Never-before-seen home video is earliest footage of Martin Luther King: ‘What a gift!’

In a brief scene, the undergraduate known as ML stands with his then girlfriend, a white woman named Betty Moitz

Several years ago, near Chester, Pennsylvania, Jason Ipock’s aunt was looking to downsize now that she had retired. In her possession was a collection of old family home videos that took up too much room.

Some of the films were in worn-out film canisters, and Ipock worried they’d soon be unplayable. “I decided that I should have the family films digitized, so that we’ll always have a copy in the event of a catastrophe,” he said.

Published: January 19, 2026, 10:43 am

Who is on the frontline of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown?

These are the federal agencies detaining people across the US – mostly, but not all, under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security

When the Trump administration ordered a surge of armed federal immigration enforcement personnel on to the streets of Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security declared it the largest operation in its history and the liberal midwestern city became Donald Trump’s latest chosen hotspot.

Such escalations mark the US president’s agenda of mass arrests and deportations from the US interior. The highest-profile efforts involve officers from multiple agencies rushing to prominent Democratic-led US cities, against local leaders’ wishes. But coast to coast, federal officers have been raiding homes, businesses, commercial parking lots – even schools, hospitals and courthouses. The efforts have delighted the president’s hardcore Make America Great Again voter base, but are also tearing families apart and spreading fear and even death on the streets and in detention.

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

The pass of the century then brutal reality: the football gods won’t let the Bears have nice things

Caleb Williams pulled off a miracle against the Rams and Chicago looked destined for the Super Bowl. The hope wouldn’t last long

A playoff game often pivots on a single moment. The Bears thought they had theirs. Down a score, driving to keep the game alive, the Bears had the ball on the Rams’ 14-yard line. Fourth down. Four yards to pick up a fresh set of downs. A play to keep their season alive. The ball in Caleb Williams’s hands.

And then it happened.

Published: January 19, 2026, 8:15 am

What ICE is doing on US streets looks terrifying, but don’t forget: it could happen anywhere | Nesrine Malik

This shocking moment is the outcome of a political, institutional and media environment that is not far off Britain’s

There is not much that can still shock about Donald Trump’s second administration. But the killing of Renee Good earlier this month by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, as well as the regular, often violent confrontations that ICE stages on US streets, show so much that is unravelling in plain sight. The rule of law, the freedom to protest, and even the right to walk or drive in the streets safely without being assaulted by the state, seems to exist no longer in the towns and cities where ICE has made its presence felt. The most disturbing aspect of all this is how quickly it has happened. But for a government agency such as ICE to become the powerful paramilitary force that it is, several factors need to be in play first. Only one of them is Donald Trump.

ICE may look as if it came out of nowhere, but the sort of authoritarianism that results in these crackdowns never does. It takes shape slowly, in plain sight, in a way that is clearly traceable over time. First, there needs to be a merging of immigration and security concerns, both institutionally and in the political culture. Established in the wake of 9/11, ICE was part of a government restructuring under President George W Bush. It was granted a large budget, wide investigative powers and a partnership with the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce. The work of enforcing immigration law became inextricably linked to the business of keeping Americans safe after the largest attack on US soil. That then extended into a wider emphasis, under Barack Obama, beyond those who posed national security threats, and on to immigrants apprehended at the border, gang members and non-citizens convicted of felonies or misdemeanours.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Published: January 19, 2026, 6:00 am

Is it true that … you lose most body heat from your head?

This 1970s notion is a bit of a myth – but it’s still a good idea to wear a hat if it’s cold out

‘Always keep your head covered. You can lose 40–45% of body heat from an unprotected head.” That’s the advice in a 1970s US Army Survival Manual, which is probably where this myth originated, says John Tregoning, a professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London.

The reality is that there is nothing special about your head. When you go out in the cold, you lose more body heat from any area you leave exposed than from those parts protected by clothing. Out in a snowsuit but no hat? You’re going to lose heat quickly from your face and head, while the suit slows down the cooling of your body.

Published: January 19, 2026, 8:00 am

‘I was bullied in school for being different. At 16, I hit a crashing point’: the awkward kid who became the world’s strongest man

As a boy, Tom Stoltman was diagnosed with autism and bullied at school. When he became depressed in his teens, his older brother, a bodybuilder, suggested a trip to the gym

Tom Stoltman was a skinny kid: 90kg, 6ft 8in, with glasses and sticking‑out teeth. Diagnosed with autism as a young child, he felt he didn’t fit in. “I was really shy,” he says. “I got bullied in school for being different.” Back then, the boy from Invergordon didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He lived in baggy hoodies. “Hood up. That was my comfort.” He loved football but “I used to look at people on the pitch and think, ‘He’s tinier than me, but he’s pushing me off the ball.’”

By 16 he’d hit a “crashing point”. He went from football-obsessed to playing Xbox all day. He’d skip meals in favour of sweets. “Sometimes it was four or five, six bags.”

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:00 am

EU has ‘tools at its disposal’ to deal with Trump’s Greenland tariff threats – Europe live

Olaf Gill says bloc will act to protect its economic interests but ‘priority is to engage, not escalate’

In a nod to Trump’s efforts on Ukraine, Starmer says he recognises the US president’s role in pushing for ceasefire there – as he says “we will work closely with the United States, Ukraine and our other allies to apply pressure where it belongs: on Putin.”

In his strongest criticism of Trump yet, Starmer goes on to say:

A trade war is in no one’s interest, and my job is always to act in the UK’s national interest.

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:40 pm

High-speed train crash in southern Spain leaves 39 dead

A further 75 people hospitalised after two trains collided and derailed near Adamuz in Córdoba province

• Spain train crash – latest updates

At least 39 people have been killed and 12 are in intensive care after two trains collided in southern Spain on Sunday night in what the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called “a night of deep pain for our country”.

A high-speed Iryo train travelling from Málaga to Madrid derailed near the municipality of Adamuz in Córdoba province at about 7.40pm on Sunday, crossing on to the other track where it hit an oncoming train, Adif, Spain’s rail infrastructure authority, posted on X.

Published: January 19, 2026, 8:21 am

Kremlin says Putin has been invited to join Trump’s Gaza ‘board of peace’

Putin shows no signs of ending Ukraine war and claim adds weight to accusation Trump favours Russian president

The Kremlin has announced that Vladimir Putin has been invited to join Donald Trump’s “board of peace”, set up last week with the intention that it would oversee a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Monday that Russia was seeking to “clarify all the nuances” of the offer with Washington, before giving its response.

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:12 am

Pentagon readies 1,500 troops for potential Minnesota deployment, officials say

US army issues prepare-to-deploy orders amid tension over ICE killing, though it is unclear if units will be sent

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers in Alaska to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, the site of large protests against the government’s deportation drive, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday.

The US army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in the midwestern state escalates, the officials said, though it is not clear whether any of them will be sent.

Published: January 18, 2026, 11:53 pm

Scientists warn of ‘regime shift’ as seaweed blooms expand worldwide

Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollution

Scientists have warned of a potential “regime shift” in the oceans, as the rapid growth of huge mats of seaweed appears to be driven by global heating and excessive enrichment of waters from farming runoff and other pollutants.

Over the past two decades, seaweed blooms have expanded by a staggering 13.4% a year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, with the most dramatic increases occurring after 2008, according to researchers at the University of South Florida.

Published: January 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Teenager among Iranian protesters sexually assaulted in custody, rights group says

Two people detained in Kermanshah, including 16-year-old, tell group they were subjected to sexual abuse during arrest

A 16-year-old was among protesters sexually assaulted in custody by the security forces in Iran during the nationwide uprising that has left thousands dead, according to a human rights group.

Two people, one of them a child, detained in the city of Kermanshah in western Iran told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) that they were subjected to sexual abuse by riot police during their arrest.

Published: January 19, 2026, 5:00 am

China’s population falls again as birthrate drops 17% to record low

Fourth year of decline deepens concerns over ageing, shrinking workforce and long-term economic impact

China’s population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025 as the birthrate plunged to another record low despite the introduction of polices aimed at encouraging people to have children.

Registered births dropped to 7.92 million in 2025 – or 5.63 for every 1,000 members of the population – down 17% from 9.54 million in 2024, and the lowest since records began in 1949.

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:12 pm

‘Remarkable’ UPS driver ran into burning home to save woman, 101

Willy Esquivel was delivering nearby when neighbors asked him to help Ann Edwards, who lives alone in Santa Ana

A United Parcel Service driver at work recently charged into a burning home outside Los Angeles and carried a centenarian woman out to safety in what officials called a “remarkable” example of “people looking out for one another in a moment of need”.

As his heroics drew attention in online circles dedicated to finding uplifting stories in the media, Willy Esquivel told the Los Angeles news outlet KTLA that he was “just a UPS driver who was in the right place at the right time”.

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:00 am

Syria president claims ‘victory for all’ as ceasefire with Kurdish-led force announced

Government’s truce with Syrian Democratic Forces follows advance on Kurdish-held areas amid struggle to control entire country

The Syrian government on Sunday announced a ceasefire with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), taking almost full control of the country and dismantling the Kurdish-led forces that controlled the north-east for over a decade.

The announcement comes as tensions between government forces and the SDF boiled over earlier this month, eventually resulting in a major push by government forces towards the east. The SDF appeared to have largely retreated after initial clashes on a tense frontline area in eastern Aleppo province.

Published: January 19, 2026, 2:47 am

White House press secretary tells CBS ‘we’ll sue your ass off’ if it edits Trump interview

Karoline Leavitt was recorded warning network to put out new interview with president in full and without edits

Donald Trump’s White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was recently recorded warning CBS News to broadcast a new interview with the president in full and without edits – or “we’ll sue your ass off”.

Trump “said, ‘Make sure you guys don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full,’” Leavitt told CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil after he had interviewed the president, according to an audio exchange first reported on by the New York Times. The 13-minute exclusive segment aired on Tuesday, months after CBS’s parent company Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16m over its editing of an unrelated interview ahead of the 2024 election that vaulted him to a second presidency.

Published: January 18, 2026, 4:08 pm

US reportedly considers granting asylum to Jewish people from UK

Trump lawyer Robert Garson told the Telegraph he discussed refuge for those leaving UK over antisemitism

Discussions are reportedly under way within Donald Trump’s administration about the US possibly granting asylum to Jewish people from the UK, according to the Telegraph, citing the US president’s personal lawyer.

Trump lawyer Robert Garson told the newspaper that he has held conversations with the US state department about offering refuge to British Jews who are leaving the UK citing rising antisemitism.

Published: January 18, 2026, 9:28 pm

Trump news at a glance: EU weighs up economic sanctions against US after Trump’s tariff threats

European leaders meet for crisis talks and are expected to discuss reviving plan to levy tariffs on €93bn of US goods – key US politics stories from Sunday 18 January at a glance

The EU was weighing up retaliatory tariffs on American goods and even deploying its most serious economic sanctions against the US as European leaders lined up to criticise Donald Trump’s threat to levy new taxes on imports from eight nations who oppose his attempt to annex Greenland – which one minister called “blackmail”.

“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” the leaders of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland said in a joint statement. “We are committed to upholding our sovereignty.”

Published: January 19, 2026, 1:17 am

Trump exacts revenge on Bill Cassidy by backing possible Republican challenger

Trump’s support of Letlow comes after Louisiana senator voted to convict president in second impeachment trial

Donald Trump has sought to deliver a staggering blow to the re-election chances of Senator Bill Cassidy – the president’s fellow Republican with whom he has politically feuded – by giving his “complete and total endorsement” to a potential primary opponent.

Trump’s endorsement of US House member Julia Letlow as well as his encouragement for her to run for Cassidy’s Senate seat in Louisiana comes after the senator voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial during Trump’s first presidency.

Published: January 18, 2026, 6:47 pm

‘I was afraid for my life’: the transgender refugees fleeing Trump’s America

Fear, abuse and eroding rights for trans people have created a hostile environment in the US – can they claim asylum in the Netherlands?

• The transgender refugees fleeing the US – podcast

Ter Apel, a small, unassuming Dutch town near the German border, is a place tourists rarely have on their itinerary. There are no lovely old windmills, no cannabis-filled coffee shops and on a recent visit it was far too early for tulip season.

When foreigners end up there, it is for one reason: to claim asylum at the Netherlands’ biggest refugee camp, home to 2,000 desperate people from all around the world.

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘We thought they would ignore us’: how humans are changing the way raptors behave

Experts call for tighter regulation as GPS tracking reveals how people’s behaviour affects the lives of some of the world’s largest birds

Many people look up to admire the silhouette of raptors, some of the planet’s largest birds, soaring through seemingly empty skies. But increasingly, research shows us that this fascination runs both ways. From high above, these birds are watching us too.

Thanks to the development of tiny GPS tracking devices attached to their bodies, researchers are getting millions of data points on the day-to-day lives of these apex predators of the skies, giving us greater insight into where they hunt and rest, and how they die.

Published: January 19, 2026, 9:00 am

Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust: ‘AI has taught us that people are excited to replace human beings’

His blunt, brash scepticism has made the podcaster and writer something of a cult figure. But as concern over large language models builds, he’s no longer the outsider he once was

If some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about “how the AI bubble burst”, Ed Zitron will doubtless be a main character. He’s the perfect outsider figure: the eccentric loner who saw all this coming and screamed from the sidelines that the sky was falling, but nobody would listen. Just as Christian Bale portrayed Michael Burry, the investor who predicted the 2008 financial crash, in The Big Short, you can well imagine Robert Pattinson fighting Paul Mescal, say, to portray Zitron, the animated, colourfully obnoxious but doggedly detail-oriented Brit, who’s become one of big tech’s noisiest critics.

This is not to say the AI bubble will burst, necessarily, but against a tidal wave of AI boosterism, Zitron’s blunt, brash scepticism has made him something of a cult figure. His tech newsletter, Where’s Your Ed At, now has more than 80,000 subscribers; his weekly podcast, Better Offline, is well within the Top 20 on the tech charts; he’s a regular dissenting voice in the media; and his subreddit has become a safe space for AI sceptics, including those within the tech industry itself – one user describes him as “a lighthouse in a storm of insane hypercapitalist bullshit”.

Published: January 19, 2026, 5:00 am

The pub that changed me: ‘I bonded with a new group of friends there – and it led to my dream job’

Ye Olde Swiss Cottage in London was gaudy, draughty and built on a traffic island. But it was just the escape I needed

Early in my career, I was going through a difficult chapter in work and life. Having moved down to London from Glasgow, I felt socially untethered, unsure of where I belonged. I yearned to feel part of a gang like I’d done back home, but I had no clue about how to find one.

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:00 am

The one change that worked: I tried all the hobbies I thought I’d hate – and found friendship and escape

I was in a work-commute-collapse cycle and didn’t know what to do. Then I began sampling activities I’d previously dismissed – book clubs, line dancing, chess – and it became oddly addictive

For most of my life, I treated taste as fixed. There were things I liked and things I didn’t, and that was that. Hobbies, foods and even social situations were quietly written off with the certainty of personal preference. But sticking to that sentiment had left me in a bit of a rut.

When I moved to London, I threw myself into work: long hours, commuting and networking. In the process, I stopped making time for hobbies or trying anything new.

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:00 am

‘Cinematic comfort food’: why Heat is my feelgood movie

The latest entry in our series of writers picking their most rewatched comfort films is a nostalgic trip back to 1995

I meet up at least once a year with a group of university friends. We pick a city, descend on it and then leave 48 hours later, often a little worse for wear. I would say about 60% of all communication on these trips is quotes from Michael Mann’s 1995 heist thriller, Heat. Screaming like Al Pacino’s coked-up Los Angeles police detective Vincent Hanna or calmly saying “I have a woman” like Robert De Niro’s robotic master thief Neil McCauley if any of my friends ask me about my wife.

The comedian and film-maker Stanley Sievers did a skit about a guy whose life is destroyed because his whole personality is the film Heat. I laughed along with that awkwardly, while considering just how many times I said “the action is the juice” the last time I met up with my friends.

Published: January 19, 2026, 10:00 am

The pet I’ll never forget: Bosko the great flying cat inspired my art – and delivered me from grief

He had youth, energy, a tiny purr and could jump 7ft in the air. I always knew when he was about to do it, because he would stare at me intensely before launching himself towards the ceiling

My animals play a big, crazy role in my life. I grew up with cats when I was a little kid but my love of black cats began when I moved from New York to LA in 1996 and found four feral black cats in my back yard. Almost immediately, two female cats got knocked up and had two litters at the same time. Suddenly, we had 13 black cats, the most I’d ever cared for at once.

I’ve been an artist all my life and during the early 2000s my career really started to take off. I began creating a lot of merchandise toys and had my own TV series called Teacher’s Pet, which won five Emmys and a Bafta. My cat Blackie was the inspiration behind all my artwork at the time; he was a scholarly cat with a giant purr – I often drew him as my alter ego. When Blackie died from illness in 2020, I felt as though I’d lost a part of myself – he had been my companion for 15 years. It took me a year to grieve before I could finally consider another cat. That’s when Bosko came into my life.

Published: January 19, 2026, 10:00 am

On embracing the ‘urgency of now’ and unconditional love on MLK Day

People across the US are moving on from the empty platitudes MLK Day often evokes – and embodying King’s words

This year, the Dr Martin Luther King Jr holiday forces Americans to grapple with the crisis and protests that have spread across the country, particularly in Minneapolis. Each year on this holiday, we reflect on King’s life and legacy. We wonder about what he might make of this moment. Though civil rights protesters in the 1950s and 60s were repeatedly met with extreme state violence, Americans are now facing a president who is troublingly more powerful than past figures such as the notorious segregationist and Alabama governor George Wallace.

Militarized and masked federal police forces, abetted by a corrupted justice department, are expansive and employ far more deadly weapons against protesters today. Civil rights leaders often sought federal intervention to combat localized racial violence in the south. But now, local and state officials, along with ordinary citizens who have been galvanized by federal violence, are combating government crackdowns against immigrants and their neighbors. Over the span of a week, ICE agents killed an American wife and mother of three, Renee Good, and shot a man from Venezuela during a traffic stop. They have arrested and detained American citizens and have terrorized neighborhoods, businesses and schools. Their irrational, unprofessional and unconstitutional actions have caused chaos, panic and harm throughout American cities. This is far from the progress King dreamed of, and he used his last years to warn Americans to refuse comfort, the status quo, and bring oppression to an end.

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

The Trump-Kennedy Center is another front in the battle for the soul of America | Charlotte Higgins

Under Trump, the world-class centre for performing arts is one of many US cultural institutions changing beyond recognition. Will others buckle?

A year ago – just a year ago – the Kennedy Center in Washington DC was a world-class centre for the performing arts. It had a resident opera company, respected artistic teams, and a run of the acclaimed musical Hamilton to look forward to. It had a bipartisan board that upheld the dignity of an organisation that, since it was conceived of in the mid-20th century, had been treated with courtesy and supported by governments of both stripes.

How quickly things unravel. Donald Trump inserted himself as chair of the organisation soon after his 20 January inauguration, dispatched the hugely experienced executive director, and installed his unfortunate loyalist Richard Grenell to run it. This former ambassador to Germany might have wished for better things; at any rate, entirely inexperienced in the arts, he seems utterly out of his depth. Things have unravelled. Artists have departed the centre in droves. Hamilton pulled out. So have audiences. In November, Francesca Zambello, the artistic director of the Washington National Opera, told me that ticket sales had tanked for the opera. Analysis by the Washington Post showed it was the same pattern across the centre.

Published: January 19, 2026, 8:00 am

Did God fix a football match? Welcome to the great divine intervention debate | Ravi Holy

Vicars, the devout – and some who are desperate – do a lot of praying to get their wishes fulfilled. But it's complicated by lots of dos and don'ts

‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God,” sings Nick Cave in the opening line of his 1997 song, Into My Arms. But Jim Sharma, a football fan who is a devotee of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, very much does – and who can blame him?

For the detached, the uninformed and nonsports fans, the issue here is that Wolves had a terrible start to the season and, until the other day, looked set to beat Derby County’s unenviable record as the worst-performing team in Premier League history. Then they played my team, West Ham, and had their first taste of victory since April. Wolves 3 West Ham 0.

Ravi Holy is the vicar of Wye in Kent and a standup comedian

Published: January 19, 2026, 10:00 am

Afraid to take vacation? The problem isn’t your boss – it’s how you work

Many people use their vacation time each year. These people take ownership of their jobs, and make sure they get them done

A recent survey of more than 3,000 US workers for employment search site FlexJobs found that almost a quarter didn’t take a vacation day during the past year and – more concerning to the study’s authors – as many as 82% “avoid using” their accrued time off. Why?

Kelsey Szamet, an employment lawyer, says the reason is a shift in mentality. “Many employees are concerned about the security of their jobs,” she told Quartz. “The adoption of AI and automation technologies has allowed employees to actually consider their own replaceability before requesting a leave or a holiday, or any kind of time-off benefit.”

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

The 75 hard challenge has come roaring back - but I have my own self-improvement regime | Emma Beddington

As punishing wellness challenges proliferate online, I’ve decided the only sensible response is to invent a kinder – and more lucrative – alternative

I have a masochistic interest in catchily named social media self-improvement challenges, so I already knew about “75 hard” – 75 days of drinking eight pints of water, doing two 45-minute workouts, eating clean and, endearingly, reading 10 pages of nonfiction – before it made its recent comeback. Paddy McGuinness has reignited interest, crediting the regime started in 2019 by podcaster Andy Frisella for his transformation from a normal soft-bodied human into an uncanny mass of bronzed abs and pecs.

It’s inspired me to make my own changes, but not by doing 75 hard or its ilk. I’ve realised what I actually want to do is devise my own devilish self-improvement challenge. After all, I enjoy telling people what to do, and goodness knows, I could use another revenue stream. But what should mine involve? I debated an intellectual 75 hard, to transform your brain into as finely honed a machine as McGuinness’s body. Participants would pack the library like a gym in January, every table crowded with locked-in bros hyping each other up, as they struggle through Gravity’s Rainbow or Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. “I can’t, it makes no sense! I’ve read this paragraph 12 times!” “That’s quitter’s talk. I know you’ve got another page in you, bruh – MAN UP!” Additional requirements would include sonnet composition, calculus, learning a new language and listening to In Our Time episodes on very occasional “cheat” days.

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:00 am

From Trump’s rejected treaties to our daily lives, we’re building walls around ourselves | Anand Pandian

Martin Luther King Jr knew that ‘whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly’. But we Americans are denying that reality

The United States seems determined to turn its back on the rest of our planetary neighbors. The Trump administration’s recent decision to withdraw from 66 international treaties, conventions and organizations is striking for the range of its rejections. Everything from the global treaty on climate change to multilateral efforts to address migration and cultural heritage, clean water and renewable energy, and the international trade in timber and minerals has been summarily dismissed as “contrary to the interests of the United States”.

It’s no surprise that an administration hellbent on physical walls around the United States would also put up such walls of indifference, as if all of these longstanding collective efforts were simply “irrelevant” to our interests as a country, as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, put it in a public statement. And yet, as we know, the reality of contemporary life on Earth is so profoundly otherwise. How has the truth of our interconnectedness with others elsewhere become so difficult to grasp in the United States?

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

Why America needs a new antiwar movement – and how it can win | Jeremy Varon

Demonstrations against the Iraq war proved protest works. Now we must halt destruction before it more powerfully starts

In spring 2004, Gen Anthony Zinni uttered about Iraq the dreaded words in US politics: “I spent two years in Vietnam, and I’ve seen this movie before.” A year after George W Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished” – when the war had hit its peak popularity at 74% – the invasion had descended into quagmire, marked by a raging insurgency, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and US casualties nearing 1,000. For the first time, a majority of Americans judged the war a “mistake”. In this, they echoed what millions of Americans, predicting fiasco, had been saying since before its start.

By the summer of 2005, with Iraq exploding in civil war, public support further eroded. Vietnam comparisons abounded. Running against the war, Democrats had blowout wins in the 2006 midterms. The new Congress empaneled the bipartisan Iraq study group, which concluded that the war had to end. Its fate was sealed by the election of Barack Obama, who made good on his pledge to withdraw US troops (though US forces later returned to take on the Islamic State).

Jeremy Varon is the author of Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

The Guardian view on Trump and Greenland: get real! Bullying is not strength | Editorial

Tariff threats over the Arctic island expose the limits of coercive diplomacy. Europe’s united response and pushback shows fear is fading

For all Donald Trump’s bluster about restoring American strength, his attempt to bully European allies over Greenland reveals a deeper weakness: coercive diplomacy only works if people are afraid to resist. Increasingly, they aren’t. And that is a good thing. Bullies often back down when confronted – their power relies on fear. Mr Trump’s threat to impose sweeping tariffs on Europeans unless they acquiesce to his demand to “purchase” Greenland has stripped his trade policy bare. This is not about economic security, unfair trade or protecting American workers. It is about using tariffs as a weapon to force nations to submit.

The response from Europe has been united and swift. That in itself should send a message. France’s Emmanuel Macron says plainly “no amount of intimidation” will alter Europe’s position. Denmark has anchored the issue firmly inside Nato’s collective security. EU leaders have warned that tariff threats risk a dangerous downward spiral. Even Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, seen as ideologically close to Mr Trump, publicly called the tariff threat a “mistake” – adding that she has told him so.

Published: January 18, 2026, 5:59 pm

The Guardian view on microplastics research: questioning results is good for science, but has political consequences | Editorial

Errors in measuring microplastic pollution can be corrected. Public trust in science also needs to be shored up

It is true that science is self-correcting. Over the long term this means that we can generally trust its results – but up close, correction can be a messy process. The Guardian reported last week that 20 recent studies measuring the amount of micro- and nanoplastics in the human body have been criticised in the scientific literature for methodological issues, calling their results into question. In one sense this is the usual process playing out as it should. However, the scale of the potential error – one scientist estimates that half the high-impact papers in the field are affected – suggests a systemic problem that should have been prevented.

The risk is that in a febrile political atmosphere in which trust in science is being actively eroded on issues from climate change to vaccinations, even minor scientific conflicts can be used to sow further doubt. Given that there is immense public and media interest in plastic pollution, it is unfortunate that scientists working in this area did not show more caution.

Published: January 18, 2026, 5:58 pm

Indiana's rise to CFP final is a tale for our topsy-turvy times

If Rudy was a charming underdog story, the Hoosiers’ worst-to-first ascent to college football’s title game on Monday night is the stuff of science fiction

We are living in upside down times. Kim Kardashian advocates for prison reform as the American government spams out cartoonish memes promoting mass deportation and detention. Dave Chappelle – flaws aside – is more trusted to interpret the news than CBS’s Tony Dokoupil. The selection committee behind college football’s playoff somehow put together a compelling tournament without inciting the usual torrent of backlash, and the team raising the trophy at the end could well wind up being Indiana. And, no, that’s not a typo.

In case it’s unclear, Indiana is basketball country – the birthplace of Larry Bird, the home of the NBA’s Pacers, the inspiration behind Gene Hackman’s Hoosiers. Tier-one campus research, Bobby Knight’s tempestuous hardwood reign, and Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban are Indiana University’s claims to fame; football rarely, if ever, entered the chat. Before the NFL’s Colts snuck in from Baltimore and blended into Indiana’s sports tapestry, Hoosiers fans spent football season rallying around Notre Dame, a national brand that happens to reside in-state, and saved their true colors for the college basketball tipoff.

Published: January 19, 2026, 9:00 am

Patriots torment Stroud to beat Texans and set up AFC championship with Broncos

• Houston Texans 16-28 New England Patriots

• New England intercept Houston QB four times

• Rams face Seahawks in NFC championship game

Drake Maye threw three touchdown passes, Marcus Jones returned one of CJ Stroud’s four interceptions for a score and the New England Patriots defeated the Houston Texans 28-16 on Sunday to advance to the AFC championship game for the first time in seven years, where they will play the Denver Broncos.

In Mike Vrabel’s first season as head coach, the Patriots will make their 16th conference championship game appearance and first since their run to their sixth Super Bowl title under Bill Belichick in the 2018 season. New England have won their last nine divisional round games.

Maye finished 16 of 27 for 179 yards, but had an interception and fumbled four times, losing two in cold conditions as snow and rain fell throughout the game. One of Maye’s fumbles set up Houston’s first touchdown.

Published: January 18, 2026, 11:38 pm

Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action

Manchester United jog memories, Nick Woltemade comes up short and there’s a tough crowd for Chelsea’s owners

• Top scorers: check out the latest top-flight standings

Sir Jim Ratcliffe was present to see the best victory and performance of his two years of minority ownership. When Ratcliffe bought in, the public impression given was of a billionaire signing up to taste the magic for himself. Saturday, and beating Manchester City, was an undoubted revival act where Michael Carrick’s team played the football of yore. That will almost certainly be unsustainable in the medium term, since most opposition will not play City’s high-line, high-wire act. But in engaging their supporters with determination and aggression, United jogged memories. There was a time when just about every big game had Old Trafford rocking like this, when the opposition could not hear themselves think. Surely that was the myth and legend Ratcliffe wanted to be part of? Would that be possible in the new stadium the Ineos chief has plans for instead of Old Trafford? Tottenham’s recent experiences suggest otherwise. Would Liverpool’s owners cash out the Anfield experience? Surely not. John Brewin

Match report: Manchester United 2-0 Manchester City

Match report: Aston Villa 0-1 Everton

Match report: Wolves 0-0 Newcastle

Match report: Nottingham Forest 0-0 Arsenal

Match report: Tottenham 1-2 West Ham

Match report: Sunderland 2-1 Crystal Palace

Match report: Chelsea 2-0 Brentford

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:43 am

Zohran Mamdani’s Afcon watch party brings African football to a New York landmark

The newly inaugurated mayor of New York City put an extraordinary game on in a classic location, a formula he aims to mimic later this year

“He missed!”

The words echoed around the lobby of the Manhattan Surrogate’s Court, off the walls, floors, and recently restored skylight ceiling of the yellow marble atrium. The normal day-to-day business at this civic landmark is largely concerned with history; the courts upstairs handle estate proceedings, and the basement houses part of the city’s municipal archives. But even with all those records of things that have taken place in New York City or that have been done by its denizens, none of them will tell of an event like Sunday’s: A watch party for the soccer championship of Africa, hosted by the city’s mayor who hails from that continent, held within a space that screams “civic business” enough to have been used in several Law & Order episodes.

Published: January 19, 2026, 3:31 am

‘Leave Greenland alone!’: US anthem heckler at NBA London game draws cheers

• Heckle comes during rendition of Star-Spangled Banner

• US president has threatened tariffs on European nations

Mounting tensions between Europe and the United States moved into the sporting arena on Sunday when a member of the crowd shouted “Leave Greenland alone” as the US national anthem was sung during an NBA game in London.

Actor Vanessa Williams was performing the Star-Spangled Banner before the Memphis Grizzlies faced the Orlando Magic at the O2 Arena when she was interrupted by the heckle. The intervention drew a round of applause and cheers from sections of the crowd.

Published: January 18, 2026, 9:34 pm

Coco Gauff secures solid Australian Open first-round win despite serve issues

• American third seed beats Kamilla Rakhimova 6-2, 6-3

• ‘I just want to win the tournament,’ says 21-year-old

Coco Gauff made a solid start to the Australian Open as she secured a relatively straightforward victory on Rod Laver Arena, moving past Kamilla Rakhimova of Uzbekistan 6-2, 6-3 to reach the second round at Melbourne Park.

Gauff, the third seed, put together a solid opening performance as she attempts to follow up her second grand slam triumph at Roland Garros last year by winning her first title in Melbourne. Despite her usual serving difficulties at the beginning and end of the match, Gauff completely outmatched her Uzbek challenger from the baseline with her supreme defensive skills and court sense, smartly choosing her moments to step inside the baseline and dictate.

Published: January 19, 2026, 3:16 am

Shaka Hislop: ‘It might take another 100 years to dismantle racism but we’ll get there’

Former Newcastle goalkeeper opens up on the abuse he has received and using the platform footballers have to support an anti-racism charity

It was a chance encounter that would ultimately help change countless lives for the better but, at the time, all Shaka Hislop wanted to do was escape.

As the then Newcastle goalkeeper stood on a petrol station forecourt, filling his car on a dark November night in 1995 his overriding emotions were outrage and fear. Hislop was heading home after an evening out with his wife and young daughter when, with the fuel gauge edging towards the red zone, he pulled into a garage just across the road from St James’ Park.

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:43 am

Growing sense of embarrassment at Fifa over Donald Trump peace prize

• Mid-level and senior officials uncomfortable with award

• Fifa says it still ‘strongly’ supports the peace prize

There is a growing sense of embarrassment among mid-level and senior officials within Fifa over the awarding of its peace prize to Donald Trump. The US president was handed the award at the World Cup draw in Washington DC in December with the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, telling Trump: “We want to see hope, we want to see unity, we want to see a future. This is what we want to see from a leader and you definitely deserve the first Fifa Peace Prize.”

Since then, the US has launched airstrikes across Venezuela and captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them to the US, where he was put in jail. Maduro appeared in court on 5 January, pleading not guilty to drugs, weapons and “narco‑terrorism” charges. Trump has also threatened to invade Greenland because he said the US needs the territory “very badly”.

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

15 years after Fukushima, Japan prepares to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant

A return to nuclear power is at the heart of Japan’s energy policy but, in the wake of the 2011 disaster, residents’ fears about tsunamis, earthquakes and evacuation plans remain

The activity around the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is reaching its peak: workers remove earth to expand the width of a main road, while lorries arrive at its heavily guarded entrance. A long perimeter fence is lined with countless coils of razor wire, and in a layby, a police patrol car monitors visitors to the beach – one of the few locations with a clear view of the reactors, framed by a snowy Mount Yoneyama.

When all seven of its reactors are working, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa generates 8.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power millions of households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land in Niigata prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world.

Published: January 19, 2026, 1:46 am

Prince Harry arrives at high court as legal battle against Daily Mail begins

Duke of Sussex one of six high-profile figures who accuse media company of unlawful information gathering

The Duke of Sussex has arrived at a central London court as he and six other prominent figures begin their legal battle against the publisher of the Daily Mail, alleging it used unlawful information gathering to secure stories.

Prince Harry headed to the high court to observe the opening of the case, which is expected to last 10 weeks. He is due to give evidence later this week and flew in from California on Sunday.

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:41 am

Japan’s prime minister calls snap election as approval ratings ride high

Sanae Takaichi tells senior figures in ruling Liberal Democratic party she plans to dissolve lower house on 23 January

Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has called a snap election as she attempts to capitalise on high approval ratings since becoming the country’s first female prime minister three months ago.

Takaichi, a conservative who is embroiled in a deepening dispute with China over the security of Taiwan, said on Monday she would dissolve the lower house of the Diet – Japan’s parliament – on 23 January, with an election to follow on 8 February.

Published: January 19, 2026, 9:39 am

Man in critical condition after third Sydney shark attack in two days

NSW Ambulance treat man at Manly beach in Sydney’s north after attack by shark on Monday evening

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A man believed to be in his 20s is in a critical condition after being bitten by a shark in the third attack at Sydney beaches in two days.

He was taken to Royal North Shore hospital on Monday evening after New South Wales Ambulance officers treated the man at Manly beach in Sydney’s north following the attack.

Published: January 19, 2026, 8:46 am

Ukraine war briefing: Russian attacks kill two as Ukrainian strikes trigger blackouts in occupied south

Kyiv’s forces say 30 Russian strikes recorded across 15 locations while hundreds of thousands left without electricity in occupied Zaporizhzhia. What we know on day 1,426

Moscow kept up its hammering of Ukraine’s energy grid in attacks that killed at least two people overnight to Sunday, according to Ukrainian officials. At least six people were wounded in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the emergency service said. Russia also targeted energy infrastructure in Odesa region, it said. A fire broke out and was promptly extinguished. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that repairing the country’s energy system remained challenging “but we are doing everything we can to restore everything as quickly as possible”. The Ukrainian president said two people were killed in overnight attacks across the country that struck Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi and Odesa and included more than 200 drones. The military said 30 strikes had been recorded across 15 locations. One person was killed in the second-largest city of Kharkiv, said mayor Ihor Terekhov.

Ukrainian drone strikes damaged energy networks in Russia-occupied parts of southern Ukraine, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power, according to Kremlin-installed authorities there. More than 200,000 households in the occupied part of southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region had no electricity on Sunday, the Kremlin-installed local governor said. Nearly 400 settlements have had their supply cut because of damage to power networks from Ukrainian drone strikes, Yevgeny Balitsky said on Telegram.

Ukrainian crews have started repair works on the backup power line connecting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the power grid, under a ceasefire brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based UN organisation said on X post on Sunday. The fate of the plant – occupied by Russia and the largest in Europe – is a central issue in ongoing US-brokered peace talks.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has said a US invasion of Greenland would make Russian president Vladimir Putin “the happiest man on Earth” in a newspaper interview. Sanchez said any military action by the US against Denmark’s Arctic territory would damage Nato and legitimise the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. “If we focus on Greenland, I have to say that a US invasion of that territory would make Vladimir Putin the happiest man in the world. Why? Because it would legitimise his attempted invasion of Ukraine,” Sanchez said in an interview in La Vanguardia newspaper published on Sunday. “If the United States were to use force, it would be the death knell for Nato. Putin would be doubly happy.“

Ukraine’s top negotiator said talks with US officials on ending the war with Russia would continue at the World Economic Forum opening this week in the Swiss resort of Davos. Rustem Umerov, writing on Telegram, said on Sunday that two days of talks in Florida with a US team including envoy Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner had focused on security guarantees and a postwar recovery plan for Ukraine.

Published: January 19, 2026, 1:03 am

Chilean president declares state of catastrophe as wildfires kill at least 18

Fires blaze through 8,500 hectares, forcing 50,000 people to evacuate as firefighters struggle to extinguish flames

Wildfires raging across central and southern Chile have killed at least 18 people, scorched thousands of hectares of forest and destroyed scores of homes, authorities said, as the South American country swelters under a heatwave.

Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric, declared a state of catastrophe in the country’s central Biobío region and the neighbouring Ñuble region, about 500km (300 miles) south of Santiago, the capital.

Published: January 18, 2026, 8:16 pm

‘People saw dollar signs’: a year after devastating wildfires, an LA community is fighting displacement

As survivors face pressure to sell their land in Altadena, a historic Black community, experts say we’re witnessing ‘climate gentrification’

Ellen Williams’ left hand played with her long dark hair as her right hand guided the steering wheel, her phone resting face-down in her lap. Born and raised in Altadena, an unincorporated area in Los Angeles county, she didn’t need to look at a map as she drove to where her home of 22 years burned down.

We passed empty lots with gaping holes where foundations once stood. The banging of hammers rang through the neighborhood and wood frames rose from the dirt, the smell of fresh lumber in the air. Perched on street corners were signs declaring: “Altadena is not for sale.”

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

Dublin Bay’s oyster graveyard rises from dead in effort to restore rich ecosystem

Pioneering scheme hopes species that thrived for thousands of years in Irish waters can do so again

The dinghy slowed to a stop at a long line of black bobbing baskets and David Lawlor reached out to inspect the first one.

Inside lay 60 oysters, all with their shells closed, shielding the life within. “They look great,” beamed Lawlor. So did their neighbours in the next basket and the ones after that, all down the line of 300 baskets, totalling 18,000 oysters.

Published: January 18, 2026, 7:00 am

Ohio man, 83, convicted of killing Uber driver faces sentencing

William Brock fatally shot Lo-Letha Toland-Hall in 2024 after wrongly assuming she was involved in plot to rob him

An 83-year-old Ohio man faces sentencing on Tuesday after being convicted of murder in the shooting of an Uber driver who he wrongly thought was trying to rob him.

William J Brock fatally shot the driver after wrongly assuming she was in on a plot involving scam phone calls that deceived them both to get $12,000 in supposed bond money for a relative, authorities said.

Associated Press contributed

Published: January 18, 2026, 9:11 pm

‘It’s unforgiving’: California park officials grapple with recent deaths on Mount Baldy

Calls are renewed for permitting to hike the Los Angeles-area mountain that looks deceptively accessible

The peak is just there in the distance, hovering above Los Angeles, snow-capped and tantalizing to the city-bound.

About an hour from the sands of the Pacific coast, Mount Baldy and the surrounding Angeles national forest have long been a wilderness playground to millions who call the greater Los Angeles area home.

Published: January 18, 2026, 4:00 pm

Epstein survivors say financier lured them with promise of college education

Multiple survivors claim Epstein dangled admission to top universities to ensnare them in his sexual abuse network

A New York City artist who said Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell shopped her around to men is among the survivors claiming that Epstein used the lure of a university education to ensnare her in their sexual abuse network.

Rina Oh was a 21-year-old art student when she was introduced to Epstein in 2000 by Lisa Phillips, a model and Epstein survivor who has since emerged as a powerful voice in the survivors’ network pressuring for full accountability in the long-running money, sex and power scandal.

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

Arrest of priest for indecent behavior with a child reignites scandal in Louisiana diocese

Korey LaVergne, 37, jailed Friday evening on three counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile, according to officials

Authorities in south-west Louisiana recently arrested a Roman Catholic priest on accusations of behaving indecently with a child, igniting a new scandal in the diocese where the US church’s reckoning with clergy abuse began – an institution that just disclosed it could lose up to $162m over pending litigation.

Korey LaVergne was jailed Friday evening on three counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile, according to Acadia parish sheriff KP Gibson, whose agency arrested the priest. LaVergne had presided over mass at St Edward church in Richard – where the Lafayette diocese had assigned him as pastor – hours before he was booked into the Acadia lockup.

Published: January 18, 2026, 11:00 am

Roger Allers, Disney film-maker and co-director of The Lion King, dies aged 76

With Rob Minkoff, Allers directed 1994’s The Lion King, which remains the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of all time

Roger Allers, the Disney film-maker who co-directed The Lion King and worked on films including Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, has died aged 76.

Allers’ colleague at the Walt Disney Company, Dave Bossert announced his death on social media on Sunday morning, remembering him as “an extraordinarily gifted artist and film-maker, a true pillar of the Disney Animation renaissance”.

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:57 am

‘Brazen’ political influence of rich laid bare as wealth of billionaires reaches $18.3tn, says Oxfam

Governments opting for oligarchy while brutally repressing protests over austerity and lack of jobs, charity report says

The world saw a record number of billionaires created last year, with a collective wealth of $18.3tn (£13.7tn), while global efforts stalled in the fight against poverty and hunger.

Oxfam’s annual survey of global inequality has revealed that the number of billionaires surpassed 3,000 for the first time during 2025. Since 2020, their collective wealth grew by 81%, or $8.2tn, which the charity claims would be enough to eradicate global poverty 26 times over.

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:01 am

Simple blood test can predict which breast cancer treatment will work best, study finds

Exclusive: DNA test means patients could be offered most effective treatment first, boosting their chances of beating the disease

Scientists have developed a simple DNA blood test that can predict how well patients with breast cancer will respond to treatment.

More than 2 million people globally each year are diagnosed with the disease, which is the world’s most prevalent cancer. Although treatments have improved in recent decades, it is not easy to know which ones will work best for which patients.

Published: January 18, 2026, 3:26 pm

Women ‘being failed by underfunded and understaffed’ UK postnatal care

Thousands of new mothers feel unsafe, unsupported and overwhelmed, according to the National Childbirth Trust

Women in the UK are being failed by a postnatal care system that is “dangerously underfunded and understaffed”, a damning report has warned.

Thousands of new mothers feel unsafe, unsupported and overwhelmed in the weeks and months after giving birth, according to the National Childbirth Trust (NCT).

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:01 am

‘I’ve had to fight tooth and nail’: Amber Davies on Strictly trolls, Love Island hunks – and her Legally Blonde no-brainer

She started out performing in her living room, charging £1.50 a ticket. Now, having blazed through Love Island and silenced her Strictly haters, the Welsh sensation is really hitting the big time

At the end of last year’s Strictly Come Dancing semi-final, pro dancer Nikita Kuzmin made a tearful appeal to camera, “I speak to the audience at home: guys, just please, please be kind!” His celebrity partner, Love Island winner, Dancing on Ice contestant and musical theatre actor Amber Davies, had been getting a lot of flak online. “You have had so much hate, every single day,” said Kuzmin.

Isn’t it crazy that we have to remind people to be nice to other humans who are just doing their job, I say to Davies, when we meet in a London hotel bar. “I genuinely think it’s getting worse,” says Davies, who has been in the public eye since 2017. “With TikTok, when people jump on a bandwagon, they go for it,” she adds. “But I feel like the nasty comments I was getting [on Strictly] weren’t actually coming from the younger audience, they came from the older audience.”

Published: January 19, 2026, 5:00 am

Sex, death and parrots: Julian Barnes’s best fiction – ranked!

As the Booker prize-winning author prepares to publish his final novel at 80, we assess his finest work

Duffy is the first in a series of crime novels about a bisexual private eye that Barnes published under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. It came out the same year as Barnes’s debut novel proper, Metroland, but where that took seven years to write, this took 10 days. Not that it shows: this “refreshingly nasty” (as Barnes’s friend Martin Amis put it) crime caper is beguilingly well written, with passages that display all of Barnes’s perception and wit. The plot of reverse blackmail and the shocking climax only add to the fun.
Sample line “Two in the morning is when sounds travel for ever, when a sticky window makes a soft squeak and three Panda cars hear it from miles away.”

Published: January 19, 2026, 12:00 pm

Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox review – space-hopping comedy asks the big question

Stimson Snead’s preposterous time-leaping indie starring multiple Samuel Dunnings is just about rescued by cameos from Keith David and Danny Trejo

For the sheer quantity of its gibbering, jabbering nonsense, this movie deserves some points. That, and the amusing cameo at the end from Keith David as the Simulator, AKA God, who explains to the awestruck mortals that God is an entirely free creator, rather like a self-published novelist, then grows irritated when the mortals think that being self-published is lame: “It’s not my fault if you don’t understand the industry!”

This is an exhausting indie romp on the subject of time travel, and sometimes plays like a funnier version of Shane Carruth’s time-travel classic Primer – well, slightly funnier. Samuel Dunning plays Tim Travers, a goateed scientist who has stolen nuclear materials from a terrorist group to power the time machine he has invented. He sends himself back one minute into the past with a gun to kill his younger self to investigate the time-traveller’s paradox: if he eliminates his one-minute younger self, then won’t he also disappear at that moment, popping like a soap bubble, because it means he can’t exist in the future? But given that he has to exist in the future to have set all this in motion, doesn’t it mean that this time-travelled self has to survive?

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:00 am

Mother of Flies review – horror in the woods as house guests are microdosed with psychedelics

The Adams-Poser clan, a family of four who make low-budget horror films, return with a menacing tale of Solveig, a woman attempting to cheat death by strange means

If you had a vision board for parenting goals, it would no doubt be dominated by images of the ultra-cool Adams-Poser family, a clan comprising upstate New York hep cat parents (Toby Poser and John Adams) and their hep kitten kids (Zelda and Lulu Adams) who make low-budget thriller-horror features together. The family members multitask above and beyond, serving not just as co-directors, co-writers, producers and stars, but also operating the camera and making the costumes. The results are genuinely striking, professional and effective (especially in terms of scare-generation). And if the scripts are often a smidge pretentious, they are never less than interesting and always original.

Their previous offerings include Hellbender, Halfway to Zen and Rumblestrips, tales that often revolve around families or familial units, although John Adams doesn’t always play the dad character and Poser isn’t always the mother. In their latest, Poser has cracked open the indigo pot and spun up some wool to make a witchy, cerulean outfit to play weird woman Solveig, a figure with strong maternal feelings, not least towards the many bluebottles that follow her everywhere; she isn’t, however, technically a mother to the protagonist, college student Mickey (Zelda Adams). The economical dialogue eventually reveals that Mickey survived cancer some years ago which resulted in a hysterectomy, but a new inoperable tumour the size of an apple (very biblical) has recently grown in her abdomen and she has maybe six months to live.

Published: January 19, 2026, 9:00 am

The most popular show among gen Z? The Rookie – a police procedural

In an era of TikTok and YouTube, teens have never watched old-school television less – yet zoomers love this broadcast drama series

Hannah Leef knows she should be studying for midterms this week. But she has to also make time to watch her all-time favorite episode of The Rookie, an ABC procedural drama about Los Angeles cops. (That would be season two, episode eight.) The 15 year old, who lives in New England, calls the show her “hyperfixation”.

Leef first watched the entire series, which is currently in its eighth season, in three weeks. “Which is, like, not healthy,” she admits. She keeps up with new episodes while constantly rewatching the series – which she’s done 10 times now. She’s hooked “about 12 or 13” of her friends on The Rookie, and one of them ploughed through the entire series in a week: “She did not sleep.”

Published: January 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

Saturday Night Live: big name cameos can’t save weak Stranger Things-themed episode

A$AP Rocky steals the show during Finn Wolfhard’s first ever go as host with surprise appearances from Sabrina Carpenter, Jason Momoa and more

Saturday Night Live returns from the holiday hiatus to catch us up on all things Trump: the president (James Austin Johnson) addresses the nation from the Oval Office, bragging about his favorite Christmas present: “My very own somebody else’s Nobel prize … and in my stocking: Maduro … we did a reverse Santa on him.”

Joined by cabinet members “Little” Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) and JD Vance (Jeremy Culhane, taking over for departed cast member Bowen Yang), who are all trying to “help me do so many legal-ish things to try to get people to stop talking about Epstein.” Said things include an impending invasion of Cuba, “trans in menswear”, new tariffs, and Greenland, only to be interrupted by Trump wandering behind them and looking out the window in a senile fugue state.

Published: January 18, 2026, 3:44 pm

A novelty golf-ball finder that conned the military: best podcasts of the week

This unbelievable, Alice Levine-narrated true story sees governments fooled by a fake bomb detector. Plus, Peter Bradshaw’s darkly comic thriller about a charming nurse

Alice Levine narrates this scam story in customary wry fashion. We meet Steve, an ex-copper who helps his childhood best pal sell his cutting-edge bomb detector, only to end up with detectives arresting him. It’s a slickly produced tale of a con that fooled governments and militaries, with action flitting from questionable Hong Kong banks to the Iraqi airports in which it’s installed as a security measure – with potentially lethal consequences. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:00 am

Poem of the week: Now, Mother, What’s the Matter? by Richard W Halperin

An exploration of what constitutes the literary arts – plus all the ‘troubled hearts’ and demons that accompany it – through the lens of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Now, Mother, What’s the Matter?

Only the monsters do not have troubled hearts.
Life is for troubled hearts. Art is for troubled
hearts. For my whole life, Hamlet has been
a bridge between. Hamlet’s ‘Now, mother,
what’s the matter?’ is life on earth. Something
is always the matter, and not just for mothers.
(As I write this, the Angelus rings.) Every
character in Hamlet is troubled, there are
no monsters in it. I render unto Caesar
the things that are Caesar’s — everything is
troubled there and, if I am lucky, Caesar
is troubled. I render unto God the things
that are God’s and feel — want to feel? Do feel —
that God is troubled. I also render unto art.
But I have no idea what art is. What
Edward Thomas’s ‘Adlestrop’ is. What
the luminous chaos of The Portrait of
a Lady is. What The Pilgrim’s Progress is.
My feet knew the way before I opened
the book: that just before the gate to heaven
is yet another hole to hell.

Published: January 19, 2026, 11:24 am

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes review – this final novel is a slippery affair

Memoir merges with fiction as the author reflects on failed love, ageing and the end of life in this last instalment to his writing career

Julian Barnes tells us that this is his final book, so that’s one departure accounted for – the last instalment of a writing career spanning 45 years, encompassing novels and short stories, memoirs and essays, biography, travel writing, translation and even a little pseudonymous detective fiction. Many of these works turn up here, whether obliquely or overtly, referred to through subject matter, style, tone or connotation; in the contemporary cultural argot, which Barnes is fond of examining, these writerly winks might be known as Easter eggs.

The other form of leave taking is the “departure without subsequent arrival”: death. It is, as Larkin had it, “no different whined at than withstood”, and the truth is that most of us are both whiners and withstanders, querulous until there’s nothing left to complain at, stoic until pushed too far. Barnes is perhaps the great interpreter of mundane grandiosity, or grandiose mundanity – understanding that even as we attempt to inhabit the heroic mode, or to reach an intellectual accommodation with both mortality and morality, we will slip on a banana skin (or in Barnes’s case, he tells us here, a wooden staircase approached with bath-damp feet in a rush to answer the doorbell).

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:00 am

Be More Bird by Candida Meyrick review – less soaring avian self-help than a parroting of tired cliches

This contrived addition to a sub-genre popularised by H is for Hawk and Raising Hare falls to earth with a thud

In July 2020, Candida Meyrick, better known as the novelist Candida Clark, became the owner of Sophia Houdini White Wing, better known as Bird. Bird is a Harris hawk, a feathered killing machine who hunts the rich Dorset fields on the edge of the New Forest. She can take down a rabbit but much prefers cock pheasants. Recently she has been eyeing up the peacocks that the Meyricks keep on their estate.

Meyrick’s starting point in this puzzling book is that Bird has a rich interior life that we flightless clod-hoppers would do well to emulate. What follows are 20 brief “life lessons” inspired by the hawk’s assumed musings. So, for instance, the fact that Bird prefers to hunt her own dinner rather than accept substitute snacks from Meyrick is used to urge the reader to “stay true to your higher self”. Likewise, her ability to keep cool under threat from a pair of thuggish buzzards becomes an exhortation to “hold your ground, you’re stronger than you think”. Other maxims include “Stay humble. Keep working at it” and the truly head-scratching “Just show up; and when you can’t, don’t”.

Published: January 19, 2026, 9:00 am

How can we defend ourselves from the new plague of ‘human fracking’?

Big tech treats our attention like a resource to be mercilessly extracted. The fightback begins here

In the last 15 years, a linked series of unprecedented technologies have changed the experience of personhood across most of the world. It is estimated that nearly 70% of the human population of the Earth currently possesses a smartphone, and these devices constitute about 95% of internet access-points on the planet. Globally, on average, people seem to spend close to half their waking hours looking at screens, and among young people in the rich world the number is a good deal higher than that.

History teaches that new technologies always make possible new forms of exploitation, and this basic fact has been spectacularly exemplified by the rise of society-scale digital platforms. It has been driven by a remarkable new way of extracting money from human beings: call it “human fracking”. Just as petroleum frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergents into the ground to force a little monetisable black gold to the surface, human frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergent into our faces (in the form of endless streams of addictive slop and maximally disruptive user-generated content), to force a slurry of human attention to the surface, where they can collect it, and take it to market.

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds review – an electrifying crescendo of faith, fury and fragile joy

Fremantle Park, Perth
Returning to Australian stages after nine years, the band delivers a fierce, generous set that draws on four decades of music

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Dragging his hand across the piano keys, Nick Cave leaps into the air and charges towards the crowd like a preacher breaking from the pulpit. “Bring your spirit down!” he cries repeatedly, arms flung wide as the choir roars behind him.

It’s barely 10 minutes into their set at Fremantle Park in Perth, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds have the audience in the palm of their hands. Touring their 2024 album Wild God in Australia for the first time, they open with the brooding track Frogs and the eponymous Wild God, an explosive crescendo of high-pitched strings, soaring vocals and pounding percussion.

Published: January 18, 2026, 11:34 pm

Author Julian Barnes confirms new novel will be his last

Booker prize winner, 80, says he has reached point of having ‘played all my tunes’ after new book Departure(s)

The Booker prize-winning author, Julian Barnes, has confirmed his new novel, Departure(s), will be his last book, saying that he has the sense “that I’ve played all my tunes”.

Barnes, who celebrates his 80th birthday on Monday and whose works over a 45-year career include 15 novels and 10 works of nonfiction, said: “One way of thinking about how long you go on is, ‘As long as they’ll still publish you’.

Published: January 18, 2026, 2:12 pm

Breakfast oysters and pricey king crab: Sydney’s new fish market is glitzy and less smelly – for now

After lengthy delays, the $836m market has opened its doors with dozens of new venders seeking to lure visitors with everything from bánh mì to artisan cheese

When the new Sydney Fish Market flung open its doors for the first time on Monday morning, one regular clientele was notably absent.

There were no seagulls. And, by extension, no poo.

Published: January 19, 2026, 5:54 am

Wide sandy beaches and amazing seafood in western France

Charente-Maritime is a more affordable, less manicured family destination than nearby Île de Ré

Dinner comes with a spectacle in La Tremblade. Before I sit down to a platter of oysters at La Cabane des Bons Vivants, one of the village’s canal-side restaurants, I stand and watch orange flames bellow up from a tangle of long, skinny pine needles inside a large, open oven. They are piled on top of a board of carefully arranged mussels and, by setting fire to the pine needles, the shellfish cook in their own juices.

This is the curious tradition of moules à l’éclade, a novel way of cooking mussels developed by Marennes-Oléron oyster farmers along the River Seudre in the Charente-Maritime, halfway down France’s west coast. The short-lived flaming spectacle is a prelude to sliding apart the charred shells and finding juicy orange molluscs inside – and just one highlight of our evening along La Grève. The avenue that cuts between the oyster beds, lined by colourful, ramshackle huts and rustic pontoons is an alluring venue for a sunset meal by the canal, the atmosphere all the more lively and fascinating for it being in a working oyster-farming village.

Published: January 19, 2026, 7:00 am

I was warned my children would be ripped in half when we divorced. But I had no idea just how brutal custody cases can be

My experience of court was eye-opening. And when I sat in on other cases, I realised how often mothers are vilified

It’s 1836 and the French writer George Sand is swimming in the River Indre with her clothes on, weighed down by layers of ankle-length fabric. To anyone passing by, she must look mad or worse – driven by a death wish. But for her there is the relief of cool water sluicing hot skin, after walking for hours in 30C heat. She’s been moving all day because if she stops she’ll remember how frightened she is: she’s about to go to court to fight for her children against a husband driven by punitive anger.

Custodire. To care. To look after. To guard. To restrain. Maternal care is, we are constantly told, the most natural of functions. But for century after century, women who transgress the expected norms of what a mother should be have battled for their children and been found wanting. Maternal care comes at a price when the law is involved. And all too often custody can be more a question of restraint than care.

Published: January 18, 2026, 6:00 am

Kindness of strangers: stranded on a tiny Indonesian island, a local took us under her wing

Noticing how out of place we looked, she asked in English if she could help us

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

In 1996, I travelled around Indonesia with my then-boyfriend. We’d been exploring Surabaya when we heard about an island off the coast called Madura that could be reached via ferry. It didn’t turn up in any of the tourist guides, which appealed to us, being adventurous types. We knew Madura wouldn’t be touristy, but expected there’d be some streets to explore and somewhere to sit down and have a cup of tea.

As soon as Madura came into sight, we realised our visit may not have been a great idea. We were expecting to see houses and buildings dot the shore, as well as the hawkers who’d typically crowd around piers in Indonesia with food and wares to sell. There was none of that. It was just a pier next to a tiny village.

Published: January 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

I adore my husband but I feel a fraud at his church | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

Couples not sharing religious beliefs or going to each other’s places of worship isn’t unusual, but perhaps there’s something else going on here

When I met my husband eight years ago, I knew he was churchy, but as a low-church Protestant, I thought this wouldn’t be a problem. Outside church, I am comfortable with our religious differences. I sort of believe in God, and find immense spirituality in nature, but think Christ was simply a good man, whereas my husband believes it. He respects my beliefs and has never imposed his on me.

The problem I have is with the church we attend. I often feel a fraud as I don’t share the beliefs of the rest of the congregation. I feel alienated by the emphasis on theology over Christ’s teachings, and the hymns and rituals. I resent having to sacrifice my Sundays mouthing words I do not believe.

Published: January 18, 2026, 6:00 am

My week avoiding ultra-processed foods: ‘Why is it this hard?’

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to various health issues, but are a ubiquitous part of the modern western diet. Can Emma Joyce avoid them for a whole week?

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I’ve been eating ultra-processed foods (UPFs) all my life. Breakfast as a child was often Coco Pops, Rice Bubbles or white toast slathered in spreadable butter. Dinners usually involved processed sauces, such as Chicken Tonight or Dolmio, and my lunchboxes always contained flavoured chippies or plasticky cheese.

I don’t blame my parents for this. Now I’m a parent too, I have cartons of juice and flavoured yoghurt as part of my parenting arsenal. Packaged foods are omnipresent in our lives. But, unfortunately, some of these foods are very bad for our health.

Published: January 18, 2026, 2:00 pm

Sleep, stress and sunshine: endocrinologists on 11 ways to look after your metabolism

Hormones impact almost all of our bodily functions, from skin, to the gut, to our moods. Here, experts on hormonal and metabolic health explain how to stay well

“Most people would like to have more energy and be leaner,” says Prof David Ray, an endocrinologist at the University of Oxford who also provides NHS services. “There is a connection between how we choose to live, what our bodies look and feel like, and the hormones that are going around the body. What endocrinologists deal with is disorders of either a lack of hormones, or too much of a hormone.”

Published: January 18, 2026, 5:00 am

Prada show rejects political elite, as Dolce & Gabbana criticised for ‘50 shades of white’

Prada says its tailoring opposes US ‘corporate masculine power’, while D&G’s all-white cast causes controversy in Milan

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the two designers behind Prada, are well aware that fashion is about more than clothes. However, backstage after their menswear show in Milan on Sunday, the duo said the volatile present moment was a difficult one to translate to a collection. “You talk about the world now,” said Prada “or you talk about fashion … The two things together, in this moment, are difficult.”

The collection was, therefore, “uncomfortable”. Rather than meaning the clothes were not pleasant to wear – this is luxury fashion, after all – there were disparate elements put together in the same outfit: the top of a red sou’wester over a trenchcoat, for example, or a yellow scoop-neck jumper with cuffs of a shirt falling out the sleeve. (There were also some useful unexpected styling tips, such as wallets stuffed in a back pocket, or brightly coloured shoe laces).

Published: January 18, 2026, 6:18 pm

Seafood cawl and ale rarebit: Luke Selby’s recipes for Welsh winter warmers

A hearty seafood stew of haddock, leeks and barley, and an almost indecently rich and comforting cheesy rarebit

For me, the best winter cooking is about comfort, warmth and connection – food that feels familiar, yet still tells a story. I’ve always been drawn to dishes that celebrate simple, honest ingredients and local tradition, and these two recipes are inspired by that spirit, and by a childhood spent doing lots of fishing in Wales. The seafood cawl is a lighter, coastal take on the Welsh classic, while the rarebit is rich and nostalgic. Both are designed to be cooked slowly and shared generously, and an ode to home kitchens, good produce and quiet moments around the table.

Published: January 19, 2026, 6:00 am

‘It felt amazing to be on the start line again’: the rugby pro who became paralysed – and is aiming for the Paralympic Games

Aged 20, Taylor Gough had a car accident. Five years later, he’s hoping to compete in the 2028 Paralympics. How did he do it?

• ‘I was bullied in school for being different. At 16, I hit a crashing point’: the awkward kid who became the world’s strongest man

From the age of 16, Taylor Gough’s body was a finely tuned machine. A professional rugby player who came up through the youth team at Leicester Tigers, his weeks revolved around training: heavy weights, tactical drills, contact sessions, cardio. “My body served a purpose and I ate to fuel it.”

Then, aged 20, he woke up in hospital unable to move or talk. “I had to mime to the nurse, ‘What happened?’ And it was during Covid – I didn’t have any family there, which made it 10 times worse.”

Published: January 18, 2026, 4:00 pm

‘I looked exceptional but I was out of breath’: the bodybuilder who switched to mindful movement

Ten years ago, Eugene Teo was obsessed with lifting weights. But, gradually, he realised his extreme mindset was making him unhappy. So he changed his outlook

• ‘It felt amazing to be on the start line again’: the rugby pro who became paralysed – and is aiming for the Paralympic Games

Eugene Teo, 34, began lifting weights at the age of 13, looking for validation. “I was short, skinny and I thought it would give me confidence,” he says. “Bodybuilding for me was the ultimate expression of that.”

Now living on the Gold Coast in Australia, with his partner and daughter, the fitness coach spent from age 16 to 24 training and competing. At times, he lifted weights for up to four hours a day, aiming to get as muscular and lean as possible. The ideal he was chasing? “If you grab your eyelid and feel that skin,” he says, “that’s the skin thinness you want on your bum and abs.”

Published: January 18, 2026, 12:00 pm

How to make mapo tofu – recipe | Felicity Cloake's Masterclass

Discover the joys of creamy soy bean curd in this spicy Sichuan dish that comes together in minutes

Mapo tofu is a Chengdu favourite typical of the “spicy generosity” of Sichuan food, Fuchsia Dunlop explains, though it’s perhaps better not translated as “pock-marked old woman’s tofu”. It may even convert you to the joys of tofu itself, should you still be on the fence about the stuff, because its creamy softness is the perfect foil for the intensely savoury, tingly seasoning involved here. It’s also ready in mere minutes.

Prep 10 min
Cook 7 min
Serves 2

Published: January 18, 2026, 1:00 pm

JD Vance: ‘despicable toady for Trump’ – and 2028 candidate in all but name

Vice-president has emerged as key defender of Maga flame – and is backed by big tech billions. Is this the heir apparent?

“We did not have a lot of money,” said JD Vance, placing hand on heart as he recalled his childhood in Middletown, Ohio in the 1990s. “I was raised by a woman who struggled often to put food on the table and clothes on her back.”

There was an earnest cry from the audience. “Mamaw!” shouted a man.

Published: January 18, 2026, 10:00 am

Davos 2026: the last-chance saloon to save the old world order?

Donald Trump will lead the largest US delegation ever at the World Economic Forum, as others plan a fightback against his policies including his latest tariff threats

“A Spirit of Dialogue”: the theme for this year’s World Economic Forum, the gathering of the global elite in the sparkling Alpine air of Davos, seems a heroic stretch, when star guest Donald Trump has spent the past year smashing up the world order.

The president will touch down alongside the snowcapped Swiss mountains with the largest US delegation ever seen at the WEF, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Published: January 18, 2026, 6:00 am

Prince Harry v the Daily Mail: high-stakes trial could have profound effects on UK media

Royal will join a group of notable figures in his action against the tabloid and its stablemate, the Mail on Sunday, in a trial expected to last nine weeks

On Monday morning, Prince Harry’s legal war with the Daily Mail, one of the British media’s most formidable forces, will finally come to trial in court 76 of the high court in London.

The prince is joined in his action by some of the most recognisable figures in British life: the singer and songwriter Elton John and his husband, David Furnish; actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost; Doreen Lawrence, a Labour peer whose son Stephen was murdered in a racist attack; and former politician Simon Hughes, who once ran to lead the Liberal Democrats.

Published: January 18, 2026, 6:00 am

A paper dragon and a cold marathon – photos of the weekend

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

Published: January 18, 2026, 2:31 pm