We are the fastest-growing city-region economy in the UK, proof that it is possible to use public funds effectively while reducing crisis spending

• Andy Burnham is the mayor of Greater Manchester

At the weekend, Zia Yusuf posted: “After 7 May 2026, Reform will accept no more Tories.” In other words: all you failed MPs and councillors have a full three and a half months to decide at your leisure whether or not to leave the sinking ship.

Taking on politicians from the party that governed Britain for more than a decade and broke it is hardly the stuff of a political insurgency. Suddenly, Britain’s newest political force doesn’t look quite so potent or relevant. Instead, it seems old.

Andy Burnham is the mayor of Greater Manchester. He served as the Labour MP for Leigh from 2001 until 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not just Tunbridge Wells – a country famous around the world for its rain is in danger of self-imposed drought

You get up and go to the loo, only to find the flush doesn’t work. You try the shower, except nothing comes out. You want a glass of water, but on turning the tap there is not a drop. Your day stumbles on, stripped of its essentials: no washing hands, no cleaning up the baby, neither tea nor coffee, no easy way to do the dishes or the laundry. Dirt accumulates; tempers fray.

The water company texts: we are so sorry; colleagues are working to restore connection; everything should soon be normal. You want to believe them, but the more it’s repeated, the more it becomes a kind of hold music. There’s no supply the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Each morning brings with it the same chest-tightening question: what will happen today? Buckets and bottles don’t stop you feeling grubby and smelly, or from noticing the taint on your family and friends and neighbours. You’re not quite the people you thought you were and nothing feels normal.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

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

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

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

Rolling coverage of the world economic forum in Davos

• Trump declaration of Greenland framework deal met with scepticism as doubts persist

Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen has issued a statement reacting to the vague agreement apparently reached after talks between Donald Trump and Mark Rutte last night.

Frederiksen says it is “good and natural” that Arctic security was discussed between the US president and the Nato secretary general here in Davos last night.

“I have been informed that this has not been the case.”

PM says he hopes focus will now shift to the ‘hard yards’ of maintaining security in the Arctic

Andy Burnham may have a new route to parliament after the MP Andrew Gwynne reached a settlement with the Commons that would allow him to retire and call a byelection, Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Josh Halliday report.

In her Sky News interview this morning, Kemi Badenoch also said she was opposed to the UK joining President Trump’s board of peace if Vladimir Putin is a member. She said:

We should not be, certainly, on any board with Vladimir Putin. That’s something I’m completely against.

Exclusive: Gorton and Denton MP’s pension settlement allows him to potentially retire and call byelection

Andy Burnham may have a new route to parliament after the MP Andrew Gwynne reached a settlement with the Commons that would allow him to retire and call a byelection.

The mayor of Greater Manchester is said to be seeking a return to parliament to stand for the Labour leadership if there is a challenge to Keir Starmer, but was thought to have limited options for a byelection in the north-west.

Exclusive: Legislation thought unlikely even to be put to vote before timing out after delay tactics by opponents

• UK politics live – latest updates

MPs and peers who backed the assisted dying bill now believe it is “near impossible” for it to pass the House of Lords in time because of procedural obstacles used by opponents.

Supporters of the bill, including its sponsor, Kim Leadbeater, have been in intense discussions with the government to find ways to move it to a vote in the Lords. With progress so slow, experts and MPs believe it is unlikely the legislation will even be put to a vote before the end of the session in May, after which it will automatically fall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The actor is the latest to testify in court over a claim that the newspaper misused their private information

The claim over the tapping of lines and bugging comes from a now “disavowed” witness statement from the private investigator Gavin Burrows.

Breaking down again, she says she feels bad that her son will learn about some of the things reported today because of the trial.

Minister says use of former army barracks at Crowborough is part of plan to move people out of hotels

• UK politics live – latest updates

A first group of asylum seekers has been moved into a former military camp in East Sussex, the Home Office has said, amid expectations of further protests and legal challenges.

Crowborough training camp received 27 men in the early hours of Thursday morning, a statement said, which will be scaled up to 500 over several months.

