Bar owners say they struggle to dissuade people from forming a line as behavioural experts point to post-pandemic ‘new norms’

“I’m not sure what else we can do to be honest,” Paul Loebenberg said, of the people lined up at his bar. “Maybe there’s something I’ve missed, but we’ve tried everything.”

To anybody who frequents pubs and dislikes feeling as if they are waiting at a bank, Loebenberg’s exasperation is all too familiar.

Sabrina Carpenter fangirling Miss Piggy, Beaker losing his eyes … yes, Kermit and co are back for a trip down memory lane – and it’s a perfect, saucy joy

The Muppet Show is back! We need this, don’t we? We need them. The TV show ended in 1981, yet decades later, memes of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Animal et al still circulate. We give their movies Oscars. Their version of A Christmas Carol is a non-negotiable tradition for anyone with sense. Jim Henson’s furry anarchists bring us together like few things can. As a beady eyed fun-sponge, I can’t help but wonder – why?

In an 1810 essay, German poet Heinrich von Kleist argued that puppets demonstrate pure grace: a weightless unself-consciousness that humans long for but never achieve. He was talking about marionettes, suspended from strings. Yet Muppets are hand puppets; extensions of a body. They have weight. As for grace, have you seen how Kermit moves? His arms flap, and he bounces vertically, while moving forwards. It’s hard to imagine a less efficient walk. That frog, he silly.

Every year in Turkey, hundreds of women are recorded as having taken their lives by ‘throwing themselves from a high place’. But many grieving families maintain that investigators are missing the full story

Almost nothing seemed to scare Şebnem Köker. With her hair dyed fire-engine red, the 29-year-old nurse lived life by her own rules. Friends say she was so headstrong, she’d be getting ready for a night out in their home town, the Turkish coastal city of İzmir, and suddenly suggest a change of plan to a last-minute trip away. Even a prospective move to Canada didn’t seem to daunt her. But there was one thing that had terrified Şebnem: heights. Her father, Abdullah, says she was afraid to even tiptoe on to the slim balcony that wraps around the third-floor apartment they shared in İzmir.

“She wouldn’t even have a cigarette or eat out there. She wouldn’t hang laundry on the balcony,” he says, sitting on the sofa in the darkened living room they once shared. A pouting portrait of Şebnem is tucked into the frame of a mirror on the opposite wall.

In the second part of our series on digital politics, we look at how online provocateurs have advanced extreme political ideas – and watched them seep into the mainstream

• Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

• Part one: How liberals lost the internet

The internet has totally changed the way in which politics is conducted. As established in the first piece in our series, liberals have totally failed to grasp this fact. The right, however, are thriving in this new world. Future historians studying the role that fringe online ideas played in the US republic’s demise will be spoiled for choice. One episode in particular comes to mind: Tucker Carlson, a former primetime speaker at a Republican convention, inviting a white supremacist livestreamer, Nick Fuentes, on to his YouTube show in 2025 for a chat in which he talked about the influence of “organised Jewry” in the US.

Carlson spent years echoing white nationalist talking points on his Fox News show, but Fuentes’ style – combining Nazi salutes with cheeky grins – places him beyond the pale for broadcast television. However, under the logic of YouTube, the meeting of these two major influencers is almost inevitable. Platforms incentivise audience cross-pollination, which is why Fuentes routinely livestreams with figures such as Adin Ross and Andrew Tate, who are known more for their homophobia and misogyny than their thoughts on ethnostates.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

Nato chief has glibly dismissed prospect of coping without US support, but in the age of Trump the case for autonomy is growing

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, was typically blunt when he met members of the European parliament this week. From the dais of the blond-wood committee room in Brussels, he was clear: “If anyone thinks that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming. You can’t. We can’t.”

And if Europe wanted to supplant the US nuclear deterrent, existing spending commitments would have to double, he added – “so hey, good luck!”

As rivers swell and homes are cut off, scientists say UK winter rainfall is already 20 years ahead of predictions

When flooding hit the low-lying Somerset Levels in 2014, it took two months for the waters to rise. This week it took two days, said Rebecca Horsington, chair of the Flooding on the Levels Action Group and a born-and-bred resident. A fierce barrage of storms from the Atlantic has drenched south-west England in January, saturating soils and supercharging rivers.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal titles last year, features heavily in the latest tranche of the Epstein files

Keir Starmer has said Andrew Mounbatten-Windsor should testify before the US Congress about his links to the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The prime minister, who is in Japan for a meeting with its premier, Sanae Takaichi, was asked by journalists if the former prince should apologise to the disgraced financier’s victims and give evidence about what he knew about his crimes.

Party picks ward councillor Angeliki Stogia to defend seat as PM and colleagues argue only Labour can beat Reform

Keir Starmer has said the byelection in Gorton and Denton will be a referendum on “true patriotism” saying Labour is the only party that can defeat the “poisonous division” of Reform.

The prime minister, during his visit to Japan, said he saw the vote as a two-way contest between Labour and Reform UK, as he criticised Nigel Farage’s party.

Deadly attacks launched day before border crossing due to open as part of ceasefire deal

Israel has carried out some of its deadliest airstrikes on Gaza in months, killing at least 30 Palestinians, some of whom were sheltering in tent cities for displaced people.

Despite a nominal ceasefire, the Israeli military struck a police station in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood west of Gaza City on Saturday, killing 10 officers and detainees, the civil defence said. It indicated the death toll could rise as emergency responders searched for bodies.

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The race for the golden boot

It feels very strange to scan this page and not see the letters S-A-L-A-H. For a variety of reasons he’s scored only four league goals in 2025-26; his lowest total at in a full season at Liverpool is 18.

Former prime minister Tony Blair paid tribute to Triesman as a ‘vital part of the New Labour movement’

Lord Triesman, a former Labour minister and chair of the Football Association, has died at the age of 82. The Labour party said the peer died on Friday night “peacefully and at home”.

The former prime minister Tony Blair paid tribute to Triesman as a “vital part of the New Labour movement”. Labour’s leader in the House of Lords, Angela Smith, described him as “respected and loved by his colleagues for his courtesy, kindness, wisdom, loyalty and generosity of spirit”.

From zoos to soup kitchens, people are hauling away tonnes of surplus spuds after the biggest crop in 25 years

Germans love their potatoes. They eat on average 63kg a person every year, according to official statistics.

But the exceptional glut of potatoes produced by farmers during the last harvest has overwhelmed even the hardiest of fans.

The veteran activist called his arrest at Palestine solidarity rally in London an ‘attack on free speech’

Peter Tatchell, the activist and campaigner, has been arrested for holding a placard which displayed the phrase “globalise the intifada” at a pro-Palestine march in London.

Tatchell, who attended a Palestine solidarity march in London on Saturday afternoon, held a sign that read: “Globalise the intifada: Non-violent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.”

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and Schitt’s Creek co-creator Dan Levy lead tributes to award winning actor

• Catherine O’Hara, actor known for Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek, dies aged 71

Tributes have poured in from the world of showbiz and politics for Catherine O’Hara, with the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, and Schitt’s Creek’s co-creator Dan Levy mourning the loss of a “legend” after the actor died at the age of 71.

O’Hara, who won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her role in the TV comedy series, died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness, according to her agency, CAA.

Despite repair problems, its admirers say Thomas Telford’s Menai Bridge is good for another two centuries

When Ian Evans’s grandfather opened a hardware shop on Anglesey in the 1930s, the Menai Bridge was instrumental in ensuring its success.

The wrought-iron chains from the early 19th century had just been replaced with tensile steel, making the suspension bridge stronger and wider. This allowed it to carry heavier freight and the Evans family was able to order bottled gas from the newly established Calor Gas company, bringing widespread energy access to rural Anglesey (Ynys Môn).

Newly released files reveal how the paedophile tried to leverage his relationship with the former Duchess of York

• Epstein files – latest updates

When Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, was confronted in 2011 about her closeness to the paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein she could not have been more fulsome in her regret.

“I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me,” she said. “I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children and know that this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf. I am just so contrite I cannot say.”

The killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti have inspired people across the US to document federal agents’ activities in their communities

On Monday night, nearly 80,000 people hopped on a video call to learn how to “observe ICE”, a non-violent and constitutionally protected practice of documenting federal immigration agents’ activities in public. Some wrote in the chat where they were from: Arkansas, Texas, Michigan, Florida and many other corners of the country. Others typed why this was important to them: calling for “ICE out” of their communities and demanding the abolition of the agency itself. “The fact we’re all here gives me hope we’ll come out the other side,” wrote one participant. Within 24 hours, another 200,000 people had watched the recording on YouTube.

