Access denied: why Muslims worldwide are being ‘debanked’ | Oliver Bullough

Innocent people are being frozen out of basic banking services – and it all traces back to reforms rushed through after 9/11

Hamish Wilson lives a few miles away from me, in a cosy farmhouse in the damp hills of mid Wales. He makes good coffee, tells great stories and is an excellent host. Every summer, dozens of Somali guests visit Wilson’s farm as part of a wonderfully wholesome project set up to celebrate their nation’s culture, and to honour his father’s second world war service with a Somali comrade-in-arms.

Inadvertently, however, the project has revealed something else: a deep unfairness in today’s global financial system that not only threatens to ruin the Somalis’ holidays, but also excludes marginalised communities from global banking services on a huge scale.

Published: January 27, 2026, 5:00 am

Removing US as World Cup host would be eminently sad – and entirely justified | Alexander Abnos

A country where safety is under threat from federal violence on the streets is not fit to stage soccer’s showpiece event

Removing the United States as co-host of the 2026 World Cup would hurt for pretty much everyone. Fans would miss out on seeing the sport’s pinnacle in their home towns (or somewhere nearby). Cities and businesses small and large would lose the financial benefits they had banked on. It would be a logistical and political nightmare on an international scale, the likes of which have never been seen before in sports. It would be eminently sad. And it would be entirely justified.

It brings me no pleasure to say this. The United States has been eager to host a men’s World Cup for more than a decade and a half. The desire survived and even grew after 2010’s failure to out-bid Russia and Qatar (in public and behind closed doors) for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. With hosting rights for 2026 later secured alongside Canada and Mexico, the US soccer scene prepared to show off that the sport is now part of the nation’s fabric, 32 years after hosting the tournament for the first time in 1994. Soccer’s growing popularity in America has helped inspire other US sports to try new formats, encouraged us to engage more fully with the world in a sporting context, and has been at the center of conversations about our society and culture. The 2026 World Cup was seen as the best chance for the world to fully experience not just how much the US has improved at soccer, but how much soccer has improved the US.

Published: January 27, 2026, 10:00 am

Anti-pop and an alien sigil: how Aphex Twin overtook Taylor Swift to become the soundtrack to gen Z life online

The mysterious Cornish electronic music pioneer has gained an extraordinary second life in the TikTok era. Writers and musicians explain why his glitchy slipperiness is so in tune with life today

QKThr, an obscure cut from Aphex Twin’s 2001 album, Drukqs, sounds like an ambient experiment recorded on a historic pirate ship. Shaky fingers caress the keys of an accordion to create an uncanny tone; clustered chords cry out, subdued but mighty, before scuttling back into dreamy nothingness.

This 88-second elegy has always been overshadowed by another song on Drukqs, the Disklavier instrumental Avril 14th, which alongside Windowlicker is the Cornish producer’s best-known track. But QKThr has become a weird breakaway success, featuring on nearly 8m TikTok posts, adorning everything from cute panda videos to lightly memed US presidential debates, and a fail video trend dubbed “subtle foreshadowing”.

Published: January 27, 2026, 5:00 am

Nudist neighbours to sweary mums: the best TV characters you never actually see on screen

Their faces may not have been given any airtime, but they remain some of the most beloved characters in television history – in shows like Friends, Frasier and This Country. Take a bow, Ugly Naked Guy …

When you think of television characters, chances are you remember the ones you can actually see. But this is a wildly unfair slight on a small but powerful minority: the characters who remain staunchly offscreen. For decades – mostly in comedies, with a handful of dramatic exceptions – these invisible workhorses have more than earned their keep, and they deserve their props. Here are the 10 best characters whose faces you have never actually clapped eyes on.

Published: January 27, 2026, 11:06 am

Disappeared bodies, mass burials and ‘30,000 dead’: what is the truth of Iran’s death toll?

Testimony from medics, morgue and graveyard staff reveals huge state effort to conceal systematic killing of protesters

On Thursday 8 January, in a midsize Iranian town, Dr Ahmadi’s* phone began to buzz. His colleagues in local emergency wards were getting worried.

All week, people had taken to the streets and had been met by police with batons and pellet guns. With treatment, their injuries should not have been too serious. But emergency room staff believed many wounded young people were avoiding hospitals, terrified that registering as trauma patients would lead to their identification and arrest.

Published: January 27, 2026, 5:00 am

To show the next generation the horrors of the past, we need to learn from David Lynch | Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

How best to portray the evil of Stutthof camp witnessed by my grandfather? The Zone of Interest and Twin Peaks could have the answer

When I was nine years old, my grandfather took me to the museum at the former Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk, in northern Poland. Established by the Nazis in the German-annexed territory of the Free City of Danzig, he had been imprisoned there as a teenager. It was his first visit since the second world war. When we went through the gate, he began to cry, to shout, to reconstruct scenes. The past returned all at once and he fell into a state of trauma. During his imprisonment he had been responsible, among other things, for carrying bodies from the camp infirmary.

Most of the most infamous Nazi death camps have been turned into memorials like Stutthof, in the hope that they can teach something to future generations and avert a repeat of this darkest of chapters in Europe’s history. But it is a fact that few visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau or Stutthof are shaken like my grandfather was. Sites of memory increasingly fail to reach new generations. Visitors learn facts, dates, perpetrators. But knowledge of past crimes does not automatically prevent future ones. Many institutions still teach a reassuring lesson: there were evil people once, they were defeated, we are different. Evil is placed safely in the past. The visitor leaves morally intact.

Published: January 27, 2026, 5:00 am

Border patrol commander to leave Minneapolis after shooting of Alex Pretti

Gregory Bovino, an aggressive promoter of Trump’s deportation agenda, is said to have been stripped of ‘commander at large’ title

Gregory Bovino, the border patrol commander who has become the public face of the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, is expected to leave the city on Tuesday as the Trump administration reshuffles the leadership of its immigration enforcement operation and scales back the federal presence after a second fatal shooting by officers.

A senior Trump administration official told Reuters that the 55-year-old, who has been a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists, would be leaving Minnesota along with some of the agents deployed with him.

Published: January 27, 2026, 9:05 am

‘A militia that kills’: uproar in Italy over ICE security role at Winter Olympics

Milan’s mayor says agents ‘clearly not welcome’ in co-host city and that Italy can take care of security itself

A unit of US immigration and customs enforcement agents (ICE) will have a security role in the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Italy, sparking uproar and petitions against the deployment.

Sources at the US embassy in Rome confirmed a statement from ICE, the agency embroiled in a brutal immigration crackdown in the US, saying that federal agents would support diplomatic security details during the Milan-Cortina games but would not run any enforcement operations.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:23 pm

‘Abdication’: Trump formally takes US out of Paris climate agreement for a second time

Experts are watching for how other countries will react as the ‘real economy’ shifts to cheaper, cleaner energy

The United States has officially exited the Paris climate agreement for the second time, cementing Donald Trump’s renewed break with the primary global venue to address global heating.

The move leaves the US as the only country to have withdrawn from the pact, placing it alongside Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries not party to the agreement. While it will not halt global climate efforts, experts say it could significantly complicate them.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:30 pm

Alex Vindman, key Trump impeachment witness, launches Democratic bid for Senate

Vindman, who served on national security council, will challenge Republican incumbent in Florida if nominated

• US politics live – latest updates

Alex Vindman, who became a key player along with his twin brother in Donald Trump’s first impeachment, announced on Tuesday that he is running for the US Senate as a Democrat in Florida.

Vindman, an army veteran, was serving on the national security council in 2019 during Trump’s first presidency. That year, Trump pressured Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:13 pm

US still faces freezing temperatures and power outages amid deadly winter storm

More than 30 have died across a dozen states as deep snow and ice halted traffic, canceled flights and closed schools

Many in the US faced another night of below-freezing temperatures and no electricity after a deadly, colossal winter storm heaped more snow Monday on the north-east and kept parts of the south coated in ice.

More than 30 deaths were registered in more than a dozen states afflicted with severe cold, according to reports. There were still nearly 550,000 power outages in the nation on Tuesday morning, according to poweroutage.us. Most of the outages were in the south, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Officials warned that it could take days for power to be restored.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:57 pm

Tech giants head to landmark US trial over social media addiction claims

Meta, YouTube and TikTok accused of making products intentionally addictive and harmful to young people

For the first time, a massive group of parents, teens and school districts is taking on the world’s most powerful social media companies in open court, accusing the tech giants of intentionally designing their products to be addictive. The blockbuster legal proceedings may see multiple CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, face harsh questioning.