Youngest son of US president raised alarm after woman was allegedly attacked during video call last January

Barron Trump, the youngest son of the US president, alerted police in London after witnessing a woman allegedly being attacked by a former boyfriend, possibly saving her life, a court has heard.

Trump was on a video call a year ago with the woman, who cannot be named, when he saw Matvei Rumiantsev, a Russian citizen, repeatedly punch her, Snaresbrook crown court was told on Wednesday, according to reports.

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

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

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

Manual for building design aims to encourage low-carbon construction as alternative to steel and concrete

An airport made of bamboo? A tower reaching 20 metres high? For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it’s time we took it seriously as a building material, too.

This week the Institution of Structural Engineers called for architects to be “bamboo-ready” as they published a manual for designing permanent buildings made of the material, in an effort to encourage low-carbon construction and position bamboo as a proper alternative to steel and concrete.

Tracking data from a chaotic year, from ICE detention and job growth to inflation and the president’s popularity

The Trump administration has had an unprecedented first year. The Guardian has been hard at work tracking the social and political ramifications of Donald Trump’s second term through words and pictures. But sometimes the story is best told through charts and graphs. Here are some of the vital data points that the Guardian has been tracking on immigration, the economy and public opinion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Name: Hotel bathroom doors.

Age: Solid doors have existed since ancient Egypt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think I’m exaggerating? Consider the copious amounts of evidence

Which way, western man?

That was the title of a racist tract published in 1978 by William Gayley Simpson, a former leftist Christian pastor turned one of the most influential neo-Nazi ideologues in American history. The book helped radicalize an entire generation of white supremacists in the US, with its vicious antisemitism, opposition to all forms of immigration and open praise for Hitler. The purpose of the book, wrote Simpson, was “to reveal organized Jewry as a world power entrenched in every country of the white man’s world, operating freely across every nation’s frontiers, and engaged in a ruthless war for the destruction of them all”.

Mehdi Hasan is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo

Trump’s tariff retreat should lull nobody into dropping their guard. The EU must join forces with Canada, Japan and other like-minded countries

EU leaders would do well to meditate on the seminal lesson that the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, delivered at this year’s World Economic Forum.

In an incisive analysis of the new age of predatory great powers, where might is increasingly asserted as right, Carney not only accurately defined the coarsening of international relations as “a rupture, not a transition”. He also outlined how liberal democratic “middle powers” such as Canada – but also European countries – must build coalitions to counter coercion and defend as much as possible of the principles of territorial integrity, the rule of law, free trade, climate action and human rights. He spelled out a hedging strategy that Canada is already pursuing, diversifying its trade and supply chains and even opening its market to Chinese electric vehicles to counter Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian-made automobiles.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

The global economic system doesn’t even benefit its US and European creators any more – let alone indebted nations or emerging giants

Donald Trump represents everything that the Davos crowd hates – and it is unlikely they are any more well-disposed towards him after being forced to listen to more than an hour of the president’s rambling speech today. He is a protectionist, not a free trader. He thinks the climate crisis is a hoax and is suspicious of multilateral organisations. He prefers power plays to dialogue and he doesn’t have any time for the “woke” capitalism that Davos has been keen to promote, with its focus on gender equality and ethical investment. The shindig’s organisers, the World Economic Forum (WEF), had to agree to sideline those issues in order to secure Trump’s appearance.

For decades, anti-globalisation protesters have sought to shut down the WEF. Thanks to Trump’s threat to take over Greenland, their prayers may soon be answered. In today’s world, Davos is an irrelevance and it seems fitting that Trump should be on hand this week to deliver the coup de grace to the liberal international rules-based order that the WEF prides itself on upholding.

The prime minister has a duty to be candid with the British public about the scale of the global realignment caused by a volatile US president

One foreign policy achievement that Donald Trump prefers not to boast about is his role in helping Mark Carney win last year’s Canadian general election. The incumbent Liberal party faced crushing defeat before Mr Trump threatened to annex Canada. Mr Carney’s candidacy was buoyed up by a patriotic rally against US bullying.

Perhaps because his country has also been coveted by Mr Trump, Mr Carney has given one of the most clear-sighted responses of any democratic leader to the US president’s designs on Greenland. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the Canadian prime minister set out the challenge for countries whose security and prosperity have depended on a global system underwritten by the US.

