The youth minimum wage is set to rise over this parliament, but it’s putting off employers from hiring people into their first roles

When Keir Starmer was 14 years old, he got a part-time job clearing stones from a local farmer’s field. At 16, Kemi Badenoch was flipping burgers and cleaning toilets in McDonald’s. Me, I waitressed at weekends from the age of 15 in an Essex pub owned by an ex-paratrooper with two formidable rottweilers roaming behind the bar, which was a life lesson all of its own.

But whatever your first job may have been, there’s a reasonable chance it combined the thrill of hard cash with several mortifying mistakes and a crash course in handling stroppy customers, taking criticism more or less gracefully and moaning about it only out of earshot. Though teenage starter jobs have been in decline for decades – for reasons varying from academic pressures on sixth-formers to the rise of side hustles on Vinted that don’t show up in official statistics – everyone still has to start somewhere, even if it’s now more likely at 18 than 14. But getting that start is becoming harder than it was.

The actor, comedian and raconteur, who would have turned 100 on Sunday, could play humble or haughty, cheeky or Chekhov – but always stole the show

When standup comic Tom Allen received Attitude magazine’s comedy award last year, he used his acceptance speech to salute the subversive wits who paved the way for freedoms now enjoyed by queer people in Britain. Joining Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward on the list was an actor and raconteur singled out by Allen as “a big hero of mine”, and feted by everyone from Orson Welles to Judy Garland, Maggie Smith to Morrissey.

“I wanted to mention Kenneth Williams because he was so profound,” Allen tells me. “And yet, because he was also funny, that profundity hasn’t been acknowledged. As a child, I connected with his outsiderness. Rather than trying to fit in, he went in the opposite direction. Not only did he not apologise for being different, but he was queer in every sense, truly at odds with the world in which he found himself.”

I cut small trees around Offa’s Dyke, then shape the wood by hand

I never wanted to be part of an unsustainable society. I’ve always tried to live as peaceful a life as I can, outside the big cities. Now I am the last person left in England making clogs by hand. I spend most days in my studio in Kington, Herefordshire, carving green sycamore wood that I collect myself, hand-dyeing the leather and making sure the soles are as near perfect a match to someone’s foot as possible. I don’t think you can have a more peaceful life than that.

I grew up in Ceredigion, surrounded by sheep. There were no jobs in the area and in 1976 I had to go on benefits. I developed extreme anxiety after breaking up with my first girlfriend. Convent schooling and boys’ boarding schools weren’t the best places to learn to develop relationships and I needed to find something therapeutic to do.

Information content manager Rosie Weatherley says harmful inaccuracies are presented as uncontroversial facts

• Mind launches inquiry into AI and mental health after Guardian investigation

A year-long commission has been launched by Mind to examine AI and mental health after a Guardian investigation exposed how Google’s AI Overviews, which are shown to 2 billion people each month, gave people “very dangerous” mental health advice.

Here, Rosie Weatherley, information content manager at the largest mental health charity in England and Wales, describes the risks posed to people by the AI-generated summaries, which appear above search results on the world’s most visited website.

Political correspondent Alexandra Topping and special educational needs student Jake with his mum, Laura, explore the government’s controversial plans for reform

Next week, the government is expected to announce its education white paper. It is a moment, as political correspondent Alexandra Topping explains, of high political peril.

Part of the proposals will be reforms to special educational needs provision in England. And while nearly all agree that the current system is broken – extremely expensive, very divisive, and failing the most vulnerable children – the mood around the announcements is still tense. Simply put, many disability rights campaigners fear the reforms are not about improving the system, but cutting costs.

Graham Readfearn enters a simulation to investigate how heatwaves affect the human body

The arrest of the 66-year old former prince has sent shockwaves through the UK and abroad, with reaction rolling in from the US to Australia

• King: ‘The law must take its course’

• Friday’s newspaper front pages

The family of Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, responded last night to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest.

“Astonished to see Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested today over alleged misconduct in public office linked to material from the so‑called Epstein ‘Files’,” they posted on an X account run by Maxwell’s siblings.

Exclusive: Josh Simons pressed intelligence officials to investigate reporters, in emails described as ‘McCarthyite smear’

A Labour minister who claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” at a PR agency’s work to investigate journalists on his behalf had been personally involved in naming them to British intelligence officials and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda, the Guardian can reveal.

Josh Simons, who was running the thinktank Labour Together at the time, was also involved in telling security officials that another journalist was “living with” the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. Officials were told by Simons’ team that the former adviser was “suspected of links to Russian intelligence”.

Largest January total since records began in 1993 is sharp reversal from December’s £11.6bn deficit

• Business live – latest updates

The UK government has posted the biggest ever budget surplus, official figures show, after a large increase in self-assessment and capital gains tax receipts.

In a boost for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in the run-up to her spring statement next month, public sector finances recorded a surplus of £30.4bn at the start of the year, according to the Office for National Statistics. This was double the surplus recorded in January 2025.

US president links deal with military strikes against Iran in connection with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions

Donald Trump changed his mind on supporting the Chagos Islands deal because the UK will not permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran, the Guardian has been told.

In his latest change of heart on the deal, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.

Exclusive: England and Wales charity to examine safeguards after Guardian exposed ‘very dangerous’ advice on Google AI Overviews

• ‘Very dangerous’: a Mind mental health expert on Google’s AI summaries

Mind is launching a significant inquiry into artificial intelligence and mental health after a Guardian investigation exposed how Google’s AI Overviews gave people “very dangerous” medical advice.

In a year-long commission, the mental health charity, which operates in England and Wales, will examine the risks and safeguards required as AI increasingly influences the lives of millions of people affected by mental health issues worldwide.

Children to get individual support directly from school instead of via council in attempt to curb spiralling costs

Children in England with special needs will receive individual support and therapy directly from their schools as part of the government’s overhaul of England’s special education provision.

Under the plans, mainstream schools will be given commissioning budgets to spend on therapists or additional support, instead of the money being controlled by highly indebted local authorities.

The court in Innsbruck handed Thomas P a five-month suspended prison sentence and a €9,400 fine over death of woman named as Kerstin G

A 37 year old hobby mountaineer has been found guilty of gross negligent manslaughter over leaving his girlfriend behind on Austria’s highest peak, after they got into grave difficulties on a climb.

Thomas P was handed a five-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay a fine of a €9,400 ($11,100) fine for causing her death in January 2025 by gross negligence, an offence that carries a maximum prison sentence of three years.

Israeli police raid compound, arrest staff and curb Muslims’ access as Ramadan begins

A six-decade agreement governing Muslim and Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site has “collapsed” under pressure from Jewish extremists backed by the Israeli government, experts have warned.

A series of arrests of Muslim caretaker staff, bans on access for hundreds of Muslims, and escalating incursions by radical Jewish groups culminated this week in the arrest of an imam of al-Aqsa mosque and an Israeli police raid during evening prayers on the first night of Ramadan.

Actor who played ‘McSteamy’ died on Thursday, 10 months after he revealed his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease

Eric Dane, an actor in hit shows Euphoria and Grey’s Anatomy, has died aged 53, less than a year after he publicly revealed he had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

Dane died on Thursday afternoon, his representatives announced in a statement. He first revealed in April that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease.

Kraków’s ban on burning solid fuels plus subsidies for cleaner heating has led to clearer air and better health

As a child, Marcel Mazur had to hold his breath in parts of Kraków thick with “so much smoke you could see and smell it”. Now, as an allergy specialist at Jagiellonian University Medical College who treats patients struggling to breathe, he knows all too well the damage those toxic gases do inside the human body.

“It’s not that we have this feeling that nothing can be done. But it’s difficult,” Mazur said.

FCAS, which also involves Spain, is imploding at a high-stakes moment for Europe, as threat rises from Russia

France and Germany’s plan to build a fighter jet of the future, planned to come with a swarm of drones and a “combat communications cloud”, is collapsing.

Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said this week that the €100bn programme no longer worked for him. He insisted it was “not a political dispute”, but a technical one. France needs a jet that can carry nuclear weapons and launch from aircraft carriers, while Germany does not. However, the problems go back much further.

In rare interviews, some of those sent back across the Channel after arriving in the UK on small boats describe what happened next – and the risks of a system organised to get rid of them

When Keir Starmer stood alongside the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at Northwood military base last July and announced a “groundbreaking” treaty to stop small boats overfilled with migrants from crossing the Channel, he said there was no “silver bullet”. But, he added, the plan would “finally turn the tables” on the numbers making the crossing.

The initiative, known as “one in, one out”, means each small boat arrival can be forcibly returned to France in exchange for another person – who has not attempted the crossing – being brought to the UK legally.

The 22-year-old singer is up for two Brit awards thanks to her frank songs about family strife and predatory men. She explains why she’s fighting for her fellow council estate kids

Although she is on course for pop stardom, with two nominations at next week’s Brit awards, 22-year-old Skye Newman lives in a cabin at the bottom of her sister’s garden in London. It’s the backdrop for the music video to her song Hairdresser, which has 7.5m views on YouTube. In the clip, she is made up, her hair in rollers, lounging with a gaggle of friends. Licking her fingertips to roll a joint, she laments a one-sided friendship with another woman: “When I’m needed, know I’ll be there first / You don’t reciprocate and, girl, that hurts.”

It’s typical of Newman’s songcraft: ballad-driven contemporary soul that goes beyond romantic heartbreak to cover all kinds of pain and recrimination.

This documentary looks at the 2015 slaying of the majestic head of two lion prides in Zimbabwe, by a trophy-hunting American dentist. Sadly it raises more questions than it answers

There are a lot of unanswered – possibly unanswerable – questions in the air at the moment. Questions such as what prompts a husband to drug his wife and, for a decade, invite strange men over to his house to rape her while she lies unconscious in the marital bed? Or: what kind of a person do you have to be to hang around with a convicted child sexual offender and billionaire who is exercising his perversions in plain sight, even if you are not yourself fully involved with said perversions? Or: if a year into a presidency you already have citizens being killed in the street by uniformed thugs barely a notch above a militia, what happens next?

It’s almost a relief to have to turn away and consider for a moment an older, slightly smaller question; namely, what makes someone want to kill an animal for sport? Not for food, not in defence of a home or family or livestock, just for fun. Just to be able to say they did it and take a picture with the corpse to prove it.

It caused a scandal in imperial Russia, then became a staple of popular art in the USSR. But when I spied a copy of Ivan Kramsky’s portrait in the film Sentimental Value, it opened a door to an untold case of life imitating art

Sentimental Value is one of those films you have to watch very closely. In the Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest work, which swept the board at the European film awards and is nominated for eight Baftas and nine Oscars, stories are hidden in closeups, half-tones and peripheral objects. Some of these stories are so well hidden, in fact, that they aren’t even apparent to the people who made the film.

In one scene, roughly an hour in, the camera glides down a corridor, and suddenly there she is: a woman’s portrait on the wall. Anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union and later Russia between the 1950s and 2000s, like me, would recognise her instantly. She has been endlessly reproduced: as prints, embroideries, portrait medallions, even on boxes of chocolates. In Britain, people may have encountered her on the covers of various editions of Anna Karenina.

Dane was initially only contracted to appear in one episode of series. He starred in a further 138, revolutionising the show along the way

• Eric Dane, Grey’s Anatomy and Euphoria star, dies aged 53

Eric Dane, one of the most handsome men DNA has ever fabricated, has died at 53, just a year after announcing his ALS diagnosis. We just lost Dawson Leery, and now this. It’s a tough time to be a millennial.

It goes without saying: Dane was very good looking. Even in the 2000s, which treated us to a glut of ridiculously handsome TV stars (Chad Michael Murray, Jared Padalecki, Milo Ventimiglia), he was breathtaking. The voice. The eyes. The soul patch. Oof.

Hollywood scion and talent agent exchanged sexual emails with Epstein associate

Casey Wasserman was born into Hollywood royalty, and for much of his life – until the release of the Epstein files brought his world crashing down – he appeared as formidable and untouchable as the entertainment industry moguls of old.

