No fuel, no tourists, no cash – this was the week the Cuban crisis got real

Diplomats in Havana are preparing for an alternative Trump tactic: the country being starved until people take to the streets and the US can step in

Among the verdant gardens of Havana’s diplomatic quarter, Siboney, ambassadors from countries traditionally allied to the United States are expressing increasing frustration with Washington’s attempt to unseat Cuba’s government, while simultaneously drawing up plans to draw down their missions.

Cuba is in crisis. Already reeling from a four-year economic slump, worsened by hyper-inflation and the migration of nearly 20% of the population, the 67-year-old communist government is at its weakest. After Washington’s successful military operation against Cuba’s ally Venezuela at the beginning of January, the US administration is actively seeking regime change.

Published: February 15, 2026, 6:00 am

Facing meltdown? Over 75% of people suffer from burnout - here’s what you need to know

Does it only affect weak people? Is work always the cause? Burnout myths, busted by the experts

Once, after surviving yet another round of redundancies in a former job, I did something very odd. I turned off the lights in my room and lay face-down on the bed, unable to move. Rather than feeling relief at having escaped the axe, I was exhausted and numb. I’m not the only one. Fatigue, apathy and hopelessness are all textbook signs of burnout, a bleak phenomenon that has come to define many of our working lives. In 2025, a report from Moodle found that 66% of US workers had experienced some kind of burnout, while a Mental Health UK survey found that one in three adults came under high levels of pressure or stress in the previous year. Despite the prevalence of burnout, plenty of misconceptions around it persist. “Everybody thinks it’s some sort of disease or medical condition,” says Christina Maslach, the psychology professor who was the first to study the syndrome in the 1970s. “But it’s actually a response to chronic job stressors – a stress response.” Here we separate the facts from the myths.

Published: February 15, 2026, 6:00 am

‘Full of emotional wisdom’: Guardian writers on the best movie romances you might not have seen

For Valentine’s Day, writers picked their favourite lesser-known film love stories – from a dom-sub chamberpiece to a magical teen comedy

• ‘It launched a million fantasies’: the greatest ever TV romances

It’s the first rule of romcoms that opposites attract, and you can’t imagine two more different lovers than Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave), a spark plug of a dame convinced that she is in a relationship with the 19th-century composer Giacomo Puccini, and Fish (James Earl Jones), a gentle giant who spends his spare time wrestling a demon that only he can see. That makes for some of the film’s funniest moments, like when Poinsettia ruins a Madama Butterfly opera performance by loudly singing along to the aria. Charles Burnett’s touching film is about how Fish and Poinsettia find refuge with each other that lets them emerge from the fantasies protecting them from the real world’s cruelty, and they find a kind of late-in-life puppy love over dinner dates, cozy sleepovers and card games at their Barbary Lane-like boarding house. When I saw the restoration last 14 February, the theater was filled with couples who, like my boyfriend and I, seemed cozied up just a little closer than usual. Owen Myers

The Annihilation of Fish is available on the Criterion Channel in the US

Published: February 14, 2026, 9:07 am

Anatomy of an upset: how Ilia Malinin lost Olympic figure skating gold

Ilia Malinin entered the Olympic free skate as the runaway favorite. Early mistakes triggered a meltdown that laid bare the brutal math of modern figure skating

What made Ilia Malinin’s Olympic defeat so shocking was not simply his years-long dominance entering Friday night. It was how completely the competition had tilted in his favor before he even stepped on the ice.

For nearly three years, Malinin had been men’s skating’s guiding light: unbeaten since late 2023, winner of back-to-back world titles, the skater who recalibrated the sport’s technical ceiling and then made winning look procedural. He arrived at the Milano Ice Skating Arena leading by more than five points after the short program and carrying the most difficult planned program in the field. Under almost any normal competitive logic, that combination should have been decisive.

Published: February 14, 2026, 4:16 pm

4 tips for packing light, plus ways to warm your belly and your home

How to make a personal-item backpack work for a trip – and space heaters, Valentine’s chocolates … and bath towels!

• This story was originally published in the Filter US newsletter on buying fewer, better things. Sign up here to get early access to it

Each week we cut through the noise to bring you smart, practical recommendations on how to live better – from what is worth buying to the tools, habits and ideas that actually last.

I’ve worn three jackets to the airport and shoved shoes in my coat pocket to avoid checking an extra bag. And with the long weekend ahead, many of you may be puzzling over how to avoid baggage fees or just hoping to skip the unsolicited arm workout that comes with overpacking.

Baboon to the Moon Go-Min 32L Backpack

Published: February 14, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘Regrets? Number one: smoking. Number two: taking it up the wrong hole’: Tracey Emin on reputation, radical honesty – and Reform

She scandalised the art world in the 1990s with her unmade bed, partied hard in the 2000s – then a brush with death turned the artist’s life upside down. Now she’s as frank as ever

There is a long buildup before I get to see Tracey Emin – her two cats, Teacup and Pancake, preceding her like a pair of slinky sentries as she walks into the white-painted basement kitchen of her huge Georgian house in Margate. The lengthy overture is because – though I’ve been invited for noon – Emin is a magnificently late riser. Her average working day, her studio manager Harry tells me, runs from about 6pm to 3am. And so, while the artist is gradually sorting herself out, Harry takes me on a tour through her home town in the January drizzle, the sea a sulky grey blur beyond the sands.

At last, Harry is ringing the doorbell, and Emin’s lovely housekeeper, Sam, is sitting me down in the kitchen, then finally here she is, dressed in loose dark trousers and top, with those faithful cats. Emin is recognisably the same as she’s ever been – the artist who scandalised and entranced the nation in the 1990s with her tent embroidered with the names of everyone she’d ever slept with; with her unmade bed and its rumpled sheets and detritus. She still has that sardonic lip, those arched brows, those flashing eyes. But these days she is surprisingly calm, slow moving, her greying hair swept back into a loose bun. This is the Emin who has worked hard, survived a great deal and, somewhat unpredictably, ended up a national treasure.

Published: February 14, 2026, 6:00 am

Venezuelan deportee can return to US but fears repeat of ordeal: ‘I’m not over that nightmare yet’

Luis Muñoz Pinto, 27, who was sent to notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador, would like to clear his name after US judge’s ruling

A US federal judge’s order that some of the Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador must be allowed to return to the United States to fight their cases has been greeted with hope and a sense of vindication – but also fear – by one of the deportees.

US district judge James Boasberg ruled on Thursday in Washington DC that the Trump administration should facilitate the return of deportees who are currently in countries outside Venezuela, saying they must be given the opportunity to seek the due process they were denied after being illegally expelled from the US last March.