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.

Questions about the breakup of a venerable education charity, and who has benefited from it, need answers

Whatever emerges from two separate investigations into last year’s privatisation of City & Guilds, the transfer to new owners is a done deal. The qualifications arm of the 148-year-old vocational education charity – with a royal charter granted by Queen Victoria – is now the property of a Greek-owned business, PeopleCert, with plans to cut costs and replace UK jobs with cheaper staff abroad. One of the biggest, best-regarded non-profits in England’s further education (FE) sector has thus been turned into an international brand that shares the name of the charity that sold it – now rebadged as the City & Guilds Foundation.

Ministers appear not to have been paying attention when this momentous decision was taken by trustees (neither City & Guilds nor the other awarding bodies were mentioned by name in last year’s skills white paper). The sell-off was not debated in parliament. But the deal is belatedly under the spotlight after the Guardian revealed that senior City & Guilds staff, including the chief executive, Kirstie Donnelly, and the chief financial officer, Abid Ismail, received huge bonuses (£1.7m and £1.2m) when the deal went through.

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.

Joe Yates, Prof Philip J Landrigan, Prof Jennifer Kirwan and Prof Jamie Davies respond to an article on doubts raised about studies on microplastics in the human body

While it may be a belated Christmas present for the petrochemical industry, your article (‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body, 13 January) was less surprising to the scientific community, where constructive debate around microplastic detection in humans has been ongoing for some time. Such debate is entirely normal – and essential – for scientific inquiry.

New and novel methods must be tried, tested, critiqued, improved and tried again. Science is incremental and gradual – unlike the uncapped production and pollution of plastics, which contain thousands of hazardous chemicals. Decades of robust evidence demonstrates the harms that these inflict on people and planet.

Alderman Gregory Jones KC responds to an article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett about her beloved untrendy cafe and subsequent letters on the subject

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s lament for the untrendy cafe reflects a view held by some that the operators of cafes on Hampstead Heath should never change (I’m sick of avocado toast – I just want to keep my local, untrendy cafe, 12 January). It is a position rooted more in nostalgia than in the practical realities of managing public assets – and it overlooks several inconvenient facts.

The long-standing reliance on short-term arrangements limited the cafes’ ability to invest in buildings, facilities and staff. This had to change. Moving to longer leases is not about change for its own sake, but about providing stability: enabling investment, fair pay and a sustainable future for customers.

Responding to a letter by Kathy Dalwood, Jennifer Gale says women have heard of Stuart Broad and Tracy Zussman commends sporting analogies. Plus a letter from Colin Prower

Kathy Dalwood complains of articles “that make use of male sporting analogies” (Letters, 18 January). I think most female Guardian readers, unlike her, will have heard of Stuart Broad – we tend to be well informed in general, not just about other women. I have been attending men’s cricket matches for at least 40 years; apart from in the rowdy “party” stands, there are usually almost as many women as men in the crowd.
Jennifer Gale
Bideford, Devon

• I am a female Guardian reader who knows who Stuart Broad is and understood the analogy of someone choosing not to walk. Some of us quite like analogies, sporting or otherwise, and don’t consider them to be akin to “blokey, pub-style chat”. I hope this example hasn’t pushed any readers over the edge – or should that be the outside edge?
Tracy Zussman
Hove, East Sussex

Tailed in Moscow | Martin Kettle on music | John Crace has it all covered | Changing duvet covers | Reform UK characters

Dan Sabbagh reports that a former British defence attache to Moscow said he was tailed every time he left the British embassy (Why a Chinese ‘mega embassy’ is not such a worry for British spies. 18 January). A British spy in Moscow in the 1960s told me how, after offering his bus fare one morning, the driver said it had already been paid. As the driver pointed to a fellow passenger, the Briton and the Russian tasked with tailing him exchanged knowing glances.
Richard Norton-Taylor
London

• Following the letters (15 January and 18 January) in praise of Martin Kettle’s excellent political writing, I’d like to add my appreciation for his superb reviews of classical music. He shows great knowledge and insight into both areas – a real renaissance man. I hope that he will still provide the odd music review in his well-earned retirement.
Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick
St Albans

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News from the series opener in Colombo, 9am GMT start
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1st over: Sri Lanka 7-0 (Nissanka 3, Mishara 4) This is the first time Overton has opened the bowling in an ODI. He starts with a short ball that is pulled smoothly for two by Nissanka. A single behind square brings the left-handed Mishara on strike; he’s beaten first ball, chasing a short delivery that snaps away off the seam.

