We had a mass snowball fight and a disco, and I slept in a room full of drunk men with wet socks. It was fun, but in future snowstorms I won’t be rushing to the pub

In all my years of reporting, nothing seems to fascinate people more than the four days I spent snowed in at Britain’s highest pub last year. It was early January and the Met Office had issued severe warnings for snow. It dawned on me that people were about to live out a British fantasy of being snowed in at their local pub. I knew where I needed to be: The Tan Hill Inn, high up in the wilderness on the very northern edge of the Yorkshire Dales national park.

The world needs global leaders to clearly and firmly denounce the havoc Trump is wreaking on the US and international order

Hundreds of global CEOs, finance titans, and more than 60 prime ministers and presidents are in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual confab of the world’s powerful and wealthy: the World Economic Forum.

This year’s Davos meeting occurs at a time when Donald Trump is not just unleashing his brownshirts on Minneapolis and other American cities, but also dismantling the international order that’s largely been in place since the end of the second world war – threatening Nato, withdrawing from international organizations including the UN climate treaty, violating the UN charter by invading Venezuela and abducting Nicolás Maduro, upending established trade rules, and demanding that the US annex Greenland.

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

Manchester City have issues with injury and form, and need their big players to step up and turn the ship around

At Bodø/Glimt, in a first Champions League outing since 1 October, the 29-year-old appeared what he is: a player still recovering after 18 months out with a serious knee injury and several related setbacks. This was only a third start since his latest return began with the second 45 minutes of the goalless draw at Sunderland on New Year’s Day. Last week Rodri declared he was “ready to go” and said: “I’m really happy to be on the pitch every single day.” Yet in Saturday’s 2-0 loss at Manchester United he was a one-paced, non-factor unable to do what he did with ease pre-anterior cruciate ligament rupture: run midfield and so the contest. In Tuesday’s 3-1 humbling in Norway the Spaniard was the same, and two moments tell the tale of his form. First Jens Petter Hauge left him a statue before registering a memorable long-range strike for Bodø’s third goal; thencame the two yellow cards in two minutes that had Rodri sent off.

She’s got the smarts, the FBI training and the CBeebies wardrobe. Will the bookies’ favourite become the first female Traitor to win a UK series?

Even a stopped castle clock is right twice a day. During last Friday’s jack-in-the-box mission on The Traitors, the remaining contestants were asked which of their fellow players would make the best Traitor. In a rare moment of insight, Weymouth gardener James Baker – he of the clumsy shield-stealing – said: “Rachel. She has those FBI skills and is just so smooth.”

He doesn’t know the half of it. Cut to Rachel saying through gritted teeth: “Shut up, James. Just shush.” She might have been momentarily rattled but the canny operator was soon making a mental note of everyone’s answers to use against them later. Translation: James’s days could be numbered.

Our nation’s fascination with rubbish knows no bounds – as was proved by one recent online debate

Even if you’ve never been anywhere near it, the Mumsnet message board is legendary. Since it launched in 2000, it has changed the vernacular – “am I being unreasonable?” is not just a question, it’s a shorthand for the type of person who asks it – and introduced us to the penis beaker (one maverick husband’s postcoital hygiene regime, made infamous). It’s a screenshot of society, a cultural thermometer; if it’s happening on Mumsnet, it’s big news. And one of the most popular recent threads is about bins.

The post that kicked it off was written by a woman who lived opposite an empty house where tenants had moved out. The landlord popped round late at night to drag the bins out for collection, and the next morning, at 6.45am, she could hear the lorry approaching. The coast was clear, and she still had a backlog of rubbish from Christmas. Deciding it was a victimless crime, she slipped one of her bags in their bin, which easily had room. Enterprising? Without a doubt. Moral, though?

Our passion for these cute-looking salamanders means they are everywhere – except in the wild, where the species is under increasing threat

Axolotls are the new llamas. Which were, of course, the new unicorns. Which triggered a moment for narwhals. If you are an unusual-looking animal, this is your time. Even humans who have never seen an axolotl – a type of salamander – in the smooth and slimy flesh will have met a cartoon or cuddly one. Mexican axolotls have the kind of look that is made for commercial reproduction. The most popular domestic species is pink. Some glow in the dark – and their smile is bigger than Walter’s in the Muppets.

At Argos or Kmart, you can buy axolotls as cuddly toys, featured on socks, hoodies and bedding, or moulded into nightlights. You can crochet an axolotl, stick a rubber one on the end of your pencil or wear them on your underpants. The Economist says they’re a “global megastar”. More than 1,000 axolotl-themed products are listed on Walmart’s website. They grace US Girl Scouts patches, McDonald’s Happy Meals, and the 50-peso bill, a design so popular that, last year, the Bank of Mexico reported that 12.9 million people were hoarding the notes.

Rolling coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the US president is addressing world leaders

Q: Is the US worried that institutional investors in Europe might pull out of the US Treasury market, such as pension funds in Denmark?

Bessent brushes this aside, saying

The size of Denmark’s investment in US Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant.

It is less than $100 million.

They’ve been selling Treasuries for years. I’m not concerned at all.

PM also accuses Kemi Badenoch of supporting efforts by Trump to ‘undermine the government’s position’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump’s criticism of the Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius was explicitly intended to put pressure on the UK to weaken its position on the future of Greenland, Keir Starmer has said.

In his most explicit criticism of the US president so far, Starmer used prime minister’s questions to link Trump’s change of stance over a deal he had previously backed with the president’s much-stated intention to annex or buy Greenland.

The Duke of Sussex said he would cut off anyone in his friend group if he suspected they were leaking information to the press

When asked by Antony White KC, for Associated Newspapers Limited, the Duke of Sussex said it was “pretty convincing” that journalists had sourced information about him from his friends at the time they were published.

He said: “That was the way the articles had been written, a source said this, an insider said this.”

Following the death of my mother in 1997 when I was 12 years old and her treatment at the hands of the press, I have always had an uneasy relationship with them.

However, as a member of the institution the policy was to ‘never complain, never explain’.

Reform UK leader, who failed to declare £380,000 on time, says he is computer-illiterate ‘oddball’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nigel Farage has apologised for 17 breaches of the MPs’ code of conduct after failing to declare £380,000 of income on time, saying he is an “oddball” who does not do computers.

The Reform UK leader and MP for Clacton said he had relied on a senior member of staff to submit his income to the register of interests and had been let down, but he took full responsibility for the error.

Family splits are more common than people realise and are typically caused by abuse, new partners and differing beliefs

Family therapists say they typically come across three reasons why parents and children become estranged: abuse, new partners, and irreconcilable differences over morals, values and beliefs.

At least two of these were evident in the Beckhams’ highly publicised family feud, which culminated in Brooklyn Beckham’s scathing Instagram post this week announcing his estrangement.

Israeli prime minister accepts position on US-proposed body with initial remit to oversee Gaza ceasefire

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that he had agreed to join a US-backed “board of peace” proposed by Donald Trump, despite his office having earlier criticised the composition of its executive committee.

The body, chaired by the US president, was initially presented as a limited forum of world leaders tasked with overseeing a ceasefire in Gaza. More recently, however, the initiative appears to have expanded well beyond that remit, with the Trump camp extending invitations to dozens of countries and suggesting the board could evolve into a vehicle for brokering conflicts far beyond the Middle East.

Snap’s chief executive had been due to testify in civil action also involving Meta, TikTok and YouTube

Snapchat’s parent company has settled a civil lawsuit shortly before it was due to start in California, but other large tech companies still face a trial under the case.

Snap’s chief executive, Evan Spiegel, had been due to testify in a tech addiction lawsuit which also involves the Instagram owner, Meta; ByteDance’s TikTok; and Alphabet-owned YouTube – which have not settled.

Felling of 500-year-old oak has provoked fury from public and Enfield council, which leases land to Mitchells & Butlers

The restaurant chain Toby Carvery is facing eviction from one of its sites after taking a chainsaw to an ancient oak tree without the permission of its council landlord.

The partial felling last April of the 500-year-old oak on the edge of a Toby Carvery car park in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, provoked widespread public dismay and fury from Enfield council, which leases the land to the restaurant’s owners Mitchells & Butlers Retail (M&B).

DVSA says increase to 2,844 recorded cases in year to end of September is down to more cheating and better detection

Attempts to cheat on driving tests in England, Scotland and Wales increased by 47% in a year, figures show, raising concerns about road safety.

