Quad God and the Blade Angels: is the new USA Dream Team a group of figure skaters?

The US enter the team event as hot favorites: powered by world champions, rising stars and a generation determined to push figure skating beyond its traditional audience

On Friday morning inside the Milano Ice Skating Arena, the United States will launch their defense of the Olympic figure skating team title carrying something rare in a sport usually defined by individual brilliance: overwhelming depth. Which raises a question that, until recently, would have sounded almost absurd in figure skating.

Is the new USA Dream Team a group of figure skaters?

Published: February 6, 2026, 8:15 am

Republicans are the party of separating and destroying families | Moira Donegan

Their ‘pro-family’ rhetoric is a cynical and hollow sham

Of the 3,800 children and infants taken into immigration custody between January and October of 2025, a majority – 2,600 – were detained by ICE officers. That means that the children, as young as one or two years old, were not arrested at the border or legal ports of entry, where asylum seekers frequently present themselves to border officers, but inside the country.

That means that those children were not new arrivals seeking help; they were kids going about their daily lives in the US, often with legal status. They were children like Liam Conejo Ramos, aged five, who was snatched from his driveway after school by immigration agents while wearing a blue bunny hat to keep him warm in the Minnesota cold. They are children like one student, a 17-year-old from Liam’s school district in Minnesota, who was taken from their car, or the other child, a 10-year-old girl in the fourth grade, who was taken alongside her mother; or the two other boys, brothers in the second and fifth grades, who were delivered by school officials to an ICE detention center after their mother was arrested and taken there. She had called the school to ask them to bring her boys to her in the prison; there was no one else to take care of them.

Published: February 6, 2026, 10:00 am

‘We stole the Super Bowl audience’: how In Living Color pulled off the greatest heist in US TV history

Turning Point USA is plotting its own half-time show in defiance of Bad Bunny – but one of TV’s Blackest programs already perfected the alt-cast in 1992

When the NFL announced Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny as this year’s Super Bowl half-time show headliner, it walked right into a culture war. Right-wing critics raged over the musician’s gender-nonconforming style, Spanish-language music and anti-Maga politics. Donald Trump, after saying he had never heard of Bad Bunny, called the headlining choice “absolutely ridiculous”.

In response, Erika Kirk and her Turning Point USA conservative advocacy group turned the controversy into its own counter-programming event: the All-American Halftime Show. After its Nashville-heavy lineup, led by Kid Rock, was announced on Monday, vice-president JD Vance was first among conservatives to enthusiastically spread the word.

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:00 pm

Hail our new robot overlords! Amazon warehouse tour offers glimpse of future

At its new Stone Mountain, Georgia, facility, Roomba-like robots shuffle between stacks, another adds shipping labels while another arranges packages in pallets

One of the reasons Amazon is spending billions on robots? They don’t need bathroom breaks. Arriving a few minutes early to the public tour of Amazon’s hi-tech Stone Mountain, Georgia, warehouse, my request to visit the restroom was met with a resounding no from the security guard in the main lobby.

Between the main doors and the entrance security gate, I paced and paced after being told I would have to wait for the tour guide to collect me and other guests for a tour of the 640,000-sq-ft, four-story warehouse.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:00 pm

‘Tickets have become status symbols’: from Harry Styles to Taylor Swift, why is live music bigger and more expensive than ever?

Styles is playing a record 12 nights at Wembley Stadium and 30 at Madison Square Garden, as demand for big artists soars – and audience expectation along with it

Selling out a venue such as London’s O2 Arena used to be considered a high point of an artist’s career. Now, selling out just one night there might seem a bit underwhelming. Raye and Olivia Dean will play six nights apiece at the 20,000-capacity hall this year; Dave is playing four, Ariana Grande is playing a whopping 10. Harry Styles, never one to be outdone, last month announced a staggering 30 dates at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with more than 11 million people applying for presale access, as well as a record-breaking 12 nights at Wembley stadium: the most on a single leg of a tour. Taylor Swift managed a mere eight.

Swift’s Eras tour, which made more than $2bn (£1.6bn), doesn’t seem a complete outlier any more: Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour has lasted four years and made $1.5bn, and the Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn tour is also four years deep and has crossed the $1bn mark. It’s even de rigueur for world leaders to get involved in the fight for tickets, with the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, asking the South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, to help book more BTS shows in her country, just as the then Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, publicly asked Swift to come to Canada. Meanwhile, the Singaporean government paid for Swift’s six shows in the country to be a south-east Asia exclusive.

Published: February 6, 2026, 8:00 am

Experience: I am the Excel world champion

I have been called the LeBron James of spreadsheets, but I try not to take myself too seriously

Growing up in Waterford, south-east Ireland, I was always good at maths. I first used Excel at university in Cork while studying maths and physics. We used a software programme called Mathematica but it was expensive, so at home I used Excel as a workaround to do the same tasks, using it to generate, say, a list of prime or Fibonacci numbers.

After that, I worked at a consultancy company in London and started using it more conventionally. I soon became the go-to person for people who had random questions about the software, such as how to use it to figure out how many trucks are needed to transport a certain amount of packages.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:00 am

White House takes down Trump’s racist video about Obamas after outrage over ‘vile, unhinged’ post – live

Multiple outlets cite a senior White House official as saying, ‘a White House staffer erroneously made the post’

• Trump shares video with racist imagery of Obamas

Top Democrats in Congress have condemned Donald Trump for sharing a racist video of Barack and Michelle Obama that depicts them as apes.

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, called the president a “vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder”. He noted that the Obamas were “brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans” who “represent the best of this country”.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:39 pm

Newly revealed emails undermine RFK Jr testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of measles outbreak

Kennedy later said the purpose of his trip had nothing to do with vaccines. US embassy and UN staff at the time said otherwise, emails show

Over two days of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Robert F Kennedy Jr repeated the same answer.

He said the closely scrutinized trip he took to Samoa in 2019, which came ahead of a devastating measles outbreak, had “nothing to do with vaccines”.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:11 pm

Winter Olympics 2026: Anti-ICE protests before opening ceremony, Vonn completes training run – live

• Milano Cortina Games to be opened on Friday evening
• Schedule | Results | Medal table | Briefing | Email Tanya

Lindsey Vonn inspected the Olympic downhill course with other racers early this morning as she prepared to take part in the opening training session despite tearing the ACL in her left knee a week ago.

The 41-year-old Vonn is planning to compete at the Milan Cortina Games with a large brace covering her injured knee.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:42 pm

Iran says ‘good start’ made in talks with US over nuclear programme

Indirect talks end with agreement to maintain diplomatic path and possible continuation in coming days, officials say

Indirect talks between Iran and the US on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme ended on Friday with a broad agreement to maintain a diplomatic path, possibly with further talks in the coming days, according to statements from Iran and the Omani hosts.

The relieved Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, described the eight hours of meetings as a “good start” conducted in a good atmosphere. He added that the continuance of talks depended on consultations in Washington and Tehran, but said Iran had underlined that any dialogue required refraining from threats.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:59 pm

Russian general Vladimir Alekseyev in critical condition after Moscow shooting

Deputy director of Russia’s military intelligence agency shot several times in the stairwell of his apartment

A top Russian military official who plays a major role in the country’s intelligence services has been taken to hospital after being shot in Moscow, state media has reported.

Lt Gen Vladimir Alekseyev was shot several times on the stairwell of his apartment on Friday by an unknown gunman in the north-west of the city and is in critical condition, according to reports.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:01 pm

Pam Bondi announces arrest of ‘key participant’ in 2012 Benghazi attack

Zubayar al-Bakoush is suspected in Libya attack resulting in deaths of US ambassador and three other Americans

The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced on Friday the arrest of a “key participant” in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four US government officials, including the US ambassador to Libya, J Christopher Stevens.

Bondi said the suspect, Zubayar al-Bakoush, was taken into US custody at 3am ET on Friday. “We will prosecute this alleged terrorist to the fullest extent of the law. He’ll face charges related to murder, terrorism, arson, among others,” Bondi told reporters at a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington DC.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:15 pm

Sheriff says he believes Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother is still alive

Disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie from her home in Arizona is being investigated as kidnapping

The search for Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC’s Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie entered its sixth day on Friday in Arizona, as authorities said they believe that she is still alive.

“She’s out there, we’re gonna find her, we have to,” said Chris Nanos, Arizona’s Pima county sheriff, in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America show on Friday morning. “Pray – just pray,” he said.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:44 pm

Despite assurances, residents and officials prepare for possible ICE operations during Super Bowl

In Santa Clara, California, where nearly half of residents were born outside the US, fear builds as game approaches

This weekend, tens of thousands of people will make their way to the Bay Area city of Santa Clara, ready to celebrate a weekend at the Super Bowl.

Beneath the jubilant mood, some residents and officials have been grappling with the possibility of ICE enforcement operations during the game, and taking steps to prepare.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:00 pm

Sales of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights skyrocket ahead of film adaptation

The number of novels sold rose nearly fivefold year on year in the UK in January, Penguin Classics reports, as Emerald Fennell’s hotly anticipated take is set for release next week

Sales of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights have risen by 469% in the UK since last year, as anticipation builds for Emerald Fennell’s bold and highly anticipated film adaptation, figures from Penguin Classics UK show.

In January of this year, 10,670 copies were sold, compared with 1,875 in January 2025, in what Penguin has described as an unusually large boost.

