prices for this summer’s World Cup in North America during a speech to world leaders on Thursday.

Fifa’s president addressed concerns around the staging of this summer’s finals in the US amid rising domestic tensions there, telling the World Economic Forum in Switzerland how there had been “a lot of critics” before Qatar 2022.

• Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie to join torch relay

• Opening ceremony set mainly for San Siro stadium

• Williams already in Milan via fashion week appearances

Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, the stars of the hit television series Heated Rivalry, have been named official torchbearers for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

The actors will carry the Olympic flame during the torch relay that concludes in Milan on 6 February, the day of the opening ceremony that will be centered in the city’s San Siro football stadium. Organizers have not yet announced when or where Williams and Storrie will take part.

Updates from day six at Melbourne Park
Women’s and men’s No 1s on Rod Laver Arena
Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email

Sabalenka (1) 5-6 7-6 (7-4) Potapova* Potapova moves ahead. Wowee.

Hawkeye shows us that the barest of margins has seen her go long to give up the first point but she brings it back level on the next after an unforced error from Sabalenka. A big forearm winner then gets the Austrian ahead, which is followed by a backhand driven beyond Sabalenka and a big serve that cannot be returned to tee up the hold.

• Report cites cardiac arrhythmia tied to sarcoidosis

• Drug use contributory but not fatal, examiner says

American chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky died last year after suffering a sudden heart rhythm disturbance, with an underlying heart condition identified as the primary cause, according to a report released by North Carolina medical authorities.

The 29-year-old was found dead at his townhome in Charlotte in October 2025. At the time, police said his death was being investigated as a possible overdose or suicide, and no cause had been made public.

• Sri Lanka (271-6) beat England (252 all out) by 19 runs

• Kusal Mendis’s unbeaten knock of 93 proves vital

After a year in the job, it was on: a first one-day international victory away from home for Brendon McCullum as England’s head coach, a touch of joy in a troubling winter. With Ben Duckett and Joe Root hitting watchful half-centuries, the base was set on a turner, chasing a target of 272.

But the discontent continued as 129 for one turned into 165 for six, Sri Lanka’s spinners ripping everything apart under lights in the first of three ODIs. The left-armer Dunith Wellalage combined his 12-ball 25 with two wickets in the collapse as the hosts, chasing their ninth consecutive ODI series win at home, triumphed by 19 runs.

France selection for Six Nations caused a huge stir but England’s head coach has no need to spring any shocks

Steve Borthwick names his England squad for the Six Nations on Friday and as much as we do not know about the precise makeup of the chosen party, there is plenty that we do. As much fun as it may be to imagine Borthwick rocking up at Twickenham in a sharp navy suit, ice-white trainers and with a few selection bombshells in his pocket, the England head coach is not about to borrow from the playbook of his France counterpart, Fabien Galthié.

Galthié’s decision to omit Damian Penaud, Grégory Alldritt and Gaël Fickou has created such a stir because it is radical by any measure but the point here is that Borthwick’s squad, in comparison with England’s closest rivals for the Six Nations title, is significantly more settled. He has a couple of injury concerns, as is always the case at this time of year, and he is expected to reward the recent form of Exeter’s uncapped Greg Fisilau with a call-up, but what is likely to be most telling is how few surprises it contains.

• Club continues January push for experienced players

• Kelly Gago wants to leave Everton, says Brian Sørensen

Leicester have signed the Switzerland forward Alisha Lehmann from FC Como. The WSL club have been targeting experienced players this month, having often had the youngest average age in the division in their starting XI this season.

Lehmann, who has played in England’s top flight for West Ham, Everton and Aston Villa, has 64 caps and was part of the Swiss squad at Euro 2025. She has signed a contract to 2028. “It feels like a homecoming, coming back to England, and I’m really happy,” she said.

In post-Davos speech, Canadian PM jabs at Trump, saying the arc of history ‘can still bend towards progress and justice’

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said his country must be a “beacon to a world that’s at sea” and that national unity was critical as his government faces a dramatic reshaping of the world political order – and mounting domestic challenges

The national address, given at a historic military fortress in Quebec City, was far narrower in scope than the prime minister’s remarks earlier in the week at the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland. Dubbed the ‘Carney Doctrine’, the Davos speech lamented the disintegration of rules-based order amid a rise of “great powers” that used economic “coercion” as a weapon.

Bank hails Dimon’s ‘exemplary leadership’ as package for one of corporate America’s best-paid bosses rose 10%

JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon took home a total pay package of $43m last year, it has been disclosed.

Dimon’s total compensation rose 10% in 2025, according to a regulatory filing, cementing his status as one of the highest-paid bosses in corporate America.

Emmanuel Macron says the oil tanker was boarded and searched ‘subject to international sanctions’

The French navy has intercepted a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean suspected to be part of the “shadow fleet” that enables Russia to export oil despite sanctions.

“This morning, the French navy boarded and searched an oil tanker from Russia, subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag,” President Emmanuel Macron said on X.

Exclusive: sources say powerful figures in the regime secretly told US and Qatari officials they would welcome Maduro’s departure

Before the US military snatched Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this month, Delcy Rodríguez and her powerful brother pledged to cooperate with the Trump administration once the strongman was gone, four sources involved at high levels with the discussions told the Guardian.

Rodríguez, who was sworn in on 5 January as acting president to replace Maduro, and her brother Jorge, the head of the national assembly, secretly assured US and Qatari officials through intermediaries ahead of time that they would welcome Maduro’s departure, according to the sources.

Misinformation technology could be deployed at scale to disrupt 2028 US presidential election, AI researchers say

Political leaders could soon launch swarms of human-imitating AI agents to reshape public opinion in a way that threatens to undermine democracy, a high profile group of experts in AI and online misinformation has warned.

The Nobel peace prize-winning free-speech activist Maria Ressa, and leading AI and social science researchers from Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale are among a global consortium flagging the new “disruptive threat” posed by hard-to-detect, malicious “AI swarms” infesting social media and messaging channels.

Pollution from wood burners kills thousands but proposed emissions limit would cut toxic particles by 10%

New wood-burning stoves will carry a health warning highlighting the impact of the air pollution they produce, under UK government plans.

Ministers have also proposed cutting the limit on the smoke emitted from wood burners by 80%. However, the measure would only apply to new stoves, most of which already meet the stricter limit. The new limit would cut the annual toxic emissions from wood burning in the UK by only 10% over the next decade, according to the consultation.

Marineland seeks approval to sell belugas to United States after its China export proposal was rejected

• ‘It’s heartbreaking’: how 30 captive beluga whales have become pawns in row over animal cruelty

Marineland, the Canadian amusement park and aquarium which has threatened to kill its captive whales, wants government approval to sell the belugas to the United States after its China export proposal was rejected, according to an official and a former trainer.

The former tourist attraction near the famed Niagara Falls has been mired in controversy for years. Twenty animals, including 19 belugas, have died at the park since 2019, according to a tally by the Canadian Press.

Described by one researcher as looking ‘already dead’, the enigmatic creatures are one of the least understood species on the planet

It looks more like a worn sock than a fearsome predator. It moves slower than an escalator. By most accounts, it is a clumsy and near-sightless relic drifting in the twilight waters of the Arctic, lazily searching for food scraps.

The Greenland shark, an animal one researcher (lovingly) said, “looks like it’s already dead”, is also one of the least understood, biologically enigmatic species on the planet.

Extreme heat ‘is getting worse and whether we like it or not … there’s ultimately a limit to what we can actually physically cope with,’ scientist says

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Human-caused global heating made the intense heatwave that affected much of Australia in early January five times more likely, new analysis suggests.