There were 2,844 cases recorded in the year to the end of September 2025, according to figures by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), up from 1,940 during the previous 12 months, and 1,274 in 2018-19.

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

Three hundred and sixty five days after Donald Trump placed his hand on the Bible and completed an extraordinary return to power, many historians, scholars and experts say his presidency has pushed American democracy to the brink – or beyond it.

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

Sami al-Saei has defied social stigma to speak out about what a report calls a ‘grave pattern’ of sexual violence

• Warning: contains graphic descriptions of torture

Sami al-Saei said he heard the Israeli prison guards who raped him laughing through the assault, before they left him lying blindfolded, handcuffed and in agony on the floor to take a cigarette break.

At least one of the group knew a crime was being committed and intervened, not to stop the torture but to prevent its documentation. Al-Saei said he heard the man warning others “don’t take a photo, don’t take a photo” as they attacked.

The arrest of Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been described as a ‘travesty of justice’. On Thursday a court will deliver its verdict, potentially sentencing her to 40 years in prison for alleged terrorism

For weeks before the police came for her, Frenchie Mae Cumpio had noticed odd incidents. The Filipino journalist – just 21 years old but already hosting a radio show and working as executive director of a local news website – told colleagues that a stranger had begun turning up and asking after her at the boarding house where she lived. She was sent a bouquet of flowers designed for a grave. She reported that two men had been following her on a motorcycle.

Cumpio believed it was deliberate intimidation. She had recently published a series of reports after visiting poor rural farmers who said they were being harassed by army units in the region.

Driven by a belief in a common humanity, the Platzdarm search team bring the bodies of soldiers back from the frontline – no matter which side they fought on

Alexei clears his throat without showing the slightest expression on his face. Squatting and wearing gloves, he shakes the military uniform that once belonged to a man. The jacket and trousers still hold their shape, but inside there is nothing. Just air.

Alexei pulls out a worn, stained piece of paper from one of the pockets. “Andrei. Moscow,” he reads aloud. “There’s a phone number written here. Good. It helps us trace his origin.” Whoever he was, he was a Russian soldier.

Finding bodies from both sides is common at the front – the remains pile up after a battle

US civil rights activist who as a schoolgirl protested against segregation on Alabama’s buses

Although she was a pivotal figure in the US civil rights movement, Claudette Colvin, who has died aged 86, never received the full recognition she deserved for her courageous and groundbreaking protest against segregation.

On 2 March 1955 Colvin, aged 15, was riding a bus home from school in Montgomery, Alabama, with seats in the front reserved for white passengers, while those in the rear were designated for black people. She was in a “neutral” zone from which, as the bus filled up, the driver could order black passengers to move to the back. When she refused to give up her seat to a white woman, the driver called the police, and Colvin was arrested. Soon afterwards she appeared before a juvenile court. Charges of violating segregation laws and disturbing the peace were eventually dropped on appeal, but her conviction for assaulting a police officer was upheld.

Queen tells reading campaign that listening counts too – and the publishing industry increasingly agrees

Queen Camilla has met many disreputable characters in her time as a royal, but her encounter this week with two celebrity reprobates was at least for a good cause. The queen has appeared in the Beano alongside its celebrated bad boy Dennis the Menace and his dog, Gnasher, as part of a campaign to promote reading.

It wasn’t the cartoon Camilla’s waspish waist that captured the headlines (“I wish,” she said of her comic strip avatar), but what she had to say while encouraging the tween menace to “go all in” for reading: “Comics and audiobooks count too!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Veronika’s improvised grooming device has caused great surprise – but that tells us more about humans than cows

I have a farmer friend who regularly regales me with colourful stories of her cattle. Take the time when a beef cow called Noisette used her tongue to pull back the catch on the door of her pen so she could steal cattle nuts from the nearby feed bin. Or the time when she did it again, not to let herself out, but seemingly to stand back and watch as her freed compatriots “mooched around and caused mayhem.”

Where others see a herd of cows standing around looking bored, my friend sees a soap opera, with characters and plot twists. Cows, she tells me, learn quickly, bore easily and have an indefatigable penchant for mischief.

Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction

It’s time to stand up for ourselves. With targeted action and tariffs, we can help push back the bully in chief

• Ed Davey is leader of the Liberal Democrats

Donald Trump is behaving like an international gangster. His threats to Greenland this week have crossed a line, blackmailing America’s closest allies and threatening the future of Nato itself. From leaking messages with other world leaders to whining about the Nobel peace prize, the US president has gone from unstable to seemingly unhinged. And our government needs to wake up.

For months, Keir Starmer has pursued a strategy of quiet appeasement. He told us that by avoiding confrontation the UK could carve out a special status that would shield our industries from the coming storm. Only a few months ago, Trump hailed the “special relationship” at Windsor Castle after being lavished with a state banquet. Now, thanks to his actions, it is nearly in tatters. Starmer’s Mr Nice Guy diplomacy has failed.

Ed Davey is leader of the Liberal Democrats

Revivals of this history play usually reflect the politics of the moment. Now a fresh RSC retelling arrives in a world of instability and fractured alliances

I have long argued that Shakespeare’s history plays have more urgent relevance today than his tragedies. The issues they raise – such as the nature of good governance and the difficulty of deposing a tyrant – are precisely those that still haunt us. Henry V, shortly to be given a new RSC production directed by Tamara Harvey, seems especially timely as we are living in a world where the threat of war is painfully real.

It is also a play that constantly changes its meaning. James Shapiro wrote in the Guardian in 2008: “There’s no better way to know which way the cultural and political winds are blowing than by going to see a performance of Henry V.” He reminded us that in 1599, when the play was first performed, playgoers anxiously waited to hear whether an Irish uprising had been suppressed.

State provision for psychological health services is lamentable. Until things improve, let’s not judge those who turn to an app for help

It’s a sunny afternoon in a Roman park and a peculiar, new-to-this-era kind of coming out is happening between me and my friend Clarissa. She has just asked me if I, like her and all of her other friends, use an AI therapist and I say yes.

Our mutual confession feels, at first, quite confusing. As a society, we still don’t know how confidential, or shareable, our AI therapist usage should be. It falls in a limbo between the intimacy of real psychotherapy and the material triviality of sharing skincare advice. That’s because, as much as our talk with a chatbot can be as private as one with a human, we’re still aware that its response is a digital product.

Viola di Grado is an Italian author

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.

European leaders who know their continent’s history must now see that the US president is siding with the forces of tyranny

In January 2018, when Donald Trump was in the second year of his first term as US president, Angela Merkel, in her 13th year as German chancellor, gave a gloomy speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. She opened her remarks with a warning from Europe’s past. Politicians had “sleep-walked” into the first world war. As the number of surviving eyewitnesses to the second world war dwindled, she added, subsequent generations would have to prove they understood the fragility of peace. “We need to ask ourselves if we have really learned from history or not.”

Fast forward eight years. Vladimir Putin’s territorial aggression harries Europe’s eastern flank. To the west, Trump, now in his second term and guest of honour at Davos, threatens to annex Greenland. This is not a world that has internalised the lessons of the 20th century.

Sir David and Victoria cornered the market in selling their family’s privacy for money – but there was a price to pay, and Brooklyn Peltz Beckham has just sent them the bill

The way 2026 has started, none of us wants to see the word “nuclear” in a headline, so on some level you have to feel glad that last night’s news alerts announcing in real time that someone “goes nuclear” and “launches nuclear attack” related to Brooklyn Peltz Beckham. At time of writing, the story about his Instagram broadside against his parents, David and Victoria Beckham, accusing them of treating him as a commercial prop all his life was by far, far and away the best read on the Guardian site, as well as the most deeply read. Again, I’m glad this blow-up wasn’t used as geopolitical cover, because if there was a time for Trump to invade Greenland largely unnoticed, maybe this was it.

Whoever wrote Brooklyn’s intercontinental ballistic Instagram – and it wasn’t the childlike authorial voice behind regular “I always choose you baby … me and you forever baby” posts to his wife – the sentiments will be his. Here’s a sample: “My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else. Brand Beckham comes first. Family ‘love’ is decided by how much you post on social media, or how quickly you drop everything to show up and pose for a family photo opp …”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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.

A Paris appeals court will decide if Marine Le Pen can stand in next year’s presidential election. But legal troubles have not damaged the fortunes of her party

In a Paris courtroom, the first act of the 2027 French presidential election is already under way. On Tuesday Marine Le Pen began to answer judges’ questions in her appeal against a conviction relating to the embezzlement of European parliament funds. If she wins, the far-right leader will be free to run for the presidency for a fourth time. If the sentence is upheld, her 30-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, is almost certain to take her place in the race.