Mishara gets off the mark with a cross-bat edge that lands short of Buttler and bounces through for four.

Updates from the evening session at Melbourne Park
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Cilic has punched his ticket into round three for the first time since 2022, with the 37-year-old and 2014 US Open champ taking out the 21st seed Shapovalov in straight sets. Decent win, that. He’ll face the winner of Casper Ruud v Jaume Munar.

Stan is still alive! He’s broken Gea in the final game of the fourth set to snatch it 7-5, finishing off with a vicious backhand winner down the line. It’s got to be one of the most devastating shots in tennis hasn’t it? I don’t think even Federer’s single-handed backhand quite had the equal beauty and brutality that Wawrinka’s does. They’re going to a fifth.

Unprecedented times call for previously unthinkable conversations when it comes to the US-shaped problem

Could European countries really decide to boycott the World Cup this summer? It is an astonishing question to be asking in 2026 and an indictment of the bind in which, as Donald Trump sows confusion around a potential annexation of Greenland, the world’s most popular sport finds itself. But the idea is at least seeping into the mainstream and senior figures are asking what, in a worst case scenario, it would take for football to meet the moment.

Unprecedented times call for previously unthinkable conversations. As the Guardian reported this week, an anniversary party for the Hungarian FA on Monday became the forum for unofficial discussions among national association heads about how a unified approach to the US-shaped problem might take shape.

The former Aberdeen midfielder, now with Swindon, opens up about the debilitating effect of suffering an ACL injury during her time in Scotland

“People need to know what happened,” Laura Holden says as she reflects on her difficult two years at Aberdeen when injury changed the course of her life. “It’s not all sunshine and roses. There are demons that just get brushed under the carpet without having the light shone on them.”

It has taken the Swindon Town midfielder time and a change of club to process everything that happened in Scotland. Holden joined the Dons in August 2023, determined to establish herself as a key player at one of the biggest clubs in the Scottish Women’s Premier League. But just six matches and 31 minutes into the first season, she ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament away at Hibernian.

This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts is delivered to your inboxes every Tuesday and Thursday.

Brazilian endured hard times in the Swedish fifth tier after his father’s death but has found a home in the Championship

Seven years ago Léo Scienza’s life broke into a thousand small pieces. On his 20th birthday his father died and the young footballer locked himself in his room for two months, having lost the will to live. “You know when everything is bad and nothing makes sense any more?” the Southampton midfielder says. “My life had no meaning any more.

“Look, everyone has a dark side and I’m not the best person to talk about depression or what depression is. In fact, I only understood it later. My father died on my birthday – that will always be marked in my life. After he died I just wanted to stay in my dark room doing nothing. I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

Passes, shots and goals are all down on last season. It might keep tacticians happy but it’s not as much fun

By Opta Analyst

Gerard Piqué spoke to his former Spain teammate Iker Casillas on his podcast last February and the topic of goalless draws came up. You might expect a centre-back and goalkeeper to be excited about the art of defending but rather Piqué suggested that teams should be punished for participating in goalless draws.

“It can’t be that you go to a football stadium, spend €100, €200 or €300, and the match ends 0-0,” said Piqué. “Something needs to change. One proposal to consider would be that if the match ends 0-0, the teams would score zero points. Then the match would open up in the 70th minute.”

Today’s rumours are squeezing a lot into a short time

Kostas Tsimikas may be enjoying the Roman sunshine on loan, but Nottingham Forest are still peering longingly across the Mediterranean at Liverpool’s spare left-back. The arrival of Milos Kerkez has left Tsimikas firmly behind Andy Robertson in the Anfield pecking order but Forest’s interest has never gone away. Roma would be willing to end his loan period early provided they can find someone else first – understandable given he has only four Serie A starts this season under Gian Piero Gasperini, whose wing-back system does not suit the 29-year-old.

