The Buffalo Bills quarterback is not only a danger to opponents. His bravery and skill inspires his teammates to elevate their play
Two things about the NFL playoffs are predictable: Josh Allen will play out of his skin ... and Josh Allen will suffer a soul-sucking, stupefying loss. Except, maybe, this year.
We all know about the postseason heartbreaks and shortfalls over the years for Allen and the Buffalo Bills. In each season since 2019, Buffalo’s ride has ended in either the divisional or conference championship round, usually at the hands of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. But with no dominant team coming out of the regular season and no Mahomes this postseason, maybe it’s time for Allen and the Bills to finally capture the franchise’s first Lombardi Trophy.
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© Photograph: Megan Briggs/Getty Images
© Photograph: Megan Briggs/Getty Images
© Photograph: Megan Briggs/Getty Images
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
In the UK property sector, a higher proportion of homes in London were sold at a loss than any other region in England and Wales last year.
Estate agency Hamptons has reported that nearly 15% of London sellers sold for less in 2025 than they originally paid, almost double the national average of 8.7%.
Last year, the average homeowner in England & Wales sold for £91,260 more than they paid, a value increase of 41.0% over an average holding period of 9.0 years. This is £570 less than the 2024 average of £91,830.
Stronger recent price growth in Northern regions has boosted returns, meaning many sellers in the North of England achieved proportionally higher gains than those in much of the South.
Flat sellers were four times more likely to make a loss than house sellers in England & Wales (19.9% vs 4.5%).
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© Photograph: US Federal Reserve/Reuters
© Photograph: US Federal Reserve/Reuters
© Photograph: US Federal Reserve/Reuters
Crystal Palace’s stars wilt, Manchester City’s youngsters shine, and Liam Rosenior starts in stylish fashion
Playing against lower-league opposition as a top-flight side in the FA Cup is like batting on the first morning of a Test match – you cannot really win and failure can prompt humiliation and reputational damage. To that end, some members of the Crystal Palace side deservedly beaten by Macclesfield perhaps learned a valuable lesson at Moss Rose. Marc Guéhi and Adam Wharton are linked regularly with big moves away from Palace, but part of succeeding at elite clubs – the pair are admired by Manchester City and Manchester United respectively – is coping with being overwhelming favourites. Oliver Glasner, too, may have designs on bigger things, with United again a possible destination, but to see his side schooled by part-timers was a blow to his burgeoning reputation. Glasner slammed his players after the defeat but the Austrian must take a portion of the blame. They must all do better. Dominic Booth
Report: Macclesfield 2-1 Crystal Palace
Report: Manchester City 10-1 Exeter
Report: Manchester United 1-2 Brighton
Report: Derby 1-3 Leeds
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© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
With its pasties, decent brews and staff who are happy to chat, it’s a vital community space. So why are its days numbered?
What do James McAvoy and my three-year-old son have in common? Very little, you might think, notwithstanding their shared awareness of the book The Dinosaur That Pooped a Planet. Yet their lives overlap in a more tangible way, because they, along with Benedict Cumberbatch, patronise the same cafes on Hampstead Heath. Both actors have signed a petition protesting against the takeover of four family-owned north London cafes by the Australian-inspired chain Daisy Green. It’s a move that has dismayed the local community, leading to protests, and threats of legal action against the landowner, the City of London Corporation, whose new funding model for green spaces prioritises “income generation”.
You’re probably wondering why you should care, either about what Hollywood actors think, or about this notoriously chi-chi part of London. And yet, like them, and like me, you probably have a favourite cafe, one that feels very special. So please indulge me in describing mine: the Parliament Hill cafe, which has been run by the D’Auria family for more than 40 years.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
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© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA
© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA
© Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA
Going to Australia as a freelance journalist with a form of muscular dystrophy was not without trepidation but an away Ashes was too good to pass up
“Australia is not for weak men.” Had I heard Ben Stokes’s words in Brisbane earlier perhaps I wouldn’t have decided to cover the Ashes series as a freelancer. Had I known how England were going to play, I almost certainly wouldn’t.
My attendance was not in any way predicated on how well England might do in the series – making decisions based on the potential success of the English cricket team can only lead to madness. But having been born with a form of muscular dystrophy, the physical requirements of an eight-week tour to Australia were more of a consideration.
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© Photograph: Gareth Copley/Getty Images
© Photograph: Gareth Copley/Getty Images
© Photograph: Gareth Copley/Getty Images
Loosening your muscles is beneficial, but choosing the right type of movement for your chosen exercise is key
It depends on what kind of stretching you’re doing, says Dr Alex Dinsdale, senior lecturer in sport and exercise biomechanics at Leeds Beckett University.
Injuries, he says, happen for all sorts of reasons, from poor footwear to fatigue. Two key factors are not having the range of motion required or not being strong enough to control that motion. “You might go for a run and lift your knees higher than your hamstrings can manage,” he says. Or you might lack the muscle strength needed to handle moving a limb at speed.
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© Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian
© Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian
© Illustration: Becky Barnicoat/The Guardian
Was British army major Robbie Mills leading a secret double life? Or was his post-humous accuser hoodwinking Mills’ family? A true-crime investigation finds out
A true-crime investigation into the supposed secret double life of British army major Robbie Mills. After Mills died in 1955, apparently from an accident on a submarine, a man called John Cotell turned up at his home claiming to be a friend of his – and a fellow spy. Journalist Eugene Henderson tells the troubling tale of Cottell, who rapidly insinuated his way into the Mills family’s lives. Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly
© Photograph: PR
© Photograph: PR
© Photograph: PR
With its cast of thinkers, gamers and artists, this romp across Europe explores our desire to define reality – even as it slips from our intellectual grasp
Joanna Kavenna’s two decades as a writer have seen her beat a gorgeously unconventional path through a plethora of subjects and genres, from polar exploration to motherhood to economic inequality, and from travelogue to academic satire to technological dystopia. “I like genre,” Kavenna said in a 2020 interview, “because there’s a narrative and you can kind of work against it, test it.” That being said, her seventh published book, Seven, is a curiously uncategorisable, protean thing: a slim, absurdist novel, but chunky with ideas.
Of all the genres Kavenna has worked within – or, more accurately, vexed the boundaries of – Seven (Or, How to Play a Game Without Rules) is probably closest to an academic satire. We first encounter the novel’s thoroughly anonymised first-person narrator in Oslo in the summer of 2007, where he or she or they are employed as a research assistant to a renowned Icelandic philosopher named Alda Jónsdóttir. Jónsdóttir is described as “eminent, tall, strong and terrifying”, and likes to host dinner parties for her histrionic institutional peers. The hapless narrator’s job is to help facilitate her work in “box philosophy”: “the study of categories, the ways we organise reality into groups and sets […] the ways we end up thinking inside the box, even when we are trying to think outside the box”.
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© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
© Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian
Over four years have passed since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. Claudia Janke’s photographic series features 7 Afghan women who have found safety in the UK after escaping at great personal risk. She worked using an Instant Box Camera, the only type of camera allowed under the Taliban’s first regime, reclaimed for the these women to amplify their voices
Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, the regime has imposed sweeping restrictions on the rights of women and girls, with devastating consequences for society. Girls are barred from attending school beyond the sixth grade, and women are prohibited from working, appearing on television, leaving the house alone, and singing or speaking in public. They have been systematically erased from public life.
A recent UN Women report underscores the scale of this repression. The Afghanistan Gender Index 2025 reveals, among other findings:
No female representation in national or local decision-making bodies.
A complete ban on secondary education for girls.
A staggering 76% gender gap across health, education, finance, and governance – one of the worst in the world.
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© Composite: Claudia Janke
© Composite: Claudia Janke
© Composite: Claudia Janke
Director Nicole Chi Amén embarks on a journey to learn more about her own mixed cultural heritage after the death of her Guangdong-born grandma
Nicole Chi Amén, a Costa Rican woman of Chinese descent, has always been on the outside looking in. The opening scene of her moving debut feature replicates this predicament visually: her face pressed against a metal barricade, she looks through a hole in the opaque facade with interest. The camera is observing, too, and the sight of a house being torn down gradually comes into view. This was once the home of her maternal grandmother, a Guangdong native who emigrated to Costa Rica more than 60 years ago. Conceived in the aftermath of her passing, Amén’s film probes the fragility as well as the resilience of cultural heritage as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
Since neither Amén nor her grandmother speaks the other’s native language, a barrier looms large in their relationship. Even “guián”, the name Amén used to call her grandma, is a linguistic hiccup; the word refers to a paternal grandmother in the Enping dialect, a variation of Cantonese. In fact, miscommunication surrounds Amén wherever she goes. In a revealing sequence stitched together from various taxi rides, she is constantly queried by drivers confused by her multicultural identity. Seemingly innocuous, their prying betrays startling ignorance and racist prejudice. The same situation recurs when she travels to Guangdong to get closer to her roots, only this time the people asking these questions look like her.
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© Photograph: True Story
© Photograph: True Story
© Photograph: True Story
After her husband died suddenly, and her children left home, teacher Helen Smith started to question everything in her life. Then a radio programme about a shortage of Guide Dogs gave her an idea
Helen Smith was cleaning her bathroom and listening to the radio, some time after the pandemic, when a story came on about a shortage of guide dogs. The pandemic had made it hard to breed puppies. One vision-impaired owner faced a two-year wait for a new dog. Knowing the importance of her own relationship with dogs, Smith was overcome with sadness for him. Right then, she thought, “Well, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?”
She was living in the south of Hesse, in Germany, having moved in 1998 from Shropshire for her husband’s work. Their daughters were nine and three. The family settled. They got a dog. Smith found tutoring work and started a business teaching English.
Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?
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© Photograph: Guide Dogs
© Photograph: Guide Dogs
© Photograph: Guide Dogs
The performative male was over at the 2026 Golden Globes, where even risk-takers like Timothée Chalamet, Jacob Elordi and Jeremy Allen White did little to temper the black tie stuffiness
Timothée Chalamet was the final clue. As he arrived in good time on the Golden Globes red carpet, the star of Marty Supreme put pay to speculation as to whether the chromatic marketing of the film’s ping pong balls would have him wearing orange. Instead, he wore a black T-shirt; vest, jacket and Timberland boots with silver buttons by Chrome Hearts, souped up with a five-figure Cartier necklace. Kylie Jenner, his partner and sartorial foil, was nowhere to be seen.
Styled by Taylor McNeill, who was also responsible for Chalamet’s wildly amusing if chaotic red carpet campaign for the film, the look was bad boy Bond. It also set the tone for an evening of subdued tones. If we thought the penguin suit had gone extinct, we were wrong. The performative male is over – welcome to the return of the staid suit.
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© Composite: Guardian Design
© Composite: Guardian Design
© Composite: Guardian Design
Media bosses expect web referrals to plunge and want journalists to emulate content creators, report finds
Media companies expect web traffic to their sites from online searches to plummet over the next three years, as AI summaries and chatbots change the way consumers use the internet.
An overwhelming majority are also planning to encourage their journalists to behave more like YouTube and TikTok content creators this year, as short-form video and audio content continues to boom.
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© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
© Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images
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