Published: February 6, 2026, 4:00 pm

Trump says he’ll free infrastructure funds for New York if Penn Station is renamed after him

Trump also demanded Dulles airport be given his name in exchange for funding NY-NJ tunnel and subway extension

Donald Trump has told the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, that he will unfreeze funds for major infrastructure projects in New York City if he supports renaming Dulles international airport and Penn Station after him.

The demand, which was first reported on Thursday by Punchbowl News, comes after the president in October halted $18bn in funding for a major subway line expansion in New York City as well as a new rail tunnel connecting the city to New Jersey. The funding freeze was announced on the first day of a 43-day government shutdown in which Schumer, who represents New York, played a major role.

Published: February 6, 2026, 4:10 pm

‘Grind the country to a halt’: Democrat urges national strike if Trump meddles in midterms

In wake of Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to ‘take over’ voting, senator Ruben Gallego urges citizens to take a stand and give the ‘ultimate response’

The Democratic senator Ruben Gallego has proposed that, should Donald Trump try to sabotage the midterm elections, Americans should respond with a general strike that would “grind the country to a halt”.

Earlier this week the US president called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalise” voting in at least 15 unspecified locations, repeating his false claims that elections are plagued by widespread fraud.

Published: February 6, 2026, 4:37 am

‘It’s been brutal’: Cubans caught in crosshairs of Trump’s deportation push

Cubans, once fast-tracked to US residency, now find themselves targets of Trump’s immigration crackdown

When Rosaly Estévez “self-deported” from Miami to Havana last November, US immigration officers bid farewell by removing her ankle monitor. The 32-year-old had been told she was about to be detained, so she left with her three-year-old son, Dylan, a US citizen.

Heidy Sánchez, 43, wasn’t given a choice. She was forcibly removed from Florida last April but, worrying about Cuba’s failing healthcare system, she left her two-year-old daughter, Kaylin, behind with her American husband, Carlos.

Published: February 6, 2026, 10:00 am

Opposition to US has hardened in western Europe after Greenland threat, poll finds

Large majorities in six nations express antipathy to Trump’s US and support European self-assertion

Western Europeans prize Europe’s autonomy and values over transatlantic ties and will not give them up to placate Donald Trump, according to a poll suggesting opinions of the US have plunged to their lowest since YouGov began tracking them a decade ago.

The US president’s attempted Greenland grab has succeeded in turning Europeans solidly against his country, the pollster’s latest survey found. Large majorities in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain all declared an unfavourable opinion.

Published: February 6, 2026, 6:00 am

Epstein said he was ‘asked everyday’ for advice on #MeToo: ‘So many guys reaching out to me’

Files released by DoJ reveal the financier engaging in efforts to blunt the impact of the movement as it was gaining ground

In August 2018, as the #MeToo movement spread across social media and women around the world demanded justice from sexual predators, Michael Wolff, a journalist, forwarded Jeffrey Epstein a plea for help. Wolff wanted Epstein to support Stephen Elliott, a writer looking to sue the creator of the Shitty Media Men List, a crowd-sourced Google Doc that detailed anonymous allegations of misconduct against dozens of men who worked in the media industry.

“I have always thought that the way back from this climate is through specific instances of individuals successfully challenging their persecution,” Wolff wrote to Epstein, according to emails released in a tranche from the so-called Epstein files. “If his story is solid he might be worth supporting.”

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:19 pm

How anti-ICE pin badges became the essential red carpet accessory

Billie Eilish and Biebers wore ‘ICE out’ pins at the Grammys, as more and more celebrities find their political voices

The red carpet is being used increasingly as a platform for protest – and one accessory in particular has become key: the pin badge.

At Sunday night’s Grammy awards, stars including Hailey and Justin Bieber and Billie Eilish wore black and white pins that read “ICE out”, a condemnation of the recent actions of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:00 pm

‘I saw kids being shot, women, old people’: how a massacre unfolded in one Iranian city

The Guardian has constructed a timeline for the terrible events of one night of protests in Rasht, based on first-hand accounts, video and photographs

On Thursday 8 January, Iran went dark. In the midst of massive national protests, the government shut down the internet, phone calls, and almost all communication out of the country. That evening a violent crackdown began. In some cities, government forces opened fire on crowds, killing thousands – according to some estimates, possibly tens of thousands – in two days of bloodshed. The internet blackout has meant that a clearer picture of what happened – drawn from witness reports, videos, photographs and testimony from hospitals – has taken time to assemble.

When the violence began, there were demonstrations taking place in more than 200 cities, according to human rights groups. This is the story of what unfolded in one of them.

Published: February 6, 2026, 6:00 am

The best four space heaters in the US for a quick fix in a freezing home

If you’re looking to warm up soon, here are the best heat projectors, from Vornado’s whisper-quiet heater to DeLonghi’s compact device

• Eight winter clothing essentials Scandinavians swear by – from heated socks to ‘allværsjakke’

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

A home should be an inviting place of warmth. But maybe your HVAC isn’t up to snuff against how cold it’s been lately, or other members of your household want to keep it frigid for whatever inhumane reason.

This is the perfect situation for a space heater.

A whisper-quiet space heater:
Vornado AVH10

A small, portable space heater:
DeLonghi HMP1500

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:15 pm

Cage fights at the White House! A gigantic arch! Trump’s gaudy plans for America’s 250th anniversary

From minting coins featuring his own face to covering buildings with gold, the president’s proposals for marking America’s semiquincentennial say a lot about the country’s backwards outlook

When the United States celebrated its bicentennial on 4 July 1976, it marked the occasion with the opening of the National Air and Space Museum’s exhibition hall on Washington DC’s National Mall. Designed in a boldly modernist style by the blue-chip firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (now HOK), it stood as a testament to American aeronautical derring-do, from the Wright brothers to the moon landings.

At the time, even though the stench of Republican political shenanigans was never far off, with Gerald Ford replacing the disgraced Richard Nixon in 1974, there was a sense of a nation embracing progress, looking forward, not back. For all the historical re-enactments of Washington crossing the Delaware, the US chose to see itself through the prism of modernity and technological puissance.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:52 pm

‘Penisgate’ at the Olympics: why inject acid into your penis, and what are the health risks?

The World Anti-Doping Agency is investigating whether ski jumpers were injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid in order to fly further

In the quest for Olympic gold, professional athletes endure hardships that might seem unfathomable to most of us mere mortals. But do those lengths extend to ski jumpers injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid in order to fly further?

That is the question the World Anti-Doping Agency will investigate since such startling allegations emerged first in the German newspaper Bild in what has now been dubbed “Penisgate”.

Published: February 6, 2026, 8:59 am

Stephen Colbert: ‘Trump would eat a bicycle tire if you put it on a bun’

Late-night hosts responded to White House faith adviser Paula White-Cain’s claims that Trump is ‘the GOAT’

On Thursday night, Stephen Colbert responded to White House adviser Paula White-Cain’s claims that Donald Trump is “the GOAT”, while Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers addressed ICE and Jeffrey Epstein.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:38 pm

‘It’s the rubbish, female A-team!’ Derry Girl Lisa McGee on her hilarious new mystery thriller

After plundering her tearaway teens for the comedy classic, Lisa McGee is back with a Scooby-Doo-style caper. As How to Get to Heaven from Belfast hits our screens, she explains why the craic’s about to get deadly

How do you follow up a show about girls in Derry? With one about women in Belfast, obviously. That’s what Lisa McGee has done. Her new eight-parter, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, is as far away from Derry Girls as you can get when the distance between the worlds amounts to 70 miles along the A6.

Or as she puts it: “I wanted a shit, female, Northern Irish A-Team!”

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:00 pm

Week in wildlife: cuddling sloths, dazed iguanas and a very fat seal

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Published: February 6, 2026, 8:00 am

State violence against Black Americans laid the groundwork for fascism | Jason Stanley

Fascism feeds on the arbitrary killings that have long plagued the US. Ending the horror starts with abolishing ICE

In a recent Saturday Night Live episode, when asked about Minneapolis, one of the white hosts intones: “Well, the first word that comes to mind is unprecedented. You’ve got federal officers roaming the streets just pulling people out of their cars based on how they look. This just doesn’t happen in America.” The joke is, of course, that “this” has been happening forever, but to Black people in America. Now that it is happening to others, and particularly now that white protesters are being killed in the streets, it is suddenly a national emergency.

In his 1955 work Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire, the French poet and politician, argues that fascism was the result of bringing to bear on domestic populations the tactics European countries used on their colonial subjects in Africa. This is what has been called in the literature the “imperial boomerang thesis”. As many have been pointing out on social media and elsewhere, if we think of the US Black American population as an internally colonized population, then you can see what is happening on the streets of Minneapolis as a manifestation of the imperial boomerang thesis.

Published: February 6, 2026, 11:00 am

Trump’s family is embroiled in a $500m UAE scandal. We’ve hardly noticed | Mohamad Bazzi

A crypto startup founded by Trump’s family signed a huge deal with the UAE president’s brother. Where’s the political fallout?

Days before Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, an investment firm controlled by a senior member of the United Arab Emirates royal family secretly signed a deal to pay $500m to buy almost half of a cryptocurrency startup founded by the Trump family. Under any other president, such an arrangement, which was revealed this past weekend by the Wall Street Journal, would cause a political earthquake in Washington. There would be demands for an investigation by Congress, televised hearings and months of damage control.

But this latest example of corruption involving Trump and his family business hardly made a blip over the past few days, relegated to a passing headline in a relentless news cycle often dominated by Trump’s actions and statements.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:00 pm

Why are Nicki Minaj’s fans defending her Maga shift? | Tayo Bero

The Barbz have built a parasocial relationship with the rapper – in some cases to their own detriment

Nicki Minaj is back doing PR for Donald Trump, and it’s messier than ever. Last week, she appeared at a treasury department summit in Washington DC to show support for Trump accounts, a new kind of investment account designed to “provide eligible American children with tax-advantaged investment accounts courtesy of President Donald J. Trump”, according to a government website.

