If the Sunday already felt golden under the alpine sun for Team GB, it only glittered brighter after dark

Super Sunday? More like Golden Sunday. From the sunlit snowboard slopes to the floodlit ice track, Great Britain delivered a one-two punch that will live long in Winter Olympic folklore. In the space of a few hours, two British duos – Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale, then Tabitha Stoecker and Matt Weston – turned near-misses and nerves into history-making golds.

Bankes and Nightingale stunned the field to win the mixed team snowboard cross, capturing the first gold medal on snow in the nation’s 102-year history at the Winter Games. In the wild, elbows-out chaos of the event, the British duo seized a title few predicted was coming.

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© Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

© Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

© Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

A humbling Six Nations defeat at Murrayfield has left the England coach with significant questions to answer

Some of life’s certainties are impossible to sidestep. And to the trinity of death, taxes and rail delays can now be added a fourth familiar staple. When Scotland play England at Murrayfield it is now all but guaranteed the hosts will raise their game to Ben Nevis‑type heights and the visitors will be taken down a peg or three.

Thus it was again at the weekend as Scotland reignited the bonfire of English vanities and once more sent the auld enemy homewards tae think again. A chastened England were exposed repeatedly in thought and deed by opponents unrecognisable from the sodden losers in Rome the previous week and, as a result, the visitors were brutally consigned to a fifth Calcutta Cup defeat in the past six editions.

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© Photograph: Dan Mullan/RFU/The RFU Collection/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Mullan/RFU/The RFU Collection/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Mullan/RFU/The RFU Collection/Getty Images

Pressure is telling on Scott Parker at Burnley while Dominik Szoboszlai is reaching new heights for Liverpool

The lack of pressure on Scott Parker this season, despite a collection of desperate performances and an impending relegation, has been mystifying. Plenty at Turf Moor feel a strong sense of loyalty to Parker, especially the chairman, Alan Pace, but support in the stands is dwindling. The lack of backing in the winter transfer window left the squad short of quality and with limited routes out of their current predicament. The Burnley head coach’s Premier League record is miserable and the style of play is devoid of entertainment. At the weekend he had the chance to follow a first league victory in 17 matches at Crystal Palace with FA Cup progress against third-tier Mansfield, but instead Burnley were deservedly eliminated. The second-half efforts of the Clarets bordered on embarrassment in a half-full ground and it feels like things cannot continue like this much longer. Will Unwin

Match report: Burnley 1-2 Mansfield

Match report: Aston Villa 1-3 Newcastle

Match report: Liverpool 3-0 Brighton

Match report: Burton 0-1 West Ham (aet)

Match report: Hull 0-4 Chelsea

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© Composite: Guardian Pictures / Getty / Reuters

© Composite: Guardian Pictures / Getty / Reuters

© Composite: Guardian Pictures / Getty / Reuters

Frank Lampard’s team started the season with a blaze of goals but Kim Hellberg’s side are now title favourites

By WhoScored

The last time these two teams met, on 25 November, Coventry were on an 18-match run that delivered 13 wins, 50 goals and a 10-point lead at the top of the Championship. Middlesbrough, by contrast, entered the game without a head coach. Rob Edwards had taken the Wolves job and his replacement, Kim Hellberg, watched from the stands as the team conceded two late goals to lose 4-2. Boro were still second in the table but were staring up at what looked like an unbridgeable gap to the leaders.

And yet, as these two sides prepare to meet again a little more than two months later, the table tells a different story. Middlesbrough’s 2-1 win against Sheffield United was not just their sixth in a row, but it also took them above Coventry at the top.

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© Photograph: Andy Commins/PA

© Photograph: Andy Commins/PA

© Photograph: Andy Commins/PA

Dear Abby advises a woman on how to conduct herself at work.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Japan misses growth forecasts for the final three months of 2025

Japan has slotted in at the bottom of the G7 growth table, along with the UK:

With Canada and the US yet to report their GDP data for October-December, here’s what we know so far:

Germany: +0.3% in Q4 2025

Italy: +0.3%

France: +0.2%

UK: +0.1%

Japan: 0.1%

US: Due on 20th February

Canada: Due on 27th February

“Virtually flat prices in February really needs to be viewed alongside what happened in January.

After the prolonged uncertainty in the run up to the late November Budget, plus the usual Christmas slowdown, we saw activity pick up again from Boxing Day. Many sellers, some of whom had been holding back because of the Budget, came to market in early 2026 with renewed confidence, which helped to drive that bumper January price rise.

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© Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

© Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

© Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

A dating coach’s viral video explaining why men should do one simple act has sparked fierce debate, with some women saying any man needing such advice isn’t worth keeping.

Former NFL star Tre’ Johnson has died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 54 while on a trip with his family. Johnson, an offensive guard, played college football for Temple University before being drafted by Washington in 1994 as a second round pick.

Exclusive: Google fails to include safety warnings when users are first presented with AI-generated medical advice

Google is putting people at risk of harm by downplaying safety warnings that its AI-generated medical advice may be wrong.

When answering queries about sensitive topics such as health, the company says its AI Overviews, which appear above search results, prompt users to seek professional help, rather than relying solely on its summaries. “AI Overviews will inform people when it’s important to seek out expert advice or to verify the information presented,” Google has said.

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© Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Logicians and their bonnets

Today’s puzzle is a new twist on a classic genre: the “common knowledge” hat riddle in which logicians deduce facts about their hats based on what they know, and what they know others know.

Head sums

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© Photograph: Silo Stock/Alamy

© Photograph: Silo Stock/Alamy

© Photograph: Silo Stock/Alamy

Protesters welcome high court decision but many remain in legal limbo as government prepares to lodge appeal

Retirees making up some of the nearly 3,000 people arrested for supporting Palestine Action since the organisation was proscribed have said they feel “vindicated” by the high court’s decision to overturn the ban this week.

However, uncertainty remains over whether their trials under terror laws may still go ahead after the government revealed it plans to appeal against the judgment made on Friday by three of the UK’s most senior judges.

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© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

© Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Fresh fruit and other items now available but at high prices in territory where unemployment is estimated at 80%

Every morning, Mansour Mohammad Bakr sets out from the small rented room in Gaza City he shares with his pregnant wife and two very young daughters. The 23-year-old walks past the port and the breaking waves of the Mediterranean where he once earned his living.

Before the two-year war that devastated Gaza, Bakr was a fisher, sharing tackle and a boat with his father and brothers. Now his brothers are dead, his father is too old, and his equipment was destroyed during the conflict. Like hundreds of thousands of others across Gaza, Bakr needs a job.

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

A rare lymphoma diagnosis meant Giorgi Gagoshidze had to abandon a film project on the economic factors behind the USSR’s collapse – until he found new meaning in medical terminology

In autumn 2022, Giorgi Gagoshidze was in the middle of making a documentary film about the unravelling of the Soviet Union when he experienced his own personal system collapse. After returning from filming in Tbilisi to Berlin, where the 42-year-old Georgian artist lives, he was suffering from shortness of breath. An X-ray revealed that both his lungs had filled with water. He was told to get a taxi to the German capital’s Charité hospital straight away if he wanted to live.

Gagoshidze was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma, a rare, aggressive and fast-growing form of blood cancer in an advanced but curable stage. A brutal cocktail of chemotherapy followed by an eight-month hospital stay in isolation was his only shot at survival.

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© Photograph: Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

© Photograph: Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

© Photograph: Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

Mimosas and violets are already out in the south of France, making it the perfect time for a pre-spring road trip

As I take my seat in Galimard’s Studio des Fragrances, in the Provençal town of Grasse, I limber up my nostrils for the task ahead: to create my own scent from the 126 bottles in front of me. Together they represent a world of exotic aromas, from amber and musk to ginger and saffron. But given that I have left the grey British winter behind to come here, I am more interested in capturing the sunny essence of the Côte d’Azur.

Here in the hills north of Cannes, the colours pop: hillsides are full of bright yellow mimosa flowers, violets are peeping out of flowerbeds and oranges hang heavy on branches over garden walls, even though it’s not yet spring. It is the perfect antidote to the gloom back home, and the chance to bottle these very scents is a joy.

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© Photograph: Hemis/Alamy

© Photograph: Hemis/Alamy

© Photograph: Hemis/Alamy

The journalist and polymath probes the mysteries of the mind in this unsettling yet life-affirming investigation

The brain, wrote Charles Scott Sherrington, is an “enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern”. The British neuroscientist created this striking image more than 80 years ago, a time when mechanised looms, not computers, embodied the idea of technology. Even so, the symbolism feels relevant. We struggle to talk of our brains or minds without recourse to the machine metaphor: once it was clocks, then looms, and now computers. We say that our brains are hardwired; we talk of our ability to process information.

The quote appears as merely a footnote in Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears, a fabulous and mind-expanding exploration of consciousness: how and why we are self-aware. But the whole thing can be read as a lucid and impassioned riposte to Sherrington’s conception of the mind as a machine. In Pollan’s view, we have become imprisoned by such narratives, which have obscured the richness and complexity of human and non-human consciousness. Bridging both science and the humanities, Pollan mines neuroscientific research, philosophy, literature and his own mind, searching for different ways to think about being, and what it feels like.

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© Photograph: Cayce Clifford

© Photograph: Cayce Clifford

© Photograph: Cayce Clifford

Canadian experimentalist Isiah Medina’s latest flits between radical and grandiloquent, but deserves close reading and exasperated sighs in equal measure

‘If cinema was a 19th-century dream actualised in the 20th century through chemistry, then the auteur was a 20th-century dream that needs to be actualised in the 21st through digital.” Canadian experimentalist Isiah Medina is hellbent on that task in his latest feature, which almost entirely comprises a troupe of po-faced cineastes declaiming such theory-freighted slogans, and bemoaning what dogs the genuine auteur these days: western-centric power hierarchies, industry racism, the economic exclusion of serious artistic work, the tyranny of language.

It’s dense stuff, and staged at an ironic, if not quite playful, remove. Mark Bacolcol plays Clem, a director struggling to finance his next feature in the face of the system. Boyfriend Ez (Kalil Haddad) is an unblinking ideologue, who peps Clem up by telling him: “Be proud: regardless of race, most people don’t like your work.” Collaborators Nico (Jonalyn Aguilar) and March (Charlotte Zhang) are struggling to hurdle the same structural obstacles. A hipster collage in his office juxtaposes Mao’s Cultural Revolution with the title of Armond White’s 2020 book Make Spielberg Great Again. Needless to say it’s not the great white hope Clem is holding out for.

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© Photograph: Publicity image

© Photograph: Publicity image

© Photograph: Publicity image

Dana Shepherd admitted to stabbing 19-year-old Carmen Van Huss 61 times during Indianapolis apartment break-in.

After Macclesfield’s FA Cup giantkilling, the quiet Cheshire town remains suitably unassuming in the spotlight after years of heartbreak

Along the passenger bridge at Macclesfield railway station, a frieze celebrates the town’s history. Towards the far platform it reads “1874, Macclesfield Town established”. The next entry is “1979, Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures released”. Local humour has it that for 105 years nothing happened in Macclesfield. “Macc’s Macc,” say those who know of a place where change is for ever slow, many Maxonians happy enough with that.

The town, in the east of Cheshire, a gateway to England’s north-west, is a classic northern mill town, though silk was the product not cotton. It once would have been described as a bustling market town until falling victim to the nationwide death of the high street, its Marks & Spencer branch boarded up in disuse and footfall low. That said, the outdoor Treacle Market, selling artisan foods and trinkets, held on the last Sunday of each month, claims to be the region’s “biggest monthly event”.

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© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Union analysis finds consumers lag behind international peers as some rate-setters remain anxious about inflation

The Trades Union Congress is urging the Bank of England to cut interest rates and rekindle economic growth, pointing to analysis showing that cash-strapped consumers are lagging their international peers.

The Bank’s monetary policy committee voted 5-4 to leave borrowing costs unchanged this month, after six cuts since mid-2024.

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© Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

© Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

© Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

It is like House meets Elementary for this show about the sidekick of Conan Doyle's detective, who investigates a different medical mystery each week – when he isn't having tastefully lit horizontal time

Go to 221B Baker Street and the Sherlock Holmes fans you meet there will be American, not British – and while the BBC’s Sherlock might be the most famous Holmes revival on TV this century, the US has us beat when it comes to volume. Stateside telly responded to Sherlockmania with Elementary, which relocated Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes to New York and made Watson and Moriarty female, but was in many ways a more faithful sleuthfest than the overblown Benedict Cumberbatch show and ran for scores more episodes. Long before that, the biggest drama in the world was House, which was set in a hospital but featured a mercurial genius solving baffling mysteries – once the House-Home-Holmes penny dropped, you knew you were watching Sherlock in disguise.

Watson is the latest attempt by US network television to keep the Conan Doyle canon firing, and it’s a straight cross between House and Elementary. Morris Chestnut is Dr John Watson, who is an American practising medicine in present-day Pittsburgh, but is also a war veteran who, when the show aired its first season last year, had just finished a stint cracking crimes in London with Sherlock Holmes. Showrunner Craig Sweeny, formerly a writer/producer on Elementary, gave his new Watson a litter of eager doctor pups who, like the gang who used to trail around behind Dr House, were always a step behind their boss when it came to working out which arcane condition was about to kill that week’s patient.

Watson aired on Sky Witness and is available on NOW in the UK, and Paramount in Australia.

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© Photograph: CBS/Paramount

© Photograph: CBS/Paramount

© Photograph: CBS/Paramount

As AI models advance rapidly, experts warn of widespread job displacement while others call it 'doomerism.' What's the reality behind AI predictions?

What happens when the people building a new technology don’t want to use it?

British pop star joins a long line of prestigious past curators including David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith and Elvis Costello

© Laura Coulson

The UK competition regulator has previously urged all supermarkets to expand their loyalty schemes

© PA