At the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny challenged the meaning of ‘America’

The Puerto Rican star’s vision of American identity moved beyond colonial tropes to span an entire hemisphere

By now, many of us have a favorite part of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time performance. It’s a dense, rich set that invites rewatching to take in every thoughtful, exuberant detail – even though it’s barely 14 minutes long.

My most beloved part occurs a little more than nine minutes into the homage, when the cuatro puertorriqueño appears. The stringed instrument has its own moment in the spotlight, shown in the talented hands of the cuatrista José Eduardo Santana just before Ricky Martin performs.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:28 pm

Pride and unease: US Winter Olympians navigate politics, patriotism and Trump attacks

Some athletes at the Milano Cortina Games speaking out on the complications of representing the US abroad are facing hostility from home

Some US athletes at the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina are speaking more openly than at any point since Donald Trump returned to the White House, describing a complicated mix of pride and discomfort about representing the country while political tensions at home and abroad spill into the Games.

The comments – and the fierce reaction they have triggered from political figures, online influencers and the president himself – have exposed a widening gap between how some athletes view their Olympic role and how parts of the political establishment believe they should use it.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:00 am

I drove hours to see the monks walking for peace. Five minutes with them was the gift of a lifetime

I glimpsed the monks on their 2,300-mile pilgrimage across America – their message of loving-kindness had me in tears

“I’m obsessed with the monks,” my friend Sam told me. “It’s the only thing getting me through the violence of this second Trump administration. The monks, and my meds.”

I nodded. I’d first heard about the monks walking for peace after my brother and sister-in-law traveled to hear them in Alabama, returning with stories of stillness and a grounded sense of hope.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘A white man’s war, a Black man’s fight’: the eye-opening story of Black soldiers in Vietnam

At a time when Black military history is being rewritten under Trump officials, new book The War Within a War provides a vital reminder

Wil Haygood’s new book, his 10th, is The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home. Meeting in Washington DC to discuss it, he produces from between the pages a small Ziploc bag. Carefully, he takes out a flier, yellowed and brittle with age. The text at the top is Vietnamese. Underneath there is English.

It reads: “Colored GI’s! The South Vietnamese people, who are struggling for their independence and freedom, are friends with the American colored people being victim of barbarous racial discrimination at home. Your battlefield is right in the USA! Your enemy is the war lords in the White House and the Pentagon!”

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:03 am

No, the human-robot singularity isn’t here. But we must take action to govern AI | Samuel Woolley

Moltbook, a social media site for AI agents, is nothing new. Still, the marriage of big tech and politics demands we take a stand

On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was shocked by the billboards that lined the freeway outside of the airport. “The singularity is here,” proclaimed one. “Humanity had a good run,” said another. It seemed like every other sign along the road was plastered with claims from tech firms making outrageous claims about artificial intelligence. The ads, of course, were rife with hype and ragebait. But the claims they contain aren’t occurring in a vacuum. The OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, recently said: “We basically have built AGI, or very close to it,” before confusingly qualifying his statement as “spiritual”. Elon Musk has gone even further, claiming: “We have entered the singularity.”

Enter Moltbook, the social media site built for AI agents. A place where bots can talk to other bots, in other words. A spate of doom-laden news articles and op-eds followed its launch. The authors fretted about the fact that the bots were talking about religion, claiming to have secretly spent their human builders’ money, and even plotting the overthrow of humanity. Many pieces contained suggestions eerily like those on the billboards in San Francisco: that machines are now not only as smart as humans (a theory known as artificial general intelligence) but that they are moving beyond us (a sci-fi concept known as the singularity).

Samuel Woolley is the author of Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity and co-author of Bots. He is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Published: February 10, 2026, 11:00 am

‘We feel kinda bad when a solo bird shows up’: Canada sees its first European robin – but how did it get there?

Birdwatchers flock to Montréal for rare sighting of ‘vagrant’ bird that has made its home during a bitterly cold winter

On a quiet Montréal street of low-rise brick apartment buildings on one side and cement barrier wall on the other, a crowd has gathered, binoculars around their necks and cameras at the ready. A European robin has taken up residence in the neighbourhood, which is sandwiched between two industrial areas with warehouses and railway lines and, a few blocks away, port facilities on the St Lawrence River.

Ron Vandebeek from Ottawa, Ontario, is here on a frigid February morning hoping to see the rare bird, which was first spotted at the beginning of January.

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:00 pm

Democratic congressman Ro Khanna names six high-profile individuals appearing in unredacted Epstein files – live

Khanna, who co-sponsored the Epstein transparency act, named six people including Victoria’s Secret tycoon Leslie Wexner on the House floor

• Local police aid ICE by tapping school cameras amid Trump’s immigration crackdown

Jamie Raskin, a top House Democrat, accused the justice department of making “puzzling, inexplicable redactions” to documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that obscured the names of abusers, while allowing the identities of the disgraced financier’s victims to become public.

Raskin told reporters that he wanted to view the complete files to better understand how the justice department handled the redaction process.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:08 pm

‘They always gave us the heaviest work’: how Maga billionaires relied on Mexican labor

Trump administration seeks to remove ‘illegal aliens’ but Uline’s past employment practices reveal a different reality

When JD Vance delivered a speech about the US economy late last year at a Uline facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he talked up the Trump administration’s key goals: removing “illegal aliens” from the country, rewarding companies that keep jobs in the US and paying Americans good wages.

“We’re going to reward companies that build here in America and give good wages to do it,” Vance said.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

Winter Olympics 2026 day four: Sweden v USA in curling final and luge gold up for grabs – live

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

• Follow us over on Bluesky | Get in touch! Mail Geoff

Ooooh, Ariane Raedler of Austria, eighth in the individual event, nails 1:35.65, a time that would’ve been good enough for bronze; she takes the lead, giving Katharina Huber, her partner, a chance in the second portion.

Miradoli of France lays down a quicker time than she did coming 16th in the individual downhill, 1:37.37; I guess she’s used to the course now. Our big names, though, don’t come out for a while: Goggia, who took bronze in the individual event is ninth, Aicher who claimed silver, is doing the slalom portion, and Johnson is 14th with Srobova, Vlhova’s partner, going 28th and last.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:09 pm

‘A step in the wrong direction’: Israel’s West Bank plans prompt global backlash

US, Britain, EU and Arab nations condemn plans that Israeli ministers say will ‘kill the idea of a Palestinian state’

Israeli measures to tighten its control of the West Bank have prompted a global backlash, including a signal from Washington restating the Trump administration’s opposition to annexation of the occupied territory.

Announcing the measures, which involve extending Israeli control in areas that are currently under Palestinian administration, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, made clear they were aimed at strengthening Israeli settlements in the West Bank and pre-empting the emergence of an independent sovereign Palestine.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:00 pm

Norway defence chief says Russia could invade to protect nuclear assets

Exclusive: Norway’s chief of defence Eirik Kristoffersen, who served in Afghanistan, was critical of Trump’s claim Nato troops stayed off frontlines

Norway’s army chief has said Oslo cannot exclude the possibility of a future Russian invasion of the country, suggesting Moscow could move on Norway to protect its nuclear assets stationed in the far north.

“We don’t exclude a land grab from Russia as part of their plan to protect their own nuclear capabilities, which is the only thing they have left that actually threatens the United States,” said Gen Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s chief of defence.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:38 pm

Maine Republican senator Susan Collins launches re-election bid for pivotal seat

Collins is expected to face tough re-election battle as Democrats seek to flip seat in this year’s midterm elections

• US politics live – latest updates

Susan Collins, the Maine Republican senator who is a top target of Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, on Tuesday launched her campaign for a sixth term in office.

She is expected to face one of the toughest re-election battles of the year, as victory in Maine is seen as essential to Democrats’ hopes of winning back control of the Senate, and putting a halt to Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. First elected in 1996, Collins is among the few Republican senators who occasionally defy the president, and is the only one representing a state that the president did not carry in his successful re-election bid two years ago.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:24 pm

Republican House bill guts laws protecting US consumers from toxic chemicals

Bill limits type of science used to determine health risks and gives industry major role in chemical review process

A new Republican House bill proposes sweeping changes to US toxic chemical laws that would gut protections for consumers, workers and the environment, public health advocates mobilising against the legislation warn.

Among other changes to the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA), the bill would limit the type of science that is used to determine health risks, stop legally requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure chemicals won’t harm people, give industry a prominent role in chemical review processes, and make it more difficult legally for the agency to ban toxic substances.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

Search for Savannah Guthrie’s mother continues amid desperate entreaties for her return

No suspect named yet as TV host’s mom still missing a day after deadline set by ransom note from alleged kidnappers

The search for television host Savannah Guthrie’s mother continued on Tuesday morning amid desperate family entreaties for her safe return.