Having presented the original verdict as an assault on democracy by judges bent on thwarting her political ambitions, Ms Le Pen has softened her stance. If the appeals court is swayed by arguments that offences committed by her National Rally party were inadvertent, a five-year ban on running for public office may be reduced or overturned. Even if she loses, however, her political opponents may not be inclined to celebrate too enthusiastically.

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.

As climate and geopolitics shocks bite, countries are rebuilding food buffers. The UK clings to neoliberal ideas while households pay the price

Food policy across much of the world is changing. But not in Britain. That may be a costly mistake as the prices of essentials rise because of the climate emergency, geopolitical tensions and the fragility of just-in-time supply chains. Many capitals are now reviving their strategic food reserves. European nations such as Sweden, Finland, Norway and Germany are rebuilding stocks dismantled after the cold war. Climate shocks have led to Egypt and Bangladesh boosting similar programmes. Countries such as Brazil and Indonesia – sensitive to the food needs of their vast populations – are also expanding their reserves.

The UK, by contrast, has no substantial public food reserves. Its strategy rests almost entirely on global markets and private intentions – an approach shaped by decades of liberalised trade. Even in the event of war, the official advice focuses on households stockpiling essentials. In Britain’s view, food security is about prices, not scarcity of supply.

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.

Rupert Read, Andrew Boswell, Nick Brooks and Bridget McKenzie look to the Antarctic treaty to find a way forward for the high north. Plus letters from Dee Cook, Glyn Ford and others

Your leader marks the historic moment when European nations finally stepped up to Trump’s bullying over Greenland (The Guardian view on Trump and Greenland: get real! Bullying is not strength, 18 January). However, Keir Starmer’s response remains weak. By saying Greenland is only a matter for Denmark and Greenland, he tries to rewind the clock to a status quo that is plainly no longer adequate.

Greater vision has a clear historical precedent: for nearly 70 years, Antarctica has been kept out of military competition and resource grabs by the Antarctic treaty. With this 1959 treaty, countries with competing interests accepted that some places are too important to be owned, and must instead be protected for science, peace and the common good.

We need fair elections, not bombs or contracts with the US oil industry, says Gabriel Moncada Belisario

Regarding your report (Dictator ousted but regime intact – what next for Venezuela’s opposition?, 18 January), I spent the early hours of Saturday 3 January watching how my country was being bombed by the United States.

While many Venezuelans hoped that Edmundo González Urrutia would be installed as the new president or that new elections would be called, those possibilities now feel further away than ever.

Readers discuss the reorganisation of councils under the English devolution bill, which has led to election delays

One thing that’s been missing from the debate around the English devolution bill is what this change will mean for town and parish councils (More than 20 England council elections likely to be delayed until 2027, 15 January). As combined authorities start to form, it is these hyperlocal councils that will be taking the lead in shaping solutions that are genuinely rooted in place and driven by the people who live there.

At Lewes town council, the conversations we are having focus on how these changes could be an opportunity for the town. Sussex is one of the six counties on the government’s priority programme for establishing a combined authority. As the possibility of a more unified county structure edges closer, we are having to think imaginatively about the future. That means exploring how residents can lead discussions on creating truly community‑led and place‑based solutions to the most local issues.

Orwell’s insight | Antisocial media | AI takeover | Howff Club | Beyond the Tamar

Interesting article by Brendan Simms of Cambridge University on spheres of influence in the world (Has a Nazi theorist’s vision of a world divided into ‘great spaces’ found a new advocate in Trump?, 16 January). Is anyone else reminded of the three superstates in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia)?
Carol Kewley
Port Glasgow, Inverclyde

• The government should not stop under-16s using social media. The government should stop social media using under‑16s (More than 60 Labour MPs urge Starmer to back under-16s social media ban, 18 January).
Dr Charles Smith
Bridgend

• Briton falls to 7-6 (3), 6-2 loss to world No 55

• No 28 seed struggles with same issues in season so far

Things seemed to be running smoothly for Emma Raducanu for much of her Wednesday afternoon in Melbourne. An early break lead eventually provided her with a chance to serve out the first set of her second round match. Things were falling into place.

However, she had earned that lead simply by scrapping from behind the baseline and was never truly comfortable with her strokes. Under pressure in the decisive moment of the match, her forehand crumbled as she relinquished the lead and eventually fell 7-6 (3), 6-2 to Anastasia Potapova.

• Minister says there is ‘no desire’ to boycott tournament

• But Coquerel says US should be stripped of World Cup

The French government is not in favour of boycotting this year’s World Cup being co-hosted by the United States over Donald Trump’s Greenland threats, France’s sports minister has said.

Trump has targeted France among the eight European countries threatened with tariffs for their opposition to his drive to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

• League wants tournament dates switched to summer

• Clubs and players believed to be opposed to schedule

The inaugural Women’s Club World Cup’s January 2028 dates “could be catastrophic”, the Women’s Super League has said, with the league raising serious concerns over the potential impact of the tournament on domestic calendars.

A WSL spokesperson said on Wednesday that the league is firmly against the dates and have made their case strongly to Fifa, who have announced that the competition will be held from 5–30 January 2028.

• LIV rebels are appealing against DP World Tour sanctions

• Forthright McIlroy wants duo to show their commitment

Rory McIlroy has challenged Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm to demonstrate their commitment to the Ryder Cup cause by settling fines for their LIV Golf participation.

McIlroy pointed towards motivation used by Europe during victory at Bethpage last September after it emerged the United States players were paid to play in the Ryder Cup.

• 88% target of sexual misconduct in the past five years

• 260 members of Women’s Sport Collective took survey

There is a significant sexual safety problem for women working in elite sport in the UK, according to a survey, with 88% of respondents reporting they had been the target of at least one form of sexual misconduct in the past five years and five people (2%) saying they had been raped in work-related contexts outside the main workplace in that period.

The report published on Wednesday, titled Women’s Experiences of Sexual Misconduct Working in UK Elite Sport, invited members of the Women’s Sport Collective to take part in the study anonymously and 260 people responded. Participants included administrators, coaches, current and former athletes, TV producers, lawyers and physios.

• Pair will face off in NFC South next season

• Stefanski reportedly said QB ‘failed’ with Browns

Tampa Bay quarterback Baker Mayfield has vented his frustrations over the treatment he received from his former head coach Kevin Stefanski, who he will now face twice a year as an opponent.

Stefanski was Mayfield’s head coach at the Browns before Cleveland traded the quarterback to the Carolina Panthers in 2022. The two are now in the NFC South after Atlanta hired Stefanski on Saturday.

Mayfield appeared to be angered after an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter posted that Stefanski said Mayfield and another Browns quarterback, Deshaun Watson, had “failed” in Cleveland.

The former Portsmouth defender took a chance when moving to Brussels but is now captain of the Belgian champions and preparing to mark the England captain in the Champions League

Below the zigzagging contrails that paint the blue Brussels sky, Christian Burgess is reflecting on the latest chapters of his extraordinary journey, those since joining Royale Union Saint‑Gilloise almost six years ago. At the time he felt that his career was at risk of stagnating, but after rummaging Wikipedia to get a handle on the club and learning of their big ambitions, it felt a leap of faith worth taking.

Even so, there is a detectable disbelief at how that decision led him to the Champions League and an unlikely reunion with Harry Kane, with whom he last duelled as an 18-year-old on trial at Tottenham more than 15 years ago. On Wednesday Union play at Bayern Munich in arguably the biggest match in their history, knowing a positive result would keep alive their chances of advancing to the knockout stage.

Data informs many decisions now but Australia legend showed how some just have a knack for reading the game

Have you ever accurately predicted what will happen on a cricket pitch before the ball has been bowled? It’s an incredible feeling. That moment when you glance at the field, remember who’s on strike and think: “Here comes the short ball,” only for it to arrive, be pulled and then safely pouched by the fielder you had mentally circled at deep square. For a split second you feel omniscient. Like you’ve cracked the code. Cricket, more than any other sport, invites this kind of clairvoyance. Its patterns are legible, its traps visible, its repetitions comforting.