Sunderland are reportedly clutching Noah Sadiki with the kind of white-knuckled intensity usually reserved for a North Sea ferry in a gale. Manchester United are admirers of the 21-year-old DR Congo midfielder and have even toyed with the idea of a player-plus-cash deal involving Manuel Ugarte, but the Black Cats have no interest in a deal. Sadiki’s value has apparently doubled since his £15m arrival from Union Saint-Gilloise and Sunderland seem in no mood to cash in just yet. The player has started every Premier League match under Régis Le Bris bar the games he was away for Afcon.

• Reds’ success aided by Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa gigs

• Real Madrid take top spot again with £1bn revenue

Liverpool were the English club with the highest revenue last season according to the annual Deloitte Football Money League – but for the first time in the report’s 29-year history no Premier League club made the top four.

Real Madrid again took top spot with €1.16bn (£1bn), ahead of Barcelona, with €974m. Bayern Munich with €860m and Paris Saint-Germain with €837m were third and fourth respectively.

• Policy allowed Max Verstappen back into 2025 title race

• Team due to unveil new car in Bahrain on 9 February

McLaren will continue pursuing a policy of rigorous fairness towards Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri for the 2026 Formula One season, despite their insistence on not imposing team orders almost costing Norris his world title by allowing a late challenge from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

Last year McLaren enjoyed the most competitive car for most of the season and insisted their drivers would be free to race one another, applying their “papaya rules”.

Superintendent says Liam Ramos and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway and sent to Texas

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a five-year-old Minnesota boy on Tuesday as he returned home from school and transported him and his father to a Texas detention center, according to school officials.

Liam Ramos, a preschooler, and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway, the superintendent of the school district in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Liam, who had recently turned five, is one of four children in the school district who have been detained by federal immigration agents during the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in the region over the last two weeks, the district said.

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

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

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

Road safety activists ‘vindicated’ after success of campaign supported by NHS trusts and headteachers

• UK politics live – latest updates

The mayor of Tower Hamlets acted unlawfully in attempting to remove three low traffic neighbourhood (LTN) schemes, the court of appeal has ruled.

Road safety activists say they feel vindicated after campaigning for more than three years to keep the traffic restrictions in place in the east London neighbourhoods of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Columbia Road.

Official figures better than expected after stronger receipts than a year earlier

• Business live – latest updates

The UK government borrowed less than expected in December, official figures show, after stronger receipts than a year earlier.

Public sector net borrowing – the difference between spending and income – was £11.6bn last month, the Office for National Statistics said, compared with £18.7bn in the same month a year earlier.

Researchers find with high confidence that security officials used Cellebrite to extract data from activists’ phones

Authorities in Jordan appear to be using an Israeli digital tool to extract information from the mobile phones of activists and protesters who have been critical of Israel and spoken out in support of Gaza, according to a new report by the Citizen Lab.

A multiyear investigation found with high confidence that Jordanian security authorities have been using forensic extraction tools made by Cellebrite against members of civil society, including two political activists, a student organizer, and a human rights defender, the researchers said.

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

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

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

Exclusive: Beijing, Delhi, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro among worst affected, with demand close to exceeding supply

Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 39 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.

Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown.

The removal of sulphur from shipping fuels caused ‘a lot of extra sunlight’ to get through atmosphere and hit reef in 2022

Steps to clean up the shipping industry by removing sulphur from fuels intensified a major coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef by allowing more of the sun’s energy to hit the oceanic wonder, according to a new study.

Sulphur pollution can cause respiratory problems for humans and cause acid rain, but it also has a shading effect and can make clouds brighter, providing more shade to areas underneath.

Researchers say event described as ‘major tipping point’ for clean energy in era of destabilised politics

Wind and solar overtook fossil fuels in the European Union’s power generation last year, a report has found, in a “major tipping point” for clean energy.

Turbines spinning in the wind and photovoltaic panels lit up by the sun generated 30% of the EU’s electricity in 2025, according to an annual review. Power plants burning coal, oil and gas generated 29%.

