We asked some of those who have family in Iran to tell us their views on the current crisis

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, has called on the west to help unseat Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

Speaking on Friday at a news conference in Washington, Pahlavi said: “The Iranian people are taking decisive action on the ground. It is now time for the international community to join them fully.”

At 81, Jean Stewart was frustrated by her growing frailty, so she decided to get active. Now 96, push-ups, kettlebell squats and pushing a weight-loaded sledge keep her strong

I see people 30 years younger than me and they’ve given up,” Jean Stewart, 96, says. It’s not an attitude she relates to. “I like to do things for myself.”

Stewart was very active in her youth: she played hockey and softball at school and worked for the Girl Scouts for years. As she got older, however, everyday tasks became harder.

In harrowing documentary My Underground Mother, a woman finds out what really happened to her mother in the war

When journalist Marisa Fox was a young girl, her mother would regale her with stories of her own youth, all of which roiled with drama and consequence. When she was a 13-year-old girl living in Poland in the late 1930s, on the brink of the Nazi occupation, her mother told her she was pulled away from her mother and put on a boat to Palestine where she spent the rest of the second world war. As a teenager in that country, she said she became part of a radical Jewish underground group for whom she acted as a spy and a saboteur, smuggling bombs and guns which they used against the British army who ran the country at the time and who they very much wanted to force out. “I was a hero,” her mother would often boast, “never a victim.”

Stories like those both dazzled and horrified the young Fox, but by the time she was nine she began to realize that certain parts of the tale didn’t add up. “I would say to her: ‘Wait a minute, if you were born in 1935 and [the second world war] started in 1939, you would have been four, not 13,’” Fox said. “Whenever I would say that, she would say: ‘No more questions.’”

Progress of artificial general intelligence could stall, which may lead to a financial crash, says Yoshua Bengio, one of the ‘godfathers’ of modern AI

Will the race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead us to a land of financial plenty – or will it end in a 2008-style bust? Trillions of dollars rest on the answer.

The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (£2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools; the more than $4tn stock market capitalisation of Nvidia, the company that makes the chips powering cutting-edge AI systems; and the $100m signing-on bonuses offered by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to top engineers at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

From finding love to becoming a better parent … Philippa Perry, Paul Dolan, Orna Guralnik and others reveal the books that will change your life

Bruised and tainted by his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the Labour peer still has admirers – and the drive to go again

The BBC’s interview with Peter Mandelson had offered ample evidence of the Labour peer’s “formidable political brain”, according to Louis Mosley, UK head of the US data firm, Palantir Technologies.

An indefensible error of judgment had been made by Mandelson, Mosley said in a panel discussion with Laura Kuenssberg after the airing of some of the 30-minute interview on her Sunday morning political show, but “he is a masterful interpreter of Trump and we now live in a world where that man will determine much of what happens, and we need people who can be that translation function”.

Prime minister and opposition politicians condemn threat to impose 10% tariff unless deal reached to buy the Arctic island

Keir Starmer has said Donald Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs on the UK and seven other European countries over Greenland was “completely wrong”.

The US president said on Saturday that the levies would apply from 1 February to Nato members – including the UK, France and Germany – who have deployed troops to the territory in response to growing uncertainty over its future.

Government extends grip on north after stalled efforts under Ahmed al-Sharaa to reach accommodation with Kurds and fold their forces into national army

Syria’s army has taken control of swathes of the country’s north, dislodging Kurdish forces from territory over which they held effective autonomy for more than a decade.

State media said on Saturday that the army took over the northern city of Tabqa and its adjacent dam, as well as the major Freedom dam, formerly known as the Baath, west of the Syrian city of Raqaa. It came despite US calls to halt the advance.

Three Czech skiers swept away in Murtal district while five killed in Pongau area near Salzburg

An avalanche killed three Czech skiers in central Austria, police said, bringing the total to eight killed in the country’s Alps on Saturday.

Avalanches across the Alps have claimed victims since last week after heavy snowfall.

Exclusive: Amazon, Meta and X among firms holding hundreds of meetings with people at heart of government, data shows

Tech companies have been meeting government ministers at a rate of more than once per working day, enjoying high-level political access that dwarfs that of child safety and copyright campaigners, who called the pattern “shocking” and “disturbing”.

Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s X, whose Grok AI image generator has sparked outrage with its sexualised images of women and children, were among the US tech companies holding hundreds of meetings with people at the heart of government, a Guardian investigation has found.

Draft creates ‘too broad an opt-out’ for intelligence chiefs to decide what information is released after major incident

The mayors of Liverpool and Manchester have said an amendment to the Hillsborough law should be withdrawn, saying it does not do enough to prevent future cover-ups.

The Liverpool city region mayor, Steve Rotheram, and the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, said the amendment “creates too broad an opt-out” by allowing intelligence officials to decide what information is released to investigators after a major incident.

Country says some appointments to the group, which will oversee the administration and reconstruction of Gaza, are ‘contrary to its policy’

Israel has objected to the White House’s pick of world leaders who will join the so-called Gaza “board of peace”, meant to temporarily oversee governance and reconstruction in the strip.

The White House and other sources announced a flurry of appointments and invitations to the organisation over the last two days, including Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, former UK prime minister Tony Blair and the president of Argentina, Javier Milei.

Kaden Rummler and Britain Rodriguez tell KTLA and LA Times of being shot at close range during California protest

Two protesters have been blinded by so-called “less-lethal” munitions deployed by federal officers during an anti-ICE protest last week in Santa Ana, California, according to reports.

The blindings come amid rising scrutiny of federal authorities’ use-of-force policies, after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer set off nationwide protests.

The views of the former Tory vaccines minister clash with those of high-profile members and the party faithful

There was no shortage of ammunition for reporters seeking to pepper Nadhim Zahawi with questions when the former Conservative chancellor was unveiled as Reform’s newest recruit on Monday.

But one persistent line of questioning seemed to draw a flash of real anger from the defector: did he reject the views of a doctor who was permitted by Reform to use the main stage at its annual conference to claim that the Covid vaccines, which Zahawi had himself rolled out as vaccines minister during the pandemic, were responsible for King Charles and the Princess of Wales’ cancers?

Fashion elder compères his own celebration of designs revived from his archive by design director Sam Cotton

This January marks the first menswear fashion week in Milan without a familiar constant in Giorgio Armani, after the designer died aged 91 in September. But the brand will still show on Monday, and there are other elder statesmen on the schedule in the shape of Ralph Lauren, 86, and Paul Smith, who will be 80 this year.

Paul Smith showed his collection on Saturday evening at the brand’s Italian HQ. Its playful nature was evident from the format as Smith himself compèred, with descriptions of the designs and inspirations over a microphone. The clothes demonstrated all the hallmarks that fans have come to love – bold prints, great suiting (this time oversized) and bright colours on sweaters and shirts.

Donald Trump will lead the largest US delegation ever at the World Economic Forum, as others plan a fightback against his policies

“A Spirit of Dialogue”: the theme for this year’s World Economic Forum, the gathering of the global elite in the sparkling Alpine air of Davos, seems a heroic stretch, when star guest Donald Trump has spent the past year smashing up the world order.

The president will touch down alongside the snowcapped Swiss mountains with the largest US delegation ever seen at the WEF, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Royal will join a group of notable figures in his action against the tabloid and its stablemate, the Mail on Sunday, in a trial expected to last nine weeks

On Monday morning, Prince Harry’s legal war with the Daily Mail, one of the British media’s most formidable forces, will finally come to trial in court 76 of the high court in London.

The prince is joined in his action by some of the most recognisable figures in British life: the singer and songwriter Elton John and his husband, David Furnish; actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost; Doreen Lawrence, a Labour peer whose son Stephen was murdered in a racist attack; and former politician Simon Hughes, who once ran to lead the Liberal Democrats.

Many believed a US president would – for the first time – rescue them but now people can only despair after mass arrests and brutality

When Donald Trump, said he would “rescue” protesters if Iranian authorities started shooting, Siavash Shirzad believed the US president.

The 38-year-old father had seen protests rise up before, only to be brutally crushed by authorities.

But this was the first time in his life that the president of the United States had promised to help demonstrators. Reassured, Shirzad took to the streets, ignoring his family’s warnings and joining the growing crowds.

Kyrylo Budanov arrives in US heading delegation for further talks on peace proposals. What we know on day 1,425

Russia is taking aim at Ukraine’s nuclear power system, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday, as the Kremlin continues to try to freeze Ukraine into submission by crippling its energy grid. “We do not see any willingness on the part of the aggressor to comply with any agreements or end the war,” the Ukrainian president said. “Instead, there is ample information about preparations for further Russian strikes on our energy sector and infrastructure, including facilities and networks that serve our nuclear power plants. Each such Russian strike on the energy sector amid such a harsh winter weakens and undermines the efforts of key states – in particular the United States – to end this war.”

Zelenskyy spoke after a briefing from Ukraine’s chief of defence intelligence, Oleh Ivashchenko – the recent replacement for Kyrylo Budanov, who was made head of the president’s office. Budanov on Saturday confirmed his own arrival in the US to discuss peace proposals. He and Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Davyd Arakhamia would meet with US envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and the US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, Budanov said. Zelenskyy has tasked his delegation at the Miami talks with finalising proposals about security guarantees and economic recovery. If American officials approve the proposals, the US and Ukraine could sign a deal next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to Zelenskyy. However Russia has given no indication it will accept any peace deal without Ukraine’s entire Donbas region being handed over for a start.

Russian attacks left at least two people dead and others injured in Kharkiv oblast on Saturday, regional authorities said. A strike that damaged a critical infrastructure facility in Kharkiv city’s industrial district could seriously affect power and heating, said the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, with the energy system “constantly operating at its limits”. One person was wounded in the attack. An attack on a house in Kharkiv city killed a woman aged 20 and wounded others. In the village of Borivske, a 52-year-old woman was killed when a drone hit a public transport stop, prosecutors said. In the Sumy region, emergency services said an airstrike on a residential neighbourhood wounded three women and a seven-year-old child, and left 15 residential buildings damaged.

Russia struck energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Kyiv and Odesa regions overnight into Saturday, the ministry of energy said. More than 20 settlements in the Kyiv region were left without power. Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed to ramp up the importation of electricity and the acquisition of additional equipment from partners. Officials have instructed state energy companies Ukrzaliznytsia, Naftogaz and Ukroboronprom to urgently purchase imported electricity covering at least 50% of their own consumption, according to Denys Shmyhal, the energy minister.