The FBI still has yet to identify a suspect.Nancy Guthrie remains missing, a day after the deadline set by a ransom note from her purported kidnappers.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:54 pm

‘Opportunity of a lifetime’: details emerge on couple who wed at Bad Bunny Super Bowl half-time show

Story of Eleisa ‘Elli’ Aparicio and Thomas ‘Tommy’ Wolter’s love began surfacing after their cameo

They celebrated their one-year anniversary as a couple in February 2024. And roughly just two years later, they said “I do” in one of the most watched Super Bowl half-time shows ever.

Details of Eleisa “Elli” Aparicio and Thomas “Tommy” Wolter’s love story began surfacing through news reports and social media sleuthing on Monday, a day after the Los Angeles-area pair all but shed their anonymity by getting married amid Bad Bunny’s sensational performance on the field at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, during Super Bowl LX’s half-time show.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:12 pm

More pollution and higher energy costs: critics condemn Trump’s anti-environment agenda

US courts, scholars and Democrats are pushing back against the president’s aggressive drive to boost fossil fuels

Donald Trump’s aggressive drive to boost fossil fuels, including dirty coal, coupled with his administration’s moves to roll back wind and solar power, face mounting fire from courts, scholars and Democrats for raising the cost of electricity and worsening the climate crisis.

Four judges, including a Trump appointee, in recent weeks have issued temporary injunctions against interior department moves to halt work on five offshore wind projects in Virginia, New York and New England, which have cost billions of dollars and are far along in development.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:00 pm

Trump Rx prescription drug site ‘not a solution’ for many patients, experts say

New website lists only limited number of medications – and many of them cost less in generic form elsewhere

The Trump administration has launched TrumpRx, but there are other sites offering discounts on more medications, and the new government site will appeal to a very limited group of patients, experts say.

Trump has promised reforms on the unusually high drug prices in the US, and he called the announcement “the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history” at a press conference on Thursday. Yet the site only lists 43 medications, more than half of which are available in generic form at significantly cheaper prices elsewhere.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:30 pm

‘I saw the writing on the wall’: Austria offers safe haven for US academics as Trump wages war on universities

Other countries benefit from the Trump brain drain as administration wages war on academia and research

Wali Malik no longer has to worry that a rightwing bureaucrat – or influencer – will decide his research is “woke”.

He doesn’t have to fear government retaliation for speaking his mind or following the science wherever it may lead. And like others who have left a polarized United States for the calmer pastures of Austria, he need not fear his lab being decimated because the president decided he wants to deport the people who work there.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:01 am

Trump threatens to block new bridge in latest tirade against Canada

President says Gordie Howe Bridge will open only when US is ‘fully compensated’ – and makes bizarre hockey claim

As Democrats prepare to force a vote in the US House this week on Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, the president posted a lengthy tirade on his social media platform in which he threatened to block a bridge connecting the US and Canada and made a bizarre false claim that increased trade between Canada and China would include a ban on Canadians playing ice hockey.

Trump began his latest screed against the US’s second-largest trading partner by claiming that “everyone knows, the Country of Canada has treated the United States very unfairly for decades”.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:15 am

‘So shameful’: backlash as US national monuments conform to Trump’s rewrite of history

From Pennsylvania to Montana, the White House’s war on ‘woke’ has targeted US monuments that address topics like racism and Indigenous history

Blank spaces now exist where a series of panels about enslavement once appeared on the walls of the President’s House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The site, which honors the home of George Washington and John Adams, is a major landmark that bore artwork and informational signs for more than a decade. But on 22 January, National Park Service (NPS) workers used hand tools to pry off 34 panels to comply with a presidential executive order designed to reframe the national narrative. The panels that highlighted the lives of people enslaved by George Washington when Philadelphia was the US capital in the 1790s are now in storage.

The removal is one of several across the nation, as NPS staff aim to conform with Donald Trump’s executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” issued on 27 March 2025. Public markers, monuments and statues that the Trump administration considers disparaging to past or current Americans have been flagged at more than a dozen parks. Two exhibits at Montana’s Little Bighorn battlefield national monument that discuss Indigenous history and the Battle of the Little Bighorn have been targeted and deemed noncompliant. Additionally, signage about climate change at Muir Woods national monument in California and visitor brochures at Medgar and Myrlie Evers home national monument in Mississippi that referred to Medgar Evers’s killer as racist were also removed.

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:00 pm

Cowboys, lassos, and nudity: AI startups turn to stunts for attention in a crowded market

Businesses are using theatrical stunts not for shock alone but to create viral content and drive sales conversations online

When Lunos, an AI startup in New York City, was gearing up for launch, its founder and chief executive, Duncan Barrigan, and his team wanted to make a splash. So they shelled out $3,500 to do the unconventional: hire a horse and a cowboy to lasso the bull of Wall Street.

On a sweltering evening in late September, the cowboy galloped toward the iconic sculpture in lower Manhattan. Wearing ranch gear and a western hat stamped with the Lunos logo, he lassoed the bull’s horns as invitees and curious passersby watched. He and the horse then circled the statue, handing out cowboy hats and branded stress balls.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:00 pm

Ohio churches resist Trump’s attacks on Haitian community: ‘We’re powerful when we come together’

Churches in Springfield provide networks of support as Haitians face uncertainty over the future of TPS legal protections

At morning services at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, on Sunday, congregants greeted one another with hugs and expressed gratitude for a rare piece of good news. Nearly a week before, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end legal protections for 350,000 Haitians in the US.

The church is one of several in Springfield that provide services in Haitian Creole and has opened its doors to thousands of Haitians living in the small city in south-western Ohio. Addressing the ruling, Pastor Carl Ruby explained in his sermon that during times of suffering, the silence of God doesn’t mean the absence of God.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:37 pm

‘These are people’s livelihoods’: Minnesota’s economy in crisis amid ICE surge

Small businesses across the Twin Cities are suffering and owners say ‘Metro Surge’ could be worse than Covid-19

A man walked into Soleil Ramirez’s restaurant last month and started to ask strange questions: How many people do you have on staff? Why are you so small? “Stuff nobody asks,” she said.

The man then started talking loudly into his phone. “I’m here doing a dip in a restaurant. There’s not a lot of people here, so I don’t know if it’s worth coming,” Ramirez recalled him saying. The encounter left her unnerved.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Underwear optional? The health pros and cons of going commando

There are times when it is better to wear underwear than not. Here’s what the experts say

In 2015, during a particularly energetic performance of the song American Woman in Stockholm, Lenny Kravitz split a pair of leather pants right down the crotch, revealing his manhood to the world.

I’m sorry to say I think about this incident somewhat regularly. Not out of titillation, but because it planted in my head a troublesome question: just how many people, rock stars or otherwise, aren’t wearing underwear in public?

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:00 pm

Gentrification is pricing artists out of New York, threatening its cultural edge

The city’s artist population has fallen for the first time in decades, a report finds, for want of affordable housing

Rowynn Dumont, a curator, painter, photographer and writer, lived in about 25 places around the world before settling in New York in 2017.

“It’s where my community and the art world infrastructure already were,” said Dumont.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:00 pm

‘Boy kibble’: why are young men turning to dog food for meal inspiration?

The dried food, traditionally for pets, has become an unlikely influence for meal preppers. Some commenters have even claimed the trend could be an antidote to toxic masculinity

Name: Boy kibble.

Age: It’s new.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:43 pm

From Melania to Kid Rock’s halftime show: why is Maga art so dreadful?

As the right stokes culture wars, their alternatives to ‘woke’ Hollywood prove to be shoddily made and uninspired

It’s not fair, what they did to rightwing folks on Super Bowl Sunday. Regular viewers could either take in an elaborate and joyful halftime performance from Puerto Rican recording artist Bad Bunny, one of the most popular music stars in the world, or, if they weren’t interested in football or in Bad Bunny’s music, they could quietly find something else to watch or listen to. There are a lot of options out there. Those who wanted to prove their Maga bona fides or loyalties, however, may have felt obligated to watch a parade of similar-sounding country singers lead into a performance from a shorts-wearing Kid Rock, jumping around and seemingly lip-syncing to a novelty hit from 1999.