Boasberg added that the US government should cover the travel costs of those who wish to come to the US to argue their immigration cases.

Published: February 14, 2026, 5:34 pm

New photos give glimpse inside Iran’s bloody crackdown on anti-government protests

Exclusive: images and testimony from the January uprising, when Iranian security forces are believed to have killed thousands of men, women and children who had flocked on to the streets

After imposing a nationwide internet blackout, the Iranian regime appears to have largely obscured the mass killing of protesters. However, a photographer in Tehran has managed to share their documentation of what happened, along with the testimony of those who joined in and survived the protests.

Published: February 15, 2026, 6:00 am

Trump news at a glance: Danish PM believes US president still wants to own Greenland

Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said the pressure on the island’s people was “unacceptable”. Key US politics stories from 14 February at a glance

Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen has said she believes Donald Trump still wants to own Greenland, despite dialling back his recent threats to seize it by force.

Asked at the Munich Security Conference if the US president still wanted to own the Arctic island, Frederiksen said: “Unfortunately, I think the desire is the same.”

Published: February 15, 2026, 1:32 am

‘Woke Europe not facing civilisational erasure,’ says EU’s Kallas after Rubio’s Munich speech – Europe live

EU’s foreign policy chief says many countries still ‘want to join our club’

EU’s Kallas appears to be slightly sceptical about the idea of appointing an EU envoy for talks on ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

She earlier said that “what matters more than having a seat at the table is knowing what to ask [for] when you are sitting there.”

“That’s why I proposed to the member states [a] concrete mandate [of] the asks that we would have to Russia. So whoever goes to that table, whether it’s individually or bilaterally, they should ask [for] these things from the Russians.

We have a saying in Estonian that if you demand a lot, you get little; if you demand little, you get nothing, and if you demand nothing, you pay on top.”

Published: February 15, 2026, 10:43 am

Russia killed Alexei Navalny with frog toxin, UK and four European allies say

Intelligence agencies say deadly toxin in skin of Ecuador dart frogs found in Navalny’s body and highly likely resulted in his death

• What is dart frog toxin, which is said to have been used to kill Alexei Navalny?

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was killed by dart frog poison administered by the Russian state two years ago, a multi-intelligence agency inquiry has found, according to a statement released by five countries, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The US was not one of the intelligence agencies making the claim.

Published: February 14, 2026, 2:03 pm

‘We are Europeans’: fans fly Greenland flag during Olympic US-Denmark ice hockey game

• Greenland flag raised in crowd after Danes’ opening goal

• Fans say gesture is sign of support amid Trump rhetoric

• Americans pull away after slow start for 6-3 win

Two fans who raised a flag of Greenland as the United States played Denmark in men’s ice hockey at the Winter Olympics on Saturday say they did so as a gesture of European support for the island and for Denmark.

Vita Kalniņa and her husband, Alexander Kalniņš, fans of the Latvian hockey team who live in Germany, held up a large Greenland flag during warmups and again when the Danish team scored the opening goal of the preliminary round game against the US at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena.

Published: February 14, 2026, 11:49 pm

Limited government shutdown likely to linger for at least 10 days as Congress takes break

13% of federal civilian workforce is affected, although DHS – which spurred budget standoff – remains funded

A limited US government shutdown came into effect on Saturday – the third of Donald Trump’s second term – after negotiations between the White House and Democrats in Congress failed to agree on new restrictions for federal immigration agents.

The shutdown affects about 13% of the federal civilian workforce and is confined to agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which screens airline passengers.

Published: February 14, 2026, 2:57 pm

Casey Wasserman to sell talent agency after links to Ghislaine Maxwell exposed in Epstein files

Clients including Chappell Roan and Abby Wambach cut ties to firm after communications came to light

Casey Wasserman, a leading Hollywood talent agent whose clients include Chappell Roan, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar, is selling his business after communications with Ghislaine Maxwell were exposed as part of the US justice department’s recent dump of investigative documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein.

Wasserman, grandson of the late famed Hollywood dealmaker Lew Wasserman, said late on Friday he was putting his eponymous talent and marketing agency on the block, citing the impact on the company from “past personal mistakes” and telling staff he felt that he had “become a distraction” to its work.

Published: February 14, 2026, 3:52 pm

Four new astronauts arrive via SpaceX rocket at International Space Station

ISS now fully crewed after a medical issue forced the evacuation of four astronauts in January

The International Space Station (ISS) returned to full strength with Saturday’s arrival of four new astronauts to replace colleagues who bailed early because of health concerns.

SpaceX delivered the US, French and Russian astronauts a day after launching them from Cape Canaveral.

Published: February 14, 2026, 8:43 pm

Trump’s repeal of landmark Obama-era climate rule: four key takeaways

Environmental groups say ‘cynical and devastating’ reversal of endangerment finding has grave implications

The Trump administration has dismantled the basis for all US climate regulations, in its most confrontational anti-environment move yet.

The 2009 endangerment finding determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare and should therefore be controlled by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). By revoking it on Thursday, officials eliminated the legal foundation enabling the government to control planet-heating pollution.

Published: February 14, 2026, 11:00 am

Rubio tells Europe US wants renewed alliance – but on Trump’s terms

Secretary of state calls the US ‘a child of Europe’ and urges continent to back a new world order

• Munich security conference live: Europe must be ready to fight Russia as ‘warning signs are there’, says Starmer

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has described America as “a child of Europe” and made an emotional but highly conditional offer of a new partnership, insisting the two continents belong together.

In a much-anticipated speech at the annual Munich Security Conference, he said the US was intent on building a new world order, adding “while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe”. The US and Europe, he said “belong together”.

Published: February 14, 2026, 10:21 am

Trump news at a glance: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasts president’s ‘age of authoritarianism’ at European conference

Democratic representative also condemns US capture of Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s threats to annex Greenland and US support for Israel’s war on Gaza – key US politics stories from Friday, 13 February at a glance

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”, as she condemned his administration’s foreign policy in front of its allies’ top policymakers at the Munich security conference.

Speaking at a panel on populism on Friday, the New York representative outlined what she called an “alternative vision” for a leftwing US foreign policy, challenging the Trump administration’s shift to the right in front an audience of US allies who have grown increasingly wary of the US’s increasingly nationalist – and militaristic – global posture.

Published: February 14, 2026, 2:00 am

The problem with doorbell cams: Nancy Guthrie case and Ring Super Bowl ad reawaken surveillance fears

Many people bought the devices thinking they would do little more than protect their delivery packages

What happens to the data that smart home cameras collect? Can law enforcement access this information – even when users aren’t aware officers may be viewing their footage? Two recent events have put these concerns in the spotlight.