Disability campaigner at Leonard Cheshire whose mischievous personality brought a fresh perspective to the charity

Disabled people might still be waiting for all UK trains to be accessible were it not for the success of a high-profile campaign led by John Knight, who has died of sepsis aged 67, after himself overcoming profound disabilities from birth and becoming a leading figure in the charity and public sectors.

Knight was responsible for policy and campaigns at the disability charity Leonard Cheshire during passage of the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, which was to set a deadline for railway carriages to be accessible. Train companies were pressing for a date of 2035, to maximise the life of inaccessible rolling stock, but the campaign persuaded the House of Lords to back an amendment to the legislation with a time limit of 2020. The change was then accepted by the Labour government.

Survey finds rising numbers of reception pupils struggling with basic life skills such as eating independently

About one in four children who started reception in 2025 were not toilet trained, a survey of teachers has found, prompting warnings that growing numbers of pupils are struggling with basic life skills.

In an annual survey of primary school staff in England by the early years charity Kindred Squared, teachers estimated that 26% of the children in their reception class were having frequent toilet mishaps, rising to more than one in three (36%) in the north-east.

RNIB research uncovers high anxiety around rail travel with some having fallen into gaps or been trapped in doors

• ‘It was a very lucky escape’: blind man who fell on to tracks calls for rail travel improvements

Four in five blind and partially sighted people in the UK have struggled to cross the gap between trains and station platforms, according to a survey, with some falling and injuring themselves.

Many blind and partially sighted people avoid taking train journeys owing to anxieties around whether they will be properly supported after having had inconsistent experiences, according to research from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

UK had highest relative increase of five countries in study, with 20-fold rise in proportion of women over 25 using it

The proportion of people in the UK on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication has tripled in the past decade, with a 20-fold increase among women aged 25 and over, a study shows.

Researchers led by the University of Oxford examined electronic health records from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK to estimate the use of ADHD medication among adults and children aged three and above.

Cash, gold, mercury and firearms seized in operations in Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname

Police and prosecutors from Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname have arrested nearly 200 people in their first joint cross-border operation targeting illegal gold mining in the Amazon region, authorities said.

The operation was backed by Interpol, the EU and Dutch police specialising in environmental crime. It involved more than 24,500 checks on vehicles and people across remote border areas and led to the seizure of cash, unprocessed gold, mercury, firearms, drugs and mining equipment, Interpol said.

Singing legend heralds ‘new tools in service of expression’, on compilation that also features an Art Garfunkel song using AI-generated piano backing

Liza Minnelli has released her first new music in 13 years, adding vocals to an AI-created dance track.

The track, Kids, Wait Til You Hear This – also the title of her upcoming memoir – is an unexpected foray into deep house for the 79-year-old Minnelli, who adds a handful of spoken declarations to the pumping backing.

Record-breaking rains spark landslide at Mount Maunganui campsite, with helicopter teams retrieving families from rooftops and local states of emergency declared

Emergency services in New Zealand are searching for several people, including a child, believed missing after a landslide hit a campsite during storms that have caused widespread damage across the North Island.

Emergency minister Mark Mitchell told RNZ that parts of the east coast looked like “a war zone”, with helicopters deployed to rescue families sheltering on rooftops from flooding, and local states of emergency declared in five regions across Northland and the East Cape due to days of record-breaking torrential rain.

Development charity’s new co-chief executives signal shift from controversial sponsor a child scheme launched in 1972 to long-term grassroots funding

Child sponsorship schemes that allow donors to handpick children to support in poor countries can carry racialised, paternalistic undertones and need to be transformed, the newly appointed co-chief executives of ActionAid UK said as they set out to “decolonise” the organisation’s work.

ActionAid began in 1972 by finding sponsors for schoolchildren in India and Kenya, but Taahra Ghazi and Hannah Bond have launched their co-leadership this month with the goal of shifting narratives around aid from sympathy towards solidarity and partnership with global movements.

As the band prepares to tour, economists say pent-up global demand could reshape how concerts boost city economies

Move over, Taylor Swift. Her Eras tour was the highest grossing in history, sparking an estimated $5bn in direct consumer spending across the US. But now another musical phenomenon is preparing to sweep through North America – and economists expect it will generate tens of billions of dollars in economic activity along the way.