For rightwingers who couldn’t stomach the Spanish lyrics to Bad Bunny songs, they could take comfort in the clear English of the man also known as Robert Ritchie: “Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy.” (These lyrics are actually just what a certain segment of white listeners prefer: something ripped off from Black culture, in this case rapper Busy Bee.) This sad spectacle was provided by Turning Point USA, which is not actually a charity organization for faded turn-of-the-century rap-rockers, but a rightwing advocacy group co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk. When Kid Rock pivoted back to Ritchie and covered the country tune Til You Can’t (with a pious and half-assed new verse added by Ritchie himself), the music was chased with a tribute to Kirk. This means that viewers were treated to all the artistry of a Kid Rock show plus all the cheerfulness of a funeral.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:44 pm

Jon Stewart calls Maga backlash to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show ‘actually pathetic’

Late-night hosts discussed rightwing backlash to Bad Bunny’s all-Spanish Super Bowl half-time show

Late-night hosts addressed the performative Maga outrage over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:29 pm

A peeping peacock and a snow moon – readers’ best photographs

Click here to submit a picture for publication in these online galleries and/or on the Guardian letters page

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:00 pm

‘What I see in clinic is never a set of labels’: are we in danger of overdiagnosing mental illness?

Our current approach to mental health labelling and diagnosis has brought benefits. But as a practising doctor, I am concerned that it may be doing more harm than good

Someone is shot, and almost dies; the fragility of life is intimately revealed to him. He goes on to have flashbacks of the event, finds that he can no longer relax or enjoy himself. He is agitated and restless. His relationships suffer, then wither; he is progressively disturbed by intrusive memories of the event.

This could be read as a description of many patients I’ve seen in clinic and in the emergency room over the years in my work as a doctor: it’s recognisably someone suffering what has in recent decades been called PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. But it isn’t one of my patients. It’s a description of a character in the 7,000-year-old Indian epic The Ramayana; Indian psychiatrist Hitesh Sheth uses it as an example of the timelessness of certain states of mind. Other ancient epics describe textbook cases of what we now call “generalised anxiety disorder”, which is characterised by excessive fear and rumination, loss of focus, and inability to sleep. Yet others describe what sounds like suicidal depression, or devastating substance addiction.

The great topmost sheet of the mass, that where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of travelling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning … Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:00 am

Gavin Newsom’s likely presidential bid is built on broken promises | Gil Durán

The California governor has a record of failed pledges on housing, healthcare and more as he mistakes theatrics for leadership

Gavin Newsom has stumbled upon the perfect slogan for his likely upcoming presidential campaign: “Strong and Wrong.” In a recent interview, California’s governor said Americans prefer crude politicians like Donald Trump over leaders who cling to niceties and norms.

“Given the choice … the American people always support strong and wrong versus weak and right,” he said.

Gil Durán is a California journalist and author of the forthcoming book The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War On Democracy. He was an adviser to several Democratic politicians

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

The far right in power always co-opts culture – in France, it has already begun | Alexander Hurst

Marine Le Pen’s party is concocting plans to replace a vital, vibrant arts scene with a retrograde movement that would glorify the country’s past

Should you judge the quality of a film based on how many people have been to see it? It’s the type of argument you would expect to hear in the context of the “culture war”; but is it what you would expect to hear from French culture warriors? From a country that uses language quotas to maintain its musicians on broadcast media, has fought to promote its language abroad and has always seen itself as a place that radiates art outwards? After all, this is a country that put on an opera for the 2024 Olympic closing ceremony.

Enter Sébastien Chenu, vice-president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN). Chenu advanced the box-office success argument as a reason for his party’s proposal to eliminate, Doge-style, France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC) – the public body that subsidises almost every nook and cranny of the country’s heavy-hitting film industry. Let the market take over? Quality as a derivative of quantity? If the RN is perfectly happy to surrender Audiard for Avengers 18 (or whatever), why not apply the logic elsewhere as well?

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist. H​is memoir, Generation Desperation​, is out now

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

Jimmy Lai’s sentencing tells me this: democracy is dead in Hong Kong, and I escaped just in time | Nathan Law

Who will speak out for values and rights and my fellow democracy activist now that opposition has been silenced in Hong Kong? I say Britain should

• Nathan Law is a politician and activist from Hong Kong

Waking up on Monday morning to the news of the pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai’s 20-year prison sentence for national security offences felt surreal. I could have easily been in his position if I hadn’t fled Hong Kong right before the implementation of the notorious national security law (NSL), under which Lai has faced the harshest penalty ever given. In fact, Lai chose to stay and stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Hong Kong in the face of an uncertain and repressive future. Now his family fears that he will die in prison.

A mix of emotions filled my mind. I was immensely disgusted by the audacity and malevolence of such punishment. This sentence has a transparently political end, but the Hong Kong and Chinese governments make no bones about it. Their sole purpose is to silence critics, and they have succeeded: civil society and domestic media, which should be the watchdogs of individual rights and government overreach, are dead silent on criticising the trial.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:39 am

This is my first Valentine’s Day as a single person since 1994 – and I can’t wait | Zoe Williams

A trip to the pub with my favourite 89-year-old, followed by a get together with some errant wives ... It’s going to be a belter

This is the first time I’ve been single on Valentine’s Day since 1994. I didn’t give it a lot of thought – romance’s festival day has never been a great advert for the concept. In the best case scenario, it turns your real and important feelings into a commercial cliche, in the worst, it’s just a vivid and poignant reminder of how much you wish you were elsewhere, and at every point in between, it’s open season for restaurants to rip you off while you make dry conversation over drier chicken.

This year, however, I made a plan with two married friends. I did not anticipate how much I would enjoy bumping into their husbands around the place, going “guess where I’m going on Valentine’s Day? OUT WITH YOUR WIFE”, to see their astonished expressions, since, ensconced in long marriages, they can no longer remember what month it is, let alone if anyone has any plans.

Published: February 10, 2026, 11:00 am

My patient’s near-death experience in hospital left me with worry and guilt. This is how vicarious trauma starts | Ranjana Srivastava

Afterwards, my team and I kept going without ever discussing the event. But something felt heavy. And because I couldn’t name it, I didn’t know how to deal with it

“And who are you?” Tracking the voice, I realise the nurse is talking to me.

“I’m the physician looking after the patient.”

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:00 pm

Mikaela Shiffrin’s Winter Olympics drought continues after slalom slump in team event

• American wastes strong downhill leg from Johnson

• Slalom standout missed out on medals in 2022

• Raedler and Huber win gold for Austria

• Medal table | Live scores and schedule | Results

Mikaela Shiffrin extended her Olympic slump with a fourth-place finish in the new team combined event at the Milan Cortina Games on Tuesday after partner Breezy Johnson led the opening downhill leg.

Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup racer of all time with a record 108 victories –71 of them in slalom, also a record – has now gone seven straight Olympic races without a medal.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:23 pm

‘My needles are waiting’: Ben Ogden credits knitting habit after cross-country silver

• Vermont native ends US men’s 50-year medal drought

• Result continues strong showing at Milan-Cortina

• Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo wins seventh gold

Ben Ogden delivered the most significant result in US men’s cross-country skiing in decades on Tuesday afternoon, winning Olympic silver in the men’s sprint classic at the Milano Cortina Games to end a 50-year medal drought. And afterwards he credited the relaxation he finds in knitting.

The mustachioed 25-year-old finished in 3min 40.61sec after surging through the final with his trademark classical technique, less than a second behind Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who secured the seventh Olympic gold medal of his career in 3:39.74. Klæbo’s teammate Oskar Opstad Vike took bronze after climbing from 20th in qualifying to the podium.

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:55 pm

Norwegian biathlete wins Winter Olympics bronze and then tells TV interview of affair

• Sturla Holm Lægreid stuns viewers watching in Norway

• ‘Three months ago I made the mistake of my life’

The Norwegian Sturla Holm Lægreid broke down in tears after winning bronze in the men’s 20km biathlon, apologising for having an affair and saying: “It has been the worst week of my life.”

Johan-Olav Botn won gold, with the Frenchman Éric Perrot in second, but it was Lægreid who stunned television viewers in Norway after opening up to the broadcaster NRK about his private life over the past six months.

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:33 pm

Winter Olympics officials find fix for broken medals and promise repairs

• Downhill champion Breezy Johnson among the affected

• ‘A solution has been identified, and a fix put in place’

After days of embarrassing stories about Winter Olympic medals cracking, snapping, and even breaking in two after falling in the snow, organisers say they have finally fixed the problem.

Officials have also promised to repair any of the medals that were awarded in the opening three days of competition in Milano Cortina, after identifying on Monday that the issue stemmed from the medal’s cord, which is fitted with a breakaway mechanism required by law.