The rising interest in ICE observing came two days after Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a federal immigration agent and less than three weeks after an agent killed Renee Good.

When Dion Padan met Ben Graetz and his drag queen persona, there was an undeniable energy. A weekend away deepened their connection

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2015, I moved to Sydney from north Wales in the UK. Sydney had always been my dream destination, but then the Australian immigration rules changed, meaning that to get permanent residency with my skillset as a barber, I’d have to move to Tasmania or the Northern Territory. I decided on Darwin because I feared the weather in Tasmania was too much like British weather. So in 2018, I packed my bags and moved to Darwin without knowing anything about the city.

Ben and I first chatted on Grindr and he was very welcoming, offering to show me around town. He was also very interested in my story – how did this Welsh boy end up living here? He asked if I was going to Darwin Pride.

An estimated 80% of the population will suffer from lower back pain at some point. The good news is that preventing it is a lot easier than treating it

• Read more in The way you move series

Getting out of bed. Picking up a coffee mug. Waving at a friend. Bending down to pat a dog. Turning to flush the toilet.

Many who have experienced “doing their back in” have been baffled by the discrepancy between the mildness of the precipitating action and the severity of the resulting pain. How could such a small, innocent movement trigger such paralysing pain that lasts for weeks, months, years or, in some cases, decades?

First lady’s big-screen documentary premieres with criticisms over $28m payday and questions over relevancy

Donald and Melania Trump were walking a charcoal-coloured carpet beneath a stark black-and-white “MELANIA” backdrop. “Do you believe you’d be the man you are today if you hadn’t met your wife?” a reporter asked the US president.

Trump smiled and said: “He’s asking me a very dangerous question!” He went on to praise his wife without answering. When the reporter put the same question to Melania, she ventured: “Well, we will all be in different places, I guess.” With a nervous laugh, she turned to look at Trump and asked, “Right?”

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

• The best supermarket natural yoghurts

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

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

The comedian on the ridiculous clothes her mum chose for her, her love-hate relationship with mobility aids, and what it takes to be a standup

Born in 1990 in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, Rosie Jones began her career working in television as a researcher on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, before moving into live comedy. Her television appearances include Live at the Apollo, The Last Leg, Taskmaster and the Tokyo Paralympics. She has published a series of children’s books, titled The Amazing Edie Eckhart, and hosts the new series of Out of Order on Comedy Central.

This was taken in my childhood home in Bridlington. My family had moved in not long before the photo was taken, hence the very empty living room in the background. I should also acknowledge my incredible outfit: Mr Men trousers, paired with a black velvet hat. It makes me really fond of my mum. She took so much pride in putting me in ridiculous clothes.

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

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

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

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Richard Linklater pens a love letter to the greats of French cinema, and the satirical panel show finds a new home

Nouvelle Vague
Out now
Never bet against Richard Linklater: the veteran director (Dazed and Confused, Boyhood) loves turning his hand to different genres, and his latest is a typically mellow dramatisation of the period in French film history that saw the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol shake off their lives as critics and become bona fide film legends.

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

Johannes Roberts directs a concise chimp-gone-wild shocker, and the critically loved crooner releases his debut album. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

There are times when trying to make sense of Chelsea is a futile task. Lurching between extremes is their speciality. They were shambolic against struggling West Ham for 45 minutes, had Stamford Bridge ready to turn on Liam Rosenior at half-time and still found a way to mount a comeback so wild it left their opponents in a state of utter, uncontrollable rage at the end of an incomprehensible London derby.

Where to begin? With the end, perhaps, and Enzo Fernández running on to a cutback from João Pedro to make it 3-2 to Chelsea in the 92nd minute. It was some turnaround. João Pedro had made the difference after coming on at the start of the second half. The forward scored Chelsea’s first, heading home just before the hour, and was cool when he broke into the West Ham area when the game ran into added time. João Pedro had choices. He could have shot and he could have crossed. Instead he threw West Ham by pulling the ball back to Fernández, who is beginning to resemble Frank Lampard with his knack of deciding games with late unnoticed runs from midfield.

• Champion plays down significance of trophy for coach

• Aryna Sabalenka frustrated after latest major final loss

Elena Rybakina never stopped believing she would collect a second grand slam title after holding her nerve to defeat Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 1 and two-time champion, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 and win the Australian Open.

Rybakina, the fifth seed, arrived here as the in-form player after her triumph at the WTA Finals last November. It is her second major title after her win at Wimbledon in 2022.

It would be a touch too hyperbolic to suggest this was a season-defining afternoon for Arsenal’s title ambitions, but given the opposition and the pre-match drama surrounding this game, there was no doubting that come full time this was a significant one in the Premier League title picture.

Two points from three games is hardly compelling enough evidence to prompt full-blown crisis talks, but given the lofty standards Arsenal have set in the first half of this season, we would learn plenty about them here. This against a team who have lost once since the start of December and with a ferocious home crowd behind them.

David Moyes could not contain himself. As the ball hit the back of the net after the substitute Beto had bundled in the equaliser in the seventh minute of injury time, the Everton manager set off. Moyes is 63 in April, but he sprinted on to the pitch in a moment of sheer delight as Brighton’s players dropped to their knees in despair.

Somehow, Everton’s unbeaten record here that stretches back to 2019 is still intact. It had seemed a goal from Pascal Gross would be enough for Brighton to claim victory at the sixth attempt after they had spurned a number of chances in the first half. But while it is one thing to plan how you are going to overcome a team managed by Moyes, it is not quite so easy in practice.

• Apollonio-Socrepes lift unfinished a week from Games

• State-backed infrastructure agency says work on course

A cable car being built to carry spectators to the women’s Olympic Alpine skiing events in Cortina is in serious doubt of not being completed in time, prompting Games organisers to request school closures to ease the pressure on the Dolomite resort’s transport system.

The Apollonio-Socrepes lift is one of the most contentious pieces of Olympic infrastructure for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. Work on the system, designed to take spectators from the centre of Cortina d’Ampezzo directly to the slopes, began behind schedule, and some residents raised safety concerns about its location in an area prone to landslides.

Two clubs in the process of a reset. While Wolves’ fate is all but sealed, they seek to carry good vibes into the Championship. Bournemouth’s objective was to make last Saturday’s defeat of Liverpool the staging post for one of those streaks of good results that have made Andoni Iraola’s reputation.

Mission accomplished for the Cherries, who could celebrate their second away win of a troubled season, a first since August. In the performance of the debutant Rayan, a second-half sub, who supplied Alex Scott’s late clincher, there is much to look forward to.

• Former team principal was dismissed last September

• ‘I feel like I have unfinished business in Formula One’
  

Christian Horner said he misses Formula One and has unfinished business in the sport as he spoke publicly for the first time since he was ousted by Red Bull but is prepared to wait for an opportunity to “win something”, adding: “I am not in a rush.”

The 52-year-old was dismissed as Red Bull team principal following July’s British Grand Prix before his official exit was agreed in September. He oversaw a period of extraordinary success during his 20-year career with Red Bull, winning eight drivers’ and six constructors’ titles.

• WSL side host Brazilian champions in Sunday showdown

• Slegers wary of complacency against a ‘very good team’

Renée Slegers praised the impact of trailblazing hijab-wearing footballer Nouhaila Benzina after Arsenal’s defeat of Moroccan side AS Far earned them a place in Sunday’s Champions Cup final against Corinthians.

Asked about the impact of Benzina competing in the new cross-continental club competition in London, with no hijab-wearing players currently playing in the Women’s Super League, Slegers said: “The strength of football in society is that football is for everyone. It’s really good that we have role models in all possible ways to show that football is for everyone. That just makes me happy. It’s important. There are so many examples and different ways of how we can show that football is for everyone. This is one of them, so that’s great.”

The FA Cup triumph has had little impact on a club caught in the mid-table loop, their best assets always slipping away

Ask a Crystal Palace fan what price they would have paid at this time last year to win the FA Cup. Would they have taken a run of 11 games without a win, Eberechi Eze and Marc Guéhi sold, Oliver Glasner disillusioned and on his way out of the club, and a probable relegation battle ahead? Almost certainly, yes.