He wasn’t just the man charged with organizing the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles – a position he still holds, despite widespread calls for his resignation. He was a consummate power broker, someone who controlled the careers of prominent musicians, actors and athletes through the talent agency named after him, cultivated relationships in local and national politics, raised money for key election contests, endowed civic buildings and, through his family wealth, gave lavishly to social causes.

Leaving behind Cumbria for Oxford in the late 1950s, Bragg navigates class and culture in a world on the brink of change

It’s October 1958, and a nearly 19-year-old Melvyn Bragg is on the platform at Wigton railway station, saying goodbye to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah. He is off to read history at Wadham College, Oxford, one of the youngest in his cohort because national service is being phased out. Another World starts here, picking up the story left off in Back in the Day, Bragg’s previous memoir about his childhood and youth in this small Cumbrian town.

Oxford to Bragg seems “more a theatre than a city, a spectacle rather than a habitation”. After his prelims, the weeding-out exams in his second term, he is left alone until his finals. He discovers Ingmar Bergman and has many earnest pub conversations about whether Pasternak will get the Nobel prize, or jazz is superior to rock’n’roll. He goes on the Aldermaston march and joins the anti-apartheid movement – although in hindsight he sees this as inspired by a residual faith in empire, with South Africa as Britain’s moral responsibility. Even after Suez, he owns a pencil sharpener in the shape of a globe on which the empire is “a continuous governing blur of pink”.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Joint patrols are being mounted to protect undersea cables from Russian sabotage: localised cooperation is our best hope for now

• Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council thinktank

When European countries in the Baltic Sea region joined Nato for protection against Russia, they were not anticipating their most powerful Nato ally would be the one threatening to seize territory from them. The shock of the Greenland crisis may have faded from the headlines, but Donald Trump’s US has also suggested it may decide not to defend Europe. And Russia continues to be a nuisance in the Baltic Sea.

Luckily, the vulnerable Baltic nations have launched an impressive string of initiatives to keep their mini-ocean safe. As the US sheds responsibility for Europe’s defence, these efforts could provide a model for the future of Nato itself.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council thinktank. She is the author of Goodbye, Globalization: The Return of a Divided World and The Defender’s Dilemma: Identifying and Deterring Gray-Zone Aggression

After speaking to locals, I still can’t predict the result, but a big, combined effort will be needed. Without a united front the left may splinter and lose

You don’t have to be in Gorton and Denton for long to know that next week’s byelection really matters. If Labour wins in what has been an over-50% solid red-voting area since the second world war, that will calm nerves on its febrile back (and front) benches. If Labour loses, heavy blame will fall on Keir Starmer for fixing the party’s ruling NEC to bar Andy Burnham’s selection, ensuring he couldn’t challenge for the leadership without a Westminster seat.

Few doubt the popular Greater Manchester mayor would have won next week in Gorton and Denton on his home patch. Blocking him is widely seen as grubby Westminster politicking that has weakened, not strengthened, Starmer’s grip on the leadership. For many erstwhile supporters that jiggery-pokery was a turning point, as Starmer seemed willing to risk Reform UK scoring another win in order to stop Burnham, though “stop Farage” has to be Labour’s overwhelming priority.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

What happens next hardly matters: the mystique and awe surrounding the royals had been shattered. The former prince’s arrest must change everything

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is a seismic moment for the royal family as well as for himself. On one hand, it is hard to believe any greater harm can befall the family after weeks of drip-feed from the US Department of Justice’s Epstein files. On the other, a royal arrest of this sort is unprecedented. Enough is already in the public domain to indicate that police believe that there must be a case to answer to the charge of misconduct in public office.

King Charles, who apparently was not warned in advance that his brother was to be arrested, has been scrupulous in his response. “The law must take its course,” he said, offering prosecutors “full and wholehearted support and cooperation”. Whatever happens now, a line has been crossed in the life of the nation. A once exalted royal, facing serious judicial investigation by authorities acting on behalf of the citizenry. Stripped of status and finery, he faces the spotlight as would any other inhabitant of these isles. One cannot know the outcome, but just this arrest feels like a significant moment.

Once a PM is seen as hapless, there is no way back. But Labour has good plans – and with the political landscape fragmented, it could yet prevail

People like me were targets of the Islamophobia that gripped the west after the US-led ‘war on terror’. Now I fear a chilling sequel is on the way

Twenty-five years ago, George W Bush persuaded European leaders to back his “war on terror”. That disastrous project cost millions of lives and caused mass displacement of people from across the Middle East. It normalised racism and hatred for Muslims, refugees and racialised minorities in the US and Europe. I fear Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, with its calls to defend white, western, Christian civilisation against supposedly contaminating racialised migrants – and the standing ovation he received from European elites – may mark a chilling sequel.

Rubio’s language of a shared and superior American and European civilisation differs from that of his bosses, Donald Trump and JD Vance. His tone is more emollient but his outreach is conspiratorial. Rubio talks of migration and identity and civilisational anxiety, rather than terrorism and hard security threats as Bush once did. In his Munich speech, Rubio flattered Europeans about the continent’s colonial past. He denied preaching a message of xenophobia or hate, and instead framed his call to defend national borders as entirely respectable, dutiful and a “fundamental act of sovereignty”.

Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons Project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company

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.

William Golding’s classic tale is about civilisation, ‘savagery’ and empire – can a colour-blind cast do that justice?

Adolescence creator Jack Thorne’s new BBC series sees him return to the subject of masculinity, this time turning to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The novel, which remains a GCSE set text, has been a staple of secondary school English departments almost since its publication in 1954. The decision to include a diverse cast, including the excellent Winston Sawyers who plays Ralph, will probably be viewed by many as a progressive move, ensuring that not only white actors are offered roles and not only white people are represented on screen. But for all its progressive aspirations, an adaptation like this obscures some of the most interesting themes discernible in the book.

It’s important to state at the outset that I am certainly not suggesting there are too many Black and Asian people on television. The opposite is often true. Instead, I’m questioning what aspects of Golding’s original story are obscured by the inclusion of Black and Asian actors in the series.

Darren Chetty is a writer and academic, and co-author with Karen Sands O’Connor of Beyond the Secret Garden: Racially Minoritised People in British Children’s Books

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.

The homeland security department is reportedly seeking information on critical social media accounts. Look no further

The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security has sent Google, Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) and other media corporations subpoenas for the names on accounts that criticize ICE enforcement. The department wants to identify Americans who oppose what it’s doing.

I’ll save them time.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now

The police investigation into the king’s brother forces Britain to confront whether privilege can coexist with democratic scrutiny and the rule of law

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor the king’s brother, should be the moment deference ends and accountability begins – a correction long overdue. For more than 15 years, allegations surrounding Mr Mountbatten-Windsor were managed away by silence, an out-of-court settlement and his withdrawal from royal duties. In short, his behaviour was viewed as an image problem to be handled privately. That era now looks to be over.

That the eighth in line to the throne was sitting in a police cell on his 66th birthday shows how far he has fallen. The formal investigation means that the question is no longer about protecting the monarchy but one of what happened, and who might be responsible for unlawful acts. Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s descent into ignominy has unfolded slowly but inexorably. His stupidity and arrogance led him to believe that he could talk his way out of his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, he faces a legal and constitutional reckoning.

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.

The deregulation agenda being pushed by Germany’s chancellor and Italy’s prime minister is economically and ethically flawed

When the European Union launched its green deal in 2019, putting into law the goal of climate neutrality by the middle of the century, it showed strategic foresight as well as global leadership. Russia’s war in Ukraine has starkly underlined the extent to which the continent’s energy security – and its future prosperity – is dependent on the transition away from fossil fuels. Lately, however, EU leaders’ environmental approach appears to be echoing the youthful St Augustine’s plea on chastity: make us greener, but not yet.

The recent European Industry Summit in Antwerp made unusually big headlines thanks to Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s xenophobic outburst over immigration. But it was also notable for fierce attacks on one of the most important pillars of EU environmental policy. The bloc’s emissions trading system (ETS) – which makes polluters pay for the C02 they emit – has achieved dramatic results in driving down overall emissions since 2005 and encouraging green innovation. Worryingly, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, appeared to sympathise with demands from Sir Jim and other CEOs for a radical relaxation of the rules.

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.

Readers respond to the call by Keir Starmer and military chiefs for faster and larger investment in rearmament

We are told to spend even more, and more quickly, on the armed forces, whose current budget for this year is expected to amount to more than £60bn (‘Britain ‘needs to go faster’ on defence spending, Starmer says, 16 February). The Ministry of Defence must surely first show it can put its house in order.

The government is considering whether to scrap Ajax, the army’s planned new armoured vehicle, even though more than £6bn of taxpayers’ money has already been spent on the project. Ajax is eight years late, its defects so serious that vibration and noise have made soldiers training on it sick, with some suffering hearing loss.

Readers respond to the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office

I note that Andrew Mountbatten-Thingy has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Picture the scene…

“Don’t you know who I am?”

We can do without another boring adaptation of repressed middle-class sexuality, whoever happens to play Cathy, says Josh Guiry. Plus a letter from Chris Goldie

Angelika May rightly states that a considerable portion of working actors are privately educated (Wuthering slights: why are film-makers afraid of casting Yorkshire actors as Cathy Earnshaw?, 17 February). She neglects to mention, however, that Jessica Knappett, Wuthering Heights’ sole Bradford actor, is also privately educated.

Angelika points out that “northern characters, particularly women, are coded as working class”, to which I say, there’s northing wrong with that. Working-class culture, humour and identity should be celebrated. The key is to avoid what Angelika goes on to describe as “comic, chaotic or intellectually limited”. These stereotypes are deeply rooted in the British class system, and to overcome them, working class artists must smash the structures which uphold them.

The boundaries between satire and nationalism are ever more blurred, writes Alex Heaton

Stuart Heritage rightly observes the satire that is inherent in For He is an Englishman, the “patriotic” song from HMS Pinafore, cropping up in popular culture (‘The rallying cry of the rich and horrible’, 17 February).

For a more xenophobic but equally tongue-in-cheek exploration of the same vein of nationalism, screenwriters need look no further than A Song of Patriotic Prejudice, by Flanders and Swann. In this paean to the English, every other nation of the UK is rubbished through caricature, and the rest of Europe dismissed in a few lines (“The Germans are German, the Russians are red, and the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed!”).

• Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results | Briefing
• Follow us over on Bluesky | And you can email Tanya

Good grey morning readers, let us hurry to northern Italy where the skies are blue and the slopes powdery.

Medals galore today as we round the final corner.

• Team GB men’s team edge tense semi-final battle 8-5

• They go for gold in Saturday’s final against Canada

Call it the Cortina Comeback. At nine o’clock on Thursday morning, Great Britain’s men’s curling team didn’t even know whether they would be in the Olympic semi-finals. By nine o’clock on Thursday night, they had won themselves a place in Saturday’s final against Canada by beating the undefeated Swiss team 8-5.

The British, who scraped through the round robin only because the Italian team lost their last group stage game to the Swiss on Thursday morning, had promised that they would be an entirely different proposition if they got to the knockout rounds, and they were as good as their word.

• 20-year-old delivers near-flawless free skate

• Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai win silver and bronze

Alysa Liu completed a stunning comeback to competitive figure skating by winning the first Olympic women’s figure skating gold medal for the United States in 24 years on Thursday night.

The 20-year-old from Clovis, California, who vanished from the sport nearly four years ago uncertain if she’d ever return, delivered a career-best long program to overtake Japanese rivals Kaori Sakamoto and Ami Nakai. Skating in a shimmering gold dress to Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park Suite, Liu cleanly landed all seven of her triple jumps, including three in combination, and drew a standing ovation before finishing with 226.79 points overall.