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:47 pm

Welcome to the Dark Side: Seattle’s brutal, Super Bowl-winning defense is here to stay

The Seahawks’ Legion of Boom terrorized opponents in the 2010s. Now a new unit has taken up the mantle – and delivered another title

Super Bowl LX was a two-score game with less than five minutes remaining. New England had the ball on the Seahawks’ 44-yard line and – after reaching the end zone in the fourth quarter, finally – that familiar sense of possibility. But that quickly vaporized when Devon Witherspoon knifed in on a corner blitz and jarred the ball loose from the Patriots quarterback, Drake Maye, mid-throw. Uchenna Nwosu snatched it in stride and rumbled 45 yards to the end zone, sealing Seattle’s 29‑13 victory.

That the league’s top defense was able to punctuate this moment, more than a decade in the making, with an interception as the Super Bowl XLIX hero Malcolm Butler looked on made the Seahawks’ revenge all the sweeter. “They lived up to the Dark Side today,” the Seattle head coach, Mike Macdonald, said of his defense. “It’s going to go down in the history books.”

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Keion White becomes second 49ers player shot in San Francisco in 18 months

• Lineman shot in ankle hours after Super Bowl

• 27-year-old’s injuries are non-life threatening

Keion White, a defensive lineman for the San Francisco 49ers, has undergone surgery after he was shot in the ankle early on Monday morning.

The shooting happened in San Francisco hours after the end of the Super Bowl, which was played at Levi’s Stadium in nearby Santa Clara.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:10 pm

Four players ejected after brawl breaks out during Hornets-Pistons game

• Police briefly enter court as tempers flare, benches clear

• Hornets coach Charles Lee later tossed for arguing call

A fight between the Detroit Pistons and Charlotte Hornets in the third quarter of Monday night’s game resulted in four player ejections.

Charlotte’s Moussa Diabate and Miles Bridges were tossed, along with Detroit’s Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart. Hornets coach Charles Lee was ejected in the fourth quarter after he had to be restrained from going after an official while arguing a call.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:16 pm

US figure skater Amber Glenn resolves Winter Olympics music dispute with Canadian artist

• Glenn and Seb McKinnon clear up ‘hiccup’ in process

• Skater to compete next in the women’s singles next week

The US figure skater Amber Glenn said Tuesday that she has resolved copyright concerns with the Canadian recording artist Seb McKinnon after the musician expressed surprise that one of his songs appeared in her Olympic free skate program, closing a brief dispute that underscored the growing complexity of music rights in figure skating.

McKinnon, who releases music under the name CLANN, posted on social media after Glenn performed to his track The Return during the Olympic team event, questioning whether the music had been cleared. He later congratulated Glenn on her team gold medal, and both sides have since described the episode as a misunderstanding rather than a conflict.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:40 pm

Infantino dogged by threat of Russia and fear of Trump as he heads to sweet-talk Uefa

Fifa president will be under major scrutiny when he goes to Brussels to address the Uefa annual congress on Thursday

Assuming Gianni Infantino turns up on time, he is expected to make his customary address to Uefa’s annual congress on Thursday. The couple of hours spent in Brussels Expo Hall 3 will be largely procedural but the Fifa president’s messaging will be worth delegates’ attention. Even by the standards of relations between football’s major governing bodies, the past 12 months have been fractious. The fault lines hardly get narrower and there is certainly no reduction in the number of thorny issues simmering away.

At last year’s edition, in Belgrade, Infantino used the gathering of European football’s great and good to make a caveated case for Russia’s return to competitive action. If that was a rolling of the pitch, his comments on the matter in an interview last week amounted to letting the sprinklers loose. Infantino said the ban on Russian sides should be reassessed, at least for age-group teams, but there is little chance of his views gaining weight around Europe even if he elects to revisit the argument.

Published: February 10, 2026, 8:00 am

Winter Olympics: Eileen Gu expresses sympathy for Hess after Trump’s ‘loser’ attack

• Freeskier was ambivalent about representing US

• Fellow athletes defend friend after president’s attack

Chloe Kim and Eileen Gu have weighed in on Donald Trump’s attack on Hunter Hess after the freeskier said he was ambivalent about representing the US during the president’s immigration crackdown.

“I think in moments like these, it is really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another for all that’s going on,” said Kim, the two-time Olympic gold medalist whose parents are South Korean immigrants and who has faced racism throughout her career.

Published: February 9, 2026, 9:07 pm

Lindsey Vonn has ‘no regrets’ over crash as fellow skiers defend her decision to race

• American was competing with ruptured ACL

• Vonn says she has complex tibia fracture

• Father says it is time for his daughter to retire

Lindsey Vonn says she suffered a complex tibia fracture “that will require multiple surgeries to fix properly” when her Olympic hopes ended in a heavy crash.

The American crashed out early in her run during the women’s downhill competition on Sunday. Her cries of pain could be heard clearly on the television broadcast and spectators and her fellow athletes were visibly shaken as she was airlifted to hospital.

Published: February 9, 2026, 11:38 pm

F1 2026: a look at the cars for the new season – in pictures

A look at each team’s choice of colours and designs ahead of the new F1 season

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:16 pm

EU moves closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers

MEPs vote to allow people to be deported to places they have never been to, as NGOs express fears over new ‘safe third countries’ list

The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.

MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:38 pm

Iran’s shadow fleet of old tankers a ticking bomb for sea life, say experts

Exclusive: Analysts say there will be oil spill catastrophe that could be far bigger than Exxon Valdez disaster

Decrepit oil tankers in Iran’s sanctions-busting shadow fleet are a “ticking time bomb”, and it is only a matter of time before there is a catastrophic environmental disaster, maritime intelligence analysts have warned.

Such an oil spill could be far bigger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that released 37,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea, they said.

Published: February 10, 2026, 11:50 am

Bulgaria gripped by mysterious deaths of six people in mountains

Case is shrouded in fevered speculation as prosecutors say autopsies show two of the deceased were “probably” murdered

It has been dubbed Bulgaria’s “Twin Peaks”: a grim saga involving the mysterious deaths of six people in the middle of the mountains that has gripped the eastern European country.

Zahari Vaskov, the director of the national police general directorate, told a press conference on Monday that the deaths were “a case without comparison in our country”.

Published: February 10, 2026, 5:13 pm

Starmer says he ‘will never walk away’ as Burnham joins Labour figures backing PM – UK politics live

Key Labour figures have rallied around the prime minister amid speculation over his leadership

Kemi Badenoch has said that Keir Starmer just received a “stay of execution” yesterday. Speaking to reporters on a visit this morning, she said:

[Starmer] is in a very dangerous place. The Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the quiet bit out loud.

Labour MPs and the Labour party have lost confidence in their leader, but the MPs are too scared of losing their jobs, so they’re not going to call an election, and they’ve given him a stay of execution. The sad thing is that the country is suffering from not being governed at all.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:01 pm

‘Coca leaf is life itself’: Andean growers’ hopes fade as WHO upholds global ban

Under US pressure as part of the ‘war on drugs’, the WHO still categorises the sacred Indigenous remedy as akin to heroin or fentanyl, despite its many therapeutic properties

For thousands of years, Andean people living around what is now the town of Coripata, east of La Paz, Bolivia, have used coca leaves to relieve fatigue, hunger and altitude sickness (known as soroche), as well as to treat headaches and digestive problems.

Concerned about the future of this cultural and religious practice, Daynor Choque, heir to this ancient tradition, points to a pile of leaves on the table in front of him.

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:00 pm

Astronomers celebrate cancellation of $10bn Chile project that threatened clearest skies in the world

Astronomers had warned that proximity of INNA facility to telescopes would have irreparably damaged observation

The scientific community is celebrating the cancellation of a project which would have threatened the clearest skies in the world in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

The proposed $10bn, 3,000-hectare green hydrogen and ammonia production facility, known as INNA, included a port, transport links to the coast and three solar power plants, and had been under evaluation by Chile’s environmental regulator for almost a year.

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:48 pm

Indonesia prepares to send up to 8,000 troops to Gaza as part of Trump plan

Head of army says potential ‘peacemakers’ being trained, in what would be first outside force in Gaza since 1967

Indonesia has said it is preparing to send up to 8,000 troops to Gaza to be part of a peacekeeping force under Donald Trump’s Middle East plan.

The announcement by the army chief of staff, Gen Maruli Simanjuntak, makes Indonesia the first country to deliver a specific commitment to the international stabilisation force (ISF) envisaged as part of the second phase of the Trump plan.

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:17 pm

Small plane lands on Georgia road ‘in the middle of hundreds of vehicles’

Single-engine plane made an emergency landing on a busy road, striking three vehicles and injuring two people

A single-engine plane made an emergency landing on a busy road in Georgia, striking three vehicles and leaving two people with minor injuries, authorities said.

The Hawker Beechcraft BE-36 landed Monday on Browns Bridge Road in Gainesville, about 50 miles (80km) north-east of Atlanta, due to reported engine issues, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and Gainesville police.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:49 pm

Hong Kong’s once-vibrant press stays silent or celebrates Jimmy Lai’s 20-year jail sentence

Lack of response shows security law and harassment by authorities have muzzled ‘critical voices’, say experts

• The rise and fall of Jimmy Lai, whose trajectory mirrored that of Hong Kong itself

Hong Kong’s once-vibrant media outlets have responded with silence or celebration to the 20-year jail sentence handed down to Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media tycoon and critic of the Chinese Communist party.

Lai, 78, was sentenced on Monday to 20 years in prison after being convicted of sedition and colluding with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s national security law. The charges were widely seen as being politically motivated and designed to silence one of Hong Kong’s most influential pro-democracy campaigners.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:14 pm

Global economy must move past GDP to avoid planetary disaster, warns UN chief

Exclusive: António Guterres says world’s accounting systems should place true value on the environment

• Economic growth is still heating the planet. Is there any way out?

The global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste, UN secretary general António Guterres has warned.

Speaking to the Guardian after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres said humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” he said were driving the planet to the brink of disaster.

Published: February 9, 2026, 8:00 am

‘To live a normal life again, it’s a dream come true’: UK’s first climate evacuees can cast off their homes and trauma

Forty-odd residents of Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl, south Wales, relieved by council buyout after years in fear of fast flooding

When Storm Dennis hit the UK in 2020, a wall of dirty, frigid water from a tributary of the Taff threw Paul Thomas against the front of his house in the south Wales village of Ynysybwl. He managed to swim back into his home before the storm surge changed direction, almost carrying him out of the smashed-in front door.

“I was holding on to downpipes to stop myself being dragged out again. It was unbelievably strong, the water,” he said.

Published: February 9, 2026, 6:00 am

EU urged not to roll back green agenda in effort to revive faltering economy

Campaigners say industrial issues cannot be solved by watering down climate and environmental policies

• Europe live – latest updates

• Business live – latest updates

EU leaders have been warned against a rollback of the green agenda before a summit focused on reviving the bloc’s waning economy.

Campaigners from the Climate Action Network, a pan-European group of NGOs, said European industry was “under real pressure” from “high energy prices, ageing assets, global overcapacity and delayed investments”, but these issues could not be solved by watering down climate and environmental policies.

Published: February 9, 2026, 12:47 pm

Chappell Roan drops Casey Wasserman talent agency after Epstein files revelations

Wasserman has apologised for communicating with Ghislaine Maxwell after flirtatious emails they exchanged more than 20 years ago were revealed

The pop star Chappell Roan has announced she has left her talent agency after emails between its founder and Ghislaine Maxwell were featured in the Epstein files.

The Grammy-winning artist shared a statement on social media announcing her departure from Wasserman, led by the sports and entertainment executive Casey Wasserman.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:59 pm

US says two people killed in military strike on boat in Pacific

Officials say rescuers searching for lone survivor after latest attack on what Pentagon says are suspected drug smugglers

The US military’s Southern Command, which oversee operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, announced that it carried out another deadly strike on Monday, killing two suspected drug smugglers in the eastern Pacific.

The statement said that the latest in what legal experts have called a series of extrajudicial killings by the Pentagon was carried out “at the direction of” the Florida-based combat unit’s new commander, Gen Francis L Donovan, who was sworn in at a Pentagon ceremony last Thursday. Donovan takes over after a US navy admiral, Alvin Holsey, chose to retire over reported disagreements over the boat-strike policy.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:57 am

Federal judge blocks California from enforcing ICE mask ban

Judge rules that law discriminates against federal government because it does not apply to state authorities

A federal judge on Monday blocked a California law from going into effect that would ban federal immigration agents from covering their faces, but they will still be required to wear clear identification showing their agency and badge number.

California became the first state to ban most law enforcement officers from wearing facial coverings under a bill that was signed by Gavin Newsom, the governor, in September, following last summer’s high-profile raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Los Angeles.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:30 am

US judges dismiss lawsuits accusing Neil Gaiman of sexual assault

Former nanny Scarlett Pavlovich filed suit in three US states alleging author assaulted her in New Zealand in 2022

Federal judges have dismissed three lawsuits accusing the bestselling fantasy author Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting his children’s nanny in New Zealand four years ago.

Scarlett Pavlovich filed a lawsuit against Gaiman and his wife, Amanda Palmer, in Wisconsin in February 2025, accusing Gaiman of multiple sexual assaults while she worked as the family’s nanny in 2022. She filed lawsuits against Palmer in Massachusetts and in New York on the same day she filed the Wisconsin action.

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:01 am

Apple and Google pledge not to discriminate against third-party apps in UK deal

Critics brand deal with regulator as ‘lightweight’ with ‘no legal bite’ as tech giants avoid legally binding measures

Apple and Google have committed to avoid discriminating against apps that compete with their own products under an agreement with the UK’s competition watchdog, as they avoided legally binding measures for their mobile platforms.

The US tech companies have vowed to be more transparent about vetting third-party apps before letting them on their app stores and not discriminate against third-party apps in app search rankings.

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:10 pm

UK and US sink to new lows in global index of corruption

Countries’ drop in scores in annual table comes amid ‘worrying trend’ of backsliding in established democracies

The UK and US have sunk to new lows in a global index of corruption, amid a “worrying trend” of democratic institutions being eroded by political donations, cash for access and state targeting of campaigners and journalists.

Experts and businesspeople rated 182 countries based on their perception of corruption levels in the public sector to compile a league table that was bookended by Denmark at the top with the lowest levels of corruption and South Sudan at the bottom.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:00 am

South Korean crypto exchange races to recover $40bn of bitcoin sent to customers by mistake

Bithumb has apologised for staff error that sent customers 620,000 bitcoins instead of 620,000 Korean won, equivalent to a few hundred US dollars

South Korea’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange is scrambling to recover more than $40bn of cryptocurrency after accidentally crediting customers with 620,000 bitcoins during a promotional event last week.

Bithumb said it had corrected most of the mistaken credits, but that about 13bn won ($9m) remained unrecovered after some recipients sold or withdrew the funds before the error was detected.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:26 am

Traditional food could help reverse Nepal’s ‘diabetes epidemic’, studies suggest

With medication largely unaffordable in the country, experts hope community support and a change in diet could reduce soaring type 2 diabetes rates

A return to the traditional lentil and rice dishes that have nourished generations of Nepalis could save them from a diabetes epidemic prompted by the influx of western junk foods, doctors have said.

In a country where one in five of those over 40 has type 2 diabetes, the foods enjoyed by their grandparents have showed remarkable results in reversing the condition.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Masterpiece, fridge magnet, phone case … opera: how Hokusai’s The Great Wave hit the stage

He survived a stroke, a lightning strike, a fire – and created one of the world’s most recognisable images. Now the Japanese artist’s ‘wild, fascinating’ life has inspired an opera

Opera has inspired many of the 20th century’s greatest artists to create extraordinary sets. Oskar Kokoschka designed a Magic Flute for Salzburg and a Ballo in maschera for Florence. Salvador Dalí produced a controversial Salome for London; David Hockney’s designs for Glyndebourne’s Rake’s Progress complement Stravinsky’s sound-world so miraculously that they are still in use 50 years after their creation. Marc Chagall’s ceiling fresco for Paris’s Opéra Garnier and murals for the New York Met testify to the intimate connection between opera and painting.

And yet remarkably few operas portray visual artists. Something about their painstaking work seems to resist representation in this most extravagant of artforms. Only two operas about artists are regularly performed: Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, depicting the German Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, and Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini – and Cellini gave Berlioz a head-start with his rollicking memoirs about his scandalous adventures in 16th-century Florence.

Published: February 10, 2026, 4:05 pm

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was never a love story. It was a warning

Watching Michel Gondry’s 2004 time-twister as a hard sci-fi film, we might heed its advice – on technology and its futility against our romantic woes

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a film about the gap between what we think we can control and what happens when reality hits. Over the years, many critics and fans have celebrated Michel Gondry’s film as a tender-hearted love story. But a rewatch might reveal that Gondry’s second collaboration with postmodern American screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is much closer to another, twistier genre: hard sci-fi.