But equally that Palace fan would be within their rights to ask why there should be a pay-off at all. This isn’t like Portsmouth winning the FA Cup in 2008 while living beyond their means under Alexandre Gaydamak, going into administration in 2009-10. It’s not like Wigan winning the FA Cup as they were relegated in 2013 having been sustained in the Premier League by Dave Whelan.

Federal prosecutors had identified 6 million files that were ‘potentially responsive’ to the law, but only released 3.5. Why?

The justice department released a trove of 3.5m files related to the dead financier and pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche declaring that the release would likely be the last major declassification of files relating to Epstein. Federal prosecutors had identified 6 million files that were “potentially responsive” to the law, meaning that there are millions of files that have still not been released.

The release marked a belated and partial compliance with a bill passed by Congress late last year, which had mandated that all government documents pertaining to Epstein and the various law enforcement investigations into his sexual abuse of girls be made public by 19 December 2025.

The Save Act – which would do the opposite of its title – could have a huge impact on the midterm elections

If you are anything like me, then you are currently pickling in your own cortisol. As the US grows increasingly violent, increasingly cruel, every day brings a legion of new horrors. So I’m very sorry to say that I’m here to ruin your weekend by giving you yet another thing to worry about. That thing is called the Save Act and, if the Trump administration gets its way, it could have an oversized impact on the November midterms, particularly when it comes to minorities and married women being able to vote.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

‘Everyone wants to know,’ Melania says at the beginning of the two-hour extravaganza – but do we?

It’s Friday afternoon at Hoyts on Sydney’s northern beaches, and the atmosphere is horrific. I am here to see Amazon’s $75m “documentary” on Melania Trump, which has already been condemned as a flop ahead of its release.

When I arrive, I panic for a second that I have the time wrong. There are no Melania posters anywhere and the screening is tucked into the back bottom corner of the large movie theatre, like the weird leftover table at a wedding.

The knock-on effect on the rest of the industry is immense. There are many factors at play, but the ones with the power here are the big artists

In October 2024, Heat magazine’s list of the UK’s 30 richest celebrities under 30 ranked Harry Styles at the very top, with an estimated wealth of £200m. (He’d doubtless have fared well in last year’s survey, too, but he’s 31 now.)

Whatever your views on the fabulous wealth accrued by a small elite of megastars, and regardless of your opinion of Styles’ musical merits, that figure doesn’t sit well next to the headlines he is now making.

Simon Price is a music journalist and author

Sanae Takaichi may seemingly have old-fashioned values, but it’s her economic offering that has captured young people’s imaginations

Japan has rarely seen a prime minister as bold or as social media-savvy as Sanae Takaichi, the country’s first female leader.

Where previous prime ministers have gone viral for unflattering moments, such as the spectacle of one scoffing an onigiri in one messy gulp or another caught dozing off in the parliament during a key vote, Takaichi is being read by supporters as a symbol of a different era of leadership – one they feel Japan has lacked in recent years.

Karin Kaneko is a freelance journalist and a former reporter for the Japan Times

The first lady’s premiere was marked by conspicuous absences. It turns out chumminess with the president might just come at a cost

Who wasn’t on the red carpet at the official Melania documentary premiere in Washington DC was so much more intriguing than who was. No offence to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, but if I wanted to see formalwear struggling to contain Crusades tattoos, I’d hang around outside the Spartak Moscow Christmas party. Not that it was a red carpet, because the carpet at the “Trump-Kennedy” Center was black. No one bothers hiding the grift any more, with the movie’s own producer openly explaining that this aesthetic was “all about supporting this luxury brand that [Melania’s] creating”. They should have dressed the event like a colon, since Donald’s is effectively where it was being held.

Anyway: arrivals. There was Melania and Donald Trump – she finally got him out of hair and makeup – who were holding hands, a coincidentally convenient way to cover his skin if his glam squad didn’t truck in enough concealer. In recent months, Trump has had terrible bruises on the tops of his hands and even more terrible excuses for why they keep appearing. Aspirin, Swiss furniture, shaking lots of hands – the list of things that aren’t cannula sites grows longer every week.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Xi Jinping’s ousting of the country’s top general underscores the concentration of power in the hands of a few – with dangers for us all

Sir Keir Starmer is only one of the middle power leaders trekking to Beijing to renew relations. No one has forgotten China’s increasing international forcefulness, its handling of the pandemic and its closer relations with Russia as war engulfed Ukraine. But the wildness of Donald Trump’s first year back in power is spurring Canada, France and others to hedge their bets. This, not whisky tariff cuts, is what the British prime minister sought. Mr Trump called the move “dangerous”, but threatens allies and describes Xi Jinping as a “friend”. Set beside this administration, Beijing looks no more benevolent but does appear relatively predictable.

Yet the important news from Beijing in recent days was not Sir Keir’s visit but the news that Xi Jinping had purged its top general, Zhang Youxia. No one is too mighty to be ousted in a system which, while stable, looks increasingly like a “party of one”. The Chinese leader’s campaign has whittled the Central Military Commission, the top military body, from seven figures to just Mr Xi himself and the armed forces’ anti-corruption chief. He had already toppled officials at all levels of the party, including potential heirs, brushed aside term limits and fostered a personality cult. Now he is completely overhauling the People’s Liberation Army.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Countless reports and celebrities have called for greater working-class representation, so why has nothing changed?

In his McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival in 2024, the playwright James Graham called class “everyone’s least favourite diversity and representation category”. A socioeconomic duty on public bodies was included in 2010’s Equality Act, but has never been enacted. Now Class Ceiling, a review from Manchester University, co-chaired by the former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal, is calling for change. It wants class to be made a legally “protected characteristic” like race and sex (and several others), to address the class crisis in the arts – not just in the north-west but across the UK.

The report tells a depressingly familiar story. A 2022 study showed that the proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has halved since the 1970s; another in 2024 found that fewer than one in 10 arts workers in the UK had working-class roots. Top-selling musicians are six times more likely than other people to have attended private schools, and Bafta-nominated actors five times more likely to have done so. The same is true behind the scenes: last year Guardian analysis found that 30% of artistic directors and creative leaders were privately educated.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

We need to tackle the causes of renal failure and unequal access to care, writes Sandra Currie. Plus letters from Dominique E Martin on why markets in kidneys don’t work and a disgruntled altruistic living kidney donor

It is hard not to feel a certain sadness reading arguments for legalising the sale of kidneys that rely more on provocation than on engagement with how healthcare systems actually work in the UK (The big idea: Should we sell our kidneys?, 25 January).

Kidney failure is devastating, and the shortage of donor organs costs lives. About 7,000 people in the UK are currently waiting for a kidney transplant, and six people die every week while waiting. It is therefore concerning to read an argument that implicitly accepts continued late diagnosis of kidney disease and progression to kidney failure as an inevitability, rather than recognising the urgent need to raise awareness of kidney disease and prioritise its prevention before lives reach crisis point.

Device use is prolific in schools and is part of everyday activities, writes Kristyna Skriczka, while Arianny Avrile Saviñòn describes the effects of excessive screen time on children’s emotional and social development

Your recent coverage of children’s screen use (How screen time affects toddlers: ‘We’re losing a big part of being human’, 22 January) highlights an issue that still receives remarkably little attention: the amount of screen time built into the school day. While politicians debate bans on social media for under‑16s, and teachers report children trying to swipe the pages of books, it is puzzling that the question of screen time in schools is left out of discussions.

Every morning, most primary school children are greeted by an electronic whiteboard glowing in the classroom, often left on all day. Lessons are delivered as slides, tablets are used for activities, and many schools require homework to be completed online.

Readers respond to Amy-Jane Beer’s Country diary about bird visitations after her sister’s death

I can empathise very closely with Amy-Jane Beer (Country diary, 27 January) and her moving encounter with a singing robin. Thirty years ago, on the night when my father died, we returned to the family house and were greeted by the unmistakable sound of a robin’s song.

This threnody that greeted our return from the hospital was heard in bitterly cold February conditions – and this was after midnight. As a seasoned birdwatcher, it seemed very unusual to me to hear this song at that hour, but I couldn’t help attributing some deeper significance to it.
Adrian Hughes
Castell Caereinion, Powys

Kieran Clifton of the BBC responds to concerns about plans which would make UK television available only via the internet

The BBC is committed to universal public service and we would never have a plan – or support one – that excluded any audience (Letters, 28 January).

