Many of those moved into an asylum return centre have held jobs for years and can speak the language

“Sweden did this for us,” said Sofiye*, making a supportive scooping up gesture with her hands. “And then, bam.” She dropped them to the ground.

Sofiye, who has three children, arrived in Sweden from Uzbekistan as an asylum seeker in 2008, and for much of that time she was able to build a life in the Scandinavian country. The family lived in a flat in a Stockholm suburb and Sofiye worked for the municipality in the home help department. She learned Swedish and her children went through the Swedish school system. Her youngest son was born in Sweden and her 18-year-old son, Hamza, who is studying in college to be a technician, doesn’t know life anywhere else.

Amid the tumult of the WEF in Davos this week, some investors are leading the way by ditching US government bonds

There is a way to file for divorce from Donald Trump and Europe needs to grab the opportunity.

To the public it will look as if nothing has changed. But behind the scenes the EU and the UK could close the joint bank account and cut up the credit cards, or at least set in motion a form of financial separation that limits the power of a controlling former partner.

The native of Thunder Bay, Canada, has been compared to Pablo Escobar and El Chapo – but is he really as big a figure as US prosecutors have claimed?

To compete at the highest levels of snowboarding, racers must master carving, edging and balance at speeds stretching the limits of imagination. They can fluently read the nuances of snow and fine-tune their bodies to cross the finish line faster than anyone else.

The Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding had these skills – but also the quality that catapults amateurs to an elite level: a highly competitive instinct to succeed that can at times manifest in a desire to crush fellow competitors.

Which supermarket live yoghurts leave a sour note and which are naturally divine?

• The best supermarket frozen fruit smoothie mixes

Live natural yoghurt is the bedrock of my family’s diet. My six-year-old, for instance, gets through well over a kilo a week: for breakfast, she’ll have it with porridge, sometimes with blackstrap molasses, while most evenings she’ll have a generous bowl of yoghurt topped with frozen blueberries or mango before bed (ideally before teeth-brushing negotiations begin). To avoid excessive sugar and more processed ingredients, we never buy sweetened or flavoured yoghurt: just the plain, full-fat stuff that’s packed with beneficial bacteria.

So what is live yoghurt, and why does it matter? Live yoghurt contains active bacterial cultures, most commonly strains of Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium and Streptococcus thermophilus. These cultures help ferment the milk, which is what gives live yoghurt its tang, texture and digestibility, and they’re one of the reasons it’s linked to gut health.

The adventurer on his family’s escape vessel, his crush on the Princess of Wales, and a disgusting toenail habit

Born in Northern Ireland, Bear Grylls, 51, served as a soldier in the 21 SAS regiment and went on to star in adventure series, including seven seasons of Discovery Channel’s Man vs Wild. Other shows are Running Wild With Bear Grylls, the Emmy award-winning You vs Wild, and Bafta-winning The Island With Bear Grylls. His new series, Wild Reckoning, starts on BBC One next month. He is married with three sons and lives in London, north Wales and Switzerland.

What is your greatest fear?
Small things make me anxious – like social things – but I have no big fears because I have faith in my heart.

The 46th president largely exists as Trump’s foil, with his successor blaming him for the country’s woes

In bitter cold beneath the US Capitol dome, he walked to a marine helicopter and shared parting words with Donald Trump. Then, arriving at Joint Base Andrews, Joe Biden offered farewell remarks to his loyal staff. “We’re leaving office,” he said, “We’re not leaving the fight.”

But, one year later, Washington, and the world, have mostly moved on from the 46th president. Biden, 83, has been writing a lucrative memoir, planning a presidential library and fighting prostate cancer. He was once the most powerful man on the planet, but now Biden’s public appearances have been scarce and his influence has palpably diminished.

Minnesota governor decries ‘federal occupation’ after another deadly shooting less than three weeks after ICE officer killed Renee Good in city

• Man shot in Minneapolis by federal agents identified as nurse Alex Pretti

• ‘How many more Americans need to die?’: mayor lambastes Trump

In a statement sent to the Guardian, assistant secretary of homeland security Tricia McLaughlin said that at 9.05am local time, “as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis” against a person they said was in the country illegally, who she said was “wanted for violent assault”, “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.”

McLaughlin said that “the officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted” and that “more details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.”

Greater Manchester mayor has applied to stand for Labour in Gorton and Denton, setting up potential fight for PM’s political future

Keir Starmer’s allies are urging him to block Andy Burnham from running in the Gorton and Denton byelection, after the Greater Manchester mayor declared his intention to stand, setting up a potential fight for the prime minister’s political future.

Burnham said on Saturday he wanted to contest the seat after the sitting MP, Andrew Gwynne, said he intended to stand down.

After anger at claim that Nato troops ‘stayed off frontlines’, US president says UK forces were ‘great and very brave’

Donald Trump has said UK soldiers who fought in Afghanistan were “among the greatest of all warriors” after previously drawing criticism for his claims that Nato troops stayed away from the frontlines during the conflict.

In a post on social media on Saturday, the US president said: “The great and very brave soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America.

National Police Service will investigate organised crime, terrorism, fraud and online child abuse

The government is setting up a National Police Service – dubbed the “British FBI” – to deal with organised crime, terrorism, fraud and online child abuse in a major change to policing in England and Wales.

The new organisation, which will be announced by the Home Office in a white paper on Monday, means fraud, criminal gang and UK-wide counter terror investigations will no longer be carried out by a combination of existing agencies such as the National Crime Agency and regional organised crime units run by local police forces.

Yellow warnings for heavy rain remain in place across parts of Northern Ireland, Scotland and south-west England and Wales

Downpours and high winds are likely to continue after Storm Ingrid wreaked havoc in the south-west and washed away part of a historic pier in Devon, the Met Office said on Saturday.

It has been a wet weekend for many, with yellow weather warnings for heavy rain in place across parts of Northern Ireland, Scotland and south-west England and Wales.

Police said group breached HMP Wormwood Scrubs grounds where Umer Khalid is being held

A group of protesters supporting a Palestine Action prisoner on hunger strike have been arrested after they breached prison grounds, the Metropolitan police has said.

The force said on Saturday evening that it had detained a group of protesters outside HMP Wormwood Scrubs, in west London, and was in the process of making a number of arrests.

Exclusive: German research into responses to health queries raises fresh questions about summaries seen by 2bn people a month

• How the ‘confident authority’ of AI Overviews is putting public health at risk

Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month.

The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are “reliable” and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic.

President also claims US refineries will process seized Venezuelan oil, saying ‘we take the oil’

Donald Trump on Saturday said he would impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian imports if the North American country makes a trade deal with China.

Beside that tariff threat, another Trump foreign policy maneuver to make news on Saturday involved the president announcing the US had taken the oil that was on recently seized Venezuelan tankers.

Police say two men and a woman shouted abuse and struck vehicle outside Crowborough military site in East Sussex

Three people have been arrested after two occurrences of disorder outside Crowborough training camp, which is being used to house asylum seekers.

A 36-year-old man and a 62-year-old woman from Crowborough, and a 54-year-old man from Newhaven were arrested on Saturday on suspicion of an offence under the Public Order Act and are now in police custody.

Aryna Sabalenka takes on Victoria Mboko; Carlos Alcaraz to face Tommy Paul
Updates from Sunday’s day session at Melbourne Park | Email Joey

Dissipating heat, however, doesn’t mean that the environmental challenges are completely absent today. A smoke haze has blanketed Melbourne since yesterday, as winds blew down the smoke from a fire in the Otway ranges which has grown to about 8000 hectares overnight.

Air quality alerts have been issued across Melbourne, Geelong and the surrounding regions, while a a total fire ban remains in place for the Northern Country, North Central, North East, and Gippsland fire districts.

As Trump-deployed agents pervade the region, students struggle to carry on with lessons while carrying grief and fear that they or their loved ones will be taken

In south Minneapolis, a special education student logged on for their online class from the basement. They were hiding because immigration agents were banging at the door.

A second grader started having a panic attack in the middle of art class because agents had arrested his dad. His teacher had to ask a colleague to watch the other students, bring him outside, and hold him for half an hour to help calm him.

Experts say dirty waters can attract more sharks – but there are many other factors at play

• Fatberg the size of four buses likely birthed poo balls that closed Sydney beaches – and it can’t be cleared

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

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After four shark attacks in New South Wales in less than 48 hours, authorities on Tuesday urged beachgoers to “just go to a local pool instead”.

Sydneysiders have heard similar warnings before – in the past, they’ve been issued for beaches polluted with faecal matter after heavy rains.

I was 16 when the course of my life changed, and for years I was unable to speak about about what had happened

I am lying in bed listening to the radio at my boarding school as my roommate is getting dressed. As she walks out of the door she says, “See you at breakfast – don’t be late.” I’m about to get up when the early morning news comes on the radio, and I hear the announcer saying my parents’ names.

By the time my roommate arrives at breakfast, everyone has heard. My friends run to be with me. The housemaster and his wife stand in the corridor outside my bedroom, not allowing anyone in. All they can hear are my screams and the smashing of furniture. It is beyond comprehension, but then everything from now on is beyond comprehension.

Susan Hayes and Craig got to know each other through an online game. When they finally met in person, it felt like a real-life romance novel

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

When 2023 rolled around, I was ready for a change. I’d spent the Covid years locked down in Victoria, Canada. I had quit my day job at the end of 2019 to write full-time and travel, only for the world to shut down.