By now, the story of Eternal Sunshine is familiar. Depressed introvert Joel (Jim Carrey) meets Clementine (Kate Winslet), whose box-dyed hair colour and moods change as often as the weather. A mismatch made in heaven. The troubled couple eventually find a fix for their rocky, codependent relationship: a service provided by a sketchy medical company called Lacuna Inc that offers to erase their memories of each other. Clementine goes first. Out of spite, Joel follows.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:00 pm

Whistle review – a smart, sympathetic spin on the cursed-artefact horror

Chiller about a skull-shaped Aztec whistle blends Final Destination-style deaths with a tender portrait of anxious adolescence

On the surface, this teen-courting, genre-savvy Irish-Canadian horror effort looks like the kind of project ushered into production after the Philippou brothers’ cursed-artefact chiller Talk to Me cleared up at the box office. However, rather than suburban Australia, writer Owen Egerton and director Corin Hardy relocate us to an autumnal, Springsteen-ready North American steeltown, where artsy high-schooler Chrys (Dafne Keen) inherits the locker of the star basketballer we’ve just seen flambeed in a prologue. The deadly doodad she finds there is a skull-shaped Aztec whistle with either “summon the dead” or “summon your dead” (there’s some linguistic quibbling) inscribed on the side. Naturally she puts it back, and everybody lives happily ever after.

I kid, of course. For a while, the horror element is less in-your-face than it was in the pummelling Antipodean predecessor, but whistleblowing soon makes everyone’s worst fears about dying literal. That development gives Hardy’s increasingly bloody kill scenes a Final Destination-like piquancy: your heart can only go out to the boy racer who perishes via car crash in his upstairs bedroom. One similarity to the Philippous’ film is the sympathy for insecure, troubled teens who couldn’t seem more unlike the usual disposable jocks and prom queens. Egerton observes courtship rituals with tenderness, quietly foregrounding Chrys’s struggles to come out to upright classmate Ellie (Sophie Nélisse); beneath the looming shadow of death, this is an attempt to live one’s truest life.

Published: February 10, 2026, 11:04 am

Wuthering Heights review – too hot, too greedy adaptation guarantees bad dreams in the night

Emerald Fennell’s take on Emily Brontë is an emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire that misuses Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi but makes the most of Martin Clunes

Emerald Fennell cranks up the campery as she reinvents Emily Brontë’s tale of Cathy and Heathcliff on the windswept Yorkshire moor as a 20-page fashion shoot of relentless silliness, with bodices ripped to shreds and a saucy slap of BDSM. Margot Robbie’s Cathy at one stage secretly heads off to the moor for a hilarious bit of self-pleasuring – although, sadly, there are no audaciously intercut scenes of thirst-trap Heathcliff, played by Jacob Elordi, simultaneously doing the same thing in the stable, while muttering gruffly in that Yerrrrrkshire accent of his.

This then is Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, or rather “Wuthering Heights”; the title archly appears in inverted commas, although the postmodern irony seems pointless. Cathy is a primped belle quivering in the presence of Heathcliff, who himself is a moody, long-haired, bearded outsider, as if Scarlett O’Hara were going to melt into the arms of Charles Manson. However, he does get substantially Darcyfied up later on, rocking a shorter and more winsome hairstyle, his gossamer-thin shirt never dry.

Published: February 9, 2026, 8:00 pm

The Swedish Connection review – uplifting real life tale of Stockholm bureaucrat who outwits the Nazis

A genial, lightly comic portrait of Gösta Engzell, the unlikely civil servant who outmanoeuvred Nazi bureaucracy with paperwork

‘It’s a miracle!” exclaims a Swedish official. No, he is corrected by a beaming colleague: “It’s bureaucracy.” This is a man whose diplomatic pincer skills have just stuck it to the Nazi hate machine and will save tens of thousands of Jewish lives. His name is Gösta Engzell, a real-life bureaucrat in the Swedish foreign ministry during the second world war, played here by Henrik Dorsin as bumbling and avuncular in his comfy cardigans and dicky bow ties.

If we are honest, Engzell’s desk-based heroism – deploying the power of loopholes, paperwork and diplomatic notes verbales – to save lives is not terribly cinematic. Co-directors Thérèse Ahlbeck and Marcus Olsson’s workaround is to give us shots of diplomats dashing along the corridors of power, huffing and puffing; it all adds to the film’s affable comic mood, pleasant enough but sometimes jarring with the seriousness of what is at stake.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:00 am

Florence + the Machine review – ​a thrilling shift in tone towards stark, sombre catharsis

OVO Hydro, Glasgow
Florence Welch is backed by the folk-horror dramatics of a petticoat-clad choir – but quite capable of transfixing the crowd with her billowing voice alone

‘I’ve only sung this once before and it makes me shake,” Florence Welch admits, crouching alone at the far end of a long, narrow thrust stage. Watching her command this arena during the first of two sold-out shows in Glasgow in honour of Florence + the Machine’s sixth album Everybody Scream, it’s hard to imagine Welch fearing anything. Just seconds ago, she was racing barefoot, flouncy skirts gathered in one hand, ripping through Spectrum (the band’s first UK No 1, back in 2012) and its searing demand: “Say my name!”

But the new song she is steeling herself to sing presses on a bruise. With ratcheting intensity, You Can Have It All grieves an ectopic pregnancy which almost killed her, as well as a music industry that punishes its stars for motherhood. Over grungy electric guitar, her tempestuous voice billows like sails in high wind: “Am I a woman now?” It leaves the arena in stunned silence. She gives a wry curtsey.

Published: February 10, 2026, 12:35 pm

J Cole: The Fall Off review – rap legend’s final album is a self-obsessed hip-hop history lesson

(Interscope)
Bowing out after six consecutive US No 1 albums, Cole references rap greats and even conjures a convo between Biggie and 2Pac – but the lens rarely strays from himself

J Cole released his debut mixtape in 2007, and now, nearly two decades later and after six back-to-back US No 1 albums, the North Carolina MC is still wrestling with the weight of so much hope heaped upon him. He is framing The Fall Off as a graceful bowing out – “to do on my last what I was unable to do on my first”, he has said – and it’s almost as if he is a student coming to the end of a long period of study, with this double album as his graduate thesis.

Across 24 tracks and 101 minutes, The Fall Off is full of technical proficiency, raw lyrical skill, citation, interpolation and sampling, and it attempts nothing less than to embody a half-century of hip-hop. Through direct and indirect references, lessons unfold throughout. The Fall-Off Is Inevitable is inspired by Nas’s 2001 Stillmatic track Rewind. I Love Her Again is an obvious nod to Common’s I Used to Love HER. Bunce Road Blues borrows lyrics from Usher’s Nice & Slow but connects to R&B’s present with guest vocals from Nigerian singer Tems. The Let Out is reminiscent of SpottieOttieDopaliscious from OutKast’s Aquemini, and so forth: all ample material for audiences to think through hip-hop’s past and future.

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:50 pm

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show review – a thrilling ode to Boricua joy

The Grammy-winning Puerto Rican megastar delivered a powerful, detail-packed performance that paid tribute to his history and teased more greatness for his future

When the NFL announced in September that Bad Bunny would perform at the Super Bowl half-time show, the immediate expectation was that Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio would Make a Statement.

There was, of course, backlash from the people who think a performance in Spanish is un-American (all while Puerto Rico remains a US territory). But there was also criticism from those who argued that, post-Kaepernick, there is no performance on an NFL stage that could meaningfully challenge the power whose invitation into its center of capital and nationalism these artists accepted. And as we’ve reached peak Bad Bunny this week, Puerto Ricans have pointed out that many fans’ investment in the island ends with the artist.

Published: February 9, 2026, 4:09 am

Your Life Without Me by James Meek review – angel of destruction haunts a domestic drama

A plot to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral is seen through the lens of family tragedy

A great demolition is also an act of creation, so long as its execution is bold and impressive enough, so long as it clears out the dead wood and opens up the terrain. It’s the ethos that links Pablo Picasso to 1970s punk, Shiva the Destroyer to the anarchist hero of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. Rip it up and start again. Or rip it up for the pure thrill of the ripping. In Graham Greene’s short story The Destructors, the schoolboy vandals of the Wormsley Common Gang systematically unpick a Christopher Wren-designed London house, working from the inside out so that it dissolves into rubble the moment a supporting post is pulled down. The crime’s one adult witness, a lorry driver, guffaws at the sight. “I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” he tells the home’s distraught owner. “There’s nothing personal, but you got to admit it’s funny.”