What we have said, jointly with the other public-service media organisations, is that a transition to delivering TV over the internet in the mid-2030s as part of a UK-wide plan to get everyone in the country online has the potential to close the digital divide once and for all.

Federal immigration operation has resulted in government agents killing two people, sparking weeks of protests

A federal judge has denied a request by Minnesota’s state government to end the federal immigration operation in Minneapolis that has resulted in government agents killing two people, sparking weeks of protests.

The state, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, had lodged a lawsuit after the death of Renee Good, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent this month, demanding an end to the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge in the city.

US president reportedly eyes plot near Memorial Bridge for a large-scale structure named the Independence Arch

Donald Trump reportedly wants the arch he is planning to build in Washington DC to dwarf the Lincoln Memorial.

The US president envision the planned arch to be a height of 250ft, or significantly taller than the 100ft-tall Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. It would also be significantly taller than Paris’s 164ft-tall Arc de Triomphe – but less than half the height than the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Missouri, the world’s tallest arch.

A lawsuit filed last week alleges tech firm ‘can access virtually all’ private communications, a claim the company has denied

US authorities have reportedly investigated claims that Meta can read users’ encrypted chats on the WhatsApp messaging platform, which it owns.

The reports follow a lawsuit filed last week, which claimed Meta “can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications”.

University researchers say growth of the hidden fast food industry may pose risks to public health

One in seven food businesses on major delivery platforms, including Deliveroo and Just Eat, is now a “dark kitchen”, a university study shows.

The findings, which shine a light on the scale of the hidden takeaway industry, found that 15% of all online food retailers in England were dark kitchens.

One dead and six missing as body and life boat from Lily Jean found after its disappearance from Gloucester port

The search for survivors of a commercial fishing vessel that sank off the coast of Massachusetts with seven aboard has been suspended, the US Coast Guard said Saturday.

The coast guard had launched a search-and-rescue mission early Friday after receiving an alert from the 72ft Lily Jean about 25 miles (40km) off Cape Ann. Searchers found a debris field near where the alert had been sent along with a body in the water and an empty life raft, the coast guard said.

About 190,000 are still without power in the south-east as states scramble to prepare for more winter weather

Dozens of people have died in the teeth of a severe winter storm across the US south, with further freezing temperatures, snow and blizzards set to assail the east coast on Saturday.

At least 85 people have died across multiple states, according to an Associated Press tally, with frigid conditions and icy roads causing car crashes, hypothermia and other fatal incidents.

Bruce Friedrich argues the only way to tackle the world’s insatiable but damaging craving for meat is like-for-like replacements like cultivated and plant-based meat

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book – called Meat – in disarming fashion: “I’m not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won’t find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won’t find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn’t about policing your plate.”

There’s more. Friedrich, a vegan for almost four decades, says meat is “humanity’s favourite food”.

Exclusive: Formal validation for claret reflects hotter conditions, falling consumption and shift towards chillable reds

Bordeaux’s wine industry has historically adapted to consumer habits. In the 1970s the region leaned towards white, but by the 2000s was famed for powerful oak-aged reds.

Now it’s turning to a much older form of red with a name familiar to anglophones: claret. With origins in the 12th century, when it was first shipped to Britain, claret was soon our favoured wine, an unofficial byword for bordeaux red, which in recent decades has become increasingly full-bodied.

Inspired by YouTube creators, some people are limiting beef to a handful of ‘feast days’ a year to cut their climate impact

“I love beef,” says Vlad Luca, 25. But unlike most other self-proclaimed steak lovers, Vlad eats it only four times a year, on designated “beef days”.

The “beef days” phenomenon has been popularised by the brothers John and Hank Green, known collectively as vlogbrothers on YouTube. John, 48, is better known for his YA fiction, including The Fault in Our Stars, while Hank, 45, is a self-described science communicator and entrepreneur.

Jacob Leland, who taught Russian, jailed for more than three years for sexually assaulting boy on school trip

The headteacher of Eton college has apologised and said he was “appalled” after a former teacher was jailed for sexually assaulting a pupil.

Jacob Leland, 37, who taught Russian, was jailed on Friday for three years and three months for sexually assaulting one of his pupils at his flat and during a school trip in 2012.

City of London Corporation accused of lack of transparency in retendering process that handed contracts to Daisy Green

A couple who run three cafes at north London beauty spots including Hampstead Heath and Queen’s Park have claimed a small victory in their battle to overturn the decision by their landlord, the City of London Corporation, to evict them.

Patrick Matthews and Emma Fernandez have run the cafes at Parliament Hill Lido, Queen’s Park and Highgate Wood for several years, but were told just before Christmas they had been unsuccessful in a retendering process.

Campaigners criticise use of ‘vulnerable’ devices at Salisbury Cathedral and Parthenon despite their removal from sensitive UK government sites

Security cameras guarding Magna Carta are provided by a Chinese CCTV company whose technology has allegedly aided the persecution of Uyghurs and been exploited by Russia during the invasion of Ukraine, it has emerged.

In letters seen by the Guardian, campaigners called on Salisbury Cathedral, which houses one of four surviving copies of the “powerful symbol of social justice”, to rip out cameras made by Dahua Technology, based in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.

PM flies out after courting world’s second biggest economy aware of difficult balance of risks and potential rewards

The last British prime minister to visit China was Theresa May in 2018. Before the visit, she and her team were advised to get dressed under the covers because of the risk of hidden cameras having been placed in their hotel rooms to record compromising material.

Keir Starmer, in Beijing this week, was more sanguine about his privacy, even though the security risks have, if anything, increased since the former Tory prime minister was in town.

Gabrielle Goliath says Gayton McKenzie violating freedom of expression after ‘highly divisive’ artwork Elergy banned from SA pavilion

A South African artist is suing the arts minister after he blocked her from representing the country at the Venice Biennale, having called her work addressing Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza “highly divisive”.

Gabrielle Goliath filed the lawsuit last week, with Ingrid Masondo, who would have curated the pavilion, and the studio manager, James Macdonald. It accuses Gayton McKenzie of acting unlawfully and violating the right to freedom of expression and demands the high court reinstates her participation by 18 February, the deadline for confirming installations with biennale organisers.

Rubaya mine produces about 15% of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum, used in mobile phones

More than 200 people were killed this week in a collapse at the Rubaya coltan mine in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Lumumba Kambere Muyisa, a spokesperson for the rebel-appointed governor of the province where the mine is located, told Reuters on Friday.

Rubaya produces about 15% of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum – a heat-resistant metal that is in high demand by makers of mobile phones, computers, aerospace components and gas turbines. The site, where local people dig manually for a few dollars a day, has been under the control of the M23 rebel group since 2024.

Researchers tell ‘human story’ about crisis during plague of Justinian, which killed millions in Byzantine empire

A US-led research team has verified the first Mediterranean mass grave of the world’s earliest recorded pandemic, providing stark new details about the plague of Justinian that killed millions of people in the Byzantine empire between the sixth and eighth centuries.

The findings, published in February’s Journal of Archaeological Science, offer what researchers say is a rare empirical window into the mobility, urban life and vulnerability of citizens affected by the pestilence.

Half a million migrants will be ‘regularised’ under plans to boost economic growth that have angered rightwing parties

Not everyone has been enthused by the Spanish government’s decision this week to buck European political trends by announcing plans to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers to boost “economic growth and social cohesion”.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the conservative People’s party (PP), described the move as a reward for “illegality” that would bring more people into the country and “overwhelm our public services”.

My use of mobile phones has been compulsive – has it been for better or for worse?

• From a priest to a pensioner, a teenager to a tech CEO: can you guess our screen time?

In 2003, the Stanford social scientist BJ Fogg published an extraordinarily prescient book. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do predicted a future in which a student “sits in a college library and removes an electronic device from her purse”. It serves as her “mobile phone, information portal, entertainment platform, and personal organiser. She takes this device almost everywhere and feels lost without it.”

Such devices, Fogg argued, would be “persuasive technology systems … the device can suggest, encourage, and reward.” Those rewards could have a powerful effect on our relationship with these devices, akin to gamblers pumping quarters into slot machines.

Putin critic says plants in China, India and Turkey are funnelling up to $1bn a day to Kremlin

Bill Browder’s fight against Vladimir Putin has seen him face threats, lawsuits, false accusations of murder and Interpol arrest warrants. A disinformation-laden film was even made about him.