During those long, lonely years, I kept myself distracted by playing an online game. Nothing fancy, just a phone game about surviving a zombie apocalypse. It was a bit of fun and a way to connect with people from around the world. One of those people was a fellow named Craig.

Sundance film festival: There’s a smart idea at play here, with the star playing a hellish version of herself fighting against corporate forces, but there’s not a lot else

In April 2025, the pop singer Charli xcx posted a TikTok reflecting on nearly a year of her seminal album Brat: “It’s really hard to let go of Brat and let go of this thing that is so inherently me and become my entire life, you know?” she said. “I started thinking about culture, and the ebbs and flows and lifespan of things … ” She acknowledged that over-saturation is perilous, and that maybe she should stop, but “I’m also interested in the tension of staying too long. I find that quite fascinating.”

The frank, informal admission fit with Brat, a pop culture-shifting album that channeled, with stunning immediacy, the imperious ego and bristling insecurity of an artist keenly aware of her own precarious level of fame. Her ambivalence was understandable – Brat rapidly turned Charli, who spent over a decade as a fixture of pop’s so-called middle class, into a main pop girl, an artist played at midwest sorority weddings and used by a US presidential campaign. But her interest in “the tension of staying too long” also felt a little trite, the type of smart-sounding musing that dead-ends in self-awareness. Brat summer was heady, hedonistic, fun – a meme, an aesthetic, a vibe, a moment. That said moment passes? Well … yeah.

The bass player and singer on naming his chickens, selling his Banksy and surviving cancer

You used to keep chickens named after women from Blink-182 songs. Which was your favourite?

There was Wendy, Holly, Josie … I forget the others. We lived in London, but also had a 25-acre farm out in Somerset with a Georgian farmhouse that was built in 1750. A guy from the British Beekeeping Association, who worked at the local church, would come over and help me open up my hives and harvest the honey. It was crazy how much honey we got – up to 150 jars a season. It was the best honey I’ve ever tasted.

The structure of wrists mean we have the capacity to do both handstands and neurosurgery. A lot can go wrong

• Read more summer essentials

It’s a bad time of year for wrists. Parents – and sometimes grandparents – full of enthusiasm and holiday cheer hop on their child’s new scooter or bike, keen to show said child how great the new toy is, and forget that gravity isn’t as kind to the body when we’re older. Falls happen, and wrists often take the brunt.

“It’s got its own name: ‘fall on an outstretched hand’,” says Brigette Evans, an occupational therapist at Bathurst Hand Therapy. As we fall, our instinct is to put our arms out in front of us to protect our body, face and head, and the wrist takes a lot of that force.

Extreme heat wreaked havoc on Australian Open schedule but tennis has changed its ways of dealing with the sun

Even before the first set and first hour of his match elapsed, Tomas Machac had asked the umpire for the tournament doctor, trainer and pickle juice, the drink du jour for tackling cramps. Those preventive measures taken in the intense early stages of his third-round tussle with Lorenzo Musetti proved to be sensible, for the pair would spend a brutal four hours, 25 minutes on court.

Four hours of that took place inside an open John Cain Arena, a furnace in suffocating heat. “We knew today was going to be really, really hot,” Musetti said. “I think I managed well to finish the match without cramping.”

Sundance film festival: As a provocative artist using sex to wield power, the actor is electric but the writer-director’s return to his campy, dayglo roots is largely underwhelming

While Sundance is traditionally focused on the importance of looking to the future of American film, a lineup filled with more first-timers than any other major festival, this year has been all about looking back. There are misty eyes over the loss of founder Robert Redford along with host state Utah and also for the many films that have premiered here over the years. Alongside more retrospective screenings than one usually expects, even the new films have a touch of old Sundance to them.

On opening day, Rachel Lambert’s small-town drama Carousel conjured up memories of quiet character-driven indies of the late 90s and early 00s and then, on a Friday full of packed-out premieres, I Want Your Sex took us back to the era’s more in-your-face acts of provocation, made by renegade outsiders who would have otherwise struggled to find a place in the industry. It’s the new film from Gregg Araki, a film-maker who was at the forefront of this particular wave, one of Sundance’s most loved enfants terribles. He’s premiered most of his films here, from “heterosexual movie” The Doom Generation to magnum opus Mysterious Skin to all-time stoner comedy Smiley Face to 2014’s misbegotten drama White Bird in a Blizzard, his last film until now.

I Want Your Sex is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

TV bigwig Ryan Murphy is back delivering the frights, and Park Chan-wook’s latest offers more of his trademark jet-black comedy. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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

Steve Coogan stars in a loose retelling of an infamous football falling-out, while a new Netflix doc gets nostalgic about the heyday of Gary Barlow and co

Saipan
Out now
As the Irish national team descend on a small island in the Pacific to prepare for the 2002 World Cup, an epic falling out between manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) and top player Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) is looming, in this sports drama loosely based on the infamous real-life spat.

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

• Head coach highlights away game in Champions League

• Slot questions fixture list after difficult away trip

Arne Slot conceded his Liverpool side ran out of steam in defeat at Bournemouth, after Amine Adli’s 95th-minute winner condemned his side to a first loss since November. Liverpool pulled level from 2-0 down late on courtesy of Dominik Szoboszlai’s sensational free-kick, but Bournemouth responded impressively and Adli struck a winner from a long throw with almost the last kick.

The Liverpool head coach felt the referee, Michael Salisbury, should have played more second-half stoppage time taking in substitutions and video assistant referee checks but admitted he feared a Bournemouth winner. “I think it is safe to say they could have scored 3-2 a little bit earlier,” Slot said, alluding to chances for the Bournemouth pair Evanilson and Ryan Christie. “A few of our players ran out of energy and I cannot even criticise them for that because two days ago [three] we had to play an away game. We’re the only team that played in the Champions League that has two games in between.

• Head coach targeted in draw at Burnley

• Frank: ‘You can’t say we didn’t do everything to win’

Thomas Frank has called for “calm heads” after Tottenham fans urged the club to dismiss him during their draw at relegation-threatened Burnley. The away end sang “You’re getting sacked in the morning” at full time, making their views clear to the hierarchy and head coach.

Cristian Romero salvaged a late point for Tottenham after Axel Tuanzebe and Lyle Foster had turned things around to counter Micky van de Ven’s opening goal. The draw leaves Tottenham with two wins in 14 and mired in mid-table.

After Pep Guardiola dropped Erling Haaland and Phil Foden, Manchester City enjoyed a first Premier League win in four games. It handed Wolves a first defeat in six and was notable for the referee, Farai Hallam, on his top-flight debut, daring to stick with his decision not to award a penalty after being sent by his video assistant for a pitchside review.

That was for a Yerson Mosquera handball and it infuriated Guardiola, though after City’s dire recent form a first three points since 27 December is what matters. The manager reiterated a long-held belief that City can receive unfair officiating and pointed to his 11 injured players as being needed to mitigate against this.

• 2nd ODI: Sri Lanka 219; England 223-5. Eng win by five wkts

• Root hits 75 but says pitch not ‘great wicket for ODI cricket’

It’s been a rough few years for England’s 50-over side but the glow of their World Cup victory has not completely disappeared. Joe Root and Adil Rashid, both part of the 2019 class, were the headliners of the second one-day international against Sri Lanka, setting up a five-wicket victory to level the series.

Rashid led the England attack on a serious turner, taking two for 34 as Harry Brook used 40.3 overs of spin, limiting Sri Lanka to a total of 219. It was still a proper challenge, particularly in a must-win game for the tourists, their winless run away from home in ODIs having stretched to 11 on Thursday.

Derby victory was undeniably impressive but how will club assess caretaker manager’s suitability to permanent job?

The problem Manchester United have – after 13 years and seven managers of failure – is that for whatever action they take now, there is a bad precedent. Keep Michael Carrick on, and it’s just another Ole Gunnar Solskjær situation. But replace him and, for almost whoever they appoint – be it a Premier League veteran, foreign maestro, renowned past-his-best winner, Red Bull-adjacent gegenpresser, austere Dutchman or Portuguese ideologue – they have done it before and it hasn’t worked. It’s almost like the biggest problem at the club isn’t the manager.

Carrick’s start was undeniably impressive. There was pace and zip and creativity. The relief of players being released from the 3-4-2-1 was akin to one of those videos of cows being allowed back into the pasture after being kept in a barn over the winter. Who could possibly have predicted that Amad Diallo would excel as a right-sided forward, or that Bruno Fernandes might thrive as a No 10? United didn’t just beat Manchester City 2-0; they hammered them.

• Trump tells New York Post he will skip Super Bowl

• NFL stands by Bad Bunny amid rightwing backlash

Donald Trump said he will not attend next month’s Super Bowl in northern California, citing the distance to the game, amid an ongoing culture-war backlash over the NFL’s choice of half-time and pre-game performers.

Trump told the New York Post he plans to skip the 8 February championship game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara because the trip is “just too far away”, adding that he would have considered attending if it were a shorter flight. The decision means Trump will not repeat his appearance at last year’s Super Bowl in New Orleans, where he became the first sitting US president to attend the NFL’s showcase event.

• Prem Rugby: Exeter 3-8 Bristol

• Visitors leapfrog Exeter before Six Nations break

So much rain has been falling out west this week that Bristol could almost have floated down to Devon in canoes. Add in more heavy downpours, a tricky wind and a horribly slippery ball and there was never any chance of a free-flowing, fast-paced spectacle between two of the league’s more fluent attacking sides. This was a sodden slog, pure and simple, with only a rainbow or two to add a splash of colour.

