Long Covid is still here. I know – my life came to a stop because of it

With more than 200 possible symptoms, long Covid isn’t easy to treat and diagnose. Rolled-back federal funding has led longhaulers to ask: is this all in my head?

I am 30ft below the surface of the Blue Grotto, a crystalline diving hole in central Florida. Between the water’s embrace and the restriction of my wetsuit, my blood pressure finally stabilizes. The long, deep breaths I pull from my respirator keep my heart rate nice and low.

I feel lighter than I have since April 2022, when I first contracted long Covid. I feel childlike at the fact that I can do this at all – get scuba certified – when on land I’m often confined to a wheelchair or a walker.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

China’s dancing robots: how worried should we be?

Eye-catching martial arts performance at China gala had viewers and experts wondering what else humanoids can do

Dancing humanoid robots took centre stage on Monday during the annual China Media Group’s Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched official television broadcast. They lunged and backflipped (landing on their knees), they spun around and jumped. Not one fell over.

The display was impressive, but prompted some to wonder: if robots can now dance and perform martial arts, what else can they do?

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:19 am

The bogus four-day workweek that AI supposedly ‘frees up’

Business leaders tout AI as a path to shorter weeks and better balance. But without power, workers are unlikely to share the gains

The front-page headline in a recent Washington Post was breathless: “These companies say AI is key to their four-day workweeks.” The subhead was euphoric: “Some companies are giving workers back more time as artificial intelligence takes over more tasks.”

As the Post explained: “more companies may move toward a shortened workweek, several executives and researchers predict, as workers, especially those in younger generations, continue to push for better work-life balance.”

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘The whole spirit of curling is dead’: meltdown on the ice as ruckus rumbles on

Row between Sweden and Canada over accusation of double-touch continues to cast shadow over Winter Games

Well hell’s bells, who knew the ice could get so hot? The Olympic curling community is still all in a twist about everything that’s gone on in the sport since a row broke out between the Sweden and Canada sides on Friday. “The whole spirit of curling is dead,” Canada’s Marc Kennedy said on Monday night after his team’s 8-2 victory against Czech Republic, which felt like a bold take coming from the man who started this entire farrago by repeatedly telling his Swedish opponent Oskar Eriksson to “fuck off” after Eriksson accused him of making an illegal double‑touch.

On Tuesday, the Canadians were outplaying the British. They beat them handily, 9-5, which means Bruce Mouat’s team have to beat the USA team and hope other results go their way if they’re going to make the semi-finals.

Published: February 17, 2026, 10:15 pm

A moment that changed me: my parents sold my childhood home – and my creeping panic came to an end

It felt scary not to have ‘home’ to go back to. But it was also the start of something new: an experiment in multigenerational living and building a house with zero experience

Weekend breakfasts have always been big in our house. Usually a cereal course followed by a full English. It’s the execution that makes it special for me – the colourful tablecloth, the mix of bread and toast (so you can fold over a slice of your choice to make a mini bacon sandwich), the teapot, the ginger biscuits you dunk into your tea for “afters”.

When I’d visit home in Yorkshire from London, where I lived for 20 years, I treasured these breakfast moments, sitting around the table with Mum and Dad and enjoying the well-oiled ritual in the suburban three-bed semi where I’d grown up.

Published: February 18, 2026, 6:45 am

Without US military support, we need a European defence union. Here’s what that looks like | Paul Taylor

The fledgling ‘coalition of the willing’ assembled for Ukraine could form the basis for an urgent European security response

After a year of Donald Trump’s second term and two Munich Security Conferences, we now know that Europe will have to defend itself in future with less US support; probably with much less US support; and possibly – gulp – with no US support at all.

European leaders recognise that they need to reduce overdependence on the US. Yet many, including Keir Starmer and to an extent Friedrich Merz, are still clinging to the wreckage of the transatlantic relationship. They do so in hope, rather than certainty, that the US will come to Europe’s aid if Russia attacks Nato territory. Who truly believes that Trump, who prefers one-day displays of US power, would commit US forces to an open-ended war in Europe – with potential nuclear risks – if Vladimir Putin suddenly grabbed a Russian-speaking border town in Estonia, or the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard?

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

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:00 am

Environmental groups sue Trump’s EPA over repeal of landmark climate finding

Lawsuit from health and environmental justice groups challenges the EPA’s rollback of the ‘endangerment finding’

More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.

Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:10 pm

US lawmakers demand accountability for Palestinian-American teen detained in Israel

Exclusive: 15 Congress members write to Marco Rubio about nine-month detention of Mohammed Ibrahim

Fifteen members of Congress have written to Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, demanding to know what steps the United States has taken in response to the mistreatment of a Palestinian-American teenager who spent nine months in Israeli detention.

The letter, led by Senator Peter Welch and first seen by the Guardian, is centered around the case of Mohammed Ibrahim, a Florida resident who was 15 when Israeli soldiers arrested him during a raid on his family’s West Bank home in February 2025. He was charged with throwing objects at moving vehicles before being released on 27 November following a guilty plea and suspended sentence, and was taken directly to hospital upon his return.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

Judge declares mistrial in Texas ‘antifa’ protest case over attorney’s T-shirt

Lawyer for defendants accused of terrorism at ICE protest decried by Trump appointee over shirt’s potential for ‘bias’

A federal judge in Texas declared a mistrial on Tuesday after a defense lawyer wore a shirt in court with images from the civil rights movement, delaying a closely watched case in which the Trump administration is accusing a group of protesters of being terrorists and says they are part of a “North-Texas antifa cell”.

US district judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of Donald Trump, declared a mistrial only hours after jury selection began at the federal courthouse in downtown Fort Worth. He abruptly halted the proceedings after MarQuetta Clayton, an attorney for one of the defendants, had been questioning potential jurors for about 20 minutes, taking issue with a shirt she was wearing underneath a black blazer. The shirt contained images of civil rights movement leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr and Shirley Chisholm, as well as images of protests from that time.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:29 am

Excruciating tropical disease can now be transmitted in most of Europe, study finds

‘Shocking’ data shows the climate crisis and invasive mosquitos mean chikungunya could spread in 29 countries

An excruciatingly painful tropical disease called chikungunya can now be transmitted by mosquitoes across most of Europe, a study has found.

Higher temperatures due to the climate crisis mean infections are now possible for more than six months of the year in Spain, Greece and other southern European countries, and for two months a year in south-east England. Continuing global heating means it is only a matter of time before the disease expands further northwards, the scientists said.

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:00 am

Epstein files suggest acts that may amount to crimes against humanity, say UN experts

Independent experts appointed by human rights council speak of ‘grave’ nature regarding scale of atrocities against women and girls

Millions of files related to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein suggest the existence of a “global criminal enterprise” that carried out acts meeting the legal threshold of crimes against humanity, a panel of independent experts appointed by the United Nations human rights council has said.

The experts said crimes outlined in documents released by the US justice department were committed against a backdrop of supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption and extreme misogyny. The crimes, they said, showed a commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:36 am

FBI and Minnesota police investigate ICE arrest that left man with broken skull

Alberto Castañeda Mondragón was hospitalized with eight skull fractures after being arrested by ICE agents in January

Minnesota and federal authorities are investigating the alleged beating of a Mexican citizen by immigration officers last month, seeking to identify what caused the eight skull fractures that landed the man in the intensive care unit of a Minneapolis hospital.

Investigators from the St Paul police department and FBI last week canvassed the shopping center parking lot where Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents wrested him from a vehicle, threw him to the ground and repeatedly struck him in the head with a steel baton.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:49 pm

CBS accused of ‘corporate capitulation’ amid row over Colbert interview with Democrat – US politics live

Stephen Colbert said the network told him not to air an interview with a Texas Democrat running for Senate

More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.

Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:48 pm

Zelenskyy says no agreement on key issues in peace talks as he accuses Russia of ‘dragging out negotiations’ – Europe live

Unresolved ‘sensitive’ issues in peace talks are fate of occupied territories in east Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

The peace talks ended abruptly today after about two hours, according to reports, in contrast with yesterday’s negotiations that apparently took place over six hours.

Neither side have offered any public sign of progress, but instead said the talks were “difficult” with Russian news agencies quoting sources describing the negotiations as “very tense”.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:14 pm

Winter Olympics 2026: Klæbo wins fifth gold of Games; women’s slalom, curling and more – live

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

• Follow us over on Bluesky | And you can email Yara

Women’s aerials: the qualifying rounds of accelerating down a ramp and flying through the air. Hanna Huskova, gold medallist in 2018, does a triple somersault, or the “the kiss arse blaster” in the commentator’s words, but it is only enough to leave her seventh.