The heatwave earlier this month was the most severe since the 2019-20 black summer, with temperatures over 40C in Melbourne and Sydney, even hotter conditions in regional Victoria and New South Wales and extreme heat also affecting Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.

Government says plan will help end postcode lottery in access to diagnostic tests and treatment

Hospitals in rural and coastal parts of England will get more cancer doctors to help tackle stark inequalities that mean people in some areas are far more likely to die from the disease.

The plan is part of a government drive to end the “patchy” nature of NHS cancer care, which is characterised by wide postcode lotteries in access to diagnostic tests and treatment.

Fourteen-year-old was found dead in a storm drain in June 2020 six days after setting off from home on his bike

Six years after Noah Donohoe’s bike ride across Belfast ended in a tragedy that mystified Northern Ireland, an inquest is seeking answers.

Opening statements at Belfast coroner’s court on Thursday marked the formal start of an attempt to fathom what happened to the 14-year-old schoolboy, who left his home on 21 June 2020 and was found six days later dead in a storm drain.

Met says allowing protest would risk serious disorder, including from local people

Far-right Ukip supporters will be stopped from marching through Tower Hamlets for fear of serious violence, including from local people, Scotland Yard has said.

The Metropolitan police said it was not a ban, as the march on 31 January calling for mass deportations could take place in another part of London.

Celebrity chef warns UK government’s plans for higher business rates from April ‘simply will not work’

The celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has accused the government of cooking up a kitchen nightmare at restaurants across the country with tax changes that he says will make hospitality businesses “lambs to the slaughter”.

Ramsay, whose company operates 34 restaurants in the UK including Bread Street Kitchen, Pétrus and Lucky Cat, said the industry was “facing a bloodbath”. He said restaurants were closing every day as a result of rising business rates, which came on top of higher energy, staffing and ingredient costs and little growth in consumer spending.

High court ruling marks first time a foreign state has been held liable for domestic servitude by its envoy on UK soil

The United Arab Emirates must pay more than £260,000 to a victim of human trafficking who was exploited by one of its diplomats in London, the high court has ruled.

Lawyers representing the woman said it was unprecedented for a court to order a foreign state to pay for domestic servitude by a diplomat on UK soil.

Opposition lawmakers say they will seek to impeach José Jerí over undisclosed meetings in Lima’s Chinatown

Peru’s interim president, José Jerí, has denied lying to the country and claimed he was the victim of a plot to discredit him amid a growing political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen.

Jerí, 39, who took office in October after his predecessor Dina Boluarte was forced out, told a congressional oversight committee on Wednesday that he had been the target of a smear campaign designed to destabilise the country ahead of elections in April.

Union is demanding better safety standards for workers and passengers after two collisions this week killed 46

Spain’s largest train drivers’ union has called a three-day nationwide strike to demand measures to guarantee the safety of railworkers and passengers after two deadly crashes this week killed at least 46 people, including two drivers.

The death toll from Sunday’s collision between two trains near the Andalucían town of Adamuz rose from 43 to 45 on Thursday afternoon after two more bodies were recovered from the crash site. On Tuesday, a driver was killed and 37 people injured when a train was derailed by the collapse of a retaining wall near Gelida in Catalonia.

Research for first time suggests tendon and bones in heavier species would have made bounding possible

Giant 250kg kangaroos that once roamed Australia would probably have been able to hop despite their enormous size, researchers have said.

While modern kangaroos are known for their ability to travel large distances by jumping with both hind legs at the same time, it has long been debated whether their extinct relatives would have been so springy.

Estimate made by Center for Countering Digital Hate after Elon Musk’s AI image generation tool sparked outrage

Grok AI generated about 3m sexualised images in less than two weeks, including 23,000 that appear to depict children, according to researchers who said it “became an industrial-scale machine for the production of sexual abuse material”.

The estimate has been made by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) after Elon Musk’s AI image generation tool sparked international outrage when it allowed users to upload photographs of strangers and celebrities, digitally strip them to their underwear or into bikinis, put them in provocative poses and post the images on X.

Video game publisher to cancel Prince of Persia remake and close studios after several difficult years

The video game publisher behind the Assassin’s Creed series has cancelled six projects including a remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as it fights to stay competitive in the global gaming market.

Ubisoft announced a sweeping reorganisation and said it would cancel six games, sending its shares to their lowest level in more than a decade on Thursday.

Hundreds of writers, musicians and performers urge licensing deals instead of scraping creative work

Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, REM and Jodi Picoult are among hundreds of Hollywood stars, musicians and authors backing a new campaign accusing AI companies of “theft” of their work.

The “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” drive launched on Thursday with the support of approximately 800 creative professionals and bands. The campaign includes a statement accusing tech firms of using American creators’ work to “build AI platforms without authorisation or regard for copyright law”.

Regulator says thousands of UK’s most vulnerable households missed rebate for months amid soaring costs

Ovo Energy will pay a penalty of over £2.7m after failing to pass on government support payments for winter energy bills to thousands of vulnerable customers during the energy cost crisis.

The regulator found that Ovo, set up by Tory donor Stephen Fitzpatrick, was almost two years late in passing on the warm home discount (WHD) payments to almost 12,000 customers by the deadline on March 2024.

The TV chef is rumoured to be replacing Prue Leith on The Great British Bake Off. She is exactly what the show needs right now

When Prue Leith announced that she was leaving The Great British Bake Off, on the basis that “I’m 86 for goodness sake,” there was really only one figure who could realistically replace her. And so it has come to pass. Believe press rumours and the next Bake Off judge is Nigella Lawson.

If it’s true, this is the best possible call for a series that – if we’re honest – has lost its way. Bake Off has become slightly long in the tooth over the last half decade or so. This is partly to do with talent churn (over the years we’ve lost Mel and Sue, Mary Berry, Sandi Toksvig, Matt Lucas and now Prue Leith) and partly because the series is struggling to keep its challenges fresh.

The neo-soul singer and actor answers your questions on being taken to a go-go club as a child, training as an English teacher and getting mistaken for footballer Jill Scott

In a recent interview you gave an invaluable life lesson which involved a go-go bar and your mother’s love. What are your tips for living life between adversities? Integrity411
My mother’s ex-husband was a questionable man and after he picked me up from elementary school he used to take me to a go-go bar where ladies were dancing in their panties. I was a child, so I thought: how nice for them, I hate getting dressed too! They dance all day and then some nice people put money in their panties. The ladies would give me milk or Coca-Cola and give me a dollar, so I wanted to be a go-go dancer when I grew up. At that age I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me going there and I learned not to judge people so quickly. However, when my mother discovered why I was coming home late she kicked into fifth gear. She told the bar not to let me in and instead showed me art, opera, ballet – anything that was free – and changed my palate and perspective. In a way, all that brought me here. Art can get you through things. Cry as hard as you can or even laugh as hard as you can, and hold on to the joy.

A Long Walk is my favourite song of yours, not least because I was blessed to have that same experience. Is it something you shared with a special someone or something you yearned for which has not yet come to pass? Soulisasolis33
Oh my goodness. I’ve had many long walks with dogs, my mother, my mate, my friends, my child. To just take a walk and talk is one of my favourite things to do, or just to take a walk in silence. I’d recommend it to anybody.

Scott calls on Davina to help find his long-lost sister in the heart-tugging series. Plus, a Dispatches investigation into Palestine Action. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, ITV1
The DNA show never fails to make your eyes leak. Scott was 12 years old when he learned that his mum and dad were actually his grandparents and his older sister was his mum – and now he’s desperate to find his real older sister who was put up for adoption. Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help with finding her and navigating the emotional rollercoaster that ensues. Hollie Richardson

Saipan, about Keane’s infamous World Cup row with manager Mick McCarthy, has become a hit film in its native Ireland – as it opens in the UK screenwriter Paul Fraser explains how he aimed to avoid the mistakes of the past

The best bit of football action in Saipan happens on a tennis court. The forthcoming movie about the schism between Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane that led to the latter departing the 2002 World Cup before it started does not attempt to recreate any of the action from the tournament. In fact, it largely takes place in a decrepit hotel. But we do get one exception: Keane, played by Éanna Hardwicke, practising alone in the grounds. At the back of a court, the sullen, spartan athlete stands as a ball is fired up and over the net towards him. He tracks it with his eyes, opens up his right foot, takes the ball on his instep and kills it dead. And with that, his sporting bona fides are confirmed.