Not that the Bears will care much about the trench warfare nature of a victory that consolidates them in third position and above their opponents in the playoff race going into the Prem’s two-month hiatus. On an afternoon demanding character, perseverance and effort the visitors displayed all three, a first-half try from the appropriately named Noah Heward ultimately edging an old-school wrestling match.

• Fans hope for good news on Champion Hurdle favourite

• The New Lion wins race in subdued atmosphere

On an afternoon when Britain’s National Hunt fans had expected to be looking for potential winners at the festival meeting in March, they left here hoping instead for positive news on Nicky Henderson’s Sir Gino. The most exciting prospect in the sport was pulled up with a suspected pelvic injury in the International Hurdle.

Sir Gino went into Saturday’s Grade Two contest as the clear favourite for the Champion Hurdle in March, having gone unbeaten in seven starts including a brilliant novice chase win at Kempton in December 2024. He was held up last of the four runners as Nemean Lion cut out the running and pulled up by Nico de Boinville shortly after jumping the third-last flight.

• Djokovic beats Van de Zandschulp 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (4)

• Serb apologises after wild shot almost hits ball girl

Novak Djokovic chalked up his 400th grand slam victory with a 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(4) defeat of Botic van de Zandschulp to reach the fourth round on Saturday, but the Serb was fortunate not to receive a code violation after losing his cool.

An incident in the second set might have proved very costly, with Djokovic carelessly sending a ball flying close to the head of a ball girl at the net.

The US president took his bullying doctrine to Davos and hit a wall of opposition. If this creates a new western alliance against him, all to the good

The temptation is strong to hope that the storm has passed. To believe that a week that began with a US threat to seize a European territory, whether by force or extortion, has ended with the promise of negotiation and therefore a return to normality. But that is a dangerous delusion. There can be no return to normality. The world we thought we knew has gone. The only question now is what takes its place – a question that will affect us all, that is full of danger and that, perhaps unexpectedly, also carries a whisper of hope.

Forget that Donald Trump eventually backed down from his threats to conquer Greenland, re-holstering the economic gun he had put to the head of all those countries who stood in his way, the UK among them. The fact that he made the threat at all confirmed what should have been obvious since he returned to office a year ago: that, under him, the US has become an unreliable ally, if not an actual foe of its one-time friends.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Really, why wouldn’t you wash yourself after using the toilet? If you won’t listen to me, then listen to Zohran Mamdani – and get your straddle on

The first time I heard a bidet mentioned in the US – or at least what it’s used for – was at the start of an off-Broadway play I saw in 2015 called Threesome. An Egyptian-American couple are in bed waiting for a white man they’ve invited to join them for the tryst of the title. He bounds on to the stage after using the bathroom, and the couple yell at him, “Go back and wash your ass!”

Like that couple, and Threesome’s playwright, Yussef El Guindi, I’m Egyptian. In Egypt, bathrooms in every home, as well as those in public buildings, are fitted with some kind of contraption for washing after using the toilet: a bidet, a standalone low oval basin next to the toilet that one straddles – or, more popularly, a shattaf, a fixture in the toilet itself through which water streams out. Sometimes, the shattaf is a small showerhead attached to the wall next to the toilet. I’ve recently learned that its name in English is a bum gun. It’s my favourite kind of shattaf, because you can control the water pressure.

Mona Eltahawy writes the FEMINIST GIANT newsletter. She is the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, and Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

It has become difficult to feel shock at the actions of the Trump administration. But this useless cruelty is shameless

Liam Ramos is five. In photographs of his arrest on Tuesday, released by the school district where he is enrolled as a preschooler, he is wearing a large blue hat with a bunny face and ears. According to the superintendent, Liam had just arrived home from school with his father when ICE agents apprehended the two and arrested them. Allegedly, one of Liam’s relatives, who was outside at the time, begged for the little boy to be allowed to stay there in their care; instead, both father and son were captured by the federal agents and quickly transported to a detention camp in Dilley, Texas. Liam’s father has no apparent criminal record; he has a pending asylum case. Does it need to be said that the child does not have a criminal record, either? In one picture, a white man’s hand clutches, claw-like, on to the back of Liam’s Spider-Man backpack. In another, a masked man stands behind Liam, stooping slightly to reach the small child, as the boy stands at the front door of his home. According to school officials, the agent instructed Liam to knock on the door and ask to be let into the house “in order to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a five-year-old as bait”.

Liam is the fourth child from his Minneapolis-area school district to be seized by ICE agents since the surge of federal immigration forces in the city. According to school officials, two 17-year olds were also taken – one snatched alone from their car, another captured at home with her mother. Another child, a 10-year-old girl in the fourth grade, was allegedly also taken by the federal forces – while on her way to school with her mother.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

While the threat of retaliatory measures to stop the annexation of Greenland worked, it remains to be seen if Europe has the unity to follow through

The past couple of weeks have seen the most spectacular crisis escalation in the transatlantic relationship, over the US threat to annex Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark. It risked becoming a major conflict among the members of Nato, the most powerful security alliance in world history – until now.

On Wednesday, after a meeting with Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, the US president, Donald Trump, backtracked on his threats to slap tariffs on countries that got in the way of his annexation project. As European leaders huddled together over dinner for a post-crisis debrief in Brussels on 22 January, they congratulated themselves on their unity and appreciated the intervention of Rutte, or “Daddy diplomacy”. If these really were the conclusions of the latest debacle in transatlantic relations, they are missing important parts of the story.

Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe

In the US, comedy has long filled the space vacated by partisan news media. Now France is following its lead

Sometimes the freedom and openness of comedy means it is better able to respond to world events than news media. Take South Park’s raucous, unhinged and visually disturbing depictions of Donald Trump – most recently, cheating on Satan (who is carrying his spawn) with JD Vance in the White House. Fair enough: Trey Parker and Matt Stone very much own this terrain.

But there’s no reason why satirical TV programmes such as The Daily Show should have to take on the role of news provider, investigative journalist and critic. And yet, over the past three decades, the failings of the US corporate media to adequately cover the country’s dilapidated politics has pushed people such as Jon Stewart into filling the void.

The problem was identified as long ago as 2000 by the US economist Paul Krugman. He castigated the press for being “fanatically determined to seem even-handed”, to the point they were unwilling to call out outrageous untruths. “If a presidential candidate were to declare that the Earth is flat,” Krugman wrote, “you would be sure to see a news analysis under the headline Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.”

It was this context that provided American satire’s cathartic triumph in the first years of the 21st century. The Daily Show began conducting harder-hitting interviews than most primetime TV shows. Stephen Colbert rose to prominence by playing a fake conservative talkshow host, in an open parody of Bill O’Reilly’s mid-2000s show on Fox. And then John Oliver pioneered “investigative comedy”, frequently doing a better job of breaking scandalous stories than the news programmes he was satirising.

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist. H​is memoir, Generation Desperation​, is published in January 2026

To win votes, Trump can afford to face up to corporate power – to deliver his promised 1.5m homes, Starmer can’t

In an incredibly polarised society, there are fewer and fewer things that seem to unite both sides of the aisle in the US political system. Yet it turns out that an objection to Wall Street’s grand heist of single-family homes has done just that.

We might expect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren to rail against the incursion of institutional investors into residential real estate markets, causing rent prices to jump and effectively locking millions of households out of home ownership. However, I admit I was surprised to see JD Vance and Marjorie Taylor Greene striking a similar note. But I was completely dumbfounded to see the real estate tycoon and Wall Street darling Donald Trump sing from the same hymn sheet.

Adam Almeida is a writer and researcher living in London

As a lightning government offensive leaves the Kurdish-dominated SDF reeling, the political horizon needs attention as well as security

In little more than a fortnight, a dramatic Syrian government offensive appears to have undone over a decade of Kurdish self-rule in the north-east and extended President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s control. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) held around a quarter of the country and many critical resources – but were forced out of much of it within days. Though the SDF has effectively agreed to dissolution in principle, it has not shown it will do so in practice: a worrying sign for a fragile truce. A peaceful resolution is in everyone’s interests. Forcible integration by Damascus would risk breeding insurgency.

The US relied upon the SDF in the battle against Islamic State. But Donald Trump has embraced “attractive, tough” Mr Sharaa – a former jihadist who had a $10m US bounty on his head until late 2024. The US administration became increasingly frustrated at the SDF’s failure to implement last spring’s agreement to integration into the new army, apparently due to internal divisions. Tom Barrack, the US special envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey, wrote this week that the rationale for partnership with the SDF had “largely expired” because Damascus was ready to take over security responsibilities.

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.

Excluding a popular mayor would fracture Labour’s coalition and make Downing Street look fearful rather than authoritative

Politics, as Lyndon B Johnson understood better than most, is not about eliminating conflict but managing it. “It’s better to have them inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in,” the former US president observed. His enduring point was that strong leaders use their parties to contain power; weak ones try to banish it. Sir Keir Starmer seems ready to make this mistake over Andy Burnham.

Reports suggest that the prime minister’s allies will block any attempt by the Manchester mayor to run in a parliamentary byelection after a Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, resigned. Mr Burnham may be eyeing a route back to Westminster and the possibility of a future leadership challenge. But No 10 wants to stop him before he gets going. Sir Keir is not asserting authority through confrontation. He is surrendering control and accepting responsibility for the consequences.

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.