Women’s curling: Back to the brushes, where Rebecca Morrison posts the final stone of the sixth end into perfect position, Team GB take two and go into a 4-3 lead against the USA with four ends left.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:24 pm

Trump news at a glance: Hillary Clinton urges Trump administration to release millions of withheld Epstein files

‘We have nothing to hide,’ former secretary of state says ahead of her and Bill Clinton’s depositions next week – key US politics stories from Tuesday 17 February

Hillary Clinton has accused the Trump administration of a “cover-up” over the Epstein files, while claiming that she and her husband are being forced to testify before Congress to deflect scrutiny from Donald Trump.

In an interview with the BBC, Clinton said the US Department of Justice was “slow-walking” the release of documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein’s catalogue of crimes and urged the administration to “get the files out”. Despite periodic document dumps of the files since Congress mandated their release late last year, the justice department is still withholding about 3m files.

Published: February 18, 2026, 2:00 am

Trump officials sued over effort to ‘erase history and science’ in national parks

National Park Service also sued for removing rainbow Pride flag from Stonewall national monument in New York

Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from America’s national parks.

A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by Donald Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant US history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.

Published: February 18, 2026, 2:13 am

US says 11 people killed in latest strikes on alleged drug boats

Three boats targeted in eastern Pacific and Caribbean as Trump continues pursuit of alleged ‘narco-terrorists’

US military officials have said American forces launched assaults on three alleged drug-smuggling boats, killing 11 in one of the deadliest days of the Trump administration’s months-long campaign against alleged traffickers.

The military action on Monday brought the number of fatalities caused by US strikes to 145 since September, when Donald Trump called on American armed forces to attack people deemed “narco-terrorists” on small vessels. There have been 42 known strikes in notorious drug-trafficking routes such as the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, according to the Associated Press reported.

Published: February 17, 2026, 9:54 pm

Top DHS spokesperson to exit role amid growing outrage over Trump’s ICE raids

Tricia McLaughlin is leaving the Department of Homeland Security in the coming week, the agency confirmed

Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s top spokesperson and one of the most visible defenders of the Trump administration’s deportation raids, is leaving the agency in the coming week, the department confirmed.

McLaughlin’s impending exit comes at one of the most fraught moments in the department’s history. Public support for the administration’s immigration enforcement push has fallen to its lowest point since Trump took office, after a series of violent confrontations in US cities and the fatal shootings of two US citizens – Alex Pretti and Renee Good – by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.

Published: February 17, 2026, 5:50 pm

Conservative Georgia town pushes back against ICE detention center: ‘We are Americans after all’

Social Circle, a mostly Maga town, builds strange bedfellow coalition against plans to convert warehouse

On a recent morning Eric Taylor, city manager for a small Georgia town of about 5,000 residents called Social Circle, was contacted by a staffer from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“They asked me to turn on the water,” he said of a 1m sq ft warehouse nearby that the federal government recently purchased for $128m, with plans to use it for locking up as many as 10,000 detainees as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:00 pm

Credit cards cancelled, Google accounts closed: ICC judges on life under Trump sanctions

Kimberly Prost and Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza vow US reprisals will not affect work of international criminal court

When the Canadian Kimberly Prost learned Donald Trump’s administration had imposed sanctions on her, it came as a shock.

For years, she has sat as a judge at the international criminal court, weighing accusations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity; now she is on the same list as terrorists and those involved in organised crime. “It really was a moment of a bit of disbelief,” she said.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

Dust review – timely fictionalisation of a tech-bro dotcom bust that blighted rural Belgium

The drama about two startup innovators defeated by their egotistical overreach feels as if it presages these AI times

The crisis facing a couple of middle-aged Belgian tech bros in the 1990s might be better suited to a European streaming-TV drama – maybe with the two antiheroes’ travails confined to the first episode, setting up a lengthier intergenerational drama taking us to the present. Nonetheless, here it is: a feature film in the Berlin competition from screenwriter Angelo Tijssens and director Anke Blondé, handsomely produced and shot, and impeccably acted. But it’s also weirdly parochial, leaving you with the sense that it has not reached beyond its immediate concerns; and it’s not clear as to why, exactly, we need a fictionalised crisis from the 90s inspired by a real-life financial fraud scandal.

Well, perhaps the point is that very smallness and sadness: a pathetic tale of the first, almost-forgotten dotcom bust, which holds an omen for our AI-obsessed present. Arieh Worthalter and Jan Hammenecker play Geert and Luc, two balding guys who, in the late 90s, are Belgium’s pinup boys of tech innovation. Their startup company has gone public and made them both very rich, and all their local friends, family and businesses have plunged every cent of their savings into shares. Geert and Luc are now poised to turn the mud of Flanders into a European Silicon Valley.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:49 pm

​T​he ​Winter Olympics ​feel like a 90s ​snowboarding ​game​, and I’m here for it

Milano Cortina​ has cutting‑edge replays, chase‑cam drones and exuberant commentary ​bringing a wave of unexpected nostalgia for anyone who grew up on 90s extreme‑sports games

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As someone whose childhood holidays consisted of narrowboating along the Grand Union canal or wandering the harbour-side at Whitby looking for vampires, I have never been on a skiing break. The idea of plummeting down a hill on anything but a plastic sledge is totally alien to me. And yet, my wife and I have been gripped by the Winter Olympics, especially the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events. And I think I know why. Those events are really channelling the look and feel of the wintery sports sims I’ve always loved – especially those that arrived during a golden period in the mid-1990s.

This was the era in which snowboarding was exploding in popularity, especially among twentysomethings with disposable incomes and no responsibilities – which coincidentally was the games industry’s target market at the time. Perhaps the first title to take advantage of this trend was Namco’s 1996 arcade game Alpine Surfer, which challenged players to stand on a snowboard-shaped controller and swoop as quickly as possible down a mountainside – it was one of the most physically exhausting coin-ops I ever played. Later that year came the self-consciously hip PlayStation sim Cool Boarders, and then in 1998, my absolute favourite, 1080° Snowboarding on the N64, with it’s intuitive analog controls and incredibly authentic sound effects of boards cutting through deep, crisp snow.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:40 pm

The death of Heather Preen: how an eight-year-old lost her life amid sewage crisis

In 1999, Heather Preen contracted E coli on a Devon beach. Two weeks later she died. Now, as a new Channel 4 show dramatises the scandal, her mother, Julie Maughan, explains why she is still looking for someone to take responsibility

When Julie Maughan was invited to help with a factual drama that would focus on the illegal dumping of raw sewage by water companies, she had to think hard. In some ways, it felt 25 years too late. In 1999, Maughan’s eight-year-old daughter, Heather Preen, had contracted the pathogen E coli O157 on a Devon beach and died within a fortnight. Maughan’s marriage hadn’t survived the grief – she separated from Heather’s father, Mark Preen, a builder, who later took his own life. “I’ve always said it was like a bomb had gone off under our family,” says Maughan. “This little girl, just playing, doing her nutty stuff on an English beach. And that was the price.” Yet there had been no outrage, few questions raised and no clear answers. “Why weren’t people looking into this? It felt as if Heather didn’t matter. Over time, it felt as if she’d been forgotten.” All these years later, Maughan wasn’t sure if she could revisit it. “I didn’t know if I could go back into that world,” she says. “But I’m glad I have.”

The result, Dirty Business, a three-part Channel 4 factual drama, is aiming to spark the same anger over pollution that ITV’s Mr Bates Vs the Post Office did for the Horizon scandal. Jumping between timelines, using actors as well as “real people” and with actual footage of scummy rivers and beaches dotted with toilet paper, sanitary towels and dead fish, it shows how raw sewage dumps have become standard policy for England’s water companies. Jason Watkins and David Thewlis play “sewage sleuths” Peter Hammond and Ash Smith, Cotswolds neighbours who, over time, watched their local river turn from clear and teeming with nature to dense grey and devoid of life. Hammond is a retired professor of computational biology, Smith a retired detective, and together, they used hidden cameras, freedom of information requests and AI models to uncover sewage dumps on an industrial scale.