A long-awaited series of trials kicks off in Los Angeles superior court on Tuesday, in which hundreds of US families will allege that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube’s platforms harm children. Once young people are hooked, the plaintiffs allege, they fall prey to depression, eating disorders, self-harm and other mental health issues. Approximately 1,600 plaintiffs are included in the proceedings, involving more than 350 families and 250 school districts.

Published: January 27, 2026, 10:00 am

Neil Young gifts Greenland free access to his music and withdraws it from Amazon over Trump

The singer-songwriter has donated access to his music archive to ‘ease the unwarranted stress and threats’ Greenlanders have experienced from the US government

Neil Young has donated a year’s worth of access to his music and documentary archive to the people of Greenland after the territory’s future became the subject of a fraught dispute with the US.

“I hope my music and music films will ease some of the unwarranted stress and threats you are experiencing from our unpopular and hopefully temporary government,” Young wrote in a statement on his website, Neil Young Archives, which offers comprehensive access to the 80-year-old songwriter’s recorded and live catalogues and other output.

Published: January 27, 2026, 11:17 am

Sydney Sweeney was ‘not authorised’ to hang her bras on Hollywood sign, say site owners

Hollywood Chamber of Commerce says it did not approve a promotional stunt linked to the actor, after lingerie was draped over the landmark’s letters

The Housemaid star Sydney Sweeney has been reprimanded by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for a promotional stunt that involved draping bras over the celebrated Hollywood sign in Los Angeles.

Sweeney posted footage on social media of her and a group of people climbing up to the sign which is situated on Mount Lee, in the Hollywood Hills area of the city, and hanging dozens of strung-together bras over the 50ft-tall sign’s letters.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:05 pm

Trump news at a glance: White House poised to scale back surge in Minnesota as outrage mounts over killings

President and team soften harsh rhetoric after fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents – key US politics stories from Monday 26 January at a glance

The US news cycle remained fixed on Donald Trump’s ICE crackdown in Minnesota on Monday as outrage and calls for accountability mount following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents.

While there is no sign the aggressive tactics used by immigration enforcement are coming to an end, Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis said the administration will begin to scale back the number of federal agents in Minneapolis starting on Tuesday, as the president and his team soften their harsh rhetoric about the incident.

Published: January 27, 2026, 2:00 am

‘Enemy of Europe’? How Trump’s push for Greenland spooked far-right allies

Leaders and voters who formerly applauded US president’s aims have been growing increasingly uneasy

Donald Trump’s attempted Greenland grab has driven a wedge between the US president and some of his ideological allies in Europe, as previously unstinting enthusiasm and admiration collides with one of the far right’s key tenets: national sovereignty.

Trump’s subsequent disparaging remark that Nato allies’ troops “stayed a little off the frontlines” while fighting with US forces in Afghanistan has only deepened the divide, piquing far-right patriotic sentiments and prompting an avalanche of criticism.

Published: January 27, 2026, 11:16 am

Trump says he will impose new tariffs on South Korea as he criticises delays in trade deal

US president says tariffs on automobiles, lumber and pharmaceuticals will rise to 25%, accusing Seoul of not living up to a trade deal struck last year

Donald Trump has said he is raising tariffs on South Korean goods including automobiles, lumber and pharmaceuticals, accusing the country of not living up to a trade deal struck last year and briefly sending shares in Korean carmakers tumbling.

In a post on social media, the US president said the tariffs paid on South Korean exports into America would rise from 15% to 25% because the “Korean Legislature hasn’t enacted our Historic Trade Agreement, which is their prerogative”.

Published: January 27, 2026, 5:51 am

Cruz reportedly says Trump yelled and cursed over warning of midterm election ‘bloodbath’

US senator warned that Republicans would lose elections if prices continue to rise, prompting president to respond ‘fuck you, Ted’

Ted Cruz warned Donald Trump, his fellow Republican, that he would face a “bloodbath” in the November midterm elections if prices continued to rise, prompting the president to respond, “fuck you, Ted,” the US senator told donors, according to a secret recording of the private conversation obtained by Axios.

Cruz reportedly delivered the reality check to the president in a phone conversation after Trump presented sweeping tariffs a few months after returning to the Oval Office in early 2025. The president was unhappy, Cruz said – and yelled and cursed in a conversation with Republican senators.

Published: January 26, 2026, 3:16 pm

Second federal killing in Minneapolis: how the shooting of Alex Pretti unfolded – video analysis

Warning: this video contains footage that may be distressing to some viewers

At about 9am on Saturday, US federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis nurse who was observing immigration officers in the city. The Guardian’s video team has pieced together footage showing the attack from different angles

Published: January 26, 2026, 10:26 pm

The US drew up a plan to invade Canada in 1930. Now Trump is reviving old fears

Now the US is vying regional dominance, experts point to War Plan Red as proof its Canadian allyship has always been flimsy

First, American forces would strike with poison gas munitions, seizing a strategically valuable port city. Soldiers would sever undersea cables, destroy bridges and rail lines to paralyze infrastructure. Major cities on the shores of lakes and rivers would be captured in order to blunt any civilian resistance.

The multipronged invasion would rely on ground forces, amphibious landing and then mass internments. According to the architects of the plan, the attack would be short-lived and the besieged country would fall within days.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:00 pm

How ICE is using facial recognition in Minnesota

Mobile Fortify app being used to scan faces of citizens and immigrants – but its use has prompted a severe backlash

Immigration enforcement agents across the US are increasingly relying on a new smartphone app with facial recognition technology.

The app is named Mobile Fortify. Simply pointing a phone’s camera at their intended target and scanning the person’s face allows Mobile Fortify to pull data on an individual from multiple federal and state databases, some of which federal courts have deemed too inaccurate for arrest warrants.

Published: January 27, 2026, 2:00 pm

The 16-month battle to reveal the truth about Sydney Water’s poo balls

After debris balls closed Sydney beaches in October 2024, Guardian Australia reported they could be linked to sewage outfalls. Authorities were less keen to talk

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Last week, after torrential rain in Sydney, fresh poo balls washed up on the beach at Malabar, the closest beach to the problematic Malabar sewage treatment plant.

Signs were erected on the beach warning people not to touch the “debris balls” or swim. But authorities didn’t let the wider community know. There were no other warnings issued by Sydney Water, the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) or the state government.

Published: January 27, 2026, 2:00 pm

Black women on the nightmare of seeking healthcare in the US: ‘I have to be my own doctor’

Many Black women in the US report moving through medical settings strategically as a means of survival

Christina Brown was 18 years old the first time she had to correct a doctor when advocating for health.

Breast cancer runs in her family, so she had been taught early by relatives how to examine her own body – what was normal, what wasn’t and when something warranted attention. When she found a lump in her breast in September 2014, she didn’t hesitate. She went to a doctor.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:00 pm

‘I box to exorcise the badness’: Sue Webster on boozy spats, her thrilling new work – and having a baby at 52

She was half of a 90s art power couple that seemed unstoppable. But they split and the trauma floored her. Now she’s back with defiant paintings celebrating her punk past – and late-career motherhood

Sue Webster is reminiscing about boozy 90s art openings. A hazy memory of Damien Hirst riding Leigh Bowery’s shoulders is surfacing, and a terrible fight with Jake Chapman at Charles Saatchi’s gallery. “It was a verbal thing but he was probably about to punch me. You’d get very drunk on the free champagne.”

Webster, and her former partner in art, romance and general punk rockery, Tim Noble, hit London in 1992 as the YBAs rose to fame. Five years later, Saatchi stopped by their cheap-as-chips live-work space in Shoreditch and, with his taxi still running outside, snapped up a light sculpture called Toxic Schizophrenia and a “shadow sculpture” titled Miss Understood and Mr Meanor. The shadow sculptures were meticulously melded pieces of junk and detritus which, when lit from one side, projected self-portrait silhouettes onto the wall. Webster says she would sometimes cry when saying goodbye to an artwork after selling it. So what does an artist do when such a long and successful partnership ends? “I wanted to unravel my brain, and work out how I ended up here,” she says.