Guardian readers respond to Lara Feigel’s powerful account of divorce and the family court

Lara Feigel highlights the impact of “win/lose” adjudication in the adversarial court system, a system tailor-made to produce the worst possible outcomes for separating families (I was warned my children would be ripped in half when we divorced. But I had no idea just how brutal custody cases can be, 18 January). In heightening conflict between parents, this system destroys the potential of a negotiated co-parental agreement determined by parents themselves. The best laws are those which limit judicial discretion, including in family law, where children are caught squarely in the middle of the conflict.

There is a viable alternative to the dominant litigation model for couples in conflict: a legal presumption of equal parenting, rebuttable in family violence cases, a model that reduces the harms of adversarial resolution. Shared parenting maintains children’s relationships with each parent and their extended family, reduces inter-parental conflict, and prevents first-time violence. What is missing, however, is the political will to enact legislative reform based on reliable scientific evidence on the benefits of shared parenting and a child-focused and collaborative approach. Despite family courts’ invocation of the “best interests of the child”, meaningful law reform remains elusive in the UK and beyond.

Salik Rosing on the Greenland prime minister’s striking attire worn at a press conference. Plus a letter from Colin Parish

Your article (‘Designed for uncertainty’: windbreakers are a hit in turbulent times, 17 January) refers to Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, “wearing a glacial-blue windbreaker” that “took on a new, loaded and striking messaging”. The anorak is not a fashion statement or sending a message. It is formal wear, which we Greenlanders use for special occasions from weddings to a child’s first day of school and the state opening of parliament. When Nielsen wears his blue anorak, it is the equivalent of a European leader wearing a suit. Existing as a non-European person is not a statement.
Salik Rosing
Elsinore, Denmark

• Re the piece on windbreakers, I don’t want to be an anorak, but I think they used to be called “windcheaters”. I’ll get my coat…
Colin Parish
London

Kevin Whately recalls his work with the late actor in Dusty Hughes’ play, Bad Language, in the early 1980s

I was lucky enough to play Alan Rickman’s gay lover in a Dusty Hughes play, Bad Language, at Hampstead theatre in the early 1980s, and, while I wasn’t as physically attracted to him as some of your female correspondents (Letters, 15 January), I did find him one of the kindest and most perceptive and intelligent actors I have ever worked with.

Summoned soon after by the ladies in the casting department of Anglia TV, I was disappointed to find that they weren’t looking to cast me, as they spent half an hour raving about Alan, but lamenting that they just never knew how to cast him. It took another “late, great”, Anthony Minghella, to cast him as the romantic lead in Truly, Madly, Deeply for Alan’s screen career to take wing.
Kevin Whately
Aspley Heath, Buckinghamshire

Barry Glendenning’s half marathon | The Premier Inn Milton Keynes | Bodø | The Beckham family feud | ‘The North’

Barry Glendenning’s column was heartfelt and very entertaining (How hard can it be to run 13 miles? With help from the pub, park and peas I am finding out, 17 January). As a fellow bar-stool athlete, I could almost smell the tobacco smoke from years past when studying form in the Coach and Horses. Indeed, it was as though Jeffrey Bernard had briefly risen for “just the one”.
Max Tannahill
Wivenhoe, Essex

• “Nobody has enjoyed a night at the Premier Inn Milton Keynes more than we have,” says Beth, 75 (This is how we do it, 18 January). I have tried to reserve a double room for me and my wife, at the Premier Inn in Milton Keynes, only to find that it’s fully booked for the foreseeable...
Bren Pointer
London

Martin Rowson has been drawing for the Guardian since the 1980s; Ella Baron since 2022. In paint and pixels, each is tasked with capturing the chaos and absurdity of our political moment

Photographs and video by David Levene

• Gallery: cartoonists Martin Rowson and Ella Baron at work – in pictures

Martin Rowson and Ella Baron are both regular contributors to the Guardian’s daily political cartoon. Martin has been with the Guardian for decades; Ella has been contributing since 2022. This week, we challenged the pair to draw on the same subject (Trump and a world in turmoil), on the same day, to see what each – with their different styles, tools and perspectives – would come up with. Martin landed on a Shakespearean scene, with a warped “King Leer” flanked by snickering world leaders. Ella proposed him squatting in a dystopian nest, surrounded by his spoils. Below, each reflects on their process, the challenges and joys of political cartoons, and what they have learned from one another.

Kyiv says Moscow used 396 drones and missiles in ‘another night of Russian terror’ on second day of talks in UAE

Russia launched a major drone and missile attack targeting Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, early on Saturday, as US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in the United Arab Emirates for a second day of tripartite peace talks.

“Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure.

Meal at Mayfair club took place on day Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick criticised former PM’s mini-budget

If it was on the menu, a side helping of lettuce never made it to the table. Over blood-red steak and chips, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss came together on Monday for a discreet lunch at a swish Mayfair club, organised by a climate-denying US thinktank.

Lois Perry, a former leader of the far-right Ukip party who is now Europe director of the Heartland Institute, posted photographs, now deleted, on X of Farage addressing others, including Truss, at the meal.

Ceasefire to be extended for one month to allow transfer of suspected Islamic State members from Syria to Iraq

The Syrian government and Kurdish forces agreed to extend a ceasefire on Saturday, according to Syrian diplomatic sources, temporarily staving off a looming war between the two sides in the north-east of the country.

Sources told Agence France-Presse the ceasefire would be extended for “a period of up to one month at most”, citing the need to facilitate the transfer of suspected members of Islamic State from Syria to Iraq.

Dangerous weather engulfing large area of country as 16 states plus DC declare states of emergency

A powerful winter storm with more than 140 million Americans in its crosshairs started sweeping across much of the US on Saturday, packing heavy snow and sleet as well as freezing rain and causing widespread power outages.

Snowfall was already being reported on Saturday morning across parts of the plains, the south and the midwest, including in areas of Oklahoma, Iowa, Tennessee, Kansas, Texas and Missouri.

An extraordinary mosaic of wildlife has made Britain’s urban jungle its home

London is the only place in the UK where you can find scorpions, snakes, turtles, seals, peacocks, falcons all in one city – and not London zoo. Step outside and you will encounter a patchwork of writhing, buzzing, bubbling urban microclimates.

Sam Davenport, the director of nature recovery at the London Wildlife Trust, emphasises the sheer variation in habitats that you find in UK cities, which creates an amazing “mosaic” of wildlife.

Wolves killed more than 2,100 reindeer in Finland last year, and herders are blaming the Ukraine war

Juha Kujala no longer knows how many reindeer will return to his farm from the forest each December. The 54-year-old herder releases his animals into the wilderness on the 830-mile Finnish-Russian border each spring to grow fat on lichens, grass and mushrooms, just as his ancestors have done for generations.

But since 2022, grisly discoveries of reindeer skeletons on the forest floor have disrupted this ancient way of life. The culprits, according to Kujala: wolves from Russia.

Environmental charity to prioritise water capture and storage as it urges gardeners to prepare for ‘new normal’

The Royal Horticultural Society has unveiled emergency plans to protect its gardens from major water shortages in the future.

The environmental charity, which owns and operates five renowned public gardens in England, said on Saturday it will invest in more water-capture and water-management projects in 2026 after severe droughts last year.

US president asks ‘whatever happened to global warming?’ Well, it could be making our winter storms worse

Donald Trump has erroneously cited an enormous winter storm that is set to deliver freezing temperatures and heavy snow to half of the US as supposed proof that the world is not heating up due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Trump, who has repeatedly questioned and mocked established climate science in the past, posted of the storm on Truth Social: “Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain – WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”

Crime minister says reforms will improve standards, but Federation says unsafe workloads must be tackled first

The government must stop burdening police officers with unsafe workloads and improve police pay and training if they want “professional” policing, the Police Federation has said, in response to sweeping Home Office changes to improve standards in the police.

Under the new plans, to be unveiled in a white paper on Monday, police officers in England and Wales will be required to hold and renew a “licence to practise” throughout their career in the future.

Exclusive: Eluned Morgan says it is not time for protest votes when the economy and public services are at stake

The Labour first minister of Wales has urged voters not to treat the May elections as a referendum on Keir Starmer, calling on them to focus on the country’s future instead, with the party on course for a fight for third place.

Eluned Morgan said it was not the time to send a protest vote to the prime minister when two pro-independence parties – Plaid Cymru and the Greens – could end up in power and so much was at stake for the economy and public services.

Better regulation and enforcement urged before launch of oral treatments, which criminals are likely to try to exploit

Experts are warning that fake weight-loss treatments could become more prevalent as tablet forms of the medications, currently available only via injections in the UK, are launched.

They say stronger regulation and enforcement are needed to prevent fraudsters from cashing in on tablets which will be easier to counterfeit.

Electric van sales are behind government targets, but those fleets that have switched are seeing a real difference

Swinging a fully laden electric van around a training centre in Bishop’s Stortford feels easy, with instant acceleration that belies the racks of heavy equipment in the back. Perhaps too easy, as the sudden shriek of its proximity sensor suggests the Guardian was a whisker away from a bill for some new paintwork.

The van in question belongs to Openreach, BT’s fibre broadband subsidiary. It is one of 6,000 electric vans out of 23,400 in Britain’s second-largest commercial fleet – and a further 1,000 are expected to be added by March.

Thousands of Palestinian cancer patients are living without treatment as they await medical evacuation

When the Gaza war began, Ismail Abu Naji was just 18 months old, his small body covered in swollen, bleeding lesions. Months earlier, doctors had diagnosed him with a rare blood cancer, one that, if untreated, is often a death sentence.