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:00 am

US sanctions, power cuts, climate crisis: why Cuba is betting on renewables

With Trump blocking Venezuelan oil imports and old power plants breaking down, the island – with Chinese help – is turning to solar and wind to bolster its fragile energy system

Intense heat hangs over the sugarcane fields near Cuba’s eastern coast. In the village of Herradura, a blond-maned horse rests under a palm tree after spending all Saturday in the fields with its owner, Roberto, who cultivates maize and beans.

Roberto was among those worst affected by Hurricane Melissa, which hit eastern Cuba – the country’s poorest region – late last year. The storm affected 3.5 million people, damaging or destroying 90,000 homes and 100,000 hectares of crops.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘He couldn’t be happier’: celebrating William Eggleston’s incredible photography

A new exhibition brings together new dye-transfer prints of the classically American photographer’s work

As a small child, Winston Eggleston was only vaguely aware that his father, William Eggleston, was a famous photographer. For all he knew other children also had parents who were friends with Dennis Hopper, or who spent hours tinkering on a piano between occasional, fevered photography sprees, or who had taken the world’s most iconic picture of a red ceiling.

“It’s all normal to you, because you don’t know anything different,” Winston recently recalled. “Looking back, I was lucky.”

Published: February 18, 2026, 10:03 am

Smoking guns and swamp creatures: America’s fringes – in pictures

Guided by instinct, Curran Hatleberg travels the US looking for images that tell their own short stories – from a boat full of dead alligators to teenagers diving 40ft off a bridge

Published: February 18, 2026, 7:00 am

‘Populism’: we used to know what it meant. Now the defining word of our era has lost its meaning | Oliver Eagleton

In the 2010s it described an insurgent rhetorical style; in the 2020s it is inadequate to account for the wildly diverging fates of the left and right

“Populism” may well have been the defining word of the previous decade: a shorthand for the insurgent parties that came to prominence in the 2010s, challenging the dominance of the liberal centre. But no sooner had it become the main rubric for discussing both the far left and far right than commentators began to question its validity: worrying that it was too vague, or too pejorative, or fuelling the forces to which it referred.

Now, with the fortunes of the two political poles heading in different directions – the right gaining ground across the west while much of the left struggles to rebound from serial defeats – the notion that this word could encompass such different players seems even less plausible. For a lucid account of these forces, we might have to shift our focus elsewhere: finding terms that can explain their unequal balance of power, so that we can in turn find the proper remedy.

Oliver Eagleton is managing editor at Phenomenal World

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:00 am

‘A cry of pain from every player’: the new reality of Ukraine’s musicians

As the war enters its fifth terrible year, Ukrainian musicians continue to fight for freedom with music-making that is urgent and vital

It starts with a literal scream, a cry of pain from every player in the orchestra. The Ukrainian composer Anna Korsun’s piece Terricone is one of the most shattering creative acts of the war that began four years ago this month. Korsun was born in Donbas, where terricones, the slag heaps of the mining industry, bear witness to the way humankind has always reshaped the landscape. Her composition was premiered by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and its then chief conductor, the Ukrainian Kirill Karabits, at the start of 2023 – when news of the invasion brought worldwide shock and horror.

I’ll never forget being in Poole for that performance, as the vividness of it brought the fear and desolation of the emotional landscapes of the war to the audience. The Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski – a vocal critic of Putin’s regime – brought the powerful piece to London last month, as part of a bold Ukrainian/Russian programme with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:19 pm

Jesse Jackson shifted Black politics from the margins of the Democratic party to its center

The civil rights icon, who died on Tuesday, used his progressivism as rebellion

By the early 1980s, the Democratic party was facing a crossroads. The 1980 landslide election of Ronald Reagan, who clinched the presidency with a whopping 489 electoral college votes against Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, swiftly pulled the Democratic party to the right in the political and cultural wave of the “Reagan Revolution”.

For those Democratic constituents left behind, however, a challenge was mounting, mostly within US industrial cities whose economies were ransacked by Reagan’s “trickle-down” economics. Record tax cuts for the wealthy had come at the expense of a contracted social safety net, thus exacerbating inequality and collapsing much of the working class into the poor. Grassroots resistance campaigns spawned across the country in response to this dire urban crisis that had disproportionately devastated African Americans, and between 1982 and 1984 they had registered 2 million new Black voters – the largest gain in registered Black voters since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Published: February 17, 2026, 1:50 pm

‘Loaded water' is hyped as a secret to hydration. But adding electrolytes is merely effort down the drain | Antiviral

The average person does not need to be adding anything to their water

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Attitudes towards hydration have become another faultline in the generational divide: while the giant “emotional support” water bottle is ubiquitous among gen Z, those of the writer Ian McEwan’s vintage find the modern obsession with hydration “deranged”. McEwan and his ilk will be even more perplexed then that even those guzzling from their Stanley Cups throughout the day are being told they are still not sufficiently hydrating themselves.

Influencers are telling their followers they “don’t understand what hydration is” if they’re not adding electrolytes such as sodium and chloride (salt) as well as magnesium and potassium to their water to help their cells “hold on to and use” it. Often spruiking the sachets wellness companies are selling, they claim these fancy salt formulations are essential to avoiding migraines and muscle cramps, anxiety and mood swings. Some TikTokers are adding sachets alongside other ingredients such as coloured ice cubes, edible glitter and fruit into the aforementioned massive cup in a trend known as “loaded water”.

Published: February 17, 2026, 8:20 pm

I tried the latest sleep trick – and my husband and I were up all night | Polly Hudson

Cognitive shuffling is apparently the remedy for a spinning mind at 3am. But it made me question all my choices

A doctor has gone viral – which sounds like the beginning of a dad joke, but isn’t – with a hack for getting back to sleep if you wake at 3am. Cognitive shuffling is apparently the remedy for a spinning mind in the middle of the night. “Work, money, kids, planning, scheduling, problem solving. Your brain is too active to let you sleep – in fact the stress of all these thoughts tells the brain that it’s not safe to sleep, you have to stay on high alert,” says Bradford GP Amir Khan.

Cognitive shuffling interrupts this process, and invites your brain to go into sleep mode. Khan says to do it, choose a random word – like “bed”, or “dream” – then think of objects starting with each letter of it, while picturing them in your head. “Bed begins with b, so maybe bat, binoculars, baseball, banana,” he adds, helpfully, “Once I’ve exhausted the letter b I move on to e – emu, elephant, eyes. And so on.”

Published: February 18, 2026, 11:00 am

King Klæbo seals his 10th Winter Olympics gold as Norway win team sprint

• Norwegian claims his fifth gold medal at Milano Cortina

• USA have to settle for silver in cross-country battle

Johannes Høsflot Klæbo led Norway to victory in the men’s cross-country team sprint on Wednesday to claim his fifth win at Milano Cortina Olympics – and a record 10th Winter Olympic gold medal.

Alongside Einar Hedegart in the final, the Norway duo saw off the United States, clocking 18 minutes, 28.9 seconds. Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher were 1.4 seconds behind for the silver, while Italy’s Elia Barp and Federico Pellegrino took bronze, 3.3 seconds back.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:22 pm

Japanese teenager Ami Nakai overshadows USA’s Blade Angels in women’s figure skating opener

Japan’s skaters stole the spotlight as the Americans largely struggled in their attempts to end a two-decade medal drought

Japanese teenager Ami Nakai was the surprise leader after the short program of the Olympic women’s figure skating competition on a night when her country’s skaters largely stole the spotlight from Team USA’s Blade Angels in their bid to end America’s two-decade medal drought.

Nakai delivered a clean, commanding skate on Tuesday, highlighted by a soaring triple axel for a personal-best score of 78.71, edging three-time world champion Kaori Sakamoto (77.23) into second. Only Alysa Liu of the United States was able to break the Japanese hold on the top spots, scoring 76.59 to come in ahead of fourth-placed Mone Choba (74.00).

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:01 am

From cursing curlers to comeback: is Canada on the turnaround after slow Olympic start?

The Canadians began the Milano Cortina Games with a cheating scandal and a gold drought. In the second week of action, it’s woe Canada no more

Through the first 10 days of the Olympics, Canada had more memes than medals. More gaffes than golds. More “oh no” than “O Canada.”

Canada didn’t win their first gold medal of the Games until the ninth day of full competition. Meanwhile, the narrative centered on the Great Curling Kerfuffle of 2026 and its accompanying viral online content.