Joep Wennemars went under the previous Olympic record in the men’s 1500m speed skating. But so did three others

Picture this: you are on the verge of breaking an Olympic record. The cheers, the spotlight, your name etched in history. The magical initials – OR – next to your name until it is next broken. You have got a gold medal waiting to be draped around your neck? Wait, no gold? Silver, maybe? Nope? Surely bronze? No?! Fourth place?! Ouch.

Such is the life of Joep Wennemars of the Netherlands, who went under the previous Olympic record in the men’s 1500m speed skating. But so did three others.

• Nikita Filippov wins silver as neutral in sport’s debut

• Switzerland’s Marianne Fatton wins women’s sprint

We can partly thank Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for popularising the Winter Olympics’ newest sport, which made its debut amid an unrelenting snowstorm, a touch of mayhem and no little controversy in Bormio.

In 1894, the year after he had killed off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, Conan Doyle wrote about his own perilous 15-mile journey across the 8,000-feet high Maienfelder Furka Pass one that involved skiing and mountaineering.

• Olympic champion breaks indoor 800m mark in France

• Former record set 24 years ago on Hodgkinson’s birthday

Britain’s Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson obliterated the world indoor 800m record, which has stood since 2002, by nearly a second in a stunning performance in Liévin.

Hodgkinson had made no secret that she believed the record of 1min 55.82sec, set by Slovenia’s Jolanda Ceplak on the same day Hodgkinson was born – 3 March 2002 – was there for the taking after a prep race at the British championships last week.

Tottenham’s Tudor age begins with a north London derby, Guardiola ponders Haaland’s role and Wirtz has a chance to flummox Forest

Aston Villa, third in the Premier League, chasing Champions League qualification and the Europa League title, will be expected to beat Leeds on home soil. But Unai Emery’s side have struggled of late in games where the pressure is on and the onus is upon them to be the aggressor. After exiting the FA Cup to Newcastle, Marco Bizot’s moment of madness all but ending their hopes of reaching the fifth round, it is back to league duty. They eked out an ugly win over Brighton, just the kind of result they would be happy with this weekend, but recently they also lost at home to 10-man Brentford and to Everton. Before that they drew at lowly Crystal Palace, though Oliver Glasner’s side have been a bogey team for Villa. This week Bizot apologised for his rush of blood. Which Villa will turn up against Leeds? Ben Fisher

Aston Villa v Leeds, Saturday 3pm (all times GMT)

Brentford v Brighton, Saturday 3pm

Chelsea v Burnley, Saturday 3pm

West Ham v Bournemouth, Saturday 5.30pm

For Nottingham Forest, and particularly Vítor Pereira and the 1,200 supporters who signed up to this trip, an evening in Istanbul they will not forget in a hurry.

After just three training sessions, Pereira’s first match in charge could scarcely have been more impressive than the statement victory Forest recorded at Fenerbahce to put themselves in command to reach the Europa League last 16. By the end, the yellow and navy stronghold had emptied and the Forest fans present savoured every moment. “Can we play you every week?” they sang, and then: “Where’s your famous atmosphere?”

• ‘We will see huge amount of damage from social media’

• England captain’s 100th cap in crunch clash with Ireland

The England captain, Maro Itoje, has warned of the corrosive effect of social media on professional athletes and wider society before the crucial Six Nations encounter with Ireland on Saturday.

Itoje will win his 100th England cap at Twickenham in what has become a must-win game for the hosts after last weekend’s deflating defeat by Scotland at Murrayfield. The buildup has been marred by racist abuse on social media of the Ireland second row Edwin Edogbo, after the 23-year-old made his debut from the replacements’ bench in their win against Italy in round two.

Jess Park provided a timely demonstration of her qualities as her superb, long-range goal capped a confident individual performance that helped Manchester United progress to the Women’s Champions League quarter-finals with a resounding win over Atlético Madrid.

The German champions, Bayern Munich, will be Marc Skinner’s team’s quarter-final opponents, between 23 March and 1 April, with United reaching the last eight for the first time. That significant landmark for the club was fittingly accompanied by a special goal from Park, whose curling strike completed a 5-0 aggregate victory and boosted her chances of starting for England in March.

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Power-hitting co-hosts are hot favourites despite playing in strongest group, while Sri Lanka and New Zealand will fancy chance of making final

Pakistan

• Hull KR 30-24 Brisbane Broncos

• Rovers add World Club Challenge to last year’s treble

Rugby league is never short on incredible stories but even by the sport’s lofty standards, Hull KR’s rise to the greatest club side in the game feels too far-fetched for even the greatest of Hollywood script-writers.

For 40 years, Hull KR have not just been in the shadows in this rugby league-obsessed city, second fiddle to their bitter rivals whose home they filled to be crowned world champions for the very first time, they have been in the sport’s entire wilderness. Until now.

• ‘When you see a player upset, normally it’s for a reason’

• Head coach reacts to Vinícius Júnior’s racism claims

Liam Rosenior has called for players and coaches found guilty of racism to be banned from football for life and said experiencing abuse on a football pitch “is the worst feeling you can ever possibly imagine”.

The Real Madrid forward Vinícius Júnior left the pitch after alleging that Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni racially abused him during their Champions League match on Tuesday. Prestianni has denied racist abuse and Benfica have said he was a “victim” of a “smear campaign”. The Argentinian faces a 10-game ban if found guilty by Uefa.

Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have made limited progress so far

Defence ministers of the E5 grouping – France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom – are meeting in the Polish city of Kraków this morning.

They will be joined by their Ukrainian counterpart, Mykhailo Fedorov, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and Nato’s deputy secretary general Radmila Šekerinska.

Government announces tougher measures to tackle unlicensed sites as ‘prolific waste criminal’ is ordered to pay £1.4m

A new 33-strong drone unit is being deployed to investigate the scourge of illegal waste dumping across England, the government has announced.

The improvements to the investigation of illegal waste dumping – which costs the UK economy £1bn a year – come as the ringleader of a major waste crime gang was ordered to pay £1.4m after being convicted at Birmingham crown court.

Muslims donate four times more than the average adult in Britain but banking restrictions mean many humanitarian projects already affected by aid cuts will not get donations

Buckets passed around mosques, fundraisers shared on WhatsApp groups and televised appeals will raise hundreds of millions of pounds for charity over the coming weeks of Ramadan.

Much of the £2bn raised by British Muslims each year comes when giving surges during the holy month, but the full potential of that support – especially at a time of US, British and European government aid cuts – is being limited by challenges charities say they face in sending money abroad.

Exclusive: Sir Ian McKellen portrays artist in BBC documentary that draws on trove of previously unheard recordings

LS Lowry was convinced his paintings would be worthless after his death, he confided in a previously unheard interview.

Although the artist had enjoyed some success in his final years, Lowry could never have imagined he would become one of Britain’s best-loved artists or that his paintings would sell for millions of pounds.

The president’s announcement came after predecessor Barack Obama went viral last week for saying aliens are ‘real’

Donald Trump has announced he is directing the defense department and other agencies to release whatever files they have on the search for alien life.

In a post on his social media platform, Trump said that he will ask the defense secretary and others “to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”

Faaborgs rail against oppressive industrial agricultural system with unexpected evolution into indie artisan food firm

As a sixth-generation Iowa farmer, Tanner Faaborg is all too aware that agricultural traditions are hard to shake. So when he set in motion plans to change his family’s farm from a livestock operation housing more than 8,000 pigs each year to one that grows lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms, he knew some of his peers might laugh at him. He just did not necessarily expect his brother to be chief among them.

“My older brother has worked with pigs his entire adult life, managing about 70,000 of them across five counties,” Faaborg says. “But we got to a point where he went from laughing at me to saying: well, I guess maybe I’ll quit my job and help you out.”

Plastic production has doubled over the last 20 years – and will likely double again. For author Beth Gardiner, metal water bottles and canvas tote bags are not the solution. So what is?

Like many of us who are mindful of our plastic consumption, Beth Gardiner would take her own bags to the supermarket and be annoyed whenever she forgot to do so. Out without her refillable bottle, she would avoid buying bottled water. “Here I am, in my own little life, worrying about that and trying to use less plastic,” she says. Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had ploughed more than $180bn (£130bn) into plastic plants in the US since 2010. “It was a kick in the teeth,” says Gardiner. “You’re telling me that while I am beating myself up because I forgot to bring my water bottle, all these huge oil companies are pouring billions …” She looks appalled. “It was just such a shock.”

Two months before that piece was published, a photograph of a seahorse clinging to a plastic cotton bud had gone viral; two years before that England followed Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and introduced a charge for carrier bags. “I was one of so many people who were trying to use less plastic – and it just felt like such a moment of revelation: these companies are, on the contrary, increasing production and wanting to push [plastic use] up and up.” Then, says Gardiner, as she started researching her book Plastic Inc: Big Oil, Big Money and the Plan to Trash our Future, “it only becomes more shocking.”

Exclusive: Cross-party group ‘deeply concerned’ power plant may have misled ministers and regulators over source of wood pellets

Ed Miliband is under pressure from MPs to suspend subsidies worth £2m a day paid to the owner of the Drax power plant in North Yorkshire after court documents cast doubt on the company’s sustainability claims.

A cross-party group of 14 MPs and peers have called on the energy minister to halt the subsidies for Britain’s biggest power plant while the financial watchdog investigates the company’s claims about how it sources the millions of tonnes of wood pellets burned to generate electricity.

Government plans legislation giving landowners and tenants rights to cull deer to protect crops and property

It will be much easier to shoot deer in England under government plans that aim to curb the damage the animals are doing to the country’s woodlands.

Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, plans to bring forward new legislation to give landowners and tenants legal rights to shoot deer to protect crops and property.

First female cabinet secretary faced allegations of bullying behaviour in 2017 while working in New York consulate

Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Antonia Romeo as the country’s most senior civil servant has prompted dismay among former colleagues who complained about what they considered bullying behaviour when she was a diplomat in New York.

Several people who worked with Romeo at the New York consulate nearly 10 years ago have told the Guardian they are upset by the prime minister’s decision to make her cabinet secretary despite knowing about their complaints.

After a decade of austerity closed more than 1,000 centres, the government has promised £500m to renew youth services. We tour a glossy new venue in Preston – and a girls-only one in London

Preston, Lancashire is no stranger to trailblazing architecture. The city’s bus station, the largest in Europe when it opened in 1969, is a brutalist masterpiece. Next month, a new public building opens opposite the bus station built with similar aspirations to transform local lives: a youth centre.

To a generation raised when cuts had gutted services – between 2010-11 and 2023-24, local government spending on youth services fell by 73% and more than 1,000 youth centres closed – the idea of a place designed just for young people may seem as anachronistic as coach travel, but 2026 brings big changes to youth services in the UK.

Girl, 15, and boy, 17, found dead at Little Eden holiday park in suspected carbon monoxide poisoning, police say

Two teenagers have died at a holiday park on the Yorkshire coast in a suspected carbon monoxide poisoning.

A 15-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy were found dead inside a rental property at Little Eden holiday park in Bridlington on Wednesday, police said.

European Council president António Costa stops short of setting a date, but says we ‘cannot lose the momentum.’ What we know on day 1,458

The European Union is eager to begin Ukraine’s EU membership talks “as soon as possible”, European Council president António Costa has said, although he stopped short of setting a date. The US plan for an end to the war in Ukraine calls for Kyiv’s EU accession by January 2027, though experts generally consider that date highly unrealistic. “I cannot say if it’s in 2027 or even in 2026 or later, but what is important is we cannot lose the momentum,” Costa told reporters during a visit to Oslo.

The Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine is operating on its sole remaining outside power line after losing a backup line more than a week ago, the UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Thursday. In a statement, Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the Ferrosplavna-1 electric line went down on 10 February “reportedly as a result of military activity”. The plant, Europe’s largest with six reactors, was now operating with outside power only from the Dniprovska power line, he said.