But 16 years after the death of his friend and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky at the hands of Putin’s regime, Browder is unrelenting in his fight for justice. It is an endeavour that, by his estimation, has cost Putin and his cronies billions of dollars already, via asset freezes and sanctions. Hence the considerable risk to his safety.

Motorists benefit as industry offers deals of up to 18% off to attract buyers for petrol, diesel and electric models

If you are considering buying a new car, now might be the time to act as new data shows manufacturers and dealers slashing prices by more than 10%, with the average discount close to £6,000.

The typical discount available across all petrol, diesel and electric cars sold in the UK is 11.4% of the on-the-road price – the equivalent of £5,911 – according to Insider Car Deals, which sells discount data to people looking to buy.

TUC urges ministers to bring forward changes to protect workers amid concerns over apps such as Temper

The fashion retailer Urban Outfitters, the bed specialist Dreams and the operator of several Royal Parks cafes have been criticised for the use of the gig economy app Temper to take on staff – some of whom can end up earning below minimum wage.

The TUC is urging the government to bring forward promised reforms to protect gig economy workers amid concerns that those hired by apps such as Temper are missing out on significant employment rights including sick pay, rest breaks, holiday pay and a minimum hourly rate.

After a three-year hiatus, the former One Directioner has announced a record-breaking tour. But this week he’s facing a backlash. Will his big comeback go to plan?

God save Harry Styles! Thus far in his career, the former One Direction frontman and unproblematic fave has been the golden boy of British music, one of our few stars to successfully crack America and not embarrass us in the attempt. Amid ever-dwindling sources of national pride, Styles has been a constant, the UK’s preferred Prince Harry and even less controversial than Paddington. But is his charmed run about to come to an end?

As Styles gears up for his big comeback, after a three-year hiatus from music and in large part public life, there are signs he may have set his sights too close to the sun, with controversy over ticket prices and a backlash brewing. Can Harry style it out?

A candid chat between the ‘hardest working man’ in rock and Zoe Ball. Plus, how will it end for DS Lucey in Blackshore? Here’s what to watch this evening

11.30pm, BBC Two

Postcards showing Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan in character were printed as postcards and secreted around the performing arts school co-founded in the city by Paul McCartney

Pictures of the stars of Sam Mendes’ forthcoming four-part Beatles film in character as the musicians have been published, offering a first look at the actors in costume.

The pictures were released in postcard form at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, the school co-founded by Paul McCartney which occupies the premises formerly occupied by the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, where both McCartney and future bandmate George Harrison were pupils.

This carefully plotted tale of the investigation into a small boy’s death is a compelling, psychologically astute watch – which constantly pulls the rug out from under you

By ’eck – it’s grim out west. Such is the overriding impression wrought by Under Salt Marsh, a six-part crime drama set in the fictional Welsh town of Morfa Halen. As the title suggests, the town sits alongside the treacherously boggy lands, under lowering skies and just, but only just, above rising sea levels. The latter is threatening to make the defences the inhabitants are struggling to build obsolete. A huge storm is thought to be approaching and emergency evacuation warnings readied. Think of the place as a conservation area for the pathetic fallacy. There is a lot of actual and metaphorical gloom about. Much of it is attached to local primary school teacher Jackie Ellis (Kelly Reilly). Already bowed under the weight of her nine-year-old niece Nessa’s (Amara Atwal) disappearance three years ago, she finds the body of one of her pupils, Cefin, as she walks home across the marshes one night. The child has apparently drowned in a drainage ditch.

When detective Eric Bull (Rafe Spall), who was also involved in Nessa’s case, arrives to investigate the boy’s death, it becomes clear from his and Jackie’s immediate hostility that they have a fraught history – although its precise nature differs slightly from the one audiences have come to expect. It’s a series that is good at subverting expectations at every turn – not least in its delicate evocation of grief and the manifold ways a landscape can affect its people. Morfa Halen’s townsfolk are hardy and self-reliant, qualities born of their environment and isolation. But the drama poses the question of whether such independence serves a person or a community equally well under more extreme circumstances – be they meteorological or emotional – or whether a community can implode under the strain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Ronin Rhythm)
The composer’s first unaccompanied album turns extended harp technique into music of intimacy, restraint and conviction – inspired by the women who shaped her world

When the London jazz festival ran online only in 2020, an enthralling livestreamed performance by Swiss harpist Julie Campiche’s avant-jazz ensemble was a startling highlight, introducing UK audiences to a virtuoso instrumentalist and composer who was already turning heads in Europe. Campiche plucked guitar, zither and east Asian-style sounds from the harp, mingled with vocal loops, classical music, Nordic ambient jazz and more. You might call her soundscape magical or otherworldly if it didn’t coexist with a campaigner’s political urgency on environmental and social issues. But Campiche is too much of a visionary to overwhelm the eloquence of pure sound with polemic, as her new album, the unaccompanied Unspoken, confirms more than ever.

Campiche’s extra-musical agenda here is a celebration of sisterhood, dedicated to women in public and private lives who have inspired her. The opening Anonymous is built around a Virginia Woolf quote – “for most of history, ‘anonymous’ was a woman” – repeated by a chorus of women’s voices in different languages building to a clamour. Grisélidis Réal is named after the Swiss artist and writer who took her physical and mental life to every precipice, including sex work, expressed in gently lyrical harp lines around the spooky sounds of footsteps clicking on pavements.

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

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

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

Audrey Niffenegger’s follow-up to her global bestseller focuses on Alba, the daughter of Henry and Clare, as she negotiates two marriages and various modern-era dystopias

A follow-up to the 2003 blockbuster novel The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is set to be published this autumn.

Life Out of Order, which Niffenegger worked on for 13 years, is set in the same world as the original novel. The Time Traveler’s Wife has sold more than 9m copies globally since its publication, and was adapted into a 2009 film starring Rachel McAdams, as well as an HBO series and a musical.

Writers and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

Lately I’ve been going back to read some classic works that I had, in my zany life-arc, missed, in the (selfish) hope of opening up new frequencies in my work. So: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (the zaniness seems to lack agenda and yet still says something big and political); then on to Speak, Memory by Nabokov, newly reminded that language alone (dense, beautiful) can power the reader along; and, coming soon, The Power Broker by Robert A Caro – a real ambition-inspirer, I’m imagining, in its scale and daring.

White Moss by Anna Nerkagi; The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin; The Roof Beneath Their Feet by Geetanjali Shree; Berlin Shuffle by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

White Moss by Anna Nerkagi, translated by Irina Sadovina (Pushkin, £12.99)
“You, too, need a woman!” Alyoshka’s mother tells him. “Even a plain one, as long as her hands and legs aren’t crooked.” And Alyoshka, part of the nomadic Nenets people in the Russian Arctic, does find a wife, but can’t consummate their marriage: he’s still in love with a girl who left for the city years ago. This novel takes us around the camp, from Alyoshka’s family to Petko and his friend Vanu discussing old age to a new arrival who shares his tragic story of alcohol addiction: “The devil had entered my soul, and it was fun to be with him.” Meanwhile, Soviet representatives, intended to support the Nenets people, come and go: “They didn’t stick, because strictly speaking there was nothing to stick to.” This story of a solid community where people stick instead with one another is a perfect warming tale for winter.

The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Daunt, £14.99)
Agathe, a 30-year-old French woman living in New York, is so estranged from her sister Véra that when she receives a text message saying “Papa’s dead”, she replies: “Who is this?” Now she returns to the family home in the Dordogne to help clear out his things. “If we set fire to the books, there’d be nothing left.” Relations remain difficult: Véra communicates only by text message; she hasn’t spoken since the age of six. This is a book of absence and silence – village shops are closed, streets deserted, Agathe’s husband in the US doesn’t reply to her – and written with apt spareness. “I’m following the advice of decluttering influencers,” Agathe tells us, but it’s her past that she needs to offload, and slowly we learn the history of the family breakup. The balance between revelation and continued mystery makes this book both tantalising and satisfying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Place, London
Charlotte Mooney and Alex Harvey deliver a mesmerising and intimate ode to their performing lives together

Charlotte Mooney and Alex Harvey fell in love 24 years ago when they were training for the circus. They swore they would never work together. “Circus couples are a pain in the arse,” Charlotte tells us on the mic at the start of the show, chatting like an old friend.