Saipan is a movie about masculinity, about men and their egos. It’s also about an era in Irish history; the roaring of the Celtic tiger, where questions of national identity came to the fore. What it’s not, really, is a movie about football. Which might be a canny choice, because while the world’s most popular sport only continues to grow its audience, football’s track record on the big screen is, how shall we say, like Manchester United after Sir Alex.

Carnage, exploding supermodels, Isabella Rossellini … forget the disastrous All’s Fair – Ryan Murphy is back at his best with this tale of a lethal sexually transmitted virus which also makes people beautiful

Ryan Murphy’s last screen offering was the existentially terrible All’s Fair. It was critically panned, as any show that contains the lines: “He owns, like, all of cosmetics”, “You’re the best lawyers in town – maybe the country!” and a fruit basket “lightly brushed with salmonella and faecal matter”, while somehow managing to bypass humour, camp and brio, deserves to be. It got an unprecedented zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a no-stars review here on the grounds that it was so-bad-it-was-bad, and has duly been commissioned for a second series.

By that measure, Murphy’s new show is a triumph. The Beauty has a plot, structure, characters that often act, react and speak as real human beings might, a sense of what it’s doing and where it’s going and – whisper it – even a touch of commentary on the state of society today. It’s almost like old American anthology days, when Murphy threw the likes of The People v OJ Simpson, Feud and The Assassination of Gianni Versace at us one after the other; leasing new lives to Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange and assorted other glorious figures, and having us believe the good times would roll for ever.

It is the year 2029 and an LA cop finds himself accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to clear his name before robo-justice sends him down

Irish writer Marco van Belle delivers an entertaining script for this real time futurist thriller-satire set in LA in 2029, in a world (as they say) where AI is wholly responsible for assessing criminal guilt or innocence. You’ve heard of RoboCop. This is RoboJustice. Veteran Russian-Kazakh film-maker Timur Bekmambetov directs, bringing his usual robust approach to the big action sequences, and Chris Pratt stars as the LAPD cop accused of murder. (Longtime Pratt fans will appreciate a cameo appearance here of Pratt’s fellow cast-member from TV’s Parks and Recreation, Jay Jackson, effectively reprising his performance as sonorous TV newsreader Perd Hapley.)

The film’s ostensible target is the insidious power of AI, though the movie partakes of today’s liberal opinion doublethink, in which we all solemnly concur that AI is very worrying while not having the smallest intention of doing anything about it. Pratt plays Detective Chris Raven, an officer with a drinking problem but nonetheless a poster boy for LA law enforcement in 2029 for having brought in the first conviction under the city’s creepy new hi-tech justice system, ironically entitled Mercy (it doesn’t appear to be an acronym). AI is now the sole arbiter of justice and defendants each have a 90-minute trial to make their case in front of Judge Maddox, an AI-hologram played by Rebecca Ferguson who icily insists on the facts but is capable of weird Max-Headroom-type glitches.

(BLKIIBLK/Frontiers)
Tuneful yet overlong, Dave Mustaine and co’s final album is a recap of Megadeth’s strengths, flaws and familiar grudges

There are long goodbyes, and then there is Megadeth’s retirement from the music industry. A final album and tour by the thrash metal pioneers was announced last August, with an AI-assisted video and a written statement that offered some classic grandstanding on the part of frontman and sole original member Dave Mustaine. Never a man to hide his light under a bushel, he equated Megadeth’s decision to quit with a global catastrophe (“some say this is the end of times”) and suggested that the US band “changed the world”.

Their decision to quit makes sense, given the state of Mustaine’s health. Having conquered throat cancer and radial neuropathy, he’s now suffering from arthritis and something called Dupuytren’s contracture – a thickening of tissue under the skin that causes the fingers to bend, commonly known as the suitably metal-sounding Viking disease – both of which impede his ability to play guitar. The call to end the band was made during the recording of their self-titled 17th studio album. But then three months later Mustaine announced that the farewell dates announced were only the beginning. The tour is scheduled to last “easily … three to five years”. So there seems every chance that Megadeth will still be bidding the world adieu in the next decade.

Renaud Capuçon
(Deutsche Grammophon)
These performances of Bach’s solo works are elegant and persuasive – balancing a modern tone with an alert awareness of period style

To celebrate his 50th birthday, Renaud Capuçon has recorded Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas, works the French violinist has been familiar with since childhood. These impressive accounts are elegant and thoughtful, his generous tone lit up from within with sufficient vibrato to caress the ear while simultaneously acknowledging current thinking on period performance practice.

Tempi are steady throughout, occasionally leisurely in slow movements, but always persuasive. There’s a generous body to his sound and a tasteful restraint when it comes to decoration. Phrasing is instinctual, his articulation of Bach’s fugal elements a model of clarity, while his sure-footed handling of the various doubles and prestos eschews any sense of virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake. In the mighty chaconne that ends the D minor partitas, Capuçon finds a reflective lightness and intimacy that frequently draws the ear.

He lit up Europe with bands ranging from Peachfuzz to Kings of Convenience. But it was the Whitest Boy Alive that sent Erlend Øye stratospheric. As they return, the soft-singing, country-hopping sensation looks back

If you were to imagine the recent evolution of music in Europe as a series of scenes from a Where’s Wally?-style puzzle book, one bespectacled, lanky figure would pop up on almost every page. There he is in mid-90s London, handing out flyers for his first band Peachfuzz. Here he is in NME at the dawn of the new millennium, fronting folk duo Kings of Convenience and spearheading the new acoustic movement. There he is strumming his guitar in the vanguard of Norway’s “Bergen wave”. Then he’s off spinning records in Berlin nightclubs during the city’s “poor but sexy” post-millennial years. By the 2010s, he’s driving a renaissance of Italian chamber pop as part of La Comitiva, his bandmates hailing from the southern tip of Sicily.

It’s hard to think of a figure more musically cosmopolitan than Erlend Otre Øye, connecting the dots across a continent where national scenes rarely overlap – and making magic happen. No wonder his debut solo album, with 10 tracks recorded in 10 different cities, was called Unrest. Of all his reincarnations, though, the one that has best endured (if you go by Spotify) is his four-piece, The Whitest Boy Alive. And this spring and summer, they’re reuniting for a tour of Mexico and Europe to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Dreams, their debut album.

Alex Jennings’s performance hums with buried rage in Christopher Isherwood’s landmark exploration of grief

At the start of A Single Man, George Falconer wakes up at home in the morning and drags himself despondently to the bathroom. There he stares at himself in the mirror, observing not so much a face as “the expression of a predicament … a dull harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle”.

Set in 1962, Christopher Isherwood’s landmark novel follows a day in the life of a 58-year-old British expat and college professor living in California. George is silently trying to come to terms with the death of his partner, Jim, after a car accident. We accompany him from his morning ablutions – during which he reflects on the judgment of his homophobic neighbour Mrs Strunk – and his drive to work, to a teaching session, a gym workout and a drink with his friend Charley. Throughout we are privy to his internal monologue, which reveals George as a man prone to existential dread and who is isolated in a world that, owing to his sexuality, regards him with suspicion.