Published: February 18, 2026, 10:00 am

Mourinho accused of gaslighting for response to Vinícius’s allegations of racism

• Benfica manager strongly criticised by Kick It Out

• Uefa investigating Real Madrid’s players claims

The anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out has accused José Mourinho of gaslighting for his response to Vinícius Júnior’s allegations of racist abuse.

Vinícius reported that he was racially abused by Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni during Real Madrid’s Champions League playoff first leg. On Wednesday Uefa said it would “investigate allegations of discriminatory behaviour”.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:58 pm

MLS’s calendar flip is coming. Clubs are already planning how to exploit it

Starting next year, MLS will align itself with big European leagues and become a summer-to-spring operation. Executives see the change as an opportunity

Few constants have endured from MLS’s 1996 debut to now. It’s still an operational soccer league, for one thing. There’s the name itself, although its initial logo was shelved in 2015 for its current shield-and-kickstand. Eight of the 10 teams that launched the league remain involved, though each one has changed their name, crest, or both over time.

Another rare constant will soon fade into the rearview: the league’s schedule. MLS has run spring-to-fall/winter since its launch, more specifically from late February to early December in recent years. Preseason kicks off at the start of each new year, three weeks or so after the previous season’s championship bout. It’s a pretty well-ironed routine, even as ancillary competitions like the Leagues Cup and Club World Cup shuffle the middle bits each year.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

Ukraine officials to boycott Winter Paralympics opening ceremony over Russian athletes

• Six Russians and four Belarusians set for Milano Cortina

• All athletes will compete under their nation’s flags

Ukraine’s sports minister has condemned the decision to allow six Russians and four Belarusians to compete under their nation’s flags at next month’s Winter Paralympics as “disappointing and outrageous” and said Ukraine officials will not attend the opening ceremony or other official events as a result.

“The flags of Russia and Belarus have no place at international sporting events that stand for fairness, integrity, and respect,” said Matvii Bidnyi in response to the International Paralympic Committee’s decision on Monday. “These are the flags of regimes that have turned sport into a tool of war, lies and contempt. In Russia, Paralympic sport has been made a pillar for those whom Putin sent to Ukraine to kill – and who returned from Ukraine with injuries and disabilities,” he added.

Published: February 18, 2026, 12:23 pm

Back to the future: a vintage look at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics – in pictures

Paying homage to 1956, when Cortina previously hosted the Winter Olympics, a trio of Getty Images photographers have been using vintage Graflex cameras at the 2026 Games. In a modern twist, they have been adapted to record images on smartphones, enabling live transmission of the content captured

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:00 am

Tiger Woods weighs offer to captain 2027 US Ryder Cup team

• ‘I’m trying to figure out if I can actually do this’

• Woods says he could play in this year’s Masters

Tiger Woods has confirmed he has been asked to captain the USA team at the Ryder Cup next year. Woods, who has not played competitively since the 2024 Open Championship, has also somewhat remarkably left the door open to teeing up in the Masters this year.

With the USA still reeling from defeat by Europe at Bethpage in September, thoughts have turned towards attempts to reclaim the Ryder Cup in Ireland. Woods is the PGA of America’s first choice as captain. The 50-year-old will determine whether he believes he can commit sufficiently to the role.

Published: February 17, 2026, 7:50 pm

Lindsey Vonn back in US for treatment but ‘not yet able to stand’ after Olympic crash

• American fractured tibia in downhill last week

• Vonn was initially treated in Italy for injuries

Lindsey Vonn is back home in the US to continue treatment after she broke her leg during the Winter Olympic downhill.

“Haven’t stood on my feet in over a week… been in a hospital bed immobile since my race. And although I’m not yet able to stand, being back on home soil feels amazing,” Vonn posted on X with an American flag emoji. “Huge thank you to everyone in Italy for taking good care of me.”

Published: February 17, 2026, 1:41 pm

Elana Meyers Taylor’s victory in her fifth Olympics was about far more than gold

The American won her first Winter Games title at 41. She did so while advocating for Black athletes, mothers and the deaf and Down’s syndrome communities

Elana Meyers Taylor had already cemented her place in Olympic history long before Monday night. She had competed with and against men on the World Cup tour and at the world championships to help force women’s monobob into the Winter Olympic program. She had surpassed the speed skater Shani Davis as the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history. She had stacked more Olympic medals than any female bobsledder ever, reaching the podium at Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing.

But even at the age of 41, with a bad back and a concussion history, even with the added responsibility and time pressures of motherhood, even after five visits to an Olympic podium that would have been enough for a different athlete to call it a day, she had never let go of her dream of standing alone on the top step.

Published: February 17, 2026, 1:12 pm

LA mayor calls for Casey Wasserman to step down as Olympics chair over Epstein ties

• LA 2028 committee voted last week to keep Wasserman

• Emails with Ghislaine Maxwell were revealed in files

Pressure is building on Casey Wasserman, the head of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing team, after the city’s mayor urged him to leave over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend.

LA mayor Karen Bass told CNN late on Monday that “my opinion is that he should step down” despite Wasserman getting support last week from the LA 2028 organizing board to stay.

Published: February 17, 2026, 3:11 pm

‘Different but the same’: how Arsenal are keeping disabled fans in the game

In tandem with Game Day Vision, the Premier League club are improving the matchday experience for supporters with a variety of conditions

Thomas Clements’ eyes begin dancing as he recalls in vivid detail his first trip to Highbury. It was 1995 and Ian Wright was among the scorers as QPR were defeated. Clements – named after Mickey Thomas, scorer of Arsenal’s decisive second goal against Liverpool in their 1989 title win – points to his dad, Kevin, standing a metre away. “I was sat on his shoulders in the North Bank,” he says.

That is, in itself, not unusual for a child of the 1980s. However, whereas most regular match-goers might take for granted the seemingly small things – travel arrangements, the journey to the stadium, grabbing food and drink, meeting friends and family, entering and exiting the ground – for disabled supporters such as Clements, careful thought and planning go into all arrangements.

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:00 am

Nazi letters reveal paper restorers’ role in compiling Holocaust ‘hitlist’

Exclusive: Research uncovers programme to make centuries-old records legible to detect people’s ancestry

Large numbers of paper restorers and bookbinders were recruited by the Nazis and “contributed directly to genocide” during the second world war, according to research.

A British historian has uncovered a Europe-wide programme in the 1930s and 1940s in which restorers repaired and cleaned historic church and civil records, making them legible so that the Nazis could detect anyone with Jewish ancestry.

Published: February 18, 2026, 11:23 am

Six skiers found but 10 still missing after avalanche in California

Group was skiing in snow-hit Sierra Nevadas, while winter storm brings heavy rain and floods to other parts of state

Six skiers have been found after a group of 16 went missing this morning as heavy snowfall blanketed California, prompting avalanche warnings in the Sierra Nevada mountains, closing coastal roads and causing flooding in Los Angeles.

The 10 remaining skiers are still missing, according to the sheriff’s office in Nevada county, California. The group was in the Castle Peak area, where an avalanche was reported around 11.30am. According to the sheriff’s office, the group consisted of four ski guides and 12 clients.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:55 am

Obama, Trump and Biden lead tributes to Jesse Jackson: ‘one of America’s greatest patriots’

Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Al Sharpton, Donald Trump and more react to death of the civil rights leader at the age of 84

• Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader, dies aged 84

• Jesse Jackson – a life in pictures

• Share your tributes and memories of Jesse Jackson

Three Democratic former presidents led a wealth of tributes to Jesse Jackson, a “titan” of the civil rights movement and “one of America’s greatest patriots” who has died at the age of 84.

Joe Biden said history would remember Jackson as “a man of God and of the people”, calling him in a social media post : “Determined and tenacious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our Nation.”

Published: February 17, 2026, 8:33 pm

Parliamentary aide among 11 arrested over killing of French far-right activist

Assistant to hard-left parliamentarian among those held over fatal attack on 23-year-old Quentin Deranque

• Europe live – latest updates

Eleven suspects, including a parliamentary aide to France’s hard-left party, have been arrested in connection with the killing last week of a far-right activist in an incident that has shocked the country and laid bare its deep political divisions.

Quentin Deranque, 23, died on Saturday after sustaining a severe brain injury. The Lyon prosecutor, Thierry Dran, said he had been “thrown to the ground and beaten by at least six individuals” during an incident last week.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:09 pm

Tech billionaires fly in for Delhi AI expo as Modi jostles to lead in south

Google, Anthropic and OpenAI bosses to mingle with global south leaders wrestling for control over technology

Silicon Valley tech billionaires will land in Delhi this week for an AI summit hosted by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, where leaders of the global south will wrestle for control over the fast-developing technology.