Inevitably they did end up working together, forming the company Ockham’s Razor, and making warm, insightful and gently joyful circus theatre shows full of humanity and connection. They stepped back from performing into directing after having a daughter. The pair were not quite ready to retire from the stage, however, and Collaborator is one last hurrah. It’s an ode to their performing lives together, from the hopeful anticipation of day one to the challenging days when nothing is in sync, demonstrated through simple but telling games, with props, ropes and some mesmerising pendulums that make waves of energy visible.

Royal Opera House, London
The second revival of Richard Jones’s compelling production boasts an impressive cast, with Terfel’s supple and rich voice at its centre. Conductor Mark Wigglesworth keeps up the momentum

A figure with the head of a doll plays with a multicoloured spinning top, high above the stage. Three men – hooded and armed – creep forwards and seize him, slashing his throat and dragging him off.

It’s a brutal start to a brutal opera. This flashback is the brainchild of director Richard Jones (in his 2016 Royal Opera production, revived for the second time by Ben Mills, we see it replayed twice more as an episode that haunts the protagonist), but the overriding atmosphere is Mussorgsky’s. Based on Pushkin’s drama about a tsar’s reign, Boris Godunov is among the darkest of all operas. In the composer’s lean, mean original version, it is almost relentlessly so: dominated by low voices, its orchestration dense and heavy, the seven scenes push inexorably towards crisis.

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London
Some spells are cast by this show, in which the director stars as Prospero, but it wearingly replays the same tricks

The Tempest seems like the perfect Shakespeare drama for an experimentalist. It is all about artifice, after all, and interrogates the construction of art as illusion through Prospero’s rough magic. So its pairing with experimental writer-actor-director Tim Crouch seems like a natural one. Or rather non-naturalist because this painfully high-concept production comprehensively underlines its artifice.

It emphatically punctures the fourth wall until the drama becomes leaden with messages about theatre, and the act of watching is draining. Maybe this is the point? Actors often sit in a circle, barely moving, as if in rehearsal. At times they trip up in their lines, which are occasionally finished off by another or spoken in unison.

Glen Tetley’s fantastical ballet, set to an atonal Schoenberg score, is finally returning to Covent Garden. Dancers Marcelino Sambé and Joshua Junker discuss how they came under its spell

Marcelino Sambé is hanging upside down from a scaffold tower. “It’s scary,” he tells me. Nevertheless he swings, he swoons, he balances with limbs entwined around the narrow bars, reaching up to an imagined starry sky (it’s actually the high ceiling of a Royal Ballet rehearsal studio in Covent Garden). This is the iconic opening of the ballet Pierrot Lunaire, where a childlike clown is wonderstruck by the sight of the moon.

Made in 1962 by the US choreographer Glen Tetley – whose centenary is celebrated this year – Pierrot Lunaire is a distinctive, eccentric, challenging work, set to Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal song cycle of the same name. It’s based on poems by Albert Giraud, delivered in sprechstimme, a vocal style halfway between song and speech that sounds sometimes like singsong nursery rhymes, elsewhere like a ghostly aural apparition. The ballet is not regularly performed – the last time the Royal Ballet danced it was 20 years ago – but it has a special status in the ballet rep, as a pioneering example of blending modern dance with classical, and as a juicy role for its male lead as the sad clown Pierrot, the commedia dell’arte stock character here given an emotional journey of surprising depth. It was Rudolf Nureyev’s favourite ballet, apparently.

The death of the 71-year-old actor and comedian leaves behind a long line of unforgettably original comic creations, from Beetlejuice to Schitt’s Creek

• Catherine O’Hara, actor known for Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek, dies aged 71

One of the later and less beloved Christopher Guest comedies featuring his troupe of peerless, often SCTV-related improvisers is For Your Consideration, a medium-funny savaging of Hollywood’s feverish awards-season prestige campaigning.

The film’s unquestionable highlight is Catherine O’Hara, playing an actor who gets a whisper of awards buzz for a schlocky, still-filming drama called Home for Purim, and slowly loses her mind with the knowledge that she could maybe, possibly be recognized by her peers. O’Hara, known for her distinctively brassy yet malleable trill of her voice and her frequently red hair, peels back her performer’s bravado to expose the frenzied need beneath it. She somehow plays the outsized beneath the regular-sized, as her Marilyn Hack goes from plugging-away workhorse to desperate striver. Unsurprisingly, O’Hara briefly generated awards buzz of her own for playing this part; even less surprisingly, an Oscar nomination was not forthcoming. It couldn’t be; otherwise, it might have marred O’Hara’s masterclass in how certain actors, especially those specializing in comedy, are destined to go under-recognized in their lifetimes.

After undergoing emergency surgery following an accident, the photographer discovered a newfound appreciation for the human body

Three years ago, Jorge Perez Ortiz was on a small wooden boat travelling from Cartagena in Colombia to a group of nearby islands when the sea became unexpectedly rough. As a strong wave hit, Ortiz, sitting at the bow, felt his body lift and come down sharply on his seat. The sudden impact fractured a vertebra. He was taken to hospital and underwent emergency surgery.

“I’ve always been captivated by the power of water and the sense of freedom and escape one feels when diving into it,” Ortiz says, “but until that point, I’d never considered the other side of this freedom and the risks it carries.”

The Canadian actor, comedian and writer has died at the age of 71 after a brief illness. She was known for roles in Home Alone, Best in Show, Beetlejuice, Schitt’s Creek and The Studio

• Catherine O’Hara, actor known for Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek, dies aged 71

• Catherine O’Hara managed to make difficult characters utterly delightful

Mike White’s show will begin production in April at five-star Saint-Tropez resort known for old-world opulence

Will it be a fatal attack with a pétanque boule under the parasol palms? Some skulduggery in the swimming pool of a €21,000-a-night private villa? Perhaps a poisoned cocktail on the terrace overlooking the luxury yachts in the Mediterranean?

Bienvenue to season four of The White Lotus on the Côte d’Azur; judging by past series, someone is not making it out of the French Riviera alive.

With sizzling mixed grills and bhangra playing, Desi pub owners are transforming places of exclusion into new community hubs

A tantalising spread of food arrives at the table, including a sizzling mixed grill platter, blistered naans and punchy curries. The smell of spice and smoke fills the air amid a cacophony of sounds, from the clink of pint glasses to the beats of Punjabi bhangra music.

This is a scene that you might not associate with the traditional British pub, but for many communities in the Midlands it is commonplace in the growing number of Desi pubs.

The comedian on getting sacked from TK Maxx, looking permanently hungover, and his 90s crush

Born in London, Seann Walsh, 40, began doing standup in 2006. He was on Strictly Come Dancing in 2018 and I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in 2022. His podcast is Class Clown and he co-hosts Oh My Dog! (with Jack Dee) and What’s Upset You Now? His tour, This Is Torture, starts on 13 February. He lives in London with his partner and two children.

What is your earliest memory?
My dad had loads of friends round, all smoking heroin and singing me Happy Birthday. I was three or four.

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

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

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

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

Staying sober beyond Dry January? These non-alcoholic reds, whites, rosés and fizz bring all the joy – without the hangover

• I tried 75 low- and no-alcohol drinks: here are my favourites

Are you a zebra-striper, alternating your alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic versions to moderate your intake? Or are you booze-free? As curbing drinking becomes more popular, it’s clear that this moment of sober curiosity is moving beyond Dry January and into the everyday.

Luckily, the drinks industry is scratching our sobriety itch with a bevy of good alcohol-free products. If you’re ready to wet your whistle with something delicious that won’t have you stumbling into the next day with a sore head, read on to discover the best no- and low-alcohol whites, reds and rosés from my taste testing (as well as a couple of mid-strength options), perfect for any time, any place.

Textile bins are overflowing, but donating isn’t always the answer. Experts share the smarter, greener ways to declutter unwanted clothes

• How to look after your knitwear, according to experts

Have you even started the new year if you haven’t thought about having a wardrobe clearout? A recent trip to my local supermarket suggests that residents of my home town have been doing just that in their droves, with textile recycling bins overflowing on to the pavements. And we may think donating our unwanted clothes does us a favour while helping out someone else and potentially the environment, but there’s a chance we could be doing the exact opposite.

“Because our clothing is so overproduced in such large quantities, when you donate to charity, often it’s not getting resold,” says Aja Barber, author of the book Consumed. And she warns that much of our donated clothing won’t end up in the well-intended places we had hoped it would. “[It] will most likely end up in landfill or be exported in the waste colonialism chain, which means our excess volumes end up in countries like Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. It’s a business, but when a lot of the clothing is trash to begin with, sadly it creates a lot of pollution.”