When Stuart Green’s wife, an environmental rights lawyer, was shot dead in a car in front of her children in the Philippines, he found books on grief little help. So he wrote his own

The dreaded school run is a daily battle for most parents. Even once out of the door and at the school gates, feigned smiles and small talk with other haggard parents can be a mass performance. For Stuart Green, who spent years wrestling his young twins out of car seats and into coats, all the while keeping an eye on his eldest daughter, it was the small talk he dreaded.

“Is Mummy at work?” someone might ask. Green’s response would be a half truth: “I’m a single parent.” The full story could not be explained in a 15-second conversation on the street.

The Noughts & Crosses author is among the starry ambassadors for the campaign – one of the initiatives aimed at addressing the reading crisis

Last night, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, announced a £27.5m package for libraries. It’s the latest in a string of reading-focused government initiatives, the flagship being the education department’s National Year of Reading 2026, which kicked off last week with an event at the Emirates Stadium in London.

The Year of Reading campaign comes on the back of research by the National Literacy Trust (NLT), which found reading enjoyment among children and young people is at its lowest recorded level, with just one in three of those aged eight to 18 now reporting enjoying reading “very much” or “quite a lot”.

Dark obsessions drive this debut about the golden era of magazines – but its vile and hilarious heroine is not someone you want to spend so much time with

Last year the New York Times ran a quiz entitled “Could You Have Landed a Job at Vogue in the 90s?” It was based on the fabled four-page exam Anna Wintour had would-be assistants sit – a cultural literacy test containing questions about 178 notable people, places, books and films. I’m afraid that this former (British) Vogue intern did not pass muster: wrong era, wrong country.

A woman who almost certainly would pass with flying colours is the former Vogue staffer Caroline Palmer, now the author of a novel, Workhorse, set at “the magazine” during the dying days of a golden age of women’s glossies, when the lunches were boozy, the couture was free and almost anything could be expensed. In this first decade of the new millennium, we meet Clodagh, or Clo, a suburban twentysomething “workhorse” trying to make it in a world of rich, beautiful, well-connected “show horses”, and willing to do almost anything to get there.

China isn’t the only country imposing limits on creative expression, argues the provocative artist

‘Chinese culture is the opposite of provocation,” Ai Weiwei once told an interviewer. “It tries to seek harmony in human nature and society.” Harmony has never been his bag. Provocation though? In spades. As a student at the Beijing Film Academy in the late 1970s, he joined an artist group called Stars that had a slogan: “We Demand Political Democracy and Artistic Freedom”. In the 1990s, returning to Beijing after a decade in downtown New York, he and a couple of friends published and distributed samizdat-style books devoted to off-piste, often-political art of the kind that government censors tend to fear.

Ai’s own work was bolshie and anathema to custodians of good taste. His Study of Perspective series showed him raising a middle finger at global sites – among them Tiananmen Square, the Eiffel Tower, the White House – that are expected to produce awe, delight, reverence. In the self-explanatory photographic sequence Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), itself the follow-up to Han Jar Overpainted with Coca-Cola Logo (1994), he asked viewers to decide who was the bigger cultural vandal: himself, a mere artist – or a Chinese state for whom iconoclasm was a defining feature of its modernising project. A 2000 exhibition in Shanghai that he helped to stage bore the name Fuck Off. (Its Chinese subtitle was “Ways to Not Cooperate’”.)

Quake Brutalist Jam began as a celebration of old-fashioned shooter level design, but its latest version is one step away from being a game in its own right

A lone concrete spire stands in a shallow bowl of rock, sheltering a rusted trapdoor from the elements. Standing on the trapdoor causes it to yawn open like iron jaws, dropping you through a vertical shaft into a subterranean museum. Here, dozens of doors line the walls of three vaulted grey galleries, each leading to a pocket dimension of dizzying virtual architecture and fierce gladiatorial combat.

Welcome to Quake Brutalist Jam, the hottest community event for lovers of id Software’s classic first-person shooter from 1996. First run in 2022, the Jam started out as a celebration of old-school 3D level design, where veteran game developers, aspiring level designers and enthusiast modders gather to construct new maps and missions themed around the austere minimalism of brutalist architecture.

After years away​ revisiting my abandoned island uncovers new features, old memories and the quiet reassurance that ​you can go home again

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Nintendo’s pandemic-era hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons got another major update last week, along with a £5 Switch 2 upgrade that makes it look and run better on the new console. Last year, I threw a new year’s party for my children in the game, but apart from that I have barely touched my island since the depths of lockdown, when sunny Alba was my preferred escape from the monotonous misery of the real world. Back then, I spent more than 200 hours on this island. Stepping out of her (now massive) house, my avatar’s hair is all ruffled and her eyes sleepy after a long, long time aslumber.

I half-expected Alba to be practically in ruins, but it’s not that bad. Aside from a few cockroaches in the basement and a bunch of weeds poking up from the snow, everything is as it was. The paths that I had laid out around the island still lead me to the shop, the tailors, the museum; I stop by to visit Blathers the curatorial owl, and he gives me a new mission to find a pigeon called Brewster so that we can open a museum cafe. “It’s been four years and eight months!” exclaims one of my longtime residents, a penguin called Aurora. That can’t be right, can it? Have I really been ignoring her since summer 2021? Thankfully, Animal Crossing characters are very forgiving. I get the impression they’ve been getting along perfectly fine without me.

PC; Inkle
The UK game developer’s latest is a database mystery constructed from an archive of fictional books. Their combined contents threaten to crack the code of reality

Bletchley Park: famed home of the Enigma machine, Colossus computer, and, according to the premise of TR-49, an altogether stranger piece of tech. Two engineers created a machine that feeds on the most esoteric books: treatises on quantum computing, meditations on dark matter, pulp sci-fi novels and more. In the mid-2010s, when the game is set, Britain finds itself again engulfed by war, this time with itself. The arcane tool may hold the key to victory.

You play as budding codebreaker Abbi, a straight-talking northerner who is sifting through the machine now moved to a crypt beneath Manchester Cathedral. She has no idea how it works and neither do you. So you start tinkering. You input a four-digit code – two letters followed by two numbers. What do these correspond to? The initials of people and the year of a particular book’s publication. Input a code correctly and you are whisked away to the corresponding page, as if using a particularly speedy microfiche reader. These pages – say, by famed fictional physicist, Joshua Silverton – are filled with clues and, should you get lucky, further codes and even the titles of particular works. Your primary goal is to match codes with the corresponding book title in a bid to find the most crucial text of all, Endpeace, the key to understanding the erudite ghosts of this machine.

Embark Studios’ multiplayer extraction shooter game has already sold 12m copies in just three months. Will it capture you too?

Released last October Arc Raiders has swiftly become one of the most successful online shooters in the world, shifting 12m copies in barely three months and attracting as many players as established mega hits such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. So what is it about this sci-fi blaster that’s captured so many people – and how can you get involved?

So what is Arc Raiders?

Park theatre, London
Leigh Douglas plays a sorority girl turned White House receptionist – as well as lecherous side characters – in a timely show

This show arrives in London in a week that US politics couldn’t be more inescapable. While on one hand, audiences may feel that there’s only so much Trumpian lunacy they can take, it also means that newcomer Leigh Douglas’s satirical one-woman show – which had a sold-out run at the Edinburgh fringe last year – couldn’t feel more timely.

The Irish-born, American-raised comic plays Chastity Quirke, a sorority girl turned White House receptionist working for president Ronald Drumpf, whose administration is highly sexist (and other “ists” besides). She begins the show with a fervour for conservatism and a love of Maga-style beauty standards, requesting that the audience scream if they believe in “[making] America hot again”, and gyrating suggestively whenever she gets the chance.