In the weeks before the war, Ismail’s family had arranged for him to be transferred to Al-Makassed hospital in Jerusalem, a charitable institution for Palestinians, for specialised care. But the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack that triggered the conflict meant Ismail could not leave the territory.

Colombia’s Sierra Nevada has become a strategic prize for drug traffickers and paramilitaries, leaving its Indigenous people threatened with ‘physical and cultural extinction’

Around a fire in a ceremonial hut in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Arhuaco people make a pledge. Tying traditional cotton threads around their wrists, they promise to guard the land beneath them – and then they ask for protection.

“Our culture has been preserved for thousands of years,” says Ati Quigua, an Indigenous leader. “We are a peaceful community, but now violence is coming to our land.”

Driver taken into custody after car crashes through airport entrance and strikes Delta ticket counter

A car crashed through the entrance of Detroit’s metropolitan Wayne county airport on Friday evening, striking a ticket counter and injuring six people, airport officials said.

The driver was taken into custody, the Wayne county airport authority (WCAA) said in a statement. The cause of the crash was not yet known, and airport police were investigating.

Journalist’s wife had contacted authorities with concerns and ‘potential information’ regarding inquiry into his death

A review of the 2005 shooting death of the journalist Hunter S Thompson has confirmed authorities’ original finding that his death was a suicide, Colorado investigators said on Friday.

The review by the Colorado bureau of investigation (CBI) was announced in September after Thompson’s wife, Anita Thompson, contacted authorities with “new concerns and potential information regarding the investigation” into Thompson’s death, the agency said in a news release.

Attempt to reclaim alleged unpaid debts comes months after 25-year relationship with cinema chain came to an end

Coca-Cola is taking legal action against Vue after the cinema chain switched to its arch-rival PepsiCo to supply soft drinks in Europe.

Vue, which operates more than 90 cinemas across the UK and Ireland, put the contract up for tender last year.

Hobbycraft removes product from sale after parent sent samples to a lab for testing but declines to issue a recall

Bottles of children’s play sand have been withdrawn from shelves by the craft retailer Hobbycraft after a parent discovered they were contaminated with asbestos.

The parent, who did not wish to be named, raised the alarm after her children played with the sand at a party.

Number of households complaining rises to 16,000 in 2025, with Southern Water the biggest target

Complaints about water companies in England and Wales to an independent monitor surged by more than 50% last year, as customers bristled at steep bill increases.

More than 16,000 complaints were lodged in 2025 with the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), a government-sponsored body that represents customers’ interests.

Brighton & Hove Albion football club owner confirms placing bets through accounts of Reform UK adviser George Cottrell, according to legal documents

The billionaire owner of Brighton & Hove Albion football club has confirmed his syndicate placed millions of pounds worth of bets through the gambling accounts of the Reform UK adviser George Cottrell.

The admission comes in a document filed to the high court by Tony Bloom, who also admits that he, Cottrell and a former employee, Ryan Dudfield, had an agreement under which winnings were due to be split between them.

As a bookish child with a distant father and a disapproving mother, the Curious Incident author retreated into a world of his own. Looking back, he asks what it means to lose parents who never showed you love

When I see washed-out photographs of English life in the 60s and 70s – cardiganed grandmothers eating roadside picnics beside Morris Minors, pale men sunbathing in shoes and socks on stripy deckchairs, Raleigh Choppers and caged budgerigars and faux leather pouffes – I feel a wave of what can’t properly be called nostalgia, because the last thing I’d want is to return to that age and those places where I was often profoundly unhappy and from which I’d have been desperate to escape if escape had been a possibility. Why then this longing, this echo of some remembered comfort?

Is it that, as children, we live inside a bubble of focused attention that gives everything inside a memorable fierceness? The way one could lie, for example, on a lawn and look down into the jungle of the grass to see earwigs and woodlice lumbering between the pale green trunks like brontosauri lumbering between the ferns and gingkos of the Late Jurassic. The way a rucked bedspread could become a mountain range stretched below the wings of a badly painted Airfix Spitfire. Or do objects, in their constancy, provide consolation in a world where adults are unpredictable and distant and unloving?

In this week’s newsletter: As his movie Bulk tours indie cinemas, director Ben Wheatley recommends the oddball influences that fuelled his most unconventional wor​k

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Few directors currently working merit the title of ‘cult hero’ more than Ben Wheatley. Over a 15-year-plus career, the British film-maker has dabbled in just about every cinematic genre and style imaginable: psychedelic horror (A Field in England, In the Earth), grimy video nasty (Kill List), stylish, gun-toting thrillers (Free Fire), murderous Mike Leigh homages (Down Terrace, Sightseers), literary adaptations (Rebecca, High-Rise), and even a whopping great studio monster movie (Meg 2: The Trench).

Wheatley’s latest film further cements that cult status. Bulk is a defiantly DIY sci-fi-noir-paranoid-thriller hybrid, starring Sam Riley as an investigative journo tasked with rescuing a scientist from his own malfunctioning multi-dimensional creation. With its handwritten title cards, overdubbed dialogue, sticky-back-plastic special effects and general vibe of formal experimentation, Bulk exists a world away from most modern film-making. Even it’s delivery method feels far from the churn of the mainstream: instead of a standard release, the film is in the middle of a tour of independent cinemas across the UK and Ireland – tonight in Liverpool, tomorrow Lewes, with Dublin and Cork on the horizon (you can seek out your nearest screening here).

Sundance film festival: Conversion therapy has gory results in a smart and surprisingly romantic debut feature from Australian writer-director Adrian Chiarella

Something rather nasty is unfolding in Sundance horror Leviticus. If you asked the god-fearing residents of the isolated Australian town at its centre, they would say it’s the curse of homosexuality, quietly infecting the youth. If you asked the gay teens themselves, they would say it’s something far more horrifying.

In writer-director Adrian Chiarella’s indelible debut feature, queer desire is not only a danger to one’s safety from the bigots that you live, work and pray with, but it’s also a supernatural affliction. We first see teens Naim (Joe Bird) and Ryan (Stacy Clausen) as they engage in a clandestine hang, that familiar dance of a play-fight leading into a kiss. For Naim, it’s a new world opening up, a reason to believe there might be something to be happy about in an otherwise dull new town with his warm yet clueless single mother (Mia Wasikowska). But when Naim sees Ryan engaging in a similar tryst with Hunter (Jeremy Blewitt), the son of the local preacher, he allows his heart to overrule his head and does something he’ll live to regret.

Leviticus is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Though the cracks are starting to show, the endgame was undeniably nail-biting. And honestly, thank God for Rachel – the terrifyingly ruthless saviour of this series

Bit of a damp squib, this year’s Traitors. At its best, it was still able to skim the preposterously giddy heights of previous series, but I spent a lot of the run living with the growing realisation that the cracks in the format are starting to show.

One major culprit, as always, has been the mid-episode challenge; a slab of filler designed to kill any trace of intrigue, like a version of 12 Angry Men where the jurors get up halfway through to spend 20 minutes swanning around in a park. Nor did the new raft of tweaks amount to much, with the reveal of the Secret Traitor coming far too early, and the secret connections (Judy and Roxy, Ellie and Ross) fizzling out without resolution.

Sundance film festival: The actor is a charming presence in the otherwise overly twee and consistently unfunny tale of isolated siblings dealing with a visitor

Once upon a time, two siblings lived on an abandoned Scottish isle, isolated from the modern world and suspicious of all outsiders. The siblings, a brother and sister, believed themselves to be descended from the gulls that peppered the island’s scenic cliffs; they also believed, on some level, that they too were gulls – or, at least, they acted like it, flapping and squawking about.

Debauched fairytales like these loom large over The Incomer, Scottish writer-director Louis Paxton’s odd and aggressively quaint first feature, which asks a high conceptual buy-in of its audience. From the first shots of Isla (Gayle Rankin) and Sandy (Grant O’Rourke) caw-caw-ing like birds and beating sacks labeled “incomer” with clubs, Paxton commits to an askew, often alienating angle of humor – quirky, at times juvenile, a touch dark, altogether difficult to settle into for anyone with an aversion to twee.

The Incomer is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Josh Finan continues to be brilliant in Waiting for the Out. Plus: buckle up for the final double bill of Heated Rivalry. Here’s what to watch this evening

9.25pm, BBC One

(Columbia Records)
Styles is wonderfully loose and unhurried on the lead single to his new album, taking a bold path away from the rest of today’s mainstream pop

Now the proud owner of six Brits, three Grammys and seven UK Top 10 singles, it’s fair to say Harry Styles has elegantly sidestepped the potholes that pepper the route from ex-boyband member to solo superstar. His well-earned confidence means that rather than fill the gap between 2022’s Harry’s House and last week’s announcement of his fourth album – the confusingly-titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally – with various one-off releases, spurious anniversary variants or curated social media moments, Styles basically disappeared. In fact, the only sliver of excitement for his fanbase to grab on to came last September when he ran the Berlin marathon in a very respectable 2hr 59min.

Having endured the music industry at the height of its #content-heavy obsession in One Direction, there’s something old-fashioned about Styles’ absence between album eras. That’s unlikely to be accidental: since launching his solo career with 2017’s muted, 1970s soft-rock-indebted self-titled debut, Styles has cast himself as a cross-generational throwback beamed into the present, albeit one sporting fashion choices that rile gender conformists. Each album has arrived with a list of influences more akin to the lineup on the Old Grey Whistle Test than the current TikTok algorithms, while 2019’s Fine Line, Styles told us, was crafted under the influence of those vintage psychedelics, magic mushrooms.

The LA-based pop duo are sending a jolt through TikTok with maximalist songs that emote wildly in every direction

From Los Angeles
Recommend if you like Erasure, Chappell Roan, Jade
Up next Debut album Big Disgrace out 13 March

Just when you think pop is finally moving away from the synth-heavy 80s sound, another thrilling new act comes along to say: “Nope!” With shades of Erasure and a good dollop of theatre kid energy, Haute & Freddy are the Regency-styled freaks sending a jolt through TikTok. Their latest single Dance the Pain Away is the year’s first true banger, a dazzling sad-pop production that bursts through the January gloom, thrusts a spritzer in your hand and drags you to the dancefloor.

Brixton Academy
Nominated for producer of the year for his album Baby and work with Justin Bieber, the US musician’s passion and experimentalism shine in this daring performance

Dijon may have sold out two nights at Brixton Academy, but the first feels more like the audience are witnessing a joyous jam session between friends: musicians who are totally attentive to one another and unabashed in their passion.

Following an extensive US tour of his acclaimed album Baby – and ahead of next weekend’s Grammys, where he is up for producer of the year thanks to his work with Justin Bieber – the US singer-songwriter clutches the mic as if it’s giving him life, seemingly preoccupied only with the sounds surrounding him. His music is a kind of lo-fi but densely produced R&B, but his setup here is the stuff of electronic prog rock, with soundboards and decks, a vast array of synthesisers, a live kit, electric guitar and bass, a violin and backing vocals. That ambition is matched by the setlist: 21 songs in two hours played in quick succession.

(Tiny Tiger)
Moving from dream pop to acoustic clarity, the Dutch-British songwriter delivers her most personal record yet where loss is transformed into something quietly powerful

The warm sounds of folk guitar provide the roots of Tessa Rose Jackson’s first album under her own name, time-travelling from Bert Jansch to REM to Sharon Van Etten in every strum and squeak. The Dutch-British musician previously recorded as Someone, creating three albums in dream-pop shades, but her fourth – a rawer, richer affair, made alone in rural France – digs into ancestry, mortality and memory.

The Lighthouse begins with its title track. Strums of perfect fifths, low moans of woodwind and thundering rumbles of percussion frame a journey towards a beacon at “high tide on a lonesome wind”. The death of one of Jackson’s two mothers when she was a teenager informs her lyrics here and elsewhere: in The Bricks That Make the Building, a sweet, psych-folk jewel which meditates on “the earth that feeds the garden / The breath that helps the child sing” and Gently Now, which begins in soft clouds of birdsong, then tackles how growing older can cosset the process of grief. Her approach to the subject is inquisitive, poetic and refreshing.

From handbags to drug gangs to central banks – one of Britain’s finest investigative reporters reveals the surprising links in a global chain of crime

Question: why, if almost half of us now use cash only a few times a year, are high-denomination banknotes being printed in increasingly large numbers? In April 2024, the value of all the dollar bills in circulation reached an all-time high of $2.345tn, and may well be even more than that by now. The total value of dollars in the world has doubled every decade since the 1970s. Similarly, there are 1.552tn euro notes in circulation, while most other currencies – the British pound, the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc and so on – are all at something like their highest levels in history. This at a time when so many of us have pretty much stopped using cash altogether, and even the people who sell the Big Issue in our streets are equipped with card readers.

When I talk about “us”, I mean those who don’t have to worry about hiding huge cash profits from drug dealing, people-smuggling and so on. And that of course provides the answer to the question: while law-abiding citizens like you and I have to jump through hoops when we move even relatively small sums around for entirely legitimate reasons – buying a fridge or a secondhand car, say – drug dealers just shove bundles of the stuff into their coat pockets or suitcases and whisk them round the world in order to keep their business going. The number of dogs trained to sniff out cash at international airports is growing, but nothing like as fast as the rate at which big-denomination notes are being pumped out by the world’s central banks. And the ways in which money is laundered are growing in complexity and sophistication.

Caring canines; daring donuts; a golden monkey; a boy from another planet; a dark take on Little Women and more

The Good Deed Dogs by Emma Chichester Clark, Walker, £12.99
Three very good dogs’ attempts to help others keep backfiring with chaotic consequences – until they pull off a successful kitten rescue in this exuberantly charming picture book.

Auntie’s Bangles by Dean Atta and Alea Marley, Orchard, £12.99
Everyone misses Auntie, especially the jingle of her jewellery; but eventually Theo and Rama are ready to put on her bangles and dance to celebrate her memory. A sweet, poignant picture book about loss, joy and remembrance.

The Scottish author on a masterclass from Toni Morrison, the brilliance of Simone de Beauvoir and the trim novel by Tove Jansson containing everything that really matters

My earliest reading memory
Apparently I taught myself to read when I was three via the labels on the Beatles 45s we had: I remember the moment of recognising the words “I” and “Feel” and “Fine”. It took a bit longer to work out the word “Parlophone”.

My favourite book growing up
Sister Vincent taught primary six in St Joseph’s, Inverness, and was a discerning reader with very good taste, plus the kind of literary moral rectitude that meant she removed Enid Blyton from the class library because she believed Blyton’s books were written by a factory of writers. In 1972 she and I had a passionate argument when the class was choosing a book to be read out loud to us and I championed Charlotte’s Web by EB White, with which I was in love. Sister Vincent put her foot down. “No. Because animals speak in it, and in reality animals don’t speak.” I recently reread it for the first time since I was nine, and it moved me to tears. What a fine book, about all sorts of language, injustice, imaginative power and friendship versus life’s tough realities. Terrific. Radiant. Humble.

Feigel uses her own experience as a starting point to examine the past, present and future of separation

This book about child custody is, unsurprisingly, full of pain. The pain of mothers separated from their children, of children sobbing for their mothers, of adults who have never moved on from the trauma of their youth, and of young people who are forced to live out the conflicts of their elders. Lara Feigel casts her net across history and fiction, reportage and memoir, and while her research is undeniably impressive and her candour moving, at times she struggles to create a narrative that can hold all these tales of anguish together.

The book begins with a woman flinging herself fully clothed into a river and then restlessly walking on, swimming again, walking again. This is French novelist George Sand, driven to desperate anxiety as she waits to go into court to fight for the right to custody of her children. But almost immediately the story flicks away to Feigel’s own custody battle, and then back into the early 19th century, with Caroline Norton’s sons being taken away in a carriage in the rain by their father.

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.

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?

Royal Court theatre, London
Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo excel as a couple reeling from an ultrasound scan in Luke Norris’s extraordinary play

The trigger warnings are handed to us on a card as we file into the auditorium. For good reason: Luke Norris’s play is a harrowing portrait of pregnancy and grief, plumbing the depths of sorrow within a marriage. But it is not only that. It is funny and profound, intense without ever becoming overwrought.

The play follows a thirtysomething couple who remain unnamed, just like their baby, as they navigate loss. Their relationship seems to feed off a sparky kind of contrariness. She (Rosie Sheehy) is clever, ferocious, always up for a fight. He (Robert Aramayo) is gentler, using humour – and poetry, even in the face of her jeering – to soften her edges. Their dialogue sounds like a contact sport – ricocheting, fast and furious – while they wait for the results of their 20-week ultrasound scan in the first scene.

At Royal Court theatre, London, until 21 February

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London
Despite the vocal bravura of the cast, this show doesn’t capture the Jazz Age power couple’s dazzle or darkness

For decades people have been seeking to rescue Zelda Fitzgerald from her reputation as F Scott’s mad, bad wife. She’s been remade as a feminist icon – a woman driven to extremes, and even incarcerated, by a society and a husband who couldn’t cope with her creativity. Some have tried, too, to capture the Fitzgeralds’ melodramatic marriage on stage (such as in the Craig Revel Horwood-directed Beautiful and Damned in the West End in 2004), with limited success. This latest attempt, with music and lyrics by actor Hannah Corneau, is directed by Michael Greif, the man behind the original Broadway productions of Rent and Dear Evan Hansen.

He has, unsurprisingly, assembled a cast that can pour plenty of vocal bravura into Corneau’s largely poppy score. We follow the well-worn trajectory of the Fitzgeralds’ ascent and decline from Jazz Age fame through the lens of their daughter Scottie as she wanders through their archive (book-lovers will ache over Shankho Chaudhuri’s set of shelves and stacks). The framing is as little explored as the rest of the show’s ideas – why is Scottie there in the first place? – but does allow for a moving performance from Lauren Ward, as she interacts with her parents at various ages.

Milton Court, London
The new music group’s engaging programme of works by Corie Rose Soumah, Anna Meredith, Alex Paxton and Eden Lonsdale moved from the swaggering to the subtle

‘Brace yourself,” the concert programme warned. “This is music that refuses to behave.” After more than 10 years and some 350 world and UK premieres, we’d expect nothing less from Riot Ensemble. This is a group whose promo images once saw them brandishing drumsticks as clubs, music stands as Kalashnikovs, that treats new music as a bloodsport: they like to be in at the kill.

Fresh on the slab were four works from across the spectrum of scope and mood – “music of maximal difference” as conductor Aaron Holloway-Nahum put it – a playlist designed to bring a polite midweek audience up to frenzied, club levels of intensity before cooling us down and sending us out dazed and disoriented.

Soho theatre, London
The standup mines familiar comedy scenarios, but dazzling one-liners and shaggy dog stories elevate the set

Pierre Novellie protests that life is getting harder for observational comedians because, in these siloed times, we have so few reference points in common. It would be a more persuasive theory if he didn’t begin his show with two of the most relatable topics known to comedy, becoming middle-aged and moving to the suburbs. He’s clever and funny on both, mind you, and throughout a show that, at least for a while, cleaves to familiar tropes of thirtysomething standup: fussiness about dishwasher stacking; fear of turning into a “crusty old colonel”.

You might incline to the conclusion that the South African-born Brit is a better writer than he is a performer. His one-liners are frequently dazzling (“I played rugby at school the same way that horses fought in the war”) but his show is formally conventional and his delivery a little stiff. I spent a portion of the show thinking along those lines, until the sheer quality of Novellie’s routines in its second half bulldozed my resistance. His grumpy riff on how people dress in airports, with a droll sidebar on Winnie the Pooh’s couture, is fun, but pales next to its succeeding section, on the game of chicken Novellie played with the cleaners in his Melbourne hotel.

Listening to Brian May’s multi-tracked epic on a battered cassette player when I lived in repressive Havana inspired lit a spark of rebellion inside me

Throughout my childhood and teenage years growing up in 80s Cuba, Fidel Castro’s presence, and the overt influence of politics, was everywhere – on posters, on walls, in speeches that could last four hours at a stretch. The sense of being hemmed in, politically and personally, was hard to escape.

I had been raised to believe in communism, and for a long time I did. I even applied twice to join the Young Communist League, only to be rejected for not being “combative” enough: code for not informing on others. Friends were expelled from university or jailed for speaking too freely and my family included people in the military and police, so I had to be careful not to endanger them. But amid that stifling conformity, something else had begun to take hold.

A beautiful lake, gorgeous fabric: how could the Myanmar photographer resist?

When Aung Chan Thar was 25, he was selected to represent Myanmar as part of Asean Centre for Biodiversity’s (ACB) Young Asean Storytellers programme. A cohort of 20 young artists and writers visited Asean Heritage Parks in their own countries to tell stories of biodiversity, nature and culture.

Aung first travelled to Inlay Lake Wildlife Sanctuary, known for its floating gardens, in 2022. “The Intha people live around the lake and build floating houses: structures made from bamboo on stilts,” Aung says. “Fishing is a common occupation; they use their feet to paddle their boats. So is the production of colourful cloth.”

With the search for the country’s first town of culture under way, Guardian writers pick their favourite spots for art, architecture, food, festivals, music and celeb spotting

Why did Caesar, Saint Augustine, Hengist and Horsa make Ramsgate their first port of call on assorted crusading trips to England? Proximity to France? Easy landing beaches beneath the cliffs? The lively arts scene?

Avatar director, who moved to New Zealand after the Covid pandemic says he will soon be a citizen of a country where people ‘are, for the most part, sane’

James Cameron has said that New Zealand’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is the reason behind his decision to relocate there from the US.

Speaking to Stuff, Cameron – who shot much of the most recent Avatar feature in the southern hemisphere – described being the US under Donald Trump as “like watching a car crash over and over” and said his New Zealand citizenship was “imminent”.

Why do some people age better than others? Five extraordinary individuals – who scientists are studying – share their tips

Lajuana Weathers is determined to be the healthiest version of herself. She starts each day with a celery juice, is always trying to increase her step count, and meditates daily. Weathers is also 89 years old. And she has no plans to slow down. “I wake up in the morning and feel blessed that I have another chance at a day of life,” says the grandmother of six, and great‑grandmother of six more, who lives in Illinois in an independent living facility for seniors. “I look at my life as a holistic entity, and in that life is my physical, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. I have to take care of all of those. That’s what I like about the ageing process. All the clutter of raising children is out and I can concentrate on the wellness of me.”

Weathers is a superager. This isn’t a self-proclaimed label, but one backed up by science – she is part of the SuperAging Research Initiative at the University of Chicago. To qualify for the study, you have to be over 80 years old and have memory performance that’s at least as good as the average 50- to 60-year-old. There are about 400 superagers enrolled across North America.

Toby, a data analyst, meets Liam, a civil servant. Both are 29

What were you hoping for?
I wanted to go in with no expectations.

Whether you’re heading on a multi-day trek or need waterproof shoes for countryside walks, these are the best boots for the job – tried and tested by our writer

• ‘I’d never head out without one’: 10 hiking essentials

There are two types of people on any UK hiking trail: those wearing walking boots, and those who have yet to experience the unmistakable sensation of cowpat seeping through their trainers. I belong in the first camp and firmly believe that the great outdoors is best enjoyed in appropriate footwear.

A solid pair of walking boots will not only protect your feet from countryside unpleasantness but also save you from rolled ankles and skidding on slippery surfaces. Plus, provided they’re waterproof (and not just water-resistant – more on this later), they will keep your feet dry in inclement weather. I’ve tested more than 20 pairs: here’s my guide to the best walking boots out there.

Best walking boots overall:
La Sportiva TX5

Best budget walking boots:
Merrell Moab 3 Mid GTX

Central heating and chilly temperatures playing havoc? Our beauty expert shares her go-to fixes to hydrate and repair

• The best hand creams to soften dry and chapped skin

January has brought with it dark days, freezing temperatures and Arctic winds. Combined with drying central heating, your skin and hair may look and feel thoroughly out of sorts.

Adding a few extra steps to your routine to hydrate and repair can help, as could some carefully chosen swaps if your skin is particularly parched or irritated.

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

Soft leeks and crisped tempeh drizzled in a sticky, spicy sweet soy sauce and liberally sprinkled with salted peanuts

Tempeh is a gift to all home cooks from Indonesia. Made from fermented compressed soy beans, it’s an intelligent ingredient equivalent to meat in terms of protein, subtle and nutty in flavour and chewy in texture. Happily, it is also now widely available in most large UK supermarkets. Here, the tempeh is cooked in a typical Indonesian way – that is, fried until crisp, then coated in a sticky, spicy sweet soy sauce and liberally sprinkled with salted peanuts. In fact, the only anomaly is the leeks, making this dish mostly Indonesian but via a field in Lincolnshire.

Single malt prices soar, but scotch should be fun and affordable

We have Robert Burns to thank for perhaps the greatest poem about any dish ever – a poem so good that it inspires an entire nation to dedicate an evening of each year to eating haggis, even though most people find it kind of gross.

No? If the “Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race” were that delicious, we’d all be eating it all the time, surely? And yet Burns’ Address to a Haggis is enticing enough to dispel any such doubts just once a year. I especially like the bit about slitting it open so the bright entrails spill out: “And then, O what a glorious sight / Warm-reekin, rich!”

Based on a cocktail called the bees’ knees, this winter warmer will put a bit of sunshine into your evening

This drink is full of ginger spice and aromatics from both the honey and the London dry gin. The fresher it is, the better, so don’t keep the syrup for longer than two days. I’m pretty particular about citrus shelf life, too, so always squeeze it fresh and never keep it overnight or, heaven forbid, even longer.

Ross Finnegan, bar manager, The Palomar, London W1

There’s a ton of winter comfort in the rich, golden and indulgent cake with its appealing orangey edge

A Breton butter cake is a proud product of Brittany’s butter-rich baking tradition: dense, golden and unapologetically indulgent. True to its origins, my version uses salted butter, with an added pinch of flaky salt to sharpen the flavour. It also takes a small detour from tradition: a slick of marmalade brings a fragrant bitterness, while a handful of ground almonds softens the overall richness and lends a tender crumb. The result is still buttery and luxurious, but with a brighter, more aromatic edge.

Advice about how to deal with barbs and those who throw them has trickled down from the Bible and through the generations for Meg Keneally and her father Thomas

• Read more in the Home Truths series

I’ve always been a dramatic soul. As a young teenager, I would stumble home from early high school, fresh from another day of taunts about my weight, the strange protrusions developing on my chest, or the perm I gave myself from a home kit at the weekend (it was the 1980s!). And, of course, I would relay every insult, every slight, every barb to my parents.

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.

Millions of graduates are trapped by ballooning debts, as their repayments are dwarfed by the interest added

Helen Lambert borrowed £57,000 to go to university and began repaying her student loan in 2021 after starting work as an NHS nurse.

Since then she has repaid more than £5,000, typically having about £145 a month taken from her pay packet. But everything she hands over is dwarfed by the £400-plus of interest that is added to her debt every month, thanks to rates that have been as high as 8%.

From an Italian-style townhouse in London’s Chelsea to a country retreat in Dorset where every room is its own gallery

Despite the recent interest rate cut, many fixed-rate bond or easy-access account rates have held up longer than expected

Savers are being urged to shop around and move fast if they want to get hold of one of the competitive deals still available. These include one-year fixed-rate savings bonds paying up to 4.35% and an easy-access account with a rate of 4.5%.

The impact of the Bank of England’s pre-Christmas interest rate cut – the sixth reduction since August 2024 – has been making itself felt, with reductions to rates on many savings accounts. But some best-buy savings rates have arguably held up better than one might have expected.

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.

NHS England pays for private assessments under ‘right to choose’, but can reject diagnoses and is struggling to cope with demand

Sameer Modha knows the ADHD system all too well. He has been diagnosed himself, as have his two children, giving him a clear view of how the system works – and where it breaks down.