Published: January 27, 2026, 6:00 am

10 of the greatest songs by Sly Dunbar – from reggae classics to Grace Jones and Bob Dylan

After his death aged 73, we look back at a selection of the hundreds of tracks the Sly and Robbie drummer had a hand in making

It isn’t Sly Dunbar’s most spectacular performance as a drummer – although his playing is right in the pocket: listen to the lightness of his touch on the cymbals and the tightness of his occasional fills – but as recording debuts go, appearing on an early 70s reggae classic in your teens, a single that furthermore went to No 1 in the UK and sold 300,000 copies despite British radio’s disinclination to play it, is quite the impressive way to open your account.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:49 pm

At Davos, tech CEOs laid out their vision for AI’s world domination

Tech chiefs waxed poetic about AI to delegates at Davos. Plus, the ‘human’ drama of AI startups and why Tesla is thriving in Texas

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week’s edition is a team effort: my colleague Heather Stewart reports on the plans for AI’s world domination at Davos; I examine how huge investments have followed AI companies with little to their names but drama and dreams; and Nick Robins-Early spotlights how lax regulation of autonomous driving in Texas allowed Tesla to thrive.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:57 pm

The Joy of Six: unlikely Winter Olympics stars

From a cult hero ski jumper, to African bobsleigh pioneers and more, here are half a dozen unexpected heroes

Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards, was the antithesis of the Olympic high-flyer. Heavily disadvantaged by his 82kg (181lb) weight – far heavier than his rivals – poor eyesight and the small matter of being entirely self-funded, he became Great Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper. He finished 67th and last at the 1987 world championships but managed to hit the qualifying standard to secure the sole British spot for Calgary. At the Games, he finished last in the normal hill (70m) and large hill (90m) events. In the normal hill, he scored 69.2 points from two jumps of 55m, while the winner Matti Nykänen scored 229.1 points from 89.5m jumps. Despite the last-place finishes, his enthusiasm captured global media attention but also lead to the “Eddie the Eagle Rule” which was introduced to tighten entry requirements and prevent similar “Olympic tourists”.

Published: January 27, 2026, 8:00 am

Know the score? I don’t read music, but that’s no hindrance to reimagining great classical works

Folk duo Pound & Stevens have transformed, and added to, Holst’s The Planets Suite and tour the new work this week with Britten Sinfonia. Will Pound explains why playing by ear is his greatest strength

I’m a harmonica and accordion player and one half of folk-classical duo Stevens & Pound. As a multi-instrumentalist I am rooted in a folk tradition that is oral, aural and communal. Music and song are passed down by ear, either through recordings or – more fun – traditional music sessions. Here, players and singers get together to share, swap and play tunes, drawing from a repertoire that is always evolving. While collections of tunes are certainly notated, their scores act as a skeleton – providing the basic architecture of pitch and rhythm but rarely offering explicit guidance on how the music should be played.

Delia Stevens and I are about to head out on tour, performing with the Britten Sinfonia and Robert Macfarlane in a new work called The Silent Planet, a recomposition of Holst’s Planets suite. It’s the culmination of 18 months of rehearsals and revisions, and the score for this 60-minute work, orchestrated by Ian Gardiner, totals 165 pages and includes Earth, an entirely new composition.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:00 pm

Masked thugs, sneering elites and terrified citizens: a picture of the US today. We used to have a name for this | Marina Hyde

Truly, I am the country’s biggest fan. But in the spirit of free speech its leaders apparently love, here’s a few things the rest of the world needs them to know

We in the rest of the world have had to hear a lot – such a lot – about what this US government and its hardcore fanbase thinks about us. So you know they’ll be super-relaxed and free-speechy about hearing some thoughts about how they look from the outside. Let’s use last Saturday as a single snapshot. In Minneapolis, they had the shooting by ICE agents of a protesting nurse who posed no threat – an event promptly, provably and blatantly lied about at the highest level by Donald Trump’s politburo. Then that evening in Washington, a lot of those same politburocrats turned out for the White House premiere of a ridiculous propaganda film about the president’s wife, also attended fawningly by bloodless Apple oligarch Tim Cook. And he’s not even the oligarch who paid an insane amount for the film. Top line, guys: all this makes you look like what your president likes to call a “shithole country”. Sorry! I assume it’s fine to use officially licensed vocabulary?

Obviously, it’s not a proper shithole country until the soft-skinned puppetmasters in the presidential palace cut some grizzled local warlord off at the knees for following orders, so it’s good to learn overnight that border patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino has been pulled out of Minneapolis, possibly locked out of his social media accounts, and may soon “retire”, presumably a fall guy for the likes of stage 4 homeland security tumour Stephen Miller. Bovino’s the guy who’s literally got the same haircut and outfit as the Sean Penn character in One Battle After Another. But hey, at least he wears a uniform. Again, what are international outsiders to make of the spectacle of ICE’s federal officers coming masked and frequently dressed in civilian clothes, while images from protests across the States show resisting civilians increasingly drawn to military-style clothing? Can Trump’s storm detachment not at least be issued with matching shirts? They don’t have to be brown, but Maga chic desperately needs to make even a first step to getting itself together. In the entire history of the movement, only one follower – the QAnon shaman – has ever had true style.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:43 pm

‘Looksmaxxing’ young men are carving up their faces. Being ugly is a lot easier | Dave Schilling

The internet has enabled a golden age of techno-vanity. But hating your looks is a time-honored tradition

Take a second before you read this to look in the mirror. Go on, it’ll be worth it. I’ll be here when you get back.

OK, how’d that go? Did you like what you saw? Probably not. Feeling a bit puffy? See a zit in a conspicuous area? Did you want to punch yourself for the sin of experiencing the natural course of aging? These feelings are normal. Being disappointed in how you look is a time-honored tradition; it’s just that now, we have the means to fix all that. GLP-1s mean you can lose weight quickly, without doing much more than shoving a needle in your bum a few times a month. Plastic surgery, Botox, fillers, Turkish hair plugs. We live in the golden age of techno-vanity, where “self-improvement” can be had for a few bucks (and days and days of living in bandages like a hipster mummy). The odious trend of “looksmaxxing” is the natural nadir of our collective obsession with not being ugly.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:00 pm

Bafta has caught the zeitgeist with One Battle After Another, but let’s hear it for The Ballad of Wallis Island

Paul Thomas Anderson’s antifa parable is queasily relevant to the times, but here’s hoping Tim Key and co can get some reward for their brilliant British film

• Combat intensifies as One Battle After Another takes 14 Bafta nominations
• Bafta film awards 2026: full list of nominations

The Bafta nominations list underscores the enormous award-season love being felt for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, his subversive vampire riff on America’s black experience – though it isn’t making history in quite the same way as it is at the Oscars, having 13 Bafta nominations, one behind Paul Thomas Anderson’s league-leader One Battle After Another with 14.

The awards-season prominence of Anderson’s epic antifa parable, inspired by the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, with Leonardo DiCaprio as a dishevelled, clueless ex-revolutionary facing off against Sean Penn’s brutal honcho Colonel Lockjaw, is happening at a queasily appropriate zeitgeist moment. The grotesquely trigger-happy immigration officers of ICE are shooting people dead on US streets and this ugly fiasco is giving us a horribly familiar-looking new figure.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:38 pm

There was only one thing my friend regretted about her mother’s death. It’s something we all could learn from | Ranjana Srivastava

Her mother, like too many Australians, missed out on quality and timely end-of-life care. Once associated with giving up, early palliative care is better for patients and their loved ones

Some time ago, a friend requested my advice. Her mother was in hospital for the seventh time in one year. The tests just kept coming but the patient was no better. Her body was failing and her cognition faltering. The doctors were openly pessimistic on their daily rounds. And yet, after three weeks, there didn’t seem to be a clear plan, or at least one the family understood.

“Why can’t someone tell us the big picture?” my friend said. Her mother’s downward trajectory was evident, but she felt guilty thinking “bad” thoughts. However, if her mother was dying, she wanted to take her home.

Published: January 27, 2026, 2:00 pm

America has reached a tipping point on fascism – and on opposition to it | Robert Reich

A chance encounter reminded me: there are two ways to look at what’s happened in Minneapolis

One of the few advantages of being as conspicuous as I am is that many people come up to me whom I don’t know, to talk about what’s happening in America. It’s like a free-floating focus group.