More than 1,000 Kenyans have been lured to fight for Russia in its war with Ukraine, according to an intelligence report to the Kenyan parliament that highlights the scale of a Russian operation taking African men to the frontline. The majority leader of Kenya’s national assembly, Kimani Ichung’wah, said “rogue recruitment agencies and individuals in Kenya” were continuing to send Kenyan nationals to fight in the conflict. The figure of more than 1,000 individuals is a significant increase on the number given in a statement by Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry in November, which said that more than 200 Kenyans had travelled to fight in the war.

Poland’s defence minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has told the AFP news agency that European allies – especially Italy, France and Spain – need to invest more in their defence spending. “The more Europe invests, the more seriously and respectfully America will treat us in these areas,” he said. Poland, which borders Russia and its close ally Belarus, has heavily ramped up its defence spending since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Sweden has announced 12.9bn kronor ($1.4bn) in military aid for Ukraine, focused primarily on air defence capabilities. Defence minister Pal Jonson said that the military aid package was “the third largest so far that Sweden has delivered to Ukraine.”

Belarus, a close ally of Russia rarely invited to international gatherings, has said it had intended to attend the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, but failed to receive the necessary visas. Belarus has long been subject to western sanctions over its human rights record and measures were intensified after president Alexander Lukashenko allowed his country’s territory to be used for Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Foreign minister Maxim Ryzhenkov had been due to attend the meeting in Washington, his ministry said, adding “what kind of peace and what kind of sequence of steps are we talking about if the organisers cannot even complete basic formalities for us to take part?”

Freedom.gov appears to be administered by a branch of the Department of Homeland Security

The US has built a portal that will allow Europeans to view blocked content including alleged hate speech and terrorism, according to Reuters.

The portal, “freedom.gov”, will allow worldwide users to circumvent government controls on their content. The site features a graphic of a ghostly horse galloping above the Earth, and the motto: “Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.”

Guardian review of US justice department files reveals Epstein interacted with six CBP officers. The officer investigated denied any knowledge of trafficking underage girls

Federal investigators examined Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer who worked at the St Thomas airport to which Epstein regularly flew on his private planes before traveling by boat or helicopter to his private island, newly released documents reveal.

As part of that investigation, which did not result in any charges, investigators also issued subpoenas related to three additional CBP officers working at the Cyril E King airport (STT) on St Thomas, documents show. The Guardian also identified two other CBP officers on St Thomas and in Florida who were in contact with Epstein, based on emails and text messages between Epstein, his staff and the officers. It does not appear the FBI ever investigated those two officers.

Visit was ostensibly to promote economy, but US president focused on repeated, unverified claims of voter fraud

Donald Trump forcefully defended his tariffs on Thursday, claiming “tariffs are my favorite word in the dictionary” and promoting their use to empower American manufacturing at an event in north-west Georgia.

“Without tariffs, this country would be in so much trouble right now,” Trump said during his remarks at Coosa Steel Corporation, a steel-processing and distribution firm in Rome, Georgia.

LA County says the gaming company does not carry out adequate moderation and its age-verification systems are not fit for purpose, which Roblox denies

Officials in Los Angeles have said they are suing Roblox, alleging the popular online platform exposes children to sexual content, exploitation and online predators.

In a lawsuit, Los Angeles County said the company does not carry out adequate moderation and its age-verification systems are not fit for purpose.

Kathy Hochul backed away from allowing robotaxi services in smaller cities, though Waymo still plans to move ahead in New York City

New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has pulled her proposal to allow commercial robotaxi services in smaller cities outside New York City, a spokesperson for the governor said on Thursday.

“Based on conversations with stakeholders, including in the legislature, it was clear that the support was not there to advance this proposal,” the spokesperson said.

Attorney general JB McCuskey, a Republican, calls case the first of its kind by a government agency against company

West Virginia’s attorney general filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing Apple of allowing its iCloud service to become a vehicle for distributing child sexual abuse material.

The state alleges that the company facilitated the spread of child sexual abuse material by declining to deploy tools that scan photos and videos and detect such material in iCloud users’ collections.

Industrial trends survey shows firms are expecting to raise prices, with order books well below average

British manufacturing orders remain well below average and price pressure continues to persist, according to a closely watched survey.

The CBI industrial trends survey found that manufacturers’ orders for the month were below average in February, while most firms expected to raise their prices and for output to decline over the next three months.

Anthony Chen offers up a forthright but warm film that navigates romantic crises and Singapore’s infatuation with the rich

The warmth, richness and approachability of this lovely film from Singaporean director Anthony Chen, a graduate of Britain’s National Film and Television School, returns him to the family drama style of his 2013 debut Ilo Ilo; with care and connoisseurship, he again draws on the influences of Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-liang, but Chen’s instincts are less oblique. He dots the I’s and crosses the T’s; the film-making is forthright and wholehearted though not unsubtle.

The film is set in Singapore, criticising the city-state’s conformism and infatuation with the rich and western prestige, and satirically showing the high-wire dangers of its entrepreneurialism, as attempted by the poor. Koh Jia Ler plays Junyang, a goofy, good-natured but shiftless twentysomething guy who lives with his widowed father Boon Kiat (Andi Lim) in a cramped rented flat. Junyang is about to finish his military service and now needs to figure out what to do with his life – but he certainly doesn’t to work on his dad’s noodle stall, that humble business that puts food on their table. His girlfriend Lydia (Regene Lim) is far more aspirational, a gifted pianist with her sights set on university. Lydia’s stern, churchgoing single mother – hardened by her own husband walking out on them both – does not approve of Junyang one bit.

Puerto Rican singer sells out concerts in Portuguese-speaking Brazil with breakthrough ‘anti-American agenda of emancipation’

There is a saying in Brazil that Brazilians realise they are Latin only when they travel to the US or Europe.

Among the many reasons for this is that the largest country in Latin America is also the only one in the region where Portuguese is spoken rather than Spanish.

A witty, optimistic tale of a father-daughter bond. Plus, a fascinating documentary about an ex-Beatle’s attempt to find himself as a solo artist

Charlotte Regan’s delightful debut feature takes a slice of social realism and gives it a topping of whimsical wit and touching optimism. Lola Campbell is a real find as 12-year-old Georgie, who secretly lives by herself on her east London estate after her mum’s death, stealing bikes with best mate Ali (Alin Uzun) to pay her way. She’s a resourceful, artful dodger so is mightily put out when her long-absent dad, Jason (Harris Dickinson), turns up to take care of her. The development of a parental bond is slow and painful: Jason struggles with the mysteries of fatherhood, while Georgie – despite her brave front – is still wrapped up in grief. With this charmer of a drama, Regan is one to watch.
Friday 27 February, 11pm, BBC Two

A heartwarming returned for the much-loved medical drama that launched Zach Braff’s career, while Sam Claflin and Kaley Cuoco star in an irresistible thriller

However much you loved Scrubs, it’s hard to argue that the show ended well. Season nine saw characters departing, the remaining cast moving to a new hospital and a general sense of wheel-spinning anticlimax. So it’s heartwarming to see best buds John Dorian (Zach Braff) and Christopher Turk (Donald Faison) goofing off in a corridor together with their comic chemistry intact – even with middle-aged back problems. There’s a new crop of interns to mentor, this time approached via the perspective of men who are older but not necessarily wiser. It’s business as usual, complete with dream sequences and the trademark tone which sits somewhere between snark and sentimentality.
Disney+, from Thursday 26 February

Stranger Things’ Joe Keery is joined by a stellar cast battling an outbreak of virulent brain spores, but the film doesn’t offer much more than endless wisecracks and a splatterhouse grossfest

‘Pay attention! This shit is real!” screams an on-screen warning at the start of this overstuffed horror-comedy-action outing. As much as the deadly fungus it foists on Earth, an outbreak of sardonic attitude runs rampant here. It falls to two bantering storage facility workers, played by Stranger Things’ Joe Keery and Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell, to contain a potential apocalypse event – with intermittent high-grade thespian help from Lesley Manville, Vanessa Redgrave and old faithful Liam Neeson. (Somebody clearly called in a few favours here.)

Things kick off as the Skylab space station falls out of orbit in 1979 – one of its research containers winds up in the Australian outback. Fast-forward to the early 00s and a team of bioterror operatives, including Robert (Neeson) and Trini (Manville), wipe out the virulent fungus that escapes – though not before it turns one of them into a human smoothie. But the Kansas facility where they stow a sample is later decommissioned, and the ground floor converted into storage lockers. Before you can say “heinous government negligence”, night-shifters Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell) are itching to check out the random alarm sounding somewhere behind the walls.

How did Walkers decide on making hot honey crisps? Plus, Jennifer Garner and Charli xcx chat to Graham Norton. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, Channel 4
Hot honey crisps, anyone? The divisive new flavour is one of a few launched as part of Walkers’ recent rebrand. In this programme – verging on an advertorial – the cameras are invited to witness the birth of crisps from soil to shelf, and go inside the kitchen to find out how flavours like masala chicken and sticky teriyaki are invented. Hollie Richardson

(Cuculi)
The Bristol-based folk ensemble travel widely on their first album, exploring global influences with sparkling, springlike warmth

Hedera are a band of five tightly knit friends – violinist Lulu Austin, violin/viola player Maisie Brett, violinist/double bassist Beth Roberts, accordionist/harpist Tamsin Elliott, and clarinettist Isis Wolf-Light – named after the Latin botanical term for ivy. The group’s debut album combines influences from Bulgaria to Bali, Ireland to Georgia, and establishes its mood of knotted, hypnotic locked groove from its opening track, Sterretjie (named after an Afrikaans word for the coastal tern bird, which also means “little stars”). Brett’s violin passes the track’s melody to Wolf-Light’s clarinet and Elliott’s accordion with a bright, sparkling swiftness.

Many other moments of joy, lithe and spring-like, lift these 12 tracks. Roberts’ waltz about a Cornish meadow, Mayflies in June, travels from minor key to major and back again, buoyed along by Elliott’s harp-playing. (Elliott similarly impressed on 2023’s So Far We Have Come, her Anglo-Egyptian album with oud player Tarek Elazhary.) Sekar Jagat (Balinese for “flower of the universe”) twitches sweetly into life on prepared harp and plucked strings, then makes hay with a melody originally written for gamelan; on Shen Khar Venakhi, a 1,000-year-old Georgian hymn that survived Soviet purges, all five women’s voices join together in a dense, glowing mass.

(Dead Oceans)
Whether retreating from fame or heartbreak, the US musician writes gorgeous songs about the appeal of disconnection, flecked with horror and humour

Last month, Mitski released Where’s My Phone?, the first single from her eighth album Nothing’s About to Happen to Me. Its raging alt-rock is a more robust take on the lo-fi fuzz of her third album Bury Me at Makeout Creek, while UK listeners might detect a certain Britpoppy swing about its rhythm, and it ends with a guitar solo so jarringly distorted it sounds as if something is wrong with the stream. It was accompanied by a video that featured the singer as a headscarf-sporting rural mother, trying to protect her family from the attentions of the outside world with increasing violence: a milkman gets attacked, her daughter’s potential suitor is beaten bloody. It’s both funny and unsettling: there are references to Rapunzel, Grey Gardens, Grant Wood’s American Gothic and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle – a litany of the wilfully isolated.

The visuals set the tone for the rest of Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, an album on which you’re never far from its author expressing a longing to disappear; to be, as she puts it on Instead of Here, “where nobody can reach”. On opener In a Lake, she extols moving to the city from a small town, not in search of bright lights and excitement, but obscurity, a means of obliterating your own history: “Some days you just go the long way to stay off memory lane.” On I’ll Change for You, she hymns bars – “such magic places” – precisely because of their anonymity: “You can be with other people without having anyone at all.” And on Rules, she’ll “get a new haircut … be somebody else”. All this is set to beautifully crafted music that splits the difference between alt-rock, country-infused acoustic lamentation and grander ambition: the brilliance of Rules lies in the disparity between the hopelessness of its lyric and the thickly orchestrated, perky, early 70s easy listening backing.