During the week-long AI Impact Summit, attended by thousands of tech executives, government officials and AI safety experts, tech companies valued at trillions of dollars will rub along with leaders of countries such as Kenya and Indonesia, where average wages dip well below $1,000 a month.

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:00 am

Hazardous substances found in all headphones tested by ToxFREE project

Substances include chemicals that can cause cancer, neurodevelopmental problems and the feminisation of males

You wear them at work, you wear them at play, you wear them to relax. You may even get sweaty in them at the gym.

But an investigation into headphones has found every single pair tested contained substances hazardous to human health, including chemicals that can cause cancer, neurodevelopmental problems and the feminisation of males.

Published: February 18, 2026, 7:00 am

Brother of No Other Land co-director injured as Israeli settlers again attack family home

Hamdan Ballal says violence on West Bank as bad as ever, nearly a year after his Oscar-winning film shocked the world

The co-director of the Oscar-winning No Other Land has said his home and family have come under renewed attack, almost a year after the documentary on Israeli settler and army violence in the West Bank received an Academy Award.

Hamdan Ballal said a group of settlers who had conducted a long-running campaign of harassment against Palestinian villagers came on Sunday to his home in Susya, in the Masafer Yatta area on the southern edge of the West Bank.

Published: February 17, 2026, 7:10 pm

US and Japan unveil $36bn of oil, gas and critical minerals projects in challenge to China

Donald Trump says deals ‘end our foolish dependence on foreign sources’, while Japanese PM hails enhanced economic security

Japan has drawn up plans for investments in US oil, gas and critical mineral projects worth about $36bn under the first wave of a deal with Donald Trump.

The US president and Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister, announced a trio of projects including a power plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, billed by the Trump administration as the largest natural gas-fired generating facility in US history.

Published: February 18, 2026, 6:02 am

DNA from glove in Nancy Guthrie abduction investigation yields no leads

No database match for sample found two miles from home offers as search for TV host’s mother enters third week

DNA found on a glove about two miles from Nancy Guthrie’s house did not result in any leads on the case, officials confirmed on Tuesday.

Unknown male DNA was found on a glove that resembled one worn by Guthrie’s abductor in the surveillance video from the night of the 84-year-old’s disappearance, the FBI said on Sunday.

Published: February 17, 2026, 7:33 pm

Coffee-growing countries becoming too hot to cultivate beans, analysis finds

Five countries responsible for 75% of world’s coffee supply record average of 57 extra days of coffee-harming heat a year

In Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, more than 4m households rely on coffee as their primary source of income. It contributes almost a third of the country’s export earnings, but for how much longer is uncertain.

“Coffee farmers in Ethiopia are already seeing the impact of extreme heat,” said Dejene Dadi, the general manager of Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperatives Union (OCFCU), a smallholder cooperative.

Published: February 18, 2026, 10:00 am

No trees, no food, shot for fun … yet Serbia’s imperial eagles are making an improbable return

Less than a decade ago, the Balkan country had just one breeding pair of the eastern imperial species of raptor left. Now things are changing, thanks to the dogged work of conservationists

At the start of every spring, before the trees in northern Serbia begin to leaf out, ornithologists drive across the plains of Vojvodina. They check old nesting sites of eastern imperial eagles, scan solitary trees along field margins, and search for signs of new nests.

For years, the work of the Bird Protection and Study Society of Serbia (BPSSS) has been getting more demanding – and more rewarding. In 2017, Serbia was down to a single breeding pair. Last year, BPSSS recorded 19 breeding pairs, 10 of which successfully raised young.

Published: February 18, 2026, 9:00 am

‘It’s betrayal’: Shetland’s scallop fishers brace for arrival of UK’s largest salmon farm

Huge project by Norwegian-owned Scottish Sea Farms gets go-ahead amid concerns over the environmental cost of fish farming and threat to traditional way of life

At Collafirth, north Shetland, Sydney Johnson is unloading two-dozen bags of scallops by throwing them over his head like medicine balls to the pier above. Johnson, who has just finished a 10-hour shift on his boat, the Golden Shore, is concerned that plans for a new salmon farm will put fishers like him and his two sons out of business.

“They say it’s just one farm,” says Johnson. “But it’s one farm more. There’s only so much water and we’re at saturation point.”

Published: February 17, 2026, 12:00 pm

ICE reliance on Microsoft technology surged amid immigration crackdown, documents show

Exclusive: ICE more than tripled the amount of data stored in Microsoft’s cloud at the same time that its arsenal of surveillance technology ballooned

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deepened its reliance on Microsoft’s cloud technology last year as the agency ramped up arrest and deportation operations, leaked documents reveal.

ICE more than tripled the amount of data it stored in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform in the six months leading up to January 2026, a period in which the agency’s budget swelled and its workforce rapidly expanded, according to the files.

Published: February 17, 2026, 6:06 pm

Radio Free Asia resumes broadcasts to China after Trump cuts forced near closure

CEO said services have restarted after termination of grants led to criticism that US was ceding ground to China

Radio Free Asia has resumed broadcasts to people in China, its chief executive said on Tuesday, after Trump administration cuts last year largely forced the US-funded outlet to cease operations.

For years, RFA and its sister outlets, including Voice of America (VOA), had been financed with funding approved by the US Congress and overseen by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

Published: February 18, 2026, 3:55 am

ICE cannot re-detain Kilmar Ábrego García, judge rules

Case became focal point for immigration after he was deported to El Salvador where he faces gang threats

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cannot re-detain Kilmar Ábrego García because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

The Salvadorian national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.

Published: February 17, 2026, 7:35 pm

More than 600 people were fired or punished for posting about Charlie Kirk’s death. They want justice

Acolytes of the far-right activist urged employers to fire his critics. Now those who were terminated are suing and claiming their right to free speech

Julie Strebe, a 55-year-old sheriff’s deputy in the small Bible belt town of Salem, Missouri, was on a date with her husband at a Buffalo Wild Wings when her husband slid his phone across the table. On Facebook, people were demanding Strebe’s immediate termination, calling her a “wacko” with “extreme mental health issues”.

It was the afternoon of 13 September 2025, just a few days after Charlie Kirk had been killed by a sniper’s bullet on a college campus. Shortly after his assassination, Strebe had posted on her personal Facebook page: “Empathy is not owed to oppressors.” In comments underneath, she did not mince words. She called Kirk a racist, a sexist, an antisemite and the kind of person who wants to see gay people, like her own son, stoned to death. “I don’t feel bad,” she says, months later, speaking from her home. “I refuse to feel bad for this man, and the hateful things he stood for.”

Published: February 17, 2026, 11:00 am

Wealthy Americans top ‘golden visa’ surge in New Zealand and applications from China double

US family who were 100th to be granted residency under investor scheme say they want to give back to ‘amazing’ New Zealand

Wealthy Americans are dominating applications for New Zealand’s “golden visa”, driven by a love for the country’s natural beauty and entrepreneurial spirit, as well a desire to escape Trump’s administration.

New rules for the Active Investor Plus visa came into effect in April 2025, lowering investment thresholds, removing English-language requirements and cutting the amount of time applicants must spend in the country to establish residency from three years to three weeks. Successful applicants can only purchase homes in New Zealand worth more than $5m.

Published: February 18, 2026, 2:03 am

Ryanair may let dual nationals board UK flights with an expired British passport

Airline statement will reassure Britons abroad anxious about new immigration rules coming into effect next week

British dual nationals may be able to board Ryanair flights in Europe to the UK even if they do not have a current British passport when new immigration rules come into force next week, the airline has said.

The clarification comes as Abta, the trade organisation for tour operators and travel agents in the UK, called on the government to introduce a grace period during which British citizens with dual nationality can board flights back to the UK with alternative proof of being British.

Published: February 18, 2026, 10:33 am

Race for AI is making Hindenburg-style disaster ‘a real risk’, says leading expert

Prof Michael Wooldridge says scenario such as deadly self-driving car update or AI hack could destroy global interest

The race to get artificial intelligence to market has raised the risk of a Hindenburg-style disaster that shatters global confidence in the technology, a leading researcher has warned.