While his own diagnosis was relatively straightforward, the experience with his daughter was very different. The diagnosis he obtained for his eldest child, after an assessment carried out privately by a “very senior ex-Camhs [child and adolescent mental health service] director, someone who knows the system and has seen a huge amount of this”, was later rejected by the NHS. He was told it was not compliant with guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which sets healthcare standards nationally.

Done your knee in running or in a match? Pulled something while playing with the kids? These tips should get you on the road to recovery

There’s nothing quite like a persistent ache or pain to ruin your mood. Whether it’s a recurring twinge in your lower back or an acute injury from an accident, most issues stem from imbalance – when one area of the body compensates for weakness elsewhere.

“Our bodies are inherently asymmetrical – no one’s left and right sides are exactly the same,” says personal trainer Luke Worthington. “Problems arise when we inadvertently force symmetry, trying to make both sides move identically. It disrupts our natural equilibrium and leads to overuse, strain or injury.”

Too hot, too cold, never right? From microfibre to British wool, sustainable down to dual-tog designs, these are the duvets worth cosying up to

• The best mattresses, tested

At alarm o’clock on a January morning, any duvet will feel like heaven: anything’s better than having to haul myself out into the freezing dark. There’s no need to go to the extreme, though: find the best duvet for you and you’ll sleep so well that you’ll rise with a spring in your step and a smile on your face.

You probably don’t need a scientific study to tell you that you feel more refreshed the morning after a good night’s sleep, though there’s plenty of research demonstrating just that. A duvet that helps you sleep better will improve your days as well as your nights. The key is to find one that hits the perfect balance between warmth, weight and breathability for you and your sleep style.

Best duvet overall:
Panda the Cloud

Best budget duvet:
Slumberland All Seasons

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.

Goodbye, clean girl; hello, blazing icon! Hairstylist Jessie’s mismatched red-and-yellow look has been a joyful shot of warmth on our screens, and makeup artists say they’re here for it

‘It’s Stephen! It’s Stephen. And here they all come to chat a load of bollocks.” So said Jessie Roux all the way back in episode four, spewing truth bombs while wearing sweetcorn-yellow eyeshadow. Yet here we are – as I write this, on the day of the final – with Stephen Libby still masquerading as a Faithful, looking th’innocent flower but being the serpent under’t, as per Lady Macbeth’s advice.

But it hasn’t been for want of Jessie trying – the 28-year-old has been a fan favourite on the latest season of The Traitors for smarts like these, but also for her bright and mismatched makeup. Often yellow and red, like Rupert the Bear’s outfit or the Lego logo, the shades are what Little Greene paint company calls exclamatory things such as Trumpet and Heat.

Fashion designer’s death has brought the red dress – and his distinctive shade of the colour – back into the spotlight

“The red dress,” said Valentino Garavani in 1992, “is always magnificent”.

This week, after the announcement of his death at the age of 93, the red dress – and the distinctive shade of red long associated with the designer known simply as Valentino – is back in the spotlight.

Slim frames and tinted lenses are reshaping how men present themselves. Glasses have become the must-have accessory – even if you don’t have a prescription

• Don’t get Fashion Statement delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Last spring, Tom Broughton, founder of eyewear brand Cubitts, was asked to comment on a meme that was going viral, that featured a pair of his company’s ‘Plimsoll’ frames. The small, delicate, and slightly round unisex shape had been worn by British actor, Jonathan Bailey, in leaked stills from the 2025 movie, Jurassic World Rebirth – and had been dubbed by the internet as a pair of ‘slutty little glasses’.

“It all just blew up,” remembers Broughton, noting how the brand struggled to deal with the sudden demand for what had become the sexiest specs on the market. A subsequent capsule collection, made in partnership with Bailey’s LGBTQ+ charity the Shameless Fund, sold out almost instantly, too. Thousands of pairs were gone in minutes, and after multiple restocks, “we’re maybe down to our last 15 pairs,” adds Broughton. Nearly the entire run was bought by men.

A neat alternative to messing around trying to get the perfect T-shirt tuck. Here a three outfits to get you started

The process of learning to catch a wave is an all-consuming activity that can prove to be a powerful therapeutic tool

I can’t remember when my terror of waves began in earnest. Maybe it was a singular incident that triggered it, like that monster wave in Biarritz, France, almost 20 years ago that body-slammed me on to the seabed, taking all the skin off my chin.

More likely is that my transition from fearless to frightened had been more of a slow creep, and a perfectly rational one when you consider the danger of riptides, hidden rocks, sharks and concussion. But for me, I feel it goes deeper. Almost inevitably my job will have had something to do with this. Nearly two decades of working as a journalist reporting on the very worst things that human beings can do to other human beings in a wide array of contexts has definitely eroded my sense that I can keep myself – and others – safe from harm in a dangerous world.

From the jungles of Colombia to sailing in Croatia, our readers reflect on the life lessons travel has taught them
• Send us a tip on a museum or gallery – the best wins a £200 holiday voucher

I did a circuit of the Old Man of Coniston in the Lake District on a grey, drizzly weekday in October and it quietly rewired my head. I’d been running on always-on mode, and that climb forces you to slow down and breathe properly. From the Coppermines valley up to the ridge, then along the rocky summit and back via Goat’s Water, it’s rugged without being showy. The weather kept the crowds away, and the low cloud made the tarn feel like a secret. I came home muddy, soaked and weirdly calm, and started making space for long walks again.
Brandon Kindell

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.

I see the manure sellers as part of some lost and deeply English tradition, which is why I prefer my wife to deal with them

I am in the kitchen watching the dog and the cat fight when the tortoise suddenly appears. Or to put it another way: I watched the dog and the cat fight for a while, until it became tiresome; the next time I looked up – possibly 15 minutes later – the tortoise was also there. That’s what I mean by suddenly. In real terms, the tortoise doesn’t do anything suddenly.

“Where have you been?” I say, even though I know the answer. I haven’t seen the tortoise in six weeks, but I’m certain he’s been butted up against the left rear leg of the sofa for that whole period.

From Blue Monday and Candy Girl to ‘Violet, you’re turning violet’, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Lydia of Thyatira is claimed to be the first person in Europe to do what?
2 In what country do mountain lions eat penguins?
3 Single pot still is a style of what drink?
4 “Violet, you’re turning violet” is a line in what book?
5 Whose Easter Sonata was originally attributed to her brother?
6 Which two small UK cities share a name?
7 Who spoke the pitmatic dialect?
8 Which football team won five NASL titles?
What links:
9 Mercedes-Benz cars; MySQL database; Tootsie Roll sweet; Wendy’s burgers?
10 Michael Henchard; John Loveday; Elfride Swancourt; Clym Yeobright?
11 Beg, Steal or Borrow; Blue Monday; Candy Girl; Hangin’ Tough?
12 1 (1st); 55 (10th); 75,025 (25th); 12,586,269,025 (50th)?
13 First Consul for Life; Co-Prince of Andorra; King of Italy; Sovereign of Elba?
14 Women’s 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, long jump, discus, shot put and heptathlon?
15 Chicago; Buenos Aires; Marktl, Bavaria; Wadowice, Poland?

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

Rebuke will do PM no harm with his party and opens up a politically perilous but potentially appealing path ahead

“Serious, calm, pragmatic, behind-the-scenes diplomacy” is how No 10 has been describing Keir Starmer’s approach to the chaotic world of Donald Trump’s administration.

That may have been how the week started – and tiptoeing around Trump’s volatility has been the hallmark of Starmer’s relationship with the president for a whole year. But the president’s two major digs at Britain, first over the Chagos Islands and then, more seriously, his claim that UK troops did not pull their weight in Afghanistan, have finally provoked Starmer into a furious rebuttal.

Charlie Simpson, 15, is part of new generation of self-styled ‘independent journalists’ with links to far right

Andrew Rosindell had been tipped as a potential Reform recruit long before his defection from the Conservatives last weekend took Westminster by surprise.

Yet as he and Nigel Farage basked in the spotlight outside parliament on Monday, more than 200 miles away in the town of Whitby, North Yorkshire, a 15-year-old schoolboy was also savouring the moment.

In an exclusive interview at his base, athletics’ ‘iron man’ reveals why his career feels like ‘99% losses’ but he plans to retire as the greatest distance runner in history

On a bone-cold new year’s morning, the world’s most compelling athlete is sweating so much that tiny puddles are starting to ooze across his treadmill.

For 40 minutes Jakob Ingebrigtsen makes 6min 40sec mile pace look like a Sunday stroll, breezily chatting away even as the heatbox in his home gym pushes the temperature inside to more than 32.4C (90F). Only when I ask the double Olympic champion what his super-strength is does he pause to take a proper breath. “In Norwegian we have a word for it,” he eventually replies. “Ingen kompromiss. No compromise.”

We would like to hear your suggestions for the UK’s first town of culture

With the search for the UK’s first town of culture under way, we would like to hear your suggestions.

Guardian writers’ own nominations include Ramsgate in Kent, Falmouth in Cornwall, Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, and Portobello in Edinburgh. Which town would you nominate, and why?

As television turns 100, we would like to hear your highlights of the century

As television turns 100, we’ve charted TV history in a timeline of 100 extraordinary moments. Now, we would like to hear your highlights. Did we miss anything? What is your favourite TV moment of all time?

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.

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

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

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ICE in Minneapolis, Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, protests in Greenland and the Africa Cup of Nations final in Rabat – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing