Putin shows no signs of ending Ukraine war and claim adds weight to accusation Trump favours Russian president
The Kremlin has announced that Vladimir Putin has been invited to join Donald Trump’s “board of peace”, set up last week with the intention that it would oversee a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Monday that Russia was seeking to “clarify all the nuances” of the offer with Washington, before giving its response.
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© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
© Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
As punishing wellness challenges proliferate online, I’ve decided the only sensible response is to invent a kinder – and more lucrative – alternative
I have a masochistic interest in catchily named social media self-improvement challenges, so I already knew about “75 hard” – 75 days of drinking eight pints of water, doing two 45-minute workouts, eating clean and, endearingly, reading 10 pages of nonfiction – before it made its recent comeback. Paddy McGuinness has reignited interest, crediting the regime started in 2019 by podcaster Andy Frisella for his transformation from a normal soft-bodied human into an uncanny mass of bronzed abs and pecs.
It’s inspired me to make my own changes, but not by doing 75 hard or its ilk. I’ve realised what I actually want to do is devise my own devilish self-improvement challenge. After all, I enjoy telling people what to do, and goodness knows, I could use another revenue stream. But what should mine involve? I debated an intellectual 75 hard, to transform your brain into as finely honed a machine as McGuinness’s body. Participants would pack the library like a gym in January, every table crowded with locked-in bros hyping each other up, as they struggle through Gravity’s Rainbow or Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. “I can’t, it makes no sense! I’ve read this paragraph 12 times!” “That’s quitter’s talk. I know you’ve got another page in you, bruh – MAN UP!” Additional requirements would include sonnet composition, calculus, learning a new language and listening to In Our Time episodes on very occasional “cheat” days.
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© Photograph: Posed by model; simonapilolla/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: Posed by model; simonapilolla/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: Posed by model; simonapilolla/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Stimson Snead’s preposterous time-leaping indie starring multiple Samuel Dunnings is just about rescued by cameos from Keith David and Danny Trejo
For the sheer quantity of its gibbering, jabbering nonsense, this movie deserves some points. That, and the amusing cameo at the end from Keith David as the Simulator, AKA God, who explains to the awestruck mortals that God is an entirely free creator, rather like a self-published novelist, then grows irritated when the mortals think that being self-published is lame: “It’s not my fault if you don’t understand the industry!”
This is an exhausting indie romp on the subject of time travel, and sometimes plays like a funnier version of Shane Carruth’s time-travel classic Primer – well, slightly funnier. Samuel Dunning plays Tim Travers, a goateed scientist who has stolen nuclear materials from a terrorist group to power the time machine he has invented. He sends himself back one minute into the past with a gun to kill his younger self to investigate the time-traveller’s paradox: if he eliminates his one-minute younger self, then won’t he also disappear at that moment, popping like a soap bubble, because it means he can’t exist in the future? But given that he has to exist in the future to have set all this in motion, doesn’t it mean that this time-travelled self has to survive?
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© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
Ye Olde Swiss Cottage in London was gaudy, draughty and built on a traffic island. But it was just the escape I needed
Early in my career, I was going through a difficult chapter in work and life. Having moved down to London from Glasgow, I felt socially untethered, unsure of where I belonged. I yearned to feel part of a gang like I’d done back home, but I had no clue about how to find one.
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© Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Anita Chaudhuri
© Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Anita Chaudhuri
© Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Anita Chaudhuri
I was in a work-commute-collapse cycle and didn’t know what to do. Then I began sampling activities I’d previously dismissed – book clubs, line dancing, chess – and it became oddly addictive
For most of my life, I treated taste as fixed. There were things I liked and things I didn’t, and that was that. Hobbies, foods and even social situations were quietly written off with the certainty of personal preference. But sticking to that sentiment had left me in a bit of a rut.
When I moved to London, I threw myself into work: long hours, commuting and networking. In the process, I stopped making time for hobbies or trying anything new.
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© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
Willy Esquivel was delivering nearby when neighbors asked him to help Ann Edwards, who lives alone in Santa Ana
A United Parcel Service driver at work recently charged into a burning home outside Los Angeles and carried a centenarian woman out to safety in what officials called a “remarkable” example of “people looking out for one another in a moment of need”.
As his heroics drew attention in online circles dedicated to finding uplifting stories in the media, Willy Esquivel told the Los Angeles news outlet KTLA that he was “just a UPS driver who was in the right place at the right time”.
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© Photograph: Colin Underhill/Alamy
© Photograph: Colin Underhill/Alamy
© Photograph: Colin Underhill/Alamy
In a brief scene, the undergraduate known as ML stands with his then girlfriend, a white woman named Betty Moitz
Several years ago, near Chester, Pennsylvania, Jason Ipock’s aunt was looking to downsize now that she had retired. In her possession was a collection of old family home videos that took up too much room.
Some of the films were in worn-out film canisters, and Ipock worried they’d soon be unplayable. “I decided that I should have the family films digitized, so that we’ll always have a copy in the event of a catastrophe,” he said.
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© Photograph: Stephen F Somerstein/Getty Images
© Photograph: Stephen F Somerstein/Getty Images
© Photograph: Stephen F Somerstein/Getty Images
Clare Binns says three-hour runtimes deter audiences as she is named Bafta recipient for outstanding British contribution to cinema
Directors should make shorter films if they want their work screened in cinemas, the head of one of the UK’s leading cinema and distribution companies has said.
Clare Binns, the creative director of Picturehouse Cinemas, made the comments after being named the recipient of this year’s Bafta award for outstanding British contribution to cinema, amid concern over steadily lengthening film runtimes.
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© Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy
© Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy
© Photograph: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy
PM says US tariffs are in no one’s interests – and Greenland row should be resolved through ‘calm discussion’
Keir Starmer has ruled out imposing retaliatory tariffs on the United States, saying they would be the “wrong thing to do”, after Donald Trump threatened them against Nato allies to try to secure Greenland.
The prime minister said US tariffs would damage the British economy and were “in no one’s interests”. The UK would instead prefer to address the issue through “calm discussion” between allies, he added.
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© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Vicars, the devout – and some who are desperate – do a lot of praying to get their wishes fulfilled. But it's complicated by lots of dos and don'ts
‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God,” sings Nick Cave in the opening line of his 1997 song, Into My Arms. But Jim Sharma, a football fan who is a devotee of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, very much does – and who can blame him?
For the detached, the uninformed and nonsports fans, the issue here is that Wolves had a terrible start to the season and, until the other day, looked set to beat Derby County’s unenviable record as the worst-performing team in Premier League history. Then they played my team, West Ham, and had their first taste of victory since April. Wolves 3 West Ham 0.
Ravi Holy is the vicar of Wye in Kent and a standup comedian
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© Photograph: Vatican
© Photograph: Vatican
© Photograph: Vatican
Study links rapid growth of ocean macroalgae to global heating and nutrient pollution
Scientists have warned of a potential “regime shift” in the oceans, as the rapid growth of huge mats of seaweed appears to be driven by global heating and excessive enrichment of waters from farming runoff and other pollutants.
Over the past two decades, seaweed blooms have expanded by a staggering 13.4% a year in the tropical Atlantic and western Pacific, with the most dramatic increases occurring after 2008, according to researchers at the University of South Florida.
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© Photograph: Orlando Barría/EPA
© Photograph: Orlando Barría/EPA
© Photograph: Orlando Barría/EPA
He had youth, energy, a tiny purr and could jump 7ft in the air. I always knew when he was about to do it, because he would stare at me intensely before launching himself towards the ceiling
My animals play a big, crazy role in my life. I grew up with cats when I was a little kid but my love of black cats began when I moved from New York to LA in 1996 and found four feral black cats in my back yard. Almost immediately, two female cats got knocked up and had two litters at the same time. Suddenly, we had 13 black cats, the most I’d ever cared for at once.
I’ve been an artist all my life and during the early 2000s my career really started to take off. I began creating a lot of merchandise toys and had my own TV series called Teacher’s Pet, which won five Emmys and a Bafta. My cat Blackie was the inspiration behind all my artwork at the time; he was a scholarly cat with a giant purr – I often drew him as my alter ego. When Blackie died from illness in 2020, I felt as though I’d lost a part of myself – he had been my companion for 15 years. It took me a year to grieve before I could finally consider another cat. That’s when Bosko came into my life.
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© Photograph: Courtesy of Gary Baseman
© Photograph: Courtesy of Gary Baseman
© Photograph: Courtesy of Gary Baseman
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