Michael Wooldridge, a professor of AI at Oxford University, said the danger arose from the immense commercial pressures that technology firms were under to release new AI tools, with companies desperate to win customers before the products’ capabilities and potential flaws are fully understood.

Published: February 17, 2026, 6:01 pm

Marco Rubio’s warm words to Viktor Orbán reinforce EU fears that US seeks disunity in Europe

Secretary of state spoke of ‘golden age’ of US-Hungary relations at time of tense transatlantic relations with traditional allies

Even before he in effect endorsed Hungary’s Viktor Orbán before a crucial parliamentary election, Marco Rubio’s itinerary for Europe promised to be provocative. After meeting US allies at the Munich Security Conference during a particularly tense moment in transatlantic relations, the US secretary of state departed for Slovakia and Hungary – the two EU states most dependent on Russian energy and sceptical of the bloc’s support for Ukraine.

In what bordered on an explicit political endorsement, Rubio told Orbán that relations between Hungary and the US had entered a “golden age” – and would stay like that for as long as Orban remains in power.

Published: February 17, 2026, 7:49 pm

‘He invented a style’: war chronicler Robert Capa refashioned himself and revolutionised photography

A Paris exhibition showcases how the Magnum agency founder documented not just battle but also victims of war

It is not often that you get to see a war photographer at work. Certainly not one who more or less defines our idea of the profession as it exists today, is widely considered to be its greatest practitioner and has been dead for more than 70 years.

But as part of its new retrospective, the Museum of the Liberation of Paris has produced a remarkable candid film of Robert Capa on the job. He is largely unaware he is being filmed and the cameramen mostly do not know they are filming him.

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:00 pm

Rio de Janeiro carnival 2026 – in pictures

Rio de Janeiro’s carnival is full of contrasts: wealth brushes up against poverty, joyful abandon unfolds alongside hard labour. Its visual expression also explores notions of power. In a country with the largest Catholic population in the world, racy nun costumes are everywhere during the festival. Along with revellers dressing up in sexy police costumes, the Catholic cosplay reveals an element of carnival’s underlying subversive nature: authority figures softened, flipped, and reconsidered through street theatre and play

Published: February 18, 2026, 10:00 am

Being Gordon Ramsay review – did we really need six hours of him setting up restaurants?

This six-part extended brand advert follows the TV chef’s attempt to launch numerous eateries under one roof. It’s a lot of restaurant drama to have in your life

Six hours of advertising yourself on Netflix and – presumably – getting paid for providing streamer content at the same time? Nice work if you can get it, and Gordon Ramsay has got it. Being Gordon Ramsay, a six part – six part – documentary, follows the chef ’n’ TV personality as he embarks on his most ambitious venture yet. It’s “A huge undertaking”, “high risk, high reward”, a “once in a lifetime opportunity” and “one of my final stakes in the ground … If it fails, I’m fucked.” It is opening seven billion (five, but it feels like seven billion) restaurants on the top floors of 22 Bishopsgate at once. There is going to be a 60-seat rooftop garden place with retractable roof, a 250-seater Asian-inflected restaurant called Lucky Cat, a Bread Street Kitchen brasserie and a culinary school.

But we begin with a family scene. The youngest of Ramsay’s six children with wife of 30 years, Tana, are having pancakes. Gordon thinks they are too thick. They’re American-style, not the crepes he thinks they should have. “Darling,” says Tana, not for the first time even that morning, you suspect, “Could you just give it a rest?”

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:01 am

Fukushima review – a devastating account of disaster and denial in 2011 nuclear catastrophe

A tense return to the disaster foregrounds the heroism of the ‘Fukushima 50’ while raising questions about corporate secrecy and nuclear safety

The terrifying story of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011, caused by a cataclysmic tsunami, is retold by British film-maker James Jones and Japanese co-director Megumi Inman. It was a natural and human-made disaster that left 20,000 dead and a further 164,000 displaced from the area, some with no prospect of return. The earthquake damaged the cooling systems that prevent meltdowns and caused three near-apocalyptic explosions, bringing the nation close to a catastrophe that would have threatened its very existence. Incredibly, the ultimate calamity was finally staved off by nothing more hi-tech than a committed fire brigade spraying thousands of tons of water on the exposed fuel rods.

The film plunges us into the awful story moment-by-moment, accompanied by interviews with the chief players of the time – prominently nuclear plant employee Ikuo Izawa, a shift supervisor and de facto leader of the “Fukushima 50” (actually 69 people) who became legendary in Japan and beyond for their self-sacrificial courage, staying in a nightmarish reactor when everyone else had been evacuated.

Published: February 18, 2026, 11:00 am

The gulf between critics and audience has never been wider – just look at Melania’s Rotten Tomatoes score

Critics have given the Flotus flick 11% on the aggregator site, but the ‘verified ticket buyers’ score is a near perfect 98%. A campaign by activists, or a sign of our politically disparate times?

If you’ve started to feel like you’re living in an entirely different reality from most of the world, there’s a good chance that it’s because you’ve been looking at the Rotten Tomatoes page for the Melania Trump documentary. There you will find two diametrically opposed numbers. First is the official Rotten Tomatoes score – the one aggregated across published reviews by professional critics – which sits at a minuscule 11%. But then there is the audience rating, which is based on scores from members of the general public. That score, incredibly, is 98%. (Admittedly, this is a score confined to “verified ticket buyers” – Rotten Tomatoes has another section it calls “All Audience” where the reaction is more … mixed.)

Of course, there has long been a chasm between public and critical opinion, which is why the film that won the most Oscars last year was a small character study about a disenfranchised stripper and the film that brought in the most money was about Minecraft. Even so, the disparity between the brutal reviews that Melania received (“The most depressing experience I have ever had in the cinema” – Mark Kermode) and the glowing public reviews (“Every red blooded American needs to see this movie to recognise the grace, sophistication and power of Flotius [sic]” – Jackie) is enough to give you whiplash.

Published: February 17, 2026, 12:37 pm

‘A realistic take on marriage’: readers on their favourite lesser-known movie romances

After Guardian writers shared their picks for big screen love stories people may not have seen, readers have responded with some alternative options

It’s a long time since I saw it, and it’s one of those films I’ve been unable to rewatch after a first viewing in case it disappoints. The way they keep upping the ante as the movie progresses struck me as completely perfect at the time. CreatureAdam

Published: February 17, 2026, 3:23 pm

Cardi B review – ambitious spectacle and sizzling choreography

Kia Forum, Los Angeles
Grammy-winning Bronx rapper electrifies LA with pugnacious lyrics and vivid set pieces on her first arena tour

As anticipation mounts in Los Angeles’s Kia Forum for the first of Cardi B’s two sold-out shows at the arena, the rapper plays an extended visual depicting a murder of crows. The image nods to the cover of her latest studio release, 2025’s score-settling Am I the Drama?, in which the birds surround the rapper behind a storm-laced sky ready to burst. The reference is intentional: crows are whip-smart, cunning and capable of clinging to deeply held grudges for decades. Cardi’s arrival on stage tonight further underscores the ominous feeling; she appears with a long shadow behind her as a slice of album opener Dead plays: “I’m collecting body bags like they purses / I don’t even rap no more, I drive hearses.”

She emerges in a haute couture trench coat resembling battle armor and with a shock of white in her dark hair, like Cruella de Vil if she’d grown up in the Bronx. Cardi then launches into the braggadocious Hello with pyrotechnics and smoke effects, the message clear: when someone crosses her, she doesn’t just want to embarrass them. She wants them in the ground.

Published: February 17, 2026, 7:08 pm

‘It’s a nice surprise to be treated like kings!’ Why are mid-level British indie bands massive in China?

My group, Swim Deep, plays to crowds of hundreds across the UK – but in China, we play to tens of thousands. And we’re not the only ones

When I joined the band Swim Deep 13 years ago, my dreams were much like those of any young musician: to play Glastonbury, to tour America and to hear our music on the radio – all of which we’ve managed to achieve. But what I hadn’t counted on was finding a fanbase in China. Despite us never having knowingly released our music there, Swim Deep recently returned triumphant from our fourth run of shows on Chinese soil in barely 10 years, and we’re not the only British indie band benefiting from this unexpected opportunity.