The most disappointing part of the rapper’s recent turn toward Maga, though, is how her stans – a significant portion of whom are Black and queer – are responding. After the summit, Minaj’s followers defended her online and even helped push Trump’s agenda. “In a society full of hate and division, supporting Nicki Minaj is reminding people to see past political differences and see the human in one another,” one supporter wrote. Oh brother. Minaj is a perfect example of the cult of celebrity, the dangers of modern fan culture and how celebrity worship can intersect with politics in truly dangerous ways.

Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:00 pm

There’s one argument Starmer could make to save his skin – but he won’t dare do it | Jonathan Freedland

It’s right to focus on what the PM knew about Peter Mandelson, but many pointing the finger also knew and chose to ignore it

Everything Donald Trump touches dies. He put his name on the Kennedy Center in Washington, prompting artists and performers to flee in such numbers that the venue will now shut down for “approximately” two years. The Washington Post under owner Jeff Bezos sought to ingratiate itself with the second Trump presidency; this week it announced 300 layoffs and the withering of that once great institution. And now we can add one more, unexpected item to the list poisoned by the touch of Trump: Britain’s Labour government.

It’s easily forgotten, but it was because of Trump that Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson to serve as the UK ambassador to Washington. The prime minister decided it would take a snake to navigate the serpentine backchannels of the new administration and that Mandelson had the skill set. The result is an irony rich enough to make you retch. The Epstein files, which contain more than 38,000 references to Trump, his Mar-a-Lago estate and other related terms, seem set to bring down a national leader who is not mentioned by Epstein even once.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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

Published: February 6, 2026, 4:23 pm

If you are reading this it is because I’m dead: here’s what I want to tell you about how to live | Carlos Hernández de Miguel

Leaving this world in an age of lies and cruelty, my last message is simple: don’t give up on truth

• Carlos Hernández de Miguel was a Spanish journalist and writer. He died on 3 February 2026

Dear reader, for the first time since I became a journalist, I have to tell you I wish you weren’t reading what I’ve written. Because if you’re reading this, it means I’m no longer in this world – or any other. I’ve died. Shit, it’s hard to write this, but that’s the way it is. I’ve died, and I don’t want to leave without saying goodbye and sharing a few final thoughts.

I’ve been a very fortunate person. I was fortunate to have been born in a European country that, although still under the yoke of Franco’s regime, very soon afterwards began to progress economically, socially and politically. Luck, and it was only luck, made my destiny infinitely easier than that of hundreds of millions of children who are born in regions of the world ravaged by hunger, poverty and war.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:00 am

So the Epstein scandal is about politics? Silly me for thinking it’s about the mass abuse of women and girls | Marina Hyde

Obsessing over individual players and political chaos leaves less time to focus on the misogyny. And that’s for the best, isn’t it guys?

Fair play to Bill Gates’s ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, a woman who fronted up to appear on a podcast this week while so many of the men who feature in the latest Epstein files drop found that their diaries had them scheduled to stay hiding under their rocks. Melinda was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, obviously, and executed a very graceful drive-by. “Whatever questions remain there of what I don’t – can’t – even begin to know all of it, those questions are for those people, and for even my ex-husband. They need to answer to those things, not me. And I am so happy to be away from all the muck that was there.” Oof. Yet she also said, more generally: “I think we’re having a reckoning as a society, right?”

Cards on the table, I don’t think we’re having one at all. Look at the headlines, or what’s dominating all the news bulletins. We’re talking about anything but the things that most need to be reckoned with. In the UK, we’re talking round the clock about Peter Mandelson, the one guy in this we at least know wasn’t making sexually abusive use of Epstein’s trafficked women and girls. Even if he did offer Epstein image rehab advice, which, as discussed here in depth on Tuesday, was a foray into the moral abyss. (Again.) But the frenzied and remorseless focus on political fallout – and not the male-on-female debasement that is the entire heart of this story, and always has been – is weird, isn’t it? I had a mirthless laugh at the New Statesman’s cover this week, which characterised the Mandelson affair as “the scandal of the century”. Guys, it’s not even the biggest scandal of the scandal.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:36 pm

Young Muslims have created an inclusive Ramadan that works for everyone. Now that’s in danger | Nosheen Iqbal

Led by women, queer-friendly, diverse: this model can break so many boundaries. But if we lose spaces to meet in, it can't happen

Something quietly profound happened last Ramadan. In a year when the war on Gaza hardened public debate into camps, when half the UK was found to believe that Islam – and therefore Muslims – to be incompatible with British values, when the general volume of Islamophobia was ratcheted several notches higher by Reform UK’s rise in the polls, hundreds of Muslim Londoners gathered every night to build the kind of community and connection we were told had been decimated. Lost to whatever the flavour of blame is at the moment: doomscrolling, the telly streamers, individualism promoted by late-stage capitalism, a society fractured by the cost of living.

For a month, Muslims came together in the capital and put on iftars, the evening meal that breaks the day’s fast, that reflected the world we want to live in: inclusive, often female-led and queer-friendly, properly diverse, rooted in generosity. A community without judgment, formed outside mosques, free from the performative piety Olympics. Which all sounds deeply earnest, but believe me when I tell you that these were some of the most vibey events I went to last year.

Nosheen Iqbal is the host of the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast

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

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:15 pm

Lindsey Vonn, skiing with ruptured ACL, takes crucial step in downhill medal bid

• US star clocks successful practice run a week after injury

• Olympic medal race is set for Sunday at Cortina

Lindsey Vonn moved a step closer to one of the most improbable Olympic starts in Alpine skiing history on Friday, producing an aggressive and largely clean downhill training run on the Olimpia delle Tofane course less than a week after fully rupturing the ACL in her left knee and being airlifted off a mountain in Switzerland.

The 41-year-old American clocked 1min 40.33sec in a fog-delayed session, but the time itself was secondary to what the run represented: proof that she can still attack a course at speed – and survive it – as she targets Sunday’s medal race.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:50 pm

Winter Olympics Team GB skier targets ICE with graphic message written in snow

• Gus Kenworthy says ‘enough is enough’ over ICE in US

• ICE agents are in Milan with US vice-president JD Vance

Team GB skier Gus Kenworthy has launched a blistering attack on US Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers by urinating the words “Fuck Ice” on the snow just before the start of the Winter Olympics.

In a post on Instagram the 34-year-old, who will compete for Team GB in the free-ski half-pipe in Milano Cortina, also urged Americans to write to their senators to “rein in” ICE and border patrol.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:30 pm

The factors that will decide the Super Bowl: a brilliant receiver, pass protection and explosive plays

The Seahawks and Patriots are the last teams standing this season. The championship is likely to be decided by the smallest margins

The Seattle Seahawks’ run game came alive during the second half of the season and postseason. But it’s still the passing game that makes the offense sing. Almost all of that flows through Smith-Njigba.

Published: February 6, 2026, 11:00 am

NBA trade deadline: the Knicks get stronger and everyone loses in the Giannis sweepstakes

After weeks of breakup talk, the Bucks and their superstar stayed together. The Knicks and Timberwolves, meanwhile, made smart additions

It’s hard to match the absolute insanity that was the 2024-25 NBA trade deadline, and to the majority of the league’s credit, teams didn’t really try. But there was still some notable movement ahead of Thursday’s 3pm EST deadline – to varying degrees of success. Let’s do the early assessment of who came out on top, and who left us scratching our heads.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:31 pm

The race to be the USMNT’s top striker is – once again – an open competition

The window to impress on Mauricio Pochettino is waning, and the pressure is on for the No 9s on the bubble

In past points of his managerial career, Mauricio Pochettino could upgrade his squad via the transfer market. When Tottenham sold striker Roberto Soldado in 2015, his replacement came two weeks later: Son Heung-min. It’s a facet of the job completely absent in his role with the US national team, though he’d be forgiven for wishing a similar market was available ahead of this summer’s World Cup.

With provisional World Cup squads due 11 May and Pochettino wanting to avoid a “cruel” scenario of bringing players over for the final friendlies in May and June only to leave them off of his tournament squad, the window for hopefuls to make an impression is nearly closed. There are positional battles across the pitch; there’s no ironclad starting goalkeeper, a likely opening (or two) at center back beside Chris Richards, and multiple midfield places.

Published: February 6, 2026, 10:00 am

Brees elected to Hall of Fame as ‘pissed’ Johnson skips ceremony over Belichick snub

• Belichick left out despite building New England dynasty

• Drew Brees and Larry Fitzgerald among inductees

Six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick was officially left out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2026, likely opening the door to revisions in the selection process later this year.

Still, the New England Patriots dynasty Belichick helped helm well into the 2000s earned partial vindication as former Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri gained induction in his second year on the ballot.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:51 am

Chock and Bates power US team to open Olympic figure skating

• Ice dance duo give US early lead in the team event

• Alysa Liu places second in women’s short program

• Vance and Rubio in attendance for opening session

The United States seized early control of the Olympic figure skating team event after Friday’s opening day on the southern outskirts of Milan, powered by a world’s best score this season from Madison Chock and Evan Bates.