Even the greats get a kick out of playing soothsayer. During the third Test of the recent Ashes, Ricky Ponting was calling the action for Channel 7 when Pat Cummins was at the crease getting ready to face Brydon Carse. “We saw Cummins last over get unsettled by one that angled back up into the left armpit,” Ponting said. “He’s not a great ducker of the ball, he tries to ride the bounce and that’s why I like this field. You got one back on the hook so you can’t play that, you got one waiting under the helmet at short leg.”

Trainee driver killed in accident near Barcelona just days after 43 died in collision between two high-speed trains

Spain’s rail network is under scrutiny after a commuter train crashed near Barcelona just days after at least 43 people died and 152 were injured in a collision between two high-speed trains.

The second crash in as many days occurred at approximately 9pm on Tuesday when a retaining wall collapsed on to the track near Gelida in the region of Catalonia in north-east Spain, derailing a local train.

Retailer buys chain from administration for £3.8m adding to portfolio ranging from FatFace to Made.com

Next has rescued the footwear retailer Russell & Bromley out of administration for £3.8m but about 400 jobs are likely to go at 33 shops not included in the deal.

The British brand, founded in 1879 in Eastbourne, East Sussex, trades from 36 stores and nine concessions across the UK and Ireland. Next will take on only three stores – in Chelsea, Mayfair and the Bluewater shopping centre – and about 48 store staff, it is understood.

Han Duck-soo verdict marks first judicial ruling stemming from ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol’s 2024 martial law decree

South Korea’s former prime minister Han Duck-soo has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for his role in an insurrection stemming from the former president Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed martial law declaration.

The judge, Lee Jin-kwan, ordered Han’s immediate detention.

Bigger than forecast rise probably temporary but analysts rule out Bank of England interest rate cut in February

• Davos live – latest updates

Inflation in the UK rose for the first time in five months to 3.4% in December, pushed up by higher air fares and tobacco prices.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the annual inflation rate increased from 3.2% in November after falling in October and flatlining in the previous three months. The figure overshot City economists’s forecasts of a modest rise to 3.3%.

Move follows withdrawal of Kurdish forces from al-Hawl, where 24,000 people are being held over alleged IS links

Syrian government forces have taken control of al-Hawl detention camp, which houses tens of thousands of suspected Islamic State members, after Kurdish forces withdrew.

Soldiers entered the heavily fortified camp on Wednesday, part of a handover from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which oversaw the camp for the last seven years, as the Syrian government vowed to secure the facility.

Government opts against phasing out new boilers by 2035 in effort to cut energy bills by as much as £1,000 a year

• Analysis: Labour’s warm homes plan is all carrot and no stick for UK households

There will be no phaseout date for gas boilers in the government’s warm homes plan despite its pledge to wean the UK off fossil fuels, but billions of pounds will go towards heat pumps and insulation upgrades.

Labour’s principal attempt to solve the UK’s cost of living crisis, the £15bn warm homes plan, will overhaul 5m dwellings, aiming to cut energy bills by as much as £1,000 a year, in the biggest public investment yet made into home upgrades.

£5bn for upgrades, including insulation, solar panels, batteries and heat pumps, for people on low incomes.

£2bn towards low-cost loans for people who can afford them.

£2.7bn for the boiler upgrade scheme, by which people can swap their existing gas boilers for £7,500 on a new heat pump.

£1.1bn for heat networks, which distribute heat from a central source, which could be a large heat pump or geothermal or other low-carbon source.

£2.7bn towards innovative finance through the warm homes fund, which could include schemes such as green mortgages offering a lower interest rate to homes that have been insulated and equipped with solar panels and heat pumps.

Critics accuse leading firms of sabotaging climate action but say data increasingly being used to hold them to account

Just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024, down from 36 a year earlier, a report has revealed.

Saudi Aramco was the biggest state-controlled polluter and ExxonMobil was the largest investor-owned polluter. Critics accused the leading fossil fuel companies of “sabotaging climate action” and “being on the wrong side of history” but said the emissions data was increasingly being used to hold the companies accountable.

Actor says it is ‘more important than ever’ to safeguard city’s parks as report finds more than 50 are at risk

Dame Judi Dench has called for greater protections for London’s parks and green spaces, as research finds more than 50 of the city’s parks are at risk from development.

The Oscar-winning actor has long loved trees, and in 2017 fronted a BBC documentary about her love for them. She plants a tree every time a close friend or relative dies, including for her late husband, Michael Williams, who died in 2001, and the actor Natasha Richardson, who was killed in a skiing accident in 2009, and one for her brother Jeffery Dench, who died in 2014.

Overuse and pollution must end urgently as no one knows when whole system might collapse, says expert

The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people, a UN report has declared.

The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report’s lead author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with implications for peace and social cohesion.

Actor and mother of Brianna Ghey among signatories of letter to three party leaders ahead of Lords vote

The actor Hugh Grant is among the signatories of a letter urging Westminster party leaders to ban social media for children under 16.

The letter to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey calls on them to back amendment 94a to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill, ahead of peers voting on amendments on Wednesday.

IFS says system failing to deliver for those who need it and ministers face stark choices with white paper imminent

The government is facing “crunch time” over the rising costs and failures of special needs education for children in England, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The IFS said government spending on educating children with special needs would double between 2015 and 2028, “squeezing funding” for mainstream schools as a result.

Sharp increase in leading cause of irreversible but preventable blindness driven by ageing population and shows need for early diagnosis

New estimates predict at least 1.6 million people in the UK will be living with glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, by 2060.

The figure is much higher than the current 1.1 million people estimated to have the condition, research published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology suggests.

Exclusive: Northern towns are unfairly penalised by new three-year council settlements, say members with Liverpool seats

Keir Starmer is facing another potentially damaging rebellion, as Labour MPs from north-west towns urge the government to give their local councils more money over the next three years.

Labour MPs from the Liverpool city region have written to the local government secretary, Steve Reed, urging him to change the recent three-year local funding settlement, which they say unfairly penalises northern towns.

Trump tried to fire Cook in August but a federal court blocked her removal and she remains on the Fed’s rate-setting board

House Republicans are starting a push on Wednesday to hold former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress over the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, opening the prospect of the House using one of its most powerful punishments against a former president for the first time.

The contempt proceedings are an initial step toward a criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice that, if successful, could send the Clintons to prison.

They’re not above the law. We’ve issued subpoenas in good faith.

For five months we’ve worked with them. And time’s up.

Gelsenkirchen savings bank was raided over Christmas by criminals who used huge drill to access vault

Faqir Malyar, a carpet trader from the western German city of Gelsenkirchen, was on his way to visit one of his customers during the Christmas holidays when he heard news on the radio of an astonishing bank heist. Thieves had drilled a hole in the wall of the vault of a local Sparkasse – savings bank – and made off with the contents of almost 3,250 deposit boxes.

The robbery, likened by a police spokesperson to the Hollywood film Ocean’s Eleven, made international headlines: it is estimated that the thieves’ haul could have been worth as much as €300m (£260m), a sum that would make it the one of the biggest bank heists in a country wearily familiar with them.

Amnesty International deeply concerned for scores of people ‘walking around in search of assistance’

Thousands of people, including suspected victims of human trafficking, are estimated to have been released or escaped from scam compounds across Cambodia over recent days, after growing international pressure to crackdown on the multibillion-dollar industry.

The Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh said it had received reports from 1,440 of its nationals who had been released from scam centres, while large queues of Chinese nationals were also seen outside the Chinese embassy.

Abe was killed by Tetsuya Yamagami in 2022 while campaigning in the city of Nara, a shooting that shocked Japan, where gun crime is almost unheard of

A court in Japan has sentenced the assassin of former prime minister Shinzo Abe to life in prison – a case that shocked the public and exposed politicians’ ties to an influential religious group.

Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, had earlier pleaded guilty to killing Abe in July 2022 as he was making an election campaign speech in the western city of Nara.

Agreement a milestone for British television as broadcaster teams up with world’s biggest video platform

The BBC has announced that it will produce tailor-made content for YouTube in a milestone for British television as the public service broadcaster teams up with the world’s biggest video platform.

The corporation has previously posted clips and trailers for BBC shows on YouTube but under the new deal it will make fresh programming for its online rival.

Regime appears to have turned to digital currency issued by Tether in the face of sanctions

Iran’s central bank appears to have been using vast quantities of a cryptocurrency championed by Nigel Farage, according to a new report.

Elliptic, a crypto analytics company, said it had traced at least $507m (£377m) of cryptocurrency issued by Tether – a company touted by the Reform UK leader – passing through accounts that appear to be controlled by Iran’s central bank.