China has had an enthusiasm for British and Irish pop acts for years, long before its ¥500bn (£531m) music industry overtook France to become the world’s fifth largest in 2023. Jessie J became a phenomenon after winning the country’s premier singing competition in 2018, while Westlife have spent decades playing to thousands in Chinese arenas and stadiums. But less heralded is a growing interest in grassroots UK indie bands, for whom the unexpected demand – and promise of excellent pre-gig catering – presents a financial and spiritual lifeline as returns increasingly diminish on home soil.

Published: February 17, 2026, 8:38 am

On Morrison by Namwali Serpell review – a landmark appraisal of the great novelist’s work

Serpell leaves no stone unturned in her deep and enriching portrait of the Nobel laureate’s oeuvre

I have waited years for this book. But before I tell you what it is, I had better tell you what it is not. On Morrison is not a biography. Except for scattered references, there is little here about Chloe Anthony Wofford’s birth and early life in Lorain, Ohio; her education at Howard and Cornell universities; her editorial work at Random House; or her phenomenal success as a novelist. Nor is this book for fans who turn to Toni Morrison for inspirational quotes or to score political points.

Instead, On Morrison offers readers who can tell their Soaphead Church from their Schoolteacher something they have long hoped for: a rigorous appraisal of the work. Despite her enormous contribution to American letters, Morrison’s novels are still too often read for what they have to say about black life, rather than how they say it. Song of Solomon and Jazz are more likely to be found on African American studies syllabi than creative writing ones. In her introduction to On Morrison, Namwali Serpell identifies the reason: “She is difficult to read. She is difficult to teach.”

Published: February 18, 2026, 7:00 am

The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova review – a poetic exploration of Russian guilt

Written from exile after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this autofictional blend of memory and fable tracks a changing sense of self

M, a 50-year-old novelist living in an idyllic place by a lake, is travelling to a literary festival to give a talk. A sequence of events, mostly beyond her control, leaves her stranded in an unfamiliar town. It’s dead quiet, except for a travelling circus camped on the outskirts. M checks into a hotel, ignores her phone and wanders around, reminiscing about books read, films watched, museums visited. Some of these recollections are grounded in fable; others are vividly realistic. Among the latter are memories of her childhood and youth, spent in a “country that no longer exists apart from on old maps and in history books”.

M describes the country she comes from as a “beast” waging war against its neighbour. We can guess her meaning without turning to the author’s biographical note. Maria Stepanova – whose masterly In Memory of Memory combined family memoir, essay and fiction – left her native Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. We might also wonder how closely The Disappearing Act tracks her own life. But the novelist M is not here to discuss autofiction – she has more important things to reflect on.

Published: February 18, 2026, 9:00 am

A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot review – a unique memoir by a figure of astonishing power

Pelicot’s riveting account of her ordeal refuses to conform to any agenda but her own

It is a mark of the power and honesty of Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir, A Hymn to Life – a seemingly impossible writing project in which the author must reconcile herself with horrors of which she has no recollection – that in the first 40 pages, the person I felt most angry towards was Pelicot herself. Her ex-husband, Dominique, who will almost certainly be in jail for the rest of his life for drugging and raping his wife and recruiting 50 men over the internet to do likewise, takes his place among the monsters of our age. In his absence, the reader may experience a version of what happened in Gisèle Pelicot’s own family – namely, the misdirection of anger towards her.

I have read enough books by female survivors of male sexual violence to say with confidence that Hymn to Life is unique. Pelicot – she decided to keep her married name in the interests of giving those of her grandchildren who share it a way to be proud rather than ashamed – was 67 when her husband of almost 50 years was arrested in 2020 for upskirting women in a supermarket in Carpentras, a small town in the south-east of France near the couple’s retirement home in the village of Mazan. When the police investigation uncovered a cache of videos and photos in which an unconscious Pelicot was shown being sexually assaulted by scores of men, she entered a nightmare.

Published: February 17, 2026, 12:01 am

Our Better Natures by Sophie Ward review – reimagining Andrea Dworkin

Three women, two real and one fictional, seek social justice in an ambitious novel that explores power in 1970s America

What kind of justice can we have in a world driven by power? The actor turned writer Sophie Ward likes to fuel her novels with philosophical conundrums and set herself complex writerly challenges. Her ingenious, Booker-longlisted Love and Other Thought Experiments was structured around philosophical thought experiments, from Pascal’s Wager to Descartes’ Demon, with a chapter narrated by an ant living inside a character’s brain. The Schoolhouse explored the ethics of self-directed schooling and of policing in a complicated cross-period procedural. Now she turns her attention to questions of justice, freedom and power in the 1970s United States, with a tripartite structure bringing together three women – two real and one imagined.

It’s 1971: the Manson Family have just been found guilty and hundreds of thousands are marching against the Vietnam war. In the Netherlands, 25-year-old Andrea Dworkin escapes her abusive husband and attends a debate between Chomsky and Foucault on justice and power. Back in the US, the poet Muriel Rukeyser throws herself into protesting once again, though her lover, the literary agent Monica McCall, tells her rightly that her health won’t stand it. The third character is loosely based on the family history of Ward’s own Korean-American wife. Phyllis Patterson welcomes her son home to rural Illinois from the army base in South Korea, and attempts to build a relationship with her new Korean daughter-in-law and grandchildren. All three women are testing their own capacity for justice in an unjust world.

Published: February 17, 2026, 7:00 am

Robert Duvall obituary

Veteran American actor admired for his roles in Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies

“You smell that? Do you smell that? ... Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” says Robert Duvall as the mad, hawkish, surf-loving Lt Col Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979), Francis Ford Coppola’s two-and-a-half hour nightmarish ride through Vietnam.

Wearing a black stetson with a cavalry sword emblem and sunglasses, Kilgore is certainly a caricature of the American military, but Duvall, who has died aged 95, gave him a terrifying reality. Presenting a man who is only as insane as the war around him, his brief appearance was central to the film.

Published: February 17, 2026, 5:07 pm

Cardboard crazy! Scavenger genius Shigeru Ban on building cathedrals and quake shelters with paper

From high-end boutiques to housing in disaster zones with beer-crate foundations, the Japanese architect creates with things people throw away. What will his distillery in whisky’s holy land look like?

‘I don’t like waste,” says Shigeru Ban. It’s a simple statement – yet it encapsulates everything about the Japanese architect’s work. He takes materials others might overlook or discard – from cardboard tubes to beer crates, styrofoam to shipping containers – and subjects them to a kind of alchemy, refining rough edges and transforming fragility into sturdiness.

The outcome is a perpetually ingenious and curiously poetic scavenger architecture that finds beauty and purpose in the everyday. From high-end boutiques to housing for refugees, Ban’s buildings blur the lines between eastern and western design traditions, between the luxurious and the ordinary, and between what constitutes a temporary building and permanent one.

Published: February 17, 2026, 4:16 pm

‘It’s a protest movement behind windows’: tribute to the Iranians risking their lives to film dissent

Inspired by the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising that gripped Iran in 2022, two film students created a documentary, Memories of a Window, about onlookers who anonymously record footage as proof of state violence

Footage that went viral from Iran in late 2022 showed a woman being shot by security forces while capturing a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests on her phone. The victim’s last words were: “Film it!”

Mehraneh Salimian graduated from art school the same day, and that final wish guided her and her partner, Amin Pakparvar, to make their documentary short premiering at the Berlin film festival on Tuesday. Memories of a Window is dedicated to the slain woman, Shirin Alizadeh, and the role of amateur videos in recording and emboldening dissent in Iran.

Published: February 17, 2026, 2:52 pm

‘I don’t want to micromanage my body’: how the adjustable waistband became a way to regain control

Given the average British woman may change dress size more than 30 times in adult life, flexibility is one route to feeling at home in a fluctuating body. But that’s not all it’s good for

I always think that the most stylish woman in a room is the one who looks the most comfortable. She might be nonchalant in a pair of wide trousers and a loose white shirt, or stroll in casually wearing the butter-soft leather loafers she’s had for years. It was a longing to be more like one of those women, as opposed to one who fell over regularly in public because I couldn’t balance in platforms, which made me give up wearing heels for good in 2012. So it was a natural progression, a decade later, to shunning another wardrobe constraint that was making me fidget in social situations: the waistband.

I’m about to turn 49 and in the past eight years I’ve been fluctuating between sizes 10 and 14, which is hardly surprising when you consider that the average British woman may change dress size a whopping 31 times in her adult life. I attribute my own yo-yo-ing partly to the hormonal changes that a body in its 40s inevitably goes through, but I should also acknowledge that during lockdown, I developed a taste for the elasticated tracksuit bottoms that working from home allowed, as well as a macaroni cheese, or two, each week.