On Monday morning, I was at a restaurant counter finishing my breakfast when a middle-aged man sat down next to me and said he didn’t want to intrude. (He just had, so I put down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth with my napkin, and turned toward him.) He wanted me to know that although he’d been a life-long Republican, the events of the past weeks had caused him to leave the Republican party.

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: January 27, 2026, 11:00 am

Coco Gauff unhappy after racket smashing video at Australian Open goes viral

• American vents frustration after quarter-final loss

• Gauff believed she was letting out anger in private

Coco Gauff has expressed her disappointment after video of her smashing her racket at the Australian Open was picked up on camera.

The American was well below her usual high standards during her 6-1, 6-2 defeat to Elina Svitolina on Tuesday. Gauff had trouble with her forehand and serve throughout the match - she double-faulted five times in the first set alone – and hit 26 unforced errors to just three winners, losing in just 59 minutes. She also appeared to believe there was something wrong with her equipment as she struggled with her control, and had three of her rackets restrung in the opening set.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:29 pm

Champions League permutations: who needs what from final night of fixtures?

A staggering 32 of 36 teams go into the final set of matches with their hopes of staying in the competition still alive

With seven wins from seven, Arsenal have a perfect record in the league phase. Only Bayern Munich and Inter have found the net against Mikel Arteta’s team, who dismissed Atlético Madrid 4-0 in October. The bottom side, Kairat, visit the Emirates Stadium on the final night, with Arsenal needing a draw to confirm top spot and, theoretically, the most favourable last-16 draw.

Published: January 27, 2026, 8:00 am

Aston Martin become second F1 team to miss vital testing in Barcelona

• AMR26 car will not run until Thursday and Friday

• Williams unable to take to the track at all in Spain

The Aston Martin team have admitted they are to miss at least one day of their allotted three at Formula One’s first pre-season test in Barcelona and will not run their car before Thursday at the earliest. They are the second team to fail to take full advantage of the opening test after Williams also announced they would be unable to take to the track at all in Spain.

Testing is taking place from Monday to Friday this week at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with teams able to use three of the five days to assess their cars. They have been designed to entirely new regulations and with new engines this season and consequently three full pre-season tests are being held. But as the track running began, Aston Martin conceded they would not be there at the off and issued a statement.

Published: January 26, 2026, 6:26 pm

Minneapolis sports commentator apologizes for paid protesters comment and announces ‘time off’

Paul Allen’s comments came when people were demonstrating against ICE’s killing of Renee Nicole Good

A veteran Minneapolis sports radio commentator has apologized and says he is “taking a few days off” after invoking on air a conservative conspiracy theory that people demonstrating against the Trump administration’s deadly immigration crackdown were being paid to protest.

Paul Allen’s remarks about the protesters on his show Friday came a little more than two weeks after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot Renee Nicole Good to death on 7 January as she drove away from an encounter with him in Minneapolis, igniting street protests.

Published: January 27, 2026, 10:00 am

Shedeur Sanders set to better father Deion by reportedly making Pro Bowl as rookie

• Browns QB to replace Super Bowl-bound Drake Maye

• Sanders threw seven TDs and 10 interceptions this season

Shedeur Sanders will reportedly become a Pro Bowler in his rookie season as a replacement for Drake Maye.

ESPN reported on Monday that the Cleveland Browns rookie has bettered his Hall of Fame father, Deion Sanders, who was drafted in 1989 but had to wait until 1991 to receive the first of his eight trips to the Pro Bowl.

Published: January 26, 2026, 7:39 pm

‘No reason to rush’: Harry Kane in talks with Bayern over contract extension

• England captain’s deal runs to end of next season

• Kane and his family are settled in Munich, CEO says

Bayern Munich have confirmed they are in talks to extend Harry Kane’s contract. The England captain joined from Tottenham in 2023 on a deal to the end of next season and secured a long-awaited first major trophy when Bayern won the Bundesliga last May.

He has been the Bundesliga’s top scorer twice and, with 21 goals in 19 Bundesliga games this season, could chase down Robert Lewandowski’s single-season record of 41 goals.

Published: January 27, 2026, 9:20 am

David Squires on … Manchester United giving Arsenal the title wobbles

Our cartoonist on anxiety at the Emirates as Michael Carrick oversees another thrilling win

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Published: January 27, 2026, 11:10 am

Sam Darnold: after five teams and plenty of mockery, ‘Ginger Cuz’ reaches the Super Bowl

The Seattle Seahawks quarterback has endured a rocky NFL career. But in the biggest game of his career, he delivered the performance of a lifetime

Moments after clinching a Super Bowl berth, Sam Darnold strolled over for his obligatory television interview. He was thrilled; the Seattle Seahawks had just toppled the Los Angeles Rams in a 31-27 thriller. But he was also measured. Unlike receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who would follow and was teeming with emotion, Darnold simply spoke about his love for his teammates. And when asked about his improbable journey, he replied, “I haven’t really thought about it that much.”

He may not have, but the rest of us have. And whether Darnold likes it or not, his comeback story will be the prevailing storyline of Super Bowl 60. How can it not, especially after the quarterback saved what may have been the best performance of his life for Seattle’s third, and most important, tilt with the Rams this season.

Published: January 26, 2026, 8:15 am

The Fukushima towns frozen in time: nature has thrived since the nuclear disaster but what happens if humans return?

Fifteen years after a tsunami caused the Fukushima nuclear accident, only bears, raccoons and boar are seen on the streets. But the authorities and some locals want people to move back

Norio Kimura pauses to gaze through the dirt-flecked window of Kumamachi primary school in Fukushima. Inside, there are still textbooks lying on the desks, pencil cases are strewn across the floor; empty bento boxes that were never taken home.

Along the corridor, shoes line the route the children took when they fled, some still in their indoor plimsolls, as their town was rocked by a magnitude-9 earthquake on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 which went on to cause the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chornobyl.

Published: January 27, 2026, 7:00 am

‘She narrowly escaped three bullets’: Pakistan’s trans community shaken by attacks and killings

A wave of violence has left transgender people afraid to go out, as experts say the global rise of far-right ideology is fuelling transphobia

It was past midnight but Zehrish Khanzadi and Bindiya Rana were still up, drinking tea, when the doorbell rang. Within seconds of Rana unlocking the door remotely from the kitchen, three shots rang out. “The men fled and she narrowly escaped all three bullets,” Khanzadi says of her colleague and housemate.

Both trans women work for the Gender Alliance Interactive (GIA), an organisation that advocates for transgender rights, Rapa as its head and Khanzadi as a rights activist.

Published: January 27, 2026, 11:00 am

UK ministers accept $1m from Meta amid social media ban consultation

Campaigners decry ties with ‘Trump-supporting’ tech firms after funding is accepted to develop state AI systems

• UK politics live – latest updates

Ministers have accepted $1m from Meta, the US tech and social media company, to build AI systems for defence, national security and transport, sparking warnings about the UK government’s “alarmingly close relationship with Trump-supporting US tech giants”.

The money from Mark Zuckerberg’s company will be used to pay experts to “develop cutting-edge AI solutions … to support national security and defence teams”, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) announced on Tuesday.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:29 pm

California governor Gavin Newsom accuses TikTok of suppressing content critical of Trump

Newsom launched a review of the platform, despite TikTok saying a systems failure was responsible for the issue

California governor Gavin Newsom has accused TikTok of suppressing content critical of president Donald Trump, as he launched a review of the platform’s content moderation practices to determine if they violated state law, even as the platform blamed a systems failure for the issues.

The step comes after TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, said last week it had finalised a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture that will secure US data, to avoid a US ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans.

Published: January 27, 2026, 5:00 am

‘Situation is dire’ for Sicily town teetering on cliff edge after landslide

1,500 people evacuated from Niscemi after battering by Cyclone Harry triggers 4km-long chasm in hillside

The mayor of a hilltop town on Sicily said “the situation is dire” after a powerful storm brought down a long section of hillside, leaving houses perched perilously on a cliff edge.