K-pop sensation BTS will embark this year on their largest tour yet, spanning 34 regions across five continents, ending a hiatus due to mandatory military service that lasted almost four years.

Retailers report weaker sales over festive period amid ‘subdued consumer confidence’

• Business live – latest updates

The discount retailer B&M cut its profit forecast, while the value books and crafts chain The Works reported a fall in sales, highlighting a difficult Christmas trading period for British stores.

B&M’s UK sales fell by 0.6% on a like-for-like basis in its third quarter to 27 December, though it said sales improved in December after it reduced prices.

OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and Stripe are rumoured to be among ten of the biggest companies considering IPOs

You’ve probably heard of “unicorns” – technology startups valued at more than $1bn – but 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the “hectocorn”, with several US and European companies potentially floating on stock markets at valuations over $100bn (£75bn).

OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and Stripe are among the big names said to be considering an initial public offering (IPO) this year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what is Arc Raiders?

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.”

The Gangs of London star returned to the stage alongside Ben Whishaw in a 2024 production of Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece. In this diary of the first preview, he describes passing the point of no return

I step into the wings and the state of it all hits me. The hum of a packed, expectant crowd ready for a show. I inch my way down along the short passage and there, standing in the cubbyhole space backstage like a beautiful lost waif, is Ben Whishaw. It hits me how different he looks in full costume. We lock eyes and hug. We hold each other for a few moments, trying to breathe in sync and to connect. We can both feel the adrenaline pumping and rushing through each other. A final squeeze and I turn away and walk back to the edge of the wings where we are to make our entrance.

My breathing is steady, but my heart is pump-pump-pumping. This is as close as I get to full-on nervous. I am not afraid though. It’s excitement; anticipation; a sexy, knowing thrill. I know there will be a split second of sheer terror when the call comes though. The moment you know you’re past the point of no return. That thought-memory passes through with the next inhale-exhale. It’s as if I can feel the giddy heat coming off the crowd even back here in the wings, behind the soon-gone shelter of a curtain, feet away from where Vladimir and Estragon will come to life. It’s new and familiar all at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At Arcola theatre, London, until 7 February

Does your movie call for a golden, diamond-encrusted Furby or replica nuclear missile? The prop master will find one for you – or even make it from scratch

The red and blue pills in The Matrix. The Rosebud sled in Citizen Kane. Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction, contents unknown. The (real) severed horse head in The Godfather. Every sword, gun, wand and lightsaber that has been brandished by an actor on a screen or stage. What do these items have in common? Nothing, except that they are a tiny sample of the staggering range of objects, from the iconic to the instantly forgotten, known as props – or, to use their formal name, “properties”.

Props are, properly defined, anything used in a performance that is not part of the set or costumes. Sourcing or fabricating them is the job of a team overseen by the prop master; the term is gender-neutral, although the prim-sounding “prop mistress” is occasionally heard. It’s a massive undertaking, but not one that gets much attention. “It’s nice that you are asking about props, because they’re not really acknowledged,” says Jode Mann, a TV prop master in Los Angeles.

From newbie drag queens to wild voguing performances, a new archival exhibition boasts images from four decades of riotous nightlife

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

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

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

The band went on hiatus after outrage over onstage joke in 2024, but Gass confirms the band will return, saying: ‘It was hard. It is like a marriage’

Tenacious D member Kyle Gass has confirmed that he and bandmate Jack Black have reconciled and will reunite, after outrage over an onstage joke about the assassination attempt on the US president, Donald Trump, led to the band going on hiatus.

While performing in Sydney in July 2024, when Black suggested he make a wish for his birthday while blowing candles on stage, Gass responded, “Don’t miss Trump next time”, referring to the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania earlier that week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best weighted blanket overall:
Emma Hug

Best budget weighted blanket:
Silentnight Wellbeing

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

• The best hot-water bottles

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

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

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

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

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

• The best electric heaters, tried and tested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Name: Divorce rings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read more summer essentials

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Read more in the Antiviral series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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