Published: February 18, 2026, 8:00 am

The brutal hunt for low-paid work: ‘It’s like The Hunger Games – but for a job folding clothes’

It used to be fairly easy to get work that paid at or around the minimum wage. But with a shrinking number of positions come ever more hoops to jump through, from personality tests, to trial shifts, to towers constructed of marshmallows

It is 10.30am, and Zahra is sitting in a business centre in Preston, attaching marshmallows to sticks of uncooked spaghetti. There are 30 interview candidates in the grey-carpeted room, split into groups of five, competing to build food towers. Already today they have had to solve anagrams, complete quizzes and rank the importance of various kitchen items. Just to be shortlisted for this two-hour interview round, Zahra had to write an online application consisting of 10 paragraphs about her work experience. As she builds her spaghetti and marshmallow tower, she thinks: “What am I actually doing here? This doesn’t relate to the job at all.”

The job in question is not what Zahra, 20, plans to do for ever. It is as a crew member for Wingstop, a chicken shop chain, with a salary of £10.80 an hour – 80p an hour above minimum wage for her age range. During the interview, she says, “a woman with a notepad was staring at us, and all the shift managers were watching. It was so awkward.” A week or so later, Zahra received a short rejection email. “It felt like a waste of time,” she says. “What a joke.”

Published: February 18, 2026, 10:00 am

Don’t toss it, fix it: nine easy DIY remedies for stuck zippers, wobbly chairs and more

Experts share repair tips to save money and extend the life of everyday essentials from clothes to furniture in minutes

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We’ve all thrown away something “perfectly good” that just suffered a minor flaw: a wobbly chair. Jeans with a knee hole. A toaster that won’t latch. All replaced by new versions that will break the same way. Most of these things could’ve been salvaged with 20 minutes and the nerve to try.

Fixing things yourself isn’t about pinching pennies. In the rising visible mending movement, it’s about refusing to treat everything as disposable. “The lightbulb moment for me was realizing I could make mending a creative act,” says Katrina Rodabaugh, textile artist and author of Mending Matters. “I was less worried about ruining my textiles and more interested to see how I could be resourceful, make a creative statement and keep my clothes out of the landfill.”

For patching jeans:
Sewing kit with needle, thread and safety pins

For headphone cable repair:
Soldering kit

Published: February 17, 2026, 8:15 pm

The Norwich pigeon wars: how birds are dividing a UK city

To the local people feeding the growing flock every day, they are ‘perfect’ creatures with beautiful plumage. To others, they are creating a Hitchcockian nightmare – defecating, stealing and spreading disease. But who is right?

At nine o’clock on Saturday morning, Norwich market is only just stirring: shutters are still down and the aisles are quiet. In the nearby Memorial Gardens, however, a large crowd has already gathered: the market’s pigeons are waiting to be fed.

Jenny Coupland arrives on the scene a little later than her usual hour, with a backpack brimming with seed. As she begins doling it out, the birds descend from their perches and cover the ground, pecking furiously. The sun catches their bobbing heads, sending iridescent shimmers across their brown and grey feathers.

Published: February 17, 2026, 5:00 am

Lunar new year 2026: year of the fire horse around the world – in pictures

From the heart of Beijing to far-flung Manila, Panama, Moscow and New York, communities around the globe ring in the lunar new year

Published: February 18, 2026, 1:42 am

Pork chops and curd with amaretti and pear: Max Coen’s recipes for cooking with citrus

Citrus brings vibrancy and zing to savoury and sweet dishes alike

Citrus season brings an entirely new dimension of seasoning – a way to add vibrancy, nuance and brightness far beyond the standard squeeze of lemon. For me, citrus isn’t just acidity: it’s a complex alternative to sugar and vinegar, with varieties that offer bitterness, floral tones, sweetness and sharpness in equal measure. With more than a hundred types of lemons, clementines and limes now available, I find it easiest to think of them in two groups: sour citrus and sweet citrus. Once you know which you’re working with, you can explore each variety’s complexity and decide how best to use it.

Published: February 18, 2026, 6:00 am

Beats and throat singing: Sámi DJs tap into growing pride in Indigenous identity

Acts such as Article 3 are drawing inspiration from their culture and meeting a big appetite for Indigenous-focused club nights

“We both live in maybe the most impractical place if you want to be a successful DJ,” laughs Alice Marie Jektevik, one half of Article 3, a Sámi female DJ collective. Jektevik, 36, and her collaborator, Petra Laiti, 30, reside in a rural village in the far north-east of Norway.

But living in Sápmi – the region across northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia traditionally lived in by Sámi people – has proven to be central to their success, providing the inspiration for much of their work.

Published: February 18, 2026, 5:00 am

12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI’s brutal work culture is a warning for all of us

San Francisco’s AI startups are pushing workers to grind endlessly, hinting at pressures soon hitting other sectors

Not long after the terms “996” and “grindcore” entered the popular lexicon, people started telling me stories about what was happening at startups in San Francisco, ground zero for the artificial intelligence economy. There was the one about the founder who hadn’t taken a weekend off in more than six months. The woman who joked that she’d given up her social life to work at a prestigious AI company. Or the employees who had started taking their shoes off in the office because, well, if you were going to be there for at least 12 hours a day, six days a week, wouldn’t you rather be wearing slippers?

“If you go to a cafe on a Sunday, everyone is working,” says Sanju Lokuhitige, the co-founder of Mythril, a pre-seed-stage AI startup, who moved to San Francisco in November to be closer to the action. Lokuhitige says he works seven days a week, 12 hours a day, minus a few carefully selected social events each week where he can network with other people at startups. “Sometimes I’m coding the whole day,” he says. “I do not have work-life balance.”

Published: February 17, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘I felt betrayed, naked’: did a prize-winning novelist steal a woman’s life story?

His novel was praised for giving a voice to the victims of Algeria’s brutal civil war. But one woman has accused Kamel Daoud of having stolen her story – and the ensuing legal battle has become about much more than literary ethics

Every November, leading figures of French literature gather in the upstairs room of an old-fashioned Paris restaurant and decide on the best novel of the year. The ceremony is staid, traditional, down to the restaurant’s menu, full of classic dishes such as vol-au-vents and foie gras on toast. In pictures of the judging ceremony, the judges wear dark suits; each has four glasses of wine at hand.

The winner of the Goncourt, as the prize is called, is likely to enter the pantheon of world literature, joining a lineage of writers that includes Marcel Proust and Simone de Beauvoir. The prize is also a financial boon for authors. As the biggest award in French literature, the Goncourt means a prime spot in storefronts, foreign rights, prestige. By one estimate, winning the Goncourt means nearly €1m of sales in the weeks that follow.

Published: February 17, 2026, 5:00 am

US students and professors: tell us if the Epstein files have affected your university

Some universities and colleges have taken action involving faculty or affiliates named in the documents. We want to hear about what’s happening where you study or work

As fallout from the large release of documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein continues, a handful of US universities have taken action against faculty or affiliates named in the files.

At some campuses, professors have been placed under review, research centres closed, conferences cancelled or public explanations issued. Students and staff have responded in different ways, including petitions, open letters and campus forums.

Published: February 17, 2026, 6:34 pm

Share your tributes and memories of Jesse Jackson

We would like to hear your memories of the civil rights trailblazer – whether you met him or just valued his work

The Rev Jesse Jackson, a civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, died on Tuesday at the age of 84. Jackson championed the rights of Black, poor and working-class people with his “rainbow coalition”.

We would like to hear your tributes and memories of Jesse Jackson – whether you met him, or appreciated his work.

Published: February 17, 2026, 6:11 pm

Gen Z in the US: how are you feeling about your finances?

If you are age 18-29 and live in the US, we’d like to hear from you about the state of your finances and your biggest money concerns

The US economy has been in a tailspin, from rising prices, changing trade policies and the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market. Polls show many Americans believe their financial security is getting worse and it’s harder to afford major life goals.

Young Americans are no exception. If you are aged 18-29 and live in the US, we’d like to hear from you about the state of your finances and your biggest money concerns.

Published: February 17, 2026, 3:22 pm

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Published: February 17, 2026, 1:09 pm

Tent painting, sand wrestling and year of the horse: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: February 17, 2026, 5:31 pm