Shmyhal announced that Lithuania would be providing Ukraine with more energy generating equipment for Kyiv and the most critically affected regions, after already supplying equipment for emergency repairs on coal and nuclear power plants. “In addition we have received over 2,000 solar panels, various equipment and machinery from our Lithuanian friends,” Shmyhal said. “Lithuania has contributed €5.7m euros to the energy support fund of Ukraine … There is not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been hit by Russian strikes. Ukrainian energy workers continue to repair around the clock and return electricity to people.”

My experience of court was eye-opening. And when I sat in on other cases, I realised how often mothers are vilified

It’s 1836 and the French writer George Sand is swimming in the River Indre with her clothes on, weighed down by layers of ankle-length fabric. To anyone passing by, she must look mad or worse – driven by a death wish. But for her there is the relief of cool water sluicing hot skin, after walking for hours in 30C heat. She’s been moving all day because if she stops she’ll remember how frightened she is: she’s about to go to court to fight for her children against a husband driven by punitive anger.

Custodire. To care. To look after. To guard. To restrain. Maternal care is, we are constantly told, the most natural of functions. But for century after century, women who transgress the expected norms of what a mother should be have battled for their children and been found wanting. Maternal care comes at a price when the law is involved. And all too often custody can be more a question of restraint than care.

A Michelin-adjacent bistro with white tablecloths, red-trousered guests and a chunky wine list

In a room packed with fancy types just off Sloane Square in London, I am eating a £52 plate of dover sole and chips while Status Quo’s Rockin’ All Over the World blasts cheerfully through the room. The chips are very nice, all crunchingly crisp and yieldingly fluffy in all the right places. All 12 of them were perfect, in fact, stood aloft in their silver serving vessel. “A-giddy-up and giddy-up and get awaaaay,” sings Francis Rossi as I perch on a velvet, pale mustard banquette that’s clearly so very expensive that I shudder every time my greasy paws so much as skim close to touching it.

Clare Smyth, of three Michelin-starred Core fame, is letting her hair down with this new project, Corenucopia, where she’s cooking a less pricey, more comfort food-focused menu. Expect seafood vol-au-vent, chicken kiev, Barnsley chop and trifle. There’s even a separate potato menu that comes to the table in its own frame, and offers pommes anna, dauphinoise, croquettes, fondant, hasselback and so on. If you order that dover sole, which, incidentally, comes battered and stuffed with lobster mousse, it turns up with its own vinegar menu, also gilt-framed. Balsamic? Barrel-aged sherry? Champagne? “Malt, please,” I said, aware that this was the request of a drab traditionalist.

Couples not sharing religious beliefs or going to each other’s places of worship isn’t unusual, but perhaps there’s something else going on here

When I met my husband eight years ago, I knew he was churchy, but as a low-church Protestant, I thought this wouldn’t be a problem. Outside church, I am comfortable with our religious differences. I sort of believe in God, and find immense spirituality in nature, but think Christ was simply a good man, whereas my husband believes it. He respects my beliefs and has never imposed his on me.

The problem I have is with the church we attend. I often feel a fraud as I don’t share the beliefs of the rest of the congregation. I feel alienated by the emphasis on theology over Christ’s teachings, and the hymns and rituals. I resent having to sacrifice my Sundays mouthing words I do not believe.

Hormones impact almost all of our bodily functions, from skin, to the gut, to our moods. Here, experts on hormonal and metabolic health explain how to stay well

“Most people would like to have more energy and be leaner,” says Prof David Ray, an endocrinologist at the University of Oxford who also provides NHS services. “There is a connection between how we choose to live, what our bodies look and feel like, and the hormones that are going around the body. What endocrinologists deal with is disorders of either a lack of hormones, or too much of a hormone.”

At the Faversham there was thumping house music, projections of lava lamp bubbles, and bottles of K Cider. Rave culture had hit Leeds, and my friends and I plunged in

I can mark out stages in my life by the pubs I’ve been to – and I started early. My grandparents used to take me to the Sandford Arms across the road from their house in Leeds on a Saturday afternoon to play the jukebox – and since I remember records like Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon this must mean I was about four. My other grandparents, meanwhile, actually ran a pub in the city centre. Their days usually started with my grandad, who did not have the bonhomie of a natural landlord, groaning to my grandmother: “You open up, Kath, I can’t face it!”

After traumatic events we look for reminders of humanity’s good, and flashes of courage from ordinary people become symbols of hope. But it can be hard to wear the hero’s crown

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The smell of burning flesh and pulverised concrete is seared into the psyche of Anneke Weemaes-Sutcliffe. On 22 March 2016, the Australian expat was due to check in for a flight when Islamic State suicide bombers detonated two nailbombs inside Brussels airport. Miraculously unharmed, she sprinted to the exit after the second blast exploded metres away from her – but then, risking her life, decided to turn back.

Screams, wailing alarms and a thick blanket of dust choked the air. The ceiling had caved in. “It turned from buzzing with life to a war zone. It’s horrific, absolutely horrific,” Weemaes-Sutcliffe says.

About one quarter of our bones are in our feet. How can you keep them strong and pain free for longer?

Dentists have trained us well to visit them on a regular basis for a check-up, rather than waiting until things start to hurt. Hylton Menz, a professor of podiatry at La Trobe University in Melbourne, wishes we’d do the same for our feet.

“We probably ignore our feet relative to other parts of our body, because we stick them in shoes and they’re a long way away, so we tend to forget about feet,” he says. “It’s only really when they don’t actually function properly – so when they become painful, they don’t do what we want them to do – that we really think about them.”

Megan Jayne Crabbe was diagnosed with anorexia at 14. When she hit her ‘goal weight’ and still didn’t feel happy, a supportive online community showed her a new way to live

Megan Jayne Crabbe’s transformation goes beyond the physical. “My ‘before’ was trying to make myself as small as possible in every conceivable way: my body, voice, emotions, opinions,” she says. “My ‘after’ is allowing myself to be my biggest self, however that looks.”

Crabbe, 31, became aware of diets before she turned 10. As she entered puberty that intensified and she became fixated on magazine articles about how to change her body, eating as little as possible as a way to manage anxiety about school and growing up.

Idris Elba battles bad guys on the Berlin underground, while the former Take That star reconsiders his Britpop years. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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

Another visit to the UK’s putrid zombie aftermath, and the polymath rapper returns after eight years with a collb-packed blockbuster

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Out now
It would have been hard to imagine in 2002 that 28 Days Later would spawn something so different (and that’s probably a good thing; who wants identikit sequels?). The post-apocalyptic UK is now almost unrecognisable in this Nia DaCosta-directed, Alex Garland-scripted instalment, with violent tribes competing for scant resources.

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

• Manager barracked by fans after late 2-1 defeat

• Romero comments add to sense of unease at Tottenham

Thomas Frank’s future as the Tottenham manager is in doubt after Saturday’s last-gasp 2-1 home defeat by West Ham, at which the club’s supporters called for him to be “sacked in the morning”.

The Spurs hierarchy have been mindful of the difficulties Frank has faced during what was always likely to be a transitional season. The chief executive, Vinai Venkatesham, wrote an open letter to fans on Saturday morning, the tone of which was supportive, the overriding message being a call for patience.

Frenetic derby was just the place for the interim manager to roll out Ferguson’s old ‘use the energy of the people’ dictum

For Manchester United’s executives, City are the best-in-class runaway train they wish to emulate and aspire to. Coveted talent like Antoine Semenyo and now Marc Guéhi opt for blue when a generation ago, Old Trafford was the destination of dreams.

United’s myth and legend becomes increasingly sepia-tinged but there may be life in it yet. The list of Sir Alex Ferguson’s boys able to take the reins in times of emergency is being exhausted but Michael Carrick, on his second turn, found a way to feed off it. He has just 17 games though there is a tantalising prize on offer. A return to the Champions League looks possible. Rather than embracing the void, Carrick’s United reminded that sporting directors, analytic departments and strategic reviews may have their place in the eventual restoration of power, but dogged spirit, wanting it more, can win the day.

• Manager makes outburst after 2-1 defeat at Sunderland

• Austrian angry club sold captain one day before game

Oliver Glasner accused Crystal Palace’s board of “abandoning” his team in the course of a scathing post-match deconstruction after the 2-1 defeat at Sunderland.

At times the Austrian, who on Friday announced he would be leaving Selhurst Park at the end of this season, sounded as if he was talking himself out of the remaining few months of his contract.

Mikel Arteta was adamant his team should have been awarded a penalty for handball by Ola Aina 10 minutes from time that would have given Arsenal the opportunity to move nine points clear at the top of the Premier League.

Instead Nottingham Forest hung on gamely for a doughty goalless draw in a performance redolent of the team last season who were pushing for European qualification. They may only be five points clear of the relegation zone, after West Ham’s last-gasp win at Tottenham, but Sean Dyche was understandably proud of his team’s efforts that suggest Forest are moving in the right direction.

• British No 1’s first game follows men’s match on Sunday

• ‘I’m just trying to focus and turn it around for tomorrow’

Emma Raducanu has criticised the Australian Open’s “very difficult” scheduling but remains focused on her game after being lined up to compete in a late-night slot on the opening day.

Raducanu will play her first-round match against Mananchaya Sawangkaew on Sunday night, leaving the British No 1 with minimal time to adjust to the conditions at Melbourne Park after competing in Hobart. With the Sunday start, the Australian Open’s first round is now split across three days, so Raducanu’s first match could have been played on Monday.

Despite high-quality matches, Senegal’s meeting with hosts Morocco may pale with the World Cup looming

Sometimes a tournament’s greatest strength can be its greatest weakness. In part because of the excellent playing conditions, this has been an Africa Cup of Nations devoid of shocks. The better teams keep winning. There has been a lot of good football, but not a huge amount of memorable football.

And the consequence is that, in the final, we have the two best teams, or certainly the best team in north Africa against the best team in sub-Saharan Africa: the hosts and World Cup semi-finalists Morocco against Senegal, who have reached three of the past four Afcon finals.

Anfield’s emotional verdict to another dispiriting result arrived in the form of boos. Wisely, Arne Slot chose not to dispute it. The Liverpool head coach got almost everything he wished for against Burnley – more creativity and more chances in particular – but the failure to kill off a relegation-threatened opponent who scored from their only shot on target brought familiar torment.