A Super Bowl ad by the doorbell-camera company Ring and the FBI’s pursuit of the kidnapper of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, have resurfaced longstanding concerns about surveillance against a backdrop of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The fear is that home cameras’ video feeds could become yet another part of the government’s mass surveillance apparatus.

Published: February 14, 2026, 6:00 pm

The Minneapolis brass band bringing joy amid grief: ‘When people see us playing, it gives them hope’

Brass Solidarity was formed after George Floyd’s murder, and now also marks the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at its weekly meetup

A week after a federal officer shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, a troupe of brass players, percussionists and singers gathered at the site of the killing, to play a blaring, defiant rendition of the O’Jays’ Love Train.

Trumpeters, trombonists and sousaphonists had lined up along the ice-slicked sidewalk or were balancing on the snowbanks, blowing up clouds of condensation.

Published: February 14, 2026, 3:00 pm

US fixation on the hard-hat economy and making manufacturing great again makes little sense

The dream of greasy overalls is driven by nostalgia and doesn’t justify policies that harm US consumers

The exhortations to protect America’s industrial muscle have resonated in the US at least since maverick presidential candidate Ross Perot brought up the supposed “giant sucking sound” of jobs pulled to Mexico by the Nafta trade agreement back in 1993.

They flourished under Donald Trump’s first presidency and his promise to restore jobs lost to trade agreements. Joe Biden, too, put “rebuilding the backbone of America: manufacturing, unions and the middle class” at the center of his agenda. And in 2024, Trump reheated his old promise that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country”.

Published: February 14, 2026, 12:00 pm

Plantation weddings and pre-civil war fashion: the film that critiques the historical fantasy of Natchez

A documentary about Mississippi examines competing forces: the nostalgic celebration of the old south and the refusal to sanitize the brutal history of enslavement

“Natchez swallowed a master narrative about the old south.”

In Suzannah Herbert’s documentary Natchez, the opening remark from National Park Service ranger Barney Schoby functions as both diagnosis and thesis. The film that follows does not evade the Mississippi town’s contradictions. Instead, it actively adjudicates them, staging white people’s curated nostalgia against Black people’s historical knowledge, lived experience and institutional fact.

Published: February 14, 2026, 12:00 pm

My husband has started a friendship with a woman he used to work with. Am I right to be worried? | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

It’s possible this is a platonic relationship, but your concerns are valid and your husband isn’t providing any reassurance

My husband and I are in our 60s. We have been married for 40 years, some of it happily, some not so much. Our children are grown up and gone, and we have recently retired. Some of our tensions over the years have been around my husband’s tendency to be undermining and belittling. He claims not to understand why I might find certain things upsetting, yet refuses to engage with couples counselling (apparently I would tell lies). We have muddled through and mostly get on well now, though he dislikes most of my friends and siblings, and won’t socialise with them. To be fair, he is self-contained and doesn’t seem to need friends in the way I do – he has one friend.

A few months ago, an ex-colleague got in touch with my husband and asked to meet for coffee. They met, had a long lunch, and my husband mentioned a few weeks later that they were arranging to meet again as he had enjoyed the catchup. I was a bit thrown. I found it odd that she couldn’t confide in her partner or friends, but my husband exploded and we had one of our worst, most vicious arguments in years. He accused me of not wanting him to have friends (the opposite is true) and threw up the fact that I have platonic male friends; true, but my male friends and I go back 30-plus years and we don’t meet one-to-one. This just feels a bit out of character and potentially inappropriate.

Published: February 15, 2026, 6:00 am

‘The most quietly romantic town we have ever visited’ – the enduring charm of Chiavenna, Italy

Writers from George Eliot to Goethe put this Lombardy town on the map, then it fell out of fashion. Today it makes a picture-perfect alternative to the Italian lakes

The ancient settlement of Chiavenna, in Lombardy, near Italy’s border with Switzerland, was once well known among travellers. “Lovely Chiavenna … mountain peaks, huge boulders, with rippling miniature torrents and lovely young flowers … and grassy heights with rich Spanish chestnuts,” wrote George Eliot in 1860.

Eliot wasn’t the only writer to rhapsodise about this charming town. Edith Wharton described it as “fantastically picturesque … an exuberance of rococo”. For Mary Shelley it was “paradise … glowing in rich and sunny vegetation”, while Goethe described it as “like a dream”.

Published: February 15, 2026, 7:00 am

Steam up the house with this shortcut to restaurant-level hotpot at home

Start with this rich, tongue-tingling soup base - plus more low-effort tips for hotpot night at home

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Lunar New Year is 17 February this year. It’s cold. You simply would not like to go outside, thank you very much. Here comes hot pot to the rescue: few meals feel more soothing in winter than one that gathers everyone around a big ‘ol bubbling pot, cooking together while talking about nothing and everything.

If you haven’t tried hotpot at home though, it can feel intimidating. Do I need some sort of custom vessel? Do I need to make a pilgrimage to Chinatown for eight different spices? What do I even put in there? Fortunately, thanks to a ton of easy shortcuts, anyone can enjoy this belly-warming ritual without an ordeal.

For a hotpot soup base:
Fly By Jing Fire Hotpot Base

For a pot:
Lolykitch Stainless Steel Stock Pot with Lid

Published: February 14, 2026, 5:15 pm

‘You think: Do I really need anyone?’ – the hidden burden of being a hyper-independent person

Self-reliance is often encouraged over asking others for help in the modern world. But doing everything yourself can be a sign that you are scared of intimacy

When a relative was seriously ill and in intensive care for more than a month, Cianne Jones stepped in. “I took it upon myself to be that person in the hospital every single day – chasing doctors, taking notes, making sure I understood why they were doing things.” It was so stressful, she says, that at one point her hair started falling out, but she ploughed on.

It was Jones’s therapist who gently questioned whether she was going to ask for help. Jones laughs. “The hair falling out didn’t suggest to me that I needed help, it was somebody else looking in and saying that.” She has a large, close family who would have helped immediately – and did, once Jones asked – it’s just that it didn’t occur to her to ask. “I had taken that role on: ‘I’m just going to get everything done.’ I just took off, and that was it.”

Published: February 15, 2026, 5:00 am

‘I cut out one little house at a time’: the trucker who spent decades building a tiny replica of NYC

Queens-born Joe Macken’s hyperrealistic model, made with wood, cardboard and glue, is now on view at the Museum of the City of New York

In 2003, Joe Macken built a miniature model of a bridge out of popsicle sticks. He wanted it to look like a “hybrid” of the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges. Soon after, Macken, who grew up in Middle Village, Queens, moved his family to a small town upstate, more than 160 miles from the city. Macken loaded his bridge on the moving truck. It did not make the trip.