Swansea Grand theatre
Thornton Wilder’s classic American play is transposed for this company’s inaugural production. The result is heartfelt, though its emotional bite can seem uncertain

A revival of Thornton Wilder’s great American play about a provincial town, north of New York, might have carried strong state-of-the-nation resonances at this dark, Trumpian juncture. So it initially seems counterintuitive that this inaugural show for the new Welsh National Theatre, which Michael Sheen has heroically championed, transposes the US backwater to Wales.

But Wilder’s play, premiering in the interwar years, in 1938, is more eternal than political, dramatising a close-knit community navigating life, love and death. And the transposition is convincing here, in spirit, encapsulating the lilt of its Welshness, noisier, more playful and lyrical than the original, especially in its glowing visual imagination and movement design by Jess Williams as well as its emotional lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford.

Malmaison hotel, London
Theatregoers move from room to room as emotional messiness is laid bare with spirited bridesmaids, painful encounters and ‘call it all off’ nerves

When isn’t there big family drama in the buildup to a wedding? The nerves, the tantrums – sometimes even charges of “inappropriate” first dances. Isn’t it all part and parcel of the apparently perfect day?

That emotional messiness is laid bare in Dante or Die’s utterly gorgeous site-specific show, first performed in 2013, now reprised at a number of Malmaison hotels, including this one in London as part of the Barbican’s Scene Change season.

Arcola theatre, London
Chris Bowers, a former British diplomat in Iraqi Kurdistan, brings authenticity but not enough human drama to his play about the 1991 Kurdish uprising

This historical drama about the 1991 Kurdish uprising in Iraq abounds with diplomats. There is the Whitehall contingent, speaking in clipped tones about Kurds hiding in the mountains, at the mercy of Saddam Hussein’s armed forces. There’s Iraqi diplomat Al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother, and there is also Chris Bowers, the play’s writer and a former British diplomat in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Bowers infuses the debates and wrangles at the heart of this crisis with an authenticity that carries weight, but it does not make for good drama in itself.

At Arcola theatre, London, until 7 February

The follow-up to 2022’s Harry’s House boasts an esoteric title – but experts say ambiguity might be the goal

We don’t know much about Harry Styles’s first album in four years beyond its title – and it’s already causing some grammatical consternation.

The follow-up to 2022’s Grammy-winning Harry’s House is a bit more esoterically named: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. In an era when fans clinically investigate every aspect of pop stars’ lives, it was perhaps inevitable that Styles’s choice of punctuation would draw scrutiny.

Climate concerns raised over redevelopment of 1960s Brutalist estate in south-east London

A legal challenge has been launched in an effort to halt the demolition of a 1960s Brutalist estate in south-east London that featured in Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian film A Clockwork Orange.

The challenge against Bexley council and Peabody housing association, which will be carrying out the redevelopment, has been launched by the Lesnes estate resident Adam Turk.

Opening Night will appear on HELP(2), a charity compilation out in March which also features Olivia Rodrigo, Depeche Mode, Pulp and more

Arctic Monkeys have released Opening Night, their first new song since 2022 album The Car, with proceeds benefiting the charity War Child.

Opening Night is taken from HELP(2), a sequel to War Child’s 1995 album Help, which brought together A-list music names to raise £1.2m for children affected by conflict, including Radiohead, Blur, Sinéad O’Connor and the Smokin’ Mojo Filters (a supergroup of Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller).

The first Sundance without founder Robert Redford and the last to take place in Park City, Utah, will see new films starring Natalie Portman, Ethan Hawke and Courtney Love

This year’s Sundance film festival will be notable for a major first as well as a major last. It’ll be the first to take place without its founder, Robert Redford, who died last September at the age of 89, and it’ll be the last to take place in Utah, where it has been since the very beginning back in 1978.

Emotions, which are often on display regardless thanks to films often ruthlessly designed to elicit them, will be high, with events planned to commemorate a figure who helped create a launchpad and then an ecosystem for American indies. But while saying goodbye to both Redford and Park City will be front and centre, Sundance isn’t Sundance without a roster of films to also get attenders talking. Last year, it felt like that chatter was less effusive than usual because while there were films that continued evoking conversation throughout the year (Sorry, Baby, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Train Dreams, Lurker, Twinless, pretty much every documentary premiere) there were more that either died on arrival or crawled toward a slow death months later.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Thursday comes around again, and thanks to the whimsical illustrations of Anaïs Mims, it is time to find out whether you are the shiny red apple of knowledge or the awkward little question mark worm wriggling inside and ruining it. Fifteen questions on the week’s headlines, pop culture and general knowledge await. There are no prizes, but at least you can use the comments to let us know which side of the fruit bowl you fell on. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 231

In the UK, 98% of two-year-olds watch screens on a typical day, on average for more than two hours – and almost 40% of three- to five-year-olds use social media. Could this lead to alarming outcomes?

At Stoke primary school in Coventry, there are many four-year-olds among those starting in reception class who can’t sit still, hold a pencil or speak more than a four-word sentence. Lucy Fox, the assistant headteacher and head of foundations, is in no doubt what is causing this: their early exposure to screens, and a lot of it. When the children experiment with materials and creativity, and make things in the classroom, she says, “We notice a lot of children will cut pieces of cardboard out and make a mobile phone or tablet, or an Xbox controller. That’s what they know.”

At another school in Hampshire, a longtime reception teacher says in the last few years she has noticed children getting frustrated if activities aren’t instant and seamless – something she thinks comes from playing games on a phone or tablet. There is a lack of creativity and problem-solving skills, noticeable when the children are playing with Lego or doing jigsaw puzzles and turning the pieces to fit. “I find their hand-eye coordination isn’t very good, and they find puzzles difficult. Doing a puzzle on an iPad, you just need to hold and move it on the screen. They get really frustrated and I feel like there are certain connections the brain is not making any more.”

Central heating and chilly temperatures playing havoc? Our beauty expert shares her go-to fixes to hydrate and repair

• The best hand creams to soften dry and chapped skin

January has brought with it dark days, freezing temperatures and Arctic winds. Combined with drying central heating, your skin and hair may look and feel thoroughly out of sorts.

Adding a few extra steps to your routine to hydrate and repair can help, as could some carefully chosen swaps if your skin is particularly parched or irritated.

They’re hyped as fixes for everything from anxiety to insomnia, but can lying under seven kilos of fabric really help you unwind? We put weighted blankets to the test

• I tested the most-hyped sleep aids – here’s what worked

Anyone who’s ever nodded off under the weight of a purring cat or snoring dog already knows how weighted blankets work. The warmth, the softness, the hefty pressure that renders you unable to fidget or indeed move. Worries subside, and you have no choice but to slide into slumber.

Studies have demonstrated some success for weighted blankets as sleep aids, but where these hefty quilts seem to excel is in alleviating anxiety – and not just according to TikTok influencers. Scientists, medics and the NHS are trialling them to comfort dementia patients, soothe neurodivergent children and even relieve chronic pain.

Best weighted blanket overall:
Emma Hug

Best budget weighted blanket:
Silentnight Wellbeing

Looking to cut heating bills or warm just one room without firing up the boiler? We cosied up to 12 electric heaters to find the best

• The best hot-water bottles

Are you in need of a stopgap stand-in for your central heating? Or perhaps you’re looking for an efficient appliance to heat a small space. If so, investing in one of the best electric heaters will rid the cold from your home.

Electric heaters range from compact, fast-acting fan-powered models to oil-filled radiators and wall-mounted panels. Some also have smart functionality, so you can ask Alexa to turn up the heat, and other advanced features such as air purification and adaptive heating. But which are best?