Liverpool had 32 attempts on Martin Dubravka’s goal, including one from the penalty spot, with 11 on target. Two were cleared off the line by the Burnley defender Bashir Humphreys. Slot had asked for dominant ball possession to yield more opportunities and here was the response, of sorts. Only Florian Wirtz converted, however, and the champions were held to a fourth successive Premier League draw when Marcus Edwards rewarded Burnley’s improved second half showing with a fine equaliser. More missed chances followed from Liverpool before a chorus of condemnation greeted the final whistle.

• Pool 1: Toulouse 77-7 Sale

• Both clubs are through to Champions Cup last 16

They are box office, of course. The team anyone would pay good money to watch. A collection of youngsters from Manchester were given the best seats in the house, as their magisterial hosts ran rings round them. This is Sale’s record defeat. This is Toulouse avenging their defeat to Saracens last week. Far older and uglier players than Sale could call on would have suffered similarly.

Both teams thus qualify for the last 16. Toulouse leapfrog their visitors into second place, for now, which means a home tie. They will be cheering on Glasgow, who host Saracens in the last match of the pool stages on Sunday.

• Higgins wins three consecutive frames in 6-5 victory

• Kyren Wilson seals 6-5 win on Wu Yize with century

John Higgins reeled off three straight frames as he came from behind to earn a 6-5 semi-final victory over Judd Trump in the Masters at Alexandra Palace.

Things were looking ominous for the Scot early on as Trump ensured he took a three-frame lead with a neat break of 60, which ended with Higgins conceding. Higgins gave Trump something to think about before the mid-session interval by clawing it back to 3-2, including a century break, but breaks of 70 and 57 by the world No 1 helped him move to within a frame of victory at 5-3.

Yes, ‘corridor care’ horrors persist, yet statistics show my timely, efficient treatment wasn’t a matter of fortune but quite ordinary

It was a bad start to the new year. Slipping on ice, I fell and broke my right wrist, so now I can’t hold a pen with my writing hand. But my experience of the NHS was a good reminder of a few facts.

Heading to the nearest A&E, I expected one of those 12-hour waits and corridors lined with trolleys of the near-dead, rowdy with drunken and psychotic mayhem. The Guardian recently found that violent incidents recorded by 212 NHS trusts in England rose from 91,175 in 2022-23 to 104,079 in 2024-25, the equivalent of about 285 cases reported every day. So I was ready for whatever. Notices warned that there would be zero tolerance of abuse of staff.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

I was a child actor, exploited by strangers on the internet. Now millions of children face the same danger

When I was a little girl, there was nothing scarier than a stranger.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, kids were told, by our parents, by TV specials, by teachers, that there were strangers out there who wanted to hurt us. “Stranger Danger” was everywhere. It was a well-meaning lesson, but the risk was overblown: most child abuse and exploitation is perpetrated by people the children know. It’s much rarer for children to be abused or exploited by strangers.

Focusing on the ex-president won’t distract Americans from the Trump administration’s foot-dragging on the Epstein files

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that, somewhere in a makeshift situation room in Mar-a-Lago, there’s a whiteboard with “very high IQ strategies to distract everyone from Jeffrey Epstein” written on the top.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Multi-day benders that deplete your mates’ annual leave and wallets are a no-no. Keep it cheeky, cheap and – crucially – enjoyable

A stag or hen do should be a straightforward, fun night celebrating a good friend moving into a new chapter of their life. Instead, thanks to films such as The Hangover and Bridesmaids, as well as the general Americanisation of what a “bachelor” or “bachelorette” party should be, we’ve ended up with too many overindulgent, wildly inconvenient and quite frankly underwhelming send-offs to our friends who are getting married.

Somewhere along the way, they’ve morphed into three-day tests of stamina and disposable income. Groomsmen bankrupting themselves on long weekends in Vegas that are billed as obligatory for anyone who wants to keep calling themselves a friend. Injuries sustained during ill-advised human pyramids on Spanish beaches. Weddings called off after drunken lapses of judgments in strip clubs. To add insult to injury, in 2023, a survey by Aviva found the average person spends £779 attending a stag or hen in the UK – and that goes up to £1,208 when it’s held abroad. Consequently, they’ve become gruelling and – crucially – not even fun any more.

Colvin, who died this week, made a stand on an Alabama bus nine months before Rosa Parks. When we met, her message about the struggle was clear

“In life, there’s the beginning and the end,” John Carlos, the African American sprinter who raised his fist in a black power salute from the podium of the 1968 Olympics, once told me. “The beginning don’t matter. The end don’t matter. All that matters is what you do in between – whether you’re prepared to do what it takes to make change. There has to be physical and material sacrifice. When all the dust settles and we’re getting ready to play down for the ninth inning, the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet.”

Claudette Colvin, who died earlier this week in a hospice in Texas, did her job while she was here on the planet, although it was several decades before her physical and material sacrifice was acknowledged. On 2 March 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, aged just 15, Colvin took a stand and refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman.

Gary Younge is a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester

History tells us what happens when American presidents focus on foreign policy and neglect domestic economic policy

Donald Trump’s blitzkrieg since his 3 January seizure of the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro has been guided by his triumph of the will, as he told the New York Times. “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me … I don’t need international law.”

Trump treats the spectacle as a reality TV show in which he is both the executive producer and the host who ultimately declares himself the winner. At his 3 January press conference on the day of Maduro’s seizure, Trump mentioned “oil” 27 times, “money” 13 times and “democracy” not once. He trashed the democratic opposition as lacking “respect” and “support”. The capture of Maduro was a decapitation, not regime change. Indeed, Trump served as a convenient agent of an internal coup of the existing powers, whom he declared “an ally”. “We have to fix the country first,” he said. “You can’t have an election.”

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist

Nostalgic knick-knacks will always have a place on my shelf – and in my heart. There’s something magical about being able to access the past in tangible, physical ways

It’s important to state that I am the most insufferably sentimental person I know.

There are old birthday cards collecting dust in my jam-packed cupboards, stuffed toys – their colours long-faded – sitting in my bedroom despite their prime cuddling years over, while gifts handmade by friends I no longer talk to take up real estate on my cluttered shelves. You couldn’t pay me to part with any of them.

The Trump administration’s immigration policies hearken back to the racist 1924 Immigration Act, meant to whiten the US

On 14 January, the Trump administration announced a stop on issuing immigrant visas for applicants from 75 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as 10 countries from eastern Europe. The Department of Homeland Security justified the decision by claiming that immigrants from these countries are at “high risk” of reliance on welfare and becoming a “public charge”.

As an immigration scholar, I was immediately struck by the falsehood of this economic justification. The vast majority of immigrants have been legally disqualified from cash welfare since 1996. Those who do qualify for benefits like Snap and Medicaid use them at much lower rates than non-immigrants. Through their taxes, immigrants are net contributors – especially undocumented immigrants who are excluded from federal benefits.

The West Midlands police chief finally bowed to government pressure and quit. But we should not sleepwalk into a centralised system

After refusing to walk, in a manner reminiscent of Stuart Broad batting against the Australians in the 2013 Ashes, the West Midlands chief constable Craig Guildford has finally accepted the inevitable and retired with ill-concealed reluctance from his post. He had little alternative.

On Wednesday the Home Office had released a critical report by the chief inspector of constabulary, Sir Andy Cooke, into the way West Midlands police supported banning Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans from attending a fixture in Birmingham against Aston Villa. The same day, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, told the Commons that she no longer had confidence in Mr Guildford. The chief constable tried to face down the criticism. But, on Friday, he quit.

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The US president wants Americans to believe they are facing an emergency. The real danger is from his administration

In Minnesota, armed and masked agents are ripping families apart. They are seizing parents while they wait with their child at a bus stop, going door to door seeking undocumented migrants and breaking car windows to drag people out. Last Wednesday an officer shot dead Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen. Her killing is a tragedy for all who loved her, and most of all for the three children left motherless. It also marks her country’s crossing of a Rubicon.

Where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) once preferred to keep a low profile, it now seeks publicity and confrontation – pumped up on billions of dollars in funding, the aggression and brazenness of the administration and the licensing of bigotry.

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

Readers respond to Jonathan Liew’s article on rude chants on the football terraces about the prime minister

Jonathan Liew links rude football chants to the unmerited personal abuse which Keir Starmer is currently receiving (When crowds direct offensive chants at Keir Starmer, who’s to blame? I’m afraid he is, 13 January).

Football managers are frequently the target for similar treatment. Like them, Starmer has to set his team’s strategy and tactics and produce results that please supporters.

Guardian readers responds to an article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in which she laments the takeover of four family-owned cafes

I can’t help being disappointed by the current controversy over the Hampstead Heath cafes, as highlighted by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (I’m sick of avocado toast – I just want to keep my local, untrendy cafe, 12 January), as it’s all happened before.

In 2016, as chair of the Hampstead Heath management committee, I voted against the proposal to take the running of the Parliament Hill cafe away from the D’Auria family and hand it to the Benugo chain, but the proposal was initially agreed (albeit by only one vote). There was a predictable outcry against this decision, and I found myself confronted by angry protesters at a meeting chaired by the local MP, Keir Starmer.

Readers respond to Emma John’s article on the difference in attitudes to the game in England and Australia

Emma John’s perceptive analysis of cricket in Australia is spot-on (England ruthlessly privatised cricket – Australia embraces it with constant public displays of affection, 9 January). I have been visiting Australia for many years – our son and his family live in Sydney. The locals, on hearing my accent, mostly respond by saying “Sorry about the cricket, mate.” It’s not in a gloating or superior way, but in a genuine sense of puzzlement at how when we have often promised a real contest we perform like a malfunctioning firework.

As Emma observes, in Australia cricket is a national obsession and accessible to all, either to watch or to play. In England it has become elitist, with free-to-air TV coverage long gone, the cost of going to a game increasingly prohibitive and the county game’s importance as a place to learn having been eroded. In spite of a loyal and well-heeled bunch of supporters, epitomised by the Barmy Army, it has become a minority sport, and the poorer for it.

Publishing pays abysmally, says an anonymous writer, who feels closer to their neighbours on benefits than to their former peers in teaching and academia

Access to the arts might be good for mental health (The Guardian view on living more creatively: a daily dose of art, 9 January), but the conditions in which most artists have to produce their work does nothing to improve their own.

I’m a novelist, and I was paid £1,000 and £500 respectively for my last two books. The latter was shortlisted for an international literary award. That’s £1,500 earned in 10 years. Before turning to writing full-time, I worked in other areas: in local government, and as a teacher and academic.