“It got destroyed, and I was kind of bummed,” said Macken, who is now 63. “So I figured, let me build something better.”

Published: February 14, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘Love, honor, cherish, accommodate’: 16 hard-earned relationship tips

While there is no one recipe for a successful relationship, we can learn from each other to build one that lasts

What is the key to a good relationship?

For some couples, it’s important to share hobbies. Others say having individual interests is imperative. I’ve read that couples who sleep in separate beds are the happiest and I’ve also read that sleeping in separate beds is the death knell of romance. When I got engaged, I asked my parents – who have been married for 40 years – what advice they had for me, and my mother offered: “Contribute as much as you can to your retirement accounts.” OK!

Published: February 14, 2026, 12:00 pm

He ran, but he can’t keep hiding: Pressure mounts for Andrew to talk to police

As calls for the former prince to cooperate with investigation become deafening, this may be the reckoning Andrew cannot escape

Gordon Brown is a man who gets into the detail.

In office, and since then, he has applied his forensic mind to the matters that concern him. Lately, he has been focused on the Epstein files.

Published: February 14, 2026, 6:00 am

‘The time of monsters’: everyone is quoting Gramsci – but what did he actually say?

Line handily sums up people’s bewilderment at state of world, but it isn’t quite what the Marxist thinker wrote

At a time when geopolitical certainties of old are crumbling away, it has become the go-to quote to make sense of the current moment in all its seeming senselessness. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” is a line attributed to the former Italian Communist party leader Antonio Gramsci.

Over the last two months alone, it has been quoted – and often mangled – by a rightwing Belgian prime minister, a leftwing British political leader, an Irish central banker and in the title of the most recent BBC Reith lecture, given by the author Rutger Bregman.

Published: February 14, 2026, 8:00 am

What is colorectal cancer and is it preventable?

Cases among younger people are rising – such as with actor James Van Der Beek, who died on 11 February at age 48

Actor James Van Der Beek died on 11 February, aged 48; he had been diagnosed in 2023 with colorectal cancer.

According to the World Health Organization, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. While rates are declining overall, cases among younger people are rising.

Published: February 14, 2026, 3:00 pm

Nobody knows what would follow regime change in Iran – but what happened in 1979 offers some pointers | Jason Burke

The similarities between now and events preceding the shah’s exile are striking. The radical clerics benefited then, but who would prevail this time?

A critical moment looms for Iran, and so for the Middle East. The global consequences of any upheaval in Tehran have been made amply clear since the revolution in 1979 that ushered in the rule of radical Islamist clerics. In Oman, the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and his team have begun indirect talks with a high-powered US delegation. Many analysts believe the gap between the two sides is too wide to be bridged, and that a conflict is inevitable. Just this weekend, having already threatened military action, Donald Trump said regime change is the “the best thing that could happen” in Iran. The tension, and risks grow higher.

The hold on Iran of those who came to power in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution is now at stake. The ultimate objective of the US appears to be regime change. This may, in fact, already be under way. In December 2025 and January 2026, the most extensive wave of protest since the early 1980s swept Iran, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets from Mashhad to Abadan.

Jason Burke is the international security correspondent of the Guardian and author of The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s

Published: February 15, 2026, 6:00 am

Hungarians have had enough of Viktor Orbán. But Trump’s tailwind could save his skin

Opposition challenger Péter Magyar is ahead in the polls on a promise of hope. Orbán is betting on fear of war to stay in power

After 16 years of uninterrupted power, Viktor Orbán is facing his biggest electoral challenge. For years Hungary’s prime minister has spun weak policy performance as success. The rise of a rival, Péter Magyar, and the opposition Tisza party has exposed the limits of that strategy.

The economy is stagnating, despite repeated promises of a long-awaited takeoff. Over the past decade and a half, Hungary has slipped from being one of central and eastern Europe’s strongest performers to one of its weakest. Public services, from healthcare to transport, are widely seen as neglected, and Policy Solutions surveys show that voters have noticed. Hungary is not alone in facing a cost of living crisis, but comparisons offer little consolation to voters who were assured that Orbán’s model would deliver exceptional results.

András Bíró-Nagy is a senior research fellow at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest and director of Policy Solutions. He is the author of The Path of Hungary’s EU Membership

Published: February 15, 2026, 5:00 am

Given the toxicity of social media, a moral question now faces all of us: is it still ethical to use it? | Frances Ryan

With so many platforms rife with racism, misogyny and far-right rhetoric, there must be a point where decent people walk away

In a week during which Keir Starmer has been under pressure to resign, cabinet ministers took to X to show their support. “We’ve all been made to tweet,” one Labour figure told a political journalist. The irony is hard to escape: as the prime minister is embroiled in the scandal of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and now his former aide’s links to a sex offender, MPs are defending him on a platform that has in the past month allowed users to create sexualised images of women and girls.

This says something about the unprecedented way in which X has been tied to modern politics since it was still known as Twitter, as well as how widespread the culture of indifference is to the violation of female bodies, both online and off. But it also points to a growing dilemma facing not just politicians, but all of us: is it possible to post ethically on social media any more? And when is it time to log off?

Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist

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

Published: February 14, 2026, 6:00 am

Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hypercapitalists in charge, your news is not safe | Jane Martinson

His shameful stewardship of a once great title highlights how much we lose when private interest eclipses the public good

Not long after being made Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999, Jeff Bezos told me: “They were not choosing me as much as they were choosing the internet, and me as a symbol.” A quarter of an increasingly dark century later, the Amazon founder is now a symbol of something else: how the ultra-rich can kill the news.

Job cuts in an industry that has struggled financially since the internet came into existence and killed its business model is hardly new, but last week’s brutal cull of hundreds of journalists at the Bezos-owned Washington Post marks a new low. The redundancies that were announced to staff on a video call, the axing of half its foreign bureau (including the war reporter in Ukraine) – not since P&O Ferries have layoffs been handled so badly. Former Post stalwart Paul Farhi described a decision that affected nearly half of the 790-strong workforce as “the biggest one-day wipeout of journalists in a generation”.

Published: February 14, 2026, 10:00 am

Winter Olympics 2026: women’s giant slalom, snowboarding, monobob and more – live

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

• Follow us over on Bluesky | Get in touch: mail Daniel

Brignone smashed her leg at the end of last season, fought her way back, and now look!

Goodness me, she’s almost perfect as she nears the end, and 1:03.23 is her time! That puts her 0.74 up on Colturi, Hector and Stjernesund, plus a whole 1.02 on Shiffrin!

Published: February 15, 2026, 10:58 am

Winter Olympics briefing: Pinheiro Braathen writes Brazilian fairytale

Brazil’s president hails ‘unprecedented result’ as 25-year-old wins first Winter Olympic medal for country and continent

Hundreds of thousands of international tourists are expected to descend on Brazil over the next few days for carnival. But you didn’t need to go further than the Dolomites on Saturday to see somebody performing samba on a raised platform.

Lucas Pinheiro Braathen entered Brazilian sporting folklore by snaring his country’s, and continent’s, first medal at a Winter Olympics – and a gold at that. The reigning champion, Marco Odermatt of Switzerland, who leaves these Games without a title after being fancied for multiple successes, was no match for Pinheiro Braathen in the men’s giant slalom in Bormio.

Published: February 15, 2026, 8:00 am

Love is in the big air for Ukrainian skier after reaching Winter Olympics final

• Kateryna Kotsar gets engaged at end of qualifying run

• ‘It was so cute … it’s two really huge things for me’

For most athletes, qualifying for your first Olympic final would be more than enough excitement for one night. But Ukrainian freeskier Kateryna Kotsar’s evening was just getting started.

Having made the big air final, Kotsar then wrote “freedom of memory” on her glove to protest against the ban of her compatriot Vladyslav Heraskevych for wearing images of slain athletes on his helmet. And a Valentine’s Day she will never forget took another surprise turn when her boyfriend, Bohdan Fashtryha, then dropped to one knee and proposed.

Published: February 15, 2026, 10:09 am

Canada’s curling war of words with Sweden escalates after warning over ‘F-bomb’

• Kennedy insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing

• World Curling says officials will clamp down on violations

The Canadian curler at the centre of a cheating row at the Winter Olympics has denied any wrongdoing, accusing the Swedish team of deliberately trying to “catch us in the act”.

On Saturday, World Curling confirmed that Canada had escaped punishment despite being accused of breaking the rules in the 8-6 victory over Sweden on Friday night. However, the sport’s governing body did warn Canada about their abusive langugage and introduced emergency spot checks on Saturday afternoon to make sure teams were not cheating when releasing the stone.

Published: February 14, 2026, 5:54 pm

Two races, two golds: Jordan Stolz smashes another Olympic record in 500m

• US speed skating star’s four-gold pursuit continues

• 500m considered toughest of Stolz’s individual events

• Entire podium finishes below previous Olympic record

The men’s 500m is speed skating distilled to its most unforgiving form: one and a quarter laps of the oval, no pacing, no recovery window, no margin for technical compromise. On Saturday afternoon in Milan’s western suburbs, Jordan Stolz mastered the sport’s fastest and most unpredictable race and pushed his Olympic campaign toward historic territory.

The 21-year-old American won the 500m in an Olympic-record 33.77 seconds, securing his second gold medal of the Milano Cortina Olympics and adding pace behind what is rapidly becoming one of the defining individual campaigns of these Winter Games.

Published: February 14, 2026, 5:35 pm

Mohamed Salah recaptures scintillating form as Liverpool see off Brighton

There was rancour and recrimination when Mohamed Salah last faced Brighton, at Anfield in December, along with doubt over whether he would be seen in a Liverpool shirt again. Fast forward two months and the Egyptian great is starting, scoring and shaping games for Arne Slot again. Appeasement between the pair is for the greater good.

Salah produced a sublime assist, his fourth since returning from the Africa Cup of Nations, and scored from the penalty spot as Liverpool moved into round five with a commanding victory over Fabian Hürzeler’s struggling team. There was no evidence of Brighton not performing for their under-pressure manager but their lack of cutting edge was glaring, as was the case when visiting here in the Premier League.

Published: February 14, 2026, 11:35 pm

Eden Hazard: ‘I’m more of a taxi driver than a football player now, but it’s OK’

Former Chelsea and Real Madrid idol wants merely to be remembered as ‘a good player and a funny guy’ after a career of multiple titles – and spats with Mourinho

If Italy is a boot, Lecce sits right on the heel. It is here, deep in the countryside a few kilometres outside the baroque city, that the noise of the Bernabéu and the intensity of Stamford Bridge feel like a lifetime ago. The setting is rustic, quiet and slow-paced: a stark contrast to the frenetic energy that defined Eden Hazard’s career on the pitch.

It has been almost three years since he stopped playing, and the silence since his retirement at 32 has been notable. After an injury-hit spell at Real Madrid brought a premature end to a dazzling career, Hazard did not seek the spotlight. Surrounded by vineyards rather than defenders, slumped in an armchair, he seems entirely at peace, remarkably comfortable with his life after football.

Published: February 15, 2026, 8:00 am

Australia v India: women’s T20 cricket international – live

Updates from the series opener at the SCG
Start time in Sydney is 7.15pm local/1.45pm IST
Any thoughts? Get in touch with an email

3rd over: Australia 22-1 (Voll 14, Litchfield 0) Phoebe Litchfield at first drop for the Aussies, she blocks her first two balls as Renuka Singh completes a successful over.

Mooney is gone! She tries to emulate the lofted drive of her opening partner but plinks it straight to Mandhana at short cover.

Published: February 15, 2026, 10:51 am

‘Anti-racing’: Verstappen hits out at F1 rule changes as opinion divides drivers

• Dutchman joins Lewis Hamilton in criticism of new cars

• Champion Lando Norris says changes are a ‘lot of fun’

Driver disquiet over the new Formula One regulations marked the second pre-season test which concluded in Bahrain this week, with the former world champions Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen delivering damning verdicts on driving the new cars, while in competitive terms leading contenders Mercedes and Red Bull were entertainingly vehement in each declaring the other as favourite.

Times in testing must be taken with a liberal amount of salt, more so this year as so much time is being put into understanding the new cars and how best to drive them, without yet really pushing toward real performance limits. Nonetheless, across the three days in Bahrain it was Mercedes who finished on top with Kimi Antonelli and George Russell setting the quickest times, from the two Ferraris of Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in fifth and sixth for McLaren and Verstappen in seventh for Red Bull.

Published: February 14, 2026, 8:00 am

European football: Harry Kane double restores Bayern Munich’s six-point Bundesliga lead

• Inter’s late win over Juventus extends Serie A lead

• Real Madrid 4-1 Real Sociedad; Lens top of Ligue 1

Harry Kane scored twice in the first half as Bayern Munich cruised to a 3-0 win at Werder Bremen, restoring their six-point lead in the Bundesliga. Borussia Dortmund’s 4-0 win over Mainz on Friday put them within three points of the league leaders but Bayern responded.