(Domino)
Featuring taunts in Welsh, ‘bard rap’ and spirited jigs, the British quartet’s ragged, rich music underpins their vision for change

What do you do when the world’s falling apart? Take to the streets? Run to the hills? The latest album by this British folk-rock quartet suggests that a blend of fantasy and realism can provide a better way of living.

Their best-known member, Richard Dawson, addresses Facebook-dwelling flag-fiends on Dead in a Post-Truth World – “the mythical country you claim allegiance of is gone / It was never here” – his grave tone offset by Rhodri Dawson’s Welsh taunts in a nursery-rhyme melody. Between the euphoric singalong choruses of Scales Will Fall, Dawn Bothwell delivers what she calls “bard rap” – a steady vocal flow somewhere between spoken word and hip-hop – to decry capitalism and celebrate grassroots resistance. Another stunning, whirling chorus led by Sally Pilkington sits at the heart of End of the Rhythm, a spirited jig that lays out a manifesto for collective action. That collectivism is in the music itself: ragged yet richly populated arrangements of guitars, sax, trumpet and more, with plenty of guests (including children on flute and vocals).

Dupree/Orf Vienna RSO/Gruber
(Capriccio)
This collection of the 83-year-old composer’s larger-scale works highlights his inventive and restless writing

At 83, Austrian iconoclast HK Gruber shows no sign of losing his anarchic edge nor indeed his ability to entertain. This eclectic album includes his significant piano concerto, premiered by Emanuel Ax with the New York Philharmonic in 2017, and an absurdist potpourri extracted from his 2014 opera Tales from the Vienna Woods, both conducted by the composer himself.

Quintessentially Gruber, the 25-minute concerto opens in high anxiety, plunging into a twitchy, noirish landscape full of fragmented, Schoenbergian melodies before emerging into a blues-inflected daylight. This is music with ants in its pants, carried off in style by Frank Dupree whose jazz experience stands him in good stead here.

The dark past of a seemingly perfect couple is gradually revealed in this observant debut of obsession and control

Glimpse them chatting in a restaurant or posing on Instagram, and you might think they have it all. The pair live in London but often travel, drawing the eyes of other guests, their skin glowing, their limbs artfully at ease. She writes affirmations on hotel stationery; he claims to taste notes of bark and tobacco in his chianti. As Sean Gilbert’s dark, observant debut opens in Istanbul, this apparently perfect couple bicker and sweat, for secrets lurk behind their facade – and one of them might be murder.

An unexpected reunion gets their sightseeing off to a shaky start. The unnamed narrator and his wife, Elle, have not seen Benny for 15 years when they cross paths outside the Hagia Sophia. An irksome university acquaintance who has become a second-rate rapper, Benny has the grip of a limpet. As the trio browse stalls and pull on saliva-slicked shishas, talk turns to the past.

The follow-up to Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line explores the history of colonial exploration through a perilous 19th-century odyssey

With her peripatetic and philosophical second novel, Deepa Anappara travels into uncharted territory. Her dazzling 2020 debut, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was part caper and part social satire, set in an Indian shantytown. In The Last of Earth, she points her writerly compass towards the mountains of mid-19th-century Tibet – a region then closed off to European imperialists – to meditate on the chequered history of colonial exploration, cartography and the impermanence of human existence.

“It’s in the nature of white men to believe they own the world, that no door should be shut to them.” For years, the British train, coax and bribe Indians to cross over, conducting surveying expeditions on their behalf; they also venture into the “Forbidden Kingdom of Tibet” in thinly veiled disguises. Intricately researched and meticulously plotted, this immersive novel is told through the alternating perspectives of two protagonists. Balram is an Indian schoolteacher and surveyor-spy who plays guide to an English captain, clumsily dressed as a monk and intent on being the first man to personally chart the route of the revered river Tsangpo and discover where it meets the sea. Meanwhile Katherine, of part Indian heritage, is on a mission to become the first European woman to reach Lhasa and set eyes on the Potala Palace after being denied membership of the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London.

The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara is published by Oneworld (£14.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

A producer shares his tips for tight storylines, but they’re marred by verbal incontinence and hyperbole

Creative writing handbooks are almost an industry in themselves: the fledgling author, dramatist or screenwriter can choose from hundreds of titles, all offering to unlock the secrets of storytelling. These books are of limited utility for literary fiction, where plot is secondary, but if you’re writing for the screen or stage, or working on genre fiction, they can be helpful. Commercial, plot-driven storytelling is, this is an inherently formulaic business, and a working knowledge of narrative structure is a crucial foundation for an aspiring writer.

In his bestselling 2014 treatise on the mechanics of narrative, Into the Woods, John Yorke demonstrated the uncanny prevalence of five-act structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement) in many popular movies, plays and television dramas. He reprises this theme in his new book, which starts with a lengthy disquisition on plot architecture. The five-act framework, Yorke explains, is elegantly conducive to an emotionally compelling journey, with the protagonist typically undergoing a transformative revelation at the story’s mid-point. He illustrates this with reference to hit TV programmes such as I May Destroy You, and films including Star Wars and Terminator 2.

Serpell leaves no stone unturned in her deep and enriching portrait of the Nobel laureate’s oeuvre

I have waited years for this book. But before I tell you what it is, I had better tell you what it is not. On Morrison is not a biography. Except for scattered references, there is little here about Chloe Anthony Wofford’s birth and early life in Lorain, Ohio; her education at Howard and Cornell universities; her editorial work at Random House; or her phenomenal success as a novelist. Nor is this book for fans who turn to Toni Morrison for inspirational quotes or to score political points.

Instead, On Morrison offers readers who can tell their Soaphead Church from their Schoolteacher something they have long hoped for: a rigorous appraisal of the work. Despite her enormous contribution to American letters, Morrison’s novels are still too often read for what they have to say about black life, rather than how they say it. Song of Solomon and Jazz are more likely to be found on African American studies syllabi than creative writing ones. In her introduction to On Morrison, Namwali Serpell identifies the reason: “She is difficult to read. She is difficult to teach.”

Nintendo Switch 2; Nintendo
This ruthlessly competitive game will have everyone from your granny to semi-pros trying to set fire to their opponent’s side of the court with powered-up ‘fever rackets’

Tennis has been a regular hobby of Mario’s for the past 30 years, beginning with the headache-inducing Mario’s Tennis on the Virtual Boy and most recently resurfacing as the surprisingly complex Mario Tennis Aces on the Switch. Now he’s back in his whites (and reds) with a charming new take on the sport that dials back the difficulty level and adds lots of fun modes and features, aiming to appease complete newcomers and Djokovic-esque veterans.

At first, the range of options is almost bewildering. You can opt to play in one-off matches with up to three other players or NPCs, or enter a more structured tournament of singles or doubles play. Then there’s the extremely fun Mix It Up, which offers a range of fun tennis derivatives. These include Forest Court where piranha plants appear and gobble any balls that get close, and Pinball where bumpers and barriers pop up as you play. Trial Towers, meanwhile, presents a tower of increasingly tough tennis challenges which all have to be completed to open the next two buildings; fail more than three times and you’re sent back to the beginning – yes, it’s Mario Tennis: The Roguelike.

Milano Cortina​ has cutting‑edge replays, chase‑cam drones and exuberant commentary ​bringing a wave of unexpected nostalgia for anyone who grew up on 90s extreme‑sports games

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As someone whose childhood holidays consisted of narrowboating along the Grand Union canal or wandering the harbour-side at Whitby looking for vampires, I have never been on a skiing break. The idea of plummeting down a hill on anything but a plastic sledge is totally alien to me. And yet, my wife and I have been gripped by the Winter Olympics, especially the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events. And I think I know why. Those events are really channelling the look and feel of the wintery sports sims I’ve always loved – especially those that arrived during a golden period in the mid-1990s.

This was the era in which snowboarding was exploding in popularity, especially among twentysomethings with disposable incomes and no responsibilities – which coincidentally was the games industry’s target market at the time. Perhaps the first title to take advantage of this trend was Namco’s 1996 arcade game Alpine Surfer, which challenged players to stand on a snowboard-shaped controller and swoop as quickly as possible down a mountainside – it was one of the most physically exhausting coin-ops I ever played. Later that year came the self-consciously hip PlayStation sim Cool Boarders, and then in 1998, my absolute favourite, 1080° Snowboarding on the N64, with it’s intuitive analog controls and incredibly authentic sound effects of boards cutting through deep, crisp snow.

We explore the cosy world-building spin-off with Game Freak’s Shigeru Ohmori and his fellow developers – and learn how it began with a Pokémon-hunting dream

Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and everybody knows what to expect from these games by now. The concept is simple: head into a cartoonish paradise full of whimsical creatures, capture them in red-and-white balls and assemble a team of warriors from them, before battling other aspiring Pokémon masters. But the latest entry in the series is different – a game that’s more about building than battling.

In Pokopia, a refreshingly pacific twist on the series, players are dropped into a virtual world where Pokémon are freed from their spherical prisons and happily roam their natural habitats. There’s one minor caveat – you have to create those habitats by hand, building them from what you can find.

The YouTube gaming star’s weird and divisive adaptation of his obscure horror film is a game within a film about a game – and hints at new directions for storytelling

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Something weird struck me early on while watching the movie Iron Lung, which has so far taken $32m at the box office, despite being a grungy low-budget sci-fi thriller adapted from an independent video game few people outside of the horror gaming community have even heard of. Set after a galactic apocalypse, it follows a convict who must buy his freedom by piloting a rusty submarine through an ocean of human blood on a distant planet. Ostensibly, he’s looking for relics that may prove vital for scientific research, but what he finds is much more ghastly. So far, so strange.

The film was also written, directed and financed by one person – the YouTube gaming superstar Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach – who also stars. But that’s not the weird part, either. The weird part is that watching the film Iron Lung feels like watching Fischbach play Iron Lung the game. Maybe it’s the fact that he spends most of the movie sitting at the sub’s controls, trying to figure out how to use them correctly – like a gamer would. Maybe it’s that, as the film progresses, he has to solve a series of environmental puzzles linked by various codes, computer read-outs and little injections of narrative – just like in a video game. Long periods of the movie involve Fischbach trying to decide what to do next, the camera close up on his confused face. This is incredibly similar to watching his YouTube videos about playing Iron Lung, an experience he often found bewildering. It was the most metatextual experience I’ve had in the cinema since The Truman Show – but I’m not sure this is what Fischbach intended.

St John’s Smith Square, London
The London Handel festival opened with Arcangelo’s agile and elegant performance of the operatic oratorio. Christopher Purves dominated as the king, as David, Hugh Cutting’s voice was liquid honey

Oratorios tend to be more sober-minded affairs than operas, but not Handel’s Saul. Originally intended to prop up a faltering Italian opera season, its orchestral novelties included a carillon – a keyboard imitating chiming bells – to celebrate the victorious Israelite army, a harp for the shepherd boy David, three trombones for the famous Dead March and a set of supersized kettledrums borrowed for the occasion from the Tower of London. When it premiered in 1739 it was the longest music theatre work ever written in English.

Arcangelo, the London Handel festival’s principal ensemble in residence, seized on the music’s operatic intensity. Its founder Jonathan Cohen is one of the most expressive of Handelians with a keen ear for instrumental colour and a nose for drama. His pacing was urgent, though never excessively so, phrasing and dynamics were elegant and elastic, and the playing was outstanding (as you might expect for an orchestra packed with early music luminaries). An agile chorus of 30 sounded like double that number.

Abbey theatre, Dublin
The sale of the parental home triggers a generational showdown in Una McKevitt’s droll play about money, inheritance and caring for ageing relatives

On a brief stopover in Dublin to settle some scores, celebrity interior designer Sandra (Aislín McGuckin) makes a forceful impact. Una McKevitt’s black comedy brings members of the Thornton family together to mark the sale of their parental home. If family is the psychological battleground here, the house itself is alive with “triggering” elements, with designer Liam Doona’s faded decor and crammed furnishings playing a key part in the unfolding conflict.