The cost of producing milk is higher than that being paid by milk processors, leaving farmers operating at a loss

“Every morning that I roll out of bed at 4.40am, I know I’m losing £1,800 that day, just by getting up.” This is the stark daily reality for Paul Tompkins, as he and his fellow dairy farmers struggle in the face of plummeting milk prices.

Tompkins, who is the third generation to run his family’s 234-hectare (600-acre) farm in the Vale of York, can produce milk for about 40p a litre from his 500-strong herd of black and white Holstein cows. However, he is being paid only 29p a litre by his milk processor, leaving him operating at a loss, despite trying to run his business as efficiently as possible.

Supreme leader blames US for death toll and calls Donald Trump a criminal for support of demonstrations

The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has acknowledged for the first time that thousands of people were killed during the protests that rocked Iran over the last two weeks.

In a speech on Thursday, Khamenei said that thousands of people had been killed, “some in an inhuman, savage manner”, and blamed the US for the death toll. The supreme leader railed against the US president, Donald Trump, whom he called a “criminal” for his support of demonstrations, and called for strict punishment of protesters.

Warner Bros is also being pursued by Paramount Skydance, helmed by David Ellison, son of president’s ally

Donald Trump bought at least $1m worth of bonds in Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), according to a financial disclosure form, days after he said would “be involved” in a proposed merger between the two companies.

The White House released a financial disclosure report on Friday which showed that Trump made two purchases from Netflix and two purchases from WBD, each amounting to at least $502,000.

M&S, Morrisons and Ocado among retailers bringing out ranges targeting shoppers taking Wegovy or similar

Veganuary and dry January are among the new year health kicks enthusiastically endorsed by supermarkets, but this year the buzz is around “Jab-uary” as pricey diet foods aimed at people on weight-loss drugs hit the shelves.

Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Asda, Ocado and the Co-op are among the big names targeting shoppers who use weight-loss injections, known as GLP-1 agonists, but better known by brand names such as Wegovy and Mounjaro.

Nathan Chasing Horse, who had part in Dances with Wolves, accused in trial that spotlights influence of ‘medicine men’

After learning she was of Lakota descent around 1996, Melissa Leone, who was adopted, hungered to connect to her Native American tribe.

“I was grabbing a hold of any and all connections that felt good or safe,” she said.

Some regions of the continent have enough ice to push up sea levels by 15 metres if they all melt, but researchers don’t yet fully understand the consequences

On one side of Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi’s view across the vast Totten ice shelf, the sun sat low on the Antarctic horizon. On the other, a full moon.

The ice shelf is “flat and white”, says Galton-Fenzi. “If there’s cloud around, you lose the horizon.”

Virunga park ranger says babies are well cared for by mother Mafuko but high infant mortality makes first weeks critical

It was noon by the time Jacques Katutu first saw the newborn mountain gorillas. Cradled in the arms of their mother, Mafuko, the tiny twins clung to her body for warmth in the forest clearing in Virunga national park, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Katutu, head of gorilla monitoring in Virunga, has seen dozens of newborns in his 15 years as a ranger. But, he tells the Guardian, even he was touched by the sight of the fragile infant males, who face serious obstacles if they are to become silverbacks one day.

Exclusive: Secret report suggests fats, oils and grease accumulate in ‘inaccessible dead zone’ at Malabar plant, then dislodge when pumping pressure ‘rapidly increases’

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A giant fatberg, potentially the size of four Sydney buses, within Sydney Water’s Malabar deepwater ocean sewer has been identified as the likely source of the debris balls that washed up on Sydney beaches a year ago.

Sydney Water isn’t sure exactly how big the fatberg is because it can’t easily access where it has accumulated.

Todolí foundation produces varieties from Buddha’s hands to sudachi and hopes to help citrus survive climate change

It was on a trip with a friend to the east coast of Spain that the chef Matthew Slotover came across the “Garden of Eden”, an organic farm growing citrus varieties he had never heard of. The Todolí Citrus Foundation is a nonprofit venture and the largest private collection of citrus in the world with more than 500 varieties, and its owners think the rare fruit could hold the genetic secrets to growing citrus groves that can deal with climate change.

The farm yields far more interesting fruit than oranges and lemons for Slotover’s menu, including kumquat, finger lime, sudachi and bergamot.

Vincent Chan, who already pleaded guilty to 26 offences, accused of possessing indecent images of children

A nursery worker who was convicted of dozens of sexual attacks on children left in his care has been charged with a further 15 offences.

Vincent Chan, 45, previously pleaded guilty to 26 offences between 2022 and 2024, including sexually assaulting four girls aged between two and four at the north London nursery where he worked, and offences relating to more than 25,000 indecent images of children.

Atlas Lions face Senegal in final of Africa Cup of Nations on Sunday and Moroccan diaspora scents victory

London’s Little Morocco is brimming with pride and anticipation. The Moroccan diaspora in North Kensington is in no doubt that on Sunday the Atlas Lions will triumph against Senegal in the final of the Africa Cup of Nations.

“There’s not just an excitement, it has completely taken over everything else,” said Souad Talsi, who runs the Al-Hasaniya Moroccan women’s centre at the base of 31-storey Trellick Tower, at the north end of Golborne Road.

Taxpayers talk of having to borrow cash and wait for months amid ‘significant backlogs’ in processing of claims

Some people are waiting a year or more for HM Revenue and Customs to refund overpaid tax and national insurance contributions (NICs).

In some cases, refunds that were previously processed within a few weeks are taking 10 months or more, an investigation by Guardian Money has found.

Full-time carer Martina Karos and Eleni Edwards, eight, were found dead at home in Salford

A translator who became a full-time carer for her severely disabled eight-year-old daughter killed herself and her child after becoming “overwhelmed” by loneliness, a coroner concluded.

Martina Karos, 40, and Eleni Edwards were found dead at their home in Salford, Greater Manchester, after police were called when the girl did not turn up at school on 23 September 2024.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Residents near Narrabeen Lagoon told to leave on Saturday night, after death of woman near Wollongong

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Summer storms on Australia’s east coast have claimed one life and threatened dozens more as flood waters rise.

Residents and holidaymakers were evacuated from Narrabeen Lagoon in Sydney’s northern beaches overnight on Saturday, but were told they could return on Sunday.

Museveni’s opponent, Bobi Wine, alleges that members of polling staff were kidnapped and called for peaceful protests

Yoweri Museveni, has won the Ugandan election and his seventh term with more than 70% of the vote, state election authorities have said, amid an internet shutdown and claims of fraud by his opponent.

His opponent, a youthful musician known as Bobi Wine, condemned what he called “fake results” and alleged that members of polling staff were kidnapped, among other election irregularities. He called for peaceful protests to pressure the authorities to release what he called the “rightful results”.

Artemis II mission could launch on 6 February, sending astronauts on a 685,000-mile journey

Nasa is preparing to roll out its most powerful rocket yet before a mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again for the first time in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as 6 February, taking its crew on a 685,000-mile round trip that will end about 10 days later with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Congressional Republicans criticize ‘absurd’ idea as polls show most Americans oppose taking control of territory

Donald Trump’s renewed interest in taking control of Greenland has become a subject of pointed dissent among congressional Republicans, with several allies speaking out in recent days against the idea after the president reintensified his interest following the US raid that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

Congressional Republicans are typically loath to disagree openly with the president, who has repeatedly called for his party’s dissenters to be voted out of office. But amid polling that shows an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose taking control of the island and warnings from Denmark that an invasion would spell the end of Nato, some congressional Republicans have issued forceful warnings against pursuing the issue.

Parts suppliers ‘put production on hold’ amid mounting confusion as China restricts purchase of the chips and US puts 25% roundabout tariff on their sale

Suppliers of parts for Nvidia’s H200 have paused production after Chinese customs officials blocked shipments of the newly approved artificial intelligence processors from entering China, according to a report.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report, which appeared in the Financial Times citing two people with knowledge of the matter. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment made outside regular business hours.

Chocolate treats reduced in size or weight as higher price of cocoa drives new wave of ‘shrinkflation’

Chocolate eggs are looking smaller than ever this year and it is not just because Easter is still so far away.

Many of the Easter eggs already out on supermarket shelves this month not only cost more, but have been reduced in size or weight as the price of cocoa has driven a new wave of shrinkflation.

Experts say central banks are increasingly stuffing their vaults as an insurance policy in a volatile world

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, the call came for Serbia’s central bank governor: millions of dollars’ worth of gold bars, destined for a high-security Belgrade vault, had been left on the runway of a Swiss airport.

In air freight – despite the extraordinary value of bullion – fresh flowers, food and other perishables still take priority. “We learned this the hard way,” Jorgovanka Tabaković told a conference late last year.

The famous gallery, home to masterpieces from Goya and Velázquez, is exploring how best to preserve, and improve, the visitor experience

Friday morning found Diego Velázquez striking the familiar pose he has held for the past 370 years, staring out, brush in one hand, palette in the other, from the huge canvas of Las Meninas.

The 14 people who stood before the painting to meet the Spanish artist’s haughty gaze – not to mention the heavy eyes of the dozy mastiff in the picture’s foreground – were among the first visitors of the day to Madrid’s Prado Museum.

After losing her father to alcohol addiction, author Sophie Calon turned to writing – and found clarity, connection and hope in other stories of relapse and recovery

On the night of Boxing Day 2021, my dad’s body was found near a Cardiff hostel. His death, at 55, was as sudden as it was not. For years, alcoholism had been changing the shape of his heart.

He died less than a mile from his old office; top law firm, equity partner. Four miles from our once tight-knit home in a leafy neighbourhood. He had lost both his family and his job in 2019. Raised in Barry, working class, he had been proud of the beautiful life he had built for us. Others thought he “had it all”. He was widely adored, but drinking made him volatile. He was homeless and often behind bars in his final two years.

He joins Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn and Frank Bruno in a big new series. Plus: the bizarre return of After the Flood. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, Channel 4

My jaw was left agape by this rich, moving spinoff. Its two lead characters have the making of a classic comic double act

The Game of Thrones franchise has fruited again, like an abundant oak. Where’s left to go? A startling opening, in which a lumbering oaf takes a dump behind a tree, gives us a clue. Chronologically, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Monday 19 January, 9pm, Sky Atlantic) sits between the juggernaut original and its courtly prequel, House of the Dragon. Tonally, it’s in a world of its own.

That oaf eventually gets a name: Dunk. Contrary to expectation, Dunk is a knight. Specifically, a “hedge knight”, a lower-status category whose kind cannot afford their keep and must sleep under trees. “Any knight can make a knight” we are reminded, by simply dubbing them. This lack of gatekeeping has resulted in a class system in which highborn valiants scorn their ignoble brethren. They are knights in name only, and only just. Of course, there’s nothing just about this.