Bayern were in control from start to finish in Bremen, with Leon Goretzka joining the England captain on the scoresheet in the 70th minute. Kane now has 26 goals in 22 Bundesliga games this season and 41 in all competitions, 13 of those from the penalty spot.

Published: February 14, 2026, 11:09 pm

‘The perfect place for people like me’: how one couple started UK’s first women’s sports bar

Lucy and Pippa Tallant have opened the Crossbar, in Brighton, to create a place for women to feel comfortable watching all sport

You can’t miss it, the giant “Crossbar” flanked by two stylised crosses in black on the whitewashed outside walls glares down the street, a stone’s throw from Brighton’s Churchill Square. Outside is the narrow shelf that the co-owner Lucy Tallant, the DIY enthusiast of the pair, attached to the wall for those wanting to hang around outside. As she worked on that shelf, two girls walked past and one proclaimed: “Yeah, they’re opening a lesbian club.” “A lesbian club?” replied the other, “Yeah, there’s one outside now.”

Lucy was in stitches, and so was social media when she posted about what she had overheard. The shelf has become a thing, with lesbians posing for photographs and then sharing online with versions of “there’s one outside now” as the caption.

Published: February 15, 2026, 8:00 am

US launches airstrikes on dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria

Militant group’s infrastructure and weapons storage facilities were hit, as Washington praised Damascus for fresh coalition role

The US military conducted 10 strikes on more than 30 Islamic State targets in Syria between 3 and 12 February as part of a campaign against the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement on Saturday that the US had struck IS infrastructure and weapons storage targets.

Published: February 14, 2026, 3:50 pm

New Zealand officials warn more flooding could hit north island as man killed after heavy rain

Worst weather forecast to hit late on Sunday, a day after floods caused power outages, road collapses and home evacuations

New Zealand’s weather bureau has warned more flooding could hit the country’s North Island, a day after floods caused power outages, road collapses, home evacuations and caused the death of a man whose vehicle was submerged on a highway.

There was “threat to life from dangerous river conditions, significant flooding and slips” as a deepening low-pressure system east of the North Island brought heavy rain and severe gales to several regions, the weather bureau said.

Published: February 15, 2026, 6:42 am

Police seal off road near Arizona home of Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s missing mother

Sheriff’s, FBI and forensics vehicles passed through roadblocks 2 miles from missing 84-year-old woman’s home

Law enforcement investigating the disappearance of Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, sealed off a road near her home in Arizona late Friday night.

A parade of sheriff’s and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock that was set up about 2 miles (3.2km) from the house.

Published: February 14, 2026, 1:57 pm

Democratic senators launch inquiry into EPA’s repeal of key air pollution enforcement measure

Senators said repeal was ‘particularly troubling’ and was counter to EPA’s mandate to protect human health

More than three dozen Democratic senators have begun an independent inquiry into the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) following a huge change in how the agency measures the health benefits of reducing air pollution that is widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.

In a regulatory impact analysis, the EPA said it would stop assigning a monetary value to the health benefits associated with regulations on fine particulate matter and ozone. The agency argued that the estimates contain too much uncertainty.

Published: February 14, 2026, 4:32 pm

Assailants kill at least 32 in north-west Nigerian villages, residents say

Residents who escaped violence tell of bandits riding in on motorbikes and shooting indiscriminately

Armed assailants on motorbikes killed at least 32 people and burned houses and shops during raids on three villages in north-west Nigeria’s Niger state early on Saturday, local officials and residents who escaped the violence said.

The dawn raids targeted the communities of Tunga-Makeri, Konkoso, and Pissa.

Published: February 15, 2026, 3:14 am

Gisèle Pelicot plans to meet ex-husband in prison for answers on other allegations

Pelicot says she wants to look Dominique Pelicot ‘straight in the eye’ over potential abuse of daughter and case of estate agent who was raped and murdered in 1991

Gisèle Pelicot has said she needs to visit prison to look her abusive ex-husband “straight in the eye” after his conviction for drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her in a case that shocked France and the rest of the world.

Pelicot, 73, said she needed “answers” from Dominique Pelicot over the potential abuse of their daughter and the case of an estate agent who was raped and murdered in 1991, which he is under investigation for.

Published: February 14, 2026, 11:12 am

‘It still rankles’: the French town living in the shadow of being an ayatollah’s refuge

Annual remembrance in Neauphle-le-Château revives memories of short exile that reshaped Iran, but which locals would rather forget

Every February, members of the Iranian diaspora descend on an abandoned plot of land in an unremarkable street in the French town of Neauphle-le-Château, a 90-minute drive west of Paris.

On the nominated Sunday, a marquee is hastily thrown up and framed photographs of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini hung on the canvas. Green baize is laid on the muddy garden path between posts painted with equal bands of green, white and red, the colours of the Islamic republic’s flag.

Published: February 14, 2026, 1:03 pm

US man who fled jail and pleaded to Trump and Kim Kardashian gets 60-year term

Antoine Massey was convicted on charges of rape and kidnapping before New Orleans jailbreak

A man who joined nine others in fleeing a New Orleans jail – then publicly pleaded for help from Donald Trump, a rapper whom the president pardoned and reality TV star Kim Kardashian while on the run – recently got a 60-year prison sentence for kidnapping and raping his ex-girlfriend.

Antoine Massey, 32, received his punishment on Thursday at a suburban New Orleans state courthouse, months after his jailbreak-related capture and subsequent conviction at trial of prior charges.

Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana contributed

Published: February 14, 2026, 11:00 am

Danish state could face legal action over deal that gives US powers on its soil

Claims that agreement is unconstitutional could pose problems in talks with Washington over Greenland

Denmark could face legal action over an agreement that gives the US sweeping powers on Danish soil, over claims it is “unconstitutional” and could pose problems in talks with Washington over Greenland.

The agreement, which was signed under the Biden administration in 2023 and was passed by the Danish parliament last year, gives the US “unhindered access” to its airbases and powers over its civilians.

Published: February 14, 2026, 12:00 pm

Tinsel to tidewall: discarded Christmas trees reused to protect Lancashire coastline

The trees morph into sand dunes to protect homes on the seafront against rising sea levels and serve as habitat for rare species

Britain’s fight against climate breakdown may usually look like windfarms or solar energy. But on miles of Lancashire coast the frontline is rather more festive.

Tens of thousands of discarded Christmas trees have been partially buried on beaches south of Blackpool as a frontier against rising sea levels.