Rachel Reeves says business rates support for pubs is on its way after chain reveals £45m surge in costs

• Davos live – latest updates

JD Wetherspoon has warned of lower than expected half-year profits, as the pub chain revealed a £45m surge in costs driven by “higher than expected” bills for energy, wages, repairs and business rates.

The bigger-than-forecast expenses in the 25 weeks to 18 January meant profits at Wetherspoons are now “likely to be lower” compared with the same period in 2024, said its chair, Tim Martin.

Tesla boss clashed with Michael O’Leary when airline boss rejected installing Starlink technology on aircraft

• Business live – latest updates

Elon Musk has floated the idea of buying the budget airline Ryanair, escalating his public spat with the Irish carrier’s boss, Michael O’Leary.

The two outspoken businessmen have locked horns since last week, when O’Leary was asked whether he would follow Lufthansa and British Airways in installing Musk’s Starlink satellite internet technology on his fleet of 650 aircraft.

The Canadian poet, whose winning collection explores environmental and personal loss, discusses making art in existential times

Early on in her latest collection, the Canadian poet Karen Solie apologises: “I’m sorry, I can’t make this beautiful.” The line appears in a poem, Red Spring, about agribusiness and its sinister human impact: the world’s most widely used herbicide, glyphosate, is “advertised as non-persistent; but tell that to Dewayne Johnson // and his non-Hodgkin lymphoma”. In 2018, a jury ruled that Monsanto’s glyphosate weedkiller, Roundup, caused the former groundskeeper’s cancer.

Solie’s admission – that real horror can’t be prettified – recalls Noor Hindi’s viral 2020 poem, Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying. We can’t “treat poetry like it’s some kind of separate thing” to what’s going on around us, says Solie, speaking to me in Soho, London, the morning after finding out she has won the TS Eliot prize for her collection Wellwater. “We all have to keep our eyes open”, but “that doesn’t mean we can’t say we’re scared, because it’s scary”.

Éanna Hardwick and Steve Coogan star as furious Keane and his luckless manager McCarthy in this retelling of the Man Utd star’s infamous 2002 walkout

Here is a sports drama which is also a true-life psychodrama of the Irish republic. In the run-up to the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, the nation was convulsed with dismay when mercurial star player Roy Keane stormed out of Ireland’s chaotic training camp on the Pacific island of Saipan and got on the first plane home after a colossal row with manager Mick McCarthy. Could it really be true that Ireland’s key performer was going to let the side down? Was he just a spoilt Man U brat? Or was Keane a true Irish patriot, insisting on high standards of training and management for Irish football which this (English-born) manager wasn’t providing?

It’s a story which is capably, straightforwardly told by film-makers Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa, and well acted by its leads Éanna Hardwicke as Keane and Steve Coogan as McCarthy. It is almost like a theatrical chamber piece, putting us on the spot with the two male egos as they butt heads – but perhaps giving less sense of the angst they were creating back home.

The fab five convene in Washington DC for the show’s 10th and final season – and one last, escapist feelgood hurrah

In 2018, hopes were not high for Queer Eye. Having dredged the sea floor of early 00s nostalgia, Netflix announced that it had reimagined Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a makeover series that churned out 100 episodes between 2003 and 2007. In it, switched-on gay men had told clueless straight men how to dress, act and behave. Fifteen years after it debuted, however, that concept felt like a relic. At best, it was a testament to an era in which queer representation on screen was still rare and mostly dealt in unthreatening stereotypes. Bringing it back sounded unpromising, like yet another dead-end television reboot.

When Queer Eye launched, however, it had undergone a makeover of its own, and confounded most expectations. It chopped the name in half, ditched the focus on straight men as its subjects – though, ever inclusive, they were very much part of it – and dragged itself into a more emotionally literate and sensitive era. The five men at its core did fashion and style, of course, but they were delicate about it. The idea was not to shame people for their bodies or personal taste – a common feature of early 00s makeover shows – but to give them a helping hand, lift them out of the doldrums and make them feel as if they and their lives had value and worth.

This breathless and hugely entertaining financial heist show isn’t just packed with twists. It’s a clever meditation on the evil of money – in which you’re rooting for the Game of Thrones star

The trick, Zara Dunne tells her new underling as she shows her round the trades processing floor of the pension management company for which they both now work, is not to dwell on the fact that every day that passes is another day wasted. And to know where the nice biscuits are. This is very good advice for any twentysomething starting their first job, but especially one called Myrtle, as this one is, whom I imagine has already had much of the stuffing knocked out of her by her peers’ reactions to this odd parental choice of moniker.

Soon, however, they are all in need of substantially more comfort than even a chocolate Hobnob can provide, as a team of armed villains swarms the floor. From there, the glossy new six-part thriller Steal kicks into high gear and doesn’t let up for a moment. The baddies – sporting not masks but sophisticated, subtle prosthetics that can fool all the facial recognition software the police will soon be applying to the CCTV footage – herd Zara (Sophie Turner, continuing to deliver sterling work post-Game of Thrones), Myrtle (Eloise Thomas), Zara’s friend and colleague Luke (Archie Madekwe) and the rest of the rank into one conference room while the management committee is locked in another. A couple of gruesome beatings later, so that nobody is in any doubt about the dedication of the villainous gang, Luke and Zara are yanked out and forced to help them execute a set of trades worth £4bn, and the committee is forced to sign off on them all. At one point, Luke crumbles and Zara must step in to save the day. She is hailed as a hero once the thieves have completed their hi-tech heist and left the building.

Taken from her bedroom at the age of 14 and sexually abused for nine months, Smart, now a child safety activist, rails powerfully against shame in this true-crime documentary

New year, new true-crime documentary from Netflix. Age cannot wither the genre made famous by the streamer all the way back in 2015 with Making a Murderer, which explored the wrongful conviction of Steven Avery for sexual assault and attempted murder who spent 18 years in prison for that and who was later tried and convicted of another murder. That documentary was a decade in the making. Things move more quickly now, and the preferred content is more palatable to a mass audience – tales of victims’ survival and the very rightful conviction of perpetrators meet the voyeuristic appetite and proxy lust for vengeance without requiring too much painful thinking abut the inadequacies of a country’s legal system, say, or the corruption of its law enforcement.

Still, the new approach has brought some astonishing untold stories of forgotten victims into the light and – usefully or not – given us a better measure of the depraved depths to which men can go. (And it is almost always men, who either have an innate problem or need to bring a suit against an incredibly biased set of film-makers and commissioners tout damn suite.)

The cat’s out of the bag in the latest episode of Can You Keep a Secret? Plus: an Anglo-Saxon cemetery on Digging for Britain. Here’s what to watch this evening

9.30pm, BBC One
Dawn French continues to be a hoot as Debbie, a woman who’s pretending her husband has died for the insurance payout. But now the cat’s out of the bag: her police officer daughter-in-law Neha (Mandip Gill) knows that William (Mark Heap) is alive and demands they give the money back. Meanwhile, somebody else has worked out the scam and has used a very uninspiring font in a blackmail letter. But Debbie has zero intention of cowering to any threats. Great fun. Hollie Richardson

Ored Recordings documents chants, laments and displacement songs of the Caucasus threatened by erasure. After the invasion of Ukraine, its ‘punk ethnography’ has never been more urgent

In May 2022, a few weeks after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, musician Bulat Khalilov was attending a demonstration in Nalchik, a southern Russian city in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. As he joined a group congregating around the monument to the Circassian victims of Russo-Circassian war, Khalilov was approached by a policeman and sensed trouble. To his surprise, the officer asked: “Are you from Ored Recordings? I follow you on Instagram. You’re doing great.”

Their gathering still had to be dispersed, but the enthusiasm that Ored Recordings inspires even among enforcers of the law speaks volumes about the power of what Khalilov and his friend and label co-founder Timur Kodzoko call “punk ethnography”: the recording of religious chants, laments and displacement songs at family gatherings, local festivals, in people’s kitchens, to fight against the erasure of Circassian culture.