​In this week’s newsletter: Once upon a time, going online after a big TV episode was an act of reckless bravery. Now, even the most talked-about shows come with an unspoken pact of silence

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Don’t be alarmed by the image above. I can assure you that this newsletter features no spoilers for the current season of The Traitors. We won’t be discussing the shocking departure of REDACTED, or the nefarious actions of EXPUNGED, or the fact that CENSORED is the wife/half-brother/hairdresser of NAME REMOVED. Relax, you are in a hermetically sealed Traitors safe space here.

Indeed, what has gradually dawned on me while watching this latest series is how relatively straightforward avoiding spoilers has been. There have been at least a couple of occasions in the past fortnight where I have been behind by an episode or so, and I have never felt in imminent danger of prematurely learning of the latest murder or banishment. Friends who have texted me about the show’s goings-on have done so in the most cautious, detail-light manner possible, regardless of whether they knew if I was up to speed. I, in turn, am sensible enough not to wade into corners of social media where I’m most likely to be spoiled. Despite The Traitors being the biggest monocultural TV sensation in years, I don’t feel like I have to resort to desperate measures to avoid catching the results, like Bob and Terry trying to avoid the England v Bulgaria score on The Likely Lads.

(A$AP Rocky Recordings)
Now a father of three and burgeoning actor, Rocky finally comes back to music with his strongest album since his 2013 debut – though there’s plenty of flab

It has been eight years since A$AP Rocky, once and future king of New York rap, released an album. In the world of hip-hop, where even A-list stars such as Rocky’s friend and collaborator Tyler, the Creator are prone to releasing multiple albums a year, this is a lifetime. In the time since Rocky released his third album, 2018’s Testing, Kanye West has rebranded as a born-again Christian, swerved to the right and released five albums. Rocky hasn’t been sitting around: he’s been a press mainstay, thanks to his relationship with pop superstar Rihanna, with whom he now has three children, and last year was acquitted of firing a gun at a former friend, dodging up to 24 years in prison. He has also found acclaim as an actor, starring opposite Rose Byrne in the lauded dark comedy If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest.

Aside from a few one-off singles, such as the Tame Impala collaboration Sundress, Rocky has released music in fits and starts in recent years. (In terms of mainstream stars, perhaps only Rocky’s romantic partner outpaces him when it comes to leaving fans waiting: it has been a decade since Rihanna’s last record.) Testing yielded the Skepta-featuring hit Praise the Lord (Da Shine), but otherwise fell flat with mainstream audiences and critics alike, lacking the dynamism and potent charisma of his breakout albums. That album seemed to leave Rocky at a crossroads. Would it serve him best to continue exploring its slipshod experimentalism, or to make an attempt at retrenchment, and return to the more straightforward music that made him famous?

The woodwind player who taught André 3000 music theory releases his searching debut album next month

From Los Angeles
Recommend if you like Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Shabaka Hutchings’s flute music, the Coltranes
Up next Debut album And So It Is released 13 February

For woodwind players, breath is everything: the lifeforce of artistry, the thing that furnishes sound with personality. But a few years ago, the Los Angeles saxophonist Aaron Shaw realised he was becoming increasingly breathless. In 2023, aged 27, he was diagnosed with bone marrow failure, meaning he wasn’t producing enough oxygen-carrying red blood cells. A change of approach was required.

(Columbia)
Framed as the music Williams wanted to make post-Take That, Britpop surpasses pastiche and swerves unpredictably. Homoerotic paean to Morrissey, anyone?

The arrival of Robbie Williams’s 13th album has been a complicated business. It was announced in May 2025 and was supposed to come out in October, when its title would have chimed with the 90s nostalgia sparked by the Oasis reunion. Williams spent the summer engaging in promotion, unveiling fake Britpop-themed blue plaques around London and staging a press conference at the Groucho Club. There was a launch gig at storied Camden venue Dingwalls, at which he performed not just his new album in full, but his 1997 solo debut Life Thru a Lens.

It was a bold choice, given that Life Thru a Lens initially threatened to derail his solo career: at the time, the now nakedly obvious supernova hits Angels and Let Me Entertain You were overlooked while people criticised Williams’s muddled attempts to fit in with, well, Britpop. On stage at Dingwalls, he made the surprise announcement that the album now wasn’t coming out until mid-February, admitting with winning candour that he didn’t want to compete with Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl. Now it’s suddenly appeared, without explanation, two weeks into January: presumably because Williams will have fewer competitors in the albums chart this week, giving him a greater chance at breaking the record he currently jointly holds with the Beatles for the most UK No 1 albums ever.

(InFiné)
The composers’ first collaborative album ebbs from epic, cinematic heights to delicate and dreamy lullabies

After years of touring together, Los Angeles-based composers Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have developed what the former refers to as a “musical telepathy”. Tragic Magic, the pair’s first collaborative album, evidences this bond: born out of a short series of improv sessions in Paris, it’s a wonderfully immersive set of new age and ambient tracks, where Barwick’s airy, reverbed vocals and atmospheric synth washes interweave with, and accentuate, Lattimore’s twinkling harp.

The album sessions took place shortly after last year’s California wildfires, which the two musicians experienced as residents. Accordingly, tragedy and hope cut through the dreamlike haze of these unfurling compositions. With its delicate harp loop and hushed whispers, opener Perpetual Adoration is as sweet and dreamy as a lullaby, while the gorgeous, moving Haze With No Haze carries a quiet desperation in the brittle, staccato melody and Barwick’s yearning high register. As always, her lyrics are indiscernible, words blurring into texture and shapeless whispers, but teem with feeling.

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some great new paperbacks, from a Renaissance romp to an ode to optimism

The Cut Up by Louise Welsh; The Persian by David McCloskey; The 10:12 by Anna Maloney; Very Slowly All at Once by Lauren Schott; Vivian Dies Again by CE Hulse

The Cut Up by Louise Welsh (Canongate, £20)
This welcome third outing for gay Glaswegian auctioneer Rilke opens with his discovery of a body. Obnoxious jewellery dealer Rodney Manderson has been killed outside the Bowery auction rooms, stabbed through the eye with the Victorian hatpin that his boss, Rose Bowery, has brandished in front of the nation on Bargain Hunt. As she discussed the pin’s virtues as a deadly weapon as well as its millinerial uses, the fiercely loyal Rilke decides – while feeling grateful to have skipped lunch and trying not to think of jelly – to remove it before calling the police. They soon decide they’ve got their man, but Rilke’s not so sure; the roots of the crime may lie in the past – in particular, a notorious reform school. With a central character who feels like an old friend, The Cut Up is as sharply observed, humane and beautifully written as its two superb predecessors.

The Persian by David McCloskey (Swift, £20)
Former CIA analyst McCloskey’s fourth novel centres on Jewish Iranian dentist Kam Esfahani. Dissatisfied with life in Sweden, where his family relocated when driven out of Iran, and wanting the wherewithal to move to California, he accepts an offer from the chief of Mossad’s Caesarea Division. Returning to Tehran, he runs a fake dental practice as cover for assisting in “sowing chaos and mayhem in Iran”. Things go awry when he enlists double agent Roya Shabani, widow of an Iranian scientist killed by the Israelis. The book takes the form of a series of confessions that Kam, now caught and imprisoned, is forced to write by his torturer, and these documents – which may or may not reveal the whole truth – are interspersed with flashbacks. Kam’s cynical tone and mordant humour serve to underline not only the horror, but also the inherent hypocrisy of the endless cycle of violence and retribution: this masterly novel is tragically topical and utterly gripping.

From classmates to co-parents, the changing dynamics of a female friendship are astutely observed in a novel that explores the boundaries between love, lust and companionship

Australian author Madeleine Gray’s award-winning debut novel Green Dot was a smart, funny tale of a doomed office affair. Her new novel, Chosen Family, is a smart, funny tale of a complicated, life-changing relationship between two women.

Nell and Eve meet aged 12 at a girls’ school in Sydney. Gray’s narrative moves smoothly back and forth from the 00s to the present day; as in David Nicholls’s One Day, we learn about our protagonists by meeting them at different moments in their lives, from the pressures of high school to the alcohol-soaked freedoms of university to the frustrations and joys of early parenthood.

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.

When Hollow Knight: Silksong came out last summer I was in so much pain that I didn’t know if I’d be able to play it. Could a video game teach me anything new about suffering?

Last year I became uncomfortably well acquainted with suffering. In March I started experiencing excruciating pain in my right arm and shoulder – burning, zapping, energy-sapping pain that left me unable to think straight, emanating from a nexus of torment behind my shoulder blade and sometimes stretching all the way up to the base of my skull and all the way down into my fingers. Typing was agony, but everything was painful; even at rest it was horrible. I couldn’t play my guitar; I couldn’t play video games; I couldn’t sleep. I learned how quickly physical suffering lacerates your mental wellbeing.

I’d had episodes of nagging pain from so-called repetitive strain injuries before, the product of long hours hunched over laptops and game controllers over the course of decades, but nothing like this. A few months later, after the initial unrelenting agony had subsided to a permanent hum of more moderate pain, it was diagnosed as brachial neuritis, inflammation of the nerve path that travels from the base of your neck down to your hand. (Nobody knows what causes it, but it sometimes happens after an infection or an injury.) The good news, I was told by a neurologist, was that it usually gets better in about one to three years, and I hadn’t lost any function in my right hand. The bad news was that there was nothing much to be done about the pain in the meantime.

From the greatest cartoon racing game in history to a remastered version of an Alien-inspired sci-fi shooter, here are the Switch’s must-play games

• The 15 best games to play on the Nintendo Switch in 2025

Although the Nintendo Switch 2 has been out for several months, not everyone has made the leap to the new machine and there is still much to enjoy on the original console in 2026 (and beyond). From timeless Mario adventures to cutesy shooters to chasm-deep role-playing quests, here are 15 games no Switch owner should be without.

Aldwych theatre, London
Jamie Eastlake’s play about two football fans mixes together song, dance, comedy and dark family drama, with incohesive results

This tale of two hard-up reprobates in Gateshead, who dream of getting a Newcastle United season ticket by hook or by crook, encapsulates hope in the face of adversity. Adapted from an award-winning book (which also became the film Purely Belter), the play has its own rags-to-riches story, of sorts. Written and directed by Jamie Eastlake, it began life at a 60-seater social club in north Tyneside in 2022. Now, here it is in the West End, full of vivid characters, in-your-face demotic and subtly damning commentary on the political betrayals of this region, drained of resources – and sometimes hope itself.