Best electric heater overall:
Beldray 2,000W smart ceramic core radiator

Best budget electric heater:
Russell Hobbs oscillating ceramic 2kW heater

Heated airers claim to dry your clothes without costing the earth in energy. We put 17 to the test to reveal the best, from covered options to mini drying racks

• The best electric heaters, tried and tested

Rising energy bills and perma-drizzle are conspiring to keep the nation’s laundry damp, not least by making it such a turn-off to turn on the heating. No wonder heated clothes airers are having a moment. These modish appliances sell out within hours of reaching shops and inspire evangelistic fervour among owners, who call them “life-savers” and “gamechangers”.

Can a hot clothes horse really change your life, let alone dry your soggy washing as fast as a tumble dryer for a fraction of the cost and with none of the noise? Over the past 18 months, I’ve put 17 bestsellers through their paces – including three new models in the past few months – to find out whether they’re the best thing in laundry since the clothes peg, or destined for the loft.

Best heated clothes airer overall:
Lakeland Dry:Soon Deluxe 3-tier heated airer and cover

Best budget heated airer:
Black+Decker heated winged clothes airer

After Spudulike closed in 2024, the reign of the jacket potato seemed over in the UK. But now the favourite is back, piled with new toppings, sold by new companies and promoted all over social media by potato influencers

They were once a lunch option that inspired little excitement – but the jacket potato’s time has finally come. After decades in epicurean exile, the humble spud has made a roaring comeback in the UK and piqued the interest of foodies across the world. A-listers, tourists and trend-hopping teenagers are queueing for hours to get their hands on them. For Jacob Nelson, who sells loaded spuds that have gone super-viral on social media, this was all part of the plan. “We thought: how can we make the jacket potato sexy again?” he says.

The 30-year-old, who runs SpudBros with his brother Harley and dad Tony, was among the first crop of social-media savvy spud vendors to give the jacket potato a much-needed makeover. After a slow start in lockdown, the brothers spoke to some youngsters in Preston Flag Market, where they had set up shop, to find out why they were shunning spuds. “It was an absolute ghost town,” says Harley. “We spoke to one student walking past us. He said to get on social media.” The pair listened, filming their interactions with customers while showing off their mouthwatering loaded spuds, and subsequently went stratospheric on TikTok in 2023.

Spiced rums are a hit but the traditional blends outshine them all

After Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica last October, rum lovers anxiously awaited news from the island’s six distilleries. Hampden Estate, in the parish of Trelawney to the north, was right in the hurricane’s path, and the furious winds deprived its historic buildings of their roofs and the palm trees of their fronds. Then came more alarming rumours: the dunder pits had overflowed.

Dunder pit? This is the one of the most distinctive features of traditional Jamaican rum, a style exemplified by Hampden, which has been in operation since 1753. You typically make rum by fermenting molasses and/or sugar cane juice into an alcoholic “wash”, then distil that into a potent liquor, but local distillers developed several strategies to oomph up the flavour. Dunder is the leftover liquid from the still, and it’s lobbed into the next fermentation for its funky notes, a bit like a sourdough starter. At Hampden, they also use muck, an outrageously smelly, semi-sentient soup containing countless billions of yeast bacteria, plus various bits of decomposing, well, stuff. I’m not sure what would happen if you fell in: possibly die, or perhaps be granted infinite powers, Obelix-style. Then there’s the fermentation process itself: most distilleries use generic industrial yeasts, which typically convert sugars to alcohol over a couple of days, but at Hampden they harness wild yeasts, which can take weeks. Incidentally, Andrew Hussey, Hampden’s owner, has reported that production is now safe, though the communities who live and work around the distillery remain badly affected.

While we’re slogging through the long, dark days of January, a little preparation can make your midday meal a source of comfort and joy

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Even if you have no truck with Blue Monday, Quitter’s Day or any of the other new-year wheezes concocted by enterprising marketeers, the last weeks of January can feel like a bit of a confused slog. Seasonal colds and lurgies abound. The weather is generally at its rain-lashed and blackly overcast worst. Well-intentioned attempts at self-improvement or abstemiousness are starting to creak in the face of a desire for whatever scraps of midwinter comfort we can find.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to food and, more specifically, the daily puzzle of how to have something nourishing as a working lunch. These can feel like lean days in more ways than one – characterised by tax payments or a painfully slow creep towards the first payday of 2026. And that’s only more apparent now that, after the remote working and pyjama-clad Zoom calls of the post-pandemic era, lots of us have returned to the office for at least the bulk of the week. Even as someone who effectively eats out for a living, there have been plenty of times when I have stood up from the desk of my chosen workspace (often one of the oversubscribed tables at the British Library) with no real plan and wandered aimlessly, only to end up forking out for some insipid sandwich, tepid heat-lamp soup or tray of indeterminate vegetable mulch that is both expensive and unsatisfying.

This bean and pasta dish has always taken on variations from around Italy – and even Thailand

Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, under the banner of story, art and folklore, the Roman publishing house Newton Compton published a series of 27 books about regional Italian cooking. Some, such as Jeanne Carola Francesconi’s epic 1965 La Cucina Napoletana, were reprints of established books, while others were specially commissioned for the series. There is considerable variation; some of the 20 regions occupy 650 densely filled pages, sometimes spread over two volumes, while other regions have 236 pages with larger fonts, with everything in between. All of which is great, although I can’t help feeling affectionate towards the regions with 14-point font.

In the face of the vast variation of regional culinary habits, knowledge and rituals, I also feel affectionate towards the common traditions; those that are specific to a place, but at the same time that cross local and national borders, as well as for the stories of the ingredients. Take pasta e fagioli, for which beans are boiled in water with fat, maybe fragrant herbs and vegetables, then pasta is added for a dense dish that probably needs a spoon. Almost all regions (and towns and individuals) have a version that is both extremely general, and specific – white beans, potato, no rosemary in Lazio, say; lardo, sage and plenty of rosemary in Piedmont; nutmeg, bread and pasta in Liguria; lardo, marjoram, tomato and chilli in Abruzzo – inviting a sort of pick and mix. And the embracing of new ideas, too, because cooking is a living, evolving thing.

As a defence lawyer, I rely on witness statements. But one unusual case prompted me to reconsider the role of memory, and a traumatic experience that had affected me for years

I spent nearly 20 years working as a criminal defence lawyer in the remote communities of the Canadian Arctic. Nunavut – roughly the size of western Europe – is home to fewer than 40,000 people, most of whom are Inuit. The brief summers boast endless days, while polar night descends over long winters where temperatures occasionally drop as low as -50C. Despite the lack of urban centres and a small, homogenous population, the territory records one of the highest violent-crime rates per capita in the world.

There are no roads connecting Nunavut’s 26 communities. Aircraft is the only option, except for a brief ice-free window in late summer when supplies and fuel can be delivered by boat. Several times a year, the justice system arrives: a travelling circuit court sets up a temporary courtroom in local gymnasiums or community halls for three to four days.

From naked embraces and sofa snogging to the very final stages of life, a new exhibition proves there is no one way to age

From repurposed engagement rings to parties, tattoos and the wild home renovations of #DivorcedMomCore, relationship splits have entered a surprising new era

Name: Divorce rings.

Age: Relatively new. British Vogue is reporting that they are a thing. And if it’s in Vogue the chances are it’s in vogue.

In China, marriage and birth rates have hit record lows and many people are living in isolation. Is the Are You Dead? app just a practical response to this – or something more troubling?

A few days before Christmas, after a short battle with illness, a woman in Shanghai called Jiang Ting died. For years, the 46-year-old had lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hongkou, a residential neighbourhood that sits along the Huangpu River. Neighbours described her as quiet. “She rarely chats with people. We only see her when she goes to and from work, and occasionally when she comes out to pick up takeout,” said a local resident interviewed by a Chinese reporter. Her parents long deceased, Jiang had no partner or children to inherit her estate. Her lonely death sparked a debate in Chinese media about how society should handle the increasing number of people dying with no next of kin.

For Xiong Sisi, also a professional in her 40s living alone in Shanghai, the news triggered uncomfortable feelings. “I truly worry that, after I die, no one will collect my body. I don’t care how I’m buried, but if I rot there, it’s bad for the house,” she says.

From understanding jargon such as APRs and 0% transfer offers, to getting perks such as air miles or cashback

When you apply for a credit card or personal loan, the lender will quote interest as the annual percentage rate (APR). This is, essentially, the total cost of borrowing over 12 months, shown as a percentage of the amount you have borrowed. It takes fees into account, as well as interest. The rate should give you an idea of how much you will have to pay back on top of the money you want to borrow.

The cinema chain didn’t warn me clearly when I went to see Avatar: Fire and Ash that I needed to register my number plate

I parked at Cineworld in Chichester to watch the new film Avatar: Fire and Ash.

It is more than three hours long and, when I returned to my car, I’d received a penalty charge notice (PCN) for overstaying. I’d watched the previous two Avatar films there without a problem.

A bereaved young customer was baffled by the wildly fluctuating balances the energy supplier claimed on a family’s account

When my mother died of cancer, my aunt adopted me. She, too, died of cancer in 2024. At 26, I am now alone and struggling to deal with enormous, nonsensical energy bills from E.ON Next.

In 2022, I discovered my aunt had been paying massively inflated bills for the flat I shared with her, so I had the account closed and a new one set up in my name. An E.ON agent took meter readings, a smart meter was installed, and a final bill sent showing the account was more than £6,000 in credit. E.ON wouldn’t let me have it in cash, so the credit was transferred to the new account and used to pay the bills for the next two years.

This is one of three key months when fraudsters ramp up the number of scams to trap travellers into paying for a ‘bargain holiday’ … that doesn’t exist

• Stress-free travel: plan now to avoid holiday scams and pitfalls

You are battling the January blues and see a cheap deal on one of your socials for a two-week break in Spain during August. Better still, the price is £200 cheaper than elsewhere, possibly because the holiday is almost sold out.

When you text to confirm the details after making the payment, you are talked through the booking by a convincing contact.

Mini breaks and micro-stretches could help strengthen your neck and reduce pain and stress, say experts

• Read more summer essentials

If you’re reading this on your device, chin tucked into your chest, or leaning over your desk shaped like a question mark, pause for a moment. How’s your neck feeling?

The way we sit, scroll and work means we often hold static positions for too long, creating tension and stiffness that radiates through the upper body.

Pricey deworming remedies are being touted as cure-alls. Supermodel Heidi Klum gave it a go – experts roll their eyes

Last August, supermodel Heidi Klum revealed that she and her husband, Tom Kaulitz, were planning a worm and parasite cleanse.

“Everything on my Instagram feed at the moment is about worms and parasites,” she told the Wall Street Journal, ominously adding: “I don’t know what the heck is going to come out.”

Spruiked by online influencers as a way of gaining insight into our health, experts say at-home tests oversimplify complex factors and can cause unnecessary distress

• Read more in the Antiviral series

For a few hundred dollars you can put your poo in an envelope and post it off to a laboratory. In return you’ll get a report (sometimes generated by AI) outlining your food sensitivities, metabolic fitness, and what pathogens or fungi you’re harbouring.

These at-home gut microbiome tests or “GI mapping” kits are frequently promoted by influencers as a way to “hack your health” and “take control” through analysing some of the trillions of organisms that live in your digestive tract.

As a boy, Tom Stoltman was diagnosed with autism and bullied at school. When he became depressed in his teens, his older brother, a bodybuilder, suggested a trip to the gym

• ‘I was told I wouldn’t walk again. I proved the doctors wrong’: the bike-obsessed pensioner who broke his neck and started afresh

Tom Stoltman was a skinny kid: 90kg, 6ft 8in, with glasses and sticking‑out teeth. Diagnosed with autism as a young child, he felt he didn’t fit in. “I was really shy,” he says. “I got bullied in school for being different.” Back then, the boy from Invergordon didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He lived in baggy hoodies. “Hood up. That was my comfort.” He loved football but “I used to look at people on the pitch and think, ‘He’s tinier than me, but he’s pushing me off the ball.’”

By 16 he’d hit a “crashing point”. He went from football-obsessed to playing Xbox all day. He’d skip meals in favour of sweets. “Sometimes it was four or five, six bags.”

I was surprised by the dormant ringlets springing to life as I hunched over the basin, squishing in conditioner to define each tendril

• Read more summer essentials

My housemate has a special phrase for some of my old photos: “Ima’s whiteface era” – hair seared straight down the middle with brassy blond highlights.

Where I grew up, in a regional coastal town, the gold standard was sandy blond beach babe.

I’ve got a feeling this is the year skirts regain their main character energy

I never stopped wearing skirts, I just sort of stopped thinking about them. They were a plus-one, not the main event. For the past few years I have planned my outfits around my obsession with pleated trousers, or my latest experimental jean shape. Or I have worn dresses. Sometimes I have ended up in a skirt, but the skirt was kind of an afterthought. For instance, at one point last year when it was chilly and I needed to look smart as well as cosy, I picked out a sweater and a pair of knee-high boots, and then slotted in a plain midi in satin or wool, just something to sit in between.

Things could be about to change. I’ve got a feeling that 2026 could be the year that skirts get main character energy again. For a start: hemlines are getting shorter again, which makes skirts more attention-grabbing. If you left the house with your eyes open at any point in 2025, you will have noticed this happening: generation Z and Alpha wear very, very short skirts – she says, trying and failing not to sound about 150 years old – but the trend for above-the-knee hemlines crosses all generations. Adult women with their legs out was very much a feature of the pre-Christmas party season. But what is noticeable is that the mini renaissance is much more about a skirt, than it is about a dress. A short skirt feels cooler; more about your style and less about your body than a minidress.

Musée Rodin was the venue for the designer’s second men’s show for the house, and he sought to shun normality

He is one of fashion’s greatest ruminators so where better than the Musée Rodin in Paris to stage Jonathan Anderson’s second menswear show for Dior. Guests including the actors Robert Pattinson and Mia Goth, and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton wandered past Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker as they made their way to their seats on Wednesday afternoon.

Speaking backstage before the show, Anderson, dressed in his signature faded Levi’s jeans and a navy cashmere sweater, described the collection as “another character study”, explaining that this time he set out to explore “the idea of a new aristocracy”, questioning “what it means today” and “what can it be?” The-41-year old designer said when it came to the social hierarchy he wanted to “ignore the aspect of money” and instead home in on “their eccentricity”.

There are so many great value bathing creams and gels, you can indulge yourself all winter long

January is cold, frequently depressing and almost everyone is indoors and feeling broke. At the start of the year, the most activity I can manage is to pop on a podcast and haul myself into a bubble bath.

It’s a comfort that has made me an expert in every bath cream, foam and salt on the high street. I am practically incapable of passing a shelf without popping a new one in my trolley. And while I love a posh soak, there is something extra satisfying about using lavish amounts of product and enjoying a luxury-feeling bath without a drop of spender’s remorse.

GeoKarst is a new EU-funded project highlighting a unique landscape of caves, gorges and medieval villages near Trieste

Our guide turns out the lights and suddenly there is nothing. Just total darkness, the sound of gentle dripping and a creeping feeling of unease. The switch is flicked back on and the shadowy world that lies deep beneath the Karst returns. I’m in Vilenica, thought to be the first cave in the world ever opened to tourists, with records of visitors dating back to 1633. It’s a magical sight: a grand antechamber sculpted through erosion, filled with soaring stalagmites and plunging stalactites streaked in shades of red, terracotta and orange by iron oxide, and dotted with shimmering crystals.