Having inherited the house from her grandmother, Sandra’s estranged daughter Kiera (Caroline Menton) now envisages a new life, free from caring responsibilities and the watchful eye of her grandmother from her full-length portrait, which dominates the room. Upstairs, unseen, Kiera’s uncle Terry is lying in a coma, and about to be moved to a nursing home. A second uncle, Daragh, arrives: “a character actor, in demand”, played with downbeat charm by Garrett Lombard, as Kiera ushers Rio (Jack Weise) out of the house, following a quick hook-up that is so contrived it clearly signals trouble.

Birmingham Rep
The bands that came to symbolise a divided nation compete to top the charts in John Niven’s jokey play but it is woefully short on drama

Apparently, they did a lot of sitting about in 1995. They lounged in Alexandra Palace for the Brit awards when Damon Albarn was magnanimous in victory. They propped up the tables in the members’ area where Blur crashed an Oasis party to celebrate Some Might Say getting to No 1. They had deckchairs for Liam Gallagher to be interviewed, bar stools for hard-drinking pop stars to fall off, and fancy couches for Albarn and Justine Frischmann to splash their cash on. There might have been more, but a big chunk of Fly Davis’s set was obscured from my side of the theatre.

So many chairs but so little drama. John Niven’s play alights on pop’s last great moment of cultural tension. Releasing singles in the same week, Oasis and Blur went into the ring, one representing the working-class north, the other the bourgeois south. Together, they were the flag-wavers of Britpop. In opposition, they symbolised a divided nation. The song that got to No 1 – Oasis’s Roll With It or Blur’s Country House – would define the country’s mood.

The Wicked star plays all 23 characters in a hi-tech London staging of Bram Stoker’s novel by Kip Williams. Here’s a bite-sized look at the critics’ verdicts

Dracula, the Ur-vampire and ultimate outsider of the literary canon, is played by Cynthia Erivo, along with every other character, in this deliciously wicked tale of the blood-sucking count. Except it’s not deliciously wicked in adapter-director Kip Williams’ stage reinvention. Williams has proven himself a Midas-touched spinner of old stories to new. His one-woman version of The Picture of Dorian Gray was deliriously original. His take on Jean Genet’s The Maids was punk inspired. What has happened here?

Arifa Akbar, the Guardian

As in the Australian director’s hit adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray (immaculately interpreted by the Succession star Sarah Snook), the stage is sometimes so crowded with camera operators and stage crew that it’s not always easy to see Erivo. The shallow rake in the stalls makes this theatre a less than ideal setting for Marg Horwell’s handsome scenic design: I spent at least half the evening watching the action on the large screen hanging overhead. Yet it becomes a hallucinatory experience all the same.

Erivo dons wigs and skirts and recalibrates her voice to play Harker’s fiancee Mina and her friend Lucy; then spectacles to play psychiatrist Dr Seward and comic Saruman tresses for a guttural Van Helsing. It’s to her credit, and Williams’, that one sometimes loses track of which character is being broadcast live and which is recorded. The integration is mostly seamless. Personifications of Irish and American characters are knowingly ridiculous, but Dracula always had a vein of camp.

It’s refreshing to see Erivo get to own her queerness on stage, licking her lips lasciviously as a lace-decked Lucy who’s in sexual thrall to an androgynous Dracula – or strutting confidently in a masculine vest with silver chains (a welcome escape from her feminine get-ups in Wicked). She unleashes her ethereal voice to haunting, vulpine effect in the final scenes, where she finally gets to embody Dracula’s power on a bare stage, unobscured by tech and crowds.

The multi-faceted approach speaks to the way that Stoker cut between first-person perspectives using a document-sharing and epistolary form. Equally, Williams’ boundary-breaking artistic toolkit brings out the thematic heart of the matter; it emphasises the way in which the predatory count stokes fears but also embodies deep-rooted desires.

Erivo seems ill at ease with the material. There’s a hesitancy about her performance, as if she were wrong-footed by the technology that surrounds her. A scattering of arch, self-conscious moments and sly humour are part of the deal in Williams’ interpretation, but nothing feels truly felt and, as she switches between characters, the individual voices are not always properly differentiated. The overall effect is slightly ramshackle, sluggish and, in the end, frustratingly short on dash and drama.

Erivo’s range is remarkable – alternately placid, pert, prowling and predatory. A Tony award-winning star of musical theatre in The Color Purple, she despatches one melancholy torch song by Clemence Williams with wistful nonchalance. Otherwise, her athletic efforts are magnified by a filmic soundtrack encompassing Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Chopin, Björk and even a bit of electro-trance music. For truly this is a mind-bogglingly complex show, which goes beyond the kitchen sink in its attempts to create an audio-visual hallucination.

The effects, with Craig Wilkinson as video designer, are impressive: a vampire flying by, Dracula crawling down the wall. The camera operators, wig providers, stage managers and props assistants are all assiduous and wonderfully efficient. Marg Horwell’s design is effectively flexible, Nick Schlieper’s lighting and the sound design by Jessica Dunn suitably dramatic, though Clemence Williams’ score becomes increasingly over-emphatic.

Despite stumbling over the odd line, Erivo is charismatic, game, and essentially does her best as a cog in Williams’ elaborate machine. But if you agree to tie your big comeback to a very specific directorial vision, there’s not much even a superstar actor can do if that vision is faulty.

Ahead of this Sunday’s awards night, we remember Joanna Lumley’s humourless stint at hosting, acrobats dressed as astronauts and the rage of Russell Crowe

Typically, the Baftas have fewer memorable moments than, say, the Oscars. This is partly because the ceremony isn’t broadcast live, so viewers are essentially treated to edited highlights. However, when Russell Crowe won for A Beautiful Mind in 2002, it was his speech that got edited out. That was because he decided to recite the Patrick Kavanagh poem Sanctity, and it went on and on. When Crowe realised what had happened, he tracked down the show’s director at the afterparty, pinned him against a wall, called him a “cunt” and then allegedly kicked three chairs across the room.

Young Glasgow artist Trackie McLeod talks us through Utopia, the boozer he built from scratch where punters can sink a beer, throw darts at Thatcher or Trump – and win chocolate coins from one-armed bandits

‘The art world has a real issue with making things overly conceptual, too complicated and using wanky jargon,” says Trackie McLeod. “It alienates people.” So, for his latest show, Utopia, the 32-year-old Glaswegian has decided to create something more welcoming and familiar: a pub.

Custom-built from scratch, the exhibition is a fully functioning boozer. McLeod will pull pints for punters, there’s a dartboard where you can take aim at images of Thatcher or Trump, and visitors can explore his mixed-media artworks, spanning print, sculpture and sound, and swing by to catch drag acts, DJs and panel discussions.

Exit of Devyani Saltzman, described as Barbican’s ‘driving force’, announced a few weeks after arrival of new CEO

Salman Rushdie, John Akomfrah and Pankaj Mishra are among more than 170 cultural figures who have signed an open letter to the Barbican expressing concern over the departure of its arts director, Devyani Saltzman.

Saltzman, who became director of arts and participation at the Barbican in February 2024, is leaving the institution amid a significant leadership change a few weeks after its new CEO joined.

Remembering and documentation are radical acts in Lebanon, a country with a tumultuous history and no national archive. Daher’s effervescent cultural collage is a direct challenge to collective amnesia

At one point in Lana Daher’s film Do You Love Me, a woman questions the repeated advice of those around her to simply forget Lebanon’s 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. Why does she insist on “digging into the past”, especially when “this war was no worse than the others”? Yet it is precisely her act of remembering – of knowing that she “did not dream” the actuality of war – that prompts her to dig “into the present”.

The Lebanese director’s debut feature is itself a substantive feat of excavation, with more than 20,000 sources consulted in collaboration with the editor, Qutaiba Barhamji (who worked on The Voice of Hind Rajab), to unearth the footage that would produce this 76-minute film. It is substantive also in the sense that this work was done in relation to a country that does not have a national archive.

From a former Georgian hospital in a Scottish Borders town to a converted greenhouse in the Kent countryside

​T​he backwards cap, a 90s accessory once dismissed as juvenile​, is emerging as the latest shorthand for laid‑back confidence

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Within the first 20 minutes of Love Story, Ryan Murphy’s new take on the often tumultuous relationship between John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, the youngest son of the former US president is depicted wearing five different caps. They include a Kangol flat cap as he cycles to a newspaper kiosk in uptown NYC to read the latest headlines about himself, a Yankees cap as he runs topless on a treadmill and a navy baseball cap as he joins his mother, Jacqueline, for dinner, where she promptly reminds him “no hats at the table, please”.

For Kennedy Jr, hounded by the paparazzi and tabloid press who nicknamed him “The Hunk” and more often than not “The Hunk Who Flunked”, you might think this penchant for peaked caps was thanks to the fact that they let him go somewhat incognito. But he preferred to wear his backwards, pulling the cap downwards over his signature flop of lush black hair, and leaving his full face on view.

Simplify your ironing routine with our pick of the best steam irons, from powerful cordless options to compact travel models

• The best heated clothes airers

Hands up if your favourite way to spend a Sunday afternoon is tackling a mountain of ironing? No takers? Shocking. Faced with crumpled cottons and crinkled collars, there won’t be many who approach the ironing board with anything resembling excitement – and if you do, honestly, what’s wrong with you?

I am certainly no fan of ironing. In fact, I’d be happy with a wardrobe full of everything “stretch”. But when my children were in school uniforms, I faced a daunting pile of creased clothing every week – and found the only way through it was to arm myself with the right tools.

Best iron overall:
Breville DiamondXpress VIN401

Best cordless iron:
Tefal Freemove Power

Our expert rounds up the best waterproof jackets and raincoats for everything from a drizzly coffee run to hiking in the wilderness

• The best umbrellas for staying dry in the wind and rain

In the words of Alfred Wainwright, “there is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing”. When you live in boggy Britain, where it rains more than 150 days a year, waterproofing is a serious business – and a great waterproof jacket is a year-round wardrobe staple.

Whether you’re climbing a mountain or heading out on the commute, it’s worth investing in a decent jacket that’s fully waterproof, breathable and fits you properly. I’ve put 15 through their paces in rainy hike conditions to find the very best women’s waterproof jackets.

Best waterproof jacket overall:
Montane Torren

Best budget waterproof jacket:
Craghoppers Caldbeck II

We boiled litres of water to find the best electric kettles, from hard-water heroes to vintage-style, repairable and wifi-connected models

• The best air fryers, tried and tested for crisp and crunch

Despite the march of progress, the humble kettle remains a kitchen staple. It’s what we turn to in times of strife, when spirits are flagging, or to start our day. And when a visitor calls, one of the first things we do is put the kettle on.

While many small appliances have evolved beyond their original form, the kettle’s basic principles remain largely unchanged. Water goes in and heats up until a thermostat switches it off; the water then pours out, and we enjoy a cuppa. However, the technology that goes into a kettle has been slowly improving: better insulation to keep water hotter for longer and reduce reboils; different temperature settings to suit every drink from green tea to herbal brews; and more features such as filters and concealed elements to keep scale out of our cups.

Best kettle overall:
Bosch Sky kettle

Best budget kettle:
Kenwood Ripple kettle

Whether it’s paraben-free detergent, refillable deodorant or sustainable toothbrush heads, try these simple swaps for a cleaner home and body

• 33 easy plastic-free kitchen swaps

When it comes to cleaning products, both for our bodies and our homes, convenience is a bit of a dirty word. While you may have a sparkling loo, the environment won’t thank you for multiple single-use plastic bottles of cleaning fluid and ingredients that go down the sink despite the small print warning of the harm to marine life.

UK households use 13bn plastic bottles every year, which take at least 450 years to decompose, while more than 212m toothbrush heads or manual toothbrushes are thrown away across the country annually.