About 1,500 people have so far been evacuated from their homes because of the landslide, which began to show signs of movement on Sunday before developing a 4km-long front. The chasm continues to widen, raising fears it could swallow the town’s historic centre.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:06 pm

Mother of man jailed in Syria for Islamic State links calls for his repatriation to UK or Canada

Sally Lane fears son Jack Letts, who left UK aged 18, may face death penalty if airlifted to Iraq under US operation

The mother of a British-born man detained for nearly nine years without trial in Syria has called for his repatriation to the UK or Canada as the US plans to airlift 7,000 Islamic State-linked prisoners from Syria to Iraq.

Sally Lane, the mother of Jack Letts, 30, said she was “frantically trying to find out as much as possible” and that it was unclear if he would face the death penalty in Iraq or remain in Syria – or be sent to Canada or the UK in line with US demands.

Published: January 27, 2026, 10:26 am

‘Mother of all deals’: EU and India sign free trade agreement

Tariffs cut to zero for many industrial products, including iron and steel, plastics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals

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India and the EU have finalised a landmark free trade agreement, which the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, hailed as the “mother of all deals”.

The agreement comes after almost two decades of on-off negotiations between India and the EU, which vastly accelerated in the past six months and were finally concluded late on Monday night.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘The land will be left as ashes’: why Patagonia’s wildfires are almost impossible to stop

Funding cuts, conspiracy theories and ‘powder keg’ pine plantations have seen January’s forest fires tear through Chubut in southern Argentina

Lucas Chiappe had known for a long time that the fire was coming. For decades, the environmentalist had warned that replacing native trees in the Andes mountain range with highly flammable foreign pine was a recipe for disaster.

In early January, flames raced down the Pirque hill and edged closer to his home in the Patagonian town of Epuyén, Argentina, where he had lived since the 1970s. Thirty people with six motor pumps fought for hours, hoses stretched for kilometres, but “there was no way”.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:00 pm

Recycled plastic packaging claims are misleading, say experts

Manufacturers use method that labels plastic as ‘circular’ and climate-friendly, despite being mostly fossil-based

Europe’s supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum.

Brands using plastic packaging – from Kraft’s Heinz Beanz to Mondelez’s Philadelphia – use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco.

This article is part of a cross-border investigation, supported by IJ4EU and coordinated by the independent journalist Ludovica Jona, with the media outlets the Guardian, Voxeurop, Mediapart (France), Altreconomia (Italy), Público (Spain), Investigative Reporting Denmark, Deutsche Welle (Germany) and with reporters Lorenzo Sangermano and Lucy Taylor

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:48 pm

Number of people living in extreme heat to double by 2050 if 2C rise occurs, study finds

Scientists expect 41% of the projected global population to face the extremes, with ‘no part of the world’ immune

The number of people living with extreme heat will more than double by 2050 if global heating reaches 2C, according to a new study that shows how the energy demands for air conditioners and heating systems are expected to change across the world.

No region will escape the impact, say the authors. Although the tropics and southern hemisphere will be worst affected by rising heat, the countries in the north will also find it difficult to adapt because their built environments are primarily designed to deal with a cooler climate.

Published: January 26, 2026, 6:29 pm

Ouyen may have hit the highest recorded temperature in Victoria’s history – and some fear it could get even hotter

As the temperature nears 49C in the Mallee region, residents take refuge in air-conditioned rooms

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In the slanting, late-afternoon summer sun, the fields around the small Australian town of Ouyen – almost 450km north-west of Melbourne – turn the colour of honey. The edges shimmer with silver, that old cruel trick of feigning water where it hasn’t rained for weeks.

Summer is always hot out here in the sparse, flat Mallee, but this year is shaping up to be particularly harsh. Just two weeks ago, on Thursday 8 January, Ouyen got to 47.5C. On Monday it reached 44.3C.

Published: January 27, 2026, 7:48 am

US winter storm: at least 30 people dead and nearly 200m under cold alerts

Thousands of flights also canceled as states from Texas to Maine grapple with heavy snow, ice and cold temperatures

• Tell us: have you been affected by the US storm?

The powerful winter storm sweeping across much of the US over the weekend has been linked to at least 30 deaths.

The deaths have been reported from Texas to New England as many parts of the country grappled with heavy snow, ice and dangerous cold.

Published: January 27, 2026, 2:48 am

A week of ICE and outrage in Minneapolis: the turmoil of the days leading up to Alex Pretti’s death

Since the Trump administration sent ICE agents into the city in December, there have been 3,000 arrests and two fatal shootings. In the freezing cold, as the crisis deepens, the Minnesotan people continue to resist

In many ways, Alex Pretti and Renee Good could have been any of the dozens of Minneapolis residents I met last week. Among them were teachers, store clerks, Uber drivers, charity workers and clergymen – a patchwork of humanity withstanding what many have called the Trump administration’s siege on their city, which began in December last year and has led to 3,000 arrests, two fatal shootings, and routine rights violations in an operation defined by government brutality.

What the administration has attempted to laud as the largest immigration operation in US history has instead become a fully fledged crisis, and the sharpest test of American democracy under Trump’s second term.

Published: January 27, 2026, 10:00 am

As LA maternity wards close, patients are giving birth in ERs: ‘There’s no system to care for these women’

From 2016 to 2023, more than 26,500 people, mostly Latino, have gone to an ER in LA county to seek birthing care

This story was produced in partnership with the non-profit newsroom Type Investigations and the investigative reporting program at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Sigita Cahoon’s 16 September 2024 stretched through the night.

Published: January 26, 2026, 2:00 pm

Republican ends bid for Minnesota governor, citing ‘unconstitutional’ ICE surge

Chris Madel drops out of race and in video criticizes the ‘federal retribution on the citizens’ of Minnesota

A top Republican candidate for Minnesota governor has dropped out of the race, sharply criticizing what he called a “federal retribution on the citizens of our state” amid the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement operations – which sparked public outrage after US agents’ killings ofAlex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

On Monday, the Minneapolis-based attorney Chris Madel made his announcement, saying in a video online: “I cannot support the … stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

Published: January 26, 2026, 5:23 pm

Spain approves decree to regularise half a million undocumented migrants

Move affecting those who have been in Spain five months or more runs counter to anti-migration policies across Europe

Spain’s socialist-led coalition government has approved a decree it said would regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, rejecting the anti-migration policies and rhetoric prevalent across much of Europe.

The decree, expected to come into effect in April, will apply to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and people in Spain with irregular status. To qualify for regularisation, applicants will have to prove they do not have a criminal record and had lived in Spain for at least five months – or had sought international protection – before 31 December 2025.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:57 pm

French lawmakers vote to ban social media use by under-15s

Legislation, which also bans mobile phones in high schools, would make France the second country after Australia to take such a step

French lawmakers have passed a bill that would ban social media use by under-15s, a move championed by president Emmanuel Macron as a way to protect children from excessive screen time.

The lower national assembly adopted the text by a vote of 130 to 21 in a lengthy overnight session from Monday to Tuesday.

Published: January 27, 2026, 2:22 am

Ukraine war briefing: Nato chief warns of ‘harshest winter’ in a decade as Russian attacks cut power in Kharkiv

Strikes knock out electricity to 80% of Ukraine’s second-largest city and surrounding region and damage 11th-century Kyiv monastery. What we know on day 1,434

Published: January 27, 2026, 6:29 am

Toronto digs itself out after largest snowfall in city’s history

Some parts of city were buried under nearly 60cm of snow and over 500 flights were cancelled Sunday

Toronto is beginning to dig itself out from the largest snowfall in the city’s history, a process which officials say is likely to take “several days”.

Some parts of Canada’s largest city were buried under nearly 60cm (about 23in) of snow and more than 500 flights were cancelled Sunday after Toronto’s main airport was snowed in.

Published: January 26, 2026, 5:40 pm

‘The world is hurting right now’: politics and protest hit the Sundance film festival

A conflicted mood has lingered over Utah’s long-running film festival with premieres and parties continuing but stars speaking out against government cruelty

The news began to spread through the Sundance film festival on Saturday morning, as people emerged from early screenings or long nights out at the bars on Main Street.

“If you all have not heard what’s going on in Minnesota this morning, someone else was murdered by ICE,” director Ava DuVernay told the audience at a panel on freedom of expression, referring to the shooting that morning of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:28 am

Combat intensifies as One Battle After Another takes 14 Bafta nominations to Sinners’ 13

Paul Thomas Anderson’s gonzo caper takes slight nominations lead over the Ryan Coogler horror, with surprise five noms for British Tourette movie I Swear
• Full list of nominations

Sinners may have made history last week, when it became the first film ever to secure 16 Oscar nominations, but it was its awards season rival, One Battle After Another, that proved narrowly victorious at Tuesday’s Bafta nominations.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy heads into the competition with 14 nominations, while Ryan Coogler’s vampire thriller has 13. Meanwhile, Marty Supreme and Hamnet are close on their heels with 11 nominations each, and Frankenstein and Sentimental Value have eight nods apiece.

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:20 pm

Black cakes and branded buckets: welcome to the White House premiere for Brett Ratner’s Melania movie

Monochrome catering was all the rage at the VIP screening on Saturday for Ratner’s officially sanctioned $75m feature-length documentary about the First Lady. Have the photos whetted your appetite?

This week sees the release of Melania, Amazon’s official feature-length documentary about Melania Trump. Melania was directed by Brett Ratner, and has a reported $40m production budget. And, obviously, you’re probably not going to watch it.

Of course you’re not. Coming days after the killing of Alex Pretti by a US Border Patrol agent, an authorised vanity project about the current wife of a globally unpopular political leader – and directed by a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women (he was never charged, and denies the allegations), and whose production and release carried the smell of institutionalised media timidity – seems like just about the least appealing prospect ever. But, hey, any excuse for a party, right?

Published: January 26, 2026, 2:40 pm

‘It was a little scary at times’: the hilarious, heartbreaking film about one man’s riotous death

When André Ricciardi found out he had cancer, he asked a friend to film his final years. André Is an Idiot, the result, mixes in stop-motion puppetry to create an astonishing record of an extraordinary life

When André Ricciardi turned 50, his best friend Lee made an unusual proposition: how about they go and get a colonoscopy together? The pair had reached the qualifying age for men in the US to access the health check, and Lee had visions of them farting merrily on adjacent toilets while the medication flushed out their bowels, then chatting on hospital beds as tiny cameras travelled through their anal passages. André was always up for ridiculous stuff, but on this occasion he surprised Lee: he said no.

“I was 100% shocked,” says Lee today. “I actually got jealous because I assumed he must have organised to go with somebody else!” But André had not made other colonoscopy plans. He just thought it was a crazy idea and for once, he was being sensible. That turned out to be the stupidest thing he’d ever done. Eighteen months later, perturbed by blood in his stools, André did go for a colonoscopy. It turned out he had stage 4 cancer.

Published: January 26, 2026, 5:00 am

Frank & Louis review – moving drama of dementia and caregiving in prison

Sundance film festival: strong performances from Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan anchor a sensitive film about caregiving as a form of rehabilitation

One of the greatest achievements of a certain kind of Sundance movie is the ability to shine a light on an experience or community we hadn’t previously been aware of. This year’s stoic and sensitive drama Frank & Louis takes us behind bars, a place we’ve been many times before at this festival, but to shadow the taxing work of inmates taking care of those who have dementia, a specifically difficult job in an already difficult place. Petra Volpe, the Swiss writer-director, who last explored a far more known form of caregiving in exhausting nursing drama Late Shift, makes her English language debut with a film inspired by the “Gold Coats” peer support program at the California Men’s Colony state prison.

As with her previous film, there’s real rigour to how she zeroes in on the grind of under-appreciated labour, but while Late Shift was more naturalistic and experiential, Frank & Louis is far more formulaic and emotional, a clearer bid for the heartstrings. It’s a topic that’s hard not to get emotional about, the slow loss of one’s mental abilities, something many of us might be horribly familiar with, and it’s a tough, rather hopeless experience to witness on screen.

Frank & Louis is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Published: January 27, 2026, 12:53 am

Grizzly Night review – animals attack in campsite thriller of rogue bears and wayward teens

The terrifying animal at the centre of Burke Doeren’s thriller is convincingly ferocious but the supporting humans don’t match its power

Despite its lurid poster art, as an ursine rampage film this falls closer to the serious Grizzly Man/Timothy Treadwell end of the scale, rather than the Cocaine Bear one. Based on a freak August 1967 tragedy in which two women were separately mauled to death by grizzlies in Montana’s Glacier National Park (described here as a “trillion to one” occurrence), Burke Doeren’s debut grips in tooth’n’claw terms, but is considerably less sure-footed when it comes to people.

Down at the park, fire season is all the rangers think they have on their plate, but they’re not reckoning with wayward teenagers and rogue bears. At the giftshop, Michele (Ali Skovbye) leans on Paul (Jacob Buster) to join her posse and help her shoo off an unwanted suitor at Trout Lake. So he leaves colleague Julie (Brec Bassinger) to a sexy bivouac with boyfriend Roy (Matt Lintz) in a separate location. Meanwhile, with smoke plumes occupying the rangers, rookie Joan (Lauren Call) is commandeered to lead a tour group heading out to a remote lodge.

Published: January 27, 2026, 11:00 am

‘We get a lot of requests for it to be used in sex scenes’: how Goldfrapp made Ooh La La

‘I couldn’t think of a line for the chorus – but we had just been to France. I got Baudelaire into the lyrics somewhere, too’

This song was an ode to glam rock. My older sister was really into Marc Bolan and her passion for him and his sound really rubbed off on me. I love the vocal effects and drum sounds on those old records.

Published: January 26, 2026, 3:11 pm

Sleaford Mods go metal detecting: best podcasts of the week

A delightfully leftfield new interview show takes Jason Williamson to dig up rusty old nails. Plus, Ant and Dec launch their first ever podcast

In this offbeat interview show, producer and host James Deacon takes a ramble through green space with a celebrity, as they attempt a spot of metal detecting and intimate chat with themed questions (“What’s one piece of gold you’ve found in your life?”). Sleaford Mods frontman Jason Williamson is the first guest for an hour of introspection and digging up rusty nails. Works better as a visualised, rather than audio, podcast. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

Published: January 26, 2026, 7:00 am

The Bed Trick by Izabella Scott review – a bizarre story of sexual duplicity

A brilliant analysis of the trial of Gayle Newland and the literary and social antecedents of ‘sex by deception’

In September 2015, Gayle Newland stood trial accused of sex by deception. It was alleged that she created an online identity as a man and used this character, Kye Fortune, to lure another woman into a sexual relationship, which was consummated repeatedly with the assistance of a blindfold and a prosthetic penis. The woman believed she was having sex with Kye until one day her ring caught on his hat and she felt long hair. Tearing off her blindfold, she realised her male lover was actually her female friend. As these lurid, almost fairytale details seeped out, the case went viral. “Sex attacker who posed as man found guilty” was one of the milder headlines.

The trial caught Izabella Scott’s attention because it was a real-life example of a plot device she recognised from literature. The bed trick can be found in folk stories and operas, in Chaucer and Shakespeare. Often told for comic effect, it concerns sex by trickery and deception, under cover of darkness. “The plot suggests,” Scott writes, “that, in bed, anyone might be mistaken for anyone else.”

Published: January 26, 2026, 7:00 am

Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo review – the Korean bestseller about platonic partnership

A quietly revolutionary account of cohabiting captured a nation’s heart – but what does it mean for the rest of the world?

When Sunwoo and Hana met on Twitter, they were in their 40s and committed bachelorettes. Both raised by the sea in Busan, they studied in Seoul before entering the city’s famously brutal rat race, Sunwoo as a fashion journalist, Hana as a copywriter. They shared the same taste in music and books, and importantly, both had rejected marriage. No wonder. In South Korea’s stubbornly patriarchal culture, women in dual-income families spend nearly three hours more a day on household chores than men. Instead, Sunwoo and Hana joined the large number of South Koreans living alone. At first, independence felt exhilarating. By middle age however, loneliness was beginning to gnaw, and their boxy studio apartments felt oppressively small.

Two Women Living Together, a 2019 South Korean bestseller that spawned a popular podcast, charts Sunwoo and Hana’s decision to buy a sunlit house together and live not as a romantic couple but as friends. Across 49 warm, chatty essays, they invite us into the life they share with four cats, reflecting on everything from the food they love to their retirement fantasies.