Raf, the angel of destruction who haunts the wings of James Meek’s graceful, death-haunted domestic drama, is likewise drawn to the work of Wren – although his project is conceived on a much grander scale. Raf is a professional demolition man, a gifted young engineer and natural born radical, easily moved to laughter or tears and effortlessly dazzling everyone in his orbit. For his PhD project, he has been granted free run of St Paul’s Cathedral in order to test the old building’s resistance to modern traffic vibration. He drills discreet holes in the masonry to install movement censors. But he also packs the cavities with Semtex.

Published: February 10, 2026, 7:00 am

The Great Resistance by Carrie Gibson review – a panoramic account of the fight to end slavery

An ambitious chronicle spans four centuries of escapes and uprisings in the Americas

‘I am painting a historical landscape,” writes Carrie Gibson – “one that stretches the entire length and breadth of the Americas.” The story she applies this panoramic approach to is that of “the largest, longest-running and most diverse ongoing insurrection the world has ever known”: the fight for freedom by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, from the 1500s to the 1800s.

It is an ambitious project. In 1979, the historian Eugene Genovese remarked that this story “might require 10 large volumes to tell in adequate detail”. Gibson attempts it in 500 pages. Flitting from Baltimore to Bridgetown to Bahia, her 35 chapters are a catalogue of escapes, armed uprisings and revolution – a dense tapestry as rich in stories from Spanish Cuba, Portuguese Brazil, French Martinique or Dutch Curaçao as from the more familiar settings of the United States or the Anglophone Caribbean. Not that it ignores well-known events or prominent people. William Wilberforce and the campaign to end the slave trade feature, as does Abraham Lincoln and the American civil war. But such familiar terrain is placed within a much broader context.

Published: February 10, 2026, 9:00 am

Poem of the week: To Wordsworth by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The radical young poet’s backhanded tribute to the older writer is a stern judgment on his lapsed political idealism

To Wordsworth

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, —
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou should cease to be.

Published: February 9, 2026, 10:00 am

Female, Nude by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett review – a seductive drama of art and rivalry

Tensions simmer when a struggling artist joins her wealthy friends for a hen week on an exotic Greek island

It is the summer of 2019, and Sophie Evans, the reckless protagonist of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s unsettling second novel, has arrived on an idyllic island in the Cyclades with her university friends Helena, Iris and Alessia to celebrate Helena’s forthcoming marriage. Helena doesn’t want it called her “hen … Like we’re dumpy little featherbrains going cluck, cluck, cluck”, but all the same, the men – including Sophie’s curator boyfriend of six years, Greg – will not arrive for another five days.

She may be on holiday but Sophie is not at ease in the villa’s atmosphere of “almost offensive” good taste, with luxurious meals, cocktails on tap and endless sunshine. In the 10 years that have passed since they first met as students, the differences between the women have become more pronounced: money has “made itself known”. Elegant, chilly Iris, whose parents have bought her a place in Peckham, works in publishing; the family of spoilt, patrician art dealer Alessia seem practically to own the island on which the women are holidaying; and Helena’s aspiration is to be a trophy wife with a house full of “nice things”.

Published: February 9, 2026, 9:00 am

Romeo Is a Dead Man review – a misfire from a storied gaming provocateur

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox, PC; Grasshopper Manufacture/Marvelous Inc
After some dumb fun hacking at zombies, legendary developer Suda51’s first original game in a decade sadly only delivers a host of incoherent disappointments

Ever since he baffled GameCube owners with 2005’s Killer7, Japanese game director Suda51 has had a reputation for turning heads. From parodying the banality of open-world games with 2007’s No More Heroes to collaborating with James Gunn for 2012’s pulpy Lollipop Chainsaw, his games often offer a welcome reprieve from soulless, half-a-billion-dollar-budget gaming blockbusters. It was with considerable excitement that I fired up Suda’s first new game in 10 years.

The game kicks off with a slick cartoon that shows our hero, Romeo Stargazer, being eaten by a zombie. Hastily resurrected by his zany scientist grandfather, Romeo returns from the brink imbued with new powers – and then we’re off. Almost immediately I am bombarded by an impenetrable wall of proper-noun nonsense. It’s like this for the next 20 hours.

Published: February 10, 2026, 2:11 pm

How a decades-old video game has helped me defeat the doomscroll

Trading social media for Pokémon battles and evolutions in Kanto on a Game Boy Advance has been surprisingly serene

Cutting back on doomscrolling must be one of the hardest new year resolutions to keep. Instinctively tapping on the usual suspects on your phone’s home screen becomes a reflex, and vast quantities of money and user data have been specifically employed to keep you reaching for the phone, ingraining it into our work, leisure and social lives. You’ll get no shame from me if you love your phone and have a healthy relationship with your apps, but I’ve found myself struggling lately.

This year, I’m attempting to cut back on screen time – sort of. I’m replacing the sleek oblong of my smartphone with something a little more fuzzy and nostalgic. In an attempt to dismantle my bad habit, I’m closing the feeds of instant updates and instead carrying around a Game Boy Advance. I’ve been playing Pokémon FireRed, a remake of the very first Pokémon games, which turn 30 this month. Even this refreshed version is more than two decades old.

Published: February 9, 2026, 2:29 pm

The distance between us: are these people together or apart? – in pictures

Intriguing images abound in Yolanda del Amo’s new book Archipelago, which explores how our longing for closeness coexists with a desire for individuality

Published: February 10, 2026, 7:00 am

Actor Catherine O’Hara died of a blood clot in her lungs, death certificate says

Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone star died aged 71 in January after being rushed to hospital due to breathing difficulties

Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy-winning actor and beloved star of the series Schitt’s Creek and the 1990 hit movie Home Alone, died from a blood clot in her lungs, her death certificate revealed Monday.

The death certificate released by the Los Angeles county medical examiner’s office also listed rectal cancer as an underlying cause.

Published: February 9, 2026, 11:57 pm

Melania drops 67% at US box office as Rotten Tomatoes defends record-breaking audience scores

Despite an expanded release to some 2,000 screens, the gushing enthusiasm recorded on the vox pop Popcornometer is not powering a word-of-mouth hit

Melania, Brett Ratner’s authorised documentary following the first lady in the 20 days preceding Donald Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, has dipped 67% in its second week of release in the US.

The film outpaced expectations over its first weekend, taking in $7.2m domestically and leading Amazon to expand their rollout from around 1,500 venues to just over 2,000. But indications are that appetite had already been sated, with Sunday projections standing at $2.3m, meaning a drop from No 3 to No 10 in the US box office charts.

Published: February 9, 2026, 1:02 pm

Sony Pictures chief calls racist Trump video ‘despicable’ in rare intervention

Tom Rothman, CEO of the major Hollywood film studio, described a clip depicting the Obamas that was posted on Truth Social as ‘regressive’

In a highly unusual intervention, Hollywood studio chief Tom Rothman has described Donald Trump’s posting of a racist video featuring former US president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as “despicable”.

The remarks were reported by the Hollywood Reporter, and were made when Rothman was speaking at the African American Film Critics Association awards ceremony, where he accepted the Impact award on behalf of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, of which Rothman is chair and CEO.

Published: February 9, 2026, 12:36 pm

My helicopter went into freefall – inside an active volcano

Christopher Duddy was shooting a film in Hawaii when disaster struck. For 28 hours he choked on fumes near a lava lake, fighting to get to safety

The 1993 erotic thriller Sliver should have ended differently: Zeke, played by William Baldwin, was scripted to fly a helicopter towards an active volcano, after Sharon Stone’s character, Carly, reveals she’s the killer. The pilot, Craig Hosking, had been tasked with flying low over Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano, accompanied by the director of photography, Mike Benson, and his assistant Christopher Duddy, to film the bubbling lava and white plumes of smoke escaping from the Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent. It was a clear day on the Big Island when Duddy watched a corkscrew trail form in the smoke behind the helicopter, and he remembers thinking: “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this.”

It was November 1992, and a big storm was due to hit the area, so they were shooting as much footage as they could along the coast, capturing the rainforest and brilliant blue ocean shimmering against the black lava of the volcano, before the weather disrupted production. But as they dipped over Puʻu ʻŌʻō for a second time, the helicopter’s engine failed. Their visibility faded as thick smoke engulfed them. Duddy jolted his eyes away from the camera monitors towards the open doors and saw that they were heading straight for a cliff. There was a loud crash as the rotor sheared off on impact and the helicopter went into freefall.