This premium assisted machine makes every caffeinated drink under the sun, from flat whites to cold brew, but true baristas may itch for more freedom

• The best espresso machines for your home, tested

In ancient Greece, people in need of advice would seek out their local oracle. The fee for divine guidance would be paid for by animal sacrifice – a goat, or perhaps a sheep for particularly pressing issues. Fast forward to 2026, and inflation has taken its toll. The price of admission to Sage’s Oracle Jet is now closer to that of a cow. For anyone who isn’t a regular at their local livestock markets, that’s about £1,700.

However, the Oracle Jet does exactly what it says on the tin. This is an assisted espresso machine that guides users from coffee bean to espresso cup (hence the “Oracle”), froths milk to silken perfection, and heats up in seconds because of the use of fast-heating ThermoJet technology (yep, “Jet”).

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

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

A sherry old-fashioned with added southern Spanish sizzle

This reimagining of the old fashioned, in which American whiskey meets Andalusian flair, is a well-earned indulgence for the depths of winter. Deep, dark and full of Spanish warmth, it’s a cocktail that wraps you up like a velvet jacket with bourbon spice, sherry sweetness and a glint of orange zest.

Neki Xhilaga, head bartender, El Pirata, London W1

A richly textured and zingy loaf cake to enjoy with a cuppa

Anything bright and zingy is particularly welcome in January, even more so when it’s in the form of cake. I always have an odd end of marzipan after the festive season, and this is a great way to use it up and bring that cosy almond flavour. The marzipan gets blitzed into the butter for a plush-textured loaf cake, and comes together in minutes thanks to simply putting everything in a food processor.

From baked beans with a Gujarati twist to billowing Yorkshire pudding with bramley apples, Guardian readers share the dishes that have connected their families across the generations

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

A few years ago, I bought my mother a notebook for her recipes. It was a weighty, leather-bound affair that could act as a vault for all the vivid stews, slow-cooked beans and many other family specialities – the secrets of which existed only in her head. Although the gift has basically been a failure (bar a lengthy WhatsApp message detailing her complex jollof rice methodology, she still has an allergy to writing down cooking techniques or quantities), I think the impulse behind it is sound and highly relatable. Family recipes are a form of time travel. An act of cultural preservation that connects us deeply to people we may not have met and places we may not have visited.

Those realities shine through in this week’s gathered compendium of heirloom recipes submitted by readers. Baked beans given a Gujarati twist. An Atlantic-hopping riff on spinach and feta pie. A billowing yorkshire pudding with sticky bramley apples in its base. All of these preparations, particularly when a recipe for anything is a mere tap away, point to the power of human connection and the ingenuity of domestic chefs. And perhaps the best thing about ancestral culinary approaches is that they can be passed from one clan to another, living on even as they are adapted and evolve.

Ursula, 29, an events coordinator, meets Culann, 34, a charity worker

What were you hoping for?
To meet someone fun, maybe a bit of romance.

Edwin wants Chloe to join him at all of his large family’s events, but she values her independence. You decide who is playing happy families
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

It’s thoughtless to wheel me out to his family as a formality. I need my own space sometimes

After the failure of his police career, Jack came to live with us, caring for the whole family indiscriminately. When I was sickest, and felt unlovable, he reminded me I was loved

Jack, the cocker spaniel, was sacked by the police. His career as a detection dog was an utter failure – he was more interested in people than cannabis and made some embarrassing mistakes, including begging for treats from potential offenders rather than alerting officers about drugs.

A colleague told me about a police dog that needed a home and so Jack arrived – via police van – at our house. He was lithe, glossy black and animated. He ricocheted around the house, knocking over children and pot plants. He chased rabbits and pheasants over the fields. He ate off the children’s plates and collected shoes. He loved us all indiscriminately and liked to have us where he could see us. If anyone left the room, he’d sigh deeply and follow, remaining close until the pack was back together.

Can a prison officer turned tram driver and a retired medical tech operations manager agree on incarceration, antisemitism and Trump?

Ian, 60, Manchester

Occupation Retired, used to be an operations manager for medical tech

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

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

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

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

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

I was stranded in Brussels after a power failure, but the promised refund for hotels, food and transport failed to arrive

Eurostar is refusing to honour expenses claims after a power failure in the tunnel stranded thousands of passengers last month.

Our party of four was stuck at Brussels station when all trains to and from London were cancelled for 24 hours. Eurostar staff told us to find a hotel and handed out leaflets promising that accommodation, food and transport costs would be refunded.

She had entered end-of-life care and I relied on my car to get to her, but it hadn’t returned the licence

Our daughter, who has cancer, entered end-of-life care on Christmas Eve. I am a carer for her and her two young children.

We both live in rural villages with no public transport options, so I need a car to get to her at short notice, but last summer, out of the blue, the DVLA told me I could not drive until December and revoked my licence.

A clinical psychologist on why men still don’t seek help for their mental health

When Jake, a businessman in his 50s, first arrives at my therapy practice, it’s obvious that he has some misgivings. Jake’s marriage to Louise is in trouble, and she has insisted he come and see me. “If not for Louise, you wouldn’t be here, would you?” I enquire tentatively. He looks sheepish at first; then emboldened, he gives an emphatic “No.” As is almost always the case, Jake’s wife has registered a problem that has passed him by, and prompted his visit. Over the next few weeks, we sift through a maze of obstacles, and in the end, Jake is full of emotion: “I’m alone in the world, everyone leans on me, there’s no one for me,” he says. “There’s no one to turn to.”

It’s a common pattern, one I’ve seen throughout my 35 years as a psychologist specialising in male mental health. Men make up only 33% of referrals to NHS talking therapies. They don’t come easily, and when they do seek help in a crisis, they can disappear as suddenly as they arrive. Yet male vulnerability is clear – men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women and make up three-quarters of suicides and problems with addiction. But despite the increase in awareness around male mental health, men still tend to think there’s a stigma to speaking with a professional, even though most of those who have tried therapy have a positive experience.

It took six years to identify the condition that caused my chronic pain: a blood sugar dysregulation condition

Seven years ago, when I was 27, I got my first-ever migraine. Ten months later, it was still there.

Even after the 10-month migraine ended, frequent weeks-long migraine attacks and bouts of stabbing “icepick” headaches kept me in pain more often than not. I was a software engineer at Facebook, but had to take leave from work because looking at my laptop screen made my head scream in revolt. I would never go back.

Natalie Mead publishes a Substack called Oops, My Brain about life with chronic illness and recovery. She is also working on a memoir about the tension between love and caregiving in chronic illness

The ligament that connects your foot bones can cause severe heel pain when inflamed. Here’s how to avoid that

Recently, I decided to go for a jog after not running at all for more than [redacted] years. I did a half-marathon a couple of presidential administrations ago, so surely it would be fine? It was! Until the next morning, when I rolled out of bed, put my feet on the floor and felt a sharp pain in my heel.

Plantar fasciitis, my old nemesis.

Strengthen the muscles of the feet. Silverman suggests doing toe curls (with your feet flat on a towel, grip the towel with your toes and scrunch it towards your body) or marble pickups (using your toes to pick up marbles or similar objects from the floor).

Stretching. Specifically, stretching the calf muscles and the achilles tendon. Regularly stretching and massaging these areas “can help to not only assuage the inflammation, but prevent it from coming back”, says Aiyer.

Increase activity levels gradually. Allow your body to get acclimated to increases in activity levels rather than suddenly ramping up. Basically, don’t do what I did.

Wear the right shoes. Choose a shoe that’s too supportive, and your foot muscles can weaken over time, says Silverman. But choose a shoe that’s not supportive enough, and you may expose your plantar fascia to more direct trauma. Rather than sweating this Goldilocks challenge, Silverman says you should “choose footwear that matches the environment and activity”.

Traditional bodybuilding advice has been to push workouts to the point of failure, and that soreness is an indicator of effectiveness. But recent studies show there’s another way

Until pretty recently, the conventional wisdom about building muscle was that it worked via a system you might think of as “tear and repair” – the idea being that working out causes microtears in the muscle fibres, which trigger the body’s repair processes, encouraging the muscles to come back bigger and stronger.