Published: February 15, 2026, 10:00 am

US strikes second alleged drug boat in a week, bringing death toll to 133

Strike appears to be first in Caribbean since November, with vast majority of recent strikes happening in the Pacific

The US military’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said it had carried out its second deadly boat strike this week. The command said the latest strike killed three suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean on Friday.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the Southern Command said in a statement. The command included a video of the strike with its announcement, which shows a boat traveling through the water as it explodes into flames after being hit with what looks like a missile.

Published: February 14, 2026, 2:40 am

What is it about Minnesota that made it a target for Trump’s ICE crackdown?

The Democratic-leaning midwestern state where federal agents killed two citizens is in many ways anathema to the administration

Since the federal immigration surge began late last year, Minnesotans have offered varying theories for why their state was targeted by the Trump administration.

It’s a midwestern state that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, including the three times it voted against Donald Trump.

Published: February 14, 2026, 12:00 pm

More than 60 children infected in north London measles outbreak

Cases reported in seven schools and a nursery in Enfield amid concern over low levels of MMR vaccination in capital

More than 60 children have been infected by a measles outbreak in north London, it has been reported.

Seven schools and a nursery in Enfield reported the cases, with some children treated in hospital, according to the Sunday Times.

Published: February 14, 2026, 10:33 pm

Alleged cat burglar arrested after priceless Egyptian artefacts taken in Queensland museum heist

Man charged after 2,600-year-old cat sculpture, mummy mask and necklace stolen from Caboolture museum

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Queensland police have arrested a man accused of staging a brazen cat burglary of priceless Egyptian artefacts from a museum in Caboolture, north of Brisbane.

The man, 52, of no fixed address, was arrested on Russell Island in Moreton Bay on Saturday evening, after police allegedly found most of the stolen artefacts in a camper van parked at a ferry terminal.

Published: February 15, 2026, 6:12 am

Firm that went bust owing £650k to HMRC offers staff Las Vegas trip after being bought by ex-owner

Acquisition by Premier Group Recruitment boss Andrew Woosnam appears to be example of ‘phoenixism’

A recruitment business that went bust owing the tax authorities and other creditors almost £3m has promised to send its staff on an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas after being repurchased by its former owner for an initial £10,000.

Premier Group Recruitment went into administration in September with debts of £2.9m – including £647,000 owed to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), which had commenced enforcement proceedings against the company.

Published: February 15, 2026, 8:00 am

Chief mouser Palmerston dies after swapping Foreign Office for Bermuda

Social media account for Palmerston, who retired in 2020, announces death of ‘Diplocat extraordinaire’

Palmerston, a rescue cat who became the chief mouser of the Foreign Office, has died in Bermuda.

The cat, adopted from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, retired in 2020 after four years of service in Whitehall.

Published: February 14, 2026, 4:08 pm

‘There’s only one bed’, ‘fake dating’ and ‘opposites attract’: how tropes took over romance

They’re all over blurbs and social media, but do these bite-size labels lead to formulaic fiction? Plus the classics reimagined for a modern reader

Opposites attract. He falls first. Coffee shop. Forced proximity. Sports romance. University sports romance. Ivy League university sports romance! Best friend’s brother. Brother’s best friend. Slow burn. Age gap. Amnesia. Wounded hero. Single father. Single mother. Language barrier. The bodyguard. Fake dating. Marriage of convenience.

If this list means nothing to you, you’re not a romance reader. Tropes, as these bullet-point ideas have come to be known, have taken over romance. Those who write, market and read romantic fiction use them to pinpoint exactly what to expect before the first page is turned. On Instagram, Amazon and bookshop posters you’ll find covers annotated with arrows and faux-handwritten labels reading “slow-burn” or “home-town boy/new girl in town”. Turn over any romance title and they’ll be there listed in the blurb.

Published: February 14, 2026, 9:00 am

Animol review – gritty young offenders drama challenges conventional machismo

Institutional menace and an idealistic take on redemption sit side-by-side in Top Boy actor Ashley Walters’ empathic and occasionally over-earnest film

The lawless brutality of a young offender institution is the setting for this British movie written by Marching Powder’s Nick Love and directed by Ashley Walters. It’s a place where terrified newbies realise they can survive only by abandoning their innocence and decency, and submitting to the gang authority of a psycho top G, naturally involving a horrible loyalty test.

This is a place where drugs arrive by drone, where facially tattooed men meet each other’s gaze with a cool opaque challenge in the canteen, and where the cues and balls on the recreation area’s pool table have only one purpose: to give someone a three-month stay in the hospital wing while underpaid guards in lanyards and ill-fitting v-neck jumpers look the other way.

Published: February 14, 2026, 6:45 pm

‘Every role I do, I’m going to be a Black man first’: David Jonsson on winning Baftas, rebooting Alien and leaving TV’s hottest show

He went from being the east London boy who was expelled from school to becoming the Bafta award‑winning star of Alien: Romulus. Ahead of his prison drama Wasteman, David Jonsson discusses the pressures of being a leading Black British actor

David Jonsson is the kind of actor who disappears so completely into his roles that it’s easy to forget you’re watching the same person each time. In Rye Lane, he’s a lovestruck south Londoner; in Industry, an Etonian banker with ice in his veins; in Alien: Romulus, a paranoid android. He’s now starring as heroin addict Taylor in the ultraviolent British prison drama Wasteman and, for the first time, the 32-year-old actor claims he is playing something close to himself. “This is the most personal role I’ve done,” he says. “It’s so messed up because it’s a dark story about rehabilitation and addiction, but I know these men really well. Especially when you’re growing up somewhere like where I did.”

We meet on a Friday afternoon at a photo studio in Islington, closer to where Jonsson lives now in north London than to Custom House in the East End, where he grew up. He arrives wearing a beanie pulled tight over his cornrows and a windbreaker. He looks stylish but carries a delicate shyness that mirrors his character’s air of desperation. Wasteman, which opens this month after a critically acclaimed festival run that netted five British Independent Film awards (Bifa) nominations including best lead performance for Jonsson, tells the story of Taylor, a young father who has spent 13 years in prison for a crime he committed as a teenager. In the film’s unflinching depiction of the British prison system, he’s referred to as a “nitty” – UK slang for a desperate, pathetic drug addict. Jonsson lost 1.8 stone to embody Taylor’s “wasted” physique. “I was mawga, properly skinny,” he says, slipping into patois.

Published: February 15, 2026, 10:00 am

‘Stabbed in the Face soundtracked an incredibly joyous time’: the weirdest songs we find romantic

Declarations of undying affection, comparisons to a summer’s day? Who needs ‘em! Our writers recall the offbeat songs that capture their hearts

By Easter 2004, I’d been in a relationship with my partner, Maria, for four months and I was just realising how deeply in love I was. We had become inseparable. A magazine sent me to the ATP festival at Pontins in Camber Sands to interview “the Beastie Boys of noise”, Wolf Eyes. The interview fell to pieces when the band, in a state of great psychic refreshment, all wearing Manowar T-shirts, refused to stop watching a Manowar DVD and signalled they would only answer questions if they related to Manowar.