Published: January 27, 2026, 9:00 am

Poem of the week: Song by Lady Mary Chudleigh

Words of stern moral advice to a besotted young man are delivered with a brisk and even sunny touch

Song

Why, Damon, why, why, why so pressing?
The Heart you beg’s not worth possessing:
Each Look, each Word, each Smile’s affected,
And inward Charms are quite neglected:
Then scorn her, scorn her, foolish Swain,
And sigh no more, no more in vain.

Published: January 26, 2026, 10:00 am

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar review – survival in a climate-ravaged Kolkata

This moral thriller offers a perceptive account of specifically Indian anxieties

The title characters of Megha Majumdar’s second novel are a young man referred to only by a nickname, Boomba, and a woman known as Ma. Each regards themselves as a guardian, and the other as a thief. The reader is not asked to take sides, but instead to observe how the world makes thieves of guardians, and vice versa.

A Guardian and a Thief takes place over what is meant to be the last week of Ma living in Kolkata. She, her father and her two-year-old daughter are about to join Ma’s husband in the United States, as the recipients of prized “climate visas”. Floods and extreme heat have turned Kolkata into a city of persistent food shortages. Black marketeers hoard eggs, fruit and vegetables, while fish, previously the cornerstone of Bengali cooking, has vanished altogether. The terrifying word famine is disinterred. This is one of the many ways in which climate change has sent Kolkata forward into the past. While Majumdar’s acclaimed debut, A Burning, laid out the appalling consequences of a young woman’s Facebook post, in A Guardian and a Thief the city appears to be almost entirely smartphone-free.

Published: January 26, 2026, 9:00 am

Why I’m launching a feminist video games website in 2026

I’ve been a games journalist since 2007, but still there isn’t much video games coverage that feels like it’s specifically for people like me. So I’m creating a home for it: Mothership

Whether you’re reading about the impending AI bubble bursting or about the video game industry’s mass layoffs and cancelled projects, 2026 does not feel like a hopeful time for gaming. What’s more, games journalists – as well as all other kinds of journalists – have been losing their jobs at alarming rates, making it difficult to adequately cover these crises. Donald Trump’s White House, meanwhile, is using video game memes as ICE recruitment tools, and game studios are backing away from diversity and inclusion initiatives in response to the wider world’s slide to the right.

The manosphere is back, and we’ve lost mainstream feminist websites such as Teen Vogue; bigots everywhere are celebrating what they see as the death of “woke”. Put it all together and we have a dismal stew of doom for someone like me, a queer woman and a feminist who’s been a games journalist and critic since 2007.

Published: January 26, 2026, 11:00 am

Nigella Lawson confirmed as new Great British Bake Off judge

The TV cook and food writer replaces Prue Leith, who has stepped down after nine seasons on the show

Nigella Lawson has been announced as the new judge on The Great British Bake Off. She replaces Prue Leith, who stepped down after nine seasons of judging contestants’ culinary creations, so she could spend summers enjoying her garden, explaining: “I’m 86 for goodness sake!”

Lawson will join the programme for its next series, the 17th, which will launch later this year. She will serve alongside Paul Hollywood, who will continue in the role he has held since the baking competition launched on BBC Two in 2010.

Published: January 26, 2026, 1:15 pm

‘Waterfalls saved me’: how photographing nature can heal the soul

John Arnison lives with anxiety and ADHD and finds busy cities unsettling, but loves taking pictures of nature at night

When he first ventured out into the darkness of the Yorkshire Dales 25 years ago, John Arnison’s only goal was to find a photographic style that people would immediately know was his.

Driving for nearly 40 miles from his home in Leeds to Malham, North Yorkshire in the dead of night, John didn’t realise that he was starting a project that would continue for another quarter of a century, and shape the rest of his life.

Published: January 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel fairytale continues with haute couture debut

Designer’s third collection confirms his dream start at the label, as warmth for the women who wear it shines through

It is the biggest job in fashion and Matthieu Blazy is knocking it out of the park. Chanel, the most famous fashion house in the world, with annual sales of almost $20bn (£14.6bn) and a designer lineage that includes Coco Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld, is an intimidating prospect for a 41-year-old Belgian designer who, until his appointment last year, was little known outside the industry. But this haute couture debut, his third collection for the house, confirmed that Blazy is off to a dream start.

The show concluded with a standing ovation from the audience including Anna Wintour, Nicole Kidman and Dua Lipa. Backstage, veteran Chanel personnel were high-fiving each other – a remarkable display of giddiness in an industry where cool is all. In the Grand Palais venue, transformed into a willow wood of sugar-pink trees and fairytale giant mushrooms, clients tossed sable coats to the ground and clustered for grinning selfies. By every metric, approval ratings for the new-look Chanel are off the charts.

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:38 pm

‘I’d get out of bed, and oh boy, there it is’: what to know about plantar fasciitis

The ligament that connects your foot bones can cause severe heel pain when inflamed. Here’s how to avoid that

Recently, I decided to go for a jog after not running at all for more than [redacted] years. I did a half-marathon a couple of presidential administrations ago, so surely it would be fine? It was! Until the next morning, when I rolled out of bed, put my feet on the floor and felt a sharp pain in my heel.

Plantar fasciitis, my old nemesis.

Strengthen the muscles of the feet. Silverman suggests doing toe curls (with your feet flat on a towel, grip the towel with your toes and scrunch it towards your body) or marble pickups (using your toes to pick up marbles or similar objects from the floor).

Stretching. Specifically, stretching the calf muscles and the achilles tendon. Regularly stretching and massaging these areas “can help to not only assuage the inflammation, but prevent it from coming back”, says Aiyer.

Increase activity levels gradually. Allow your body to get acclimated to increases in activity levels rather than suddenly ramping up. Basically, don’t do what I did.

Wear the right shoes. Choose a shoe that’s too supportive, and your foot muscles can weaken over time, says Silverman. But choose a shoe that’s not supportive enough, and you may expose your plantar fascia to more direct trauma. Rather than sweating this Goldilocks challenge, Silverman says you should “choose footwear that matches the environment and activity”.

Published: January 26, 2026, 5:00 pm

Strong v swole: the surprising truth about building muscle

Traditional bodybuilding advice has been to push workouts to the point of failure, and that soreness is an indicator of effectiveness. But recent studies show there’s another way

Until pretty recently, the conventional wisdom about building muscle was that it worked via a system you might think of as “tear and repair” – the idea being that working out causes microtears in the muscle fibres, which trigger the body’s repair processes, encouraging the muscles to come back bigger and stronger.

That’s why many old-school trainers will tell you that there’s no gain without pain, and why a lot of bodybuilding advice includes increasingly byzantine ways of pushing your biceps and triceps to the point where you can’t do another repetition: the more trauma you can cause, the thinking goes, the more “swole” you can become.

Published: January 26, 2026, 9:00 am

A new start after 60: I jumped in the sea for the first time, and finally began to heal

Despite living on an island, David Warr avoided the water for five decades – until a swimming teacher made the link between his fear and a childhood trauma

When David Warr was 11 he thought he was dying. At his school swimming lesson, he jumped in and swam – then realised with horror that his feet couldn’t feel the bottom. He recalls his teacher, standing on the side of the pool, shouting at him to “just swim” and his own immobilising fear. “I thought, ‘I can’t. I don’t know what to do.’ I started to panic hard. I thought, ‘She’s going to let me die.’”

Warr, 61, has blocked out how he reached safety, but for five decades he refused to go out of his depth again. He lives on the island of Jersey where water is a fact of life – but even when his sons were small, he would only wade a bit, and watch them swim with envy and pride. In contrast, he felt he was “battling the water”.

Published: January 26, 2026, 6:45 am

Jonathan Anderson leans into Dior’s dramatic backstory for couture show

Designer spins the historic house off on a tangent in Paris, with his reading of its history being that shock value can sell

For billionaires with an eye on best-dressed lists and Oscar nominees with sights set on red carpet domination, Paris haute couture – where a dress can take months to make by hand, and cost as much as a small apartment in the city – is a shopping opportunity. For the rest of the fashion industry, it is a battle for bragging rights between the haughtiest brand names in the world. With ambitious young designers newly installed at Dior and Chanel vying for domination, that battle is feistier than ever.

Haute couture is an arms race like no other. At 10 o’clock on a Monday morning, the Oscar nominee Teyana Taylor was in a diamond tiara in the front row of Schiaparelli, where the house is preparing for a lavish exhibition opening at the V&A Museum this spring. A few hours later in the garden of the Rodin Museum, where a mirrored Dior catwalk reflected a suspended canopy of lush moss studded with silk flowers, Pharrell Williams and the actor Josh O’Connor arrived promptly, but the show was delayed an hour for the arrival of Rihanna in a black satin cocoon coat.

Published: January 26, 2026, 7:58 pm

Courtside fashion at the Australian Open: ‘People are definitely dressing up more’

If the races is a nightclub, the tennis is a long lunch with spectators in silk dresses, sneakers and tailored shorts

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Something is happening sartorially at the Australian Open. In addition to the on-and-off-court partnerships with some of the world’s most recognisable fashion brands (Rolex, Louis Vuitton and Polo Ralph Lauren), Melbourne Park visitors are dressing up.

The men are in tailored knee-length shorts, leather loafers and softly textured button-downs. The women are in pretty mid-to-ankle-length dresses and sneakers or flat sandals. While the crowd’s look at the country’s biggest sporting event (the organisers expect it to inject more than $600m into the economy) is undeniably preppy – plenty of jumpers are tied around shoulders and T-shirts are tucked into high-waisted trousers – the energy is decidedly more inclusive than a cordoned-off country club. Even though almost everyone looks as if you threw them a racket they’d happily take to court.

Published: January 26, 2026, 2:00 pm

Is it true that … red light therapy masks prevent wrinkles?

While there may be benefits to the treatment, anti-ageing probably isn’t one of them – which is something better left to the professionals

‘Red light therapy, where LED lights are shone on your skin, has been around for a while,” says Afshin Mosahebi, a professor in plastic surgery at University College London. But what was once an expensive treatment you’d go to a professional to receive is now becoming widely available in the form of light-up masks you can wear at home.

“Reasonable reports show that the treatment is good for wound-healing,” says Mosahebi. This is why it is recommended for inflammatory skin conditions such as acne, dermatitis and psoriasis, as it increases circulation, decreases inflammation, and improves cell regeneration.

Published: January 26, 2026, 8:00 am

José Pizarro’s recipe for slow-roast celeriac with rosemary and crisp chorizo

Creamy celeriac with aromatic garlic and paprika topped with a salty-sour chorizo dressing

Celeriac is easy to ignore or overlook, but it really deserves a bit of attention in winter. January is a time for turning on the oven and cooking without having to think too much, and this is the sort of dish that more or less looks after itself while you get on with your evening. The kitchen feels warmer, the smell changes and you know that dinner is sorted. This is simple, honest food, and not remotely trying to be clever. It’s just something to put in the middle of the table, cut into and share, which is exactly what you want when the days are cold and nights are long.

Published: January 27, 2026, 6:00 am

My rookie era: scrapbooking is like creating my own sentimental time capsule

Unlike journalling, sticking glossy pictures and ribbon scraps helps me explore how I’m feeling in in a language only I can decipher

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I had always associated scrapbooking with grandmas and bored children, so, imagine my surprise when, as a twentysomething with a Big Girl Job, I found myself enamoured of printing, cutting and sticking random bits and bobs into a book.

If, like me, you’ve racked up a disconcerting amount of screen time, you may have stumbled across a multitude of craft-inspired social media posts made primarily by young women. Described as “junk journalling”, the hobby is distinguishable by an affinity with collecting and storing physical mementoes, such as tickets, receipts, packaging and Polaroids.

Published: January 26, 2026, 2:00 pm

Do writing retreats actually work? Reader, I finished my novel in style …

The distractions of daily life can make writing a book a frustrating task, so I sought boltholes offering creative support and solitude in inspiring landscapes

The idea for my novel came in a rush: as I walked over the Thames on the Golden Jubilee Bridge in central London, the scene at the heart of it leapt out of the deep blue dusk and clung on to me until I committed to writing it into existence.

A few months later, it became depressingly clear that the half-hour snatches of writing at the end of my working day just weren’t going to get me over the finish line.

Published: January 26, 2026, 7:00 am

Meatballs, Persian rice and Korean stew: John Gregory-Smith’s globetrotting chicken traybake recipes

Mediterranean chicken meatballs with feta and black olives, Persian-style saffron chicken and rice, and a garlicky, Korean-inspired chicken and potato traybake

When it comes to traybakes, chicken is the undisputed hero, because it’s endlessly adaptable and perfect for carrying bold, global flavours. First up, some eastern Mediterranean chicken meatballs, flecked with feta and black olives for a sharp, savoury punch. Then a Persian-style saffron chicken and rice; the rice cooks with the chicken, absorbing all the flavours of the sunshine-yellow saffron and crisping up at the edges. Finally, a Korean-inspired chicken and potato traybake in which gochujang and soy create a deeply savoury sauce that elevates a simple midweek meal.

Published: January 26, 2026, 6:00 am

‘Don’t they have mercy?’: A mother on losing her son in a record year of Saudi executions

Essam al-Shazly is the latest foreign national to die in a ‘horrifying’ surge in capital punishment under the rule of Mohammed bin Salman

In his four years on death row, Essam al-Shazly’s mother was his only contact with the outside world. During their daily calls she would calm his fears, control her own tears and listen to his hopes of returning home.

Speaking from the family home in Hurghada, a tourist resort on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, she says he would tell her, “Mom, I talk to you because I want to forget what I’m going through. Don’t ask me anything about prison.”

Published: January 26, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘Our spirit can’t be broken’: Minneapolis city council member on resisting Trump’s immigration crackdown

Aisha Chughtai, who represents the district where Alex Pretti was fatally shot, vows to fight through ‘despair’ caused by federal immigration enforcement

• Minneapolis residents, angry and anxious, resolve to fight on as they mourn Alex Pretti

After weeks of federal raids and aggression, Minneapolis city council member Aisha Chughtai said what her community needs most now “is for ICE to leave Minnesota”.

Chughtai represents the district where 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents on Saturday, the second killing of a Minneapolis resident by a federal agent on the city’s southside this year.

Published: January 26, 2026, 10:00 am

Life after Molly: Ian Russell on big tech, his daughter’s death – and why a social media ban won’t work

Molly Russell was just 14 when she took her own life in 2017, and an inquest later found negative online content was a significant factor. With many people now pushing for teenagers to be kept off tech platforms, her father explains why he backs a different approach

Ian Russell describes his life as being split into two parts: before and after 20 November 2017, the day his youngest daughter, Molly, took her own life as a result of depression and negative social media content. “Our life before Molly’s death was very ordinary. Unremarkable,” he says. He was a television producer and director, married with three daughters. “We lived in an ordinary London suburb, in an ordinary semi-detached house, the children went to ordinary schools.” The weekend before Molly’s death, they had a celebration for all three girls’ birthdays, which are in November. One was turning 21, another 18 and Molly was soon to be 15. “And I remember being in the kitchen of a house full of friends and family and thinking, ‘This is so good. I’ve never been so happy,’” he says. “That was on a Saturday night and the following Tuesday morning, everything was different.”

The second part of Russell’s life has been not only grief and trauma, but also a commitment to discovering and exposing the truth about the online content that contributed to Molly’s death, and campaigning to prevent others falling prey to the same harms. Both elements lasted far longer than he anticipated. It took nearly five years to get enough information out of social media companies for an inquest to conclude that Molly died “from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”. As for the campaigning, the Molly Rose Foundation provides support, conducts research and raises awareness of online harms, and Russell has been an omnipresent spokesperson on these issues.

Published: January 26, 2026, 5:00 am

Tell us: have you been affected by the US storm?

Has extreme weather left you without power, or your child’s school closed due to heavy snow? We would like to hear from you

At least seven people have died as a fierce winter storm sweeps across the US, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power, schools and roads closed, and flights cancelled.

Twenty-six states, from Texas to Massachusetts, were under storm warnings issued by the National Weather Service over the weekend, with many alerts remaining in place this week.

Published: January 26, 2026, 2:52 pm

Holocaust remembrance and a tsunami museum: photos of the day – Tuesday

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

Published: January 27, 2026, 1:35 pm