That’s why many old-school trainers will tell you that there’s no gain without pain, and why a lot of bodybuilding advice includes increasingly byzantine ways of pushing your biceps and triceps to the point where you can’t do another repetition: the more trauma you can cause, the thinking goes, the more “swole” you can become.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In 20 years, Danish capital’s fashion week has pushed for greener standards and catapulted homegrown talent to global success

When it comes to fashion weeks, there used to be four key cities: New York, London, Milan and Paris. While they remain titleholders, a host of other cities from Berlin to Seoul and Lagos have been vying for the same recognition to become “the fifth fashion week”. But so far only one real winner has emerged: Copenhagen fashion week.

On Tuesday, the Danish showcase, which has helped catapult homegrown brands including Ganni into the international spotlight while spearheading sustainability initiatives, kicked off the start of its 20th-anniversary celebrations.

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

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

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

Saunas, island-hopping, mountain hikes, great design and cosy cafes abound in our readers’ treasured memories of the Nordic countries
• Tell us about a romantic break in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

A week’s hiking in Jotunheimen national park (230 miles north of Oslo) last summer brought me tranquillity and peace. During four days of challenging hiking and wild camping through the area we saw hardly anyone else, having entire lush green valleys and still glacial lakes to ourselves. We were fortunate to have stunning weather throughout and, despite it being July, still had a reasonable amount of snow to traverse. Norway has a fantastic network of signposted trails and huts which can be found on the Norwegian Trekking Association website.
Ben

Forget flashy St Moritz or Zermatt, the unsung village of Arosa has childlike charm, with animal sanctuaries, cool accommodation and kid-friendly tobogganing

On the approach to Arosa in the Graubünden Alps, the road is lined with mountain chapels, their stark spires soaring heavenwards; a portent, perhaps, of the ominous route ahead. The sheer-sided valley is skirted with rugged farmhouses and the road twists, over ravines and round hairpin curves, to a holiday destination that feels like a well-kept secret.

On the village’s frozen lake, young families ice skate, hand in hand. A little farther along, on the snow-covered main street, children sled rapidly downhill, overtaking cars. The resort’s mascots are a happy gang of brown bears. And there are Narnia lamp-posts, which turn the falling snow almost gold every evening. Switzerland is replete with ski towns but none feel quite this innocent and childlike, like stepping into a fairytale.

Now a ‘wild river national park’, the Vjosa needs more trees to be planted to preserve its fragile ecosystem. And visitors are being asked to help …

Our induction into tree-planting comes from Pietro, an Italian hydromorphologist charged with overseeing our group of 20 or so volunteers for the week. We’re standing in a makeshift nursery full of spindly willow and poplar saplings just above the Vjosa River, a graceful, meandering waterway that cuts east to west across southern Albania from its source 169 miles away upstream in Greece.

Expertly extricating an infant willow from the clay-rich soil, Pietro holds up the plant for us all to see. Its earthy tendrils look oddly exposed and vulnerable. “The trick is not to accidentally snick the stem or break the roots,” he says. Message registered, we take up our hoes and head off in pairs to follow his instructions.

The volunteering week is the brainchild of EcoAlbania and the Austria-based Riverwatch. Back in 2023, these two conservation charities succeeded in persuading the Albanian government to designate the River Vjosa as Europe’s first “wild river national park”. It was a timely intervention. According to new research co-funded by Riverwatch, Albania has lost 711 miles (1,144km) of “nearly natural” river stretches since 2018 – more, proportionally, than any country in the Balkans. Now, the question facing both organisations is: what next?

On our first evening, Riverwatch’s chief executive, Ulrich (“Uli”) Eichelmann, gives a presentation setting out his answer. But before he does, we have a dinner of lamb and homegrown vegetables to work through. The traditional spread is a speciality of the Lord Byron guesthouse in Tepelenë, a small town in the heart of the Vjosa valley and home to EcoAlbania’s field office – our base for the week.

From the person who scrolls on the toilet to the one without any social media, what do their digital habits tell us?

• Will Storr: we have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones – can we get it back?

Dayeon, 16: the teenager who spends less than an hour a day on screens

Intermediate Dog School involves hiding behind trees in the park …

It is rare for my wife and me to do a midweek dog walk together, but on this particular afternoon I find myself at a loose end, and volunteer to come along.

Joint walks require a bit of negotiation: my wife expects a minimum level of conversation, which is not a normal feature of my weekday afternoon. To solve this, we take turns delivering monologues of complaint – my wife going first. Because I’m a good listener, I can’t help but notice that a lot of my wife’s complaints are about me. Finally, she exhausts herself.

We spoke with five people from Atlanta to rural Germany and the UK whose households range from grandparents to three couples who own a farmhouse

In Atlanta, Carolyn Martinez, 65, lives in a household spanning four generations – and a lifelong friendship. Her 90-year-old mother, who has lived with her for more than 40 years due to various disabilities, shares the house with Martinez, 65, her adult daughter, aged 25, and her granddaughter, aged three months. “My mum has lived with me literally all my adult life,” she says. “She just wasn’t able to live by herself.”

From the Cloak of Invisibility and the Elder Wand to Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which European city changed its name in 1914, 1924 and 1991?
2 Which gun dog has won best in show at Crufts the most times?
3 Catherine Connolly is the third woman to become what?
4 Which arm of the Arctic Ocean is named after a Dutch navigator?
5 Which nut characterises Dubai-style chocolate?
6 What is the most abundant metal in the human body?
7 Where do you hear Hayley Sanderson and Tommy Blaize sing?
8 Where were the monumental Buddhas of Bamiyan destroyed in 2001?
What links:
9 Court and King, 1973; Navratilova, 1992; Sabalenka, 2025?
10 Cloak of Invisibility; Elder Wand; Resurrection Stone?
11 AMS; AV; AV+; FPTP; PR; STV?
12 JB Books; Father Karras; Władysław Szpilman; László Tóth; George Valentin?
13 Bucentaure; Santísima Trinidad; Victory?
14 Adopt Me!; Dress to Impress; Flee the Facility; Grow a Garden; Steal a Brainrot?
15 The Cradle; Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight; The Harbour at Lorient; Woman at her Toilette?

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

Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries for environmentalists – and the release of Juan Orlando Hernández has reinforced its ‘crisis of impunity’, say critics

When Donald Trump announced that he would pardon the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, only the second world leader to be convicted of drug trafficking, Anna*, an environmental defender, was shocked.

In 2022, Hernández, also known as JOH, was extradited to the US and later convicted, along with his brother, on drug trafficking and weapons charges. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle more than 400 tonnes of cocaine into the US, becoming the first Honduran head of state to be tried and sentenced abroad for running a narco state. He was also accused of grave human rights violations.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen, impressed Danes with his handling of the crisis but he says many Greenlanders are ‘afraid and scared’

This time last year, Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, was better known on the global stage for his sporting achievements than international politics. For years he dominated the territory’s badminton scene, winning the singles and doubles championships almost every year. He won several medals at the Island Games, earning himself a reputation for “very competitive” play on the court.

As it turned out, that was useful preparation for his time in office.

Dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing – there is a decent documentary to be made about the former model from Slovenia, but this one is unredeemable

• One adult for the 9.40am in Sittingbourne: a front row seat for Melania’s ominous UK opening
• Eggs, hats and unfettered ambition: what we learned about Melania Trump from her documentary

My audience with Melania is booked for Friday lunchtime at a retail park on the outskirts of Bristol, inside a large cinema which appears to have been swept and emptied in readiness. When Brett Ratner’s contentious, Amazon-backed documentary previewed at the White House last weekend, the guestlist included Mike Tyson, Queen Rania of Jordan and the president himself. Today it’s just me in the room and Melania on the screen. It makes for a more intimate and exclusive affair.

This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film’s star and executive producer proceeds to guide us – with agonising glacial slowness – through the preparations for her husband’s second presidential inauguration. She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the “candlelit dinner” to the “starlight ball”, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. “Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision,” she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. “As first lady, children will always remain my priority,” she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our 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.

We would like to hear from people about the impact of the stormy weather conditions in the UK

Flood and weather warnings from both Environment Agency and the Met Office are in place across much of the UK as Storm Chandra brought heavy rain and strong winds to many areas of the UK.

As day broke on Tuesday, there were almost 100 flood warnings in England and nearly 200 alerts – meaning flooding is possible – in place, with heavy rain falling on already saturated ground. There 24 flood alerts in Wales at the time of writing. A red flood warning – meaning danger to life – has been issued for a river in south-west England.

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ICE in Minneapolis, Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, Alex Honnold climbing a Taipei skyscraper and Sabalenka at the Australian Open – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists