Macclesfield v Brentford: FA Cup fourth round – live

⚽ FA Cup fourth-round news from the 7.30pm GMT kick-off
⚽ Live scores | FA Cup fifth round draw | And mail Xaymaca

Here we go!

Former Rochdale defender Luke Matheson actually scored against Manchester United as a 16-year-old in 2019. After playing for a number of clubs, including Wolves, Matheson finds himself at Macclesfield. Speaking before tonight’s game he said:

To give back to the fans of this town is the proudest thing you can do as a footballer. For us to be able to give them moments like the Palace game and then another against Brentford brings us such joy as players.

Shooting reported at high school hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

The ATF said it would assist police responding to reports of a shooting during a high school boys' hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Winter Olympics 2026: women’s big air final under way, ski jumping men’s super team final, figure skating pairs final – live

• Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results | Briefing

• Follow us over on Bluesky | Get in touch: email Geoff

Solberg of Norway looks like he’s going nicely, but he’s still well off the lad at every checkpoint. Increasingly, it looks like getting out first was a big advantage, Atle Lie McGrath still in front, as Sala of Italy joins the growing list of those who didn’t finish.

Visibility isn’t great as Dave “The Rocket” Ryding” sets off for his penultimate Olympic run. The GB veteran isn’t likely to trouble the podium, but he’ll want to make the second run, and he finishes 13th, 3.74 off the lead.

FBI won’t share Alex Pretti shooting evidence, Minnesota authorities say

State’s governor had demanded impartial inquiry into the shooting of the VA nurse by federal immigration agents

Minnesota law enforcement authorities have said the FBI is refusing to share any evidence on its investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, the man killed by federal immigration authorities in late January.

Pretti was shot on 24 January by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement operations in the city. His killing came just two weeks after an immigration official shot and killed Renee Good and 10 days after the shooting of Julio C Sosa-Celis.

Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95

From the classic To Kill a Mockingbird to blockbuster Gone in 60 Seconds, the Oscar-winning actor’s films spanned a remarkable range

• Robert Duvall was a vigorous and subtle actor who always performed with passion and conviction

Robert Duvall, the veteran actor who had a string of roles in classic American films including Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, M*A*S*H and To Kill a Mockingbird, has died aged 95.

“Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” wrote his wife, Luciana Duvall, in a message on Facebook.

The patience and the poker face: Iran’s wily diplomat set to face the US in nuclear talks

Abbas Araghchi is steeped in more than a decade of nuclear dealmaking with a book on the art of negotiations

If the US and Iran are to avoid a regional war, both sides need to start to make concessions at talks in Geneva on Tuesday, and also to accommodate one another’s very different bargaining styles.

The Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, steeped in almost 15 years of Iranian nuclear talks, is a near lifelong diplomat who has written a book on the art of negotiations that reveals the secrets of the Iranian diplomatic trade – the feints, the patience, the poker faces.

A timeline of Nancy Guthrie's disappearance as search stretches on

Savannah Guthrie's mom, Nancy Guthrie, was reported missing Feb. 1.

The U.S. ready to make up, Europe ready to break up in Munich

Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to reassure Europe at the Munich Security Conference, but European leaders are skeptical.

Winter Olympics: USA reach women’s ice hockey final with rout of Sweden

• Ruthless Americans reel off 5-0 victory

• Switzerland or Canada await in Thursday’s final

A United States women’s hockey team already being hailed as one of the best ever assembled is right where they expected to be: playing for Olympic gold. The Americans brushed aside Sweden 5-0 in the first of Monday’s semi-finals, setting the stage for a potential seventh gold-medal showdown with Canada.

Twenty years ago, almost to the day, the USA women absorbed one of the great Olympic shocks when Sweden stunned them in a shootout just down the A4 autostrada in Torino, ending a streak of 25 straight losses to the Americans during which they’d been outscored 187-29. There would be no such ambush this time, even if Sweden coach Ulf Lundberg had suggested the US team were “just human beings” and might not have been overly keen on facing his team in the semi-finals.

"Signal sniffer" to detect Nancy Guthrie's pacemaker deployed, sources say

A device that can pick up certain electronic signals is being used in the search for Nancy Guthrie, as it may detect emissions from her pacemaker, sources told CBS News.

Trump lashes out at California governor’s green energy deal with UK

President says it is inappropriate for UK to be dealing with Gavin Newsom after Ed Miliband meets governor in London

Donald Trump has vented his fury against a green energy deal between the British government and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a likely future Democratic presidential candidate.

“The UK’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Gavin Newscum,” Trump said in an interview with Politico, using the derogatory nickname he reserves for Newsom. “Gavin is a loser. Everything he’s touched turns to garbage. His state has gone to hell, and his environmental work is a disaster.”

Average tax refund is nearly 11% higher so far this year, IRS data shows

Forecasters predicted filers would benefit from larger checks​ this year due to a series of new tax provisions in the "one big, beautiful" bill.

Why athleisure giant Lululemon is losing momentum

After a decade of rapid growth, Lululemon is struggling to find its footing in an increasingly saturated market.

FA Cup fifth-round draw: Mansfield v Arsenal, Wrexham v Chelsea – as it happened

Wrexham and Mansfield host big guns in the fifth round while Newcastle face Manchester City and Liverpool go to Wolves

TNT have kicked off with a walk-and-talk around a packed Macclesfield dressing room, the only problem being that the camera lens keeps steaming up. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

Three minutes until the draw, according to an on-screen countdown that will inevitably prove to be inaccurate. I think the fifth round is my personal favourite round of the Cup; close enough to Wembley but still with plenty of room for surprises.

Why Starmer’s latest U-turn over local elections could be a gift for Reform

Ditching plans to delay votes in 30 English councils gives Nigel Farage chance to capitalise on Labour unpopularity

• Starmer abandons plans to delay local elections in England in latest U-turn

Keir Starmer was challenged on Monday morning over the list of U-turns he has made since entering government less than two years ago, including on cuts to winter fuel payments, cuts to disability benefits and hikes in inheritance tax for farmers.

“I am a pragmatist. I am a common-sense merchant,” he told the BBC presenter Jeremy Vine in his defence.

What is happening to Syria’s IS camps and their former residents?

Experts say the detention centres were a breeding ground for extremism and a new generation of IS members

Humanitarians warned for years that the camps in north-east Syria holding tens of thousands of family members of suspected Islamic State (IS) fighters would have to be dealt with. Calling them a “ticking time bomb”, relief groups said the women and children could not just be left to rot in squalid desert camps indefinitely, because eventually they would come home.

Despite the warnings, most states ignored the problem, refusing to repatriate their citizens. At least 8,000 women and children from more than 40 countries have been stranded in the camps of north-east Syria since 2019.

Producer of Israeli spy thriller found dead in Athens hotel room

Dana Eden, 52, co-creator of hit TV series Tehran, reported by Greek police to have taken her own life on Sunday

The co-creator of an Israeli hit TV series has been found dead in a hotel room in Athens where the fourth season of the spy thriller is being filmed.

Dana Eden, 52, was discovered by her brother late on Sunday, Greek police said, attributing her death to suicide.

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

Actor Robert Duvall has died — he brought a compassionate center to edgy hard roles

Duvall appeared in over 90 films over the course of his career, imbuing stock Hollywood types — cowboys, cops, soldiers — with a nuanced sense of vulnerability.

Italy's athletes shine at the Milan Cortina Olympics

Call it homefield advantage, call it national pride. Italy's athletes are shining in the Winter Olympics underway in Milan and the Alps.

Robert Duvall, Oscar winner who starred in "The Godfather," dies at age 95

Robert Duvall was in such classics as "The Godfather," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "M*A*S*H," "The Great Santini" and "Tender Mercies."

Serie A referee La Penna told to stay at home by police after dozens of death threats

• La Penna wrongly sent off Juve’s Kalulu against Inter

• Official could face one-month ban following incident

The referee Federico La Penna has received dozens of death threats after wrongly sending off a Juventus player at Inter on Saturday. Italian police have reportedly advised him not to leave his home.

La Penna sparked fury among Juventus fans after dismissing Pierre Kalulu, showing the defender a second yellow card for a challenge on Alessandro Bastoni. Replays showed Bastoni had clearly simulated the fall. Juventus officials and fans argued that the decision heavily influenced the game, which Inter won 3-2, despite the Bianconeri having fought back to level the score with 10 men.

Robert Duvall was a vigorous and subtle actor who always performed with passion and conviction

From his steely self-effacing consigliere in The Godfather to his surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast in Apocalypse Now, just to see him on screen made me smile

• Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now and Godfather star, dies aged 95

Robert Duvall was a foghorn-voiced bull of pure American virility, and he put energy and heart into the movies for more than 60 years. Just to see him on screen was enough to make me smile. That handsome face and head gave him the look of a Roman emperor from Waxahachie, Texas or a three-star general playing the country music circuit. Duvall was famously bald (the rare roles needing hairpieces always looked artificial on him) and so he looked the same age almost all his acting life: forever in his vigorous fortysomething prime – though often playing figures complicated with tenderness and woundedness.

Duvall had a long, rich career, starting out with notable roles in To Kill a Mockingbird, M*A*S*H, The Conversation and Network, but it was destiny to be chiefly known for two sensational and very different roles given to him by Francis Ford Coppola at either end of the 1970s. One was Tom Hagen, the quiet, self-effacing consigliere to the Corleone crime family in The Godfather (1972), with a complex relationship both with the Don himself, played by Marlon Brando, and his youngest son and heir, the coldly imperious Michael, played by Al Pacino. And the second was his extraordinary turn as the surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979), who with his “Air Mobile” division of helicopters leads a gigantic attack on a Vietnamese village in broad daylight, with speakers blaring The Ride of the Valkyries – in theory to airlift Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, and his boatful of men into the river’s strategic entry point. But all too clearly, it’s because he just wants an excuse for a whooping and hollering cavalry attack.

UK bank bosses plan to set up Visa and Mastercard alternative amid Trump fears

Exclusive: First meeting to be held over domestic payments system aimed at reducing reliance on US networks

UK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump’s ability to turn off US-owned payment systems.

The meeting, chaired by Barclays’ UK chief executive, Vim Maru, will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur.

Students in England and Wales launch legal action over Covid-hit studies

More than 170,000 seek compensation after UCL Covid settlement opens door to claims across university sector

Dozens of universities are facing legal action from more than 170,000 students seeking compensation after their studies were moved online during Covid-19.

Pre-action claim letters have been sent to 36 universities in England and Wales, including Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Imperial College London, Leeds, Liverpool and Warwick, on behalf of aggrieved students.

Primary care is in trouble. Doctors are banding together to increase market power

As costs increase, primary care practices are joining forces in Independent Physician Associations. The goal is to leverage better insurance contracts, while ensuring doctors still call the shots.

French police launch murder inquiry after far-right activist’s death in Lyon

Quentin Deranque, 23, who was on sidelines of a protest, died from a brain injury after attack that has fuelled political tensions

French police have launched a murder inquiry after a far-right activist died in hospital having been beaten up in an attack that has fuelled political tensions in France.

Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old mathematics student, died from a severe brain injury at the weekend. The Lyon prosecutor, Thierry Dran, said Deranque was assaulted by at least six masked individuals. Police were working to identify suspects and no arrests had been made, Dran said.

Kavanagh stood down from Premier League round after errors in Villa loss to Newcastle

• Referee Chris Kavanagh will not officiate this weekend

• VAR was not used in FA Cup fourth round ties

The referee Chris Kavanagh will not officiate in the next round of Premier League fixtures after a series of high‑profile errors during the FA Cup tie between Aston Villa and Newcastle on Saturday.

Kavanagh has been stood down by Professional Game Match Officials, alongside one of his two assistants at Villa Park, Nick Greenhalgh. The second assistant, Gary Beswick, will run the line at Nottingham Forest v Liverpool on Sunday.

CBS News Things That Matter: A Town Hall with Governor Wes Moore

Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a rising star in the Democratic Party, sits down with CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell to discuss issues impacting the nation, including the critical 2026 midterm elections and his vision for the future of the Democratic Party.

Far-right character’s monologue prompts violent scenes at German theatre

Actor shouted down and pelted with fruit during Catarina, or the Beauty of Killing Fascists

An actor at a theatre in Germany was at the weekend shouted down, pelted with fruit and subjected to an attempted stage invasion as he delivered a final monologue in character as a far-right activist.

The violent scenes came on Saturday during the German premiere of the Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues’s work Catarina, or the Beauty of Killing Fascists in Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia.

The NFL just wrapped a record-breaking season. Here’s why next year’s going to be even bigger

In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, the NFL announced that Paris, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro will host regular-season games for the first time.

Brilliant Sri Lanka leave Australia on brink of T20 World Cup elimination

• Stunning ton by Pathum Nissanka seals hosts’ run chase

• Australia need Ireland to beat Zimbabwe on Tuesday

Australia could be out of the T20 World Cup before they even play their final first round group match after a stunning fightback by Sri Lanka in Pallekele.

Returning captain Mitch Marsh and a revived Travis Head looked to have set Australia on course for a victory that would have kept their tournament hopes alive as they smashed a century-plus opening stand at more than two-runs-a-ball.

Why did Obama say aliens are real? | The Latest

Barack Obama has caused a frenzy after saying he thinks aliens are real during a podcast interview. The former US president was forced to release a statement clarifying he had not seen any evidence of extraterrestrials. There is a long-running conspiracy theory claiming the US government is hiding extraterrestrials at Area 51, a highly classified air force site in Nevada.
Lucy Hough speaks to the host of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, Madeleine Finlay

Was Navalny poisoning by frog toxin meant to send a message?

Yvette Cooper may think so, and use of epibatidine may seem exotic, but experts say situation is more ambiguous

It was a very particular choice of weapon, but experts say it remains unclear whether the dart frog toxin used to kill the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was intended to convey a message.

Known as epibatidine, the poison is produced by wild dart frogs native to parts of South America – meaning Navalny could not have accidentally taken the poison.

FBI refuses to share evidence in Alex Pretti killing, Minnesota investigators say

Minnesota's top investigative agency said Monday the federal government has formally refused to hand over evidence and information in the killing of Alex Pretti.

Did you solve it? Chapeau! A smart new hat puzzle

The answer to today’s peaky poser

Earlier today I set you this logic puzzle. Here is is again with the solution.

(If you found it too simple. Here’s a harder version.)

Milano Cortina Winter Olympics 2026 day 10 – in pictures

Check out the best images from day 10 of the Games, from alpine skiing to medal-biting celebrations

‘I just needed some time for myself’: Norwegian skier hides in woods after slalom gold heartache

• Meillard takes title after McGrath crashes out

• GB’s Dave Ryding finishes 17th in his final race

For more than a century of Winter Olympic sport, athletes have dealt with defeat in almost every possible way: tears, tantrums, breaking things, breaking down. On Monday afternoon in Bormio, the Norwegian Atle Lie McGrath processed his grief in a novel way after the men’s slalom gold medal had slipped away. First, he threw his ski poles as far as he could and then he hid in the woods.

“I just needed to get away from everything,” he said. “I thought I would get some peace and quiet, which I didn’t because photographers and police found me out in the woods. I just needed some time for myself.”

Savannah Guthrie makes new appeal for missing mother: ‘It’s never too late to do the right thing’

In Instagram post, TV host whose mother disappeared 15 days ago in Arizona says ‘you’re not lost or alone’

The TV news anchor Savannah Guthrie issued a fresh appeal to anyone who knows the whereabouts of her missing mother, saying that “you’re not lost or alone” and “it is never too late to do the right thing”.

The Today anchor, who is stepping away from NBC’s morning broadcast, urged “whoever has her or knows where she is” to come forward, but did not make reference to any ransom demands or communication with any abductor.

Parents say Camp Mystic counselor "died a hero" trying to save girls from flood

In their first television interview, the parents of 19-year-old Katherine Ferruzzo are demanding changes from Camp Mystic​, where their daughter died in last summer's devastating floods.

Could we have 13 million new tiles please? The astonishing £42m rebirth of modernist masterpiece Africa Hall

Hailed as one of the defining achievements of African architecture, the historic, recently refurbished Ethiopian landmark has now won the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism prize

Designed by the Italian architect Arturo Mezzedimi, Addis Ababa’s Africa Hall quickly became recognised as one of the defining achievements of African modernism on its completion in 1961. In 1963, it hosted the founding meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the precursor to today’s African Union. Africa was then emerging from centuries of colonial rule, and many of the OAU’s founders – including Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt – had led their nations to independence.

“Only a few years ago,” the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie said at the time, “meetings to consider African problems were held outside Africa, and the fate of its peoples were decided by non-Africans. Today … the peoples of Africa can, at long last, deliberate on their own problems and future.”

How British skeleton left the world in its tracks with golden Winter Olympics haul | Andy Bull

Big investment in coaches and kit – £5.8m in the last cycle – has paid off despite lack of facilities and snow at home

According to the British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, 3,500 people have signed up to audition for their skeleton Talent ID programme in the past three days, an extraordinary surge of interest in what has never been what you might call the most accessible sport.

It is all after Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker won Great Britain’s 10th and 11th Olympic medals in the sport, continuing a lineage that reaches back to 1928, when it was the winter sport of choice for the most reckless of a set of aristocratic adventurers. The 11th Earl of Northesk won bronze ahead of his teammate, and the pre-race favourite, Lord Brabazon of Tara. It is some legacy. After a century of competition, skeleton is the only Winter Olympic sport in which Britain lead the all-time medal table.

Are we all Evangelos Marinakis? Why there has never been less patience with managers | Jonathan Wilson

In an age in which every gripe is highlighted and performative fury is good business, there is an argument that long-termism has become impossible

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

Last week, Thomas Frank was sacked as manager of Tottenham and Sean Dyche was sacked as manager of Nottingham Forest. Both decisions were entirely explicable in their own terms. Frank had won only two of his previous 17 league games and Dyche only two of his previous 10. Both saw the improvement of West Ham under Nuno Espírito Santo and felt the drag of potential relegation. When fear sets in and something has to change, football tends to sacrifice the manager.

Excluding caretakers and interims, their departures take the number of Premier League managers to leave their jobs this season to eight, with Oliver Glasner to come at the end of the season, when Marco Silva and Andoni Iraola are also out of contract. Last season there were 10 departures, in 2023-24 nine, in 2022-23 an absurd 18. To give a little context, in the first season of the Premier League, 1992-93, there were only four changes (five if you include Dave Webb at Chelsea, who was effectively an interim, although he did not officially have that title). The average life span of a Premier League manager has dropped from about four seasons to about a season and a half.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email [email protected], and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

‘It was spooky’: folk singer Olivia Chaney on how a song reflecting her own Brontë-ish love triangle wound up in Wuthering Heights

Offsetting Charli xcx, Chaney’s take on 19th-century ballad Dark Eyed Sailor accompanies Margot Robbie on the moors – but it’s just a tiny part of her culture-crossing, history-vaulting musical catalogue

An hour into Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, Margot Robbie is in a gauzy wedding dress, gliding forlornly across the moors towards the man her character feels she has to marry. A lone female English voice appears to accompany her, high and pure against the buzzing drone of a harmonium, singing about a woman roaming alone, and a man who, for “seven years, left the land”, before his eventual return.

Long before Emerald Fennell found Olivia Chaney’s version of 19th-century ballad the Dark Eyed Sailor online, Chaney was preparing to sing it for a 2013 live session on Mark Radcliffe’s BBC Radio 2 folk show, in the midst of her own Brontë-esque love triangle. “I was at the beginning of my relationship with the man who is now my husband and the father of my two children – he nearly married someone else, and I nearly had kids with someone else.”

O’Romeo review – Bollywood Shakespeare takes dive into grisly mafia queens territory

After hit takes on Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Romeo and Juliet adaptation sees dead-eyed lovers drag one another to gutter and grave

It must be Misbegotten Adaptations week. This Hindi gangland epic’s credentials are impeccable: director Vishal Bhardwaj previously wowed with textured, inventive variations on Macbeth (Maqbool, 2003), Othello (Omkara, 2006) and Hamlet (Haider, 2014). But rather than a straightforward modernisation of Romeo and Juliet, this latest revisits a grisly true-crime story ripped from Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens of Mumbai, the book that previously inspired Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s 2022 hit, Gangubai Kathiawadi. The results align Bhardwaj with the newly lurid turn mainstream Bollywood has taken with recent smashes Animal and Dhurandhar, but it’s jarring to witness, as if Kenneth Branagh had followed his turn-of-the-90s Shakespeare successes by trying for Natural Born Killers.

For Venice (or Baz Luhrmann’s Venice Beach), Bhardwaj swaps the Mumbai underworld of the 1990s, ushering in the movies’ first morally degenerate Romeo. Shahid Kapoor’s Hussein Ustara – nicknamed Romeo – is a heavily tattooed bellower employed as a hitman for a local godfather; his Juliet (Animal’s Triptii Dimri) an aggrieved widow clutching a sizeable hitlist. These two are star-crossed: he rescues her amid a bungled assassination attempt on the lawyer smearing her late husband, earning them both powerful foes. The fish tank through which Leo glimpsed Claire Danes here abuts the bed to which this Romeo takes two escorts while his Juliet listens in. Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody.

‘Heath Ledger knocked my tooth out jousting with a broom’: how we made A Knight’s Tale

‘The lances were made of balsa wood and filled with uncooked spaghetti – so that when they broke, there’d be an explosion of what looked like splinters’

I wrote and directed the Mel Gibson film Payback but got fired during post-production. It was my first film as director and I thought my career was over. It was during this downtime that I wrote A Knight’s Tale. I loved the idea that jousting tournaments were medieval sports, but I had never figured out what to do with it. I thought about the ideas underpinning it: a peasant who wants to be a noble was like a screenwriter wanting to be a director. It’s a guy trying to be something he has no right to be.

Starmer vows to fast-track social media law but says under-16s ban not definite

Prime minister says action will be taken on young people’s social media access in ‘months, not years’

• What social media restrictions has Keir Starmer announced?

Keir Starmer has pledged action on young people’s access to social media in “months, not years”, while saying this did not necessarily mean a complete ban on access for under-16s.

Speaking at an event in London after the government promised to extend the crackdown to AI chatbots that place children at risk, Starmer said the issue was nuanced and that a ban was not definite, noting concerns from charities such as the NSPCC.

Did the USA v World format revive the NBA’s struggling All-Star Game?

Critics say what was once a showpiece for the league has turned into a glorified practice session. But there are signs an updated version may have worked

Basketball Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady flashed a look of disdain when recalling last year’s NBA All-Star Game.

“The All-Star Game that we witnessed last year was not an All-Star game,” McGrady told the Guardian. “I don’t know what that was.”

Carnival, lunar new year and anti-US fervour: photos of the day – Monday

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

DHS government shutdown is underway. Here are the services affected.

The Department of Homeland Security officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday after Congress failed to pass a bill to fund its operations before a stopgap measure lapsed.

Ilia Malinin writes about ‘inevitable crash’ after Olympic figure skating shock

• American was favourite for gold but finished eighth

• Video hints that experience may be used in routine

Ilia Malinin has written about “an inevitable crash” after he missed the podium at the Winter Olympics in one of the biggest shocks in the history of figure skating.

The 21-year-old was the overwhelming favourite entering the men’s free skate on Friday in Milan, but he fell twice during his routine. Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shaidorov won gold and Malinin finished 15th out of 24th in the free skate and eighth overall.

Pizza Hut feasts and improvised altars: lunar new year in Australia’s small town Chinese restaurants

They’re normally behind the wok or taking orders, year-round. But when it’s time to celebrate, these Chinese restaurant families create their own traditions

Two things are certain at Chinese restaurants in Australian country towns: you’ll find lemon chicken on the menu and the restaurant is open almost every day.

In the 1960s and 70s, Ruby Lee’s parents ran the Pagoda Cafe in Burleigh Heads, a surf town in Queensland. They worked 14-hour days and opened the restaurant year-round, even Christmas. When they did eventually close for one day a year, it was for lunar new year.

My rookie era: I attempted only the easiest Australian Women’s Weekly birthday cakes. Then came the duck cake

When I shared my attempt online, my duck cake was described as ‘Big Bird on crack’

• Read more summer essentials

I assume no parent aspires to give their offspring an unmemorable and vanilla childhood. I wanted to be a fun mum, creating love-soaked memories and quirky family traditions for my children right from the get-go. I wanted to be Bluey’s parents before Bluey even existed.

The Australian Women’s Weekly birthday cakes were destined to be a pillar of my perfectly imperfect parenting rituals. One child quickly became three, and that iconic recipe book was in constant rotation. In the early years, I would simply choose a cake that matched my very basic baking skills. I also only owned a round tin, so my kids’ early cakes were circle-shaped, or circle-adjacent: the swimming pool (a round cake filled with jelly), the cat (a round cake with ears) and the race track (two round cakes with the centres removed).

What's open and closed on Presidents Day 2026?

Most retail and food establishments will remain open, but services like mail delivery will be suspended for the federal holiday.

Gisèle Pelicot: The Newsnight Interview review – you can only gaze admiringly at her strength and grace

Mme Pelicot’s innate dignity shines through, as she explains why she waived her anonymity – after her husband drugged her so that dozens of men could sexually assault her

It’s hard to judge an interview with Gisèle Pelicot in the normal terms. Let’s start with the easy bit: Victoria Derbyshire is the ideal interlocutor. The co-presenter of Newsnight has a kind of steely warmth that meshes well with the innate dignity of Mme Pelicot – as she is called throughout – while they walk unflinchingly through her terrible story.

Her “descent into hell” began on 2 November 2020 when the local police called her and her husband, Dominique Pelicot, to the station. They believed it was to do with his recent arrest for covertly taking pictures underneath the skirts of three women in the supermarket. It was not. In the course of that investigation they had found on his laptop thousands upon thousands of videos and photographs accumulated over a decade of his wife unconscious and being raped by strangers.

Train derails in Switzerland amid fatal avalanches across the Alps

Swiss police say derailment near Goppenstein injured five as large areas of western Alps remain under category 5 avalanche risk

Avalanches from heavy snowfall in the European Alps claimed more lives over the weekend, as a train was derailed by a snow slide in Switzerland on Monday and roads and villages around Mont Blanc were closed or placed under evacuation orders.

As large areas of the western Alps remained under a high risk of avalanche – following a week in which alerts reached category 5, the highest level – Swiss police said a train derailment caused by an avalanche injured five people near the town of Goppenstein.

New UK border rules for dual nationals are discriminatory against women, campaigners say

British women in Spain and Greece face ‘huge problems’ entering UK because of differing surname rules

New rules requiring British dual nationals to show a UK passport when entering Britain are “discriminatory” against women, campaigners claim.

From 25 February, British dual nationals are required to present a British passport when boarding a plane, ferry or train to the UK, or attach a new document, a “certificate of entitlement”, which costs nearly £600, to their second passport.

Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy reccipe for crispy baked gnocchi puttanesca | Quick and easy

A crusty-topped marvel that pilfers all the parts of a puttanesca, sploshes them on gnocchi, smothers them in mozzarella, breadcrumbs and parmesan, and crisps it all up under the grill

Puttanesca purists, look away now. This dish takes the classic elements of a puttanesca – that is, anchovies, capers, olives, tomatoes – and combines them into a rich sauce for gnocchi, which are then covered in mozzarella, breadcrumbs and parmesan, and flashed under the grill. It’s exactly what you want on a rainy night. In fact, my sauce-averse toddler thought it smelled so good that she stole half of my plate – a win all round. (Although her pretty decent suggestion was that next time I use it as a pizza sauce, rather than on pasta or gnocchi. Noted.)

Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for ginger sesame meatballs with rice and greens | Quick and easy

A simple, warmingly spiced supper, irrespective of whatever mince you choose to use

I make variations of these meatballs every fortnight for my children, usually with chicken mince. The texture is fantastic and, whisper it, they’re even better made in an air fryer. Yes, I finally got one and it’s fantastic. You do, however, have to cook them all in one layer, which, depending on the size of your air-fryer basket, might mean cooking them in multiple batches. It feels more efficient to make them all in one go, though, so I’ve provided oven timings below.

The US is merely the latest to join the global rush to hoard critical minerals

JD Vance is seeking to create a ‘trading bloc’ as shortages and climate crises mean a kaleidoscope of rare earths are increasingly jealously guarded

The announcement by the US vice-president, JD Vance, that the country is seeking to create a new critical minerals “trading bloc” is a final, exotic, nail in the coffin of the old global trading system. The era of mass abundance, as supplied by unfettered free trade and global markets – “neoliberalism” – is over. We live in a new world of strategic competition between states over scarce but essential resources, with shocks to supplies from human activity and natural disasters an ever-present risk.

This means recalibrating how we think about our economy: the new economic fundamentals today are resource constraints and climate and nature crises, and these, rather than human activity, will increasingly shape the world we inhabit. Flows of finance and stocks of wealth will matter less than stocks and flows of real material resources.

Disappearances in Mexico surge by 200% over 10 years

More than 130,000 people considered missing or disappeared in Mexico as drug cartels expand

It was a bright morning in August 2022 when Ángel Montenegro was taken. A 31-year-old construction worker, Montenegro had been out all night drinking with some work buddies in the city of Cuautla and was waiting for a bus back to nearby Cuernavaca, where he lived.

At about 10am, a white van pulled up: several men jumped out and dragged Montenegro and a co-worker inside before speeding off. Montenegro’s co-worker was released a few hundred meters down the street, but Montenegro was driven away.

Ukraine and Russia to meet for second round of talks as fourth anniversary of war looms

Hopes of success remain low after Trump points finger at Zelenskyy and as Russia keeps up hardline demands

Senior Ukrainian and Russian officials are to meet this week in Switzerland for a second round of talks brokered by the Trump administration, days before the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The two-day meeting, kicking off on Tuesday, is expected to mirror negotiations held earlier this month in Abu Dhabi, with representatives from Washington, Kyiv and Moscow in attendance. Despite renewed US efforts to revive diplomacy, hopes for any sudden breakthrough remain low, with Russia continuing to press maximalist demands on Ukraine.

Guthrie suspect's mask, clothing believed to be from Walmart, sheriff says

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told CBS News the suspect's backpack is one of the most promising leads in the case, as the search continues for Nancy Guthrie.

DHS shuts down after a funding lapse. And, why athletes get the 'yips' at the Olympics

Congress is out on recess as a partial shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security is underway. And, why some superstar athletes have been getting the "yips" at the Winter Olympics in Italy.

Epstein sympathized with Kavanaugh during supreme court confirmation, emails show

Files show convicted sex abuser messaged with Ken Starr and others about Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford

Jeffrey Epstein sympathized with Brett Kavanaugh during the then-supreme court nominee’s contentious 2018 confirmation and even suggested Republicans should have been harder on Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Emails and text messages released by the Department of Justice show Epstein was closely monitoring the confirmation and seemed to believe that Ford’s allegation of sexual assault could derail the process.

More heartache than Hamnet?: Maggie O’Farrell’s best books – ranked!

As her Women’s prize-winning novel heads to the Oscars, we rate the author’s best work – from tales of new motherhood to a life-affirming memoir of mortality

The ghost of a previous lover is always a challenge, particularly if you (mistakenly) believe that she’s actually dead. This is the unenviable situation for Lily, the protagonist of O’Farrell’s second novel, who is swept off her feet by dashing architect Marcus and in short order moves in with him. Lily takes his assurances that her predecessor Sinead is “no longer with us” to mark a more permanent absence; in fact, Sinead has simply been thrown over, and it is in the details of the collapse of her relationship with Marcus that the novel most engages. Hints of the gothic ghost story deepen one of the main takeaways, which is that Marcus consists almost entirely of red flags.

Keith Wood: ‘After a Lions series, every player that went on tour is wrecked’

The former Ireland hooker on his rugby family, why Andy Farrell’s side need to rebuild and the physical toll of touring with the Lions

I have known Keith Wood for nearly 30 years and so it’s easy to talk about life and death long before we move on to rugby. But the game always provides context and, last Friday afternoon, the 54-year-old former Lions hooker and Irish captain drove to Cork to watch his youngest son, Tom, play for Ireland against Italy in the Under‑20 Six Nations.

The previous weekend Tom made his first-team debut for Munster to match his dad and the grandfather he never met. Gordon Wood played for Munster, as well as Ireland and the Lions, before he died, aged 50, in 1982. Keith was only 10 when that first tragedy occurred but he went on to play for the same three teams as his dad.

Floating cities of logs: can the ‘lungs of Africa’ survive its exploitation?

The Congo River basin is one of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems. But it is also home to a growing population and relentless trade in timber and charcoal

“You can’t be scared of the storms,” says Jean de Dieu Mokuma as the sun sets on the Congo River behind him. “With the current, once your voyage has begun, there is no turning back.” Mokuma, along with his wife Marie-Therese and their two young children, is piloting a cargo of timber downstream lashed on to a precarious raft and tied to a canoe.

Families wake up at dawn on rafts of logs and merchandise that are being transported down the Congo River by boat to Kinshasa, the DRC capital

Germany calls on France to increase defence spending

Foreign minister puts pressure on Emmanuel Macron amid doubts over US’s commitment to European defence

France needs to boost its defence spending to make European self-sufficiency a reality, Germany’s foreign minister has said.

As European powers increasingly acknowledge they may be left on their own for their defence as the transatlantic relationship comes under strain, Johann Wadephul said Paris needed to put its money where its mouth was.

Every generation gets the Wuthering Heights it deserves. And Emerald Fennell’s is for the always-online | Nadia Khomami

Packed cinemas testify to the allure of Emily Brontë’s tale, even if this latest retelling is not to everyone’s taste

It’s hard to think of any book with a stronger hold on its admirers than Wuthering Heights. Almost 200 years after publication, Emily Brontë’s tale of forbidden love and ruthless revenge inspires a devotion that makes any reinterpretation feel like a personal and proprietary affront.

Into this sea of sensitivities has plunged the director Emerald Fennell, whose new adaptation has become one of the year’s most debated films. Dubbed “50 shades of Brontë”, everything about it has been scrutinised: from the casting of Aussies Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Cathy and Heathcliff to the anachronistic costumes and music, and the overt sexualisation of the plot.

What's next for Cuba? Trump turns the screws as the island runs out of jet fuel

Cuba’s government appears to be on the brink of economic collapse amid a worsening energy crisis.

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is big movie with a very small mind | Adrian Horton

The maximalist adaptation of the gothic romance shows great interest in production design but very little in character

It does not take long into Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s English lit classic, for one to detect the film-maker’s true faith. It is not to the challenging and beloved gothic novel of emotional repression and inheritance; as with many other cinematic adaptations, Fennell dispenses with the unruly latter half of the book, along with most of its conventions. In Fennell’s emphatically maximalist vision – she has explained that the quotation marks in the film’s marketing are a note of humility, to her singular and limited interpretation – the tortuously connected Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) swoon about the Yorkshire moors in extravagant, anachronistic formalwear, flagrantly unbound by period decorum.

Over three features, the English writer-director has demonstrated a penchant for sticky visuals; arguably the most-discussed scene from 2023’s Saltburn, her discourse-driving sophomore feature, involved the licking of cummy bathwater from the drain. Wuthering Heights is not to be controversially out-soaked. In closeup, sweat beads and drips down a spine; snail slime indolently streaks a window; freshly poured pig blood mucks Cathy’s dress. Desire, less suggested than enforced, stains everything. Early in the film, just after the abrupt ageing of Cathy and Heathcliff from boundless children (played by Charlotte Mellington and Adolescence’s Owen Cooper) to unspecific adults, Elordi’s brooding, beastly Heathcliff catches Robbie’s blonde Cathy, furiously horny after a bit of light voyeurism, pleasuring herself against the windswept rocks. She tries to hide her hand in her dress; he picks her up by the bodice strings, and licks her fingers clean.

One Olympic sport doesn't allow women. These Games could determine its future

Nordic combined is the only Olympic sport that doesn't allow women to compete, despite athletes' efforts to change that. They say their odds for 2030 hinge on people watching men's events this week.

The one change that worked: When good things happen, I write them down – and it’s made me more optimistic

Growing up in a turbulent household taught me to expect the worst. Then one day I found £20 in the street and shifted my thinking

Growing up, I was envious of one type of person. It was never the kids who were smarter, sportier or more popular. My awe was reserved for a rarer breed of people: optimists. I was hypersensitive to the ease with which they sailed through exams, social gatherings or teenage milestones with a sunny conviction that things would more or less work out. To me, they were the chosen people. “It’ll be fine,” one such friend would reassure me. “Or you could embarrass yourself,” my mind would purr like a villain. “Be rejected. Fail.”

I was a chronic worrier. A negative Nancy. I couldn’t fathom that people’s brains weren’t hardwired to compulsively fear things might go wrong. I grew up as the eldest daughter in a turbulent household where my father’s moods would plummet quickly and I walked on a knife-edge. Every morning, the second my eyes opened, I would force myself to accept it was going to be a bad day – an act of self-preservation so the rug could never get pulled from under my feet hoping for better. My thinking was that if you always expected the worst, things had a tendency to turn out better than you imagined.

The pet I’ll never forget: Otto, the wild, people-loving golden retriever who had 20 volunteer dog walkers

His charm and excitement helped us see the world as he did – full of kindness and joy

When we bought Otto, a golden retriever, a year after the death of our previous dog Bertie, we were sceptical that he could live up to our high expectations. What quickly became apparent, during the routine humiliation of our puppy training classes, was that Otto was a law unto himself.

“He’s not normal” quickly became a stock family phrase, as Otto demonstrated a series of wild, mischievous and outlandish behaviours. During classes, I remember being told euphemistically that he was “wilful” and shamefully resorted to hiding cocktail sausages in my pockets during the final exam to encourage a modicum of civility in him. It just about worked.

Trump’s Obama and Bad Bunny posts crystallize his political philosophy | Sidney Blumenthal

Maga is a recapitulation of the dark side of American history that cohered into nativist nationalism a century ago

Donald Trump’s posting of a video depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes was the most overtly racist act of a president since Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal civil service – or since Trump’s previous racist gesture. The racist imagery Trump posted was so egregious that the video’s misogyny representing Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as animals was overlooked. Trump’s denigration of women is implicitly assumed as business-as-usual and not newsworthy: “Quiet, piggy!” And down the memory hole are the 3m long-suppressed documents from the Epstein files in which he is mentioned in its unredacted pages “more than a million times”, according to the Democratic representative Jamie Raskin, who was permitted access.

The only Black Republican US senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, said of the Obama portrayal: “It’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” though Scott did not disclose any list, which could have been drawn from an encyclopedia of offenses beginning decades before Trump’s birther campaign. During Trump’s first administration, in 2020, Scott chose to call out one incident as “indefensible”: Trump’s tweet of a video of a supporter chanting “white power”. Trump’s latest racist post was preceded on 11 January by his predictable vandalism of Black History Month in an interview with the New York Times with a remark about the Civil Rights Act of 1964: “White people were very badly treated.”

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

Why Marco Rubio’s ‘reassuring’ speech to Europe was nothing of the kind | Nathalie Tocci

After JD Vance’s frontal attack in Munich last year, the US secretary of state’s tone seemed almost soothing. That’s just a new Maga trap

The good news from the Munich Security Conference is that there was no dramatic deterioration in the transatlantic relationship. After the shock of last year’s event, when JD Vance stunned the audience with a frontal US attack on Europe’s liberal democracies, the seemingly more conciliatory tone struck by Marco Rubio was greeted by many present, including Wolfgang Ischinger, a veteran German diplomat and the conference chair, as “reassuring”. Indeed, the US secretary of state got a standing ovation in the room – a gesture perhaps more of relief than of adulation. But is the Trump administration’s message to Europe really any different now from that contained in Vance’s assault 12 months ago? What traps are being laid and what lessons should Europeans draw?

A year ago, Vance accused Europe of succumbing to the alleged tyranny and censorship of woke liberals and losing sight of the cultural bonds that link the two shores of the Atlantic. His attack baffled European leaders, who, while often prone to navel-gazing about their internal struggles, do not consider restrictions on free speech a primary concern. The US vice-president shocked Munich by insisting that Europe’s biggest threat was the woke “threat from within”, even as he endorsed far-right nationalists including Germany’s AfD. The insult was so deep that this year the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, used his opening address to issue a blunt warning about American unilateralist values, declaring that “the culture war of the Maga movement is not ours”.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

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Weather tracker: New Zealand hit by storms and widespread floods

Low pressure system funnels rain over already saturated areas, compounding risk of further flooding

A deep area of low pressure to the south-east of New Zealand’s North Island swept into the region on Sunday, bringing heavy rain, gale-force winds and dangerous coastal swells that lashed exposed shorelines. The storm triggered power outages, forced evacuations and damaged infrastructure, with further impacts likely on Monday as the system lingers for a time, before tracking southwards later.

Its arrival came after days of widespread flooding in the Ōtorohanga district, where a man was found dead after his vehicle became submerged in flood waters. Some areas recorded more than 100mm of rain in 24 hours on Thursday, with Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay and the Bay of Plenty bearing the brunt of the deluge. The Tararua district and Wairarapa have also been experiencing heavy rain and strong winds from the storm, with 24-hour rainfall totals reaching more than 100mm locally, and wind speeds of about 80mph (130km/h) along coastal parts.

Poem of the week – from plastic: A Poem by Matthew Rice

Two time-stamped poems are taken from a book-length sequence tracking the human moments of a factory night shift

01.29

When we look up at stars on break
we see only stars behind
the exhaled Milky Way
of Bobby’s Golden Virginia,
ways to navigate shift patterns,
nothing seismic or anything approaching
truth; for us stars mean only night shift,
insanity of depth,
the slow individual seconds
during which the dotted starlight
doesn’t burn fast enough.

‘Unintentionally among the queerest releases of its time’: why Calamity Jane is my feelgood movie

The latest in our ongoing series of writers picking their comfort watches is an appreciation of Doris Day’s rule-defying heroine

There was a real vogue for gunslinging heroines back in mid-20th century American cinema. Gene Tierney wrangled civil war rebels in Belle Starr. Betty Hutton pranced around with a shotgun in a sparkly red cowgirl get-up, alongside a cowhide-wearing Howard Keel, in Annie Get Your Gun. But cinemagoers were thrown a curveball three years later when they got Doris Day – again with baritone sidekick Keel in tow – dressed, wise-cracking and swaggering exactly like a man.

Admittedly, when I first saw Calamity Jane aged nine, I was also not immediately sold. Not because of Day’s gender non-conformity, which had me hooked, but because of the bizarreness of the pseudo-biopic’s synopsis and its grating musical numbers. The New York Times had a point when they deemed it “shrill and preposterous”. Then there was the fact that on first look it appeared to be a western. Part crooning romcom, part frontier drama, it’s a strange beast of a film, but I was soon won over.

Coco Gauff: ‘I don’t think people should be dying in the streets just for existing’

The world No 5 says she has been disturbed by events back home, and is not afraid to speak up about issues in the United States

While getting treatment and preparing for this week’s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Coco Gauff has had the news on in the background almost every day.

Gauff could be forgiven if she’s not up-to-date on everything that’s been happening back in the United States: she is on the road for nearly 11 months a year, often thousands of miles away from her home in Delray Beach, Florida.

Is that carb ultra-processed? Here's a test even a kid can do

The latest nutrition guidelines urge Americans to avoid highly processed food. But when it comes to carbs, many people don't know which ones are ultra-processed. Here's an easy way to find out.

'American Struggle' author assesses Trump's expansion of presidential power

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham talks about Trump's impact on democracy. Meacham's latest book is a collection of speeches, letters and other original texts from 1619 to the present.

Italy’s famous Lovers’ Arch collapses into the sea on Valentine’s Day

Rock structure which served as backdrop to countless proposals disappears into the Adriatic after storm

The famous arch of the sea stacks at Sant’Andrea in Melendugno, Puglia, Italy, popularly known as Lovers’ Arch, collapsed on Valentine’s Day after strong storm surges and heavy rain swept across southern Italy.

The rocky arch, one of the best-known natural landmarks on the Adriatic coast, got its name as it served as a backdrop for wedding proposals, selfies and postcards, and was one of the most recognisable symbols of the Salento, one of Italy’s most heavily visited tourist areas.

Cuba suspends annual cigar festival as U.S. oil blockade deepens energy crisis

The postponement comes as the island nation's communist-run government endures its biggest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Frogs for Watchdogs by Seán Farrell review – about a boy

A charming child’s-eye view of rural Ireland

There’s a particular energy to novels written from the point of view of small children. Humour, of course, in the things the child misinterprets; pathos in the things they feel they must keep hidden; jeopardy in the dangers we can see, and they cannot. As any relative or babysitter can attest, even the sweetest child can become mind-numbingly dull when they’re all the company one has, so there’s a skill to charm without boring. The other skill is to find ways of enabling the reader to read over the child’s shoulder, as it were, to piece together for themselves the adult dramas to which a child’s natural egotism, or simple innocence, blinds them.

In 1988, the longsuffering mother in Seán Farrell’s first novel, Frogs for Watchdogs, is stranded. This Englishwoman has had a boy and a girl with a handsome rogue of an Irish actor, but he has walked out on them. Asked to leave a commune unsuited to children, skint, too proud, perhaps, to return to the protection of well-heeled parents in England, she rents a farmhouse on the cheap in the deep countryside of County Meath, where she can grow vegetables, raise hens and a few sheep, and attempt to scrabble a living as a healer. (From the multiple dilutions her boy witnesses her perform, her fairly batty practice would seem to be some form of homeopathy with new age elements thrown in.) While her doubtless appalled parents insist on sending the oldest child, a forthright girl called B, to an English boarding school, B’s younger brother spends months running happily feral. Once he is eight, he will be old enough to follow her and be tamed and anglicised.

Frogs for Watchdogs by Seán Farrell is published by John Murray (£14.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Some European policymakers welcome U.S. Secretary of State Rubio's warm words, others remain cautious

Rubio's comments at the Munich Security Conference struck a softer tone than Vice President JD Vance's at last year's event.

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model review – Tyra Banks comes across terribly in this exposé

This three-part documentary has remarkable access to people involved with this 00s TV hit. It’s an awful tale of body-shaming, humiliation and toxic treatment

If you’re a millennial woman, America’s Next Top Model may have been your first experience of appointment TV. The show, which ran for 10 years from 2003, was an early reality juggernaut and made a household name of the supermodel Tyra Banks, its creator and host. At its peak, Top Model drew more than 100 million viewers globally, and left a niche but indelible impact on culture. “Smize”, meaning to “smile with your eyes”, is in the Collins dictionary, while Banks’ infamous tirade (“We were all rooting for you!”) at an unruly model still circulates as a meme.

With its high-concept photoshoots and extreme makeovers, Top Model was ahead of its time in manufacturing viral moments. Today, however, the exacting critiques and body-shaming makes for deeply uncomfortable viewing, as gen Zers bingeing the show through the pandemic have pointed out. This latter-day reckoning is the peg for Netflix’s three-part docuseries, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is on Netflix

The hill I will die on: ‘Being a DJ’ isn’t a proper job | Phil Mongredien

In what other field is a couple of hours’ work taking the credit for somebody else’s brilliance so venerated?

Who earns the easiest money in showbiz? And when I say “earns”, what I actually mean is “gets paid”. If David Guetta and Calvin Harris can make up to $1m for a festival-headlining set – a couple of hours’ work – there can only be one answer: DJs. Because boil it down and all they’re doing for such vast sums of money is quite competently playing music that somebody else actually created. They are proficient labourers rather than artists. In what other field is taking the credit for somebody else’s brilliance so venerated?

Ah, but they get people dancing, you say. Yet how difficult is it to get people to dance when they have come out with the specific intention of dancing, and a reasonable proportion of them are on another planet? These people have invested heavily in having a good time, so it invariably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given the sheer number of floor-filling tunes made during the past six or seven decades, it’s hardly a great feat to choose a few that other people will tolerate or even like.