A bright, fruity pudding topped with a toasted pebbly crumb

Rhubarb brings its late-winter brightness to this favourite pudding, while ripe, buttery pears soften the edges and add a gentle creaminess. Instead of the traditional rubbing-in method, the crumble is made by pouring warm browned butter straight into the dry ingredients, creating a pebbly topping with a deeper toasted flavour. Leave out the crushed fennel seed, if you prefer, but this small addition, bloomed briefly in the butter, gives the whole thing a subtle aromatic lift.

As pancake day and Orthodox Maslenitsa – or cheesefare week – overlap, I’m leaning into halloumi scones, oozy taleggio galettes, and sweet and savoury crepes

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In terms of religious food festivals, this week is kind of a double whammy. First up was pancake day, which is always a whole-day affair in our kitchen, with both sweet and savoury stations, crepe pans and all the toppings (you can always rely on Felicity Cloake for a foolproof recipe). And, because of the way the calendars fall this year, we are also celebrating Orthodox Maslenitsa, or cheesefare, week at the same time.

OK, so the sentiment is pretty much the same (it’s the week before the start of Lent, when people ease into their strict fasting period), but these two celebrations can often be weeks apart (blame the battle of the Gregorian and Julian calendars). For those of Orthodox faith, last week was all about eating meat, and this week is all about dairy. Essentially, you are trying to consume all the animal products and get them out of the house in preparation for the 40-plus-day fast. And, whether or not you are religious, in my book any tradition that means you get to eat loads of cheese is a win.

Dubbed ‘the holiest of holies’, produce from this former Soviet republic today boasts a variety and deftness that’s sending sales surging

France, Italy and Spain purport to be the best-loved classical wine regions, but if you’re in the market for the real old-world deal, look no further than Georgia, which has more than 8,000 years of winemaking prowess. There’s something about this place on the lush intersection of the silk roads between Europe and Asia that gets under the skin. Perhaps it’s the combination of unpolished authenticity paired with profound generosity (guests are considered a gift from God and fed accordingly), all while being gently rocked in a cradle of civilisation, that make Georgian wine so beguiling. (My first visit in August 2023 – a khachapuri-fuelled reconnaissance for my book, Drinking the World: A Wine Odyssey – lingered in my mind long after my flight touched back down on British tarmac.

What I find most refreshing is that the country, and its wine, is completely itself, despite being hemmed in by empires with a proclivity for invasion (Persians, Turks, Mongols et al), as well as the decades spent under USSR rule, which between 1922 and 1991 switched the grape-growing focus to yield over quality. Today, you really feel the Georgian delight at flipping that old Soviet diktat on its head.

Victoria Brzezinski is co-author of Drinking the World: A Wine Odyssey, published by Pavilion Books/HarperCollins at £22. To order a copy for £19.80 go to guardianbookshop.com

A decadent, velvety and chocolatey set cream dessert infused with aromatic rosemary

The pungent and lingering aromas of familiar kitchen herbs – oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, bay, lavender, mint – seem purposely made to donate their landmark volatiles to our everyday lives and food. In fact, their design is not for domestic calm and onion basket or fridge drawer neglect, but for uncultivated wilds. In particular the limestone terrain of the Mediterranean, where their defining smells are hardcore chemical defences, with every small, tough leaf or needle loaded with enough volatiles to deter both predators and competitors.

Rosemary is particularly kick-arse in this respect, with those volatiles (mostly organic compounds called terpenoids) synthesised and stored in minuscule glands that project from the surface of each dark green needle, which breaks when brushed against or bitten, releasing an intense, hot, bitter shot. It’s the evergreen equivalent of carrying personal defence spray. The needles also mark territory. By leaking their volatiles into the nearby soil, they inhibit the seeds of other plants (maybe even their own) from taking root and, in turn, taking space, water and precious minerals in a challenging environment.

While other countries are deep in a sex recession, the Danish drive shows no signs of stalling. How do they stay so frisky?

Copenhagen on the Thursday before Valentine’s Day is intoxicatingly romantic. That’s not hyperbole – you could breathe in and be drunk on it. The canals have frozen over, which only happens about once every 13 years, and couples are skating on them. You can see cosy bars from miles away because they’re strung with fairy lights – apparently not just a Christmas thing here. Everyone is beautiful.

But none of that comes close to explaining why young Danes in Denmark, unlike gen Z across the developed world, are still having sex. Winter isn’t even their frisky season. “You feel the atmosphere in the springtime,” says Ben, 35, half-British, half Danish. His friend Anna, also 35, originally Hungarian, says: “Post-hibernation fever, you can feel the sexual energy. Everyone is on. Everyone swims in the canals, a lot of the women will be topless – they’re like herrings.” (Which is to say: they are typically Danish, they love the water and they don’t wear clothes … I think.) Ben and Anna are millennials, of course, rather than gen Z: they provide the outsiders’ perspective.

It is reasonable to avoid hurt after such a big betrayal, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but don’t mistake isolation for safety

• Read more Leading questions

I was in a relationship for 26 years, married for 17, and my husband had an affair. It was hidden, long term and denied until discovery. I divorced him but that was delayed and I had to live with him for a further two years. I spent a year alone in my new house with my now adult sons. Now I am a little over a year into a new relationship and suddenly panicking about it. I’m scared to go forward. I’m not sure I can commit to long term again, and if I see him looking at other women (we work together in a predominantly female workplace), I panic! I’m older than him by nine years and I feel like I want to end things to prevent getting hurt. But then I feel I’m being cowardly. How can I stop going down this road in my head?

Eleanor says: On behalf of everyone everywhere, let me say: what a schmuck thing for your husband to do. That is such a big betrayal. And the cruelty you’re living through now is that as well as teaching you to be mistrustful of others, betrayal on that magnitude teaches you to be unsure of yourself. If I misread things once …

Marta wants her scent to be unique, but Elsa thinks copying her friend is just sharing the joy. Do you smell a rat?

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

My individuality is very important to me and I like to keep my style and my scent unique

I’m not trying to copy her whole identity. Friends having similar tastes is just sharing the joy

He didn’t look like a stereotypical ‘drug addict’, but when he fled to South Africa with all our savings it was obvious that is what he had become

When I tell people that a drug addiction nearly killed my dad, I know what most of them are thinking. Heroin. Crack. Maybe meth or ket. Those substances that steal your soul and slowly wreak havoc on your body. They’re imagining Trainspotting; too-skinny frames and protruding hip bones, the physical effects of addiction that are impossible to miss.

But that isn’t how it played out in my family.

New technology has workers spooked, but experts say it’s creating an opening for a resurgence in worker power

In 2026, it’s a scary time to work for a living.

Gone are the days of quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and the highly visible union-organizing battles that began the decade and signaled that perhaps worker power was on the rise again in the US. Instead, much of that momentum is being crowded out of our minds by anxieties: a worsening affordability crisis, geopolitical instability and the specter of artificial intelligence looming over the workplace.

Spending on gear, travel and race fees can easily add up – here’s how to make getting to the start line affordable

Before you enter a race, it’s vital to think about whether you’re in shape to make it through the training. For a marathon, you’ll probably need to be a regular runner who has completed several 10ks or the half distance.

Its ‘fibre checker’ tool confirmed I could have a connection, but a month later it changed its mind

My internet provider informed me by email that full fibre broadband had become available for my property, confirmed by Openreach’s “fibre checker” tool.

After a month, Openreach declared the connection uneconomical due to blockages in the conduits below the road.

Fraudsters use stolen personal details to send out products, then post a fake verified and positive online review

A package arrives but you can’t remember ordering anything.

When you open it, you find some cheap, flimsy jewellery.

Making choices can be difficult when options are not clearly better or worse than each other – how does one even begin to decide?

I love cats. I’d been idly keeping an eye out for a less allergenic breed, when bam – a kitten became available. Suddenly I had to decide whether to take the leap.

Even though I’d been considering cat ownership for a while, I felt anxious. I mulled over all the responsibilities: vet bills, stubborn allergies, years of commitment. One big sticking point was travel. Having a cat would be rewarding, but did I want it right now if it meant I couldn’t decide on a whim to book a cheap last minute flight to another city? Did I want to buy Fancy Feast, or stay fancy-free?

With more than 200 possible symptoms, long Covid isn’t easy to treat and diagnose. Rolled-back federal funding has led longhaulers to ask: is this all in my head?

I am 30ft below the surface of the Blue Grotto, a crystalline diving hole in central Florida. Between the water’s embrace and the restriction of my wetsuit, my blood pressure finally stabilizes. The long, deep breaths I pull from my respirator keep my heart rate nice and low.

I feel lighter than I have since April 2022, when I first contracted long Covid. I feel childlike at the fact that I can do this at all – get scuba certified – when on land I’m often confined to a wheelchair or a walker.

The average person does not need to be adding anything to their water

• Read more in the Antiviral series

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Attitudes towards hydration have become another faultline in the generational divide: while the giant “emotional support” water bottle is ubiquitous among gen Z, those of the writer Ian McEwan’s vintage find the modern obsession with hydration “deranged”. McEwan and his ilk will be even more perplexed then that even those guzzling from their Stanley Cups throughout the day are being told they are still not sufficiently hydrating themselves.

Influencers are telling their followers they “don’t understand what hydration is” if they’re not adding electrolytes such as sodium and chloride (salt) as well as magnesium and potassium to their water to help their cells “hold on to and use” it. Often spruiking the sachets wellness companies are selling, they claim these fancy salt formulations are essential to avoiding migraines and muscle cramps, anxiety and mood swings. Some TikTokers are adding sachets alongside other ingredients such as coloured ice cubes, edible glitter and fruit into the aforementioned massive cup in a trend known as “loaded water”.

The hit podcaster, author and former GP says a failure to regulate big tech is ‘failing a generation of children’. He explains why he quit the NHS and why he wants a ban on screen-based homework

A 16-year-old boy and his mum went to see their GP, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, on a busy Monday afternoon. That weekend, the boy had been at A&E after an attempt at self-harm, and in his notes the hospital doctor had recommended the teenager be prescribed antidepressants. “I thought: ‘Wait a minute, I can’t just start a 16-year-old on antidepressants,’” says Chatterjee. He wanted to understand what was going on in the boy’s life.

They talked for a while, and Chatterjee asked him about his screen use, which turned out to be high. “I said: ‘I think your screen use, particularly in the evenings, might be impacting your mental wellbeing.’” Chatterjee helped the boy and his mother set up a routine where digital devices and social media went off an hour before bed, gradually extending the screen-free period over six weeks. After two months, he says the boy stopped needing to see him. A few months after that, his mother wrote Chatterjee a note to say her son had been transformed – he was engaging with his friends and trying new activities. He was, she said, like a different boy from the one who had ended up in hospital.

This is the season when dressing is dictated by logistics – safety first and function-led. But don’t let that put you off adding the odd flourish

My very first girlcrush is still my ultimate winter style icon. Miss Bianca, star of the 1977 film The Rescuers, is Disney’s most underrated princess. As the Hungarian delegate to the Rescue Aid Society, an international humanitarian organisation run by mice with a secret headquarters in the walls of the UN building in New York City, Miss Bianca travels the world rescuing children in peril, and never allows being a mouse to stop her either from feats of bravery – commanding meetings of international delegates, rescuing children from flooded caves – or from rocking a look. She has a nice line in shawl-collar trapeze-line coats (think mid-century Balenciaga), but her real style signature is her glamorous scarves and hats. In a violet pillbox hat with a matching scarf tied in a bow, or dashing shades of mustard, Bianca makes cosy winter dressing look delicious. She might be a mouse, but she is never, ever mousey.

A cartoon mouse is an unusual place to begin an article about winter accessories. It is also an unusual point from which to draw a line to a former first lady of the US, but while pairing a tiny animated rodent with Michelle Obama as co-style icons is a mismatch on paper, it is not so in spirit. At the 2009 inauguration, Obama wore a lemongrass coat and dress by Isabel Toledo, offset by olive-green leather gloves. Her daughters, Malia and Sasha, were chicly bundled in scarf-and-glove sets chosen to contrast with their coats. Their clothes were elegant, but it was the accessories that made the look memorable. The family looked comfortable, relatable, and quietly joyful: no small feat on a freezing day dense with symbolism and expectation.

No need to get in a lather – there are plenty of stylish-looking, premium-feeling options at a reasonable price

Please can we all admit that on occasion, when we’ve been gifted and subsequently drained a posh-looking hand wash, we unscrew the luxury cap and pour in something from Asda? And that those of us privileged enough to have a downstairs loo that visitors see, routinely leave the posh soap there while the resident family rely on a bumper dispenser of Carex? Surely no one is above such behaviour.

An illicit bargain refill last autumn inspired a hunt for stylish-looking and luxury-feeling hand soaps that, while not weekly-shop cheap, feel at least like a justifiable luxury. I’ve rarely enjoyed my research more.

Given the average British woman may change dress size more than 30 times in adult life, flexibility is one route to feeling at home in a fluctuating body. But that’s not all it’s good for

I always think that the most stylish woman in a room is the one who looks the most comfortable. She might be nonchalant in a pair of wide trousers and a loose white shirt, or stroll in casually wearing the butter-soft leather loafers she’s had for years. It was a longing to be more like one of those women, as opposed to one who fell over regularly in public because I couldn’t balance in platforms, which made me give up wearing heels for good in 2012. So it was a natural progression, a decade later, to shunning another wardrobe constraint that was making me fidget in social situations: the waistband.

I’m about to turn 49 and in the past eight years I’ve been fluctuating between sizes 10 and 14, which is hardly surprising when you consider that the average British woman may change dress size a whopping 31 times in her adult life. I attribute my own yo-yo-ing partly to the hormonal changes that a body in its 40s inevitably goes through, but I should also acknowledge that during lockdown, I developed a taste for the elasticated tracksuit bottoms that working from home allowed, as well as a macaroni cheese, or two, each week.

Dry air indoors can cause an inflammatory reaction, yet so can cold, windy outdoor conditions – but turning down the heating and using a moisturising cream can help

‘This is kind of true,” says consultant dermatologist Dr Emma Craythorne. Human skin has evolved to retain water, thanks to a protective barrier on its surface. But that barrier isn’t totally watertight. Water is constantly moving across it, depending on the humidity of the surrounding air.

Skin tends to be most comfortable at a relative humidity of about 40%. When the air around us is drier than that, water is more likely to leave the skin. That matters because the process of water escaping across the skin barrier is mildly inflammatory.

The best places to seek respite from the wintry UK weather in France, Italy and Germany

• Tell us about a family adventure in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Saint-Jorioz in Haute-Savoie will provide a springtime lift for your spirits. On the shore of Lake Annecy, it’s a short bus ride from the city of Annecy, but less busy and with superior lake and mountain views. Hike to the surrounding peaks, towards the lesser-known Col de l’Arpettaz, or cycle on the excellent greenways. Relax by the cool blue alpine water. Behind you lies the underrated Les Bauges Unesco Geopark. The department only joined France in 1860, and has its own Italian-influenced regional cuisine.
Brian Lowry

A trail named after a brutal marcher lord passes through tranquil countryside between Shropshire and Herefordshire but is rich in reminders of the area’s turbulent past

In the UK, there is a proud tradition of naming long-distance walking paths after talented reprobates. I mean the various opium fiends, international terrorists and child murderers who make up our colourful national tapestry (see the Coleridge Way, Drake’s Trail and the Richard III Trail). So perhaps a 30-mile weekend walk dedicated to the Mortimers, and their most notorious scion, Sir Roger, is an appropriate addition to the weave.

After all, this is the man who allegedly slept with a reigning queen (Isabella), probably killed her husband (Edward II), and certainly became de facto tyrant of the realm for three turbulent years in the 1320s, feathering his own nest relentlessly during that time. They don’t make world leaders like that any longer, do they?

A century ago, the Serra da Estrela mountains were Portugal’s answer to the Swiss health resorts of St Moritz and Davos. Now, a historic sanatorium has been given a 21st-century makeover and is drawing people back to the hills

Navigating the high slopes of Portugal’s Serra da Estrela in midwinter requires serious negotiation with the elements, but my guide, João Pedro Sousa, makes it look simple. Angling his lean frame into the wind, he digs his plastic snow-shoes into a steep drift and pauses, scanning the white ridgeline. He’s looking for mariolas – small cairns of rocks, fused by ice, that will indicate our onward trail. “The landscape changes every day so you have to learn how to read it afresh,” he says, setting off again. “At this time of year, nature is a true artist.”

I plod inelegantly in his wake, still clumsy in the frames clipped to my boots to keep me from sinking into the powder. At a quartzite outcrop rippled with rose and amber, we pause and drink in the view. Below us, cupped in the glacial scar of the Zêzere valley, is the terracotta-roofed town of Manteigas – founded in the 12th century and today the modest hub for tourism in the region. Ahead, on the horizon, João Pedro points out mainland Portugal’s highest peak, the 1,993-metre Torre, home to a small ski resort suited to beginners. “This region is full of surprises,” he grins.

A cabin on a farm near Hawick, known for its whisky and woollens, offers wild seclusion – and a great base for exploring an overlooked region

The tiny, off-grid cabin looked almost unreal: made of repurposed oak it stood by a private lochan, with separate cedar sauna, cold outdoor shower, sunken hot tub, and a jetty with two hammocks and a pair of paddleboards. It screamed Finland or Sweden, not a sheep and deer farm in the Scottish Borders. It was the sort of isolated location that would set Ben Fogle’s heart racing in New Lives in the Wild. Two swans bugled my arrival. I felt a little embarrassed that all of it was mine.

Sometimes, we need to escape to a place where the phone coverage is bad enough to make you believe you’re somewhere truly wild. Tiny Home Borders, hidden in rippling foothills 10 miles east of Hawick, is such a place. Last August, owners David and Claire Mactaggart opened a second two-person cabin on their farmland (the first opened in 2022) and I jumped at the chance to stay, swim, soak, and – crucially – switch-off.

Sydney’s Qing Fong dance troupe undergoes intensive training for their busiest period of the year, when they will perform more than 100 times and earn ‘lots of pats’ from the crowd

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Drums and cymbals echo across Mingyue Lay temple’s sun-baked concrete car park. Lion heads made out of papier-mache are dotted around the lot and pairs of kids are jumping on to poles, tables or each other’s shoulders – all while connected at the hip.

It’s a sticky night in Sydney’s west, but the 33C heat doesn’t faze these lion dancers, who are gearing up for their busiest period: lunar new year. The festivities continue well past the day itself, with more than 100 performances across three weeks. On the eve of lunar new year, the studio will start their performance at the temple in Bonnyrigg at 9pm and finish well past midnight.

Above: Team instructor Jenny Cao and Long Huynh outside the hall
Below: Costumes wait to be put on for dance rehearsals

Lunar new year has ushered in a rare zodiac symbol with a reputation for energy and independence

As the lunar new year begins, the focus has turned to the Chinese zodiac and the arrival of the year of the fire horse – a rare pairing in the 60-year lunar cycle.

Drawing on Chinese metaphysics, the fire horse blends the horse’s reputation for energy and independence with the intensity of the fire element, giving it a distinct place in the zodiac tradition.

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

It is time for the Thursday news quiz. The scorpion of knowledge, delightfully illustrated by Anaïs Mims, has 15 questions for you. They are designed to lull you into a false sense of security before delivering a very small but memorable sting. Or an in-joke punchline you’ve seen 1,057 times already. One or the other. There are no prizes, but we enjoy hearing how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 235

It felt scary not to have ‘home’ to go back to. But it was also the start of something new: an experiment in multigenerational living and building a house with zero experience

Weekend breakfasts have always been big in our house. Usually a cereal course followed by a full English. It’s the execution that makes it special for me – the colourful tablecloth, the mix of bread and toast (so you can fold over a slice of your choice to make a mini bacon sandwich), the teapot, the ginger biscuits you dunk into your tea for “afters”.

When I’d visit home in Yorkshire from London, where I lived for 20 years, I treasured these breakfast moments, sitting around the table with Mum and Dad and enjoying the well-oiled ritual in the suburban three-bed semi where I’d grown up.

From TikTok deepfakes to smears put out by the White House, fake videos modeled on Black archetypes are running rampant - putting Black users at risk

Late last year, as a US government shutdown cut off the Snap benefits that low-income families rely on for groceries, videos on social media cast the fallout in frantic scenes. “Imma keep it real with you,” a Black woman said in a viral TikTok post, “I get over $2,500 a month in stamps. I sell ’em, $2,000 worth, for about $1,200-$1,500 cash.” Another Black woman ranted about taxpayers’ responsibility to her seven children with seven men, and yet another melted down after her food stamps were rejected at a corn-dog counter.

Visible watermarks stamped some videos as AI-generated – apparently, too faintly for the racist commentators and hustlers more than happy to believe the frenzy was real. “You got people treating it like a side hustle, selling the stamps, abusing the system,” the conservative commentator Amir Odom whinged. Fox News reported on the Snap deepfakes as if they were authentic, before issuing a correction. Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt claimed people were using Snap “to get their nails done, to get their weaves and hair”. (Lost in the outrage was a basic fact: white Americans make up 37% of Snap’s 42 million beneficiaries.)

With Gorton split between Labour and Greens, division creates opportunity for Farage’s party in other side of constituency facing byelection

If you’re unsure whether you’ve crossed the border from Manchester into Tameside, the Reform posters will probably give it away. In windows, on walls, and staked on garden posts, Denton is awash with turquoise blue as the 26 February byelection looms.

Near the town centre, Ian Singleton and his wife, Irene, have one of Reform’s turquoise banners standing proudly in their front yard. Ian was born in Gorton, in Manchester, but for the best part of the last three decades, the couple have lived on the other side of the constituency, in Denton.

Business leaders tout AI as a path to shorter weeks and better balance. But without power, workers are unlikely to share the gains

The front-page headline in a recent Washington Post was breathless: “These companies say AI is key to their four-day workweeks.” The subhead was euphoric: “Some companies are giving workers back more time as artificial intelligence takes over more tasks.”

As the Post explained: “more companies may move toward a shortened workweek, several executives and researchers predict, as workers, especially those in younger generations, continue to push for better work-life balance.”

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now

We’d like to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to assist with your social life or important life decisions

Lots of people now use chatbots as personal assistants, not just for work but in everyday life and social interactions. We want to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to navigate your social life or significant life decisions.

Have you ever drafted a breakup text using AI? Or crafted a message to delicately cancel plans? Have you consulted AI on whether to take, or quit, a job? Or sought advice from a chatbot on a tricky friendship or relationship?

We want to hear how the fall in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and ether are impacting people

Bitcoin sank to its lowest value in more than a year this week, faling to $63,000 on Thursday, about half its all-time peak of $126,000 in October 2025

It’s part of a wider shock to crypto prices. The second-largest cryptocurrency, ether, has faced losses of more than 30% this year alone.

Tell us about a memorable trip where you tried something new as a family – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

Have you had a memorable family adventure? A trip where you stepped outside your comfort zone and tried something new together? Whether it’s a family backpacking trip, completing a long-distance hike, bike or canoe trail, wild camping, youth hostelling or trying out a new activity, we’d love to hear from you.

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

As storms intensify and flooding becomes more frequent, many communities say infrastructure is struggling to cope. We want to hear how resilient your community feels to more extreme weather

Persistent rain and repeated flooding are testing the resilience of rural communities across the UK, impacting daily life, work and people’s livelihoods.

In recent years, repeated storms and long periods of rain have overwhelmed drainage systems, cut off villages, damaged roads and disrupted power and broadband services. Scientists warn that heavier winter rainfall is arriving earlier than expected, while councils and the Environment Agency face funding pressures and difficult decisions about where to prioritise protection.

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