Jonathan Tulloch’s original novel, The Season Ticket, was published in 2000 but could have been written for our age of austerity, though its tone wavers between comedy and tragedy. The picaresque exploits of young, disenfranchised friends Gerry (Dean Logan) and Sewell (Jack Robertson) – whether scouring the banks of the Tyne for stuff to sell or carrying out burglaries – are spliced with dark family drama involving poverty, domestic violence, alcoholism and sexual abuse.

At Aldwych theatre, London, until 24 January. Then at Newcastle Theatre Royal, 9-13 June

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Dai Fujikura’s elusive trombone concerto was given its UK premiere by Peter Moore, who made its colours and textures sing; a persuasive but perhaps too sunny reading of Mahler’s first symphony followed in the concert’s second half

Trombone concertos don’t come around every day. The last time this Cinderella of the brass section had a major moment in the spotlight was in 2022, when the Proms hosted their first solo trombonist in almost 20 years. Before that, you have to go back to 2008 for headlines – when a dazzling 12-year-old broke records as the youngest ever winner of BBC Young Musician. The trombone player in each case? Peter Moore.

Now with a decade-long stint at the London Symphony Orchestra under his belt, Belfast-born Moore is one of the great champions of his instrument, whose growing concerto repertoire has a lot to do with his persuasive advocacy. He had an intriguing platform in Dai Fujikura’s Vast Ocean II (2023) – a reworking of the composer’s 2005 trombone concerto, given its UK premiere here by Kazuki Yamada and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

King’s Head theatre, London
Levi Kreis embarks on a journey of rediscovery in song, from self-hating adolescence to self-destructive adulthood

The title of this semi-autobiographical musical is also a massive spoiler. Broadway star Levi Kreis plays a version of himself, battling his demons and facing his past, only to conclude that, however flawed he often feels, he is in fact – ah, you’ve guessed.

This Levi stumbles off stage, inked and emotional, having been dumped by text during a matinee. After 11 sober months, he reaches for the crystal meth – but his soft-eyed sponsor Ben (Yiftach “Iffy” Mizrahi) urges him to confront his inner child, ideally in song. Levi is unconvinced – “my inner child is like Chucky, but he’s human, he’s gay and he thinks he’s Elvis” – but sits at the keyboard and yowls through the pain.

Piotr Anderszewski
(Warner Classics)
Darkness hangs over a fluid and distinctively emotional take on a dozen introspective works

Brahms’s late piano music is a pinnacle of 19th-century Romanticism, though its atmosphere of introspection and veiled emotion is a million miles from the more turbulent works of his youth. Piotr Anderszewski sees in it a testament of sorts, but one that keeps as many secrets as it reveals. By selecting a dozen of these intimate miniatures to make up an absorbing 48-minute programme, the Polish pianist opens a markedly individual window on to the composer’s solitary artistic maturity.

He opens with the aching B-minor Intermezzo from the Op 119 set, the tempo measured and laden with melancholy reflection. Phrasing is fluid across concentrated interpretations that exhibit a distinctive emotional core. The moderate pace continues throughout, with Anderszewski preferring to avoid leavening the mood merely for the sake of contrast. The cumulative effect is one of penetrating regret.

Being able to understand the comedian talking in French in his Dress to Kill show led to me learning several languages and working on the continent

Until the age of 13, I had never taken much interest in school French lessons. I had visited the country a couple of times, on family driving holidays to Brittany and Normandy, but my parents did all the talking and I didn’t see the point of learning le and la, soixante-dix or quatre-vingts. It was just something on the curriculum that I had to do.

Then, one evening at home, in Stirlingshire, Scotland, with everyone else in bed, I sat on the sofa and put on a VHS of Eddie Izzard’s standup show Dress to Kill. My parents were fans and I’d caught a glimpse on TV and thought it looked funny. I was young and some of the material was probably too rude but I enjoyed the surreal and absurd comedy, impressions and mad tangents.

Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie have gone from waiting tables to ‘One Direction-level’ fame in a matter of months, upstaging A-listers at the Golden Globes last week. What’s next?

Tough luck if you prefer your romcoms PG-rated, or ice hockey leaves you cold: there is no escaping Heated Rivalry. The steamy coming-of-age series has been a sensation in North America, making instant stars of its leads as producers rush to make more of it. It’s hard to remember the last TV show to spark such a furore, let alone one from Canada’s “Crave network”. So who are the young men at the centre of the frenzy – and how are they coping with all that thirst?

1. From waiting tables …

She was a star at 14, learned how to act with the whole world watching, then stepped away to discover herself. Now she’s back in the new Tomb Raider – and a Die Hard-style thriller

Sophie Turner has a screwball comedy vibe in real life – elegant trouser suit, arch but friendly expression, perfect hair, she looks ready for some whipsmart repartee and a sundowner. She seems very comfortable in her own skin, which is unusual anyway when you’re not quite 30, but especially incongruous given her various screen personas: first, in Game of Thrones. Thirteen when she was cast as Sansa Stark, 14 when she started filming, she embodied anxious, aristocratic self-possession at an age when a regular human can’t even keep track of their own socks. Six seasons in, arguably at peak GoT impact, she became Jean Grey in X-Men: Apocalypse, a role she reprised in 2019 for Dark Phoenix, action-studded and ram-jammed with superpowers.

Now she’s the lead in Steal, a Prime Video drama about a corporate heist, though that makes it sound quite desk and keyboard-based when, in fact, it is white-knuckle tense and alarmingly paced. The villains move in a malevolent swarm like hornets; hapless middle managers are slain almost immediately; it’s impossible to tell for the longest time whether we’re looking at gangster thugs or hacking geniuses, motivated by avarice or anarchy. It’s a first-time screenplay by novelist Sotiris Nikias (who writes crime under a pseudonym, Ray Celestin), and it feels original, not so much in the action and hyperviolence as in the trade-offs it refuses to make: whatever explosions are going on, however much chasing around a dystopian pension-fund investment office, you still wouldn’t call it an action drama. It has a novelistic feel, like characters from a David Nicholls book woke up in Die Hard, and there’s a constant swirl, as you try to figure out who’s the assailed and who’s the assailant.

Original script from 1954 referring to ‘troubles of this kind’ to be brought to life on stage for LGBT+ History Month

“All the homosexuals I’ve known have been extremely eager, like alcoholics, to spread the disease from which they suffer,” the barrister Lord Hailsham told the BBC in 1954.

Other contributors to the BBC’s first ever programme on male homosexuality largely agreed. A Church of England moralist warned any “invert” who may have been listening in of “transitory attachments, disillusionment and loneliness in his old age”.

Repairing the cistern has not only given me hope for the year ahead, it has changed our lives …

At the beginning of the month my wife and I had our traditional dispute about the official start date of Dry January.

“January 1st is a public holiday,” I said, as she watched me open a beer. “It doesn’t count.”

At 17 Niki vowed to give her newborn son, born blind and profoundly disabled, the best life she could. Thirty years on she and Jimmy are travelling Australia in a Toyota Troopy, balancing hard-won freedom with constant care

Outside a supermarket in Exmouth, a small town 1,250km north of Perth, a man notices Niki carrying Jimmy on her back. She is 152cm tall and he weighs 45kg. “He should be carrying you!” the man says.

Strangers often misjudge Niki’s son, who is 30 but looks, she says, “like he’s eight or nine”. Jimmy is blind and has panhypopituitarism, a hormonal disorder that affects fewer than one in 100,000 Australians each year. This condition halted his development, leaving him unable to walk or speak, with severe intellectual disability.

Niki hoists Jimmy on to her back for a walk along the beach in Exmouth. She has always carried him

This week, we got crunching on a batch of widely available granolas, tasting for flavour, ingredient quality and provenance

• The best supermarket runny honey

Granola is similar to muesli, but baked with a sugar syrup (maple syrup, honey or golden syrup, say). It’s by definition sweet, and I find sugar addictive, so I enjoy it only rarely as a treat. The best ones come in golden clusters; sweet, but not too sweet (under 10% is low, over 15% high), with a touch of salt and a range of whole grains, dried fruit, nuts and seeds. I also love ones that include toasted coconut, because it adds complexity and flavour at not too much extra cost.

The quality of this test group was pretty high across the board, with nutty bargains, luxuriously indulgent, sugar-packed treats and, to my surprise, some really healthy, low-sugar wholefood options.

From traditional to microwavable, wearable to extra-fleecy, here are our favourite hot-water bottles for winter

• Winter essentials to get you through the cold snap

Call me old before my time, but I find hot-water bottles particularly comforting. I can’t be alone, either: once the relic of grandparents’ bedrooms, hot-water bottles are having a revival. Maybe it’s the effects of high energy prices, or an increasing desire to achieve cosiness.

But how different can hot-water bottles really be? Fill them, hug them – job done, right? Well, yes and no. Since hot-water bottles have been trending, manufacturers have upped the ante. Yes, there are the traditional hot-water bottles sloshing about with bellies full of hot water, but there are also rechargeable hot-water bottles, which often stay warm for far longer. And, many people prefer the comforting weight and safety of microwavable “hot-water” bottle alternatives, often filled with natural grains, such as wheat.

Best overall:
CosyPanda majestic mustard waffle hot-water bottle

Best budget:
Argos hot-water bottle with chunky knit cover

Cold weather cracking your hands? From cult classics to anti-ageing formulas, these creams will nourish and protect

• The best body moisturisers, tested

The skin on your hands is exposed to all sorts of stressors, from cold weather to cleaning products. Even hand soap can strip skin of its natural oils, causing dryness and irritation. Whether you’re struggling with skin dryness or want something with anti-ageing benefits, there’s probably a hand cream that can help.

The best hand cream for you will depend on the specific problems you’re facing, so I asked dermatologists to identify the best ingredients for each goal. The recommendations here are a result of weeks of thorough testing, based on the expert advice I received.

Best hand cream overall:
L’Occitane shea butter hand cream

Best budget hand cream:
E45 Repairing hand cream

From vintage suede to discount designer heels, these wardrobe staples are often better preloved

• From beeswax to baby wipes: how to make your leather last a lifetime

What’s not to love about secondhand shopping? You get one-off pieces while making an environmentally conscious fashion choice. From party dresses to jeans, some pieces are even better – and much more affordable – vintage. A well-made, brand-new leather jacket could set you back anywhere between £150 and £700, but you could pick up a secondhand one for £50 or less.