The three-time world champions, together on skates since 2011 and married since 2024, set the marker with 91.06 points for their program to music by The Guess Who and Lenny Kravitz, earning the maximum 10 points for an American team entering the Winter Games on a tailwind of hype.
Chock and Bates, nearly unbeatable since finishing fourth in the individual ice dance event at the Beijing Games four years ago, skated with the precision and polish that have defined their rise to the top of the sport.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:56 pm

Premier League: 10 things to look out for this weekend

Arsenal need energy from home crowd, Florian Wirtz has found his groove and Liam Rosenior deserves respect

Daniel Farke is understood to have wanted a new goalkeeper during the January transfer window but the Leeds board failed to oblige. Might that decision ultimately cost the club their Premier League status? It will be interesting to see whether Farke recalls the recently dropped former Lyon goalkeeper, Lucas Perri, or keeps faith with Karl Darlow against Nottingham Forest at Elland Road on Friday night. Darlow, formerly second choice at Newcastle, struggled with crosses when Arsenal won 4-0 in West Yorkshire last Saturday and may approach a quintessential relegation six-pointer against Forest with dented confidence. What about Illan Meslier? Previously a star under Marcelo Bielsa, a keeper once hyped as France’s future No 1 has been demoted to third choice and has been discussing a potential move to Besiktas before Friday’s transfer deadline in Turkey. Talks only began after Leeds rejected a bid for Perri from Besiktas last week. Time will tell if that was that the right decision. Louise Taylor

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:01 am

Matthew Stafford wins NFL MVP and vows to return to Rams next season

• 37-year-old pips New England’s Drake Maye to award

• Myles Garrett is unanimous Defensive Player of Year

• Jaxon Smith-Njigba wins Offensive Player of Year

Matthew Stafford walked away with the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award and a declaration that he will return to the Los Angeles Rams for another season.

Stafford edged Drake Maye for the MVP award on Thursday night in the closest race since Peyton Manning and Steve McNair were co-winners in 2003.

Stafford received 24 of 50 first-place votes while Maye got 23. But Maye has a chance to go home this week with a Vince Lombardi Trophy: he leads the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:24 am

Snoop Dogg shocks British curling pair with request for photo at Winter Olympics

• ‘I am feeling pretty good about myself,’ says Bruce Mouat

• Figure skaters Gibson and Fear in bronze position

Snoop Dogg and the sport of curling made for a very odd mixture at the Winter Olympics on Friday with British competitors Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds even more shocked than the crowd and the millions tuning in when they got a picture request from the rapper.

Mouat and Dodds had maintained their unbeaten record so far at the Games with a 7-4 win over tough opponents Sweden, but were just as pleased to meet the US superstar.

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:31 pm

How the Epstein scandal has shaken the British government to its core

Anger at former US ambassador Peter Mandelson’s relations with the child sex offender threatens to topple the prime minister

It was the one scandal that Donald Trump seemed unable to shake. No matter his best efforts to convince his supporter base that there was nothing to see here, the demands for the administration to release every document it had on the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein only grew.

Yet even after the most shocking revelations in the latest drop about Trump’s inner circle – involving everyone from Elon Musk to the Maga honcho Steve Bannon to the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, not to mention Trump himself – so far, it seems, the administration has escaped largely unscathed. Nobody has resigned, nobody has been fired, and certainly there is no sign that the US president is going anywhere.

Published: February 5, 2026, 7:33 pm

Australian coins celebrating late queen criticised for poor likeness

The two coins, created to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s birth, have been subject of online debate

Two Australian coins commemorating Queen Elizabeth II have been criticised for failing to resemble the late monarch.

The $5 (£2.56) and 50c (26p) silver coins, created by Royal Australian Mint to commemorate the centenary of the queen’s birth, were released in an online ballot that closed on Wednesday.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:34 pm

Ex-Catholic church lawyer who warned US bishops of systemic clergy abuse dies at 78

Ray Mouton was one of the earliest and most influential figures in exposing sexual abuse inside the church

A Louisiana attorney whose work helped crack open the US Catholic church’s long-hidden clergy sexual abuse crisis died Thursday morning in suburban New Orleans.

Ray Mouton was 78.

Published: February 6, 2026, 11:00 am

Canada and France open Greenland consulates in show of Denmark support

Founding of diplomatic outposts in Nuuk comes after US made efforts to secure control of Arctic island

• Opposition to US has hardened in western Europe after Greenland threat, poll finds

• Europe live – latest updates

Canada and France are to open diplomatic consulates in the capital of Greenland on Friday, showing support for their Nato ally Denmark and the Arctic island after US efforts to secure control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand, was travelling to Nuuk to inaugurate the consulate, which officials say also could help boost cooperation on issues such as the climate crisis and Inuit rights. She was joined by Canada’s Indigenous governor general, Mary Simon.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:05 pm

Menstrual blood test could offer alternative to cervical screening for cancer

Researchers say blood sample strip, which can be used at home, can pick up virus that causes cervical cancer

A pioneering test of period blood for signs of cervical cancer could be a convenient, non-invasive and accurate way of screening for the disease, researchers have said.

A regular sanitary pad topped with a blood sample strip can pick up human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes most cases of cervical cancer, and could be used by women at home, the results of a study indicate.

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:32 pm

Mosque bombing in Pakistan capital kills at least 31 people

Police investigating whether blast that injured at least 169 at Friday prayers in Islamabad was suicide attack

An explosion has ripped through a Shia mosque on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital during Friday prayers, killing 31 people and injuring at least 169 others, according to officials. Police said they were investigating whether the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

There were fears the death toll from the blast at the Khadija al-Kubra mosque in Islamabad could rise as some of the injured were reported to be in a critical condition. Television footage and social media images showed police and residents transporting the injured to nearby hospitals.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:57 pm

Elton John accuses Daily Mail publisher of ‘abhorrent’ invasion of privacy

Singer says articles about his health and birth of son ‘outside even the most basic standards of human decency’

Elton John has said articles about his health and the birth of his son by the publisher of the Daily Mail were an “abhorrent” invasion, and that its behaviour was “outside even the most basic standards of human decency”.

Appearing briefly at the high court via video link on Friday, John said he was “incensed” when he was told about allegations that private investigators working for Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) had tapped phone calls and accessed private medical information.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:47 pm

What Trump’s plans for the Arctic mean for the global climate crisis

With plans to sell off over a million acres of natural habitat for oil and gas development, the Trump administration is ignoring the dire impact on its fragile ecosystem

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This week, the Trump administration took a key step towards opening new leases for oil and gas drilling across millions of acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – a pristine and biodiverse expanse in northern Alaska and one of the last wildlands in the US still left untouched.

With a call for nominations officially issued on Tuesday, the US Bureau of Land Management began evaluating plots across the 1.5 million-acre Coastal Plain at the heart of the refuge – an area often referred to as the American Serengeti, thanks to its rich tundra ecosystems, which provide habitat for close to 200 species and serve as the traditional homelands of the Iñupiat and Gwichʼin peoples.

Flawed economic models mean climate crisis could crash global economy, experts warn

Fossil fuel firms may have to pay for climate damage under proposed UN tax

The lithium boom: could a disused quarry bring riches to Cornwall?

Trump’s Greenland threats open old wounds for Inuit across Arctic

‘Erasure of years of work’: outcry as White House moves to open Arctic reserve to oil and gas drilling

Arctic endured year of record heat as climate scientists warn of ‘winter being redefined’

Published: February 6, 2026, 7:00 am

‘On a knife edge’: can England’s red squirrel population be saved?

Government plans to protect species by increasing woodland and removing greys, but campaigners say it needs to go further

When Sam Beaumont sees a flash of red up a tree on his Lake District farm, he feels a swell of pride. He’s one of the few people in England who gets to see red squirrels in his back garden.

“I feel very lucky to have them on the farm. It’s an important thing to try and keep a healthy population of them. They are absolutely beautiful,” he said.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:00 pm

Only seven new petrol-powered cars sold in Norway in January

Data shows 29 hybrid and 98 diesel cars also sold, while the figure for battery electric vehicles was more than 2,000

Just seven new petrol cars were sold in Norway last month, data shows.

The country, which is the frontrunner in the uptake of electric vehicles, shifted a record low number of new fossil-fuel cars in January, information from the Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) reveals.

Published: February 6, 2026, 10:20 am

Florida euthanizes 5,000 iguanas after cold snap stuns the invasive reptiles

State culled a number of the non-native reptiles after thousands were ‘cold-stunned’ and dropped from trees

Wildlife officials in Florida say they euthanized more than 5,000 non-native iguanas in the state after hordes of the reptiles froze and fell from trees in this week’s cold snap.

The Florida fish and wildlife commission (FWC) authorized the first officially sanctioned cull of “cold-stunned” iguanas as temperatures plunged below freezing in many areas of the state.

Published: February 5, 2026, 5:52 pm

US military says two killed in strike on alleged drug boat in Pacific

Death toll from Washington’s campaign on alleged drug traffickers now at least 128

The US military on Thursday said it killed two alleged drug traffickers in a strike on a boat in the eastern Pacific, bringing the death toll from Washington’s campaign to at least 128.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the US Southern Command said in a post on X. It said “no US military forces were harmed” in the operation.

Published: February 6, 2026, 4:08 am

Uber found liable for sexual assault by driver and ordered to pay victim $8.5m

Verdict could influence more than 3,000 similar cases against ride-hailing company

A federal jury in Phoenix ordered Uber on Thursday to pay $8.5m after finding the company liable in a lawsuit brought by a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by a driver. The verdict could influence thousands of similar cases against the ride-hailing company.

The case, brought by plaintiff Jaylynn Dean, was the first trial of more than 3,000 similar lawsuits against Uber that have been consolidated in US federal court. So-called bellwether trials are used to test legal theories and help gauge the value of claims for possible settlements. The jury found that the driver was an agent of Uber, holding the company responsible for his actions. They awarded Dean $8.5m in compensatory damages but declined to award punitive damages. Attorneys for Dean had sought more than $140m in damages.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:42 am

Victims of Colorado funeral home scam prepare to testify: ‘Justice is missing’

Jon Hallford to be sentenced Friday for abusing nearly 200 corpses; his wife,⁠ Carie Hallford, to be sentenced in April

Derrick Johnson buried his mother’s ashes beneath a golden dewdrop tree with purple blossoms at his home on Maui’s Haleakalā volcano, fulfilling her wish of a final resting place looking over her grandchildren.

Then the FBI called.

Published: February 6, 2026, 1:43 am

Oregon must dismiss more than 1,400 criminal cases due to attorney shortage, court rules

Severe lack of public defenders has meant people charged with crimes have been routinely unable to fight their cases

The Oregon supreme court has ruled that a large number of criminal cases across the state must be dismissed due to a severe shortage of public defenders, a major decision that attorneys say will impact more than 1,400 pending cases.

The problem has been years in the making and has become a significant constitutional crisis, as people charged with crimes are routinely unable to fight their cases as they wait weeks, months or sometimes years for the state to appoint them lawyers. The attorney shortage – due in part to the increasing difficulty of recruiting attorneys for the low-salary, high-caseload jobs – has meant that people have had cases hanging over them for extended periods of time, impacting their housing, employment and families, advocates say.

Published: February 5, 2026, 11:05 pm

Calls to postpone presidential election as Storm Leonardo lashes Portugal and Spain

Portugal’s far-right Chega party has said vote should be delayed as state of calamity declared in 69 areas

• Europe live – latest updates

Heavy rains and strong winds have continued to batter parts of Spain and Portugal, causing at least two deaths, forcing the evacuation of more than 7,000 people and prompting calls to postpone the second-round of Portugal’s presidential election.

Storm Leonardo, which has lashed the Iberian peninsula this week, has led the Portuguese government to extend the current state of calamity in 69 municipalities until the middle of February.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:28 pm

The Russian economy is finally stagnating. What does it mean for the war – and for Putin?

A wartime boom in Russia has given way to sluggish growth, tax hikes and squeezed public services. Will it affect the conflict in Ukraine?

Western leaders were bullish when they imposed sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half,” said the then US president, Joe Biden, in March, a month into the war.

Published: February 6, 2026, 6:00 am

Dozens dead after record snow in Japan – and officials warn warmer weather will be treacherous

Dozens of people have died, including two Australians, as record-breaking snowfall blankets the north

Dozens of people have died in Japan after record-breaking snowfall blanketed northern regions of the country, while officials warned that warmer temperatures could trigger a new wave of accidents.

Authorities said 35 people had died in snow-related incidents across Japan since 20 January, with almost 400 injured, 126 of them seriously. Most of the deaths were among people who fell while trying to clear snow from their roofs or around their homes.

Published: February 6, 2026, 4:02 am

TikTok could be forced to change app’s ‘addictive design’ by European Commission

Preliminary EU ruling says app shifts brains of users into ‘autopilot mode’, with concerns for children and vulnerable adults

• Business live – latest updates

TikTok could be forced into changes to make the app less addictive to users after the EU indicated the platform had breached the bloc’s digital safety rules.

The EU’s executive arm said in a preliminary ruling that the popular app had infringed the Digital Services Act (DSA) due to its “addictive design”.

Published: February 6, 2026, 11:57 am

Queen of Chess review – how the greatest female player of all time checkmated the sexist establishment

She was raised as part of a prodigy-breeding psychological experiment, took on the chess patriarchy and beat her idol Garry Kasparov. So why isn’t there more depth to this documentary?

Judit Polgár won her first chess tournament in 1981 when, at the age of six, she marmalised a string of middle-aged Hungarians and toddled off with a swanky Boris Diplomat Bd-1 Electronic Chess Computer. “I was a killer,” says the amiable 49-year-old in Netflix documentary Queen of Chess. “I wanted to kill my opponents. I would sacrifice everything to get checkmate.” Archive footage captures the bloody aftermath of Polgár’s inaugural victory; a roomful of solemnly jumpered victims looking on, dazed and ashen-jowled, as the vanquishing Hungarian scowls at photographers from beneath a bowl cut that could confidently be described as “ferocious”. The triumph put paid (at least temporarily) to Polgár’s painful shyness, making her feel “exceptionally powerful. After this, it was so obvious for me that I’m going to be a chess player. And if you want to become the best,” she says with a wry smile, “it’s very important to have the challenges.”

Ah, yes. The challenges. But with which to start? Queen of Chess – a rhapsodic account of the life of the greatest female chess player of all time – is spoiled for choice. There is the punishing chess-training regime, designed as an experiment by Polgár’s educational psychologist father László to prove “geniuses are made, not born”. (School and weekends were banned so “every day was a working day.”) There is the communist regime so threatened by the family’s ambitions to compete in the west that it confiscated their passports. There is the relentless sexism that trailed the tiny trailblazer and older chess-playing sisters Susan and Sofia, outraged at the temerity of their insistence on taking on the male-dominated sport’s grandmasters while delivering pronouncements of the “women lack the pure mental ability needed to understand chess” variety. It’s all here, and Queen of Chess throws its arms wide in an effort to capture the frequently depressing reality of Polgár’s experiences. Not quite wide enough, though. There is throughout the documentary’s 90 minutes the persistent sense that there’s more to Polgár’s story; that if only Emmy-winning director Rory Kennedy had been steadier with her magnifying glass the results might not feel so emotionally underdeveloped. Instead, we get a garish, skittish account of Polgár’s youthful ascent to chess superstardom, with grainy scenes of strategic prowess accompanied by jarring neon graphics and an aggressively irksome soundtrack by various female-fronted post-punk types.

Queen of Chess is on Netflix now.

Published: February 6, 2026, 8:01 am

‘I’ve been advised not to say certain things’: The Secret Agent makers on Oscars, dictators and death threats

The actor Wagner Moura and writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho explain how the Brazilian thriller mirrors their experiences of political corruption and why they are compelled to speak out

Unusually for a political period drama that is not in the English language, runs nearly three hours and peppers its authentic portrayal of a military dictatorship with sight gags and gory shootouts, The Secret Agent has transpired to be quite the awards magnet. Best picture and best actor, for its star Wagner Moura (who recently won a Golden Globe), are two of the four categories in which it will compete at next month’s Oscars.

The nominations haven’t yet been announced when I meet Moura in a London hotel room, but it is unlikely they will have turned the head of this seasoned 49-year-old. He has years of experience: he headlined the Elite Squad thrillers, played Pablo Escobar in the streaming hit Narcos, and joined Parker Posey as husband-and-wife assassins in the TV version of Mr & Mrs Smith. He exudes relaxed, matinee idol charisma, as well as the same air of decency and humility as Armando, his character in The Secret Agent. A widowed academic hiding out in a refugees’ safe house in Recife at the height of the dictatorship in 1977, Armando is plotting to flee Brazil on a fake passport. To do so, he will need to outrun the hitmen hired to kill him by a vengeful industrialist.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:00 am

Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision review – some of Charles’s ideas are strangely trippy

Jeff Bezos gives yet another powerful person an uncritical profile. The point of this one: if we’d listened to the king, there would be no climate crisis – even if some of his ideas are a bit woo-woo

We find ourselves at an interesting moment in the streaming wars; one where Amazon’s programming policy has apparently shifted to simply giving a massive platform to authority. Last week saw the release of the Melania Trump film (a grating vanity project it paid $75m for) and this week it’s our turn, with the platform releasing the King Charles documentary Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision.

Why Jeff Bezos would want to curry favour with the most powerful people on the planet by paying to air uncritical profiles of them is anyone’s guess. Either way, as a film, Finding Harmony is intensely frustrating to watch. It is ostensibly a relatively important climate crisis documentary, undone by its own innate sense of chippy entitlement. Perhaps a better title would have been King Charles: Needless to Say I Had the Last Laugh.

Published: February 6, 2026, 5:01 am

From Jay Kelly to Wicked 2: the Oscar-primed films that fizzled this season

It was a great year for Sinners and One Battle After Another but films with megastars like George Clooney, Julia Roberts and The Rock all struggled

Last year’s Oscars narrative might have been more about the little films that could, from The Brutalist to Anora to Emilia Pérez, but this year has become closer to the opposite with big-budget films like Sinners, One Battle After Another and Frankenstein all leading the way.

It’s therefore not quite as easy to explain why some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, from Julia Roberts to Dwayne Johnson to George Clooney to Emily Blunt to Adam Sandler, found themselves removed from the race. So here goes …

Published: February 5, 2026, 10:03 am

Add to playlist: the bizarro punk of Dutch upstarts Grote Geelstaart and the week’s best new tracks

Dressed in Sunday school apparel and singing exclusively in Dutch, this unorthodox five-piece embrace clinical chaos

From Kapelle, Holland
Recommended if you like Black Midi, King Crimson, YHWH Nailgun
Up next New single Maalstroom out now

Tight-fitted in scrimpy Sunday school apparel, Grote Geelstaart – Dutch for great yellowtail fish – make music that’s decidedly less orthodox than appearances suggest. Drums skirmish with frighteningly efficient, jackhammer velocity; synths and guitars buzz and ring like fire alarms; the bass rumbles like a jammed freighter engine. Grote Geelstaart’s clinical chaos goes hand in hand with vocalist/guitarist Luuk Bosma’s primal punk dramaturgy, reminiscent of Nick Cave, James Chance and underrated Dutch punk thespians De Kift. This MO translates wonderfully to Grote Geelstaart’s Zeelandic roots, a place where an intricate network of dykes is built and maintained to keep the unforgiving North Sea at bay: human ingenuity v lawless elements.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:25 pm

Danny L Harle: Cerulean review – an earnest homage to early 00s bangers or a poor imitation?

(XL)
On a high-minded album boasting a weighty guest list including Dua Lipa and Clairo, the superproducer lacks the hooks of the pop-trance he’s so heavily influenced by

Cerulean is a confusing business. It is billed as Danny L Harle’s debut album, which it definitely isn’t – his actual debut album, Harlecore, came out in 2021, although in at least one sense, Cerulean is markedly different from its predecessor. It’s the weighty guestlist, featuring Clairo, Caroline Polachek, PinkPantheress, MNEK and more, a reflection of Harle’s ascension into the major leagues of pop production: he’s worked with Polachek before, as well as Florence + the Machine and Dua Lipa (who also features on Cerulean), among others.

But in another way, it’s markedly similar. As with Harlecore, its chief source material is the kind of pop-trance big on BBC Radio 1 in the early 00s and the speedy, cheesy, Eurodance music on which the wildly successful Clubland brand was founded in the same era. This it presents with high seriousness. “This album is my message,” offers Harle in the accompanying blurb. “I hope it is received.” A press release suggests that he is drawing on “a particular strain of Italian artistry that encompasses the Renaissance composer Monteverdi and the Y2K club bangers of Eiffel 65”.

Published: February 6, 2026, 10:30 am

Fabiano Do Nascimento & Vittor Santos Orquestra: Vila review | Ammar Kalia's global album of the month

(Far Out)
The Brazilian guitarist is joined by the 16-piece ensemble for an album that showcases his dextrous blend of finger-picked melody and percussive strumming

Over the past decade, Brazilian guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento has honed a sound so muscular and expansive it may make you think the prolific soloist and collaborator had four hands playing his instrument’s six strings. His 14 records since 2015’s debut Dança do Tempo include everything from a tender duets album with saxophonist Sam Gendel, The Room, to the electronic-influenced Aquàticos with producer E Ruscha V, and the percussive tabla textures of Cavejaz. On Vila, Nascimento is leaning into orchestral composition, featuring alongside the 16-piece Vittor Santos Orquestra.

Employing his signature combination of finger-picked melodics with percussive strumming, Nascimento’s performance across Vila’s 11 tracks showcases his ability to weave seamlessly through the orchestra’s dynamic range rather than playing a single role. On Spring Theme, he establishes a simple lead melody that guides the ensemble and is anchored through swells of strings and soft shaker rhythm, while on Tema em Harmônicos his fingerpicking mirrors thrumming hand percussion as a muted trumpet takes the lead instead; Plateau’s intricate picking answers the staccato tones of the brass section, simultaneously leading and following. Conductor Vittor Santos’s arrangements reference the luscious, bossa-influenced orchestrations of fellow countryman Arthur Verocai, producing enveloping, overlaid harmonies on Valsa and Floresta Dos Sonhos.

Published: February 6, 2026, 9:30 am

Amidst the Shades album review – Ruby Hughes’ captivating Dowland tribute is steeped in delicious melancholy

Ruby Hughes / Jonas Nordberg / Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann
(BIS)
Joined by lutenist Nordberg and Brinkmann’s viola da gamba, the soprano’s homage to the Renaissance composer is captivating and persuasive

John Dowland died 400 years ago this year, and we’ll be lucky indeed if there are many other tributes as captivating as this one from the soprano Ruby Hughes, lutenist Jonas Nordberg and viola da gamba player Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann. The music is by no means all Dowland – in fact, the recording takes its title from a song by Purcell, and one of its most memorable tracks is a spellbinding version of the Corpus Christi Carol as set by Britten – but everything is steeped in the delicious Elizabethan melancholy that Dowland distilled so very effectively.

Hughes’s voice retains a natural quality, for all its refinement, which has been skilfully captured – the recording is close enough for her to be able to be soft and confiding, but there’s still a sense of space around the sound. She’s more vocally demonstrative than some, colouring each word individually: when in Dowland’s Flow, My Tears she sings of “fear, and grief, and pain”, we’re left in no doubt that these are three different but equally terrible emotions. And yet she, Nordberg and Brinkmann hold all this in balance, maintaining a persuasive sense of line and focus so that the expressivity registers not as indulgence but as communication. This is just as evident in the music by Dowland’s contemporaries and in Purcell as it is in the four new or recent compositions based on Shakespeare’s song lyrics at the end, by Deborah Pritchard, Errollyn Wallen and Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Published: February 6, 2026, 7:00 am

The best recent poetry – review roundup

Afterburn by Blake Morrison; Into the Hush by Arthur Sze; Unsafe by Karen McCarthy Woolf; Only Sing by John Berryman; Lamping Wild Rabbits by Simon Maddrell; Dream Latitudes by Alia Kobuszko

Afterburn by Blake Morrison (Chatto & Windus, £12.99)
Best known as a memoirist, Morrison returns to poetry after 11 years with a masterclass of lyric distillation and charged observation, demonstrating that nothing is beneath poetic deliberation. His subjects range from social and political justice to meditations on poetic heroes such as Elizabeth Bishop and sonnet sequences elegising the writer’s sister. The interwoven specificity and occasional nature of the poems is captivating: one feels their movement, “in the flesh, / in his memory / and in the words”, as they unspool with control and purpose. “I’m still capable of being in love.” This is a poet clearly still in love with life.

Into the Hush by Arthur Sze (Penguin, £12.99)
This first UK publication introduces readers to the current US poet laureate’s bold vision of the world’s fragility: one of unceasing iridescence and glimmer, even in the face of ecological destruction and dilapidation. While the title suggests a sonic organisation, it may be more apt to understand the poems as painterly brushstrokes. “When you’ve / worked this long your art is no longer art / but a wand that wakes your eyes to what is.” Single-line stanzas that decrescendo to em dashes recur, illustrating the silence into which Sze feels both world and body disappearing: “you have loved, hated, imagined, despaired, and the fugitive colours of existence have quickened in your body -”. Even in its continual replenishing beauty, the collection is eerie, as though these poems were a last attempt to bring order to the disorder of living. “What in this dawn is yours?” asks one. Perhaps nothing, because “once lines converge, lines diverge”.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:00 pm

Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman review – a perfect fairytale for our times

What does good living look like? With his marriage and career in meltdown, a man tries to get back to nature in this thought-provoking fable

There has never been a better time than now for Man, the protagonist of Helen of Nowhere, to be a neo-transcendentalist. As a university professor, the lessons he imparts involve encouraging his students to remove themselves from the politics of the city and “the tools of human construction” to pursue the purity of nature. In doing so, Man muses, they might invoke an “innate ability to engage in simply being” outside arbitrary institutions of knowledge, such as the university.

Man is a good person, or so we hear. He is observant, he listens. And of course, “I [love] women,” he tells us. “I’d worked hard for women my entire life.” But “the fact was that war had been declared against me [by] … a faction of women … They were hysterical … and maybe evil, words I could only bring myself to whisper … for I knew the politics behind their deployment.”

Published: February 6, 2026, 11:00 am

Nussaibah Younis: ‘The Bell Jar helped me through my own mental illness’

The author on taking solace in Joan Didion, discovering Donna Tartt and being cheered up by David Sedaris

My earliest reading memory
The first books I became obsessed with were Enid Blyton’s boarding school stories Malory Towers and St Clare’s. When I was eight, I’d hide them under my pillow and read by the hallway light when I was supposed to be asleep.

My favourite book growing up
Roald Dahl’s Matilda. I felt woefully misunderstood by the world and longed to be adopted by a very pretty teacher with only cardboard for furniture. I spent a lot of time trying to make a pen move by concentration alone. Sometimes I still try.

Published: February 6, 2026, 10:00 am

Jean by Madeleine Dunnigan review – sex and teenage secrets

Queer self-discovery drives this powerful coming-of-age debut set in a bohemian 1970s school

It might sound like a potentially familiar narrative: a queer coming-of-age story, charted across one single heat-crazed summer in the 70s. From its very first paragraphs, however, this debut novel feels different. Madeleine Dunnigan immediately takes us inside the head of her rather scary protagonist, and makes his adventures in teenage lust and self-awareness as involving as they are immediate. The writing is constantly surprising, as unafraid of sensuality as it is of the story’s repeated eruptions of brutality.

We first meet Jean, our eponymous hero, as he is about to take his O-levels. He is sitting them at the unusually late age of 17; later, we will find out that this is because he has a history of violence, and has been excluded from every school he’s ever attended. To the despair of his teachers, Jean seems completely unable to learn. He is also a Jew in a school full of gentiles, the lone child of a single mother, a county-funded scholarship boy whose friendship group is unanimously monied and privileged. This is not, however, the story of a queer outsider battling to find himself in a setting of dreary conformity. Perched high on the Sussex Downs, Jean’s school specialises in colourful nonconformists; known to its pupils as The House of Nutters, its regime mixes high-risk bohemianism with the occasional dash of old-school protocol. Crucially, it is isolated, and its pupils are all male. It is a classic microcosm; a petri dish alive with potentially dangerous experiments in masculinity.

Published: February 6, 2026, 7:00 am

‘Christian pastors declared Pikachu to be a demon’: how Pokémon went from moral panic to unifying global hit

Nintendo’s monster-collecting franchise was pilloried as a ‘pestilential Ponzi scheme’ in the 90s. But as its celebrates its 30th birthday, it now stands as a powerful example of video games’ ability to connect people

When I was 11, it was my dream to compete in the Pokémon World Championships, held in Sydney in 2000. I’d come across it in a magazine, and then earnestly set about training teams of creatures, transferring them between my Pokémon Red Game Boy cartridge and the 3D arenas of Pokémon Stadium on the Nintendo 64. I never made it as a player but I did finally achieve this dream on my 26th birthday, when I went to Washington DC to cover the world championships as a journalist. I was deeply moved. Presided over by a giant inflatable Pikachu hanging from the ceiling, the competitors and spectators were united in an unselfconscious love for these games, with their colourful menageries and heartfelt messaging about trust, friendship and hard work.

It is emotional to see the winners lift their trophies after a tense final round of battles, as overwhelmed by their success as any sportsperson. But it’s the pride that the smaller competitors’ parents show in their mini champions that really gets to me. During the first wave of Pokémania in the late 90s, Pokémon was viewed with suspicion by most adults. Now that the first generation of Pokémaniacs have grown up, even becoming parents ourselves, we see it for what it is: an imaginative, challenging and really rather wholesome series of games that rewards every hour that children devote to it.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:30 pm

Mewgenics review – infinite ways to skin a cat

PC; Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel
This mischievous roguelike escapade featuring utterly fiendish felines is compelling, and impressively tasteless

You know that old saying about cats having nine lives? Well, as far as Mewgenics is concerned, you can forget it – and you can also forget the idea that a game about cats has to be in any way cute. These kitties are red in tooth and claw, prone to strange mutations, and strictly limited to just the one life, which often ends swiftly and brutally.

Such is the nature of roguelike, a format that has spawned some of the biggest indie hits of the past 20 years. In these games, failure is permanent; dying sends you back not to the last checkpoint but back to the beginning, the game reshuffling its elements into a new shape for your next run. And so it goes in Mewgenics. You gather a party of four felines and send them out on a questing journey, from which they return victorious or not at all.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:00 pm

‘It’s gonna be a huge party’: Bad Bunny set for Super Bowl stage as Trump skips event

Puerto Rican rapper to follow Grammy victory and anti-ICE speech with show on most-watched US TV event of the year

Just a week after receiving the Grammy award for Album of the Year, the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny will take on the US’s most watched concert of the year when he performs at the Super Bowl this Sunday.

The artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio took home the music academy’s top honor for 2025’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos, a politically minded record infused with Puerto Rican music and culture. The album became the first Spanish-language work to take home the prize, beating out competition from Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

Published: February 6, 2026, 10:04 am

Doctor Doom is Iron Man’s evil shadow? The most far-out fan theories about Avengers: Doomsday

A message board on the Russo brothers’ website briefly hosted Marvel fans’ best guesses about the direction their forthcoming film will take. Here are the wildest

With its enigmatic promo run for Avengers: Doomsday, Marvel has perfected the trailer that reveals precisely nothing. Teasers have consisted of portentous glances, mood lighting, and characters standing very still. Dialogue is pre-scrubbed of context. Music swells with the confidence that something enormous is happening just out of frame. Plot, meanwhile, has been placed in witness protection. The studio is clearly well aware that giving away even a smidgen of detail this early on – the film isn’t due for release until December – would result in fans cracking the code long before any bums actually go on seats.

After all, Marvel has been here before. Avengers: Infinity War’s trailers laid out just enough narrative scaffolding for the internet to calmly conclude, months in advance, that Thanos was going to win and leave the universe in binary tatters. And it happened again with Avengers: Endgame, a film whose storyline was deduced from toy leaks, casting announcements and the radical insight that actors rarely sign multi-picture deals only for their characters to die permanently.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:18 pm

‘It’s not very French to change stuff’: how Claire Tabouret’s stained-glass windows cast Notre Dame in new light

Five years after a fire destroyed most of the cathedral, the artist explains how her designs will give the landmark a modern makeover and the ‘contemporary gesture’ Emmanuel Macron promised

Claire Tabouret can draw a clear line between before and after Notre Dame. Before she was chosen from more than 100 artists to design six new stained-glass windows for the cathedral – reopened in 2024, five years after it almost burned to the ground – Tabouret had a select group of admirers (one of them the French tycoon and art collector François Pinault), but she was hardly a household name.

That has changed – for better and for worse. At the end of last month, the first major solo retrospective of her work opened at the Museum Voorlinden outside The Hague. In Paris, Tabouret’s window designs are on display at the Grand Palais, before being installed at Notre Dame later this year at an estimated cost of €4m (£3.3m). The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and Paris’s archbishop have been enthusiastic in their support, but the plan to integrate a modern artist into a historic landmark has also provoked protests, petitions and claims of cultural and spiritual vandalism.

Published: February 6, 2026, 7:00 am

Purr-fect casting: is Orangey the most important movie cat ever?

A new retrospective celebrates the work of the cat credited with roles in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Comedy of Terrors and Rhubarb

In the midst of Oscar season, it becomes evident just how much work it takes to win an Academy Award, both in on-screen work and off-screen campaigning. Consider, however, that multiple actors have won more than one Oscar. (Emma Stone, one of this year’s best actress nominees, won twice in the past decade.) Only a single cat, meanwhile, has twice won the Patsy – the Picture Animal Top Star of the Year. (The award, given by the American Humane Association, not to be confused with the Humane Society, was discontinued in 1986.) That cat is Orangey, the subject of a small retrospective at New York City’s Metrograph cinema. Plenty of rep houses will play a movie like Breakfast at Tiffany’s around Valentine’s Day; the Metrograph is going deeper into the Orangey catalogue for a wider variety of titles and genres.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s does offer Orangey his most famous role: the rather less colorfully named Cat, pet of Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn), who calls him a “poor slob without a name”. Orangey features heavily in the film’s climax, when Holly releases her pet into an alley as she prepares to leave town, only to have Paul (George Peppard) rush to retrieve him. It completes a running thread that Cat is a part of Holly’s wildness as well as her potential domestication. What better animal, of course, than one equally prone to draping himself over his makeshift mistress and making yowling leaps around her apartment?

Published: February 5, 2026, 5:14 pm

A quick fix for broken zips – and 84 other tips to keep your clothes looking good

From keeping whites white to preventing ‘bacon neck’, keep your clothes looking better for longer with these expert hacks

First, be sure to buy the best quality you can. Layla Sargent, founder of The Seam, which connects people with skilled menders, cleaners and restorers, advises going for “a slightly higher denier, a good amount of elastane/Lycra, and reinforced toes and gussets”. Brands such as Falke, Heist and Swedish Stockings should last longer than a supermarket three-pack.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:00 pm

Five high-protein snacks that are good for vegetarians, according to a dietician

We asked a dietician for tips on hitting protein goals when you have a plant-based diet or are sick of protein bars

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

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

Not a day goes by that I don’t eat a protein bar. I keep my desk stocked with Aloha or GoMacro bars, and never leave the house without popping one in my purse. There’s no denying a bar’s convenience, but when we held an in-office taste test to find the best-tasting ones on the market, our testers had strong feelings about many of their “chalky” textures and “bitter” aftertastes.

Go Macro Bar

Published: February 5, 2026, 8:15 pm

‘People are turning themselves into lab rats’: the injectable peptides craze sweeping the US

Though lab-made peptides are touted as a cure-all, they are not FDA-regulated and pose serious risks, experts warn

Here’s a new trend that sounds unwise: buying unregulated substances from dealers in foreign countries and injecting them into your body.

And yet, grey-market injectable peptides – a category of substances with obscure, alphanumeric names like BPC-157, GHK-Cu, or TB-500 – have developed a devoted following among biohackers and health optimizers.

Published: February 5, 2026, 5:00 pm

Traveling light? We tested the best backpacks that fit under US airplane seats (18x14x8)

I tested a dozen backpacks that work as a personal travel item on airlines to find the best, most durable options to save you from getting dinged by gate fees

• I travel 200,000 miles a year. This is the best travel backpack I can’t leave home without

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

I love my REI Trail 40 Backpack. I’ve used it as my “personal item” on countless flights for nearly a decade. But, as a cost-conscious traveler, I always worry I will get caught for flying with an oversized personal item.

Almost every airline will let you bring a “personal item” aboard for free, so long as it can fit under your seat. Each airlines has specific measurements for a personal item. It’s especially important to mind these measurements on budget airlines such as Spirit and Frontier, which don’t offer carry-on bags for free. Purchasing a carry-on or checked bag on these airlines can drastically increase your flight cost, sometimes doubling the original price.

Best overall:
Bellroy Lite Travel Pack 30L

Best on a budget:
Bagsmart Blast Travel Backpack

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:18 pm

You be the judge: should my husband stop walking everywhere – and get on his bike?

Frida loves cycling everywhere, while Frantz likes to slow down and smell the roses. You decide who is getting a rough ride
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Bikes are a quicker way to get around. We should use them so we can enjoy more of our destination

Published: February 5, 2026, 8:00 am

After high school, a friend I was very close to drifted away. Should I seek closure from her? | Leading questions

Getting closure and reaching out are two different questions, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. One may not help with the other

• Read more Leading questions

Should I try to seek closure with a person I used to love but drifted apart from, or is it best to leave them be?

There’s a person I used to be really close to who doesn’t talk to me any more. We didn’t have a fight. We just drifted, but I still think about them all the time.

Published: February 5, 2026, 2:00 pm

The rise of ‘low contact’ family relationships: ‘I said, Mum, I need to take some space’

Many people are now opting for minimal contact with their parents and other relatives. But while this can provide time to think, it is fraught with emotional complexities

When her mum called her, stress would ring through Marie’s body like an alarm going off. So “I stopped answering the phone,” she says. She forms the words purposefully, as if reading from a script. This was one of the “boundaries” she discussed carefully with her therapist three years ago when she reached a point of crisis in managing her maternal relationship.

She has never explained her decision to her mother, but it followed a lifetime of what Marie, who is in her 40s, feels has been rejection, shaming and feeling like the “black sheep of the family”. Marie’s mother, she says, would always make everything about herself. “Everything I did was just … everybody has it worse. You know, I’d say, ‘I don’t feel very well’ and she’d reply: ‘Yes, well, I’ve got diabetes.’ I was scared to have a voice.”

Published: February 5, 2026, 5:00 am

Does getting cold increase your chances of catching flu?

Traditional advice to keep warm in winter does have a limited basis in science but understanding disease transmission is much more beneficial

“Put your coat on or you’ll catch your death of cold.” It’s a common refrain that feeds the narrative that getting cold will make us sick. And it’s true that illnesses are more common during the winter months, but is it true that you are more likely to catch the flu if you forget your hat?

Not exactly. Writing in The Conversation, medical microbiologist Manal Mohammed from the University of Westminster has explained that colds and flu are caused by viruses that spread either by respiratory droplets or person to person regardless of the temperature. However, there is a bit of truth in the idea – many viruses survive for longer in colder and dryer conditions, increasing the chances of them hanging around and infecting a fresh victim. Cold weather also encourages us to spend more time indoors, and in crowded and poorly ventilated spaces viruses can build up and jump from person to person more easily. Reduced sunlight in winter also lowers production of Vitamin D, which can lead to a weakened immune system.

Published: February 5, 2026, 6:00 am

Levi’s sales grow in UK as celebrities drive denim revival

Noel Gallagher and Harry Styles lead way, and sales of jeans in general rise faster than wider fashion market

The UK was one of Levi’s fastest-growing markets last year as British trend leaders from Harry Styles to Noel Gallagher and Grime Gran were spotted in the brand’s kit.

Lucia Marcuzzo, the managing director of the European operations at the US company famous for its denim jeans, said the revival of 1990s trends had boosted sales of its classic 501s. New trends such as baggy jeans and cinch styles, which can be adjusted around the waist, had also helped, as denim has found its way back into wardrobes.

Published: February 6, 2026, 3:21 pm

Filled with good intention: could the new It bag be an antidote to the tote?

From a £149 John Lewis version to LA’s gorpcore take, the ‘good intention’ bag is intended to look good but hold more

It’s not a multi-thousand pound handbag from Hermès that best captures the new era of It bags, but a £149 tote from John Lewis.

Launched this season, it’s deeper (45cm) and taller (33cm) than your average handbag, and comes loaded with good intentions. It’s able to hold your packed lunch, flask and book, as well – at a push – as your gym kit. The high street retailer is calling it the Intentional tote bag.

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:48 pm

Heads up: what to wear to elevate a humble hoodie

With the right styling, a hooded top doesn’t have to be restricted to travelling or working from home

Published: February 6, 2026, 6:00 am

The Japanese gardening technique of kokedama will bring a touch of magic into your home

Recreate a centuries-old technique from the far east with moss, soil, twine, bonsai compost – and a little patience

I’ve lived in the same corner of London for the best part of 15 years, and increasingly the pavements and parks are layered like onion skins, holding memories of my youth that I don’t realise are there until I return. This week I took my newborn daughter to Peckham in south-east London, to meet a friend in a cafe I’d never heard of. When I turned up, I realised it used to be a regular haunt of mine, and suddenly I was both a tired woman in her late 30s with two kids, and also 22, unemployed and making the most of happy hour.

I bring this up because of what was on the table: a kokedama. If you’re unfamiliar, the word translates to “moss ball”. A decade ago, I saw them hanging outside the doorways of houses in deserted, snow-covered mountain villages in Japan, holding the tremulous fronds of overwintering ferns. The technique dates back centuries, a side-product of the art of bonsai that has become popular in its own right. Kokedama are a lot easier to create at home than bonsai trees: plants’ rootballs are removed from their pots and packed tightly with dense moss, before being bound with the string that can be used to hang them up with.

Published: February 6, 2026, 12:11 pm

Helen Goh’s recipe for Valentine’s chocolate pots de creme for two | The sweet spot

Delicate, rich and silky chocolate pots to round off a romantic dinner

These chocolate pots are dark, silken and softly bitter, with enough richness to feel a little decadent, but not heavy. Make one to share or two individual ones, depending on your mood. They can be made ahead, anywhere from an hour to a full day in advance, and will keep happily in the fridge. If they’ve been chilled for more than a couple of hours, let them sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes before serving. They should feel cool against the spoon, but not fridge-cold, which dulls their luxurious texture. A slick of good olive oil and a pinch of flaky salt is a lovely contrast to the chocolate’s richness, but you could also top them with a few edible flowers or a scattering of grated chocolate and a raspberry or two.

Published: February 6, 2026, 6:00 am

‘It’s dedicated exclusively to female artists, from Frida Kahlo to Tracey Emin’: readers’ favourite unsung museums in Europe

From ancient Greek bronzes to an unusual take on Donald Trump, readers recommend galleries and collections they’ve discovered on their travels
• Tell us about a sunny break in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

We visited the Female Artists of the Mougins Museum, in Mougins, a small village on a hill near Cannes. Full of exclusively female artists – from Berthe Morisot in the 19th century and Frida Kahlo in the early 20th to contemporary figures such as Tracey Emin – it houses an incredible collection of often overlooked art and artists. We visited on a rainy October day and it was remarkably quiet and calm. I particularly enjoyed the abstract works – well worth a trip up the hill.
James

Published: February 6, 2026, 6:00 am

What a ​four-​year-​old ​taught ​us ​about the ​magic of ​baking​ a chocolate ​cake

In a kitchen ruled by ​a t​iny, adorable dictator, even the most familiar recipe becomes an adventure – filled with dragons, sprinkles and unexpected wisdom

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

Valentine’s is on the horizon, which means we are about to officially enter chocolate cake season – that soft-focus part of winter when confectionery and romance blur together. For our four-year-old goddaughter, it is always that time of year. Just hearing the two words together makes her roll her eyes and roll out her little tongue in anticipation of pleasure, like a cartoon kid. When we told her we would come and bake a chocolate cake with her, there were squeals of joy.

Settling on a recipe was the first challenge – Ravneet Gill’s fudgy one, Felicity Cloake’s perfect one and Benjamina Ebuehi’s traybaked one were all contenders. We eventually landed on Samin Nosrat’s much-loved, tried-and-tested midnight chocolate cake.

Published: February 5, 2026, 12:35 pm

Bald eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd: is Budweiser’s all-American Super Bowl ad serious?

Featuring an unlikely animal friendship, the commercial boasts enough patriotic iconography to verge on self-parody

Three years after its sister brand, Bud Light, faced a rightwing boycott over a transgender spokesperson, Budweiser’s new Super Bowl ad, American Icons, contains absolutely nothing that could be mistaken for social progress. Instead, it features an unlikely friendship between two animals whose blood runs red, white and blue: a bald eagle and a Clydesdale horse, the Budweiser icon. An adorable foal trots out of a barn, and the viewer is injected with a single minute of American iconography so pure that it would make Lee Greenwood nauseous.

The horse meets a struggling baby bird who gets caught in the rain, prompting the horse to stand over the bird as a roof. The pair become pals and grow up together, the bird riding on the horse’s back as it grows larger. It falls off a few times, but, like George Washington at Valley Forge, it never gives up. Finally, the horse jumps over a log while the bird spreads its wings above, and we get a slow-motion image of something like Pegasus. We realize the bird, now fully grown, is a majestic bald eagle, taking to the sky as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird reaches its climax. Two farmers look on while drinking Budweiser, as the words “Made of America” appear on the screen. “You crying?” one asks. “The sun’s in my eyes,” says the other.

Published: February 5, 2026, 10:28 pm

The way, the Trump and the lies: prayer breakfast displays US right’s devil’s pact

Trump might not embody Christian values yet is the religious right’s chosen instrument to turn the tide against liberal, godless America

They had come to say a prayer for the father, the son and the holy ghost.

The father was Donald Trump, who, despite sending federal militias to roam Minneapolis, threatening to invade Greenland and telling lies by the dozen, remains the lord and saviour of the religious right.

Published: February 5, 2026, 7:17 pm

Revealed: Private jet owned by Trump friend used by ICE to deport Palestinians to West Bank

Exclusive: Luxury aircraft owned by property tycoon close to US president’s family has twice flown Palestinian men from Arizona to Tel Aviv

On the morning of 21 January, Israeli authorities left eight Palestinian men at a West Bank checkpoint. Disoriented and cold, they were dressed in prison-issued tracksuits and carried their few belongings in plastic bags.

Hours earlier, they had been sitting with their wrists and ankles shackled on the plush leather seats of a private jet owned by the Florida property tycoon Gil Dezer, a longtime business partner of Donald Trump.

Published: February 5, 2026, 5:30 pm

Snoop Dogg curling and a police baton charge: photos of the day – Friday

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

Published: February 6, 2026, 2:18 pm