Published: February 10, 2026, 6:00 am

‘Every shirt has a story’: the designers saving football kits from landfill

The beautiful game has a fast fashion problem, with clubs bringing out multiple kits every season. But a move towards upcycling old shirts and wearing vintage garments is on the rise

It may have been a quiet January transfer window, but even so, thousands of new shirts will be printed for Lucas Paquetá, returning to his former Brazilian club Flamengo, while his West Ham shirt instantly feels old. Not to mention the thousands of other players moving from one club to another. Uefa estimates that up to 60% of kits worn by players are destroyed at the end of the season, and at any one time there are thought to be more than 1bn football shirts in circulation, many of which are discarded by fans once players leave.

The good news is that lots of designers are bringing their upcycling skills to old kits, taking shirts and shirring them, sewing them or, as in the case of designer and creative director Hattie Crowther, completely transforming them into one-of-a-kind headpieces. “I’m not here to add more products into the mix, I’m here to reframe what’s already in circulation and give it meaning, context, and longevity while staying culturally relevant,” says Crowther, whose creations involving the colours and emblems of Arsenal, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain, are, she says, “a response to how disposable football product has become”.

Published: February 10, 2026, 8:00 am

The best bath towels in the US, from fluffy to quick drying – tested

We tested bath towels at all price points to find the softest, most absorbent towels that can withstand the rigors of life – and are worth the money

• Experts tips for cleaning and caring for your bath towel to keep them softer, longer

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

I am a huge fan of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That book has taught me two things: don’t panic, and a quality bath towel will get you far in this world (it says that a towel “is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”). A nice bath towel is also a simple way to add a dash of luxury to your daily routine.

When it comes to bath towels, I want one that’s soft, fluffy, absorbent, and can withstand the rigors of life. Above all, it has to be worth the money.

Best overall bath towel
Parachute Organic Super Plush towel

Best value bundle
Brooklinen Super-Plush Turkish Cotton Bath Towels

Published: February 9, 2026, 8:47 pm

My rookie era: on my first ski trip, I felt like a natural – then I was rapidly humbled by the mountain

I was a ski god. An avalanche. I was starting to think about the Olympics. Darude’s Sandstorm was playing in my head. Then wham, bam, stacked it

• Read more summer essentials

Twenty hot lesbians in a cabin in the snow. It sounds like a budget porn plot from the 70s, but it was the pitch my sister gave when she convinced me to try out skiing for the first time.

I am not a sports dyke. I am a like-to-read-books-and-sit-in-saunas dyke.

Published: February 9, 2026, 2:00 pm

A new start after 60: I became a wrestler, 50 years after falling in love with the sport

After a career in accountancy, Sally Goldner decided to get in the ring – as Zali Gold – and live out her childhood dreams

On the night of her 60th birthday, Sally Goldner climbed on to the top rope of the wrestling ring, to the roars of the crowd, and launched herself on to her competitors with a missile dropkick. The crowd roared. For a second, she was completely airborne, before landing on her opponents.

“‘Wow, I’m doing this,’” she thought. “Exhilarating. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing on my birthday.” She had seized her moment in an Alpha Pro battle royal, a multi-competitor elimination match. As her opponents – all men – threw her out of the ring, they wished her a happy birthday.

Published: February 9, 2026, 7:00 am

Is it true that … hair grows faster when you cut it?

Does a good trim really make your locks longer and thicker – or is it more complicated than that?

‘That’s not true,” says Desmond Tobin, professor of dermatological science at University College Dublin. Hair grows from follicles – tiny structures in the scalp sitting 2-4mm beneath the skin. Inside each follicle, the hair fibre is formed long before it becomes visible at the surface of the scalp. By the time it emerges, the hair that you’re cutting is dead, hardened tissue.

“Cutting what’s above the surface has no effect on what’s happening in the follicle below,” says Tobin.

Published: February 9, 2026, 8:00 am

Beats Powerbeats Fit review: Apple’s compact workout earbuds revamped

Secure, noise-cancelling Bluetooth earbuds that shine for exercise and everyday use on Android and iPhone

Apple’s revamped compact workout Beats earbuds stick to a winning formula, while slimming down and improving comfort.

The new Powerbeats Fit are the direct successors to 2022’s popular Beats Fit Pro, costing £200 (€230/$200/A$330). They sit alongside the recently redesigned Powerbeats Pro 2 as Apple’s fitness alternatives of the AirPods.

Published: February 10, 2026, 7:00 am

What is fibremaxxing – and how much is too much? | Kitchen aide

Most of us aren’t getting enough fibre in our diet, but, as our panel of experts explain, upping your intake is a case of taking baby steps …

Why is everyone talking about fibremaxxing?
Chris, by email
TikTok-born trends rarely go hand in hand with sage health advice, but that’s not to say upping our fibre – an often-forgotten part of our diets – is a bad idea. “Fibre needed its moment, so this is a good thing,” says dietitian Priya Tew. The non-digestible carbohydrate has two main functions: “There’s insoluble fibre, which is found in things such as whole grains, brown rice or vegetable skins, and I think about it like a broom,” Tew says, “in that it brushes the system out.” Then there’s soluble fibre (oats, beans, lentils), which she likens to a sponge: “It turns into this gel in your gut, and aids digestion and keeps us regular.” But that’s only part of the story, because fibre can also help lower cholesterol and stabilise blood sugar.

So, are you getting enough? “The aim is 25-30g fibre a day, but in reality most of us are maybe getting 15-18g,” Tew says, so we’ve got a little way to go. That said, some folk on the #fibremaxxing train have set their sights higher, which is where things can become problematic. “If you’re having too much fibre, you can end up feeling bloated, constipated or have abdominal pain,” she says, and that can occur when you increase your fibre intake too quickly: “The body needs time to get used to what’s happening.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:00 pm

Houseplant hacks: is candle wax useful for taking cuttings?

There’s a new trend for propagating plants by dipping cuttings in melted wax. Is it worth all the faff?

The problem
Plants like pothos are easy to propagate. But the internet loves anything that resembles a scientific experiment, so now there’s a trend for using candle wax.

The hack
Putting a wax “cap” on a cutting is supposed to keep bacteria out and force new roots to sprout from the nodes above. In practice, you’re coating a wound that already knows how to heal, with a substance that does nothing to help it.

Published: February 10, 2026, 10:00 am

Say no to fake snow: the Austrian ski resort that likes to keep it real

Like many Alpine areas faced with declining snowfall, Villach had to make a difficult choice: bring in the snow cannons or reinvent itself

Walking up a winding trail in the Dobratsch nature park in Carinthia, surrounded by picturesque snowy slopes dotted with pines, we hear shrieks coming from round the corner. The path is as wide as a one-way street but Birgit Pichorner, the park ranger I’m taking a tour with, motions for me to move to the side, where we watch a couple with wide grins glide past on a wooden toboggan.

We have seen families out hiking with young children and speed walkers pacing for the summit, while on a trail above us, four skiers are zigzagging up one of the nature park’s designated ski touring routes. For residents of Villach, the southern Austrian town at the foot of Dobratsch, this is very much their Hausberg, a much-loved “locals’ mountain”, says Birgit.

Published: February 10, 2026, 7:00 am

The Minnesotans trapped at home, too terrified of ICE to go outside: ‘Our house is like a jail’

The surge of federal immigration agents has forced many families to remain inside for weeks, living in fear of roving ICE patrols snatching people off the street

José hasn’t left his house in Saint Paul for 29 days – not to shovel the snow at his driveway, not to fix up the car.

When the car needed an oil change, he video-called his wife, Sara, from inside so he could walk her through it. “I’ve only been from the bedroom to the living room,” he said. He’s afraid to even get near the front door.

Published: February 9, 2026, 1:00 pm

Is Britain about to lose another prime minister?

While the herd is yet to move against Keir Starmer, many believe his tenure may be coming to an end

When Boris Johnson resigned as the British prime minister in 2022, he explained that the politicians who had once loyally supported him had turned against him.

This had sealed his fate. “The herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves,” he said.

Published: February 9, 2026, 6:32 pm

People in the US: what is your top piece of relationship advice?

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, we want to hear from readers on their one top tip for healthy romantic relationships

There is a lot of free relationship advice out there, much of it conflicting:

“Never go to sleep angry.”

Published: February 10, 2026, 3:00 pm

A camel race and Donald Trump taking a Liberty: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: February 10, 2026, 1:54 pm