But it can be daunting when you first start. Knowing what you’re looking for and where you can find it is key. Consider where to shop: Vinted is good for a high-street steal, while Vestiaire Collective could get you discount designer (and it’s great for shoes; see below). Don’t overlook your local charity shop, either: some of my most satisfying secondhand buys have come from Oxfam or Crisis.

Food critic comes under fire after suggesting health and safety rules ‘don’t really apply’ to elite restaurants

According to a critic who has eaten at every three-star Michelin restaurant in the world, Gareth Ward, the star chef and owner of Ynyshir, on the southern edge of Eryri national park, is a groundbreaking visionary.

“He knows which rules to break and when,” Andy Hayler wrote. “He’s like Picasso; if you look at his early still lifes, they’re unbelievably perfect.”

A warming, scoop-it-up tomato and egg dish a bit like shakshuka, but the zippy lemony yoghurt and harissa give away its Turkish roots

I am not the type of person to say, “These eggs will change your life”, but these eggs changed my life, so they may also make a sizeable dent in yours. The recipe is based on (but not authentic to) the Turkish dish menemen. There is much to love about these eggs, not least how magnificently delicious they are and how fun it is to scoop them up with hot flatbread. On a practical note, meanwhile, they can be eaten at any mealtime and, if not finished, reheated later. Which, if you love eggs and leftovers as much as I do, is a (small) dream come true.

Pandan leaf brings fragrant southern Asian sweetness to a mix of rice gin, white vermouth and green chartreuse

At Bun House Disco, we’re all about bringing the vibrancy of late-night 1980s Hong Kong to Shoreditch, east London, and paying homage to a time when the island came alive after dark. In that same spirit, our cocktail list nods to the classics, but also features all sorts of Chinese and Asian ingredients and spices.

Serves 1

Linus Leung, Bun House Disco, London E2

There are some decent wine substitutes out there that are worth trying – but it’s always worth remembering that they aren’t actually ‘wine’

Are you a lover of oaky rioja, or maybe zingy Kiwi sauvignon blanc, and looking to find a non-alcoholic lookalike? To put it bluntly, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Alcohol does much more than make you tipsy; it is the magic ingredient that gives so much of wine’s wondrous complexity, character and charm. Not only does it carry volatile compounds that make up wine’s endlessly fascinating combinations of scents and tastes, along with a sensation of warmth, it also creates that viscous body and texture – what’s rather grossly known in the trade as “mouthfeel” – of the liquid in your mouth, and the overall balance of all these factors in the wine.

When the base wine is dealcoholised, however, all that character goes with it. Compared with beer’s relatively low-alcohol content, wine’s usual 11%-15% ABV means that, when the alcohol has gone, you feel its absence more, which is partly why nolo beers are generally more successful than nolo wine. That said, there are some wine substitutes that are worth trying, but, to avoid disappointment, my advice is to see them as drinks that aren’t wine because, well, they’re simply not.

Dating in New York City wasn’t easy for comedian Mel McGlensey. Then she fell hard for Doug

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2015 I was in my early 20s and living in New York City, working as a journalist and moonlighting as a comedian.
My dating life was not going well, and my poor little heart had taken a beating. Dating in the city had set the bar very low. But even if it hadn’t, Douglas would’ve stepped right over it.

On our first date, something felt different. For one thing, I spent the entire time talking, rather than smiling and nodding when appropriate. Instead of knocking back a series of drinks just to get through it, I found myself nursing a single cocktail the entire evening as I fielded his questions about my opinions and aspirations. Compared with the self-indulgent jerks I usually suffered through dates with, Doug’s common decency was a revelation. I even phoned my mum on the way home to gush about him.

A dry spell doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over, say the experts. They share their advice on how to restore intimacy, from changing venue to writing a ‘menu’ and finding your kink

First up, don’t panic! “Every couple goes through dry spells. It doesn’t mean either of you is broken, and is not an indicator that something is ‘wrong’,” says Dr Tammy Nelson, sex and couples therapist, author of Open Monogamy, and host of The Trouble With Sex podcast. Dr Laurie Mintz, sex therapist and author of Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters – and How to Get It agrees: “The limerence stage, where you can’t keep your hands off each other, lasts six months to two years, then fades, but people think there’s something wrong with them or the relationship.”

Researcher calls for guidelines for diagnosing prolonged grief disorder to be expanded to cover people who lose pets

Grief over the death of a pet could be as chronic as that for a human family member, research has shown, confirming what many people already know about their bond with their furry friends.

People grieving the loss of a pet can suffer from prolonged grief disorder (PGD), a mental health condition brought about by the death of a loved one, a survey published in the academic journal PLOS One has found.

Margaret says her daughter didn’t pay the airport charge, so it’s on her. Georgie says this cock up is all her mum’s doing. You decide who got them into this fine mess
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

We dropped Georgia off in her own car and she didn’t pay the drop-off fee, so the fine is hers

I didn’t know you had to pay for drop-off. Mum knew and didn’t tell me, so she should help pay

Top tips on holiday booking essentials, from how to pay to what insurance to buy and when

It’s chilly and the days are short, so, to beat the January blues, many people’s thoughts are turning to holidays.

Although the high cost of living is continuing to put a strain on household finances, for many the annual getaway to somewhere sunny is sacrosanct, with travel companies predicting a 5% rise in bookings this year.

If you rush it because 31 January is on the horizon you are likely to make mistakes, or not have everything you need

The deadline is 31 January, but don’t put it off – try to set aside enough time over the next few days to complete your tax return for the tax year that ran from 6 April 2024 to 5 April 2025.

This was even though I had revoked my citizenship and now have dual British and German nationality

I want to flag a discriminatory experience I’ve had with the Co-op’s will-writing service.

I asked it to update a will it had drawn up for me in 2020, with my partner and our daughter as the beneficiaries. I received no follow-up for two months.

I have paid two monthly £108 instalments but am now phone-less and out of pocket

I ordered a £544 phone from Amazon. A tracking update later informed me that it “may be lost” and I could request a refund. I pressed the refund option and was directed to customer service, which insisted I wait a week to claim.

A week later I was told I needed to file an incident report from the email address associated with my account. When I complied, the report was rejected as coming from an address that “didn’t meet certain security standards”.

A study found small changes to key behaviours can have significant benefits, and I’m all for barely perceptible adjustments

A week into the first lockdown of the pandemic, I vowed I would never set foot in a gym again. This pledge seemed in keeping with the confused fatalism of the moment, but it turned out to be one of the few promises to myself I have ever kept.

Since then I’ve become a fan of evidence suggesting that minimal changes to one’s lifestyle make a big difference to overall health, and this week there was more: a study from the University of Sydney found that even small changes to three key behaviours – sleep, diet, and exercise – can have significant benefits. For those with the least healthy habits, an additional five minutes of sleep, two minutes more exercise and minimal dietary adjustments could add another year of life.

It’s becoming more common for people to use AI chatbots for personal guidance – but this doesn’t come without risks

• Sign up for our free newsletter course on how to make AI work for you

If you’re like a lot of people, you’ve probably ditched your new year resolutions by now. Setting goals is hard; keeping them is harder – and failure can bring about icky feelings about yourself.

This year, in an effort to game the system and tilt the scales toward success, some people used AI for their 2026 resolutions. It’s the latest step in an ongoing trend: in September 2025, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released findings showing that using the AI chatbot for personal guidance is very common.

Judy Stokes, a retired GP, shares her experience as a spatial-sequence synaesthete

• Read more stories of synaesthesia in the way I feel series

Did someone with spatial-sequence synaesthesia design the calendar app on mobile phones? Because that’s how time and dates look in my brain. If you say a date to me, that day appears in a grid diagram in my head, and it shows if that box is already imprinted with a holiday, event or someone’s birthday. Public holidays and special events like Christmas and Easter are already imprinted for the year, and the diagram goes backwards to about 100,000BC and then forwards all the way to about the year 2500 before tapering off.

It was only in my 60s that I discovered there was a name for this phenomenon – not just the way time appears in this 3D sort of calendar pattern, but the colours seen when I think of certain words. Two decades previously, I’d mentioned to a friend that Tuesdays were yellow and she’d looked at me in the same strange, befuddled way that family members always had when told about the calendar in my head. Out of embarrassment, it was never discussed further. I was clearly very odd.

From Greenland’s prime minister to Timothée Chalamet, the anorak signals a shift from aspiration to realism

Power dressing usually comes in the form of a suit or a wide-shouldered wool coat. But right now, things look a little different. This week, Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, appeared at a joint press conference with Denmark’s leader to say that he had no intention of acquiescing to Donald Trump’s stated desire to “own” Greenland – all while wearing a glacial-blue windbreaker.

It is a garment Nielsen wears regularly but, in this shifting geopolitical moment, it took on a new, loaded and striking messaging.

The Gardanas, a pair of mucus-coloured hemp shoes, are a somewhat paradoxical current must-have. But their appeal goes deeper than the topsoil

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There is every chance that 2026 will be the year you see your first pair of Gardana gardening clogs in the wild. In fact, if you spend much time on TikTok, or live in Brooklyn, you’ve probably already been seeing them for months, if not years. I saw my first pair a few weeks ago. I watched a dad dropping his kids off at school in head-to-toe Carhartt, a pair of Gardanas peeping out from below his trousers like a shy frog.

Pliable, but with a sturdy sole, they go for as little as £25. The work of French “environmental poet” André Ravachol, who founded the Plasticana brand behind the clogs in 1998, they’re made from 100% recycled PVC and hemp, which gives them their earthy-caramel or, as Vogue put it, “bird-pooey” hue. They have since been called “maybe the coolest shoes in London” by one TikToker, as he Lime-biked his way through the capital to try to nab a pair.

The bandhgala jacket will no longer be part of the formal uniform for Indian Railways staff, following claims it symbolises a ‘colonial mindset’

It is one India’s most ubiquitous garments, with origins in the grand Mughal courts and Rajasthani kingdoms of times past, and still widely favoured by sharply dressed grooms at wedding receptions.

But this week, the distinctive high-collared bandhgala jacket – known to many as the “princely jacket” in a nod to its royal origins – found itself at the centre of a lively debate after it was denounced by the Indian railways minister as a symbol of a “colonial mindset”.