Vilenica is just one of a network of thousands of caves located in the Karst region of western Slovenia and eastern Italy, which is known for its porous, soluble limestone rock. Above ground, this creates a distinctive landscape, filled with rocks bearing lined striations and pockmarked by hollows known as dolines, where the limestone has collapsed underneath. But below ground is where it’s really special, with enormous caves, sinkholes and subterranean rivers. Later in the day, I visit the region’s other main visitor cave, Škocjan, where I’m amazed to see an underground river thunder through a chamber almost 150 metres high. It’s an almost surreal sensory experience, with the rush of the rapids echoing around the walls.

With 64% of the city’s residents relying on buses and trains so overloaded that up to 10 passengers die a day, anger is rising over a taxpayer-funded road most will never use

Mumbai is known for its graphic inequality, its gleaming high-rises where the rich live with panoramic views of the Arabian Sea standing next to windowless hovels perched over drains. It is home to 90 of India’s billionaires, but also to more than six million slum dwellers, about 55% of central Mumbai’s population.

Now Mumbai has a new symbol of the gulf between rich and poor: a high-speed, eight-lane motorway on its western coast, which critics say serves only the wealthy despite being built with taxpayers’ money.

The city’s architecture travels through time and continents, incorporating everything from slabs of the Italian Alps to meteorites that hit southern Africa 2bn years ago

In the heart of London’s Square Mile, between the windows of a tapas restaurant, a 150m-year-old ammonite stares mutely at passersby. The fossil is embedded in a limestone wall on Plantation Lane, sitting alongside the remnants of ancient nautiloids and squid-like belemnites. It’s a mineralised aquarium hiding in plain sight, a snapshot of deep time that few even glance at, a transtemporal space where patatas bravas meet prehistoric cephalopods.

How often do you give thought to the stones that make up our towns and cities? To the building blocks, paving slabs and machine-cut masonry that backdrop our lives? If your name’s Dr Ruth Siddall, the answer to that question would be yesterday, today and every day for the foreseeable. Her passion is urban geology, and it turns out that the architecture of central London – in common with many places – is a largely unwitting showcase of Earth science through the ages.

Forget draughty bunk rooms and awkward social encounters, hostels now provide home comforts and a sense of community private rentals will never match

‘Penguins? In Snowdonia?” I asked incredulously. “That’s right!” came the enthusiastic reply from our newest hostel companion. We were standing in the large kitchen of The Rocks hostel in Capel Curig, a village in the north-east of Eryri national park (Snowdonia), chatting amiably while waiting for our teas to brew.

“Head up Moel Siabod to the lake, and that’s where the penguins are. You’ll see a sign warning about feeding them,” he said. “But even if they’re hiding and you don’t see one, it’s one of the best walks in the area.”

Randy thinks throwing in a line or two lightens the mood. Taylor says it’s an avoidance tactic. You decide who’s out of tune

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

He will throw in lines from songs during serious conversations – it is an avoidance tactic

Yes I should tone it down, but a lyric can lighten the mood and there’s one for every occasion

This ancient Scottish tavern was a raucous, cross-generational hangout where everyone – young and old, locals and tourists – sang themselves hoarse to Fairytale of New York

This is said to be one of Scotland’s most haunted pubs, but for me it’s haunted with happy memories, the ghosts of hazy nights out, the spectre of my younger self, and of course the cantankerous clergyman who stalks its walls from beyond the grave.

Solid doors are being replaced with sliding ones, or even transparent cubicles. For furious guests, this is a cost-cutting measure too far

Name: Hotel bathroom doors.

Age: Solid doors have existed since ancient Egypt.

When I swapped my iPhone for a Nokia, Walkman, film camera and physical map, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But my life soon started to change

When two balaclava-clad men on a motorbike mounted the pavement to rob me, recently, I remained oblivious. My eyes were pinned to a text message on my phone, and my hands were so clawed around it that they didn’t even bother to grab it. It wasn’t until an elderly woman shrieked and I felt the whoosh of air as the bike launched back on to the road that I looked up at all. They might have been unsuccessful but it did make me think: what else am I missing from the real world around me?

Before I’ve poured my first morning coffee I’ve already watched the lives of strangers unfold on Instagram, checked the headlines, responded to texts, swiped through some matches on a dating app, and refreshed my emails, twice. I check Apple Maps for my quickest route to work. I’ve usually left it too late to get the bus, so I rent a Lime bike using the app. During the day, my brother sends me some memes, I take a picture of a canal boat, and pay for my lunch on Apple Pay. I walk home listening to music on Spotify and a long voice note from a friend, then I watch a nondescript TV drama, while scrolling through Depop and Vinted for clothes.

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

A brief encounter set off a chain of events that culminated in a public rebuff to the US president from Keir Starmer

When Kemi Badenoch met Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, on Monday evening, she pressed him on two issues: the Chagos Islands deal and North Sea oil drilling.

Neither participant was part of their respective executive branch, and neither issue was at the centre of the crisis that has engulfed transatlantic politics. But before long, the meeting had some very real political consequences.

Scale and speed of president’s moves have stunned observers of authoritarian regimes – is the US in democratic peril?

Three hundred and sixty-five days after Donald Trump swore his oath of office and completed an extraordinary return to power, many historians, scholars and experts say his presidency has pushed American democracy to the brink – or beyond it.

In the first year of Trump’s second term, the democratically elected US president has moved with startling speed to consolidate authority: dismantling federal agencies, purging the civil service, firing independent watchdogs, sidelining Congress, challenging judicial rulings, deploying federal force in blue cities, stifling dissent, persecuting political enemies, targeting immigrants, scapegoating marginalized groups, ordering the capture of a foreign leader, leveraging the presidency for profit, trampling academic freedom and escalating attacks on the news media.

In Oscar-shortlisted documentary short Cashing Out, a little-known industry that saw dying LGBTQ+ people sell their life insurance policies is remembered

During the summer of 2020, at the onset of the Covid pandemic, the documentary director Matt Nadel was back home in Boca Raton, Florida. He remembers one particular evening walk that he took with his father, Phil, as they weathered out those early months.

As they strode through the neighborhood, Nadel, now 26, said that the prospect of a vaccine was exciting, but the idea of pharmaceutical executives profiting off a devastating virus left him feeling uneasy. Phil grew concerned by the complex ethical predicament that his son laid out, and Nadel could quickly tell that his father was acting strangely.

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”.

We would like to hear from people who have used chatbots for companionship or mental health support

AI Chatbots are now a part of everyday life. ChatGPT surpassed 800 million weekly active users in late 2025.

Some people are forming relationships with these chatbots, using them for companionship, mental health support, and even as therapists.

Has a chatbot helped you get through a difficult period in life? If so, we’d like to hear about it.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

We’d like to hear your questions ahead of the next episode of It’s Complicated

The team from our It’s Complicated Youtube channel are looking at how eating throughout the day has become normal in many Western contexts, what that might be doing to our bodies, and whether this new wave of wellness fasting really does what it claims.

We’d like to know what you want explained. If you could sit down with a leading expert on fasting, what would you ask them? Send us your questions, large or small via the form below. Your questions could help shape our reporting and be featured in the show.

Our clothes can be one of the most powerful non-verbal communicators – tell us yours reflect who you are and what you do?

From uniforms to suits to tracksuits to costumes, clothes keep us warm and covered – but they are also one of the most powerful non-verbal communicators, a second skin which reflects who you are and what you do.

We want to hear from people about why they wear what they wear. Do your clothes help you in the workplace? Are they making a statement? Maybe you’re a waiter and have worn the same work uniform for years, or maybe your job involves wearing very little. Please tell us about yourselves.

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