‘I love you twenty-sixty times’: how lyrics written by a three-year-old became tear-inducing viral hits

When Stephen Spencer began setting his daughter’s surreal stories to music, he had 36 followers. Now his banging pop miniatures have been streamed nearly 30m times – and are making parents cry

I’m listening to the latest Stephen Spencer song when suddenly I burst into tears. Was it the falsetto vocals? The swirling harmonies? No, it was the lyrics: “What did Apple-the-Stoola say? He said ‘I love you’ twenty-sixty times.”

Spencer, you see, has a unique lyrical collaborator: his three-year-old daughter. Over the last four months, he has been posting short songs online based on her stream-of-consciousness stories. There’s a smooth soul number about “a regular rabbit, who has regular ponytails just like me”. A song called Funchy the Snow-woman that could fit easily on to a 1975 album, but for its lyrical message about using a litter tray in the forest. And a festive tune about a Christmas cat called Harda Tarda, who hopes that Taja (“a funny way to say Santa”) will bring her “a doggy, a puppy and a ninja-bread man”.

Is it true that ... central heating is bad for your skin?

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

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

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

A World Appears by Michael Pollan review – a kaleidoscopic exploration of consciousness

The journalist and polymath probes the mysteries of the mind in this unsettling yet life-affirming investigation

The brain, wrote Charles Scott Sherrington, is an “enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern”. The British neuroscientist created this striking image more than 80 years ago, a time when mechanised looms, not computers, embodied the idea of technology. Even so, the symbolism feels relevant. We struggle to talk of our brains or minds without recourse to the machine metaphor: once it was clocks, then looms, and now computers. We say that our brains are hardwired; we talk of our ability to process information.

The quote appears as merely a footnote in Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears, a fabulous and mind-expanding exploration of consciousness: how and why we are self-aware. But the whole thing can be read as a lucid and impassioned riposte to Sherrington’s conception of the mind as a machine. In Pollan’s view, we have become imprisoned by such narratives, which have obscured the richness and complexity of human and non-human consciousness. Bridging both science and the humanities, Pollan mines neuroscientific research, philosophy, literature and his own mind, searching for different ways to think about being, and what it feels like.

Provence in bloom – exploring its flower festivals and the ‘perfume capital of the world’

Mimosas and violets are already out in the south of France, making it the perfect time for a pre-spring road trip

As I take my seat in Galimard’s Studio des Fragrances, in the Provençal town of Grasse, I limber up my nostrils for the task ahead: to create my own scent from the 126 bottles in front of me. Together they represent a world of exotic aromas, from amber and musk to ginger and saffron. But given that I have left the grey British winter behind to come here, I am more interested in capturing the sunny essence of the Côte d’Azur.

Here in the hills north of Cannes, the colours pop: hillsides are full of bright yellow mimosa flowers, violets are peeping out of flowerbeds and oranges hang heavy on branches over garden walls, even though it’s not yet spring. It is the perfect antidote to the gloom back home, and the chance to bottle these very scents is a joy.

Grim reapers: what has fertilised the rich new wave of neo-rural cinema?

The Shepherd and the Bear is part of a new breed of films with a sympathy for country matters that has moved on from othering folk-horror

One of the best horror scenes this year arrives in a documentary about French pastoralism. It’s pitch-black out on a Pyrenean mountainside. Wagnerian lightning illuminates the ridges and the rain sheeting down. Bells clank in darkness as the sheep flee en masse to the other side of the col. Yves, the shepherd in charge, faces down this bewilderment, trying to perceive the threat: “Are those eyes?”

The Shepherd and the Bear, directed by Max Keegan, is part of a new breed of films with a heightened sympathy for country matters. Surveying the wind-ruffled pastures, lingering in battered cabins, it’s a highly cinematic depiction of the conflict in the Pyrenees provoked by the reintroduction of the brown bear. Much past rural cinema made hay from insisting we beware of the locals: Deliverance’s vicious hicks, The Wicker Man’s wily pagans, Hot Fuzz’s Barbour-jacketed cabal for the “greater good”. But the new school rides with the locals like Keegan’s film taps their knowledge and tells us what they’ve known all along: that it’s nature that’s truly scary.

Keir Starmer has a unique talent – to alienate absolutely everyone | Nesrine Malik

Who is his constituency now? Not the left or the right – and not the centre any more. That’s why there’s been a nosedive in the polls

After a tumultuous few weeks, we are once again in “reset” territory. Keir Starmer has bought some more time, there is a modest bounce in his polling, and he has had the well-timed fortune of the Munich security conference. His call there for the “remaking” of western alliances and taking the initiative on European defence cooperation has fumigated the air a little of the sense of imminent demise that has been swirling around him. But it will probably be a temporary hiatus. He is in a hole that is too deep to climb out of. The prime minister’s persistent unpopularity is best understood as the result of abundance: there is simply, in Starmer, something for everyone to deplore.

In policy, he has taken stances that have established him in the minds of many people as devoid of principle and compassion. On Gaza, Starmer got it wrong from the start. From his early assertion that Israel had the right to cut off water and power, to refusing calls for a ceasefire and then cracking down on protest (a move now judged as unlawful by the high court), the prime minister positioned himself against a huge domestic swell of distress. Add to that the cuts to disability benefits that made him appear callous after so many years of austerity, and what you have – whatever U-turns or watering down followed – is an impression of a politician whose instincts are those of a state apparatchik; someone whose default is enforcing pre-existing conventional wisdoms in foreign policy and economics, no matter how damaging or unpopular they are.

OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joining OpenAI, Altman says

OpenClaw, the open source AI agent that's surged in popularity in recent weeks, will live within OpenAI, according to a post on X from Sam Altman.

2/15: CBS Weekend News

Glove found near Nancy Guthrie home has DNA evidence, FBI says; Partial government shutdown continues amid demands for DHS reforms.

Moore says Biden "needed to do more" on immigration, blasts Trump's crackdown

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told CBS News that no administration has ever fully figured out an effective immigration system and only Congress can fix it.

7 highlights from CBS News town hall with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore

In a CBS News "Things That Matter" town hall, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore blasted President Trump — but also urged Democrats to change their perception as "the party of no and slow."

Is this the world’s most eye-popping restaurant? The architectural marvel – in a Leipzig industrial estate

This extraordinary diner is the final wonder of the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who dreamt it up at the age of 103. And it’s a fine place for a sunset kombucha and gin

Perched among old brick buildings in an industrial neighbourhood of Leipzig in eastern Germany, a giant white sphere appears to hover over the corner of a former boiler house. Is it a giant’s golf ball? An alien spacecraft? A fallen planet?

Twelve metres in diameter, the Niemeyer Sphere is the final design of world-famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and probably the most surprising creation by a visionary who valued the sensation of newness in art above all else, the result being mesmerising buildings that seem both space age and out of this world. The Sphere is like a vision from the future, dropped among used-car dealerships and construction equipment rental outlets, in a working-class neighbourhood that few tourists would ever pass through by design.

‘It’s the most urgent public health issue’: Dr Rangan Chatterjee on screen time, mental health – and banning social media until 18

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

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

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