Kings Place, London
At over four hours without a break, Morton Feldman’s work dedicated to his artist friend is challenging, but in a rare live performance, the concentration of its performers made it an unforgettable experience

Running to four and a half hours without a break, Morton Feldman’s late work For Philip Guston is long by any standards. Non-athletes can finish marathons in less time; even the apocalyptic final instalment of Wagner’s Ring cycle is shorter. Yet the most striking thing about the work is its economy. An opening sequence of four pitches played by three musicians provides the musical material that is transformed, transposed, stretched and compressed throughout. Notes and motifs are repeated and multiply, echoing across the ever-sparse texture. The tempo is consistently slow, the dynamic consistently quiet. Rhythms are complex, but subtly so, making the instances of absolute synchrony into passing miracles. Time is the only resource with which Feldman is profligate.

Challenged on the work’s scale, Feldman once quipped, “it’s a short four hours!” I’m not sure all attending this rare performance in Kings Place’s Memory Unwrapped series would have agreed. Seats creaked constantly as people wriggled, late arrivals crept in and others trickled out. Coughs were half stifled. Phones buzzed. Someone near me went through an inexplicable, maddening phase of humming along.

This unbelievable, Alice Levine-narrated true story sees governments fooled by a fake bomb detector. Plus, Peter Bradshaw’s darkly comic thriller about a charming nurse

Alice Levine narrates this scam story in customary wry fashion. We meet Steve, an ex-copper who helps his childhood best pal sell his cutting-edge bomb detector, only to end up with detectives arresting him. It’s a slickly produced tale of a con that fooled governments and militaries, with action flitting from questionable Hong Kong banks to the Iraqi airports in which it’s installed as a security measure – with potentially lethal consequences. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

The former heptathlete throws shapes to Cameo and got gold-medal inspiration from Whitney, but which rapper helps get her out of bed?

The first song I fell in love with
I was at nursery school when Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen was the song of the moment. I remember seeing the video on Top of the Pops, which is chilling at first, but epic when it gets to the big guitar break.

The first single I bought
My mum had this little record player that used to keep me very entertained, so I got her to buy me Ring My Bell by Anita Ward for my birthday or Christmas, from a record shop in Wolverhampton.

The ghosts of Lincoln in the Bardo return to confront a dying oil man’s destructive legacy – but this time they feel like a gimmick

George Saunders is back in the Bardo – perhaps stuck there. Vigil, his first novel since 2017’s Booker prize‑winning Lincoln in the Bardo, returns to that indeterminate space between life and death, comedy and grief, moral inquiry and narrative hijinks. Once again, the living are largely absent, and the dead are meddlesome and chatty. They have bones to pick.

They converge at the deathbed of an oil man, KJ Boone. He’s a postwar bootstrapper: long-lived, filthy rich and mightily pleased with himself. “A steady flow of satisfaction, even triumph, coursed through him, regarding all he had managed to see, cause and create.” Boone is calm in his final hours, enviably so. He seems destined to die exactly as he lived, untroubled by self-reflection. But as his body falters, his mind becomes permeable to ghosts, and they have work to do. The tycoon has profited handsomely from climate denial, and there is still time for him to acknowledge his fossil-fuelled sins before the lights go out.

In this larky autofiction, the ups and downs of creative life are cartoonishly dramatised as the writer becomes an action hero

Rob Doyle’s previous novel, Threshold, took the form of a blackly comic travelogue narrated by an Irish writer named Rob. In one episode before Rob becomes an author, we see him as a sexually pent-up teacher abroad, masturbating over an essay he’s marking. That the scene is an echo of one in Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised (once named by Doyle as the best book from the past 40 years) hardly lessens our discomfort, and it’s hard not to feel that our unease is precisely the point. “Frankly, a lot of my life has been disastrous,” he once told an interviewer – which might not be quite as self-deprecating as it sounds, given that Doyle has also argued that “great literature” is born of “abjection” not “glory”.

The autofictional game-playing continues in his new novel, Cameo, but instead of self-abasing display, we get a perky book-world send-up for the culture war era, cartoonishly dramatising the ups and downs of creative life. It takes the form of a vertiginous hall of mirrors centred on gazillion-selling Dublin novelist Ren Duka, renowned for a long novel cycle drawn on his own life, the summaries of which comprise the bulk of the book we’re reading. Duka’s work isn’t autofiction à la Knausgård: hardly deskbound, still less under the yoke of domesticity, he leads a jet-set life of peril, mixing with drug dealers, terrorists, spies, and eventually serving time for tax evasion before he develops a crack habit, a penchant for threesomes in Paris and – perhaps least likely of all – returns to his long-forsaken Catholicism.

An exploration of what constitutes the literary arts – plus all the ‘troubled hearts’ and demons that accompany it – through the lens of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Now, Mother, What’s the Matter?

Only the monsters do not have troubled hearts.
Life is for troubled hearts. Art is for troubled
hearts. For my whole life, Hamlet has been
a bridge between. Hamlet’s ‘Now, mother,
what’s the matter?’ is life on earth. Something
is always the matter, and not just for mothers.
(As I write this, the Angelus rings.) Every
character in Hamlet is troubled, there are
no monsters in it. I render unto Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s — everything is
troubled there and, if I am lucky, Caesar
is troubled. I render unto God the things
that are God’s and feel — want to feel? Do feel —
that God is troubled. I also render unto art.
But I have no idea what art is. What
Edward Thomas’s ‘Adlestrop’ is. What
the luminous chaos of The Portrait of
a Lady is. What The Pilgrim’s Progress is.
My feet knew the way before I opened
the book: that just before the gate to heaven
is yet another hole to hell.

This contrived addition to a sub-genre popularised by H is for Hawk and Raising Hare falls to earth with a thud

In July 2020, Candida Meyrick, better known as the novelist Candida Clark, became the owner of Sophia Houdini White Wing, better known as Bird. Bird is a Harris hawk, a feathered killing machine who hunts the rich Dorset fields on the edge of the New Forest. She can take down a rabbit but much prefers cock pheasants. Recently she has been eyeing up the peacocks that the Meyricks keep on their estate.

Meyrick’s starting point in this puzzling book is that Bird has a rich interior life that we flightless clod-hoppers would do well to emulate. What follows are 20 brief “life lessons” inspired by the hawk’s assumed musings. So, for instance, the fact that Bird prefers to hunt her own dinner rather than accept substitute snacks from Meyrick is used to urge the reader to “stay true to your higher self”. Likewise, her ability to keep cool under threat from a pair of thuggish buzzards becomes an exhortation to “hold your ground, you’re stronger than you think”. Other maxims include “Stay humble. Keep working at it” and the truly head-scratching “Just show up; and when you can’t, don’t”.

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

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

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

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

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

So what is Arc Raiders?

The team behind Baby Steps discuss why they made a whiny, unprepared manbaby the protagonist – and how players have grown to love Nate as he struggles up a mountain

“I don’t know why he is in a onesie and has a big ass,” shrugs game developer Gabe Cuzzillo. “Bennett just came in with that at some point.”

“I thought it would be cute,” replies Bennett Foddy, who was formerly Cuzzillo’s professor at New York University’s Game Center and is now his collaborator. “Working on character design and animation brings you over to liking big butts. I could give you an enormous amount of evidence for this.”

Showing the value of great design over visual impact, this faithfully resurrected home computer seamlessly integrates modern tech with some wonderful additional touches

The emotional hit was something I didn’t expect, although perhaps I should have. The Commodore 64 Ultimate, a new version of the legendary 8-bit computer, comes in a box designed to resemble the original packaging – a photo of the machine itself on a background of deep blue fading into a series of white stripes. Then when you open it, you find an uncannily accurate replica of what fans lovingly referred to as the breadbox – the chunky, sloped Commodore 64, in hues of brown and beige, the red LED in one corner above the row of fawn-coloured function keys. It’s like 1982 all over again.

My dad bought us a C64 in late 1983. It was our second computer after the ZX81 and it felt like an enormous leap into the future with its detailed colour graphics, advanced sound chip and proper grown-up keyboard. We unpacked it on our dinner table, plugging it into a small portable TV and loading the one game we had, a very basic Donkey Kong clone named Crazy Kong. My life would never be the same again. This contraption was my obsession for the next four years – my friendships and free-time would revolve around games such as Bruce Lee, Paradroid and Hyper Sports. To this day, I treasure the memories of playing golf sim Leaderboard with my dad. The sound effects, speech samples and graphics conjured by that computer have lived rent free in my head for, god, almost 40 years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

At Arcola theatre, London, until 7 February

In All Is But Fantasy, the fates of Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra and more are given a thrilling twist by US writer, director and singer Whitney White. She talks about untimely deaths – and being left speechless by Judi Dench

Whitney White is practically swooning. “I have more respect and love for William Shakespeare than I can honestly communicate,” she says on a video call from Stratford-upon-Avon. When she went to Holy Trinity Church to visit his grave, she says: “I just wept, because the language is so beautiful to me.”

White’s first encounter with Shakespeare’s work was in Chicago at high school, where A Midsummer Night’s Dream unleashed her inner “theatre nerd”, she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Shouldn’t all theatre have music and dance and text and fights and be as full as possible?’ Then you grow up and start doing theatre – and we segment the business into musicals and plays.”

A Giant on the Bridge, performed by a ‘Scottish indie folk supergroup’, draws on dozens of interviews about the confines former prisoners experience on the outside

When we talk about crime and punishment, the notion of homecoming is often absent but decarceration and re-entry are critical aspects of the justice system. These subjects are at the heart of A Giant on the Bridge, the singer-songwriter Jo Mango and the theatre-maker Liam Hurley’s urgent piece of gig-theatre, which premiered in 2024 and heads out on tour across Scotland next month.

It was born from a research project, Distant Voices: Coming Home, that revealed dire statistics for the number of people who come out of prison and then go back in again, says Mango. “Research showed that the process is often less about the individuals and more about societal and structural issues – whether they can get a job when they come out, whether they have any family left who are there to support them.” A Giant on the Bridge emerged as “a kind of way of writing an essay about what we learned”, Mango says, but using songs co-written by people who have lived experience of the prison system.

They published a raunchy book inspired by the Guardian’s Owen Jones; broadcast interviews with obscure punk legends; and make calendars to navigate the world of underground art. Now they’re going global

Stuart McKenzie turns towards a fan on a makeshift stage so his long brunette hair blows in the wind. The artist is dressed in a power suit with thick rimmed glasses, flamboyantly smoking a cigarette as he performs the confessional poetry he’s been writing since the 80s. “Stuart is this fantastic London staple who is just coming out of the woodwork now,” says Emily Pope, the director of Montez Press, who hosted the fundraiser where McKenzie performed to support their queer, feminist press and radio.

McKenzie is a typical Montez Press collaborator: an experimental artist who doesn’t fit neatly into either art, literary or music spaces (although he did recently support the indie band Bar Italia). He’s later in his career than some of the emerging artists they collaborate with but he has Montez Press’s “desire to push boundaries and ask questions,” as Anna Clark, one of the organisation’s founding members, puts it.

At the Shed in New York, attendees wearing enhanced glasses are witnessing an experimental new play where actors appear in video form

You sit in a circle at the Shed, the cultural center in Manhattan’s futuristic Hudson Yards, waiting for the show to begin. Through your enhanced glasses, you see four empty chairs facing you, just out of reach. You watch strangers look out for the actors to arrive. As they do, one at a time, you feel unsettled – each locks eyes with you, specifically. “Don’t panic,” the esteemed British actor Ian McKellen assures you, as the actors take their seats.

Except the actors are not there, really – McKellen, along with co-stars Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene and Rosie Sheehy, appears in An Ark, a new play at the Shed, in video form, a nearly opaque specter overlaid on the candy-apple red carpeting and crisp white walls of the theater and the outlines of your 180 or so fellow audience members. The experimental new play, written almost entirely in the second person by Simon Stephens (whose most recent show, the Andrew Scott-starring Vanya, wowed audiences at the Lucille Lortel theater last year), is one of the first so-called “mixed reality” shows staged in New York, blending physical experience with digital elements. Over 47 minutes, the actors address you, the viewer, directly. Their gaze remains trained on you. Don’t panic, they repeatedly assure. (Though due to some technical malfunctions at the preview I attended, there was some panicking.)

The 85-year-old bestselling author’s final novel, Adam and Eve, will be published in English in October

Bestselling novelist Jeffrey Archer has announced his next novel, Adam and Eve, will be his last, coming out 50 years after his debut was published.

The 85-year-old author has sold more than 300m books around the world since his first novel, Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less, was published in 1976, according to his publishers. His 1979 novel, Kane and Abel, was his biggest hit, selling more than 34m copies in 119 countries and 47 languages, and being reprinted more than 130 times.

The maverick theatre-maker Pip Simmons, who died two years ago aged 80, is captured on stage and off in a book by photographer Sheila Burnett documenting the radical troupe’s years of European touring

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

• Read more summer essentials

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

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

This creamy grain-free dish contains flaked almonds for extra crunch and protein – perfect if you’re cutting down on carbs

I’m fasting for three days a week for the whole of this month. It’s not for everyone, I know, and it’s important to talk to your doctor first, but the benefits are well researched and include improved digestion and immune function, and lowered blood pressure. When we fast, the body goes into ketosis, which breaks down fat for energy, and to stay in ketosis afterwards it helps to reduce carbs and increase protein, which is where today’s low-carb, zero-waste recipe comes in.

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

• The best electric heaters, tried and tested

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

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

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

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

New year pick-me-ups; hand cream to soothe dry, chapped skin; and the best clothes to buy secondhand

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Damp weather, grey skies, days that don’t seem to be getting any longer and the return to normality after the new year motivation boost: it’s no wonder some of us feel a bit flat in January.

To lift our spirits, we asked you for your favourite pick-me-ups, and rounded up some from us at the Filter too. From umbrellas that give you a glow-up to microdosing nature, here are your tried-and-tested ways to beat the January blues.

Hunt, scroll, strike gold: the best clothes and accessories to buy secondhand – and where to find them

The best (non-greasy) hand creams to soften dry and chapped skin, tested

‘Big, firm, crunchy’: the best supermarket granola, tasted and rated

The best wake-up under the sun: Lumie Bodyclock Glow 150 sunrise alarm clock review

We tested 20 hot-water bottles – these are the best for comfort and cosiness

The best Apple Watches in 2026: what’s worth buying and what’s not, according to our expert

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

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

• The best hot-water bottles

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

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

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

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

Whether you want waterproof or leather, we put women’s walking boots to the test to find the best for every adventure

• The best women’s waterproof jackets, reviewed and rated

A great pair of walking boots will get you outdoors in any weather. While you can get away with wearing trainers for a stroll in the park, more exciting, hilly terrain (or just walking through mud or in rain) calls for a proper pair of walking boots.

They’ll keep you warm and dry, support your ankles, and give you a decent grip underfoot. It’s worth investing in a quality pair that fits well, and they’ll last for years if you look after them. Here are the best hiking boots, tested and rated.

Best walking boot overall:
Lowa Innovo GTX mid

Best budget walking boots:
Regatta Holcombe III

Coconut bars with matcha, a nutty rubble for soups, sandwiches or toast, and super-simple almond butter flapjacks

I love a Bounty, although I call them paradise bars. I also love matcha (and not only for its health-supporting benefits). Though my partner doesn’t enjoy drinking matcha tea, when I mix it into the sweetness of the coconut filling, even he’s on board. Then, a very munchable and grabbable savoury granola, and flapjacks that you can throw together in minutes for a week’s worth of on-the-go snacks.

Our preserving pundits dive into the bittersweet dilemmas surrounding baking paper circles, wax seals and the judicious application of heat

When my son makes marmalade, he never warms the jars or uses circles of baking paper and cellophane – he just puts the lids on. It never goes mouldy, so am I wasting my time doing it the “proper” way?
Dagna, Berkhamsted, Herts
You can’t get much sweeter than marmalade, and this is most likely the reason for both Dagna and her son’s success, despite their differing strategies. “The chance of mould developing is low because there’s so much sugar to balance the bitterness of the orange peel,” says Camilla Wynne, preserver and author of All That Crumbs Allow. “Mould needs water to do its thing, and sugar binds to water.” She recalls a former student who, like Dagna’s son, simply ladled her marmalade into jars and closed the lids. All was fine until one day the student’s latest batch of marmalade was covered in mould: “She’d been reducing the sugar in her recipe over the years, so her method no longer worked because there was available water for mould to grow.”

But back to the particulars of the family dispute. “He’s more right than she is,” says Pam Corbin, author of Pam the Jam: The Book of Preserves. “Nowadays, we have fantastic food-grade lids, which have a wax seal inside and keep preserves safer than a wax disc and cellophane would.” Some people put a wax disc under the twist-on lid, too, but for Corbin that’s a hard no: “As the marmalade cools, condensation forms on top of the paper, so you’re more likely to get mould.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Jammy leeks, savoury sweet chawanmushi and toasted sesame seeds make this flaky pastry dish feel decadent and special

This savoury custard tart celebrates some of my favourite flavours (and dishes): jammy miso leeks, savoury-sweet chawanmushi (a Japanese steamed custard flavoured with dashi) and toasty sesame seeds, all enveloped in flaky pastry. It feels decadent, so it’s best served with a simple fennel salad, zingy with apple cider vinegar and mustard. It’s excellent eaten while still warm from the oven (be patient!), but even better as leftovers, because I have a soft spot for cold eggy tarts.

Ferment: Simple Ferments and Pickles, and How to Eat Them, by Kenji Morimoto, is published by Pan Macmillan at £22. To order a copy for £19.80, visit the guardianbookshop.com

Modern western diets are full of ultra-processed foods, but experts say we need to reduce our intake. Here they offer achievable alternatives

• My week avoiding ultra-processed foods

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“It’s not poor willpower,” says Mark Lawrence. The ecological nutrition professor from Deakin University is a global expert in ultra-processed foods, a beacon of knowledge in the proliferation of UPFs. “It’s really difficult to avoid them.”

Australia, alongside the US and UK, has one of the world’s highest consumption rates of ultra-processed foods which have been linked to “multiple diet-related chronic diseases”, according to a global report of which Lawrence was a co-author.

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

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

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

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

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

Name: Divorce rings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read more in the Antiviral series

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

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

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

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

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

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

Studies detecting microplastics throughout human bodies have made for alarming reading in recent years. But last week, the Guardian’s environment editor, Damian Carrington, reported on major doubts among a group of scientists about how some of this research has been conducted.

Damian tells Ian Sample how he first heard about the concerns, why the scientists think the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives, and where it leaves the field. He also reflects on how we should now think about our exposure to microplastics

Clips: Vox, Detroit Local 4

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

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

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

A look at some of the Italian fashion designer’s greatest moments, after his death at the age of 93

Italian fashion designer who dressed some of the world’s most photographed women in glamorous, show-stopping gowns

After Valentino Garavani retired in 2008 from a fashion world in which the meaning of luxury had changed, his half-century of couture creation was marked with exhibitions.

The one at Somerset House in London in 2012, Valentino: Master of Couture, displayed more than a hundred of his outfits within close peering range, each with a card bearing the name of the woman – royal, diva, star, social leader – for whom it had been created.

New menswear director Leo Dell’Orco appears to have ditched the ‘greige’ while embracing the brand’s history

What exactly Giorgio Armani looks like without its eponymous founder at the helm has been the burning question in the fashion industry since the designer’s death in September.

In Milan on Monday afternoon, it got its answer as the designer’s collaborator and right-hand man of four decades, Leo Dell’Orco, made his debut at the Italian fashion house where he will oversee menswear for the foreseeable future. It was the first Armani collection in which the late designer had no involvement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charente-Maritime is a more affordable, less manicured family destination than nearby Île de Ré

Dinner comes with a spectacle in La Tremblade. Before I sit down to a platter of oysters at La Cabane des Bons Vivants, one of the village’s canal-side restaurants, I stand and watch orange flames bellow up from a tangle of long, skinny pine needles inside a large, open oven. They are piled on top of a board of carefully arranged mussels and, by setting fire to the pine needles, the shellfish cook in their own juices.

This is the curious tradition of moules à l’éclade, a novel way of cooking mussels developed by Marennes-Oléron oyster farmers along the River Seudre in the Charente-Maritime, halfway down France’s west coast. The short-lived flaming spectacle is a prelude to sliding apart the charred shells and finding juicy orange molluscs inside – and just one highlight of our evening along La Grève. The avenue that cuts between the oyster beds, lined by colourful, ramshackle huts and rustic pontoons is an alluring venue for a sunset meal by the canal, the atmosphere all the more lively and fascinating for it being in a working oyster-farming village.

At first Stephanie Wood felt out of her depth rafting the Franklin, but by the end, a world of new possibilities had opened up

I am old, I am unfit for this project and I am colder than hell frozen over but I am also stuck. A helicopter will not winch me out because my only injuries are the agonies of dodgy hips, screaming arm muscles and deeply wounded pride.

And there are miles and days to go before I sleep again on a mattress with clean sheets and a pillow and luxuriate in a hot shower and can be propelled forward in ways that do not require the use of my arms.

As a study says a pet death can hurt as much as that of a relative, three people describe their emotions

Grief over the death of a pet could be as chronic as that for a human family member, according to research. The study, published in the academic journal PLOS One, suggests grieving pet owners can suffer from prolonged grief disorder (PGD).

PGD is a mental health condition that can last months or even years, and often involves intense longing and despair, and problems socialising and going about daily tasks. Currently, only those grieving the loss of a person can be diagnosed.

The Glory was a haven for outlandish self-expression and the early stomping ground for many of the UK’s most infamous drag queens. It made me ready for life

In a packed pub, revellers chat, sip lager and look at their phones. Suddenly a side door crashes open, and in walks drag sensation John Sizzle, dressed as a hair-raisingly accurate Diana, Princess of Wales. She saunters demurely to a halo, fashioned from tinsel and coat hangers and stuck to the wall, stands under it, and starts lip-syncing to Beyoncé’s Halo. The crowd erupts.

Bananas contain nutrients, but rotting peel smells and attracts fruit flies

The problem
Do you ever finish your smoothie, look at the peel and think: “Surely this could feed something?” You are not alone: social media is full of claims that soaking banana skins in water makes a fertiliser that will give you bigger leaves and better blooms.

The hack
Put banana peels in a jar of water, leave them to sit, then pour the liquid on your plants. Bananas do contain potassium and small amounts of other nutrients. The snag is you have no idea how strong it is or what’s missing.

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

Years of civil war have turned whole areas of the city into rows of empty husks. But after the fall of Assad, Syrians have returned to their old homes determined to rebuild

The kebab stall stood in the shadow of a building whose three upper floors had been sheared in half, leaving behind concrete slabs that seemed to hang in mid-air. Under a tarpaulin, its edges weighted with cinder blocks, stood a thin man with a thick white beard. Smiling, he stoked the fire in a narrow grill. Walking back and forth to a table set atop a wheelbarrow, he tenderly inspected a dish laid out with tomatoes, greens and a few skewers of meat. A torn mat covered the floor, while a plastic ice box and a few more cinder blocks provided seating for the customers who were yet to appear.

The streets were largely deserted here in Amiriya, a dilapidated suburb of Aleppo that once formed the frontline between the rebel-held enclave and government-controlled areas. But there were a few signs of life: children hopping on and off a rusty motorcycle, a woman selling cigarettes and water from a shack, a young man digging through the rubble with his hands, pulling out pieces of limestone and stacking them in a neat pile to use later in rebuilding his own house. “They are much better than the new ones,” he told me.

She grew up on a Manchester council estate. Now she’s gone stratospheric for her pivotal role in Sinners. The star talks about leaving Britain for LA – and the £30 bus trip that changed her life

‘I do love a Greggs,” says Wunmi Mosaku, as she settles into a sofa in a hotel in London’s Holborn. She’s extolling the virtues of the high-street baker after I jokingly suggested that’s what she could have for lunch, now she’s back in the UK from her base in Los Angeles. Despite being Stateside for the best part of a decade, she has lost none of her Manchester twang or sense of humour.

“You know what I love about Greggs?” she asks, leaning in. “In each city, they have something specific to that place. So in London, they’ve got the Tottenham cake. Manchester’s got the Eccles cake. In Liverpool, they’ve got the scouse pie. In Newcastle, they’ve got … a ton of breads. You can’t get them anywhere else!”

Aid groups say rise of far-right rhetoric in politics has fed into intimidation, vandalism and hate graffiti around migrant camps

Not far from a camp in Dunkirk where hundreds of asylum seekers sleep, hoping to cross the Channel to the UK, are some chilling pieces of graffiti. There is a hangman’s noose with a figure dangling next to the word “migrant” and, close by, another daubing: a Jewish Star of David painted in black surrounded by red swastikas.

Utopia 56, a French group supporting migrants in northern France, posted the image on X on Christmas Day with the comment: “This is what comes from normalising the extreme right’s rhetoric, a visible, unapologetic, unabashed hatred.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We would like to hear about the shows that leave you confused, yet entertained all the same

What is a TV show that leaves you confused, yet entertained all the same? The Guardian’s writers are compiling their favourites – and now we would like to hear yours.

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

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

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

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