Published: February 14, 2026, 1:00 pm

I took up paddleboarding in my 60s. Now I feel calm in the water and strong on land

It was a wobbly start. But every time I haul my paddleboard out I feel my balance and confidence improving

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At 66, I don’t feel old but, according to my grandsons, I’m ancient. While I’m reasonably active and walk most days, articles about ageing well hit home. Walking isn’t sufficient. I should be doing something about my strength, balance and core. Five-minutes-a-day routines may work for some but I know that I’ll start with good intentions and soon give up. I’m not one for going to the gym and yoga has never been my thing.

The answer is in my boat shed. It’s a paddleboard I bought for fun a few years ago. I was a total beginner; a friend gave me a few lessons. Then several floods turned the Hawkesbury River, where I live, a foul brown and my board has been sitting in the boat shed, unused. Then winter got in the way.

Published: February 14, 2026, 7:00 pm

‘What do we want gardens to sound like?’ It began with a frog pond – then suburban rewilding became an obsession

Wild gardening is about shedding obsessions with tidiness, embracing a looser aesthetic and providing a home for ‘the most important creatures on the planet’

On a wintry January day in Manchester, I crossed University Green, navigating a paved path behind our hotel through lush patches of lawn. It was the start of the inaugural “Wilding Gardens” conference. For two days, scientists and practitioners were gathering to discuss new ways to think about gardens and nature, about what nature needs to thrive, and the untapped potential of gardens – if we step back and allow ecological processes to unfold – to help counter climate change and biodiversity loss.

Clumps of snowdrop flowers poked through the unmown grass and a grey squirrel streaked across it, from one bare-branched tree to another. Probably common alders, going by the University of Manchester Tree Trail. The world’s first industrial city seemed an apt venue for a talkfest on the urgency of rewilding suburban gardens to help save the planet from precisely what drew Marx and Engels there to study, 180 years ago: the impacts of industrialisation.

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Published: February 14, 2026, 7:00 pm

My cultural awakening: ‘Thirteen influenced my hedonistic youth, until a psychotic episode ended it’

My teenage self was shy and miserable, before a coming-of-age film unleashed an adolescence of drink, sex and drugs. It was a years-long party that eventually came crashing down

At 13, what felt like almost overnight, I turned from a happy, musical-theatre-loving child into a sad, lonely teenager. Things I had cared about only yesterday were suddenly irrelevant, as I realised that nothing and no one mattered, least of all me. It’s an angst that adults often find difficult to remember or understand; as the famous line from The Virgin Suicides goes: “Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.”

Going to an all-girls Catholic school, I didn’t even really know that sex, drugs and alcohol existed, or that they had currency, until I watched Thirteen for the first time at 14, after seeing a still on Pinterest. The reckless rebellion the two best friends portrayed was seductive to me, and within weeks of watching the film, I’d met some girls from the co-ed school opposite who were having sex, going to parties and taking drugs. Soon, I was doing it all too.

Published: February 14, 2026, 7:00 am

No swiping involved: the AI dating apps promising to find your soulmate

Agentic AI apps first interview you and then give you limited matches selected for ‘similarity and reciprocity of personality’

Dating apps exploit you, dating profiles lie to you, and sex is basically something old people used to do. You might as well consider it: can AI help you find love?

For a handful of tech entrepreneurs and a few brave Londoners, the answer is “maybe”.

Published: February 15, 2026, 7:00 am

‘Nothing says love like chemicals’: Valentine’s roses often covered in pesticides, testing finds

Bouquets imported to Europe found to be heavily contaminated, often with chemicals banned in EU and UK

Stay away from roses this Valentine’s Day, environmental campaigners have warned after testing revealed them to be heavily contaminated with pesticides.

Laboratory testing on bouquets in the Netherlands, Europe’s flower import hub, found roses had the highest residues of neurological and reproductive toxins compared with other flowers.

Published: February 14, 2026, 3:00 pm

The moment I knew: as soon as we parted I realised Hitomi was the one. I waited years to see her again

There was a language barrier, a mother who burned their letters and a record label manager who disapproved. But Kerry Cox was madly in love

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In my early 20s I quit my job in New Zealand and moved to Sydney to study martial arts. In 1982, after competing in the World Pugilist championships in Hong Kong, I hitchhiked around Japan for a month or so, then headed for Korea via ferry in January 1983. I’d heard air fares were cheap from Korea. No internet back then!

While boarding, I was approached by a very attractive Japanese woman, with limited English, who told me that if I bought one box of bananas and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black label, I could pay for most of my trip in Korea. These items were very much in demand back then.

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Published: February 14, 2026, 7:00 pm

Blind date: ‘My friends would adore her. She is a cupcake in a world of muffins’

Sabah, 38, a publicity director, meets David, 36, a PhD candidate

What were you hoping for?
In an ideal world, my last first date. Failing that, an entertaining voice note for my pals.

Published: February 14, 2026, 6:00 am

‘My husband burned down our house – then the bank threatened repossession’

A family struggled to rebuild their lives after an abusive marriage ended in tragedy and financial ruin

Family life ended for Francesca Onody on a late summer evening in 2022 when her abusive husband doused their cottage with petrol as police arrived to arrest him. She and her children escaped seconds before the building exploded. Her husband Malcolm Baker died in the blaze.

That night, Onody lost her husband, her home, her pets and her possessions.

Published: February 14, 2026, 7:00 am

Tim Dowling: I could look out the window all day – so why bother having curtains?

As a dedicated observer of things happening right outside my house, I can testify that that big puddle has been there for three months

I’ve never needed to be convinced of the cognitive benefits of looking out the window. I would do it all day if I thought people couldn’t see me.

I’m currently staring out of our front window, arms folded, at the large puddle running along the road’s edge outside our house.

Published: February 14, 2026, 6:00 am

Will pancake day be a success? It’s a bit of toss up: the Becky Barnicoat cartoon

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Published: February 14, 2026, 6:00 am

A rare chronicle of war, survival and devastation in Darfur – in pictures

Few outsiders, if any, have ventured more widely into the centre of Sudan’s brutal civil war than Jérôme Tubiana. The French humanitarian has been granted unprecedented access to travel throughout the western region of Darfur to document the heart of a conflict that has created the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. His powerful images offer insights into a gruelling war that shows no sign of abating, but where hope endures that one day the killing might stop

Published: February 15, 2026, 7:00 am