Bring your ostracised wardrobe items in from the cold by forgetting about whether they go with each other. Instead, let them shine in all their glory

Fashion is a dance between rules and rebellion. Great style requires a bit of both. The rules are essential, because one of the key emotional benefits that a great wardrobe can deliver is a sense of control in a chaotic world. The rules are there to simplify and clarify, lighting our route to a well put-together outfit. That well put-together outfit has the power to help you feel calmer, simply because you look in the mirror and see a competent person and therefore feel like a competent person. Style rules also come in useful for making sense of the world around us. Dress codes, style tribes, the signals we send – whether as blatant as the slogan on a T-shirt, or as subtle as the brand of your rucksack – hold an important social function, making other people legible to us.

But style also needs friction. Fashion dies if it stops moving, because moving with the times is what makes it fashion rather than just pretty clothes. The restless forward energy that moves hemlines and invents new silhouettes is what drives the plot and keeps us interested.

Thirty years after she first visited, our writer is relieved to discover that the town has managed to swerve the worst excesses of tourist development

My favourite memory of Akyaka? The second evening of our most recent visit: the beach floodlit by the last embers of a flaming sunset, the mountains that stand sentry around the town softening into deep purple hues. Before our eyes, all was transformed: sunloungers stacked away, waiters whisking back and forth with tables, menus and small rechargeable lamps. A little further along, in one of the bar areas on the beach, a trio of Turkish women, their hair in shades of pepper and smoke, sat with their toes in the sand, happily knitting. I recalled other beaches in Turkey, where oligarchs and influencers preen and pose, and thought – yes, this is exactly where I want to be.

Akyaka – a small town, huddled on the eastern end of blue-washed Gökova Bay – is an old friend of mine. Thirty years ago, working as a holiday rep, I visited on a weekly basis, popping in to see the handful of clients who were staying at simple pansiyons (small B&Bs) in the town. Back then … well, actually, back then it wasn’t that different from today, which is something that can’t be said about many of the Turkish villages and small resorts I knew in the mid-1990s.

Our readers bask in the memory of great beach discoveries, from Latvia to Sicily
• Send us a tip on Scandinavia or Finland – the best wins a £200 holiday voucher

Forty miles east of Palermo, the magnificent Sicilian resort town of Cefalù juts out beneath dramatic cliffs. The town has a perfect half-moon beach of golden sands melding into the gorgeous clear turquoise sea. Medieval lanes of stones in a diamond pattern lead up to a lively square offering great Italian food. It’s fronted by a beautiful Norman cathedral with twin towers and Byzantine mosaics inside.
David Innes-Wilkin

Dipping in the freezing waters of Scandinavia, Greenland and Finland was life-changing – and full of warmth thanks to saunas, hot springs and like-minded people

Warm lights shine from the houses that dot the wintry slopes of Mount Fløyen and a cold wind blows as I stand in a swimming costume trying to talk myself into joining my friends in Bergen harbour. Stars are already appearing in the inky mid-afternoon sky.

Life-changing moments are easy to spot in retrospect, but at the time they can feel so ordinary. I didn’t know then that my wintry swim would lead to a year of adventures. I was a hair’s breadth from wimping out, but then I was in. The water was so cold it burned. I gasped for breath. The bones in my feet ached with cold as I trod water, legs frantic under the dark surface. It lasted under a minute and then we were out.

The multi-day trail between the Cumbria and North Yorkshire coasts is one of Britain’s most popular, and now upgrades, path repairs and trail officers aim to preserve it for future generations

A soft breeze tickled the waters of Innominate Tarn, sending ripples dashing across the pool, bogbean and tussock grass dancing at its fringes. From my rocky perch atop Haystacks, I gazed down on Buttermere and Crummock Water glistening to the north, the round-shouldered hulks of Pillar and Great Gable looming to the south. A pair of ravens cronked indignantly, protesting against the intrusion on their eyrie; otherwise, stillness reigned.

Bless you, Alfred Wainwright, I murmured, picturing the hiking legend whose ashes are scattered around this lonely tarn. And then, surprising myself: you too, Rishi Sunak. In very different ways, both had brought me to this most spectacular of Lakeland crags.

When the Brazilian photographer heads out on his motorbike, his rescue pets come along for the ride …

Brasília’s sky was bright and beautiful on the day Thiago Bernardes de Souza took this shot. Exploring Brazil’s capital city on his motorbike is a pleasure when the weather is like this, he says, and his canine cavalcade had effectively invited themselves along for the ride.

“The first member of our pack, Filo, isn’t in the photo, but she was there that day,” de Souza says. “Filo started riding with me in a backpack years ago, then around the time she turned one, I rescued Teo. He’s the dog in the goggles, a mixed breed and the most energetic and mischievous. Teo jumped into my sidecar when he was a puppy, and when I rescued Juju, at the front, a couple of years later, she settled into the remaining place immediately. She’s the sweetest and most loving dog. Now, when I head out on the bike, they even know in which order they should get into the sidecar.”

From Clarissa Strozzi and Charles V to Tom Parker and Walt Disney, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 What did LA plumber George Holliday videotape on 3 March 1991?
2 Named after a Greek god, what is Earth’s largest land biome?
3 Abigail, in November 2015, was the first what?
4 Which literary character says, “Come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books!”?
5 Which Play School presenter sits in the House of Lords?
6 What cricket fixture was played from 1806 until 1962?
7 Which rescue organisation is based in Poole, Dorset?
8 The Kanneh-Mason siblings are famous names in what field?
What links:
9 Babington; Parry; Ridolfi; Throckmorton?
10 Bleu; saignant; à point; bien cuit?
11 Basilisk lizard; fishing spider; jacana; pond skater; Clark’s grebe?
12 Virginia (8); Ohio (7); New York (5); Arkansas, California, Hawaii (one each)?
13 Enhanced Fujita; Modified Mercalli; Saffir-Simpson; Torino?
14 Ben Bradlee; Walt Disney; Jim Lovell; Colonel Tom Parker; Chesley Sullenberger?
15 Clarissa Strozzi; Charles V with a dog; Philip II; Pope Paul III and his grandsons?

Cranbrook, Kent: I have a stretch of leggy hawthorn that needs attention, so I head out into the cold with my axe and billhook

Wire netting is everywhere in the Kent Weald – barbed boundaries to ancient pastures where sheep and cattle still idly graze. But what did farmers do for the hundreds of years before stock fencing was invented?

Hedges, so rooted in what we wistfully consider to be our natural landscape, are in fact human-made features, planted almost solely for the purpose of enclosure. Unmanaged hedges are not a permanent solution, though: young trees mature, trunks become bare, and animal‑sized holes appear, rendering them useless. To remedy this, the practice of hedge laying was developed; unlike bricklaying, it is an act of maintenance rather than creation.

Dying is a process and in a person’s final hours and days, Nickie and her Threshold Choir are there to accompany people on their way and bring comfort. Through specially composed songs, akin to lullabies, the choir cultivates an environment of love and safety around those on their deathbed.  For the volunteer choir members, it is also an opportunity to channel their own experiences of grief and together open up conversations about death.

Full interview with Nickie Aven, available here

How would you feel if your therapist’s notes – your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings – were exposed to the world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality, with deadly consequences

Tiina Parikka was half-naked when she read the email. It was a Saturday in late October 2020, and Parikka had spent the morning sorting out plans for distance learning after a Covid outbreak at the school where she was headteacher. She had taken a sauna at her flat in Vantaa, just outside Finland’s capital, Helsinki, and when she came into her bedroom to get dressed, she idly checked her phone. There was a message that began with Parikka’s name and her social security number – the unique code used to identify Finnish people when they access healthcare, education and banking. “I knew then that this is not a game,” she says.

The email was in Finnish. It was jarringly polite. “We are contacting you because you have used Vastaamo’s therapy and/or psychiatric services,” it read. “Unfortunately, we have to ask you to pay to keep your personal information safe.” The sender demanded €200 in bitcoin within 24 hours, otherwise the price would go up to €500 within 48 hours. “If we still do not receive our money after this, your information will be published for everyone to see, including your name, address, phone number, social security number and detailed records containing transcripts of your conversations with Vastaamo’s therapists or psychiatrists.”

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power plants as severe frost set in have been described as ‘crimes against humanity’

Outside the main pumping station for Bucha, three engineers, bundled up in parkas, are working on the emergency generator keeping the Ukrainian city supplied with water.

One holds a heat gun to the generator’s filter in an effort to unfreeze it, his face reddened by blowing snow and a daytime temperature of -12C (10.4F). Watching attentively is the city’s mayor, Anatolii Fedoruk. The generator in his office is also frozen when the Guardian visits and he apologises for the lack of coffee.

We would like to hear about what your pet meant to you and your family

Grief over the death of a pet could be as chronic as that for a human family member, according new research published in the academic journal PLOS One.

According to the study, grieving pet owners can suffer from prolonged grief disorder (PGD) – although currently only those grieving the loss of a person can be diagnosed.

We would like to hear about your much-loved locals. What was the pub that changed you – and how?

As part of a new series, writers are telling the stories of the pub that changed them, kicking off with Zoe Williams who was barred from the Spoons she adored most.

Now we would like to hear about your much-loved locals. Was there a bar of your past that left a lasting impression on you? What was the pub that changed you – and how? Let us know and we’ll publish a selection of your responses.

We’d like to hear from young people, parents and teachers about how Elon Musk’s controversial chatbot is affecting you

Degrading images of real women and children with their clothes digitally removed by Elon Musk’s Grok tool continue to be shared online, despite widespread alarm and a pledge by the platform to suspend users who generate them.

While some safeguards have been introduced, the ease with which the AI tool can be abused has raised urgent questions about consent, online safety and the ability of governments worldwide to regulate fast-moving AI technologies. Meanwhile, the misuse of AI to harass, humiliate and sexually exploit people – particularly women and girls – is rapidly escalating.

We are looking to tell the stories of pairings who developed friendships because a common life experience - either shared at the same time or lived apart - bonded them

Do you have a friend who was the right person at the right time? Did they become a great source of support because you met at a certain moment in your life or a particular shared set of circumstances brought you together?

We are looking to tell the stories of pairings who developed life-affirming friendships because a common life experience - either shared at the same time or lived apart - bonded them. From becoming parents at the same time to losing a relative or dealing with a new diagnosis, we want to hear how you helped each other. Whatever scenario brought you close – whether overcoming adversity or celebrating a new life stage – we’d love to hear about your friendship and how it helped you both.

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The brutal crackdown in Iran, ICE in Minneapolis, Russian aistrikes in Kyiv and heavy rain in Gaza – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing